Misplaced Pages

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Recurring policy proposals are discussed at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (perennial proposals). If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that Misplaced Pages doesn't have it, please check there first before posting it, as someone else might have found it obvious, too.

Before posting your proposal:

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

Discussions older than 7 days (date of last made comment) are moved here. These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

Web of Trust

The German Misplaced Pages has a relatively successful "Web of Trust" scheme to help with continuous rating of users' "trustability". The English equivalent, Misplaced Pages:Trust network, has been resurrected as a proposal, with a strong basis in the German system. If you want to make a public record of which contributors you find particularly trustworthy, you can follow the instructions given there. TheGrappler 21:54, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how this fits in with the whole "assume good faith" thing - shouldn't we be assuming that all users are 100% trustworthy? Waggers 12:10, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

"Assume good faith" is to prevent knee-jerk disputes arising simply because a person is wrong. It does not mean that all users are 100% trustworthy or have 100% good faith. A Web of Trust would, ideally, show that a user does not, in fact, have as much good faith as might be expected of some randomly selected user. -- Centrx 23:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is a place to make arguments (or rather to copy the arguments of others) and then back them up (with links or information about where to find those arguments). You are arguing that the statements made by others are true. To use a "Circle of Trust" not only, to me, sounds a little clique-y (which would put new users off), it also aids people making ad hominem arguments against others. Ad hominem arguments are, obviously, not valid and should be stifled. Users should be on a level playing field. --Stellis 08:39, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

This sounds interesting. Could you please give me the location on the German Wik. Kdammers 10:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

http://de.wikipedia.org , unless it's some other non-standard Misplaced Pages. - PhilipR 19:24, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Featured sounds

I'm trying to revive my earlier proposal, and am looking for nominations, if not to "featured sound" status, then at least to something preliminarily like "good sounds". Please see Misplaced Pages talk:Featured sound candidates. Thanks.--Pharos 02:03, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Isn't there a proposal to change Featured Images to Featured Media? User:Zoe| 15:26, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Scratch that; please have a look at Misplaced Pages:Sound of the day instead, an idea of mine that might actually work.--Pharos 14:57, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

naming languages in English

I'm not sure if this is something within the control of admins in English Misplaced Pages, but in case it is.

Regarding language names listed in "In other languages", it would be nice, if, for logged in users, the alternate languages of an article were displayed in English (or more precisely, the user's selected language), instead of the native name of the language (e.g. display "German" instead of "Deutsch"). To me, it only makes sense to show the native name for anons, because you have no idea what language they speak, and we want to help them get to their native language easily. But, if somebody is a registered user, than we can assume text is in their perferred langauge (because language is pickable in preferences). In some case (like codes "am" and "iu") I can't even see any characters, but get "????". I'm hoping this is something that could be changed, that doesn't involve a software change (in which case, it probably wouldn't be worth it). I suppose it's not essential to know that an article is in "Inuktitut", but it would be nice. --Rob 22:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

This would require a software change. The meaning of language codes can be found by looking for the appropriate article, if you're interested; am stands for the Amharic language, for instance. But really, why is an article written in a foreign language whose alphabet you can't understand interesting to you? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:28, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this proposal. If I am logged into a language that I don't know very well but still can read, I want to be able to see if there is a link in a language I can read better (e.g., I can follow Russian, but I can't recall the Russian word for English, much less know what the Wik Russian abbreviation is for English in case I know there is an English version and simply want to stick in an over-looked link.) On the other hand, if the name in the language of the Wik site being looked at were in the language of that site IN ADDITION, that would be nice. Kdammers 10:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Change to MediaWiki:Revertpage

Currently, when an edit is reverted, the text is Reverted edits by ] (]) to last version by $1 (where $2 is obviously the revertee, and $1 the editor of the reverted-to revision). I think it's confusing to have the username link to contributions, when that's nothing like what we have for signatures and other "default" things: the name by itself almost always links to userpage.

So, I think it should become Reverted edits by ] (] • ]) to last version by $1. Any objections? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:20, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds better, I wonder where you got the idea (uh maybe your name. lol. Lincher 19:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Mild oppose. It does make more sense, but it's been that way for so astonishingly long that it would cause major mindf**ks to all the more elder Wikipedias (such as myself), so for that reason, please don't do it. Also, it wouldn't be retroactive, so we'd have two conflicting versions, which would be less than nice. (Of course, we already have this problem, with popups, etc. But still...) JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Ark, you're right that it wouldn't be retroactive. That's a nuisance. No real point in changing it then, I suppose. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Let's define encyclopedic relevance (or notability)

I propose that the Misplaced Pages community seek a community definition for encyclopedic relevance. Please add your thoughts after mine. Here's my first attempt at such a definition:

For the subject of an article to have encyclopedic relevance, there must be provable common knowledge and reverence of the article's subject within the subject's expected natural sphere of influence and a significant number of references outside the original article author's sphere of influence in cases where the author has a significant real-world linkage to the subject. Neither the volume of Google hits nor a subject's ranking in Alexa (if it's a website) provide sufficient evidence for these purposes.

—  Stevie is the man!  19:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Notability has nothing to do with WP:AUTO. Authors often write about non-notable subjects which they're directly involved in, but that doesn't mean they should have to pass additional tests to qualify. I do like the first part, "there must be provable common knowledge and reverence of the article's subject within the subject's expected natural sphere of influence". Deco 20:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I didn't mean to suggest suppression of autobiography in my attempt at a definition, but I believe autobiography is acceptable under my definition. My definition just says that there must be proof of relevance outside the article author's sphere of influence. So if you're writing an autobiography of sorts, you would have to ask yourself this question--"Excluding my contributions or bodies of work related to this subject as well as me or heavily linked organizations (e.g., publishers) talking about the subject, is there enough of a degree of common knowledge and reverence in the expected natural sphere of influence of that subject?" —  Stevie is the man!  22:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

On second thought, I think I now see the above definition creates a conflict with WP:AUTO and that a decoupling is needed. Here's a second attempt (italicizing the change):

For the subject of an article to have encyclopedic relevance, there must be provable common knowledge and reverence of the article's subject within the subject's expected natural sphere of influence. Further, all references provided for proof should rest outside the direct influence of the subject itself as well as intricately linked parties or organizations. Neither the volume of Google hits nor a subject's ranking in Alexa (if it's a website) provide sufficient evidence for these purposes.

—  Stevie is the man!  22:56, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why the references created by the author or people affiliated with the author should be disregarded. Does how notable something is depend on who's writing it? It's an objective quality that every reference contributes to. Let's not try to make this definition do too much all at once - I think it's better to depend on the reputability of the sources, as many crank theories are based on irreputable sources created by the author. Deco 00:00, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you, especially because that's not my position. My position is that in determining relevance, we cannot use information that comes from a conflict of interest as I described above (that is, we cannot have someone basically saying "I am important, therefore you must include me"). I'm not saying that someone cannot create an article about themselves or their organization--I'm saying that entities outside of a conflict of interest must demonstrate that they are relevant. I realize that it's difficult to understand what I'm saying, as there are fine points here. Let me rephrase a different way: I am not talking about how articles are created, but rather how their relevance is determined. Anyone should be able to create an article about any relevant subject, even if the author is the subject. But in determining relevance, the subject and intricately linked parties cannot be trusted as a source for that relevance, although they can indeed inform us of sources of relevance outside the conflict of interest. —  Stevie is the man!  00:41, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Example: The President of Arby's can write an article about Arby's. If, for sake of argument, somebody challenges the Arby's article as not having encyclopedic relevance, the President of Arby's cannot provide for proof of relevance that he says Arby's is important. Other officers of the Arby's corporation (or its parent company) also cannot say Arby's is important. But they (as well as anyone else) can point to third-party entities (outside a conflict of interest) that say Arby's is important. I hope this clarifies things. —  Stevie is the man!  00:56, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I still disagree. I think these sources should be included, but weighted according to the standard of Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources. I think it overextends the concept of notability to take conflict of interest intos account. Deco 01:30, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I now agree with excluding tests for reliable sources, as simplicity is a good thing. But I still can't fathom why anyone would accept self-notability in any possible form, as if someone could assign importance or relevance to themselves. —  Stevie is the man!  19:11, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

It is quite true that the volume of Google hits and/or a subject's ranking in Alexa do not indicate that the subject is "encyclopedically relevant" (q.f. notable), but they do provide some evidence to include when there is nothing else to provide WP:V. User:Zoe| 21:02, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

If there's nothing else to provide verifiability, then it is worth asking whether the subject is notable enough to belong in an encyclopaedia. It might be, but it should surely provoke some serious consideration. Jakew 21:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I am just saying that this kind of information is not enough to prove relevance. —  Stevie is the man!  22:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea in principle of providing a guideline on notability, but I'm not certain of your (Stevie's) proposed definition. I think that may be a little too narrow, and that it needs expanding, with discussion and illustrative examples. We would need to incorporate (and avoid contradicting) relevant parts of WP:NOT and WP:AUTOWP:BIO, and possibly other policies.

I definitely think much more discussion is needed, and refinements are naturally expected. —  Stevie is the man!  22:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I would be interested in working with you on this. How do others feel about doing so? Jakew 21:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. As a Wikipedian of over two years, I've long thought a fully fleshed-out discussion on this subject is long overdue. Perhaps it would be a good idea to start working on an official proposal that the community can begin marking up? —  Stevie is the man!  22:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Note to all: I'm off on vacation for the next few days. On Thursday or thereabouts, if there's interest in working on this as a proposal, I will rejoin the discussion at that time. Thanks! —  Stevie is the man!  01:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

As a practical matter, WP:BIO does cover most of the common cases. Most trouble in the individual notability area is related to lesser figures in the entertainment industry, and for those, we have reasonably objective standards, like WP:BAND. Right now, we do have an AfD pending for a dead Anglican bishop who was the brother of someone famous, but that's an unusual case. Arguably, Misplaced Pages's standards for notability are too strict for corporate figures and too loose for entertainment figures. Misplaced Pages would normally accept as notable a performer with two bad albums available on Amazon.com. But the #2 executive at a Fortune 500 company normally wouldn't get in. Personally, I'd throw out every living musician below the platinum record level as non-notable, but the fans would scream. --John Nagle 02:25, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not harmed by including non-notable content, but it can be helped. If you look at the costs and benefits, the latter clear predominate. The one and only possible cost is loss of respect—but frankly, I have yet to see anyone say "Misplaced Pages must suck because it has 424 articles on Simpsons episodes". I have seen many non-Wikipedians become angered or distressed with our system because their articles got deleted. Let those who will respect us respect us for our breadth as well as our reliability; don't shut out knowledge just because you don't think it's "important" enough. Look at the arguments for and against; weigh the demonstrable alienation and loss of readership on the one hand, and the ungrounded speculation about respect and maintainability on the other. Live and let live: you aren't hurt if someone writes verifiable articles on their favored fancruft, and neither is anyone else. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:27, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

We definitely have different viewpoints about what should be included in the Misplaced Pages, but let's be clear here: This definition is not about exactly defining what is important, but rather about creating a framework for helping Wikipedians conclude if something is important or not. Recall the phrase "expected natural sphere of influence"--I wouldn't necessarily even vote on Afd's for fancruft I knew little about. The question is not "Do I as a Wikipedian editor find it important?" but rather "Does it appear that the community that naturally surrounds this thing thinks it is important?". Also note that people can still disagree about importance under a definition of "encyclopedic relevance"--it's merely a definition, but by nature it does not give the Afd reviewer an exact answer to their question of importance unless they actually research that question and find out. Under this new definition, we would hope to reduce snap decisions of "Delete" or "Keep". —  Stevie is the man!  04:34, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

To refer back to the original title, let's not define it. As a growing body of work, Misplaced Pages can't afford to have notability standards set in stone. What is notable for an encyclopedia with 10,000 articles is considerably different from what is notable for one with 100,000 articles, and different again from what is notable for one with a million articles. As th number of articles changes, so too must our levels of required notability. (For a more thorough explanation of this viewpoint, see meta:Incrementalism). Grutness...wha? 06:00, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know; I think we could have 100 million articles and cruft would still be cruft, to a large extent. There really are probably many more genuine encyclopedic topics than even Wikipedians generally give credit for. A real standard for notability would of course be Misplaced Pages's (or at least AFD's) philosopher's stone; I've often thought something quantitative might work out, if it was based on, say, an exhaustive micro-study of the possibilities in one small Ohio town.--Pharos 09:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

After reading WP:N, WP:IMP and other materials, I now realize I am not exactly breaking new ground with my proposal. I am humbled by the complexities involved, and thus believe that this isn't worth pursuing as yet another new proposal. However, I will take my views and use them to formulate my own policy with regards to notability, and use that in deletion discussion. I suppose that is what every Wikipedian does anyway, albeit in an informal manner. —  Stevie is the man!  19:53, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedians by politics for deletion

I have nominated Category:Wikipedians by politics and all of its subcategories for deletion. Feel free to comment at Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 June 19/Wikipedians by politics. Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:58, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

If electioneering belongs in Cfd, this entry should be removed. —  Stevie is the man!  13:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Huh? This is notification. This is the right place to notify people about stuff. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

And if we did this for every xfD, this place would be a mess. This is electioneering, and should go. —  Stevie is the man!  15:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Slippery slope fallacy. Hipocrite - «Talk» 19:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

But we don't do it for every XFD, so it's fine. This CFD is of particular interest, so it's reasonable to publicize it. If too many XFDs start being publicized here, then we can talk about banning them. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Electioneering is "trying to influence people's votes", not "trying to get people to vote". The latter can potentially be electioneering as well if you select people who will vote disproportionately the way you want the vote to fall out, but notifying the village pump doesn't qualify. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

'Move this page' command

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the move this page command is now causing more problems than it is worth. Of late a lot of new users seem to join WP and engage in vast numbers of page moves, often without any fixing. Examples of the virtual orgy of page moving can be seen here and here. That is just one user's move in the last couple of days. I am coming across mass moving of articles of late all the time, much of it by newbies. Some of the changes are correct, but often others here have no specialist knowledge to know if the change is correct, and no explanation is needed to justify the move. The moves could be to made-up names or may be complete bullshit for all we know.

I specialise in the areas of Irish history, politics, state institutions and monarchy. At this stage I can't keep up with all the changes. Users constantly come to me saying "look what has been done now" and I find that someone has moved 20, 30, on one occasion 117 articles, in one go. The manual of style and naming conventions are being torn to shreds by naming that often is done without reference to them; indeed is done by people who don't know we have them at all.

Maybe it is time to remove the right to move pages unilaterally. We could either require all moves to go through the formal requested moves procedures, though that may be cumbersome where the move is merely to correct an error in naming. Another option might be to create an alternative corrected name procedure whereby a user could indicate that a name was flawed and request an admin move it. The corrected name procedure could allow these requests to be categorised so that the request could be seen by someone who knows a bit about the topic/area, etc. If the admin sees that, yes, there is a problem, they could then do the move. If it is debatable, they could put it to requested moves to allow a full discussion and decision by users.

The idea would be a variant on the requested moves procedure used right now with admins doing the moves. It could work as follows: {{corrected name|existing name|new name|category|reason}} as in {{Corrected name|Cahal Brugha|Cathal Brugha|Ireland|Brugha spelt his name with a 'th' not a 'h' in the middle}}{{Corrected name|John Wiki, 3rd Duke of nowhere|John Wiki, 3rd Duke of Nowhere|capitalisation wrong on N}}

The current move this page command is now too dangerous given that with Misplaced Pages's size moves may not be spotted, or the scale of moves may be such that no one editor can wade through them all and check them out. We need to get this all under control before it does even more damage. It has done too much already in specialist areas. FearÉIREANN\ 21:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is a problem, I think that it would be better to just have a few people randomly check the Page Moves log (which I do often, anyway) —Mets501 (talk) 21:22, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, on the grounds that a user without the option to move may be tempted to copy-paste move instead, which would double the mess. Maybe we should consider modifying the Mediawiki:Movepagetext template to more strongly recommend seeking consensus prior to a move. Deco 21:23, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Ditto Deco, he said exactly what I would have in different words. Nihiltres 02:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Having seen some of the moves Jtdirl is talking about I am inclined to agree with some of his arguements that it is simply too easy to move a page. One of the most problematic issues is that a move in itself does not flag up in your watchlist - theirfore it might take some time and damage before you realise whats happened (this can be a nightmare if vandals attempt to circumvent and move to "odd" names). Whilst taking away the function for most logged users would be a back step in the wrong direction certainly the move page could be better worded to make it clear that in cases of doubt or when it is not a clear-cut spelling mistake that a consensus is a must on the talk page. And that above all the move command is not a license to move. Djegan 17:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

As long as moves are un-doable without too much grief, this is consistent with Misplaced Pages's basic approach - anyone can edit, and anyone can undo the edit. --John Nagle 17:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that they are not undoable "without too much grief". Some time ago I had to spend 6 hours over a number of days undoing screwed up moves by another user. It would take one user hours to untangle some of the moves, and verify the name changes, in the example I mentioned originally. They could be fixed easily enough when WP was a small encyclopaedia. but with over one million articles all it would take would be twenty new users to engage in the wholescale moving of 20 articles to require 400 fixes. Many new users move a heck of a lot more than 20. (I came across one user who move 300 in four days!!!) Because the new names didn't show up on watchlists and they were rather specialised articles the moves weren't noticed (as happens, when the moves were going on, no-one with a specialist knowledge was on, and by the time they came on, so much else had happened that the changes were way down at the bottom of their watchlist or off it.). I only spotted it when I caught the user vandalising articles and looked at his edit history. At that stage I had no time to fix the complete mess that user created. I constantly get messages and emails from people saying "have you seen what user:x has done to such and such?" Or "where is article x gone to? I just keep getting redirects to redirects to redirects". Those of us working in specialist areas are getting a bit tired of spending most of our time on WP these days reverting vandalism and moving articles back to their original location as required by the manual of systle. For example, not that many people know about the Irish Unionist Party. I could move that to Unionist Party of Hawaii and it could sit there for months, because no-one would notice until they were went to the original article and found it at some nutty location. If only one hundred articles are moved every week to a nutty location, and not spotted, that could mean over 2000 articles have been moved this year alone. With one million articles we simply cannot keep up with all the fixing. And on the evidence, the number of wild moving by new editors seems to have rocketed. I've come across five or six new users who in the last two weeks between them must have moved between 400 and 500 articles, many of them to rubbish names and away the name chosen because of the manual of style or naming conventions. At this stage that move this page command has to go, before it reduces whole parts of the encyclopaedia to a tangled mess. FearÉIREANN\ 22:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

But moves are undoable by anybody except an administrator if the page has been edited since the move. The original name exists as a redirect, and it is impossible (I think) for an ordinary editor to move a page back to its original name. An ordinary editor either has to ask an administrator to do something, or start a vote to move the page back. The present system makes it all too easy for new editors to make a mess of things. Noel S McFerran 01:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

There's one exception to that rule: if the sole edit in the history of the target page is a redirect to the page being moved, a non-admin can overwrite it. This means that moves can typically be reverted by ordinary users. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:13, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I utilise the move function a fair bit in instances that are mostly non-controversial. I think I would lose a fair bit of editing time if I have to request moves for everything. Also, I fix a lot of absolutely terrible moves. That takes long enough without going to WP:RM. What I do think needs to be done, if possible, is a bar on moves by users with less than a certain number of edits. Between registering and reaching whatever that number is, it would be fairly evident whether the user is going to be a problem or not. If a user is found to be abusing the moving privilege, he or she can simply have it revoked or frozen for a certain amount of time, like a ban. Users such as the example you provided, who do not heed warnings, would ones eligible for a move ban. Many stop the nonsense after a warning. After a certain number of edits, if they haven't figured it out, then a move ban would be in order. Charles 01:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I think a good feature that WP should consider is a tab specifically for the move history of a page. All too often, it is confusing to sift through the history to piece together what moves were made. That history should "travel" with the page whenever a move is made. Also, summaries should be mandatory in order to complete a move. If insufficient or misleading summaries are made, it should warrant a warning. Charles 01:54, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

If the existing admin move-rollback function is inconvenient in some way, specify how and file a feature request at Mediazilla:. Editing the page-move message to be scarier would probably also be a good idea. Beyond that, restricting moves so much would add too much hassle to be justifiable. If you think they should be throttled, you can vote for Mediazilla:1454. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:13, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Moves are fairly normal part of editorial work. There is firstly no good sense to build any more "privileged" positions in Misplaced Pages, such as "privilege to move". I believe persons who are asking such additional privilege system to be built, are nearing the much-warned "instruction creep" stage. That's something I am warning against. There are of course always those who desire to have more and more control over things - Bush administration is another good example of such - control freak is quite common phenomenon (by the way, also Bush administration is good to gain more control powers by creating and adding people's fears, by doomsday-scenarios and by spreading assumption that everyone is going to attack "the bastion", be it USA or Misplaced Pages; certain writers above need to learn that others in Misplaced Pages are also working to make it better, and that the only changes that are improvements, are not those made by the certain writer having the control freak attitude). Btw, we of course assume that Jtdirl is not going to move Irish Unionist Party to a place which is totally wrong - BUT, if Jtdirl so moves, I am willing to assume that sooner or later someone moves it to the right direction, and/or opens a move request - which will make the thing more visible and leads it towards being named in a good way. Perhaps each article deserves one renaming vote - at least then the name will be thought about. And if one has not enough time to do what (s)he wants to do, I remind this work is voluntary. But somehow Jtdirl anyway seems to have so much time at hands that those 6-hour sessions are quite regular - so I would not pity them, god to have a hobby for empty days. Instruction creepism regarding certain naming conventions has come to such a current situation that almost no one is committed to those conventions, either not bothering to make sense of such detailed and self-conflicting instructions or are opposing those. I understand that some initiation of this discussion has come from naming of biographies about royals and nobles, a convention which is actually absurdly twisted, and complicated. The worst thing in it is that some persons (possibly also writers above) proclaiming themselves experts, are actually relatively obstinate, but relatively ignorant of the historical grounds behind such. I would like to see those who pontificate about their "expertise" to actually show it, by telling in clear language where "historical naming of wives" come from and how it has been variously used in works of history, prosopography, heraldry and genealogy, and what prefix titles have been in real use in European history before most recent three centuries. I would bet they are sadly ignorant of such, presumably because the so-called expertise often seems to come from a zeal into Queen Victoria's extended family and next to nothing else. one of the sad things is that naming built upon what may fit to Victoria's various grandchildren, is not in all parts historically relevant in larger context, but still those Vicky-zealots are pushing their untenable namings, throddling over better experts. Funnily enough, Vicky-related biographies seem to be most "protected", there having been unduly long page protects and quite stupid edit wars, made by certain people who somehow try to pretend to be editors in "good standing". And, of course I repeat what I have expressed in other places: Jtdirl is no specialist on feudal and early modern historiography and their monarchies, so that the context of above initiative comes clearer to discussants here. There is the relatively easy way to move articles by making cut-and-paste moves, and some editor above who seems to want more control over movings, has actually done cut-and-paste moves, when it suited to one's interests. It is highly necessary to remember not to push towards cut-and-paste moves with denying the current more proper means to move. Shilkanni 22:15, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Widespread client-side wiki parsing

There are many people that read Misplaced Pages pages quite a bit. I know I request at least 50 pages from en.wikipedia.org every day.

If all of the people that do this frequently used their computers to do the parsing (using Special:Export and, perhaps, a Firefox or IE plugin), couldn't it decrease a lot of the CPU usage on WikiMedia servers? This would be a bit like "donating" but in very small increments by a very large group of people, hopefully Misplaced Pages's most frequent users. The goal would be that new users would be less likely to experience (discouragingly) slow page loads, especially the ones using dial-up.

I am a programmer but unfortunately my wiki expertise is very limited. If there is already a program that does this and if it already has widespread use, let me know. If you know of any reasons this couldn't work, I would also like to know. --Stellis 07:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:POPUPS and so on from there. It's been done, it's being worked on, it's impossible to do perfectly for various subtle reasons. JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Possible, technically, but the developers' time would be better devoted to rewriting the current parser. Your proposal would require that either volunteers install PHP and hack their browser, or install PHP and use a specialized application for browsing Misplaced Pages, or that someone rewrites the entire parser in Javascript. Realistically, probably 95%+ of resources are spent serving anonymous browsers, not editors, so it wouldn't make any significant difference.

Anyway, for future reference, proposals like this should probably go at WP:VPT, where the devs will see them, not here. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Word 'Filter'

This is apparently technically simple, but has met resistance in the past; hopefully putting this new angle on it will help. I'm sorry it's come out very long, but hopefully I've covered most of the bases.

I propose an automatic response on posts from unregistered users that contain common vandal words (fuck, penis, etc) - registered users would still be able to edit articles with no effect, but attempted vandalism by IP or new users would result in some kind of warning, automatic message to talk page.

Issues I'm trying to get around:

• Shouldn't prevent the edit in the first place, as it is Against The Spirit of Misplaced Pages. (ie, has to be a secondary action to the post, not preventing the post from happening)
• Registered users should be unaffected (technically very simple)
• There are currently systems in place that catch a lot of them, but I use no tools and still come across some to remove by hand, proving that the bots in place by no means catch them all. A bot HAS to err on the side of caution so as not to revert valid edits
• Articles that are missed by current bots are not flagged in any way and rely on being caught by the RC patrol

Proposal:

• When a registered user posts, nothing different. Registered users are more likely to be making valid posts, and this type of vandalism seems close to nonexistent from registered users.
• When an IP or new-user posts an edit that contains something matching a filter elsewhere (could be a page so things could be added, could be an internal list... only really worth discussing this detail if the rest of the proposal can be shaped into an acceptable form) ((Edit: if the diff contains a word on the list that isn't already on the article page, would probably work better --Firien)), one or more of the following happens:

• The article also has a category added to it or its talk page, flagging it for review. This would be a handy tool for the RC patrol, and would also be a Place To Help.
• The talk page of the poster has a template added sending a message to that poster that contains some medium that both thanks valid posters for their contributions and also warns vandals that their edit has been noted and will be checked.
• Tthe edit link is pasted onto a page elsewhere rather than putting a template or category on the page. This is also feasible with an RC bot, but will probably be simpler with mediawiki source. This does not alert the poster but still flags the edit for review.

• The automation of this proposal - tieing it in with the software - reduces the chance of missing an article. By doing it serverside, traffic is reduced compared to botting; for mediawiki releases, the filter list can be empty, leaving it as an option for the owner of any specific wiki

Pros:

• Is better than searching for each individual word
• Is a useful duty that new admins can help with and (afaict) should tie in well with the admin tools to be able to block problem users.
• Does not need to err on the side of caution because it does not make any visible changes to the article, unless a category is added
• Should flag far more vandal edits than valid ones
• Yet another way to help, and brings similar problems together in the same way as stubs are together, projects are together
• Hopefully fits the Spirit Of Misplaced Pages better than previous suggestions on word filters

Cons

• Will still flag valid edits
• Notifying valid editors that their edits are being taken notice of may scare them off; hopefully the wording of any notification could take care of this?
• Vandals may realise to remove categories, unflagging a page
• Possible difficulty with filter on talk pages; perhaps on talk pages anything goes so the filter would be unneeded here?
• ?

Suggested Filter:

• swear words
• certain slang eg GNAA, niggaz, etc
• multiple consecutive punctuation

Basically, this is looking to be a list of things often used in vandal edits but rarely or never in valid edits. It is clear that the items in this proposed filter would very likely be subject to argument, nitpicking, etc. Hopefully it can be considered as a whole; the aim of this is to have the filter, and the precise items to have in can be argued on later.

--Firien § 13:17, 20 June 2006 (UTC) PS I won't post this to bugzilla until a consensus is reached on whether it should be included or not. --Firien §

Have you seen User:Lupin/Anti-vandal tool, which filters any edits which match any of the words on this list? --Cherry blossom tree 15:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't come across it - looks good though, and should probably be used as the basis for comparison for this proposal. Great word list too; the major difference between the two (and to the other RC tools) is that the tools rely on someone being there at the same time. That system does work very well, for the most part, and all credit to the other anti-vandals for being there to catch the vast majority. This proposes to catch those who slip through the net.

Admittedly I'm beginning to have trouble reconciling the new backlog of paperwork this would create elsewhere; either removing categories when confirming an edit is valid, or cleaning a page elsewhere in the way that old vfd pages (for example) have to be cleaned up after. It's a balance between letting the few slip through the net but not having extra pages to look through to counter those ones that do slip through, versus hopefully keeping more pages clean but then having more time spent away from direct RC patrol. It depends on the balance of how much time this might cost to follow vs how many edits do slip past and taint articles, which I can only guess at. --Firien § 16:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that could be taken a step further. Each time an edit was made, it would be rated for its likelihood of being vandalism, based on the following criteria:

• Words, as you mentioned.
• The removal of large amounts of text from the article.
• Specific characteristics of newly added text, such as:
  • being at the top or bottom of the article.
  • being in ALL CAPITALS.
  • repeating the same short phrase several times, e.g.
  • consisting of a single sentence or bullet point.
• External links to sites associated with spam. (This could eventually replace the spam blacklist.)
• Using a recently blocked account or IP address.
• An edit is much less likely to be vandalism if it is from an established account. ("Established" would mean a certain age and a certain edit count.)
• Obscure articles (those which are rarely viewed and have few inbound links) are rarely vandalized once they've existed for a few days.

Then, MediaWiki would rate the edit for likelihood of being vandalism. The rating would be displayed on Special:Recentchanges, where it could be used as a filter criterion, and on watchlists. Also, if the likelihood was very high, it might display a warning and require the editor to click "Save page" again in order to do so; vandals who ignored these warnings could be blocked sooner. Seahen 18:37, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Is there any pressing reason to implement this software-side when Javascript and external applications do such a good job already? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Unilaterally splitting an article

Three days ago, I posted {{splitsection}} on Pac-Man#Atari 2600. I still have not received a single response, let alone enough to establish a consensus. If I wait, the split may never happen, even if it is the most popular and logical course of action. Since Pac-Man is such an important article (400 inbound links, PageRank 6), this is a problem. In circumstances like this, is it okay to split a section off an article unilaterally? I think rules are needed about this sort of thing — not just splits, but everything that can be done and undone by regular users — to say that the action can go ahead if there are no votes after X days. Seahen 18:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Basically, yes. If you ask for comment, and no-one says anything for a week or so, that's plenty of evidence that no-one's going to object if you do it. If someone does object, stop, of course, and discuss it, but waiting a week is plenty to make a trial of it. See Misplaced Pages:Revert, discuss cycle (I think that's the name) for details. We probably ought to make this more well-known. JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:18, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

It sounds good to me. What do you suggest for X? Kdammers 10:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think it should be less than a week for high-profile articles (where there should be plenty of users watching the article, and a lack of comment indicates a lack of opinion). If it takes a week just to get one comment, it could take months to get a quorum of opinions. I intend to make the split this afternoon (that's four days) if there's still no comment. Seahen 10:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

NPOV or BPOV?

Can I propose that the phrase "Neutral Point of View" is replaced by "Balanced Point of View"? Although I enthuse about Misplaced Pages, I am skeptical of its claims to operate with a Neutral Point of View, simply because I do not believe one can be entirely neutral. However, there is surely a difference between total neutrality and being able to take cognizance of several conflicting viewpoints, so maybe "Balanced Point of View" (BPOV) would be a more accurate description of Misplaced Pages policy. ACEO 19:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I view these somewhat interchangably. The important thing about the neutral point of view is that the speaker does not take sides - they describe viewpoints held by others, rather than holding any viewpoint themselves. If this is an unachievable ideal, well, at least it's a goal to strive for. Deco 20:57, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

NPOV is a process, not a pass or fail test. No claim that it is perfectly achieved should be inferred from the policy. "Balanced view" seems to me to have a major inherent danger: there are many topics on which most of the noise is made by cranks, and Misplaced Pages shouldn't seek to cover such views in a way that reflects the balance of opinion among participants in the debate. Honbicot 02:59, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I concur with Honbicot. Balanced is even more problematic a word than neutral. Plus, any change to the NPOV policy would ultimately have to be approved by the Wikimedia Foundation and maybe even Jimbo Wales himself. --Coolcaesar 22:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposing abolition of strict time rule for 'did you know'

Hi,

everyday some very interesting "Did you know" facts are on the main page of Misplaced Pages. But there is a strict rule saying that the facts cannot come from articles older than four days.

I personally think this is an unnecessary extremely strict condition.

There are several interesting facts like "Egypt and Syria used to be one country" or "Inner Mongolia is actually in China" or "King Leopold 2 , the private owner of Congo , never visited the country", that could be added there, but all of them are not from articles that young.

I do understand that you wanna advertisements for new articles, but still...the toll is too high I think.

Evilbu 20:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The purpose of the "did you know" section is to exhibit new articles. The format is largely irrelevant, and some people find it misleading or strange that the "new articles" section is written in this odd "factoid" format. Deco 20:58, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I think DYK needs to be kept under review and may require major reform at some point as new articles are inevitably about less and less substantial topics. Honbicot 03:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we should focus on new articles, but I think an article up to 14 days old is still new. Seahen 10:41, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't just accept articles that have been created but recently expanded stubs also. There's no reason for the topics to get more marginal until we have a full article on them all. And have you any idea what kind of backlog there would be if it allowed any factoid? --Cherry blossom tree 18:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

new user permission: editprotected

I'm proposing a new permission setting that allows users to edit any fully protected page, even if they are not administrators.

Reasonable requirements would include:

• no history of vandalism
• no history of edit wars
• good standing

Any bureaucrat would be able to grant this permission.

However, the downside is that if a blocked user with this permission were to abuse their talk page, then protecting the page will not help at all.

Any thoughts? --Ixfd64 23:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Possibly, but with much stricter requirements. Many pages are protected not for vandalism, but because if they were edited in the wrong way, it could screw up so much. Perhaps no history of vandalism, no history of edit wars, 500 wikipedia-space edits, and 2000 total edits, but now we're getting closer to the requirements for adminship.... —Mets501 (talk) 23:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, though users like me will never go for adminship because it is too much of a demanding job and would maybe like to modify these vandal-free articles w/o being an admin. Lincher 01:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Being an admin is not, nor should be a demanding job. We have hundreds of admins who haven't logged in in months. It's just a user with access to some extra software functions, it's not supposed to be a big deal.Deco 01:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

How about de-admining them then? And at the same time de-admining those who do thing it's a big deal - there are quite a few of them too.Honbicot 03:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Note that some pages are protected for legal reasons, such as the disclaimer and GFDL. In my opinion, not even admins should be permitted to edit these. We don't currently have a protection level for this. Deco 01:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, we have WP:OA, where editing the article can result in indefinite blocking and de-adminship without warning. I think WP:GFDL and disclaimer are two pages — and the only two pages — for which OA protection might be justified for more than a few weeks. Seahen 10:59, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

help/search

(I don't know if this is considered policy-related or not - I think not.) I think there should be a separate search function for finding items in the guidelines, at the Pump, etc. That is, for finding stuff that is in that part of Wik which is NOT part of the content of articles. I always have a dickens of a time trying to find any-thing, such as copyright, special symbols, etc. It is especially difficult, since so much of the "Help" information is linked, meaning I go through 5 or 6 links before I get whither I want to go. Even with a "fast" connection, this often takes me around ten minutes to find out a simple think such as how to make the won" (Korean currency) sing. I often just give up or ask on a member's page. This seems like a poor set-up to me. Kdammers 09:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Muslims in Phillipines

I was surprised wiki search had no returns on the above subject.

• See Islam in the Philippines.--Pharos 18:23, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Article searching

When one searches for an article, and makes some sort of grammatical error it just comes up with a screen saying: Thread not found.

i think it would be excellent if Misplaced Pages had a function like google were it offers alternates for your search, ones similiar to yours.

For instance. If I search for 'Special air serv' it will find nothing, but it would be good if it suggested that you try something like 'Special Air Service'.

See Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(perennial_proposals)#Better_search_feature.-gadfium 21:13, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Reorder Charcters

See my proposition at MediaWiki_talk:Edittools#Reorder_Characters. Thanks, Mwhorn 01:23, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Change in MediaWiki:Licenses

Since apparently no one looks at MediaWiki talk:Licenses anymore, I'll whine here. MediaWiki talk:Licenses#Changing NoRightsReserved. --Rory096 18:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposed future event template

I've proposed a future event template to cover future events that are mandated by law, but which might not actually take place. See Misplaced Pages talk:Current and future event templates. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:06, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

AOL users can edit ... after accepting the CACERT certificate.

"AOL users can edit Wiktionary here after accepting the CACERT certificate. For more info, visit IRC or Wiktionary:AOL."

Go to Wiktonary, this is the line you read on the main page. Could we adopt this sort of policy for Misplaced Pages? (Is this a question better left on Meta?) -- Zanimum 13:09, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

No, not better on Meta, but better at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical). Wiktionary requires AOL users to use a secure (https://) server, and I think it was mentioned that if all AOL users were to use Misplaced Pages on the secure server, it would be terribly overburdened. But anyway, it's worth a try to ask at WP:VPT —Mets501 (talk) 13:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Then why not switch more servers to https? Seahen 17:48, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

On a per connection basis, https takes considerably more resources than http because of the encryption step. As it would seem to be just a matter of having enough resources, I'm sure it could be done someday, but I'm not sure it could be accomplished on the presently available hardware. Dragons flight 07:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I've filed a configuration request at Mediazilla:6459. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:07, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

New magicword <<DYNDATETIME|ZONE>>>-2006-06-23T18:27:00.000Z">

NOTE: To avoid my text being interpreted as code, I replaced all curly brackets ({{) with triangular brackets (<<). They really should be curly brackets in the actual implementation.

BACKGROUND:

Many articles have specific dates and times in them. Currently these dates are fixed as simple text, and all users, regardless of their timezones, see the same number.

In many cases this is the way it should be, e.g. historical articles, events where the time of the day is important etc. But in many other cases, mostly in current event and schedule-specific articles, the ultimate objective is to convey the actual time of the event to the reader, as opposed of presenting the perspective of a local time.

For example:

"On January 1, 19XX, at 16:00PM country A declared war on country B."

In this case, the local time is important, to show the historical perspective. This date and time should stay constant to all readers, and not be adjusted for timezone.

But in another example:

"The semi-final is scheduled on August 10, 2006 at 16:00 PST"

The focus is more reader oriented than local oriented. The objective is to let the reader know when exactly the event takes place, for example so they can watch it in real time.

PROPOSAL:

For accomplishing the latter case, have a magicword of the following format:

<<DYNDATETIME|ZONE>>

For example, the article text contains:

<<2006-08-10 16:00|PST>> (Let's not get in a fight over the date format in the tag, it can be MMDD or DDMM or whatever, that's not the point of this suggestion.

What this would do is convert the displayed date and time according the user's timezone settings in Misplaced Pages (preferences -- time zone). It would then display the date to the user according to their specifications under preferences under "date format" section.

Thus, a user with time zone of -8 and long date preferences would see on the page something like:

August 10, 2006 16:00 GMT-8

A user with the same style but in timezone +3 would see:

August 11, 2006 03:00 GMT+3

And a user with short date preferences and offset 0 would see:

2006-08-11 00:00 GMT

In a nutshell, it would make dates displayed more dynamic, more suitable to user preferences, and most importantly, timezone-adjustable. So next time, for example, I won't have to recalculate all the times on my favorite football match when reading Misplaced Pages.

Of course, ALL CONVERSIONS WILL BE DONE BY HAND AS APPLICABLE. I am not suggesting that a bot do that, because in many articles the date and time should stay as they are (that is simple text). This is not intended to be a lighting-fast change, but rather gradual introduction in articles which could benefit from dynamically-adjusted times, mostly indended for current events and especially sports and other competitions.

Of course, we could also make a format like <<DYNDATETIME|FIXED>>, where it would adjust the style of date and time, but not adjust it for timezone.

Finally, users should be able to turn autoadjustments on or off in their time/date preference settings. If they turn it off, they will always see date and time for the same zone which was written in the article. And article writers, when writing dates and times using this magicword, should always use local time for the event as the base case.

Elvarg 18:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)>"> >">

First of all, do not write in all caps in your proposal. It is considered rude. Now, about the proposal; I disagree. All events should have the local time of the place where the event took place, instead of the reader's local time. It is much more confusing when, for example, there's a sports game, and you write: "the game was a night game, starting at 6:00 AM EST," or something of that sort. —Mets501 (talk) 14:02, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Mets501. The current practice is, in my view, better than this proposal. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

World map

I was wondering about the plausability of some sort of Misplaced Pages Atlas, where simply clicking on the country links to the article. I've created a (very rough) proof of concept at User:Smurrayinchester/Map (only Iceland, England, Wales and Scotland have been set up so far). smurrayinchester 12:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

That does seem to work quite well, though it will break down when the geography gets a bit more unusual. Your version does seem quite a bit better than my own somewhat functional clickable map prototype at Wellington Street. - SimonP 20:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for common look and feel for geographical infoboxes

I've created page for discussion about creating a standard look and feel for geographical infoboxes, please contribute at Misplaced Pages:Geographical infoboxes if you're interested. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:37, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Span.texhtml

Please see my proposal here. —Mets501 (talk) 22:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Cite the subject of this article

Several times I've been starting or expanding a video game article, and I've had to cite a book with an article. Since the book is already cited by several other articles, a copy-and-paste should be possible. But the only way to do this seems to be to go to the Special:Whatlinkshere of the book in question, click on one of the links given, and hope it uses the cite template. There has got to be a better way.

We could just decide that a wikilink to the book was sufficient for citing it. However, this would be inadequate for printouts of the article, and the book article might be deleted, so I don’t think this is a good idea.

What I think would work well would be to associate a set of Template:Cite book arguments with each book article. This could take the form of a human-readable template on the talk page ({{citethisbook|title=this|last=that|first=and so on}} → "To cite this book in a Misplaced Pages article, use {{cite book|title=this|last=that|first=and so on}}") and could be botted from Template:Infobox book arguments. Finally, we'd set up a cite template whose sole argument was a wikilink, and a bot to replace it with the completed template fetched from the to-cite-this-book template. Thus, an editor might just type {{cite bwa|High Score!}}, and save a lot of work. (BWA would stand for Book With Article. Note that High Score! is a redirect, which the bot would have to deal with.)

Would this work? Maybe it could also be used for sources other than books, when the piece of work is the entire subject of the article. Seahen 20:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the flaw is, that one book title, can have multiple variations, each with its own ISBN. A page number in a reference for one, doesn't always work for another. --Rob 20:39, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

If it is really necessary to cite specific editions and page numbers, I can see a way around this: For books with multiple editions, place multiple copies of the cite-this-book template on the talk page, one describing each edition, and make sure they all include the ISBNs. Then, create a variation of the BWA template that takes ISBNs as input rather than titles. (Each edition of a book gets its own ISBN.) The bot would search cite-this-book templates for the matching ISBN. This would have a further advantage: if the book didn't have an article, the bot could use the ISBN to look up its details from an outside source, more easily than it could use a title. Seahen 01:18, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Automatically providing primary authors with copy

The process of article deletion is harrowing enough to then deny or delay the primary author from obtaining a reference copy of the article for continued revision and/or personal use. I propose that upon deletion of an article that a link to a hidden copy of the article be provided to the primary author or to everyone involved in the deletion discussion so as to uphold the Misplaced Pages civility policy. Otherwise I fear the deletion process will appear to simply be viewed as a mugging carried out by a bunch of ruthless thugs. ...IMHO (Talk) 00:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

If you want the contents of a deleted article, you may request them at Misplaced Pages:Deletion review#Content review, with the stipulation, they can't be used to recreate the page in article space, but may be used outside of Misplaced Pages. A high percentage of deleted articles are made by throw-away accounts, so this "on request" approach probably makes more sense (though it's admittedly not well known). --Rob 01:19, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Its a matter of courtesy and civility in line with the idea that setting an example of proper attitude and operation makes better sense. Essentially the Misplaced Pages needs to follow the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." ...IMHO (Talk) 01:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

This is a bit tricky. If anybody else significantly edited the article before its untimely demise, then the author is constrained to use it under the terms of the GFDL - but with the article deleted, they have no history to link to, so they can't give credit in the usual manner. If such a case did arise, it would be necessary to supply interested parties with both the original article contents (in wiki source form) and the complete history to enable license compliance. Deco 04:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Not being that knowledgable yet about Misplaced Pages structure I have no basis for arguement but it would seem that it should not be that difficult to simply make everything that aleady exists hidden or invisible from the Misplaced Pages yet retaining everything just as it was and even being able to limit access to those parties involved, especially those who participate in the discussion. Perhaps just sending all parties detailed instructions on how to make a copy request might even be sufficient. Again its just a matter of taking Wikimedia operation to a level that is beyond reproach or at least making the effort. ...IMHO (Talk) 06:32, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

What would really help is making it mandatory for admins who delete an article to provide a link from the deletion log summary to the deletion discussion. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to hunt high and low through the archives to find the discussion. Carcharoth 10:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Each deletion discussion is reached as a subpage of WP:AFD, as Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Articlename. (Older discussions are under the old page name at Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Articlename.) No high-and-low hunting required. You can always watchlist specific discussions, too—then you'll have a link from your watchlist page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah. Thanks. Rather embarassingly I did actually find this out a few weeks ago (well, that was actually when trying to find an ArbCom ruling), but it seems I promptly forgot again! :-) Carcharoth 00:19, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

New User categories

Hello,

My Question relates to the possibility to add a category such as category:public lectures in Town (replacing public lectures by org. name & town by the real name of the location) and invite user to add their user accounts in it ? (relating them with a main article Template:catmore which shall describe the community as a wikipedia encyclopedic article).

The aim is to give some newbies the feature of registering as members of that group, so that they could meet thereafter.

My point is to add brand new users that share the follow-up of philosophy-related lectures ; those are not the teachers, but they search a place to share the knowledge they acquired throughout a community.

I proposed wikipedia, which I know through another wiki identity. So that I just started this account creation to enhance their initiation to the wiki (people come from the course, and are basically unaware of wikipedia guidelines).

Yours,

--Lilliputian 12:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Current events?

There is a still-open Portal:Current events creation proposal and an earlier discussion on Talk:Current events that suggests some support and no opposition for moving Current events to the portal namespace with minimal initial changes in layout and organization. I'm not convinced the proposal has had enough scrutiny so I hope it's appropriate to mention it here as well. Please comment at Misplaced Pages:Portal/Proposals#Portal:Current events or here as appropriate. Suggestions for other places to make this proposal known would also be welcome. Thanks – kayaker (talk · contribs) 09:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC).

Popular culture - link in, not out

I edit a lot of military related articles, and often someone will add "This gun/tank/missile is used by (insert some fictional character) in (some fictional piece of work) to do (something fictional)." I think it's pointless and crufts up factual articles with a load of fictional references that are basically not notable, and not encylopedic. See Colt Python for a good example. I think it would be good to have a policy/guideline in place that basically limited "Popular culture" references for real things or objects to only iconic references - i.e. Dirty Harry. Popular culture articles - video games/films/fiction should link to the objects in question, not the other way round. What do other people think ? Megapixie 09:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I personally don't mind those sections much other than I think that they often needs to be trimmed of less notable appearances and have lists converted to prose. Jeltz talk 12:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Classification of articles within the Misplaced Pages

Whoever first recognized the need has probably been long since been obscured but Dewey ended up with the credit for the Dewey Decimal System. What is becoming apparent is that the entire Misplaced Pages project is in need of a similar classification system. Anyone have any specific ideas of how such a system should be organized or if it would be sufficient just to start with the divisions upon which the reference desks are already based? ...IMHO (Talk) 12:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

• Does anyone know of a list of intellectual criteria that could be used as the basis of article classification? ...IMHO (Talk) 12:18, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Two points, one irrelevant to this question - firstly, I've been reading a few of your posts to the Village Pump and it's slightly aggravating that each post seems to be followed up by several minor corrections. If you use the "Show Preview" button, you can proof-read your contributions before they "go live" as it were - it would save a lot of effort. To actually reply to your point, however - how would this differ from, or what is in your opinion needed in addition to, the Categories system? --JennyRad 12:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Its a problem for me as well. What I need is an offline editor. I try most of the time to use Word but a built in Misplaced Pages speller would do most of the trick. Have any ideas? The the Categories system is exactly what I would start with but the reason I would not stop there is because there are so many articles that cover a great portion of the same thing because whatever that thing might be has become almost a common tool which many people still think of as particular and special to their own particular application. Example? Half life. Half life is such a common and wide spread concept it is even used to describe gasoline consumption on common digital dashboards. I'm looking for a list of criteria that is about 10 to 30 (multiple state) independent variables deep. ...IMHO (Talk) 12:32, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

• Also I would propose that the the Categories system hierarchy be listed at the top of each article as the subdirectories are for disk file folders and most web pages. ...IMHO (Talk) 12:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Any more references as to the classification of knowledge besides the the Categories system? ...IMHO (Talk) 20:42, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

There are the various index pages, and things like "AllPages", but the thing I find most helpful when wanting to get a reasonable starting point towards what exists in a certain area, is to use the Prefix index. Also, using the "What links here" link on the toolbox (at left) is sometimes a powerful tool to see the links within the encyclopedia. And then, of course, there is always the outward bound links from any page - I'm not sure if there is a way to list those for a particular page. This all works much like a cross-referencing system, rather than a classification system as such, but I sometimes find these entry points and browsing methods more useful than the category system (which I also find useful). Carcharoth 07:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that depending upon where you want to go next its great to have a choice between a bus, a car or a Star Trek Teleporter. Its just that I can't seem to get the idea out of my head how great it would be to have a list of all the criteria upon which just categories in the Misplaced Pages are based much less articles. The main difficulty of course is in coming up with criteria that must be combined in order to define all categories or articles. I mean certainly things like "author" and "creation date" would qualify in that regard but what I am really looking for are things more content orientated. ...IMHO (Talk) 09:48, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry. I read that three times, but still don't understand it! :-) Carcharoth 23:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Contact List of Experts

The community of Misplaced Pages comprises 1.6 Million members including hundreds of thousands of highly engaged experts in different fields. By this Misplaced Pages is not only an encyclopedia but also the propably largest expert network worldwide. My idea is about how this potential could be used more effectively. I think that a high absolute number of members would volunteer to answer e-mail requests on topics from their area of expertise. Their already exist ways to ask questions to the community of WP, but every of these have either of the following drawbacks:

1. The experts who could answer the question do not obeserve the site where it is asked
2. Questions are asked in the wrong places
3. E-mails are written to experts who are not willing to help

My proposal is that every member can voluntarily specify topics on which he is willing to answer e-mail requests. These topics could be portals, categories or single articles. Furthermore every portal, category or article could contain a tab "Experts" linking to a page where the experts on the topic would be listed. This page could include an e-mail link, a link to their userpage and a description of their expertise so that the reader can make the correct choice.

What do you think about my proposal? I want your opinion, ideas and criticism.

--Falk Lieder 13:42, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

It's a very good idea. However, I predict that the community won't like it, because it would be incredibly hard to operate, technically and otherwise.--Keycard 15:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Even though it would be hard, it would be some kind of an assessment for the articles which some would really benefit especially fields where WP doesn't have too many experts representing them. Though we could also ask for journals or newspapers to assess articles for us. Lincher 17:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know there already exists a list of Wikipedians by topic, but it is not linked to project pages, portals or even single articles. This makes it difficult to find it, which is probably why it is used so little. I've just searched for it on the English WP and could not find it. Therefore I think improvement is necessary here. --Falk Lieder 20:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I think this would be a good idea. However, I don't like the idea of adding an Experts tab, because newcomers might (a) not understand the tab's purpose or (b) mistake the self- or peer-nominated volunteers for professionals paid and/or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Instead, I'd suggest associating a list of experts with each WikiProject. You could have a table something like this:

User	Credentials	Usual response time	Sub-specialty
Template:Ulte	6 yrs as level designer, Electronic Arts MA in Media Arts, University of Toronto	24-48 hours	First-person shooters

This would require no change in MediaWiki. It probably doesn't even require a policy change; the first expert willing to sign up on a WikiProject can start the table right away. Seahen 18:44, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I can see your point but to my mind this list of experts should not only be available to Wikipedians working on a certain project but for everyone using Misplaced Pages. In order to avoid the misunderstandings you expect one should add a disclaimer to the top of every list of experts. Nevertheless I would also appreciate if the weak version you want established. --Falk Lieder 20:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I oppose this suggestion for a few reasons. 1-Most WikiProjects already have a participants page, where project participants are listed. 2-Credentials just promote "I'm better than you" in the Misplaced Pages community, which is not a good thing. 3-Experts can already be contacted through their talk page, and most do not want to be contacted by email. —Mets501 (talk) 22:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Front Page notice

It is regarding this:

Welcome to Misplaced Pages,

the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

1,210,396 articles in English

I believe the "anyone can edit" should have disclaimer that source must be verifiable, useful, and bunch of other stuff that people usually not read through. Many users and editors do not even read the bottom Content must not violate any copyright and must be based on verifiable sources. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL. --Dooly00000 18:32, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

• I don't think it's going to make much difference regardless of where we put it, unless it's a check box that needs to be checked before the edit can be accepted. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-06-24 18:50

  Sure it does, whevener people click edit they view the "disclaimer". ;) --Cat out 23:13, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

< Scraped from Main article, 23:15, 24 June 2006 (UTC), by Dooly00000

One problem with front page stuff is that 99.999% of new users end up entering and being introduced to the Misplaced Pages via an article following a Google search using a keyword that gets a Google Misplaced Pages hit. Once in an article there is no backtrace to the main page through a classification hierarchy shown at the top of the article as there is in disk file folders and most web pages. Consequently you never as a user look for or see the main page. ...IMHO (Talk) 20:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

There's a giant picture at the top that links to the main page and another link in the Navigation box that explicitly states "Main Page". Obviously, there's plenty of ways back to the main page. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 20:34, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes but why would anyone ever want to take a direct route to the main page versus going back up through the hierarchy. Remember people come to the Misplaced Pages in search of knowledge about the topic they are interested in not to learn about the Misplaced Pages. ...IMHO (Talk) 20:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

That's your opinion of what people want and Misplaced Pages does not work as you seem to think it does. There is no hierarchy, only groupings of relevant topics. Everything exists within the same sublevel, more or less. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 20:42, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Where is the giant link to the Misplaced Pages:Browse on the article page??? ...IMHO (Talk) 20:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Petition the MediaWiki people to add it if you feel it's so important. Generally, people don't just randomly read encyclopedias. They search for a topic they want to read about, making random browsing a somewhat pointless venture, don't you think? – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 20:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually an acyclic graph for each article might be more appropriate. When people are searching for knowledge they may use a variety of techniques. The idea is to accomodate this fact. ...IMHO (Talk) 21:07, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

That would look terrible. This is an encyclopedia, not a directory listing. If anything, you should look into creating an index of sorts. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 21:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

A nice icon that links to an ugly graphic would still do the job. ...IMHO (Talk) 21:17, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

• And if pretty is what you want the is what you get. ...IMHO (Talk) 09:51, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

• What is really needed is a list of knowledge criteria so that dynamic classification of articles can be handled by a computer. ...IMHO (Talk) 21:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

It's a matter of fact that the Main Page gets a lot of hits. A lot of hits. Way more than any other page. To the point where things linked off the main page tend to be more popular than anything else. It's a very popular portal, and I'm confident people are reading it. Deco 21:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand the hits could simply be due to reflex action after a Google search brings a person to an article page. After a couple or three hits the jigsaw puzzle globe would entice even adults to click on it to see what might happen. ...IMHO (Talk) 22:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Email

I am reintroducing the topic of an "Email this page" in the toolbox. Many times I've read simply fascinating articles, and would have loved to've been able to quickly share it with a freind. I've also had freinds who were not wikipedians copy and paste the text of a wikipedia article and send it to me. It would be great if there was a link that you could click on and either (1) send a link to the article to someone, (2) send a text version of the article (since some of these articles are gigantuous) or (3) (my faviorite idea) send the lead in HTML, with a More here... link to the rest of the article. Many magazine, reference sites, and newspapers have such a feature, and I think it would be great here.--Esprit15d 14:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Support I love that idea. I can't count how many times I've copied and pasted articles or links into emails. It would be great if there was an "email this page" link and then in the next screen you can select email addresses to send it to, your email (who it should appear to come from), which would have a default value of the email associated with your account if you have provide one, and an option to send a link to the article, the article in plain text, or an HTML version with a "Read the rest of this article here" link. I do realize that this would be a decent-sized software change, but I think it is worth it. —Mets501 (talk) 14:49, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

E-mail this page (or a link, whatever) is a natural feature for websites that have an interest in increasing readership... I'm kind of surprised we don't have such a common feature. --W.marsh 20:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

This is a nice idea. I suggest a feature request bug be filed on http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/ Lupin|talk|popups 22:26, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Listing number of recent article edits on each article page

We periodically have visitors who stumble across an article just after it has been vandalized, or read a poor stub and walk away disaffected with WP. Even more experienced wikipedians should get more into the habit of checking the history to see if an article is in flux when they consult it. How about automatically adding a little sentence at the top of each article whenever displayed which would read something like

2 edits in the last 10 minutes, 10 in the last 24 hours, 160 in the past year.

That immediately warns readers to look for vandalism/major reverts recently. In contrast,

5 edits in the last 30 days, 40 in the past year

is likely a slowly evolving article, and

2 edits in the past year

may very well be an orphaned stub.

In this, I am assuming we would have a sequence of timeframes (e.g. 10 mins, 24 hours, one week, 30 days, 1 year) and the software would leave out "0 edits in ...". Plus, I think this would actually help motivate readers to join in and fix things, since they would see others are doing it. Thoughts? Martinp 20:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Automatic conversion between American and British/Commonwealth English

This proposal was originally brought up by User:A Transportation Enthusiast as a result of the long-term dispute with User:RichardHarrold who kept moving the page Train station to Railway station (saying that British English was the "correct" English). See Talk:Train station#A Software Solution?.

Would it be possible (or is it possible today) to add the capability to switch based on locale data? In other words, if a user specifies he (or she) wants US english, "color" is displayed; for UK or Canada, it's "colour".

To do this, it would be necessary to specify alternate versions of words or phrases for different locale settings, while editing. Something like:

 "The {US:color|UK:colour} of the {US:train|UK:railway} station's walls is blue."

For common terms like color/colour, a shorthand could be used, i.e. something like {!color} that would look up a database of localized terms for that specific term.

The Chinese Misplaced Pages has a similar system that automatically converts characters between simplified and traditional Chinese according to the user's preferences. Conversion is done through a set of character conversion tables that may be edited by administrators, and regular editors may override the conversion tables for specific sections using special syntax (Chinese Misplaced Pages#Automatic conversion between Traditional and Simplified Chinese). Maybe the same idea can be applied to the English Misplaced Pages to convert between American and British/Commonwealth English? SCHZMO ✍ 21:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps something in the software that automatically displays whichever spelling people want whenever one of the words is detected, words like color/colour etc. where it would make sense, instead of forcing people to code it into every article. --W.marsh 21:54, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Then you'd have to code in an exception tag for direct quotes or exceptions. Not worth the effort, at all. I'm fascinated people think this is a problem. --Golbez 22:07, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Why stop there? Why not do it for entire languages? {US:My name is Golbez|JP:Boku no namae wa Gorubezzu|SWEDISHCHEF:Me Golbez de bork bork}? I think the Brits and Yanks will live 120% perfectly happy having to read a misplaced Z or U here or there. There is no way on heaven or earth that this is worth half the effort it would require. --Golbez 22:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I have to admit it does seem like more trouble than it's worth, and RichardHarrold is the only user who is vehemently opposed to using American English. SCHZMO ✍ 22:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation Keys

I propose including pronunciation keys for some entries. I often find myself needing to check an online dictionary to find the pronunciation of things I'm looking at on Misplaced Pages. It would be convenient to have it right at the begining of the entry.

IPA pronounciations are present in many articles, right at the start. For the ones that aren't, go for it. --Golbez 22:49, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean providing a key for the different IPA symbols? SCHZMO ✍ 22:50, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

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