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)

Nobody should argue against a person on the grounds that they aren't so well trusted - but there are already rules against ad hominem attacks. I can understand that it might be seen as cliquey, but would it really be such a bad thing for new members to be watched a little more closely than established ones? If some articles that you are mildly interested in, just enough that they are on your watchlist but not so much that you inspect and verify every edit, starts being edited by a newbie I expect you would go and take a much closer look than if you saw it being edited by a well-known and respected editor. This is not only natural, but sensible, and in no sense exclusive or cliquey (new editors may well appreciate a degree of oversight and feedback). This system is of the most help in marginal cases, where an editor with some experience has started editing in one of your main topics. It is natural to try to get to know a little about other editors (read their user page, talk page, sift through their contributions) but that can be time consuming. This is just an alternative tool to help to gauge an editor you have just come across. They may well be well-trusted and respected for sterling work on another area of Misplaced Pages, though this may not be obvious from their talk pages (in fact the best contributors often have the most negative sounding remarks put on their talk pages!). On the flip side, I have seen users who display an array of barnstars, but it turns out to be the work of a group of POV-pushers, awarding one another for their efforts. A trust network might not reveal level of trust so much as it reveals patterns of trust, and these can often be both informative and practically useful. TheGrappler 01:11, 28 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)

The particular system is at de:Misplaced Pages:Vertrauensnetz.TheGrappler 03:48, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Epinions has had a web of trust for many years and I can tell you that it has led to an enormous amount of bruised egos, hurt feelings, backbiting, etc. It can be used as a weapon--removal: "I just don't trust this person anymore" as a revenge tool--spamming pages of other users with "I noticed that you have NAME on your WOT, please see this edit ___, he/she is not trustworthy" and many more scenarios. And it is incredibly cliquish, with members gloating over how many people have trusted them and statements to new members "well you haven't earned enough trust so ____". Even if you build into the guideline proposal language to attempt to insulate against WP:AGF violation, they are bound to clash. We joke about the cabal; this will create it or at least give its appearance great strength. It is stated right up front at Misplaced Pages:Trust network that the proposal will be "neither a popularity contest nor a measurement or assessment of an editor's trustworthiness or value." The reason this statement is prominently displayed and necessary is because that is how, at least to and by some, it will be used and seen—prescriptive guideline language notwithstanding. I think it sounds useful on paper and will be a disaster if implemented. I would be interested in seeing an experienced German Misplaced Pages editor's take on these matters.--Fuhghettaboutit 20:54, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't see a web of trust as being particularly useful. What do you do, rule a dispute in favour of whoever has the higher rating? Have bots revert edits from distrusted people? In the former case, you'll have lots of Wikipedians crying foul; in the latter, distrusted editors — legitimate or otherwise — will either discredit our claims of openness or circumvent using sockpuppets. As well, if the most established editors have a collective POV, they might use the Web to reinforce that POV by distrusting neutralizers. I think a WOT, if actually used for anything important, will tend to create a caste system that favours:

• Those who have been here the longest, highest edit count, most user page views etc. at the time of inception.
• Those with friends in high places (admins, stewards, bureaucrats, developers, ArbCom, Foundation staff).
• Those who are good at meeting other Wikipedians on the outside Web or in meatspace.

This will tend to be self-reinforcing if the WOT rating is used to discount edits, campaign for adminship/stewardship/ArbCom, hire employees to the Foundation or for social networking. Hence, if the WOT is implemented, I won't consider the trustworthiness ratings trustworthy. Seahen 22:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Some would argue that all three of these things are important for judging suitability for the above. GreenReaper 22:59, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Then according to them, we should favour older editors at the expense of fresher ones, the admins' friends over those they have yet to acquaint themselves with, and those who socialize with lots of other Wikipedians (mostly extroverts in large Wikipedian-rich cities) over all others. All this at a time when WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias depends on gaining new editors from new geographic regions, new walks of life, new circles of friends. So the people who argue that are the people whom we should all argue against if we want to advance the goals of openness, equality, diversity and NPOV. Seahen 23:13, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I think a "trust rating" would have a chilling effect on freedom of debate and consensus, and would eventually formulate a stratification of wikisociety and create "experts" and "everyone else", which as far as I can tell is the opposite of the goal of wikipedia.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 18.239.6.57 (talk • contribs) .

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)

Nothing fallacious here. Your nom (which failed, to the betterment of the Misplaced Pages) proves my point, in which it is claimed that these categories have gotten out of hand, and anything that gets out of hand had to start somewhere. There are many movements in here that started with a permissive attitude toward one person or a few people doing something. Your advertising of this vote here was indeed electioneering that can easily get out of control, no matter what anyone says. —  Stevie is the man!  06:12, 15 July 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)

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)

Me too. Cranks should not get equal time, even if they do make a lot of noise. All theories should be assessed against an absolute standard. In some cases they may be assessed against more than one absolute standard. If they fail to measure up then we should say so. Filceolaire 16:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

The general sentiment here is right - balanced is way worse than neutral. Neutral point of view allows us to justify substantially less weight for cranks, whereas I think balanced just invites the opposite. WilyD 14:04, 11 July 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)

2 solutions here: a) you se WP shortcuts like WP:NPOV and WP:AFD for policy you want to referene, or, i seem to remember (at the bottom of a search page) a bunch of check boxes for which namespace you want to search. I hope this helps, but somehow i'm not sure I know what you're looking for. MichaelBillington 05:47, 29 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)

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)

Actually, I guess the latter could be implemented just using the existing {{cite book}}. Seahen 03:19, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

You should really take a look on the bibtex system. Some adaptation of the scheme used there could probably work. Bfg 09:12, 4 July 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)

Anybody ? 20:23, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Forgive me, but I'm not sure if I understand what you're proposing. I'll give my best try, though. You've attended (or will attend) classes or lectures of some sort, and a large number of people from those classes have joined (or will join) Misplaced Pages? And you're proposing a category or categories to help the people from these class(es) find each other and communicate? Am I right? Luna Santin 08:42, 5 July 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)

I think that at the very least equal importance should be given to both directions, i.e. making sure that each fictional character has a link to the article on the real world weapon they use. Lor 08:48, 12 July 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)

Post script here in case you have this on your watchlist... I have installed the following CSS script which seems to have helped my poor eye sight to better deal with the problem. Now all I need are some fingers, hands, elbows and shoulders with muscles that lack minds of their own. (textarea {font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size:150%;}) ...IMHO (Talk) 00:31, 28 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)

Forgive me. I guess I have been a logician for too long. I naturally assume that everyone else lives with dependent and independent variables and their states on their minds at all times. What I am referring to is the breakdown of knowledge in terms of criteria with combinatorial capability. Like for instance one might use "logic" as such a criteria and then check off logic in terms of how it relates to a category or article. The various possible ways that logic could relate to an article or category would be listed under logic as potential states. (I can give you a highly detailed example if this description does not suffice.) Then one might look at another potential independent variable like "time" asking if the category or article relates in any way to time and then check off the state of time that indicates this relationship. An alternative scheme might be to simply use the old writer's guide of who, what, when, why and how. I want to consider a few basic possibilities before focusing on any one. ...IMHO (Talk) 23:55, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah! "Who, what, when, why, how" - simple! I understand now! ;-) Carcharoth 09:22, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I've thought for awhile that categorization isn't Misplaced Pages's strong point; we've got cross-referencing on the head, and once I find an article, I'll be able to find dozens of its cousins with no difficulty... the trick is finding the first one. I wish I could understand your proposal more fully, but for whatever reason it's not coming to me; that said, I encourage you to develop the idea. One other consideration, you might be interested to look at the portal system (or the directory), and see if that gives you any new ideas. Luna Santin 09:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

For instance if I want to classify microbes then I look for distinguishing characteristics which are in most cases based upn some parameter that can be or is measured in the laboratory whose combination can uniquely identify a particular microbe among millions and which can be updated to accommodate new microbes and new characteristics. With articles instead of classifying them as history I might instead use "when" as a characteristic and "history" as a state of "when." The idea is to reduce the descriptive criteria of knowledge to its essence such that a computer can classify articles such that each article will be represented by a unique rule or combination of multiple state characteristics. Combination and multiple state are critical terms here. You need both to do a comprehensive yet comprehendible classification. ...IMHO (Talk) 10:18, 6 July 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)

Mets501, you may be right about the Credentials column, but I stand by all the others. Just because a Wikipedian signs up as a participant at a project doesn't mean they consider themselves an expert in the field or any clearly defined part thereof, are willing to be contacted with reference questions, or can answer questions in a timely fashion. Hence, I think available experts need a way to mark themselves as distinct from other project members.

An alternative, of course, would be to subdivide our five reference desks into dozens or even hundreds of topics. This would not necessarily mean splitting off new pages; we could just make the first-level headings on the existing desks sort by subtopic rather than date. This would allow a greater number of experts to use the system without promoting spam. A drawback to this is that a Wikipedian might not notice a question outside their specialty that they could, and otherwise would, answer. _SeahenNeonMerlin 05:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I really like this idea, perhaps set this up in a similar way to the Misplaced Pages:Local_Embassy, with lists of users (I like the example table above (= ) who are 'experts' or 'knowledgeable' in a particular area. That way people can contact them if they want expert input for a certain article, etc. Perhaps the Misplaced Pages Consultancy Bureau?--Lor 10:13, 12 July 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)

Every current browser has an "email this page" option. User:Zoe| 03:46, 9 July 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)

I really like this idea, actually...but if it requires calculations on every page load, it might be too much of a server drain. Still, I think it would be definitely worth a suggestion at Bugzilla, in case there's an inexpensive way to do it. — Catherine\ 01:18, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't this be kinda' redundant to the date/time of last revision already at the bottom? You can infer frequency from that without checking the history or talk page... -RJFerret 01:36, 10 July 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)

If the default behavior doesn't change what happens today, then it would not need to be a hassle. In other words, "color" can remain "color" everywhere, until someone decides that an article has enough international overlap that "color" should be internationalized. So it becomes just another tool at the editor's disposal. Also, if desired, page migration for common terms like "color" can be automated.

Using it for multi-lingual support would be ridiculous, I agree. That's why you have different Wikis for different languages. But for US English vs UK English, the amount of variation would probably amount to less than 1% of the text, so an intrusive mechanism is not so unwieldy (and could be very useful in some cases).

But, it doesn't really affect me too much. I live in the US right at the Canadian border, so I'm used to the occasional spurious "u". :-) I just figured it could help for cases like this where there is a dispute over spelling or usage. A Transportation Enthusiast 23:50, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

And I manage to put up with the occasional missing "u" . The problem becomes insurmountable when you realize that Canadian English is sort of half-way between UK & US, Australian English has its own idiosyncracies, etc. etc.Bridesmill 15:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

And then there's the vandalism potential. {US:Hello.|UK:Cheerio!|AU:G'day, mate!|NF:KILL ALL NEWFIES}, and unless you saw the diff go by or you edit that article - and with so many, that could be rare - the small percentage of folks set to Newfoundland English would be a bit shocked. Also, and here's another major problem - what about non-logged in people? What's the default, American? British? Do we add another layer of processing by figuring it out through their IP? In other words, no. --Golbez 22:32, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

The vandalism potential is certainly a valid concern. Perhaps a function could be run to extract all recent changes involving locale macros like this, so that vandal activity could be caught quickly. As for anonymous editors, a default can be assumed. But this is certainly not something I care enough about to fight for... I just thought it'd be a neat idea. A Transportation Enthusiast 01:10, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

It's all an interesting idea, I like fresh ideas and especially people who look for solutions to common problems, but it seems like an unimaginable magnitude of extra work for a gain which would probably be both small and elusive. There are already good policies dealing with UK/US/AU/CA/etc. English within articles (use what's locally appropriate, or if it doesn't matter, just maintain consistency as best you can); it's only really a notable problem when it comes to naming articles. When that comes to the fore, just do a few redirects, for chrissake. It shouldn't be that hard, and people who insist on turning this into a problem should immediately be referred to WP:POINT. Just a few suggestions, Luna Santin 08:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

SOMETHING really ought to be done, I know it's ridiculous, but the British spellings ("ageing, labour"), especially on article titles or projects, really annoy me. Google any difference between U.S. and British spelling and you'll find the American spelling is more common, typically 4 to 1 or greater. -- C. Hopkins, July 7, 2006— Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.64.174.130 (talk • contribs)

<HUMOUR>Yeah and you really annoy me, can we get rid of you? No. Oh well just have to live with you then. </HUMOR> Jooler 16:46, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

What about having something like

$$colour

in the wikisource that would then be converted to either color or colour based on user preferences. The words color/colour etc. could be in a separate list so it wouldn't have to be defined in every article. The articles could stay like they do now, just with $$ added in front of the words, by default it could display the article in whatever it was originally written in, then there could be a link, Display in American English/Commonwealth English, for setting a cookie for default behavior. U195 18:52, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Here is a small number of the many talk pages talking about British vs American spelling, this REALLY is needed. Talk:Armour, Talk:Theatre, Talk:Grey, Talk:Yoghurt, Talk:Aluminium/Spelling, Talk:Humour/Spelling, Talk:Metre/Archive1, Talk:Kilometre, Talk:Color, Talk:Fiber, Talk:Sidewalk. U195 19:07, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

It might be easy to think about the British and American english for differences but when it actually comes to the real thing there are so many english that it is almost impossible to create a system or to implement the concept in the media wiki software because it doesn't really serve a purpose. I really doubt that british can't read the american english and seriously doubt the contrary. Altough if this process is taken into action there will be requests of other varieties of english and that is not really necessary. Maybe for a printed/static version of the WP it is necessary to have all the types of english but for the evolving encyclopedia that WP is, it needs not to have a user-preference-choice of english since they are intelligible by all the parties concerned. Lincher 20:07, 10 July 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)

Typing prompt

When I open Misplaced Pages I can't start typing in "search"; I have to click in "search" first. Is there a reason why the prompt isn't automatically in "search", as it is for example when one opens Google? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pmjensen (talk • contribs) 02:30, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

This has been proposed and rejected many times, with the rationale that users would rather be able to use the arrow keys to scroll on than have the cursor/prompt in the text box. This is not an issue for Google, as it is all displayed in one screen (i.e. no scrolling is required) —Mets501 (talk) 02:33, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. My mouse has a wheel and I tend to use that for scrolling. Perhaps this is something that could be reconsidered once the mouse-with-wheel becomes the norm?--Pmjensen 02:52, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

How about a user preference, default to what it is now, but at least you can change it. I would put the prompt in the search box. --213.84.16.179 22:25, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually I just found out that hitting Alt-f brings your cursor to the search box --212.136.56.20 15:56, 4 July 2006 (UTC) (same guy diff ip, i should create an account, i know)

Misplaced Pages jurors.

How about having a jury for AfD, RfA, and similar activities? Members will be drawn at random from the community, and will be tasked with examining the nominee's activities. --Folajimi 19:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

• I can see some attraction because it would ensure a cross section of Wikipedians would be involved thereby ensuring it wasn't the same old few users always getting their way. However, the downsides are considerable. A lot of users probably just dip in and out of Misplaced Pages and having to commit to something might drive them away. Secondly these activites do need users for experience and knowledge of policies etc to decide the right course of action. --MarkS (talk) 19:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Of course. Having newcomers/novices in the jury pool would be an unmitigated disaster. Regular contributors for a year or more would probably be a sizable pool to draw from.
    • Perhaps a "competency test" would be in order? --Folajimi 19:55, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
      • part of the reasoning behind afd though is to get as many people as possible to input there knowledge on a matter. Articles have to be reasearched inorder to determine if they meet the requirements for inclusion or are accurate. to limit afd to a jury would reduce the number of eyeballs on the issues. Ydam 00:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
        • The jury's input is in addition to the opinions of the community; it would be ill-advised to limit participation to the jurors. The idea is that you would have disparate members of the community who are tasked with determining whether – or not – the nominee satisfies accepted standards, qualifications, etc. The goal is to avoid steamrolling by the mob. Folajimi 01:48, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

One thing we could do very easily is to look at Recent Changes, choose some random people who are editing right now, and solicit their vote on a random current AfD. This ensures us that they're an active user, creates no long-term commitment, and has no apparent bias. There could be a template for this. Deco 01:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• Do you think this will transfer to other situations, such as RfAs? Folajimi 01:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Sure, as long as you give them some links for sufficient background (requirements, etc). I think many users want to become more involved with the encyclopedia and so would be inclined to invest a bit of effort in it. Deco 02:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Here's an example message:

You've been randomly selected to participate in a discussion regarding X at the page Misplaced Pages:X. For background on this type of discussion, please read W, Y, and Z. We welcome your input and hope you will take this opportunity to make your voice heard.

Something like that. Deco 02:03, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

To be blunt, frank, and possibly rude this proposition does not make anysense at all. People should be allowed to participate in whatever they see fit. Currently we have a sizeable amount of people whom work in RfAs and XfDs. Rewarding experience with "privilages" seems a little ludacrious, if people have knowledge of policy and are willing to place themselves into the trenches they should be allowed to. Currently these discussions work fine under the system they exist under. By creating a jury you will create more red tape for the maintance of Misplaced Pages and bog everything down. Misplaced Pages is growing fast, and is reaching obscenely new high numbers, it is not wise to slow the pedia down. Yanksox 04:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Allow me to respond to some of the points you raised:

1. This proposal does not deny current participants a role in this process; the "usual suspects" will still be able to participate. The idea here is to introduce heterogeneity and keep groupthink at bay.
2. As it currently stands, anonymous editors, regardless of their contributions to this project are denied equal participation in these discussions. From that standpoint, it is safe to conclude that a registered editor who has been contributing to the project for a year is more "privileged" than an anonymous editor who has consistently contributed for three years.
3. Knowledge does not correlate to wisdom.
4. Perhaps you could explain how this proposal "will create more red tape for the maintance of Misplaced Pages and bog everything down." It is unclear to me how having randomly selected participants will tax the system. --Folajimi 05:24, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

At first blush, it sounds like instruction creep to me. It will add a significant amount of complexity and overhead to our processes for somewhat vague benefits.
I also have questions about the feasibility of implementation. How would you select your jury candidates when we are an all-volunteer force and you never know if the person selected is actively volunteering during the discussion period in question? I suppose "Recent Changes" gives you a hint that they were active a few minutes ago but a selection process solely on that basis may (will?) create a selection bias. Now, a selection bias is not necessarily bad as long as that bias lines up with the kind of jurors we would want for this purpose - calm, analytical, mature and articulate users who will read and fully understand the nuances of our policies and practices. Grabbing random current users would appear to create a mild bias away from users who have full-time jobs or families. This isn't a perfect analogy, but I'm mindful of the stereotype of the US jury system where your "peers" are considered to be the people too lazy or stupid to think of an excuse to avoid jury duty.
Still, it sounds like a creative idea and maybe I'm being too critical. Is there a small place or process where you could test out the concept? If you do, I would recommend selecting a process less complex and less confrontational than the deletion processes. Maybe the featured articles selection process would be a candidate for a pilot of the idea. Rossami (talk) 04:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

There are a few points I am counting on to make this proposal feasible:

1. Vandals are outnumbered by those who make constructive edits to this project; filtering out for vandals will likely improve the quality of the pool of those to draw from.
2. Yes, the pool from which the jury will be drawn is "an all-volunteer force." However, I seriously doubt that I am the only editor to the project who enjoys making contributions. For me, this is not a job; this is something I do for fun.
3. The parallel to the jury system you are comparing this to is flawed in that it draws from a pool of mostly unwilling participants. No one is forced to serve in this capacity; so disgruntled jurors will be removed from the list.
4. Users will be free to opt-in from this activity. When such users decline an invitation, they may also express a desire to be left alone.

Like you, I detest instruction creep. If this proposal creates a new bureaucracy, I will be one of the first people to call for its obliteration. Folajimi 05:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• Um, proposals should address an existing problem, not just shuffle around the deck chairs, so to speak. I don't understand or see any discussion of what problem this would supposedly fix. --W.marsh 13:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• Disagree for the proposed usage, I'm afraid. RfA (Requests for Adminship), by definition requires Wikepedia-experienced editors. Inexperienced editors would have no idea what admins do, so would not be good at selecting good candidates. AfD, on the other hand, requires subject-experienced editors. If an editor knows nothing about a subject, then whether or not a given borderline notable article is sufficiently notable is going to be a mystery. The only place where it could help would be on RfC (Requests for Comments), where things are closer to a criminal trial. There a jury of random editors, some experienced, some not, would be useful, to give an idea of what is and what is not a reasonable editor action. But not for RfA or AfD, please. AnonEMouse 13:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Excellent points. Allow me to re-iterate that newcomers and novices are exempted from this process. We are in agreement that it would be ill-advised to have inexperienced contributors in the pool. If I may, I would like to address some of your concerns:

1. Regarding RfAs, there is nothing stopping inexperienced contributors from joining the fray with a simple Oppose/Support "per nom" response, without providing any rationale for such decisions. There have been cases where uninformed participants (yes, even admins) have exercised poor judgement, either by cherry-picking the information used in making a decision. The current process does not control for any of this. Besides, I am yet to be persuaded that it is impossible to bring contributors up to speed on what administrators are required to do. Unless there are "trade secrets" only other admins are privy to.
2. About AfDs — Correct me if I am wrong, but I gather that the Project is opposed to having deference for "subject experts." (See Misplaced Pages:Anti-elitism.) As you seem to suggest, it would be unfortunate if the participants are uninformed about the subject matter. However, this is addressed by Deco's draft above; users are provided relevant information to make informed decisions. Again, the current process allows anyone to vote to keep or delete articles, without providing a rationale. (For examples of those who are apt to behave in this fashion, please see deletionists and inclusionists.)
3. Although criminal trials are dramatic, juries are also present for civil cases.

I hope this addresses your concerns. --Folajimi 14:11, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

@ For more on experts within the project, I would like to invite you to read what Matt Crypto and William M. Connolley have to say on the subject.

Thank you for your courteous response.

Your points 1 and 2: It is certainly not impossible to bring contributors up to speed in theory, merely in practice. The really interesting AfDs are the borderline cases, the ones where it is not easy to see if an article really is sufficiently notable. The ones that are easy to see one way or another by briefly scanning the article and related issues are not a problem now. The ones that are a problem now are the ones where it is not easy to figure this out. Some specific examples of difficult issues that tend to come up on AFD:

1. subject of article doesn't have many pages about it on the Internet, but defenders claim this is because subject is notable in Bangladesh, or Togo, or Mongolia, or some other country which does not have a big Internet presence, and cite print and news articles that, again, editors not in Bangladesh or Togo or Mongolia might find difficult to get (and if they got, to read).
2. text of article is an arcane scientific language that requires at least a Bachelor's degree in astrophysics or microbiology or lapro-endo-ondoscopie to really understand if this is an important article about the current state of the field, and can't be phrased in any other, simpler way, or merely nonsense
3. article is claimed to be nominated "in revenge" for another editor's actions
4. article is claimed to be part of the anti-Islamic/pro-Islamic/Zionist/anti-Semitic/neo-Fascist/anti-Croatian/Scientologist/Masonic/ antidisestablishmentarian (pick one, several, or make up your own) conspiracy. Or nomination is. Or both are.

And so forth. These all come up, if not not regularly, at least often. All of these are areas where well informed angels justly fear to tread; we shouldn't be encouraging well intentioned but uninformed ... shall we say, mortals? ... to rush in by having an automatic program spam them. I'm not as knowledgeable about RfAs, having only participated in 2 or 3, but I suspect the difficulties are similar.

2, experts on AfD: I didn't write "expert", and don't mean it that way. People who participate in AfDs voluntarily now are those who care about the subject. They do tend to be more knowledgeable than those who don't care about the subject, but that doesn't mean they have a degree, sheepskin, or other formal expert status, it only means they care, one way or the other. We shouldn't draft people who don't care, their opinion is more likely to be noise than data. AnonEMouse 17:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I definitely agree with you on the AfD issue. However, I think I have a solution which might address that concern. There are at least two members which come to mind — Longhair and JJay — whom I have helped create articles on arcane and obscure subjects. More often than not, I am uninterested in the subject matter; yet, I am able to address their requests without too much trouble.

Perhaps someone could prove me wrong, but I seriously doubt that I am the only member in the community who is able to do this. If panel members are volunteers who are determined to amicably resolve difficult AfD episodes, I am willing to bet that they will come up with an appropriate solution. Even in the event that the nominated article is on a hot-button issue.

For malicious nominations, I think the RfC model is apt; the instigator is given the "Cluestick Treatment." That seems to cut down on the number of such frivolous nominations.

Finally, this process will work without having to draft users. This, I believe, is one of the reasons the jury process is looked upon so poorly offline; those who refuse to participate when drafted for jury duty are punished. Here, the nominee is given the opportunity to opt-out.

Rossami's idea of having a testbed for this process will be a very useful means of determining whether this idea is worthwhile; hopefully, that will establish what becomes of proposal. Folajimi 22:42, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

• I like the idea. I don't think it would create any red-tape at all. Jurors could be selected by AfD nominators, to get the first few votes. I don't think, however, that this should apply to RfA. Wikibout-Talk to me! 15:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Note that the nom is biased towards deletion by definition. That is like having a jury in a trial selected by the prosecutor. AnonEMouse 17:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

By selected, I meant the nom would go to recent changes and click on a few talk pages. Not going to people he knew who were like minded. Perhaps a governing body could run the process, who would prevent an all deletionist jury. But, to prevent red tape, calling people to a jury could be done whithout contacting the governing body. On a side note, if this becomes a reality, the jury should be listed on the AfD page so everyone knows who it is, and two aren't selected. Wikibout-Talk to me! 18:04, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind the concept, but I have a lot of problems with it. First and foremost is the name - it implies a binding decision. Something clearly needs to be done about de facto vote stacking. Right now, if you create an article that mentions Israel, Star Wars, GOP/Democrat, etc, when that article comes to AFD, hoards of people will show up who couldn't care less about Misplaced Pages policies, but just want to protect their crufty articles or see articles contrary to their views removed. Administrators do have the technical ability to disregard those votes they feel to be without merit, however, there are obvious problems with this as such administrators are not necessarilly unbiased themselves. (Consider the recent silliness with regard to Be bold after the DRV was concluded.) So I agree that there needs to be some unbiased committee, but I don't know that this is the right solution. What I think would work better is creating a step in between {{prod}} and AFD. Most of the deletions on AFD are nearly unopposed. If non-controversial (say, snowy deletes) could be kept separate and a new area for controversial deletions could be created, then that itself would be an invitation for unbiased members of the community to offer an opinion and to help to minimize the ability of a fanbase to override a community consensus. BigDT 17:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• I would have to oppose this idea, even though I see advantages. The main one being, more likely to have unbiased people deciding than there currently are. (that sentence failed at English). Even so, that could also go the wrong way. Interested parties probably have more useful information on which to base their decisions. It also seems wrong to me that if I see an article I like or have invested time in go up for deletion, I might not be allowed to even comment on why I think it should be kept (or the opposite, in another case). -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 20:35, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Could you please clarify what specific issues you have with having unbiased people providing input? As I see it, one are more likely to get a fair shake from disinterested parties. Why do you think you will be denied input in the discussion? That would be incredibly counterproductive to the Project (at the very least, it will discourage contributors – an undesirable outcome).

Remember, the goal is to have people who are capable of articulating their position(s); surely such will be much more useful than the boilerplate "per nom" responses. (FWIW, although I seldom vote on AfD, I have managed to save several articles I have no personal interest in. I actually go about finding the information which will establish the subject's notability.) --Folajimi 02:09, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this proposal. The current system works great, and we should not take the "power from the people" unless necessary. We use a set of people to do requests for arbitration, that's where juries belong and nowhere else.

In different words, AfD, RfA, etc. work best in a distributed fashion, and it would take an impossible amount of work to be done by a jury.

This idea has as much merit as asking that wikipedia articles be written by a jury. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Why a jury? Why not just leave it to the cabal? Just zis Guy you know? 21:10, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

"Misplaced Pages is not a democracy" --Macarion 23:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Random Article

I don't know whether there is processing overhead associated with this, but I think it would be a good idea to only link to real articles from the Random Article link. Currently it links to both deleted pages and disambiguation pages;deleted articles are obviously not useful and returning disambiguation pages looks odd in this context. Maybe there should also be some weighting for featured articles or a Random Featured Article link Yomangani 10:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I actually like it the way it works now. Whenever I have a few minutes but don't know what to do I just click 'Random Article' a few times until I see something that needs help; it usually doesn't take too many clicks to find something to work on that way :) --Doc Tropics 13:47, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I've got 'Random Article' marked 20 times as bookmarks so I can open 20 random articles in tabs in Firefox at a single click - there's generally an interesting one. MikesPlant 15:11, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Dab pages need to be looked at too... Septentrionalis 01:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I never understood the point of the Random Article thing. --Macarion 23:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice if there was an option in My Preferences to modify the function of the Special:Random on a per-user basis. I would love to see checkboxes like the following, with only the first three checked by default, so new users wouldn't bump into pages of little encyclopedic value:

This would obviously require a software change, but I would certainly use the Random article feature more often if this were possible. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 16:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Top of Page link

When an article is split into sections, there's an 'edit' (=edit this section) link at the top right of each section. Wouldn't it be fine and dandy if there was also a 'top of page' link there? MikesPlant 15:11, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Aha! found this on the Misplaced Pages Bugzilla MikesPlant 15:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The Word "Recently"

No article on Misplaced Pages should contain the word "recently." It is not specific, and the fact that something happened recently isn't important. It also has to be changed when it is outdated, but it is impossible to know when something is no longer recent when you don't know when it happened. --Macarion 17:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• Agreed. Perhaps that could be added to the manual of style? Wikibout-Talk to me! 18:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Support but of course most people won't see it. Chicheley 21:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  • I thought we already had a policy on time-sensitive language. Somewhere? Isn't that what all this "as of <year>" stuff is about? Deco 22:52, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
• See Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Time. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
• Idea for a bot? Scan edits for the word "recently" added in article space and drop a note to the editor who put it in? Martinp 03:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
• not all uses of the word "recently" in articles are bad. there's nothing wrong if an article says that "Poet X's work displayed a change in style in 1954, as the poet had recently converted to Catholicism". legit uses of the word like that should be allowed to stay. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 05:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

That's the same as saying "...the poet had converted to Catholicism," since recently means still nothing there --Macarion 18:43, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

"the poet had converted to Catholicism" doesnt imply that it was immediately before his 1954 work. "the poet had recently converted to Catholicism" does. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 02:02, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

"Immediately"?

yes immediately. "he had recently converted" indicates that the poet converted sometime in 1953-54. leave it out and thats not clear. unless you mean "...as the poet had immediately converted to catholicism" which soulds silly. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 00:46, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I must admit I agree with BL on this... the word "recently" in that context and other similar ones "He was unaware of the situation as he had only recently arrived in the country", etc. is a good, clear usage of the word "recently" that is legitimate and flows far better in encyclopedia writing than alternatives (such as "just"). A global removal of the term "recently" is a bad idea IMO, although i do agree that its use to refer to items recent to the article's writing should be removed. Grutness...wha? 01:46, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

"its use to refer to items recent to the article's writing should be removed" Right, that's what I was was talking about --Macarion 22:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I thoroughly agree with that - I was just agreeing with BL's comments which indicate why a bot couldn't be used to replace them (as had been suggested by Martinp). Grutness...wha? 01:07, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems like every acceptable use of "recently" will come after "had," so...

"X had only recently arrived in Brazil...". But yes some kind of filtering ike that would work. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 23:17, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

List created articles

I think it would be a good idea to implement a feature in Wikimedia that allows a user to be able to list all articles that he/she have created. -- Frap 19:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Just list them on your user page. Wikibout-Talk to me! 19:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

User:Interiot has a tool that can generate such lists on demand. He's quite responsive to requests made on his talk page. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:24, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Fully protect ALL closed and archived AfD discussions

An archived AfD discussion (example) reminds users in bold red text saying "Please do not modify it". And why would anyone need to, as it is a closed discussion no longer open for contributions? --NicAgent 21:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Requiring a full protect of all such debates would add a small amount of additional work to the already rather bureaucratic closure process. Far more importantly, it would mean that non-admins could never usefully close a debate, without having to either find an admin to come along and protect or produce a backlog of (rather pointless) closed but not-yet protected debates. -Splash - tk 21:47, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

And there are occasionally reasons to modify (for example, if the AfD is reviewed and relisted). Septentrionalis 01:59, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok then - this is just really a proposal for gain and not real important - but how about protecting lots of controversal redirect pages such as Dubya? --NicAgent 02:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

It should be done automatically if at all. Adding another step to closing discussions isn't a good idea... it's rather tedius as-is. --W.marsh 12:22, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Verb Tense

When someone dies, when a band breaks up, etc, all the verbs have to be changed to past tense, but this can take a long time. We should just say "Albert Einstein is a deceased scientist..." or "Blink-182 is a defunct band..." and then leave the rest in present tense. This helps especially if a band reforms, because all you have to do is remove "defunct." Macarion 22:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

We'd also be covered if notable dead people come back in zombie form. --W.marsh 03:23, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Or when Elvis Presley comes back from Proxima Centauri. User:Zoe| 03:10, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Although all the verbs have to be changed, they then never need to be changed back, unless, as has been suggested, Elvis comes back or notable dead people come back as zombies. For bands, there would be more effort needed - but on the other hand, bands have more fans (including Wikipedians) than dead people. I think the effort's worth it; the resulting article is less awkward. Nihiltres 02:23, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

User Levels

I was thinking that Misplaced Pages should have user levels. I think this would be good, since almost all user-oriented sites have them. I hope you look at some examples I made and consider them (I used userboxes, but the they wouldn't be if this happened). Please take some time to look at them. Also, if you would rather see more of the "meat and bones" rather than the fancy userboxes, I can do that instead. Thank you.

User: Trosk/User Level Suggestions

--Trosk 14:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome to put whatever level-related stuff on your userpage you feel like; you can even encourage others, within reason, to do the same. In general, however, you'll probably find a philosophical objection to any sort of ranking or rating scheme. There's a cultural aversion to anything which tries to categorize editors into different 'classes' or might encourage 'pulling rank' or similar antics and attitudes. We also tend to discourage editcountitis—anything which furthers an obsession with number rather than quality of edits.

Ultimately it comes down to the idea that we're an encyclopedia-oriented site, not a user-oriented one. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:15, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Does that mean that you actively encourage those who are more likely to contribute high-quality content? Folajimi 18:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Wiki Backup

Just a thought: If not done so already,it would be a good idea to backup wikipedia every year or so so that future generations can learn from our current news and trends. The internet is a brilliant resource that in the future will be used to learn about us, so making sure that information is kept so that future updates and events do not replace the current information, or it will be lost forever.88.106.127.189 15:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)(Not logged in when posted)

Everything is backed up frequently, see http://download.wikimedia.org/ Martin 15:45, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, most information is never removed from the database. Every version of every article is kept, and even versions of deleted articles (which are hidden from the view but still available to admins). As of recently, even deleted images are still stored in the database. Nothing's getting lost, really. Deco 16:58, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Subpage Deletion

I propose that we give users the ability to delete their own subpages. If the subpage should not be deleted, then admins can "userdelete protect" them, so only admins can edit them. If an admin creates another users' subpage, it is "userdelete protected" by default. Users can delete anything in their userspace except their talk page, which is by default "userdelete protected". This would be useful, because a user won't have to hassle an admin if they want loads of their subpages deleted (i.e. User:GeorgeMoney/delpage ). Thank you, GeorgeMoney 21:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I say no. Way too much potential for abuse. For example, someone gets warnings for vandalism; he moves his talk page to a subpage (as we do with so many of our archives), and deletes it. No more record of the warnings, unless you go digging. Even worse if they move an article to a subpage of their userspace. The speedy templates are sufficient. --Golbez 22:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, how about if a page keeps its attributes when moving, so if it is originally an article, and the user has a legit reason for it to be their subpage, then an admin will have to take off the protection before they could delete it, and the same with talk pages. --GeorgeMoney 03:16, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a dev, but I don't think pages have any attributes - it's decided entirely on the name. --Golbez 09:01, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, you can copy and paste archive your talk page, which I do instead of moving my talk page to a archive page and then starting over. Wouldn't that cause problems for the attributes solution? Anyway, it's not that big of a deal for admins to delete user subpages, even if there are a lot of them. I suppose if you created several hundred subpages, it could take a single admin a while to delete them all, but several admins could still take them out relatively quickly. -- Kjkolb 10:12, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Move Protection

I say we permanently move-protect articles such as cat and dog, because there is no point in moving them. If some sceintist somewhere decides to rename them, then a sysop will probably know in enough time to move it his/herself. --GeorgeMoney 21:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Viewing changes/contributions for a specified date

I propose that there be something in the page history and user contributions pages that allows you to enter a day or month, and then view the changes to the page or the user's contributions on that specified date. This would allow people to quickly jump to a particular edit that they know happened on a certain day, or a particular activity that occurred during a certain period of time, which would be useful for dispute resolutions, RfAs, and other user-related discussions. SCHZMO ✍ 21:29, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Multiple featured articles?

I think that the number of registered users (1.7 million) that English Misplaced Pages currently has is enough to support posting two featured articles on the main page every day. Does anyone agree? C. M. Harris 22:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Not I. We have just over 1000 featured articles; articles have been featured since 2003. I don't know when we started doing featured articles every day, but if it was any sooner than sometime in 2003 (i.e. in the last 1000 days), we've already repeated some, si. Having more than one would just make us repeat them more often, and gain nothing. --Golbez 22:25, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of whether we have enogh featured articles or not what would having two in the front page achieve. Wouldn't it just take up more space at the expense of all the other stuff on it Ydam 23:39, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

What does the number of users have to do with the number of featured articles? --Macarion 23:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

When was the last time that we had to repeat a featured article? And as for the number of users, if it takes X users to bring one article per day up to FA standard, and one out of every Y users would participate in that, then the number of users required to sustain posting a new featured article every day on the main page would be X*Y users, and to support two per day, the number of users would be 2*X*Y, which I am sure is less than 1.7 million. I'm sorry if I confused you. C. M. Harris 17:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

While the English WP may claim over 1 million registered users, most of them are sockpuppets. I've seen one source that states that the majority of edits in WP are performed by the 1,000 most active editors. While less active editors make valuable contributions to WP, we do not have a pool of one million, or even 100,000 editors, available to work on bringing articles up to featured status. And quite frankly, although I am moderately active (almost 7,000 edits in less than a year), I'm not turned on by FA projects. I just try to improve the articles I touch without regard as to whether they are being promoted for FA. I suspect there are other active editors that feel the same way. -- Donald Albury 18:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

We're producing about 30 FAs per month (we hit 39 in June, but that's unusual - we get a couple of busy months a year). In order to get two a day, sustainably, you'd need to double the rate at which we produce them. This is broadly independent of editor numbers - it's been increasing only slightly over a couple of years. Shimgray | talk | 18:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, having two featured articles would seem to detract from the meaning and significance of making something a featured article. To 'feature' something implies that it has earned a place in the spotlight, so to speak, it is praised for having qualities we look for in articles, and having multiple featured articles at any one time would detract from this. --Lor 21:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

New accounts

Hello! I was amazed by how there is no verification to sign-up. It's pleasant that there is no e-mail hassle but a keyboard verification might be good to keep off the spam. Thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pawel z Niepolomic (talk • contribs) .

The commenter is probably suggesting the use of captchas during signup. The one possible use for this that I can think of is preventing massive automated account creation for the purpose of bypassing semiprotection. Deco 14:14, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I strongly believe that there should be e-mail address verification, so that if a member misbehaves, not only can the account be blocked, but so can the e-mail address, so they would have to get a new address, which is easy to do, but is time consumming and annoying, so it would act as a deterent. -Wser 15:21, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that is perfectly sensible. Also, I assumed we already used captchas, because when I signed up on some other language wikipedias they did. Martin 15:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Article Parenting

Maybe this has been suggested before, but it struck me that we have many more registered users than articles, even if we assume half a million of them to be inactive or irregular users. Therefore would it be possible to assign users an article to 'parent'. The process could begin by each user choosing an article that they are knowlegable about or interested in. Those users who do not choose, or who would rather have the opportunity to research something new to them could be automatically assigned one on their talk page. It would be the parent of each articles job to oversee that article in terms of vandalism, and research the subject and contribute to it themselves to bring it up to a level of accuarcy and detail which could be expected in an expert edited encyclopedia. This would reduce the number of stubs as if each user concentrates solely on one article it would improve, and since we have enough users for every article to have a parent, all articles could be improved, in some cases, beyond recognition. It would also reduce vandalsim and increase factual reliability. Possibly this scheme may be considered unfeasable, but I thought it was an idea worth debating.--Oli 09:41, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Is that not what we already do, except now we look after a few more articles? --Macarion 10:34, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I guess I've already been doing this for Game and Pac-Man. This means that I have them on my watchlist, I revert vandalism if the RC patrollers haven't already, and I've taken steps to document and fix some of their problems. But that doesn't mean I can do it on my own; the articles still need a good deal of effort that I can't provide, and I've been nominating them (with no success yet) for WP:AID and other such projects-of-the-week.

However, I think "babysit" would be a better term for this than "parent," because I did not give birth to either article. (I did start Food and Drugs Act, but I've had limited involvement with it, so in a sense I'm its non-custodial father.) Seahen 13:39, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Assigning random articles to people in which they have no interest would not be a good way of motivating participation. Encouraging people to add a few random pages to their watchlist to check for vandalism is fine, but don't expect people to volunteer to research things they don't care about. Deco 14:12, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Not to mention that there is always the potential one will be charged with being on the wrong side of WP:OWN... Folajimi 18:48, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I am pretty sure this is already done - I have a few articles I watch that I check all the edits on, just to make sure - I'm sure other people do the same. WilyD 14:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I check most edits in my watchlist of 5270 articles. violet/riga (t) 14:49, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

According to the Roy Rosenzweig article that has been discussed on Misplaced Pages:Village pump (news), the average English Misplaced Pages article is on two watchlists. Of course, that means some articles are not on any watchlist; I have stumbled across articles where obvious vandalism had not been corrected for days or even weeks.

It's certainly possible - most serious editors watch all the articles I create, I imagine, but otherwise ... who knows? Maybe some service like Misplaced Pages:Unwatched Articles could be implimented so that someone could adopt all those articles - I'm sure most people wouldn't mind picking a few up. WilyD 15:23, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Just because an article is on a watchlist doesn't mean it's actually being watched. A new editor might build a watchlist and then forget to ever check it, or an established editor might vanish altogether and leave behind a long watchlist. (I think the latter is more likely.) The only sure way to find unwatched pages would be to check whether a page has actually appeared on a called-up watchlist in the last X edits or Y days. A simpler partial solution would be to discount users who have not recently called up their watchlists and/or not recently edited. _SeahenNeonMerlin 05:36, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem with having a list of unwatched articles is that vandals can easily see which articles they can attack and not be noticed. violet/riga (t) 15:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Namespace

• I know that some people are sick of having to type "Misplaced Pages:", "User:", etc. before every page with that namespace. This suggestion probably won't go very far, but how about putting a dropdown menu above the go/search box to select a namespace? --Gray Porpoise 18:56, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

If you want, you can go to the search page where there is a namespace selector. Also, we have shortcuts exactly for the reason you mentioned. (see WP:WP) —Mets501 (talk) 19:23, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Typing's faster and less RSI-aggrevating than using a mouse. --Carnildo 22:40, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Still, it's nice to give people options instead of deciding what's best for them... --W.marsh 23:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

On my wiki I added a hack so that namespaces could be abbreviated in links and the search box, for convenience. Would be nice if Misplaced Pages had a similar thing letting you substitute WP wherever. Deco 23:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

This might confuse new users. If they want to search Misplaced Pages for an article, they'll think they have to select the Misplaced Pages namespace, etc, etc.Lor 09:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Content warnings

Shouldn't we have so called "content warnings" on certain pages? What I'm saying is, that on pages with explicit content (eg. f**k, or pornography or certain other pages with a high percentage of profanity), a banner could be displayed at the top saying something like:

This page contains material that some (people) may find offensive

I know Misplaced Pages dosen't get censored, but this could provide clear information on the article's explicit content. --88.107.169.74 19:50, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

We don't censor Misplaced Pages, but we try to adhere to a 'Principle of Least Astonishment'. That is, material that under some circumstances might be considered offensive or inappropriate for minors should only appear in articles and locations where one might reasonably expect to find such content.

In other words, if someone goes looking for the article fuck, one should not be surprised that the article contains profanity. Similarly, a reader that goes to the article list of sex positions might reasonably expect to encounter descriptions and diagrams of sex acts. On the other hand, one wouldn't expect to find pictures of sex acts in our article on Minnesota, and such images would be removed.

The disclaimer that you propose is, unfortunately, much too general to be useful. It might best be applied to all of Misplaced Pages—in fact, it's part of our Content disclaimer. Trying to decide whether or not content should bear a specific additional warning is an invitation to endless argument:

• Is a photograph of a naked person offensive?
• Is a sculpture of a naked person?
• How about an oil painting?
• A line drawing or other scientific illustration?
• How about just a breast?
• What if it's Janet Jackson's?
• Some cultures and religions would find unclothed legs scandalous and offensive.

You can see the problem. If someone is going to look at a particular article, we try to ensure that the images and text are appropriate to that article; that's the best we can do. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the arguement its too subjective. One can have objective criteria, such as saying depictions of sex require a standard warning tag specific to that type of content. Decisions may be debated, and mistakes made, but that's what a wiki always has. Also, I disagree with fears that warnings are related to censorship. A great example of hypocracy here, is {{spoiler}} warnings. Take The Village (film) and Million Dollar Baby as example. The most noteworthy parts of those films can only be discussed after we give a spoiler. Yet, we give the spoiler warning as a couresy to our readers, and the film makers. We wouldn't want somebody to miss out on enjoying a good movie, even if it means the intro of the article fails to explain what the film is truly about (even though a person reading about a movie in an encylclopedia, aught to expect spoilers, as we're not a movie guide). But, in other articles, we have an explicit/offensive image, with no advance warning, with no concern of harm/offense. --Rob 20:43, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

It being a spoiler is simple fact. It being offensive is opinion. --Golbez 22:55, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The main reason that we don't have content warnings is that what constitutes obscenity, unlike what constitutes a "spoiler", varies widely from place to place. This is why the courts have consistently ruled that a crime involving obscenity must be tried according to the moral standards of the place where the crime occurred, not the most ultra-conservative little town in the country or the most lavicious casino strip. Deco 23:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

It comes back to the Principle of Least Astonishment. Articles which contain depictions of sex – to take your example – need not be flagged with an additional warning because the accompanying images are appropriate and reasonable within a given article's context. If a reader looks up list of sex positions or fuck, then that reader should be unsurprised to find depictions of sex acts or profanity (respectively).

There's also the technical issue, of course; it just won't work. If we start treating all our readers as incompetent children, then every time there's a failure of the system we'll bear the brunt of the resulting anger and resentment. If people start relying on some sort of paternalistic tagging system, how do we ensure that all articles bear the appropriate tags? Frankly it's an impossible task, unless we're willing to contemplate major changes to how editing happens on Misplaced Pages (we aren't). TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:19, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:No disclaimer templates. --cesarb 03:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Archive splitting and size limit

Recently I visited Misplaced Pages:Reference desk archive/Science/February 2006, and found that the part I wanted to read had been cut off. Using the edit history and a diff, I found that the most recent edit was responsible for the truncation, so I went to revert it. I received an error message: "ERROR: The text you have submitted is 1,237 kilobytes long, which is longer than the maximum of 1024 kilobytes. It cannot be saved." Then when I went back to read the intact version, my browser crashed!

This led me to the decision:

1. to split the archive page into four. (On a second attempt to load the unsplit page, minus a bunch of other browser tabs, there was no crash.)
2. that we need to set a limit on archive page sizes. 1 MB appears to be the upper limit for whole-article edits; but I think to accomodate users with less RAM (I have 1 GB), the limit should really be no higher than 500 KB, and possibly as low as 200. If the archive page produced by the usual schedule — or a pre-existing page — is above the limit, the archiver or a bot must split it. Unless Misplaced Pages wants a reputation as a site that makes everyone's browser crash, I think a measure like this is the only possibility. Seahen 06:25, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages helping the hackers

It is my firm belief that Misplaced Pages is abusing the privacy of users around the globe. It uses IP address tracking, and subsequently puts your privte IP onto itself, making your IP avalible to anyone who cares to look. Who would look? Hackers. It is a free ride for them. All they need to do is look at that page, and its a open invatation into your computer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spazit (talk • contribs)

If your computer is so vulnerable that knowledge of its IP address is all it takes for it to get cracked, then I am sorry to say that it is going to get cracked soon regardless of whether you edit anonymously on Misplaced Pages. I also do not see your proposal on how to handle this supposed problem, which makes me think you are probably trolling. Haakon 14:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. People who have static IP addresses should at least have a firewall to block incoming connections. _SeahenNeonMerlin 17:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Your IP address is visible to anyone who has SSH access to any server running any website you visit. It is by definition (in the TCP/IP protocol), not private. So, as Haakon says, if that's all it takes for someone to hack your computer, then you have serious security issues totally unrelated to Misplaced Pages. Raul654 18:09, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I would also like to add that your IP address is only recorded if you edit while not logged in. No one is obligated to reveal there IP address in this way. You can avoid revealing your IP address in two ways. 1. Registering an account or 2. Not editing in the first place. Ydam 22:23, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Then vote to prohibit anonymous editing on Misplaced Pages! Revealing your IP address to a website will not compromise your computer security, althoguh it may compromise your privacy (unless you're using a shared IP, like me). --J.L.W.S. The Special One 02:49, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps this user edited anonymously and found out that his or her IP address is in the history of articles that he or she edited. Others have said that there is not a security risk, but if it really bothers you, there are some things you can do. You can ask your ISP to assign you a new address, if they have more than one available for users. You might be able to get a dynamic or shared IP if you have a static or unshared one currently, too. A drastic step that you could take is to change your ISP, but services are usually not equivalent (same speed, price and reliability) if you have broadband. If you have dialup, you have a lot more choices. -- Kjkolb 10:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Create a User id. Then your IP address will only be visible to a select few. User:Zoe| 03:53, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Turning years articles into prose

Did anyone think about turning years articles (like 2005) from lists and timeline to prose. These articles could be well-written summaries about what happened during the year in all fields. It will be divided by topic (politics, science, sports...) rather than months. It would be an enthusiatic community work, and relativly simple with very easy-to-find sources and pictures. And imagine that we will conduct a vote about what events should be included in the article, and write the article as the second step. What do you think? CG 19:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

It's been done in some languages - most prominently German, but I believe some others. Compare 1974 and de:1974. Might be interesting to try mimicking the German one in a subpage somewhere and see what it looks like. Shimgray | talk | 20:25, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the German article is close to what's on my mind (Thank you for the link), but I also have some comments. The Politics section should not be divided by country but only by continent because we will have to include every country to preserve NPOV. Plus, no images should be inserted in the lead because we will have long debates about which image is the most representative. Finally we can keep the timeline but by moving it to Timeline of ####. CG 11:35, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I strongly support this proposal. Much, much better - far more useful to the end reader than a laundry list organized by date. KillerChihuahua 11:41, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

You might also like to check out the Britannica 'Book of the Year' editions which I think use a similar approach (although they also expend much effort publishing revised versions of articles in their main encyclopedia). I imagine there might be a problem in limiting how deep you go into the events of each subject, but that's not a reason not to try it. -- Solipsist 11:57, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

You're right, I've though about this problem earlier. Everyone will want to include event that are important to him, to his town or to his country. Therefore, as a first step, we should make discussions and votes about which events should be described in the article. CG 12:35, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

We do already have some articles like this, such as 1922 in Germany. - SimonP 12:54, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

But my proposal is to generalise it and replace timelines by prose into all years articles (maybe also decades and centuries) and finally modify the template given by Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Years. CG 16:46, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I oppose. The German approach doesn't give nearly the same amount of information as ours does. User:Zoe| 03:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment : I think that if the German doesn't give as much info as ours does is because they have less people adding to them and to keep the amount of information that we have we have to create a hierarchy of articles like 2005 ... Births in 2005, Deaths in 2005, Events of 2005 ... Births in January 2005 ... And do this until we give out all the information that we already have in several prose articles in order not to break the flow of reading that happens when reading lists. Support Lincher 18:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how you worked that out. The German article is impressive. But while it would be good to add prose to these articles, most of the lists should be kept too. Honbicot 21:02, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Multi Page Delete

Moved to Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy).

Naming Convention Proposal: Rockets associated with space

Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (rockets):

The purpouse of this naming convention is to standardise naming for ICBMs and space launch vehicles. It also covers other forms of ballistic misslies, such as IRBMs, and sounding rockets.

So far I have found 13 different ways of naming them - obviously this is a mess, so they need to be standardised. I have reccomended that the best naming convention would be to use the name, followed by the term rocket in parenthesis. This could be used in conjunction with a name only format where appropriote, for example a page could be located at Titan III, but with a redirect at Titan III (rocket) rather than the other way around. --GW_Simulations_{|User Page | Talk | Contribs | E-mail} 20:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Internal PageRank

There are currently two ways of objectively evaluating the notability of a Misplaced Pages article, and both are flawed.

1. One way is to count the number of links to an article from within Misplaced Pages. The flaw in this is that it treats obscure articles, and even user and user talk pages, as being just as important as the Main Page, a portal or a widely-linked-to article such as Game.
2. Another way is to check an article's Google toolbar PageRank. The problems with this are that it would tend to favour old articles (to the point that many new ones such as Pac-Man (Atari 2600) have PR0), those about information technology (given to the influence of Slashdot and Digg). Also, it has very low precision: a scale of 0 to 10 and rounded to the nearest integer. Finally, the toolbar PageRank is only updated once every three months, which is ages in Misplaced Pages time.

I propose an alternative: that we create a script that implements PageRank, but applies it only within the English Misplaced Pages, excluding user and user talk namespaces, and updates daily? MediaWiki could report an article's internal PageRank above the article. Would this be possible within Google's patents, the way is? Even if not, I suspect they'd give permission just because Google and Misplaced Pages have such a good relationship. _SeahenNeonMerlin 21:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Barnstars and awards in need of an overhaul

While we have now a rather good method of discussing new awards, in the past quite a few barnstars and awards were added in good faith, but now create a mess, making it hard to distinguish between some awards and barnstars that cover overlapping areas (or don't cover what their name suggests - want to guess what Barnstar of Life is awarded for?). Comments would be appreciated regarding a major overhaul proposal, which would redefine some barnstars and remove a few that are rather pointless.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:00, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Organization Folders in Favorites List

when the favorites list has many things, it looks unorganized and confusing. it can be setup to make your own folders, and put each favorite in whichever one you desire. for example, you can make a folder, and label it "Flora/Fauna". That folder will be specifically for animals and plants. Get it? its much more convenient and organized. User : PitchBlack

User designation name change

I propose that the name "user" of a Wikimedia foundation participant be changed to "citizen" so as to better characterize user roles, relationships and responsibilities to each other as well as to the Misplaced Pages Foundation administrative hierarchy. ...IMHO (Talk) 10:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Watchlist all articles in a given category

Sorry if this has been proposed before, but wouldn't it be very useful to include a function allowing Wikipedians to watchlist articles in a category they'd like?

Currently the 'watch' button on category pages only adds the category page itself to the user's watchlist and doesn't reflect changes to the pages in the category. This is OK, it is of use to many people, and I'm not advocating this function's substitution. I'd like to have both a 'watch page' and 'watch all pages in the category' (hope someone would come up with a shorter name :)) button on category pages.

I'm very interested in topics related to my native country, Bulgaria, and have often regretted not being able to effectively observe the developments (new articles, major changes to existing articles, article moves, etc.) in Category:Bulgaria, so the idea of such a function crossed my mind.

Now, of course, some more in-depth thinking reveals several problems: if you watchlist all articles in a category, you'd have to automatically watchlist all articles that are being added to it afterwards (there's little sense in the contrary). Also, implementing the removal of pages from the watchlist (when they've been added because they fall in a given category) may be an issue that needs further discussion. And besides, watchlisting very big categories may be troublesome both to the user and the software (not sure about that). Another issue are subcategories — the user should be asked whether to add them to his/her watchlist together with the main category or watch only the main category.

I'd like to hear what you think about it before going to Bugzilla, so we could discuss any suggestions and ideas, and see if it's a good proposal overall. I know the final result would look a bit complex and hard to understand to new users, but I (and I'm sure many other Wikipedians) would find such a function very handy. Todor→Bozhinov 15:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, what you want is Related changes, which you can find in the Toolbox (left column under the Search box) on most pages. For example: Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Bulgaria. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 15:54, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Recent changes is a useful function, but it only shows changes in the main category and not in the subcategories. And it lacks many of the other advantages watchlisting has. Todor→Bozhinov 16:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Infobox for file comparison software

An infobox for file comparison software is needed, and I created one here. It should go on the bottom of each file comparison software article, and several other pages. One anonymous editor is against the idea, I think mainly because one of my own (free, web-based) tools is listed in the infobox. Another editor is supporting him for now because the guidelines say that generally others should decide whether to add a link rather than the person whose website it is. This discussion is taking place mainly here.

Could I get some support for using that infobox? This is especially hard for me because my tool is included and the articles that the infobox belongs in are probably watched mainly by those partial to the tool covered by the article. -Barry- 20:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Israeli apartheid and related "apartheid" articles

At Misplaced Pages:Central_discussions/Apartheid a series of competing proposals have been made on how to deal with various articles on modern uses of the word "apartheid", namely Israeli apartheid, gender apartheid, sexual apartheid, Crime of apartheid and global apartheid and also the articles Apartheid outside of South Africa and Apartheid (disambiguation). The proposals vary from merging various articles (particularly Israeli apartheid) to leaving the articles in their current state. The debate and voting has been dominated by various interests - it would thus be best for the community if a broader cross section of people including disinterested and neutral parties, reviewed the proposals and had their say. Homey 23:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

New article tag

I propose we have a default tag for new articles. I believe this will help wikipedia's credibility and protect from potential hoaxes. The default tag would last for a certain period of time unless an admin removes it or is replaced by an afd or speedy tag. It could say something to the effect of: "This is a new article and may not have been reviewed for following wikipedia guidelines." I know most questionable articles get deleted but some stick around before anyone notices. I am a relatively new wikipedian and do not know the technical issues involved with this but I think this seems to be a good idea. MrMurph101 23:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Should Misplaced Pages use spoiler warnings

Whether or not Misplaced Pages articles should have spoiler warnings has come under debate again, despite the issue being recently visited via TfD Misplaced Pages:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 May 4#Template:Spoiler. Feel free to share your thoughts at Misplaced Pages talk:Spoiler warning. -- Ned Scott 00:58, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Note, the discussion is not related to deleting the template, but seeks to build a consensus on the usage of the templates and the deifinition of what constitutes a spoiler. Steve block Talk 22:52, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Mark articles as COMPLETE/STABLE

There are different classes of users, who use Misplaced Pages differently. The simplest division will create two groups: producers who advance the wiki by adding content and consumers who reference the created content. The problem is that as the wiki grows, it becomes more useful, more trusted and more likely to be used as a consumer's primary reference. As a result, it becomes far more profitable for malicious producers to play pranks, libel or otherwise vandalize the wiki. The will become the biggest challenge facing the wikipedia in its destined path to become a real life Hitchhiker's Guide.

The way to solve this problem is to apply Computer Science's advances in source/content revision control to the human knowledge contained in this wiki. The typical person wants to use software that has been tested and debugged so it runs without crashing on the person's system. Those interested in the bleeding edge version with all the new features (and bugs) will download the beta version or CURRENT build.

The same is true with knowledge. Once an entry has been debated and hashed out by the authoritative producers/authors for awhile, label it as STABLE/COMPLETE/CONSENSUS/FINISHED. When a consumer seeks out a topic, they are given the STABLE version by default. If a producer arrives with a new perspective or new information and breaks the consensus, it can then be flagged as needing to re-reach consensus. The authoritative parties can then hash out their differences until a new consensus is reached and the STABLE version is moved to the new consensus of opinion. If the consumer is interested, they can request the CURRENT version being debated, but all throughout this expert debate, the default version given to consumers will be the most recent consensus reached about the opinion. So an external link on a blog to a congressman will never suddenly become a porn advertisement or a libellous account of his/her person. This will eradicate most vandalism, and go great lengths to answering the concerns about the trustworthiness of the Wiki starting to brew. But at the same time, it will stay true to the (worthwhile) goal of the Misplaced Pages to allow anyone to advance the state of the wiki by adding their own content.

When the reputability of the wiki is challenged, the response can be, "We give the best of both worlds. By default we give users a version fo the story that experts in the field have debated and come to a conclusion based on the best information at the time. But knowledge is an ever evolving phenomenon, and todays good ideas can become bad quickly. So we still leave the topic open for debate, allowing that person not only to read the consensus, but view the most current and provocative thinking on the subject." Erick Fejta July 8th, 2006

Please see Misplaced Pages:Stable versions and the related Misplaced Pages:Static version and various other entries in Category:Misplaced Pages editorial validation. One major hurdle is that pretty much any implementation of this requires software changes, but there is not a general agreement for precisely how this should work, so the software changes don't get made. Another issue is that the number of articles that might be considered stable/complete/consensus/finished is extremely small (out of about 1.2 million articles in the English Misplaced Pages, only about 1,000 are featured articles and another 1,200 are tagged as good articles). I think what is needed is a software change supporting a separation between the "working" version of articles and the "generally viewed" version and a practical, scaleable procedure for updating the "generally viewed" version to the current "working" version. I also think that without the direct support of Jimbo Wales, this will never happen. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, the best metric of the quality of an article is the number of people who currently have it on their watchlist. If an article has 50 people watching it, it almost certainly would qualify as a "good article", even if it is not currently labeled as such. Unfortunately, that information isn't visible today, but hopefully a future version of MediaWiki could display that number. --Arcadian 15:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

History Tab usability

The History tab is very daunting for new users; it's very busy and just about everything can be clicked on, so it's confusing as to what one should do. At a minimum, there should be a link to Help:Page history in some obvious place near the top.

Are there any other ways it could be made more usable or intuitive? Could there be a "simple" and "advanced" version of the history tab (chosen in My Preferences) so that new users would see only the most essential information (hiding the "talk|contribs" links for each user, for example)? Could it be redesigned into more of a table format so the columns could be labeled? I know a lot of this would involve a MediaWiki software change, but I thought I'd get some feedback here first.— Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 04:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Could an admin please at least add a link to Help:Page history? It would help a lot of people and would hardly be any trouble at all. If you want to go a little further, I would suggest changing the current History page text from:

... to ...

Thank you! — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 22:11, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I like this idea. I've long been concerned that Misplaced Pages's processses are too opaque to new editors and outside observers.--Pharos 22:33, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't. Not every newbie is a moron or a computer illiterate. Write wordy tutorials for people who want them, but don't cut interface functionality because you assume people are incompetent. Disclaimer, I do in general hate Misplaced Pages's tendency to talk down to readers, link "difficult" words, go off on illustrative "dumbing down" tangents, etc., we are an encyclopedia, not high-school-level education software (unlike, arguably, simple:). dab (ᛏ) 22:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages processes are a lot less "obvious" than you, as a well-experienced user, may think. Every time major news organizations have written feature articles on Misplaced Pages, they have demonstrated some fundamental misunderstanding of the system.--Pharos 23:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I think more explanations is enough. The history interface is useful and shouldn't be dumbed down but it isn't obvious. Not saying that it is hard to understand just that it isnn't obvious which is fine. The a bit longer explanantion should be enough but it is hard for me as a wikipedian to judge. Jeltz talk 23:45, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and would give strong support to this proposal. When I first looked at the History tab, I was blown away by it. It was only by experimenting for a while that I managed to bumble through it. I think A short explaination would be perfect and would help a lot. Perhaps it'd also be good to include a short sentence on how to revert pages, too. I remember reading about reverting all over Misplaced Pages but having to hunt through several layers of help pages before I arrived at an explaination of how to revert something.Lor 09:38, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

• It would also be nice to have the instructions visually separated from the "(Latest | Earliest) View (previous 50) (next 50) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)" navigation by putting a border around the instructions. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 03:29, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

• So is there a concensus on this? Who can make it happen? — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 16:08, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Changes made to the protected message at MediaWiki:Histlegend -- it looks a bit bulky, but definitely more helpful than what was there previously. We'll see how others like it. — Catherine\ 17:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Any option on how to remove that in one's preferences? It's just too big. Wouldn't just a link to Help:Page history be sufficient? Garion96 (talk) 17:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't like it myself, but I can see that it might be informative for new users. But if it stays, it should be possible to turn it off in ones monobook or somewhere. Shanes 18:00, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

What can I say but UGH!. This huge box simply wastes a full third of the space on the history screen. What's more important: the history or the instructions? It should be a small link, or at least a single line (as it was before). I'm not opposed to the idea, just to the amount of space it wastes. For now, I'm reverting to the previous revision, but keeping the link to the help page (which is a good idea). --cesarb 18:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! Btw, I agree with keeping the link. Garion96 (talk) 18:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Good compromise. The Help link is prominent, but the header doesn't eat up all my screen real estate. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

With due respect to the editors involved in this, I find this change to the page history an extremely unpleasant one. On a 1024x768 screen, it puts this legend directly smackdab near the center of the screen, where the eye naturally goes for whatever they're searching (in this case, history data). The amount of spacing and whitespace makes it an unusually large box. It makes extremely prominent functionality that most Wikipedians know after a short period of time. At the very, very least, please put a CSS class around it so that people can display:none it in their monobook.css file. — Mike (talk • contribs) 18:17, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

How about the following (with a border around it for visibility), since each user only has to learn how to use the History page once. There's no need to see the Legend every time, is there?

— Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 18:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Again: what's more important: the history or the instructions? Drawing attention away from the history and towards the instructions is plain wrong in this case. Less visibility is better. --cesarb 18:41, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. The instructions are the first thing that a new user should see, since the page by itself is far from intuitive. By the time a user becomes comfortable using the page history, the instruction link (even if it is a visual standout because of a border) will no longer be prominent because our brains are wired to ignore things that aren't needed and don't change. A highly visible link to the instructions will become less visible to each user as time passes.

After seeing the "bulky" instructions put to use temporarily, I agree that they were too much, and I now prefer the very succinct "For help using this page ..." notice. This reduces use of screen real estate without cutting usability. I also agree with Mike that it should have CSS class so people can display:none it if they wish. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 19:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The instructions should definitely be visible, after all, why even bother with them if they aren't? I like the new, more succinct notice though. For myself at least, the current: "Legend: (cur) = difference with current version, (last) = difference with preceding version, m = minor edit." is/was extremely confusing. We need a more visible link to the help at least. --Lor 21:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

shoving instructions into people's faces is patronizing. Don't assume every newbie is a moron. Place an unobtrusive "help" link for people who need it, but for the love of god don't clutter a perfectly user-friendly layout with infoboxes and talking office clips! dab (ᛏ) 00:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Users Online

In forums there is a thing that lists how many users are online at any given moment.

I think this would be a good thing for the Misplaced Pages main page. Usually there is seperate entries for Registered Users, and guests.

There is also usually an option for people to not be counted, on their own user pages etc...

What do you people think?

Cheers.Raven.x16 04:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to see that per-article. I'm especially curious about how large an audience mediation and arbitration pages get (especially mine). Even if it's not a live update, like per-day only, that would be interesting. -Barry- 07:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

This would be interesting. Especially if it's just 'X number of people are currently viewing this article/have viewed this article today.' It might even help with determining the importance of esoteric and obscure articles that could be mistaken as vanity (I forget the official wikipedia policy on it.) I think I would be against any 'lists of registered users currently viewing/who have viewed this article today'. simply because I can imagine people wouldn't like it known what they're reading on wikipedia all the time.Lor 09:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Sysops and what we call them

So I was thinking, the word "admin" seem to bear a very high-and-mighty connotation to it, which might be attributing to the perceived power that admins have in the Misplaced Pages community.

We could rename them janitors! Not only does the title suit them better, but it also makes them not a big deal. Plus it's funny. :-) --The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake 07:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

- I guess the term gods is to much for them then? LOL - don't want to give their ego's too much of a boost!Raven.x16 07:12, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm seriously considering this.. it makes perfect sense. Why do we call them admins anyways? They basically just have some extra tools that they're trusted to use properly...

Administrators are Wikipedians who have access to technical features that help with maintenance. Those include protecting and deleting pages, blocking other editors, and undoing these actions as well. Misplaced Pages practice is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active and regular Misplaced Pages contributor for a while, is familiar with and respects Misplaced Pages policy, and is generally a known and trusted member of the community.

This little snippet from WP:ADMIN describes a janitor perfectly.

How do you think I could make this a widespread term? With enough effort, this could become the new name for sysops. I like it, personally. --The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake 07:31, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I think people would jump on board if you could persuade everyone that Misplaced Pages:Administrators should be renamed. But good luck with that. Deco 07:38, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Meh --The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake 07:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I know they have janitorial duties...but don't they also act as kind of security guards/pseudo cyber (spam) cops as well? LoL.Raven.x16 07:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Also they act as mediators, peer couselors, and tour guides, but since they can block me I call them all "Your Excellency", they like that :) --Doc Tropics 08:03, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I also like "The Powers that Be". ;-) While "janitor" is an informal name for admins, I don't think it would go over very well with everyone. On some pages, admins are referred to as "sysops", but I think it might be worse or at least not much better than "administrator". "Custodian" might be better and acceptable. I think it would be difficult to get it changed, though. We've got a bunch of pages referring to admins and some have "administrator" in them. Also, people are used to calling them admins and it would be difficult to get them to change. Also, people might get confused and think that there is a difference between a janitor and an admin if both are used or they see old discussions that say "admin". -- Kjkolb 10:18, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I suppose "moderator" might be another option, but I think it is somewhat misleading because it implies that they keep things from getting out of hand through mediation, whereas they mostly do janitorial work (speedy delete articles that meet the criteria, close AfDs, move pages) and blocking, and those that are blocked are usually just vandals, which does not require much mediation beyond the test templates. Of course, admins try to mediate when appropriate, but they have no special authority or tools to do so. -- Kjkolb 10:33, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

'Moderated forums' are places were 'moderators' review new posts before they appear on the forum. That certainly does not fit Misplaced Pages. -- Donald Albury 11:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

"Custodians", perhaps? Kirill Lokshin 02:57, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Quis custodiet custodiens? User:Zoe| 22:25, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

What's the spirit of the original proposal? Is it to eliminate any intimidating titles used around Misplaced Pages? If it is, then something like Janitors is ideal. I certainly wouldn't mind being a Janitor for Misplaced Pages =), and I'm sure that most if not all Misplaced Pages admins. If on the other hand we're trying to assign them a name that fits their job description perfectly, then perhaps 'Custodian' or even 'Senior Wikipedian' or something to indicate their trusted status.

What's the spirit of the original proposal? Is it to eliminate any intimidating titles used around Misplaced Pages? If it is, then something like Janitors is ideal. I certainly wouldn't mind being a Janitor for Misplaced Pages =), and I'm sure that most if not all Misplaced Pages admins wouldn't mind this. If on the other hand we're trying to assign them a name that fits their job description perfectly, then perhaps 'Custodian' or even 'Senior Wikipedian' or something to indicate their trusted status.Lor 09:20, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

But I'm a 'custodian' of Misplaced Pages. I watch over it, nurture it, undo vandalism, welcome people, etc. But I'm not an admin, as I'm here to write an encyclopedia. I'd be hurt (and in some cases deeply insulted!) by any implication that I'm not as responsible as admins. I think the same would go for 'senior Wikipedian' - I've probably been here longer and made more edits than the pushier folk who can't wait to be admins. JackyR | Talk 11:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Janitors is best precisely because it is the least dignified title. Let them best their esteem on what they do, not on what they expect others to call them. Honbicot 21:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm still a fan of the term "power user", because this connotes that they are "just a user" but they can do more stuff. It doesn't indicate any particular status or responsibility. But if you want admins to have responsibility, then I can see how another word might be preferable. Deco 23:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Well said, JackyR. As an editor, you are a custodian of Misplaced Pages whether you are an admin or not. We all are. The only real difference between an admin and any other editor is the "trust" element which an editor earns over time by making useful edits and demonstrating that they can get along with other editors. Once they've gained that trust they can cash it in by becoming an admin and getting the "trust-required" tools (if they want to). However there are plenty of trustworthy editors who haven't bothered. I've often thought that "administrator" and "sysop" are a very misleading pair of titles. Something more on the mark would be "old hand" or even "trustie". -- Derek Ross | Talk 18:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

One current concern is notifying editors what they are signing up for when they choose to become an admin. Perhaps we should rename the title to be "target". So we have regular editors like me and target editors with blocking powers who draw the enmity of donkey-editors onto themselves. Works for me. WAS 4.250 22:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

That made me laugh. Although, if you are courteous even when others are not, and thoroughly and politely explain your rationale for doing something controversial, I think you will find you will only occasionally be a target.

Until admins have a new name, I suggest that the instances of "sysop" in the Misplaced Pages namespace (guidelines, policies and such) be changed to "admin" or "administrator" to avoid confusion. -- Kjkolb 23:08, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for articles lacking verifiability

I was thinking about this last night (well, I was bored). I didn't know whether to put it on WP:V or WP:DEL, so I went down the middle route.

There are a heck of a lot of articles on Misplaced Pages that have absolutely no source information, and they should - it even says at the bottom of the edit box to 'use reliable sources for encyclopedia contend'. And thousands of new pages don't bother. So I thought of a way to resolve this. If an article has no sources (thus currently failing WP:V), and doesn't qualify speedy deletion, or it's been no consensused at AFD), or it's been deprodded, it could be tagged, by a tag that reads along the line of:

This article lacks references, reliable sources or verification, and may be original research. It is very important for articles on Misplaced Pages to have sources, as all articles must be verifiable. This tag was placed on 14:58, Friday, December 27, 2024 (UTC). If references or sources are not provided within 30 days, it will be deleted. Do not remove this tag unless you are adding a reliable source or reference for information in the article.

This is way more generous then AFD, or PROD, and gives a heck of a long time to sort something out. It also means all that garbage with no references can be deleted (as an incredible number of articles that fail WP:V still seem to get through all the current deletion processes. A bot (if someone is clever with a bot) could then flag the pages that have reached 30 days (or 14 days, or 2 months, or whatever) for speedy deletion, and then an admin would still have the final say on whether the article is kept or goes.

If someone has already suggested something like this, apologies. Any thoughts? Proto///type 13:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

• Correct me if I misinterpret what you said, but I think you are referring to {{unreferenced}}, {{unverified}} and {{original research}}.

Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 13:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, rather than delete a whoooole lot of content, it would be better to help people avoid this situation in the first place. We should, similar to WP:AFC, require a source when people submit an article. There should be a seperate field where they enter the URL or citation, and it's automatically added to a references section in the article (this is bypassed if the article uses ref tags, and so on).

Other than the obvious vandals and spammers, most new articles are created in good faith... this would let us quickly seperate the good faith from the bad. If someone can't find a source for an article, or can only find an ultra-obscure blog or something, it's probably a hoax or vanity or something and will be much easier to spot. Requiring a source at article creation means that the person who knows/cares about the subject will be able to address it, rather than just dropping it at our doorstep and leaving us with a potential mess to clean up, a la Seigenthaler et al.

But this will probably never, ever happen... the opposition to a sane article creation process is amazing. End rant. --W.marsh 14:03, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Interesting idea, and probably doable, but there's the question of how easily it could be done, and what priority the programmers would give it. And, of course, there are complications. The system would have to detect if the new article was a redirect or a disambiguation page, which wouldn't have references. There would also still be a lot of work checking for and cleaning up spurious and malformed references entered by editors to bypass the requirement. -- Donald Albury 15:08, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Good points, but invalid citation (i.e. they just link to random Google results or goatse or whatever) would be a strong sign that the article was a hoax/unverifiable, though some human judgement would be needed (similiar to how it is now, we'd just have a real head start on it by being able to quickly identify articles with bogus sources). Ultimately we have 1m+ articles right now, some with sources, some without... checking all of them is nigh impossible. If all had at least 1 source, it would be a much more realistic chance of finding hoaxes. --W.marsh 21:45, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to keep articles – even ones which don't explicitly cite their sources – as long as those articles are still 'better than nothing'. I support adding tags (like {{unreferenced}}) where appropriate to clearly indicate to the reader articles that don't have sources and which should be taken with a larger-than-usual grain of salt. Articles that are clearly hoaxes, essays, or screeds can and should still be deleted as 'worse than nothing' through our usual processes. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:47, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that this is such a great idea because it would mean removing like 70% of the whole encyclopedia (frustrating a lot of people). Secondly, it is better to have a poorly sourced or unsourced article than no article at all ... this would also be frustrating to find only red links on articles that were formerly well subpaged. Thirdly, as time will go, there will be less and less subjects to work on (I think we can foresee this in about 2 years) and then people will bring the whole project to a better level of quality overall. Thus, removing all these unsourced article would be frustrating, time-consuming and useless for such a project, we should then all take the time to add a book citation per day (maybe this could become a project or something). Lincher 05:30, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Very strong oppose This is a complete overreaction. Good material should not be deleted for being unsourced, and we should assume good faith on the part of contributors. There are plenty of more moderate mechanisms in place already, but like any major aspect of Misplaced Pages referencing is a never to be completed task. Chicheley 13:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Please note that WP:Verifiability#Burden of evidence supports the removal or hiding of ANY unreferenced edit, and an article with no references could easily become an empty article, which can be speedy deleted. Also, there is no way to determine whether material added is "good", unless the sources can be checked. This is policy, and it isn't going to change, so rather than ranting about "good material shouldn't be deleted", work on providing reliable published sources. -- Donald Albury 14:45, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

When I'm doing RC patrol, I'll usually put a {{verify}} or {{prod}} on any new article with no citations that I can't verify with less than a minute of work in Google. If I can find one reasonable citation, I'll add a link. See, for example, Caribbean reef shark, which appeared as a one-line article and just needed a link to get it started. On the other hand, Afanti was a one-line article with no cites that was basically wrong, so I gave it a {{prod}}. --John Nagle 01:45, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Oddly enough I just posted similar ideas at Misplaced Pages talk:Deletion policy#Suggestions for deletion criteria. I completely agree that referencing needs to be much more strongly encouraged. Putting a delete tag on uncited articles would probably rarely result in actual deletion but would instead mean articles got citations quickly - a good thing.

It's very difficult to find sources for what someone else wrote - sometimes it's pretty hard finding sources for what you yourself have written, if you come back to it weeks later. So I think references should be mandatory on new articles, and they should be deleted after 7 days if refs are not provided. Worldtraveller 09:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Integration

WP:ʃ

For the last month, myself and 1-2 other individuals have been jumpstarting a massive cleanup project as an attempt to bring order to Misplaced Pages. I think I have the methodology sorted out: now we need participants. There are more details on the project page. Thank you. Cwolfsheep 12:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Dealing with vandals

I see that a lot of the warnings to vandals have been standardised ("Thank you for experimenting..."). I think that including the following sentence in the standard response can further reduce the frequency of vandalism:

"If you feel the need to be funny, try editing on Uncyclopedia. Uncyclopedia is a parody of Misplaced Pages where anyone can add jokes or funny pictures to articles."

- sYndicate 12:50, 09 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd support this in the first warning (apart from blatant vandal). Why don't you go over to the template talk page and suggest it? --Oldak Quill 19:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't find any vandal templates? -  sYndicate   23:00, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Vandalism — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 16:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Found it, thanks Jonathan. -  sYndicate   03:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Marking redirects

Hello all;

I don't know if this is quite the proper place, but a feature I think would be of great use for tracking pages and maintaining one's watchlist would be to have any redirect on one's Special:Watchlist/edit page marked as such. I, for one, frequently go back and check for certain redirects and remove others. It is tedious and time-consuming to visit the majority of those pages. Charles 01:41, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Redirects are already marked there with a watchlistredir class. If you want them to look different, add something like .watchlistredir { font-style: italic } on your user CSS (this is the one I use, and it makes them appear in italic; you can try other styles if it's not different enough). --cesarb 14:58, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know where to go to do that or how to do that. Could you possibly point me where to go or what to do? Charles 23:48, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

If you use Monobook (the default skin), it's at Special:Mypage/monobook.css. Invitatious (talk) 02:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks guys, it's very much appreciated :-) Charles 02:42, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

support for google video

I thought it would be neat to include special banners linking articles to google videos. This would allow users to supplement their research with interviews, animations, etc, using already moderated source material. It seems like a logical step to me, so I'm sure someone's already working on it. Just wondering.--Asherp 20:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

what are google videos, and who "moderates" them? User:Zoe| 03:16, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Google Video (http://video.google.com/) is a service similar to YouTube. I think it is unmoderated. To the original poster, Google Video is a commercial service with copyrighted videos and so is not appropriate for a free-content site like ours to systematically link to. The best situation would be to find free-content videos of interviews, upload them to Commons and link them (this already happens). I'm just speaking from the position of Misplaced Pages proper. There is no reason why you couldn't design some kind of external extension or service which would display relevant Google Videos (and Google Web search results) alongside a Misplaced Pages article. A similar project exists which links Misplaced Pages articles to locations on Google Maps (http://www.placeopedia.com/) . It is, of course, external. If you feel like throwing around a few ideas with me (I can help you from the Misplaced Pages POV), feel free to drop me a message.--Oldak Quill 19:52, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Case-sensitive login notice

Is it possible to change the login failure message to include a notice that the username and password are case-sensitive? It is not a problem for me, but failed log-in attempts may discourage people from logging in to edit. (I am assuming that account-editing is preferred over "anonymous"-editing, although this may not be the case.) I am accustomed to systems where the username is not case-sensitive, and such "case-insensitive" login systems seem rather widespread, so I expect that this might be a common problem. I apologize if this has already been discussed elsewhere.--GregRM 23:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I've updated the "no such user" error message. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:21, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

That was fast. Thanks for the quick reply and action.--GregRM 23:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Improving coverage of places in France

I am relatively new, so don't have the technical expertise to sort this. But the coverage of towns and villages in France is very patchy. In the French wikipedia most places that don't have an extended article have a standard stub page with headings and links, as well as a table (infobox?) with statistical information - postcode, number of inhabitants, area and population density, altitude etc. These must have been generated automatically from the French national statistical service database. Is there a way to migrate this information into the English wikipedia, without of course writing over entries that are more complete in the English version? --Itsmejudith 10:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Since Misplaced Pages should not reference itself as a source (see Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources), if this is done it would be better to redo it using the original statistical database than the French Misplaced Pages articles. There are a number of folks who write bots that might be able to accomplish this. Bot requests can be made at Misplaced Pages:Bot requests. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:09, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Please don't do this. The bot-created American articles are awful. I would rather wait for a real person to start an article, even if it is only a sentence to begin with. Honbicot 21:07, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Senior editors

Another proposal for senior editors... at least it has nice pictures. The reasoning and details are in the essay... It's just a userpage essay, comments welcome. It's here. Herostratus 19:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I, and many others, oppose the thrusting of hierarchy upon the userbase apart from a few functional rôles such as admin and bureaucrat which are necessary to the fighting of vandalism and whatnot. I've been a member here for over two years, an admin for over a year and a half, I have done work on many different parts of Misplaced Pages (from stub making to article featuring to policy and WikiProject proposal and creation). I would not accept being called a "senior editor" - I am no more senior than any other editor. An anon with one edit should have as many rights as I when it comes to POV/content dispute (sadly, this isn't the case). The length of my term here and the breadth of my involvement does not, and should never, give me more rights (apart from the aforementioned functional rôles) when it comes to editing. I cannot speak strongly enough against this proposal. (By the way, the crux of the proposal (acknowledgement of hard work and giving newer users a list of people to talk to when problems arise) is already provided by barnstars and adminship, respectively.) --Oldak Quill 19:37, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Something like this would help with vandalism fighting and other things, but it would need only be a function of how long the user has been an editor, with no vandalism, or somesuch. At the moment, I can find vandalistic registered users or newbies who need help or create articles that need to be cleaned up, based on whether their usernames are redlinks, that is, they have no created a userpage. This works a little, but newbies are quite able to and do create user-pages; vandals have the same ability and some make user-pages specifically to thwart this identification. —Centrx→talk • 20:14, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Just because an editor's been around for ages doesn't make them immediately trustworthy, either. There's plenty of absolutely dire editors (I'm not even talking about POV-pushers or personal attack makers, of which there are plenty, I mean people still on the level of racking up copyvios, inserting completely bizarre, unsourced, own research/conspiracy theories/rants into articles...) with thousands of edits. They're only just above the vandals, but so long as they don't get personal and move on to new battlegrounds every so often, they don't tend to get banned. After that, there are an army of experienced POV-pushers, conspiracy crufters, edit-warriors and goodness knows what else. I believe quite firmly that Herostratus' belief that edit count plus two years experience indicates all is well may be far too generous. Unfortunately, identifying even the most obvious exceptions is likely to become "political" in some sense, and would involve to some extent the exercise of my own personal point of view. Several years back Jimbo came up with the idea of a "trusted editor" system, in which editors could declare which editors they trusted (the original idea was to have a ranking of how trustworthy editors were so that the senior editors could be identified, but it was difficult to decide on a "trust metric" and the system was potentially gameable - if lots of POV-pushers trusted each other, then they'd appear as the most trustworthy editors - so it shifted towards a more distributed "trust network"), but the system relied on people filling in and updating a rather complicated centralized table. Over at de:, they picked the idea up about 4 months later and ran with it, using a simpler technical solution for recording trust (see de:Misplaced Pages:Vertrauensnetz, and for an example of the system in action, de:Benutzer:Elian/Vertrauen). The English Misplaced Pages's version died through lack of interest, but an old copy is archived here. I made an effort to revive it using the German technical solution, but interest has been a little low and feedback generally negative (see WP:TRUST) precisely because a "trusted editor" system is political to a degree and looks a little like a popularity contest. So does WP:RFA, but still... The advantage of doing it this way is that if you see an editor who is trusted by somebody you trust as an expert on that subject working their way through your watchlist, you can make a fairly sensible decision not to make checking after them your priority. On the other hand, somebody trusted only by 50 sockpuppets, or a whole bunch of people you know to be nationalistic or pseudoscientific POV pushers, would ring alarm bells. I used to judge people to a significant extent by their edit counts, and give experienced Wikipedians more leeway, but I've always found the "diffs" column of their contribs page more useful than the number of them. Some, even with high edit counts, are just shocking. And the user page red/blue is not much of a guide either: linkspammers, for instance, sometimes do a null edit on their user page as one of their first acts after getting an account. 10,000 edits is a sign somebody isn't a blatant vandal or spammer, but it's no guarantee that they deserve to be seen as "senior", yet identifying them as undeserving is likely to involve at least a little bit of politics even in obvious cases. One advantage of the "trust" system, is that excellent contributors who focus on adding a small number or substantial and high quality edits can be recognized, as with those more active on another language Misplaced Pages but well-regarded for their work there, while there is no need to explicitly say "I distrust so-and-so" to more experienced editors, which is what would happen if there was a RfA type process for "Senior Editor" (precisely why Herostratus intelligently avoided including one, but his proposal leaves no means for doing so implicitly either). TheGrappler 14:50, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

This strikes me as a sublimely, almost comically bad idea. It does indeed feel like a system that might be devised to measure moral authority in an encyclopedic effort—if that effort was being run by the honourable users Gilbert and Sullivan. So, what, someone who's hit the 'edit' button ten thousand times over the course of two years gets a shiny sticker on their userpage, and we're to hope that other users will give all their opinions extra weight as a result? I have a counter-proposal, one that I believe is vastly superior in all regards: Any user who wants to call themselves a senior editor is free to do so at any time. They can, furthermore, decide at whim what rank they wish to assign themselves, and may even invent new ranks if the thought of ranking below or alongside one of their compatriots is displeasing to them. In the spirit of reciprocity, however, any user who assigns themselves a rank must likewise respect the rank of all other ranked users, deferring to those above them, managing those below them, and always, always using full titles in all communications. In this fashion, those who care about ranks and honours will spend all their time on meaningless politeness, while those of us who are actually interested in writing an encyclopedia will be free to do so uninterrupted. --Aquillion 16:09, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I think Herostratus' point is that it's not all about ranks and honors. For certain purposes it's handy to see whether you are dealing with an editor you can just leave to get on with things. Like Centrx said, a user name or user page often aren't much information to be going on. TheGrappler 17:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Revision of Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment page

I have prepared a major reorganization and substantial revision of Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment at User:Centrx/Sandbox/Request for comment. It had not been substantially changed since RfCs were split out into subpages and has become a unnavigable and repetitive hodgepodge. This revision cleanly divides the page into subsections relevant to specific kinds of RfCs—articles, policy, user, and responses—with specific instructions, advice, and reference to policies for each.

What should be trimmed down further? What is missing? the section on requestion comment on articles is the most well-developed, but what might be appropriate for the user section in integrating it well with its subpage? Should the policy section be expanded? How about the section on responding? Also, I would like help with formatting of the templates on the right near the introduction, problems which may be visible on higher resolution screens. —Centrx→talk • 19:44, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Annoying "new messages" boxes

On various User and Talk pages, for example, GeorgeMoney (in the past) and Moeron (now), I have found fake "You have new messages" boxes. My proposal:

1. Put something into the relevant policy, that although it isn't, lists this as an example of what is not allowed.
2. Eradicate the existing ones (bot maybe?)
3. If the problem still persists, have the developers make a change to the software that disables the real new messages boxes (user preference) and showing new messages other ways, such as the background color of the talk page link.

Seems to have come from this: User:Zappa.jake/templates/new_messages Invitatious (talk) 02:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree; the practice of spoofing the "new messages" alert is juvenile and irritating. I have asked a few users to remove them, but apparently their amusement at tricking others outweights my irritation and time wasted. It's rude, to say the least. — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:13, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

One time I was on someone's talkpage and they made a what they called a "joke" and it forced me to laugh for several seconds when I could have been using that time to write the encyclopedia, so I'm proposing a NO JOKES AT ALL policy.

Seriously, come on... this is too much. Let it be. If someone you interact with has one, let them know of your displeasure and let peer pressure work its magic... vote against them if they ever come to RfA if you like... but making this a policy issue is overkill. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I also find the spoofs annoying. Maybe it was funny the first few times, but it long since lost any appeal it had. However, the comment above makes me wonder. Is it possible right now to alter my style sheet so that real message boxes appear to be a non-standard color? Dragons flight 03:22, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you can change the settings for the "usermessage" class to your liking. Unfortunately, most (all?) of the people involved are aware of this, and use the same class in the div tag for the fake bar. Kirill Lokshin 05:28, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Where is the real notice in the page in relation to the other classes and IDs? Invitatious (talk) 15:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Bunchofgrapes, that was unhelpful. Just because I don't find a particular action amusing does not mean I lack a sense of humor. At the hospital at which I work, we must use Internet Explorer, which means I don't have access to a tabbed browser. Furthermore, and I'm not sure why, but loading Misplaced Pages pages (even going back and forth in the history) takes at least 15-20 seconds, sometimes more. To go to someone's page (the most recent time for me was responding to an unblock request due to being autoblocked), seeing the message, and following the link wastes at least 30 seconds to a minute while I sit and watch the screen. It may not seem like a lot but it really is quite irritating. Your analogy is not accurate; laughing out of amusement is enjoyable; staring at my's computer screen waiting for pages to load because a user thought it would be amusing to deceive me is not enjoyable to me. In general, I am opposed to any spoofing of or interfering with the standard Misplaced Pages interface; this includes obscuring the standard layout with absolutely positioned divs, using protection templates on pages that aren't protected, forging notifications, and so on. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I am surprised, truthfully, that this is considered this permissible under the existing rules. Spoofing the Misplaced Pages interface in order to confuse other editors is plainly disruptive behavior; we shouldn't need new pages of rules specifically forbidding it to say that. There's some room for jokes, of course, but if someone objects or indicates that they find it genuinely confusing then it ought to be fixed. --Aquillion 15:51, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

It's certainly childish. Disruptive... maybe. The bottom line is not to go to "new message" pages if you're on a user page, but even that's annoying. Those of us armed with WP:POPUP escape that, of course.TheGrappler 16:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

True, this is annoying, it shouldn't be accepted as WP intends to be a serious project and these childish behaviour add to the non-respect of the encyclopedia. It shouldn't be a stand-alone policy but be added to some existing unaccepted behaviour page. Lincher 17:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

If some people find it disruptive I understand, but let's not call these people childish or disruptive for doing something that they honestly thought was innocent and playful. Only vandals enjoy wasting people's time. If you just tell them that some people find it confusing, I'm sure they'll understand and remove it - if you make a giant fuss about it they'll just go on the defensive. Deco 23:46, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

When I see the new messages indicator, I always eyeball the destination of the link before I click to it. Not sure if your browser selection doesn't display the link distance if your hover your mouse over it, though. --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I always do that now whenever I see one on a user page (with popups). I would still like to get rid of these anyway. Invitatious (talk) 01:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

• I would recommend removing it on sight, dropping them a note, and protecting their page for awhile if they fail to take the hint. Faking the interface is dangerous and disruptive. --Improv 12:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

copyright tag classification

Although Public Domain and SELF seem to be the primary divisions of copyright tag classification it appears that their are many, many more subdivisions which are not readily classified for the user. I propose for this reason that the copyright tags not only be properly classified but that the resulting classification be expressed for the benefit of users in the form of a dichotomous key. ...IMHO (Talk) 17:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Chronology or reverse chronology for lists of works and people

Blog format or scholar format for lists of works and people - here, applied to the case of the list of past conductors of a major orchestra. A proposal with four formats, various points about them, and a discussion is opened at Talk:Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (but the topic goes beyond this one article, and probably beyond orchestra articles).

(Disclosure: ongoing edit war and associated vandalism on the article.)

-- 62.147.38.70 17:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Keeping medical updates

Are there any Wikipedias who wish to spend some time each week making sure that medical articles are up-to-date? Misplaced Pages has been praised for been up to date, and there are certainly some fields (popular and media culture, current affairs and politics, anything to do with computer software) where it certainly is this, leaving other encyclopaedias (even those online) trailing. However, the medical articles are not always up-to-date. The article on whooping cough has not been updated since June 29 2006, in spite of a recent July survey into whooping cough in Oxford, United Kingdom. My proposal is for medically qualified Wikipedians to ensure that medical articles are updated regularly. ACEO 18:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

See WP:CLINMED and WP:MEDGENP for starters. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 15:54, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

CSD reference template series proposal

I propose a set of templates, Category:CSD reference templates, that creates references to criteria for speedy deletion, for use in XFD debates. I think it is useful because of newbies who may be looking for the relevant criteria. Examples of use are on the talk page. If you can improve the summaries (should be very concise) of the criteria, you are of course welcome to edit the proposed template. Also: Is this possible to use in edit summaries? Invitatious (talk) 01:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Special:Allpages in sidebar

Special:Allpages was recently added to the side bar. I think this is not a very helpful page to direct people to (less useful than the search box certainly). As a result, I am inclined to remove it, but don't want to start an edit war, so I'd like to hear other opinions. Dragons flight 14:27, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree.

I thought these pages were protected? Lincher 14:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

They are protected, but Patrick is apparently an admin, and any admin has the technical ability to edit protected pages, though some discussion would have been nice. Dragons flight 14:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I have been bold in adding it, because I think it is quite convenient (even more so since a namespace can be selected). I use it more often than Featured articles and Random article. What do others think?--Patrick 15:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it should be removed, or at least moved down to the toolbox. It's a confusing way to browse Misplaced Pages, especially for new users, and it's a very large page (90k). The type of user that would use it (such as yourself) is experienced enough to know where to find it and how to bookmark it. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 15:49, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I would go for removing it completely. It's basically useless to the casual reader (or even the casual editor!). Kirill Lokshin 16:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. — Catherine\ 16:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I removed it. Seems like a consensus to me. At least I think I removed it. Is there anything special I have to do to get me Sidebar to actually reflect the change? —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 16:33, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

11/03/2004 Spanish Trains Bombing

Warning for English users and Administrators :

There exists in Spain a small group of fanatics who think that the Madrid_Train_Bombing March 11th bombing was done by the current Spanish governement that was at that time the opposition party. They have now landed on English wikipedia and have started to shape the article to fit their madness.

They have many picturesque and bizzarre ways to state this non-sense and some variations involving secret services from France or Basque terrorist organisations (you will get painfully familiar with this crap so it is no needed that I give you details). The only solution is to block them and all their IPs. If you do not do this ASAP you will have all their rambling atrocities written again and again. In Spanish Misplaced Pages we are sick of these guys trolling tactics regarding a so sensitive issue. A more soft solution, could be to give them a special page for their deliriums as had been done with other conspiranoics. It is up to you. My message is that I cannot double my activity and control this nuts in English Misplaced Pages and many colleagues in the Spanish wikipedia are in the same situation. So it is up to you what to do between the next given three posibilities.

1-Allow them to publicize their aberrations spoiling the credibility of Misplaced Pages (currently happening)

2-Give them a page to at least have the damage controlled

3-Block them forever.

The 11-M were islamic terrorist actions as anyone with brain can see so I do not thing they will convince nobody but is really anoying to see their dirty lies shown as the truth. If someone wants to do something, please do it understanding that netiquette is used by them as a tool for their trolling. Enjoy.

--Igor21 16:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC) link addedFilceolaire 22:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

This is an article-specific dispute that should be resolved through Talk:11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings and, if all else fails, through Requests for arbitration. You might solicit admin attention on Misplaced Pages:Administrator's noticeboard. In any case, this is not a proposal. Deco 03:37, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

US Cities in French-language Misplaced Pages

A bot is currently needed to create articles on US Towns and counties on foreign language wikis. Much of North America is absent from these wikis. Policy has already been adopted in order to counter eurocentric and francocentric editing. ADM

Hmmm - a specific effort to increase systemic bias? I'm not impressed unless you're also planning to run a bot adding cities and towns from every other country in the world to these wikis. Grutness...wha? 00:08, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Please explain how adding North American cities to the other language wikis is adding systemic bias? I find your comment unbelievably offensive, Grutness. User:Zoe| 01:40, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Not nearly as offensive as I find the suggestion of deliberately favouring (oh, sorry, that would be favoring, wouldn't it?) one country in all language wikipedias at the expense of the rest of the world. And I bet I'm not alone in that thought. I've no objection to a bot creating articles on places worldwide on other language wikipedias, but suggestng that it shoulld be done for one country and one country alone seems apallingly parochial. Hell, the original suggestion didn't even mention the possibility of adding places in both the US and Canada to bump up the number of North American articles - no, it was the US alone. Grutness...wha? 02:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Funny, last I looked, North America was not a country. And I am boggled at the prospect of intentionally omitting information on any wiki because you personally don't like the country it comes from. User:Zoe| 02:41, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Nitpicking. There was absolutely no reason to switch the region on him. Partially a slip on Grutness's part, since he assumed that since the United States was specifically mentioned, it usurped the definition of North America, but I probably would have made the same mistake myself. — Edward Z. Yang 22:09, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Ack, unexpected tab reset, whooops. (Comment retracted). — Edward Z. Yang 22:10, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Exactly my point on both counts. North America is not a country - so why did the original suggestion imply that the way to improve coverage of this region was by adding only US places, omitting Canada, and, for that matter, how would adding information about just one part of the world reduce any form of bias? It would simply replace it with another bias. There is no reason at all why Canada should be omitted from this plan, or anywhere else for that matter. There is no way that adding information about only one country can counter systemic bias - it will simply skew the encyclopedia in another dirction. This scheme, if done, should be worldwide, not simply for the US. This is not a US encyclopedia. As to whether I personally like or dislike a country, that has no relevance whatsoever to my views on whether this idea would address the problems it sets out to address. I would feel exactly the same way if someone suggested adding information from my own country in order to reopresent its continent under the guise of removing a Eurocentric bias. Turn it around. How would you feel if someone was to say "let's remove the Eurocentric bias of the french language wikipedia by adding articles for everywhere in China with a population over 1000 - but not add anything from the rest of the world". Would it remove systemic bias? No. It would replace a bias in one direction with a bias in to directions. What if they said "let's make the French language Misplaced Pages represent Asia more fairly by adding places in China." Would that make it fairly represent Asia? No. it would only bias the Asian articles in favour of one country. so, as I said, originally, before you got hot under the collar about it - "I'm not impressed unless you're also planning to run a bot adding cities and towns from every other country in the world to these wikis." Grutness...wha? 03:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I would expect other wikis to endeavor to eventually create articles on all cities around the world, so it is not a choice between adding cities in the U.S. or adding cities in the rest of the world. The English Misplaced Pages can and does welcome articles on cities from around the world. If we could get a bot to create articles on all of the cities in France or Argentina, we'd be thrilled. Also, cities in the U.S. are apparently what the other Wikipedias are lacking, so they would be countering bias on their Misplaced Pages by adding them. What is on other Wikipedias, like the English Misplaced Pages, is irrelevant because they are completely separate and most people are not multilingual. We should not cover the just the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand cities in the English Misplaced Pages, Spain and Latin America in the Spanish Misplaced Pages and China in the Chinese Misplaced Pages. I don't know why the bot proposal is currently limited to the U.S., but it might have something to do with our readily available computerized records, which would be useful when using a bot to create articles. Finally, what they are talking about needs to be made clear. North America is not made up of the U.S. alone, or even the U.S. and Canada. It also includes Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. -- Kjkolb 03:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

(post edit conflict) As I already said, we (the English Misplaced Pages), would love it if we could get a bot to create articles on cities, even if it was from a single country, no matter where in the world it is. We don't have to chose which cities to cover. We intend to get around to them all eventually. -- Kjkolb 03:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

It may help this discussion to point out that many of the current articles on U.S. towns and cities were originally produced by Rambot using information pulled from the United States Census Bureau and other U.S. government agencies. As not all countries provide similar information, or place copyright restrictions on the information that effectively prevent wholesale usage of the information, it may not be reasonable to expect similar automated article generation for non-U.S. locations. I would suggest the requester contact the bot owner for information on current translation efforts. --Allen3  03:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Exactly, more articles is always a good thing, and generated articles from public domain US census data is relatively easy for a bot. If this exists in a machine-readable form for Canada or other countries, great, but I'm not sure if it does. It's complete bullocks to say that creating articles on US cities is somehow biased. If we can do it easilly, we should. Applies to articles on cities from any country. --W.marsh 22:15, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Creating articles on only US cities - which is the original proposal - is extremely biased; this is a comment I stand by and nothing to do with oxen. Grutness...wha? 22:41, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

So we should create no articles instead of creating some articles? That's a terrible approach. If someone wants to create some good articles, the last thing we should do is tell them not to. --W.marsh 22:48, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Added tags/templates be seen in summary

I propose that the addition of tags such as NPOV tags and cleanup tags or any other tags be also duplicated (by the mediawiki or the wikipedia) in the summary box. This would help in two things, first, to know which version of the article was POV-oriented in order to work with the history more easily ans also, it would allow bots to recognize these tags right in the summary box thus helping with the FA and GA criteria. Lincher 19:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

That might be expensive in server processing. At first glance, the diff between the old and new versions could be parsed for well-formed templates in the new, but not the old version. However, if a template was not entered correctly, it wouldn't be picked up because a well-formmed template did not show in the diff. If the template was corrected on a later effort, it still would not be picked up in the diff. To avoid this, the program would have to parse all of the new version noting templates, then parse all of the old version, and then compare the lists of templates to see what well-formed templates were in the new version, but not the old. The program would also have to deal with templates being moved around in the article. And all of this processing would have to be performed on every edit. -- Donald Albury 20:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the fast answer. Didn't know it was THAT tough to do and that it would consume that much server processing. Well, it was an idea. I'll ring in if I have less expensive ones. Altough we can now ignore the idea, it would be nice to have somekind of a bot that would search articles that are added a tag like cleanup or NPOV to monitor the GA and FA lists. Lincher 01:30, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Did you delete the talk page?

I originally wrote this to the technical page of the VP... it seems technical considerations have been addressed successfully, so I'm bringing it here to the proposals page. One thing I've run foul of two or three times when deleting pages is forgetting to check whether there was a discussion page... sometimes leaving a lone talk page floating in the void. I propose putting a message in large friendly letters on the "page deletion complete" page which will come up if there's an undeleted talk page that needs dealing with. Grutness...wha? 22:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Some talk pages shouldn't be deleted... per WP:CSD, if "they contain deletion discussion that isn't logged elsewhere or notes that would help in creating an article". Other than that, yeah... generally there's no point of keeping talk pages that I'm aware of. Some kind of warning would be helpful I guess so admins can check... though I'm not sure if the software supports it right now? --W.marsh 00:25, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

That was all gone over at Misplaced Pages: Village pump (technical)#Did you delete the talk page?. It seems that it can be done. As for some pages needing to be kept, that was also mentioned, and there was a suggestion that some kind of {{deletedsubject-because}} template could be added to the talk pages kept to expalin why they were kept, which sounds a good idea to me. Grutness...wha? 00:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

change the powerstructure on wikipedia

I move to simplify the de-sysopping process and to establish clear and easy criteria for the Rf adminship. Unlike stated in all statements of how wikipedia should work, there is a group of editors who are a sort of an "inner group" on wikipedia, and these are the admins. They do not always follow the policies, they interpret them as they like and use their priviledges in content disputes, especially if there is no admin on the other side (because in that case there will be no wheel warring). In my opinion, any editor who reaches 1000 mainspace edits and has no history of vandalism or uncivility should be given the administrator status, without long and stupid discussions if he/she really "needs the mop". Arguments like "I dont see where he could use the admin quack" are only used by people who are exceptionally zealous and proud of what good they have done on wikipedia. Look for what they did in real world and you will find that they are 15, have problems at school because they spend all the time RC patrolling, RfA discussing, AfD nominating, prodding etc. But they believe that wikipedia is the real good of today's world. Admin priviledges should be easy for everyone to reach and equally easy to lose, should one prove, that he is not capable of having some responsibility. Azmoc 15:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. I think that it may too easy to reach adminship. Admins are entrusted with certain tools that can be misused. Mere edit counts do not establish that someone can be trusted with those tools. I could rack up 1,000 more edits in Main space in a couple of weeks if I wanted to, but that would mean nothing about my understanding of Misplaced Pages. Understanding of Misplaced Pages and judgment are important considerations in choosing an admin, edit count is not. -- Donald Albury 15:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

It takes a lot more than a specific quantity of edits and the ability to avoid calling someone a jerkface to justify entrusting a user with the ability to prevent others from editing, be it by blocking users or protecting pages. Too many people would be inclined to use these tools as bludgeons in content disputes with new / anonymous users. -/- Warren 15:39, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Yet again the case of a supposedly brand-new user, who has yet to make any edits to article space, trying to tell us how to run Misplaced Pages. Yawn. User:Zoe| 20:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Yet again a supposedly silly comment from someone who thinks he/she is running wikipedia. Yawn. It is possible to be editing without an username for a long time, then create one. I said, adminship should be easy to gain and easy to lose, your arrogant ad personam argument now violates the NPA in case I am experienced and BITE in case I am not, and in my opinion, you should lose your admin priviledges now and re-gain them when you learn how to behave. Azmoc 08:12, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

You are exactly the type of person who would use his priviledges in a content/conduct dispute. I find your stated belief that you are running wikipedia more than the other (yet inexperienced) users unbelievable. Azmoc 08:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Azmoc, are we supposed to believe that you have come here with suggestion after less than a week on the project and almost no mainspace contributions? Special:Contributions/Azmoc refers. Have you previously edited under another account? It would help to see your full edit history. Also, please remain civil. Just zis Guy you know? 12:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

The cabal rejects this proposal. That is all. Just zis Guy you know? 12:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

JzG, who I am, or under which IP I have edited before is no bussiness of yours. I will ignore your elitist ad personam argumenting, you should however note, that any ad personam argument is considered uncivil. I could also place a warning template on your talkpage. Your comment above doesn't concern the content of my proposal, just me. Stop that please. Azmoc 12:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Organized cleanup effort

I recently looked at Misplaced Pages:Cleanup and said to myself, "Wow, that's a lot of articles." After a bit of glancing about, I found that on average there's about 4 or 5 articles listed for cleanup in any given day. I then looked at Category:Cleanup from June 2005, and realized how unintimidating that list looked compared to the huge list of two thousand plus (I don't even want to guess how large it is). I searched around a bit to see if there was an organized wikiproject to deal with cleanup, and found Misplaced Pages:Cleanup Taskforce, though it appears to be long dead/dying and I don't particularlly like the way it's set up myself. Basically, I have in mind a wikiproject that would act similar to WP:AID, only there would be one article from the category of pages in need of cleanup a day(starting from June 2005 and moving towards more recent months). This would mean that, should it get dedicated people, there is a specific goal of at least 7 articles getting cleaned up a week, meaning the backlog would slowly deteriorate. This would take some effort to get started, such as getting people who are interested in glancing at the page every once in a while to see if the current article in need of cleanup has not been looked at. How does that sound? I am more than willing to start such an effort myself. Cowman109 23:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Anything that would get people doing more maintenence work and dealing with our extensive backlogs is a good thing, so I'd support anyone who can do that. You might try revitalizing the existing cleanup taskforce/project though, one centralized effort works best, I think... better able to get and maintain the critical mass of volunteers needing to keep a project going. As for your one a day approach, I hate to say it but an article is tagged for cleanup every few minutes, so you'd need to clean up quite a few every day just to compensate for the new stuff being added to the queue. --W.marsh 00:22, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, right. I was foolishly going by the list at Misplaced Pages:Cleanup. You're right that the extent of the cleanup additions is much larger, so the goals could start out small (ie one a day) and once it grows, could focus perhaps on more at a time. The only problem I see with changing the cleanup taskforce is that it's a completely different method (and looking at it further, it appears to have a complex system of assigning certain pages to members that is completely different from my proposed method. I don't think cleanup should necessarily be restricted to certain categories, and believe that anyone could theoretically go into any article needing cleanup and improve it in some way. If I created a project like this, I fear it would be an alternate process (similar to how we have 3 current different forms of going through a mediation process:WP:MEDCAB, WP:MEDCOM,WP:GUERRILLA). Cowman109 00:36, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

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