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User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia/Credits and further work

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Credits

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Much content from User:SP-KP/Wikipedia Topics, copied November 22, 2006

To do - additions

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To do - subtraction

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I'd suggest removing failed proposals from the list, because they're not really part of "how Wikipedia works" and not really something most people would want to look up (and some of them are quite ludicrous :) ). Similarly I'd be hesitant about including essays here, but there are several good exceptions to that. IMHO. >Radiant< 08:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Just before I let the index go (so to speak - when I move it to Wikipedia namespace), I'll take a close look at these suggestions. And of course once it's in Wikipedia namespace, I'll defer to others as to what additions and subtractions are appropriate. For my personal copy, I intend to be somewhat inclusionary (although I've omitted essays like Wikipedia:Negotiation, which seemed to me to have essentially zero value), because it's instructive (to me) to see what has failed, and sometimes instructive to have links lesser-known/used essays. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I favor inclusionism in the Index for the following reasons:
  • Since we can use Ctrl-F search in a Web browser, there is little penalty for increasing size. I.e., omitting information yields little performance benefit.
  • The failure of a proposal does not necessarily mean the issues that motivated the proposal have been resolved. Therefore, other editors in the future may make the same proposal, unaware of its history ("Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it"). Future rehashes of the discussion will be more efficient if they proceed from the discussion which already occurred. That only happens if people can easily identify the "new" proposal as a mere repeat of an earlier failed proposal, and retrieve the earlier discussion. Obviously, we want failed proposals in the Index until it can be shown that nobody will ever raise those issues again.
  • Failed proposals commonly resurface on the Help desk, such as the suggestion to require users to log in before editing as a way to reduce (not eliminate) vandalism. The efficient way to answer such questions is to look up the failed proposal and cite it. It's nice to have one Index that answers all the repetitive Help desk questions. Presumably the same questions are coming up in the minds of other editors who do not ask on the Help desk, and an inclusive Index would help them find answers on their own.
Thomas Edison famously said something like: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Edison's philosophy was only as useful as his ability to keep track of his failures, so he would not uselessly repeat them. --Teratornis 15:08, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Why not a subpage or separate page to list failed proposals. Maybe a link to the category if there is one, and leave it at that? Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals is the category. Oh, it's already in the index. Well, that was a waste of time! :-) Carcharoth 12:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

To do - quality

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*Follow each and every wikilink to confirm existence and avoid redirects

  • Add info from wikilinked pages about what the page is about, where missing, if not obvious (including "essay", "policy", etc.)
    • Probably not
  • Add info from each wikilinked page about a shortcut to that page, if exists
    • Maybe copy the contents of Wikipedia:List of shortcuts to Word, see if I can create a (sortable) list, then do the same with the index, and manually compare the two?
Perhaps a bot could help with link checking, and maybe with identifying pages that have shortcuts (see WP:CUTS#How to create a shortcut for some clues about the structure of shortcuts which a bot could probably exploit). --Teratornis 15:15, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
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