Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive D

Implementing this by hand seems to make an unwarranted assumption that the hierarchy of categories will be stable. This particular example is in an area where that is probably true, but in other areas this could be a maintenance nightmare. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:54, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

We can suggest that people wait before classifying any categories in flux. I know I'd wait! --

Samuel Wantman

20:24, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I like the way the Classification's look. Good job! JesseW 01:44, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to link up the

As a member of the online forum www.classicaquasport.com I will be coordinating an effort to reconstruct the history of this well-known manufacturer of recreational power boats. The history is complicated by the fact that the original company, formed in 1967, went bankrupt before being purchased by current owner Genmar, and most historical documentation, both on the company itself and on the individual boat models, was lost. A collaborative, online effort might be the most efficient manner to reconstruct this history. I am seeking guidance as to whether to work within the Wikipedia environment, or to start a separate wiki. Stevedem 19:51, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia could probably benefit from an article on the company and the boats, but as it is not a general knowledge base, a truly exhaustive treatment of them probably would fall outside the scope of wikipedia. Good luck, though. jdb ❋ (talk) 04:33, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I recommend that you start a separate Wiki where you can be as comprehensive as you like; just make sure that your licensing is such that you can freely move articles to Wikipedia as appropriate. Then test the waters on how much of this the Wikipedian community considers appropriate. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:29, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

I think it is quite clear that

As, of course, mere complaining would not be welcome, I would like to propose a solution to the problem. I hope, firstly, that the fans of this series who have contributed articles on the subject do not take this as an attack on them. Rather, it is only an attempt to improve article quality and standards. I propose, then, that a majority of these articles be redirected to the broader, main articles. The significant subjects (the books, movies, principal characters, and perhaps other important topics others may care to suggest) would have their own articles; all others would redirect to the appropriate pages, into which the material would be incorporated. We would not have such things as a page for each spell, plant, beast, or magazine that appears in the series. -- Emsworth 20:58, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Seems modest compared with the documentaion of

boggy numbers since 1835.--Jirate

21:04, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)

I think that 'boggy' is a cross between B.R. and H.P... Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 23:51, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

So what? As long as it's accurate. There's plenty of room for it. Maybe some articles should be consolidated, but otherwise I don't think this is a problem. - Omegatron 21:56, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

One certainly does not advocate the deletion of the content. Rather, consolidation is in order. To give an example, there is no need for separate articles for

Rules of Quidditch. A List of characters in the Harry Potter series or some other suitably named article should cover a majority of the cases in question. -- Emsworth

23:39, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hear! Hear! When you consider the howls of 'not notable' that greet the creation of an article on someone who has 'only' published a book or two, or affected hundreds or thousands of people by being an inspirational teacher, this sort of nonsense is truly offensive (well, it's the howls of 'not notable' that are offensive, in fact, but there seems to be nothing that can be done about the hordes of editors who are appalled at the idea that someone else might be the subject of an article and not them). The notion of 'accuracy' is also largely empty; how can one be accurate about a character that doesn't even exist in the books? Here (and elsewhere) this needs a firm but fair (and consistent) hand. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 23:51, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Consolidation is an excellent idea. HP fans might take a cue from what's been done with Atlas Shrugged, which also has legions of rabid fans, but (fortunately) has been whittled down to a few large articles, rather than zillions of short ones. (There's also a section-by-section analysis, but on Wikibooks, not WP.) jdb ❋ (talk) 02:35, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No need to consolidate - wp is not paper. The Recycling Troll 10:14, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Consolidation is an excellent idea in many cases such as this. I say this not because we need to conserve pages (I am a follower of Wikipedia is not paper and largely an inclusionist), but because it's good article organization and helps people that are genuinely interested in the topic explore small bits of related info together rather than jumping around. It also avoids repetition of context and assumptions. Subjects requiring more explanation can be briefly explained and linked. A good example is

There is a difference, though. Someone with enough knowledge, resources, or time to invesitgate could expand an article on

Godric's Hollow, a bit of Potter ephemera that cannot be expanded beyond fanfiction or speculation, regardless on the amount of time spent on it. Here, a redirect to Placenames in the Harry Potter universe or something like it seems appropriate. Should J. K. Rowling provide more information on it at a later time, then maybe it should get its own article. Cmprince

20:29, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I feel this is a good idea. I have contributed bits and pieces to a few of the main Potter articles, and reckon we don't need dedicated articles for things like Mark Evans or Harry Potter and the Toenail of Icklibõgg. But I also feel that a huge over-consolidation would be wrong as well. There is a huge number of articles about different Pokemon characters, which really should be consolidated too. - Mark 13:54, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty firm on saying that the Harry Potter material belongs in Wikipedia, and offhand 200-300 articles does not sound excessive, as long as they are the right ones and well written. Frankly, I think great coverage of something like Harry Potter is a great way to get a lot of young people interested in Wikipedia.

That said, I have nothing against consolidation. For example, minor characters about whom little can be said, might as well be redirects to substantive articles that cover those characters. I see two clues to what can be consolidated:

1. Short articles with no significant potential for expansion.
2. Articles that heavily duplicate what content they have.

Jmabel | Talk 19:26, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

• True, we don't really need articles on each minor detail For example: I don't think we particularly need an article Harry Potter and the Toenail of Icklibõgg; it could easily be in an article about title rumours. I suggest we merge everything with no significant entries the Harry Potter Lexicon. I don't have a problem with a great number of articles, as long as they describe the major characters, places and issues of the books and films, anything minor like that plant Neville Longbottom had in book 5 should be deleted unless it's proven important later. - Mgm|^(talk) 15:32, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

New idea to complement the idea of Wikiversity/books... WikiNotes - where anyone can post notes filling in the details between the lines of science books (and, in time, other books).

Description by example: most physics major textbooks (take Griffiths or Shankar or Sakurai) have lines of confusing text (that are often obscure in its long-paragraph form - better if rehashed as notes) and equations that seem to come out of nowhere (many steps in-between are omitted - better if all steps were shown).

WikiNotes would be a collection of open-source notes that fill in the confusing parts of textbooks. There should be no copy-right problems with the original textbooks, as WikiNotes would clarify the text, but not plagiarize it.

WikiNotes would be a valuable resource for students attempting to learn on their own. The barrier of not understanding a textbook shall be broken! It would also be a good resource for other students in prep for their courses.

I have been considering setting up a site like this for a long time now. With the advent of Media Wiki, something like this might actually work out (easily, too). Such a site would require ample publicity for enough people to contribute notes - thus, it'll be best to be called WikiNotes.

I can contribute a number of booknotes for WikiNotes once someone sets up the basic MediaWiki for it - or, if I gain permission to do so.

Tell me what you think at WikiNotesBrainstorm.

=(Yosofun 06:42, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC))

There is a vote proceeding over what name to use for the capital city of Poland during various periods of history. Please go to the Warsaw/Vote page to cast your vote. RickK 23:22, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

Let's all have a good time squeezing as much out of this proposal as possible. At worst we'll conclude that it's rubbish and we need something else. That would already be something, no? JRM 23:19, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

Based on this year's experience, I thought a semi-serious policy for April Fool's Day was in order. I have proposed it at

A few days ago I posted the following on the discussion page of the Knights Templar article. I'm repeating it here since I'm not sure if that is the appropriate place.

Temple Society/Tempelgesellschaft

The German and Hebrew editions of Wikipedia have articles on the German society founded by Christoph Hoffmann in 1861 de he. Extra-wiki sites can be found via this clusty search and this Google search (Yahoo only gives 17 results for: "Temple Society" "Christoph Hoffmann"). Could someone {I don't know enough} add a similar article in English {if one already exists I can't find it} with at least links between between it and this article. Michael {is this the accepted procedure for making comments?} Retrieved from "Talk:Knights_Templar"

Knights Templar

I know schools are a pretty touchy issue on Wiki at the moment but I don't think this should mean they couldn't be a little more organised. I've made a draft

Actually I have just tried it out on

my own School.LukeSurl

00:12, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would note that headteacher sounds very British English and that the enrollment item should allow for a date at which that enrollment was correct. Rmhermen 16:30, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Saying "pricipal" is very American English. Is there any appropriate word which doesn't suggest either? Would an "Information last updated" or "Above Information correct as of" field be appropriate? Please feel free to edit the template.--LukeSurl 18:13, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The non-American, non- British, poliically correct word: School Administrator. --Munchkinguy 19:37, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good, I'll put it in...--LukeSurl 20:06, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Whilst I agree neither principal or headteacher are the best word to use, school administrator suggests clerical staff to me... Drw25 20:08, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How about, simply, Headmaster/Principal?

t^g_e^c

) 20:28, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That also sounds good. But "administration" is the way to refer to the Principal and Vice Principals grouped together. So I deduced that "administrator" would be the right term. --Munchkinguy 03:52, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User:138.251.118.16 has completlely rewritten the template. As a result the template's use on a few articles has been suspended. It looks quite good but it raises two issues.

Firstly, is it best for a school template which is so comprehensive in its scope, or just a table? Personally I have no inclination either way (had a think about this) would prefer a summary table as the template, the aim of the template is to provide an organised set of the 'mundane' facts about the school and then allow the writer flexiblity in what he has to say in the rest of the article. The template as it stands is certainly not flexible as it dictates almost exactly how the article should be structured.

One bone of contention is that this edit is very American in its language (the words "principal" "graders" and "state"), and from what it implies will be the information contained (such as American Indian ethnicity). I'm going to do my best now to internationalise this template. --LukeSurl 18:46, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, this template being an article thing is creepy. This template should be a table, not a crazy fill-in-the-blanks template for an entire school article. --Munchkinguy 16:03, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Keep in mind that many school articles have almost no information that couldn't be moved into this template, and that articles consisting only of a template are candidates for speedy deletion. While I don't think that such articles would actually be speedied, it would be a very compelling argument on vfd, so this probably would have a net negative effect on the "all schools are notable" cause. —Korath (Talk) 20:03, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

As it is now, the template is completely useless, since it dictates the article structure. It should reverted to the previous state. Alfio 10:58, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I sort of reverted the template. Some of the things still listed there are a bit trivial, but I'll leave them there.... for now. --Munchkinguy 19:11, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Here is a different proposition keep people from wasting time with the 3RR. Two technical changes would be needed:

• A "seniority system" where users get powers from having participated in WP (Example: 1=newbies 2=users with some combination of # of edits (e.g.500), time on the project, amount contributed etc. 3=admins)
• A blocking system per page.

Then if a level-2 user sees a level-1 user vandalizing, she/he can be banned from editing the page for 1 day (maybe longer after repeated abuse). Disputes between level-2 users should be solved by level-3 users.

Problems with dynamic IPs would be solvable: for example, allow only edits by logged-in users from that IP block. That way, others can still edit--J heisenberg 13:15, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia? This is WikiPediaAid speaking. I say, maybe you should go for a Guinness World Record for say, Encylopedia website with most articles. Just goto their website and go for the record. I don't know if they will accept it or anything, but please try!

GREAT IDEA - surely we can demonstrate some sort of broken record - or propose one. The folks at Guinees handle questions by email - but the reply takes 3 weeks. What should we propose to them?

Lotsofissues

05:26, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We're hands down the world's largest encyclopedia. Nickptar 12:40, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are those in the world (most?) who claim we are not an encyclopedia. --Sean κ. ⇔ 13:20, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Then largest... um... what's a good generic term for a wiki? "Collaborative writing project"? "Publicly-created knowledge source"? Nickptar 14:06, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Propose many things in one email. r3m0t ^talk 15:01, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

If you mean by "encyclopedia" an expert-written and peer-reviewed reference work,

• If you are submitting a claim for a Guinness world record, you have to document a significant number of similar endeavors that yours surpasses. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:22, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

List of claims we are making

• Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia
  • If we don't fit the exact criteria of encyclopædia (which I think we do), then the phrase "reference work" should do, imho. Thryduulf 23:41, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Wikipedia is the world's largest collaborative project
  • Is this actually true? (see comments below) Thryduulf 23:41, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What else?

• largest editorial team?
• largest wiki (no doubt about this)
• largest number of contributors to an online project?
• encalopaedia/reference work with editions in the most number of languages
• largest encylopaedia/reference work/collaborative project/internet site in xx langauge (for some of the smaller languages this might be true. Indeed without checking, I am wondering if the Klingon and Interlingue Wikipedias (for example) are the only encylopaedias in their respective languages). Thryduulf 12:57, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If we get in the GBoWR for being the largest Klingon encyclopedia, that will make my day. —Sean κ. ⇔ 14:47, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's getting to be like a vanity claim. It's like I am the first living thing on earth to eat a Whopper on this McDonald's table at 11 AM. -- Toytoy 16:45, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Largest collaborative project?

Are we the "largest collaborative project"? I'd say we're the largest collaborative (online) reference work, but largest collaborative project is a very braod claim. Depending how you define a collaborative project, things like the largest of either of the coaltions in

• The fall of the
  Berlin wall
• The
  Egyptian Pyramids. Can these (and others involving slavery) qualify as a "large unpaid collaboration"? (remark by Igny
  )
• Live Aid
• Linux
• resistance movement in
  Occupied France
  /other occupied country.
• Human Genome Project
• FreeDB
• SourceForge

Thryduulf 23:49, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How about a feature whereby users can state subjects they consider themselves to have specialist knowledge on? This would be to make it easier to match up users to pages needing attention, stubs and substubs.

There already is one. I believe you can find it at

t^g_e^c_k

) 17:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No problem, I didn't mean to sound brusque or harried there...

t^g_e^c_k

) 18:41, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Don't worry you didn't. --Ebz 22:04, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You may also consider the (newly-created)

Cleanup Taskforce, a group of volunteers to whom you can submit articles that need work, based on their areas of expertise. The group is still starting up. — Knowledge Seeker দ

05:34, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Nickptar 20:54, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea, how about the following improvement. Have the thumbnail inline in the article, inside a div (box) the same size as the larger image. Clicking on the thumbnail goes to the full image. That way the layout of the page won't change, and you can still vaguely see the image. --Sean κ. ⇔ 19:14, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, also a good idea, but you'd have to shrink the image to almost complete unrecognizability to avoid the "Other People In the Room" problem. Nickptar 20:34, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The small image is a good idea, but another option would be for mobile (

GPRS/GSM) browsing when an option to not display images over a certain filesize (say 20kb) without specifically requesting it would be useful. Thryduulf

20:08, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Maybe there could be user-configurable thresholds for showing inline images (show none, show smaller than X), and configurable actions (don't show, shrink to X, blur/ultra-compress). Wouldn't want to confuse people with too many choices, though. Nickptar 20:34, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's not hard to draw an obscene picture that's smaller than 4K in size (by using only two colors and GIF compression). --Sean κ. ⇔ 22:24, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good point. Hence turning off images totally. Even shrinking and blurring wouldn't be much help with Autofellatio.jpg. Nickptar 02:08, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm all in favor of anything that helps the viewer take responsibility for what he views. — Xiong熊talk 07:01, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Image:Lunar-Phase-Diagram.png

The calculation of a day's lunar phase is not very difficult. Can the wiki server generate the image of the moon each day? I guess it is a nice idea to see today's moon in the article moon.

You need a good picture of the moon such as Image:Moon merged small.jpg, and generate 29 moon images. Save the images. And have the system copy the corresponding image to [[Image:Today's moon.jpg]] each day according to UTC.

It is also a good idea to generate the coordinates of planets and stars of a user-defined place but lunar phase is the easiest job. -- Toytoy 10:56, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

OK, that's cool.... But why would we want to do it? Are we going to start listing the phase of the moon for every day in history? I really think auto-moon phases are a neat thing to do, but I'm not sure how much relevance it has to Wikipedia. Seems more appropriate for an astronomy site or a weather site. - Pioneer-12 03:28, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Maybe wikinews along with the weather map? Mgm|^(talk) 11:37, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

I'll be great to display today's lunar phase in the article for moon. I'll also be great to display the current temperature and weather in each major city's article. The former is not that difficult and fun. You may want to list the lunar phase information in the article of a historical battle such as the D-Day. Or maybe for Jack the Ripper ... . -- Toytoy 12:49, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

The moon phase affects night light, tides, religious ceremonies, and werewolves. OK, a moon phase detector would be good for researchers to have. What other useful information can be auto-generated that would apply to more then one article? (Day of the week....hmmm.... eclipses....) Maybe this could be expanded into a "Wiki autofacts". It's not quite Wikipedia, but it would be a useful tool for Wikipedia to have access to. - Pioneer-12 23:22, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why not make a working orrery to display in the page by that name? Mmm, and maybe a dancing Jacko? — Xiong熊talk 06:59, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

I would like to see some markup added to the Wiki language for marking up simple tables.

This is not a proposal for a whole new table syntax, which I don't think we need. Rather, I feel that a simplified table markup would be useful for making the simple boxes that are ubiquitous on WP. To see what I mean, take a look at the Taxobox over at Plant, or the infobox over at Portland, Oregon. The proposal is simply:

 [*Heading*]
 :Row1 Item1, Row1 Item2
 :Row2 Item1, Row2 Item2
 :Row3 Item1, Row3 Item2 :Row4 Item1, Row4 Item2
 [*Second Heading | background=red*] : Row1 Item1, Row1 Item2
 ...etc...

Where the commas and colons are delimiters. The parsing is pretty simple, and there would be some restrictions, like no nested tables, no use of colspan or rowspan, and no commas or colons within a cell.

I'd like to point out a simplified table markup could help shift the focus from formatting to logical structure. That is, we should be able to think of a table as a list of lists, not a collection of cells. If I mark something up, I shouldn't think about the way the table is laid out, just as long as it preserves the logic. As an example, I could see the markup,

 [*Plants*]
 :Picture, [[Image:A plant.jpg]]
 [*Scientific classification*]
 :Domain, Eukaryota
 :Kingdom, Plantae

Could be laid out as,

Plants
Picture	(some image)
Scientific classification
Domain	Eukaryota
Kingdom	Plantae

But by simply passing a parameter, the editor could flip the orientation,

Plants	Picture	Scientific classification	Domain	Kingdom
	(some image)		Eukaryota	Plantae

Or,

Plants	Scientific classification
Picture	Domain	Kingdom
(some image)	Eukaryota	Plantae

Or, we could skip the table all together and have it output as,

Plants Picture: (some image).

Scientific classification Domain: Eukaryota. Kingdom: Plantae.

All of these convey the same information. Then the editor wouldn't have to think about layout, just logical structure. Well that's enough WikiPhilosophy for one night ;) --69.203.121.20 15:10, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC) (standing in for Sean Kelly.)

Pipe syntax is pretty simple. Let's not introduce another syntax to navigate. — Xiong熊talk 06:51, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

A competition is announced for the standardisation of talk page templates: see

You can request this article on the Arabic Wikipedia at ar:ويكيبيديا:مواضيع مقترحة. Angela. 01:19, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Not certain where the best place to propose this, I'll post it here: I've been noticing that our various articles on colo(u)rs are not necessarily consistent with each other, particularly when it comes to

• I like the idea, and I don't think you're duplicating effort. Don't forget to read the
  list of colors before you start, though. :) Mgm|^(talk)
  19:34, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
  • Sounds like a good idea. Coincidentally, yesterday I proposed {{
    WP:WSS for the many stray colour article stubs (col to get around the color/colour problem). Grutness|^hello?
    00:09, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Created. Now I need lots of help so it doesn't implode under its own weight. --Phil | Talk 09:45, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Count me in. — Xiong熊talk 06:40, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

The idea:

To make a wiki space dedicated to the documentation of hardware and thechnology.

History and rambling:

A few hours of scouering the internet with only a serial number as a starting point prompted the idea. I had this card for my pc and needed a driver for it and thought it would be easy to just look it up like in the old days when all the inhabitants of the web were tech-minded people and if you werent you had no means of logging on.

Now I eventually found the driver on a page dealing with issues like this and apparently the company making this card had gone bankrupt / stoped supporting the card / been bought or liquidated or taken over or whatever. But a user of the card had posted the driver on his personal website. Now some would say: "Why not just go to this site when you need something like driver / hardware info?" and I would say : "Well there are loads of those sites and most in thread form with old data and most of the time just questions with no answers! But the Wiki system is mutch better for this since the articles accumulate info instead of just piling up text like threads and with the wiki we would have connected us with the critical mass of people needed to make this work."

Anyway I think it would be awesome and useful even if the drivers themselves werent hosted it would be a good starting point.

Best regard to all yall.

Ágúst Rafnsson.

If you want to propose this as a Wikimedia project, please see meta:Proposals for new projects. However, a documentation wiki already exists at Wikicities:c:Documentation. Angela. 01:14, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

I am one of Wikipedians interested, for various reason, in articles that need translation. However, the current system for handling that is, IMO, pretty bad. The worst part is that we have a ton of different places for that. Consider:
Category:Wikipedia translation that contains:
Category:Pages needing translation and Category:Translation requests. I know that these two categories are separate, the first being for non-English articles posted on English Wikipedia, and the second being for requests from other Wikipedias. However, it still makes it harder to follow. Next, we have Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, which is, apparently, the most often checked place by translators, but then again, there are many articles in Category:Pages needing translation that are not on this page.
Next, lists of translators. Wikipedia:Translators available and Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Translators are really in need of merging, being two places with the same intention and different contents. My preference lies with a layout such as in Wikipedia:Translators available, so you can browse by language.
My proposal is to have one big page for everything translation related, and not like

• Yes, it's probably a good idea to browse by language. I'd say merge the two into Wikipedia:Translators available and redirectWikipedia:Wikipedians/Translators there. The fact there's a lot of articles in the category that aren't on the Wikipedia namespace page is probably because people tag articles without listing them. I'd prefer if we kept translations from and into English seperate. If any cats duplicate eachother I suggest you take it to CFD and ask for a consensus whether or not they need merging. Mgm|^(talk) 19:32, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

  I am the main person who keeps

  WP:TIE

  is a place for making requests, which do not have the urgency created by some anonymous author's pasting of (possibly copyvio'd, possibly libelous) foreign-language material into Wikipedia. Perhaps one or the other name should change to make the distinction clearer, but they absolutely should not be merged.

  As for the various places people sign up as translators: I'm all for merging redundant pages, but we should not confuse pages aimed at that particular task with more general lists of translators, or mere statements of linguistic capability that do not imply a willingness to handle translation requests. Most of the people signed up on Wikipedia:Translators available actually do some translation work (although I'm sure there are a few dead accounts still hanging out there).

  I find Category:Translation requests useless and wish it would go away. When I suggested this a while back, it seemed to be somebody's little darling, I forget whose.

  WP:VFD

  .

  Most of these pages are reasonably large, large enough to be a problem for slow connections.

  WP:TIE

  . I didn't initially like the idea, but it seemed to result in a really major increase in translators signing up, so I think we should keep them separate.

  I'm open to quite a few suggestions, but, to put this bluntly: if someone else wants to take over the legwork that keeps this going, fine, set it up however you want. However, if you merge

  WP:TIE, I am absolutely unwilling to help administer the resulting clusterfuck. -- Jmabel | Talk

  06:40, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

  One of the reasons I originally posted that is exactly

  WP:TIE will result in a mess? Look at how the Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English

  gets rather few entries. The problem with many separate pages is they are hard to see nd potentially translators can miss them.

  Anyhow, can we agree that Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Translators and Wikipedia:Translators available need to be merged? Solver 16:51, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If something like this is implemented, perhaps we'll never see the message "search is disabled for performance reasons" again.

1. That registered logged in users be able to set a default search engine preference for the search button, either "internal search" "Google" "Yahoo" or the "choice box" (the one that currently comes up when search is disabled") with "choice box" being the default preference for new users. An added bonus would be for "internal search" to be one of the "choice box" options.

2. That anonymous (not logged in) users only have access to Google or Yahoo. They would get a "choice box" without "internal search" as an option.

3. Some variation of the above.

Ron Ritzman 16:44, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Should be the other way around. We exist to serve the public. Anon users should get first crack at the search engine. If editors want to use it, we should kick in more Cash Money. — Xiong熊talk 06:38, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

I think wikipedia should have a section for proposed articles. Users unsure if an article they wanted to create would be put on vfd right away, and didn't want to find out by making it. People could vote on wether an article was notable enough for wikipedia. Howabout1 16:37, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I think that's a good idea. It's a lot less stressful to find out something will get deleted before you invested time in writing about it. Mgm|^(talk) 20:31, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • I like it in theory... but I think most of the people who are creating those articles aren't reading *any* of the policy pages before they make them, and then there's the issue of editor eyes watching the "proposed articles" page: probably not many. I suspect many people would be rather impatient wanting to start their article. For those who did wish to ask such questions I'd probably suggest a visit to the
    Wikipedia:Help Desk, which is watched by many and open to all sorts of newbie questions. Mindspillage (spill yours?)
    05:16, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's not how it works around here. Even if you did it, it would not give you a free pass -- your article might end up on VfD anyway. You have to take your chances with the rest of us in the box full of monkeys, typewriters, and cattle prods. — Xiong熊talk 06:09, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

The FA and PR boxes, along with all the other possible talk page tags, look quite ugly when they are put together. There is no real consistancy, with different styles and sizes in use. I've made an example status/development box at User talk:Violetriga/statusdevelopment which makes it look, in my opinion, much better. It can also cope with, for example, multiple FAC nominations. Would it cause problems though, making it too difficult for the inexperienced to add tags? Comments, as ever, are more than welcome. violet/riga (t) 11:37, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think the new tags are very nice-looking. — Xiong熊talk 06:06, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

It is very difficult to create articles like

Very true! I've no idea how we could change that, though. --Munchkinguy 21:56, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Lots of aplications allow you to sellect multiple files. Like the existing upload page but allows me to select multiple files. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 00:15, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Tell me about it! (*cough* Cyrillic alphabet *cough* Early Cyrillic alphabet) Tabbed web browsing helps a lot. I command click on "Upload file" a bunch of times, then fly across the tabs and work on all the upload pages at once. —Michael Z. 2005-04-9 22:24 Z

So will this be adressed? --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 03:30, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that in many cases, a desire to upload more than a few images at one time may point to a set of images that may never be used individually. In such case, you want to create one giant image that contains all the little ones, or perhaps a few such, with an entire row. I do not believe there will ever be a distinct article on podplukovniks.

By the way, that NATO insignia page is huge. I have two 20" monitors now, and the page spans about 1-1/4 of them (nearly 1600 pixels wide). — Xiong熊talk 06:05, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

I'm surprised that this hasn't been discussed before (or maybe I'm just ignorant), but wouldn't it be a good idea to have a spell check button (along with the bold button, underline button, signature button) at the top of the screen when editing articles.

• Support --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 01:02, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Support, great idea. Howabout1 01:05, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Sounds like a good idea (as long as it accepts both US and UK spellings!) Grutness|^hello? 09:14, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comment: Unfortuately I think any Wikipedia-based spell-checker would be a huge CPU hog and therefore would cause a performance hit. There is another solution, however. I'm using the

Safari and several other Mac web browsers already use the system's inline spell checker, which supports four kinds of English, ten other languages, and many more with the CocoAspell extension. If someone takes the time to develop a Wikipedia extension, I want to be able to turn it off completely. —Michael Z. 2005-04-9 16:42 Z

• As pointed out above, that's a browser issue and shouldn't take Wikimedia time. Arbor 18:54, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There supposedly already is a spell checker but it has been turned off because it hogs the servers. See

One more reason to abandon MS Internet Explorer. All the hip Wiki kids are doing it! For more info about alternatives and add-ons, see Wikipedia:Browser notes. —Michael Z. 2005-04-9 22:14 Z

I do use Firefox... when I can, but I'm rarley at my computer and most other computers use Internet Explorer. Perhaps there should be a prominent link somewhere in the website that points out where this extention is. --Munchkinguy 18:27, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is much wiser to edit in an external, say, word processor and spell check there. This reduces wikistress in the event of edit conflicts and server balls-ups. — Xiong熊talk 05:54, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

I would like to create a group for Wikipedia editors and staff in LinkedIn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn). For those of you who are not familiar with the service, it allows you to create a network of contacts and maintain them on-line. You obviously have immediate contact information for anyone on your contact list, but can request contact with any one of your contact's contacts, up to 4 degrees of separation. You can then search through your network of contacts and use them to search for jobs, hire someone, make a professional contact, and more. The service is free.

LinkedIn users create profiles, a type of on-line resume, and I felt that listing membership in Wikipedia would be prestigious.

I sent an e-mail to LinkedIn and received the following requirements to start the group:

LinkedIn’s current group functionality is absolutely free.

Five simple steps to setting up your group:

1. You (and/or your organization) decide to create a group on LinkedIn, and then contact us
2. You sign up quickly and easily via our online group service agreement on the web
3. Once we receive notification that you have accepted the terms of the agreement, we will set up your group
4. You send us your group's logo and a few pieces of additional information such as an administrative contact name. You will need to create a list of members that are pre-approved to join your group to ensure that people signing up are actual validated members of your group
5. We are ready to launch!

I am not quite sure who to list as the technical contact. Any thoughts? Are there enough LinkedIn users here to warrant this?

—  this was posted by User:Theskaven diffs

This message looks like spam. -- Toytoy 23:33, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

• LinkedIn is a real service, and it's a good one. Wikipeida would basically be authorizing the use of the logo to identify LinkedIn members who are also Wikipedians; this would all occur on LinkedIn.com and would be an entirely voluntary grouping for LinkedIn members. Point four would be a problem re the list of members. I'm a LinkedIn member. — Davenbelle 00:51, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

• • I just signed up for it...for future use I guess. A wikipedia group'd be nice. Considering I'm only 13, I don't have too much of a use for it though — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 03:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• • • Yes - I was afraid it might be taken as spam when I posted this. I have no affiliation with the product, I assure you, but thought it might be useful for those of us Wiki members who are already on the network.

I joined, and we'll see how it goes -- call me one of the lab rats. If I'm not shriveled and blue on the cage floor in a couple months, then you can decide what to do with this. I'll try to remember to post some sort of comment on my user page; or Talk to me later. — Xiong熊talk 05:47, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Basically: Project on creating audio-articles from wikipedias articles

There are many good articles like the recent article of the day Military history of the Soviet Union which we could transform into audio format. It would be great for (pur)blind people etc. and nice for those who like to listen to audio books (while jogging or what ever :). Of course it is harder to update the audiofiles as against text obviously, but if we use good articles, that is to say selected articles that aren't NPOV etc., this shouldn't be a big deal.

This is the basic idea, I don't think I will be doing more than just getting it out (since I do not speak English natively, but perhaps I will do this in my language) but I'd like to see this happen. --Friðrik Bragi Dýrfjörð 12:33, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone know how good Wikipedia is with text to speech programs? Does our use of templates cause problems? :ChrisG 19:06, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Templates are long out of the picture by the time we render the article for a reader. -- Jmabel | Talk

It's a fantastic idea, but it would obviously require a static version to work from (e.g. the proposed 1.0 printed editon - see Wikipedia:Paper edition for some relevant links). Otherwise it would be impossible to record a new version for every edit. I know that the German wikipedia is ahead of us on such static editions, but I don't know if they've done any audio versions of articles - I'll see if I can find out. SteveW | Talk 18:59, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The German wiki seems to be out of action for the moment - I'll try again later. For the moment, I've made a note of this idea at Wikipedia talk:Pushing to 1.0#Audio articles to see if we can find out what people working on that think about it. SteveW | Talk

I like the idea of having Wikipedia articles available in audio format, but I don't think it's worth the effort to try to record audio versions of articles, especially with the ever mutable nature of articles on Wikipedia. I think it would be better to (1) ensure that articles work well with text-to-speech programs, and (2) link to or collaborate with a good text to speech program. They're encyclopedia articles, not adventure stories, so having having a computer program instead of an actor read them isn't going to make a huge difference. (On the other hand... if they were read by Patrick Stewart or John Rhys-Davies, I would love to hear that.)

For people who want to listen to articles like audiobooks, there already exists online software which can convert text into a wav file! Check it out, it's really quite impressive: http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html - Pioneer-12 02:46, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Will anyone support me in advocating dropping SAMPA and IPA in articles - even my World Books on the shelf have plain English "pro-nuhn-see-ay-shuns" of things and people's names. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for the average person not an encyclopedia for linguists. PMA 13:41, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I agree wholeheartedly. Wikipedia is not a dictionary and as such scientific definitions of the pronunciations are unnecessary. For example, the article Sydney contains the following: The city's name is pronounced "SID-nee", IPA: /ˈsɪdni/. — Why is the first pronunciation not sufficient? - Mark 14:22, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I disagree and want to keep IPA. Indicating pronunciations in a way invented on the spot each time, will not give a reliable cue to the sound. A fixed system of denoting sounds should be followed, which is well standardised and described, and that the reader can access. The
  International phonetic alphabet or IPA is such a system, able to describe not only English words, but also foreign ones, such as is needed for names of people, places, customes and events in most countries. However, there is no need to use SAMPA anymore, which is a modification of IPA using only symbols available on typewriter keyboards. With the advent of modern computer and display technologies, this limitation is no longer relevant. −Woodstone
  15:14, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)
  • I disagree - World Book Encyclopedia among others _do not_ have IPA - they use plain English pronunciations - as i said above Wikipedia _is not an encyclopedia for linguists_. Adam Carr and Jtdirl have said as much in the last year and they are more than qualified to know. PMA 15:25, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I strongly oppose dropping IPA. Ad-hoc pronunciation guides are only useful to North American or UK native speakers, and even then they're full of ambiguities. Pronunciation is most often needed for foreign words, and ad-hoc guides are completely useless for words that have sounds not found in the English language.

• "pro-nuhn-see-ay-shuns": "pro" as in "professional" or as in "process"? (or do those sound the same to you? They don't to me, a native Canadian English speaker.) Does "nuhn" sound like "noon"; how does the h change it from "nun"? Does "ay" sound like "eye", or rhyme with "hey"?
• "SID-nee": why would a reader assume that "nee" is pronounced like "knee", and not "née", or with a double e as in "preeminent"?

To make these actually work, you'd have to make a reference page with a pronunciation guide, which is defeating the purpose (might as well start learning IPA). And even then they would continue to be useless for non-English sounds. —Michael Z. 2005-03-20 16:09 Z

how about phasing out IPA which the average reader cannot make head or tail of in favour of pronunciation sound files? Is that acceptable to you then? PMA 16:54, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sound files can be a good supplement to IPA for readers who can play them. They can help learn IPA. But they're not a substitute for IPA, and I'd still disagree with removing it. Why are you so set on removing IPA, when others find them helpful? —Michael Z. 2005-03-20 20:59 Z

Besides, not everything can be exemplified by sound examples. Hearing the

✎

01:29, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I disagree strongly with phasing out IPA. Wikipedia is plagued by terrible ad hoc pronunciation guides. They make me cringe. I favour IPA first and foremost (SAMPA is obsolete these days, as Woodstone says) followed by an approximation provided it's been thought through properly. Sound files are ideal of course. IPA is an incredibly useful tool which allows you to describe the pronunciation of just about any word in any language. You can't explain how to pronounce
  !Xóõ using the "pro-nuhn-see-ay-shuns" method. Wikipedia has enough about IPA to allow readers to look up the chart and follow the links to see what the symbols mean. Personally I had only a very rudimentary grasp of the IPA a few months ago, but it didn't take me long to use Wikipedia plus a few of the external links in our phonetics articles to be able to understand it. Now I can read it with no problems at all, and it's ad hoc attempts that cause me problems because they're so ambiguous. You don't need to be a linguist to read IPA. I'm certainly not one. — Trilobite (Talk)
  20:21, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Please keep pronunciations in IPA. Ad-hoc attempts to describe pronunciation only help people who speak the same dialect as the person who wrote the description. And they are useless in describing sounds that don't occur in English. (It makes sense to link to the IPA article, though.) Gdr 20:43, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)
• I strongly disagree with the idea of abandoning IPA; what Michael Z, Trilobite and Gdr said. We could do without SAMPA however, as it's only a modification of IPA which is obsolete now that we have better Unicode support.
  ✎
  01:14, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Disagree, deferring to others' comments above. —
  Talk | Contrib
  04:53, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• We are partially repeating discussions. See Wikipedia:Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American) and especially its talk page. JRM 01:25, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

Also, for reference:

Wikipedia:Pronunciation. —Michael Z.

 2005-03-21 01:44 Z

• As someone who isn't very good at pronuncing english words, I disagree with using pseudo-english pronunciations. Something like IPA is much more useful for people for whom english is not a first language. --cesarb 21:46, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Disagree; keep. -- Must retain IPA! — Xiong (talk) 14:19, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

• Disagree - Please keep IPA, in addition to the "ad-hoc" versions. It provides a standardized pronounciation guide for any region in the world. Definitely link each and every IPA pronounciation to an IPA reference chart, though. Audio files are a good improvement, and hopefully the IPA references have audio files. - Omegatron 22:21, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep IPA, but provide pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns for words that are pronounceable in some variety of English. There's no reason we can't do both. grendel|khan 19:19, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)

• Keep IPA. Wikipedia might not be for linguists but it is certainly used by people whose main language is not English. What may be obvious pronunciation to a native English speaker may be completely non-obvious to somebody for whom English is not the first or even second language. The first example in this page illustrates the point nicely. The respondent says that "SID-nee" is sufficient. To a French person "nee" might well be taken as being pronounced "nay" as in "Mary Smith nee Robinson" meaning that her maiden (birth) name is Robinson. IPA gets around this. By all means keep pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns. Why is there an argument about providing more information? Is there a "less is the new more" movement?

• Keep IPA. As a further example of the ambiguity of pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns, consider George Bernard Shaw's example of why we (native English speakers) need a phonetic alphabet: how do you pronounce GHOTI in English? Answer: it's pronounced FISH. That's GH as in cough, O as in women and TI as in station. Amusing, yes. But a very strong argument.

• I disagree strongly - I am not English native, and even if I have to admit the sometime I also have some problems with IPA (e.g. two word are show as identically pronuonced but are not and similar) and other problems that are relate to the fact that I have not a good English probounce, I can not understand at all the pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns. In the example of pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns, how can I know that the e is pronunce i like in see and not e like center? Ok this is bad exapmle since see is pronunce like the world see, but how could you tell me about ay? I consider this method of showing the pronunciation useful only to people very common to English pronunciation and you should admit that en.wikipedia is not only for English-native people.

I wold point out than no one has the duty to write the SAMBA or the IPA pronunciation, as nobody has the duty of doing anything here in Wiki. Maybe the question should be better stated as if can pronunciation as pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns be allowed AnyFile 12:12, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Another keep for IPA. For foreign words, obviously, and even for English as a native speaker sometimes pro-NUN-see-ay-shuns leave me befuddled. IPA, sound files, and ad-hocs can all coexist. So then our example would be (SID-nee; IPA: /ˈsɪdni/ (listen)), which I don't think is an overwhelming amount of information. I'd say do away with ad-hocs, but from personal experience talking to people who don't want to bother to look up the IPA symbols even whilst learning a foreign language, I have to say they are useful in their limited way. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 03:45, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• If we would have sound files (or even an automatic renderer) the example above could be shortened (SID-nee, /ˈsɪdni/). The /.../ indicate already that it's the IPA style phonemic transcription, clicking on it would play the file. −Woodstone 07:20, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

• Keep IPA. It's a unconditional keep. -- Toytoy 03:11, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep IPA, for all the reasons stated. It's simple, elegant, and it works across all English dialects. --Coolcaesar 09:30, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Keep IPA (for those who really want to know) and AD-hoc pro-NUN-see-AY-shuns (for the lazy people), and have audio for really interestingly-pronounced words. It's not too much information. Nickptar 12:48, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I wondered what people thought about including Geo META data on wikipedia pages ? The geourl.org project maintains a database of pages which are About a given location, and several other services like AlltheGoodness and mappr are starting to use Geo Meta data in interesting ways.

My proposal: allow two optional attributes 'latitude' and 'longitude' on articles, and have this information embedded in the page in meta data e.g.

a page about Sydney Opera House would have attributes:

latitude = -33.8587 longitude = 151.2096

which would produce meta data like:

<meta name="geo.position" content="-33.8587;151.2096" />

which can then be used by search engines etc. to understand more about the content and by others to provide additional services. --neilp 02:43, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

It's not quite there yet, but see

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Geographical coordinates and WikiProject Geographical coordinates. —Michael Z.

 2005-04-12 03:20 Z

Anyone know whether this data will flow through into the pages' meta tags?--neilp 08:33, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

Discussion Moved to: WikiProject Rankings

This project is for the idea of having a ranking system in Wikipedia. Please discuss in talk and make suggestions here (if any)

I was reviewing several countries and their populations. All of the countries I looked at (smaller ones) referenced the List of Countries by Population. Yeaah! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population However, when I compared the population rankings, I received inconcistancies. For example, Vatican City is ranked as 192nd, yet Greenland is ranked as 210th, and American Samoa is ranked as 203rd.

I have only recently been aware of Wikipedia, so I am the Village Idiot around here. I seeking any particular method of resolution, but I was desiring consistency in the statistics. Is it possible for places which are dependent upon data, to populate its information automatically from a reference - like a table? If this could be done, then when that table is updated all of the dependent articles are automatically updated.

That was a specific instance. If I found this issue on my initial uses of Wikipedia, I can only assume that many other types of statistical data will be using either 1) different sources, or 2) using the same source but in inconsistant manners. If this can be addressed in any manner that would be great. (And I did not automatically update the articles as I was unsure which method should be used for ranking.)

My honest suggestion: DO NOT TRUST WIKIPEDIA. Wikipedia is usually a good starter. However, always find yourself another source (Britannica, Encarta, U.N. ...) if you have any doubt. Even if you don't smell anything fishy, consult another printed material if possible. Go to a library. Numbers are especially not very trustworthy. -- Toytoy 16:55, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Many Wikipedia statistics come without enough explaination. By population, Vatican City is the 192nd SOVEREIGN STATE. Greenland and American Samoa are the 210th and 203rd on the list of sovereign states, geological areas and other political entities (such as Hong Kong S.A.R., Isle of Man, Palestinian Territories and Republic of China). -- Toytoy 17:30, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Ive seen people change numbers baselsesly and my revert of it reverted and declared POV. Certain things should be better regulated. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 23:31, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Toytoy, thank you for the advice about double checking the material in Wikipedia if I need reliable information. I will take that to heart. In regards to the ranking, I did understand that some articles were using sovereign states, and some articles were using geological/political areas. Even if we accept TWO separate rankings, American Samoa is listed immediately before Greenland. So that is not consistant either. From what I understand, I will accept the statistical information as possibly being inconsistant, with no likelihood of a policy to correct the issue (at least in the near future). Thank you all for your help. -- AltNrg4U 06:51, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

A page where you can list a group of articles you watch for both vandalism and generally unproductive edits. Thus, I might watch all the main articles on European countries (e.g. Belarus, Finland, Germany) and someone else might watch all the history-ofs for European countries (e.g. History of Belarus, History of Finland, History of Germany). Or everyone on List of people by name: Roc-Ror to "Roe" and someone else from "Roe" to somewhere else... I'm not proposing any kind of special rights for those who add themselves to the list. It's just meant as a method of reducing redundancy. My watchlist is always very cluttered with time-consuming articles I have little investment in, and there's some stuff I don't want to remove since I think one else is watching it. I often don't check external links that are added to see if they're spam, but I wouldn't mind doing so on a selected subset of articles if I knew others were doing the same. Would anybody else be interested in this? Tuf-Kat 07:55, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

I was under the impression that people can create sub-pages for themselves within reasonable limits, or stuff their own user pages with things. That's the best I can do. -- Kizor 09:52, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just create a page (or pages) for this purpose in your user space, and use "Related changes". I believe a lot of people do this already. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:39, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

(Newbie here)

Why do I have to be a different user in each language version? What if I speak (and contribute to) several languages?

I cannot see messages directed to me unless I log in (and check) into each different language I'm active in! That's annoying!

Please, I propose an universal account!

Thanks --Tom-b 23:05, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• It's been proposed often. The main problem is name conflicts between existing accounts on different wikis. If you don't want to check too many places for messages, you can redirect (or "soft redirect") all but one of your user talk pages to the one in the wiki you work in most. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:38, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

• See bugzilla:57 r3m0t ^talk 23:47, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Even more than the convenience factor, in my opinion a more important reason for universal accounts is user impersonation. There have been several instances of a disgruntled user from en going to another-language Wikipedia, registering under the name of the user who reverted or blocked him, and doing a bunch of vandalism. — Knowledge Seeker দ 00:25, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it'd take too much work to be feasable. Personally, I redirect (see m:User:Ilyanep) or put a line of info down ([ru:User:Ilyanep] and [es:User:Ilyanep]), and it works for me (especially because 97.5% of my contribs are to en, so it doesn't do me much inconvenience. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:39, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Here's the discussion page for the various proposals: m:Single login I personally think Omegatron's proposal is the best. - Omegatron 01:04, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

I do like your proposal...almost like a

Wikipedia passport — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ)

23:00, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Unfortunately, it'd take too much work to be feasable." Please! I can't stand the "oh, it's too hard" attitude. It's a bit tricky to design, but once made, it isn't that complex a thing to implement. Designing a secure login system from scratch is much harder then extending a one-site login system to multiple sites. What makes it difficult is transitioning from the current system. The simple truth is, multiple logins should never have happened in the first place. It's shameful that bloated microsoft with its passports can beat the pants off of open source. - Pioneer-12 03:18, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've found the binary nature of the current spoiler system irritating. A good example is the

What I'd like to do is to use two different spoiler warnings. The standard one for those who haven't played the game, and another for those who have but have not specifically researched the Orz. I have no plans of making this an official policy, but would likely use it one or two times in the future if the situation warrants it (erring on the side of not if there's doubt.) What say you? -- Kizor 20:03, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Oh feel free to implement such a thing on relevant articles, but I think it's probably better not to make a template and tailor the text to the article you're using it on. Mgm|^(talk) 20:33, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • Naturally, such things would be one-offs far too much for a common template. Thanks. -- Kizor 22:49, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Alternatively you could split the article up so you can place an individual spoiler warning on each. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:31, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

I have just started using Wikipedia, and I have noticed a case where, In the English interface, I searched for "Tucholsky" and got back a null result; Then, using the German interface, I searched for "Tucholsky" and got back an extensive multimedia page about Kurt Tucholsky.

I would think it useful for the Wiki software always to let the user know that information is available in other languages even if it is not available in the currently selected interface. A list of all Wiki entries matching the keyword should be presented where practical.

Admittedly, implementing this proposal has some difficulties. At least for proper nouns it could be done and would be very useful.

In any case, interlingual Wiki linking will become more important in the future when competent machine translation becomes available.

Forgive me if I've misunderstood your comments, but we do have a short article on Kurt Tucholsky, and on the left of the page you'll notice a box titled "in other languages", which does link to the German version. If you find an English article that's lacking in information its often worth checking the interwiki links, if there are any, to see if any of the other language Wikipedias have more information. — Trilobite (Talk) 17:51, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've put in a request for the German article to be translated into English, so hopefully we will have more information on him in English soon. — Trilobite (Talk) 17:58, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Additionally, you might not have gotten the result you wanted because you clicked "Go". This button will cause Wikipedia to search for an article by that exact title. German Wikipedia probably had a Redirect pointing from that name. If you want to make sure you find everything in English wikipedia when doing a search, you may want to try the "Search" button or WikiWax instead. Mgm|^(talk) 08:36, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Tucholsky will take you to the Kurt Tucholsky

article. I'm working on the translation now and I'll get it done as soon as possible.

If anyone finds anything interesting on a foreign language that isn't on the English Wikipedia, please see

German into English especially there's quite a backlog.) SteveW | Talk

11:02, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You can also find useful readin

Wikipedia:Embassy and the links herein AnyFile

14:42, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This would save a lot of bandwidth as less data is sent. I can still expand the category I want by clicking a + --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 01:07, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• That's what the pull-down menu at the top is for. Also, edit counts would undo the bandwidth saving you'd be doing as those counts cost a lot of it. Mgm|^(talk) 08:30, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

• • To clarify: It would certainly save bandwidth, but this would require that a pageload looks through all contributions (not just the latest 50) in greater detail and do a lot of counting and totalling. This would put load on the servers, which is more expensive than bandwidth i.e. it would slow the page (and site) down more overall. r3m0t ^talk 22:15, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Probably a simple question: I have my own media wiki and pretend to make a total css makeover, so as not to look like other wikimedias.

I don´t find in th css style the box wich contains the wikipedia logo. Where can I find the logo itself to change it, and where can i find the layer that contains it, so I can change its position on the page?

I found many images on the monobook skin. One of them was the "headbg.jpg". Is that this grayscale book we see faintly at the wikipedias background? where is it hosted? where are the other icons (external link, lock, user logged etc) hosted (their adress)?

Thanks.--Alexandre Van de Sande 15:02, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The book thingy is located in the monobook skin directory along with most of the other images. The logo is located at Image:Wiki.png. If you'd like some ideas on how to do some weird stuff, take a look at User:Cyrius/monobook.css. I've got a screenshot on my user page of what it does. Note that it's for my personal use, so I make no guarantees about browser compatibility. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:07, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

6 Apr 05 1154 local

a) article:

d) seek permission from community at large to i) create disambiguation page for Survival (Bob Marley album) and survival (art of staying alive) ii) commence pouring raw material into latter

e) seek cooperative effort in keeping with Wikipedia ideal in construction of ii) above

Corporal Chris Maxwell --Esseye 10:02, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think

Surviving is fairly useless; a check of its history indicates that someone started by writing "surviving shark attacks", and I guess that person was told their content would be better off at wikibooks. Wikipedia does need an article about outdoor survival, and I think wikibooks would benefit too from a "guide to outdoor survival". The line between the two is sometimes subtle, but sometimes not. The wikibook (hosted at wikibooks) would go into details of specific techniques to whatever degree you felt necessary. The wikipedia article, by contrast, would very briefly summarise techniques, but would contain information about history of survival studies, native people's survival skills, modern schools of survival thought, etc., that wouldn't be in your manual. Don't worry that you're not a technical writer - most wikipedians aren't, and yet we all get by anyhow. As a plan of attack, I'd probably propose pouring into into the wikibook first would be best, written from an entirely general how-to approach. From that it should be possible to filter and summarise stuff into a great wikipedia article. I don't know much about the subject, but I think I've got a fairly good feel for what the wikipedia article would look like, so I'd be happy to help with it. -- John Fader (talk | contribs

) 13:59, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In fact, I see people have already gotten started on an outdoor survival wikibook - it's at wikibooks:Outdoor Survival. There's not much content there, so I'm sure they'd appreciate your help. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 14:13, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• And as soon as both articles are written, I've got no problem with a disambiguation for the Bob Marley album and outdoor survival. It looks like you've taken your time to check Wikipedia procedures and everything, so I'm confident you won't make much mistakes. Just give it a go. I'm sure people will jump in and help out as soon as you start. Mgm|^(talk) 20:47, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Well, "survival" as the word is employed by professionals is agreed to mean "the art of staying alive" - but of course not everybody is a survival professional so I guess "outdoors" would be a Good Thing to mention. "Hmm...surviving your cat, post-surgery..." --Esseye 07:11, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC) talk

Britanica generates MLA and APA citations for the page the user is viewing. A bottom "generate citations" link for each page would require minimal work. The reasons for doing this: 1. Britanica Online has a feature we don't! 2. Increase appearance of acknowledged cites to wikipedia in thousands of undergrad papers everyyear.

That's a good idea. Mathworld does a similar thing (it actually has the citation at the bottom of the page, ready to cut'n'paste). One complication is that, at present, it's difficult to cite the "current" revision of an article reliably (if someone changes the article, the citation will change to be that version, not the one you read while writing your paper). The forthcoming version of mediawiki fixes this (giving every version, including the current one, a stable permalink). With that done, your suggestion would be practical. I'll suggest it in the bugtracking system. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 09:46, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, this might be possible already, using the system-wide templates in mediawiki (although it may require some extra variables). I'll see if I can implement it. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 13:38, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sounds great.

Lotsofissues

22:21, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

On considering things futher, some additional support in mediawiki will be necessary. 1.5 adds a variable which gives the id of this version, but we'd need to add variables for the date and time of this version also, as most of the citation standards require that. I'm preparing a RFE for this now; I don't think it will be much effort to implement. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 13:07, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It would make sense to put this in the toolbox, next to "What links here" and "Related changes". —Michael Z. 2005-04-6 20:46 Z

I just want to throw this idea around. I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a medical wiki (think WebMD wiki style.) I am a pharmacy technican, and such a wiki would be useful for me. Any thoughts? --STDestiny 03:49, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I'm thinkin' 3 page long disclaimer...how about you?

I'm sure it would have the standard "for reasearch only, please consult a medical professional for advice." disclaimer that WebMD has. It would be more for the layperson to research something they've been diagnosed with. --STDestiny 17:25, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea, but I think you can add it into wikipedia. What you suggest can be easily achived with the creation of a new category that unites all relevant medical data. :) --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 01:01, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

— Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 04:00, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am going to see my dentist right now. ... Before he sees this DentalWiki website. :) -- Toytoy 06:37, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

There has to be a feature to encourage the generation of redirects. For example, when you start an article called

How about that we place 3 or more additional fields under the edit window. In addition to "Edit summary", you enter suggested redirects. If each new article comes with several placeholder redirects, the possibility of duplication would minimize. I guess it's not a very difficult job for programmers.

Redirects are especially useful when you create biological articles. If you create an article for

If a redirect is taken. You may want to check if anyone had written an article on that subject before you. Or you may want to create a disamb page instead. -- Toytoy 00:17, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I like that idea...it could be improved a little bit, but it's a good start! — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 01:56, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Having a fixed number of such synonym fields is inflexible (too few and people will only make a few, too many and it will take up valuable screen real estate. Instead, one could have a single long "Synonyms:" field, which lists all the redirects that point to an article, delimited by | characters. So the Edison one might read "Thomas A Edison|Thomas A. Edison|Thomas Edison|Tomas Edison|Tom Edison|T.A. Edison". Better, when you subsequently edit Thomas Alva Edison, this list is repopulated. This is nice, but has some issues:

• Does deleting an entry from the synonym list cause the redirect to be deleted? If so, is this a task only admins can do?
• Computing the synonym list on each entry is likely to be another database query (on "what links here") and a join with the is-redirect field, so there's a nontrivial performance cost.
• It's a great way for vandals to quickly generate abusive redirects.

Still, worth thinking about. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 10:00, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, that said, there's talk on the mediawiki-l list of adding metadata support (granted, talk at a fairly handwavey stage). Really synonyms and redirects are metadata, and I wonder if its worthwhile implementing something before proper metadata support comes. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 10:04, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Last week Wikipedia killed the great actor,

The flip side of this, of course, is that we would never (for example) have scooped Fox News on the death of Johnnie Cochran. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:02, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Will Jerry Falwell be the next one murdered by us? If Mark Twain is alive today, he must be very pleased to say: "The rumors of my death shall have been wikified." Shall we start a WikiRumor project? Let's start a crazy massacre! Ha! -- Toytoy 02:45, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

I disagree that Wikipedia should have any "scoops" at all. We are an encyclopedia, not a news service—Wikinews is. So yes, I say require citations. The worst that could happen is that we no longer scoop deaths unless Wikinews gets there before the others. A small price to pay for factual accuracy. I'm pretty sure I'm currently in the minority on this, though, and may continue to be for some time. JRM 08:24, 2005 Mar 30 (UTC)

You should at least know that it's a minority of two; this kind of error is just disasterous, while the 'scoop' factor is almost irrelevant. Filiocht | Talk 08:37, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

• I don't think citations for recent deaths are particularly needed. Most Wikipedia editors have to get their info from a regular source which is available to anyone with a simple Google search. 131.211.210.15 07:52, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  If it's so simple, it should be trivial to give a citation. I think we can require editors to put in slightly more effort in exchange for a verifiable fact. JRM 11:52, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

Yes a note in the discussion page should be glad: it is that change should be discuss in the discussion page, isn't it?. Also if I page is uptade becouse of the death of the person subject of the article I will expect to see al link in the extern link to a news about this important event of his/her life. AnyFile 12:28, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I would find it useful if when searching, one could be in the wikipedia, but in the search bar be able to type a command in that would search on the wiktionary or in wikispeicies. Thus, when you were in an article, and wanted the defenition of a word from the wiktionary you could search for with without having to go to the wiktionary main page and search from there. An example that I saw was on google, where you can type in Define:wikipedia and it will show the defenitions for wikipedia that it found. A change of this would be that you type in Define:wikipedia and it will show the wiktionary definition for it. Also, Species: Book: News: Quote: etc... Alphanoid 01:26, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A nice idea. I'd prefer it if the bit before the colon was the same prefix that is used in interwiki links (mayeb this would let you search on the french wikipedia too with fr:. -- My own personal hobby horse here is that I'd like to be able to Go or Search on keywords to a new window to keep the window I'm currently viewing. -- SGBailey 15:44, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

When possible (when a whole page is avaible, as in the page of the result, that is not in the shurtcut dialogue in the bar) a more evident way of selecting it should be provided by radio button or select tools. Of course writing like b:Shakespeare directly in the input box is very nice. AnyFile 12:18, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm sure I'm not alone in having loads of items on my watchlist. First time I check it every day, I have to stop and think "which of these are new ones from when I logged off?" Would there be some easy way of adding a "last check at 00:00, day-month-year" at the top of the watchlist page, so that it's possible to know what has and hasn't been looked at? Grutness...wha? 02:51, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd like that as well. At the moment, that information gets stored in my memory, which leaks.-gadfium 04:06, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

That'd be a great idea. I'd love to have this. — Knowledge Seeker দ 17:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Or another button that automatically just does the diff from when you last checked it.

(diff; since last; hist)

What I always end up doing is going to the hist and then viewing since the last version I edited. Not very efficient. I bet there are behaviors like this that everyone does, that bog down the servers a lot more than they need to be. - Omegatron 21:49, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

It would be very useful. I can usually remember what portion of my watchlist is new from when I last checked it, but not always. A diff from when you last viewed the article is a good idea. Similar to Omegatron I go to the history quite a bit, but I usually go from the last edit summary/contributor I remember - which is pretty much as inefficient. Thryduulf 22:48, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed something about disambiguation pages. Statistically speaking, they're the messiest and worst-written pages we have. They're disorganized, real slapdash jobs, full of content that belongs in articles but winds up in disambigs anyway. I just went to Category:Disambiguation and sifted through half a dozen or more pseudorandomly chosen pages. A couple of them were passable, a few were bad, and some were very bad. I was about to list the category on Cleanup in desperation, but then I decided that that was probably foolish. I think there should be a WikiProject:Disambig cleanup or something to that effect. It would work a little like the erstwhile Wiki Syntax or Spelling, except instead of having bots to generate lists of articles that need fixing, we'd just have the category listing. And the work involved in fixing each page would be nontrivial. --Smack (talk) 04:54, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

There is a discussion at present about the style and formating of disambiguation pages. I think it is at

Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Style. Thryduulf

08:02, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

At the moment, when doing a long edit on an article, you have two choices: just keep typing and hope that you won't get a crash or an edit conflict, or save then re-open the editing function from the saved page. As anyone who's done much word-processing knows, the best thing to do so as not to lose your train of thought or lose what you've just typed, is save frequently and quickly, and carry on going straight away. At the moment, that is a fairly long-winded process. Has any thought ever been given to adding a third button under the edit box "Save and continue editing", so that the text is saved but you aren't returned to the "read-only" article page? Grutness|^hello? 10:07, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I think it is difficult to add such a feature. So far I almost always add more sections. If someone else also edits, at least it reduces the likelihood of edit conflicts. Many article have too few sections and subsections. By the way, please do not use images in signatures. The server loading is already over the top. Wikipedia is not very responsive these days. -- Toytoy 11:29, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Just do a regular save and return to the URL that called the save (by JavaScript, or by passing a parameter). You could also pass the cursor position to keep everything as is using JavaScript. Or better still, have the button pop-up a window that does the saving, then closes itself. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 12:08, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

and how is that supposed to be dealt with database-wise? It would still need to be recorded in the history. Mgm|^(talk) 11:34, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Whats wrong with just recording it as usual, except that it'll be a bunch of saves? Gkhan 12:59, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

High server load. Just live with getting the occassional edit conflict. r3m0t ^talk 20:24, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Server load would only be an issue with VERY frequent saving. If done without the pop-up, it would essentially act as a macro for clicking save, then editing again as soon as the save had happened. And if the pop-up solution was used, it should be possible to use JavaScript to update whatever variable on the edit page that tracks the most recent edit.

To prevent edit conflicts with other users, {{inuse}} should be used, as suggested below. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 21:08, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps using {{

• Another option is to copy the wiki text out of the editing window into a desktop editor, do your big edits offline, and then paste it all back in at once. That way you don't lose the text in case of crash. FreplySpang (talk) 12:57, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
  • In use doesn't always discourage people from editing, and working in a word processing package offline is worse, becaseu if anyone has made any changes while you've been working, you'll automatically wipe them when you repaste your work. Which either means anything new will be lost or you will find your work being reverted. Grutness...wha? 02:59, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

What do people think about the idea of creating a sort of sub administrator? A new class of users, who have amassed a couple hundred edits or so (or however many people think a trustworthy user/one with a strong knowledge of Wikipedia, should have).

They would be granted the roll back button as well as a couple other basic tools and/or priveleges. This would make it much easier for a typical user like myself to stop vandalism. Perhaps even another, higher sort of user with the ability to delete newly created aricles that are vandalism.

Admission to this class would be either a quick vote, or an appointment by higher authorities. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, Thanks! Collins.mc 21:17, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what would really be gained here. Arguably admins/sysops/whatever name you want to use presently don't have all that much extra anyway. I was reverting sans button before I was an admin and the extra time taken is minimal. Deleting newly created vandalism articles is something I and other admins will already do as part of the speedy delete process where it is clearcut that that is the correct thing to do. This 'sub-admin' couldn't really be "by appointment" as rarely with other admins already know the person and, in the end, it is only with time and a track record that people become an admin at all so I can't see how this could adequately work in demonstrating the level of trust implicit in the extra priviledges. --

Willow

21:33, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Super-user and Wikipedia:User access levels. Everything you're talking about is there. JRM · Talk 21:37, 2005 May 7 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for the input. I didn't think that I would be the first to come up with this and was wondering what was stopping it. I now see the logistical issues. Collins.mc 02:43, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Please comment on

See Wikipedia:Database download. JRM · Talk 15:18, 2005 May 6 (UTC)

Imagine the improved response time and pressure of maintaining RC omniscience lifted if every edit that fits the following criteria appeared in highlighted red in RC.

• Vandal frequent words such as "gay", "penis", "cock", "fuck", etc. appear in an eit
• Article blanked
• Exclamation mark appears more than 3 times in succession
• Large article loses 95% of its content
• Preset frequently vandalized entries

Would this demand too much of the server?

Hey! GREAT proposal. --Subramanian 13:38, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Also, what about adding IPs to a user watchlist?

This sounds like a really good proposal. I'd also note if an article increased in size by a substantial amount (e.g. I came accross a short stub that had been replaced by a huge number of copies of the phrase "pelican shit"). This would also catch the accidental page doubling that appears to be happening atm. Don't forget to add "pelican shit" and "Wikipedia is communism" to the list of vandal's favoured words.

Being able to see when a certian user has added to thier contributions would be a very useful addition to watchlists imho. As would being able to watch for additions to categories. Thryduulf 15:38, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Definition please. -- I know what bullshit is; horseshit, chickenshit, monkeyshit, pigshit, batshit, babyshit, birdshit, and Micro$hit. Does the vandal mean penguinshit? — Xiong熊talk* 00:34, 2005 May 7 (UTC)

I like this idea generally. Since we do indeed know the common methods for vandalism, simple pattern matching can indeed help us correct the problems faster. We would just need some kind of process for maintaining the list of things to watch for, and we'd need to ensure that the pattern matching never becomes "over-sensitive." —

The thing that immediately springs to mind for determining the pattern matching criteria would be a list editable by admins only (to prevent vandalism and bloat) but with a world-writable talk page to allow suggestions for addition/removal, e.g. a few months ago I doubt anyone would have predicted needing "pelican shit" on such a list, and maybe in another couple of moths we'll find we need something as obscure as "octopi 1 wikipedia 0". I think that a minimum criteria for being on the list would be that 2 or 3 established users who frequent recent changes to agree that it would be of benefit. After no matches for a few months it may be apropriate to remove some entries to keep the list trim. Again I don't forsee removal without the agreement of a minimum of two or three established users who frequent recent changes. Based on the MediaWiki:Bad image list I assume that this would be technically possible. The page size detection would need another method though. Thryduulf 23:04, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

To tighten the expansion of further criteria I would aim for adding only widespread patterns onto the list. There will be a public forum discussing additons, subtractions and adjustments. Well articulated proposals will be gathered together for a monthly vote.

Lotsofissues

23:36, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

It does not need to be so complicated. If enough reports come in to the admins that "gay" is generating too many

false negatives. r3m0t ^talk

00:15, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

By the way, Thyrduulf, "octopi" is a false declension. :) r3m0t ^talk 00:15, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

This seems like it would be a very useful feature. It may need to be restrained somewhat — for example, users can legitimately "vandalize" their own user pages — but should not be restrained to the point of treating admins, normal users, and anonymous users differently. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 00:12, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm no expert in performance, but the check that a user is trusted (i.e. admin)/that the user is editing their own user page is probably not worth the bother of programming it. r3m0t ^talk 00:15, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Octopodes or no octopodes, the concept is brilliant, if it can be made to work and filter propoerly. Grutness|^hello? 01:32, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Who decides what to additions to the software will be worked on? I want to push this.

There is a bugzilla thing where requests are made - http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/. Post there what you want and link to the discussion here. Also if you could place a link to the bug number you generate here that would allow others to easily comment if necessary. Thryduulf 01:13, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

But it's for bugs?

Lotsofissues

08:28, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

No, it's also for feature requests. Also, add a link from m:Anti-vandalism ideas to the bugzilla page. r3m0t ^talk 09:09, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks I've added the proposal

Lotsofissues

16:51, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

See also the similar [bug 958], filed at bugzilla many months ago. — Catherine\^talk 18:34, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Great proposal. Much agreed. --Wolf530 18:50, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Great idea, would be good with other idea of puting some sort of mark next to names of known vandals on RC. Howabout1 19:57, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

That's mentioned only a few sections down on this very page. r3m0t ^talk 20:21, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it should filter; it should just list. The spam filter, for instance, creates significant problems with false results, preventing people from saving their edits if they have some obscure match in it.

I made the same proposal at m:Talk:Anti-vandalism_ideas#Blacklisted_word_anon_edit_summary_page. (Visibility of ideas seems to be one of our biggest problems...)

Also this ties into Automatic edit summary generation - Omegatron 21:59, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Although I find Wikipedia terrific, I notice that there is very little about the environment. I am in the process of creating an online 'keywords and concepts' source on environmental studies for my academic departmental community. Is there a way to work together so that what we produce enters your wonderful open source domain - whilst being accessible separately in our own free portal dedicated to environmental studies? In other words, is it possible to create a system wherein editorial changes can be made in either portal, subject to the conventions and rules of the Wikipedia, of course? Thank you for taking the time to read this.

RAVI RAJAN, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064

1.831.459.4158 :: [email protected]

In the usual WikiWay at the very least, something like this is possible. I don't think it would be very Wiki to produce an article parallelling your website, but information could 'naturally' be shared between the sources in the usual WikiWay. . . if there is not an article about a subject covered in your external site, create one!

also, it would be plenty Wiki to make plenty of links between these related articles, and the related teirs of your external site. of course, if you don't want to produce all those articles yourself, the easiest and most Wiki way to solicit some aid would be to create a stub with a link to your site and under the talk/discussion tab, you could inform a reader that your site contains more data and it would be nice to expand the wiki article.

if the wiki article becomes more comprihensive then your site (not at all unlikely) then you could certainly update your external site with the Wiki produced info.

MethodicEvolution 00:00, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

As long as we keep in mind that Wikipedia has a policy of "no original research." Of course, new encyclopedic material is very welcome here. —

Talk | Work

18:14, May 2, 2005 (UTC)