Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)

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The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas.
Before creating a new section, please note:

• Discussions of technical issues belong at Village pump (technical).
• Discussions of policy belong at Village pump (policy).
• If you're ready to make a concrete proposal and determine whether it has consensus, go to the Village pump (proposals). Proposals worked out here can be brought there.

Before commenting, note:

• This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
• Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Wikipedia:Perennial proposals.

Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for two weeks.

« Archives, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63

Redesigning and simplifying the English Wikipedia website

I would like to start a discussion on redesigning the English Wikipedia website. I'm not sure if the WMF would need to get involved with this. Here are some design changes I would like to see and would like to know your thoughts on them. To start, I would like to see the sidebar's contents be moved to the top of the page as menus and be replaced with the table of contents of a particular article. Britannica does it best there with its articles (example). I would also like to see the main page to be redesigned. Since the 2006 design, the design has changed very little and I think the main page is due for a redesign. Britannica also does good here with this factor with its modern look. The current main page is dated and I was hoping we could make an RFC on what we could do to make it more user friendly. I would appreciate any comments about where to start with how we can simplify and redesign the Wikipedia website and the main page. Interstellarity (talk) 23:04, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: have you tried the "new vector" interface? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:36, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: No, how do I access it? Interstellarity (talk) 01:29, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering select the skin "Vector", uncheck "Use legacy vector", check "enable responsive mode". You should be able to tell you are in it if you can collapse the left sidebar. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:26, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi Xaosflux,

While I think this is an improved version of the old vector design, I think it could be improved by moving the sidebar's controls into tabs like most websites do. I think for articles, instead of placing the contents in the article, they should go where the sidebar's current controls are. I think if you want to navigate from one section of an article to another, you would have to scroll up to the contents to go where you want to go. If the contents were on the sidebar, it would be a lot of easier to navigate from one part of an article to another. These are my ideas of how to make the user interface of Wikipedia more user friendly. Interstellarity (talk) 16:09, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): Do you have any mockups or wireframes related to the upcoming proposals? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:51, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Workspaces

What about if editors could rearrange the window as workspace. If you edit a page the page appears on the left say, the talk on the right, and the history at the bottom. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 08:56, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@Wakelamp, I'm thinking about integrating something much like this in meta:Teyora, so keep your eye out for its release :) ✨ Ed talk! ✨ 22:29, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Just in case you haven't seen it yet, take a look at mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements. It doesn't directly address your point, but if you're interested in site redesign, it's a good place to catch up on what others are doing. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:38, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I would like to continue the discussion before this gets archived. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to structure the Wikipedia page? Interstellarity (talk) 15:28, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I think having the table of contents always be easily accessed would be a useful navigation feature. Having it always-visible on the left makes WP comparable to other hierarchy-index+content UIs, such as Microsoft Outlook's mailbox view. Two features that could be added--one easier, one harder--are to have the items in it be collapsible (as is common in tree view UIs) and to have the currently-visible section gets highlighted on it (so one can keep track of one's place in the scope of a long article or long section). Some browsers have a "scroll-to-top" feature but others do not. Adding it as a universal UI button to mediawiki has been proposed before, such as MW:Reading/Web/Projects/In-page Navigation, and there are various local implementations ({{Skip to top and bottom}} and {{Top of page}}, for example). I thought there was a skin feature or gadget for that, but I can't find it in my preferences at the moment. And there is consensus not to use these templates in mainspace in a one-off manner, specifically because they are not universally deployed, though they are usable (and used) in other namespaces. DMacks (talk) 19:00, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I saw some early work by @AHollender (WMF) on making the TOC always visible earlier this month. You may get what you wish for. :-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@DMacks, @Whatamidoing (WMF): Have you seen this prototype? ― Qwerfjkltalk 09:50, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl I think that design improves the page, but I think it would be better if the sidebar controls were at the top of the page rather than on the left of the page. Britannica does a good job at this. When comparing the two, Wikipedia looks more dated and Britannica is more modern. Interstellarity (talk) 14:13, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl I hadn't seen that, but that's exactly one of the ways I was envisioning. +1! One technical nit is that when I "<<" to collapse the TOC, the old-style control-panel appears in the left column instead rather than actually collapsing the left column altogether. DMacks (talk) 06:09, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: archiving is based on elapsed time since the last comment, not the thread's location on the page. DMacks (talk) 22:11, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello, you may try the mobile view on desktop computers. --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:43, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

(Late comment)- Not really sure if we need a redesign of entire interface, we already have more interface options in our "preferences". But I generally agree that Main Page needs a revamp, and look relatively modern. It's Wikipedia's very first page and it frankly doesn't look great, it looks a little outdated and boring even. ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 18:25, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom, if you are interested in Wikipedia:Main Page design, then you might be interested in looking at the su: and se: Wikipedias. These are both small Wikipedias with modern, professional-quality desigs for their Main Pages. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Split backlog drive?

Hi! There are hundreds of old split tags that need discussion or removal. Is it possible to do a drive to deal with them? It is immensely annoying to the eye when reading and quite sad when I see a single editor proposing a smart split in like, 2015 or something that got no response. Some months ago I dealt with a few dozen but there's just... many left. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 13:26, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Category:All articles to be split would be the category. There's about 350 from 2021 and over 400 from before this. A backlog drive on the pre-2021 discussions would be good. In lots of cases, it may be that more discussion is needed, but other resolutions would be somebody removing the split tag when unnecessary, or carrying out a split when uncontroversial. The problem is these often need extremely specialised attention: I'm not going to succeed in splitting Coexistence theory, for instance. Maybe there could be a month-long backlog drive and for those that are not dealt with, an appropriate WikiProject will be (manually) notified (in bulk, with a list of all items that are under their scope).

WikiProject Cleanup might be the projectspace place to host a backlog drive, but it'd need good noticeboard advertisement. — Bilorv (talk) 17:39, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Bilorv I agree with the points you've raised, and appreciate your input here :).Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:30, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

If the older split tags are old enough, and especially if the tagger didn't offer any edit summary or talk page discussion to go by, or the article is small enough, you should just remove the tag as 'stale'. I see you tried to restart the 5-year-old Trini Lopez split proposal; I would have simply removed it. The article is small and the section (that was proposed to be split out) has hardly been changed in 5 years. Platonk (talk) 00:51, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Narky Blert used to bring lists of pages with disambiguation problems to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine to ask for help (example). You might be able to coordinate something like that, to encourage the more active WikiProjects to clear out the older items. Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Article alerts#SPL lists 12 open split proposals among the articles tagged by WPMED, and there may be a couple more that it considers too old to list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:39, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

That's a really cool type of post, and especially helpful for certain types of articles. From my experience most of the old split tags are in 3 categories: BLPs, Science, and Sports. AFAIK the 3 relevant WikiProjects are quite active, so perhaps this is a better way of going about cleaning the split backlog without needing to organize a drive, at least at first. However, seeing as there are 768 articles with split proposals I'm not sure what the best way to go about doing this would be. Thanks for bringing it up, WhatamIdoing! Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:37, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@A. C. Santacruz, I'd suggest that you look at the oldest (e.g., in Category:Articles to be split from November 2015, Category:Articles to be split from July 2016, Category:Articles to be split from August 2016, and Category:Articles to be split from November 2016) and see if you can find people to resolve just those few. In that process, I think you'll learn a bit about what does/doesn't work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

End of the Late modern period?

I would like to suggest an end date for the "Late Modern Period."

one problem with this, of course, is that the term "late modern" itself intrinsically suggests that it is still ongoing, as it is the "modern" period in which we all live. However, I would suggest that the "late modern period" was actually a period with a beginning and an end, and was typified by the great conflicts of the 20th century, starting with the Franco-Prussian War as a precursuor, and then of course World War I, World War II, and the Cold War.

I would submit that the "Late Modern Period" was succeeded by the "Information Age," which in fact is now the current period in which we all live. Obviously, one next step would be to find some published sources for this premise. equally obviously, clearly this is not a question that needs to be resolved immediately.

presumably, people may happen upon this question a decade or two from now. at some point, this question of delineating the "late modern period" from whatever comes next will in fact become more relevant. I am simply introducing this question for some initial discussion, if possible. I welcome any comments. thanks. ---Sm8900 (talk) 🌍 14:52, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

This seems in no way related to actually improving enwiki, and is a content discussion best had offwiki somewhere. Fram (talk) 14:59, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Not entirely sure what relevance this has to the idea lab. We can't decide what labels are used, we must follow historians' use on a case-by-case basis. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

This comment might have more appropriately been put on the talk page of this article. I would say that the period of history in which we now find ourselves is no longer the late modern period, but contemporary history. YTKJ (talk) 09:23, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Upload .CSV linked data to Wikimedia files

In the Summery section of the Wikimedia document there should be a way to upload linked data to a .csv file or .tsv file, so other people can update the data/graph/chart later. --Wikideas1 (talk) 06:46, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

You can upload it as mw:Help:Tabular data. There is a gadget that allows you to upload an entire csv to that. Or upload to commons archive and then link to it with Template:Source File location. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:34, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Accessibility preference to disable the Wikipedia dropdown toolbar

See: Wikipedia:Help desk#How can I disable the Wikipedia dropdown toolbar? I will update this link when the thread is archived.

The Wikipedia main page does not have a dropdown toolbar when you scroll down from the top of the page. But most pages on Wikipedia do have it. For example:

Help:Contents.

We need a preference that eliminates that dropdown toolbar. It takes up too much usable space on my screen. Especially since I often have the font zoom bar setting on Firefox at around 150%, 170%, etc.. Which makes that toolbar even larger. So it is an accessibility issue too.

This CSS snippet could be made into a preference:

.vector-sticky-header{
  display: none !important;
}

See:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Timeshifter/vector.css

I wish it was a preference, or a gadget. Many people would benefit. It's an accessibility setting. Discussion? --Timeshifter (talk) 12:22, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Could the Wikipedia homepage be more random?

I haven't posted a message here or anywhere else on Wikipedia before. I love Wikipedia. I use it all the time. I particularly like the daily-updated homepage, which it is my ritual to look at while having lunch. However, I have noticed that in the did you know snippets (my favourite part) there are recurring themes (featured themes perhaps) for instance, lately, US radio stations and Missouri military history. In general, the did you knows, appear to be US-heavy. Presumably the did you knows are chosen/put forward by individuals. I was just wondering if it might be better (and possible) to generate these snippets randomly. It is the randomness and triviality that I like, as I find myself suddenly becoming interested in something far-removed from my knowledge, and going off at tangents. Would such a development be in the interests of other users? Whilst appreciating the news items are chosen (somehow) by significance, and are arrived at via media/politics-based decisions (and not my interest) I would also like to see the featured articles, the on this days, the anniversaries and the featured pictures, being random. I dare say, the very concept of randomness needs to be defined, is something which has different connotations to different people, and can be arrived at in different ways. Also, I have no idea how snippets could be plucked from an article. I'm sure software could be programmed to pick out several of the six million odd articles, but maybe it couldn't isolate something suitably bite-sized that could be put in the format of did you know...? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AdrianKeefe (talk • contribs) 12:44, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

AdrianKeefe if you like the snippets, one thing you can always do (and which I do from time to time) is go through the DYK archives and click on random dates. It's not totally random, but it does provide that sense of exploration that one would find cool. Note that DYKs are not only put forward by individuals, but also each day is curated for various reasons (not having too many DYKs of a single topic on the same date, specific DYKs nominated far in advance for specific dates, etc.) and so I think making it automated would probably not be very benefitial. I strongly encourage you to participate in the nomination of DYKs, if you wish. You don't need to create tons of content, just finding suitable articles and interesting facts is all you need. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 12:57, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

You might also want to check out this page I made. Every time you purge the cache on this page, a different set of DYK hooks from a random date between 2005 and 2021 will appear. It's like browsing the DYK archives in the way that Santacruz described but with minimal clicking involved. —GMX^{(on the go!)} 17:28, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

That page is in a near-complete state, and now I have the strong urge to to make a Main Page design with randomized parts. —GMX^{(on the go!)} 20:25, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• The desktop menu has a Random article entry so you can just use that. I tried this just now and got Ogden Tweto; culptural composition "Egyptian Pyramid"; and Benedikt Lampert. The latter is a weak stub but the others seem fine as random selections.

The iPhone app has a different style of main page. This is a scrolling selection including:

• Featured article
• Top read
• Picture of the day
• On this day
• Random article
• Places near

So, as well as the desktop main page items, you get some others including a random article each day. These seem to be filtered so that only articles which have pictures are shown and this helps cuts out the more boring stubs.

But if what you really want are oddities then the page you want is WP:WEIRD...

Andrew🐉(talk) 13:15, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• User: Adrian_Keefe, are you talking about Wikipedia: Main page? You say that the "Did you know" snippets on Wikipedia tend to be U.S.-heavy, but that could be an aspect of Wikipedia that applies to all of Wikipedia, not just Wikipedia: Main page. I suspect that if one went through ALL of Wikipedia, one would find a bias to articles to do with North America, western Europe and Australasia. If one compares the article on Donald Trump with some past state leaders of India, you may not be surprised to see which one is longest. You may like to look at the article Racial bias in Wikipedia. YTKJ (talk) 14:29, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• It's always wonderful to hear thoughtful feedback from readers, as many of us editors tend to get so absorbed in our various processes that we forget what the experience of casual readers actually is, so thank you for coming here and sharing, AdrianKeefe.
  To give you some background info, to appear in the Did you know (DYK) section of the Main Page, an article needs to be newly created, newly expanded, or have newly passed a good article review process. An editor (typically the primary editor who wrote the article) can then nominate it to appear, and after some feedback, it's usually approved, assigned a date/slot by a DYK coordinator, and runs. As a rule of thumb, the coordinators try to have no more than half the blurbs on the Main Page at a given time be U.S.-related. However, you're still going to see some topics popping up a lot, since some individual editors who are interested in certain subject areas have a habit of nominating their articles for DYK, which leads to a lot of appearances on those topics. These areas will reflect Wikipedia's systemic bias, which is unfortunate.
  The process for Today's Featured Article (TFA) is different. When we say "featured article", we don't mean it in the sense of "random article we decided to feature today"; rather, we're referring to a specific quality assessment, featured article-class (FA-class), which is currently given to only 6047 articles out of Wikipedia's 6 million, roughly 1 in 1000. To reach this status, articles need to undergo an extremely thorough peer review process (for instance, the combined length of the reviews for one article I recently improved to FA class reached 40,000 words, equivalent to about 80 pages). So there's a much more limited pool there, and it also unfortunately reflects systemic biases toward certain topics (many of which are comparatively easier to write about at an FA level, such as weather events).
  I think we need to do a much better job of communicating these processes to Main Page readers. For instance, we used to say something like "From Wikipedia's newest content" above the DYKs, but we took it out several years ago, and I've been waiting for someone to propose that we restore it. I also think we need to more actively prioritize interesting content readers will be most likely to appreciate, rather than prioritizing editors who wish to see their work featured prominently. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:17, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Universal notice for draftspace

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T6469

One of the hallmark characteristics of the draft namespace is that it is not rigorously patrolled. As anyone who ever done AfC patrolling knows, it has a lot of junk. Because of this, and also just because it's not part of the encyclopedia proper, we don't index it for search engines.

However, it's still not too hard for readers to stumble into it. For instance, if you go to a redlink for a page with a draft but no article yet (example: Cleo Abram), you'll be pointed to the draft. It's also possible for someone to share a direct URL to a draft off-wiki. And if reader does come across a draft, there's nothing really there to tell them what it is and to give them relevant disclaimers.

Therefore, I think it might be a good idea to add {{Draft article}} to the space permanently as an interface element (i.e. it'd be outside the wikitext). I also think we could improve the notice to tell readers This is a draft encyclopedia article. It is not yet part of the encyclopedia and has not been reviewed for compliance with Wikipedia's editorial standards.

Thoughts? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:27, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I strongly agree with improving the notice. I also think that it would be a good idea to add {{draft article}} to the Draft space, especially for less wiki-fluent (I struggle to find the particular word I mean right now) visitors that may stumble upon a draft article and assume it is a mainspace article. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 23:55, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb: where exactly do you want to insert this? I'm strongly opposed to hacking it in via the sitenotice and phab:T6469 was declined. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:05, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux, I'm not sure—I don't know much about that technical aspect of Wikipedia (that's what I depend on editors like you for ). I see in that phab ticket that it was declined because there wasn't a strong use case, so if we found consensus for this, perhaps we'd revive that ticket and try to push it through. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:11, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb: meta:Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022 is open for proposals right now - so if you want to get a new piece of code (in this case "namespace notices") created for mediawiki in general, it could be the chance to propose that T6469 gets revisited. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:40, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I have re-opened it and filed a patch. – SD0001 (talk) 18:41, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@SD0001: thank you, I'm fairly supportive of putting something useful in a ns-118-notice (and maybe some other ns's, certainly not 0!) — xaosflux ^Talk 19:08, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Multiple Timelines

I am trying to understand the sequence of major technological advances, and when they occurred in history. It occurred to it would help to have a timeline. I found this discussion about timelines, but the link is dead..

I suspect that all sorts of timelines would be helpful, for any discipline, for any country, for any war or historical movement, or for any company or organization. BooksXYZ (talk) 17:06, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

References

You can try entering Timeline in the search box. Near the top of the list in the results is Timeline of historic inventions. There apparently are 131,624 articles in the English Wikipedia with "Timeline" or "Timelines" in the title. - Donald Albury 18:14, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Showing user hostnames for anonymous users.

A large source of vandalism comes from school devices on school networks. Currently, there is no way for a school to identify which students are vandalizing the website, which gives me an idea. Many schools include student names or student id codes in the hostname of school devices (Such as 21-John-Doe, etc). If we included user hostnames in the edit logs alongside ip addresses, this could give some schools the ability to cut down on vandalism. I don't see this as a violation of privacy as this information is available to any website you visit anyways. Elijahr2411 (talk) 01:44, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

If an organization like a school wants to identify which of their clients used one of their IP's to connect to us, they can use their own logs for that already. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:51, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Wait, so schools are sharing the full names of children with random strangers on the internet?! I did not know this, but I guess it shouldn't surprise me. But yes, that's a "violation of privacy" even if we aren't the ones doing it. We should not make the problem worse by storing this (possibly ephemeral) information in a permanent and widely-mirrored log.

The point is moot, however. See meta:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation which is coming whether we like it or not. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 04:25, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Damn, I forgot the possible impact of this on our ability to do school blocks. Doug Weller talk 09:28, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I should have looked first, it appears this may be taken into account. Doug Weller talk 09:29, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

At this point, these changes are up to the WMF with the feedback they receive following the roll-out. Very little up to us at the moment. We'll see what happens post roll-out with this school issue, and give the appropriate feedback then. Curbon7 (talk) 04:48, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Elijahr2411, Suffusion of Yellow, I don't think hostnames of devices are included in http requests anyway, but correct me if I'm wrong. School devices are probably typically behind a Network address translation router or school VPN. Even if you could obtain hostnames that information wouldn't be legal to publish without permission. The school IT staff may be able to identify users, but not us. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:17, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Hosting scripts with non-CC licenses

rant

I've been extremely disappointed by the way many commenters have been shitting on me in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/MediaWiki:Gadget-afchelper.js/core.js. Being widely used is not a reason not to nominate something for deletion (unless one wants to invoke WP:IAR, but, really?), it having been around for a long time isn't either, the shifting of the burden to prove compatibility is downright ludicrous, accusations of the nomination being disruptive and pretending I'm trying to change policy with it or something are a serious violation of WP:AGF if I ever saw one. Yes, I'm pissed and I needed to get that off my chest. I nominated it because I didn't think the license was compatible, and I'm still unsure whether it is. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't automatically assume there's a wider problem.

While I hate to have to be the one to initiate the discussion, there appears to be a desire to host third-party scripts on Wikimedia that have a free license that isn't compatible with CC BY-SA 3.0. A few options I have thought of that could achieve this:
1. Toolforge. Already available, but not readily accessible to everyone to upload. Will require CORS exceptions. May cause downtime/performance problems.
2. Add an exception to WP:Copyrights. Somewhat complicated. Would have to be well-written. Would only provide a solution for enwiki, assuming we don't want to host everything here for all projects in all languages.
3. Create an exception on Meta and load any non-CC scripts from there. No CORS or performance issues and available to anyone who isn't blocked on Meta. Similarly complicated, but would solve the issue for all projects.
4. Same, but on Commons. The likelihood of getting blocked on Commons without bad faith is probably higher than meta (copyright is hard) so I have rather mixed feelings about that.
5. Create a new wiki just for this. None of the problems, but even less trivial.
6. Create an exception on foundation:Terms of Use#7. Licensing of Content. I'm not sure about the implications there, if it would overrule WP:Copyrights, etc.
Or we simply ban non-CC scripts of course, but my gut tells me that won't be a popular option. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:58, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

As a few participants in the linked MfD noted, we should seek advice from qualified individuals (e.g. WMF Legal) before doing anything. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:33, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Idea for an "Edit Wizard"

See User:Enterprisey/Edit Wizard design doc. I'll copy/paste a bit here:

The Edit Wizard is a proposed better edit request process. Users will be guided step-by-step through building up an edit request.

There will be four workflows:

• Add Fact: Choose Source, Choose Quote (quote must appear exactly in source), Rephrase Quote (in your own words), Choose Place (for the new fact)
• Tag an Issue: Select Text (in the article), Choose Tag (Category:Inline cleanup templates), Choose Source+Quote (optional)
• Update Text: Select Text, Choose Source, Choose Quote, Rewrite Text
• Delete Text: Select Text, Choose Reason (irrelevant, incorrect (require source), misleading, redundant (require selection of other text))

Thoughts appreciated. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:23, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Enterprisey: as ER is a step wise process, do you have any samples of what the request output will be (what other editors will have to deal with)? These are often defective today. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:10, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Have you seen Ed's code for handling {{fact}} tags? If memory serves, it's blocked on the two-parser problem, but it sounds like it would fit your goal. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I haven't thought much about that yet, but I don't think it'll be a difficult part of the project. We could start with a template sentence, like "Please insert the text '___' at this location '___'. It is supported by the quote starting with the words '___' from the website/book/journal ___". There will be as much detail as the user gave - . Possibly also a sample diff (copy existing text to sandbox, make edit, take diff). Where it gets interesting is that I want other readers to be able to offer feedback on the requests, perhaps by - gasp! - upvoting. @WAID, that sounds interesting and I haven't seen that. Would you happen to have a link? Enterprisey (talk!) 00:22, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

See phab:T211243 and phab:T225750. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:01, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Converting WP templates on redirect?

Would it make sense for a bot to automatically convert all WikiProject templates to the redirect form when its article is redirected? I.e. either comment out the 'class' and 'importance' options, or set them to 'redirect' and 'na'. That would reduce maintenance on those templates. Praemonitus (talk) 22:40, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

It should not be necessary to set |class=redirect explicitly - if omitted or left blank, it's autodetected. Then, if the redir becomes an article again, it'll automatically revert to Unclassified. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:54, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Notice on talk page that the subject does not run their Wikipedia article

I find Template:Not a forum insufficient for this purpose. I've encountered instances of people reaching out to foundations, philanthropists, and politicians seeking aid (and posting personal info). There should be a specific template still does not exist.Hariboneagle927 (talk) 02:32, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Simplified lead sections

Complicated topics on Wikipedia are often explained in their lead sections in a way that people inexperienced with the subject or younger people could not understand.

Many times the Wikipedia link for a topic is the top result in a search engine and users often click on it expecting to learn what it is. However, if the topic's lead section description is beyond their scope of knowledge, it could lead them to go back and find a resource that explains it better. I'm sure this has happened to you...

An example article is Imaginary numbers. Unless you know what complex numbers, real numbers, and imaginary units are, you're immediately going to be distracted by learning what those things are when fundamentally you just need to know that imaginary numbers are the square roots of negative numbers and their squares produce negative numbers.

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So, I am proposing that we create simplified versions of lead sections that can be accessed through a tab selector.

This is an example UI:

The switchable lead sections could be implemented with a template. It would just switch between the two types of lead sections. The rest of the article would remain the same.

The simplified versions should be explained at a level in which the fundamental pieces of knowledge needed to understand the topic are the only things mentioned. In the case of imaginary numbers, that would be numbers and squares.

If the reader does not know about those fundamental topics, the topics will at least be linked and they can further work their way through the knowledge tree and possibly visit other articles with simplified leads until they finally grasp what the topic they were originally searching for is about.

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Some might say "the lead section is supposed to describe exactly what an article is about and nothing more or less. The Imaginary number article does that perfectly fine". And I would agree with that statement. But, we are truly causing a lot of people's days to be worse and decreasing the possible usefulness Wikipedia could provide. Wikipedia is supposed to be a free source of knowledge. It can't do that well if the readers can't even understand the knowledge to begin with.

Some might say "this is why we have the Simple English Wikipedia". The Simple English Wikipedia is meant to simplify topics only grammatically. This proposal is aimed at improving the comprehensibility of the knowledge itself (and a bit of the grammar). Additionally, as explained above, people click on the top-ranked English Wikipedia to learn about something. The Simple English Wikipedia is not top-ranked and does not provide a range of knowledge like the main Wiki. Fulfilling this demand for information on this wiki and not another will be extremely beneficial for both readers and editors alike.

Some might say "the Imaginary number article is an exception. The lead section just needs to be improved". There are countless examples of things that should be easy to explain but their lead sections do not. Here are some more examples: Schrödinger's cat, Order of operations, Atom. Lectrician1 (talk) 03:43, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm afraid that this would make Wikipedia less of a encyclopedia, and more of a how-to guide in some cases. The proposed format is also probably too complex for the average user to intuitively understand without a explanation of the two purposes. Sea Cow (talk) 04:34, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

We have Category:Introductory articles, which is basically this, only applying to the entire article, and using hatnotes instead of the fancier UI in your mockup. Two are even FAs: Introduction to viruses and Introduction to general relativity.

Their existence is a little controversial; the main objections are that they are a form of WP:CONTENTFORKING that doubles the editor effort needed to cover a topic, and that they give non-introductory versions an unwarranted free pass to have inaccessible content. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:59, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Lectrician1, your original point is a good one. But your proposed solution is cumbersome and highly unlikely to gain consensus. The real solution is to follow Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Provide an accessible overview. I agree with you that explaining the concept of Imaginary number as fundamentally you just need to know that imaginary numbers are the square roots of negative numbers and their squares produce negative numbers is a good simple explanation. It is a real shortcoming that the lead section of this article does not mention or wikilink to negative number or square root. The solution is not to create a two-tiered system of competing "simple leads" and "complex leads". Instead, it is to bring the existing leads into compliance with the Manual of Style. It ought to be easy for you to write a new accessible introductory paragraph for that article that incorporates your simplified explanation. Cullen328 (talk) 06:38, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm with Cullen here - the first paragraph of the lead ought to define and describe the subject in simple terms. Where it's not doing that, it needs to be improved. There is also Simple English Wikipedia as well - I wouldn't be averse to making links to the relevant article over there where it might help. Girth Summit _(blether) 06:48, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Simple explanations can be misleading. Such as in in the humanities and politics. If we have to debate is it simple and accurate, no thanks, too constraining and fiddly. Person 1 changes to be more simple, person 2 changes to be less POV but person 3 thinks it's too complicated etc.. Accuracy competes with simplicity. Nevertheless, the creativity of the suggestion and image markup are noteworthy, the idea of parallel or complimentary text in a tab might have other application. -- 07:11, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Our coverage of Boolean algebra ran into a related problem in the early years, namely that the way the topic was developed by algebraists was a bad entry point to the many other users of this mathematical formalism. We 'solved' the problem by developing a parallel set of overlapping articles on the topic, including Boolean algebra (structure), Boolean algebra and Boolean algebras canonically defined. I seem to recall we used to have a treatment directed at engineers, but I don't find it. Separately considered, these are decent treatments, but the problem is that the lead of each article isn't ideal for helping readers who do not know what we have to offer which is likely to be the right article for them to start with.

This is the most extreme example I know of, but there are many examples of topics that have several articles on them that are pitched at different kinds of reader. The idea of a standard navigation interface like the tab suggested that users would know to consult if the feel they are not reading the right presentation is a promising one, but (i) I think the idea that we can just assume there is a simple vs an expert presentation of any given topic doesn't do justice to the wide variety of ways in which we have tried to accommodate the mismatch between what the treatment demands and what the new reader brings, and (ii) we have a fundamental competence issue here, which is that WP is mostly edited by people who have a relatively good feel for what material we have on a particular topic, and so are not good at putting themselves in the shoes of the new reader: good facilities for introductory jumping-off points is quite likely not to result in us writing up a lot of good jumping-off points. — Charles Stewart (talk) 11:53, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Allow Nutshell template be used on articles

I'd like to see {{nutshell}} templates to be partially allowed to be put on articles (main namespace), for concise summary about this topic on top of articles. 36.74.41.108 (talk) 15:58, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Are you aware that the opening paragraph of any article is supposed to consist of just the sort of concise summary you are suggesting? (See: WP:MOSLEAD for more). Other than placing that leading text in a template, how is your idea different from what we currently do? Is there a benefit to placing it in a template? Blueboar (talk) 18:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)