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Recurring policy proposals are listed at Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals. If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that Misplaced Pages 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, Misplaced Pages:Manual of style, and ask people to discuss it there.
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'Confirmed' usergroup

We had some discussions on the ability to grant or remove 'autoconfirmed' status, for example here, but it wasn't conclusive. So I propose to create a usergroup confirmed, with an autopromotion identical to the autoconfirmed requirements. I think it's feasible since the 'editor' usergroup in the extension FlaggedRevs has an autopromotion. So it could be granted and removed by administrators, and would be automatically granted by the software when the user meets the 'autoconfirmed' requirements. Cenarium (talk) 17:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Currently the autopromotion system used by FlaggedRevs is different from the one used in the core software. There's a somewhat hacky way to do it with the current core version (create a "non-autoconfirmed" group and require that users not be in it to be autopromoted). Mr.Z-man 18:10, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

So we'd need an extension, such as FlaggedRevs, to make it non-hacky ? Cenarium (talk)

Or the FlaggedRevs autopromotion system would have to be moved to core. Mr.Z-man 18:17, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, if there's consensus for this, we'll open a bug then. Cenarium (talk) 18:33, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

We may have other groups with autopromotion in the future, so it would be worth to have an autopromotion system available in the core I think. Cenarium (talk) 10:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

This new user group is supposed to have 'autoreview' right? Ruslik (talk) 20:05, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

In the flaggedrevs proposal yes, like autoconfirmed, but this can be done independently. Cenarium (talk) 10:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

It can be instead of autocomnfirmed. Ruslik (talk) 11:01, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed would be deprecated. It would probably require much rewrite. Cenarium (talk) 12:28, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

The usergroup 'uploaders' could also be deprecated as superseded by 'confirmed'. Possible uses could be:

• granting: when needed, a new user known to be trustworthy (for example, from other projects, or a wmf account), a bot account (for a trial, etc), restoring the confirmed status when previously removed
• removing: vandalism, in particular on semi-protected pages, when the vandalism is insufficient for a block (confirmed users are able to perform actions like move, edit semi-protected, and are cleared from certain abuse filters, so the potential damage would be much weaker if the permission is removed) Cenarium (talk) 13:12, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Poll on (auto)confirmed usergroup

This is a poll/discussion to see if there is support to deprecate the 'autoconfirmed' implicit usergroup and replace it with a usergroup 'confirmed' that is granted automatically to users passing the 'autoconfirmed' requirements and can also be granted and removed by admins. So said otherwise, do you support or oppose a modification of the 'autoconfirmed' permission so that it can also be granted and removed by admins ? Cenarium (talk) 18:14, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose - it makes life very complicated, and would require complex structures and policies to be built up (when is it appropriate to add/remove confirmed status? for how long?), and adds little helpful utility. However, I support a system where Abusefilter-editors can re-add the autoconfirmed status of users who have been "wrongly" demoted, if there is not already such a mechanism (not quite clear from the proposal). ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 18:22, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

  This feature does exist. Happy‑melon 18:34, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

  It shouldn't require complex policies, it didn't require complex policies for removing rollback, or adding it, and it's much easier here. We have a problem when an autoconfirmed user vandalizes and remains unblocked, or is blocked temporarily, because the vandalism activity is not sufficient. Autoconfirmed users are immune to many vandalism-related tools, for example some abuse filters, because it is assumed that an autoconfirmed user has been around enough so that they aren't a vandal - or they would have been blocked. A criteria for removing autoconfirmed should be simple: vandalism. Being able to grant autoconfirmed rights prematurely would be helpful for bots, and good-faith new users needing the rights. Cenarium (talk) 20:53, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

• Support in principle, but a change to this effect should be enacted by making 'autoconfirmed' an explicit group in MediaWiki. Essentially the same effect, but with less fuss. I have complete faith in our ability to cope with the not very complicated at all structures that would be needed. Happy‑melon 18:34, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose the proposal as stated. Just make "Autoconfirmed" removable, and don't automatically readd it if it's been removed. Nothing else is needed. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:45, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

  Ironically, this is essentially what I'm suggesting in my post, with completely the opposite caption :D Happy‑melon 18:54, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes it is. It's purely a matter of semantics - but I preferred to confound the polling thing a bit. — Gavia immer (talk) 19:22, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

We couldn't grant it prematurely then, for bots, etc. According to this, the group is not automatically restored by autopromotion when it has been removed, the status log is checked for removals. Cenarium (talk) 19:32, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

• Support the idea of allowing the right to be added or removed. I think that autoconfirmed/confirmed (I don't mind about the name) should be really easy to obtain. Any account that's x days old with y edits gets it automatically, anyone who requests the right should get it immediately (unless their account has been blatantly vandalising). Also, I think this right should be given out to anyone who might need it. What I mean is anyone who posts a question about how to move pages, upload files or edit semiprotected pages should receive the right immediately. I'm not entirely sure about when the right should be removed manually. There probably are some good situations for this, but I would imagine it would be a fairly rare occurrence. Tra (Talk) 19:29, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, agree with TreasuryTag (talk · contribs), above. Cirt (talk) 18:40, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Too complicated. Would be better to simply make the user group removable. ♪Tempo di Valse ♪ 20:58, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

  So you mean it should be removable, but not grantable prematurely ? Cenarium (talk) 21:06, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

:::Yes, that's what I meant. I agree with Gavia immer (talk · contribs). ♪Tempo di Valse ♪ 21:10, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Ehh... then again, it would probably be best just to leave things as they are. Too complicated otherwise, really. ♪Tempo di Valse ♪ 21:12, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

• It can already be re-added if a filter wrongly removes it, but for particularly cumbersome vandals, it would be nice if the ability to remove the group was granted to admins as well. - Mgm| 10:04, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I have modified the structure of the poll to make it clearer, move your comment if you wish. Cenarium (talk) 21:18, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

1. Oppose - I don't think this one actually helps. The aim of (auto)confirm is to ensure some actions can't be done except by users with a modicum of experience or involvement (ie repeat editors). A problem user will just do their 10 edits, then ask for autoconfirm, then vandalize anyway, wasting other users' time. Meanwhile bona fide users will add considerable admin workload that isn't needed, and a user who abuses autoconfirm access is probably a candidate for a block or ban anyway. Open to differing views or reasons why this is poor logic, but for now, no good rationale seems to exist for change. FT2  14:43, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

   Users will still be autopromoted after 10 edits and 4 days. I gave examples of users vandalizing who would not have been indef-blocakable at the time below. Cenarium (talk) 20:00, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Removable and grantable prematurely

1. Thought it over, and decided that it seems to be a good idea. I misunderstood the proposal at first, and thought that the autoconfirmed group would no longer be given out automatically. ♪Tempo di Valse ♪ 21:26, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
2. Certainly - I cam across this due to some minor vandal who IMO does not warrant blocking but needs watching. putting him back into the new users pack would accomplish that. OTOH valid sockpuppets or established users on other wikis could be promoted to be useful right away. Agathoclea (talk) 09:59, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
3. Pretty much what Agothoclea said.--Aervanath (talk) 07:34, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
4. Fine. flSiet (aklt) 09:54, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
5. Support, New users sometimes point out mistakes in semi-protected articles on the article's talkpage. It would be useful to let them correct the mistakes they point out. Tim Vickers (talk) 23:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
6. Support. There will be some occasions to use it in a positive sense; and there will certainly be occasions to use it to remove autoconfirmed, especially for SPAs with the minimum number. A good first step before seeing if we need to raise the autoconfirmed numbers.DGG (talk) 04:03, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
7. Support. Per Agathoclea, some people who are disruptive (but perhaps not blockable) should not be able to edit semi-protected articles and if they manage to pass thethreshold should not ruin it for everyone else and cause a page to have to be fully protected. They would also appear on the newbies contribs list. On the other side, some well-established people with valid reasons may create a new account or a legal sock for testing purposes. In this case I think premature auto-confirm is merited and the bit should be in the hands of admins. Valley2city 20:17, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
8. Support. Per Agathoclea. -- Alexf 17:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
9. Support with obvious comment As with all admin tools, abuse of such priveleges should be dealt with in the same way as other admin abuse. An obvious statement but one that needs making anyway. Seddσn 19:11, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
10. Support I support as someone may wish to retire one username and form an entirely new one (tho retain their public identity). If they are trusted then it would make sense to be able to remove the normal limits on a new user account. At the same time I also feel that this can be useful on a case-by-case basis. Basket of Puppies 19:37, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
11. Good proposal Alex Bakharev (talk) 03:02, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
12. support Reasoning above is good. I can't see much reason for allowing premature granting but I can imagine some circumstances that would probably be ok (i.e. you know someone is a productive user from another wikimedia project). The minor nature of this usergroup means that we really won't need any policy for it for now except more or less common sense. JoshuaZ (talk) 05:28, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
13. Support This feature would be a net positive for the project, as it will produce more help than harm. hmwithτ 16:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Removable (and not grantable prematurely)

1. This is definitely where I fall; I can find no valid reason to autoconfirm a user before 10 edits, but I love the other part as an early-step anti-vandal tool--CastAStone/ 18:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

   What if a trusted user comes from a very trusted position in other projects & we're sure they'll be trustworthy here? hmwithτ 16:51, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

   LOL at saying "trust" three times. It wasn't intentional. hmwithτ 16:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

   Then they can make ten AfD contributions. Or mod their user page ten times. Or spend 5 minutes looking at and reverting recent changes. Ten edits can be done in 5 minutes easily if you try, and these people will aldeady know how to do it.--CastAStone/ 16:21, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

   We could use this for new bots in trial period, for example. Cenarium (talk) 17:37, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Grantable prematurely (and not removable)

None (no change)

1. The criteria are really too trivial to warrant special treatment. I know there may be arguments in favor of granting instant "autoconfirmed" status to new accounts which are known to be returning "trusted" users, but would saving four days really be worth blowing their cover? I know I'd rather just wait. Also I cannot envision any circumstance where it would it be better to "remove autoconfirmed" status than to simply block the account. Could someone please provide an example of when they would do this? I will say if the numbers were higher, maybe in the order of 40 days and a few hundred edits, granting exceptions both ways would be worth considering, but right now it would be too useless to bother with. — CharlotteWebb 11:50, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

   Since the autoconfirmed status allows to bypass many protections against vandalism, not only semi-protection, but some abuse filters and other anti-vandalism tools (and they would also have some additional permissions in the flagged protection implementation), having an autoconfirmed user vandalizing around is very unfortunate and they're not always blocked, for examples, see the history of vandalized semi-protected articles, such as Obama: 1, 2, 3, 4. Those have vandalized but have not been blocked indef, or not immediately, and two of them have been able to cause vandalism when their block expired. Cenarium (talk) 14:39, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

2. Auto-confirming lets users move a page and a page to their watchlist. Watchlist doesn't matter, and moving a page can be undone easily. That's why we also have blocking and move protection. Nothing more is needed. Jd027 (talk) 23:25, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

   Any user can watchlist a page. Autoconfirmed allows to edit semi-protected pages, and bypass certain anti-vandalism tools among others. It's simply proposed to allow to grant the autoconfirmed permission before the 10 edits/4 days, and make it removable. Cenarium (talk) 20:00, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

3. I don't think this is such a good idea to make the autoconfirmed group more than it is now (I see some discussion on removing the right for SPAs). It shouldn't be more than "the account is old enough to edit this page". The user rights are complicated enough. -- lucasbfr 14:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
4. I don't see a pressing need. This seems to be another solution in search of a problem. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:05, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

   Which problem ? Cenarium (talk) 14:58, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

5. I can possibly see a few use cases for granting it early, but I don't really see any use for removing it. Pretty much any case where it should be removed, it would probably make just as much sense to block the user. Mr.Z-man 16:27, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

   I gave examples above of users that would have not been indef-blockable. Some have been temp-blocked and vandalized just after that. Cenarium (talk) 14:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

   Apa aff os and labz were clearly vandalism only accounts and should have been blocked indefinitely, and one of them was. The other 2 I probably would have blocked indef as well. Mr.Z-man 20:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

6. I agree with Mr.Z-man, usually those who would be candidates for having their autoconfirmed status revoked are usually vandalism only accounts and are quickly blocked. -Senseless!... says you, says me 02:21, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

   Precisely, it's not always the case (examples above, more can be found). Cenarium (talk) 15:01, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

   I disagree, either the user should be blocked (indef or not), or just warned (and then no action ought to be taken). Having this extra option is just one more headache to me. Granting it early could be a plus (but having the user wait for 4 days before operating on semiprotected pages is not that big a burden, seriously :)). -- lucasbfr 16:05, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

   The problem is, after a temp block, the user can resume vandalizing, and bypass anti-vandalism protections like semi-protection, abuse filters, and other anti-vandalism tools ignoring autoconfirmed users, this happened for those users: 1 and 2. Special:contributions/newbies is also used for vandalism detection, we could modify it so that it lists unconfirmed users (or make recentchanges filterable by confirmed users)(and thus granting a bot in trial period the confirmed group would also have the desirable effect to remove it from there). Cenarium (talk) 17:58, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

   The problem is some admins being too soft on blatant vandalism. Mr.Z-man 20:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

at time zone to time stamp at bottom of articles "This page was last modified on "

time stamp at bottom of article fails to provide time zone (current: "This page was last modified on 2 April 2009, at 08:02."). thus, a printed version read by non-wikipedian (and probably many wikipedia users) are clueless that times on wikipedia are in "UTC" (i think it is UTC; somewhere that information is buried within wikipedia; sometimes i stumble upon a usage, but i always have trouble finding it when i want it and i'm sure i'm not the only one).

of course ideally, all time entries (history, discussion, etc.) would indicate which time zone is used.--71.183.238.134 (talk) 08:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

This can't be done easily. MediaWiki:Lastmodifiedat could be edited to indicate UTC, but then it would be wrong for anyone who's said their time preferences to anything other than UTC. This might be one to bug the devs with. Algebraist 11:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

If someone changes their Date/Time preference, the time at the bottom reflects that. -- lucasbfr 15:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Quality related proposal - use of a "drafts" namespace.

I was considering the issue of BLPs, and not convinced that any of the current proposals (CSD#10, or otherwise) would make sufficient difference. A possible suggestion:

From <date> onwards, all new articles should be of some basic standard, to be added to the wiki. At a minimum: Any claims or statements likely to be controversial must be reliably sourced Any BLPs have sourcing for their major statements, and a reasonable balance of weight for any criticisms or potentially negative content. Any article that relates to a person, group, organisation, web content, or news event should have some reason visible why it is likely to be encyclopedic. New articles that do not visibly meet these criteria may be moved by any user to a "Drafts:" namespace as follows: The author is notified as follows: "Thank you for contributing to Misplaced Pages. Your article needs a little more work done on it, before it can be added to Misplaced Pages. The will explain what issues were found. Otherwise the draft will be removed in 5 days, but you may always ask for a copy of the text by email, for the purposes of improvement and re-posting." The article in the Drafts: namespace has a header added - "This draft article is awaiting improvement by its author or any other user, to rectify issues noted in the . Once these are fixed it may be moved back into the main encyclopedia. If they are not fixed within 5 days the draft will be automatically deleted." The Drafts: namespace is forcibly NOINDEXed. No redirect is created for moves to Draft: . Instead a note is added to the "page not found" notice saying to check if a missing page was moved to that namespace

Advantages compared to current processes:

1. Dodgy or questionable articles (especially BLPs) can be removed from mainspace and indexing, immediately, until the basics are fixed, and "benefit of doubt" is no longer a problem.
2. Articles can be retained for improvement but their new location isn't spidered, so they aren't doing harm while the author is consulted or others work on it.
3. It's more user-friendly to move something to drafts, than to delete it, and informs a well-meaning author what's needed to make it okay. This encourages good faith authors to do more, and to a better standard.
4. All articles added to the wiki henceforth, will be of a basic minimum standard, or else they can be instantly deleted, or Draft-ified.
5. The process is open and flexible, and hence well suited to be extended or updated based upon experience.
6. This has all the advantages of PROD and none of the disadvantages. So PROD can probably be deprecated.

Initial thoughts?

FT2  15:12, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose - this is broadly similar to Citizendium or Veripedia or whatever I'm thinking of :p and impairs the concept of a wiki. As long as there are new-pages-patrollers, people should be able to create new articles of any standard that meet the very basic guidelines, and have them improved by the community in general. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 15:17, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

How exactly does it prevent any of that? It simply says that if certain common basic issues are noted in the article, it's moved to a separate namespace where it can't do harm, and the author (and others) advised of its defects. Anyone can work on it, anyone can create new articles... these things are unchanged. I think you may have misunderstood the idea. FT2  15:20, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I certainly read everything you wrote ;-) The thing is, if you're going to take the "it won't make any real difference" tack, then why introduce such a complex change? And if it is going to make a big difference, than that's my point.

I don't understand what practical, tangible benefits the introduction of a new namespace, and the template-messaging of newbies saying "We've stuffed draft: in front of your article title until you complete the following tasks..." (yes, exaggurated, I know), will bring to Misplaced Pages. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 15:27, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

You are essentially talking about a way of using flagged revisions. In one common configuration, the actively edited but not yet delivered to the public version is even placed behind a tab called "Draft". Dragons flight (talk) 15:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Flagged revisions is quite different. This would be for new articles only, and not require any new "permissions" or "classes"; its aim is to ensure that at the first addition of a new article to the wiki, at least certain basics are taken care of, or else the author is asked to fix them first. As such there is no "class" or users who can and can't do this - the pages are in a namespace anyone can access, and anyone can re-mainspace them. In effect a genuinely defective 1st draft of a new article is put somewhere safe until the author fixes up the basics and moves it back to mainspace. Flagged revisions is considerably different. FT2  15:33, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe that this effect can actually be achieved with FlaggedRevisions, or certainly something very similar to it. Happy‑melon 16:13, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Whether it can or can't, Flagged Revisions is not trying to achieve this goal. The aim here is two things -- new articles going forward should at least have reasonable sourcing (especially BLPs) and reasonable notability, and, if they don't, then the dichotomy of CSD/PROD/leave is not necessarily a good one. It may be better to return them to the author (out of mainspace and not indexed) with a request to improve, rather than a simple "delete/don't delete" (CSD) or "leave to be mainspace and indexed while waiting for evidence of appropriateness" (PROD). I've suggested a "draft" namespace but it could as easily be userified. The advantage is that userspace might be indexed, draft space wouldn't be. FT2  19:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose It's against our editing policy. Our articles are perpetual drafts. Either it's to be deleted and we have processes for that, either it's to be fixed, and moving to a less visible place will make the fixing less likely. Cenarium (talk) 19:46, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

• Disclosure: FT2 asked me to take a look at this, so here I am. In my view, the opposers are opposing on "anyone can edit" grounds, essentially. They have a point. This proposal does not exactly fit our current culture. But they miss the larger point which is that our current culture ... is broken. It needs fixing. We have quality problems. In some areas it's a so what... that we have the details wrong about an early 19th century landscape composer isn't going to be the end of the world. But in other areas (BLPs for example) it matters a great deal. Disclaimers or not, we do want high quality. This proposal may not work. But it is worthy of further investigation and elaboration. Dismissing it out of hand is wrong. Support further elaboration. ++Lar: t/c 20:21, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

  If we put a page in a corner where nobody will find it, then its quality is not going to improve. Our articles are steadily improved because of their visibility - and incidentally, because anyone can edit - but forking like this will not result in improvements. Drafts will be forgotten and inappropriate content will stay. The vast majority of our articles, even our best ones, were started as stubs or in bad shape. We need increased coordination for BLPs, and progress in this sense has really started only recently. Cenarium (talk) 22:06, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there are some articles where sufficient bad shape in key areas is a big enough problem that "eventually" isn't good enough. Hence CSD and PROD. "Yes there happens to be a contentious claim that's unsourced and could do harm if inaccurate but someone'll eventually fix it so never mind" just doesn't work, for a top 5 reference site. This proposal would require articles to be held in abeyance and their authors (or other editors, or patrollers) notified that contentious claims needs to be sourced and cited, before it's fit to be added to mainspace. This isn't contentious - sufficiently inadequate articles are historically often deleted (A7) rather than just passed back for improvement. Drafts (under this proposal) will be automatically deleted in 5 days, as PRODs are, the difference is that a wider range of problem articles will be able to be intercepted and improved, ie, a quality improvement of new articles added to the wiki. We need those adding articles to have it explained at the point of posting, that basic sourcing of anything contentious is part of initial stub writing, not just an afterthought. FT2  10:20, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Of course, some BLPs need swift action. But why should we apply such a process in other cases and not let our current editing process apply ? You say that this would be used for new articles and that it would deprecate prods, but prods are not used for new articles only. (Moreover, moving a page that has existed for a long time to the draft page would surely be controversial, and I imagine move wars over this.) Anonymous and new users could not use this process because it requires moving a page, so I would oppose for that only. I would much prefer and support a template that can be put on a blp when it is suspected that it violates the BLP policy, and would put the page in a tracking category, and optionally noindex (removals can be monitored with the abuse filter). Cenarium (talk) 14:56, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose #1 is basically a pseudo-CSD for enforcing WP:V, #2 is a pseudo-CSD nuclear option for enforcing WP:BLP, and #3 is a vaguely-defined version of WP:CSD#A7. This sounds like a bad way to chase off new editors, and a poor excuse for not having consensus for a CSD to enforce WP:V: instead of outright deletion, it shoves the pages off to some obscure corner with no reference to it, where it will be deleted in 5 days. It also seems wide open to abuse where one side decides that it will never accept any source as "reliable" or any wording of criticism as "balanced". I also find the claim that this is somehow the only way to deal with unsourced statements in BLPs to be inaccurate; what ever happened to removing the statements in question instead of nuking the entire article? All in all, it strikes me that Misplaced Pages is neither Veropedia nor Citizendium, and I'm not convinced that needs "fixing".
  IMO, the only good idea here is the NOINDEXing of pages pseudo-prodded in this way; but why not just NOINDEX any BLP that is prodded/AfDed for this reason instead? Also, as you allude, the idea (and others like it) is currently having much more in-depth discussion at WT:CSD. How about joining that discussion instead of forum shopping it here? I don't see a single comment with your signature on that page. Anomie⚔ 16:10, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Veropedia locked stable versions of articles down and Citizendium had articles written by proven experts. I don't see how eithe project relates to requiring basic article writing criteria to be met. Veropedia only comes in on 'finished' articles and we still don't put a limit on who can write the article as long as they register as a user. - Mgm| 08:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Both seem to be based on an idea of "only people who 'know enough' and want to jump through our hoops can edit", as opposed to Misplaced Pages's "anyone can edit". Forcing every new contributor to have knowledge of the intricacies of WP:V and WP:CITE or their contribution gets summarily deleted strikes me as a pretty big hoop, and far beyond the current threshold of "your contribution has to have some basic indication as to why it's worth inclusion in an encyclopedia" given in CSD A7 and A9. Anomie⚔ 12:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that CSD is (as its name suggests) for speedy actions only - that means those where there is pretty much overwhelming cause. We need to tilt a balance slightly more towards quality, say 3/10 rather than 1/10, and asking that basics like letting authors of new articles know "please cite contentious claims in new articles before mainspacing them" is not something that CSD is designed for, so it's not helpful to suggest it on that page. FT2  17:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

• I don't oppose the idea of a draft namespace on its own (having a draft space might actually make people stop and think before creating deficient articles in mainspace), but if anything that's no goof after 5 days is deleted, people will simply use userspace as is common practice now. Noindexing already takes care of the outside visibility, so there's no reason to speed up deletion. - Mgm| 08:31, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense. If it would help get things moving, then thats reasonable, or at least a longer period. FT2  17:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages and the Internet

I'm not a fan of exceptions, and I love rules. But far too many people on Misplaced Pages make it their mission to try to remove as many "deficient" articles rather than spend their time creating new ones. Far too many people feel some sort of thrill from having someone's hard work be deleted by slapping them with some rule or criteria. We have too many wiki-cops and too little wiki-artists.

We can say youtube is a site to post videos and Google is a search site. And we can say Wiki is an encyclopedia. But we all know these three are the big e-triumvirate that have grown far past what they were meant to be, to the point that google and wiki have become verbs (even youtube now, "go home and youtube it".

And as much as we have rules for notability, such as having more sources other than let's say Youtube itself. Wiki has to realize that Youtube is a category in itself. Having 17,000,000 views mean at least let's say 50,000 people a year at LEAST (or if you want to be conservative 5,000) will see some reference to Happyslip somewhere online/or hear about it(such as I did), and want to find out more about it. Knowing that even 1,000 people want a reference to it, should be enough. Youtube works more through word of mouth anyway, which is hard to document, who hasn't seen "Charlie Bit me"? I've been in drugstores and heard people talk about it, I've seen mothers put their finger in their children's and say, "ouch Tommy, Tommy bit me!". The beauty about Wiki is that it's not a cut and dry encyclopedia. It also documents e-life, e-phenomenons, and is basically an encyclopedia for us, the surfers. It's an edgier encyclopedia, and while we want to hone our accuracy and dependability, let's not forget that.

We also need to relax and realize that things can be notable now, or have BEEN notable. So for example, when a guy is lost at sea, and the media is buzzing about it. It's everywhere on the news for weeks, and someone adds it here. Three weeks later because the media died down about it does not make it less notable. What happens 5 years from now if the guy is found, and someone wants to see a reference to what they are talking about?

I realize this is not myspace, a forum, or a blog, but I believe there can be a peaceful coexistence between the serious academic and purely entertaining notability. When an article such as the "numa numa" guy faces problems it scares me! As long as an article is unbiased, neat, organized, and facts properly sourced, why work so hard towards deleting it?

I wonder if we could have some sort of view counter on pages, it would certainly help to see just how many people are accessing a page. (I'm hoping at least that would help show how notable something is)

This is just a friendly reminder for us to all take a big breath and care a little less about what grade an article would get. While an A article is beautiful, so is knowing you wrote down a little piece of history.

I sorely apologize if this sounds a bit like ranting. It's not, it's an honest effort to get people to stop a moment and readdress what we want to be, and how to get there. Wiki has matured into something more than just an encyclopedia, and that's a good thing. Pointing to a "WP:whatever" should not be the end of any discussion nor should it be unmalleable. I apologize in advance for my English and I appreciate any feedback. 75.69.233.90 (talk) 22:49, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

It is possible to see how often a page has been viewed, by going to the history tab then clicking 'Page view statistics', although it is a bit hidden away. However, it can be difficult to use the number of page views to judge a subject's notability. For example, this page shows the most viewed articles in August 2008. In position 6 is Wiki, which I'm sure you'll agree is not the sixth most notable subject in existence. Looking through the list, there are plenty of pages there because their subjects are well known, or in the news at the time. It's necessary to use other methods of determining a subject's notability, apart from its number of views. Tra (Talk) 09:08, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages's size also means its effect on the real world is increased. Creating articles about barely notable or non notable people is a recipe for disaster with regard to false statements and libel. Mr.Z-man 18:11, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I hope you are correct about Misplaced Pages being big on the Web (I look at it often, but hardly every look at You Tube myself). What you seem to be concerned about here is that Misplaced Pages has a number of users who identify themselves as "deletionists" and also that to judge a topic as "notable" is not an all-or-none matter. I agree with you that Misplaced Pages has now grown beyond something similar to a standard printed encyclopaedia - although we are not Wikinews, the coverage of up-to-date media topics does help it to bridge the gap between newspapers and encyclopaedias. To console you about deletionists, can I point out that there are Websites out there such as Includipedia or Antiwikipedia which seem to exist to recycle deleted Misplaced Pages articles. However, I am inclined to agree that one must use other methods to determine an article's notability than the number of times it has been viewed - a subject in the news might have had many hits, whereas some obscure topic which is known to be important to experts in the field might have few hits, but still be judged important by experts. Also, I already think Misplaced Pages has balanced the "seriously academic" and the "purely entertaining" well, as it is well-known that there are many articles on popular media culture in Misplaced Pages.

These are my own personal reactions to the above comment, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Misplaced Pages community as a whole. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 18:59, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Three weeks later because the media died down about it does not make it less notable. What happens 5 years from now if the guy is found? Our approach to notability is that if a subject is notable now, it automatically stays notable in the future. Or, if you will, we don't delete articles because very few people are interested in a topic, or very few people are reading that particular article; we look at sources to determine whether the subject of the article ever was notable. So, in your hypothetical case, in five years the article will still be in Misplaced Pages.

Looking at the various links in Misplaced Pages:Article Rescue Squadron should make it clear that the issue of excessive deletions have been discussed before. Do keep in mind that much, quite possibly the vast majority of articles that are deleted are pure drek (and are deleted via CSD); only a small fraction of articles are deleted via discussion (AfD). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:39, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• Articles created by true 'wikiartists' as you call them, 75.69.233.90, are unlikely to be affected because those are rarely deficient in anything. The easiest way to solve this, is simply not to rush article creation. I've already had at least one great example in my own creation log. When I first wanted to create Louis Barnett (chocolatier), only a handful of references were available. By being patient and waiting for a couple of months I ensured that the resulting article I wrote was of sufficient quality. - Mgm| 08:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• Some experience patrolling new pages would likely change your point of view. You say "as long as an article is unbiased, neat, organized, and facts properly sourced, why work so hard towards deleting it?". We don't work so hard towards deleting those, we work so hard towards deleting all the other ones, those that do not, will not be unbiased, neat, organized and properly sourced often precisely because the notability of the subject is nil. Obscure bios or pages on high school bands or unknown rappers created out of vanity, hoaxes, nonsense, essays and original research on a variety of subjects, fancruft, POV forks, advertisement ... a ton of articles are created every day that do not and cannot meet the standards set by the community. The AfD process which I believe you are thinking of, is just the tree before the forest, most articles that are deleted do not reach AfD, they are quietly swept away by new page patrollers and admins, "speedy deleted" or more slowly (WP:PROD). Few reach AfD not because "wiki-cops" are nasty people hell bent on disposing of someone's work while nobody's looking, but because they are so below the standards set by the community that it would waste everyone's time and require more "wiki-cops" and "wiki-lawyers" if they did. Now some deletions are contentious, *some*, that's why the AfD process exists, that's were the community deals with borderline cases or at least disputed ones. We *need* standards, or Misplaced Pages wouldn't be anything like an encyclopedia, and we *need* what you call "wiki-cops" otherwise standards are of no use. There are standards you might not agree with, for instance you might think short lived internet buzz establishes notability, many however do feel that it's a playground for original research and unverifiable assertions. If it takes an AfD nomination to find out if a given article meets standards, then so be it, it's not a punishment, it's not a bad grade, it's just a useful process. Equendil Talk 12:42, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Extending Misplaced Pages: Biographies_of_Living_Persons

Can I please suggest that WP: Biographies_of_Living_Persons policy be extended to include the recently deparated, as well as those still living? Recently, I found out (incidentally, from Misplaced Pages) that the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama had died on March 25, 2009, and put up the "recent death" tag on his page. As this is now more than a week ago, this tag was removed as from today (April 4, 2009). However, looking at the talk page, I see that this page still has the bit about biographies of living people having policies that need to be adhered to, and I did not remove this for this reason. I have wondered whether we should not merely have a policy to protect privacy of living individuals, but also those who, for example, have died in the past five years.After all, there are privacy laws which do exist, I believe,for 40 years (correct me if I am wrong). If a person has died and is therefore technically not a case for Misplaced Pages: Biographies_of_Living_Persons, that person could still have (and in many cases, would have) relatives who are still living, so we must be extremely cautious about avoiding contentious statements that could be offensive to relatives of a recently deceased individual. I shall be interested to see whether Misplaced Pages is going to extend this policy.ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:29, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

• Disagree - BLP is a very restricted policy for a very specific purpose: that eventualism is not workable for BLPs for very specific reasons. The case of the relatives must also be specific to material about them; because they may not like an article is not the species of harm caused by a bad BLP, not even close. BLP carries enough practical risk of NPOV violations; its scope must be kept very restricted indeed for this reason - David Gerard (talk) 21:43, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
• Disagree. While courtesy suggests we wait a decent interval before adding anything that might offend the survivors, we should not enshrine courtesy a requirement in BLP the policy. I agree with David Gerard that the scope of BLP should be strictly limited to living people.   Will Beback  talk  21:54, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
• The policy did formerly extend to "recently deceased" people, but that seems to no longer be true. In any case, Misplaced Pages:Biographies_of_Living_Persons#Dealing_with_articles_about_the_deceased appears to cover that aspect well enough. — Gavia immer (talk) 04:11, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support The key point is proper referencing and solid editorial control. Just because a person died and can't sue us, doesn't mean it's a good idea to have unreferenced contentious/controversial material in their article. By not including dead people in an overall People policy, editors tend to ignore the fact that all material should be cited and that contentious material is no different. - Mgm| 12:52, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

changing text of edit summary field

Recently on wikien-l Erik Moeller mentioned that on de.wp they have changed the text of their edit summary field to read "Summary and Sources" instead of "edit summary." Apparently lots more new editors started including URLs etc. What do people think of trying this out on en:, as well? Could be an easy way to up sourcing. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 21:37, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

• Support - David Gerard (talk) 21:41, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't this make people put their sources in the edit summary box instead of putting them in the article? It would be a bit confusing to tell editors that their sources should go in the edit summary box, when they really need to show up at the bottom of the article. Tra (Talk) 21:54, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

yes, it could lead to that, but I think the point is that it's easier for an experienced editor to pull a source from the edit summary and add it in the right place than it is to find a new source from scratch. Also, it reminds new editors that they have to have sources. Footnote syntax and refsections are confusing enough that people often skip it altogether. There might be better phrasing than "summary and sources" possible. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

It would be a lot of work to have to keep going after each edit that puts the source in the edit summary box. I think it would only be worth it if it caused a substantial increase in sourcing. It might be useful to look at the German Misplaced Pages and take a random sample of edits before and after the change. You could then classify them into vandalism, edits not requiring sources, edits which need a source but don't have one, edits with the source placed on the article and edits with the source placed in the edit summary. The number of edits of each type could then be compared between before and after the change. Tra (Talk) 09:30, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

• A better solution in my opinion would be to add a note on citing sources at MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning or MediaWiki:Edittools, it would also allow to link WIkipedia:Citing sources. Some recent discussion on this here. Cenarium (talk) 23:09, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

  And we could also implement an editnotice for blps, Template:BLP editintro, but there's still the unresolved issue to hide them. Cenarium (talk) 00:13, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

• I'd prefer the notice the French Misplaced Pages uses between the edit box and edit summary, but failing that, this is a great idea, assuming that it increases people posting sources. We can make bots and scripts to pull sources from an edit history making the job of putting them in a mere technicality. We should also pay more attention to avoid supposed experienced editors from including bad sources taken from edit summaries. - Mgm| 13:49, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

• Tend to Oppose because Edit Summaries already have to bear a huge burden in a relatively cramped space, chiefly both what you did and why. Besides your motive, "why" also often includes external reasons that justify your edit (such as policy or a source). At the moment, most edit summaries don't meet (at least formally speaking) both the what and the why, often with unfortunate results, such as abbreviations that are incomprehensible to most ordinary editors, or necessarily-terse reasons that look peremptory, arrogant, hostile or just plain rude. There's also overcompression that hides (often unintentionally) something with which not all other editors might agree, such as "RVV" or "cleanup", tell-tale terms that many of us have learned to view with skepticism when posted by an unfamiliar editor. ¶ However, I'm not opposed to the idea of encouraging editors to give some indication of the source or policy (even though I'm a rank libertine and anarchist who thinks the Manual of Style should be far more permissive and about 5-10% its present monstrous size), so long as sources are also properly posted in the footnotes. Would greatly expanding the size of an edit-summary box, or adding a second one for sources help? —— Shakescene (talk) 07:03, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
• Strongest possible oppose - makes things very confusing, will obviously reduce in-article citations (which are extremely useful), and generally makes it harder to check if things are original-research or not, for example. Also makes us vulnerable to spam/attack page URLs, as summaries can presumably not be edited by admins. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:19, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, unnecessary. –xeno (talk) 19:02, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, providing sources is not what the edit summary is for. Equendil Talk 12:50, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
• I oppose this proposal on the grounds that it effectively asks people to put their sources in the edit summary box, which is not where the sources should be—that description would be misleading. Moving sources from the edit summaries to the article could constitute a significant amount of unnecessary work. If we had an "auto-append ref with contents of box X to addition" feature, however, that'd be a different issue {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 15:15, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support something needs to be done to stop unverified claims going into articles. People saying it's not what the box is for well the keyword is OR. Pragmatically, there is evidence from the german Misplaced Pages that sourcing is on the increase. As an aside, I'm sure someone could develop some sort of script or bot to apply the sources from the summary retrospectively. --DFS454 (talk) 16:01, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist tweak.

Often when browsing my watchlist, I find something completely unrelated to my interests. It would be nice to be able to remove articles directly from Special:Watchlist, either through an (diff; hist; unwatch) link or through a checkbox. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

There are several scripts for this at WP:JS. Algebraist 09:05, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:POPUPS works well for this. –xeno (talk) 19:02, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

See user:js/watchlist for an easy solution: just install on your monobook.js page as instructed. Gwinva (talk) 09:42, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Redirect Category:uncategorised to Category:uncategorised pages

The former is a historical category with no pages. I propose a redirect to the proper page. --DFS454 (talk) 18:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:CfD is the place for this I think. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 23:19, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

A tag for signalling a weak citation

In the Monomyth article, its 5th citation link says only "Northup, p. 8", and in Comparative mythology the 8th citation is identical. So I researched online and didn't come up with anything, it seems original research being claimed as fact.

To quote from the Monomyth entry: Although well-known in popular culture, the monomyth has fallen out of favor in academia, which currently leans away from comparative mythology (comparativism) and toward particularism.

To quote from the Comparative mythology entry: However, modern-day scholars lean more toward particularism, feeling suspicious of broad statements about myths.

I'd like to highlight the linked citation as weak or too insufficient. "Northup, p. 8" doesn't really help to verify and further research the source. boozerker 18:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

What research did you do? Have you checked the given reference, "Northup, Lesley. "Myth-Placed Priorities: Religion and the Study of Myth". Religious Studies Review 32.1(2006): 5-10"? Algebraist 19:18, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, further down. But shouldn't the source be listed in the numbered citation? Also, we can still use a tag for really bad citations. boozerker 19:23, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

It's one of the standard ways of presenting references (see WP:Citing sources#Shortened footnotes). Not sure abount the mix of styles in a single article, though. Algebraist 19:28, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

You probably want one of these templates:

• {{Verify credibility}}, flag a source as possibly being unreliable and/or unverifiable
• {{Verify source}}, request that someone verify the cited source backs up the material in the passage
• {{Failed verification}}, source was checked, and did not contain the cited material
• {{Request quotation}}, request a direct quote from an inaccessible source, for verification purposes

--—— Gadget850 (Ed)  - 19:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. If encountering a bad cite, should I put the tag next to the cite # in the article paragraph, or down at the bottom of page in the reference list? boozerker 20:58, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Inline after the <ref>...</ref> in the body. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  - 21:01, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

AES

A proposal has been made at MediaWiki_talk:Revertpage#AES, however, additional discussion is needed. -- IRP ☎ 22:14, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Image → File

After the rename of the "image" namespace to the "file" namespace, I propose that we rename links to "images" to be links to "files", if the article is already being edited for some other reason. For example, this can easily be done using AWB while also making other edits, but edits should not be made solely for the change as it is a waste of server energy.

The reason for this proposal is that seeing both "Image" and "File" could be confusing to newer users who aren't aware that there was a change. File is also the more correct term to use after the rename, and being two letters shorter could have some impact on page loading for users with slower connections if there are a lot of files on the page.

Thoughts? –Drilnoth (T • C) 22:45, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I know you said "if the article is being edited for some other reason" but I still don't see the need for a planned process to change these over. I figure if you notice while editing an article, change it if you want, but it won't make any difference. - Rjd0060 (talk) 02:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that there needs to be a specifically planned process to accomplish my proposal, just an acceptance of the change when someone uses AWB or the like and makes it. –Drilnoth (T • C) 12:18, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

You've already started planning the process, by creating this thread. :-) I don't see a need for this organized effort, honestly. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:08, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Using image vs. file will have no noticeable effect on loading time. What matters for most page loads is the rendered text, and "Image:" is always converted to "File:" for the rendered text except in the rare case of unpiped image links like Image:Example.jpg, even then, the target of the link is still converted and a couple bytes isn't going to make a difference, even on a dialup modem. There might an extra microsecond to look up the namespace alias on the server, but the performance impact is basically nil. Mr.Z-man 16:45, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Yep, all excellent reasons why we shouldn't go through and changes these en-masse, but I'm sure the it could be added to AWB's general fixes (if it hasn't already). Drilnoth has a point about consistency and not confusing new editors. It'll be a slow process, no doubt. –xeno (talk) 16:51, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay; I just wanted to make sure that I could add the change to my customization of AWB and that there wasn't any real opposition to it (I can't tell if Rjd0060 is opposed or just neutral on this matter). The primary concern was to reduce confusion for newer editors; I didn't know whether the loading time thing was accurate or not. And I just prefer file over image. :) –Drilnoth (T • C) 17:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

The change from Image: to File: has not been published very widely, so there are probably quite a few long-term editors who are not aware of it (I wasn't). And then just changing this will actually confuse them even more than new editors, who will simply start using File: to start with. Since there is not any positive effect to be achieved by changing Image: to File, I would still recommend to NOT do combine changes in other edit work. AWB work is often already obscure; please don't make it more obscure. IF the change is necessary/required/decided, then a simply bot can do all the changes throughout WP. Wim van Dorst (talk) 19:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC).

Hide footnotes for printing

Hi,

I would really appreciate if you could include a function so that you can hide the footnotes in the printable version. It would save me la lot printing paper, and it could be an optional setting, sothat the ones who want the footnotes can keep them. Furthermore you could also include an option to hide the Reference out of the printable version.

Sincerely yours, pascal — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.66.148.198 (talk • contribs)

• Create an account
• Edit Special:MyPage/monobook.css
• Add:

ol.references, .references-small *.printonly {display: none;}

• Follow the instructions at the top of monobook.css to bypass your cache

--—— Gadget850 (Ed)  - 17:03, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Excellent suggestion pascal. Gadget850, It might be really helpful to include a button that does the same, for printing. Lots of news sites and web pages have the option to get a clean print. If the option must be hunted for, people aren't likely to know it's there.

Here's the first example using a New York Times article on Misplaced Pages.

The print button there is highly visible and gives us this next page.

Any thoughts? boozerker 18:32, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Not only do we have a link in the sidebar to the printable version, any decent browser will default to the printable version if you try to print anyway. Footnotes are an integral part of the article, so I don't think they should be left out of the printable version by default. Algebraist 19:02, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Print styles are automatically applied unless your browser does not support CSS; for those, we have the "printable version" link on the left sidebar. See Help:Printable for more info (I have been rewriting this help page). We don't print elements such as section edit links, navboxes, article message boxes and more. Printing references should be a matter of personal choice; I don't think this should be non-printable by default. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  - 19:09, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Let me try this again. The previous rule will neither display nor print the references. To display but not print, use this rule:

@media print {
    ol.references, a.references-small {display: none;}
}

--Gadget850 (talk) 19:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikidoc.org

The gentleman Michael Gibson who operates wikidoc is interested in combining wikidoc with wikipedia. I think that this would be a wonderful idea. They are under the same license as wikipedia but have tighter security with respect to vandalism. They are also written more for a medical audience. Not sure if it would be best to attach it as a sister project or combine much of the information into wikipedia ( as that is were much of the information comes from in the first place ). Anyone have any thoughts?--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

This is an issue you'd have to take to the Foundation, the users can't decide on their own. But I'm fairly sure you'll just get a "no"... ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 16:07, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what kind of format the content would take. I'm fairly certain the Foundation would not host WikiDoc without some form of payment, given the extra traffic it would need to host. As far as combining content, what would the mechanism be for moving content back and forth? This sounds like a GFDL headache.

All this apart from the fact that WikiDoc was launched with much fanfare, largely built on Misplaced Pages's current medical content but without any consultation. JFW | T@lk 09:59, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I was just out of luck, but for the 5 articles I checked, none came with sufficient sources. Merging the wikis together would only give us a whole bunch of extra unreferenced material. Not to mention we already cover much of the topics they have. - Mgm| 12:47, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

The one article I looked at, Local anesthetic, (yes, I know, inadequate sample) started out life as a Misplaced Pages article of around 8,000 characters, in October 2007, and (on WikiDoc) had reached 12,000 characters (after 15 edits) as of December 2008 (its last edit). Meanwhile, the Misplaced Pages article, after about 70 edits, had also reached about 12,000 characters in length. So it would be an interesting challenge to try to figure out what new material in WikiDoc was worth bringing across. In any case, it makes absolutely no sense (to me) to have WikiDoc as a separate Wiki. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:17, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's up to the foundation, but I don't think it's a good idea either. WikiDoc is under GFDL, so all changes they have that we don't, we can incorporate into Misplaced Pages anyway. SoWhy 23:27, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I see this as mainly as a way to increase the number of editors of medicine article. It does sound like a nightmare to combine the two and would be easier to have it as a sister project. This would make the transfer of info back and forth easier. One could write for a medical audience. It would be like have we have simple English as a language. We could have medical English as a language aswell? Just ideas.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:14, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

It's not at all clear that having that wiki be on a Wikimedia Foundation server would make transfer of information back and forth any easier. We already have a system where (using interwiki links) we can link to another wiki that isn't in a WMF domain. And we can obviously cut-and-paste from WikiDoc, something that probably wouldn't be a good idea if WikiDoc really was aimed at a medical audience.

I suppose it would be easier, if WikiDoc was a WMF wiki, to ask editors of WikiDoc to do (more) editing at Misplaced Pages, but since WikiDoc seems be be based around visible "ownership" of articles ("editor-in-chief") whereas that is against the rules at Misplaced Pages, I suspect that very few editors would be willing to switch. And WikiDoc doesn't allow anonymous (IP editing), something that is a core Foundation principle.

Obviously editors at WikiDoc are aware of Misplaced Pages, plus they have MediaWiki editing skills, so if they want to edit here, why wouldn't they already be doing so? In short, the best way to add editors to Misplaced Pages - if that is the goal - is probably to shut down WikiDoc. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:54, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikidoc does not allow anons to edit which I think is great. Some of use get tired of all the vandalism and wish to know more about the editors which I think attacks people to wikidoc. I do realize that this is a long shot and just put the idea out there.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Repurpose of Template:Picture of the day

I recently came across this template, as it was tagged on a file in the Special:UncategorizedFiles. While it being picture of the day is worthwhile and all, I don't think this template should be transcluded on the front of images. Like featured article and good article milestones that are accomplished on Misplaced Pages, I think this template would be best repurposed to the talk page of the image, instead of the actual image itself. Doing this would stop the false leads into finding uncategorized files (since most featured images are on the commons, a lot of uncategorized images tend to be wikipedia file pages with nothing but the potd template on it). — Moe ε 22:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Nobody reads image talk pages. Anyway, anything with a POTD tag on it should also have a {{FeaturedPicture}} or a {{FormerFeaturedPicture}} on it, which would resolve the problem of being uncategorized. MER-C 08:28, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion to make Cancel button as noticeable (in same type of box as) the 3 boxes to its left

When I was first using Misplaced Pages (it can be overwhelmingly confusing at first if you're not used to looking at lots of mark-up!) I used to accidentally miss (not be able to find) the cancel button quite frequently, and sometimes ended up clicking on 'save page' or 'show preview' instead! (Then having to undo it, I think. It's all a bit of a blur, honestly, but I know I kept missing the cancel button.) So I think it might be helpful if the cancel button was as noticeable as the 'save page' and 'show preview' buttons, perhaps just by putting it in a box like the 3 currently to its left? (And maybe making it red, or pink, or something.) Just a thought. Thanks very much. (p.s. Misplaced Pages is great! I love it! Go Misplaced Pages!)--Tyranny Sue (talk) 04:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I think making it a button isn't too bad, but coloring it different... I dunno.
Keep in mind that you can also always just hit "back" in your browser, or click on the "article" or "discussion" tabs at the top (depending on where you are). EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea to make it a 4th button (Save page/Show preview/Show Changes/Cancel edit) and would cut down on accidental newbie saves that appear as vandalism. Is there any way this can be advertised more for a larger audience to discuss? --64.85.214.183 (talk) 18:51, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion for WP software. If the "Edit summary" is left blank...

If the "Edit summary" is left blank then it would be nice if the software would pop-up an intermediate page that gives a little warning and says "You forgot to fill out your edit summary, please fill-out the edit summary to continue." in bold & red letters directly next to the field.

Various online forms do this sort of thing as a reminder. Like when you come across a form that asks you to fill-out your name, address, phone number, email etc. If you forgot a field it will notify you... I must admit sometimes I am flying through something and I click before I realised that I've revised without adding to the edit summary. Because of this I wish the Misplaced Pages software could pop-up up a warning that the edit summary wasn't filled out. To my mind, I think a LOT of vandalism on WP might also get circumvented this way because if someone has a track record of claiming they are doing something legit (according to the edit summary they posted, but in actuality they aren't) then they will have eventually left a long trail showing they intended to vandalise while making their false edit summary statements claiming they were doing good. Others who are making legit contributions will get a mere small nudge to share what they are changing and will be able to move along thereafter. Would this process add too much load to the WP servers? CaribDigita (talk) 04:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

There is. Special:Preferences → Editing → "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary". EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:52, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, this is an interesting idea: how about requiring edit summaries as a way to prevent IP vandalism? Calliopejen1 (talk) 12:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

It's been suggested! ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 12:26, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• Then they'd just include a seemingly innocent summary making the vandalism harder to spot.- Mgm| 12:43, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• Ditto. I'd much rather have vandals do their things from an IP and no edit summary, the more they stand out the better. Besides, I find it infuriating when some piece of software tries to force me into doing something. Especially with popups. Ain't how tools are supposed to behave. Equendil Talk 23:32, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oh no you have me all wrong. It would **not** be a "pop-up", as in a Javascript pop-up window. I hate those too. It would look like the same thing as when you only--- input your username (but not password) on say the Yahoo login or Gmail mail login. If you don't fill in *both* the username and passwords on those sites they return you to the same page again with the red text reminder asking you to input something in both username and password fields.... In the meantime, great suggestion EVula. I'm going to turn mine on right now. :-) CaribDigita (talk) 01:26, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

• I would prefer mandatory filling of the edit summary for logged-in users in the article namespace. It would be very helpful for page watchers, and also it could prevent having too many edits by the user in a short span of time. Jay (talk) 02:49, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • We could start by having the preference "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" set to "yes" (that is, checked) for all new user accounts. Then editors could turn it off if they wanted to. Plus the edit summary would not be mandatory, since clicking the "Save page" button a second time will save an edit even though the edit summary is (still) blank. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:02, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

RFC: Notability of free open source software

Misplaced Pages is currently missing a standard of notability for free open source software. I wrote a proposal at Misplaced Pages:Notability/RFC:Notability of free open source software and would welcome your comments. Thank you, Dandv (talk) 04:45, 10 April 2009 (UTC).

Referencing stats

Not really a proposal, other than we should have better stats regarding quality control. Anyways, at User_talk:Peregrine_Fisher#Referencing_stats one of the nice bot operators has come up with some stats about referencing efforts. Check it out. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:54, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Adding a note on sourcing in copyrightwarning or edittools

I have often noticed IPs or new users who didn't know how to cite, and messed up with references tags or just didn't format. So we could add a note on sourcing and link to Misplaced Pages:Citing sources in MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning or MediaWiki:Edittools. Of course, it would also help to improve sourcing. For example:

• Content that violates any copyright will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable, please cite your sources. You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL.

And/or adding a more detailed note on this below Please note:, although it would be less visible. Cenarium (talk) 19:28, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Or something like:

Content that violates any copyright will be deleted. You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL.
Encyclopedic content must be verifiable, references are required for most claims, please cite your sources.

Please discuss at MediaWiki_talk:Copyrightwarning#.22must_cite_sources.22. Cenarium (talk) 20:39, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Making the "remember this is only a preview" message look like an editnotice

See proposal: essentially with a bit of CSS we can turn the preview bar into a proper editnotice like all the others we have. Comments appreciated over there. Happy‑melon 19:57, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

My proposal: Good and Featured...Editors!

Hello! As a member of the Misplaced Pages:Kindness campaign, I wanted to brainstorm an idea for how to show our appreciation for editors. Now, first and foremost, I realize our emphasis here is on content, i.e. article writing in order to contribute to the sum-total of human knowledge as part of a combination paperless encyclopedia-almanac-gazetteer, but Misplaced Pages is after all a volunteer project and as a way to both recognize our contributors and to present for future contributors Misplaced Pages as a welcoming environment that appreciates its contrubutors, I propose that we have not just Good and Featured articles, but also Good and Featured editors! I think it would be a really nice thing to every once in a while show-case on the main page some editor who has made many constructive contributions to the site and again, it would give our readership (and potential writership) some examples of model editors as a way of showing them who to emulate and what being a succuessful Wikipedian entails. We can have discussions akin to RfAs and Editor reviews as to who to feature and I am sure we have a handful of editors with no serious conflicts that can receive pretty near universal support (weren't some arbcom candidates, for example, recipients of hundreds of supports with few opposes?). So, what do y'all think? Best, --A Nobody 03:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Poll: autoformatting and date linking

This is to let people know that there is only a day or so left on a poll. The poll is an attempt to end years of argument about autoformatting which has also led to a dispute about date linking. Your votes are welcome at: Misplaced Pages:Date formatting and linking poll. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 09:05, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Advertising discussions

Please see Misplaced Pages:Advertising discussions, a proposal I've made to formalise guidelines on where and how the largest discussions should be advertised around Misplaced Pages to ensure sufficient input to major discussions. Improvements to the page and input on the talk page would be appreciated. Carcharoth (talk) 10:33, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Poll on reviewer autopromotion for flagged protection and patrolled revisions

There is currently a poll on the autopromotion of reviewers at Misplaced Pages talk:Reviewers#Poll on autopromotion, for the trial implementation of flagged protection and patrolled revisions. For information, see general documentation and overview. All users are invited to comment, and to participate in the elaboration of a reviewing guideline as well. Cenarium (talk) 13:43, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Disputed maps templates

Despite the importance of the maps, we have very little editorial tools (or control process) over the maps. We have no templates, inline for map citations, or for map pages, to indicate that a map may be inaccurrate or unreferenced. We only have the {{POV-map}} template for indicating on a map page that it may not be neutral, but we have no inline version for caption. I propose creating the five missing templates, see also threads at Misplaced Pages talk:Dispute templates#Disputed map, Template_talk:Unreferenced#What_about_maps.3F and Template talk:POV-map#Inline version. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I support this proposal. Incorrect maps can distort an article greatly.HP1740-B (talk) 08:23, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting

I propose some automated (bot) cutting-down of this category. All the 6,119 page included have some <ref> issues that result in the loss of information. However, within that there are many distinct causes which a bot (or someone with a lot of spare time on AWB) could sort, leaving the important ones more accessible. The point is that many of these pages - and I wouldn't propose editing anything in article space, don't worry - are now archives, and no-one really cares very much.

That's just a start, but we'll see exactly the community is happy with (editing archives?) before proceeding. - Jarry1250 10:40, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

See Help talk:Cite errors#RE: Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting. We have been discussing namespace detection for this set of errors. I don't think there should be any issues with removing it from any talk page, but we need to discuss other spaces.

As to templates with refs; see Help talk:Cite errors#Broken refs in templates/infoboxes/etc..

--Gadget850 (talk) 11:18, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, having read a few of the various discussions, I think I'm with debresser - I'd rather fix these than ignore them. As for templates - and I'm sure your experience in previous discussion would be most useful in advising here - that documenting with a {{Reflist}} would have an added benefit of alerting people to the fact that the template may cause errors if incorrectly placed in an article. - Jarry1250 11:26, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

You want to fix the errors on talk pages? That is going to be a never-ending task. AS to templates, I had a template at {{template reflist}} but deleted it after discussion. It can easily be restored if needed. --Gadget850 (talk) 11:45, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough about talk pages, but we have thousands of never-ending tasks on Misplaced Pages, and a full backlog-clear would be of no harm, surely? - Jarry1250 16:15, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

• Agree about removing from this category all archives. If that is technically possible. And if there are a lot of them (500+). Very strongly disagree as far as templates are concerned. And I am willing to fix any template with such a problem (just as I did in Category:Misplaced Pages pages with broken references). Debresser (talk) 11:51, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

  What about warning people that these are potentially troublesome templates? Is that not a just cause? - Jarry1250 16:15, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Subpage feature

We are planning to enable the MediaWiki subpage feature on the namespaces Help, Help talk and Category talk. If anyone has any comments to that, see discussion at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)#Subpage feature. Technical comments are especially welcome, we want to know if anyone knows anything that might break when we turn that on.

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:12, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Automatic detection of citation format

I have proposed that Citation bot amends pages using a mixture of 'Cite xxx' and 'Citation' templates so that only one family of templates is used. I would welcome comments on this suggestion here. Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 20:01, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

New search engine option, so everyone is happy. The tags can be blocked from reviews.

• PROBLEM Many deletionists are constantly trying to delete articles they don't like, much to the irritation or people who like them and want them to remain. There are constant debates for deleting, merging, and editing articles.
• SOLUTION A simple solution would be to tag things, and then have the search feature filter things accordingly.

With the Google search engine, you can search for a specific term, found only in the tags, and only show those with tags you like, and not those with tags you don't like. Click here to see a search that reveals all those articles tagged as fancruft. You can have Google filter out all searches that have that also, if you don't want to see any fancruft at all.

If you want only want to find article approved as being of a certain quality level, then you can search for those who have an appropriate rating on the Assessment scale and/or the Importance of topic scale. Additional tags can be made. Just determine what some people want(such as articles for every episode, character, and list of weapons in a series), and others do not, and tag them accordingly, so people never see something they don't want to, while others can still have their fun.

Remember, 99% of wikipedia articles are just entertainment. Even some education ones, listing all species of extinct insects, ancient battles from two thousand years ago, etc, are entertainment only for those who like that sort of thing, there absolutely no practical application for that knowledge. And that's just fine with me.

And for all those people who are complain constantly that fancruft and whatnot give wikipedia a bad reputation, to whatever snotty elitists they believe are out there judging us and care about, you can have the default set to filter fancruft and whatnot out, people only finding it if they click the option under the search button, saying they want to see it. That way, everyone is happy, no legitimate complaints left to argue back and forth on. Dream Focus 21:33, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

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