Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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Split proposal at Wikipedia talk:Missing Wikipedians[edit]

There is a split proposal at Wikipedia talk:Missing Wikipedians § Split proposal that may be of interest to editors. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten[meow] 11:49, 3 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Add nowrap for para[edit]

Wrong venue. Copied from the edit request at Template talk:Para#Add nowrap for para, which was rejected as "consensus required". April 2023 attempt to seek said consensus received no response. That system leaves a lot to be desired.

I used {{para}} and got a line break after the pipe character. This looked ridiculous and makes little sense. I assume other line breaks would be possible, such as after a hyphen in the parameter name. Adding {{nowrap}} or equivalent would make far more sense than requiring editors to code, e.g., {{nowrap|{{para|archive-url}}}}. While Note 2 below the table at "General-purpose formatting" speaks of nowrap options, I'm at a loss to see how they help my situation. In any event, I don't see how automatic, unconditional nowrap for all uses of {{para}} could be the slightest bit controversial. At the very least, an option could be added to suppress the default of nowrap for cases where horizontal space is limited, such as in tables.

See also Template talk:Para#no line-breaks in output, where a request for this was ignored (or never seen) 13 months ago. As to If the proposed edit might be controversial, discuss it on the protected page's talk page before using this template., well, we've seen how effective that was. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:53, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's unfortunate that the edit request was declined, when this seems like a fairly straightforward improvement and there seems to be a silent consensus to implement. I will plan to implement unless there are objections (courtesy pinging @Redrose64 as edit request responder). (Yes, coming here for this is a little POINTy, but the frustration at the edit request is understandable, and in any case let's not get bogged down by process concerns. Next time, though, I'd suggest replying to or talk page messaging the edit request responder.) Sdkb talk 22:05, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I did reply to Rose, with a ping, a mere four minutes after her rejection. When she hadn't replied after another 25 minutes, I surmised that she wasn't going to. Mea culpa: If I had checked her contribs, I would've seen that she hadn't made an edit after the rejection, so it's likely she left the site during those four minutes. Now self-flagellating for one hour. In any case, Rose doesn't change her mind much in my experience; she's that good.
I fail to see any POINTiness here; I'm just playing the cards I was dealt. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:22, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm generally against adding nowrap, and would rather see it's use curtailed. It's causes endless formatting issues for those not using desktop screens, where the auto-formatter would do a better job. Nor do I see how not having 'para' wrap is an improvement, wrapping won't lead to any misunderstanding and may not even be wrapped on different screen aspects. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 01:46, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From a usability standpoint, |archive-url= should all be on one line, not wrapped, because "archive-url" is a single concept (the parameter name) and should not be split in any way, despite the hyphen. I do not find broader ideological opposition to nowrap persuasive if it is applied reflexively to this circumstance without considering the particular situation here. I would find examples of instances in which parameters should be wrapped much more persuasive. Sdkb talk 02:36, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It would be helpful to hear from TheDJ, who appears to have disabled nowrapping after it had been in place for about 11 years. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:04, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Applying nowrap to anything longer than a word is really bad practice and causes many issues for mobile, and situations where width is restricted. if you are going to apply it, apply it just to to the param= part, not to values (which can be giant urls) and definitely not to the entire line. A lot has changed in 11 years. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:30, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One of the problems here is that people give examples of common usages of this template. The problem is that those are NOT the only usages of the template. Even the doc page of the template itself has examples of pretty long values that basically form an entire sentence. Making an entire line not wrap is bad. Htm has to be flexible for many situations and if you set a very strict css option on a very generic template block that has very differing uses, you will run into problems like this. Solutions are to make the css more targeted (which in this case means being more strict about what the parameters can be, instead of just wrapping the template around a block of arbitrary text) or applying the css more targeted. |archive-url= for instance is ok.it just requires more thought by those writing the uses. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:57, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Applying it only to the param= part sounds reasonable. Sdkb talk 14:14, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be happy with that, provided it included the pipe character (that was the case that brought me here). ―Mandruss ☎ 16:29, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@TheDJ: Looks like a limited-participation agreement, but I don't see any edit activity to the template. And this is due to fall off the page in three days. At the least, this comment will keep it for another nine. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:01, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for another nine days. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:48, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support nowrapping the parameter-name, per Sdkb. The left side of param=value is a specific string of characters, not ordinary text, so it's best that it stays unified to it can be recognized or discussed correctly. DMacks (talk) 20:54, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another job aid proposal, this time with AI[edit]

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Joe Roe (talk • contribs) 07:32, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features § Should English Wikipedia enable the Suggested Links newcomer task?[edit]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features § Should English Wikipedia enable the Suggested Links newcomer task?. Sdkb talk 21:13, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Mythological cycle[edit]

[[Category:Mythological cycle]] is written with the lowercase "cycle" even though the main article of the category is capitalized as Mythological Cycle. Should the title of the category be capitalized like [[Category:Cycle of the Kings]], [[Category:Fenian Cycle]], and [[Category:Ulster Cycle]]? YukaSylvie (talk) 01:12, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@YukaSylvie That looks like an uncontroversial pagemove to me. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 13:48, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Political userboxes (especially PIA)[edit]

The recent pages Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:AtikaAtikawa/Userboxes/Anti-israeli apartheid and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:AtikaAtikawa/Userboxes/Antizionist have involved contentious discussion, where commenters have suggested deleting other PIA-related userboxes. Political userboxes in contentious areas, especially ones involving war and violence, have strong potential to antagonize other users and threaten Wikipedia's values of civility, collaboration and discussion. This may outweigh the value of users' political self-expression as Wikipedia is not a forum. In the case of PIA, userboxes open an avenue for unproductive controversy that does not improve PIA articles by users who are blocked from editing them by ECR. Do you believe that such controversial userboxes are a problem? If so, would you consider broader policy restrictions on userboxes that make politically controversial statements about PIA? Air on White (talk) 00:47, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think they may still have to be argued on a case by case basis. One problem may be that some box is "anti" or against something, rather than for something else. eg instead of anti-zionist, they could have said, the user wants only Arabs in Israel. Instead of Anti-israeli apartheid it could have said the user wants one joint Israeli-Palestinian state, and then been acceptable. So MFD probably has to consider the name and the content of each box. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:06, 27 May 2024 (UTC) edited Air on White (talk) 03:27, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that case-by-case evaluation makes sense, but I don't think that only positive statements will help. Remember the scandal about the editor who made a positive statement that he "respected" Hitler? Or the drama over the positive statement that the editor believed marriage should involve one man and one woman? "I positively affirm that I believe it would be best if your whole nation ceased existing" is not the kind of statement that builds up the community. It is the kind of statement that makes individuals feel excluded and rejected.
On the other hand, there are some statements that might be acceptable. The community would probably not object to more generic statements like "I'm anti-genocide" or "I support peace in the Middle East". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:16, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This has been discussed ad nauseam, and I'll say what I've been saying: using userspace to make politically charged statements violates WP:SOAPBOX, WP:NOTBLOG, and WP:UPNOT, and it calls into question whether an editor is capable of complying with WP:NPOV. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:59, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well the bias would be recorded on the userpage, and is disclosed, so NPOV has something to check. Undisclosed POV pushing could be worse. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:01, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it gives us information about how biased an editor might be, but I still think it would hurt the community overall. We have to be able to work together. Sometimes that means not posting messages that you wish people would die, or that countries would fail. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:18, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Agree with Graeme in that respect, there may be reasons to avoid userboxes taking clear positions on X and Y, but a userbox is, at most, a symptom of NPOV issues. CMD (talk) 03:19, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My view, having spent years watching the ARBPIA topic area, is that this is easily resolved by not caring about PIA-related userboxes people put on their user page that no one needs to look at or spend any time thinking about (unless and until an editor does something ANI/AE-report worthy in terms of content editing or their interactions with other editors).
  • It could be argued that to care about them and draw attention to them can itself be 'unproductive and may antagonize other users and threaten Wikipedia's values of civility, collaboration and discussion' via something resembling the Streisand effect.
  • Or they can be viewed as a signal in all the noise, a useful public declaration of an editor's biases that may influence their editing.
  • If someone is deeply offended by an Israel flag on my page, or something about how great the IDF are, or my agreement with human rights organizations' assessments of Israel or Palestine, and such-like, I wonder why they are editing in the ARBPIA topic area. I wonder if they have read Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel_articles#Editors_counselled and should do something else for a while.
  • The PIA topic area is blessed with a diverse set of editors/drive-by visitors ranging from infuriatingly dumb piece of shit fire-starter motherfuckers to very experienced and knowledgeable editors who (want/try to) focus on content. Those experienced editors all have biases that influence their content edits and talk page comments in various ways that can and do 'antagonize other users and threaten Wikipedia's values of civility, collaboration and discussion' on an almost daily basis. It's okay, the PIA topic area is not that brittle.
  • For interest (or not), many years ago I added some photos from an Israeli human rights organization to the top of my talk page, arranged in the form of a comic strip. It is deliberately ambiguous. I was interested in whether anyone would interpret them as 'politically charged statements that violate WP:SOAPBOX', because to do so they would have to use inference to decide whether they represented support or opposition to the removal of Palestinians from land in the West Bank by the IDF. No one has ever commented on them. No one cares, and for me, this is how it should be in ARBPIA.
Having opinions about how to socially engineer/nudge the ARBPIA topic area seems to be quite popular, but they are rarely evidence-based, and no one really understands the complicated dynamics and can predict the impact of rule changes and the ways they are interpreted/enforced on content and behavior. As I have said elsewhere, it's probably better to focus on enforcing the existing simple rules that cover PIA. Sean.hoyland (talk) 05:23, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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