Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 14

I'm making a program for my TI-84 Plus Silver to help me with Flight Simulator. I'm using Wikipedia to collect several formulas to assist me in this. When I was collecting data for Mach airspeed, on several pages I noticed that the units weren't listed, which is increasing the difficulty in writing this program. I don't know what each input unit is in, for example, air density in what set of units?

As my 2nd grade math teacher would say, "Five Hippos?"

This proposal would remove this confusion. If the units are clearly listed, there would be no difficulties with the formulas.

--Cricket Boy (talk) 23:19, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree, a proper policy needs to be drawn up, standardising units used (SI unless an international body favours something else) and requiring that all inputs to formulas clearly state their units, and optionally the output units also (although these are generally trivial to calculate). LinaMishima (talk) 00:32, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

For which pages did you see this problem exist?

(Talk)

01:17, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Posting a note on the talk page of the article is a good way to attract the attention of an editor who can improve the article to answer your question. Also, on the talk pages you'll find (most likely) links to one or more WikiProjects that have the articles within their scope. Posting a note on the main talk page of a WikiProject is also a good way to get the attention of an editor who can answer your questions while improving articles. (If you do post to a WikiProject, be sure to provide links to the articles where the problem exists. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll echo Tra's question—could you give us some examples where this is a problem? It's worth noting that on articles like

troy ounces per square Smoot

; the units cancel out.

What you want to do when using a new equation for the first time is a bit of dimensional analysis. Plug in the units for all of the variables and process them through to make sure that you get a result that makes sense. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:59, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I would welcome an in depth article about the history of the electric car from the early Baker to GM's CV1.

To be complete it should analyze why the development of electric cars has been crushed by auto manufacturers in USA and Japan and by the oil companies.

Reference: The movie, "Who killed the electric car?" Good as far as it went, but short on reasons.

I do not have the background to write about this. Perhaps a canvas for the engineers and designers of GM's CV1 and former directors of GM might provide accurate substance for the history and analysis.

Ansley Sawyer [email protected] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.118.250.167 (talk) 17:22, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The page you want is

Wikipedia:Request an article. There is already an article at History of the electric vehicle. Hut 8.5

20:04, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I propose that someone writes a bot that, whenever a page somewhere is moved, checks for the formation of a double-redirect, and fixes it so I don't have to. It could surely operate automatically without the need for constant supervision and if someone moves a page back, the bot just goes to work and flips the redirects back appropriately. You wont even know it's there! ----Seans Potato Business 20:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

There are already bots that fix double redirects so if you forget to fix double redirects when moving a page, you can wait for the bot to get to it. However, there is quite a long delay between moving the page and the redirects being fixed.

(Talk)

21:13, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

To elaborate: the bots that fix double redirects use Special:DoubleRedirects, a page that is generated about once per month. So there is (on average) a two-week or so delay between a double redirect being created and (if not fixed by a human) a bot getting to it. So there would be an advantage in having bots checking every page move, assuming that they can figure out, themselves, what are double redirects rather than having the special page do it for them. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:11, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe that special page is updated every three days. It was last updated January 4; it should be updated January 7. If not, leave a note on my talk page; there are far better options than checking every page move. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:15, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars#Patern-avoiding permutation has history links [1][2] showing User:Computer fixing the same double redirect several times minutes apart. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:47, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the edits done of User:Computer, it seems clear that I was mistaken about the frequency of this special page, and therefore about the advisability of fixing double redirects on the fly. Apologies. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:28, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

If the redirects are fixed automatically, then maybe we don't need to encourage people to fix them and should remove the notification that asks people to check. I used to get annoyed, being asked to do something that a few lines of code should have been doing. ----Seans Potato Business 02:05, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

There are several articles in

EDIT:A related discussion is occuring at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Supercentenarian regarding the notability of these articles. I figured that it would be best to link to it, as it addresses the same issue (but in a much more narrow scope).I think that we can't really have rules for this minute area of notability, hence the proposal.--Vox Rationis (Talk | contribs) 20:12, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The concept of Superior Orders as a defence to criminal liability in International and domestic law is missing from Wikipedia. I have quite a bit of research on the subject, (being a law student), but I'll looking to collaborate with someone who can help with the more technical aspects of writing such a piece.

Please post on my talk page if interested. --

There are some very savvy people at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Law who will be better suited to the task than a general editor. They'd know off-hand how to tie things together. Post your request to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Law to garner the help you need. -- Fullstop (talk) 22:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I think all articles should have the ability to be rated, eg like videos on Youtube, and knols on Google. The reasons for this are twofold:

1. It lowers the barrier to entry for feedback/editing of articles. Users who - for whatever reason - don't click the edit button, or don't contribute to talk page discussion, are much more likely to offer a rating of the article. This benefits editors of wikipedia because it allows us to gauge the opinion of the silent majority of Wikipedia readers. This in turn makes it easier for editors to quickly see which articles need improvement and which don't on a global basis.
2. It offers another method to judge possible quality of articles, and by its nature will be more widespread than the current ad hoc grading system. Ratings are not a replacement for this system, but rather act as a complement to it. While in the short run, high popularity (ie high rating) does not equal quality, in the long run great articles (in the eyes of say FA reviewers) will inevitably become highly rated.

The key drawback here is that a vote is only completely relevant for the version of the article it was actually intended for. Thus, votes would decay with subsequent edits, with votes from more recent versions of the article receiving a higher weighting. A possible idea is if the user clicks on 'Rating' they see a graph of the rating over time, reflecting the dynamic nature of the article. Furthermore, users should be restricted to one vote per edit, so as not to bias the rating. Abuse would be detected and not tolerated.

Many (most?) articles are rated, via templates on the talk page. Not sure what additional purpose would be served by such a massive change to the Mediawiki software. -- Visviva (talk) 17:26, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Rated by whom? One person? A group? Who decides who can rate? How often are the articles rerated (the rating is only as relevant as the edit it took place at). The key here is that the collective wisdom of the readership should be able to produce a robust (and current) rating of any article in the long run, which is exactly the same logic that says that the collective wisdom of editors should be able to produce a robust article of any subject.

talk

) 18:33, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Interesting idea. If implemented, we need at least 2 rating systems. The one for quality should be as it is now, otherwise IPanon could get a few frieinds to promote a poor article to FA status. But user ratings might give us some idea of where to focus our efforts. A user rating system probalby needs to measure several variables, e.g. how important it is to the reader, how informative and how easy to understand. Philcha (talk) 16:18, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I would never suggest that the current rating system be replaced by this one - and an article could never become FA just because it has a 'high' rating. Rather, allowing readers to rate articles offers another qualitative angle for people to judge quality. It is deliberately simple - any extra feedback (ie writing quality, content issues) should be dealt with in the talk page. I am strongly of the opinion that on average, a rating will offer a useful guide to the quality of the article.

talk

) 18:24, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

But how is a rating of "2 stars" going to help someone know how to improve the article? Unless its accompanied by text, its pretty much a random number. Mr.Z-man 18:59, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Well if an article has a rating of two, any reasonable interpretation would be that it must mean the article is 'below average'. After rating an article, if a reader wants to be more specific in their feedback, they can go to the talk page, or obviously just edit the page themselves. All the rating does is allow you to gauge some qualitative assessment of the article (1) before you read it and (2) without having to go to the talk page. When reading wikipedia, you should always take the material with a grain of salt. However, some articles are clearly better than others - all a rating does is tell you how big the grain of salt should be. This is because over the long run, articles which have been deemed 'FA' by wiki's established process will inevitably be given a high rating, and those which are of poor quality will be given a low rating.

talk

) 22:32, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I definitely like your idea. It might also be cool to offer ratings by sections? I don't know. But I definitely like the rating system. And your explanation for supporting it, Suicup, is very well put. —Preceding unsigned comment added by VaporOne (talk • contribs) 10:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Another way to combat potential vote abuse would be to prevent users from rating their own edits.

One word: No. --

^{REV LIMITER}

02:01, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the ratings are poor enough already. This would be to move in the wrong direction. Johnbod (talk) 02:18, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Helpful feedback. Gp, any expansion on your lengthy answer? Johnbod - your 'reason' is precisely why ratings would be a good thing! Being able to rate an article a la Youtube would make for far more relevant and accurate ratings of quality.

No, it really wouldn't. Because the first thing that will happen is that articles like

Controlled demolition hypothesis for the collapse of the World Trade Center, Evolution, Intelligent design, etc. would all be hammered by votes from those with an agenda. If their current talking point isn't included, or they feel the article is "biased" against them, that article will get an undue rating. Even if those on the other side rally the vote, all you're doing is running a popularity contest on the facts of the article. -- Kesh (talk

) 21:50, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. Going by your logic, the articles you mentioned would be overrun by so-called biased editors. Obviously you trust Wikipedia to produce good articles due to the fact that moderate knowledgable people will outnumber extremists in the long run. Why can't the same be for ratings??

talk

) 08:11, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

In the long run, we revert, block and ignore the POV-pushers. Should we revert their votes as well? This would just lead to more problems as people start to hurl mud, reverting one another's votes. You are over-simplifying matters, trying to judge an article on a 1-5 basis. Plus, many people simply don't understand what constitutes a good article. I remember reading something from one anonymous contributor, akin to "Why does every line need to be referenced? That's just distracting. Yeah, a couple of references so we know you aren't just making it all up, but this is just taking it too far." And that was on an ultra-controversial article, AACS encryption key controversy. If people are going to start saying articles are poor because of the high number of references... I think, overall, ideas like this are best suited to blogs and entertainment. We are trying to create an encyclopedia here, and people voting on how good the articles are, in terms of criteria known only to them, is a bad, bad, bad idea. J Milburn (talk) 13:48, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

J Milburn, I think you miss the point of my proposal. I am not advocating replacement of the current system, but rather a complement to it. Multiple methods allow us to triangulate the true worth of a given article in the eyes of editors and readers. You need to think in terms of the reader side of the equation, as well as the editor side. Again, why do you think that minority viewpoints polluting the rating in the short run is a problem, if in the long run it will be naturally corrected, and at the end of the day, the long run is all we care about? As for criteria, it is completely irrelevant. Most people's criteria will be: did it have the info i needed? was it well written? your anecdote may be true, but the plural of anecdote is not data! The current system is by definition 'out of date' because numerous articles become locked due to editing disputes, when the rating the article has been given hasnt changed at all. Is this acceptable? in an ideal world, we would have constant feedback on the quality of articles. right now that doesn't happen. hang on, isnt that what my proposal is putting forward?? cheers

talk

) 08:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Certainly an opaque rating system would be a bad idea, but perhaps an interesting idea would be some sort of a feedback template - I bet that this would be simple to achieve by adding an extra tab that opened the edit window for a new section of the talk page of an article, using the preload option to load a feedback template which would make it easier and more obvious for users to give feedback about an article. Since this would just be a simple way for users to submit feedback via the talk page, it wouldn't be a big deal to implement, either. Nihiltres^{t.l} 14:09, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

To do that with some JavaScript and a few template pages would be easy.

// Feedback tab on article/article talk pages
function feedbackTab () {
if (wgNamespaceNumber == 0 || wgNamespaceNumber == 1)
   {
      addPortletLink('p-cactions', '/wiki/Talk:' + wgTitle + '?action=edit&preload=<template with parameters to be filled in>&editintro=<thing on top of edit page that says what to do>&section=new', "feedback");
   }
}
addOnloadHook(feedbackTab);

That would create a feedback tab on the top of article and article talk pages that would take people to a page adding a new section to the article talk page that would have a "feedback" template with the parameters to be filled in (the preload) with an explanation on top of what to put in each parameter (the editintro). Ideally though this would be something added to the MediaWiki code. Mr.Z-man 09:16, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that code is exactly what I imagined. I'm sure that it wouldn't be hard to add it through MediaWiki, though testing the social application of such a tool (before busying the devs further !) would be easy using only a JS version. I'll create a pair of templates for the editintro and template, and try it out in

try it and get community feedback. Nihiltres^{t.l

} 20:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we should have this, because if the rating system is open to everyone, many articles might be given an absurd rating just to be funny (e. g. rating a featured article 1 or rating a stub 5), or given a rating without a

neutral point of view (e. g. giving George W. Bush a 1). Articles, as you know, are rated by those in their designated wikiprojects, and there's only one rating, so it can always be changed (for good reason, of course). Green caterpillar (talk

) 01:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Larry Sanger's memoir notes that "the cultures of online communities generally are established pretty quickly and then very resistant to change, because they are self-selecting." I was thinking this may explain the rising tide of deletionism. Many contributors with inclusionist views have left the encyclopedia because they were tired of their articles getting deleted. As a result, the remaining base of users leans more to the deletionist side of the spectrum. This makes it even harder to shift the consensus in policy debates and x for deletion debates toward inclusionism. It becomes a self-sustaining phenomenon. As has been mentioned in earlier Village Post discussions, deletionism may be a reason for the deceleration in article growth on Wikipedia. But Wikipedia have made so much progress to this point that it seems a shame for people to just give up on the project and chalk up inclusionism as a lost cause.

As Wikipedia:Free speech notes, Wikipedians have only two rights: the right to leave and the right to fork. Yet, a complete fork would probably result in unnecessary duplication of work in an effort to maintain two sets of separately evolving articles on subjects (e.g. George W. Bush) whose inclusion everyone would agree on. Why not, then, have a separate wiki devoted only to articles whose inclusion was rejected (or would be rejected) on Wikipedia on notability grounds? This new wiki would probably be self-selecting toward inclusionism.

Mirrors (such as

• I believe this site [3] or some other Wikia project, would cover this, although I' not certain.
  talk
  05:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • WP:TRY
    lists a number of alternatives to Wikipedia; that's not the issue. I note you use the passive voice here: articles might simply be transwikied to the inclusionist wiki, which is precisely the problem: who does the transwiki work? How does that person or persons decide which wiki to move the undesired article to? Who makes the decision (other than the article creator?) as to whether the article is even worth moving? (A lot of deletes are CSD.)
  • I do think we could do a better job of telling editors that there are alternatives to Wikipedia. But I doubt that Answers.com is particularly interested in the vast majority of articles that are deleted here, nor do I see no way that we could ever pick a "most favored" wiki that would be considered a Wikipedia Junior site. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:40, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
    • At AfD, there could be delete votes and transwiki votes. The inclusionist wiki would be another transwiki option. The closing admin would transwiki upon the community's request. There might be some cases, e.g. Thomas Carl Rustici, where something is verifiable but doesn't meet Wikipedia's notability standard, so there might be consensus for transwiki. Alternately, after deletion of an article, a user could request restoration to his userpage and then transwiki it himself.
    • You are probably right that it would at first be viewed as a Wikipedia Jr. However, if the inclusionist wiki were to become successful and start getting a lot of use, there might come a point where the mainstream wikipedia would want a piece of the action, and the two wikis might merge, thus bringing inclusionists back into the project. That's how I hope it would play out anyway. It would be interesting to see what happens if we do this.
    • If there is sufficient interest within the inclusionist community, I will go ahead and post this proposal at
      talk
      ) 04:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
• This duplicates the efforts of others already running their own wikis about specific subjects. Say articles about X are being worked on at a wiki about X. You're proposing that in addition to that place, articles about X should be transwikid to the inclusionist wiki as well. Now there are two or more versions of the same thing being developed.

  Whether the inclusionist wiki becomes "successful" is irrelevant. Trivia sites are successful, but Wikipedia doesn't merge with them due to principle. Every article either belongs here, or it doesn't. If it doesn't belong here now, but may belong in the future, editors are given the opportunity to work on it in some userspace page. A whole different wiki for this sort of activity just diverts attention away from editing articles that belong, without a doubt, in the encyclopedia. You don't fork in hopes of a merge.

  From my observation it seems current trends are more "inclusionist" than early 2007. Inclusionists might have left, but deletionists might have left also due to the frustration of seeing ridiculous articles being kept. But the inclusionism-deletionism distinction isn't good to begin with: we're each an inclusionist towards certain types of articles, and a deletionist towards other types, with seemingly valid reasons. This roughly balances out overall for consensus to decide whether each article is encyclopedic. It's not perfect, but it works well enough. –Pomte 05:19, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

  • I guess "fork" is the wrong word to use. If it were a Venn diagram, the two wikis would be two non-overlapping circles. The idea is to avoid a scenario where you have an article about X on both wikis. The only articles that would be transwikied from this wiki to the inclusionist wiki would be those deemed too non-notable to keep here. Oh, are you talking about an overlap with specialty wikis like hrwiki or the star trek wiki? The problem with those is that they do have a major overlap with wikipedia and other wikis.
  • I thought that if you write an article that gets deleted, and then you put it in your userspace, there's a good chance of it ending up at MFD for trying to get around normal restrictions on allowable content. People will claim that it goes against "Wikipedia is not a free web host." I've seen it happen plenty of times.
    talk
    ) 05:31, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
    • If you're suggesting that the Wikimedia Foundation board approve a new wiki for non-encyclopedic content, good luck - it ain't going to happen. It's not part of the mission of the foundation to provide a website for original writings, and there is absolutely no precedent in terms of controls (policies, guidelines, admins, etc.) in a wiki where basically anything goes.

      As for putting deleted articles in userspace, that's acceptable provided (a) there appears to be a reasonable chance that the subject could become an article, and (b) there is some indication that you're working on improving the article, over time. So a philosophic discussion about television shows that you really like, or an attack page, or an advertising page, are going to MfD, sure. On the other hand, a stub with a couple of sources, or notes about where you plan to get sources, isn't something (I'm guessing) that really bothers other editors. (If you have counter-examples of MfDs for things that really could become articles, and were doing no harm where they were, I'd welcome your posting links here.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:41, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

      • No, I'm proposing a wiki for otherwise encyclopedic content that doesn't meet the notability threshold.
        talk
        ) 02:49, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
        • This would be really good if we do a search in regular Wikipedia for something non-notable and Wikipedia would suggest looking in your wiki if a pertinent article exists. -- penubag  03:14, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
          • For that matter, we might have a checkbox under my preferences -> search to automatically include the other wiki in searches.
            talk
            ) 03:40, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
            • That's kinda pointless, that would only benefit us editors with accounts. Besides anyone would rather see a link to an article from another wiki rather than a message saying there is no article by this name. -- penubag  04:22, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
              • Indeed, but then you run into those arguments raised at
                talk
                ) 05:07, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
                • True, and I am wholly against deletion of articles that merely need improvement, but simply redirecting people to a different wiki should be fine, similar to redirecting people to Commons. There's actually a wikiproject or some organization that's goal is to influence Wikipedia in putting other wikis as templates in articles, similar to the Wikimedia Commons has media related to: page. I cannot remember where I saw it and I just looked again, but cannot seem to find it, but I know it exists. I would support them but there weren't enough people involved. -- penubag  05:36, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
                  • There was a TFD about that awhile ago. Some people were saying that we shouldn't have templates directing people to non-Wikimedia wikis. I'm not sure what's going on with
                    talk
                    ) 18:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
                    • WP:FICT) as the place to dump excess fancruft. About the only major category of material thrown out of Wikipedia that doesn't have a home on Wikia are vanity articles - garage bands, non-notable people, and such. (MySpace has that covered.) So we don't really need an "inclusionist fork" in Wikipedia. We just have to be careful about conflict of interest issues in recommending export to the Wikia slushpile. --John Nagle (talk
                      ) 05:29, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
                      • Yeah, the downside to such a disaggregated system is that you don't have the advantages of a unified wiki, such as wikilinks to all other articles, etc. (unless there is some mechanism for connecting the wikis.) Oh well.
                        talk
                        ) 18:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
                        • In reference to Nagle's "MySpace has that covered" statement – by that same logic, couldn't we say, we don't need an article on the different presidential candidates, because Vote Smart has that covered? And in reference to the remarks about Wikia already hosting the fancruft, couldn't we just as easily say, "We don't need an article about Homestar because HRwiki has that covered? 71.63.88.166 (talk) 13:26, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
                          • No, because xyr argument was expressly limited to articles that get deleted because they are not coverable by a tertiary source with our content policies, and not a straw man. Please read it again. Uncle G (talk) 14:37, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
                            • What's xyr? 71.63.88.166 (talk) 23:21, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
                              • It's the possessive of xe. Uncle G (talk) 02:13, 9 January 2008 (UTC)