Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive Y

I'm not sure if this has ever been brought up, but the main page lacks themes when it really needs them most. For example, on holidays, or birthdays of celebrated people, or special days of the year, like election day. On these days, (except for April Fools Day, of course), the main page doesn't change to anything special. The featured picture is still random, just like the article, and the "Did you know...". I guess what I'm trying to say is, why doesn't Wikipedia, like Google, get all dressed up on special days to celebrate with articles/pictures relating to the special day it is. It seems reasonable, just that no one has done it.

Today/Tomorrow, for instance, we could have fixed up the main page for US election day, which is very important. But instead we have an article about some medal and a sea horse on the main page. Just my thoughts...would anyone care to respond?

I don't think this would work, since Wikipedia serves a global audience. Most holidays are either religious or specific to certain countries. It's only election day for 300 million people (though, smaller number considering some segments of the population are not eligible). There's already been way too much debate over what sports events to mention on the main page (e.g. World Series, Stanley Cup, World Cup scores...) I know that Google can detect what country you are in and serve you a certain version of Google based on that. --Aude (talk) 03:05, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Any given non-global theme will be inherently POV and systematically biased. This doesn't fit with Wikipedia's ethos. In addition, the effort required to bring the appropriate article(s) to FA status - assuming they were not close already - would be enormous. Neat idea, but I don't think we can use it in practice. Nihiltres 14:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The only truly international holiday I can think of, off the top of my head, is

 °

07:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I've overhauled

Please! It's awfully quiet... --Quiddity 20:01, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

After reading an article about why Academics don't participate in Wikipedia, I wrote up a proposal for how we could change this. I'd love to hear some thoughts on the proposal and also hear from anyone who'd like to participate. --Wolf530 18:40, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Whilst I agree in principle with the need to bring in expertise I'd suggest that some of what you've written is aiming at forcing experts to conform with Wikipedia, rather than reflecting the need to work out why they might want to contribute. It becomes a question of marketing, find out how to make your offer attractive, rather than forcing the offering on people.

There is also an assumption that Wikipedia is the only Wiki. Wiki is a technology, Wikipedia is one instance of that technology with a particular culture driven by the policies applied to its use.

There are already experts in various topics, but it's extremely frustrating to bump up against the anarchic, quasi-democratic and personality based qualification of content which is prevalent within Wikipedia. A number of areas need to be addressed to become attractive.

I'd agree that it is a workstrand worth pursuing, but you need to be realistic about the likelihood of it being implemented, given the fundamental change needed in certain policy approaches.

ALR 11:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry... I'm completely confused by your response. Would you mind elaborating on what you mean by "forcing experts to conform with Wikipedia"? If that's an issue, I'd like to fix it. But the suggestions is first to bring Wikipedia to the attention of academics, and second to teach them how to use the wiki and the basics of editing. Cut down on the time-cost of joining, basically. --Wolf530 (talk) 01:43, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Academia knows about Wikipedia, and doesn't trust it. The issues are related to wikipedia policies and practices, which do not and cannot assure the reader that the page they read is valid, without some additional research within wikipedia itself before even looking at the references and sources.

Its only humanities area where there can be conflict not in science area. In humanities area also I think neutral academia will join Wikipedia sooner than the non-neutral ones (and after wikipedia acquires a critical mass in academic circles as well, non-neutral experts will also join wikipedia, its only a matter of time) and from that point onward we will see the (positive) change in quality of humanities articles (I am waiting for this to happen as there is good degree of scope for improvement in quality of articles esp the ones related to History/Religion/Political science/Politics/ etc). Vjdchauhan 06:33, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

The time cost of joining isn't an issue, those in academia are well used to writing this type of material and the process is very quick. But whilst a contribution can be quite quick it can quickly be undone by someone with little knowledge or understanding of the subject, so one gets embroiled in wikipolitics rather than actually contributing content.

The reliability to the casual reader is fundamentally flawed, so there is little attraction for the serious and knowledgeable to be involved. Wikipedia needs to change the process, then it'll become attractive.

ALR 09:04, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Again, I think you're missing the point. If you read my actual proposal, my hypothesis is that there are many academics who are simply not savvy enough to break in to Wikipedia. I can remember a dozen of my own professors who used their computers a lot, but were fairly clueless about the internet. I believe if we present the humanitarian, and world-benefiting aspect of Wikipedia (including stuff like the $100 laptop, etc.), and make it easy for them to understand, we will find that there are many who are willing to participate.

By cost of joining, I mean this: someone who "always has a paper to grade" is not going to sit at their desk and say "Hmm... maybe today is a good day to learn how to use Wikipedia?" We all forget that actually learning to use the wiki -- learning the syntax, the edit flow, the history tab -- these are things which are easy for us because either A) we have used Wikipedia for a long time, or B) we've grown up on the internet and are used to the way it works. People in Academia are older, and do not understand the design architecture of the internet, it's as simple as that. We need to give them the opportunity to make it easy by saying: "Take two hours of your time to come sit down with us. We'll walk you through the process -- you'll leave being an editor of Wikipedia." That breaks down the cost of joining, because then there's no reason not to do it. Whereas before, if you're a 55 year old English teacher who probably would get into WP if you knew more about it, you're not going to try because it's too frustrating. There is too much to try and learn on your own, without someone there answering your questions and guiding you. A seminar, like I am proposing, is a language that Academics understand. It's a classroom setting where the foundation is laid in an efficient manner, and where questions can be answered quickly.

Please understand what I am proposing. This is a project that can work. And it does not have to wait for Wikipedia to change. We need to create the change we want to see. Helping usher in intelligent, knowledgeable editors who will only help our environment by bringing level-headed people into the discussion. I can't imagine why anyone would have a problem with this. --Wolf530 (talk) 16:21, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I have read your proposal, and I do appreciate what you're suggesting, I just think you're not appreciating why the academic community sees little value in participating. I don't know if you've looked at my profile, I'm a communications engineer by profession and a change management and knowledge management consultant by employment. That professional situation is why I see WP as flawed in terms of it's underlying processes and policy.ALR 22:14, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

More specifically, what are the problems with process and policy? Only hot-button issues have the problem of editors fighting rather than working together to create a good article. There is a vast sea of articles on philosophy, mathematics, economics, chemistry, etc. with no problems of this type whatsoever. The editors there are largely intellectuals themselves and do work together productively. For some there is no one concerned with an article; a professor could re-write the entire thing and as long as it were sensible no one would make a peep. These articles remain substantially identical for months or over a year until the next intellectual comes along and improves it. As long as someone stays away from articles on

Pokemon, there is no problem. —Centrx→talk

 • 09:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I wish this were true, but it's not. Pete.Hurd 19:14, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Very broadly, the pseudo-democratic approach, which itself suffers the flaws of democracy. If everyone has a view, regardless of their expertise or knowledge and understanding of a topic, or indeed their understanding of the policies and processes themselves. take a look at this for a demonstration of an AfD which appears to have been kept because the article was interesting to people rather than the subject being notable. Equally there are discussions where reasonably arcane topics are deleted because people haven't heard of them or only use Google to establish notability. Google is a useful tool, but for many more academic subjects FAME, EBSCO, MINTEL reports etc are more appropriate.

Much of the enforcement of policy is also done by people who, in the main, lack tact or people skills, hence alienating people, and who may not have an understanding of the subject themselves. Given the characteristics of domain experts, who frequently need careful handling themselves, that can quickly lead to frustration.

Consensus is a fallacy where large groups are concerned. As a facilitator I would never expect to achieve true consensus within a group of more than about 12. What the WP refers to as consensus is actually bludgeoning editors with a majority view until they give up and bugger off. Discussion is frequently polarised and results in a failure to compromise and achieve a balanced and agreed outcome. Arbitration procedures don't support that being themselves adversarial. The two mediation processes are useful but are conducted by people who don't appear to have effective facilitation skills, or whilst they may do in the face to face context fail to translate that to the online context.

I could go on.

ALR 20:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Centrx - Pete is right. As an editor who works on reasonably esoteric things, I am constantly spending time explaining to people why the choices made by me or others (which would NEVER be questioned by any expert in the field) are justified. As an example, see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/DotSix. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 04:25, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

From my experience, you're incorrect about the causes of the absence of academics in wikipedia. Every faculty member and graduate student in my department is perfectly capable of editing wikipedia, but only a few do. Wikipedia is frustrating to academics for just the reasons ALR says. Those of us that are experts have to constantly argue with people who are not about content decisions that would never be an issue if only experts could edit. Given how easily academics get frustrated with each other about these things, it doesn't surprise me that this would turn some of them off. If wikipedia wants more expert editors, it needs to be willing to make some (cultural) changes about how decisions are made. I think editors should be encouraged to defer to the decisions of experts instead of feeling entitled to question any decision they don't immediately understand. Regarding your proposal, academics are busy people. Those of us who are at (or plan to be at) research universities have very high demands on our time. Using phrases like "they are going to need to learn the "Wiki way"" will just turn them off. If academics are going to participate they should be made to feel as welcome as possible. Keep in mind, most of academics are already doing a lot of good for the world, and so the philanthropic possibilities of wikipedia may not be sufficiently attractive. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 06:52, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Arbitration only by Experts is an Elitist point of view, wikipedians will understand if the change conforms to NPOV and No Original-Research policy. Discussion page of the topic/article is good place to put the info/viewpoint on which consensus in needed between Experts and Lay Man and for sure rich content will win but the content has to be neutral else Lay Man will win in the democratic space :-) Vjdchauhan 08:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

If Wikipedia lasts another 10 years or so this issue may become elementary, as new academics who have been using Wikipedia for years will have emerged. --

A cynic of me suggests that if it was appropriate to include wiki-works into CV there would be much more academics around us. Just now even very good contributions (e.g. series of FAs and GAs on related themes) are snubbed upon. Maybe we should encourage professors to give their students assignments that include improvement in Wikipedia articles? A couple of weeks ago I saw a huge influx of new editors (~15) who were inclined to expand the Viscoelasticity article. It required a lot of efforts to channel their energy into a few related articles. Each have written a few of paragraphs and then disappeared. I bet it was a class in a some University who got Wikipedia-related assignments. If only their instructor put a notice for us somewhere. They all were doing the same mistakes and it was cumbersome to copy the same staff into 15 talk pages. If I had time to set up a wiki-school page or some Viscoelasticity project... Alex Bakharev 10:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we should encourage professors to give their students assignments that include improvement in Wikipedia articles? It has/is being done, see

Wikipedia:School and University projects. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk

] 04:25, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The whole "experts don't get more of a say than anyone else" IMO does a lot more good for this place than harm. But encouraging experts and academics to help us would probably be beneficial, especially now that we're trying to improve the quality of our articles. What i'm suggesting is something like a mediation/advocacy/mentorship system whereby academics could contact wikipedia about wanting to help, then get 'partnered' to a volunteer wikipedian who will help them and i guess...keep an eye on their contributions and step in on talk pages on their behalf and so on; i think would do us a lot of good. I guess just acting as the middleman between them and the rest of the wikipedian community, who the academic in question probably doesn't really want to bother dealing with. --`/aksha 11:29, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Kevin Zollman has hit the nail on the head, Alex Bakharev's suggestion about assigning wikiwork in upper level undergrad, or graduate is a good idea. I know of some examples of it being done, I've planned to do it myself, and have some ideas about how to make it work. I've been planning to write a WP essay on the idea, but havn't had the spare time to do it. WP needs more authors who have real world experience consulting and using encyclopedic sources. Too many articles on WP have been written by people who clearly have no experience using the product they are trying to create. Pete.Hurd 15:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

WP needs more authors who have real world experience consulting and using encyclopedic sources. And yet, when I suggest a way to help bring these people into the fold, everyone tells me I've got the wrong emphasis. God forbid we try an idea before it's snubbed with criticisms about hypothetical bias and an unwillingness to learn ... --Wolf530 (talk) 19:40, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that having identified the symptom, lack of academic involvement, you've then identified a possible solution. However I think you just need to do more analysis on why that symptom occurs before putting effort into finding a solution. Something I frequently use when I'm facilitating process improvement workshops is a Japanese technique of Ask why five times which is a useful discipline for shedding our preconceptions about solutions, it forces us down the cause and effect path quite far before allowing us to establish where to apply pressure to resolve the issues.

It's a useful discussion to have, it just needs more work.

Where is your evidence that academics don't participate in WP because it's too time consuming to work out how to use it?

ALR 20:54, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Pete, where do you see these kind of assignments sitting? I can see value in knowledge or information management courses, since one would gain an appreciation for how wikis in general work and infer from the experience the social and cultural issues which need to be designed into broader KM system. I'm speaking from the 'knowledge as a social entity' school of thought within the discipline in that sense. I see less value in incorporating it into other courses since it then becomes an exercise in information presentation, which are more meaningfully assessed in other ways, and become more auditable using other methods since there is little persistence in WP.

Notwithstanding that I do see the issue disappearing over time as there is an increase in the volume of people familiar with the resource and how to play the game, having used it as undergrads and then moving further up the food chain.ALR 21:07, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I have limited Academia experience. I only lectured one year in a mediocre Russian Uni and then worked as a postdoc in UIUC then went into industry. But I would love to give my students an assignment like this:

• Look into the Wikipedia article on the theme of the course (subject of my lecture, assigned subject)
• identify five mistakes/important missing information
• write a new article/significantly expand an old article (discuss the topic with your instructor)
• link your article to the relevant articles
• explain your edits to wikipedians
• write the report

Benefits for the students: review of the course, using your knowledge with slightly different notation/terminology, in depth knowledge of a particulr subject, training in literature research, training in Wikipedia usage - understanding its limitations, training in arguing your position, etc.

Benefits for the professor: free material for his notes, books, reference for his students

Benefits for the humankind: free reference

Everybody is a winner. I would actually love to gave this assignment to my students (but for the last ten years I have not been given ones. :( Alex Bakharev 13:42, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it's an interesting suggestion, but I'm also aware that it is a diversion from the subject so probably best not discussed here. What subjects do you see it being applied to and what do you see as the learning outcomes which one would expect for students, beynd that which could be gained using another media channel? I think a lot of what you suggest as benefit is pretty generic.

I think there is a case for an output to be an essay on the issues with Wiki technology in general and how it can be used to encode tacit knowledge in an effort to move it around the knowledge cycle and make it available for the organisation to then exploit it by socialising it and then building on it. Although I see that applying to wiki technology in general rather than just wikipedia in particular.ALR 18:03, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a View Changes Preview?100110100 05:10, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. The "Show preview" button gives you a ... preview. User:Zoe|(talk) 06:00, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

There is such a thing. It's the third button from the left, "Show changes". Displays a diff between the current revision and the one you have in the edit box.

 °

06:18, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

For several months, I have wanted to suggest this feature, not knowing it already exists. Thanks for letting me know. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:24, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

A proposed guideline is in development to address some gaps in the Wikipedia namespace. Currently

There is Wikipedia:Third opinion. I just used it for the first time, and it was extremely quick and easy. It's only good for disputes that can be easily summarized in a few sentences, understood fairly easily, and where both parties can generate a neutral description of the issue that they both agree on (and of course both parties have to agree to abide by the third party's decision). There's no back-and-forth; the third party basically looks at the description, looks at the issue, and decides, game over. (I guess it can get a litle more involved than that, but it's supposed to stay really simple.) It's also supposed to be only for disputes where there only two individuals in disagreement, though. Herostratus 00:04, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Since wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it contains things such as Sex, Penis etc. Now I agree that it can be allowed onto wikipedia, and suitable pictures are aloud. But still, I have seen on it's talk pages that some people find it offensive, rude etc. And since wikipedia is open to everyone, including young children, do you think there should be some sort of notice at the top of the page saying something like

!Warning, this page contains content that some users may find offensive!

or some sort of stub similar to that?Samaster1991 20:30, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:NDT lays out the reasons this is a bad idea, but let me inform you that I am terribly offended by the TV show "Lost," and must insist that every article about that show be the first tagged. JBKramer

20:34, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I am offended that you are offended by "Lost", and I demand that you be blocked for your unwarranted attacks on Jimbo's favorite series! --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 21:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• No. See also
  WP:PEREN. (Radiant
  ) 10:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Why do geographical coordinates have to be provided in a decimal format with only degrees? The common usage is in degrees, minutes, and seconds (see, e.g., the German wikipedia). Currently, one has to click on the coordinates to get this information. I don't see why that should be necessary. Unless other reasons speak against it, I'd suggest to change the format... --Ibn Battuta 03:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

"Provided" in what sense? In articles you can write them whichever way you want. The handy "coor" template supports degrees-minutes-seconds (e.g. 56°28′58″N 16°34′31″E / 56.48278°N 16.57528°E / 56.48278; 16.57528). (The rendition of the minutes and seconds symbols is buggy on my PC, and spurious white space is inserted, but that's another matter!) Matt 23:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC).

Errr... I'm not sure if we're getting different outputs? Well, at least *I* get the coordinates in a decimal format (e.g., 45.5315° N 11.5600° E of the

There is more than one template: {{

coor dm}}. I prefer the dms version myself (where appropriate). See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. -- Eugène van der Pijll

12:39, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The format in which coordinates are displayed in an article is the choice of the editor who adds them to the article. Everyone reading the article then sees the same thing - different people shouldn't see different "outputs". For example, at

Villa Capra "La Rotonda" the coordinates are in degrees, and at Alby, Sweden

they are in degrees-minutes-seconds. This is just because the respective editors chose to do it that way. As an editor you can, if you want, enter coordinates in plain text format, and then you can obviously type whatever characters you like - Wikipedia doesn't know or care that they are coordinates. However, I guess you're probably talking about the handy "coor" template which gives you the auto-formatting and the auto-link to map lookups. In this case you choose whether you want degrees, degrees-minutes or degrees-minutes-seconds with the second parameter. For example:

{{Coor d|45.5315|N|11.5600|E}}     produces     45°31′53″N 11°33′36″E / 45.5315°N 11.5600°E / 45.5315; 11.5600

{{coor dm|56|28|N|16|34|E}}     produces     56°28′N 16°34′E / 56.467°N 16.567°E / 56.467; 16.567

{{coor dms|56|28|58|N|16|34|31|E}}     produces     56°28′58″N 16°34′31″E / 56.48278°N 16.57528°E / 56.48278; 16.57528

If you want the coordinates at

Villa Capra "La Rotonda"

to appear as degrees-minutes-seconds then you will have to do the conversion yourself and edit the article appropriately. Matt 13:06, 14 November 2006 (UTC).

• • Incidentally, in the above examples, does everyone else see spurious white space after the seconds and minutes symbols, or is it just me? Matt 13:28, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

It's just you. At least; I don't see it. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 16:27, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's an idea. Could we not extend the "date preferences" type of setting to things like co-ordinates as well? I remember a few weeks ago someone asked about unit conversions (SI, metric, etc.) and at the time I thought this would be a great idea to incorporate as well. Wehere should i request this? Zunaid©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 07:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... automatic unit conversions? So, for instance, the article on

Three Mile Island would be displayed, under some user preferences, as 4.828032 Kilometer Island? *Dan T.*

14:21, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

LoL! Obviously not! But seriously, I think auto unit conversion would be great. I edit a lot of car articles so there's plenty of kW, hp, PS figures going around etc etc. A user preference that would display the desired units (and optionally, other units in brackets) would make life much easier for editors (by removing the need for manually populating different unit values) and for readers (by removing potentially annoying units that they may choose not to see). It would also standardise the way units are presented, by always showing the same unit first, second, third etc. e.g. if i set my preferences to kW, then hp, units will ALWAYS be displayed as "100 kW (134 hp)" no matter how they've been entered into the article. There could also be a specific way to bypass these choices for specific cases e.g. for an article on unit conversion itself, or where a certain unit (e.g. light years, parsecs, "miles" in 3 mile island) should not be replaced by the user's default. Zunaid©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 07:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I can envisage all sorts of problems trying to make automatic conversion work reliably with pre-existing text. That sounds like a non-starter. Probably it would be better to provide some new syntax, template or whatever - something like {{units|100 kW}} (except not that because the "units" template already exists!) Matt 10:27, 16 November 2006 (UTC).

I want to start this, but I need help and support. --Geobeedude 02:30, 14 November 2006 (UTC)Geobeedude

You can propose it

- Tutmosis

15:28, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Can anyone explain why so many people feel it's worthwhile to link from dates? One of trillions of examples: "On

• Please see
  WP:MOSDATE (manual of style). This is a perennial issue, some people feel that all dates must always be linked, others feel this is irrelevant. (Radiant
  ) 11:57, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe that the disagreement is over related, but slightly different, matters. The Manual of Style states that only relevant or notable dates should be linked, & that multiple links to the same article are usually unnecessary and should be avoided. What the words "relevant" & "notable" mean in this instance, & if there are instances where multiple links are justified -- these are perennial issues, & I don't know if a consensus will ever be reached about them. -- llywrch 22:01, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Probably what you're missing is that dates are linked for the dual purpose of wikilinking, but it also allows the software to format dates according to your user preferences. There's been discussion in the past of making the UP section work differently, but it's never gotten anywhere. -- nae'blis 15:36, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
• See (old)
  WP:MOSDATE archives 42-46, and many many shorter threads both before and after, and the technical end at Mediawiki Bug #4582. -Quiddity
  01:06, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Im not an agnostic (or secular myself), but i will not express my belief here. But what really annoys me is when browsing WikiPedia, it seems that anything other than Christianity, Judaism or Islam is considered "mythology" here at WikiPedia, to a non-religious website, i think that WikiPedia should not label any religions as mythology, because its not the right way for a secularly written encyclopedia to go, to a non-religious person, Christianity is just as believeable as Paganism of any kind (including for example, Ancient Egyptian Religion). I hope my proposal and opinion is not taken lightly. Brenton.eccles 08:54, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't secular, it's

talk

09:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not up to Wikipedia to decide if a particular religion is "mythology" or not; we merely report on what others say, and if a large weight of information from reliable sources generally agree that something is considered "mythology", then that's how we present the information. Our policies really don't give us much leeway on the matter. Remember: we are monks, not philosophers...

Warren

10:45, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

If a Wipedia is really going to operate with NPOV, I would endorse referring policies against referring to any religions as "mythological" as this term could be taken in the pejorative sense. On a related theme, I do think it helpful if editors of articles on religious subjects can express their religion on the usserpage, so that we can check reasons for a particular bias a particular editor might have had. ACEO 19:47, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

As noted above "we" (as editors) shouldn't be saying anything about any religion because that would be

reliable sources have said about said religion. It is possible for current scholarship to be split on whether to categorize a faith as a "mythology" or something else and both views should be included. If you have a particular article in mind that provoked this post, my recommendation would be to find some reliable sources that categorizes the faith apart from "mythology" and include comments about that scholarship view in the article. Be Bold. Agne

19:53, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

(1) "Mythology" is not necessarily a pejorative term; myths can be true. Betsy Ross is part of the American mythology that isn't true; Paul Revere is part of the American mythology that is true (basically), and so on. Same with religions, the Battle of Jericho is a mythology that is (probably) more or less true, the parting of the Red Sea is part of the mythology that isn't true. (2) It isn't true that all religions are the same; there's been a tremendous advance in religious thought over the last three millenia or so. Beliefs like (say) that God (or the gods) lives in a particular geographical place on the earth have pretty much been superseded by more subtle thinking, and there's no point in pretending otherwise. (3) Most every religion has a crust of arrant nonsense along with the cool stuff, but we live in a political world, and Wikipedia is part of that world. So if your religion has lots of adherents, you can expect to get the kid-gloves treatment else the Great Screaming will begin; but if you let your religion die out, well, it's pretty much fair game. Don't worry about it, that's just how people are. (4) I think Wikipedia is secular, or at any rate should be; an encyclopedia is hella more part of the world of science than of religion.

Diderot's original enycyclopedia was specifically written partly to combat superstition and parasitic priestly class who fed off it, and all proper encyclopedia's are basically in that vein. Herostratus

23:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I just think that in general, the word should be antiquity rather than mythology, eg: "a religion of antiquity. Because a lot of the antique religions are not dead.Brenton.eccles 00:53, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Ressurected Wiccan traditions based on ancient mythology can be treated seperately in those cases where they make a significant enough minority to be included, which is to say those articles which are actually about neo-paganism. There's no reason to go messing about with the

talk

01:00, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Could a counter displaying the number of people watching articles be included on each page. This would be to see how many people are interested in a particular page. --Mutley 11:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

This is available to admins, problems with vandles using it to find pages which are not watched mean its not availiable to regular users. A pereneal proposal, see the archive for more. --Salix alba (talk) 12:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Technically, admins can only see a list of the first 1000 pages that are unwatched (watched by 0 people). The number of people having a page in their watchlist could be retrived via action=info, but this is disabled for performance reasons. Tizio 13:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• I'll add this to
  WP:PEREN. (Radiant
  ) 10:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

How about a rule that stops anonymous users from editing pages that no one is watching?

Wouldn't that be too restrictive? Putting together neglected pages and new users should be a goal, rather than something to be avoided, IMHO. – Little Miss Might Be Wrong 00:13, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that new editors that are just starting out here at Wikipedia could be confused about what to put in the edit summary field. I am proposing that we change the text next to the edit summary box to say

• Edit summary (Description of your edits)

instead of just

• Edit summary

What do you think? —Mets501 (talk) 04:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. -Quiddity 06:10, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to see anything more on an edit page. Indeed, I want to see less. Valuable screen real estate is thrown away saying the same things over and over. Don't submit it. Use the sandbox. See policies. Foo. If I haven't read that by now, I won't.

Agree that proper use of edit sums is critical to just about everything here. Do not agree that more boilerplate nagging will help.

Give me a setting in my prefs to remove all the verbiage, leaving only the buttons themselves, and I'll be content no matter what else you do.

 °

06:15, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with John Reid's idea of a setting, so experienced users won't read the instruction creep, but newcomers will. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

As for changing a setting, here's some code that you could put in your monobook.css to trim down the editing page. You can pick and choose which elements you want to hide:

#editpage-copywarn, #editpage-copywarn2, #editpage-copywarn3, .previewnote, #newarticletext {display:none} /* remove the warnings */

#editpage-specialchars {display:none} /* remove special characters list */

#toolbar {display:none} /* remove toolbar */

#wpSummaryLabel, #minoredit_helplink, .editHelp {display:none} /* remove helpful links */

.templatesUsed {display:none} /* remove list of templates */

Unfortunatly, #editpage-copywarn2\.3B doesn't seem to work properly, I think because of the '.' in its id.

(Talk)

15:09, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

It's working now. I think the element's id was changed temporarily as I was writing the code.

(Talk)

15:38, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

There was a misplaced semicolon (which was transformed into ".3B"). Since removed. :)

And yeah, I hide most of those, and the copyright footers, with User:Quiddity/monobook.css. Makes everything a lot cleaner. --Quiddity 19:27, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Mets501's idea is good. "Edit summary" may be confusing to some, while "description of your changes" should be clear to anybody. Given how large the edit form currently is, I do not see adding 20 bytes to it as a big problem, if that leads to more valid edit summaries from newcomers (and perhaps less valid edits being reverted). Tizio 13:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm slightly confused. What exactly is confusing about the phrase "edit summary"? If people are getting confused about what to put in it, then this idea seems good, but I can't see what else "edit summary" could mean, except "summary of your edit". Trebor 14:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll admit: it actually confused me when I first edited Wikipedia last February. I took it to mean "edit the summary of the article" or the like, so I never filled it it at first :-) —Mets501 (talk) 15:37, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh okay, I just wanted to see evidence that some people did get confused by it before changing anything. It sounds good then, so long as there's an option to turn it off. Trebor 20:13, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

To turn it off, put #wpSummaryLabel label small {display:none} in your

(Talk)

22:51, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

If edit summaries are so important, why are people complaining about long edit summaries? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Coming from a developer's perspective in terms of SVN/CVS, you get reverted and publically humiliated if you leave a blank or unsatisfactory log entry (the source code equivalent of edit summary). I'd really like to see more people making use of this function, perhaps even encouraging multi-line edit summaries and the ability to edit the edit summaries. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 04:33, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Post-implementation

Has anyone else noticed how "Edit summary (Briefly describe the changes you have made)" is now being fully justified and is now filled with large gaps instead of flush left like it used to be? I tried removing the span tags from MediaWiki:Summary but that didn't fix it. I'm currently see this layout problem in Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060830 Firefox/1.5.0.7 (Debian-1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.7-2). --  Netsnipe  ►  06:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I get the same (with the same browser). It's extremely ugly; if it can't be fixed I think it should be changed back. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 06:54, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Edit summary box

A comment,

I think that the alignment issues that I am having, are caused by the setting "Justify text" in the user preferences that I have set. I guess the same is true for Netsnipe. I added a span to MediaWiki:Summary to counteract this, hopefully without causing any other problems. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I use a fairly small browser window and find that the edit summary box is now incredibly small now. Anyone else with that problem? JYolkowski // talk 23:47, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I have aligned it to the left. It looks ugly justified. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:14, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I would like to propose the usage of white-space: nowrap; on the links in navboxes; as many navboxes use   or link-breaks to keep title together. I was thinking of something like (which should work on Firefox, IE5.5+, Opera):

table.toccolours a, .NavContent a {
  white-space: nowrap;
}

-Dispenser 23:56, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Basically, redirects of the form, e.g. redirecting HSBA.L and 0005.HK to HSBC. Any comments on this -- good idea, bad idea, been discussed before? Thanks. cab 06:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• I don't see the harm, go for it. (Radiant) 10:47, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I have several ideas for new Wikiprojects. One of my ideas is Wikiproject Australian Television Schedules, Which could create schedules for older years in australian TV. Another is Wikiproject Episode status, Which could improve articles by mentioning how many episodes still exist (with older shows). Another idea is wikiproject Daytime United States Television Schedules. The problem is that I dont have the knowledge to do them myself.What do you think?DesignForDreamingFan 07:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this, but i have a feeling TV schedules are not going to go well with copyright laws. I mean, there's not much to write in a TV schedule except to literally type up a schedule - which is copyrighted. Plus, i don't think TV schedules really count as being "encyclopedic" articles.

As for TV episodes, they are covered by two existing wikiproject -

Wikipedia:WikiProject List of Television Episodes. Most "list of [tv series] episodes" articles already cover information about future episodes. If you're interested in TV episodes, you're welcome to drop by either of those projects and help out, or make any more specific suggestions about improving our articles to do with TV episodes. --`/aksha

08:21, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not talking about episodes, I'm talking about improving articles On late 40's early 50's Television by mentioning how many episodes still exist.DesignForDreamingFan 08:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't quite understand what you mean by "how many episodes still exist". Shouldn't...all episodes still 'exist'? It's not like episodes for old shows are destroyed. Can you clarify? --`/aksha 08:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

WTF! almost the entire Du Mont archive was destoyed, as were hundreds of shows in the 50's. Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiping —The preceding

unsigned comment was added by DesignForDreamingFan (talk • contribs

) .

It may be obvious to you, but keep in mind what is 'common knowledge' to you is most certainly not nessasarily common knowledge to everyone else. I for one, had no idea what you're talking about. Information regarding something like that would be worth putting into articles. These articles, however, are television articles and are in the domain of Wikipedia:WikiProject Television. Creating a project specifically for this purpose is fine, but it would be a child project of the Television WikiProject. So the best place to ask, especially if you're asking other people to do it, would be at the talk page for Wikipedia:WikiProject Television. The people there would be more knowledgable regarding this area, and would probably be able to help you more. --`/aksha 12:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems like this falls on the wrong side of

Wikia might be a more appropriate palce for this sort of info. --Salix alba (talk

) 12:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to mention it, TV schedules are routinely deleted over at AfD so a Wikiproject to create them would be futile and quickly get deleted itself. --The Way 10:35, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I propose we change the link to

Editing help

(opens in new window)

It's technically difficult to add an additional link (as previously proposed and supported), and a few editors suggested it would actually be preferable to simply replace the "Editing help" link (at MediaWiki:Edithelppage), for clarity and simplicity. I agree, but this is a major change and will require strong consensus. Please comment/show support. Thanks :) --Quiddity 21:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC) - Updated per 2nd comment at 02:14, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Support - The
  Cheatsheet for ArbCom! oh wait, I got my forums confused... Doc Tropics
  21:12, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
• Conditional Support - I strongly support this change, however I don't support the verbiage change. I think it still needs to remain "Editing help" linking to the Cheatsheet. Simply putting "Cheatsheet" isn't explicit enough and new users will ignore the link out of confusion for what "Cheatsheet" refers to. --Wolf530 (talk) 00:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't considered the wording, only the utility of the change itself. I agree with Wolf that the term "Cheatsheet" lacks the clarity of "Editing Help", which should probably be retained. Doc Tropics 01:49, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Proposal above updated accordingly. -Quiddity 02:14, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

• Support but the cheatsheet would need to be given a prominant link to
  (Talk)
  02:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

  Thanks, that link looks great!

  (Talk)

  02:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

  np, you beat me to the reply! I've tweaked the See also section too. -Quiddity 02:49, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks good, nice job : ) Doc Tropics 03:21, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for asking a question rather than voting (unfortunately I don't have a strong opinion): is the term cheatsheet adequate in tone for an encyclopedia? My non-native speaker "feeling" would go for quick reference or quick reference card. Just bad feeling? —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 05:04, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

If enough editors feel strongly about it, "Cheatsheet" could be renamed as you suggest; however, there is probably a general understanding that the term has no negative connotations in this context. Doc Tropics 05:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I (months ago) moved it from "Wikipedia:Quick guide" to "Wikipedia:Cheatsheet" in order to match with the existing meta page

Wikipedia:Reference card is already an incoming redirect, so it could be moved there; I'm happy with either.(Also it's not a "vote", people often just add bolded initial words to give an "at a glance" summary of the state of a thread. You could add comment before yours for example :) -Quiddity

05:39, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - I like the change though, as I said above, I don't feel strongly about it (the main reason is: while it may help getting started earlier, which is good, it may also induce skipping a thorough read of the complete manual, which is harmful in the long run). What I would suggest anyway is eliminating the link redundancy at
  More editing help (last table row), for instance. —Gennaro Prota^•Talk
  06:02, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

  Done, it was redundant to the arrow/link back to help:contents too. (Anyone can edit it, it's not locked ;) --Quiddity 06:42, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

• Support. Much more readable and accessible to newbies. Lincher 14:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
• Absolute Support, the "Cheatsheet" is more newb friendly. It's much easier to glance at that the edit help, and I think it will help Wikipedia.++aviper2k7++ 01:35, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
• Another Conditional Support: The cheatsheet is much better for syntax, but I think the "Editing basics" bullet points at
  talk
  ) 17:34, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

  Signing talkpage posts is already heavily reminded at the top's of those pages via MediaWiki:Talkpagetext and at the bottom via MediaWiki:Edittools. I won't revert your addition at Cheatsheet, but I don't think it's necessary.

  Adding the "Editing basics" bullet points would greatly increase the size of the page, and I think its brevity is one of its strong points. I'd suggest that the mentions elsewhere (intro/tutorial/help:editing/How to edit a page/etc) are sufficient; We want to get people started editing, more than we need them to start off perfectly. (imho, and all that :) -Quiddity 21:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

  Wow, I had never noticed the

  talk

  ) 22:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

  It's new, in the last few weeks - top of talkpages. As for the Cheatsheet - it's a normal wikipage, edit at will; discuss if drastic or reverted. :) --Quiddity 01:16, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Is that enough support (with zero objections)? I can announce it at

• Support; this would reduce confusion for new users (who are most in need of the link). --ais523 14:23, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the change. the wub "?!" 21:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I wish to propose Etymology at the top of the page of disambiguation of each word, or such so you can know the very first version and root of the word. As it is now, it is sometimes very difficult to find the root and first meaning of the word. /Minoya 08:33, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• That's properly addressed at our dictionary, Wiktionary. Encyclopedias generally do not address lexicographical matters or etymology -- both of which are core concerns of dictionaries. Geogre 11:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Depends on the topic doesn't it? I've recently become interested in the origins of the term 'Ripper', which seems to have become the UK vernacular for a serial killer of prostitutes, presumably from Jack the Ripper. However it would be interesting to know where Jack the Ripper got the name from - does it refer to his mutilation of the women (ripping their faces), or because its similar to the term rape, or what?
  • Anyway, my point is that the term Ripper is unlikley to have (or deserve?) a page on wiktionary, so having the etymology of the term on the Jack the Ripper, or Ripper disambiguation page would be approprite in this case. Similaly for the etymology of names of animals, etc. --Neo 11:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• I think you'll find that Ripper does have a page on Wiktionary. At any rate, it comes from the fact that he ripped the women's bodies open. He did not merely slash faces. The current use is, in fact, just an analogy for "man who kills prostitutes." "Rip" has an origin in Old English for our purposes, but, if you want to go back farther, you'd go to Old West Germanic, then to a Sanskrit, then to the fabled proto-Indo-European, but it, like "reap/rape" comes from a root meaning "to seize," unless it comes from /ras/ roots, when it would mean "rough/abrasive/abrade." It's still a lexical matter, though. Geogre 12:31, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

it really queit simple we need to have printer freindly versions and spell check on serch. many i've tryed to print out a artical and goten a usless page of ink. then i have trouble find articals i need because i have trouble spelling. Comeback2009 00:18, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

For a printable version of an article, click 'Printable version' in the toolbox on the left hand side. Spell check in search is disabled for performance reasons, use Google Sitesearch instead.

(Talk)

00:30, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, something has really nagged me. First people fixed the lowercase problem, but now we can't change "Asdfexamplething" to "asdfexamplething". However, an easy way to do this would be to create an admin bot that would search for the {{lowercase}} tag, then turn "Asdfexamplething" to "thisisapageusedbyanadminbot" to "asdfexamplething". It should then delete "Asdfexamplething" and "thisisapageusedbyanadminbot". Anyone like my suggestion?

• You can make bot requests at
  WP:BOT. However, note that the community tends to disapprove of bots with admin rights. (Radiant
  ) 17:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
• I don't see the use of this. The template is working fine. And it doesn't matter what you type. Why bother? - Mgm|^(talk) 13:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Besides, it won't work. It is used on Wiktionary, but we still need the template as Wikipedia still puts in capital letters. Also, there'd be no point in deleting the old entry after moving. We need redirects to remain so outside links don't die. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The way that wikipedia writes equations is absurd. Example:

Z_{vib}=\prod_j{\sum_i{e^{-\frac{E_{j,i}}{kT}}}}

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Invisible site (talk • contribs) 03:10, 7 December 2006

You must be looking for Help:Displaying a formula. In any case, that example has more braces than it needs, some of which are an indication that it's being typeset incorrectly to begin with. It should be:

Z_{vib} = \prod_j \sum_i e^{-E_{j,i}/kT}

which produces:

${\displaystyle Z_{vib}=\prod _{j}\sum _{i}e^{-E_{j,i}/kT}}$

See how much less absurd that is? Melchoir 05:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

For comparison, the originally posted math typesets like this:

${\displaystyle Z_{vib}=\prod _{j}{\sum _{i}{e^{-{\frac {E_{j,i}}{kT}}}}}}$

Honestly, I understand neither Invisible site's question, nor Melchoirs reply. Of course, removing the extra braces improves the readability of the source, and changing "\frac" into "/" may (or may not) be a good idea here.--Niels Ø 10:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It is based on TeX, which is used by scientists (in particular mathematicians) to write documents and books (often using LaTeX). S Sepp 16:50, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

My point is that the braces are a helpful feature: they alert you when you're attempting to nest too many styles. It isn't a good idea to have a variable with multiple subscripts within a fraction within an exponential, and that's independent of the language used to generate it. TeX forces the issue by requiring you to type out all the code. Melchoir 22:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I though Invisible was commenting on the apperance of formulae at the article page; I now realise (s)he referred to their appearance at the edit page (i.e. to the source). The relevant help page for Invisible is

WP:FORMULA.--Niels Ø

19:25, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, so sometimes people will use a bit too many braces. That's not a tragedy. But having equations written using TeX is a must: most editors of equations are familiar with TeX as S Sepp just pointed out. Sure it's a bit complicated but then again, typesetting equations properly requires some amount of sophistication. Pascal.Tesson 19:28, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

LaTeX can be ugly, but it's at least human writable -- count your lucky stars we don't use MathML... — Matt Crypto 11:02, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

every now and then ther's a fuss about material that is regarded as offensive by some.Why not implement in the preferences for the viewer a filter/filters that filters out what he might regard as offensive.I presumed that the images would have an exstra template to categorize them.That whay if you live in saoudy arabia or in a naturist island,you can be confortable in reading wikipedia--Zigzag8 01:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

(

Naturists are easily offended?!) Slippery slope - We can't distinguish zealotry from conservatism, and shouldn't be required to. See Wikipedia:Content disclaimer. Also, stopping the close-minded folks from seeing other people's perspectives doesn't help the spread of knowledge... -Quiddity

01:29, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It's not like you'll find a random image of a dick in the middle of the

Cleveland steamer as search terms. That way, the easily-offended can stop being offended while the rest of us write a thorough encyclopedia with relevant images to support the content. Pascal.Tesson

05:40, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

• Please see
  WP:NDT. (Radiant
  ) 12:32, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

• Avoiding and battling the use of potentially offensive images on irrelevant pages (aka vandalism) goes a long way. For everything else, people can get their own blocking software without getting us a whole lot of extra work. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I guess it was inevitable but school filters blocked wikipedia (a while ago actually), its not that they think its unreliable its just that they know that there is offensive content and they can't block those single pages,so they must block the site. This is a bit of a problem for schoolchildren because the school decides what software filters are used, I believe that Wikipedia should implement a password based filter option that the school can control, therefore, eliminating the need to block it -Charlie 34

Although semi-protection is an effective deterrent for all but the most determined vandals, the current suffrage of 4 days allows determined vandals to create sock farms.

I propose that the suffrage be changed from 4 days to 100 edits.

With the change in suffrage, a sock puppet would have to make 100 edits without getting blocked, before they can vandalise a semi-protected article. This should deter even the most determined vandals. If they make 100 edits that are beneficial to the encyclopedia, before making several vandal edits and getting blocked, Wikipedia will have a net improvement. Of course, sock puppets could make many edits in user space and sandboxes, and this is something RC patrollers will have to be wary of.

Do note that 100 is an arbitrary number.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Given a decent broadband connection I can make 100 edits in under an hour (probably much faster if I just sat there and reverted vandalism using pop-ups). It's a lot faster to make 100 edits than wait 4 days. --

talk

19:15, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Consider the time taken to create a sock puppet, and the time taken to make 100 edits. This proposal will increase the net effort needed to vandalise (very little effort is needed to spend five minutes creating ten socks, and four days later, using them to vandalise). In addition, consider the quality of their 100 edits. If these 100 edits are vandalism, they will be blocked before they can reach the 100-edit mark. If these 100 edits are beneficial (e.g. vandalism reverts, spelling corrections), they will compensate for the vandalism. Of course, RC patrollers will have to be wary of users who make many edits in their user space or in the sandbox, or use other methods to artificially inflate their edit count. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:07, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Account creation is tracked in the user table, but number of edits is not. Hence calculating the age of an account is a simple (low impact) database operation, whereas calculating the number of edits currently requires a full query of all page histories. Given that autoconfirmed status is looked up before every edit, keeping the overhead low is a major reason for using age rather than number of edits. Dragons flight 19:27, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

That is a valid concern. Instead of constantly parsing contribution/page histories, perhaps there could be an editcount variable, which increases by 1 when a user makes an edit, and autoconfirmed status could be granted once the variable reaches 100. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:07, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Look at it the other way around ... wouldn't it be better to multiply by two the autoconfirmed suffrage everytime one vandilizes a page. This could be done automatically, for example everytime that person has a vandal tag on his/her user talk page, hence, the established users have 0 days of suffrage and thus multiplying this value by two gives 0 again which means this could be implemented.

We could do it in another way, everytime one creates an account, he/she has to make an edit to, say, the mainspace, talkpagespace, userspace, userspace, wikipediaspace, wikipediatalkspace in order to be granted this status. This would also assure such users are participating in the general discussions and not just disrupting the system. Lincher 21:39, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

They could just write a script that would make and revert a single insignificant change to many articles until the limit is reached. No one would think twice. There are plenty of ways to circumvent this automatically. I'm not saying it's not a good idea - making things harder for vandals but not so much for legit contributors is good - but it's not foolproof. Deco 01:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Heck, why not just change the suffrage period from 4 days to two weeks? or a month? there are always talk pages if new editors really want to edit semi-protected articles, and there is still AfC and Requested moves. I would support an edit count combined with a minimum time period. This covers both aspects. Zunaid©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 07:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that an an edit count is too vulnreable to fraud to work. Only if combined with the existing 4-day time limit would it work. Also, I cannot supprt the suggestion of extending the time period without some study showing that it would have a significane amount of added beneficial effect. --EMS | Talk 17:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Has it already been proposed to automatically include in articles a section listing "Articles Linking To This Article"? It seems to me that it would automatically add a lot of information about a topic.

If this has already been discussed, I wasn't able to find it.

It already exists in the toolbox I think - the link: "What links here" Lethaniol 16:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• Indeed, that's what that button does. (Radiant) 17:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be a brilliant idea to have the navigation, search and toolbox things sliding up and down, like the 'overview' on this page: [4]. That would be handy on really long articles like

What would happen to all of the interwiki links. If it slides up and down as the page scrolls the bottom of the language links will not be visible unless you have a massive screen or there are only a few interwiki links. Why not just have a link at the bottom of each page (near to the Privacy Policy and About Wikipedia links) that links back the to top of the page. Chris_huh^talk 16:52, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree - the box is too big to scroll up and down (would lose toobox and interwiki) - unless we put a scroll bar inside the sidebar. The idea of putting a go to top link at the bottom of every page is good whatever. Cheers Lethaniol 17:12, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Whoa - what about having a (hide) option on each bit, like the Contents at the top. Or just automatically have each part hidden? I don't know. It's just an idea.

(I like the massive screen idea too. Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha. Bye, bye, any chance of paying off the mortagage ...) Jake95 17:22, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

You can get the links to move up and down by putting the following text in your monobook.css:

#column-one {position: fixed}
#p-personal {position: fixed; right:0}
#f-copyrightico {display:none}
body {background-attachment:fixed}

But it does have the associated problms mentioned above and additionally, the WMF link messes it up so it removes that as well.

(Talk)

17:24, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Yuck, no offence to whoever wrote it. Also I have a very slow connection - and this makes it struggle. Not ideal solution Lethaniol 17:33, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Your internet connection should have no affect on how the CSS script works. falsedef 21:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

There is a discussion going on here on if Featured Pictures should be changed to Featured Media. -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 05:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Would it be good if categories could have suppporting citations? I'm imagining some that would look roughly like Category:foo^[1]. JoshuaZ 21:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It may be a good idea for certain controversial categories, although I think the software allows something like that. —Mets501 (talk) 22:25, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Really? How would it do it? I was playing around with my sandbox earlier to try to get something like that and was unable to figure out a way to do it. JoshuaZ 03:41, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

• I think you can do it with a CSS hack. I'm not so sure if it'd help, though; the cat list is plenty long already in many articles, and I'd estimate superscripted numbers are unlikely to be noticed. (Radiant) 16:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Likely to be noticed wouldn't be as relevant as having a way to source cats which would make the controversial ones much less controversial. Also, controversial cats seem to be more common on articles with only a few categories. JoshuaZ 19:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I suggest just commenting out the citation and putting it right after the category in the article's code. That should work... not optimal but I think it would look pretty ugly even if we could figure out how to put an inline citation after the categories in the displayed actual page. --W.marsh 19:07, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

People recently commented that this would make a decent guideline to remind people of the hazards of making personal details available on-line. Please copyedit and comment on its talk page. (Radiant) 12:57, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

That looks like one question that might be up to the lawyers at wikimedia. i kan reed 00:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Imagine your watchlist was an ordinary document called [[user:<user name>/watchlist]]. Whenever something is to be added to the watchlist, the system should append a line in this format:

[[<link to article or whatever>]], [[<link to associated talk page>]]

The "my whatchlist" button should simply show "Related changes" for your /watchlist page.

I think this would make it easier to manage your watchlist (especialy if it is long) - pruning, adding articles to watch that do not currently exist, etc. Also, you can organize the items under various headings, if you want to (remember to put a heading like ==Unsorted recent additions to my watchlist==" at the bottom!) - it will not affect the functionality, but may still be useful. Does it sound like a good idea?--Niels Ø 10:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It's an interesting idea but I think there's already far too much data in the unstructured free wiki text format. Like this discussion for one. Once it's wikitext it can contain syntax errors, it can't be easily resorted based on time of most recent modification (a feature many people find helpful), and so on. Deco 11:43, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Alternate idea

Instead of having a wikitext watchlist page, how about simply allowing users to filter their watchlist using either standard or custom tags. This could be accomplished by having an additional option on the "Added to watchlist" page that lets the user select a tag for the page in their watchlist. (This page would probably need to no longer redirect back to the watched article as it does now after a short timeout.) On the watchlist page, in addition to the "Namespace" filter there would be a second selectable criteria to select which tags to view. No interface for changing filter tags is needed—simply "unwatch" and then "watch" and set the new filter tag.

Now having proposed this (which I think is technically a much better proposal than an editable watchlist), I'm not sure I see the need for it. But if this type of functionality is desired, I think my proposal is a much better mechanism. —Doug Bell ^talk 22:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure if you already know, so pardon me if you do, but your watchlist is easily editable at Special:Watchlist/edit. Prodego ^talk 22:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that is simply how a user can edit what it on their watch list. The proposal here is for changes to how changes are viewed on the Special:Watchlist page. However, your point is good in that an addition to my above proposal would be to list the filter flags for each page in the watchlist on the Special:Watchlist/edit page. Perhaps even list them in the form of a selector widget so that the filter preferences can be changed directly from that page. —Doug Bell ^talk 22:38, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

A potential use for this

A watchlist document would be handy. Wikiprojects could really make a great deal of use out of that. So that someone who was part of a project(and considered themselves knowledgable about the subject) could watch for vandalism in all of the related pages.(especially helpful with new pags being added to a project, users wouldn't have to manually add everything related to a subject to their watchlist.) Otherwise unwatched topics might become very well watched indeed with this sort of structure. It sounds like a great idea to me. i kan reed 00:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Make the page with a list of links to the pages that need watching, then to use it as a watchlist, people can come to the page and click Related changes.

(Talk)

00:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I would like to propose the idea of a new top tab - A Q&A tab. This page would allow people to ask common questions about the subject that could be answered by people that know the subject. This is a place where common misconceptions about a subject could be brought up that would be appropriate for the content page. By creating a seperate section it allows the talk page to focus on issues regarding the presentation of the main content. The Q/A page would rather be a compliment to the main content page, dealing with things like Urban Myths, misconceptions, etc. -- Themepark

What about expanding Wikipedia:Reference desk Wikipedia:Help desk to accomodate this? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 16:30, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I think Themepark means that this tab would be present at every article, like how every article has a discussion page. I think a problem of this idea is that questions might often go unanswered for long. The reference desk works well for questions people have, and it seems to work well because question-answerers are concentrated there. S Sepp 18:33, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's the page where I got the idea of seperating the Q/A from the content and discussion pages: [Talk - Particle Accelerators] - see Q/A. Sure some questions go unanswered for a long time, but that's no different then an article taking time to be expanded - we see those all the time. This isn't about getting quick answers, but more about helping explain common questions about a subject. Clearly some of that can make it's way into the main article. -- Themepark

This could be accomplished by transclusion of a topical subpage located within the Reference Desk domain as a subpage. The subpage might be something like Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science/Particle accelerator or Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science/Physics/Particle accelerator. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

• At first blush, this seems like a really good addition. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 16:31, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this is a very useful and needed project, but it should definitely be on Commons. It would be best to have people from all the Wikimedia sites working on the same pool of improvement requests, and since most images are language independent, it's possible. Commons as a multilingual image repository is made for this. --

Para

18:39, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

It is first need to make request. From now, when you see an improvable image : keep the name and submit it to the

Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Images to improve Yug (talk)

23:39, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

• See also
  Wikipedia:Stable versions and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. (Radiant
  ) 16:47, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

In some articles, particularly science articles, the material is so dense that it is a bit difficult for nonspecialists to approach the article. One article where this debate has resurfaced a few times is evolution. The article's introduction is becoming inaccessible. Of course, one could simplify it, but a lot of editors are afraid of losing the technical precision if they do that. It has been suggested to link to Simple Wikipedia might be useful as a primer or starting place. Some have suggested an evolution (basic) page, possibly with a link, or a blue box with basic information in it. However, it is not clear what style a link to a simpler version should be. It would be nice to have a uniform link to basic articles as part of an MOS. For example, at the top of the article, a note, possibly in another color just below the disambiguation links to a basic version of the article or a tutorial version of the article. Comments?--Filll 20:41, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Not sure what the best solution here would be, but creating

Wikipedia:Content forking. Koweja

21:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the MOS page you want is

Wikipedia:Lead section. -- nae'blis

23:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Right now it's at Introduction to evolution. I think the introduction should be clear and simple and not too scientific, and explain in more jargon-detail later on in the article. Either way one article I think is preferable. Fagstein 05:17, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Nobody's been posting on the talk page for it, and I'm wondering why. I mean, I don't think they're obsolete (or are they and I just don't know?), so is it just a subject that nobody wants to talk about? P.S.: I left a similar message on the boilerplate text talk page. Nineteenninetyfour 22:02, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

This is copied from my comment on the pump policy page:

I have an article on my watch list with an incorrect name and is now deleted. It appears a vandal had edited the article and then moved it to a nonsensical name -- therefore the article was probably speedily deleted without proper checking. I don't know know what the page was originally about, since the history is now gone, and my watchlist is too large to remember every article individually. This is a loophole in the system, and allows vandals to get legitimate articles deleted without editors of those articles noticing until it's too late (deleted articles don't appear on my watchlist changes, so I never noticed the deletion).

We need a way to keep track of what articles are being deleted on our watch lists, and edits that we have made on deleted articles. The discussion on the policy page also details how vandals' histories of creating articles are deleted from view, preventing accurate targeting of such users. There needs to be more accountability for speedy deletion.falsedef 13:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it would be nice to have deletions, etc. appear on the watchlist. This is an amazing loophole, one in which a vandal can actually get an article deleted by turning an unwitting admin into his accomplice. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 16:14, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

No loophole here. Admins are supposed to look at both the history and What links here before deleting. Looking at either would reveal this simple deceit. Rmhermen 21:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

They ideally should. Sometimes admins aren't careful enough. See Confused deputy problem for a more general description of this elevation-of-privilege phenomenon. Deco 21:39, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that popular culture questions are being split among

I further suggest Wikipedia:Reference desk/Law, just because law is a very distinct topic from the other humanities and is more specialized. I think law experts will be more likely to participate in the reference desk if they don't have to wade through the history and arts questions all the time. NeonMerlin 03:10, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

However, it would encourage people to ask questions about Law (not a bad thing), law experts to answer questions (not nessasarily a bad thing), and people to follow the advice (a bad thing). We're not supposed to give out legal advice, it's one of Wikipedia's main disclaimers. That's probably the reason we don't have a medicine/health desk, even though a lot of questions on the science desk are questions to do with health/medicine/people. --Yu-Tian Fang 13:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Most of the law questions that I've seen seem to be questions of curiosity or about things like legal history, not people asking for advice to help themselves (which is what they'd go to a lawyer for). Similarly, when they ask about medicine, it seems usually to be something to be curious about, not concerned about. Thus, I would say people are already using their doctors and lawyers when they should, and as long as we put extra disclaimers on the law desk, I think we'll be fine. (I'd also be in favour of a health desk, but let's not do too much at once.) Besides, there is plenty of health advice that people don't go to doctors on, like how to get in shape, how to lose weight and what over-the-counter pain-killer works best. NeonMerlin 13:41, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I would work a pop culture ref desk.--Chris Griswold (☎☓) 19:33, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the Law Desk is probably not a good idea, but the Pop Culture desk sounds like a good one to me. I could finally find out what this Naruto thing is without having to read all the articles. ;)Dina 14:39, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

This has been entered as Bugzilla:8108. Vote for it if you like it.

When you look at watchlists, recent changes, or contrib lists, there are indicators like "minor" "new" and "top". There should also be an indicator for "unviewed". If a particular diff has been viewed by someone besides the person who made that diff's change, the "unviewed" flag will be taken off.

Currently we tend to focus on edits by anons or redlink user names in our watchlists when checking for vandalism, but a lot get missed that way, and the vandalisms (or erroneous additions) stick around unnoticed for days. This way we can change our focus to diffs that haven't been viewed by anyone else yet, making every diff much more likely to be viewed by at least one real, well-intentioned person.

We could expand the idea a little to make it more robust, so that the "unviewed" flag only gets turned off once viewed by two or three different "editors in good standing" (same people who can move articles or edit semi-protected articles), for instance, to prevent hiding of vandalism, though I think even the basic "viewed by one other person" flag would be a tremendous addition.

The flag should also be shown in article histories. Anything that shows a list of diffs.

This is like the perennial proposal for a "this page is watched by x editors", but without the problems (that I can see). It would help in vetting of all edits, too, not just vandalism.

What do you think? — Omegatron 22:09, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

• We tried it. It didn't work. amount of stuff not being viewed or people beinf confused and the like.Geni 23:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

• When? Why didn't it work? I've never heard of it being done before. — Omegatron 00:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Late June 2005 I think.Geni 00:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I was here in late June 2005, and I don't remember anything like this happening. Can you provide any documentation that it did? — Omegatron 01:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I think what you're looking for is meta:Help:Patrolled edit, the feature was added in MediaWiki 1.4 and discussion on that talk page dates to April 2005. -- nae'blis 19:13, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

That's not the same thing. That extension requires users to specifically say "I have approved this edit". My proposal is for an extension that says "no one has viewed this diff at all yet". It would prevent edits like this from surviving for three hours before being reverted.

You can't say my proposal won't work just because the patroller extension didn't work. They're different things. — Omegatron 20:52, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Isn't this a bit too easy to circumvent? The very person vandalizing would have just to click for the diff while using another account :-( —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 00:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

So? Any anti-vandalism measure can be circumvented by a determined vandal, but very few of them are determined. They can currently "hide" their vandalism by making a good edit afterwards, for instance. This is even detailed online. But how often does this happen? Rarely. This would be beneficial for every type of edit, too, not just vandalism. — Omegatron 00:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

It's true most vandals don't have a good deal of knowledge of the wikipedia system of checks. The majority of them are not going to take drastic measures to circumvent reverts. I personally like the idea, but I find myself agreeing to most proposals here. Would love to hear some comments from some more experienced editors on this one. RichMac (Talk) 03:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, as long as it helps I'm all for it, of course (just to clarify; I was under the impression that Omega got me wrong :-)). —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 23:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Another idea: "good user" flag

I know this idea in the crude form I'm going to present here will probably be put through the bit shredder, but what about putting the bits on the users. After 100 trouble-free edits, the bit is set on the user. It can be cleared by administrators for vandalism, blocks, bans, etc. Having the bit set would indicate a user without a history (or recent history as people do reform) of vandalism, spamming, edit warring or inappropiate posts that require review. This would allow the RC patrol to be much more focused on problem users. Again, address the idea, not my clumsy description of the mechanism. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Assume good faith implies the opposite. All users are good users until proven otherwise. "Setting the bit", in this case, would be the same thing as banning a particularly troublesome user. — Omegatron

00:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Well I think you mistake the purpose of the bit. The purpose of not having it set is not to identify a bad user, but simply not a known good user. There is no assumption of bad faith in not having the bit set, having it set simply is used to indicate which user's contributions have a track record of not requiring any review or reverting. —Doug Bell ^talk 00:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

We already kind of have that. Only editors that have had accounts for a certain number of days can edit semi-protected articles, for instance. See

Wikipedia:Semi-protection. — Omegatron

00:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Again I think you miss the point (probably my fault for not explaining it better). The purpose of the bit would not be to give users any more or less freedom than they have now. It would simply be to increase the efficiency of RC patrol. Much the same as your proposal above. —Doug Bell ^talk 00:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a fundamentally good idea, however I can't see it being implemented in wikipedia itself. Perhaps some of the anti-vandal tools could implement a similar concept.RichMac (Talk) 03:21, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

• The MediaWiki software actually has this feature and the one above (page patrol and autoconfirmed). There is probably a good reason that they're disabled on enwiki; I believe this has to do with our sheer size, making the patrol and autoconfirm impractical. However, some Java-based vandalfighting tools have whitelists and such. (Radiant) 10:08, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Would this proposal be effective if someone views the diffs using popups? I use popups to check Recent Changes, but I don't actually view the diff page.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 17:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The MediaWiki software actually has this feature and the one above (page patrol and autoconfirmed).

The Patroller extension (which I now see was written by Rob Church. No wonder he doesn't like my proposal...) is fundamentally different, in that it requires action on the behalf of the editor to say "I have endorsed this edit". Mine is meant more to say "This edit hasn't been viewed or endorsed by anyone. Put it at the top of your list." The Patroller extension was apparently turned on for a while, but later turned off. This might be what Geni is talking about.

Anon 70.230.73.20 said it well: "Any validation approach which needs extra work by the users won't bring a significant improvement compared to simply trusting people to improve bad articles through editing."

On a wiki, in the vast majority of cases, there's no difference between "viewing" and "reviewing" and edit.

People "review" diffs by viewing them, and then deciding whether to leave them as they are (good review) or counteract them (bad review). Anything that requires additional active effort to say the same thing won't be used enough to make a difference.

Would this proposal be effective if someone views the diffs using popups?

Any viewing of the diff page, through pop-ups or otherwise, should mark the diff as "viewed". — Omegatron 18:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Or this one that lasted two days. — Omegatron 16:41, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I would like to see our cleaning department revived. I think that the backlog on some of the maintenance categories is enough for this to be useful again.

• While that is an excellent idea, how would you propose to revive them? (Radiant) 12:32, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Being a statistics freak I think a list like that would be pretty interesting. Downsides? --Winterus 16:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Downside is people making a lot of crap edits just to get the count up.Koweja 16:34, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Hardly. It's not like the list would be on the front page, it's basically just a minor modification of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Mostrevisions --Winterus 17:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

• You can probably hazard a guess by going from Special:Recentchanges. (Radiant) 12:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

As there are "a large number" of articles that have some sort of tag on them (of whatever kind) a "Random article needing updating" link on the navigation bar. This might get some more articles tidied up/developed (and leave the Random article to cover all articles, "presently considered reasonable" and otherwise. Jackiespeel 22:59, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• The easiest way is to (1) click
  bugzilla. (Radiant
  ) 12:35, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Checked the article

talk

22:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

See also:

Big Mac index. -- BrianSmithson

01:35, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

And also,

WP:TRIV. (Radiant

) 12:35, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Please see the discusion that is ongoing at Main page talk Main page talk.

The gist of it is, in the light of recent article count milestones, comments by Jimbo to focus on quality over quantity, discussion on Wikipedia Weekly, etc., that we should place a count of how many FAs we have on the main page to compliment (rather than replace) the existing total article counter. The current suggestions are to either place it alongside the total-article counter or to place it inside the FA box - replacing "all FAs" with "all xxxx FAs".

Please make your views heard.

Not a bad idea. Perhaps also

good article count could be listed too? This could inspire people to raise these counts. I also thought that the "Randomizer" should also include the option to provide a Random "featured" or Random "good" article as well. It would be nice if I could get a Random article to read that others thought was "high quality" and not just random cruft. There could be 2-3 options like "Random Article"; "Random Good Article"; and "Random Featured Article". --Jayron32

02:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I kinda think no, because a) you need to then explain what "featured" and "good" articles are—it's not like a generally understood term; b) when compared to the total number of articles here it kinda points out a negative more than strength. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

In response to your points Doug, 1) It's a wiki! People can simply click on the link to find out what FA means, and besides, the most prominent thing on the main page is the "todays featured article", so there is already significant FA presence. 2) Isn't that an argument to promote the FA project rather than to hide it away?

lama

11:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Point of pedantry. Witty, you say: "It's a wiki! People can simply click on the link..." - this misses the point. The defining aspect of a wiki is not that you can click on a link (you can do that on any old webpage), but that anyone can edit the site. I agree that people can simply click on the link, but please understand what you are saying when you exclaim "It's a wiki!". Carcharoth 12:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the featured article count is fine where it is, and where it belongs, which is on the featured article page. The definition of a featured article: "The featured articles are what Wikipedia editors believe are the best articles in Wikipedia." is rather subjective—it imparts little useful information for judging what it mean that there are 1185 of them. There isn't any independent notable organization confering featured article status. I'm sure other may differ, but putting the feature article count on the main page is something meaningful only to people that spend a lot of time here. I don't see where it has any relevance or meaning to the greater population of people that visit Wikipedia to find stuff out, and I think putting the count on the main page just adds confusion. I'm sure others will differ with this opinion, but I just don't see the point in it. It doesn't meet

WP:V. —Doug Bell ^talk

12:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Possibly FA count, but preferably not. This has been discussed before when it was debated whether to keep the article count on the front page at all!! My preference at the time was to not have an article count, as that is the best way to de-emphasise quantity, as opposed to quality. And most definitely not a Good Article count - last time I checked, these were still of rather lower standard than Featured Articles, though GAs do seem to be improving. Carcharoth 12:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah, here we go. It all got archived in one place for clarity and ease of referring back to it. Please see Talk:Main Page/Archive 79. Prepare for a long read... That should tell you that changing the article count could stir up a hornet's nest. :-) Carcharoth 12:36, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Ignore that. I went to the discussion at Talk:Main Page and people there, including the OP of this thread, were already aware of Archive 79, and the proposed "FA-count inside the FA-box" is a brilliant idea. Carcharoth 12:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)