Jump to content

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jmabel (talk | contribs) at 06:21, 29 December 2004 (→CiteSources template and Missing Citations category). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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

Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~ or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar).

Start a new discussion in the proposals section

[[{{{1}}} Formula One season|{{{1}}}]]

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

Proposals archive

Discussions older than 7 days (date of last made comment) are moved here. These dicussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

WikiAtlas?

I love WikiPedia, I love the random page function.

but ... Is anyone else annoyed at how often small town entries come up? It seems pointless to have "Nuclear_winter" and "Dacula,_Georgia" [with it's pop. of 3,848] in the same place.

A WikiAtlas would be a great project, but perhaps this is not the time.

Is there a way to seperate all these geographic entries from the rest?

I would say that inclusion of Wallaceton,_Pennsylvania is certainly non-encyclopedic ... unless you can open the WorldBook set and find Brights_Grove,_Ontario in there.

I believe that what people are saying when they say such things are unencyclopaedic is that one would not find such articles in a "real" encyclopaedia. Well guess what? Wikipedia is a real encyclopaedia, but is not constrained by the same issues as other encyclopaedias. Having such articles in Wikipedia is "a good thing". Most towns, however small, may even have history or attributes that are interesting to more than just those living in the town. And outside the US (i.e. the vast majority of the world!), this is all the more so the case. Most places in Ireland for example, even if a population of only a couple hundred, have hundreds of years of history and may have points of interest. I won't say notable points of interest, as we actually have "non-notable" castles in Ireland!!! They may indeed all some day have Wikipedia articles though!.
Separating out articles that one considers less worthy is not a sensible idea. It would only leave holes in Wikipedia. zoney ♣ talk 12:41, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
A better solution to the problem of RamBot articles cropping up in random searches would be to implement limiting Random page to include and/or exclude certain categories. There is no reason to factor out all geography articles in a separate project. — David Remahl 13:44, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This topic was originally about the 'random page' link. I think it's a good idea to use a more popular selection of pages for the random pages, (if the point is to promote newcomers). If each small town gets its own page, the set from which the random page is drawn can still exclude those pages. Possible criteria for 'random page' consideration: size of article, number of reads, number of edits, being featured on the main page, etc. rmbh 08:01, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
well, but then it wouldn't be random anymore, would it? One of the uses of the random page button is to get an impression of what the average of those touted 400.000 articles looks like. being selective about them would be cheating, in my view, unless we quoted another number, e.g. "we have 398765 articles, 234567 of them larger than 2kb". use the 'random page' link to see a randomly selected member of the latter set." dab 12:15, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Sure it's still random! It's just not a representative random sampling. For example: all possible combinations of one letter and one number is much larger then the number of bingo balls, but it's still a bonified random sampling when the bingo caller draws one. Still, your point about producing "average" or representative page hits the nail on the head: what is the random page supposed to accomplish? Produce a representative sample of all of Wickipedia, or something interesting to act as a 'hook'? rmbh

[copy from Talk:Main Page]:

I agree that the town entries are fine. The only time where they ever get in the way is the random page button, which is a toy, anyway. However, "WikiAtlas" is an excellent idea! I have been wondering for some time how we could standardise custom maps. When I want to draw a map to explain a point in a specific article, I have to search for a public domain map of the area in question on google, and then maybe remove labels in an editor before adding my own information, arrows or whatever. The Xerox Mapserver has been gone for several years, and I don't know of a similarly useful tool to produce basic maps (e.g., the map of Image:Kurgan map.png is based on a Xerox mapserver map). How about starting a WikiAtlas project that somehow links to all geographical WP articles? There is probably not enough CPU resources to generate maps dynamically, but if we had an application that could generate maps from vector data, we could still make a large collection of ready made maps, and illustrate the location of all these little town stubs. dab 07:32, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There is a discussion of this at meta:Wikiatlas. See also meta:Category:Wikimaps. Angela. 18:10, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)
thank you. dab 10:09, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I started this one, and maybe I sent it in the wrong direction.
I'll readily admit that every town has a history, but most of the entries are no more than a location and population.
How about a way to do "random page" within a broad topic? Like Science or Art or Literature?
All I want is a way to browse with the "random page" button. I don't care if it's "a toy", because many people use it with serious intent. (like boning up for Jeopardy)
There's nothing wrong with small town entries, but maybe we need a broad category like Geographic Locations or somesuch to put :them in.
BigFatDave 02:59, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Back to the map generation, NASA World Wind is a great piece of software for producing detailed, public domain, and high quality *physical* maps. For political maps it isn't as good - the only details that it can display are country borders and state/city/suburb names. -- Chuq 03:16, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm glad Wikipedia has all this town information - don't remove it! But I think the real concern is that if the "random article" function primarily shows town, you don't see other categories. So, here's a proposal: why not store in a cookie what you 'last saw' in a random function (or the last 2-3), and the next time you ask for a Random page, make sure that the page is not in any category that you saw the last few times. This wouldn't be hard; pick a random page, and if it matches a previous category, try again (up to say 20 times). I think then you'd meet the real goal: you want the "random page" item to show you the many different categories of articles. I believe all the town articles are already marked by category, so this should work. Only problem is, someone will need to code that. I don't know if any developer thinks this is worth doing. If you like this idea, submit it as a feature request... Dwheeler 03:19, 2004 Dec 19 (UTC)
Rambot towns don't show up nearly as often as random pages as they used to--used to seem like 1 in 3 or 4--now it seems more like 1 in 10 or less. First 20 random pages I just got--seems like a decent balance of subjects (a bit US-centric, but that problem is gradually shrinking as well): Benton Township (US community), Diplolaemus (biology [genus]), First aid (health care), Koblenz, Switzerland (community), Orvar-Odd (Icelandic mythology), Puffer train (CA) (mathematics), Winx Club (TV series), G.I. Generation (history of US people), Belgaum (community-India), Dipole magnet (physics), Illinois Central Railroad (transportation), USS Hawkins (DD-873) (military history), St. Ann's School (education), Hepa ("bogus SI prefix"), Rock County (US community), Juelz Santana (musician), Matthew Carnahan (TV crew), List of geological features on 951 Gaspra (astronomy), Walkerton, Ontario (community-Canada), Dillinger (musician). Niteowlneils 00:31, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikidemia

(Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (news) Paul August ☎ 20:50, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC))

Printer Friendly?

Has there been any consideration about adding a feature where a user could view a printer-friendly version of wikipedia articles? --ZekeMacNeil 19:39, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Viewing? There's already printer CSS that your browser should select automatically when printing. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:57, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
If you just want to view it, use your browser's Print Preview command. Catherine\talk 18:46, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Wikipedia already has this. Just select "Printable version"; at least with the skin I use, this is a link that you can select near the top. You can also access the printable version directly through funky URLs, like this: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Fischer_Random_Chess&printable=yes

Dwheeler 02:11, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

Wikipedian categories

We could have Wikipedian categories for people interested. This could have a similar intent as the lists of Wikipedians, but might do more to give people with similar interests a place to congregate and converse. It would be less formal than the various projects. Maurreen 20:04, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Do you mean adding a category or categories to your userpage to flag your interests? Filiocht 15:15, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)
Yes. For instance, you could have Wikipedian butterfly collectors, or Wikipedian physicists, and so on. Maurreen 05:29, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I like it, once we're careful not to add ourselves to article categories. Should we just start? Filiocht 11:26, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)
Thinking about this, I'd first of all sign up to Category:Modernism, but this is an article category, so how about Category:Editing on modernism? Category:Editing on XXX could be a reasonable general structure for user page categories, maybe. Filiocht 11:47, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)
I'd like to suggest using a naming convention such as Category:Wikipedian Modernists. It would be nice in the future if the software made it possible to designate any given namespace as acting like :Category and it might then be possible to migrate the designations. --Phil | Talk 12:53, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good. Filiocht 13:26, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

I've started a few: Category:Wikipedian journalists, Category:Wikipedian military and Category:Wikipedian random pages. I put them all in Category:Wikipedians. Maurreen 16:43, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've added Category:Wikipedian modernists. Filiocht 10:10, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)
Would it be possible (by some administrator, perhaps) to make categories within the User namespace for this purpose, rather than regular categories? That would allow catergories of User pages but keep them separate from the actual Wikipedia. Or was that what Phil just said is not possible on the current software? Sorry, I'm new, and a little confused... I know people will only put themselves into "Wikipedian _____" categories, but I still think it's desirable to keep User pages and the actual Wikipedia totally seperated. To separate the contributors and that which is contributed, as it were...TheNewAuk 05:18, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'd say we need a separate "Wikipedia Category" namespace, in which we can put both infrastructural categories like the wikipedia policies ones, and categories of users. I agree, we need strict separation between main and the other namespaces. &#0xfeff; --fvw* 21:46, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC)

Linking bible references.

There are quite a few bible references scattered around wikipedia. It would be nice if they were links so if I entered [John 3:16] I'd get a link to the relevant verse. It would be even nicer if this was done rather like the ISBN links: not requiring additional markup, and taking you to a page where you could choose which version of the bible to read. Zeimusu 12:55, 2004 Dec 13 (UTC) editid Zeimusu 02:58, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)

Which version of the bible is it going to point to? The apocrypha, pseudepigrapha and all other mystic texts should be given the same treatment.--Jirate 15:23, 2004 Dec 13 (UTC)
Indeed, but the Bible would be a good place to start.Zeimusu
Surely there is or should be a copy of at least the KVJ Bible on Wikisource; just do [[wikisource:KJV Bible - John#3:16|John 3:16]] or whatever the proper format would be. --Golbez 17:40, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)
That would be [[wikisource:Bible, English, King James, John#Chapter 3|John 3:16]] A fair bit of typing, and we can't link to a verse. The wikisource version also has no commentaries or cross references or concordance.Zeimusu 02:58, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)
I think the point is that selecting one single translation is going to be problematic — many people, me included, think the KJV is a particularly poor choice because the English is archaic. Rather than debate translations, it would be nice to have an "ISBN"-like page where the reader can select from any number of online versions according to their preference. (I believe "Mediazilla" is an appropriate place to lodge software feature requests). — Matt Crypto 18:21, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
And what about all the other different versions?--Jirate 18:48, 2004 Dec 13 (UTC)
What about the RSV? A lot more modern - and not too controversial (I think). And we can do this without software requests as it's easily available off the internet. jguk 23:17, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
RSV is no better than KJV, in that picking any one version will incur the wrath of all those who prefer another. It is also (arguably) POV to link to one version. I'm off to mediazilla to see what the programmers think.Zeimusu 02:58, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)
See Bug 1104 on mediawiki. Zeimusu 03:33, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)
This seems to me to be something that should be a separate project, something like http://www.biblegateway.com/versions and http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword, which already exists and lets you select or search by a number of version. It would also be useful for works like the Iliad and other classical works or even modern works which exist in more than one English translation where one might also want to compare various translations and also compare the original texts. But it would require a database of some kind in which chapters and verses or sections were all recorded separately. There are some scholarly websites that do this kind of thing for individual works that exist in different versions. There are also some commericial products now that run in the background, let you highlight anything in any application, and then do a search on it in a particular dictionary or suite of reference works. Such a free utility, which would work with anything, not only Wikipedia, would probabably be no harder, but no easier, to construct than a utility that was part of Wikipedia. Jallan 01:59, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)


why haven't we yet seen a wiki bible? koran? quoran? talmud? baraka? how much of that shit is NOT open content by now? what, is king james' great great great great niece gonna sue? seems like they oughtta be up and running as piecemeal starter-block datasets, and the wiki opportunity exists solely in the playground between them all. people of faith populating each's outreach, given scripting ground, and let to found. indeed:).
Open source religion! Everyone can change the basic principles as much as they want. I personally would remove some sins and add others — that section is sorely out-of-date. Maybe add some sneaky vandalism in Genesis saying "God loves adultery". Hmmm... the talk pages discussions might get a little violent, though... Deco 07:03, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Remind people to cite sources while editing

I suggest adding underneath the edit box a short, simple message:

Please cite your sources so others can check your work.

If some people think that's a good idea, and others don't, perhaps we could try it out for a few days as an experiment and see if there's any harm.

There's an infinite number of style suggestions, but for other stuff, it's easy to fix things later. Formatting weird? You can fix it. Bad grammar? You can fix it. POV? Usually you can fix that too, IF you can find out where the data came from. But if you've no idea where the info came from, it's really difficult to do fact-checking later. Thus, I think citing sources is unique - it's more difficult to fix later. I'm not perfect, but I try to do this. Reminding people -- and especially telling newcomers -- would make it more likely to happen.

In particular, I think this would help deal with one of the main complaints about Wikipedia: "Can I trust it?" With sources cited, you can check things yourself, and many people have greater trust in an article when the citations are included. It also makes the fact-checking folk's work easier/possible. -- Dwheeler 23:33, 2004 Dec 17 (UTC)

I've seen absolutely zero protests about this, after 4 days, and this can easily be undone. People who only read Wikipedia won't even notice! So, I've given this change a whirl -- hopefully others will like it! Dwheeler 23:52, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC)

Actually, I don't like it. It adds even more information to the bottom, which even less people read. And, frankly, citations are in my opinion only a small priority for the user to understand. I personally prefer the old version, it puts much less load on the user. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:15, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)
Sorry you don't like it. But I think citations are absolutely vital; as I noted above, everything else can typically fixed by at least some other user (NPOV, etc.), but without a citation, it's really hard to make progress. This simply reminds people of a policy that's already in place, but all too often unintentionally forgotten. And it's not much text, so it shouldn't have too much load on the user. Anyway, this is obviously trivial to reverse. Let's see what others think about it, and go from there. -- Dwheeler 02:53, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)
I agree completely with Dwheeler, citing sources is enormously important for fact checking articles and helping the reader know that what they are reading is reputable. It also allows readers to find more detail on the article if they are trying to research it. Adding a one line note to cite your sources would take very little space, it'd be easy to implement, and it would remind everyone that when they add factual information to an article, they should cite their sources. --Soren9580 04:01, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Dwheeler. When I first found this place, it was over a nutrition subject in which I learned that a certain nutrient isn't contained in a type of food a very ill family member was eating regularly to receive that nutrient from. Without source checking however, I have no idea if the information I read here is correct or just someone's opinion. This didn't occur to me till recently because I originally blindly accepted the info I read in the article as fact and made dietary health purchase decisions based on this. So I think we should cite sources where we can, such as when making statements like "spinach has oxalic acid in it which blocks the absorption of iron." The statement is true, I'm sure, but people need to know where it came from. -Emerman, December 28, 2004, 11:40 a.m. Eastern.
We should realize that many people write articles from their own experience or knowledge, and don't necessarily have a source to cite. I don't think we should unnecessarily hamstring article development by making this an absolutely hard requuirement. Keeping it as a recommendation is fair however. --Stevietheman 16:46, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
This doesn't hamstring article development. It's just a recommendation/plea. The text says "Please cite your sources so others can check your work." All it says is "please", it certainly doesn't say "you must". It doesn't stop you from adding pages with references! But a lot of people actually know where their info came from, if only we reminded them to tell us.
Point taken, but if some people are discouraged from contributing because they think that have to provide a source, based on the "Please", then that's something to think about. Also, please sign your posts. --Stevietheman 00:57, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

High risk status for pages

After monitering my watchlist and the Recent Changes page for awhile, I've found that there are some pages which attract much more vandalism then others.

I would like to propose a new protection level for admins to apply to a page, something along the lines of "high risk".

What this new status would do would prevent anonymous users from editing, but would still allow logged in wikipedians to do so. Sort of like a milder version of protecting a page. I feel this would be of considerable benefit, expecially on pages which are vandalised almost daily. Oberiko 00:13, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I like this idea!! Currently, if something is starting to get vandalized a lot, we often end up locking it up completely, which is unfortunate. This idea gives us a nice intermediate stage to use instead... if the vandalism is from anons, then instead of blocking entirely, we can only block anons. Dwheeler 00:32, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)
I think the "recent changes" page should include some sort of marker on any edit of a 'high risk' page, again, so that it can get more scrutiny. Dwheeler 01:35, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)
In the long term, I think it'd be useful to see a range of protection levels. E.G.: Anyone can edit, only logged-in can edit, only 'good standing' users can edit (varying levels of standing), through protection. 'Good standing' might simply mean "account around for more than 30 days, contributed over 50 edits in at least 3 different days, and their last 50 edits have not been reverted or sysop-deleted". Eventually a few levels that can be decided automatically, and perhaps a level or two bestowed by humans. Giving humans rankings based on the quality and trustworthiness of their contributions might really incentivize people to create good stuff, and it gives others a nice way to reward those doing good. And by having a sliding scale to protect problem pages, if vandalism on a page starts, you can raise the protection up by only the minimum necessary to stop the problem; currently protection is kindof an all-or-nothing sort of thing. Anyway, it's an interesting thought. Dwheeler 01:35, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to experiments, but lately a lot of vandals seem to be switching to single-use accounts instead of editing under IPs. I doubt that anything short of some kind of a "good standing" account would mean much. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:37, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)
I've also noticed a bit of single-use accounts, but from what I've seen, that's the vast minority. Not nearly as many would-be vandals are willing to go and create an account just to put "Hitler was a fruit loop" on a page on World War II.
And even if they did, it would allow use a much easier time of tracking and banning, helping use steer away from the broad blocking of an IP range which might lock-out good users.
I like the ideas about the four level spectrum of protection (none, low risk, high risk, protected) and marking them so on the Recent Changes. It would certainly make any policing of the Wikipedia I do much easier at least.
For the "good standing" accounts, thirty days is probably overkill. In most cases, I'd think an hour would do it. Oberiko 03:03, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
That may be for now, but if true, one reason may be because there's no need to do anything else. If there was an automated mechanism that demanded that people demonstrate at least a few reasonable contributions and some calendar time before being allowed to fiddle with "higher risk" pages, then we might curb some problems without having to always turn on "protected". And putting on my rose-colored glasses, perhaps by requiring vandals to contribute nicely first, we might get some of them to change their tune.... or at least get some useful work out of them :-). I suspect experimentation will be an absolute requirement before finding out what's optimal. To be honest, in the longer term I like the idea of rewarding contributors with higher 'ranks'. I believe Napolean famously noted that men will die for brightly colored strips of cloth (ribbons), and while those ranks are in many senses a game, the game would have the nice side-effect of rewarding desirable behavior. It might also help people gain confidence in Wikipedia itself: you can explain that Wikipedia rewards good contributors. Dwheeler 15:09, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)
I am very much in favour of this. While I'm not suggesting this is scientific estimate it is approximately 0.1% of the articles that result in 50% of the work in terms of resolving edit wars and vandalism. If we have a subtle protection mechanism for these pages, then it will allow those people patrolling Wikipedia to do more useful things.
For most of those controversial pages and anon ban would be a good enough. For most of the others a one hour account would be sufficient. It would only be a very small minority which would need a 30 day edit rule.
Further in the future I would like the ability to ban individual users from certain pages. There are a number of contributors who while perfectly sensible about most topics, should avoid contributing on the topics they can't maintain a NPOV. Bans over various time periods would provide flexibility here as well. If we had that level of granularity then we could dissolve many of the problems we have between registered users. We wouldn't have to protect pages from editing, we would just have to protect pages from users. :ChrisG 12:11, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This makes me think of another, less restrictive, possibility; I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement. Might we be able to make it possible for a user to set up a second watchlist, so admins easily set up a second, smaller watchlist just to watch frequently vandalized pages? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:13, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

I like the previous idea (about blocking anon edits on some pages) too, I had been thinking about it for so long myself. Though I am not too sure about protecting pages from user. Someone who can cross the boundary on one article can cross the boundary on any article. Anyway, about second watchlist, I saw JesseW use an "Important Watch list" on his user page. I asked him how he made it and this is what he told me I made a list of important pages on a subpage of my user page, clicked on "Related changes", copied the URL, edited my user page and copied the URL into a single bracket form with the "Important Watchlist" label. Does that explain it? JesseW 00:39, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC). It almost is a second watchlist and anyone can use it. --Ankur 15:03, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Make Newpages more visible

This is a must... I've been watching Special:Newpages today, and therefore caught lots of vanity/nonsense articles I listed as speedy deletion candidates. Problem is, the Newpages page doesn't appear in a visible location and it turns out that many Wikipedians don't even know it exists. I myself have to access it either through typing the address or making a link on my own userpage, either way, not very efficient. Why not just add it under Recent Changes, or as a link from Recent changes, or to the top navbar when logged in? Solver 16:44, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It is already at the top of recent changes, the first item in the utilities section. - 16:53, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

WikiNutrition?

Can we start a WikiNutrition project? I've been adding nutritional values occassionally to food articles for months (e.g. hamburger, ketchup and Talk:Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest). Copying from the USDA Food Nutrient Database is both time-consuming and boring. Is there a way to do it automatically?

I mean maybe someone can import the USDA database and export the values using a template. You may want to use a bot. A good encyclopedia cannot do without such highly useful information. -- Toytoy 17:40, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

I'm willing to do this. But the database is quite large; which foods do you want nutrient data for? Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 05:20, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

My proposal:

  1. Download the USDA food nutrition database.
  2. Append nutrition facts to all articles related to USDA food items.

However, to save efforts, the articles may only include our basic required foods (see: food guide pyramid):

There are 252 raw beef items. We may only use nutrition facts to one or two general cuts, such as "Beef, brisket, whole, separable lean only, all grades, raw" or "Beef, carcass, separable lean and fat, select, raw". We may add nutrition facts to other beef-related articles (e.g. sirloin) later.

    • Rice, white, medium-grain, raw, unenriched
    • Wheat, durum
    • Wheat, hard white
  • Milk (Milk, whole, 3.25% milkfat)
  • Pasta and breads (Boy!)
  • Fats
  • Fruits (How can there be so many of them?)

You may only want to include essential nutrients (see: Category:Essential nutrients) such as vitamins, minerals. Fats are importans but there are just too many essential, non-essential, saturate and non-saturate fats.

This is not an easy task. It also requires much discretion. But it will make Wikipedia much more useful. -- Toytoy 02:57, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

  • This sounds like a really cool idea! I hope it finds legs, and i hope it remembers to keep itself presentable to meat-eaters. I don't want anyone but a level-5 vegan giving me nutritional advice, but it would be great if they'd just remember that they need to budget for my butter-fried-bacon-fried steaks and my occasional bacon wrapped in bacon.
    • Some nutritional info is undoubtedly appropriate here, but I think all the specifics (i.e. of different kinds of beef) should be part of the wikibooks cookbook. I already did a little work on [1]. Tuf-Kat 04:42, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

One problem with doing this, though, is determining how much of a particular nutrient is (for lack of a better phrase) dietarily significant to warrant mentioning. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 04:51, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

A not-so-great but workable solution:
  • Wikify the whole nutritional database. (raw data -> HTML -> wiki syntax)
  • Post these pages somewhere.
  • Let us cut and paste (we may use some discretion).
A truly great solution is to create a nutrition server and use tags like {{nutrition|beef,raw,100 g,...}} to automatically generate the nutrition lists. However, it will be difficult. It will also burden our servers. However, it's a good interwiki solution. You may translate "protein", "fat", "calcium", "sodium" ... into another language and get an instant nutrition output in that language. People will love it. Meat-eaters unite! (Pardon my PROUD POV.) -- Toytoy 05:34, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

Footnotes, endnotes and bibliography

Template:F1b There is now a simple and effective footnote implementation working on Wikipedia. An example has been set up on Wikipedia:Footnote2 and it is also fully working on MBTI.

Our goal is to encourage wikipedians to use footnotes/endnotes in the same way they are used in books and research papers; to make it possible for the reader to validate what the writer is saying at every turn, and to allow the writer to expand upon important points without interrupting the flow of the work. We hope to create articles that are so well backed up by footnotes and sources that wikipedia articles might be afforded the same degree of trust that readers now give to Journal articles and books.[[{{{1}}} European Formula Two Championship|{{{1}}}]] --soren9580 and --[[User:Alterego|Alterego☺]] 18:37, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Or you could use my idea, which is simpler yet and interrupts even less :) Fredrik | talk 18:42, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Template:F2bHi Fredrik! We should work together on this and come up with something good. One thing I would say though is in reply to this point on your proposal: Adding notes and inline links everywhere in articles only adds clutter. I don't think it adds clutter! Take a look at that article on the MBTI. It looks very 'professionally cited (needs more citations though) Sorry I misinterpreted your point :) --[[User:Alterego|Alterego☺]] 18:55, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Template:F3bAlso, did you see how this one is already working? It doesn't get much simpler than that ;) (see the start of this topic and click the 1. It's just two little template commands in the article, {{f1}} and {{f1b}}
--[[User:Alterego|Alterego☺]] 18:58, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
This does look like an excellent solution for footnotes. My primary concern is that although footnotes work great if you have 20 of them in one article, they certainly become impractical when you have one note for each sentence, which may very well be necessary if you intend to add specific references for every fact. -- Fredrik | talk 19:12, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Template:F4bOkay, let me see if that is addressable. Our dream is that footnotes work like this. I am typing out a sentence in an article, and need to add a footnote, so I finish my sentence. {{#|Ripley's Believe it or Not (1973). ''This is now my footnote''.}}. And I continue on with my article. The software would then automatically number the footnotes and put them at the end of the article, wherever you have placed the {{Footnote}} template command. From that point, users could have a preference as to surf Wikipedia with or without footnotes. And to make editing the footnotes easier, there could be section editing for the automatically created ==Notes== section, which gathers all the footnotes from the article and puts them in an ordered list. We also hope that simultaneous Notes and Bibliography sections can become the status quo, so that users alphabetize items, including web links, in MLA style in their bibliography. It looks very professional. I know we have the template {{Book reference|Author= |Year= |Title= |Publisher= |ID=ISBN }}, but it's not flexible and is cumbersome. perhaps something built into a page on mediawiki such as I have on my website here would be an easier solution, since it automatically creates the output for users.--[[User:Alterego|Alterego☺]] 19:26, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well... that would require a lot of additions to the software. I don't think the complexity, both in code and the editing procedure, would be worth it. Neither am I a big fan of the thought of having the software modify the wikitext.
A separate reference page would be as straightforward to edit as articles currently are. And why implement a preference for showing or hiding references when you can have a simple links between two pages? Fredrik | talk 20:04, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Template:F5bOkay, I have been mulling over one further idea. I have to say I don't like the idea of going to a new page considering wikilag and slow wikiloadtimes, and perhaps we are asking too much of our developers to want so much automation (although, considering we are an encyclopedia, I consider an extensive footnote/endnote/bibliography system to be a high priority). What if we continue with the {{#|Ripley's Believe it or Not (1973). ''This is now my footnote''.}} train of thought, and have a single superscript footnote at that location, and when you hover your mouse over the footnote the citation in full appears. This would just bit a tiny bit of javascript and it would be very easy to implement. --[[User:Alterego|Alterego☺]] 20:27, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Having javascript as the only way to do anything important would be unacceptable. Wikipedia must work for people who use browsers that have javascript disabled. —AlanBarrett 20:58, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hey guys, it's really easy to simply bash down every idea that gets tossed out, but can we come up with some creative work arounds? I have found that usually, with just a little bit of creative and productive discussion there is a meeting ground that really works for most people. I agree that footnotes should work in Lynx et al. Perhaps it could also be rendered on the bottom as well using HTML. Hey look! Footnotes are working in the encyclo right now. The citation system on this page looks really really nice and professional. Can we come up with a way to make getting our pages to look like that which is easy on both our editors, developers, and also our servers? --[[User:Alterego|Alterego☺]] 21:07, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here is a List of featured articles with no references at all created by Taxman. The system I have now works and it's really easy, but automated numbering would make it that much easier. --[[User:Alterego|Alterego☺]] 21:37, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Just to say I like it, and think it works very well. :ChrisG 10:25, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 

The MLA has deprecated reference footnotes and reference endnotes for decades in favor of in-line bibliographic references. This author-date reference system according to the Oxford Guide to Style:

...is the most commonly used reference method in physical and social sciences. It provides the author's name and year of publication within parentheses in the text, and the full details at the end of the work in a list of references. It is in contrast to the author-title (short-title) system, which provides this information with a combination of footnotes or endnotes and the full reference at the end of the work.

This and similar systems is also covered in the Chicago Manual of Style (16.4–5). And it is recommended at Wikipedia:Cite_sources. So what purpose in pock-marking articles with footnote numbers?

I say "yes" to sourcing and documentation. But I say "no" to any attempt to encourage old-fashioned, clunky, ugly, annoying, clumsy footnote referencing.

The modern author-date reference system works now, without any software enhancements and does not require a reader to continually jump to the bottom of page or end of an article to see if there is something there of value. And it is commonly used in books and research papers, possibly more commonly than the footnote method.

Footnoting software for Wikipedia seems to me to be a solution in search of a problem, and footnoting to provide references is generally a bad solution in my opinion, and increasingly so seen in modern scholarly writing which increasingly avoids it for reference purposes.

In Wikipedia you can reference a work which has its own article by linking to that article on first mention and reference other works by the author-date method and bibliography at the end of the article (or even make a reference at the bottom of the article to a standard bibliography at the end of a main article that covers a group of articles). And is there anyone who does not generally loathe endnotes in books, constantly jumping back and forth for trivial information that often could be enclosed in parentheses in the main text? Where a long endnote would appear in a book, or a long footnote, in Wikipedia the same result can usually be better achieved by an internal link to another article.

My goal is to encourage wikipedians to use author-date references in the same way they are used in books and research papers; to make it possible for the reader to validate what the writer is saying at every turn. The writer can expand upon important points without interrupting the flow of the work by creating related short articles or referring to an existing related article or by referring to a later section of the same article.

Jallan 01:26, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I like Jallan's perspective, but I still believe footnotes have a reasonable use in wikipedia. Citing sources should be done with the MLA format, because that's standard, but for extratexual references, aside from just giving people a link to another wikipedia article which also may be very long, it would be helpful to provide a footnote explaining in greater detail the point being made. This is how footnotes are used in Legal writings; see any supreme court decision, for example, http://wikisource.org/wiki/Texas_v._Johnson shows how footnotes can be used to provide more information that doesn't fit in the flow of the opinion, but is relevant.

--Soren9580 05:15, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I fully accept using footnotes for cases where footnotes are arguably the best way of presentation, such as a two-level text involving both a main text and also extensive commentary as found in much legal writing (as Soren9580 indicates) or in extensively annotated historical or literary texts. There is probably little call of this in encyclopedia articles. But it is certainly quite proper to use such an annotation system for the rare article that does cry out for two-level presentation. Tablular presentation or alternate sections of main text and annotation with typographical distinction between them are other solutions to two-level presentation, sometimes arguably superior to extensive footnoting and sometimes not. Jallan 15:32, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fredrik's idea of a "separate namespace that has for each article a list of references used in it" has since been archived and can be accessed at [2]. I've filed an enhancement request for Fredrik's idea at MediaZilla:1199. -- Paddu 19:57, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

News category

I was thinking that it might be an idea to have Category:News (and Category:In the news 2004 or Category:In the news December 2004) for articles that have been noteworthy during a certain time. An example would be Rumaisa Rahman, the smallest baby ever born, who was in the news from the 20th of December for that simple fact. Not wanting to cast doubt on her future achievements but what are the possibilities that that article will be linked to from many others? And the only suitable category at present is Category:2004 births. I know that some articles could be in the news over numerous years or months, but my main idea is to categorise news stories (articles) that are one-offs. Good idea or pointless? violet/riga (t) 00:34, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've created this as a bit of a skeleton concept - please visit Category talk:News for discussion. violet/riga (t) 11:51, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I hope this proposal is not too controversial. I feel that there should be a link to Wikipedia:Utilities on the sidebar. I propose this for three reasons: 1) many non-regulars (especially new users) seem not to know that many maintenance, deletion, and other pages exist on Wikipedia; 2) while it's worthwhile to make note of these pages in the Recent Changes header, space is necessarily limited; a list of utility pages has effectively no such space constraint; and 3) having a utility link always available will be helpful and convenient even for regular editors. Discuss this proposal. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 01:33, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

I agree - it's a shame the utilities page is quite so long, but it is, and all the links on there are useful. Good idea. Smoddy 13:51, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I also agree. This will make housekeeping much easier. -- Toytoy 16:45, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)
I like the idea. --Stevietheman 22:37, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is just a little idea I had recently. In many articles, I see external links to Google directory categories, but since DMOZ.org is the non-commercial source to Google and other search engines, perhaps it might be a good idea to link to DMOZ instead. Perhaps a bot could be created to convert Google directory links to DMOZ ones? --Stevietheman 19:25, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi Stevietheman. I ran a MySQL query for you (my first one, yay! :) There aren't all that many (132) so you can probably go through and do it by hand. Here's your list: User:Alterego/Google directory links --[[User:Alterego|Alterego☺]] 00:07, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Cool, thanks... It's hard to believe it's only 132, but I'll attempt to change these soon if nobody else beats me to it. --Stevietheman 01:03, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
NP :) I added a couple of other short query lists to that page if you are feeling sufficiently bored. --Alterego 06:00, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
neat idea. like the "i don't wanna eat it, you eat it, mikey'll eat it" vibe on this. can't help but find slight want for it being part of this environment that 'Alterego' could have made the updates with his nifty new script, but that would prolly be way too much power to put in the hands of any mere mortal of the street. still,, with some ability to revert built into the inmplementation, why couldn't the random focker of the street be given of kind of that kinda access?
It's not a script. Just download the database and download MySQL. Install mysql, 'CREATE' a blank database, tell mysql to 'USE' that database, and then 'SOURCE' the wikipedia database into the database you just created. Then look on the m:Requests for queries page for examples of mysql queries. The entire process on a broadband connection should be ~1 hour. --Alterego 09:09, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
All done. However, the secondary queries didn't result in any bugs. For instance "the the%" queries ended up finding text like "the theory...". --Stevietheman 07:39, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Ohhh, interesting. Have to scratch that wildcard next time :) --Alterego 09:00, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

changing tables

I just proposed a change in the way we manage table in some articles (specailly the one inside wikiprojects). For example, in the kyoto article, instead of a table like this 

  <div style="float: right; margin-left: 2em; margin-bottom: 1ex; width: 300px;">
  <table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="right" width="300px">
  <caption><font size="+1">'''Kyoto Prefecture (京都府)'''</font></caption>
  <tr>
  <td align="center" colspan="2" style="border-bottom:3px solid gray;">
  [[Image:PrefSymbol-Kyoto.png|Kyoto prefectural symbol]]<br>
  Kyoto prefectural symbol
  </td>
  </tr>
  </table></div>

we would put simply: 

 {{ City
     Capital: [[Kyoto]]
     Population: 2,644,331 
     Pop_density:573/km&sup2
     Map:[[Image:Japan_kyoto_map_small.png]]
     Region:[[Kinki region|Kinki]]
  }}

This would first define some variables. That is, any ocurrence of anything as $Population or $Map in this article would be swapped by the corresponding value. Secondly this would insert the template {{City}}, a general table for cities written in the normal way, but with variables placeholders instead of actual data.

This would be good for

  1. for he layperson user, it would be easier to read and edit the kyoto article, as it was not bugged with a lot of code noise.
  2. for the advanced wikipedian, it would be more pratical to edit multiple pages, as changing the one city template would change the table in all articles in the city project.
  3. for the computer it could read some simple data from wikipedia. That way wikipedia would serve more as a machine readable database that could be used for making atlas, hyperdiagrams, games, or anything anyone could think of.

Please comment.

--Alexandre Van de Sande 19:50, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You do know that templates have been able to accept variable input since the introduction of MediaWiki 1.3? -- Cyrius|✎ 21:28, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
For example: The article on the Dutch city Leiden begins with:
 {{Infobox Dutch municipality|
   name=Leiden|province=[[South Holland]]|
   area=23.16|land=21.99|water=0.16|
   population=118,702|population_year=(2004)|density=5397
  }}
which is very close to what you are proposing. Eugene van der Pijll 00:08, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Wow thats great. We need to use that more often. I´ll start to change some wikiprojects templates to be that way. Now What we need will be someone who makes a nice page thats able to search the wikipedia using those variables. Like, get me anything in the categorys Books, btween 1936 and 1945. Then we can say goodbye to those ´´1936 in books´´ like categorys...

"Space Shuttles" list omission

Technically, if the "Pathfinder" mock-up in Huntsville belongs on the Space Shuttles list (right),

then so should the "Explorer" mock-up at Kennedy Space Center.

Redirect arrow

If you think the new redirect arrow is ugly, design one for the Wikipedia:Redirect arrow contest. [[User:Rdsmith4|User:Rdsmith4/sig]] 05:21, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Moving category:... in article to the top of article

Could we moving all category:... in article to the top of article(not below the article)? So one can easily seen the category of the article and can quick-connect to the category page.Roscoe x 10:38, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Common use is to place them at the end (as with the lang links). But I think you are talking not about the wiki code, but about the page display: in that case it may be possible by user styles. 11:01, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


The place where the category is displayed depends on the skin you're using, not the location in the article. I use Cologne Blue, which isn't as pretty as the standard skin but is in my opinion a far more practical skin for editing. In this skin, the categories are displayed at top right next to the alternative language links (if any). --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:04, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ow.. Ok, I got it... Thanx for the answer.Roscoe x 12:40, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Illustrative examples

Template:ExampleSidebar I've read a few articles where an example is given to illustrate the topic (e.g., stock options). It seems to break with the style of the encyclopedia, but the example is useful. I thought it might be worthwhile to have a sidebar device, like those found in newspapers and magazines, to include examples without cluttering the main body of the article. For this purpose, I created Template:ExampleSidebar, and the stock option article using it is on User:cmprince. Please send your comments if you think this is an especially good or bad idea. Thanks! Cmprince 22:42, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Looks nice (in a full-function browser), but I'd want to take a look at it with a limited browser (IE on iPaq, 480x640 screen) to see if it's as readable there. I'll do that in about five or six hours time.-gadfium (talk) 23:39, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Good point. You just reminded me I could pass a percent value instead of a px value; the template has been adjusted accordingly. Is there any way of setting a default value for a parameter? --Cmprince 03:15, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it's as good in the iPaq browser as the main article is. There are three modes of viewing: One column, which works best for Wikipedia, default, which works badly for all Wikipedia pages, and Desktop, which provides much the same view as a normal browser but requires scrolling horizontally to read the text. In One column mode, all content appears as a single column for both stock options and User:Cmprince. The template has the coloured backgrounds to show it is special. I encourage use of your template; you've done a great job.-gadfium (talk) 04:26, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • right on. almost any incarnation of this sorta thing is whitespace well-spent in my opinion. i stumble trying to understand the resistance to such. the presense of such doesn't really serve to prevent those inclined to read each word-bit to the last, and greatly facilitates the passer-by's experience. just so long as the whichever side of any conflict's discussion re: any tricky page's content gets to have (with full endorsement of their getting it by the current discussion's underdog) something in the vein of 'the editorial conductor's directing stick on those boxes' content. or something like that.
I like it a lot. One reason you haven't mentioned is that it will make our articles look more attractive, interesting and professional to the reader. In the last year we've started using infoboxes and photos on a wide scale; and I think appropriate example boxes are the next big thing. I think you need to try it out on a few articles; so that we can see if anything needs tweaking. :ChrisG 10:15, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Liked it so much I amended the stock option article to see what it looked like. :ChrisG 10:22, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It's a neat idea and would definitely be useful, however, can you make it more subtle and stylish? It's a real eyesore in monobook imo. You don't really have to get anyone's permission to do it, so if you make a nice one and start using it, it just may catch on! --Alterego 20:56, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Meta
The new Meta Sidebar.

Now with more options. And I don't mean stock options.

I modified the sidebar to make it more customizable. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 01:52, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

...

...

... [deliberately added to break the flow] Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 01:58, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

Archive of Screenshots of Tops of homepages of Wikipedia.org? Its pump/discussion page?

Is there an archive of screenshots of the top of this page being kept anywhere? At the bottom of this page itself, or perhaps linked just off it?

It's interesting to see the first-flash/above-the-fold presentation of what's going on there change over time. Organization growing, ever-changing. It bubbles, kinda coolly.

Seems like a prohibitive notion to add this kinda thing to each page of each and every MediaWiki project's pages (whether through user-polation of the notion or through inclusion into the functionality of the governing content management system and its accompanying implementation cost(s)), but for the primary entrance page of the flagship product?, and it's perhaps its discussion area?, it seems like it might merit. Or not; who knows.

Something in the vein of (and sorry if this wouldn't best belong here, or anywhere):

In watchlist, add class="selfedit" to self-edits

It would be helpful if there were a way to distinguish pages you edited yourself from pages edited by other users in the watchlist. The easiest to do this, I think, would be to add class="selfedit" or something along those lines to the <a> tags of self-edits, then the users could set their display preferences in their CSS. (I would like to gray out self edits, for example.) – [[User:Flamurai|flamuraiTM]] 20:16, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

This would be useful where you are the latest editor, definitely (or even suppress that line entirely where you are the most recent editor) --Vamp:Willow 12:20, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The watchlist only shows each page once, so it would only show the most recent edit to each page. At least mine does. – [[User:Flamurai|flamuraiTM]] 13:28, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

More on Banning and Blocking

On this lovely Xmas morning I'm sitting here reading through all the various pagtes on the subject of reverting vandalism and blocking IP-only users where they run through a number of articles in quick succession. One thing I haven't found suggested (although it may be archived 'way back when' somewhere) is that instead of blocking *all* users with that IP address the software first checks whether the user is logged in, and so only blocks non-logged in users at that IP address. (AIUI valid users will currently also be blocked when an IP is banned). Workable? --Vamp:Willow 12:20, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This has often been proposed; I would think it was not technically difficult, but it has never been pursued. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:02, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)
I wouldn't underestimate vandals. They currently don't log out because it doesn't help. If it did, they would just log out and continue their vandalizing. If you don't buy this, look at how many vandals change their IP after being IP-banned. Deco 06:53, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
But that is the point! When we block a proxy / ISP-NAT'd IP we stop all users at that address, not just the non-registered/logged-in ones. If we let people who are logged in carry on editing (and they can always be individually blocked anyway) then blocking an IP becomes effective in stopping anons but permitting well-bahaved registered users. win-win! --Vamp:Willow 00:29, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Proposal for project producing a printable newspaper, i.e. wikiReport

I had an idea for a project to gather news from different areas such as science, politics, health, etc and produce a newspaper that can be printed freely and distributed freely. The idea would include people to handle the layout of the newspaper, people to gather information for the articles, and also editors, etc that would be needed to produce the newspaper. The goal would be to produce articles that are not biased and focus on the facts of the article. Ideas for articles would be logged and easily searchable and collaboration would be given to all ideas behind the paper and this would include the artwork, articles, etc that went into it. This publication would then be able to be printed freely and distributed for instance in colleges and other public places for the sole price of the paper and ink. The idea would give readers the kind of information they need in order to make well informed decisions about events in the world and even about health and the many other facets of society. This project would be great for people and students interested in publishing, journalism, and graphics, etc. This would be an openly collaborated newspaper with no limits in its influence and use for the public good. So there's the idea and I hope that people think it has potential. Soulman 06:46, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think you're looking for our Wikinews project. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:26, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I do know about the wikinews project. Thanks for mentioning it though. I was thinking though that the project would basically produce a pdf of an actual newspaper that could be easily printed and distributed. Sure the wikinews project could definitely have a great use here, but I think the extension of developing an actual publication could be of great use to the community and at using another medium by which to share information. Soulman 08:10 AM, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If someone would create a software capable for turning a serie of wikipedia's articles ( a whole wikibook, anything in the science category, evrything that linked from x) in a nice pre-layouted pdf for printing, it would be a great thing.--Alexandre Van de Sande 15:01, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I did a serie of small images to be an icon for Featured Articles. What it means:

  • A featured article is represented by a star. Oh!
  • A featured article is made of tiny fractal pieces.
  • In fact, it is written that way: someone writes a big piece and then a others fit it right. When you get a bunch of big pieces well fit, you've got a great article.
  • You can still add more on a featured article, so it can always grow.

and what it wolud look like

Template:Featured article is only for Wikipedia:Featured articles.

--Alexandre Van de Sande 14:56, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oooh, very pretty. I'm not very active on the Featured Articles front, but I think this is a big improvement, as cosmetic improvements go. --fvw* 17:55, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)
The FAC one doesn't look that good to me with my screen resolution as the star is not fully contained with in the template box.Evil Monkey → Talk 20:55, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)
I like it :) Dan100 11:18, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

For the FAC one, I fixed the HTML so that it appears correctly on non-IE browsers like Mozilla Firefox (using min-height: 60px; in the CSS). I also reworded the text to get rid of ugly whitespace (and I think the new text is better anyway; it wasn't that clear what the "that page" in the old text referred to). Here's what it looks like:

This article is a current featured article candidate.

Please visit Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Village pump (proposals) to support or contest the nomination.

--Redquark 21:07, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • I've changed it so it looks like this:

This article is a current featured article candidate. Please comment on that page to support or contest the nomination.


...because it was displaying badly in Firefox. I've checked and it now appears to work equally well in IE and FF. [[User:Rdsmith4|User:Rdsmith4/sig]] 17:33, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia biases

I think Wikipedia needs a general disclaimer on all Palestine/Israel-related issues, like The majority of the editors on Israel-Palestine issues have a strong bias and all readers are requested to make independent conclusions, cross-check information themselves and best of all, avoid reading these pages for authoritative information very importantly, not take offense at the presentation of historical facts on these pages. This will stop the more conscientious editors from stressing over every moronic agenda-based edit that mutates Wikipedia every few moments and focus on articles they can actually make progress on. -- Simonides 01:24, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't think this disclaimer would stop anybody from stressing over anything; quite the opposite, in fact. I think a lot of editors would disagree with the statement that they have a "strong bias". (Only their opponents are biased!) Also, I question the utility to readers, since anyone who wants to read about Israel/Palestine is probably well aware of the POV swamp they are wading into. --Redquark 21:15, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If these ideas have already been talked about or implemented, I apologize. But it would be cool, if:

  • A database of common misspellings (and possibly even common bad grammar phrases) were developed, and a bot periodically run to identify articles with the misspellings from the list.
  • A bot was periodically run to identify dead links supplied as external links in articles. As links sometimes go down for short periods and return to normal, there would have to be a way of identifying how long a link has been down and the reason (40x or 50x). Even identifying redirects would be useful so they could be corrected to the new URL.

I don't have the time to implement these myself, but in my view, these kind of bots could do a lot of useful work for the Wikipedia, in helping to identify simple errors faster and thus help Wikipedia help project an even higher quality. Any thoughts?

Spelling bots are not trusted to operate autonomously. I think that's explicitly stated somewhere. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:56, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
At any rate, I was thinking these bots would generate listings of articles to check manually, rather than directly making updates to the articles. --Stevietheman 00:54, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

CiteSources template and Missing Citations category

I've created a new "CiteSources" template to help identify articles that don't cite their sources. If you come across (or write!) an article that doesn't adequately cite its sources, you can add {{CiteSources}} to the top of the article. This will automatically add it to the Category:Missing Citations, which maintains a list of the articles missing citations.

Nobody's obligating anyone to use it. But, if you'd like to use it, here it is! -- Dwheeler 01:00, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

While I am a very strong advocate of citing sources...
  1. Wouldn't something like this be better on the talk page?
  2. Citing sources is not usually a black-and-white matter. For example, it's really no problem if we don't cite a source for the readily ascertained date of the JFK assassination, but it's very bad to have an unattributed claim about gunmen on the Grassy Knoll. This kind of thing isn't easily dealt with by slapping on a template. I think, like the NPOV template, this should always be accompanied by a specific indication of what facts need citation, so it can be removed when the matter has been addressed. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:21, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&oldid=8912710"