Misplaced Pages

• Support. "Book:X" is much cleaner and more intuitive than "Misplaced Pages:Books/X". Jpatokal (talk) 22:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support. This seems logical and much cleaner than having a book-class with all the banner/project business. --Kleinzach 05:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I think this will be in addition to book-class rather than instead of it. No matter what namespace the books sit in (some/all) WikiProjects will want to keep track of them. Road Wizard (talk) 10:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes to tracking, but maybe using a simpler process than incorporating it into the Misplaced Pages: Version 1.0 assessments? Or are we all too addicted to that gaudy clutter on the talk pages? --Kleinzach 23:38, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support - absolutely, terrific idea!
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:49, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support - This would make things much cleaner and help curb resales by profiteers. NB I wondered at first if all the linked articles in a book would have to be given full URLs instead of the usual ] shortcut, but then remembered User pages have a different namespace. In other words, these books remain part of Wikipedia, if I understand correctly, rather than becoming part of Wikibooks or whatever. --Jubilee♫clipman 18:30, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support The book format is sufficiently different from the rest of the project's content types to need its own namespace. Agree with comments by Jpatokal, Road Wizard above.  Skomorokh  22:20, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support Clearly the format and extension are sufficiently mature as to merit a namespace and further work. Though I wonder if it would quickly become a form of greater overlap with Wikibooks? Steven Walling 01:17, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

  I doubt it, Wikibooks takes a more personalised how-to approach to their writing style, which is fantastic for some things (I finally learnt how to use Blender. Well, I sort of made a snow-man that looks like the devil incarnate, but you see where I'm going with this). We take a more encyclopaedic factual approach which is better suited for some other things (a how-to guide on genital mutilation and regicide would get us into all kinds of trouble with the pesky Interpol people...). —what a crazy random happenstance 17:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support Makes complete sense. MER-C 01:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
• Support Good idea. —Anonymous Dissident 12:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• Mild Support. I'm strongly against it starting a precedent for everyone else to claim namespaces for all and sundry, but this particular instance should really have been implemented when the Books feature was first added, rather than the ad-hoc system in place now. —what a crazy random happenstance 16:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support: agree fully with Happenstance, but this should always have been the case. Isolating books into their own namespace makes so much sense it's unreal: we can customise searching, search-engine-indexing, subpages, transclusion, formatting/appearance, and countless other aspects, with much greater ease. Having them in their own namespace will make identification, by "Book-Class" or whatever, totally trivial. Happy‑melon 11:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support. I honestly don't fully understand the books feature myself, but if that's the way the wind is blowing, let no one say I don't also blow. Plus it's been a while since there were any major changes around here. Seriously though, if Books is a feature of the software rather than a Wikiproject, it shouldn't be stuck under some project-space page. That didn't make any sense at all. So I do fully support this. Equazcion 11:53, 15 Dec 2009 (UTC)

Forbidding programme guides

I think we should forbid programme guides like those at some american TV network articles. Those are already at the websites of the networks. This forbidding of programme guides is already at Nl wikipedia. Misplaced Pages is a encyclopedia not a programme guide KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 20:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

To an extent, I agree with you, but that information is already present on Misplaced Pages via the Categories of the shows. Linking them to the network article itself just makes that information easier to find on the site. --King Öomie 20:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It is reasonable for a reader of an article on a programming network to want to know what is on the network currently. The grid format presents the information in a clear, concise format. Further, the grids do not present information on a by-episode basis, but only for the current season. There should only be two rounds of changes (fall premieres and mid-season replacements.) In that respect, it's not a program guide. What do you propose as an alternative? The only things I see are prose sections listing the programs or a long See also section with links to the current programs. —C.Fred (talk) 20:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I am wanting the Long See also system KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 20:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Why? How does it make life easier for the reader? —C.Fred (talk) 20:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes but i want a uniform Misplaced Pages ruleset and this is one of the things of that KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 20:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

This was recently discussed, at length, at Misplaced Pages talk:What Misplaced Pages is not/Archive 30#Per station television schedules. I didn't follow it closely - can someone that did please summarize key points?

Afaik, centralizing the schedules at a single location is preferred, such as 2008–2009 United States network television schedule, whereas per-network lists such as Fox Broadcasting Company#Programming are deprecated. But that might be wrong. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Please give an example of a program guide. I'm not sure what you're talking about. - Denimadept (talk) 20:53, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, he's referring to pages like House (season 3) --King Öomie 21:01, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

This:

• Midseason: Breakthrough with Tony Robbins
• Summer 2010: America's Got Talent, Friday Night Lights, Who Do You Think You Are?
• The weeknight late night schedule consists of talk shows The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Last Call with Carson Daly, followed by Poker After Dark. Saturday Night Live and Poker After Dark air on Saturdays.
• From September 14, 2009, the weekday 10:00 hour of prime time will be removed to make way for The Jay Leno Show. Saturday Night Live has its season premiere on September 19.
• During NFL season, the Sunday night schedule airs live across the country, starting at 7:00 p.m. ET/4:00 p.m. PT.

We had something like that at the Dutch Nederland 1 article but i deleted it because it was against the rule sof Misplaced Pages NL.. as i have said Misplaced Pages isnt a programme guide KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 21:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

There's absolutely zero reason for such tables to be in WP. It's a clear violation of WP:NOT. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 21:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that such tables shouldn't be here. OTOH, the list of episodes such as what Kingoomieiii pointed to, I can see a use for. - Denimadept (talk) 21:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

There's no good reason for the tables, or for the scheduling information. In rare cases changes to a timeslot have historical significance (say, when Bullwinkle became the first primetime cartoon show) — but that can be discussed in individual cases. Also, it's undesirable to get into a controversy between editors on every network, every TV station about whether its past, current, and future schedules are significant. All of them are promotional, all inappropriate. Piano non troppo (talk) 21:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

As I pointed out above, these were discussed in-depth recently. There was a fairly clear consensus that historic lists are relevant/notable/useful. See List of United States network television schedules, and Category:Television_schedules and it's sup/sub cats.

Whether to have the information for current-schedules repeated within each network's article (as is being given as an example above), was the only thing I recall strong disagreement of, but again, I didn't follow the WT:NOT thread closely. I'll ask a couple of the participants there to chime in here.

Someone could also Search through the afds for precedent, if desired. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The result on the most recent link from that search was "no concensus". A weakness in the argument of those in favor is claiming that a past schedule is "historically significant", without saying why. The fact that the timeslot for Show XYZ was taken by Show PDQ is probably no more significant than "executives thought they could make more money" ... and that would be somewhat significant ... if that reason was given a reliable citation. Another compound failing of the "historically significant" position is that the instant a schedule changes, it becomes "historical", on the one hand, that's a lovely way to add relatively promotional material to Misplaced Pages, and on the other hand, it causes the schedules to be at least always slightly out-of-date. I.e., it's misleading. Unadorned "historical schedules" are in some ways more of a problem than current schedules. Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 22:32, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The result of the debate was no consensus. Historical network schedules, such as 1951–52 United States network television schedule, can easily be sourced (and are) to any number of reliable print references, but the WP:FANCRUFT crowd is so adamant about deleting television content that they would actually delete articles with tons of inline citations from print publications. Firsfron of Ronchester 00:56, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

A list of the programs presented by a network is no more promotional than a list of vehicles currently manufactured by a car company. It is something that a reader of the article will find useful. It makes sense to present it to the reader in an easy-to-use format—especially for US networks that have predictable weekly schedules. The alternative would be seven bullet points with each day's programs in a row. While that works for late night, it's cumbersome for prime time. The table works better; why do we want to hinder the readers? —C.Fred (talk) 03:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

My recollection of the previous discussion was clearly that per-station schedules like the one exampled above (particularly "current" schedules) are inappropriate; the consensus was split, but generally held in favor due to historical reasons of the type of national, larger-picture schedules that compare various networks as 1951–52 United States network television schedule examples were generally ok, as long as they did not take a very fine-grain approach to the schedule. --MASEM (t) 05:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The one exampled above is not a per-station schedule, it is a network schedule. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 17:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I've been asked to comment here, but I think I'll defer to Masem. By best attempt at summary was here. It wasn't terribly well received by Firsfron and it doesn't offer a hard and fast rule. So I'll agree generally w/ Masem here. Protonk (talk) 02:56, 6 December 2009 (UTC) It is true that, as readers of WP: What Misplaced Pages is not will know, Misplaced Pages is not a "how-to" manual, so no one should view it as a manual to tune in to television channels or a series of programme listings in the same sense that the Radio Times would be. However, it is surely quite central to the basic information about a programme to know when it is on, for example, if a series has been a regular part of the BBC Radio 4 schedule or the BBC Two schedule, it is quite central to know the time of day that a programme is normally broadcast or the day of the week when the programme is normally broadcast. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

What's the argument against their inclusion? There seems to be a tendency among some to say this isn't allowed and this isn't possible and generally forbidding things. All other things being equal that strikes me as being against the original spirit of Misplaced Pages. If there are people willing to put the time and effort into it, there is some justification for the information, and as long as they do not otherwise infringe on others or harm Misplaced Pages, then allow it. Lambanog (talk) 12:31, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Where to start? There's always a better source of information than Wiki: The stations themselves. After a few years, there would be dozens of historical schedules in a single article. It's information that could easily be vandalized, and would be difficult and tedious to correct. If the example table in the article is typical, it's amateurish and ugly (in part because there's no easy way to describe to editors some uniform color scheme), and doesn't contribute to understanding the topic. It's a mass of undifferentiated facts being quoted without meaning just because the figures happen to be available. I.e., unencyclopedic. Piano non troppo (talk) 13:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

• The stations are often terrible sources, since they tend to try keeping this info out of the public eye for whatever reason (nevermind the fact that the stations are a primary source, with the attendant issues that comes with).
• Vandalism is an oft used strawman argument about anything that people don't like. All of Misplaced Pages is susceptible to vandalism.
• The example above is just an example. If you have an aesthetic concern with it, then you can go ahead and change it. I don't see an obvious need for a "uniform color scheme", regardless. And the meaning of the content is blatantly obvious by the context.
• Define "unencyclopedic". Even easier: define "encyclopedic".
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 14:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The point, "encyclopedic" here, is to understand what impact the broadcast schedule has on human knowledge, as without that, it is simply factoids. When you look at a specific station (or broadcast network to address the concern of the IP above), that schedule means little, because it just tells you when things aired. But when you put that schedule against all other significant rivals, now you have information that is more transformative and going to be better sources: the examples I present include the rivalry between The Cosby Show and The Simpsons, and the impact of NBC's Must See TV on ratings of the other networks to the point they didn't even try to compete with it. Furthermore, the side-by-side comparisons bring out the information in a less indiscriminate form, while individual station/network schedules tend to get too detailed (even to the point of week-by-week schedules, which is NOT important). --MASEM (t) 14:54, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

A Permanent Record

Misplaced Pages has a kind of "Institutional Memory" issue with regards to not keeping track of past bad behaviour very well. Unless you get a block, there's no easy to identify record of past bad behaviour that can show a pattern of poor judgement / malicious intent.

This is particular in cases where an Arbitration case has passed warnings or cautions on editors or admin. These are solely recorded on the case, and so people might forget about them or never have seen them, and an editor or admin can revert to their past behaviour when the attention from the case has died down.

Do we need some way of endorsing a permanent record associated with an account when there have been such cautions, or consensus to make such cautions from such as AN/I? Would this be best handled with current tools, or would an extension to the codebase be needed? --Barberio (talk) 15:39, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm against the general idea of permanent records of warnings. ArbCom decisions are a little different, but in the whole, Misplaced Pages should be forgiving. Past performance should not prejudice the future; people change, and relatively easily. We allow people to remove warnings from their talk for this reason, and I'd like to keep to that spirit. Warnings are just that; they have no permanent value, only temporal. As I say, editing restrictions as imposed by the ArbCom may need to be handled differently. - Jarry1250  15:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

See WP:Editing restrictions and see the log of blocks and bans under each Arbcom case, for example WP:DIGWUREN#Log of blocks and bans. EdJohnston (talk) 16:01, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I know that page, but it's not exactly obvious if you were going to warn someone for their actions. If someone, say, could not edit particular topics, and you went to warn them about 3RR, you wouldn't realise. In any case, that's really a separate debate. - Jarry1250  16:38, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I think there is merit in this idea (the thought occurred to me before). Forgiving is not the same as forgetting. An annotated record created and maintained at admin discretion could allow for old incidents no longer relevant to be removed from the record, and the annotation would permit a better explanation of the issues than the block log does. A user subpage could serve this purpose, perhaps. It's not unproblematic, but it's worth discussing whether or how it could work (eg subpage created only after first block, annotations by admins only, should the record be visible to admins only, etc). Rd232 16:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I am against this idea. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, and our efforts should be directed toward improving the encyclopedia rather than creating a database of bad editor behavior. Things which don't improve the content of the encyclopedia are tertiary, and efforts spent on editor records will only lead to bureaucracy. Firsfron of Ronchester 18:34, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Hate to break it to you, but bureaucracy is already upon us (as are various forms of editor records). The issue is how to make it as efficient and unintrusive as possible, so it takes least time, energy and drama to manage. Rd232 21:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Just because we have some bureaucracy (and way too much already in my opinion) that does not justify having more bureaucracy to deal with the bureaucracy we already have. I have seen (and had slapped on me as well) plenty of useless and wrong "warnings", why have a permanent open easily accessed location where people can see them and get the wrong impression about a user? I was once blocked by accident because someone thought a particularly bad edit on a talk page was done by me (it wasnt, they misread the history of the talk page, it was a different editor) luckily the admin who blocked me realized their mistake within a few minutes and took the block off before I even knew about it, they apologized on my talk page for it and explained what happened. Do I want a permanent record that I was blocked, a record that might not explain the full details of what happened and that I really didnt do anything wrong? What about editors who go around "warning" other editors based on "pay back" for disagreeing with them? This would lead to so much abuse and tarnish good user's names. Everyone please stick to working on an encyclopedia and dont worry one iota about editors being "rude" or warning editors or disciplining them. Waste of time and ridiculous. Stick to editing and improving and adding information to articles if you want to help build an encyclopedia.Camelbinky (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree, to a great extent, with what you've said above. The idea of building and maintaining a permanent record of disciplinary actions has absolutely nothing to do with writing encyclopedia articles, and can only lead to drama and wasted efforts and resources. The effort spending time compiling editor records would be better spent improving encyclopedia articles. Firsfron of Ronchester 21:52, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

For certain kinds of incidents, the record needs to be more open and transparent. There are two reasons. Last year I stumbled across a confrontation-in-progress with a very young Wiki editor, and was invited to contribute. This editor was in the habit of erasing warnings from her talk page, etc. So it took me some time to discover that she'd been warned, blocked, and mentored. One of her critics became an administrator during the resolution, etc. It was a complicated situation that could have been resolved fairly easily — the editor simply was using one device after after another — making promises she didn't keep — to continue her behavior. If the time I spent was any example, a half dozen people spent hours finally bringing her inline. Second, the lack of reporting (in some, limited situations) is an impediment to new-ish editors, who don't know the procedure for researching, and may be unaware that they are dealing with an editor with a troubled history. They may leave Wiki, having had a bad experience — not having any easy way of realizing they themselves, and Wiki as a whole are on the right track. Simpler reports for new users, certainly. Piano non troppo (talk) 22:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

(e/c)The issue is how to make it as efficient and unintrusive as possible - Er, no, the issue is whether we should have it at all. There are some things like ArbCom/RFC archives and block logs, but nothing like what's being proposed here. I agree with Camelbinky and Firsfron, there's simply too little benefit to the project to justify this. Mr.Z-man 23:07, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The issue is how to scope the project. If a new user could push a button and get a summary of an editor's behavior — it doesn't have to use "loaded" language such as "blocked", "banned", "warned" (which a new user won't understand, anyhow) — it would be greatly appreciated by many a new user who has their edits reverted. The report could say, loosely, "This is moderately experienced editor, who is not an administrator, with some experience in administrative issues, who infrequently follows up on edits in a large number of articles, and who strongly defends their position." (That's just one example. Several types of reports are necessary, tailored to specific editor needs.) Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 23:16, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

(ec)"the issue is whether we should have it all" - LOL. I think you misunderstood - "it" in my sentence was the whole existing superstructure, not this suggested record. Or are you suggesting we abolish block logs, ban lists, AE archives et al? The issue is, when all those records are spread around, keeping track. And in some cases, insufficient clarity and context (eg when blocks are overturned or questioned); and in others, massive WP:TLDR. So an annotated central record would have its uses. Drama could be minimised by making it visible only to admins, a suggestion I alluded to above - but obviously at the expense of transparency. Bureaucracy isn't going away, people, just by rejecting any suggestions to make it work better. I'm not saying this incipient hint of a barely-developed suggestion is unambiguously worth doing, but the argument should be on the merits of it or possible variations. As for "focussing on the content" - suspect you're just not familiar with the problem areas of Misplaced Pages, and its associated various problem types of editor, or you wouldn't say that. These problem editors need handling better, and the lack of a central, clear record is a massive enabler of drama by allowing problems to fester unaddressed for far too long, because nobody can get a handle on the issues. Rd232 23:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty used to people citing "That's just extra bureaucracy" when ever there's a suggestion for a process or documentation that'll make editors lives easier... But I think this takes the cake... This is a call to reduce bureaucracy, by centralising all the various hidden areas people's 'behaviour record' are currently kept. Right now, someone's past behaviour can only be found by doing separate searches on their user name, in WP:AN, WP:AN/I, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Index/Motions, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Index/Cases, and Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Index/Involved parties as well as the block log. And that won't even show the times when someone has had to give them a very strong warning on their talk page not to do something again. That's a lot of bureaucracy that could be replaced by a single 'conduct history' for each editor. --Barberio (talk) 00:51, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

There is no bureaucracy behind the current records system. Block logs are done automatically by the software, we have discussion archives because its almost as easy to archive them as it is to simply remove them. Having some sort of centrally managed system would need bureaucracy or else it would just be a free-for-all, controlled by whoever can yell the loudest for the longest. Mr.Z-man 02:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

(e/c) Actually, instead of checking all of those places, one can just check the user's talk page history, since it's a requirement that the editors being discussed receive notice of said discussion. This also shows when a user has been given warnings. Maintaining pages containing users' permanent records is bureaucracy, and detracts from the point of Misplaced Pages: creating a 💕. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:20, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Are you serious? It could take hours to comb through an established user's talk history in this way, looking for relevant messages. This is in no way a substitute for an annotated record, especially including summary of responses and subsequent behaviour, which takes seconds to skim. The only time you'd put in the effort to do scan the talk history in this way is to argue for a major sanction. A record could be relevant in informing other actions, including the information or advice that should be provided in particular contexts. Rd232 10:40, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess I could say the same thing about maintaining a permanent record of bad behavior of hundreds or thousands (or every?) of users: it could take hours... per user. It would take years and years of maintenance for an even semi-accurate record. This effort would take a great deal of time away from building an encyclopedia. Firsfron of Ronchester 18:42, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, that's a point. Maintaining the record should reduce costs elsewhere, but there is the cost of the record itself. I'd see it as an investment, if it works - the efficiency savings elsewhere should be much bigger than the costs. Given how little detail there is on the idea at this point, it's pointless to speculate on the exact costs. The largest investment returns would be if the records were only maintained for real problem users; editors with 10+ blocks, say, off the top of my head, or maybe editors with blocks longer than a month. Rd232 22:23, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

"Unless you get a block, there's no easy to identify record of past bad behaviour that can show a pattern of poor judgement / malicious intent." But, it would also behoove us to realize that merely being blocked, however often, does not necessarily show a pattern of poor judgment or malicious intent. People are blocked inappropriately all the time. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 01:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Very rarely. In my experience in years, and tens of thousands of edits, blocks are, I would estimate, correct more than 95% of the time. More than one block is 100% certain indicator of an abusive editor. Piano non troppo (talk) 15:22, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Rubbish. --Malleus Fatuorum 15:27, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you aren't familiar with the daily use of blocking to thwart vandalism? Collect a random sample of blocks (they *are* applied by administrators). They are usually correct in some respect. Speaking from experience with anti-vandalism, a previous block is a strong indicator that an editor is a vandal. It's a virtually certain indicator that dealing with an editor will involve unpleasantness. For the sake of new editors who are completely at sea with the complexities of Wiki culture, a simple description of who they are dealing with would be helpful. Consider the people we are turning away. Piano non troppo (talk) 01:31, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, which further shows how hard it is to get an appropriate user conduct history. There needs to be some way of giving a suitable record of conduct, that can be edited after the fact when needed, and wouldn't be prone to a single Admin's grudges or mistakes. --Barberio (talk) 01:30, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

So who would it be managed by that it wouldn't be susceptible to grudges, biases, or mistakes? Mr.Z-man 02:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I dont understand something, current policy states that if you read a warning then you have the right to delete it from your talk page, it clearly states that. So why are some so intent that warnings must be for everyone to see out in the open and easily accessed? It goes against the core of our "rehabilitate and teach instead of stigmitize and punish" philosophy here on Misplaced Pages. This, to me at least, is more about changing Misplaced Pages's core philosophy on how it treats and teaches users than about just a new way of making our current structure work better. This is a pandora's box and leads us down a slippery slope towards punishment, stigmitizing, embarressing, and biting not only newbies but established users as well. Perhaps next someone can propose a "scarlet V" on user pages of those who have vandalized? All in the name of making it easier to know if they have a history of vandalizing should they make the same mistake again of course.Camelbinky (talk) 02:27, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Excellent points, of course. The stigma of having a "permanent record" if they should do something "wrong" (or even the threat of the same) is only going to drive more editors away from WP. Considering the recent news story about the number of editors already leaving WP in droves, is this really a smart idea? Firsfron of Ronchester 03:06, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The most commonly cited reason for people leaving is an uncollaborative, hostile environment. This requires better bureaucracy (which already exists to address that problem), not less - especially in dealing with the WP:OWNery, WP:GAMEy well-established editors who can easily get their way in dealing with all but the most persistent newbies. Rd232 10:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

A possible technical solution: Improve search, "what links here," and contributions to filter by page or group of pages and look at edit histories. For example, if I am at a user talk page and I can filter "what links here" to just look at Arbitration Committee pages, then it's easier to spot related discussions. Likewise, if I can easily search old edits of a user talk page for warnings, particularly recent ones, then I know if I should give him a level 1 or level 4 warning. Edit summaries sometimes help but some editors are coy in their edit summaries when giving warnings. On the other hand, maybe it's a good thing that I can't easily search old versions, it allows those giving the warnings to be more welcoming. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a very bad idea in my opinion. Misplaced Pages is a collaborative encyclopedia, not a surrogate for parents or school. Our work here is neither to parent, punish, or create pariahs. We are here to build an encyclopedia. If someone cannot edit adhering to our policies and guidelines, we rescind their editing privileges. They ask for a second chance, or they come back and behave, what do we care what they did in the past as long as they are helping now? We do not "brand" people literally, and we should not brand them figuratively. People who cannot edit within our rules usually make themselves known after a short amount of time anyway, from my experience. -- Avi (talk) 04:55, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Fully agree. If you're a good faith editor, we'll accept you and smack you on the nose if you mess up. If you're not productive, we have various methods of dealing with it. –Juliancolton |  05:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment: It's already been acknowledged that whilst the upside of centralising record-keeping and annotating and summarising those records is greater transparency, efficiency and accuracy, the downside of centralising record-keeping is... greater transparency, to the point where a record might be better not seen by non-admins. Perhaps the respondents could address this issue, instead of beating down a germ of an idea before it's had a chance to be developed. I hate how responses to new ideas are so often so dramatically negative, as people see the worst possible implementation/outcome and reject all attempt to consider the merits of it and of possible variations. Yet discussing bad ideas often leads to new ideas which are good: it's a classic idea generation technique ("come up with a really bad idea"). At any rate, do the respondents so vehemently opposed to finding ways of making the existing bureaucracy work better (a) deny that this "bureaucracy" (block logs, ANI, AE, Editing Restrictions, RFC et al) exists (b) deny that the problem that bureaucracy exists to manage exists (problem editors) (c) consider that bureaucracy unimprovable?

Does the existing system really work so well that attempts to improve it have to be squashed immediately? In dealing with vandals, sure, it's OK. But dealing with persistent, well-established long-term problem editors - no, it's frequently appalling in a number of ways (including being unfair, both to the problem editors and to others, as well as ineffective). The reliance on individual admins to know problem editors enough to judge how to deal with them is a key factor. If we had a central, annotated record (eg explaining block contexts, summarising other issues dealt with elsewhere), it would be much easier for uninvolved admins to contribute. And the issue of admins being "involved" with problem editors is one of the major causes of drama - it personalises everything. But as long as we rely on individuals' personal knowledge of long-term problems, that's how it's going to be. So how can we improve on that? Only with something that somebody can inevitably label "bureaucracy". Funnily enough, I don't think police forces say "we don't need bureaucracy - screw proper filing and paperwork! We're here to uphold the law!" The mantra "we're here to create an encyclopedia" overlooks the fact that there are problem editors who either aren't here to do that (they just pursue agendas, more or less subtly), or have problems in participating in that project in a consistently collaborative way. I mean I'm not making this up, am I? Rd232 10:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd tentatively have no problem with a private permanent record that only administrators can see, so long as the editor themselves may also see their permanent record. A private permanent record on yourself that you can't see, and thus can't try to correct errors on, would be the wrong way to go. (And also illegal within certain jurisdictions data protection laws.)

I'd be willing to accept semi-transparency as a balance of privacy issues. And I'd also expect ability to have that record expunged for a variety of acceptable reasons, ie actions as a minor. --Barberio (talk) 15:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, of course if the record is non-public the subject should be able to see it and at least comment on it, if not edit it. but I'm not entirely comfortable with non-publicness though; maybe, between annotating current/recent issues (all of which is at most summary of info available elsewhere), and archiving/deleting old ones, it wouldn't be necessary - people would learn to interpret the significance of the record. Not sure about that. Rd232 17:08, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Rd232 the reason so many, including myself, are vehemently against this is because the way to fix a bureaucracy is not more bureaucracy, it is with less bureaucracy. You are taking a minor issue of Misplaced Pages (disruptive behavior) and trying to solve it with a nuke instead of a targeted smart bomb. Your proposal is yet another broad-type of proposal that has been seen around here before, eliminate our problem-children through "Patriot Act"-type actions and oversight. We are here to create an encyclopedia, not find better more efficient ways of controlling individual and group internet behavior and interaction. When it comes to vandalizing, sockpuppetry, etc and other extreme behavior that is related to editing those people tend to get blocked and remembered anyways, so this proposal doesnt help in "catching" them anyways. What it can hurt is those that do things that are subjectively disruptive such as "rude" or "uncivil" behavior at talk pages and forums. The reason I am concentrating on speech related behavior is that this proposal will quickly become the center of any "uncivil" warnings issued to editors, you get into an argument, tempers on both sides get heated, and one side will decide to slap a warning on the other side and put it on his/her permanent record; even great admins will start seeing their permanent record full of such slander whenever they do something that is disagreed with by someone. It will be the number one abuse on this system. Yes, we must look at the worst that can happen, because the worst will happen with any proposal, the best benefits of this proposal are not worth the cost to freedom or the abuse that will be done by using this system.

• This is only a hypothetical example and I am not really insulting anyone, so bear with this example and give me AGF, ok?- Say I call X a "fucking idiot", and in disagreements with lots of people at different places I say the opposing side is "a bunch of morons" and similar words. Currently I can be brought to the wikettiquete board, AN/I, etc; get warnings I can ignore, possibly be blocked depending on how long this has been going on and if I apologize, it takes lots of editors to deal with one editor's rudeness, lots of threads, lots of bureaucracy. In real life if I drive down the street, curse and flip off other cars that piss me off, does the community take real-life actions against me that take up a similar amount of time and effort and "punishment" or "rehabilitation" in order to get me to conform to societal norms? Hell, NO! It isnt worth the effort of multiple drivers or of even one police officer to take time and "correct" me. It annoys me and pisses me off when I drive by a Planned Parenthood clinic and constantly see those abortion protestors with their signs and stuff, but I cant get them banned from society or a temporary block from society or issue them "civility" warnings or put a permanent record hanging over their heads on what they do so whenever someone meets them the know "this person is ignorant". Speech is speech and it is protected. We dont stigmitize in the real world all that much for crimes, we definitely dont stigmitize here. At an encyclopedia even more than the real world rude or unwanted speech should be protected even more vehemently than in the real world. Some Wikipedians would rather "we all talk nice and civil", fuck that (is an example of what some rude people should be allowed to say regarding that).
• Perhaps instead of this proposal more editors need to just shrug off rude behavior they find "annoying" and do editing instead. I know the times when I have gotten "rude" or "snippy" with an editor it is almost always because they didnt mind their own business and thought they had to put in their two cents about a conflict between me and someone else because they thought they needed to "resolve" it for us. Everyone needs to simply edit and not worry about anything that doesnt have to do with them editing. If it doesnt affect your ability to edit, why care about it at all? Someone calling X a "fucking moron" doesnt affect your, or X's, ability to edit does it? I guess you could call me the Libertarian of Misplaced Pages.Camelbinky (talk) 17:41, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

You say we want "less bureaucracy, not more". Well that depends, doesn't it? Unless you're an anarchist, you must accept that there is a level of bureaucracy which is too low (unless you're using "bureaucracy" to mean "stuff I don't like", rather than bureaucracy). So the question on quantity is an empirical one, and citing the principle that we don't want too much is useless. So how much is too little? Well, when it doesn't work properly, and when additions to it can make it work better, by criteria such as workload, effectiveness in achieving goals, fairness, etc. So what goals do we have? Primary goal, build an encyclopedia with certain qualities like NPOV. Cool. Secondary goals derive from that: keep vandalism and spam to a minimum, deal with POV-pushing, maintain a collaborative, friendly environment that is open to newbies, etc. That's what the current bureaucracy is there for, and it's not going to go away, because it's needed. So how can it be improved? If not with the suggestion which kicked off this thread, then how? So often, ideas on Misplaced Pages are squeezed into a binary paradigm of "Yes, Amazing, We Must Do This Now!" vs "The Sky Will Fall On Our Heads If We Do This", so that if an idea isn't fully worked out in shining magnificence, the discussion goes nowhere, instead of inspiring some self-critical reflection, if not on the proposed solution and possible variations large and small, at least on the identified problem. Rd232 22:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Camelbinky, this seems to be more about your opposition to WP:Civility than it does this proposal. I suggest you bring your opposition up there if you want to. --Barberio (talk) 17:43, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I have absolutely no opposition to WP:CIVIL, and I share many of Camelbinky's concerns above: a permanent record will lead to a stigmatizing, "scarlet letter"-type system with more bureaucracy and less focus on what we're here to do: build a collaborative encyclopedia. Firsfron of Ronchester 18:32, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

A better way to deal with long-term problematic users is to handle them (ban them or restrict them) before it becomes a long-term problem, not to treat every user as if they might become a problem user. Such records could easily be turned into a weapon by people against users they don't like. Currently if people want to use ANI as a weapon, they generally have to convince enough people to get the other user blocked. With permanent records, all they would have to do is convince enough people that their complaint isn't totally baseless and they get something almost as effective as a block log entry. Mr.Z-man 18:01, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

"Almost as effective as a block log entry" - what now? The record only summarises actions which would have been taken anyway, but are notable enough to record and explain for as long as it is useful, especially with reference to repeat behaviour or followup actions. Judgement is involved here, admin judgement I would think. And the record's not a new dispute resolution venue or something. It could be a collective notepad for admins, if you will. Rd232 21:59, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

So if its decided on ANI that someone is being disruptive, but not so disruptive that they should be blocked, nothing will go on the record? What's the point then? To just summarize the block log? Mr.Z-man 22:36, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

If there was a clear outcome to a substantive ANI issue, I would think it would be useful to record that (matter of judgement, of course). The situation you describe (disruptive behaviour not quite meriting block) is exactly the sort of thing we're collectively less good at keeping track of (it's down to individuals). So if an admin thought the discussion/outcome was worth noting (even if it's to note that the person was exonerated - it's not unusual for dead issues to be rehashed), then noting it would serve a purpose. Now if you're going to ask me things like how long that note should be kept, I don't have the answers: we're discussing a vague idea, not a blueprint. PS in some cases, summarising/explaining/annotating the block log would be a very useful thing in itself, if the proposal was limited to just that. Rd232 16:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

My gut reaction is "Ewwwww, no." I think this would create extra work for admins and discourage the development of young, well-meaning editors. Forgive and forget, is much more friendly and practical. If that sometimes leads to more disruption, then I think that is a price worth paying for having a friendly and welcoming working environment. Dragons flight (talk) 19:00, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking it would lead to less work, by enabling a better handle on problem editors who create the bulk of the endless WP:TLDR dispute resolution drama. Forgive and forget, as has already been said, should be part of such a record - but active forgetting, with a decision to forget, not merely an inability to remember. As for discouraging development - OK, that I can see, a bit. But getting out-GAMEd by established editors is also discouraging, isn't it? Rd232 21:59, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I ask again, who will be maintaining the records such they they won't be susceptible to grudges, gaming, and mistakes like other processes? Mr.Z-man 22:36, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Admins, I guess, preferably uninvolved ones. Comments supported by diffs/links where possible (which will be easily to hand from the situation being summarised). Rd232 08:45, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Well to address the question poised directly at me- I am a communist, not an anarchist; I am in fact against all bureaucracy on Misplaced Pages, not just those policies I disagree with, an anarchist would have no policies, a communist would have two (WP:IAR and WP:Use Common Sense). I do consider Misplaced Pages to be the truest form of communism that has existed probably ever, "to each according to their needs, from each according to their ability" is how we decide who gets adminship, tools, rollback, etc and we dont pay editors and we are all equal in our rights and in our ability to voice opinion, non-admins often have a great voice at resolving things at AN/I for example.

• I also would like to understand from the defenders of this proposal their philosophical beliefs on the role of policy enforcement. Are A-policies to be enforced like laws with the goal of punishing those who violate it, or B- are policies just as the word "policy" is supposed to be used as in "it is good policy to do X, but eh, this is just the best way of doing things that we have for now" and if you violate it, we can forgive and forget as long as your heart is in the right place? If Misplaced Pages is about A then sure your proposal is great; but Misplaced Pages has always been about B and your proposal simply doesnt fit in with our basic philosophy on Misplaced Pages. So I believe it is very important for all of us to know if your personal beliefs about Misplaced Pages is in fact A, as it would put the reasoning behind this proposal in full-light.Camelbinky (talk) 03:44, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

• I reject your A and B. A - no system of law has the goal of punishing those who violate it: it has other goals, which there are rules to support, and sanctions to enforce them. B - unless you have some telepathic way of determining "whether their heart is in the right place", you'll need some kind of system of rules to evaluate that (based on statements and behaviour), or rely entirely on arbitrary decisions by admins. On Misplaced Pages there is a need, very simply, to distinguish between those who are broadly willing and able to play by the rules (nobody's perfect); to educate those who substantially aren't willing or able; and at some point to give up and throw them out. This requires tools, of which a record of the type described is one. It isn't a new rule, or a new sanction, or an attempt to impose discipline for discipline's sake. Let's go the other way, and suggest eliminating block log, WP:AE, and WP:ANI as "bureaucracy". Misplaced Pages:Editing restrictions absolutely has to go! The system doesn't really need them, does it? It would be so much better for admins to keep private notes (or need photographic memory to remember everything), and discuss everything on IRC. Anything else is just bureaucracy. Spit. Rd232 08:45, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

If a bureaucracy was government by bureaucrats, those who governed from nice wooden desks with fancy little draws, and beautiful leather blotters; then wikipedia is better described as government by that one frazzled resentful clerical frontliner with pages of garbage all over his desk, and a petulance born from overwork. A disciplinary google search of wikipedia for past abuse is as amusing a concept as a revision of party membership papers as conducted by examination of a card-file. If we are forced to chose between ineptitude and a disciplinary matrix, then for goodness sakes, let us choose a kind and gentle incompetence. Failing is, in many ways, more desirable than success when producing a system of discipline. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:54, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Question: would this smell any better, to those to whom it stinks, if it were pitched as an Admin Collaborative Notepad? Kept in a central place, targeted only at users where there is a history that needs explaining/summarising (generally problem users, but could also include users who were sanctioned in error, say) as identified by easy metrics like number of blocks or length of block. Or, going in a slightly different direction, what if the block log for each user had a protected talk page, for annotating block history? Rd232 09:55, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Not really, they (still) seem too far removed from the goals of the project. By only targeting certain users, you may as well just ban them instead, because you're destroying any possible chance at rehabilitation by permanently branding them as a problem user. IMO, systems like this would only serve to multiply the drama caused by things like ANI discussions. With these, we would have not only the discussion itself, but the potential for drama over the wording of the notes. Also, I'm not sure how these proposals fit into your "improving" the current bureaucracy idea when they just seem to be adding on to the current bureaucracy. Mr.Z-man 18:28, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

We discussed above only having records for users with substantial block logs. Unless there's some movement afoot to expunge block logs, it makes the "but a record brands people" issue moot. If anything, as I keep mentioning, it allows for unbranding by permitting followup to note that problems have not recurred, say, or that new information casts the issues in a different light. As for "adding" to bureaucracy... jeez I give up. If even a talk page for the block log is additional "bureaucracy", clearly this discussion is a complete waste of time. Perhaps we should MFD WP:ANI, PROD ARBCOM, and CSD WP:BLOCK and burn the blocklog while we're at it. War on Bureaucracy(TM) - bring it! Frankly, how does even having administrators advance the goals of the project?? :( Yeah, I'm suddenly reminded that RL isn't the only reason I'm on a 99% wikibreak. Rd232 22:51, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Anyone who gets blocked has a block log, what this is proposing is that anyone who has X blocks or has been blocked for Y amount of time gets something in addition to the block log that summarizes all the bad things they've done, including things they might not have been blocked for. That is significantly different to the block log. Its basically creating criteria for calling someone a problem user. A talk page of a block log is basically a summary of a summary. My point was that you supported an earlier proposal because it would help streamline bureaucracy, now you're blatantly proposing adding more, while streamlining nothing, then calling it a compromise! Its the worst aspects of the initial proposal with few of the benefits. Administrators frequently work directly with content, deleting crappy pages, protecting articles from vandalism, etc. Mr.Z-man 23:11, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

No, I explicitly said that the criteria were aimed at identifying users with records that needed explaining or contextualising; where knowledge needs to be transmitted over time and between people in a neutral way. That certainly includes people blocked in error, or who've subsequently shown good behaviour which is worth noting. This "identifying" aspect would also be irrelevant if the record is non-public (except to admins and the subject). Block log talk page could obviously be used for more than a "summary of a summary" (though that in itself would sometimes be useful), it could include links to relevant DR that would subsequent followup much easier. Rd232 01:16, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

(basically I'm paraphrasing straight from an old criminal justice textbook of mine, so it may be outdated, I was a freshman)- There are four aspects objectives of a criminal justice system - Punishment, rehabilitation, deterence, and incapacitation, the US system has always had the primary goal of punishment, per the Classical School. The Positive School believes rehabilitation is the way to go.

• This proposal adresses only one objective- punishment; and not deterence, rehabilitation, or incapacitation. Perhaps if a deterent value or rehabilitating value of the proposal was shown some could get on board? Not me though. Personally due to so many being in opposition I think the best thing is to let the proposal die and get archived, perhaps one day it will be needed, but not now.Camelbinky (talk) 23:43, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

"so many in opposition" - LOL. I make it 3 vehemently opposed, 1 proposer, 2 thinking it's worth exploring. Did I miscount? As for your 4 objectives, well (a) punishment, by established Misplaced Pages lore, isn't a goal of the system of rule enforcement - it's merely the latter three. I think that was touched in this discussion already. (b) rehabilitation - I mentioned "unbranding" and similar ability to cast old details in a new light; plus of course rehabilitation needs to be monitored and tracked to see if it's actually happening. Such monitoring also enables better education and use of measures short of blocking, like mentoring or limited bans. (c) incapacitation - would be improved by better tracking of behaviour requiring it; (d) flows from (c), since much of the time WP:GAMEing is enabling by a collective inability to monitor such behaviour. PS whilst we're, somewhat off-topic, on the subject of legal philosophy, I'm very much in favour of enabling rehabilitation. Rd232 01:16, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I tire of this evidently pointless discussion, but (since the legal metaphor has been introduced) I suggest as a thought experiment how well a police force of a major city would work if it used a system of records equivalent to Misplaced Pages's. And how much better it would work if - lo! - someone suggested a central filing system to, y'know, keep track of shit. Of course cops would complain about the paperwork involved in maintaining it, decry it as needless bureaucracy, and generally at odds with the police purpose of keeping order. They'd reckon the status quo was just fine. And since the citizens who hated it would tend to leave, no police chief who wanted to change that would get elected. PS Just to state the obvious, admin != police, just as Anglo-Saxon common law != Napoleonic civil law. But there are enough similarities that comparison is meaningful. The point is that many of the functional benefits of a proper police record system apply here too - and if you think the only benefit is executing murderers more quickly, well, think again. Rd232 01:16, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Well now you've just shown two misconceptions (or three) regarding Misplaced Pages that may explain where and why you have this proposal. First- Misplaced Pages is not a state, nor even a city, its function is not to find disruptive behavior and corect it, it is concerned with making an encyclopedia, that is all; not to find a better online way of policing an online community. Second- Admin does not in any way equal police! OMG! I cant believe you even wrote that; a better analogy is admin=janitor (and I'm not the only who uses that analogy). 3- policies are not laws that need enforcing as such, they are our best way of doing things as we know it at this moment, which is why they can and are changed as needed and ignored without the need to change when it suits us. This is a freakin encyclopedia, not a community; treat it like what it is, a hobby. Enough people have had very good points on why this is a bad idea, please drop it, this Patriot Act proposal really scares me, it eats at the core of what a wiki is about and Misplaced Pages in particular. Freedom. Oh, and I counted 7 who oppose... given that there arent even half that many supporting; yea it really should quietly go.Camelbinky (talk) 02:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

OMG! You don't know that != means "not equal to"! OK, too geeky. Well now you know. As for "This is a freakin encyclopedia, not a community." - for realz? A community-written encyclopedia does not involve a community? lulz. Rd232 09:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Rd232, I just don't support this police state style of administration. The very words "permanent record" remind me of law enforcement or the threats of a "marked record" back in high school. The janitor analogy works so much better than the police one, and I'd hate to see someone leave WP based on a mark of "shame" in this sort of system. Best, Firsfron of Ronchester 04:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

If you want to go with a school analogy, you must recognise that admins are not merely janitors (at least, I'm not aware of any schools were the janitor has Dean-like powers to exclude students). You don't like "police state admin"? Yeah, because obviously any country or city which has a police force that uses centralised records is a police state. And it's much better for deans to exclude students based on personal memory alone, rather than any institutional memory recording relevant knowledge. Rd232 09:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Both those replies seem to have been led astray by not recognising my use of != notation, which is fairly widespread geekspeak for "not equal to". Try again. Rd232 09:41, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I'll try again- Admins arent deans of a school, they simply carry out the Community-made decisions, they dont make the decisions themselves. Admins have equal voice, no greater than a non-admin or IP even. Oh, I know I'll get slammed now for saying this isnt a community then using the word community. This isnt a "community attempt at making an encyclopedia", this is simply an attempt at making an encyclopedia, that is all. Enough people have voiced their opposition here and in other discussions regarding these proposals that are only usefull in controlling a population, just worry about spending time on editing, creating, improving articles. What is the point of anything else? You see vandalism, correct it, someone calls another user a dipshit, ignore him. Gee, do we need to sit around for days talking about a specific user who vandalizes or happens to swear at another user? If everyone minded their own business and edited we wouldnt have half the drama that occurs and ends up at AN/I or the Wikittiqute board or numerous other places. This is just one more proposal which will make drama continue and for it to never just die. Which is what this proposal needs to do.Camelbinky (talk) 22:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Rd232, I understand perfectly that "!=" means "not equal to" (and that "!vote" means "not a vote"). I've used these expressions myself. I was responding to your comment which stated, "Just to state the obvious, admin != police, just as Anglo-Saxon common law != Napoleonic civil law. But there are enough similarities that comparison is meaningful" (emphasis added). I stated that the "janitor analogy works so much better than the police one". I was responding to your point, and I still don't agree with you on this proposal. Best, Firsfron of Ronchester 23:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

What a fantastically terrible idea. The last thing we need are rap sheets that we can use to lord over editors for one godawful reason or another. If we (as a whole) forget about a user's transgressions, that is a pretty good indication that said transgressions are not worth remembering. This project has bigger issues to face than trying to keep track of how many times John Doe has been admonished for failing to follow Guideline A or Policy B. Besides, there are enough editors with a vindictive streak to keep a dirty little list of secrets on their would-be enemies, ready to whip it out at the first sign of a scuffle. Please. Shereth 15:38, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I give up, I guess. The initial framing of this issue seems to preclude any serious discussion of the underlying problem and potential solutions. Lots of wishful thinking on how WP should work... good luck with that. PS if any of you haven't spent any time seriously engaged in some heavy POV warring editing topics (eg nationalist ones - cf Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/The Plague), you really should. If you can't solve that problem singlehandedly, the experience might motivate you to consider possible solutions (i.e. improvements - not expecting a magic wand). If you come up with anything, drop me a line. Rd232 20:07, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry Rd232 that this has gotten so emotional for you. I have tried to understand where you are coming from, perhaps if I was involved in controversial subjects I may feel the same way, however in my little corner of the Misplaced Pages-verse we dont have those types of "Black Hole" articles that suck the life out of editors and leave no remnants of sanity due to vandalism, or POV warring etc. I applaud your efforts to solve problems and reign in unruly editors. I however dont think a policy/proposal such as this is appropriate for Misplaced Pages at this time. Abuse such as "look at X's history, we shouldnt listen to her, she's been warned about POV pushing three times. Obviously that's what she's doing now" will lead to a lack of AGF at minimum, with further abuses already mentioned at worst. It may not be civil, but it may be ok within policy to keep a page off your userpage where you want to personally list things issued against individual users including blocks for your own and other's use, and encourage others to add to it on editors they have seen be problem children; basically informally implementing anyways this idea manually. Of course should I ever personally be on that list I will of course raise hell. :-)Camelbinky (talk) 02:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Um, what ever happened to WP:Assume good faith and WP:BITE? If a newbie doesn't do everything perfectly within policy, and a year later after being an excellent contributer wants to run for WP:RFA or some other process requiring community support, would it be fair for people to pull issues out of a malice log from when they screwed up here and there while still getting aquainted with everything? If someone does something bad enough to warrent a permanent record, they'll be blocked. As hardcore, zero tolerance as I am on nonsense edits (like "cheerleader vandalism" for example), a certain percentage of our constructive users started out breaking certain policies, and sometimes even vandalizing, but not to the extent that a block would be needed. If we impliment something like this, people will be chasing away newbies right and left with permanent entries in their "malice log." PCHS-NJROTC 09:03, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

WP:NOTNEWS - Encouraging compliance by redirecting to Wikinews

I previously had a number of Misplaced Pages templates tweaked to allow optional links to appropriate current articles on Wikinews. Picking Ted Kennedy and the obituary template met with great resistance, and I — personally — don't have the patience of a saint required to deal with arguments that should not be dragged into daylight where certain material is technically against Misplaced Pages policy, and such should be redirected to Wikinews.

I have taken some time to put together another attempt at what I see as the appropriate templates to be changed. The examples shown there are with links to Wikinews, click through to the template copies there to see the proposed display where no parameter is given. Note! There is extensive use of tooltips in my changes.

I would like to get this sorted out before Christmas, please suggest how this proposal could be improved. Naturally, I would like to be able to add the Wikinews logo but, there has to be some balance and keeping this relatively unobtrusive.

Thoughts? --Brian McNeil / 14:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

And what if there is no accompanying article on Wikinews? Would your change to policy be just not to note that this subject is currently in the news? 99.166.95.142 (talk) 17:17, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Where, precisely, do I propose change to policy? Had I thought this impacted policy I would have raised it on that section. The policy is WP:NOTNEWS. I propose templates regularly applied to articles where this policy is applicable be used as a way to direct contributions unwelcome as a consequence of that policy to another Wikimedia Foundation project where such contributions are welcomed and appropriate.

Have you any further, and preferably constructive, criticisms to add? If there is another policy which you feel the proposed changes would violate, please enlighten me and give a cite as to why there is a problem. --Brian McNeil / 06:58, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think that's a great idea. To address the above concern, if there's not yet an article on Wikinews, we could always have a template saying "This subject is a current event that is not appropriate for an encyclopedia article at this time. If you would like to write about it, you may wish to consider writing about it on Wikinews." I think that would vastly help compliance, as well as drive a lot of news type stuff where it actually belongs. Seraphimblade 07:18, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

• Thank you for the encouragement! I was just adding an additional piece to my user talk (the initially linked to section above) to try and explain what I was guessing might be the anonymous user's issue if they did not look there, or at the alternate visible here. As said above, there are tooltips embedded in my proposed changes to these templates; for one, a very long Wikinews title might mess the template formatting, so only pop it up when the user mouses over the link to it. I was reluctant to link to WP:NOTNEWS within my proposed changes because when I last looked at that it is a redirect into a largish policy document.

Would copying the template examples from my user talk page here (adding a little colour) provoke more feedback on this? --Brian McNeil / 07:35, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Patrollbot

When patrolling new pages, I find it annoying to click on a seemingly un-patrolled page just to find that it is already CSD-ed or PROD-ed. I propose a bot to hit "patroll" when a new page is marked with a PROD or CSD template (allowing time for the article's tagger to do this themselves, of course). I already made a script that does this, I wanted to see how many people would be on-board with this concept before going to the BRFA. Tim1357 (talk) 03:33, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

My understanding of the current system is that the article starts unpatrolled; the first NPPer tags it; the second NPPer sees the tags, agrees, and marks it as patrolled. So you've got two sets of eyes on each tagging before it's marked as patrolled. I've certainly caught things other taggers have missed, and I'm sure it works the other way round. So if you put a bot in as the second NPPer, we miss out on that review (of a review). Josh Parris 04:59, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

If you CSD or PROD with Twinkle, it marks the page patrolled at the same time. Pseudomonas_(talk) 14:57, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

But only if you access it from Special:NewPages. To patrol a page you need the rcid, and as far as I know the only place to get that is from Special:NewPages. So if you access it from any other location and want to patrol the page, you have to check there. Reach Out to the Truth 21:02, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

oh, I realise that; I just meant that the current system doesn't assume that the person that tags should not also mark as patrolled (either that or Twinkle needs fixing). Pseudomonas_(talk) 21:14, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

(In response to Josh) But the thing is, when an article is CSD'ed or PROD'ed, an admin (in the case of CSD) or PROD-review (in the case of PROD) will review the deletion tag. That means, that NPP can focus on the pages that need improvement tags. I guess what annoys me is when i hit a yellow page, just to find that has been tagged for deletion. Tim1357 (talk) 22:35, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Sure, but your CSD or PROD might be rejected (say the author gets in before admin), leaving a "patrolled" article with no improvement tags. I've taken to (except in egregious cases) tagging for improvement and deletion. Josh Parris 22:46, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

But then, isn't it the job of the de-prodder or the de-csder to do that? It would make the most sense. Tim1357 (talk) 00:44, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Administrator time is a limited quantity; I do my best to minimise my consumption of it (and things will get worse, the number of active admins is heading south) Josh Parris 03:16, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Also, there are bots that prevent the author from removing the CSD template, and warn the PRODer if they remove a Prod. Also, twinkle automatically patrols a page when a user CSD's or PROD's it. With that in mind, there is no reason to not hit patrol if another editor forgot to, as its common practice to do so in the first place. Tim1357 (talk) 00:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

That assumes that a patroller will be around to get those messages. Your point of Twinkle does it so it must be okay doesn't seem right to me; I would have thought some kind of consensus would have to be reached that this was appropriate. That the web interface works this way, that you propose to fix with a bot, is an indication to me that multiple editors to fix is okay. But hey, I'm just one guy with just one opinion. You really need more folks than just me to talk to. Josh Parris 03:16, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't even really mind if I come across a PROD, AFD, or CSD tagged page while patrolling. It doesn't take much time to just click on the patrol link, and I could also decide to weigh in on the deletion discussion. And I know I'm not the only one who does that. One time when I was patrolling the back of the new page log I came across an article that had been nominated for deletion at AFD. I commented on the discussion, and then another new page patroller came in and did the same. Because the page had not been automatically patrolled, the deletion discussion received two comments it might not have otherwise received. Reach Out to the Truth 03:42, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi there, I did start a similar discussion on the NPP talk page (it's now been archived but is here). We generally reached agreement, I pointed John Vandenburg back to the thread, and it all stalled (I can't remember why). Perhaps this discussion could be relaunched, perhaps with a different bot running it? GedUK  13:30, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages as a Gift (PDF)

the idea

This is a raw idea. I'm in a open yes phase, and need feedback. Is it possible to give wikipedia when it's free? My idea is built around getting more donations and publicity. It's soon christmas, and a lot of people is wondering what to give friends and family that have everything. Is it possible to make a automated PDF that donaters can print and give as a Christmas or birthday present?

Sample dokument

• Her is the sample dokument of my Idea

benefints and toughts.

This is just a option for a normal donation. Maybe more people will donate more christmas money to Wikipeida? This is a way to make more people get involved, people who don't use it often, but like the cause. I will be the first to give wikipedia to my friends and family for Christmas, but if this is this an idea that the rest of the wikipedia community supports? When you like the idea, helpe me make this possible. If the wikipedia comunity don't want to try this method for getting more donatinos spread the word and engage the somunity, ok for me. I just need to know that I and hopefully you tried --Gmdahl (talk) 21:09, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I have read breafly Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages is not and I belive my idea don't connflict directly on the rules. If the do, but I have just read them breafly. --Gmdahl (talk) 05:31, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

What can I do to get more people involved discussing this? The faster we work the faster we can get more donations. --Gmdahl (talk) 05:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion:

• You could always make one yourself? ╟─TreasuryTag►without portfolio─╢ 17:59, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I will, but what do you think of the idea? --Gmdahl (talk) 18:08, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Not much, to be honest. This is an encyclopedia, not a generate-your-own-gift-certificate site... ╟─TreasuryTag►First Secretary of State─╢ 18:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I suppose you could contact the Foundation. It's a little close to (December gift-giving holiday of your choice) to get it into action if they don't have it already, but they might have some kind of acknowledgment for donations to the Foundation made in honour of somebody. —C.Fred (talk) 18:30, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

• "Gifting Misplaced Pages" in this way makes sense (whatever the precise motivations), and your sentiments almost make it sound like it shouldn't. Rd232 21:12, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

• I think it's a great idea and if it gets our donation numbers higher, then all the more power to us. –xeno 21:28, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

• Wasn't there already a plan to sell Misplaced Pages on DVD? Also, it changes the whole dynamic when you sell the actual content, rather than asking for an altruistic donation.--Lester 21:55, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Dead-tree form is also available. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:20, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

You're not really selling any content in this idea, you're just providing an easy to print out certificate confirming a donation-OBO. –xeno 00:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

• Her is the sample dokument of my Idea (ok i'm green=). This is a win win situation, people that need a creative present, wikipedia and the inviromet. Mabye we get more users this way to, som more older people with more knowlage to share. I think this is a easy project to do if somone in foundation like the idea. --Gmdahl (talk) 05:31, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

• I'm just a student, but if wikipedia likes the gift idea will I donate 250$ this christmas. --Gmdahl (talk) 00:22, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
• I agree with this in principle, as long as its done totally free of charge. ThemFromSpace 01:24, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

If you like the idea

Join the Facebook group: Misplaced Pages as a gift?

Please don't canvass this discussion off-wiki. ThemFromSpace 01:22, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, Do you want me to shut down the Facebook group, or should I just copy the text to Facebook so Misplaced Pages don't get the traffic? --Gmdahl (talk) 18:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm new to the inside of wikipedia, but I wouldn't be this aggressive if it wasn't for my imaginary deadline before Christmas . 1. of December would be the idle time to start. --Gmdahl (talk) 18:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

QUESTIONS

• Who decides?
• How to speed up the proses?
• How long time does it take answer a multiple choice question?

• • Do wikipedia like this idea?
• ( )Yes, ( )No, ( )Maybe later.

Misplaced Pages is not a democracy or bureaucracy Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages is not .So why does it take so long time? STOP ME OR HELPE ME: I need clear guidelines for submitting my idea. What can i do??

--Gmdahl (talk) 18:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Don't panic! Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucracy and it is not a democracy, you don't need permission to do this. So if you want a PDF book of all of Misplaced Pages then just go an create it.

As you may appreciate a book of the all 3.1 million articles would be quite unwieldy. I recommend completing the Featured Articles book. Go to Misplaced Pages:Featured articles, click "Create a book" on the left hand side of the screen and start adding all 2,716 to your book.

Here's Volume 1 of your book. Click "" to download the PDF version. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 18:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I belive you haven't read mye Idea properly. Read it Again and you'll understand why I'm panicing... --Gmdahl (talk) 18:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

You could sell the PDF yourself per Misplaced Pages:Merchandise and give the profits to WikiMedia Foundation.

If you want to add a PDF download as an reward for donors to the fundraiser you need to go to m:Fundraising 2009/Launch Feedback and request it be added to the website. The kind of back-end changes to the website cannot be made by normal editors it can only be made by a few users with direct access to the website running Misplaced Pages.

Someone on that page might also be able to help automate making the PDF (adding all those featured articles would be hard work to do by hand, which is why I suppose it has not been completed). --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 19:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Update: I made a book of the complete Misplaced Pages Featured Articles. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 23:49, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

This won't get done for this Christmas, but I would definitely suggest this at m:Fundraising 2010. –xeno 14:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

'insert' section below text edit box

when you edit a page there is a section down below the text edit box that lists things you can 'insert' into the text area by clicking on them. Is there some very good reason why that list isnt immediately below the text edit box? As it is now I have to scroll down to see it. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 23:29, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

In the future (See Beta) it will be in the toolbar, so I don't think there is much use in moving it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Add this code to your monobook

/* Hide stuff */
#minoredit_helplink {display:none}
#wpSummaryLabel {display:none}
#editpage-copywarn {display:none}
#editpage-copywarn2 {display:none}
#editpage-copywarn3 {display:none}
#mw-wikimedia-editpage-tos-summary {display:none}

to clear some breathing room. (Log out to see/reread it occasionally, to keep up with changes that are made). -- Quiddity (talk) 09:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

☺ Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 06:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Administrator accountability

I'd be interested in comments or criticisms of a proposal I wrote requiring all administrators to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation: Misplaced Pages:Administrator accountability. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Your papers please. 18:20, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

(Discussion moved to Misplaced Pages talk:Administrator accountability. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC))

Expect a mass exodus of admins if you do that. PCHS-NJROTC 08:43, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

bot request for wider discussion: Set page ranges within page parameter of citation templates to use en-dashes

Please see Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests_for_approval/RjwilmsiBot: Set page ranges within page parameter of citation templates to use en-dashes. Thanks Rjwilmsi 18:35, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Boilerplate for new articles extension

Proposal: install Extension:MultiBoilerplate to enable new articles to have a boilerplate template or skeleton added. Rd232 22:08, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a really, really good idea. Many general categories already have WikiProject-designed standard formats; it surely couldn't be very hard to turn them into an article skeleton. It would help prevent a number of newbie mistakes and increase wikification. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 00:24, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget to add a CSD (and/or filter rule) for pages that only duplicate the boilerplate. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:59, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

That would be a straightforward filter rule. I'd assume we'd want to set it on disallow, with a custom warning saying "You haven't made any changes, sorry" or whatever. That makes sense. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 20:00, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there any opposition to installing this extension? I'm surprised that this hasn't received more comments. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 20:00, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

The template(s) should be drafted beforehand though, no? --Cybercobra (talk) 20:28, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• I support it an excellent extension for Mediawiki, which I can imagine ideal for company Mediawiki installations allowing per-department customized boilerplates, but oppose its installation on en-Misplaced Pages.
  A lack of intention that it become a straitjacket notwithstanding, it may well be taken that way. The concept of a single formulaic "right" format is difficult to reconcile with my understanding of this site. We've limited layout conventions, such as related wikilinks not already covered go in a See also section near the bottom, but that's a far cry from this. There's a rich variety of article formats and styles, shaped by information the author has available, author style, and more. It's one thing to have an Article wizard; that's a good idea. It's hard to see "This, is how "we" do things here.", a natural connotation of pulldown boilerplates, as a positive step. –Whitehorse1 21:26, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
  • The usage can be determined by consensus in the usual way. One of the things it might be useful for is adding something similar to {{userspace draft}} or {{new unreviewed article}}, providing some help links for newbies. For a standard skeletion, References / See Also / External links (using HTML comments for explanation) might nudge people towards thinking about sourcing etc. Beyond that, being any more prescriptive is highly context-dependent, but as OrangeDog suggests below, might work in some areas. Rd232 23:13, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• In the general case it wouldn't be that great, but WikiProjects may find it useful for small groups of limited-scope articles (episodes of House, schools in Oaklahoma, mushrooms of north-east asia, etc.). OrangeDog (τ • ε) 22:23, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be good in the general case. A number of newbies that I've interacted with off-wiki have expressed concern that they don't know where to start when creating a new article. Our basic, basic formatting standards for articles (bold the first named instance of the subject, use wikilinks throughout, leave the lead untitled and add level-2 headers below, add a section for references, etc.) aren't obvious when you're faced with an empty text box. At very least, some commented text beside a {{new unreviewed article}} template or such might be helpful to a newbie. The limited-scope article types are actually less of a concern for me, since we already have preload and inputbox functionality (and combinations thereof) to load that kind of template in. I see this extension as not so much adding functionality, but to making it more usable. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 16:37, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

General search engine inclusion suggestion

Request/suggestion for inclusion into the Misplaced Pages pages that feature ISBN or book titles, i.e.: http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:BookSources/141653606X

Requesting inclusion under "General search engines." Our site uses a very basic URL structure, so this could automatically be included into any ISBN/book Wiki page with ease and would enhance the end user's experience dramatically if they're looking for the desired book.

Here's an example of our URL structure: http://booklookr.com/search/isbn/0451529065

Allow autoconfirmed to edit editnotices

There is a proposal to lower the bar for the creation and editing of editnotices to autoconfirmed. Your input is requested. ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 02:10, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

To disable the immediate indexing of unpatrolled pages into Google search

Proposal Based off the discussion here, this proposal would disable the immediate indexing of all new page into Google until the pages have been patrolled. This would help prevent blatant hoaxes, attack pages, clear BLP violations and test pages from being immediately appearing on Google searches. Basket of Puppies 21:37, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment

There seem to be only a couple of comments on each of three threads (one of them archived). Since this is slightly above the routine, maybe we should let more people know through a relatively-brief posting at WP:Centralized discussion. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:28, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a really good idea! Interestingly, CENT says" Village pump (policy) and Village pump (proposals) provide central areas both for giving notice of discussions elsewhere and for debate itself. " But I think you're right in that it should be moved to CENT. Is there a way to do this while preserving the contents here? Basket of Puppies 03:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussions are listed at {{cent}}, they don't take place there. I've taken the liberty of listing it for ya. --Cybercobra (talk) 04:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Splendid! Thank you!! Basket of Puppies 05:18, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

• Question Is this technically feasible? I strongly support this idea, but I seem to recall it being shot down before on such grounds. How do you propose to implement this? Am I wrong in thinking {{NOINDEX}} will not work in the mainspace?  Skomorokh  22:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
  • I believe it would require a software change of some sort. Doesn't sound too complicated though. Rd232 22:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
    • From my understanding, it doesn't work in the mainspace currently but that can be changed by the devs. Additionally, if I recall correctly, noindexing only saves it from search engines that "listen" to the coding that requests the page not to be indexed. The internet is an unwieldy place, and I don't think brushing new articles "under the carpet" from certain mainstream search engines and/or mirrors will attain the goal we're seeking. Killiondude (talk) 22:58, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
      • It depends on the goal. If the goal is to deter novelty-article spamming, not making it into the "big" search engines cuts out much of the reward. If the goal is to censor from all mirrors, that is pointless and, except for material that would be WP:oversighted anyways, a bad idea. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:02, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
• Comment Special:Newpages is marked "noindex, nofollow." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
• I think the premature structuring of this as a vote has derailed the conversation. Several of the Opposes are basically "we haven't had enough discussion" when we should be having said discussion (but aren't really due to the vote). --Cybercobra (talk) 08:10, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems the straw poll above was premature. More discussion is needed on

1. the principle
2. the practical aspect re search engine indexing: how soon after removing a noindex instruction is a page going to be indexed;
3. the mechanism for identifying "new" pages for noindexing, and for declaring such new pages suitable for indexing.

Rd232 17:20, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

On point 2, I believe Google and other major search engines index and reindex Misplaced Pages extremely rapidly - typically hours, and more like minutes than days. On point 3, I would say I'm not sure if NPP is the best mechanism. I'm inclined to set a time limit, so that articles younger than say 24 hours aren't indexed unless an index template is specifically added. After that indexing is automatic and mandatory. This would be handled in software by respecting NOINDEX in mainspace, but only for articles less than 24 hours old. (A bot can remove the template once the article is 24hrs old, and the template no longer applies.) Only a handful of articles merit immediate indexing, and that handful should be easily monitorable. Rd232 17:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Something like Automatic Filter Block?

This popped into my head the other day. We have a special page that logs all attempted abuse. And we have tools like Huggle that can tell what level (1, 2, 3, 4, or 4IM) of warning we gave the user. What if there were something in the software that 1) could read the trips in the filter by a user/anonymous IP and 2) tell what level of vandalism warning was last given and automatically block the user for something short, say, 12 hours, until an administrator can look at it, review the automatic block, and either lift it, or extend it? There's my two cents. —Duncan (that's me!) / _{What I Say} 02:01, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

It should be doable (just that the "block" would be actually a throttle-disallow). However, I don't think there's a way to detect who put the warning there, so it's subject to abuse. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Reminder: Comments sought on community de-adminship

Reminder: comments from all interested editors are invited and welcome at Misplaced Pages talk:Community de-adminship/Draft RfC, where a proposal for community de-adminship is being discussed. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:17, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Dump the essays

Probably perennial. Can the essays be rolled into one and given a template, "Lame wikipedia essay that shows I'm cute and more experienced than you follows"?

• Don't be a dick
• Misplaced Pages:Let it go
• Misplaced Pages:Don't edit war over the colour of templates
• Misplaced Pages:Don't spite your face
• Misplaced Pages:Use common sense
• Misplaced Pages:Do not disrupt Misplaced Pages to illustrate a point
• Misplaced Pages:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man
• Misplaced Pages:How many legs does a horse have?
• Misplaced Pages:Lamest edit wars
• Misplaced Pages:The Last Word
• Misplaced Pages:Get over it

Why do we have an essay titled, "Don't be a dick" anyway? To establish our professional credentials in conversations with each other?

Click appropriate box in response, "You're lame," "You're disruptive," "I'm reporting you to AN/I as a sock puppet." --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:18, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

• Without essays we would find ourselves repeating the same things over and over. They also help new users get up to speed in the way of the wiki. One or two bad apples doesn't spoil the bunch. –xeno 18:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

No, they're just used to hit new users when the established editor realizes they would otherwise revert to biting. In other words, they're a means of breaking a rule without breaking it. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:27, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Essays don't hit new users, editors hit new users. –xeno 18:31, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

But if it weren't so easy to get ahold of an essay, the editors would not be so ready to use them, resulting in... --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:38, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

As Wikipedians one of our fundamental rights is that to bear essays. –xeno 18:44, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Just as fundamental as my right to bare stupidity? --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:03, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

You'll get my essay over my cold, dead body, you commy, pinko, puke! _hehe
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:22, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Dead horse's body. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

"A well-regulated militerature being necessary to security of a free encyclopaedia, the right of the editors to write and cite essays shall not be infringed." — Second Amendment to the Five Pillars. Says nothing about trying to smuggle fully-automated trout from Virginia to New York, or who's responsible when they're used in drive-by whackings, or how to deal with concealed minnows on the street. —— Shakescene (talk) 21:19, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about everyone else, but I actually find some of them quite amusing. But that's the kinda guy I am :) - Jarry1250  18:42, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Certainly, they're more amusing to hit someone with than to just say "you're an asshole" and be accused of biting. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:03, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

There is more wisdom in some of these essays than in most of our policies. Using WP:ALPHABETSOUP to beat people over the head with is bad, though. See WP:OMGWTFBBQ. — Kusma 19:12, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Other crap. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Any discussion like this really needs to mention the favourite of many, m:Friends of gays should not be allowed to edit articles. Yes, it would be a nicer (but duller) world if everyone shared a sense of humour, and if nobody was ever rude/curt, but deleting essays isn't going to change human diversity or behaviour. Read WP:OWB and WP:ZEN, shrug, smile, and continue. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

But they're not funny or amusing or interesting in any way. Once inserted into a discussion they simply say, "This editor is not creative." Okay, as creativity is not necessarily a useful editor attribute on wikipedia, but ultimately pointless drivel inserted into a tendentious as only the writers and a few remaining users have not been pummeled to the point of knock-dead-boredom by the essays already. I did read, on a user page, ages ago, a great description of them, that I would love to find and quote. Maybe the author is watching this and the essays page and joins this discussion to provide their quote which I can then turn into an essay to use to beat over the head of any editor who lamely thinks they are cute or interesting or clever by quoting a dead horse of an essay at another editor. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:45, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Handle these on a case-by-case basis, under WP:Miscellany for deletion. My personal recommendation would probably be to keep most or all and userfy the rest, if any. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:23, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Its not just "quoting an essay" that is annoying. Its also those who instead of using common sense and their own words and intelligence they instead just quote straight from a policy or guideline (or more annoyingly just put the WP:whatever link and make you read it yourself trying to figure out what part is relevant). All an editor says by saying "see WP:V" is- "Your an idiot, read this policy, it is law and we dont think for ourselves, we do as what is written. I'm a mindless ape" (So those that do that, remember that is what you are actually saying). All quoting or linking to policy should be banned from a discussion and all decisions based on quality and convincing ability of the arguments in the discussion with no caring to established policies (because if a policy isnt upheld in a normal discussion and consensus then that policy now lacks the Community's consensus and is no longer valid). Obviously that will never fly around here, but its what should be done.Camelbinky (talk) 22:25, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Policies reflect established consensus, by ignoring policy, one ignores consensus, although sometimes consensus should be gathered on a case-by-case method, a lot of the time it should just be found within policy. We can't except the community to make a new decision for every single issue that comes up, which is why we have policy, which describes an example issue, and then details how to deal with it in the way the community has agreed via consensus. People who quote from policy are not being "mindless apes", rather, they're demonstrating what established community consensus is on certain matters, if that consensus strikes you as out-dated then a new consensus can be formed. Kind regards, Spitfire 22:48, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Essays capture what's difficult (well, too time-consuming) to constantly repeat to people. It sounds like you're trying to solve a social problem ("people quote essays too often at other users") with a slash-and-burn approach that's only going to damage good, useful content. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:41, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

POINTy proposal. Forget it. ╟─TreasuryTag►stannator─╢ 22:42, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Automatically add link WP:media help in header of media file

Currently, a sound clip file is automatically assigned a button to play this file. However, for readers who have not yet installed *.ogg support this will not work. It would be useful to add a link to WP:media help, so they can find out how to install it. −Woodstone (talk) 20:27, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

By header, do you mean the text of the Misplaced Pages or Commons page? This should be non-controversial. Perhaps bot-adding a template to all ogg files with a link would be in order. That way, if the instructions needed changing, it could be done in a centralized location. You might want to raise this on the Commons's idea page. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:17, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

To clarify, it's actually "readers who have not yet installed *.ogg support NOR installed JAVA support" —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:29, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

And Michael Dale is already changing all of this, so I guess it's up to him. I'll forward him this discussion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:38, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

We should probably just include that link if the client has no way to playback the content. Which the new player does do that. I think the existing oggplayer does that as well. mdale (talk) 21:40, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Revival of the WP:Mentorship Committee

Title says all. OutlawSpark (talk) 23:43, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

No it doesn't. Are you proposing that the committee be revived, or are you posting an announcement that it has been revived, or what? ThemFromSpace 23:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I am proposing that the commitee be revived. OutlawSpark (talk) 23:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

This may be a solution in search of a problem. If there are enough people being put on some type of restriction instead of being blocked through community discussion, then we would need a volunteer pool. Until then, I'm not sure we need this. By the way, as admins usually lead community discussions that can lead to blocks, and admins are required to block, without admin cooperation or even admins as a group championing the idea this will be a non-starter. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

"Cheerleader Vandalism" edit notice

I've noticed that some articles have editnotices like Template:Romeo notice, and I was wondering if a similar template would be useful for "cheerleader-like vandalism" and/or "cheerleading is not a sport" vandalism. I'm torn on whether this would help or hinder WP however as a lot of this immaturity is blatant trolling and may be linked to off wiki encouragement, and feeding the trolls is a bad idea. Basically, I wonder if a template like this would be a good idea.

Comments? PCHS-NJROTC 01:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I recommend you bring this up on the talk page of the one article that needs it most. Any admin can create or change an edit-notice. {{editprotect}} may be a way to get an administrator's attention once there is a consensus to add the template to that page. Once it is used on one page, you can then go to the talk pages of other pages that you think need it, and see if there is a consensus to add it or not. This is not a pump-level decision, but rather an article-level one. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Editnotices are done on an article-by-article basis and only when there is a very good reason to do. The reason being is that any notice is probably going to discourage some legitimate editing, and anyone who wants to vandalize an article probably won't care about a notice that tells them not to. (Not to mention the potential to give people ideas on how to vandalize.) --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

This is edit-notice creep, as are already the Romeo editnotices. The impact on vandalism is nil and potentially inverse, while it confuses or scares away good-faith editors. Actually this is a good place to discuss on whether we should still use the romeo editnotices. Cenarium (talk) 02:44, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

My idea is to use this editnotice as an excuse to either block immediately or skip to 4im when cheerleaders or cheerleader haters vandalize articles relating to cheerleading. There's a lot of unique immaturity there, and I can think of at least one cheerleader vandal that's a long term abuser. PCHS-NJROTC 03:26, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

IMO, that is an exceptional bad reason for an edit notice. We shouldn't be looking for excuses to block people as quickly as possible, but instead looking foor ways to convert vandals into useful contributors. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:52, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I've done my fair share of that. It's always cool to convince vandals to come back as constructive editors. That's actually one reason why I will never change my username; I think there's a potential that some users will realize that anyone can be a constructive editor here if a high schooler is reverting their vandalism. However, most of these cheerleader vandals, in my experiences, are unforgivable middle schoolers and HS freshmen who in some cases have come here following the instructions of a disgusting underground chain letter distributed from cheerleader to cheerleader worldwide Myspace and Facebook. The chain letters say that "Misplaced Pages hates all cheerleaders." If you try to be reasonable with them, they will try to find you off-wiki and harass you to know end. On the other hand, I suppose it's kind of ironic that I'd want to put a big warning on the page before they can even save an edit considering they already think we hate them. I have friends who are cheerleaders at PCH that know I edit this site and have brought some of these chainletters they've received to my attention. PCHS-NJROTC 04:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a joke, right? Cheerleader vandalism? And this is way too over the top to be serious. Please tell me this is just a joke. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 04:27, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not a joke unfortunately; neither it references to "school vandalism." It's like "school vandalism" that carries on beyond school hours, and it's quite annoying IMO. Call me radical if you want filing abuse reports on petty vandalism, but it's still AUP violations. That's the risk one takes when they edit as an IP; just as anybody can edit this site, anybody can view the logs on this site, and it doesn't take much for people that may not even be editors here to file abuse reports on virutually anything they desire to. Abuse reporting is in it's own world from Misplaced Pages's policies; once an ISP becomes aware of activity it's up to them what happens; there's no "warn four times first." I don't know what other people do, but I usually only file reports if they've been warned three times and it appears there's no way the user has the will and/or intelligence to become a straight forward editor. Obviously there's not enough time to report every vandal, but I personally believe that we could be doing a LOT better in the field of abuse reporting. PCHS-NJROTC 04:50, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Also note there is no rule specifically that says one can't file abuse reports on people who've only vandalized a few times; to take it to WP:ABUSE they have to have been blocked at least five times, but there's no rule that says you can't report them on your own, and there's probably quite a few people who do report vandals and we never know. There's probably MUCH less severe cases than that one that are reported to ISPs. PCHS-NJROTC 04:55, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) That type of immaturity still exists in this generation? Wow. Well for one thing I don't believe adding such notices would help at all. To vandals, they read "Edit me and add smiley faces :-)!!!" . Even the maintenance tags are obstructive. ZooFari 04:56, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Can you post a sample message here so I can see how you are reporting vandalism to ISPs? Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 05:01, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It's a very professional message; I inform the abuse contacts (A user at) x.x.x.x is violating your Acceptable User Policy by inserting spam/off-topic nonsense into articles at http://en.wikipedia.org. The user's actions are disruptive and the issue should be addressed. Please investigate the logs below and enforce your AUP. The log format is already available at the Abuse Response revamp discussion. PCHS-NJROTC 20:00, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually I was most curious about how you and other "contactors" represented yourselves in relation to WP. Do you state that you are doing this on WP's behalf? How do you identify yourself - with your real name or your WP username? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 20:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't identify myself at all in the message unless they ask (this is rare), in which case I would represent myself as an editor at WP. The emails are sent from my personal Embarq email account, so my real name appears as the sender. If it's on behalf of WP:ABUSE, I give them a link to the project. I do not blatantly lie to ISPs or IT&S departments. PCHS-NJROTC 03:55, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you lied to ISPs. I was curious if you were implying that this was an official WIKIPEDIA action, and clearly you are not. I suspect that you are making assumptions about the AUP (acceptable use policy) of various ISPs. Since WP invites people to edit it, typical vandalism (even cheerleader vandalism) won't be breaking the AUP of most ISPs. In any case, I don't really see the usefulness of your actions, but you are clearly of a more simplistic, punitive mindset than I am. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I try to stray away from being too overly strict, but became a Wikipedian partially because I discovered WP:ABUSE and what vandalism is from a search I ran on an IP involved in off-wiki abuse, so naturally I'm inclined to report to ISPs in certain circumstances; I've been strict like that much longer than I've been a Wikipedian. I used to actually look up the exact part of the AUPs that the vandals would violate, which varied by the vandalism and the AUP, but it was too time consuming and didn't really matter anyway because in my experiences the same ones that do nothing about wiki vandalism also do nothing about spam, port scans, and even phishing websites. For one thing, it's a common misconception that there's "nothing illegal about vandalizing Misplaced Pages;" most of the time it could be considered harassment when they repeatedly do it after being warned, some of them make threats, some of them stalk the vandal fighters, and that's just on the legal side. I've found that wiki vandalism is actually a pretty big deal considering how there's usually more than one part of the AUP they're violating. For starters, it's maliciously messing with someone else's computer, if they mention someone's name it's slander/libel, and if the person is under 13 it's a violation of COPPA, it often involves spreading hoaxes, if they engage in sockpuppetry to get past blocks it's circumventing a firewall, accessing something without authorization, disguising their identity by technical means, or just circumventing a blocking feature within a website, it affects other ISP users' ability to enjoy the service if they engage in IP hoping resulting in either a range block or IP blocks on one heck of a large list of IPs the person's used, if they say their ISP won't do anything or otherwise mention their ISP they're tarnishing the name of the provider, they're violating third party policies via their internet connection, it's off topic posts/comments, it's unsolicited advertising if they promote anything in particular, they often make "obscene" comments, and the list continues on. PCHS-NJROTC 20:20, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

No offense, but that editnotice makes us look stupid IMHO, and is more suitable for Uncyclopedia than here. Seriously, we have bigger problems than cheerleader loving/hating vandals. I see no reason to move them to a different category from the normal vandals and attempt to block them on sight. Follow the normal procedure for dealing with vandalism (revert, explain and warn sufficiently, report). If a particular article is attracting a lot of such vandalism, get it protected. ≈ Chamal  ¤ 05:19, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

As does the Romeo templates, or giving them four different warnings when it's blatant trolling. But yes, Village Pump is a place for proposals, some good ideas, many bad ideas, some realistic, some unrealistic. The original idea was to warn test editors ahead of time, and then anyone who ignores it is obviously trying to be malicious. I do agree that it'd be better to just treat them as any other vandal; perhaps we should have a note on all pages directing test editors to the sandbox. It should be brief and to the point; it should not be too bitey (or too silly), but it should be firm and should indicate that sillyness will be promptly removed. It should point test editors to the Misplaced Pages:Sandbox. Didn't we used to have a message like that? PCHS-NJROTC 20:00, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Its still there, below the edit box, under "Please note:" it says; "When you click Save, your changes will immediately become visible to everyone. If you wish to run a test, please edit the Sandbox instead.". Personally I don't think edit headers on articles are a good idea in general, they should be more reserved for the project namespace (Misplaced Pages:) and user (user:), as it is messy and discouraging to new users in the main namespace. Kind regards, Spitfire 20:04, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism by bored school kiddies is persistent and tends to run in cycles. This fact is not however reason to immortalize the latest fad with a special template (see Misplaced Pages:Deny recognition for more details). If established policies and procedures are not able to handle the problem then there is reason for change. There is however no evidence presented that this is what is happening. --Allen3  18:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Just like TCP portscans and spam mail; it's a problem, but not the end of the world. PCHS-NJROTC 20:02, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

P: and T: namespace aliases

Over a year ago, there was a discussion about adding P:, T: and C: as namespace aliases for Portal:, Template: and Category: respectively. This discussion resulted with some people supporting and one opposing, and a request was filed on Bugzilla. This request has been rotting in bug hell for over a year until I stumbled upon it today. I'm willing to make this happen, but I'm a bit leery of making a change that was last discussed over a year ago and may have gotten controversial since. If you guys still want this to happen, I'd like to see a fresh discussion or at least a fresh vote. --Catrope 16:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Not that it'll ever actually happen, but support. Maybe someone will notice in a few years and actually implement it. *shrug*
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 16:35, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• It would certainly be very useful for many editors, but let's make sure we appreciate what the cost is: I believe it means that we could never create an article with a title beginning P:, T: or C: . Which people might sometimes need to do. (I don't know, but it might work better to use aliases which have less chance of beginning the names of things in the real world, something like P;: or P-: .)--Kotniski (talk) 16:50, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Hmm, that brings up a good point. I wonder if Article: could be created as an alias to files in the article namespace that start with Misplaced Pages:, User:, WP:, etc. Such articles would be so rare that it might not be worth it. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Just a note that the prior proposal was only for P: and T:, since we saw the issue with C: (computer languages, etc). So yes, I still support P: and T:. MBisanz 18:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• A "technical restrictions" hatnote along the likes of C-Sharp (Monkeyshine) The proper name for this article is C:#, due to technical restrictions it has been renamed C-Sharp (Monkeyshines) "C:# is Monkeyshine's implementation of the C# programming language..." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: Currently there is one "T:" article, T:kort, and one redirect, T:MP that don't point to templates. There is one "P:" article, P:ano, and two redirects, P:D & P:RUS/NEW, that don't point to portals. There are 4 "C:" articles. The C: pseudo namespace is barely used at all, the T: one is lightly used, and the P: one is heavily used. The normal shortcut for categories is CAT: by a 24:1 margin over C:. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• The request, IIRC, wasn't for a "C:" alias because we realised that then ] (we discussed ]) would act the same as ] - that is, actually add the page to the category. What we really might like is for ] to be equivalent to ], but that's not supported in the software AFAIK. I definitely support adding P: and T: aliases. Happy‑melon 20:26, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Seems useless to me. Template links usually use {{tl}}. Are portals linked to often enough that saving 5 characters is really worth it? "CAT:" (not "C:") I could see using if it could be equivalent to ], but not otherwise. Anomie⚔ 23:32, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

  Don't forget the innumerable times the required titles are navigated to directly from the search box; I know I certainly 'link' to templates this way often enough to benefit from the abbreviation. "Useless" is a pretty weak argument, especially since you then state a usefulness in the same paragraph; what you mean is "not worth the effort/hassle". But if someone is prepared to put the effort in, what sort of an argument is that? Happy‑melon 23:49, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Sure, if it can be done easily and without holding up existing proposals. –Juliancolton |  23:39, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
• Yes, it'd definitely be helpful. ≈ Chamal  ¤ 01:51, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• Support T: and P:; I'd like C: to be CAT:. —MC10 (T•C•GB•L•EM) 16:21, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• 'Support "P:" and "T:", but "C:" should change to "CAT:"--Unionhawk 00:09, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
• Support P and T, I'm neutral on C and CAT, could we maybe get both? And some chips? Ta. :) A solution to the problem pointed out by my delicious friend would too be brilliant, but that's a separate problem. Has a Bugzilla report been filed for it? —what a crazy random happenstance 17:44, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose: Single letter NS aliases and Interwiki links are more likely to cause issues with page naming for both current articles as well as any future articles that may be created (Which has already been discussed in this discussion) so we should try to avoid them were possible, And are we really that lazy we have to shorten them that far? Peachey88 12:29, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

  We as a civilisation saw it fit to abbreviate the three-letter word yes to 'y' and tiny little two-letter no to 'n'. So yes, I think we really are. —what a crazy random happenstance 15:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal/Question Re: Where You're Brought When Clicking on Entry in Watchlist RSS Feed

I think this is the appropriate forum to post this request. I think it's wonderful that Misplaced Pages's Watchlist is accessible via RSS feed. However, while individual entries in the RSS feed document specific changes, following them takes you not to the change, but to the article's main page. That has felt both a little counterintuitive and a little less useful. Are there any plans to change this behavior to what might be expected? If not, and this is a brand new idea starting with me, is this the appropriate forum to suggest such a change, or should I make it somewhere else? Thanks in advance. MikeHarris (talk) 17:14, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Feed for 'Days Of The Year'

How hard would it be to set up a feed for the individual 'Days of the year'? I have been looking for a good online almanac. Your format is ideal:

 * 1 Events
 * 2 Births
 * 3 Deaths
 * 4 Holidays and observances
 * 5 External links

What I want is an RSS feed (or email or facebook post) of the contents of the 12 December page today and 13 December page tomorrow etc. without making a link 366 times. The wiki-sync thingies would be perfect, but there's only a few and none for this. The Days of the year on Misplaced Pages are about the best almanac type data I have found...now if I could only get it in an almanac form without either logging on every day or making a link to each day's individual page. Gracias! --Genesee.gbh (talk) 00:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

You could write a PHP or Perl script to do so yourself (or ask someone), I very recently wrote a few to do similar sorts of things, it's not very difficult (and no, I'm not volunteering). Buena suerte. —what a crazy random happenstance 17:50, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Documentaries

I've been watching a lot of documentaries lately on the Discovery Channel and the History Channel and the like, and it struck me: why don't we (Wikipedians) make some short documentaries? For the most part, documentaries have four components: 1) a narrator reading a script; 2) film of images relevant to the topic (lions hunting, for example, or a reed canoe being paddled down a river); 3) interviews with experts (usually college professors); and 4) animations designed to show things like the curve of a trend, or the biological structure of a creature. All of these elements could be compiled by Wikipedians with access to specific resources or with particular editing talents. For example, for the Lion article, we could 1) find some public domain stock footage of a lion using its regular means of attacking a prey animal (there is an amazing supply of such footage available from a variety of sources); 2) get someone with a camcorder to record a few sound bites from a local zoologist or biologist who knows enough about lions to speak authoritatively on the subject; 3) create an animation that shows things like how the lion positions its jaws to go in for the kill; 4) write a short script to describe the details of how the lion is going about its kill and to introduce the expert and the animation; 5) have someone with a good voice record that script; and 6) piece it all together with appropriate subtitles, transitions, maybe even some background music into a ready-made snippet of "documentary footage" which could be embedded right into the article. bd2412 T 03:47, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps because it wouldn't be encyclopedic? :-) Possibly one of the sister projects would be a good home for those?—RJH (talk) 18:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd put it that a series of documentaries would simply be an videographic encyclopedia. I don't see why it wouldn't be "encyclopedic" if the information presented is accurate and given an encyclopedic tone. bd2412 T 19:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. (FWIW)
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 11:47, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I've done a limited amount of professional video, but I would say this is not practical because of the unusually stringent skills required. Have a look at the professional video accompanying the Britannica, National Geographic, or PBS. These aren't a matter of an enthusiast getting together friends for a weekend, but of an experienced team with professional camera, lighting, video editing, and video compression tools. The nature of the media would make it difficult for subsequent editors to seamlessly change it, making it distinctly un-Wiki.

An alternative that avoids some of these problems -- within the capacity of quite a few people -- would be a narrative slideshow. Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 00:09, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Last chance to vote in the Arbitration Committee Elections

This is a brief reminder to all interested editors that today is the final day to vote in the December 2009 elections to elect new members to the Arbitration Committee. The voting period opened at 00:01 on UTC 1 December 2009 and will close at 23:59 UTC on 14 December 2009 as initially planned. Updated 20:55, 13 December 2009 (UTC).

The voting this year is by secret ballot using the SecurePoll extension. All unblocked editors who had at least 150 mainspace edits on or before 1 November 2009 are eligible to vote (check your account). Prospective voters are invited to review the candidate statements and the candidates' individual questions pages. Although voting is by secret ballot, and only votes submitted in this way will be counted, you are invited to leave brief comments on the candidates' comment pages and discuss candidates at length on the attached talkpages. If you have any questions or difficulties with the voting setup, please ask at the election talkpage. For live discussion, join #wikipedia-en-ace on freenode.

Follow this link to cast your vote

For the coordinators,  Skomorokh  12:59, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Backlog at PR and GAC

It's gotten to the point where it's actually easier to get an article featured than it is to get a PR or a GAC review. Is there simply a shortage of willing reviewers, or is there something structurally wrong? Serendious 17:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

As I remember GAC has always been backlogged, although backlog elimination drives usually help. Ruslik_Zero 19:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

For an individual reviewer a GAC can be at least as much work as a FAC (if not more so because a GAC can have more problems to fix) and there are surely many more GA candidates as compared to FA candidates. Sometimes you just have to be patient and wait until a volunteer is available.—RJH (talk) 23:41, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

COPPA compliance

Mainstream view here is against age limits on Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages is "the 💕 that anyone can edit," so age restrictions would be completely against our fundamentals. However, is it really necessary for people younger than 13 to indentify themselves as such? A rule banning the representation of one's self as a person 12 or younger would get us out of that gray area we're in on the issue. Not only would it be in better compliance of COPPA, but it would reduce the temptation for pedophiles to try to use this as another Myspace-like medium to contact children. In a nut shell: you're free to edit, create an account, and be part of the community if you're younger than 13, but just don't spill the beans or we'll have to oversight every scrap of personal information you may have posted. PCHS-NJROTC 22:56, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how COPPA is relevant, since Misplaced Pages doesn't "collect personal information" from anyone, as it's an encyclopedia. Ntsimp (talk) 23:45, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Speaking as an Oversighter, I can say that this is already common practice, in the interests of 'Do No Harm'. It is covered by the letter of OS#1, and in spirit by simple morality and decency. The legal issue is a non-issue, as Ntsimp says: Misplaced Pages does not collect personal information, anything that's up here is what the editors have posted. There doesn't need to be a legal reason to do the Right Thing. Happy‑melon 23:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, there's WP:Personal information, which says don't include personal information anywhere on Misplaced Pages. —C.Fred (talk) 23:58, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

There's also WP:NOTMYSPACE, which I think this would fit right in under, but I think this perhaps should be addressed directly. Just an idea. PCHS-NJROTC 00:10, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

And I'm saying that it already is addressed, directly and consistently, whenever the issue is encountered. There is no need to have a 'rule' that people have 'broken' in order to be able to take action. Happy‑melon 11:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

1. "NBC Fall Preview", NBC.
2. "'Heroes' Back in a Big Way This Fall", Zap2it.