Misplaced Pages

• Oppose. URLs and Facebook's link-posting function works fine, if you ask me. Guoguo12--Talk--  21:39, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support - Facebook is already on many other sites, and it's a great way to spread the message. So what if it's a commercial site and it's social networking? Great way to share. That said, I have opted out of this feature myself on Facebook due to privacy concerns (enforced via NoScript on my browser!) Magog the Ogre (talk) 06:53, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose There are tons of sharing utilities, bars, social sites, etc.. To add functionality for one or for all would be to extensive, and the "flavor of the month" always changes. If you like something, just use whichever tool you have to share with friends. Who (talk) 13:19, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support - I tend to agree with Fences & Windows. Being scholarly is not the same as being old-fashioned. There are even services now like CiteULike specifically for sharing scholarly publications. Nature and journals published by Springer also include some variant of "share" links. The links don't have to be extremely visible, just present. I don't think it's in our best long-term interest to continue to isolate ourselves from the rest of the internet. Mr.Z-man 17:28, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support While it wouldn't turn Misplaced Pages into a social networking site, it would only serve to increase visibility of articles, encouraging contribution. I don't think WP:NOTMYSPACE applies here, the ability to share articles on social networking sites doesn't make Misplaced Pages a social networking site itself. Swarm 17:39, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support Misplaced Pages is not myspace, but to deny the existence of the social web is to miss out on a whole venue of site promotion. Being able to share articles only attracts more readers, and probably over time, more editors too. I don't see a negative. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 05:59, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose A special plea to those obsessed with Facebook: Keep it as a separate part of your lives. I use Facebook a little, but there is no way I want to see any connection between it and Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages is already very well known. A link via a url makes a perfect connect if one is required. HiLo48 (talk) 06:16, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose We really need a button to do this? All you are doing is ctrl+l, ctrl+c, go to facebook (as in type it in to the address bar, not search for it), ctrl+v. The only advantage of doing this via button is to collect statistics on our users as to who is sharing what where. Buttons are in my opinion more work than just copying and pasting, because as of yet there is no standardized way of doing this and you end up having to log in anyways. As such it usually takes me longer to post about something on facebook with a share button than it does to do it manually. --nn123645 (talk) 18:59, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
  • There most certainly is a standardized way. Mr.Z-man 22:23, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
    • Popular share buttons include share this, add to any, add this, custom share buttons, and the buttons from the third party sites (such as facebook). I would hardly call this standardized. --nn123645 (talk) 00:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose It's just like the like/dislike buttons above. ~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 20:36, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
  • No it isn't. The only thing that they have in common is that they're both buttons. The "like button" proposal above is for something that would be completely based on Misplaced Pages. Mr.Z-man 22:23, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Mix Misplaced Pages and Twitter

Misplaced Pages offers the "immutable" knowledge of the world. Twitter offers the "mutable" experience of the world changing in front of our eyes. Wouldn't it be interesting to being able to take a look to both at the same time? --Maalvarez (talk) 09:56, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

So go design that. I'm not sure exactly what you're envisioning, but if you have something in mind, web hosting is cheap (and often free) while you're just in development. Why does everyone want to throw something out there, and then have someone else go code it? Seraphimblade 10:11, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

For what purpose? There's no reason to read a Twitter feed and an encyclopedia article side-by-side (and I say this as an avid Twitter user with close to 13k tweets). Plus, your use of "immutable" and "mutable" here is incorrect: Misplaced Pages is an excellent example of "liable to change". EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:51, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Here's an easy way to do this. Go to Misplaced Pages. Resize your browser screen to half of your monitor. Open another browser window. Go to Twitter in the other browser window. Also resize this to half of your monitor. Place them side by side. Presto! Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:27, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

But that's hard to do if you don't have Windows 7… :( --Izno (talk) 16:46, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Hell No! The separation of WMF project and social network site must be absolute at the development level, or Misplaced Pages loses essentially overnight the credibility and academic standing it has spent ten years trying to gain. I don't see how this is so freaking hard for people to understand that Misplaced Pages is not a social networking site. Most Wikipedians are quite happy with the fact that there is no share or like or friend or whatever other buttons on Misplaced Pages, and that there are no corporate relationships between the WMF and these sites. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, it shares the knowledge of the world. It can be social in so much as that people work together to improve the project. Twitter is not academic, most of the time it is not even substantive, and it's primary functions are in no way comparable with Misplaced Pages. If you want a social experiance related to Misplaced Pages, hop onto the IRC, which at least attempts to be Misplaced Pages focused some of the time. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:25, 27 February 2011 (UTC):

I agree, hell I don't really consider Misplaced Pages to have much credibility, though I do think its articles are reliable 99.95% of the time. I would never use it in an academic setting, but I think it has been improving and maybe a few people are starting to respect it a bit more. Plus I am editting it in a serious manner rather than just vandalising, so I guess that says something. If you integrate the ability for Twitts to do this and that so that it becomes a social networking site where people talk about and share the most boring details of their lives, I think Wiki will lose any and all respect that, as Sven has said, it has spent all these years trying to get. So in closing, **** No! TheArchaeologist Say Herro 20:44, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Sharebox is a script that reorders your toolbox. It adds new buttons that make it easier to mail, print or share an article on Facebook or another linksharing service. See User:TheDJ/Sharebox. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  20:56, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a useful script. I didn't know that AddThis could be used in wiki scripts. Goodvac (talk) 08:37, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Please read Misplaced Pages: What Misplaced Pages is not. I think it is the section under sub-heading 2.5 that clarifies that Misplaced Pages is NOT a social networking site, so it must be kept separate from websites such as Facebook, Bebo, My Space or Twitter. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 22:27, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• No It has the same principals like facebook. ~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 21:21, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Testing new account creation processes

During the next couple of weeks, there will be some testing on the account creation process. I and the others who are working on this of course aim to disturb the normal routines as little as possible, but as we have seen (see WP:AN for more details), there can be some unforseen side effects. If that is the case in the future, you are welcome to help out. I have created this workspace, so that everything is transparent. If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact me through my talk page (but remember that I am on GMT+1 time), or through email (which you can find on my user page). I apologize in advance for any problems this may cause and hope that many people jump and create their own versions so that we have many new alternatives to test.

Oh, and by the way, I intend to start testing version nr 3 in about 10 hours. You may edit that page up until that moment. Thanks for your patience.//SvHannibal (talk) 00:15, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion this is a great idea. I think that it would also be a good idea to provide this information to those whose accounts were made at the ACC interface.. perhaps a little blurb on the response email for requested closed as created? Ajraddatz (Talk) 03:16, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, when ACC-created users login for the first time, they see the shiny "New messages" bar and they read the normal welcome template. The welcoming bot was down for some time last year, so the messages didn;t get out, but I;m quite sure they do now. *checks . Yep. They do. Oh, and the idea is wonderful!. I might try to create my own version... ManishEarth 12:05, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

• FYI: Now test nr 3 is up and running. Let me know if there are any problems.//SvHannibal (talk) 12:54, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
• And now test nr 4 is going on.//SvHannibal (talk) 23:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
• I just started test nr 5.//Hannibal (talk) 16:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC) PS. If you are curious about the results, you can have a sneak peak here.
• I just started test version nr 6. //Hannibal (talk) 12:52, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
• Me again. Test version nr 7 is on now.//Hannibal (talk) 16:56, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Qualification for being a reviewer

My proposal is that no editor ought to be allowed to review an article at a level that they themselves haven't reached. In other words, if you haven't written a good article or a featured article then you have no demonstrated expertise to review someone else's GAN or FAC. Malleus Fatuorum 03:08, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Is there an actual problem this solution is designed to resolve? Lack of reviewers is a problem that has plagued Misplaced Pages for years. Creating artificial barriers to willing volunteers will simply exasperate the existing lack of supply. Additionally, FAC has a reputation for being rather cliquish in nature. Implementing a restriction that only existing members of the FA club are able to comment on the worthiness of others efforts will simply compound this widely held perception and breed animosity to the FA process. --Allen3  03:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

No, of course there's no problem, everything's just hunky-dory, my mistake. Malleus Fatuorum 03:46, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I personally would oppose this, but only because I can't write a good article to save my life. It doesn't mean that I don't have a literary skill set, I'm just better at reviewing than writing. Seriously read one of my books and you would agree. That said, I agree with Allen3 on many points. Any input is better than no input, IMHO. Who 05:12, 3 March 2011 (UTC) sorry my sig got scrubbed. Who (talk) 05:15, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I oppose this, not because I don't think there's a problem, but because I think your solution needs adjustment. Not everyone is an excellent writer, but that does not mean that they don't know what to look for in conducting reviews. Instead of mandating that everyone produce content in order to review content at that level, why not mandate that new reviewers get mentored into full reviewer status. Case in point: In my first and only GA review, I asked an experienced reviewer to check my work. I got some things right, but I also missed a bunch. In the end, it went rather well, everything got caught and fixed, and I learned a lot about what to look for. If I decided to continue to do reviews, I would have continued to ask for guidance until I performed a review where the second reviewer did not see anything that I missed. It might have taken three or four or five tries, but in the end there would be two competent reviewers instead of one. Perhaps training is a better option, as it both includes those that make for good reviewers but bad writers and excludes those that make good writers but bad reviewers. Thoughts? Sven Manguard Wha? 07:04, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, people may know how something should be done without being able to do it themselves. Otherwise, we wouldn't have, well, critics in general. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 07:07, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

you can't vote for president until you've been one ;) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 08:12, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

This would discourage/forbid editors who may be experts or have access to good sources who don't happen to have got an article to GA/FA from commenting at all - surely this would make for a poorer quality review and poorer articles.Nigel Ish (talk) 22:12, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

• Comment I've done quite a few FA reviews including at least one to an article that Malleus submitted, and don't even have a Good Article to my name, so I suppose I'm a fairly extreme example of the sort of reviewer that this proposal seeks to weed out. As you'd expect I think this sort of rule is unnecessary and unhelpful, but I suppose I would say that wouldn't I. I'm especially not convinced that FAC reviewing should only be done by FA writers, as this is a collaborative process with multiple reviewers and FA delegates who can judge the reviews and ignore unhelpful ones. I accept that GA is somewhat different because one reviewer can pass or fail an article. But if it helps keep the peace, I will avoid reviewing further articles by Malleus Fatuorum, ϢereSpielChequers 00:27, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
• I have a hard time believing that doing this would be anything less than detrimental to the GA/FA review process. Second, I don't see how writing a GA/FA makes you more competent to review GANs/FACs. Who would say when "you've written a GA"? Nominating a good looking article and fixing minor mistakes brought up doesn't automatically make you competent to review GAs, and never doing this doesn't mean you're incompetent. Third, the "you can't comment on it unless you've been there" sentiment simply valid. Fourth, I don't see a problem that needs fixing. Swarm 17:15, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
  • second point is a good one. it's not always clear who gets how much credit for writing an article. Rd232 18:08, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Support. Of course. We don't need more unqualified reviewers. We need more qualified ones. It's hard enough dealing with qualified ones, but throwing poor quality into the process reduces efficiency, not increases it.

Doing a good review in some ways requires even MORE perspective than doing a good article. Ideally we'd have some superstud New Yorker editor figure. But failing that, an article writer is much better than someone who can't or won't write articles. If someone doesn't have the capability (or desire) to write an article, I don't want the review.

I've been unimpressed by the reviews from people who haven't done an article. They don't have an overall vision, they don't spell out their crits, they don't have any sympathy or understanding of the author. They seem to play the RFA power game of playing with the support/oppose to drive personal views on style choices, rather than making reccs on things where a choice is allowed. I've actually twice (in a short go) seen very malicious behavior from reviewers who had not done an article.

Only other thing is would add that we should do quid pro quo (require reviews) as DYK does. I'd MUCH rather have an enforced review from someone who writes featured content (he's going to give a good review, he's already shown that by writing articles that he can compose his thoughts) than have a review from someone who is intimidated by actually...well writing an article (which after all is the unit of work product from the reader point of view). And I'd be more likely to do the reviews and be more interested in the process, if it was a part of the civic duty, than if it's some ad hoc thing with Sandy whining about how no one does reviews or isn't nice enough to reviewers.

And I actually agree that the places (well FA really) are kind of clubby. But I don't think inviting Randy from Boise is the answer. The answer is getting ALL of the populaton of FA writers to do reviews, not just a small number.

TCO (talk) 14:33, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Improving review processes

Moving beyond the original proposal, which hasn't had any support, there is a real issue motivating that proposal. Now I would have thought more emphasis on collaboration would be the way to go, to ensure that (for GA) reviews don't rest solely on the shoulders of a single editor who might not be qualified enough. Get a minimum of 2 or 3, and on average it should be OK. Alternatively, and more in line with the original proposal, get the relevant community (FA/GA) to approve reviewers, based on some defined standard in which contributing FAs/GAs would feature as providing lots of credit, but not be required (necessary credit for approval can be reached without that). We could also consider ways to make reviewers more accountable, with a clear list of review contributions. Rd232 08:11, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I think there is a case for doing something close to this at GA where currently a sole review by any editor other than the article creator can include promoting the article to GA status. At FA we have FA delegates who close FAC discussions, perhaps GA needs a similar role but with the added responsibility that they can promote as GA an article that they have reviewed, and even where they are the sole reviewer. This would mean that any editor could still review at either GA or FAC, but only someone who has been trusted to do so by the community could close a discussion and decide whether or not to promote an article. So a single review could still lead to a GA being promoted or not, but only if a "GA delegate" did the review or made the call based on another editors review. As an aside, I'm not convinced that either reviewer or delegate is the best title for this. WP:Reviewer is already in use and I think delegate is a title that we have given a very different wiki meaning to its real world meaning. ϢereSpielChequers 15:32, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

GA nominations can sit for months awaiting a review from a single editor. How long would they sit waiting for a second or third editor to review them? Or, in the case of the alternative option, how much longer would they sit waiting for a "GA delegate" to promote them? The great thing about the current system is that GAs can either be reassessed by the community or by a single editor and delisted at any time. GA reviewing is a much more massive operation than FA reviewing, hence it naturally needs to be quicker, more flexible, etc. While a good idea in theory, I don't see how it could work practically. Swarm 17:06, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

"How long would they sit waiting for a second or third editor to review them?" - depends. Additional reviewers would be able to draw on the work of the first, and contributing to an existing review discussion is less daunting than taking lead (and often sole) responsibility. So paradoxically, you might get more people move into reviewing, if you can create a clear path for reviewing baby steps through contributing to reviews led by an experienced reviewer. Besides which, waiting months for a competent reviewer isn't a problem per se (WP:DEADLINE); far better than having people pitch in who aren't really interested and risk the review being too superficial. Rd232 18:06, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Would this slow the process down? Well that depends on the proportion of the current GA reviews that are done by people who would merit "GA delegate" status. If the bulk of the GA reviews are already done by people who are already at the standard to do a GA review on their own, then my proposal should not greatly impact waiting time, and as RD232 pointed out it might even speed it up, both for the reason RD232 gave and also as it could encourage reviews from people like myself who check some but not all aspects of articles. But also there is no deadline, better to get something like this right than have them done to a schedule. Though it would be important to appoint all the suitably active and accurate reviewers as GA delegates. ϢereSpielChequers 19:17, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, that pretty much answered my concerns. At the same time, while we have no deadline, backlogs are bad. Excessive waiting is bad. I wouldn't like see the GAN backlog get any more overblown due to waiting time when most reviewers are perfectly competent already. If process wouldn't be affected too much, it's definitely something I'd support. Swarm 01:08, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The other direction

Personally, I'm all for going in the complete opposite direction, here. We should just mark the whole GA/FA process historical and forget about it. Regardless of original intents (which, I believe, were good), the reality of the current GA/FA ecosystem is that it consists of an insular group of people who seek to provide ego boosts to themselves and others associated with the group. I, for one, will not be a part of it.
I don't expect that my opinion here will be popular, of course. As a matter of fact, I expect it to be largely ignored. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think that it's still important to state. People such as myself generally avoid those of you involved with GA/FA due to your collectively prickly nature (in the area concerned with the GA/FA process, at least). I have done some MOS work, and may contribute to parts of the MOS again, at some point in the future. Unfortunately though, the FA/GA process has become a rather exclusive and, as I said above, insular group (dare I say elitist?). I simply feel that it is the antithesis of what Misplaced Pages should aspire to, so I have no real motivation to enable it. I know that I'm not alone in basically ignoring the whole system (which, interestingly, is easy to do. Happily.). Regards
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:33, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

• You're not alone, although I would go further and include at least some of the most vocal the MOS regulars in that assessment. Many MOS-related discussions are simply impossible to contribute to due to a certain group of users, and enough MOS "guidelines" seem to be decided on and then enforced as if policy by small insular groups that when I hear about a new MOS prescription decided on without any community discussion I just chalk it up as par for the course. I too just try to ignore them whenever possible. Anomie⚔ 15:15, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

• I think it helps the articles to have people concentrate on individual ones to try and bring them up to a good standard. I definitely would not discourage that. And as to stopping people doing a review who hadn't themselves done work to that level, hasn't anyone heard of film critics? Do you really want to get rid of such opinions? Do you expect artists for instance to work in a vacuum with no feedback? Dmcq (talk) 15:41, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

• Whether V = IR is being cynical or serious, they make a very, very good point. A large number of people who "write GAs" tend to view themselves as vested contributors who increase in value with each icon they add to the top of their userpage. They then presume to look down on people who haven't done GAs. This commonly manifests itself as an oppose in an RfA or the like. It's really quite nauseating. While doing away with GAs entirely is...one option... a more practical option perhaps would be to do away with "keeping score" when it comes to GAs. This probably wouldn't be a successful community proposal either, but people who track GAs as if it were a game certainly tend to be a problem. Swarm 01:22, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• While I tend to agree about what the processes have turned into (not to mention the constantly tightening standards, especially with FA), I see them as more of a necessary evil. Being able to put a little icon on your userpage or seeing your work on the main page for a day provides a little more incentive for people to improve our existing articles, which we desperately need. They may be insular groups, but they're insular groups going around and improving articles; I can't really complain that much about it. Mr.Z-man 19:41, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

• Hear, hear!!! the reality of the current GA/FA ecosystem is that it consists of an insular group of people who seek to provide ego boosts to themselves and others associated with the group. I, for one, will not be a part of it. Articles should just be rated A - B - C - start - stub, with clearly-defined criteria for each, and any established editor should have the freedom to assign a grade. I have no interest whatsoever in any of the FA/GA nonsense, which seems to me to be related to the Cult of Administratorship, in which I also refuse to participate. Carrite (talk) 01:45, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• I've heard a few iffy things about GA, and worse things about FA, however the criticism I hear the most is that there exists a group of reviewers who will fail the reviewed item because there are problems in it, fixable problems, and yet even though it would be easy for those problems to be fixed by the reviewer, the reviewer does not 'see it as their problem' to do so. In the worst cases, reviewers will say 'you failed criteria X' and not even make themselves available for clarification, let alone assistance. I saw this recently in a Featured Sounds review, and the reviewer actually said as much, that reviewers review and that it should have been right before being put up for review (Mind you mentioning FS is a tad off topic, but still illustrates the point which I've seen in GA and heard about in FA). Now I agree with the second part, to a point, things should be in as good a shape as possible before being reviewed, but at the same time, there needs to be a recognition that things won't be perfect going in, and more importantly than that, there needs to be an attitude shift. I would go as far as to say that any reviewer that is unwilling to help fix the problems he spots should be barred from reviewing. I'm not saying that reviewers need to help rewrite articles or fix up articles that were clearly not ready to be submitted, but the fail and run attitude I've seen at GA and heard about at FA needs to end, and it needs to end now. More than a textbook sized MOS or the learning curve required to write top quality material, the biggest, most discouraging factor hampering these processes is getting a drive by panning. If a user's first GA review ends up like that, I doubt that user will be back for seconds. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:53, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Online testing of FA/GA reviewers

I have another proposal for improving FA/GA reviews - subjecting reviewers to a short 10 question open-book online quiz to make sure they have read the criteria. Anyone who passes the quiz would have a bit set in their signon record and they would be eligible to review FA and GA candidate articles. We are facing a large problem with criteria creep. Some people who are reviewing DYK-suggested articles treat the process as if it were a GA review of the article. Other reviewers give GA nominated articles an FA level review, etc. The plan could be implemented by designing a panel of 25 multiple choice questions that would be selected at random and presented to the test-taker one at a time with an explanation of why each answer selected was right or wrong. The test-taker would only advance to the next question if he answered the prior one correctly, and the bit would be awarded after 10 correct answers in a row.

At present, there is no guarantee that the reviewers understand their role or the criteria. This proposal would give FA/GA reviewers a sense of being "certified" and would lead to better reviews. Racepacket (talk) 15:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Automatically welcoming new users

The Welcoming committee has a huge task, to try and introduce new editors to the basic aspects of the wiki once they make a contribution.

My proposal would be to use bots to automatically leave a message with registered users once they make their first edit into the project namespace. Regardless of wither this is a positive or negative edit, I think a simple message could be generated to neutrally present the five pillars, some basic links to editing, and a handful of other useful links. This would in turn automatically show users the broader aspects of the community and perhaps lead them to make more constructive and focused edits. More specific welcoming messages could be used if the first edit is to a user page, a talk page, and so forth.

This would not negate the use of the Welcoming Committee, they could still provide a more specific and human welcome. But for the most part, their basic duty could just as easily and more accurately be performed by automation. Thoughts? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 06:13, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

This is a Perennial proposal ;) -- œ 08:48, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

See also User talk:Hannibal/Welcomecreation#Use the user's talk page for confirmation (a proposal intended as an alternative to the confirmation page for newly registering accounts) prompted by the hubbub caused by outreach experiments adding a preloaded inputbox "Create your user page" on experimental versions of the confirmation page.  --Lambiam 15:37, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah bummer, sometimes a good idea is just the same old unpopular idea. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 16:54, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

One unusual aspect of this perennial is that some of our sister projects have successfully implemented it, Commons has been doing it for years. What we don't know is whether the advantage of welcoming those newbies who currently get ignored offsets the disadvantage of giving an impersonal welcome to those newbies who would otherwise have received a personal one. I did make a proposal some time ago to try and achieve the best of both worlds by using a bot to welcome all the newbies who were still unwelcomed a week after their first edit - strategy:Proposal:Welcome all useful new users, if necessary by a bot. Perhaps now would be a good time to refloat that idea? ϢereSpielChequers 01:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that sounds like a great idea. I'll definitely expand on my thoughts if there's another proposal. Seems like a bot welcome is better than no welcome any day of the week. At least a welcome template tells newbies where to get help and answers to their questions- whereas an "unwelcomed" newbie will have no clue where to go for this. Swarm 02:27, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Maybe welcoming the people who fall through the cracks might be a good idea, after a week they're probably not goingto get noticed by anyone. More generally tho, how personal are the welcomes from the Welcoming Committee? Is pasting a template on a talk page really a personal welcome? Certainly humans can give more appropriate welcoming messages, like if the user makes an nonconstructive edit, but for general editing advice and policies, I think a bot would do just as good or better. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 04:37, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Exactly what I was thinking. How impersonal is a bot compared to a human when all it does is paste the exact same welcoming template a human would? Another point to consider is that if an account creator has the option enabled a welcome template is automatically placed on any account they is create. This is on Misplaced Pages. Swarm 05:46, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Just for the record: it's much more important to have a welcome template on commons to inform the user how to proceed within the context of the many different languages. This is not an issue here. Magog the Ogre (talk) 05:53, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I welcome a lot of newbies, but I almost always use one of four options on friendly: The plate of cookies, welcome your first article didn't meet guidelines, welcome IP vandal and welcome vandal. Two of those are tailored level 1 warnings and a third is almost a warning - so I fit the usual pattern of personalised relevant info for problem users but an impersonal welcome for our best newbies. Occasionally I will tailor it by adding a relevant wikiproject to the message. Maybe we need an easier way to do that? Or maybe we could get the bot make their message personal by mentioning some wikiprojects that are relevant to the articles they edit? If we want to reverse the trend of fewer editors joining us, then personalising the welcome message would be sensible. Better still we need an analysis done of the hundreds of thousands of users welcomed and the welcomes they've been given so that we can identify which welcome messages work best and encourage their use. ϢereSpielChequers 10:32, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I did some counting.

Of the last 1000 user creations of February, 461 had one or more contributions. Of those 461, 278 (60%) had no talk page yet.

Of the last 1000 of January, 356 had at least one contribution. Of those, 166 (47%) had no talk page.

I think that means that half the users who did more than only register received no welcoming message.

Here is a simple experiment. For a couple of days, we send randomly about half the new users an automated welcome message. For the other half, business as usual – maybe someone welcomes them personally, maybe no one does. (Whether someone does or does not gets an automated message should not be really random but be decided in a way that can easily be repeated afterwards, such as whether the user name has an even or odd length.) Then we check say two months later if there is a difference in activity between the two groups.  --Lambiam 18:10, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. If we determine which method best increases the number of return users then it would help us move forward. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 01:27, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

From a pragmatic point of view, I would oppose this. Redlinked talk pages can be a good cue for vandal fighting and sock-hunting. Seeing redlinked talk pages for people with precocious knowledge of Misplaced Pages is a very useful cue to investigate further. If we bluelinked every talk page as soon as someone edited, it would make it somewhat harder to track these sorts of issues. --Jayron32 04:46, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Special:Log/newusers shows both links to talk and contribs. Checking for vandalism involves actually looking at user contributions, and the only useful information you can glean from redlinked talk pages is that no one has chastised them yet. If this proposal were put into place, it might take an extra click (or mouse hover depending on your setup), but I think the potential of increased return users would far outweigh this small negative. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 06:00, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, it was a small (but very real) concern. I am quite experienced enough to know how to root out problematic users. I was just noting the lamentation of the loss of one small tool that does help find socks rather easily, should this proposal be accepted. In other words, yes, I know quite well the limitations of relying on the redlinked talk page as the sole method of finding socks. Still, its a handy tool at times, and I would miss it if we bluelinked every talk page the second an account went active. --Jayron32 06:13, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I understand your perspective, and it is a legitimate concern. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 07:13, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

This is a perennial issue which really arises because of the flaw in MediaWiki:Welcomecreation: it disappears and can't easily be found again. The solution was proposed as Template:Bugzilla: essentially, turn it into a dismissable message shown on new users' talk pages, which isn't an actual talk page posting and doesn't turn the redlink blue. Rd232 14:34, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

• I hadn't been aware of the sock spotting advantage to redlinked talkpages. However that would not be affected if we set the bot to welcome people who still had redlinked talkpages one week after their first edit. ϢereSpielChequers 18:19, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
• I oppose welcoming users on their first edit with a boilerplate message. First off, personally I don't think that boilerplate welcome messages help with anything at all. People recognise it instantly as an automated message. I for one wouldn't care for an automated message on my talkpage. Ideally I'd say leave a personal message on a talkpage after about 5 edits, to show the newcomers that they are free to experiment and make mistakes, and people aren't watching on their fingers with every step and mistake. Then, if they still haven't been welcomed after about 20 edits, leave a boilerplate message (and hang our collective heads in shame). I know this is a lot more labour intensive than templating. Still, I believe that welcoming one newbie properly should be chosen over welcoming 20 with a template. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 21:55, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• By the way, I would very much welcome metrics of newbie retention on editors templated newbies verses non-templated numbers. I can have all the ideas I want on the effectiveness of template/boilerplate messages, but without any numbers it's anyones guess really. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 22:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to run a test session

I think the test method outlined by Lambiam would give us the most neutral way of determining which method of welcoming functions better. Taking a test group of new editors and automatically welcoming them when they make their first edit, and then a control group where regular methods of welcoming occur. Using a few thousand accounts for each group would reduce the chance of number skewing.

The bot welcoming message would be simple, it would only include neutral information about content policy, MOS, how to interact with users/talk pages and how to get involved with the community. Just short and simple. Then after several months, we analyze the results. Thoughts? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 15:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd support a test, though it needs to be 7 days after their first edit not immediately, and in that case the control group should be unwelcomed users not manually welcomed ones. We also need to test the efficacy of various welcome messages. ϢereSpielChequers 18:23, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Things I, as a newbie, would have liked to have seen when I was "welcomed"

This is my first visit to the village pump. After a year or more of considering the possibility, I did my first edit on 23 February and since then have been enjoying populating a very small corner of the Misplaced Pages world (Jewish musicians, poets, actors, etc involved in cabaret in Warsaw between the World Wars) using a few Yiddish reference books I've been reading and some amazing Polish savants who post inter-war tangos on Youtube!

Feedback for the old-timers: I found the Misplaced Pages interface incredibly intimidating. It's austere and verrrry nerdy and obscure. It took me a while to even SEE the "edit this page" tab - at first I thought I could only edit the reference list, not the article itself. Also, I couldn't figure out for a couple days HOW to make my references show up in a reference list.

I needed (still do need) a list of formatting rules close at hand - I still look some of them up by GOOGLING wikipedia to see, for instance, how to format a "redirect." I know there is a cheat sheet but I can't remember how to find it. I am overwhelmed by all the acronyms. I stuck it out because I was curious, but it wasn't easy. I'm surprised and pleased to see so many people here caring about there being new editors - and I did receive a "welcome" note - but really what you need is to see this interface through my eyes (or any other newbies). It doesn't work like any forum or other user-content-generated site I've ever been involved with. And now I will remember to add my four tildes. Jane Peppler (talk) 03:37, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Truly this is a testament of great courage and tenacity. Hearing your comment about learning how to make a ref show up is a very common problem I see new users having when I—very rarely— patrol new pages. Perhaps more effort should be made to direct new users towards the help button on the left hand side of Misplaced Pages, or to use the "first article" creator, or to look at the tutorial.AerobicFox (talk) 04:42, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

One of the biggest problems with referencing is that there is no standard. We have our citation templates, but not only do some people (including veteran editors) not use them, but there are different ways of using them, such as list defined references vs. ordinary inline references. Some use {{Sfn}}, others use {{Harvnb}}, and many simply create footnotes manually. Some "References" sections have "Literature cited" subsections and use footnotes, others don't. And if you try to discuss standardizing it across all Wikiprojects, expect to see people charge at you with pitchforks and torches... or just ignore you completely. Personally, I hope the new editing interface is released relatively soon, and I especially hope it handles references for us in a clean, efficient manner. But one of the biggest things I think we need for new users is a better interface to policies, like WP:MOS, WP:V, WP:NPOV, etc., as well as other things like WP:ASSESS. It needs to be super simple, easy to find, easy to read, but providing links to more detailed explanations for when the general overview is insufficient. As it stands, these important pages are long and difficult to read, and I doubt few editors have read them completely. – VisionHolder « talk » 05:22, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Re refs: There should be a "cheat sheet" which includes the suggestion that new users (or anyone, really) is welcome to insert a reference by simply entering the plain text in brackets. A wikignome will format it in due course. What is needed is a simple suggestion about what information should be entered, and the order, with a couple of examples.

Re new editing interface: The rich text editor at wikia.com is ghastly. Management and newbies love the idea of it ("look, there's a bold button just like on my word processor"), but the only things the clever editor can do are the dead easy things (bold, italics, and perhaps one or two other things since the last time I tried, months ago). The stuff which is tricky in wikitext is ghastly or impossible in a clever editor. Johnuniq (talk) 06:27, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Dear Visionholder: I visited those acronym links of yours (WP:MOS etc) and nearly fainted. Though I am a cum laude graduate of Yale University and read very long books quite happily, I find the formatting and tone (if not the content) of those pages so dense that they immediately fall into the life is too short category. You would have to hold a flame to my foot to make me read them. Jane Peppler (talk) 12:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Jane Peppler. I can remember being intimated by the interface, the tools and the WP:bureaucratese of the policies and guidelines. I've attempted an advice page at User:Philcha/Essays/Advice for new Misplaced Pages editors, which tries to write in simple English, to concentrate on useful tools and techniques, and to summarise the main policies and guidelines and link to pages where editor can get advice on the main policies and guidelines. But I'm aware that I'm very probably assuming too much - apart from WP, I've been using Windows since 1992. If anyone can identify problems or omissions, or suggest improvements, please comment at User talk:Philcha/Essays/Advice for new Misplaced Pages editors. --Philcha (talk) 12:29, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Reducing boilerplate below edit box

Between the edit box and the box below it (the one that allows you to enter wiki markup and such stuff as Greek and Hebrew letters by clicking) there are several lines of boilerplate text:

Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license. See the Terms of Use for details.

and:

If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. All text that you did not write yourself, except brief excerpts, must be available under terms consistent with Misplaced Pages's Terms of Use before you submit it.

(These texts can also be found at the interface pages MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning and MediaWiki:Wikimedia-editpage-tos-summary.)

By now, after some 30,000 edits, I just ignore them. So why do they bother me? Because this boilerplate stuff takes up real estate at an inconvenient place: I regularly find that I need to scroll the window down and up, again and again, to switch between the place in the editing window where I'm entering text and the Non-Latin-letters-etcetera box below it, since I want to have immediate feedback, but they don't fit together in the browser window. It is annoying to do this scroll down, click, scroll up for every single letter you enter. (I could opt to have fewer "rows" in the editing window, but then it becomes a peephole through which it is harder to keep an eye on the context.)

The proposal is:

Add an option (disabled by default) to the list of options at Special:Preferences/Editing to "Show Wikimedia copyright warning and terms-of-use summary before preview and edit box".

 --Lambiam 15:04, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I doubt any developer would get around to adding such an option, and disabling it by default would never fly; we want IP users and newbies to see that text. To disable it hide that text for yourself, add this to your skin.css:

span.editHelp { display:none; }
#editpage-copywarn { display:none; }
div.mw-tos-summary { display:none; }
#editpage-copywarn2 { display:none; }
span#minoredit_helplink { display:none; }

This could probably be turned into a Gadget if there were sufficient demand. Anomie⚔ 15:20, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I think you have misunderstood. The default (disabled) would let the page be exactly as before: with the boilerplate between the edit box and the goodies box. Enabling the option will move the boilerplate up to before the edit box, where it will still be quite visible, just as the anon edit warning "You are not currently logged in. ..." before the edit box is quite visible. But the CSS stuff does the trick for me; thanks.  --Lambiam 15:58, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I misunderstood. Sorry. Anomie⚔ 00:01, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, it stopped working; an admin deleted my skin.css page, stating: creates copyright headaches. :(  --Lambiam 00:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Someone who has been here for 5 years with over 30000 edits should be well aware of the copyright issues by now, without needing interface clutter to remind them. Try asking the admin in question what they're playing at, and if they won't undelete take it to WP:DRV. Anomie⚔ 05:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Another admin already restored it, stating: don't be silly – always good advice to everyone except clowns and comedians. I hope I did not unwittingly instigate a wheel war.  --Lambiam 13:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately being aware of the copyright issues means aproximately very little from a legal perspective. We need a release and by removing the we lose that release. Effectively your position is equiverlent to arguing that experence users don't need to add license templates to their images.©Geni 18:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

It is a totally different position that does not bear even the remotest resemblance to the strawman you're putting up.  --Lambiam 00:13, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Interesting argument. Do you really think one can prevent their contributions being so licensed simply by hiding the relevant text? If so, what is to stop them from hiding it with browser css (or a post-it note, for that matter)? –xeno 18:56, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Because that's browserside. They got a bunch of stuff sent to them that has the intention of showing that notice. With the CSS changes no attempt is made to show the notice. The whole area is very messy and best avoided for precisiely that reason.©Geni 19:11, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

So you are hypothesizing some future situation where someone would sue the Wikimedia Foundation for copyright infringement, after hiding the release via css? And you think that, after it is demonstrated that they had intentionally and willfully hidden the release, they are going to have legitimate grounds for such a suit? –xeno 19:19, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

they argue that their action was the equiverlent of opting out. The court might accept that. The court might not but argue that any future use of material derived from that work would then constitute a copyvio. As I said messy. The copyright situation on wikipedia is complex enough as it is and making it messier is at best missguided.©Geni 19:24, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that's a bit of a stretch - but would you be satisfied if a user who, having hid the release via CSS, made a blanket general release somewhere on their userpage? –xeno 19:26, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

(e/c)CSS is browser-side whether its delivered by the server or not. The text of the copyright notice is still there in the HTML source, its just hidden by the browser. The terms of use don't stop applying just because you don't read them. Mr.Z-man 19:30, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, the terms of use is still linked on every page, and clearly states how everything is licensed. I too find this scenario quite a stretch. henrik•talk 19:33, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

if you remove editpage-copywarn and editpage-copywarn2 (which appears to be what is being attempted in this case) then there is no link to the terms of use on the edit page.©Geni 19:41, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

No but in this case we need an active agreement which is a bit of a problem if the editor has turned off the mechanism by which we get that.©Geni 19:37, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

This is rediculous. Any editor may choose what to hide for him/herself, even if it is a copyright warning. One's personal CSS file only affects visibility to the eidtor itself, unlike licence templates, which are visible to anyone. Please don't remove those lines from personal CSS files. — Edokter (talk) — 19:13, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The license templates are the release in the case of images. The release in the case of text is clicking save page on a page with the text of editpage-copywarn next to it. Other people being able to view it or not is of no actual significance.©Geni 19:20, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

By hiding a message, the editor is asumed to have read and agreed to any message previously displayed. Hiding it does not in any way deminish our policies. If it were really this important, the message would be unhidable. — Edokter (talk) — 19:27, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

!)I don't think it occured to anyone that someone would try and do this and 2) how would you even go about making it unhidable.

You could remove the class ID, I suppose. In any case, as Z-man notes about, even when hidden with user or browser CSS, it is still present in the HTML source. –xeno 19:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Unless you are going try and argue that the courts would look kindly on a release in the HTML that was commented out I don't think "it's still there in the HTML" is an argument that gets us very far.©Geni 19:39, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I feel silly arguing about this in the first place, but I suppose frivolous lawsuits are a lot more common south of the border. –xeno 19:44, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

There are 352 users who are hiding copywarn2, including me for close to two years now. IANAL and find the idea that hiding the notice can be argued as an opt-out absurd, but I try not to underestimate the absurdness of copyright law, so I wouldn't want to rule it out either. Cat's out of the bag however. If anyone is seriously worried about this having the potential to create problems, ask WMF legal council, and have them worry about it. Amalthea 21:29, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The long term ones create another headache because of course the copyright warning has changed from pure GFDL to GFDL+CC-BY-SA.©Geni 23:58, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

And even 726 users are hiding copywarn. The way I see it, we all agreed at some point to uphold policy; we really don't need to do that with every edit. — Edokter (talk) — 00:35, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm in a weird position here in that I agree that it's probably not necessary, if we require affirmation of understanding of policy before the notice is disabled, but still kind of thinking that displaying it universally is a good idea. :) The only potential for legal problems I can see out of allowing opt-out would be if somebody argued that they had usurped an active account and so did not themselves agree to the opt out or know about the copyright policy, or if terms significantly changed (as with our great license shift). For all I know, it's plausible to unilaterally override everybody's opt out in the latter case, and the former could be taken care of by adding to that opt out requiring an affirmation of understanding that accounts are not transferable. But, again, I think it's a good idea to have it at the bottom of every edit screen because it may potentially provide an additional layer of protection for WMF, demonstrating a strong good faith effort to prevent misuse of the project. --Moonriddengirl 13:53, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Going back to the original proposal, if you add the release to the login page and repeat it as part of the setting on the preferences page, surely that is sufficient if the user has opted out of the warning next to the edit box? - Pointillist (talk) 18:48, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure adding text to the login page for everyone is a great idea.©Geni 19:20, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Why not? - Pointillist (talk) 21:33, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Because we try and keep it as sort as possible in the vauge hope that new users will read it.©Geni 00:00, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Is that an established view? I would have thought that the project would benefit from new users being told that "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL." BTW, why do you prefix your username with ©? - Pointillist (talk) 00:21, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Well the whole registration system is meant to be undergoing a complete overhal so I suppose historical might be a better description. The © is playing with a bug in CC-BY-SA 3.0©Geni 00:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Side question—appropriate use of admin powers?

Is it really an appropriate use of admin powers for an admin to go around editing other users' personal css files after it has become clear that there is not consensus for his/her position? Anomie⚔ 23:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

A strict reading of policy would call for warning followed by indefinet block however I would regard that as somewhat excessive.©Geni 23:59, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Revert, desysop, block, then ban. What fun. Mono (talk) 00:04, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I would say not. An editor's personal CSS is not subject to any content or copyright policy. An admin making such edits should revert his/her edits and apologize to the editor. — Edokter (talk) — 00:32, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Everything (with the possible exception of the logo) on this wiki is subject to the copyright policy. Quite a few of the CSD criteria could also apply. In fact since it is possible to drop comments into your monobook.css page there are quite a selection of content policies that apply.©Geni 00:37, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Right, there are cases where a users js or css file could be deleted. This isn't one - hiding a page element doesn't make it not there, any more than covering a contract with a piece of paper voids it. But I think we've come to that conclusion already anyway. Prodego 02:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Redesign

How about combining the two into a simple notice, like

Mono (talk) 00:04, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Isn't that considerably larger than what we currently have?©Geni 00:19, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

It is somewhat consolidated. But in my view, it should be shrunk to one clear line with a link to the Terms of Use page. — Edokter (talk) — 00:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Tried that. Actualy back in the GFDL days we got pretty close (although we used footnotes rather than link out). Current text is foundation mandated and objections about length got kinda brushed asside. Feel free to file a fresh protest though.©Geni 00:31, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the second? Mono (talk) 01:19, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

The second notice is not consistent with Terms of Use, in that hyperlinks and URLs are not the same thing. For instance, we use hyperlinks when copying within Misplaced Pages, not URLs. (Also, it's not necessarily to the page you're contributing to, as it could be a stable version stored elsewhere.) Both of them exclude reference to "except brief excerpts". I think we need to retain that. :) We don't want to eliminate quoting here. I'm not sure that either of these are an improvement over what we have, though. (Though it, like these, omits the other possibility of attribution--a list of authors.) --Moonriddengirl 13:30, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Adblock Plus

Personally, I found Adblock Plus an efficient tool to ged rid of those annoying messages. —Ruud 01:06, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Why have the boilerplate disclaimers?

Sometimes, I wonder why we have them there in the first place. I highly doubt most people, including newcomers, "casual editors", and veteran users alike, don't care to heed them. If they're going to add unverifiable or copyright-violating stuff, they are going to anyways. I feel that they are more in the way aesthetically than whatever benefits they have in informing users. –MuZemike 20:35, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It is, as we lawyers say, to cover your ass... in case of a lawsuit. Without notice of disclaimers etc it is hard to rely on them in court. With them you at least have an argument. Isn't this an issue that the Foundation's General Counsel should be opining upon, rather than the user base? – ukexpat (talk) 20:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

An alternative for the legal issue

All this started because there is people who do not like a mass of well known links in the space between the edit box and the summary and save sections; but now it may seem that it may be legally needed to include the copyright release in the save box. Both things are not mutually exclusive: if it turns out that the copyright links must be included, wy not include them somewhere else? The "important" area in edit mode, where editors use things and need to see them or scroll to them,, is between the tools and the save button. Above and below it's unused space (for editing purposes) and any boring mandatory messages may be included in there. MBelgrano (talk) 21:59, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Which was the very proposal with which this started, or, at least, to make that a user-preference option.  --Lambiam 00:51, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Non-admins moving pages with no Talk redirect

Pretty-much in the title: what would you think if non-admins could move pages without leaving a talk page redirect? Maybe the software could check for inbound links to the talk page and not present that option if they exist. The vast majority of talk pages have no incoming links, and the ones that do probably shouldn't be moved. The article/page would still leave a redirect, so no harm done. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 19:34, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that's a dreadful idea. Only admins should be allowed to do anything. Malleus Fatuorum 06:14, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

"move pages without leaving a talk page redirect"... how often is that a good idea? And WP:CSD#G8 makes cleanup of the occasional case easy. Changing the software is always hassle, you need to make a pretty good case to stand a chance of it happening. Rd232 00:54, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Interesting idea Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 08:26, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Merits aside, I think this is technically problematic as "not leaving a redirect behind" is currently achieved using the delete tool, which would have to be split or otherwise tinkered with a lot to isolate this particular implementation from the ability to delete other pages. Skomorokh 18:36, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

No, "not leaving a redirect behind" is achieved by unchecking the "Leave a redirect behind" checkbox on the move form or using the noredirect parameter in an API action=move query. This is available to users with the suppressredirect right (currently bots and admins). Anomie⚔ 21:59, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Force edit summary usage for new users until they're autoconfirmed

I don't expect to get much support for this one. But I want to propose it anyway. I often see new accounts make big bold edits without leaving edit summaries, and I assume good faith of course, but I still don't know why they boldly removed that certain paragraph or sentence, or changed that date or statistic, or whatever. I don't know how many times I've had to leave an extended message on new users' talk pages explaining why they need to use edit summaries. Better to get them in the habit early, then once they get autoconfirmed they can have the option to turn it off. -- œ 09:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I like it, can we set a trial to test this out? I think use of edit summaries would reduce the number of good faith edits reverted as vandalism. Yoenit (talk) 09:40, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I've often reverted silent deletions due to lack of an edit summary (they're indistinguishable from vandalism or POV-zealotry). Occasionally I've inferred "lack of references" as the reason and not reverted, but requiring an edit summary would significantly help in distinguishing nonconstructive deletions from good-faith ones. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:PEREN#Automatically prompt for missing edit summary. (But I'm not sure I agree with the “easons for previous rejection”: after all even most e-mail clients warn you if you're trying to sent a message with an empty subject line.) --A. di M. (talk) 11:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Do we have evidence that this is even a true perennial proposal? It seems to have been added back in 2006 , but has it ever been the subject of discussions? Yoenit (talk) 12:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

What about turning on the prompt gadget by default? Kayau Voting IS evil 12:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Right. The gadget is already there, but only registered users can turn it on in their preferences setting. If turned on, an attempted save of a summary-less edit does initially not succeed but instead displays a conspicuous warning banner: "Reminder: You have not provided an edit summary. If you click Save again, your edit will be saved without one." (See it at MediaWiki:Missingsummary.) Unregistered users and most new users don't get to see this, as it is turned off by default. Although enabling this by default is not exactly forcing unconfirmed users to use edit summaries, it most definitely will help encourage them to do so.  --Lambiam 14:02, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Could we change the text to something like "Reminder: You have not provided an edit summary. Edit summaries help other users understand the intention of your edits. Please enter one before click Save again, or your edit will be saved without one."? I am afraid the default text is not really helpfull to a newbie and is more seen as annoying. Yoenit (talk) 14:27, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I've put this proposal up at Misplaced Pages:MediaWiki messages#Proposed change for MediaWiki:Missingsummary. Please discuss it there.  --Lambiam 23:22, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm definitely all for trying to get people to put in edit summaries and I haven't the foggiest why ips aren't prompted to do so. It should be like that by default. Dmcq (talk) 16:13, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I really dislike this proposal. What are the new users supposed to do say they are for instance, just trying to get a piece of wiki code to work, or making minor edits. Forcing them to write a summary of everything they do seems like a hassle for new users.AerobicFox (talk) 17:27, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I would weakly support a dismissible reminder for anons and new users (weakly because of AerobicFox's concerns), but I would oppose forcing users to provide one. Mr.Z-man 17:38, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I've had other users ask me how to leave an edit summary before, so I do suspect that many just can't see the bar right above the "save page" button. How about we just move the edit summary above the edit box, make it some obnoxious color, and render "Edit summary (Briefly describe the changes you have made)" as "Edit summary (Briefly describe the changes you have made)" and/or (along Mr. Z-man's suggestion) if they try to save a page without putting an edit summary, a prompt comes up saying "are you sure you don't want other editors to understand what you're doing?" Ian.thomson (talk) 17:50, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

If you use an obnoxious colour then the message could use the same colour so they can easily spot where the place to insert a summary. Dmcq (talk) 13:13, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I would oppose compulsary edit summaries. The last thing we need is another hoop for new users to jump through before they can edit. Support a reminder, which would leave it firmly in their hands while still encouraging them to use the tool and educating them about its use. Interesting to note that of the eleven of us involved in this discussion, only four used edit summaries on the first edit, and none on all of the first ten ( ). Would it be right for us to force new users to do something that we failed to? Alzarian16 (talk) 13:27, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Support the default reminder in article space for non auto-confirmed users. It's no great imposition and should reduce misunderstandings and possible summary reverts due to misjudging new editor's intentions, particularly if edit is not well formulated. It should also serve to highlight intentional disruption. RashersTierney (talk) 13:45, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. As Alzarian helpfully pointed out this is not something we should hassle newbies about. I would be more tolerant of something along the lines of "congratulations on your 100th edit, may we now introduce you to the idea of the edit summary", but as for newbies I'm much more concerned about getting them to tell us their source. DE wiki has a referencing prompt and I would like that to be trialled here. ϢereSpielChequers 14:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

The last thing we need are more barriers, especially those requiring a degree of technical aptitude, to new editors contributing. Would not object to a dismissible prompt after 20 or so edits though along the lines of the comments by MuZemike and WSC above. Skomorokh 18:33, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Allow Wikimedia-wide searches from within Misplaced Pages search screen

There used to be a box at the right of the search results page that showed the most relevant results from sister projects (see Help:Searching#Search results page which btw desperately needs updating) This is no longer the case and hopefully someone can tell me why because I thought that was very a very useful feature. And I DO have "Enable enhanced search suggestions (Vector skin only)" checked in My Preferences, and this tool doesn't really do what I'm wanting to do. What I propose is to be able to search ALL Wikimedia projects, including ALL languages, all at the same time, and to be able to do this from the regular Misplaced Pages search results screen (perhaps by selecting it from the drop-down box that lets you select external search engines?) Is this feasible? -- œ 09:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, wiki-wide searches is a problem. If I search for 'Mikołaj Dowgielewicz' I get nothing - except on the wikipedia.pl because he is polish. In this case I took the picture, so I know he is polish, but next time maybe all I have is a name, and no nationality. Really I could use a system-wide search, for any language, and also for picture/media as well. It would be useful if the search result told me how many bytes (so I can look at the longest result first). As it is now, it is entirely a one-language closed box. If anyone knows how to do system-wide searches, then tell me, as I apparently do not know how to do that. --Janwikifoto (talk) 15:36, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Warning sign on Mediawiki:Signupend

Hello,

I just wrote a proposal about removing some of the more off-putting things on one page in the account creation. The discussion can use your input. Best wishes//Hannibal (talk) 14:26, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

After receiving only positive feedback on my proposal, I edited Mediawiki:Signupend to create a shorter second page in the account creation process, which I hope seem a little bit friendlier now. All the relevant information is just one click away. Assuming that newcomers like the shorter version, this may actually increase the number of new accounts slightly. We will have some results on that shortly on this page. (If you have an account on the Toolserver, please help out with that.)

Best wishes//Hannibal (talk) 22:46, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Revolutionizing Peer review and the accademic Process through wiki: Involving the Professors and digitizing academia

I propose we, wikipedia, begin to create appeal for PhD.

I propose the following

Wiki registration divide members up according to discipline of major and level of education (Elementary, Middle, Highschool,Undergrad Freshman+Sophmore, Undergrad Junior and senior, master candidate, master, PhD. Candidate, TA,)then...

Instructor 2 Board Eligible 50-75 hours of teaching per year

Assistant Clinical Professor 8 High degree of clinical competence, 50-75 hours of teaching per year

Associate Clinical Professor 6

Clinical Professor - - Evaluations - Excellent teaching, 50-75 hours of teaching per year

Emeritus - - Reserved for highest rank - distinguished record of UCSF teaching and clinical competence.

I proposed based on academic rank no level can edit the information placed by a supperior accademic title, and can only be altered by one of a higher or equal rank,

However, the issue is when a piece of information becomes out dated event though a professor said it is true and no one can change it. I would propose that any Graduate can question the point made by a professor and opon reaching a certain boundary it should be checked by a staff of PhD.'s hired or open sourced through wikipedia.

Also I propose anyone can hypothesize, while also a process of philosophical building can occur in the mind and words of anyone, as such anyone can propose theory (Following this same rank system mentioned above), however I propose only a graduate can choose to breath life into the idea and perform appropriate scientific experiments that will move the idea from philosophy to theory.

I believe this would revolutionize accademia giving professors access to a vast sea of ideas while establishing an interactive process of peer review which is constantly being refined by the masses. I believe this would increase education, reseach, wealth, knowledge and the condition of man.

Finally I propose we establish a section for every discipline with a subsection for every theory and its associated subsets until the fact level. I believe that this would enable man to revolutionize the peer review process making responces between professors instant and furthermore breaking peer review down from massive 30 page essays of 6 months of independent thought to thought by thought constant refinement.

Tell me what you think and please add and edit as you see fit! You can reach me at <redacted> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcl10002 (talk • contribs) 10:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Anyone signing up can claim to be a Nobel Prize winner, but how do you propose to verify the claims provided by a registrant? Your ideas may have some merit for an academic Wikidea (see also http://academia.wikia.com/), but not for an encyclopedia. I don't know if you are familiar with academia, but it is a battleground of ideas, and you don't want this battle to be fought out on the pages of an encyclopedia. And trust me, there are plenty of professors who are also kooks. If a professor replaces verifiable information by unverifiable self-glorifying content, anyone should be able to revert that. Academic qualifications are not required, or even particularly helpful, for being able to contribute to a good article on a topic like, say, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Finally, the title Emeritus doesn't mean more than that some geezer managed to get old without being kicked out of academia.  --Lambiam —Preceding undated comment added 12:36, 12 March 2011 (UTC).

You may also want to review Essjay controversy; the failed proposal Misplaced Pages:Credentials (proposal) and its talk page; competing essays Misplaced Pages:Credentials are irrelevant, Misplaced Pages:Ignore all credentials, and Misplaced Pages:Credentials matter; Misplaced Pages:Expert editors; and Misplaced Pages:Expert retention. Anomie⚔ 13:47, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I've known brilliant physics professors who couldn't program the time on their VCR. Having a degree in one field does not mean you know anything about unrelated fields. And, as Anomie points out, every field has its quacks. Simply put, what you're proposing won't work for Misplaced Pages. It might work as its own service, but I doubt it. — The Hand That Feeds You: 19:13, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

In addition to all of the above concerns, which are correct, proposals that restrict editing in some hierarchical way are incompatible with meta:Founding principles and therefore will not be realized.  Sandstein  20:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Citizendium works on similar principles. Peter jackson (talk) 18:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Automating submissions for Autopatrol right

In an effort to reduce the burden at WP:NPP, several people have undertaken a large project to review and grant autopatrol rights to users that qualify for them. Over the last 2 months, about 2,500 users have been reviewed and about 1,000 users have been granted the right so far. The task has been laborious and I would like to get one or more bots to help with the effort. Before making a bot request, I want to get input from the community to see if we want to do this. Do we want to do this?

If we decide to do this, I think much of the effort could be automated. We already have a script/bot that is generating reports of possible qualified users. This is the general idea — only users that would easily qualify for the autopatrol right would be automatically submitted for review.

1. The existing script/bot would be left "as is" to generate reports
2. One or more bots would remove users from the list using defined criteria
3. Users that remained on the list would be submitted to Misplaced Pages:Requests for permissions/Autopatrolled by a bot over a series of days rather than having seperate lists as we have now.

The bots could remove users from the list using several defined criteria;

• Users that have been declined recently
• Users that have copyright violations in their recent talk page history (certain messages from CorenSearchBot}
• Users that have created unreferenced BLPs in their recent talk page history (certain messages from DASHBot}
• Users that are currently blocked

Note that this is completely different than users requesting the right. This would be specifically defined to find users that would easily qualify for the right. Any input is greatly appreciated. - Hydroxonium (talk) 13:04, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

As one of the people who has been appointing Autopatrollers, I would add that the most important filter that the current bot reports lack is that the editors need to have created articles recently. The current bot just identifies people who have created sufficient articles to qualify, but many have been inactive for years. It is only worth assessing candidates who still create articles. ϢereSpielChequers 13:19, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

If the bot is just weeding out candidates who qualify on numbers but not on other things, leaving those who are eligible for review by admins, I think this would be helpful. I would suggest that it only remove indefinitely blocked users and it would be good if it could remove anyone who hasn't created a new article in, say, two months. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that's all good. No copyvios, no unreferenced BLPs, no indefinitely blocked users, no users recently declined. Indefinite is the requirement here in that if someone happens to be on a 1-hour block while the bot goes round, they'd be excluded under your criteria. Ironholds (talk) 14:26, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

If the bot was running a weekly report then you could keep it simple by excluding blocked users. If they happened to miss one week's report because of a 24 hour block the next week would include them. It would also be sensible to exclude those currently displaying a retired template on their userpage. ϢereSpielChequers 15:01, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

And the {{Not here}} template. -- œ 15:10, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

If we can exclude authors who haven't recently created articles then all the {{Not here}} ones will be excluded. If we can't do that then the report will be almost unusable as we have already picked off most of the active ones in the recent trawl. So unless we can screen out those who haven't created an article in the last couple of months then I doubt if there will be any value in running the report till nearly Xmas. ϢereSpielChequers 16:56, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Would it make sense to check for deleted article creations? For example, if the editor has created a couple hundred stubs, but half of them have been quickly A7'ed, that might suggest that having NPPs continue to patrol their creations would be a good idea. 28bytes (talk) 17:26, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Minor remark. The generated list is based on the count of created articles that are not redirects, but this also includes articles in the count that were created as a redirect, but were later changed (usually not by the creator) to a normal article. I assume that that is not intentional. In practice this may not be a big deal.  --Lambiam 21:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I would also suggest looking at the List of Wikipedians by number of edits here for those that may qualify. I would also recommend excluding from the list anyone with Admin Rights (the permission would be inherent in their admin powers) and anyone with a Retired template. --Kumioko (talk) 17:14, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The current prospect list excludes admins and Autopatrollers and yes any new list needs to continue to do that. I'm not convinced it is worth assessing editors who have high edit counts but don't create articles, the reason why we flag users as Autopatrolled is as a white list for newpage patrol. If someone has done fifty thousand useful edits but never created a new article then they would get Autopatrolled flag as part of the admin package if they passed RFA. But there is no reason to spend time checking their contributions otherwise - and no history of creating articles would mean it was more difficult to predict whether any future articles they created might merit deletion. ϢereSpielChequers 13:53, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, latecomer to this discussion. Per 28Bytes, and there are editors who mass create stubs - some of them are socks (or reformed socks and still creating stubs). What experience has been gained on this by the admins who have been according the right?--Kudpung (talk) 10:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Need help with time frames

Thanks for all the great input everybody. This is what the search currently does.

• Finds users on en.wiki who have created 50+ non-redirect articles
• Remove users that are Admins, Autopatrolled or Bots
• Remove users that are less than 6 months old
• Remove users whose last edit was more than 30 days ago

These are new suggestions

• Remove users who are indef blocked (or any block, they'll get picked up on the next run)
• Remove users that are {{retired}} or {{not here}}

These suggestions need timeframes

• Remove users that have been declined in the last (30? 60?) days
• Remove users whose last new article was more than (30? 60? 90?) days ago
• Remove users that have copyright violations on their talk page within the last (??) days
• Remove users that have unreferenced BLPs on their talk page within the last (??) days
• Remove users that have deleted articles in the last (??) days

Any help for suggested lengths of time is greatly appreciated. Thanks very much. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 08:25, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Deny automated recognition

You may be interested in my user essay User:Yaris678/Deny automated recognition. It recommends a tweak to how the various automated and semi-automated anti-vandal tools should work. Yaris678 (talk) 15:50, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I've seen some vandals that were obviously trying to earn warnings, but I usually start at uw2 and will skip right to a uw4 if it looks like it's gonna be a vandalism only account. However, most of the IP vandals I see are people just testing the waters, and they get scared when "some admin" (apparently only admins can give warnings?) "threatens to ban them" with the standard warning templates. Though I do agree that it is a problem that if I give a uw4 at the end of the month, ClueBot starts off with a uw1 in just a few hours, but I also see that behavior in human editors. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Add of access

Ok, so I think that SPI Clerks should have access to all relating to sockpuppets. It's strange that they do not have all sockpuppet things access. ~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 19:07, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

What are you even talking about? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:06, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm talking about that SPI Clerks gets to go block confirmed sockpuppet accounts and all of SPI. ~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 19:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Clerks are not necessarily Admins. That's why they don't get to block. — The Hand That Feeds You: 19:16, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Classification, Quality and Authorship

Let me start by saying how amazing the Misplaced Pages is. Given the disparity of views and how difficult human nature is it is amazing that the Misplaced Pages works at all.

I wonder if it would have been better to have different classes of pages within the one wikipedia.

Quality

• Draft.
• Mad ramblings of uniformed amateur. ;)
• Original work (new ideas etc).
• Expert.
• Reviewed for accuracy.
• Reviewed for unbiased and referenced.
• Reviewed for readability.
• Core document.

Classification

• Encyclopedia entry (a page describing a comprehensive list of final results and facts relating to a subject).
• Encyclopedia summary entry (a page describing a summary of key results and facts, to allow quick understanding of a subject).
• Derivation (a page showing how results are derived).
• Rigorous proof (a page showing a rigorous proof. Bias is towards accuracy, not readability).
• Teaching Page (a page showing a lesson or lessons to allowing the understanding of an area. An ordered series of lessons designed to allow understanding of a subject).
• Research Paper (allow actual research papers to be published on the wiki).

Authorship

• Designated author (or co-authors)
• Expert authorship only (authors must have established expertise in field)
• General authorship

I think this could open the Misplaced Pages up and allow a broader range of content. Thepigdog (talk) 02:54, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Please see WP:PILLARS and WP:ENC ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

"Allow actual research papers to be published on the wiki" -- Never going to happen. This is a proposal which would fundamentally alter the structure of Misplaced Pages, as such such a system would probably need to be implmented as a new project. --nn123645 (talk) 14:48, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, WP:OWN. Kayau Voting IS evil 15:00, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, "original works" and "experts only" will not happen because of WP:5P. There are already a number of systems that classify articles by quality or deficiencies, too.  Sandstein  20:30, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Most of the above types of material can be posted on Wikinfo, while Citizendium has an expert approval system. Peter jackson (talk) 18:08, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Automatically redirect CamcelCase

I usually have this issue when it comes to WikiProject redirects, but have had it elsewhere. It becomes really annoying when I am confused for a while as to why my link is redlinked. I usually try several other things before it dawns on me it was an issue of CamelCase formatting. I realize that this could cause issues when 2 items conflict and one is spelled with CamcelCase and the other isn't, but I think we already do something similar with plurals.陣内_Jinnai 23:28, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

If capitalization differences are autoredirected, then it becomes impossible to create distinct articles should one be evenetually needed under two capitalization schemes. For example, sat is a redirect page to a disambiguation page, while SAT is the college admissions test. If the redirecting was handled automatically, it would be impossible to distinguish between these two usages. There are likely many more examples. Instead, what you should do is create redirectes manually as needed. --Jayron32 05:45, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I would think the software should be able to be updated to check for the lack of an existing article under the exact name if typed in and only then redirect.陣内_Jinnai 22:32, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Since it already does this with first letters of the title, I would think it'd be possible as well. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 00:10, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I could imagine a search function similar to Google's that asks, when you are searching for 'dinasore', say, responds with "Did you mean 'dinosaur'?" That should also resolve 'New York times' and 'CamcelCase'.  --Lambiam 22:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

That would be useful, although I think it should auto redirect and ask the question then because I'd think most of the time the answer would be yes and it involves less clicking for the user.陣内_Jinnai 20:50, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Bot to reduce duplicate references

I have made a request to allow a bot to reduce duplicate references in articles, and I'm posting here to see if there is any opposition to the idea, or any requests to modify the way the bot would work. The bot request is here. In short, the bot will comb through this list of articles and search for duplicate references in each article. If it finds duplicate references, it will combine them using named references. In other words, if the bot finds multiple instances of this in the same article:

<ref>foobar.com</ref>

it will replace the first instance with:

<ref name=duplicateref1>foobar.com</ref>

and it will replace all subsequent instances with:

<ref name=duplicateref1 />

Please note that this bot will only affect references that are exact matches. If there is even one character that is different in two refs, it will leave them alone (unless the difference is only whitespace characters). I've made a table below to summarize the different cases that the bot will encounter, and whether or not it will take action on each case:

Hopefully the table above demonstrates that the bot will only be fixing duplicate references which were created either by mistake or created by editors who don't know about named references, and it will not touch any references that were purposely not grouped together. There are currently over 5,000 articles that have duplicate references. Let me know if you see any potential problems with this proposal. Thanks. —SW—  16:55, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

• Sounds good to me, I don't know what we didn't already have this. I'm no programmer, though. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:09, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
• As described here, it sounds great in principle. Would want careful testing before implementation though. Skomorokh 18:30, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support Nifty! Sounds potentially really helpful, with the appropriate care in rollout of course. I'd almost suggest that worrying about the cite template argument order is too conservative, but I'm guessing that if anything it's easier to code (and easier to code correctly) the current way, and it probably wouldn't pick up that many more duplicate refs. I wouldn't mind a version I could run on my own, either. --joe decker 18:38, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Reflinks will do this manually. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  18:42, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Awesome, I make a lot of use of RefTools but haven't played with Reflinks at all. Thanks! --joe decker 18:46, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

The main Reflinks has a bookmarklet that you can drag to your browser bookmark bar. Clicking on it will open the current page in Reflinks. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  04:20, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

You're right, it's much easier to program the bot if it doesn't have to worry about identical template arguments that are out of order. And, I agree that it would probably only find very few (if any) additional duplicate references if it was programmed to look for that case. Not worth the effort, and not worth the risk of introducing bugs due to increased algorithm complexity. —SW—  20:57, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

• Applauds* your good engineering sense.  :) (And thanks to other folks for pointing me at Reflinks, which I'm also using now to good effect in a couple places.) --joe decker 19:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• I'm surprised this doesn't exist already. I guess existing instances I've seen are using reflinks and possibly AWB? Rd232 00:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I was also surprised that this doesn't exist. I think the fact that there are currently over 5,000 articles that have duplicate references is proof that either no such bot exists, or that it's not doing a very good job. —SW—  15:45, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Whether we should have named references or not (and correspondingly, whether we should have multiple footnotes at a single point) are matters of editorial judgment; an article repeating one reference exactly is not a problem. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:18, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

As Pmanderson says, using named references is optional. Bots should not add "named" references to articles where human editors have avoided using them; see WP:CITEVAR. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

To be clear, the bot is specifically designed to not add named references to articles where human editors have avoided using them. It is specifically designed to find articles where duplicate references have been inadvertently introduced. Can you describe a situation where it is necessary to have multiple references in a single article which are 100% identical? —SW—  17:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• I don't see the objection. This does not seem to be the kind of variation in style that WP:CITEVAR is concerned with. It is the difference between:

John agreed, and the flight was uneventful. But on arrival in Chicago, the police was waiting for the duo. Martin had snitched on them.

---

References

23. ^ John Doe (1999). My Crook Years: an Autobiography. Hothouse Press.

24. ^ "An uneventful flight". The Chicago Flyer. 2009.

25. ^ John Doe (1999). My Crook Years: an Autobiography. Hothouse Press.

26. ^ John Doe (1999). My Crook Years: an Autobiography. Hothouse Press.

and

John agreed, and the flight was uneventful. But on arrival in Chicago, the police was waiting for the duo.. Martin had snitched on them.

---

References

23. ^ John Doe (1999). My Crook Years: an Autobiography. Hothouse Press.

24. ^ "An uneventful flight". The Chicago Flyer. 2009.

What is the value of having repeated identical entries in the References section?  --Lambiam 17:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, there is no value to having repeated identical references, and WP:CITEVAR is not a relevant guideline with respect to this topic. If sentence #1 cites reference #1, and sentence #2 cites reference #2, but reference #1 and reference #2 are 100% identical, then there is no difference for both sentences #1 and #2 to cite reference #1. The only difference is that it is more efficient, saves space, improves readability, and generally makes logical sense. —SW—  18:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

It sounds like you are arguing that using named references is required by WP:CITE, but it isn't. Articles are not required to use named references even if they have "100% duplicate" citations, which is why a bot can't just go through changing the duplicates to named references. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:01, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Bots are not limited to perform only tasks that are explicitly "required" by some guideline or policy. The reason that grouping identical references is not required is because Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucracy, and not every common sense rule has to be spelled out. There is no logical reason why having duplicative, identical references is preferable to grouping them. Unless you can provide some kind of example situation (preferably with respect to an actual, real, existing article) where grouping 100% identical references will result in an actual problem, or an example situation where duplicative references are actually preferred, then the basis for your opposition is unfounded. —SW—  20:12, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Our guiding principle is that, in optional matters, the established citation style in each article should be preserved, and new references should be added that match it. The style should not be converted from one optional style to another based solely on personal preference. This includes, among other things, the choice whether to use named references in an article. Neither using them nor not using them is objectively better; it's just a matter of preference. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:32, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The issue of named references is a red herring. It's not like the bot is going around naming every reference it can find. The primary purpose of the bot is to group identical references, and it just so happens that it accomplishes this by naming them. Having identical references is not a personal preference, nor is it a style preference. It is illogical and inefficient. Again, you have not presented any logical reason why identical references would be preferred in any real situation, or why grouping identical references would be problematic in any real situation. We're looking for logical reasons to not perform this task, not reasons based on an emotional response to automated edits. —SW—  20:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The choice of style is always a little illogical. But since there's no lack of vertical space in articles here, there's also no need to be efficient with it. There is a long history of disagreements over citation styles where everyone feels their preference is the only logical choice; but in reality the choices are all more or less equivalent. That's why we have a presumption to keep the original style. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:13, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you're saying. The only thing I disagree with is that this particular issue is a style issue. The use of duplicate references is, in my opinion, a mistake on the part of the editor, not a conscious stylistic choice. If this were a style issue, then there would be at least two valid ways of dealing with identical references. You would be able to say "In situation A, it's better to do it this way, and in situation B, it's better to do it a different way." That is a style issue. In this case, there is only one valid way to deal with identical references, and that is to group them. If you disagree with that statement, then please provide an example of a real-life situation where not grouping identical references is clearly preferable to grouping them. We don't force editors to group references because it is not technically possible. However, it is beyond clear that it is considered preferable to group them, as evidenced by the fact that no one can provide an example case where it is not preferable. —SW—  23:41, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Some find sequential references are simpler to follow in a text, and some style guides support that. In the Wiki implementation, if you have three refs reused a dozen times each, then grouping with named refs makes some sense, but grouping a handful of refs that are repeated once or twice each impedes sequential referencing for no substantial benefit. So there are some situations where is is preferable not to group refs. However, if you say it is "beyond clear that is it considered preferable to group them", what is the huge over-riding benefit that trumps any other consideration? Gimmetoo (talk) 20:42, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Don't most people use ibid when referring to the same thing? I like the lettering thing. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Say Shalom! 18:06, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

See WP:IBID, which specifically instructs us to not use ibid. —SW—  18:28, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• Sounds like a very sensible bot proposal. As said above, there is no value to having repeated identical references, and no style variant that I know of calls for repeated identical references.  Sandstein  20:27, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Many style guides for endnotes say they should be numbered consecutively , which means that the same number cannot be used in two different places for the same reference. Do you know of any style guide for endnotes that allows the same endnote number to be repeated after larger numbers have been used? The same question applies for footnotes, but I doubt any guide allows using a footnote number for a footnote that appears on a previous page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:40, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

You can't be serious. Random external style guides don't trump the MOS. If sequential footnotes were required, then the mechanism for grouping footnotes wouldn't have been made available to us. Can you tell us the real reason that you are so vehemently opposed to this proposal that you would go to such lengths to discredit it? —SW—  20:52, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing in the MOS that requires named references – that's my point. You're arguing as if they were required somehow. OTOH Sandstein said he had never heard of a style guide that would require repeating a reference, so I pointed out that some do, by requiring endnotes to be sequentially ordered. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:13, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok, let me clarify my position as much as possible, as it seems you're not understanding the point. It's true that the MOS doesn't require identical references to be grouped. On the other hand, the MOS doesn't prohibit identical reference from being grouped either. In fact, the Mediawiki interface specifically provides a mechanism to group identical references, suggesting that this is a desired feature. Furthermore, bots have never been restricted from performing tasks that weren't "required" by some guideline or policy, so your argument that it is not required by MOS is irrelevant. Also, while the MOS does pull some of its style guidelines from other organizations' style guidelines, that doesn't mean that we are bound to any style guideline you can find on google, so that argument is also irrelevant. Besides, I think Sandstein was saying that he's not aware of any Misplaced Pages style variant, not that he was not aware of any style variant that has ever existed in the history of mankind. Here is my main point, which you or no one else has yet responded to satisfactorily: Under what circumstances would it be beneficial/desired/valuable to adopt a personal preference or style preference whereby duplicate references are not grouped? When would it ever be better to leave identical references ungrouped? Until I get a satisfactory answer to those questions, then I can't help but to feel that you are arguing for the sake of arguing. —SW—  22:40, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm just pointing out that we have a longstanding principle not to do this sort of thing. WP:CITE allows article to use named refs, or not to use named refs, and the established style should be respected. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• I regularly coalesce identical refs, like here, and have not yet once run into an adverse reaction. My impression is that, apart from the cases that were introduced before we had ref naming, many editors don't know about the possibility or do not understand how to use it (and copy–paste is easy), while in other cases duplicate refs are inadvertently introduced by editors unaware of the fact that there is already an identical reference elsewhere. I've never had the impression such duplication was a conscious preference.  --Lambiam 22:26, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• I could've sworn some of the cleanup bots already do this. I have yet to come across a single article where references are duplicated on purpose and named references are avoided on purpose, so some of the above arguments seem rather silly to me, to be honest. --Conti|✉ 22:41, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• To combine a couple threads above, I'll respond here. If an editor writes an article in which he or she consciously chooses to keep the footnote numbers consecutive, by not using named references, that is certainly stylistic choice - what else is it? We have a longstanding practice of respecting such choices unless there is a consensus that something has to be done some other way. That's expressed both in WP:CITEVAR and WP:STABILITY in the MOS: when two different styles are both acceptable, the first style to be chosen should be left, not changed solely for the benefit of using a different optional style. This principle is motivated by the perennial difficulty of getting any agreement on these things; arguments that one style is better than another tend to be Qixotic. In the case at hand, the benefit of named references is marginal, because there is no space limitation on the references section of an article. On the other hand, the idea that footnotes should be numbered consecutively is quite common in real style guides and is certainly compatible with the MOS. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:51, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

To my knowledge, keeping footnote numbers consecutive has never been important on Misplaced Pages, nor has it ever been spelled out as a priority, a requirement, or even a suggestion in the MOS (again, to my knowledge). —SW—  00:27, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether I, or you, find it important. If the style in an article is established that way, in the absence of any requirement that named references have to be used, we need to respect the preferences of other editors. Everyone has their own taste and their own preferences, which may not make sense to others. We recognize that in our policies by saying not to change from one optional style to another. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:36, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Now you're assuming that editors are making conscious choices to preserve the consecutive numbering of citations. What evidence do you have that at least some of the duplicative references are a result of conscious style choices by editors, as opposed to inadvertent coincidences or blatant mistakes? —SW—  00:55, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Carl, do you have any examples of articles where editors specifically choose to use duplicated references? Because I'm getting the impression you're talking about a hypothetical problem here that doesn't actually exist anywhere on Misplaced Pages. --Conti|✉ 07:51, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I thought this whole discussion began with a list of articles where there were duplicated references; aren't those examples? If we assume good faith, that means assuming that editors edited articles intentionally, and formatted the references the way they wanted to. It's not as if named references have ever been required, so not using them is not a mistake in any way; if an editor didn't use them, that's the prerogative of that editor, and perfectly acceptable according to the MOS and WP:CITE. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:54, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

That's a rather odd way of defining "assuming good faith". Is it suddenly "assuming bad faith" when I assume that people might not even know of named references, and therefore don't use them? Or that the large majority of editors simply wouldn't care one way or the other? No one here talks about named references being required. It just simply makes sense to use them, and apart from "there might be somewhere someone that might not want to use them for no specific reason", there's no reason not to use them. --Conti|✉ 12:37, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The existence of articles with duplicate references is not proof that they were created that way intentionally. AGF has nothing to do with determining whether someone did something as a conscious stylistic choice, or if they did it unintentionally or as a mistake. If I misspell a word in an article, I would hope that you wouldn't "AGF that I meant to do it" and not fix it. —SW—  14:19, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

A good example of that is this edit, which introduced duplicate refs in an inferior style (just the bare urls) in an article that at that moment had strictly coalesced refs, largely in standard style and at least giving the source titles. I see no reason not to assume good faith, but it is quite far-fetched to suggest that this referential duplication is the result of an intentional choice reflecting the editor's stylistic preference.  --Lambiam 22:15, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Articles are not required to use duplicate citations and humans can change them to named references, which is why a bot can just go through changing the duplicates to named references. There also is no need to be inefficient with vertical space merely because there's no lack of vertical space in articles. If an editor disagrees with the change, they can just undo it. Change in an article always invites a potential for disagreement. However, until there is a disagreement or at least an objective/explicit preference for a particular style, there is no basis to preserve one style over another, particularly for stub and start articles. Consensus preference for removing duplicate references is set by Misplaced Pages:Featured article criteria - criteria to which all articles should aspire. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 15:43, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support A no-brainer, I think. Now if we can only reduce the "single word supported by 25 cites syndrome". Any bot available to find the worst offenders? Collect (talk) 14:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I just saw one of those articles, but now forget where it is. Good idea for another bot - list of articles having more than three adjacent references sorted by max number of adjacent references. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 16:03, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

There may already be a toolserver script out there that does this. —SW—  16:31, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support trial tests - In general, it is a good idea. As for an issue, not very often, I'll use duplicate references when I want to use two different URL links to two different pages in the same book posted at Google. If the bot were to remove one of my two URLs, that would be a mistake. I think the bot will have to have a lot of exceptions to its decision to remove duplicate references. I suggest finding the most clear cut case for removing duplicate references - the one where just about everyone will agree that it would be beneficial to remove the duplicate references -- and use that to implement the bot v1. Let everyone chew on that for a while then slowly add a second duplicate reference removal condition. I suggest starting with dublicate {{cite web}} references since newbies are more likely to cite to web pages and to not know about naming a citation. Also, perhaps you can limit the bot to operating on articles rated below a B class. Carl's point above about preferred styles likely is more true for B and higher class articles. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 15:27, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I would hope that no GA's or FA's would have duplicate references. That would almost certainly be something that gets addressed in GA/FA review. And, for the moment, the plan is to run the bot once, not let it run continually. If the backlog bloats up again in the future, I might run it again, but it would probably be several months down the line. —SW—  01:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

See the table at the top of this thread. If two references have slightly different URL's, the bot will not group them. It will only act on references that are 100% identical. —SW—  16:31, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, what about limit the bot to operating on articles rated below a B class. The bot won't be hitting uf FA or GA articles, right? Also, the bot should not return to any article it has worked on since (i) if the bot reference change is kept, then there is no reason to return and (ii) if the bot reference change is undone, then a human decided what they wanted and the bot should not re-undo that. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 00:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Like CBM argues, articles have been written with all refs in sequence, consciously avoiding reused named refs. A bot really shouldn't change that. But, there is a fairly natural way to handle this - only automate work on articles that already have some minimum number of reused named references (say 5), and definitely avoid any article which does not have any reused named references already. That should avoid the bot working on any article written without reusing named refs. Gimmetoo (talk) 20:42, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any conscious movement to support the sequential numbering of references in articles. Is this just a feeling that you have, or do you have any evidence to support the fact that there is a conscious effort to keep references sequential, or any evidence of articles where the major editors of an article expressly agree that sequential references are important on that article for some particular reason? Also, the limitations you've proposed above would make the bot almost completely non-functional. The vast majority of articles with duplicate references don't already use named references, because if they did then they wouldn't have duplicate references. This is because duplicate references are not intentionally created, they are created either by mistake or by editors who are not aware that there is a mechanism available to group them. Take a look at the reference sections of these example articles and tell me you don't see a problem (the bold ones are especially terrible):

• 1984 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season
• 1985 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season
• 2011 Asian Winter Games opening ceremony
• 2011 Clube de Regatas do Flamengo season
• 2011 in hip hop music
• Abram Fitkin
• Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy
• Antonia Handler Chayes
• Arian controversy
• Australian Road Rules

And considering I only searched until the end of the A's, it's all but guaranteed that there are even worse examples out there. Only one of these articles would pass your criteria of already having 5 named references (Arian controversy). I don't see any evidence of a conscious effort here though. Take Australian Road Rules as an example. It's hard to argue that an editor consciously did that to keep references sequential, since the same reference is repeated a dozen times in a row with no other references in between. So, if they had grouped the references, it would not have broken the sequential numbering. You can also see from these examples that grouping references makes it much easier to determine how heavily an article relies on a particular source. If there are 400 references in an article, and one reference is repeated 50 times throughout the article, it would be difficult to determine that this is a reference on which the article relies heavily. If it was grouped, however, you'd be able to see it immediately. There is no benefit to sequential numbering, and that is why there is no reason to strive to keep reference numbers sequential. —SW—  21:36, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not a "feeling". If an article has 20 refs, two of which are used twice and all the others used once, I don't perceive any significant benefit from introducing little 'a' and 'b' marks on the two, and doing so would break sequence, which I perceive as a loss. Sequential refs are easier to follow for verification and in accord with some style guides. If you don't agree those are benefits, that's fine, but saying "there is no benefit" is not exactly correct. Your proposed bot would be useful for articles which have a lot of named, repeated references, but get sources re-added regularly by editors who are not aware of what sources are already cited. Gimmetoo (talk) 22:34, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

How do sequential refs make it easier to follow for verification? All you're doing is matching numbers. Actually, in most cases all you're doing is clicking the link and looking for the highlighted reference, so the sequential nature of the number makes no difference. Even if you were going through an entire article top to bottom to verify references, it would still be beneficial to have grouped references. That way, if reference #7 is used 5 times in one section, and you've already read through reference #7, then you can just skip over it. With sequential references, you would waste all kinds of time looking through the references just to find out that references 14, 19, 27, 53, and 66 are all the exact same source that you've already read. I can say that "there is no benefit to grouped references" because no one has produced one as of yet. So far, the reasons you have described include: "I don't perceive any significant benefit", " would break sequence, which I perceive as a loss", "sequential refs are easier to follow for verification" (with no other reason to support why it is easier), and " in accord with some style guides" (style guides which have nothing to do with Misplaced Pages, and which do not include the MOS). None of these are valid reasons, in my opinion, and I believe I have refuted them all. You also mention that you believe that the bot would be useful only for articles which already have a lot of named, repeated references. What about the vast number of articles that have been recently created, which have been primarily edited by one editor, where that editor is not aware of named references? This case makes up the majority of the 5,750 articles that currently have duplicate references. Also, keep in mind that we are currently talking about 5,750 articles, which represents 0.16% of articles on the english WP. The fact that this problem affects such a relatively small number of articles implies that #1, duplicate references are not desired since 99.84% of articles already don't have duplicate references, and #2, that we probably shouldn't be making such a big deal over it. —SW—  23:05, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• • • • None of these are valid reasons, in my opinion, and I believe I have refuted them all. Then you don't know what you are talking about. Absolutely and unconditionally oppose. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:26, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Apparently we need a bot to refactor duplicate !votes, too. --joe decker 18:02, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

See also Help:Footnotes#Multiple_citations_of_the_same_reference_or_footnote, which does not mention that this is optional or subject to stylistic interpretation in any way. Your "absolute oppose" is duly noted, but without a logical reason for your oppose, it carries little weight. —SW—  03:51, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Nor does it say named references are required. I have provided a case where it is not preferable to use repeated named references. You appear to disagree, and apparently think that "it is beyond clear that it is considered preferable to group them". Fine. Can you convince me that reusing named references in the case I describe is absolutely and completely beneficial so as to override any other consideration from any other editor? Gimmetoo (talk) 04:45, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Note that Pmanderson was just blocked for 1 week for an unrelated incident, and therefore probably won't be able to respond. —SW—  04:15, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I wish I could convince you, but in order to do that I would have to understand why you think that having sequentially numbered references has any benefit whatsoever. The guidelines don't specifically say that named refs are required or optional, but I think this is only a bureaucratic distinction and it's clear that they are highly preferred at the very least. See Misplaced Pages:Footnotes#Reference_name_.28naming_a_ref_tag_so_it_can_be_used_more_than_once.29, Misplaced Pages:Citing_sources#Footnotes, and Help:Footnotes#Multiple_citations_of_the_same_reference_or_footnote. They don't specifically say "It is required that you do this", but they all generally say "Here's how to use identical references." —SW—  18:21, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Strong support, if only because I always group my references because I think it makes sense. However, having worked as a major contributor to pages (eg.Brontë, Malvern, and a few others) that have hundreds of footnotes, it makes even more sense. There is also the aspect from my experience at AfD of having to sift through refs on articles that 'claim' to be well referenced, that to a more casual reader, a long list that includes the same duplicated ref makes it look as if the article is well referenced, giving a false impression of notability. Kudpung (talk) 07:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Support It's much easier to see how well sourced an article is (and how much improvement it could use) when duplicates references are unified. Having fixed this a number of times by hand, I support having a bot to help out with this task. Sailsbystars (talk) 17:43, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Stats

I ran an analysis on the first 500 articles from the toolserver list, and found the following statistics:

• 672 distinct references were duplicated at least once.
• A total of 1,820 duplications were detected.
• The maximum number of times a reference was duplicated was 24.
• The average number of times each duplicated reference was duplicated was 2.7.
• 197 of the 500 articles (39%) already had at least one named reference.
  • Out of the 197 articles with named references, the average number of named references per article is 27.1.
  • Out of the 197 articles with named references, the maximum number of named references in an article is 466.
  • 156 articles had 5 or more named references.

—SW—  16:25, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikibets

Anyone want to start a page where users place bets on things like sporting events, elections, or really anything. We would be betting work on Misplaced Pages. Example:

Superbowl:

Person A Offer: 20 new page patrols says the Greenbacks win next season

Person B: I accept

Music:

Person A Offer: Getting any article of the other person's choice to good article status. I'm betting that Justin Bieber's next single doesn't even break the top 40.

Person B: His next single will make it to the top 20, I'm accepting this bet. My article will cardiovascular system.

Person A:Damn, nobody wants to touch that article!

Some wikifun to pass the time and hopefully get some work done. Thoughts?AerobicFox (talk) 20:58, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

No, you are not going to be immortalised in WP:NOT with such a poor proposal. That page is only meant for things that might with some plausibility be expected to fit here, or that a lot of people think should be allowed. Try again. Hans Adler 21:43, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I lol'd Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, AKA TheArchaeologist Say Herro 22:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

That is pretty harsh Adler considering the proposal could just be an add on to our current bounty boards.AerobicFox (talk) 22:25, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll bet you 15 featured sounds that your wikibet proposal is not accepted. —SW—  23:49, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I like the enthusiasm! Unfortunately though I don't think it will be accepted :( , so I decline your bet. Maybe I will just make bets with random users...AerobicFox (talk) 06:00, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

SW, if you mean that you're going to upload FS quality sounds, I'll pay in barnstars. If you're the performer, I'll pay in custom made barnstars. How's that? Sven Manguard Wha? 06:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Can I have a barnstar too? What's that worth in Jew gold? (Also, what is it? Seriously). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, AKA TheArchaeologist Say Herro 06:30, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Right... Jew gold. Go be racist somewhere else please, there's no place for that here. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:46, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

As a Jew I reserve the right to make self-depricating jokes as it is part of our contemporary culture, especially that memorable one from South Park. Please check my userpage where I put that bit of my heritage (Ashkenazi Jewish). Also relax mate, it's the net (though being the net I can see how you'd make that mistake what with the rampant anti-Semitism elsewhere on it). ;) Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, AKA TheArchaeologist Say Herro 06:56, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Eh, your comment wasn't appropriate, but I suppose I overreacted. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Nah, despite my reaction, it's good to see people stand up for us now and then. Jewish humor is rarely appropriate, mate. ;) (We came up with most of the holocaust jokes) Though I suppose if my username were more clickable then you could have just clicked there and seen my background etc. Another reason to change it. On the issue of race in Judaism btw, I recommend checking out Category:Jewish_ethnic_groups, we come in many different flavours, but are genetically related (except one group, which I forget). So what was a barnstar again? What do they do for you? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Say Herro 07:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

You are mistaken, and Sven Manguard did not overreact. Misplaced Pages is connected to the Internet but different procedures apply here, and crass commentary is not permitted. It can take quite a long time and lot of argument, but eventually people who repeatedly make comments such as yours are persuaded to do it elsewhere. Johnuniq (talk) 09:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

::::Oh will you relax, lol, such outward hostility like that can dissuade one from editing all together as it makes them feel unwelcome. Are other groups not allowed to make self-depricating comments in talk pages as well or does it just apply to us? I am curious, how is it handled when it does come up (in practice, not in theory)? I will take the approach that as you feel offended by it, I will not make self-depricating jokes on the encyclopedia, but I do still consider it to be an important part of our culture, and so I feel nothing wrong whatsoever about it. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Say Shalom! 17:06, 16 March 2011 (UTC) Edit: alright, now that I am a bit more chill about this, and can look at it without the distraction of being offended, let me analyse it as an anthropologist. I think this is an instance of common cultural and (in my case) professional practice coming up against Wikipedian cultural practice and rules. So as an anthropologist I must of course conclude that the best approach to take is to adapt to the cultural practice of the Wikipedians so as not to cause further offence to them (and I know you're probably thinking I am talking about you guys like natives, etc, but the same applies if you're in France or elsewhere). So that is what I will do. Though might I suggest in the future this sort of thing be approached with a gentler hand? What starts and argument is two or more people approaching something in an angry manner rather than one person being calm, polite and friendly and dealing with it in that manner. Remember the old saying "you win more flies with honey than you do with vinegar." You do that until friendliness no longer works and then simply bring the banhammer. No one can blame you if you failed, but odds are that being friendly diffuses the situation. Anyway, about this bet thing, I oppose.

• Oppose I just don't like the idea of turning Misplaced Pages into an e-Casino, even if there is no actual money involved. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Say Shalom! 17:26, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• There's Misplaced Pages:Last topic pool -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 00:24, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

This might be a fun thing to have on a completely separate website..... Wabbott9 (talk) 01:35, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Fair use upload bot

Please see commons:Commons:Village_pump#Proposal:_Fair_use_upload_bot for my proposal for a bot that would re-upload images that are deleted on Commons but in use on En to En as candidates for fair use. Please comment there. Dcoetzee 12:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Time limits on adminship

I propose that adminship be granted for a period of three years only. An editor must also wait three years between adminships. All existing admins that have been admins for longer than three years lose that status (but may reapply for adminship in three years). I think this proposal is a good idea because:

1. It reduces admin burnout
2. It reduces factions of admins persisting for any length of time
3. It reduces the special status of adminship - admins really are just the same as other editors, they only temporarily serve in a higher capacity
4. It ensures a renewal process in the admin pool
5. It helps prevent WP rules and policies from becoming too byzantine. Very long term admins will know all the existing WP rules inside and out and naturally attempt to extend them to cover every eventuality. Short term admins will seek a smaller ruleset.

--Surturz (talk) 12:47, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I think limiting terms is a good idea, but I think there will be a lot of resistance from long time admins, especially those who use a lot of admin specific tools to do their day to day work here. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 13:12, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

In that case, the newest admins should sign up for the policy. It will increase their influence, and improve their ability to implement new ideas. I suspect that people being people, some of the long-time admins have become warlords of a sort with entrenched factions? I pulled the "three year" period off the top of my head. Is there a way to work out a time limit that would eliminate the oldest (say) 40% of admins? --Surturz (talk) 13:19, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• I think a set time limit is a very good idea, I would even advocate reducing it to 2 years. However, I'm not sure about a long gap in between though, perhaps they could re-appply immediatly for a vote of confidence. More importantly still, I would like to see editors having to show a 2 year commitment to the project before being able to become admins in the first place - I think this would reduce a great many of the problems which are caused by Admims being unaware of policy and common sense. Giacomo Returned 13:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

This proposal isn't practical. WP:RFA created 117 new admins in 2009 and 75 in 2010. If we carry on promoting people at the same rate as last year then by the end of 2011 this proposal would mean that we would have about 270 admins. Since we currently have 1,780 (780 of them active) this would probably result in huge backlogs in admin-related tasks. Hut 8.5 13:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

In order to assess partiality. It would e a good idea if those commenting on this stated if they were themselves admins. I am not. Giacomo Returned 13:26, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm an admin, and I think some time limit on adminship would be a good idea. 3 years sounds fine, although it would be good to know how many reconfirmation RfA's we'd have in that case (how many users that were made an admin three years ago are still active as an admin today?). A mandatory pause of three years sounds problematic for the reasons Hut 8.5 outlined above. --Conti|✉ 13:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm still as active as an admin as I was three years ago; even more, since the number of admins working copyright cleanup queues has declined. --Moonriddengirl 13:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)As an admin, I'm tentatively in favor of time limits, but opposed to a 3-year break in service. A month without the tools would be sufficient to see if you think you still need them enough to jump back in the meat grinder... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:37, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)x2 Assuming we maintain a pool of around 1000 active admins we would have one reconfirmations/RFAs per day on average with a 3 year time period, which is less than RFA handled in 2007. Should be doable. Yoenit (talk) 13:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest a large cohort of existing admins would mean that less and less people get granted adminship as time goes on. Newer admins will encourage newer users. With a time limit, we do not need to vet admin candidates as much, since there is a built-in limit to their power.

This link shows the 1780 admins, 40% of 1780 = 712, and admin # 712 was created Nov 2004. So we could set the time limit at SIX years and still retire the 40% longest serving admins.

Reconfirmation isn't required, I think the link I provided can be used to work out which admins are auto-retired. --Surturz (talk) 13:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Your link gives the date that the username was created. It doesn't tell you anything about when adminship was achieved, other than that it has to be more recently than that. Dragons flight (talk) 13:41, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

60% of 1780 is 1068. 818 people were promoted to administrator in 2007 or later, and there were 353 promotions in 2006, so if you wanted to retain 60% of the admin corps the time would have to be at least four-five years. Of course not all these people are still administrators so the limit might have to be set back even further. At this stage the proposal isn't going to be very good at tackling burnout, because if you're going to experience burnout it's probably going to happen less than five years after becoming an administrator. Hut 8.5 14:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Two of the above reasons have nothing to do with being an admins: factions of users, and byzantine rulesets. Both happen with experienced users, and admins that are abusing their rights to enforce these when it is counter to consensus is not appropriate. Admin burnout can be dealt with on a voluntary basis, though I could support periods where as less-strict remedies for burnout is to deny an admin their admin status for a month or so.

To me, it is the lack of admins in various areas that need regular admining that put the task to only one or two dedicated volunteers that is an issue; that persists today. Any process along the lines of the above will cause these processes to break (we can't force admins to work on specific tasks so we can't necessarily replace the dedicated volunteers). --MASEM (t) 13:50, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

With the health of our community being as fragile as it is right now, I think that experienced admins are a resource that we won't be able to replace if we desysop all of them. If people want to serve the community long term as an admin, why not let them? Arbcom, though imperfect, can remove serious problem admins. (I am an admin myself, though I rarely use the tools)--Danaman5 (talk) 13:59, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

With a regular reconfirmation of adminship, say, every 3-5 years, admins could serve as long as they (and the community) want to. --Conti|✉ 14:03, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Reconfirmation is possible, but this proposal specifically is talking about a forced break between terms. And to extend what the original idea is, reconfirmation likely would not fix any of the mentioned problems with an "old boys" network (as they pile on their "support retention" to a reconfirmation) --MASEM (t) 14:09, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

This process will just create a lot of unneeded bucrocreacy. In most cases the reconfirmation of good admins will have a huge supporting result, making it unneeded to go through it in the first place. It may be better to leave reconfirmation processes for cases when there's really a strong and specific reason to propose it. MBelgrano (talk) 14:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The issue is that, of the 700+ admins which are "active", all but maybe a few dozen never show up as being "problematic". In other words, this is a case of taking 95% of the admins and making them jump through some silly burocratic hoop merely to catch the 5% that cause problems. Why not just come up with a better procedure of addressing the 5% of the problems directly, and let the other 95% do their job... For the record, I am an admin, have been for many years, and if anyone wants me to give up my tools for any specific action I have taken, feel free to raise the issue specifically about me. However, there is no need to tar the entire corps of administrators because I screw up. Deal with the individual on the individual basis, not on the group. --Jayron32 15:18, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• I'm an admin, and this idea has a lot of problems. It fails to consider that what is controversial and damning at RfA is not necessarily what is inappropriate. If, for example, I close a difficult AfD, I will undoubtedly piss off one side whatever happens. This is inevitable. The impact of turning adminship into an eternal popularity contest is that "difficult" decisions, those requiring judgment calls, will be avoided. However, I like the theoretical basis for it, and personally I'm not going to stop closing things just because I have the chance of being shouted at for it. As such, I hereby announce that I will stand for adminship again, precisely two years after my successful RfA. If it goes well, it'll reassure those people worried (me included) that such a system would have a chilling effect on our admins. If it doesn't, the fireworks display will be damned fantastic :P. Ironholds (talk) 16:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• I'm not sure that time limitations solve anything. There needs to be an efficient recall mechanism whereby serious errors of judgment or abusive behavior can be reviewed, defenses mounted, and votes of confidence taken. Carrite (talk) 17:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Oppose: Personally, I think that mandatory reconfirmation after 3 years is a bit too short. It'll cause unnecessary trouble for our existing admins. Concerning admin burnout, this would not solve the problem. As Misplaced Pages isn't a bureaucracy, this would be against the goals of the project.Jasper Deng (talk) 17:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• Most of our admins were appointed more than three years ago, so to desysop them and put them on a three year break from adminship would be an irresponsible action that would mean attack pages sat around for longer and vandals could do more vandalism before they were blocked. I'm one of the 346 admins appointed in the three years up to the beginning of this month, but don't imagine this would leave you with 346 admins, as many of those 346 have already gone. On current trends we won't appoint half as many admins this March as the 22 who were appointed in March 2008 and who on this proposal would be about to stand down for three years, so the number of active admins would not only be slashed but would quickly slide further under this proposal. If you want to introduce term limits first fix the problems at RFA and start appointing more admins than we lose. We currently have only 12 admins who started editing in the last 24 months, the challenge at RFA is how do we persuade those who joined us in 2008, 2009 and early 2010 to volunteer for adminship. Discussion of term limits is at best a distraction from that. ϢereSpielChequers 17:50, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• I would agree with a 4 year term of adminship. I think that taking three years off could cause good editors to loose interest in the project. Maybe 8 months off. Inka 07:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

This is clearly listed at WP:PEREN#Reconfirm_administrators. Mono (talk) 17:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• OpposeI'm an admin, and I think periodic reconfirmation would be a good idea, as would be some period between terms of adminship. "Elected for life" sounds like a tinpot dictator, although in a kinder light it might be viewed as being like a US federal judge, who can serve until he dies, resigns, or is impeached for bad behavior. I have seen many admins desysopped for bad behavior. The proposal is flawed: Three years off after three years service is too long, and would slash too severely the pool of hardworking volunteers which keep this project from turning into Uncyclopedia, full of vandalism, spam, and agenda editing. I could agree with a 4 or 5 year reconfirmation, or a 3 or 6 month timeout after 4 years with the option of reapplying. Then the folks at WP:RFA would not just be speculating about whether the applicant would properly wield the mop, and could look at performance versus promises about what admin activities would be done. Stepping away from the keyboard for a while and experiencing real life might be good for some admins (and other editors) who are glued to the keyboard 50 hours per week. Some of the anger aimed at admins in various forums is, in fact, from agenda editors who want to ignore the principles of Misplaced Pages and use it for their own purposes, without hindrance, don't want to be hindered in their flaming and personal attacks on other editors. (Speeders would prefer fewer traffic cops: after being a cop for three years, the cop should take 3 years off). Slashing the ranks of active admins, and making sure they are fairly inexperienced, would make it easier to make Misplaced Pages say what they want it to say, regardless of reliable sourcing, verifiability, neutral point of view, or undue weight. I expect that a variety of agenda editors would try to vote out any good faith admin who had thwarted their desires, even if it was done in full accord with policies and guidelines. More participation on WP:RFA from the general community would be needed to keep a cabal from voting out the good guys, broadly defined. The shiny buttons an admin gets do not confer any special privilege in regular editing that I have noted. After 3 years as an admin, I do not detect any special "power" when engaged in regular editing activities such as AFD debates, and regularly endure personal attacks from editors who have different views and who do not agree with Misplaced Pages:No personal attacks. Edison (talk) 18:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I think comparison with a federal judgeship is probably taking our role a bit too seriously. Most jobs are pretty stable unless the company goes out of business or you screw up repeatedly and/or egregiously. (It's not like admins are paid; there's no incentive for Misplaced Pages to lay us off to reduce costs or bust our union.) Janitors, grocery store clerks, garbage collectors, bus drivers, mailmen, truckers, gardeners — they've all got a job for life, at least as long as the work needs to be done. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:30, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

There is such a thing as periodic corporate downsizing, where they lay off a fraction of the workers, chosen more or less randomly. A "job for life" might have been more typical in the 1950's than today. I see a great many people who lost their jobs in favor of a new hire who was younger, fresh of of school, and happy to work for lower pay. Granted volunteers here work for "no pay" but to make up for it they get unlimited abuse from agenda warriors. Edison (talk) 19:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I see adminship as more akin to a driving licence. You can lose it if you break the rules, but otherwise you go on till you are old enough to start needing medicals (I gather that the US and some other countries charge annual renewal fees, but does any country make everyone resit their test?). Term limits are needed for politicians, trustees and in our case Arbcom members, basically anyone whose role is to make policy as opposed to implementing it. Term limits are inappropriate as long as admins are wielding the mop in accordance with policies that the whole community makes. If policy making or banning decisions became an admin only matter then there would be a case for term limits. Refresher courses or training modules for different parts of the mop are a different matter, they probably would be a useful innovation. ϢereSpielChequers 19:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose (are we voting?) - I'm an admin with lots of outside interests. Health breaks are natural and needed, but an enforced 3-year break is unworkable, as per Hut 8.5 above, and will probably cause some of the best sysops to walk away. - Now, of course, if we could be sure that the vandals were taking a 3-year break too, then it might be worth a second thought... Ian Cairns (talk) 18:20, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment Perhaps a "matching service," so that one agenda warrior or vandal takes a 3 year break along with an admin? Nah, the admins are outnumbered 100 to one, and the other side has a drawer full of socks Edison (talk) 19:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose There is already an admin shortage, the last thing we need is an automatic, mindless process which further lowers the admin count by forcibly desysopping experienced admins who are perfectly willing and able to perform admin duties. —SW—  18:32, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. I'm not an admin, and I was heavily involved with Misplaced Pages:Community de-adminship/RfC, which (speaking of perennial proposals) please see, if you haven't before. I dislike the idea of a three year gap before reapplying, for the reasons given by others. I also dislike the idea of only applying it to new administrators, since (a few of the) older administrators are usually the ones for which this issue arises. I like the idea of making RfA more reversible than it currently is. I like that a lot. In fact, I think it's inevitable. But as noted above, making the many conscientious administrators jump through this hoop is an inefficient (at best) way to accomplish that, just to weed out a tiny subpopulation, and it has no chance of getting consensus anyway. I think we will need to find a way to more efficiently place administrators who lose the community's trust in front of ArbCom, without putting all administrators there. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support One of the reasons RfA is such an ordeal is that adminship is a life appointment, so people are looking for the tiniest indication of unsuitability in candidates. I'll bet an adult beverage of your choice that a lot more candidates would be approved if we knew bad admins would naturally age out of the system. At present almost the only way to get rid of admins is if they firebomb the server farm and GOATSE the main page. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• comment: Currently, surplus of administrators, or even surplus of "burned out" administrators (I am not sure how that category is defined), is not among wikipedias problems. Are admin cliques a problem? If they are I don't see this proposal helping that - three years is plenty of time to join or form a clique. As for complicated rules - admins don't make the rules, the community does. I don't see what process would lead to rules becoming simplified if this proposal was enacted. To me it looks like a bad solution looking for a problem. The real problem people are worried about is how to make admins more responsible and easier to remove - this is of course best adressed by enacting rules that serve that purpose, for example an easier process of desysopping (e.g. through rfC/U) - although even that might mean that less people would want to become admins.·Maunus·ƛ· 20:26, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• Strong oppose per WP:BROKE. This proposal would turn our current admin shortage into a devastating drought, which the community will no doubt fail to compensate for by loosening RfA standards. Swarm 20:31, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose If someone is a good admin, why should they lose the ability to help others and have to wait another three years (remember, Misplaced Pages's only 10 years old, so that is a long time) to be able to assist again? Also, if you get rid of the required waiting period between RfAs, what is the point of a three-year term? One or two years might make slightly more sense, but three is seems weird. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:51, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• The 3-year forced non-adminship part of this proposal is ridiculous and counterproductive; it would significantly deplete the admin corps, which is absolutely what we don't need as the size of the project continues to increase. Periodic admin reconfirmation makes sense though. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• As noted, this is a perrenial proposal, and as always, the question remains whether the consequences of such a plan outweigh the supposed benefits. The last proposal was built far more solidly than this, and it failed pretty easily. I don't expect this will work either. Truth is, if there was an expiry date on my adminship, I simply wouldn't waste the time looking for a reconfirmation. The tools, when I use them, are useful for page maintenence and quick blocking of vandals. If I gave up the bit, that is work that would fall to a smaller cadre of admins, who would likely face burn out at a much faster rate. So of the five arguments presented, I'd say 1 and 4 are patently false, and this proposal would actually make both problems worse. 5 I think is unproveable, 3 depends on the editor. I think most of the people constantly clamoring for term limits find the position far more glamourous than I do. 2 would happen, of course, but the question is whether that is actually a problem in need of repair. And if it is a problem, all it takes is one admin to make an action. non-admins can just as easily comment and help build consensus, even on AN/ANI, so nothing is solved this way. Resolute 23:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
• I agree with Resolute. Given the choice between going through RFA again or just not doing the few admin tasks that I do anymore, I'd choose the latter. Personally, I think this would make the "special status" issue much worse. If it's not a special status, why does it need additional rules about keeping it and why should people have to repeatedly go through a long, stressful process just to maintain the status quo? The real way to fix that issue is to make it easier to remove bad admins and lower the standards at RFA. Being an admin is not significantly more difficult or more dangerous than it was when I got the bit in 2007 (we can't even crash the site by deleting the sandbox anymore) but standards have continuously increased. Mr.Z-man 04:52, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. As noted above, the effect would be to make the good 95% of admins jump through hoops over the actions of the 5% (or less, IMHO)—and those are admins who should be addressed more frequently than at the end of their term.
  For disclosure's sake, yes, I'm an admin. No, I'm not listed as open to recall. However, I've taken a break or two in the past from admin tasks, and it's been in part because of concerns raised by fellow admins or veteran users about how I was using the tools. I stepped back, cleared my head, re-read the rules, and when I was ready eased back into the task.
  I'm a referee off-wiki, and there are procedures in place there to deal with errors made in games. It never happened to me, but I know crews who've had to go in and review game tapes sent in by coaches to the association and had to explain why a call was(n't) made, and I know crews who've gotten suspended over there errors. If we need to restructure the procedures with admins, that's the route to go: sit down the admins who are making the bad calls, but don't take the mop away from those using it well. —C.Fred (talk) 05:12, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. I'd oppose mandatory removal of the bit. Why should a good admin lose the bit just due to a time period running out? Even if I didn't have a problem with that, why on EARTH shouldn't they be allowed to re-apply immediately?! I've suggested a reconfirmation process below, which I'm expecting to get blown out of the water due to the perennial status of it. If burnout is an issue, perhaps there should be a system where X admins/editors can get to suggest a 1-month break for an admin, which then is enforced by the removal the bit for that period? I can think of a situation where that would have been useful in very recent history... Worm · (talk) 09:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• 250% opposed I can't see this working. RFA (you know what I mean) is a big page with just 3 requests, so if former admins and admin hopefuls are mixed together on the page, then I can see people with slow Internet/computers waiting to the end of time for the page to load. And if the page swells with this idea if it goes ahead, it may not load at all. There is no way to make RFA smaller, just get a faster Internet/computer. I also add Metropolitan90's and a litany of other users thoughts. Just chuck this idea in the bin. It must never be remembered, only mourned as this idea fails as consensus dwindles. -- _{of Mayhem} 09:59, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. We have a declining number of admins - sending good experienced ones away for a forced break is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a long time. There might be some merit in some sort of review/reconfirmation in case they're doing a poor job, but most are doing just fine and forcing every one to go for a new RfA is not a good idea - we're trying to attract more admins here, not chase them away. And re: "In that case, the newest admins should sign up for the policy. It will increase their influence, and improve their ability to implement new ideas" - I'm a new admin, but I didn't do it for influence. And admin has got nothing to do with news ideas - anyone in the community can come up with new ideas any time they want. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• Strong oppose : We already have trouble with backlogs, and admins are needed pretty much everywhere. I'm not an admin myself (and don't want to be one in the near future), but I think that we should keep out admins. ManishEarth 11:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• I oppose this specific proposal with the mandatory three-year break, but support the general idea of admins needing to go through periodic re-election. Standards for admins now are so much more restrictive that those who passed the 2004-5 process can't be said to have gone through anything that we would now understand as an RFA.—S Marshall T/C 12:12, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose As a non-admin, I have concerns about re-confirmations. Long-term admins are at least as much an advantage to the project (through consistency, institutional memory, and ability) as they can be a detriment. The problems come in our most difficult areas of adjudication. What admin is going to make difficult decisions in the face of aggravating their "constituency" to the point that they stand a very real chance of being denied another term? While I do believe that the loss of adminship is one of the least substantial actions the community can impose (considering interaction bans, blocks, site bans, etc. to be far worse restrictions) for actions that are non-constructive to the project, I have not yet seen a practical manner of implementing a reconfirmation process. Administrators in this project do not sit as a group and set policy, nor do they have much in the way of an authoritative role in process. They are not elected representatives in the democratic sense. As an example, a regular editor providing a third opinion tends to carry as much weight as an admin doing the same. Policies, guidelines, and consensus itself are created by editors who far outnumber admins. As such, I do not see that "re-election" really serves a substantial purpose. A community-based de-adminship process that does not require going to ArbCom would be far more effective in removing those few admins who have shown themselves to be problems in the general consensus of the community at large. The elimination of WP:NBD and the recognition that ALL actions by an admin, and not just those involving the use of admin tools, are "admin actions" would contribute greatly to the needs of the community in demonstrating a loss of support in a particular administrator. Reconfirmation would be a bureaucratic nightmare, and the limited number of members of the community who would bother to participate would probably make such an action a farce in terms of determining actual consensus for retaining admin rights. Jim Miller 19:29, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

So if three years is crazy what would be a good number

I get the feeling there is some support to give admins a bit of a break, and clearly three years is too long. What about a much shorter period of perhaps three months? It is not overly long and would give admins a chance to reevaluate things from the outside once again. And what if this was a voluntary program to sign up for? Consider it a like a periodical sabbatical. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 04:34, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I get much the opposite view. A few relatively new non-admins and one noted anti-establisment figure support this, the vast majority, now and historically, do not. There are things I support, such as making it easier to desysop admins who frequently break policy, (however the process would have to have safeguards against personal grudges and vendettas taking the form of desysops,) however I think that the idea of fixed time limits is an absurdly bad idea. If you want adminship and the RfA atmosphere to improve, you need to make adminship easier to gain, but also easier to lose. That will make it less of a zero-sum game. However the vast majority of admins do good work on a consistent basis, and imposing time limits on that work will hurt the project. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:54, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Sven - easier to gain and easier to lose really is the best rubric, but unfortunately that's extremely unlikely. Rule #1 of power is that no one ever gives it up willingly once they have it (except for the few saints among us, and burnout cases), and unfortunately the project has been naive about the RfA and desysopping procedures, so that now becoming an admin is torturous and removing an admin is all but impossible.

If you wanted something interesting that might stand a ghost of a chance of success, suggest an admin lottery: one person a week (chosen at random from the group of editors who meet some minimum standards) is granted adminship no questions asked. they can refuse, in which case someone else is chosen, but otherwise they're in. That would add 52 new admins a year - enough constant fresh blood to shake up the establishment, but not so much that the newbies overwhelm the old guard. Very Roman republic, that... --Ludwigs2 06:07, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Certainly a new idea, but I think it would end poorly. What happens when we give an admin that has issues with behaving civilly to others the mop? How do we decide if he should be excluded? Perhaps a better option is that we turn the system upside down: That every editor that hasn't been blocked in 18 months (ignoring blocks that were overturned as a bad block) becomes an admin unless the community decides that they don't deserve it. A reverse RfA if you will. That has it's risks too, but I think that it would be better than something random. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:21, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

18 months is too tiny for anyone to even consider this proposal, three-four years is better, though still I feel it isn't a good idea. Admins have quite a lot of power (and they carry around some respect, too... most people listen to admins). That's why we thoroughly vet them with RfAs. ManishEarth 11:07, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Eh, I think the 'who hasn't had a block' condition is just a wide invitation to gamesmanship. For instance, my block record sucks, but all except for one of my blocks were entirely undeserved (the result of science editors trying to game me because they think I'm a fringe editor - dorks!). But how am I supposed to argue that in any meaningful way?

The 'random admin' thing has two advantages:

1. it would insert people as admins who might be too shy or scared to run the AfD gauntlet but would otherwise make excellent admins.
2. it would give an incentive to improve the desysopping procedures (so long as adminship is seen as a powerful privilege admins will always fight against regularizing desysopping, but start throwing in wild cards and we'll start getting a few bad apples, and then we'll have to create a consistent process for desysopping just to get rid of them).

sometimes the only cure for systematic problems is to stir the pot - add random elements and force the system to adapt. --Ludwigs2 16:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Don't we already have a voluntary process, Misplaced Pages:Administrators open to recall, which handles this more efficiently than a term limit does? —C.Fred (talk) 04:47, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Admins that misuse their powers certainly wouldn't sign up to that voluntary process, wouldn't they? --Conti|✉ 08:04, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not gonna happen, ever. I've read all this stuff many times before in different variations. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 04:58, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. I am an admin and have been one for over three years, and I agree with Jayron32's comments above. If an admin is doing a good job, there is no reason to take adminship away from them, particularly given that there is no maximum limit on the number of admins. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 07:42, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• Completely opposed to this for a litany of reasons that have already been covered. Strikerforce (talk) 07:50, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• 3 months of non-adminship sounds like a good idea to me. There'll still be enough admins to do what needs to be done, after all. The sad thing is that, thanks to Misplaced Pages's consensus system, even if just a third of our admins are power hungry and oppose any and all means to take away their toys, these proposals will never get anywhere. --Conti|✉ 08:04, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• If we have so many admins to do what needs to be done, why can't I get people to help out in a sustained way with copyright cleanup even when I advertise? :( (1; 2, for example.) One or two people pitch in for a while, but then they fall away as real life interferes or the tedium of the job overwhelms them. Of the four "copyright admins" (that is, people dedicated to the work on a sustained basis) that I can think of promoted in the past three years, three of them have vastly declined their participation levels (; ; ). People don't seem to be lining up to replace them. --Moonriddengirl 12:05, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• A short break that admins can voluntarily sign up to? We already have that - they can just take a Wikibreak like everyone else. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• Non-admin comment. This proposal seems to once again highlight the perceived problems caused by rogue admins. I do not dispute that there are bad admins, but these are usually ones that have not signed up for recall, and usually use all means (such as bullying, lawyering) to hang on to their tools. So we must treat the underlying cause, and re-evaluate the mechanism for de-sysopping. I do not believe systematic retirement after three years is the answer, nor is the three-year fallow desirable for the smooth operation for our project because it will potentially cut our admin staff by half, with the most dramatic effect being in the first year of operation. This is the wrong medicine for the patient, and risks doing harm. An alternative could be to make the recall mandatory rather than voluntary. --Ohconfucius 01:59, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Annual/Biennial Re-confirmation

I was thinking about this on my way home from work yesterday, completely unrelated to this thread which I only saw this morning. I think one of the major reasons that RfA is "broken" is that there is a common belief that it is too hard to get administrators out. I was trying to work out if there was a way to re-confirm the administrators. What I propose is a process where "Once every *time period*, administrators would submit themselves for community review, where the community could offer feedback and most importantly !vote on whether they should retain the mop. The voters should be *editors in good standing*, and if the !vote is below *arbitrary limit*, then the administrator would lose the bit".

Now, I think the idea is good in principle, but the three items in question should be discussed. I was thinking a *time period* of 1 or 2 years (if we did 1 year, we'd have around 6 a day... that's possibly to much), *editors in good standing* should be editors with say over 100 edits (to prevent people registerring in order to get someone out), and the *arbitrary limit* I was thinking at around 50%. Definitely not as high as RfA, but if less than 50% of the community think you are doing a good job, I don't accept that "Someone has to make the tough decisions" is a good excuse. I wouldn't be averse to putting in a leeway of say, 20% for crat judgement either. Above 60% mostly retain the bit, below 40% mostly lose the bit. For the record, I am not an admin, but if I were I would be looking at something like this for my recall procedure. Worm · (talk) 09:02, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Periodic review (of active admins) may be helpful, in the sense of an Editor Review. Re-confirmation is too much work for too little benefit and too much risk of detriment to admins taking tough decisions. Admins are not elected representatives (in theory everyone could be an admin...), and they don't need to be re-elected; sufficient opportunity for desysopping when appropriate is quite enough. And to come back to the Review element: if there is no immediate risk of desysopping attached, it'll be reasonably open, honest and productive. If there is such a risk, it becomes a trial, with the admin being charged with Being A Bad Admin (chief witnesses: anyone they've ever acted against, fairly or not). Really, I think we should institute such a Review, because the demonstrated usefulness of that would reduce the frequency with which this perennial bad idea of Reconfirmation comes up. Rd232 15:29, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The last thing I'd want is a trial, and I was trying to avoid that by setting the bar to a point where it is more a review. But I also think this "job for life" thing is causing RfA to be regarded as a "gauntlet". Admins do drift off, burnout, exhaustion, whatever - leaving a much smaller admin corps. If there was a review process which could involve a de-sysop, I think that people would be less harsh at RfA. I could be wrong of course Worm · (talk) 16:39, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Setting the bar low wouldn't work, it would still be the same dynamics if immediate desysopping was on the table. Remember, a really bad review would be a wakeup call to the admin, and otherwise lay a basis for future desysopping if problematic behaviour continued. Besides, overall RFC/Us are more effective in this area than people credit, particularly as a wakeup call, which is part of what makes me think we should look at Reviews first. And apart from anything else, Reconfirmation is a perennial proposal which isn't going to get anywhere, so best not to waste energy on that anyway. Rd232 18:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I have in the past proposed incorporating Editor Review as a preliminary stage in RFA, so that candidates have a better idea of likely reception and what they can do to improve (if necessary) before getting to the more hardcore voting stage. Rd232 18:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

How about this. We get a strong consensus from users here that we want an attitude change regarding desysoping. I would be behind a proposal that does not involve term limits or reconfirmation but would say "All admins, irregardless of their stated position on recall, are eligible for a desysoping procedure when a consensus of uninvolved users determines that they have made an egregious error or show a pattern of consistent error in admin related tasks." The proposal would have to put that bar in a high enough place that this doesn't become a tool for vendettas or content wars, but low enough that if an admin does screw up, there's a viable last resort system for correcting the issue that's more accessible and less extreme that ArbCom. Even if it never get's used, the mere presence of such a system would, I think, make RfA a bit less nasty and admins a bit more honest. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:12, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I approve of that idea. Worm · (talk) 17:52, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that admins are expected to learn from their mistakes, with review via ANI and sometimes RFC/U. Anything more contentious needs the formality and neutrality of something like ArbCom - and we already have one of those. About the only thing I can see being useful is making it easier to refer admins to ArbCom for review, with possible outcomes including a reconfirmation RFA or even outright desysopping (also rejection of the request for review, and of course any censoring, sanctioning or advisory motions that might emerge from the review). Whatever the outcome, it would be properly justified after careful consideration by neutral parties. Rd232 18:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

"Learn from their mistakes"'? I don't think that the way it is. In order to become an admin, one has to be perfect, after that, one can safely ignore any criticism short of murder in the real world. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 20:27, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

One can also claim to have "the trust of the community" while admitting that you would never get through another RfA because you've had to take "some hard decisions". Dishonest doesn't even get close. Malleus Fatuorum 20:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

My point exactly. I disagreed with a block that an admin made and left them a message on their talk page. 3 days later, the admin was still plodding along, the message was ignored (though is still there), the block had expired. I'm not one to take it to WP:ANI (one incident, and I disagreed with the length, not the block itself) so basically that is going to be totally ignored for all time. I've got the admin's talk page watchlisted, there has been no further incidents, so as far as I'm concerned he/she appears to be a good admin in general - but that doesn't mean that a feedback process wouldn't help them. Worm · (talk) 20:36, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - I am open to six year terms or such, but we already have horrendous backlogs in many urgent areas of admin work - from WP:AfD to CAT:CSD - and this proposal will make it much worse. I have written many times that I am open to recall. Bearian (talk) 16:26, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• It's obviously a good idea, just as the enforced break of three years suggested above is equally obviously too long. But even more obviously, none of these proposals have a snowball's chance in Hell of getting past the self-interested entrenched positions so evident here. Malleus Fatuorum 18:52, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

  "It's obviously a good idea" - it is? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

  I don't think it's obviously a bad one, as I wouldn't have suggested it. Malleus is right though, the people who actually discuss these ideas most fervently are generally the same people who have an interest in them not happening. Worm · (talk) 20:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose: I'd have to oppose this too, not so much that it's a bad idea (I think it has merit), but that it's addressing the wrong problem. The problem, I think, is that admins are insufficiently answerable to the content creators they serve. I think what we need is an easier, community-based, admin recall process - and ideas like this, while possibly good, detract distract us from that -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose What we need is a way to remove the tools from admins that don't use them correctly, not a means of pestering admins that do their job correctly just to make them jump through some hoops. As I said above, the problem isn't the vast majority of admins who don't create problems. Its the small handful that do. I support efforts to remove the tools from admins that don't use them right. But I think that forcing all admins, including the hundreds that do nothing wrong ever, just to catch the 10 or 12 that may need to give up the tools, is wrong-headed. --Jayron32 19:50, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Ten or twelve? I could name you at least 30 or 40, which is a substantial proportion of the active administrators as oppsed to the headline number. Malleus Fatuorum 19:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
    • Oh, we all understand your position, Malleus. We know that you believe that 100% of all admins are instantly corrupt and worthless the moment they accept a nomination for an RFA (and quite interestingly without any actual evidence on an individual level, person for person). It makes it quite easy to ignore your statements on these matters because they are so obviously without merit. Which is a shame really, because I think that in some cases you often have valid points. However, your presense in arguements which would otherwise help fix the situation with real problematic admins instantly ruins them, if only because of your position in opposition to a specific administrator in indistinguishable against your unfounded, baseless and nonspecific prejudice against the administrator corps in general. Again, what it really hurts is that, once you show up with the same tired arguements, it ruins any chance to remove actual problems because it poisons the well; people who would otherwise be able to rationally consider removing an administrator who needs to be removed will just stay away lest they be associated with you. Thanks a bunch. Keep it up, and we'll never ever get any real reform towards having a respectable administrator corps. After I finish typing this, I'm going to mail myself an email with your highly predictable response, before you even write it to me, so as to prove how predictable and tired your behavior in these matters is. --Jayron32 21:07, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
      • You very evidently don't understand, so I fail to see why you might want to pretend that you do. Malleus Fatuorum 21:20, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
      • Whether Malleus is right or wrong on the numbers, there should be a way for individuals to express such concerns and have them looked at by the community. (And I've never seen Malleus suggesting anything like the suggestion that "100% of all admins are instantly corrupt and worthless the moment they accept a nomination for an RFA", so you really should not malign him like that) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:22, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
        • Indeed I've never said anything like that, no matter how many times Jayron32 tries to convince himself and others that I have. What I have said repeatedly is that the system is corrupt, a view that I find it difficult to believe that any rational person would disagree with. Malleus Fatuorum 21:26, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Let's focus on a recall process instead. If there's a problematic sysop why do we have to wait up to a year or whatever to deal with it? Why go through all the trouble of a "reconfirmation" RfA if nobody has any concerns about the admin? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

  I understand the general thinking and why the proposal has no chance of getting through - but my answer would be feedback and confirmation that you're doing a good job. The bar to desysop was intentionally set so low that there had to be a significant problem with the admin, but the feedback would be helpful. Worm · (talk) 20:22, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• I've got the same answer for just about everything that comes up at WT:RFA: I have no objection if people want to experiment. If someone wants me or any other admin to run for reconfirmation so we can see what that looks like, then fine. My guess, based on the recalls we've had so far, is that most people will be disappointed with the results, for a variety of reasons. But if a significant number of Wikipedians think it's worth trying, then let's have a look and see what happens. - Dank (push to talk) 20:46, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose as per WereSpielChequers, Erik Haugen, and Sven. Most admins I know and who are active divide their time between admin tasks and content building/page repairing/policy making. Submitting their work to review after a fixed period would only invite opposes from people who have had their pages deleted or who have been blocked. Adding a time limit to tenure would also add to the reasons why so few good editors are coming forward to run for office. After my own recent RfA I would not expect to go through it again, and If I had thought for a moment that I would have to do it again or take a forced break, I wouldn't have bothered wanting the mop. 'Time' feels different for different people; I've been on Misplaced Pages for five years already, two very active, which demonstrates that I was in no hurry to get the bit. Now I've just got it, three years is is one heck of short time for people of my age. Let's not forget also that many of our admins are very capable young people who are still at school or college, and Real Life can get in the way for a few years. They may want to return to sysoping when the pressures of school or college life are over. I'm an admin open to recall, and I think we should be looking more into that direction than introducing proposals for probationary periods or reducing admin tenure. It can often take three years as an admin to gain the experience and the trust to become a bureaucrat. Kudpung (talk) 09:00, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Time-based solutions don't work

If I'm hearing it right, the perceived problem is that "adminship is for life", and that it's too hard to get rid of those that are perceived as "bad admins". The proposals above focus on either forcibly desysopping admins after a certain period of time, or forcibly putting them through another mini-RfA every year, or something along those lines. None of these time-based solutions work. If an admin is doing a good job, and is willing to continue doing a good job for 20 years, then desysopping them for no other reason than "a certain amount of time has passed" is shooting us in the foot and throwing a good admin into the trash. Forcing a good admin to go through a mini-RfA every year is also an unnecessary burden on the admin and on the community. Getting through RfA once is stressful enough, having to go through that process again every year would be borderline unbearable. The problem is with "bad admins", not with "good admins", so any proposed solution should only affect the bad admins and leave the good admins alone. If the problem is that it's too hard to get rid of bad admins, then the proposal should focus on creating a mechanism for desysopping an admin when there is an overwhelming community consensus to do so. Or, the proposal should focus on making WP:AOR more enforceable. Any solution that involves mandatory events for all admins at specified time intervals is too cumbersome, bureaucratic, and places an unnecessary burden on admins who are busy enough doing a great job (i.e. the vast majority of them). I'd suggest this thread gets closed and you go back to the drawing board. —SW—  20:47, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I concur, but I'm wondering if something more simple might work. For example, we could say that that a new minted admin has a term of 3-4 years, and after that time, they stand at RFA again or the bit's removed, but only once (this to weed out admins who are gung ho, but lose steam, or who deviate from the path of truth and beauty sooner rather than later). And we work on a better recall system for the bad admins that have passed that bar. --Nuujinn (talk) 21:29, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

That's to ignore the possibility that a corrupt system (adminship for life) leads to corrupt and unaccountable behaviour, which in my view is where we find ourselves today. Malleus Fatuorum 21:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't ignore that possibility, it just recognizes that a minority of admins will become corrupt as a result of the "adminship for life" system, and therefore the solution should only affect the minority that have become corrupt, not the ones who haven't done anything wrong. It's the whole hatchet vs. scalpel thing. —SW—  21:47, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

So your excuse for a corrupt system is that it hasn't yet corrupted everyone? Well-designed systems have checks and balances, not a "let's wait until someone goes crazy" mentality. Malleus Fatuorum 22:55, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

That's not even what it is; I'm all for "let's wait until someone screws up" — the current situation, however, is rather "let's find excuses for anyone who does screw up and sing kumbaya." Again, admins can practically do whatever they want, everyone knows it, and that's the problem. Once you're an admin, it is basically a courtesy of yours to give a damn. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 23:49, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

To trow any crazy idea in the fray, one of the main concerns about RFA is that it is currently very, very hard to pass which causes a massive reduction in the number of successful candidates (and I assume candidates in general). How about we do something like:

• 75-80+% support => full adminship
• 55-65+% support => temp adminship for 3 months
• less => fail.

A temp admin could do RFA again in three months and either get full adminship, get a second temp run or get demoted. The focus in the second RFA should be on his/her actions in those 3 months. I am pretty sure something like this has been suggested before, but I dunno what would be problems with it. Yoenit (talk) 23:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

It has been proposed, yeah. The problem I see with this is that those three months aren't very useful to judge a potential admin. The temp admin will know that he'll be scrutinized very closely, after all, so he'll be on his very best behaviour. Only once he gets full adminship he'd be himself, for better or worse. So you can just as well give him full adminship from the start. --Conti|✉ 23:15, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

"There is a problem, but this is not the ideal solution, so let's do nothing." That's the impression I get from a lot of the comments above. It's true, this isn't an ideal solution, but I sure as hell don't see a better one being proposed. As for the proposal, we could do it the other way around. Adminship will be automatically granted every year unless a significant number of users protest. That way, all the admins that do their work won't have to do anything at all to keep their adminship. --Conti|✉ 23:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Not a particularly bad idea, but it has no more chance of success than any other idea that's been floated only to be shot down the entrenched admin corps. The only solution to this impasse is to unbundle the admin tools and to make it easier to add or remove those tools. This fiction that we have a trusted cadre of users just because they managed (once) to get through a popularity contest is simply that, a fiction. Malleus Fatuorum 23:16, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I think this last notion is also an interesting option. I wonder if we could configure a set of "admin lite" tools, for lack of a better word, each with a particular orientation (vandal control, for example). But I have no conception of how difficult that would be in practice. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:53, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I do: impossible in the current "admins have been through an RfA and are therefore trusted forever with everything, even those things that didn't exist when they were elected" environment. Malleus Fatuorum 01:04, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Ha! I wasn't thinking of the political layer of the OSI model, but rather the technical aspects of breaking out what is often described as a bit into multiple bits. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:58, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure it would be trivial. Just as I'm sure that it'll never happen while the admins rule the roost. Malleus Fatuorum 04:09, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Unbundling is something I would support, and have done several times at WT:RfA, but it always gets shot down -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:08, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

In the name of Jimbo!

I just read through the entire text above. Consensus sits (fairly) squarely against it, for various reasons, not the least being that there is already a shortage of administrators. Now discussion is drifting back towards unbundling, and temporary adminship, which really doesn't seem to be directly related to the three years proposal. While I am against it for many of the reasons above, I think that this discussion either needs to truly redirect itself at some targeted proposals, or refocus on what was presented and what can be changed in the original proposal to make it viable. NativeForeigner /_Contribs 03:58, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

What evidence do you have that there's a shortage of administrators? My experience has been that there's a damn sight too many. Malleus Fatuorum 04:11, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

None. Just parroting the feelings voiced above. NativeForeigner /_Contribs 04:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I seem to remember reading about the shortage in the Signpost. I think it was covering a potential or impending shortage, but I don't recall clearly. Swarm 07:01, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

If we are to assume that a growing number of users and articles needs a growing number of active admins, then we definitely have an admin shortage. --Conti|✉ 07:35, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Other Wikis

I understand from this discussion thread now ongoing as part of the March 2011 update on Strategic Planning at WikiMedia that the Swedish wikipedia currently has one year terms for admins, reportedly with successful results. Could we learn from what might work elsewhere and apply lessons learned here? Perhaps Lars Aronsson, who made the observation there would weigh in here? (I'll ask him) Geoff 22:16, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• Comment. I'm not an administrator anywhere and have no opinion in this matter. The Swedish Misplaced Pages in January-February 2006 introduced a one-year time limit on adminship. As far as I know, it has worked just fine for five full years now. The policy is now mentioned in sv:Misplaced Pages:Administratörer#Förordnandetid but was originally a page of its own where you can still trace the history and discussion (which, of course, are entirely in Swedish). --LA2 (talk) 22:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the Swedish Misplaced Pages also has half of the ratio of admins to articles that we do. They have 97 admins for 390,408 articles, a ratio of 1 admin for every 4025 articles. We have 1 admin for every 2014 articles. If we had the same ratio as them, we'd have about 891 admins instead of the 1,781 we have today. —SW—  23:59, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The ratio of admins to articles is irrelevant, and simply demonstrates what an over-inflated view administrators have of their own importance. The overwhelming majority of vandalism is dealt with by the (untrusted) troops on the ground. Malleus Fatuorum 00:04, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Um, that's because reverting vandals doesn't require admin tools. What's your point? —SW—  04:07, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Bad math. If en.wp had an annual renewal, it would lose some of those 1781 admins, who aren't active and wouldn't bother to be reelected, so the ratios would become more similar. The lower Swedish ratio is in part the result of having annual renominations for five years. --LA2 (talk) 00:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Quite possibly a significant number are dead, which puts the lie to the "admin for life" idea; it's actually "admin for all eternity". Malleus Fatuorum 00:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Ha, good point ... I feel enshrined. - Dank (push to talk) 03:49, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

"admin for all eternity" - that's actually what it says on the pyramid I built. You wondered what it was for? It is in fact a giant barnstar I gave myself, for being patient enough to wait thousands of years for Misplaced Pages to be invented. Well hey, when you've got eternity, you need to be patient. Rd232 13:41, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposer comment ("This is not a admin reconfirmation proposal")

• This is not a admin reconfirmation proposal. The crucial part is that admins are forced to take a break from being an admin for a period of time. I am happy to compromise on the timeframes, so that "Adminship be granted for a period of X years. An editor must also wait Y years between adminships". The value for X could be as high as 10, the value for Y could be as low as 1. I think the periods should be measured in years, not months, however.
• Just to cement my claim that this is not a reconfirmation proposal, I'm happy for admins to be automatically reinstated after Y years (though I'd prefer them to go through RfA again).
• While a lot of people are understandably focused on "rogue admins", this proposal is really about governance and renewal. This proposal suggests de-sysoping admins for a period of time even if they are doing a good job, for various reasons.
• Despite their self-image of some, admins are not simply normal editors with extra widgets. Because of the WP:RFA process, admins wield political power, and normal editors will usually call in an admin to personally mediate disputes in the first instance.
• Some admins have claimed that there are not enough admins. Patently untrue. The WP:RFA process is currently rejecting applicants at a rate of 50% or more. If WP were really desperate for admins, it would not have the luxury of rejecting so many applications, nor the time to be so exhaustive in vetting candidates.
• Given the tens of millions of people on the internet, the millions of wikipedia users, and the hundreds of thousands of active WP editors, it is not reasonable to assert that there are only 1800 or so suitable to be admins. The only reason that there are not enough admins is because the current system keeps people out of joining their ranks. This is not surprising, and not even a necessarily bad thing. As more people join the admin cohort, it is natural for the cohort to keep raising the barrier to entry (the counterintuitive aspect of this is that new admins are more likely much better admins than older ones!).
• The issue of governance is that the group of wikipedia leaders, who wield political power, should not be granted that political power indefinitely. Not because of "fairness" or "democracy", but out of the simple fact that if the group of admins is largely static, the website will inevitable end up tailored to the desires of that group, rather than appealing to the community at large.
• The issue of renewal is that with a largely static adminship, the website will be much less able to adapt and cope with changing circumstances in the future.
• We have an encyclopedia here where articles are changing every second, yet we grant adminship for eternity. It makes no sense whatever.

--Surturz (talk) 08:03, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Apologies, the reconfirmation thing was my fault, an idea I put forward later on which I considered similar to your idea and worth mentioning. Worm · (talk) 08:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

The root of your idea seems to be that admins get "political power" from being admins. But they don't (they're not elected representatives), they get "political power" (such as it is) from (a) being the sort of highly experienced and non-divisive editors able to get through RFA and (b) having (via RFA) the demonstrated trust of the community to wield powerful tools. As a result, taking an enforced break from adminship will have no effect, since the trust has not been withdrawn: only desysopping on grounds of untrustworthiness will have an effect. Besides which, admins have no more say in any of the "political" processes (of policy writing, enforcement and reform) than anyone else qua admin. The problem is rather one of numbers: the sort of people who get heavily involved in those over a longer period are very often the sort who will either become admins (becoming involved before RFA), or are admins already (becoming involved after). PS your remark of "a largely static adminship" is in any case highly debatable; especially on a 3-5 year time scale, there's actually a lot of churn in active admins. PPS given the perennial confusion between admins and elected representatives, I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't be done with it and have some, empowered to develop policy proposals with something like the deliberation process of ArbCom and put the proposals to the community. At least it would reduce the scale issues perennially experienced in developing big policy changes. Rd232 09:28, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

But what actually is the point of a forced break? What actually is it supposed to achieve? It seems to me to me to be just trying to cosmetically address the "Admin is for life" issue but completely missing the reasons why that is considered a problem -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:05, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Your proposal works on the presumption that admins will actually remain active during the term you proscribe and will fill in the necessary tasks. I've put a lot of thought into this, because I am an admin of over three years standing, and I needed to ensure that I'm not protesting out of some self-interest. I don't think I am; I'm sure some others will disagree. :) That said: however many admins there may be, there are not enough admins working in the area I work (text based copyright cleanup); as I demonstrated above, of the four text-focused copyright admins that I know who were promoted within the last three years, three of them are either participating much less or virutally gone. Cut and paste repair, too, is a tedious and complicated task. User:Anthony Appleyard has been steadily working on this task for almost five years. He is one of very few admins who bother to do so. Anthony has been an administrator since December 2006. What benefit to the project could it possibly be to remove him from this task, which he attends to so well, for any length of time? I have myself long thought that there should be an easier process to review and remove admins who are unsuited to the tasks or who go off the rails. But universal forced breaks will only pull qualified people away from tasks which they are willing to undertake. The only way that I can imagine it would work is if we created some kind of draft system to require our new admin volunteers to take on the tasks that are then abandoned, rather than allowing them to work where they want to...and that seems like a whole separate recipe for disaster. --Moonriddengirl 12:26, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Those are great examples - forcing you and Anthony Appleyard out of the job for a while would be a disaster. The "admin for life" issue is only a problem for bad admins, not for good productive ones. You wouldn't, for example, force all doctors out of their jobs at regular intervals as a way to address medical malpractice - you'd have a process for addressing bad docs without harming the good ones. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:22, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• It goes a lot further than that Boing!, under this scheme, only 1 of the top 10 admins by administrator actions (who are not bots and are still admins) would be remain an admin. These administrators are doing lots of uncontroversial work, not causing any issues, not showing signs of burnout or political gain (to the best of my knowledge). Desysoping would clearly harm the encyclopedia and I'm unsure of the benefit? Worm · (talk) 13:28, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oh wow, yes, that would not be good. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:47, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• The WP:RFA process is currently rejecting applicants at a rate of 50% or more. If WP were really desperate for admins, it would not have the luxury of rejecting so many - RFA is generally accepted to be a broken process. There is a huge disconnect between how things work at RFA and the needs of the rest of the project.
• the hundreds of thousands of active WP editors - If you define "active" as "has made an edit in the last month" perhaps. But most of those people wouldn't even qualify for rollbacker. There are only 11,000 users who have averaged at least 1 edit per day in the last 30 days. Fewer than 7,000 have averaged 2 edits and only 5,000 have averaged 3.
• the group of wikipedia leaders, who wield political power - Misplaced Pages works on consensus. When it comes to policy discussions, admins in general hold no more weight than any other user. As Rd232 noted, any power they have comes from their experience and trust, not their user rights.
• As more people join the admin cohort, it is natural for the cohort to keep raising the barrier to entry - Have you actually looked at RFA before making these comments? Most of the voters are not admins. Looking at a recent unsuccessful RFA, almost 80% of the voters were non-admins. Mr.Z-man 15:09, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Re: "The WP:RFA process is currently rejecting applicants at a rate of 50% or more. If WP were really desperate for admins, it would not have the luxury of rejecting so many applications". That does not follow. There are actually very few marginal RfAs, and the vast majority of the rejected applicants are nowhere near ready for admin, no matter how bad a shortage might exist - they might make good candidates some day in the future, but they're obvious NOTNOW and SNOW results. Rejecting them is not a luxury, it's a necessity. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:53, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Undo button for text editing

Alright, maybe I'm missing something, but I am not sure why (to my knowledge) there is no undo button for those times when you accidentally hit Crtl+A while writing something. Just happened to me before. I see no option for undo, and it's not in the perennial proposals or in the old proposals afaik. So why don't we have an undo button exactly? Oh and redo too I suppose. If there are none without the toolbox thingees then I propose that an undo and redo button be added. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Say Shalom! 17:39, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

What editor are you using, and what effect does Ctrl+A while editing have for you? I use the browser edit box, and there Ctrl+A has the effect of "Select All"; I also have Undo and Redo with their key shortcuts in the Edit menu.  --Lambiam 18:13, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

From a technical standpoint, I'm not sure how readily that functionality can be added to the interface; the edit window itself is just a text box in my browser, and I don't know if an external button can send it an 'undo'. For a user, undo should be available with the shortcut Ctrl-Z, and redo is Ctrl-Y. You can also right-click the text box and select 'Undo' or 'Redo' from the menu that appears. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Did you intend to start this thread at WP:VPT instead of here? —SW—  23:49, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, didn't see that section, so guess I did. I'm using the plain old vanilla editor. And now that I tried the buttons CTRL-Z and CTRL-Y, it did have the undo and redo effect even though I cannot see the buttons indicated. That'll do. =p Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Say Shalom! 18:57, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Use of Abuse Filters for enforcement of bans (including ArbCom bans)

I emailed ArbCom about this (because I thought since it would be an ArbCom ban, it was ArbCom's decision) and they said that I should make the proposal to the community. Basically, the proposal is: I was thinking: people occasionally don't listen to ArbCom or community bans, and end up editing pages or topics they are banned from; sometimes with full knowledge, in which case they might create lots of drama and hinder editing, or a complete accident, where their claims sometimes can't be believed, even when they're true. Then I thought of a way to 'block' users from pages in certain categories or pages etc: the abuse filter. The abuse filter can be used (as said in an IRC discussion) to prevent users from editing certain pages by preventing the edit if a certain user tries to edit a certain page, and I believe this would be useful to prevent users from deliberately going past bans and causing disruption, or banned users accidentally editing pages they are banned from editing and being punished for their mistake. That's my proposal. --123Hedgehog456 : Create an account! 20:09, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I suppose this could be useful for specific page bans, but in my experience topic ban violations are less often a matter of (to make up an example) "He was banned from Scientology articles and edited scientology!" than of "He was banned from Scientology articles and edited ." For that reason, having a software solution isn't going to help with most topic bans except in the most obvious of cases. Not necessarily a reason to not pursue it; just saying it may not be as useful as it sounds at first blush. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Agreed. Editing restrictions are normally so broad that they cannot be usefully implemented in software, see e.g. WP:TBAN.  Sandstein  20:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe there are areas where it would be impractical, or impossible to implement, but in areas where it is possible to implement, it may provide benefits. --123Hedgehog456 : Create an account! 20:31, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I think you can ban users from editing articles that are in specific categories, and lots of categories carry the same topics as those that are commonly topic-banned (if you get what I mean). And in my opinion, this would be useful, as no-one wants to be blocked for an accident, or unnecessary drama created by a user editing a page they are banned from and causing problems. --123Hedgehog456 : Create an account! 20:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The server cannot have too many filters and some useful filters were disabled in the past simply because they were not triggered often enough. So a filter for just one user is not going to be created. By the way, another possible solution is to remind users about topic bans through their own common.js. — AlexSm 20:47, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be a good idea for a filter for the reason's given by Alex, but a bot would be easier (reports edits made in the topic). We can keep a section of monobook.js which gives them a nice "do not edit please please please" banner on the relevant pages, so that they don't accidentally edit.

Proposing a new "sister project"?

Is there a standard procedure for proposing a new "sister project" (Wiktionary, Wikiquote, WikiBooks, WikeSource, WikiNews, and a number of others are "sister projects" of Misplaced Pages, run by the Wikimedia Foundation)? I've created this proposal, but I don't know if that's the sort of proposal being sought there, and as far as I know, no one's noticed it. What would be the best way to inform online communities of the proposal and invite participation? (Besides maybe a brief notice on the talk pages of interested WikiProjects?)

Briefly the idea is this: Web sites like rate-my-prof (or whatever its called) are for soundbites only; they do not welcome serious substantive discussion. They have extremely small limits on lengths of comments and don't want to change that. I'd like to have a forum devoted to the same topic, differing from those in that it would allow and encourage serious discussion. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe this is something that the Wikimedia Foundation would be interested in. All of the current projects revolve around making knowledge more accessible, an encyclopedia, a dictionary, a collection of primary source documents, a collection of multimedia files. Your idea seems more along the lines of a social network or a forum on living people. I would personally not support such an idea being created under the WMF banner. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:59, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

You may want to check out the Strategy wiki, it's a place where you can make these kinds of proposals. -- œ 08:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Without considering the merits of the proposal, Wikimedia does have a page for proposing new projects at meta:Proposals for new projects. Qwyrxian (talk) 08:04, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Random Article

I have read through WP:PEREN and as far as I can tell this issue haunt been directly proposed yet. I have also searched through the archives of the pump and again as far as I can tell this issue has never been directly addressed.
I believe that there needs to be a way to tag something to not show up if you press the random article button on the side bar. I am saying this mostly for the point of censorship, I am not saying that the article be removed I am just saying make it so a 5 year old on Misplaced Pages can't hit the random article button and get something inappropriate for his age. I understand there are ways to go into setting to dis able pictures showing up but to do that you would have to know that the picture was on there in the first place. _{@ d \/\/ | | |} 11:42, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:NOTCENSORED. I am also willing to bet my left kidney that 99.999% of all children visiting "inappropriate" pages on wikipedia do so because they actually searched for a specific term rather than with random article. Yoenit (talk) 12:14, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm also willing to bet a child has a better chance at winning the lottery than they do at landing on an inappropriate page instead of some obscure stub article.AerobicFox (talk) 17:21, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Every time I click on the "Random article" button, I get an unreferenced stub of questionable notability on some random person/band/town in India with a population of 19. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:17, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposed liberty on essays

(NOTE: The following was moved from Misplaced Pages:Proposed liberty on essays. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 14:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)): The Proposed liberty on essays is a Misplaced Pages proposal that would let people have POV essays that don't have to do with Misplaced Pages. Well, we have userboxes that often have a POV and userboxes are often short. It would be healthier for the brain because then we can read more and thus our brains don't become mush. -- SomeDudeWithAUserName 21:22, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not supporting or opposing the proposal, but I feel that the word 'liberty' is not accurate in this case. Such a change will change the scope of userspace completely. Kayau Voting IS evil 14:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Obviously not, we are not a general discussion forum. If it is not related to building an encyclopedia it doesn't belong here. POV userboxes are already evil, but are tolerated because they are relatively harmless. Yoenit (talk) 14:37, 18 March 2011 (UTC)