Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 69

Dead links in citations (i.e.

Articles and reviews can be found on Amazon and other pages. More articles and reviews can be found on her facebook fanpage. I wanted to find out more and did a search on here. That's when I found out there were no articles about this author or her book. Please, don't suggest that I do this because as I said, I didn't grow up with computers and if anyone out there is a computer snob, that really won't help. Second, I am sick and weak and can't do it as I tire easily. I hope I will get better. Thank you for your time.— Preceding unsigned comment added by JunkMailFyle (talk • contribs) 17:00, 11 February 2011

She doesn't seem to have significant coverage about her in reliable sources such as books, magazines, or newspapers. We don't use Facebook as a source. We need significant coverage about someone to write a biography. Fences&Windows 04:17, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Having the references in smaller type is an accessibility issue for unregistered users. We should remove the css element that does this. Rich Farmbrough, 22:25, 8 February 2011 (UTC).

Could you elaborate a bit more? I know that references are smaller, but why does this only affect anonymous users? Yoenit (talk) 22:34, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't. Simply every time I bring this up as a genreal issue people kindly tell me how to hack my css, or that a gadget is available. I don't have much of a problem, personally, but enough to know that it is a problem. Rich Farmbrough, 00:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC).

Are you proposing that we should 'forbid' anything under our default font size because some people don't know where the "Larger" option is in their webbrowser ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:45, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm saying we should not have small fonts for references for several reasons. We already have guidance elsewhere on the general deprecation of non-standard font sizes. Using the embiggen control results in the normal text of the article being too large, those who can control, or have others control for them, the size of text will already have optimized the size. There are no compelling reasons to have small text. We do not need to look like paper. We are not paper. Rich Farmbrough, 00:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC).

Just to comment, a lot of people with visual impairments are already using OS settings, browser settings, and other software to enlarge text on their screen. Browsers let you set a minimum font size, or override all font and color styles on web pages, and this does not require editing CSS files. You can also disable CSS altogether for a particular site (in Firefox under the View menu), and the result is often quite nice. –

talk

) 06:53, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

It's only 10% smaller, so this is hardly an accessibility issue (if X*0.9 is too small, then X probably is too, so it's the reader's responsibility to zoom as needed). It's just a design issue: and most people prefer it because it makes it easier to skim the page, because the refs look slightly different. Rd232 ^talk 00:29, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I have seen a number of complaints about the legibility. "Just a design issue".... Rich Farmbrough, 00:38, 9 February 2011 (UTC).

If the reference list size needs to go, the so does every other instance of small fonts— infoboxes, navboxes, etc. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 04:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

While I have no issue with other instances going too, it doesn't necessarily follow. Navboxes and inofboxes are a different style, less dense than normal text, while references may be more dense. And while they have internal footnotes as small as 6pt (I would judge) that could also be resolved in a number of ways (there does seem little point using a smaller font for collapsed navboxes since they take no space until they are uncollapsed). We should really consult usability/accessibility experts on this stuff. Rich Farmbrough, 11:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC).

Wellll... some websites have CSS font size change buttons baked in, don't they? Could we do that? Rd232 ^talk 04:28, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't know, its certainly an idea. Whether it's worth increasing the complexity of the interface to maintain an existing piece of complexity or not might be determined by some study. Rich Farmbrough, 11:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC).

Well the buttons would apply to the entire page; I just don't see the 10% difference as an issue. My suggestion is merely aimed at making it easier for a reader to adjust Wikipedia's font size generally, even though many readers will already be well aware of how to do it via the browser. Rd232 ^talk 13:59, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I like to have the footnotes smaller, but I can see how this may be an issue for some users. Same thing with size for images.

Couldn't there be a way for unregistered users to set some preferences and save them via cookies? I mean, I have some preferences set for Google (which national site for the main Google page, which country for Google News, and so on), and these are in force via cookies whether I am logged in or not. Couldn't Wikipedia do the same? (Anyone refusing to accept cookies is probably tech-savvy enough to fix this in some other way.) --Hegvald (talk) 18:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Would someone please explain the problem with font size?

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (accessibility) is mute on font size as an issue and even mentions the use of <small>. I have skimmed through the Section 508 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

and don't see this. I have used some online accessibility tools and don't see a font problem.

Now, if we do have accessibility issues, wouldn't a better solution be to create variant skins with accessibility to address any and all issues? (It does appear that our use of stylesheets is a 508 issue.) ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:05, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The issue is simply that the end user can be assumed to have set their browser to a default font size that's comfortable and legible for them. Increasing the font size over the default by too much is annoying to read, but unless it's set to be enormous (less than one word per page, say) there's no real usability issue. Decreasing the font size below the default by even a little bit can make it difficult to read, and the only stylistic defense of this that's ever been offered is "on my browser on my computer it looks fine for me". — Gavia immer (talk) 18:32, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

And that is why every page fails the 508 standard in our use of stylesheets, regardless of font size. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:39, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion: deleting templates ({{expand}} springs to mind) breaks old revisions. It should be possible for deleted templates to be wrapped in a {{deletedtemplate}} wrapper which detects whether the page URL contains "&oldid", which makes it likely that it's an old revision. What the wrapper would do is simply display the template as it was before deletion (if &oldid is found), and suppress the template output (or give an error message) if not (i.e. if the current revision contains the deleted template). Does this make sense? Is it worth doing? Rd232 ^talk 00:25, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe templates can detect that they are on old versions of pages. A significant template like Expand could simply display as a null template - unbreaking the old revisions. The better solution is for the historical verisons of the pages to use historical versions of templates (proper history like ZUG), something I have advocated for some time. Rich Farmbrough, 00:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC).

historical versions of templates would be lovely, but infinitely more complicated and vaguely never-gonna-happen territory. What's wrong with my detection of &oldid in URL proposal? (The only kink is permalinks to the current version, but they shouldn't contain deleted templates anyway.) Rd232 ^talk 03:35, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I seem to remember coming across this. If you go to the history of a page and click on a past version, you won't get the version of a template that was actually on the page at that time, you'll get the present version, or an error message if it's been deleted. Peter jackson (talk) 10:20, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

(True history is not that hard.) Well the current (permalink) version we can use in theory "revision = -" ({{REVISIONID}}) - but I'm not sure any of the magic words give is the actual URL being accessed in the first place which is the pre-requisite for your idea. If you can (something like {{fullurl:{{PAGENAME}}}} =//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_69, of course, doesn't work) then the implementation should be easy enough, given that our damaged string functions can cope, which they quite often can't. Rich Farmbrough, 11:25, 9 February 2011 (UTC).

Hm, looking around at the string functions available, I'm sure it's doable, but I'm not sure how the various limitations will interact in terms of working for all page titles. Perhaps someone else would like to play around and see how it goes... Is there a bugzilla entry for a proper history thing? Rd232 ^talk 14:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Of course, a simpler, temporary alternative would be for the {{deletedtemplate}} wrapper to always display a small "deleted template, should only be visible on old revisions" warning over the final version of the template before deletion. Rd232 ^talk 17:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Or, more crudely, simply "This template has been deleted". Rich Farmbrough, 14:43, 10 February 2011 (UTC).

I don't know, I am not terribly enamoured with the rate that Bugzillas get zapped, so I haven't looked (that I remember), I should.

But your basic idea might well be solvable, since you can compare the revision ID of a history page with the current one. Let me experiment with Expand and we can find out. Rich Farmbrough, 14:43, 10 February 2011 (UTC).

'Tis done. [2] displays an "Expand" template, but if I use it here I get:

The template {{Expand}} has been soft deleted.

Et voila! Soft deletion! Rich Farmbrough, 14:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC).

Now someone has to continually monitor Special:What Links Here on all the 'soft deleted' templates to see whether some n00b has created error messages on current revisions by placing a softly deleted template on it (bearing in mind that one of the keep arguments for {expand} was, it's so simple even idiots can remember it/use it - the exact kind of idiot who isn't likely to know what 'soft deletion' even is, or how to fix the resultant error message), just so we can view old revisions in perfect condition. MickMacNee (talk) 16:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Infact, even non-n00bs are likely to not have a clue what it means if they see it mentioned. The analogy to soft-redirection is if anything, a complete red-herring. Given the fact that Wikipedia:Soft deletion is a failed proposal about something completely different, I suggest you avoid the whole phrase all together, and come up with a simple message which explains why someone might be seeing this message, and what to do about it. MickMacNee (talk) 16:14, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I've done it myself infact [3] (I've hardcoded the message above too, to retain this discussion thread's logic.) MickMacNee (talk) 16:23, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Well that seems pretty neat, if it really works consistently. The logic should be moved into {{deletedtemplate}} for general use, and some instructions written. Unless anybody thinks it a bad idea to implement this. PS One kink: the same "remove me" message is shown on old revisions which postdate the template's deprecation, even though you obviously can't remove the template from an old revision... I've tweaked the message accordingly to add an "if this page is a current revision". Rd232 ^talk 17:29, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

{{Deleted template}} created. Needs documentation. Also created tracking category. Rich Farmbrough, 06:28, 11 February 2011 (UTC).

Done. I wonder if it's possible to allow subst:ing in order to fix talk pages and archives using deleted templates in past discussions? Rd232 ^talk 14:49, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

A

A member of the

Editors are invited to comment on the feasibility and desirability of the automated task here. –xeno^talk 16:22, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Voting has begun at Talk:Main_Page#Featured_sounds_vote. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:58, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• Hey, is nowiki broken?? I had to delete the final semicolons

  I think it doesn't work inside headings? -- œ^™ 06:18, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

• Dunno how doable this is, but when wikilinks break across right margin of body text or (even worse) across the columns of a cite (imagine one breaking from the bottom of a long left column to the top of the right) it's odd to say the least. I suggest it would be beneficial to comprehensibility to replace all empty space in wikilinks with   ...can this proposal be done?Locke'sGhost 05:41, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

You can replace the ampersand with the HTML entity & ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 06:22, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

• Done, thanks. Now about the proposal...? Locke'sGhost 06:29, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be better to use CSS. For example <span style="displaywhite-space: nowrap;">[[Wikipedia]], the [[Free content|free]] encyclopedia that anyone can [[Help:Editing|edit]].</span> should not wrap. – Allen4names 06:59, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

• Good suggestion. I leave it to techie folks to decide on implementation. Can and should we make wikilinks non-breaking? Locke'sGhost 07:11, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure that that implementation is wrong; you probably want <span style="white-space:nowrap;">Blah blah blah</span>. I don't think nowrapping links is a good idea, though; there are too many places where long links (eg section links) should wrap. Happy‑melon 19:55, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Correction made per Happy-melon. Thank you for the correction. – Allen4names 23:16, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Behold the magic of {{

cool stuff

) 06:53, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• Why should section links wrap? Locke'sGhost 23:18, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I often see that warnings and questions on talk page regarding disruptive users are often left unanswered or even acknowledged...especially by new or unregistered users. I sometimes wonder if they even know that a talk page exists, or that they should bother to look at it. Anyway, would it be possible to add an admin tool that blocks a user from editing until a response is made on their talk page? I would see it working, for example, in this way: A disruptive user gets a couple of warning on his/her talk page, but does not respond or change behavior ----> Admin uses the "response required" tool and requests communication with a message (or template) on the user's talk page ----> Next time the user tries to edit, he/she gets a notice that a response is required to an issue on their talk page before editing can resume ----> When a response is received, the admin can verify this and remove the editing restriction. I just think this might be a good way to "force" someone to put down the stick and communicate...even if the response is "go to hell", an admin can at least determine where the user is coming from. Thanks,

Special:Block ? –xeno^talk 19:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Just trying to think of ways to retain some users since the numbers have been in decline lately, and the subject of discussion. I guess it would be a last-resort attempt before block. Maybe some of these people just need a little guidance and don't know its available to them.

David Able

19:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with xeno. If the user refuses to respond and is editing disruptively, a block is warranted. Once the user responds, the block can be lifted.

In the case of a user repeatedly recreating a page, I've also

SALTed

the page for a short time. That at least forces the user to choose a new page name, which reaffirms intent to disrupt (or ignorance of his talk page), or brings them into discussion on a talk page.

As for giving guidance and getting the user's attention, the latest revision to the underlying software isn't a help. The new message notice box is now a pale blue instead of the attention-grabbing orange. —C.Fred (talk) 19:06, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

@ Xeno, I am not an admin so I can't see the link you provided...but perhaps a tool like this already exists in some form.

David Able

19:07, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

(It's a link to the blocking form) I think a bigger problem affecting retention is administrators blocking before the users have had a chance to respond/resumed editing. If they receive a talk page message and keep up their disruptive behaviour or otherwise do not attend to the message after the orange bar (pale blue?) should have drawn their attention to the message, an attention-getting block strikes me as an appropriate response, and serves the function you've suggested. –xeno^talk 19:08, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I see a lot of the same problem with warnings, xeno. A user makes series of edits and gets warned. A subsequent warning comes in for an edit that preceded the one he got warned for. Suddenly, a user goes from an empty talk page to a level three warning, and they haven't made any intervening edits. I look at time stamps a lot, especially if a user is nearing a block. I won't block them over an edit that they made right after the level 4 warning, because they were probably in the process of hitting save page before or as the warning came in. —C.Fred (talk) 19:14, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Blocks go in the block log, and require an admin to lift them. I can see the merit in this: the person would effectively be able to unblock themselves by responding on their user talk, and it wouldn't be logged. As a result, it would be a very minor measure which could be used much more liberally than blocking. Rd232 ^talk 19:09, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough. –xeno^talk 19:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

• Since we're talking about tools to get a user's attention, it'd be nice to be able to do a user-specific edit notice. So that, if there are warnings they haven't responded to, they get a "Warning! You have not responded to messages on your talk page about your conduct. If you do not respond, and if you continue to make the same inappropriate edits, you may be blocked. Please respond to the comments on your talk page" message inside a bright orange box at the top of the edit screen. —C.Fred (talk) 19:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

It should just be an attention getter...gentle prod...a temporary removal of editing privileges with a personable message of concern, and an easy link that directs them to a new section of their talk page to respond. And don't call it a block. Sometimes the language in the escalating warning templates can be downright intimidating. Something like "Hang on a second. I've noticed some problems with your editing that may be breaking the rules of Wikipedia. Why don't you click here, and tell me what you're wanting to do? Once you respond, I'll restore your editing privileges, no harm done." Again, I'm not trying to take the teeth out of a block. This would be a pre-block step to be used when circumstances warrant maybe less of a "bite." Definitely not to be used in all cases.

David Able

19:46, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

That's in the same direction, but I think forcing a response is more commonly going to be helpful. They've probably already ignored requests to discuss things. Rd232 ^talk 01:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Alternative. Change the message bar to red and have it double in size for each talk page message not responded to until it fills his full screen.. Seriously though, I can see how it might be easier for some people to edit articles then talk pages. Some newbies might not even realize that the warnings on their talk pages are something they can respond to. I use to participate in usenet and web forums before Wikipedia and it took me a while to get the hang of talk pages and noticeboards. I wonder if

Well that consideration just makes the concept more attractive, because the notification template could include crystal clear "click here" type instructions. Rd232 ^talk 06:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we could add a monobook.css/vector.css to the user to make an input-box appear on any page they use on Wikipedia that would also pose the critical message we want them to read and respond to. They would get this even if not editting. The hard part will be to make it save the answer they may give. As alternative we could even just simply change that light blue background to a blinking orange with the personalised style sheet upgrade!. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:53, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

How would you apply it for the target user alone? The saving bit could probably be done the way MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext does the "submit an edit request" thing. How would JS/CSS know to clear the response request though? Rd232 ^talk 09:07, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Make it at User:offender/monobook.css or user:22.33.44.55/monobook.css which should only strike the affected user, perhaps there can be some if exists test that will suppress the alert once the response is saved in a talk sub page. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

An excellent idea - I could have used it today. Sometimes you need to block to stop a chain of disruption and discuss the issue with the user, but a traditional block can just make things worse. In this case I discussed the problem with the user, who settled down and was cooperative, and unblocked. It would have been less stinging if we could have a friendlier tool to say "time out while we talk this over," as opposed to a regular block that gets interpreted as "you're banned." In this case the user was in fact communicating, but not particularly constructively until they had to come to a full stop, but a required response might have done a gentler job of breaking the chain of escalation. Acroterion _(talk) 20:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I can't see it working for IPs, with all the concerns if another person uses the IP.

Otherwise...the principle, to force a user to respond, might have merit. It's time-centric though; what exactly will happen if they don't respond for hours/days/weeks; and, who will respond to their answer - if the same admin requesting it was around, yes, great; but they might not be. Will their 'quick need for response' potentially languish for days?

I do think it worth discussion though. It could reduce the stigma currently attached to blocks for minor offences by new users.  Chzz  ►  20:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

From what I know of the MediaWiki software, it would be possible to design an interface similar to Special:Block that, similar to blocking a user, would prevent them from editing until they edited their talk page, and provide a notice to that effect when they try to edit pages. And yes, it might be worth it, especially in regards to new users as Chzz said. Ajraddatz (Talk) 22:08, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Ultimately, this whole deal will mean that people will only have to pay attention to warnings issued by admins (or a special group of users), and other warnings can be safely ignored. Not a very convincing idea. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 23:19, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• No, lets not do this. It will be abused or misused - at the very least admins will be accused of misuse and abuse. Far better to simply block users if they fail to respond and continue to engage in the unacceptable behaviour that is a concern. After all, if the concerning behaviour isn't worth a block its certainly not worth forcing someone to respond over.
  Spartaz ^Humbug!
  04:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Either this or we need a new class of trusted users that have more permissions to do basic housekeeping tasks (page moves, editing protected templates, and other things that can be easily remedied if performed incorrectly). I don't want to be, nor do I believe I have the patience or temperament to be an administrator, but I'm requesting their assistance for simple edits several times per day. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Account creators and administrators can, and I think that it would be good to keep it that way. You are free to request a modification through any user with access to it. Ajraddatz (Talk) 19:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

A proliferation of excessive messages can really get annoying. A type of

WP:CREEP

. Also, edit notices are quick hack-ish.

Regarding the wider matter, there have been various calls for 'unbundling' of various user rights. I'm not necessarily saying it is a bad idea, but just that you should do a bit of a search through

WT:RFA e.g. this, and search around a bit for prior discussions - clearly none of which succeeded, thus far.  Chzz  ► 

20:33, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Your comment of I don't want to be, nor do I believe I have the patience or temperament to be an administrator is understandable, and a good illustration of just what is wrong with the current adminship process. It should be

no big deal, and if you, or anyone, has a valid need for those buttons, they should get 'em. If you don't like blocking or whatever else would try your patience, then don't do that stuff. Just 'coz you have buttons does not mean you have to press them.  Chzz  ► 

20:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Editnotices don't normally need to be changed often enough than an occasional {{

editprotected}} is that big a deal, IMO. Looking through your contribs, Floydian, I don't see where you're asking for admin assistance several times per day. Anomie⚔

21:50, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I usually ping them through the IRC channel I frequent because its faster that way, and they're the admins that understand the kind of articles that I'm working on. Add to that various template modifications and the numerous moves I've requested. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 22:05, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

See

Maybe we should instead fix the problems that caused them to leave, like the constant biting of newcomers? Ajraddatz (Talk) 05:34, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Fixing the problem of biting newbies is much better. - Hydroxonium (H₃O⁺) 03:52, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

This should be the time to talk about the

See

- dating so this will be archived. Fences&Windows 22:47, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

There is a simpler version of the WikiBlame tool, linked as "Revision history search" from a history page; this is called Article Blame, from toolserver.org: http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/blame/ It should be considered whether the simpler tool should also be included in the External Tools section of a history page.

- dating so this will be archived. Fences&Windows 22:48, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll have to admit, I'm not overly familiar with this side of things, i.e. whether the initiative in such collaborations is taken by Wikimedia or by the other party, but if it is by Wikimedia (in the case of e.g. Wikipedia (en) searches straight from your Google toolbar, or whatever), then it might be an idea to integrate WP into what seems to be the new MS Word's replacement for the 'Synonyms' feature (roughly explained here). It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 23:51, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

A situation has come up in regards to a TV broadcast and

If this idea is a complete no-go I understand, but we have an editor at the discussion who is willing to trial the system if we can try it. Betty Logan (talk) 03:52, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I took a look at that link, but it's just the one comment. What I'm wondering is who is interpreting

WP:V can be read to generally state that un-archived television programs cannot be used as sources. Is this being discussed somewhere else? Qwyrxian (talk

) 00:40, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 12:58, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Is there currently a problem with vandalism on the RfA archive pages? If not, then what is the point of protecting them. Yoenit (talk) 13:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Although probably unnecessary, and technically not worth the trouble of implementing, It's still not a bad idea: There's no reason anyone should be editing those pages anyway, and in the off-chance that they do get vandalized, and I can see that happening as someone wanting 'revenge' on an admin for some past block, it's possible that the vandalism can go uncaught for a long time, especially if the admin is inactive, as presumably noone other than the admin would have that page on their watchlist. -- œ^™ 18:42, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

As there is always the possibility of unforeseen future reasons to edit closed RfAs, I don't think it's necessary to preemptively protect them. –xeno^talk 18:49, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Basically wrapping everything (articles, watchlists, special pages, etc... in <div class="plainlinks">. This icons can be annoying to those of us who are fine with the difference in tone as the only way to tell internal apart external links.

Try adding this to your skin.css:

a.external {
    background:none !important;
    padding:0 !important;
}

That could probably be turned into a gadget, if there were sufficient demand. Anomie⚔ 01:59, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the proposer means. Are there external links icons? Where?

the arrow in the box to the right of this text is what he's talking about.

Wha?

04:22, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

How about a top icon for A-class articles? I made a template already. It's at Template:Class A article.

~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 12:51, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

GA and FA are wikipedia-wide standards while A-class is wikiproject specific. Not all wikiprojects use A-class and if one wikiproject makes an article A-class that does not mean it is an A-class for another wikiproject. For example Thinis is assesed as A-class for Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt, while Wikipedia:WikiProject Former countries considers it only B-class. Yoenit (talk) 13:17, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of the idea. Actually, I'm not a big fan of the GA top icon either. For the casual Wikipedia reader, I think the multiple icons are confusing because their meaning is not that obvious. In particular, the fact that a good article is "not as good" as an A-class article but "better" than a B-class article is somewhat counter-intuitive. Furthermore, the process that identifies A-class articles is not transparent. For the avid Wikipedia reader/editor, there's always the possibility to set the preferences to include the user interface gadget that automatically displays the assessment. I highly recommend it if you're not already using it. Pichpich (talk) 13:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I was going to propose this and I think it's personally an awesome idea, but we need to standardize this site-wide first before we can really make progress with this proposal.

A proposal to add

There are two other processes worth mentioning: Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, which is a project geared to create articles that have been identified as missing through a variety of other sources. There is also Wikipedia:Requested articles where users can add red links to the subject-based lists.

Basically I am looking for ideas. I guess there's two issues, methods of discovering missing articles and methods of creating missing articles. I think this is the sort of problem that would be served well by applying the original goals and ideals the wiki, since when it started out there was a great deal of interest and momentum in article creation. As things are right now, there are huge gaps in certain areas, and this is a community issue. What are your thoughts? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 00:54, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Not really an answer to your questions but: aren't red links still strongly discouraged in templates? That's what Wikipedia:Red link says. Pichpich (talk) 01:16, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Not always - "The exception is redlinks in navboxes where the articles are part of a series or a whole set ..." - which fits most of the large templates which have been the issue here.

talk

| 03:07, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

It's too late to start over, but I always wonder when I read an article how many others have read before me. It would be interesting to me to see how many hits each article has had. Wouldn't Wikipedia administrators as well as users like to have some idea of this?

Just a suggestion.

Thanks for reading.

An external counter for page view statistics is linked under the page history tab - it's on a daily basis rather than "for all time", but it should be more or less what you're looking for.

talk

| 20:02, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

You click on "History" and then you click on "Page View Statistics." Sincerely,

talk

) 20:03, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

A fresh install of MediaWiki still has counters for total page hits at the bottom of every page (mw:Manual:$wgDisableCounters). However, this feature was disabled on Wikipedia many years ago, so it looks like admins didn't like it. --Morn (talk) 00:47, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe it's disabled because it doesn't count pageviews that are served by the caches, just the ones that make it through to the apache servers. And since we want as many hits as possible to be served by the caches, it's basically useless here. Anomie⚔ 01:52, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

There's also the fact that, as I understand it, MediaWiki itself doing the hit counts is quite inefficient. Whilst it's theoretically capable of it, enabling the function on a system with this much traffic could have rather messy effects, since it has to update a record every time a page is hit. Even without the caches, it would still be more efficient to use the "secondary" counting via logs.

talk

| 02:07, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

True, cache hits aren't counted, so enabling the stock MedaWiki feature wouln't help. Then again, a nightly job could be set up to analyze the logs like stats.grok.se does and add total daily hits per article to the database. I don't think it's a technical or performance issue. It's more due to lack of interest on the admin side that this feature never came back to Wikipedia. --Morn (talk) 11:49, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Click on the "History" bar at the top of each article, and then find the icon that says "Page view statistics". Click on that - I think that that will give you the information which you have been seeking. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:56, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

He's looking for total hits, not hits per day. --Morn (talk) 22:53, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

You can get a good idea by adding all the years' data together. http://stats.grok.se/en/2011/User:Killiondude/stats + http://stats.grok.se/en/2010/User:Killiondude/stats etc. etc. stats.groke.se appears to list things from 2008 and onward, but see User:Killiondude/stats about locating its source data and for links to the internet archive's copy of even older data. Killiondude (talk) 23:06, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi all, my name is Paolo.

First of all: sorry for my bad english language :)

Next, right to the subject: I really appreciate what Wikipedia gives to me everyday and I would like to return to it a little bit.

I think this idea could lead to:

a) significantly lower the storage costs of the immense wikipedia mass of data while exponentially increasing available space;

b) boost the wikipedia speed;

c) involve all us, as users, in a new higher grade of collaboration;

My idea simply consists into developing and issuing a software through which we all can share a little percentage of Hard disk space on our internet-connected home computers, just like p2p philosophy, and following the example of SETI @ HOME project, in order to host some encrypted datas of wikipedia which will be managed only by the original website

I will not annoy you with all the technical details I have thought of, because I would like before to know your opinion about this proposal...and for sure there are many other people who are better than me for this :)

Wishing to help you improving wikipedia...

Regards,

--94.163.7.8 (talk) 08:28, 24 February 2011 (UTC) Paolo Bianchi e-mail: bianpaol @ gmail . com

Well, SETI@HOME doens;t share disk space: It only uses your computer's processor to process data. SETI's data is run through many different algorithms, and this requires a lot of RAM. It wouldn't be a good idea to implement this on Wikipedia, as we don't need that much processing. It would require as much RAM to send the data requiring processing and the algorithm to a computer as it would to do the job itself. Wikipedia requires fast results, which would be slowed down if the data was sent to another computer for processing every time you used the search suggestions or something similar. All of Wikipedia's processing is related to messing around with the database, so a user's computer can't help anyways. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 12:45, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but this does not seem like a good idea for a number of reasons. First of all, Wikipedia has a massive and very complicated network architecture, and this type of change would require it to be completely redone. Second it poses major security risks, as anyone with direct access to the servers and enough technical knowledge can get into places they shouldn't by simply circumventing any web interface based security features. Third, it would only be possible if the volunteer computers were always on and always connected to the internet, something Wikipedia can't ensure. Fourth, if something does go wrong, having the servers all in a limited number of places allows for more efficient repairs and less downtime. Finally, for legal reasons, Wikipedia keeps servers in some places and explicitly out of others. If a single person from New York donated part of her computer as a server, it would open Wikipedia up to New York's very restrictive laws on musical recordings, and Commons would have delete about a third of its repository of sound files. Likewise if a single person from another country opted in, it would have legal and tax ramifications.

Simply put, if you want to help Wikipedia with it's storage needs, ask them for a wishlist and buy them hardware off the wishlist (or send them money earmarked for said hardware so that you save on shipping.) Sure a server is expensive, but there are likely other things they could use too, and everyone likes donating tangible items.

Wha?

16:47, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Storage is cheap, it's constantly getting cheaper, and text does not take much space to store. The cost to develop and implement a system like this would probably offset any savings in storage costs for years. Mr.Z-man 21:48, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Has it been reviewed yet ? Unreviewed code cannot be deployed (I know it's on Roan's list for the coming weeks, just like the new Narayam and a few other extensions, but as far as I know, it has not yet been done at this exact time) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:39, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Extentions don't really get reviewed unless somewhere (a community) requests that it be activated to avoid pointless requests, which is why I'm trying to gain consensus first. 09:08, 25 February 2011 (UTC) — Preceding

talk • contribs

)

(More specifically, extensions don't get reviewed unless a sufficiently large community requests it, otherwise it just sits around for years while all the code reviewing gets done for the big projects. Grumble grumble...) Does this extension actually solve any real problem, or is it just a more elegant solution to something already been dealt with by CSS? --Yair rand (talk) 11:24, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

This will sound like a bit of a silly/stupid idea, but as an archaeologist, I know that pretty much the only histories we have ancient cultures other than oral histories and papyri are those written on (accidently baked) clay tablets and stone (and a few other anecdotal instances of other materials.) Paper degrades and so do disks and all manner of digital storage. So I was thinking wouldn't it be fun if at some point the articles (after review of course) in Wikipedia were copied down onto either hard durable plastic or some manner of stainless steel tablet? Something that would never degrade and even if somehow civilisation was wiped out completely, the archaeologists of the future would have an abundance of information from this era and our knowledge and cultures would be preserved. After all, the cultures for whom we have no histories are pretty much lost to history.

I can just imagine the caches being found in the distant future and whoever finds them saying "Ah Ha!" and finding out all the old stories and whacky theories about this time and earlier are true! Full records of our global civilisation with its many peoples, languages, musics, foods, dances, etc.

Silly I know, not to mention expensive and time-consuming. However it would be nice if this could be done. I would love to see projects like this in maybe a decade when the other languages have caught up to the English wiki. It would be a marvelous thing if people in many different nations raised money for this sort of thing and everyone contributed to the preservation of their collected knowledge in their own tongues (no sense just preserve the English Wikipedia.

Just a thought.... =) TheArchaeologist 06:36, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

The idea had been kicked about a bit. Metal has too high a scrap value and plastic degrades on exposure to sunlight. Best suggestion I've run across is probably to stamp extracts of wikipedia articles into bricks (and then use them for normal construction.©Geni 01:45, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

We could put it on a solid gold CD and shoot it into space. (Please someone get the reference.)

Wha?

03:56, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, yes, haha, very funny. =p You two laugh, but a lot of people, when they really really think about it, are at the very least a little uneasy with the idea that if our civilisation just ceased to be tomorrow, then there would be nearly nothing left of us (our modern civilisation) in a thousand years (if you believe the History Channel, which is typically not good practice I will admit) except from some plastic cases, of course garbage dumps (archaeological gold mines) and apparently the Hoover Dam. (yes I do overuse commas)

Looking at what you said as jokes seriously though (time to kill the jokes >:3), the scrap value thing assumes that stainless steel would still be valued at that time and they wouldn't have something better that they use for their main metal (like some manner of cheaply produced titanium or some other metal) and the idea of a cache is that usually it is in a vault of some sort or buried (in a vault in this case), and I don't think many plastics degrade on immediate contact with sunlight, it also depends on the type of plastic you use (in this case, not one of the eco-friendly ones that degrades quickly). Even then, it's not like if the vault is exposed for study that its contents would degrade anytime soon. They might be stolen and sold, yes, but not degraded for a long time.

Yep, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. I think Futurama helped a few more of the younger generation get that reference (though I read many Astro books when I was a kid (21 atm)). There was a recent little Finnish film (which I cannot find or remember the name of) actually where one of the Voyagers (I think it was 2) crashes and this odd man and his alien dog (don't ask, I didn't get that bit) play it and then build a rocket to go to Earth. They find nothing there but an old man and a bar with a computer that has a short video history, nothing else.

It would be nice if someone financed a project similar to this at some point. If not with wiki then maybe Britanica or Encarta (though they are very limited) TheArchaeologist

Say Herro

04:29, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Well the closest I'm aware of is the Long Now Foundation's Rosetta Project.©Geni 18:55, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

If it's good enough for Scientology, it's good enough for us: "The archiving project, which the church has acknowledged, includes engraving Hubbard's writings on stainless steel tablets and encasing them in titanium capsules."[4] Fences&Windows 19:21, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Well the disk is a start, but I don't like the fact that it will eventually degrade. =/ Ugh, I for one hope THOSE tablets stay buried or are destroyed. Godforbid whoever the later archaeologists are find those and think that it was a major religion or part of our culture. See they have the right idea though, even if they are basically preserving what is in my opinion (don't want the CoS to sue) garbage. TheArchaeologist

Say Herro

03:35, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I have no clue if this has been discussed before, or if there's a reason why it hasn't been done but I think that in order to edit Wikipedia, you must create in account or login. No more anonymous IP edits. Wouldn't this greatly cut down on vandalism? If you have something constructive to add, you can easily sign up. Others will be discouraged from adding nonconstructive things. It seems like it would work to me. ~ Richmond96 t • c 23:50, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

See

talk

) 00:00, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I see the reasons for the current method, now. ~ Richmond96 t • c 03:26, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

One thing I think would help improve the ol' Wikipedia is to have a little template appearing at the top of the page saying you have new messages on your talk page whenever you do have new messages. Of course, it would have to be done so that it doesn't appear on every single page to everyone, just to those who have new messages on their talk pages. Maybe have it say something like this:

You have new messages

Just have it be as simple as possible, and have "new messages" link to whichever user's talk page. Besides, just about every other Wiki I've been to has this feature, why not Wikipedia? --

• Isn't that what the orange "You have new messages" band is for? – Peacock.Lane 01:51, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

• This is, in fact, the way it works already! The reason you're not seeing it is that you're editing as
  talk
  | 03:04, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I would edit as "Thebigfan" but I seem to have forgotten what my password was to get on it. --

Can't you just request the password be sent to your email address? Otherwise, redirect

User:Thebigfan2, and get on with editing, problem solved. You already use the totally unrelated "Codyrox" in your sig so there's no reason to be wedded to the Thebigfan account. Fences&Windows

23:58, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Posting here as there it seems we have a final draft before this gets promoted. This is based on the GNG,

I would like the purge dropdown to change to a tab, as it's easier. --Highspeedrailguy (talk) 16:22, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Alternatively, we could change the personal toolbar purge clock in preference → gadgets tab → User interface gadgets, into a default and have its removal available through preferences.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Please don't. Anomie⚔ 22:42, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Purging is a fairly rare need. I'm sure someone could write a gadget to add a tab for it though. --Cybercobra (talk) 02:28, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

See User:Svick/DropDownToTabs.js. — Edokter (talk) — 18:03, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I wish to add more functionality to the current

{{Worldcat|name=Test|oclc=222395773|accessdate=March 2011}} would produce:
Test in libraries (WorldCat catalog). Retrieved on March 2011.

similarly:

* {{Worldcat|name=Test|id=lccn-n50-34079|accessdate=March 2011}} would produce:
Test in libraries (WorldCat catalog). Retrieved on March 2011.

Please feel free to view and edit my proposed version to better refine it, or offer any suggestions. Thank you. Who (talk) 23:08, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Hey, everyone. This isn't a proposal itself per se, but I wanted to drop a note here to point out a new place where fully-formed proposals that have some community support can be taken if they need help from the Wikimedia Foundation. Some of you know that the WMF started a fellowship program for Wikipedians, academics, and others to come join the organization for a limited time to work on a specific project or projects (that's my job). Well, now there's an open proposals process for new fellowships on Meta, so please consider it when you're thinking about the future of Wikimedia and moving your proposals for improving English Wikipedia forward. Thanks! Steven Walling at work 23:51, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Bots can be used to maintain census figures.

Editors may construct initial text templates which would be locked. These would be incorporated into the text of the place article. Editors would present the template for incorporation into the list of templates a bot would maintain. A separate "acceptance" bot would be needed to accept and file the template.

When the bot was run, and found material that needed to be updated, it would unlock the template, make changes in some pre-specified manner, and relock the template.

No one else would make any census changes in the US. There would be a separate country-bot (and acceptance bot!) for each country since they each present material differently. But they would probably resemble the US one in construction and updating. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Student7 (talk • contribs) 17:54, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what this means. I do know, however, that the boilerplate used for census figures in the U.S. articles is simply appalling. Sincerely, your friend,

talk

) 20:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

While the editors of the article would still construct the text (template presentation; layout) for the article, I would guess that the templates would become more standardized. But yes, the words "spread out" for age groups, particularly appalled me. But these would be decided in advance (as the 2000 census were, only by a much smaller group, and for everyplace in the US) and would usually not be as clunky, having had the input of several people for each article. Student7 (talk) 13:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm with

verifiable to the casual reader of Wikipedia. In my view, Wikipedia can do better, and we should. N2e (talk

) 13:40, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm in full agreement about the need for a change in the boilerplate. Even after reading and editing scores of articles on US communities, that phrase "the population was spread out" always makes me think of population density. The organization of the age-distribution paragraph could also be improved: I think that it ought to begin with the single summarizing statistic, viz., the median age; after that, we can elaborate on the distribution. --Ammodramus (talk) 23:23, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

The boilerplate could be addressed with this change. The bot (and bot handlers) would have the responsibility of ensuring the material was properly footnoted. This would most likely be in the boilerplate template - the same place for everybody. I am assuming a centralized census bureau, as in the US, and, in fact, aiming this at the US which would most likely be first to be implemented.

So, step one, could be the construction of a recommended text template. There is no reason we could not start work on one now. On the other hand, there is no reason why anyone must use this exact boilerplate, but we might build into the "acceptance bot" criteria for a basic template. That is, the US template must contain age distribution, economic data, the valid footnote, etc. No point in using the bot without census-relevant data. Student7 (talk) 13:53, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I concur; the work on the boilerplate could start anytime. And if we could build consensus about that boilerplate text, including the specific {{

citation(s) (linkable to the particular place in the Census Bureau online data repository that supports the specific claim for any particular Wikipedia page, along with the date of the data and the date that the bot accessed the database) that would support the quantitative assertions, then the bot gurus could later use it and turn a bot loose on adding the text to applicable pages based on the data in the Census report. If anyone starts this, feel free to drop me a line and I'll try to join the effort. Cheers. N2e (talk

) 19:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

For the record, a current (or near-future) boilerplate, might have "...White = 44.6%..." as a part of its text. The distant future template, might have, for the same information, "((uscensus|white=}}" and be absolutely riddled with this type of template invocation.

My idea of boilerplate is dry facts, no embellishment. Just looked up Demographics of New York City. Quite embellished. Editors would still be free to have any template they wanted, including embellishments. But the one we come up with would be dry as toast, right? Student7 (talk) 18:35, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I support the idea of using a bot to update the numbers but...good luck. I don't have much faith in the bot group these days and from what I have seen if you submit the bot task today it will be summertime before it gets approved and by then we could have fixed the majority of them manually. I would recommend working with the US WikiProjects in a Census drive to fix the problems. You will probably have better results. --

talk

) 19:06, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I was rather hoping for census data to be maintained centrally. Right now we get annual updates (if we are lucky) or monthly or more frequent ones with someone "finding" another guesstimate on their local population increase. Always increase, of course. The idea here is to control format, then release figure updates to the bot. The bot unlocks the template for updating once a year with the official census guesstimates, then locks them again. No changes unless approved.

Our problem in the past has been to figure out when someone is legitimately updating and when some newbie IP is simply vandalizing by altering a few numbers at random. Usually they get reverted (with no edit summary)! But it is a nuisance to have to even worry about it. And unnecessary IMO. Student7 (talk) 13:29, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I support the idea of a managed bot, opened only occasionally (annually?) to put in basic non-embellished "dry facts" from the census data, with simple boilerplate of the type suggested by

reliably source

the claims made. In the case you mentioned, it might be "...White = 44.6%...<ref name=uscb20yymmdd> {{cite web |title=Census 2010 Database |url=http://www.LinkGoesHereForCensusDB.gov |work=United States 2010 decenial census |publisher=US Census Bureau |accessdate=20yy-mm-dd<!-- date the bot consulted the database to obtain the data -->}}</ref>" as a part of its text, but with a citation. We should not turn a bot loose that adds a lot of text to articles that is difficult to

verify, as was done after the 2000 census. Cheers. N2e (talk

) 14:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Agree.

Having said that, I've put a possible boilerplate for census data on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_United_States/proposed census boilerplate. Not sure there were citations there when I copied it!

Note that we will change and discuss changes on the same page.

Feel free to notify other interested editors/Projects. I've put a notice on the US Project discussion page. Student7 (talk) 19:25, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Small problem. How do I request a bot? Student7 (talk) 13:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The current layout renders {{Deletion sorting}} notes on XfD pages similarly to the !votes cast. This makes XfD pages harder to understand. I propose changing the layout so that notes are more clearly separated from !votes, using a colon to generate an indented list item without a bullet, and eliminating the bold formatting of the word "Note". A mock-up is shown below. - Pointillist (talk) 12:56, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has not been included in any list. Can you believe that?

• Support – looks like an improvement to me. Also makes the delsort messages actually easier to spot, for the same reason – now they look too similar to the !votes.  --Lambiam 18:19, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

For the record: the proposal has been boldly implemented.  --Lambiam 13:26, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Up to a point...

Mono made the change for Template:Deletion sorting, but there are about fifteen other templates in Category:Deletion notification templates that use the old look, AFAICS. - Pointillist (talk

) 19:00, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for following up. I was going to leave it until there was a consensus for the change! - Pointillist (talk) 00:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I propose a Like button/link on every page. This information would be persisted for every user. This information could be used to provide personalized page suggestions on the home page, based on that particular user's interests.

• Sorry, but I disagree. Wikipedia is a completely different thing than Facebook. See
  WP:NOT. – Peacock.Lane
  01:49, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
• I also think that's not a good idea. Besides, if you really want to share a Wikipedia page, just cut and paste the URL of that page into your post on the social networking site. It's much easier than the prevalence of buttons on other sites would indicate.
  Wha?
  03:53, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's what the OP meant. The "personalised page suggestions" would suggest an entirely on-wiki thing, but we don't really have a way to achieve this. - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 20:44, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

This is actually in the works via the article feedback pilot; see Category:Article Feedback Pilot. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:54, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I looked at the feedback form, it asks for too much, there should be a short form, ie the Like button, and a long form which people can optionally fill in.Hackbinary (talk) 12:19, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Strong Support A simple like and dislike buttons, keep it simple. Hackbinary (talk) 12:19, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

• Strong disagree This isn't facebook. It shouldn't be here because that wikipedia is for knowledge and articles. Not about "Liking" other users. ~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 23:41, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

This has been proposed and rejected a month ago, see

Anyone wanting personal suggestions might be interested in User:SuggestBot, "a program that attempts to help Wikipedia users find pages to edit based on their past contributions". Fences&Windows 19:14, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to propose a debundling of a new right, commonshelper, to allow non-admin users experienced in image work (transferring appropriately licensed enwiki images to commons, reviewing transferred images) to be able to delete in the File: and File talk: namespaces. They'd use this right to help clear backlogs, (

Would/should/could this be bundled with the

hockey10 ^e-mail

03:22, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Note that consensus may soon allow all autoconfirmed users to move files. Guoguo12--Talk--  20:51, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Note that the above statement is patently false and that the consensus supports unbundling of filemover but rather strongly opposes giving it to every autoconfirmed user at this time. FWIW the proposal also opposes bundling it with accountcreator, so I'd avoid that idea here.

Wha?

23:49, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Note that the statement directly above may not be true. How can you say consensus strongly opposes it at this time? You strongly oppose it, but the opposition is not unanimous, nor is consensus very clear. However, for obvious reasons, let's not discuss this here. Guoguo12--Talk--  01:12, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

• Support FWIW.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:39, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose allowing non-admins to delete anything, for any reason, at this time. I would however be in favor of creating a bot to assist in the work. Consider the following:
• Wikipedia already has the capability of noticing that someone is trying to upload an image that is pixel for pixel identical to an existing file.
• Most of copying to commons involves copying images pixel to pixel.
• A bot, theoretically, could scan two addresses, the enwiki one and the commons one, to determine if the two images are pixel for pixel matches.
• One idea would be to allow users access to a wikipedia to commons move script without the ability to delete the wikipedia image, which would automatically feed information to a bot that would scan to ensure that the image was pixel for pixel identical, the file names were identical, and that license information was transferred over successfully. If that were the case, the bot would delete the enwiki version. Any edits that need doing to the image itself, such as cropping or renaming, could be done on commons.
• This proposal ensures that only files that were copied to commons are deleted, as opposed to allowing anything in the file namespace at all to be deleted.
  Wha?
  00:06, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

  That would hit a couple snags though. If people uploaded blatant copyrighted images, such as a cover of an album etc., the bot wouldn't be able to tell it is copyrighted. So the inexperienced editor adds {{

  hockey10 ^e-mail

  12:57, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

• Unfortunate Oppose - after thinking about this, I've come to the conclusion that there are very few users that would be suitable for deleting images moved to commons but not suitable for other admin tasks. Now to toot my own horn a bit and show my credentials in the area: I have spent literally hundreds of man-hours moving images to commons and I'm largely responsible for the clearing of 2/3 of the backlog at Category:Wikipedia files with a different name on Wikimedia Commons. I can testify right now that many non-admins are better at recognizing which images should be moved over and which shouldn't. But the users I'd trust to recognize which images should be moved over, I'd mostly also trust to be admins. Thus I see three problems:
  1. If any admin could bestow this ability upon a non-admin, then there would be countless bad moves, if only because most admins don't really know what they're doing in the area. This isn't like rollback or autopatrol; hitting the delete button can't be undone easily. And if an admin sees exemplary behavior from a user in all areas and much good work with images, this admin is liable to say "I would trust this user with images" without going through the vetting process of making sure that user is familiar with the subtleties of image moves (e.g.,
     PD-Russia-2008
     }}, etc.).
  2. If, on the other hand, we require a vetting process to gain the bit, it would become sort of a pseudo-RfA. All of which would be fine with me (no really), except that the community has repeatedly rejected the idea of giving admin bits in increments.
  3. The third objection isn't really mine, and it might prove to be immaterial: this is a fairly difficult thing for the devs to write into the software. They would have to give the ability to certain users to delete only certain files, and only allow the users to choose one option from the pull-down list. The devs might reject this as not worth their time. Magog the Ogre (talk) 18:29, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

  I'm not one to ask, but I don't think it'll be THAT hard to make a new usergroup that can delete pages in the File: and File talk: namespaces. Also it's not just for users just focused on enwiki>commons work. It's for users who are fully capable of reviewing enwiki->commons images but would not pass a regular RfA for various reasons (not any experience in certain areas such as

  hockey10 ^e-mail

  22:35, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose This is an example for creating too many user groups for too few users. I suspect that only a few users would end up helping with the backlogs; we have over a thousand admins and look where we are. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:40, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to take the "we have a thousand admins and look where we are" comment. We have a 2-3 year admin backlog that few people want to deal with? A handful of those few people being non-admins? I kinda picture this to be similar to the abusefilter right. Not TOO many people have it, but it's enough to significantly clear the current (2-3 year) backlog that we have. --

hockey10 ^e-mail

15:08, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Support Deletions in the File/File Talk namespaces are often uncontroversial. And virtually all deletions that have to do with images moved to Commons are uncontroversial. There's a need for competent people working in this area and it's a good idea to try and make it happen. I see a couple of problems with Addihockey10's objections above. First it's quite likely that some very competent candidates for this userright would fail RfA because of unfamiliarity with other areas that are considered more important at RfA. Second, it's true that most admins would be incompetent at this task but this is precisely why it makes sense to selectively target competent people for this task. Unbundling will increase the number of competent people in this area without creating any sort of drama. Pichpich (talk) 19:46, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose only because I have a concern that the moved images are not reviewed properly and then removing the source moves the problem to commons. I also have to agree with the points made by User:Magog the Ogre. All the images moved to commons really need to be be checked as we have a more than you think number of images that should not have been moved, many obvious copyright violations are just moved to commons and these have to be sorted out. Removing the local copy without checking just makes the problem dissapear without a trace into commons. MilborneOne (talk) 00:26, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

  Well of course the users with the commonshelper right would have to check that the image was moved properly, that the license is correct and that there are no issues with it, source, attribution etc. etc. --

  hockey10 ^e-mail

  22:25, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

As I am sure everyone here knows, Wikipedia is the largest source of free online information available. Thanks to the ever vigilant team of admins and editors(yes I’m talking to you) this website continues to become increasingly accurate and neutral. The talk:Reliablilty of Wikipedia does an excellent job of allowing us editors to help the way by which this online resource covers itself, showing that neutrality is ultimately the websites main goal. However this produces a paradox of sorts, Wikipedia cannot self-define with absolutely neutrality. This brings me to my main point; a collaboration with Citizendium. When Wikipedia’s founder left the team shortly after its creation, he started a second project which attempted to remove the lack of credibility that is inherent within Wikipedia(sorry guys). I propose, and I assume I am not the first, that these two projects are combined. The pure size of Wikipedia is something that Citizendium could never match, and the accuracy and neutrality that Citizendium has is exactly what is holding Wikipedia back. Citizendium only has 155 pages with have been edited and confirmed by multiple experts of that topic, but these pages are said to be entirely error free. Adding this level of accuracy to Wikipedia articles, even if just 155 out of the 3-million plus articles would be an incredibly beneficial step forward for the site that would only increase with time.” --Droberts4080 (talk) 09:24, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I've never been overly impressed with the scope or writing on Citizendium; of the pages they have that are workable the content is about on a par with what Wikipedia has on the same topic, usually using the same sources. The caveat to that is that certain contentious pages are much better on Citizendium through virtue of being restricted editorship - but practically speaking those pages are crappy (example compare Islam to Islam) because they are contentious. The lead to our Islam article is horrible; but how is Citizendium collaboration going to fix that problem :) --Errant ^(chat!) 09:52, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Citizendium Porting exists already as a way for Wikipedia to benefit from Citizendium's work. You might want to look at what they're doing. Including, by the way, assessments of which pages aren't up to Wikipedia standards. — Gavia immer (talk) 09:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Citizendium is hardly error-free, nor are they particularly neutral. Their alternative medicine articles have largely been taken over by proponents, and many of their approved articles are terribly written and/or inaccurate, for example, Biology is a confused mess, and Scientific method has a section advocating for Intelligent design, which is pretty horrifying to anyone who knows biology.

Frankly, there's serious quality and accuracy gaps in a lot of Citizendium articles, and we'd be well advised to be very careful in use of them, while, of course, benefiting from the occasional very good articles to come out of the process. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 10:07, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

There isn't a "section" on ID, just part of a paragraph, which clearly states that very few biologists accept it. Peter jackson (talk) 11:38, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

It looks to me as if there are three whole paragraphs (and some other verbiage elsewhere) dedicated to introducing the proposition that the theory of evolution by natural selection is possibly not scientific. Since the article is not about evolution (and says it is not), the amount of verbiage attached to this proposition is pretty troubling. — Gavia immer (talk) 12:05, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Having taken the time to flick through a few more articles there, Citizendium suffers a lot for requiring "expert" editors on topics & most of the articles suffer from a lack of focus, poor writing, neutrality issues and often too narrow a scope. It's a shame, the idea IIRC was to fix those very problems, I guess that is an approach that doesn't work. --Errant ^(chat!) 12:18, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I've seen no evidence that Citizendium is overall more neutral or accurate. Many of their articles are in fact old forks of Wikipedia articles that have since been cleaned up on Wikipedia, but not on Citizendium. 28bytes (talk) 16:26, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Quite. "Citizendium only has 155 pages with have been edited and confirmed by multiple experts of that topic, but these pages are said to be entirely error free." Said by whom, the experts? Citizendium has terrible problems with fringe science, even more than we do, and that's caused by their "experts" (just look at their Homeopathy article). Moreover, the restrictions on editing and the general culture there led to stagnation (example: the discussion email list got busy just as it was launching, so Larry Sanger responded by essentially shutting it down[6]; another example of Sanger's "golden touch":[7]). An alternative approach is to overlay 'expert review' on top of Wikipedia, see meta:Expert review. Fences&Windows 23:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

An alternative to this may be to create a system similar to the GA nominations, where the articles would be reviewed by an expert in such topic. Of course, "an expert" would not be some random user with delusions of grandeur, but someone previously approved for such a task, perhaps detailing his real name and degrees by OTRS. And of course, the topics that this expert can manage as an expert. This system would not replace FAC or GAN, but be a new one. It may not replace FAC, accuracy is an important thing for FA status but not the only one, and an expert-approved article may still need to adress other issues. We shouldn't expect real-world experts to be aware of internal Wikipedia nuisances, such as how to use templates, not linking to disambiguations, no overcategorization, image licences, what to keep at an article and what to move to a fork article, etc; and the expert may overlook them. And, although it would have a higher prestige than GAN, it will certainly be a very, very, very slow process, with backlogs that may last for many months, as very few people would be managing them, and without help from other users.

[Edit conflict] The major problem is that credentials can be somewhat dangerous when you're dependant on one person: For example (and using only really obvious cases to avoid BLP issues) Michael Behe is a professor of biochemistry, but one would not want him as the judge for our biology articles, given his promotion of the unscientific intelligent design form of creationism, and denial of evolution. Andrew Wakefield was a medical researcher at a respected hospital, but would've been a disaster if he were our judge for immunology, given, you know, that he was found guilty of committing fraudulent and unethical research in order to promote a crank immunological theory.

Instead, may I point to the vastly respected

WP:MILHIST and their multi-person expert A-level review. On a WikiProject level, with multiple experts fully integrated into Wikipedia, expert review can work wonderfully. Adam Cuerden ^(talk

) 18:07, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Isn't Citizendium basically dead? Only 155 articles in how many years? I just looked at the recent edits there which are 500 article edits since 26 februari, not terribly active. Garion96 (talk) 17:56, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

There are more than 155, the 155 are the approved articles. Still not that much though. Garion96 (talk) 18:00, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I have very rarely looked at Citizendium, but on the rare occasions I have looked at it, I can only say that it appears to be an online encyclopaedia that is lower-quality product than Wikipedia. It lacks Wikipedia's range of articles and comprehensiveness, for a start. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:41, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Let me be a little more specific. When I looked at Citizendium, I noticed that it did not even have an article on Paul Tillich - a leading theologian of the twentieth century without an article! Citizendium may be against anonymous editing, but that has not made it a better encyclopaedia than Wikipedia. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I looked at Citizendium from the computer I use at work on the morning of March 3 2011,and again, I was anything but impressed with it. I noticed that it did not even have a separate article on

May I also add that Citizendium rarely has the high Google search that Wikipedia has. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:07, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to write such articles yourself. Citizendium can't be expected to have lots of articles until it has lots of people. Peter jackson (talk) 09:39, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

MB, Veropedia already runs such a system for WP articles. Also, the new site known (last I looked) as Knowino has such a system internally. Peter jackson (talk) 09:42, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Gavia, the article is on scientific method. It's proper for it to cover philosophy of science, in which Karl Popper is a major figure. In relation to his ideas it's quite appropriate to discuss whether evolution is a scientific theory. Peter jackson (talk) 09:44, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

It is not, however, reasonable to then go on to claim that Intelligent design - an idea, not a theory, the premises of which are either untestable or disproven, is on equal footing. That's directly contrary to Popper.

Indeed, anti-science is core citizendium policy:

In short, Larry Sanger is an idiot, and Citizendium is awful by design. We're not going to salvage this by bringing a horribly broken system over into Wikipedia, which violates our basic

WP:NPOV policy (ironically, written by Sanger orginally, before he decided he knew better than those damn scientists). Adam Cuerden ^(talk

) 07:17, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 07:13, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Let Citizendium rot. Last time I saw a thread here regarding Citizendium, it was because they didn't have enough money to keep the doors open and someone suggested a WMF loan. I have issues with both the quality of Citizendium's content and its philosophy. My opinion on Larry Sanger isn't so hot either, but that's a different matter entirely. The point is that it's really not something worth our time. For the sake of discussion,
  Wha?
  06:21, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
  • We're 40% done with the porting, and several articles we lacked have been imported wholesale. I call that success. But yes, there have been a surprising number of articles copied from WP w/o significant improvements, and there are a few unusably tainted articles. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:02, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
    • There's certainly things to gain from using the compatible licenses, and the Porting WikiProject should not be disparaged: it has improved a few dozen articles. But adopting Citizendium's methods, or giving Citizendium power here, as the proposal suggests, is an AWFUL idea. I'm of the impression that the successful articles are despite the setup they have, not because of it. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 02:27, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

My impression of Citizendium is that it's basically failed - I don't know why, perhaps just because it never achieved that critical mass of publicity to match that of Wikipedia, or perhaps because it turns out that their editing model isn't tenable for a voluntary project, whereas Wikipedia's (in spite of all we dislike about it) is. That isn't to say we can't learn things from Citizendium - if there are some articles that they have better than ours, then I'm all in favour of porting them in, licencing permitting (and glad to hear that that's happening). Otherwise, the best way to "cooperate" with Citizendium is to persuade the kind of specialist editors who write there to come and write for us instead/as well - ours (fortunately or otherwise) is the encyclopedia that the world reads. And we could certainly benefit from hearing first hand about any features of the setup over there (including the software) that might be usefully introduced over here.--Kotniski (talk) 08:46, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Adam, the article doesn't put ID on an equal footing. And Citizendium's neutrality policy is much the same as Wikipedia's. Peter jackson (talk) 11:07, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Repeatedly saying that doesn't change the truth. If the neutrality rules are the same, why did Sanger apparently personally invite homeopathic advocate Dana Ullman to take over writing the Homeopathy article? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 07:47, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't always observe its own neutrality policy. Nor does Citizendium. Peter jackson (talk) 10:45, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Kotniski, many of the specialist editors on Citizendium do edit here as well. For the rest, it's hardly going to be the case that they're unaware of Wikipedia, is it? So those who don't edit here must have some reason for not doing so. That must be that they got fed up with having to fight endless wars with propagandists and/or idiots and/or trolls. Until Wikipedia develops an effective means of resolving disputes those sorts aren't going to come back. Peter jackson (talk) 11:12, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's kind of what I meant. Make the atmosphere and culture here more amenable to serious and knowledgeable editors.--Kotniski (talk) 12:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

But I don't think it's likely to happen in the near future. The community is too complacent. Not much is likely to change until competition forces it. Whether that competition will come from Citizendium, Wikinfo, Knowino, something I haven't heard of or something that doesn't exist yet I don't know. Given the orders of magnitude separating WP from others it'll take a long time, though a "long time" on the internet may be only a few years (corollary of

Moore's Law?). But it's bound to happen eventually if WP carries on getting "suckier" as Ludwigs puts it. Peter jackson (talk

) 10:49, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

How would a competitor taking wikipedias position be a problem? Think of wikipedia as the

Rome is we lose the war against the Vandals. Yoenit (talk

) 12:17, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

It would only be a problem in the sense that it's a waste of the enormous resources currently available in WP space. If WP could make proper use of them itself, that would be more eficient and a lot quicker than someone else having to do so. Peter jackson (talk) 11:22, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Between the edit box and the box below it (the one that allows you to enter wiki markup and such stuff as Greek and Hebrew letters by clicking) there are several lines of boilerplate text:

Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be

CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license. See the Terms of Use

for details.

and:

If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. All text that you did not write yourself, except brief excerpts, must be available under terms consistent with Wikipedia's Terms of Use before you submit it.

(These texts can also be found at the interface pages MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning and MediaWiki:Wikimedia-editpage-tos-summary.)

By now, after some 30,000 edits, I just ignore them. So why do they bother me? Because this boilerplate stuff takes up real estate at an inconvenient place: I regularly find that I need to scroll the window down and up, again and again, to switch between the place in the editing window where I'm entering text and the Non-Latin-letters-etcetera box below it, since I want to have immediate feedback, but they don't fit together in the browser window. It is annoying to do this scroll down, click, scroll up for every single letter you enter. (I could opt to have fewer "rows" in the editing window, but then it becomes a peephole through which it is harder to keep an eye on the context.)

The proposal is:

Add an option (disabled by default) to the list of options at Special:Preferences/Editing to "Show Wikimedia copyright warning and terms-of-use summary before preview and edit box".

 --Lambiam 15:04, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I doubt any developer would get around to adding such an option, and disabling it by default would never fly; we want IP users and newbies to see that text. To disable it hide that text for yourself, add this to your skin.css:

span.editHelp { display:none; }
#editpage-copywarn { display:none; }
div.mw-tos-summary { display:none; }
#editpage-copywarn2 { display:none; }
span#minoredit_helplink { display:none; }

This could probably be turned into a Gadget if there were sufficient demand. Anomie⚔ 15:20, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I think you have misunderstood. The default (disabled) would let the page be exactly as before: with the boilerplate between the edit box and the goodies box. Enabling the option will move the boilerplate up to before the edit box, where it will still be quite visible, just as the anon edit warning "You are not currently logged in. ..." before the edit box is quite visible. But the CSS stuff does the trick for me; thanks.  --Lambiam 15:58, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I misunderstood. Sorry. Anomie⚔ 00:01, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, it stopped working; an admin deleted my skin.css page, stating: creates copyright headaches. :(  --Lambiam 00:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Someone who has been here for 5 years with over 30000 edits should be well aware of the copyright issues by now, without needing interface clutter to remind them. Try asking the admin in question what they're playing at, and if they won't undelete take it to

WP:DRV. Anomie⚔

05:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Another admin already restored it, stating: don't be silly – always good advice to everyone except

wheel war.  --Lambiam

13:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately being aware of the copyright issues means aproximately very little from a legal perspective. We need a release and by removing the we lose that release. Effectively your position is equiverlent to arguing that experence users don't need to add license templates to their images.©Geni 18:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

It is a totally different position that does not bear even the remotest resemblance to the strawman you're putting up.  --Lambiam 00:13, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Interesting argument. Do you really think one can prevent their contributions being so licensed simply by hiding the relevant text? If so, what is to stop them from hiding it with browser css (or a post-it note, for that matter)? –xeno^talk 18:56, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Because that's browserside. They got a bunch of stuff sent to them that has the intention of showing that notice. With the CSS changes no attempt is made to show the notice. The whole area is very messy and best avoided for precisiely that reason.©Geni 19:11, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

So you are hypothesizing some future situation where someone would sue the Wikimedia Foundation for copyright infringement, after hiding the release via css? And you think that, after it is demonstrated that they had intentionally and willfully hidden the release, they are going to have legitimate grounds for such a suit? –xeno^talk 19:19, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

they argue that their action was the equiverlent of opting out. The court might accept that. The court might not but argue that any future use of material derived from that work would then constitute a copyvio. As I said messy. The copyright situation on wikipedia is complex enough as it is and making it messier is at best missguided.©Geni 19:24, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that's a bit of a stretch - but would you be satisfied if a user who, having hid the release via CSS, made a blanket general release somewhere on their userpage? –xeno^talk 19:26, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

(e/c)CSS is browser-side whether its delivered by the server or not. The text of the copyright notice is still there in the HTML source, its just hidden by the browser. The terms of use don't stop applying just because you don't read them. Mr.Z-man 19:30, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, the terms of use is still linked on every page, and clearly states how everything is licensed. I too find this scenario quite a stretch. henrik•talk 19:33, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

if you remove editpage-copywarn and editpage-copywarn2 (which appears to be what is being attempted in this case) then there is no link to the terms of use on the edit page.©Geni 19:41, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

No but in this case we need an active agreement which is a bit of a problem if the editor has turned off the mechanism by which we get that.©Geni 19:37, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

This is rediculous. Any editor may choose what to hide for him/herself, even if it is a copyright warning. One's personal CSS file only affects visibility to the eidtor itself, unlike licence templates, which are visible to anyone. Please don't remove those lines from personal CSS files. — Edokter (talk) — 19:13, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The license templates are the release in the case of images. The release in the case of text is clicking save page on a page with the text of editpage-copywarn next to it. Other people being able to view it or not is of no actual significance.©Geni 19:20, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

By hiding a message, the editor is asumed to have read and agreed to any message previously displayed. Hiding it does not in any way deminish our policies. If it were really this important, the message would be unhidable. — Edokter (talk) — 19:27, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

!)I don't think it occured to anyone that someone would try and do this and 2) how would you even go about making it unhidable.

You could remove the class ID, I suppose. In any case, as Z-man notes about, even when hidden with user or browser CSS, it is still present in the HTML source. –xeno^talk 19:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Unless you are going try and argue that the courts would look kindly on a release in the HTML that was commented out I don't think "it's still there in the HTML" is an argument that gets us very far.©Geni 19:39, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I feel silly arguing about this in the first place, but I suppose frivolous lawsuits are a lot more common south of the border. –xeno^talk 19:44, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

There are 352 users who are hiding copywarn2, including me for close to two years now. IANAL and find the idea that hiding the notice can be argued as an opt-out absurd, but I try not to underestimate the absurdness of copyright law, so I wouldn't want to rule it out either. Cat's out of the bag however. If anyone is seriously worried about this having the potential to create problems, ask WMF legal council, and have them worry about it. Amalthea 21:29, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The long term ones create another headache because of course the copyright warning has changed from pure GFDL to GFDL+CC-BY-SA.©Geni 23:58, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

And even 726 users are hiding copywarn. The way I see it, we all agreed at some point to uphold policy; we really don't need to do that with every edit. — Edokter (talk) — 00:35, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm in a weird position here in that I agree that it's probably not necessary, if we require affirmation of understanding of policy before the notice is disabled, but still kind of thinking that displaying it universally is a good idea. :) The only potential for legal problems I can see out of allowing opt-out would be if somebody argued that they had usurped an active account and so did not themselves agree to the opt out or know about the copyright policy, or if terms significantly changed (as with our great license shift). For all I know, it's plausible to unilaterally override everybody's opt out in the latter case, and the former could be taken care of by adding to that opt out requiring an affirmation of understanding that accounts are not transferable. But, again, I think it's a good idea to have it at the bottom of every edit screen because it may potentially provide an additional layer of protection for WMF, demonstrating a strong good faith effort to prevent misuse of the project. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:53, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Going back to the original proposal, if you add the release to the login page and repeat it as part of the setting on the preferences page, surely that is sufficient if the user has opted out of the warning next to the edit box? - Pointillist (talk) 18:48, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure adding text to the login page for everyone is a great idea.©Geni 19:20, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Why not? - Pointillist (talk) 21:33, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Because we try and keep it as sort as possible in the vauge hope that new users will read it.©Geni 00:00, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Is that an established view? I would have thought that the project would benefit from new users being told that "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL." BTW, why do you prefix your username with ©? - Pointillist (talk) 00:21, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Well the whole registration system is meant to be undergoing a complete overhal so I suppose historical might be a better description. The © is playing with a bug in CC-BY-SA 3.0©Geni 00:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Side question—appropriate use of admin powers?

Is it really an appropriate use of admin powers for an admin to go around editing other users' personal css files after it has become clear that there is not consensus for his/her position? Anomie⚔ 23:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

A strict reading of policy would call for warning followed by indefinet block however I would regard that as somewhat excessive.©Geni 23:59, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Mono (talk

) 00:04, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I would say not. An editor's personal CSS is not subject to any content or copyright policy. An admin making such edits should revert his/her edits and apologize to the editor. — Edokter (talk) — 00:32, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Everything (with the possible exception of the logo) on this wiki is subject to the copyright policy. Quite a few of the CSD criteria could also apply. In fact since it is possible to drop comments into your monobook.css page there are quite a selection of content policies that apply.©Geni 00:37, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Right, there are cases where a users js or css file could be deleted. This isn't one - hiding a page element doesn't make it not there, any more than covering a contract with a piece of paper voids it. But I think we've come to that conclusion already anyway. Prodego ^talk 02:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Redesign

How about combining the two into a simple notice, like

Please note: By saving, you agree to irrevocably release your contribution under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GFDL. You agree to be credited by re-users, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL to the page you are contributing to. If you do not want your writing to be edited and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. See the Terms of Use for details. If you did not write this yourself, it must be available under terms consistent with the Terms of Use, and you agree to follow any relevant licensing requirements.

Please note: By saving, you agree to irrevocably release your contribution under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GFDL. You agree to be credited by re-users through a URL to the page you are contributing to; your writing may be edited and redistributed at will. See the Terms of Use for details. If you did not write this yourself, it must be available under terms consistent with the Terms of Use, and you agree to follow any relevant licensing requirements.

Mono (talk

) 00:04, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Isn't that considerably larger than what we currently have?©Geni 00:19, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

It is somewhat consolidated. But in my view, it should be shrunk to one clear line with a link to the Terms of Use page. — Edokter (talk) — 00:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Tried that. Actualy back in the GFDL days we got pretty close (although we used footnotes rather than link out). Current text is foundation mandated and objections about length got kinda brushed asside. Feel free to file a fresh protest though.©Geni 00:31, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the second?

Mono (talk

) 01:19, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

The second notice is not consistent with Terms of Use, in that hyperlinks and URLs are not the same thing. For instance, we use hyperlinks when copying within Wikipedia, not URLs. (Also, it's not necessarily to the page you're contributing to, as it could be a stable version stored elsewhere.) Both of them exclude reference to "except brief excerpts". I think we need to retain that. :) We don't want to eliminate quoting here. I'm not sure that either of these are an improvement over what we have, though. (Though it, like these, omits the other possibility of attribution--a list of authors.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:30, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Adblock Plus

File:Screenshot-Adblock Plus Preferences.png

Personally, I found Adblock Plus an efficient tool to ged rid of those annoying messages. —Ruud 01:06, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Why have the boilerplate disclaimers?

Sometimes, I wonder why we have them there in the first place. I highly doubt most people, including newcomers, "casual editors", and veteran users alike, don't care to heed them. If they're going to add unverifiable or copyright-violating stuff, they are going to anyways. I feel that they are more in the way aesthetically than whatever benefits they have in informing users. –MuZemike 20:35, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It is, as we lawyers say, to cover your ass... in case of a lawsuit. Without notice of disclaimers etc it is hard to rely on them in court. With them you at least have an argument. Isn't this an issue that the Foundation's General Counsel should be opining upon, rather than the user base? – ukexpat (talk) 20:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

An alternative for the legal issue

All this started because there is people who do not like a mass of well known links in the space between the edit box and the summary and save sections; but now it may seem that it may be legally needed to include the copyright release in the save box. Both things are not mutually exclusive: if it turns out that the copyright links must be included, wy not include them somewhere else? The "important" area in edit mode, where editors use things and need to see them or scroll to them,, is between the tools and the save button. Above and below it's unused space (for editing purposes) and any boring mandatory messages may be included in there.

talk

) 21:59, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Which was the very proposal with which this started, or, at least, to make that a user-preference option.  --Lambiam 00:51, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Allow Wikimedia-wide searches from within Wikipedia search screen

There used to be a box at the right of the search results page that showed the most relevant results from sister projects (see Help:Searching#Search results page which btw desperately needs updating) This is no longer the case and hopefully someone can tell me why because I thought that was very a very useful feature. And I DO have "Enable enhanced search suggestions (Vector skin only)" checked in My Preferences, and this tool doesn't really do what I'm wanting to do. What I propose is to be able to search ALL Wikimedia projects, including ALL languages, all at the same time, and to be able to do this from the regular Wikipedia search results screen (perhaps by selecting it from the drop-down box that lets you select external search engines?) Is this feasible? -- œ^™ 09:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, wiki-wide searches is a problem. If I search for 'Mikołaj Dowgielewicz' I get nothing - except on the wikipedia.pl because he is polish. In this case I took the picture, so I know he is polish, but next time maybe all I have is a name, and no nationality. Really I could use a system-wide search, for any language, and also for picture/media as well. It would be useful if the search result told me how many bytes (so I can look at the longest result first). As it is now, it is entirely a one-language closed box. If anyone knows how to do system-wide searches, then tell me, as I apparently do not know how to do that. --Janwikifoto (talk) 15:36, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Mix Wikipedia and Twitter

Wikipedia offers the "immutable" knowledge of the world. Twitter offers the "mutable" experience of the world changing in front of our eyes. Wouldn't it be interesting to being able to take a look to both at the same time? --Maalvarez (talk) 09:56, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

So go design that. I'm not sure exactly what you're envisioning, but if you have something in mind, web hosting is cheap (and often free) while you're just in development. Why does everyone want to throw something out there, and then have someone else go code it? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 10:11, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

For what purpose? There's no reason to read a Twitter feed and an encyclopedia article side-by-side (and I say this as an avid Twitter user with close to 13k tweets). Plus, your use of "immutable" and "mutable" here is incorrect: Wikipedia is an excellent example of "liable to change". EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:51, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Here's an easy way to do this. Go to Wikipedia. Resize your browser screen to half of your monitor. Open another browser window. Go to Twitter in the other browser window. Also resize this to half of your monitor. Place them side by side. Presto! Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:27, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

But that's hard to do if you don't have Windows 7… :( --Izno (talk) 16:46, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Hell No! The separation of WMF project and social network site must be absolute at the development level, or Wikipedia loses essentially overnight the credibility and academic standing it has spent ten years trying to gain. I don't see how this is so freaking hard for people to understand that Wikipedia is not a social networking site. Most Wikipedians are quite happy with the fact that there is no share or like or friend or whatever other buttons on Wikipedia, and that there are no corporate relationships between the WMF and these sites. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it shares the knowledge of the world. It can be social in so much as that people work together to improve the project. Twitter is not academic, most of the time it is not even substantive, and it's primary functions are in no way comparable with Wikipedia. If you want a social experiance related to Wikipedia, hop onto the IRC, which at least attempts to be Wikipedia focused some of the time.

Wha?

20:25, 27 February 2011 (UTC):

I agree, hell I don't really consider Wikipedia to have much credibility, though I do think its articles are reliable 99.95% of the time. I would never use it in an academic setting, but I think it has been improving and maybe a few people are starting to respect it a bit more. Plus I am editting it in a serious manner rather than just vandalising, so I guess that says something. If you integrate the ability for Twitts to do this and that so that it becomes a social networking site where people talk about and share the most boring details of their lives, I think Wiki will lose any and all respect that, as Sven has said, it has spent all these years trying to get. So in closing, **** No! TheArchaeologist

Say Herro

20:44, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Sharebox is a script that reorders your toolbox. It adds new buttons that make it easier to mail, print or share an article on Facebook or another linksharing service. See User:TheDJ/Sharebox. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:56, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a useful script. I didn't know that AddThis could be used in wiki scripts. Goodvac (talk) 08:37, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Please read

My Space or Twitter. ACEOREVIVED (talk

) 22:27, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• No It has the same principals like facebook. ~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 21:21, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Add of access

Ok, so I think that SPI Clerks should have access to all relating to sockpuppets. It's strange that they do not have all sockpuppet things access. ~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 19:07, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

What are you even talking about?

talk

) 02:06, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm talking about that SPI Clerks gets to go block confirmed sockpuppet accounts and all of SPI. ~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 19:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Clerks are not necessarily Admins. That's why they don't get to block. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:16, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Transferring over "filemover" tool