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Blank inactive user/user talk pages, and delete user subpages after 5 years.

We are getting to the age where we do in fact have user pages left over from users who stopped being active more than five years ago. It's a small number, but it will grow exponentially in the coming months. Those pages serve no further purpose to the project, and are an annoyance to the extent that they tend to add absolutely useless matter to the "What links here" pages of any article to which they are linked. Subpages pose an entirely different kind of problem, because they frequently serve as repositories of unencyclopedic information, copyvios, and forgotten drafts that will never be made into articles. Unless someone sets out to do a thorough scouring of user subpages, most will never be found in the regular editing process. Based on the foregoing, I propose the following:

  1. If an editor has been inactive for five years (i.e. no edits at all, in any space), their user page and user talk page will be automatically blanked. It will not be deleted, so if the editor in question has just been lurking, and really wants to keep the page as is, they can just go back to the previous edit.
  2. User subpages created by, and in the userspace of, an editor who has been inactive for five years (i.e. no edits at all, in any space), and which have not been edited by anyone in that time, will be deleted. An exception will be made for subpages that are linked to or transcluded from (as is the case with some infoboxes).

That's it in a nutshell. bd2412 T 07:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

  • An interesting proposal, and I see where you're coming from. But, do these pages, no matter how useless they are, actually have a negative impact on the project? As in, do they slow down the server etc., to a significant enough degree to warrant your proposal being implemented? If they do, then I think your idea may warrant implementation. --Paaerduag (talk) 08:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
  • An excellent proposal. Though five years sounds very long; I'd bring it down to three years. Tama1988 (talk) 09:03, 16 December 2008 (UTC) PS NVO's suggestion below that a template should be added is a good one. Tama1988 (talk) 11:10, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose to #1. It's not about the substance of your proposal, it's about motives. Sometimes, checking article histories, I stumble at these long-abandoned accounts and guess what - I'm not annoyed at all. Annoyance or lack thereof is strictly personal, it should not be brought up here. As for the What links here concern - again, what seems useless to you is quite harmless to me and may be even useful for someone else. Proposal to #1: Don't blank pages completely, but replace with a template explaining what has happened, and with a button to skip to previous version, bypassing the History roll. NVO (talk) 10:06, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose - The namespace selector on the what links here page takes care of the concern about user page entries. Just set the selector to the article namespace and the problem is solved. Graham87 13:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't see the point. If you come across a copyvio, remove it. Majorly talk 13:20, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
    • Copyvios are the tip of the iceberg. There are countless subpages for non-notable people, businesses, and (probably most of all) bands, which idle eternally in user space, with no one intending to ever improve them or make them into something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia (which, indeed, would likely be impossible). bd2412 T 16:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I've seen editors return after a 4 year absence to make edits, for instances, look at Special:Contributions/Jasonr. How we could handle such a thing, I don't know. MBisanz talk 13:23, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
    • If they come back five years later and find their user page blanked and their subpage deleted, they can unblank the user page with one click, and ask any admin to restore the subpage. bd2412 T 14:26, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
      • Deleted means deleted. The developers have told us that there is no guarantee that deleted revisions will be kept around. If something needs to be preserved, archive it.
      • That said, if a user creates a subpage to work on an article and then doesn't come back to it for 5 years, the usefulness of the subpage is probably low enough that it could be deleted without much problem. —Remember the dot (talk) 21:45, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't see a problem with this (with or without a template). Five years is enough time to keep dormant pages around. --Kbdank71 15:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose; this is instruction creep, pure and simple. There's no problem caused by their continued existence that can't be solved by tools that don't cause the loss of information, so I don't see why we would ever do this (excepting the obvious, i.e, copyvios, subpages that contain deleted content that obviously isn't being worked on, etc). Celarnor Talk to me 19:49, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
    • Hmmm. Suppose rather than deleting anything, we were to blank everything, put an explanatory template on the main "user" and "user talk" pages, and redirect the subpages to the user page (which has the template)? bd2412 T 03:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose - first of all, how do we define "not linked to"? Imagine the situation that tomorrow Lucasbfr effectively leaves Wikipedia. Over the next few years, all the transclusions of, and links to, User:Lucasbfr/UKBlock get removed. In 6 years, a non-admin attempts to understand the block log of 194.72.9.25 - we must allow such a user to understand what's going on. Second of all, there is no way we can be sure that a user will never want these pages again, short of confirmed death of the user (which can only happen if a highly trusted user knows the real-world identity of the user - which doesn't apply to most users). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:19, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose — The justification doesn't seem reasonable. Is there a problem with incoming links?—where are the complaints? And we don't delete stuff because we speculate that it might possibly include copyvio. Please check that an editor's ID is inactive in all wikis before deleting their anything. —Michael Z. 2008-12-17 16:08 z
  • No. It doesn't work in practice. I base this on my experience of User:Uncle G/On having a user page being speedily deleted. It took me a long while to remember the exact title of the sub-page, and there's no practical way to discover such names from the deletion log. Do you really expect inactive editors to be able to remember the exact names of their sub-pages, in order to request their undeletion, after a period of inactivity? I had a hard enough time as an active editor.

    We already have a process for deleting stale article drafts in userspace: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. Many stale article drafts have been deleted there, without even waiting for the 5 years that you propose. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Bacchiad/Anarchism, for example. If stale article drafts and copyright violations are the problem that you are actually addressing (which it seems so) then simply use the working mechanisms already actively dealing with these that we already have. Uncle G (talk) 23:44, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

    • How about this, someone with good wiki-fu rustle me up the statistics on the current number of user subpages from users who have been inactive for, say three years or more (which should give us a reasonable estimate of how much this would occupy MfD over the next few years). If the number is manageable, I'll propose creating a project to hunt down the bad ones, rather than a rule for an automated solution. As I have indicated above, I think blanking the subpages and redirecting them to the main user page (which would be blanked but for a short template explaining the blanking) would be acceptable as well, which would give the user (should they ever return) a handy listing of subpages in the What links here list. bd2412 T 09:54, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose Yesterday I had to pop over to de.wiki to leave a note for a user, and while I was there I put links to my enwiki/commons userpages, in case the user wished to respond directly to me. It turns out they didn't, and it's highly unlikely that I'll edit there again, but it occurred to me that users have and will use their page(s) for soft redirects to other wikis. I don't see the exercise of deleting/blanking inactive pages necessary or productive. PeterSymonds (talk) 10:39, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. User subpages that contain copyright violations can be dealt with on a case by case basis. There's no good reason to delete or blank potentially useful content. If the user themselves doesn't return, someone else can turn a draft into something useful. But that would be impossible to do if blanked, because it would make it impossible to find the text with a search engine. - Mgm|(talk) 11:37, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Regarding are an annoyance to the extent that they tend to add absolutely useless matter to the "What links here" pages of any article to which they are linked, the "What links here" page allows the reader to specify a namespace, so user pages can be easily excludable. (Perhaps the default should be mainspace/articlespace, but that's another matter entirely.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:26, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

What about IP talk pages?

We have thousands of these, where the user has never been blocked, they haven't edited in a year (or more), and 'their' user talk page hasn't been edited in a year or more. Can these be deleted? For a tabula rasa, among other things (no new messages bar, etc.). Obviously pages with {{sharedip}} or {{dynamicip}} or whatever would be skipped. Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:51, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Didn't Wikipedia used to regularly delete old IP talk pages, and the practice was abandoned because non-admins couldn't see if the IP had a history of vandalism? —Remember the dot (talk) 00:22, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't believe so. This specific proposal is dealing with IPs with no direct blocks, though. So it's rather unlikely there's anything substantial to look at (and contribs will still be visible, obviously). --MZMcBride (talk) 03:23, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
The odds of an IP who vandalizes, then whose talk page goes a year without any edits, still belonging to the same person if/when it starts vandalizing again are pretty slim. Mr.Z-man 06:53, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Actually, we have a rule of thumb on that, which is to blank them rather than deleting them in order to preserve a readily available edit history - see Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 9#IP talk pages. I just finished blanking a batch of ten thousand of them today, some having nothing more than a single comment posted in 2003 or 2004. bd2412 T 09:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
That seems rather silly for two reasons. (1) They'll still have the new messages bar which is crazy confusing to a new user (esp. when the diff is removing all of the page content). (2) Blue links indicate an active user and they indicate the presence of actual page content. Page histories, watchlists, etc. all show blue links for these user talk pages when the page is in fact blank. From the pages you blanked, is there anything substantive that needs keeping there? I'm talking about a specific subset of IPs, much like the ones you just blanked, except I'm also looking at block log, recent activity, and template transclusions. If an IP was never blocked, hasn't edited in the past year, and hasn't had their talk page edited in the last year, one can be fairly certain the page is no longer of value. Keeping a record forever that an IP vandalized some random article doesn't seem particularly useful or necessary, e.g., this. Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 09:58, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, I will say that blanking them is a heck of a lot faster than deleting them would be. And why would it matter at all if the IP had been blocked, if, for example, it was blocked for one day over four years ago, and has since been inactive? bd2412 T 10:09, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, a block indicates that a more serious problem existed. One incident of hit-and-run vandalism two years ago (no block) is much different than one edit that was a serious death threat (block). I'm trying to come up with parameters that don't include any false positives. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 10:33, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
It still shouldn't matter. A serious threat or similar block-worthy offense originating from an IP address is meaningless with reference to that IP address because they are (a) frequently open or shared (i.e. school or work computers to which many people have access), and (b) dynamic, in that IP addresses are reassigned from time to time. Unlike a user name, past edits by an IP address tell you nothing about the person making present edits. bd2412 T 13:11, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

When non-admins can delete a page

I propose that users who are not administrators will be able to delete pages if they are the sole contributor to them or if they are within their own userspace. This feature should replace {{db-author}} and {{db-user}} -- IRP ☎ 15:28, 22 December 2008 (UTC), modified 15:30, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose for mainspace articles, weak support for userspace. I recall one case where an editor requested the deletion of several articles he created because he lost an AFD debate so admin discretion is still needed for such cases. On the second. I would support a feature where one can delete/protect pages in his own userspace as long as protecting ones talk page is discouraged unless there is a damn good reason. However, it would make sense to allow self protection of things like user talk page archives and the main userpage in cases of vandalism. However, such a feature might encourage "myspacery" so I expect and understand the inevitable opposes. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 15:55, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Not within userspace; user talk pages in particular: there are fairly obvious situations where users would want to delete user talk pages but it's not appropriate for them to do so. Pages where they are the sole contributor are another matter, but still IMO not entirely without controversy. I wouldn't mind seeing an adminbot that deletes pages tagged by the sole author, with suitable checks on whatlinkshere and age. Such would be uncontroversial within certain limits. Happy‑melon 15:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Is this really needed? Last time I needed a user page deleted I tagged it, and an admin came along and deleted in. no problem. Is there something wrong with this so that we'd need to get some sort of restricted delete button developed?--Cube lurker (talk) 16:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Regular users shouldn't delete articles; and since articles can be moved into user space, that applies there as well. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 16:27, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Good catch, there. Under this system, nonprotected pages could be moved to userspace, & deleted, with the redirects to them being deletable as well - this would be a fairly vicious modification to the existing page-move vandalism problem, and could have real repercussions. if not cleaned up properly. Shimgray | talk | 18:39, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
I agree, no need for this when {{db-user}} works so well. Anomie⚔ 17:55, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
No this just adds yet more complexity without any benefit, adding a speedy tag to a user page gets the page deleted quickly and easily, without any problems at the moment. Davewild (talk) 18:30, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
I am in favor of allowing registered users being allowed to police themselves, but after reading arguments, understand why it needs to be thought out. I reference a post (now in archive 40) about users copy and pasting articles into their user pages and the category tag goes with it. Something I was accidentally guilty of. My question is: maybe allow us to clear our own history, perhaps rename pages within user space. Perhaps if only when we are sole contributor AND within user space (maybe after x-number of edits, or time even. I only ask because I think most users can police themselves, and I'm sure anything that lightens the burden on the admins is appreciated. Thankyou and hope everyone has an enjoyable holiday season regardless of how you observe it. Ched (talk) 16:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Use a filter to block the manual insertion of the AES arrow

I propose that Wikipedia use a filter to prevent things like this from happening. It deceived users into believing that was the actual action of the user, which it wasn't. The vandalism remained in place for months until I finally caught it and reverted it. Please note that I am not proposing that this blocks the user from editing, but just causes an error message to display if a user attempts to manually insert "←" into the edit summary. -- IRP ☎ 17:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

This could be handled by the Abuse filter. Happy‑melon 17:56, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Mmmm... maybe. You'd have to be quite careful in coding it, to ensure it does the check before the automatic summary is created! I can't tell from the existing documentation quite how that works, but it looks likely that it should be doable. File a request with the abuse filter people to have this as a rule when it goes live? Shimgray | talk | 18:05, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
That would be a good idea, except that in the edit you linked, the automatic edit summary wasn't added manually. The automatic edit summary text "redirected page to ..." is added whenever an edit is made that makes a page become a redirect (including adding text to an existing redirect page). For an example, see this edit to User talk:Giano; by User:Angr, who is an admin. The addition of text that is not a redirect template to a redirect should be banned by the software, but that could probably be handled by the abuse filter. Also see bug 7304 about text after redirects causing problems with the database. Graham87 09:43, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Huh. I assumed this was the problem initially, and tried to generate it myself - I got this, which had a blank edit summary. Shimgray | talk | 11:51, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I got the same thing when testing it with one of my sandboxes. Perhaps the bug causing this behaviour has been fixed, as the cited edits are very old. I can't find any entry in the Signpost or Bugzilla relating to this problem, though. Graham87 12:22, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


The issue is not that/whether the edit summary was faked. Even if it were a deliberate deception (which is unlikely; if the deception were deliberate, why keep the redirect?), there are a number of other ways to fake a pseudo-AES summary that no rule anyone can come up with will catch.
The issue is that the fact that no bot caught the substance of the vandalism. Bots already have rules to catch that sort of thing, so why didn't any catch it? -- Fullstop (talk) 12:51, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This type of edit used to give the default edit summary, but no longer does. Therefore a lot of my recent edits, where I added categories to redirects, have no summaries. For the record, as vandalism goes, this was very minor, since you'd only see it if you edited the redirect. --NE2 13:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Used to? It still worked for me. See this link. -- IRP ☎ 02:26, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Blanking an page, replacing a page with other text, and so on will still give an automatic edit summary. However adding to a redirect page doesn't do that anymore,. Graham87 05:04, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it did, see where it says "←Redirected page to This is a test" on the left? -- IRP ☎ 12:22, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
This is the type of edit. --NE2 12:52, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Adding something other than the redirect code will prevent the automatic edit summary from appearing. -- IRP ☎ 20:22, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
And that also proves that this was a manually created summary. -- IRP ☎ 20:24, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
No, it doesn't. To prove that, you would have to perform the test on the version of MediaWiki in use here on 2008-02-09. And considering r43315, you would very likely get different results. Anomie⚔ 20:54, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Need review for a test template.

I made a template (User:JSH-alive/Sandbox/Testground, specific revision) to store former slogans, titles, names, call signs, whatever else in one place, especially in the infobox.

Comments? -- JSH-alive talk • cont • mail 13:29, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Opening in new tabs

I often come to browse Wikipedia. I start with an article I need to know something about (say, C#). I find in the article something else I want to learn about in a link in the article (say, model-view-component). I click the link, and lo and behold, I am navigated away. Wouldn't it be soooooooooo simple to a) make it the default that other articles open in a new tab, or b) make it a "permanent setting" (you set it when logged into your acct, and when you're on Wikipedia on the same computer, even when not logged in, Wikipedia will see that and auto-open in new tabs)?

Please tell me why this would be hard, if it is.

Obviously the 'default' behavior isn't going to change, just because one person asks. Not for such a fundamental change. I imagine it's be possible to add a setting for logged in users (no idea, but considering what I've seen can be done...) but for "same computer"? Can't see it. Still, why not just press the middle mouse button and be done with it? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Please no. Every browser on Earth has a way of opening a link in a new tab or window if the user wants it. The opposite ability, opening a "opens in new page" link in the same page, is almost unheard-of. --Carnildo (talk) 06:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Carnildo. I already open too many tabs on purpose. I don't want any more opened 'by default'. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 11:07, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
As a point of information, one option for a logged-in user, in "my preferences", under the "gadgets" tab, in the "User interface gadgets" section, is "Open external links in a new tab/window". (emphasis added) There isn't a comparable option for internal links (wikilinks). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:16, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, please no. If you want to open a link in a new tab, either hold down ctrl as you click, or (as Melodia points out) use the middle-button. To get an idea of the nightmare in the making, wedge down your control key while surfing. -- Fullstop (talk) 16:24, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

All user pages protected

Users without a username can easily go around vandalising a person's page. Also, if an IP address wishes to speak to a person on the talk page, they may only add, not take away( unless reverting own edits)

All userpages protected? How would non-admins edit their userpage? I can't really understand the rest of your message unfortunately. Majorly talk 19:12, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Very Strong Oppose Per above; How would a non-admin edit his own talk page? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 19:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
  • (To clarify, the way this proposal is worded suggests semi-protection rather than full protection, however I) oppose this, because most userpages are never touched, some userpages are edited constructively by IPs, and indeed, many users welcome this. Low-risk pre-emptive protection goes against the protection policy and the idea that Wikipedia is something anyone can edit. PeterSymonds (talk) 19:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Oppose too. Obviously this is never going to happen but to make a counter-proposal, why not the move-protection of all userspace pages. There are very few reasons to legitimately move a user page, the only real one being the renaming of a user, which is done by crat's anyway, but there is a lot of user-page moving done by vandals.--Jac16888 (talk) 19:38, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
How about developing a template in userspace and moving it to templatespace when it is ready? Or the same for an article, for that matter? Or just renaming your user subpages? Also, would this move protection also prevent Grawps from moving articles into userspace where non-admins cannot move them back? Anomie⚔ 19:51, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Also, page-move vandals rarely succeed. With scripts available, mass-moves can be mass-reverted on the click of a button. I believe a number of users watch the move log and idle in #wikipedia-alerts connect so it can be found in real-time. Userspace move-protection isn't a net benefit, as it blocks a number of useful tasks, and isn't really blocking anything that can't be easily fixed. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 19:58, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Also for me userspace is the least damaging area for vandalism. If vandals are going to vandalise anywhere make it userspace as it does not damage the encyclopedia (far better than them just adding falsehoods to articles) and is easily caught and reverted. Davewild (talk) 20:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough, guess I didn't think that through--Jac16888 (talk) 20:04, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I presume this is suggesting that the protection extended to users' .js and .css files (ie only they and admins can edit them) be extended to all pages in userspace. If so, then no: vandal moves featured articles into userspace of some random user, articles are locked until admins move them back; huge amount of admin time is tied up unnecessarily. Or, user creates policy-violating content in their own userspace, moves it into the userspace of a retired user, same problem. The knee-jerk reaction of "protecting things → less vandalism" really doesn't hold when you step back and think twice. Happy‑melon 21:29, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I also oppose because of the reasons stated above, such as that it would be pre-emptive and not really protecting much. Besides, I think it would only serve to create a paranoia on Wikipedia, where every page is suddenly considered "high-risk". --.:Alex:. 21:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Clarification of conflict of interest policy

The conflict of interest guidelines need clarification. It says that editing with a conflict of interest (particularly when there is money involved) is 'strongly discouraged', but pretty much all the reasons why seem to come back to other policies - notability, npov etc. Most of the cases that come to the attention of the COI noticeboard also seem to involve editors who have written crappy pages, created pages on non-notable subjects, linkspammed or whatever - all things which would be bad whether the editor has a conflict of interest or not.

So, is editing with a conflict of interest considered bad in and of itself, or only when it leads to bad editing? It does seem like the vast majority of people with a COI make bad edits, but it does not necessarily follow that COI automatically leads to bad editing. For starters, everyone who comes onto Wikipedia for the sole purpose of promoting their company or whatever is a new editor and thus likely to make bad edits regardless of their motivations. Also, I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of editors out there with conflicts of interest that no one knows about because they haven't drawn attention to themselves by making obviously biased or otherwise crappy edits. I think it's probably in the best interests of Wikipedia to encourage these people to be open about what they're doing rather than passing themselves off as ordinary editors.

Basically I think we need to decide whether conflict of interest editing is bad regardless of the quality of the edits (and if so, why) or just when it violates other policies. If the former, the COI page should be more explicit about this, and provide reasons why COI editing is bad in and of itself. If the latter, the term 'strongly discouraged' should probably be dropped and COI editors encouraged to be open about who they are and abide by a code of conduct, something along the lines of 'obey the spirit and letter of all policies, don't get involved in controversial editing, and be honest about what you're doing'.

Since several people have had accounts blocked for falling afoul of this - and not always in cases involving clearly bad edits - this needs to be resolved. I also posted this on the COI talk page but after a few days no-one has replied, and I really don't want to go changing this without some kind of consensus. --Helenalex (talk) 01:31, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

  • People being blocked for having a COI without disruptive editing is a bad thing. If COI is not a valid reason for deletion, it certainly shouldn't be a valid reason to block or ban them. That said: if someone was to have a COI and edit said page in a good way, no one would notice it. Therefore it's only a problem if it leads to bad edits. At least in my opinion. In my early days I made a COI edit, but so far someone has yet to notice which article it was (probably because the edit I made was good for Wikipedia).- Mgm|(talk) 10:40, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
  • WP:COI already does state that COI editing is only bad in that it often leads to problems with the other policies, but it could possibly be made more clear; part of the problem is an inconsistent use of "COI edits" to mean "edits that violate core content policies due to conflict of interest" versus "edits where a possible conflict of interest exists, regardless of quality". I suggest you copy it to your userspace, rewrite it there, and then bring it up at WT:COI and advertise the discussion here and at WP:VPP. I also think {{COI}} should be removed in favor of using the appropriate tags that identify the actual problems with the article, but that's a different discussion and would probably get bogged down in the larger discussion over article tagging at all. Anomie⚔
I have written a suggested revision of the COI guidelines here. Explanation of the changes is here. Because of my own conflict of interest I should probably not be the one who changes the guidelines - the last thing I want is to end up appealling to guidelines I have written myself. So someone else needs to take this over. --Helenalex (talk) 23:31, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
Looks pretty good, although I do have a few criticisms; I know that some of these may be things copied word-for-word from the existing guideline, but I suppose they could still use changing.
Anomie⚔ 01:48, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Anomie. I have made all the suggested changes except the last two. Instead of the last suggestion, I put more emphasis on blocking into the first paragraph of 'consequences'. I think this is more clear than the original guidelines in terms of what specific actions can result in blocking.

I originally cut out the sentence on promotional articles because I thought the rewritten guidelines already made it clear that non-NPOV, non notable articles etc were unacceptable. It probably did need to be made clearer, so I have added "Editors should not create articles which serve solely to promote their subject. All Wikipedia articles should contain useful information written as if from a neutral point of view. The writing of 'puff pieces' and advertisements on Wikipedia is strictly prohibited." I felt the term 'promotional' was far too vague - it could be interpreted to mean any article on behalf of a client or employer, even if it's a good article. If you want 'promotional' back in, it needs to be defined. I have also removed the reference to clients as it seems to imply that creating a promotional article for an employer or best friend or whoever is more acceptable, which seems like a fairly odd and arbitrary distinction to make.

Again, I would rather not be in charge of this, so if you or anyone else wants to copy this into their own namespace and take charge of its final form, that would be much appreciated and probably help acceptance of whatever revisions end up getting made. --Helenalex (talk) 04:56, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I kinda get the gitters thinking about the reason behind this change, explained on the talk page for the rewrite, but the page does need an update. The writing just isn't up to par, and most of the issues noted above seem valid. That said, don't forget to update related policies. This seems to dramatically undermine Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from enterprise) in its present form. MrZaiustalk 15:33, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
If you want to do your own rewrite, I'll withdraw mine. I don't think any of us wants the final form of the COI guidelines determined by someone with a conflict of interest. But as you say, someone needs to update the guidelines. Once a more neutral person is in charge of this I'll put notices on the pages for related policies and guidelines (spam, npov etc) so that changes can be consistent across all of them. --Helenalex (talk) 22:01, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Need a rating system for pages and a way to filter pages based on ratings

I propose a rating system of some kind for pages and images. This applies not only to this wiki, but the simple version as well. Articles about ejaculation, penis, etc. should be rated R considering the images and videos that are place on those pages. And parents should have some way to make sure that those materials are not available to our children unless we give explicit permission. Maybe for articles where the content is appropriate for teenagers, there can be a "ejaculation, student version" or "penis, student version" that contains images and diagrams that one would expect to find in a middle school or high school health education text book. 69.120.135.108 (talk)

Please see Wikipedia:Perennial proposals. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Also see WP:NOT#CENSORED. The best way to keep children from seeing objectionable content is parental supervision, coupled with the knowledge that children will find these things out eventually anyway. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 09:40, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

In disambiguating links to Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway, I have to filter out a lot of chaff added by {{North American Class I}}. It's also useful sometimes to see what actually links to a page in the prose rather than in a navbox template. Would there be any way to add this feature? --NE2 19:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

The software could perhaps be changed to treat links from templates differently than direct links from within the article text, although I suspect this would not be an entirely trivial change. In your particular case, I think this Google search comes pretty close (it excludes pages including the template, so any page with a link that also includes the template is not listed). Since the template doesn't include the full text of the railway name, this search may be closer to what you're actually looking for. To suggest a software change, please see Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests. -- Rick Block (talk) 06:44, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Can disambiguation pages be identified?

On so many occasions I've added to an article or created one and felt confident I was linking to an actual article because I saw a blue link. But several times, I've found out why I shouldn't be so confident. When I have found out, I have corrected my mistake, but there's no way I can go back and find all of the mistakes like that. I try harder these days to check all my links.

Is there a way to produce another possible link color for articles tagged as disambiguation pages?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:43, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Unlike redirects and nonexistant pages, the MediaWiki software would have a hard time distinguishing dab pages due to the variability of the page text involved in creating them (unlike redirects, which have very limited syntax). I doubt that such a feature could be implemented in MediaWiki, but I would be surprised if a js tool like popups didn't support it. Foxy Loxy Pounce! 23:18, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
All disambiguation pages are part of Category:All_disambiguation_pages. A js tool to colour the links to these pages would be super nifty. --Jake WartenbergTalk 06:40, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
All disambiguation pages will have an object with the "disambigbox" id. If you know any javascript you could easily write a script to check that. Happy‑melon 11:47, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
Special:Disambiguations defines a disambiguation page as being a page which transcludes any of the templates linked to from MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage. I think we should go by that definition. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:17, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
A slight work around I use is that under My Preferences I set the "stub link" to only 500 bytes, which turns all articles that size or smaller to a dark red. This usually IDs most dab pages. Aboutmovies (talk) 12:16, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
Category:All_disambiguation_pages is the method my user script uses. Anomie⚔ 14:57, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
Learn something new every day! Aboutmovies, that's a handy tip on the "stub link" size. I never noticed that on the "misc" tab of my preferences, thanks.  :) Also, Anomie, do you have more info on what your script does, or is it best to just install and experiment? --Elonka 09:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
What do you want to know? Basically it pulls the title out of every link in the page, queries the API for page categories, redirect targets, and so on, and then assigns CSS classes based on the results. It detects links that are self-redirects, broken redirects, DABs, and pages being discussed for deletion. Anomie⚔ 12:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Article voting?

How many times has it been suggested that editors can vote "yeah" or "nay" on articles to say "This is a good article" or the reverse? - Denimadept (talk) 09:14, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

See voting is evil. Ruslik (talk) 09:38, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
You might be interested in Wikipedia:Flagged revisions as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:41, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
While it is close to such functionalities, this is not the point of flaggedrevs at all to vote on an article. Anyway, article voting will almost surely never happen on Wikipedia. Cenarium (Talk) 01:54, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Updating of Organizational Communication

Hello, my name is Dr. Jason Wrench and I'm starting a project with my students this spring to update the information on organizational communication in Wikipedia. Organizational Communication is a wide field, but the current information on Wikipedia is very minimal, so I want to have my students to help me update the information. --JasonSWrench (talk) 06:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC) Jason S. Wrench

Welcome! If you haven't seen it already, allow me to point you to Wikipedia:School and university projects which has quite a bit of guidance and advice that should help your project be a success. The people at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classroom coordination should be happy to help you. Anomie⚔ 15:35, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

List of usability proposals

To prepare for the upcoming Wikipedia usability study, I wrote up a list of usability problems and proposals. Any comments are welcome. Cheers, AxelBoldt (talk) 17:46, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

m:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Simple English (2) Wikipedia‎

There is a proposal to close the Simple English Wikipedia. Additional comments would be appreciated. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:29, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Why did you even post this here? Its a meta issue, not an en issue. Synergy 20:00, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
He has posted it on the Admin noticeboard as well, which is off-topic for that page. Majorly talk 20:01, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to know how its on topic for either of these pages. Synergy 20:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, short answer is, it's not on-topic. But I think we should leave it. Streisand effect, WP:STICK and all that :-) Majorly talk 20:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Highlighting most sought disambig entries

This has been mildly bothering me for a while now, and I thought I'd mention it and see if others felt the same way. I often use Wikipedia to help solve crossword puzzles, and frequently face clues like "Pop singer Jones". This leads me to the disambiguation page, List_of_people_with_surname_Jones#Music where I see a list of everybody named Jones involved in music. That's fine of course, but obviously some of the people listed are going to be more prominent or famous that all of the others, and thus more likely to be who myself or other readers are looking for.

Another example is the disambiguation page for Buffalo#United States, which lists 29 different US cities named Buffalo. I know that one of them is a quite large city and home to the Buffalo Sabers, but I (as a Canadian) had no idea which one, and no way of finding out short of trying each link (or using Google—I've since added a "Largest US city name Buffalo" description).

It would be great if there was some clear way of highlighting those disambiguation entries on the list that a reader is most likely after, for example using bold face for the link. Obviously a danger here is creating arguments about whether borderline entry X is prominent enough to deserve highlighting or not, but Buffalo, Oklahoma with a population of 1200 is quite clearly less prominent than Buffalo, New York (apologies to any of the 1200 Oklahoma Buffalonians who may be reading this...)

I've cross-posted to Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation#Highlighting_most_sought_disambig_entries; please comment there if you're interested. --jwandersTalk 08:03, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

How about just expanding the description? Towns could have population added, plus if they're a state capital, home to a notable sports team or whatever. I think just bolding the 'most important' listings will just lead to a lot of arguments, or lists in which 2/3 are bold. --Helenalex (talk) 23:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
This would be extremely complicated. Have you tried easier crosswords? -:) — Blue-Haired Lawyer 03:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Namespace drop-down list in Special:Log/delete

Sometimes I go through the deletion log to see if any recently-deleted articles have been recreated. It can get complicated when the log is a huge list of user talk pages or images that are not likely to be recreated. I propose adding a drop-down list to the deletion log page, as we have on other special pages such as watchlists, so that the reader can focus on an individual namespace. ... discospinster talk 14:44, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

See bugzilla:14711 for details on why this isn't enabled. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:47, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

ArbCom reform idea

I've started brainstorming on a reform idea for ArbCom at User:Kirill Lokshin/ArbCom 2.0; it's still in a very early stage, but any comments would be appreciated! Kirill 19:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Disabling indexing of non-content namespaces

There's an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#NOINDEX of all non-content namespaces regarding disabling indexing of non-content namespaces. Comments would be appreciated. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:46, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Consistency for naming character lists

Has there been any attempt to make a consistent naming scheme for the articles in Category:Lists of fictional characters by medium? I'm seeing everything from "List of ______ characters" to "List of characters in _________" with no consistency either way. I would like to see some sort of consensus form in one direction or the other, but don't know where to start. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 20:12, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

The Manual of Style? Naming conventions? I'd love to see this settled once and for all (in fact I'd like to see whether they constitute lists at all or not). --.:Alex:. 20:43, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Splitting up some admin rights for bot use only

Now, as nearly everyone knows, splitting up the admin rights has been debated to death and deserves its spot on WP:PEREN (if its not there already), but I feel we need to revisit it one last time, from an angle I don't believe has been discussed before; splitting up some rights for bot use only. As many people are aware, getting an admin bot its userrights can run into a whole bunch of comunity issues, from fears that the bot's password can be found out (and thus compromising an admin account) and concerns that the bot will be the next Skynet, blocking all the users or protecting all the pages. My idea would be to split up some of the rights that adminbots use (delete and editprotected I think are the main ones) and allow crats to assign only the relevant rights to the bot's accounts. This has various advantages over giving a bot an admin account:

  1. The bot does not have access to rights outside of it's specific area (i.e. DYKadminBot can only edit protected pages and can't go on a rampage blocking all the editors or protecting all the pages, if a bug was present or if its owner wished to utilise the bot's bot flag to do some damage)
  2. A compromised bot account would not allow the compromiser access to the whole set of admin tools, only a small portion, limiting damage if this were to happen (i.e. If RedirectCleanupBot were to have its account compromised, the compromiser can only delete pages, he/she cannot block people)
  3. Currently, a bot with admin rights are generally only run by an administrator, the problem with that is that many gifted bot writers do not wish to be an admin and/or do not want to write a bot and have an admin constantly checking the code and not revealing the bot's credentials to the coder (It could be potentially very frustrating to the coder). With this, if DYKadminBot's owner was not an admin and went on a rampage, what can they do? Edit protected pages. Hardly as damaging as being able to delete this page or blocking that guy.

We would, of couse, in classic Wikipedian style, need to debate over all the little bits of policy that need to be created, but I believe that this has some great potential. Foxy Loxy Pounce! 00:59, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Not really an issue. A bot is much more reliable than a human, in that, as long as it's programmed properly, it will only do what it's told. Adminbots get enough scrutiny at BAG to avoid any of these errors. Splitting the flag is solving a problem that isn't really there. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 01:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Thankyou Peter for your input, although I must point out that your point only addresses advantage #1, do you have any views on the other advantages? Foxy Loxy Pounce! 01:18, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
How likely is it that the bot would be compromised? About as likely as you or I were to be. That is, not very likely at all. Ability to edit protected pages can be very damaging. Consider MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Sitenotice, as two examples. Majorly talk 01:28, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Both of which cannot be edited with editprotected, you need editinterface to change Mediawiki: pages. Administrators have the protect (which includes editprotected) and editinterface which can cause some confusion. Also, editing people's .css and .js files is another seperate userright (I think its editusercssjs or something like that) Foxy Loxy Pounce! 01:34, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
EDIT: Also, it should be noted that only pages protected manually are editable via editprotected Foxy Loxy Pounce! 01:42, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Splitting them would be nice, but you can't split them in useful ways. For example, it would be nice for ImageRemovalBot to be able to edit protected pages, but the risk from giving it admin rights there isn't that ImageRemovalBot will go on a rampage and block people, but that it will remove an image from the main page or something similarly inappropriate. There's no "Edit any protected page except the Main Page and pages transcluded on it" right that you can give it. --Carnildo (talk) 01:15, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Good point, do you think that security (regarding compromises) and non-admin ability to run these bots are useful advantages? Foxy Loxy Pounce! 01:20, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Compromising of any account is bad. In addition, even if the operator is not an admin, it would probably still not be accepted by the community, as the bot has higher rights than the operator. I oppose this request due to that, and the point last given by Carnildo. Xclamation point 01:50, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
But still if an image needs to be removed, the being on the main page should not would not make it a special case. — CharlotteWebb 20:06, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Actually, for that particular example there is: The editprotected right does not grant the ability to edit cascade-protected pages, which includes Main Page and everything transcluded in it. Anomie⚔ 03:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
I think this is a nice proposal, but a lot of it hinges on the what-if of "compromised account oh noes!" In actuality, however, it isn't a particularly high-risk scenario, so I can't quite get behind it. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:03, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
  • An adminbot programmed to edit a protected template is very, very, very highly unlikely to go a blocking spree. I have a higher chance of deleting the Main Page again than DYKAdminBot going on a blocking spree. butterfly (talk) 02:10, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Um, this is probably a waste of time/not cost-effective:
  • While 1 and 2 are good computing practices, I'm not sure we'd gain much.
  • Re: #1: How many times has a runaway admin bot done damage in the last, say, 3 years? How many times would a runaway non-admin-bot wrecked havoc had it been an admin bot? If all the runaway bots were admin bots, what would the overall cleanup cost have been?
  • Re: #2: Now many times in the last 3 years has an administrative account been compromised? How many times has a bot account been compromised? How much overall damage was done? What was the time and effort needed to repair that damage?
  • Now compare those cleanup costs with the time and effort needed to adopt this proposal.
  • Regarding #3, how often do non-admin bot writers have to get the assistance of admins, and how many times are they discouraged because they don't have admin rights to test their bots? Oh, and as for blocking Jimbo Wales, everyone above the level of Admin should have their account blocked for an hour a month just to remind them of what it feels like to be blocked. Admins should be blocked for 5 minutes a month for the same reason. OK just kidding there. Remind me never to delete the main page between March 33rd and March 31st of the next year.
  • davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:26, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Nicely put david. As Peter says above, there is really no need for such splitting, compromised accounts are always bad and some admin using an admin bot to run havoc is not worse than the admin running havoc themselves. And as said, why would we give someone's bot more trust than we give them? If they are not trusted to be admins, I don't see why they should be able to code a bot that is trusted to be (part-)admin. So nice idea but it fixes a problem that does not really exist, so why bother? Regards SoWhy 09:02, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I think the main benefit of doing this proposed splitting for bots would be increasing people's trust and faith in adminbots. I am known to not be a big fan of adminbots; I like to know that people are in charge and not machines (I don't even trust my car's cruise control when driving 14 hours on the freeway). However, if adminbots lost the capability to block, I would trust them a lot more. Useight (talk) 18:03, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I personally find blocking more damaging than deleting, just because I find it more "personal". I was once blocked because I was too new to know the importance of using edit summaries and edited a page that several vandals were editing. I got blocked with the crowd. When I got blocked I was thinking, "Oh man, how do I fix this?" and my mind was racing. I've also had articles deleted and it was far more of a "shrug that off" or "chalk that up to a learning experience". Basically, I think a good editor would be much more prone to walk away from Wikipedia if he was temporarily blocked than if his page was deleted. Whether this is accurate or not is a matter of opinion, but that's the way I see it. And since vandals are a dime a dozen while good editors are like gold, I'd rather have the bot in charge of the item I personally deem less likely to cause good editors to leave. Also, sorry for the delayed response; I'm enjoying the final week of my vacation. Useight (talk) 01:20, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I suppose I'm not against it, I just see it as pointless. A bot runs from a code, so if the code had no mention of Special:BlockIP at all, then there's no way that the bot could possibly block anyone. Despite Skynet, bots on WP genuinely can't think for themselves, so an adminbot will run the scripts it's programmed to follow. With the recent Lustiger Seth RfA, he passed despite there being no technical way of splitting his administrative rights. If one fear adminbots, one might as well fear any admin; but a human administrator is a lot more likely to go nuts than a bot. :) PeterSymonds (talk) 18:08, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Adminbot group

It may be useful to create a unified 'adminbot' usergroup, which has all user rights that current 'bot' and 'sysop' usergroups have (possibly, except 'block'). Accounts can be assigned to this group and removed from it by 'bureaucrats'. Creation of such a group will streamline bot's management. Currently it is rather complicated: a bureaucrat needs to add a bot to both 'bot' and 'sysop' groups. And only a 'steward' can desysop a bot. Ruslik (talk) 19:09, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

As above, why is this necessary? Do we have a situation where the stewards are being inundated with desysop requests for rogue admin bots? No. Do we have a situation where we're being innundated with rogue adminbots using the block function? No. Solution in search of a problem. Happy‑melon 19:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
This is ironic because the first earliest recognized adminbots specialized in blocking. I think the only appeal here is the inherent scariness of the word . — CharlotteWebb 20:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Yeah; I don't really see any need for this. - Rjd0060 (talk) 20:06, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
The only thing about the idea of an adminbot group that I like is that it would be entirely in the hands of the local bureaucrats. But I'm still at a bit of a loss as to why it's necessary... EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:59, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality disputed - why?

Proposal: Add "reason", "bias" or "views" to Template:POV.

What it should look like: 

The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page. (February 2008)
Bias towards          |          Views not adequately represented
Keynesianism          |          Adamsians, Furries, Pastafarians
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

My shot at it as a HTML comment. Add some CSS, should be fine q: --Sigmundur (talk) 19:49, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Rationale: Take Supply-side economics as an example, just saying that neutrality of a totally random article (from a casual viewer's point of view) has been accused as biased doesn't really say much. Is it too liberal/conservative? Rich north / poor south -bias, maybe? Adamsians enraged by the ridiculous claims of the Keynesians, or *gasp*, vice versa? No way to tell. To me, arguing about bias in an article about supply-side economics is like... well... claiming there exists a way in the first place to take a definite stance on such dictionary issues. Just check this list out. Can an article about Puzzle Bobble be biased, honestly?

I see there is indeed a Template:POV-because. It's not documented though, it seems; also, use of "biased" without explanation should be discouraged in general. --Sigmundur (talk) 18:58, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing more annoying than having a bias template added to an article you've worked on, then having to chase up the person who added it to find out what they actually mean. Having said that, I'm not sure if this template will fully solve this problem. It's not always obvious how an article is biased, even if the direction of bias is stated. Is there any way that people adding this template could be made to add an explanation on the talk page? --Helenalex (talk) 23:05, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
None that I can think of, which is why I remove such tags if an explanation isn't provided on the talk page within 24 hours, at most. If an editor doesn't have the courtesy to explain what they mean, I feel no obligation to waste time trying to mindread. - BanyanTree 06:08, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
While we can't make editors add explanations of POV templates, we could enforce a "explain or delete" alternative. Specifically, we could have a bot check to see if an editor had posted to the article talk page within (say) 2 hours of posting a {{POV}} template to an article, and if not, the bot could (a) remove the template, and (b) post a note on the editor's user talk page, mentioning the deletion and saying that the editor is welcome to repost the template if he/she also posts an explanation. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:45, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
I would support such a bot task. - BanyanTree 10:23, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Automatic edit summary without AES arrow

How come all automatic edit summaries have AES arrows except for the automatic edit summary for reverting an edit? I propose that "Reverted edits by Vandal (talk) to last version by Editor" be changed to "←Reverted edits by Vandal (talk) to last version by Editor". -- IRP ☎ 16:50, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Straw poll on 'trial' implementation of FlaggedRevisions

The discussion on the implementation of a 'trial' configuration of FlaggedRevisions on en.wiki has now reached the 'straw poll' stage. All editors are invited to read the proposal and discussion and to participate in the straw poll. Happy‑melon 17:53, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Community announcements

Hi, let me be clear, I do not have any sort of annoucements for the Wikipedia community but Wikipedia has loads. Fund-raising, FlaggedRevs, Wikipedia 1.0, 10 Million articles, et cetera. I searched through the Pump archives and found nothing on this. Users do not sign up because they are not interested. When are you guys going to insist to us users/editors how interesting Wikipedia is by sending some messages to our talk pages. I am aware of Signpost but that is a hefty item. Some stuff such as what I mentioned above obviously transcends asking for a weekly digest. I think you guys who make announcements on the community portal page should collaborate with Arbcom and announce anything of signifigance on a mini barnstar type template with a nice big Community Portal signature. People will edit lots of stuff and rarely if ever look at the portal page and yet some irregular stuff would be nice to hear. Some people will look through half the wiki without even looking at half the main page. If I sign up for a specific project I will get announcements occasionally as applys. I like it and would welcome any announcements from the Community Project as well just because it is interesting. ~ R.T.G 02:04, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I propose that rollback links show up next to edits in the recent changes list. Although we might not be able to determine exactly what every edit looks like simply by looking at the list, if we see something like "(←Replaced content with 'BITCH')", or large, red, bold negative numbers in size change with no edit summary, then, the recent changes patrollers with rollback rights can roll it back faster. -- IRP ☎ 17:51, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

This is bug 9305. Mr.Z-man 18:32, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
Probably better not. It's all too easy to accidently click on a link, and unlike most other "adminny" tools, it works instantly. I don't think Special:Recentchanges is all that useful anyway, what with tools like Huggle all around us. Majorly talk 18:53, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
This could be made an option in the preferences. We just have to determine which option should be used by default. Cenarium (Talk) 19:13, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
Off is my preference :-) Majorly talk 19:15, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this can be something we can add to our monobook? -- IRP ☎ 21:07, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

If this is enabled at all, it should be through a script, rather than a gadget. It's useful in blatant cases (←Replaced content with 'text'). However, a lot of vandalism isn't so blatant, and could lead to a rise in good-faith IP reverting. I agree with what Majorly said about RC-tools, and the speed of RC, as well. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 21:15, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
Almost all gadgets are scripts, Gadgets is just an easier way to turn them on. However, this could potentially be a pretty inefficient script. After the watchlist/rc loads, the script would have to load all the data again from the API to get the rollback token. Mr.Z-man 04:09, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
Large, red, negative changes in page size may also represent the removal of vandalism, even in the absence of an edit summary. Sometimes it's also the result of substantial copyediting. Sometimes a novice editor will inadvertently duplicate a section of the article, and they (or someone else) later fix the error. Please don't rollback these edits on sight at Recentchanges — check the diff first.
Meanwhile, for the 'obvious' bad edits, the conscientious vandalism patroller will click through to the editor's contributions page to check for other, similar vandalism. All the vandal's recent, damaging changes can be rolled back from there, and the vandal can be reported (or blocked) if necessary. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:37, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, the only place you should be rollbacking edits without checking the diff first is on a vandal's contribs page, after you've confirmed a pattern of abuse. On RC? No. EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:54, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
For myself, I tend to check diffs via popups. Pseudomonas(talk) 11:42, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

'Commons' tag on image pages

Another proposal: On our image pages, could we have a small tag at the top of the page saying 'commons', which, when clicked, would lead to the commons' image page (when existent)? Exactly like on commons, where there's a little tag 'en', which leads to the English Wikipedia's page describing the file.

It would act as a compliment to the template automatically generated beneath the image when commons holds the image but we don't (but isn't generated when both we and commons hold an identically named image). It would make it much easier to spot when {{ncd}} needs to be placed, and would save having to scroll to find the template below. - Anxietycello (talk) 06:11, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The template is hardcoded at MediaWiki:Sharedupload. We could perhaps add an icon to the top right (say, the Commons icon) to allow faster acknowledgement that the image resides on Commons, not locally, but that does nothing for spotting when {{ncd}} is appropriate, as you have to scroll down to look at the licensing tag. Not sure what you mean by the "little en tag" that leads to Wikipedia, though... EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:04, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
The more I considered it, the more I thought it was a good enough idea to just be bold and do it. You can see it at File:WTN EVula 187.jpg. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:19, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Cool that looks good, yeah. But it wasn't what I meant. I meant the labels above the window that, when logged out on commons, read "File, Discussion, Edit, History, check usage, find categories, log, purge, en" It was the last "en" tag and its functionality that I had my eyes on. But your way of doing it would work just as well, if you could get the File:Commons-logo.svg to link to the commons' image page (instead of the commons main page)? Anxietycello (talk) 23:53, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
I would love it if the icon was a link to the file's Commons page; however, I couldn't get the magic word to work properly. Adding that tab is outside my admittedly somewhat feeble skills with MediaWiki scripts, so I'll leave it to someone better... EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:22, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

How about replacing the line:
default [[commons:Main Page|This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.]]
with
default [[commons:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.]]
or
default [{{fullurl:commons:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}}} This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.]
Not sure if either would work, my skills are probably even more feeble. Anxietycello (talk) 00:43, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

The first line is similar to what I was trying (PAGENAMEE, and no NAMESPACE), and got me a giant red "Error: invalid title in link at line 3". The second got me "Error: no valid link was found at the end of line 3". EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:57, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
How about:
default [[commons:{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}|This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.]]
If that doesn't work, I'm stumped. Anxietycello (talk) 01:21, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Nope, I think it just doesn't handle magic words. EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:24, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
To use the magic words, you need to switch to the {{#tag: … }} format for the ImageMap, as the <imagemap> tag form doesn't accept magic words or template inputs. I wrote a tutorial for ImageMap a while ago that might be useful. Better yet, use the |link= bit in ordinary image syntax that now exists. Oh, and while you're at it, would you please move the Commons-icon so that it doesn't screw with the featured image icon (e.g. as on File:1Mcolors.png)? {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 16:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Scan uploaded files for malware

I propose that, to decrease the risk of Wikipedia being used to spread malware and getting bad press as a result, all uploaded files in potentially vulnerable formats be scanned for malware (not necessarily at the time of upload) and, though not deleted, tagged if they test positive. MediaWiki could give each file one of the following four notices:

  1. This version of this file last tested negative for malware on {date}. It is of a format that can contain malware, and the scan may not have detected malware that was new on that date.
  2. This version of this file tested positive for malware on {date}. {program} detected the following malware in it: {bulleted list, with links to descriptions}
  3. This version of this file is awaiting a scan for malware. It is of a format that can contain malware.
  4. This file will not be scanned for malware. It is believed to be of a safe format.

A client bot could do this, but it would leave open the possibility of vandalism changing a positive to negative or vice-versa.

NeonMerlin 04:28, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia does not permit uploading executable files. Files are already automatically screened to make sure that their file type matches their extension. —Remember the dot (talk) 05:19, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
No file type accepted by WMF has the potential to contain malware, as far as I know. Dcoetzee 05:20, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
In short, everything would get notice #4. --Carnildo (talk) 06:06, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
PDF has malware capability. — neuro(talk) 08:45, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
So does JPEG, for users of Windows XP and older whose GDI+ library is unpatched. NeonMerlin 02:26, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Scanning uploads for known exploits for render-engine holes &c. - fine, but we shouldn't tell downloaders that we've scanned - it's too much like a guarantee and we should let them make their own arrangements as well. Pseudomonas(talk) 11:34, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Clear Editing Format

The editing function should be true-to form,

including having the same format, font, spacing, linking, and elements as the posted article.

HTML and code is too obscure and not user friendly for many users.

It should be formatted as closer to word processing and normal true-to form text-editing, requiring fewer steps and abstraction in formatting for editing.

==

Also, the toolbar should include: lists, and other functions in edit and formatting, all the way to the end of the bar.

The 'internal link' should allow for specificity, possibly by including a drop-down list of the articles in disambiguation for the term.

==

Other formatting of the editing page can be simplified for ease of use, trueness to form, and versatility in editing.


-AthenaO (talk) 08:01, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

The main problem with doing this is that hosting a Wordpress-style WYSIWYG AJAX editing window like the one that you describe would be substantially more costly than the present one (I assume that's what you're getting at). While there is work in progress to implement just that, it's a long way from completion and would require implementation elsewhere before it gets rolled out here. That said, the language used here is far, far simpler than HTML and implementing what you're asking for would also carry with it substantial drawbacks. The pages at present are, syntactically-speakin', clean, consistent, and relatively simple due to the artificial constraints imposed by requiring manual editing of the internal MediaWiki syntax. Going away from that will result in far more frequent deviations in terms of style and formatting and might undermine the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. MrZaiustalk 08:39, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Until MediaWiki produces such an editor, you can use wikiED, which has pretty much all of the stuff you listed. flaminglawyerc 06:18, 5 January 2009 (UTC)


That looks closer, although still not true-to form. It looks like mostly programmer or abstract creation types would be comfortable with the current editing format. It would be nice to have a clear and more user-friendly editing format in the future.

-AthenaO (talk) 07:47, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's background image

Hi guys! Just wondering, could we possibly improve on our background image (File:Headbg.jpg)? Firstly, would it not be better to have it as a png file, rather than a jpg? Secondly, it seems to have a mauve tinge; wouldn't it be better to have it in greyscale? Worst of all, it seems to have a large amount of square-like shapes, which are probably compression artefacts. For all the effort put into WP:FP, it seems sensible that our second-most visible picture shouldn't contain so many easily fixed faults? Anxietycello (talk) 05:49, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Well I can tell you that it looks pretty awful on a widescreen monitor, so yes I would approve of some enhancements if possible. --.:Alex:. 20:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Working on it. Dendodge TalkContribs 21:46, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Why would PNG be preferred? JPG is generally used for images of real things.... --MZMcBride (talk) 21:53, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Ah - those JPG artefacts are hard to get out without getting rid of the 'pages' effect, and photoshop doesn't like me ATM, so I'll leave it to someone more skilled than myself. Dendodge TalkContribs 22:04, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Headbg on Wikipedia is a smooth, continuous-tone image, so I think JPEG makes sense, even if it's not a photo. I believe the colored tinge is intentional. The compression artifacts are probably more visible at low resolutions, but I think because it's "in the background" they prioritized filesize over appearance. But it loads once and gets cached, so I really think we could afford to up the quality a bit - I'd advise you to track down the person who has the original full-quality image. Dcoetzee 20:13, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Clear Introductions

Wikipedia should be easy to use, and contain clear definitions of each topic.

The introduction of each article should be the clear definition of each topic.


It should be clear, concise, and able to be freestanding. It should be neutral in tone, and give an simple, complete, gramatically positive definition of the topic.


It should answer the 7 journalistic base questions in a clear manner-

who, what, why, when, where, which, how

In a clear, simple, understandable way.


==
It should not include expository or derivative elements, including:
trivia, heavy statistics, overly tedious detail, loaded adjectives, criticism, opinion, negation definitions, or quotes from secondary sources or media,

and ideally be easily interpreted, and able to stand free of derivative definitions, including obscure references, excessive internal linking, or external references.


==

The elements of a concise encyclopedia definition should be clear in the introduction.

Any expository or elaborating elements kept in the body of the article.


It should be more of a light, illuminating the subject,

than a pile of trivial or redundant information crowding the subject.


The introduction should also be topographically flat, user-friendly, easy to grasp, and clear, and not requiring extra foreknowledge about the topic.

In this way, all entries are accessible and understandable to all readers.


To have comprehensiveness of entries is fine, but it should also be user friendly, accessible and lightweight for users who want a definition, not to be intimidated by a mass of information on each topic.

Wikipedia should still be able to function as an encyclopedia, rather than theses on each topic.


==

The proposal is for standard guidelines for Clear Introductions for each topic, functioning as free-standing encyclopedia definitions.


Any expository elements should be relegated to the body of the articles.


In this way, people can use to Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, rather than only a set of theses on each topic.


-AthenaO (talk) 08:02, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

  • "topographically flat" - that's, indeed, "simple, understandable way" :)). Suggestion: take an existing featured article that, in your opinion, has a faulty lead, and present your version. Show how your "topographically flat" approach improves it (or not). NVO (talk) 08:16, 4 January 2009 (UTC)




Clear Introductions

Examples


Apple

New Clear Introduction:

The apple is the fruit of the apple tree. It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits in the world. It grows mainly in temperate regions, in moderate climates.

The tree originated from Central Asia, where the wild ancestor of all modern apples, the wild crab apple, is still found today. The fruit was consumed by humans since the Stone Age, and cultivated in large scale in about 2500 BCE. It is one of the first fruits cultivated for human consumption. There are more than 7,500 known types of apples cultivated in the world today.

Apples are grown mainly in orchards, on the continents of Asia and North America as the main sources of supply. At least 55 million tonnes of apples were grown worldwide in 2005, with a value of about $10 billion. About 35% of this total was produced in China, the leading producer, and 7.5% in the United States, as the second leading worldwide producer. Apples are also grown in other countries, including in Europe.

The common apple (M. sylvestris) is the best known and is commercially the most important temperate fruit in the world today.

==

Original:

The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family Rosaceae. It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits. The tree is small and deciduous, reaching 3 to 12 metres (9.8 to 39 ft) tall, with a broad, often densely twiggy crown.[1] The leaves are alternately arranged simple ovals 5 to 12 cm long and 3–6 centimetres (1.2–2.4 in) broad on a 2 to 5 centimetres (0.79 to 2.0 in) petiole with an acute tip, serrated margin and a slightly downy underside. Blossoms are produced in spring simultaneously with the budding of the leaves. The flowers are white with a pink tinge that gradually fades, five petaled, and 2.5 to 3.5 centimetres (0.98 to 1.4 in) in diameter. The fruit matures in autumn, and is typically 5 to 9 centimetres (2.0 to 3.5 in) diameter. The center of the fruit contains five carpels arranged in a five-point star, each carpel containing one to three seeds.[1]

The tree originated from Central Asia, where its wild ancestor is still found today. There are more than 7,500 known cultivars of apples resulting in range of desired characteristics. Cultivars vary in their yield and the ultimate size of the tree, even when grown on the same rootstock.[2]

At least 55 million tonnes of apples were grown worldwide in 2005, with a value of about $10 billion. China produced about 35% of this total.[3] The United States is the second leading producer, with more than 7.5% of the world production. Turkey, France, Italy and Iran are among the leading apple exporters.

==

From- too much information, to- just enough

==

Gala Apple

New Clear Introduction:

Gala is a type of apple. It originated in New Zealand in the 1920s. It is a cross between two types of apple, the Golden Delicious and Kidd's Orange Red apple. It is now grown in many parts of the world, and is often available year-round in supermarkets.

The gala apple typically has red skin, with light yellow stripes, sometimes with shades of yellow and green, and has a mild and sweet flavor.

It is one of the most widely grown apple varieties in the world, in part because of its uniformity of flavor, durability, and availability year-round. It needs a warm temperate climate to grow best, and can be supplied from growers in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The United States, New Zealand, and Australia are the currently the major producers and exporters of the fruit.

==

Original:

Gala is a cultivar of apple with a mild and sweet flavor.

==

From- too little information, to- just enough

==

Standards for Clear Introductions

The introductions should have uniformity, of information, length, and completeness.

The subject of the article should be able to be understood completely in the introduction only.


One model is a standard encyclopedic definition, which is generally clear and simple, and can be read and understood in less than a minute.

A second standard model is the standard essay, which contains a clear, broad, easy to understand introductory paragraph, which covers the breadth of the topic discussed in the rest of the essay in a complete manner.

Another model for covering a lengthy subject is the standard 250 word abstracts in standard medical and scientific articles, which contain a standard set of information. and the most important and main points of the article. The subject can be completely understood by the abstract only.


There should be a clear set of information in the introduction of each article, so that users can reliably read a complete definition of the subject in the introduction.

The exposition is supplementary, and should not need to be searched in order to get the basic information and comprehension of the topic.


So, the introduction is to be clear and definitive.

All of the information following, in the body of the article, is supplementary and expository.


-AthenaO (talk) 18:36, 4 January 2009 (UTC)


==


The point being

that the introductions need to have a clear format.

They should reliably communicate a complete set of information about the topic.


Too many articles resemble a black hole of expository and elaborated information

and Wikipedia cannot function as a lightweight encyclopedia in this way.


The format needs to be cleaned up so that the introduction can function as a complete definition.

The exposition should be separated into the body of the articles.

This would probably go under the Manual of Style for Introduction or lead formatting.


-AthenaO (talk) 07:27, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Ummm... sounds like you're looking for something like the Simple English Wikipedia, which might be getting closed. Go here to voice your opinion on whether it should be closed or not. flaminglawyerc 03:18, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


No, it's not Simple English Wiki. The introductions of the standard Wikipedia should have a reliable set of information about the topic.


This is to standardize the introductions,

in a clear, understandable way.


Right now, there is too much variation between introductions of articles, and there is not a clear set of information that can be found about each topic in the introduction.

Some are 1 sentence. Some are 8 paragraphs, containing excess elements. Some articles do not have introductions at all.

Many of the articles on Wikipedia are becoming very elaborative, and while it's ok to elaborate on topics, there should still be a clear encyclopedic definition for each topic.


The proposal is to have the introduction of each article, contain a clear, definite set of information about the topic.


-AthenaO (talk) 09:29, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to close Simple English Wikipedia

I don't know if this is old news to everyone, but there is currently (and for a while now) a discussion about closing the Simple English Wikipedia at Meta (meta:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Simple English (2) Wikipedia). Would this be inappropriate to add to Template:Cent, as it isn't directly about EN and it doesn't link to our project? I think it would impact EN were it to close, as it impacts EN being open. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

And not-as-relevant, meta:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Simple English (2) Wiktionary. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:55, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
It was on there, then it acquired an inactivity streak of 4 days. So it got taken off. flaminglawyerc 00:18, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Okay, that makes sense. That must have been where I saw it in the first place. BTW, on an only slightly-related note, there is a proposal to de-sysop Jimbo on Meta. Meta is one crazy-wacky place. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 16:39, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Move all noticeboards to consistent subpages

There has been an update to inputbox that makes searching subpages much more streamlined (see here). I'd like to propose that most (if not all) noticeboards be moved to subpages (or pages with similar prefixes) of a few pages. All of the village pumps and their archives begin with Wikipedia:Village pump, so there's no problem there, and several others are already subpages of WP:AN. I'd like to move the rest to either Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/ or Wikipedia:Noticeboard/. So, for example, Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard would be Wikipedia:Noticeboard/Biographies of living persons. The naming is just reversed, but it makes searching for previous problems worlds-simpler. The idea is that if you encounter an issue with an editor or article (or any noun), you can easily search multiple noticeboards and archives at once to see if there is a previous point of reference. This would be especially useful for the WP:RNBs, the names of which are all over the place. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, take a look at Template:Editabuselinks. And this would only really be helpful for the ones that contain discussions and/or archives. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:26, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

So either nobody cares or nobody has any clue what I'm talking about? Both? I don't need a response, I just wanted to make sure that the idea won't make the 'pedia explode. I'm still going to go the normal route as far as proposing renaming, as I have already proposed with the Community sanction noticeboard and its archives. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:42, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
  • It's not neccesarily a bad idea as long as there's a clear explanation on how such sources should be done and if it's first established that old redirects are kept in place and such moves won't cause significant issues. How many pages would be affected? - Mgm|(talk) 13:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep in mind I am planning on listing these individually for renaming (unless there is overwhelming support here, which at this point seems unlikely), this is just a proposal about the idea, but to start with -

I'd also like to set one up a noticeboard for WP:CSD (or maybe just deletion?), which was suggested on the talk page a month or two ago, as people often have complaints about speedies. I have already moved a few inactive boards to subpages of WP:AN - WP:CSN and WP:PAIN (WP:PAIN doesn't have archives, that was just for cleanup). The searchbar at the top of WP:AN will now search those pages as well. I'd like to set up WP:Noticeboards as a directory, with search bars for the Village pumps, AN, and whatever else. The RNBs are tougher, because many aren't actually noticeboards, but those can be worried about later.

Here is an example that I posted on Technical, like the one at WP:AN -


~ JohnnyMrNinja 14:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia should become a paid web host

Wikipedia should become a paid web host. This means wikipedia won't have to ask for donations anymore. The wikipedia.org site should not promote your own webhost to keep things neutral and you should have a seperate domain name that doesn't sound like wikipedia and doesn't have the word wiki in it.

You should offer dedicated servers and dedicated servers in a cluster using private racks(one or more servers connected together running as one) and shared servers.

The difference between your web host could be that every server has unlimited monthly bandwidth, because wikipedia knows how expensive bandwidth is, so you could maybe build your own underground/underwater cables so you can offer unlimited bandwidth. Danielspencer2 (talk) 01:27, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Wha...? I'm not understanding what you're saying. Are you saying that Wikipedia should start a web hosting company as a side-business to make money? If so, then Wikipedia wouldn't be a non-profit, which would probably repel visitors. And think about it - if Wikipedia started a hosting company, it wouldn't be any different than any of the others out there. It wouldn't make very much money (not as much as they get from donations, anyway). flaminglawyerc 03:14, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you are aware about the profits hosting companies make. a simple google search shows they make millions each year. Danielspencer2 (talk) 23:57, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Just because something makes money doesn't mean that the Wikimedia Foundation should do it. By that logic, they should also open up McDonald's franchises.
Personally, I'd rather they implement op-in ads so that those of us that don't mind seeing them can help bring in more cash. EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:01, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
  • If Wikipedia makes money to hosting or advertising, they probably wouldn't have to ask for donations anymore, but the idea that they should do it implies that asking for donations is a problem which is a false premise.- Mgm|(talk) 13:20, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed on a couple other Wikipedias, IP editors have links at the top right corner of the page, similar to those that logged in users have (see nl:Main Page). These include links to the IP's userpage, talk page, contributions, and the standard login link. I'd like to see this adopted here. 68.220.210.50 (talk) 04:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. Rgoodermote  16:41, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
IIRC, the pages shown to IP editors are uniform so that they may be cached by the Squids. Flatscan (talk) 05:32, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there's a way to do this currently... I'd like for there to be a way to specify a link so that the page that includes the link doesn't show up on the "What links here" page for the page that is linked to. This would be useful for the production of content (e.g. project-level alerts) that could show up in multiple places (e.g., project banners) that contain links to articles, users and other pages. I request this to avoid potential "What links here" clutter.

A couple ideas off the top of my head for how this might work:

  1. Allow a symbol specified at the beginning of a link to turn it into a phantom link, like so: [[&Abraham Lincoln]].
  2. Create an enclosing tag that would render all links within to be phantom, like so: <phantom>[[Abraham Lincoln]] was a U.S. [[President of the United States|President]]</phantom>.

I'm open to other approaches on this, but I think we could eventually have too much "What links here" clutter in some articles at some point if we don't do something. Also I think this would be a useful approach for user pages, sandboxes and the like. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 15:36, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a googlebomb waiting to happen, if vandals can come up with an unobtrusive way to get a load of articles to link using <phantom>[[George W Bush|Penis]]</phantom>, that would prompt the result http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W_Bush to shoot up the rankings of google searches for "penis". It wouldn't be obvious why this was the case, and hiding links from whatlinkshere only clouds the issue further. More generally, comprehensive backlink tables like WhatLinksHere are absolutely integral to the way a wiki works as a cohesive whole: when an article is deleted all backlinks will become redlinks, so they need to be hunted down and delinked or retargetted; this can only be done if there is a complete list available. We could perhaps implement a method to segregate 'maintenance' links from 'real' links, but what distinguishes one from the other? One man's clutter is another's treasure. Happy‑melon 15:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Happy-melon, your critique is sound. Perhaps we could have a way whereby links within particular constructs (e.g., project templates or alerts) don't show up in "What links here", and implementing this would require some kind of protection device that only an admin can set up. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Another thought that just occurred to me is that we could have these phantom/maintenance links not show up in the default "What links here", but add a feature to WLH that says "Show phantom links". Therefore, they're not truly hidden, and googlebombs and the like can be defused. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:56, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Cat: and Catagory: headings

Is it possible to incorporate Cat: and Catagory: headings so when you type Cat:, Catagory: shows up? This would be very useful as many extra pages would be unneccessary. If so, then can someone do this? Thanks! MathCool10 Sign here! 03:52, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I suggest you consolidate this with #new shortcut namespaces above. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 14:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Random article function

Portals could have their own "Random article" functions. So I get a random Arts article, a random Technology article, etc.

See [2].

Franciscrot (talk) 15:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Some portals already do, such as Portal:Middle Earth and this tool which doesn't seem to be linked from Portal:Mathematics for some reason. The difficulty is in creating and maintaining a list of articles falling under the auspices of a given portal. Algebraist 15:48, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Flagged Protection

Flagged protection (WP:FLP) is currently being proposed, if you have time please comment on this proposal, and make changes to it as you see fit. The page also needs some copy-editing as well. Please fill in any missing part in this proposal if you can. Thank you. Y. Ichiro (talk) 03:57, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Introductory Sentence Proposal

I propose to standardize the introductory sentences in all articles across wikipedia into the following format:

[Indefinite/definite article] + [Article title] + [relevant conjugation of the verb ''to be''] + [definition/overview etc.]

(NB: The article may be omitted if it is inappropriate/unnecessary.)

This is an example of a legitimate opening sentence according to my proposal (from the article Apple):

The apple is "the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family Rosaceae."

Here there is the definite article, followed by the article name, followed by the third person singular conjugation of to be (is), which is then followed by the definition. Another example is given below (from the article Guerrilla warfare):

Guerrilla warfare is "the unconventional warfare and combat with which a small group of combatants use mobile tactics (ambushes, raids, etc.) to combat a larger and less mobile formal army."

Here, the article is omitted, but the article name is there, followed by the third person singular conjugation of to be, followed by the definition (which I have put in quotation marks for emphasis). An example of a sentence which does not conform to my proposal is given below (from the article LaRouche criminal trials):

The criminal trials of the LaRouche movement in the mid-1980s stemmed from federal and state investigations into the activities of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche and members of his movement.

Here, it is not immediately clear what "LaRouche criminal trials" are. The use of "stemmed from" gives no immediate indication of the subject, and to me, assumes previous knowledge of the reader. A better format, in line with my proposal, would be:

The LaRouche criminal trials were "a series of trials occuring in the mid-1980s, which stemmed from federal and state investigations into the activities of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche, and members of his movement."

Here, there is the definite article, the article name (stated word for word for no confusion), and then the third person plural past preterite of to be (which is were). Following this, there is the definition (once again in quotation marks for emphasis).

I think that there are too many cases of topics being started vaguely and ambiguously, when what is needed is the formula for the introductory sentence which I have proposed. This is more than just the Use-mention distinction, it's about starting the topic by defining the word-for-word article name. That is what the introductory sentence should be. It should not be jumping into a discussion about X, without first saying "X is ____." Thanks for any feedback and comments on this proposal, and fingers crossed that it passes. --Paaerduag (talk) 06:58, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, many topics are indeed started vaguely and ambiguously. How is formula the best prophylactic or antidote? Incidentally, is a good article about a particular person one that defines that person? Tama1988 (talk) 08:59, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I think that in the case of people, the introductory sentence should outline that which makes the person notable, as 'defining' a person is impossible. But in terms of people, I'd say that pretty much every single article on an individual person already follows the 'formula' (for lack of a better word) that I've given in bold, above. For example, the Michael Jackson article begins thus:
Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958) is an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman.
This sentence follows the 'formula' I gave above. It states the article name (with more detail by adding the middle name, which is fine, although in cases not involving people, I'd say word-for-word transcription of the article name is best), and follows with the correct conjugation of to be, and then an outline of what makes the person notable. My main aim with this proposal isn't about 'defining' as such, so much as it is about a clear and concise introductory sentence using the formula I've given above, which most article employ anyway. It's just a clear "X is ____." I just think that ALL articles should follow this pattern, to maintain consistency across the project. --Paaerduag (talk) 09:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, you could rewrite the start of Ebonics to for example "Ebonics is a term that was..." but I don't see how that would be an improvement. I fully agree with consistency in, say, the use of terms -- anomie may have this meaning or that one, but its meaning shouldn't slither from the one to the other in the course of your paper -- but I don't see how a requirement for consistency helps here. (Actually it seems a bit fetishistic to me.) Must the readers of Wikipedia be so diligently protected against variation? Tama1988 (talk) 09:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, in terms of the Anomie article, it already follows the formula I've made:
Anomie, in contemporary English language, is "a sociological term that signifies in individuals an erosion, diminution or absence of personal norms, standards or values, and increased states of psychological normlessness."
There, the article name is stated, sure there's "in contemporary English language" added, but I'm not against such additions, because overall this already follows, perfectly, my proposal. After the name and the informative addition, the correct conjugation of to be is present, and once again I have put the definition in quotation marks for emphasis. Therefore, the anomie article perfectly conforms to my proposal. We know what 'anomie' is - it is a sociological term. And, never having heard the word before, I immediately knew what it was, after reading the first sentence. Whoever wrote that sentence did a fantastic job :) --Paaerduag (talk) 23:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Sounds like instruction creep to me. And there are some few cases where forms of "to be" are expressly avoided so we do not have to have edit wars over whether something "is" or "was". Anomie⚔ 12:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Let's take the instruction creep page as an example. This is the first sentence:
Instruction creep occurs when instructions increase in size over time until they are unmanageable.
Ok, so I know when 'instruction creep' occurs, but do I know what the hell it is? Nope. For that, I have to read on, which defeats the purpose of the introductory sentence, which should succinctly summarize what the article is about, which is usually done by succinctly summarizing what the subject of the article IS - what IS it?. Of course, I know the 'instruction creep' page isn't a proper article, I merely used it to demonstrate the point I'm trying to get at. Also, I'd appreciate if you can give me an example of an article with an "is"/"was" debate - I want to be able to understand this issue firsthand. Thanks. --Paaerduag (talk) 23:43, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I also want to add that, after reading the instruction creep page, I believe my proposal does follow the KISS prinicpal - It is almost intuitive to start the article in this way. I just wrote a fancy 'formula', but it is really the way almost every single article on wikipedia is started, it is simple, and it makes sense. I think that this simplistic introductory sentence structure should be used on every article, so that right off the bat, people know what the hell the article's subject IS. Not when it occurs, not what it stems from, but what it IS. --Paaerduag (talk) 23:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Ok, so I know when 'instruction creep' occurs, but do I know what the hell it is? Nope.
What? The line you quoted explicitly defines instruction creep. I'm not sure what problem you're seeing here. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 22:52, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
really? Ok, I'll explain by posting the sentence again:
Instruction creep occurs when instructions increase in size over time until they are unmanageable.
Simple question - What is instruction creep? Using ONLY that sentence as the basis for the answer, here goes: Instruction creep is... occurs "when instructions increase in size over time until they are unmanageable". See, I haven't answered the question of what instruction creep IS. I've only answered when it occurs - it occurs "when instructions increase in size over time until they are unmanageable". Sure, I know when it occurs now, but do I know what it is? No, that is answered in the second sentence of the instruction creep article:
It is an insidious disease, originating from ignorance of the KISS principle and resulting in overly complex procedures that are often misunderstood, followed with great irritation, or ignored.
Now I'll ask myself the same question again: what is instruction creep? Answer: Instruction creep is an insidious disease. There, now I know what it is: an insidious disease. How was I supposed to know what it was from the first sentence? Here's a better introductory sentence to the instruction creep article, conforming to my proposal:
Instruction creep is an insidious disease, which occurs when instructions increase in size over time until they are unmanageable.
Do you see where I'm coming from now?--Paaerduag (talk) 01:56, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Not really. Instruction creep is defined by when it occurs, much like saying a millenium is when 1000 years have passed. And, just to be pedantic, adding "insidious" to your example would be a weasel word. ;) — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 03:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the only reason I added "insidious" was because I was being faithful to the actual page, which used the word. Furthermore, as I have stated before, the instruction creep page isn't a proper article page (hence the use of 'insidious' for humorous effect), i merely used it to demonstrate a point. also, your argument that instruction creep is defined by when it occurs is confusing - so what, is instruction creep a unit of time now? Why don't we start the World War II article with: "World War II was 1939-1945."? as you can see, world war II most certainly wasn't 1939-1945, it OCCURED during this time, but you cannot define it as BEING this time. I don't understand where you're coming from.--Paaerduag (talk) 00:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Seems pointless from where I'm standing. WP:LEAD already explains you should properly define the article subject in the lead. Giving specific instructions won't make it easier, especially when most people haven't got a clue what a "definite article" and a "conjugated verb" are. - Mgm|(talk) 11:45, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
are you joking? that's Grade 3 knowledge. and as I have stated previously, that is just a 'fancy' representation of this basic formula: X is ______. Y was ______. I don't see what is so over the top, or 'difficult' about "X is _____". and honestly, people on wikipedia are generally quite intelligent, so I think that "X is _____", "Y are ______", "Z were ______" is an understandable structure to most. This is the 'structure' that I'd say 95% of articles start with, so the other 5% have vague, ambiguous openings, which are best avoided on wikipedia. --Paaerduag (talk) 23:26, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
You'd be surprised. While people may know how a sentence is supposed to be built intuitively the specific grammatical terms tend to be forgotten to older one gets. I'm just afraid it tends towards Wikipedia:Instruction creep. Articles with bad openings tend to be bad on a more global level. Wouldn't it be better than instead of turning good writing in a policy or a guideline, to make a project to directly address the issues in relevant articles. - Mgm|(talk) 10:36, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
At first glance your proposal looks good, I would suggest improving about a hundred ledes along this line, akin to what you did for the LaRouche trials lede above, then sit back and wait for responses. Modify, rinse and repeat. If it catches on, then it will become widespread practice and eventually new WP policy.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 16:30, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a terrible proposal. Rôte formulaic boilerplate is no substitute for writing that is the result of intelligent thought, and the latter most certainly should not be changed to the former. One size most definitely does not fit all in this particular instance. Uncle G (talk) 00:58, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

  • "Writing that is the result of intelligent thought"... perhaps too intelligent, if the introductory sentence doesn't even tell an uninformed reader what the hell the article is about? It's fine for academics to edit wikipedia (great even), but when they start assuming knowledge, and starting article with "X does ___" or "In Physics, X shows ___", people won't know what the hell is happening. I.E. what IS X? I think here you're arguing that vague, ambiguous introductory sentences which demand prior knowledge of the subject are better than clear, concise introductory sentences which inform the previously uninformed reader. I think yours is the terrible proposal.--Paaerduag (talk) 00:39, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
    • That response is nothing but a giant straw man. No-one said anything about academics, for example. What I'm arguing in favour of is writing that is the result of intelligent thought, not straw men of your invention. And what I'm arguing against is your proposal of a one-size-fits all approach that uses rôte formulaic boilerplate, with no thought applied as how best to explain the topic at hand.

      Here's an example of actually putting intelligent thought into things: Qualifiers such as "In X," are necessary for some articles where the same name means different things in different fields, or where the field of knowledge has to be given to ensure that the terminology used in the rest of the introduction has enough context for it to make sense.

      Putting no thought into things, and just using boilerplate formulae for writing, to achieve the not even evidently desirable goal of consistency, is a terrible idea. It's akin to the idea of putting one-size-fits all infoboxes on every article in a given class, again in the name of nothing but consistency. If you want to read several article writers' views on that idea, also applied by rôte by editors who aren't thinking about the specific articles, or even the infoboxes at times, and who are placing consistency ahead of intelligent writing, see User:Geogre/Talk archive 24#Who OWNS what?, User:Geogre/Talk archive 24#Infobox discussion at Philosophy Wikiproject, and the various places linked from them. Uncle G (talk) 02:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

  • I agree (obviously, I suppose) that specifying a particular formulation (a predicate nominative or predicate adjective) for the opening sentence isn't going to be any kind of aid. We all know what would happen next, don't we? A -bot would go through and change every article "per MoS" or some such (like the one designed to stop overlinking of dates and is now simply removing every link of every date, even if it's to 1696 in literature). The closer we get to -bot written articles, the worse we are as an encyclopedia. That said, I agree (obviously, too), that the proposal is grounded in a real need. We have endless editors who don't know what encyclopedic style is. The proper freedom we have is sometimes a mask for gushing by fans of bands and autobiographers. Therefore I suggest that this be a part of WP:LEDE as a suggestion and as a preference for basic articles. Leave it merely as a guide for the inexpert, but never let it rise to the level of standardizing human communication. Geogre (talk) 12:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I agree; formula shouldn't be imposed on writing style, but it can be a useful aid. It must be clear that this is just one acceptable style, so editors never presume that it is required. —Michael Z. 2009-01-06 14:37 z
The suggestion is not a formula for writing style; merely a device to ensure that things are actually defined (at a high level) in the 1st sentence. There is scope for freedom of style in the qualifying clause and the defining text that come before and after the main verb (to be). Unless we're able to list other examples of acceptable 1st sentence constructs, then this one should be at least a strong recommendation. 87.114.146.27 (talk) 20:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

new shortcut namespaces

Wouldn't it be nice to have more shortcut namespaces like WP: and WT:? Currently, the WP: namespace is amazing because it shortens how much you type by just that little bit. It's so much easier to type [[WP:OR]] than to type [[Wikipedia:OR]], just because it's 7 characters shorter. So I propose to make a U: shortcut for the current User: namespace, T: for Talk:, UT: for User talk:, TP: for Template:, TT: for Template talk:, I: / F: for Image: / File:, IT: / FT: for Image talk: / File talk:, etc. (I can't think of any more namespaces; add any more suggestions below) Note that this would also free up some space in signatures (← Look at that! I just used a WP: shortcut! That was so easy!) and pretty much everything else you can think of. flaminglawyerc 06:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Template talk: really is a keyboard-full, it's a good idea. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:55, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately TT:Foo doesn't go where you think it should... :( Happy‑melon 10:43, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
If you want some of these, please go vote for T18452, for P: and T: Happy‑melon 10:46, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
On the other hand, how often do any of those other namespaces need to be linked? For Template, {{tl}} is normally used instead, and "TT" is already taken for Template talk. Any shortcut for categories would really only be useful if it did not require the leading colon. The rest in my experience are so short or need links so infrequently that typing the extra characters is not particularly onerous. Anomie⚔ 15:26, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
I have been wanting this for awhile now, actually. It just makes getting to these pages just that little bit easier. It's annoying have shortcuts for project pages, but not related templates too. It would definitely help though. --.:Alex:. 16:19, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

At DYK we solved this by making the redirect come from T:TDYK instead of TT:DYK. But why a new namespace, the whole thing already works. - Mgm|(talk) 13:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Becuase one time in a million someone is going to click on Special:Random and 'fall out' of the mainspace through that redirect. Plus it (and the other hundred or so T: redirects) are screwing up the pages-in-mainspace stats, bulking out cross-namespace redirect reports like these, and are untidy relics for reusers of our content (people who copy the whole mainspace but only relevant parts of the other namespaces are now left with a hundred broken redirects in their supposedly clean content). Of course none of these issues are crippling, but nor are they inconsequential. It's cleaner, more convenient and generally the Right Thing To Do to separate these out of the mainspace. Happy‑melon 16:02, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
I have another suggestion: use Cat: for Catagory:, as it is shortened for many catagories. MathCool10 Sign here! 05:03, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
the problem with this is that if the devs defined "CAT:" as a synonym for "Category:", then adding [[CAT:WPB]] would cause the page to be categorised into Category:WPB, not just adding a link there. There is currently no way to create an alias to the inline link version, which is what is really required. Happy‑melon 10:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
How about "CG:" for Category (or even just "C:"), and "CT:" for Category talk? Also, what about the MediaWiki and Help namespaces? --.:Alex:. 15:55, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
:Cat: could be used, just like :Catagory: is used. MathCool10 Sign here! 03:29, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Tool to find when (and by whom) specific text was added to an article

I had asked this question at WP:Helpdesk on April 15, 2008:

Is there an easier way to find when a particular phrase was added to an article? I currently look through the history and the only way I know of is to continue clicking "older edit" until I find what I am looking for. Searching the FAQ Archives, I came across the freeware called WhodunitQuery, but I was hoping Wikipedia had its own tool to do this already built in. Any ideas? Thomprod (talk) 22:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
There is nothning built in. I sometimes do a manual (approximate) binary search. For example, if there are 100 edits in the history then first click on number 50 and see if the text is there. If it's there then try the older edit 25 next time, otherwise try the newer edit 75 to narrow it down. And so on, approximately halving the interval of edits each time. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, PrimeHunter. That will speed the process up. Is there somewhere on Wikipedia to suggest future improvements? Thomprod (talk) 12:14, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikiblame is a tool made for just this purpose, though the method Primehunter describes really works quite well and doesn't take very long if the article history is not huge. You can suggest improvements at the village pump proposals.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, Wikiblame is not currently working. DuncanHill (talk) 23:31, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

And so here I am. Such a tool could be a time-saver in trying to determine when (and by whom) specific text was added. Could this be added as a future feature? --Thomprod (talk) 23:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I use PrimeHunter's primeval method and understand nothing about tools, but I've noticed User:Franamax/wpW5 and thought to myself how useful it sounded, if only I wasn't such a technophobe. I'm certain Franamax would be willing to help you. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
You could use Luca de Alfaro's trustwiki - it shows the origin and approximate 'trust' of the segments of articles added by different people. Avruch T 17:06, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Right Click Option - OPEN IN WIKIPEDIA

It would be good if when I was reading a website or document even if when I came across a word or phrase I didn't full understand I could just put my curser on it then Right Click on it and they'd be an OPEN IN WIKIPEDIA option.

<email removed to prevent spam>

And what do you propose we do about this? This page is for proposals to change Wikipedia, not to change your web browser. Algebraist 15:43, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
You have to admit, however, that it's a damn good idea ;-) Tan | 39 15:50, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like something that could be made into a FireFox addon. But that's something to suggest over there. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 16:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Already done - if the search box is set to search wikipedia then the context menu offers that option. Pseudomonas(talk) 12:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Ah yes, that's true. A minor extra step, but it's there. (I usually keep mine to Google so I forget it changes like that)♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 12:37, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
In Opera, there's a "Dictionary" option and a "Encyclopedia" option in the context menu, which can easily be configured (instructions here). -- Jao (talk) 14:02, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

There's a Greasemonkey script called "QuickiWiki" that does something like this. It's available at http://UserScripts.org. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

For any Mac users, I highly recommend iSeek. Very handy application, and with a quick key command, you can search any site you want; I've got mine pretty much permanently set to Wikipedia, and in five actions (select, copy, activate, paste, return) bring up any topic on Wikipedia. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:30, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Watched page scoring

While this proposal is related to the FAQ entry Wikipedia:PEREN#Create a counter of people watching a page, don't reject it out of hand. Hopefully implementation of this idea would be more useful for improving the quality of articles on Wikipedia.

I'm imagining a new special page that displays a rank-order list of articles that have been scored according to a ratio of editing frequency divided by the number of people watching a page. Articles having 1 or less editors could be excluded, as these are likely to be either unwatched pages or new articles under development by one author.

This would show a higher rank for high-activity pages that have few editors. A special page showing such a list would tell me what articles are likely to require attention. High-ranked articles would be watched by 2 or more editors and have sufficient activity to indicate the article is of interest and could use participation from others.

Ideally, such a special page would ultimately accomplish the flattening of the distribution of pages that have few watchers. Any thoughts? ~Amatulić (talk) 01:54, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

In addition to the vandalism argument listed on PEREN, I think enabling this would be a big performance hit, much the same as the hitcounter feature which is also disabled. Also, just because the software returns that a number of people have a page on their watchlist does not mean those editors are active, thus the data offers very little value. ~ TheIntersect 01:34, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
The vandalism argument is irrelevant for this proposal. The score indicates actively edited pages that have few watchers. The active editing is either a protection against vandalism — or an indication of vandalism. There is nothing here to encourage vandalism.
Some special pages are updated periodically, not continuously. If that was the case with this special page, the performance hit would be so minimal that it would not be noticed.
I disagree that the data offers little value. Even if the editors watching the page are inactive, such a ranked list would indicate pages that could use more watchers, without revealing the number of people watching them. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:32, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Save Function

I think that It would be great if Wikipedia added a save function to the user accounts where users would be able to create a list of their favorite articles. They fould be able to create and name folders much like an e-mail account, and then save links to the articles in the folders. This would allow you to come back to an interesting article you come accross when you have more time to read it, or allow you to keep track of articles you want to use as sources for a research project.

For Example I just came accross a really great article on the Dominicans that I would really like to read, but it is quite long and it is 1:30 AM and I don't have the time now. I will never remember to come back to it myself, but If Wikipedia allowed me to "flag" it in my account the next time I log in I could see it and remember that I want to read it.

Thanks for considering this suggestion.

One of the nice things about editing a wiki is that this kind of feature comes for free. If you want a list of articles to read, just make one on your user page. Algebraist 06:43, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
A javascript widget that does the bookmarking with one click would be easier. Not private, though. Del.icio.us might do this better, and not just for Wikipedia. Pseudomonas(talk) 12:14, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
This is a web site; you can just bookmark the article and do any organizing you want within your browser. Karanacs (talk) 22:14, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
You could just use your watchlist if you're not interested in editing--Jac16888 (talk) 22:20, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
You could either bookmark it, add it to your watchlist, or just leave it up in your browser. It's been more than once that I've emailed myself wiki links to check out (either to read or to do work on). EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:26, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Reading this post reminded me that I once hoped for this functionality as well. I whipped up a little user script to do just that. Take a look at User:Twinzor/Wikimark. — Twinzor Say hi! 04:22, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
If the computer you are working from is not your own, you can add the article to your watchlist (and I can't see why that isn't an ideal solution in all cases) or you can email it to yourself, or if you have are using a portable storage device like a memory stick, you can use (say) MSWord to keep links to all your favourite sites. Then you can use these in Internet cafes and so on. Myles325a (talk) 06:16, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Well, I can admit that my watchlist is quite large, and if I find interesting articles I'll want to read later I'd rather add them to a separate page, since browsing through my whole watchlist would be quite a chore. Oh well, I guess it's different for people who know how to keep their watchlists at a reasonable size. :) The script I posted above should make the whole thing a lot simpler though (if you don't mind having everybody be able to read your favourites list). — Twinzor Say hi! 06:53, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
I have 2,920 items on my watchlist; adding an article to my watchlist isn't especially helpful. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 07:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Time for a Content Committee?

Well, happy new year y'all, and since I'm here anyway, allow me to bounce an idea off a few heads.

The Ireland ArbCom case recently came to my attention. This strikes me as a dispute that is extremely important to 1% of our userbase, who are more-or-less evenly divided between the two sides, and mostly irrelevant to the remaining 99%. It also strikes me that we have a whole gallery of this kind of disputes, and that they tend to rage on for months and cause serious burnout in involved people.

We need a way for resolving these issues. Based on the recent ArbCom case, there is now an effort to try and decide it by headcount, but that strikes me as counterproductive, as it rehashes all arguments again, repeatedly, and will probably end up near a 50-50 split between two options.

So I'm thinking, perhaps it's time we make a Content Committee? Basically, a small panel of uninvolved users that makes lasting decisions in this kind of cases. It strikes me as a far better idea to decide that "yes, we will call the article Gdańsk for now", than to keep edit warring over it for a lengthy period of time. It goes without saying that such a committee could not go against WP:NPOV and WP:RS and so forth. But when there are two equally viable answers, it's good to be able to stick with one and stop arguing.

Thoughts please? Should I draw up a solid proposal page or is this too wishful thinking? >Radiant< 22:06, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

There have been several proposals in the past year about the same basic idea. So far as I remember, none of them received consensus, which was a bloody shame really. I agree that we would be much better served if there were some body in addition to ArbCom and MedCom which could be called in for such instances, and wholeheartedly support the idea of creating such a group. I can see a few problems in selecting people for it and other things, but maybe this time they can be worked out. John Carter (talk) 22:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
I strongly oppose the idea of putting a committee in place to rule on content matters. Firstly and basically it goes completely against the way wikipedia has successfully worked till now, by consensus (with polls sometimes unfortunately necessary to determine that consensus). This would increase bureaucracy by setting up another committee and processes for that committee to work with. People would be chosen/supported for the committee based on whether people feel they will support their view (e.g.do you support SPOV? could become a litmus test) - as some sort of election would be necessary if such a committee is to be at all responsive to the community. I also think there would inevitably be creep - the reach of the committee (and the instructions for that committee) would keep expanding as editors keep trying to get them involved in their disagreement. I have no problem with making lasting decisions where necessary such as Gdansk but the community should make those decisions not a committee. Impose a method for the community to make the decision, lay out the arguments for and against the options and bring in the wider community by wide advertising of the discussion but let the community make that decision itself. Davewild (talk) 22:52, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
I could imagine a committee that played some role in really horrible, long-running content disputes. Such a committee should probably have *elected* members, and they should not make the final decisions. They would merely be trusted to frame the issue correctly so that it could be forwarded to some very wide method of getting input from regular editors, as wide as an Arbcom election, or at least a site notice directing people to a central discussion. EdJohnston (talk) 00:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it is correct that there is an attempt to solve the particular dispute that prompted this message by "headcount". I think it unnecessarily distorts the problem by describing it as such: instead, ArbCom instructed us to start discussions on a new page and come up with a process to decide the matter which they would oversee if no result was forthcoming within a certain time-frame. The dicussions have re-started on Talk:Ireland (see the end sections), and you will see that headcounts are not a feature of all the proposed processes.  DDStretch  (talk) 02:50, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
FYI, there's a discussion going on at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Committees. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 22:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

A streamlining committee?

I was reading some of Wikipedia's articles to find the flow to be awkward at times. As Wikipedia is the conglomerate of the knowledge of many, it has also become of the style of many. I think we should have some sort of project to help with streamlining articles; i.e., they simply rewrite the current facts such that the flow of the articles is smoother.

--Heero Kirashami (talk) 18:54, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

You mean Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors? Strike that, I meant Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors. — Twinzor Say hi! 19:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Adding lyrics to song articles

I think that lyrics should be added to songs to help people understand references to lyrics and so that they can understand what the song is about (though the lyrics). I have wondered why this has not already happened, it would be very helpful to many people. (Edit: Which part of that WP:NONFREE does it fall under? And what about if it is an interpretation of the lyrics and is not copied from any website? --Somebody You Do Not Know (talk) 04:57, 6 January 2009 (UTC)) (Edit: Well then at least adding under external links a link to a copy of the lyrics?) --Somebody You Do Not Know (talk) 19:38, 6 January 2009 (UTC) --Somebody You Do Not Know (talk) 04:08, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it has to do with copyright issues — chandler — 04:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, see WP:NONFREE. A lot of public domain songs DO have lyrics, and a lot of songs have part of the lyrics is they are commented on. But asking this is like asking for a recording of it...which obviously isn't going to happen in most cases. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:46, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
For the section of NONFREE that is applicable, see "Unacceptable uses" for text - lyrics are copyrighted so full or significant duplication of them are not allowed. You can use interpretation of lyrics from reliable sources as long as you source them, but you cannot write your own interpretation per original research --MASEM 05:19, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
In respect to your later question, you can link them if the site that you are linking is legally licensed to display the lyrics. Sometimes official band websites host lyrics. Sometimes sites like MTV host lyrics. You can't link to the sites that host them illegally per WP:LINKVIO. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
In some cases I have added a brief description (say one or two sentences) of the lyrics to a song article; as long as your description is manifestly obvious it's not likely to violate Wikipedia:No original research. Any real analysis has to be cited to a reliable source. Dcoetzee 20:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
We can certainly quote short sections of the lyrics a non-free song as long as there is related content, but we cannot present them in their entirety. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 14:38, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
More extensive guidelines are to be found at WP:LYRICS. ww2censor (talk) 05:13, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Mathematics Article comprehension fix

I've noticed that many articles on mathematics seem to be poorly written, and as a result, the only people who understand the article are the people who already understood the concept.

I propose that there be a project to overhaul sections about mathematical topics so that anyone could understand them, no matter their prior knowledge.

  • This notion comes up here every so often, and I have yet to find a single example (save perhaps a few one-sentence stubs). Can you please provide an example of a page on mathematics which can only be understood by people who already understand the concept? Algebraist 01:18, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
  • If one has suggestions for more comprehensible style, the denizens of the Mathematics WikiProject are the best people to talk to, moreover. But the preceding points about specific examples remain nonetheless. Uncle G (talk) 19:02, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Comprhensive list of symbols

I have long thought that we all need a comprehensive list of symbols and their explanations. This is a feature that is missing from nearly all dictionaries, which generally exclude anything that does not begin with an alphabetical character. As a result, many people have no idea what most symbols are called, even though they may have a rich vocabulary and know the meanings of the most abstruse and uncommon words. It seems odd to me that someone can know the meaning of words such as oreochiette, strangury, apophatic, scrim, proleptically, and nosology but have no idea what “&” is called, through there being no readily available reference which explains that this squiggle is called an ampersand and is short for “and”.

I have a theory that a big part of the reason that many people are frightened of math and can’t begin to understand it is simply because they cannot “read” the equations, which are full of what appears to them to be squiggles and weird Masonic-type signs. When people can READ signs they can talk about them (even if just to themselves) and they start to get an intellectual grip on what is involved. If you don’t know HOW the Greek symbols and other math signs are pronounced, then you can’t begin to understand the subject; it becomes completely opaque. For example, most readers would have seen those accents which frequently appear above the letter e in French. But many don’t know what they are called (acute and grave), and fewer know what it is they do. This is directly because one never sees them when flipping through a dictionary.

I would urge that WP gather and organize a comprehensive and easily accessed list of all such signs, arranged by language and function (e.g. logical, chemical, mathematical and so on). How would you know in what order these signs should be listed? Well, how do the Chinese organize THEIR dictionaries and phone books. You use the simplest elements first and then the more complex. And of course their should be a REVERSE alphabetical listing, so that you can access the signs by their proper names. An article like this would could become a valuable resource. This is one of my many hobby horses, so discussion is warmly invitedMyles325a (talk) 07:29, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Template-based solution to reference clutter

A perennial complaint by editors is the amount of space that references occupy in articles. Also, anything that simplifies adding references can only be a good thing.

Most journal articles contain a unique identifier in the form of a DOI or PMID. My bot Citation bot is trained to complete citation templates from only a DOI - it can expand something of the form {{citation|doi=10.1010/asiohu23}} into a fully fledged reference. However, this requires manual intevention (and knowledge of the Citation bot) and can leave a large imprint in an article. I often find myself referring to the same article many times; if I wish to tweak the reference (for example, adding a free access URL) this involves editing every page.

I have come up with a solution that could automate the process.

In the article, a user would enter something along the lines of <ref>{{doi/10.1010/ashi8ub}}</ref>. If the article in question had already been referenced elsewhere, it will of course automatically appear in its entirety in the reference list. If not, Citation bot will spring into action, look up the article's details at Crossref, and create the new template page. The full reference will appear in the article immediately.

Does anyone envision either any problems with this process, or any ways it can be improved?

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:59, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

There might be a problem with creating a new template subpage for every one of the god-knows-how-many DOI articles we reference in articles. While I think the bot is an excellent idea and will considerably improve the consistency of our references, the problem of references cluttering up the edit window is not one that will be resolved in this fashion. That will require a radical overhaul of the edit interface in the underlying MediaWiki codebase. Happy‑melon 12:21, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Now I think about it I recall such a concern thwarting a similar project I instigated some time back. However, since some templates are used more than once, this approach will decrease the overall size of WP. As many edits on my watchlist involve tweaks to references by bot or human, I suspect that it will decrease the total number of edits required (which as I understand it is a resource consumer). But all this boils down to worrying about performance - until someone provides numbers to demonstrate the magnitude of the performance issue that these extra pages will produce, informed argument over this point is impossible. I should also add that no change to the edit interface will be necessary. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
I partially solved this problem (for myself, at least) when I created {{Source list}} template. See example in Rings of Neptune article. Some references are on subpages of {{Source list}}. Ruslik (talk) 13:45, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
A neat idea, but with problems: it's not scalable (there are probably lots of other references which one may wish to call 'Smith1986') and it increases editor workload (a new source must be placed in two locations, and can't just be put in when editing one section). Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:49, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Naming scheme can be improved; and a bot can create source lists by moving references from the text to Source list templates (and to subpages if necessary). Ruslik (talk) 20:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Help: namespace

I was on the very edge of filing Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Help: namespace, but I think it would be more productive to come here instead. I think it's time to take a serious look at the state of our Help: namespace, and to ask how we expect it to develop. As best I can determine, Help: has never really had very much enthusiasm in its construction and development; in the beginning, content was assembled on meta-wiki and copied here by a bot on a regular basis; a complicated set of templates allowed the inclusion of site-specific content. That update cycle stopped many years ago, and the content has very much languished ever since. More recently, the website http://www.mediawiki.org was created by the WMF to provide documentation and support for MediaWiki: this includes a public-domain Help: namespace that it intended to hold site-neutral help content on the MediaWiki interface. While the development has progressed fairly slowly, that content is now building up, and is in many cases better than our own content: compare mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions with our old version.

There are, as I see it, three ways to proceed with our Help: interface in light of this increasingly mature content available at mediawiki.org. Firstly, of course, we could ignore it, and rely on our own help pages to document MediaWiki's features. However, there's no evidence that there is any of the enthusiasm required to actually build and maintain such pages. Or, we could try and interface with mediawiki.org and derive our help content from their PD help.

There are various means by which we could do this. We could just create something like Portal:Help that explains the situation (that help is available on an external site, which is allied with, but not affiliated to, en.wiki) and has a big fat interwiki link to pipe people there, and abandon our own Help: namespace altogether. We could try and get a bot to restart the copying-pages-from-the-main-wiki process (not something I would advocate, too fragile). We could ask for interwiki redirects to be enabled to mediawiki.org. We could alternatively ask for interwiki transclusion to be enabled from mediawiki.org, so we can just put {{mw:Help:Foo}} on our help pages and get a dynamic copy of the content immediately available. That would be my personal preference, but there might be performance issues that the devs will bite us with. Alternatively, we could hack up a JavaScript implementation to do the same thing, putting the performance hit onto the users' browsers.

I think the only thing we can't do is allow our Help: namespace to continue in the diabolical state it's currently in. Your thoughts, please. Happy‑melon 13:08, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I edit Help pages whenever I am trying to do something and discover that the help is inadequate. I think that we should have a method of copying help from elsewhere, and customising it using templates, much like the existing system. I don't care whether the master copy is on mw: or on meta:, and I don't care whether the copying is done by transclusion or by a bot or by hand, but the copying should be more frequent than it has been recently. We certainly should not rely on javascript in the user's browser — people who disable javascript, or use non-mainstream browsers, should not be denied help. By the way, the 3 December 2008 version of Help:ParserFunctions is better in some respects than the 12 January 2009 version of mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions; for example, it has the functions sorted alphabetically, and it has more examples. —AlanBarrett (talk) 14:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Parser function extension currently supports ln and trigonometric functions. However 3 December version does not mention them. Ruslik (talk) 14:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
There are two types of help pages. The first type is about general help (see Help:Contents and its subpages, which are not so bad). The second type is help pages about MediaWiki, which are problematic. I prefer replacing the second type pages with MediaWiki analogs. It may be better to "project" help namespace directly onto mediawiki.org, so any link like Help:foo would directly lead to an appropriate MediaWiki page (if the local page does not exist). Ruslik (talk) 15:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

User preference for US or UK english spellings

A form of disruptive editing I frequently encounter is the 'correction' of an article from British to US english, or vice versa. I know that the spelling 'color' galls many Brits and Canadians, and am sure that Americans find the extra u equally annoying.

Without software changes, it would be possible to implement a template-based solution so that any user could opt to view Wikipedia in their own dialect. It would work as follows:

  • Instances of words that should be translated will be included in a template, for instance {{useng|color}}
  • The template will by default display the text as typed - "color"
  • If a user has set a preferred dialect, they will see it as they desire - e.g. "colour".

The setting of the preference would involve copying one line of text to the user CSS; with consensus, it would be easy to add a box to the 'gadgets' page.

Without getting into the technical details of how this would be implemented, I would be interested to know whether people think that it is a good idea to allow people to see words in their local dialect if they wish to.

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 00:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

See previous discussion for an array of reasons not to do this. Algebraist 00:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
No no no. This will turn into its own WP:Requests for arbitration/Date unlinking, which has involved 10+ ANI threads, 2 RfCs, and countless other arguments over the last 6 months.
Please don't make us do that again :( NuclearWarfare (Talk) 00:41, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I hereby table this proposal. =) —kurykh 01:33, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The only relevant comment, alas, seems to be the one which I can find no argument against - the 'waste of system resources'. On that sad note hopefully no more editors will waste their own resources considering this post! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 01:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Technical note: you can't do this using cascading style sheets. CSS is for styling text, and the HTML has to degrade gracefully if the CSS doesn't work. CSS is not a content management system.
Having said that, I'm against this. It would consume a lot of resources and be disruptive to editing (way more than the annoying but minor “corrections” being done). It couldn't work reliably, and only very few editors would be able to actually write using both American and British idioms. If you really want to please Canadian editors, that means three sets of spelling. And why leave out the Australians, South Africans and Indians?
And frankly, what is the benefit for all this cost? —Michael Z. 2009-01-13 03:08 z

Lighthouse notability

We have hundreds of articles on lighthouses, but there is no notability guideline for them. The current policy seems to be that simply being a lighthouse makes it notable. There's obviously some hobbyist niche that absolutely adores lighthouses, but do we really believe that every lighthouse in the world in inherently notable enough for an article? Most of these lighthouse articles look good, but only consist of technical information and a section on its (local) history. Your grandfather's barn is not notable just because you know its history and dimensions. --Remurmur (talk) 19:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm inclined to think that a functioning manned lighthouse, one that was functioning as a manned lighthouse until the late 20th century, or a lighthouse that has been maintained or restored as a museum or tourist attraction rather than left to rot or be dismantled, very likely meets general notability requirements, even if it's only because there are likely to be significant-sized blurbs about them multiple in tourist-oriented books. If they were decommissioned or automated in the very late-20th century or 21st century, then there was very likely significant press coverage when they were decommissioned or automated. Others might meet notability requirements, either as lighthouses, as landmarks, or for one or more events that happened near there. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:52, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
There is a proposed guideline at Wikipedia:Notability (buildings, structures, and landmarks) that would cover lighthouses. I would also consider any lighthouse that is a registered historical place to be notable. The key here is that notability must be shown outside of the local area. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 23:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
If notability must be shown outside of the local area then the formal criterion of registered historic place will only apply to jurisdictions where designations are awarded on the national (federal) level. Anyway, national practices differ, one government or municipality will issue a hundred of landmark certificates where another would issue none. NVO (talk) 08:33, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
  • They don't need any special treatment (what current policy did you refer to? they just don't attract as much attention as Japanese cartoons). If it ain't broke... and if it is, either fix or AFD, one at a time. A special policy extension might be justified for high-traffic, high-exposure topics, but here it's not called for. The sad story of failed guidelines on buildings, transportation etc. has shown that they aren't needed (compare page traffic on the guideline cited above with, for example, WP:ATHLETE). NVO (talk) 08:24, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't think we need separate rules for lighthouses. We can apply current building guidelines and WP:V or WP:GNG to it. - Mgm|(talk) 13:28, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I haven't yet seen an AFD for a lighthouse, so the default notability status we have now doesn't seem to bother anyone sufficiently. Mangoe (talk) 22:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

new feature

hello, i jus had a suggestion regarding the wikipedia articles. I thought it would be a good idea to add a feature that would allow people to add a slideshow of pictures instead of one still picture in their articles. for example in this article --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_house , there is only one picture of the white house (South façade of the White House) ,by using this feature, editors can upload several pictures of the white house and the pictures would change every few seconds showing several different views of the white house in the same little box. Another thing that can be done is allowing editors to upload images that can create a 360 degree view of something. for example the inside of the white house can be shown in 360 degree view (rotateable) on the article page in a small box. I think this will take wikipedia to the next level. thanks.

It has it's uses for things like molecular structure but would be quite a trick to implement it in a free software enviroment.Geni 04:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Unless they are very well done changeing images next to text you want to read tend to be intensly anoying.Geni 04:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Noticeboard for people seeking template help?

Is there a centralized place for people who know about coding and using templates, where users looking for help can find an experienced user? For example, we have Wikipedia:Graphic Lab for images and WP:BOTR for bots, and yada yada...is there anything like that where people who are having trouble with a template (either people trying to code a template, or people using one in an article or something and having problems) to get help? Maybe there already is, and if so you can ignore this (but please let me know where that place is).... If not, though, would it be helpful to start some sort of noticeboard, project, or what-have-you, where people needing template help can easily find experienced template people?

I know I can often directly contact a user that I know from personal experience to be more template-savvy than I, but that's not always the case, especially for users who are new to WP or new to playing around with templates. And a lot of templates aren't watched much, so requests for help at the template talk page aren't always useful (I posted something at Template talk:Royal Family of Bhutan about two months ago and haven't gotten a response, for example). So maybe a noticeboard for people seeking template help would be useful, if you guys feel there is enough demand for such a thing and enough template-savvy people to participate in it. Any thoughts? Politizer talk/contribs 15:44, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) works just fine for template questions. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
There's also Wikipedia:Requested templates. Eklipse (talk) 18:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Also, for infoboxes, there's Wikipedia:List of infoboxes/Proposed which I try and help out at. David Ruben Talk 21:31, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
And Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes. You're spoiled for choice! Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Citizendium Comparison

Would be interesting to see if a third party could do a blind review a WP and Citizendium article of the highest quality on the same topic, blind. Has this already been done? Balonkey (talk) 04:22, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's been done: at least, I've never heard of such a study. In any event, the sample size would be very small: my quick look-over returned only two articles that are both "featured" here and "approved" there: Joan of Arc and DNA. I'd imagine that someone seriously considering a comparison would do a more eliminative search, but I don't think that a comparison is practical at this point, a small sample makes the results more or less useless for anything but bragging rights. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 06:29, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Adding a new protection level

I propose that we add a new protection level, that would allow any user to edit, but no anonymous users to edit. In order to solve this problem, all that would be needed is for the sysadmins to edit $wgRestrictionLevels, and add 'user' to the list. The benefit of this would be to prevent IPs !voting at RFA and to prevent IPs posting requests at CHU. If this gains consensus, I'll fill out a bug report. What do others think? Xclamation point 03:17, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Since when have IP's been a major problem at RFA and CHU? Semi-prot stops IP's and non-autoconfirmed editors. If we added a protection level that allowed non-autoconfirmed editors but not IP's, they would simply sign up, it takes minutes--Jac16888 (talk) 03:26, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, I would be surprized if there were IP users who want to do something as recondite as posting on an RfA who would not be willing to create an account to do it. Algebraist 03:34, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Actually, there is no rule that says IP's can't post comments and discuss at RFA's, they simply can't place numerical !votes, the scope for abuse would be too great--Jac16888 (talk) 03:40, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Oppose. This won't solve anything and will only cause users to simply create an account, which leads to more throw-away and/or indefinitely blocked accounts. - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Oppose. Jimbo Wales said it himself: the childish urge to vandalize pages is reduced when the user has to wait for those extra four days to edit under an auto-confirmed account. Perhaps there could be a new protection level for a specific purpose, but in any case here, it looks like the negative impact of letting ips immediately get through out weighs the positives. ~ Troy (talk) 02:02, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Questionnaire/2009

Feel free to hop in and help develop this page. -- Cat chi? 08:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

New Vandalism Template

Hello,

I had an idea of creating a new template that could be used in huggle/twinkle. Maybe a minority of users who vandalize Wikipedia just do it because they think its funny so maybe we could make a template that says:

"Thank you for trying to use Humour on Wikipedia. Unfortunately we are here to build an Encyclopdeia. You may wish to direct your efforts here "

Many thanks DFS454 (talk) 13:48, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

There's an existing template set {{uw-joke}} which is for similar use. Plus your final sentence has ambiguous meaning. It could mean you can edit the Uncyclopedia article if you wish. Or it could mean that Uncyclopedia is part of Wikipedia family and we recommend you consider that site for such joke edits. LeaveSleaves 13:57, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Oops , I means edit at Uncyclopedia.org DFS454 (talk) 14:00, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Okay, but why would we ask editors here to go edit at Uncyclopedia.org? Our motive should be to increase their interest in sensibly editing here. LeaveSleaves 14:09, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it's fair or prudent to tell vandalise to vandlaise someone else's site.
See Wikipedia_talk:Vandalism#Policy_change. I've suggested a tougher policy towards vandals, with tougher messages. --Philcha (talk) 15:04, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
How about if people can vent their political frustrations etc on that site and make constructive contributions here. I here what you are saying but some of the "vandalism " is a protest because they don't like the article's subject in question. I think this could work if there was awareness about that site DFS454 (talk) 19:02, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Introducing a wikipedia Special:Random-function that is split up into subjects?

I have for a little while been using the very nice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

link-page of wikipedia as my starting page. I was wondering if it would be possible to implement a function that would 'split up' this page into subcategories or subjects; so that when you entered a link, say Special:Random/[subject X], you would be able to get ie. articles only related to the subject 'mathematics' or 'culture'?

To me, that would greatly improve the value of the wikipedia Special:Random feature.

Knowledgelover121 (talk) 20:39, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, here's one for mathematics, but in general this is quite difficult to do; that maths one requires a fair amount of bot and human work just to keep it more-or-less up to date. Algebraist 20:45, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Algebraist, thank you very much for your swift response and for your link to the random mathematics link which I didn't know about. Knowledgelover121 (talk) 20:53, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Fix the image size mess

MOS:IMAGES states "As a rule, images should not be forced to a fixed size". It also states that size-forcing is appropriate for lead images and that "Lead images, which should usually be no larger than 300 pixels". The trouble as I see it is that every wikiproject has a different policy on the InfoBox/Lead/Taxobox image size. As a user with a number of large monitors, I have my default thumbnail size set to 300px. This means that in most cases the lead images are smaller than the following images in an article. I propose a modification to the image syntax allowing something along the lines of [[File:example.jpg|thumb|large]] so that these images are consistent. The size of large images would then be specified by user preference (perhaps ranging from 180-450px). Doing this would make wikipedia more mobile device friendly, and reduce work on pages in the future (as monitor size and resolution climbs). Specifying a well defined "large" image size would also bring consistency to the lead images across the project and give a more professional look. Noodle snacks (talk) 02:27, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Image sizing is a thorny issue. Noodle snacks's proposal assumes that images should only be shown at one or two standard sizes. Size forcing (specification of sizes by editors) has been been discussed several times, most recently in Nov 2008 (Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_105#Forced_v_unforced_image_sizes_.28again.29), and there was no consensus either way about image size-forcing. This is a perenial question, note "again" in the title of thatdiscussion thread. --Philcha (talk) 18:12, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Coordinates format

Hello, I have traveled from WikiProject Geographical coordinates, where we seek wider opinions on whether {{coord}} should offer a N/S/E/W labeled format for decimal coordinates (example: 43.12° N 79.34° W) either as an option or by default, or if the existing unlabeled format (example: 43°07′N 79°20′W / 43.12°N 79.34°W / 43.12; -79.34) is sufficient. Please comment there if you have an opinion on this. Thanks! --GregU (talk) 18:12, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

SFW/NSFW Tags?

I think it would be benificial for all to have a way of tagging articles or images as safe for work, or not safe for work. Doesn't have to be these tags specifically, perhaps your own rating system. The reson I post here first instead of bugzilla as I don't know what exactly this would entail. The idea is steming from a desire to see complete articles, images and all, from work. Currently, my place of employment block images due to some of the odd things you can look up that might be offensive, etc. This takes a great deal from Wikipedia, and can be useful in downtimes at certain industry jobs, and this can be a life saver in situations AT work. Demortes (talk) 16:37, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

If someone doesn't know that Blowjob isn't safe for work, that's their fault. We don't need to cushion the blow, so to speak, for the readers. If you shouldn't be viewing Wikipedia content at work, well... don't. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:57, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
However, the problem isn't that it isn't appropriate, the problem it is, but images arn't allowed due to the offensive items that might be depicted. I'm all for punishing those idiots who browse inappropriate things at work, I just want to give my IT a way of filtering it out, so they don't have to block everything. Demortes (talk) 18:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Who would be the judge? In some workplaces or countries, photos of women in short skirts, the written name of God, the formula for gunpowder, a Swastika, or a depiction of Mohammed may be “not safe for work” or even illegal to display or view. This proposal is flirting with WP:CENSOR. —Michael Z. 2009-01-12 18:37 z
Censoring certain images would not be bad, if it were an option that an editor could self-enable. It is currently possible to add CSS to disable the images entirely or on any certain page. A school could create a list of articles they consider objectionable and disable the images on those pages (I'm surprised such lists aren't already being published). I think it would be technically feasible to tag images with different content levels via CSS and add a gadget to check which types of images can be displayed or apply CSS filters. I don't see how allowing self-censorship would disrupt the aims of Wikipedia. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 19:12, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
That is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not saying WP to censor, I'm saying give the tools for workplaces, schools and other applicable locations the means to, don't do it for them. This would at least make life easier for many, and perhaps open enlightenment to more. Demortes (talk) 19:25, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
There's plenty of such software available that many schools and workplaces already use, they also have the benefit of applying to more than 1 website. I don't see why we should create extra work for our contributors and developers to work on something that's not really helpful to our mission (and arguably contrary to it). Mr.Z-man 19:34, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Really? I would like to know what kind of software, as I could test, and propose the addition to the IT infrastructure. To continue on this path, I find no need to continue this part of the discussion on the village pump, so leave me a msg on my talk page or something. I'll have to google it as well, but my main concern is accuracy and cost.
There are also derived projects, like Wikipedia for Schools. —Michael Z. 2009-01-12 20:57 z
I looked into third partly tools for doing this recently. There are no open source solutions that run on windows that would be really effective (you can short of get addblocker stuff to do it). For linux dansguardian might be able to do it but I haven't fully investigated.Geni 04:28, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
With the exception of Special:Random, what article are you concerned that people will look up at work for legitimate work purposes but will unexpectedly turn out not to be appropriate?
There is no one page that is causing problems. I'm just sick and tired of looking at wikipedia without images that could help me in my tech support job. I was hoping to come up with a solution I can present to my IT, but looks like ratings provided by Wikipedia is unlikely. Demortes (talk) 16:18, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
If there is a specific article that seems like it should be serious, but has suprise sexual content, then perhaps a disambig page is called for? APL (talk) 22:31, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
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