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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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

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Redirecting deleted pages to other wikis to which the deleted pages were transwikied

The thing about transwiking is that a lot of readers and editors come here for these articles and there is an element of convenience just navigating around one main wiki rather than googling for other specialized wikis and I believe that Wikipedia attracts a lot more editors than these other wikis, which augments the likelihood of us covering some of these articles even better than the other wikis do. Now, granted our articles when transwikied thus carry that work over to the other wikis, but then editors and readers who had worked on or used the articles here are oftentimes baffled when it's all of a sudden no longer here. An idea could be something like having internal links that can allow for easier navigation among the wikis. Or having deleted pages that are transwikied somehow redirected to the transwikied page (that has to somehow be technologically possble). --Happy editing! Sincerely, Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 15:04, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Another possibility: having related Wikia pages in the external links. However, I like both suggestions and believe Le Grand Roi's idea here is a good one that could be implemented and improve the encyclopedia. Red Phoenix flame of life...protector of all... 15:10, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Please see - Qwika and Qwika - WikiIndex. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:27, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Something like this was proposed recently, see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 29#Interwiki redirects Mr.Z-man 15:36, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
I checked that discussion, but the "vandalism targets" as a reason for oppose don't strike me as that compelling as everything from articles on presidents to my own userpage have been vandalism targets. --Happy editing! Sincerely, Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 16:20, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I think there is a lot of sense of redirecting to wikimedia foundation projects but I'd expect any other wiki that we linked to be at least respectable. I'd personally like to see some examples of how this would work in practise before I could go along with it but I agree there are possibilities. I'm wondering mostly about whether there should be a disclaimer? Spartaz Humbug! 16:56, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
  • its a good idea, to over come the vandal and spam link concerns
    1. Admins to create and full protect the page
    2. bot to monitor these pages, and edit to break links. On unprotected pages the bot will be able to do this then add them to a list of speedy deletions.
    3. persistent spam links could then just be added to the list of spam sites, and editors blocked where appropriate. Gnangarra 04:18, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Along these lines, I've been wondering about the possibility of keeping some of these deleted pages within Wikipedia, just not in the main-space. I suspect that if we went to the offices of the Encyclopedia Britanica, we'd find numerous file cabinets with articles with material that the editors determined was not fit for the printed edition. There is a middle ground between trash and material suitable for the main space. Keeping this material in our "back files" instead of deleting them would have several advantages:

  • People who created the pages in good faith could continue to work on them within Wikipedia. Deleting a page is often a severe reaction to pages that are just shy of what we think is acceptable. Deleting them can feel harsh and off-putting to newbies.
  • Articles about people and things that currently fail notability tests might it the future become more notable as the result of some event. At that time, we'd have material ready to shape into an acceptable article.
  • There is group knowledge often fails strict verifiability guidelines, but is none-the-less quite useful.
  • If articles are moved to the back files instead of being deleted there would hopefully be much less contentious bickering at AFD.

As an experiment, I created some dummy accounts in the user space to hold these pages. The main account is User:Back files. I own the account, but I do not use it for editing. Several months ago, after an AFD discussion deleted List of songs with numbers in the title, I moved it to a subpage of one of my dummy user accounts. It is now at User:Wikilists/List of songs with numbers in the title. Some of the editors who worked on the page have continued to add information to the page.

I still believe that many pages should be deleted. I would not change any of the policies for speedy deletions. However many, if not most, of the other pages now deleted at AFD could be moved to user space instead. As far as I can tell, there is nothing against policy about moving deleted pages to user space so they can be worked on and improved. However, to make these pages more useful, there should be more links to these pages. I think it would be helpful if any page that gets moved would be replaced with a page that explains that there previously had been a page that was deemed unsuitable for the mainspace and also have a list of the reasons why the page was deemed unsuitable. It could then have a link to the moved page in userspace. There could also be links to similar pages outside of the project. This could be very much like a disambiguation page. As the back files fill, there would need to be templates created that make it very clear to users what the shortcomings are with the articles. It would also help if there was a taxonomy of categories for these pages. The taxonomy should be kept separate from the other categories, but could be linked when appropriate. For instance, there might be a subcategory of back files of song lists that is linked to Category:Lists of songs.

I think a collective userspace could work as long as it is transparent what the problems are with the articles in the space, and we have clear standards that help remove the trash. It might even make Wikipedia a much more pleasant place on the web. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 06:05, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

"Dust Box" Policy Proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

For known edit warriors, such as myself, has anyone ever considered banishing us to a Dust Box where we might fairly debate? This would save a lot of Admin time, and some of us might trade our freedom to openly edit on articles for a link to "Debate of the Day" on the Main Page. I'll open with an example that would become a hopeless edit war:

Hopeless edit-war bait
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Now that we have established that the genetic code is designed and there are no technologies based on Darwin, I further state:

All new cosmology since the finding that the Balmer red-shift is inversely proportional to square-of-distance in presumed recessional velocities of stars has been used to patch up this very finding, and that includes quasars and black holes, neither of which are directly observable by anything but variations in predicted red-shifts. The Big Bang tautology also includes the creation of the Second Law of thermodynamics with the Bang, with no mechanistic explanation other than faith in Hawking, and no reading of his work by the vast majority of his faithful at any level of intelligence beyond para-quoted hearsay for the less-intelligent-than-him; that is to say, with no reading of his math and physics.

Hawking is quoted as saying in an MIT seminar that there might be a supreme intelligence within Black Holes. His followers now claim this is the source of predicted Hawking Particles.

Hence, faith in NO GOD is still faith. The apostles of NO GOD are Hawking and Darwin.

Please vote on discuss this proposed policy. Doug youvan (talk) 05:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Disagree: various parts of WP:NOT would appear to apply here, especially WP:NOTSOAPBOX. If people want to have debate, there are various fora (especially bulletin-boards) for this. I don't see it as being productive for wikipedia to create such a forum (and thereby potentially attract more contentious attention, with the very real possibility of it spilling over into article-talk/mainspace). HrafnTalkStalk 06:01, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Oh, and WP:NOT#FORUM.--Izno (talk) 06:39, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Why such eagerness for a poll? Such matters should be discussed, not voted upon. Waltham, The Duke of 06:04, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Hrafn - I was thinking of you as the other half of the debate, with both of us taken off the table as article editors. Waltham - Sorry, I do not know the procedure here; let's make it a discussion. Doug youvan (talk) 06:17, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Doug: I am not on wikipedia to debate you on a "made-up term", but to edit the encyclopaedia to ensure that information is verifiable (as well as adding new verifiable content, etc). HrafnTalkStalk 06:48, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Hrafn: Your contribution is noted: http://www.wikipediaversusthegodofabraham.org , thus we are already far into debate which has no place here because our work involves strawdogs, polemic questions, and other debate tactics. Doug youvan (talk) 07:02, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Doug: this website which you created would be considered WP:HARASSment if it were not so absurd. Not only does it contain numerous non-sequitors (unrelated to purported opposition to 'the God of Abraham'), but difs such as this one give the appearance that I was the author of large changes when in fact I only made a 'minor edit' at the end. There is no "debate" here, other than in your own mind. HrafnTalkStalk 07:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
See bullet 4 concerning identity: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2008/Archive2#Questions_before_candidacy.3F. That is for a Board Member; we are just editors. In my experience, I know of no method other than a court to determine ID, and only in cases where opposing counsel vigourously attacks one's identity for purposes of impeachment as a witness. The meta.wikimedia.org procedure is inadequate, unless http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cary_Bass is Homeland Defense and they are really on their toes. Hence, you are arguing the case for taking this into debate: It hardly matters in debate who we are. Any of us could be a consortium of people sharing a username and password who represents a special interest group that has no interest in the quality of an encyclopedia, but a lot of interest in a political campaign, market position, highly sophisticated vandalism, etc. Doug youvan (talk) 08:00, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

If you want a truly uninterrupted, no gloves on, full out debate, maybe something should be set up off-site and linked to? -- Ned Scott 06:40, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I have no interest in debating a sockpuppeting editor who has previously been indefinitely blocked for making legal threats against me (I apologise for not clicking that Doug youvan=Nukeh earlier). HrafnTalkStalk 08:28, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Maybe you guys should look into dispute resolution if the disagreement on that page is spilling over onto here. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 10:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
So, generalizing from this particular problem which is far more than a simple editorial dispute, I believe it is still in the best interests of WP to open a debate forum as an alternative to a hopeless edit war follow by a dispute resolution process involving highly polarized issues. There is some information in debates, but it is usually not of encyclopedia quality. This also addresses another problem, our authority. Perhaps some of you have heard from students that their teachers and professors are instructing them not to use Wikipedia as a source. I think that is bad advice on articles such as John Calvin and the Bohr Atom. Those articles are well done and should be seen as authoritative. However, on a subject such as Intelligent Design, which might be perceived by some to mix religion and science, a structured debate is a better forum. If we identify the participants by real names, and those names are prominent, we will place some of mankind's current thinking into the historic record by a more efficient means. For the Intelligent Design Debate, I propose we invite Richard Dawkin. Doug youvan (talk) 13:49, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Real names and "authenticated experts" have been proposed lots of times under different contexts, but have never caught on in a formal sense. I agree with User:Ned Scott's point about taking it off-site if you want a debate under less restrictive conditions. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 14:55, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Ned and Grey: So many things would have to be taken off-site. For example, how could someone with journalistic information from American Family Radio (AFR) edit in Planned Parenthood without a war? What about someone from JDL editing on Godwin's Law? We could make a list of almost impossible edits here, but that list is probably the same list that is well known to WP as the most time consuming topics that enter dispute resolution. I also believe that a large number of editors just give up. They operate in good faith, hit a consortium of well wired editors, and withdraw. Just watch: I withdraw from this discussion as of now, because it is time consuming. You guys work it out. Doug youvan (talk) 16:48, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Since this discussion abutted mine and has been nagging at me I thought I'd comment. Each response you give Doug seems to indicate there is a lot more going on than just the need to vent in a Dust box. I feel and to no disrespect, that you are saying "we" and "our" problems of Wikipedia when I really think you are addressing your own problems -- specifically those that deal with editing of religious or ideological articles. It is no surprise many archived debates in conflict resolution, arbitration, wikiquette, etc are related to ideology (and speaking of anything related to the Muslim world--uff da!). Please consider lots of topics have seemingly deadlock debates -- politics, culture, wars, lutefisk, etc. I feel you, but do not be too apt to say the World of Wikipedia is working against you, and neither should your conflict with another user become the pinnacle on which to preach. NOTFORUM NOTSOAPBOX .:DavuMaya:. 19:34, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
it's got nothing to do with our core business and would go against WP:NOT. On that basis, I'd say this is a terrible idea. --Allemandtando (talk) 23:12, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, the proposer already withdrew, so I guess we can just archive the discussion unless somebody else wants to take up the cause? (Any volunteers?) --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 15:16, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I can no longer withdraw because of this recent event: http://wiki.eso.workers.dev/wiki/Wikipedia:Suspected_sock_puppets/Nukeh#User:Nukeh. Such vigorous editing against a simple policy change proposal indicates more of the same here. Note that nothing hereinabove mentioned anything about the initial statement concerning Hawking and Darwin. What is actually at stake is a fair election of Kansas School Board members. Opening a debate threatens the position of www.kcfs.org in illegally influencing this election by inappropriate use of Kansas state funded salaried positions and facilities that are used 24 x 7 by this consortium of editors who should be spending their time teaching, as salaried, rather than attempting to rewrite history on WP. Doug youvan (talk) 07:17, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
Ummm, this is truly bizarre -- I posted notice of this sockpuppet report both here and on this user's talkpage, before this user withdrew. I would recommend following Grey Knight's advice and archiving (per WP:NOT & per lack of anybody actually interested in debating Youvan). HrafnTalkStalk 08:03, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
I think it would be better to propose this at a time when you don't have something "at stake", otherwise you're going to have interests conflicting. What is the below block of (what looks like) quotations for? I don't understand their relevance to the proposal. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 10:45, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
Okay Grey Knight -- I'll butt out, and leave you to work out how best to deal with Doug, and his scintillating prose (below). :D HrafnTalkStalk 14:18, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
Grey - I don't understand what is "at stake" other than these italics writings stumulating a debate on Intelligent Design, possibly in reference to John 14:13-14. Maybe it is time for a vote so we can count the number of secular fascists on WP. Doug youvan (talk) 17:29, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
More flame-bait
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I see no reason to counter GDI or ID. ID also includes panspermia, a theory attributable to Arhhenius, the same man that described chemical rates and activation energies.

My thoughts are along the lines of this being an P universe, the daughter of a NP universe, wherein it is likely P!=NP. It appears that a progenitor biological event occurred in the NP universe.

I believe that all science that is not connected to mathematics is inferior to science that is connected to mathematics.

If one asks where is the math behind Darwin, we have the metaphor of the mathematical genetic algorithm (GA). An experimental reduction to practice of GA directed evolution is cited as my own work, yet I see no connection to anything as complicated as Darwinian theory.

Mathematicians are pleased to either prove a theorem, or prove a theorem can’t be proved. If P!=NP, and the underlying math for certain biophysical phenomena is describable as NP, then there is no scientific solution to be found. For those who want to explain everything with science, P!=NP will be more limiting than even the Uncertainty Principle.

It is ironic to see Pascal as both the father of combinatorics, and his own wager (Pascal’s Wager).

It is also astounding to see the truthfulness of Einstein when he ran into the Uncertainty Principle. His work is all backed by mathematics and proved by experiment. Darwin and Hawking are at the other end of the spectrum: no mathematical proofs, no predictions, no confirming experiments, and no technology. Einstein’s technologies range from clock corrections on GPS satellites to nuclear reactors and H bombs. With Darwin and Hawking proved false by insoluble underlying NP math, no technology whatsoever is affected.

Once confronted with NP phenomena, I personally find the book of Genesis to provide mathematical beauty via simplicity. Mathematical beauty is used by physicists to pick one theory over another on the basis of the winning theory having fewer variables. Genesis presents one variable, i.e., God. Pascal’s Wager takes this a bit further as to the logic of how one might want to bet. John Calvin’s work makes it somewhat more understandable. Doug youvan (talk) 10:31, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a place for debating topics, it is a place for editing. If you cannot edit without deliberately causing conflict, you should not be here. Can we please put an end to this garbage? JohnnyMrNinja 18:02, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

May I respectfully suggest Fark.com as a suitable place for this crankcruft? – ukexpat (talk) 19:01, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
The editor in question has been indefinitely blocked as a sock of a previously indef-blocked disruptive editor. HrafnTalkStalk 19:08, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
I also didn't understand the John 14:13-14 reference since, to the best of my knowledge, Jesus doesn't frequently post on the Village Pump (on account of having too much sense, probably). Anyway, let's dispatch this thread, shall we? --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 17:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Speedy warning

I recently got a message on my talk page from an admin saying that I placed a speedy tag too quickly after the page creation. That may have been true but as the page stood it was certainly eligable as not asserting notability. I could have tagged the page with the notability tag but in my opinion this doesn't really fit as it makes no reference to the fact that the page could be speedily deleted. Indeed it says 'ultimately deleted' which to me suggests it's not going to be deleted for quite some time not the matter of minutes / hours it may be deleted in if it does get speedied. If I was a new editor and had my page speedied after reading the notability tag I'd be surprised to say the least. By putting the speedy tag on the page it makes the editor aware that they need to assert notability but also alets admins to the page which means it may be gone before they get the chance. Is it worth creating a template along the lines of "this page appears eligable for speedy deletion and needs an assertion of notability if this is to be avoided" as an intermediate step. If one is not fortcoming in say an hour then the speedy tag could be added. This way the editor gets a chance to update the page if they can but the page can still be tagged by those who patrol new pages so making it less likely to be missed then if we just avoid putting the tag on for, say, the first hour. The only other speedy criteria I could see something similar applying to is the copyright tag. Sorry if this has been raised before. Dpmuk (talk) 21:38, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I think Dpmuk's idea of a speedy-warning template is a good one. Maybe it could include a time that's set to one or two hours in the future, after which it may be deleted if not properly sourced?--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:53, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
I see no particular reason to add more steps and regulation to the process. While they do not need to be perfect or fully formed, articles should have sourcing and assertion upon creation. If an editor believes the article can meet the criteria, he is fully free to use {{hangon}}. seresin ( ¡? ) 21:58, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
Rather than adding yet another step to our processes, perhaps we could emphasize that editors recommending deletion for lack of notability should evaluate the possibility that a subject is in fact notable - ideally, by doing just a bit of research in cases where doubt exists, and that the more obscure the subject matter, the more an editor should lean in the direction of a "lacks notability" template rather than a speedy delete template. That way, we can be welcoming (to those who are adding articles that really are useful) while still quickly deleting cruft. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:06, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, they should have sourcing and assertion, but I'm sure when I was new I didn't get the edits all lined up and previewed before committing anything - lots of people will write a paragraph, save that, and so on - it's reasonable that they shouldn't be bitten too hard if there's every chance that they're about to get to the point in their next edit. Prompted, yes; slapped, no. It shouldn't be another step, just another variant template, in the same way that one can choose between any number of warning templates, using uw-vand in different situations from uw-test. I'd perhaps timestamp the notice, but wouldn't make an hour a hard limit; I'd leave it to admin discretion as at present. Pseudomonas(talk) 22:16, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
That's my point exactly. Yes it should be sourced and have it's notability asserted at it's creation but new users may not know this and so it would seem to me that as it stands this entire speedy category will often fall foul of WP:Bite. Maybe I haven't come up with the best proposal but this seems to be a geniune problem that needs something done. Dpmuk (talk) 18:45, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Could we have a db-friendly template and associated user warning? One that has the gist of "It looks like you're probably trying to build a decent page here, but really and truly you do need to have at least one source and at least one claim of notability, thanks a lot, your efforts are appreciated". In the same way that admins informally give db-attack their highest priority, they could give db-friendly a bit more leeway, without it having to be another tier of bureaucracy. Pseudomonas(talk) 12:18, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Add "Purge" to navigation

Would there be any opposition to adding purge to the navigation (...history, watch, purge)? Or, possibly, to the toolbox? I can never remember how to do it and I have to look it up everytime. It seems as though it would be more helpful than harmful. Thoughts? JohnnyMrNinja 05:15, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't the purge action provoke some extra server load and add to the job queue sometimes? Do we want to encourage it? I never remember it either, but trying &purge and ?purge always clears it up, one way or the other. Franamax (talk) 05:33, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
From your preferences, you can activate the gadget "clock in the personal toolbar" (under the section "user interface gadgets"), which displays a UTC clock on the upper right corner of the screen and purges the page if you click on it. Both its functions are very useful. Waltham, The Duke of 08:27, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
This = awesome. Thanks!
Or, if you want it as a tab, use Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Add purge to tabs. Algebraist 10:25, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Expand all navboxes on printable version

Now that the majority of navboxes are collapsible should the printable version expand these all so they should when printing?Gnevin (talk) 09:29, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

RFC on allowing Admin Bots and with what rules for them

Please speak up at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Adminbots. Thank you. rootology (T) 13:12, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Make 'new section' bold and 'edit this page' regular

The sensible way to edit a large, oft frequented discussion page is by clicking on 'new section' or the 'edit' link next to the section of interest. Otherwise, one must search for the relevant section within the edit window and deal with the horror of edit-conflicts. Currently on pages like the Science Reference desk et al., the 'edit this page' link is bold and the 'new section' link is regular, leading to me accidentally being drawn to the bold link when I want the regular one. Indeed, I imagine few people ever need the 'edit this page' button on the reference desks. I suggest that the 'new section' link is made bold and the 'edit this page' link is made regular, so that people are drawn to what is probably the correct link out of the two. ----Seans Potato Business 17:29, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

It sounds sensible, but... Can this be done for a single page? Waltham, The Duke of 20:13, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
How about doing it for all talk pages and pages with __NEWSECTIONLINK__ on them? – FISDOF9 23:54, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
That might be a good idea. Pity that we seem to have failed to receive enough attention here. I had forgotten about this myself for almost a week... Stupid Pump. Waltham, The Duke of 00:30, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

WikiDataSource or WikiStatistics (Part 2)

I think users commenting misunderstood my prior post which can be seen here: [[1]] . It is my understanding that subscription websites compile data because it is hard to get, not because they pay for it. I do not suggest that people get a subscription and post the data on Wikipedia, but I do suggest that Wikipedia acts as a mechanism for people that compile data on their own to post the data. Thus, the service other webpages provided of searching for and compiling data would no longer be necessary. Academics could easily post data they have collected, provided they did not think they could make money off of it because perceived demand is low.

Many datasets would come up in Wikipedia when many researchers might not even know that data existed, and people could make use of already collected data when they do not have the resources to compile data on their own.

The idea is to create a new system, not to steal from the old. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.37.94.10 (talk) 20:07, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Support: I think this is a rather good idea. There are tons of pages that use data such as List of countries by foreign exchange reserves or List of countries by GDP (nominal) that would be great to keep track of by year or even by month. --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 23:07, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Strong Support Such a separate DataCommons would be a good place to use the Semantic Wiki tools so that the data could be reused in different ways. If the data in the Wikipedia Infoboxes were moved to there then that data could be available in every language wiki. Once one language had created a template to import the data then other languages could have the same by just localising the template. However this idea needs to be raised on Meta since it affects much more than the English WP.

In the meantime, is there a way that info from WikiSpecies can be transcluded into en.WP taxoboxes? Where can I learn about doing that? Filceolaire (talk) 10:26, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

It is my understanding that subscription websites compile data because it is hard to get, not because they pay for it. I question this - the alternative view is that subscription websites compile data because people are willing to pay for that data. In this view, the income from subscriptions isn't primarily for web hosting; it's for the costs of collecting the data, data quality reviews, etc. In my opinion, much, if not virtually all the data collection wouldn't occur if someone wasn't paying the people who put it together. In short, while there isn't any reason not to have a WikiMedia DataCommons, let's not be extremely optimistic that it will make much difference. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:07, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Following a poll on this village pump (here) and a recent software change, I have proposed implementing a move of the search bar here. Any thoughts or comments are much appreciated on that talk page. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Optional filter for tables

There are several long tables on Wikipedia. Take the List of unit testing frameworks for instance. Wouldn't it be nice to have a way to filter out only the results for operating system X, language Y, or licence Z. Maarten Tromp 14:30, 1 July 2008 (CEST)

Interesting, but making all the tables that dynamic seems complicated and likely to increase load time. What about Greasemonkey? Dar-Ape 03:50, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Pretty much anything that'd work in Greasemonkey would work as a Wikipedia user script, perhaps one that can be offered to everyone in the Preferences section. Pseudomonas(talk) 07:56, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm posting this here rather than to Bot Approvals since I think it requires more general discussion before formulating the proposal, being a social issue as much as a technical one.

I wrote and manage PseudoBot, which reverts the addition of redlinks/no-links/links-to-disambiguation-pages to the Births or Deaths sections of the date pages (e.g. 1986 or October 15) made by anonymous users or recently-registered users. This is in line with the date page policy.

I've now had a couple of people ask if I could do the same for list-sections of other articles, and given that I do a lot of recent-changes patrolling and anti-vandalism, I can certainly see the appeal - some sections seem to attract vanity and attack entries. Things that come to mind are the "Notable Alumni" sections of certain schools, "Famous Residents" of certain towns/villages, and "List of Famous Fooizens" where Foo is some country or other.

If done right, registering a section with the bot could be a less-intrusive version of semi-protection, prevent a lot of junk, and save a lot of wasted time. If done wrong, it could restrict genuine edits and bite newbies. In any case, I think it'd be best restricted to only reverting non-autoconfirmed users - that way if something is mis-reverted, any autoconfirmed editor can reinstate the text, and the bot shouldn't touch it again.

Building the bot would be technically easy; there are many ways in which sections could be registered with the bot, I've already thought of quite a lot of them, and (though it's not my place to tell people what to discuss) I think that deciding on such mechanisms are best left until the Bot Approvals stage, lest we argue about what colour to paint the bicycle sheds.

What I'd like opinions on:

  1. Is this just a terrible, terrible idea in all cases?
  2. If not, should it apply to any blanket sets of articles (such as "School stubs" or "Members of Category:Villages in Foo" or "Lists of people with no more than 5% of their entries currently as redlinks") - or should the bits of the community that are working on an article or wikiproject or antivandalism nominate individual articles as the need arises?
  3. Who should be able to register pages? Admins only, or any autoconfirmed user, or anyone?
  4. By what means should pages be unregistered?
  5. Are there any sets of pages which (like the date pages) already have a "no redlinks" policy?
  6. What notices should be put on the sections? The date pages have HTML-style comments including Do not add people without Wikipedia articles to this list.
  7. What notices should be issued to editors whose contributions have been reverted? I'd favour something fairly gentle and taking care not to imply vandalism.
  8. Anything else that people think is relevant.

Pseudomonas(talk) 13:17, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

In my view, what is needed is to establish policy for groups of pages, and then have the bot police that policy if need be. A good place to start might be "those bottom-level pageslists in Lists of people by occupation". The current style guideline (at Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists)#Lists of people) says: "Selected lists of people should be selected for importance/notability in that category and should have Wikipedia articles (or the reasonable expectation of an article in the future)." If consensus can be reached to tighten that up to say "no red-links" and make it a policy (with date pages being a precedent) then policing that policy would be a good task for the bot. I don't see that as a big ask: all that the policy is saying is "create a stub first". I don't see that the BAG need be involved except at the highest level - to approve a bot to police certain kinds of pages (e.g. lists) for which there is an established no-redlinks policy. Having a separate mechanism for adding or removing pages is even worse - it just adds bureaucracy. If consensus on a no-redlinks policy is established, and the BAG have approved the bot, that should be enough. Philip Trueman (talk) 13:45, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
(e/c) I think this is an excellent idea. As far as which pages to have the bot patrol, I have no idea how you would be able to find them all. I would say, just add as many as you can find easily, and then let autoconfirmed users add more to the list if/when they find them. I think that the pages should be assumed to be permanently added to the list. If any of them became a problem, just let an autoconfirmed user remove the name. For the notice that the bot gives people it reverts, how about something like
Hi, your recent edit to Middleofnowhere High School has been reverted by an automated bot because it added a name with a red link to the "notable alumni" section. If you believe that this was an error, and the name should have been added, please leave a note on this page. Thanks, [ PseudoBot signature would go here ]
And then make the error page similar to User:ClueBot/FalsePositives. People who are autoconfirmed could review any requests that come up, and if the name is legit, they could add it to the article, and the bot wouldn't revert them. Considering how few people (relatively) leave messages on the ClueBot error page, I seriously doubt that a hypothetical error page for PseudoBot would be a major burden, and in any case, the amount of time wasted dealing with people reporting errors would be far outweighed by the amount of time the bot would save if it reverted all these other pages as well as the date pages. J.delanoygabsadds 13:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I suggest starting out slowly - do this for specific sections of specific articles/lists by request only. After you have the bot doing this for a while (at least a couple of months), then I think you should come back to the community and ask if anyone objects to your expanding it as you see fit. As for who can make requests, I suggest that you be bold and let anyone do that, but that you also adopt the practice that if any experienced editor objects to deletions, you'll stop using the bot on that particular section. (Treat this as a content dispute, in which you're not going to take sides.) I think an invisible comment, similar to the one you mention, is good to add to sections. I suggest that you not notify errant editors - particularly if the comment is in place - because a lot of them are probably going to be IP editors, and that's fairly pointless (shared IP addresses, like schools, in particular). A good edit summary should suffice to let editors know why their addition was reverted. (If you find that you're answering a lot of questions about deletions, then, yes, consider posting a notice to user talk pages.)
And thanks for doing this! Bots like yours help make Wikipedia articles better. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:47, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
(ec)this sounds like it could work very well on the many "List of xyz Bands/Artists" articles we have here, some of them are a mass of dead links added by spa's to promote their non-notable bands, take this early version of List of Korean musicians, [2] for example--Jac16888 (talk) 14:50, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
Whilst I'm happy to be bold, I need Bot Approval Group permission to run any bot, and I need to detail the specifics of how the bot will behave before I start. PseudoBot has already been running for some months with what I consider to be a good track record, so I feel I'm at the stage of asking for expansion into perhaps more contentious areas. Interesting point you make about not notifying IPs - I wonder what the general view is about that? Pseudomonas(talk) 15:00, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

WHile I think this could be good and useful if done right, it may upset a lot of people. You'd have to be careful with it's coding and usage. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:22, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Obviously accurate coding is important, yes. What features do you think would minimize the upset it might cause? Pseudomonas(talk) 21:15, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
It may upset people who think that redlinks are okay. Again, I suggest starting slowly - ask permission to run the bot, on a by-request basis; set up a subpage in your user space to list the pages that your bot is patrolling, and see how things go for a couple of months. Then you'll have more information about whether (and how) the bot might be more widely used. And as for WP:BOTREQ, I think you should just go ahead and ask permission to start (slowly, manual requests) and see what happens. The worst that can happen is that BAG denies your request; if they do, you'll have your answer. (Or, to put it differently, if you start out with an incremental approach, it doesn't matter that much what "features" you bot has; BAG will raise any issues that are important.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:30, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Problem is, I think there's a de jure presumption that redlinks are OK, even if de facto a human editor who removes a random unsourced uncommented redlink from List of vegetarians or whatever isn't going to have any opposition in the matter. Perhaps your suggestion of just taking it to the BAG and seeing what conditions they're minded to impose is the way to go. Pseudomonas(talk) 12:34, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm generally in favor. A few thoughts:

  • Some lists are factual and limited, such as Neighborhoods of Cincinnati, or List of Sesame Street puppeteers. Theoretically, every member deserves an article, and so redlinks (if factually correct) should stay. Other lists are not supposed to be complete: List of people from Cincinnati should not list each of the millions of people born in Cincinnati, obviously, so if a person is not notable enough to have an article then he/she is not notable enough to be included in the list. This task should only focus on the latter sort of list. (Some lists may be gray area: should all Cincinnati High Schools be listed at List of high schools in Cincinnati, Ohio, and do all deserve articles?) But I think that should still be a guiding principle.
  • This task seems to focus on new additions of redlinks to articles, but I'm not sure that's a smart priority. Imagine two redlinks at List of people from Cincinnati, one that has been around for months, and one that was recently added. In my opinion, it should be a higher priority to remove the older redlink. After all, the addition of a new redlink could be the first step in creating the article, while a stale one is not likely to have its article in process. It's not that I would oppose the task as described; I just think it would be better to, say, wait 48 hours to delete redlinks, so that you can be reasonably sure the article is not being worked on. On the other hand, I would support the removal of all redlinks over a month old in those lists, no matter who added them.
  • This really isn't anti-vandalism task; it's more of an anti-vanity, or anti-trivia task. Unconfirmed users are more likely to commit vandalism than confirmed ones, but are they more likely to commit vanity edits or trivial edits? I'm not sure. I'd support this task for all users, with the caveat that redlinks get a 48 hour grace period for an article to be created before the links are removed. Perhaps the caveat shouldn't apply for unconfirmed users... perhaps the bot should warn the user immediately, and then remove the redlink (if undo is still possible) after 48 hours... but these are details.
  • Whatever the method of bicycle shed painting, it should be opt-in. Preferably by a hidden template in the list's section.
  • I'd support this in disambiguation pages too. Disambiguation to non-existent articles is not useful.
  • I suspect that notifying IPs is not useful, but that's not a strong opinion.

All in all, I think this is a well needed task, and I encourage you to submit a bot request. – Quadell (talk) (random) 14:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Similar non-list sections are also highly susceptible to such vanity additions, e.g. adding your non-notable band to your city's page. (In this example the link is blue, but you get the idea.) Should this bot handle non-list entries as well? – Quadell (talk) (random) 12:42, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

As I say above, I had in mind the "famous residents", "notable alumni" and so on sections. I don't think anything can be done about people inserting redlinks into prose. I'm even worried about legitimate prose entries in lists, especially disambiguation pages - for instance:
In this case, I need to avoid reverting, even though the first line is a bulleted entry with no link. Maybe if the text is over a certain length with no links of any colour I should consider it to be OK. I think what it will come down to is that the bot just isn't suitable for all sections. Pseudomonas(talk) 16:45, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I think we need to ensure a time limit here. I edited Wikipedia for several years before I ever created a new article without first creating a red link for it in at least one other article. ("Build the web", save the orphans, etc.) We should not instantly remove a red link without waiting at least a little while to see if someone is writing an article on the subject. (also then "Don't bite the newbies" probably applies) Rmhermen (talk) 17:01, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Good point, thanks. I wonder what delay mechanism would be best, and how to deal with the page being edited by other users in the meantime. Pseudomonas(talk) 07:52, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Will do - I'm mulling things over :) Pseudomonas(talk) 07:52, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Top 10 Wikipedias

Hi all.

I would like to request your attention to a vote that will start this midnight, regarding a rearrangement of the top ten Wikipedias that are displayed on the main wikipedia portal (http://www.wikipedia.org).

This topic has been wandering around for a long time on Talk:www.wikipedia.org template, coming to surface in many occasions, especially on the times around the milestone of 100.000 articles of the Chinese and Russian Wikipedias.

After a tentative wrap-up of all the proposals made in that page throughout the months in Talk:www.wikipedia.org template#rethinking the top ten, a discussion was launched in Top Ten Wikipedias, to which all the major Wikipedias have been invited to in their village pump.

A lot of good opinions have been collected and discussed, and a vote proposal has been made and received some feedback. That proposal was now implemented on Metapub. Please head to the poll to vote. I hope to see you there! --Waldir talk 12:46, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Note that the poll has now moved to m:Top_Ten_Wikipedias/poll. Dcoetzee 06:54, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Text searching within a wikipedia article.

I have had trouble finding a specific word or phrase within a article using the standard find function which only seems to work well on .txt type of files, not html. I was wondering if others were having the same problem if wikipedia could add a search function to search within an article for specified words or phrases using double quotes("), to delimit a phrase? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.243.178.196 (talk) 21:37, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Ctrl+F works fine in FF and IE for me. ninety:one 21:40, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Please ignore if others are not having this problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.243.178.196 (talk) 21:44, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with ninety:one; a browser's search function usually suffices.
As an aside, I suggest signing your posts, so that people can see the name (or, in your case, IP address) of the post's author, as well as the exact time it was made, without troubling bots. You can do it by typing four tildes in the end (~~~~). Waltham, The Duke of 08:33, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
You can do a search on google now, simply enter your search terms and after it put "site:wikipedia.org" and it will give you results just like it does any other search. I find this very useful when trying to find out if a specific topic has been written about previously %%-SYKKO-%% (talk to me) 18:52, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Disabling unified login

I think that there should be an option in a user's preferences, after unified login is enabled on their account, to temporarily disable it, or to temporarily disable the creation of accounts on other wikis just by browsing to them while logged on. I don't like accidentally creating accounts that I'm never going to use on other-language Wikipedias that I've only visited once. — Insanity Incarnate 21:30, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you like that? —Wknight94 (talk) 21:45, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
It does prevent people from impersonating you on other wikis, which has been an issue in the past. Grandmasterka 22:12, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Feature requests should be made at Wikimedia's bug tracker. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I've grumbled about this a few times, having followed a link to an article on some other wiki, then (particularly on low traffic sites), noticed my name at the top of recent-changes. I've often wondered if people would see CharlotteWebb "account created automatically" (or however this is explained in the local language), and ask themselves what the hell is she doing here? Wonder what she's reading... Of course if and when I ever visit the same site again and see a big thing on my talk page (which judging by babelfish is probably a "welcome" template of sorts) even I won't remember the answer to that question. So I try not to worry about it too much. Hope this helps.
Really I consider this temporary hack with all accounts becoming global, eventually (at which time "local" account-creation logs are phased out). But there is a certain dilemma of what to do about two or more accounts with the same name on different sites, but with neither a password nor an e-mail address in common, who due to inactivity are unable to confirm or deny that they are the same person (that is if one or zero of them have a confirmed e-mail address — differing address would suggest a different identity). In this manner all conflicting accounts could be forcibly disambiguated (by wiki-of-origin), and ones later established to be the same person could be merged back together. Until then we must err toward assuming they are different. — CharlotteWebb 14:16, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Mass watch.

I would find it very useful if there was a way mass watch pages. I'm not aware of such a function on Wikipedia, but perhaps there is. What I have in mind is the ability to watch either all the pages tagged with a specific Wikiproject, or all the pages within a category. This way if you become interested in say, military history, then you could watch all the pages tagged with {{WikiProject Military history}}, or something. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 01:37, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

  • Strong Support if it is possible and a realistic thing to do it would be nice if it also makes it possible to do groups based on sub pages or transclusion. Watching all the articles in a project would be very helpful so I really love this idea! %%-SYKKO-%% (talk to me) 02:18, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Support, with the caveat that it should be subst'd, to prevent a vandal from mucking with my watchlist. For example, "Mass watch everything in WikiProject United States" would add those articles that are currently in that project but would not add or remove articles as they were added or removed from the project. I don't think I want Some page I don't care about showing up on my watchlist because some vandal added it to the Wikiproject. Likewise, I don't want United States disappearing because some vandal removed it from the project. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:42, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
  • You can do something like this now if all the pages of the wikiproject are in one page or category using Special:RecentChangesLinked. For example to see changes to all articles about living people go to Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Living people. Hut 8.5 06:47, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I wrote some simple javascript to do this for myself and a few others. It turns category links on a page into "Watch this category" buttons, and creates buttons for the subcategories. It would not be hard to add a version for backlinks that is add "Watch What links here" button to the toolbox. JackSchmidt (talk) 18:46, 8 July 2008 (UTC)


Just edit your raw watchlist and paste a list of articles into it. 1 != 2 15:41, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Change the navigation on left and the background image

I see that the navigation bar in the left has been tampered (i.e. the headings not capitalized.The background of wikipedia too looks little rusty at http://wiki.eso.workers.dev/skins-1.5/monobook/headbg.jpg
The background I think is not needed.
I also want to make the logo colorful (but not change it).
What do you all think at my comments.
• Autographed by RRaunak • Wanna meet him ? •

You mean the logo used by default on Wikipedia? There is a more colourful logo situated at Wikipedia:Wikipedia logos... You can read this. --ɔɹǝɐɯʎ!Talk 15:26, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
It's encouraging to hear WP needs a fresh infusion of style every now and then but as a graphic designer and one who has performed many boring usability web tests, I feel the current layout is fine. Yes it could be tweaked slightly, I've always felt to move a few pixels here and there but considering the "atmosphere" of the WP layout, it's just enough texture and variation to let you focus. Rraunak I suggest you edit and work on some articles and overtime get the feel of WP, I noticed you are a new user. WP should always be focused on the content, the style comes secondary (not to mention you can change your default css). .:davumaya:. 15:33, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Warning the community before a broadcast appearance

Jimmy Wales appeared on the TV show Squawk Box this morning, and in the hour he was on, the article about the host Rebecca Quick was treated savagely. Another user suggested here that Wikimedia staff and Board should, by policy, warn the community before noteworthy public broadcast appearances, so that the related pages (about the show, about the host, etc.) can be temporarily protected for 24 hours or so. This would save a lot of embarrassment. I saw the show this morning, and Becky Quick was mortified by some thing she saw on her biographical page. This could so easily be prevented, yet Jimmy Wales and the male co-host seemed almost titillated by the prospect of sexually offending Quick. The other user who suggested a policy change was basically drummed off the Rebecca Quick talk page, which is also shameful. Why this culture of "we don't care how much we offend living people"?

Go Green Go White (talk) 22:22, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I was the user that supposed drummed another user off the talk page, by suggesting that they bring a policy discussion here instead of having it on the talk page for a single article...
I disagree with the idea of preemptively protecting articles, but I don't think it would be a bad idea if the community was made aware of appearances to get more eyes/watchlists focused on articles that may see a spike in vandalism. --Onorem♠Dil 22:30, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree that "policy" was the wrong word to use. I still think that some sort of formal request from the community would be more likely to see results than individual users leaving notes on User talk:Jimbo Wales requesting that he leaves them a note when he's going to be on TV. --Onorem♠Dil 14:05, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Remember though that "the community" consists of more than the English Wikipedia. If the foundation did give prior notice for things like this, it would likely not be made on WP:AN or elsewhere on the wiki. It would be made on meta or more likely on the foundation-l mailing list perhaps cc'd to wikiEN-l (all of which would also be better places for this proposal as well). Mr.Z-man 23:35, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

This proposals page is not working, and the auto-archiving is part of the problem

I propose that we slow down the proposals, and make sure that we have gathered a fairly large audience and opinion on them. We archive them manually afterwards. We could even start listing a history of proposals by category, and when people come up with similar proposals, refer back to them. We should only have a few proposals going on at a time, and while those are going on, others will have to wait. That will give people who think they have a good proposal an incentive to comment on the ones existing. In the meantime they can write their proposal up as a subpage. There is not a huge hurry. It is more important that we actually address some of the ideas raised here. II | (t - c) 03:35, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see it as practical. How would you enforce such a limit? — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 12:09, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Flagged bots to edit protected

This proposal has two parts

  • Flagged bots to be allowed to edit protected pages
  • A new protection level to prevent flagged bot edits to sensitive pages (like the main page)

Bots deal with non-controversial and mindless tasks. If a bot makes a controversial edit it risks loosing its bot flag and the bots operator risks blocks or other sanctions. Bot operators are rational people who do not use their bots to cause disruption.

The idea behind this is that mindless tasks such as the fixing of Special:DoubleRedirects frequently hits "protected pages". These pages were protected due to edit wars, vandalism, or some other form of disruption often far back ago when semi-protection was not available.

  • Bots should be allowed to edit protected pages unless the pages are protected from flagged bot edits.

The other alternative to this is granting an admin flag to bots so that they can edit such protected pages. This is something I do not believe is preferable over to my proposal.

-- Cat chi? 13:14, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Step one would involve the devs making some small changes, step two would involve rather a lot of work. I think we can just make the bots admins and limit their code to what they can do. It has happened before. There is also (semi)-automatic admin accounts that do a lot of work. 1 != 2 15:43, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
The coding is done. See: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13137 In addition stewards can easily create such a user group from scratch I believe.
You are assuming the bot works properly. The bot's code may work improperly. For example a bot can accidentally blank the main page and keep doing that if it has an admin flag. In addition for security reasons the fewer bot-admin accounts we have the better. Bots only use the adminship tool to edit protected pages. Yes is this being done through a category currently - but that really is a temporary solution, not a permanent one.
Semi-automatic admin accounts (accounts that use admintools more than just the ability to edit protected pages) can keep their admin flag. That is an entirely different animal beyond the scope of this discussion though.
-- Cat chi? 09:22, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

If DoubleRedirects hit protected pages, it is probably a good idea to check whether they really need to be protected. I'd rather have a human admin decide between unprotection and editing through protection in such a case than treat everything the same. How many times does this come up anyway (any data?) Other bot work (like recategorisation after CFD) is already done by bots running on admin accounts. Interwikibots shouldn't be able to edit through protection, as there are (rarely) contentious disputes about this question (for which an extra permissions/protection group is probably overkill). Kusma (talk) 15:53, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Right we should have less number of protected pages - bit thats an entirely different issue. The odds of a human making an error in a manual fix of a double redirect is significantly larger than of a bot. I'd rather leave fixing of double redirects (weather the page is protected or not) to the bots. Admins should not be bothered with such a task. I get weekly protected page hits on double redirects. There is no solid number but the number differs with a range.
The idea behind this proposal is not to have bots with admin access. Bots in general do not need tools to block, delete and etc. Among all the admin tools, bots use it to edit protected pages. Do we really want to have so many admin-bot accounts? Really?
The additional protection level is for sensitive pages like the main page where we do not want bots to edit. Currently this is done with a template/category (it is been done for ages). What I am proposing is mediawiki support for it.
-- Cat chi? 09:22, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I should note that someone with the "editprotected" right isn't able to change a cascade protected page (Main Page for example) I think. FunPika 11:28, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't know (I never tried to edit the main page - not that I can :P) But there are pages where bots are unwelcome that aren't cascade protected. ;) -- Cat chi? 13:15, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Enable rating of articles

Why dont we rate articles like uncyclopedia. I would be a great Idea to rate pages with 5 stars down the navigation panel
[+] • Autographed and Signed by RRaunak • [+]
11:07, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd give your signature half a star, then. It's too long, too distracting, and it does funny things to the mouse pointer. --Carnildo (talk) 23:19, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
We do have ways of rating articles, they're just not based on democracy, they're based on certain criteria that the community has decided we want in our articles. See Wikipedia:Good article and Wikipedia:Featured article. --Tango (talk) 01:39, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
The idea of getting feedback from readers on how a page looks has some merit, but I don't think it would work. Too much is controversial on Wikipedia. II | (t - c) 01:51, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Take a look at SlashDot comments on a political topic to see why this doesn't work. And there's always poll crashing (getting people on a forum to all vote one way in an online poll). — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 12:12, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Being able to edit your edit summaries

Ok, I've done this way too often. I make an edit, write the edit summary, and click "Save page", only to notice that I completely misspelled a word. At this point, there is nothing I can do about it other than hope nobody looks at my contributions. My proposal is being able to edit your own edit summaries. I brought up this discussion on one of the Wikipedia IRC channels, and there were plenty of ideas. The first is only letting admins edit summaries, and letting people make requests for them, because there is fear that other users would abbuse it, and possibly fabricate them. The other is only being able to make minor edits to fix typos, and prohibit completely rewriting the edit summary. I know this sounds odd, but some people (myself included) think this would be something that would make editing a little easier. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 17:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I really don't see the need for this, nor a big problem that this would solve. If anything, a user script can be created that would require some sort of confirmation of your edit summary before saving it. - Rjd0060 (talk) 17:36, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I think such a feature would be useful, as long as only admins could change them, and a history of the changes was logged. It should only be done for typos and minor mistakes. Fabrications of edit summaries would obviously not be allowed. Majorly (talk) 18:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I would say have it so you could only change it if it was the most recent edit to that article (and it was your edit, ofcourse). This would do away with the need for a history of changes, admin-only restriction, etc., while allowing for fixing of one's edit summary in the vast majority of cases where it would be useful and appropriate. Kevin Baastalk 18:21, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
This would require a fundamental change to how Wikipedia's database is structured. (1 == 2)Until 18:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
How so? You wouldn't need to change any table names or column structures. As far as the database is concerned, it would just be one additional "update" query. Something like "update [table] set summary=? where article=? and revision=? and editor=? and revision=(select max(revision) from [table] where article=?)". That's not what i'd call a "fundamental change [in the] database [structure]". Kevin Baastalk
I'd much rather be able to change my log summaries (blocking, protecting, etc) which can sometimes look odd with typos. MBisanz talk 18:43, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I would support that if it's possible. I would add though, that a message (like "This edit summary was added at <TIME/DATE>") was added at the end of the summary and then let admins view all versions of the edit summary. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 20:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Why waste time fixing a typo in an edit summary? Edit summaries are not part of article content, and so it doesn't matter that they have perfect grammar. If you really need to amend or retract an edit summary, then make a dummy edit or use the talk page. –Pomte 20:12, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Because that would be an even greater waste of time to leave a message on the talk page. And it wouldn't take that long. It could be like Rollback. You have to be granted the ability to edit your edit summaries, and then you just have to press a button or something. And really, how much time is it going to waste? Also, an edit summary is supposed to give an overview of what you've changed in the article. If you misspelled something or gave the wrong information, people might mistake what you've done. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 20:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
And it can get worse. I have sometimes pressed the wrong key while writing the edit summary (I still don't know exactly what I did) and that resulted in the edit being saved with just half the summary. This is obviously unhelpful. Waltham, The Duke of 21:02, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
That happens to me all of the time. You pressed Enter. hmwithτ 18:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I would go with Kevin Baas on this one. One's most recent summary should be editable to fix typo. Any more than that, I and see RfA candidates going back to give themselves a leg up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paragon12321 (talk • contribs) 22:29, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
There is a simpler solution. Cultivate the habit of proofreading the edit summary as well as the actual edit when you show a preview. If you make a small error, it is really not a problem. If you really screw it up, make another edit to carry a correction.
Letting people alter either edit summaries or the substance of edits is allowing the rewriting of edit histories. It undermines the integrity of edit histories. The benefits are not anywhere close to being worth the cost. IMO. Wanderer57 (talk) 02:25, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Not if you only let them change their edit summary if it was the most recent edit to that article - as soon as another edit is made you can no longer change the edit summary, so a historical record is kept (and shown) that can't be rewritten. Kevin Baastalk 15:36, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
You may be right. I think people are underestimating the technical difficulties involved in allowing people to edit their edit summaries, and overestimating the benefits of doing so. Wanderer57 (talk) 06:01, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
This is a great idea! I suggest limiting it to the latest edit during a 1 - 12 h period. Coding-wise it is an absolute no-brainer and will be very easy to implement (contrary to the above comments). Full support - Сасусlе 00:15, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
This is also good if you accidentally forgot to add a summary or put in the wrong one (happens if you have many tabs open). This would cut down on pseudoedits just to give or correct a summary. Сасусlе 20:49, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Straw poll

I think it is too early to start a straw poll, please let us discuss details and implications a but further. Сасусlе 20:49, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
See also: bugzilla:10105. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:55, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Support

  1. This is an excellent idea. At present, vandals can put offensive comments in an edit summary and nothing can be done about it other than attempt to get the edit deleted from history. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 20:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
    I am pretty sure that there is a wide consensus that admins should NOT be able to edit summaries of other users. We are talking so far about changing your own summary during a limited time period for every user. Сасусlе 20:49, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
    That sucks; I think admins should be able to edit the edit summaries; I have seen WAY too many vandals using abusive edit summaries. But I still support, there's been plenty of times when I've screwed up with edit summaries and wished I could go back in and fix the problem. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 00:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
    If an edit summary in a vandalism edit is that offensive, the revision can be deleted by an admin -- no editing necessary. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:34, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
  2. I have often wished I could edit my summary - sometimes I noticed my error just as I clicked the Save button. Allowing users to edit their own summaries immediately after saving and before any other edits to the page seems very reasonable. Sbowers3 (talk) 00:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
  3. have it so you could only change it if it was the most recent edit to that article (and it was your edit, ofcourse). Kevin Baastalk 14:19, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  4. This idea would be wonderful if it can ever be implemented. Users should only be able to edit their own summaries, except admins can edit other users summaries to remove stupid comments ect. .:Alex:. 19:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  5. Excellent idea; more people see edit comments that the actual text, and how many times have we all see boo-boos after pressing the button? Tony (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  6. A fine idea - a few times I've hit "Save Page" and at the last moment realised that I've omitted something from the edit summary that perhaps should have been there. I see no real drawbacks (apart from the drain on the programmer's time) to this proposal. Lankiveil (speak to me) 12:12, 12 May 2008 (UTC).
  7. Support - users should be able to edit their last edit, as long as it is the last edit to a page and it has been no more than a couple hours. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 20:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
  8. Support - It would stop embarassing things like this, where I had the fingers of my right hand one key over from where they were supposed to be and didn't notice until I'd hit "Save page". ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 00:02, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  9. Support, On the grounds that the user can only edit their own summaries. Also, admin should be given the right to edit anyones summaries. Rgoodermote  19:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
  10. Support for own edit summaries only, but with admins able to edit offensive edit summaries by anyone. DuncanHill (talk) 11:05, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
  11. Support for last edit only, by same person/IP only. --207.176.159.90 (talk) 23:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
    Comment:No offense but I myself do not like the idea of an IP being able to edit their own edit summaries. I know you are an IP. But I would like to suggest that IPs be given a limit. Rgoodermote  18:11, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
  12. Support - offensive summaries or summaries that reveal personal data are a big problem, but right now there is no way of editing them except for deleting the edit completely... which is not a solution most of the time. Figure out a way to prevent abuses, but it should be implemented. Renata (talk) 21:51, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
  13. Support I also like this idea but I can definitely see the problems it might introduce. If this is ever implemented, I think it should be restricted to auto-confirmed users and above. Perhaps there could be a feature that allows sysops to revoke a user their right to editing their summary. Also, it should definitely be possible for the user's last edit and only for a set time. ——Ryan | t • c 08:43, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
  14. Support as I would love to go back and fix any edit summaries of mine where I either forgot to put something or made a typographical error. --Happy editing! Sincerely, Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 02:26, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Conditional Support

  • On one hand there should be a mechanism for removing disrputive, offesnsive, promotional, or dangerous edit summaries without going through oversight. On the other hand, I'm opposed to allowing any user to change any edit summary. It has a huge potential for abuse or misuse and I'm not sure why the average contributor would need that capability anyway, except maybe to correct a typo on their last edit. My vote would be to definately give sysops the capability to modify or remove offensive or disruptive edit summaries, and to allow other users to edit their own most recent summary under some type of time limitation. Mister Senseless™ (Speak - Contributions) 18:39, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes – I have made typos in edit summaries, and also sometimes wished that I had written one (instead of using the default). This is a neat idea. However, I am not sure if there are any legal issues (therefore, I'm putting my support as "conditional.") 69.140.152.55 (talk) 14:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak support leaning towards "not really important", there's been a few instances where I wished I could fix my edit summary, but again it's no big deal (forgive the cliche). If it's not a huge technical hurdle, I'd support editing the last edit summary only, during a 5 minute window following the edit. xenocidic ( talk ¿ review ) 16:40, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong support as long as we are talking about an editor being able to change the summary of an edit if, and only if, it is their own edit, it is the most recent edit on the page, and no more than, say 12 or 24 hours have passed; this should apply equally to all registered users, including sysops. There is no potential for abuse there (nobody would "re-write article history"), and all sorts of problems with erroneous or incomplete summaries would be solved without complicating the history by leaving confusing or misleading summaries or making otherwise useless edits. Waltham, The Duke of 09:39, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support Good idea, though I don't view not having this capability as a significant hinderance to the work of most editors on Wikipedia. If it is something that can be fixed in a relatively simple way, then I'm all for it. If not, then there are bigger fish to fry. - Masonpatriot (talk) 15:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support I thinks users should only be allowed edit their own edit summaries, this way if you make a mistake you can correct it. Who cares if someone says something offensive in an edit summary. Pseudoanonymous (talk) 02:03, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support. This seems like a good idea, but it could cause problems. To see if there are any problems, should there be an edit summary edit history? An edit summary edit summary? An edit summary edit count? An edit summary contributions? An edit summary watchlist? An edit summary recent changes? I've often wanted to edit my own edit summary, but this could cause problems as the limit is 200 characters. Perhaps only if you are only allowed to edit your own summaries, and then admins can see your edit summary edits or something like that. Thanks. ~AH1(TCU) 16:40, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support per Waltham, although I wouldn't mind if the cut-off time was longer. I suggest 3 days. « D. Trebbien (talk) 01:15 2008 June 17 (UTC)
  • Excellent idea, if practical I'm sure the wikipedia developers are just sitting around waiting for work. It sounds like there could be significant database issues, and it's not worth jumping through too many hoops. As a compromise, I kind of like the idea of being able to change only your most recent edit, because that's when you know you messed up. How's this for an idea: Typically if you re-edit, and make no changes, you don't see a new result. How about if the only change is to the edit summary, then keep the change in place of the other change, or some such. It would have to be to your own edit only, not to someone else's. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:28, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Idea - Make it possible to add to the edit summary. Add and nothing more, for example to clarify something. For example on July 2nd you could accidentally type "Erasing Handle's Edits", and later add "(7/2/2008:1220). I meant Erasing Vandle's Edits (added 7/3/2008:1250)". Kopf1988 (talk) 00:18, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. Not worth fussing over. Live with your embarrassing mistakes, or make a non-edit follow-up to correctly describe your mis-typed previous edit. Too many issues about the reliability and fixed-ness of the edit history database arise in ths proposal. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 20:04, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  2. Language in an edit summary is often quoted in disputes, often very quickly after the edit. Fixing the imo trivial problem of typos in summaries would seriously jeopardise the ability to verify these claims if an editor can go back and modify their summary based on future events. Frankly, well meaning intentions aside, this is a no-brainer, or should be to anyone who has followed a few disputes before. A far worse problem that needs addressing is allowing no summary. MickMacNee (talk) 18:16, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    But under this proposal, the edit summary could only be changed if it was the last edit made. It seems to me that most of the time what you are saying would not happen. Plus, I think someone proposed that admins would be able to view the previous edit summaries. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 14:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  3. Resounding oppose - toooooooo much potential, hardly any benefit, causes some damage (yeah, I know...), if people want to retract an edit they can always do a null edit afterwards. —TreasuryTag—t—c 18:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  4. This seems to offer little actual improvement to the editing experience to offset the major disruptions it could cause to the process of dispute resolution, vandalism fighting, etc. --Gwguffey (talk) 19:46, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  5. Strong Oppose. We have enough problems with vandalism without creating a route for "edit summary vandalism". – ukexpat (talk) 15:22, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    If the editing is limited to the last edit during a relatively short timespan I do not see the potential for vandalism or disruption as any subsequent edit (e.g. fixing vandalism) makes a summary permanent. Cacycle (talk) 03:57, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  6. Highly doubt this would ever actually happen, but here's my two cents anyway. I agree it's annoying when you accidentally make a stupid grammar or spelling error in an edit summary, yeah it can be embarrassing etc, but guess what, it happens to all of us and it isn't important, so just deal with it. Also, as someone points out above, summaries are used as evidence in disputes -- so the ability to edit them would add a certain kind of recursive complication. Similar to the fact that edit summaries are required when editing a page, edit summaries would probably be needed when editing edit summaries as well -- it is, after all, the ability to change evidence, so an explanation for the edit would be needed, not to mention a history of previous versions.... seems to be getting silly then, right? You bet. This would only cause problems and, trust me on this one -- it's just not happening. No developer in their right mind would ever add this kind of superfluous functionality. Equazcion •✗/C • 04:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  7. Per above. ES are have document character here. If we make then editable we need a history/permalik feature for them as well. This will not happen. Don't waste your time fussing about it. The benefits are marginal. Everyone makes typos sometime, just suck it up. --Dschwen 17:09, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  8. Strong Oppose: They are often used in RFArb cases, so no hiding embarrassing edits. --Dragon695 (talk) 00:50, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
  9. I have made spelling mistakes in my edit summaries an embarrassing number of times but I don't really see having the option to edit them improving the encyclopaedia. Spelling mistakes - not really a big deal, being able to easily hide past negative behaviour is potentially a big deal. If edit summaries were editable would they have histories, are are these histories going to have edit summaries, will those be editable? Guest9999 (talk) 02:50, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
  10. Strong Oppose - Negligible benefit, strong likelihood for misuse/abuse. /Blaxthos ( t / c ) 12:11, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
    • I am referring here to all the opposing parties using this as an argument: How could the feature possibly be abused if the summary could only be changed within a few hours and as long as the edit is the top one? Or do people expect cases to open on the same day as the edit summaries are given? Honestly, I do not understand this. Waltham, The Duke of 23:29, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  11. Oppose. The benefits are negligible while the potential for abuse is substantial. Nsk92 (talk) 19:08, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
  12. Oppose One of the points of edit summaries is to keep a record. Are we to also have edit summary histories? Do you make an edit summary to explain the change to you edit summary? Can you change those edit summaries too? This is a waste of the developers time too, as the current software cannot do this. 1 != 2 19:14, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
  13. Oppose I do not see the problem for which this proposal advances a solution. I can imagine new problems and new rules about who is allowed to edit what in which summaries, and how to deal with those who abuse the feature, people suspected of abusing the feature, or people not using the feature being told they should. in lieu of null edits, etc. Why create a new layer of crap when the status quo is actually just fine? Jerry talk ¤ count/logs 17:34, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  14. Oppose if this were implemented, modifications would have to be logged for transparency. And of course, we'd have to have a field in which users could provide an explanation as to why they edited the summary. And then... oh... :D Happy‑melon 16:42, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
  15. Oppose. Too little benefit would cost too much in time and effort. WODUP 20:36, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
  16. So not worth it. It is supposed to be a record of what happened on the wiki - if you could change it (at all!) that defeats the purpose. Also, we would need a log for changes. But then people might make typos... – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 23:39, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
  17. Strong Oppose Completely unnecessary and a real potential for abuse add up to make this a very bad idea. We've all made typos and other typographic faux pas and, yes, it's embarrassing. But it's very much not a big deal. Too real a potential for abuse for this to be implemented. faithless (speak) 08:28, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
  18. Strong oppose - We should be concentrating on editing articles, not summaries. Sure, it looks stupid to have a misspelled word in your edit history, but in the bigger picture who cares? All it really does it open up potential new problems (even with the "own, last, recent" restrictions mentioned below) and not improve the encyclopedic content of Wikipedia. As such, it runs counter to the principles of Wikipedia. As someone above mentioned, check your work before you submit. Also preview your work. I will edit and preview a massive rewrite of an entire article for sometimes two days before I finally hit submit. The change log shows +10,000 or more article length increases in a single edit, with no need to go back and make further edits. If you're careful, you don't need to edit your edits. That's not to say I never make mistakes (I'm human, not a bot, after all), but so what. Sometimes it's funny to look back at your goofs and smile. --Willscrlt (Talk) 11:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
    Willscrlt: I completely agree that we should not care to correct typos in summaries. But that is not the reason for this proposal anyway. The only reason why we need this is to correct accidentally misleading summaries, such as empty, switched, or half-written summaries. I do not see that Wikipedians would start focusing on editing old summaries instead of articles, so I do not really understand your strong opposition against this nice to have feature - especially after your confession that even you make some summary mistakes from time to time ;-) Cacycle (talk) 19:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
    I suppose that the reason is that summaries a) can be accidentally misleading - what a person only slightly familiar with a subject considers an "insignificant change" can be a big deal to someone intimately familiar with it; b) can be deliberately misleading - a vandal could say "correcting typos" when really he changed every occurrence of "orange" to "purple"; c) are often omitted because many people don't care or understand; and d) are no match for a quick diff comparison (I love popups for that). I guess my thinking is that summaries are nice, but are not an essential feature of the software. Editing comments is really wasting time that could be spent on improving the project. It also makes the software more complicated and increases the chance that a bug could be introduced. I run two other wikis that use MediaWiki software, and I would prefer to keep feature creep out of the software when it doesn't significantly improve anything. --Willscrlt (Talk) 23:08, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
  19. Oppose Edit summaries serve the use of giving a reader a general idea of what the editor did. They are not extremely important. After all, the reader can always compare versions and see exactly what happened between those two versions. Constantly changing edit summaries would be confusing to the reader ("Wait--what? Didn't it just say something else a minute ago?") and would also serve for another place for vandals. Edit summaries are not that important! Like I said before, no one's going to change exactly what you did to the page, which is most important. IceUnshattered (talk) 00:12, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
    I am still waiting for an explanation how this feature could be used for vandalism under the proposed restrictions. I would also be interested how you came to the conclusion that editors would "constantly changing" their summaries under those restrictions. I disagree that summaries are not important, we have them for a good reason, i.e. to make life easier, and again, this proposal is for correcting accidentally misleading and confusing summaries. Cacycle (talk) 00:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
  20. Oppose otherwise what we end up with editors sanitizing their edit summaries as part of the lead up to RFA, RFB or ARBCOM. Yeah ok we all leave the odd spelling/typo error but live with it why waste server load with editors changing edit summaries. Gnangarra 04:10, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
    Please check the following "Short break" section for the actual proposal. You will see that it would not be possible to sanitize edit summaries. Cacycle (talk) 23:05, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
  21. Oppose I think any possible wasting of time over editing edit summaries or even the possibility of misuse or confusion in doing this easily outweighs the (to my mind) negligable benefits. Davewild (talk) 20:58, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
  22. Oppose there are just way to many ways in which this feature could be abused, vandals could post extremely virulent personal attacks or other obscene statements in their edit summaries and then remove them within seconds content with the knowledge that they had insulted every one watching recent changes at that time, and, that because they have changed there summaries the users have no proof. The only way to stop such abuse would be to give each edit summary its own history which would be extremely problematic. -IcĕwedgЁ (ťalķ) 06:12, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
  23. Opppose There needs to be an immutable record to follow development of article. Having to also rework the history of edit edits would not be worth the confusion of people fixing "teh" and other misspellings. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:38, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
  24. Oppose Why fix something that isn't broken? Yngvarr (c) 12:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
  25. Oppose Just relax and accept that the occaisional mispelling is not that bad a stain on your reputaition. Lumos3 (talk) 10:01, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Short break:

It was really not a good idea to start a poll without talking about the same thing.

The current proposal and bugzilla discussion can be found here. It asks for a mechanism to correct edit summaries (1) if it is your own edit (2) and if it is the last edit (3) during a short time span. This exact same mechanism is implemented in most online forum systems and has proven its efficacy and safety. Under these restrictions (own, last, recent), there is absolutely no potential for abuse (e.g. any following edit would make the previous summary permanent). At the same time you keep the benefits such as fixing accidentally empty summaries, switched summaries (when you have many tabs open), and half-completed raw summaries.

I am sure that many of the opposing users (as well as some supporting users which were obviously voting for a different mechanism) would actually support such an implementation under these restrictions. Again, this is not about allowing administrators to change summaries, not about allowing admin candidates to white-wash their editing history, and not about giving vandals any type of new toy. It would just be a nice feature to make editing Wikipedia easier - nothing more and nothing less. Cacycle (talk) 03:28, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree. With all due respect to the editors who have voted above, and to their arguments, a poll as badly organised as this one can yield little useful information on the consensus for the specific proposal made here. Waltham, The Duke of 15:22, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree as well. I too was about to fall victim of the poll, thinking I opposed, until I read this section. Now I'm thinking that the proposal is a pretty good idea. -- Ned Scott 10:16, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
if it is the last edit (3) during a short time span - the sticking point is that even if an edit summary exists for only a minute, it's going to be seen by recent change patrollers as well as editors who have the page on their watchlist - particularly those using RSS feeds for monitoring. Perhaps that's not a big issue - if a vandal posts obscenities and removes them 45 seconds later, there is presumably a log that can be used to demonstrate that the obscenities did exist. Still, we're adding yet one more thing to the complexity of Wikipedia. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:54, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Neutral

  • As a number of people mentioned above, this could be difficult in implementation and perhaps more importantly could have wider implications. My suggestion would be a special kind of 'change edit summary' edit. This would function much like the above (only possible with most recent edit by the person who made the edit and perhaps some sort of time limit as well) except instead of actually changing the edit summary, it simply makes an automatically completely null edit with summary and marks the previous edit summary as 'obsoleted' or something of that sort (similar to minor edits and bot edits). By default, these obsoleted edit summaries will be hidden but editors can obviously chose to view them if they so desire. My suggestion would be to extend this to edits as well. (It will always be completely optional.) This way, editors who e.g. don't preview or otherwise make several edits in quick succession can choose to hide the intervening edits if they desire to make it easier for other editors to browse the edit history (but as I mentioned other editors can still view the intervening edits if they want). A time limit will probably be important in this case to avoid editors who think they're funny and vandalise or cause other problems and then hide it a few hours later to try and obscure what they're doing, and also to avoid encouraging editors to edit when they are in a foul mood thinking they can hide anything bad they did later. Potentially this should be added as an autoconfirmed option or even a rollback option to discourage misuse further. Nil Einne (talk) 06:50, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
    Under the restrictions we are currently talking about (last plus own edit for a short time) I do not see the potential for abuse (after all, any following edit to the page makes the previous summary permanent). Therefore, I do not think that we need a history for this. A simple link on the history page that lets you change the summary entry of that edit would do it. We probably want to restrict this to registered users, but I do not think that we would need further restrictions. Сасусlе 21:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
  • While I'm still roughly neutral on whether an editor should be able to edit their own edit summaries (I can see both points of view, but haven't personally decided yet), I don't think admins should be able to edit "anyone's". Yes, talk page comments may be edited, but only under certain situations. (And I've seen enough successive revertings by admins of such edits, to be concerned.) And we really don't need to see the creation of reversion histories of edit summaries. So opening this door would seem to be a bad idea. And there's no real "need", since admins can always delete the revision in question. (And which can also be undeleted. And already has a set of logs.) If it's deemed truly necessary, just add this ability to the oversight "package". - jc37 20:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Please participate in the discussion of the "official feature request" for this under https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13937. Cacycle 19:16, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Bugzilla is for technical implementation, not discussion of this sort. The developers will not be happy if you start spamming the bug with "DO WANT!" – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 03:59, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Allow established/experienced editors to see deleted contributions

A number of editors have been around for years and have made thousands of edits, but are not necessarily interested in becoming admins. Nevertheless, such editors do participate in deletion reviews and requests for adminship discussions where seeing deleted contributions would indeed be relevant and helpful to assess the articles and candidates under discussion. Therefore, I propose that we come with a criteria by which established and experienced editors who have been editing for years and who have thousands of edits be able to see (not undelete, just see) deleted contribs for the purposes of such discussions. I am sure that it is somehow technologically possible to allow such editors to see the contribs without tacking on the undelete function. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 20:07, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I think this would be a good idea, it is somewhat difficult to decide whether or not an article should have been deleted if you can't actually see that content--Jac16888 (talk) 20:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
  • It is important that COPYVIO, BLP, and other things be kept under tight control. Before I would go along with any such proposal, it would have to be limited to certain articles, for a certain length of time. A "deletion reviewer" userright that would allow access to articles actively undergoing deletion review makes sense. A separate userright that would allow access to deleted edits made by a person in an RfA or other rights-elevation process also makes sense. For deleted articles, this would show just the edits made by RfA candidates and the immediate preceding edit for comparison, not any other edits. If there is no RfA-style vote, then limiting both rights to people who have both an old account with many edits and a recently-active edit history also makes sense. I would recommend such rights automatically expire after 6 months, with nearly-automatic renewal if the person is still an active editor and asks that the right be renewed. Defining "active editor," "old account," and "many edits" is something that can be hashed out later, but I would recommend at least 6 months, several thousand edits, and at least 100 edits in the immediate past 6 months. I know this sounds complicated, and it is, but creating a class "read only admins" that have access to all non-oversighted deleted edits is neither necessary nor desirable. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
  • I think for myself as the iniator of the thread, I have over 20,000 total edits, have been editing since 2006, have rollback rights, but although several editors have offered to nominate me for adminship I have so far declined as I really focus on non-admin areas. With that said I do think that my comments in RfAs and DRVs would be more intelligent if additionally based on deleted contribs. Plus, even personally, I have never and would never made any copyvio or BLP edits and so think I should be able to see the totality of my contributions. Best, --Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 23:24, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Just so you know, I wasn't saying that the process should be exactly the same as for AWB, but just that the process' be similar. i.e. Come up with a set of "requirements", then if someone wants those abilities, they apply at a page (like for AWB), and in most cases they are granted. This would make sure that there is some approval process, but it's not as involved as RfAs. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 19:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
(ec) Let's not get over-restrictive on this. Established editors have enough sense to avoid spreading blp and copyvio--and if they try to reinsert it they will soon no longer be established editors. If we're concerned about they're using it elsewhere, there are enough other ways to get deleted comment if one wishes to be in bad faith. I see no reason not to let anyone with a good reputation here have it, with an appropriate warning about what not to do with it. The material that is really sensitive is oversighted--since we dont fully trust all 1500 of the admins to be sensible 100% of the time either.
A six-month restriction is absurd, because we've made people full admins with less experience than that if they do things right. AWB requires 500 edits in mainspace, and anyone who does that much work successfully is probably trustworthy enough for this very limited purpose. But if this is to be an automatic right, not a screened right like AWB, yes, it should be a little higher than that. And some of the uses suggested by arb com do not require large amounts of experience in mainspace, unlike most of what AWB can do.
Additionally, any editor should be able to see the edits they hav themselves contributed. It simply doesnt make sense not to. 23:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs) 23:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
I mentioned COPYVIO and BLP not because they are likely to be reposted, but because if copyrighted material is made available to more than a select few, it can invite a copyright lawsuit. Likewise, if BLP material isn't deleted from view, it can invite a libel lawsuit. Now, the reality is, many BLP and COPYVIO items are in non-deleted edits that are open to every Internet user on the planet, so the risk of a lawsuit may not be all that high. However, we should at least recognize the possibility before proceeding. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:45, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
I think though if it is okay for admins to see the stuff, then those with as many contributions as admins who do participate in DRVs and RfAs should be able to also see these contribs (it would of course still be an overall limited number of editors) and as DGG or someone else said we really should be able to at least see the totality of our own contributions. Best, --Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 00:08, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Surely it would be better to use the rollback tools system of approval, it seems to be working fine, and since this is an admin tool too, it makes more sense to have a similar set-up--Jac16888 (talk) 23:37, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
The key difference is rollback and AWB don't grant any new powers, just a new convenience and the ability to really mess things up in a hurry rather than slowly. Granting the right to see deleted material is significant, done in the extreme it's equivalent to "backup operator" permissions on a computer. This is why it should be reserved for either people approved by the community a la RfA or to people who are not just trusted not to make mistakes, but trusted not to misuse information that is hidden to the masses. I know we aren't talking visibility to WP:OVERSIGHTed edits, but we are talking seeing what most can't. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't see why the present system of having an admin–many of whom say on their userpage that they are happy to do it–allow users to view deleted material on request is insufficient. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 00:00, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Skipping the middle man saves time and is more efficient. There's no reason why established editors should not be able to see all of their contribs. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 00:03, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Please, someone, centralize this discussion. I've posted quite heavily on this subject at the Wikipedia_talk: page, but it would seem that that is one of multiple places this discussion is taking place. Only one page is needed. Pick one please, and merge the two pages. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:31, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd say that the fragmentation is not intentional: the ArbCom discussion is (or should be, anyway) about the commons-admins-seeing-our-deleted-images issue, which is only tangentially connected to this discussion. Discussion on a new en.wiki right to see deleted contributions, which is what this is, should be kept in this thread. Happy‑melon 21:23, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't think the commons issue is even mentioned in the arbcom page, and was only mentioned in the first section on the talk page. That proposal is for a global right and is being discussed mainly on meta. Mr.Z-man 22:30, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd be very interested in a slightly enlarged set of userrights, without having all the admin rights. I have no wish to block users ever, or deal with page protection; but I'd often find it helpful if I could view deleted pages/images. The other two items from the WP:UAL#Table list which I would be interested in include "editprotected" and "unwatchedpages". -- Quiddity (talk) 20:13, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
What, you don't want the "all-you-can-eat" option? And we're doing a one-day-only 2-for-1 offer on oversight: buy hiderevision, get checkuser half price!! :D In seriousness, there are a number of admin permissions that I would like to see broken out, but not into separate groups a la rollback, ipblockexempt, etc. Why are we so ideologically opposed to a 'trusted' usergroup (with a nicer name, of course). Bundle rollback, accountcreator, deletedhistory, noratelimit, edit-semi-protected, unwatchedpages, and a handful of others together and dish it out like rollback: you get someone who is equipped with all the admin tools that don't have sharp edges, and you leave the admins free to handle the 'big three' of protect, delete and block. Happy‑melon 20:26, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the API usergroups list, the less dangerous admin rights are: deletedhistory, import (unused), move-subpages, autopatrol, proxyunbannable (unused), rollback, trackback (unused), reupload-shared (not sure what this does, may be unused), unwatchedpages, upload_by_url (seems to be disabled?), ipblock-exempt, markbotedits (for rollback), suppressredirect (currently unused), apihighlimits, browsearchive, noratelimit, tboverride, override-antispoof, and uboverride. Mr.Z-man 03:48, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Happy-melon's idea for a "trusted" user group. This group could be given to experienced editors who don't feel ready (or don't want at all) to be an admin. The current rollback group could be merged into this group as well. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 19:30, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
For various reasons, I like the idea of a "trusted" group too - given anyone can get an account, a standard not needing RFA, simply to say "this person broadly has the idea and even if not perfect edits mostly decently". Roughly, it ties in with high risk vs. low risk, and also may mean a user who wants that, knows there will be some review of their reputation and work, and hence that it may mean a bit more to build a good rep and do good work :) FT2 (Talk | email) 23:08, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
The only problem is that besides the ability to view deleted content and rollback and perhaps autopatrol, most of the "safe" admin rights are either unused (import), rarely used (markbotedits), not very helpful (unwatchedpages), or bypasses for disruption-prevention measures (tboverride) that the vast majority of users may never need. Especially if we choose not to bundle the deleted history rights with this, it would basically be nothing but a status symbol. Mr.Z-man 23:37, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

In reply to above, the present system of admins saying they will give copys of deleted articles is with caveats. No copyvios, no BLP, nothing that would be inappropriate for the general public. I know I have deleted, and I have seen deleted information in articles that is not suitable for the masses or the average editor to have access to. As for the average editor seeing their deleted contributions, I don't think that is what this proposal is for. This is for people with a genuine need. Curiosity is not a genuine need. The idea of skipping the middle man is moot for the reasons I have just mentioned. If this going to be implemented the requirements would be on par with a successful RfA. Community trust, no real history of blocks or abuse, etc. I think if someone wants this ability they need to demonstrate they could pass an RfA if they attempted one. KnightLago (talk) 19:07, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

A general comment: First off. I think this is a brilliant idea. I think there should be a barn star for this proposal! In reply to KnightLago: Hi KnightLago. I respectfully disagree. Here is the reason. I would like to use this feature myself but in the past I've been block. I've been blocked personally for several reasons which, now that I think about it, may have been justified. However, anyone, that has enough experience to have been blocked, such as myself, must surely know what the concensequence are if they violate the trust of the community. For example, using this new feature for disruption would most likely be considered an automatic block. I can think of many other examples but one that comes to mind is an editorial dispute over content. Such disputes would be dealt with by our current channels (Admins) who could easily permanently or temporarily take away the privilege of going back into deleted page history. Also, I think an RfA is pretty much a load of crap of politics which really doesn't apply for this privilege. (I am a little biased though since my RfA failled many a years ago. Nevertheless, I too don't really have an interest in being an admin right now and think it's a great idea for experienced users to be able to check deleted pages. In particular, I think experienced users (8000 edits or more during a period of 2 years. The 2 years in mandatory.) should be permitted access to all deleted pages. Less experienced user (let's say 2000 to 7999 edits or 1 year of experience (we could also add closes like: despite the fact that they may have been editing for more then 2 years they must meet the edit number)) should only have access to content which they specifically help contribute. (The reason I say less experienced users is because, sometimes, in my case, I remember making a new article (just in May 2008) and honestly believing that it could make it. (See User:CyclePat/Rhumart). I had to request that the page be moved to my user page and then make another request so I could merge the information to Free World Trust v. Électro Santé Inc.. And on top of that there was some more melodrama that I added because I was the only editor because I tried having the content speedy deleted, and tried moving the page myself to my own user page. Anyways... I just wanted to share this story with you because I think it's a relevant example of how we can cut back on melodramatic administrator who want to follow procedures by the book. In my case, the admin could have deleted the page, and I could have then userfied it myself. Finally, I think new editors shouldn't have access because they may not completely understand wikipedia's policy, may be trolls, etc, and may likely simply recreate the same page again. --CyclePat (talk) 17:54, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, I am always happy to see them added to my list!  :) --Happy editing! Sincerely, Le Grand Roi des CitrouillesTally-ho! 18:05, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, The software support for tiered deletion is pretty much done, though it's still in code review and not turned on yet. Once its activated deciding how to use it is up to the community. Cheers. --Gmaxwell (talk) 20:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the tiered deletion system should be used to divide up deleted content. The "Trusted" user group could have access to anything that was deleted because of notability issues, etc. Copyvios and BLP stuff could still be only visible for admins. I can't think of anything that's wrong with estabished/experienced users seeing information with notability issues, and they might be able to find something notable about it. I've made a few articles that were speedy-deleted because they weren't "notable", but I still believe that they should be included in Wikipedia. Giving established users access to this content would help Wikipedia and not have many (if any) negative effects. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 01:10, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
surely this tiered-deletion system effectively negates the only major concern about this proposal, that more people will have access to copyvios and blpvios, with that fear removed short of the odd slip by an admin, then i really can't see any reason not to go ahead with this--Jac16888 (talk) 20:03, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I just reread the entire discussion again and I admit there are a few promising ideas. The high standard with close to RFA like requirements I was arguing for would be for a general view deleted privilege. I don't like the idea of such a thing and think there would be more than a few problems with it. As Davidwr said, Copyvios, BLP information, libel, attack pages, etc. would be available to the public with no real need to see the information other than curiosity. While I agree that the risk of a lawsuit is not high, the possibility becomes greater. Besides that, the idea of RFA and DRV only deleted viewing is interesting and after thinking about it I recognize there is a genuine need, so I would be for that. Regarding viewing your own deleted edits, maybe after a certain time limit and/or edit count this could be allowed. The problem would be new users continually recreating deleted content or trolls if the limit/ability is set too low. As for the tiered-deletion system, after reading it I am not exactly sure what the parameters are or how much it could be applied to this proposal. Right now it look more geared to admins and deleted information viewable to them and to what extent. A tiered deletion system sounds interesting, but the details need to be greatly expanded upon before I can offer a real opinion. After reading all of this, the question I have is which proposal is being advanced right now? Because there are a lot of ideas that have been thrown out on this page, but there needs to be some direction in order to focus on the details of the proposal. KnightLago (talk) 23:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Tiered deletion with established/experienced user group

This section has gotten a bit crowded so I thought I would summarize the idea that I am proposing.

  • A new user group between auto-confirmed and administrator be created and given rights like rollback and other "less dangerous" (as decided later on) rights that are currently admin-only. This group could supersede the current rollback group.
  • A tiered deletion system be implemented with categories as follows:
  • Oversighted edits (Oversight only)
  • Copyvio, BLP, attack, etc. (Admins and higher only)
  • Miscellaneous, non-notable, etc. articles (Established/Experienced users and higher only)
  • When articles are deleted, admins select which category the deleted page belongs under. To most users, the result would be the same as the current system. However, the lowest tier (notability, etc.) would be visible to established/experienced users.

I don't think that it would be that big of a deal if these users had access to the lowest tier of articles, and those users may be able to improve the article to fix any notability issues. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 20:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Seeing stars

There's a bit of a mess currently regarding various uses of symbols involving a number of stars.

For example:

The disambig at Four Star page lists some articles related to four star and has a see also section which lists more articles related to four and other numbers of stars. Both lists are incomplete, and the second is probably inappropriate. The presence of the other numbers of stars here indicates a more general problem to me.

Three Star redirects to Three Star Club, again no hatnote at the target, and there seems to be no disambig for three stars.

Five Star (disambiguation) has a similar structure to the Four Star disambig.

Before starting to tidy this up, I'm inviting discussion. We may even end up writing a guideline, but let's first work out some sort of consensus as to what we should do.

Or, is there already a relevant guideline that I'm overlooking?

Issues:

  • Capitalisation of disambig page names... shouldn't it be four star (disambiguation)?
  • Need to complete the disambiguation pages... how far up should the numbers go?
  • Hatnotes missing
  • Redirects... should probably go to the disambig pages rather than to individual articles, unlikely to be clear primary usages
  • Alternatives to the see also section of the disambig page for navigation to other numbers of stars (maybe a template?)
  • Others...?

Comments sought of course. Also some help with the cleanup in due course. The survey of existing practice above isn't exhaustive, but enough that I thought I should seek some other input at this stage. Andrewa (talk) 17:39, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Three stars exists.
You'll probably get better answers if you ask at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation or Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). Both are fairly active. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:41, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Make "Four star" a disambiguation page and redirect the others to that. Grandmasterka 02:46, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for comments so far... let's continue at Talk:Star (classification)/Archives/2013#Related articles and redirects. Andrewa (talk) 19:23, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I believe adding a link to Special:NewPages under the interaction section of the Wikipedia Sidebar would increase patrolling of those pages and make it easier to do so. What do you all think about doing that? - Preceding unsigned comment added by SunDragon34 (Talk) at 23:09, 11 July 2008

I think it would be a good idea. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe those buttons could be drop down menus? For example, click a plus sign by Recent Changes and it drops down a menu with New Pages, Newbie Contribs, User Creation logs, etc. Hmm. TN‑X-Man 19:16, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
The drop-down menu idea sounds good. Making those changes probably would increase their use. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 18:55, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
I was just talking to someone about this yesterday on IRC, I didnt realize it had already been suggested! I think it is a great idea as I just recently started NP Patroll myself. Currently new page patrol is so backed up that there are still unpatrolled pages at the end of the 720 hour time frame. Anything that would make it easier on patrollers would really be a big help. and the dropdown [+] is a very good idea! I like that alot %%-SYKKO-%% (talk to me) 19:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree, it would be very useful to add that one link to the sidebar, most likely in the "interaction" section. I think the drop-down menu could be added as well. Artichoker[talk] 02:10, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Castles By Century

We use Wikipedia for a number of uses, but mostly for our genealogy research for various families. Much of our time is spent sifting through the various European castles to find out which were build in specific centuries. It would be extremely helpful to us and other researchers, if wikipedia would create a page that lists the various castles by the century in which they were built.

For example, just the other day, we were searching for a Danish 11th century castle; however, to our misfortune, we could not find one on wikipedia. It would not only save us hours, days, weeks, and even sometimes months of searching, but it would also assist many others people/ groups in their various forms of research.

We wrote to Wikipedia concerning this matter, and we received a reply from a Phil Sandifer suggesting we use this form to make our proposal/ suggestions. We sincerely hop you will consider our proposal. Thank you for your time.

It is possible to get the answer to your query by using a Category intersection of Category:11th century establishments and Category:Castles in Denmark. While category intersections cannot be performed directly within Wikipedia, there's an external tool to perform them.
This query tells me that Koldinghus is the only castle which matches your criteria; of course, there are very likely to be castles which we don't yet have articles on, or articles which have not been added to the appropriate categories.
For my own interest, I tried other centuries, and got more results using Category:12th century architecture as my period category than Category:12th century establishments. You can help by adding articles to categories yourself.-gadfium 19:41, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
For what it's worth, this search can in fact be performed in Wikipedia. Just search for 'incategory:"11th century establishments" incategory:"Castles in Denmark"'. Algebraist 17:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for permissions

After Rjd0060 discussed this idea with me, I was bold and created a new proposed "request for permissions page" which would handle all admin-granted requests for permission here. It would basically keep it all organised onto one page. The page would handle rollback, IPblockexempt and account creator flags. It would be based on the current RfR page and the permissions could be granted by any admin after a flick through a users contribs/logs. Let me know your thoughts at Wikipedia talk:Requests for permissions. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:21, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

RE: Universal navigation bar to go with unified login

(old discussion)

I had a go at hacking together something roughly like this at User:Tiny plastic Grey Knight/scripts/suldropdown.js. Please see my monobook.js for an example of how to import the script and customise the menu. There are still several bugs, but nothing dangerous. You need to add such an import statement on each project where you want the menu to appear, it won't follow you around.

Most annoying bugs so far: On Internet Exploder, the lists still have bullet marks and the first project isn't selectable. The menu seems to jump behind the main page-block (#content) unless I set #content's z-index to 0; setting the menu's z-index to anything seems to have no effect.

Opinions and bugfixes are welcome! --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 08:27, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, probably it can be made prettier too, let's count that as a bugfix. :-P --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 12:40, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
NEATO! I like it a lot!!!!!!!!! The arrow grafix u chose were are very complementary. Do you think you could add some more spacing between the row links and have each light up with a background-color when you hover? .:davumaya:. 16:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

When was the sidebar changed??? I don't really mind the search box being moved up, but its new name is terrible. Find is not the right term for that. There really needs to be more community input before changing something affecting everything on enwiki. Reywas92Talk 18:57, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm attempting to gauge the community's response to the header change (at the time when it's the least disruptive, given the fact that MonoBook users already must adjust to the box's new position). Yours is the second criticism that I've seen since performing the edit more than fifteen hours ago.
This was discussed a while back (along with the rest of the sidebar redesign). The consensus within that group of editors was unclear, so broader input is needed.
As for the rationale, it simply doesn't make sense for "Go" and "Search" to fall under the heading of "search" (and the addition of the auto-completion feature makes this more true than ever before). Both are methods of finding articles, so I strongly feel that the the "find" label (already used in the Cologne Blue skin, so it isn't entirely new) is the most logical choice. —David Levy 19:59, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
This discussion should probably move to MediaWiki talk:Sidebar. But I will say that I think 'find' is far more appropriate. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:01, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
the rest ('navigation' etc.) are nouns, but 'find' is a verb . it looks a little out of place, but not worth changing. ninety:one 20:10, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Both "search" and "find" can serve as nouns or verbs, and I agree the heading comes across as a verb in this instance. We'd intended to use the headings "navigate" and "interact," but the replacement of "navigation" evidently broke some users' custom scripts. —David Levy 20:23, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

In common web browser parlance, "search" = "find pages which match this input" and "find" = "search the current page for this input", for better or worse. Drive it on a parkway and park it in a driveway, your mileage may vary. — CharlotteWebb 13:22, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Generally, search is the beginning of the process, and find is the end; i.e. "I searched for X and found Y". Locate may be a more accurate heading here. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 22:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Note: the box is again titled "Search". -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:06, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. "Locate", to me, more strongly implies success (or at least that the item sought is in fact known to exist). — CharlotteWebb 14:37, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Table of contents margin

Per a brief discussion at User talk:Ed Fitzgerald#Spacing?, how would people feel about this?: 

#toc { margin-top: 10px; }

—Wknight94 (talk) 18:24, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I feel it is a very nice CSS statement, well spaced and compact. If you want opinions on what the statement would do when added to Wikipedia's global CSS files, you should probably post some more details and perhaps some examples. Anomie⚔ 21:43, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
What I meant was what do folks think about adding some space above the table of contents? The guy at the talk page I mentioned was so vehement about adding space that he was inserting blank lines and a comment at the end of the first paragraph of various articles! —Wknight94 (talk) 22:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

It might be better to use some relative units (e.g., 3% or 1.5em) instead of 10px. -- Taku (talk) 23:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to keep the lists of basic topics together. Someone has renamed one of them so it no longer matches the set!

The maintainers of the List of basic opera topics have renamed that list to List of opera topics. That page has the same scope and the same standard format as the rest of the basic topic lists. And the set of pages called Lists of topics that it has been moved into are comprehensive in scope. The page is clearly a member of the wrong set of pages now.

I propose that the Lists of basic topics be kept together, and that they retain the standard names of the set they belong to. If they are to be renamed, they should be renamed together as a set, as in the proposal in the previous section above.

If the pages can be renamed by local consensus individually on each one's talk page, then the discussion in the previous section above won't make much difference, as any of the pages could be renamed by anybody at anytime on a whim. Every time a page is moved out of the set, it creates a hole in the set's coverage, or at least has the potential to create confusion over what the purpose and scope of the renamed page is.

List of opera topics should be renamed back to List of basic opera topics, since that matches the naming convention currently in use for the set it was designed to be a part of. And if the discussion in the previous section above determines a new name for the set, it should apply to its opera component as well. The Transhumanist 19:22, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

  • Looking at the edit history of this article, it seems there were objections to the words 'basic' and 'outline' as requiring POV decisions by editors. Does this objection still apply and might it apply to the previous section also? Hmains (talk) 22:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose I agree with Hmains: the word "basic" is problematic (because it is PoV) in the titles of list articles, just like words like "notable" and "prominent." (Note: based on edit summary, User:Nrswanson appears to have the same PoV concern with "basic"). UnitedStatesian (talk) 19:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
    • Perhaps an alternate word like "core" or "fundamental", in the sense of being taught in most College (or earlier) introductory courses? That would at least be verifyable through published textbooks.—RJH (talk) 16:24, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia even an appropriate name?

While the main page redesign proposal is an good idea for giving the site a cleaner yet prettier look, I have another concern.

I mean, given Wikipedia's international/multi-lingual goal, the word Wikipedia might be a tough word to pronounce in different tongues. While it is pretty easy and familiar to us English speakers, I fear others might stumble upon the syllables. Think about the Simple English Wikipedia.  Marlith (Talk)  00:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

With the huge 'brand' that Wikipedia has, I can't honestly see you ever succeeding in getting near to having the name changed. TalkIslander 00:11, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, plus Wikipedia has been adopted into other languages with equivalent translations, it would be a proposal to change dozens of names with their own individual audience. WP-in-other-languages I feel are a compromise to the English WP. It's difficult enough to internationalize an English product, why not increase its viability with translations. If you feel this proposal has more merit I think it would be wise to present it to Wikimedia. .:davumaya:. 15:35, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, just a note. Nothing huge...

First I think it is an appropriate name (and that you would never be able to change it now) but I think you should know that even in English there is a debate on how it should be pronounced. See Wikipedia (terminology)#Pronunciation (part of it revolves around the issue of how to pronounce the Hawaiian term Wiki) Here is a link to an off-site discussion of the matter: [3] Rmhermen (talk) 00:29, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

a) The name is just fine, it is recognizable and people figure out we are an encyclopedia quickly, b) it is far to late to change it now. 1 != 2 15:39, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

a) Actually, I agree with the original poster, I've always thought the name weird, misleading, and a touch off-putting. I've always thought so, right from the start. Is it too late to change it? Yeah, probably (but see below). But how much nicer if the name were "wepedia" or "ourpedia" or "netpedia" (all of which have probably been taken by commercial interests by now!), for example. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always thought the word "wiki" had to do with a rather strange new-age cultish semi-religion, and could never figure out why in the world this public encyclopedia used it, unless, of course, this public internet encyclopedia was actually started by wiki-practitioners. And, as I think about it more, a name change would be a fantastic public relations event, with tremendous promotion. Look at all the free publicity Esso got when the conglomerate of Esso, Enco and ... well, whatever the other one was ... changed their name to Exxon. The technical difficulties are nothing; retaining the ownership of the name wiki, simply have a redirect to the "ourpedia" home page, and I have no doubt google is smart enough to figure out how to redirect searches that include wiki to include everything relevent in "ourpedia". This also brings up an interesting challenge for linquists; what single word is the most universal word in the world meaning "all of us"? Personally, I haven't the faintest idea (what a laugh it would be if the word turned out to be "wiki") what it is, but it's worth taking a look at.

Yes, it does have to do with a new-age cultish semi-religion: The Internet. I've never heard anyone criticize wikipedia for its name. Maybe for other things, but not for its name. The name also makes good logical sense once you know the reason for it. "Wepedia"? "Ourpedia"? Now, those sound weird. Its not "ours", it's everyone's, so maybe "Everyonepedia"? Nah. However, given the premise that anyone can edit, with everyone rushing to their keyboards you could all it "Stampedia". Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 01:58, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
The idea of a wiki predates Wikipedia by several years. Mr.Z-man 02:06, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Exactly. Plus what about the Wikimedia Foundation? A name change will absoluely positively never happen. Although, I do like the idea of Stampedia... ;)
Wikipedia is a registered trademark, valued by some as being worth at least $7 billion, so the chances of that happening are pretty much minimal. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 18:08, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorting of subcategories

Currently subcategories are sorted alphabetically like regular articles. This creates the need to look through the entire category to find all of the subcategories, unless the person adding the subcat cleverly used some special text. I propose that subcategories are alphabetically placed before articles within a category, always placing all subcategories at the beginning of a category. The only undesirable effect that I can foresee is that subcategories would then require their own TOC when the numbers reach 500+, but most categories do not contain nearly this many subcategories, so this would come up rarely. Thoughts? JohnnyMrNinja 09:49, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Subcategories are placed before articles in a category - see, for example, Category:Pakistani people by occupation. What you're referring to, I think, is that when there are more than 200 or so articles in a category, they appear on multiple pages, and the subcategories follow the alphabetic range of articles. See, for example, Category:Economists, where there are six subcategories - 3 on the first page, 1 on the second, 1 on the third, and 1 on the fourth. It would certainly be better if all six subcategories appeared on the first page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:19, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
I'd agree with that, except... What if there were 200 sub-categories? : ) - jc37 02:26, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Then those subcats probably need to be placed into more general subcats. Wrad (talk) 02:28, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
They are not automatically. It requires something like a piped link with a space after it, see [4]. They are placed at the top of the screen, if that's what you mean, but it isn't what I'm referring to. They are still alphabetized with the regular articles, just displayed at the top. Category:User essays contains Category:WikiProject U.S. Roads essays, but you have to click next 200 until you hit the W section, where it is automatically placed. A lot of people would probably never even see it there. JohnnyMrNinja 02:50, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't fully process your response before I responded. So does this seem like a good idea? Should I take it to Bugzilla? (that's where these things go, right?) JohnnyMrNinja 02:53, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
I like the idea. It might be a little tricky to implement, because currently a single SQL query is done to get a certain section of the alphabet on each page, without regards to the namespace. It would be easy to order the results by namespace first, but then the logic to decide where to start the next page is a little more complicated (so the code would be a little uglier), and I'm not sure if there would be a SQL performance impact by changing the order people want to retrieve pages in from the database. JackSchmidt (talk) 03:23, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
I really don't know anything about SQL, so forgive me if this sounds silly, but couldn't the coding for the way Category names are handled just be changed, effectively making two consecutive alphabets, a Category one followed by a regular one? They could display normally but be alphabetized first. As Categories are the only places these pages are usually alphabetized it won't affect much else (does this even slightly make sense?). This would simplify things (maybe). JohnnyMrNinja 03:41, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
To be clear, the technical details are probably best left to the devs (or to WP:VP/T if you want to get more advice on how to phrase it), and I'm just saying don't be surprised if the feature is not implemented since the devs are busy and this isn't a no-consequence one-line change to the code. This page should focus on deciding if the proposal is good (which includes being feasible, but not really whether or not it is easy). I think this is a good proposal, and worth seeing if the devs like it.
Your description of the solution is basically right; instead of using just the name of the page as the thing to alphabetize against, one uses the namespace (descending), followed by the pagename, effectively creating an alphabet for each namespace. The problem is that an enormous number of things need to get pages back in alphabetical order, and so they need an index. If this new sorting method also needs an index, then that is a big deal to add, or if it doesn't get an index, maybe suddenly no one can browse Category:Living people any more. It's possible I'm a nervous nelly, and no dev thinks there are SQL problems, then it really is basically a bunch of trivial one line changes. JackSchmidt (talk) 04:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
So how do we find out? JohnnyMrNinja 04:36, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

(undent) I suggest starting a discussion on the talk page of WP:CAT, and perhaps a cross-reference posting on the talk page of WP:SUBCAT, to see if there is general support for this. I think it's a good idea. (The only disadvantage that I can see if for those very few higher-level categories where editors regularly move articles into subcategories; if there were more than 200 subcategories - which I'm guessing is infrequent - then the first page of the category wouldn't show problem cases.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:18, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, one example of a problem category to consider is Category:Albums by artist, "This category has the following 200 subcategories, out of 9,559 total." Personally, I like how api.php lets you chose what namespace you want to look at, so you can find all categories in the category (subcategories), all talk pages in it, all user pages in it, etc. each in its own report. It might be easier to add a feature where you can restrict the Category:Whatever display to *just* subcategories, or *just* pages (default being like now, both, sorted together). I think that would be a one-line change (which I could write and post to bugzilla). JackSchmidt (talk) 13:49, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Just adding my support for Johnny's original proposal. I think the 200-per-page limit could be raised as well (would 500 be a problem?) --Kotniski (talk) 08:21, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Adding my support as well. Having all subcatagories listed before listing any articles would be very helpful to me. The table of contents could be linked only to articles, as most categories have fewer than 200 sub categories and very few have so many that a separate table of contents would be of any real help. The table of contents indexing becomes more important as the number of pages of entries increases. Dbiel (Talk) 22:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps categories could also have a ( 200 | 500 | 1000 ) option, with 200 (or 500) default, much as history etc. As having 9000+ subcategories is far from common, it would seem a happy compromise. JohnnyMrNinja 04:39, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Bot to update US city populations

I have filed a request to add functionality to my bot, specifically to update the various US city and town articles per the updated, official Census figures (which are the figures that should be used per WP:USCITY). The folks over at BAG suggested I would need more input from the community given the potential scope (there are approximately 19,500 incorporated places in the US), so I am bringing this up for attention here.

The actual functionality of the bot would be simple. The "population_total" field in the infobox would be updated to match the current Census figures, and the "population_footnotes" section would be updated to reflect the new source. Existing sources in that field would be maintained in the event they are used elsewhere in the article. The main body of the article would not be altered by the bot.

This bot would only affect the articles for incorporated places in the United States, as these are the only ones for which the Census releases annual estimate figures. Unincorporated communities would not fall under the scope of this work. I will make a link to this discussion so the BAG folks can take a peek at it. Feel free to comment here if you are interested. Thanks, Shereth 15:26, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Since WP:USCITY says to use "US Census numbers only" I would think your conversion to US Census estimates may be controversial. We have seen this already at Detroit where the estimate was officially protested by the city and then raised by 50,000 (in a city of only about 900,000)[5]. Rmhermen (talk) 15:54, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps, although I doubt anyone would argue that the 2000 figures are any more accurate and relevant today than the 2007 estimates. Many articles currently feature estimates from various years and sources other than the US Census, and I'm aiming for some consistency. Shereth 16:36, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
This idea seems fine to me. Although there would be a lot of edits, but it's important to have accurate information. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 15:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I think the point made that estimates are not accurate information above was missed. How about this, assuming you're proposal is these fields (Snipped from WP:USCITY):
  1. | population_footnotes =<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.census.gov/popest/estimates.php|title=US Census July 1, 2006 est}}</ref>
  2. | population_total = 8214426
  3. | population_metro = 21976224
  4. | population_urban = 287759

Have the template modified to add the four fields:

  1. | est-population_footnotes =<ref name="Latest estimates">{{cite web|url=http://www.census.gov/popest/estimates.php|title=US Census July 1, 2006 est}}</ref>
  2. | est-population_total = boo<ref name="Latest estimates"/>
  3. | est-population_metro = goo<ref name="Latest estimates"/>
  4. | est-population_urban = foo<ref name="Latest estimates"/>
and the logic modified to test the second parameter and 'fiddle' with the 'table' (assumed) output format so the two figures appear side by side (dynamically, iff defined).
Taking one as an example tack into the output line for population total:
{{#if: est-population_total|   (est: boo<ref name="Latest estimates"/>}}... ''however that field ends now.'' I presume the same kind of if-logic for the population output line, using "(Latest estimates<Your reference here>)", etc.
There must be 300-400 people around that can change that template that way... and keep everyone's nose "in-joint".
This approach breaks nothing, does not change official statistics (i.e. 'Official Findings'), or hide the old whilst keeping the distinction between estimates and the last official census findings. A little testing with the modified template in one of the {{Tt#}} templates with manual changes to 20-30 pages, would prove the new template, and then make sure your bot can add the fields vice altering the old. // FrankB 19:10, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
I really like this idea. In fact, so long as no one gets bent out of shape about adding the new lines to the infobox, I would rather prefer to do it this way. It shouldn't be too hard to re-code the bot to do the footwork and make sure the actual line represents the official (2000) figures at the same time. Shereth 19:17, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Addendum - while I still like the idea, after reviewing a number of articles for US cities (as well as several cities in other countries) it appears that the vast majority are using whatever estimates are most current. Before proceeding with this project I'd like to get a better feel for what the community consensus is, whether Census estimates qualify as "official" or we should revert these back to the 200 census numbers. Shereth 20:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

GA Symbol on Article

I've noticed how featured articles stars are in the top right-hand corner of featured articles. Why aren't Good articles symbols there? Can they be? Shapiros10 contact meMy work 17:19, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
See this archived discussion at WT:GA on that particular subject. Thanks, D.M.N. (talk) 17:23, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I like that idea, because since I have learned about ratings of articles I have come to rely on an articles rating to know how reliable it is. I think having some sort of icon could help to squash some of the nay-sayers who are anti-wiki* %%-SYKKO-%% (talk to me) 04:30, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Seriously, this has been beaten to death. Please check the link; every argument for and against the idea is there. Waltham, The Duke of 15:43, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Recently discussed and broadly defeated for the gazillionth time; not again. Nothing has changed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikinnovations

I think it would useful if Wikipedia started a sister project called Wikinnovations. The idea is to take open-source development to the masses. If a layman has an idea for an innovation for a product, software or service, he could post it to the site. People could comment on or add ideas to the innovation.

Think about all of the times you've thought, "wouldn't it be nice if . . ." and then the idea slips into your next thoughts as quickly as it came. You could "twitter" the passing idea to Wikinnovations and it would become a seed for a new product or more ideas. Think about all of the people with ideas for applications on iPhone, but do not code or are too busy to bother themselves with the idea. Many people have probably had ideas for incremental improvements on their car or refrigerator, but will not be competing with GM or GE in the near future.

Eventually, most products, software and services would be categorized with its respective wish list of future features and discussions. The ideas could then be rated by users for usefulness or need. The best ideas would float to the top. Marketers could mine the site for good ideas and pursue innovations that have sufficient market pull. This site could substantially accelerate the evolution of products and meet the needs of people in rapidly changing environments.

David Kern Roberts

This is a great idea, but it's the wrong place. This is for proposals for the English Wikipedia. New project ideas should be posted on Meta. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 00:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
The Foundation is very conservative about starting up new projects; it might be easier to just go ahead and create the wiki yourself. Please see WikiWikiWeb:WikiFarms for a list of places that will help you get a wiki started! You could also search around on wikiindex: in case somebody else has already had a similar idea. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 12:01, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Subpages tab

I would like a subpages tab, like the history tab, that creates a dynamic list of every subpage (and the subpage of every subpage) for a given page on WP. It would make finding things much simpler, it would also help towards keeping WP more transparent. I personally can't remember how to get to half the junk I have under my userpage, and it would be very nice to browse through all the subpages of WP:VG. JohnnyMrNinja 06:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Try Special:PrefixIndex. --- RockMFR 06:17, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
This is perfect. I did not see this listed at Special:SpecialPages. Would this not be desirable as a tab? JohnnyMrNinja 06:23, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that's why I have it as one :). I took it from Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/User tabs; if you want it outside userspace you can easily rewrite it. Algebraist 10:54, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipediakids

From this discussion Emmanuelm came up with the idea of Wikipedia for kids (lovingly called "wikipediakids") and I strongly support this idea; Wikipedia is not censored, and it should be that way, but it leaves us with the problem of possibly leaving out an internet minority with unsuitable content. If "wikipediakids" was considered and debated, I propose this set of basic prinicples that would differ from the 'pedia we know and love:

Censorship and such
  1. Articles would be suitable for children, with attention taken to also preserve the range of content that the site would offer. I.e, Sex would not be an article, but Mother and Father would be. (if that doesn't make sense, please harrass me)
  2. Pictures would be appropriate and self explanatory.(see below)
Article clarity and readibility
  1. Articles would essentially be lengthened introductory paragraphs. This would allow the length of the article to be reasonable, and the content understandable. They would alos be linked to the full length article on en.wiki, that way they could "advance" if you will.
  2. Pictures and other media would be self-explanatory and would attract the attention; I'm almost certain that most youngins understand more effectivly with a pictorial representation.
  3. Length (going into greater detail) would be a heavy issue on WikiKids. The article would have to be a readable size, maybe the equivilant of a long stub?
Vandalism
For fairly obvious reason (I hope), the vandalism that is rampant here (specifically that with homophobic/vulgar content) can not be evident there. It would ruin the entire purpose, and for this problem I present these solutions:
  1. Only registered users on en.wiki can edit.
  2. Those who want to edit on WikiKids have to be reviewed or approved by an admin.
  3. All uploaded files would be reviewed, then posted.
  4. New pages have to be run through a couple other users.

That's all I can think of. Tell me your ideas! Or crush mine, either/or. Leonard(Bloom) 03:34, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

You can't really just say "pictures will be self-explanatory" and have it be so - we restrict ourselves to freely licensed media, so we're stuck with what we can get. If such a project were to be hosted by Wikimedia, or use the Wikipedia name, I assume it would have to use free media too. And doesn't linking back to the Wikipedia article somewhat defeat the purpose, to keep the kids separated onto a "safer" site? Finally, to truly eliminate vandalism (or make it really unlikely, at least) you'd have to either have trusted users approve every edit before it goes live or have very strict requirements for who can get approval to edit, which would dramatically reduce your potential userbase. Mr.Z-man 03:44, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
That bit about freely liscened media makes sense, and I overlooked that. Hm... I'll ponder that bit later. Moving on, the linking back issue I wouldn't say is self-destructive; linking back allows for more information at the risk of unsuitable content. Maybe a warning page when you the link or something? Like a redirect to a warning, then "continue? yes/no" bit. As for the vandalism, as you kinda said, there is always a human factor, but assuming good faith and having tighter vandalism watches (again, that is assuming people are willing to volunteer; I would) would help. I hope that helps clear some things up. Leonard(Bloom) 03:59, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
So, no images of the Prophet then, right? That could be damaging to some of the little tots. No pictures of anyone in a bra, in fact, we better not have anything about brassieres or breasts. And what's with that bit about not being homophobic, that sounds like homosexual recruitment to me. Of course, nothing about any ideas of how religious education affects children and certainly nothing that would indicate controversy about the way children are educated in any province, state or country. A whole lot of articles about disease would have to be changed to "It's going to be fine, just take the medicine".
I support none of what I've just said, but any one of them are illustrative of the absolute minefield of setting out to produce a Wikipediakids. We can barely figure out what's good for us adults. It's a noble idea, but to follow Z-man's comment on having trusted users - who defines which users are trusted to approve the content? The reality of parenthood is that everyone has their own specific idea of what is right for their kids. I can see problems arising on many levels. If you can figure out a way to extend the encyclopedia to be used by younger users though, more power to you! Franamax (talk) 06:03, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
It's doubtful that the Wikimedia Foundation themselves would want to do it — the Wikipedia is probably as far as they want to go into the content-segregative kind of thing. Of course, you can always fork it yourself. :-)
I'll ask User:NonvocalScream to chime in here, I believe he's looked at some similar underlying concepts in the past and might be able to offer some constructive suggestions on how to avoid the "telling people what to do" trap.
--tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 13:27, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
There's already the Simple English Wikipedia. That's kind of a precedent for content-forking, although that's on language grounds. I'd be quite strongly in favour of a wikipedia with child-accessible articles (in terms of simple and friendly explanations, writing style, and general idiom), but I'd be extremely opposed to any kind of promise that it'd be non-offensive - I don't like either a) the concept of censorship to avoid any potential offence whatsoever, or b) the prospect of the aftermath of the inevitable slipups. Pseudomonas(talk) 15:58, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
There are parental controls that most Internet browsers have, so parents could just use those to block out uncensored material on Wikipedia. RedThunder 16:49, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
Basic response to the above comments, respectivly:
  1. "Trusted users" means having someone review anyone who wants to help WikiKids. Like getting rollback; you post your name and reason and you get a response. As for the "minefield" bit, I think it would be relatively easy to set out what would be appropriate and not; sexual or morally taboo topics would be excluded, but, would be connectable through links to en.wiki. But I may be dumbing down the whole process.
  2. Yeah, I doubt this idea will ever reach Jimbo. But, who knows? It's not quite a snowball.
  3. A child accessible wikipedia is a great idea, and it might make more sense in the long run than WikiKids. I don't support censorship either ("Censorship is like banning steak because a baby can't eat it" -Mark Twain), but I feel Wikipedia might be losing out on potential viewers by refusing the censor. I'm am not saying Wikipedia should be censored, but an alternative should be offered.
  4. No response comes to mind. Sorry. The response are much appreciated, and I hope to see this idea debated and reviewed. Leonard(Bloom) 19:36, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
I like the concept... perhaps a suggestion would be to open another free content encyclopedia, another project. "English Wikipedia for youngsters" or something similar. The new project (if approved and set on incubator/meta) would require work from the ground up as far as guidelines, and content guidelines go. But perhaps an offshoot of wikipedia here is not a good idea, rather, consider if another wikimedia project aimed to be targeted to kids (that is to say, the audience for that project pedia is kids). Each project has the ability to set how it runs. This would perhaps be the way to avoid violating the integrity of this encyclopedia (The English Wikipedia). Consider proposing a new project on meta. Thoughts? NonvocalScream (talk) 03:09, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
"Kids" is a pretty broad target demographic - would we try and aim it all kids, or have different wikis or some other kind of wall between content for 5-10 year olds, 11-14 year olds and 15-18 year olds (for example)? As for your vandalism concerns, WP:FLAGGED revisions could be of some help were this to come to fruition. — Matt Eason (Talk &#149; Contribs) 21:33, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Kids would be a self-defined demographic, with the deciding factor being parents; the children (or parents) would decide if they want (or their kids) to see the unsuitable content on en.wikipedia. Also, WP:FLAGGED is a great addition, and thanks for the comment! Leonard(Bloom) 00:47, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

It's a tricky one. The point of Wikipedia is that anybody can edit it, but should always verify information with citations, & their edits may be challenged by other users. That doesn't translate too well for children, who are unlikely to be able to follow Wikipedia's rules and guidelines on content, editing, style, references, etc. & If all those rules were relaxed, so that (for example) children could add unreferenced content & POV comments, it would quickly degenerate into a very poor quality encyclopedia. If, on the other hand, WPKids was edited by adult users, & children themselves could not edit it, it would not be significantly different from any of the children's encyclopedias you can get on CD-Rom. Weasel Fetlocks (talk) 14:18, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

A thought occurs: instead of building a whole new wiki for the kids' version, why not just make Wikipediakids as an interface for using the existing Wikipedia database. It could have more kid-friendly graphics & start from a simple search page. A search would then bring up the relevant article from Wikipedia, but displayed within a Wikipediakids window, which could maybe also have a Wiktionary search field in it too, so that kids could instantly look up any words in the article that they don't understand. I'm sure it would be very easy to put 'blocks' in, so that Wikipedia articles on certain subjects (e.g. sexual subjects) could not be viewed through a Wikipediakids search. Weasel Fetlocks (talk) 15:05, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
That idea is probably the most practical of this thread, and I think it could be easily done. Would it be too much to ask for a "support" or "oppose" at this point? I wanna see if this idea could go anywhere. Leonard(Bloom) 17:39, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
Oppose all attempts at 'windowing' Wikipedia in-situ. What you do with a forked copy is up to you. But here on Wikipedia, don't be a WP:TOBY. Splash - tk 12:57, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this idea of a Wikipedia for children would turn out to be largely redundant with the already existent Simple English Wikipedia; while the latter project is not designed especially for children, it is written specifically in non-technical and easy-to-understand language. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 08:39, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Not to beat a dead horse but while the proposal has merit in terms of increasing accessibility to the Wikipedia product, it also stretches people and resources thin when considering the whole of WP is not in an entirely strong state--and I mean when you go to WikiProjects, how many are Featured and Good Articles compared to stubs and lows? In addressing direct points.
  • Utilizing censorship would open a pandora's box of doom. Assuming this is an American product, not simply an English product, then are we the Christian nation of America? Okay, do we align "appropriateness" to Evangelical, Protestant, Catholic or Lutheran beliefs? Barring religion, WHO then on what grounds decides what is appropriate to include and not? Should we develop policy pages, how many months will be spent simply debating that?
  • Educators will ask if we are trying to promote a real educational product and what guidelines we are following and what grades we are targeting. Kids? Are we talking preschool or elementary?
  • Even if we have adequate safeguards for users to join, who says they aren't secretly some pedophile or psycho who will go on a naughty-page vandal spree? The safeguard of WP now is that so many invested users are watching out for each other so that vandals can get caught within minutes. We'd open a whole new world of litigation and liability for the Wikimedia Foundation by doing a "kids" version. I think they have their hands full already.
  • Instituting all these limitations to Wikipediakids such as checks, reviews, etc therefore diminishes the spirit of Wikipedia to begin with and shouldn't be associated with this product. It is better left to develop on its own and then merged in later if deemed successful. We need to protect the brand and its quality. .:davumaya:. 15:57, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm against this idea, I'm afraid, as WPK would mean yet more inclusion/exclusion debates - for instance, maybe there should be an article on biological sex; who is to say that children should not be allowed to learn about that? Plus, it would mean rewriting / copying most of WP and it seems to similar to the Simple English Wikipedia. My main problem, however, is that it is hard to define a "kid". Five-year-olds need material written in a different style / of a different difficulty to that which twelve-year-olds need, which might lead to edit wars or to WPK just being useless for most of its target audience. It Is Me Here (talk) 16:23, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

A WikiProject for use as an example

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I am thinking about starting a WikiProject to use as an example or other general purposes. Which name would be preferable?

Wikipedia:WikiProject Example
Wikipedia:WikiProject Play ground
Wikipedia:WikiProject Sample
Wikipedia:WikiProject Sandbox
Wikipedia:WikiProject Test
Wikipedia:WikiProject Testing ground

Also, I would like to know if there are any admin who would be willing to help keep it sane. This is basically going to turn into a sandbox like area, so a little administrative oversight would be appreciated. It would have its own banner for other pages which are similar, and possibly its own assessment section. - LA @ 04:06, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

  • Sample or Sandbox I like those 2 names the best, with sandbox being the main one I like because it really is in line with testing on wikipedia already. I am assuming that the idea is to give people the chance to try getting their hands dirty and editing and changing things around... perhaps there could be some sample data and it could be reverted on a slower level than the typical sandbox by a bot? %%-SYKKO-%% (talk to me) 04:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking "Example" at first, but I can see a "WikiProject Examples" becoming a real project, actually. I'll go with "WikiProject Sample" if it's to be a mostly-static example, or "WikiProject Sandbox" if it is a more sandbox-like construction. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 12:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
This should go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 12:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, but I think first LA is trying to get a feel for what name to propose from the community in general %%-SYKKO-%% (talk to me) 15:03, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Ummm ... Wikipedia:WikiProject Demonstration ? (Though I'm puzzled as to why people would need to "play around" with editing a WikiProject - a model that other WikiProjects could copy from would be more valuable, I'd think.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:34, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
This might look irrelevant, but if the example WikiProject will include a sample project page, this could be a useful resource. As far as the name goes, I also prefer "Sample" or "Sandbox", depending on what exactly is proposed. Waltham, The Duke of 15:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I think I will suggest WikiProject Sandbox. There will be a few static pages, however, this will be the WikiProject that can be used to test various templates. Example would be a C or B class top-importance article of this project since one aim would be to create a suite of example pages throughout Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Sandbox would also be part of it, and every user who wants their sandboxes in it. So, part serious, part playground is the idea. - LA @ 18:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I have proposed this at the WikiProject council. Thanks for your help in choosing the name! - LA @ 21:08, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Page Flipping Wikipedia

Hello to the editors of Wikipedia!

My name is Wiley Coleman, Inside Sales Representative of ingage, Inc. I am contacting you regarding a possible future working relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and ingage, as I believe we offer a product that could be of great value to you.

ingage is a digital publishing company. We cost effectively convert print media into digital, online, page flipping, interactive documents. Essentially, we give the user the feel of reading an actual piece of printed material. My idea is to incorporate our page flipping technology to the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. There would be no more scrolling up and down, you would be flipping the pages just as if it was an actual physical encyclopedia (and it would have interactive features that make it extremely easy to move throughout the entire document). I will include a sample with this email so you can get a better feel for the product, see how it works, and see how it could benefit you. I would be glad to follow up with another email or phone call to outline more information about ingage and discuss this possibility further. We are excited about the possibility of working with the team at the Wikimedia Foundation and I look forward to hearing back from you. I can be contacted at wiley@ingageinteractive.com .


Sample – http://publications.ingagepublication.com/BRIERCREEKMAGAZINE07/

Thank you! Wiley Coleman

Wikipedia has a policy of using only free and open-source software. Since your software appears to be based on Adobe Flash, even if it is itself open source, it cannot be considered for our use.-gadfium 21:18, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

You may, of course, speak with the foundation (foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org) or technical team (wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org). — Werdna • talk 04:30, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

God NO! Wikipedia works perfectly as it does. No need for some Flash-based bells and whistles that would make navigating and searching articles way harder than it is now. Is he back? (talk) 10:39, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
(ec) I couldn't even get the linked example open. I'm sure the Foundation will soon let him know in no uncertain terms, hopefully such proposals can go to the right place next time. Should we maybe close off this section to pre-empt the inevitable onslaught of expressions of disgust? :-) Or does this raise any real issues (all I can think of is embedding Flash thingies in articles (as opposed to replacing the entire interface with a Flash thingie like the above), and I think that has been roundly defeated any time it's brought up. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 11:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
This isn't an issue, just a reminder that the original poster above is of course free to take the text of Wikipedia and put it into whatever display format he wishes on his own webspace, within the constraints of the GFDL. Pseudomonas(talk) 11:51, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Pretty much serious fail in the KISS pinciple and we already have "features that make it extremely easy to move throughout the entire document" the TOC and the scroll bar or wheel.Geni 11:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
I ran the demo, and I couldn't see anything "extremely easy" about it. It's slow and ugly compared to PDF, and terrible compared to what we're doing already. Apparently the only thing it has going for it is the page turning animation, a gimmick which I'm sure users will tire of very quickly. -- Tim Starling (talk) 09:23, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
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