Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 56

Follow this link to cast your vote

For the coordinators,  Skomorokh  12:59, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Currently, a sound clip file is automatically assigned a button to play this file. However, for readers who have not yet installed *.ogg support this will not work. It would be useful to add a link to

By header, do you mean the text of the Wikipedia or Commons page? This should be non-controversial. Perhaps bot-adding a template to all ogg files with a link would be in order. That way, if the instructions needed changing, it could be done in a centralized location. You might want to raise this on the Commons's idea page. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:17, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

To clarify, it's actually "readers who have not yet installed *.ogg support NOR installed JAVA support" —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:29, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

And Michael Dale is already changing all of this, so I guess it's up to him. I'll forward him this discussion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:38, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

We should probably just include that link if the client has no way to playback the content. Which the new player does do that. I think the existing oggplayer does that as well. mdale (talk) 21:40, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed that some articles have

Notice to editors Adding "hi"s, hearts, and smiles will not make this article look "prettier" and such edits will promptly be reverted. You (or your friends) are not the "best cheerleader(s) in the world," nor are you, your friends, or your enemies the "worst cheerleader(s) in the world." Seriously, nobody cares. Cheerleading is listed as a "sport" because many athletic associations consider it as such; please do not change the article to say otherwise. Cheerleading is not factually "awesome" or "stupid." As this template has fairly warned editors, cheerleader vandalism or "cheerleading is not a sport" vandalism may result in an immediate block on your account or IP.

Comments? PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 01:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I recommend you bring this up on the talk page of the one article that needs it most. Any admin can create or change an edit-notice. {{

editprotect}} may be a way to get an administrator's attention once there is a consensus to add the template to that page. Once it is used on one page, you can then go to the talk pages of other pages that you think need it, and see if there is a consensus to add it or not. This is not a pump-level decision, but rather an article-level one. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail

) 01:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Editnotices are done on an article-by-article basis and only when there is a very good reason to do. The reason being is that any notice is probably going to discourage some legitimate editing, and anyone who wants to vandalize an article probably won't care about a notice that tells them not to. (Not to mention the potential to
  give people ideas on how to vandalize.) --ThaddeusB (talk
  ) 02:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

This is edit-notice creep, as are already the Romeo editnotices. The impact on vandalism is nil and potentially inverse, while it confuses or scares away good-faith editors. Actually this is a good place to discuss on whether we should still use the romeo editnotices. Cenarium (talk) 02:44, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

My idea is to use this editnotice as an excuse to either block immediately or skip to 4im when cheerleaders or cheerleader haters vandalize articles relating to

long term abuser. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages)

03:26, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

IMO, that is an exceptional bad reason for an edit notice. We shouldn't be looking for excuses to block people as quickly as possible, but instead looking foor ways to convert vandals into useful contributors. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:52, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I've done my fair share of that. It's always cool to convince vandals to come back as constructive editors. That's actually one reason why I will never change my username; I think there's a potential that some users will realize that anyone can be a constructive editor here if a high schooler is reverting their vandalism. However, most of these cheerleader vandals, in my experiences, are unforgivable middle schoolers and HS freshmen who in some cases have come here following the instructions of a disgusting underground chain letter distributed from cheerleader to cheerleader worldwide Myspace and Facebook. The chain letters say that "Wikipedia hates all cheerleaders." If you try to be reasonable with them, they will try to find you off-wiki and harass you to know end. On the other hand, I suppose it's kind of ironic that I'd want to put a big warning on the page before they can even save an edit considering they already think we hate them. I have friends who are cheerleaders at PCH that know I edit this site and have brought some of these chainletters they've received to my attention. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 04:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a joke, right? Cheerleader vandalism? And this is way too over the top to be serious. Please tell me this is just a joke. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 04:27, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not a joke unfortunately; neither it references to "school vandalism." It's like "school vandalism" that carries on beyond school hours, and it's quite annoying IMO. Call me radical if you want filing abuse reports on petty vandalism, but it's still AUP violations. That's the risk one takes when they edit as an IP; just as anybody can edit this site, anybody can view the logs on this site, and it doesn't take much for people that may not even be editors here to file abuse reports on virutually anything they desire to. Abuse reporting is in it's own world from Wikipedia's policies; once an ISP becomes aware of activity it's up to them what happens; there's no "warn four times first." I don't know what other people do, but I usually only file reports if they've been warned three times and it appears there's no way the user has the will and/or intelligence to become a straight forward editor. Obviously there's not enough time to report every vandal, but I personally believe that we could be doing a LOT better in the field of abuse reporting. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 04:50, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Also note there is no rule specifically that says one can't file abuse reports on people who've only vandalized a few times; to take it to

WP:ABUSE they have to have been blocked at least five times, but there's no rule that says you can't report them on your own, and there's probably quite a few people who do report vandals and we never know. There's probably MUCH less severe cases than that one that are reported to ISPs. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages)

04:55, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

(

ZooFari

04:56, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Can you post a sample message here so I can see how you are reporting vandalism to ISPs? Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 05:01, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It's a very professional message; I inform the abuse contacts (A user at) x.x.x.x is violating your Acceptable User Policy by inserting spam/off-topic nonsense into articles at http://en.wikipedia.org. The user's actions are disruptive and the issue should be addressed. Please investigate the logs below and enforce your AUP. The log format is already available at the Abuse Response revamp discussion. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 20:00, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually I was most curious about how you and other "contactors" represented yourselves in relation to WP. Do you state that you are doing this on WP's behalf? How do you identify yourself - with your real name or your WP username? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 20:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't identify myself at all in the message unless they ask (this is rare), in which case I would represent myself as an editor at WP. The emails are sent from my personal Embarq email account, so my real name appears as the sender. If it's on behalf of WP:ABUSE, I give them a link to the project. I do not blatantly lie to ISPs or IT&S departments. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 03:55, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you lied to ISPs. I was curious if you were implying that this was an official WIKIPEDIA action, and clearly you are not. I suspect that you are making assumptions about the AUP (acceptable use policy) of various ISPs. Since WP invites people to edit it, typical vandalism (even cheerleader vandalism) won't be breaking the AUP of most ISPs. In any case, I don't really see the usefulness of your actions, but you are clearly of a more simplistic, punitive mindset than I am. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I try to stray away from being too overly strict, but became a Wikipedian partially because I discovered

WP:ABUSE and what vandalism is from a search I ran on an IP involved in off-wiki abuse, so naturally I'm inclined to report to ISPs in certain circumstances; I've been strict like that much longer than I've been a Wikipedian. I used to actually look up the exact part of the AUPs that the vandals would violate, which varied by the vandalism and the AUP, but it was too time consuming and didn't really matter anyway because in my experiences the same ones that do nothing about wiki vandalism also do nothing about spam, port scans, and even phishing websites. For one thing, it's a common misconception that there's "nothing illegal about vandalizing Wikipedia;" most of the time it could be considered harassment when they repeatedly do it after being warned, some of them make threats, some of them stalk the vandal fighters, and that's just on the legal side. I've found that wiki vandalism is actually a pretty big deal considering how there's usually more than one part of the AUP they're violating. For starters, it's maliciously messing with someone else's computer, if they mention someone's name it's slander/libel, and if the person is under 13 it's a violation of COPPA, it often involves spreading hoaxes, if they engage in sockpuppetry to get past blocks it's circumventing a firewall, accessing something without authorization, disguising their identity by technical means, or just circumventing a blocking feature within a website, it affects other ISP users' ability to enjoy the service if they engage in IP hoping resulting in either a range block or IP blocks on one heck of a large list of IPs the person's used, if they say their ISP won't do anything or otherwise mention their ISP they're tarnishing the name of the provider, they're violating third party policies via their internet connection, it's off topic posts/comments, it's unsolicited advertising if they promote anything in particular, they often make "obscene" comments, and the list continues on. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages)

20:20, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

 * 1 Events
 * 2 Births
 * 3 Deaths
 * 4 Holidays and observances
 * 5 External links

Don't panic! Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and it is not a democracy, you don't need permission to do this. So if you want a PDF book of all of Wikipedia then just go an create it.

As you may appreciate a book of the all 3.1 million articles would be quite unwieldy. I recommend completing the Featured Articles book. Go to Wikipedia:Featured articles, click "Create a book" on the left hand side of the screen and start adding all 2,716 to your book.

Here's

coṁrá

) 18:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I belive you haven't read mye Idea properly. Read it Again and you'll understand why I'm panicing... --Gmdahl (talk) 18:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

You could sell the PDF yourself per

WikiMedia Foundation

.

If you want to add a PDF download as an reward for donors to the fundraiser you need to go to m:Fundraising 2009/Launch Feedback and request it be added to the website. The kind of back-end changes to the website cannot be made by normal editors it can only be made by a few users with direct access to the website running Wikipedia.

Someone on that page might also be able to help automate making the PDF (adding all those featured articles would be hard work to do by hand, which is why I suppose it has not been completed). --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (

coṁrá

) 19:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Update: I made a book of

coṁrá

) 23:49, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

This won't get done for this Christmas, but I would definitely suggest this at m:Fundraising 2010. –xeno^talk 14:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Mainstream view here is against age limits on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," so age restrictions would be completely against our fundamentals. However, is it really necessary for people younger than 13 to indentify themselves as such? A rule banning the representation of one's self as a person 12 or younger would get us out of that gray area we're in on the issue. Not only would it be in better compliance of COPPA, but it would reduce the temptation for pedophiles to try to use this as another

I don't see how COPPA is relevant, since Wikipedia doesn't "collect personal information" from anyone, as it's an encyclopedia. Ntsimp (talk) 23:45, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Speaking as an Oversighter, I can say that this is already common practice, in the interests of 'Do No Harm'. It is covered by the letter of

OS#1, and in spirit by simple morality and decency. The legal issue is a non-issue, as Ntsimp says: Wikipedia does not collect personal information, anything that's up here is what the editors have posted. There doesn't need to be a legal reason to do the Right Thing. Happy‑melon

23:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, there's

WP:Personal information, which says don't include personal information anywhere on Wikipedia. —C.Fred (talk

) 23:58, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

There's also

WP:NOTMYSPACE, which I think this would fit right in under, but I think this perhaps should be addressed directly. Just an idea. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages)

00:10, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

And I'm saying that it already is addressed, directly and consistently, whenever the issue is encountered. There is no need to have a 'rule' that people have 'broken' in order to be able to take action. Happy‑melon 11:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Asian Golden Cat
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Felidae
Genus:	Catopuma
Species:	C. temminckii
Binomial name
Catopuma temminckii (Vigors & Horsfield, 1827)

You know how featured articles and featured lists are marked with a gold star in the corner? Let's mark featured pictures too so they're easier to find. Currently, readers either have to browse the featured content galleries or else click a lot of thumbnails to find featured picture needles in the content haystack. Here's an example of how hard it is to tell a featured picture from a non-featured picture at a glance. Several editors at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates have a proposed solution.

Add a small featured star to the caption box near the featured picture. This communicates at a glance that the image meets the site's highest quality standards. Featured pictures hold up to viewing at close scrutiny, and can be suitable for monitor wallpaperand other purposes. At left is an example of a featured star in a taxobox. Below is an example of how the featured picture star would look in an image caption.
The featured picture stars would be implemented and maintained by bot. We think this would make it easier to see and enjoy the site's best content. Bringing the proposal to the wider community for discussion. Durova³⁶⁶ 20:42, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I am something of an anti-star curmudgeon (I don't like seeing FA stars floating around on user pages and all over the place) so you'll have to take my opinion with a grain of salt, but personally I find the solutions presented above to be distracting. FA stars on articles are, at least, somewhat inconspicuous and take up relatively little in the way of real estate; the above stars are intruding on templates and captions and to be honest seem inelegantly pasted in. I also would have some concern as to whether or not the addition of graphics into areas of templates where graphics might not be expected has unintended (and unwanted) consequences in terms of template formatting. So, the short answer is, I'm no fan of the idea but it may be just me. Shereth 21:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm a featured pictures regular, so you'd expect me to support this, and I do. I think that the little stars are unobtrusive, and do the reader a service by signalling that the image really is worth their time. It improves the reader experience at very little cost. Mostlyharmless (talk) 22:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I have an honest question here. I am curious how knowing which pictures happen to be featured improves the typical reader's experience? I'm not trying to question your statement but rather just trying to understand the point of view presented here, since I am having a difficult time seeing the material benefit of indicating, at least within articles, when an image has been selected as "featured". Shereth 22:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

(To Shereth)- I can only speak for myself, but as a "photo-illiterate" who has to rely on others for photos/pictures for articles I create/work on, I often go to other articles and "steal" their photos for my new articles (to represent that existing article name on a new list article, or if I need a photo to represent a particular town and there is a geologic formation in that town with an existing article and photo). If I need a photo and I can tell at a glance which photo is a FP that would help me use the best one for my new article. That is just one example of what this star can help with.Camelbinky (talk) 23:13, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

@ Shereth: It will increase curiosity and hopefully bring people into the project, get them to donate their photos, and maybe even nominated some FPs. I became a member of the project because of some of the beautiful images that were promoted to FP status, and only because I stumbled across some in articles (at first I didn't get the connection between FPs and POTD). Unlike articles though, images can be used in many places, so

NYer

00:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your replies. I am sympathetic toward those who put a lot of time and effort into creating/uploading images and graphics for use in Wikipedia - I've uploaded over 13,000 on Commons, mostly via bot and mostly graphics as opposed to images but I feel I have a certain amount of sympathy nonetheless. I'll chew over some of this information for a while and see if I come up with some additional insight but I appreciate your responses. Shereth 03:34, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• Strong support with inclusion of infobox stars as well Couldn't have said it any better than Durova, and now that we have a way of getting the star in infoboxes, no FPs will be left behind.
  NYer
  22:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
• I like the idea but agree about screen real estate. It would be nice if one could use CSS trickery to place the star overlapping or on the image (with possibly some ability to set which corner it should be by), but then I worry that for some images, the star could become too distracting. --MASEM (t) 22:30, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong support per UpstateNYer and Durova.Camelbinky (talk) 22:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
• "too so they're easier to find." is a poor argument, given that there are other methods to do so. I'm not going to go hunting for featured images by hunting through articles... It also draws the eye away from the image, unnecessarily so, and Masem's idea would simply obscure the image in question in some part. These are enough to draw me to oppose the proposal. --Izno (talk) 22:42, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support except for the infobox implementation. I find it to be obtrusive as used in the example infobox. The thumbnail view is great since that would be unused space next to the caption anyway. Great feature in an article with multiple angles or views of the same subject. Let's the reader know which one may be the best one to view at full-size. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 22:46, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

• This is a more palatable solution to my curmudgeonly resistance to these stars. I'm still not in support per se but if it has to be implemented I would prefer to see this solution :) Shereth 22:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

• I don't mind one way or the other about this little star, but if it is "hard ... to tell a featured picture from a non-featured picture at a glance", why is the featured picture project of use for Wikipedia, in which images are generally only viewed at a glance? Fences&Windows 22:58, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • There can be times when editors want to view an image in detail. Featured pictures hold up to careful viewing and scrutiny. Durova³⁶⁶ 00:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support as a good way to encourage more good quality photographs in articles and reward editors that produce them. I think some more tough could be put into how the start is displayed - an overlay on the image might make it clearer that it is the image that is being "starred" and might work better in the info box example too. Is there any equivilent for "good articles" status for images? rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (
  coṁrá
  ) 23:40, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • NYer
    00:57, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• I am pro highlighting featured images, but I'm not sure about the best approach. I'd consider adding a star as an overlay on one of the corners (though this may work poorly for some images). Or one could do something totally different like adding a gold border to the image frame rather than adding a star. Dragons flight (talk) 23:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

• oppose - The majority of people who will see those stars (anons, and regulars) will have no idea what the stars are and can lead to confusion, especially when they click on it thinking the star would do something (as might a regular website)b. The current article stars are okay because they're hidden way up in the top corner, but this is right within the article. Perhaps this can be implemented as a gadget for those who see it as beneficial. -- penubag  (talk) 00:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • This argument has already been brought a couple times at
    NYer
    00:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I think the star at the top of an article is okay since it's out of the way and necessary to exemplify featured articles. But I personally think it's distracting to have stars in the middle of an article to point out "featured here and there" parts, and unnessary. One of the criteria for a featured article is that is is properly illustrated with images, and adding featured pictures help the final product get renowned. It seems unprofessional to single out good works within an article and advertise them. Shirley, Encyclopedia Britannica, or any encyclopedia doesn't engage in such practice. The image summary featured templates are good enough.-- penubag  (talk) 01:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
      • I dont know what Shirley does in her encyclopedia (Airplane reference, get it?), but for your Enc. Brit. comparison- we arent paper, we can, and often do, do more than an encyclopedia can, we arent limited to doing only what "real" encyclopedias do. That really isnt an argument that can be used against this proposal. Paper encyclopedias dont have templates, infoboxes, wikiprojects, categories, talk pages, and alot of other "shiny things" that we can have being internet-based. This is another thing that helps us make a better encyclopedia, that's my two cents.Camelbinky (talk) 03:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Camelbinky pretty much said what I would have. As for your first sentence, what makes FPs any less noteworthy than FAs? An FA being illustrated is completely unrelated to FPs; it's nice to have FPs in an FA, but not required or even expected. Noting that an image is an FP with a star gives the project some needed press and may cause some new users to start donating their images and nominating good content (not all editors build text content, wikignome, etc - some limit their contributions to image-related tasks; why lose a potential contributor because of an argument over a star in a caption?). It's like when you first discover FA as a new user: "Wikipedia has standards? Gasp!"
        NYer
        04:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
        • What makes an FP less noteworthy than an FA? Nothing, but the images are being presented in an article, so if the article displays a star for being featured, it's okay. We are not reading images, and if we are, the featured star exists on the file description page, which is where it belongs. If "it's nice to have FPs in an FA, but not required or even expected" then why showcase it just when they are??? Camelbinky only talked about one of my points which I admit was poorly crafted, so I retract that statement. Your second point about "lose a potential contributor" is like the argument for having image placeholders which has been rejected by the community. Also, another comment, if this proposal passes, why not have featured stars on featured quotes from Wikiquote? I would love to see that happen. -- penubag  (talk) 06:08, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
          • Identification of quality images serves the same function as identification of other content, such as articles: to get the attention of potential contributors who could donate material at a similar level. The New York Times ran a piece last summer about Wikipedia's need for better media content, which profiled a successful professional photographer who has contributed a featured picture.[1] To highlight only the featured articles doesn't help to improve the media side, since most featured pictures appear within articles that aren't featured. Few individuals are skilled at both media and text contribution; featured articles often display images that are merely adequate. There's even been a problem with non-media editors replacing featured pictures with lower quality images. It's usually done in good faith; they just don't realize the difference. Durova³⁶⁶ 18:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
          • Just as much effort is put into getting an FP as an FA, trust me. The time commitment and the number of gigabytes of photos that I don't nominate or upload is large. As for your wikiquote reference, I'd have no problem with that, but note that you're talking about a completely separate project whereas FP is a WP project. And I didn't know the image placeholders had been poo-pooed by the community; I use them all the time and think they're a great idea!
            NYer
            22:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
            • I was just going to comment that I also never realized image placeholders werent "allowed", I missed that memo.Camelbinky (talk) 02:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - Maybe at some point WP can become more of an encyclopedia for readers and less of a repository for signs and symbols of behind the scenes social activity? --Kleinzach 02:17, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support. I get the feeling that some of the opposes are on the basis that this is merely project-cruft. However, high quality pictures that illustrate articles in highly encyclopedic ways are important to the project. Wikipedia:Feature Pictures places high premium on the "encyclopedic value" of an image in illustrating particular articles - being merely pretty or high quality is not enough. Wikipedia's Featured Pictures are ones that add considerable value to articles, and thus are likely to be images which readers are likely to get value from in looking at more closely. For this reason having a small and unobtrusive marker is going to improve the encyclopedic experience of readers. Mostlyharmless (talk) 02:38, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Fair enough. Can the star be made 'small and unobtrusive'? --Kleinzach 02:44, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I would say the the star is already 'small and unobtrusive'. If this encourages editors and readers to submit more images and allows users to quickly find good images, I would think it is an excellent idea. Definite support. NW (Talk) 03:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support. I find this rather uncontroversial. Having a star on the page isn't going to detract from the quality of the image, nor can I see it confusing new users. We already have this for other featured content, so I'm fine with this. PeterSymonds (talk) 03:16, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Do you find the images to be linked inline with the text in every instance? Say, everything linked to Barack Obama? That is the equivalent of what will be done here, in my eyes. How would you not find that obtrusive? --Izno (talk) 04:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Would you mind elaborating? I'm having trouble understanding your meaning here. Just to cover the base, the plan is to have the stars link to
      NYer
      04:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Support — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 06:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Fairly obvious support. Wikipedia is known for its crap photos and this may go some way to correcting that problem (by encouraging new photos and keeping crap ones out of articles that already have FPs). MER-C 07:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• It gets my support too, following on from Mostlyharmless' comment. A wee star saysclick me, and just like the FA star, it tells you you'll be rewarded by spending some time with the content you find when you do. Per MER-C, images on WP are increasingly underrated, under-employed and overlooked, and this may well prove a key element in reversing that trend. mikaul^talk 07:35, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Support When you compare the amount of space advertising "featured articles", the little start is quite minimal. It is also part of a necessary emancipation of the illustration.. remember, a picture paints a thousand words and, many of our articles are overly verbose.. GerardM (talk) 10:23, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Would there be a way to replace "" in thumbnails of FPs with a slightly flashier version - maybe gold background on the larger rectangle, rays, or superimposed star on larger rectangle? No extra screen clutter, easily differentiable for people who are looking for it, and would signify that it's the magnified version that's special. Pseudomonas_(talk) 12:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • We thought of changing that but it would require actual code changes to the wiki, there isn't a template anywhere that would work for that. Then again it's possible to create a custom image box template for FP's that would do as you say, unfortunately that would also be beyond the abilities of us that created the template and proposed the idea. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 16:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose The reason to add this feature is sound and I support it. However, as was stated on the first discussion about this in WP:FPC, this proposal can only works if the star is added through an entirely automatic process (such as "picture has FP tag -> auto include of star whenever picture is included in a page" which would be very tricky to do). Many pictures are featured and some are delisted every week, and all pictures may be included in several places, so ensuring that the star is displayed for the right pictures everywhere is a huge work. Failing to do this properly will merely make this star meaningless, with many thumbnails of FP lacking it, and some thumbnails of delisted pictures having it. Soon, misinformed people will start to add it to any picture they find pretty. Therefore, until someone propose a way to deal with this problem, I oppose the creation of this template which will otherwise probably be misused and then misunderstood. Ksempac (talk) 14:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Part of the closing process (specifically for delisting) could be adding/removing this from pages, generally FP's are not on _lots_ of pages but only a one or two or three rarely more. It wouldn't be that much more of a burden. The bot would just ensure that it's not being used anywhere it shouldn't along with catching pages that a FP is used on later. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 16:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
    • An understandable worry, but easy to resolve the same way featured articles and featured lists get managed. A bot would update the displays per the featured picture templates. So other than coding the bot, this doesn't create any more work for anybody. Durova³⁶⁶ 18:01, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Some kind of tag to indicate a featured picture would be fine, so long as it is not too intrusive. Surely a bot could take care of the maintenance? How are the featured article stars done? Fences&Windows 15:13, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Definitely. As far as I can tell, the worst-case scenario brought up here is that readers will be confused, click on the link, figure it out, and the either a. go "Okay" and get on with their lives or b. get interested and start editing. Where's the downside? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:39, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support. I didn't even know WP had such a thing as featured images until I started reading
  good" content) is supposed to represent our best material, and we should try to make readers aware of that. --RL0919 (talk
  ) 17:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support - Definitely. We give lots of praise and kudos to the people who work on FAs, but not so much for featured images.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 17:30, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support outside of infoboxes. I'm not convinced from the example above that they look good inside them. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:54, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Weak support for this outside of infoboxes as well. I've given it some thought and while I still find them mildly obtrusive I doubt they would do any harm. I wish there was a more elegant way to perhaps replace the symbol with something indicative of the featured status but that is merely nitpicking on my part. However I will still oppose the inclusion of any graphic symbol within infoboxes, as they do funky things to the formatting and are more than a little intrusive in appearance in these instances. Shereth 18:27, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support, reasonable proposal. Rather uncontroversial addition to the website. –blurpeace ^(talk) 20:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support but not in infoboxes Great idea, it helps readers to find the best of Wikipeda images. It looks confusing in the taxobox-what's it linked to? Let's leave them out of infoboxes, though. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:43, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Note If a bot is going to be used to maintain these, it should be easy for the bot to only add the star for images where the file name is located within [[ ]] brackets, and ignore those without. That would skip any image located in an infobox. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 21:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Comment. Maybe it's just me, but I don't have a problem with how the star looks in the infobox example. --RL0919 (talk) 21:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• Looking at the image above, I don't know what the star is related to. It does not appear, in the infobox with the cougar, that the star is related to the image, but rather that the star is related to the species in some way. Even in this discussion about stars on featured pictures, and knowing exactly what FA and FP stars look like, my first thought was that the star means it's an endangered species or maybe one taken off the endangered list. I want stars on featured pictures in articles, I think it's a great idea, past time to have them. But I don't want to confuse readers, ever. Impossible to reach that goal of never confusing a reader, so I'll settle for eliminating the worst confusion. When I see something that is so confusing, that I'm not sure what it is even when I know what it is, this is, imo, something that may confuse more users than it provides any utility for. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 22:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• Support We do this for other featured content types. — Jake Wartenberg 23:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Conditional support In thumb boxes, it looks ok. But I agree with those who find it out of place in infoboxes, and I just can't see how it would not look even more out of place on
  the other types. Anomie⚔
  00:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Thiodina puerpera
Image of a female Thiodina puerpera
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Arachnida

• Support - both infoboxes and thumbs. A star below an infobox image would not look obstructive if there's a caption provided, such as the one on the right. Maybe the FPC process can imply the requirement of captions in infobox FPs, which would also merit the EV an image needs to be featured.
  ZooFari
  01:18, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

• Now it even more appears to be saying the species is rated star for some reason, removed from endangered list would be my guest. My second guess would be the taxon's article is a featured article. The problem is, imo, it appears to belong to the taxon, not to the image. And, I like the idea of attaching the stars to featured images in article space to let users know they're special. But I don't like the idea of attaching stars that don't appear to be for the image. In addition, adding the star to the taxobox will require input from the biology projects. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 01:56, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose - Readers only care about the content of articles (and images), not about those internal mechansms of wikipedia. They care about if the article is complete, clear, well-written, etc; and if images are of good quality and related to the topic, or not. Being featured, however, is only of community concern. The star can be considered a self reference (by being an addition that isn't related with the article at all), but having no text and being at a corner the problem is so small it can be ignored. Those others, however, would be in the middle of it all. Second, have in mind that internal links to featured articles from other articles make no distinction when they link featured articles, there's no underline, bold text or gold link instead of blue. Why should images be any different? And third, an image is featured or not by itself. For an article to be well ilustrated, the image must be related and ilustrative of the topic, not necesarily a featured one. For example, let's say there's an article that talks about an old war: a portrait about such war, even if available at a low resolution, would be far better than a photo of a sunset in the beach where the armies once landed, even if that sunset is a featured image.
  talk
  ) 02:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Actually you're overgeneralizing there. Just like an article can't be featured without images, an image can't be featured without being in articles. Encyclopedic value is what makes
    NYer
    03:29, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia Featured Pictures places a very high premium on the encyclopedic value of the image in illustrating a particular concept with specific reference to the articles. Unless it relates to the text that surrounds it, it won't be featured. WP:FP isn't pretty pictures - they do that at Commons:FP. WP:FP is about illustrating the encyclopedia with the best images. Mostlyharmless (talk) 02:28, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Generally support but reasons for opposes need to be taken into account before implementing. See User_talk:Durova/Archive_73#Implimenting featured picture stars easily for a couple of ways implement this automagically. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I like that idea. Though (as others have said), I'm really not sure about for infoboxes. Pseudomonas_(talk) 10:02, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose in Infoboxes As others have commented, it would not sufficiently clear to the uninformed what the star applies to, possible misinterpretations including the infobox itself or its subject. Also wastes a slight amount of space if no caption is present for the infobox image. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Regarding taxoboxes one of the most encyclopedic uses of high quality images is species identification. Wikipedia's photographers have been doing amazing work in that regard, for example with birds and flowers. It would be a real service to readers to have a cue available when the lead image is that useful. Durova³⁶⁶ 19:05, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

  The concern is that the star does not appear to indicate the picture is featured, when it's in the taxobox. Even coming here to discuss this, knowing that's what the stars are, my first thought was the pictured cat had been moved off the endangered list or something.

  So, if the star is not a cue to the image being featured, but leads to confusion about the status of the species, then it's not a cue about the lead image. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 07:47, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose because it doesn't add value. Rather it adds confusion. Rich Farmbrough, 21:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC).
• Support. Linking the star to Wikipedia:Featured pictures reasonably clarifies any kind of confusion. A bot to monitor them would be good, too. Dan ☺ 21:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Not needed, and causes confusion. I'd rather we start working on improving the encyclopedic content more than adding small features as golden stars in infoboxes for images. warrior4321 22:04, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's metadata, and original research, since there is no independent confirmation of the value of the image. If we want to clue readers on whether it's worth clicking through, add the dimensions in the title attribute.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I've added an endangered species with an image star. It looks like the star is attached to the IUCN red list category in some way, and about the same with a caption or without. Adding this to taxoboxes will require input from biology editors, also. They should be notified of this discussion. Also fossil organisms have age ranges, add the star to the trilobite taxobox with its fossil range to see that it doesn't appear to indicate it's a featured picture. Yes, clicking on it takes you to the FP page, but, it still starts out with confusion. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 07:50, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Barbary Lion
Barbary Lion
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Felidae
Genus:	Panthera
Species:	P. leo
Subspecies:	P. l. leo
Trinomial name
Panthera leo leo

Note Due to the proposal to add the stars to taxoboxes I posted a request for input at the taxobox template discussion page, and at wikiprojects Tree of Life, Animals, Plants, and Fungi. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 08:34, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Alternate implementation

I don't think that the core of this idea is bad, but I think that it's clear that the proposed implementation is lacking somehow. I was just thinking that a good solution would be to use the "Designated Metadata Area" (if that's actually a term) that the current featured article start uses, and to use a different graphic (a graphic of something like a photo would seem to make sense). If the Featured Photo appeared anywhere on a Featured Article then both icon would appear.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:13, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

This makes the most sense. I'm going through this page thinking "caption areas? infoboxes? Thats ridiculous!" Why would these appear anywhere except on the File: namespace for the photo. We don't put stars in the infoboxes or next to the links of featured articles, why should we with featured pictures? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Possible Solution to Ambiguity

There is really nothing to prevent the community from decreeing that the star for FPs be the same star as for FAs. If we had a featured image star that looked unique, it would solve all three different ambiguity concerns that I have seen above.

Only for established users who know what the conventions are. For the regular user who just uses Wikipedia as a website, it'd just make things that wee bit more confusing, unintuitive, and excluding. Pseudomonas_(talk) 16:27, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know. That might work. Can you offer a suggestion, a logo about an image that makes it seem the image is unique? I do like the idea of cluing the user in to the quality of the image, particularly since if it's a featured picture it's usually a large file, and, when it's not, it's usually a very important image. This makes finding an image, particularly when it's not your specialty, easier. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:32, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Subdividing for clarity

It appears that most people support the use of featured picture stars in captions and a smaller number support it for infoboxes. In order to clarify matters please state your opinion in one of the following sections:

1. Support implementation of featured picture stars in caption boxes and in infoboxes.
2. Support featured picture stars in caption boxes only.
3. Oppose any use of featured picture stars.

Support implementation of featured picture stars in caption boxes and in infoboxes

• Per above. Durova³⁶⁶ 22:35, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• As I said above, I think this is a good idea and I don't see a problem with having it in infoboxes. --RL0919 (talk) 22:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Ditto RL0919
  NYer
  03:45, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support In both places. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 09:07, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support - if the infobox is required to have a caption under the image. Comment - why are we turning this into a vote? We should at least use bullets instead of numbers...--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 13:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  I went ahead and changed the numbered lists in the sections to bulled lists, to keep this as consensus, not voting. I still don't like dividing this into sections, but it's a little late to undo that, at this point.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 13:56, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  Hmm... opposers are quite convincing... going Neutral.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 14:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Support --
  ZooFari
  23:04, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Weak support This should be judged based on its value to readers (if this is aimed more at editors or some other narrower audience, we can seek another method, like categories or something). My reason for thinking the stars may help readers is that they give an idea of whether it is worth bothering to click on a thumbnail link to see a larger image. But I agree with many of the oppose comments about self-references and self-congratulation and clutter not helping readers, so this is a weak support verging on weak oppose. Kingdon (talk) 15:26, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support I think this is an excellent idea, and, IMHO, the stars aren't distracting. I fail to see how the 'new users won;t know what it means' argument works, as, surely, linking them in to our best content is a good thing? :-)
  talk
  ) 07:57, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong support, dont find them distracting, and they are beneficial to those who look for the best pictures so we can use them elsewhere on Wikipedia.Camelbinky (talk) 01:51, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
• Support, as long as a bot is produced to manage the stars rather than relying on editing by hand. Also, might it be possible to add some sort of mouseover or tooltip to the star, if people are worried that it's purpose might not be clear? --Stormie (talk) 21:46, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Support featured picture stars in caption boxes only

• Strong, strong oppose - This would be troubling. All FPs should be treated fairly. One of the reasons for stars is the motivation of nominations, and potential FP contributers would be motivated to contribute their images in thumbs only. Taxo bars are what we consider high EV images and we don't want to lower that bar.
  ZooFari
  23:29, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support I find the white space created in the taxobox to look awkward, and the star is not clearly linked to the picture in that location. I also don't agree with the proposal to add a caption in the infobox to fill the white space. Any picture in an infobox should already match the title bar, and a caption would be redundant. They work well in the thumbnail frame, and should be used there. Nothing says that the best picture is going to be most appropriate for the infobox anyway. That one should contain one that will be most recognizable to the reader, whether featured or not. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 00:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• For what it is worth, this is not my preferred solution; I actually have a preference for the below option (oppose all stars), however, for the sake of cooperation and compromise I am willing to support this version. I am still quite opposed to any addition of such stars to infoboxes. Shereth 05:54, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support --Cybercobra (talk) 06:35, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Although, leaning toward the below option, as it is hard to communicate to supporters just how inappropriate they look and how confusing their addition to taxoboxes would be to readers. They're too confusing in the taxobox. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 07:50, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong oppose as this would encourage editors to not put the FP's in any infobox so that the star could be displayed. Inferior photos would end up in the most prominent place (ie- the infobox).Camelbinky (talk) 01:54, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

  And what is wrong with that, particularly when the inferior image in terms of photographic quality is actually the superior image in terms of relevance to the subject? Given pictures of the same subject (like the Tower Bridge referenced) then naturally, the FP should be used - but the "most prominent" place in an article should be reserved for the image of the highest relevance, not the highest quality. Shereth 20:13, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose any use of featured picture stars

• Oppose any use of featured picture stars in article space. Stars linked to internal Wikipedia processes are 'self-referential'. They shouldn't be used in the encyclopedia per se. Nor do I agree that "most people support the use of featured picture stars" (above). The opposition is considerable. How about setting up a thorough-going centralized discussion to see what support this really enjoys? Reg. --Kleinzach 23:19, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

  I note that stars for featured articles and featured lists appear in the mainspace. Anywhow, I agree that the discussion should be fully publicized considering how much input it has already drawn and the diversity of opinion. An RfC with placement on

  WP:CENT should do the trick. --RL0919 (talk

  ) 23:27, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

  Article stars are a different matter since they appear outside the body of the article; they are as much part of the article as donation banners. If this feature is implemented, we'll have articles literally peppered with stars. mgiganteus1 (talk) 11:05, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  Of course, at the moment, thanks to said banners, the FA stars appear in the article body. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:38, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose featured picture stars. The stars are disproportionately flashy, potentially confusing in meaning (especially in the taxobox), and most importantly, do not improve the encyclopedic merit of the article in any way. The image is already there; it's doing its job regardless of whether a star's next to it. What problem is adding these stars meant to solve? Is there a flood of complaints that unmarked featured pictures are detracting from users' experiences? The point of every Wikipedia article is to present information. Let's keep out unnecessary distractions to that goal, and high-quality images can attract attention to themselves on their own merits. -- Yzx (talk) 09:32, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong oppose Distracting and unnecessary. Woefully inadequate as a way of highlighting quality images in an article, because the number of FP-like images on Wikipedia is very many times greater than the number of official FPs, and this will always be the case. mgiganteus1 (talk) 11:00, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose in article space. What next, stars next to article links? Hesperian 11:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - weakly for thumbnail boxes, strongly for infoboxes. It's all distraction and clutter that bit-by-bit makes Wikipedia less intuitive. Pseudomonas_(talk) 11:07, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Urgh, this is hideous. FA stars are tucked away in the Designated Metadata Area(TM) in the top-right corner, not actually within the main content pane. This is self-referential and a gaudy advertisement, and implementation would be an emormous undertaking. Would that people stopped obsessing over their stars - it's bad enough that people feel the need to tart their home pages up with so many silly boy scout badges without this creeping any further onto articlespace. That said, I would not be opposed on principle to Pseudomonas's suggestion in the general comments section that the "click to view me full size" icon in thumbnails could be overloaded in some way for FIs (certainly not with a flipping star though), but not in infobox templates.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Thumperward (talk • contribs) 12:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  I'd kind of thought of something like but less ugly (that was hacked up in 5 min). Personally I'd be happy to shelve this until MediaWiki allows a parameter for overloading the images - then we could also maybe overload for disputed images &c. Pseudomonas_(talk) 13:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose I don't personally have strong feeling about this, but I think that the oppose commentary here makes for a fairly convincing argument. It's probably a good idea to bring some attention to featured pictures (and other featured content), but this doesn't seem to be the way to go about it. I find the "self-referential" and "not in the content pane" arguments offered above to be particularly compelling.
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:05, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose All the featured content within Wikipedia should be treated the same. We don't add stars to everyplace that a featured article or list links in other articles. The thumbnails in the articles are links to the picture page and from what I have seen, the picture page has the star in the upper right hand corner (like articles and lists) but it also has a banner on the page stating it is a featured picture. We do not need to add additional star everyplace that it links. ~~ GB fan ~~ ^talk 13:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, self-congratulatory and kindergarten-ish. Readers can't be expected to dig through our back-office processes to understand what it means. Changing the color of the little magnify symbol would be a more aesthetically pleasing option if this is felt necessary, but I don't think it would be a positive step in any form. Christopher Parham (talk) 13:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose in article space . An image can be valuable to one article, while being unsuited or even misleading in another. Having the star in article space may give the sometimes false impression that the image is the one best suited for that particular article. Melburnian (talk) 13:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  Good point, Melburnian. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:09, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Swayed by good arguments of opposers. Self-referential; obscure; distracting; clutter. --Cybercobra (talk) 19:35, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. Classic example of original research: no independent evidence of notability.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  ...huh? not that I disagree with the !vote, since I opposed myself, but... Original research? notability? What does that have to do with anything here?
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  If someone were to add a Wikipedian with many barnstars, many newly created articles, and hundreds of thousands of edits, but who was not notable outside Wikipedia, to a "List of people in Wherever" article, it would rightfully be reverted, since there is no independent evidence of notability. If a bunch of Wikipedians formed a project to issue a list of the ten best English-language movies of the year, based not on external reviews, but on their own opinions, it's hard to imagine they'd get much support to put it in mainspace. How are featured pictures any different?--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  Humm... I don't have any real issue with the Featured Article or Featured Picture process myself. Labeling them as OR isn't really accurate or helpful here though, since the processes themselves are not really what's at issue here. Let's not overstate our case here, and start an argument about something that is really tangential to the proposal. We're hardly going to develop consensus to deprecate those processes out of this discussion, after all.
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 16:43, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  You asked him to explain his reasoning, and he did. He's not starting an argument, nor does he give any appearance of trying to start one or get rid of the FP or FA processes. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 17:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  I have no quibble with having FA or FP, nor do I disagree with the concept of barnstars: All are ways to encourage quality, cooperation, and all the other good things that make Wikipedia work. On the other hand, elevating the identity of the awardees to encyclopedic content seems counterproductive.--Curtis Clark (talk) 18:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  I disagree that it elevates them by using them in article space. I find it helpful to know an article is a FA or an image is a FP because I know it has received some level of scrutiny higher generally than regular articles. (The FP I admit is more about size and technical issues and poorly about EV, but I still find FP more useful, often, than non-fP.) Still, I see you have valid concerns, because of my ()al remark about FPs. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:06, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  I'm just trying not to be confused here, because I am, and we're essentially on the same "side" so that's not a good situation. There seems to be a rather fundamental viewpoint difference here because I don't see FA or FP evaluations as an "award" at all. Classifying them together with barnstars at least sheds some light on the original question that I had about this, but it only creates a new question. There are people that take personal pride in "getting an article to FA" status, and Durova clearly takes pride in doing the same with images. That's great for everyone because ultimately the encyclopedia wins all the way around. The editors are motivated to (continue to) contribute, and the content is vastly improved. However, the FA or FP "award" ultimately belongs to the article or file in question, not the article. So... again, I hardly begrudge the !vote since I'm !voting the same way, but this position concerns me because it seems to be a repudiation of the whole "featured content" system itself, and I don't want to support that.
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:46, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  But you're not supporting any particular other vote by voting the same. Whatever reason you vote, is simply your reason. If someone else votes the same way as you, but for a different reason, there's no assumption that you adopted their reasoning. I've not even heard of that, so I may be wrong about what you seem to be saying. Others' reasons for their votes don't accrue to you when you vote the same. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  Maybe to you, which is great, but human nature being what it is... Anyway, it's not as big of a deal as we appear to be making it. I was more curious then concerned, really.
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 11:21, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose, of no help to Wiki readers, and featured pictures is a process which gets very limited community input. These proposals are self-referential "creep". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, I think the idea is inherently flawed, as there is no good way to indicate that images are featured without either being confusing or obscuring part of the image. No one's going to understand why stars are appearing in their captions. They will just end up being removed. Kaldari (talk) 17:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose It's not a terrible idea, but I just don't think it really adds anything that would be useful for most readers. And the infobox stars in particular would just be confusing. Reach Out to the Truth 17:32, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
• I had been willing to support a compromise solution but the more I think about it the less I am convinced. The only real argument as to a material benefit to the reader is, paraphrased, "Lets users know which images view well at full size/are worth clicking on to see at full size". This reasoning implies that non-featured images are somehow not worth clicking on to look at in full size, or somehow do not look good at full resolution, and that is patently false. The distinction between an otherwise "good" image and a "featured" image can be marginal at best, and to the untrained eye (or those not familiar with the process) may be negligible. Take the Tower Bridge photos above. The featured photo is clearly superior but the non-featured version is not bad. There really is not a convincing reason to encourage editors to view one image at full size but not the other. I can't see any defensible argument that these stars provide the reader any material benefit and thus no longer see any reason to support any version of the proposal, sorry. Shereth 17:38, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
• As I stated before, stars on featured content are added in the content itself, at an unobstrusive place. Featured articles or lists are not linked from other articles any different than non-featured ones and there is no system intended to make their links more "visible". There's no compeling reason not to do the same with images: if they are of featured quality, and are included in the article, then they are already doing their work.
  talk
  ) 14:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per many above. I fail to see how putting a star beside the picture will "draw someone in" that wasn't already interested in the picture or even how that's supposed to be beneficial. "Yes, nice picture. Now what?" If you're harvesting pictures for different articles, you should use the picture that's appropriate, not the one that won the beauty contest. Matt Deres (talk) 01:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
• Strong support - big up our featured content wherever possible. --bodnotbod (talk) 16:27, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Probably perennial. Can the essays be rolled into one and given a template, "Lame wikipedia essay that shows I'm cute and more experienced than you follows"?

• Don't be a dick
• Wikipedia:Let it go
• Wikipedia:Don't edit war over the colour of templates
• Wikipedia:Don't spite your face
• Wikipedia:Use common sense
• Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point
• Wikipedia:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man
• Wikipedia:How many legs does a horse have?
• Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars
• Wikipedia:The Last Word
• Wikipedia:Get over it

Why do we have an essay titled, "Don't be a dick" anyway? To establish our professional credentials in conversations with each other?

Click appropriate box in response, "You're lame," "You're disruptive," "I'm reporting you to AN/I as a sock puppet." --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:18, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

• Without essays we would find ourselves repeating the same things over and over. They also help new users get up to speed in the way of the wiki. One or two bad apples doesn't spoil the bunch. –xeno^talk 18:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

No, they're just used to hit new users when the established editor realizes they would otherwise revert to biting. In other words, they're a means of breaking a rule without breaking it. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:27, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Essays don't hit new users, editors hit new users. –xeno^talk 18:31, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

But if it weren't so easy to get ahold of an essay, the editors would not be so ready to use them, resulting in... --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:38, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

As Wikipedians one of our fundamental rights is that to bear essays. –xeno^talk 18:44, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Just as fundamental as my right to bare stupidity? --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:03, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

You'll get my essay over my cold, dead body, you commy, pinko, puke! _hehe
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:22, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Dead horse's body. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk

) 19:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

"A well-regulated militerature being necessary to security of a free encyclopaedia, the right of the editors to write and cite essays shall not be infringed." —

whackings, or how to deal with concealed minnows on the street. —— Shakescene (talk

) 21:19, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about everyone else, but I actually find some of them quite amusing. But that's the kinda guy I am :) - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 18:42, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Certainly, they're more amusing to hit someone with than to just say "you're an asshole" and be accused of biting. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:03, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

There is more wisdom in some of these essays than in most of our policies. Using

Other crap. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk

) 19:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

But they're not funny or amusing or interesting in any way. Once inserted into a discussion they simply say, "This editor is not creative." Okay, as creativity is not necessarily a useful editor attribute on wikipedia, but ultimately pointless drivel inserted into a tendentious as only the writers and a few remaining users have not been pummeled to the point of knock-dead-boredom by the essays already. I did read, on a user page, ages ago, a great description of them, that I would love to find and quote. Maybe the author is watching this and the essays page and joins this discussion to provide their quote which I can then turn into an essay to use to beat over the head of any editor who lamely thinks they are cute or interesting or clever by quoting a dead horse of an essay at another editor. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:45, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Handle these on a case-by-case basis, under WP:Miscellany for deletion. My personal recommendation would probably be to keep most or all and userfy the rest, if any. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:23, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Its not just "quoting an essay" that is annoying. Its also those who instead of using common sense and their own words and intelligence they instead just quote straight from a policy or guideline (or more annoyingly just put the WP:whatever link and make you read it yourself trying to figure out what part is relevant). All an editor says by saying "see WP:V" is- "Your an idiot, read this policy, it is law and we dont think for ourselves, we do as what is written. I'm a mindless ape" (So those that do that, remember that is what you are actually saying). All quoting or linking to policy should be banned from a discussion and all decisions based on quality and convincing ability of the arguments in the discussion with no caring to established policies (because if a policy isnt upheld in a normal discussion and consensus then that policy now lacks the Community's consensus and is no longer valid). Obviously that will never fly around here, but its what should be done.Camelbinky (talk) 22:25, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Policies reflect established consensus, by ignoring policy, one ignores consensus, although sometimes consensus should be gathered on a case-by-case method, a lot of the time it should just be found within policy. We can't except the community to make a new decision for every single issue that comes up, which is why we have policy, which describes an example issue, and then details how to deal with it in the way the community has agreed via consensus. People who quote from policy are not being "mindless apes", rather, they're demonstrating what established community consensus is on certain matters, if that consensus strikes you as out-dated then a new consensus can be formed. Kind regards, Spitfire^Tally-ho! 22:48, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Essays capture what's difficult (well, too time-consuming) to constantly repeat to people. It sounds like you're trying to solve a social problem ("people quote essays too often at other users") with a slash-and-burn approach that's only going to damage good, useful content. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:41, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

As a comment,

WP:MfD. Just because some are attack'ish doesn't mean we should get rid of them all, that's equivalent to saying that just because some users vandalise we should block everyone Regards, Spitfire^Tally-ho!

20:28, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

• I don't want to forget about this: Would anyone be opposed to merging
  Wikipedia talk:Colours#Proposed merger.
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω
  ) 21:03, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Over a year ago, there was a discussion about adding P:, T: and C: as namespace aliases for Portal:, Template: and Category: respectively. This discussion resulted with some people supporting and one opposing, and a request was filed on Bugzilla. This request has been rotting in bug hell for over a year until I stumbled upon it today. I'm willing to make this happen, but I'm a bit leery of making a change that was last discussed over a year ago and may have gotten controversial since. If you guys still want this to happen, I'd like to see a fresh discussion or at least a fresh vote. --Catrope 16:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Not that it'll ever actually happen, but support. Maybe someone will notice in a few years and actually implement it. *shrug*
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 16:35, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
  • It'll happen for real this time. I'm dealing with a lot of old shell bugs now, and once this achieves consensus it'll happen within days. It'll also not hold up existing requests (on the Bugzilla side at least), which was a concern voiced elsewhere on this page.--Catrope 21:30, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
• It would certainly be very useful for many editors, but let's make sure we appreciate what the cost is: I believe it means that we could never create an article with a title beginning P:, T: or C: . Which people might sometimes need to do. (I don't know, but it might work better to use aliases which have less chance of beginning the names of things in the real world, something like P;: or P-: .)--Kotniski (talk) 16:50, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Hmm, that brings up a good point. I wonder if Article: could be created as an alias to files in the article namespace that start with Wikipedia:, User:, WP:, etc. Such articles would be so rare that it might not be worth it. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Just a note that the prior proposal was only for P: and T:, since we saw the issue with C: (computer languages, etc). So yes, I still support P: and T:. MBisanz ^talk 18:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• A "technical restrictions" hatnote along the likes of C-Sharp (Monkeyshine) The proper name for this article is C:#, due to technical restrictions it has been renamed C-Sharp (Monkeyshines) "C:# is Monkeyshine's implementation of the C# programming language..." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: Currently there is one "T:" article,
  T:MP that don't point to templates. There is one "P:" article, P:ano, and two redirects, P:D & P:RUS/NEW, that don't point to portals. There are 4 "C:" articles. The C: pseudo namespace is barely used at all, the T: one is lightly used, and the P: one is heavily used. The normal shortcut for categories is CAT: by a 24:1 margin over C:. --ThaddeusB (talk
  ) 20:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• The request, IIRC, wasn't for a "C:" alias because we realised that then [[C:Foo]] (we discussed [[CAT:FOO]]) would act the same as [[Category:Foo]] - that is, actually add the page to the category. What we really might like is for [[C:Foo]] to be equivalent to [[:Category:Foo]], but that's not supported in the software AFAIK. I definitely support adding P: and T: aliases. Happy‑melon 20:26, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Seems useless to me. Template links usually use {{
  tl}}. Are portals linked to often enough that saving 5 characters is really worth it? "CAT:" (not "C:") I could see using if it could be equivalent to [[:Category:Foo]], but not otherwise. Anomie⚔
  23:32, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

  Don't forget the innumerable times the required titles are navigated to directly from the search box; I know I certainly 'link' to templates this way often enough to benefit from the abbreviation. "Useless" is a pretty weak argument, especially since you then state a usefulness in the same paragraph; what you mean is "not worth the effort/hassle". But if someone is prepared to put the effort in, what sort of an argument is that? Happy‑melon 23:49, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

  Having a shortcut for categories that wouldn't require the leading colon would be a use. But having an arbitrary short prefix for something that is rather infrequently used seems like too little benefit for the added complexity and risk of name collisions. Anomie⚔ 03:16, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

• Sure, if it can be done easily and without holding up existing proposals. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 23:39, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Yes, it'd definitely be helpful. ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 01:51, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• Support T: and P:; I'd like C: to be CAT:. —MC10 (T•C•GB•L•EM) 16:21, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• 'Support "P:" and "T:", but "C:" should change to "CAT:"--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail} 00:09, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
• Support P and T, I'm neutral on C and CAT, could we maybe get both? And some chips? Ta. :) A solution to the problem pointed out by my
  what a crazy random happenstance
  17:44, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose: Single letter NS aliases and Interwiki links are more likely to cause issues with page naming for both current articles as well as any future articles that may be created (Which has already been discussed in this discussion) so we should try to avoid them were possible, And are we really that lazy we have to shorten them that far?
  Talk Page · Contribs
  ) 12:29, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

  We as a civilisation saw it fit to abbreviate the three-letter word yes to 'y' and tiny little two-letter no to 'n'. So yes, I think we really are. —

  what a crazy random happenstance

  15:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support. This or some variation. Even "Temp:" or "Tpl:" would be an improvement. Reading template documentation of various templates to see and compare which is most appropriate is a hassle because one must type out the whole thing. Lambanog (talk) 07:19, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It's gotten to the point where it's actually easier to get an article featured than it is to get a PR or a GAC review. Is there simply a shortage of willing reviewers, or is there something structurally wrong? Serendi^podous 17:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

As I remember GAC has always been

backlog elimination drives usually help. Ruslik_Zero

19:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

For an individual reviewer a GAC can be at least as much work as a FAC (if not more so because a GAC can have more problems to fix) and there are surely many more GA candidates as compared to FA candidates. Sometimes you just have to be patient and wait until a volunteer is available.—RJH (talk) 23:41, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

It may have to do with the large number of people who don't think the process is meaningful. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 17:21, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

An anonymous poster speaking for the majority? Hmm, well I'll choose to disbelieve you. That being said, however, I think a way to make the PR/GAC more significant is to require them for all A-class articles and to make them prerequisites for a FAC.—RJH (talk) 22:38, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

GA reviews are often very thorough, and looked upon well when an article comes to FAC. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:48, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think both the PR and GAC processes are very useful for the purposes of getting an article ready for FAC.—RJH (talk) 21:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

In what environment does "large number" = majority? 99.166.95.142 (talk) 17:35, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Well this is getting argumentative and all I've said is that I chose to disbelieve you. Out of curiosity then, exactly how many wikipedia editors are you speaking for?—RJH (talk) 21:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I've been working on a motivation and purpose statement for a proposed new

I made this suggestion on the talk page for the evolution article, and I was advised to come here:

Would it be possible to add a message to the edit page for this article and the talk page, much like the one for BLPs, saying something like "If you wish to add or remove content from this article, or start a new topic on the discussion page, please see the FAQs, which provide explanation as to why certain additions have been deemed inappropriate to include in this particular article. This especially applies to topics regarding subjects such as objections to evolution and others which are not directly relevant to the science of the subject, or which express a belief or point of view." While this is unlikely to deter people such as the user who posted "ATHIEST PROTECTIONISM???", I think it would reduce the numbers of these "zombie arguments", (from people such as this user) which seem to come up very often. It could also be used for other similarly misused articles. I think this would be more effective than the "important notice" at the top, as people would have to see it if they wanted to edit. It's just a suggestion though.

A possible problem arising from this may be that if the messages were used too often, then they would be ignored, but I think that this sort of idea would be useful on evolution and other controversial articles (

For my part, I wouldn't object to the proposal. The only point that I would make is that I think it's to our advantage to relax when it comes to the subject of fringe beliefs. As a group, it seems to have become our culture to aggressively remove er... less than neutral content as soon as possible. I just think that it's (often, not always) more constructive to work with such additions then it is to simply remove them. It's important not to censor the fact that fringe beliefs exist, and what they are, to me. More importantly, it's easy enough to talk about fringe beliefs without making them seem true. I'd rather let teachers deal with that sort of problem in person then to keep it from appearing at all in Wikipedia (assuming that we can maintain editorial control, of course).
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 21:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

(cross-posted to foundation-l, wikitech-l,

Hi all,

With the Foundation's support, I've spent the last few months churning away at Extension:LiquidThreads, a new discussion system that is proposed for use on Wikimedia projects.

Essentially, it's an attempt to marry the radical openness of the wiki paradigm with the usability and practicality of a forum-like system. As the name implies, LiquidThreads is designed to allow any user to easily refactor discussions while maintaining edit history, to edit other users' comments, and to collaborate on a summary of an ongoing discussion. LiquidThreads also brings many standard communication features lacking from wiki discussion pages, such as watching and protecting individual discussion threads, RSS feeds of comments in a discussion or on a discussion page. In the world of online communication, its approach is entirely unique.

LiquidThreads has been in alpha testing on Wikimedia Labs for several months, and, more recently, it's been used in a production context on the strategy wiki, where it has been quite well-received. It's been easy to run these smaller trials, as the extension allows the activation and deactivation of LiquidThreads discussions on individual pages with a simple parser function.

While there are still some issues remaining before wider trials, I believe I can resolve most of them quite quickly (within a few weeks when my vacation finishes at the end of next month), and I'd like to get the ball rolling in proposing small-scale trials on some of the larger wikis, so that a full discussion can be had, and so that adjustments can be made on the basis of ongoing feedback. I'd especially like to see LiquidThreads used on some of the higher-traffic discussion pages on English Wikipedia (such as the technical village pump), and progressive rollout on some of our mid to large sized wikis.

So, I'd like to encourage you to have a play with LiquidThreads, either on the strategy wiki or on the test site (which generally runs a newer version). Tell me what you like about it, and (far more importantly) what improvements you think it needs before we can expand our trials to wider parts of the Wikimedia Universe, and perhaps move towards a full rollout of this very exciting technology.

I should give the following caveats about LiquidThreads as it stands. These are all issues that I intend to address before any trial expansion occurs.

• Presently the system is somewhat vulnerable to abuse. I intend to make changes to the way signatures work, and improve tracking and listing of thread actions by specific users.
• While LiquidThreads allows for thread summaries and discussion headers, the system does not currently have support for collaboratively-edited posts which are unsigned or signed by a group of people. These are a key piece of any decision-making framework, and I intend to make adjustments to make this possible.
• There is no support for embedding LiquidThreads discussion pages on other pages.
• There are plenty of minor interface issues which I intend to clean up.

Feedback is best directed to the dedicated Feedback page, or, alternatively, to bugzilla (although before filing a bug, you should check the list of existing LiquidThreads bugs).

— Werdna • talk 20:59, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Hallelujah! Best thing to happen to Wikiepdia is ages!
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 21:12, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I've been watching a lot of documentaries lately on the Discovery Channel and the History Channel and the like, and it struck me: why don't we (Wikipedians) make some short documentaries? For the most part, documentaries have four components: 1) a narrator reading a script; 2) film of images relevant to the topic (lions hunting, for example, or a reed canoe being paddled down a river); 3) interviews with experts (usually college professors); and 4) animations designed to show things like the curve of a trend, or the biological structure of a creature. All of these elements could be compiled by Wikipedians with access to specific resources or with particular editing talents. For example, for the Lion article, we could 1) find some public domain stock footage of a lion using its regular means of attacking a prey animal (there is an amazing supply of such footage available from a variety of sources); 2) get someone with a camcorder to record a few sound bites from a local zoologist or biologist who knows enough about lions to speak authoritatively on the subject; 3) create an animation that shows things like how the lion positions its jaws to go in for the kill; 4) write a short script to describe the details of how the lion is going about its kill and to introduce the expert and the animation; 5) have someone with a good voice record that script; and 6) piece it all together with appropriate subtitles, transitions, maybe even some background music into a ready-made snippet of "documentary footage" which could be embedded right into the article. bd2412 T 03:47, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps because it wouldn't be encyclopedic? :-) Possibly one of the sister projects would be a good home for those?—RJH (talk) 18:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd put it that a series of documentaries would simply be an videographic encyclopedia. I don't see why it wouldn't be "encyclopedic" if the information presented is accurate and given an encyclopedic tone. bd2412 T 19:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. (FWIW)
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 11:47, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I've done a limited amount of professional video, but I would say this is not practical because of the unusually stringent skills required. Have a look at the professional video accompanying the Britannica, National Geographic, or PBS. These aren't a matter of an enthusiast getting together friends for a weekend, but of an experienced team with professional camera, lighting, video editing, and video compression tools. The nature of the media would make it difficult for subsequent editors to seamlessly change it, making it distinctly un-Wiki.

An alternative that avoids some of these problems -- within the capacity of quite a few people -- would be a narrative slideshow. Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 00:09, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

A narrative slideshow could work - and it could incorporate some animation in the individual slides. The biggest problem facing collaborative video editing, on the other hand, is the lack of an online platform through which different contributors could add to and work on the arrangement of the whole video. Surely the people who brought us the wiki software could create such a platform. bd2412 T 16:19, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

We at least should have raw videos embedded in the articles. So the lion article should have a raw video of a lion. Sole Soul (talk) 04:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• While editing a file, it would be useful to be able to call text-search through that page's old edits. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
  • I think Wikiblame might be what you are looking for: http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php. Fences&Windows 01:39, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
• Thanks. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:36, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

^ --MZMcBride (talk) 15:42, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

When a book is in the process of being generated, the following words appear:

Please wait while the document is being generated.

Progress: [percentage] Status: layouting (wiki page: [name of page being added to the book])

This page should automatically refresh every few seconds. If this does not work, please press refresh button of your browser.

Could the wording be changed to "please press your browser's refresh button"? The current wording sounds like Chinglish. Nyttend (talk) 21:54, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Layouting? -_- Road Wizard (talk) 22:33, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

::Confused, what do you mean? Nyttend (talk) 22:47, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Now I see what you mean; I'd not even thought of that, but you have a good point. I guess it means "making the layout"; perhaps it could be changed to "laying out"? Nyttend (talk) 22:49, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

"...please press **[the]** refresh button of**[on]** your browser." Yes. It took me a few reads to spot that typo too. "...please press your browser's refresh button" is better. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (

coṁrá

) 23:02, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Adds: could

coṁrá

) 23:03, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Any admin can do this, there will be a MediaWiki: namespace system message somewhere that can be customised. Not sure which one; have a look at Special:Allmessages. Happy‑melon 15:19, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Found (MediaWiki:Coll-rendering text) and done for the refresh button, not sure about where one might find "layouting" to change though. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 15:23, 18 December 2009 (UTC) Of course, that's just locally. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 15:25, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Also filed as bugzilla:21889 so other installations can benefit as well. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:32, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

This section concerns a draft proposal which is a work in progress. Editors are requested to comment on pros and cons on the basic idea and on how the draft proposal can be improved, rather than on whether it is a good idea to adopt the draft in its current form. Once this notice is removed, discussion can move more clearly on to the issue of whether an actual proposal should be adopted, with or without amendments.

I suggest that we adopt something along the lines of the template {{

On a related note, I'm also thinking we should try and find a way to do collaborative editing at least of summaries of proposals. Collaborative editing is fundamental in article space, but it barely exists in project space, where proposals are created by individuals, and then discussed and amended by individuals based on discussion, etc, which works fine for simple things, but not for complex ones. Rd232 ^talk 01:25, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I support the template, while I must agree I have been one has in the past jumped on and dismissed a proposal in early stages (as Rd232 well-knows) I have also been on the other side protecting an editor's proposal hoping that it would at least get more comments and a look at and I have admonished editors who thought it was best to just say "no" with no reason behind it or comments of what could be done to make it at least a little appealing.

For the collaborative project space, that's a problem with editors, not with any fundamental flaw in our system. Dank at WP:Policies and guidelines had a broad idea and collaborated with many users including myself on how his proposal would work across the entire Wikipedia policy "universe". The fundamental reason why collaboration doesnt work at places like policy talk pages or the VPP is that there are too many of the conservative group who believe policies as written right now are how they should stay and change is bad ("this is long standing wording" is the most common reason I hear, which I dont even understand how that is possibly a reason for keeping something, Leninism existed for 50 years in Russia, why would they change that?!) It's hard to collaborate with people whose fundamental outlook is that things shouldnt be changed if they've been there "for a long time".Camelbinky (talk) 03:07, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Addendum- Oh! What if we always had a system similar to the US Congress, where a proposal at the VPP is automatically labelled "in committee" where it would still be open to comments from anyone/everyone but where discussion is "strongly" encouraged to be debating the wording of the proposal and to add ammendments to it; then after its been "voted out of committee" (basically everyone agrees that whoever is going to be against it is going to be against it no matter what and any further amendments are useless); it gets labelled "on the floor" where it is then discussed whether or not the measure is needed. Its really not new bureaucracy, its basically the same as the template, but instead of a template we just give a short label that is automatic to any proposal; some will move to "on the floor" almost immediately or skip that step altogether, others may take a longer time. But the point is that all proposals will be given a chance to be worked on first.Camelbinky (talk) 03:13, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Not sure about that, it sounds a little complicated (more than it actually would be, perhaps, but appearances matter). I'd be happy to just have a "draft proposal" template that proposers could use if they felt their proposal was complex enough to need it, and if people generally understood and respected the template. Rd232 ^talk 12:22, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

seriously, this is the last time i'm gonna hear 'oh pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeash, donate or i'll day' before i'll throw up. this is not a hate message, this is a reality, it's getting old and you know it. tell that to that guy responsible for posting it to know it too. i.e. be more creative. --Leladax (talk) 01:49, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

If you're talking about the donation banner on top of a Wikipedia page, and you're typing from a computer that you control (i.e. not one shared at a library, school, job or Internet café), then just click the link that says "dismiss" and it's gone whenever you're logged in. The only time I see it is when I visit another part of Wikimedia (Wikicommons, a foreign-language Wikipedia, etc.) or when I'm not logged in. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:56, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Community review and input is requested here. Durova³⁸⁶ 23:11, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I have renamed the section from Arbitration discussion; very important to Arbitration Committee: Logo change poll because the previous title was a little pretentious and gave overdue weight to the matter.

Talk Page · Contribs

) 06:58, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Intended as dry humor. ;) Durova³⁸⁶ 17:37, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

It used to be that when Ityped in a possible-article name, I would get an option to suggest that article if I couldn't find it by tweaking my search. I can't find this suggestion any-more (I had to fumble around to find the suggestion page).Kdammers (talk) 06:59, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I think we should forbid programme guides like those at some american TV network articles. Those are already at the websites of the networks. This forbidding of programme guides is already at Nl wikipedia. Wikipedia is a encyclopedia not a programme guide KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 20:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

To an extent, I agree with you, but that information is already present on Wikipedia via the Categories of the shows. Linking them to the network article itself just makes that information easier to find on the site. --King Öomie 20:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It is reasonable for a reader of an article on a programming network to want to know what is on the network currently. The grid format presents the information in a clear, concise format. Further, the grids do not present information on a by-episode basis, but only for the current season. There should only be two rounds of changes (fall premieres and mid-season replacements.) In that respect, it's not a program guide. What do you propose as an alternative? The only things I see are prose sections listing the programs or a long See also section with links to the current programs. —C.Fred (talk) 20:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I am wanting the Long See also system KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 20:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Why? How does it make life easier for the reader? —C.Fred (talk) 20:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes but i want a uniform Wikipedia ruleset and this is one of the things of that KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 20:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

This was recently discussed, at length, at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 30#Per station television schedules. I didn't follow it closely - can someone that did please summarize key points?

Afaik, centralizing the schedules at a single location is preferred, such as

2008–2009 United States network television schedule, whereas per-network lists such as Fox Broadcasting Company#Programming are deprecated. But that might be wrong. -- Quiddity (talk

) 20:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Please give an example of a program guide. I'm not sure what you're talking about. - Denimadept (talk) 20:53, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, he's referring to pages like

House (season 3) --King Öomie

21:01, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

[Note: Example taken from the article NBC (this diff/section) ]

This:

• Midseason:
  Breakthrough with Tony Robbins
• Summer 2010:
  Who Do You Think You Are?
• The weeknight late night schedule consists of talk shows The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Last Call with Carson Daly, followed by Poker After Dark. Saturday Night Live and Poker After Dark air on Saturdays.
• From September 14, 2009, the weekday 10:00 hour of prime time will be removed to make way for The Jay Leno Show. Saturday Night Live has its season premiere on September 19.
• During NFL season, the Sunday night schedule airs live across the country, starting at 7:00 p.m. ET/4:00 p.m. PT.^[1][2]

We had something like that at the Dutch Nederland 1 article but i deleted it because it was against the rule sof Wikipedia NL.. as i have said Wikipedia isnt a programme guide KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 21:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

There's absolutely zero reason for such tables to be in WP. It's a clear violation of

WP:NOT. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk

) 21:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that such tables shouldn't be here. OTOH, the list of episodes such as what Kingoomieiii pointed to, I can see a use for. - Denimadept (talk) 21:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

There's no good reason for the tables, or for the scheduling information. In rare cases changes to a timeslot have historical significance (say, when Bullwinkle became the first primetime cartoon show) — but that can be discussed in individual cases. Also, it's undesirable to get into a controversy between editors on every network, every TV station about whether its past, current, and future schedules are significant. All of them are promotional, all inappropriate. Piano non troppo (talk) 21:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

As I pointed out above, these were discussed in-depth recently. There was a fairly clear consensus that historic lists are relevant/notable/useful. See

List of United States network television schedules, and Category:Television_schedules

and it's sup/sub cats.

Whether to have the information for current-schedules repeated within each network's article (as is being given as an example above), was the only thing I recall strong disagreement of, but again, I didn't follow the WT:NOT thread closely. I'll ask a couple of the participants there to chime in here.

Someone could also Search through the afds for precedent, if desired. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The result on the most recent link from that search was "no concensus". A weakness in the argument of those in favor is claiming that a past schedule is "historically significant", without saying why. The fact that the timeslot for Show XYZ was taken by Show PDQ is probably no more significant than "executives thought they could make more money" ... and that would be somewhat significant ... if that reason was given a reliable citation. Another compound failing of the "historically significant" position is that the instant a schedule changes, it becomes "historical", on the one hand, that's a lovely way to add relatively promotional material to Wikipedia, and on the other hand, it causes the schedules to be at least always slightly out-of-date. I.e., it's misleading. Unadorned "historical schedules" are in some ways more of a problem than current schedules. Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 22:32, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The result of the debate was no consensus. Historical network schedules, such as

A list of the programs presented by a network is no more promotional than a list of vehicles currently manufactured by a car company. It is something that a reader of the article will find useful. It makes sense to present it to the reader in an easy-to-use format—especially for US networks that have predictable weekly schedules. The alternative would be seven bullet points with each day's programs in a row. While that works for late night, it's cumbersome for prime time. The table works better; why do we want to hinder the readers? —C.Fred (talk) 03:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

My recollection of the previous discussion was clearly that per-station schedules like the one exampled above (particularly "current" schedules) are inappropriate; the consensus was split, but generally held in favor due to historical reasons of the type of national, larger-picture schedules that compare various networks as 1951–52 United States network television schedule examples were generally ok, as long as they did not take a very fine-grain approach to the schedule. --MASEM (t) 05:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The one exampled above is not a per-station schedule, it is a network schedule. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 17:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I've been asked to comment here, but I think I'll defer to Masem. By best attempt at summary was here. It wasn't terribly well received by Firsfron and it doesn't offer a hard and fast rule. So I'll agree generally w/ Masem here. Protonk (talk) 02:56, 6 December 2009 (UTC) It is true that, as readers of WP: What Wikipedia is not will know, Wikipedia is not a "how-to" manual, so no one should view it as a manual to tune in to television channels or a series of programme listings in the same sense that the Radio Times would be. However, it is surely quite central to the basic information about a programme to know when it is on, for example, if a series has been a regular part of the BBC Radio 4 schedule or the BBC Two schedule, it is quite central to know the time of day that a programme is normally broadcast or the day of the week when the programme is normally broadcast. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

What's the argument against their inclusion? There seems to be a tendency among some to say this isn't allowed and this isn't possible and generally forbidding things. All other things being equal that strikes me as being against the original spirit of Wikipedia. If there are people willing to put the time and effort into it, there is some justification for the information, and as long as they do not otherwise infringe on others or harm Wikipedia, then allow it. Lambanog (talk) 12:31, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Where to start? There's always a better source of information than Wiki: The stations themselves. After a few years, there would be dozens of historical schedules in a single article. It's information that could easily be vandalized, and would be difficult and tedious to correct. If the example table in the article is typical, it's amateurish and ugly (in part because there's no easy way to describe to editors some uniform color scheme), and doesn't contribute to understanding the topic. It's a mass of undifferentiated facts being quoted without meaning just because the figures happen to be available. I.e., unencyclopedic. Piano non troppo (talk) 13:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

• The stations are often terrible sources, since they tend to try keeping this info out of the public eye for whatever reason (nevermind the fact that the stations are a primary source, with the attendant issues that comes with).
• Vandalism is an oft used strawman argument about anything that people don't like. All of Wikipedia is susceptible to vandalism.
• The example above is just an example. If you have an aesthetic concern with it, then you can go ahead and change it. I don't see an obvious need for a "uniform color scheme", regardless. And the meaning of the content is blatantly obvious by the context.
• Define "unencyclopedic". Even easier: define "encyclopedic".
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 14:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The point, "encyclopedic" here, is to understand what impact the broadcast schedule has on human knowledge, as without that, it is simply factoids. When you look at a specific station (or broadcast network to address the concern of the IP above), that schedule means little, because it just tells you when things aired. But when you put that schedule against all other significant rivals, now you have information that is more transformative and going to be better sources: the examples I present include the rivalry between The Cosby Show and The Simpsons, and the impact of NBC's Must See TV on ratings of the other networks to the point they didn't even try to compete with it. Furthermore, the side-by-side comparisons bring out the information in a less indiscriminate form, while individual station/network schedules tend to get too detailed (even to the point of week-by-week schedules, which is NOT important). --MASEM (t) 14:54, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I think I understand what you're getting at. I tend to stay away from television articles as much as possible (too much angst involved) so there's probably something that I'm missing here. However, the schedules that stations/networks have and are using is at least information, so I don't see what we're gaining by "forbidding" their inclusion. The transformation of information into knowledge is a writing/editorial function, so I don't see how tying people's hands by expressly forbidding the use of certain information is helpful at all. Anything beyond that is a bit beyond the scope of what we should discuss here, isn't it? Specific content issues should be discussed in the context of the content itself (ie.: the article talk page, or a meta/related Wikiproject talk page).
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:52, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

There is always a source of better information for anything than Wikipedia, because we rely on outside sources as a basic principle. But the point of having an encyclopedia is to conveniently assemble information for users. In fact, if we didn't do that we'd be a mere Web Directory, and that's pretty basic NOT. In reality, for material such as this, we are often the best readily available source of summary information. DGG ( talk ) 01:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

It's possible to watch a category page, but all this permits is knowing if it is renamed, deleted, commented on, vandalized, etc. There is not, AFAIK, a way of watching all the pages within a category short of doing so one by one. I think it would be handy to be able to click a single thing to watch all pages within that category and a smart feature that automatically adds any pages added to that category to this watchlist. In one's watchlist, they could be organized under that category, or have still have the alphabetical list, but the category next to the article by way of annotation. Watching all pages in a category could be turned off, removing all that were not individually added, or individual pages could be manually removed from the watchlist.

You could use Special:RecentChangesLinked. For example, Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Living people. You could even have an RSS feed for that. ;-) Killiondude (talk) 07:23, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that's neat and I will have to experiment with it! Offhand, it appears to have more limited functions than what I'm suggesting and is less easy to find and set up. I think it would be more intuitive to be able to do it from the category pages (or even possibly for the watch star icon to appear next to categories in articles, so they could be added from there as well. Likewise, perhaps easier and more intuitive to have the watched categories appear under My watchlist built into our WP account rather than our browser. If we are accessing WP from some computer other than our own, we wouldn't have ready access to those RSS feeds. Also, it looks like I will have to submit a browser bug report, because I got this message: "can’t open the page “feed://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Living_people&feed=rss&target=Category%3ALiving_people”. The error is: “The operation couldn’t be completed. (Mach error -308 - (ipc/mig) server died)” (NSMachErrorDomain:-308)"

talk

) 07:49, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

People have wanted to watchlist entire categories for a long time now, and the only thing I've ever seen that has come close to it is the SpecialChangesLinked option. Some people have those linked on their userpage or somewhere on-wiki for quick access no matter which computer they are using. The RSS feed option is found in the toolbox on the left side of your screen when you're viewing the RecentChangesLinked page. Depending on how your browser is set up to handle RSS feeds, it may not have liked that link. It worked fine for me. Killiondude (talk) 07:59, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

"People have wanted to watchlist entire categories for a long time now," a good proposal then! Yet not listed as a perennial one. Linking from on-wiki would be an option, I suppose, yet without affording the same degree of privacy the watchlist does. I'll work on the bug problem.

talk

) 08:05, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I would absolutely LOVE this option....on another Wiki I'm on that uses MediaWiki (there, you can't even use the RSS feeds like you can here except on select pages, alas). ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 15:06, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

As a work around you could null edit every page in a category, thus adding it to your watchlist, with the right settings. Rich Farmbrough, 01:03, 22 December 2009 (UTC).

Not quite sure what you mean by "null edit," and if this would require opening pages for each article?

talk

) 23:55, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I think all categories that are in an article submitted to AfD should be added to the AfD itself. At the moment AfDs have no categories in them at all. I had suggested adding the categories here

What would be the advantage over the deletion sorting lists exactly? --Cybercobra (talk) 08:07, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Deletion sorting AFAIK is to assist people interested in finding open AfDs under general categories they have more interest in than others. People might be interested in finding open discussions on more specific categories, and also for reviewing archives of closed AfDs for articles within specific article categories, like for investigating

talk

) 08:47, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I can see why keeping a permanent record of the types of deletion discussion would be useful, but using article categories is problematic as then the categories would fill up with AfD discussions, whereas categories are for navigating articles. Fences&Windows 16:41, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, and I certainly see your point. As I said though, there are a number of ways they could be prevented from automatically appearing in the Category: namespace either by rules the Wiki software would follow, or by amending the name of the category while otherwise keeping the name intact. Some users might like to be able to view them from the categories pages, which could be an option that could be set by default to off, but able to be turned on and off optionally. That could be handy, but not necessary as long as the ability to search the category from the AfD search box, from the regular search box with boolean searches, or with user-created search links was possible. Or such search links could be also be placed on the Category or Discussion page of categories, but again, not necessary.

talk

) 17:41, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

There could be an Articles for Deletion sub-category for each category, so they would be accessible without cluttering up the category. We could add copying the article categories to the AfD to Twinkle, placing them into the AfD sub-category. Fences&Windows 15:57, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe. An article in [Category:Online encyclopedias] that was deleted would end up keeping that category but it would end up being [Category:Online encyclopedias]>[Category:AfD discussions]>[Category:Online encyclopedias]? I wonder if the duplication of the same name at different levels would be a problem. I suspect some would not like AfD discussions to appear even under a single link on a category page with articles in the mainspace, although I like the transparency of that.

talk

) 00:00, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I've been thinking about it for a while now. The process involved in PROD, while ideally designed to reduce the workload at afd, leaves too many articles open for deletion that simply don't have anyone watching them. Articles that have inherent notability (such as many facets of geographical locations. Towns and such in countries that do not have any involved English editors) can often be deleted without notice to anyone. These articles are not "less important" because they do not have any sources, or because they haven't changed in several years, or because they contain a bare minimum of information. These articles have broken the ground where other editors will

In short, PROD only determines that nobody is watching an article, not that its deletion is uncontested. All non-speedy deletions merit some discussion. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 19:20, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of an admin that would delete an article through PROD that they believe has poor reasoning to be deleted... I don't totally disagree with you, but there are people who watch

WP:PRODSUM too.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review}

19:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

This sounds more like an argument of deletionism versus inclusionism. As noted above, WP:PROD doesn't automatically delete pages after seven days. It still comes down to a judgment call by the acting admin. --King Öomie 20:44, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Interesting page, thanks. I might have seen it before, but can't remember. I've just declined a PROD I saw there. –Whitehorse1 12:40, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Admins should not be deleting article on-sight merely because they are an expired PROD. Spurious nominations can (and should be) declined. Shereth 20:46, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Well you can look in the deletion log, and ask an admin to have a second look at deletions that look as if there ws a prod on a notable topic. Do you have some examples you would like restored? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

You are assuming an admin opens the article and looks at it. There are several different tools designed to allow one to delete entire categories (like old PROD categories) without the bother of having to manually open each page. Dragons flight (talk) 20:55, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

That would be bad, and I would be disappointed if that occurred (without review). People have been shot down at RfA's for missing a single CSD borderline case. If we have admins deleting entire categories of content without review, that would be a very bad example. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I would expect that an administrator deleting all expired prods without bothering to look at them would be admonished, if not desysopped. That's a severe misuse of tools. -- Atama頭 22:07, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Well perhaps you should talk to the frequent deleters of PRODs and ask them about their process. (The history of PRODSUM makes it easier to identify who is is really doing the deletions.) For example, NuclearWarfare (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is a frequent closer of PRODs and often deletes 20 such pages in a single minute. I would assume he uses a tool to accomplish deletions at that speed. Now, he could have reviewed every one of those beforehand, in which case there is no issue. Historically though there are certainly examples of people using tools to clear deletion backlogs with no review. For example, I remember someone deleting some 700 disputed fair use images without looking at their content or considering the validity of the dispute. Such people can get yelled at, but they are rarely desysoped. Dragons flight (talk) 22:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that when I was an admin, I often handled several days of PROD at a time. I'd open up dozens or hundreds of tabs, go through them all (removing more than a few nominations, although in general PROD seemed pretty accurate & I consider myself an inclusionist) either editing them or opening up the deletion field, and then I'd make a second pass. So even though the log would show many deletions a minute (and even per second if I was typing particularly fast), I was still reviewing them all exactly as they should've been. Doing it this batch way saved me vast amounts of time because I didn't have to wait for several seconds of loading & rendering time for each page. From the outside, I don't think there's any easy way to see whether NuclearWarfare is employing a batch method or not. (Although I suppose you could look to see whether there are miscellaneous edits or PROD removals in the 20 or 30 minutes preceding a mass-deletion.) --

10 November 2009

(GMT)

• oppose if an article has no one watching it, I don't see it as much of a step towards creating a genuine article on the topic. Stubs are good up to a point, as sort of an outline for future development, provided it's actually a good outline. But I would think that the unwatched status of unwatched stubs might be correlated with them not being particularly good outline items. In cases where that's not so, the article can always be recreated. There's a legitimate concern that the editors who do care might have large watchlists and not notice the PROD, but that could be dealt with by formalizing the courtesy notices into a requirement. --Trovatore (talk) 20:54, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. Prod is a valuable process. There is a group of regular prod patrollers who could always do with extra help. I regularly
  Article Incubator. Fences&Windows
  21:20, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - I wonder what basis Floydian has for this argument, as it doesn't seem to match what
  WP:PROD states or how proposed deletions are actually processed. Articles that do not have any sources, haven't changed in several years, or contain a bare minimum of information would be as unlikely to be deleted via PROD as they would via AfD or CSD. As said above, every article deleted through PROD has been reviewed by an administrator who uses his or her own judgment regarding the deletion justification given when the deletion is proposed. Should we get rid of speedy deletions because someone might incorrectly put an A7 tag on a notable article subject that isn't being watched? -- Atama頭
  22:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - PROD helps keep the workload at AFD manageable. Users' time is not an infinite resource, we should allocate it to discuss articles that actually might warrant a discussion. If anything we need to use PROD more. Any article deleted after a unanimous AFD could potentially have been PROD'ed. Mr.Z-man 23:16, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
• Alternative:
  WT:PROD#Userfy PRODs instead of delete?. Rd232 ^talk
  00:57, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The basis I have, which initially got me going on this idea (aside from my own opinion that as long as an article isn't

utter BS of defamatory than it usually deserves a place here) was the over PRODing of articles by Less Heard van U (who is an admin I believe, and may have been deleting those articles after 7 days), who was doing so solely on the basis of A) a lack of sources and B) a certain size requirement. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢

03:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

If you think the articles should have remained, tell the deleting admin, and they should restore it as a contested PROD.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 03:09, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

That's an issue to take up with the admin, or his/her behavior. There's no benefit to changing our policy based on one incident. BTW, you can see who deleted an article in the logs. Would be best to do that before making accusations. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:58, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

PROD was intended to replace AFD and CSD. Somehow that process stopped halfway, and now we have 3 systems, instead of one good one. I wonder how much time it would take to take things a few steps forward again, sometime soon? --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:30, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Kim, I think your memory is betraying you on this one. I don't believe anyone seriously proposed PROD as a replacement, but rather it was originally proposed as a way to take some of the load off a chronically overworked AFD. Dragons flight (talk) 01:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I know at least some folks (like me ;-) )wanted it to be side-by-side and then eventually replace, because AFD at the time was really bad, and admin deletion sucks in general. AFD has improved since then, CSD hasn't. It might be nice to actually work on updating the systems with what we've learned since last time, and simplifying besides :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:10, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know why we need multiple systems and huge bureaucratic structures for deletion proposals. There should be one template that you stick on the talk page if you think a page warrants deletion. Have a bot date these templates, then an admin comes round after the appropriate time and decides what to do (based on the arguments given, if any, plus his/her own knowledge about wider consensus). No fuss (well fuss about whether to delete the page, obviously, but no additional complications spawned by the process itself). Ah, but that would be too simple, we have to let the wikibureaucrats have somewhere to play... --Kotniski (talk) 16:14, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

We don't have to let 'em play at all! I think you could sort of treat it like a hygiene issue analogous to -say- malaria at the panama canal: Eliminate the breeding grounds for them and/or the vector (simplify and tidy areas where too much bureaucracy has encroached), and inoculate people against them (by getting people to understand IAR and consensus as early as possible)

Do you think we can still stamp out the disease? ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:21, 5 November 2009 (UTC) To be clear, I'm not sure AFD is as much of a problem area as it was years ago. I think the bureaucrats have retreated to other areas.

Getting rid of PROD would at least concentrate the problem in one area (AFD), rather then spreading it out. The real issue with the current deletion process is simple: it's not structured enough. Surveys and widespread general opinion have shown for quite a long time now that at least the perception, if not the reality of, our current deletion process is simply too random. I know from my own personal investigations that the admins who regularly participate in AFD definitely have a brain on their shoulders, and there is at least a DRV process now in order to take care of the more egregious deletion problems. Those two items make me fairly confident that the majority of deletions that do occur are at least defensible. The fact remains that the process itself is still far too random, however. We all know that there are articles that almost every would agree should be deleted, yet when those articles manage to be identified they can still be difficult to delete. More serious is the fact that many "borderline" articles continue to be deleted on a daily basis. What some deletion advocates seem to (continuously!) fail to grasp is just how permanent and therefore demoralizing and damaging deletion is to author/editors... I don't want to turn this into more of an Inlcusionist rant then it already is, so I'll end here by simply saying that I support deprecating the confusing and unnecessary PROD procedure.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 05:00, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, the majority of deletions are via CSD. In terms of deletions per day, there are about as many articles deleted via PROD as via AFD, and about 10 times as many articles deleted through CSD as AFD and PROD combined. Mr.Z-man 05:33, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. Honestly, I only use PROD if it's only borderline CSD. Most of my prods get deleted under speedy criteria.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 05:43, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

The thing is that you guys are right. Nobody is disputing the point that probably 99.9999999+% of all deletions are perfectly acceptable... but, none of that matters. The 0.0000001% of deletions that are not acceptable are the ones that are noticed, and the fact is that they should be. No matter how much potential good that the proper deletions gain the project, the fact is that the few instances of bad deletions do enough damage to far outweigh the good. At least, in my opinion.

There are those who take similar views and create an ideology that "all deletions are bad", which is just as much of a problem as doing nothing with the current deletion process is. I personally feel that a temporary moratorium on deletions (and a short one at that, possibly even just a few hours) is at least called for. However, that action is predicated on the belief that we can and should actually make a change that will better the project as a whole. Article deletion for it's own sake shold be stopped. Preventing article deletions for the sake of preventing deletions should be stopped as well. The process as a whole needs to be tweaked, at least, and intentionally slowing it all down certainly couldn't hurt (although, admittedly I do recognize that doing so will anger a certain percentage of the editorial population). At the very least, if all but the most egregious deletions take 7 days (or possibly even a couple of days longer)... who or what is harmed by that?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 06:56, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I would say that even if 5% of deletions by Prod were erroneous, the system is working fine. When people notice that their article is gone, they generally contract the deleting admin, and the article is restored. Abductive (reasoning) 07:01, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

No, no, no... anything as "in your face" as deleting articles simply cannot stand up to this line of thinking. If we were talking about normal open editing procedures then I would agree with the point that you're making here, but the simple fact is that we're not.

Article deletion needs to be treated with the same... "respect" (for lack of a better word) that blocking is treated with, and for the same reasons. I'm not arguing that the deletions are a mistake at all, just as the vast majority of blocks are perfectly acceptable. However, in the exact same manner that good blocks still create controversy and emotion, deletions will and should cause the very similar reactions.

Think about this: if there was some sort of a "speedy block" policy/procedure being proposed, what would your reaction be to that? Granted, the analogy is far from perfect here, but at least give it a chance.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:21, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess I was just wondering why you seem to have a problem with the lack of a formal process for PROD and not for CSD, even though PROD can be overturned by anyone for any reason at any time. Why are you assuming that all of the bad deletions come through PROD? It isn't a "speedy" procedure at all, so your analogy doesn't make any sense. PROD takes as long as an AFD. Mr.Z-man 17:05, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, if I had my druthers, I would prefer to severely restrict the use of CSD, along with simply switching the PROD procedure to use AFD instead (which is effectively what we're talking about here). I don't really believe that any change in the deletion process is possible, but this at least started a discussion about it. It's just... complicated. For newer editors, and especially for part time editors (which, in my view, are probably the most important editorial members of Wikipedia), the fact that there are three different processes with a fourth follow up (CSD, PROD, AFD, with DRV to follow up) is simply confusing and overwhelming. The

WP:DELETION

document is in a perpetually confusing state. Whether someone comes along and decides to start one of the deletion processes on an article is way to random, and CSD and PROD almost always occur too quickly for non-regular editors (and even many regulars) to really follow the process (never mind the fact that there are simply too many deletion discussions to really follow). PROD does take as long as AFD, but it's a mostly silent procedure so the perception is still there of fast change.

Anyway, as I said earlier I don't really think that there are many bad deletions, if there are any at all. This isn't actually a discussion about reality though, it's a discussion about perceptions. All of you who oppose this proposal are on solid factual grounds, but the fact is that doesn't change the perceptions of those who are supportive. We're talking past one another still, at this point.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 21:31, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. The proposer has brought up some hypotheticals, but I don't see any evidence that clearly notable articles or stubs are being routinely deleted via the PROD process simply because nobody is watching them. Sure, it could happen, but it's very unlikely. The system works, there is oversight to it, there's a strong fail-safe worked in to curb abuse (anyone can ask for it back at any time, an article can only be marked with a PROD once and only if it meets certain criteria.), and while having three separate processes can be confusing to outsiders, it's not that hard to explain things. I'm not entirely convinced PROD is necessary anymore, to be honest, since I'm not sure the problem it was intended to solve exists anymore. But I see no reason it should be dismantled because of what might happen in theory (if we're doing that, let's drop CSD first. In theory, one could get the main page deleted that way). --UsaSatsui (talk) 14:59, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. Most PRODs in my experience are merited (and I deleted hundreds if not thousands of PRODs), usually have been looked over by a second user (excluding the deleting admin), and they do us a genuine service in considerably lightening the load on AfD, letting people focus on truly borderline articles. The userfication proposal has merit, but that's a separate issue (though I encourage Floydian to take it up next!). --
  10 November 2009
  (GMT)
• Oppose I regularly partrol PRODs, and regularly deprod about 5-10% of what's PROD'ed. I routinely restore prods per request... just check my talk page archives. The problem may be with individual admins not doing their jobs well, but not with PROD itself. Jclemens (talk) 04:23, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's too easy to stop, if anyone really cares. Unschool 06:14, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. PROD is vital for its drama-reducing effect on the deletion process.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 21:49, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, but that's not to say that the process doesn't need serious improvement. Unwatched and uncared-for pages are a problem (I've seen many decent articles go), and the deletions shouldn't be done blindly. That said, the process has its place. As an idea it's much better than what AfD has become. Let's delete AfD instead. I'm not kidding. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 21:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
  • "You are User:Ed Poor, and I collect my 2 pounds", or however the game goes? I'm getting Strong Deja-vu here. ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC) perhaps it's a glitch in the matrix?

• Oppose with alternative - require articles that have been around more than, say, 30 days to have 3 people agreeing to the deletion instead of just 2. This would allow today's "very easy" prods for new articles that weren't speedy-able but have a higher standard for lightly-watched articles. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:05, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Comment while I don't follow PRODs it does seem likely that, as I hae observed with CSDs, they do get deleted on the basis that thye are correctly and validly nominated. When I used to do CSD's it was delete, delete, delete.. wait lets examine this one: edit- not speedy, save - the page has been deleted by someone else - sigh, undelete. It may be better now of course. Rich Farmbrough, 21:19, 18 November 2009 (UTC).
• Comment I don't know what the answer is, but the system as it is doesn't always work as it should. I see a lot of AfDs which were contested PRODs, so although it's designed to lighten the AfD workload it has the potential to add to it instead. I think some editors try to use it as a short-cut process for articles which end up at AfD anyway. Sometimes I wonder how many people actually read the bit that says PROD is supposed to be for uncontroversial deletion candidates. It serves its purpose correctly when it's used for articles like How to be a spy, but on the other hand we have candidates like Wendy-O Matik, which probably has the potential for a decent article even though the current version needs a complete rewrite, and The Novocaines, which looks a perfectly acceptable article aside from the lack of citations and perhaps questionable notability of the subject: since the article was only created in October 2009 it's unlikely to have been completely abandoned by its author, and I think this one would have been better dealt with by tagging it appropriately and perhaps later AfD if concerns were not addressed. I would certainly support Trovatore's suggestion of making the courtesy notices on talk pages a requirement, which would lessen the chances of editors overlooking PRODs on a busy watchlist, but I also think that 7 days is a pretty short time period: editors could return from holiday, internet connection problems or real-life demands on their time to find their articles deleted. This isn't a major disaster with PRODs since articles can be reinstated on request, but it's still a bit demoralising especially for newbies who may be unfamiliar with procedures. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 05:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
• Concur w/CMD. In large part, the problem is editors who do not do a search on their own per wp:before, prior to prodding. The same problem afflicts AfDs.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:01, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per MrZ. ╟─TreasuryTag►stannator─╢ 21:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong oppose - AfD is already overworked. At times, AfD discussions need to be relisted multiple times because no one added any comments after the first relist. I think that PROD is a good solution - it's easily awatched through
  WP:PRODSUM, and apparently there are a lot of users who do so. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu
  11:50, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
• I regularly check the prod categories for anything that shouldn't be deleted. --NE2 11:58, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
• Keep Prod All our deletion processes have lots of errors, but at least Prod is far less bitey than Speedy. ϢereSpielChequers 19:30, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
• FYI: there's a related discussion here: Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Consolidation
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:05, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
• Comment I both like prod and find it imperfect. I wonder if an article is prodded and the prod not removed if the article could be taken out of the articlespace, the page blocked from editing, but the talk page kept open? Also, is there any searchable record of deleted prods similar to the AfD archives?
  talk
  ) 06:53, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
• Comment As long as it's specifically detailed out that deleting admins have the responsibility of making sure that the PROD is actually a valid one, that bulk deletions are against policy, and one can't use an arbitrary "length limit" as a deciding factor, I'm fine with PROD. As for publicity, why not include PROD articles in the AfD List as well? ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 03:59, 25 December 2009 (UTC)