Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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Village pump proposals   post
The proposals section of the village pump is used to discuss new ideas and proposals that are not policy-related (see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for that).

Recurring policy proposals are listed at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals. If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that Wikipedia doesn't have it, please check there first before posting it, as someone else might have found it obvious, too.

Before posting your proposal:

  • Read this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
  • If the proposal is a change to the software, file a bug at Bugzilla instead. Your proposal is unlikely to be noticed by a developer unless it is placed there.
  • If the proposal is a change in policy, be sure to also post the proposal to, say, Wikipedia:Manual of style, and ask people to discuss it there.
  • If the proposal is for a new wiki-style project outside of Wikipedia, please go to m:Proposals for new projects and follow the guidelines there. Please do not post it here. These are different from WikiProjects.
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Contents

[edit] Introductory Sentence Proposal

I propose to standardize the introductory sentences in all articles across wikipedia into the following format:

[Indefinite/definite article] + [Article title] + [relevant conjugation of the verb ''to be''] + [definition/overview etc.]

(NB: The article may be omitted if it is inappropriate/unnecessary.)

This is an example of a legitimate opening sentence according to my proposal (from the article Apple):

The apple is "the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family Rosaceae."

Here there is the definite article, followed by the article name, followed by the third person singular conjugation of to be (is), which is then followed by the definition. Another example is given below (from the article Guerrilla warfare):

Guerrilla warfare is "the unconventional warfare and combat with which a small group of combatants use mobile tactics (ambushes, raids, etc.) to combat a larger and less mobile formal army."

Here, the article is omitted, but the article name is there, followed by the third person singular conjugation of to be, followed by the definition (which I have put in quotation marks for emphasis). An example of a sentence which does not conform to my proposal is given below (from the article LaRouche criminal trials):

The criminal trials of the LaRouche movement in the mid-1980s stemmed from federal and state investigations into the activities of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche and members of his movement.

Here, it is not immediately clear what "LaRouche criminal trials" are. The use of "stemmed from" gives no immediate indication of the subject, and to me, assumes previous knowledge of the reader. A better format, in line with my proposal, would be:

The LaRouche criminal trials were "a series of trials occuring in the mid-1980s, which stemmed from federal and state investigations into the activities of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche, and members of his movement."

Here, there is the definite article, the article name (stated word for word for no confusion), and then the third person plural past preterite of to be (which is were). Following this, there is the definition (once again in quotation marks for emphasis).

I think that there are too many cases of topics being started vaguely and ambiguously, when what is needed is the formula for the introductory sentence which I have proposed. This is more than just the Use-mention distinction, it's about starting the topic by defining the word-for-word article name. That is what the introductory sentence should be. It should not be jumping into a discussion about X, without first saying "X is ____." Thanks for any feedback and comments on this proposal, and fingers crossed that it passes. --Paaerduag (talk) 06:58, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, many topics are indeed started vaguely and ambiguously. How is formula the best prophylactic or antidote? Incidentally, is a good article about a particular person one that defines that person? Tama1988 (talk) 08:59, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I think that in the case of people, the introductory sentence should outline that which makes the person notable, as 'defining' a person is impossible. But in terms of people, I'd say that pretty much every single article on an individual person already follows the 'formula' (for lack of a better word) that I've given in bold, above. For example, the Michael Jackson article begins thus:
Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958) is an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman.
This sentence follows the 'formula' I gave above. It states the article name (with more detail by adding the middle name, which is fine, although in cases not involving people, I'd say word-for-word transcription of the article name is best), and follows with the correct conjugation of to be, and then an outline of what makes the person notable. My main aim with this proposal isn't about 'defining' as such, so much as it is about a clear and concise introductory sentence using the formula I've given above, which most article employ anyway. It's just a clear "X is ____." I just think that ALL articles should follow this pattern, to maintain consistency across the project. --Paaerduag (talk) 09:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, you could rewrite the start of Ebonics to for example "Ebonics is a term that was..." but I don't see how that would be an improvement. I fully agree with consistency in, say, the use of terms -- anomie may have this meaning or that one, but its meaning shouldn't slither from the one to the other in the course of your paper -- but I don't see how a requirement for consistency helps here. (Actually it seems a bit fetishistic to me.) Must the readers of Wikipedia be so diligently protected against variation? Tama1988 (talk) 09:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, in terms of the Anomie article, it already follows the formula I've made:
Anomie, in contemporary English language, is "a sociological term that signifies in individuals an erosion, diminution or absence of personal norms, standards or values, and increased states of psychological normlessness."
There, the article name is stated, sure there's "in contemporary English language" added, but I'm not against such additions, because overall this already follows, perfectly, my proposal. After the name and the informative addition, the correct conjugation of to be is present, and once again I have put the definition in quotation marks for emphasis. Therefore, the anomie article perfectly conforms to my proposal. We know what 'anomie' is - it is a sociological term. And, never having heard the word before, I immediately knew what it was, after reading the first sentence. Whoever wrote that sentence did a fantastic job :) --Paaerduag (talk) 23:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Sounds like instruction creep to me. And there are some few cases where forms of "to be" are expressly avoided so we do not have to have edit wars over whether something "is" or "was". Anomie⚔ 12:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Let's take the instruction creep page as an example. This is the first sentence:
Instruction creep occurs when instructions increase in size over time until they are unmanageable.
Ok, so I know when 'instruction creep' occurs, but do I know what the hell it is? Nope. For that, I have to read on, which defeats the purpose of the introductory sentence, which should succinctly summarize what the article is about, which is usually done by succinctly summarizing what the subject of the article IS - what IS it?. Of course, I know the 'instruction creep' page isn't a proper article, I merely used it to demonstrate the point I'm trying to get at. Also, I'd appreciate if you can give me an example of an article with an "is"/"was" debate - I want to be able to understand this issue firsthand. Thanks. --Paaerduag (talk) 23:43, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I also want to add that, after reading the instruction creep page, I believe my proposal does follow the KISS prinicpal - It is almost intuitive to start the article in this way. I just wrote a fancy 'formula', but it is really the way almost every single article on wikipedia is started, it is simple, and it makes sense. I think that this simplistic introductory sentence structure should be used on every article, so that right off the bat, people know what the hell the article's subject IS. Not when it occurs, not what it stems from, but what it IS. --Paaerduag (talk) 23:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Ok, so I know when 'instruction creep' occurs, but do I know what the hell it is? Nope.
What? The line you quoted explicitly defines instruction creep. I'm not sure what problem you're seeing here. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 22:52, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
really? Ok, I'll explain by posting the sentence again:
Instruction creep occurs when instructions increase in size over time until they are unmanageable.
Simple question - What is instruction creep? Using ONLY that sentence as the basis for the answer, here goes: Instruction creep is... occurs "when instructions increase in size over time until they are unmanageable". See, I haven't answered the question of what instruction creep IS. I've only answered when it occurs - it occurs "when instructions increase in size over time until they are unmanageable". Sure, I know when it occurs now, but do I know what it is? No, that is answered in the second sentence of the instruction creep article:
It is an insidious disease, originating from ignorance of the KISS principle and resulting in overly complex procedures that are often misunderstood, followed with great irritation, or ignored.
Now I'll ask myself the same question again: what is instruction creep? Answer: Instruction creep is an insidious disease. There, now I know what it is: an insidious disease. How was I supposed to know what it was from the first sentence? Here's a better introductory sentence to the instruction creep article, conforming to my proposal:
Instruction creep is an insidious disease, which occurs when instructions increase in size over time until they are unmanageable.
Do you see where I'm coming from now?--Paaerduag (talk) 01:56, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Not really. Instruction creep is defined by when it occurs, much like saying a millenium is when 1000 years have passed. And, just to be pedantic, adding "insidious" to your example would be a weasel word. ;) — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 03:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the only reason I added "insidious" was because I was being faithful to the actual page, which used the word. Furthermore, as I have stated before, the instruction creep page isn't a proper article page (hence the use of 'insidious' for humorous effect), i merely used it to demonstrate a point. also, your argument that instruction creep is defined by when it occurs is confusing - so what, is instruction creep a unit of time now? Why don't we start the World War II article with: "World War II was 1939-1945."? as you can see, world war II most certainly wasn't 1939-1945, it OCCURED during this time, but you cannot define it as BEING this time. I don't understand where you're coming from.--Paaerduag (talk) 00:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Seems pointless from where I'm standing. WP:LEAD already explains you should properly define the article subject in the lead. Giving specific instructions won't make it easier, especially when most people haven't got a clue what a "definite article" and a "conjugated verb" are. - Mgm|(talk) 11:45, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
are you joking? that's Grade 3 knowledge. and as I have stated previously, that is just a 'fancy' representation of this basic formula: X is ______. Y was ______. I don't see what is so over the top, or 'difficult' about "X is _____". and honestly, people on wikipedia are generally quite intelligent, so I think that "X is _____", "Y are ______", "Z were ______" is an understandable structure to most. This is the 'structure' that I'd say 95% of articles start with, so the other 5% have vague, ambiguous openings, which are best avoided on wikipedia. --Paaerduag (talk) 23:26, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
You'd be surprised. While people may know how a sentence is supposed to be built intuitively the specific grammatical terms tend to be forgotten to older one gets. I'm just afraid it tends towards Wikipedia:Instruction creep. Articles with bad openings tend to be bad on a more global level. Wouldn't it be better than instead of turning good writing in a policy or a guideline, to make a project to directly address the issues in relevant articles. - Mgm|(talk) 10:36, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
At first glance your proposal looks good, I would suggest improving about a hundred ledes along this line, akin to what you did for the LaRouche trials lede above, then sit back and wait for responses. Modify, rinse and repeat. If it catches on, then it will become widespread practice and eventually new WP policy.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 16:30, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a terrible proposal. Rôte formulaic boilerplate is no substitute for writing that is the result of intelligent thought, and the latter most certainly should not be changed to the former. One size most definitely does not fit all in this particular instance. Uncle G (talk) 00:58, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

  • "Writing that is the result of intelligent thought"... perhaps too intelligent, if the introductory sentence doesn't even tell an uninformed reader what the hell the article is about? It's fine for academics to edit wikipedia (great even), but when they start assuming knowledge, and starting article with "X does ___" or "In Physics, X shows ___", people won't know what the hell is happening. I.E. what IS X? I think here you're arguing that vague, ambiguous introductory sentences which demand prior knowledge of the subject are better than clear, concise introductory sentences which inform the previously uninformed reader. I think yours is the terrible proposal.--Paaerduag (talk) 00:39, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
    • That response is nothing but a giant straw man. No-one said anything about academics, for example. What I'm arguing in favour of is writing that is the result of intelligent thought, not straw men of your invention. And what I'm arguing against is your proposal of a one-size-fits all approach that uses rôte formulaic boilerplate, with no thought applied as how best to explain the topic at hand.

      Here's an example of actually putting intelligent thought into things: Qualifiers such as "In X," are necessary for some articles where the same name means different things in different fields, or where the field of knowledge has to be given to ensure that the terminology used in the rest of the introduction has enough context for it to make sense.

      Putting no thought into things, and just using boilerplate formulae for writing, to achieve the not even evidently desirable goal of consistency, is a terrible idea. It's akin to the idea of putting one-size-fits all infoboxes on every article in a given class, again in the name of nothing but consistency. If you want to read several article writers' views on that idea, also applied by rôte by editors who aren't thinking about the specific articles, or even the infoboxes at times, and who are placing consistency ahead of intelligent writing, see User:Geogre/Talk archive 24#Who OWNS what?, User:Geogre/Talk archive 24#Infobox discussion at Philosophy Wikiproject, and the various places linked from them. Uncle G (talk) 02:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

  • I agree (obviously, I suppose) that specifying a particular formulation (a predicate nominative or predicate adjective) for the opening sentence isn't going to be any kind of aid. We all know what would happen next, don't we? A -bot would go through and change every article "per MoS" or some such (like the one designed to stop overlinking of dates and is now simply removing every link of every date, even if it's to 1696 in literature). The closer we get to -bot written articles, the worse we are as an encyclopedia. That said, I agree (obviously, too), that the proposal is grounded in a real need. We have endless editors who don't know what encyclopedic style is. The proper freedom we have is sometimes a mask for gushing by fans of bands and autobiographers. Therefore I suggest that this be a part of WP:LEDE as a suggestion and as a preference for basic articles. Leave it merely as a guide for the inexpert, but never let it rise to the level of standardizing human communication. Geogre (talk) 12:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I agree; formula shouldn't be imposed on writing style, but it can be a useful aid. It must be clear that this is just one acceptable style, so editors never presume that it is required. —Michael Z. 2009-01-06 14:37 z
The suggestion is not a formula for writing style; merely a device to ensure that things are actually defined (at a high level) in the 1st sentence. There is scope for freedom of style in the qualifying clause and the defining text that come before and after the main verb (to be). Unless we're able to list other examples of acceptable 1st sentence constructs, then this one should be at least a strong recommendation. 87.114.146.27 (talk) 20:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Community something about ArbCom

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump/ACFeedback

[edit] Move all noticeboards to consistent subpages

There has been an update to inputbox that makes searching subpages much more streamlined (see here). I'd like to propose that most (if not all) noticeboards be moved to subpages (or pages with similar prefixes) of a few pages. All of the village pumps and their archives begin with Wikipedia:Village pump, so there's no problem there, and several others are already subpages of WP:AN. I'd like to move the rest to either Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/ or Wikipedia:Noticeboard/. So, for example, Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard would be Wikipedia:Noticeboard/Biographies of living persons. The naming is just reversed, but it makes searching for previous problems worlds-simpler. The idea is that if you encounter an issue with an editor or article (or any noun), you can easily search multiple noticeboards and archives at once to see if there is a previous point of reference. This would be especially useful for the WP:RNBs, the names of which are all over the place. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, take a look at Template:Editabuselinks. And this would only really be helpful for the ones that contain discussions and/or archives. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:26, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

So either nobody cares or nobody has any clue what I'm talking about? Both? I don't need a response, I just wanted to make sure that the idea won't make the 'pedia explode. I'm still going to go the normal route as far as proposing renaming, as I have already proposed with the Community sanction noticeboard and its archives. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:42, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
  • It's not neccesarily a bad idea as long as there's a clear explanation on how such sources should be done and if it's first established that old redirects are kept in place and such moves won't cause significant issues. How many pages would be affected? - Mgm|(talk) 13:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep in mind I am planning on listing these individually for renaming (unless there is overwhelming support here, which at this point seems unlikely), this is just a proposal about the idea, but to start with -

I'd also like to set one up a noticeboard for WP:CSD (or maybe just deletion?), which was suggested on the talk page a month or two ago, as people often have complaints about speedies. I have already moved a few inactive boards to subpages of WP:AN - WP:CSN and WP:PAIN (WP:PAIN doesn't have archives, that was just for cleanup). The searchbar at the top of WP:AN will now search those pages as well. I'd like to set up WP:Noticeboards as a directory, with search bars for the Village pumps, AN, and whatever else. The RNBs are tougher, because many aren't actually noticeboards, but those can be worried about later.

Here is an example that I posted on Technical, like the one at WP:AN -

~ JohnnyMrNinja 14:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Lighthouse notability

We have hundreds of articles on lighthouses, but there is no notability guideline for them. The current policy seems to be that simply being a lighthouse makes it notable. There's obviously some hobbyist niche that absolutely adores lighthouses, but do we really believe that every lighthouse in the world in inherently notable enough for an article? Most of these lighthouse articles look good, but only consist of technical information and a section on its (local) history. Your grandfather's barn is not notable just because you know its history and dimensions. --Remurmur (talk) 19:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm inclined to think that a functioning manned lighthouse, one that was functioning as a manned lighthouse until the late 20th century, or a lighthouse that has been maintained or restored as a museum or tourist attraction rather than left to rot or be dismantled, very likely meets general notability requirements, even if it's only because there are likely to be significant-sized blurbs about them multiple in tourist-oriented books. If they were decommissioned or automated in the very late-20th century or 21st century, then there was very likely significant press coverage when they were decommissioned or automated. Others might meet notability requirements, either as lighthouses, as landmarks, or for one or more events that happened near there. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:52, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
There is a proposed guideline at Wikipedia:Notability (buildings, structures, and landmarks) that would cover lighthouses. I would also consider any lighthouse that is a registered historical place to be notable. The key here is that notability must be shown outside of the local area. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 23:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
If notability must be shown outside of the local area then the formal criterion of registered historic place will only apply to jurisdictions where designations are awarded on the national (federal) level. Anyway, national practices differ, one government or municipality will issue a hundred of landmark certificates where another would issue none. NVO (talk) 08:33, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
  • They don't need any special treatment (what current policy did you refer to? they just don't attract as much attention as Japanese cartoons). If it ain't broke... and if it is, either fix or AFD, one at a time. A special policy extension might be justified for high-traffic, high-exposure topics, but here it's not called for. The sad story of failed guidelines on buildings, transportation etc. has shown that they aren't needed (compare page traffic on the guideline cited above with, for example, WP:ATHLETE). NVO (talk) 08:24, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't think we need separate rules for lighthouses. We can apply current building guidelines and WP:V or WP:GNG to it. - Mgm|(talk) 13:28, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I haven't yet seen an AFD for a lighthouse, so the default notability status we have now doesn't seem to bother anyone sufficiently. Mangoe (talk) 22:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] new shortcut namespaces

Wouldn't it be nice to have more shortcut namespaces like WP: and WT:? Currently, the WP: namespace is amazing because it shortens how much you type by just that little bit. It's so much easier to type [[WP:OR]] than to type [[Wikipedia:OR]], just because it's 7 characters shorter. So I propose to make a U: shortcut for the current User: namespace, T: for Talk:, UT: for User talk:, TP: for Template:, TT: for Template talk:, I: / F: for Image: / File:, IT: / FT: for Image talk: / File talk:, etc. (I can't think of any more namespaces; add any more suggestions below) Note that this would also free up some space in signatures (← Look at that! I just used a WP: shortcut! That was so easy!) and pretty much everything else you can think of. flaminglawyerc 06:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Template talk: really is a keyboard-full, it's a good idea. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:55, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately TT:Foo doesn't go where you think it should... :( Happy‑melon 10:43, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
If you want some of these, please go vote for bug 16452http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16452, for P: and T: Happy‑melon 10:46, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
On the other hand, how often do any of those other namespaces need to be linked? For Template, {{tl}} is normally used instead, and "TT" is already taken for Template talk. Any shortcut for categories would really only be useful if it did not require the leading colon. The rest in my experience are so short or need links so infrequently that typing the extra characters is not particularly onerous. Anomie⚔ 15:26, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
I have been wanting this for awhile now, actually. It just makes getting to these pages just that little bit easier. It's annoying have shortcuts for project pages, but not related templates too. It would definitely help though. --.:Alex:. 16:19, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

At DYK we solved this by making the redirect come from T:TDYK instead of TT:DYK. But why a new namespace, the whole thing already works. - Mgm|(talk) 13:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Becuase one time in a million someone is going to click on Special:Random and 'fall out' of the mainspace through that redirect. Plus it (and the other hundred or so T: redirects) are screwing up the pages-in-mainspace stats, bulking out cross-namespace redirect reports like these, and are untidy relics for reusers of our content (people who copy the whole mainspace but only relevant parts of the other namespaces are now left with a hundred broken redirects in their supposedly clean content). Of course none of these issues are crippling, but nor are they inconsequential. It's cleaner, more convenient and generally the Right Thing To Do to separate these out of the mainspace. Happy‑melon 16:02, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
I have another suggestion: use Cat: for Catagory:, as it is shortened for many catagories. MathCool10 Sign here! 05:03, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
the problem with this is that if the devs defined "CAT:" as a synonym for "Category:", then adding [[CAT:WPB]] would cause the page to be categorised into Category:WPB, not just adding a link there. There is currently no way to create an alias to the inline link version, which is what is really required. Happy‑melon 10:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
How about "CG:" for Category (or even just "C:"), and "CT:" for Category talk? Also, what about the MediaWiki and Help namespaces? --.:Alex:. 15:55, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
:Cat: could be used, just like :Catagory: is used. MathCool10 Sign here! 03:29, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia should become a paid web host

Wikipedia should become a paid web host. This means wikipedia won't have to ask for donations anymore. The wikipedia.org site should not promote your own webhost to keep things neutral and you should have a seperate domain name that doesn't sound like wikipedia and doesn't have the word wiki in it.

You should offer dedicated servers and dedicated servers in a cluster using private racks(one or more servers connected together running as one) and shared servers.

The difference between your web host could be that every server has unlimited monthly bandwidth, because wikipedia knows how expensive bandwidth is, so you could maybe build your own underground/underwater cables so you can offer unlimited bandwidth. Danielspencer2 (talk) 01:27, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Wha...? I'm not understanding what you're saying. Are you saying that Wikipedia should start a web hosting company as a side-business to make money? If so, then Wikipedia wouldn't be a non-profit, which would probably repel visitors. And think about it - if Wikipedia started a hosting company, it wouldn't be any different than any of the others out there. It wouldn't make very much money (not as much as they get from donations, anyway). flaminglawyerc 03:14, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you are aware about the profits hosting companies make. a simple google search shows they make millions each year. Danielspencer2 (talk) 23:57, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Just because something makes money doesn't mean that the Wikimedia Foundation should do it. By that logic, they should also open up McDonald's franchises.
Personally, I'd rather they implement op-in ads so that those of us that don't mind seeing them can help bring in more cash. EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:01, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
  • If Wikipedia makes money to hosting or advertising, they probably wouldn't have to ask for donations anymore, but the idea that they should do it implies that asking for donations is a problem which is a false premise.- Mgm|(talk) 13:20, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Adding lyrics to song articles

I think that lyrics should be added to songs to help people understand references to lyrics and so that they can understand what the song is about (though the lyrics). I have wondered why this has not already happened, it would be very helpful to many people. (Edit: Which part of that WP:NONFREE does it fall under? And what about if it is an interpretation of the lyrics and is not copied from any website? --Somebody You Do Not Know (talk) 04:57, 6 January 2009 (UTC)) (Edit: Well then at least adding under external links a link to a copy of the lyrics?) --Somebody You Do Not Know (talk) 19:38, 6 January 2009 (UTC) --Somebody You Do Not Know (talk) 04:08, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it has to do with copyright issues — chandler — 04:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, see WP:NONFREE. A lot of public domain songs DO have lyrics, and a lot of songs have part of the lyrics is they are commented on. But asking this is like asking for a recording of it...which obviously isn't going to happen in most cases. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:46, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
For the section of NONFREE that is applicable, see "Unacceptable uses" for text - lyrics are copyrighted so full or significant duplication of them are not allowed. You can use interpretation of lyrics from reliable sources as long as you source them, but you cannot write your own interpretation per original research --MASEM 05:19, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
In respect to your later question, you can link them if the site that you are linking is legally licensed to display the lyrics. Sometimes official band websites host lyrics. Sometimes sites like MTV host lyrics. You can't link to the sites that host them illegally per WP:LINKVIO. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
In some cases I have added a brief description (say one or two sentences) of the lyrics to a song article; as long as your description is manifestly obvious it's not likely to violate Wikipedia:No original research. Any real analysis has to be cited to a reliable source. Dcoetzee 20:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
We can certainly quote short sections of the lyrics a non-free song as long as there is related content, but we cannot present them in their entirety. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 14:38, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
More extensive guidelines are to be found at WP:LYRICS. ww2censor (talk) 05:13, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Add user links for IP editors

I've noticed on a couple other Wikipedias, IP editors have links at the top right corner of the page, similar to those that logged in users have (see nl:Main Page). These include links to the IP's userpage, talk page, contributions, and the standard login link. I'd like to see this adopted here. 68.220.210.50 (talk) 04:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. Rgoodermote  16:41, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
IIRC, the pages shown to IP editors are uniform so that they may be cached by the Squids. Flatscan (talk) 05:32, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Phantom links

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there's a way to do this currently... I'd like for there to be a way to specify a link so that the page that includes the link doesn't show up on the "What links here" page for the page that is linked to. This would be useful for the production of content (e.g. project-level alerts) that could show up in multiple places (e.g., project banners) that contain links to articles, users and other pages. I request this to avoid potential "What links here" clutter.

A couple ideas off the top of my head for how this might work:

  1. Allow a symbol specified at the beginning of a link to turn it into a phantom link, like so: [[&Abraham Lincoln]].
  2. Create an enclosing tag that would render all links within to be phantom, like so: <phantom>[[Abraham Lincoln]] was a U.S. [[President of the United States|President]]</phantom>.

I'm open to other approaches on this, but I think we could eventually have too much "What links here" clutter in some articles at some point if we don't do something. Also I think this would be a useful approach for user pages, sandboxes and the like. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 15:36, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a googlebomb waiting to happen, if vandals can come up with an unobtrusive way to get a load of articles to link using <phantom>[[George W Bush|Penis]]</phantom>, that would prompt the result http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W_Bush to shoot up the rankings of google searches for "penis". It wouldn't be obvious why this was the case, and hiding links from whatlinkshere only clouds the issue further. More generally, comprehensive backlink tables like WhatLinksHere are absolutely integral to the way a wiki works as a cohesive whole: when an article is deleted all backlinks will become redlinks, so they need to be hunted down and delinked or retargetted; this can only be done if there is a complete list available. We could perhaps implement a method to segregate 'maintenance' links from 'real' links, but what distinguishes one from the other? One man's clutter is another's treasure. Happy‑melon 15:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Happy-melon, your critique is sound. Perhaps we could have a way whereby links within particular constructs (e.g., project templates or alerts) don't show up in "What links here", and implementing this would require some kind of protection device that only an admin can set up. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Another thought that just occurred to me is that we could have these phantom/maintenance links not show up in the default "What links here", but add a feature to WLH that says "Show phantom links". Therefore, they're not truly hidden, and googlebombs and the like can be defused. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:56, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Tool to find when (and by whom) specific text was added to an article

I had asked this question at WP:Helpdesk on April 15, 2008:

Is there an easier way to find when a particular phrase was added to an article? I currently look through the history and the only way I know of is to continue clicking "older edit" until I find what I am looking for. Searching the FAQ Archives, I came across the freeware called WhodunitQuery, but I was hoping Wikipedia had its own tool to do this already built in. Any ideas? Thomprod (talk) 22:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
There is nothning built in. I sometimes do a manual (approximate) binary search. For example, if there are 100 edits in the history then first click on number 50 and see if the text is there. If it's there then try the older edit 25 next time, otherwise try the newer edit 75 to narrow it down. And so on, approximately halving the interval of edits each time. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, PrimeHunter. That will speed the process up. Is there somewhere on Wikipedia to suggest future improvements? Thomprod (talk) 12:14, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikiblame is a tool made for just this purpose, though the method Primehunter describes really works quite well and doesn't take very long if the article history is not huge. You can suggest improvements at the village pump proposals.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, Wikiblame is not currently working. DuncanHill (talk) 23:31, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

And so here I am. Such a tool could be a time-saver in trying to determine when (and by whom) specific text was added. Could this be added as a future feature? --Thomprod (talk) 23:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I use PrimeHunter's primeval method and understand nothing about tools, but I've noticed User:Franamax/wpW5 and thought to myself how useful it sounded, if only I wasn't such a technophobe. I'm certain Franamax would be willing to help you. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
You could use Luca de Alfaro's trustwiki - it shows the origin and approximate 'trust' of the segments of articles added by different people. Avruch T 17:06, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematics Article comprehension fix

I've noticed that many articles on mathematics seem to be poorly written, and as a result, the only people who understand the article are the people who already understood the concept.

I propose that there be a project to overhaul sections about mathematical topics so that anyone could understand them, no matter their prior knowledge.

  • This notion comes up here every so often, and I have yet to find a single example (save perhaps a few one-sentence stubs). Can you please provide an example of a page on mathematics which can only be understood by people who already understand the concept? Algebraist 01:18, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Yes- this is at least the third time I have seen this. If any article is incomprehesible or full of jargon, then it should be tagged and discussed on the article page. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 14:35, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
  • If one has suggestions for more comprehensible style, the denizens of the Mathematics WikiProject are the best people to talk to, moreover. But the preceding points about specific examples remain nonetheless. Uncle G (talk) 19:02, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Cat: and Catagory: headings

Is it possible to incorporate Cat: and Catagory: headings so when you type Cat:, Catagory: shows up? This would be very useful as many extra pages would be unneccessary. If so, then can someone do this? Thanks! MathCool10 Sign here! 03:52, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I suggest you consolidate this with #new shortcut namespaces above. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 14:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Comprhensive list of symbols

I have long thought that we all need a comprehensive list of symbols and their explanations. This is a feature that is missing from nearly all dictionaries, which generally exclude anything that does not begin with an alphabetical character. As a result, many people have no idea what most symbols are called, even though they may have a rich vocabulary and know the meanings of the most abstruse and uncommon words. It seems odd to me that someone can know the meaning of words such as oreochiette, strangury, apophatic, scrim, proleptically, and nosology but have no idea what “&” is called, through there being no readily available reference which explains that this squiggle is called an ampersand and is short for “and”.

I have a theory that a big part of the reason that many people are frightened of math and can’t begin to understand it is simply because they cannot “read” the equations, which are full of what appears to them to be squiggles and weird Masonic-type signs. When people can READ signs they can talk about them (even if just to themselves) and they start to get an intellectual grip on what is involved. If you don’t know HOW the Greek symbols and other math signs are pronounced, then you can’t begin to understand the subject; it becomes completely opaque. For example, most readers would have seen those accents which frequently appear above the letter e in French. But many don’t know what they are called (acute and grave), and fewer know what it is they do. This is directly because one never sees them when flipping through a dictionary.

I would urge that WP gather and organize a comprehensive and easily accessed list of all such signs, arranged by language and function (e.g. logical, chemical, mathematical and so on). How would you know in what order these signs should be listed? Well, how do the Chinese organize THEIR dictionaries and phone books. You use the simplest elements first and then the more complex. And of course their should be a REVERSE alphabetical listing, so that you can access the signs by their proper names. An article like this would could become a valuable resource. This is one of my many hobby horses, so discussion is warmly invitedMyles325a (talk) 07:29, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

  • There are many symbol pages on Wikipedia. Agreed, if one doesn't know what a symbol means, then it's kind of hard to search. I think this discussion should be moved to List of symbols. Leon math (talk) 19:56, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is not a dictionary. If you have suggestions for making a better dictionary than existing dictionaries, the project that is aiming to make a dictionary is the place to make them. You'll find that that project already has d:&, telling the reader what it is called. Indeed it has an entire category of d:Category:Translingual symbols, including d:«. It also has several other categories, including categories for mathematical symbols such as d:∈, d:ℤ, d:Σ, d:∀, and many more. Your better dictionary already exists. So use it! Uncle G (talk) 19:15, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Right Click Option - OPEN IN WIKIPEDIA

It would be good if when I was reading a website or document even if when I came across a word or phrase I didn't full understand I could just put my curser on it then Right Click on it and they'd be an OPEN IN WIKIPEDIA option.

<email removed to prevent spam>

And what do you propose we do about this? This page is for proposals to change Wikipedia, not to change your web browser. Algebraist 15:43, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
You have to admit, however, that it's a damn good idea ;-) Tan | 39 15:50, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like something that could be made into a FireFox addon. But that's something to suggest over there. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 16:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Already done - if the search box is set to search wikipedia then the context menu offers that option. Pseudomonas(talk) 12:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Ah yes, that's true. A minor extra step, but it's there. (I usually keep mine to Google so I forget it changes like that)♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 12:37, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
In Opera, there's a "Dictionary" option and a "Encyclopedia" option in the context menu, which can easily be configured (instructions here). -- Jao (talk) 14:02, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

There's a Greasemonkey script called "QuickiWiki" that does something like this. It's available at http://UserScripts.org. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

For any Mac users, I highly recommend iSeek. Very handy application, and with a quick key command, you can search any site you want; I've got mine pretty much permanently set to Wikipedia, and in five actions (select, copy, activate, paste, return) bring up any topic on Wikipedia. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:30, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Random article function

Portals could have their own "Random article" functions. So I get a random Arts article, a random Technology article, etc.

See [1].

Franciscrot (talk) 15:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Some portals already do, such as Portal:Middle Earth and this tool which doesn't seem to be linked from Portal:Mathematics for some reason. The difficulty is in creating and maintaining a list of articles falling under the auspices of a given portal. Algebraist 15:48, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Watched page scoring

While this proposal is related to the FAQ entry Wikipedia:PEREN#Create a counter of people watching a page, don't reject it out of hand. Hopefully implementation of this idea would be more useful for improving the quality of articles on Wikipedia.

I'm imagining a new special page that displays a rank-order list of articles that have been scored according to a ratio of editing frequency divided by the number of people watching a page. Articles having 1 or less editors could be excluded, as these are likely to be either unwatched pages or new articles under development by one author.

This would show a higher rank for high-activity pages that have few editors. A special page showing such a list would tell me what articles are likely to require attention. High-ranked articles would be watched by 2 or more editors and have sufficient activity to indicate the article is of interest and could use participation from others.

Ideally, such a special page would ultimately accomplish the flattening of the distribution of pages that have few watchers. Any thoughts? ~Amatulić (talk) 01:54, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

In addition to the vandalism argument listed on PEREN, I think enabling this would be a big performance hit, much the same as the hitcounter feature which is also disabled. Also, just because the software returns that a number of people have a page on their watchlist does not mean those editors are active, thus the data offers very little value. ~ TheIntersect 01:34, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
The vandalism argument is irrelevant for this proposal. The score indicates actively edited pages that have few watchers. The active editing is either a protection against vandalism — or an indication of vandalism. There is nothing here to encourage vandalism.
Some special pages are updated periodically, not continuously. If that was the case with this special page, the performance hit would be so minimal that it would not be noticed.
I disagree that the data offers little value. Even if the editors watching the page are inactive, such a ranked list would indicate pages that could use more watchers, without revealing the number of people watching them. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:32, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Flagged Protection

Flagged protection (WP:FLP) is currently being proposed, if you have time please comment on this proposal, and make changes to it as you see fit. The page also needs some copy-editing as well. Please fill in any missing part in this proposal if you can. Thank you. Y. Ichiro (talk) 03:57, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Save Function

I think that It would be great if Wikipedia added a save function to the user accounts where users would be able to create a list of their favorite articles. They fould be able to create and name folders much like an e-mail account, and then save links to the articles in the folders. This would allow you to come back to an interesting article you come accross when you have more time to read it, or allow you to keep track of articles you want to use as sources for a research project.

For Example I just came accross a really great article on the Dominicans that I would really like to read, but it is quite long and it is 1:30 AM and I don't have the time now. I will never remember to come back to it myself, but If Wikipedia allowed me to "flag" it in my account the next time I log in I could see it and remember that I want to read it.

Thanks for considering this suggestion.

One of the nice things about editing a wiki is that this kind of feature comes for free. If you want a list of articles to read, just make one on your user page. Algebraist 06:43, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
A javascript widget that does the bookmarking with one click would be easier. Not private, though. Del.icio.us might do this better, and not just for Wikipedia. Pseudomonas(talk) 12:14, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
This is a web site; you can just bookmark the article and do any organizing you want within your browser. Karanacs (talk) 22:14, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
You could just use your watchlist if you're not interested in editing--Jac16888 (talk) 22:20, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
You could either bookmark it, add it to your watchlist, or just leave it up in your browser. It's been more than once that I've emailed myself wiki links to check out (either to read or to do work on). EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:26, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Reading this post reminded me that I once hoped for this functionality as well. I whipped up a little user script to do just that. Take a look at User:Twinzor/Wikimark. — Twinzor Say hi! 04:22, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
If the computer you are working from is not your own, you can add the article to your watchlist (and I can't see why that isn't an ideal solution in all cases) or you can email it to yourself, or if you have are using a portable storage device like a memory stick, you can use (say) MSWord to keep links to all your favourite sites. Then you can use these in Internet cafes and so on. Myles325a (talk) 06:16, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Well, I can admit that my watchlist is quite large, and if I find interesting articles I'll want to read later I'd rather add them to a separate page, since browsing through my whole watchlist would be quite a chore. Oh well, I guess it's different for people who know how to keep their watchlists at a reasonable size. :) The script I posted above should make the whole thing a lot simpler though (if you don't mind having everybody be able to read your favourites list). — Twinzor Say hi! 06:53, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
I have 2,920 items on my watchlist; adding an article to my watchlist isn't especially helpful. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 07:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Time for a Content Committee?

Well, happy new year y'all, and since I'm here anyway, allow me to bounce an idea off a few heads.

The Ireland ArbCom case recently came to my attention. This strikes me as a dispute that is extremely important to 1% of our userbase, who are more-or-less evenly divided between the two sides, and mostly irrelevant to the remaining 99%. It also strikes me that we have a whole gallery of this kind of disputes, and that they tend to rage on for months and cause serious burnout in involved people.

We need a way for resolving these issues. Based on the recent ArbCom case, there is now an effort to try and decide it by headcount, but that strikes me as counterproductive, as it rehashes all arguments again, repeatedly, and will probably end up near a 50-50 split between two options.

So I'm thinking, perhaps it's time we make a Content Committee? Basically, a small panel of uninvolved users that makes lasting decisions in this kind of cases. It strikes me as a far better idea to decide that "yes, we will call the article Gdańsk for now", than to keep edit warring over it for a lengthy period of time. It goes without saying that such a committee could not go against WP:NPOV and WP:RS and so forth. But when there are two equally viable answers, it's good to be able to stick with one and stop arguing.

Thoughts please? Should I draw up a solid proposal page or is this too wishful thinking? >Radiant< 22:06, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

There have been several proposals in the past year about the same basic idea. So far as I remember, none of them received consensus, which was a bloody shame really. I agree that we would be much better served if there were some body in addition to ArbCom and MedCom which could be called in for such instances, and wholeheartedly support the idea of creating such a group. I can see a few problems in selecting people for it and other things, but maybe this time they can be worked out. John Carter (talk) 22:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
I strongly oppose the idea of putting a committee in place to rule on content matters. Firstly and basically it goes completely against the way wikipedia has successfully worked till now, by consensus (with polls sometimes unfortunately necessary to determine that consensus). This would increase bureaucracy by setting up another committee and processes for that committee to work with. People would be chosen/supported for the committee based on whether people feel they will support their view (e.g.do you support SPOV? could become a litmus test) - as some sort of election would be necessary if such a committee is to be at all responsive to the community. I also think there would inevitably be creep - the reach of the committee (and the instructions for that committee) would keep expanding as editors keep trying to get them involved in their disagreement. I have no problem with making lasting decisions where necessary such as Gdansk but the community should make those decisions not a committee. Impose a method for the community to make the decision, lay out the arguments for and against the options and bring in the wider community by wide advertising of the discussion but let the community make that decision itself. Davewild (talk) 22:52, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
I could imagine a committee that played some role in really horrible, long-running content disputes. Such a committee should probably have *elected* members, and they should not make the final decisions. They would merely be trusted to frame the issue correctly so that it could be forwarded to some very wide method of getting input from regular editors, as wide as an Arbcom election, or at least a site notice directing people to a central discussion. EdJohnston (talk) 00:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it is correct that there is an attempt to solve the particular dispute that prompted this message by "headcount". I think it unnecessarily distorts the problem by describing it as such: instead, ArbCom instructed us to start discussions on a new page and come up with a process to decide the matter which they would oversee if no result was forthcoming within a certain time-frame. The dicussions have re-started on Talk:Ireland (see the end sections), and you will see that headcounts are not a feature of all the proposed processes.  DDStretch  (talk) 02:50, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
FYI, there's a discussion going on at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Committees. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 22:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] A streamlining committee?

I was reading some of Wikipedia's articles to find the flow to be awkward at times. As Wikipedia is the conglomerate of the knowledge of many, it has also become of the style of many. I think we should have some sort of project to help with streamlining articles; i.e., they simply rewrite the current facts such that the flow of the articles is smoother.

--Heero Kirashami (talk) 18:54, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

You mean Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors? Strike that, I meant Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors. — Twinzor Say hi! 19:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Template-based solution to reference clutter

A perennial complaint by editors is the amount of space that references occupy in articles. Also, anything that simplifies adding references can only be a good thing.

Most journal articles contain a unique identifier in the form of a DOI or PMID. My bot Citation bot is trained to complete citation templates from only a DOI - it can expand something of the form {{citation|doi=10.1010/asiohu23}} into a fully fledged reference. However, this requires manual intevention (and knowledge of the Citation bot) and can leave a large imprint in an article. I often find myself referring to the same article many times; if I wish to tweak the reference (for example, adding a free access URL) this involves editing every page.

I have come up with a solution that could automate the process.

In the article, a user would enter something along the lines of <ref>{{doi/10.1010/ashi8ub}}</ref>. If the article in question had already been referenced elsewhere, it will of course automatically appear in its entirety in the reference list. If not, Citation bot will spring into action, look up the article's details at Crossref, and create the new template page. The full reference will appear in the article immediately.

Does anyone envision either any problems with this process, or any ways it can be improved?

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:59, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

There might be a problem with creating a new template subpage for every one of the god-knows-how-many DOI articles we reference in articles. While I think the bot is an excellent idea and will considerably improve the consistency of our references, the problem of references cluttering up the edit window is not one that will be resolved in this fashion. That will require a radical overhaul of the edit interface in the underlying MediaWiki codebase. Happy‑melon 12:21, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Now I think about it I recall such a concern thwarting a similar project I instigated some time back. However, since some templates are used more than once, this approach will decrease the overall size of WP. As many edits on my watchlist involve tweaks to references by bot or human, I suspect that it will decrease the total number of edits required (which as I understand it is a resource consumer). But all this boils down to worrying about performance - until someone provides numbers to demonstrate the magnitude of the performance issue that these extra pages will produce, informed argument over this point is impossible. I should also add that no change to the edit interface will be necessary. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
I partially solved this problem (for myself, at least) when I created {{Source list}} template. See example in Rings of Neptune article. Some references are on subpages of {{Source list}}. Ruslik (talk) 13:45, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
A neat idea, but with problems: it's not scalable (there are probably lots of other references which one may wish to call 'Smith1986') and it increases editor workload (a new source must be placed in two locations, and can't just be put in when editing one section). Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:49, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Naming scheme can be improved; and a bot can create source lists by moving references from the text to Source list templates (and to subpages if necessary). Ruslik (talk) 20:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] new feature

hello, i jus had a suggestion regarding the wikipedia articles. I thought it would be a good idea to add a feature that would allow people to add a slideshow of pictures instead of one still picture in their articles. for example in this article --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_house , there is only one picture of the white house (South façade of the White House) ,by using this feature, editors can upload several pictures of the white house and the pictures would change every few seconds showing several different views of the white house in the same little box. Another thing that can be done is allowing editors to upload images that can create a 360 degree view of something. for example the inside of the white house can be shown in 360 degree view (rotateable) on the article page in a small box. I think this will take wikipedia to the next level. thanks.

It has it's uses for things like molecular structure but would be quite a trick to implement it in a free software enviroment.Geni 04:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Unless they are very well done changeing images next to text you want to read tend to be intensly anoying.Geni 04:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Adding a new protection level

I propose that we add a new protection level, that would allow any user to edit, but no anonymous users to edit. In order to solve this problem, all that would be needed is for the sysadmins to edit $wgRestrictionLevels, and add 'user' to the list. The benefit of this would be to prevent IPs !voting at RFA and to prevent IPs posting requests at CHU. If this gains consensus, I'll fill out a bug report. What do others think? Xclamation point 03:17, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

  • Doesn't semi-protection already do this, or am I missing something? SDJ 03:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Since when have IP's been a major problem at RFA and CHU? Semi-prot stops IP's and non-autoconfirmed editors. If we added a protection level that allowed non-autoconfirmed editors but not IP's, they would simply sign up, it takes minutes--Jac16888 (talk) 03:26, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, I would be surprized if there were IP users who want to do something as recondite as posting on an RfA who would not be willing to create an account to do it. Algebraist 03:34, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Actually, there is no rule that says IP's can't post comments and discuss at RFA's, they simply can't place numerical !votes, the scope for abuse would be too great--Jac16888 (talk) 03:40, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Oppose. This won't solve anything and will only cause users to simply create an account, which leads to more throw-away and/or indefinitely blocked accounts. - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Help: namespace

I was on the very edge of filing Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Help: namespace, but I think it would be more productive to come here instead. I think it's time to take a serious look at the state of our Help: namespace, and to ask how we expect it to develop. As best I can determine, Help: has never really had very much enthusiasm in its construction and development; in the beginning, content was assembled on meta-wiki and copied here by a bot on a regular basis; a complicated set of templates allowed the inclusion of site-specific content. That update cycle stopped many years ago, and the content has very much languished ever since. More recently, the website http://www.mediawiki.org was created by the WMF to provide documentation and support for MediaWiki: this includes a public-domain Help: namespace that it intended to hold site-neutral help content on the MediaWiki interface. While the development has progressed fairly slowly, that content is now building up, and is in many cases better than our own content: compare mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions with our old version.

There are, as I see it, three ways to proceed with our Help: interface in light of this increasingly mature content available at mediawiki.org. Firstly, of course, we could ignore it, and rely on our own help pages to document MediaWiki's features. However, there's no evidence that there is any of the enthusiasm required to actually build and maintain such pages. Or, we could try and interface with mediawiki.org and derive our help content from their PD help.

There are various means by which we could do this. We could just create something like Portal:Help that explains the situation (that help is available on an external site, which is allied with, but not affiliated to, en.wiki) and has a big fat interwiki link to pipe people there, and abandon our own Help: namespace altogether. We could try and get a bot to restart the copying-pages-from-the-main-wiki process (not something I would advocate, too fragile). We could ask for interwiki redirects to be enabled to mediawiki.org. We could alternatively ask for interwiki transclusion to be enabled from mediawiki.org, so we can just put {{mw:Help:Foo}} on our help pages and get a dynamic copy of the content immediately available. That would be my personal preference, but there might be performance issues that the devs will bite us with. Alternatively, we could hack up a JavaScript implementation to do the same thing, putting the performance hit onto the users' browsers.

I think the only thing we can't do is allow our Help: namespace to continue in the diabolical state it's currently in. Your thoughts, please. Happy‑melon 13:08, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I edit Help pages whenever I am trying to do something and discover that the help is inadequate. I think that we should have a method of copying help from elsewhere, and customising it using templates, much like the existing system. I don't care whether the master copy is on mw: or on meta:, and I don't care whether the copying is done by transclusion or by a bot or by hand, but the copying should be more frequent than it has been recently. We certainly should not rely on javascript in the user's browser — people who disable javascript, or use non-mainstream browsers, should not be denied help. By the way, the 3 December 2008 version of Help:ParserFunctions is better in some respects than the 12 January 2009 version of mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions; for example, it has the functions sorted alphabetically, and it has more examples. —AlanBarrett (talk) 14:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Parser function extension currently supports ln and trigonometric functions. However 3 December version does not mention them. Ruslik (talk) 14:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
There are two types of help pages. The first type is about general help (see Help:Contents and its subpages, which are not so bad). The second type is help pages about MediaWiki, which are problematic. I prefer replacing the second type pages with MediaWiki analogs. It may be better to "project" help namespace directly onto mediawiki.org, so any link like Help:foo would directly lead to an appropriate MediaWiki page (if the local page does not exist). Ruslik (talk) 15:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] SFW/NSFW Tags?

I think it would be benificial for all to have a way of tagging articles or images as safe for work, or not safe for work. Doesn't have to be these tags specifically, perhaps your own rating system. The reson I post here first instead of bugzilla as I don't know what exactly this would entail. The idea is steming from a desire to see complete articles, images and all, from work. Currently, my place of employment block images due to some of the odd things you can look up that might be offensive, etc. This takes a great deal from Wikipedia, and can be useful in downtimes at certain industry jobs, and this can be a life saver in situations AT work. Demortes (talk) 16:37, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

If someone doesn't know that Blowjob isn't safe for work, that's their fault. We don't need to cushion the blow, so to speak, for the readers. If you shouldn't be viewing Wikipedia content at work, well... don't. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:57, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
However, the problem isn't that it isn't appropriate, the problem it is, but images arn't allowed due to the offensive items that might be depicted. I'm all for punishing those idiots who browse inappropriate things at work, I just want to give my IT a way of filtering it out, so they don't have to block everything. Demortes (talk) 18:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Who would be the judge? In some workplaces or countries, photos of women in short skirts, the written name of God, the formula for gunpowder, a Swastika, or a depiction of Mohammed may be “not safe for work” or even illegal to display or view. This proposal is flirting with WP:CENSOR. —Michael Z. 2009-01-12 18:37 z
Censoring certain images would not be bad, if it were an option that an editor could self-enable. It is currently possible to add CSS to disable the images entirely or on any certain page. A school could create a list of articles they consider objectionable and disable the images on those pages (I'm surprised such lists aren't already being published). I think it would be technically feasible to tag images with different content levels via CSS and add a gadget to check which types of images can be displayed or apply CSS filters. I don't see how allowing self-censorship would disrupt the aims of Wikipedia. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 19:12, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
That is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not saying WP to censor, I'm saying give the tools for workplaces, schools and other applicable locations the means to, don't do it for them. This would at least make life easier for many, and perhaps open enlightenment to more. Demortes (talk) 19:25, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
There's plenty of such software available that many schools and workplaces already use, they also have the benefit of applying to more than 1 website. I don't see why we should create extra work for our contributors and developers to work on something that's not really helpful to our mission (and arguably contrary to it). Mr.Z-man 19:34, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Really? I would like to know what kind of software, as I could test, and propose the addition to the IT infrastructure. To continue on this path, I find no need to continue this part of the discussion on the village pump, so leave me a msg on my talk page or something. I'll have to google it as well, but my main concern is accuracy and cost.
There are also derived projects, like Wikipedia for Schools. —Michael Z. 2009-01-12 20:57 z
I looked into third partly tools for doing this recently. There are no open source solutions that run on windows that would be really effective (you can short of get addblocker stuff to do it). For linux dansguardian might be able to do it but I haven't fully investigated.Geni 04:28, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] User preference for US or UK english spellings

A form of disruptive editing I frequently encounter is the 'correction' of an article from British to US english, or vice versa. I know that the spelling 'color' galls many Brits and Canadians, and am sure that Americans find the extra u equally annoying.

Without software changes, it would be possible to implement a template-based solution so that any user could opt to view Wikipedia in their own dialect. It would work as follows:

  • Instances of words that should be translated will be included in a template, for instance {{useng|color}}
  • The template will by default display the text as typed - "color"
  • If a user has set a preferred dialect, they will see it as they desire - e.g. "colour".

The setting of the preference would involve copying one line of text to the user CSS; with consensus, it would be easy to add a box to the 'gadgets' page.

Without getting into the technical details of how this would be implemented, I would be interested to know whether people think that it is a good idea to allow people to see words in their local dialect if they wish to.

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 00:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

See previous discussion for an array of reasons not to do this. Algebraist 00:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
No no no. This will turn into its own WP:Requests for arbitration/Date unlinking, which has involved 10+ ANI threads, 2 RfCs, and countless other arguments over the last 6 months.
Please don't make us do that again :( NuclearWarfare (Talk) 00:41, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I hereby table this proposal. =) —kurykh 01:33, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The only relevant comment, alas, seems to be the one which I can find no argument against - the 'waste of system resources'. On that sad note hopefully no more editors will waste their own resources considering this post! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 01:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Technical note: you can't do this using cascading style sheets. CSS is for styling text, and the HTML has to degrade gracefully if the CSS doesn't work. CSS is not a content management system.
Having said that, I'm against this. It would consume a lot of resources and be disruptive to editing (way more than the annoying but minor “corrections” being done). It couldn't work reliably, and only very few editors would be able to actually write using both American and British idioms. If you really want to please Canadian editors, that means three sets of spelling. And why leave out the Australians, South Africans and Indians?
And frankly, what is the benefit for all this cost? —Michael Z. 2009-01-13 03:08 z

[edit] Noticeboard for people seeking template help?

Is there a centralized place for people who know about coding and using templates, where users looking for help can find an experienced user? For example, we have Wikipedia:Graphic Lab for images and WP:BOTR for bots, and yada yada...is there anything like that where people who are having trouble with a template (either people trying to code a template, or people using one in an article or something and having problems) to get help? Maybe there already is, and if so you can ignore this (but please let me know where that place is).... If not, though, would it be helpful to start some sort of noticeboard, project, or what-have-you, where people needing template help can easily find experienced template people?

I know I can often directly contact a user that I know from personal experience to be more template-savvy than I, but that's not always the case, especially for users who are new to WP or new to playing around with templates. And a lot of templates aren't watched much, so requests for help at the template talk page aren't always useful (I posted something at Template talk:Royal Family of Bhutan about two months ago and haven't gotten a response, for example). So maybe a noticeboard for people seeking template help would be useful, if you guys feel there is enough demand for such a thing and enough template-savvy people to participate in it. Any thoughts? Politizer talk/contribs 15:44, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) works just fine for template questions. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
There's also Wikipedia:Requested templates. Eklipse (talk) 18:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Also, for infoboxes, there's Wikipedia:List of infoboxes/Proposed which I try and help out at. David Ruben Talk 21:31, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
And Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes. You're spoiled for choice! Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Citizendium Comparison

Would be interesting to see if a third party could do a blind review a WP and Citizendium article of the highest quality on the same topic, blind. Has this already been done? Balonkey (talk) 04:22, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's been done: at least, I've never heard of such a study. In any event, the sample size would be very small: my quick look-over returned only two articles that are both "featured" here and "approved" there: Joan of Arc and DNA. I'd imagine that someone seriously considering a comparison would do a more eliminative search, but I don't think that a comparison is practical at this point, a small sample makes the results more or less useless for anything but bragging rights. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 06:29, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Questionnaire/2009

Feel free to hop in and help develop this page. -- Cat chi? 08:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

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