Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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Article popularity

Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine editor) has a new blog called The Long Tail [1] which discusses the nature of Amazon and Wikipedia and Netflix (and many others) that provide access to content that ranks low on the popularity scale (obscure books, obscure encyclopedia articles, obscure movies) that traditional channels have ignored (compare the number of articles in WP to EB or titles at Blockbuster to Netflix). These obscure titles are the "long tail" on the popularity chart. His most recent entry [2] discusses the nature of "choice" and how we decide which of these obscure titles to read/watch, and the overwhelming variety of choice. He says that we depend on metadata and the wisdom of the crowds-- for example, Google rankings are based on what other people are linking too. Or on Amazon there are item popularity rankings, the circles feature, and other ways.

Wikipedia addresses this problem two ways. First it has Featured Articles to showcase the best articles, and second it relies on Google ranking for the project as a whole. However I contend that these are not enough. For one, Featured Articles is not wisdom of the crowds (more like 10 or 20 people) and is akin to the traditional method of gate-keeping recommendations such as journal editors. Second the google ranking breaks down on obscure titles that may have 1 to none external links to it.

Therefore I propose that a new system of popularity ranking be examined. Wikipedia has close to half a million articles, no one really knows whats here, if you read every article it would take a lifetime. We absolutely must have a system of recommendation.

Because this would involve resources (programming and otherwise) I'm not sure how fruitfull a discussion it would be without input from the powers that be. However, I will say that wisdom of the crowds is the only way to scale such a system. Perhaps one of the easiest and most obvious suggestions would be a page hit counter for each article. --Stbalbach 16:46, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There is a page hit counter, but it has been turned off for a long time because it overloads the servers. 68.237.137.57 03:25, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Until recently there also used to be a monthly analysis of the server logs which could be used to count hits, but these have been halted — also on performance grounds, I believe. — Matt Crypto 09:36, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My experience running a core Usenet server is that logs take a lot of resources, and eventually it become fiscally prudent to send the logs to /dev/null, so I totally understand with the number of hits Wikipedia get this may not be possible at this time. I do wonder though if there are thoughts or ideas on how to determine an articles popularity? It should of course be possible to look at article ranking at Google, and then add that information to the bottom of the article (all automated of course). This could be done on a monthly or less to keep resources at a minimum, and it could be very un-intrusive on the page. I've done something manually along those lines in my personal articles page User:Stbalbach/Articles to get an idea of what it is. --Stbalbach 17:17, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No need for a seperate system. I would recommend reading featured articles... Mgm|^(talk) 12:45, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Featured Articles is not wisdom of the crowds (more like 10 or 20 people) and is akin to the traditional method of gate-keeping recommendations such as journal editors. .. also many of the featured articles are, IMO, not very good compared to many articles where no one has taken the effort to nominate it. I mean, out of half a million plus articles, there are more than 900 good articles. Indeed many of the featured articles have, uh, put on some weight and no longer in shape as they were when they were nominated (and, nomination standards keep improving). --Stbalbach 16:45, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I heard somewhere that a review system is being developed for Wikipedia. That would be very useful in this regard. Couple this with a rating system (and page hit counters when resources allow) and you're home and hosed. Not sure what code they use but lovefilm.com have an excellent rating system (you'll have to register to try it unfortunately). I'd love to see a rating system that attempted to take into account people's political outlook. For instance you could get members to take a political compass test like that on politicalcompass.org before they can rate articles. This would then allow readers to categorise ratings based on where raters see themselves on the political spectrum. —Christiaan - ☎ 16:29, 20 Jan 2005

Those are all great ideas. How do we account for articles changing in quality, for better or worse, over time using a rating system? --Stbalbach 16:45, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That's a really good question. Maybe ratings could expire when a certain percentage (rater determined?) of the article has been modified, at which point raters would be invited to confirm or modify their rating? —Christiaan - ☎ 19:05, 20 Jan 2005

Is a rating system even practical at all? It can't be complicated. Since the articles are in constant flux and change, one can't give an article 7 stars in any meaningful way because in the future, it may be an entirely different article. So for things that are constantly changing, how does one rate it? This is a lot like the problem of ranking stocks, except we have almost no data to work with. The Google rank is sort of the markets vote on an articles popularity. Although I noticed when using the "link:" command in Google, most of the sites linking to a Wikipedia article are from within Wikipedia, a sort of insider trading pyramid scheme. --Stbalbach 19:04, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Um, I don't understand your question, "So for things that are constantly changing, how does one rate it?" Why would you ask that in response to an answer? As for Google rank, that's only a measure of popularity, it's not neccessarily a measure of the quality of an article (especially obscure ones). —Christiaan - ☎ 20:25, 20 Jan 2005

It was rhetorical question. I agree about Google, although popularity is often a guage for relevance, which I think is what most people are really looking for (the reason Google is so popular). If it's relevant to other people, good chance it will be useful to yourself as well. --Stbalbach 04:47, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If articles are ranked, I would propose giving the rankings a weight that decays with each subsubsequent edit. And if one who ranks wants to re-rank at a later time, full weight would be restored to their ranking, and it would begin decaying again with more edits. Something like this is already done on E-thePeople. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 16:28, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Prepare yourself for Invasion of the Sock Puppets! —Michael Z. 2005-01-28 16:45 Z

Perhaps a way could be found to work around sock puppets with regards to ranking. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 18:56, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikicalendar

I have just come up with a fantastic new idea for a "Wiki" website: Wikicalendar! I got the idea from typing years (like 2005) into the Wikipedia, and learning different facts (like that 2005 is the World Year of Physics). It could either be part of Wikipedia, or on its own. The idea is an open source calendar where people can add holidays and onto the calendar. Then, you coul click on the hyperlinked holidays, and it would take you to a page with an article about that holiday. Another cool feature might be that one could view different formats of calendars (Gregorian, Jewish, Muslim, etc.) --Munchkinguy 20:03, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hmm...nice.....and don't forget the Chinese calendar. However, it does sound like a lot of coding involved, especially all the tables (I hate making these things on Wikipedia). It can be done by regular wikipedians like us though...just need to be really hard working, even just to get things started. One question: how do want this to look like, especially the part where we put several calendars togather? Not all calendars have 365 days a year you know. SunTzu2 03:36, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I also belive that tables are evil. I was thinking that the current day would be highlited on the calendar, and clicking on the link to other calendars would take you to the current day on that other calendar, with the day highlited on that calendar. I was hoping that somebody more technologically inclined than myself would come up with the coding. --Munchkinguy 20:58, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well...guess I have to learn to make these tables sooner or later...... I got 5 1/2 months holiday ahead of me anyway. I can help with the 2005 Muslim calendar, the Chinese calendar and the Gregorian calendar (lol, who can't?). Before I get things started, a few issues to settle:

1. Coding the thing to show the highlight date automatically. I got no idea how to do this.
2. Crossing the language barrier. How do we present other calendars, which may be weird to just romanize them, especailly names of months, or in some cases (like the Chinese calendar), years as well.
3. Dealing with existing articles. What do we with it? Especailly these: 2005, 2004, 2003...ect. Without being rediculous for reinventing the wheel. SunTzu2 05:05, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I suppose that somebody will have to change the highlited date every day. To colour in the backround of a cell...

hello

... you type this... <table border=black> <td bgcolor=yellow>hello</td> </table>. I think that the calendar should be created under a new article called "Wikicalendar", and then put a link to it on the "Calendar" article and articles for the years (2004, 2005, etc). As for the cross-language stuff, it is probably good to transliterate, except for the years, in which case they should be translated. I hope that made sense. --Munchkinguy 21:20, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

lol, manual labour it is then. As a standard, the dates should be in UTC. I don't know about other calendars, but the chinese year might be tricky to translate. Half of it (see Heavenly Stems) has no meaning, the characters used there is almost exclusively for calendars only. No problems with second half though, just names of animals. btw, I get an eerie feeling we're alone in this, lol. SunTzu2 12:04, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tada~~ here comes Wikicalendar: 2005. Needs a lot of work though, so I listed it for expansion. What kind of holidays should we list there? National holidays? State holidays? Religious holidays? Cultural holidays? School holidays? (just kidding on the last one). Do we put all the holidays in every calendar or do we put them in the calendar that marks the occasion only? SunTzu2 15:37, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wonderful! My brainchild has been born. Bwahaha! I think that any important holiday from anywhere in the world can be added. That way, each day will have a holiday. Just one thing... (please don't get angry) ...I think it might be better if the weekdays were at the top of the calendar. --Munchkinguy 20:52, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You got to be kidding me......*faints*. Don't forget that's my sweat we're talking about, I've got a huge headache trying to get the tables to the right spot. And you haven't answer me about what to do with the Heavenly Stems. SunTzu2 02:47, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay, here's the deal: I deleted my "Edgar Allan Poe Birthday". I don't really know what you should do with the Chineese Calendar beacuse I don't know anything about it. You should probably write the months phonetically. Just go with your intuition. I will try to rotate the calendar so the weekdays are at the top, but I won't make any changes until it looks perfect in preview so don't worry. --Munchkinguy 18:49, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Can I just ask why you haven't done the tables in Wiki markup, because the other usages are deprecated? (See m:Help:Table.) Noisy | Talk 19:11, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Sure you can! It's because I can get most of the work done in HTML with MsFrontPage. You've seen how much coding it involves right? And after I'm done with the Gregorian Calendar, I still have the Islamic calendar and the Chinese calendar. (Nice thing about living in Malaysia is that you get 4 in 1 calendars, the other one is a Hindu calendar, not sure which variant it is though.)SunTzu2 07:06, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

50% of my work is done now. I found a HTML=>Wiki converter and cut down it's size, but it's still almost 40kb of codes, hope it's worth all the space it's taking. Meanwhile, I need help adding all the holidays, linking pages to and from Wikicalendar and Wikicalendar: 2005, updating the dates daily, and discuss which other holidays to add. (See dicussion page for more info) I'll finish the rest of the Chinese calendar and Muslim calendar myself, in stages. --SunTzu2 11:04, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Aaah! I am very confused by your Chineese Calendar. It starts with 23, and then 1 is in the middle, and then some of them have Gregorian month names. --Munchkinguy 20:12, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'll add a manual or something, lol. --SunTzu2 04:29, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I just think that the Chineese New Year should be on the first day of the first month, instead of having the Chineese months congruent with the Gregorian ones. --Munchkinguy 21:18, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Any suggestions on how else to allow people who are unfamiliar with the calendars to tell when is when? At the moment I'm the only one moving the yellow box daily, and that's several hours after midnight (UTC). I might not be able to keep this up after my holidays come to an end. How do we move the yellow box when it's no longer 2005 anyway? By then there'll be no boxes to move, just a calendar. I just want people to be able to easily determine which 2 days are the same on different calendars even with little maintainence. --SunTzu2 07:49, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, after 2005 is over, we can make a Wikipedia: 2006 page. Remember, we can put links for every year on the Main Wikicalendar Page (sort of an archive), and put the current year at the top --Munchkinguy 04:56, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Stopping Link Spam / Comment Spam

Link spam or Comment Spam is the practice of someone putting links to their own pages in Wikis, Blogs and other places in order to raise their page's ranking in search engines by creating bogus links.

Google has devised a method to make this undesirable practice ineffective. I recommend that Wikipedia place this feature on the list of things to be implemented.

How it is done is, for external links, automatically insert rel="nofollow" in the generated html. Here is a quote from the example:

Q: How does a link change?
A: Any link that a user can create on your site automatically gets a new "nofollow" attribute. So if a blog spammer previously added a comment like
Visit my <a href="http://www.example.com/">discount pharmaceuticals</a> site.
That comment would be transformed to
Visit my <a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">discount pharmaceuticals</a> site.

I think this will be a useful feature to make link spam not worth bothering to do or less significant.
Paul Robinson Rfc1394 18:37, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it would do that, but it would also mean that we don't contribute to the Google ranks of the good articles we link to, which is just plain unfair. I think that outweighs the advantage of the proposed change. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:10, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. There are is a lot of paranoia here (some of it justified, some of it not) by visitors who like to add links. If the links don't count for search engine rankings, there is no point in adding spam links. However, good links that help the article would still be added. As time went by, this community would become less paranoid about external links. As to this comment, "Yes, it would do that, but it would also mean that we don't contribute to the Google ranks of the good articles we link to, which is just plain unfair. I think that outweighs the advantage of the proposed change." Why should any site get a bump for being in Wikipedia? No one should be making money off of the efforts of the Wikipedia community. Some do but we don't have to condone it or make it easier. 141.209.33.148 21:10, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's not about "making money":

1. If we use "nofollow", Wikipedia itself will not be known to Google a "backward link" from any of these articles.
2. Presuming most links in Wikipedia are valid, and point to useful, scholarly resources, we want to boost their rankings. This is the same means by which Wikipedia itself becomes visible on Google. Our valid links help good, scholarly resources compete in the Google rankings.

Jmabel | Talk 22:10, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

How is it a good thing to be less paranoid about external links? Advertisements and other spam, as well as links to sites that don't contain information, should be removed regardless of whether the links are followed by search engines. Fredrik | talk 07:31, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Jmabel. We're always going to have vandalism. Link spam is just another form of vandalism, and it can always be dealt with by reverting. It's not worth taking away the benefit to the quality resources (most of which are noncommercial) that are listed for good reason. – flamurai^TM 22:27, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

In addition, link spamming is not a problem we encounter every day -- it's very infrequent. Peter O. (Talk) 01:07, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

• Especially since the spam blacklist was added, and is maintained. I too think adding nofollow would be a bad idea. —Ben Brockert (42) 04:20, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Jmabel and others in opposition to this proposal. Link spam is infrequent and reverted in a timely manner, whereas in blogs, they usually don't have the same editing standards and Wikipedia's "watchful eyes." --Stevietheman 06:27, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I just figure that someone trying to insert link spam here is probably not sufficiently aware of how Wikipedia works to be deterred by this. (If they were that aware of how Wikipedia works, they would know better than to try in the first place.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 17:30, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think the nofollow tags are a great idea, and should be used whenever an anonymous user adds an external link. Dealing with each vandalism manually when we have technical tools to help lessen the load is a waste of our valuable time. - Omegatron 00:47, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

It does sound good at first, but adding nofollow to all links is a bit like dropping out of the Web altogether. By its nature, Wikipedia's community self-moderates spam links, and this is meet and good. Gives us something to do on a slow day. —Michael Z. 08:14, 2005 Jan 21 (UTC)

• It would only be applied to external links, so it wouldn't make any difference as far as wikipedia articles coming up in google searches.
• Although wikipedia is a good source for highly relevant, quality external links, I'm sure it doesn't make a huge difference in the overall popularity of such links.
• It could be applied only to anonymous editors, making the effect negligible. - Omegatron 16:30, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

This has been turned on! I am very unhappy that it has, who do we need to ask to turn it back off? —Ben Brockert (42) 02:30, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Is it time to vote? - Omegatron 02:44, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

I hope so, though I would have thought that the time to vote was before a change in longstanding policy. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:43, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

As a public and appreciative wikipedia user, I heard about the change and stopped by to see how the community had handled it so quickly, given the democratic nature of wikipedia. Wow... tis is amazing that it was turned on without discussion? And with all of the negative opinions expressed? What's with that?

Since this affects every Wikipedia, the proper place for discussion is meta. I put up a page at m:Meta:nofollow, I hope you'll all go there to enhance it and express your opinion. —Ben Brockert (42) 05:35, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

But it isn't that hard to spam Wikipedia if you know what you are doing. Always create a login name, only add one or two links per user name, use different IP addresses by logging in at your local public library and having subs to services like Earthlink and AOL that give you a different IP address every time, only add one or two links a day, etc. There are some successful spam sites in Wikipedia. The serious ones learn from their mistakes and figure out how to edit here and get away with it. Further, I am aware of several sites that are on the spam filter because a competitor spammed the hell out of them to get them banned from Wikipedia. They know about the spam filter and are using this method to get their competition out. The actual site owners are innocent but even legit adds from these sites are filtered out. Having a no follow tag on links will end most spamming. Most good sites don't need the help of the Wikis to rank well... 172.135.76.241 01:38, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Verbal explanations and pronunciations

At the recently reopened Museum of Modern Art the audio guide has ad-lib discussions of notable pieces by current "experts" in the field. They aren't scripted - it is just someone who knows something about a subject talking about it and putting it in context with history, other pieces, artists, modernity, etc. Further, M-w.com has verbal pronunciations of many words, indicated to be available by a small speaker symbol (example).

I am proposing a somewhat mixed integration of these two ideas, and the Ogg Vorbis audio codec would probably suffice, although I admit to having not used it myself. We would openly invite those who feel comfortable with speaking, with a certain subject, and also with licensing a snippet of their voice under the GFDL, to simply speak about a subject and upload the file. This could be concerning a work of art being displayed inside an article, an entire article, a clarification of some point, or anything the speaker wishes. Because some people would find the small speaker symbols annoying, their could be an option in the user preferences to turn them off, or they could hide them with CSS as is often done here. A limitation would be that they could not introduce facts not already indicated in writing somewhere in the encyclopedia.

This is further expanded to Wiktionary, where it would be highly useful to have open source pronunciations of words in many regional accents of english speakers, and appropriately for other languages as well. --Alterego 00:26, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

I think the concept of having sound is a good one for pronunciations as you mentioned and pages on music. – flamurai^TM 04:29, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

This would be great, especially for the wiktionary - Omegatron 23:32, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

Tables should have their own namespace / We should make a better table editor

The selling point - an alternative table editor

This has been moved to Wikipedia:Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace. Please contribute comments and criticism. - Omegatron 00:16, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

A "TOP" link

I think it would be nice for some long pages to have a shortcut to the top of the page.
As all the pages have an id="top", why not use it?
Could there be an automated process do do that?
Cy21 16:03, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Conceptually, I like this idea. But alas, the devil is in the details. Perhaps there would need to be a user setting that determined where "top" links are placed, like after every n paragraphs or something like that. --Stevietheman 07:39, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Most browsers have built-in commands to go to the top of the page (e.g. the "Home" key). Given that, why would you want a link in the article? —AlanBarrett 08:26, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it could go next to the "About Wikipedia" and "Disclaimers" links at the bottom.

But I've always wondered why some people insist that web designers need to spend time duplicating the most basic operating system functions. If someone managed to navigate to the web page, and even scroll to the bottom!, don't you think they can scroll back to the top without even having to give it any thought? Why only on "long" pages; hitting the page up key or dragging the thumb to the top of the scrollbar doesn't get harder if you have farther to go!

For me the top link is useless, so I would just consider it page clutter. —Michael Z. 2005-01-22 17:16 Z

It is not very useful. Anyone can just press the "home" key to go to the top. Also, you can add edit links to the bottom (Help:User_style#Duplicate_edit_links_at_the_bottom_of_the_content_area). (I really wish wikibooks had "next" "previous" and "up" links, though.) - Omegatron 18:00, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

To answer some concerns here... I think Top links are useful for the person keeping their hand on their mouse while casually reading articles. To have someone take their hand off their mouse to hit the Home key is a bit awkward. Of course, one could program a button on their mouse to do a "Home" but most people wouldn't bother. Top links are a regular appearance on web sites and they need not cause any clutter if designed correctly. Further, going back to the top fast is sometimes a necessity if 1) one wants to re-read the basic summary in the article a second time, or 2) one wants to select a task from the left-hand Wikipedia menu. --Stevietheman 19:14, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You can also make the sidebar float in css, though I seem to be the only person who likes this feature, and my rendition is kludgy. See here for the css: meta:Help_talk:User_style#Floating_sidebar. If someone knows css and can help me finish it, I would appreciate it. We could also consider adding the bottom links css and floating sidebar css to the universal skin instead of a top link. Now that I think of it, an unobtrusive up arrow under the edit link for each section does sound kind of nice, actually. - Omegatron 21:39, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Re: the "unobtrusive arrow", that's fairly close to what I was just thinking today. Put it next to the edit link. And for those who would argue a little up arrow to be clutter, then let's make it a user setting that's defaulted to Off. --Stevietheman 00:14, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. - Omegatron 14:32, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Proposal: Autocomplain if user doesn't enter an edit summary

It's a good deal easier to track edits if the editor uses the "Edit summary" box. Wikipedia doesn't force editors to enter something in the box, which is a good idea. It could, however, do what many email clients do if you fail to enter a subject: ask the user if they really want to do that. This could gently encourage people to enter an edit summary, without the risk of forcing people to use it (in that case, people might just type jibberish). Thoughts? jdb ❋ 01:45, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... I'm bad about this myself, and it would be good for me to have a box pop up if I didn't type anything, making it more efficient to just type something. On the other hand, that is just me. Others would be annoyed. But maybe the non-annoyance of the many outweighs the non-annoyance of the lazy? Complaining is fun. - Omegatron 02:01, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Support. Compare submitting a mail with no subject in Mozilla Mail. Although I hate it there, on Wikipedia an empty summary field is more often a mistake. Deco 02:14, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Support as well - it could be configured that by simply clicking enter at the prompt, which also had a field for an edit summary and "cancel" - eg no mouse clicks - it went ahead and saved. This is a minor inconvenience, and I think we would rather see the person submitting the edit inconvenienced than the multitude of people throughout history from now until the end of time who will have to check their edit. To be honest, I think edit summaries should be mandatory in the main namespace.

That's one way: you could do that with a few lines of javascript. "Press OK if you really want to submit this edit without a summary, press Cancel to go back and add one." Or you could do what some web forms do -- bring the user to a new page with a giant honking exclamation point and a "are you sure you want to do that?" admonition. Given that the latter would involve a roundtrip to the (often painfully slow) wikipedia servers and the former wouldn't, I'd favor the former. jdb ❋ 02:41, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A popup javascript dialog is the way to go, with a form in it so you don't have to push cancel; you can fill in the summary right then and there and push enter. It will certainly annoy me, but that is for the better good.  :-) - Omegatron 02:45, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

No offence, but I think this is a bad idea. Just my 2¢. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 03:23, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. Neutrality^talk 03:24, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. Nagware is bad, and tracking vandalism on RC is much easier when most vandalism is by IPs who leave no edit summary. —Ben Brockert (42) 03:35, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

The proposal is not to force an edit summary, but suggest one. I doubt that vandals will stop leaving empty edit summaries even if WP reminds them to do so. The proposal may, however, make finding genuine vandals easier, by filtering out regular users who are in the habit of not entering summaries. jdb ❋ 19:45, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I also oppose. Peter O. (Talk) 03:49, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

My 2ψ oppose: not everyone browses with javascript on, or allow it to pop up windows, and having to go through another page reload is sometimes tortuous. —Korath (Talk) 05:51, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

If someone doesn't have javascript on, this wouldn't have any effect -- it easily could be designed to fail gracefully. Also, there's no need for a page reload (see above) -- it could be implemented entirely in client-side javascript. jdb ❋ 19:08, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Neutral. See my comments above. It would be somewhat annoying, but would make the entire experience less annoying in general. It would not be a pop-up window; just a dialog box. It would only take one click more than it currently does. It would save bandwidth as edit summaries would be more likely to be filled in and people wouldn't need to check edits by loading the page. A less forceful method would be preferred, though. - Omegatron 06:14, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. This idea would slow down the "data entry flow" and I'm not sure the benefit is worth it. Perhaps a better approach would be to track what users do and automatically append a friendly informational message to their talk page if they submit so many edits w/o a summary. --Stevietheman 07:52, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I do like that idea, but it only works for logged-on users. Some combination of the nagging dialog for not-logged-in users and a nagging message on the user's talk page would be good. jdb ❋ 19:08, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

oppose. It will not work. I write summaries when I feel tension, or potential of disagreement. I often don't when I think my edits are totally uncontroversial. I would just switch off Javascript, or else I'd just type something like 'asdf': nonsensical edit summaries are no more helpful than no edit summaries. dab (ᛏ) 09:14, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Not to tell you how to edit, but an edit summary is more than a defense or justification. It's also informational, so people can look at the history or Recent Changes and see what changed, briefly, without interpreting a diff. An RC patroller will often interpret a missing edit summary as a potential attack ("what do they have to hide?"). Deco 10:23, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree - edits summeries makes it possible to see what is in an edit without checking the diff. As Wikipedia:Edit_summary says, Always fill the summary field. Thue | talk 22:31, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

support. As a Wiki-newbie, I have repeatedly found myself hitting "submit" and then realizing that I did not enter a summary -- even though I wanted to. The solution may be as intrusive as nagware, or as simple as placing the summary box above the wiki editing area. Allowing users to go back an add a summary to an existing change may also solve this one specific issue. --Zenkat 06:00, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As a side note, has anyone considered performing controlled experiments on Wikipedia using server stats as the experimental evidence? It could be interesting to try a two-week nagware experiment that tracked the percentage of edits that included a comment, as well as other statitics about edit frequency, length, secondary alterations, etc. --Zenkat 06:00, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Conditionals in templates

It would be great if there were a simple way to do conditionals in templates. It would be great even to just check if a variable existed. For example,

|-
|| Release date:
|| {{{release_date}}}
{{{{if awards}}}}
|-
|| Awards:
|| {{{awards}}}
{{{{endif}}}}
|-
...

I don't know what the best syntax would be, but this would really be helpful.

– flamurai^TM 21:31, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

I found a way to do what you want. There's no way for checking the existence of a parameter and any template will output garbage if a parameter it needs is left undefined. It is however possible to do some equality testing on the value of a parameter. I created Template:ifdef which outputs one text if a parameter is the empty string, and another if it's anything else. I made a demo template, User:Rorro/sandbox:

• {{User:Rorro/sandbox|param=42}} outputs "

Mount Everest
Height	8844
Range	Himalaya

Mount Everest
Height	8844

".

• {{User:Rorro/sandbox|param=}} outputs "

Mount Everest
Height	8844
Range	Himalaya

Mount Everest
Height	8844

".

This won't work in your case, since the pipe characters break the template syntax, but it's not difficult to make something similar which calls a template. _R_ 02:12, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Protecting Wikipedia:About

I have re-opened the debate on whether Wikipedia:About should be protected. Visit the Talk page to discuss. --Slowking Man 06:45, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

"Hide logged-in users" in Special:Newpages

I would very much like to see a "hide logged-in users" feature in Special:Newpages, just like in Special:Recentchanges. Most of the vanity/advertisement/etc pages are created by anonymous users. That way it would be easier to spot them quickly. What do you think?User:Pt/sig 14:46, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sounds useful to me. --Stevietheman 21:59, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Support. Deco 22:42, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ditto. jdb ❋ 00:55, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This would be one of the most useful features ever. Neutrality^talk 06:31, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Of course, as soon as any vandal got their head around it, they'd simply log in to reduce the likelihood of their vandalism bening noted. Filiocht 08:55, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Right. And of course they don't do that now for regular edits to pages, which are already hideable this way. Anyone who cares about insidious vandals will simply leave these options off; people who prefer dealing only with egregious vandalism or newbie tests can turn them on. JRM 10:37, 2005 Jan 24 (UTC)

I have wanted this too for some time. I made a patch at [3]. If somebody else reads it/tests it and say it works then I think it will have a better chance of being applied. Thue | talk 20:09, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It would also be nice to be able to mark pages as checked on special:newpages, to help yourself and other editors, like a software-assisted wikipedia:new pages patrol. I made a patch for that too: [4]. Note that you can vote for bugs in the bug tracking system :). Thue | talk 16:00, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Names of People

Articles concerning people seem to be titled as "A.A.Milne". It would be better to title them "Milne,A.A" or, "Milne, Alan Alexander", or preferably "Milne, Alan Alexander (1882-1956)".

If this is desirable I would be willing to assist in renaming the current articles.

Why do you consider putting an article at a title no one would ever use to be better? -- Cyrius|✎ 14:54, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why would this be better? It isn't a library card catalog where you have to browse through by last name; it's the internet. I think the names should stay in normal order. - Omegatron 14:57, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

The library is orgainised by last name, normal encyclopedias also, the Who's Who is by last names as well. I would assume that there is a reason for this! Why should wikipedia be different?

Because the only way to find an entry in any of those is to browse through in alphabetical order. While this is a factor for Special:Allpages, I expect that the number of people finding an article through that is vanishingly small compared to those who search or follow a link (which would either have to be piped all the time, or have a redirect for every single entry). —Korath (Talk) 03:13, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Let me break this down.

1) Is it desirable to have a policy for the naming of pages concerning people ? 2) If it is, what should this policy be ? 3) If it is, is it desirable to change the existing pages ?

No, no, no, no, no. Do you know how many thousands of pages and links there are in Wikipedia? We CAN'T change this now, even if we want to, and you still haven't presented a case for why it's needed when we have links. RickK 05:37, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

There is not an official policy, but the de facto policy emerging from many past discussions like this one is that names should be in the normal order (first first, last last). Deco 05:44, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why not just add redirects for all the names of people in the form Milne, A. A.? They will appear in the desired place in the list, and they will get you to the article. Nothing that exists now has to change; this just would just add the desired functionality.

Well, get to work! —Michael Z. 2005-01-22 16:54 Z

The only reason other sources use names backwards is because you have to browse through them in alphabetical order to find things. Thanks to hyperlinks, much of that sort of tedious browsing has been eliminated. Likewise with backwards names. We just link to Thomas Edison like we would if we were just speaking about him. It makes much more sense, don't you think? And for things like categories of people, they are registered in backwards, so they show up in alphabetical order. For example, Category:Deceased musicians. I see no reason for this backwards naming at all. It's a step into the past. But if you want to add a bunch of redirects that will never be used, go right ahead. We'd rather see you use your editing time for something constructive, though.  :-) - Omegatron 06:26, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

add a new option

hello, your website is very interesting but I want to make a possibility to remove the pictures when I don't want them.

Turn off "auto load images" in your web browser. jdb ❋ 17:31, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Edit Display Mode for links

A user 'preference' editing option that tags wikilinks with status info.

An example of this tag might look like stones(disamb) or perhaps Earthworks(stub).

This markup would be invisible to regular users, but anyone who likes to ramble around doing small edit work could set the preference to display the markup. This would open up the ability to work on a number of links on a single page by having a heads-up about the current status of all the links on that page. (Really the idea is just a further extension of the dead link color code that already exists.)

I know this would be a significant coding issue (of which I know nothing), but a general solution might be to append non-visible characters directly to the article title (or header?). This would negate any new sorting requirement on the wiki system by having the title altered each time a 'stub' or 'disambig' or 'cleanup' or similar template is added/removed from the article. Then it is just (just?) a matter for the end user's system to recognize the coding and display it.--Bookandcoffee 23:47, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Or put it in the title field of the link! That is what I thought you meant when you said it. So when you hover over a link it shows you in the tooltip. - Omegatron 03:07, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. Then you'd have to hover over each link to see what its status was. That might defeat the purpose? I was hoping to see it appended within an article itself, not the artcle holding the link. ie. in the above example it would be the title of the 'Stone' article that holds the template information. That way any link to 'stone' would be able to exploit the info, and any update would be universal.--Bookandcoffee 09:04, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good point. That would be mystery meat navigation. Perhaps color coding? That could get too elaborate, though. If we broke it down into just 4 colors or so, that would be viable. Nonexistent articles, regular articles, stubs, and disambigs? Putting words next to each link is kinda ugly. But maybe. - Omegatron 15:39, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Mmmm. Mystery meat...

Ahh... See here: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Stub_threshold. - Omegatron 15:47, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the link. Once again my illusions of originality have been shattered. :) Not only has the idea been thought of - its been implimented and disgarded! I still think it has some merit, so I'll wander over to the technical thread and put my two cents in there. --Bookandcoffee 20:33, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

For modern browsers (i.e. not IE): :link:after {content: " (" attr(title) ")"} User:Anárion/sig 15:48, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Stable", protected, democratically elected version of each article?

How about having two versions of every article; One, which is protected, democratically deemed accurate and NPOV enough (for the time being)etcetera and another, which is the regular kind, edited by anyone,anytime. The version under construction would then be voted to be better than the "Stable" version (or not), and take it's place (or not)? During voting there'd be a third, temporarily protected version so that the anyone,anytime editing would not suffer ... --Mikko

OH, God, no. This is the antithesis of the Wiki way. RickK 07:26, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Lots of people have made lots of variants of this proposal. The devil is in the details, and the details are hard. So far, I haven't seen a detailed proposal of this sort that I'd support. jdb ❋ 07:28, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Can you point me to some discussion of this or give a short summary of the devilish details? I realize that this Wiki way of evolving texts is the best atleast in a world with people committed to the truth, but I'd like to be convinced it's the best even in a world with vandals and advertisers and whatnot... --Mikko

It's been discussed in a lot of places. I think the most discussion is at Wikipedia:Approval mechanism; another place you might look is Wikipedia talk:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards (the relevant discussion is probably mostly in the archives), but someone else might have additional suggestions. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:02, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, this sounds just like Wikipedia 1.0. apart maybe from the 'democratically elected' bit. Filiocht 11:49, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

There's a list of relevant links at Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0. The idea of 1.0 is that there might be a version of Wikipedia that's made available in some other medium, CD/DVD or even paper, and which would necessarily have to be stable. Whether or not that happens, there might be some value in identifying a "stable" version of an article that's been vetted in some way (experts or popular consensus). The stable version would be available via a link from the article. The main version of the article still be openly edited by anyone. JamesMLane 17:11, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The more I look at this Wikipedia (tonight for the third night(sleep during day)), the more it seems to me to be working and I now believe it is headed for greatness even without an expert or a democratic approval mechanism, unless the world turns into an absolute global totalitarian policestate. I guess my contribution here should be seen as a reminder of how some newcomers might think at a first glance... :) Thank's. --Mikko

Hong Kong notice board

Hi all. I am thinking of starting a notice board on Hong Kong related materials. Any bright ideas or people wanting to join? Pls drop me a line on my talk page. Thanks. --JuntungWu 12:16, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Power Users

This may have been proposed in the past but I believe it's a useful idea. I propose that a new permissions level of "Power User" be created. These users would have normal permissions except that they would have access to the rollback link. They would not have the admin powers of blocking users or deleting pages. A user would become a power user after hitting a threshold of 500 edits (or 750, 1000, the exact number would need to be agreed upon). If the Power User violates the 3RR or abuses their rollback power, they would lose their Power User status.

I believe establishing "Power Users" would allow users to revert vandalism more quickly and easily. It would also allow users to prove themselves ready for adminship by providing them with a relatively harmless admin power. Carrp 16:06, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, but I wouldn't base it on number of edits, as a number like that has little to do with the quality of edits. I would favor an application/nomination process, however. --Stevietheman 18:02, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree that a set number of edits isn't an ideal system. The edit threshold was an attempt to come up with an automated system that wouldn't put additional responsibilities on admins or bureaucrats. Since adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", my opinion is that becoming a Power User should be almost automatic. The reason I don't think all users should have the rollback function is because it's too likely to be abused by new users. Perhaps the threshold should be based on time (1 or 2 months?) instead of edits. The specifics would certainly need to be discussed. Right now I'm just trying to get support for the idea of Power Users. Carrp 18:37, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea of a time-based system. - Omegatron 20:56, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

I believe there are plans to incorporate something like this in MediaWiki 1.5. One of the planned Wikipedia:User access levels is the rollback ability. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 20:52, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't like to based it on time, because a user might have signed up for a long time but did very little. So this user would be no different to a new user. A combination of a time and edit based system maybe? Also, maybe we should give power users immunity to autoblocking as well (but still can be blocked directly), since they've proven to be genuine contributers. This will save us dynamic IP users a lot of headache. --SunTzu2 04:25, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

e.g. "after 50 days on which the user made at least 10 edits"? dab (ᛏ) 11:17, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That would probably work pretty well. There could be a query run daily (or weekly) that would assign the Power User permissions to all users meeting the criteria. Admins (or maybe just bureaucrats) would be able to deny these permissions to abusive users at any time (before or after meeting the criteria). Carrp 13:12, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

PDFs of tutorials etc

How feasible would it be to put together and publish in PDF format the various tutorials and style guides, with indices? I have a box file with piles of printouts of parts, and I am finding great difficulty in finding my round the online pages, since it is not obviouslty structured. Perhaps it is and I have not cracked it yet! It strikes me to be a successful and concientious editor one needs to absorb a great deal of knowledge about the Wikipedia culture and conventions, on top of learning how to research and write well. I certainly would welcome the means of having a paper version for studying off-line. Apwoolrich 20:10, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a decent print style sheet, which hides most of the navigation links and tools. If your browser supports print style sheets (if not, try Firefox), you can get good results just printing right from your web browser. On Mac OS X, click the PDF button in the print dialogue to save in PDF format (dunno what you need on Windows). Of course this doesn't give you contents or indices with page numbers, but it's easy to do right away. —Michael Z. 2005-01-22 16:54 Z

Seconding the latest changes to an article?

Looking at the latest changes made to an article and then reverting to the previous state is a way of saying "I don't agree with what the last person who edited this did to the article. Thumbs down." How about (and again, I'm a noob. This is probably another example of me not finding the proper discussion on the subject, or knowing of a feature (or set of features)or built in systemic logic that essentially would do this) a button in the history tab of giving thumbs up (for logged on or even just especially respected users) to a latest edit? Seems to me (without having given it too much thought) it might be helpful for those looking for vandals or disinformationists. They could list articles with recent changes that no one has seconded. They wouldn't have to look at articles someone else has allready looked at and approved of. --Mikko

Firstly, you shouldn't revert changes made to an article just because you don't agree with them. Reverting is meant for cases of clear vandalism (although it does get used quite a bit more than that in practice). If someone makes an edit you don't like, try to improve the edit, make it NPOV, or make sure it's attributed to one party and give the other party's POV.

We have tried a system of trusted users "flagging" recent changes to show that they appear to be genuine contributions and not vandalism, but it was turned off after a few days. I'm not sure where the discussion of the feature is. I'd like to see that discussion too, if someone could link to it please.-gadfium 00:24, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I should have said editing/reverting. --Mikko.

The way I see it, the fact that anyone can edit any article means that the opinions or data expressed in the article will eventually converge to a stable equilibrium point that everyone can agree with. If it slides away from this point, it will be pushed back into the middle by another edit.  :-) Also, the information here will always be more accurate and more neutral than the information on an average website. Does this help you understand the ideal a little better? You've read the replies to common objections, right? - Omegatron 15:05, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

As an experienced user, I will often add a comment to a discussion page "endorsing" an edit by an anonymous user if I've verified it independently. I'll also make remarks about something seeming likely but needing citation, etc. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:45, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

I would worry that a feature like this could cut off discussion and eliminate compromise. Why try to incorporate and improve someone's contribution, when a few people have already marked it as "bad"? —Michael Z. 2005-01-28 15:13 Z

"List" namespace

Why don't we give the numerous "List of" articles on Wikipedia their own namespace? Denelson83 22:15, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm curious as to why you think WP should. jdb ❋ 22:48, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How is this different from categories? - Omegatron 23:45, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Well, there are lots of non-category "list of" articles: for instance List of Latin phrases, List of shock sites, etc. They tend to provide more information about each article than category lists. I don't think there's any reason why they belong in a separate namespace, however. jdb ❋ 01:12, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The reason is that there are, in my opinion, lots of lists in Wikipedia that may have only little to no encyclopedic merit, or there may be too small an amount of things that have something in common to merit their own list, as in you could not possibly find enough items to put into the list to even warrant it having a WP article of its own. Denelson83 01:58, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Many of these List of ... articles have gone through the Votes for Deletion process, and have survived. Lists are not the same as Categories, in that they can hold red links and also more information than a category. RickK 07:01, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

One of the main virtues of a "List of…" article is that, unlike a Category, it has a Related Changes link (e.g. like this) which can be used as a sort-of-shared watchlist. --Phil | Talk 08:14, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

You might be happy to learn that the Related Changes function now works with Categories. I believe it was part of the MediaWiki 1.4 upgrade. older≠wiser 13:39, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

TOP 1000 SCIENTISTS FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME TO 2000 AD by Philip Barker and American academy of Arts and Sciences

I should like to write an article about the above mentioned topics but as I am new should appreciate advice.My email [email protected]

Good idea, but it seems to conflict with Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View. However, it would be a great project for Wikibooks. --Munchkinguy 05:27, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikiproject of the Week?

A lot of the Wikiprojects are dead or near it. Some could be edited to be more effective and some have good ideas that could be implemented. Maybe there should be a Wikiproject of the week similar to the other focused collaboration ideas. I guess there could be a WPOTW Wikiproject. Iunno. It's just one idea to get people interested in some broad topics that they might not ordinarily think to tackle, but might be interested. --Sketchee 06:43, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how working on different individual wikiprojects

could get very far in a week.

But about broad topics people might not ordinarily think to tackle, it could be good to have a weekly collaboration that works on current articles without confining itself to stubs. I'd go for that. Maurreen 16:28, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maybe. Nothing wrong with it if some people want to do it. I would remark, though, that the fact that a project lacks overt ongoing work does not mean that it is a dead letter. For example, about a year ago I started Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups. It kind of petered out as a project, but I think it influenced, and probably continues to influence, a lot of people about how to write encyclopedically about an ethnic group. -- Jmabel | Talk

Anon users

In the interests of trying to reduce vandalism, can we have a message at the top of the edit page (for anon users only) which says something like "Yes, you really can edit this page right now, and it really will appear on the website when you press Save. Please don't modify the page just to test this - there is a sandbox for this purpose here. We welcome useful contributions from anyone - but please don't vandalise Wikipedia!". The ickle sandbox message at the bottom, below the Save button, really isn't sufficient IMO. Rd232 08:35, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Reciprocal talk comments

This one is almost certainly beyond the available technology's capacity, but I'll put it here anyway. I notice that when a two-way conversation is going on on user talk pages, it is common for replies to be posted on both the talk pages concerned. (eg if User X says something on user Y's talk page, then User Y will put a reply on both his/her own talk page and on User X's. Then User X will reply in the same way on both pages, and so on). It would simplify the process (again using the same example) if User Y could type a reply once, but have it simultaneously added to both talk pages. As I say, it's almost certainly beyond the reach of the technology, but it would be useful... Grutness|^hello? 11:24, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The tech is there: templates or subpages. However I don't see this work. User:Anárion/sig 12:59, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Someone else just asked for this, and I think it would be great, too. Some people don't want their replies on their own talk page, apparently, but that can just be an option. - Omegatron 23:35, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

Simple English Contributors

I believe that a link should be placed in the tasks pane of the Community Portal that says something along the lines of: "Contribute to the Simple English Wikipedia". With only c.2000 articles, great work still has to be done. A note should also be made that contributors can use the English Wikipedia (en) as a starting point. Alexs letterbox 09:42, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A sampling of articles also suggests rather poor quality. Frankly I think it may just be a bad idea. It's not clear enough who it's aimed at, or why their needs can't be accommodated in Wikipedia, or perhaps in Wikibooks (as a Wikibook aimed at children, say). Rd232 13:09, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I don't see what that encyclopedia provides over simply translating en with one of the many tools available --

Alterego 02:17, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

This is not a section for discussing wheter or not we need a Simple English Wikipedia; we already have one. It was created for people who have English as a second (or third, fourth, etc) language. Discussing whether or not there should be one is irrelevent to the topic. Anyway, if the articles do have "rather poor quality", all the more reason to get people to expand it. I didn't even know about it until recently when I noticed "Simple English" on the "other languages" bar on the left side of the screen. Besides, Babelfish does a really bad job of translating webpages. --Munchkinguy 05:16, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Template:Disputeabout

Often, long articles are tagged as disputed, just because one subtopic is disputed. A brief message about the nature of the dispute would greatly help the casual user. I created a new tag Template:Disputeabout, which can be used as e.g. {{Disputeabout|the number of deaths}}. The idea is to have a brief message, so the casual user knows which parts of the article should be used with care. See also Template talk:Disputeabout. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:58, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

Good idea, although I'm looking forward to the point where I see one that says, "the dispute is about what the disputeabout template should say". -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:49, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, we've already got the {{NPOVNPOV}} template, so why not? --Carnildo 23:45, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Templates for deletion

When a template is nominated for deletion, a {{tfd}} is placed on it, and a handy-dandy message appears on its page saying something like "This template has been nominated for deletion". That same message appears on every page that features that template. In some cases, that can be bulk untold multiple truckloads of pages (such as with {{actor-stub}} at present). Is there any way of changing the way this message appars so that it is on the template's page but not on the pages of articles featuring that template? It can spoil the look of otherwise good articles. Grutness|^hello? 09:11, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well it does bring the request to the attention of wider audieence. Often it is the only way that I have found a template is up for deletion. Evil Monkey∴Hello? 09:32, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

Could we just make a tfd small icon? Rolling over it, the tool tip could have the current message. Would this be effective? It'd have to be a pretty self-explanatory-looking icon though. Clicking on it could either go straight to vfd or to the talk page.

Either that or make the current template into just italicized plain text to be less obtrusive? --Sketchee 10:45, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

I support the notice appearing in every article where the template is included, so that Wikipedia users will be made aware of the delete process; otherwise, it would be hidden from most people. However, if there's a way to make it less obtrusive as has been suggested, that would be a good thing. We certainly don't want to hurt the aesthetics of the articles where tfd is in play. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 18:49, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Autodetect deletion vandalism

A popular type of vandalism is to replace the whole article, or a whole section, with the word "pwn3d" or the like. This kind of vandalism could be autodetected: If an article size decreases by some large amount - perhaps a threshhold could be 20% of the section or article being edited, or 3000 characters, whichever is larger - then the article's name is automatically placed on a list that can be quickly peer-reviewed in the same way that Wikipedia editors currently routinely review new edits.

Possibly valuable because it decreases the chance that 'deletion vandalism' will slip through the cracks unnoticed, and if someone feels like monitoring this list on a particular day, the time-to-revert will also be decreased. Tempshill 21:52, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. I had once brought up the idea of not allowing anonymous users to change an article by more than a particular percentage, but I think your idea has more merit. To make it better, I think, the list maybe should not include those size decreases where the article is replaced with a redirect. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 02:14, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This idea would work as it still requires review by human users. However, such a system would need to be trialed to find which percentage (personally I think 20% is too little) works the best. Alexs letterbox 05:17, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Reasonable. I can think of several other vandalism-detection heuristics: insertions of the seven dirty words, insertion of leet, and the like. Summary-list edits by anonymous are also suspect, albeit less so (one might combine this with weaker heuristics, like single-word insertions, to screen out false positives). If these were displayed in a list, or flagged in RecentChanges, it would make them easier to catch. jdb ❋ 05:55, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Knowing a dramatic change in size content might also be useful for other purposes. Most any article changed by a large amount probably needs a quick look over. --Sketchee 00:00, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

In regards to the seven dirty words, some consideration must be taken for articles which actually use those words. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See Feature Request 958: Proposal to extend Recent Changes flags (and related discussion on User:CXI/RC flags proposal) -- comment there if you like the idea. — Catherine\^talk 04:07, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Printable version

Hello,

I was wondering if it was possible to have a printer friendly version (or better : directly a pdf or ps file) to be more confortable while reading articles from wikisource ?

In any case, would a wiki to ps or wiki to pdf filter be possible ?

Thanks

I think this is included in the css? - Omegatron 19:30, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Exactly. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:32, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Try doing print preview. Smoddy | ειπετε 21:46, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I sometimes get hosed when I print; some of the words up against the right margin get cut off. Tempshill 03:27, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Printer Friendly is a good idea! This is because when printing a Wikipedia article, part of the page always gets cut off to sacrifice space for the sidebar, which is useless on a piece of paper anyway. Print Preview will not change this. A "remedy" is to select the part of the page that you want to print, and then select the Print Selection option when printing. The problems with this "remedy" are that the resulting page looks funny if there are pictures, and the printer often prints out an empty page at the end, wasting paper, ink, and money; not to mention that it is sometimes difficult to select everything you want without selecting some things you don't want. Several online encyclopedias have a "printer friendly" option, such as The Canadian Encyclopedia. This should be easy to implement. All we have to do is get the designers of MediaWiki to add this feature on their next release. --Munchkinguy 21:26, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Printer friendly exists. What there is is a stylesheet solely for the purpose of printing. This is, actually, very easy to read. This page is a poor example (mainly due to the large table of contents) but 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake shows my point well. Just do a print preview and the text will be eminently readable. Smoddy (t) (e) (c) 16:58, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Proposal: A grammar test that is required for all Wikipedians (hear this one out please)

I propose a grammar test that when taken, which would be required before anyone can edit, that would give a number beside of a wikipedians name that would indicate how well they scored! If someone edited an article and they had a 1 beside their name then you can rest asured that the edit is good, but if they had a 9 beside their name then you can decide whether or not to check the article they edited out! I understand that English is different in American than in England so a red number could indicate American English and a green number would indicate British English (lol). Any ideas, questions, comments? Please refer them to either here or my talk page... Jaberwocky6669 19:01, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

7 Noisy | Talk 19:19, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

I propose that no grammar or spelling tests be required, as this would prevent 99.999% of the internet population from contributing. :-)

If you don't like someone's grammar, fix it! - Omegatron 19:32, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

You say that like stopping them from editing is a bad thing. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:22, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No, I think you miss my point! It wouldn't stop anyone from contributing, unless they didn't complete the test, it would indicate where their grammatical skills stand. Re-read the original entry please and pay particular attention to the number and color system that I propose. Also, 99.999% of all internet users wouldn't be blocked from contributing. You can't look at net forums and assume that because they didn't use correct grammar there that they do not have the ability to use it anywhere else! Jaberwocky6669 20:26, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of labelling some Wikipedians as being better than others according to some criterion or other. Let people's accomplishments speak for themselves. If grammar is your strong point, then fix grammar. If it's not, then you write what you know about and someone else will polish it up.

First, I never even implied that it be used to rate someone as being better, it would be a way of making it easier for those who go around correcting grammar and the like. However, you do make a very fine point that does cut my idea down to size though, lol! Jaberwocky6669 20:38, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

What colours will we use for Canadian English, Indian English, Australian English, etc? —Michael Z. 2005-01-31 20:31 Z

With an unlimited color pallete at our disposal I don't think that would be a problem! Jaberwocky6669 20:38, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

It is not unlimited and is limted more by the ability of humans to perseiv colour.--Jirate 20:43, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

Grammar is the least of our problems. And I certainly don't want to discourage editing by non-native speakers. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:40, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Also, I would like to add that if someone happened to score the lowest possible score there would be no restrictions whatsoever on what they can and can not do! The same would go for high scores, there would be no special privelages for them. Also, a test like this would have to be timed so that someone can't take the time to look the answers up from somewhere else. They can test only once maybe twice with special permission, which would eliminate the possibility of someone writing the questions down and looking up the answers and then going back and cheating. Jaberwocky6669 20:46, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

No one would be discouraged, if someone spoke a different dialect of english they would indicate such and be given s special test for their dialect of english. WHich as I mentioned would be indicated by the color of the number. Jaberwocky6669 20:46, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

One problem is for people who edit from dynamic IP addresses. Do you want to force them to take a test every time they dial in to the internet and try to edit Wikipedia? They would also quickly recognise the correct answers after seeing the test a few times, and so the actual result would be meaningless. Those of us who edit from a fixed IP address could find a way to sit the test via dynamic IP address so we know what to expect before sitting the test that counts. Finally, it wouldn't be long before someone posted the questions with model answers off-site. To counter these problems, you need a very large pool of questions, with the precise questions asked on each occasion selected at random. All questions would need to be of equal difficulty. This still wouldn't avoid the annoyance factor for the dynamic IP contributor.-gadfium 22:13, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Let's save the "grammer" and "reading" tests for weeding out minorities at the polls. Anyone remember why they stopped doing that? No, I don't think this is a good idea. Grammer problems are minor and I'd rather encourage more international Wikipedians to contribute. This would not only probably discourage people from translating because they have imperfect grammer (although they can convey the ideas well enough), but would discourage information from international wikipedians. Not only that but it will discourage everyone else. I really don't want to sit here and answer a dozen questions to edit an article and I'm already here. Will new users really go through with a lengthy process? If you want to make a voluntary test (ie strike the word "required"), I guess I wouldn't discourage you. --Sketchee 23:53, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

(Yes I realize it's spelled grammar, but you still knew what I meant. :) )--Sketchee 00:48, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I have let this idea die, but I still don't understand how it would discourage anyone from editing! I say again that I no longer propose this idea, but anyone who has anything to say are encouraged to comment. Back to my point, no one would be blocked from editing any article anywhere on Wikipedia even if they scored the lowest score. Instead, it would have been merely a tool to judge whether or not an article should be examined for grammatical errors. If I see that a user who scored the highest edited an article then I would not take the time to look that article over; however, if someone scored the lowest score then I would definately utilize my time efficiently by checking the article over. Also, no minorities would be specifically discouraged or excluded simply because a unique test would exist for them that would have been tailored to their specific English dialect. Don't turn this idea that I had into something that would be used to discriminate people. I never had those intentions and I clearly laid out the details of how not to discriminate! I'm done. Jaberwocky6669 03:47, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Let me clarify my old idea one last time. I will then allow the slain beast to die in peace. If an Australian, who speaks a unique dialect, were to take the test, then that Australian would choose which nationality they were from a drop down list and the corresponding test would then be administered. If this same Australian user scored the highest in Australian English then they would receive the highest score; However, the number would be a different color in order to allow other editors to distinguish his specific dialect! This is all. I think the idea could be utilized in different ways by those creative enough to see through to the core of the idea. Jaberwocky6669 03:54, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Also, what about the people who propose that only articles contributed by people who do not register a name be given extra scrutiny? I'm sure if I took the time I could see all kinds of instances in which people are discriminated and weeded-out. Not saying that discrimination should be practiced by Wikipedians, but that you should go after those instances in which discrimination actually 'is' practiced and not what 'seems' like discrimination at first glance. Jaberwocky6669 04:06, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

It's as simple as this: All that matters is what's in the article, not who wrote it. – flamurai^TM 04:26, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

All you have to do is read through the archives of at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style to learn very quickly that we are often unable to decide which standard to use to determine what is grammatically correct. You can't always say, "this is correct in American English and this is correct in British English, and in Australian English it's like this". Even if we all agreed that this is a good idea, it would be very difficult to come up with grammatical rules that should be included in the test. It's not just that I think that this would promote discrimination; on a purely practical level, it would be a waste of time and energy to implement (we might eventually be able to agree on some grammar to test, but it would take a long time). -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:55, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If Wikipedia is an international effort, then any form of dialect and grammar should be allowed to exist in unity. No one standard should be chosen over another. I envision pages with varying grammars and dialects. Jaberwocky6669 16:16, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

IQ Test

Hear me out. I think that before editing users should be given an IQ test. To screen out those people who can only spell and form gramtically correct sentences, without any understanding of the content.--Jirate 20:43, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

I THINK THIS IS A GR3AT IEDA1!111! OMG LOL - Omegatron 20:57, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, laugh, go ahead, have fun at my expense. Even though my idea may go nowhere it's still good to keep everything fresh you know? Yuk Yuk Yuk. Well I aints gots me no edycayshun! HU HU HU HU HU DURRR =D Yeap, raise your glasses at the fool! Raise them HIGH! Jaberwocky6669 21:36, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

:-) it's just discriminatory and discouraging and entirely unnecessary. some people ain't got no good grammar. so what? they can still add articles without worrying about being labeled for it. maybe we should make a classification system to rate people on how good their ideas for proposals are. would you contribute more ideas if everyone gave you a big fat 9 for this one? the grammar errors sort themselves out over time. - Omegatron 21:48, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, thank you, I stand corrected. Even though my intentions were good it would still be a springboard that others would use to judge people with. My last gasp for air is this: I just wished there was a way to classify people according to their abilities. If such a system were implemented I understand that it would have to be voluntary and only the results could be listed on the talk-page of the user. Jaberwocky6669 21:56, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC) I'm leaving it to die now though, thanks! =)

It would be nice to have a system for recognizing whether people know what they are talking about or not, technical knowledge specifically. If you doubt an edit, you can kind of guess from their user page or other contributions though. But it would still turn into a discrimination thing. - Omegatron 21:58, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

The easiest way to know if someone knows what they're talking about is if they add references. If they do and you check the reference and it all agrees, then there you go. If their grammer sucks, that's easy to fix especially compared to if the information has been miswritten compared to the source. --Sketchee 23:44, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Sometimes taking the piss is worth 1000 words, on Wikipedia it's about 10000.--Jirate 22:26, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

What does that mean?????? !!!! Jaberwocky6669 22:52, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

• Pssst. If any you would like help passing your IQ test, send me 10 USD and I will take your test for you. Guaranteed high score!  :-) —Mike 05:00, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Haha! That, too. - Omegatron

User-related diff

When I click the diff link on my watchlist, 100% of the time I want to see all of the changes made by the last editor. If he made three edits in a row, I want to see them all at once; the difference between before and after this user's last several edits, yet it only gives me the last edit. We should either:

1. Change the way the "diff" link works to work like this
2. Make it an option
3. Add a separate link, like "Geocentric model (diff; prev; hist)", where "prev" means "difference between current and before the last editor".

I am sure I'm not the only one who clicks hist and goes to the last revision before that user every time. It just makes sense.

Now that I am an admin, I have this lovely rollback link that reverts in exactly this way. So it must make sense to someone. - Omegatron 15:07, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I agree (I think I actually proposed this before), but I think it would be more useful if you get the diff to the last version since you checked your watchlist. That may be slightly tougher to implement, though, depending on what data is already being tracked. – flamurai^TM 22:32, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Good point. Let's add a button for all of them!  :-) - Omegatron 22:34, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Ease of editing

I don't think anyone can critisize this idea over any other labor saving ideas. I propose an option that individual users could enable in their preferences area that would allow you to edit any page directly from the article page. Let me explain, when I go to edit a page it takes me to a new screen with a separate window that shows me the wikimark-up. This proposal would enable a user to directly edit a page from the page on which the article is displayed. No separate windows, instead you would just edit the page normally and then click on a "save this page" link. Like I stated earlier, the option would be enabled under a users preferences. It would also make vandalism easier for signed in users, but we don't have many registered vandals. Also, reverting vandalism would be much more streamlined. As well as general over all editing. Yes, you may laugh and shoot my idea down now. Jaberwocky6669 20:22, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree with this. The version I heard was to still have an edit link behaving as it does, but have the preview displayed immediately by default (as a user setting, obviously). I think there's a feature request in bugzilla where they said it "was right around the corner!" but apparently was forgotten about, like a lot of other things. You can go there and vote for it if you want. I almost always push preview right after clicking edit, and I know a lot of other people do, too. - Omegatron 20:51, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I think we could all agree that sarcasm gets us nowhere. Jaberwocky6669 20:28, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Who's being sarcastic? Hmmm... I can't find the bugzilla thing. Maybe I imagined it. We should submit a feature request. Do we want the edit to appear at the bottom of the regular article or do we want the preview to appear when you click edit by default? I found this one, though, which is similar: [5]. I can't find the discussion, though it was definitely discussed. - Omegatron 22:03, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Square kilometre

Right, at the moment, there are a whole load of pages linking to square kilometer, which is a redirect to square kilometre. I am considering changing all these pages. Does this seem like a good idea? Any objections? Thanks. --Smoddy | ειπετε 21:44, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia policy is to not change spelling from American to British or vice versa on articles which specifically relate to one culture. But if the article is culture-neutral, then I have no problem with your doing all this scut work. RickK 00:11, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

I would recommend just using a piped link. (But I don't really see that it's worth the trouble.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:47, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'd expect a whole lot of squawking if you go ahead with this--folks around here tend to view systematic changes to spelling like this as some sort of cultural imperialism. Besides there is absolutely nothing wrong with appropriate redirects, and there are far more helpful sorts of Wikipedia:Maintenance you could do than this, IMO. older≠wiser 02:52, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

It's my opinion that we shouldn't have any wikilinks to unit of measurement articles unless they are especially relevant (cubits or other archaic units, for example.) Neutrality^talk 03:55, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

It seems like a lot of effort to me. There are multiple dialects of English, and changing a bunch of wikilinks won't change that fact. Let's celebrate the diversity of English instead, and keep a mixture of spellings. sjorford:// 23:52, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Display of subcategories

Take a look at Category:American_actors as an example. It's a category page with numerous articles and numerous subcategories spanning several pages. At first glance it appears that Category:African-American actors is its only subcategory ("there is 1 subcategory to this category"), but lo-and-behold if you click to the next page, you'll see another subcategory, and so on. This isn't very logical. The problem is that the articles are listed alphabetically such that a page shows all articles that begin with A-C, for example — which makes sense — but the subcategories (which are usually far fewer in number) are divided the same way as the articles, which doesn't make sense. I think a more logical system would be to display a Category listing that lists all subcategories first, followed by all articles. Is it feasible to implement this change? — Brim 23:22, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I second that! I've ben working on geography stubs, and for a long time it looked like the only subcategories began with A or B. There is a way of kludging it (by giving all the subcategories an alphabetising marker (e.g., [[:Category: Geography stubs|*Zambia]]), which would list them before the start of the alphabetical listing but, as I said, it's a kludge. Grutness|^hello? 23:33, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Along similar lines, articles in categories should sort by namespace, then by alphabetical title of articles. This way, all main namespace articles will be listed first, then images, then templates, etc. – flamurai^TM 23:35, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to third, fourth, or whatever this request. It's very difficult to figure out where an article belongs in an unfamiliar category tree if you can't see all the subcategories on the first page. -Aranel ("Sarah") 02:46, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely. Does anyone have an idea whether this is a significant technical undertaking? I can imagine exiting algorithms where it would be trivially easy to make this change and ones where it would be quite tough, and I have no idea which we are using. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:15, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 02:11, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agreed -- this would make working with Categories much easier. (For that matter, I wish "What links here" sorted by namespace too....) — Catherine\^talk 04:35, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Removing Cleanup from Recentchanges

Since the Cleanup page no longer functions like it did originally, does it really serve much of a purpose to keep it on the Wikipedia:Recentchanges page? I'm thinking about removing it, but not without discussion beforehand. RickK 00:07, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

Maybe link to the Category:Wikipedia cleanup with the list of pages would be better... AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 23:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Short diff in change lists

I'm curious as to whether anyone would find one of these two related features useful. I certainly would.

• Hovering the cursor over a change in a watchlist or Special:RecentChanges causes a floating window displaying the diff (if it's short) to appear. (See the wikilinks in the wikipedia clone [6] for an example -- hovering causes an unobtrusive popup of the linked page to appear)
• Articles without an edit summary could have the diff with the last version shown just after their entry in the change list (if the diff is short).

If a change created a long diff, a truncated version could be shown instead. (oops -- forgot to sign. :: jdb ❋ 21:06, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC))

External links must die

<rant warning>

"External links" must die. Both the section title and the tendency to add links arbitrarily and without descriptions.

The standard section for further information should be called "Further information", because the distinction between web-based and printed resources is artificial. Web links are of course special because the user can access them immediately. However, this makes no sense for eventual printed versions of Wikipedia articles, and thanks to the ISBN mechanism even books are "linked".

"Further information" is also superior semantically because it reflects the purpose of the section, not the medium. "External links" is comparable to the link title "click here", which similarly lacks semantics and is unnecessarily medium-specific. On a minor note, the "external" label is confusing when we need to link to pages in the Wikipedia: namespace.

We should avoid links that don't point to specific documents or document collections because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a web index. We should definitely provide links to things like relevant fan sites and web forums, but not in Wikipedia. Instead, we should start a Web directory project and create a nice, shiny sisterproject box that can be used for the "Further information" section in Wikipedia articles. Important websites, such as certain official company websites or major fan sites, should have their own articles or sections.

Needless to say, web links should always be described, including information about author, publisher and date (where applicable). The primary purpose of a "Further information" entry must be to identify a resource, not link to it. URLs change or go away; document titles and author names do to a lesser extent.

(I prefer "Further information" over "Further reading" because the latter excludes audio and video.)

</rant warning>

Fredrik | talk 20:36, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Your rant suggests that IBM should not link to http://www.ibm.com/, but instead to a separate article about ibm.com on some other project. This makes no sense to me. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:12, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, no, the separate page should be called "IBM". In either case, Template:Infobox Company deals nicely with official company websites. In fact, official company websites aren't really the problem, so I should perhaps revoke that part. Fredrik | talk 00:32, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What stops you from adding descriptions to external links? I have done it several times myself. As for books, I have usually added them under the title "Books".

Of course, you are free to begin your own web project whose only effective purpose would be to serve as massive amount of redirects to infoboxes that list only external sources and would make it necessary for every new contributor to learn appropriate infobox syntax instead of just adding material in text format ("Mere text is boring, right? There must be more complex syntax to handle this, right? After all, we absolutely have to use large amount of hypertext links through different parts of the server net, right?"). Just do not expect me to approve. - Skysmith 12:13, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Would you then say Commons and Wikiquote are a bad idea because users have to edit another site and learn infobox syntax instead of just adding images or quotes directly?

And yes, I sometimes add descriptions to external links myself. But I don't see why books should be listed separate from (relevant and high quality) web resources. Fredrik | talk 15:31, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't agree with the claim: “the distinction between web-based and printed resources is artificial”. Aside from anything else, printed resources, being more likely to be peer-reviewed, are considerably more reliable (I don't say that they're wholly reliable, of course). Looking at some of the external links in Wikipedia articles, this is a significant issue. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:34, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The solution is to have a higher standard for external links. How about "include only links to sites and documents that conceivably either could be used as a reference, or written about"? Fredrik | talk 15:31, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Your free to edit the pages. Why don't you do the work?--Jirate 15:55, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC)

Was that aimed at me? Fredrik | talk 17:39, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Votes for deletion - format change

A roughly a month ago, the votes for deletion process was changed in how the VFD pages were handled. At the current moment, when an article is nominated, it is put at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name. Where on that page, === Article name === is placed and all the information as to why it should be deleted is placed on that page.

Then it is placed on a VFD day page, a subpage which goes by the UTC date, like today's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2 and tomorrow's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 3, and yesterday's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 1 and so on.

So, on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2, a transinclude is placed there, specifically, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name}} under the section where the date is placed. In this case, under the section label: == February 2 ==.

Then, from there, transincludes are placed on the main Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page, containing only the pages linking to the dates, thus only having a list of days like: {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2}}

This allows automatic linking using the variables in the MediaWiki system, and a direct way to link to the current day to place a VFD vote.

Prior to this system, everything was placed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (main page). This meant that all the subpage transincludes, specifically, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name}}, was placed on the main page VFD. So you'd have the section dates on the main page VFD, and each section date would contain the transincludes for each VFD nomination. The only problem with this system was that it could not provide direct linking to the appropriate section to add the VFD nomination to the page.

Several users have made some complaints regarding this, and wish to revert the system back to what it was prior to December 25, 2004, before the inclusion of the day to day subpage transincludes. A vote is now taking place at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#VFD_One_Page_a_Day. Please make your comments there, and make any suggestions regarding this issue. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:51, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A "stub" finder

If we could use the wikipedia search engine and modified it to find articles less than certain length of words, those articles could then be reviewed and looked for for stubs that have been missed. There should be an option to ignore already marked stubs. From there, maybe someone with some coding experience could write a dll that would function as a bot? Furthermore, it would be nicer for wikipedia to have a more advanced search engine. --DoubleRing 06:24, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Advice to and help for non-native-speaker editors

(I can't see this mentioned anywhere else; if it is, I apologise.)

I've noticed a number of articles that non-native speakers have edited or even created, in the process introducing useful and informative content, but creating problems because of their grammar, spelling, inability to judge the correct tone, etc. The next native speaker who happens along can then correct it, tidy up the errors, etc., but that might not happen for some time. Not only will the damaged article have been on display for that period, but there might be passages too obscure to be understood, so that the new editor needs to contact the original author for help — and the original author might by then have disappeared. (I've had various experiences of this kind: for example, see Talk:Lentienses and Elgoog.)

Might it be a good idea to advise non-native-speakers (not only in the English version, of course) who recognise their linguistic limitations to add or explain their additions on the relevant Talk page instead of directly in the article, with a request for a native speaker's help? There could be a central page (like this one) on which such requests could be posted. If it is agreed to be a good idea, how easy would it be to set up? I'd be more than happy to lend a hand (or, if it's relatively straightforward, to do it myself). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:48, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This can be useful. My english is poor but my ideas are rich. Even if I write with a dictionnary next to me, i'll be glad sometimes to have some advises on the correct sentence structure to reach my purpose. Lvr 09:55, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia:Help desk and Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance) can satisfy this purpose. —Michael Z. 2005-02-3 17:40 Z

I think it would overwhelm those. Certainly would overwhelm Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance); I don't deal much with Wikipedia:Help desk.

It would probably be worthwhile for someone to start a Wikipedia-space page or Meta page discussing options for working on articles outside of one's native language. Certainly Mel Etitis' idea would be one of those options. I suppose it ultimately belongs on Meta, but I think we might "incubate" it in Wikipedia space. How about calling it, for starters Wikipedia:Contributing to articles outside your native language? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:20, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's the sort of thing that I had in mind, perhaps with an area for people to add requests for native-speaker assistance on particular articles? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:54, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A Suggestion...

I have been working from some time to start a project similar to this one... But it some twists:

-Authors should adhere to norms in their Learning Material.

-Learners should pay lots of "points" that they use (a "point" per each K of text) to gain access or possibility to copy or print text, text is visible in screen but Select/Copy doesn´t work, also they pay a "point" per minute, for playing educational games or getting in-line tuition.

-Authors produce: text, educational games, translations, researchs, power point presentations, on-line tuition, etc.

-A percentage of the Income from Learners, should go to the Authors of the accessed learning material, the rest of the income is for the portal operation expenses.

-This will permit willing educators, that have knowledge but are: jobless, disabled, parentes of disabled kids, retired, etc. to earn some adittional income, and will promote quality in submissions, to be attractive and useful to Learners of course, authors names should be prominent, and some will become famous.

-What is your opinion? I will be grateful for brief & practical answers to this post.

---

Ing. Dagoberto G. Flores-Lozano Ex Research Fellow and University Professor (UNAM, UVM, UIA) Post Degree in Academic Administration, UC at Berk. --Dagoflores 17:21, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC) Hear me out. I think that before editing [Authors] users should be given an IQ test. To screen out those people who can only spell and form gramtically correct sentences, without any understanding of the content.--Jirate 20:43, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

You need to realize that you could never prevent a dedicated user from "stealing" information from an encyclopedia. Disabling copy and paste are only available through javascript, which can easily be disabled. Even if you make javascript required, they can just navigate to the page and then disable it. One way you could do it is through flash, which would disable copy paste. However, it's not to difficult for someone to find the url of the flash file and save it. Just check out the Homestarrunner Wiki. They post the locations of the actual flash files used on the site. Of course you could use the infamous Brittanica method: only displaying a few words of the article and forcing you to buy the rest, though i doubt it will work in this case. Lastly, the best path that I would take would be to program an application that would communicate with the parent server, bringing back the articles as they were requested. The only way to make money, however, is to use the Britannica method. The disabling select/copy sounds very innovative, however, few people, except plagarizers, directly copy and paste from encyclopedia articles. You've got a good idea though! Don't give up on it. --DoubleRing 05:23, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

To counter all the Britannica claims, etc...

Perhaps we could embark on a major project in which we go through the Britannica and verify that we have a Wiki article for each of theirs, and at least as thorough as each. It'll take a long time, and is obviously subject to problems, but if we pull it off we can counter the standard Britannica argument that our articles aren't as good as theirs.--Etaonish 19:23, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Here: Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics - Omegatron 19:59, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. Thanks.--Etaonish 01:56, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm fairly new here, so I don't know what “all the Britannica claims” refers to; could you explain please?

The short of it is that Britannica has been running a bit of a campaign to point out shortcomings in Wikipedia. Some of these are inaccuracies, others are omissions. While this would do little to address the inaccuracies, there are many periods of history and many regions of the world where their coverage is simply much more thogough than ours, and this could help to address that. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:09, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I suppose that it's quite sweet that the Britannica is worried enough to run such a campaign. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:15, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

But there are a great many areas where our coverage is superior to theirs. Also we are able to cover topics which used to be in EB which they have dumped to make room for modern ones, such as biographies of significant but minor historical characters. Also where does Britannica's campaign of pointing out our shortcomings occur?Apwoolrich 19:23, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciations of non-English words

Hi all, Wikipedia is great...i get to read about a lot of famous people and the works of great authors. But unfortunately i cannot pronounce most of their names. It would be a great help if you guys could add pronunciations of non-English names/nouns/verbs/etc.

Thank you.

It's a good idea in principle, but there are problems in practice:

1. What system should be used? The obvious choice is the international phonetic alphabet, but how many editors would be able to use it? There'd have to be a cadre of phoneticists whose job it was to go through Wikipedia adding pronunciations. And how many readers would be able to make use of it?
2. How would one decide which words needed the treatment? The author (or pronunciation-guide czar©) would have to second-guess the reader's knowledge or lack of it.
3. It would be strange to apply it only to non-English names and other words, if only because Wikipedia is used by many non-native English speakers.
4. Which pronunciation? North German, South German, Swiss, or Austrian German? Australian , Yorkshire, Ulster, Surrey, Canadian, or U.S. English? And which further regional or class variants of those? I don't just mean for obvious words like buoy (British English: bɔɪ; U.S. buːɪ) or scone (skəʊn or skɒn) — many if not most words have more or less subtle differences in pronunciation, depending upon the regional (or other) dialect, or idiolect. The thought of edit wars over the correct pronunciation of kilometre or controversy brings me out in a cold sweat.

Perhaps I'm being unduly negative; I hope so, because as I said at the beginning, it is a good idea in principle. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:45, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Definitely IPA. It's not trivial, but we learn as we go along. Most words have a phonological pronunciation that can be listed; it's more-or-less independent of regional dialects—sort of a "canonical" pronunciation. Your examples are some of the many that have two or more accepted pronunciations (it's /ˈkɪl.oˌmi.tər/, of course, and in certain regions we just automatically pronounce the final /r/ as [ɹ] or silent).

I think Wiktionary intends to systematically list the pronunciation for all words. In Wikipedia IPA is used routinely for linguistics articles, and occasionally when explaining the pronunciation of problematic names. —Michael Z. 2005-02-4 19:27 Z

Ah, thanks for the practical demonstration of how I should have done the IPA coding. In the case of “kilometre”, in fact, I was thinking about the stress pattern; the pronunciation that's beginning to become standard here is /ˈkɪləˌmitə/, but I was brought up to say: /kɪˈlɒˌmitə/. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:43, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Me too (with a bit more "r" at the end), but a while ago I realized that there's no reason it shouldn't rhyme with millimetre, centimetre, and in parallel with kilolitre and kilogram.

Template:IPA has just been developed recently to work around MSIE's font-display deficiencies—documentation is at Template talk:IPA. —Michael Z. 2005-02-4 20:41 Z

Adding World Coordinates to make Wikipedia Mapable

I've often had the idea that Wikipedia is in many ways like the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in the sense that it is an incredible guide to the the Universe. In the spirit of that book I'd like to suggest the idea of adding a special tag or link in articles that would allow an editor to add the longitude and lattitude of a particular place (as taken from GPS or a map.) In the future this could allow a person to view a map where Wikipedia articles appear as points on that map. Thus someone could find out about thing specific to there actual location on earth.

This could perhaps link into an external website like Topozone, Mapquest, (or some sort of Open Source cartography site at some point in the future.) that could generate a map for a particular article.

This same principle could be extended to other types of maps such as star maps, the map of Middle Earth, or the surface of Mars. --Plowboylifestyle 23:04, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)plowboylifestyle

This has been discussed extensively on the mailing lists [7] --Alterego 08:31, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

WOuldn't it be cool?

IS anyone familiar with the KEO project? If not then here is the link, http://www.keo.org/ Wouldn't it be great if all of Wikipedias articles made their way onto KEO? Not as a substitute for any other source of information. Just as something cool to think about because Im a dreamer =) Jaberwocky6669 16:30, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)