Jump to content

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Codypuma (talk | contribs) at 02:37, 8 October 2011 (→RfC: Elimination of outline articles). 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 
Shortcuts

New ideas and proposals are discussed here. Before submitting:

« Archives, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215


Remove ability for new users to create other accounts

For background, see [1] - it is a common MO of a number of serial vandals to create one account, then use that account to mass-create a bunch of "sleeper" accounts. These accounts have no log entries of their own, which makes detecting them through Checkuser impossible until they are used, thus allowing the vandals to continue attacking the site after the main account is blocked. Even aside from these nefarious purposes, I have noticed a number of new users create an account, get confused, and accidentally create another account. Now they have two accounts, and in rare occasions get blocked as sockpuppets because they start editing with the first, then later log into the second mistakenly thinking it was the one they created in the first place.

To this end, I'd like to propose that the ability for non-autoconfirmed users to create accounts be revoked. This may seem backwards, as anonymous users can still make accounts, but in the first example, the serial vandal would have to make a log entry in the checkuser database for all of the accounts, making them infinitely easier to locate and block all at once. In the second case, the new user may be confused by the "access denied" message, but hopefully with the use of Mediawiki messages, we can make it clear that it's because they already created an account and are free to edit. Thoughts, comments, and concerns are welcome. Hersfold (t/a/c) 01:14, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like a good idea but I'm just wondering: once a person sees they can't create multiple accounts while logged in, wouldn't it be just as simple for them to log out and then create whatever number of accounts they'd like to, logging off in between each creation? Maybe the idea is still just as viable because people won't think of this workaround, so it will still be preventative, but I'm just wondering about the mechanics.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I saw the ANI thread that led to this proposal, which does sound reasonable. Are there any potential pitfalls of it, besides the "access denied" issue you already raised? I presume the situation of multiple people on one IP address (such as library access, university access) would not have a problem because they'd individually be registering accounts from that IP, right? LadyofShalott 01:28, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know the Checkuser tools but I suppose you know that public logs show who created an account and which other accounts they have created. For example, [2] shows that User:Kentdorfman was created by Hersfold, and [3] shows other accounts created by Hersfold. If it doesn't exist already then somebody could maybe make a one-click script to get these logs from a user page, or display them by default. But if you say the proposal would make it much easier for Checkusers to find abuse then I believe you. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:59, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • From a technical point of view, it would be easy to modify the throttle limit for account creations from the current 6 accounts to 1 every 24 hours, however, this would place users at WP:ACC at a severe disadvantage. Also, I'm not sure if it would be technically possible to disallow account creations by new users. If the createaccount right was restricted in the user group, then anyone in the user group would be unable to create accounts - regardless of whether or not the user had access to the right as part of another user group. To do this, new users would need to be automatically put in a separate group which would then be removed when they became autoconfirmed... and that would take time and effort on part of the devs. Ajraddatz (Talk) 04:16, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • For it to stop the primary offender, we'll need both a ban on new accounts creating accounts and a lower throttle; 2 or 3 for non-ACC people would seem reasonable. The above-linked banned user won't be any less difficult to spot, as anyone who's seen him knows, it'll just make it harder for him. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)I must admit, though, I had to laugh when I saw User:Cloudy with a Chance of Mascots; in a strange way, it can be entertaining.[reply]

I just wanted to snipe my 2 cents in here too. I also agree that there is no need for someone to be able to create an army of additional accounts on day one. I think the idea of limiting this ability to Autoconfirmed users is good as is the limitation of only creating 1 account per 24 hours. Additionally, it should be possible to write a sql report against the database to see if a user has created another User account and in particular if they haev created multiples. It may even be possible to determine if those accounts have contributed. Let me do some asking around and see if that is possible. --Kumioko (talk) 14:51, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like a sensible step forward - there is no good reason for non-auto-confirmed users to be able to create multiple accounts. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:37, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see this a good direction to explore further. I am puzzled at the above comment that users at WP:ACC would be disadvantaged by this change. I assume that the people who handle requests at ACC have the ability to create accounts in large numbers if they are needed. Also, why would the creation of a new account by a registered user not show up in their own log? Can't all users (not just checkusers) see what other accounts someone has created? EdJohnston (talk) 20:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They can (and that's one of the reasons it's so easy to nail MascotGuy socks), but new users probably don't know how to check that. I see that happen with some frequency when I monitor the new user log; a person will join as Davidsmith, then (for instance) create the account David smith, because they thought that's what their account was named in the first place (there are a couple scenarios where that might happen), and they end up confusing themselves. Our logs aren't exactly easy to find if you don't know how to get to them, so although it shows up there, a new user won't realize what they accidentally did. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:43, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Only those with the accountcreator flag are free of rate limits, so new contributors to the ACC would be at a disadvantage. Ajraddatz (Talk) 23:09, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep in mind that the reason why multiple accounts are "authorized" is due to the fact that the only check here is to see if the same IP address is being used to create multiple accounts. For users at something like an internet cafe, at a school, or some other activity where multiple people can be using the same computers and/or ip address, putting a throttle on new account creation actually can keep some legitimate users from being able to create accounts. Yes, it would be a rare exception for when this situation would happen (such as a classroom assignment for some tech class of non-Wikimedia users simultaneously creating accounts in a short period of time), and the real question would be to ask how many new users with genuine accounts would this impact? It would not be zero people, as I know this has happened, but my experience is that such efforts are usually quite rare, on the order of once or twice per month if I was being extremely generous (more like a couple of times per year). In this exceedingly rare situation, an instructor could also get some cooperation from an admin to help out in terms of simply creating the accounts as well, so I don't think it is necessarily the end of the world. --Robert Horning (talk) 17:50, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • If the root problem here is that these "secondarily created" accounts don't get log entries, surely it would be just as easy to develop a way to make this be logged in the same fashion as normal account creation? Shimgray | talk | 17:58, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think there are two issues getting confused here. One is the ability to track account creations with the checkuser tool. Let's leave that aside for the moment.
  • The bigger issue here, I think, is someone registering an account and then using that new account to create multiple other accounts (not multiple people registering one account on the same IP address or anything like that). There is simply no reason for someone to create an account, then use that account to create multiple other accounts (see this log entry). TNXMan 18:04, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That's the problem I have as well. Anyone who watches the new user log will have seen innumerable similar log entries, and the way it's set up now he's allowed to multiply x6 (this is what can be done with the current throttle), making it that much more annoying because admins have to block all the accounts and non-admins can't do anything but report, watch, and wait. I can't think of a good reason why a newly registered account would need to create more than one new account (and then only for things like softerblocked usernames and the like). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:14, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For what its worth I found out that it is possible to create a report that would tell if someone used their account to create another account even if that account has never been used. I don't know how useful it would be since technically its allowed until they do something stupid with it but I thought I would drop a note and let you know. --Kumioko (talk) 19:34, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have thought that Special:Log/newusers was created many years ago. You seems to be unaware of it. Ruslik_Zero 20:00, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Lower the limit of account creation in a 24 hour period by non-autoconfirmed accounts

A discussion at WP:ANI on sockpuppets creating other sockpuppets seems to have consensus to lower this limit. The reason not to eliminate this ability altogether is to allow for a bad username to be changed by the user as they familiarize with WP:USERNAME policy. There are two proposals, one to lower the limit for non-autoconfirmed users to two accounts per 24 hour period, the other to one account per 24 period. Cerejota (talk) 19:43, 1 September 2011 (UTC) moved from ANI as per WP:SNOW, only moved !vote, not discussion on moving here--Cerejota (talk) 20:35, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

 Done--Cerejota (talk) 04:34, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How about treating this like aspirin?

Is the issue really # of accounts in 24 hours or # of accounts in a short period of time? What if we had a limit of 6 accounts per day but 2 per hour? Or even beyond that, 2 per hour, 6 per day and 12 per week? Protonk (talk) 04:36, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But why do new accounts/non autoconfirmed users need to create that many accounts? I just don't see what anyone would do with that many accounts. TNXMan 11:31, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Will be teaching a class of medical students coming up. They will all be creating new accounts from a single IP. Would this proposal interfere with that? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:43, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, this only affects users who create an account, then use that account to make more accounts. Editors that use one IP to make multiple accounts, per your example, would be fine. TNXMan 13:13, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I can think of a few reasons, but my point is the restrictions should match our goals. It doesn't need to be 6 per day but it is pointless to just say "well no one should need that many accounts." I'm just suggesting a solution which nets the same benefits but keeps an overall rate limit closer to the old one so we don't curtail legitimate use. Protonk (talk) 15:37, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK, a few things. First, Protonk, what you suggest is possible (I think), but honestly is it needed? I think that 2 per day would be fine, no real need to make it more complicated from there. Doc James, yes this would affect you (and Tnxman you are wrong, the reduced limit applies for the IP and not accounts), but you can request temporary accountcreator flag at WP:RFR to allow you to bypass the rate limit. Ajraddatz (Talk) 20:28, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I want to know a single hypothetical or real scenario for which a non-autoconfirmed user might want to create six accounts a day. Name just one. I have a rather wild imagination and I cant think of one other than puppetfarming. Autoconfirmed users do have at least one reason, which is to help the article creation team, but even then that's a right.--Cerejota (talk) 23:49, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A professor creating accounts for his students. It's happened before, several times. We've always had to use the accountcreator right for that, though. And puppet farming is stupid if you create it from your same account. Then it's logged, and what's the point of logging your sockpuppetey? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 15:49, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Tell that to this guy, then; he's been doing that since 2004. He seems to just like doing it, and the throttle now lets him do this, which is 300% the annoyance compared to lowering the threshold to 2 accounts. And he does this at least a few times a day. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:21, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am not annoyed by MG. If you are, it is your problem. Do not try to solve it at the expense of others. Ruslik_Zero 18:13, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That you aren't involved in fixing the damage he creates is your problem; don't foist your laziness on those of us who are trying to do something about it. Give me one good reason why a new editor would need to create 6 accounts. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:20, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The bottom line is there is no legitimate reason for anyone except an accountcreator or sysop to need the ability to create six accounts in one day. The only example of a need for more than two that has been thus far brought up is a professor creating accounts for students, and this requires the accountcreator anyway. N419BH 18:32, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Blade of the Northern Lights, that reason was provided several lines above your comment, but you seem to have ignored it. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:57, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well a higher account limit would allow for professors to make accounts (or the students themselves, if the computer lab parcels out one IP for dozens of computers) without being dragged through PERM or ACC. Both processes are (no offense to participants there) a pain in the ass. Protonk (talk) 22:07, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay so if I need to create a hundred accounts in the span of a few minutes for a workship at McMaster [4] how do I go about doing this again? Will I need to create them myself and then hand them out? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:30, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In your case, you should be fine, as you're an admin. For others, it shouldn't be too hard to go through the ACC people; if this is implemented, we'll of course want to make ACC easier to find. Perhaps a note in the login window about it would be good. That is the only reason I can think of a new user would need to create so many accounts, and we have a way of doing it that won't open us up to the annoyance of malicious users doing it. @Fetchomms; I didn't ignore it, I merely think that our ACC process can already handle it, and new users should arguably go through it already. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 13:38, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if you've used the ACC system before (as a volunteer, not applying for an account) but it's a bit of a hassle if we get a bunch of requests at once, to check that they're all from the same IP, then create them, and then tell the requesters to check their email for a password, etc., etc. This could be addressed if there was a better way to request accountcreator (and if the account creation limit was displayed more prominently somewhere for professors/teachers/etc. to see), but it's still annoying. It would also mean that basically every ACC volunteer will get the accountcreator right, which has the side effect of being able to edit editnotices (unless they changed that), and people have messed around with that ability before. Anyway, MascotGuy won't stop creating accounts if there's a lower limit; it just means a minute saved for admins blocking them. But he's so easy to detect there's no real problem there. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 19:20, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It seems he'd not the only one doing this at the moment; see [5]. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:23, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if I'm missing something, but all those problematic usernames weren't created by other accounts as far as I can see ... /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:40, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, that's me not thinking straight. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:04, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
IPs would still be limited by this throttle. This would also slow down this kind of crap. Reaper Eternal (talk) 12:19, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible to reduce the timeframe from 24 hours along with account creation, say perhaps 12 hours or similar? You can argue that would have the same effect in stopping a good amount of disruption as with 24 but would minimize much of the collateral damage caused. –MuZemike 18:23, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible. — Kudu ~I/O~ 23:08, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can someone clarify for me - are we targeting an actual problem here? Yes, MascotGuy is annoying. He's also just one person - last time I checked, we didn't make technical changes which affected every new user based on one person, or, for that matter, on "it makes my life a bit easier, and that's the only concern" - although some of the people I see in this discussion seem to have a track record of believing that things work that way. Ironholds (talk) 04:43, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Reaper Eternal linked to another vandal who seems to like mass account creation, and I've seen this happen elsewhere too (a whole series of accounts named User:Tim Pawlenty's DNA, User:John Boehner's DNA, and so on with various Republican politicians' names). Yes, MascotGuy is the primary annoyance and the most visibly obvious one, but it's not just him. And finally, I'm pretty sure Filter 360 was set up last summer to help prevent one particular IP-hopping user from spamming something, which was configured to nail IPs and non-autoconfirmed users. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい)
    So...three. You're restricting account creation to deal with three people, one of whom, by your explanation, seems to have such an obvious modus operandi that an edit filter would work a lot better. Ironholds (talk) 21:56, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The examples were meant to be demonstrative, not exhaustive, but regardless I'd be fine with simply making an edit filter to handle it. I don't much care how, more that it gets done in some form. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OTRS member group

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There does not appear to be consensus to implement this proposal at this time. While several of the editors opposing expressed a willingness to reconsider if the permissions were trimmed from both deletedhistory/deletedtext and undelete to simply deletedhistory/deletedtext, even accounting for those views there does not appear to be a sufficient level of support for a new OTRS member group. 28bytes (talk) 07:58, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
parallel discussion on Commons

It's been brought up on the OTRS-permissions mailing list and I've experienced it myself, where OTRS agents who work at both Commons and Wikipedia on getting validation for media and text content at either location have to deal with the difficulties imposed by deleted content referenced in emails. If a file is deleted the OTRS agent cannot check to see whether conflicting information was placed on the description page for comparison to the email that has come in regarding the file. And for both files and articles deleted for copyright violations or lack of permission, OTRS volunteers must continually pester at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion, remember which files/articles were requested, keep coming back to check for a restoration, then finally add the proper tags before emailing that the restoration was performed. OTRS agents working with permissions do so for both en.wiki and Commons but in many cases are an admin on one but not the other, despite the fact that files can be uploaded to either. I personally received a suggestion to apply for adminship so I would stop placing OTRS-related requests for undeletion (see entry).

In order to expedite the process, reduce the workload on the limited number of admins, and acknowledge the trust already placed in individuals considered knowledgeable enough with the projects already to answer emails to our readers, it is proposed that an OTRS member group be created here, analogous to the one at Commons. First and foremost this makes it so that the OTRS userbox can point to the user rights display here for verification of OTRS member status. Secondly, this allows for an edit filter to check for addition of OTRS tags by non-OTRS members on files and article talk pages. Thirdly, the following rights are proposed to be associated with the group to facilitate the operations that OTRS agents would need to perform as part of their duties and which are hindered when content has already been deleted:

  • Undelete a page (undelete)
  • View deleted history entries, without their associated text (deletedhistory)
  • View deleted text and changes between deleted revisions (deletedtext)

Please note that the above does not include the ability to delete in the first place. – Adrignola talk 15:08, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If they are trusted to work on the OTRS system, they should be fine in passing an RFA. And if they don't pass the RFA, they probably shouldn't have OTRS. AD 15:36, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wrong, Commons has repeatedly shown this is not the case. How many OTRS volunteers on enwiki don't have admin rights on Commons because an RfA based on "I need it for OTRS" failed? Go see for yourself. How many Commons-based OTRS volunteers don't edit enwiki enough to pass RfA? Most. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 15:40, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody needs admin rights, especially for OTRS. Anyhow, I'm sure we make exceptions when it comes to exceptional candidates. As for Commons, that's none of our business. If they want a user group for OTRS they can make one, but we don't need one here. AD 15:45, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Somebody needs them, to keep Wikipedia running. And could you back up what you're "sure" of with examples? Lastly, you obviously don't know how OTRS permissions work because Commons is not the only place that deals with them. We get many tickets relating to enwiki permissions (text and images) and having an OTRS userright here would expedite the oft-backlogged process. Now, if you aren't going to volunteer yourself for OTRS, then I'd ask why you're trying to inhibit those who have. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:56, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're also forgetting that OTRS is a cross-project effort, and that the volunteers who handle tickets in English may have a different home wiki - another language, or another project, or another project in another language - and that they may fail an enwiki RfA because they don't do enough here. - Jredmond (talk) 18:52, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • This opinion was in regards to the content that violated copyright or was libelous. Such content is not oversightable. Ruslik_Zero 18:06, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree this seems like a reasonable request. If they can be trusted to be an OTRS volunteer then they should have access to the tools they need to do the job. Even Jimbo has stated in the past that being an Admin is no big deal. --Kumioko (talk) 16:48, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • What if we just made them admins on (simple non-RFA) request, with the instruction that they should limit their use of the tools to OTRS related matters until they pass a regular RFA? Monty845 17:30, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I like this idea. An OTRS admin could request the enwp +sysop for the OTRS volunteer on the 'crat noticeboard, and the 'crats then make the final decision - thats what we pay them the big bucks for. John Vandenberg (chat) 18:00, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    This would violate the principle of least privilege. –xenotalk 21:19, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm good with this IFF it's reciprocal. Me being on Arbcom and needing to verify en.wiki user misconduct on Commons was not considered admin-worthy by commons, even though the stated need would have been covered by this level of access. Jclemens (talk) 20:28, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I dont follow you. This proposal doesn't relate to Commons. its OTRS and English Wikipedia. fwiw, Commons already has an OTRS-member role, however it is used for role based edit-filters and (afiak) doesnt grant any additional permissions. John Vandenberg (chat) 21:09, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    If I can get access to deleted files on Commons, by virtue of being an OTRS agent, then I'm willing to allow non-en.wiki-sysadmin OTRS agents who may already be Commons admins to see deleted materials on en.wiki. If that's not on the table, then I'm not inclined to support anyone else going around local approval processes just because they're trusted elsewhere and/or identified to the foundation already. Jclemens (talk) 22:10, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think anything we agree on here can affect Commons. Would need to have a parallel discussion there. –xenotalk 22:25, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, absolutely. In fact, I would favor a WMF-wide discussion on the permissions accorded to cross-wiki OTRS volunteers. I think it appropriate to give OTRS editors the ability to view deleted (not suppressed) material on alternate projects that they need to deal with is entirely appropriate, and I have no particular problems handing out view (not change) permissions far more liberally than the current RfA process treats cross-Wiki admins. Jclemens (talk) 23:42, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, thanks for the clarification. There is now an identical discussion on Commons. Also, a global permission to see deleted files (only) has been already 'approved' a long time ago and is waiting on coding (see meta:Global deleted image review). It is currently designed to be granted to Commons admins, which wont help you as such, but will allow more liberal granting of the ability to view deleted files. John Vandenberg (chat) 03:21, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you ABSOLUTLY need to do that, ask an sysop without giving details or ask for the researcher right on meta. Also, you can defer to a sysop on OTRS. Finaly, who's in OTRS but isn't an sysop? If we need an special group for OTRS, wouldn't commons already have one? ~~Ebe123~~ (+) talk
    Contribs     22:04, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Indeed, if a special group for OTRS was needed, Commons probably would have one. Oh wait... :p Happy‑melon 23:38, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support this proposal partially because I support unbundling the tools in general but also because a lot of OTRS work would be benefited by being able to see (and possibly restore) deleted revisions. "they can go to RfA" is a decidedly sub-optimal answer. RfA is an overly political process and is overkill for the needs of most OTRS volunteers. Rather than sending people doing a tough job into the grinder in order to make their job marginally easier, we should support routing around RfA where possible. Protonk (talk) 23:49, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • If this proceeds, I would suggest that holders of this userright be required to submit a ticket number into a viewdeleted log to ensure the rights are being used for the purpose for which they were granted. –xenotalk 00:49, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    There is no 'viewdeleted' log. Ruslik_Zero 10:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Indeed - which is why I said a viewdeleted log instead of the viewdeleted log. The suggestion would require developer assistance. –xenotalk 13:43, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I might be convinced that deletedhistory is reasonable when investigating a ticket, and there is something to be said about a "visible" bit for OTRS volunteers, but I can't think of a valid reason to be able to view deleted revisions' text or undelete anything while handling a ticket that cannot be just as easily achieved by asking someone who has the right. — Coren (talk) 00:57, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • ... except that asking someone who has the right is another step. In OTRS, there's already what I perceive to be a large bias in that simple tickets with straightforward boilerplate responses are handled more quickly than serious, but involved tickets. The big deal about deleted revisions was based on a legal ruling that said no, under no circumstances would "average" editors ever be given the ability to see them. Now that we have wider use of suppression, the average sensitivity of a deleted but unsuppressed edit is lower, and the vetting process for OTRS is sufficiently strong that I suspect distributing the right more widely would pass legal muster. Jclemens (talk) 01:09, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. If OTRS volunteers are trusted to handle private and personally identifying information then certainly they can be trusted to view deleted material. Also, per jclemens's point about suppression, perhaps we should see about getting an updated legal opinion from our general counsel. One last point, I can't help but wonder if this proposal came about because of me "waffling" on this refund request from an OTRS volunteer. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:33, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • See [6] for the "updated" opinion. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:03, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • And I have emailed Geoff to get a specific analysis on this particular situation, given the trust and access to sensitive information that OTRS personnel already have. As for the "waffling", mere coincidence. Neither myself nor the OTRS agent involved in that particular request for restoration originally brought up the issue prompting this proposal on the mailing list. – Adrignola talk 15:49, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - If they need the tools, they should have them as OTRS volunteers are highly trusted members of the community that go through a sufficient screening process to become members. There exists a process to handle issues in the event of abuse, which, I expect, would end in a volunteer having their membership removed. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 07:01, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose to anyone except administrators elected via the RFA process being able to undelete anything. Viewdeleted is another matter. However, it would be far more useful to create a global group for them. Ruslik_Zero 10:36, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • View deleted stuff seems quite reasonable to give to OTRS people. I understand that they are all identified persons to the WMF, and are somehow vetted. However, I do not see why the ability to undelete is requested. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:09, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Undeletion is required for images or articles deleted as copyright violations and for which release under an acceptable license has been received from the copyright holder. This avoids the need to try to find an active admin who also has OTRS access to assign a ticket to or constantly post requests at WP:REFUND, which then ask admins without access to OTRS to blindly restore content based on the OTRS member's word (not much different than the OTRS agent restoring it themselves). – Adrignola talk 15:49, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • I would offer view deleted permission to any reasonable request from an OTRS member. I believe that there is already a "researcher" group with this permission. I would not support unbundling undelete from delete, and together they should be limited to admins. If commons won't promote enough admins from the OTRS corps, that is a commons problem, and it shouldn't be overridden by creation of a global group against the wishes of the people at commons. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:13, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since Adrignola is the most frequent requester at WP:REFUND perhaps adminship should be considered. I have not notices other OTRS volunteers requesting refund. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 13:34, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not convinced & comment on identification to WMF I'm an Admin on en.Wiki and an OTRS volunteer. I don't believe I was ever asked to identify to the Foundation. I've no objection to all OTRS volunteers being given the ability to view deleted material, but that isn't the request here as it's specific to en.wiki. If the power to view is given it should be given to everyone everywhere, not just a few, although I sympathise with the problem. The request should be for a global group. I don't see a need to undelete, it should always be possible to find an Admin who will help. Dougweller (talk) 14:18, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - most OTRS agents are not identified to the Foundation. They are required to be willing to identify on demand, but rarely have we requested that. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:10, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support this is just for viewing deleted material--a very minimal one among the admin rights, as it has no effect on the actual content of the encyclopedia. I'm a member of both , and I trust the judgement and discretion of OTRS people as a group more than I do that of the other. DGG ( talk ) 18:44, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose undeletion and viewdeleted for anyone who hasn't passed the minimum trustworthiness standards that an RFA represents. The comments from Wikipedias' lawyers at this discussion makes very clear why this is important, and what loosening it might mean for wikipedia and the foundation. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 02:20, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Wait—do you mean RfA and not AfD? (Also, given that all OTRS volunteers must be willing to identify themselves to the WMF if requested, and being allowed to deal with private information on a regular basis, I think that's putting in a lot more trust than we do in most admins.) /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:01, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I have been an OTRS volunteer in the past, and I support this simple proposal that will make their job easier. -- Donald Albury 11:49, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. OTRS volunteers are subject to more scrutiny than admins are and this proposal would grant them fewer rights, but enable them to do their job more efficiently. Thryduulf (talk) 14:41, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure how useful these would be - but I don't see a major problem handing them out per se. I think the "legal opinion" is misdirected, because there are far more admins than OTRS agents with access to deleted material. And we hand them that bit at pretty much the whim of the community & with little oversight. --Errant (chat!) 15:43, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Viewdeleted is okay. Undelete probably not. Basically read access but I'm hoping that transactions can become audit-able (similiar to CU log) - Mailer Diablo 16:33, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm going to need to say yes. OTRS peoples are trustworthy, and this shouldn't be a big deal making their lives easier. Ajraddatz (Talk) 18:19, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Opposed because of the inclusion of the undelete right. Without that right, I would likely support. My second and subsidiary concern is project autonomy - with the exception of a few global groups, I can't think of a particular instance where one group of people (in this case, OTRS admins - and let there be no mistake, they are among our best and brightest and are people I respect highly) select people who will be granted rights on a project upon which they may or may not be active. In my capacity as an administrator, OTRS agent, and volunteer, not as an employee action. - Philippe 18:38, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will oppose this as it's written.
    1. If we want to give individual volunteers extra bits for their OTRS-related work, that's fine, but OTRS volunteers are not a single contiguous group: there are many different roles, which handle many different sorts of things, and which may or may not overlap. We grant those roles individually, based on demonstrated tact and ability rather than some minimum criteria, and skill on OTRS does not always correspond with trust on-wiki.
    2. OTRS is not a badge; outside of the permissions queues, on-wiki OTRS-related admin actions should stand on their own merits rather than on a ticket number. I realize that this proposal is thinking specifically of permissions queues, but one we grant the extra bits then there won't be an easy way to tell between the two.
    3. Finally, as I mentioned above, OTRS is a cross-project endeavor, which can draw volunteers from any language version of any WMF project. OTRS is not an extension of enwiki, and many OTRS volunteers have never edited enwiki. Wherever possible, the enwiki community should be the ones to dispense special bits on enwiki; you shouldn't hand out bits here just because I think someone would do a good job with e-mails.
I'm fine creating a separate OTRS bit here for edit-filter tracking (like what they have on Commons). I just don't want OTRS-related actions to become unquestionable, and this proposal tends in that direction. - Jredmond (talk) 18:52, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They're not unquestionable. There's a whole section on WP:OTRS about disputing or querying OTRS actions, and this proposal deals mainly with copyright verifications, which is among the least controversial tasks OTRS agents perform. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:01, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. (Rationale copied and pasted from my comment on the identical proposal at the Commons VP). This comes up very frequently in the OTRS permissions queues. There are a few dozen OTRS agents, many of whom are admins either here but not on the English Wikipedia (as in Adrignola's case) or on the English Wikipedia but not on Commons, and it's a royal pain in the arse trying to deal with tickets relating to deleted content on the project where you can't see it. A lot of people who email OTRS don't realise the distinction between WP and Commons, and there really isn't that much difference and the difference isn't that much—OTRS agents do much the same job on Commons as they do in the enwiki filespace, and allowing them to view and restore deleted images on both just makes everybody's lives easier. The other clear advantage is that OTRS agents take personal responsibility for the undeletions, rather than asking admins to take responsibility on the basis of a ticket the admin can't see. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:32, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose because of the undelete right. I could support otherwise, assuming there are no legal concerns (maybe get the OTRS volunteers who get the right to identify themselves) and the WMF approves. However the undelete right does affect encyclopedic content and anyone who is given it should be subject to scrutiny and accountability measures as administrators are. Hut 8.5 19:33, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The undelete right is kind of the point, and what basis do you have for suggesting that OTRS agents who aren't admins but have the ability to undelete pages (and only those pages that have been deleted because of copyright concerns, but whose license has been verified through OTRS. As for identifying to the WMF, admins don't have to, so why should an editor with less privileges? We're talking about simplifying a very common admin action, not checkuser data. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:01, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • The only reason I mentioned identification is that in the past Foundation legal counsel have expressed severe concerns about proposals to allow trusted registered users to view deleted revisions (link is somewhere above). I thought that if similar concerns were expressed about this proposal then identification may be enough to address them. Hut 8.5 12:05, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm an OTRS agent of about two and a half years, and an OTRS admin for about 14 months. Shortly after joining OTRS I started processing image requests and found sysop on Commons would be useful. My RfA was shot down in flames. I respected their decision, and moved on to another aspect of OTRS in answering info emails. If I need something looked into or done on commons, there are plenty of users I can contact on-wiki, by IRC, or email, or by OTRS. I'd prefer to do it myself, but the commons community prefer I not. No big deal.
Now, I neither support nor oppose this idea of a set of permissions, this is simply my opinion: I don't really see the point on en.wp. I see the need on commons, it would be nice if an agent asking me for opinions on a ticket which I cannot access the history could be settled. It's quite a stumbling block. That need isn't as necessary in dealing with photosubmission and the English Wikipedia. If it has been deleted as a copyvio and permission is given to release CC-by-SA it does not have to be restored locally but instead reuploaded to commons. Simple as that. 99% of OTRS tickets related to the English Wikipedia do not require editing the article solely on ticket reference. My rule of thumb is that if an edit based on a ticket cannot be performed within policy/guidelines and can be justified without OTRS even being mentioned, it's probably not healthy for Wikipedia and the person writing us should be educated on the community process instead.
Additionally, we have (statistically) few agents answering tickets related to the English Wikipedia who are not admins. Those select few have been scrutinized for selection based on their ability to assist people contacting us, and part of that is knowing that sysop tools should never really be needed when handling requests for editing articles from inanimate objects to BLPs. Being a sysop is considered a general standard since the agent has been through a community review, but it is not a requirement.
Long story short: this userright would be granted rarely, and rights are not a golden ticket. Keegan (talk) 04:32, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You're conflating permissions and photosubmissions. Of course images are already attached to the emails when people submit photos, but when they're wanting an image restored that was deleted as a copyright violation, that's normally not the case. Sure, we could ask them to attach the image, but that not only hides who originally uploaded if we re-upload, it is also annoying to the contact if we already sent out replies trying to figure out which image is being discussed (then seeing it's deleted) and/or trying to find out the licensing. (Leading to them saying "screw it, enough with your bureaucracy" and losing images). You're also conflating the info-en queues and the permissions queues. This proposal relates to those handling the latter, and cases handling the latter are the ones non-OTRS members are familiar with, with the tags on article talk pages and image pages showing the orange OTRS tag. Yes, those with access to info-en queues are normally en.wiki admins; those accessing the permissions queues that apply to Commons and en.wiki, not so much. The people in this proposed group would be the same ones that are members of the OTRS-members group on Commons currently. – Adrignola talk 15:44, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • For disclose I have access to OTRS and am also an admin. OTRS is split into language queues and access for each queue is on a need to access basis so a German wikipedia OTRS volunteer cannot access info-en and wouldn't get access unless they were specifically vetted for access to that queue. That means for us that there are not OTRS volunteers working on tickets relevant to us who are not members of the english wikipedia community so access doesn't go to all and sundry. I believe the exception is for the permissions queue where I have access to the non-english tickets and vice versa. For info-en tickets - the blp vios and why was my article deleted stuff I can see that access to deleted revisions and deleted pages would be very useful but I cannot image any circumstance where a volunteer would benefit from undeletion. For permissions, I can see that being able to check the images and the licenses for deleted images would be exceedingly useful but there are no problems for getting stuff undeleted at REFUND so the tags and licenses can be sorted. I'm uncomfortable with a global undelete button for permissions users as I believe that its not just a question of getting the tags sorted but sometimes there are local policy issues for volunteers to get right and volunteers unfamiliar with en might easily create an inadvertent faux pas and raise the drama level. In other words, I fully support the proposal as long as the undelete function is excluded from the proposal, otherwise oppose. Spartaz Humbug! 16:22, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps it would make sense to clarify whether the proposal is seeking a global group (where projects are typically asked to opt-in) or a local group that would be requested and assigned locally at WP:RFPERM. –xenotalk 16:30, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that's a valid question. I wouldn't like a global group. If a user thinks they could or would use the flag they can apply for it at REFPERM. Not every OTRS volunteer wants to be easily identified as such so a global user-right would be unwelcome. I also think holders of the flag need sufficient understanding of English to be able to explain and defend their actions so this should be a status granted by an EN admin/'crat. The more I think about it, the more I wonder about the scope of the proposal - how many users here would need it??? Spartaz Humbug! 17:54, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Thought it should be clear that this is a local group, that would only encompass those with access to permissions queues (permissions-en@wikimedia.org, permissions-commons@wikimedia.org—OTRS members handling one can access and handle the other). Otherwise I would have expected the proper location to be at Meta. I would expect that English-language ability would be taken into account at WP:PERM (certainly it would hard to request it otherwise). As for how many, it would be anyone in this list, minus any en.wiki admins, minus any non-English speakers, minus anyone inactive. – Adrignola talk 18:13, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a historical list and its not entirely clear how many of those users are still editing. Spartaz Humbug! 02:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Which raises another question. Would this apply even to an OTRS member who rarely did any OTRS work? Who would monitor to see when the permission should be removed and what would those criteria be? Dougweller (talk) 08:29, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    If this userright were to be created, it should be 1) approved by the Foundation; 2) locally assigned on a need basis; 3) withdrawn when no longer in use; 4) configured such that viewing of deleted revisions by these users requires a log entry (where they will enter a ticket number). Otherwise there is no way to effectively monitor that it is being used appropriately. –xenotalk 13:04, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • With the undelete, this is a Strong Oppose, because after all, OTRS membership means, well, access to OTRS, not a golden ticket to miscenallous "useful" rights everywhere. Yes, OTRS members are trusted. So what? We might as well give every Wikipedia admin admin rights on Commons, since they're trusted. If a user needs to regularly perform duties related to OTRS queues and such, I may accept that as a valid reason for putting forward a candidacy for steward. On the other hand, I wouldn't like to make en.wikipedia a "special case". As for a group allowing only to view deleted history/text, I would be leaning towards supporting, but I'd rather have it done globally, rather than making en.wikipedia, as I mentioned earlier, a special case. I hope that was clear enough - if it wasn't, do tell me so. — Kudu ~I/O~ 23:24, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    No, it's not clear. I keep seeing this "golden ticket" mentioned, but it's not clear why a limited number of rights needed to perform necessary duties would be opposed in favor of having people need to go all-out and request adminship or (in your case, a first that I've seen) request stewardship (that's admin/bureaucrat actions on every project without local admins/crats). Regarding your comment on en.wiki admins getting admin rights on Commons, I proposed a similar proposal there for the same rights proposed here (undelete and deleted revisions) which gives OTRS volunteers who may only be admins here and not at Commons the tools they need to work with files there. It seems to me that if I felt OTRS volunteers had a "golden ticket", I'd have asked for OTRS volunteers to be made admins with all possible actions including deletion and blocking, even for those who aren't admins anywhere. Not asking for the world here. – Adrignola talk 15:22, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose to having approval processes outside of en.wikipedia grant user-rights on en.wikipedia. Support the unbundling of user-rights. jorgenev 16:53, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose; the inclusion of the viewdelete right sways it for me. Ironholds (talk) 19:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose While I agree that this would make certain OTRS tasks more useful, undelete is a sticking point for me. Also of issue is that we need to decide what to do if something goes wrong ahead of time. If needed, can someone lose access to this while still being on OTRS? Can someone be given OTRS access but not this at the discretion of the OTRS admins? ect. Sven Manguard Wha? 09:52, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support I support minus the undelete tool. Usergroup, viewing deleted pages, and viewing deleted revisions is fine with me. There should be a board under WP:PERM for this though. The user should have to go through the OTRS approval process but also a local (enwp) approval process. Since many tasks at OTRS can be done without the permission, I think request that gives enwp community a chance to review a user's contributions is fair. Could be redundant though, I havent spent a whole lot of time thinking this through.--v/r - TP 15:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. OTRS is an interface for answering messages, not a userright of its own. AGK [•] 11:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Despite the fact this proposal doesn't seem likely to pass, I just want to state that I support the unbundling of rights. —stay (sic)! 09:15, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Quite pointless, I think. Stifle (talk) 13:08, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support seems like a perfectly sensible step forward. Why we want to create extra bureaucracy where none is needed is really beyond me. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 11:55, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - As a former OTRS volunteer, I don't see the need. One potential abuse is the joining of OTRS with the agenda of becoming an admin. As flawed as it is, the Rfa process acts as a community forum that requires consensus to create new admins. Arguments in favor of this proposal fail to convince this is truly needed. Jusdafax 01:46, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

I raised this in the parallel discussion on Commons, but that proposal seems much more likely to pass than this one: Would those opposing on the basis that only admins should be able to view deleted content feel any more comfortable if this permission was limited to OTRS agents who are already admins on Commons, but not here? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:35, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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

I think it would be a nice minor convenience to have a tooltip (hover message) on the interlanguage links, allowing English users to easily determine what the different languages are without having to look them up individually:

Current
Languages
Dansk
Deutsch
Ελληνικά
Español
Esperanto
Français
⋮
 With tooltip
Languages
Dansk
Deutsch
Ελληνικά
Español
Esperanto
Français
⋮

Or something along those lines. —Designate (talk) 21:48, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]


As you have the table above, the words in the right of the column are a mere replication of the words on the left hand side. Did you mean to have the words Danish, German, Greek, Spanish, Esperanto and French on the left-hand side of the table? I appreciate your good intentions here, but I feel that if Wikipedians are knowledgeable enough about different languages to be able to edit in different languages, they would almost certainly know that name of a language in its own language (please correct me if I have misunderstood you here!) ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:00, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hover over the words on the right and you can see it gives the English name of the language in the tooltip. –xenotalk 23:02, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To translate the interwiki links to English, add this to Special:MyPage/skin.js:
importScript('User:Tra/sidebartranslate.js'); //[[User:Tra/sidebartranslate.js]]
---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 04:25, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would support this for sitewide implementation. Before I figured out an easier way, I can't tell you how many times I went to m:List of Wikipedias to figure out things that this would have made moot, and I can't think of any reasons not to do it except possibly if we were told it was a server strain, which I doubt.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:10, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
When I hover over the link, I want the name of the article, not the name of the language. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 05:33, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It already does this. Hover over the third one down to see.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 06:27, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's my point: don't change it. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 11:58, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In other words, you oppose this because it would add an additional feature that other people would find useful, that you personally would not, but which would not affect the feature you find useful at all?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:21, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This looks like an excellent idea. Well worth proposing to the developers (though there's no guarantee they'll act on it, of course).--Kotniski (talk) 10:32, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. As long as it retains the name of the article (and it does), adding he name of the language sounds like a great idea. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 11:55, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's bugzilla:5231 from 2006. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like a good idea to me. bobrayner (talk) 11:30, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not really sure where this proposal ends up. —Designate (talk) 01:02, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You could post to bugzilla:5231 with a permanent link to this section to show support for the feature. You could also vote on the bug. I don't know whether it will have any effect. See also Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 August 24#Interlanguage map? I posted an idea for an implementation which may require less work for the developers. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:36, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cool idea. I've been mystified by certain languages myself. Before I had to make a judgement by looking at the first two letters in the address bar and looking at the particular article ("da.wikipedia.org" for Danish is easy enough when viewing an article, but I still don't know what language "ka.wikipedia.org" is, for example).--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 03:52, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea of the double tooltips too. I've had the same problem as Brianann: with Wikipedias in foreign languages, especially foreign writings systems, it's often quite impossible for a non-expert reader to find out what language it actually is by looking at their own pages. ("ka" is Georgian, by the way.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:38, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good idea. It is little things like this that get people interested in exploring things more. Shabidoo | Talk 08:46, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Because the interwiki links exist for people who have stumbled across the page but don't necessarily speak English, so they can direct themselves to the article which does exist in their language. The tooltips, by the way, seem like an excellent idea, and I support them. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 03:47, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Elimination of outline articles

I propose that outline article are desposed of. I know this is a rash decision, but I think that when entering a wikipedia portal, one sees different subject protal with links and references to smaller subjects. The outline articles are simply lists of sources, which could be citated in the subportals, making it where there is not a huge disorganized mass of references without any article to give reason to the references, so outline article may instead of listing portal after portal after portal instead be introductory articles of the subjectory portals.


I would like to propose the removal of all outline articles. All articles currently named "Outline of ..." would be renamed "List of ... topics". If there is already a list of that name, the two would be merged. For example,

The earliest reference I've found to the idea of outlines on Wikipedia is Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_28#Major_rename_proposal_of_certain_.22lists.22_to_.22outlines.22. User:The Transhumanist began to implement his proposal and was quickly met with Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive436#User:The_Transhumanist. It soon became clear that there was no consensus for this, and The Transhumanist reverted himself, pending a discussion at VP. No consensus for these moves was achieved during that discussion, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_31#Proposal_to_rename_the_pages_called_.22List_of_basic_x_topics.22_to_.22Topic_outline_of_x.22.

Ever since then there has been no clear consensus on Wikipedia over the status of outline articles. There are periodic disruptions caused by mass moves from one naming system to another. For example:

It appears to me that most (not all, but most) articles named "Outline of ..." were created by a non-consensus renaming of a "List of ... topics" article.

On top of that, there are big and unanswered questions about what outline articles should be and whether or not they are appropriate. Here are some past discussions I've found on the subject:

There are a few issues that keep coming up:

  • Some outlines are lists. They should be named lists.
  • Outlines that are not lists are content forks. They should be turned into lists.
  • Outlines require as much effort and maintenance as ordinary articles. This effort could be spent elsewhere.
  • Some people in the above threads do not believe that outlines offer any benefit beyond lists of articles or ordinary articles.

I believe that all of these are serious problems with outline articles. Because of this, I believe that all outline articles should be renamed or merged.

If this proposal were to pass, the transition would mostly consist of a large number of moves from "Outline of ..." to "List of ... topics". No redirects would be left behind. In addition, any currently existing "Outline of ..." redirects would be eliminated. The most time-consuming parts would be:

  1. Merging material that does not fit in a list into the main article on the topic, if there is any such material. For example, the introduction to Outline of water would be merged into Water.
  2. Merging duplicate lists. For example, Outline of Africa and Index of Africa-related articles would need to be merged into a single list. This list would be called List of Africa topics. If objections to this name are raised on the talk page, then the merged list might also be called List of Africa-related topics, Index of Africa-related articles, Index of Africa articles, or some similar name.

In addition, Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines would cease to be useful. It would become inactive, and pages such as Wikipedia:Outlines would be marked historical.

Finally, I would like to ask everyone to refrain from commenting on user conduct. While there have been contentious user conduct issues in the past (on both sides), the issue at hand is the outlines themselves, not the behavior of individual users or the outlines WikiProject. Ozob (talk) 00:01, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Update: It seems that many people are misinterpreting the above as a proposal for deletion. It is not. All content will be either renamed or merged. No content will be lost. However, articles that are currently formatted as outlines will be reformatted. Ozob (talk) 23:58, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, the above proposal does not mention anything about reformatting, except in the case of merges. The Transhumanist 17:19, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See my response to you immediately below. Ozob (talk) 23:01, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support

  • Support as proposer. Ozob (talk) 00:01, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The proposal is very poorly conceived. "Elimination of" implies that all outlines, whether named "Outline of" or not are to be deleted or rendered into non-outlines. It implies that when your work is done, there won't be any structured topic lists left on Wikipedia! But the body of your proposal specifies that outlines are merely to be renamed to "List of ... topics". But then you confuse that issue by mentioning merges into the alphabetical "Index of" articles. The proposal also does not consider what is to be done with existing "List of ... topics" (almost all of which are hierarchically-structured lists, that is, outlines). This is not a well-thought-out proposal, and if it is adopted in its above form, it will lead to great confusion.
Simply put, you have not made clear how you wish hierarchical topic lists (such as Outline of Middle-earth or List of computer vision topics) to be dealt with and whether or not they will co-exist with alphabetical topic lists, or what this co-existence will be.
Also, why would you be in favor of merging some structured topics lists into indexes while keeping others? Your proposal does not explain this approach at all. Compare Outline of Japan with Index of Japan-related articles for instance. The Transhumanist 01:02, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Let me attempt to clarify, then.
  • The proposal would not eliminate hierarchically structured lists. However, all lists of articles that grouped articles by topic (whether the grouping was hierarchical or not) would be renamed "List of ... topics".
  • If there is already a list of articles at that name, it will be merged. If that's not possible or desirable (for example, if one of the lists is alphabetical and the other is topical), then a different name for one of the articles will be chosen. For example, the alphabetical list might be named "Index of ... articles".
  • Some outlines are more than hierarchically structured lists. For example, consider Outline of canoeing and kayaking. This articles contains a hierarchically structured list, but it also contains prose that is not integrated into that list. For example, it contains a lead; it contains a paragraph on canoeing and kayaking activities; and it contains paragraphs on traditional and modern kayak designs. These outlines are content forks. Duplicate content will be merged into the main articles on these topics and removed from the outline. The result will be a hierarchically structured list. This is the sense in which outlines are eliminated. The rest is just housekeeping.
  • Some article indexes and some topical outlines may be better off merged. My first impression regarding the Outline of Africa and the Index of Africa-related articles was that these two lists would be better off together. The former groups African articles by topic; the latter groups African articles by country; countries are a topic; therefore the latter list fits naturally within the former. Now, I might be wrong on that. I have no experience with either of those lists, so I would defer to those who do. But that would be my first inclination.
Ozob (talk) 23:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll reply point-by-point:
  • A list is a group. A topics list is a group of topics. Therefore topics in them are "grouped". If you meant "organized topics by subtopic, rather than alphabetically", that meaning was not conveyed well. I had to read it a few times to figure out what you meant.
  • Also, you have contradicted yourself. You said that "The proposal would not eliminate hierarchically structured lists." But hierarchically structured lists are outlines, and your proposal is entitled "Elimination of outline articles". If your intent was to keep outlines, but under different titles, then you shouldn't have proposed getting rid of outlines in the title of the proposal. Whether outlines should continue to exist or not is primarily what has been discussed below. The term "outline" pertains to any article the contents of which is an outline, regardless of what it is named. It's a type of format. In the title you state you want to eliminate that format, and in the body of the proposal you imply you want to keep it. The title is very misleading, and has eclipsed your intended proposal.
  • Removing paragraph prose (section leads) from outlines would not be an act of eliminating outlines, just modifying them. More confusion.
  • The Index of Africa-related articles currently lists Africa-related index pages (one index per country), which makes it a multi-page index divided by country. Similarly, the Outline of Africa includes links to the outlines of each country in Africa, since they are branches of that subject. In the outline, a link to the Index of Africa is provided, which in turn leads to its component parts.
It appears that you support outlines, just not the name nor the inclusion of paragraph prose. The Transhumanist 22:31, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The proposal is essentially to rename outlines, but keep the format except for paragraph prose. Outline of is more accurate and more concise. The title "List of ... topics" is ambiguous. Topics lists include structured topics lists (outlines) and alphabetical topics lists (indexes). To have one type named "topics" rather than by its type, is confusing. Outlines and indexes complement each other nicely. "Topics lists and indexes" makes no sense, since indexes are a type of topics list. The rename would be a misnomer, leading to grammatical awkwardness and errors. The Transhumanist 22:48, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – taxonomical structuring is a bad idea? It has major applications in both science and in encyclopedia publishing (including in the Outline of Knowledge in the Encyclopedia Britannica). The outline project is alive and well, and it is helping readers understand subjects and navigate Wikipedia's coverage of those subjects. The outlines are continuously being improved and refined, and these are pretty good "places" to be going. More literally, the outlines lead readers to many places they wish to go; the outlines contain over 100,000 links to articles on Wikipedia, presented in an organized fashion for ease of understanding and navigation. The Transhumanist 02:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The relationship information conveyed in the structure of the outlines generally is not presented better or more concisely anywhere else on Wikipedia. Outlines do not fall under the definition of undesirable forks as defined in WP:CFORK. And based on how many readers use outlines (and that number is growing), the outlines are a valuable feature of Wikipedia. The Transhumanist 02:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, yet another group of articles that need regular updating, watching, policy application (shouldn't the people named in Outline of British pornography have a reference on that page?), and so on. A section of Outline X links to List X, which is a redirect to Outline X: not really helpful but all too common. Outlines are dreadfully subjective, and have been for years (e.g. Outline of fiction, the lists of authors; worse, probably, on Outline of rights, the list of "Accused limitators" only contains left-wing people, not a single right-wing person, as if Hitler wasn't a limitator of rights, or whoever started the Inquisition, or many, many other people. Communism isn't the only limitator of rights, contrary to what that outline strongly suggests... ). Sticking to one format of topic lists, and maintaining those, will serve Wikipedia better than this hard-to-follow variety of similar lists. Fram (talk) 11:08, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree some of the outline articles are atrocious, but this is no reason to ban the entire method, it is on one hand an opportunity to provide clarity and guidelines for them, and on the other hand to improve the issues they have. By your logic, we should close down wikipedia, its all about vandals anyways.--Cerejota (talk) 11:26, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, my logic (badly expressed probably) is that we have too many similar systems of topic lists, indexes, introductions, outlines, timelines, ..., many of them duplicating info from one another (e.g. the outlines copying the intro's from the general articles in many cases), but too many to be maintained. The quality of the outlines indicates that many or badly maintained or not maintained. I support any suggestion that reduces the number of similar topical index articles, sibnce I don't believe that the advantages outweigh the negative effects. Outlines don't have new information, they present information in a different way: articles have new information. Comparing my criticism of outlines with a general criticism of Wikipedia is therefor not correct. Fram (talk) 11:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To make the argument on Wikipedia that outlines should be eliminated because it is too much work to improve and maintain them seems like very short term thinking to me. By that logic we should delete about 3.5 million of the 3.7 million Wikipedia articles because there are just too many to improve and maintain. Many of the outlines may be in poor shape right now, but they will improve over time, just as the rest of Wikipedia does. Hopefully Wikipedia will be around for many decades, and so there is plenty of time to get around to improving all the outlines eventually. Rreagan007 (talk) 05:07, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But those other articles don't simply duplicate information found elsewhere on Wikipedia, and only present it in a different way. Please don't take only one aspect of my argument to dismiss it, when it is the combined argument that actually is my reason to support this. Fram (talk) 08:18, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As for new information, I assume that what you are trying to say that since almost all links in a outline will appear in the main article also. I did not think that would be the case since my experience is that I find lots of NEW interesting articles that I have not seen before when I find a new good outline. I wanted to tested this and did so on Chocolate and Outline of Chocolate. The result is like this.
The internal wikilinks that appear in both pages are.
Bitter (taste), Brain, Children in cocoa production, Chocolate Chip, Chocolate bar, Chocolate chip, Chocolate fountain, Chocolate ice cream, Chocolate liquor, Chocolate milk, Chocolate truffle, Cocoa bean, Cocoa butter, Cocoa solids, Couverture chocolate, Criollo (cocoa bean), Côte d'Ivoire, Dark chocolate, Digital object identifier, Dutch process chocolate, Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Fermentation (food), Fudge, Health effects of chocolate, History of chocolate, History of chocolate in Spain, Hot chocolate, International Standard Book Number, Lecithin, List of bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturers, Milk, Milk chocolate, Open Directory Project, Phenethylamine, PubMed Identifier, Sugar, Theobroma cacao, Theobromine, Theobromine poisoning, Types of chocolate, United States military chocolate, Vanilla, White chocolate.
The links that appear ONLY in the outline are:
Afghan biscuit, Antioxidants, Banania, Bittersweet chocolate, Black and white cookie, Broma process, Cacao tree, Cafe mocha, Caffeine, Candy, Catechin, Choco Pie, Chocolate, Chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, Chocolate-coated peanut, Chocolate-coated raisin, Chocolate agar, Chocolate biscuit, Chocolate brownie, Chocolate cake, Chocolate chip cookie, Chocolate crackles, Chocolate money, Chocolate pudding, Chocolate salami, Chocolate spread, Chocolate syrup, Cocoa Frosted Flakes, Cocoa Krispies, Cocoa Processing Company, Cocoa Puffs, Cocoa powder, Cocoa production in Côte d'Ivoire, Compound chocolate, Concentration, Confectionery, Cookie, Cookie Crisp, Crème de cacao, Death by Chocolate, Dessert, Devil's food cake, Fairtrade labelling, Fat, First-pass metabolism, Flavonols, Food, Freddo Frog, German chocolate cake, Grenada Chocolate Company, Ice cream, Index of chocolate-related articles, Ingredient, International Cocoa Initiative, International Standard Serial Number, Kuapa Kokoo, List of breakfast cereals, List of chocolate bar brands, List of cookies, Minstrels (chocolate), Mint Chocolate Chip, Mint chocolate, Modeling chocolate, Molten chocolate cake, Monoamine oxidase, Nesquik, Phenylacetic acid, Routledge, Rum ball, Scho-Ka-Kola, Semisweet chocolate, Swiss Miss, Swiss chocolate, Theophylline, Wacky cake, Yoo-hoo.
Many of these might not be interesting but I find enough new in the outline good enough to justify outlines. --Stefan talk 06:35, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The bulk of these articles are foods made with chocolate. The chocolate article doesn't currently have a section on chocolate's use in other foods. (It's in fact an ex-GA; I wouldn't promote it to FA without such a list.) Some of these are aspects of production that could be linked from the chocolate article. For example, I just linked cacao tree by finding its first mention in the article and turning it into a link, and I just added a {{seealso}} for Cocoa production in Côte d'Ivoire. The above list mentions a few groups such as the International Cocoa Initiative that could also easily be added to the article. Oddly, your list also includes International Standard Serial Number, which doesn't appear in either the main chocolate article or in the outline. It seems to me that the outline mentions more topics than the main article does, but only because the main article is incomplete. Ozob (talk) 12:02, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – The question is "are the outlines worth the amount of effort needed to maintain them?" Yes! First, once developed, it doesn't take that much effort to maintain an outline. Circular redirects are a minor problem, easily fixed. The subjectivity Fram mentioned above comes from the fact that these are works-in-progress, that is, incomplete, just like millions of other articles on Wikipedia. Getting rid of them just because they aren't completed yet is all-or-nothing reasoning. Even partially completed, outlines are useful navigation aids. Second, based on their traffic stats, the outlines have great utility. But by far the strongest reason to continue developing outlines is their potential: they will keep evolving and improving over time, to become more and more useful. We haven't even started to apply outliner technology to them yet. There are some amazing things that can be done with hierarchically structured information.
But "List of", "Timeline of", "Glossary of", "Index of", and "Table of" are all in article space. And for a good reason. -- penubag  (talk) 02:17, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a good reason, that's basically special pleading. I forgot to say it, but most of the stuff you are listing should also be moved to portal space because it's more similar to portals than to articles. Portal space is currently severely underused because its scope is interpreted in a ridiculously strict way. I can think of no valid reason for this. Except: In the same way that the line between the various other list-style pages and portals is blurry, this is also the case for the line between articles and lists. Some "List of" pages are really articles organised in list form. As they should remain in main space, some effort will be required to clarify the new rules. Hans Adler 16:31, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – Being taxonomical, outlines convey relationship information within their structures. Therefore they are not merely navigational. In addition, note that outlines are topic-based, rather than article-based. That is, not all topics are linked, and therefore outlines are more than site maps of subject coverage on Wikipedia. They cover their subjects' topics, whether Wikipedia has articles on the subtopics or not. The links are not the primary feature of outlines, the topics they convey are – the links are a bonus! The Transhumanist 02:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – we've looked closely at the option of moving these to portal space. The effect it would have would be to bury the outlines. Wikipedia's search engine is useless for searching portals, due to the way the cryptic page names clutter search results. Because of this, portal space is not included in Wikipedia search results by default (you have to reconfigure it in "My preferences"). If outlines were integrated into portals, they would be buried even deeper, as their formatting is not compatible with the formatting of portals' topic lists. The topics lists in portals have much more complex and tedious formatting, and they don't support annotations. Outlines were designed to be easy to work with, and have much simpler wiki-code, and they support annotations. The Transhumanist 21:32, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support total, scorched-Earth deletion of this nonsense shite that has infested Wikipedia. Not once have the supporters of this quixotic little project to duplicate the encyclopedia shown one single quantifiable benefit. Not one. Ever. I've said it before and I will say it again: Outlines are crap, and everyone who has wasted their time and ours by insisting on them--usually via ridiculously circular, well, I won't dignify it with the term 'logic'--should be sent to bed without their supper. Outlines are useless duplication that serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. → ROUX ₪ 10:27, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – The traffic statistics show that the set of outlines get millions of page views per year. But it's quality that matters here, not quantity. The structural information conveyed by outlines isn't covered anywhere else on Wikipedia as well as it is in outlines. And many outlines are growing into comprehensive guides about their subjects, far more comprehensive than the corresponding prose articles. The main purposes that outlines serve are to present the subtopics of a subject in a hierarchically-organized fashion for ease of understanding and browsing. They also provide enhancements, such as descriptive annotations to aid in topic selection, and pictures, that are impossible to include in a category page's listings. Readers are using outlines, and many find them quite helpful (see the Oppose section below for some of them). The Transhumanist 02:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – the content fork guideline was created to prevent synonymous articles about the same subject, such as one article entitled "United States" and another entitled "United States of America". It has nothing to do with outlines, which are a different type of article, with different purposes. They aren't original research any more than prose articles are. If Karanacs was willing to point out specific OR or NPOV violations, I'd be happy to fix them. The Transhumanist 02:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How are most of them not OR? Editors are deciding for themselves what belongs in the overview - there are in the vast majority of these outlines no reliable sources cited. Sure, I can find source A that says "Z" is a part of topic T. I can find source B that says "Y" is a part of topic T. I can find source C that says "X" is a part of topic T. I can then put together an outline that groups Z and Y under one section header and X under another section header. Synthesis. We're cherrypicking in some cases, we're cramming topics that most scholars may consider unrelated in others, and we're synthesizing it all into a format that a few editors thinks makes sense. As for NPOV, I'll go out on a limb and posit that 90% of all outlines that have a section on history are POV because that list of links does not include the explanatory text that tells the nuances. Karanacs (talk) 15:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note that each article on Wikipedia is an overview of its subject. Your WP:OR and synthesis arguments are just as applicable to paragraph-format articles. It applies to the entire encyclopedia. WP:VER states "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." Outlines get written the same way as articles do, by editors who decide for themselves what they wish to write about. For the vast majority of material found in articles, there are no sources cited. And most of the citations are concerning the facts being presented, not about whether or not the fact belongs to the subject or field that the article (and article section) is about. That's not as detrimental as it sounds, since WP:VER states "in practice you do not need to attribute everything. This policy requires that all quotations and anything challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed in the form of an inline citation that directly supports the material." There have been very few challenges to the inclusion of material in the outlines, since the editors have been careful not to include anything they thought would be likely to be challenged. And because most inclusions are obvious. As far as I know, there are no whales listed in the Outline of sharks. If someone comes across a non-shark-related topic in there, they would simply remove it. Outlines are under the same scrutiny as articles, if not more so. By the way, I visited WP:VER a few years ago to ask what would happen if an editor went around challenging everything on Wikipedia that wasn't cited regardless of how obvious it was, and it was pointed out to me that the person would likely be blocked for being disruptive or trying to make a point. If there are instances of inclusion that you doubt the verifiability of, then please point them out, and we'll track down sources for them. If we can't find any, we'll remove that material from the outlines and the corresponding articles (citing your challenges as the reason for the removal). If outlines need cleaning up, please point out exactly where, so we can get right to it. The Transhumanist 22:55, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Re:NPOV: As for NPOV, are you saying that a list of links is NPOV simply because it lacks the detail you would typically find in a prose article? The purposes of topic outlines is topic identification and to show taxonomical relationships, and the lack of nuance-level detail is built-in to the definition of hierarchical outlines. Anyone familiar with outlines knows that they are a summary format and therefore also knows not to expect all nuances to be present. But it is also hypertext, and more detail on a topic is usually just a click away. Also, most Wikipedia pages are works-in-progress and therefore incomplete. If an outline lacks topics (which are a type of detail), then it is because editors haven't gotten around to adding them yet. To require that articles not be posted on Wikipedia until they are done defeats the collaborative nature of the wiki. Wikipedia is great because editors can and do build upon each others' work. The Transhumanist 22:55, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support deletion of these and the index articles. We have categories for a reason. And the people behind these don't seem interested in their upkeep or improvement. Especially support deletion of the ones related to U.S. states because they include arbitrarily created redlinks to topics that may not ever merit their own articles. If kept, they must actively involve a related WikiProject in their improvement. Valfontis (talk) 19:48, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – I have been working on improving these for years, and they have improved a great deal since they began. I've put multiple man-years of effort into them. How much more interested can I possibly be? Others have helped a great deal as well. I especially like the work others have done on Outline of forestry, Outline of Buddhism, Outline of cell biology, Outline of canoeing and kayaking, and Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling. Outlines are evolving nicely. Concerning the redlinks on state outlines, they aren't arbitrary, as they were based on the patterns by which the coverage of states is expanding. Most of those topics actually do exist by the way, but not as separate articles (the topics haven't split off on their own yet). That is, most of the redlinks can be turned blue, with section links. Categories don't support section links, but such links work well in outlines. The Transhumanist 02:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – the evidence shows that people are using the outlines and deriving benefit from them. It's not like they aren't being used. The Transhumanist 02:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean by "dead weight", in the outline what is dead weight and how is it dead weight? Please point out on the outline's talk page specifically what is wrong with the outline. Then we can address your concerns and go about fixing any problems. The Transhumanist 20:56, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – "Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline", which is a structured list. The hierarchical outlines on Wikipedia are a type of topics list (the other type of topics list are alphabetical indexes of articles). There are about 500 outlines named "Outline of" and another 200 outlines named "List of ... topics". Most of the 7,000+ other lists are item lists, which present the members of a set, such as List of culinary vegetables. "Topics lists" on the other hand try to present all the topics related to a subject or academic field, such as Outline of chess or Outline of hydrology. There is relatively little overlap between the outlines named "Outline of" and the outlines named "List of ... topics". There is a near complete set of outlines on the countries of the world, including about 260 country outlines named "Outline of". There is another set of country outlines on about 50 countries named "List of ...-realted topics". The smaller set should be folded into the more complete set. There are maybe another 20 pairs of "Outline of"/"List of ... topics twins. So, of the approximately 200 outlines called "List of ... topics", about 70 of them are on the same subjects as outlines. The set of outlines include most top-tier and second-tier major subjects. The set of outlines named "List of", not so much. I cover the makeup of the 200 in more detail in the "Other" section, below. The Transhumanist 21:25, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support Outlines may be navigationally valuable (though I 'strongly suspect that navigation is a relic of the past--most of our readers get to articles through google) and some may have good content or helpful information. I oppose deleting them outright on the basis of a single RfC however I think we should consider eliminating some of the less trafficked outlines. Many of them are better as lists, content forks, or otherwise unmaintanable. In the prior RfC I expressed a contrary position to this, however I think I've changed my mind. Protonk (talk) 01:49, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – There are two ways to look for things on the Web: by search engine and by browsing the links on pages. Outlines provide a solution when readers get stuck. If they can't think of the right word to search for, or they don't know what topics a subject is comprised of (and therefore don't know what to type into the search box), outlines help by providing a bird's eye view of a their subjects. Outlines present the terminology of each field, and provide readers with lots and lots of search terms. Outlines and search engines are synergistic. Note that nothing on Wikipedia is unmaintainable, the nature of the wiki makes them maintainable. It's a collaborative effort. Concerning changing their names to lists, that won't change the fact that they are structured topics lists, that is, hierarchical outlines. But, eliminating the less-trafficked outlines will put holes in the collection of outlines, which is growing into a comprehensive outline of human knowledge, with each individual outline being a branch of the great big tree. Readers browse the tree and wonder why particular branches are missing. Currently it is because it is a work in progress. We shouldn't make the matter worse by deleting branches. We shouldn't prune the tree of knowledge. Instead we should fertilize it and make it grow. The Transhumanist 23:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. These are just redundant at best, and at worst very confusing content forks that appeared without any consensus among editors working in the article space of these topics. 2005 (talk) 05:31, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What content do they fork, and how do they violate the WP:Cfork guideline? Articles don't get consensus before they are created. People just create them &ndash all it takes is a click. If articles had to be approved first, that would slow the process way down, and Wikipedia wouldn't have 3.7 million articles. Nor would it have 8,000 lists, 900 portals, etc. Both structured topics lists (hierarchical outlines) and alphabetical topics lists (indexes) have been around since the beginning of Wikipedia. Back then both types were called "List of ... topics", and the two types competed for that same name, which was awkward. So you wound up with similar titles like "List of mathemetics topics" (structured) and "List of mathematics articles" (alphabetical). The mess isn't yet entirely cleaned up. There are still about 200 hierarchical outlines named "List of" (though almost all the alphabetical topics lists have been renamed to "Index of"). The Transhumanist 23:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom. This entire undertaking was profoundly misguided, not least because the people creating most of the the "Outline of" articles clearly did not have even rudimentary knowledge about the topics they were trying to compile "outlines" (sic) of. Most of the content is just complete and utter dross. We have the categorisation system to collect links of related articles. All attempts to systematically "dumb-down" Wikipedia should be resisted. In fact, we should be striving to make the project as academic and intelligent as possible. Next, the Pokemon plague?Mais oui! (talk) 06:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – It was only about 3 years ago (June 2008) that topics lists started getting renamed to indexes and outlines. The development of structured topics lists has been going on since 2001 when Wikipedia started, and is done by interested editors - the same selection criterion for editors of prose articles. All editors on Wikipedia are self-selected. Most articles, including lists, start out as stubs or rough drafts. Some editors are more knowledgeable about a subject than others and over time articles, including outlines, improve. That's the wiki-way. Outlines are improving over time, and are being developed with features that categories lack, such as more structure per page, annotations to reduce clicking/hunting and speed up topic selection, and more attention to detail. They also have the advantage of edit histories so that additions and removals of entries can be tracked (on categories they just mysteriously disappear). Outlines support redlinks and section links, while categories cannot. With section links, outlines can lead the reader to topics even when they are under a subheading of an article.
Comment – I conducted an experiment to see how helpful outlines could be, and built the Outline of chess. My chess game has improved immensely, and players who used to beat me about as often as I beat them can barely touch me now. That outline provides a much more helpful presentation than the chess category tree does. It improved my chess vocabulary very rapidly, which in turn enhanced my chess awareness - I couldn't even see these concepts on the chess board until I learned the terms. Now I see the tactics coming much further in advance, because I recognize them as part of my chess concept vocabulary. Toward building that vocabulary and helping to make it stick, the outline helps review the material whenever needed, because the annotations remind you what the terms mean, and saves you from doing a lot of tedious clicking around to re-read article leads. The chess category tree is a much more tedious way to study and review chess on Wikipedia. Eventually, outliner technology will become available to view and edit outline content. There are some pretty powerful features to look forward to there. The Transhumanist 23:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, merge with Portal - IMO they should be merged/moved into Portal spaces. Most of the outlines I've seen are basically duplicate information & links. Let's face it, most people find information in WP articles by searching, not clicking on nested links on an outline page. IMO, Outlines are an idea whose time has gone. Best, Markvs88 (talk) 15:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – The set of outlines get millions of page views per year. Many of Wikipedia's readers are finding them helpful. They assist macro-study of a subject and taking in the big picture, and provide rapid taxonomically-based (top-down) navigation. The Transhumanist 23:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – quoting myself from another page...

As a type of article, outlines are designed to cover the entire scope of their subjects, while portals are modeled after the Main page and are designed to sample a subject by presenting excerpts of a small selection of articles. Outlines are for browsing an entire subject, while portals are for presenting suggested reading similar to the Reader's Digest.

Being more comprehensive, outlines tend to be larger than portal pages, and wouldn't readily fit into most portal's designs without making the portals overly long, cumbersome, or unbalanced.

Some portals have their own topic lists, but the scope of their lists is very limited compared to that of outlines, and the complex table formatting of the lists on portals make them much harder to create and develop – even more so than the other parts of a portal. And converting existing outlines to these formats would be extremely tedious and time-consuming.

Outline formats are standardized, making outlines very useful for comparing similar subjects (such as comparing countries).The Transhumanist 23:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

  • Support. There is no reason for their inclusion alongside portals. Merge 'em. — LlywelynII 21:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, with modifications. For the first time in many attempts to remove the outlines, I've actually seen a valid, credible argument in favor of the outlines. However, there are several flaws in the outline process:
    1. The people maintaining the outlines are not subject-matter specialists, so that the outlines are not maintained as articles are created, deleted, or renamed.
    2. The lead paragraphs in the outlines are almost always accidental forks of the primary article for the topic, are not maintained, and do not maintain the necessary copyright information. (This is also a problem with some portals, but Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines makes these first two points worse.)
    3. I see not all the portals are even as well-maintained as the outlines, but Portal:Mathematics is much better than Outline of mathematics could be.
    Some of them should be merged with the Portal, some merged with the lists, and some eliminated, but I don't see any that should remain intact. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:19, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – the people maintaining the outlines are random editors who come across the outlines. The same type of people who maintain prose articles. If you watchlist the outlines, you'll see that they get a lot of editing activity. People are changing outlines every day, adding new links, removing dead ones, etc. The leads aren't accidental forks - they were included in the outlines to aid in subject identification. That way, you wouldn't have to look around to find out what "Outline of epistemology" meant. But even if you oppose the use of article leads in such a way, it doesn't justify getting rid of whole outlines - the actual outlines start after the lead section, and even states so on almost all outline pages, like this: "The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to x:"
Speaking of the lead paragraphs, the required copyright info (in the form of GFDL accreditation) was added to the edit histories of all outlines thanks to Minnecologies and others.
Have you tried merging an outline into a portal? How would you go about merging Outline of Buddhism into the Portal:Buddhism? Most outlines dwarf the corresponding portals, but the Buddhism outline must be 50 times the size of the Buddhism portal. The biggest problem though, is that portal developers don't even want outlines as part of their portals. The two are incompatible. Portals have their own format of "topics lists", which is totally different than outline format. The purposes of portal topics lists are different too, in that they are short rather than comprehensive, and they don't include annotations. It would be an insanely difficult task to convert outlines into portal topic list format, so you'd probably have to leave outlines in their own format. And if all you did was move them to be subpages of portals, you might as well leave them where they are, since outlines are easier to find right now and their links do not violate the "no cross-namespace links" guideline. Making them part of portals will eliminate them from Wikipedia searches where the portal namespace is excluded by default. And it would make links to them against the rules. It wouldn't serve Wikipedia's readers better than outlines do now. The Transhumanist 23:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They aren't even comparable to portals. Outlines are lists, while portals are a mosaic of excerpts, news items, categories, task lists, and non-annotated topics lists. Outlines are generally larger than portals, so where would you fit them in? And how will portal developers respond when they learn you're forcing them to include outlines? The outline content, being far more extensive than portal content in most cases would dominate the portals. It would be more like adding portal content to the outlines. The outlines would engulf most portals. What would portal developers do with all that material? If you just stuck outlines onto the bottoms of portals, how would anyone find them in searches? How would they travel between outlines? Outlines currently fit together as branches of one huge outline of human knowledge. The Transhumanist 23:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

2011 (UTC)

Oppose

  • Oppose Are you insane? These outlines are crucial! They function as "Subject guides" showing the full taxonomy of knowledge for certain subjects. They allow for macro study. DO NOT DELETE OUTLINES. --Baalhammon (talk) 19:57, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I do not think I am insane, but I'll take your advice into consideration. Ozob (talk) 15:39, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Not sure how deletion then a merger to the less orderly format would help our readers at all thus I must Oppose. Its clear that some of our readers like this Outlines (as proven by view counts on Outlines). Its best to let our readers chose what they would like to use to navigate Wikipedia - as some like the indexes and/or lists with there ABC order, while others like the Outlines with there TOPIC more uniform format. Your asking us to chose for all what format everyone "must" use to navigate topics, rather then giving our readers that option that they currently have.Moxy (talk) 00:15, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The proposal does not suggest deletion. Please see my clarification above. Ozob (talk) 00:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The title of the proposal suggests deletion very explicitly. The Transhumanist 00:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Looking at the three example articles listed, Outline of physical science seems like a valuable article, that does more then a list would, providing insight into the scope of the field and its subdivisions that does not just duplicate content available in other articles. I think the example is more of an article then a list, but trying to cram the contents of it into the physics article would result in a bloated article, that would have lots of useless content for someone just looking for information of the general field of physics. The other two examples seem more like formatted/organized lists, and I wouldn't have a problem seeing them renamed as lists, but as Outline of physical science demonstrates, some outlines are valuable to the encyclopedia, and they should be considered on a case by case basis. I would instead suggest that a guideline be established on what should be in an outline, and when wikipedia would be better served by a list. Monty845 00:25, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Copied from Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines: For examples of well-developed outlines, see those on anarchism, ancient Rome, Buddhism, canoeing and kayaking, cell biology, forestry, Iceland, and Japan. I suggest those considering this proposal take a look at some of those outlines that the WikiProject has identified, some of them seem really good. Monty845 00:44, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      OK then, let's look at one of those. Arbitrarily I pick Outline of ancient Rome. Here is what I see:
      1. Three paragraphs of lead. These were derived from this revision of Ancient Rome. Since then the lead of the Ancient Rome article has improved, and that of the outline has not.
      2. No footnotes. None of the text in the lead has any footnotes at all. In the Ancient Rome article, that's tolerable because the rest of the article is cited; anyone who wants a citation for a fact in the lead can find one by looking in the article body. But in the outline article, that's not possible.
      3. The rest of the article is just a list arranged by topic. I suppose that you can call that an "outline" if you want, but it makes no more sense to do that than it does to call it a "list" or an "index".
      Let's look at the next one on the list, Outline of Buddhism.
      1. There's two paragraphs of lead here. These were present in the very first revision of this outline. They were copied from this revision of the Buddhism article. (Much later someone noted this in a dummy edit. [7]) And again, we have the problem of drift. Nobody is maintaining the lead of the outline article.
      2. This outline contains more commentary than the one on ancient Rome. For example, in the first section on "The Buddha", there's a section called "Qualities of the Buddha". It has a bullet point that says, "Abandonment of all defilements (kilesa — principally greed, hatred and delusion) together with their residual impressions (vasana)". This is a content fork. The topic is also described at Buddhism and in great detail at Kleśā (Buddhism). And it suffers from a common problem with content forks, namely that it does not agree with the other branches of the fork (according to the Kleśā article, the outline's explanation is a vast oversimplification of a subtle and nuanced theological subject).
      3. That bullet point is followed by three more bullet points, "All defilements have been abandoned totally — all defilements have been destroyed with none remaining", "All defilements have been abandoned completely — each defilement has been destroyed at the root, without residue", and "All defilements have been abandoned finally — no defilement can ever arise again in the future". None of these have citations. To be honest I can't say I have a clue what they mean. There is some sort of Buddhist jargon here, but to a non-Buddhist like me, the meaning is impenetrable. Now, that could be fixed by adding more detail. But then you would have turned this brief description into a large and serious content fork.
      4. These problems are repeated over and over throughout this article. For instance, under the "Four Noble Truths" doctine, we find the heading, "1. The Noble Truth of Suffering (Dukkha ariya sacca)" followed by the bullet, "Suffering (dukkha • duḥkha) — to be fully understood (pariññeyya)", which is glossed as, "Dukkha as intrinsic suffering, as bodily or mental pain (dukkha-dukkha)", "Dukkha due to change (vipariṇāma-dukkha)", and "Dukkha of conditioned formations (saṅkhāra-dukkha)" (with a list of examples after each). Again, I have no idea what's going on. The main Dukkha article (which is linked from the outline) explains this idea in complete sentences. But again, the outline is too fragmentary to comprehend. And if it were not fragmentary, it would necessarily duplicate a large amount of the content in Dukkha—it would be a content fork.
      Let's move on to Outline of canoeing and kayaking.
      1. The lead is copied from canoeing ([8]) and kayaking ([9]). Again, the original has been improved and is much more detailed, while the copy is stagnant.
      2. Underneath "Types of canoeing and kayaking" there is a wonderful paragraph on what people do with canoes and kayaks. As far as I can tell it appears nowhere else on Wikipedia. Someone looking for information on what people do with canoes and kayaks will not find this under canoe, canoeing, kayak, or kayaking. This is another problem with content forks: Some forks gain material that others don't. In this case, the outline fork has gained a beautiful paragraph that the main articles on these topics don't have.
      3. And again, most of the article lacks citations. The parts that have citations are full paragraphs, i.e., content forks.
      I stand by the claims I made in my proposal. Outlines are either lists or content forks. Ozob (talk) 12:34, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      Even if we moved these outlines to lists, you would still need an introductory paragraph to explain the larger topic and the like, and using the logic you have above, would still be a content fork. We have to recognize that content forks are not bad as long as the overlap between the articles that share content is not large. In fact, content forks are almost necessary when an article topic spreads over multiple pages. It is not required that prose between content forks be exactly the same nor up-to-date with whatever the original article is, as long as it is not saying anything that is blatantly wrong. And if the outlines gain new language, and that's language that would be beneficial on another page, that seems like a simple trivial fix of copying the new text to the other appropriate pages. --MASEM (t) 13:57, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      No, you don't need an introductory paragraph. Take a look at List of general topology topics, for example. It clearly states that it is about general topology. If the reader wants to know what that is, then the reader can go to that article. There is no content fork, and no maintenance is required. This is ideal.
      Furthermore, it may be a trivial fix to copy new text from one outline to an article; but it's not a trivial fix to copy new text from a hundred outlines to a hundred articles. The examples I provided show that this kind of maintenance does not happen. So as long as you have outlines, content forks are unavoidable. Ozob (talk) 21:55, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      First on WP scales 100 items is nothing, secondly fixing them up to remain in sync is trivial, thirdly the effort expended on this RFC would more than have achieved that goal. Rich Farmbrough, 14:06, 25 September 2011 (UTC).[reply]
      What is the trivial mechanism by which they can stay in sync? Ozob (talk) 15:40, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Outlines serve to organize information of a complex subject into a readily-usable format, particularly if you don't know exactly what you are searching for. I would even go to the other extreme: we should delete "List of X topics" in favor of using categories for these, unless they can be coaxed into an outline format. --MASEM (t) 01:09, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Outlines and "list of..." serve different purposes and should not be merged together. Most proponents just don't understand the differences between the two. I've written a short essay awhile back, please give it a quick read before you vote. -- penubag  (talk) 04:28, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose in fact, as is the case with the special type of disambiguation article called set indices, we should formalize and expand "outlines" into their own type of list, rather than treat them as some kind of special list. This RfC (if outlines are kept) should be followed up with an effort to formalize the "Outline" articles as an accepted and encouraged form in any encyclopedia, with its own guidelines and purpose. Essentially, Wikipedia:Outlines should be rewritten and prepared to be promoted to a guideline - and hell, there is already a WikiProject. --Cerejota (talk) 04:36, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a great idea and would definitely make transparent many buried articles. -- penubag  (talk) 05:35, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Outlines are lists. Outlines are specialized navigational lists of articles arranged hierarchically. This is not a new concept, as an example, Encyclopædia Britannica is using such system. This is as much a content fork as categories, indexes, navboxes, set indexes, lists of, or portals are to each other. This is supplementary system. Edit stats for broad outlines [10][11][12][13] show that these are more visited than many of individual articles, so they are useful to at least some people. Neither categories, portals, navboxes, or indexes currently allow for sentence outlines (brief explanation of the topics, such as here) or group all sub-topics hierarchically. WP:OUTLINE should be trimmed down and made into a guideline. The project should serve to keep track of and organise these pages. I do not think "Outline of x"/"List of x topics" naming should be enforced without discussion, but that's another RfC. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:18, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • they may be "specialized navigational lists of articles arranged hierarchically", as you say (emphasis mine). This means they aren't valid list articles. Our list articles are lists of encyclopedic topics, e.g. a list of kings of Hungary, not lists of Wikipedia articles. Lists of Wikipedia articles are self-referential, and duplicate our category system. If we must have them, they belong under Portal:Contents, but certainly not in article namespace. --dab (𒁳) 14:11, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: it's quite rare for me to come across an outline page but when I do I'm glad of it. I don't understand why anyone would say they are a content fork. --bodnotbod (talk) 08:55, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Outlines are useful to group topics together in a way that cannot normally be achieved by categories. They are not supposed to reproduce content from articles but to structure articles thematically, which I think can be very useful if a reader wants to know more about a subject area that reader has few or no previous knowledge of. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:26, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    What do outlines achieve that lists and categories do not? I don't understand why you find them useful. Ozob (talk) 22:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    As I said an outline article can be useful to give an overview over a subject area. I agree that many outlines currently are poor. However they can be useful if they are well structured to give a reader an overview over a topic. For example, many people complain about that Wikipedias mathematics articles could only be understood by professional mathematicians. Some subject areas like mathematics require some basic knowledge that cannot be pressed into a more specific article. A well written outline in my opinion could guide a reader to the articles required to understand more abstract or more specific subject areas in mathematics. And yes, I think that Outline of mathematics in the current state is not very helpful, but I think it is possible to transform it into an annotated page that gives the reader an overview of the subject areas of mathematics and has the potential to become a useful guide through mathematics (although it currently isn't). Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 00:05, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm still not sure how the outline would be useful. For example, suppose that I want to learn about abstract algebra. The first step I would take would be to read the abstract algebra article. That would give me an overview of the subject. If I wanted more detail on something, I might click on a link in the article, maybe group (mathematics). From there I might make my way to Sylow theorems. If I wanted to browse, then I might visit Category:Abstract algebra or go to the List of abstract algebra topics (which, I should point out for fairness's sake, has also been called Outline of abstract algebra).
    An outline, as I understand it, would be like the List of abstract algebra topics but would have additional commentary and description of what the articles are about. If I wanted that I would be more likely to visit the main abstract algebra article or an article on a more specific topic (like, say, Lie algebra). It will link to the topics I'm interested in, and it will have a fuller and more complete description of what those topics are than an outline could (unless the outline is a large content fork). I suppose you might use the outline if you were looking for something and didn't know what to put into the search box or which articles it might be linked from. But in that case I am not sure that the limited detail an outline can provide makes it any better than a regular article.
    I am curious to know: How do you think someone would use an outline article? Ozob (talk) 01:48, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The outline of mathematics can be transformed into an annotated list providing an overviev over the branches of mathematics, but in a more compact form than Mathematics#Fields of mathematics or Areas of mathematics does. An outline (as I understand it) is supposed to give someone who does not yet know how a topic area is structured an overview over the branches of the field. I would use an outline to get an overview over a specific field. For example, if I wanted to learn about Physics but did not have previous knowledge, I would look at the outline to see for example into which subfields it is divided and which articles Wikipedia has that might be relevant for me. This also might be more convenient than looking at categories. I don't think, for example, that the alphabetical structure of a category is helpful to get an overview over the field I want to learn about. If i don't know what specific terms mean beforehand, looking at a category is not very helpful. An annotated outline, however, that is not structured alphabetically, but instead from basic level content to more advanced content could be helpful here. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 11:37, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    So, if I understand what you are saying, you would find an annotated list of articles (as described at WP:SAL#General formatting) useful. I don't have any objection to an annotated list (similar to the List of business theorists, even though it's not a list of articles). If a Wikipedia outline was the same as an annotated list of articles, then I might use them myself.
    Instead, Wikipedia outlines are unstructured. The ancient Rome outline is done in a completely different style from the Buddhism outline which is yet another style from the kayaking and canoeing outline. The lack of structure isn't a good reason to eliminate them. But they're almost always either annotated lists (which should be called annotated lists) or content forks (which should be merged), and that is a good reason to eliminate them. Ozob (talk) 23:34, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree that all outlines should be formatted and structured in a consistent manner (and currently they are not). However, this is not a reason to ban the concept of an outline from Wikipedia, but instead to create clear guidelines and make all outlines compliant with those guidelines. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 00:11, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, if you can write guidelines for outlines that (1) give them a consistent structure, (2) make them more than annotated lists, (3) ensure they are not redundant content forks, and (4) gain consensus from other supporters of outlines, then I'll withdraw my proposal to eliminate outlines. Ozob (talk) 01:10, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Outlines are a very useful way to help organize topics that have large numbers of articles associated with them. They are also very encyclopedic in that other reputable encyclopedias use them. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:35, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    What kind of organization do you see outlines providing that lists and categories do not? Right now, quite a few outline articles are just lists. Even the best-developed outlines have long lists of articles. Ozob (talk) 22:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Redundancy is better than consolidation. Whatever is useful to the reader. User:Fred Bauder Talk 21:16, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Redundancy also creates extra work and backlogs. Do you personally find outlines useful? (I don't.) Ozob (talk) 22:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, after some thought. I think an "outline" serves as a contents page for a topic, and I think there could be a useful distinction to make between lists-as-contents-pages and lists-as-lists. I don't see why outlines can't coexist with portals and categories as another way to group related content and give a structure that enables end users to find what they need.—S Marshall T/C 22:12, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose this particular RfC. I do believe that some outlines may be merged into their corresponding lists on a per-case basis, but as Monty demonstrated, some outlines indeed truly are valuable. — Kudu ~I/O~ 22:43, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Wikipedia now have 6,931,053 articles, I do not know them all and any help in navigating is a plus, I find outlines very useful. If you call them Outlines or List or god knows what does not matter that much. If content forking is such an issue (I do not think it is), move them to a EASILY accessible different portal space that can be searched by default without adding extra options to the standard search. Just because some outlines are not good or updated does not mean that they should be removed. We have lots of stubs and we do not remove them because they are just stubs yet. The extra work is not an argument to remove them. --Stefan talk 05:52, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per KuduIO and Penubag - HIGHFIELDS (TALK • CONTRIBUTIONS) 20:28, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I can see how outlines may be useful for younger readers or non-english speakers. It's rare to find an importance-based hierarchy in Wikipedia, so that apsect of outlines is useful. Why do we have outlines in addition to...? is somewhat convincing and although I rarely come across these, looking now outline of Japan seems interesting, well-illustrated and a useful addition to the encyclopaedia Jebus989✰ 16:05, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The fact that outlines are not articles per se is one of their strongpoints. They are a useful place to keep navigational information that is improper to have as an article (a lot of list articles are improperly formatted this way and their material could easily be merged into an outline with little loss). This being said, moving outlines outside the main namespace would be a step in the right direction, solidifying this distinction. ThemFromSpace 16:17, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Outlines seem superior to lists as a concept because their essence is to summarise in an encyclopaedic way whereas lists tend to be open-ended laundry lists. Warden (talk) 17:27, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose -- Outlines are an improvement on lists. We should be trying to preserve improvements rather than regress. Greg Bard (talk) 22:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Just because we have found examples of problems with a particular format is no reason to delete the entire format. If I know of a particular outline that should be renamed to a list, I should propose a move. If I know of an outline that is a content fork, I should propose a merge or delete of the offending outline. It makes as much sense as deleting all articles because some Wikipedia articles violate policy, or deleting all images because some images don't conform. Might as well declare all of Wikipedia "dead weight" that is too much work to maintain. The fact that some outlines are useful is proof that it's possible to create good outlines. Now it's simply a matter of time to bring the weaker outlines up to the level of the good ones. And we have all the time in the world. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I am not aware of any outline that is acceptable in its current state. As far as I am aware, all outline are either lists or content forks. To carry your analogy further, it is as if all Wikipedia articles violated policy. My proposed solution would not be deleting all articles, but instead bringing them into compliance. As you can see from the proposal above, no content would be deleted, only renamed and reformatted. Ozob (talk) 00:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    OK. Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling is the only place I'm aware of that gives a comprehensive and thought-out overview of motorcycles and motorcycling. Category:Motorcycling and Category:Motorcycles are both inferior, by definition. Years went by with nobody creating a navbox or portal or list or category that does what the outline does. It was only due to the inspiration of the outline format that we now have a useful navigation tool for motorcycles. It's imperfect, but to call it "unacceptable" is absurd. What's unacceptable about it? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 00:15, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It contains redundant content forks, so it violates WP:CFORK. Some of the content forks are in full paragraphs not connected to the list. This content discusses the Daimlers, motorcycle racing, motorcycle clubs, and The Wild One. Other content forks include the legal definition of a motorcycle, the meaning of café racer, and a description of land speed racing.
    I don't want to see a useful navigation tool go away, but having content forks means that users can't find all the information they want in one place and that editors have to maintain more than one set of information. That makes Wikipedia harder for everyone to use. The right solution is to merge the excess paragraphs into regular articles and turn the outline into an annotated list of articles. We would still have a useful navigational tool. Plus, because we'd have fewer content forks, Wikipedia would be even easier to use. Ozob (talk) 23:14, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It is not redundant content. It is a brief summary of the main content. In other words, it is an example of Wikipedia:Summary style and WP:SPINOFF. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:32, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Most text in outlines is either copied from the main articles on the topic or written from scratch; WP:SPINOFF is about the reverse, where the main article got too big so some of the information was moved to a separate article.
    Because there are no standards for outlines, there is no community consensus on whether or not they meet WP:SS. My opinion is that they do not. I think the motorcycle outline is close to being acceptable, but I think the items that I mentioned above are too detailed. Details should always be in the main articles on a topic. Ozob (talk) 12:26, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    You are confusing "unstructured" with "variously structured". That the outlines may differ in structure is not necessarily a bad thing. Moreover "Details should always be in the main articles on a topic." - would mean we would not need the detail articles - ultimately we would have just one enormous article called Everything with all the detail in it. Rich Farmbrough, 13:33, 25 September 2011 (UTC).[reply]
    I do believe in WP:SPINOFF and in WP:SS, and I do not believe that there should be a single article named everything. But I also do not believe that outlines are article spinoffs, and I also do not believe that they usually adhere to proper summary style. Sometimes, the outline does not include enough detail (for an example, see the outline of Buddhism that I discussed above). Other times, it includes too much (I believe that the outline of canoeing and kayaing is worse than the outline of motorcycling in this regard). It would help a lot if there were standards for outlines—at least then, you could say to me, "You think that's a redundant content fork but in fact it follows the guideline." Right now, you can't say that, because there are no standards for outlines. Ozob (talk) 15:49, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I have no objection to renaming them as List pages, but I strongly oppose deleting them. If someone doesn't want to read them, they don't have to. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:25, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The proposal does not suggest deletion. Please see my clarification above. Ozob (talk) 00:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The outline articles are very helpful and are different from a simple list. The ones I've seen are much more than an simple list of articles - they show the structure of topic. For instance chess doesn't have anywhere near all of the articles on chess. Index of chess articles is a list of all of the chess articles, but you don't see much of the structure of the articles. Outline of chess shows that structure but doesn't have all of the articles. Also, the list doesn't have any text whereas the outline does have brief explinations of the article. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 23:59, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Having worked collaboratively with other editors on a new outline, it really helped me by exposing me to other articles related to the topic - articles that I probably would not have come across (and subsequently contributed to) had it not been for the outline. --Biker Biker (talk) 00:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Well structured outlines serve a different purpose from articles and comprehensive topic indexes/lists. I agree certain outlines have problems (content forking being a common one), but this is a reason to improve those outlines, not to prohibit the form from Wikipedia. --Avenue (talk) 00:45, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Lists and Outlines are essentially two different animals--Lists are typically an alphabetical enumeration of existing articles on a given topic, whereas Outlines are a topical enumeration. In an alphabetical list, the presence of redlinked (not existant articles) is discouraged, whereas in a topic enumeration, the presence of a redlined article topic is a logical extension of the ultimate purpose of an outline--what are major topic areas (with sub-articles) for a much broader topic. Editors who wish to contribute to a topic area find outlines extremely useful in identifying subjects for new articles. I would caution those who wish to delete outlines enmass (merging into existing lists is impossible since a topical enumeration cannot be merged into an alphabetical enumeration with eliminating either the alphabetical or topic organizational structure) that Wikimedia has strategic goals to significantly improve the quality and scope of content in the encyclopedia. [14]. Outlines, as a concept and as a tool are a significant contributor to furthering that goal. Deleting them serves no purpose other that to satiate the desires of those who don't understand the strategic goals of the community.--Mike Cline (talk) 01:00, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Additional Comment It really distrubing to see many of the comments in the Support section claiming Outlines are useless, a failed experiment, inherently of low quality, redundant to categories, et. al. It is disturbing because the outline concept is one of the most useful tools when trying to identify topics for new articles and topics that need improvement within a given broad subject area. Those of us that are Campus Ambassadors, charged with outreach to higher education find outlines a perfect way to quickly identify topics that students can and should work on in university classes. Over the course of many terms, a professor can have many classes working on filling out topics based on outlines on a broad subject. Indeed there are good and bad outlines, as there are good and bad articles, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. What I believe is exceptionally relevant is the fact that outlines are a valuable tool in our Wikipedia in the classroom initiatives. Everyone reading and participating in this RFC needs to be aware of and understand that a lot of hard volunteer work is going across the globe to achieve lofty goals relative to higher education in addition to $$$ being spent by the foundation. Eliminating the outline for the reasons being stated by the supporters of this RFC would be strategically ill-advised.--Mike Cline (talk) 20:39, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    You seem to be suggesting that outlines are part of WMF's strategic goals. Am I interpreting you correctly? Or do you intend to say only that you believe outlines help achieve WMF's strategic goals? Ozob (talk) 23:19, 16 September 2011 (UTC)2nd[reply]
    Ozob, your 2nd contention is correct. Outlines as a form of list (a topical enumeration of articles and potential articles on a broad subject area) are indeed a valuable tool in the classrooms of higher education. Efficiently identifying potential Wikipedia articles for improvement or creation by a class of 25-30 students is not served well by categories which are typical highly fragmented on complex or broad subjects and tell you nothing about what's missing. Indeed it is not the foundation's role to tell us to use Outlining as list/navigational/developmental methodology, but it is our responsibility to develop policy that supports (not impedes) progress toward our global community strategic goals. If the case was made that outlines are indeed bad for the improvement of WP quality, that they impede to growth of content and that they discourage increased diversity of participation or they impede technological innovation, I would support their elimination. But none of the supports in this discussion have done that. In other words, no one has made a strategic case for their elimination and the tactical rationales being provided have little basis or merit when weighed against the strategic goals of the community. --Mike Cline (talk) 10:18, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree that there is a place for lists of needed articles. But such a list would not be part of the encyclopedia proper. It's more like an internal memo. Such a list would fit better in the Wikipedia namespace than in article space. So I went looking for it there and was not surprised to find Wikipedia:Requested articles. It's an enormous list of articles that Wikipedia needs, grouped by topic.
    That list does not indicate articles that might need improvement (but then, neither do outlines). Wikipedia:Cleanup handles that, but unfortunately it's not grouped by topic. With the help of a bot, it's possible to filter out all the articles of a certain topic that need cleanup; the mathematics WikiProject does for math articles and catalogs its results at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity.
    Finally, regarding tactics versus strategy: To me, avoiding content forks is a strategic decision to improve the content, the user experience, and the ease of editing. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of saying, "I remember reading about [something or other] and I want to look it up, but I can't remember where I read it." That is exactly the problem caused by content forks. Content forks make it harder to find the information you want, harder to integrate that information into a larger context, and harder for editors to maintain and improve. They make Wikipedia lower quality. I don't object to proper summary style, and I don't object to annotated lists when the annotations are short. In those cases there is a net gain in usability. But that does not seem to be the standard for outlines, which contain extensive duplicate content. As long as outlines do this I will see them as impeding WMF's strategic goals. Ozob (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Look, it's all well and good to prefer one format to the other, but proposing that the other format be eliminated is really veering into WP:NIME territory. If you don't like the Outlines... don't use 'em. Jclemens (talk) 01:43, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Some outlines, such as Outline of physical science, are done well and can be useful. Others are simply list that are improperly named outlines, and you just change their name. But don't destroy all outline articles simple because some aren't really outlines. Dream Focus 04:57, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose What harm do outlines do? We have better or more urgent things to do with our limited time. And this isn't really a proposal to eliminate Outline articles so much as it is a proposal to rename them. Using the phrase "eliminate" gives a misleading and somewhat scary impression. Jeff Ogden (talk) 05:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Outlines provide a useful alternative navigation system in Wikipedia. Also merging with "List of" articles is a bad idea as "List Of" articles are themselves quite problematic.--Penbat (talk) 08:48, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Outlines and topic indices should be to different things structured in a different way. GreyHood Talk 09:15, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I see no reason to eliminate outlines that some users clearly (based on view counts) find useful just because others don't like/use them. The nominator says (in response to something someone posted higher up in this section) "I don't understand why you find them useful." To me, this smacks a bit of WP:IDONTLIKETHIS. MeegsC | Talk 12:52, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose:List of... or Index of... articles are lists of links generally organised in alphabetical order. But outline articles are different. They are organised according to topic. Both types of articles serve different purposes and both must be kept. Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 05:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: Although those subjects may already have specific articles talking about them, outlines can provide people with deeper views into the subjects and can induce them to read other related articles. In short, outlines are needed for people to know more about the subjects that the outlines are related to. -- 7D HMS (talk) 14:01, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The outlines that I'm familiar with are useful. Whether there are other outlines that aren't I have no idea, but I'm not in favour of "eliminating" the useful ones in the haphazard approach that the nominator has suggested. PKT(alk) 16:19, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The articles seem to serve a useful purpose. Many of them have a large number of page views a day and a fair number of watchers. They provide a useful overview of topics in different areas and are also a good guide to searching. There is of course more work to be done in order to improve their coverage and provide more detailed explanations of the topics they cover. - Ipigott (talk) 07:14, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Some outline pages are incredibly well-done. Most, unfortunately, are under-developed (in particular the country ones are little more than lists with a lead copied from the country's main article). But that doesn't mean that they cannot be developed in the future. Wikipedia is not finished. Nightw 11:11, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose.If the proposed deletion policy is carried through,in a blanket manner,then it would be a form of "legal" vandalism.My reaction to that is exactly the same as the very first commentator in the Oppose section-"Are you insane?"I admit though that some of the outline articles are kind of sub-par and need a lot of work.Some may have to be merged with others.Some yet would need a few touches to bring them up to standard.But that is called editing.A proposal to zap the category is going to be counterproductive.Please keep this very useful category.They can exist side by side with the portals.There is no conflict between the two categories.The outlines aid in "macrostudy",as the first commentator in the Oppose section stated while the portals bring up a more "multimedia-oriented" and "multi-nodal" aspect to the studies.Let them both stay and evolve.Skylark2008 (talk) 22:40, 24 September 2011 (UTC)Skylark2008[reply]
  • Oppose the proposal, keep outlines in article space, and use Outline of for their titles - There are about 500 "Outline of" articles, while there are only about 200 outlines entitled "List of ... topics". Definitely keep outlines, and use Outline of titles for them, which are the most accurate names for this type of page: Outline of presents what these pages are in fewer words and differentiates them from the other type of topics list: Indexes. Outlines and Indexes make useful pairs. "Lists of topics and Indexes" is more awkward and potentially confusing, since indexes on Wikipedia are a type of topics list – why would one be designated by the type of topics list they are and not the other? It would be best to keep outlines in article space where they are the most accessible and the most useful: many other articles link to them, while cross-namespace links are discouraged. Moving them out of article space would reduce connectivity and accessibility, partly because Wikipedia searches of portal space do not work, due to unreadability of the results which includes a mass of convoluted portal subpage titles - try a portal space search and see for yourself. But the main reasons outlines should be kept in article space are that outlines serve two major purposes: 1) They present a taxonomy for their respective subjects, which shows relationships between topics by how they are placed within the structure relevant to each other. It's encyclopedic content within the structure itself. That is, the structure itself conveys information about the topics included - basically, what is a subtopic of what, throughout the tree: parent/offspring relationships. As articles, outlines are effective learning tools, and they show structure and relationships where prose articles do not. 2) The second main purpose is navigation, via links, to Wikipedia's coverage of each subject. An outline, which may extend to further branches represented by further outlines and item lists, may become comprehensive, and several have already while the rest are progressing in that direction. These purposes serve two very important functions, the first supporting understanding, and the second improving access to all pages about a particular subject on Wikipedia. That's a potent combination to have on a single page, serving up an entire subject to a reader on a silver platter. Keep outlines, and oppose the proposal to eliminate/rename/move them. Thank you. Sincerely, The Transhumanist 00:46, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like outlines. They are like big warm fuzzy navigation templates with context. I therefore oppose this proposal and i guess kinda call for the reverse of it where appropriate. delirious & lost ☯ ~hugs~ 07:35, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Lists and categories are useful; outlines seem in many ways to be an improvement as they organise the information and indicate relationships between articles. I've no doubt that they have problems, too. If there are problems with redundancy and fork-ish issues, I'd prefer to see those resolved on a case-by-case basis. Enabling the user to easily find and navigate to articles of interest is a hard problem, and I think it's a mistake to think we've solved it. As long as it doesn't do any harm, it's probably better to encourage experimentation with presentation of information. Jakew (talk) 09:26, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Another way of organising information is good thing. A structured way is even better. Rich Farmbrough, 13:27, 25 September 2011 (UTC).[reply]
  • Oppose These articles provide useful information to our readers, which is the reason Wikipedia exists. This proposal does not change the information, it simply changes the way in which it is presented. To implement this proposal will require a great deal of time and effort, and that is not necessary. I suggest we expend our energies on other more-important topics and leave these articles as they are. Truthanado (talk) 15:21, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I find them useful. I don't think they confuse the readers. --Iopensa (talk) 13:33, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I also find them useful. They help the users make their way easier through the millions of articles that Wikipedia has. -- Petru Dimitriu (talk) 16:44, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose and let outlines exist in peace. I'm not involved in the Outlines project and don't actively edit outlines, but the fact is that many other editors do, and have been for a long time now. Outlines are firmly established now, and I have enough good faith to respect the work of so many editors who have put their time and effort to improve Wikipedia by providing readers with another legitimate method of navigation. Furthermore, The Transhumanist has done more good for Wikipedia than many of you may be aware of. I've watched him tirelessly put up with a lot of hassle over this and still maintain his integrity and resolve. He shouldn't have to waste his time on so much needless drama. -- œ™ 04:34, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Outlines are a valid and valuable educational technique. More effort should be put into to making our outlines great. Uniplex (talk) 20:04, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This proposal has come up before and has been defeated. I have been working on a new outline; it was an unpleasant surprise to see the proposal resurface. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 11:20, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Refer to The Transhumanist comments above. Outline are extremely useful to find quickly all the content on a topic, for readers and also for us, editors. Everything is said. OffiikartTalk 20:18, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose (this is going to be a lengthy one). First of all, I would like to start my response to this proposal by pointing to the ever-present policy of our global community project that Wikipedia is not paper. Therefore, pages that do nothing other than improve the navigation between existing articles are actually not overtly redundant, but rather improve the general flow of article namespace by directing readers to the most relevant articles. They are grouped by sub-topic, and are quite different from regular lists, topical indices, categories, portals, disambiguations and WikiProject link listings. Most of the arguments I've seen here have focused largely upon redundancy and replication, either with other article or pagename formats or from the main article itself, replicating the lede introductions. At worst, this is a minor GFDL violation in articles that stagnate quickly from inactivity and disinterest; at best, this can be easily fixed given adequate collaboration and checking for page parameters such as consistency and article development.
Many of Wikipedia's article creation lists, WikiProjects and Wikipedia-space topics are heavily backlogged as there are not enough editors to actually work on them. However, and additionally in the case of article outlines, this is not a reason to trash any portion of the encyclopedia simply because prolific editors have quit or are currently unavailable. Obviously, there needs to be a way of optimizing the flow of the encyclopedia given this now-years-old existence of article outlines. They are extremely expansive, and can lead readers into developing articles (at worst, stubs) on red-linked areas that need content. We can see that they need content only when a listing such as an article outline brings them up, a feature rarely found on other similar listings. Portals typically show only the best articles, while a regular index or category page can be too difficult to navigate as a result of its alphabetical nature: it is difficult to apply the reader's current knowledge to find an article they want to read or improve.
Over the years, Wikipedia's new articles and their rate of creation have declined dramatically, while the contribution proportion of regular editors has nearly stagnated. Even worse, difficulty of navigation may have created a form of Internet gridlock that I suggest slows down overall article creation. Of course, many would argue that we need to work on bringing our existing articles up to Good or Featured status, yet this alone might fail to attract new editors simply because some might perceive that Wikipedia is becoming "complete", which goes against its very definition, as well as counter to the nature of knowledge itself. Recently, there were a series of appeals for donations, one of them by a Wikipedia member named Sue that our article output has fallen in the past few years. Please see WP:STATISTICS for more information.
Here, we have a tendency to delete whatever is currently unproductive. Sure, the outlines do have potential, yet we judge them to be detrimental to the progress of the project when they seem mere duplicates of existing formats. This, in my opinion, is an unnecessary line of thinking in terms of the encyclopedia, since we can develop whatever format that works. The article outlines are simply a new way of organizing articles, lacking a detailed explanation into what it actually constitutes. Thus, extreme confusion ensues in the populace.
There, in my mind, is absolutely no reason why an individual editor cannot simply introduce a new idea or format to Wikipedia and implement it over the span of several years. Yes, discussion and community collaboration is necessary. No, it is not redundant, nor distracting.
A great number of Wikipedians IMO undergo a routine type of editing, consisting of checking Special:Watchlist, article improvement, occasional participation in expert editing, Wikipedia-space discussion, talkpage discussion and usertalk discussion. Of course, there is great variance, for example in the case of some users creating bots and other scripts to facilitate user-encyclopedia interaction, and discuss whenever something causes the entire website to crash, such as the trouty deletion of the Wikipedia sandbox. Perhaps the outlines are thus not routine, and hence, get very little activity or edits, and therefore after a stagnation period of several years are put up for deletion, and mass chaos inevitably ensues.
We defiantly [Sic] require more insight. As a reader of Wikipedia, I know how easy it is to become insanely addicted to the encyclopedia simply through clicking see also links and discovering more information about a topic, followed by tangential topics, and followed even further by more tangential topics. Of course, those see also links are sometimes chaotic, and many featured articles do not have them, simply because the articles already incorporate the necessary links in its main body, giving the appearance it is approaching the asymptote of completion. This is precisely the reason why article outlines improve navigation, as they subdivide topics by topic-category. I, for one, have little to no problem providing a relatively concise explanation of a topic featuring many references to external sources and dozens of internal links, all fitting on one browser screen. It is this ability to cross-link, rather than cross-categorize, that IMO facilitates the user experience on the Wikipedia.
As editors, we all have different ways of interacting, or designing article namespace, or spending our time here, or combating vandalspamcruft, or talking to other users whom we presume are human, or contributing in general; the mere existence of Conflicting Wikipedia philosphies strongly exemplifies such. Nothing, therefore, is a massive waste of our collective time, since there will always be some users interested in editing a certain area of our project. Heck, there are plenty of pages that don't even fit in our standard understanding of article-space formats, the existence of which I refuse to demonstrate due to non-existent confidentiality measures. There are plenty of such users too: many are blocked for “trolling”, others are forced to quit due to wiki-overdose, and still others flee to alternative websites.
In my experience, Wikipedia is a three-part, co-interactive process: article space, editor traffic, and the real world itself. The last part is where we find all our sources, verification, and mentions of Wikipedia in the mainstream news. Without it, the encyclopedia wouldn't even exist, never mind outlines. Thus, I believe it is crucial to connect those three components as much as possible when designing articles or navigation formats, so that the encyclopedia can grow as a whole.
Currently as they stand, the article outlines are neither irrelevant nor defunct. In fact, in the unlikely event that user traffic exceeds our current expectations, the project can involve the participation of developers so that any bursts of high traffic flow do not trip the circuit breakers on our servers. Even more importantly, WP:expert retention needs addressing in a way that the scope of topics on Wikipedia can be expanded in all dimensions. We need breadth as well as depth for all topics, but it is even more important to remember that all topics are mutually connected. The only place where over-linking is currently not a problem for navigation, IMO, is the article outlines that have existed for years. Individual concerns can always be solved through collaboration and discussion, rather than bipolar fist-fighting.
Of course, the outlines must incorporate the important aspects of both written content and simple linking throughout the topic's scope, and WikiProjects can also work on them. This needn't be an obscure, self-limiting, self-contradictory idea that only receives a handful of participants; rather, this can go project-wide. Since Wikipedia doesn't have five-year plans nor collaboration on anything similarly identical, we always need an influx of new ideas and contributors from around the world and the inter-sphere, lest knowledge stagnates, for potential knowledge is infinite.
Consider also that existing topics are approaching Wikipedia, and that non-existing topics are receding from Wikipedia, in a process called the Doppler shift. When we realize that nearly all topics have multiple applications in various fields, there is a distinct possibility we will attract experts on subjects. Many articles can use expansion in areas we don't normally think about, yet because we are such time-limited beings, we tend to continue not thinking about them, and thus stagnation results, and deletion causes an implosion that further results in trought.
Another problem given the existing article space is that despite the fact that we have few expert editors, most articles are written from a completely obscure POV, often requiring years of experience and research knowledge just to comprehend the article's basics. This puts many of our articles in danger of becoming esoteric, further alienating the encyclopedia from the minds of regular readers and potential editors, who usually edit less then ten times. In fact, this may even increase our susceptibility to attacks from dramatic foreigners.
Yet, we often give vandal-fighting attention, without really considering the source of that vandalism, which often makes a disruptive point about the nature of the encyclopedia. Rarely do we have any time to incorporate these suggestions, as thickly veiled as they may be, into improving the project's content and its navigation. Many have seen the end of the encyclopedia project as such, and yet it doesn't even have to be the END.
...Unless, of course, an EMP destroys the Internet in 2012, in which case it really would be the end. However, that's irrelevant. Article outlines aren't. </end-rant>
Given that there are so many aspects of Wikipedia, few of us find ourselves devoting time to the more obscure entities. NPOV issues result when contributors hinder the use of logic in efforts to improve article space, and those issues are rarely addressed–the last time I visited an administrative NPOV complaints page several years ago, it alongside many other similar pages were heavily backlogged. Despite this, the rest of the project keeps trudging along, without thinking much of the ways we can improve the ease of the project in a multitude of ways.
Most of the regular editors here, myself included, actually have plenty of time to edit the encyclopedia and participate in collaboration without even realizing the amount of time we have. Therefore, the outlines are not simply a waste of time, nor of the very renewable electrons. In the event that Wikipedia contributes excessively to pollution and/or global warming, simply switch the servers to renewable energy resources that don't cause other damage.
Any editor can spend a bit of time addressing many of the ever-growing problems on Wikipedia, and I think the outlines are a great innovation to our project. However, we tend not to understand outlines, since they are obscure. Since many editors do not wish to use outlines, the contributors behind the outlines project also take less time to outline (excuse the pun) the purpose and usage of these pages. There is always room for improvement, even when traffic is low. When the traffic is high, please ensure the bridge does not collapse under its own weight.
Additionally, we have plenty of unusual articles, and whether we adopt formats already used on other encyclopedias, or stick to our own unique procedures, really doesn't matter, given it does not give rise to legal issues. In fact, many of our most unusual article topics could use outlines as well, and in order to prevent certain pages from becoming a directory, we need adequate discussion and collaboration on part of all interested parties.
I will conclude my disjunct analysis by a list of suggestive measures through which to ease the facilitation of article outlines even further:
    • Have a guideline for what the outlines are, why they're here, and in what ways they contribute to the encyclopedia. This is better than relying on any and all readers to interpret them.
    • Discuss ways of expanding outlines directly, without making them frustrating to read and navigate.
    • Create a flexible layout for outlines per subject area, which can be open to discussion directly on part of associated WikiProjects, without necessitating any overt canvassing. The template-like format of some outlines, especially for countries, can be problematic.
    • Allow any contributor to the project to suggest ways of either improving an individual outline, or improving the format of all outlines. Even when this may take months, regular collaboration can speed it up.
    • Focus on ideas affecting the encyclopedia, rather than limited in-group discussion that solely discusses the future of the outlines WikiProject, when it can be put up for deletion…again.
    • Have discussions, even those not related to the outlines project, on the Wikipedia-space talkpages of other areas of Wikipedia to reduce any backlogs and facilitate navigation and communication.
    • Focus on WP:5P, and demonstrate how the outlines contribute to it.
    • Find ways to collaborate so that WP:AGF is no longer meaningless.
Thanks. That's all I have for today. ~AH1 (discuss!) 02:22, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose These articles have utility, plain and simple. I have used Outline of British Columbia and was glad to find it. As noted above, we are not a paper encyclopedia and some overlap between our navigational pages is not a real problem in my view. These aren't for the reader seeking an immediate fact, but for the leisure reader who can take the time to wander through a topic. If these are being actively improved, they should not be deleted. The Interior (Talk) 06:47, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - the elimination of all articles in outline format would be overly-broad, and would reduce options for browsing and learning. It also appears that outlines are a valid type of encyclopedic formatting. Northamerica1000 (talk) 12:59, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please be so kind as to keep the current Outline format : it is extremely helpful as a comprehensive research tool in topics. Your effort and understanding in this regards is highly appreciated by users from around the globe. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.21.43.15 (talk • contribs) 13:33, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Wikipedia is supposed to make it EASY for people to find connections between things and Outlines do exactly that. I have followed traffic to articles before and after they were included in outlines and there is a clear trend for increased page views. The idea of deleting the useful Outlines that have been created is an example of the worst kind of editorial thinking. Ask users - i am sure they will agree that outlines help not hinder. Strong Keep. Thruxton (talk) 08:10, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Other

  • comment --- elimination or no elimination, the important thing is to move them out of article space. They aren't articles. They are de-facto a part of Portal:Contents. So if people want to work on them or find them useful, peace to you, but please, please, move them into Portal: namespace where they belong. Did I mention that they are not articles? --dab (𒁳) 14:08, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Is being portal really consistent with the systematic coverage of the topics that the outlines provide? The portals I'm familiar with don't really do that. Monty845 14:18, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Outlines are not part of Portal:Contents, only a list of them are. Portal:Contents lists articles that are elsewhere, the same way the project Wikipedia:Featured articles lists articles. Featured articles are in article space, lists are in article space, glossaries are in article space, and so are timelines, bibliographies, indexes, and outlines. All these articles are not part of the project or portal they are associated with, they are supported by those. And yes, outlines are articles, the same way lists are a type of article. Actually, outlines are lists, a type of topics list. As topics lists, outlines aren't restricted to listing articles, as the purpose is to outline each entire subject, whether it has articles on all the topics or not – and therefore non-article list entries can be added to any outline. Note that the other type of topics list is indexes. By the way, that there are 2 types of topics list is why neither should be named "List of ... topics", since that would imply lists of the other type are not topics lists. The Transhumanist 22:59, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Why move outlines to portal namespace? We already have "List of", "Timeline of", "Glossary of", "Index of", "Table of", "Outline of", and others in article space, why should we put outlines in Portal namespace and leave the rest in article namespace? This has already been explained -- penubag  (talk) 21:47, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
@dab (Dbachmann): DAB pages aren't articles either, yet they are in article space. So I don't really see what the problem is with having the outlines in article space. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 03:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We have disambiguation pages because articles on Wikipedia are indexed by name. Someone who types lift into the search box could be looking for any of 35 articles. They can't reach the article they're interested in without additional assistance. (This is similar to why set indices are necessary. It's also part of why article naming disputes can get so heated.) Whereas outlines are not necessary, because articles on Wikipedia are not naturally indexed by topic. If we replaced the search box by an outline navigation tool, then I would concede that outlines were a fundamental part of Wikipedia. But right now they aren't. Ozob (talk) 11:30, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with dab. What use are such articles? They can only duplicate and confuse. What would you put in an Outline of the Hundred Years War article when Hundred Years War is an encyclopedia article and therefore an outline in itself? We are writing hypertext here. We can use internal and external links. Readers can already navigate using categories, links, navboxes, projects, portals and more. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:16, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    You say "what use are such articles?", I understand you are not familiar with an outline and probably never used one, but please give this a read before commenting. -- penubag  (talk) 21:47, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • comment Clearly the people opposing and commenting on opposition have no idea what an outline article is. It is used in nearly all encyclopedias, and in printed ones, there are even outline volumes as part of the "micropedia" or equivalent book, intended to allow the reader a quick overview of topics that have a lot of articles related to them, and to do so in a concise fashion. They can aid in navigation, but are not navigation tools, but rather a special type of article. As I mentioned, perhaps the tight association of outline articles with lists does them harm, and we need to create guidelines specifically for outlines. Again compare it to the long respected form of dab article, the WP:SETINDEX. That outlines have not gathered the respect and attention they deserve, or that some are low quality and badly done, is no reason to delete the whole type.--Cerejota (talk) 00:21, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • My recollection is that "outline" articles in printed encyclopedias include some explanatory prose giving an overview of the topic. It's much more than just an introductory paragraph followed by a list of articles. Many of the articles called "outline" on wikipedia really are lists: all we have is a lead paragraph followed by a structured list of links. It's not at all the same as the printed outlines you refer to. Examples of good outlines: Outline of anarchism, Outline of canoeing and kayaking, Outline of cell biology, List of algebraic structures (should be called an outline but isn't). I haven't yet found any others. Examples of misnamed lists: Outline of logic, Outline of regression analysis, Outline of statistics, Outline of fiction, Outline of music and many many more. There are some annotated lists which in my opinion are closer to lists than outlines, but I admit that it's a grey area: for example, Outline of chess and (the humourously named--I hope it's not intentional) Outline of Russia. It seems to me that WikiProject Outlines is a good concept that so far hasn't been well implemented. Jowa fan (talk) 00:51, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      Print encyclopedias do not have the benefit of hyperlinks. Together, the use of wikilinks, {{main}}, {{seealso}}, categories, lists, and searching makes it far easier to find appropriate articles on Wikipedia than in a print encyclopedia. If we were a print encyclopedia and did not have any of the above available, then I would agree that outlines served a purpose.
      I disagree that set indices are a useful analogy. Set indices collect objects of the same type that share similar names. We look up things in Wikipedia by name, so set indices are unavoidable. Outlines, I maintain, are made obsolete by hyperlinks. Ozob (talk) 01:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I have seen a few "Ouline of..." articles that actually are outlines, but mostly they are lists renamed. Regardless of the outcome of this RfC, I suggest that at the very least these lists be moved back to "List of...". As for whether outlines belong in article space, I tend to agree with Dbachmann. Sławomir Biały (talk) 02:23, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disorganized thoughts - Having worked on outlines a fair amount, I don't think they are articles in the traditional sense, but they certainly are useful. And while "It's useful" is not an argument for keeping an article, it is an argument for keeping a navigational structure. (And easy navigation is one thing that Wikipedia definitely lacks.) When I talk to readers and new users, many tell me about how difficult it is to find things on Wikipedia. I understand that as an organically grown project we resist top-down organization, but I think this is a great disservice to readers and editors alike. (One nice thing about outlining is it allows you to see what is missing from our coverage of a topic, hence the appearance of redlinks in many outlines.) --Danger (talk) 18:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Has there been an RFC of any form on outline articles before? I was wondering about this a while ago - I vaguely feel like I've seen reference to one, but no idea where, or if it was just a proposal being kicked around. Shimgray | talk | 20:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    See here for a bunch of discussions regarding outlines. It doesn't look like we've had a formal RfC. --Danger (talk) 21:36, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete all including "List of x topics" I see no clear inclusion criteria for these articles, as items can be tangentially related, or not so tangentially related, which is hard to define. I also see no reason why categories can not do what these "lists" are doing.Curb Chain (talk) 12:23, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Outlines may have their place, but anyone proposing to "outline-ize" a current list for a discipline must consult the project first, to avoid disruptions. Rschwieb (talk) 18:00, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move them all to Portal:Contents. They are useful for navigation, but redundant to articles, and are not proper mainspace content. Same with most of all of "List of", "Timeline of", "Glossary of", "Index of", and "Table of" (excluding independently notable things). Navigation aides require original editoral work and the best of it can't comply with WP:NOR. I suggest creation of a namespace shortcut for Portal:Contents/Outlines. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move them out of article space to somewhere else. I don't really care where, but they are not articles, they are navigation aids, and do not belong in article space. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 21:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move out of article space. I support moving them out of article space, no preference where. Kaldari (talk) 01:34, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why does the notification say that outlines will be deleted?. The notice that is being inserted on various outline articles, saying that they will be deleted is a bit misleading. Deletion discussion notice While I appreciate the notice, it might have been more helpful to say that discussion was happening about renaming or merging. Since the edit summary says that deletion of the articles is being discussed, that might be part of the confusion on what is proposed. Zodon (talk) 23:13, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Allow exceptions. I think the proposal is too strict and does not allow enough flexibility in handling. Most of the outlines are simply lists of articles, and should just be renamed back to lists.
However there are a few (I have seen 4 or 5 so far, such as Outline of anarchism, Outline of cell biology, Outline of forestry, Outline of motorcycles and motorcycling ) that seem to have merits as articles. The outline format (a topic with additional detail text) can be useful in explaining the relation between various items. While an article may contain an outline, it might get too large to be a subsection, and therefore merit splitting into it's own section (per summary style). But if that happens, then suddenly it is an outline and runs afoul of this proposal and gets deleted. Just as with a regular article, an outline should be supported by sources, etc. (i.e. it is a regular article, but happens to have a particular format) So there should be latitude for outlines to continue to exist, either where there is a well formed one already, or where a new one is divided off from a main article (but they have to have a clearly indicated main article that they are a subsidiary part of).
The definition of lists is also too narrow - some of the documentation says it should be alphabetical. Many lists of articles are more helpful if articles are grouped based on content. (Making them somewhat like the beginnings of an outline). Zodon (talk) 00:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's a pretty small list. Notice that the list is devoid of most major subjects. It's a weird list of straggling subject lists without any WikiProject support. Almost all of them are outlines (hierarchically-structured lists). Those about mainstream subjects should be folded into the set of outlines. The rest should be merged somewhere. The Transhumanist 00:55, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I was actually looking for something like this, didn't know it existed. I can't comment on most subjects, but in science they would be very useful, at least if users knew about them. Same goes for portals, why are 95% of links to portals buried in talk pages where most users will never find them? And as for categories, I don't know what subject those who find them useful are into, every time I click on a category it only confirms my feeling that something providing structure to the categories content is badly needed. If articles would actually link to outlines maybe more editors would get involved in improving them. I don't quite understand where the links are that title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Outline_of_physical_science refers to, can't seem to find them on most pages listed... DS Belgium (talk) 23:18, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative Outline Articles Proposal

We should develop a guideline that specifies what a proper outline article is. Once a consensus is reached on that, the guideline can be used to support the renaming of lists masquerading as outlines, and the merging of outlines that do nothing more then duplicate existing articles or lists.

  • Key features of an outline:
    It helps explain how a large topic area is broken down into subtopics.
    It Provides links to subtopics, with an explanation of how they relate to the broader topic.
    It Provides a broad overview of the topic area, without going into depth.
    Is designed to help those who may not know much or anything about the outline topic identify subtopics that may interest them.
  • What an outline is not:
    Not a list (lists can be annotated and still be lists).
    Not a mere copy of the contents of a main topic article with a bunch of links.
    Not a replacement of any existing article or list, it should provide something that is not currently available in another location.

That is just my idea for how to start it, does it seem consistent with what a proper outline should and should not be? Monty845 01:51, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This makes sense to me. Looking at the examples I mentioned in the section above, which do you think should be called "outline" and which would you call lists? Jowa fan (talk) 08:33, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I support the idea of having guidelines on outlines and that seems a good start. However, I do think that an outline will, of necessity, take some content from the lead of articles it links to. Some may say that's a fork, but if so it's a benign one. For me a fork is an attempt to mirror an article with the intention of sneaking in stuff that couldn't achieve consensus in the article proper. That's obviously bad. But provided that isn't happening I think an outline should give more than an article link, and I don't see how that can happen without repeating some info that the user will find should they click the link. We should be providing context that gives the viewer of the outline enough to decide whether they want to progress to the article or not. A teaser, I guess. --bodnotbod (talk) 09:48, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What you call a fork is what WP:CFORK calls a POV fork. I don't think—and I don't think anyone thinks—that the paragraphs in outline articles are POV forks. (And thank goodness they're not!) But CFORK describes another type of content fork, the "redundant content fork". It's not malicious like a POV fork; it's just a waste of resources. It generally happens by accident. But my opinion is that with outlines, it happens (and cannot help but happen) by intent. If they use proper summary style to introduce each of their links, then they will effectively duplicate the main article on the topic (or even, perhaps, have more detail). Summary style is not itself a redundant content fork; but duplicating an article is. I still haven't seen anyone attempt to explain why the examples I discussed above (in the "Oppose" section) are not redundant content forks. Ozob (talk) 11:45, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The exact same duplication happens by intent in regular articles. (In the main article on a topic, in related articles where they summarize what is in the related article.) The articles will not duplicate the main article on the topic, they will summarize it. If I have various sections that cover material in related articles, using summary style, what makes this okay if I have them just listed sequentially with different headings (as in an article), but not okay if I have them in an indented list (an outline)? Zodon (talk) 23:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You're right; I misspoke. I believe that proper summary style for the main article on a topic is out of place in an outline. Proper summary style in an article may include a full paragraph with a multitude of links. Including an entire paragraph next to each entry in an outline means that you are effectively writing a new article, and I object for WP:CFORK reasons. However, I believe there is a proper summary style for annotated lists. It's shorter than in a regular article; no more than a sentence or two, and nothing that ought to need a footnote. If an annotated list consistently limits itself to that then I think it's not a redundant content fork. Ozob (talk) 19:16, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - "Hey, this storage box is full of crap, let's clean it out!" "Naaaahhh.. let's just rename it a Crap Storage Receptacle, and formulate rules for how we put crap in it!" → ROUX ₪ 10:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This comment is useless, inappropriate and childish. Wikipedia is not a place to give emotional opinions. OffiikartTalk 20:14, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. This looks like a way forward. Some outlines are indeed poor and should be deleted or moved to be a list. Some lists could become outlines. At their best, outlines are very useful. At their worst, grrr!
I agree with whoever the unsigned user above is - HIGHFIELDS (TALK • CONTRIBUTIONS) 20:28, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Outlines should be permitted (not particularly encouraged). In general they should have a main article associated (unless they are the main article on the topic). They should have sources, just as a regular article. For some material an outline is a natural way to present it, editors should not be arbitrarily barred from using that format.
The requirements for list of articles should be made less strict (not require alphabetization), allow items to be grouped by topic. Zodon (talk) 00:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Clearly matches my understanding of what an outline should be. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 10:56, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a good compromise which should keep the majority of supporters and opposers above happy Jebus989✰ 11:03, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Roux above. It's duplicate portal content. Merge 'em. [edit: Where original content wasn't a pre-existing list that should be restored. Why didn't admins stop this trainwreck editing faster?] — LlywelynII 21:57, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment When I have found "Outline" pages useful it is because they are lists - a particular type of list, ordered by topic, annotated where needed to make clear what the articles listed are about. Timelines are another specialised type of list. Outlines should not have introductions or simplified explanations of subjects - those belong in the Lead section of the articles. I don't much like the name "Outline" but apparently it is widely used in US universities so I guess I can live with it as a name. In summary Keep "Outline" pages where they are hierarchical lists of articles, organised by topic and sub-topic.--filceolaire (talk) 23:14, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The good examples referenced above like Outline of anarchism, Outline of canoeing and kayaking, Outline of cell biology show great promise for providing new and unique value, even though they cover the same area as some other lists and articles. Although not all encyclopedias include them, they clearly are in line with our mission. However, I am also concerned about the risk of content forking - I would rather see minimal prose in the outlines, including links, or a brief summary, than a straight copy of any substantial part of the article on the topic. One way to do this is to replace prose paragraphs with short bulleted lists of phrases or possibly infoboxes (which offer the succinct key:value format for basic facts). Dcoetzee 07:00, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - the massive cleanup that this proposal suggests is already underway, and has been for the past couple of years. That's why the outline and index WikiProjects were formed. Many pages have been merged, to reduce redundant lists, and the work continues. Note that outlines are lists. All of them are, so differentiating them from lists per se is impossible. Though we can differentiate them from other types of lists, such as indexes, and item lists. The Transhumanist 21:16, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have three times been unable to save a support !vote because the system says I am trying to save a blacklisted external link. There were no links in the prose I tried to append, so in effect my !vote is being unnecessarily precluded. Someone should investigate this. My76Strat (talk) 07:35, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I have placed a vote in your name in Support section. Maybe it will let you edit that vote? Ozob (talk) 11:44, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thank you, BTW I have isolated the problem as local, so it is not an issue to be investigated further. Unless someone knows why my end might be causing this? It has something to do with the word updating, the fact that dating is green with two underscores on my screen, and when I edit, up and dating split with some crazy markup which includes a blacklisted site added between the two words. It's crazy. My76Strat (talk) 03:43, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I agree that clarification of the difference between "Outlines" and "Lists" would be worthwhile. If a clear consensus of that distinction can be made, I support such a guideline in principle, if not in content. With such a guideline it is likely that some Lists might be better served in Outline format. Consider Tree structures and Inventories, for these articles in question (whatever their current forms), are they more suitably defined as strictly Lists or conversely as strictly Outlines? I suggest neither limitation is advantageous. Keep both, but clarify and distinguish appropriately. Also, I typically use these linking-articles, as well as tables and boxes, as primary browsing tools. Pro-expansion, anti-constriction. JimsMaher (talk) 03:45, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support. Would prefer an outright deletion for those pages, though. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 01:36, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. An outline should list topics in an order that makes the scope and vagaries of the subject matter clear. bd2412 T 18:03, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. As I commented in a separate RFC, I feel that the whole focus of Wikipedia should be to help people to quickly find and jump to an answer to their specific question, not to redirect them and force them to read through a humongous article to see if it contains something related to their question. If articles are written as outlines with links to subtopics which are standalone articles, then it is much easier to find a subtopic than if it were merged into a humongous article. In general such major subtopics do not belong exclusively to a single main topic anyway -- for concrete examples, see the comments on Emergency Management in the above-mentioned RFC. LittleBen (talk) 11:28, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Styling for titles disambiguated by parentheses

As part of the renewed Ireland-naming discussions, an idea was raised about the formatting the titles of disambiguation pages. One suggestion was to remove the disambiguating terms in the title displayed on pages. Another was to put the disambiguating terms onto a second line.

I'd like to post another (fairly moderate) idea here. That is to reduce the size of disambiguating terms when they are displayed on page. I've mocked up two examples here:

[Never mind how this technically achieved on these example pages, it could be done much more gracefully in real life, including automatically formatting titles in this way.]

There are some possible benefits to doing this (before this is called a solution looking for a problem).

  • Disambiguating pages can be contensious. Putting disambiguating terms in small letters may reduce those tensions (small font = less of a big deal).
  • It may allow the common-name disambiguation to be used more frequently. At present many people avoid parenthetic disambiguation because it is "ugly". Using small letters may avoid that "ugliness".
  • It emphasizes the actual title of the article, which the term in parenthesis can distract from.
  • Finally, I also think it looks prettier.

Other view? --RA (talk) 21:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I also support this idea - when an article is about a thing with a name (and hence we expect the article title to be a name of that thing), we should be separating out the part of the title that isn't part of the name, but serves only to fulfil the technical requirement of uniqueness. Of course editors will be confused at first, and possibly start making wrong links (due to not realizing what the full technical title of the page is), but these will be dab links that will get corrected, and people will soon get used.--Kotniski (talk) 06:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not convinced. I'm concerned that pages will be loaded with an extra template for a very small, if any, benefit. It's already in brackets, which reduces the impact. I think your idea could lead to requests for "Republic of Ireland", and I think such a suggestion is unlikely to lead to a reduction in tension or mitigation of offense. DrKiernan (talk) 07:58, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I would not be convinced by a template approach. It would be very messy. I think a software-based approach would be better. The basic algorithm being, if page title is of format "XXX (yyy)" and the page "XXX" exists then apply styling (plus a few other considerations, I'm sure). An extension to do this would be relatively trivial. --RA (talk) 09:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • A similar proposal... --Yair rand (talk) 08:26, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Solution in search of a problem. The parentheses make it clear that part isn't part of the "proper" title, while the uniform size makes it clear it's part of both the local pagename and the URL. Also, if someone objects to the term in a normal-size font, why on earth would they oppose the smaller font any less? A title is equally accurate/inccurate, etc. regardless of its size. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 09:28, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, parentheses don't always indicate that it isn't part of the proper title, as in the example given above. And we ought to be aiming to present information encyclopedically, and not worry so much about conveying information about internal technicalities like local page names and URLs.--Kotniski (talk) 09:38, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't the proposal at hand just such a solution? Or are you saying you'd like it to look more elegant? I'm sure the exact formatting can be discussed at length, if the general concept meets with general approval.--Kotniski (talk) 10:52, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What I mean is that the implementation would not be elegant because there is no way to apply it to all articles. Suppose you make the software "smallify" parentheses automatically. Then you need to scour all articles that don't have parentheses in them and fix them with a template. If you don't, then you need to scour all articles that do have parentheses, and apply the "smallification" on a case-by-case basis via template. You either get plenty of articles inappropriately smallified, or plenty of articles inappropriately "bigified". Bots would help yes, but there would still be an unfathomable number of cases that bots could not handle. Creating a very puzzling and jarring style difference, and a backlog of articles in need in smallification/unsmallification, for no real benefit, and yet another thing to edit war over. Should it be USS Wisconsin (BB-9) or USS Wisconsin (BB-9)? Should it be Monkton, Kent, [[Monkton, Kent]], or Moncton (Kent)? I fail to see any real benefit to this, and zillions of problems. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:35, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Account Deletion Revisited

In this thread I suggested the creation of an account to which users could have their accounts merged upon request, effectively deleting them. That proposal was defeated due to licensing concerns. In the middle of the thread, User:Mabdul proposed that such an account be for the purpose of merging accounts with no edits in to it, so that the usernames would be able to be used by someone who is willing to edit. This would also greatly decrease the length of the list of registered users through which anyone who wishes to change their username has to trawl. Mabdul's proposal never received much comment, but all of those who did comment supported it. In addition, he suggested that an email be sent to accounts that have registered an address to ensure that they do not wish to resume editing. I think these are all very good ideas - comments, anyone? Interchangeable|talk to me 22:53, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This essentially already exists. See WP:USURP. → ROUX ₪ 23:02, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The idea is to merge all accounts with no edits, without waiting for them to be usurped, in order to reduce some burden on WP:CHU/U. Interchangeable|talk to me 19:23, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm unaware of WP:CHU/U being backlogged or having a major burden. Perhaps you have examples showing the opposite, but I doubt it. → ROUX ₪ 20:10, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure why you're crediting an individual for this. At least one other person (me) suggested that zero-edit year-old accounts be automatically pruned, with a log left behind and a possibility for easy reversion. — Kudu ~I/O~ 23:26, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, easy to answer: I was the first with this idea ^^
USURP is really bureaucratic and thus more work for our 'crats and admins; and most users (especially new ones who want to create a new account) are not aware of this procedure. mabdul 13:30, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget that some readers create an account so they can set preferences, use scripts, or whatever but do not actually edit. And then there are some bot accounts that exist so the bot can make queries using the apihighlimits right, but do not perform any on-wiki edits. All of these proposals about automatically deleting or merging "inactive" accounts would also delete the account out from under these readers.

Also, do not forget that deleting the local account makes no difference if the SUL account still exists, as the local account will just be recreated the next time that user visits and no other user could create it. And an SUL account is automatically created for all new account creations. Anomie⚔ 20:02, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Add doppelganger accounts to the list of common reasons for creating zero-edit accounts.
Additionally, when the WMF sent e-mail to a bunch of accounts a while ago (a year ago, now?) to ask people why they left Wikipedia, they got a lot of responses that said the user still wanted the account and still planned to edit in the future. So "hasn't edited for a while" does not mean "will never edit again", and deleting an account out from under someone (especially for so dubious a benefit as reducing the length of an automatically generated list) is about as WP:BITEy as you can get.
I still think this is both a bad idea and a solution in search of a problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would support accounts self-terminating after 10 years of complete disuse (i.e. registered but never did anything at all, user_touch older than 10 years), so the username is automatically released for use. Other than that, I don't see a pressing need for this. –xenotalk 20:33, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd support pruning 2-year-old accounts (by user_touch, not last edit/log action), and deleting the associated SUL account, if it isn't attached anywhere else. — Kudu ~I/O~ 00:06, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This issue has arisen before and was rejected. There are a couple reasons why, but primarily:

  1. Non-editing accounts are used to maintain preferences
  2. Non-editing accounts are used to maintain watchlists
  3. Non-editing accounts are used to view Pending Changes

The question is really not "why should we do this?" but really "why should we not do this?" and there are more reasons not to do it, I think.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 00:58, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Using user_touch data as a tool to measure if accounts are being used sort of defeats all those points. I don't particularly care one way or the other about this proposal as long as it goes by user_touch data as mentioned above. I am against it if it goes solely on edit/logged action history. Killiondude (talk) 07:55, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's actually not very good, either. user_touched gives false positives on activity - especially if someone interacts with them.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Which means we would be erring on the side of not deleting accounts? How is that a problem? –xenotalk 16:14, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well. I'm not really the one to argue about this; I just wanted to point out that this has been suggested before and rejected before. I'd suggest talking to someone with deep MediaWiki experience, such as Brion or Tim.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 17:18, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How about user_lastlogin ? mabdul 02:33, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As was mentioned earlier, this is unacceptable given the large number of accounts that have been untouched but that the users have indicated that they are merely taking breaks and will be back eventually. --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 02:57, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My suggestion is to terminate accounts that were registered but never used and have not been touched in 10 years. These are not accounts of users who are 'merely taking breaks'... –xenotalk 15:40, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wow. I'm nonplussed that I, the least technical person to post on this page in eons, actually know the reason why this was turned down in the first place, and why it is not possible now: SUL. It was in the early development stages back during the original discussion, and is now pretty much automatic when a new account is registered. As SUL-account editors go from project to project, even just reading, an account is automatically created for them on each project. Messing with people's SUL is just not on. Now someone more techie than me can figure out how deleting a SUL account on one project will mess things up, but there's little doubt it would: either it would screw up the SUL account holder, or it would release an account on our project that can't be used because there's an existing SUL account. So no, this is not a good proposal. Risker (talk) 03:43, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think deleting a local account would mess up the SUL, it will just mean the account will be automatically recreated again when the user visits again. Simple solution is not to delete accounts attached to an SUL - but in any case, my suggestion (10 years of complete disuse) would not even reach SUL accounts until 2018. –xenotalk 15:44, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    What's the point in even that though? Is there evidence that we're losing potential contributors because they can't get the exact user name they want? What is the benefit in this proposal? --Onorem♠Dil 15:47, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The benefit is releasing desirable usernames for use without users having to leverage the usurp procedure. This means that new users don't have as hard a time finding an acceptable username, and also means that SUL holders don't have to figure out our local usurp process if their SUL name happens to be already registered here. –xenotalk 15:53, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    To be honest I don't feel like that's a huge benefit; if anything it points to inconveniences in the system and is just begging for a proper resolution such as "allow for multiple people with the same name and have sane ways to distinguish them, so nobody has to worry about username conflicts as a general case". One high-profile example of a site dealing with this very differently is Facebook; there can be thousands of John Smiths in the system, but each has a distinct identity, their own avatar, their own circles of friends and activity. The only place you actually have to conflict for resources is on shortened URLs to your profile page -- an optional feature you have to opt in to anyway. I'd rather see effort on moving towards taking these things out of peoples' way, and making sure that we still have a good identity system that distinguishes between people with similar names. --brion (talk) 18:50, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, even just being able to have an SUL containing accounts with different usernames would be a decent bandaid to situations like this one. –xenotalk 18:55, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Userfy instead of CSD A7/A1

Except for very obviously bad pages (like advertising, vandalism, and attack pages), most pages that get CSD'd often are good-faith. Speedy deletion can be demeaning to new editors, as any admin who participates in speedy deletion knows.

The vast majority of these pages would have no problem if they were userfied. My proposed change here is to modify the CSD policy so that userfication should be considered before deletion. Any thoughts?Jasper Deng (talk) 19:39, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For reference, A1 is "Articles lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article" and A7 is "No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content)." Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:17, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest you take such discussions to WT:CSD but I'm fairly sure that has been proposed before. Check the archives maybe. Regards SoWhy 20:25, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - moving useless crap that would never survive as an article into userspace is not a better solution than deleting it. See also the Article Canvassing Rescue Squadron for an object lesson in why. → ROUX ₪ 20:45, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - we have a flood of junk. moving it around doesn't lower the level. Passing the user on to Article Creation or another mentored process is best. Keeping content which will be overwritten at best isn't useful. Rmhermen (talk) 21:10, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: There are certain pieces of junk that should not be userfied. However, we need to make this more friendly to new users, not just us.Jasper Deng (talk) 22:08, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - it is already open to the reviewing admin to userfy if he thinks the article has potential, and I sometimes do that, but just being "good faith" is not enough - e.g the innumerable garage band and non-notable autobiography articles. The speedy notice gives the reason and links to essential guidelines like WP:N, for users who are willing to learn. JohnCD (talk) 22:14, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I agree with the spirit, but I feel like I oppose the proposal due to instruction creep; I'd hope all admins consider possibilities for the article rather than just deleting everything with a tag, so it isn't necessary to state it. Myself, I see articles tagged A1 or A7 falling in a range. At one end are articles that are clear deletes: utter lack of context or utter lack of significance (e.g., Jane Doe is a freshman in high school; she's cool!). At the other end are articles that just need a little tweak, like a(nother) reference, before they can stay in article space. In between are the articles where I try to talk to the editors and tell them what they need to add that could save the article or that they could have the article userfied to work on it with less threat of deletion. (I didn't think about moving the articles to Articles for creation space; I'll need to consider that for the future.)
    If any change needs to come about, maybe it's a template that can be added to note that an administrator has reviewed the request for speedy deletion and is discussing the situation with the article's editor(s). —C.Fred (talk) 23:13, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Last big discussion on this was Wikipedia:Wiki_Guides/Change_CSD_to_userspace_drafts. Yoenit (talk) 06:18, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The vast majority of pages deleted under A7 and A1 are not suitable as encyclopedia articles. The logistics of this aren't trivial. A7 is used to delete about 7,000 articles a month. A1 and A3 account for another 2,000 a month between them. Consensus is that pages which look like articles should not be allowed to remain indefinitely in userspace. If most deletions under A1, A3 and A7 were to be replaced by userfication then it would be necessary to delete tens of thousands of stale drafts on clearly inappropriate topics. Even if this is possible there are surely better ways to use the time of our editors. Hut 8.5 17:03, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - The overwhelming majority of article being CSD'd over an A-code is because they are not and very likely will not ever achieve notability. The proper solution to this is better communication, doing things in as non-bitey of a way we can, and educating the new user in our proper policies and procedures. Userfying every crapsack article that we KNOW isn't ever going to be in the encyclopedia is no more fair to the new user than simply deleting it is... only in this case we are giving them false hope and wasting their time in the improvement of an article that we could have said from the very beginning would never survive a CSD the NEXT time they try adding it. Trusilver 20:46, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Irrespective of content, an article can be useful to the editor as an example of how to start, create sections, format text, insert links, references, ..., a cheatsheet basically. Especially when it's the first article by an editor, deletion would take away what could be his/her main edit aid. Seems strange to use the lack of notability and suitability for article namespace as an argument against moving it to a namespace where it would not break the rules. Exactly the same could be said for essays placed in the article namespace. Should they be deleted instead of moved to the project namespace, because they'll never make it as encyclopedia articles? And about the work involved, wouldn't moving to userspace and deletion of stale drafts after a certain inactive time be considered less drastic actions requiring fewer considerations to take into account, effectively reducing the workload?
Not saying a user should be allowed a large collection of rubbish articles of course. DS Belgium (talk) 06:02, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Content dispute resolution

A breakdown of content dispute resolution processes. Two diagrams discuss how content dispute resolution was done in the past and how it is done at present, with two further diagrams outlining potential shuffles of the DR hierarchy.

This isn't the first time I've been here recently. Back in June I proposed the creation of the dispute resolution noticeboard, a way of getting many eyes on a dispute and coming to a quick resolution as opposed to something like MedCab or an RFC. Not to toot my own horn, but it has been reasonably successful thus far. Since then, I've been discussing proposed changes to the Mediation Cabal (see discussion) to make it more of an intermediate option as opposed to how things are at present (refer to diagram).

Resolution process for content and conduct issues at present

Additionally, it's made me think of the issues that content dispute resolution faces at times. Conduct issues have a pretty clear cut method of resolution, whereas content disputes have no lasting resolution. Consensus can change, and that's important. At the same time, there have been a select few disputes in the past that have gone through conventional DR methods numerous amount of times, and have ended up at ArbCom, often because of conduct issues, but at times topic bans or discretionary sanctions don't have the desired effect and the issues with the content continue. Senkaku Islands, Ireland article names, Eastern European disputes and Palestine-Israel articles are a few examples of disputes that have been through the DR processes endlessly both at present and in the past.

This is not a new idea. It's been proposed in the past, with Wikipedia:Community enforceable mediation, there was some discussion of it at an RFC on content DR back in 2008, and several variants of the idea for binding resolution of content disputes are littered over userspace, Two examples of this are here and here. I don't think that such a committee or body should be utilised lightly, it should only be done when all other methods of dispute resolution has failed. Perhaps it could be used after a case is closed as unresolved by the Mediation Committee. Perhaps a dispute would be referred there by the Arbitration Committee. Or perhaps there's another idea completely. I don't have any concrete ideas as of yet, I do think that any potential resolutions or decisions by this, well, for now let's call it "content ArbCom" should have time limits and be open to amendments if situations change vastly within the dispute, but would be ideal for highly charged disputes such as the ones I've listed above, and would appreciate input from the community on this. Thanks. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 01:00, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since one of the referenced userspace drafts is mine, I'm obviously in favor of the idea. While my version is a bit rule-intense, its goal is to make content arbitration a kind of enforceable-RFC which requires a prior attempt at RFC and DR, attempts to make a last-ditch attempt to draw in as much community participation in the final outcome as possible, and only allows the arbitrators to make a decision if the community fails to come to consensus about the content, saying in effect: "Hey, community - trout slap - if you don't decide this, it's going to be decided for you: Do you really want that to happen?" Though it's not mentioned in my draft, I would hope that filings with this committee would get the publicity, such as ongoing reporting in the Signpost, as do ArbCom proceedings so as to draw in as many editors as possible and avoid committee-only decisions. Whether by community consensus or committee decision, decision at this forum would determine the matter for the time being and would be enforceable. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 14:05, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Just rename Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents to Wikipedia:Community forum, because that is all that is. Moreover, I question whether or not "mediation" is suitable in an open wiki environment (as opposed to MedCom, which is more closed). –MuZemike 23:01, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • We already have a last resort for content disputes. It's called ArbCom. Not sure what the point is here, but it seems to ignore the fact that behavioral and content issues often go hand in hand, therefore it makes sense to have one body that is authorized to deal with both. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:51, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • No, not really. I'm actually bringing this here partly on the suggestion of an arbitrator (see the Abortion workshop). ArbCom don't issue decisions on content. I agree that in 99% of cases there shouldn't be a "binding" decision in regards to content, but for the rare cases where continuous discussion is damaging to the community (see the list of cases I linked to) there should be a method to resolve the disputes, at least for a period of time (like the Ireland article names dispute). I have no concrete ideas at present, but think we should have a serious discussion about it instead of throwing ideas out pretty much straight away. If ArbCom deals with content disputes, why are so many issues sent around the loop too often without resolution. At least think about it. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 00:08, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, i see where you are coming from, they make decisions about how editors in dispute are to behave, but you are right that they don't usually wade into the dispute itself. I guess I'd like to see a more solid idea of how this would work. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:28, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are two possible ways we could do this. Either a dispute goes through the content dispute hierarchy first (Talk page, DRN/3O/MedCab or MedCom) and then ArbCom who will look at any conduct issues and refer any unresolved content issues to this "content committee" or it could be a step taken directly after a MedCab/MedCom case, with strict requirements for the dispute so the new committee doesn't become a free-for-all (Serious discussion must have happened for an extended period of time and all options of resolution have been tried without success.) A modified version of User:TransporterMan/Sandbox/3 may be a starting point, out of which we can mould a more of a solid proposal. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 02:40, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think there is a problem here to solve. Content issues, devoid of editorial issues, should be dealt with by: 1) Editing, 2) talk page, 3) WP:3O, 4) WP:RFC. The higher number should be seen as supporting the lower number, with solutions only ever obtained via #1. Perhaps there is room for some structure for RFC? There are various noticeboards that can support, and I think that committed tendentious editors should be restricted in editing in the problem area without reference to the content issue. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:13, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Part of the reason I brought it here was the Senkaku Islands dispute which has been through content DR processes several times over. If a dispute is still unresolved after 2-3 years of conventional DR, we need something new to fix that. Our standard processes also have no way of dealing with civil POV pushing. Is this a radical idea? Of course. But I think by the info I listed at the top of this section, it's needed, at least for those once a year issues that warrant it. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 03:29, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with the idea of having a semi-systematic way of making a final decision on controversial content issues (final in the sense of, if nothing changes in the real world, nothing changes on Wikipedia); when an edit war drags on for years and years, it's in the encyclopedia's best interests to come to a resolution and put the issue to rest. However, I cannot support this proposal without knowing more details about how this body will work. What, ideally, should their decisions be based on? Like for ArbCom, their decisions are based on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, etc., but it really comes down to personal judgment and common sense. Why does User X deserve a 1-year ban while User Y only gets admonished? The severity of sanctions is not encoded anywhere in policy; it's just what feels right to the arbiters. Now, a bit of personal opinion is perfectly fine for ArbCom, because ArbCom members (as well as most experienced users) are all pretty mainstream when it comes down to user conduct. Even an ardent deletionist, as long as they understand and uphold our policies, would object to someone mass deleting articles they don't like, for example. The problem for content disputes is, however, that it would be very difficult to find a group of users who are relatively neutral on all political, social, and other controversial issues. Moreover, while our behavioral guidelines cover all of user conduct (yes, all - any leftovers are taken up by WP:IAR), we can never hope to create a set of guidelines describing all possible content, simply because the world has too many twists and turns. IAR is fine, but just try moving Republic of Ireland to Ireland unilaterally. IAR means common sense; articles, however, feed on sources. Interpretation of those sources (what to include, what to prioritize, etc.) is what leads to this mess. If a policy or guideline is ambiguous, we hold a discussion to amend it. But the sources are there, and we can't change them. The above is the fundamental difference between conduct and content. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:55, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree with the differences in content and conduct disputes, and the complexities and difficulties that convening such a DR body for content issues will create. The reasons you give are sound ones. As Wikipedians we all have personal opinions on things, religion (either religious or not religious) or politically (various broad categories here). One doesn't have to have no opinion on anything to be able to be objective and neutral, they must however have a very sound understanding of the content policies and how they work together (NPOV, RS, V, BLP, UNDUE to name a few) as these are largely how content is governed. I think TransporterMan's draft proposal might be a decent starting point we can mould something out of. I'd agree that this should be done cautiously, so perhaps the requirements for case acceptance at the "Content Committee" can be very strict to start off with, with their remedies to be in effect for a max period of time to start with (say 6 months) and the acceptance requirements and duration of remedies etc can be modified as the committee becomes more structured and the case process becomes smoother and works better as time goes on. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 10:23, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The more time single purpose editors spend arguing, the less time they spend edit warring. In that respect, the status quo works relatively well.

    I think what we need is an alternative to RfC that comes after existing options have failed, in which uninvolved editors try to determine whether there a solution is remotely conceivable, or whether the issue should be recognised as something which is unlikely to ever be resolved. When writing about love and war, religion and politics, life, the universe and everything, it's inevitable that the latter will sometimes be the case. —WFC— 14:35, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Would be in support of this idea. Frequently a RfC resolves issues but for cases in which it does not we do need a further mechanism of content resolution.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:43, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thoughts by FT2 on content resolution + proposals

The issues that cause content not to be resolved are very well known - as a community we have seen it happen thousands of times. Four issues seem to cause a debate to get really bad. I would like to propose a 4-way framework that would be likely to help.

The problem with "binding content resolution"
  1. The risks of "setting content in stone" is huge, this alone is a major concern ("you can't change it, it was agreed by arbitration etc").
  2. It makes it hard to improve any "fixed" text later,
  3. It creates a prime target for gaming and politiking (eg who gets to make these decisions),
  4. We don't want to ditch broad community consensus as our process except in the utmost need.
Issues to design around
  • Some topics are inherently difficult because of the question, even if conduct is good. For example: - weighing sources, evaluating what is a "mainstream" view, and issues with genuine multiple answers (naming disputes etc). The process especially needs to help these kinds of question.
  • It doesn't take many people to frustrate good debate. We have policies that in theory should work well but rely on good quality participators and very good faith efforts and mutual respect. In heated debates these are easy to break or hard to obtain from all participants.
  • We don't have a formal structure to help editors reach consensus in complex issues. So each time there is a "reinventing of the wheel". At Arbitration the answer to many content issues is "you need to try proper multi-stage, carefully planned, consensus-seeking". Several "heavy" content issues got resolved this way but the lesson how to do it (or that it may be needed) hasn't spread.
  • It's easy for a newcomer to a topic to demand a rehash of a debate even if there isn't really anything new to add. This can add scrutiny and improvement and inclusion of updated facts (good) but can also cause pointless rehashing and lack of progress to the frustration of long term topic editors (bad). It can also mean a newcomer with a good point is silenced due to impatience that they were not aware of nor responsible for (bad).
Proposed framework

Three key targets:

  1. A way to bring specific points to a process that examines genuine hard content questions productively and narrows down or answers the problem, but without fossilizing or helping gamers.
  2. A way to make more/better use of multi-stage dispute resolution methods, also easier and earlier. (Used as well or instead of #1)
  3. A way to put the brakes on users who "fly under the radar" by impeding good discussion in a way that makes it hard to block them (eg civil edit warriors), and on disputes involving so many heavily-involved users that little progress towards resolution gets made over years (eg ethnic disputes)
Framework proposal #1 - Content review for genuinely hard issues

Users able to bring specific content points for independent evidence-based review, if all other routes fail.

  • Talk pages often get distracted or fail. The review "rules" are designed differently to avoid that.
  • Users present evidence related to the content issue (not related to past debates, behavior, personalities etc).
  • Only the highest standard of contribution is allowed, eg speaking on content issues only, examining evidence only, asking questions intended to clarify concerns or points of fact/evidence, and making succinct (non-essay) points related to policy or best practice only.
  • Page header states that anyone meeting certain standards (eg mainspace edit count, GA/FA, no recent blocks) can contribute but users who can't or won't discuss to a very high standard , may be asked to contribute on the review's talk page only.
  • The aim is to set rules that gain high quality discussion by experienced users - including a high proportion of uninvolved users - who can be shown the actual evidence on the content point rather than endless dispute history, and who collaborate to analyze that evidence and ask questions, and clarify their thinking to the disputants.
  • The outcome is that disputants get a high quality review of the content related evidence, which can be taken back and used to help settle the dispute - but is only binding in the sense that it's an independent and high quality review.
  • Future questions on the topic can be resolved by pointing to the discussion of evidence, or by adding a new section to reopen the debate on specific new points of evidence if editors can't solve it on the talk page. So content isn't fossilized or "dictated by edict", but also isn't endlessly rehashed in the absence of new evidence.
Framework proposal #2 - Making multi-stage dispute resolution more accessible

Users able to get proper uninvolved help to set up and operate a good quality multi-stage DR process. We have seen these used on several big disputes already. They work.

  • Relies on experienced users working neutrally together (maybe part of MEDCOM or a separate WikiProject?) who help others with a dispute to set design, set up, and operate a decent DR process for their specific content concern, by listening and learning what the issues are and why it's stalled, and trying to help the participants to develop a way to resolve it (eg based on what's worked in other major issues)
  • Users in a difficult content dispute could disagree on the content but agree they are getting nowhere and agree to ask for help to design a good quality DR process. The request would be something like, "This is a major and messy dispute, we agree we need a proper DR process but we can't agree on one or don't know how to operate one. Please help"
  • The role of the "helping" users would be to help disputants build consensus for a process that gets enough "buy-in" to be helpful (eg to frame the issue, agree what questions need asking, agree any "rules" for the discussions, then hold a discussion with agreed "rules" etc)
  • May work or may not, but this is how many "heavy" disputes like naming disputes actually get resolved after years of arguing, so worth making it more accessible.
Framework proposal #3 - Keeping "skilled disruptors" and "mass involved participant issues" from damaging content progress

Two possible avenues:

  • The line between disruption and good faith lack of skill or advocacy is hard to draw. Disputes often flounder because our criterion for removing a user is that they are egregiously causing a problem. If the rule was flipped in some disputes, that users had to contribute to a visibly high standard of conduct (as seen by uninvolved user consensus) to stay in the debate, and not just "avoid egregious bad conduct", or there was a "one warning and courteously asked to leave the page for 24-48 hours without a block" rule for some disputes, then a lot of disputes would vanish because people would start to realize anything but good content-focused conduct just got them excluded. It would make tendentiousness or ad hominem much harder to get away with.
  • Good quality content tends to be more stable and less polarized. Articles with perennial disputes drive away exactly the skilled editors who could help improve the content. An option would be to develop a way to identify users the community trusts in content disputes - users who have shown a high level of editing skill and capability, very good respect for policy, not prone to POV or gaming, good on both conduct and content, fair, etc etc. In effect "trusted content editors" - people we know from their past editing will consistently edit content well, neutrally, and with good conduct. We have easily hundreds or thousands of such users, enough to make this work. Such users could be given exclusive editing of the article for a month, then it handed back to the wider community/previous participants to take it over again. It won't stay perfect, but being put into good shape by good quality editing that reflects multiple views neutrally and acknowledges issues, will reinvigorate it, and makes it much easier for regular users to maintain.

Together these would make a massive improvement to content issues, possibly including some of the worst, and avoid the risks of "binding content arbitration". FT2 (Talk | email) 15:15, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • We certainly do need a workable process for content dispute resolution. Options that I can think of are (1) to set up authority figures who chair, guide, steer, or decide, as FT2 suggests (will we elect these people?), or (2) to have a fixed-duration centralised discussion framework, which would resemble XFD discussions, to be closed by administrators based on community consensus. Either way would lead to a quicker and more final decision on content matters, which I think is the outcome we want.—S Marshall T/C 00:12, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PLEASE Make PWV ranking

At Academic studies about Wikipedia, I see PWV ranking.

"Editcount ranking by bot" is aleady exist.

Make "PWV ranking by bot", please. -- Bonafide2004 (talk) 04:41, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How would that help us in our task of building an encyclopedia? Phil Bridger (talk) 21:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Template to assist bots in updating stats?

Sorry if this is perennial, didn't see it in the search. In articles such as Comparison of open source software hosting facilities there are columns of statistics such as "Number of Users" and "Number of projects" which could be efficiently updated by a tool or a bot. The location of the information is unique for each source. I propose a silent template designed solely to serve as a kind of inline citation for a tool or bot to lookup and insert the stat in the article. This could be a template in the table ==Popularity==, column Users, row Launchpad:

{{lookup| url=http://example.org/people | match="There are currently %10d people and %7. teams registered in Launchpad."}} 1,234,567

where %10d is the numeric partial string to replace the string to the right of the template, and "%7." represents a variable length alphanumeric to skip).

Such an explicit data lookup template is a kind of ultra-specific source citation, and can serve to assist editors locate source data too, so maybe it belongs as an extension to {{cite}}. Of course these rules could be gathered separately from the article, embedded in the tool itself, but where's the sport in that? --Lexein (talk) 09:19, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I got a proposal to improve OKBot so she can update Alexa rankings within the article's text as well. I think it's easy to do this for specific websites, but it's less easy to create a 'universal' script to extract all kinds of data because each website will depend on a different regex, well, unless we can keep a list of domain patterns and the regex that should apply to them.--OsamaK (talk) 06:25, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see that arbitrary regexes should not be created by users on the fly - there should be a repository of vetted "safe & tested" strings. Ok, how about a page where folks can submit urls and strings, as follows:
{{setOKbotlookup| url=http://example.org/people | match="There are currently %10d people" | field="people"}} 1,234,567
{{setOKbotlookup| url=http://example.org/people | match="and %10d teams registered in Launchpad." | field="teams"}} 4,234
(I don't think the originating web page should be listed - seems like the info might be usable in multiple pages ...)
then you vet them, add the url, regex, and url-unique field name to the cases list for the bot, remove them from the submissions page, and list them on the "working searches" page (updated by OKbot daily). Then, usage would be of the form:
{{OKbotlookup| url=http://example.org/people | field="people"}} 1,234,567 or
{{OKbotlookup| url=http://example.org/people | field="teams"}} 12,234
When OKbot does its Task 5(?) processing once a fortnight, and the URL and field name match an entry in your database, OKbot updates the text following the template. A failed search would not update the page, but produce an error on the OKbot status page, listing the failed lookup URL and field name, such as "no such field in database" or "no such URL in database" or "404 while accessing URL". --Lexein (talk) 06:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is the sort of thing that meta:Wikidata would be perfect for. I just wish the Foundation would put some resources towards it... --Cybercobra (talk) 06:54, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know?

Good afternoon :)!

I would like to speak with you about an app' that i created yet. It is an animated gif that i posted on commons.

You write into the box ( 1) the name of an article (target) in wikipedia and (2) a question about this article.

Look :

[ [ File:Did you know.gif|right|120px|thumb| [[Human Torch (android) (1) |What is the first Marvel Comics-owned superhero appeared in Marvel Comics #1 (Ocober 1939)? (2) ] ]


I am sure that wikipedia would be more insteresting with it. Don't you? : )

[[:File:Did you know.gif|right|120px|thumb| What is the first Marvel Comics-owned superhero appeared in Marvel Comics #1 (Ocober 1939)? ]]

Thank you very mutch.

Best reguards and have fun ! : )

Bastien Sens-Méyé (discuss) 13:58, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Much as I hate to shut down a clearly enthusisastic and good-faith editor, this has to go. The animation (which is actually quite a cool design) is so fast as to be brutal on the eyes (I'm getting a migraine just looking at it), and the concept of inline quiz questions is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Perhaps a slower version of the .gif could be used on the mainpage, to draw attention to the Did you know? section, but as it stands, this concept doesn't belong in article space. Yunshui (talk) 12:30, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with migraine concerns, actually. I was coming by after seeing the animation in action at AN to say that very thing. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:14, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have slower!! But i was afraid that would be tooo much slow. Just take a look, please, and tell me?! Thank you very much :) !! Bastien Sens-Méyé (discuss) 15:18 , 3 October 2011 (UTC) PS : It is possible to slow down more and more and more :) !!

[[:File:MORPH.gif|right|120px|thumb| What is the first Marvel Comics-owned superhero appeared in Marvel Comics #1 (Ocober 1939)? ]]

Sorry, I think this is a step in the wrong direction. Animation should be used exceedingly sparingly, in my opinion, and never as a "decoration". Animation like this is OK, because it helps reader understanding, but we shouldn't just display animation because we can, or we risk irritating and annoying readers. 28bytes (talk) 14:19, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Count me as someone that would be irritated and annoyed by this. I've seen it at the original rate and the slower rate that was posted here. I find both distracting and ugly. Honestly, my first thought when I saw them was "who's using the blink tag?" Yeah, it's that bad to me. I have no doubt this was created with the best of intentions, but at least for me, it's an utter failure. Please don't use this in any article in WP space. Ravensfire (talk) 14:34, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with 28bytes, and IMO even the slower version is still headache-inducing due to the sudden jump as the animation loops. Anomie⚔ 15:25, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Good evening, People!!

Ok, I have understand : this animation is not to use on wikipedia.

So, I won't use it on wikipedia. Trust on me! ; ))

If I have other ideas, and of course i'll speak about it here at noon. But, from now on : no (gif) animation , ok :) Have fun !Bastien Sens-Méyé (discuss) 22:49, 3 October 2011 (CEST) PS : Perhaps with the same idea of acient chinese turtle [15] , because i like Asia and i like turtles too! :)

Look!

File:Did you know.jpg
What team of superheroes use the leitmotiv "COW-A-BUNGA DUDE!"?
Where do you envision placing this? It doesn't threaten to trigger a migraine in me anymore, but I'm not sure I understand what it's intended to do. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a bystander that uses wiki alot, i like knowing alot about bands ect .... I believe that on wiki without advertising you should be able to say where to get certain bands or even brands merchandise, because some is hard to find.

Band articles typically link to their web page(s). If they aren't willing to advertise their band or their band's brands on their website, then that's not our problem. We're not the Yellow Pages. Rklawton (talk) 14:59, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Political positions articles have non-neutral (unencyclopedic) titles and should be renamed

The core of my argument is that these articles do not have neutral titles which "encourage multiple viewpoints and responsible article writing". I have started this discussion at the NPOV noticeboard, and I am asking for more input there. Thanks. Jesanj (talk) 17:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Summary Pages NOT Childrens' Pages

My suggestion is that significant (value-judgement!) and / or large articles should have a SUMMARY [one-page or maximum-two-page]. It should use simpler language, be somewhat content-censored and be both neutral and balanced about multiple argument, be particularly suitable for homework and general knowledge readers and perhaps be somewhat access-limited for editing.
This is NOT the same as altering or amending the Simple English concept.
This is NOT the same as suggesting that there should be a Childrens’ Wikipedia.

The quality of articles on Wikipedia is tremendous in both spread and depth BUT there are often occasions where I need to show my son simplified one-page or maximum two-page summations without the complexity, jargon and depth of the full article. Is this a gap in the Wiki system which needs to be filled ?

Accumulated and commented comments from Archive J #72 & 104 dealing with a Childrens’ Wikipedia 2003/4

There is already the Simple English Wikipedia ‘SEW’. However this merely uses an abbreviated vocabulary rather than being a brief article. As at Oct 1 2011 there are 3.7 million articles on main Wikipedia and a mere 74,000 articles or under 2% on SEW. There appears to be no link to Wikipedia to say there is a SEW version.

There is also WikiJunior Project begun in 2004 for which the avowed intent is to create books rather than articles. As at Oct 2011, Solar System; Big Cats and South America have been completed as prototypes.

The proposal for Children’s English Wikipedia “CEW” was eventually closed as being incompatible with the Language Proposal policy in 2007. The original idea was for a Wikipedia aimed at children, with a less text-heavy interface, more friendly language, explicit content censored and special reference desks for homework help. There were arguments in favour and arguments against.

The majority of arguments against stated that SEW and Wikijunior would suffice. Others argued that ‘there are other sources for Junior readers’ {such as??]

One argument against the CEW stated - “If you want it simpler, either write simple introductory paragraphs, or add to the simple English wikipedia already in place. If you want homework support, go to, or create a homework orientated site.”

Would a Childrens’ version still be a genuine wikipedia if it is designed for a particular audience ?
Would a Summary article fall foul of any wikipedia rules?
Would a new set of rules be required for valid summaries ?
Would there be some restriction on editability or word-count ?

How would a Children’s Wikipedia deal with Creationism, Homosexuality; Abortion or any of the flameable or edit-war issues - It then becomes quite easy to see that a Summary will often be viable for dealing with these more ‘adult’ issues. Editing-Rules for Summaries would need to encourage the use of simpler language and to deal ‘properly’ with “on the one hand one the other hand” argufying.

“Children's encyclopedias when I was young were great. Each article was short, focused on exciting or interesting aspects of the topic, and was probably 2/3 pictures. And re ‘Simple English’ they definitely used a vocabulary bigger than 1500 words.
There still appears to be no ‘worthwhile’ online free children’s encyclopedia as at autumn 2011

There is an article for a proposal called Wikikids. The attached talk page has had only occasional input since 2005 through to 2009.

Overall, I believe that there are more and better arguments for a Summary than for a restricted-content-Child version. In addition for any Children’s Wikipedia or equivalent there will continue to be all sorts of adult input as to appropriateness, child-friendly POV and similar issues.

I would appreciate feedback on how to progress this suggestion. Nojoking (talk) 22:40, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I prefer it if an editor uses the lead (first) paragraph, or two, to summarize the article topic in a clear and concise way, essentially the simplified capsule-form of the topic. But it's a problem to decide how simplified is simplified enough. If Wikipedians were to add summaries to every article with the intention that they be child-reader friendly, how would we all determine what age range to aim for, so that the language would be age-appropriate? 6 to 8 years, 9 to 12, 13 to 16, etc.?
Although it sounds like a wonderful idea in theory, I don't think it's realistic -- I just don't see how a complex and controversial article, such as "Creationism", or "Homosexuality" or "Abortion" would be boiled down to a non-controversial summary that would be acceptable to all parents to show their children. Even the fact that some of these things exist as concepts is repulsive to some people, and some people have a moral objection to what would otherwise be a NPOV presentation of the topic.

OttawaAC (talk) 02:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My first section talks in terms of NOT a ChildrensWik but of Summaries for the General Reader for large or significant articles. My understanding of Wik is that what you call unacceptable articles must be carefully written so as to cover the topic as a NPOV while avoiding being repulsive. Nojoking (talk • contribs) 08:58, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

re OttawaAC I have produced a two-page summary DRAFT for the 'General Reader' for the three topics of "Creationism", "Homosexuality" & "Abortion" which I am very willing to send onwards. They took about half-hour each. Nojoking (talk) 12:22, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Could you post them on a sub-user page so we could see what you have in mind? —Akrabbimtalk 14:28, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't done a sub-user page yet but General Reader Summary - Abortion !!very draft !! is on my talkpage albeit still requiring wikilinks and references (lost in transfer). Nojoking (talk) 15:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why this pointless change?

Before going on, I am well aware (from experience) that it is difficult, if not impossible, to bring about a change that satisfies all users of Wikipedia. However, I wish to complain about how to log onto Wikipedia: Village pump (proposals), and wish to make a plea to go back to the old way of getting here. At one time, it was very easy - one just clicked on "Proposals" after visiting the Village Pump, got an icon that said this had been added to your watchlist then another icon that said "Return to Village Pump - proposals" and there one was. Now, for some strange reason, you get a little box saying "Do you want to add this to your watchlist?" You can click OK, but then you do not seem to get any icon telling you where to go back to the Village Pump (proposals) (I can only do that by putting in the full wikilink for this section). Can I make a request that we go back to the old manner of doing things, before I have any more difficulty getting here? Thank you, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 09:58, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

> At one time, it was very easy - one just clicked on "Proposals" after visiting the Village Pump...
It seems that one has to either click on the icon or the text link below the icon to get to proposals. I'd agree that the "watch" link is not so useful as it doesn't tell you if you're already watching it or not. The "post" link is also not very useful because you'd want to first go to the page and check the existing proposals before creating a new one. And the "search" link doesn't seem to do a good job of finding a search keyword in previous proposals that have been archived. Maybe a "find *my* past proposals" or "find *my* past proposals and comments" (i.e. a search that includes archived proposals) would be easier to implement and more useful than the present search which does not do a very good job of finding a search keyword in present and past proposals. LittleBen (talk) 10:57, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Thank you for the feedback on this. I think your idea of having a "Find my past proposals and comments is a good one" but I would add one qualification. Why do we need to bring in the word my? This is because a lot of people come here to look at proposals that are not their own, but have been made by other Wikipedians. Again, thank you for the feedback. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:15, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

READ THIS: STOP CULTURAL GENOCIDE

No proposal for discussion here, hidden to reduce distraction

It has been brought to my attention that the Italian language version of the Wikipedia FREE encyclopedia is in danger of being deleted because of an Italian language law. I couldn't hold myself back from voicing how grievous a mistake this would be. Not only is it bowing down to one state's laws that go against free speech and take public liberty and constitutional rights a giant step back, but it also undermines and punishes the Italian speaking community outside of the Republic of Italy. It would hardly be fair to delete the Spanish language version of wikipedia because of censorship laws in Cuba, or the French language version because of some new directive in a single French speaking nation. The same is true for Italians. It is a gross assumption that the Italian language is dead outside of Italy. Italian is in fact an official language of Switzerland as well as in parts of Croatia and Slovania. More significantly it is the language of a community of descendants from one of the largest diaspora in the last few centuries. United States, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and France all contain populations of Italian speakers exceeding a million persons. Also significant populations reside in Canada, Australia, Germany, Egypt, Libya. This is a terrible discrediting of the voices and rights of these people who are not bound by any law of the Italian Republic. This is an open commons that does not represent the laws of any country but of the human condition. The moment that a website like this caves in to such an atrocious attack on the free speech, wikipedia ceases to be what it has set out to be and is not deserving of any respects or funding. If the Italian language version is upheld, I will go on a campaign to make sure it's funding is strongly upheld. If it is deleted, I will personally make sure that everyone I know will be advised not to fund of utilize the website and in turn try and start telling their associates to do likewise starting a movement. This would be the definition of democracy and in a democracy the people cannot comply with a system that stifles any kind of freedom or right nor ignores the needs of any community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattk0516 (talk • contribs) 17:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but there's nothing the English Wikipedia can do about this. You may find a better response at Meta. TNXMan 17:50, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Genocide"? I do not think this word means what you think it means. --Golbez (talk) 17:57, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It definitely doesn't mean what he thinks it means. Anyway, the solution to this problem is fairly obvious: move the Italian WP servers out of Italy. - Denimadept (talk) 18:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Problem solved. I believe they're concerned that the editors themselves can be prosecuted for their actions; the Wikipedia itself is safe. --Golbez (talk) 18:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note but this message was left in multiple locations by the user above who seems to be trolling. --Kumioko (talk) 19:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly is the law that it violates? Designate (talk) 19:21, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this fits the definition of trolling. More like yelling and soapboxing. And yep, afaik there can not be genocide against a language; just a genocide of the speakers. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 7 Tishrei 5772 19:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]


I agree that this would be a a great calamity if this Wikipedia is closed, which seems to me absurd - for a long time now, the Italian Wikipedia has been one of the ten Wikipedias with the most articles (see List of Wikipedias). However, what I am curious about, as some one above obviously is, is the question of exactly what state law does this violate? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For more on this, see:

--NSH001 (talk) 00:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The original poster is misled. The Italian Wikipedia will not be deleted or closed regardless of what happens. However, they may be forced to delete certain articles (particularly those on biographical figures) if those figures issue complaints regarding the articles about them (the alternative is to post the individual's rebuttal alongside the article and sacrifice neutrality, a core principle of the project). Dcoetzee 21:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am not a lawyer, but no, they won't have to do that. The Italian Wikipedia is not under the jurisdiction of Italian law. There are no servers in Italy. Whether individual Italian editors may face consequences under the law is a more subtle question, but I don't see any way that that can force the project to remove or modify articles. --Trovatore (talk) 21:59, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I thought that the point is the the law allows "victims" to address their concerns to an "administrator", and that the administrator would then be required to make the change, no matter where the servers are located. In other words, the law held anyone who could be seen as having some sort of authority on the website as automatically responsible for its contents (and, some implied, even all of the historical versions, since they're all publicly accessible). As such, my understanding is that to make the project possible we'd actually have to block all editing of Italian Wikipedia by all Italians, since otherwise the 'pedia would be compelled to make changes incompatible with its fundamental mission. I, too, an not a lawyer, though. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:20, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if we have to block them from it.wiki, we have to block them from en.wiki too. Legally, all Wikipedias are exactly the same, as far as I can see. The language a Wikipedia is in has no relevance whatsoever to what law applies to it. --Trovatore (talk) 01:22, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
@Qwyrxian: How, exactly, would an Italian law compel an American website to do anything? The WMF is under no obligation to comply with the Italian law; I don't even think the Italian authorities could compel the WMF to reveal the identity of anyone; any logged in editor would be completely obscured to anyone except WMF personel and their designated checkusers, and the Italian authorities couldn't even know if edits were being made by an Italian resident, or, say, an American resident who had never even visited Italy but who happens to speak Italian. There is literally a) no way to force the WMF to comply with the law itself b) No way to force the WMF to make any changes to articles per the requests of Italian authorities c) No way to force the WMF to identify users who make edits to it.wikipedia articles. Perchance, if the Italian authorities were pissed enough at Wikipedia, they could block access at their end (akin to the Great Firewall of China), but I doubt it would go that far. --Jayron32 03:58, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

cross posted: Special:UnusedTemplates

See Wikipedia_talk:Special:UnusedTemplates#subpages (to get more attention). Thanks. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 03:47, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikilove - Send a message of appreciation to another user

A lot of new users are using this function (the 'heart' icon on User and User Talk pages) to award themselves barnstars, kittens etc.
Example: User talk:Hb18619
This is not what user talk pages are for, and may irritate other users who genuinely like being sent these messages by others as a welcome or gesture of appreciation.
Can this function be partially disabled so these messages can only be sent to other users, and not to themselves ? . . Mean as custard (talk) 09:14, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How is it that a user experimenting in their own userspace should annoy anyone? --Jayron32 14:23, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed - in fact, I think users absolutely should be experimenting with the feature in their own userspace before they go try using it on others. Dcoetzee 23:04, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&oldid=454486203"