Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 6

Having read through the FAQ, and the notification of notifying all contributors to a certain page on their talk page on deletion, I understand that this is a difficult process, because of the sheer strain of informing hunderds of editors. The suggested remedy is watching the page. I for one would like it though for the log entries of deletion to show up at the watchlist. For example, when I am watching page to be deleted, an entry of its deletion would be made on my watchlist with the deletion log entry for the deletion, for example:

15:40 to be deleted deleted by Deleting Admin (deleted per G6, housekeeping)

• Do others see this as something we want?
• Is this technicaly viable? Martijn Hoekstra 13:41, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it already notifies you. All contributers do not have to be notified in a speedy deletion, only Prods or AFDs, and even then, only th main ones are notified--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 21:22, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Technicaly, notification is never needed, it is just the polite thing to do. What this suggestion is about though, is not notification, but display of the actual deletion on the watchlist. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 22:56, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Deletion and protection log entries don't display on the watchlist. It would be useful if deletion entries did; right now to check if a page is deleted a user has to either go to the page or edit the full version of their watchlist and notice that a former redlink has turned blue. (Some users (including many admins) intentionally watchlist some deleted pages, so just seeing that it is red is not sufficient evidence.) I rate this one as nice to have (with deletion being more significant than protection), not as a critical requirement. It probably would require developer effort, so bugzilla is the place to go, or

GRBerry (talk

) 16:03, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree this would be a good thing to have (I'm surprised that protection doesn't already show up - it shows up in the history) —Random832 17:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

It's worse than not showing up. Protection actually masks previous edits. If I were to edit a page and then protect it, the edit would not show up on anyone's watchlist. --Carnildo (talk) 09:11, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Hello, some time ago I proposed to allow the

The main concern, and the one that stopped the proposal, is to know if the license of the royalty free DNG patent specification is free enough for the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation (see [2]). Has anyone experience with this? In other words, I think the point is whether DNG is an

I suspect this is best discussed at the Commons village pump rather than here, since that's all about all Wikimedia projects, or which the English Wikipedia is only one. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:00, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, I'd suggest taking this up at Commons; in theory, the only images we should have here are Fair Use images, where the last thing we'd want to do is provide ultra high-quality images. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I sort of disagree with that. Public domain, CC and GFDL images could be high quality. Corvus cornix (talk) 22:39, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but public domain, CC, and GFDL images shouldn't be uploaded here; they should be set to Commons. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:46, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah. I see what you're saying. Corvus cornix_talk 23:41, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Someone has, rightly, questioned why {{ICD9}} uses an unrelated and nonauthoritative .com site for its links when {{ICD10}} links directly to the WHO (even if via a rather complicated system). Does anyone know if the WHO's ICD9 pages could be systematically linked via the ICD9 template? 68.39.174.238 (talk) 01:00, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Ask Arcadian (talk · contribs). He is the main editor behind this process. He must have had compelling reasons not to link to a WHO page. JFW | T@lk 13:12, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanx, I'll see what he says. 68.39.174.238 (talk) 00:41, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Response at Template talk:ICD9. --Arcadian (talk) 01:18, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Cross-posted from Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals

When I was at medical school my university's library came up with the most amazing tool: it installed a proxy server on its library systems, so people could access online journals from the comfort of their own home, even if they were only using institutional subscriptions.

I have been dreaming for some time of Wikipedia running a similar facility, or at least acquiring access to a similar facility. I am aware that the logistics and cost are substantial, but I also feel that it would be a collossal boost to academically-oriented subjects (sciences and humanities). Personally, I have to be selective with my sources because I have limited access to journals at most hospitals; I therefore may select a lower-quality reference because I can get hold of it, or rarely pay the library to order it from the British Library.

I'm simply curious about community support for such an endeavour. JFW | T@lk 13:14, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like a great idea, but probably unworkable because anyone can register a Wikipedia account. That means you can't regulate access and charge the right amount, which is what institutional subscriptions are about. An institutional subscription needs a clear idea of how many people are accessing the journals, which gives an idea of cost. I think we are stuck with relying on Wikipedians with such access to provide and verify sources. Carcharoth (talk) 13:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

It would be fabulous—but also unworkable, for the reasons outlined by Carcharoth. Aside from problems with the site licensing restrictions, the sheer cost is also likely out of Wikipedia's price range. Here's a link to pricing for the Nature family of journals. The cost for a large academic institution to subscribe to the major journals will run well into the tens of thousands of dollars. A major university library will have a budget for periodicals that can push into the tens of millions. (For reference, Wikipedia's entire forecast 2007-08 budget is $4.6 million, the majority of which is earmarked for keeping the lights on in the server room.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Hello,

My apologies for such an obvious, basic question: I would like to write an article about this movie. There is only a one-sentence stub for it, with an entreaty to expand. Does this mean I can review it? I don't know if this would be considered "biased" information or not, but I see that movies are routinely written about. Is this an appropriate article topic?Lucy1492 (talk) 16:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

You can expand the article in an encyclopedic manner, but no, you may not write a review (or rather, you can, but you can't post it here). EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I can preview my edits, but I can't preview any footnotes until I save my work. Often, I have found that a "simple" footnote has required a second clean-up edit because of a missing pipe or parameter. Can the <references /> be incorporated into the bottom of the preview? Yes, I know I can add <references /> myself to the section I am editing and then remove it before saving. However, this seems to be a work-around approach to add text that is not ultimately intended to be there. I am not sure if this requires some sort of hardcoding in the MediaWiki software, as I did not see anything at Special:Allmessages, but maybe there's a simple solution.—Twigboy 16:07, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

You can do so. You have two options. 1) Edit the whole page so the references section shows up in the preview, then you will see those. 2) Add {{reflist}} or <references /> to the end of the section you are editing temporarily (i.e. for the preview only) and remove it from your final save before you save it. Both work quite well. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 04:32, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think Twigboy already mentioned that. It would be nice if the software could do it automatically. I guess in the mean time it could be done with javascript. -- DatRoot 14:39, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I've now created a script to do this. Just add importScript("User:DatRoot/Scripts/PreviewRefs.js‎"); to your js file. -- DatRoot 14:20, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I discovered the render action in the API, which allows me to create User:Anomie/ajaxpreview.js. It seems to work pretty well, it even handles cases where you're editing a section with a named ref that is defined elsewhere in the article. No guarantee it works on IE and such though. Anomie⚔ 04:53, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I like it! I've not got into that Ajax stuff yet. It seems to work fine on IE as well. -- DatRoot 15:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a really interesting and good idea. I've written a bug report for it, here: [3]. Hope that helps,

Category:Year of birth missing and Category:Year of death missing have become massive, to the point of being impossible to maintain. I don't know if it's been brought up before, but I propose splitting the categories. There are two ways of doing this:

• Splitting by country. To use myself as an example: as a Dutchman, I have relatively easy access to Dutch sources. These sources may provide the year of birth of a subject. If I have a category of Dutch people whose year of birth and/or death is/are unknown, I may know where to look.
• Splitting by subject. Sports fans will easier know of which sports people the year of birth and/or death is unknown. Same for music enthusiasts, aviation experts, etcetera. Again, they may know the sources. Such categories could be maintained by the relevant WikiProjects.

Any thoughts? Aecis^Brievenbus 02:33, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

What we normally do with massive cleanup categories (such as Category:Articles lacking sources) is to split them by date. Hut 8.5 10:20, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

True. I mirrored this on the way Category:Stubs has been sorted (see Category:Stub categories). I think such a categorization would make it more likely that someone who knows the subject comes along and fixes the issue. Aecis^Brievenbus 12:18, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Expect very sporadic take-up if it's done on a WPJly basis: it may seem reasonable on the face of it to say, in effect, "these are 'your' articles, what about some help in fixing them up?", but it's not every editor that's going to be interested on that basis, and it may in practice be closer to none. Which isn't to say it might not help somewhat. By-month may also help, but as much by working "backwards" as "forwards": if an article's been languishing without a YoB for a long time, it may be intrinsicly hard to source, whereas new additions may be "low hanging fruit". Alai (talk) 03:43, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this would be akin to saying "these are 'your' articles, what about some help in fixing them up?" I think it would be closer to saying "Did you know that these articles within your scope have this specific problem?" It could also give interested editors who are not yet involved within a WikiProject but who are looking for "something to do" within the scope of a certain WikiProject an incentive, a suggestion of what to do. All in all, I think splitting the categories by subject gives a better chance of the problem being fixed than splitting by date. Aecis^Brievenbus 13:11, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Let's take rugby as an example, to further illustrate what I have said above. Say that a year of birth is missing in twelve rugby player biographies. The chances of someone who knows about rugby coming across one of these articles are small, but the chances of someone who knows about rugby finding a second article with this problem among the tens of thousands of articles in Category:Year of birth missing are nil, not to mention the remaining ten articles. The chances of the problem being fixed for the twelve articles are substantially bigger if they were to be sorted in (hypothetical name) Category:Year of birth missing for rugby players. Aecis^Brievenbus 13:23, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Coming from a number of highly active talkpages creating massive amounts of data in several threads at the same time, I myself for some time have been considering to suggest that by means of simple code implementation, talkpages should be structured like actual forums. Clicking on the talkpage you'd see thread titles in a table sorted by date of last post (date mentioned next to thread title), and you'd then click on the threads you'd like to read. It would be a far more efficient and readable system with a better system of priority classification (new posts bump threads up on the list), not to mention a decent quote device where you could quote your fellow editors, especially for talkpages as active as this one. It would relieve us also of such issues as lacking signature or, by introducing forum-like tables with boxes for each post made, trying to tell people's posts apart as not everybody seems to strictly stick to further indents. Furthermore, it would render archiving rather futile because threads not responded to would simply slide down the list. --Tlatosmd (talk) 00:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

If that ever happens, I think it will mark the end of my editing. One of Wikipedia's strengths is the complete absence of the overdone layouts and "features" (such as those ungainly quotes that you mention) that are indicative of fora. The current system serves us perfectly well and has always done so; it is entirely appropriate for our editing and archiving practices and is instinctively simple without clutter. Adrian M. H. 00:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you serious? The issue is completely unrelated to anything Wikipedia stands for, it's a mere question of more convenience, better, cleaner formatting, and better readability. On highly active talkpages, where five, ten, or more threads are started each day, you easily lose grasp. --Tlatosmd (talk) 01:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Of course I am serious. This ridiculous idea has been proposed and discussed more times than it warrants. It would be likely to result in ugly formatting and inferior usability and is at odds with working practices. Adrian M. H. 01:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

It's quite possible to add some forum-style features whilst still keeping the same look & feel; the implementation that

wikia uses is a good example of this[4]. While individual "threads" still work in the sme way as talk pages, a list of all threads is provided, in date order, even showing the user the threads with new posts to them. I guess there's a small possibility the Help and reference desks could be converted to use that system. -- DatRoot

01:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, of course what I have in mind would follow Wikipedia's basic design schemes and look closely if that's what you're having problems with. I simply can't see how it could damage working practices or usability in any way, all I can see is many advantages compared to how it is now. The way talkpages are now, they look like somebody was just too lazy to think up a usable concept for them. Even after years of contributiong to Wikipedia, I often find myself completely lost on highly active talkpages also after continously taking part in them for days and weeks, while the necessity to browse through automatically and manually archived yet always fully shown sections and threads (instead of only showing thread titles) is very distractive and unconvenient. --Tlatosmd (talk) 01:41, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

How can anyone call the current awful MediaWiki discussion system perfect? Thousands hours spent while training new users to "sign their posts", a lot of effort to archive discussions with dumb cut-and-paste (and don't say "bots xx and yy" because most other projects don't have them). I don't want some users to start new sections by editing the last section (resulting in wrong edit summary); I want to be able to "watch" specific sections (aka threads) of a forum page; I'm fine with users editing other user's post but I want these edits to have a special flag so I don't have to check every diff ∴ AlexSm 03:13, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The feature being discussed exists. It's called "Liquid threads", and there's a page about it at Extension:LiquidThreads. There's a test wiki for it, linked to the discussion page, but I don't know what the status is or what the plans to introduce it to Wikipedia may be.-gadfium 07:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

One system I'd love to see proposed would be some way to ensure that new threads had to be placed at the bottom of a page, its fairly annoying when archiving to have to syphon off threads that were accidentally placed at the top of the page, as well as the obvious advantage that to see new threads you would simply go to the bottom of the page instead of having to scan the entire page. --Ferdia O'Brien (Talk) 02:22, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Why not remove the Edit button for talk pages (except for admins?) just leaving the edit for individual threads throughout the page, and an "add new discussion" button or something in place of the edit and + buttons.

talk

) 11:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

That would be a bad idea, because then only admins could a) archive Talk pages, b) tag Talk pages for inclusion in Projects, c) add AfD results templates, etc. Kesh (talk) 12:44, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Well in my experience its usually passing IP Addresses as opposed to registered members who make the error, so perhaps use the above idea, but where registered members have the freedom to do anything (as it'll be registered members who do the three things mentioned by TheGreatZorko. Ferdia O'Brien (Talk) 03:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Could it be implemented so that you see an indicator when one's userpage is edited by other users similar to the "new messages" indicator. My userpage was vandalized a few days ago and I didn't notice it until some time after.--Miss Pussy Galore (talk) 14:51, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. The 'workaround' is to keep your talk page on your watchlist, and frequently check your watchlist. This works quite well, as long as you do keep an eye on your watchlist. Your solution is easier from an endusers point of view though. Maybe it could even be implemented as a sort of 'superwatchlist' where you are notified of any changes to any of the articles on that list (which would contain your userpage by default). It might be something for the Bugzilla though. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

It's likely to be archived soon, but there's a similar topic near to the top of the page. One Wikipedian even wrote a user script:

/* Script to warn you if your userpage is changed by another user. By [[User:ais53]]. Note that the message persists until you edit
   your userpage yourself. */
 
function upm_checkthisisme(xmlreq)
{
  var junk;
  try
  {
    var ed=xmlreq.responseText.split('<rev user="')[1].split('"')[0];
    if(ed!=wgUserName) document.getElementById('siteSub').innerHTML+="<div class='usermessage'>Your userpage was changed by "+
      "<a href='/wiki/User:"+encodeURI(ed)+"'>"+ed.split('<').join('&lt;').split('>').join('&gt;').split('&').join('&amp;')+"</a>"+
      " (<a href='/wiki/Special:Mypage'>your userpage</a>, <a href='/w/index.php?title=User:"+encodeURI(wgUserName)+"&diff=last'>"+ 
      "last change</a>)";
  } catch(junk) {};
}
 
addOnloadHook(function(){
  var a = sajax_init_object();
  a.open('GET', wgServer+wgScriptPath+'/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&titles=User:'+
    encodeURI(wgUserName)+'&rvlimit=1&rvprop=user&format=xml');
  a.send('');
  a.onreadystatechange = function(){if(a.readystate==4) upm_checkthisisme(a)};
});

However, as it has been pointed out above, there are other workarounds. Puchiko (Talk-email) 15:27, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Today's featured list.

The Transhumanist    09:57, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a good idea. It'd help the problem of so many lists being of such bad quality--victor falk 10:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that Wikipedia talk:Village Plump (proposals) should be redirected to Wikipedia:Village Plump (proposals) as there is no need for that article, as all the discussion goes about here. Feedback ^☎ 06:13, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I assume you mean Village pump, not plump, right? Anyhow, I agree. What is the reason for the talk page...on all of the Village pumps, not just this one? - Rjd0060 (talk) 06:16, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

So you can discuss the Village Pump itself? That would be a sensible place for a discussion about Village Pump archiving practices, for instance (and such a discussion is there at the moment). Redirecting them all to

WT:AN. --ais523 10:24, 23 November 2007 (UTC

)

Would anyone be against an option to delete the Talk page of an article as a Check Box life when moving pages? I don't see a peroblem with this and it would save a few seconds each time a page is deleted. (could someone summit this as bug? I don't know how to do tha.) -- The Placebo Effect 07:08, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, I would object. I see no valid reason to delete a talk page while moving an article. The two are linked, and there is rarely a good reason to delete the talk page. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:20, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Agree with Mgm as to the *stated* proposal. It may come up that a talk page should be deleted when an article is moved but it's exceedingly rare. The only situation I can thing of is where the talk page consists of an attack, a copyvio or nonsense that the article does not and that offending material is the only content that was ever on the talk page. However, after your first sentence where you use the word "moving," you say "it would save a few seconds each time a page is deleted." Did you mean a check box for admins that would allow deletion of articles' talk pages automatically upon deletion of articles (and not upon moving)? Now that has some merit, though there is still the situation of keeping talk pages which contain unlogged deletion discussions that are not logged elsewhere per
    CSD G8 - talk page of deleted or nonexistent article" Another check box option that would be useful would be to specify that no redirect is created upon moving. Many moves are from implausible names for which no redirect should exist.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk
    ) 09:56, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
    • To clarify what I said, When you move an article, you have the option of moving the talk page or not via a check box. I would like to mkae this feature available for deleting articles also. (when i delete an article, the talk page is deletes to) The Placebo Effect (talk) 17:08, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
      • Bad idea. We want admins to read the talk page before they delete it - there may be reasons not to delete there. Such evidence can take many forms, including: prior AFD evidence which trumps WP:CSD#A7; more recent AFD which trumps G4 on an older AFD; assertions or proof of permission to use text originating elsewhere which trumps WP:CSD#G12; a "keep it" or Oldprod template which defeats a new prod; discussion that shows the current version is a vandalized version; et cetera. Read the talk page (and any archives) before deleting the article; if you've done that then you'll already have the page loaded, and it only takes 2 clicks to delete it.
        GRBerry (talk
        ) 16:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
        • Admins should have read the Talk Page BEFORE deleting the article. I'm saying in situations such as AFD where it is obvious the page is to be deleted. And since it as an option that will be off by default, I don't see the harm in this. The Placebo Effect (talk) 18:20, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Second, has there been any thought to the ability to render footnoted material in hover text? I suppose it would not be feasible to click a link in the hover text, but in those cases, you can move to the footnote as usual. This also makes for easier reference checking, rather than bouncing back and forth through the article.—Twigboy 16:07, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

That seems like an interesting idea, it might be a little more complicated to implement than it would be worth though and could be distracting. -Icewedge 03:34, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Again, I thing a reasonable solution could be produced in javascript without too much difficulty. Full HTML tooltips with clickable links could also be done with a little more work. -- DatRoot 15:04, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Here's a quick script I did to add the plain footnote text as tooltips. (Go easy on me if there's things wrong with this :) ) It works for me in IE, Firefox & Opera.

// Script to footnote text to the tooltips on footnote links
addOnloadHook(function refTooltips() {
    var linkElem, linkHref, noteElem;
    // Get list of footnote links (they all have class: 'reference')
    var refElems = getElementsByClassName(document.body, "SUP", "reference");
    for(var i = 0; i < refElems.length; i++)
    {
        if(linkElem = refElems[i].getElementsByTagName("a")[0])
        {
            linkHref = linkElem.href;
            // Get footnote id from link href and add text content to link tooltip
            if(noteElem = document.getElementById(linkHref.substr(linkHref.indexOf("#") + 1)))
                linkElem.title = noteElem.innerText || noteElem.textContent || "";
        }
    }
});

-- DatRoot 16:04, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Quite simply, awesome. Thanks!—Twigboy 22:27, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Nice script! I've copied it and modified it slightly to strip off the "^" and letter links. Anomie 14:27, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Cool. I've now (not in a case of one-upmanship, honest!) made a script that creates rich html tooltips with clickable links. You can use it by adding importScript("User:DatRoot/Scripts/RichRefTooltips.js"); to your js file. It's a sort of beta version at the moment but it seems to work pretty well -- DatRoot 19:19, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok ignore that for the moment, it's only working in Opera (tested in 9.5) -- DatRoot 00:19, 19 November 2007 (UTC) Think it's fixed now -- DatRoot 12:11, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Unless I'm missing something, installing

Thanks. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 09:18, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but I have no idea how it could be implemented. --ais523 18:13, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Although it sounds really useful for an editor, I don't think it's a really great idea for everyone and in article space. Instead, perhaps a user script that used a bot-updated list of AfD's to highlight links to particular pages might be in order, so that people who do not want and/or need the functionality do not receive it. I imagine that such a script would be similar to the script that highlights admin names in cyan. Nihiltres^{t.l} 22:58, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I also thought it was interesting, interesting enough to write a script. The script just adds CSS classes (currently "redirect" and "deletion") to appropriate links, you can edit your monobook.css to do something with it.[5] Anomie 06:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Could you make the CSS includeable as well? IIRC there's an easy way to do that on a monobook.js page.

Any chance you can make the 'has been deleted and is now blank' and 'under DRV' parts? My guess is that these two are the harder ones to code, but if done, making a subst template to dump all relevant links should (?) be a relatively easy extension. Thanks! Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 23:28, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I've renamed the thing, it's now at User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js. My CSS rules are now includable, see User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css. "Has been deleted" would require downloading the page logs in addition to the categories, and DRV would require getting all links from DRV. If someone else wants to make a similar script to do those, go ahead, but I'm not interested. Sorry. Linking to the AfD/DRV wouldn't be that hard, but there would be cases where it failed because the AfD/DRV page was named oddly. Anomie⚔ 04:49, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Are the issues with DRV & deleted articles ones that could be solved by a modification on the server end, rather than in userscript? E.g. so that there is some simple way to find all afd/drv/etc from an article name, without having to do a huge search of logs by date...? Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 02:38, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

There are two problems with AfD/DRV naming that come to mind off the top of my head. Sometimes multiple related (or not so related) articles will be listed under one name (e.g.

AfDM}} template syntax. DRV is more difficult, since there is not even an intention of an individual page per article. I also just realized that my statement above was incorrect, as "getting all links from DRV" would also think anything else wikilinked from that page was being DRVed. Anomie⚔

23:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Can you please give an up-to-date tally on EVERYTHING from your sources and just call it numbers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.230.57.250 (talk) 15:51, 19 November 2007

I think that would not be appropriate for Wikipedia, per several sections of "

What Wikipedia is not". - Rjd0060 (talk

) 15:55, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

You can use their curiosity as a lever to get them to read more substantive information (assuming they're old enough to read). Raymond Arritt (talk) 16:06, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

• A problem is that such numbers change constantly and it is impossible to know if the info is up-to-date. - Mgm|^(talk) 18:47, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I was looking at

1. Unregistered (anon)
2. Registered
3. Autoconfirmed (4 days)
4. Emailconfirmed (Has a valid e-mail address on account)
5. Bots
6. Import (ridiculous, that is like
   making a rollback flag
   , except worse because of the fact we don't use import on this wiki I believe)
7. Admins
8. Bcrats
9. Board Vote admins (when is our next Board of trustees election?)
10. Checkusers
11. Oversights
12. Stewards (no enwiki specific stewards)
13. Founder (Jimbo gave himself his own special flag that only he will ever get)
14. Developer

From what I have read on various talk pages, people don't like the idea of having too many flags/access levels. So how can we DECREASE that number of current flags? Here are some ideas I have:

1. Combine Checkuser and Oversight into one flag (possibly not the best idea as some CUs/OSs only have 1 of the flags, so those people would either have to be removed or considered trustworthy of both flags).
2. Get rid of the useless Import flag.
3. Only have BV admin flag on when there is actually a board election going on.
4. Make Jimbo an enwiki specific steward again rather than giving him an exclusive flag that only he would get on ANY Wikimedia wiki (meaning Steward isn't exclusive as there are other Stewards on meta).

That would bring it down to 6 flags without counting anon, registered, autoconfirm, emailconfirm. FunPika 21:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Why is having too many flags a problem?

To be considered trustworthy of a checkuser or oversight flag is up to ArbCom. They are two totally separate tools anyway. Import is not useless and does happen occasionally. We also can't pick and choose when a user group is shown. The only thing I'd vaguely agree with is to remove Jimbo's "founder" flag, as it's redundant to his one on Meta. But I agree with Gracenotes, what's the problem? Majorly (talk) 21:17, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Only problem I have seen is that I have observed that many people are strongly opposed to the mere thought of adding more flags. Examples: Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_revisions/Sighted_versions/Archive_4#the_definition_of..., some people there were opposed to the implementation of the flaggedrevs extension just because of the addition of editor and reviewer flags. I am starting to think I should not have made this discussion here (other than Jimbo's flag)... FunPika 21:36, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• I don't see why 12 is too much. 120 would be another matter. What's wrong in having more fine-grained information if it's not overwhelming?--victor falk 00:11, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Do not see any need to save the flags, what we are trying to achieve? Saving a few bits per user? If the flags help us to solve specific problems, then why not? Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:21, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• Would you mind clarifying? I'm not too familiar with the subject... but to me, it seems user flags are tools, and having a wider variety is allows more flexibilty, like the more different-sized wrenches you have, the better. --victor falk 03:25, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

That is exactly what I was saying. The number of flags is not a scarce resource we need to save at all cost. If one hundred flags make the system work better than ten, then lets have this one hundred Alex Bakharev (talk) 05:53, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• The whole aim of those flags is to make the user list easier searchable. I don't see any reason not to have any of those flags. They're all informative. - Mgm|^(talk) 18:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The user talk pages are terrible to keep track of conversations. Is there a way we can make Wikipedia do a manual "wall-to-wall" similar to Facebook's? Feedback ^☎ 07:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Facebook, but there is discussion of changing talk pages at Wikipedia: mw:Extension:LiquidThreads. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:16, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

If one looks at the article on

You can propose it at

be bold and simply create the page. Sephiroth BCR ^(Converse

) 20:07, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering if a userbox is possible with the text 'this user's wikiage is x years, y months and z days', where x, y, and z being the numbers to be calculated for each user using some program based on the age calculated between dates user made his/her first edit to wiki and present date. If a userbox is not possible, something else of that sort would be kind of good showing user's wikiage on his/her talk page and maybe later we can celebrate user's wikibirthday (a substitute for the actual birthday). I am sure, this move will bring more harmony in the community. DSachan (talk) 20:19, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

There is userbox

subst it, then you can change it to include wikiage. Reywas92^Talk

20:29, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Administrators can see deleted page revisions. I'd like to propose that they also be able to see the deletion logs (but not the text or other information) of oversight-deleted revisions. Admins don't need to see the text of oversight, but for accountability and transparency's sake the fact that an oversight has occurred should be available. The fact and reason that a revision has been oversighted is not a privacy issue, only the content of the revision itself is. Thus, there is no harm in letting trusted users see who has been oversighting what pages. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 03:32, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Great Idea! :) For all the reasons listed above, and, I can't see how it would harm the project. SQL^{Query me!} 03:40, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, for supervisory purposes it would be nice to allow admins to oversee (no pun intended) the logs of what is being oversighted, by whom, and why, to make sure this important tool is not being misused. --

⟲

03:44, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I also agree. I can see this as being helpful without being harmful.

Love

03:49, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Some checks and balances wouldn't be terrible, with the understanding that many oversights are legitimate, necessary, and not to be spilled across the talk pages of oversighters.

Gracenotes^T

§ 03:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• T14069 Mercury 03:58, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I have a number of reasons why I believe this is a bad idea. I do, however, have to go to bed right now. I leave it to others to discuss. Cary Bass ^demandez 04:20, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

When you get in, could you please share some of those reasons with us? :) I assume, at least one, is the 'oversight reason', which could conceivably contain sensitive data. Here's the log looks like on my test wiki, if anyone's curious. (details) (diff) 07:03, 22 November 2007 MySQL removed an edit from Page (Reason) SQL^{Query me!} 04:26, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

For the reasons that Cary shall explain tomorrow (he, Pathoschild, MZMcbride, and I just had a very long discussion about this...), I see no reasons why we need this. Oversight users can monitor themselves and this will most likely cause more harm than good (for the reasons he will explain tomorrow). Cbrown1023 talk 04:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to seeing these concerns. For those that have not looked at the bug report, User:Tim Starling, a Developer said that "page titles and usernames in the log may contain the private data which was being removed". I'm curious, would these usernames not appear in the User Creation Log? What about the Block logs? Deletion logs? How about the deleted page titles? Do they still appear in the deletion log, if deleted before being oversighted? What about Special:Newpages? SQL^{Query me!} 05:00, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

If the problem text appears in public logs, those log entries are permanently deleted. We don't currently have a method for archiving log entries. -- Tim Starling (talk) 05:19, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I didn't know that, thank you for your input! :) SQL^{Query me!} 05:22, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the response on the bug report was the best reason. ;) Mercury 04:40, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• Strong support Neutral the more transparency, the better--victor falk 05:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see a reason for this. The administrators do not need to "oversee" the oversight people. What would be the point of it? If an admin has a problem with an oversight issue, there's nothing that person can do about it. The oversights have the ability to view oversight logs, and they "oversee" eachother. The oversight process is, and should be as confidential as possible (including obviously the context hidden, and the fact that there have been hidden contribs), and the idea of allowing nearly 1500+++ people view these transactions is, IMO, a horrible idea. - Rjd0060 (talk) 05:57, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

We'd just see that someone oversighted an edit, the date it was oversighted, and who oversighted it. That's all. Administrators would still be sealed off from the content of the edit, thus preserving privacy. That's all there is to it. I don't see the problem in being able to see who oversighted what. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 06:32, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I still don't understand what benefit the administrators, and the community, will gain by this. - Rjd0060 (talk) 06:34, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Increased transparency? The Durova AN/I subpage has sections improperly oversighted; this wouldn't happen if there we were able to see who's doing it. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 06:42, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

If you cannot see the text of the hidden contributions, how do you know if something is improperly (or properly) oversighted? - Rjd0060 (talk) 06:49, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

We wouldn't, but at least we'd know who to ask about it. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 06:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

If you don't know what was in the hidden revisions, you'd have no reason to assume it was an improper use of oversight, so no reason to ask anyone. Unless you're thinking that every time there's an oversight and you don't personally have the details to show that it was a proper one, you can turn up at the page of the person who did it to ask why. ElinorD (talk) 11:41, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Hm, I have to think more about if the cons are stronger than the pros. But it's a case of quis custodiet ipsos custodes, and adding layer after layer of hierarchy that gets more and more opaque is something that should avoided to the maximum extent; the public eye is the best way to ensure good behaviour. Who are those overseeers exactly?--victor falk 06:28, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by that question. I do know (per

WP:OVERSIGHT#Logging) that oversights have the ability (and I'm sure they do) to view oversight actions by anybody with oversight rights, and it then goes up the ladder (meaning I'm sure that the Stewards monitor the oversight activity, as they are able to revoke oversight rights). - Rjd0060 (talk

) 06:33, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I doubt they do, as they would have to have local oversight rights, and I doubt there would be a scenario where a steward would need to give himself oversight rights just to check the logs, as there are always 2 oversights (and checkusers) at least, and therefore monitor each other. As for this proposal, I agree that admins should be able to view the logs. However, sometimes, as was said on the bug report, what is revealed in the log is what needs to be removed, and there is no way to filter those out from others, so I see the issue there. I also wonder if including checkuser logs viewable would be good (obviously not the IP). I (talk) 06:44, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I am sure the stewards can view the logs, considering they can revoke the rights if "an editor has abused oversight by hiding revisions which do not qualify". - Rjd0060 (talk) 06:52, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but I believe that the authority to revoke the oversight permission resides with those who authorized them (i.e. an ArbCom or local election), not with the Steward, and the other oversight would probably alert the community/ArbCom of the malfeasance. A steward would only be a functionary, because a steward bit cannot see oversight logs, only oversights can. As I am none of these things, I am not sure, but that's what I've come to believe. We could ask Redux, as he's both an oversight and a steward, though. After reading the revocation section on the oversight page, I see you are correct in that it says stewards are permitted to remove oversight bits on their own recognizance. This seems to contradict the m:Steward policies in my mind. I still think we should ask Redux. I (talk) 07:19, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. What's wrong with allowing us to better monitor oversight actions? --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 06:42, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

What would you do with this information (the oversight logs)? - Rjd0060 (talk) 06:49, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

See if there's misuse and/or abuse. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 06:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

You can't unless you know what was removed. ElinorD (talk) 11:41, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Same with deletion logs, though. An editor sans adminship viewing a delete/partial restore situation in a page's deletion log may not be aware of what was removed, but may ask an admin why the revisions were deleted if he/she has a concern.

Gracenotes^T

§ 16:50, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Technically,

this is the stewards "job". - Rjd0060 (talk

) 06:53, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Was this available to all users at one time? See Wikipedia talk:Oversight#Oversight log. - Rjd0060 (talk) 07:00, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

(u)No, AFAIK, the revocation itself is the stewards job. And rightfully so. Still, why should a larger group not be capable of reviewing oversight actions? Would 'crats be ok? I'd be OK with just about anything, that isn't appointed by the same small group reviewing.... SQL^{Query me!} 07:24, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

This "same small group" is one elected by the community. ElinorD (talk) 11:41, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

So are administrators, and crats.... SQL^{Query me!} 06:43, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I see no real reason that this should not go forward. Apparently, the devs remove things in the public logs; therefore, nothing private would be revealed in the oversight logs. Use it appropriately, comment conservatively, there's no reason that I can see not to be transparent in this process that permanently removes revisions from Wikipedia. SQL^{Query me!} 07:27, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

this makes it seem as if oversight logs were completely public at one time. I just have a problem with allowing 1500 (and regularly increasing) people view confidential transactions that occur. I realize that they would not be able to see the actual context being hidden, but I still think it is a bad road to go down. As for allowing the crats to view the log, I still have my reservations, as the crats are still local (versus the Stewards being everywhere), however given the small number of them, I think that may be feasible. Even the logs themselves, only containing dates, times, and comments, could contain information that is better left known to a few people, and there have been "rouge admins" before. I dont think there have been any "rogue crats/stewards", so I'd trust them more than the admins (no offense to our great admins). - Rjd0060 (talk) 07:32, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Terrible idea. Just knowing when and where oversight was used can be more information than a non-oversight needs to know. John Reaves209.159.32.50 (talk) 07:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

SPA. - Rjd0060 (talk

) 07:37, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Man, I wish you were a checkuser so you could checkuser me, see the IP I'm using and see how not assuming good faith makes you look like a jackass. John Reaves 07:40, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Excuse me? Would that be a personal attack? I wasn't not assuming good faith, actually, I was just adding that because I've been accused of using sock's already, and being the only one opposed to this, I'd rather not have any more accusations. - Rjd0060 (talk) 07:42, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

You'll notice that I opposed it also. John Reaves 07:45, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I just saw that. However you should realize my point here. Personal attacks from an admin, you should know better. And you're even running for ArbCom. Hmm. - Rjd0060 (talk) 07:46, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I suppose I'll have to write up an essay called "When you don't AGF you look like a jackass". It's a simple statement and an encourgment to AGF, not an attack. This is all very off-topic now...John Reaves 07:56, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. Knowing who carried out an oversight won't help us to know if it was abusive, unless we know what was removed. Even if we do know what was removed, we might not understand the reasons. We definitely don't need a situation where someone has oversighted something to preserve a user's privacy, and gets flooded with questions about it on their talk page. In the recent case of Blnguyen oversighting an email that was posted, that email should not have been posted in the first place. And Blnguyen came forward immediately to say he was the one who oversighted it. So having logs wouldn't help. If people have already seen the content prior to removal, and think it shouldn't have been oversighted, it's possible that there was extremely sensitive information in it which they failed to understand. If it was an improper use of oversight, it may not have been abusive. Oversighters have to make decisions, and there must be a lot of borderline cases (to say nothing of IAR). A genuinely abusive oversighter will be found out soon enough by their peers or by developers. If I think FloNight has abused oversight, and Mackensen assures me she hasn't, I'm quite happy to accept that without knowing any further details. The last thing we want is a situation where someone accidentally posts his own phone number, oversights it, and then gets five or six admins (followed by seventeen users) showing up at his talk page demanding why he oversighted it. Also, it could in some cases be possible to guess what the information was by seeing which pages were oversighted, by whom, and at what time. ElinorD (talk) 11:59, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid this isn't even practically possible. Edits are often enough oversighted because of the name of the page they were created with and not just the content of an edit. It is a privacy issue. Even in other cases where the privacy/libel violation is not directly in the page name, frequently knowing the article and reason is enough to infer what it was (which is, needless to say, not good if it was deemed worthy of oversight). In any case, I don't see any problem that this proposal solves. Assuming that accountability of oversight is an issue, being able to see the log but not the actual oversighted edit does not address that issue, since there is nowhere near enough information for any outsider to guess whether the oversight decision was good or not.

• Limited support. I'd support a limited version of this proposal: If an existing page had some revisions oversighted, a short note stating that "Some revisions of this page may have been removed via oversight." would appear on the history view, the same way as the note about deleted revisions is currently shown for admins. Or perhaps it could appear on Special:Undelete. The purpose, either way, would be to inform admins that the history view may contain unexpected gaps; as much care as oversighters generally take to preserve the integrity of the edit history and correct attribution of edits, sometimes this isn't entirely possible. In those cases, an investigating admin can often eventually determine that oversight must've been used, due to the fact that there are apparent gaps in the history and no corresponding deleted revisions, but this can take time and lead to significant confusion. A simple note that oversight may have been applied would reduce this confusion and allow admins to contact the appropriate people if they need to investigate the history of the page further. (In fact, for the same reasons, I might even support a similar note in the history view to non-admin users if the page in question has any deleted or oversighted versions.) I'd also support an option in the oversight interface to suppress even this notice, in cases where even that might leak excessive information. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:30, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a very sensible proposal. I would support this. Carcharoth (talk) 12:34, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I also agree that this seems like a sensible approach. What I think some people may be missing here is that there (in my opinion) is a certain integrity in the history tab. There are a very limited group of people who are incredibly trusted to be able to revise this history, and with good reason. The history of the page is difficult to have revised for both legal and ethical reasons; when it is revised (or changed) a notice to that effect may be appropriate. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:14, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that the current system is not transparent enough. What is needed is a formal system where people can request review of oversight in cases of possible abuse. In order to do that, you need to know whether the oversight has taken place. At the moment, material posted on wiki is visible to all who are aware of it and have access to an internet connection. The material can be: (a) removed by editing (still in page history - accessible to all those aware of it and linkable using permanent links); (b) removed by deleting page revisions (admins can view these deleted revisions and can see in the page history that such deletions have taken place - not sure what non-admins can see - I think they can at least still click on the revision and get told it is missing, but might not get the clue at the top that anything is missing in the first place); (c) oversight removes the material from all except oversighters (even admins looking at a page will not see that anything has changed, though there may be circumstantial clues in the surrounding diffs and text); (d) developers and others with 'root' access can probably effect permanent removal, but hopefully there are checks in place to prevent this.

It is possible in cases of rapid removal and oversight that no-one notices what has happened. In many cases this is good. But it does raise transparency concerns and issues of how to prevent abuse of the system. Part of the problem is that in cases of genuine oversight, the information does need to be kept private, but in cases of oversight abuse, the calls for privacy help anyone who abuses the oversight system. Possibly the best way forward is to require that all oversights are reviewed by a second oversighter. Does that sound feasible? Would it overload the current system? Carcharoth (talk) 12:34, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe currently it's required (or simply understood) that there are at least two oversighters and checkusers on a specific wiki for this very reason. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:14, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. When the oversight feature was implemented, the logs were public at first. We then found out that all this was doing was giving people a list of pages to look for on mirrors, in dumps and in Google's cache to read the oversighted information - in other words, it was actually doing harm rather than good. If we are going to have the oversight feature (and it is needed, for numerous reasons) it cannot have a public log of what was removed and why. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 17:12, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I think a lot of people recognize that listing which specific page(s) was/were oversighted would be problematic, which is why a log that simply states "User:John Q. Public oversighted 8:45 9 November 2006" and nothing more might not be the worst idea. Just food for thought. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:14, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• Strong oppose

This is a completely unworkable proposal. Even the very fact that something is oversighted is sometimes part of what must be kept private.

We don't provide access to the oversight log, on the basis that the page titles and usernames in the log may contain the private data which was being removed. -- Tim Starling.

It doesn't get much clearer than that. There exist sufficient (3) checks and balances to oversight already

• Those having oversight are chosen by ArbCom, the body in which we have placed our highest trust
• Those with oversight review each other
• the m:ombudsman process

I urge immediate rejection of this proposal. ++Lar: t/c 20:43, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• Limited support per
  GRBerry
  21:16, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I was going to support this, but Morven's statements raise a good point. Usually if one asks another oversight who did the oversighting, they'll tell as well (key word, USUALLY). While it may help the transparency, it could be a double edged sword.

How about at least making publicly available the number of oversight actions per month, or per year. Seeing that the number is low would be reassuring. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:26, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I keep hearing about a "revision deletion" feature which will bring with it something that will allow fine-grained control over visibility of text / edit summaries / usernames / etc, that's coming in