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RfC: Proposal to add global JavaScript and redirect all IRC help links through a disclaimer page
Propose moving User:PhantomTech/sandbox/IRC Disclaimer to Wikipedia:IRC help disclaimer and redirecting all links that connect users to the #wikipedia-en-help channel to Wikipedia:IRC help disclaimer in addition to adding the script at User:PhantomTech/Scripts/IRCNick.js to MediaWiki:Common.js. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 04:02, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
- Details: There are currently several problems with the IRC help channel, a few of those problems are that people often ask the same questions and that helpers sometimes have issues helping people because of the nicks they're given. Right now, almost all links give the default nick "WPhelp" with a nice long number at the end. As this post points out, this not only causes issues for people trying to help but also the people being helped. The proposal aims to cut down on the number of repeated questions (though not everyone may read the page) and give user's a friendlier IRC nick by default. Not all issues with the help channel are solved by this but it is a pretty simple modification that can solve one of the bigger issues. Currently, the script picks nicks in the following way:
- Users who do not support javascript fallback to using one of the current "WPhelp" nicks
- If the user is logged in, their nick is the first 11 characters of their username with anything non-alphanumeric characters replaced with an underscore and "-WP##" added to the end, where ## is a two digit number unless the username has 4 or more characters replaced with an underscore, then the next option is used.
- All other users are given a username that starts with a random color with "-WP###" added to the end, where ### is a three digit number. Colors are used because they are the least likely to offend people.
- Example: Someone whose username is User might get the nick User-WP42, someone with the username Full.Stop might get the username Full_Stop-WP20 and someone who is not logged in might get the username blue-WP493. Note, "might" is used because the numbers at the end of the usernames are chosen randomly and the color in the last example is also chosen randomly. Feel free to ask for any clarification or any more examples, the script can be tested by following instructions at the top of the page at User:PhantomTech/sandbox/IRC Disclaimer to see what nick you would be given. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 04:02, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
- Cross posted to WikiProject AFC, Teahouse and the help desk. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 16:54, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
OpposeSee explanation below the disclaimer as written, could support it with some heavy revision. Oppose adding such a script to Common.js as that is not the appropriate place for such a thing. I could see a nick picker added to an on by default gadget though (such as the Teahouse Ask a Question script), and I would support such a suggestion. —{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)15:41, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
- Could you be more specific about what you think is wrong with the disclaimer? I have no issue making this a default gadget instead of something in common.js, assuming that default gadgets are enabled for IP users. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 19:44, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
- Full support. I'm not commenting on implementation as a default-on gadget or as an addition to common.js, but whatever is according to convention is fine by me. --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 16:35, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Because it's nice to give people some context around the Freenode webchat interface, and the username consistency is a nice touch. But I think that it's unnecessary and unhelpful to tell questioners to RTFM before asking. I'd strongly prefer that language be removed if you plan to implement this for the Teahouse IRC channel (TH is the anti-RTFM). That said, no one uses the TH IRC channel anyway, so it's basically a non-issue. Cheers, - J-Mo Talk to Me Email Me
- Yeah, I don't see new editors in there often, but I'm pretty sure that is because -en-help is what is linked to from the THQ page and the only one ever mentioned. That kind of makes -en-help the Teahouse channel also, which suggests that it should be the anti-RTFM as well. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)16:41, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
- Yeah, I don't see new editors in there often, but I'm pretty sure that is because -en-help is what is linked to from the THQ page and the only one ever mentioned. That kind of makes -en-help the Teahouse channel also, which suggests that it should be the anti-RTFM as well. —
- Support. Great solution and implementation. APerson (talk!) 03:29, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- So...you want to provide people with a link that will very easily associate their username with their IP address? Legoktm (talk) 03:39, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Legoktm: Yes, but not much more than is already done. The script doesn't force the username on them, it just prefills it so they do still have the option to change it if they wish. As it is, people are already associating their username with their IPs, probably without knowing it. One of the first questions people tend to be asked are "What's your username" or "What article/draft" so that they can be helped easier, while the last one isn't direct, it isn't hard to figure out their username from a draft with one contributor and IRC gives us their IP when they join. With this solution, the association is more automated but there's a warning for anyone who's unfamiliar with IRC, something that doesn't exist right now. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 16:50, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support - I think it works well, it's cool, and provides a central place to link all of IRC to. We need a disclaimer talking about IP addresses anyway, and some of the other stuff is also pretty useful. Am not opposed to revising the disclaimer in a way that Technical 13 is happy with. — kikichugirl oh hello! 17:02, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support, although I would avoid unnecessary jargon (like "IP" instead of "IP Address", "IRC" without any explanation, "FAQ" instead of "Frequently Asked Questions", and "#Wikipedia-en-help") in the green box. I mocked up a more "noob friendly" version of the green box at User:Ahecht/sandbox/IRC_Disclaimer --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:18, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Ahecht: Feel free to merge your changes into my sandbox, your version does seem more user friendly. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 20:09, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- I've trimmed the code and made it HTML5 compliant. That works fine for me. As for the IRC nicks, I've added another option that both addresses the WPHelp/Guest issue and the anonymous issue that Legoktm brought up here. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)20:30, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- Assuming this isn't closed yet, I'd like to say it sounds like a good idea. I'm not sure why something odd involving revision IDs has been implemented instead. That seems like a creepy way to find out what someone's draft is; better to just have their username, and the -WP### thing is a good workaround for registered nicks. ekips39❦talk 01:54, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
- Strongly oppose forcing additional global JavaScript on every user on the encyclopedia for something that will not work most of the time due to the IRC naming restrictions which limits nicks to 16 alphanumeric characters, plus underscore, hyphen, and pipe, where the first character must be a letter. Many of the people who come to help in the channel are IP editors, so the script wouldn't work for them (can't start with a number or include a period), many of the editors with accounts I've found to have non-latin usernames (Múññå ShÈœhzÄdå), start with a number (2-Door), or include disallowed punctuation (Dermont~enwiki or As'ad A R).
- Also, the current scheme for nicks is being misrepresented (as it was modified per consensus yesterday). WPHelp usernames have been deprecated in favor of nicks that offer the helper a starting point for where to help the person that is showing up for help. Quite often, people don't know how to link their draft, don't have a username, can't point the helper to their draft or question, and those people get sent away with "Sorry, you can't be helped, go away and come back when you get a clue", this damages editor retention. Currently, all of the templates give the status of the draft or a single letter indicator and the revision id of the page they came from which allows helpers to help those people who would otherwise be unable to be helped increasing friendliness and improving editor retention.
- This proposal to take away the links to IRC from drafts (you have to navigate through a separate page adding to frustration of "can't I just please get some help?"), adds global JavaScript bloat to Common.js (using code that isn't compliant with WMF standards for a gadget no less). I know I suck at explaining things, but this community just made me the Editor of the week for being "a strong voice of the technically-oriented editors", and I hope that says something to some of you that my goal here is to protect the wiki from the damage this highly technical proposal will cause. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)19:23, 28 April 2015 (UTC)- With respect; Technical 13, posting two times with two separate bullet points, with bolded votes for each, is misleading. And I say the following as the person who wrote the nomination statement for your being awarded Editor of the Week: EotW should definitely not be cited in a community discussion as anything that would influence anything. Thanks, --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 04:10, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Technical 13: Not sure why you decided to !vote twice instead of just expanding on your original post or why you felt the need to add so much formatting to your "strong oppose" but guess I should start replying to your points. I don't know what you're talking about with there being problems with IP users, you read the proposal right? I even explained to you in IRC earlier that anonymous users are accounted for by the script with colors instead of trying to use their nonexistent username. Usernames that can't be used as nicks are also accounted for, and again that's explained in the proposal, non alphanumerical characters are replaces with underscores and there's a fallback to colors if too many characters are replaced. You mentioned that there are a lot of users who have usernames that would create a problem, you don't by any chance have any statistics to back that up do you? Sorry for "misrepresenting" the nicks, as you pointed out it was changed after this proposal was made, you wouldn't mind pointing to where the consensus for the change was by the way? It doesn't seem like there was any. Again for the point about people unable to point to their draft or whatever they need help with, could you provide some statistics that show how many people have this problem, excluding anyone that wouldn't have the problem as a result of this proposal? Even if there is no consensus for this proposal, the current (new) system has to be replaced, it appears to have been implemented without any consensus and is a major privacy issue, it uses what looks to users like a random number to effectively link usernames to IP addresses.
As a side note related to your EOTW message, it seems that to say the "community" made you editor of the week is a gross misrepresentation since it looks like only a very small number of users participated in the discussion. Additionally, it seems somewhat dishonest and petty to advertise yourself in this way. There are editors who are familiar with you, these editors have their own opinions of your skills, how much you should be trusted, etc. so to them this is pointless. What you have left are the editors who aren't, for whatever reason, familiar with you and may not be familiar with EOTW, presenting this information to them creates an unnecessary bias in the same way one would be created if sysops advertised their admin status on their replies and it is for these reasons that they don't. It is possible that your concerns are valid however it is counterproductive to say "this code isn't formatted right, let's just throw out the idea, trust me." Surely it would be trivial for someone with the technical expertise you seem to claim to have to make the code compliant with whatever standards it may have an issue with and it doesn't help that you explicitly said that you would support a nick picking gadget in your original oppose !vote. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 04:37, 29 April 2015 (UTC)- Agreed. I wrote something similar but it wasn't as good and didn't add much, so I won't bother posting all of it. I did have a couple of additional points, though: I haven't seen people turned away for the reasons T13 gives, and many people come in with custom nicks, which defeats the purpose of the revision ID nicks. ekips39❦talk 04:43, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- I struck the above !vote with a note to see down here. It would have been inappropriate to add that much text indented above, and you would have accused me of trying to sneak it in there like last time. So, I added it down here. I very much think that adding JavaScript code to compromise editors privacy and security is a big deal, especially when the code is as badly flawed as it is from a technical standpoint. Also, since the title for this section is very deceitful, I've reworded it to be appropriate. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)14:19, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- Interesting new title. The proposal is about the help channel, not all IRC links (how would we add a disclaimer to all IRC links, anyway?), and "proposal to add global JavaScript" sounds as if we didn't have any global javascript before. I think the previous title was less misleading, though it's worth including something about the nick bits, I suppose. Something that makes clear what the purpose of the global javascript is. Can't think of a way to say it that doesn't sound too long-winded. Also, that's not what the javascript will be doing, but this has been explained at length... ekips39❦talk 23:17, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Ekips39: I've edited the title to make it more accurate. Also, still not buying Technical 13's objections, seeing as PhantomTech clearly explains that their script would fix all of the alphanumeric character problems. The current revid usage is also a potential privacy issue as someone mentioned somewhere in this textwall... — kikichugirl oh hello! 18:23, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
- While the current revid usage is not a privacy issue as it only connects any IP/person that can view a draft to the draft, this proposal is certainly a privacy issue as it directly connects a username to an IP and in doing so outs the user. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)03:07, 7 May 2015 (UTC)- The disclaimer is meant to solve that problem. It warns you that it will reveal your IP. If you willingly enter the room anyway, then you willingly disclose it and connect it to your username. The RevId, done without consensus, does not clearly state that it is a privacy issue at all, or even that an IP will be revealed. — kikichugirl oh hello! 03:38, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- It is a safe assumption to say that a user who joins the IRC help channel from a draft link is the major, or usually only, contributor, and your original mention of the current system seems to recognize this lack of anonymity by stating that the extent to which their anonymity is important is limited to anonymity perceived by the helpee. There is no worse level of anonymity than near complete transparency which is disguised as anonymity, and, by using what looks like a random number, that is exactly what the current system does. By using usernames, users are fully aware of the information they are sharing and free to change it prior to connecting. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 04:00, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- While the current revid usage is not a privacy issue as it only connects any IP/person that can view a draft to the draft, this proposal is certainly a privacy issue as it directly connects a username to an IP and in doing so outs the user. —
- @Ekips39: I've edited the title to make it more accurate. Also, still not buying Technical 13's objections, seeing as PhantomTech clearly explains that their script would fix all of the alphanumeric character problems. The current revid usage is also a potential privacy issue as someone mentioned somewhere in this textwall... — kikichugirl oh hello! 18:23, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support the disclaimer. I've always thought editors connecting to the help channel were insufficiently warned that their IP would be revealed. As they would need to take further steps to identify the IP with an on-wiki account, it wasn't a huge deal, but did make me a bit uncomfortable. The current implementation has made the issue much more severe. Now, the default nick you enter IRC with, ties your session back to a revision of the page you came from, which in most cases, means that your IP which was already visible on IRC, can with a reasonable certainty, be tied directly back to your account here. In my view, in the absence of a clear notification to the user that this will be possible, this is a violation of the foundation privacy policy. I would actually go a bit further, and explicitly state that it will be possible to connect the IP and username by connecting. We may also want to ask someone from foundation legal whether they feel the language provides sufficient warning about what is going to be revealed. (As an aside, I think many people are unreasonably sensitive about revealing IP information, but the community has decided to respect their concerns, and so we should be consistent) Monty845 14:37, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support the disclaimer for that channel. Not sure if I can get behind adding that script to common.js. We should also all be aware that adding an interstitial page between the IRC link and the channel will cause fewer people to actually go to the channel to get help. On balance that's probably ok (given that inadvertently revealing your IP can cause actual harm), but it's a likely consequence. Protonk (talk) 00:13, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Protonk: Would you support adding the script as a default gadget instead of to common.js? PHANTOMTECH (talk) 01:06, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Well, I don't know. First, if we're going to mangle the usernames to fit them into IRC (and de-dupe, I'm assuming?) why not just assign a random name? Protonk (talk) 01:15, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Why not have the nick be a direct link to the page the helpee wants help with so they don't have to be sent away without any help because of language or technological barriers? (that's what it currently is now btw, a status indicator and a revid number so the helper can actually help the helpee). —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)01:49, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Protonk: Usernames make it easier for helpers to find the information they need to help helpees, a random name (color, since some names could be considered offensive) is assigned to IPs. @Technical 13: Usernames don't look like a random number, so helpees know what information the nick contains, and revids don't solve the problem of making it easy to tell helpees apart that both helpers and helpees have. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 02:04, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- That sounds reasonable. I'll take another look at the code. Protonk (talk) 02:25, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Protonk: Usernames make it easier for helpers to find the information they need to help helpees, a random name (color, since some names could be considered offensive) is assigned to IPs. @Technical 13: Usernames don't look like a random number, so helpees know what information the nick contains, and revids don't solve the problem of making it easy to tell helpees apart that both helpers and helpees have. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 02:04, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Why not have the nick be a direct link to the page the helpee wants help with so they don't have to be sent away without any help because of language or technological barriers? (that's what it currently is now btw, a status indicator and a revid number so the helper can actually help the helpee). —
- Well, I don't know. First, if we're going to mangle the usernames to fit them into IRC (and de-dupe, I'm assuming?) why not just assign a random name? Protonk (talk) 01:15, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Protonk: Would you support adding the script as a default gadget instead of to common.js? PHANTOMTECH (talk) 01:06, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- . I'm onboard with the code now. I'm still skeptical that we want to mangle the usernames in the first place especially imagining a long username truncated and with some "_"'s added could be worse than a random one in a lot of cases. Protonk (talk) 16:55, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- I agree that having to edit usernames at all isn't ideal and that usernames can exist that would be better off just being random but I don't think they'll be too common. I think most of the time a username gets changed it will still be useable, but I'm usually in the live help channel so if I'm wrong, I should notice and be able to modify the script. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 17:57, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose Both especially oppose the JavaScript. I hate to say it but JavaScript is a security flaw and a bunch of issues waiting to happen. And the other point, I don't think linking users to yet another page is going to help. When I was new, all I wanted was to actually converse with a real person, not get sent round in circles in Help: pages and Wikipedia: pages... I also want to point out that anyone editing from an IP probably knows their IP is being thrown around (should we add more disclaimers to that -_-) and in general Wikipedia isn't "private or one on one". In my opinion it would make more sense to add a small something to the IRC chat page, like it already has.
"Hi there, WPhelp44410...other crap...Replies could take several minutes. If you are asking about a particular page, please provide a link and/or your on-wiki username to make it easier for our volunteers to assist you. "
Makes more sense to just toss something on there, instead of routing users away from help and to more useless FAQ's and Instruction pages. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 01:27, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Wikipedia already uses JavaScript, what additional security flaws and issues would this script introduce? The disclaimer warns about linking usernames to IPs, not IPs to IPs. Adding a disclaimer inside the IRC channel is like not letting someone read a contract until after they sign, it's too late at that point. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 06:18, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- The issue with "anyone editing from an IP probably knows their IP is being thrown around" is that it doesn't matter if they're logged in or not, if you join the IRC channel your IP is visible unless you have a cloak (which 99.9% of helpees don't). Sam Walton (talk) 08:59, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose the JavaScript because people don't read the small print (or the big print, for that matter), and will unwittingly link their IP with their account without meaning to. Support a disclaimer which warns users of the possibility, though not all will take notice, per Monty. Alakzi (talk) 01:49, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- I've said this before somewhere above but there's a lot there now so, people already unknowingly link their IP to their account when they say what draft or whatever they need help with, (or while the current revid system is in place, just by joining) using usernames as the default makes autocompleting nicks easier, is less confusing for helpers/helpees and can help helpers help helpees faster. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 06:18, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Unarchived, waiting for formal close. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 07:42, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Soften the notification number
Surprisingly, I don't find this in our drop-the-stick list.
Despite exhortations in the guidelines, many editors experience an adrenaline spike when they get reverted, and this makes it that much more difficult to stay calm in one's reaction to the revert. This would seem to increase the frequency and severity of edit wars. Considering the known psychological effects of different colors, would it not make sense to use a soft blue or soft green, instead of a bright red, for the background around the notification number? I think we're waving a red cape in front of a human bull in many cases, if not most. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:33, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- For reference, the current colour is #BD2400 . EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 21:42, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
- I agree that the big red square looks too much like an error message (or the more severe warning messages that we place on talk pages). I would completely support a blue to match, for example,
or, as a compromise, an orange to match 
. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:10, 15 April 2015 (UTC)- It's hard to think of something which, though likely of very minor value (though maybe not...) would be so easy to try and ought to be uncontroversial. But watch -- someone will argue against it. EEng (talk) 16:07, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- I'll revise my suggestions slightly: #00528C to match the bullets in the watchlist or #F9C557 to match the "You have new messages" background. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:45, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- See WP:BIKESHED. That's my last comment on the importance of this issue. --Jayron32 16:14, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- Since the nuclear power plant has already been built, there's no reason why we shouldn't have a nice bike shed there. I'm sure my blood pressure goes up when I get a notification; a blue like Ahecht suggested above might decrease the stress a little. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 16:24, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- It's only BIKESHED if people fuss over this obviously sensible, harmless change. It's a good idea and we should do it. EEng (talk) 16:33, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- Since the nuclear power plant has already been built, there's no reason why we shouldn't have a nice bike shed there. I'm sure my blood pressure goes up when I get a notification; a blue like Ahecht suggested above might decrease the stress a little. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 16:24, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- I'm honestly not buying it. In any case, blue would blend in too well with the existing personal bar links, so orange should be used at a minimum from Mandruss' suggestions. BethNaught (talk) 16:36, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- Purple's a nice cool color. EEng (talk) 16:47, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- I think multicoloured would be quite nice. Trout71 (talk) 17:08, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support but only if the colour is #a5427e, and if colour is spelled with the u. If you keep it the same or change it to any other shade of any colour or spell it without the u, I will take it to WP:ANI. Seriously, though, it's a reasonable idea, and any of the suggested colours would be fine. Ivanvector (talk) 18:38, 15 April 2015 (UTC) The u is kinda important though.
- Support changing the color without the u - I do think that a bright red is too likely to cause edit wars, or make them more severe. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:58, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support in particular green. Most of my notification list is thanks, or the occasional notice that I've been mentioned somewhere, but the red does seem more like an error message than anything. Jerod Lycett (talk) 20:00, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- Something like the
#008560 used by {{tq}}#008740 used in the flow logo? I kind of like that. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:18, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
- Something like the
- Support in particular orange, as the old message bar. Red works for alerts on less disputatious sites, but not here. NebY (talk) 20:36, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I agree that this will accomplish anything, but I certainly don't see any harm or reason to object to it. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:40, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support Green or (if green doesn't pass) orange or (as mentioned above) purple. Really, any cool, calm, not-red color. EEng (talk) 19:44, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
- Alternative but support for the idea in principle even if it is a marginal gain), There was an education study done that showed Green is a much better colour for teachers making HW/Tests based on the effects on students, so perhaps Green is better? --- :D Derry Adama (talk) 20:31, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support I like the #F9C557 so it doesn't just blend in with the rest of the blue interface and links. Maybe toning down the wording would help too, currently it says
"Your edit on [page] has been reverted by [user]. (Show changes)"
. I think maybe something like"Your edit on [page] has been undone by [user]. (Show changes)"
. What do you think? EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 21:19, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
- Maybe change the word revert to pervert, so it says
"Your edit on [page] has been perverted by [user]. (Show perversions)"
. EEng (talk) 22:14, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
- Maybe change the word revert to pervert, so it says
- Comment - I really think soft (pale) is important here, as important as not red. Most of these examples are hard. We only need enough contrast that a notification won't be easy to miss. I'd gladly offer a suggestion or two, but I'm not very handy with color pickers. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:03, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support #F9C557 per Ahecht and EoRdE6. I've always found #BD2400 a bit off-putting, but any change can't come too close to the text color, as I would expect matching File:Information.svg might. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 23:16, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support in principle; I've thought the same before. I'm not convinced of the usability of the colours that've been proposed. Alakzi (talk) 23:28, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
- Changing the color to a less noticeable color could be problematic. If a new user making problematic edits doesn't notice that they have a message, you have a situation where they keep on doing whatever it is without knowing that they're doing anything wrong. A softer color is less likely to elicit a click. --Yair rand (talk) 00:44, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- Messages on talk pages don't leave a mere notification number; there's accompanying text as well—which, I should note, uses #F9C557 or something virtually identical. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 00:47, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose, getting an adrenaline spike if you are reverted is exactly as it should be, unless you're a spammer or vandal expecting reverts. –Be..anyone (talk) 01:31, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- Why should it be that way? Alakzi (talk) 01:33, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed. One could argue the converse: "not getting an adrenaline spike if you are reverted is exactly as it should be, unless you're planning to go revert the reversion(s)."
—ATinySliver/ATalkPage 04:20, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed. One could argue the converse: "not getting an adrenaline spike if you are reverted is exactly as it should be, unless you're planning to go revert the reversion(s)."
- Adrenaline spikes are rarely a good thing, at Wikipedia or anywhere else, as they hinder the ability to think clearly and calmly. They evolved to aid escape (run like hell!) or defense (fight like hell!) when in danger. So I'm afraid you've lost me there, Be..anyone. ―Mandruss ☎
SupportComment - I like paler, and "You have new messages" could be changed to match. #8EED9D and #CBBAE8: 1 You have new messages 1 You have new messages ―Mandruss ☎ 11:37, 17 April 2015 (UTC)- Support. Looks popular, and assuming it remains so the next step would be picking the particular color. If no consensus emerges here I'd suggest showing examples of various colors and asking people to pick their 1st-2nd-3rd choices. Herostratus (talk) 11:30, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose I would like to point out the fact that red is the notification color of choice of almost all major websites when it comes to small size indicators. By diverging from that, we isolate ourselves from a common well understood paradigm for users. We also diverge from mainline MediaWiki software, giving users a different experience throughout the WMF properties (just at a time where we finally have brought all the accounts together), which seems unwise to me, and we aren't measuring the effect of all this in any sort of scientific responsible way, which I also think is the WRONG way to make decisions like these. Perhaps the textual messaging is the problem here, and not the color of the notification indicator. Perhaps we should just disable that type of notification. Why is no one asking those questions ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:48, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- I don't know, but perhaps they could be asked separately without doing damage to Wikipedia? Must the scope of these things always be inflated to the point where no consensus is possible on anything? ―Mandruss ☎ 11:57, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support go with Blue , Blue is good lightsaber, red is bad light saber. Bryce Carmony (talk) 17:36, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support: change to dark blue or dark green matching below if possible, but nonetheless a less irate colour. 1Potato2Potato3Potato4 (talk) 10:43, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Note - added column nC and proposal 7. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:54, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support Ahh, this would explain my road rage at traffic lights. I'm fine with any softer shade, but prefer #F9C557 despite (not because) it matches my sig. --RacerX11 Talk to meStalk me 12:33, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Although I'd much rather have a complete reskinning and modernization of Wikipedia's design (and a dark theme already, my eyes hurt!), I suppose this color change would help. Whenever I see the alert, I'm worried I messed up and someone's alerting me of it. Maybe this is due in part to the color itself. In any case, the red color certainly alerts me, but can do so to the point that it's distracting. A different color may benefit us, even if it comes at the expense of decreased conspicuity. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 13:46, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Note - added proposals 8, 9, and 10, per Nøkkenbuer's comments in the next section. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:03, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Comment – Would it be possible to make this customizable or something similar? With this many choices below, I have some doubts that any majority agreement will be reached. Dustin (talk) 15:55, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- That's why I tentatively suggested two rounds of voting in the following subsection. Customization would be a bigger software job and thus harder to pass. Even if passed here, it would likely wait longer in the developer priority queue. I'd prefer to keep this proposal at its current size, but you're welcome to make your own separate proposal. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:01, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Comment – I think we should consider not using colors but instead a black and white pattern. Bus stop (talk) 16:31, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- The problem with that is that I doubt many would notice it. The color is intended to draw attention to the notification, since it is a notification. Black-and-white is probably the least noticeable color scheme we could use in this situation. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 18:06, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Some patterns such as polka dots with intersecting sine waves rendered in black and white are very recognizable without color. Bus stop (talk) 19:28, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- The problem with that is that I doubt many would notice it. The color is intended to draw attention to the notification, since it is a notification. Black-and-white is probably the least noticeable color scheme we could use in this situation. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 18:06, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support I think it's, at the very least, worth trialling some different colours, red does seem too 'You've done something wrong' and not enough 'here's a notice of something you'll likely be interested to know about'. Not sure on the particular colour, none of the options below grab me straight away, but I also support the idea of collecting colours and voting a few favourites through to a new poll if there is support for change. Sam Walton (talk) 18:21, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose. I prefer the red because it stands out. It's also a color widely used for notifications online and on platforms such as the iPhone. Perhaps we should let individual users pick their own preferences. Calidum T|C 21:49, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose - it needs to be bright to catch the attention, and as others have pointed out it's consistent with other systems. No objection if it's made a user choice, as long as I can keep red. JohnCD (talk) 22:08, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- That's actually a good idea; an option within each editor's preferences to change the color to his/her own liking, as noted above, "bigger software job" notwithstanding. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 22:21, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- This is possible to do manually now. It has been suggested at least a couple of times before, in 2013 and 2014, and both discussions include simple solutions using CSS, which are being used already by editors.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 10:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- Much obliged! Just created the appropriate page in meta; works perfectly. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 19:59, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- @JohnBlackburne: except I can't figure out how to change the "you have new messages" text color. Clearly, I'm not a coder. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 01:26, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- See Quiddity (WMF)'s post at the very end of this section (not sub-section), it has CSS for both.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 01:43, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- It doesn't work right at Meta; there's a parameter missing or something ... —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 01:52, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- See Quiddity (WMF)'s post at the very end of this section (not sub-section), it has CSS for both.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 01:43, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- This is possible to do manually now. It has been suggested at least a couple of times before, in 2013 and 2014, and both discussions include simple solutions using CSS, which are being used already by editors.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 10:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- See the opening post and the first three comments at #Wouldn't this be better as a new preferences option?. The original intent of this proposal has very little to do with personal preferences. If we've segued into that area, I'd gently suggest that we're off topic. Also see some (I think) interesting discussion at the beginning of #Colo(u)r nominations. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:11, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- That's actually a good idea; an option within each editor's preferences to change the color to his/her own liking, as noted above, "bigger software job" notwithstanding. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 22:21, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support as proposer, and I think a proposer should have a lot to say about what is being proposed. Others are free to make their own separate proposals. Besides, I once suggested modifying someone else's proposal after some !voting had occurred, in response to Opposers' concerns, and that was not allowed because it would have required all existing !votes to be discarded (or at least re-evaluated by the respective !voters, many of whom were no longer involved in the discussion). This looks like the same situation to me. (meta: It astounds me that, after 14 years, en-Wikipedia has yet to establish clear ground rules for orderly processes. We do love the chaos, frustration, and wasted time, it seems.) ―Mandruss ☎ 09:45, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- [meta]: We do have clear ground rules for the orderly process by which decisions are made on Wikipedia. They are here: Wikipedia:Consensus. The problem with the process described below is it does not seem designed to establish consensus – or at least it is not mentioned at any point – and seems flawed in a number of ways. The result of a poll is no substitution for discussion, but that seems to be what’s being proposed below (though "Details will be determined later". how? By a further "vote"? By discussion? By proposer fiat?). Normally a higher degree of consensus is required for changes to policies than e.g. for content discussions, and if anything an even higher one for changes to the Mediawiki software. In this case because this is part of the software on all Wikipedias if it needs changing it needs changing globally, for consistency, not locally, but that cannot be done here.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 11:29, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- Arguments have been presented in this subsection, per WP:CONSENSUS. If the Opposes win, the color selection is moot, but that doesn't mean we can't proceed with the color selection anyway. Besides, one's Support or Oppose might depend on what colors have been presented as alternatives to the status quo, no? Isn't that what you said yesterday? In that sense, color selection might be viewed as prerequisite to !voting. I can't imagine how one would argue for one color choice over another, beyond saying that they find it more visually appealing, so that part is properly a vote, not a !vote.
- "Details will be determined later" refers to the specific details of the color selection voting process. There are at least two ways that could go that I believe would be sufficiently fair and accurate for this purpose (we're not electing a president here). Yes, I intended to simply choose one, and I think "proposer fiat" is hyperbolic. If people wish to spend time debating those details, fine, and that will tend to validate claims of BIKESHED in this matter. It will also introduce another opportunity to stall the process and derail the entire proposal, due to lack of a sub-consensus. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:54, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- I had to look up WP:BIKESHED, an essay I had not had reason to look at before. "Don't get hung up on minor details." That would describe the premiss of this yes, a minor interface details that editors can easily fix for themselves. But lack of consensus is not a minor detail. WP:Consensus is a core policy, Wikipedia is not a democracy and holding a vote on this is the wrong way to go about it.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 14:38, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- As I said, consensus applies in this subsection. I don't know that WP:CONSENSUS implies that we have to establish consensus for every detail of the process. I'll revise my comments, as this is an argument for a color choice. Nonetheless, I don't know how a closer would decide between multiple viable arguments as to color — such arguments can't be policy-based —, so that part would end up an effective vote anyway. I'm interested in other opinions on this, but I'm for voting on the color and !voting on the proposal, just for sake of simple expediency. Let's not overthink something that several experienced editors have criticized as BIKESHED. In the end, it's about whether the bright orange-red is the best choice or not for the notification number; the rest is minutiae. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:49, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- Alternatively, you could volunteer to design this process, in detail, the way you think it should be done. Give us something specific. Someone has to attend to these details; it's not enough to make the general observation that "things should be done by consensus" and expect the process to proceed to a resolution without some structure. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:16, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- This: come up with a proposal for the new colours, with a rationale for your choice, considering as many of the factors and objections that you can, including the many times it has been raised before. Then post it here as a proposal, and see if there is consensus for the change. A simple, one step process based on consensus.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 15:53, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- I see. So the problem is that my proposal was not specific enough. And we're to assume that it will be either up or down on that specific proposal, with no suggestions for modification? ―Mandruss ☎ 16:03, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)See this, then, as an open and largely co-operative process of forming a single proposal for a new colour scheme, or as a consultation stage, if you prefer a more top-down model. NebY (talk) 16:12, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- One or two of us are making a more serious issue of this than the vast majority appear to. I'm not inclined to put together the full-blown legal case that JohnBlackburne requires, for a little color change. Here at Wikipedia, no question can be too small to argue for weeks or months about, only to fail for lack of clear consensus (see another recent example). I hope the majority will speak up and express their opposition to this approach; absent that, I think I'm done here and this can be closed or continued in whatever direction the remaining participants wish. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:39, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Mandruss: please do carry on. There's clear interest in moving away from the old scheme, editors are continuing to join the discussion constructively (in itself an endorsement of your process, even if they don't also comment right here) and others who have already commented will be looking forward to the next stage, we've valuable input on feasibility and alternatives from within WMF, and your plan has an excellent chance of producing a clear outcome within a reasonable time. NebY (talk) 22:44, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- @NebY: Ok, with that comment I'm prepared to continue to move my process along, even if it's unclear whether it will be of any benefit in the end. I'll leave the rest, including debate with JohnBlackburne and discussion of phab, to others. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:09, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Mandruss: please do carry on. There's clear interest in moving away from the old scheme, editors are continuing to join the discussion constructively (in itself an endorsement of your process, even if they don't also comment right here) and others who have already commented will be looking forward to the next stage, we've valuable input on feasibility and alternatives from within WMF, and your plan has an excellent chance of producing a clear outcome within a reasonable time. NebY (talk) 22:44, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- This: come up with a proposal for the new colours, with a rationale for your choice, considering as many of the factors and objections that you can, including the many times it has been raised before. Then post it here as a proposal, and see if there is consensus for the change. A simple, one step process based on consensus.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 15:53, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- I had to look up WP:BIKESHED, an essay I had not had reason to look at before. "Don't get hung up on minor details." That would describe the premiss of this yes, a minor interface details that editors can easily fix for themselves. But lack of consensus is not a minor detail. WP:Consensus is a core policy, Wikipedia is not a democracy and holding a vote on this is the wrong way to go about it.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 14:38, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- [meta]: We do have clear ground rules for the orderly process by which decisions are made on Wikipedia. They are here: Wikipedia:Consensus. The problem with the process described below is it does not seem designed to establish consensus – or at least it is not mentioned at any point – and seems flawed in a number of ways. The result of a poll is no substitution for discussion, but that seems to be what’s being proposed below (though "Details will be determined later". how? By a further "vote"? By discussion? By proposer fiat?). Normally a higher degree of consensus is required for changes to policies than e.g. for content discussions, and if anything an even higher one for changes to the Mediawiki software. In this case because this is part of the software on all Wikipedias if it needs changing it needs changing globally, for consistency, not locally, but that cannot be done here.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 11:29, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support #008560 - This was brought up either this year or last .... IMHO the notification colours do need to change. –Davey2010Talk 14:59, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
Worth mentioning in my search for earlier mentions I came across the tasks at top right which would probably address some peoples concerns here, by allowing for different displays for different sorts of notifications. While changing the colour can be done locally and even individually varying it by type of notification requires a change to the underlying software. These go much further than just a simple colour change, and so would render the outcome of this proposal largely moot if implemented. T94634 in particular is quite new, active and being brainstormed. With three open bugs/requests it seems likely something will come out of them. There’s nothing to stop editors here participating in the discussions at phabricator on those tasks.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 17:20, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- Support - every time I see that red number, it freaks me out just a little. And that panic is unnecessary. — kikichugirl oh hello! 19:17, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- NOTE - reminder, the local defaults should only be changed if the proposed colors pass WCAG. Please test all color combinations against http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ for accessibility. Cheers :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:40, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Quiddity (WMF): Are we testing per WCAG AA or WCAG AAA? I have stricken those that fail WCAG AA, but some of the remaining ones fail WCAG AAA. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:57, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Mandruss: WCAG AA at minimum, although that should be sufficient in this case because it isn't a long string of text. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:29, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Quiddity (WMF): Are we testing per WCAG AA or WCAG AAA? I have stricken those that fail WCAG AA, but some of the remaining ones fail WCAG AAA. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:57, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose It's meant to be attention-grabbing. One needs one's attention grabbed when one has been mentioned in a comment, or one's edit reverted. Red is by far the best colour for this. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:21, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- weak support any colour is attention-grabbing really...I think just a bit less overt would be nice. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:27, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- Colour comment Please do not use green and the current colour — some of us, including me, won't be able to tell the difference. If you want to implement the proposal (I don't have an opinion on the proposal itself), please pick a radically different colour for one of them, like yellow or medium blue. Nyttend (talk) 23:20, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Nyttend: That shouldn't be a problem, as nomiinations are closed and there are no such candidates. Voting is below if you want to. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:30, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose - red is the standard color for notification badges on the web. Using UI conventions that are consistent with other websites is a good thing as it makes our UI easier for new users to understand. Kaldari (talk) 20:06, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Strong Oppose, red is a standard notification color, and I don't automatically think oh-no when I see my big bright red notification, I'm actually happy to see it, it could be a revert, but it could also be thank. Also, it needs to be seen, if the notification color was a "soft" color, then we don't need to call it a "notification" anymore, because it's not important. If a user gets mad because the system notified them of their revert with red colors (how could we?!), and goes and violates 3RR with an edit war, that's not our problem, it's their's. --AmaryllisGardener talk 21:20, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- lol per Jayron32. Protonk (talk) 01:18, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Process description
- Colo(u)r nominations will continue until 26 April, during which time there is no voting. Additional nominators will have to provide the colo(u)r codes, but I or someone else can do the table update for any nominator who is table-challenged.
- On 26 April, I will ping all users then listed in the Interested parties subsection (below), all existing votes will be discarded, and a first round of voting will begin. Any user (pinged or not) may then vote for up to three choices. Details will be determined later.
- Per the above, there's no point in any further voting before 26 April, and any premature votes will be ignored. This will ensure that each voter has seen all the candidates.
- On 6 May, three finalists will be determined and presented, interested parties will be pinged, and the second round of voting will begin. Details will be determined later.
- On 16 May, the winner will be determined and presented and ... wait for it ... interested parties will be pinged. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:29, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
Interested parties
This list will be used to notify interested parties of developments such as the start of a voting round (described above). Add or strike yourself as desired. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:32, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- (Remember that {{ping}} won't work at all if more than 20 users are listed in a single invocation.) EEng (talk) 19:02, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
- Thanx. I didn't know that. Ain't collaboration great? ―Mandruss ☎ 19:07, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
1Potato2Potato3Potato4, Ahecht, Alakzi, Allen3, APerson, ATinySliver, Be..anyone, Beeblebrox, BethNaught, Bryce Carmony, Bus stop, Calidum, Casliber, Davey2010, DerryAdama, Dustin V. S., EEng, EoRdE6, Fauzan, Herostratus, Hroðulf, Huntster, IJBall, Ivanvector, Jamesmcmahon0, Jayron32, Jerodlycett, JohnBlackburne, JohnCD, Kaldari, Kennethaw88, Kharkiv07, Kikichugirl, L235, LindsayH, Mandruss, Mr. Granger, NebY, Nøkkenbuer, Nyttend, Od Mishehu, Origamite, Pathore, PhantomTech, Quiddity (WMF), Racerx11, Renata3, Rich Farmbrough, Samwalton9, SchreiberBike, Soap, Spinningspark, Technical 13, The ed17, TheDJ, TheMesquito, This, that and the other, Trout71, Yair rand
Colo(u)r nominations
Nominations are closed. Voting round 3 is open.
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Omits proposals lacking a specific colo(u)r code. Here is one of several web-based colo(u)r pickers. You may prototype a colo(u)r code here.
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Voting round 1
Voting round 1 is closed. Voting round 3 is open.
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Notification of interested parties @1Potato2Potato3Potato4, Ahecht, Alakzi, Allen3, ATinySliver, Be..anyone, Beeblebrox: ―Mandruss ☎ 12:52, 26 April 2015 (UTC) @BethNaught, Bryce Carmony, Bus stop, Calidum, Casliber, Davey2010, DerryAdama, EEng: ―Mandruss ☎ 13:02, 26 April 2015 (UTC) @Dustin V. S., EoRdE6, Fauzan, Herostratus, Ivanvector, Jayron32, Jerodlycett: ―Mandruss ☎ 13:03, 26 April 2015 (UTC) @JohnBlackburne, JohnCD, Kharkiv07, Kikichugirl, NebY, Nøkkenbuer, Od Mishehu: ―Mandruss ☎ 13:05, 26 April 2015 (UTC) @Quiddity (WMF), Racerx11, Samwalton9, SchreiberBike, Technical 13, TheDJ, This, that and the other: ―Mandruss ☎ 13:06, 26 April 2015 (UTC) @Trout71, Yair rand: ―Mandruss ☎ 13:07, 26 April 2015 (UTC) @EEng: ―Mandruss ☎ 13:31, 26 April 2015 (UTC) Anyone may vote here, whether pinged or not. You have six votes that you may distribute between one, two, or three candidates. If you like only one candidate, give it all six votes. If you like two candidates, distribute your votes between them evenly (3/3) or unevenly (4/2 or 5/1). For three candidates, your voting could be 2/2/2, 3/2/1, or 4/1/1. Any votes that total less than six (why?) will be accepted and counted, but any votes totalling more than six will be flagged and ignored. If this happens to you, you may fix it at any time before 6 May, but you probably will not be notified of the error. You may write your votes in any way that's clear. One very concise example is like this: 7B(4) 0A(2) You will be added to #Interested parties if not already listed there. On 6 May, three finalists will be determined by a simple count of votes, #Interested parties will be pinged, and the second round of voting will begin.
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Voting round 2
Voting round 2 is closed. Voting round 3 is open.
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Notification of interested parties @1Potato2Potato3Potato4, Ahecht, Alakzi, Allen3, APerson, ATinySliver, Be..anyone: ―Mandruss ☎ 16:13, 6 May 2015 (UTC) @Beeblebrox, BethNaught, Bryce Carmony, Bus stop, Calidum, Casliber, Davey2010: ―Mandruss ☎ 16:14, 6 May 2015 (UTC) @DerryAdama, Dustin V. S., EEng, EoRdE6, Fauzan, Herostratus, Ivanvector: ―Mandruss ☎ 16:14, 6 May 2015 (UTC) @Jayron32, Jerodlycett, JohnBlackburne, JohnCD, Kennethaw88, Kharkiv07, Kikichugirl: ―Mandruss ☎ 16:15, 6 May 2015 (UTC) @NebY, Nøkkenbuer, Nyttend, Od Mishehu, Origamite, Quiddity (WMF), Racerx11: ―Mandruss ☎ 16:15, 6 May 2015 (UTC) @Rich Farmbrough, Samwalton9, SchreiberBike, Technical 13, The ed17, TheDJ, This, that and the other: ―Mandruss ☎ 16:16, 6 May 2015 (UTC) @Trout71, Yair rand: ―Mandruss ☎ 16:17, 6 May 2015 (UTC) Anyone may vote here, whether pinged or not. Candidates include the current colo(u)rs and the three leaders from voting round 1. You have six votes that you may distribute between one, two, or three candidates. If you like only one candidate, give it all six votes. If you like two candidates, distribute your votes between them evenly (3/3) or unevenly (4/2 or 5/1). For three candidates, your voting could be 2/2/2, 3/2/1, or 4/1/1. Any votes that total less than six (why?) will be accepted and counted, but any votes totalling more than six will be flagged and ignored. If this happens to you, you may fix it at any time before 16 May, but you probably will not be notified of the error. You may write your votes in any way that's clear. One very concise example is like this: 3A(4) 0A(2) You will be added to #Interested parties if not already listed there. On 16 May, the winner will be determined by a simple count of votes and #Interested parties will be pinged.
Round 3 potentialNot to stretch this out unnecessarily but, say, absent a clear winner, a final round between the top two might be in order ...
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Voting round 3 (runoff)
Notification of interested parties
@1Potato2Potato3Potato4, Ahecht, Alakzi, Allen3, APerson, ATinySliver, Be..anyone: ―Mandruss ☎ 19:57, 16 May 2015 (UTC) @Beeblebrox, BethNaught, Bryce Carmony, Bus stop, Calidum, Casliber, Davey2010: ―Mandruss ☎ 19:57, 16 May 2015 (UTC) @DerryAdama, Dustin V. S., EEng, EoRdE6, Fauzan, Herostratus, Huntster: ―Mandruss ☎ 19:58, 16 May 2015 (UTC) @IJBall, Ivanvector, Jayron32, Jerodlycett, JohnBlackburne, JohnCD, Kaldari: ―Mandruss ☎ 19:58, 16 May 2015 (UTC) @Kennethaw88, Kharkiv07, Kikichugirl, L235, Mr. Granger, NebY, Nøkkenbuer: ―Mandruss ☎ 19:59, 16 May 2015 (UTC) @Nyttend, Od Mishehu, Origamite, PhantomTech, Quiddity (WMF), Racerx11, Renata3: ―Mandruss ☎ 20:00, 16 May 2015 (UTC) @Rich Farmbrough, Samwalton9, SchreiberBike, Soap, Spinningspark, Technical 13, The ed17: ―Mandruss ☎ 20:00, 16 May 2015 (UTC) @TheDJ, TheMesquito, This, that and the other, Trout71, Yair rand: ―Mandruss ☎ 20:01, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Anyone may vote here, whether pinged or not. The leader from round 2 received only 39% of the votes, so a runoff is necessary between it and the first runner-up.
You have one vote. Please vote either 0A or 1A.
You will be added to #Interested parties if not already listed there.
On 23 May, the winner will be determined and #Interested parties will be pinged.
| n | nA | |
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| 0 (current) |
#BD2400/white | 1 You have new messages |
| 1 | #00528C/white | 1 You have new messages |
- 1A ―Mandruss ☎ 19:55, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A Dustin (talk) 19:59, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A APerson (talk!) 20:01, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A --Jayron32 20:03, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A —Soap— 20:10, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A - Not keen on either but prefer blue over the red .... –Davey2010Talk 20:15, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A - damn...what happened to the others? I think I prefer the current one. sorry. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:19, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A. I'm frankly not at all fond of this scheme, but 1A is worse. In particular, when a user has a notification but not a message, 1 will all but disappear into the mix for anyone using monobook, at the least. (Edit for clarity: it has been my experience using monobook that You have new messages shows up only when someone has edited my talk page. Only the number box shows up when I have any notification(s).) —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 20:22, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yeah. As you noted, only two votes (i.e., one voter) separated 1A and 3B. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:28, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yup.
—ATinySliver/ATalkPage 20:40, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yes. Indeed my round 2 vote, for example (based on my own misunderstanding at the time), tipped it favor of 1A over 3B. Had I known what I know now, I would have likely voted for 3B. I was fine with this process and thought it work, but an honest mistake has messed it up. Not sure what can be done about it now. --RacerX11 Talk to meStalk me 16:03, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oddly enough, after using 3B within my own global.js for a while, I'm not as fond of it, and for the same reason: even the #086 notification tended to blend in and escape attention. I'm now using the original 2A so notifications use the same scheme as the text box. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 20:28, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oddly enough, after using 3B within my own global.js for a while, I'm not as fond of it, and for the same reason: even the #086 notification tended to blend in and escape attention. I'm now using the original 2A so notifications use the same scheme as the text box.
- Yes. Indeed my round 2 vote, for example (based on my own misunderstanding at the time), tipped it favor of 1A over 3B. Had I known what I know now, I would have likely voted for 3B. I was fine with this process and thought it work, but an honest mistake has messed it up. Not sure what can be done about it now. --RacerX11 Talk to meStalk me 16:03, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yup.
- Yeah. As you noted, only two votes (i.e., one voter) separated 1A and 3B. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:28, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A Origamiteⓣⓒ 20:35, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:49, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:19, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
1A--RacerX11 Talk to meStalk me 21:53, 16 May 2015 (UTC)- 0A. Changing my vote per this discusion. --RacerX11 Talk to meStalk me 15:51, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A Sure. --IJBall (talk) 22:21, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A Kaldari (talk) 23:35, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A EEng (talk) 23:46, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:28, 17 May 2015 (UTC).
- 0A. --JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 01:50, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A — Huntster (t @ c) 02:34, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A TheMesquitobuzz 03:14, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A - I beleieve that the red may, in fact, be a bas color to use. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:24, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A Still no need to change this while we wait for per type color coordination... —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)03:26, 17 May 2015 (UTC) - 0A I still prefer red as it is a standard across multiple websites; users should have the option to set colors in their preferences. Calidum T|C 03:31, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A — This, that and the other (talk) 04:14, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A, but the contrast in this column sucks. –Be..anyone (talk) 05:27, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A, stop messing with something that is perfectly servicable and we have all got used to. How much more complicated are you going to make this vote? SpinningSpark 07:58, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A As for this process being "too complicated", I've found it very easy to understand. This last round is helpful because the last one could be seen as showing a distinct majority against the status quo and as showing the status quo as the preferred option. Clarifying that doesn't favour either the status quo or change. NebY (talk) 12:46, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A,This was the obvious choice. Far preferable to the current red flag-styled notification. Thank you Trout 71 17:42, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A, Blue, as I don't want inexperienced editors to be distracted by notifications like 'Linked' or 'Reverted'. The yellow new message indicator is much more important. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 18:15, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A - I think blue would be a much better choice as the default, as a short, medium or long-term change. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:31, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A Sam Walton (talk) 10:51, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A Kharkiv07 (T) 13:28, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A This is getting ridiculous. 1Potato2Potato3Potato4 (talk) 18:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A Ivanvector (talk) 14:51, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A as the lesser of two evils, but green on the number would've stood out much more. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:37, 19 May 2015 (UTC) - 0A The blue color lacks luminance contrast compared to the "no new notifications" grey background. The red stands out better. Pathore (talk) 23:18, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
- 0A As the lesser of two evils. Cheers, LindsayHello 02:58, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Comment This process failed because everyone considered it frivolous enough to have a vote instead of a !vote. Option 0A has a clear opposing rationale, red looks like an alert of something bad. Option 1A has a clear opposing rationale, the blue disappears into the other blue interface elements. Basically ANY of the other options would have been better than these two. Good job Wikipedians! (And the blame goes to me too, I saw this RfC running and I didn't participate before now.) For formal vote purposes I have no position on red vs blue, but if anyone wants to be bold and invalidate
thisthis process for being a vote, the 3B green runner up from round 2 seems to be the most popular vote with no apparent oppose rationale. Alsee (talk) 08:08, 21 May 2015 (UTC)- As far as I can tell, the rationale against 1A didn't appear until this round (#8), after 3B was already excluded. An argument does not exist until someone makes it. Throughout the process, some voters have given arguments even though none was required, and I assume that the ones who didn't read and considered those arguments. There's nothing gained by requiring voters to write "per [fill in username]" when they have no new argument of their own. My personal feeling is that the dark blue would contrast with the lighter blue enough to be noticed, and I doubt that many of the 1A voters failed to consider that. I too preferred 3B, and I would be lynched if I supported invalidating these results after they didn't go my way (n.b. the ABF I got when I added a runoff vote). You're right, you're a bit late. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:41, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Alsee, 3B turned out to be not that great, either, at least in my humble opinion. I'm much more fond thus far of what was 2A. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 19:49, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1A I'd prefer almost anything other than red. I think the waving a red flag factor affects me sometimes, let alone newbies, and likely other more experienced editors as well (subliminally, if nothing else). ... I've mostly skimmed the preceding thread(s). Has anyone discussed simply removing reversions from among actions given special notifications? As reversions are already noted in the page histories and appear on user watchlists -- both of which may be accessed at will at a time of a user's choosing, as opposed to having a 'flag' (presently a 'red flag') intrude upon whatever else a user may be addressing. Basically, manual reversions don't prompt special immediate notices, why should semi-automated ones do so? Especially in light of the various 'red flag'/'seeing red' concerns that have been raised. While changing the color may help, it seems to me the 'surprise' factor of being interrupted (i.e. 'flagged') with a quick revert notice seems to be (an edit war) cause for concern regardless of the notification color announcing it. --Kevjonesin (talk) 13:02, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Another plan
- I'm sorry, what are y'all voting on? As far as I'm aware the plan is to have a dynamic color based upon the type of notification. So, there will be no static color and my understanding of this vote based on the table above, this vote is a moot point. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)20:02, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
- @Technical 13: what is the status of that plan? Is it definitely on the developers' work schedule to deliver it, and if so when will it be delivered? Does it depend on progress of the larger project to replace the current talk page system? I ask these questions because it's not unusual (within Wikipedia or elsewhere) to see simple suggestions - that could have been quickly implemented - dismissed with a promise that eventually something much better will be delivered and yet, for one reason or another, that much better solution is perpetually delayed, or lost in the collapse of another project.
- Meanwhile, I'm giving this discussion its own header. It may be that despite your posting, your fellow editors will still want to (!)vote and we don't want to interleave this discussion with those votes. NebY (talk) 20:43, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
- Phab:T57359#1224097 -- > Just waiting for implementation of a class to be added to the growler (echo flyout) for each new notification which is more likely to happen than getting them to just change the color (which you can do yourself with css by adding to your own personal common.css
.mw-echo-unread-notifications { background-color: ‹your color choice› !important; color: ‹your color choice› !important; }. —{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)23:40, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
- Indeed, you can make it global. (Oddly, while it balks at "!important", it won't work otherwise.) —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 23:48, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
- I'll remind everyone that, while this vote might be about personal preferences, the proposal itself is not; thus the possibility of a personal change does not address the issue. Anyone who is unclear on this point is encouraged to read the opening post and perhaps the first three comments at #Wouldn't this be better as a new preferences option?. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:55, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
- That's more information than is available at Phab:T57359#1224097 but doesn't tell us whether it's definitely on the developers' work schedule to deliver it, and if so when it will be delivered. You do tell us that it depends on other progress without indicating whether the latter is itself on the developers work schedule or when it will be delivered. NebY (talk) 16:11, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
- Can you clarify how this is going to work? What colour will it be if I have more than one notification? Sam Walton (talk) 12:54, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Phab:T57359#1224097 -- > Just waiting for implementation of a class to be added to the growler (echo flyout) for each new notification which is more likely to happen than getting them to just change the color (which you can do yourself with css by adding to your own personal common.css
Wouldn't this be better as a new preferences option?
As noted above by Jayron32, this is a WP:BIKESHED problem. As such, it seems unlikely that a large group of self selected individuals will agree on a single colo(u)r scheme. An obvious means to get around this problem is to create a new preference that allows anyone with a registered account to select the shades they prefer. Default values can remain at the current settings, or be battled over by those who feel a need to control the configurations of others, as any values selected are guaranteed to wrong. --Allen3 talk 21:20, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- Except that one of the stated problems we want to solve is new users seeing a revert as an "error message" and having a battlefield mentality. This is not just an issue of personal preference, but rather a discussion of what the default should be. The users who would know how to change the notification color are exactly the kind of users that would be least impacted by the change. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:28, 20 April 2015 (UTC)- Precisely; thank you; except that many not-so-new editors would apparently benefit, too, and knowing about the preference setting wouldn't mean understanding the potential benefit, or even recognizing any need for a change in the way you react to a revert. This change does not benefit the people "seeing the red" so much as the people they are working with and the community as a whole (e.g., admins who have to deal with edit wars, etc). ―Mandruss ☎ 23:39, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- I adore preferences, I've written about it at length over at mw:Requests for comment/Redesign user preferences (particularly here on the talkpage). But developers really dislike adding preferences, because it is more userpref columns in the database, more code complexity, more code variations to test everything against, and more code to maintain/consider forever going forward; similarly, product managers dislike preferences because they add to the complexity of the already fairly extensive special:preferences tabs (which is a problem because it effectively reduces the probability of the widely useful preferences being discovered & used). Hence this small aesthetic tweak would not be a good candidate for a user-preference
- Instead, either the local default could be changed (as suggested above), or the global default could be changed (which would need a vastly wider discussion), or individuals could tweak it for themselves with user.css (I'd recommend this option) - Just add this code to your special:mypage/common.js:
.mw-echo-unread-notifications {background-color: #00528C !important; color: #FFF !important;}for the badge, and.mw-echo-alert {background-color: #00528C !important; color: #FFF !important;}for the talkpage notification (changing the color codes as desired). - Regarding the discussion above, the local defaults should only be changed if the proposed colors pass WCAG. Please test all color combinations against http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
- Hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
- The distinction has to be drawn between core preferences commonly used, or critical for accessibility, and obscure preferences. Obscure preferences can be accessed from "advanced->very advanced->super advanced" tabs - this is standard UI design. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:49, 29 April 2015 (UTC).
- The distinction has to be drawn between core preferences commonly used, or critical for accessibility, and obscure preferences. Obscure preferences can be accessed from "advanced->very advanced->super advanced" tabs - this is standard UI design. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:49, 29 April 2015 (UTC).
- I haven't read this whole discussion, but I actually worked on this very thing awhile back with User:Technical 13/SandBox/Notification colorizer.js but had to drop the idea for now because there is currently no way to access the types of notifications in the flyout until it is expanded. I've mentioned this in the Phab ticket, and hope it will be acted up in a way that will allow completion of the script I started. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)11:46, 21 April 2015 (UTC) - That actually sounds a great idea - That way they'd be no "Oh I hate this colour and that colour", Having own preferences mean we'd all be happy, I have wondered if in the next 5 years this will crop up again and everything would be changed. –Davey2010Talk 16:34, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- If we aregoing to do this at all, preferences is the place for it. DGG ( talk ) 15:48, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Uniform tables
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Presently there is major difference with the layout of wikitables on the desktop site and on the mobile site. Most importantly, the mobile wikitable has no background color for its header cells and its border are brightly colored to the point that they are almost indistinguishable. This creates readability issues for the mobile wikitable. To illustrate this I have made a screenshot of table both in the desktop and the mobile version.
A wikitable on the desktop site
The same table on the mobile site
Therefore, I would like to propose the mobile wikitable's layout to be made the same as the desktop wikitable's, so as to have a uniform table style. Tvx1 19:21, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
Discussion (Uniform tables)
- First question: How exactly does this effect our readers and the encyclopedia? Second question: How do you propose to do this? —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)22:37, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
- Wikitable CSS is defined:
- Screen:
mediawiki.legacy/shared.css - Print:
mediawiki.legacy/commonPrint.css - Mobile: MobileFrontend/less/content/tables.less
- Screen:
- -- Gadget850 talk 23:36, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
- The mobile site uses a different skin, "Minerva", specifically tailored to mobile devices. I suspect this colour scheme was carefully chosen for a good reason, and I haven't seen a good explanation of why the desktop site's table colour scheme is any better (or worse, for that matter) than the mobile scheme. As such I would oppose any changes. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:02, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
- This ^^^ Also that table uses colored background to communicate information, which is an accessibility problem. And the background of the table won't matter much to readability on my watch. Also why would things have to be visually consistent across multiple skins ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:41, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
- I can think of many reasons why it's impractical to have multiple layouts for the same tables. I'm not aware of every type of instance tables are used for on Wikipedia, so I can only talk about the one I'm involved with. I mainly edit in the Formula One Wikiproject. The example use above is of a "result's table". This type of table is quite common in sports articles. The background color used in these tables is supplementary to the text. It's not the sole means of communicating info by any means. The complaints about the tables I have encountered there are that the lack of clearly distinguishable borders on the mobile site's tables makes it difficult to find specific results in these tables. Even more so for colorblind people. You can find some discussion on this here, here and here. Furthermore having different desktop and mobile layouts creates unnecessary complications for editing. Quite often a change of content in a table on desktop works fine on desktop, but creates problems on mobile. I can't see any good reason either why header cell can't have a background color on mobile. I can't give an answer to Technical 13's second question because I'm not adept enough with the site's programming language, so I simply can't point to which part of the CSS has to be changed nor to what it should be changed to. Tvx1 16:28, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
- This ^^^ Also that table uses colored background to communicate information, which is an accessibility problem. And the background of the table won't matter much to readability on my watch. Also why would things have to be visually consistent across multiple skins ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:41, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose any change, that is just the way the mobile site is supposed to look, and it doesn't look any worse (I honestly prefer it). I also think you forget that tables look unique in each different skin, (Similar colourful table in Modern, Cologne Blue, and MonoBook) that is just the way skins work. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 00:11, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
- Also Vector (for those people who don't have it as default), and Mobile. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:10, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
- EoRdE6, I'm not talking about aesthetics here. I'm talking about accessibility and editing issues caused by the mobile version. The skins you link to only have some minor aesthetic differences which cause no problems with accessibility. Only the mobile version has some fundamental differences to the basic layout which cause these issues. Cell borders are almost indistinguishable, the wikitables have no basic background-color and neither do header cells (
!). Also, 2014 Formula One season is not a good example to look at, because those articles' tables have been coded differently by an other editor to make them universal on mobile and desktop. 2013 Formula One season will give you a far better view on just how different those tables are. Tvx1 13:18, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
- So here are the facts that we've determined so far:
- Every skin looks different.
- Mobile's headers use bold and centered text, whereas Vector's use bold, centered text and with a gray background. One standard way of describing this difference is that Mobile has a higher contrast/easier readability, especially on very small/lower resolution screens (i.e., old smartphones).
- Individual tables can be coded to different from the default. (Indeed, most of them are different from the default, because most of them are set to
class="wikitable".)
- I'm not really sure that making every skin match every other skin is a good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't see the need for this. They are parts of two different skins, which are different for good reasons although not being part of the design process I do not know the reasons in detail. But changing just one element to make one skin look like another makes no sense, without considering the overall design and how it relates to other skins. Besides the above is a bad example: there are far more problems with the actual table than the underlying CSS/HTML. It looks more like something from a glossy magazine than an encyclopaedia, with all the colours, flags, repetition and bold text.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 14:28, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Although all skins have their variations, the mobile version is the ONLY one, as I have pointed out earlier, to have fundamental differences to the base style (e.g. header cells, borders) for reasons I don't know. The others just have a different "finish touch" but the BASE style is the same. Not so for the mobile one. So this is a case of making the mobile base style match the numerous other ones, and making them all the 100% exact same. I really can't understand how one can genuinely claim that the mobile one has a higher contrast? It's exactly the opposite. Because of the lack of header cell colors and clearly distinguishable borders it has much LESS contrast and as a result much reduced readability. That's why I made this proposal in the first place. If it's not clear, the mobile table is the one on the right in the picture above. Tvx1 16:45, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, that's a "higher" contrast. Black text on white background is "higher" contrast than black text on a gray background. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
- You're both right. Mobile has higher contrast for the text, but mobile gridding is pale-gray to the point of almost invisible. Alsee (talk) 08:37, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
Good Lists
A new class of article to be introduced. It will be a good list. It is similar to good article criteria but in a list format. The step up from list to FL is too great and, like an article, we need a good list. The criteria are below.
It covers a topic that lends itself to list format (see WP:List) and, in addition to meeting the requirements for all Wikipedia content (particularly naming conventions, neutrality, no original research, verifiability, citations, reliable sources, living persons, non-free content and what Wikipedia is not) a good list has the following attributes:
- Prose. It features a good standard of writing, with no major copyedit issues,
- Lead. It has a lead that introduces the subject and defines the scope and inclusion criteria.
- Comprehensiveness.
- (a) It comprehensively covers the defined scope, providing all of the major items and.
- (b) In length and/or topic, it meets all of the requirements for stand-alone lists; does not violate the content-forking guideline, does not largely duplicate material from another article, and could not reasonably be included as part of a related article.
- Structure. It is easy to navigate and includes, where helpful, section headings and table sort facilities.
- Style. It generally complies with the Manual of Style and its supplementary pages.
- (a) Visual appeal. It makes suitable use of text layout, formatting, tables, and colour; and a minimal proportion of items are redlinked.
- (b) Media files. It has images and other media, if appropriate to the topic, that follow Wikipedia's usage policies, with succinct captions. Non-free images and other media satisfy the criteria for the inclusion of non-free content and are labeled accordingly.
- Stability. It is not the subject of ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the good list process.
TheMagikCow (talk) 17:09, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
- This has been discussed before, though I don't have any links handy. Personally, I do not believe there is much value in creating another review process that is ultimately redundant to the Featured List process. There will not be enough difference between a "good" list and a "featured" list to make the process worthwhile. Resolute 17:11, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
- How does this proposal compare to FL? What are the similarities and differences? —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)17:32, 3 May 2015 (UTC) - There is not much difference between these criteria and those at WP:WIAFL. Apart from changing the word "featured" to "good" throughout, the differences are in just two main criteria and one subcriterion:
- In criterion 1, "... professional standards of writing" is replaced by "... a good standard of writing, with no copyedit issues"
- In criterion 2, the word "engaging" is omitted
- In subcriterion 3(a), the words "at least" are omitted, as is the phrase ", where practical, a complete set of items; where appropriate, it has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about the items."
- In short, I think that the above proposal is expecting too much for a Good List. Compare the requirements for a Featured Article with those for a Good Article - the differences are much greater. In particular, although FA and FL both require compliance with the Manual of Style, GA need only meet the MoS in five areas: lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation. I don't think that a GL proposal should require full MoS compliance either. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:58, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- I've found that WikiProject Military history (MILHIST) has a quality scale for lists, which has intermediate levels CL, BL and AL - but there is no "Good List" level, see WP:MHA#SCALE. Accordingly, I've sent MILHIST a note. A shorter version of that has been sent to some other talk pages (example). --Redrose64 (talk) 10:36, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose I think we revisit this idea about once a year. As Redrose64 notes, the proposal is very close to FLC already, and trying to define a deliberately weak set of criteria for a "good list" doesn't serve our community well. Full MOS compliance isn't actually that difficult for any article, but it's actually quite important from a technical perspective with lists, so downgrading that would be a bad thing too. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:21, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support Yes and those many thousands of years-related articles that are being maintained for ages with reliable sources needs some recognition. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log)
- Could I ask what is preventing any of those many thousand of years-related articles from meeting the FL criteria? Do you have an example of one which you consider to be good enough to be a good list? The Rambling Man (talk) 10:46, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- 2012 in the United States, 2014 in the United States and more. Due to the lack of concentration and dedication that is actually required for FL, they cannot achieve this FL milestone. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 11:00, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- You're supporting a proposal because we're lacking concentration? Yes, those articles are awful, awful, but we have many "timeline" featured lists which could be used as a basis if someone could be bothered to look into it. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:18, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- 2012 in the United States, 2014 in the United States and more. Due to the lack of concentration and dedication that is actually required for FL, they cannot achieve this FL milestone. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 11:00, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support I think the biggest difference between F(L)C and a G(L)C is in the procedure. It takes multiple reviewers to approve a F(L)C nomination, it would only take one reviewer to approve a G(L)C nomination. You can only nominate one article/list at a time for F(L)C but you could nominate multiple for G(L)C simultaneously. The quality of a F(L)C article/lists increases by the diversity of multiple reviewers contributing. Subsequently a list reviewed by just one person most likely will suffer in quality because every review has weaknesses and strength. Having said that, I think a GL-class makes sense, although the criteria may only be marginally different. MisterBee1966 (talk) 12:16, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- Partial Support The WP:MHA#SCALE approach seems good, I find that the top levels of perfection are unattainable in many cases, but there is a need to bring a start class list upto a C. If you are documenting List of watermills in the United Kingdom or worse still List of watermills in the World then having some lower level goals would be helpful. New editors would probably be happy to work in this uncontraversial area if we had low level goals to set them. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 13:27, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- Question it looks, to me at least, like the most usual candidates for this "good list" idea are those which are just very long and therefore a lot of work is required to suitably format and reference them, is that the idea? The Rambling Man (talk) 13:38, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- No the idea is that lists that are not FA class get recognition. There is no minimum entries to a list as long as it is WP:NOTABLE — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheMagikCow (talk • contribs) 16:14, 4 May 2015
- I'm afraid I don't understand your point at all. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:44, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- No the idea is that lists that are not FA class get recognition. There is no minimum entries to a list as long as it is WP:NOTABLE — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheMagikCow (talk • contribs) 16:14, 4 May 2015
- I really wish this discussion had not been fragmented on Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Good Lists. That said, I Support this proposal. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)14:03, 4 May 2015 (UTC) - Oppose we've had this discussion before (probably been a few years, though) and my opinion is unchanged: There does not exist a quality gap necessary to fill with a Good List concept. Any putative "Good list" would essentially be a featured list anyways. --Jayron32 14:56, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose - any "good list" would still need to be complete and be referenced, right? Just like GAs? At that point you might as well nominate it for FL- you're basically there, most lists don't have enough prose to get tripped up on. I appreciate the idea of having an intermediate level for really long lists that take a lot of effort, but "a lot of effort but is not done" isn't really a good point to slap a star on something. I'd like to see some examples from the supporters of what current lists they'd consider "good" - the examples posted so far are just "would take a lot of work to complete", which isn't the same thing at all. --PresN 16:13, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- Exactly. It's just about lists which need more work, nothing more. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:44, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support As nominator. TheMagikCow (talk) 19:13, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose I don't see any tangible benefit to this idea. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:58, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose. Per Beeblebrox. --Dweller (talk) 09:30, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose featured list is already very easy to achieve and we seem to have a disproportional mount of these already. So having this would just make a lower quality bar that would enable an easy to achieve recognition. Instead just go for FL. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:32, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose. What nonsense, this is simply lowering the standard of a list. FLs are very easy to achieve. HYH.124 (talk) 08:46, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose. It is not difficult to promote any regular list to featured list. If the process itself is like the good article review process, it would probably take less time to promote an article to featured list than good list, due to the relatively little work needed and the backlog of a unilateral review process. Esquivalience t 02:55, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose. The English Wikipedia is biggest wikipedia; but I think there is not enough list article to make GL.--Skky999 (talk) 02:36, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support: there are multiple lists present that are not FL but they can make GL and need recognition. It might also help identify, which lists have potential to be GLs and would redirect short term efforts towards those lists as well. --lTopGunl (talk) 16:32, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. I am in agreement with MisterBee1966 regarding the process of GA and FL assessments. Progressing to expand List article's assessments is in the right direction for improvement of List articles in the encyclopedia by giving editors a process to improve List articles in the same manner as Articles rather than the antiquated back of the bus assessment of Lists (Stub, List and FL). Gmcbjames (talk) 01:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
It's time to abolish the "Ignore the Diacritics" rule everywhere
Reasons:
- Botching diacritics can be seen as very disrespectful by native speakers;
- Botching diacritics can be a strong indication that the editor has little or no knowledge/acknoledgement of their functions and/or linguistic/cultural significance;
- With new generations of computers and tablets becoming more and more available, the "I don't know how to type it" excuse is becoming no longer valid.
Based on the above reasons, I strongly propose that it's time for Wikipedia to completely abolish the "ignore the diacritics" rule (or convention or whatever). Cedric tsan cantonais 19:29, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- What rule is that? Where have you seen it being applied? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:46, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- Presumably the guideline at WP:DIACRITICS. Whic does not call to "ignore the Diacritics". -- Gadget850 talk 20:29, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- It might as well. Though the use of diacritics is "neither encouraged nor discouraged", the fact remains that we're instructed to make that decision off the back of English sources, which have - by and large and for the most part - omitted diacritics, for a variety of reasons. Alakzi (talk) 20:38, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- "we're instructed to make that decision" Where? -- Gadget850 talk 21:02, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- It's the first sentence of WP:DIACRITICS. See also MOS:PN#Diacritics, which contradicts it. Alakzi (talk) 21:13, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:DIACRITICS (which, by the way, only applies to article titles), says "
when deciding between versions of a word which differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language.
" That is pretty easily derived from WP:V (and, by extension, WP:NONENG). If the common usage in English includes diacritics, that is what's used in the English Wikipedia. If the native language uses diacritics but English doesn't, then neither does the English Wikipedia. - However, the original poster seems to be referring to this diff, in which User:Canuckian89 said that "
Wikipedia convention is that diacritics aren't used on NHL-related pages
". That is referring to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ice hockey), which states "All North American hockey pages should have player names without diacritics, except where their use is likewise customary (specifically, in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and the Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey).
" That wording was put in by User:Djsasso in 2003 — previously the guideline stated that they should use "most common spelling in English as described by reputable reference books and media outlets. In most cases this means the omission of diacritics and other characters not commonly found in English.
", which is in line with WP:V and WP:NONENG. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:18, 5 May 2015 (UTC)- @Ahecht Thank you. This is the very first convention that I seek to repeal. As for references, I would argue that if we are willing to look at sources in other languages (which, according to my experiences, are equally valid in English Wikipedia), there're plenty of sources indicating the correct use of diacritics. For example, in this news release by the Czech Ice Hockey Association, more than one NHL players, including Petr Průcha, David Krejčí and Zdeno Chára, are mentioned and the diacritics in theirs names. Also, the Czech were nice enough to keep all diacritics in players' names, regardless of the languages they're in. All these are making Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ice hockey), which tries to justify botching diacritics, invalid. Also, if TSN and ESPN are seen as valid sources, the Czech Ice Hockey Association just can't be any less valid. Cedric tsan cantonais 22:01, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- If the problem is specific to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ice hockey), why discuss it here, not at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ice hockey) (plus an advisory note to WT:WikiProject Ice Hockey). --Redrose64 (talk) 22:54, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- I wouldn't say that non-english sources are "equally valid in English Wikipedia". WP:NONENG says "
However, because this is the English-language Wikipedia, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones whenever English sources of equal quality and relevance are available.
" --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 23:23, 5 May 2015 (UTC)- The key words here are
whenever English sources of equal quality and relevance are available
". In terms of diacritics, I would argue that there are little or no English sources "of equal quality and relevance" available, due to my observation that many English sources, other than English Wikipedia, would already botch the diacritics before making their way into English Wikipedia and, therefore, cannot match the quality and relevance of certain non-English sources. Henceforth, my argument that certain non-English sources, like the news release I posted above, should be deemed equally valid in the case of diacritics. - Also, since my main focus is on Cantonese Wikipedia, I don't edit English Wikipedia as much and that's why I wasn't aware of the existence of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ice hockey). But now that I know there's this convention, I'll start working on getting the "ignore the diacritics" part amended or abolished.Cedric tsan cantonais 00:08, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- You say "my observation that many English sources... botch the diacritics". You're saying English Sources are "botching" how things are written in English. Even if you're right, Wikipedia is not the place to try to fix it. We follow the sources, we don't lead. Alsee (talk) 05:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not "leading". I'm just cherry-picking the best sources to follow. In the case of diacritics, many non-English sources had proven themselves more trust-worthy than their English counterparts. — Cedric tsan cantonais 17:36, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- You say "my observation that many English sources... botch the diacritics". You're saying English Sources are "botching" how things are written in English. Even if you're right, Wikipedia is not the place to try to fix it. We follow the sources, we don't lead. Alsee (talk) 05:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- The key words here are
- @Ahecht Thank you. This is the very first convention that I seek to repeal. As for references, I would argue that if we are willing to look at sources in other languages (which, according to my experiences, are equally valid in English Wikipedia), there're plenty of sources indicating the correct use of diacritics. For example, in this news release by the Czech Ice Hockey Association, more than one NHL players, including Petr Průcha, David Krejčí and Zdeno Chára, are mentioned and the diacritics in theirs names. Also, the Czech were nice enough to keep all diacritics in players' names, regardless of the languages they're in. All these are making Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ice hockey), which tries to justify botching diacritics, invalid. Also, if TSN and ESPN are seen as valid sources, the Czech Ice Hockey Association just can't be any less valid. Cedric tsan cantonais 22:01, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- "we're instructed to make that decision" Where? -- Gadget850 talk 21:02, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- It might as well. Though the use of diacritics is "neither encouraged nor discouraged", the fact remains that we're instructed to make that decision off the back of English sources, which have - by and large and for the most part - omitted diacritics, for a variety of reasons. Alakzi (talk) 20:38, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- Presumably the guideline at WP:DIACRITICS. Whic does not call to "ignore the Diacritics". -- Gadget850 talk 20:29, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
- As one of the parties of the compromise over on the hockey WikiProject, I've got two cents to throw in. The compromise was the truce in a long and contentious edit war involving many editors (myself included) and many articles. No one was really happy with it, and there've been a couple attempts over the years since to overturn it, but it's kept the edit warring down to a dull roar.
My strong preference was then, and remains, to recognize that this is the English Wikipedia; not the Czech, not the French, not the Swedish or Finnish or Viet or any other national Wikipedia that commonly uses diacritics. The English language does not, for the most part, use diacritical marks. I would be thrilled to see WP:DIACRITICS extended project-wide, the hockey articles included. That being said, it's obvious from the guideline itself that private compromises have been enacted -- this MOS section dealing with Ireland-related articles, for one -- and I don't see any horde of editors coming in to force a change to go over any better than it would have on what I see from archives was a long and bitter dispute on those articles. Ravenswing 01:59, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I have the same but opposite opinion as Ravenswing. I think they should be used everywhere because they are proper names and as such don't change between languages so if they have diacritics on one they have diacritics in the other. That being said, what Ravenswing says about it being a compromise is true. Diacritics have been an all out war at times on the wiki and the battle over them has left many people on both sides of the issue blocked and/or banned. As such the hockey project for hockey articles in the absence of a true wiki-wide consensus came to a consensus to damper down the edit warring that was constantly on going. It is a topic I generally recommend editors staying away from and usually counsel people to leave it like you found it in the same vein as ENGVAR. I would note the edit of mine being referenced above goes back farther than 2013, it was just added to that particular page at that point, however, it had been listed elsewhere for years before that. -DJSasso (talk) 13:52, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I would be shocked to see WP:DIACRITICS extended project-wide since that would be a major sign of collective ignorance. I'm considering adding reference(s) whenever I'm writing diacritics. This is kind of a last-resort measure but now that I know there's such strong opposition towards diacritics, I've got little choice. — Cedric tsan cantonais 17:36, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think many people would view something like that as being disruptive to make a point. Resolute 20:17, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- I see no reason to change anything here. I'd say 99.3% of the time diacritics aren't appropriate on the English Wikipedia because they are not in the English alphabet. I'll counter your claim that
they are proper names and as such don't change between languages so if they have diacritics on one they have diacritics in the other
with Hillary Clinton - Hilarė Klėntuon - Hillary Clintonová or maybe even Гілары Клінтан from the collapsed section in support #53 of Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request#Support. We're not using Hilarė Klėntuon because this is English, in the same light, diacritics don't belong on other names in English. Now, as for the claim that "the "I don't know how to type it" excuse is becoming no longer valid
, I'm not buying that either, my English qwerty keyboard still doesn't support those characters without knowing the unicode values for each, and to expect anyone to have a huge chart on the wall or know which character means what is unreasonable. —{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)04:13, 7 May 2015 (UTC)- And that is a strawman, Hilarė Klėntuon or Hillary Clintonová are not her name. If they were, and if they were what she used for her name, then yes they would be completely appropriate. You don't need a huge chart on the wall to know what the characters mean, if you don't know what they mean you ignore them just like you are seeking to do in print. As for typing it, its great that the edit box actually has them included so you don't have to know the unicode values, you just click a link. They aren't in the English Alphabet but they are in the English Orthography. -DJSasso (talk) 13:29, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Have you ever visited any Vietnamese article? You might be nonplussed. Alakzi (talk) 13:45, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- With all due respect, saying that
they
(diacritics)are not in the English alphabet
only shows that you have nearly zero knowledge of English history. Back in the old days, "one, two, three, four" used to be written as "ān, twā, þrēo, fēowor
" — and, still, I don't think anyone can argue that "these are not English words". As for typing, I use a QWERTY keyboard, too, but typing alphabets likeáàêęçţčạẇėīōåøœæłțůžĉĝñẽã#€ëýȳÿ
are almost as easy as one-two-three (and I don't even need to bring up the special character panel below the edit box). Of course, this took me quite a bit of practise, ḃůţ ħéÿ, ṗřæċťïşẽ ṁąḱęś ṕèřƒēçť! —Cedric tsan cantonais 16:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC)- Using that argument suggests that you have a poor knowledge of English history. You do understand, don't you, that however much the English alphabet was different half a thousand years ago, we're editing here on the English Wikipedia, not the Middle English Wikipedia? Your argument is the moral equivalent of claiming that Americans are still subjects of the British Crown, just because they happened to be a few centuries ago. Yogh, thorn, eth, and wynn haven't been in the English language in several centuries, and neither are diacritical marks. Ravenswing 11:43, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- You know what? I'm pretty sure that English had already adopted Latin alphabets by the time Beowulf became codified. And yes, I'm totally aware that ð, þ, ƿ, etc., used to be alphabets of Old English, and I would totally advocate re-adopting at least ð and þ. And no, that does not equal me arguing that US citizens are still British subjects because the US had already declared their independence while you never specified which period of English we're talking about. OTOH, arguing that diacritical marks haven't been in the English language is simply ignorant. As far as I know, New York Times, for example, is sticking to café rather than cafe, and I don't think you can argue that "café" is not an English word now, can you? Cedric tsan cantonais 16:50, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Using that argument suggests that you have a poor knowledge of English history. You do understand, don't you, that however much the English alphabet was different half a thousand years ago, we're editing here on the English Wikipedia, not the Middle English Wikipedia? Your argument is the moral equivalent of claiming that Americans are still subjects of the British Crown, just because they happened to be a few centuries ago. Yogh, thorn, eth, and wynn haven't been in the English language in several centuries, and neither are diacritical marks. Ravenswing 11:43, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Do I get this right, Motörhead, Hüsker Dü, Blue Öyster Cult are wrongly named lemma because there is no diacritical sign in the poor english language? European top footballers like Petr Čech, Tomáš Rosický, Tomáš Ujfaluši, Thomas Müller, Jérôme Boateng, André Schürrle, İlkay Gündoğan and so forth (I just looked up Čech and German) should be dumbed down as well? That would be a great loss. The article should be proper named, the dumbed-down diacritic-less version should be a redirect imho. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk) 14:01, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Well, I would say the heavy metal umlat is less a problem of language, and more one of trademark. Resolute 20:17, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- This debate is ultimately a rehash of one that has long plagued the project. And, as with Ravenswing and DJSasso above, I am one of the editors that helped draft the compromise that brought about a truce in WP:HOCKEY's diacritics war. (The short version of the compromise is that NHL and NA team/league articles hide them, while European articles and all player articles show them.) At the time, I was one of the people with the "English Alphabet" mentality, but have subsequently 'switched sides' and favour their use. But from either perspective, and recognizing the overall lack of consensus, I think our compromise does a good job of maintaining order at this point in time. Though it should be noted that times are changing, as diacritical marks are slowly making appearances on NA team hockey jerseys, publications, etc. But that is in its infancy, and I don't see a need to revisit this now. Resolute 20:17, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- I beg to differ, sir/madam. As the means of inputting diacritics became more and more easily accessible, I would argue that now is the time for the pro-diacritic side to at least make a push to popularise diacritics (provided that they're used correctly, of course). And by "making a push", I mean that the pro-diacritic side should initiate conversations in order to make diacritics more and more widely accepted. Also, I think now is the time to amend the rules so when pro-diacritic users open up new articles with diacritics, anti-diacritic users won't be able to mess things around in these new articles and push them back into the Old Régime. Cedric tsan cantonais 18:05, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- It is not Wikipedia's place to right great wrongs. Nor is it our place to popularize diacritics. I sympathize with your viewpoint, but it will be some time yet before the movement of technology reaches the point where a consensus will form in your favour on Wikipedia. Resolute 18:08, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- In that case, I'll just keep telling others to "stop f*cking around on the pages that I opened", even though it wouldn't be likely for me to open up that many articles on English Wikipedia since Cantonese Wiki Projects remain my priority. — Cedric tsan cantonais 21:34, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- It is not Wikipedia's place to right great wrongs. Nor is it our place to popularize diacritics. I sympathize with your viewpoint, but it will be some time yet before the movement of technology reaches the point where a consensus will form in your favour on Wikipedia. Resolute 18:08, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- I beg to differ, sir/madam. As the means of inputting diacritics became more and more easily accessible, I would argue that now is the time for the pro-diacritic side to at least make a push to popularise diacritics (provided that they're used correctly, of course). And by "making a push", I mean that the pro-diacritic side should initiate conversations in order to make diacritics more and more widely accepted. Also, I think now is the time to amend the rules so when pro-diacritic users open up new articles with diacritics, anti-diacritic users won't be able to mess things around in these new articles and push them back into the Old Régime. Cedric tsan cantonais 18:05, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- The issue boils down to WP:COMMONNAME and the US/UK news media's inability to deal with diacritics in a sensible fashion. Most 'foreigners' new topics are introduced via the news media so their known-as names are those used by the media. The media refuses to deal with diacritics. Therefore WP:COMMONNAME is typically the topics true name minus the diacritics. Personally I prefer to use VIAF for preferred ASCII renderings of non-ASCII names where possible. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:05, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- With all due respect, sir/madam, I prefer Unicode. :P — CÉDRIC TSÄN CANTONAIS SAYS NO TO I.P. EDITS! 17:31, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
- It feels weird to have this discussion without User:PBS involved. Also, why isn't this discussion about a general rule over at the talk page for the actual rule? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:45, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads up WhatamIdoing. The title of this section says It's time to abolish the "Ignore the Diacritics" rule everywhere. There is not such rule what rules there are say follow usage in reliable English language sources.
The arguments based on WP:COMMONNAME—for which I think the link WP:UCRN (Use commonly recognizable names) is preferable—which is an important part of the Article titles policy is limited in scope to article titles. As is the guidance given in the policy section called "Foreign names and anglicization" (link WP:UE) and the explanatory guidelines called Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) as section of which called "Modified letters" (link WP:DIACRITICS)
The sections of the MOS that covers usage within articles (other than the subject of an article) is MOS:FOREIGN and also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Proper names § Diacritics.
The fundamental problem here is exactly the same as spelling in general. If one reads a paragraph that contains an unusual spelling such as color/colour and it is not in ones own dialect it tends to look odd, and editors will wish to change it. This was the driving force behind the creation of the rule about MOS:ENGVAR—and it is something that some third party style guides also describe (see here). The use of accent marks on names tends to spark the same annoyance as "incorrect" spellings. This tends to split the community by native monoglot English speakers/reader and those familiar with the presentation of the word in another language. For example I would imagine that most French people reading English Wikipedia see nothing odd in the use of Ivory Coast but if the name used is "Cote d'Ivoire" then it will bother them because they will be used to seeing it as "Côte d'Ivoire and like the color/colour spelling may wish to "correct" it.
On the alphabet. When one is at school in the English speaking world the alphabet is the 26 letter of the alphabet song, it does not include "&" or any other character. Accent marks are not introduced to children until they learn a "Foreign" language (this includes words such as cafe/café which if the child notices will be explained ways as a foreign word not yet fully Anglicised), so consequently accent marks are seen by most English speakers as a foreign things (blame it on teachers). Now I know that some English speakers are passionate about using the "correct" accent marks on words but they (both the users and the letters) are often seen as eccentric or pretentious by monglot English speakers, (an example of this comes across on pronunciation as well for words like Porsche#Pronunciation of "Porsche" those who pronounce it the German way are assumed either to own one or want to own one).
Faced with the instability this problem of "it does not look right", the Wikipedia community has several options.
- No guidance at all and a local consensus for each article. This was ruled out for the same reason that MOS:ENGVAR exists. Article content becomes unstable as people care passionately about this issue and some will edit war over it, so the community needed to issues guidance that reflects a wider community view.
- Guidance that accent marks will never be used.
- Guidance that accent marks will always be used.
- Guidance based on a rule similar to the Economist guideline that those languages which a generally educated person in an English language country ought to know, eg French for the British, Spanish for Americans, (the Economist also includes German and Portuguese).
- Guidance based on English usage. The first advantage of this one is simple to implement and it is less arbitrary than the Economist rule eg why German and not Italian? The second advantage is it produces spellings with "least surprise" for the majority of readers and therefore probably causes the least annoyance. Third it is simple to understand and ties in with the concepts behind "Use commonly recognizable names" (WP:UCRN) which in turn is based on the policy WP:V.
So while following usage in reliable English language sources does not always produce the "best" results, it has proved a reasonable and sustainable method for settling disputes over the "best" spelling to use for many years, because using sources to prove a point is widely used when trying to reach a consensus in many areas of disagreement in on Wikiepdia talk pages. For example the initiator of this section uses a source to make a point:
- "As far as I know, New York Times, for example, is sticking to café rather than cafe, and I don't think you can argue that "café" is not an English word now, can you? Cedric tsan cantonais"
This is how the policy is meant to work and it come naturally into play among experienced Wikipedians because it is so frequently used in debates about titles and content. And user:Cedric tsan cantonais when you wished to show that "café" is an English spelling you turned to an authoritative English language source; you did not use a French source such as here (the first page of who's survey seems to contradict your findings). But your point still stands, as does mine that when we as editors discuss the "correct" usage of "Cafe" and "Café" we turn to reliable English language sources to decide on English language usage, and that is what the policies and guidelines reflect. We may or may not disagree on which spelling we think looks better (is more correct), or whatever, but providing we are editing in good faith, even if we do not agree on those issues, we may well be able to agree on what is most frequently used in English reliable sources (even if we we are surprised by the finding and do not like the result). The guidance only breaks down when someone ignores usage (or plays the system by arguing that only sources that reflect their bias are reliable), because as editors editing in good faith, we can always go back to whatever the original usage was if reliable sources do not give a definitive answer. -- PBS (talk) 11:32, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- My two cents: Most of you are looking at this issue too narrowly. You're thinking of words or names in languages you're familiar with (like French in many of the examples), and think the only problem is diacritics on one or two letters. It isn't! Many other languages have have alphabets that have diverged more from the English (i.e, Latin) one than French did. These other languages have not only diacritics, but also additional or bizarrely modified letters, and worse, letters that look like English but are pronounced differently from their English cousin. The end of this spectrum are languages with completely different character shapes from English (e.g., Hebrew, Greek, Russian) or no alphabet at all (e.g., Chinese). At which point do we stop copying the topic's original native name, and start transliterating it into English? This is why we have an article called "Beijing", not "北京市", and "Pasha" not "paşa", because English speakers cannot read, and do not use, these foreign characters, so those are not useful as article names (but can appear in parantheses in the opening paragraph, of course). And if we do transliterate, it should be into some sort of commonly used English - not some phonetic alphabet. Check out http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Talk:Nazareth_Illit, where while everyone agreed that Hebrew names (in Hebrew letters) cannot be the name of English wikipedia articles, there was an argument whether the names of the articles should be some sort of theoretic transliteration nobody is familiar with, or the more commonly accepted simple transliteration into English.
87.69.227.74 (talk) 11:06, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
For those who claim that English uses its own "English alphabet", I have a simple message. There is no such thing as the ”English alphabet". English, like many other European languages, uses the Latin alphabet. It just doesn't use every possible letter available in that alphabet. Because of this convenience I myself, whose native language is Dutch, can read English without having to learn a different alphabet beforehand. And this example counts for any combination of languages which use the Latin alphabet. Russian, just like English, doesn't have its exclusive alphabet either. It uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Using or not using diacritics is not just a question of aesthetics, but actually one of spelling and, more importantly, pronunciation. Writing Petr Cech instead of Petr Čech provokes an entirely different and wrong pronunciation. Therefore we simply cannot ignore these characters. Transliterating should only between languages that use different alphabets or syllabaries (e.g. Kanji to Latin, Cyrillic to Latin,...). This is not the England (or even United States) wikipedia. This is an international encyclopedia, and this one is uses by many users, just like me, don't have English as a native language as well. Just claiming that all English speakers cannot read these "foreign" characters is blatantly ridiculous. We should really accept that millions of none native English speakers read this wikipedia as well. Therefore I support Cedric tsan cantonais's proposal to ditch this censoring of these characters which are even part of our alphabet. Tvx1 17:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I agree with Tvx1's point. But I cannot let the claim 'There is no such thing as the ”English alphabet"' stand. Here is the English alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Here is the Polish alphabet: AĄBCĆDEĘFGHIJKLŁMNŃOÓPRSŚTUWYZŹŻ. Both are derived from the classical Latin alphabet ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVXYZ. Maproom (talk) 06:14, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- FWIW, no "support" or "oppose" !vote will have much weight here unless a proper WP:RFC is created. And I wish anyone who attempts it good fortune as I can tell you right now it will end as no consensus. Resolute 17:18, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- @User:Tvx1 you write "There is no such thing as the ”English alphabet”". As I said above disputes are often resolved by looking at sources. What is your reliable source for that statement? Because a search of Google Books of "English-alphabet" states "about 89,600 results" and it returns 960 books,[1] the same search but limited to the 21st century states "about 13,900 results" and about 670 books.[2] which refutes your statement. There is a Classical Latin Alphabet (which was derived from an earlier alphabet) from which the English Alphabet is derived, but contains its own extensions such as "W", other languages have their own alphabets derived from the Classical Latin Alphabet their own additions or subtractions. Those that are derived from the Classical Latin Alphabet can be amalgamated into what is today called the "Extended Latin Alphabet" (or "Latin Alphabet" for brevity), but whether that concept existed and was commonly used before 1960 and the need for a term in computer science I know not, however a search of Google books for "Extended Latin Alphabet" (About 1,740 results) tellingly returns "Extended Latin Alphabet Character Set for Bibliographic Use" ISO (1975) as the second oldest use of the term with one mention the year before.[3]. -- PBS (talk) 10:16, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Boy do I differ with Tvx1 on this one. This is an English based Wikipedia. That's why we have so many different language encyclopedias to choose from. We use English sourcing whenever possible and we use the English alphabet when English sources lead us in that direction. We don't complain when the Serbian Wikipedia does strange things to US spellings nor should they when we do the same. We simply follow the English sources and use what the sources show us. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:56, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
Oppose further use of diacritics - Fyunck hits the nail squarely on the head. Let's review some basic realities and first principles:
- This is the English language Wikipedia;
- The English language Wikipedia is written in English to serve readers who read English;
- English is the native tongue of the overwhelming majority of English language readers of Wikipedia;
- The overwhelming majority of native English speakers are completely unfamiliar with the diacritics added to the Latin alphabet in the Croatian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, German, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Turkish, Vietnamese.
- Only a small percentage of English-speaking specialists learn these languages in American, British or Commonwealth secondary schools and universities. To the extent Americans learn a foreign language in high school or university, the overwhelming majority study Spanish or French. In short, the overwhelming majority of native English speakers cannot read or write a foreign language that makes widespread use of diacritical marks.
- The standard QWERTY keyboard in use throughout the English-speaking world does not include diacritics, and cannot produce diacritical marks without resort to the alternative ASCII alternative character sets -- which requires not only some understanding of spelling in the particular foreign language, but also knowledge of the ASCII character maps and ASCII character codes.
- To the extent the spelling and/or use of diacritical marks differ for an article title or subject, including proper names, we can and we should identify those differences in the first sentence of the lead of the article.
- To the extent the spelling and/or use of diacritical marks differ for an article title or subject, including proper names, we can and we should create redirects from spellings with diacritical marks to standard English article titles without diacritics.
- None of this intended as a slight to our international readers whose first language is not English; we love y'all and we appreciate your readership and editorial contributions, but demanding that native English speakers adopt foreign orthography for the English language Wikipedia is a bit over-the-top. One can only imagine the reaction of editors of the German, Hungarian or Serbian Wikipedias if native English writers demanded that those Wikis adopt English spelling and a diacritics-free orthography for articles about American, Australian, British, Canadian, Irish, and New Zealand subjects.
- Bottom line: Wikipedia should follow the standard majority practices of mainstream publications in the English language when comes to the use of foreign diacritics and orthography. That means omitting the diacritics in the vast majority of cases.
Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 11:39, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not convinced that diacritics posit any major problem to English speakers. Firstly, technical issues are pretty much non-existent: search engines have got no trouble finding these pages, and we've set up redirects from diacritic-less titles, etc. Secondly, if a speaker of English cannot parse the diacritics, would they not read the text as they normally would? What good does stripping Latin-alphabet names of their diacritics do? Alakzi (talk) 12:00, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Correction, the standard QUERTY keyboard can produce diacritics simply if the correct operating system is used. It has been simple to include many diacritics on the Macintosh since its inceptions and mobile keyboards make it even easier. Not to detract from the argument though, Windows and Linux do not, allow the easy addition of diacritics.
- With that said, the remainder of the arguments are sound and one is missing but alluded to in the conclusion: how do the majority of English-language sources present the name? 208.81.212.222 (talk) 18:19, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- It's not a question of creating problems, although I give up on many tennis player names once too many diacritics start pouring in. It's a question on what is used in English sources and what the title should be. I'm not saying we shouldn't also mention the foreign spelling, of course we should. But for normal everyday usage we should use standard English as sourced from English sources. If that tells us to use résumé instead of resume then that's what we use. If it tells us to use Zurich instead of Zürich then ditto. We let everyone know alternate spellings exist and move on. It even causes problems when trying to copy and paste a tennis player name from wikipedia into huge databases like the International Tennis Federation. Unless you use standard English it comes back as "not found." So I use a "follow the English sources" viewpoint. If there really aren't any English sources then we move out and use other sources at our disposal. But today we are forced, yes forced, to use diacritics in tennis player names, even if 99% of sources do not. Often even if a player has dropped the use of them herself. And we are not allowed to even mention that a standard English version exists in 99% of sources, lest the diacritic police come down on us like thunder. English versions of player names are banished forever per tennis RfC. I don't fight it anymore unless I can prove that a player uses the non-diacritic version on their own websites, facebook and twitter accounts. It just isn't worth it. I don't know what is taught in Canadian or Australian schools, but US schools don't teach them. They only let us know they exist because a few words still use them on occasion. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:17, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
RfC: Should Persondata template be deprecated and methodically removed from articles?
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Background (Persondata)
From Wikipedia:Persondata: "Persondata is a special set of metadata that can and should be added to biographical articles only. It consists of standardized data fields with basic information about the person (name, short description, birth and death days, and places of birth and death) that, unlike conventional Wikipedia content, can be extracted automatically and processed by cataloging tools and then used for a variety of purposes, such as providing advanced search capabilities, statistical analysis, automated categorization, and birthday lists."
The question of whether to delete {{Persondata}} has been visited in the past, the motivation being that Wikidata (and infoboxes) now provides better functionality, making Persondata obsolete. The main concern from the last RfC was that it was too soon, and that the info from Persondata should be copied to Wikidata before any deleting should be considered. Since then, a TfD ruled the template deprecated, but as there were only 4 users participating (compared with the ~50 users in the RfC) no action was put in motion to stop adding new templates.
In the meantime, PLbot has now copied all of |SHORT DESCRIPTION= to Wikidata (link). In various conversations, all other fields of Persondata have been argued to be too unreliable for any meaningful use. The bot request for copying the data to Wikidata is closed (archived), and Wikidata isn't interested in the remaining Persondata fields.
- Faults of Persondata
- Problems with name sorting, formatting guidelines not always followed, and there are also names like "Otto von Bismarck" or "Martin Luther King Jr" which are often mislabeled. (link, link)
- Problems with date formatting, also dates before a certain time are unreliable as Gregorian and Julian formats are indistinguishable (link). Also, dates rarely have references (link)
- Problems with location disambiguation; formatting and when there is no link markup, or too much link markup (link, link, link)
- It is not used by anyone that I know of (Periglio is now using Wikidata)
- User:Periglio/Wikidata: Analysis of accuracy of Persondata vs Wikidata.
- User:Pigsonthewing/Persondata: explains some additional problems with persondata
- Reasons to keep Persondata
- If anyone is currently using it.
- If the parameters other than short description can be shown to be useful and worth keeping.
- If any future use cannot be replaced by Wikidata.
- Rough plan
I have compiled a rough plan of how Persondata will be migrated to Wikidata and eventually deleted (A more detailed version can be found here). This is my own plan, and doesn't necessarily have to be the way we do it. I am only mentioning it here so I don't give the impression that this RfC is to delete Persondata immediately. Please discuss below if you have any suggestions.
- Transfer
|SHORT DESCRIPTION=across to Wikidata.
Done - Stop bots from automatically creating new Persondata templates.
- Notify users in relevant projects of deprecation.
- Transfer any new data to Wikidata, then remove methodically.
- Close the template and relevant pages when ready.
Questions:
- Is anyone still using Persondata?
- Are any Wikidata bots still extracting Persondata for new/revised articles?
- Can Persondata be considered deprecated and no longer added to articles?
- Is short description the only useful parameter?
- Main Question: Should the {{Persondata}} template be methodically removed from articles and no longer be used?
Proposed by Msmarmalade (talk) 07:23, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
Discussion (Persondata)
- Have a comment?
- The big problem with WikiData is that its "impossible" to edit and watch changes to articles (from enwiki). E.g. all {{authority control}} data has been moved to WikiData (and deleted from the articles) - how do we suppose editors to figure out how to change any wrong data? I think the same will happend with persondata if its transcluded from WikiData. The question is; - is anybody using persondata to anything? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Christian75 (talk • contribs) 18:15, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Comment In Preferences > Recent changes > Advanced Options, there's a checkbox for "Show Wikidata edits by default in recent changes and watchlist". Based on your comment, I guess it's not checked by default. I've been using it for a long time; so much so I forget when I even turned it on. Basically it shows when any change is made to the corresponding Wikidata entry for any articles in your watchlist. Jason Quinn (talk) 09:24, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I am aware of that, but I rarely use my watchlist. I use diffs. Christian75 (talk) 09:30, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Wikidata has diffs. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:50, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- So you suggest first to check changes (diffs) on enwiki, and then check changes to WikiData (if I realise that the article transclude anything from Wikidata at all)? Christian75 (talk) 10:12, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I suggested nothing. If you want a suggestion: use watchlists. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:20, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Thats not a solution if the change happend a few days ago. My oppion is. Do not use WikiData (on Enwiki) until its ready and templates on enwiki which transclude data from wikidata should have an "Edit button" with a direct link to the entry on WikiData. Christian75 (talk) 11:06, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- This is not a discussion of whether or not to use Wikidata on this Wikipedia. It is a discussion about whether or not to continue storing data in {{Persondata}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:23, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think it is. Your own argument to delete it is "and all of its functionality, and much more, is available using far better technologies, via Wikidata (and infoboxes)". If the alternative is WikiData; the discussion should be about using data from Wikidata too. Christian75 (talk) 14:40, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- This would only be true if we were talking about using [use of content from Wikidata on this Wikipedia] to replace [use of content from Persondata on this Wikipedia]. Since the set of articles in which the latter applies appears to be zero (do feel free to correct me), it's irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:53, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- A previous RfC came up with the objection that there was no suitable alternative for someone wanting to use the data from Persondata. This has been addressed by the community in getting Wikidata updated with the biographical fields. My own research confirms that the WD database is now just as reliable as Persondata. The question we are trying to resolve with this RfC is whether there is still a need to keep Persondata. The future plans for Wikidata are not relevant as they no longer involve Persondata. Periglio (talk) 22:22, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Did your own research take into account Wikidata date errors make it unstable and unreliable? —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)02:35, 7 May 2015 (UTC)- That's bunkum, as explained elsewhere on this page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:55, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Did your own research take into account Wikidata date errors make it unstable and unreliable? —
- I think it is. Your own argument to delete it is "and all of its functionality, and much more, is available using far better technologies, via Wikidata (and infoboxes)". If the alternative is WikiData; the discussion should be about using data from Wikidata too. Christian75 (talk) 14:40, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- This is not a discussion of whether or not to use Wikidata on this Wikipedia. It is a discussion about whether or not to continue storing data in {{Persondata}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:23, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Thats not a solution if the change happend a few days ago. My oppion is. Do not use WikiData (on Enwiki) until its ready and templates on enwiki which transclude data from wikidata should have an "Edit button" with a direct link to the entry on WikiData. Christian75 (talk) 11:06, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I suggested nothing. If you want a suggestion: use watchlists. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:20, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- So you suggest first to check changes (diffs) on enwiki, and then check changes to WikiData (if I realise that the article transclude anything from Wikidata at all)? Christian75 (talk) 10:12, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Wikidata has diffs. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:50, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I am aware of that, but I rarely use my watchlist. I use diffs. Christian75 (talk) 09:30, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Comment In Preferences > Recent changes > Advanced Options, there's a checkbox for "Show Wikidata edits by default in recent changes and watchlist". Based on your comment, I guess it's not checked by default. I've been using it for a long time; so much so I forget when I even turned it on. Basically it shows when any change is made to the corresponding Wikidata entry for any articles in your watchlist. Jason Quinn (talk) 09:24, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Question: Given that a recent discussion came to a consensus that wikidata was not a reliable source, where is quality control for this data going to be, if it's not in the Persondata additions in wikipedia? The last time I checked, wikidata had no policy equivalent to WP:BLP, so this is a serious issue. Stuartyeates (talk) 08:20, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is also "Not a reliable source". As was noted on the discussion you cite, neither is Wikidata supposed to be. Where is the quality control for persondata? WP:BLP is based on WMF policy, which applies to Wikidata, just like every other project. Please re-read the comments there by User:Snipre, User:TomT0m, User:Izno, User:Kaldari, User:Maximilianklein, User:filceolaire, User:Giftzwerg 88, all of whom correctly attempted to address your misapprehensions about how Wikidata works. Regardless, none of your arguments support keeping persondata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:18, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't use persondata actively, but I do use it for search. I have personally put a lot of aliases in the aliases field and these enable findability. Where the alternate comes from other links we have the redirects, but if you delete persondata you will lose these alternate spellings. I do think the accuracy of the dates and places is better on Wikidata, so I don't mind deleting that. As far as editing goes, maybe we should wait until Wikipedians feel more comfortable updating Wikidata. As a Wikidatan it's hard for me to say, but the fact there are so few templates transcluding information from Wikidata is an indication to me that most Wikipedians still feel uncomfortable editing there for some reason. Jane (talk) 08:31, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- A better way to make aliases searchable is to create redirects from them (or to add them to or disambiguation pages). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:53, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, but in some cases, such as Gaetano de Rosa, this name is already in use by another article, and making a disambig for an alternate spelling seems a bit extreme. Also, having the redirects on the page also helps for people reaching the page from other projects. Jane (talk) 11:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- A better way to make aliases searchable is to create redirects from them (or to add them to or disambiguation pages). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:53, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Question: as much data is duplicated between the persondata and an infobox on the same page - do we know how many pages contain conflicting datapoints (as in day of birth differences between infobox and persondata, or missing in one but not in the other), and how much of the infobox is getting updated when needed (as in e.g. the subject passed away) and how many editors do take the effort to immediately also update the persondata? I would expect that with the broad implementation of infoboxes that that data is, generally, more reliable than what is in the persondata box (people see the infobox is wrong, and update that). --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Not sure anyone knows but I feel that we would know better if we merged the data to WD and had a tool make the comparison and flag the differences for correction. A whole lot easier to do that at WD than here. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:42, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- In answer to these questions, death dates are updated within seconds of the death announcement! Persondata is always missed by these morbid people, but will usually be updated within a few days. My validation work has flagged up hundreds of examples where the Persondata is out of sync with the rest of the page. 95% of the time, it is Persondata that has an old or vandalised date. The bulk of birth and death dates have been copied to WD and again I am finding 100's of differences. More often than not, WD has picked up a dodgy date from Persondata. I have been trying to get the bot people to use the more reliable age templates, but thats another story. Periglio (talk) 21:52, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'd much rather see persondata merged into infoboxes to go at the bottom of the code (possibly creating what appears to be redundant parameters) so the data is still available without having to dig through dozens or thousands of history revisions and this would also allow the addition of vandal detection as the vandals might change the visible data in the infobox but are likely to leave the persondata alone (especially if it is a long infobox and that information is at the opposite end where they are unlikely to see it). This would allow for the infobox templates to detect an inconsistency and add the page to a category for a human to check for data accuracy. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)02:35, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Not sure anyone knows but I feel that we would know better if we merged the data to WD and had a tool make the comparison and flag the differences for correction. A whole lot easier to do that at WD than here. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:42, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I frequently use and make use of persondata. In some cases, I have found it contains details of dates and places or birth and death which do not appear in the text of an article but can prove extremely useful in researching further details of a biography. I also use the facility to record the variations in spelling (especially from non-English-language originals) of names and aliases/pen names/married names, etc. of an individual. In many cases, these variants are too cumbersome for inclusion in extenso in the article (or in a box). I am also rather concerned that Wikidata has not picked up essential data from earlier articles. While my recently created Raquel Lebrón is indeed in Wikidata with a date of birth, Carl Nielsen which has been in existence for years and now covers 37 languages has no date of birth in Wikidata! Can the bots not be upgraded to pick up such details from the articles themselves (since it has been decided the dates in persondata are unreliable)? And if the info is missing, can any editor simply enter it directly on Wikidata? I also think there should be a more straightforward way of entering Wikidata from any article rather than clinking on "edit" under languages (if the article is in more than one language). Maybe there could simply be a prompt "Wikidata" (leading to Create or Edit) in the LH margin?--Ipigott (talk) 09:34, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Please can you provide examples of pages (current or past) with dates in persondata, that are not displayed in the article? The only case where I can envisage this happening is where an unsourced or date has been removed, perhaps from a BLP, but overlooked in persondata - another reason why persondata is harmful. BTW, Nielsen's DoB was added to Wikidata- by a bot - on 27 April: [4]. That was likely picked up from the infobox in another-language Wikipedia; the lack of an infobox on our article makes it near impossible for a bot to extract such data with any certainty. Also, articles already have a "Wikidata item" link in the left-hand navigation (default desktop view) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:56, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- On Nielsen, I am amazed that a bot cannot be developed to pick up dates presented in a standard fashion at the beginning of the lead in several language versions, e.g. "Carl August Nielsen (Danish: [kʰɑːl ˈnelsn̩]; 9 June 1865 – 3 October 1931)...". I think the persondata on places and dates of birth is frequently added by editors translating an article from another language, indeed I do it myself. I nearly always start a biography by writing an introduction of one or two lines, a couple of pertinent references (one usually containing place and date of birth), the key categories and the persondata). One of the problems in regard to place of birth is that this should not be included in the lead but rather in a biography section. This means that when there are time constraints and the article is still at stub status, the only reference to place of birth and death might well be in persondata. See this for example. There are hundreds more from me and I often find other editors follow a similar approach -- although I cannot give you chapter and verse. It would be extremely difficult to find examples in retrospect as when I find them I add the missing details to the text of the article. All I can say is that if one has the date and place of birth, it is then much easier to search for other pertinent information about the person in question. This helps greatly when there are several notable people with the same (or similar) name.--Ipigott (talk) 13:04, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- So, no examples of pages (current or past) with dates in persondata, that are not displayed in the article? The claimed existence of a very tiny number of instances of an uncited date or place of birth, in persondata, but not in the body of an article, should not stand in the way of the proposed deprecation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:18, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- My validation work has highlighted many examples of living people with a death date lurking in Persondata. The point is that being invisible it is not subject to scrutiny by the average reader, they do not have citations and without additional research can not be treated as a reliable fact. Periglio (talk) 21:18, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- So, no examples of pages (current or past) with dates in persondata, that are not displayed in the article? The claimed existence of a very tiny number of instances of an uncited date or place of birth, in persondata, but not in the body of an article, should not stand in the way of the proposed deprecation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:18, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- On Nielsen, I am amazed that a bot cannot be developed to pick up dates presented in a standard fashion at the beginning of the lead in several language versions, e.g. "Carl August Nielsen (Danish: [kʰɑːl ˈnelsn̩]; 9 June 1865 – 3 October 1931)...". I think the persondata on places and dates of birth is frequently added by editors translating an article from another language, indeed I do it myself. I nearly always start a biography by writing an introduction of one or two lines, a couple of pertinent references (one usually containing place and date of birth), the key categories and the persondata). One of the problems in regard to place of birth is that this should not be included in the lead but rather in a biography section. This means that when there are time constraints and the article is still at stub status, the only reference to place of birth and death might well be in persondata. See this for example. There are hundreds more from me and I often find other editors follow a similar approach -- although I cannot give you chapter and verse. It would be extremely difficult to find examples in retrospect as when I find them I add the missing details to the text of the article. All I can say is that if one has the date and place of birth, it is then much easier to search for other pertinent information about the person in question. This helps greatly when there are several notable people with the same (or similar) name.--Ipigott (talk) 13:04, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Please can you provide examples of pages (current or past) with dates in persondata, that are not displayed in the article? The only case where I can envisage this happening is where an unsourced or date has been removed, perhaps from a BLP, but overlooked in persondata - another reason why persondata is harmful. BTW, Nielsen's DoB was added to Wikidata- by a bot - on 27 April: [4]. That was likely picked up from the infobox in another-language Wikipedia; the lack of an infobox on our article makes it near impossible for a bot to extract such data with any certainty. Also, articles already have a "Wikidata item" link in the left-hand navigation (default desktop view) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:56, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Question: is there a reason why history functionality could not in principal present an integrated timeline view of all changes to a page, transclusions, linked data, etc.? This was the problem with {{cite pmid}} and the like: it breaks wp:V when linked metadata is no longer valid. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Questions on multilingual issues. Do current plans also cover the German Personendaten, the French Wikipédia:Métadonnées personne, and all the other language equivalents? I can see nothing about the matter here or here. I would suggest the Germans and French in particular should be invited to take part in the current discussion. After all, Wikidata is a multilingual facility. Is biographical data from other languages being copied over to Wikidata on the same basis as data from EN articles? If so, can one trace exactly where it has come from (in case it needs to be updated or corrected)? It would be useful for those of us who frequently write biographies to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms involved. We could then no doubt contribute more usefully to Wikidata. It seems to me to be potentially an extremely useful tool for Wikimedia's multilingual environment. If the other items of data could be backed by editing facilities as efficient as those available to interwiki links, we could handle them very easily when creating new artilces. But we need improved guidelines and better editing facilities to ensure wider coverage and improved reliability.--Ipigott (talk) 14:37, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Probably - but that's irrelevant to the discussion of what we do on this Wikipedia. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:47, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
Do current plans also cover [...] the other language equivalents?
They could, but that's irrelevant to establishing consensus on this wiki. I don't think I disagree that they might be invited or otherwise.Is biographical data from other languages being copied over to Wikidata on the same basis as data from EN articles? If so, can one trace exactly where it has come from (in case it needs to be updated or corrected)?
Yes and yes. --Izno (talk) 19:17, 6 May 2015 (UTC)- In the french language Wikipedia, the Persondata is obsolete since 3 years. The template has been deleted on 2012-07-31. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 20:29, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- The plans discussed in this RfC do NOT include Personendaten. From my understanding, each wiki governs itself, and as such Persondata is not directly linked to Personendaten (or Métadonnées personne). If you think that this discussion will be of interest to them, you're welcome to post a notice over there—Msmarmalade (talk) 03:20, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- As to whether or not anyone is using {{persondata}}, I occasionally use its presence as a mark of the article being about a person, if I'm doing a category scan (this tool) among stubs - while scanning the deep contrent of Category:People stubs is possible, it's both too big to use. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:23, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- We have categories (and indeed, the Wikiproject Biography banner on talk pages) that serve that purpose. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:27, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- When you say it's "too big to use", what do you mean? Why wouldn't you want as many results as possible?—Msmarmalade (talk) 02:59, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- I mean that the scan would frequently never show up; even if it did, it would take it much longer than it should - all because it would need to scan through dozens (probably even hundreds) of categories. And we're talking about a need to exclude articles about people, not include them. And if I also want to exclude certain stub tags, a template on the talk page isn't helpful. What I would need is a single category or template which would be on trhe article page. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:37, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- I just want to quickly introduce myself - I used the Persondata template for a personal "celebrity birthday" project. This expanded into a Wikipedia data validation project, and recently converted to Wikidata. My work also confirmed that the bulk of the data in the Persondata templates is now available on Wikidata. i.e. Deleting Persondata is no longer a loss to the Wikidata project. I have spent many hours looking into why discrepancies occur. My conclusion is that both "databases" (Persondata and Wikidata) have accuracy problems, a lot of this is due to dates rarely being referenced in articles, but that is outside the scope of this RfC. I would like to see Wikidata being incorporated within Wikipedia infoboxes which would help with Wikidatas reliabilty problems. Personally, I would like to see Persondata disappear if only to free up resources to push Wikidata forward. Periglio (talk) 20:58, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Having now read through the comments so far, I think most people are being sidetracked by Wikidata. The issue under discussion is whether the Persondata template is useful or not. The template has its faults but nevertheless it is a database of biographical information. The big question is "Are there people actually making use of it?". This aim of this RfC is to find out if the effort keeping it maintained is worthwhile. Wikidata provides an alternative database and has potential to provide much more to Wikipedia but that is outside the scope of this RfC. Periglio (talk) 21:39, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Question: Some users have shown interest in using infoboxes (or perhaps categories) for the data fields that Wikidata will not take. I am all for this idea,
and for mandating infoboxes for BLP articles) (and actually, I mentioned this in the last RfC, but I've just been so caught up in the Wikidata front that I forgot). So, Firstly, Is it ok if I add this to my plan above (I don't know RfC editing protocol) just as something like "(edit: and/or infoboxes?)".Next, do we need separate community consensus to instigate this?Just because Wikidata considers the remaining fields unreliable, doesn't mean that Wikipedia necessarily has to discard them (However, the arguments I linked above may still be relevant). Also there were some potential issues mentioned in the last RfC about infoboxes when there is not enough information to fill them. For example an infobox with just the name is ugly and pointless (But then if Persondata only has the name then it can just be deleted) —Msmarmalade (talk) 02:05, 7 May 2015 (UTC)- Strong objection I certainly do not think infoboxes should become mandatory as part of this proposal. The use/need/nature of infoboxes for biographies merits a separate proposal.--Ipigott (talk) 07:47, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Ipigott: I think for the sake of this RfC, I'm only really interested in the suggestion of migrating excess Persondata to infoboxes (and creating infoboxes where appropriate). Mandating infoboxes on every BIO page would indeed need consensus and would be a huge task to try and implement (@EoRdE6: May feel differently.). If we don't worry about mandating infoboxes, would you be satisfied with moving excess Persondata to infoboxes?—Msmarmalade (talk) 13:53, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- I just think we need to have readily updatable machine readable data on these pages for bots and the like. I'm not saying it would be quick, or necessarily retroactive, but maybe just a mandate for new biographical articles with two sections or more, or when an article is expanded to be more than two sections. And the removal of persondata would def be a slow and taxing process, starting with stopping adding it (and stopping tools like AfC helper and AWB from adding it) and then moving and verifying the data has been moved somewhere. I just don't think a bot can really check this data either. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 14:20, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Ipigott: I think for the sake of this RfC, I'm only really interested in the suggestion of migrating excess Persondata to infoboxes (and creating infoboxes where appropriate). Mandating infoboxes on every BIO page would indeed need consensus and would be a huge task to try and implement (@EoRdE6: May feel differently.). If we don't worry about mandating infoboxes, would you be satisfied with moving excess Persondata to infoboxes?—Msmarmalade (talk) 13:53, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Strong objection I certainly do not think infoboxes should become mandatory as part of this proposal. The use/need/nature of infoboxes for biographies merits a separate proposal.--Ipigott (talk) 07:47, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Sorry, I cannot agree with EoRdE6. In the case of biographies of artists and others from the cultural sector, there are often good reasons why a carefully chosen image rather than an info box with a photo of the individual is presented at the top of the article. There have been extensive (and often heated) discussions on the matter and as far as I know it has still not been resolved. If an infobox already exists in a biography, I would not object to details from Persondata being added but new boxes should not be created or substituted without consensus on the article in question. I would far prefer to see the data transferred to Wikidata but there seems to be general agreement that it is not reliable enough. I have been informed that we cannot take into account Persondata from other languages but I would have thought that cross-language checks would probably be an excellent way of checking the validity of the data for inclusion in Wikidata. And why has no one suggested checking against all the items in authority control which has been added to a large number of biographies? This too could be automated.--Ipigott (talk) 15:06, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Question If we should decide to get rid of Persondata. What kind of time scale between a successful proposal for deletion and the actual deletion would people think is reasonable? In other words, should there be a grace period and, if so, for how long? Jason Quinn (talk) 12:08, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Seventeen seconds? Seriously: as soon as possible, unless anyone advances evidence of an exmaple of a problem that will be caused by delaying. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:31, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Question: Currently persondata can be put on redirects (think the individual members of Category:Duos). My understanding is that currently practise limits infoboxes to article space (at least I don't recall seeing an infobox on a redirect). Is this going to change? Stuartyeates (talk) 21:12, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
Support (Persondata methodical removal)
- Support I would prefer to see the data of birth, death and a short description in an infobox, open to all, not hidden, and connected to the rest of Wikipedia with the links to periods and places. Look at Handel or Beethoven for an example. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:24, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support removing persondata completely, with moving missing data into the infobox. The latter is more visible, and avoids duplication. What WikiData does (besides WikiDataDrowning) is beyond this - I guess it would be good that they have the data .. but as it is unchecked, 'invisible' (our watchlists do not get alerted if s.o. changes it there) I don't have a real opinion on that problem.
- Note: some data, like synonyms etc., does not necessarily be visible, but it would be good to be parsed like in the persondata - that functionality can of course be duplicated by our infoboxes, and the data can then be moved from the persondata box to the infobox. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:48, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Watchlist updates for Wikidata changes are already available, as described above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:45, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Pigsonthewing: - but that would require to check both your local watchlist, and the WikiData watchlist. I do the former, not the latter. If only WikiData would have thought before inserting terafields of data how to have each datapoint verified and referenced ... --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- No it would not, as Jason Quinn explains near the top of the "discussion" section, above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:48, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Note: some data, like synonyms etc., does not necessarily be visible, but it would be good to be parsed like in the persondata - that functionality can of course be duplicated by our infoboxes, and the data can then be moved from the persondata box to the infobox. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:48, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support removal. Persondata is harmful, as I outline at User:Pigsonthewing/Persondata; and all of its functionality, and much more, is available using far better technologies, via Wikidata (and infoboxes). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:45, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support using persondata templates is a complete anachronism. It is completely single wiki focused, manual, and doesn't follow a smart idea of keep it simple. For those concerned, ensure that we have a process to ensure that the data is there prior to removal. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:20, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Cautious support for removal of PERSONDATA. I opposed the previous RfC on the basis that it was premature - i.e. Wikidata wasn't ready/up for the task. However, as we can "hide" any data that cannot be migrated, it seems to me a this would be "a good thing". Philg88 ♦talk 10:24, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Persondata adds nothing to the encyclopaedia (it's not even visible when reading an article). Metadata like this belongs on Wikidata, and now that the necessary data have been copied across it's time to delete Persondata. WaggersTALK 12:01, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support for the same reason I gave last time; it is just more edit window clutter. SpinningSpark 12:40, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support moving this stuff where it belongs, and keeping anything deemed to be useful. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Cautious support: I believe it is time to enact step 2: Stop bots from automatically creating new Persondata templates. When bots add the template, it creates more article entries into those hidden categories (...missing short description), which fools such as I feel impelled to fill when I am doing other tasks. The other obvious question that I have is: isn't there still some issue with infoboxes being in / out of certain articles? What of those articles declared, (wherever those laws are), to NOT have one under penalty of whatever? (Curious minds...) Fylbecatulous talk
- Support I believe it is time to remove this. Wikidata covers it better. -DJSasso (talk) 14:07, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support, per my comment on the last RfC. It's separating plumbing from porcelain. Protonk (talk) 14:09, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Also, looking at Pigsonthewing's essay, I can't help but agree. I've never edited persondata, so I've probably inadvertently introduced discrepancies without even realizing it. I didn't even know what it was until the last RfC. Protonk (talk) 12:23, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support removal. The Persondata template appears to have very very limited usage and I have not seen use cases (including that of Ipigott below) where the benefits outweigh the problems of keeping it. The template's attempt to add semantic structure to data is outside the proper scope of the encyclopedia and now that Wikidata exists, such efforts have a proper venue. The non-reader-facing nature of the data has always been problematic and just adds an extra place for data to be out-of-sync. As far as the encyclopedia should be concerned, the persondata information is best presented in infoboxes or incorporated into the article text, or as redirects in the case of aliases. The non-reader-facing aspect also appears to have impacted its reliability too, as per Periglio's conclusions. After all, we cannot collaborate and fix data we cannot see. I'd also like to inject that the purpose of the persondata template is non-obvious and adds an additional barrier of intimidation and confusion for new editors. If Wikipedia were a garden, persondata would be a weed and we should uproot it. On the whole I am unworried about the loss of data, which I think would be minor, if the template were simply removed: this data is not irrecoverable, and any lost data would be re-added eventually and in a better, more appropriate way. Adding information is what we, as Wikipedians, normally do and what we are best at. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:14, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support A WikiData based methodology will simply produce more accurate information. Onward! --j⚛e deckertalk 15:12, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support with the provision that a user should verify that any useful information from the Persondata template has been transwikied to Wikidata before removing the template. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:42, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Strong support. Ironholds (talk) 18:45, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support, for all the reasons above. Alakzi (talk) 18:54, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support - I've never seen the point but anyway WikiData covers it all. –Davey2010Talk 19:51, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support - I think there is very little chance that any of the remaining data will be ported to Wikidata. At this point we should move on and not have overlapping workflows for adding the same information. Kaldari (talk) 20:02, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support - Wikidata has extracted all it can from the template. I was still using it for data validation purposes but finding that the incorrect date was in Persondata 95% of the time. I would rather everyones efforts be put into gettng Wikidata up to speed, not keeping Persondata maintained. Periglio (talk) 20:39, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support as functionality is better served by other mechanisms, (categories, infobox and wikidata). It adds extra work to add and maintain. It would have less reliable data, for example I am one of the people that will add dubious data from unreliable references to persondata because it does not need any reference. However it would be good to get a copy of what was there before it is removed by bots and overzealous editors. But it would not be truly lost as it will still be in history, so perhaps the scan prior to culling can record the revision that contained persondata. (especially if there are inconsistencies). Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:32, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Wikidata seems to be as good or better in every significant way, and we shouldn't keep a redundant template around unnecessarily. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:14, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support as above. filceolaire (talk) 01:42, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support but, from a layman's perspective, it looks like we urgently need to make access and editing of Wikidata values more intuitive and easier for non-tech editors, and develop clear guidelines (in common language using short words) about when and how to use Wikidata values in Wikipedia. With all the current buzz about Wikidata, I see little available information, how Wikipedia-content and Wikidata-values are supposed to be handled together in daily practice. GermanJoe (talk) 03:20, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support this appears to be outdated, redundant, and a maintenance burden. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:44, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support no need for it, confusing to the average editor. Dougweller (talk) 09:05, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support per JasonQuinn's reasoning. APerson (talk!) 13:20, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support removing persondata completely; data that WikiData wants can go there, and our infoboxes can cover the full set of data currently in PersonData. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:45, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Even before Wikidata, I always viewed PersonData as a solution in search of a problem. Resolute 20:20, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Never liked it to begin with. Hidden from readers, unstructured data input, no real uses for the data... Renata (talk) 13:31, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (Message me) 14:42, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support - As infoboxes have all what is needed, persondata is redundant.- Cwobeel (talk) 00:50, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support - Time to move on. It is a shame to remove something into which editors have put time and effort but that is the price of progress. Wikidata has better structured data and removing persondata allows us to focus our efforts on further improving Wikidata, e.g. to make its functionality and data more visible to editors and readers.--Wolbo (talk) 21:05, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support per Jason Quinn. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:43, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support Per various reasons above. I much prefer WikiData, anyway. Prefall 15:03, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Oppose (Persondata methodical removal)
- Strong Oppose: Provides all kinds of information that wiki articles just don't usually provide: namely: all variants/spellings/iterations of name/aliases/pseudonymns/stage names/birth name/nickname/common name/full name/various married names, etc. Persondata harms no one, and benefits many. I use it and benefit from it. Softlavender (talk) 08:49, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Wikidata provides all that functionality; better. How do you use it? With what tools? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:07, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Moreover, most of the data, and certainly ALL of the functionality can be performed by infoboxes (including non-displaying fields containing all variants/spellings/iterations of name/aliases/pseudonymns/stage names/birth name/nickname/common name/full name/various married names, etc.). Having them all in one place overrules the necessity to duplicate (some fields are commonly found in both the infobox and in the persondata). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beetstra (talk • contribs) 11:41, 6 May 2015
- Wikidata has the necessary fields for that data (for example pseudonym; official name; nickname; birth name). However in terms of migrating
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES=to Wikidata, this information would need to be manually transferred, since the formatting in Persondata is not suitable for a bot to process. @Beetstra: would it be possible for a bot to transfer this information into infoboxes? Or is it a similar situation with formatting? —Msmarmalade (talk) 02:56, 7 May 2015 (UTC)- Should be possible, but formatting may indeed be a problem. I am sure that there are many cases where the information is formatted differently between specific infoboxes and persondata. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:16, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose: On the basis of my comments above, I think this is still premature.--Ipigott (talk) 09:36, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Ipigott: Under what circumstances would you consider it no longer premature? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:00, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Once we have found a more reliable way of transferring basic information on date and place of birth and death and variants on the individual's name over to Wikidata. I do not agree that boxes should be the only reliable source. Maybe tools could be developed to allow editors to add this information to Wikidata, where possible with references, while an article is being created or edited. I have looked at the Wikidata records on several noted individuals and find them sadly lacking.--Ipigott (talk) 12:39, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- But that has already been tried, and it has been found to be impossible to do so without introducing an unacceptable number of errors; for the reasons stated (and in discussion linked to) elsewhere on this page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:47, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Once we have found a more reliable way of transferring basic information on date and place of birth and death and variants on the individual's name over to Wikidata. I do not agree that boxes should be the only reliable source. Maybe tools could be developed to allow editors to add this information to Wikidata, where possible with references, while an article is being created or edited. I have looked at the Wikidata records on several noted individuals and find them sadly lacking.--Ipigott (talk) 12:39, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Ipigott: Under what circumstances would you consider it no longer premature? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:00, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose if my understanding is correct. Wikidata has no interest in supporting all the fields and they all hold value, so I can't support deprecation and migration to Wikidata. I would probably support deprecation and merging with infoboxes however, if that was to be put on the table as an alternate proposal. I'd happily embed persondata with infoboxes and then go through and bot edit to move the persondata parameters into the infoboxes. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)10:23, 6 May 2015 (UTC)- @Technical 13: Which Persondata fields do you believe are not supported in Wikidata? It seems to me that they all are. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:29, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Andy, I'm only going by this proposal, which declares at the very top PLbot has now copied all of
|SHORT DESCRIPTION=to Wikidata (link). In various conversations, all other fields of Persondata have been argued to be too unreliable for any meaningful use. (bolding mine) —{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)10:38, 6 May 2015 (UTC)- Hmm .. so the argument is now that since all these fields are too unreliable for any meaningful use, we have to keep 'm all here? --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:41, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- The reliability of the fields is a matter of opinion and debate I suppose, and I don't agree with you that the data we've had in persondata since its inception for name, date of birth, date of death, place of birth, place of death, etc is any less reliable than short description. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)10:54, 6 May 2015 (UTC)- No, it is not a mere matter of opinion; the problems have been demonstrated, with examples. People have tried, and been unable to resolve the issues. If you have some solution that's not already failed, by all means please state it now. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:49, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- The reliability of the fields is a matter of opinion and debate I suppose, and I don't agree with you that the data we've had in persondata since its inception for name, date of birth, date of death, place of birth, place of death, etc is any less reliable than short description. —
- That means we're not copying the Persondata data over; the fields ("keys") themselves are supported by Wikidata, and have been mostly filled in using infobox metadata, if my understanding is correct. Alakzi (talk) 10:43, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'd have no problem with that if it made sense. If that is the case, why is the mentioned field different? What makes people think that infobox data is any more reliable than persondata info? I've often found BLPs where trolls have modified the infoboxes trying to push their POV and left the sourced data in persondata alone because they didn't know what it was or didn't see it at the bottom of the article. I'd say infobox data is probably less reliable for these things that don't often change (my date of birth hasn't changed in decades and I don't expect it to). —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)10:54, 6 May 2015 (UTC)- Infobox data is more visible, so more likely to be corrected, if bogus, than hidden persondata. It is also more easily disambiguated, because it is more often linked (e.g.
[[Paris, Texas|Paris]]). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:57, 6 May 2015 (UTC) - This is contrary to the experience of the bot operator commenting at Wikidata. Alakzi (talk) 11:01, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Infobox data is more visible, so more likely to be corrected, if bogus, than hidden persondata. It is also more easily disambiguated, because it is more often linked (e.g.
- I'd have no problem with that if it made sense. If that is the case, why is the mentioned field different? What makes people think that infobox data is any more reliable than persondata info? I've often found BLPs where trolls have modified the infoboxes trying to push their POV and left the sourced data in persondata alone because they didn't know what it was or didn't see it at the bottom of the article. I'd say infobox data is probably less reliable for these things that don't often change (my date of birth hasn't changed in decades and I don't expect it to). —
- The unreliability of the data in Persondata (as previously explained - feel free to refute that explanation; and explain how you would import such data into Wikidata; or even to infoboxes) does not mean that the data fields are not supported (and populated by other means) in Wikdiata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:51, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Wikidata_date_errors indicates that persondata is likely still more reliable than Wikidata. So, still going to have to go with "Wikidata is not stable and ready yet". —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)00:47, 7 May 2015 (UTC)- You've linked to a new conversation with no replies, which provides 3 examples of errors (with suspicion of more). While potential coding error is a concern, I find this to be a very weak argument compared to Periglio's analysis and the various arguments linked above.—Msmarmalade (talk) 02:31, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- ...and none of those errors relates to people, so persondata is no solution. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 07:33, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- The reliability (accuracy) of the data and reliability (availability) of the service are two completely different things. (For God's sake, why are people using Module:Wikidata in mainspace? Whoever's said that it's ready for primetime?) Persondata cannot even be used in this manner, so what point are you trying to make? Alakzi (talk) 02:49, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- The argument I think Technical 13 is making is that if Wikidata's dates are less accurate than Persondata's dates, then we can't justify outright deleting Persondata dates. —Msmarmalade (talk) 02:54, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- That's not the argument he was making just now. Alakzi (talk) 03:13, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- The argument I think Technical 13 is making is that if Wikidata's dates are less accurate than Persondata's dates, then we can't justify outright deleting Persondata dates. —Msmarmalade (talk) 02:54, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- You've linked to a new conversation with no replies, which provides 3 examples of errors (with suspicion of more). While potential coding error is a concern, I find this to be a very weak argument compared to Periglio's analysis and the various arguments linked above.—Msmarmalade (talk) 02:31, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Wikidata_date_errors indicates that persondata is likely still more reliable than Wikidata. So, still going to have to go with "Wikidata is not stable and ready yet". —
- Hmm .. so the argument is now that since all these fields are too unreliable for any meaningful use, we have to keep 'm all here? --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:41, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- There are over a million Persondata templates and the information from these has been migrated to Wikidata. Wikidata no longer has a use for the template. The issue here is whether the Persondata template can be deprecated and removed from enwiki. I see your point about using Persondata to create infoboxes and this could be discussed further if we get to the stage of talking about how we deprecate. Periglio (talk) 22:52, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Andy, I'm only going by this proposal, which declares at the very top PLbot has now copied all of
- @Technical 13: Which Persondata fields do you believe are not supported in Wikidata? It seems to me that they all are. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:29, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose for now. Until consensus can be reached to add infoboxes to all articles it should be kept. More importantly, I ask what harm it is causing? And lastly Persondata may/is relied upon by outside things such as Google Knowledge Graph and other private uses, and I can't see the benefit of removing their sources. I of course support the use of Wikidata, but until all persondata can be found in the infobox, and through consensus they are mandated, I don't support removing this harmless feature. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 18:54, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- The main harm is additional maintenance. The data can end up being in 4 places, in the main body text of the article, in the infobox, in persondata and in wikidata. This would just be the start of reducing that down to three places. Further work could be done on infoboxes to take the data from wikidata (if no parameters were supplied), which would then reduce that to two places. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:45, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- As I keep mentioning, I have worked on data validation. I can confirm that hundreds of articles have conflicting dates and the hidden fields in Persondata are normally the ones that are to blame. Periglio (talk) 22:28, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I've added a comment regarding infoboxes in the discussion section above. Can you provide evidence that Google Knowledge graph uses Persondata? I had just assumed they use infobox. Also can you please specify some examples of "other private uses"? —Msmarmalade (talk) 03:34, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- FYI Knowledge Graph uses Wikidata now for this acording to Denny Vrandečić from Google. --FischX (talk) 08:15, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- @FischX: Can you please provide a link to where he says this? —Msmarmalade (talk) 10:27, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- No, because the webinterface for wikidata-l doesn't support searching. But feel free to subscribe and look it up yourself. --FischX (talk) 13:46, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- @FischX: Can you please provide a link to where he says this? —Msmarmalade (talk) 10:27, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose "as per" oppose #1 and #3. I'm sorry, I don't have too much more to contribute to this discussion. Thanks, --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 00:07, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose per #1. But it looks like most people want to get rid of it. BIt will be interesting to see if new article gets any description on WikiData when wikidata cant import it from Enwiki. I think we have evidence that when text are not visible at enwiki nobody sees it and "nobody" edits it like wikiquote, news, and so on. Christian75 (talk) 18:54, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose - right now the infobox simply doesn't have the capability of PersonData, including the ability to have text that is invisible to the page, such as basic description (eg 14th-century English knight) or to include "also known as" for alternate spellings, previous names, etc. These are highly useful for searching. I do favor infoboxes however and think they should be mandatory when sufficient info is available. And Wikidata, in my experience, is very clunky - asking people to go to a second page to input data for every article is going to cause some problems. —МандичкаYO 😜 00:09, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
A way to prevent revertwars from erupting
I propose a way to eliminate the current separation between the discussion and revision history pages, as it is a major cause of edit wars. For example, if one's contribution is undone (itself a much-abused tool), what is often the first instinct? To revert it! And leave a message in edit summary explaining why the undoer is wrong. They will in turn likely do the same... leaving an edit summary message saying why you are wrong. This only leads to reversion wars, because the only way to reply, to leave a message on that page, is to make an edit... The talk page? Indeed, leave the edit conflict, go there and navigate the wall of text, edit the page (which is more cumbersome than a message box system), then try to attract the other's attention... and who is going to start the discussion? The one whose version is current doesn't care anymore, the other one only cares about making their version current! If only messages could be posted inline on the revision history page, the whole process would become so much less reversome and smoother. The messages would be posted through a message box, and be posted on the page as expandible stubs, shown in chronological order between the revision versions. There would be clickable tags inside the messages that would scroll to the message being replied to, and tags to scroll to any replies. If there are more than eg five or ten messages between two revisions, the list could be collapsed. Messages posted privately from one of the users to another would show up as stubs that are only expandible by the sender and receiver. And a captcha in the messagebox would prevent spam and overuse.
The current system makes it pathologically ready to invalidate another user's contribution by deleting it entirely (which is distinctly inflammatory), and far too cumbersome to discuss changes instead. And this creates disproportionate damage when the edit in question is large, as it's more likely to be reverted. So even though most edits aren't reverted, reversion is a big problem.
Regarding undo: 'undo' is far too often a way of saying 'I sort of disagree, and can't be bothered to show subtlety'. Instead of 'undo', the button should be 'see changes' (with an edit box below a comparison of this version and the one preceeding it, and the ability to select and copy text from the two sides separately). This would encourage people to treat others' contributions with greater respect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.211.109.208 (talk) 03:55, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- How often have I thought this: what a clumsy system - if you want to know for sure whether an editor has provided any justification for, e.g. a content removal, you have to check both the edit history and the talk page. In practice, article talk pages seem to be going out of fashion, with whole elaborate discussions taking place through a sequence of edit summaries. IP is also right that we have a structure that makes for conflict, not collaboration, owing to the fact that reverting is very much less trouble than judicious editing and discussion. If a system along the lines described turned out to be technically feasible it would be well worth pursuing. We do, though, need to keep the "undo" button, for straight reversion of straight vandalism: Noyster (talk), 11:15, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
WP:BRD. --Atlasowa (talk) 12:19, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- Posting nothing but a WP link, without anything in your own words, is unconstructive or even borderline linkspam. BRD?? there's a joke. Thag whole page is nothing but a wall of politically correct refusal to admit straight up that a monster has been created (and no offence to monsters), that noone seems willing to do something about 'undo' abuse, when it's so pathologically easy to wipe a contribution out in two clicks rather than bother editing with consideration, or devote entire days to discussion on a separate page...
- I do think Noyster is right about the need to have a way to easily undo vandalism. I do think, however, that a Report Vandalism button could work better, by invoking a third party (an admin), to resolve arguments over whether deletion of a content the editor dislikes is vandalism or not. 85.211.108.179 (talk) 08:38, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- IP editor, the problem is that you (and other editors at that article) are engaging in WP:REVTALK. Don't Do That, chuckle. REVTALK actually encourages reverting because the only way to communicate is by preforming more reverts. Your proposal would actually make the problem worse.
- A simple revert with edit summary is appropriate - the first time. Do not simply make an edit that you know is contentious and is likely to be reverted. Generally, you know someone already objects to your edit the moment you would be reverting a revert. I have a trick that actually works in your favor. If you would be reverting a revert, first explain your case on the Talk page then and make the revert with an edit summary pointing to the Talk page explanation. That breaks the REVTALK cycle and sends the other person to Talk. By being the person to break the cycle you (usually) get the advantage of keeping your version live on the article page during Talk discussions. If the other person reverts instead of Talking then they are blatantly at fault for editwarring.
- P.S. You have the right to IP Edit, but it's easier to work here and you'll get more respect if you make a named account. Alsee (talk) 11:04, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- I've got a better solution: No more anonymous edits. Everyone who wants to edit Wikipedia should open up his/her/their own accounts. Statistics had told us that 80% of vandalism on Wikipedia are done by those hding behind IP addresses. If people truly want to contribute to Wikipedia, identifying themselves by opening up accounts really isn't that much to ask for. Cedric tsan cantonais 17:20, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
Preventing revert spats from occuring, is like preventing editors from having emotions. Nobody likes to see their additions or deletions reverted & quite often our reaction tends to be revert back. At that very moment, tempers flair. The only way you're gonna cut down this occurances, would be a Wikipedia-wide 1RR rule. GoodDay (talk) 17:40, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
'The only way to communicate is by preforming more reverts' is exactly what the proposal is addressing; to have comments posted in between page versions on the revision history page, instead of the (no) talk page where only tumbleweed proliferates. The very existence of the REVTALK article is like an admission that people find the talk pages way too separated from the centre of activity, and REVTALK for the convenience of having the conversations where the edits are.
Indeed noone likes 'being reverted' (or so it feels), and yes tempers flare... but often they flare even before that time, as soon as the dark red messages notification square appears in the top middle of the screen, clashing with the rest of the color scheme. The 'message' is often the automatic undo notification, meaning you are supposed to go and BRD the other... well-intentioned editor. This is why I don't browse logged in anymore - I want to read my beloved Wikipedia in peace, without looking over my shoulder all the time, for someone potentially reverting an edit I made months or (on quieter pages) years ago.
The problem is that the 'undo' gives people the wrong kind of power. By its design a powerful anti-vandalism tool, using it essentially says 'this edit is vandalous/superfluous'. All in just two clicks. If people instead edited actual text, they would put some care into it, and be less casual about erasing it. If i stead there was a button to open the altered section of the article for editing, and to show the difference that that revision had made, that would decrease the incidence of complete reversion. An infopopup should appear, telling that the other editor would be notified - this should be a prominent element, and give people a moment's pause.
-And by showing the differences, any vandalism would be obvious and easy to reverse, too. (the preceeding version of the page should be available in a box below in case of restoring deleted material)
85.211.108.179 (talk) 18:58, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
- Would encouraging editors to perform dummy edits (edits that don't change the article in any visible way) with either a response or a "see talk page" instead of a response also address this problem? Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:43, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Please don't do that. Histories are sufficiently hard to follow without a bunch of pointless dummy edits cluttering them further. The advice above is correct: the first revert should use a decent edit summary, and any second revert should be only after posting on talk, in which case the edit summary would include "see talk". Johnuniq (talk) 12:09, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Please don't do that. Histories are sufficiently hard to follow without a bunch of pointless dummy edits cluttering them further. The advice above is correct: the first revert should use a decent edit summary, and any second revert should be only after posting on talk, in which case the edit summary would include "see talk". Johnuniq (talk) 12:09, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Darkfrog24: - I too thought about the leaving summaries via dummy edits, but people might be too tempted to edit once they have the edit window open. A more elegant way of posting short/collapsible comments on history would work better.
- Johnuniq: - this advice would be an improvement compared to the current BRD, as it would not require people to plead, and then wait to receive the reverter's consent before putting back the material. The design of BRD is a prominent example of misunderstanding of humans, and misplaced expectations. It was supposed to 'highlight opposing views'... and it does this alright. BRD as it is might as well be 'Bold Rage Delete'. As a policy BRD altogether goes out the window in revert conflict. But at the start, it is what helps trigger it. BRD 'emboldens' potential 'reverters' (especially with the 'undo' link as prominent as it is). It implies that the immediate way to deal with (potentially any) edit is to obliterate (revert) it, rather than try to adapt it to the article content. The policy (once one reads it) does of course encourage people to work with the new edit. But that is not the popular perception borne from the phrase 'bold revert discuss'. People see BRD as excusing hair-trigger reverts. Most people do not actually see their edits as 'bold', and being reverted triggers a feeling of unfsirness, and a reaction to put it back. And maybe add the reason in an edit summary (not the talk page). And you'll find it hard to convince them of the fine difference. But there wouldn't be a whole WP waggling its finger at people for talking via edit summaries, if only there was a way to post 'summaries' without the 'edit' part. It would make it a nonissue, as people would post a reply on the history page and then edit. The entire edit cycle would go a lot smoother with this.
- Darkfrog24: - I too thought about the leaving summaries via dummy edits, but people might be too tempted to edit once they have the edit window open. A more elegant way of posting short/collapsible comments on history would work better.
Which usergroups should be allowed to add and remove tags ?
It is now possible to manually add tags, provided they have been defined by admins at Special:Tags, and to remove these as well as undefined tags. Two userrights are added :
- The applychangetags right allows to add a tag when making an edit, which is useful for scripts since it allows to track edits made by the script. It is given to all registered users by default, and it is not proposed to change this.
- The changetags right allows to add tags after the edit has been made (typically by another user) and remove tags provided they are user defined or not defined at all. It is useful especially for bot tagging (vandalism, copyvios, etc), and the ability to remove them is needed in case of abuse or bot failure. It is given to all registered users by default.
In the original feature request, there was consensus to provide the abilities offered by the changetags userright to bots and sysops, but not beyond these two groups. As such, I suggest that this second right, changetags, be removed from the 'registered user' group, in accordance with the previous consensus, and added to 'bot' and 'sysop', for the following reason :
- The user interface is quite visible in histories, logs and once phab:T98611 will have been resolved, contributions; which could be confusing for inexperienced users and of little general use. On the other hand, sysops already have the chechboxes of revision deletion so it's a minor change for them. (It is not shown currently since no manual tags have been defined. EDIT: But as soon as tags will be created for use by bots or scripts, the UI will be visible again.) See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 136#Edit Tags.
- The use case is relatively small, and when needed a sysop can be asked to make the cleanup (same as moving without redirect).
- It's relatively easy to cause disruption with this feature by removing undefined tags which might still be of use, and in other ways once multiple manual tags will have been defined.
It has also been suggested to grant the 'changetags' userright to template editors and edit filter managers, to which I have no objection but which would require a consensus. Cenarium (talk) 16:58, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- You do realize it is already hidden from all other users except sysops right, so we can't use it anyway. It was solved on VPT last week and in phab, don't know the number RN. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 17:05, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
- This was 'solved' only temporarily (and sysops can't see it either, for your information). When tags will have been defined, the UI will be visible again. I made this clearer. And even though the UI is hidden, the action can still be used. Cenarium (talk) 00:32, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think we should move it to auto confirmed. Then hide the interface behind some type of opt in, requiring either a preferences setting or css/javascript to enable it. It seems no more likely to be abused than many other things auto-confirmed editors can already do, and the issue with it being so visible on the interface of everyone is mitigated. Also, so few editors commented on the user rights question in the previous discussion that it is a really weak consensus. Monty845 00:54, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- That was not a weak consensus. The proposal was for bot tagging of (other users') edits, and everyone supported bot tagging of edits, but nobody suggested going beyond that, i.e. allowing ordinary non-bot users to tag edits. Sysops need to be able to remove these for cleanup, which I described as 'mass untag' in the original proposal, so they should also have the right. You suggest to somehow 'hide' actions available to a usergroup by default. Is that some sort of security by obscurity ? I disagree with this approach. If a userright is not useful to a group, then we should not grant it. If it is useful, we should grant it. There is no preference option to hide/show this UI, and I do not expect one to be created. As for gadgets, these tend to be unreliable. And this would have the significant disadvantage of not showing the UI for those where this would actually be useful, i.e. sysops and members of the template editor or abuse filter manager groups. Cenarium (talk) 10:58, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think this should be limited to bots and sysops, with the ability to grant it to other users should a strong need arise (I don't know if it ever will but its a possibility). I'm under the impression this feature was added so that bots could tag edits, not so that anyone could. Sam Walton (talk) 11:07, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'd like this ability to be used for all sorts of scripts from the teahouse script, twinkle, to Technical 13's[†] OneClickArchiver[†] script. Since not all the maintainers for scripts that would be using this are sysops, TEs and EFs should be able to manage the tags for their scripts. I don't care if it's given directly to those existing group or if it's added to a new script/gadget maintainer group with a set of api/gadget/technically related permissions. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)11:35, 9 May 2015 (UTC)- Okay, so I created a test tag for OneClickArchiver on testwiki:Special:Tags and learned that in order to add labels and descriptions, tag managers would need to be able to create and edit pages in the MediaWiki namespace (I had to create testwiki:MediaWiki:Tag-OneClickArchiver and testwiki:MediaWiki:Tag-OneClickArchiver-description for my test to work properly). That being said, knowing that there has been some objection to the ability to edit interface pages being added to TE in the past (although I suppose WP:CCC), I'm thinking the best way to handle this is to create a new usergroup for "Scriptmaintainers" I'd suggest that this new group should be a vetted nomination RfX style process and that any permissions that may be needed to work on scripts should be granted to this new group. I'd think that at a bare minimum:
managechangetagsCreate and delete tags from the databaseeditinterfaceEdit the user interface (needed as mentioned above because tags use these interface pages, this is also where gadgets are stored)edituserjs&editusercssEdit other users' JavaScript files & CSS files (this is why I suggested a vetted process, there is a lot of abandoned code that needs to be repaired on this wiki and forking it may not always be sufficient or appropriate because it is hard to maintain the attribution that way)noratelimitapihighlimits(script = api = very useful for testing and working on scripts and improving ability to update template transclusions as needed.tboverrideper
Template editortemplateeditorper Template editorrollback(to quickly rollback a change to a script that has an undesired result that proper testing didn't reveal that could be damaging to the encyclopedia)
- I have to run, but I will happily finish this train of thought later and hope to see some feedback on it. —
{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)22:49, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- Okay, so I created a test tag for OneClickArchiver on testwiki:Special:Tags and learned that in order to add labels and descriptions, tag managers would need to be able to create and edit pages in the MediaWiki namespace (I had to create testwiki:MediaWiki:Tag-OneClickArchiver and testwiki:MediaWiki:Tag-OneClickArchiver-description for my test to work properly). That being said, knowing that there has been some objection to the ability to edit interface pages being added to TE in the past (although I suppose WP:CCC), I'm thinking the best way to handle this is to create a new usergroup for "Scriptmaintainers" I'd suggest that this new group should be a vetted nomination RfX style process and that any permissions that may be needed to work on scripts should be granted to this new group. I'd think that at a bare minimum:
We should settle this one way or the other, otherwise once user-defined tags will get created, we'll have another panic, so here's a poll. Cenarium (talk) 01:14, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- I should clarify that the poll is only on the
changetagsuserright, for the reasons given in my original post. Cenarium (talk) 15:28, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Option 1 (tag editing permissions)
The following usergroups may add or remove tags on arbitrary edits and logs (changetags userright) : bot, sysop, edit filter manager and template editor.
- Support Since there's only consensus for bot tagging and script tagging, but not for manual tagging. Those usergroups would benefit from access, they may need to cleanup after bots and scripts, but autoconfirmed users in general have no use for it, and hiding the interface for all would make it harder for the former to find out about it when the need arises. Cenarium (talk) 01:14, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- This should be for
managechangetagsand related rights needed to accomplish this task if not already present. —{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)03:21, 17 May 2015 (UTC) - Okay, but this has nothing to do with editing templates..? — This, that and the other (talk) 04:15, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Bot, sysop: yes. Edit filter manager and template editor, no, neither needs it for their job. A "changetageditor" group assignable by admins at WP:PERM, sure. Anomie⚔ 11:05, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support for admins and bots - I see no reason, in general, to allow non-admions to do it, except for plausably the need to rename tags - and this would be done by a bot. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:21, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support, but only for admins and bots. Tags, as others have already stated, have nothing to do with editing templates. APerson (talk!) 18:45, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Option 2 (tag editing permissions)
All autoconfirmed users may add or remove tags on arbitrary edits and logs (changetags userright), but the interface is hidden by default in common.css or js.
- Support As its pretty much what I proposed above. I don't really see how disruption incorporating tags will be any worse than other auto-confirmed vandalism, so this seems the right permission level. By setting it up so that editors need to turn it on, hopefully most people will educate themselves on how they work (any any relevant policies on their use) before using them. Monty845 02:02, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, this should be for
applychangetagsandchangetags—{{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c)03:23, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Discussion (tag editing permissions)
WP:Tags has some technical details, but there should be an outline of why adding/removing tags might be desirable before discussing who is able to perform that operation. Are there any examples of how this activity would benefit the encyclopedia? I recently added a discretionary sanction notification here and its history shows the useful "Tag: discretionary sanctions alert". However, if it is technically possible for, say, template editors to manually add or remove that tag, its utility would be diminished. At the moment, the "Tag filter" search on a long history page provides a guaranteed way to quickly show whether or not a notification has been delivered. Things would be less certain if such tags could be added/removed manually, perhaps by accident. Why would it be helpful, say, for someone to add "references removed" tags to hundreds of edits? It sounds like just another thing to argue about, unless there is some known reason why manual tagging would be useful. Johnuniq (talk) 01:54, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Any tag must be specifically activated for user editing before it could be edited. And further, a tag applied by an existing edit filter cannot be marked for user-editing (although the reverse could be done). So much of this is worrying about things that will probably never happen (i.e. unless some admin does something stupid). Anomie⚔ 11:05, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- We'll also need to contact bot operators to see if they're interested in making their bots tag edits, for which I guess a BAG approval would be needed. A couple of bots I think of : ClueBot NG (talk · contribs) (for edits with a high prob of vandalism but not high enough for rollback), CommonsDelinker (talk · contribs) (some of the deleted commons files may be acceptable on enwiki), CorenSearchBot (talk · contribs) (copyvios, copy pastes, templates often get removed), EranBot (talk · contribs) (copyvios) and XLinkBot (talk · contribs) (bad links/spam).
- Now, for scripts and such : WP:TW, WP:HG, WP:STiki. Should we have some sort of process for approving these, or just a discussion at WT:Tags ?
- The last part would be replacing some of the tag-only edit filters, with bot requests. Cenarium (talk) 15:22, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Cross-wiki Proverb redundancy
I find it problematic that we have three different Wikiprojects that contain somewhat overlapping (but largely uncoordinated) material on proverbs.
- Wikipedia has "List of proverbial phrases", and other articles like "Spanish proverbs".
- Wikiquote has "English proverbs" (and lists of proverbs in over a other a hundred languages, such as [5]).
- Wiktionary has an appendix of English proverbs, as well as a category for entries on English proverbs and categories containing proverbs in over sixty other languages, such as Category:Spanish proverbs.
This is something of a mess. I believe that there should be some coordination to avoid duplication of effort, the potential presentation of conflicting translations or interpretations, and other inconsistencies in content arising or likely to arise between projects. I propose a cross-wiki task force to review the materials contained in these three projects and to enforce some sence of coordination and communication between them. In my view, this is exactly the kind of opportunity to harness the energies that are going into three different, redundant pages, and build one thoroughly vetted page in a single place.
My inclination, quite frankly, is to say that we should do away with the Wikipedia list and the Wiktionary appendix entirely, and host the entire thing on Wikiquote, with the appropriate cross-wiki soft redirects from the other sites, and with links to the Wiktionary definitions for individual pages on specific proverbs. I am cross-posting this on all three projects, but I believe that the discussion should be kept in one place, and should probably be at the Wikipedia Village Pump because that is the highest-traffic project. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:59, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- Proverbs are lexicographically significant, and carry meaning, so they meet Wiktionary's CFI and it wouldn't be complete without them. I'm not sure why they'd be on Wikiquote at all as they're not quotes from anyone or anything, they're just things people say, like "it's raining". CodeCat (talk) 02:28, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not suggesting that we delete entries on proverbs, but why does Wiktionary need the appendix, which is redundant to a Wikipedia article and a Wiktionary page? bd2412 T 03:17, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I agree that it doesn't make sense for Wikipedia to be collecting proverbs systematically and/or as such, and I agree that it makes sense for Wikiquote to collect them. And I would be fine with moving Wiktionary's appendices of proverbs to Wikiquote (leaving soft redirects, as you suggest), since it is egregious that they duplicate not only our (Wiktionary's) main-namespace content but also the Wikiquote content. Wiktionary should continue to have main-namespace dictionary entries for at least the short proverbs, of course, as CodeCat notes (and as you agree). -sche (talk) 03:27, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I do agree with keeping the entries - however, I think that it is important that the information presented in them complements the information in other places where these proverbs are listed. At the very least, we need to be sure to avoid any contradictions, and be reasonably uniform in presentation. bd2412 T 03:47, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- Dealing with proverbs can often be messy in many ways for many reasons. I am currently only briefly scanning things, but don’t agree that the current redundancy in the projects is, in itself, necessarily a "mess."
I believe permitting the different projects to develop pages on the subjects according to the inclinations of those who most regularly attend to them, and to index them accordingly, is quite natural and proper in many ways, though there can be various forms of messiness within them.
So long as there are general links provided between the projects, I am inclined to believe that any attempts to artificially develop absolute cross-wiki conformity in aims and purposes in relation to the listing of proverbs would probably be far more of a mess than any purported messes that such would be designed to solve. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 11:17, 9 May 2015 (UTC)- Each community having its own editors determining the content of its own proverbs pages also means that there will be a lot of redundancy - different people putting roughly the same information in different places - which squanders our resources. bd2412 T 16:10, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think the potential redundancy should be noted and the issue revisited in five years, but an opinion should be sought from the wikidata bods as this is right up their street. How ever personally I don't see a problem- I looked for the secondary source for these phrases, as I would expect on a en:wiki page. A lot of work needed on the English pages but references are given- wiksource gives primary refs in a peculiar way- but would not be seen as correct in en:wiki. So on the whole a strong vote for the status quo. A dormant canines scenario.-- Clem Rutter (talk) 16:38, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- Redundancy is one problem. I am also concerned about the potential for inconsistency. I have not checked to see whether there are inconsistent usages between these pages, but someone should do that. bd2412 T 18:20, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't see why inconsistency among the pages is a problem whatsoever. One page can cite a different version of a proverb from another; as far as I'm concerned that's just fine and doesn't need to be corrected. Or maybe you meant something different? --Trovatore (talk) 18:31, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I only care that the Wikipedia proverb articles are solid article. I find it odd that there is a long list of English "List of proverbial phrases" as a Wikipedia article. That is the wort of material that could profitably be moved to a different platform.Pete unseth (talk) 20:18, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think that's kind of a separate issue. I'm not a huge fan of that sort of list on Wikipedia either, but such lists have their defenders. My position, or meta-position, would be that whatever we do with such lists should be almost independent of what happens on other Wikimedia projects. --Trovatore (talk) 20:25, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- Why have other Wikimedia projects at all, then? I think that we frequently, and correctly, delete mere dicdefs on the grounds that they belong at Wiktionary, we delete reproductions of source documents on the grounds that they belong at Wikisource, and we delete collections of quotes on the grounds that they belong at Wikiquote. There may be an argument for having this particular list at Wikipedia if Wikimedia as a whole had no other venue for it, but we have another venue. As for the consistency issue, there is more information about proverbs than the proverbs themselves being offered on these pages; that too should be consistent. bd2412 T 11:55, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- If you believe sincerely that these articles are not what Wikipedia is for, Articles for Deletion is -> that way. Anything else is doing the runaround on either WP:RFC or WP:AFD. Given the feedback you've so far gotten, I'm skeptical that there will be many to support you, but this is just a local consensus, so…. --Izno (talk) 20:43, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- Why have other Wikimedia projects at all, then? I think that we frequently, and correctly, delete mere dicdefs on the grounds that they belong at Wiktionary, we delete reproductions of source documents on the grounds that they belong at Wikisource, and we delete collections of quotes on the grounds that they belong at Wikiquote. There may be an argument for having this particular list at Wikipedia if Wikimedia as a whole had no other venue for it, but we have another venue. As for the consistency issue, there is more information about proverbs than the proverbs themselves being offered on these pages; that too should be consistent. bd2412 T 11:55, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think that's kind of a separate issue. I'm not a huge fan of that sort of list on Wikipedia either, but such lists have their defenders. My position, or meta-position, would be that whatever we do with such lists should be almost independent of what happens on other Wikimedia projects. --Trovatore (talk) 20:25, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I only care that the Wikipedia proverb articles are solid article. I find it odd that there is a long list of English "List of proverbial phrases" as a Wikipedia article. That is the wort of material that could profitably be moved to a different platform.Pete unseth (talk) 20:18, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't see why inconsistency among the pages is a problem whatsoever. One page can cite a different version of a proverb from another; as far as I'm concerned that's just fine and doesn't need to be corrected. Or maybe you meant something different? --Trovatore (talk) 18:31, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- Redundancy is one problem. I am also concerned about the potential for inconsistency. I have not checked to see whether there are inconsistent usages between these pages, but someone should do that. bd2412 T 18:20, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think the potential redundancy should be noted and the issue revisited in five years, but an opinion should be sought from the wikidata bods as this is right up their street. How ever personally I don't see a problem- I looked for the secondary source for these phrases, as I would expect on a en:wiki page. A lot of work needed on the English pages but references are given- wiksource gives primary refs in a peculiar way- but would not be seen as correct in en:wiki. So on the whole a strong vote for the status quo. A dormant canines scenario.-- Clem Rutter (talk) 16:38, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- Each community having its own editors determining the content of its own proverbs pages also means that there will be a lot of redundancy - different people putting roughly the same information in different places - which squanders our resources. bd2412 T 16:10, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- Dealing with proverbs can often be messy in many ways for many reasons. I am currently only briefly scanning things, but don’t agree that the current redundancy in the projects is, in itself, necessarily a "mess."
- I do agree with keeping the entries - however, I think that it is important that the information presented in them complements the information in other places where these proverbs are listed. At the very least, we need to be sure to avoid any contradictions, and be reasonably uniform in presentation. bd2412 T 03:47, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think we delete dictionary definitions because they are not appropriate for an encyclopedia, not per se because there's such a thing as Wiktionary. As to why to have other Wikimedia projects, that's really up to the Foundation — I don't think it does or should play much role in what we do at WP.
- The information about the proverbs should be correct. If it's correct, then it will presumably be consistent. Consistency itself is really of no value. --Trovatore (talk) 02:19, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
- I agree with Travatore. Our content should be driven by what is good for the encyclopaedia, not what exists on other sites. In any case, it is not appropriate to decide on a cross-wiki policy at just one of the member projects, that's what Meta is supposed to be for. SpinningSpark 11:49, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
RfC - Creating Redirects to lists, from the things they are lists of
Pigsonthewing requested at Bot Requests a bot to create redirects for lists. E.g. If there is a list List of Foo and the article Foo does not exist, create the page Foo as a redirect to List of Foo. I have done some pre-processing and this will create over 77000 new pages. I have submitted a request for bot approval. Per WP:MASSCREATION I am submitting an RfC here to gauge support, opposition and otherwise. I have also posted at WikiProject Lists and WikiProject Redirect. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 21:01, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
- For evaluation purposes, can you build a partial list of cases where "List of Foos" and "Foo" exist but "Foos" does not and would become a redirect to the list? If "s" at the end is literally the only difference then it should be simple to make the list but cases like List of demoparties, Demoparty and Demoparties may be trickier to automate. I don't think Demoparties should redirect to the list. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:56, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
- Second this request. Would save people a lot of time pondering this if some examples were given. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:33, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
- If, as is common, the list article begins
The following is a list of [[demoparty|demoparties]]...
then the bot could be programmed to find the first piped link, check both Demoparty and Demoparties and, if neither existed, create the redirect at Demoparties. In this instance Demoparty does exist, so presumably no redirect would be created: Noyster (talk), 20:03, 13 May 2015 (UTC)- The full list has been dramatically scaled down now to around 12000 by removing pages that were of the type 'Foo (A-F)' etc. It is here, the list of cases where "List of Foos" and "Foo" exist but "Foos" does not contains around 500 pages and can be seen here. Since these cases are a little more complicated, I think it is best to leave them out until after the 12000 block has been completed. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:55, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- On the whole, it's probably a good idea. Praemonitus (talk) 15:45, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
- Comment - If this is going to be done, can we ensure the bot creates the redirect in accordance with WP:REDCAT, and that it contains {{rcats}}: {{R from subtopic}} and {{R to list entry}}. I also think we should create a category for these redirects; like for example: Category:Bot created redirects. The source code would append as follows:
#REDIRECT [[Xxyyzz]]
{{R from subtopic}}
{{R to list entry}}
[[Category:Bot created redirects]]
- Thank you for considering this as well.--John Cline (talk) 04:32, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I was going to use
{{R from list topic}}
{{R with possibilities}}
- I don't think {{R to list entry}} makes sense in these cases and I'm on the fence about {{R from subtopic}}. I can definitely do the Category:Bot created redirects however which would probably be a good idea. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:54, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Thank you. The rcats I mentioned were a suggestion. I understand that this has been discussed, and do not contest using the rcats you've shown. Cheers.--John Cline (talk) 14:44, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't think {{R to list entry}} makes sense in these cases and I'm on the fence about {{R from subtopic}}. I can definitely do the Category:Bot created redirects however which would probably be a good idea. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:54, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support proposal.--John Cline (talk) 14:44, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Establish WT:MoS as the official page for style Q&A on Wikipedia
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Because the proposal to establish a dedicated style noticeboard has fallen through, it is now proposed that WT:MoS be established as Wikipedia's official page for style Q&A. This would involve the following actions:
- 1) Adding text to the effect of "and for questions about the use of capitalization, punctuation, organization and other matters of style on Wikipedia" to "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Manual of Style page."
- 2) Inserting text to the effect of "ask style questions at WT:MoS" any place that would otherwise have pointed to a style noticeboard.
- 3) Inserting text to the effect of "ask style questions at WT:MoS (and not here)" in the talk pages of other style guide pages so that style Q&A is more centralized.
Here are the kinds of questions that people ask: 1, 2, 3.
The goal of this proposal is make help with Wikipedia style issues easier to find and more centralized without increasing opportunities for forum shopping. WT: MoS has already served as an unofficial Q&A board for many years. The discussion leading up to this proposal is available here. 05:06, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Support: WT:MoS for Q&A
- Support 1, 2, 3 The MoS has provided clear, low-drama Q&A for years. The problem with the current system is that not enough people know about it, there's overlap across multiple talk pages, and, because it's unofficial, people might think they're breaking rules by using it. A noticeboard might have solved these problems more cleanly, but actively guiding users with questions to the existing system will also do it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:06, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support 1, 2, 3 Moved to Support: One official page will help new editors/ editors with a question. TheMagikCow (talk) 14:40, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support 1, 2, 3 - Centralizing style issues is a good idea. Disagree with the editors who oppose. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:43, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support 1, 2, 3 Much as a greatly dislike the MoStafarian 'reasoning' process and the mad beaating by the reggaelation players here, there is a need for an identified place to ask questions that will be seen and responded to. My recent question on a side talk page probably didn't get seen by more than one
morlockdreadlocked being. So while my emotional impulse is much the same as Beeblebrox, I see the need for "where to go" for reviewed questions. Shenme (talk) 05:13, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Oppose: WT:MoS for Q&A
- Oppose all – This flies in the face of the recent RfC, whereby a clear consensus was to not have any such designated place for style. What's more, locating the proposed space at the MoS gives the proposal a partisan air, allowing MoS editors to have undue influence on outside disputes. There is no way that this can be tolerated. Do not buy Mr Frog's canards about an "existing system". There is no existing system. The MoS talk page is only for discussing changes to the MoS, and nothing else. RGloucester — ☎ 14:27, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- The previous proposal concerned whether or not to create a new noticeboard. No decision whatsoever was made regarding existing pages where Q&A is already taking place. By "existing system," I mean the fact that people ask style questions at WT:MoS and receive answers there: [6]. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:09, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose largely per RGloucester. This is basically a rehash of the rejected proposal to create a style notice board. Calidum T|C 23:26, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Oppose We have the WP:HD TheMagikCow (talk) 14:38, 16 May 2015 (UTC)Moved to Support: One official page will help new editors/ editors with a question. TheMagikCow (talk) 14:40, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose I understand the intent here. If you have questions for admins you go to WP:AN. If you have questions about biographical articles you go to WP:BLPN, for sourcing we have WP:RSN and so on. So it should logically follow that if you have questions about writing style you go to the MOS, where the experts or "gurus" are. And that's where we run into a problem that is going to hamstring any attempt to do this unless and until it is fixed: the ranks of MOS regulars include a lot of grammar/punctuation obsessives, who wrongly believe that in each every situation there is a hard and fast rule. This would not be an insurmounatable problem if they at least agreed on what that rule was, but they pretty much never do. So this would just draw innocent, curious users into a cesspit in the back rooms of Wikipedia, A simple question about style could end with a giant drama fest in which multiple users are blocked, as has happened time and again in the MOS area in recent years. I'd much rather have some slight inconsistencies in our overall style than allow these obsessive types to have undue influence over actual content. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:03, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- You seem misinformed about what actually happens when people ask style questions at WT:MoS. Please click these links (or check the archive): 1, 2, 3. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:26, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose - Absolutely not. MoS and its ridiculous intractable debates are a 6,000 watt beacon for obsessive-compulsive moths. The last thing I want to do is to give such creatures venomous fangs with a noticeboard. Carrite (talk) 16:29, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose While I respect and appreciate the work MOS editors do, I feel most editors just want to write and improve content. So far, I have found that general legibility requirements like grammar, spelling, sections etc. can be achieved by discussion on the talk page and people coming and copy-editing. Every time I have seen the MOS be used in a dispute, it has not gone well (generally due to lack of focus on content, wikilawyering etc.). Since the goal is to produce a useful encyclopedia, I think that if MOS issues are causing disputes, it's time to drop the MOS and focus on the content. I fear any MOS noticeboard-type entity would attract those who either see MOS as the goal of Wikipedia, or those who want to use it to wikilawyer (in short, wp:NOTHERE). Don't get me wrong, I think most MOS edits are non-controversial and beautify the encyclopedia, but those edits don't need a forum/noticeboard anyway. Happy Squirrel(Please let me know how to improve!) 17:43, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose all. The Help Desk is experienced in, and I believe good at, dealing with new editors who ask things like "what is the recommended way to capitalise section headers?" The MoS talk page has no experience in dealing with human beings. I never knew of its existence until today. I have just looked at it, and read a long debate on the correct shape for the apostrophe-thing in "Qur’an". While I appreciate that such discussions need to be held, and admire the scholarship of the editors who hold them, I believe that such discussions should be kept out of sight of ordinary users. Asking one's first question on Wikipedia is a stressful experience. Adding a redirect to it adds to the stress. And redirecting new users away from a place where they are likely to get a helpful answer is crazy. Maproom (talk) 07:34, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose all. This just does not fit into the structure and feels wrong to me per RGlouster and Beeblebrox. SpinningSpark 12:24, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose all per Beeblebrox and Maproom. Everything I'd like to say has already been said by them, but I'll emphasize that WT:MoS is definitely not where we should be sending new editors. APerson (talk!) 18:29, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose. The recent consensus was that people don't want a designated area for style questions. Anyone can ask a style question anywhere, and if they want to go to WT:MOS they're welcome to do that. Sarah (SV) (talk) 19:29, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose. As a general proposition, we should be less concerned about enforcing "rules" about the minutia of style, not more. —Steve Summit (talk) 21:16, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
- I would be fine with 1a. Adding text to the effect of "and for questions about the interpretation of the Manual of Style" to "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Manual of Style page." —Steve Summit (talk) 21:25, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose, what is this? Didn' we just have an RfC regarding this? Why does there need to be a centralized location? Why not just place a please see link on the WikiProject's page?
- This is not a game of wackamole, or kick as many balls towards the goal, and see what comes through.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 21:29, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose any further move to empower or give special designation to the MoS black pit. The last thing any productive content editor (new or old) needs is to get mired in the MoS's idiotic maelstrom. Neutralitytalk 21:35, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Discussion: WT:MoS for Q&A
- Without opposing or supporting per se, right now, I will note that the previous discussion was opposed for many reasons, and the fact that it was rejected was not universally agreed upon. The devil is in the details here, and unlike what RGlouscester asserts here (and elsewhere), we cannot say "The community unilaterally rejected any and all forms of centralized style discussions". All we can say is that the community rejected one very specific proposal for one very specific way to manage style-based discussions, and because people had many different reasons for opposing that discussion, it is perfectly fine to have a new discussion about different ways to handle the problem. The community did not reject having centralized style discussions. The community rejected one proposal to do it one specific way. I think it is fine to revisit the issue from a different perspective. --Jayron32 20:18, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- I did a breakdown of the reasons that participants gave for supporting and opposing the creation of a style noticeboard here if anyone wants to look at it. Many opponents said that they didn't want to create one more page for style discussions. It's reasonable to say that at least some of these participants would support endorsing an existing page with a proven track record. Some even explicitly said that they thought a talk page system would be better than a noticeboard. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:11, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
If someone has question relating to style, where should they go to ask it?
This really is the first question that needs to be answered... The answer may be that there is not one single "official" page... but if not, what are the options... it would help to know where to direct them. Blueboar (talk) 21:04, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- Article talk page. RGloucester — ☎ 21:05, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- that may work if there are a lot of style guru's who work on the article... but what about an article with few editors... it is quite possible that none of the editors working on the article (ie those watching the talk page) will know the answer to the question. So where do they go to find out the answer if asking on the talk page doesn't work? Blueboar (talk) 21:10, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- There is no need of "gurus", who do not exist. A consensus of editors on a given talk page is enough to resolve a dispute, and if a consensus does not form, the usual channels remain open, such as DRN. RGloucester — ☎ 21:21, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- Sorry, I wasn't talking about resolving disputes ... I was asking where editors go if they have a simple question about style, if they need help and advice. For example: An editor who knows he/she isn't great at punctuation - and wants to ask for help and advice... Where would that editor go to ask for help? Blueboar (talk) 02:14, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:HD. --Redrose64 (talk) 05:11, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Quite right, Mr Redrose. If someone feels a bit off with his English orthography, that has nothing to do with the MoS at all. That belongs at the existing venues for such matters. RGloucester — ☎ 13:43, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Except the MoS is where we wrote down all the rules concerning those matters, and it's where most people already go. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:32, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Quite right, Mr Redrose. If someone feels a bit off with his English orthography, that has nothing to do with the MoS at all. That belongs at the existing venues for such matters. RGloucester — ☎ 13:43, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:HD. --Redrose64 (talk) 05:11, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Sorry, I wasn't talking about resolving disputes ... I was asking where editors go if they have a simple question about style, if they need help and advice. For example: An editor who knows he/she isn't great at punctuation - and wants to ask for help and advice... Where would that editor go to ask for help? Blueboar (talk) 02:14, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- There is no need of "gurus", who do not exist. A consensus of editors on a given talk page is enough to resolve a dispute, and if a consensus does not form, the usual channels remain open, such as DRN. RGloucester — ☎ 21:21, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- that may work if there are a lot of style guru's who work on the article... but what about an article with few editors... it is quite possible that none of the editors working on the article (ie those watching the talk page) will know the answer to the question. So where do they go to find out the answer if asking on the talk page doesn't work? Blueboar (talk) 21:10, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- Article talk page. RGloucester — ☎ 21:05, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- Right now, no there isn't one official page for style Q&A (though WT:MoS has done a large part of the job unofficially), but I feel there should be just one. Call it a noticeboard, call it a help desk; I don't much care so long as the Q&A that we currently do at WT:MoS and other talk pages all happens in one place and is made easier for editors to find. If we use multiple pages, then people get contradictory results. Other editors have also expressed concerns about forum shopping. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:16, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- I agree that it does notmatter what we call this proposed forum. The problem, as I noted above, is that these self-appointed "gurus" are often extremely obsessive rule-mongers, often disagree with one another to the point where everyone else decides that they don't care anymore and they just walk away, and sometimes even resort to socking and other unacceptable behavior to get their way in whatever is their latest utterly pointless dispute. It would be a terrible idea to direct anyone to go to these people for help. So, regardless of the name of the page, we just shouldn't do this. In fact, I would support large notices at the current MOS talk pages advising users to go elsewhere with their inquiries. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:50, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Beeblebrox, please click the links of example questions, if you think they're cherry-picked, check the WT:MoS archive. People show up, ask their question, get their answer and move on. When people say "What should the MoS say?" yes we fight about that, but when people ask "What does the MoS say?" it's pretty straightforward. Or on the flip side, can you post a link to a time when an editor asked a style question and it devolved into a fight with sock puppets (or comparable viciousness)? Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:30, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- I agree that it does notmatter what we call this proposed forum. The problem, as I noted above, is that these self-appointed "gurus" are often extremely obsessive rule-mongers, often disagree with one another to the point where everyone else decides that they don't care anymore and they just walk away, and sometimes even resort to socking and other unacceptable behavior to get their way in whatever is their latest utterly pointless dispute. It would be a terrible idea to direct anyone to go to these people for help. So, regardless of the name of the page, we just shouldn't do this. In fact, I would support large notices at the current MOS talk pages advising users to go elsewhere with their inquiries. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:50, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Responding to Darkfrog24's notice at WT:HD. I have worked the Help desk with some frequency for about a year and I can't recall seeing a style question, not that I have seen everything or that my memory is perfect. I would consider that outside the scope of HD, being in the realm of editorial rather than how-to, so I would personally direct such a question elsewhere. That said, I haven't seen a clear consensus as to the scope of HD (no surprise there), or much concern about enforcing any such scope. Regardless of the question, many responders will try to answer it rather than direct the OP to a place where they might get a higher quality answer. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:00, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- User:Darkfrog24 you said "the MoS is where we wrote down all the rules concerning those matters, and it's where most people already go." That's not quite correct. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style is not a list of rules it is a Guideline. That is, a set of best practices that can, within reason, be ignored. Is Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style the page where most people go to ask? I really don't know as I rarely look at any MOS talk pages. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 22:15, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Guidelines in name, rules in practice. Whether that's a good thing is a matter for another discussion, but I refer to the MoS's contents as rules quite deliberately. As to whether it's "most," I'll concede that we'd have to count them. The whole point of this proposal is the idea that lots of people with style questions give up before they ask them anywhere. But certainly a lot of users ask their style questions at WT:MoS. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:19, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- And that's why you are getting resistance to a single style Q&A page governed by MOS experts. Too many see them as rules that must always be obeyed. As to them being "rules in practice" there are many pages that do not conform to the MOS. I've ignored the MOS when it seems like a good idea to do so and so do many others. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 22:28, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Actually, many of the MoS experts disagree with me about whether they should be considered rules or not. But if you check the example questions provided (or the WT:MoS archive), you will see that the people who ask questions want to know what the MoS's rules/whatever-you-call-them are. I remember one question that was about "Someone else is doing X and I want to do Y; tell me whom the MoS supports." Most of them are more along the lines of "What's the right-or-at-least-MoS-compliant way to do Z?" This isn't about reaching out to other editors and telling them to stop doing what they're doing. The other editors are already reaching in to the MoS and asking what they should do differently. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:59, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- And that's why you are getting resistance to a single style Q&A page governed by MOS experts. Too many see them as rules that must always be obeyed. As to them being "rules in practice" there are many pages that do not conform to the MOS. I've ignored the MOS when it seems like a good idea to do so and so do many others. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 22:28, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Guidelines in name, rules in practice. Whether that's a good thing is a matter for another discussion, but I refer to the MoS's contents as rules quite deliberately. As to whether it's "most," I'll concede that we'd have to count them. The whole point of this proposal is the idea that lots of people with style questions give up before they ask them anywhere. But certainly a lot of users ask their style questions at WT:MoS. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:19, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
I had not known about the recent RFC, and only saw the proposal above. Reading here and there I am glad (though sadly...) to see my feelings about MOS are shared by many. However, since I do want "a place" to ask questions related to 'style', I saw in comments to User:Darkfrog24's summary of objections to the RFC that WT:MOS is suggested as 1) existing, 2) likely to be seen by MOStafarians who can volunteer opinions. I may repost my question about "JaMon 1st" vs. "JaMon Ist" there. Shenme (talk) 04:53, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Date and time in contribution lists
When viewing a contribution page of an editor with many edits per day, after selecting year and month, it is not uncommon to skip several pages of 50 edits each, before arriving at the desired edit. Therefore I suggest there be added boxes for selecting Day, Hour and Minute on user contribution pages and page history pages. I know that it is possible by editing the URL, but I still feel this suggestion will make things better. Iceblock (talk) 16:41, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support Useful feature, no downside except the time necessary to code it. --Jayron32 01:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support adding a 'Day' field, no question. (I can't tell you how many times I've wished for that!) I dunno about 'Hour' or 'Minute' fields (especially 'Minute') – I suspect that might make the proposal more complex for implementing that we'd want... --IJBall (talk) 01:17, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
Additional Security for Wikipedia Editors and authors
Please incorporate in future module of security for Wikipedia editors for Mobile Number additional login
I know this is little costly but you can start for senior and most active editors and after success pass it over to authors
Well you can seek help of many organizations to support this cause financially or technical without any terms imposed on Wikipedia
Just like gmail where mobile is required for security code same can be incorporated in Wikipedia
This can be incorporated as optional feature in case some people do not wish to opt for enhanced security.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bipingharat (talk • contribs) 12:41, 18 May 2015
- @Bipingharat: do you mean two-factor authentication, specifically mobile phone two-factor authentication? Imzadi 1979 → 06:53, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Bipingharat: A TwoFactorAuthentication extension exists (is that what is requested here?) but is currently not deployed on Wikimedia wikis, probably simply because nobody has requested this yet. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:28, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- I support the addition of the two factor authentication extension to en wiki, not sure if an RfC would be required or not to add it. An RfC or some sort of discussion would defiantly be needed to determine under which circumstances someone could have the feature disabled on their account in case they lost their phone or something, which I suspect would happen a lot more than people loose their passwords and I don't think an email to turn off two factor authentication would be a good idea. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 19:41, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- 2fa has advantages - and can have disadvantages too. If anybody has (or would like to draw up) a concrete proposal, I would be keen to run an RfC to see what the community thinks. bobrayner (talk) 22:32, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Bobrayner: RfC is posted a few sections down. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 23:30, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- 2fa has advantages - and can have disadvantages too. If anybody has (or would like to draw up) a concrete proposal, I would be keen to run an RfC to see what the community thinks. bobrayner (talk) 22:32, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- I support the addition of the two factor authentication extension to en wiki, not sure if an RfC would be required or not to add it. An RfC or some sort of discussion would defiantly be needed to determine under which circumstances someone could have the feature disabled on their account in case they lost their phone or something, which I suspect would happen a lot more than people loose their passwords and I don't think an email to turn off two factor authentication would be a good idea. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 19:41, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Bipingharat: A TwoFactorAuthentication extension exists (is that what is requested here?) but is currently not deployed on Wikimedia wikis, probably simply because nobody has requested this yet. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:28, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
Dealing with articles in foreign languages
In case you missed it, please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § English policy: So blindly obvious, but... for discussion of proposals for dealing with articles in foreign languages in the article space of English Wikipedia. —sroc 💬 14:15, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
RfC re:Anthroponymy page guidelines
There is an active RfC on moving Wikipedia:WikiProject_Anthroponymy/Standards into the MOS, at either Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Anthroponymy pages or Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Anthroponymy. Please contribute. Thanks! —Swpbtalk 20:13, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
RfC: Proposal to add optional multi-factor authentication to the English Wikipedia
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Should optional multi-factor authentication be enabled on the English Wikipedia? PHANTOMTECH (talk) 23:30, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
Details
Multi-factor authentication allows users to require that, in order to sign in to their account, they provide a code generated by another device (their phone) in addition to their password. The extensions mw:Extension:TwoFactorAuthentication and mw:Extension:OATHAuth allow for multifactor authentication on sites that use MediaWiki, note that only one is required, there are just two that I'm aware of. This proposal will take up to 2 phases:
- Phase 1: Determine if there is consensus to implement optional multi-factor authentication. If there is not, this will be the only phase.
- Phase 2: Determine recovery options, what someone who decided to turn on multi-factor authentication would have to do to have multi-factor authentication on their account disabled without logging in, in case they lose their phone or something. Each possible option here will have its own subsection, any possible options that have consensus will become recovery options.
Phase 1
Should optional multi-factor authentication be enabled on the English Wikipedia?
Support
- Support As proposer. Not aware of any reason to not allow optional multi-factor authentication. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 23:30, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. I use 2FA for almost all my services (email, Dropbox, finance, heck even Wikimedia Labs) myself, so I personally support this and would use it fully, but I would also ask those who don't to still support, as there will be no disruption or difference to those who do not use MFA/2FA. --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 02:14, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Absolutely. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:36, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Multi-factor authentication would be a very good idea. I have seen evidence of someone trying to break into my admin account before, when I received notification emails from external sites after someone had used the "reset your password" feature with my Wikimedia email address. And a lot of damage can be done with a compromised admin account before it is locked, some of which is not easily recoverable. Multi-factor would make it much harder for password-snooping attacks etc. to be effective, and I can't see any downsides, especially if it would be optional. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:26, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support - Sounds like a very good idea to me, it should be strongly recommended for admins. I would be interested to hear from the developers of tools such as AWB and PyWikiBot as it seems to me that Bots are another type of account that would benefit from extra protection, however the tools would have to be updated to work with whatever multi-factor might be used. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:28, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support Seems completely sensible as an option. Sam Walton (talk) 11:10, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Most other websites I use allow this, so why not Wikipedia? APerson (talk!) 18:31, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support as optional. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:10, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Oppose
- Oppose: This seems to require the collection and retention of potentially large amounts of personal information such as email addresses, phone numbers etc. This would pose severe privacy problems if the was hacked into or misused. While I'm sure that people will endeavor to keep this information secure, the best way to avoid the risk of it being divulged is to not have it in the first place.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:08, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- While some types of multi-factor authentication require personal information, by using a Time-based One-time Password Algorithm, no personal information has to be stored or shared. The server (Wikipedia) provides the client with the information it needs to generate codes, ideally that information is shared only once and is shared securely. From that point, both the client and server keep the information and use it, combined with the current time, to check what the current code should be. So to summarize, the only information shared is from Wikipedia to the client and is not personal, after that the client requires nothing but the current time to generate a code, which is checked by the server using the information it sent and the current time. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 18:55, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Discussion
This RfC provides very little context. What is the reason for requesting it i.e. what issue does it address? What are the consequences, advantages, disadvantages, if any? --Wolbo (talk) 23:55, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Wolbo: The reason for the request and advantage of having it is that multi-factor authentication increases security for users who use it because in addition to needing the user's password an attacker needs access to the device the target uses for authentication, their phone. I'm not aware of any disadvantages of having it as an option, though the "risk" of enabling it is that if you lose your device and don't have any backup codes, it's like losing your password except you have no chance of remembering it since it changes about every 30 seconds, the second phase of the RfC would be to create ways for users in that situation to regain access to their account without completely removing the security benefits of multi-factor authentication. If implemented properly, users who decide not to opt-in to multi-factor authentication would notice no difference, the only way they would be affected is that the possibility of multifactor authentication being enabled on their account may discourage some attackers from trying to access their account. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 00:11, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- I would add that possible disadvantages are; multifactor may not work initially with 3rd party tools such as AWB, Huggle, PyWikiBot, WP Cleaner etc. Though I expect that would be resolved reasonably quickly. Another downside would be additional coding and server processing etc. I have no idea what scale this would be on though I would guess fairly minimal as there are a number of standardized options for multi-factor already in widespread use. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:34, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Linking to disambiguation pages
There should be a tool that automatically replaces Foo with Foo. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 01:25, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Linking to disambiguation pages.
Links to disambiguation pages without " (disambiguation)" should be automatically fixed by a bot to link to the redirect with " (disambiguation)". 2602:306:B8E0:82C0:5151:4DE4:D781:AD4C (talk) 22:32, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- No; let's say that somebody links to North Eastern Railway, which is a dab page. How is a bot to know that the dab page was linked on purpose? The user may have meant to link to the page about the railway in the United Kingdom, and hadn't realised that others exist. The link should indeed be fixed, but it needs to be examined by a human because a bot cannot tell whether a link to a dab page is accidental or intentional. Only the intentional ones (see WP:INTDAB) should be altered to e.g. North Eastern Railway (disambiguation), the accidental ones should be fixed to an appropriate link such as North Eastern Railway. --Redrose64 (talk) 06:57, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- There is (already) a bot which corrects the intentional ones (as in uses of {{for}} for example). --Izno (talk) 14:11, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
The article titles "de jure"/"De facto"
The title of the "De facto" article is first-word-capitalized. The title of the "de jure" article is not. I find this disturbing. Vexes my sense of symmetry and seems kinda' awkward and embarrassing for Wikipedia (as they're likely to often be referenced together). I propose we pick 'one way or the other' and stick with it for both. I personally don't have a strong preference as to which, as long as they match. --Kevjonesin (talk) 12:20, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not entirely sure why de jure is not capitalized in the article title. House style would indicate that the first letter of a title is normally capitalized, with a few exceptions, mostly related to proper names where the first letter isn't capitalized (like iPhone). The article de jure is not one of those exceptions. --Jayron32 12:24, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- De jure is now capitalized: Noyster (talk), 13:24, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks Noyster, ... but how was it done such that the edit showed up neither in page history nor on my watchlist? (Is some server lagging, or ... ?) --Kevjonesin (talk) 13:47, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- {{lowercase title}} was removed in [7]. I saw it in the page history, and it's also on my watchlist after I have added the page. I don't know why {{lowercase title}} was added in [8]. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:42, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks Noyster, ... but how was it done such that the edit showed up neither in page history nor on my watchlist? (Is some server lagging, or ... ?) --Kevjonesin (talk) 13:47, 22 May 2015 (UTC)