Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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The proposals section of the village pump is used to discuss new ideas and proposals that are not policy related (see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for that).

Recurring policy proposals are discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals). If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that Wikipedia doesn't have it, please check there first before posting it, as someone else might have found it obvious, too.

Before posting your proposal:

• Read this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
• If the proposal is a change to the software, file a bug at Bugzilla instead. Your proposal is unlikely to be noticed by a developer unless it is placed there.
• If the proposal is a change in policy, be sure to also post the proposal to, say, Wikipedia:Manual of style, and ask people to discuss it there.
• If the proposal is for a new wiki-style project outside of Wikipedia, please go to m:Proposals for new projects and follow the guidelines there. Please do not post it here. These are different from WikiProjects.

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This talk page is automatically archived by Werdnabot. Any sections older than 7 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive. Sections without timestamps are not archived.

These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

Auto Log-in Box for Edit Tab or Long Edits

ELApro: It would be nice if the Log-in window would pop up automatically when the edit tab is clicked. A cancel or anonymous user button could be provided for anonymous users. I have often gotten the majority of an edit completed before noticing that I forgot to log in. If I try to log in after the edit is begun, all the edit work will be lost after logging in and returning to the page. I have also noticed that if a period of time passes after logging in, the log-in is somehow lost while the user is still in the process of editing. It would also be nice if the log-in option would be offered before dropping a logged in user that is in the process of a long edit.

I second this motion. I've had a few edits go astray because I didn't notice they were posted anonymously, and once they're posted that way I don't remember to revisit them because they're not in my edit history. Technically, I'm not sure a pop-up window is the best option - I think that fields with name and password copied from the standard log-in screen might simply be put at the bottom of the edit form. Mike Serfas 17:55, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

You could just copy the text out to your clipboard, and then paste it back in after logging in. Most modern browsers retain text in pages in the history, so it's safe to log in and go back to the edit page before clicking save, too. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:38, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I would like a way to prevent myself from editing anonymously. Especially from IPs that I don't want associated with my account... — Omegatron 15:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Redirect on Contribution pages, "redirect=no"?

uhh....i think people just don't really have an opinion on it. I, for one, have almost never encountered the situation you've outlined. On the offchance i do click on a contribution that's a redirect, i just click the history or diff links instead to see what changes the person made. I suppose a better place to ask would be the technical section... --`/aksha 02:27, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, this is definitely a good idea. `/aksha is right - move this to a technical section and it'll get noticed and maybe even implemented. Good luck. Nihiltres 18:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea (found it annoying myself before), but yeah this may have been better on the technical pump. -- nae'blis 19:52, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Reduce the size limit for sigs?

I keep running into huge sigs that take up four lines in the edit box and drown out the user's actual comment in a mess of formatting. Would it be reasonable to cut the size limit for sigs in half? Unless someone has a (blockably) huge username, that should still be enough for a userpage link, a talk page link, contribs, and a reasonable amount of formatting. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd love to see that. I agree with you that sometimes you can't read the other person's comments in the edit box because of the markup from their sig. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:30, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to get rid of custom user names entirely. They aren't necessary and just waste space. --Tango 21:38, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I would only go for that if the current sig replacement technology allowed to a link to the User's Talk page as well as their User page. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:39, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, yes and yes, to all above. Reduce and restrict, for clarity and simplicity in talkpages and talkpage wikicode. Please! —Quiddity 21:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I support the prohibition of signature elements that serve purely decorative purposes. Extra links (talk page, contribution history, et cetera) are fine, but it is annoying to deal with several lines of HTML that merely add fancy colors and fonts. —David Levy 21:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I remember finding someone with a 1k (yes, I don't lie) signature. He used to transclude it, so you would not notice how long it was. Or force users to write at least 2x the amount of characters in their signature everytime they write in a talk page. That would make some people realize how awful a long signature is for us "common" people ;-) -- ReyBrujo 04:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

This is getting perilously close to a perennial proposal: See Wikipedia_talk:Sign_your_posts_on_talk_pages#Propose_banning_non-standard_.2F_raw_signatures. from just a couple of weeks ago. -- nae'blis 05:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not asking for a total ban, just a cap on the length, like two lines in an edit box long. This will cut down on overformatting simply by not allowing space for it, and cut down on the mess they make in edit view. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 07:19, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll support anything that cuts down on the bloat. I recently had to struggle to find the actual post of someone with nine lines of sig markup. Fortunately he had included edit comment text to mark out its beginning and end... - BanyanTree 20:21, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

(Is my sig okay? --> Yuser31415 04:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC) <-- :)) Anyway, I believe per WP:SIG there is a limit on 200 characters in a signature, and, since the edit box is by default 80 characters wide, I make that 2.5 lines allowed in a sig. Is that what you would like? (If not, stating the specific number of characters you would like to be the maximum for a sig could help.) Cheers! Yuser31415 04:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely fine! Optimal even. Short and useful.

It's 16 line long monstrosities like this fellow's sig that are the worst offenders; anything more than 2 lines of raw text (which is 200 characters at my resolution/settings) is probably unnecessary, and more than 3 lines begins to get annoying fast. I don't know if there is a hard limit, but I'd like to see a 200 character limit implemented, or even less (150? 100?), or the suggestion from Zoe above. —Quiddity 02:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Giving leeway to userspace type things like sigs is a good idea, but if it gets to the point that it inconveniences other editors, we have a problem. Suggest that it should be under two lines. —Dgies^t c 05:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I second the two line limit. Sounds like a good compromise, leaving enough personal freedom while keeping annoyance to a bearable level. This is not MySpace after all, and the hugest sigs tend to be just font/color HTML anyways. --Dschwen 08:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

How about making the sig a template in userspace? Then we could just put our sig in preference, and ~~~~ would translate to {{User:Username}} where our sig will be. It would cut the clutter down as we won't see them when editing anymore and we can update all instances of our sig just by changing the template. --antilived ^{T | C | G} 09:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

See #Transclusion of templates for why we can't. —Quiddity 09:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes I've seen it but I don't think it's entirely valid. How many times are you going to change your sig in a year? IMHO not many people will chnage their sig very often and thus they shouldn't consume too much resource to re-cache. And simply protect the sig so only the user him/herself and maybe admin/sysops can edit should clear the vandalism problem is well. --antilived ^{T | C | G} 09:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

{{User:Username}} would transclude the userpage, and like that there would be no way to permanently store the date, which is an important part of the sig. Also having a template defies the purpose of a sig as a permanent unchangable mark. Right now any sig manipulation shows up on the history page, with a template much more sneaky things could go on.--Dschwen 13:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget the 5 tildes that produce the timestamp only. It could be {{User:Username}}~~~~~. NikoSilver 12:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

That's just some random user space link I used to illustrate the point, not that I intend to embed the whole user page onto talk pages.:) And also I meant 3 tildes not four so the date would still be in the page itself, only the sig is changeable. --antilived^{T | C | G} 20:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Lol, I guess I'll be the first here with a "long" signature.... you should get Why1991 to defend himself here. I really don't feel strongly either way, but I do understand that going though lines of code due to a long signature is pretty annoying. I propose a 5 line (in the edit window) cap for signatures.S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 20:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Since most of my opinion has already been said, I'll just say that I agree with the above statements. I like Yuser31415's idea of 200 characters. I don't like the idea of userspace transclusions. I don't think there should be a total removal of custom signatures, as they are one of the few ways to make yourself unique. And now I sign. --Tewy 23:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Just a thought, but what about implementing this in steps (500 character limit, 300, 250, etc.). I'm just not sure how else the users with long signatures would be warned (is there a bot that could locate them all?) I'm a little worried that there will be this angry mass of users who all just found out their signatures no longer work. With a gradual system, it wouldn't affect all of them at once. --Tewy 23:37, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

There's now a bug for this; go vote your support. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Nice signature. -- ReyBrujo 01:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Good grief. That's to the point where I'd edit his sig down myself if he posted it on my page. --tjstrf talk 12:16, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Lucky for you then I've changed my signature now so its far shorter :) RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 12:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I think a 250 chars limit would filter out most monstrosities, leaving the 'grey' area sigs for case-by-case evaluation. I also liked proposal above for transcluded userspace sigs that can be edited by the user themselves and admins only. NikoSilver 12:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd prefer just name and talk link per Zoe. A max one line sig would be good, but no more than two. Tyrenius 16:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

My sig's about 180 characters in the preference box (update: I actually counted, it's 193), but shorter on the edit screen (because I type {{subst:CURRENTMINUTE}}, etc, to mess around with the date/time string). Mine's pretty short, and so I'd support the limit being something like 250 characters (or possibly 200, but I prefer 250 (three lines)). --ais523 16:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Your sig is the most perceptive sig I've ever seen, which is one more reason why our brain activity should not be limited by irrational WP:CREEP-like authoritative extreme measures. I stand by my 250 chars proposal, as the optimum solution that filters out most monstrosities, while it allows people to not feel like members of the Outer Party (and therefore inspires them to produce more)! NikoSilver 23:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Exact same discussion being held at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Signature length.

I proposed that templated sigs at {{User:Username/sig}} be allowed, but treated specially to avoid the server load problems, but at least one developer doesn't like this idea. — Omegatron 15:21, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. But to get to an agreement we need to decide what will be used as criteria for the limit. Here are some diferent options:

1. bytes (ex: the limit would be xx bytes)
2. lines taken up in a screen of a chosen size (ex: x lines in a screen of xx by xx pixels)
3. content (ex: maximum x links and x different colours)
4. a combo of 2 or 3 of these options

Once we have chosen one (two, or three) criteria, we will be able to choose the actual limits.

Chris5897 (T@£k) 13:57, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Introduce points system and reduce powers of Admins

Now Wikipedia (esp Engligh one) seems to have acquired critical mass in terms of number of users and there are over 4000 'very active' users so I think there is no need to have separate Admin or may be very active users should be able to vote them (bad admins) out or only on basis of points system (acquired over a long period of time from positive edits to very broad range of topics) can one become an Admin. This will hopefully resolve the issue of US Federal employees/contractors controlling Wikipedia. With this points system in place, very active users can be given extra privileges like giving access to number of watches to a page data which they can use to improve their own productivity over Wikipedia. Vjdchauhan 06:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

Who decides what is a "good edit"

Couldn't you accumulate a bunch of points through trivial work and then spend them to push POV in your pet issue?

"US Federal employees/contractors controlling Wikipedia" is hardly a pressing issue to reorganize our admin system over. It's just one guy having a feud with an imaginary Wiki cabal. —Dgies^t c 07:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

POV pushing will anyway be reverted and thus reducing your points. All edit is good as long as it survives and is not reverted (including minor edits like spell checks, spacing, changing indirect wikilink to direct wikilinks etc).

From policy point of view "US Federal employees/contractors controlling Wikipedia" is a serious issue even if incorrect/non-pressing and the system should have inbuilt machanisms to prevent/revert such things. Not all (very active) users want to become admin but they too feel themselves very committed (if not as much as Admins) to Wikipedia cause and they too should have better say in deciding how the the system is taken forward.

Lastly 'very active' users still need access to number of watches to a page data. Vjdchauhan 07:35, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

How can it a be a serious issue "even if incorrect"? Surely then it's not an issue at all. Edit count is never a way to measure judgement, at any rate. Trebor 07:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure whether its correct/incorrect but it is one thing that is bound to happen over time whereby Govt will try to control the content of Wikipedia as its gaining popularity and ranks very high in Google Search. The Algo of granting points may not be that simple, it should have proper weightage attached to kind of changes (e.g. more weightage to new page creation, category maintainance etc). Why are you so sceptical, have faith in decentralization/democracy. Vjdchauhan 08:53, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

If government were to assume control of WP, then the current system for admin selection would be much safer, since it is all in the open. If the selection were based on some complex algorithm, the numbers and the algorithm could be manipulated by government agents who would have control of the WP databases and servers. Crum375 19:44, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

"Why are you so sceptical, have faith in decentralization/democracy". A little ironic, considering you seem to be a little paranoid and obviously don't have any faith in our current democratic system! Is there any evidence that the US government (or any other government) is controlling or seeking to control Wikipedia? I certainly haven't seen any. -- Necrothesp 04:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

"An example of over use of admin power is 'Everywhere girl' where one person with admin capability has chosen to censor all content. Now I accept change wars happen and an admin can be needed to reflect all points of view, but for someone to decide that admin power gives them the right to ultimate authorship challenges wikipedia validity at its core. Of course in the wider world those in power write history but if wikipedia is to be more than a factional mouthpiece and to aim for verifiable encyclopedic content then the fact that this sort of behaviour happens means that some form of check or balance needs to be enacted, tested and where necessary reenacted" X-mass

• See also WP:PEREN. >Radiant< 13:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Email notification of new messages

Following from my posting a few months ago about this subject on the perennial proposals board, As it seems there have been no replies I've come to the conclusion that it may not have been quite as perennial as I had thought. The few responses it's received on the other board have been very positive, and it's apparently already available on Wikipedia Commons. I've posted it here and now to see if it might get a wider response...

...I've been wondering about this for a while now - when a user recieves a new message on his/her talk page, they get that lovely and prominent "you have new messages" banner at the top of each page. Sometimes though, users want some down time away from wikipedia - to be honest I'd be suprised if that statement didn't account for the majority of users.

Given the purpose of talk pages (ie, for the community to get in touch with a user), would it not be to the benefit of both the community and the user if (just like almost every forum out there on the web), each registered user had an option in their preferences to recieve a simple email notification of a new message. Just like every forum out there of course, it would only send a notification for the first message, and not send one again until the user has visited the talk page.

Alternatively, A weekly email could be sent out with a summary of new talk page sections from over the last week, which would be perhaps useful in cases where a user is on an extended leave from wiki. I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but I haven't seen anything about it. Any thoughts?

{{VPP-bug}}: Please see the notice at the top of the page - when a proposal involves a change to the software, go to the bug tracker (which also does feature requests) and file a new bug there. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I missed that (twice it seems!). One of the reasons I posted about it here though, is that I also wanted to know what the community in general thought about it. Is this OK, or should this be removed? Crimsone 21:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I suspect there are a lot of intermittent editors who'd appreciate this feature (though one could question how many of them would actually learn of it). And I suppose that if it were implemented, there might be more demand for other push-type e-mails, such as notification of AfDs of articles where one had recently contributed. So, in general, I (for one) think it's a good idea, and if it didn't take a lot of programming effort, why not? John Broughton | Talk 03:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Spam gateway! Spam gateway! Spam gateway! Anon and newly-registered users can post to User_talk: pages. What mechanism will be put in place to prevent spammers from abusing this as a spam relay? Even if this is solely an "opt-in" feature, couldn't this also get legit Wikipedia emails flagged as collateral damage spam? —Dgies^t c 05:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

If all it does is say "You got a message, come check it" then you're only going to get one email regardless of how much spam you get, and won't do the spammer any good vs. spamming talk pages now. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 05:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It would be trivial for a developer to enable this, but it would probably place far too much load on the servers (if this is popular, the number of emails sent might be pretty large); the number of emails being sent from Wikipedia might also lead to it being (incorrectly) detected as a spammer and blocked by email services. --ais523 15:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Both Commons and Meta have these notifications

   Dear ReyBrujo,
   
   the Wikimedia Commons page User talk:ReyBrujo has been changed on
   21:47, 14 November 2006 by JeremyA, see
   http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:ReyBrujo for the current
   version.
   
   See
   http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:ReyBrujo&diff=0&oldid=2978670
   for all changes since your last visit.
   
   Editor's summary: Re: Album Covers
   
   Contact the editor:
   mail: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Emailuser/JeremyA
   wiki: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:JeremyA
   
   There will be no other notifications in case of further changes unless
   you visit this page. You could also reset the notification flags for
   all your watched pages on your watchlist.
   
           Your friendly Wikimedia Commons notification system

Personally, I don't like it. -- ReyBrujo 15:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I personally can't confirm the calculations, as I don't know the number of changes per day first hand, but in one of the number of bug reports on the issue, a couple of users are saying that the server load is actually far lower than would be at first thought. (here) Crimsone 23:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Being notified of changes to articles on your watchlist and changes to your talk page are two different things. The server load would be much smaller if it only notified you of changes to your talk page. I would really like to see this enabled for talk pages only. — Omegatron 15:08, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. This is what I'm suggesting (and can be easily done). Enabling it for the watchlist would indeed be a silly proposal if only for the rediculous load on the server - for user talk pages it's (apparently) a different story though. I filed a bug report for this precisely (rather than the bug report I posted above which is slightly different, though it was apparently a duplicate) - here Crimsone 15:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

An end to vandlabots?

Here is an idea that may eliminate vandalbots/automated spam. I know that when creating an account, it is nessecary to answer a math question to protect agianst vandalbots. What if a math question had to be answered before an edit can be saved, at least for IP's? Yes, this would decrease productivity and be annoying, but it would protect agianst vandalbots very well. Or is this too big a change in Wikipedia's policy, and would not even be used because of policy problems? (This post is also in the policy section.) Seldon1 00:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

• Well, a CAPTCHA would be a better idea. Bots are probably better at simple arithmetic than 99% of us anyway. I wouldn't be opposed to a CAPTCHA but I'm not sure if Mediawiki supports it easilly. Plus it adds to server load, generating all those images. --W.marsh 03:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

True, but would either method be worth it? --Seldon1 13:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

They could just run the vandalbot anonymously. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I would support the idea of having anonymous IPs having to answer a math or knowledge question every time they attempt to save or show preview of a page. It just might deter their edits. If they become a regular user, it becomes easier to block a vandalizing user. Ronbo76 13:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

A CAPTCHA for anonymous edits would be a good idea. Maths questions would deter those who failed Maths in school (i.e. some of my classmates). --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Please not on show-preview (that would just discourage anons from previewing their edits). I'm inclined to disagree with this even on edits, because it would discourage casual editing of this site, and vandalbots normally get usernames anyway (because otherwise they're too easy to block). --ais523 14:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't. Anyone sincere enough to make a good edit probably won't be discouraged by a CAPTCHA. The only problem I see is the increase in sever load needed to load all the images. Seldon1 16:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

They don't even need to enter a captcha to register... anyways, I don't think it is worth the problem. I noticed that some Wikipedias (in example the latin one I think) do ask you to solve a math equation if you try to add an external link to an article. I would not object that, as I am more worried about spam than vandalism. -- ReyBrujo 19:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

On one of the smaller Wikimedia wikis (not sure which one), I was reverting blanking and got a simple sum to do when I saved a page containing an external link. If anything, this would slow down spammers if enabled for registered users (not sure if it was an anon only feature, as I wasn't signed in when I made the revert). Perhaps something to request at the buzilla. Martinp23 21:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It would have to be a real CAPTCHA, not a silly math problem (umm, yeah, computers can do math). And it would be very inconvenient. Are vandalbots really such a large problem? I don't think the inconvenience we'd be placing on millions of edits would make it worth it. --Cyde Weys 21:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Isn't there a votation?

—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—
18:41, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
We have a very fast bot. I fell in edit conflict to put the sign, 5 seconds after.

"LOG SEARCH STRING" function added to wikipedia

Create a way to "add" articles to a timeline or list and email them to you or someone else —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.161.115.65 (talk) 03:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

• That sounds like two different ideas, and what you mean by the first is unclear (at least to me). As for the second, it's not clear why one wouldn't just email a link; because Wikipedia is a wiki, it changes all the time - who would want to have an old, outdated copy of an article, rather than a link that always points to the most recent version? John Broughton | Talk 19:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Sheet Music Section

There is much sheet music out there that is out of copy right and is currently public domain. There should be some sort of repository for storing this music on wikipedia. Music is an important aspect of human history and should be availible through this site. If possible a seperate wiki project dedicated to this would be the best thing. If that is not possible could it be included in wikisource or wikicommons? -Vcelloho 03:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Check out Project Gutenberg. — Miles (Talk) 05:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

And Mutopia. Dar-Ape 22:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

And Chroal Wiki! RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 22:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh my! Dar-Ape 00:18, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there are other places where this information can be found however I still believe that there should be a wikimedia wiki repository for this. I don't think that redundancy is such a bad thing in this case. Redundancy of this sort in literature exists and I don't think that its such a bad thing. I do however see your argument however my proposal was infact prompted by seeing the short comings of each of these sites. -Vcelloho 03:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

choral wiki is actually really good for it. We should probably link to these pages in articles RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 03:17, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

• If you really want to submit PD sheet music to a Wikimedia project, you should visit WikiSource rather than Wikipedia. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank's for the suggestion. I'll make sure to take this proposal to the proper location. -Vcelloho 20:20, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia + digg like links for each subject could make wikipedia as integral as google, if not more.

If you haven't used digg, check it out. Basically the collective users vote whether or not links are of interest. But the thing about digg is it's extremely focused on the present, forgetting the past. It's all about the latest links, the newest trend. This form of social bookmark promoting would also work well per subject. Perhaps for every wikipedia subject. How would this work for wikipedia? Now for most wikipedia pages you get a few links to outside pages, but no real sense if the links are worth going to. If people could submit links to each page/topic and then allow the collective users to vote whether or not those links were of interest, and then promote the more heavily voted on links to the top, as well as show how many votes the links got, people would be able to find the best outside links for each subject. Saving time and leading people deeper into the subjects. I would have the outside links categorized: news items, interviews, pictures, videos, audio, official websites, unofficial websites, forums, etc. For example if say the page was about Bob Dylan, for the digg-like voted on section, people could post links to their favorite videos of bob dylan, of links to their favorite audio samples of bob dylan. Then other uses could vote, and when you go to the Bob Dylan page, you could easily find the most popular pictures, sound files, video files, interview, etc about bob dylan. It's one thing to read about bob dylan, it's another to see a the web communites favorite video of him, and also read the most interesting interview with him. Any page would have these digg-like links that could be added. You could also choose to view these list of user submitted links based on most popular recently, or all time.

This might not be as beneficial for every subject, but for some it will really make wikipedia a more vibrant and useful resource.

Along side a seperate part of each wikipedia page for digg like links broken into categories, I would also have a place for rating and polling. These would be subjective, and not included in the factual section. Again an example for bob dylan, the web community could rate each of his albums (1-10), as well as his songs. Then you could see which is the most beloved album by bob dylan, as well as his highest rated song. Or if page was about an author - say H. G. Wells. You could quickly find out what people think is his best book.

I think adding both of these sections to a wikipedia page (perhaps not on the main page) would add incredibly useful features that will make wikipedia more useful than google.

-Isa Kretschmer —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.124.87.54 (talk) 03:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

• Including ratings from Wikipedia editors (even in a separate place, such as the talk page) would be original research. If you want to know the ratings of various artistic works, infoboxes often include a list of the professional reviews, and/or sales statistics. —Dgies^t c 16:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your suggestion, but, ehem, Web 2.0 and me don't carry on well, so I am biased here. No, we do not need "ratings". We already have a 3-star scale: Article, Good Article and Featured Article. We also have some kind of votation to improve an article at the different collaborations of the week/month, peer review and requests for feedback. Finally, and I am blunt here, we don't need people to tell us which articles they like more, but instead, to help us improve those that are still stubs. -- ReyBrujo 17:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Just to clarify I'm not suggesting rating wikipedia articles, or voting on them, I suggesting voting on outside links (non-wikipedia) that relate to the wikipedia article's subject. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.237.173.17 (talk • contribs).
      • Ooooof, I really don't like the Digg link ideas. For a variety of reasons. Mainly, because we're an encyclopedia, and it just doesn't make sense. --Cyde Weys 21:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
        • One huge difference between Digg and Wikipedia is the ratio of articles (of interest) to editors. I'm guessing that there are thousands of people voting on any given day regarding a hundred or two articles (and, even if more, most only look and vote at the top ones). By contrast, there are 1.5+ million articles on Wikipedia and in any given month there are less than 5000 people who do 100 edits or more in any given month. (Statisics from here. And if the voting is on external links, then we're talking about 2.6 million external links. Because each article is of interest to a very small subset of users (unlike Digg), it certainly would be easy to "game" the system - for example, Scientologists voting to remove all external links to cites that attack Scientology. Wikipedia already has edit wars - why would we want to have external link voting wars as well? John Broughton | Talk 19:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes

Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes has been around for a while, and may make a good 'official' guideline. --Barberio 00:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

• Responses should be posted at Wikipedia talk:Avoiding common mistakes#Promote to guideline. John Broughton | Talk 19:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

CotW on Main Page

I think it would be a good idea to have a "Collaboration of the Week" on the Main Page. This is a quick way to introduce visitors to collaborative editing and shows them how Wikipedia works. In addition, if there is a topic that grabs the readers' attention, we might gain a few good contributors to the project. Nominations for the Main Page could come from the various Wikiprojects which already organise CotW's amongst themselves. (side note: should I cross-post this to Talk:Main Page and send them here or should I move this there and cross-post from here?) Zunaid©® 09:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I recommend that you post to Talk:Main Page, and that anyone interested follow the link to that page. John Broughton | Talk 19:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

So done. Please jump in and discuss at Talk:Main Page#CotW on Main Page Zunaid©® 07:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Books

Creating the ability for the users to organize the data in Wiki into a book format so schools, profs and students could use Wiki as a "Book", with indexed, Table of content, high-liter feature, bookmark etc etc.

Ex: lets say I'm a teacher of Biology, I already have a course outline and know the topics I want to cover in my class. So all I would need to do is gather this data into a central organized way so students can just read the mat'l I would want to cover... Maybe there could be an online testing ability too or an area to put practice test Q/As....

This might not be what you're looking for, but do you know about Wikibooks? --ais523 15:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

And Wikiversity (in beginning stages still). —Quiddity 20:28, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Please Issue Easy Guidlines for Footnotes with Links

I'm a newbie and can't find a simple footnote button or any kind of instructions on how to create a footnoted link to a web article in plain English for the technically-challenged. Can you post some simple (as in gratingly simple for the utterly stupid) instructions for how to create citation links? Since I can't figure out how to do it, I've been putting the references in the summary of edit line for whoever would like to incorporate the info. But just can't do it myself. The instructions are all Greek to me. Help? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by FirthFan1 (talk • contribs) 18:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC). FirthFan1, 18:40, 12 January 2007

Here's a real quick example, hope it helps. —Dgies^t c 18:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

 ==Some paragraph==
 Contrary to popular belief, the sky is not blue.<ref>{{cite web|title=Crackpot Journal|url=http://your.url.com/}}</ref>

 ==References==
 <references/>
 

Did you discover WP:FOOT? (SEWilco 19:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC))

Formatting references isn't that difficult. Just enclose the reference's URL in <ref>...</ref> tags. For example, if your reference is http://google.com, you would format the reference like this: <ref>http://google.com</ref>.

Above the "External links" section (if the article has one), add a "References" section consisting solely of the following tag: <references/>

I don't know how to format references that aren't URLs, though. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:13, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:CITET offers links to several templates that can be used to cite references either inline or in a section at the end. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:43, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's a few more places to look: Wikipedia:Citations quick reference, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links), and WP:CITE. I'm not sure how "plain English" they are, however. John Broughton | Talk 15:52, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Glad someone else is having trouble with "references" or "footnotes" - whatever. I have discovered:- This should give a small superscript "[1"] which can refer to the list of refs listed near the end. BUT what do I do if the same ref is referred to more than once and therefore given more than one reference number? (Hope I can find this page again to read the answer to this question!!)Osborne 11:24, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Reference reliability statistics

As much as Wikipedia stresses the importance of having references in articles, the quality of references on the site is still very much a mixed bag. When I'm reading an article, and I want to know how reliable the information is, it can be quite tedious to stop at each citation and hunt down the source statement that matches the one in the article. I'd like to see some kind of feedback/rating system for references which goes something like the following:

When a Wikipedian checks a reference, he/she can mark it as "good", "bad", or "mediocre". The reference will then keep track of how many users have reviewed it, who those users are, and what its average rating is. To view these statistics, users can hold their mouse over the reference link in the article, and a tooltip will appear over the reference displaying something like:

16 reviews. 2.3 average rating. Click here to display list of reviewers. Click here to submit your own review.

Pros that I know of:

• Provides a way to quickly ascertain the reliability of a reference. Useful to non-Wikipedians who are browsing the site to do research, and useful to Wikipedians looking for weak references which need help.
• If the references keep track of their reviewers, abuse can be weeded out fairly easily. The ability to review a reference could even be restricted to users who have been registered for a certain period of time, or who have made a certain number of edits.

Cons that I know of:

• No real way of knowing what standards reviewers are using when rating the references. I guess a WP policy would be written to address this.
• Depending on the manner in which the reference statistics are displayed, it could add clutter to the pages or make them look gimmicky. The statistics would be more useful if there were a way to display them beyond just the tooltip - perhaps color coding for the reference numbers, or a small icon next to them showing a "star rating" - but that's where the clutter/gimmickiness comes in.
• Might be a programming hassle.

I'm interested to hear what people think of this idea. If I left out any considerations, please let me know. G Rose (talk) 08:43, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

It's been tried with templates that people could mark the references with. Allowing submitted reviews would be a major change in the software and require recognizing references as objects with reviews attached to them instead of just pieces of text that are parsed when the page is. What happens when someone changes around the referencing on an article? Ignoring the technical issues, it seems fundamentally flawed. Would you even trust these reviews? A source is either reliable or we shouldn't be using it, and if information is taken from an unreliable source that's an issue that rating a source poorly can't fix. If a source sucks, say it on the talk page, try to replace it with a better one, or just remove the material drawn from it as unreliable. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:04, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

This proposal would just create yet another backlog: "References to rate". --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:07, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

See m:Wikicite and m:WikiTextrose. (SEWilco 06:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC))

Inclusion V Advocay (Paranormal and pseudoscience)

I'm not sure if this is the right place to suggest this, but....

Having run into a number of problems with users over controversial subjects, particularly those where myself and other users have been trying to document pseudoscience or the paranormal, I'd like to suggest that there be some form of guideline (a policy would be too strong) over the differences between inclusion and advocacy of a notable claim. For example, something with clauses explaining the validity of including information that is unproven, pseudoscience, or which has been since been proven false, as object illustrations of the beliefs of proponents, but NOT as a claim of it as being true, and defining the difference between inclusion of such things, and advocacy of them as being true.

My primary motive for requesting such a guideline is that I've run into several user who are constantly reverting pages or arguing over content when people have been trying to record what exactly it is that pseudoscientists are saying, and what the history of a given area of pseudo science is, on the grounds that what they said "can't be proven to be true" and the belief that "stating that they said it means advocating it as being true". perfectblue 12:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia:Fringe theories helpful? or Wikipedia:Don't be a fanatic? John Broughton | Talk 15:48, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Cheers, "Fringe" is useful to know, but not entirely helpful in this case because most of the inclusion = advocacy users that I've come across would instantly hone in on "fringe theories that may seem relevant but are only sourced by obscure texts that lack peer review should not be included in the article". This part of a general problem that I've found with Wikipedia policy and guidelines. They are science and journal based. This is great if you want to stop somebody putting up their own pet hypothesis and making out that it is widely supported by scientists, but it is not so great if you are trying to write a history of the contactee movement.

I'll give you an example of the kind of thing that I've seen. For example:

A page about X a notable and verifiable as existing group of spiritualist. User 1 writes a history of the group, they include the events that lead each member to come to the group, the famous cases that they were involved in, and a machine that they build which they say lets them communicate with the spirit of a Native-American Chief. They include source material from a range of books dealing with the paranormal and spiritualism.

User 2 comes along, deletes any and all claims that the group members made about spiritualism, and most of the details of their cases on the grounds that their claims can't be backed up by science, and that recording their claims = advocating the truth of claims. They then delete most of sources saying (in so many words) that because the person who wrote the source believed in the paranormal the source didn't meet WP:RS (I've often seen this kind of user use WP:RS to mean must be from a mainstream scientist). Then demands a peer reviewed source detailing the groups machine from a scientific perspective.

It's a grand pain. -- perfectblue 17:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to do two things. First, WP:NPOV includes a provision for not giving something undue weight, and WP:NOT says that Wikipedia isn't an indiscriminate collection of information. So just as we don't include verified sightings of celebrities (as reported, say, by the New York Post in biographies of celebrities, so too is it inappropriate to go heavily in depth on minor things. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a collection of book-length articles. Use those as a basis to shorten articles to the most important claims and facts.

Second, where information comes from a book or article from a fringe publisher or magazine, and discusses controversial matters or makes outlandish claims, then the sentences in the Wikipedia article should say "X said that A occured" or "Y wrote in Z-book that B happened" or even "A claimed that C took place", rather than "A occurred", "B happened", or "C took place". Obviously this shouldn't be done for everything - if a book says that N joined the group in 1997, there isn't any basic reason to doubt that. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof: "X said that A happened" isn't an extraordinary claim, while "A happened" is. John Broughton | Talk 19:53, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I've been doing this for some time, so I know the boundaries. The problem is that when we are writing about notable people/claims/incidents (Big foot, for example, is highly notable) and are hedging our words to keep perspective ("this is the way that they said it is" rather than "this is the way that it is"), the slant on policy towards science, history and Bio, still means that there are users abusing these policies to try and keep the information that we provide down to "names and faces".

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" That would be WP:OR in most cases, which is against wiki policy.

I guess my main argument is that wikipedia needs some policy clauses stating that demanding peer review for the paranormal is a waste of times, and that users shouldn't use it as a means of stifling pages about unscientific subjects. I mean, is it even logical to demand peer review on something that is a hoax, urban legend, or is a cult? perfectblue 07:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand your reference to "peer review" - the term is used for (see Wikipedia:Peer review) for proposed featured articles. If you're saying that demanding WP:RS or WP:N for paranormal and pseduoscience and hoaxes is "stifling", I'm not sure why. If you're saying that editors object to "He said" and "she said" type sentences, and remove these, I suggest you just keep insisting that they state the Wikipedia policy that disallows these, or the policy that says that there are to be minimized, because I'm not aware of any such policy. And if they can't come up with such policies, then deleting relevant information from reliable sources is POV, in my opinion. It's fine to argue about reality (e.g., does the strength of gravity vary significantly anywhere on the earth); it's wrong to argue that Wikipedia can't cite people who (by all reasonable measures) have an incorrect view of reality, if the subject of an article is those people. That they have such views is reality. John Broughton | ♫ 15:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

By peer review, I mean peer reviewed science journals. A peer reviewed journal is pretty near the peak of WP:RS. It can take a coupe of years for an article to be deemed good enough to be published in one. Except in a few very very rare cases they simply won't touch experiments involving the paranormal. Not even experiments using science to disprove phenomena.

Users demand peer review because they know that it won't exist, and they do it because they want to reduce articles to "He said he saw a Bigfoot, but he doesn't have proof".

Telling them about WP:RS doesn't help because they already know that they are in the wrong, but hope that you don't know that.

perfectblue 16:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

History of deleted articles upon recreation

As a new page patroller it would be really useful to be able to access the history of a page upon recreation after if it has been previously deleted. This would allow new page patrollers to assertain, once the article has been recreated, whether or not it merits retaggting for deletion, or whether significant changes have been made so that the article is OK. It would also allow quicker removal of recreated articles RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:14, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Article history is not available to non-admins due to past copyright and potential inflammatory edits which have been removed. If all users, or even all logged in users, had that capability, every one of those inflammatory and copyvio edits would have to be WP:OVERSIGHTed. User:Zoe|(talk) 00:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

However, most deleted page histories are non-problematic, and can be provided on request. Additionally, an extension that permits admins to quickly view the deleted contributions of a user (to help spotting things like chronic recreations of articles) is currently under development. --Slowking Man 08:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Holding deletion discussion (of articles) in WikiProject space

See Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Proposal for de-centralization of debates for more detailed arguments. Basically, the idea is creation of a process which puts the encyclopedia before deletion and is improve first and delete only if necessary. Additionally, discussions should be informed by the informed. --Keitei (talk) 01:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Ugh, no. Let's not make it harder to find discussions than it already is. --tjstrf talk 06:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I have to concur with tjstrf, this is a bad idea for several reasons:

1.' It's important to have one centralized location for AfD discussions. An article should only get deleted if the topic itself is unverifiable or non-notable so those articles that simply need improvement don't, or at least shouldn't, get deleted anyways.

2. Wikiprojects are going to tend to cling to articles falling within their scope and are less likely to push for deletion of something even if that something should, in fact, be deleted.

3. What about articles that don't fall within the scope of a single Wikiproject? They would get less protection than articles falling within a project if this were implemented.

4. Even worse than articles falling under no Wikiproject are those falling under a number of projects. For example, renewable energy fits within the Wikiproject on energy, the Wikiproject on the Environment and the Wikiproject on International Development. A process like the one above could easily result in problems arising between projects.

5. The notion that this allows the "discussions to be informed by the informed" is not a valid one. Currently, when an article goes up for AfD a notice is placed on the page in question and anyone who normally edits that article and similar articles is likely to see it and get involved anyway; as a regular contributor to AfD discussions I'll say that those rare few AfD's that may actually require some specialized knowledge of the topic do, in fact, draw those individuals into them. And besides, AfD's are procedural and don't actually require this knowledge; the central question in and AfD discussion is whether the article in question meets the Wikipedia's guidelines/policies. It doesn't take an expert to decide whether or not something is notable or has sources. --The Way 04:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: " An article should only get deleted if the topic itself is unverifiable or non-notable so those articles that simply need improvement don't, or at least shouldn't, get deleted anyways." --
if only that was the case. Quite a few users (including admins) believe that articles are deleted when they could have just been improved. In most cases an admin will find 2 faults in an article -- like finding a paragraph that reads like a how-to guide and bad referencing -- and instead of putting up a template or two, will put the entire article up for Deletion Review. Then after a week, if it's an infrequently visited article, the problems still exist (because no template was put up) and the article is deleted. That's exactly what happened on the article for Anal Stretching -- an article that should exist but no admins bothered to put up templates.

The deletion of articles instead of amendment of articles seems to be a major issue, and any suggestions to fix such would be welcomed :) Rfwoolf 13:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Mac Wikipedia Software

Not sure if this is the right place for asking this, but I think it would be useful if more Wikipedia related tools became available to Mac users. The majority I have found are for Windows. 152.78.254.245 15:13, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

What would be your top three? John Broughton | ♫ 14:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• An application for browsing without a web browser, i think on Windows it's called WikiBrowse, but would only be useful if it could do edits as well.
• Editing apps like AutoWikiEdit, extensions to BBEdit, that sort of thing
• Not applicable to me, but some of the anti-vandal tools would be nice.

Sorry, was slightly more vague than a top three. Littleandlarge 14:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

US State infobox/template things

I have a proposal to tweak the infoboxes that currently appear on US-State related articles, the big colorful ones with the state flag that link you to the state's largest cities, state flower, etc etc. Where is the best place to make my suggestion? How do these things even get changed? --Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 20:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Try first the infobox talk page. Also, Wikipedia:WikiProject United States is a good place. -- ReyBrujo 20:24, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Where do I find this talk page? That's exactly what I was looking for in posting this question. Thanks--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 20:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

You could try Template talk:Infobox U.S. state. Tra (Talk) 20:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

If you go to Longmont, Colorado and look at the bottom of the page, there is a big box. That is the thing I am wondering about. I think the template referred to above is a different one.--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 21:18, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

That would be {{colorado}} -- ReyBrujo 21:26, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

TfD of {{user wikipedia}}

This went up for TfD in August 2006 with the result of keep. This result was more of a vote and not consensus. It seems that a lot of the people saying keep were of the WP:ILIKEIT variety. Since this template is a tautology and of no direct value to the project, I think it should be userfied per WP:GUS. However, before starting what I know will be a contentious discussion, I wanted to hear a little feedback here first. —Dgies^t c 05:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Only it we're userfying it at User:Jimbo Wales/Userbox/User Wikipedia. Otherwise keep. --tjstrf talk 05:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Centralised discussion at MoS on flag icons

Proposed MoS guideline. Please contribute to the centralised discussion on flag icons at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Flag icons - manual of style entry?. Please add comments over there, not here. Thanks. Carcharoth 14:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Automatic signing

I am new to Wikipedia. One of the first things I noticed was that signatures were not automatically appended to talk pages. I knew nothing about "signing", and assumed my name would be inserted after a paragraph I wrote in a 'talk' page. I later noticed that a bot made some funny signature for me, exclaiming something to the effect of "Danger Will Robinson! Danger! Xerxesnine did not give a signature! Abort, abort! Does not compute!"

This is so completely ridiculous, I can hardly believe the practice of manual signing has gone on this long, even though it's just a few tildes. In the computer world, the term "signature" by definition means something which is automatically appended by software, so it's an abuse of the term. But this is beside the point, because there's just no justification for requiring users to do ANYTHING when software can easily do it for them.

Please don't respond with, "Oh, it's just a few tildes." Arbitrary and useless hoop-jumping is always a bad thing. These things add up. Old-timers get accustomed to such irrationality, but newcomers like me see the silliness for what it is.

The signing instructions above says it all --- obviously, such "instructions" should be entered into the software where they will be executed reliably, rather then attempting to upload them into the brains of users. --Xerxesnine 14:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The bot's text is ok IMO, but feel free to add a proposal.

As for automatic, there are many cases where the signature must be omitted (e.g. in WP:RfA summaries), or preceded (e.g. when placing a quote from a source), or altered (e.g. when only sig, [~~~] or only date [~~~~~] is required), or duplicated (e.g. when intermingling 2-3 responses in different parts with one edit) and the software would not know how to make a distinction. Please try to get used to it. Here goes: NikoSilver 14:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC) :-)

But the first-pass answer is obvious: automatically append a signature when there is a new unambiguous paragraph. I even forgot about my sig just now, and only noticed it during the preview. Xerxesnine 15:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

As for the issue of having the wiki software do what the bot does - there are only a few (two?) full-time (part-time?) paid programmers, and they have a long list of features and problems to work on. If something can be implemented by a bot (that is, without changing the core wiki software), that's one fewer thing for the programmers to do. And one fewer things for the programmers to maintain. Maybe, eventually, when they run out of other things to do, they can look at the various bots and start replacing them with core code, but I wouldn't (personally) hold my breath while waiting for that to happen. John Broughton | ♫ 14:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I did not mean to imply a distinction or a preference between "bot" and other software. I don't care how automatic signing is implemented. My point was that the current signing bot seems to make a big deal about it (large and distracting comment), rather than quietly performing its duty. Xerxesnine 15:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

As Niko Silver said, you don't always want something signed in the same way, or at all. The automatic signing bot has already added my signature to one page completely incorrectly, and I can't see any other automatic system getting it right under every circumstance. Trebor 14:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

In the case of an unambiguous new paragraph without a signature, it will always be right. There is already a distinction between pages which require a signature and pages which don't, so it's a red herring to say that you don't always want a signature.Xerxesnine 15:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

This would not "always be right." There are plenty of instances in which a new paragraph that shouldn't be signed (such as a summary or an advisory) is added to an ordinary talk page.

Furthermore, the {{unsigned}} message is supposed to draw attention to the fact that the user didn't sign the message, thereby encouraging him/her (and others) to do so in the future. The wording, however, actually is rather mild. There is no shame involved. —David Levy 19:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The current signing bot will already sign all such paragraphs, including the ones you mention that should not be signed, so I don't see the relevance of your point --- except that I should have said "almost always" instead of "always". As for your "furthermore" part, my whole argument is that we should do away with the ridiculous manual signing in the first place. Grabbing attention is exactly what the bot should not do; it is needless noise. Did you read my initial post, above? Xerxesnine 16:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

1. Indeed, HagermanBot has the same flaw. Personally, I'd prefer that it be retired. (It causes other problems as well.)

2. "Almost always" remains an overstatement. "Usually" is more accurate.

3. Yes, I read your initial post (which is what I alluded to). You claimed that the message "exclaim[ed] something to the effect of 'Danger Will Robinson! Danger! Xerxesnine did not give a signature! Abort, abort! Does not compute!'", which is a silly exaggeration of mild wording that serves a valid purpose under the current setup (irrespective of whether said setup should be changed). —David Levy 00:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, consider when:

• The user edited a page which requires a signature.
• The user made edits which are clear and unambiguous additional sections.
• The user did not add a signature to one or more of said sections.

When all three conditions hold, a bot should quietly add some standard signature to those sections lacking one.

By "quietly," I mean that the bot's diff comment should be very short and non-attention-grabbing, or better yet that there should be no diff at all (which probably means the code runs in the commit hook rather than a separate bot entity).

What do you think? Xerxesnine 15:57, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I concur about automatic signatures. It would be a nice feature to have the Wiki automatically sign my username whenever it is required. I detest seeing the Bot messages which I just to delete. My recommendation would be for the Bot to put the unsigned message on the talkpage written upon and not put a message on the user's talkpage. Ronbo76 16:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

And if it doesn't change, I think it might wait 20 seconds before editing. I realized in one talk I didn't sign, then I returned, and I had an edit conflict with HengermanBot, I think it's called.

—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—
18:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
This time I noticed.

Add yourself at User:HagermanBot/OptOut. I like the bot, but I wish it could move new talks to the bottom (new users usually post at the top instead of the bottom). -- ReyBrujo 23:05, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

People whining about Hagermanbot is getting really lame really fast. If you don't like the bot, learn to sign manually. It's that simple. If Hagerman bot didn't exist, then the only thing different is that one of us would have to sign your posts for you using {{unsigned}} if it was causing confusion in a topic. --tjstrf talk 22:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course this is simply the authoritarian stance on the status quo. "Love it or leave it." It does not address the underlying problem which I stated in my original post; indeed, I anticipated this argument and explained why it is flawed. Xerxesnine 12:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

So, because you think there's a problem, anyone who disagrees with you is "authoritarian"? Could it not just be that most of us do not think there's a problem? -- Necrothesp 14:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The response is authoritarian, yes. To say "It is right, deal with it" without even addressing the point is called an authoritarian response. To simply respond with "'Tisn't!" is equally weak. You have to make a rational argument to the point. Xerxesnine 16:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Going back to the original comment, Xerxesnine said, "In the computer world, the term "signature" by definition means something which is automatically appended by software,..." and says that the Wiki code ~~~~ signature sistem does not fit that definition. However, I must disagree, because, through not having to type out the entire [[User:Nineteenninetyfour|<font color=green>Ninety</font... thingy, and being able to simply type ~~~~, you have an automatic signing mechanism. Ninety^wazup? 00:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

You are at liberty to disagree by presenting rational counter-arguments, but you are not at liberty to change definitions and pretend that's a counter-argument. "Automatic" as I have used it clearly means "without user intervention", and this includes typing tildes as is clearly stated in my original post. It also appears as though you missed the clause in my original post which states "But this is beside the point". Xerxesnine 12:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

This would be a nice feature if it were simple, or even possible, for software to determine when an addition needs to be signed, but I don't know that it is. The rules you propose above would inappropriately place signatures when people add templates, etc. that do not need to be signed. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

To clarify even further, software should NEVER require needless work on the user's part, and should minimize manual labor wherever it can. It has been argued that sometimes you don't want a signature. Alright. If 99.9% of the time the user DOES want a signature, and 0.1% the user DOES NOT want a signature, then what should the software do? Clearly, there should be a "no signature" tag (say, "!~") instead of a signature tag (tildes). Furthermore, there can be special exceptions where no signature will be added, for example paragraphs which consist solely of certain templates, thereby pushing manual use of "!~" down to 0.0001%. --Xerxesnine 17:06, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

1. Your figures are greatly exaggerated.

2. I wouldn't oppose such a setup, but only as an optional, non-default setting. Otherwise, mass confusion would ensue. —David Levy 00:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

1. The use of obvious hypotheticals ("If 99.9% of the time...") in conjunction with obvious hyperbole ("Danger Will Robinson!") are techniques which are meant to illustrate a point. They serve the same purpose as homework problems involving trains moving at 3/5 the speed of light which are given to first-year students in Special Relativity. A train moving at 3/5 the speed of light? Your figures are greatly exaggerated!

2. Right, of course it wouldn't be appropriate to completely change the behavior of the current signing bot. Users would explicitly opt-in to such behavior. Xerxesnine 15:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

As this thread comes to a close, I will just express my general lament that poor user interfaces can persist (here and everywhere) due to users perpetuating them out of habit and/or arbitrary attachment to the status quo. I believe my arguments concerning the four tildes, and the reactions to those arguments here, demonstrate this problem well. Xerxesnine 15:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Wanted: Easy PubMed referencing

It's a good thing that Wikipedians are making good quality scientific articles with detailed reference lists. Unfortunately, actually setting up those references seems like a lot of trouble. Forgive me if I've missed something, but it seems like at the moment there is no automatic way to transfer title, authors, and literature citation to a new reference. Yet all of that data exists in the public PubMed servers of several nations, available in a variety of standardized formats, with special machine-readable formats used by reference management software such as EndNote. So in theory it should be possible to type something like "ref PubMed 948762", and have all the other data appended automatically on submission. PubMed is the most important database for biological abstract searches. 948762 is the unique PubMed identifier (PMID) of the article - an identifier stable enough to use in interlibrary loan requests, for example. That should be enough information for a complete reference to be generated automatically. Alternatively, I and others have already committed the sin of entering references like so [1], trusting that this is sufficient for people to actually find the content. However, such a link can and probably will go dead eventually - although it ends in the PMID, which should always be possible to look up by some means.

It would be very nice to have both the template system for entering new references easily yet correctly and some kind of bot going through Wikipedia entries and substituting properly detailed references for the quick Web links to NCBI wherever they appear, and either one would be an immense help. Mike Serfas 18:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

As I discovered while querying something at WikiProject Clinical medicine, if you type PMID followed by the unique id, it is automatically converted into a URL to PubMed, in example, PMID 948762 becomes PMID 948762. Is this what you were asking for? -- ReyBrujo 18:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, also note that just "importing" all the information from a page would not work for Wikipedia because of several reasons, including a) licensing and copyright issues; b) formatting; and c) inappropriate content. Note that an almost copy of a PubMed article was sent to deletion (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PMID 8474513) because it is considered not appropriate for Wikipedia. -- ReyBrujo 18:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a nifty feature I wasn't aware of! Until I you pointed this out I hadn't realized that such references weren't just URL links. They should be useful in that a single change to whatever code is interpreting the string could fix a future change in the URL of a PubMed server. Even so, the effect is a bit disappointing - the article still doesn't accumulate an impressive-looking list of references at the end, and more to the point, you can't read through the titles and authors to quickly recognize familiar papers or the most relevant topics. I can't believe there are any copyright problems involved in rifling through the U.S. government PubMed server for a list of titles and authors, journal names, volume and issue numbers, and dates of publication! I understand the abstracts would be on shakier ground, but they wouldn't look right in the references anyway.  :) Mike Serfas 19:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Is this helpful? It coverts a PubMed ID into cite info that can be pasted into an article. John Broughton | ♫ 17:10, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist enhancement

I wondered if it would be possible to introduce some whizzy tec that'll make it possible to remove pages from the Watchlist from the main "my watchlist" page, rather than the alpha order full list?

I do RC patrol and consequently my Watchlist rapidly fills, making it more difficult to really watch the pages I want to keep an eye on. I'd find it easier to prune the list using the recency element of "my watchlist" than the alpha list.

Opinions welcomed. --Dweller 10:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I use the "unwatch" feature of popups to unwatch pages directly from my watchlist by opening "unwatch" in a new tab. If your watchlist is getting too long, you might also consider typing up a list of pages you really want to watch and check changes to them with Special:Recentchangeslinked. Hope that helps, Kusma (討論) 10:09, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I finally installed popups as a result of your suggestion (something I've been meaning to do for yonks). It does work, but if I'm curmudgeonly about it, it's still quite clumsy, as for each unwatch click, I get taken to a new page telling me I've removed the page from the watchlist, rather than leaving me able to select a bunch of pages simultaneously. I, erm, didn't understand your other suggestion, but it sounds pretty laborious. --Dweller 10:19, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

That's why I open the new unwatch pages in background tabs, where they don't annoy me. For the other thing, see User:Kusma/Contributions and Special:Recentchangeslinked/User:Kusma/Contributions for what I mean. Best, Kusma (討論) 11:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist enhancement - "temporary watch" feature?

When warning a vandal, you may wish to temporarily "watch" them for further vandalism. Similarly, after reverting vandalism, you may wish to temporarily "watch" the article for further vandalism. You may also wish to "watch" a request for adminship, or a nomination of an article for deletion (such discussions usually last 7 days). Once it's clear that vandalism has stopped, or the discussion has ended, there's no further need to watch the page, and it simply clutters your watchlist.

How about a "temporary watch" feature, which allows you to watch a page for a specified period of time, after which it is removed from your watchlist? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I wondered if it would be possible to introduce some whizzy tec that'll make it possible to remove pages from the Watchlist from the main "my watchlist" page

Yep. The one I am using is here, though Quarl had a better version that used AJAX. See User_talk:Ilmari_Karonen#Unwatch_link and Bugzilla:424.

How about a "temporary watch" feature, which allows you to watch a page for a specified period of time, after which it is removed from your watchlist?

I would love this. In the bug report, someone suggested it a little differently:

Perhaps a user could set a "max number of watched items" parameter in his preferences. If he then adds a new watched item that takes him over his limit, the software would drop the oldest watched item from his list.

— Omegatron 14:50, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

You would have to be notified about which link was dropped, and there must be some way of sorting by date and not only alphabetical, otherwise you may lose watch links you don't want to. It would be much better if you could "categorize" your watch items in different categories. -- ReyBrujo 12:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikilyrics

I think there should be a site created for the sue of submiting lyrics for songs! This woule be a great addition to the Wikipedia creators!

The vast majority of lyrics are copyrighted so the site would either have almost no content or get shut down. A lot of lyrics sites are being shut down or at least being ordered to remove a lot of their lyrics as it is. Koweja 20:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Despite that, there are still some in existence. Trebor 20:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

There are plenty of sites host copyrighted videos still in existence, but that doesn't mean Youtube should allow people to upload protected works. Koweja 16:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• We also have some on Wikisource. But yes, they tend to be copyvios. The internet is full of copyvios and most of them don't get shut down or anything, but that doesn't mean we should join them; note that we are rather more high-profile than just about anything else on the 'net. >Radiant< 12:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Separate "Fanpedia" for all fancruft

Strangely this is not in the list of perennial proposals, although it seems obvious, and I would guess someone suggested it already. The proposal is to limit articles with many associated specialised articles (of interest to fans only). There would be only one article on The Simpsons, Star Trek, Big Brother (TV series), individual computer games, professional wrestling, and so on. All derived articles, on individual episodes, sequels, characters, tournaments/competitions, scores, league tables, competitors, and so on would be moved to an entirely new project. This is both a policy proposal and a new project proposal, and the policy could only be implemented when such a project starts up.Paul111 12:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with it. You don't see it unless you're looking for it. — Omegatron 14:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Various fan wikis exist at Wikia and other Wiki hosting services, for example Wookieepedia. Kusma (討論) 14:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's not paper; we don't need to remove information because it's only of interest to fans. As an (imperfect) analog, imagine getting rid of General relativity because it's only of interest to scientists. That said, various projects do exist generally for fictional universes, and cover the story in more detail (but tend to include less out-of-universe information). Trebor 15:02, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Ever seen Memory Alpha? User:Zoe|(talk) 18:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Wookieepedia is exactly what I had in mind, but for all fan-interest-only articles. Even if they are not visible without looking for them, they are still a distortion of content. Look at the new page creations, and you will see how many articles fall into this category. The best analogy is with recipes: policy excludes them all, ending all disputes on notability.Paul111 11:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

POV rears its ugly head. You'll be arguing to kingdom come over many of the articles as to whether or not they're fan-related. --Dweller 11:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• Up to a point. I have seen a number of well-written articles which fail core verifiability policy taken to Memory Alpha or Wookiepedia. Guy (Help!) 12:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• I would be all in favor of a guideline asking that when too much unsourced in-universe fancruft, a wikia be created to cope with all the fan protestations during the AFD. Anyone seen the WP:GUNDAM mass deletion dispute recently? It's true we need a solution for these cases.--SidiLemine 13:37, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

All articles go to semi-protect mode when WP:WDEFCON reaches two?

I don't know if this is feasible, but it might help editors on Vandal Patrol if all articles could temporarily be automatically semi-protected when the WP:WDEFCON reaches two. It would take an admin to invoke that level. This could help cut down on anonymous IPs attacking articles and enabling the VP to catch with article reversals if need be. Ronbo76 01:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Withdrawn. It looks like WP:SNOW. Ronbo76 05:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

No, just no. WikiDefcon is an unofficial number set by people who see vandalfighting as a pseudomilitary operation. The last thing we need is giving a person who assumes bad faith and thinks all IPs are vandals the power to block them from editing at will. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:35, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose: I'm concerned that this would just give the vandals a target to aim at and thus lead to more vandalism, rather than less. Newyorkbrad 02:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hey, that would be interesting, like a giant plug of anonymous edits. But that would go against the spirit of Wikipedia. There are enough patrollers and admins around to handle most attacks. -- ReyBrujo 02:42, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This is possible, but I oppose it definately. It totally takes away the idea of a wiki and is, as Night Gyr said, an unofficial number. It would be totally unfeasible for this to happen whenever we reach "Defcon2". If we somehow reached "Defcon1", a developer would lock the database (something we experienced while I was trying to save the page :)) to try and sort it all out. (as if someone accidentally put something bad in one of the MediaWiki pages, a definite no-no! So, no, I do not agree with it. Cbrown1023 02:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm opposed, not all IPs are bad, it's "unwiki", and there are even some IPs who actually revert vandalism. What is Defcon1 anyway? Willy on Wheels just got a 'cratship and started changing everyone's names to "Username ON WHEELS!!!"? --tjstrf talk 02:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Vandalbot is real and rises up from the deep like r'lyeh from beneath the sea, its tendrils touching thousands of machines across the internet calling them to "SPAM! SPAM! SPAM WIKIPEDIA WITH DISRUPTION!" and lo, the evil washed across the land. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

It only feels like that sometimes....... Newyorkbrad 03:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. This is preemptive semi-protection, a violation of policy (and for good reasons). Superm401 - Talk 04:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

noinclude pages in the Wikipedia namespace

I have a suggestion: to take all pages in the Wikipedia namespace (policies, essays, guidelines, etc.) and enclose them in the <noinclude> tag. What this will do is prevent transclusion or substitution of pages like WP:MOS, which in nearly no circumstances would require transclusion ({{Wikipedia:Manual of Style}} or substitution ({{subst:Wikipedia:Manual of Style}}) While this need not occur on short essays, or on Wikipedia pages that are meant to behave like templates, it seems good to me, and it will prevent abuse that could cause inconvenience for the page viewer and possibly Wikimedian servers. (Yes, there is WP:PERF for good faith editors, but purposely trying to slow down servers is different.)

Suppose that I write an essay and call it Wikipedia:Drunk driving, and the content is

Don't edit Wikipedia when you're drunk. [...] End of story.

...and suppose that the essay is (somehow) a couple of kilobytes long. There is no reason to transclude or substitute that (just link to it), so make the page content:

<noinclude>Don't edit Wikipedia when you're drunk. [...] End of story.</noinclude>

Or even better,

<noinclude>Don't edit Wikipedia when you're drunk. [...] End of story.</noinclude><includeonly>[[{{subst:NAMESPACE}}:{{subst:PAGENAME}}]]</includeonly>

This seems like a good idea due to recent vandalism to User talk:68.39.174.238, which was met with this course of action, which I suggested to Tuxide on IRC. (The user that did this may need checkuser, but that's my passive opinion.) Doing this for all pages in the Wikipedia namespace (except for, as listed above, pages meant to behave like templates, and maybe short essays) can't hurt; and if it can, please tell me why. Thanks. Gracenotes^T § 04:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. This could be extended to user pages. Several come to mind. 04:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
P.P.S. Hm, how about User:Tuxide/Sandbox/Do not subst my user talk page? :p 04:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I decided to stuff some WP:BEANS up my nose. check my userpage. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

This won't solve anything. Vandals will just find some way to vandalize wikipedia, including using subst to copy everything over as someone did to my talk page recently. Besides, we don't need to change thousands of pages just because of one instance of vandalism. That would just give the vandal a lot of attention, which we shouldn't be doing. Koweja 13:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The point of this proposal is to counter server/client thrashing (and impersonation in the case of user pages), not necessarily vandalism. This particular user tried to impersonate me by substing my talk page onto his own, and repeatedly added 1.5 megabytes of text to someone else's talk page by transcluding WP:MOS. This resulted in a talk page that took forever to load/generate. Tuxide 22:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

edit: I know there is WP:PERF but the client can also be thrashed as well, as in this case. WP:PERF only addresses possible server concerns and has no regards to the user client. Tuxide 23:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

A radical reworking of AfD

A lot of people complain that AfD is in some way "broken". Others disagree but acknowledge serious flaws. One common problem is bad articles on good subjects; people often !vote "keep and clean up", which often results in the article being kept but not cleaned up. So I have an idea:

• Rename to Articles for discussion (consistent with some other meta discussions)
• Have three outcomes, not two: keep, expedited cleanup, delete
• Articles sent to expedited cleanup are tagged as such and dated, and after say 14 days if not cleaned up can be speedily deleted

I believe this will reduce the chances of crap articles on good subjects being deleted by those whose mission is to improve the quality of the encyclopaedia. And crap articles which are not remedied will be deleted, which is also good for the encyclopaedia. Finally, closing admins will have a middle ground between keep and delete in marginal cases, giving those who advocate keep a deadline to remedy the faults identified by others. Guy (Help!) 12:16, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a good idea. The German Wikipedia has something like that in de:Wikipedia:Qualitätssicherung (Quality assurance). Articles at AfD can be sent to quality assurance if they are bad (too stubby or poorly written) articles on notable subjects, and will only be deleted after that attempt to improve them has failed. I don't know how well that works, though. Kusma (討論) 14:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. I've always argued that "keep and rewrite" should be counted as delete !votes on the grounds that if an article needs a major reworking then it is not useful to keep the crap version hanging around anyway. There are FAR too many articles that survive AfD on this basis. Delete without prejudice to recreation should far and away be the most common closure of these AfD's. Sadly they aren't. Your solution offers a good middle ground. Zunaid©® 14:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Not bad, but I would shorten the period to 7 days. Users would have 14 in total since the article is sent to AFD until they can be speedy deleted. Note that some AFDs end with "conditional keep", however nobody ever cares about the "conditional" part, since nobody verifies if the condition is fulfilled. -- ReyBrujo 14:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

A possibly very valuable change, but I have three concerns:

• I think the present name, albeit not consistent with other XfDs, should be kept. I'm concerned that AfDs could come pouring in from folks saying "well, it's a dicussion, not a delete, so what's the harm of having this article reviewed". AfDs should really be limited (in my opinion) to articles that someone seriously doubts meet WP:V and WP:NOR criteria, and the name does affect how the process is interpreted.
• Similarly, the instructions need to make perfectly clear that articles that are stubs, need expanding, not major cleanup, etc., are not to be sent to AfD as a way of forcing a quality improvement. Instead, again, only articles with WP:V or WP:NOR qualify for AfDs. (We have way, way, too many stubs to send even a small percentage through AfD.)
• Third, the most serious concern: How much discretion does this proposal shift to admins? I'd bet that under the three-tiered system, only really bad cruft (almost speedy-delete material) would get a "delete" consensus; after all, why not put anything marginal into the QA (middle) tier and see what happens? What will happen at the end of the 14 days is that an admin will say either "Nope, those references aren't good enough" or "Well, I suppose that's okay", without any further input by anyone. Is that what we want?

So maybe (at the risk of instruction creep), if the decision is "expedited cleanup", then the admin decision at the end of 14 days, if someone disagrees, it goes back to AfD, and this time the expedited cleanup option is not available? John Broughton | ♫♫ 15:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Two Questions... 1) Is WP:NPOV not a criteria for deletion? and 2) You talk about crap articles on good subjects, what about well written articles on crap subjects? 38.112.47.92 16:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Does Coprophilia count? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 16:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll tell you why this is a problem - the deletion discussions more often than not revolve around the worth of the article as a subject for inclusion. I can see it now: a poorly written article on an important, but little known, historical event gets tagged for "expidited cleanup." Nothing happens because few editors know enough about said event, article gets deleted. Then, major problems and hand-wringing about the resubmission of said article, the quality of the resubmitted article, and on and on and on. Instruction creep is not an issue here, but the amount of changes that will have to be put in place to deal with the fallout are somewhat staggering to me. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

One of my pet peeves at AfD are people who vote for "Keep, but clean up" because they think the article's topic sounds "intresting" or "cool", even when the article may be a mess and they know little or nothing about the subject. I wish there was a way to stop this, but I don't think there is.

That said, I don't have a problem with creating a "Keep, but clean up" decision option. I would, however, put the onus on the editors to enforce this and not the admins. If an article is not cleaned up in a reasonable time, it can always be renominated for a 2nd AfD, and the proposer can point to the previous AfD discussion and comment that no "clean up" was done. The admin who is determining the 2nd AfD will then know that "keep and clean" does not seem to be a realistic option and delete.

I would, however, not support the idea of an "expedited" clean up... it may take more than 14 days for an editor (one who honestly wants to clean the article up) to read up on the subject, research citations, etc. We don't want to undercut an honest good faith effort to clean a poor article up just because an arbitrary deadline has passed.

Finally, the idea of "Delete without prejudice" is the flip side of "Keep, but clean up" - ie, an indication that the topic has potential, but the current article itself is so bad that it needs to be deleted. I would favor adding that to the options as well. Blueboar 18:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Is WP:NPOV not a criteria for deletion? No, it's not - see Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.

BDJ has a point - if there are impassioned defenders of an article, the expedited cleanup basically gives them 14 days to put up or shut up. But for other articles, it's unclear whether there would be a "cleanup corps" that would really work articles to prevent them from being deleted at the end of their 14 days, or if it would be a "someone else will take care of that" sort of falling between the cracks. In some sense, AfD now spurs people to fix articles they think are repairable (I've certainly done that myself a couple of times), because that's the best argument they can make to prevent deletion. John Broughton | ♫♫ 18:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

What if we trial the idea? It doesn't nessecarily have to seriously affect XfD for the moment. Instead, if it works, it could be an organic process of change. All we would have to do is set up WikiProject Quality Control (ok, I know control may not be the best word, but that's what you get at the end of a factory line where quality of a "product" is checked.) or WikiProject Quality Assurance. I have no doubt that a fair number of people would join such a project, and it's sole aims would be twofold - Admins closing XfD's that have an indication that a cleanup is needed could a link to the article/AfD discussion on an "XfD cleanup list" at his/her discretion, and members of the project could add articles to a seperate "cleanup list" if something was felt to need real attention from the project (or some such. the latter is just an idea). The concentration of course would be on the XfD list.

As I say - it wouldn't need to be fully integrated into the XfD process. In fact, to start with it would be better not being integrated to start with and just having a closing admin doing it on a discretionary basis as part of a trial. It wouldn't need to be every XfD article that would apply - just a few would see if it works well or not to start with...

...Just an idea. Crimsone 18:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Whether this is a good idea or not seems to boil down to whether people think we should keep articles we will want in the long run, or delete them until they are of sufficient quality. Provided it passes notability and WP:NOT then we can have an article on it. But should we remove that article until it meets the other content policies, or leave it in a poorly-written state. I would be inclined towards the latter; I don't think deletion should be a reflection on the current state of the article, merely whether one could be written (I'm an eventualist, not an immediatist). Trebor 19:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• The actual problem is that our cleanup processes are terminally backlogged. >Radiant< 09:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• We have a cleanup process? I thought we just tag articles with {{cleanup}} and then forget about them. Kusma (討論) 12:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
• Maybe so, but I don't see how deleting the articles will help. I find it more effort to start a new article than work from an existing base, even if the base isn't very good. Similarly, if I'm searching, I prefer to find limited information than no information at all. I feel this would attack the symptom (a large number of poorly-written articles) than the cause (people's tendency to slap clean-up tags on articles rather than actually clean them up). Trebor 16:51, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• The reality however is that poorly-written articles reflect badly on the 'pedia and tend to stay in that state for a very very long time as Radiant mentions. I am of an exclusionist bent, and classify myself as a "3-monthist" (any and every article should be pulled up to Wikipedia standards within 3 months of creation). Now that I think of it, I'd prefer the three options be keep, delete without prejudice and delete with prejudice. If an article can't even be turned into a useful stub (at the very least!) in the five days it takes AfD to run, then clearly there is no material worth saving for a "keep and clean up". The extra days and extra process are unnecessary. Zunaid©® 14:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
• Several good suggestions above. I proposed a while back changing AfD so new entries went to the top (so that they get seen and discussed - last of the day tends to get virtually no discussion). That was thought by some to be a good idea as well. But nothing has yet been done. How do we progress this stuff? Guy (Help!) 08:59, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Be bold? As far as I can see, adding the new suggestions to the top is a no-brainer. Ideally, there'd also be a page that logs the 150-200 additions too, to avoid the cut-off at midnight. But with a large community it seems very hard to get anything done. Trebor 12:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea that not only should be applied to keep/cleanup votes but also to the No Consensus. As for the short time period common sense should be applied where an article has been unedited (excluding bots, vandals etc) for the 14+ days then send it back to AfD and then the editors who say Keep and Cleanup should required to make some effort during the AfD, then when closing if nothings happened to the article then these comments should be discounted/ignored. Gnangarra 13:18, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

• Support idea (but with detection of hypocracy) - The infamous article on Anal stretching -- had namely 2 issues -- which could have easily been addressed had someone put up some templates -- attracting the attention of admins and other sexology editors. But alas the article topic was not well known and received little attention, so that at the end of the AfD deadline: POW, it was deleted. You still endorse that deletion and have made it a nightmare of note to restore the article and fix it. You in fact will delete any reappearance of the article on G4 grounds, meaning that once an article is deleted -- rightfully or wrongfully -- it is very difficult to recreate and fix the problems, i.e. you have to start from scratch.
  If your suggestion had been implemented earlier, the Anal stretching article -- and I fret many others -- would have been amended before they were deleted. Rfwoolf 14:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Google Widgets

Hi, I'm a fan of both Google and Wikipedia and I use the wikipedia widget for my google homepage. Since google homepage doesn't allow to have more then one instance of the same widget, I'd gladly see a new version of the wiki widget allowing to me to have more then one query field for different languages. I use both it.wikipedia and en.wikipedia for different searches and I'd be very happy to have both query fields in the same homepage. Now, there is only the option to select a language. I'd be happy with one "add one more language" option, that allow to me to chose one more language for another query field. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.208.83.231 (talk) 14:35, 18 January 2007 (UTC).

Derek

The best name out there, hands down

A fantastic feature would be a tool bar that would enable me to highlight an article (not for public display and not for editing purposes) but for display in the articles that I view within my own account when I have logged in.

Then when I am reading about something, I wouldn't feel I have to print the article and then highlight it, but just mouse highlight things. Then it would be great to save this highlighting to show up only in my account.

This suggestion outlines the only drawback to online learning as opposed to paper (and therefore mark-up-able) learning--wikipedia would be a pioneer!

What do you think?

Troy Russon

I like the idea, but it would be pretty tricky to do; it would be hard technically to keep the highlighting when the page was edited. --ais523 18:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Printer Friendly Pages

I would like to suggest that, if possible, a "printer-friendly" version of Wikipedia articles be made available. As the web pages are constructed now, it is a very tedious process to copy and paste the rich information that is provided on any given subject.

James Gabe Oklahoma City January 18, 2007 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jamesgabe (talk • contribs) 18:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC).

We already have one. Click on 'printable version' in the toolbox (which is below the search box). --ais523 18:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Collapsible synopsis sections for films

There have been long discussions in WP Films on the length of synopsis sections in film articles. I would risk to state that some consensus has been reached on a 500-600 word length. Yet there are members in WP Films and other users who think the synopsis should be as concize as possible. But not every contributor has the talent to put in a few lines the whole plot of a film. There have been reverts in long synopsis to short versions and the other way round, but no big edits wars (that I know of) yet. My preference is a full plot that doesn't indulge on trivial matters, but I do respect those who don't want to have to go through a long section, even with spoilers, in the length of the article. We have discussed even creating separate pages for long synopsis of films, but we found out they don't stand a chance in Wikipedia. So I have encouraged a knowlegeable member to create collapsed-collapsible sections and here is a display of the result: User:Hoverfish/Notebook#Testing collapsible long synopsis. I am aware that under accessibility and older browsers, the section shows anyway. So I wanted to ask Village pump, if we could use this CSS technique as an attempt to satisfy both sides. Hoverfish Talk 17:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, collapsing does not work in every skin. -- ReyBrujo 17:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a minor objection to me. I like the proposal.

El Ingles 17:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

No, the code for collapsing is in MediaWiki:Common.js so it will work in any skin. However, it won't work for browsers that don't support javascript. Tra (Talk) 18:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

This is indeed so. It works in every skin but not for some browsers. However in the rare cases it won't work, no information remains hidden, so it doesn't violate Wikipedia:Accessibility Don't use techniques that require physical action to provide information. The only inconvenience is that some few users will see the long synopsis anyway. Hoverfish Talk 20:26, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, if the summary becomes so long that it needs its own articles or a collapsible section, it is excessive. However, if there is consensus to hide the unnecessary stuff leaving the article as bare as possible, I am not against it. -- ReyBrujo 20:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The 500-600 word limit will apply to the Long synopsis as per current consensus. We have some articles where a well written short synopsis exists and users wanting to add to it spoil the quality of it. In other cases we have a well written longer synopsis and users trying to trim it down, also spoil its quality. This is the main reason for this proposal and not to encourage overly long summaries. Hoverfish Talk 21:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Will it be complicated to use, for relative newcomers like myself? Shawn in Montreal 21:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

It's very easy to use. If you want to read the short synopsis than you can. If you want the entire plot or more elaboration you click on the "show" button to reveal the full synopsis. That way it is your choice which you want to read. --Nehrams2020 21:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant that, as someone who does create and edit articles on film, how much more code would I have to learn? Is there a tutorial already on how to create a collapsible section? Shawn in Montreal 21:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

From what I know it is the same as editing a section of an article. Once you "show" the section, then there is an edit button to allow you to modify the text. Once you're done, you can save it as a normal edit. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nehrams2020 (talk • contribs) 22:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC).

No, that's not quite correct. There is a template called {{LongSynopsis}}. You use it like {{LongSynopsis|This is a quite long synopsis that few people will want to read in it entirety, etc....foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, foobar, }} in the wikitext. Then it shows like:

Template:LongSynopsis

To modify the synopsis, you would just modify the text between the '|' and '}}'. A full example is at User:Hoverfish/Notebook#Testing_collapsible_long_synopsis. To me this seems like a bad idea for articles, but I'm not sure. --Superm401 - Talk 22:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer having a begin synopsis and end synopsis templates, like the spoiler one. It seems cleaner than having a lot of text inside a template. -- ReyBrujo 22:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

This section is actually to be a subsection of the main "Synopsis" section. The spoiler templates are to be given in both cases. Hoverfish Talk 22:12, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm very much opposed to this idea. The current guidelines state, "Plot summaries should be between 400 and 700 words (about 600 words), but should not exceed 900 words unless there is a specific reasons such as a complicated plot." These are only guidelines, so we can be flexible. The plot summary for Pulp Fiction is 1,303 words, which is above the guidelines but is justified because of the film's chronology. This summary stands in stark contrast to the unwieldy 2,592 words it used to be. Another example is Psycho. The plot changed from 1,469 words to 687 words. I invite you to compare the two versions; here is the earlier one, and here is the current. Is there anything essential missing in the much shorter version?

We should also always think of the end user as well. The user who does not want to know the plot can skip it by clicking in the table of contents. One click and he skips the long plot, without the need of javascript that creates worrisome compatibility issues. If he wants a brief summary of the plot, we can create a new guideline saying that there should be a brief spoiler free summary before the main plot. Such sections can be found scattered about, such as the one here. My final objection is that it clutters the page.--Supernumerary 22:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I agree. But the point is that some users are trying to bring plots down to a few sentences, or a couple of paragraphs at the most. Hoverfish Talk 22:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

These users are wrong, and we should discourage their practice by reverting their edits. If they protest, then we can work our way through discussions, third opinions, request for comment, and so forth.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Here, by the way, is the last big discussion we had in WP Films: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/archive8#Long synopses -- again + a few sections after it: #Extended plot sub articles. I like your point of view and your excellent work on plots, but does it look like the matter was settled? Hoverfish Talk 22:26, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Obviously it's not settled, or we wouldn't be still talking about it.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

An example of what I had in mind happened lately in Night at the Museum, where a whole plot has dissapeared and now a few lines are "enough said". Hoverfish Talk 22:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Ugh. Talk about an ugly plot. Not only is it stub, but now it's not even in prose. I'm going to go revert it back to a decent plot, which is what we can do in any case where someone does something bad like this.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Something has to be done to reduce the size of plot synopses. Editors produce huge, unparagraphed synopses that are completely unreadable and defend their sodden prose with ferocity. This is a common reaction for bad writers (I've seen it in several online fiction critique groups) and it's why they're bad writers: they won't ask themselves "Would anyone want to read this?" and any feedback from readers produces only defensive blustering. All the published writers I know (a fair number of science fiction and fantasy writers) send their work to test readers before they send it to the publisher -- and they listen when someone says, "This doesn't work." The long synopsis cutout isn't particularly elegant, IMHO, but it does provide a way to divert the long-synopsis writers into a cul-de-sac where they can ramble endlessly and no one needs to scroll past the boredom. Ideally we'd just have a rule, enforced, saying that nothing can be longer than 600 words without a papal indulgence from Jimbo, purchasable for a mere $1000, but ... I'm not sure I could get this one passed :) Zora 23:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Do we really want to encourage bad writers to ramble on? I say we beat the habit out of them by reverting their poor edits. Another thing is that this condones adding material that is not truly encyclopedic. Who wants WP:Films to become known for having terrifically long plot "summaries" even if they don't have to be read? This just occurred to me, but are bad writers good for wikipedia? I guess they are when they add to an article, but they must learn at some time that they should leave the proper grammar and syntax to those better than them at it.--Supernumerary 00:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The more that you hound and revert bad writers, the more that they will be convinced that you are wiki-snobs trying to mold Wikipedia into what you want it to be. Regardless of how bad you think they are, if you attack them they will just stick to their guns even harder. Mentor bad writers into being good writer, don't slam them simply for being inexperienced and over keen.

perfectblue 11:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Now that I've read though the arguments, I must say I agree with those opposed, particularly the last two. I'm lucky or cursed to write film synopses for a living and distilling a story down to a reasonable length is not rocket science. It takes some talent and editing, either self editing or the kind that Wikipedia uniquely provides, sooner or later. Shawn in Montreal 03:30, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

But there are relatively few of us working on film articles who seem to CARE about readable synopses. We're far outnumbered by the self-indulgent bores. Attempts to prune a synopsis often result in a long and excruciating edit war -- which the summarizer may well lose. The problem is that there is no enforcement mechanism for the 400-600 word guideline developed by the film project and no way to inform new editors that this is a rule. People seem to pick up on 3RR and suchlike, if they've been warned or blocked, but there's no such enforcement for synopsis length.

I suppose it would help if all synopses (even non-film synopses, such as for novels) had a short no-wiki warning right after the Plot or Synopsis header, saying something like "Summaries should be at most 600 words long. Longer summaries will be edited ruthlessly." Probably not the best wording. Suggestions invited. I've noticed that stern no-wiki warnings deter some (but not all) editors intent on linkspam. Zora 04:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Simplification of barnstars and nomination process

I feel that often barstars are given out too easily and don't fully reflect what the recipient has done. A nomination process (possibly similar to Rfa) would result in far more credibility to the award. It could also be simplified so there are only a few different ones awarded (off the top of my head; vandalism barnstar, editing barnstar, signifcant contribution barnstar and Minor edits barnstar (for the tireless tasks). I just gave my 1st one which I feel is deserved, but this is not shown because anyone can give them RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I think all that would do is drag people away from editing the encyclopaedia, and into more bureaucratic !voting. Can't a barnstar remain as a symbol of one user's appreciation of another user's contributions? Trebor 23:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I definitely oppose this, and can't think of a more misleading title for your post. You don't want to simply them, but rather to create instruction creep; you're missing the point. Superm401 - Talk 23:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

But surely it would spur people on to edit, and their contributions could be rewarded with a meaningful 'wikipedia award' RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Too bureaucratic, plus barnstars are not that important. Right now every barnstar is deserved because one editor thinks that another editor deserves one. Good enough for me. Garion96 (talk) 03:35, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The point of the barnstar is that it has meaning only as a symbol of one editor's appreciation of another. It's a very personal and informal thing, not a consensus-based meritocratic reward. See Meatball:BarnStar. Ideally, people don't edit seeking barnstars. They are meant to be a honor, not an incentive. Superm401 - Talk 04:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Color preferences

I propose having options in the user preferences for changing the color of the background/text/links/etc. on all pages. Sounds kinda frivolous, I know, but it would really be nice to be able to browse the site in a dark room without having my retinas burned by the light contrast — especially since I spend more time here than on all other websites combined. Personally, I'd set my color scheme to something friendly like:

The release of Pink Floyd's massively successful 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon, was a watershed moment in the band's popularity. Pink Floyd had stopped issuing singles after 1968's "Point Me at the Sky" and was never a hit-single-driven group, but The Dark Side of the Moon featured a U.S. Top 20 single ("Money"). The album became the band's first #1 on U.S. charts and, as of December 2006, is one of the biggest-selling albums in U.S. history, with more than 15 million units sold.

What say my fellow Wikipedia denizens to this idea? --G Rose (talk) 11:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

You could probably do this by making the appropriate edits to your Monobook (don't ask me how to do that but I'm sure someone will know). However, a limited set of preset colour options in user prefs could well be beneficial, best solution would be a new skin for this accessibility purpose.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I say "yuck" to those colors, but that's just me. You can edit your own personal stylesheet for Wikipedia, at Special:Mypage/monobook.css, and just add something like:

body { background:black; color:green; }

...or whatever else you'd like. Tutorials here. —Down10 ^TACO 11:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I guess that'll keep me pacified. It would still be a lot more convenient to have it in the prefs, though. --G Rose (talk) 11:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Why limit yourself to a few set preferences when you can use any colour you like through coding? The monobook method is far more versatile. --tjstrf talk 13:33, 20 January 2007 (UTC)