Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive A

How does one edit a template? I'll need to update {{CurrentLCOTW}} in the temporary absence of User:Ludraman, who usually does it. Thanks in ignorance. Filiocht 13:17, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC) Worked it out by trial and error. Filiocht 13:37, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I guess this is what one calls "getting the ball rolling". My proposition is a wiki-based confrontation site. maybe confrontation is the wrong word. Argue. But they argue about

Is there a page on wikipedia showing useful keyboard shortcuts for editing. e.g ALT-S saves the page. Would like to find more shortcuts. ~

I don't know of a page(although you should check meta). However, you can find them via tooltips, or looking for accesskey in the HTML code of pages. Once you find them, make a page, like Wikipedia:Keyboard_shortcuts, and add them there. That way other people will be able to find such a page, because you wrote it! JesseW 00:24, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

See m:MediaWiki User's Guide:Shortcuts for the full list of keyboard shortcuts. Angela. 07:19, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)

A user named

(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 18:19, Nov 15, 2004 (by User:Violetriga 04:06, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC))'

Currently the MOS says: 'For the English Wikipedia, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English.'

But there are two exceptions to this rule in the manual. There is a poll on

I am just wondering whether it would be OK to make a page on a now-defunct Australian soccer club, the Northern Spirit. They existed for around 10 years in the National Soccer League. Also, there is a new league in Australia starting, called the A-League, since the National Soccer League was taken down. Would it be ok to write one about this? Australian soccer is not big outside Australia, and it doesn't have that many supporters within Australia - but it is a national competition...--AlbinoMonkey 04:17, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

By the way, it gets 15,900 Google hits just for "Northern Spirit", over 9,000 for "Northern Spirit", soccer OR football. AlbinoMonkey 04:30, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 04:32, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

You might want to call the article

Northern Spirit F.C. or similar; Northern Spirit is (or was!) also the name of a British train company. AdorableRuffian

14:57, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I hope this is the right place to put this. There is currently a vote going on at Talk:Kobe Bryant's Accuser discussing whether the article should now be moved to the woman's real name. RickK 23:55, Oct 31, 2004 (UTC)

Currently, if an article does not exist, the visitor gets a message with three options:

• Edit this page
• Look into the Wiktionairy
• Look at the candidates for speedy deletion.

I propose to add an option "search for this". When I want to know something about a certain subject, I type it directly into the address bar. Recently, I typed "w are you being served", and received the Article does not exist page. It turned out to be called "Are You Being Served?". I had to paste the text I was looking for into the search form to search for it. If the 'does not exist' message would have had an option "search for this", it would not have been neceserry to do the latter. I'm sure it would be a useful feature, the only minor disadvantage being that the 'does not exist' message would grow.

I've added a link to the search from the "noarticletext" page. See

MediaWiki talk:Noarticletext. Angela.

13:18, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

The proposal is in my namespace: User:Chmod007/Alternate_version_proposal. Please discuss it on the talk page. — David Remahl 13:30, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Since we are expected to post to individual pump sections rather than to the pump, it should probably be protected. That way, people like me who've bookmarked the link to add a new section to the village pump would also come to know of the new policy of posting to individual sections. -- Paddu 21:10, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Moved that from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). -- Paddu 19:27, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree this would seem a reasonable reason for protection. Angela. 13:20, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

The cheat has a gold tooth. Can someone add that? Clownfish 19:21, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It seems that you've figured out that you can do it yourself. (although you misspelled "gold" as "good") -- Cyrius|✎ 04:19, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi,

I have a suggestion for a method of using Wikipedia to create a respository of Common Sense which can complement the knowledge bases produced by OpenCyc and OpenMind and help in making further progress towards artificial intellignce.

Wikipedia can be used as a harbour for closer collaboration between AI researchers and the general public as well as for mining common sense. I wish to know your opinion about this.

Please have a look at

• User:SudarshanP
• List_of_Lists_useful_for_AI
  • Pls check out my personal page first so the list of lists funda makes more sense.

Again, I used a list as a random choice. I guess using categories is better. But what is more important is whether the Wiki community likes or dislikes this from happening to Wikipedia. Please let me know on the discussion page.

It's a small thing, but these links at the top of "User Contributions"?

View (previous 50) (next 50) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500). 

Could we have them on the bottom, too? It'd make it much easier to peruse someone's contribution list.... Catherine | talk 21:38, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As this requires a (fairly minor) change to the software, I suggest you submit a

"bug" to MediaZilla, marking its "severity" as "enhancement". This makes it easy for developers to see and keep track of your request. - IMSoP

16:44, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

How about not worrying too much about archiving/removal of old discussions from the pump by having pages like Village pump (proposals) (Oct 29, 2004)? At any time two such pages would be transcluded, with the "add new discussion" links pointing to the more recent one. Once the older one grows old, we just have to remove the old links, create a new Village pump (''section name'') (''date'') page and transclude that. We can have a redirect from Village pump (''section name'') to the latest Village pump (''section name'') (''date''), so that only that redirect needs to be updated.

This would hopefully make it easier to restrict the pump sections to editable limits. -- Paddu 21:16, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That sounds really smart! I like the idea. Catherine | talk 21:38, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The big problem with this is watchlists: if you are watching "x (October)", and "x (november)" is created from fresh, you will not be watching it. Whereas a moved page leaves you with both on your watchlist, and a manually archived page leaves you with the one that is actually changing. I, for one, use the watchlist as a convenient way of accessing pages like the VP (since they're bound to be somewhere at the top of it). - IMSoP 21:55, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

To access pages like VP you could use the Community portal. I thought that's what it is for. -- Paddu 08:28, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess I could get used to not being able to do that trick (it broke for a bit when the pump was split recently, anyway, cos I didn't have each section watched). Personally, I tend towards the view that nothing should end up in a "village pump archive", except a list of links to where things were actually archived / discussed, but that's a lot of maintenance. My reasoning being that finding anything in such an archive is an absolute. But actually, one advantage of this particular suggestion is that unlike with other archiving systems, links to a particular discussion will be ever-lasting: a link to [[Wikipedia:Village pump (section) (date)#header]] can be created as soon as the header is, and will still take you to the right place years later! Basically, we need a better discussion structure in the software, but I won't hold my breath... *shrug* I guess I'll cope with whatever form things take for now, but this idea does actually make some sense. - IMSoP 16:38, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

BTW old discussions could also be removed. I'm neutral on whether they should be archived (since AFAICT archiving is done irregularly -- some discussions are archived & some deleted, I always rely on the history section in case I'm ever interested in what I said in the pump years ago), but I suppose my suggestion would lead to smaller pages. That was my main intention, but my fingers typed an unrelated title in a hurry.

Also what could be done is that the subpages a few months old need not be linked to from the main Village pump, but they need not be deleted until they're several months old. -- Paddu 18:52, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, there's no real reason to delete them ever, is there?

Wiki is not paper, after all, and if they're date-based pages, they don't even clog the DB up with page history... - IMSoP

23:26, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Based on some experimenting on the Dutch wikipedia, i came up with a partial solution for using tooltips in the wikipedia. It works in Mozilla/Firefox, but not in Internet Explorer, and it requires an adaption to your personal stylesheet. See User:Taka/Tooltips. --Taka 20:30, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Moved to

On all of my Wikimedia User pages, I have included a link to Special:Contributions/PhilHibbs because I think it is important to be able to see what a user has contributed, especially if there is a suspicion of bias, vandalism, or spamming. I would like to see this available on all User pages with a single click, much as History, Discussion, etc. are. PhilHibbs 16:37, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It is available in all user pages. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:43, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Ah, in the "Toolbox"! Cheers. PhilHibbs 11:50, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Actually, it does not seem to be available (at least using the default skin) on user subpages--see User:Niteowlneils/music. Niteowlneils 17:33, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Citing Wikipedia

When search is disabled on Wikipedia (for performance reasons), would it be expensive to redirect to the search query if there is an exact match on the title of an article? (ie, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SearchString) My guess is no, and this would make WP a lot more useful from, for instance, the firefox search box. Searching seems to be disabled frequently these days.

A lot of people find the Google/Yahoo search boxes that are on the search page when search is disabled useful. So, redirecting to an article instead would remove this when it might still be more helpful than going to an article with the word you were searching for. Angela. 13:24, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

It may be that something like this has already been suggested but: Occasionally anons enter articles about local features - locally prominent landmarks, restaurants, schools, etc - that usually end up being nominated for deletion. At the same time there are numerous articles about small towns that contain mainly numerical census data. If some things have mainly local significance, maybe we could encourage people to add them to articles about that locality? - Skysmith 09:22, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Maybe we could encourage people not to delete factual, verifiable and interesting articles? Mark Richards 19:42, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Plenty of things are factual, interesting, and not encyclopedic, certainly not at the level of meriting articles of their own. Yes, I agree competely with Skysmith: if, for example, you want to write about your high school, which virtually no one outside of your town has heard of, write it in the context of the article of your town or (if it's a big city) do an article on the city's public school system. See for example [[1]] or Seattle Public Schools; either of these could do with some expansion -- in particular, both figured interestingly in the history of school integration -- but these are examples, in my view, of handling this appropriately. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:22, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

I really like Skysmith's idea of just integrating these things into articles about the locality. It makes complete sense. Obviously we shouldn't get down to the barbershop-on-the-corner level, but there is another level of information that could be in those article. —siroχo 10:13, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

I like this idea. It would certainly be a lot less time we have to waste on VFD. And we wouldn't be as reliant on admins. Anyone can merge and redirect. anthony 警告 01:12, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, it's the best way to do things to have The Big Pickle in Pickletown, rather than as a separate article. There are a few things that gather notice outside of their towns (Peachoid, e.g.), but most of these are empty calories. As for "no one should delete verifiable information," remember that there are more facts than things in the world. Encyclopedias are not the reference equivalent of a person with Tourette's compulsively trying to touch every tree in the park. It is a work designed for use, not just vaccuuming up. At any rate, where I have seen bad local-only articles come in SCHOOLS (all hail the local 5 & Dime and the hallowed halls of Peabody Primary for Preteens!) and neighborhoods. In particular, most of the latter have come in the cases of places where Rambot doesn't go -- Australia, in particular -- and in places that are too big for such narrow focus -- Seattle, in particular. So a New Page shows up called Merrylake. You find out that it's a park in Canberra. Not the park, just a park. Ok. Or you see a new page, and it's called Valleydown. You find out that it is a subdivision in Seattle. You can't merge that in and have any end to the article, and so you can either speedy delete it or VfD it or, of course, say that it's a verifiable fact and therefore is sacred and that anyone who thinks otherwise is deletionist scum. Geogre 17:24, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think there's a reasonable home for just about anything. Merges can be done, and when things get too crowded in the parent, splits can be made. When there are too many subdivisions in a seattle article, you move all but the most important to Subdivisions of Seattle. When too many parks are listed in Canberra, you start Parks in Canberra. I do think we need to distinguish between facts and knowledge, though, as there are an infinite number of facts. We wouldn't keep the facts "1002 is a number, 1003 is a number, 1004 is a number, etc." What we'd do instead is explain the concept on the number article. Finally, we should consider that Wikipedia is part of a larger project, Wikimedia. Some detail (e.g. the latitude and longitude of every single fire hydrant in a certain city) might go beyond that which is reasonable to include in an encyclopedia. But that doesn't mean we should delete it, rather it should be preserved somewhere so it can be used in future projects. In the example of the fire hydrant locations, this would be great information for a detailed interactive map of the world, which is one of the things I'd like to see in my proposed project meta:Wikiteer. anthony 警告 13:22, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

One of the main motives for contributing to a wiki is discussing your interests with other people who share them. It seems to me that there is a need for discussion areas somewhere between article talk pages and the Village Pump. With the various regional notice boards, and such initiatives as Project Crossbow, it looks like a few people agree with me. Here's an idea for auto-generating discussion groups based on subject matter. I'm not proposing that the Wikipedia adopt the idea, I'm just polling for opinions on the matter.

I think the optimum size for a discussion group is between 20-200 members. Below 20, there isn't enough variety of opinion, and groupthink might set in. Above 200, the signal-to-noise ratio drops, although discussion is still possible up to about the 400 mark. As a sanity check, I checked out number of members of various legislatures at

Higher House Highest: 67 Lowest: 20 Mean: 38.7 Median: 38

Lower House Highest: 400 Lowest: 40 Mean: 108.3 Median: 100

It should be noted that the second largest body, Pennsylvania's lower house, has only 203 members. Note the difference between the mean and median figures on the Lower House table.

To start, take a list of contributor logins. Throw out any known bots. Throw out any inactive contributors. What “inactive” means is a bit arbitrary, I would suggest no edits for the last 30 (or possibly 90) days as a definition.

It might also be a good idea to limit the list to “elder” contributors, those with 100 or more edits to their name. Before I get flamed on this point, I'd like to point out that I'm currently under 100 edits myself. “Younger” and anon contributors would of course be allowed to participate in these groups, but it might be wise not to assign a contributor to a group until they reach the 100 edit mark. (It is, of course, not possible to assign an anon to such a group.) In addition to cutting down on sock puppets, a contributor might be assigned to an inappropriate group based on too small of a sample size of their edits. If “younger” contributors are to be assigned to groups, they should be re-evaluated for group assignment fairly often, perhaps as often as every 5 edits. (Reassignments would take place during off-peak hours, so no more than one reassignment a day.) Incidentally, any idea how many active “elder” contributors there are?

Anyway, you take the resulting list, and sort it by number of edits. Take the top x contributors. (20 might be a good value for x.) These contributors are the first members of their own groups. Starting at the bottom of the list (to help slow down how fast a group's subject area spreads), compare what articles each contributor has edited, and assign them to the group which has the most overlap. (Limit this to main namespace articles, of course.)

When a group reaches the 200 member mark, split off the two most senior (in terms of edits) members. Starting with the most junior member of the group, assign members to one of the two daughter groups. Since the results will be a lot closer than the general assigning, might want to weight based on number of edits on each article.

After all contributors have been assigned, disband any group at or below the 20 member mark, and disperse its members among the other groups. Again, split up any group that hits the 200 mark.

Auto-generate a page for each group in a separate name space, say, “Special Interest:”. Since it would be hard to write a script to determine the nature of the group, assign a serial number to each group. (Or name the group after the most shared article, and give groups with the same article a number.) This page would have a list of the members, and a list of articles, sorted by the number of group members who have edited the article. The group's discussions would take place in the associated talk page.

After the initial setup, the group system ought to be maintained on a daily basis, during offpeak hours. Assigning new contributors, splitting maxed out groups, delisting inactive contributors, and disbanding minimum-ed out groups. Since you probably don't want to be with the same group your entire Wikipedian career, if this doesn't produce enough churn, then “elder” contributors' group memberships could be reevaluated at 100, 50, or even 25 edit intervals.

Comments? crazyeddie 21:29, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It would be really cool, IMO, if it was possible to implement this on an outside site (i.e. crazyeddie's if you're interested); that way, those Wikipedians who wanted to use the system to find BOAFs could, but it would not burden the main site. If it became wildly popular, of course, it could me moved over. I don't know if it's possible to implement this in this offsite way, but I think it should be doable, since the cur and old tables are downloadable... JesseW 12:27, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't have a site or the coding skills to pull this off by myself. If someone likes the idea and wants to run with it, you have my blessing. I'm not sure how much of a load this would put on the main site, since all the work would be done on off-peak hours. Also, if server loads got too high, updating could be put off temporarily. But it might take an off-site trial to prove the idea.

This idea does have some tie-ins with some other ideas on the page. Somebody got pointed to a "Wikipedians by interest" list. It seems to me that this method would be a more accurate version of the same thing. Another person suggested a "catagory maintainer". Each interest group could elect a maintainer. Slightly different, but same result.

I'm personally now leaning away from making the groups "elders" only. Does anybody have any guesses on the current number of active contributors, elder or otherwise? crazyeddie 17:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Also, it might not be good to limit the groups to main namespace articles - there might be a Village Pump BOAF Group (good name by the way). crazyeddie 17:48, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

One last thought - it seems to me that this system would be a possible supplement or even replacement for the catagory system, with lots of room for interesting, serendipitous results. crazyeddie 17:51, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I think it would be pretty convenient for everyone to have a "Go to top of page" link on every Wikipedia article/ talk page - especially on long pages (perhaps the link can appear automatically if the page exceeds a certain size). -- Simonides 23:40, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As someone pointed out in #wikipedia, Ctrl+Home, in most browsers, goes to the top of the page. Is this really necessary? --Slowking Man 00:01, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

I'm sure this comes as a rude shock to the browser savvy, but I doubt the majority of people reading Wikipedia (apart from Wikipedians) are aware of the Ctrl+M command. -- Simonides 00:40, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

But every keyboard I've seen has a "Home" key, which certainly takes you to the top of the page. (And, more useful on a lot of Wikipedia: pages, an "End" key.) --jpgordon{gab} 00:50, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's good to have as many ways of doing a task as possible. Let the user decide which one they want to use. Even if a user knows to use "Home" or Ctrl+M keys, which is a very small minority of users, they might prefer to use the mouse instead. I know I do. crazyeddie 21:32, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes. I don't understand the resistance to a minor addition that covers more possibilities and is a convenience to most users. -- Simonides 13:07, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, in defense of the conservative viewpoint, this minor addition would take up valuable screen real estate and coder time. However, it looks to me like it wouldn't add too much clutter to the bottom of the screen, and this minor addition shouldn't be too bothersome to code. While this change isn't necessary, it would greatly increase convenience. crazyeddie 18:03, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't see it as being a particular problem to have such a line, if it's warranted. Most articles are barely a screen long (depending on resolution, of course, font, etc.), but for those articles that are very long, it might be worthwhile to put a nav box in. The TOC at the top of the article could be repeated. However, I would like to say that it should not be a command that all articles have them, only that it's a nice thing to do if you find yourself working on a very long article (like that full length discussion of Harry Potter's wand or whatever). Geogre 17:29, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Maybe some sort of script that adds the "go to top of page" and the toc is the article is over a certain length? crazyeddie 19:54, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Just what I suggested at the beginning. -- Simonides 20:09, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

A TOC link next too each section edit link would be better. --

Maybe. But I'd think that would clutter up the page too much. I think our best bet is a script that adds a "home" link and second toc if the page is over a certain length. I guess Simonides agrees with me. So what's the next step in getting this idea to the powers that be? crazyeddie 07:09, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind having some better intra-page navigation help either, to help people reading long articles to find their way around. —siroχo 08:27, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)

I have another deletion related proposal, hopefully less controversial than the one on the other part of the pump.

I strongly support increasing the number of articles that can be speedy deleted. As policies get more complicated it inevitably makes it more necessary to check the deletion log to ensure admins are complying with policy. To make checking the deletion log easier why not replace the link on recent changes to Special:Ancient Pages? Old pages seems to not be functioning most of the time, and I see no reason why old pages are more of a priority than short, deadened, or orphaned pages all of which get by with only being linked to from Special:Special Pages. For symmetry's sake the deletion log is also much closer companion to the new pages log than is old pages. - SimonP 05:18, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Can I take this silence to mean there are no objections? - SimonP 19:06, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps a section for links to all the administrative logs could be created (Deletion, Block, Protection, etc.)? It might be a good feature to increase the visibility of administrator actions. --Slowking Man 00:03, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

We have a large number of articles that I believe are in a state where they represent a state of 'as good as it can get'. This might be because the article is an enhanced dictionary definition or because the finest word-smithing has now been done and further change might probably detract.

I would propose that such articles are identified, listed and voted into some sort of protected status whereby change could only be carried out provided proper debate had taken place. This would remove lots of articles from possible vandalism, reduces the review of changes to what were finished articles still being fine tuned etc.

I further propose that changes would be done by making a revised draft and that draft be voted on to replace the previously 'frozen' version.

I accept that this is a major change to policy and welcome views of every one. --Rjstott 06:36, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Warning: this next posting contains irony.

I agree, if you let me pick the articles to be protected. Filiocht 08:05, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

No. See Nupedia. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:20, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Aargh. Please. No. Mark Richards 17:56, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

End of irony ;-)

I think many of the articles you mention are already in a something close to that state. If you try changing them, most of the time your changes will be reverted quite quickly unless they have been already subject to "proper debate" on the Talk page. The only difference between the staus quo and your proposal is that articles could be in this state without having someone "guarding", i.e., regularly checking, them for changes. That that new state would be better is what you need to argue for; please do.

A related possible change could be to make this state of "semi-frozen" more formally clear, by a template that could be added to Talk pages, etc. This has been discussed some in various places(I don't remember where right now) but no consensus has been reached AFAIK. JesseW 03:39, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

These are good points made above. One is that effort is going into watching for changes to articles, which at the current rate of change can be very time consuming, secondly the watchers are self-appointed and it's easy to fall foul of this, certainly notification of the status would help. I read the Nupedia intro and certainly don't want that but I strongly believe if we could impose a form of protection it would help. This same protection might also be applied in cases of dispute to prevent revert wars. --Rjstott 10:53, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If an article is as good as it can get, you should nominate it as a featured article. anthony (see warning) 12:53, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps this would be one mechanism whereby such protection could be obtained? --Rjstott 11:07, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Irony warning ctd.

At which point it will promptly be improved. Filiocht 12:59, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

Articles that have matured, have good facts, and have been well reviewed deserve to be baselined and made safe from vandals. But I don't think Wikipedia is the right place to do that. Better would be the proposed Wikipedia Version 1.0, placed in a physical medium. If that proposal was moving forward, of which I've seen no sign.

OT - I've just discovered my home system requires 20 minutes to load the Village Pump, so this is probably the only time I'll ever contribute to it. Glenn6502 01:58, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OT reply: Use the

Village pump sections instead of loading the whole page. Angela.

10:52, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

I'm a moderator for http://wiki.linuxquestions.org , and I've been pondering this same question. We don't yet have featured articles implemented yet, but when we do, I think we'll upload new featured articles to the Linux Documentation Project, which is a traditional peer-reviewed documentation repository. We would make changes based on their recommendations until the article is approved. We would then periodically submit updated versions of the article. The Wikipedia could do the same thing (but you'd have to go through the backlog of featured articles), but first you'd have to create a peer-review setup, since there isn't an existing one in place. crazyeddie 21:46, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

A stable version will be created for offline distribution. If you have ideas for how that should be used for the online version, please comment at

Note that there is some (oldish) discussion of a software feature for footnotes at meta:Footnotes - IMSoP 21:48, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I want to see if anyone has opinions on the following page move I suggest:

• Move
  Indigo (color). Any opinions on this?? 66.245.103.202
  21:16, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have no objection to moving it, but I have no objections to the way it is. Why do you want to move it? Was someone confused? JesseW 06:03, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I say it should be moved for reasons primarily relating to the information on Talk:Indigo. 66.32.245.70 20:00, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. The colour article should be at

Indigo (colour) :-) Seriously though, surely the colour should be at Indigo if that's not to be a disambiguation page? zoney ♣ talk

09:24, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If there were a tabs on article pages that led to a newsgroup provider, offering to host discussions of the articles topic, many wiki functions could be vastly enhanced and some difficulties avoided and article developement spurred forward. Discuss at wblakesxWblakesx 17:15, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC) to dialogue.

Should deleted articles still be visible?

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Viewing deleted articles.

The previous poll at

There is now a vote on which of the following should be the article title:

• September 11, 2001 attacks (the current location)
• Attacks of September 11, 2001

Please

zoney ♣ talk 16:09, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think it would be cool to contact academics asking them to contribute to articles that as of yet nobody else editing wikipedia seems to have a clue about. Maybe this could become an established project with suggested items and a template email. There are obviously problems with this: each academic would have to agree to be merciless edited like the rest of us(although obviously there contributions would be generally respected by people)... but it could be valuable for filling in gaps.

What do people think? dpen2000 15:32, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Not likely to hurt, but I seriously doubt it will help. As wikipedia's profile rises, interested academics will start to contribute. I'm confident my academic friends would not respond to a cold contact asking for free labor on a web site they've never heard of. On the other hand, some have contributed after discovering it themselves. Wolfman 17:53, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I do think, however, that it is useful to contact academics about the possibility of involving their classes in structured projects related to Wikipedia, or about urging them -- and their stronger students -- to release good papers under GFDL. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:12, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Asking them to encourage students is a good thought. Also possibly lecture notes which could be turned into an article easily. Or good survey articles, which they happen to have already written and posted on the web. I suspect success would be most likely through personal contact, particularly by students of a professor who are involved in wikipedia. Asking directly for the professors to write articles is unlikely to work, in my opinion (i'm a professor). But encouraging low-cost contributions like those mentioned above, might get some immediate response and possibly some direct contributions in the longer run. Wolfman 00:06, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Is there any chance that categories could one day be combined with boolean operators? If so, then one could look up categories "Medicine AND Law NOT Psychiatry" to obtain a defined area of knowledge. --CloudSurfer 08:33, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

We have:

• Category:Women's universities and colleges
  • Category:Women's universities and colleges in the U.S.
    • Category:Seven Sisters schools

and

• List of women's colleges in the United States
• Women's college, which contains a list of women's colleges
• Seven Sisters schools
• Template:Seven Sisters schools

Talk:Women's college (the only one with a Talk page) has some discussion about the proliferation and overlap of lists, but it's a bit dated, there's no consensus, and since there are so many different articles I thought I'd ask around here instead of just the one place.

There actually are some meaningful differences among all those pages. I think the two "women's colleges" categories make perfect sense and match the hierarchy for other universities and colleges. Seven Sisters is a subcategory of these two, except that many of the Seven Sisters have been co-ed since the 1960s and 70s and the category doesn't reflect this. The freestanding U.S. list page sorts the women's colleges by state, and the list on the Women's colleges page gives some city locations, both of which are helpful, but the page names don't indicate what's different or what each different list provides.

I am thinking we could improve things a bit:

• Keep Category:Women's universities and colleges and Category:Women's universities and colleges in the U.S. as-is, and add a note that they are intended only for colleges and universities that are currently women-only.
• Keep
  Template:Seven Sisters schools, but eliminate Category:Seven Sisters schools
  . It isn't needed, and I think burying some of the best-known U.S. women's colleges under a subcategory (along with others which are now co-ed) is confusing. So, move the Seven Sisters colleges that are still women-only up to the U.S. subcategory.
• Move
  List of women's colleges in the United States to List of historical women's universities and colleges
  . Sort by country and state on this page, add specific location info for each entry, note which ones are currently co-ed, retain notes for the Seven Sisters and any other women's college alliances.
• Move/merge the list off of Women's college into the abovementioned article.
• Even though I just said the category and U.S. subcategory should be limited to current women's schools only, it seems to me it would be useful to continue to include the list page itself on the U.S. subcategory, and it would be useful to include the Seven Sisters article on the U.S. subcategory also, just like the Women's college article is on the category now. So I guess limit individual institution listings to current women's schools only and then also articles related to women's colleges in general?

(I swear I'm going to have to change my user name to "Overthink".)

I am totally willing to do the legwork on all of this, but as the proposed changes are sort of significant, I thought I'd better solicit some opinions first. Does this seem like a reasonable plan? My thinking is that if prospective women's college students or other interested parties are browsing wikipedia, I'd really like to make it easier for them to find the info they are looking for. Thanks for any feedback! —Bsktcase 03:39, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

How long do y'all suppose I should wait for objections before I assume there aren't any and proceed?  :) —Bsktcase 20:49, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

All of these proposed changes seem reasonable to me. The lists are currently proliferating out of hand, and this sounds like a good scheme for merging them.

coeducation should be expanded with historical information (whether timelines or narrative), but not more and more lists. -- Rbellin

22:07, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Category:Women's universities and colleges: added note and removed one article from category which is no longer women-only
• Category:Women's universities and colleges in the U.S.: added note and confirmed that articles in category are all still women-only
• Wikipedia:Categories for deletion
• List of current and historical women's universities and colleges
• List of current and historical women's universities and colleges
• Seven Sisters schools: moved to Seven Sisters (colleges)
  because that's what they are, not "girls' schools"
• Template:Seven Sisters schools: moved to Template:Seven Sisters
  for same reason
• Fixed all affected pages except still working on
  List of women's colleges in the United States
  redirects

Thanks for the support or at least the lack of opposition.  :) —Bsktcase 22:04, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Some images, while appropriate and informative in the articles they reside in, nonetheless can be awkward to have on one's screen in a public computing environment. It would be nice in some circumstances to flag such images, and then have a user preference to be able to browse the Wikipedia in "PG mode" where the images would not display unless affirmatively clicked on. Shimmin 13:59, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

Indeed. Random page worries me slightly, although I haven't happened upon anything untoward as yet, no doubt there is the potential for goodness knows what to load up! zoney ♣ talk 14:08, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No. No. No. No. No. A setting in Wikipedia to hide all images would be reasonable (for use in environments where it would not be acceptable to change the browser settings). A preference setting to add a command to the page display to hide images or display images would be acceptable. But a feature where individuals are encouraged to mark particular images as possibly offensive begs for misuse (and for use by any kid wanting to find all the "good stuff"). Jallan 15:52, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I second Jallan. While it sounds like a good idea, simply turning off images in public computing enviroments, then turning them on for specific images is quite sufficient, AFAIK. Shimmin, if this would not work for you, please explain further. JesseW 06:09, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Turning off all images would be effective, if all images were equipped with good alt text, so that one would not be surprised by what one elected to see. Shimmin 17:34, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

I've just created

Precedents for this are the occaisional images that pop-up for comment on the Reference Desk, such as the discussion for Image_talk:Wfm_monument_valley_annotated.jpg.

It could also be used for Wikipedia:Requests for image manipulation discussed above.

One problem is that you need to give an image a filename before you can upload it. It isn't easy to get a relevant filename if you don't know exactly what the subject is. -- Solipsist 20:01, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It has become quite difficult to find Wikipedians interested in certain things; e.g. when creating or expanding on articles. Maybe there should be a list (preferably at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by interest) for just this purpose. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 15:37, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by fields of interest already exists. Hope that helps! zoney ♣ talk 15:45, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm surprised. That list should be more prominent. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 15:49, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

I have noticed that some articles feature strong language and offensive content. An example of this is Shock site. In order to let users know that the article that they are about to view falls into one of these categories, I would propose a template displaying the following notice:

Notice: This article may contain offensive language and/or information.

I think it is important that people who are 'sensitive' know what type of article they will be reading, beforehand.

Please, let me know if you agree or disagree with the creation of such a template (or if you believe the notice should be modified).--Logariasmo 07:44, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I disagree with this for many reasons. First off, its just asking for edit wars (both on how the template should look and where it should be placed). Secondly its far too much of a judgement call, and will end up violating NPOV to some degree. I could give several examples of how it would be "abused" and cause arguments, but that would take forever, i'll let you use your imagination. Lastly, it isn't Wikipedia's place to police itself. We're all adults here, and if we're not its up to our parents and guardians to police us, not Wikipedia. In the cases of articles like shock site, the introduction should give ample warning to the contents of the article, and we shouldn't plaster warning signs on it. —siroχo 08:29, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

Seconded, on every point. • Benc • 11:12, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the range of what people might find offensive is huge. For a strict Muslim, a woman's face might be offensive. Should we tag all the articles that contain a picture of one? Intrigue 23:38, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I wonder where the notice would go on the Fuck article? Before you linked to it perhaps? --CloudSurfer 11:15, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There far too many ugly templates in Wikipedia now that stick inane, boiler-plate announcements onto articles. (I don't need a template to tell me that an article is short or that a plot discussion may contain spoilers.) And a rating system for level of offensiveness is something I woudld find offensive. Jallan 16:00, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I would rather not see any more tags like this added to articles. We already have a General disclaimer linked to from every page (twice on every page in some skins). Also, see mav's comments at Wikipedia talk:Risk disclaimer about the legal risks associated with adding warnings selectively to pages. Angela. 02:16, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

I agree - get rid of nearly all the tags. People know that an article about a novel will discuss the plot, or an article about genitals will be about genitals, or that a short article is short. The Recycling Troll 21:27, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

well said! let's get rid of the silly "spoiler warnings" already!

dab

17:20, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Every so often, I run across a US city that apparently has no article. This could be for various reasons, including that the Census Bureau uses quirky definitions of what qualifies, spelling issues, town no longer exists, etc... Next time I see one, I'm going to make a list of such towns so that they can be redirected/written/fixed by someone who knows the area and can determine what can be meant. I'm just leaving this here because I can't remember where I've seen any such links. If someone else does, I suggest using the title

One I've found is

Milwaukee, Oregon. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 04:27, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC) It was just a misspelled version of Milwaukie, Oregon. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk

)]] 04:56, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

Often the quirky reason is that the city is unincorporated and therefore doesn't exist as an actual legal entity. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:40, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, the Census Bureau data identifies every incorporated municipality as of 2000. However, articles may not be where expected because of ambiguity in naming (or alternative spellings). I'll grant that there may be cases where the Census Bureau got it wrong, but I suspect these are few and far between. The more likely explanation for "missing" localities is that they are unincorporated, which means the Census Bureau includes them within a larger surrounding entity. If and/or when you create articles for such "missing" localities, please do not use names such as "city" , "town", or "village" which indicate legally incorporated municipalities. older≠wiser 13:04, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

The Census Bereau does list some unincorporated populated places, and the

Wikipedia:US cities without articles and then match it up with that list, and for all the matches you'd have the latitude and longitude which could then be run against the polygon data for the census list [3] to find the containing location. However, I'd argue against creating a redirect, because that would discourage actual articles on these populated places from being created. If you want more information on this or can provide me with more, leave a message on my talk page, because there's a good chance I'll miss it if you just leave it here. anthony (see warning)

18:09, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the census does include some unincorporated places. My comment concerned this section's heading "US cities without articles" and the comment about "unincorporated" cities, which is something of an oxymoron. Of the supposed "cities" on

Wikipedia:US cities without articles, nearly all of these are in fact unincorporated. I don't know of anywhere in the U.S. where cities are unincorporated. There are many populated places that are unincorporated, but they are not cities. Also, before anyone gets any ideas about automatically creating articles based on the USGS list of populated places, be EXTREMELY cautious--the list includes many "places" that are nothing more than a road-crossing and a few houses--certainly not much to write about in an article. Unlike Anthony, I would STRONGLY encourage these places to be redirects to the containing locations which could easily contain the few lines of information that the majority of these would consist of. For those places where someone has enough information to write more than a few lines, the redirect can easily be converted into an article. older≠wiser

19:03, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

My comment concerned this section's heading "US cities without articles" and the comment about "unincorporated" cities, which is something of an oxymoron. The term city is commonly used to refer to unincoporated populated places. In fact, according to dictionary.com [4], this is the more common use of the term. Also, before anyone gets any ideas about automatically creating articles based on the USGS list of populated places, be EXTREMELY cautious--the list includes many "places" that are nothing more than a road-crossing and a few houses--certainly not much to write about in an article. The incorporated places and census designated places for which we already have articles are also not much to write about in an article, but we have a consensus that they should be written about anyway. anthony (see warning) 19:31, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In the U.S., cities are a specific type of incorporated municipality. The term is sometimes used informally to refer to large urban population centers regardless of municipal status. Even so, I suspect that there are extremely few entries on

Wikipedia:US cities without articles that most people would refer to as a city--more likely they'd be called "towns" or "villages". BTW, the dictionary you cite does not specifically say that city is "commonly used to refer to unincoporated populated places" it simply makes no mention of incorporation status. The first entry, which I presume you mean as being the "most common use" says "A center of population, commerce, and culture; a town of significant size and importance", which I would argue would most definitely not apply to most of the unincorporated places on that list. The incorporated places and census designated places for which we already have articles are also not much to write about in an article, but we have a consensus that they should be written about anyway. There is a distinction between having an article with rambot-generated census data (which at least has some semblance of "thereness") vs. an article about an unincorporated place with nothing but the latitude/longitude and the enclosing state/county/township (which I'd consider worthless substubs). I think it is preferable to use redirects and place information about such unincorporated communities within articles about the enclosing entity, that is, to provide some context, rather than to produce yet more substubs that will likely never be expanded. If and when someone has more to say about one of these places, it is simple to replace the redirect with a more substantial article. older≠wiser

20:12, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

In the U.S., cities are a specific type of incorporated municipality. That is just your definition, and by no means reflects a consensus among Americans. The term is sometimes used informally to refer to large urban population centers regardless of municipal status. It's also used both formally and informally to represent any populated place important enough to have a zip code. Hence, when you fill out a document, and it asks you "city, state, zip", you don't put "but I don't live in a city", you put the name of your city, no matter how big it is. There is a distinction between having an article with rambot-generated census data (which at least has some semblance of "thereness") vs. an article about an unincorporated place with nothing but the latitude/longitude and the enclosing state/county/township (which I'd consider worthless substubs). I never suggest that we have articles about unincorporated places with nothing but the latitude/longitude and the enclosing state/county/township. The fact of the matter is we already have rambot articles on unincorporated places. For instance, Oak Valley, New Jersey is an unincorporated section of Deptford Township, New Jersey. Turnersville, New Jersey is an unincorporated section of Washington Township, Gloucester County, New Jersey. I'm sure there are thousands of other examples, because these are two just from the County where I happened to grow up. Now I agree with you that we shouldn't be automatically creating substubs. In fact, I would oppose rambot if it applied to be a bot today. I don't like the rambot articles. I think they put a bunch of useless information into an article which hinders the likelihood of the article becoming a well designed useful source of information in the future. But I would also oppose a bot which creates thousands of redirects for unincorporated populated places. And I would oppose someone systematically going through these places and manually adding redirects. I think it is preferable to use redirects and place information about such unincorporated communities within articles about the enclosing entity, that is, to provide some context, rather than to produce yet more substubs that will likely never be expanded. I think we should leave these blank until someone decides to fill them in with more than just a substub. Mention them in the parent entry, and leave the link red until someone stumbles upon it and is willing to manually create an article on it. anthony (see warning) 13:13, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That is just your definition, and by no means reflects a consensus among Americans. It is by no means "just my definition". It is in fact the #2 definition listed in the very dictionary that you cited. And it is a fact, not my opinion. I am not saying that that is the only use of the word--however, it is a very common use of the word, despite your intransigence. The fact of the matter is we already have rambot articles on unincorporated places. I never said that we don't or that we shouldn't have any articles about unicorporated places. But I would also oppose a bot which creates thousands of redirects for unincorporated populated places. I agree with you about this (and also that the general structure of the rambot articles is unsatisfactory). I would not want there to be automatic redirects without some indication in the article as to why the redirect goes there. And I would oppose someone systematically going through these places and manually adding redirects. Here I disagree with you. A redirect to an article which explains why the redirect goes there is, IMO, preferable to either nothing at all (red links) or to a stub with limited prospect for expansion. For example,

Burt Lake, Michigan in the same way, but also includes a link to the Indian River, Michigan CDP rambot article. Another example, Paradise, Michigan is an unincorporated place where there is already something marginally interesting to say about it that is worth an article apart from Whitefish Township, Michigan. I think we should leave these blank until someone decides to fill them in with more than just a substub. Mention them in the parent entry, and leave the link red until someone stumbles upon it and is willing to manually create an article on it. I disagree, but I don't really think there's much point to arguing about it. I see the red links and I want to know something about the place and rather than create an unlikely-to-be-expanded-anytime-soon-or-maybe-not-ever stub, I prefer to place the information where there is some context for it. BTW, I would suggest that Oak Valley, New Jersey and Turnersville, New Jersey should be edited to clarify that they are census-designated places and not "towns" in any official sense. older≠wiser

15:51, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

I am not saying that that is the only use of the word--however, it is a very common use of the word, despite your intransigence. I never denied that it is a common use of the word. However, calling unincorporated populated places cities is very common too. A redirect to an article which explains why the redirect goes there is, IMO, preferable to either nothing at all (red links) or to a stub with limited prospect for expansion. I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think sometimes a red link is preferable to a redirect. This is especially true when a redirect is rather arbitrary. You have listed some situations where it might make sense, but I don't think we should systematically go in and change all of them. BTW, I would suggest that Oak Valley, New Jersey and Turnersville, New Jersey should be edited to clarify that they are census-designated places and not "towns" in any official sense. I'd like to see a definition of what is and is not a "town", then (as well as what is and is not considered incorporated). Because, while I understand where you're coming from trying to restrict the use of the term "city" I've never heard of such a restriction on the term "town". According to town, In the United States of America, the meaning of the term town varies from state to state. In some states, a town is an incorporated municipality, that is, one with a charter received from the state, similar to a city. Typically, municipalities are classed as cities, towns, or villages in decreasing order of size, although not all states have all three. Many states do not use the term "town" for incoporated municipalities. In some states, for example Wisconsin, "town" is used in the same way that civil township is used in elsewhere. In other states, such as Michigan, the term "town" has no official meaning and is simply used informally to refer to a populated place, whether incorporated or not.. According to unincorporated, an unincorporated town is usually not subject to or taxed by a city government. I don't know what basis the census department had for calling Oak Valley a town, but as the original rambot page used that term I assume it did so. And I can tell you without a doubt that Oak Valley is part of Deptford Township. Maybe they used to be separate and then they merged? Would this qualify as a town? anthony (see warning) 18:30, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[5]. No, it doesn't seem Oak Valley was ever incorporated. I'd still like to see documentation as to how that makes it not a "town", though. anthony (see warning) 18:33, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't think we should systematically go in and change all of them. OK, but I think we may be working with different understandings of "sytematically". One of my ongoing projects is to "systematically" work through the entire

List of cities, villages, and townships in Michigan and make sure there is "something" there for everything, whether it is a separate article or a redirect. I do not plan to do it mechanistically--but do a bit of research and exercise discretion about whether to create an article or a redirect. I think sometimes a red link is preferable to a redirect. I disagree, provided that the redirected article contains an indication as to why the redirect is appropriate. I would rather be able to learn something from an appropriate redirect with an explanation than not learn anything useful from a red link. I'd like to see a definition of what is and is not a "town" Good luck with that--I think it is one of the most ambiguous terms for human settlements around. BTW, I think you may have misunderstood me. I wasn't suggesting that the NJ CDPs should NOT be characterized as towns (although I prefer the less ambiguous term "unincorporated community" or simply "community"), just that the situation be clarified to indicate that they do not have any legal status as organized municipalities. The term "town" did not come from the Census Bureau, which refers to them as CDPs. Rambot used town to describe CDPS, which, IMO, was one of the biggest failures of Rambot and has been the cause of considerable confusion. older≠wiser

19:09, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

One of my ongoing projects is to "systematically" work through the entire

List of cities, villages, and townships in Michigan and make sure there is "something" there for everything, whether it is a separate article or a redirect. I do not plan to do it mechanistically--but do a bit of research and exercise discretion about whether to create an article or a redirect. I guess that's fine. My main concern was that we'd be creating redirects out of laziness, because we know that the place is part of a larger place, but we don't even bother to check whether more than that can be said. I wasn't suggesting that the NJ CDPs should NOT be characterized as towns (although I prefer the less ambiguous term "unincorporated community" or simply "community"), just that the situation be clarified to indicate that they do not have any legal status as organized municipalities. If I could definitively say that about Oak Valley or Turnersville, I would. All I know for sure is that Oak Valley is located within Deptford Township, and that Turnersville is located within Washington Township. Incidently, it seems that wouldn't fall under unincorporated, as we have it defined, as the places are part of a municipality, they just (probably?) aren't municipalities themselves. I suppose I can change Oak Valley to "Oak Valley is a section of Deptford Township, located in Gloucester County..." That's what they always called it when they dispatched the fire department. "Deptford Township, the Oak Valley section". The term "town" did not come from the Census Bureau, which refers to them as CDPs. Hmm, I just looked it up, and you're right. But I have seen rambot use the term CDP before. anthony (see warning)

19:57, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think it is safe to say that Oak Valley itself is not incorporated as a separate municipality. Incorporation actually gets very confusing, as you've probably noticed, and I've seen where even official sites fudge the matter. There is an important distinction between entities such as Counties or Townships, which, at least initially, are defined, created and exist as municipal entities solely through acts of the state legislature. These are sometimes called "general law" municipalities. Strictly speaking, they are not incorporated in the same way as cities or villages, in which residents request to become incorporated. The former are more properly described as being "organized" rather than incorporated. And in some states the distinction is even further blurred, in that counties and townships may be granted "charter" status or "home rule" powers, in which case they are incorporated. General law entities typically have an extremely narrow range of options for administering governmental affairs prescribed and limited by law, while incorporated entities generally have much greater leeway in determining how to run their own affairs. BTW, I've not ever seen an unedited Rambot article use the term CDP (except in the title for disambiguation purposes). There are a number of editors who have edited Rambot CDP articles to either substitute a different term for "town" or try and make it clear that "town" is not a legal designation in those articles. older≠wiser 00:45, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)

FWIW, some of the "cities" listed on

As to having the links in the browser-viewable version, we like it that way. It allows for easy navigation to articles on the topic, and enables the use of the "What links here" function. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:13, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There ought to be a link to the printable version of a page, on the sidebar. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 04:31, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

• Firstly Among other reasons, the links show that an article exists and the correct way of spelling it and helps duplucation of several articles on the same thing with different spellings. It is also a much more expedient way of browsing related aticles or being prompted that there is one.
• Secondly It helps with random reading. Traditional Enyclopedias often taught what the reader stumbled accross without looking up and this draws one to do this on Wikipedia
• Thirdly How did you survive in a precomputing age library? Editing the text of something that is already prepared by other people is hardly that onerous. Furthermore if it is for class, how about doing it in your own words you lazy little turd!

An old grumpy fart

I assumed TF was a teacher, and wanted to copy and distribute the text of one of our articles to his or her class. Paul August 18:13, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Even more reason for me to despair about the youth of today when they have teachers like that grumble grumble.....Still an old grumpy fart

Generally links are one of the great things about an online encyclopedia. There are many benefits as

Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context), it's a judgment call, and editors disagree about specific cases. Paul August

18:13, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Agree with Paul, it's possible to overdo it, but the vast majority of articles I've seen seem to strike a good balance. One more thing -- if you create an account, you can also create your own user stylesheet at User:Username/monobook.css. See m:User Styles for information on how to do so; copying the relevant sections of the global "print" stylesheet (anyone know the proper name of it?) into your user stylesheet should remove all visible links from your (and only your) viewing experience. Catherine | talk 23:15, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Judging mainly by filenames, I'd guess the styles applied when printing come from commonPrint.css and/or wikiprintable.css - IMSoP 21:29, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think a featured article and a featured article candidates category would both be very useful, and lessen the need for the big long (and about to become bigger and bigger...). It would also be very handy as an index. Do I need to gather community support to do this or should I just go ahead and do this? JOHN COLLISON | (Ludraman) 23:29, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

They already exist at:

• Category:Wikipedia featured articles
• Category:Wikipedia featured article candidates
• Category:Wikipedia featured article candidates (contested)

Wikipedia:Featured articles exists to keep track of which articles have already been featured on the main page, format the category nicely, etc. (This page should still continue to exist until and unless the chief FA maintainers (i.e., Raul654) decide that switching over to categories would reduce their workloads, not increase them.) • Benc • 04:31, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The Portal is fun at the moment. Folks seem to be working on it, and that makes me happy, cuz I had no clue how to fix it. Someone moved it, possibly multiple times, to .. oddly named pages.

We don't let normal users delete pages. Why do we let them move pages? Ponder what it takes.

1. To fix a deletion, you merely undelete. Right?
2. To fix a move of this caliber, you seem to have to contact a dev.

We don't allow normal users to delete, so why do we allow them to move pages? I have no problem with creaing a "Requests for move" page, but this kind of activity could be absolutely destructive to the pedia.

I propose we limit access to "Move" to admins and above only.

--Golbez 08:51, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it seems some of the more persistant vandals discovered they can create more harm by moving a page than by simply vandalizing its content. I wouldn't go as far as prohibit moving for normal users completely, as that will only create many cut-and-copy moves with the inherent loss of editing history - but what we could need would be a move-protection, so we can prevent the malicious moving of those pages which create most harm. Especiall user pages should be move-protected by default, which would avoid vandals moving a user page to an insulting name. andy

and/or

1. allow users to move-protect pages in their own user area (but probably not their user talk area), so only an administrator can move it. (To move it yourself, if you are not an admin, you would unprotect it).
2. work out an easier way for admins to undo a move

I'm not sure I see the best answer to all of this, but I'd love to see a good worked-through idea. -- Jmabel 19:33, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

For an unrelated reason, a Wikipedia:Requested moves page is currently in the works. See: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#requested moves -- policy change? • Benc • 20:21, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have just run across my first easter egg hiden in the Wikipedia. I wanted to report it like on

#ffdead is very common. Happens to be an often appropriate color and easily remembered. I use it often. You'll find it all over the Internet, if you look. -- Jmabel 21:21, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

It's probably originally from the X11 color "NavajoWhite". Goplat 23:07, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There is a proposal to move

• September 11, 2001 attacks
• September 11, 2001, attacks
• 9/11
• September 11 attacks
• September 11th attacks
• Attacks of September 11, 2001

Feel free to express your preference(s) and help with any decision to move or not move the page.

zoney ♣ talk 13:16, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

See wiktionary:Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Associative Wiktionary. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 16:45, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

User:Xed, the creator of CROSSBOW, a project to eliminate Wikipedia's systemic bias, has apparently decided to leave Wikipedia indefinitely. Since I didn't want his excellent work to go to waste, I moved his project page (by request) to Wikipedia:CROSSBOW. Those involved should figure out what to do next. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 02:42, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

I'm back in on this. As some of you know, I thought this was generally a good idea, but wasn't happy with where Xed was taking it and decided I'd do best to stay out of his way. I've taken the liberty of starting two QuickPolls at Wikipedia:CROSSBOW to try to get consensus on where we should go from here:

• Poll 1: whether to make this a Wikiproject, just maintain a tasklist, or do something else
• Poll 2: what to call it.

Anyway, I'm ready to give some serious effort to this thing; I've rejoined and I hope some others will sign up as well. -- Jmabel 03:27, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

You could do worse than start by changing its name. Using a weapon as a name of a project is, at best, a little unfortunate. --Tagishsimon

Agreed; it will be

Wikipedia:WikiProject countering systemic bias. We're still hammering out a few details, but it should be ready to go "live" in about another day. -- Jmabel

00:35, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Just to bring everyone up to date, he's back, the project is Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias, and it's launched. -- Jmabel 21:23, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

The somewhat delayed Wikipedia:External links/temp seems to be ready to be adopted as a set of guidelines for including external links (and replace its parent page). I don't know if I should bring it to a vote or anything yet. Maybe a few people should give the page a once-over and then we'll decide if its ready. —siroχo 21:35, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

(I split up the discussion, since we are now talking about a slightly different topic. SirJective)

[...] Another such list that would be useful would be to take the <city>, <state> US placename format and find all those for which the base <city> article does not exist. —Morven

It should be quite easy for me to tweak my program so that it finds article "XXX, YYY" without article "XXX". The decision if it's a city could then be made manually, and perhaps by adding certain criterions to the search (I will first check how many such articles exist). Any suggestions how such a list should be called?

Addition: I found a total of 42000 such articles, thereof at most 30000 ending with a U.S. State name (in the form "AL" or "Alabama"). The search is not yet working as expected, but there will be lots of such articles. --SirJective 10:36, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Is here a dedicated page to ask for the semiautomatic creation of special lists (e.g. using SQL statements), or is the village pump used for that? And another question to the sysops: Is the Special:Asksql function deactivated here too (at de: it seems to be)? --SirJective 13:50, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My impression is that this kind of report is best produced from a downloaded copy of the database. User:Topbanana sems to specialise in this kind of thing and has created Wikipedia:Offline reports which is probably helpful to you. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 11:58, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

Phil, thank you for your information. At de: we have de:Wikipedia:Datenbank-Abfragen where on the talk page one can request lists of articles meeting certain criteria and someone (lately me) will create and perform the request and upload the result. I liked to offer my help here :-) --SirJective 11:15, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The city list contains 28000 titles of the form "xxx, yyy" where "xxx" and "yyy" contain no ", " and "yyy" is one of the 50 U.S. state names in both forms "Alabama" or "AL". Additionally there are 5000 titles where "xxx" contains ", " itself, most of them are like

Abington Township, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, where there is no Abington Township

. Should I upload these too?

In that latter case, the check would actually be whether there was an article for Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, the "containing entity" (in this case there is). HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 12:58, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand this--ideally, there should also be a redirect or disambiguation page at least at Abington Township, Pennsylvania. With so many locales in the U.S. (and with many already criticizing the huge number of articles about obscure places in the U.S.), I'm not sure if there is much value to having redirects or disambigs for every unqualified locale name (e.g., Abington Township). (Phil | Talk pp) User:Bkonrad

Sorry, I got confused again. Given an article named "town, county, state", as quoted above, if there is another similar article with "town" and "state" the same but with different "county", there probably ought to be an article named "town, state" listing all the towns with that name in that state. What (whoever the heck that was, oh it was User:Bkonrad, I'll take the liberty of signing it) is saying is that having an article named simply "town", and listing all the towns with that name in the entire US, is probably not helpful. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 14:18, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Precisely, sorry about forgetting to sign. older≠wiser 15:07, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Let's unravel this...

• I created a list of "city, state" and am waiting for suggestions on the title of that list.

• Articles of the form "town, county, state" should have:
  1. always an article "county, state"
  2. in case of multiple countys an article "town, state"
  3. unless otherwise useful no article "town"

So my second list covers exactly the third, nonwanted case *g* I'll go check on the first case. --SirJective 14:44, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

1) Yes, there should always exist a "County, State" for any article of the form "Town, County, State"

2) I think yes. For cases such as "Town, County1, State" and "Town, County2, State", there should always be an article of the form "Town, State"

3) Let me check on something here--If there are articles such as "Town, State1" and "Town, State2", there generally should be a disambiguation page "Town" for these. However, there is not, as a rule, articles of the form "Town" corresponding to every single "Town, State" article.

older≠wiser 15:07, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

I use "city" and "town" synonymously for the purpose of this discussion, I hope that's OK with all of you. So the "city, state" list will also find "Town, State1" and "Town, State2", and due to the lack of proper distinction also "Town, State1" without "Town, State2", as long as there is no "Town". The decision which articles should be created would therefore be left to the ones who work with the list. --SirJective 16:11, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I upload a part of the list for you to look over it, as User:SirJective/tmp_a. Please find a good name for the list. --SirJective 17:05, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This looks interesting. As for a name, how about User:SirJective/U.S. cities lacking redirects? About the report itself--two things:

1. Many of the items listed appear be cases with two entries, such as "City, ST" and "City, State", where ST is the two letter abbreviation for State. The "City, ST" entry should always a redirect to "City, State", so if possible, it would be helpful to eliminate pairs where ST is same as State. What might be of some value to identify if there are any cases where there is an article (not a redirect) at "City, ST" and also at the equivalent "City, State".
2. Thanks to Rambot, there are a lot of anomalous parenthetical disambiguations for U.S. cities. Thus there are a lot of instances such as "Place (City), State" and "Place (Town), State", with similar variations for CDPs and Villages. This can be quite confusing. Basically, we would never want anything at simply "Place (City)" or "Place (Town)". What might be helpful is to ignore the parenthesis after the Place name. So, for example, if there are articles of the form "Place (City), State" and "Place (Town), State" there should be something at "Place, State". Where this really gets messy, is that titles of the form "Place, County, State" should also figure in the comparison.

older≠wiser 14:55, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Some of them need redirects, and some of them need disambiguation. So let's hold this title as a candidate.

I hope I can manage to automatically identify pairs "City, ST" / "City, State". Then I can check wether "City, ST" is a redirect to the article "City, State", and in this case suppess "City, ST" and otherwise add a remark to the entry.

It should be much easier to implement the removal of the parenthesis from "Adams (town), New York" to get Adams. BTW: That page also links to many "Adams Township". Sould there be a separate article Adams Township?

--SirJective 15:27, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Re: Adams Township -- I don't think it would be of great value, but it might be of some interest. Townships are minor civil divisions of a county. Even people who live in them are not always aware of what township they live in, and references to a township are almost always in the context of a county and state, so there is likely little value in making a general disambiguation page for them beyond the state level. However, within a state, there can be confusion between multiple townships and a city or village with the same name--so a Township disambig page at the state level is useful. In cases where there is a multi-state (or multi-country) disambig page for a place name, sometimes townships are also included, just for completeness. older≠wiser 15:58, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

That depends on what state. In New England, townships are more important than counties. Even in New York they are pretty important. Offhand, I don't think any of the West Coast states even have them. Township (United States) is currently a stub, could certainly use serious work. -- Jmabel 19:20, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Aren't they called "Towns" in New York and New England? They are all those articles with "Place (town), State". While both terms have been used historically somewhat interchangeably, it seems that New York and New England settled on "Town" for an official designation, while Pennsylvania and midwestern states (except Wisconsin) settled on "Township" as the official designation. I quite agree that Towns are important designations in New England. I'm not so sure about New York, but Wisconsin uses Town in much the same way that other midwest states use Township. Beyond the midwest, Towns/Townships were surveyed, but were generally not used as civil divisions of government. Even in some midwestern states, there may be named townships used for Census statitistical purposes, but they are not organized units of government. Also, I'm not saying that townships in midwestern states are unimportant--its just that they are not nearly as distinct as incorporated municipalities like cities or villages. The townships provide important governmental functions in Michigan, especially in rural areas, but still, many people couldn't tell you what township they're in--while it would be extremely rare to find someone who did not know what city or village they lived in. older≠wiser 19:32, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

I upload another demo list, User:SirJective/tmp_b, which contains

• "city, state" articles without "city, ST" or vice versa,
• redirects "city, state",
• non-redirects "city, ST"
• redirects "city, ST" not linking to "city, state".

All this for the state of Alabama. I did not put all "city, state" without "city" into this list (I have now put it in), but some of them are nevertheless listed due to the other criteria.

I think, the title "U.S. cities lacking redirects" fits more to this list :-) --SirJective 19:01, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

tmp b is now almost done. All remaining red-links are handled at a different capitalization, except for two--I haven't mustered the courage to tackle disambs for Margaret and Theodore. I don't think all 150-200 people named Margaret and 100+ people named Theodore need to be listed, but the older ones that are like Margaret the whatsit, and Theodore of whereever probably should be. Oh, and Union probably needs stuff added to the list. Niteowlneils 02:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. There's so much to do that I think you won't have to create the pages strictly alphabetically :-) Some temporary gaps are IMHO acceptable.

I will continue uploading the list as soon as I have rewritten my (unfortunaly lost) program. --SirJective 11:52, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The list User:SirJective/tmp_a now contains the same type of list as tmp_b, but for all 50 states and all titles starting with "A - Am". Is it now in a format you can work with? --SirJective 11:56, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

At the german WP, I created (following someone elses idea) a list of articles whose title has parenthesis, like "name (topic)", for which there is no article with the stripped title "name". The german list is here. I could create such a list for the english WP (it will contain 4000 articles). At the german WP the list is considered useful for creating missing disambiguation pages or removing the parenthesis where it is not needed.

demo list removed, please see the full list

So what do you think about such a list? --SirJective 19:03, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Useful. [...] —Morven

Then I will soon upload a new list. Any suggestions about the title? SirJective

I uploaded the parenthesis list as User:SirJective/Parenthesis. SirJective

Careful with the USS articles. The parens are the ship hull number and the proper title of the ship. Yes, they eventually should have index pages for the numerous ships that carry the same name. A strict removal of the paren is not a good idea in this case. Not a complaint, just a note of caution. Jinian 15:40, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Jinian, you're right. --SirJective 20:44, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

From now on please use User_talk:SirJective/Parenthesis for discussion of articles that should be handled carefully. --SirJective 20:44, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There is no listing in Wikipedia for this condition. It must be rare; I've worked in the medical field for 23 years and have never heard it, but it is in the medical dictionaries. They don't specify what it means, however. Gawaine --172.128.85.138 11:45, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Added to Wikipedia:Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences#Health Science. -- Paddu 20:37, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My first guess would be something related to

Joan Jett's band, but....the only relevant Google hit defined it as "melanosis of the heart." [6] (Webster's 1913, colorfully or not, describes melanosis as "The morbid deposition of black matter, often of a malignant character, causing pigmented tumors.") -- then again, I suspect it may be someone else's obscure joke... [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\^talk

]] 13:33, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Fredrik | talk 15:30, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I am sure something like that is already happening inofficially - those interested in a field of knowledge monitor the related articles already, most commonly by watchlist. Categories aren't that handy for that task yet - often there are many small sub-categories, thus many single category pages to monitor. Maybe that will become better once it's possible to get all pages in a category including all subcategories listed at once. Yet in case the vandal removes the category tag the article will be no longer present in the category, and thus you won't see the vandalism anymore - and page blanking is still a popular way of vandalism. Another way I use for monitoring the changes in topics related to Thailand is the List of Thailand related topics, the link "Related changes" shows all the latest edits. However unlike categories that list have to be maintained manually. andy 12:51, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It would not let you see the removal of the category tag, but for other edits: An additional "related changes" function for the categorized articles. This way it would work like a manually maintained list. --SirJective 19:19, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Why not make this an optional thing for WikiProjects to do? Ideally, every article category should be covered by at least one WikiProject. • Benc • 20:17, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This has tie-in with the auto-generated special interest groups idea that I've posted further down the page. I was thinking that these Special Interest Groups might serve as administrative divisions, but I was waiting to see reactions to the general idea first before adding that complication. The Special Interest Groups and Categories wouldn't be one-to-one, but the effect would be the same. crazyeddie 21:55, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to move "Thomas Lynch (disambiguation)" to "Thomas Lynch". I moved the previous article under Thomas Lynch to "Thomas Lynch (statesman)"; given that his son (Jr.) was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and that there are several other notables with the name, I didn't think it was reasonable to conclude he was clearly the best-known. I believe I've moved all the other links/redirects correctly. MisfitToys 21:09, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Done and done. :) (I wikied the names in your comment so I could leap to them easily) --Golbez 21:25, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Many thanks! MisfitToys 22:13, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

If someone could move

Done -- Chris 73 Talk 02:21, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

It would be enormously helpful to have a standardised Wiki syntax for pronunciations (i.e., phonetic transcriptions), in a similar spirit to the way dates are currently treated. Currently, pronunciations (of, for example, place names) are given in a haphazard and unsystematic way using a number of inconsistent systems (International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), SAMPA, X-SAMPA, Kirshenbaum,

There was a lengthy debate at

The idea would be to let users enter pronunciation in a number of systems, but that this would be wikified into a single wiki markup, which can then be rendered in various ways.

This is possible since there is a deterministic and straightforward translation between these formats (with the exception that you can only translate into simplified English pronunciation, since it contains less information).

I'm sure many wikipedians would happily weed articles to add the appropriate syntax.

There would be several advantages to this:

1. It would enable people to set a preference for how they prefer to see pronunciations. I, myself, prefer IPA, but some people don't have the necessary fonts so need to use SAMPA, and I'm sure many people would prefer simplified English phonetics.

Most people probably don't care, but this would allow the needs of those who prefer linguistically accurate transcriptions to be met along with those who want something more straightforward.

2. It would lead to more concise articles, since currently people often add pronunciations in more than one system.

3. It would make it easier to actually enter phonetics in the IPA. You could, for example, enter it in the ASCII-based SAMPA system, and after wikification, view it in the IPA. This would be easier than having to figure out the html markup for IPA symbols, and also more meaningful in the source.

4. Standardisation. A pronunciation system should be formalised and centralised in one location, rather than made up in an ad hoc way on an article by article basis. For example, there was a proposal for a

5. Extensibility. In principle, new phonetic systems could be added in future (this is not quite as nerdish as it sounds). Once the framework is up and running, we can add or modify systems, but the point is that this would only need to be done in one central place.

Eoghan 15:57, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is a system for entering IPA symbols current undergoing testing at Wikisophia. You might be particularly interested in this. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:10, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Cool. This still doesn't allow customisation like I suggested (and therefore will not help IPA-haters), but if tipa was adopted as a wiki syntax standard then we could do that. Eoghan 18:01, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 10:32, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC))'

I notice several Wikipedia biographies link to my database of pedigrees. (freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~jamesdow) Would there be interest in Wikipedia hosting the entire database? This might have many advantages.

Despite the open (anarchistic?) Wikipedia policies, this is not something I could just start doing myself. For one thing, Wikipedians should help decide the best format.

-- James D. Allen (e-mail: fabpedigree at yahoo or jamesdowallen at gmail.)

We are in the planning stages of developing just such a project. See

mav

18:38, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There are various specialised genealogies out there, which the wikipedia should subsume and improve on. Some of them are now moribund. See, for example, http://sigact.acm.org/genealogy/ (theoretical computer scientists) and http://www.genealogy.ams.org/ (mathematicians). Eoghan 17:53, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We need Wikipedia gear. T-Shirts, Sweatshirts, HOODIES, Hats, etc. They'd help raise money and generate traffic/interest besides just being insanely cool. I'd buy one if good quality items were available; CaféPress sucks, but it's probably the fastest way for this to happen. Anyway, I'm sure you guys can figure out the technicalities. ^__^

Anybody with me?

http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia But it never has brought in much money at all. --

mav

18:36, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's cool, thanks for showing me. It'd probably do a lot better if you guys used something besides CafePress...they always have real low-quality products. Just iron-ons. Try a place like CustomInk.com and put the links in a prominent place on the site and I think that will help out a lot. I'm not going to buy from CaféPress. !Cookiecaper 05:21, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I propose a 'Wikipedia is my television' or 'Alt-x is my remote control' bumper stickers, I would buy one. Libber

How about, "Real Men/Women Edit Wikipedia"? Or, "Vanity. Delete." Perhaps a little more obscurely, "{{pfd|person={{YOURNAME}}}}". And, of course, "Cabal Member Since (project join date)".

Dudes. I just want to say, that was one of the geekiest conversations I've ever read. Congratulations Sirs

Can we have the one-equals headers back for the Pump? Why do they exist at all if we're not supposed to use them? It muchly improves the look of the pump to have the little HRs under each heading, instead of headers floating in space, and this only happens if the section headers are ==, and the major sections are = or ==. But on another question, is there any use for = headers at all? --Golbez 15:59, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

Actually no, look at Wikipedia:Village pump, the == headers are used to seperate the sections, === are for topics. -- Solitude 17:46, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

But that destroys the usefulness of the "start a new discussion" link, as that creates headings at the == level. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:59, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Star Trek information on Wikipedia can be characterized as mostly "barely okay" with the exception of a few stellar articles. My intention is to vastly increase the quality, quantity, and general goodness of all Star Trek related information. I should say that I am not a Trekkie and so I am not as well informed about all things Star Trek as some of you might be, but I am slowly but surely making improvements to related articles. You can too!

My specialties lie in

What needs to be done:

• There is a serious lack of episode information. They should be fairly easy to create: everytime you watch a Star Trek episode, get on Wikipedia and create the related article. I tried to make one episode article that could be used as a general guide: In the Pale Moonlight. By all means it isn't perfect or anything, and I encourage you to improve it, but if every episode could be wikified as such, we'd be a long way towards our project goals. Many episodes are refered to in Star Trek articles... this would provide valuable background information. A true encyclopedia.
• Images! There is a veritable infinite number of images that can be used under
  Bolian
  ).
• And much, much more. There is a large variety of types of articles one could work on, from technology to history to politics to popular culture.

How to get started:

1. Go to United Federation of Planets or Star Trek and start clicking links. Most of them are shallow entries. Star improving them. Add pictures.
2. A great resource is Memory Alpha. All the content there can be taken so long as you provide a link back to the source. Most empty articles here have write-ups there. Take and build upon them.

Go!

Simply put, we need to rekindle my proposed "take-over" of Memory Alpha. Currently, we try to get recent copies of their articles on our site, but that's falling through the cracks ever so quickly. They want to create a definitive guide to Trek, we want to create a definitive guide to the universe. What's to lose? Is there any objections to me contacting them again, and proposing a merger of sorts. -- user:zanimum

I don't oppose a complete take-over of the site, but I doubt they would agree to it. A more realistic option is to take advantage of their wiki-friendly copyright policy and just take articles that are better than ours and integrate them into this site (I have begun doing this.) So long as a link to Memory Alpha is included within the text, it is all perfectly legal. EDGE 22:44, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

Note that MA is actually not using a license compatible with Wikipedia, they use the Creative Commons no commercial usage license. Using a non-commercial license is

prohibited. -- Solitude

18:20, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

Since there already is Memory Alpha, would it not be more profitable to leave documenting Star Trek to them, and work on things that there is actually a shortage of knowledge on? DJ Clayworth 14:38, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I can't say much for your 'template' episode; there's nothing in the first paragraph establishing that (1) we're discussing a TV episode; (2) that the events described are fictional ocurrences. Every article needs to have context established, no matter what it's about or where in the heirarchy it is. As well, the episode description seems to sound more like a review at times; try to keep it NPOV where possible. Radagast 16:25, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

I think you're completely right about the context. I will make appropriate corrections. Where, precisely, do you see POV text? Is it the part about it being considered a Star Trek classic? This is widely accepted among Trekkies. Check the Star Trek review websites or even the episode page on Startrek.com itself. If the POV is elsewhere, please list it so I can review your claim. Thanks, EDGE 22:42, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't seem as POV on second reading; sorry about that criticism. Do please get that context in, as I feel like i'm reading an episode guide and not an article. Radagast 12:02, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

Does it look better now? --Phil | Talk 13:47, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

It does; I've also put quotes on the episode title and tialicized the name of the program, these are standard formatting. No further objections. Radagast 13:13, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

Original broadcast dates would be nice, as would the episode's writer and director. MK 03:55, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Just a note, to expand on Radagast's idea of how the articles should work. I think a good idea when dealing with so-called "fancruft", which many of these articles are is to ensure that the articles are encyclopedic with relation to the real world. That is, each article should explain the significance of its topic to the plots, themes, and effect on the viewer, thus representing it as fiction of a certain significance. No article should just be a book-report, that is not an encyclopedic account of a topic. —siroχo 23:37, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

• Alternate meaning 1...
• Alternate meaning 2...
• Etc...

|}

I would like to suggest a formatting change where articles have one or more other uses appearing at the bottom. Current convention is to separate it from the preceding article with a horizontal rule, but this isn't the best formatting when dealing with longer articles. The alternate meaning does not show up in the table of contents, and it is easy to overlook a small blurb at the end of the article. Instead I suggest using one of two other methods: 1). Move the alternate meanings to a disambiguation page and include links between that new page and the current page. 2.) Create a new "Other uses" section at the bottom of the page (see example at right). (It would be "Other uses" only because many articles, including the new

People generally won't complain if you move the different meanings to their own page and create a disambiguation page. I find the horizontal rule method annoying too and I generally treat it as a vestage of the days before we figured out how to do disambiguation. anthony (see warning) 16:11, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• List of links

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" />