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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Software recognition of dates in plain text

A discussion started about automating date preferences. I think it is worthy of further discussion.

Here is the original text:

It is impossible to automatically format a date without creating link. This contributes a lot to overlinking.
For example, there are pages with 1000 links to the year 2000. I think that is overlinked. As a category, dates are the most excessively linked articles, as is shown by their ranking on the following lists:
Is it possible to have a 'create date object' that is independent of the 'hyperlink to other article' method? Bobblewik  (talk) 16:33, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
The obvious syntax to use for this would be the double underscore, i.e. __30 May__ __2005__ would be equivalent to [[30 May]] [[2005]]. The first occurence of each date, particularly the year, could be linked but the others formated but not linked. I have seen other proposals for this, and I support it. Thryduulf 22:23, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
Interesting. I can see why special characters are needed at the beginning and end of the date object i.e. before '30' and after '2005'. Is there a particular reason why special characters need to be placed in the middle of the date object i.e. between 'May' and '2005'? Bobblewik  (talk) 13:26, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
hmm, the current format has characters in the middle, [[30 May]] [[2005]], but there is a reason for this - we have articles on every year, and on every day of a year, but not on every day of every year (very sensible, as apparently nothing of note happened on 14 October between 1987 and 1998) and thus it needs to be two links.
I suppose that it would be possible for the software recognise a date in any standard formats (see below) without internal characters. For simplicity though I think it would be preferable to allow both __30 May 2005__ and __30 May__ __2005__.
  • 30 May 2005
  • 30 May, 2005
  • May 30 2005
  • May 30, 2005
  • 2005-05-30
  • 30-05-2005
  • 05-30-2005
  • 30 May
  • May 30
Thryduulf 15:19, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
I did not know that the middle characters were deliberately put there to make two links rather than one. I thought they were an unintended feature. I would personally find it simpler to avoid middle characters when formatting only. If you think it is simpler to allow both, then that is fine by me.
It sounds good. Is it really possible?
As for the middle characters, I think both should be allowed as inevitably people will try to format it as if it were a link, but I agree that without is nicer in the code. If we allow either, neither method will break and users can use whichever is the more intuitive for them.
Is it possible? I think we should try and get a bit more input into its desirability (there are several discussions on dates happening in several places at once, and when I next have time, I propose to bring them all into one) and then make a feature request on bugzilla. I don't have time to do that at the moment. Thryduulf 18:29, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
As to two links being required for date preference, that is simply not correct. If the ISO 8601 format is used, a date such as 2005-03-05 can be linked as 2005-03-05 and will show up with proper preference formatting. I have taken to using this format when I intend a date to be linked for prefernce settins, particularly for dates of birth/death in a biographical article. The seperate links mzy be winted as links but since the proposal is for a way to apply date preference settings without making links, that is irrelavent. I think that ideally such a new construct should allow any of a range of formats (although i think the all-numeric formats should follow ISO 8601). I don't see any advantage in allowing (much less engouraging) two-part constructs. Since this will be a a new constturct, that no one will use without learning new rules in any case the rules don't have to folow the rules for the previous style of date linking, particualrly since those rules are rathey controary to the ways dates are written in other contexts.DES 22:07, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
I support this proposal. I agree that linking to dates is a generally cause of over-linkink. i think thjat shuch links, as links, are usually pointless, and should be removed if there were to be another way to apply date preference formmatting. I also think that most links to partial dates (D/month without year, or year alone) are already pointles, and i have started to remove them when I edit articles that have such links, although i don't go looking for them.
I have no idea if the proposal is technically hard or easy. I find it hard to belive that it is impossible. Note that instead of _10 Jan 2005_ we could have #Date(10 Jan 2005) if that were technically easier to implent. DES 22:07, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
There's no need for special syntax, the software can recognise dates in plain text. -- Tim Starling 09:35, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
That would be much simpler if implemented! I presume that on occasions (such as this) where we want to see a specific format not altered by preference then putting the date in nowiki tags would allow that? (i.e. 01 June 2005 would appear as per your preference and <nowiki>01 June 2005</nowiki> would always appear that way). Thryduulf 12:50, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Excellent. So where does this go now? Bobblewik  (talk) 23:13, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Does anybody know how to implement this? Bobblewik 13:38, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I think the first step will be to put a feature request on bugzilla. Outside of that, I'll point any of the developers at the discussion if I happen to see them later. Thryduulf 09:54, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I wonder why a new element type is introduced here. Why can we not use a template for this (vaguely similar to the style already in use for geographic coordinates):

{{date |any date having month in text or following ISO}}
{{date dmy|numeric date with day first}}
{{date mdy|numeric date with month first}}

The first form like {{date | 30 May, 2005}} would accept any of "30 May 2005", "30 May, 2005", "May 30 2005", "May 30, 2005", "2005-05-30", "30 May", "May 30", "2005"
The second and third would accept "30-05-2005" and "05-30-2005" respectively.
−Woodstone 10:50, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Templates can't do that. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:21, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the responses. I don't know how to put a feature request on bugzilla. I would be grateful if somebody more familiar with it could do it. Bobblewik 21:56, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Templated Database

I've observed several situations in which access to pieces of information would be helpful. A shared database could be accessed through a modification to Template behavior which would allow manipulation of retrieved data.

Using {{Data:Country/USA}} within a template may convert to Article=United States|President=George W. Bush|Continent=North America

Several possible uses are suggested:

Perhaps this can be provided primarily through the existing Template code.

  • Data could be stored in "database" entries, perhaps within a "Data:" namespace.
  • A single Data: entry could contain several values, such as Title, Author, Mass, Dimensions.
  • Existing template code supports named parameters.
  • Template modification needed: Templates could use data if substitution of values took place when accessing a "database" entry.
  • Desirable modification: Template references to nonexistent data entries reduce to nothing.
  • Existing template code could then display data as needed. Interface to Data needed.
  • Access to Data: namespace through browsers could display an edit field for each value within a single page, or use existing dictionary WikiSyntax.
    • Existing [[namespace:article/article#section]] syntax can refer to data entry as well as specific item within (ie: current head of state for specific country: {{Data:Country/England#Head_of_state}}.

(SEWilco 13:50, 6 August 2005 (UTC))

I'm not certain if this is the same thing, but one of the ideas for the future presented by Eloquence at Wikimania this morning was the possibilities of inter-language namespaces, e.g. for countries (Country:Germany) and companies (Company:Google) that will host shared infoboxes. The reasoning being that the capital of a country doens't change because of the language it is in, and the turnover of a company is the same in Finnish as it is in Esperanto, and that when information does change (e.g. the president or CEO, then only one change is needed to update all the Wikipedias.
When and if this comes about is not certain, as they are all just ideas (not even proposals) at this stage. Thryduulf 14:22, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
This proposal was created independently of what you describe at Wikimania, but is intended for the same type of shared-data usage. However, language sensitivies can exist. The country "United States" does not have the same name worldwide due to translations of the component words. Possible solutions include separate language spaces (same as each lang has its own Image: space), shared global space (same as Commons behavior), or lang: tags within pages for alternatives to a default value. (SEWilco 16:06, 6 August 2005 (UTC))
This technology would also replace arrays with a template for each element, which store data as templates. (SEWilco 01:35, 8 August 2005 (UTC))

Is there a plan to change editing / review approach?

Reuters, as quoted by Yahoo!, reports Wikipedia will impose stricter editorial rules to prevent vandalism of its content, quoting Jimmy Wales. Slashdot picked this story up. Later text seems to suggest this is really a separation of "stable" and "draft" versions. Does this mean there's a plan to implement an article validation proposal, and if so, what's been decided? If it's just continuing to be discussed, could someone say so? If not, could someone say that too? The article makes it sound like there's new news, but that doesn't make it so...! Sorry for asking a "question" in Village pump, but it seemed like a major proposal issue if there IS such a change and worth discussing. Dwheeler 01:21, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

I think this is referring to Wikipedia 1.0. There are no plans to freeze any pages on the web version of Wikipedia, except temporarily. Superm401 | Talk 01:23, August 6, 2005 (UTC)
There has been no announcement by Jimbo or the board, and no verification of any such thing from Wikimania attendees. It is generally accepted that the Reuters report is rather short on facts. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:33, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
I hope so because this would be a really bad idea. What articles exactly could ever be "finished"? Certainly none of the major ones. Osomec 06:01, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
There are article validation possibilities being discussed, Eloquence gave part of a presentation on one possible method of doing this this morning, as part of a peer review process I think, although I must confess to not being awake enough to take most of it in. Only an abstract of the presentation has been published so far, but more should be added.
Certainly as far as I understand it, all these things are still proposed and no decisions have been made. Thryduulf 14:13, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

RSS feed?

Is there any way to get an RSS feed set up for Wikipedia featured articles? Or articles as they're featured on the main page? (Cross-posted at "technical".) – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 19:42, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Syndication. Bovlb 04:28:48, 2005-08-06 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a newspaper so why not a....

...podcast! Wouldn't it be great with a weekly show that discussed what has been going on in wikipedia for the last week? "Well, the arbcom is up for relection, any surprises this year Willmcv?" "Yes, it turns out that recently admined and bureocrated gkhan is running. And he is looking good! Also in the race, DrZoidberg!"

All jokes aside, wouldn't it be a nice wikiproject? We certainly have people able to do it (see WP:SPOKEN). Sortof like the Signpost but spoken! A good way to keep up with all the things going on. And with the wonder of Skype there could be interviews with a number of interesting wikipedians. (ohh, and by the way, I picked Willmcw because he is active in WP:SPOKEN, no other reason :P) gkhan 08:19, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

personally, I find this quite unattractive. Of course that's no argument against it, but I would very much that this is only regarded as a possibility provided we have server space, bandwith and cpu power to spare, and then some. I don't want to experience lags because too many people are watching wiki-tv! dab (ᛏ) 10:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Bandwith isn't really an issue I think, there are sites offering unlimited bandwith for very little money. And besides, it could be hosted using bittorrent which would pretty much eliminate any bandwith-concerns. gkhan 10:31, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
sure, it could be hosted offsite. The 'unlimited bandwith' deals are not really unlimited, as there is only so much data you can squeeze through their cables in a month, and WP almost certainly needs much more. The Alexa stats are beginning to look positively scary... Anyway, I suppose there is nothing to stop wikipedians from starting an audio service somewhere. dab (ᛏ) 10:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Bandwidth can be reduced with technologies such as BitTorrent, perhaps using an RSS feed to announce current files. Is there an implementation of BitTorrent which supports automatic updates/inclusion of new files? (SEWilco 13:54, 6 August 2005 (UTC))

WikiWho - THE virtual who's who for common folk

Not certain if this has been proposed. I did a lite search and didn't find anything. But I was thinking of a 'phone book' of the world - for us common folk. There could be a common template to ad photos. Perhaps 3 image slots for different ages like 'baby', 'young adult', and 'mature adult', or something along those lines. There could be fields to supply as much or as little information as possible. Nothing personal such as SSN and street address or any of that nature. Since the whole world would be participating information gathered would have to be linear, in that it's applicable to everyone and each could relate to. Such as

Where born: Year born: Maiden name: Sir name: Syblings

It could turn out to be a short bio that is updated or deleted at will. How to prevent same name entries and the like, I haven't really thought of yet. Just thinking out loud right now.

Just thinking out loud. If anyone from Wikipedia would like to pick this thought up, I would be happy to help in any way.

info at jamescalvin dot com

Please see the notice at the top of the page - when you are proposing a new wiki-style project, go to m:Proposals for new projects and write about it there, not here. Note that this does not apply to WikiProjects. r3m0t talk 07:12, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Template:talkheader

I created Template:talkheader as something that could go on the top of every Talk page (a) to welcome newbies on any page they land on and (b) to remind regulars of key points whenever they visit a talk page. It'll only really work with a software change to make it automatically appear on every talk page, but for now it can be tested and developed, and we can see what people think. Rd232 19:57, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I think MediaWiki:Talkpagetext may show up on all talk pages automatically. Perhaps someone more informed could confirm or deny? Superm401 | Talk 05:42, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Bias is here.....

If this Wikipedia wants to remain a living, growing, and ever improving project.... I suspect it will have no choice but to admit its POV, and to place a very clear disclaimer as to the difficulty it has with maintaining accurate information. For whatever reason, this wiki is having some troubles, maybe for its extraordinary growth rate, thus a bit like a clumsy and oafish teenager... or maybe because it has attracted so many people from Public Relations, Media, and even the intelligence community, NOT because it is such a reliable source for information, but rather unfortunately, because of its powerful dynamic to mold Knowledge, Opinion, and for what people falsely carry away as "Fact".

Place a disclaimer Mr Wales, front page and center. Tell people what exactly an open-source wiki is, and remind them in much stronger words that anyone, ANYONE can come here to add knowledge, just as easily as they can bend it.... the honorable future of Wikpedia may depend on this. 3chester4 14:26, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Given that this is your only edit, I'm wondering just what experience you've had that lead you to post this little rant. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:54, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I wonder after editing so much how you can dismiss his claims as a "rant". This site is swarmed by POV warriors. And there are some areas such as college pages where promotional POV is standard. lots of issues | leave me a message 10:07, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
It's extremely easy, actually, to dismissed unsourced ramblings as rants. If he has a problem, he can cite a specific instance - otherwise he's just screaming at the tide. He doesn't even tell us what he thinks "Wikipedia's POV" is. --Golbez 03:09, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
It's a very, very common "rant" to just dismiss offhand. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Wikipedia_disclaimer and Wikipedia:Proposed update of MediaWiki:Tagline for current discussion. - Omegatron 02:00, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

Beakman & Jax files on Wikipedia

I am the creator of You Can with Beakman & Jax, an educational comic strip that's in about 250 newspapers. The CBS TV show Beakman's World was created from the comic in the early 90s. A company called bonus.com has offered file serving (and a salary) to me for the comic's archives. They are no longer able to do this and I lose file serving on August 31, 2005.

I'm looking to get the files served elsewhere, like here maybe. I know there is no salary here, but I'd still like the files offered to teachers and students without me needing to pay for file serving. Or, if you have other thoughts, please be in touch.

If anyone want to discuss this with me the best thing is to contact e by eMail at [email protected]. You can look through the files at http://bonus.com. Then click the Strategy button.

best,

Jok Church

I'm not sure, but perhaps you should be looking at Wikisource? In any case, it definitely seems like something to preserve for the future. --NeuronExMachina 06:56, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I used to read those! :-)
You probably want to ask in their version of the village pump: Wikisource:Scriptorium - Omegatron 02:02, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

I used to read those too! lots of issues | leave me a message 22:43, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

A dynamic graphical timeline for Wikipedia?

Screenshot of Encarta Dynamic Timeline

I hope this has not been suggested already and if it has, I apologize in advance. Could not find it with a search through the village pump.

I've been using WikiPedia for quite a while now and I have to say that my MSN Encarta installation has been fairly dormant since I found WikiPedia. There is however a couple of things I find really fun and useful with the Encarta implementation. One of these is the Dynamic Timeline feature in Encarta. Take a look at the screenshot above and note the back and forward arrows and the zoom capability in the bottom right hand corner.

I know that implementing something like this would break the html-only / no dynamic content pattern that most of wikipedia seems to adhere to, but I think this would be a high-value-add add-on to wikipedia and people who would like to use it could install a java applet that would display the time line, people who do not want java applets on their machine could just skip using the feature.

I am a java developer with a fair amount of Swing experience and would be interested in contributing to a project like this.

--Mbjarland 11:38, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

This sounds interesting. Are you referring to the one where you can add on events, or the pre-made ones on one subject? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 11:24, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm referring to one where you could add your article to the timeline (including if it's an event or a time period, when it occured, etc) and the timeline could be used as a tool to browse articles. --Mbjarland 13:38, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
There already is a timeline tool for wikipedia. See for instance Alexandria#History. It isn't as pretty but it is certainly useful (although a little under-used, only about 100 on en). It is documented at m:EasyTimeline. gkhan 11:27, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
Did not know about the existing timeline. It does seem fairly extensive and thought through. However, looking at how it works and the fact that it's not dynamic, I think there might still be value for a dynamic timeline feature like the Encarta one. The current timeline implementation seems very useful for displaying a timeline related to a specific subject whereas the dynamic one in Encarta is useful (and a ton of fun) as a starting point for browsing from the toplevel and finding relations between articles (i.e. what where the Europeans doing when the Chinese invented gunpowder), and getting a feel for the orders of magnitude involved in history. Feel free to correct me if you think this is not true...and apologiez for not initially signing my post. --Mbjarland 11:38, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand what you mean by dynamic, EasyTimeline can be updated dynamically, just look at the wiki-code. But you do have a point in that the encarta one is a lot more easthetically pleasing. I don't see a reason why it wouldn't be possible to create a timeline that shows what the europeans were doing when the chinese were blowing stuff up for the first time, although I don't really see in what article that would belong (History of the World seems a bit broad for one timeline :P). Why don't you try doing some timelines for a few articles, god knows many need it? The markup don't seem that hard :P, especially not for a java programmer (and, by the way, SWT rules!). Ohh, and about not signing, fuhgeddabout it, every one does that sometimes gkhan 12:30, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I was probably not being entirely clear in my first post. If you've ever used Google Maps, you could say that the dynamic timeline is to the current wikipedia timelines what Google Maps is to a normal atlas. I.e. the little arrows at the left and right ends of the screenshot allow you to dynamically scroll to the left and right (i.e. further into the past and less far into the past) in the timeline and using the zoom tool in the bottom right corner you can zoom in and out so that from a zoomed out view you would see only major events like say "Persian Wars" or "Jesus Christ" and zooming in more details appear so that you would see things like "Diogenes Founds School of Cynicism" etc. This tool is in Encarta used independent of topics and can be accessed from a global, non-article-dependant menu item. It is a lot of fun to just start by zooming in at say the 16th century and then zoom in and scroll around and get a feel for what was going on. So if this kind of tool existed for wikipedia, you could get a feel for what articles have been written in wikipedia about the 16th century or any other time period and you could correlate the times of separate articles. This does mean that you would have to somehow register your article (is this an event or a time period, when did it occur, what should the label in the timeline be etc) in the timeline and this would naturally require some work, so I wanted to start a discussion here on how hard that would actually be and if people would just be opposed to such a dynamic, non-html paradigm in general. I think the implementation difficulties can be overcome. --Mbjarland 13:12, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


Very interesting. I've been wanting to start a similar kind of project, a branching geneology of influences, laid out chronologically, so you could connect wikipedia articles about artists, authors, or thinkers to their influences and followers. Whether or not it has a connecting feature, a dynamic timeline with zoom features would really facilitate browsing specific areas of the Wikipedia. Adding organization like this would improve the value of the content. Is there a simple way to have a visual space with text be open to edits in wiki style? --mlove 8 August 2005

Please take a look at Wikipedia:Featured topics for a proposal regarding featured collections of articles. violet/riga (t) 14:50, 12 August 2005 (UTC)


Quick Wikipedia Map

(Proof of concept included, please see below)

This is a proposal for a tool which could potentially speed up pathfinding within the "auxiliary" pages of Wikipedia. This proposal doesn't intend to improve the content, or anything related to the content within the articles -- it's only meant to help with pathfinding for users, both old and new, among the increasing number of help pages, policies, sub-projects, formats, and so on (most of you probably know what I mean -- remember the last time you searched for "that" format, or "that" policy, or "that" project" you knew about, but didn't know where to look for?).

The two issues this proposal wishes to address are response speed and structure within the "auxiliary" pages structure, many of us have a relatively hard time browsing. The response speed is an issue because the servers need to (a) format all pages from Wiki sources to HTML, which involves high CPU loads (the data is cached, but it still involves a caching layer to check on), and (b) include all bells and whistles, such as the navigation box, CSS, headers and footers, which involves a bandwidth load.

My proposal is to create a relatively simple tool in Macromedia Flash for browsing the Wikipedia structure -- a Wikipedia Map tool. This tool would read XML files stored within Wikipedia (and thus subject to the same Wiki concept as the rest of the site), and render the structure in an easy-to-understand fashion. The XML files don't need to be pre-parsed by the Wikimedia servers, and they are quite small files. The XML files are retrieved on-demand, depending on what the user is interested in -- I expect the average XML file (which makes up a tree level) would be around 4-5 KB long, as opposed to the typical Wikipedia page, which includes an overhead of around 20 KB (the overhead of the HTML alone is around 20 KB, I'm not talking about actual content, or CSS, or images, or JavaScript).

I have created a proof of concept (i.e. ugly and with very little content) Flash file for this proposal -- unfortunately Wikipedia doesn't currently support this type of media, so I had to place it off-site, at this location. The left side shows the map sections, and the right side shows the links within the sections. Only the first sub-sections are working at this time (i.e. "For New Users" and "About the Project"), but the links should all be working.

You will notice that the tool isn't lightning-fast -- that's because, due to the Flash security limitations, it can't load XML files from other sites than the one which hosts the Flash files. Therefore I had to make the Flash connect to my local server, which connects to Wikipedia -- so instead of your browser retrieving the data directly from Wikipedia, you go through my server, which is located in Romania (pretty far from most of you).

If you want to experiment with tweaking the links and structure, the XML files it uses are the following: first page, for new users, and about the project (the files are on the Romanian Wikipedia because I'm an admin there and I can delete them -- didn't want to spam the English project with useless files). If you want to edit those XML files, you need to right-click on the blank image presented in the links in this paragraph, save the file locally, edit it without changing its name, click on "Încarcă o nouă versiune a acestui fişier" back on the page linked here, pick the edited file, edit "Nume fişier destinaţie" to have the "png" extension (instead of "xml" as default), click on "Trimite fişier" and then click on "Salvează fişierul" in the resulting page.

The procedure for editing the XML files is that complicated because Wikipedia doesn't currently support XML files natively either, so you can't edit the file inline -- they have to be stored as PNG files, as far as the Wikipedia server understands.

As I said, this is only a proof of concept, so please don't judge its merits by its current looks, speed or ease of editing alone -- it currently can't excel in any of those areas because objective reasons related to the current implementation of the Wikipedia software on one hand, and its looks aren't exceptional because it would be stupid to invest a lot of time in a proof of concept before I get at least some feedback on. However, if I get enough positive feedback, I can push for this tool, and for making XML files native to Wikipedia (which wouldn't be a bad thing anyway) -- and I would work on it a lot more. So, please do let me know what you think by adding comments in this section!

Thank you for at least reading this!

--Gutza 00:16, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

A page-renaming template

We always face a problem of wrong titles when dealing with articles whose titles begin with a lower case letter, e.g pH. The best solution is yet to add a template as follows:

The correct title of this page is pH. It appears incorrectly here due to technical restrictions.

It's just the same blunder when I was editing the article am730. But recently I've discovered a very interesting template in the Chinese wikipedia to change the title of the article, see the Chinese version of pH. Then I contacted User:Zhengzhu, one of the system administrator of the Chinese wikipedia, and this's his reply:

The template you referred to in page am730 is specifically implemented in the software for the Chinese wikipedia, mainly to support cutomized conversion between traditional and simplified Chinese in the title, but people quickly found out that it can be used for other purposes as well, like the case of am730. It is fairly easy to implement this function for other languages like English, and I will be happy to do so. However you should first check with the the specific language community to see if such feature is desirable. I suggest you ask around at village pump or post to wikipedia-l and wikitech-l, and contact me again. (I am kind of on break now, with new jobs and everything...) Thanks! --Zhengzhu 17:32, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I think this "template" would be of much avail to our current system. :-D -- Jerry Crimson Mann 14:23, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, some of our titles appear quite awkward. Are there any cons to having this capability? hydnjo talk 18:08, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
At least we won't have awkward titles anymotr. :-) -- Jerry Crimson Mann 15:36, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Very nice. - Omegatron 18:19, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
For those of us that don't speak Chinese, could you link directly to the template? --Golbez 18:23, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
This is the "template" used: -{T|NEWTITLE}- -- Jerry Crimson Mann 15:36, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Oh, never mind, I see - it's in the software. I misread. Is there code we can see? --Golbez 15:48, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

locking pictures in articles

Is there a way to lock a picture to one article to prevent a valid image in one context being used to vandalise other articles? Two examples: One anonymous user keeps using the valid image of a penis, which is on the Penis page, to vandalise scores of user pages. Another keeps using images of Darth Vader and other Star Wars images to vandalise the page on Pope Benedict XVI. Locking the pages isn't an option. The vandal may disappear for two weeks, then suddenly reappear and begin inserting the images over and over again until they are blocked, at which time they reappear using another IP, then another to keep doing it.

Some of the images that they were using but which weren't in any real article were deleted immediately but users don't want to have to propose the deletion of valid pictures. But it is gone beyond a joke at this stage; I once had to delete the penis picture of 20 user pages in 10 minutes once, then delete Darth Vader three times off the pope's page. I blocked the vandal only to find that he had come back and put the penis picture on another batch of user pages again. Locking a picture into one page with a valid article so that it could not be used elsewhere (and there is not likely to be much need throughout Wikipedia for a picture of a penis or a picture of a minor Star Wars character off their own article) would solve the problem.

FearÉIREANN\(caint) 19:31, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Now, I'm not a fan, but... Darth Vader is a minor Star Wars character? :-)
Aside from that, no, we don't have such a feature, nor is there any way of implementing it with what we've got. There is a feature that will prevent certain images from displaying in-line, but that's not what you want here.
Mediazilla awaits. The only problem will be maintenance; ideally you'd want something that allows you to whitelist pages for certain images (and implicitly blacklist everything else). You can also stick to one page, if you reckon there will never be a useful image for vandalizing that's legitimately used on multiple pages. JRM · Talk 23:03, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

The feature to prevent an image from appearing inline is mentioned in this post. I realise that isn't quite what you wanted, but it should be possible to program a similar feature which blocks a named image from appearing other than on one or more named pages.-gadfium 01:47, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

As an alternative, it might be possible to make it such that a protected image can't be added to a page, except by an admin. Then all sensitive/vulgar images could be protected, and if you wanted use a particular image on your legitimate new page on some feature of penises you would have to ask an admin to add the image for you.
I'm not sure how that would work out in the coding though. You would have to check each saved edit for included images, see whether it was protected and do a diff to see if was already on the previous version of the page. If its protected and not there before, then return to the preview with a 'get an admin' message. -- Solipsist 16:38, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

George W. Bush photos add nothing to articles on state leaders

every president meets with other leaders. state leaders like to meet with other state leaders. Adding a picture of George W. Bush and the said state leader in any of these articles is unnecessary and excessive and it adds NOTHING to the article.

just test it. go to an article on a president of another country, and most of the times, there will be some photo of George W. Bush that shouldn't be there. Unless George W. Bush has some personal or political connections to this person, like Tony Blair, adding a photo of him is just stupid.

When you're looking for free images one of the best sources is the United States federal government. US federal government images of current state leaders tend to have the current US president alongside. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:19, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
It is not mandatory that an entire image be used. If a single person's image is desired then only that part of the image could be uploaded. (SEWilco 01:25, 8 August 2005 (UTC))
Typically such photos are handshakes. A handshake cropped so the other party is not visible looks really weird. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:14, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Semiprotected status

Wikiproject: Wikipedia:WikiProject Semiprotect

I believe that there should be a kind of page protection on Wikipedia, which, instead of blocking all non-admins, only blocks anonymous users, or anonymous users and accounts that are (say) less than a week old. The vast, vast majority of the on vandalism persistent wikipedia comes from anonymous and brand new users, and is usually dealt with by protecting the page. I think that introducing a semiprotected status for pages would help deal with vandalism and spamming without preventing normal editing of the page.

I believe this would require a change to the software (could be wrong) and so I'm testing the waters here before proposing it on bugzilla. Any thoughts? Yelyos July 3, 2005 23:10 (UTC)

Personally, I love the idea. Some pages with a high amount of vandal traffic, such as George W. Bush, could be protected in this sense, while other pages remain completely open to all. Setting up an account on Wikipedia is not a big deal, and I think that a semiprotected page status would save us RC patrolers a LOT of energy. Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk July 3, 2005 23:16 (UTC)
This is proposed practically every 5 minutes. The argument against it is the push-pull effect: the majority of vandals are anonymous because they don't have to register to vandalize. If they did, many of them would. And of course, there are useful anonymous contributions to these articles. There are various other ideas that might be more effective, like a time delay before anonymous changes become visible, or if necessary, some kind of peer review. Deco 3 July 2005 23:25 (UTC)
In response to your comment, I do not believe that the majority of vandals would actually register, because (and I'm taking an educated guess here) the majority of vandals include young, immature adolescent males. Secondly, the articles that most of these vandals target are of a high-profile, and thus protecting those pages from anonymous edits would hinder their efforts. The majority of effort by normal users and administrators on these articles are reverts. You need only to look here and see that while there some anonymous IP addresses that actually made some good edits, the vast majority of said IP addresses are vandals. Let me be frank: if a viewer is hellbent on adding content, that person will find a way. But, let's keep things simple: make the vandals register just like anyone else, and let the administrators block the vandal. Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk July 3, 2005 23:37 (UTC)
I personally also disagree with Deco. Much as we could introduce a time delay, it would still not significantly reduce the work of editors. In fact it would increase it as all edits by anonymous IPs would have to be moderated by people. In fact I would suggest a time delay would be more annoying to genuine non-vandal anonynous editors than what is suggested here (making them log in to edit some high traffic articles). Of course there are useful contributions by anonymous editors (and indeed the vast majority are useful) but, if they had to log in first, it would not reduce the usefulness of their contributions. I understand that some editors of wikipedia do not want to log in, but note that this suggestion does not ask for the wholesale blocking of anonymous users, but instead just a form of protection for particularly highly vandalized pages. As for the comment that the vandals would be just as able to vandalize when logged in, of course this is also true, but blocking a logged in user avoids the complications associated with dynamic IPs and worse, proxies. On frequent occasions, IPs are blocked that are shared by a number of anonymous users - this in itself is preventing a good number of useful edits by people who are blocked through no fault of their own. As such I believe that Yelyos's suggestion is a very good one that will improve Wikipedia both for its editors and readers. I would object to anyone arguing that this acts against the spirit of a wiki as this system would still allow anyone to edit any article (just for some they would need an account). If anything this is actually more wiki-spirited than the current system in which some pages have to be protected against any editing due to vandalism, which benefits no-one. Will => talk 3 July 2005 23:44 (UTC)
This protection status could also protect against accounts that haven't been registered for a week, which would cause vandals with short attention spans (which is most of them) to forget about whatever urge drove them to vandalize in the first place. Also, this would mean that instances of vandalism (barring sockpuppetry, which presumably could be detected within a week) from each person to those pages protected with this status would be reduced to a week. I think this protection status would be most useful in the case of coordinated attacks from external sources on specific wikipedia pages, and would stop those quite effectively while still allowing normal edits to get through. Alternatively (and I am loathe to suggest this, since it's opening a pandora's box) the requirement could be a certain number of edits, enough to weed out vandals. I am not suggesting that controversial articles be protected permanently under this status. I'm simply suggesting that it could be used as a tool to replace the use of temporary full protection in instances where it's warranted. Yelyos July 4, 2005 01:24 (UTC)
I'm not sure. "The encyclopaedia which anyone can edit, barring anons on certain topics" doesn't have the same ring to it. The example of George W. Bush is a bad one; it would only be used, presumably, against cases of vandalism exclusively by anons, such as anon vandal bots. I definetly think that protecting anything which gets vandalised a lot from anons is stupid, as a lot will be put off. Its not "anyone can edit" if anons can't. Hedley 3 July 2005 23:51 (UTC)
I brought this up on IRC; the idea I had was that specific articles (those already prone to vandalism) could be marked (by an admin) as semiprotected (the term I used was hemiprotected as I think there already is a semiprotection status in MediaWiki) that would prohibit edits by anons to that article only. The ability of anons to edit other articles would be unaffected. Anybody who does vandalism patrol has run across the problem of a vandal with a roving IP (or a vandal at AOL or NTL) repeatedly vandalizing the same article in the same way over and over again, that can't be effectively blocked, either because they have a roving IP or because they are on a public proxy that we can't effectively block because doing so blocks thousands of other editors. I consider blocking anons from editing one article for an indefinite time far less damaging than repeatedly blocking thousands of editors (all but one innocent) from editing any articles. Kelly Martin July 4, 2005 00:02 (UTC)
A further follow up: I noticed today on the wikimedia foundation site that certain pages (eg this one) have "edit (requires login)" at the top of the page. This would suggest to me that a change such as the one outlined above could be introduced with very few technical changes, as the software seems to support the basic idea of it. Will => talk 5 July 2005 23:00 (UTC)
That whole wiki is login-only. It's not per-page. --cesarb 5 July 2005 23:22 (UTC)

I presented something like this earlier on. It has vanised for some odd reason. Atricles such as george W bush and many others need a semi protected status. We could put edit quotas to some articles such as george w bush, bill clinton etc. The quota could be for example 100 edits, Would at least slow down vandalism if not halt it. I am not sure if blocking annon users completely off of such articles is good. Some annons contribute a lot. --Cool Cat My Talk 7 July 2005 13:53 (UTC)

problem would be that you might totally deter someone who was only interested in the high profile page but who had something interesting to say. Asking someone to wait a week is one thing, but asking him to go off and work on 100 different pages first might be rather a big task to be allowed to add your bit. Waiting a week before being allowed to edit a 'protected ' page would not be unreasonable if you look at as a weaker prohibition than banning everyone. You would have to include a time delay, otherwise people would just log on and create thousande of single-use ids which would in itself clog up the system. Would you need a procedure to delete them, because this measure certainly would cause them?Sandpiper 02:04, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm somewhat conflicted on the issue. While it's immediately obvious how useful it would be, what worries me is its affect on Wikipedia's social structure. At the moment, there seems to be a de-facto standard that, while you may have to register to participate in policymaking and other meta-stuff, editing can generally be done as easily by anons as by logged in users. Also, currently the only restrictions that have been placed on registered accounts have been for Arbcom/Foundation voting. Would it be wise to implement something that might change this? CXI 03:12, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

The point is not to annoy "good users" but instead annoy and in conviniance vandals that vandalise same articles. Their objective is to destroy an article on a personality or topic they dont like. Such as Abortion, George W. Bush. Some restrictions are necesary. I observed entier wiki data flow long enough (not that its a big thing) to know how often some articles are blanked. See history of George W. Bush. We have the option of locking the article completely or semi locking it. Also on VfD or RfA or RfC cases such a protection is more than beneficial. --Cool Cat My Talk 12:39, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
It seems that there is overwhelming support for this idea... should we have a petition or something for people to sign in favor of this idea? How and when does it get to the next step towards implementation? --kizzle 18:52, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

I, too, think the "semi-protect" status is a good idea. An anonymous vandal with a dynamic IP can easily dodge bans, whereas one who must create an account has at least that small piece of tediousness to take up his time. A semi-protect status would give Wikipedia admins another, more fine-tuned tool between full open-editing and full non-admin lock. I don't think even semi-protection should be an article's usual state, of course.
Also consider that if a repeat vandal with an IP shared by other people has his IP banned, the ban will also hurt others who use that IP. If he has to create his own account (or accounts) to do his damage, then banning that account will only hurt that user. --Mr. Billion 05:07, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea. Almafeta 23:46, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Good idea, but would be even better if we could allow certain anons to edit those pages. Support either way. Bart133 (t) 16:57, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea. A lot of wikipedians spend a lot of time reverting vandals (myself included), when we could spend it making contributions or reading other's good contributions. --Rogerd 02:14, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Exterminate Vandals

Monitoring entier wiki data flow for several weeks I noticed several articles such as George W. Bush end up vandalised too frequently. While {Protecting} the article is a very bad idea as we want users to edit articles, putting edit caps on certain frequently vandalised articles maybe usefull. Granted its not absolute protection but it would make first edit vandalisms imposible for such articlers. Dynamic IP's such as various AOL vandals abused (as well as many others) use their IP to vandalise on first edit. --Cool Cat My Talk 4 July 2005 07:14 (UTC)

What I propose is some sort of an edit cap, number not being outragous, but also being time consuming to achive. Since wikipedia has over 600,000 articles I do not believe people will have difficulty reaching cap. This prevents vandalism by inconviniancing vandals. --Cool Cat My Talk 4 July 2005 07:14 (UTC)

Users like Evilmonkey, myself and other RC patrolers will revert pages but because of articles like George W. Bush which get vandalisedmultiple times in an hour by a number of IP's at times make RC patrolers job harder each day as more such articles appear. --Cool Cat My Talk 4 July 2005 07:14 (UTC)

Another possible solution - currently pages may be protected so that only admins may edit them - could a second tier of protection be added somehow, so that at "Level 1 protection" only admins can edit them, and at "Level 2 protection" any registered users can edit them, but anons cannot? That might slow some vandals down a bit... Grutness...wha? 4 July 2005 12:54 (UTC)
Oops - I've just noticed that quite by chance I have suggested something that someone else put forward about a day ago (further up the page). Looks like an idea whose time may have come? Grutness...wha? 4 July 2005 12:57 (UTC)
Seems to me that the time has come for this idea, as I don't see any opposition to it. --kizzle July 9, 2005 19:02 (UTC)
Alternative: "progressive approval loop." I would like to at least start anything like this by being as lenient and as egalitarian as possible. This is how I would solve it: articles that are vandalized once would require any other (separate) user to approve the permanence of the change before making their own changes (rejected otherwise). This is not a totally protected page, because the other user could be anonymous too, but would still have to be different in a couple of ways. For a determined vandal, this is not insurmountable, but it wastes their time enough that they may prefer to go back to fark :) The limitation automatically expires after a certain time period. If the article keeps being vandalized, a registered user has to approve the changes, and it takes that much more time to expire. The next step would be that the account that approves has to have been in existence for at least 1 full day. And so on... There may be a multiplier for articles that get a lot of traffic, so that they immediately jump to longer account seniority and longer expirations. Now, I wish to be clear that making a change that someone else decided to revert shouldn't be considered vandalism automatically, only the most clearly destructive stuff should require this sort of approval loop. Auxi1iarus 04:34, 12 August 2005 (UTC)~

Well, it appears that that vandal has resurfaced. He's been over on the Dick Cheney page posting the same pictures. Huh. Well, guys, it looks like my little plan has caused you to think twice about who can edit the Bush page. By doing my vandal streak this morning, I have succeeded in causing this cebate on whether to limit who can submit contributions to this article. Looks like you just can't keep an old Bush vandal down. Like I said, if you take the other choice, and decide not to allow only registered sers to contribute, then Ill satrt anoter one of the vandal streaks. Even if you do allow only registered members to contribute, I have a couple of registered names, that have existed for quite a while. Let the debates begin! Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:George_W._Bush"

Can someone please stop the Campbellsville, Kentucky, or Elizabethtown, Kentucky, "vandal" who uses ALLTEL Digital Subscriber Line? I don't like Star Wars. It's another damned Hollywood loony-lefty movie. 2004-12-29T22:45Z 01:23, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

I think this has enough support to start a wiki project. --Cool Cat My Talk 03:04, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Counterproposal (article stability for public consumption)

I tentatively suggest the following for discussion:

- the public face of the wikipedia be placed on a time delay- only versions of articles stable for more than a certain amount (1 day?) will be served to the normal public.

- meanwhile watchlists and edits and logged in editors views will update in realtime.

The idea is that this is an encyclopedia, and hence nothing is supposed to change that quickly, meanwhile the delay gives editors a chance to remove vandalism. Doing this would also discourage vandalism since the vandals wouldn't even see their own edits, and the vandalism gets fixed before any harm was done. Meanwhile, well intentioned edits would go through.WolfKeeper

There are 370,000 users here, and I think most page views are probably by registered users. The vandalism is still going to bother all of us.Superm401 | Talk 05:02, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
Exactly! And the editors are the ones who know how to fix it, and are naturally motivated to do so. Meanwhile the users don't see any problems, so the perception of the wikipedia rises. This idea scales naturally, since the number of editors scales up with the number of users and the number of vandals.WolfKeeper
Therefore, I don't think this is much of a solution. Superm401 | Talk 05:02, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
It's a solution to the problem of perceived accuracy of the wikipedia, not a solution to vandalism. Barring some clever AI, the only solution to vandalism is editors looking and reading and correcting.WolfKeeper
I just thought of something. If it takes a day for a new version to be visible to anons, then if a page is vandalized(or made in accurate or POV or...) and an editor fixes it, the public version will still be inaccurate for the amount of time between the vandalism and fix. I.E.
January 1st-noon-George W. Bush is blanked
January 1st-1:00 P.M.-reverted
Assuming 1 day delay:
January 2nd-noon-blanked version becomes visible
January 2nd-1:00 P.M.-reverted version visible
Either way, the vandalized page is visible for an hour. There is no reasonable way to avoid this as far as I can see. Superm401 | Talk 05:25, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
I'm ahead of you- I changed it to 'stable'. :-) That means it only become visible if nobody has changed it for a period of time, so a series of vandalisations and reverts wouldn't ever appear. WolfKeeper
That's unacceptable. For a start, you would be seeing a version of this page that's years old. That solution doesn't allow constant improvement of pages, which is what wikis are all about. If pages are improved more than once a day, the improvements won't ever show. The wiki should never be "stable". It should grow. Superm401 | Talk 05:52, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
This isn't exactly an ordinary page! And besides, June 5th is not years old. And there's nothing magical about my suggest of using "one day", we could use 6 hours. For this page that would be August 6, and I can't overemphasise how unusual this page is. The wikipedia is *not* a news outlet not up-to-date to within seconds. It's supposed to be accurate. Wikinews is the time critical one.WolfKeeper
Ultimately we have to trade some small measure of timeliness for security. We have to slow down the appearance of edits to the general public so that we can control the accuracy of the information we present. It's not just vandalism, it's well meaning errors, spelling, grammar etc. The wikipedia relies on the editors to do that, and giving them some small time to do their job is very reasonable. And if people are hacking on a supposedly informative encyclopedia entry continuously, it's obviously not ready for the big time yet.WolfKeeper
I just did a quick straw pole through the wikipedia; I was unable to find a vandalisation that had survived for more than 2.5 hours. It's not perfect there doubtless is some that survived, but it's not the normal case. I think a 6 hour stabilisation would work great with >99.9% of all articles whilst massively reducing the effects of vandalisms. WolfKeeper

Proposed Admin option to set page editable only by signed-in accounts

We the editors of the George W. Bush page request that some sort of option (only available to admins) can be set on certain pages that are frequent targets of vandalism. I know a widespread policy of such a nature is not a good idea, but on certain pages, it would cut the amount of work down a tremendous amount, and since it would only be enabled/disabled by admins, its usage would be highly discretionary. --kizzle July 9, 2005 15:57 (UTC)

Are you proposing a semi-protection? There's a failing proposal about just that above. Howabout1 Talk to me! July 9, 2005 16:12 (UTC)

I personally take offense to the statement "we the editors of George W. Bush", I edit the article at times and have not made up my mind on the issue of semiprotection and I think that Kizzle should only speak for himself and not for the thousands of other users who edit that article. Jtkiefer

My apology... I just haven't seen your name in the vast amount of recent talk. --kizzle 18:50, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
I have been trying to keep away from it as much as possible other than to revert blatant vandalism due the massive number of issues that George W. Bush is perpetually involved in. Jtkiefer 00:42, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Split the George W. Bush article to diversify the location of content

I suggest that you split the article into various sections. First of all, the article is too long. Look at the stats:

  • George W. Bush - 54.6KB (7540 words) - 10:15, July 9, 2005

You could make a separate article for every section. That way you would diversify the location of the content, and "vandals" would be less encouraged to make any changes to so many articles. When you have all the content about George W. Bush in one page, "vandals" know that it's easy to disorganize the article. If you had various articles, each for every stage of Bush's life, then the "vandals" would get too lazy to change anything.

To put it differently, if "vandals" know they can disrupt everything by editing one single article, they are gonna do it. Just split the article. On the main article you keep the summary about Bush, and then you make hyperlinks to every section about his life. That way it would also be easier to expand every section. When you have all the thing in one article, it's just more error-prone and vulnerable to "vandals". 2004-12-29T22:45Z July 9, 2005 17:44 (UTC)


To respond to both of you, quite honestly I don't find any convincing arguments against the proposal mentioned before mine to "semi-protect" a frequently vandalized page from anon-ips. In addition, with all due respect, my characterization of the discussion is that the proponents of this concept are bringing forth convincing arguments whereas opposition is mostly absent from the entry. If the only setback to such an action is that it would create more vandals, the type of people who would register an account simply to vandalize already have accounts. In addition, the ability on such a semi-protected page to effectively combat roving IP vandalism seems to greatly out-weigh any minor inconveniences such a proposal would create. By only allowing logged-in users to edit highly vandalized pages, we increase our ability to effectively monitor and control vandalism with little repercussion to the good-intentioned editor. I don't think its fair to simply rely on editors to combat vandalism when the page reaches 30+ vandalisms a day. --kizzle July 9, 2005 18:48 (UTC)

Then say that in that proposal, not here. Howabout1 Talk to me! July 9, 2005 18:59 (UTC)

You know, then I think you should use both strategies, first of all, forcing users to register, and, secondly, spread the content accross different articles, so it gets more difficult to "vandalize". To those people who say it's not worth the effort to force users to log in, I say that Wikipedia should experiment first, and then we see if it works or not. If it doesn't work, then you reenable users to edit without logging in. Take also a look at #Breakup controversial articles. A user proposed the same thing. To me it makes sense. 2004-12-29T22:45Z 20:23, July 9, 2005 (UTC)

My proposal would mean that anyone could read, but only registered users could edit. I know that would never fly, but protecting heavily vandalized pages so that only registered users could edit them is something I would be very much in favor of. I really do not see what the inconvienence is to anyone by asking them to register. As Wikipedia becomes more better known some change may be inevitable. As far as the comment above that a tiered structure (admin-registered user-anonymous poster)...that I would oppose that though. The dividing line would be registered and unregistered.--MONGO 06:36, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

In addition to this, I'd like to see a one-click option that automatically reports the user and supplies the questionable modification directly to the Admins. I think this would be much more efficient than doing it manually. EreinionFile:RAHSymbol.JPG 05:14, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

So Admins, what happens now considering overwhelming support? --kizzle 00:07, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Find someone to write the code for you. Simply having admin status does not mean one can. Filing an enhancement bug on Bugzilla wouldn't hurt. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:39, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand. No offense, but what good is a proposals section if an option with overwhelming support simply gets archived with no action on it? --kizzle 16:39, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

This is a volunteer project. Did you think that by getting support for something, that would force someone to write the code for you? -- Cyrius|✎ 01:02, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Of course not :). Just didn't understand hierarchy of where i needed to direct such a proposal. By the way, there is a current bug now. I would highly suggest people interested in this idea to login to bugzilla and voice your opinion, as we have one person who wants to close it simply due to an across-the-board belief of letting anons edit, and another who does not feel there is concensus, despite a great deal of support above, which is enough at this stage to keep it in limbo. --kizzle 22:43, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Re: splitting the gwb article to diversify it's content: this has already been done. But this gives me a different idea: use templates to delegate it's contents, and create a level of indirection for vandals. The page could then be protected, but the templates not, such that vandals could only vandalize a section at a time, at best. Kevin Baastalk: new 01:43, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Blocking policy/Personal attacks

A new proposal has been written to allow admins to block people that make frequent personal attacks (but only if the admin is an uninvolved party). Please visit and give your comments. It is still in the discussion stage, so no voting please. Radiant_>|< 09:39, August 14, 2005 (UTC)


I want to start a new project

I want to start a new project called "Psychotherapy and counseling". I have a list of articles that would fall under here, and more could be added. I don't know what to do or how to begin. The wikipedia:project page was not much help.whicky1978 18:15, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

That page does have quite a bit in its "Suggestions for new projects" section that should help. I'd start by creating a project page at, say Wikipedia:WikiProject Psychotherapy and counselling, setting out what you want the project to achieve - even if the aims are fairly amorphous at the moment. They can always be amended once people start to add themselves to the project. Have a look at the main pages of some other wikiprojects, to see what sort of things go on on them - most have things like lists of potential goals, lists of articles that need creation or expansion, any useful templates and useful online research resources, and a place where project members can add their names as active project members. After that, it's a case of advertising the project. See if there are any related wikiprojects where you could add a note to the talk page (I see from the list of Wikiprojects that there are ones concerned with Sociology, Sociology, Community, Family and relationships, and Sexology and Sexuality, and or all of which might be good places to advertise). Add a mention of the new project on the talk pages of the main relevant articles, and have a look at the project histories - if the same editor names keep cropping up with major revisions, chances are they may be interested in the project. Hopefully after that it'll be a case of watching the discussion and the project grow. Grutness...wha? 01:17, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Watch talk pages

I'm suggesing a change in the software that allows users to watch only talk pages, not articles themselves. It's useful if a user posts a comment or a question on a talk page and is watching it waiting for a reply, but is not interested in the article itself. CG 17:35, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't seem worth the developers' while. It may be usefull, but not usefull enough to do. Father Howabout1 Talk to me! 17:38, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

Need opinion for a new collaboration project

I'm about to create a collaboration project (like the Wikipedia:Collaborations of the week) for Unusual articles, and I'm asking for your opinion: should I make it a weekly collaboration (I'm not a fan of this), monthly, or more originaly every April Fool's day? CG 15:11, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

  • I suspect weekly is a bit much; why not start with fortnightly, step it up if there is more interest and down if there is less? Many of these collaborations have become more or less frequent as participation has waxed and waned. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:31, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
  • Good idea; I think this one might attract lasting interest and could have the potential to solve our April 1 problem with a supply of decent real articles on unlikely topics.--Pharos 02:51, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for your comments. But could you be more precise on what is the April 1 problem in Wikipedia. CG 08:32, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
Our "April 1 problem" (as I've bowdlerized it) is the annual controversy over whether we should put phony items on the Main Page for April Fools Day. If we instead have some featured-quality true-but-unusual articles on hand, we could avoid clever but perhaps less-than-encyclopedic humor.--Pharos 22:50, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Portal Namespace

There is a proposal to add a Portal: namespace at Wikipedia:Portal namespace. Please vote there - even if you think there are already enough votes! – ABCD✉ 00:30, 15 August 2005 (UTC)


AOL users

Now, I realize I'm going to sound a little bit unfair, knowing that Wikipedia's supposed to be all about "everyone can contribute at any time whether they've registered or not," but here's the deal: my proposal is that we not allow anyone from an AOL IP to make edits unless they are registered and logged in. The reason for this is that basically, the "rotating IP" nature of AOL makes it literally impossible to put a halt to vandalism from an AOL user.

Case in point -- every few days, a vandal comes along, goes through every single Street Fighter character, and removes the formatting which organizes the "Street Fighter characters" category by last name (as you can see from the history of just about every single character with a last name). I then spend about ten minutes reverting this vandalism. This person is on an AOL IP, has not registered (or at least not logged in), and thus there is no way to stop them due to the rotating IP. They even went onto my user page and removed a conversation I had with someone else about the revert war. Anyone have any other ideas about how this might be dealt with? --Yar Kramer 20:43, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

This won't work. They'll just register a username and vandalize, which'll make them less obvious. When the name is blocked, they'll redial to get around the autoblocker, register a new username, and continue. The mild additional annoyance to the vandal of having to come up with new names is far outweighed by the additional difficulty noticing the vandalism. —Cryptic (talk) 21:34, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I fully support the idea. At least it would allow us to block an individual and so target the block, even if it has to be done repeatedly. The situation with randon AOL IPs has become impossible and is causing widespread problems. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 21:53, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

The best solution would be better identifying tools. There are obvious traits to vandal editing (a short list of words, blanking, repeat exclamation marks, etc.). If vandal likely edits could be highlighted in yellow in RC, the nuisance would wreck less havoc and we wouldn't have to resort to blocking. lots of issues | leave me a message 00:53, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Those kind of tools are available to those who use CDVF. -- Essjay · Talk 05:18, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
Er ... I probably ought to know these things, but what's CDVF? --Yar Kramer 21:59, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter (google it). The IRC channel #en.wikipedia.vandalism on Freenode does the same thing. ~~ N (t/c) 22:03, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
User:CryptoDerk/CDVF. FreplySpang (talk) 22:13, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Who's watching

It's a proposal: how about a "Who's watching" link along with "What links here" and "Related changes" that lists all the user who are watching this particular page. I think it would be useful to estimate the popularity of the page. We could also make a [[Special:Most watched]] that list articles that have the biggest number of people watching it. CG 14:17, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

I'd prefer a simple number of people who are watching it, rather than a list. Privacy concerns. --Golbez 14:21, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
I remember suggesting something similar a few months back, and apparently then I wasn't the first. At some point previously it had apparently been rejected on the grounds that vandals would hit the pages that nobody or only a very few people were watching.
A possible way around this would be to restrict the entire feature to admins; or to just display approximate numbers (for non admins only?) below a certain threshold, e.g. This article is being watched by 20 or fewer users vs This article is being watched by 38 users.
If it was possible to show a list of users, then I think this could be restricted to beaurocrats to allay (sp?) privacy concerns and to allow the feature to be used as possibly another indication in sock-checking. If this would cause a lot of work for the servers then I don't think its worth it.
I do not think that it should be possible to see another user's watchlist as this would lead to possibilities of stalking other users. Thryduulf 16:38, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
The idea of having a little notice above an article for admins to see which notes than only a few people have the article on their watch lists is a good idea. It allows specific users to see vunerable pages, while preventing privacy problems. It couldn't be too difficult to add a little counter to a page which increases whenever someone adds the page and decreses when they remove the page from their watchlist. — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 10:04, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
I've put in a feature request for this - see Bugzilla:3128. Thryduulf 16:05, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
I answered in the bugzilla. This feature is available in my special version called EnotifWiki, but certainly not implemented or switched on on Wikipedia because of server and database load it creates in addition. screenshot - see the number in [ ] --Wikinaut 20:54, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
I think a number of people watching would be great, and I agree with the rationale stated above that this would be for privacy purposes. And to prevent vandalism of pages that would list a number "0", how about whenever the number of watchers is less than 5, show "<5" so as to leave it as a mystery as to the actual number. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 22:41, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
That would still signify that the page is barely being watched. In this context, less than five watchers is basically nobody, when any of those five could have left the project, or have that page buried under 500 other pages in their watch list. I think it would be better if the count was shown only to admins or, at the limit, logged-in users. — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 11:41, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
My choice of "5" was arbitrary. I'm open to any consensus number. You're right about what "<5" *could* mean, but if it's a mystery as to who is watching it, rather than *knowing* it's zero, that would have to make some difference. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 15:22, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
Please could you continue discussions at Bugzilla:3128 to keep the debate together, there are already at least two disucssions on different VP pages! Thryduulf 08:14, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikiversity

This is more of a heads up and an attempt to "advertise" this project to more people that may be interested. Wikiversity has been a project that has languished on Wikibooks for some time, and there is a discussion about where it needs to go from here. If you want to get involved with deciding its fate and where it belongs, you are encouraged to join in on the discussions on Meta. --Robert Horning 17:24, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


Second Wikipedia Tagline

A second Wikipedia tagline at the top right of every page has been proposed at Wikipedia:Proposed update of MediaWiki:Tagline. Consensus is building to add "All articles are user-contributed." at top right of pages. Interested contributers please visit this page and comment. -- Sitearm | Talk 04:11, 2005 August 16 (UTC)

Blog an Entry

Flickr has this cool function where you can just click 'blog this' from any picture and it lets you add text and then goes straight to your blog and adds an posting.

Wikipedia could do this too. I'm always finding interesting stuff that I'd like to blog.

You need me to be a member and enter my blog login details.

And you need to set it up so that the entry is well presented in blogs, including images, or links back to the page. You're not a picture though, so I guess it should be the page title and an abstract or the first 100 characters?

Or you can blog a pic you find on Wikipedia?

The other option is just to spit out some html and people can cut and paste it as they please?

Are you asking for a function that will output the code for a link to a Wikipedia article or picture as well as a short abstract? That really doesn't seem that difficult to do manually. Superm401 | Talk 04:43, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Featured article date

We surely have (too) many lists already but I think that this one would be useful:

  1. To provide an index of our best stuff,
  2. To provide the date of featured publication (to allow comparison of then vs now).

Lacking a list (scratch #1) could we at least provide within the featured template the date of featured publication. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to you comments. hydnjo talk 23:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured articles does not count? --cesarb 00:02, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Oops! Yes of course, it was so obvious that I ... Well anyway what does anyone think about a date stamp in the featured template? Again, thanks for your comments. hydnjo talk 02:43, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Strike previous comments by myself. hydnjo talk 00:08, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Probably a good idea. Articles change over time, so it would be worth checking some that got FA status a while back to see if they still qualify. it would also make it easier to see which one have been FA for a long while but still haven't made the front page. Grutness...wha? 04:50, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
What needs to be done to make this actually happen? I dare not mess with the template. ;-) hydnjo talk 18:01, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I have added the Main page publication date to the talk page of the featured articles of the last few days. Please take a look and comment. Thank you, hydnjo talk 03:48, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Strike prior stupid comments suggestion by myself. hydnjo talk 02:38, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
Looks good, although it's almost certainly better done using templates. Unfortunately, I don't have the skill to come up with one that would do the trick. Grutness...wha? 01:46, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Neither do I. Using any of the existing templates (eg:{{Now}}), etc. would be corrupted by an edit. So, until some kind soul steps in, I'll just do it manually.  ;-( hydnjo talk 02:47, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure this is relevant, but 5 ~'s (like signing, but one more) expand to the current date. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:32, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
The problem with 5 ~'s is that it includes the time of day with the date which would not be appropriate for the Main page FA date. Also. the problem with using something like {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}} {{CURRENTYEAR}} as parameters within the {{Featured}} template is that the date would be volatile (vandal blanking and reverting would result in displaying the wrong date - I think). I just don't know how to make the initial date "stick" so I'm adding it manually for now. hydnjo talk 17:32, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Resources for Research

I propose that Wikipedia purchase site licenses for services like ProQuest Historical Newspapers and LexisNexis. These are just select examples of research services that could be helpful to Wikipedia editors. If the site licenses were purchased, Wikipedia editors would be able to get interesting new forms of information, such as case law and back newspapers. I already see editors asking each other to use university and work accounts for these services. It would be better, however, if Wikipedia had its own license. This would be invaluable in our constant effort to cite our sources as well as in doing more deep research. Superm401 | Talk 04:45, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Proquest may be affordable but LexisNexis licenses for the inner core of contributors would be staggering. I agree that access to these databases would wonderfully lift the quality of content. We just need to find a way to obtain it for free or low cost... lots of issues | leave me a message 12:09, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Do you think I should write and ask how much the ProQuest costs? I won't if there's no interest. Superm401 | Talk 16:33, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
I can't imagine they'd agree; it's hard to see how it would mean anything else than effectively making it free to anybody who signed up to Wikipedia. They might never sell another subscription. Rd232 16:39, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
That's not quite a reasonable way of looking at it. Plenty of libraries already have these services free. Yet, people don't just use the libraries' accounts forever. They sign up themselves if they have a substantial need. No one is going to be depending on Wikipedia's account for important business. Most people who use these services will never even hear that we have an account. ProQuest would undoubtedly specify that the account is valid only for Wikipedia research, just as they specify that other accounts are valid for only corporate business. The corporations and non-profit organizations that sign up for these research services are not going to be willing to misuse our account for their purposes. It's too much of a legal risk. I highly doubt Proquest will pass this up if we can afford it. Superm401 | Talk 16:49, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
I would support begging rather than asking for a quote. The licenses can be limited to only members who've had a dedicated history of article writing. lots of issues | leave me a message 19:11, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I guess that's a fair start. If they refuse to donate their service, we can decide where to go from there. Ron Clowney of Proquest seems to be an appropriate contact for this. His information is here. I won't post it on Wikipedia for obvious reasons. I believe our best choice would be to send him a fax. What do you think? Superm401 | Talk 05:18, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
Does anyone have a problem with me sending a fax as a representative of the Wikimedia foundation? Superm401 | Talk 06:16, August 6, 2005 (UTC)
Go for it dude. And thanks, we would benefit so much if you succeed. lots of issues | leave me a message 19:06, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Fax sent. I'll post any reply here. Superm401 | Talk 04:09, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Renaming of #REDIRECT {{special tags}}

For a little while now there have been aditional template message tags added to Redirect pages in the form of:

#REDIRECT [[Uluru]] {{R from alternate name}}

Which clarifies the reason for the redirect. (e.g Ayer's Rock is an alternate name for Uluru).

One such popular tag is {{R with possibilities}} which makes explicit that the redirect goes to a subtopic of the article, and perhaps a whole article with this name could or should be created future.

My proposal is to change the names of these special tags to make them more memorable, better clarified, and more useful. And to do it now, while these templates are relatively new and unknown.

Summary of proposed changes
Existing Proposed
{{R from abbreviation}} {{R abbreviation}}
{{R from misspelling}} {{misspelling}} * (see 4th point below)
{{R from alternate spelling}} {{R alternate}}
{{R for alternate capitalisation}}
{{R from alternate name}}
{{R from alternate language}}
{{R from ASCII}}
{{R from plural}} {{R plural}}
{{R from related word}} {{R related term}}
{{R with possibilities}} {{R subtopic}}
{{R to disambiguation page}} {{R disambiguate}}
{{R for as of}} {{R as of}}
{{R from shortcut}} {{R shortcut}}
{{R to sort name}} {{R sort}}
{{R from scientific name}} {{R scientific name}}

Firstly, I'd like to remove the word "from". so instead of {{R from related word}} we'd just have {{R related word}}. This would make it easier to remember the tag, as some use "from", some "for", and others "to". I don't think there is any ambiguity, and the full meaning can be understood from the category page.

Secondly, {{R subtopic}} is much more clear than {{R with possibilities}}

Thirdly, instead of categories based on the original list of what redirects are used for, I'd like to make it categories based on what the special tags can be used for. Misspelling, for instannce, is useful in that it lets the reader know that it's not just an alternative name but a misspelling. (unfortunately that information is hidden at present, but I imagine in future the reader will be told they were redirected from a misspelling.) Also in future, perhaps the "what links here" will tell you which redirect pages are misspellings. That's useful documentation. It means links to misspellings cna be found easily, etc.

On the other hand, whether a redirect is counted as an alternate name or alternate language, I think is less generally useful, and only makes it more difficult to categorise redirects. Likewise for whether something is a different spelling, or just using ASCII. So I propose to lump all the "alternates" together, so long as they are all correct alternatives. This would bring the number of tags down from 13 to nine.

Fourthly, make "misspelling" its own tag, which can be combined with others.

E.g. Air's Rock would become:

#redirect [[Uluru]] {{R alternate}} {{misspelling}}

as it is a misspelling of an alternate name.

Fifthly (ok these ordinal numbers are getting silly), {{R to disambiguation page}} to {{R disambiguate}}. "to disambiguation page" is not really clear, it really means someone should disambiguate the link that lead them there, not only that it redirects to a disambiguation page. And some other minor changes. See list below.

Finally, Any more suggestions? What about redirects from a misspelling of an alternate name? Is there a way to do a heirarchy of these things, like categories?

I don't know how these changes would be implemented. I assume someone would have to write a script, unless there are ways of migrating more elegantly. I also don't know what the appropriate Wikibureaucracy process is to get these changes implemented. I figure someone just has to do it. Comments welcome.

This proposal also been posted to Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/Redirect_pages

—Pengo 02:36, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

These templates are not "new and unknown". They are very old, and seldom used because a change on the software made they stop appearing (IIRC it was around the time it stopped showing "1. REDIRECT ..." and started showing a nice icon). Besides, they are evil: if someone makes a move and then adds one of these templates to the page, the page cannot be moved back over the redirect (because it does not have a single edit only anymore). They are also not that useful (if the reason for the redirect is not obvious enough, just use the redirect's talk page). One exception (there's always one exception...) would be {{R_for_as_of}}, which has none of these problems, and is useful for finding all the "as of" redirects. --cesarb 04:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Note that all of these have been listed on Templates for deletion. (Not by me, don't shoot the messenger, etc etc.) —Cryptic (talk) 15:36, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
The way these templates work changes from time to time (initially the content of the message was displayed when viewing the redirect's page). Currently, one can use them for categorization and Special:whatlinkshere on the templates. Either way, they allow to select, e.g. all misspellings, all scientific names, all Redirects to decade etc.
Recently, it was suggested to use "from" where possible (e.g. {{R from other capitalisation}} ). I renamed one or two that way. There was some confusion about the use of "alternate", so "other" is used instead.
Personally, I would rename/move the {{R with possibilities}} to {{R subtopic}} as suggested and keep {{R from alternate language}} a separate tag/category.
{{R to disambiguation page}} seems less ambigous than {{R disambiguate}}. The text on the template should explain the use of the redirect.
If it's a misspelling (not an alternate spelling), I'd use just that tag. -- User:Docu


#Top link?

Would the developers be willing to put in a #top link next to the edit button at the top of each ==Section== or ===Subsection===? I think most browsers now automatically predefine the top line of an HTML page as <a name=#top></a>. Alternatively, it shouldn't be so difficult (I say, as I sit here coaching from my easy chair) to predefine all the article pages as a hidden #top. Thoughts? Comments? Popcorn? Tomer TALK 23:14, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds great. I would post it to technical. It can't possibly take long to program. Superm401 | Talk 18:16, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Grammar desk

What do people think about creating a third desk called "Wikipedia:Grammar desk". I think that there are enough grammar queens on Wikipedia to monitor and answer questions. I think that such a desk would be useful, and would help improve the quality of writing here. I propose that a FAQ page be attached. Any comments? Ground Zero 19:04, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

(copied from User talk:Ground Zero) wikipedia:WikiProject Grammar was designed for that purpose, but appears to have sadly gone unused. (That brings up another question: where should the adjective have gone in the previous sentence?) Anyway, I think it would be good to revive that project, and maybe set up a wikipedia:English style FAQ, where we highlight the most frequent spelling and grammar problems on wikipedia pages, and talk about why they are incorrect. For example, the commas, its/it's and which/that, and common spelling mistakes like noticable/noticeable and inital/initial (I've spent the last few days fixing those!) Graham 01:59, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Ground Zero and Graham: firstly, excuse me if this makes little sense: I have just arisen. Secondly, I agree totally with what you both propose. I think that it is rather detrimental to Wikipedia that there is not much in the way of grammar discussion. As you both know, fixing spelling and grammar is a very silent job; we often just find mistakes and fix them, but this does not stop the same mistakes from being made repeatedly. It would be far more productive to discuss failings of grammar, spelling, punctuation and general style on one easily accessible page. It would be great to have our deliberations on one page, rather than on thousands of unique pages. Furthermore, I find that nearly all the errors that I correct are on pages that no one has ever tagged for copyediting. I should bet that many Wikipedians have qualms over style when they read articles, but do not wish to engage in a wasteful fight with the original article writer. I think that people would be more enthusiastic if they could refer their opinion for general debate. Templates could be added onto pages with a message like ‘some of this article’s grammatical accuracy is disputed’, with a link to the discussion on the grammar desk. The petitioner could explain why they find something wrong, and we could all give our opinions. This zone would not be solely reserved for debates about particular pages, but about grammar questions in general. (I can think of many, such as: why should there be an apostrophe s after numbers?) The discussions could help to formulate a more comprehensive style and grammar FAQ. I think that any centralised system has to be better than the current adhocracy. Sometimes, we have to be vigilantes, but it is more constructive to have consensus.

(By the way, as for the question about the adjective, I do not particularly see why split infinitives are such a crime. I think that language should be both as clear and as precise as possible; unlike the use of commas, I feel that unnaturally convoluting a sentence to ensure that there is no split infinitive does not enhance a sentence’s clarity. However, that is just my opinion.) IINAG 10:27, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

  • I took a look at wikipedia:WikiProject Grammar as Graham noted. I think that part of the problem is that no-one knows that it's there. Before posting my original proposal, I tried twice to find a page that would do what I was proposing. In neither extensive search did I find that project. In my proposal, a link to the Grammar desk would appear on the Wikipedia:Community portal along with Wikipedia:Reference desk and Wikipedia:Help desk. That would make it easy for people with grammar questions to find a place to post them. I think that this page could serve the function that IINAG is identifying: if there is a dispute over grammar, the disputants can seek the views of others. The Grammar desk FAQ could also point people in the direction of the Grammar project, so that its list of articles with grammatical problems could become more active. It could also have links to outside sources of information like Get it write on-line Ground Zero 15:37, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree with IINAG that grammar rules should be flexible. We should only correct things that are obviously wrong (like "that dogs IS hungry"). Subtle rules, which most people ignore, should not be enforced here, either. To do so would discourage contributors who provide input which is useful, if not always grammatically ideal. StuRat 03:44, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, our grammar standards should be flexible, perhaps, but not that much and not for that reason. To encourage contributors, we should say, "FACTUALLY CORRECT, but ungrammatical (or otherwise poorly written) contributions are very welcome. Errors will be fixed. Poor style will be improved." Then when someone writes something that isn't perfect, we should make it better. I say let Wikipedia strive for stunningly excellent prose, which generally requires good grammar. The main reason we do want to be flexible about grammar rules is that we have contributors from different countries. It is well known, for example, that standard U.S. usage differs significantly from standard U.K. usage. So there is no standard of "correct grammar" that applies worldwide. Another reason is that grammar standards evolve. For example, getting back to IINAG's example, hardly anyone has a problem with split infinitives any more. — Nowhither 14:33, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I do a fair bit of copyediting on Canadian politics and history pages, and some elsewhere. I always work to improve the quality of the writing since no-one "owns" the articles. If someone reverts one of my improvements, I don't worry about it unless it is a reversion to something that is unambiguously wrong. I might fix a split infinitive because I think it is poor style, but I'm not going to spend any time arguing with someone who changes it back. There is so much poor writing here that it is beeter to spend time fixing things on which I won't get arguments.

And this is where my proposal comes from. An editor created hundreds of articles about Canadian electoral districts using the phrase "xxxx was a former electoral district". I fixed that mistake (xxxx is still a former district), amongst others, in dozens of articles before the original writer intervene to tell me that there was nothing wrong with the way s/he had written it originally. I ended up at the Wikipedia:Reference desk, for want of anywhere else to go, to get other editors to help resolve the disagreement. That worked, and convinced me that a specialized desk would be a useful tool for resolving grammatical disputes, and would contribute to improving the writing on Wikipedia by giving people an obvious place to go to ask questions.

So I wanted to canvass other views before I go ahead and create this page as a branch from Wikipedia:Ask a question. Ground Zero 15:47, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Hello, everyone. I am glad to see unanimous support so far for these proposals. As you have pointed out, we would not strive to form a sort of homogenous style, discarding all regional differences; this would be rather counterproductive. I know that it would make me slightly consternated if people should pick on my British spelling, or how I learnt semi-colons, for example. Instead of being autocratic, I could see such a desk as a forum for maintaining a high level of clarity in Wikipedia’s articles; as a way to reduce grammatical confusion. The ‘excellent prose’ to which we aspire has to be prose that transmits information both sparingly and accurately. Many bad pieces of grammar, such as Ground Zero’s example, fly under the radar; at the minute, an error can only be remedied if someone reads the page, and notices the error. A new, consolidated system would establish an accord over what is imprecise and what is just simply doctrinaire. Having had such discussions, we will be able to remedy repeated errors more quickly in the future.

(In my opinion, incidentally, when I read the sentences 'X was a former district,' I think that it X was abolished, or in a state of abeyance, and then someone brought it back. In fact, the preterite and the word 'former' usually suggest to me a thing that was disposed of, until being reinstated. There are some exceptions to this. 'Persona Xsapat was a former pupil at Idiot College, Swindon' is clear, despite being a tad ungrammatical, because not many people on Wikipedia can be said to have attended school and then returned to it. 'Al Gore was a former Vice President' or 'John Major was a former prime minister' seem definite past to me, due to context: I cannot think of many Vice Presidents of America who lost the job and then regained it; I can only think of four Prime Ministers who lost the job and regained it since the days of Gladstone and Disræli. Of course, the sentence 'previously, Al Gore was Vice President', or 'Al Gore is a former Vice President' is far clearer to me than using the word former. This could be one of the many things that we could debate and resolve on the grammar desk. I think that it could be not only a useful tool for disambiguation, but also a rather interesting insight into how contributors see the language. IINAG 20:06, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposed updates to the Wikipedia tagline

Because of the recent heavy discussion about adding a second Wikipedia tagline, additional proposed updates to the main tagline are being documented here. All interested contributers please participate and comment in this important discussion. -- Sitearm | Talk 05:11, 2005 August 18 (UTC)


Animated Battle Maps

I have noticed that it can be hard to tell what is happening when looking at maps of battles, generally a number of pictures of the same map with different arrows drawn on it is used.

I think we should design a flash program that allows battles to be 'replayed' in real time.

The map could be of a single battle like Gettysburg or of a campaign like the eastern front of WW2- It could even be used as an 'empire map' showing the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

Eventually we could chart the whole of humanity on one huge map showing every nations expansion and contraction.

A good example of something similar to this is Iraq Casualties, which is a map of Iraq which shows the location of every casualty over time and location. Imagine if this was a map of the world and showed every battle fought since 0 BC.

Are you volunteering to write the code? -- Cyrius|✎ 18:46, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
  • The problem is that Flash has a lot of potential for introducing malicious code. Why not design animated gifs first? - Mgm|(talk) 12:56, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • Remember to let people edit mercilessly every image and annotation. Should be interesting code. (SEWilco 06:48, 15 July 2005 (UTC))
Many people do not have Flash. For me a series of maps is clearest.Dejvid 20:43, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
Howabout a wiki-editable description language for such events that gets used to generate (for now) a series of PNGs, and (later) animated GIFs or APNGs or Flash animations? (e.g. using map x, place icon y at (lat,long,day,month,year) with arrow to (lat,long,day,month,year) etc...) Ojw 21:25, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

A few "fluffy" comments:

  • Nice as it is in many ways, forget about using Flash. However wonderful they may once have been, Macromedia are now basically adware marketers, and many of us avoid their software on principle. Also, as noted earlier, there is the potential for malicious code.
  • Battles and empires are only one kind of application. Consider what else we could do with changing maps: showing movement of rivers, land loss (e.g., in southern Louisiana), climate change, expansion of cities, continental drift, spread of political/religious movements, etc.
  • Now generalize even more, and consider other things we might do with the same kind of technology — things other than maps. Like showing a caterpillar going through its entire pupa phase, or a human face aging, or a volcano growing. Those wonderful illustrations of engines and locks could move.
  • This is a good idea. Doing it with maximum usefulness and compatibility, and minimum annoyance and change to the software is a tough job, however.

— Nowhither 05:56, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Pennsylvania Dutch/German Wikipedia?

I am proposing having a translation of Wikipedia into Pennsylvania German. I have taught myself the language and would be willing to write some articles, but I'd like to know if anyone else would be interested and be able to collaborate with me on this. For those of you who don't know, Pennsylvania German, or Pennsylvania Dutch, is spoken to some degree by about 100,000 people in the mid-atlantic and midwestern U.S. It is unintelligible to speakers of regular German (Deutsch) but many of the words are similar.

This would be a great way to make a contribution to reviving the language. In southeastern Pennsylvania, the language is dying. Most of those who speak it only speak a little bit, and the ones that are fluent are all over 40-50 years old./

If anyone would be with me on this, please send me an email to [email protected] or reply to this thread.

Thank you very much!

Interesting idea. Is it really unintelligible to Standard German speakers? Why don't you have a look at How to start a new Wikipedia. Before you start a new Wikipedia though, you probably want to have some experience on another Wikipedia first.--Pharos 02:46, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree that it's a good idea, but don't do it if you're only goal is to revive the language. The primary purpose of any Wikipedia should be to educate. Superm401 | Talk 05:38, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
Language revival isn't such a bad goal; it's probably one of the main motivations behind at least half of our Wikipedias. Just remember, the product should be a neutral encyclopedia in Pennsylvania German, not a website promoting the use of Pennsylvania German. Good luck!--Pharos 05:52, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
You could also work on expanding Pennsylvania Dutch, the article. — David Remahl 06:07, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch almost universally Amish, and thus unlikely to ever participate in Wikipedia? jdb ❋ (talk) 04:01, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
As it happens, I am Pennsylvania Dutch -- one of my many heritages. I can say, truthfully, that I rarely heard the old tongue spoken when I was a boy on the farm, and that was 40 years ago. But it is not restricted to the Old Order Amish, or even Mennonites in general.
The German language spread widely throughout south-central Pennsylvania and beyond, among the German peoples who settled there. The "Dutch" in Pennsylvania Dutch (just as the "Dutch" in Holland) is a corruption of "Deutch" -- the German word for German. Occasionally, those outside the Pennsylvania Dutch community are spoken of by those inside it as "English" -- be they in fact French or Italian.
But the old tongue and the old ways are dying out hard. My boyhood farm is now a housing development, a subdivision, a part of the suburban sprawl out from Harrisburg. And it is entirely true that, with the rarest of exceptions, anyone using the old tongue unaffectedly would shun Wikipedia -- in any language, and in any form, I suspect. — Xiong熊talk* 23:07, 2005 August 22 (UTC)


Search re-direct to wiktionary

I noticed a few times there are things that I search for on wikipedia that don't have articles, but do however have wiktionary entries. I suggest that the search page have in addition to the links "create a page" and "request the page" it also have "check the other wikimedia pages" and provide links to that specific search at wiktionary, wikibooks, etc.

You may want to add your support to my proposal at MediaWiki talk:Nogomatch#Suggested addition to help new users. Bovlb 14:53:54, 2005-08-20 (UTC)


Replace Template:Infobox Senator and others with Template:Infobox Politician

I noticed the senator infobox recently and was concerned that it was too-focused on a senator's senate career and neglects previous political offices held (such as being a congressman, or, in rare cases, having held multiple senator positions in different states). Furthermore, the senator infobox puts too much information in that is better left for the succession boxes at the bottom of the articles, namely the successor and predecessor.

Thus, I came up with the general politician infobox (link above; see in action at this example article). It does not have successors and predecessors, and has space for many previous offices held to be displayed. I also added in the term of the offices, but that could be removed as well. In addition, displaying information regarding spouses is made optional, as sometimes finding information regarding spouses can be difficult.

So I bring this here for general comment and community input, just to see if this could potentially replace the senate infobox and others (such as the president infobox; although that position is at such a level that previous offices could be placed aside), and if it is set up well or need some adjustment. Thanks. --tomf688<TALK> 23:35, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good, but I haven't used any of those "complex" boxes. Superm401 | Talk 04:41, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

Proposal to create a system of WikiMedals

Following discussion on the Wikipedia mailing list, I have created Wikipedia:Nominations for WikiMedals. The idea is to create a system of positive recognition of Wikipedia contributions. Like it? Think it's a stupid idea? Please vote at that page. - Jakew 12:04, 23 August 2005 (UTC)


Proposal to allow some duplication of articles in Categories and Subcategories

After many months of discussion, there is a proposal to allow some duplication of articles in Categories and their child Subcategories in a few specified cases. Basically, duplication would be allowed for three reasons:

  1. When the article is the topic article of a category, it would be categorized the same as the category, and would also be a member of the category. For example, Film would be in the same categories as Category:Film along with being in Category:Film.
  2. When a set of subcategories is incomplete, it might be useful to put an article in both a subcategory and the supercategory. For example Halle Berry is in both Category:American actors and Category:African American actors.
  3. Some other special cases when it makes common sense. For instance, many of the articles in Category:Musicals describe both the stage and screen versions of a musical. It makes common sense that they belong in that category and its child Category:Musical films

For more about this, and to take part in the discussion, please go to: Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Updating_the_section_on_category_duplications. -- Samuel Wantman 06:00, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

media formats...

is there any plans in motion to extend the media format choices? i.e. wmv, rm, etc....more choices than ogg?

thank you

Those formats are not free and are therefore unacceptable. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:10, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Media help and Free software for more info. In my opinion, it would be a good thing to offer more formats such as WMV, MOV, AVI, but apparently that won't happen because they think MS will sue them for offering videos in WMV format even though lots of other sites offer WMV videos for free and don't get sued for it. WMV, MOV, and AVI are better than Theora anyway. --pile0nadestalk | contribs 05:29, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Are you so sure about that motive? It's more likely that those formats are not open, like everything else about the wiki (except some image formats) and therefore controllable and not quite the wiki way. I don't think anyone is afraid MS will sue them for having a bloody WMV. It's not going to happen, and neither are closed formats on Wiki. --Golbez 07:04, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
When Dirac is finished hopefully that can be used for video. I think that with the support of the BBC it's bound to become more widespread than Ogg Theora. Other than that, there aren't any major open source alternatives for video that I can think of. the wub "?/!" 09:01, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Use of German eszet in English Wikipedia

I have begun an exclusionist, ethnocentric, anti-German argument on the subject of eszet (ß) in English Wikipedia. You are invited to express your disgust with me on the Manual of Style talk page. :-) --Tysto 21:54, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

Provenance

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Provenance

This discussion has been moved to Wikipedia talk:Provenance----Carl Hewitt 13:19, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Categories in preview move

Its would enhance the process of creating articles. As it is, one has to chance for different categories, often I'm in the alternative between "Swedish municipalities" or "Municipalities in Sweden", "Municipalities of Sweden", (substitute with rivers, cities, etc). So I'd like to see the categories in preview mode, instead of after saving. --Fred-Chess 08:11, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

With the default skin, the categories are previewed at the very bottom of the preview page (below the edit box). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:08, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! I never noticed :-) --Fred-Chess 20:28, August 24, 2005 (UTC)


Often when looking through history of an article I wonder why a particular editor has added an item, and ocasionally the urge becomes strong enough to ask the editor. Yet the history links to the editor's user page, rather than the user talk page, making the process just that fraction longer. is there any reason why a link to both user page and talk page couldn't be listed in article histories - much like they are on a personal watchlist? Grutness...wha? 09:32, 27 August 2005 (UTC)


Please could you add the link Allpages to the search box, under the "GO" and "Search" buttons? A lot of users uses this page as a way to find an article, and it would be better if they don't have to access it by the Special:Specialpages. CG 09:24, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Renaming Votes for deletion

It has been proposed to rename Wikipedia:Votes for deletion to Wikipedia:Pages for deletion, to remove the word "votes" from the title and to be more consistent with our other "X for deletion" areas. It has also been proposed to rename Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion to Wikipedia:Deletion review. This has been announced in several places, but the discussion is in one place: Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Name_change_.28again.29. Uncle G 16:35:52, 2005-08-26 (UTC)

Just to clarify: The discussion also includes whether to separate "articles for deletion" from "miscellaneous for deletion" (name to be determined, if needed). The latter would include user pages and Wikipedia namespace pages. Maurreen (talk) 19:37, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Spell Checker!

Okay, who wouldn't love a spell checker for new articles on wikipedia? Tell me, who wouldn't? Yeah, spell checkers aren't infailable (sp? see why we need a checker?), but it will be a start. However, I want support before I follow the procedures to 'change the software'. So, who supports?

British or American spelling? There are many different correct spellings of the same word. This has been shot down many, many times. Howabout1 Talk to me! 23:32, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Give the editor a choice between Brit or American spelling. It would be great for assuring an article was one or the other, which it is supposed to be, especially given that it isn't made clear exactly how one is to write/spell in American as a Brit and vice/versa, let alone use the correct grammar, SqueakBox 23:45, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Tell you who wouldn't? I wouldn't! Spell-checkers end up creating more problems that they're worth because people either trust them implicitly and don't proofread or spend more time by spellchecking via machina and manually. Plus, you've got the problems of US vs International English, and the problems that spell-checkers always run into: foreign words. Something you're far more likely to run into ediing on Wikipedia than editing a letter or essay at home. Grutness...wha? 01:01, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

okay then.....HereToHelp

But shouldn't we encourge the people who want to contribute but don't want to reasearch their brains out? *cough, me, cough* HereToHelp 02:53, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Go contribute!!!! Yay! You can do it! You can do it! Sorry for the sarcasm, but how would a spell checker encourage people who don't want to reasearch? Howabout1 Talk to me! 02:57, August 20, 2005 (UTC)


I certainly can't see how this is an awful idea, even if it has been knocked down many times.
A spell checker can very easily include both US and British spellings, as WP policy does. True, the problem with spell-checkers is that people rely on them too much and often the spelling problem can be a correct spelling in the wrong place (e.g. 'know' instead of 'knew'), but even the very worst spell-checker would improve the pretty terrible spelling on WP and, anyway, it seems that most of the proof-reading side of editing is done by people with fairly good language skills (who would not need or use a spell-checker), while most of the spelling mistakes are done by those who would, and probably should, trust them. As for foreign words, if someone trusts an English spell-checker to correct a non-English word, then there is little hope for there spelling in the first place. If the idea has actually been 'knocked down' before, I hope it was not simply by the reasons that have so far answered HereToHelp's question.
(Perhaps the real problem is practical. WP has a shortage of developers and a spell-checker requires a lot of developing - but this is not a reason to dismiss it in principle.) --Dast 04:39, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
What about having a spell-checker just so it could tag a page full of mis-spellings as likely to be vandalism? That's what I keep wanting an anti-spam company to do. Superm401 | Talk 04:46, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

The current version of the google bar (it's compatible with firefox) has a good spellchecker built in. This link is Broken 14:45, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

The point may not be that he has no easy access to a spellchecker but that he wants all contributors to have ready access to one. There are literally millions of spelling errors in all the text. A spellchecker would be a great addition. lots of issues | leave me a message 23:23, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Rather than select either US or British English, I would prefer that the spellchecker always accept either spelling. Many articles, such as the one on tea, have both US and British sections, so would be expected to have both spellings in various places. I currently cut and paste things I write to a spellchecker. Unfortunately, it goes far beyond spellchecking and gives silly advice on grammar and when to spell out numbers, too. It also has trouble with the markup brackets and such. As for the comment that spellcheckers aren't perfect, well of course not. Cars aren't perfect either, but we don't ban them. Both require an intelligent operator paying attention to what they are doing. Also note that a local word list (stored as a cookie ?) to supplement the official list would be useful, so proper names you encounter frequently wouldn't keep flagging errors. StuRat 00:06, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Always use an external editor and one's own spell-checker. There are many benefits. — Xiong熊talk* 23:42, 2005 August 22 (UTC)
A solution that might be both more useful and much easier to code would be another button next to "show preview" that looped through every word (and 2 or 3 word phrase) and automatically added wiki brackets around words that existed as articles in wikipedia, except for a stoplist of the 2000 or so most common words. Then we could bypass the American/English issue, and it would be clear to the user when they spelled something wrong. Of course it wouldn't be perfect, but it would help Wikipedia become a better semantic web. --Arcadian 18:52, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
I would only think a very small portion of the words in the English language would have Wiki entries, so the brackets idea wouldn't work as a spellchecker. It might be good for checking nouns, but not so good for verbs, adjectives (like "beautifully"), etc. StuRat 22:23, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Alternate stub criterion

I have proposed text, at Wikipedia talk:Stub#Proposed "depth of coverage" standard to try to captue in words the notion thaqt what a stub is cannot be solely defined by a mere mechanical counting of words, sentances, or paragraphs. Please visit and comment. DES (talk) 23:18, 26 August 2005 (UTC)


I respect the Deletion Process on Wikipedia

I respect Wikipedia's rules, until October 1st that is, and so will not recreate the WikiProject for the letter. However it was irresponsible to Speedy Delete it, that just ensures no one will see our message. I am reproducing the letter here. TheMessenger 18:54, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Addendum: I would like to find a more public place to host this letter and I am therefor soliciting advice on this issue. TheMessenger 18:54, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

account creation log/show new users

In light of the recent Willy attacks, I suggest that developers add an account creation log, or a page showing up to the 500 newest registered users. This could really help in fighting vandal accounts. --Ixfd64 20:27, 2005 August 26 (UTC)

I believe the current image link logic is to first search the local area, say en.wikipedia, for images under the specified name, then, if not found there, search Wikimedia Commons under the same name. I propose keeping this logic the same, but also allowing "c:" to be specified in front of the name of an image on a link to bypass the search in the local area and only look for the image under Wikimedia Commons. This would solve this current problem:

  1. User loads an image into Wikimedia Commons.
  2. User adds a link to that image in Wikipedia article.
  3. Another user loads an image with the same name in the local area, say en.wikipedia.
  4. This image now displays in the article, with no warning of the change to any user.

If the second user does intend to change the illustration in the article, they could always edit the article and remove the new "c:" flag. Note that this logic is similar to the "w:" flag used in WikiNews to point to a Wikipedia article, versus a WikiNews article with the same name. This logic could also apply to other Wikimedia Commons files, or only images, whichever is felt to be the best option by the majority.

StuRat 20:46, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

There are advantages to this I think.
Currently, I usually upload images with a different name to wikimedia commons, because in case I want to change it or modify it later, I would otherwise have to reupload it twice.
Secondly maintanance is more difficult if people can upload an image on top of another , and no one will notice because it won't appear on any watchlist.
Furthermore, it is irritating to upload an image on commons and discover that a local image is blocking its way, I think this may be confusing to many other people too (especially newbies).
Fred-Chess 21:28, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Information from commons

I tried to submit this to bugzilla, but it didn't let me stay logged in.

I think that now that many people on wikimedia commons are using a template called "Self", where it is inserted "I, the creator of this file release it with this license: [eg gfdl]", the name is often not shown on the image description page. I wonder if not the upload history of the commons image therefore should also be shown on the description page on respective wikipedias?

Fred-Chess 08:22, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, it would be a simple matter to alter those "Self" templates to say "I, User:X, the creator of..."--Pharos 08:38, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

A simple matter made more complex by templates not being able to hide errors when a parameter has not been provided. (SEWilco 16:19, 26 August 2005 (UTC))
Well, the three tildes could just be included in the "Self" template.--Pharos 16:26, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
I have suggested in on the talk for the self-template on wikimedia commons. I still think that providing the upload history would do no harm. Many users do write "Image taken by user" on the description page, i myself have often written "Image taken by uploader; date as of upload" -- which only makes sense if you see the upload history.. :-) Fred-Chess 21:34, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

"The encyclopedic worth of this article is disputed"

Perhaps there should be a tag like the above for articles that pass VfD as "no consensus", seeing as how there's probably something wrong with them and articles that pass VfD with something wrong with them are rarely cleaned up. ~~ N (t/c) 22:26, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

...possibly linking the article to a Cleanup-like category. Yes, I can see that being useful. Grutness...wha? 01:59, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
There are already tags for {{cleanup-importance}} and {{explain significance}}, as well as for any other fixable problems that might lower an article's perceived encyclopedic worth. If the encyclopedic worth of the subject is debated (with no need for clarification or explanation) then I'm not sure what good a tag will do... No amount of editing is going to make a non-notable subject notable. Aquillion 02:16, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, it could invite further discussion. But I see your point. ~~ N (t/c) 14:00, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

all image uploads in user contributions

I think that all image uploads (not just uploads of new images) should be shown in user contributions. This could help keep track of vandals who like to replace images. Also, all Wikimedia wikis should have this feature, not just Wikipedia. --Ixfd64 18:29, 2005 August 25 (UTC)

Speedy delete obvious copyvio material

I have made a preliminary proposal to allow speedy deletion of copyvio material, see Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Preliminary_proposal.

It is preliminary because i want to see how it could be improved, please go and say what you think! (even if it is just "Support" or "Oppose") Martin - The non-blue non-moose 09:17, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Subject divisions for disagreements, etc.

This is food for thought and discussion more than a proposal. It could be useful to change the way some processes are centralized.

For example, conceiveably on "Page A" (more less like a project or portal), we could have all RFCs, VFDs, CFDs, etc., related to "A". And a similar page for "B", and so on, as needed.

I don't mean that these would be detailed division, but perhaps along the lines of the eight or so main categories listed on the main page.

Then we could consider doing away with all or most of the now central pages. Thoughts? Maurreen (talk) 08:07, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

  • I like it. I don't understand why VfDs are currently separated from, and get so much more attention than, other content disputes. RSpeer 19:02, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • And how is anybody supposed to know that there was an RfC, VfD, etc. on the article unless they were to peruse every single article in Wikipedia? Zoe 21:07, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • Generally you find out about VFDs on an article because the closing admin left a note on the talk page. Failing that you can check Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/NAME OF PAGE or Special:Log/Delete to find it. - Mgm|(talk) 13:19, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

My idea is for a variant on the "featured article" concept. It would feature a reasonably well written article on a topic that is not widely known to the general public. The article would not have to meet the same standards as the featured article for quality, but must have enough content and accuracy that people reading the article will have received a quality introduction to the topic. The purpose of this feature would be to give such a topic a bit of exposure that could lead to it becoming more popular. The name "Featured Obscurity" is only a suggestion at this point. Feel free to give your opinions on the name as well as the idea. CanadaGirl 09:30, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Unusual articles. Perhaps WP:FA should have a see also to other groupings of articles, like this one. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:02, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
It isn't necessary, being an unusual article isn't an argument for an objection to a FA status. There's no need for a new page, because these odd articles are listed with the other FAs (Exploding whale, Japanese toilet...). Unusual featured articles are even more requested for filling the main page during the first of April. And I'll take the opportunity to invite you to check the new Wikipedia:Unusual Collaboration of the fortnight that aims at writing unusual featured articles. CG 18:52, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
The problem is, I'm looking for something part-way between an unusual article and a featured article. As I said above, the article does not have to be the same quality as one that gets considered for featured status. However, it doesn't have to be an unusual topic, only something that is not very well-known. One example of a topic I had in mind was the Canadian author Eric Wilson (he doesn't have an article yet, but I'm working on it). He has sold over a million copies of over 20 books he has written, but he does not seem to be well-known by the general public. CanadaGirl 20:19, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
Please look over WP:FA. Many (perhaps most) featured articles are actually on relatively obscure topics; I think a new system is hardly needed.--Pharos 20:26, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
Again, such an article would have to be of even higher quality than I had in mind. CanadaGirl 20:29, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't see why we should adopt a lower quality standard here; many of the FAs are on topics more obscure than an author who has sold over a million books. You'd be surprised at what can be done with some good research.--Pharos 21:08, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
I think "Did You Know" handles assorted articles well enough already. (SEWilco 04:32, 25 August 2005 (UTC))

"Trusted" Editors

It occured to me that perhaps there should be a status of user between logged-in and administrator. Quite often recently, I've seen situations in which I wanted to say "Regular users shouldn't be able to do that" but I couldn't, because that would mean only admins could, which I didn't want. I'm thinking there should be a "trusted" status that editors can be given upon consensus of five trusted users, or one admin. The status could be used to allow, for example, the below. The specific actions are off the top of my head and not the real proposal. They can change. What would people think about this if it were technically feasible? Superm401 | Talk 04:08, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

1. Move pages. 2. Create templates 3. Do automated reversions.

I like it. Regular users can do 1 and 2 though, and there's a proposal somewhere to give us non-admins rollback. Im don't think this will get too much support, though. Howabout1 Talk to me! 04:13, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

I know regular users can do 1 or 2. Perhaps it could be moved up to trusted, though. Superm401 | Talk 04:47, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

I don't like that idea. There are back logs everywhere because they are admin only. Making basic things admin and trusted only would make it worse. Howabout1 Talk to me! 14:37, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

You're right. What if we had it but only moved privileges down to it, not up? Superm401 | Talk 00:01, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

I like that one. Howabout1 Talk to me! 00:14, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

What if we start by letting trusted users edit permanently protected pages? Superm401 | Talk 00:44, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
A trusted user can get into a personal vendetta -- admins have (admittedly, very rarely) been known to fall into this. What goes up must come down -- once you define a way to promote a user, you must simultaneously define a way for demoting that user class. Personally I don't agree with allowing trusted users to edit protected pages -- I see this status as pretty loosely awarded, therefore it shouldn't qualify for such "important" edits. Of course, this is just a personal opinion -- and overall, I support the idea of an intermediary status between regulars and admins; I think it was proposed before with no success though, but I don't know exactly why it didn't catch. --Gutza 01:00, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea, but think the threshold to become a "trusted editor" should be lower, to avoid creating additional backlogs. In my opinion, if one current trusted editor or admin will vouch for the person, that should be enough. At the start we may need an even lower threshold, since there won't be any trusted editors to approve others. Perhaps anyone who has made more than 100 contributions could be approved ? We could also remove the "trusted editor" status from those who abuse it, perhaps the "5 trusted user" level would be right for that. StuRat 01:07, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Removal shouldn't be so easy, or people would use it as a way of pursuing personal vandettas. Perhaps Admins could do it temporarily or permanently as a way of stopping vandals (and prevent it from being reinstated), or as the outcome of an ArbCom case, but removal of trusted status shouldn't be something that happens lightly. Trusted status should mostly be something that people get almost automatically and never have to worry about again. I also think it should just be used to limit problem abilities that have frequently been used for vandalism, like moves. I don't know if giving automated revert ability to a wide group is such a good idea; that's really a seperate discussion.
You should only need one trusted user or an Admin to vouch for you; no other limitations, and everyone would be encouraged to do it lightly and easily, as soon as they feel they trust someone at all. If one of your friends or family joined Wikipedia, it would be perfectly acceptable to give them trusted user status before they even made a single edit; that's how easily it should be given out. The only thing it signifies is that someone vouches that the user in question is not an obvious vandal.
However, the system would also note who gave trusted user status to each trusted person, and anyone could check this at any time. While you wouldn't be responsible for everything they did, if (say) someone kept giving Willy On Wheels sockpuppets trusted status, the guilty party would become obvious very quickly. Honestly, when you get down to it I just see this proposal as a way of stopping Willy on Wheels, with the added advantage of adding a bit of socializing with new users, and a way of encouraging new users who seem to be doing well. Aquillion 04:31, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

I think it should be a little harder to get it. Maybe 2 admins/trusted's to make it. I don't think moves should be made trusted only, they are a basic function. I think of it as just editing the title. T's should get rollback and maybe editing protected pages. Howabout1 Talk to me! 04:38, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

I still don't support editing protected pages for this class, it's just too risky. But I support moving and rollback -- actually I can't find any good reason why easy rollback (revert) isn't activated for all users, when it's so easy to do manually anyway. One more thing I would use the trusted users class for, I would add another "recent edits" filter: hide edits by trusted users. --Gutza 04:48, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
I appreciate all the input. Most of the other proposals I've made lately have fallen on apparently deaf ears. I do agree that there should be some means of removing trusted status, and I think that there should be the option of making the removal "permanent". That would mean only an admin could make the user trusted afterwards. We could do this in the case of vandalism or sockpuppetry despite warnings. There should also be an option of recursively untrusting someone. To recursively untrust would mean untrust them and recursively untrust anyone who became trusted through their approval. That should only be used in extreme cases, and will be draining on the database. However, it will be necessary to avoid having to go through 100's of trusteds created by a few bots who snuck in. I also still don't like the idea of allowing only one trusted user to give the status to another. That could make it needlessly simple to create an infinite line of sockpuppet trusteds. As for the idea that we grant trusted status automatically by edit count, I don't like it. A bot vandal could pass that easily. We could make a special page for non-trusteds with over 200 edits though, and sort it chronologically. Then trusteds could look through the page, but would still use judgement. Perhaps that could be a compromise. The entrance criteria for trusted could change over time, but to start perhaps we could require only three trusteds. It shouldn't be that hard to find three people on Wikipedia to vouch for you if you've been making good contribs. I do think it should be possible to see who has "trusted" who quickly and easily. I also really like the hide edits by trusted users idea. However, I still think trusted users should be able to edit permanently protected pages. Those pages are not protected permanently so that only admins will have say in what goes on them, but rather to avoid outright vandalism. All good-faith edits should be permitted with a normal wiki approach. If the trusted status is handled right, it should be safe to let trusteds edit permanently protected pages. There will undoubtedly be a little vandalism, but with the "Who trusted who?" page, and untrusting, it should be minor, and worth it to regain the wiki atmosphere on those pages. Below I am making a list of proposed trusted powers. Feel free to add and comment, (but not remove yet; this is brainstorming only)Superm401 | Talk 05:30, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

What a trusted user may be able to do

  1. Move pages
  2. Show up differently on the recent changes
  3. Upload images
  4. Vote in certain elections(possibly VFD?)
  5. Create other trusteds
  • I'm afraid that, while I like the idea of a status between ordinary user and admin, none of these abilities seem to me to be appropriate. Why should moving pages (which is already only possible after a certain time as a registered user), up-loading images, or voting (which is already limited by informal limits on edit counts) be limited to a special class? The first of these would put especial strain on the "requested moves" page. I don't really see the point of the "recent changes" suggestion (admins and bureaucrats don't show up differently), and the ability to create other trusteds would lead in a relatively short time to the vast majority of users being "trusted", thus nullifying the whole venture.
    It would be useful, though, to have an intermediate user-category of people who are willing to perform a particular task (say, dealing with category moves), and who are given specific powers relevant to that task (deleting categories, in the example). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:28, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
One advantage to restricting the move pages ability in this fashion (as opposed to the current fashion) is that it would completely fix the "Willy on Wheels" exploit. Right now, Willy just has to let an account age a little in order to use it to mass-move pages; under this change, he would have to convince someone to trust it for each and every one. Even if he gave up on the recognizable names, that would still be a pretty insurmountable obstacle. (He couldn't depend on using an already-trusted account of his own--at least not for long--since the fact that it always trusts Willy alts would be quickly spotted in the 'trust logs' once those alts reveal themselves.) Aquillion 13:53, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
You're right that admins and bureacrats don'ts how up differently. That's probably just because there are so few of them the feature wasn't even worth implementing, though. It would be more useful for trusteds. As for uploading images, limiting it to trusteds would be a great way to limit copyright violations. It would create a little backlog, but it's usually not that difficult to determine an image's copyright status, given a good source description. That means the backlog could be processed efficiently. As for the voting, it seems you've answered your own questions. Right now, we have informal, changing, and sometimes confusing limits. Limiting (some) votes to trusted could make things much simpler, and reduce edit-countitis. It would also prevent people from just spamming a lot of edits then getting to vote. When I said that they should be able to create other trusteds, I didn't necesssarily mean they should be able to do it on their own. In my opinion, it should require at least three trusteds to create another. When you add in the recursive untrusting described above, I think that should be sufficient. As for your specific powers based on task, that seems very chaotic to track. Like I said, this in brainstorming. I'm not definite on any of these yet, and encourage people to add more. Superm401 | Talk 14:50, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
Well, there are upwards of 400 admins; how many trusteds were you thinking of? I must say that it wouldn't save me any time, for one; even when I trust an editor enough not to check their edits when they show up on my watchlist (there aren't many), I still check, because I don't know what was done before their edit.
Up-loading images is my least favourite part of the proposal, because it's such a common activity; I'm not sure you realise just how many images are up-loaded daily. I'd not like to be one of the admins trying to cope with it all.
VfDs, etc., are exercises in establishing community consensus; your policy would make it into consensus of an elite sub-group.
What sort of mechanism would prevent making someone a trusted with fewer than three agreements? And I'm not convinced that that would solve the problem of exponetial growth in any case.
Why should powers be tracked? Are these people supposed to be trusted or not? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:25, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not really liking this idea now, I'd like them to have rollback, maybe edit protecteds, but limiting ordinary user's powers to give to another class is bad. I've seen cases where people register only to upload. Howabout1 Talk to me! 15:50, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Need detailed analog proposal

I don't like discontinuous social controls. It's an analog world.

I don't see any need or value to creating yet another class of editors. We have already far too much trouble with the many classes we have; it took me weeks to figure out the hierarchy as it is.

We do need to control -- in a smooth, continuous, analog fashion -- access to Project and Community features. There are too many of these to list in a short comment. It's not just page moves and rollbacks; all editing, all participation in the Community needs to be subject to some sort of liberal, non-threatening, realistic limits.

At the recent BAR Camp, I spent about an hour discussing my ideas for such controls. The key is that we must balance the needs of the anon and new user against those of long-time editors and against those of our passive readership. Achieving such a balance with distinct classes of user is a crude approach.

I can't do everything at once. When I have time, if I can possibly do so without getting kicked out of my apartment and being thrown starving into the street, I will work on a detailed proposal. — Xiong熊talk* 23:58, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

Simple compromise

A simple compromise that would reduce substantially some of the concerns raised, though admittedly not stop them, would be to make some privileges available to registered users only, possibly as follows:

  • Automated reversions, deletions - admins only
  • Page moves - registered users only
  • template and category creation - registered users only
  • image uploads - registered users only
  • VFD, CFD, SFD, TFD and RFA votes - registered users only

Sure, it is simple for people to register, but it is also far easier to keep track of registered users than anons, and there's the psychological factor that - even though we can't tell much about a user from their user name, the registered user will feel more identified than the anonymous user, and will therefore be a little more wary. Grutness...wha? 01:27, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Isn't all of that already in place? And I don't understand why everyone can't have rollback? Is there any way it can be harmful? Howabout1 Talk to me! 01:57, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Auto-rollback makes revert-warring that much easier. The general idea is to discourage that. On the other hand, when auto-rollback was first added, the 3RR was just an informal guideline... Now that it's an actual rule that can get you blocked, we might not need to worry about discouraging rollbacks quite so much. The 3RR is certainly more effective at discouraging them than the two or three extra clicks added by the lack of a rollback button. Aquillion 20:39, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree entirely with Aquillion. As to "Isn't that already in place?", some of it is. But anyone can create templates and categories, whether they're a registered user or not (hence many of the headaches at sfd and cfd). Similarly, anyone can upload images, and anyone - theoretically - can vote at those voting pages (although anon votes are usually discounted). Basically, I'm just saying that reducing the number of things that an anon can do on Wikipedia may well reduce several of the problems mentioned. Grutness...wha? 02:34, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think anons can upload images, and I'd say most of the thme anons vote's aren't counted. I still think rollback should be more freely available, but I also don't like the 3RR. Howabout1 Talk to me! 03:16, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Speedy category renaming

A number of proposals for further speedy category renaming criteria have been made at the above page. Opinions are sought. Steve block talk 21:07, 29 August 2005 (UTC)


Multilingual Wikipedia

Being French but living in the UK, I am in a position to read and edit articles both in French and English (if pushed hard I could possibly read some Spanish and German artcles too).

I find it a little frustrating that, while Wikipedia has branched to many different languages, it remains so pigeonholed (so to speak) and does not allow searches across the board. While it would not necessarily be true in the English to other language way, I am pretty sure that many people (especially since they are internet users) of none English speaking countries could be interested and able to read articles from the English version. To have results for all languages in one search would be quite helpful, I think.

Also I have had to create accounts both the English and French Wikipedias. Why not allow for "multiwiki" accounts which would allow contributers to navigate from one Wikipedia to another?

Thank you

You can already do multiple Wikipedia searches with Google. Go to Google and enter something like
abc site:wikipedia.org
"abc" is the thing you want to search for. This is not all that useful, however, since you cannot search for different words on different versions of Wikipedia. As for the across-the-board user ID's, you are not the first one to suggest that. Nor will you be the last, I imagine. I do not remember why it has not happened, however. — Nowhither 09:55, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
The reason it hasn't been done yet is because it's hard to incorporate multiple conflicting usernames (for example if there was an ilyanep on the italian wikipedia who wasn't me because I don't know a glimmer of italian) into one database... — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:23, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
See bugzilla:57 (Single login on all wikimedia projects). Bovlb 17:37:51, 2005-08-28 (UTC)

Human Rights Servey on Wikipedia (The final post of I_sterbinski)

Dear all,
Wikipedia was recently a subject of intensive research of an huge international human right organization. A team of people from different nationalities and ages were acting on Wikipedia for 20 days, investigating previously noted anomalities of Wikipedia free editing and forming a final report, which (between the others similar reports) will later be a guide to all future moves of the organization concerning Wikipedia. Acting under an account of a real person, their privacy is to be held private. Therefore, very few private information will be revealed.
Also, this is a result of the lack of final possition of the organization concerning Wikipedia and human rights, which was still not formed.
The team's final post on Wikipedia, where they explain their actions can be found on the following addresses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:I_sterbinski
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Macedonia#Human_Rights_Servey_on_Wikipedia_.28The_final_post_of_I_sterbinski.29
The team would like to thank to all the persons who took part in the correspondence with us.
We also want to appologise for keeping our identity secret for a longer period.
Best regards,
Aleksandar, Biljana, Asparuh, Christos, Valjon, Michael and Ana Luiza
I sterbinski 00:56, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Whatever my PoV is on the matter, I should refer you to WP:POINT. Physchim62 01:02, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Is this disruptive, though? ~~ N (t/c) 01:09, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Special:Ipblocklist

Would it be possible to split the block-list? It's getting very big, and it takes a long time to load. --Ixfd64 20:28, 2005 August 26 (UTC)

Yay! They did it! Thanks! :) --Ixfd64 01:36, 2005 August 28 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration is being used as a tribunal - that ain't right

Dispute resolution
(Requests)
Tips
Content disputes
Conduct disputes

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration is being used as a tribunal to try people accused of misdemeanor (alleged bad behavior). That ain't right. It contaminates the arbitration comittee who should be spending their capital fairly arbitrating CONTENT disputes. There should be some kind of court established to give charges against the accused a fair trial before you cain him. 8^)

This would also take a big case load off the aribitration committee.

Arbitration and tribunal are two entirely different things.

Arbitration is the process by which two parties to an unresolved dispute JOINTLY submit their differences to the judgment of an impartial person. [1]

A tribunal is a court of justice before which an accused is brought for justice after being provided with a summons citing precisely what sections of the code he is charged with violating, and specifically what particular actions of his are alleged to be violations of the code. [2] --67.182.157.6 21:23, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

To all passers-by: take a look at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/DotSix first. --cesarb 21:28, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
Fetch the comfy chair. Ereinion 00:32, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
Despite the name, this does seem to be the intended purpose of Wikipedia arbitration. "The Arbitrators will primarily investigate interpersonal disputes." I've seen at least one case rejected because it was more of a content dispute than an issue with an editor. Cease trolling, Dotsix. ~~ N (t/c) 01:36, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

The "Cease trolling" comment is just more of your standard obscurantist sophistry of argument _ad hominem_, because you are trying to "poison the well" concerning the contributor, right? Now, to stick to the issue, if the arbitration committee is not the last recourse on the list (see graphic at right), after failure of attempted negotiation and mediation as means of resolving a CONTENT DISPUTE, then where would I find an accurate list of steps in resolving a CONTENT DISPUTE?--172.196.75.230 07:44, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

In light of DotSix's complaints, I propose that the Arbitration Committee be renamed the "Wikipedia Un-Wikipedian Activities Committee." Then they could open hearings with cool lines like "Are you now or have you ever been a sockpuppet of user:CommunistParty?" Aquillion 03:30, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
User:Wikipedia is Communism, you mean? ~~ N (t/c) 16:27, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Nobody expects the Wikish Inquisition! Radiant_>|< 10:31, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the difference between an arbitration and a tribunal (since I just got an A in a course in alternative dispute resolution at the law school I graduated from): Actually, it is arbitration because the parties are voluntarily submitting to the decision of the arbitrators. A tribunal is involuntary in the sense that one is coerced to appear or else risk a default judgment and subsequent fine, imprisonment, execution, or loss of assets (the kind of things protected by due process). It would be a tribunal only if Wikipedia actually had the power to fine or imprison DotSix for his bad behavior! --Coolcaesar 17:17, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikinfo may not have many friends at Wikipedia but I think they had one good idea: green links. With the incredible growth of Wikipedia and the tendency of overlinking, 'What links here', one of our most useful features in "building the web", has too often become crowded with irrelevancy. We need to split wikilinks into two types: those that register on 'What links here' and those that do not. Green links would generally be the type of thing that it would be appropriate to put in a 'See also', and would highlight the most important relevant info, while blue links would serve more for background information. The rule would be: does this article actually have something to say about the linked topic? I think this might help solve the problem of, say, linking to [[New York City]] (see, I didn't do it here!) in every biographical article about anyone who has ever happened to visit that metropolis.--Pharos 01:29, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I propose that we instead focus on eliminating the really irrelevent links entirely. It is not necessary, for instance, to link to the Wikipedia article on New York City every time the city is mentioned. Aquillion 19:56, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
While this is true, unfortunately it happens anyway. I am trying to think of ways to get around the inevitable tendency toward overlinking by redefining wikilinks.--Pharos 02:46, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
I must disagree. I do not think there is too much linking. Remember that not everyone knows as much about a topic as you do. It is true that an article usually only needs to be linked to once per page, so second mentions on the same page usually don't need a link. It is also true that, in the default view, Wikipedia pages are often hard to read, since every other word is underlined. But that is easily solved by going into "Preferences" and getting rid of the underlining. — Nowhither 05:06, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
By the way, I don't think the original poster understands Wikinfo green links. Green there is like red here, and mauve there is like having the arrow (external) icon after it here. The difference is that if Wikinfo doesn't have a requested article, it can redirect to Wikipedia, so while green links do mean "we don't have an article on that", they don't mean, "if you click on this, you won't get anything". — Nowhither 05:12, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Autofellatio and Toby

Demo Available
A simple demo of Toby (or a demo of Simple Toby) is now available at User:Xiong/tobydemo. The sample potentially questionable content is pretty much low-risk, being images of posters from the Cultural Revolution and so forth. (Low risk, that is, unless you live in China in the year 1977.)

I solved the problem of contentious, questionable content some time ago. Perhaps now, we're ready to entertain a realistic compromise. Please see Wikipedia:Toby. — Xiong熊talk* 22:20, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

Copied discussion to the talk page. Further discussion there, please. JRM · Talk 23:57, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Call for moderation

We really need some moderate voices in this discussion.

Toby is neutral, and does his very best to serve both sides of this contentious issue fairly. For those who wish to see everything and brook no interference, Toby will neven be in your way. For those who think just about everything (including a fat tenor in a tux) should be heard, but not seen, Toby stands ready to do your bidding.

I find it disheartening to think that this Community is so polarized that it consists only of extremists who find it impossible to tolerate even discussion of a compromise. I'm sure there are many moderates, too -- but sensibly, moderates don't think there's much here to make a fuss about. Your voice needs to be heard in support of moderation. Thank You! — Xiong熊talk* 19:27, 2005 August 26 (UTC)

I don't really have much of an opinion about this, either, but it's pretty clear to me that Toby isn't an effective compromise. The people who are trying to get the images removed are doing so because they believe that those images have no place on Wikipedia, not because they themselves will melt if they look at them; it's primarily a content dispute, and therefore not something subject to a technological solution. Offering them a Google-Image-like 'Wikipedia safeview' as a response to their concerns is like offering one side in a POV dispute a filter or mirror that will display every article in their POV; it entirely misses the point. A safeview might still be a good idea, mind you, but it shouldn't be seen as a solution to the larger debate over images. Aquillion 20:09, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Another call for moderation

What must I do? Get down on my knees and beg? Offer to wash editors' socks by hand if they get involved? If moderate voices stay out of contentious debates, then these debates will be dominated by extremists! Right now, as I read over Toby's Talk, all I see are remarks that tell me most editors (a) haven't read the proposal, (b) haven't read anybody else's comments, and couldn't care less. They have read exactly enough to see that it's a moderate proposal for potentially questionable content management. Details don't concern them, only their fanatic agendas -- violently opposed.

Toby is not perfect. Toby is not a even a god. Hey, Toby's just a little guy! He can help, but that's about it. No question about it: Toby will make a lot of folks mad. He won't do enough to satisfy some, and he'll do too much for some others to tolerate. That sounds just about right to me. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to keep everybody happy.

Right now, we've got Original Toby and Simple Toby to talk about. Either one is guaranteed to cool off contentious debate over potentially questionable content and its management. I promise! In either flavor, Toby touches nothing -- alters no content -- but allows users to choose how the site is rendered for them. That's all. How can choice be bad?

Fanatics on one side say, essentially, "We don't care if we can't see this. Nobody must be allowed to see it." Fanatics on the other side of the chasm say, "We don't care if they don't want to see it; we insist they do, lest they fail to contribute to it." There is not a thing in the world I can do to reconcile these extremes -- not if I were the god-king Jimbo himself.

But there is a great mass of editors who would just be happy if they could see what they wanted to see, and could choose not to see other stuff. Toby will do this. But of course, your moderate voices are not heard in the debate, since you don't think it is a really big deal.

PLEASE! THINK! READ! COMMENT! Toby is just a little guy. He needs your help -- now! — Xiong熊talk* 10:47, 2005 August 29 (UTC)

Until recently, it wasn't possible to put interlanguage links in templates since those links would be included in any page on which the template was used. However, it's now possible to specify that any content inside <noinclude> tags will display only on the original page, and not in any pages where that content is included.

This has various uses, but the first one I'd like to propose is that templates get interlanguage links. See, for example, simple:Template:Delete. This would make it much easier for people who edit across languages but don't edit one of those languages enough to know where the templates are. Are there any objections to this?

It works on any page, not just templates. See my sandbox for example.

Angela. 00:32, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Well I'd find it useful, but I'm not sure how many others would. Can I nominate {{copyvio}} and {{stub}} as particularly worthy candidates to be interwikied in this way. Physchim62 00:53, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Is the inverse of this possible as well, i.e. displayed only on included pages? There are templates that add pages to categories, to which the template itself generally shouldn't be added. -- Rick Block (talk)
I don't think the inverse is possible, but I don't know for certain since I only found <noinclude> was working by accident. Angela. 06:32, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
<includeonly> seems to work. —Cryptic (talk) 06:55, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Wow! I didn't know anything about such tags before I read this discussion here! Aren't they really documented anywhere? (Google gave me just one mail-list post for search "includeonly wikipedia -latex".) Is there any reason yet, why we shouldn't use <includeonly> in all the templates putting pages into categories (starting from, for example, {{vfd}}, etc., etc.)? — Pt (T) 07:48, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Presumably, you’d have to remember not to use subst: when including them, although you could put in {{tfd}}, where the category was abandoned as unworkable, then you would want to use subst:. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 15:58, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
No objections here; this would be useful. Excellent. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 13:25, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
I implemented this at Wikimania, sorry about the lack of documentation. I'll write a mailing list post now. -- Tim Starling 14:31, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
Mailing post now at [3]. Thanks Tim. Angela. 15:13, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
Any more goodies? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 14:47, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, there is <meta>... but I don't think the advanced search special page is finished yet. -- Tim Starling 15:40, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

noinclude will be very useful, thanks! (Now, howbout a way to disable category inclusion, so we can get even the Wikipedia:Template messages pages out of all those categories... ;-) JesseW 01:49, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I've created a Template:if template template which can remove all templates from a category. It's based on the genric Template:if. --josh 01:55, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

A way for Wikimedia to make money

Why doesn't Wikimedia liscence MediaWiki, the software they use to run Wikipedia, to other organisations for a fee? MediaWiki is the perfect tool for groups of people to pool together large amounts of fragmented knowledge. The most valuable asset of most organisations is their collective knowledge and expertise, and so their ability to manage it is crucial to their success (whatever that may be). If Wikimedia could market it (which should be easy), I think there would be an enormous demand for it. And most importantly Wikimedia could support itself without (I think) violating its ethos.

Rob Watson

15/08/05

P.S. Apologies if this has come up a lot already, but I'm new to this, and I think it's too good an idea not to share :-)

Free software is part of the Wiki "ethos". ~~ N (t/c) 19:35, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
As the good man just above me says, it's kinda against the wikipedia philosophy. Good idea thouhg. Welcome to wikipedia, I hope you will get a username and become part of the community! gkhan 19:51, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Says who? (in a friendly, rhetorical way). Besides, my main point is that Wikimedia should do more to sell (not necessarily for money) the MediaWiki software. I think many organisations would find it, or something like it (do alternatives exist?), extremely valuable, but they probably just haven't considered it. Personally I think they should capitilise on it, so that they no longer have to rely on donations. Still keep it free for individual and personal use, but at least charge cooperations for it. As the article you linked to points out, free software is open, but not always free - "free as in speech, not beer". --RW 20:29, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, MediaWiki is licenced under the GPL, which I believe might make it hard to sell for money (you can still make money on tech support or other services, but Wikimedia is short on tech-savvy people like developers as is). Note: IANAL. Additionally, Wikimedia is a non-profit group, which might hamper any commercial efforts as well. Best, Meelar (talk) 20:36, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
See, for instance, Wikipedia:Five pillars and m:Foundation Issues. It's a fundamental principle (even though it isn't specified in those two pages for Mediawiki specifically, but you get the idea, and I'm to lazy too look up better sources :D) gkhan 20:50, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
You can't restrict free software from being used commercially without payment - it's not truly free then. And this isn't just a philosophical point - MediaWiki is licensed under the GPL, and so can't be relicensed without permission of anyone who's ever contributed code to it, and even then pre-relicensing versions would remain free. ~~ N (t/c) 20:56, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses. I accept the legal arguments for why they couldn't sell it, though not the philosophical ones. The links you put in, Gkhan, refer to the content of wikipedia, not the software. As you said, Meelar, probably the best way for them to generate some revenue is through tech support/consultancy. Anyway, here's hoping that Wikipedia becomes more than a means to unlock copyright. Rather it becomes synonymous with managing knowledge more effectively. --RW 23:28, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

From a legal point of view, the software can have a dual license -- see MySQL. However, that goes against the Wikipedia philosophy, as others have pointed out. On a side note, yes, Wiki alternatives exist in PHP, and they're also free software, so there really is no point in limiting the software via licenses -- it would draw less attention, and less attention means less improvement. Wikimedia's "business" is content, not software -- as long as free software is the price for better software, Wikimedia should be happy to pay it, IMO. --Gutza 23:41, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
What exactly do you mean, "Wikipedia becomes more than a means to unlock copyright"? In my view, Wikipedia isn't about unlocking copyright. Indeed, I don't believe that's possible. Wikipedia to me is about unlocking knowledge. Superm401 | Talk 04:35, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
Not real big on business models here, are we? Of course MediaWiki is open source; free-speech-free and free-beer-free, too. So? That doesn't mean WMF can't make money selling it, or that the Wikipedian Community can't make money from selling the Project. People are often quite happy to pay for things they might have for free. It's all about packaging, marketing, and added value -- value, I said, not mere BS. — Xiong熊talk* 06:57, 2005 August 16 (UTC)
Thanks Xiong. Superm, I'm glad you see it that way. I read an article at BBC Online recently that gave me a different impression: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4152860.stm --RW 08:33, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't think I understand. That BBC article didn't seem to be about much of anything to be honest. There was so much filler like "a sample entry from an encyclopaedia that doesn't have to worry about how many pages it has." and "even though it has enormous implications for tech-heads and global village idiots alike." and it went off on so many tangents that it barely seemed to focus at all. I agree that the article had a weird perspective on copyright issues involving maps in particular. Beyond that, what disturbed you? Perhaps I need to give the article a better read? Superm401 | Talk 18:43, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
RW, If I'm not mistaken, I think there are tons of enterprise-class wiki software for sale. I know that wasn't your question, but it's just an entrepreneurial realization of what you wanted.--Muchosucko 02:33, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I think the idea is a fine one, and the free software claims people have been saying don't apply, unless you want to restrict the access of people to the software - if you just want to charge people for the software, you can do that fine with free software, they just don't have to get it from you. The way I think this would work is for someone who was interested in doing this would set up a seperate company, start selling Mediawiki, and, assuming they made money, donate some of it back to the Wikimedia Foundation. That way, if it fails, the Foundation isn't in debt for it. JesseW 01:26, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

What JesseW said. A lot of the comments here show a fundamental misunderstanding of what "free software" is and is not. It's "free" as in speech, not "free" as in beer. It's perfectly fine to charge for free software. Nandesuka 05:33, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Splitting cram schools from hagwons

I would like to propose splitting Cram Schools from hagwons in terms of definition. The term hagwon is used quite frequently in terms of teaching in Asia, however very little is mentioned on Wikipedia about hagwons.Davidpdx

New Standard Section

I know there is no real 'standard', but i would like to see a 'rough notes' section added to articles. This would be at the end, hand contain a brief over view in bullet points about the article, ie, for 'Digital Cameras': - Digital Cameras are Camaeras in wich the photogrphic image is stored in digital format rather than on film. -etc.

Just a suggestion, - David

This is kind of the intention of the lead section to an article — the bit before the table of contents (or in a short article the first paragraph or so). It's supposed to give a brief overview of the whole article. The trouble I would see with a "rough notes" section is that it is not terribly encyclopedic sounding (and this is an encyclopedia, after all). However, it's quite common to put a note on the talk page (click the discussion button up top) if you're having trouble writing some part of an article, or think something needs clarifying but don't want to do it yourself. -Splash 22:17, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Cletus Spuckler (the Simpsons)

Given that the term "wifebeater" in reference to a tank top is considered by some to be offensive, perhaps that word in the article on Cletus Spuckler should be changed to "tank top."

Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to change it. We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, because wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse. (But I fixed it myself this time. Thanks.) ~~ N (t/c) 16:20, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

There's a feature in Mediawiki were you could link to subpages by typing [[/SUBPAGE]] instead of [[PAGE/SUBPAGE]], but the display of the link is [[/SUBPAGE]] (with a slash mark) and not [[SUBPAGE]]. That's why I'm suggesting that whenever this feature is used, the link displays as [[SUBPAGE]] (the slash mark is removed). I suggest also to use [[//SUBPAGE]] to keep the slash mark as it displays [[/SUBPAGE]]. CG 12:19, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Graphics tutorials in the project namespace tagged for copying to Wikibooks

Please discuss the disposition of these articles, whether it is better to have them in the project namespace at Wikipedia or in the main namespace at Wikibooks (some possibly merged in with the existing wikibooks Using The GIMP, Using OpenOffice.org, and Microsoft Word User's Manual), at Wikipedia talk:Graphics in two modes/move. Uncle G 14:13:53, 2005-09-05 (UTC)

A new namespace

Please visit Wikipedia:Gallery namespace for the proposal of a new namespace for the categorization of images. CG 08:42, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Help Please on Able Danger

The article Able Danger is demonstrating one of the problems with Wikipedia. If you have a faction that is intent on peddling a conspiracy story driven by partisan blogs it is very difficult to get balance.

The article is currently locked (not by me). I am not sure that many people who are interested in acheiving an NPOV are going to want to work on it as anyone who objects to the world according to Fox News and Bill O'Reilly is going to be attacked as a "liar" and a "national socialist" (i.e. NAZI). Time Magazine is also accused of 'lying'.

If the Able Danger conspiracy story is true then the Bush Administration is currently engaged in the biggest coverup since Watergate - to protect the reputation of Bill Clinton. Am I the only person who finds such a claim to be somewhat unlikely?

The article is now unblocked (not by me), and I have removed the {{current}} tag because I feel that it was misplaced there. Otherwise, it is hard to see the problems with this article: the Talk page is certainly violent, but the article itself seems to give space to both sides of the argument. 9/11 Intelligence Failures is (IMHO) a much more serious violation of WikiEthics... Physchim62 01:59, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
The relationship between the two subjects is likely to alter the latter further, so it will not remain in its current violationist condition. (SEWilco 02:25, 5 September 2005 (UTC))
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