Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 11

It'll never pass, it's a

perennial proposal. Will ^(talk

) 22:55, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I like it. Saying it's a perennial proposal doesn't say much. What exactly makes this a bad idea? Seems like this would make it easier to get an idea of which way a discussion is leaning. It's also more aesthetically pleasing, and makes it easier to find specific !votes when you're looking for a particular one in the midst of a large discussion.

Equazcion •✗/C • 23:22, 12/23/2007

I like it too. It could also be more easily processed by a bot if one wanted to automate vote counting.

talk

) 00:18, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Vote counting for what? The only thing we have that is officially a straight vote is ArbCom elections, held once a year and we already have bots that count that and

RFA (a pseudo-vote). The place where this would get the most use, AFD, is not a vote and most closings require reading and analyzing the comments, so a bot would be useless. Mr.Z-man

08:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I find it distracting rather than pleasing. The bolded words are enough; entirely unnecessary to have 2 distinct ways to express the same thing. See

TfD Nov 2005, TfD May 2007, DRV May 2007, etc. –Pomte

07:52, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I just found this monobook.js script that automatically shows those symbols when you're viewing a !vote discussion, based on the text of people's votes. Seems to work pretty well so far.

Equazcion •✗/C • 11:53, 12/24/2007

Hm. I tried it out. It's kinda quite good, but it has flaws in that it adds a symbol to unrelated text in certain articles and talk pages. I also just found out that the commons uses something similar to this, but lets not bring that into it.

I have seen some instances where it adds the symbols to non-vote text, but that doesn't seem to happen too often -- certainly not enough to be a problem.

Equazcion •✗/C • 12:41, 12/24/2007

I strongly oppose this, partly on the basis of the previous TFDs. However, the larger reason is that the symbols add no context to the opinion (be it keep, delete, support, oppose, etc.) whatsoever. The only way they would be helpful is in a multilingual project, like Wikispecies, Commons, and Meta. 哦，是吗？(O-person) 23:33, 26 December 2007 (GMT)

I don't know if this would be against wikipedia's policies, but it seems to me that there is a problem with finding contact details for companies, and especially with finding contact details that allow direct contact with a human as opposed to an automated system.

There are lists out on the web at the moment (gethuman.com) but they do not allow easy contributions from the public. This is where I think wikipedia could really improve the list. Any visitors could immediately add contact details, or change them if they become obsolete.

This wouldn't really make an encyclopedia entry though. If it's not suitable for wikipedia perhaps there are other wiki projects that would be more appropriate? Milliondead (talk) 22:43, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

As you say I don't think this really falls under the scope of an encyclopedia. You could contact Wikia about setting up a project like that. It seems like the kind of thing they'd be interested in.

Equazcion •✗/C • 23:50, 12/24/2007

Your initial suspicions were right:

How about we start a new featured section for usres? There would be criteria such as edit count, contribution, and other. Juliancolton (talk) 17:00, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

We're here to build an encyclopedia, not glorify individual editors. That and any selection process would be a popularity contest, and ultimately not based on any type of objective criteria. Sephiroth BCR ^(Converse) 18:07, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it would be like RfA, only more to-the-point. Who the hell wants that? Equazcion •✗/C • 10:17, 12/26/2007

Sounds like Uncyclopedia's "Noob of the month." bibliomaniac15 23:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I propose that links originating within transcluded templates have a special note beside them in the "What links here" page to reflect the fact that they're not mentioned in the body of the article. I'd like to change it to be able to identify them at a glance. This is especially an issue with large navigation templates.

I agree. I've found several times that whenever I've moved a page, changing the links to the article is often a torturous process, as 90% of the links are to a template, and finding the links that are not template-related is often exhausting. Having a notice would go a long way to making this process more streamlined. Sephiroth BCR ^(Converse) 07:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I first brought this up in the technical section of the Village Pump (here, to be specific), in order to get a first consultation on the technical implications of this matter. Seeing that there are practically none (for reasons stated in the aforementioned location), I have decided to re-submit the issue, this time here.

Ahem. I like article series boxes, and I like succession boxes—they are very useful and their appearance has greatly improved since the old days. However, I find that the transition from the article's text to the templates is usually both ugly and confusing. That is, more often than not the templates begin right after the last reference, external link, of line of text of the article, leaving no space at all and making the very last part of these articles look crowded, creating a tiring and confusing image for the reader, and practically obscuring the fact that there is not going to be any text after that point.

This, this, and this are examples of the situation I am referring to: bad template layout, bad page end construction. I have encountered worse cases, but only these examples I have been able to retrieve promptly enough.

Articles need to be able to breathe. All we need is a small gap.

The remedy is a simple one: instead of leaving only one empty line between the templates in question and their preceding text (or references list), or even no lines at all, I propose that we leave two empty lines. It is nothing complicated; I have been consistently applying this simple solution to articles (and I am active in

I wonder whether this small directive can be accepted by the community, how this can be done, and, if it can, in what form might it be incorporated into our editing practices. I hope that even a small matter like this one can generate fruitful discussion and eventually lead to some kind of improvement. Waltham, The Duke of 21:45, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to something like this:

Using two spaces instead of one is simply a bad idea. The example above uses margin:5px auto; instead of margin:auto;. Modifying a couple of key templates would fix the issue almost universally. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:46, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The Duke of Waltham isn't referring to spacing between the boxes, but spacing between the last line of the article and the first box. –Pomte 23:04, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Bingo. Instead of this...

• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at Box Office Mojo
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at Metacritic

Doesn't it just look better? The same goes for succession boxes, which in any case always precede article series boxes and are close to them both in purpose and in function. Waltham, The Duke of 23:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I think while there's not enough spacing in the first case, there's too much spacing in the second case to make it look inconsistent, since that sort of spacing doesn't appear anywhere else in the article, like it shouldn't be intended. A compromise would be roughly half that space, using an empty div or something, but then this would have the disadvantage of being complicated and requiring another template (this is just a personal preference though, which can be ignored). I agree overall that the second is better than the first. –Pomte 00:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If not looking inconsistent is a consideration, spacing (or anything else) specified in terms of pixels looks inconsistent depending on what browser resolution and text size an individual user happens to have his machine and his browser set up for. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 01:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I should not think that the fact that spacing of this size does not normally appear in the rest of the article is that much of a consideration, as we are talking about what is essentially the end of the article. It is one thing discussing the spaces between different paragraphs or sections, and an entirely different analysing the connection between the article's text and a few foreign elements, whose purpose is to ease navigation between the article in question and different articles. That said, I persist in the two-line scheme, which has the added benefit of introducing neither complex syntax nor any inconsistently appearing pixel-defining code.

In fact, large gaps in this very place are usual in Wikipedia, a result of small boxes on the right linking to portals and/or one or more of the sister projects. In the article for London, for example, this is most evident. I should say that adding larger spacing in the rest of the articles actually increases standardisation across Wikipedia, as the large gaps of my example are more or less unavoidable, while the reverse (adding spacing) is perfectly feasible. Waltham, The Duke of 08:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Wtmitchell: I wasn't thinking in terms of pixels, but em. There's more space in Firefox 2 than IE6 anyway, for instance, but this is beside the point. –Pomte 08:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought this discussion was actually interesting... Or is it just the Christmas effect? Waltham, The Duke of 17:27, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I have made a proposal for taking note of the primary contributor(s) to articles at FAC, for purposes of transparency (especially to non-Wikipedians) and good book-keeping. Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Taking note of the primary contributor(s). Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 07:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Has anybody ever looked into the percentage of anonymous edits from schools that are vandalism? It sure seems like school IPs are a large portion of the vandalism. I wonder if the current policy of generally blocking schools from editing for a few hours (as opposed to the longer periods for other anonymous users) might be a bad policy? Obviously, creating a policy similar to the Open Proxy policy wouldn't make sense, but would Wikipedia benefit by requiring editors from school computers to register accounts at home before they can edit at school? Life, Liberty, Property (talk) 07:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I think you are mistaken - it's the other way round. Most anonymous users are blocked for a few days , whereas unregistered editing from school IPs with a history of vandalism is routinely disabled for months at a time (up to a year). See

Template:SharedIPEDU. Hut 8.5

20:00, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I, as a vandal fighter, am quite content with the current policy
To begin with, while it is true that some school IPs are blocked for a few hours, 24 or 31 seems to be a more common duration for first time offenders. Persistent vandalism can get months. Also, blocking them only for a couple of hours is logical, it can be long enough for the vandal to move on to the next class where they might not have access to computers.
I haven't seen any percentages, but I can imagine that many edits coming from school IPs are constructive contributions. Imagine this-you're a high school student reading up on the French revolution during your free period. You notice a typo. So you click the "edit" link. You are told you can't edit it, which is in direct contradiction of what it says on the main page (Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit) and one of the

systemic bias). I can imagine that there are a lot of valid contributors from school IPs. Puchiko (Talk-email

) 20:06, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Some great points. The more I think about it, vandalism from school IPs should eventually decline as soon as the teachers understand more about Wikipedia and step in to stop vandals. I guess I got this bad idea because of all the bias against Wikipedia in schools and because school articles seem to attract alot of vandalism. Life, Liberty, Property (talk) 21:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Please see here for a discussion regarding the Proposal of Commission for Public Complaints Against the Arbitration Committee (CPC-ArbCom). I have already gotten a few requests to investigate some interesting cases. --CyclePat (talk) 19:15, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Anonymous users don't use user pages, yet whenever you visit the talk page of an anonymous user you see an ugly red "user page" link. I've made a user script that automatically hides this link. I'm wondering if there's any interest in deploying this script for all users.

To try it out, add the following to your monobook.js (or the script file for any other skin you may be using):

/* Automatically hide "user page" link for anonymous users */

function hideAnonUserPageLink()
{
    document.getElementById("ca-nstab-user").style.visibility = "hidden"
}
 
if (wgPageName.search(/^(User_talk:(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?))$/) == 0)
{
    window.addOnloadHook(hideAnonUserPageLink)
}

—Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes a message is put on the user page of an IP, see e.g. User:216.83.121.194.--Patrick (talk) 10:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but since people rarely visit IP user pages, the information is generally given at the top of the talk page instead. I see your point though, and I've tweaked the script to only hide the user page if it does not exist:

/* Automatically hide "user page" link for anonymous users that do not have user pages */
 
function hideAnonUserPageLink()
{
    var userPageLink = document.getElementById("ca-nstab-user")
    if (!window.hideAnonUserPageLinkDisabled && userPageLink.className == "new")
    {
        document.getElementById("ca-nstab-user").style.visibility = "hidden"
    }
}
 
if (wgPageName.search(/^(User_talk:(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?))$/) == 0)
{
    window.addOnloadHook(hideAnonUserPageLink)
}

—Remember the dot ^(talk) 18:17, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

The ugly red user page link can be fixed with an edit to your monobook.css.

Gracenotes^T

§ 18:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 19:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

How about:

#ca-nstab-user.new {
    color: #hexcode;
}

Note that it colors all nonexistent userpages, not just IPs'.

Improve me

] 04:36, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion! However, I'm really interested in applying this to IP editors only, because otherwise it would make it difficult for ordinary users to create user pages. Generally, IP editors should not have user pages, so it doesn't make sense to display the "user page" tab for them. In fact, if you request from the search box the user page of an IP user that does not have a user page ("User:24.115.70.15", for example), the search function will take you to the contributions page instead of the user page. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 04:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... The body of each page in MediaWiki is assigned a class named page-[namespace]_[escaped_title_here], but I don't know about the feasibility of regex in CSS rules. I'm not sure it's possible to do that. JavaScript would have to be used. There's just no class- or ID-based way of telling IP #ca-nstab-user tabs from registered user tabs. Perhaps you could put in a request at Bugzilla for an "anon" class to be added to IP user and user talk pages; then you could use the selector #ca-nstab-user.anon.new...

Improve me

] 14:20, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if this is something that might be added to the new gadgets tab of "my preferences", but in any case, would you mind setting it up on a separate page? Village pump pages are only pseudo-archived, so archives aren't searchable via Google and a permanent page is thus much better for things of ongoing value. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:51, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to let you know, the newer archives are now indexed by Google although most of the older ones are not searchable.

(Talk)

18:21, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm interested in having this enabled by default, perhaps with a gadget to disable it if desired. It would improve the user experience for all. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 19:26, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes you use the <ref> tag for notes (ie a bit more information) instead of for a reference, and i have seen articles which use the old {{note}} template to create a separate list of notes as well as of references. It should be very easy for the mw:Extension:Cite/Cite.php extensions to add <note> and <notes /> as two new hooks which work in exactly the same way as <ref> and <references /> do.

This would enable an article to maintain two lists (one of notes and one of references) as now it is either lumped together in one list, or needs to use old templating systems. For example: International Whaling Commission uses just the ref tags but some of the tags are for notes (eg number 6), so could have two lists instead.

Also, would it not be possible (maybe with a bit more work) to be able to have multiple lists of each. Ie you could have <ref1>, <ref2>, <ref3> which corresponds to <references1 />, <references2 />, <references3> which would be handy for articles such as

(I also raised this question at the technical village pump.) Chris_huh^talk 15:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

This is often discussed at WT:FOOT. Incidentally, if there is a Bugzilla request for this feature perhaps it should be listed in the Related section of WP:FOOT. -- SEWilco (talk) 15:25, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I think those are both excellent ideas, the notes and the separated lists of refs (and maybe even separated lists of notes, like <notes1><notes2>). I hope it gets implemented. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:58, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Having a section attribute would be a good way to implement this. Example usage:

<ref section="notes">hello i am a note</ref> and <ref>i'm just a regular (default) ref</ref>