Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive AD

just suggested should be partially merged with Graphic lab) --Quiddity

04:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

My name is Justin Hadcock. I graduated from the State University of Oswego, NY with a BA in Public Relations. I did a similar marketing program at Fair Haven Beach State Park in NY during my summer internship, administrators at the park asked me to put together a creative PR campaign on campers needs and wants. Through my research I found out that many of the campers just wanted to be included in the parks programming and operations. Basically the campers wanted to be regarded more than a camper they wanted to be felt like they were family. They felt apart of the family through various programs we let them create. The park became one of the best visited parks in the United States. Thanks one again. Please email me or call my business phone 315-806-4580 anytime. Thanks once again. I praise your project. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lordhaddy19 (talk • contribs)

However, I'm kind of confused what the parent name of the project is, is it wikipedia? or wikimedia? The parent organization of Wikipedia and numerous other collaborative projects is the Wikimedia Foundation.

Maybe even buy out google Earth. The foundation has less than 10 full time people, an annual budget on the order of $2 million, and is funded through donations. I don't see buying out any part of Google (market capitalization of what, $100 billion?) anytime in the near future.

Where people who are wrong or misusing the system can be tracked through IP or user name and penalized by adding or subtracting WikiPoints. Ignoring for the moment the issue of who decides that one user is "right" and one user is "wrong" when there is a content disagreement, we here at Wikipedia have a more straightforward approach to those misusing the system - we explain what they are doing wrong, and if they don't stop, we

block

them.

In closing, may I suggest that if you are interested in improving Wikipedia, you take some time to actually understand it (editing articles for at least a month would be a good way to start), and that you follow the norms here. For example, you'll probably notice that there are no other users posting long messages with multiple suggestions that mention their name and qualifications in both the first and last paragraphs; rather, each idea gets its own section, and ideas stand or fall on their own, not on their owner's credentials. You might want to read

Wikipedia:How to create policy for starters, for example. -- John Broughton (☎☎)

18:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

There is of course a free alternative to Google Earth:

NASA World Wind.--Pharos

08:41, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I was interested in setting up a contest for the best pictures personally taken by wikipedia members that had been released into the public domain and added to important pages (such as core topics or featured articles) within a period of time (such as 2007). The winner would be selected by a panel of wikipedia individuals (perhaps administrators) that had some expertise in photography. The winner would be awarded a barnstar and given some amount of money (like $100 which I would put up). I was wondering if anybody had done anything like this and what the community thought about it. Remember 12:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Nice idea, but I don't think you need to offer money: If you see the heraclean efforts that some editors put into getting their articles to FA status, just bragging rights alone should be enough impetus. --Slashme 13:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

True, but I think a nominal money award lets the entrants know that it is a legitimate contest with some heft and not some guy and his friends just handing out barnstars to people. Hopefully, if we get the right reviewers involved it will be considered as prestigious as winning other photo contests. Remember 13:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you aware of Wikipedia:Featured pictures? --ais523 13:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and I think featured pictures is a wonderful policy. But featured pictures doesn't encourage people to contribute to core articles, doesn't rank the pictures in order in terms of the best picture for a certain time period and doesn't actually have to be taken by the person who submits it. That's why I proposed this contest. Remember 13:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

In addition, prizes seem to encourage better participation and more innovation. See NY Times article on prizes to reward innovation Remember 14:07, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Why not just make a post on the Bounty board or Reward board? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I could do that. But the idea is to set up a repeating award, not a one-time payment in return for a specific task. Remember 14:55, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the incentive of ones work becoming a "featured photo" is enough. But I think some people upload and nominate their own good photos which don't contribute much to article. Nice photo, but I didn't learn anything. --

Indolences

17:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

A similar competition is running on Commons at the moment. Have a look at Commons:Picture of the Year 2006 --MichaelMaggs 22:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

When I search for something, I (most of the time) go straight to one article. Could we have it where a search page comes up and gives a list of related articles?

Jeremyp1988 18:09, 9 February 2007 (UTC)Jeremyp1988

I don't know if this is what you mean, but if you click on 'Go' or press return, it jumps straight to an article if there's one with that name, or if there's a redirect in place from that name (people add the redirects to help out the search engine, among other reasons), and if you click on 'Search', you'll always get the list of search results. --ais523 18:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Currently, getting administrator attention for cases of vandalism is a somewhat time-consuming process, which includes a need to place notices on the page of the culprit, etc. My suggestion is to add a checkbox to the editor screen to explicitly flag certain edits or sets of edits as vandalism when cleaning it up. The idea is that when this checkbox is used, it will result in a notice being created and posted to special page that can be watched by sysops and/or a warning placed on the user page of the editor.

I am hoping that this will make vandalism reporting and tracking easier, and will also result in more timely blocks of the culprits. "The burned hand teaches best". Often a vandal will be around for 10 minutes or so hitting as mamy pages as they can before getting off. Sometimes a notice is all that is needed. Other times an admin needs to get involved. However, while one is setting up the message or sending a cry for help to

The one problem that I can see with this is that vandals and edit warriers may latch onto this feature and start flagging legitimate edits as "vandalism". So a page is needed to track complaints in that regard, as well as a policy for deaing with it. My suggestion is to consider obviously malicious use of the vandalism flag to be serious violation of

I also call for the imposition of the blocks to be done manually, albeit with appropriate tools to streamline to process as much as possible. It seems to me that any blocks need to be based on a competent administrator having looked over the issue determining if it is true vandalism, an attempt to subvert the flag, or being just plain mistaken on the part of the initiating editor. Also, it means that there is someone who can be held accountable for the block if it should turn out to be inappropriate. --EMS | Talk 16:51, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

getting administrator attention for cases of vandalism is a somewhat time-consuming process - actually, posting at

WP:AIV

is among the easiest things to do at Wikipedia. I also call for the imposition of the blocks to be done manually - well, they are done manually now, and no one is proposing that this be changed, so that's a rather moot point.

As for the "click and post" approach to vandalism, the problem is the one size doesn't fit all - sometimes it's appropriate to start with a level 3 or 4 warning, sometimes level 1; it really depends on what kind of vandalism is involved. Similarly, if the user has done some constructive edits, some leniency might be shown in the escalation of warnings. Anonymous IP editors need different handling than registered users (for example, for school IP addresses). And there already are automated tools that make vandal-fighting easier - see Category:Wikipedia counter-vandalism tools and Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 18:06, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that you are missing the point here. Most of the time I just revert and move on. Sometimes I will track down the vandal and leave a message. On still fewer occasions I will check the vandals contributions and do a revert campaign, and if the person remains active I will post a notice. Still, those things take time. For a generated message, it should be short, sweet, and fatual; and should probably include a link to a page where one can make a case for the edit not being vandalism. Alternatively, no message would be generated, or a screen present to the reporter making a set of related tools available to him or her. (The screen could include selections to see the vandal's history, see the vandal's talk page, post one of the several warning templates, and even report to

WP:AIV.) Remember, the goal is to make vandalism reporting and handling easier and more efficient. --EMS | Talk

17:06, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

An RVV checkbox would have some advantages over the present ad hoc reversions. People use various phrasing to indicate vandalism, and the checkbox could add a default phrase to the edit summary (perhaps if the default message is not changed). A checkbox would also allow automatic marking of an RVV, perhaps for uses such as a Pages recently vandalized report. (SEWilco 20:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC))

I think that'd be an excellent flag to add, but it should have a check to make sure that the page is actually being restored to a previous version's exact state, to ensure people don't use it to hide sneaky changes. A filter on histories to remove reversions would also make it simpler to read some heavily vandalized pages. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:01, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

That semms reasonable to me. Indeed, the flag's applicability should be limited to reverts of one or more edits by the same user or IP as well as where no edits are being done on the text being reverted to. The former restriction permits automated tracking of the editors involved in this activity, thereby enabing the possibility of early admin intervention. --EMS | Talk 17:36, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I too have no objection to a checkbox/flag. But no one else has commented on this: The idea is that when this checkbox is used, it will result in a notice being created and posted to special page that can be watched by sysops and/or a warning placed on the user page of the editor. What EMS seems to be proposing is to use the checkbox as an alternative to this: Sometimes I will track down the vandal and leave a message. On still fewer occasions I will check the vandals contributions and do a revert campaign, and if the person remains active I will post a notice. Still, those things take time. In fact, the listed actions: (a) leaving an appropriate message (except for hit-and-run editors), (b) reviewing other editor contributions and reverting other vandalizing edits that haven't been reverted; and (c) posting a notice (at

WP:AIV

, I assume) if this is a case of repeated vandalism (level 4 warning already in place) or a vandal-only account - are exactly what should be done in all situations. Yes, they do take time.

In short, any "hit a checkbox and move on" approach simply can't determine the appropriate level of warning, won't revert other vandal edits, and leaves someone else (who?) determining when to make a request to

WP:AIV for blocking. I don't think that is a good approach. -- John Broughton (☎☎)

15:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

If there is too much work involved, nothing will get done. That is the long and the short of it. We have volunteers who are willing to be on vandal/cruft duty. Let's find the best way to make the best use of that resource and the time resourcee of the regular users. I have also put forth later in this thread to option of immadiately presenting the user flagging the vandalism with a set of tools for tracking down other vandalism by the user, sending messages to the talk page, and sending the case to

WP:AIV. Perhaps that is the way to go, but if you disagree at the least please present an alternative that will help to achieve the goal rather than complaining about people moving on. --EMS | Talk

21:48, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd been in the habit of using a template Template:Future article talk page, to start a talk page before an article is created. After applying the template to the talk page, I'd use the talk pages to post what source links I had, why I thought an article should exist here, it's notability, etc.. It seemed that wiki policy at the time served created talk pages before the article was created, if the talk page served to help create a notable article.

Either I misunderstood wiki policy of the time, or it has changed since. The template got deleted, etc. The primary reason for the deletion was the possibility of abuse I think. I still don't see that as likely. By applying a template and categorizing future article talk pages it was easy to track them, and delete them if abuse became an issue. I'd been using said template for months, I didn't see a significant amount of abuse happen.

Anyway I'd like to reexamine wikipedia's policy on talk pages that are for articles that do not exist yet, or were deleted, for each of the possible methods of deletion.

I have tried to discuss this area of wiki policy on a lot of different pages, before I got directed here :) The list of those places is here Template_talk:Future_article_talk_page.

Talk pages that exist without article pages seems like a controversial topic here. I'm betting wiki veterans have legitimate reasons for opposing the idea. I'd like to here them, because the idea worked fine for me for a few months :) Mathiastck 15:49, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Current style seems to support creating an article in userspace instead, or at least posting a stub as soon as you have enough content. PRocess around creation is pointless, might as well just be bold and go ahead and write the article already. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I tried the go bold approach first :) I do most of my wiki editing at work, and I can't justify spending enough time to create an article that can defend it's own notability. There is already process around creation, the requested articles process. I just really dislike that process, and I'm betting new users don't much like it either. Userspace pages are fine if you want to remove your efforts from the collobarative wiki process, but I would prefer a method that allowed collobaration on initial article creation, and preserved discussion on why or why not an article is notable. Mathiastck 16:58, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Defending notability is not hard, just write the most important facts in a few sentences. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm with Night Gyr. I really see no situations where it would not make sense to first write a very short stub and tag it with {{

inprogress}} if need be. Pascal.Tesson

17:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I see no problem with writing a short stub, and a larger talk page filled with less verifiable information. Mathiastck 15:46, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

What would other Wikipedians think of someone who started a business selling t-shirts? On the front of the t-shirts would be various of Wikipedia's

Perfectly legal under the GFDL, yes; but would this upset members of the community? What if, oh, say 10-20% of any profit were kicked back in the form of a donation to Wikimedia Foundation? Moreover, if this profit-seeking venture wouldn't upset you... would you want to buy such a t-shirt? Do you think such t-shirts would sell? Or would our hypothetical entrepenur be eating his or her losses? Just an idea I've come up with and thought I'd kick around. Anonymously. 70.239.89.111 01:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

You know, if you used PD or CC images, you wouldn't need the GFDL. And, putting these images on T-shirts, posters, or anywhere else that they're being spread around and taking knowledge with them is within the mission of wikipedia. You can profit off them as much as you want; spreading the knowledge, even for profit, is the whole point of using licenses that allow commercial use. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:47, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I, personally, would love such a venture. We already have something at CafePress that sells Wikimedia-related items, and you may wish to see if they're interested. Donating back a percentage of the profits would be great! (Note that even if the image is PD or CC, I believe that the caption used for the picture of the day would still have to be GFDL. I might be wrong on this, though. It would be best to consult Brad Patrick, the Foundation's general counsel, or a private legal professional to make sure you have all of your bases covered.) Keep us updated and let us know if this becomes reality. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 21:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

You could print the license on a peice of paper and ship it with the T-shirt. Im sure that would meet the requirements. You could staple it to the tag just to make it one product just to be on the safe side. The UPC has a smaller version for things like gum. Why not allow a short reference to the license for small items. --Gbleem 02:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia store at http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia is great. I wonder how management (Wikimedia foundation) feels about commercialization. I suppose there is a whole debate on whether going mainstream is a good idea. Too much growth all at once can be overwhelming. Growth inevitably requires change and that takes time. Maybe the policy is to let growth and mainstreaming happen at it's own pace. Of course, if money becomes an issue, someone will think of this. --Insect 21:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

The notes page would contain elements that have not yet been incorporated into the actual article, but which have relevance and should probably be incorporated into a later version. This would correspond with an encyclopedia's files related to an article without falling into content discussions and messy archiving.

Examples of where a notes page would be very useful.

pre-editing controversial subjects (keeping flamewars off the main page and allowing a stronger article element to be built and agreed upon in a temporary area where editors can access and refer to it easily)

adding elements in discussion in scientific journals without adding items of questionable but valid veracity to the main page

alternate elements that may not be appropriate for the main page but may come in handy for future edits. (i.e. pictures and stuff that'd be a pain in the butt to dig out of the talk archive.)

interviews/hearsay/relevant but non-encyclopediac data that isn't archived elsewhere on the web.

71.102.28.61 21:58, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

This is what talk pages are for already. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Except the fourth, which shouldn't be anywhere. -Amarkov moo! 22:37, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

If the archives are a pain to dig through you can make a special talk

subpage for a particular issue. Night Gyr (talk/Oy

) 22:39, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Most people reading this page go to the bottom for the most recent comments. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 13:16, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

i fully understand that, it must be have become a habit for people who have been here longer. but for people who are new, this is the most logical and intuitive way, to have the most recent post at the top, not at the bottom of the page. and the community want new people doesn't it. it would help a lot in the early times.

other than that, do you like scrolling to the bottom of the page to see whats new?

Yes, I just hit the "End" button on my keyboard, and it goes right to the bottom. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 13:33, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

In most forums new threads are defaulted to the top of the page (with most forums providing an option to change the default ordering in preferences to reverse this), but the thread itself, where the text appears, is in the format we read in, i.e. top down. The pages on Wikipedia are much closer in form to a forum thread itself than they are to a listing of threads.--Fuhghettaboutit 14:08, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

ok...i havent seen many forums in the way you are mentioning, i do know that there are options to reverse the ordering, but most people dont do that because, the default (i.e. the newest post first) is the most convenient. but maybe I am wrong...it would be good to know what other people think. the other thing is why have all the articles in expanded form in this page. why cant we have the topics in a single link, so that if you are interested you can always visit the particular post, but you dont have to unnecessarily browse through posts you are not interested in.

Well, no, to me (and I'm sure many others) the most logical and intuitive thing to do is to read the end of the page to see what's new. After all, we read from top to bottom, so logically the last topic comes last, not first. Anyway, haven't you noticed the table of contents, which means you don't have to browse through everything to get to the topic you want? -- Necrothesp 22:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Articles currently under AFD should temporarily be added to robots.txt to stop them google from giving pigeonrank to their subjects, for the duration of the AFD. A lot of spam is caught quickly, before it is indexed by google, and this will mean that it won't get indexed at all, if it does get deleted. Less candy for spammers. If the article survives AFD, then it comes out of robots.txt and it gets treated normally. It would also be a good idea to temporarily remove the article from the default content-dump, so that answers.com and other mirrors don't grab it, or at least incorporate a flag that stops them from using the content automatically unless they specifically choose to disable such flags. That's getting a little esoteric for me but I trust that others reading this will get the gist of what I'm saying. This should all apply to other content besides articles too; I've seen spam inserted in templates in what appears to be an attempt to escape detection. This proposal would make up one part of a zero tolerance policy. — coelacan talk — 04:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

so what happens when good articles get frivolous AfDs to keep them off the ranking index and content feeds? Also, AfD is currently entirely human based; this would require implementing a significant software change. Further, Zero Tolerance is antithetical to wikipedia's principle of

WP:AGF. Night Gyr (talk/Oy

) 03:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Good articles would merely not be indexed during the AFD. Unless I misunderstand robots.txt, doesn't it just stop google from making a new copy? So google would still have its older index. AFDs only last five days, google probably doesn't touch every article that often anyway. I don't think this would be a significant software change; I don't know but it doesn't seem like it would be a big deal. It would be invisible to humans anyway. We know for a fact that spammers are using Wikipedia to drive up their ranking, zero tolerance against them is not a violation of AGF. This will have no effect whatsoever on good new articles; anything that passes AFD gets removed from robots.txt and starts getting indexed. So at worst it only amounts to a five day delay before the first indexing, for new articles that are nominated for AFD promptly (this doesn't happen to most good new articles anyway). I see no negative side effects to this, but it would impede the results for spammers and thus reduce their incentive to spam here. — coelacan talk — 06:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

E-Book Systems Inc., would like to share with the Wikipedia community - a unique display format for Wikipedia purposes.

Founded in 1998, E-Book Systems’ patented Digital Flip® Technology provides a unique way to organize and view digital information. Our solutions bring life to digital content with its ability to integrate multimedia, and display it in a realistic 3D page flipping interface.

With Digital Flip® Technology, Wikipedia can provide its users a true encyclopedic experience. Users can browse through Wikipedia like they would a hard copy encyclopedia. They can flip individual pages, grab a few pages to flip, lift a page to compare with contents on the proceeding or preceding pages, flip through pages rapidly, zoom in or zoom out on a page, jump to a desired page, click on links to navigate to desired page, search content for a desired search term (where feature is available).

We would like to work with Wikipedia to create Wikipedia FlipBook. This Wikipedia FlipBook should adopt the same concept as the existing Wikipedia site. Please click on the following link to browse through the sample Wikipedia FlipBook created for the editors' evaluations : Sample Wikipedia FlipBook

Please note that the Wikipedia FlipBook is only for demonstration purposes. It contains only an extract of the contents in Wikipedia site. The links (in black underline) included in the demo Wikipedia FlipBook have not been enabled. However, please note that we do have the ability to enable the links and ensure that all links navigate to the relevant pages.

About E-Book Systems E-Book Systems is a private organization, with offices in the U.S, China, Japan, Korea, Europe, and Singapore. Investors in E-Book Systems include Creative Technology Ltd, and SOFTBANK Media & Marketing Corporation, a subsidiary of SOFTBANK Corp.

I'm not speaking officially here, but you're just as welcome as any other of the Mirrors and forks to copy the content under the GFDL and use your interface on it. I doubt it'd catch on here, because it requires downloading addition software, and doesn't sound like it adds enough to be worth it. We try to keep the technical requirements low here. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

We would like to work with Wikipedia to create Wikipedia FlipBook. The Wikimedia Foundation, which controls Wikipedia and a variety of other free-access projects, has a policy of not using commercial (aka "pay-for") software unless absolutely necessary. So if you are proposing some sort of business proposition whereby you would pay the Foundation for a specialized feed, for example, feel free to contact them; otherwise, you're probably wasting your time. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it'd catch on here, because it requires downloading addition software, and doesn't sound like it adds enough to be worth it. We try to keep the technical requirements low here. E-Book Systems also offers the FlipViewer® BV version which does not require any software download. Please click on the following link to browse through the FlipViewer® BV version of the sample Wikipedia FlipBook: Sample Wikipedia FlipBook - FlipViewer® BV version

my name is nick church and I am aware of the tomb raider version of wikipedia, however I believe I have a better idea. I have seen many electronic dictionaries which are very popular over in japan. What about a device very similar to the electronic dictionary, yet with wikipedia on it. I realize that wikipedia as a site must take up quite a bit of space, but if you cut out all the user pages, and the talk pages, it could be made to fit on a 30g drive which would definitely fit in something the size of an electronic dictionary. along with this you could include a docking station which will update all the pages automatically, as well as charging it. You could also include basic functions such as a calendar, clock, etc. Also if possible you could consider hooking up with google maps/news to include area maps and news. perhaps an sd card reader would be a good idea so that one may use it to watch videos or play mp3s as well.

you could probably get a good deal on the manufacturing, sell it for about $300 a piece and use the profit for wikipedia expansion...or whatever you want.

Anyone can take a data dump and stick it on such a device. Quality control is an issue, not size. All the text for the current version is only a couple of gigabytes. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Some of the more expensive dictionaries I saw at the E-Mart also doubled as a book reader but I think they were around $350 US. My dictionary was on sale for about $89 but I can't change the contents. I would think one could make a cheap book reader for around $50 that could have just about anything you wanted on it. --Gbleem 03:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

You could just browse it from a cell phone with an appropriate skin. If you want a local copy, you run into the trouble of downloading all that data every time you want to update. Unless the servers make up a custom set of diffs for you, you'll need a couple of gigs of data, and that's not going to be done in the time it takes to charge the battery. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

While stumbling around a few pages, I came upon

Since Dragons flight who originally proposed this plan to standardize the usage of the GFDL tag between the projects has "basically abandoned" the plan, I am planning to pick up where he left off. Does anyone have any concerns with, or support for this? Kyra_~(talk) 23:23, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Additionally, I'd like to expand this to include the {{

• Based on: Link to original media. (Example: In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it is filled by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
• Related book(s): Novels, non-fiction books, factual books.
• Related comic(s): Comic books, comic strips, graphic novels, Webcomics, manga, light novels
• Related film(s):
  V-cinemas
  .
• Related TV series: TV dramas, animated series, TV anime, TV comedies, sitcoms.
• Related video game(s): 2-D games, 3-D games, anime games, all computer and video games.

to:

• Comics infoboxes
  • {{
    Infobox Comic strip
    }}
  • {{
    Graphicnovelbox
    }}
  • {{
    Supercbbox
    }}
  • {{
    Infobox Webcomic
    }}
• Book infoboxes
  • {{
    Infobox Book
    }}
  • {{Book Series infobox}}
• TV and film infoboxes
  • {{
    Infobox Film
    }}
  • {{
    Infobox Television Film
    }}
  • {{
    Infobox Television
    }}
• and {{
  Infobox CVG
  }}

to inform related medias.--JSH-alive^{talk to me}_{see my works}^{mail to me} 15:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

These could be added to the infoboxes by putting in the following lines of wikicode into the correct positions:

{{#if:{{{based on|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Based on'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  
{{#if:{{{related book|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Related book(s)'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  
{{#if:{{{related comic|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Related comic(s)'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  
{{#if:{{{related film|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Related film(s)'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  
{{#if:{{{related TV series|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Related TV series'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  
{{#if:{{{related video game|}}}|<tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td>'''Related video game(s)'''</td><td>{{{current}}}</td></tr>}}  

They are all optional parameters so they won't break any existing articles with the infobox that have not added the parameters. To specify the values of each of these parameters, you could then add the following to where the infobox is referenced:

| based on =
| related book =
| related comic =
| related film =
| related TV series =
| related video game =

(Talk)

16:08, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

This seems unnecessary; doesn't related content generally go at the bottom of the article, with the see also links, rather than at the top? The infoboxes are pretty big as it is. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The "Based on" line sounds good, but otherwise, what Night Gyr said. Infoboxes are meant to be concise summaries, and their size is a point of contention already. "Related" items do belong at the end of a subject's article. --Quiddity 01:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, frankly, I want to disable {{

Infobox CVG}}.--JSH-alive^{talk to me}_{see my works}^{mail to me}

02:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Most schools do not accept Wikipedia as a reliable source, and rightfully so, since anyone can edit and throw in misinformation. There are statistics listed at Special:Statistics, especially under "Other statistics" that you might find useful. I don't like the term "backward nations" either. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 13:15, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I cant understand why most wouldn't accept a possibly wrong information source, but what I proposed was a expert written text, not something which will be readily edited by every body. so you can have a list of ips of reknowned educational institutes, whose people would be allowed to edit topics. undoubtedly you can never prevent vandalism,(even if you some way to ensure that it is a professor who edits a particular article, his id can also be stolen) but it is definitly a good way to increase the accurate ness of articles which are most necessary for learning. as a student i have seen, almost all of my batchmates using wikipedia for information, it would really be helpful for a lot of people to have a better information source.

also if you look at the number of science or humanities topics that are being accessed by people you will realise that most of them would be from college going students

Yes, it is certainly a good place to start—to get an idea of a topic. However, textbooks and academic journals are more appropriate resources in an academic setting such as a university. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 13:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

what i am saying is to have a mit, ocw version of wikipedia, only that it would contain a much wider variety, of content but related to academics. OCW is a quite a good concept, and the purpose of that is very similar. But the problem is that various universities, (like a stanford ocw, a beijing university ocw etc) have there own versions of ocw, why cant there be a single repository of information. I am not talking of academic journals, anyway if you are doing research academic journals are the best way to go, they are peer reviewed, and you will definitely have a better source of information.

We already have Wikibooks to write textbooks and Wikiversity to do academic stuff like research and writing teaching materials. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

• Note that many of our "most visited" pages relate to sex. Listing that on the front page is not likely to fly well with schools. >Radiant< 12:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest an English language translation of the Italian television show 'Don Matteo': http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Matteo

As it's just started a run on Australian tv (SBS) this might be of interest to readers. --Robert Fraser 06:39, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Robert. This request would probably be better placed at Wikipedia:Translation/*/Lang/it, specifically set up for translation requests of Italian Wikipedia articles into English.--Fuhghettaboutit 12:07, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

ddafd

thank you

Jeremyp1988 17:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)jeremyp1988

[moved from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard]

It's been proposed that we replace all of our "salted" articles (currently tagged with Template:Deletedpage) with redirects to a page in the project namespace containing similar text (thereby removing salted article pages from the random article pool and total article count). I believe that this would be an improvement, but the main disadvantage would be that users would no longer be able to view useful links unique to the individual pages.

Now that cascading protection has been enabled, it's finally possible to protect a nonexistent page (simply by transcluding it onto a page with cascading protection directly applied, thereby causing it to appear as a red link). I propose that we switch to a system in which a series of project pages (perhaps one for each month) is created and used for this purpose.

I've created a

I've tweaked some MediaWiki code to display a {{deletedpage}}-style notice (along with advice to check for additional information on the page to which cascading protection has been directly applied) when a non-sysop attempts to edit (or follows a red link to) a nonexistent page with cascading protection applied. If a non-sysop merely attempts to view such a page, he/she sees the standard "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name..." message (which could be modified to reference instances in which "view source" is displayed instead of "edit this page"). Clicking on "view source" displays the aforementioned {{deletedpage}}-style notice and accompanying link/advice.

A bot could be used to convert all of the salted pages to this format (automatically sorting the titles chronologically—likely based on the pre-existing list—and inserting the most recent edit summary as the reason).

Opinions? —

This is a very intelligent solution--and certainly we've all agreed for some time that the holy grail would be some way to protect articles in a genuinely deleted state. The only problem I can see is that it will have the same effect if a non-existent page is (for whatever reason) transcluded on to some other page with cascading protection, but perhaps that doesn't matter (it seems like it would be rare). It would also require admins to change their behavior in a more drastic way, which is also always a challenge. :)

Chick Bowen

06:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I've given this some thought, and I've been unable to come up with another situation in which we'd want to transclude a nonexistent page on a page with cascading protection enabled. —

David Levy

17:30, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Typo on mainpage links? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, yeah--it would be from a screwup of some sort. If a template were deleted and the admin forgot to check whatlinkshere, it might appear to another editor that it had been protected against creation. As I say, though, not a big deal.

Chick Bowen

18:03, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, okay. I misunderstood your comment to mean that we might actually want to do this for some reason. —

David Levy

18:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there a way to make the "This page has been deleted and protected to prevent re-creation" message not show if the cascading protection is only semi-protection? That would make eliminate the likeliest circumstances.

Chick Bowen

18:15, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm surprised to learn that cascading semi-protection is possible, as this enables anyone with a non-new account to semi-protect pages. That's a far worse problem than the display of that message (which would require developer intervention to change) and I don't believe that cascading semi-protection should ever be applied for any reason. In my opinion, it should be formally prohibited via the protection policy. —

David Levy

18:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much for noting this. In fact, when semi-protection cascades it becomes full, so the problem is even worse. I've filed

Talk

20:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Yikes, I didn't realize that! I'm going to go ahead and add an explicit prohibition to the protection policy. —

David Levy

22:04, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a really good idea. —Centrx→talk • 17:45, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not really against it. So, instead of adding the {{deletedpage}} or {{spambot}} templates to the pages, we would include the page in a list. Gives us better control than just a category for sure. -- ReyBrujo 17:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a great idea, but when someone attempts to edit a non-existing, cascading-protected page, I think as well as the message you added, there should also be an empty, disabled text box on there, to make it clear that they are on the edit tab, there is no text on the page and to keep with convention, e.g. with

(Talk)

19:00, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a "view source" tab instead of an "edit this page" tab. I don't believe that a disabled text box would be of any benefit, and I also see no means of adding one. (We're working within the confines of

David Levy

19:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

If you go to this page (from one of your examples), the title of the page says 'View source' but the tab at the top says 'edit this page'. However, yes, I can see now, you didn't edit any code, you just customised

(Talk)

22:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I'd only viewed the page while logged out (which results in a "view source" tab). —

David Levy

22:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, wow. This is brilliant. --

Steel

19:06, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I really like this idea. ···

joe

20:17, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

If this is what I think it is, Wikinews has been doing it for ages with noxiously recreated pages, see

68.39.174.238

22:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

They're using protected redirects to a project page. (The pages aren't actually in a deleted state.) As noted above, this is something that we've considered doing. —

David Levy

01:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I dislike that idea. It decouples the protection from the page, which means that, for instance, the protection will not be recorded in the page's history or logs. It would be a better solution to change the code to allow nonexistent pages to be protected (if it displays a special message in that case, we could simply change it to be identical to the current {{deletedpage}} template). --cesarb 21:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The page must be re-deleted before it can be protected. If the sysop includes a comment along the lines of "salting page," why would this (combined with a clear recording in the history of a specific project page) be insufficient?

Yes, a function created specifically for this purpose would be preferable, but that isn't available (and it isn't as though we haven't asked the developers to add it). Until it is, we have to choose one of the available methods. —

David Levy

22:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

That would, assuming the admins specifically say so when deleting (which I doubt; the delete reason is to write the reason for deleting, not what you are going to do next), only record when the page is protected, but not when it's unprotected.

I know it might not be easy to create a function like I described (in particular, it's quite probable that either the database layout would have to be changed or a "phantom" row would have to be used... which would be quite similar to what's currently done with {{deletedpage}}). But it's the right way to fix the real problem, which is that we have a page at the article namespace which should not be counted as an article (the same happens with things like the Main Page and redirects; in fact, something similar to what is done with redirects could be a reasonably elegant solution). --cesarb 23:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

1. The designated project page would contain a record of both the protection and the unprotection.

2. Again, the fact that it it may be possible to implement a better solution in the future doesn't change the fact that we need to implement something now. We currently have no perfect option, but I believe that the use of unorthodox bookkeeping is an exceedingly minor issue compared to the problems inherent in the available alternatives. —

David Levy

23:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Pending the implementation of a feature to protect nonexistent pages, using cascading protection to create protected redlinks seems like a good idea to me. As for the 'this page has been deleted, and protected to prevent recreation' message, it would be possible to prevent confusion in any other cascaded-redlink case by changing it to something like 'this page has been protected against creation' (which is much the same thing, but slightly more general). --ais523 15:35, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

The one time I landed on a delete-protected page via

Flyingtoaster1337

02:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Excellent excellent idea. Take a look at Reality. (while logged out if you are an admin) to see this in action. Prodego ^talk 02:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

And the final step would be a bot run with admin rights that deletes {{

Wikipedia:Protected titles. Guy (Help!

) 14:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I thought the above would be the last "minor quibble" I had but there's another... I notice you removed the link to

Flyingtoaster1337

17:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I removed that line because the message isn't visible to sysops (who are presented with such a link in the text that they see). —

David Levy

17:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Activity log link is borked for pages with spaces in the titles but thta is a minor quibble :-) Guy (Help!) 17:50, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Minor indeed. The parameter that gets put into the link just needs to be {{urlencode}}d.

Flyingtoaster1337

18:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of this when I created the template (which is why I included a conditional parameter for the page title with underscores in lieu of spaces). I'm working on a better version now. —

David Levy

18:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I've reworked the template accordingly. The underscored title parameter has been eliminated and the optional reason parameter has been shifted to the second position (which is more intuitive). Thank you, Flyingtoaster1337! —

David Levy

19:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Go vote for

Ligulem

17:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm in the planning stages a real delete-protect feature, possibly being smarter, and allowing a "title blacklist" that prevents non-admins from creating a page with titles matching a regex, or moving to illegal titles. I'll probably do this after per-page blocking. — Werdna talk 05:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Werdna, you are a god among men. Thanks. Philwelch 05:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Which should stop those spambots creating Talk:Foo/w/w/wiki/index.php/Asdf/index.php style pages once and for all. Yay!

Flyingtoaster1337

09:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Are we ready to make the cascading protection-based deletedpages system official? It probably will make it easier to migrate to Werdna's system once that gets rolled out. Neither system needs any boilerplate text in place at the deleted title. IMO, if we delete the {{

• I'm putting new ones in there and when I find the salt on a vandal magnet deleted I'm adding that as well. Guy (Help!) 10:21, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
• They've been doing it on wiktionary, but it there a blacklist page on wikipedia and are page blacklisted permanantly or is there a process to get these page out if their if a legitimate editon is released? BuickCenturyDriver 11:49, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

(Talk)

15:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can see, there is no complete consensus here regarding the format of the taxonomist's name ("authorisation") in the template:taxobox. There are articles with Linnaeus's name abbreviated, whereas others state his full family name.

I think the taxonomist's name should appear in the abbreviated form, common in the scientific literature, and without parentheses, which should only include the year of description. The abbreviated format should link to the article regarding the specific taxonomist. Reasoning:

1. Such a format, together with the binomial name, gives the complete and exact scientific format, to designate a species. The template is the best place to expose the readers to this standard way of writing, common among all scientists and scientific literature. This way there is also a match between the format in the article and in scientific articles.
2. Readers who will be confused by the abbreviations, can clarify the matter immediately by clicking on the abbreviation and reaching the article regarding the taxonomist.

Parallel message posted on the template's discussion page.

Gidip 13:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

For example.100110100 08:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Instead of Articlehistory:Ido, shouldn't it just be History:Ido? —Doug Bell ^talk 10:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

In Special:Recentchanges, there is an option to "invert" the selected namespace. I think this means it will show edits in all namespaces except the namespace selected, whereas it would normally show only the selected namespace.

If this is correct, I think it would be useful (thought not imperative) to have this option available in our watchlists. Is there a more appropriate place to bring this up? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 11:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Any thoughts? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 06:42, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd like us to come up with a better text for the permanent donation appeal to unregistered users than

Wikipedia:Attribution, a proposal to subsume and replace Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research, is ready to be implemented. Please review the document and discuss any problems on the talk page. —Centrx→talk • 23:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

There is discussion on its talk page as to whether or not this is a consensually-supported guideline. Comments are welcome. >Radiant< 17:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a proposal that has been discussed a little on individual talk pages for certain templates found in

Definitely. We're here to provide knowledge on all aspects of a subject, not just to promote a particular viewpoint desired by the subject itself. Tyrenius 03:08, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm the one who encouraged Andrew c to ask about this here - but what I was suggesting was that he enquire about putting criticism links on all WikiProject templates, not just Religions. I don't think it's a necessary or helpful idea. But if it's going to be a new policy, it should apply to all Projects, not just Religions—for example, Projects templates for Countries and Ethnic Groups (to point out a couple of examples that might be as controversial as Religions) should be included in this policy if it's going to be a new policy. ॐ Priyanath talk 03:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, there are some things that aren't going to have any sort of criticism article, but for the ones that do, we certainly should require a link to them. -Amarkov moo! 03:29, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello, law of unintended consequences. I suppose it's not overly important, as there will never be a policy regarding what one should or shouldn't put in one's infoboxes and nav templates. Opabinia regalis 05:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

It's an arguably valid interpretation of

WP:NPOV that you should be, and I don't see any unintended consequences. -Amarkov moo!

05:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

That I should be what?

I suspect the criticism links do belong in the religion navboxes. But the way to implement that is to figure it out with the religions projects and editors, not to try making a general policy on the specifics of navbox contents. Opabinia regalis 06:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

It definitely sounds like they should go in. To not include them for some silly reason would be a whitewash. NPOV and all that ... Cyde Weys 06:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks everyone so far for the comments. I apologize to Priyanath for not fully understanding the comment to me, and not making the proposal more broad. I do not believe that there is any policy that specifically restricts the use of critical links in infoboxes.

template:Pokémon species, is there a "criticism of Pokénon species" article?) I think we should stick to discussing the religion navigational boxes (unless we have specific examples of other neglected criticism articles).--Andrew c

06:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Valid criticism articles should be included in any navigation structure about the topic, and sometimes in "See also" sections for articles that don't have nav templates. If the criticism page is bogus/unfair,. edit or have it deleted, don't sweep it under the rug. That's almost textbook POV editing. -- nae'blis 16:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think including criticism articles is probably required according to policy. Criticism article are already on questionable ground when it comes to

This is not an endorsement of criticism articles, but if we must have them, they should be well-linked to their subjects. Cool Hand Luke 22:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Currently deleted edits are retrievable up to

• Probably not, but it is my impression that most costs go to bandwidth and processor speed, rather than server storage. >Radiant< 17:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The deleted revisions are not a problem. If they were, the developers would already have pruned them. They have already warned they can purge all deleted revisions without any warning, and that we shouldn't depend on them being kept forever[1]. --cesarb 17:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

We need a {{let the developers worry about it}} for people worried about server load. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

We already have a Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. --cesarb 01:05, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I have always loved Google's "spell-check" when searching for a term I do not know how to spell. I use this often before I search for the term on Wikipedia. It would be great if I could simply skip the copy-paste step and have the spell check on Wikipedia. Not being computer-saavy, I couldn't begin to suggest how to do this. Thanks!

This has come up quite a few times. Basically, spell checking has had to be disabled on Wikipedia search for performance reasons. I would suggest that you continue to use Google for spell checking.

(Talk)

04:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

If you're using Firefox, I find that the built-in spell check works very well, and it doesn't require any cut-and-paste operations. You can install a wide variety of different languages and switch between them quickly and easily. As an example, I default to Canadian English, but I can "right-click-select" to switch to British English or American English if the article requires it. (Apologies if this sounds like a promo for FF, but the feature does work quite well.) --Ckatz^chat_spy 09:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll back that up. I use the same feature for the same reasons. -- KirinX 16:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

How do I find firefox built-in spellcheck?

For those not in the firefox cult, the Google Toolbar, which works in IE and many other browsers I believe, offers similar text-box spell checking. -

Indolences

17:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

How about a built in spell checker when actually editing articles? RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 21:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Firefox 2.0 does this out of the box. MER-C 11:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

And you can also do this with the

(Talk)

14:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The Google check is helpful (I used it before Firefox added spell checking) - but it unfortunately has a size limit wherein it will only do the first "x" errors in a large group of text. The Firefox one doesn't seem to have that issue. --Ckatz^chat_spy 20:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

What I've done with the Google spell checking for long pages is I either edited the article in sections or I copied and pasted part of the article into another text box and spell checked that.

(Talk)

20:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Performance reasons? Is there no way around this? I think it would greatly improve the performance to have a "did you mean..." or spellcheck option, like Google. Aceholiday 17:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I think IP userpages should get information known about the IP posted on them, this could prove useful for an admin when determaining how much a block may effect legit editors, ect. For example it could contain whois info, perhaps if it belongs to a lan, or specific computer if know, ect.--RyanB88 18:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

That information's added to the talk page at the moment, when known. There are a lot of IP userpages around at the moment as well (see Special:Prefixindex/User:68. (to take a common IP first number), for instance). --ais523 18:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

One can tag a given IP address talk page with info found by clicking the [IP Info] link and copy and pasting the info into the template Template:Ispinfo like so {{subst:Ispinfo|whois results}}. (→Netscott) 18:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps IP pages can automatically be generated and tagged? Koweja 18:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi,

I use the Wikipedia main page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) as my home page. But because I live in New Zealand our timezone means that for more than half of any day (midnight until early afternoon) the "on this day" section is always a day behind NZ time and showing facts for yesterday. At the bottom of the section there are quick links for the last three days (ie "recent days"). What would be great is if you also had a quick link here for "tomorrow", being today for us in New Zealand. ie. currently I have to click "more anniversaries" and find the date from the full year calendar.

Thanks for considering my suggestion.

Regards, Matthew Blair Wellington New Zealand.

You can use

(Talk)

21:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if it would be possible to refine the software to implement this through preferences, though I doubt it'd be a high priority for the developers. See

Wikipedia:Bugzilla for how to file a request for a software improvement.--Pharos

02:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I would like to propose that the TfD process be restructured to match the AfD process. For example, discussion about an article's deletion is relegated to its own subpage of AfD. The discussion about a template is currently done within the TfD page itself. Therefore, monitoring a template discussion is more difficult than monitoring an article discussion, since Watching the page causes you to see a change made to any template deletion discussion. Making the two processes uniform and consistent will also aid editors who make submissions to both projects. There is some discussion from Jan 2006 and a little bit more recently. - grubber 17:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

• The reason it's set up like this is because the mailflow on AFD is an order of magnitude larger than on TFD. >Radiant< 17:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

  Agreed that the volume on AfD is larger. But, what do we lose by changing the process? I can think of plenty of advantages to the change, however. - grubber 17:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

  • What we lose is that both nominating and closing become more complex and less efficient. Note that TFD is already "in line" with CFD, SFD, RFD and DRV, so bringing it "in line" with AFD for standardization is not such a useful argument. >Radiant< 17:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

    Opening an AfD isn't that hard, or there wouldn't be a hundred of them every day. I don't know how difficult it is to close an AfD as opposed to a TfD, since I haven't ever done it. But in any case, assuming you're right: We would make two edits harder, but make the actual process of voting, watching, debating, and stating easier on all the other editors who participate. It seems like a useful tradeoff. Further, I would argue that making the whole XfD more uniform would be a good thing. Clearly, because of volume, we can't change AfD. Let's change the others to match it instead. We lose so little and gain so much. - grubber 18:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Given the volume of AfD over TfD, I think it makes sense that it behaves differently. That said, I have no real strong feelings about this one way or another... EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I've done a couple of AfDs nominations over the past year, including one in the past week. I've always been struck by how many steps there are to the process, and how kludgy it feels, but it's definitely gotten better. Still, while I favor, in concept, changing the whole XfD to be consistent with AfD, I can see the reason to oppose the change until it's agreed that the AfD nomination process is as smooth and painless as possible. (XfD closing, on the other hand, tend to be done by those who do it a lot, I'd guess; an extra step or two for such closings wouldn't seem to me to be a big daal.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) My main issues are: (1) Using subpages (like on AfD) is useful to voters. (2) Making the XfD pages more uniform is a good thing (admins and users would need to know only one procedure to use for any XfD page). I don't have an opinion either way if AfD is the "best way we can think of". If not, let's design the "best way we can think of". Once we have a good method, then let's adopt the procedure to XfD as best as possible. - grubber 20:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I see no reason to change other XfD processes to match AfD at this time. Radiant has my opinions already outlined above. -- nae'blis 21:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

If uniformity of process is what you're after this matches most XfD types and AfD is the odd one. Separate pages for every nom make sense when there is a high volume and therefore a high likelihood of edit conflicts, or watchlisting the page is impractical because of so many changes. But separate pages impose a workload/complexity cost. They definitely make sense for AfD, but I don't think TfD needs them right now. —Dgies^t c 21:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you really believe the workload is that much higher? - grubber 15:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

• The workload is an order of magnitude higher. Yesterday's AFD had 130 nominations, yesterday's TFD had nine. >Radiant< 16:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The attendance is so limited that any good means of attracting more users would help. Having a similar structure would increase useful cross-references to topics that might be of more general interest. And, how does the use of subpages add to the workload or complexity. It's just section editing.DGG 19:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

When I say "workload", I mean the effort required per entry. Higher volume is higher work, but my question is: Does using subpages increase the amount of effort significantly compared to the status quo? - grubber 20:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it does, yes. It requires at least three edits/nine pageloads to make an AFD (due to the three steps), and most other processes (TFD, RM, DRV, etc) can be done in two edits if you're careful. Also, keeping them on one page makes multiple nominations concomitantly easier to perform. -- nae'blis 20:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Don't think we need to migrate to the AfD procedure unless another
  Mailer Diablo
  20:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

  My concern is that TfD's are less editor-friendly. It may be more admin-friendly, but it appears to me that the difference is negligible. - grubber 20:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Don't think there's really a need for subpages on TfD, just increases workload, and it's just really not needed....only when the number of daily TfDs multiplies by about five, then consider. Doubt that'll ever happen , however. Alex43223 ^{Talk | Contribs | E-mail | C} 11:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible to add navigation to the watchlist, similar to the "History" and "Contributions" pages? With large watchlists that feature very active pages, the "last x changes" setting in "Preferences" can often fall short of when you last logged in. That means going into the preferences, changing the size of the watchlist, and then either having to go back and reset it OR forgetting (and then facing the increased load time every time one calls the watchlist). Thoughts? --Ckatz^chat_spy 03:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you have the option to collapse multiple changes to the same page turned on? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I did use that feature for a while, but found that I was able to do more with the non-collapsed version. (It often saves a lot of time in checking frequently updated pages, as you can see the context for edits rather than just the last one.) I would think that adding navigation shouldn't be all that difficult, given that the code already exists for the other pages. However, if there is some reason that it isn't doable, another option might be to add an "override" feature on the Watchlist page (much like the "Last 50"/"Last 100"/etc. choices on History pages. That way, you could choose a temporary increase in the number of edits, without having to adjust your default setting. --Ckatz^chat_spy 19:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Umm, there is a manual override at the top of the watchlist page. It says "Show last 1 | 2 | 6 | 12 hours 1 | 3 | 7 days all". ;-) --Quiddity 01:15, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Tried that. It limits your watchlist, if the setting goes too far back for your liking. However, it doesn't extend it, which is what I would like. If, say, you're set for 500 changes, and that times out 18 hours back, adjusting the settings you mentioned still only goes back the same amount of time.

Ah, well that's probably more a WPtechnical question. Or try searching bugzilla. --Quiddity 19:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

A while ago [2], I suggested making the watchlist a regular page, made up entirely of links, so that checking it would be a "Related changes" thing for the watchlist page, and so that editing it would be like editing any other wiki page. Naturally, this would include the page having a history. Clicking "Watch" would add a link to the desired page at the bottom; clicking "Unwatch" would replace any link by an empty string. Users could freely edit their watchlist, e.g. to organize it by grouping the links under various headings.--Niels Ø (noe) 10:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is even the right place to suggest it, or whether I can even suggest it, but a sister project which encompasses lyrics to songs would be quite useful. Considering every single lyrics site on the net so far is riddled with pop-ups, it could be a valuable asset. Clockwork Apricot 00:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this probably couldn't be done as most song lyrics are copyrighted.

(Talk)

00:32, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

There are already a couple. Linking them might not be kosher due to copyright, but just google for lyric wiki. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:36, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Or check out LyricWiki. -SpuriousQ (talk) 06:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I'm sure this must have suggested before, but why don't we create a Wikiproject namespace? It's always bugged me how wiki appears twice in the title of projects (three times if you count the url). Wikiproject:Chemistry seems to make so much more sense than Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry, anyone else agree? - Jack · talk · 13:52, Saturday, 17 February 2007

This seems to me to be a good idea. But how would this be implemented? semper fictilis 17:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

In the code that keeps track of namespaces, you would add one more entry. This would definitely be a good idea, given the number of projects we have. Koweja 18:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Currently, its use is discouraged. There are pages that would be in that namespace, but they're all redirects:

Gracenotes^T

§ 19:29, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

While it might seem a generally good idea, it unnecessarily creates a lot of work, for devs, admins, and active users, a cost that I don't think justifies a slight simplification. Besides, the "Wikipedia:" namespace is already considered the "project namespace" - it just does not subdivide inherently into a namespace for the projects. If we really wanted to remove excess "wiki"s, we should remove the "wiki" from "WikiProject". As a social change, I don't think that's likely to happen: names like "WikiProject Novels" sound a lot nicer than "Project Novels", even if you consider the double "wiki" in "Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels". Nihiltres 20:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Exactly how many Wikiprojects are there? Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory, (among other places) seems to be the place that should provide this, yet it ain't there, and I'm not entirely sure it knows. I think this may be a quirk that would be very easy to find out, if only there was a Wikiproject namespace. By my count, there are even more redirects beginning with "Wikiproject" (44 in Wikiproject and 58 in WikiProject). I can see this would be a lot of work, but I'll be willing to do what I can, and I'm sure at least one member from each of the wikiprojects will be happy to make the switch for their project. I think simplicity is key to our ultimate goals as a project, and in the future it'll only gonna get harder to make this switch. On a side note, along my travels I found these two violations of policy (here and here) - Jack · talk · 00:37, Sunday, 18 February 2007

Regarding the two violations, on the first I've notified the user to move the page; on the second, I've posted a speedy delete since the user has in fact created a WikiProject and apparently missed this subpage when doing cleanup. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:42, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

This issue came up on the mailing list a little while ago. There didn't seem to be any consensus for change. The namespace "Project:" can't be used as it is already some kind of meta-wiki name for the local Wikipedia space. For instance, going to Project:Village pump will end up at the same place as Wikipedia:Village pump. Trebor 16:47, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I propose making it so that when one searches a year using the BCE dating sytem it will automatically redirct to the year using the BC method. This is a temporary fix to the BCE/BC arguement and it would allow and pages that use a BCE year to not go to a dead end. This would most likely have to be done through a bot which I have no experince on how to make, seeing as there would have to be thousands of rederect pages made manually. An example would be automatically redirecting a page like

Why not the other way around... if you search for BC it redirects to BCE? Seriously, I can understand that one system should be used consistently, and if the consensus is to use BC (or BCE for that matter) then having a redirect makes sense... but you will probably get some argument as to which to use. Blueboar 20:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Umm... isn't that already the case?

350 BCE redirects to 350 BC, no?-Andrew c

21:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think he's proposing using a bot or something similar to fill in the missing blanks, like

wouldn't require a consensus here unless someone started objecting. -- nae'blis

23:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I see. I did not realize that there were some pages that didn't have the redirect (but then again

847 BC itself is a redirect page). I think it doesn't really serve a purpose to create all these unused redirects. If it is possible, what might be useful is to have a bot that can find redlinked BCE years, and fix them. Preemptive change seems unnecessary.-Andrew c

23:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

One of the benefits of "unnecessary" redlinks is that they help prevent spurious changes from forming. If someone is writing an article and adds 847 BCE to it, then notices it's a redlink and goes to create the page, it could become an inadvertent content fork of 840s BC. By pre-emptively creating the redirects (in a reasonable manner, obviously I don't mean 50,358 BCE) it can help stave off some of that well-intentioned confusion caused by the BC/BCE thing. -- nae'blis 15:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• One of the benefits of not using these unnecessary redlinks is that they encourage people to diverge from the apparent standard of using BC, in effect reinvigorating the entire debate about that, once again. >Radiant< 15:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

That'd disingenuous and you know it, Radiant; the

MOS specifically says that there is no "right" answer to the Common Era/Anno Domini question. In many articles it would be appropriate for the flow/npov of the article to use BCE, while still connecting to the proper article. -- nae'blis

15:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Not at all. Considering that the entire category tree of Category:1st millennium BC uses BC rather than BCE, that makes it an apparent standard, which is all that I meant. >Radiant< 13:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

It could be equally well argued that all BC and AD links ought to be redirected to the standard non-religious form. Neither argument would hold-- As we will never settle what is the right form, there's no point in this. For the very few articles where it matters, redirects can be made of an individual basis. DGG 06:20, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, this is User:Chris is me, and I just thought of this idea and am too lazy to log in (I'll verify the account later). What if, instead of restricting page creation to 4-day-old users (which allows a lot of junk), we have users check off a little forum under the "edit summary" button? The reason a form would work instead of the header nobody reads is because the page would not be created unless the boxes were checked. Here's some examples:

• I believe that the subject is notable (has been mentioned in multiple reliable sources)
• The subject of this article is not myself, my close friends/relatives, or otherwise someone I am acquainted with. The article is not vanity.
• The article above is not one of an organization or company I work for or am attempting to represent in a positive light. My article is NPOV written in a tone that favors no side.

_{add more}

How about it? Sure, some junk will still get through, but it'd be nice for those users editing in good faith to realize what Wikipedia is not. 69.19.14.35 21:39, 12 February 2007 (UTC) _{This post was made by -- Chris is me (user/review/talk) when he was unable to log in}

Two concerns: First, people who really are just trying to self-promote will just go and check all the boxes regardless. Second, new people will have no clue what "My article is NPOV." means. --

talk

...but.. wouldn't it cut some of the junk down from good-faith new editors? This way, we don't have to spend as much time assuming good faith (some time, but less) since a good faith editor would see that their article wasn't right for Wikipedia. -- Chris is me _(u/c/t) 05:27, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Only if after completing the form a set number of times you don't get hassled with it anymore. —Doug Bell ^talk 12:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, bad faith editors will ignore the boxes, but it does allow us to know they were already told. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

In those relatively rare cases where someone has written an autobio in an objective way, or started one & then somebody unrelated rewrote it, the article has usually been kept, in spite of having gotten here illegitimately. I think we would lose some good articles this way. DGG 06:15, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The last heading with an [edit] link is often "See also", "External links", "References", or the like. However, in the source this heading is often followed by other end matter, and editing this end matter by clicking the [edit] link produced by the last heading results in a misleading edit summary. Examples of such end matter taken from a few random articles:

{{start box}}
...
{{end box}}
{{English Monarchs}}
{{Austria-bio-stub}}

[[:Category:English monarchs]]
[[:Category:Musicians who left Nazi Germany|Krips, Josef]]

[[es:Enrique VII de Inglaterra]]

Could we introduce a dummy heading, say ==Endmatter==, to be included in the source immediately following the stuff logically belonging under the last proper heading? It should be suppressed by the wiki software, appearing as an [edit] link, but not as a proper heading, and not in the table of contents. Maybe it should not appear as a heading in the source, but as some sort of internal link template, and perhaps it should appear not merely as [edit], but as [edit endmatter]. In any case, the edit link should open everything following it in the source for editing, and produce an edit summary like /* end matter */. One could also consider introducing a similar dummy heading or internal link template appearing as [edit lead section] or [edit top matter], opening everything down to the first heading for editing, and producing a corresponding edit summary.

If such internal link templates are created (or already exist - I don't really know), or if such wiki software modifications for suppressing dummy headings are introduced, it would be left to the editors (perhaps assisted by suitable bots) to introduce the required changes to the source of our 1645523 exitsting articles.-- 10:24, 18 February 2007 Noe

That sounds like a useful idea. Not sure how to make it though. ~

problem solving

17:14, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Submit it as an enhancement request in Bugzilla. (SEWilco 17:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC))

It's kind of in between a policy thing and a technical thing. I thought this might be the place for a short discussion about the relevancy of this idea, before possibly submitting it to the technicians. So I'd still be happy for more feedback here...--Niels Ø (noe) 19:07, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

"This article don't have links to articles in other languages, please 
help wikipedia by introducing the appropriate interwiki links"

[[Category:Articles lacking interwiki links]]