Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive AP

For reference, there is a

If there is AFD, MFD, CFD, TFD etc, should there be one on lists, or does this just go under AFD? Simply south 14:02, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Try clicking on

WP:AFD for just this 'lists counting as articles' reason; I see it's now been repurposed to link to a particular section of that page.) --ais523 14:13, 19 September 2007 (UTC

)

Hi; I’m a foreigner, looking for a Jordanian partner to establish a new operation here in Amman. This operation is very successful, doesn’t need too much capital to invest and have a high potential returns. For interested business men please contact me on <contact info blanked> My Best Regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wael Abd Elbary (talk • contribs) 11:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

This really is the definition of spam, isn't it? I mean, it's like those scam emails... and it appears that the user is going to resist it being removed... <sigh> SamBC(talk) 11:30, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I've posted a welcome and a warning at the user's talk page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The

Here is an example of the new look. (Note: Exact colour for the left-side colour bar is not yet decided, and we will of course have the old full text in them, this is just a short example.)

Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled.

Any input is welcome, see discussion and more examples at

--David Göthberg 02:24, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure if this is the correct place to put this idea, but I was wondering if it would be possible to place a link next to each page on each user's watchlist to remove it from the watchlist. For example, if Example is on my watchlist and somebody edits it, when the change shows up on my watchlist there is a link that I can click to remove Example from my watchlist (perhaps next to the diff link). --דניאל - Dantheman531 00:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

You could always just click through to the article and then click the "unwatch" tab. It's only one more click. -Chunky Rice 00:10, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I know, but then I have to wait for my (rather slow) internet browser to load the page before I click unwatch. The fact that unwatching a page no longer opens a new page is a huge improvement, IMHO, but it would be nice if I could just remove it from my watchlist, especially if I wanted to remove multiple pages at the same time. That way, I would not have to sort through my entire watchlist to find what I want to delete, I could just delete it when someone edits it. --דניאל - Dantheman531 00:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

User talk:Alex_Smotrov/wlunwatch.js will do it. Anomie 00:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! --דניאל - Dantheman531 01:36, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello, i'm a french wikipedian. I search someone who lives in Philadelphia. It's for taking photographies ... If he is free, can he take contact with me on fr:user:stef48 ? Perhaps exist a category for find all user living in Philadelphia, but i dont' know ! Thanks, Stef4854 18:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi! Wikipedia:WikiProject Philadelphia has a massive list of active members who live in or are interested in Philadelphia. Just leave a message on any one of their talk pages and they will be happy to take a photograph for you. Paragon12321 20:06, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I am trying to connect with individuals in the wikipedia community who are interested in working on an open source programming project to create a visualized interface to map wikipedia. I have started to draft a proposal in my Sandbox, but am not sure where the most appropriate location is to post such a proposal or connect with interested people. Does anyone have suggestions, feedback, comments? Thanks! SlvrDreams 20:20, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

The newly written proposal/essay/how-to/whatever Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language and its talk page essentially state that singular they is common practice on Wikipedia, apparently with the intent of promoting this as a good idea, and likewise state that this practice is frequently disputed. Outside opinion is requested on (1) how "common" this practice is, (2) how "frequently" the dispute is, and (3) whether people consider it a good idea. >Radiant< 14:13, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, the article you link to in the subject summarises it pretty well.

WP:GNL suggests it as an alternative to gender-specific language but notes that it's objected to, largely because people objected to it during drafting. It could turn into a whole stack of turtles, as some people objected to the objection. This whole discussion was had a week ago, wasn't it? SamBC(talk

) 14:17, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Use of "they" and "their" as singular generic pronouns is almost universal writing and informal speech. It's on the level of using "you" instead of "one" or using contractions. It does not stand out as wrong, but rather informal. We try to be a serious reference source, so I think most people try to avoid it where they can. Using "he" or "his" as a gender-neutral pronoun is even more awkward so people try to avoid that too. You can almost always word things without the need for a singular generic pronoun, so that's what people do for the most part in formal writing, including here in Wikipedia. Incidentally, in the history of English, using "he" and "his" to stand for a person of indeterminate sex is relatively new and never caught on. Before 1850 or so "they" and "their" were considered correct, but some succeeded in promoting "he" and "his." That got written into the rules of formal writing but never completely followed or accepted. I don't think the original intent was to make talking about men the norm, and women only by implication, but that's what happened with the new pronouns, and it's the reason why people are moving away from them today. The best advice for main space, I think, is to do whatever you have to do as long as you don't use "he" to stand for "he and she." You'll find that borne out in the articles. It's rare to come across one that uses male pronouns in the generic sense. Wikidemo 16:08, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

As a further thought, I'm not sure anyone wants to promote singular they in any general sense, just to give it as a way of avoiding non-gender-neutral language. SamBC(talk) 16:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

There are ways to use non-sexist language without violating plurality, such as using the word "s/he".ACEOREVIVED 19:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

If you're going to use awkward constructions like that, how about using my favorite: s/h/it? --Carnildo 02:57, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Heh, you have a point; "s/he" is pretty awkward. I'd say just go with the singular "they" where it's necessary and avoid it whenever possible. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 14:57, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it's very clunky when a sentence has s/he. To me, it implies laziness to type he or she and is an admission that the three-word pronoun is awkward as well. The singular they is well established, and according to The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, they is more established than he as the gender-nonspecific singular pronoun.—Twigboy 15:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

In theory "they" is grammatically accepted now, although I have to admit that I cringe a little whenever I read it in a student paper because it *sounds* so unproper. In philosophy classes I was taught to use "one" but I think people read that as British or pretentious. As a feminist I prefer "he or she" or "she or he" because it establishes that both genders are being taken into account, that their is no bias being implied and it doesn't inadvertantly multiply the number of people being referred to and sound as if the numbers are not in agreement. Using "he or she" / "she or he" tells us that we've at least *tried* to take human/sex/gender rights into account. P.S. I *did* sign my comment! Wiki is being weird! Saudade7 18:06, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

It'd be advantageous to have a button on every wiki page, clearly labelled, that leads to a helpful page showing the code language for the most common alerts: bias, vandalism, doesn't cite references, etc.

Such is needed.

--boozerker 17:30, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

see

OK, I meant have a clearly visible button atop every wiki page, so that cleanup becomes more effective.

Edited my first post to add that one clarification. --boozerker 03:05, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I belive that the page

The page is not helping to fueling article creation, is just providing a place for spam. I counted 51 articles in the most recent archive, out of all these one single sentance stub was selected for inclusion in Wikipedia.

I belive that having this page actualy is decreasing output as well. If you go to Category:Unreviewed articles for creation request pages and observe some of the pages there, you will see that less than half of all submissions have reviewd. This means that that half the articles we could be getting if we directed IP's to create an acount and do it themselves are getting lost. -Icewedge 02:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I would recommend changing the procedure for handline

uw-vand2

}}). Blatant spam or nonsense postings could be removed without objection.

There's also room for improvement in how WP:AFC is handled - although that's more of an implementation issue that would probably require a discussion in a wider scope. --Sigma 7 05:00, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

How many anonymous editors make a suggestion at

WP:AFC and then go on to be registered members or continue to improve wikipedia as anonymous editors? Jeepday (talk

) 05:34, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

For example, we could (a) try to recruit more editors for AFC reviews; (b) create tools that will make it easier for editors to respond to and close AFC submissions; (c) create an in-between response, where reviewing editors can say "Maybe - do you have more sources?", rather than just "Yes" (and then have to create the article) or "No" (and close the posting). I suspect that a lot of reviewers, when they find something that might be an article, are reluctant to do the research to confirm it is, and reluctant to be the one to say "No way". So they just go on to the next article, and another reviewer looks at the article and also can't decide, and so on, which is a lot of duplication. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

"Even conceding that the suggested articles that haven't been rejected may be in a gray area, why does it follow that (a) we want these; (b) no one else subsequently created these; and/or (c) the person making the suggestion didn't try again, but rather was so discouraged that he/she will have nothing further to do with Wikipedia." I am just saying that out of the sizeable block of unreviewd submissions you can find articles that would be acceptable articles, very few of these acceptable will every be reviewd though because working

WP:AFC is such an unrewarding task and no one really wants to do it. If we directed the IP's that submited these to instructions on how to create articles we might be able to get these worthy article into the mainspace instead of having them lost in the vast backlog forever. -Icewedge

16:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The first thing to do is stop calling IPusers anonymous users, as they are a lot less anonymous than the registered users. Call them what they are, unregistered users. Second, I have no interest in registering and will continue to contribute in any manner that I can without registering. If I was directed to create a username to create Foo article I could register Foo(followed by a big long random number), create the article and go back to being an unregistered user. That would be unproductive. I like being associated with the articles that I propose and am happy that there is a process that they can be created. Third, as stated above if someone is proposing an inappropriate article there is less overhead to not create it than to delete it and chase down Foo(biglongrandomnumberwhodoesn'tuseitanymoreanyway). Fourth, a lot of contributions to Wikipedia comes from unregistered users who see an article and say wait, they didn't include Foostuff, and click edit this page for the first and only time ever. While figuring out the process to create an article is a bit more involved, it comes up anytime a search is done and the page is not found as a link from "request it" and should be retained. 199.125.109.88 02:51, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason so few of AFC articles get created is that only ones that are almost guaranteed to stay on Wikipedia are created. The criteria for what will actually be created is quite strict. If the article would be deleted if it were to be created, it will just be denied. Look in

newpage patrol is post-posting review. I would agree that we need more people to review articles there, but due to the immense amounts of "low-quality" articles it is easy to grow to hate the task. Mr.Z-man

05:03, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

If a new user didn't know about namespaces were for, they might try to make a non-existent namespace (ex. Weather:The weather in London). Shouldn't there be something in the MediaWiki that above the edit box? Æetlr Creejl 02:31, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I dont know that might be a bit complicated. It is much easyier just to move the page to an appropriate namespace. -Icewedge 02:49, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

How would you tell an attempt at creating a new namespace (Weather: The weather in London) from a valid article title (Magic: The Gathering)? --Carnildo 03:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be a problem at the moment; posting a warning seems to be a case of

WP:BEANS. -- John Broughton (♫♫)

01:59, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

One can't create a namespace like that. Anything that does not begin with User:, Template:, Wikipedia:, Image:, MediaWiki:, Portal:, Category:, Help:, the "talk" versions of those, Special:, or Talk: is treated like an article. Mr.Z-man 05:08, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Can I please beg that the section of Wikipedia on what Wikipedia is not say that Wikipedia is not a newspaper? I have long found one of the interesting things about Wikipedia is that it helps to transcend the boundary between encyclopaedia and newspaper, covering contemporary events in detail, and in some ways, being more up-to-date than newspapers (I first learnt of the death of Jerry Falwell through Wikipedia. Indeed, over the summer of 2007, one could read Wikipedia articles on Madeline McCann, the foot and mouth crisis in the UK of 2007 and the floods in the summer of 2007 in the UK. However, Wikipedians must quicly make up their minds - is this website a newspaper or an encyclopaedia? ACEOREVIVED 19:07, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

It's an encyclopedia, however, We have encyclopedia articles on stuff that's in the news. Why not put them on the main page--

Phoenix 15

19:55, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:NOT#NEWS is already there. Folks wanting to update current news items should look to Wikinews. -- Kesh

21:46, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

However, if we create a new pseudo-namespace (EXIF:) we will no longer have this problem. This would require edits to MediaWiki:Exif-model-value and all similar MW files both here and on Commons, but would clear EXIF linkage away from possible competition with encyclopedic redirects (various cameras in Nikon's Coolpix series will likely have this problem). The cost is a new pseudo-namespace populated solely by redirects. I think this could be worth implementing... Thoughts?--Nilfanion (talk) 21:08, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

AFAICT, this problem was solved for the image discussed in the discussion mentioned above by using longstanding Wikipedia disambiguation practices — this RfD mentions this image, where clicking on the "Camera model" link to E950 ("E950" being a designation contained in the image file which is meant to identify the camera used to produce the image, and "E950" also being used in European countries to designate a particular chemical often used as an artificial sweetener) goes to the E950 article. That that article redirects to Nikon Coolpix 950, and that page (finally) disambiguates the two conflicting usages of the term "E950" by containing "{{redirect|E950|the sweetener|Acesulfame potassium}}", which produces:

"E950" redirects here. For the sweetener, see Acesulfame potassium.

This seems to be a solution in search of a problem. -- Boracay Bill 22:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem with that solution is this: The chemical is known as E950 in European countries so E950 → Acesulfame potassium is a sensible redirect. On the other hand, the camera is not really known as the "E950" - Nikon E950 maybe but not just E950. This would dictate the redirect pointing at the chemical and a hatnote there to the camera. But if that was done, EXIF links would point at the wrong thing. Standard practice on disambiguation is that there should be no incoming links to the "wrong" article. That means a technical limitation restricts editorial judgement. I can't just you an example offhand (due to the untrackable nature of EXIF), but its certainly plausible that there are more serious clashes.--Nilfanion (talk) 08:01, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

• Super-strong support - why in heck do we have documentation redirects in article space? lol. ←
  Ben^B4
  22:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

How about using a similar technique to that used in

(Talk)

22:53, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, that sounds like a good solution (it will also make it easy to copy it to other projects). My one concern is that the huge ParserFunction switch which would be required may be hideously inefficient on the servers relative to a ton of redirects. I'll check the devs later, and if I'm being overly paranoid here I'll just

be bold and hack at those templates and mediawiki files.--Nilfanion (talk

) 08:01, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

1. When a user goes to create a new article, below the edit box there would be a drop-down menu from which the author could select a broad stub category that fit the article. (Such as {{sci-stub}}, {{bio-stub}}, {{art-stub}}, etc.)
2. Once they selected a category, the menu would be replaced by another from which the author could select a more specific subcategory that fit the article. Once they selected one of those, they could select an even more specific category, and so on.
3. When the page is saved, the user's selection from the menu would automatically tag the article with the corresponding stub template, which would put it in a specific stub category.
4. The system would not allow the user to save the new article until at least one stub category was selected, thus forcing all new articles to be sorted right from the start.

I think this feature would help the project considerably, especially by eliminating the generic Category:Stubs, which is a constant backlog due to the bot that adds {{stub}} to short, uncategorized articles (which is virtually every single one of the thousands of articles created each day). So, what do you think? --CrazyLegsKC 05:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

What if when they create the article, it isn't a stub? Mr.Z-man 05:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, the majority of newly-created articles are stubs, are they not? But for the few cases where it isn't, the template could easily be removed from the article manually, after saving. --CrazyLegsKC 05:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

How about we simplify it further, and replace all the thousands of specialized stub tags with {{stub}}? --Carnildo 05:41, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

That would take away an important tool in the (often very large) task of identifying and organising articles that need the most work at wikiprojects and taskforces. Adrian M. H. 11:28, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Stub sorting is not really important. We should encourage people to use the correct (non-stub) categories on all their articles and make categorization easier (perhaps by establishing a systematic category tree instead of the current mess), but should not make it harder for newbies to submit their articles. Kusma (talk) 12:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure about that last part? So much of the new stuff we get is so arcane and questionably notable that I've often thought we should perhaps make it harder for new articles to be created, which is one reason why I made this proposal. Just two weeks ago, we reached 2 million articles, and since then we've already gotten 17,000 more. Our dedicated user base isn't expanding nearly as fast, so we should really focus on expanding and improving the articles we already have, rather than creating so many new ones, IMO. However, if you don't like that idea, just consider the proposal without point #4. Newbies could still create any article as quickly as they can now, but they'd also be given a way to tag their articles quickly, and the stub sorting project would have less of a backlog. --CrazyLegsKC 14:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

FYI, CrazyLegsKC, my bot (which I assume is the one you're referring to) "only" tags up to 1000 articles every three days, when

uncat

}}, instead -- hence the even larger backlog there. Admittedly many of those are probably actually stubs: I'm using the fairly conservative threshold of 100 words for making the stub/non-stub distinction.

Kusma, are you sure about anything you just asserted? And more to the point, do you have evidence to back any of those claims up? As 'Legs implies, it makes very little sense to privilege the ease with which people can create a crapstorm of crappy little articles, over the "not really important" task of organising their 'work' after the fact. The quality curve of those 2m+ articles has a very, very long tail, and if we ever hope to improve that, and not let the "wiki-" means systematically dominate the "-pedia" ends, we have to be willing to considering some of the organisational burden onto those submitting -- often self-indulgent if not outright self-aggrandising -- articles. I'm not sure what your particular beef with the category structure is, but in my judgement it's for the most part about as logical and systematic as one could expect, given the vaguarities of natural language usage, the inherent fuzziness and subjectivity of much of the ontology involved, and indeed the whole wiki-based "do it first, think about tidying it up later" process that gives rise to it.

I can't really see CLKC's proposal being adopted as-is (for all the usual editors-can't-agree and devs-don't-care reasons), but let me see if I can break it down into 'baby steps'. Firstly, the gist of the idea can be implemented client-side, and adopted on a per-stub-sorter basis. It would require drafting someone to write a JavaScript framework for pull-down menus to retag a given stub template with its various descendents, and then populating that on a per-stub type basis (which could be done in a semi-automated manner). For non-stubs, we could at the very least, expand the 'uncategorised-by-topic' cleanup cats, and have a JS menu to populate those. Some of the above might get migrated onto the server-side, as and when. Eventually, once those are in place, there might be general acceptance of the now-perennial proposal to 'force categorisation of new articles', given that we'd now have the means to do at least some initial categorisation fairly readily. Alai 16:25, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I would oppose anything designed to make articles more difficult for the aim of discouraging new article creation. That's not what we're all about. However, it is useful to categorize things. I don't believe editors should be forced to go through two menus just to create a new article, at least not without offering experienced editors a quick opt-out. We often create articles that are start class from the beginning, plus redirects, disambiguation pages, etc. It would be a pain in the butt if we can't get around a menu-driven article categorization system. I don't know the ins and outs of the stub sorting project, but merely assigning a stub class to an article isn't by itself a big deal. It's a lot more important to assign proper categories, assign the article to the appropriate wikiprojects, and get the basic template right (infobox, header, sections, references, see also, external links, categories). One thing that would be very helpful is more of a checkbox type of thing where one can choose common categories, wikiprojects, and article features, or perhaps a choice of article templates depending on what kind of article someone wants to write -- a film, TV show, BLP, article about a company, food item, etc. If following the menus would add a whole (optional) template and not just a stub template, that might be worth the extra hassle for the user.Wikidemo 16:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

For those of you piling on the "stub sorting isn't important" bandwagon: ask yourself what happens to the many (many, many, many) articles which are created without any of those "more important" elements (as alleged). It's an especially quaint idea to imagine that tagging an article with a wikiproject talk-page template achieves prompt attention to any of the other aspects you allude to -- most especially categorisation. Alai 16:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I wat to stay out of the "is stub-sorting important" argument, but I will add that stub categories are the editorial analogy of pemanent categories, and as such are as important to editors as permanent categories are for readers, so if there's a move to remove stub categorisation as unimportant, then all permanent categories of articles should also be removed as equally unimportant. We can probably make do with one large category for stubs - with 400,000 articles - from which editors can easily find articles to work on. Grutness...wha? 04:07, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm a little taken aback to hear people's ideas described as "quaint", an admonishment that people on this page must be unsure of what they say, a challenge to provide evidence for their opinions, new articles called a "crapstorm", etc. It gives me pause as to whether we should entrust a new gatekeeping function to enforcers who have that opinion of the abilities of the great mass of editors writing articles.Wikidemo 17:13, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

The idea sounds lovely in theory, but I too am worried about the practical aspects, especially for newbie editors, who may well find it quite a instruction-heavy process (whereas at the moment the beauty of WP is the ease of editing and creating articles). A halway idea, however, might well be worthwhile - the automatic tagging of new articles with {{stub}}. At least that will get them into the stubsorting system immediately, rather than stub-sorters having to wait for database dumps and the like for the base stubcat to be replenished. Any new articles which are beyond stub length could be removed from the stub system by sorters at that point. Grutness...wha? 04:07, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Even better, the bots could troll through {{stub}}'s top-level relatively frequently (probably more often than the stub sorters could), and anything over a certain size there would be de-stubbed before making the sorters go through the trouble of sorting it. A win/win proposition, perhaps? Neier 05:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

That was my question as I read this string: When is a stub not a stub? Brian Pearson 17:45, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

That's a big problem - there's no hard and fast definition and it tends to be fairly arbitrary at times. The official definition (from

WP:STUB) is A stub is an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information. It's not directly linked to length - an article with one sentence of text followed by a 32k list is still a stub, whereas an obscure historical character about whom virtually nothing is recorded could be only a few sentences long and not be a stub. It also depends largely on the importance of the subject. To use one of my favourite examples, Croughton, Northamptonshire is not a stub - that's all you'd really need to say about a village of a few hundred people. But if New York or London had an article that length, it would be silly not to call it a stub. That's one of the reasons why automation doesn't always work well. Grutness...wha?

23:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

It should not be a huge intrusive thing naturaly, just a small note, with a link to some page listing the various alternative browsers out there, and a dismiss "button". If there is no great oposission to the idea I'll take it to the relevant MediaWiki talk pages (we need to put the detection stript and stuff in the common.js and add a "hook" for it to the sitenote and such to make it work). --Sherool (talk) 22:19, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It isn't the job of the library to criticize how old the car that delivers the patron is. This is a self correcting problem, users of older browsers will see degraded performance as the web changes, and if we get into this, it distracts from the core purpose of the site. Just my opinion. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 22:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not claiming support or opposition yet, but I'd like to mention that it would be possible to only deliver this message to XP users running IE6 or older. —METS501 (talk) 22:41, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Problem is most of the remaining "holdouts" are probably "casual" computer users that don't even know other browsers exist, and I think that self correction you mention won't happen for a long while still. IE6 have a big enough market share that most website will ensure that they deploy the nessesary fixes and workaronds to make things work in IE6, thus casual users see no problems (and they don't know what they are missing out on) and so feel to need to go download a new piece of software to view websites, and so the problem perpetuates itself. If such a notice could help "nudge" a few more users into dropping IE6 it would be a good thing for the web all round IMHO. Sure it's not our job to critizise users for theyr choince of browser, but we could at least inform them that they do in fact have a choince and that they are currently using last decade's model. --Sherool (talk) 23:40, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that this would be classified as an advertisement. What about the people that can't upgrade to IE7. For instance, Mac users have Internet Explorer 5. It has not been upgraded yet. There are some Windows operating systems that cannot upgrade to IE7. There would only be one condition that would justify, in my opinion, putting this script to upgrade, and that would be to detect the browser and if it's not the up-to-date version of the browser that the person is using, then it would post a link to update it, however, I would disable that script, because I already have enough notifications from all of my browsers telling me to update. I would compare this script to software that installs on your computer and tells you to upgrade your os. Very annoying... --Μ79_Šp€çíá∫횆^{tell me about it} —Preceding unsigned comment added by M79 specialist (talk • contribs) 00:53, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not our concern what browser users use, but the poor web designer (and, in Wikipedia's case, the editors) to use compliant code no matter what. That said, we shouldn't encourage, say, Lynx users to switch because they can't see images. People use their own web browsers for a reason - or for lack of one to change. x42bn6 Talk Mess 04:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

You said it best. Try going to http://www.workrave.org/welcome/ in IE. An ad for Mozilla appears at the top of the screen saying "We see you're using Internet Explorer. Try Firefox, you'll like it better." I don't see why people get so obsessed with what browser other people use. -Henry W. Schmitt 05:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Well you can't write standards complant code and make it work for IE6 at the same time. You have to jump though several extra hoops to make stuff work in all sorts of old browsers. Wich is fine up to a scertain point, but there rely is no reason for anyone to keep using IE6. You can either upgrade to IE7 or use FireFox, Opera or Safari or whatever. If someone use Lynx as theyr main browser at least they know what they are doing and are aware that they are not getting the full experience. I suspect however that most of the remaining IE6 users simply are not aware that they are basicaly using the browser equivelent of a black and white television. Sure if they are happy with black and white that's theyr choice, but I think we should at least make sure they know it's possible to get colors now. As for why people care; There are several reasons: webdesigners can't make full use of modern web technology because more than half theyr potential users still use crappy old browsers and would asume theyr site was broken unless they spent a long of time to create a "light" version of theyr site for such browsers. There are also security issies. IE6 is rater notorious for it's security flaws, and a compromised computer is not just a danger to it's owner. Such

zombie computers are a major source of spam, Denial-of-service attacks, they become breeding grounds for viruses, used in frauds and other neferious activities. The sooner IE6 is dead and buried the better off everyone will be. --Sherool (talk)

01:33, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I observe that Google analytics tells me that browser hits in the last 30 days on a website I manage break down as 65.35% IE, 30.84% Firefox, 2.5% Safari, 0.88% Opera, 0.29% Mozilla. Within IE, it breaks down as 69.89% 6.0, 29.66% 7.0, 0.45% 5.5. I would guess that Wikipedia has similar browser hit percentages. So, Pre-7.0 IE accounts for about 100 * .6535 * (1 - .2966) = about half of all visitors. I opine that this information should drive decisions regarding how much effort should be expended in providing compatibility with IE pre-7.0 browsers. -- Boracay Bill 02:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Considerable efforts are already beeing taken to ensure compatablity with IE6. That's not the issue here. I'm just suggesting we inform IE6 users (in a non-intrusive way in the form of a dismissable one line notice at the top of the screen) that they will be better of with a different browser in the hopes of actualy making a dent in those statistics so that in the future we no longer have to expend so much effort on adding JavaScrit hacks to make things work decently in IE6. --Sherool (talk) 14:46, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I happen to use IE6, both on my desktop and laptop. And probably like any other IE6 user, I really don't like to be bugged by any non-intrusive well-formulated one-line tip of the day. We just don't care. Really. Any time an idea comes to my mind to upgrade to FF or IE7, I just take a very long walk in the park, and it naturally goes away. On the other hand, I don't expect you to put much attention into those JavaScript hacks either. Trick is, if I'll notice that a really, really useful JS ceased to work, I might just upgrade my browser... maybe. Excuse me for being so straighforward! This idea of giving good advice when not being asked for one, this drives me crazy. --Kubanczyk 19:46, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I guess that's one opposed. Any particular reason you dislike the idea of upgrading though, is it just a "I'm used to this interface" kind of thing? Anyone else have any thoughts on this topic? --Sherool (talk) 15:15, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion. There is plenty of room at the left for more links, particularly in the interation section. There is a link to Help, but no link to "Browser difficulties" even in the Help page or in the Browsing Wikipedia page. I would add the link Browser difficulties and make it a page about how Wikipedia is written to work in all browsers, including text only browsers and in browsers used by the blind, and then add that some older browsers such as IE2 and Netscape 1.0 may not render articles as well as newer browsers, and make a list of common browsers and their current version, with external links and instructions on downloading. This computer has IE6 and I thought that it was the latest greatest version. See how easy it is to ignore those nags to upgrade? Like I really want to take an hour to download an upgrade that could be a downgrade anyway. Focusing on IE6 would be a mistake. Even mentioning it would be a mistake. 199.125.109.88 15:44, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Sherool, the thing is, people generally just don't like being nagged to upgrade, or do anything, really. It tends to annoy people. It's patronising, irritating, and just generally doesn't endear people. I generally keep everything up to date, but I'm me and I'm a geek. Most people don't, and it doesn't cause them much of a problem. Plus, wikipedia is not an engine for social change (except in terms of tacitly encouraging free information, of course). SamBC(talk) 15:52, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

As long as we intend to support IE6, there is no reason for us to tell people to switch. If we decide to stop supporting IE6 at some point in the future (which we probably will, but not for at least a year or two, I'd think), that's when we should add a sitenotice telling IE6 users that we intend to stop supporting IE6 and they should switch if they want to continue using Wikipedia effectively. --Tango 15:50, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this image is helpful and should be added to the other "Wikipedia: About" pages: OOPS, I didn't properly copy this picture & credits. Please go to the German Language Edition to see the picture taken at Honolulu Airport that I am proposing be added.

Mahalo, Jerry Mershon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.163.128.41 (talk) 21:17, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Can it be set up so that the cursor is already in the search box when Wikipedia is first opened? This way a user can simply start typing their query once the page loads (like in Google). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.221.3.7 (talk) 14:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Not everyone is going to wan to search... but most people probably will, so that's not a bad idea.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 15:15, 09/24/2007

15:15, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

That prevents users using the arrow keys to scroll the Main Page, which is something else users expect to be able to do. --ais523 15:19, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Could we make a javascript keyboard shortcut instead, to put the cursor in the search box?

Equazcion • argue/improves • 15:25, 09/24/2007

Exists already, and not even using JavaScript. It's (some combination of modifier keys depending on your browser)-F; see Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts for more information. --ais523 15:26, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

That takes you to the dedicated search page; it doesn't use the search tool on the left. But I guess it's just as good. Thanks

Equazcion • argue/improves • 15:30, 09/24/2007

It does take me to the search tool on the left in Firefox 2, at least. Maybe it varies by browser? --ais523 15:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox 2 also. What exactly are you pressing?

Equazcion • argue/improves • 15:41, 09/24/2007

Nevermind, I got it. alt-shift-F does it. Thanks

Equazcion • argue/improves • 15:42, 09/24/2007

What the watchlist really needs is a "Changes since my last review" option, so instead of seeing the changes that have happened in the last 3 days, I can see what's changed since the last time I actually read or edited the article. Let's say I start an article on something and add it to my watchlist. Then later I go on vacation for a few weeks, and it is subtly vandalized by someone and none of the

Personally, I just note down the time and date of the most recent item on my watchlist before I leave, and when I come back I look at any changes listed more recent than that. You can easily change the days parameter in the watchlist URI if you need to look further back (e.g. this will show changes in the last 30 days), or just use the "all" link on the watchlist page. Commons seems to have a feature that will highlight revisions in the page history and your watchlist since you last checked the page, but I've never been that fond of it. Anomie 14:25, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

It is getting increasing common that TV, internet and printed sources use images from Commons in their work without giving any attribution at all.

Should Wikipedia start with by-lines next to all images? People are not accustomed to clicking the images. They assume that if there is no by-line, the image has no copyright. I have had a couple of images used by a major Swedish newspaper. I didn't complain though because I am worried that in a court of law, they would get right because established practice is to have a by-line next to the image??

And today I saw the image from Olof Palme used on http://www.thelocal.se/ -- again with no attribution.

The problem is not mainly on my behalf because I am a proponent for free knowledge. But it will be difficult to convince others to upload their photos here if they can not be sure of getting their required attribution.

Fred-J 15:57, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Sadly, the fact is that nobody has the resources to sue. Contributors have to expect that, we can only ask that people follow the rules. Those who have asked for photo attribution can take action. Have you tried asking the offenders to add an attribution? ←

Ben^B4

22:00, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

• The Free Software Foundation has extensive resources to deal with people who violate the various GNU-related and copyleft licenses. >Radiant< 11:50, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Ben: No, I haven't requested it (my own photos appeared in a printed magazine). Maybe Wikipedia could start an interest group to send out attribution demands? Anyway, won't image bylines solve the problem? / Fred-J 11:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Just wondering, with all the criticisms about the use of unreliable sources in a number of articles and promotion of pseudoscience etc, how hard is it to create a template or some sort of indication (Like we use the

My Idea is the template will be in the lines of

• For publications {{Sourced from published|name1|name2|...}}

or {{Sourced from published|This article cites extensively from publication(s). Please see the talk page for a list of reputable publications it has used.}}

• For Peer reviewed journals (Science or other subjects)

{{Sourced from Journal|name1|name2|...}} or {{Sourced from Journal|This article cites extensively from peer reviewed publication(s) or Journal. Please see the talk page for a list of Journals used.}}

• Note, by published, I am emphasising on Secondary resources.

• A further additional template can be made for reputable websites, (eg, BBC, CNN, Universities etc)

• These can be added to any article that cites and sources substantially from such references, and does not neccessarily have to be for a featured article only.
• Another point is, may be a review of sources should be incorporated into the FAC process.
• The proposed template itself should be added after peer review of the article itself to establish that it indeed meets the criteria.

I think where such publications or journals have been used (I always try and go for published accounts and journals), any reliabillity (or doubts) can be judged for itself.Rueben lys 14:23, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

We should just focus on removing unreliable sources and providing reliable sources in the articles themselves, and better define reliable sourcing at

WP:RS. The templates would just sprawl, adding additional places for people to argue over the reliability of sources. This seems like an additional layer of complication that would add little, but provide more places for dispute. Vassyana

14:46, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I am saying where obviously peer reviewed journals or published accounts have been used. ie, If it is a journal (like

Journal of Rheumatology, Social Scientist, Pacific Historical review

etc), you know that it has been peer reviewed. The point of the template is to outline that such a peer reviewed source has been used.

Again for books, a published book is a more concrete source than a blog or a random website like tripod resource etc, especially when it is a well known book on the subject (eg, Tiger Force, or The last Mughal, etc).

The point is not to say that the article is perfect, but to say that the information comes from thoroughly verifiable and moreover respected accounts. This would allow the reader to make up his own mind on how reliable the article is.Rueben lys 14:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The reader can make up their own mind anyway, and those proposed templates would be prone to an incredible amount of abuse. Who's to say that the article accurately represents the source given? If the article is that close to a single source, then isn't it pushing the boundaries of copyvio? Can't people see, when they look at the reference list, that it's a book or a journal rather than a random website? SamBC(talk) 15:47, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I have an idea, probably not an original one, but here goes. What if there was, for every article page, another page, similar to the discussion page, but for discussion and debate about the article topic, instead of the article itself. Maybe not linked by a tab like the "discussion" page, maybe just a "bluelink" at the bottom. Definetly a flawed idea, but I think that it would substantialy reduce the violent and inconstructive arguments, which I have, to my great remorse, taken part in myself in the past. Zantaggerung 01:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is definitely

advocate a particular view of a topic. This is directly against the grain of the wiki. Vassyana

14:49, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

This one crops up regularly. The internet is overflowing with fora for every conceivable subject; WP is not going to risk joining them, thankfully. Adrian M. H. 21:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, these are obvious problems, but my idea wouldn't really be a part of the encycloppedia, it would merely re-direct those people who wish to debate. I think you misunderstand me, probably due to my non-clarification. Zantaggerung 01:28, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Of course wikipedia should not actually sponsor violent arguments, merely say "Hey, why don't you do that over here instead?"

Zantaggerung 01:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is

WP:NOT#FORUM ≈ jossi ≈ (talk)

01:54, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the administrator rollback function should be made available to every user with auto confirmed status. The benefits of providing this tool to all users older than a couple of days are many and the drawbacks few and inconsequential.

The most obvious benefit is that it saves time. The

The rollback function is also far more efficient then scripts in terms of bandwidth. When an admin presses the rollback button a small package of data is sent to the wikimedia server which then creates a dummy revision that points to the revision that was rolled back to. When a script reverts a page it first has to request the data it is reverting to from the wikimedia servers, then the script has to send the data right back to the server which saves the revision under a completely new ID. For a 10,000 byte page the script would use 20,000 bytes of bandwidth and 10,000 bytes of storage space, a rollback would use probably less then 150 bytes of both bandwidth and server space.

As for the drawbacks to this proposal there are very few. The reason that this function was not given to normal users in the first place was because it could potently be used by vandals, or so I assume. This is not a good enough reason to keep the rollback function from the mob in my opinion because if the rollback ability was given to auto confirmed users very few vandals would ever be able to use the function; 97 percent of all vandalism is carried out by IP's and of the accounts used for vandalism very few, perhaps 5% of those ever wait 3 days. That is only 0.15% of all vandals having access to the function.

So, does anyone agree with me, should we give normal users the rollback function? Or is this a stupid proposal that no one will ever care about? -Icewedge 18:58, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not stupid, but there are foreseeable problems. Rollback is a powerful function, and might be a bad idea to give to all users including those who are inexperienced. The good thing about TW is that most people don't become aware that they have the option to install it until they reach a certain level of knowledge with the wiki. I think that's a good natural check against new users (even autoconfirmed users) performing accidental multiple reverts. Autocnfirmed is just based on number of edits and amount of time, so it's not that great an indicator of technical understanding. Editing of monobook.js to install scripts is a better indicator. Plus I myself haven't found TW's rollbacks to be all that slow. They just take a few seconds for me. It probably depends on your connection and computer speed (both of which happen to be pretty darn fast for me).

Equazcion • argue/improves • 19:31, 09/23/2007

There was a proposal a year or two ago to make rollback a feature which could be given to trusted users. It failed to get consensus. There is less need for it now that there was then, because the undo function provides a convenient tool for ordinary users to revert vandalsim, and there are many add-on tools which give rollback-like functionality. I would not oppose a level of trusted user who gets rollback, but the right would have to be able to be removed as some might use it to edit war.-gadfium 19:44, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Why would having the rollback function in an edit war be a problem? Sure it is faster but in edit warring, unlike the reversion of vandalism, it does not particularly matter if it takes 3 seconds of 15 to revert a page. -Icewedge 20:10, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

If the admin version is better than Twinkle I see no reason not to make it available. Having it available in the same way as Twinkle would provide the same 'natural check' anyway. Richard001 07:18, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

See

Not saying I agree or disagree with the proposal, but just to note that failing to acheive consensus previously is of purely historical interest - consensus can change. SamBC(talk) 14:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't think that consensus will change on this one. You can try if you wish. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 01:56, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Currently, in a

But this is just a prelimary thought; I need so opinions to actually raise it.--Samuel di Curtisi di Salvadori 01:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Has the idea of creating Wikipedia pages for smart phones, PDAs, and other mobile devices been proposed? Many users want to access information and Wikipedia is a great reference tool or at least a great starting point to gain general information. They want to access it using their mobile devices for quick reference. However, the format that Wikipedia is in right now is not mobile-friendly. Will this be feasible some time in the near future?

Thanks in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shigawire1012 (talk • contribs) 06:51, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

What about http://en.wap.wikipedia.org? Also see

Wikipedia:WAP access. --ais523 13:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC

)

It can be difficult to predict what people do or do not know. For that reason, the

Gracenotes^T

§ 02:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

While the reference desk may be useful, it does have three problems:

1. Like you said, not many people know about it.
2. It can take a while to get an answer.
3. Some people don't feel comfortable asking questions to strangers, I know I wasn't my first time.

Also, the list would be automatic and it would just look for very simple patterns, and each pattern would have it's own entry on a special page that people can add to. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 02:53, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Something just struck me as odd; I realized that on the main page, and also the featured content page, there is no featured quote (there is also no featured quote on Wikiquote)! Perhaps a featured quote template should be developed. --OES23 12:44, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikiquote is a separate project from Wikipedia so there is no reason for a "featured quote" here. Judging which quotes would be good enough to be featured (it's not like you can rewrite a quote for clarity, etc.) would be a pretty POV process. Wikiquote uses a "Quote of the Day" on its Main Page. Users nominate quotes on the related pages: Wikiquote:WQ:QOTD. Rmhermen 14:18, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I looked to see if this had been proposed and couldn't find it anywhere. I am unsure if this is a "software" issue that I should post on the Bugzilla site or if the software is already there and just needs to be activated. Here's the thing...I just have tons of pages on my watchlist and I would like to be able to create my own categories to organize them on that page, even if it is just under headings I self-create like "Politics" "Mathematics" "Marine biology" etc. The watchlist is a "special page" that doesn't allow for manual editing, or I could just do it. I guess that its interactiveness with the system as a whole prevents it from being *also* editable? Anyway, any ideas? Because there are items on my watchlist that I put there because I had never before heard of them--I just stumbled across them link-jumping--and I wanted to save them, but now I don't know what they are at a glance. A series of cubbyholes could at least help me sort them, so that I would know their main subject matter.

As a side note I would also request that the "Clear Watchlist" button be moved farther away from the "View and Edit Watchlist" and the "View Raw Watchlist" buttons. I am clumsy and since there is no access to "History" on that page, it is a disaster (for me) waiting to happen.

Merci d'avance, Saudade7 12:10, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

No opinion on point 2 (seldom uses either function). There is no way as of yet for point 1, though you can create subpages of links (as your categories) then use the link at the side entitled "Related changes". This takes you to a page where it looks like a watchlist, but on it is all the links of that page. You can see an example of my userpage: Special:Recentchangeslinked/User:X42bn6. That is a slightly crude solution - but the only way I can think of. x42bn6 Talk Mess 12:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I would not worry about clearing your watchlist; it is a two-step process that would be difficult to do accidentally. A backup is sensible, though. Adrian M. H. 12:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks x42bn6 Talk Mess and M. H.. I feel better knowing that I cannot erase my list, but I am still alittle confused about the sub-pages thing. I like having everything all clean and on one page. I have to say that I use "watch" more like "bookmarks" and less as a tickertape of recent changes thing. And I didn't want to take up more wiki space. Oh well. Thanks. Saudade7 12:57, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that interwiki and interlanguage links, at least those with codes less than four letters long, function only if the code is in lowercase. This would accommodate abbreviations such as M:TG and ST:DS9, and I've yet to see an intentional interwiki or interlanguage link that didn't already comply. NeonMerlin 03:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

That problem can be bypassed without anything fancy just use this syntax ; [[:ST:DS9]]. -Icewedge 16:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

In links, that's fine, but what about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST:DS9 (which may, for instance, have worked before the Sesotho-language Wikipedia was established and still have some links left over from then)? What about the link at the top of the search result page (which occurs even with the colon)? I don't think it improves our image if someone ends up at an external site with no idea how they got there and no idea what the page they're seeing says (because it's in an unfamiliar language). Right now, there's a soft redirect back to en.wikipedia or fr.wikipedia (which I made), but what if the Sesotho-speakers decide to delete it, or what if a German-speaker tries http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST:DS9 (in which case I can't make a soft redirect to help them since I don't speak German)? NeonMerlin 00:06, 29 September 2007 (UTC)