This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (idea lab). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
That would be a very bad idea. Wikipedia has plenty of factual content about climate change, which should be available to everyone at all times. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:42, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
'Featured Wikipedian' on main page
Maybe we could nominate Wikipedians who have made an lasting contribution on Wikipedia, via, let's say, a page of the name 'Main_Page/Users who have made an legacy on Wikipedia' (shortcut: WP:LEGACY) and feature one on WP:MAIN. This way, we have recognition of people on WP. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mac Henni (talk • contribs) 21:09, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
Visual images such as maps often make unsupported nontextual assertions in Wikipedia articles. I see this as a problem (see this discussion about that), and a remedy has occurred to me. I've applied this remedy the case of two maps and in articles showing those maps as their lead images. This is better shown by example than by explanation, I think, so see the lead images in the State religion, Abortion in the United States, and Abortion in the United States by state articles and the supporting cites in their captions. I'm looking for comments regarding or suggestions for improvements on what I've done there. Thanks. Wtmitchell(talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:03, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Wtmitchell, that looks useful. I don't think that we want a rule that says "Thou Must Always", but I think that it would be helpful to see that approach used in more cases. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:16, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
switch the default colour of the stylesheet, page backdrop, WP tables, and article'summary
see images put into a grey frame
have an expandable search tool box. This avoid users the need to go at the top of the page, each time they want to look for a a new article.
Wiki 2 is one of the many only-read web browser which copyright Wikipedia work and content. We can't be so confident to be enabled in the future to separate open-licensed content from closed and proprietary software, like this.
Apart of that, browser copyright the Wiki software while introducing secondary innovations. And WP software is open source and open-licensed as well as the contents of Wikipedia.
Why don't you forbid this bad and dangerous practice? Or, in change of this comercial use, ask to have in the public domain some of their graphical futures so as to be implemented and runned on Wikipedia.org? Hope this help Wikipedia not to loose web traffic in favour of commercial web services. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.14.139.212 (talk) 23:13, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
I'm finding it difficult to undertand what you are saying here, particularly as your links don't work. I would suggest closing this thread unless someone can put it into comprehensible English. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:12, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
See the link that goes to a malformed page containing only a literal text string of "404" - what are we supposed to do with that? — xaosfluxTalk03:14, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
@Wtmitchell: right, it came from "wiki2.org" - from following the example of the original poster, a completely broken page being served by a platform that can't even produce proper error messages. Not sure what all that "+Brights" stuff is they are adding, some sort of referrer code perhaps? — xaosfluxTalk13:16, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
On a quick skim through their "Random Page" button, their pages are all attributed to Wikipedia with a link to the original article at the end. Since they're using a database dump they should really link to the specific version of the article they've imported and include a link to the page history for full attribution, but they certainly appear at least to be making a good-faith effort to attribute correctly. Regarding what appears to be a suggestion that we re-skin Wikipedia to mimic their appearance, it's not as simple as it sounds; a site with a readership the size of Wikipedia needs to display correctly and consistently on a huge variety of platforms, from antiquated PCs to non-graphical terminals running Lynx to smartphones to web-enabled televisions to screenreader software to huge high-resolution DTP setups, hence our display output appears fairly basic and primitive compared to sites serving a specialist market. Other websites with the same need to function consistently regardless of hardware (Google, Yahoo, Reddit, Facebook…) have similarly primitive-looking interfaces. ‑ Iridescent16:22, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
SNGs are always superseded by WP:GNG with the exception of academics, which look to WP:NPROF to determine academic notability. Unfortunately, WP:NPROF can be difficult to apply, especially if you're outside academia - I was told it's similar to what you would look for when granting tenure, which I have absolutely no idea about. Proposals to transition WP:NPROF to be superseded by WP:GNG have generally failed. Academia does not always get written about in sources which commonly pass WP:GNG.
I personally see this exemption as a problem, not because I have any bias against any academic articles, but because it's difficult for me to apply WP:NPROF and therefore difficult to assess an article about an academic at AfC or NPP. I tend to just leave these for others unless I see a copyvio.
What I think would be exceptionally helpful is maybe some sort of "WP:GNGA." Clearly, there's a way to determine whether someone has achieved prominence in their field based off of sources, whether it's the number of times they've been cited or being written about by other academics in journals. I would make a more formal proposal, but I don't know quite enough about what sources we look towards determining whether one of the WP:NPROF prongs has been met, something along the lines of the following (along with an explanation for the exemption): "When determining the notability of an academic, the following types of sources are exempted and count towards satisfying WP:GNG: 1. the following is an example A press release or article about the academic written by the academic's institution announcing the academic's named chair While technically a primary source, named chairs at major academic institutions are generally notable, and consensus has demonstrated these sources to be reliable 2.." would really be helpful. SportingFlyerT·C03:14, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
I am not sure that SNG are always superseded by GNG, even if they are part of an 'official' notability guideline. Different people may interpret our guidelines and policies differently, but as I understand them, WP:ATH is a far lower bar than GNG and easier to achieve than WP:NPROF. Perhaps DGG would like to weigh in here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:39, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
More specifically, at the end of the day, we want a quality article, but we used presumed notability from the GNG or an SNG to allow for a sub-quality article to be in mainsapce on WP to draw editors to help expand and improve with without a fear of a deadline; though if someone still presents a strong rationale for why an article likely cannot be expanded or improved further (per WP:BEFORE), then deletion is reasonable. Going from ATH to the GNG is a step towards that better quality of article. (The reason the GNG supercedes an SNG is that a topic may fail an SNG it is normally within but meets the GNG, allowing for an article.) --Masem (t) 15:07, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
A major point about SNG's that is sometimes not clearly understood is that an SNG can never be used to exclude a subject that meets GNG. An SNG is by definition meant to (temporarily) lower the bar for subjects for which proving GNG compliance is difficult. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 05:51, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
Let's solve the problems, not the things which may not seem logical but are not actually problems.
The distinction is a little different. The SNG for WP:PROF neither supersedes nor is superseded by the GNG--it's an alternative It was adopted because it matches what the world in general and the profession in particular thinks relevant. It became finally accepted when it was realized 10 years ago that I and others working in this area could, if we truly relied on the GNG in a literal sense, could show everyone who had published more than one or two papers moderately-cited papers notable, because there would be significant discussion of their work in some of the articles citing them. It's a practical convention. Other SNGs are also interpreted in ways that make them somewhat unrealistic conventions--for example the presumption that professional athletes will meet the GNG even if have only statistical sources. Or, in the other direction, the refusal to accept a presumption for local sources for losing major-party candidates in national elections. My feeling is that the only way to avoid indefinite fighting is to allow those working in each subject and commenting in the afds for that subject to decide what they will accept. Actually, it's the only way compatible with Wikipedia--because we go by consensus, and the entire structure of notability is only a guideline.
Where we need policy for articles on people is where we have it, NOT ADVOCACY. Of all the major fields , there's so far relatively little promotional articles or other junk on academics, because those of us who work there put great emphasis on removing such articles unless there is very clear notability , and in practice will rewrite any article on an actually notable academic to remove any promotionalism. The few really divisive debates about articles on academics have been articles on beginning academics --usually those with very attractive very professional photographs -- who do not meet WP:PROF, but have other sources that are essentially promotional , but accepted here anyway-- or, in the other direction, people who clearly meet the usual standard but have adopted currently unpopular ideas.
Perhaps we will eventually realize that the GNG was a naïve idea which has left us wide open to promotionalism. The effect is that anyone is notable who has a competent PR agent who can get the right sort of articles published about their clients. It doesn't correspond to what anyone outside WP thinks matters, and its use in some areas make us look ridiculous.
There are lots of places to clean up WP; if you are interested in the academic world, 95% of our articles on universities need rewriting. I did all US law schools a half year ago, but I know I'll need to do it again next year. Anyone who knows the UK willing to help with the UK institutions that have greatly expanded the pomposity of their titles in recent years? Anyone who knows what matters in India willing to try to combine the articles about little proprietary offshoots of universities into their actual notable parents or sponsors?
anyone really want to clean up WPshor start by helping us ban all paid editing, as even the honest paid editors admit is necessary? Anyone willing to try a rule not letting any biography or organization be a person's first article?
and if anyone actually cares about notability, how about we start enforcing the most neglected WP:GNG provision, WP:NOPAGE, for merging articles about people or things where there is nothing much encyclopedic to be said? (The first step would be a simple way of enforcing a contested merge outside of AFD. )
and if anyone really cares about logic, they could try rewriting the entire set of guidelines and help pages into something consistent and coherent.
and is anyone is brave enough to tackle the most neglected part of WP, let's look at upgrading the quality of sourcing and content? . DGG ( talk ) 06:52, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
I've just realized I didn't answer the easy part of the question. It is agreed that an official CV is a reliable source for the facts of a person's career (just as for an official list of elections and committees for a legislator) It is however necessary to be careful about university press releases, which emphasise what they want to and need to be confirmed: if they announce a named chair, they're reliable for the fact of the chair, but not necessarily for the earlier career or the correct statement of the fields of interest--and certainly not for the adjectives of praise they tend to use. Similarly, an announcement of an award from the awarding body proves the award, but the statement that accompanies it tends to be hyperbola. Lately, there is also a problem with faculty pages written in a personal or promotional style, often by the university pr staff--they are written in most cases for the purpose of attracting graduate students. Fortunately, the really key WP:PROF guideline, effect upon the person's field, is unambiguously verifiable from the publication and citation data of the articles or the books. Straightforward as it seems, there is judgment involved--it is impossible to construct a proper bio by bot from a list of data. DGG ( talk ) 07:07, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
@DGG: Thank you, this graf is exactly what I'm asking about. All I'm really asking is, as someone who knows relatively little about academia, which sources should I be looking to in determining whether the article should be kept? In any other subject, including WP:NCORP, you perform a WP:GNG analysis, and I've had some misses with WP:NPROF because the guideline for determining whether someone's notable enough isn't clear to me. SportingFlyerT·C17:42, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
{ec}} I thank DGG for his thoughful reply. SportingFlyer, the corpus of this encyclopedia contains tens of thousands of perma-stub biographies based on a single, non in-depth, and non-independent source. Therefore, Dodger67, WP:ATH, for example, is most definitely not always used as a 'temporary' measure. The texts of the guidelines are clear enough to understand. What I do not fully comprehend however, is that certain Wikiprojects, insist that by virtue of the sheer popularity of the parent topic, the lower bar of their SNG for bios trumps GNG and BASIC, while some users insist that topics that obviously benefit from exceptions to GNG, such as just for example, proven human settlements and geographical features should be deleted. This is probably partly due however to it still being possible for new pages to be patrolled by new and inexperienced users who do not have access to Curation.
WP:NOPAGE is unfortunately one of the least well known guidelines. For example, the notability (or lack of it) of university sub-sections, faculties, departments, or affiliated schools, or members of a band, or minor movie actors, needs to be pointed out more often and in conjunction with WP:NOTINHERITED, and merge/redirect which is actually a policy, not simply a guideline.
In some English language regions, especially those heavily populated ones where it is an official second language, it is often the cultural dichotomy which makes it hard for people from those regions to understand that the English Wikipedia generally targets an anglosphere readership, and that is why our en.Wiki guidelines should be observed, irrespective of how the 300 other-languages apply their own notability criteria. Many people believe also that scraping the Internet for fleeting mentions makes a plethora of very weak sources add up to notability. It doesn't.
DGG's suggestion: Anyone willing to try a rule not letting any biography or organization be a person's first article? is a very valid, organic, and natural extension to ACREQ which we fought for nearly a decade for and which was rolled out a year ago with great success. With that, we may prevent a lot more UPE which is mainly commissioned by self-important individuals and political candidates more so than blatant spam or advertorial. I'll put some feelers out before we jump into something controversial. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:45, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
@Kudpung: As I do most of my work in the sports part of the encyclopaedia, I can assure you WP:ATH does not "trump" WP:GNG. If someone can show the article does not pass WP:GNG at AfD, it will be deleted. (The exception of course is where there's enough consensus, valid or otherwise, to keep the article. But I've found improperly applied consensus to be a very minor yet project-wide issue.) SportingFlyerT·C17:42, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
SportingFlyer, the corpus of this encyclopedia contains tens of thousands of perma-stub biographies based on a single, non in-depth, and non-independent source. Despite a notability guideline to the contrary, an AfD will gain consensus to 'keep' because of 'delete' votes being out-voted due to the sheer popularity of the parent topic. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:13, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
Kudpung While I agree there's a lot of permastubs (and I don't think permastubs are bad if properly sourced - not every article needs to be a GA), for the most part, I disagree with you - the majority of AfDs I've seen with no sources which satisfy WP:GNG (even based on only one source) tend to get deleted. But this is getting far away from the point I'm trying to bring up, which is to make WP:NPROF more accessible. SportingFlyerT·C18:20, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
SportingFlyer, perma-stubs are completely useless as encyclopedic content. All they do is make work for the people who have to do something about them. Note the expression 'perma-stub' - I'll explain it for you on my tp if you don't understand it. I wholeheartedly agree however, that academics who make a serious contribution to humankind beyond simple entertainment should have an access at least as straightforward as any unknown footballer who has kicked a ball for only part of a match as a substitute and whose only claim to notability is a listing on the club's squad page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:39, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
@DGG: - "My feeling is that the only way to avoid indefinite fighting is to allow those working in each subject and commenting in the afds for that subject to decide what they will accept. Actually, it's the only way compatible with Wikipedia--because we go by consensus, and the entire structure of notability is only a guideline." - excellent phrasing. The SNG lower/higher/replacement/alternate division is a morass, but I don't believe that there's a way to make them line-up without some major negatives. At that point we'd be prioritising neatness over actual functionality. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:24, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
To understand the special relationship of WP:PROF, it helps to note that WP:PROF and WP:CORP predate WP:N. All other SNGs derive from WP:N, or have been merged smerged or deprecated.
Anyone willing to try a rule not letting any biography or organization be a person's first article?. That could be a very good idea. I would exclude people who died over fifty years ago. Many newcomers start with historic local people. I’ve suggested before that whenever anyone wants to start an article on a company, or its products, or its founder or CEO, the. The onus should be on them to provide the WP:THREE sources that demonstrate notability. Kind of like an autoBLPPROD, but for promotion-liable articles. It’s definitely about WP:PAID.
On that, WP:PAID, as teaching institutions become increasingly front ends for this money making businesses, there is a blurring between an academic teacher and a non academic teacher. There are modern universities, lacking campuses, not doing research, who have “professors” that are not professors as traditionally understood or assumed at WP:PROF. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:46, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
No BLP should be the first article by an editor or the first biography about the subject. I think DGG makes an excellent suggestion but I think a "no first rule" should be applied to both editors and subjects, and we could start by applying it to BLPs and seeing how that goes. I'm perhaps a bit of a fanatic in my belief that, with rare exceptions, unless an article is based upon two independent, reliable, secondary sources, it should be deleted. – Levivich00:51, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
@Levivich:No BLP should be the first...biography about the subject - what? An article where the subject is a living person is a biography of a living person - how would these ever get created? — xaosfluxTalk15:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
Xaosflux, I mean Wikipedia shouldn't be the first to publish a biography of a person. In order for there to be a BLP, there should already have been a biography (i.e., SIGCOV, preferably two or three) published by some reliable source, for us to use as a source in our article. – Levivich15:30, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
That's a misinterpretation, the first article of an editor should not be a BLP or organisation article is what is suggested. I don't think this would be effective in preventing paid editing or coi editing as the editor would just write a mini-stub on some other subject first. Some undeclared paid editors boast of having more than 80,000 edits so this would have little effect except reducing autobios so its not worth biting the newbies with this proposal imv, Atlantic306 (talk) 15:44, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
WP:SILENCE? It appears no one challenged the edit at the time and years later. And it's not even clear whether the clarification was as a result of any discussion or not. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:27, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
There was a 2017 RfC on NSPORT directly contradicting it wrt all SNGs. I'm stuck on mobile so little chance I'd be able to find it quickly. Regardless, SILENCE is thin grounds for sweeping project wide changes in basic policy. GMGtalk20:08, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
PROF's relationship to GNG has been contested on and off for years. See, e.g., my complaints about "The person has had a substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity", which does not require that any alleged "substantial impact" be verified in independent sources. According to this SNG, any prof has a substantial impact if he's quoted in the paper (which is a function of his willingness to return phone calls from journalists, not his actual achievements), or if he wrote a textbook on a mainstream subject, or if any editor says so. And once notability is declared, the entire article can be written from his employer's webpage. We'd never accept such claims for, say, Fortune 500 CEOs, but we accept them for all profs. That page has been the source of a remarkable number of other strange claims, like this edit objecting to the requirement that sources used for verifiability purposes must be WP:Published – and claiming that self-published sources are an exception to the requirement for published sources (making them, what, self-non-published sources?). The fundamental problem is that some editors really, really, really want to write lots of articles about academics because of their personal belief that they're important, and the world gives us relatively few Wikipedia:Independent sources about them. So we're trying to make do with a combination of WP:ITSIMPORTANT and not caring about whether we're giving WP:DUE weight to the independent and non-independent sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: For Wikipedia articles. You know, I always see in many biographies of notable Muslim people: He gifted all of his books to X, donated it, or made his own library a public Waqf. like Al-Hakam II, i guess, and many contemporary people. -Ruwaym (talk) 18:17, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
A new method of including source code in articles, for informational purposes, could be useful. I implemented a quick sketch at my sandbox showing what could be done.
What I'd like to see is a easy way to, for example, mark source-code that intentionally does not compile, or link source-code and it's outputs together in one section cleanly. Alongside this, some way for users to 'try out' the code in their browser would be a welcome addition (In the demo, I used tio.run for this purpose.).
I'm hoping to flesh out this idea, as it could allow Wikipedia to further improve it's articles on programming languages (Rust, C++), processors (Zilog Z80, MOS Technology 6502), and mathematics (Mandelbrot_set#Computer_drawings). — Preceding unsigned comment added by MoonyTheDwarf (talk • contribs) 00:42, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Proposal for a way to highlight spoken articles that need to be updated/re-recorded
There appear to be many articles that were recorded as spoken articles many years ago where the pages have likely changed significantly since and need re-recording. I think there should be a way to highlight this (perhaps like the update template for articles, but a spoken language template variant). For example the spoken article for the Avril Lavigne page has not been updated in over 9 years. I have posted this at Wikipedia talk:Spoken articles but had little response. Helper201 (talk) 17:04, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
@Helper201: "length of time" may not be the best measure for triggering a "this should be re-recorded" - perhaps number of revisions? If something repeatable could be decided on a bot job could be made that would periodically check all the pages with recordings, see if the condition was met, and then add some identifier (e.g. Category:Spoken articles in need of updating. — xaosfluxTalk15:43, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Number of revisions sounds reasonable on first glance. However, how would a bot determine the signicance of these edits? For example a page may have had 100+ edits the vast majority of which are simply grammar and minor fixes and additions or trivial inclusions. Whereas another page may have had say 20 edits of more signicance.
I think it is reasonable to conclude that after a number of years most articles have changed fairly significantly. Perhaps the bot could tag all pages that were recorded 5+ years ago and have not been updated since. Most pages will have changed quite significantly in this time. However your proposal could be worked on and used instead or as well as this. The identifier Category:Spoken articles in need of updating sounds good to me. Helper201 (talk) 17:41, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
@Helper201: That could be done, the parameters could be adjustable. To get this going, create the new category and have a chat with anyone watching Wikipedia talk:Spoken articles / Wikipedia talk:Spoken articles. Once ready, drop a note at WP:BOTREQ and someone will probably take that up for you, it's not a "hard" bot task, and this would only update "metadata" type of information so should be a fairly easy bot approval. It wouldn't need to run constantly, maybe once a month or so. The hard part is probably going to be what comes next - are there people ready to work on actually re-recording the articles? — xaosfluxTalk17:51, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
US Presidential succession
Hello all. According to United States presidential line of succession#Next in line, there have been thirty-five separate periods during which there was no Vice President who would have assumed office if the office of the President of the US became vacant. I added information about this to the infobox on Andrew Jackson's page ([1]) (as well as US Grant, LBJ, Nixons and Ford's pages, but some of those were reverted). What do you think of the note that I added to the Jackson page? Should all/some of these thirty five instances be documented in this way? Thanks for any comments. (Some discussion of this issue has already taken page on the LBJ talk page). Geographyinitiative (talk) 09:22, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Some Wikipedians use Anti-Vandalism tools like Twinkle to make reverting easier and faster. These tools can also leave custom warnings on others' talk pages. However, I noticed that a few times, I edit-conflicted others, even those using tools. Then, even though the operator was edit-conflicted, the system will still leave a message on a talk page, even though the person did not revert. Take a look at this diff for an example. I reverted the previous edit, edit-conflicting Serols (who I am inviting to this discussion), who uses Huggle, in the process. I was going to leave a message on the talk page, but he already left a message. My idea to prevent something like this is to have the code in the tool detect when there is an edit conflict, and will not warn the user as a result. I cannot wait for your thoughts. Thanks for reading, and please comment on this. --LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop) (My Little Pony) 21:40, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
@LPS and MLP Fan: I believe Twinkle will open the user warning form for you only after the revert has been performed (successfully). This is the ideal behaviour. I am not familiar with the other tools but if there are issues with them please raise it on the tool's talk page such as at Wikipedia:Huggle/Feedback. SD0001 (talk) 16:54, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Visual change the appearance of user pages compared to regular pages
Title. When you click to a user page it's still confusing to me, and I assume to regular users, to differentiate immediately between an official edited page and a user page. I think that something very simple like a slightly darker gray background to user pages would be worlds more helpful for every party. Pretty simple suggestion. Kugihot (talk) 19:39, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
At the very top left you should see in big bold letters the title of the page. If it just says some article topic, like Plato, then it's an article. I'm not sure what an "official edited page" is, but if it says "Wikipedia:" with the colon and something follows that - it's a wiki policy, guideline, essay, noticeboard etc.. Example: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard or Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), if it starts with "User:" , like [[User:Kugihot]] then it's a user page. Hope that helps. — Ched (talk) 20:10, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
A slightly darker grey background might make user pages difficult to read. At the top of the user pages there is a note saying user pages are user pages. Vorbee (talk) 06:21, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
Adding the following to your User:YourNameHere/common.css will change the background color of the left and bottom panes of user and user talk pages to the specified color:[class*="page-User_"] { background-color: #BFFFFF; } Unfortunately, it will also change the color of pages in article namespace that start with "User ", like User interface. (edited) —[AlanM1(talk)]—16:21, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Update: I missed the fact that there are classes for each namespace, named "ns-x", where x is the namespace number from WP:namespace. So, this is better/faster and eliminates the problem with mainspace pages starting with "User ":
.ns-2{background-color:#BFFFFF;}
To affect multiple namespaces, use a comma-separated list:
Anyone who is interested in this idea: Please put mw:Talk pages project on your watchlist. One of the projects might be making "talk" pages (all of them, not just article talk pages) visual different from other pages, so that it's more obvious that you should treat those differently (e.g., sign your comments on a talk page, but don't sign in the middle of articles). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:11, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Mobile version diffs
Hi, so why isn't there a way to undo changes from the diffs in mobile version like the desktop version? I think if we add a button for undo next to thanks button it would be great. Most editors use mobiles while editing including me! I have to switch to desktop version if I need to revert.--SharabSalam (talk) 09:22, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Xaosflux, I used that tool before, it was awesome. I stopped using it because the editor who made it got blocked (I think indefinitely) from English Wikipedia. I fear that they might use it to compromise editors accounts. I don't know how codes in Wikipedia work. Do you think it is safe?--SharabSalam (talk) 07:34, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
@SharabSalam: I'd have to spend a little time reviewing it, but you can always fork it once you have a version that you think is safe (copy paste it to your own userspace) - you would not gain future "improvements" but you would not be subject to arbitrary changes. — xaosfluxTalk11:09, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
On Wikipedia I have often created redirects from abbreviations I observed in real life, often abbreviations of U.S. states I see in the media (example: Anywheresville, Tx.)
In Tokyo I noticed that the subway stations are all using the abbreviation "XXX Sta." or "XXX sta." on English signage. Creation of multiple redirects collectively takes a long time, and many editing hours would be saved if an editor writes a bot to do mass creation of redirects like these:
XXX Univ. (and variants like "Univ") for universities
XXX, U.S. or Canadian state abbreviation (like Houston, TX or Houston, Tx.) for U.S. and Canadian cities
XXX HS for senior high schools (Lamar HS)
XXX Sta. (and sta.) for railway stations, like Shinjuku Sta.)
If memory serves (and it may not; I'm sick, and my brain melts at low temperatures), User:Headbomb did similar work with academic journal abbreviations, and therefore might be able to help you figure out whether it's a good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Sounds like a useful proposal, but individual classes of redirects need to be carefully thought out first. For example, is there a danger that Foobar, NC, a redirect for the town of Foobar in North Carolina, might not be confused for a village of the same name in South Africa's Northern Cape province, or that Foo, CA might be ambiguous between places in California and in Canada. (I'm admitting these examples are contrived – inasmuch as I don't know if such abbreviations are commonly used in this way in Canada or South Africa, and the chances for such coincidences are generally low – but they're illustrative of the potential for ambiguities that need to be explored.) Also, it's a good idea to be parsimonious: for example, don't create both XXX Univ. and XXX Univ – for a variety of reasons (some of which are documented at WP:COSTLY), redirects incur a maintenance cost over the long term and it is best to only create as many redirects as are strictly necessary. – Uanfala (talk)14:58, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
@Uanfala: 1. The part about not wanting to get tied into ambiguous place names sense, and I imagine part of it comes down to using Regex skillfully and part adding a routine a bot that checks what the destination article would be before writing the redirect?
2. As for the bit about creating redirects, I have created both "XXX Univ. and XXX Univ" because of issues with Wikimedia's searching capabilities. Perhaps if they improve it will become less necessary? Also my understanding is that bots make redirect maintenance (often) less necessary as, if the destination article changes location, bots will later retarget all the redirects. **WhisperToMe (talk) 14:44, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Change in print stylesheet
When you print a page (or use the print stylesheet by any other means), the URL of external links are appended within parentheses after the link (as customary in print stylesheets). Since Wikipedia by nature has a lot of interwiki links, I would suggest that even those links have the URL appended. That would help tremendously in finding those link targets, because not every interwiki link's text is the same as its target.
Example:
The page Entity Framework has in its first paragraph an interwiki link to Visual Studio. When this section is printed, that link will only be underscored.
In the same History section, the second last paragraph, there is an external link to Entity Framework 6's Github repository. When this is printed, that link will be underscored with the URL appended, like this:
I realise that one big downside with implementing interwiki links in the print stylesheet the way I proposed, is that some pages have a lot of interwiki links and those pages would get cluttered very quickly when printed. Could a compromise be that there is a toggle in user settings on whether or not you want interwiki URLs to be visible?
I am writing an online book about birds of Sierra Leone (which will be free) and would like to use the IUCN range maps. IUCN so far has refused to give me permission. Accounts in Wikipedia for many species, however, include the IUCN map. For example the map for African Darter appears to be identical to the IUCN map except for the color. For many other species, neither Wikipedia nor Wiki Commons-Images has a range map. My questions are:
1. Has the specific issue of using IUCN maps in Wikipedia been discussed (I could not find a discussion)? If so where?
2. If not, would it make sense to discuss the issue (hopefully involving IUCN). Topics for possible consideration include:
a. Could Wikipedia approach the IUCN asking for help in resolving the issue. The current state in which some maps are reproduced exactly (except for color) seems a little silly.
b. If IUCN will not let Wikipedia use its maps, then what is the best way for users like me to make maps based on IUCN.
The IUCN Terms of Use are pretty clear: [2] If you are certain the African Darter map is the same as the IUCN map except for the colour, it needs to be deleted as a copyright violation as it would be considered a derivative work by the copyright owner. I assume you've emailed them and have not received a response? SportingFlyerT·C10:28, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the comment. IUCN responded to my request to use the range maps saying I could not but that there might be a product sometime next year that would meet my needs. I replied making some of the points in my initial post and they did not respond. I'll call the person at IUCN but wanted first to learn whether the topic had already been discussed. As to your comment about the Darter, I agree. I'm just saying it is an unfortunate situation: (a) Wikipedia has lots (probably hundreds) of pages that violate copyright law, (b) the only way to avoid breaking the copyright law is to modify the maps but as far as I know no guidelines exist on how much modification is enough, (c) why would we want to modify the maps anyway?, and (d) IUCN is an NGO getting money to carry out charitable work; does it really make sense for it to spend a lot of that donor money and then not let anyone use the results? I just thought Wikipedia might be in a better position to raise these issues than I acting as an individual. - Jon Bart — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanbart (talk • contribs) 22:51, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
The short answer is, we unfortunately won't be able to host any maps which are dependent on the IUCN data, even if they're self-created. They will not be willing to change their license to make it compatible with ours (it's not impossible, but it's very unlikely especially given their response to you.) I would concur Wikipedia might be in a better position, but that doesn't mean the answer will change (there's probably very practical reasons why they haven't released it publicly, especially given the number of potential copyright holders in the information.) SportingFlyerT·C07:41, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks very much for these comments, especially informing me about the agreement signed back in 2010 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:IUCN_Red_List). I have not been able to find the agreement but assume it provides the authority for producing and licensing the distribution maps. I'm going to call the GIS person from the IUCN who wrote me, refer to this agreement, and seek his advice on how to proceed. Jon Bart — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanbart (talk • contribs) 05:32, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for pinging me. The agreement with IUCN was that Commons could create maps based on their spatial data [3], not use their maps directly, citing the IUCN red list and their contributors as the authors of the data underlying the maps. So, you can download the shape file and use it in any GIS to produce a map of the distribution range, acknowledging the fact that you used the data they compiled, and upload it to commons with a free license. The negotiations with them were tedious because of the many contributors to the data, and I think that it would have been better to have a more dynamic solution than having static maps, but that was what I could manage at the time. The GIS person that I dealt with has since left IUCN, so I don't think I can do much about this anymore. If it helps I can probably fetch the email conversation I had with them. GoEThe (talk) 09:29, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the additional information. Very helpful. I'll find out whether the agreement is still in force (and then may have additional questions). Jon Bart — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanbart (talk • contribs) 22:05, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
Idea development help needed: Preventing WP:PRIMARYTOPIC from being used as a shield to perpetuate androcentrism
Below is my draft proposal. I would appreciate as much feedback as possible:
Okay, I may have lost a few of you there. First, let me explain what I mean by this, then I'll explain how I envisage this rule tweak being used in practice.
Per the [Wikipedia article on the topic: ‘Androcentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing a masculine point of view at the centre of one’s world view, culture, and history, thereby marginalising femininity’. The essay, WP:WAW, sums it up as ‘language and images that make male the "Self" and female the “other”’. The essay goes on to advise: ‘Avoid labelling a woman as a female author or female politician, unless her gender is explicitly relevant to the article […] Linguists call [the practice] markedness. Treating a man who is a writer as a "writer" and a woman as a "woman writer" presents women as "marked", or the Other, requiring an adjective to differentiate them from the male default’.
Wikipedia article naming policy, however, can occasionally perpetuate (and entrench) such practices. A recent example comes courtesy of a requested page move, which I submitted, seeking to make the England national football team page a disambiguation page, with article currently given that title moved to ‘England men’s national football team’. Another editor, User:Jopal22, suggested “England football team (men’s senior)”. In truth, the new name of the article wouldn’t be of much incidence, so far as it didn’t show men as the ‘default’ gender, with women marginalised.
However, a common response arose. Wikipedia policy on the naming of articles, primarily WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, was used to justify the continued marginalisation of women. Though arguments were made (by myself and others) against the men’s team’s page being any more ‘primary’ than the women’s team, this argument was not persuasive, and no positive consensus was reached. If the wording of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC was amended, Wikipedia would recognise that there is no default gender, with WP:NOPRIMARY then applying. My suggestion is to amend the final paragraph of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC as follows:
In most cases, the topic that is primary with respect to usage is also primary with respect to long-term significance; in many other cases, only one sense of primacy is relevant. In a few cases, there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage (Apple Inc.) and one of primary long-term significance (Apple). In such a case, consensus may be useful in determining which topic, if any, is the primary topic. If a gender qualifier is required to disambiguate one topic from another, it must be mirrored in any corresponding articles (e.g. United States men's national soccer team and United States women's national soccer team, rather than United States national soccer team and United States women’s national soccer team). — Proposed changes in bold.
This small change would help us take a big step towards preventing the marginalisation, the marking, and the othering of women on Wikipedia. We must recognise the harm that Wikipedia does, not only by failing to challenge androcentrism, but by actively perpetuating it.
Note: User:LtPowers raised this eight years ago, but I’m not sure it’s been raised since. See here for the discussion that generated at the time.
Domeditrix (talk) 20:48, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
This isn't a terrible idea in a vacuum, but I don't think it has any chance of going anywhere in the context of Wikipedia. The general principle is that except in extreme cases, Wikipedia follows general practice; it doesn't try to set it. Moreover, when you frame this in terms of "marginalizing women" and start using dog whistles like "marked" and "othering", I think you're setting yourself up to fail. This sort of approach will undoubtedly alienate a lot of people. And in any case, I think the ultimate problem is with PRIMARYTOPIC. It's vague, and people can often insert their own biases when invoking it. But trying to carve out an exception (even a noble one) for one case is potentially going to lead to many more exceptions being (or at least attempting to be) carved out. And I think that's going to make a lot of people squeamish as well. But that's just me, and others might disagree. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 21:12, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
I have a few things to say around this, so will respond a bit more later. But on the whole this is an issue that keeps coming up and it does need clearer guidance in wikipedia across articles. At the moment we are slowly getting messy wikipedia pages like Template:England national football team, where the topic title links to the mens team, but the contents are a mixture of mens/womens/other. But one thing I would say is if it wasn't painful to discuss it in talk pages, I don't think the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC does stop us using the names “England football team (men’s senior)” and “England football team (women’s senior)” as I suggested. The PRIMARYTOPIC is build on what you'd get back when you search for a subject, including wikipedia page views...but the answer to that also depends on when you search. The popularity of these articles is cyclical and if you look at https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=wiki.riteme.site&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2019-03-26&end=2019-10-16&pages=England_national_football_team%7CEngland_women%27s_national_football_team you will see that undeniably (and this will be in the media too), that the PRIMARYTOPIC could be applied to the womens team for a period, as it was way more popular during the womens world cup. So the argument that there is a clear PRIMARYTOPIC is false. Therefore is might be better if we look to change wikipedia policy to change PRIMARYTOPIC to have the caveat that it must be consistently primary to not need clarification. Also be careful not to come across as WP:RGW in your reasoning for wanting to changes, as there will be big push back on that Jopal22 (talk) 21:57, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
I'm against Domeditrix's version of this, primarily on the grounds of Wikipedia not being designed to try to drive change. It would probably be positive if the media did this (and then us), but I don't want us to have to spend huge amounts of time considering and then defending various attempts to push the public into certain behaviour as if we do this a strong case can be made for other changes being needed. Nosebagbear (talk)
I do, however, think there might be something for Jopal22's idea that PRIMARYTOPIC should include the caveat "consistently primary to not need clarification". I'm not sure where we'd draw the line on consistently (if one group is the primary topic 358 days a year, that would probably be sufficient), but I don't believe it's so damned to vagueness to be ruled out on those grounds. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:35, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
A few things I would challenge
Just because something has a female identify does not mean the mirror is "mens". For instance The Open Championship, World Snooker Championship and PDC World Darts Championship have female versions, but the "mirror" version is non gendered and can include women. For instance I wouldn't want Reanne Evans to be changed from This made her the first woman ever to win a World Championship match to This made her the first woman ever to win a Men's World Championship match as if she is competing somewhere she doesn't belong. So I would caveat "mirror" to being backed up by the governing body.
With things like Manchester United Football Club and Manchester United Women Football Club this are is still messy. The Football Club includes both mens and womens teams so there should theoretically an article called Manchester United Football Club with Manchester United (men's team) and Manchester United (women's team) subarticles like American college sports (e.g. Kansas Jayhawks). But this is where I back up the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Nearly everyone looking at Manchester United Football Club would expect to see it dominated by the mens team/history (womens team has only been around a couple of year). Also given growth of womens football is relatively new, the goal post are moving about how they frame things e.g. changing it from framing as Manchester United Women Football Club to Manchester United Football Club Women. Therefore I think it would be overkill and far too soon to look at altering football club articles. (especially as Man U refer to them as the "First Team" and "Women's team - wikipedia follows the conventions used by the media and governing bodies and does not try push a progressive viewpoint without this)
Where it should be quite clear is things like 2020 ICC T20 World Cup being renamed as 2020 ICC Men's T20 World Cup (just look at the logo in the same page!)
Therefore I would look for two changes to primary topic. a) If there is cyclicality for primary topic then we should treat as no primary and disambiguate. b) If the official name or governing body references gender to disambiguate it competitions, then wikipedia should too.
I most often get the conclusion or argument in many such male gender tournament or team cases that, it is in-consistent with the other articles , which often create chaos. Today all federation and council of sports are bringing disambiguation in their tournaments. As suggested above by Jopal22, Wikipedia policies should be reformed accordingly, as in recent cases it can be seen that the article name of the tournament is inconsistent with the logo of the tournamnet itself rather than all other previous editions of tournament. And most important point which should be addressed, wikipedia always believe in providing citations and sources, so when all citations show gender disambiguation, why the articles are ambiguous in nature. I think its high time that this things should be addressed. And more than that such a change is not new, many more articles are being created disambiguously like that of Men's Hockey World Cup, 2019 FIVB Volleyball Men's Nations League, 2020 Men's World Ice Hockey Championships, NCAA Division I men's swimming and diving championships and almost all article related to athletics. My simple logic and idea is- If any board, council, federation and authority addressing name of their tournament, competition, meets and even team in a disambiguous way, distinguishing "Men's" from "Women's" and all sources indicating the same, then Wikipedia should also be created with the same official name.Dey subrata (talk) 19:29, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
@Dey subrata: - I guess your fun next task with "If any board, council, federation and authority addressing name of their tournament, competition, meets and even team in a disambiguous way, distinguishing "Men's" from "Women's" and all sources indicating the same" is where the official name gets changed but the sources stick with common usage and don't usually/ever call it by the changed name Nosebagbear (talk) 22:59, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
This is, incidentally, the issue with the England national football team article. The English Football Association website references the "Men's Senior" and "Women's Senior" teams. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:COMMONNAME have been used to prevent any name change to the article of the men's team reflecting this. Domeditrix (talk) 23:13, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
@Domeditrix: and @Nosebagbear: See if we think every board or federation will do same at a time, it will never happen, so is with the source. There are 100s of games and sports and 1000s of tournaments. It will never happen instantaneously. So our move here will be to change things step by step. Like for example now ICC (cricket council) started to distinguish Men's tournament from Women's tournament, they start it from 2020 ICC Men's T20 World Cup and 2020 ICC Women's T20 World Cup bringing disambiguation. The most interesting thing with it is all major or popular website of cricket are also disambiguously displaying names of tournament and Men's record and Women's record separately. Even ICC too have shown record separately now. Some sports already did are "Hockey" and "Athletics". So I think we need to take one sports at a time and change wikipedia articles accordingly. Otherwise if we wait for all sports to bring disambiguation, it will never gonna happen. Dey subrata (talk) 23:55, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
I never said, or even implied, that'd I'd advise shifting sports wholesale or not at all. Nor did I say that all or nearly all sources on a tournament (et al) would need to change to match the official name before altering the wikipedia article would be warranted. However, for any given sport/tournament/etc, the recent sources would need to be at least someway using the new name. Once it's into "no-consensus territory", then obviously we'd opt for the official name. That doesn't however help in use cases where the sources are always not using it. I supported the consistently as a possible alternative, with the caveat that consistently doesn't mean 100% and further discussion would be needed on that aspect. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:44, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
@Nosebagbear: Yes, I understand your point. I am saying that only. Your point "...the recent sources would need to be at least someway using the new name.", is what I am saying. There are already sports which align with this. The cricket example that I gave, where the "official name", "official logo", "the official website", and "all popular website of that sport" refering the same name disambiguously, seprating the two gender and even "records" are kept separately for cricket. So I am saying if such been done in any sport, we must do it in wiki also. Starting one sports at a time. Cricket will be the first as its showing all possibilities. Dey subrata (talk) 14:21, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
I think the proposal as written isn't too helpful. There are reasons why things are listed as "women's" without the opposite. There is a WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS argument here. The snooker one above is a good one, as is any sport where the rules don't specifically say it's a men's game, but most of the players are men. Other sports do have "men's and women's". For instance, the 2010 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship was the only event to be known as the men's event (as opposed to the female event of the same name, but later dropped the name as it stopped women from wanting to play in the qualifiers.
II still haven't seen a compelling argument that the articles for national sides need changing above the Primary topic. Real life has a way of disambiguating these topics, we should follow suit (regardless of how sexist it is). If it changes (and it most likely will) then we should too, but not until then.Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)19:41, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
@Lee Vilenski: The discussion is not only about changing national side but the tournaments. MY suggestion as mentioned above is to keep names of article (of tournament) according to official names and logo. The arguemnts are mentioned above. Dey subrata (talk) 14:14, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with sports, but it definitely sits poorly with me that WP would redirect a search term to a male team when a corresponding female team exists. It wouldn't surprise me, given WP's gender imbalance (which I'm sure is exacerbated on sports-related articles), if many of the discussions reflected editors' subconscious androcentrism, with arguments about WP:PRIMARYTOPIC just serving as rationalization. Still, I don't know if changing WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is the right way to address the issue; I'd prefer for these discussions to bring in more editors and interpret the existing policy better to establish a beneficial norm. It'd be better to get at the root of the problem than to try to patch this one manifestation. Sdkb (talk) 02:36, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
Import language family GeoJSON data from Glottolog.org
Hi all,
I got to thinking after looking at Salishan languages that it was a pity that there was no "locator map" that gave a general visual representation of how those languages relate to each other geographically (at least in historical terms). I have noticed that the language families which do have maps, e.g. Indo-Aryan_languages, Uralic languages, etc) are often rendered as imgs, not vector graphics. (There is even a category on commons for such maps.) I have made a few SVG language maps in the past (e.g. the locator on Pomoan_languages), but it is a painstaking process of tracing in Inkscape.
I was looking at the information on how to include maps based on GeoJSON data and it seems like there is an existing workflow in place. (Template:Mapbox seems relevant). Now, there is a good resource for GeoJSON representations of language families which is under CC BY 4.0 at [4]. That resource represents language families with a point per language, which is not ideal of course (polygons would be better), but such data has the advantage of being processable with relative ease. Furthermore, such a file might serve as a good basis for extending from points into polygons via other tools, such as [5] or [6] (or perhaps there is a geojson editing tool somewhere in the innards of Mediawiki?).
So I guess what I’m asking is, does it seem like a good idea to think about a project to generate language locator maps from glottolog.org?
I don't know, I haven't been involved with the templates that use GeoJSON. Just a few scattered thoughts: Articles about languages already support the traditional pushpin locator maps (via {{infobox language}}, see an example here). Something similar can be done for language groups (along the lines of what's seen here), though representing languages as points really isn't going to work most of the time. The Salishan languages are probably a rare exception, in that there are many of them and that each is spoken by a small community, so points are not unreasonable approximation. As for polygons, ethnologue have a GIS dataset (presumably the one they're using for their maps), but it's not publicly available). http://www.llmap.org is more open if I remember correctly, but their coverage was variable last time I checked. There probably are other resources out there. Personally, I wasn't satisfied with what was available for the two little language areas I'm interested in, so I started compiling raw(ish) data from the various sources, but that's a fiddly process; so much so that I haven't gotten around to finishing a single map yet). – Uanfala (talk)21:06, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
Use a bot to make the markup changes VisualEditor is doing.
VisualEditor seems to be making some markup changes to any articles it touches, such as changing Image links to File links and changing spacing in infobox fields. This makes recent changes patrolling frustrating—edits like this one require digging through a large amount of noise to find the vandalism. (And that's a relatively tame example—just the first one I came across while working on this proposal.) It seems to me that, if we're going to do this, it'd be a lot less disruptive to have it done by a bot, which can make minor/bot edits everyone can ignore, instead of having the changes made by random IP editors whose work we need to check. Gaelan💬✏️23:33, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
Þjarkur, ah, good to know that it's not intentional. The one I linked in the original comment happened Sunday, so I it was definitely happening then; I'll let you know if it's still happening next time I have a chance to go RCPing. Gaelan💬✏️23:59, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for this note, Gaelan. I've told the devs. It shouldn't be doing this, and they're trying to figure it out. (It sounds like it's actually mw:Parsoid, which is behind VisualEditor.) I don't know if it'll get fixed this WP:THURSDAY or later, but they're working on it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:33, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
Two different questions. But the answer is: Because we decided it this way, for a variety of reason. With respect to the second question: Without ads we are not beholden to advertisers. And we do not piss off users. And we waste less bandwidth. And we make the site more performant. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:25, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
I thought that if we run ads, Wikimedia wouldn't be non-profit. I think if we added ads at the bottom of the article it wouldn't piss off users. Editors can also earn part of the money Wikimedia gets from the ads. That would be very helpful to editors who are editing here for free. Yesterday I watched an interview with an editor here who had made 1/4 or 3/4 (I don't remember) of what is in Wikipedia and when the interviewer asked him how much money he earns from this, he said none!. Isn't that very disappointing?--SharabSalam (talk) 09:43, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Non-profits can earn money, they just cannot make a profit (at least not one that is distributed to its principals, or that goes beyond its non-profit purpose). Adding ads would sure piss me off (and I'm a user). I'm sure others would share that sentiment. I doubt that there is an editor who made 1/4 or 3/4 or indeed any reasonable fraction of what is in Wikipedia, although we do have some very prolific contributors. Many of us who donate time to the project do so because it is a non-profit. Why should I give my work to a commercial entity? Unless they pay my going rate, which would be very hard to recoup with ads...at least when applied to all editors. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:02, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Most likely, the OP refers to the editor who was reported to have touched one-third of the articles on en-wiki. Clearly the OP didn't retain much more than the headline. ―Mandruss☎03:59, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
According to CBS, as long as I make an edit to every article, I am responsible for the entire Wikipedia. –xenotalk06:55, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Looking at that piece of journalism, the non-English Wikipedias have "millions of translated article", which would leave very few original ones. Maybe I should tell the people on de: ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:26, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
It would cease to be a free encyclopedia if it were run for profit and running ads results in the inevitable influence of advertisers on content (and other) policies. Wikipedia has been strict about conflicts of interest since forever, so I am sure there would be consensus against this if it was proposed - perhaps it has been in the past, not sure. Quora is a website which thinks it's a "competitor" of Wikipedia but is run for profit and has most of its modus operandi dictated by its advertising partners. In any case, even if the WMF did make money from advertisements on Wikipedia I doubt they would share any of it with the editors. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱10:02, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
It isn't the non-profit status of the Wikimedia Foundation that allows it to avail itself of section 230 (Internet service providers and Internet search engine companies, for example, benefit from its protections). It's the lack of editorial control on its part, thereby assuring that the "information content provider" (as described in section 230) remains the Wikipedia users. isaacl (talk) 18:38, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Advertising implies tracking. How else would the advertisers be sure their advert has been delivered as many times as they're paying for? That in turn means violating the privacy of your IP address and your off-wiki identity which you were guaranteed when you signed up - Wikipedia:Why create an account? -- Cabayi (talk) 10:25, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
I would suggest that perhaps Wikipedia should in fact allow some advertising. we are one of the top websites worldwide after all. there's no reason it should be so hard for Wikipedia to obtain enough funding to operate smoothly.--Sm8900 (talk) 13:05, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
The Bible should have advertisements. The Bible is one of the top books in the world. Why not add some advertisements in every copy? No reason not to. Buddhist monks should have ads on their foreheads. Encyclopaedia Britannica should have a page of ads every ten pages. Merriam Webster should have thirty pages of ads at the back. All that wasted ad space on the sides of the Kaaba! Gravestones too! (actually I have seen a discrete ad on a gravestone) Hell, add adverstisements on the dollar bills! That would be awesome. Jails should be sponsored. "Bud Light Correctional Help Center" Your name should be an advertisement man- go change it. If you don't change your name to Dick Microsoft, you have wasted an economic opportunity. That's my opinion~~haha Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:22, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Large chunks of Wikipedia are already advertising. We have some companies’ entire product lines covered. We have navigation templates for many product lines. For example, we have a better catalogue of Microsoft products than Microsoft.com. – Levivich06:21, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
The main issue is whether we can be independent of advertisers if we ran ads; while Wikipedia was indeed originally intended to be for-profit, being paid by outside parties would compromise our neutrality. There's also some moral argument that others might raise, although I personally don't care much for it and it is secondary to the above. This was a really big deal back in 2002, but at this point it's probably well established that we don't run ads. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 00:06, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
Vital articles, level 6 proposal
I am relatively new to Wikipedia as an editor, so please feel free to redirect me if this is the wrong place to start.
I am a regular consumer of the Vital Articles project and have been following the development of both the level 4 and level 5. I realize it is premature to start a level 6, as level 5 is only at 33,666 articles of the proposed 50,000, however, I would like to propose to the community that they consider starting level 6, mainly to help with some of what I observe in the talk page discussion. (I'm also aware I might be missing entirely a discussion forum where more in-depth collaboration is happening, so if what I'm proposing is already in the works, please let me know; and, if someone can point me to those places, I would be a happy fly on the wall there.)
At level 5, what I notice is that major topics are developing into vast categories. For example, at level 5, mathematics has 1100 (targeted) articles, literature 1000, and language 590. However, these areas easily have well over 1000 important topics. Consider, for example, the more than 7,000 languages known of around the world. As someone who enjoys consuming knowledge in the encyclopedic format Wikipedia offers, I like knowing after level 5, for example, what next order of topics would be important.
My proposal has a more practical motivation, however. Having a level 6 right now, rather than when level 5 is complete, would allow authors/editors a larger dumping ground to lay out many of the proposed articles that might make it into level 5 but are still being debated. Having a preliminary level 6 would allow Wikipedians to make some estimates on how many possible articles might be in a given category at level 6 (for example, the language category might have a target of 2,000 articles at level 6). Additionally, this might inspire some Wikipedians to develop many less-visited articles that are brought to light by this method of prioritizing further topics.
Using the same scaling factor as from level 4 to 5 (being 10,000 articles, to 50,000 articles) one could envision a level 6 focusing on the most important 250,000 articles on Wikipedia. This then could be tackled and refined once level 5 is finished. But having it laid in place would allow the authors/editors of level 5 to lay down many of the competing candidates for level 5 in the level 6 area, then work backwards by refining that through ongoing discussion. It would also allow contributors to suggest topics that might go in level 5 or level 6, giving them more option than simply being allowed, or rejected (and then forgotten about).
Because it is impractical to start dumping 250,000 articles in this possible level 6, I'd propose that if this idea were started, it would be limited to categories, i.e. the language, mathematics, and literature example I gave. One would not need to worry about whether the estimated total is too accurate. It is enough to say, for instance, that we could imagine if language has a target of 590 articles in level 5, then a level 6 target could be 2,000. It might be practical to make sub-categories for each of these level 6 topics, rather than just a level 6 (i.e. "Vital Articles level 6 (language)", "Vital Articles Level 6 (mathematics)"), so that each major category in level 5 could be developed separately as level 6, while level 5 is being put together. This is just a thought.
I appreciate any help / input you might give on this matter. Meanwhile, I will continue to read my way through the vital articles. It is a great endeavor and a good system to organize information, and my hope is over time this approach will allow Wikipedia to curate and refine articles through a method of rigor, in order of priority using the vital articles priority as a guide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnrobinrt (talk • contribs) 05:43, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Already at the level 5, many of the topics are not very vital, and I suspect that many topics yet to be written should be at this level. Projects probably need to explore possible topics that could be written even at the level 5. A deeper level certainly would not be vital, as it would be beyond most encyclopedias. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:22, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
I'd already support deleting level 5 with how broad it is. I do not want another level, as I believe that would be waaaaaay too broad. InvalidOS (talk)15:17, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
I appreciate the thoughts, but I have to concur that we're not ready for Level 6. There are barely enough efforts to build out Level 5, and I anticipate that a level 6 would be sloppy and incomplete, damaging the integrity of the VA label. Sdkb (talk) 02:44, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
What is the point of this Vital articles anyway? I haven't noticed the articles at the top levels improved significantly because of the project. Wouldn't it be better, if instead of adding new levels and sorting articles, steps would be taken in the direction of actually improving those at the levels 1,2,3 and finally giving project some sense. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 16:03, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
I know why it was established. Maybe I wasn't clear. I know that it gives a direction in which to work, but do editors really follow this direction? I know that it provides a measurement of the quality, but are areas which are lacking it really being improved? That is what I'm talking about. It seems to me that there are no results from those lists. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 18:23, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
Ludost Mlačani, I think that list makes almost no difference here, at the English Wikipedia. A very small number of editors has been inspired by it in the past, but that's all. However, it is used by people who want to start a new Wikipedia (i.e., in a different language). WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:25, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
For articles about people, the person(s) which the article is about, could have a "messenger" function. Like a "hotmail" functionlty, private messages to the user. Just like Per in Sweden contact page, but private, non-public too. Entirely voluntary for the people concerned, of course.~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Per in Sweden (talk • contribs) 16:59, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
This was just a quick useful idea that I had. I realize the problems with fake identities, people who want to have fun reading and writing in some famous peoples name. Any solutions, that do not require enormous amount of work by wikipedia?
(1) Threat of suing for ID hijacking. The problem is that in third world countries with access to Internet might not be possible to sue them. And especially if they are very poor, not much gained either.
(2) Email verification with proper unique resource locator (URL) that are recognized.
(3) Credit card verification.
(4) Snail mail verification with printed code.
Advantage to wikipedia is that wikipedia could charge people who want this service (to cover administration e.g. snail mail handling, and a profit)~ Corporations could have their sales boosted by a contact feature on their wikipedia article, since it is so accessible, which means wikipedia can charge premium rates, and reduce their reliance on user money contributions, that you ask for.Per in Sweden (talk)
Probably most wanted feature of famous people, BAN abusive people, i.e. log IP-number and if user presses BAN, then that IP-address is banned from future contact with that person.
Another useful feature would be CAPTCHA feature, that prevents bots sending spam.
Another useful feature would be to people can talk privately with their identity on wikipedia, so that people do not have to reveal their e-mail.~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Per in Sweden (talk • contribs) 17:39, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
No. If I understand this proposal correctly I can see no benefit whatsoever to it. This is an encyclopedia, not a social networking site or a marketing resource. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:31, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
1. Social networking, means not private messaging function, email was never called "Social networking"; further me and you messaging here for others to read in the Community portal, is already a kind of social networking. Therefore it is already in place making your point mute, unless you want to remove the Community portal.
2. Everything is commercial, since one needs to eat (buy food). Donations is commerical, what metters is not to be governed by those who provides economical resources. ~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Per in Sweden (talk • contribs) 19:05, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
3. Securing economical muscles, usually is an advantage. Competitors to wikipedia could happen in the future. Then the donations strem could reduce until it is too little. Survival usually means planning for the future, in many ways. Denying yourself economical security, usually is dumb. Pride before fall, as it is called. ~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Per in Sweden (talk • contribs) 19:50, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
What could be useful is a link to an official communications or contact site for the person. I don't think that Wikipedia is a service for providing contact. But if the subject is also a Wikipedian then there are the standard ways of talk pages and perhaps emailuser. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:30, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
Articles in Wikipedia are supposed to be based entirely on reliable sources. If a person or an institution has concerns about the contents of an article about them, there are mechanisms in place for dealing with those concerns. I see no reason to provide a method for editors or readers of Wikipedia to contact subjects of articles in Wikipedia. We are not a fan site, or a social networking site, or an on-line shopping service. - Donald Albury13:56, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm not entirely opposed to a private message system to replace email. There are several problems, though:
If it becomes fashionable to use PMs instead of talk pages, discussions will be closed from other users. This means that other editors would not be able to see the discussion for reference, and they would not be able to participate.
E-mail creates an atmosphere of caution. You're revealing your e-mail; it better be important, and you'd better trust the user you're e-mailing a lot. Whereas with PMs, you can use them for almost anything, meaning that the problems with the privacy of e-mail are particularly increased.
Only users with high user permissions would be able to see PMs. Probably not even admins. This means that abuse of PMs is less detect-able. Trolls and vandals could easily use PMs to harass editors while it takes hours for a bureaucrat or someone to block them.
A few other points. First, ID hijacking isn't really a big deal. Impersonation of famous people is easily spotted and can be dealt with. If a country is trying to heavily influence Wikipedia, we can always fight them back. I'm glad that there isn't a recent Fram-scale scandal (yet) involving government interference in Wikipedia that would shake Wikipedia to its core.
Second, 2, 3, and 4 are likely to stop many contributors from editing. They wouldn't apply to IPs, so I guess we'd have to ban IPs. Also, many users would be scared away by privacy violations. My last objection is that we have many wonderful editors who are minors and therefore don't have credit cards.
Wikipedia isn't a guide, handbook, or advertisement. It's nonprofit, and one of our core policies is neutral point of view. This is related to conflict of interest, which means people related to topics on Wikipedia are especially scrutinized. There are numerous examples of companies trying to influence their own Wikipedia pages, and we stop them. A "contact me" feature on Wikipedia contradicts Wikipedia's state as an encyclopedia. In addition, Wikipedia's mission statement says that it aims to be free of charge.
A block feature wouldn't work so well. Imagine two contributors to an article in an edit war. They both decide to block each other. What happens now? They can't see each other's edits, so the edit war gets nastier. We need to be able to see (nearly) everyone's contributions (see WP:OVERSIGHT). We have interaction bans that can be handed out by community consensus or the Arbitration Committee (I believe) that prevent problematic users from interacting with each other.
The last point about securing economic status isn't valid. Wikipedia is nonprofit. There aren't any profits threatened by competition. Wikipedia being forced to compete would ruin its integrity. FromAnUnnamedUser(open talk page)03:11, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Cross-reference multiple categories
It would be great to see which articles appear across every one of a selection of categories. i.e. selecting Category:Portsmouth F.C. players and Category:Aston Villa F.C. players would display all people to have played at both clubs. Grunners (talk) 12:08, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
Collapsing other people's comments during discussions
Are there any guidelines for {{collapse}}? This is becoming a frequent tactic and seeing abuse and escalations. One involved party dismisses another party in a grey area of legitimacy. It can be intimidation. Akin to deleting a post without crossing the line.
A possible remedy is 1RR where anyone can collapse comments, but anyone else can uncollapse. Both parties are under 1RR. Someone else would have to re-collapse and a fourth party would have to re-uncollapse etc.. everyone under 1RR. If it still doesn't work out, discuss or take to ANI. Perhaps Admins would not be subject to 1RR to better deal with abuse. -- GreenC21:42, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Best way to get others to read a post is to collapse a post....makes everyone want to see what it says. Simply human nature to want to see. So if the tactic is to hide somthing collapsing has the opposite affect.--Moxy🍁21:53, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
That's extra true if Javascript is disabled. I just see everything framed in a box with an eye-catching red/green overline. I almost have to read it. InedibleHulk(talk)00:32, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
No, the point is not to hide but to say to other readers, "This is unrelated or otherwise inappropriate. If you want to waste your time reading it, click Show and knock yerself out." I think many editors can resist the temptation (I'm generally not one of them, but then I have lots of time to waste). I have zero doubt that collapses make a closer's job considerably easier, when there is a closer.As to the OP's questions, you can't codify all aspects of good behavior. In general the community needs to be less tolerant of chronic disrupters, in my view, and that would help alleviate many problems including this one. Barring that, Idunno. ―Mandruss☎22:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
As a related aside, I strongly feel that all collapses including other editors' comments should be signed like any other comments. But I'm not sure I would advocate a guideline on that either. ―Mandruss☎22:07, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
The only people who should be collapsing other editors comments in my view are administrators/crats, arbitrators or ArbCom clerks. It's especially troubling when the collapsed content is one or two comments as it strikes me as censorship. —Locke Cole • t • c22:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
If it is to be done, it is absolutely NOT the exclusive purview of functionaries like admins, arbs, etc. No way at all. I'm not saying it should or should be done, but if it is to be done, it is definitely NOT an exclusive power of admins. Admins have three exclusive powers: to delete an article, to protect an article, and to block a user. Absolutely everything else can be done by any other user in good standing. If a discussion does qualify for collapsing, anyone can do it. Insofar as the closest policy to this is WP:CLOSE, it specifically and directly states "Most discussions don't need closure at all, but when they do, any uninvolved editor may close most of them – not just admins." Furthermore, an RFC clearly and unambiguously determined that admins don't have special rights to close or to overturn a closure by a non-admin. Admins do not have special consensus powers, and having the admin toolset is not a big deal. </rant> --Jayron3217:08, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
I don't think we need new rules or guidelines about collapsing (hatting) material on a talk page. I agree with Jayron that collapsing material can be done by anyone, not just administrators. If it appears to have been done in bad faith, it can be reverted by anyone else, including the person/people whose comments were collapsed. Collapsing can be appropriate for disruptive material (falling short of outright vandalism which can be deleted), personal commentary about other editors ("discuss content, not other users"), off-topic digressions - basically things that disrupt or detract from the discussion, or take focus off the point at issue. As Mandruss said, it makes a closer's job much easier (although I'm guessing closers generally do look under the hat), because it makes it easier for readers to follow the thread. Of course, a reason should be given and signed by the person who does the hatting. -- MelanieN (talk) 19:28, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
As to reasons, I'm a bit concerned about your "wall of text" prevention rationale setting a dangerous precedent. When you busted me at Saugus, it made sense. That was 24 lines (on my monitor), with three line breaks and roughly 80% off-topic stoner crap. But above, Mandruss presses the same charge against four lines, no paragraph breaks and 80% relevant quitter talk. Where do we draw the line? Mandruss' introduction is relatively gargantuan (33 lines, 9 spaces, 9 signatures) and you just here went twice as long as I did. Puzzling. InedibleHulk(talk)23:11, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Hulk, I will say that the Saugus bit was the first time I have ever hatted with that particular rationale, and that I hatted not a single comment, but three - two from you and one from El C - a humorous side discussion more appropriate for a user talk page. It might have been OK there if that wasn't already such a problematic discussion. As you know, that particular RfC generated many, many side discussions about other editors, which I and others collapsed in an attempt to keep the RfC discussion readable. I did not intend for that collapse to set a precedent, and I would not have applied it to your post above where you bid a colorful sayonara to the process - although it's true that it did nothing to further the discussion. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:10, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, you two. For what it's worth, not furthering discussion was entirely the point of trying to end my part in it. Can't just say nothing after seven years of saying things a weirdo might say, just be glad it was shorter than usual this time, eh? InedibleHulk(talk)18:47, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
You're aware that this thread has nothing to do with the preceding one? you just here went twice as long as I did. Puzzling. Not puzzling at all, if you refrain from comparing apples to oranges. ―Mandruss☎09:37, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
In a few ANIs I've seen, the burden of reasoning for collapsing content gets higher the more involved the editor is and interpreted intent in doing so. I've rebuked several editors and an AfD was reconsidered for suggested abusive collapsing (as well as, as above, just undoing it when I more conventionally disagree with it). But as they say, it's all dependent on circumstances. While I don't think 1RR for it is a poor idea, I also don't think it's needed Nosebagbear (talk) 22:40, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
This IMO is the most important thing we've identified so far in this discussion: "the burden of reasoning for collapsing content gets higher the more involved the editor is and interpreted intent in doing so". If you're heavily involved in a dispute, if you have a strong POV about the main subject under discussion, if you are perceived (fairly or otherwise) as having a difficult relationship with any of the editors whose comments you want to hat, or any similar circumstance applies, then you shouldn't collapse those comments yourself. If it truly needs to be done, someone else will recognize that need and do it for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
It goes both ways with the collapser and uncollapser being involved, that is the grey area situation. There are also cases of group vs group where one member will collapse another member from the other side, but the collapser is staying quiet in order to reach in and appear neutral enough to do controversial things, like collapsing inconvenient arguments. -- GreenC18:46, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Monitoring discussion activity
I am told simply getting the stats on this would require hours of programming so I'm just going to propose it without stats. There are various attempts at improving discussion across the site, including drawing peoples attention to discussions. Wouldn't it be useful if a bot monitored recent talk page activity so that you could look through grouped lists to find active discussions and unanswered sections? However, though a great many statistics are available, this particular stat isn't, so how feasible it is can't be discussed unless someone with the capability wants to define a script to read and report the activity across the site. I mean, how many discussions are active? How significant are they? How many unanswered sections are there over given time frames? Would there be enough room there for a wikiproject patrolling talk pages for unanswered requests? ~ R.T.G16:54, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
@RTG: Making talk page discussions more productive is a worthwhile effort, but I think it's important to first arrive at a shared idea of what that entails or what form it should take. And my view on that is, because Wikipedia is not a social networking site, anything that would indiscriminately encourage simply more discussion is probably not the right approach. By which I mean...
We already have a bot that can handle tracking active discussions: Lowercase sigmabot III, AKA the archive bot. If a talk page is set up for archiving, then the parameters of what's considered "active" are set in the archival configs, and any discussion that becomes inactive will be moved to the archive. Because Wikipedia isn't Twitter, a post on a talk page doesn't have a value proportional to its recency, and if an editor has something to contribute to a talk page section, it really shouldn't matter whether they're replying minutes after the last post, or months after. I'd hate to see anything adopted that (even implicitly) discouraged editors from participating in (or even just reading) older discussions, simply because some time has already passed.
We also have an "unanswered requests" patrol bot: AnomieBOT. If a talk page discussion involves a formal request that requires handling, then an {{editprotected}} or similar template will bring it to the bot's attention, which in turn will bring it to the attention of someone who can fulfill the request.
For any talk page posting that's not a formalized, actionable request, no response is inherently needed. Which is to say, the decision on whether to become involved in a particular discussion should be based on the merits of the discussion and the interest level of the participant(s), not by whether or not anyone has responded. Nor should editors feel (even implicitly) discouraged from contributing to a discussion simply because someone has responded, or because the previous participants feel that the matter has already been settled or a decision made.
And plenty of other talk page sections go unanswered simply because there's no reason to answer them: The original poster is off-topic, or confused, or using the talk page as a soapbox, and responding to them would only be "feeding the trolls". So, to use "unanswered sections" as any kind of metric or motivator seems like it would have questionable benefits. No bot can make what's ultimately an individual value judgement: the decision as to whether or not a post needs a response. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 21:09, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
Standardising infoboxes
I think it would be a good idea for the infoboxes across Wikipedia to have a more standardised style, at least for basic elements like the title / header.
In the first one, the title is above and outside the infobox. In the 2nd and 3rd ones, the title is inside, but with a different shade of grey and height for the title bar. There is no reason for this, in my opinion.
I understand that different infoboxes require different parameters, but basic elements like the header could be made more consistent. ElshadK (talk) 20:06, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
@ElshadK:Can be, but it's somewhat debatable whether they should be (or, whether that should be forced on editors by policy). All of those infoboxes are implemented using the same {{Infobox}} code, meaning they all could look identical — the differences in layout are deliberate, not accidental. And we already have an extensive style guide for Infoboxes, which says (regarding the infobox title) Either a table caption or a header can be used for this. In other words, these variations have already been considered, and deemed acceptably equivalent. (That consensus decision is always subject to change, of course.)
An individual infobox's layout decisions involve a number of factors, including its intended use. Some infoboxes are designed to be 'stacked' with others, or to be used in article sections — both situations where an interior title tends to work better. That's less of a concern when an infobox is expected to be the primary infobox in an article, so those may use a caption-style heading instead. (It can also simply come down to the age of the infobox, as caption-style headings were more common in the earlier years of the project.)
If any content, including an infobox, is violating the Manual of Style, it's appropriate to make edits that correct the issue. But as the introduction says, Edit warring over optional styles is unacceptable. In areas where there's some flexibility in the guidelines for how information can be presented, variations will naturally occur across the site's content. The question is whether those variations are really detrimental to the encyclopedia, or simply matters of preference. Diversity is often seen as a positive, after all... one of the things that keeps life interesting.
Our current system of organizing navigational templates is a bit of a mess. Currently, they (mostly) just have bare names in the Template namespace, with no indication what type they are, or even what the purpose of the template is. To give just one example, {{Roman religion}} is a navbox (horizontal at the bottom of articles), while {{Roman myth}} is a sidebar (vertical at the top-right of the article). I've even seen navboxes that simply categorize other navboxes, some for article space, an some for project or template space.
I don't know if anyone has suggested overhauling this before; if anyone knows of any previous discussion, please do chime in. But I think this can be improved. It would seem that any steps along these lines would require a large number of automated edits. So before looking into the feasibility of this, I at least wanted to get some sense if others think this would be a good idea or not. At the very least, I see a few basic possibilities to start with:
Have navboxes and sidebars start with the word "Navbox" and "Sidebar", like {{Navbox Foo}} and {{Sidebar bar}}. There are some of each out in the wild that already do this, and infoboxes do as well.
Like the previous, but put "navbox" or "sidebar" at the end (some do this already as well)
Have them be supbages of the main template, so {{Navbox/Foo}}, etc. (some sidebars seem to do this, currently, but I didn't see any navboxes that do).
Add a couple namespaces dedicated just for these, so {{Navbox:Foo}}, etc.
My initial worry, when it comes to number 3: Are there any issues with managing page protections at the subpage- and sub-subpage (remember the /docs) granularity, when you have a lot of (if we're being honest) unrelated templates all grouped together as subpages of a crowded parent? -- FeRDNYC (talk) 22:59, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
If you need to find navboxes, you can start here. Arbitrary titling rules is unnecessary when we have the search power we do. It becomes makework otherwise to move 130k templates and subsequently their invocations in pages. --Izno (talk) 05:45, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
Yup, renaming all of them and all their invocations would be a huge hassle for what is, at most, a pretty minor issue. I could see some use in maybe adding redirects along the lines of {{Navbox foo}} or {{Sidebar foo}} to navbox/sidebar templates that both lack such a redirect and lack a clear indication in their name. I mean, yeah, with the right search query the navbox/sidebar's findable anyway, but such redirects might help some folk. Would still be a lot of work, but would at least cause no mainspace disruption and would be helpful even if only partially implemented/abandoned before finishing. AddWittyNameHere06:00, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
Having such redirects generally isn't necessary either--all it does is mix usage in the wikitext out and about and makes it harder for newbies to figure out what a template invocation actually looks like (by adding in the redirect proxy). --Izno (talk) 06:26, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
Fair enough. Most of the templates I work with--redirect categorization templates--have such a variety of (generally long-standing) redirects that I'm really used to seeing several different names for the same template scattered about. Makes it easy to assume that's common across the entire 'pedia, which I suppose it isn't. You're right that it makes things more convoluted to new editors. (Suppose that in redirect tagging that's a bit less of a big deal--redirects are practically invisible to most newbies anyway, and those that go out looking for them are usually the ones with a decent grasp on things) AddWittyNameHere06:36, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, it would be nice if the titles were more consistent and transparent, but I second the opinions above that changing that now would be more trouble than it's worth. A more descriptive title helps when you go looking for templates in the categories or when using the search engine, but in the vast majority of cases you encounter them when editing articles, and by their position in the text it's usually pretty clear if the template is a sidebar, a navbox or something else. – Uanfala (talk)21:25, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
Backlog category for long-unresolved article issues
Wikipedia have the backlog that lists the task should be done on Wikipedia to make the articles more useful to readers. Many articles have the long-unresolved issues, making them useless for a long time. Since the tasks in the backlog is the most important thing to do on Wikipedia, there should be a category called "Articles with issues left unresolved for over X years (a year/3 years/5 years/10 years)" to resolve the long-unresolved issues more quickly. --Ijoe2003 (talk) 11:21, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
What i mean is, what if we do something like 14th century in italy, or if there is enough information, we could do 1776 in United States, instead of like the middle ages in asia. An example is if there is data over a hundred years in the country, we could do it. More data in a year, do it there. It could be good for research and in months too!
New3400 (talk) 22:46, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
I have an idea
What about adding an audio beside the celebrity’s name that says their names
Because most of people around the world don’t know how to say the celebrity’s name right
Believe me people need that
If you did so please give me some credit
Thank u :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by AyaTarekk (talk • contribs) 16:13, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
If you followed a link here and are confused, scroll to the top of this page for information on the idea lab, its purpose and how to participate.InedibleHulk(talk)14:51, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
There have been various comments calling – begging – for a guideline to avoid these repetitive discussions. I feel your pain. There are always those comments, but this time they include support for such a guideline from a couple of admins, which is something new. User:El C has suggested that we work up a proposal here for submission at the Village Pump. I don't know how to get that started except to just start talking about it and hope something useful comes out of that. So here I am with my brain dump, and I will end each point with my signature so comments can be inserted without interleaving. Others may have ideas about how to organize this. ―Mandruss☎15:32, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
The first question is how another proposal after only one year will be received. That's a relatively short gap in the history of these proposals, I think. WP:CCC says proposing to change a recently established consensus can be disruptive, and bringing another eight-week discussion after only a year may be seen as disruptive as well. ―Mandruss☎15:20, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
If we decide to proceed, we need to see what we can learn from past failures. In my view that last one failed partly because it was framed with too wide a scope. Instead of being just about mass killing events, it sought a guideline governing "tragic events" including plane crashes and natural disasters. That complicated the question – many of the relevant factors differ between a mass shooting and a plane crash, for example – and it sent the discussion in too many different directions for any consensus to emerge. I didn't follow that discussion closely at the time, and I haven't read the whole thing now, but I think that's a safe assumption knowing how these discussions play out. ―Mandruss☎15:20, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
"One size can't fit all" makes more sense when the "all" includes all those different types of events. While one could argue the merits of the wider scope, that doesn't mean much if it prevents any solution to our narrower problem. ―Mandruss☎15:20, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
That last proposal was framed as a binary yes-or-no on the "deprecation" of "bare lists of victims, which only compile names and basic information (age, birthplace, occupation, etc.)". I'm not sure it wouldn't be better to frame it as three options: default to omit, default to include, and no change. ―Mandruss☎15:20, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Further, I think it should be explicitly stated that the guideline is only a "default". "Default" means that it should apply to roughly 95% of cases, and to deviate from the default editors should seek a consensus that there is something exceptional about the case that justifies said deviation. I believe this would help alleviate concerns that a guideline would be too inflexible. ―Mandruss☎15:20, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I believe any guideline should explicitly allow for the inclusion, in prose, of the names of dead individuals who had a "significant active role" in the event. As tragic as it is, simply dying at the hands of another is a passive role, not an active one. An example of an active role would be a person who died trying to take down the shooter. Obviously, the prose should speak about the individual's role. ―Mandruss☎15:50, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Alternatively, the guideline could be worded to apply only to inclusion of the names of all dead (regardless of format, list or prose), and allow anything else to be handled on a case-by-case basis. ―Mandruss☎15:57, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
This is promising. For the record, I've been calling for a guideline on mass shootings' victim lists for months now. Glad to see it may actually come to pass. El_C16:05, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
More precisely, group killings or something similar. This would apply to killing any group of people with any weapon, including your knife, your car, etc. And "mass" doesn't really work considering that this originates from an article about the deaths of two individuals. Defining a clear boundary with any kind of coherence could be one of the tougher problems. ―Mandruss☎16:20, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
For these types of articles, the default should be to include the basic information [name, age, and (if relevant) occupation (i.e. student, teacher, coach)], so as long as the list doesn't become so long as to distract the reader away from the article (i.e. taking half the article). TheHoax (talk) 17:03, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
This discussion is about how to formulate a proposal, if any. It is not the proposal itself. If there were a three-way proposal as I suggested (which would be at WP:VPP or WP:VPR, not here), your comment would be a Support for "default to include", with further qualification. ―Mandruss☎17:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) You're putting the cart before the horse — that's something to be argued at the proposal stage. We are just workshopping here about how the question ought to be framed. I think Omit, Include, or No change (the case-by-case repetition in place as default presently) are reasonable options to ask participants to choose from to serve as a default. El_C17:18, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I agree the RfC options should be Default to omit, default to include, and no change. The guideline should be clear that this is a default that can be overridden on any given article by local consensus (but we stick with the default unless/until a discussion is closed as consensus to override default). Couple questions:
New guideline? Is this a new guideline, or an addition/revision to an existing guideline, and if so, which one? I propose this be an addition/revision to WP:BLP.
Scope? I don't think "all mass casualty events" is a good scope. I would suggest test-flying this out on mass shootings in the United States. Why? Because sadly they happen often and get lots of attention. – Levivich17:28, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
This is a critical point: to deviate from the default editors should seek a consensus that there is something exceptional about the case that justifies said deviation. If you just say can be overridden on any given article by local consensus, you accomplish nothing. Editors whose preference is the inverse of the default would simply seek a consensus to override it at every article. ―Mandruss☎17:44, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I concur with Levivich that this discussion should be limited to "Mass shootings in the United States", and I would like to add the additional qualification that we are talking about shootings where the victims were chosen at random. In cases where the victims were targeted, such as January 2019 Louisiana shootings where the shooter killed family members, or 2019 Río Piedras shooting where the shootings apparently involved a drug gang war, the identity of the victims may be relevant in determining the shooter's motivation, and thus more important to include compared to victims targeted at random. -- MelanieN (talk) 18:05, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
That's fine with me, but it changes the proposal from one for a new guideline to one for a narrow-scope trial run. PAGs would not change (yet) and editors would link to the consensus discussion from article talk as needed. ―Mandruss☎18:09, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with narrowing the scope, unless it is clear that it is only mass shooting in the US that have problems within the consensus to include/exclude victim lists (which I am 99% sure is not the case.) It should be for all types of disasters - man-made and nature - where innocent, generally non-notable people before the incident died. A trial run in a specific area is fine, but the RFC discussion should cover the concern broadly with a note that what results would be test-run on US mass shootings. --Masem (t) 21:13, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I also disagree with narrowing the scope to US shootings. Exactly the same considerations apply to articles like January 2017 Melbourne car attack, where there was a minor editorial skirmish to include victim names. Our deliberations should cover all such fatal attacks, regardless of the location or the weaponry. WWGB (talk) 04:46, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Well I for one am curious on what all of the articles with kept victim names have in common? If we do make a new guideline it will then be driven by something in place. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:14, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
So, let's say that we have "Default to Include" and "Default to Exclude". That implicitly means "default to include (or exclude), subject to consensus to change that default on this specific article". No? So, how is that different than what we have now ... which is, seeking consensus over and over again on each article? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:51, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
See comment beginning "This is a critical point", above. The essential point is that discussions of overriding the default would have to be limited to what makes that case exceptional compared to most of the rest. That would have to be explicitly stated somewhere and supported by the community consensus. If an editor violated that rule by making arguments not related to what makes the case exceptional, other editors would point to the rule. Persistent or repeated violations would be treated as disruption and subject to sanction. When there is a closer, the closer would need to be aware of the rule, and they would simply ignore any arguments that are in violation of it. That's really the only workable alternative to doing things the same way, include or omit, in 100% of the cases within the scope of the guideline. In my view such a system would prevent most of the discussions we have today, without being completely inflexible. ―Mandruss☎21:03, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I want to say that the RFC should definitively close as "default to exclude" and "default to include" with either case have allowance for consensus-based local discussions override. But to that last point, we should make sure to provide bullet points of what are reasonable cases where to override this proposed PAG can be used. For example, if we "default to exclude" an exception may be made for cases of killings targetting specific individuals (as suggested by MelanieN above), which should be spelled out in this PAG. What we want at the end is a PAG that helps avoid "I like it/I don't like it" arguments for inclusion/omission of victim lists. And the more definition we can give based on past practices of the line, the better. --Masem (t) 21:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
User:Masem, I'm not sure that a one-size-fits-all approach is as likely to get consensus as a more nuanced approach. Consider, e.g., alternatives like these:
Default to exclude complete lists when the list of injured, missing, and dead people exceeds n.
Default to exclude, unless all of the following conditions are met...
Default to include all notable and non-random targets, and to normally exclude non-notable 'random' targets.
Also, I think we'll get more support if the proposal says what to do when the victims' names are excluded. Reminding people that they can link to an external list of victims can be helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:54, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Some editors have said that victims' names should be included when the number killed is in single or low double figures, but to exclude them if the number killed is above a particular figure. I disagree with this, but does that suggestion have enough support for it to be an option? Jim Michael (talk) 04:13, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
I disagree with it, too, since my reasons for opposing the lists apply whether it's three or thirty. I don't see much value in a compromise that says, "Ok, you can violate these principles just a little bit." If there's a counter-argument, some reason why three should be more acceptable to me given my stated arguments for opposition, I don't recall seeing it.More important to me at this stage: How can we find a good answer to the question does that suggestion have enough support for it to be an option? and the many others like it? This thread is less than a day old, and it's already becoming unmanageable. This is what I anticipated in my opening comment: Others may have ideas about how to organize this. ―Mandruss☎09:48, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Just seen this, and my $0.02 is to repeat the long standing view that articles about mass shootings (and also disasters as a whole) should not list all of the victims' names by default; WP:NOTNEWS, WP:NOTMEMORIAL etc, it has all been said many times before. However, it seems that it is never possible to obtain a consensus in favour of this proposal, so I am not sure how far it will get this time round.--♦IanMacM♦(talk to me)12:39, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
@Ianmacm:I am not sure how far it will get this time round. Nor am I. But, while it may be wishful thinking, my perception is that sentiments are changing as experience shows how useless and unnecessary "case-by-case" is for mass killings. While outcomes have varied in recent years, it wasn't because of significant differences in the cases; it was a random result of who (and how many) happened to show up. We know this because the arguments never varied much between cases, and any variances had nothing to do with the unique characteristics of the cases. Some discussions cited NOTMEMORIAL, others didn't; some cited NOTNEWS, others didn't; and so on. There's nothing like actual experience to replace crystal-balling. Secondly we can learn from mistakes made in the formulation of previous proposals. ―Mandruss☎12:52, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Why did The Hoax get hatted for voting too soon, while Ian got a ping, repost, show of solidarity, echoes of policies exclusionists would echo and a wall of text about your perception of sentiments and personal experience of useless and unnecessary campaigning? Topic ban and hat me, fine, but I move you be disqualified from overtly leading this supposed ultimate plan on account of your obvious conflict of interest. Pick someone from an untainted pool of powerusers with dispute resolution experience, if you want this to be impartial. InedibleHulk(talk)10:13, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
One difference: Part of Ian's comment was relevant here, its last sentence. Note that that's the part I responded to. And yes, status/experience and reputation mean something at Wikipedia, just as everywhere else in the world since the dawn of personkind. BTW, TheHoax has been topic banned. Also BTW, I'm "overtly leading" nothing. All threads are started by a single editor, I happened to be the one to step up and start this one, and I started it with things that have been in my head for some time about the prospects of a new proposal and how it might be framed (which is distinct from the names issue itself, a point that some have found it difficult to grasp). It's not evil, really. Mandruss's first priority, his #1 agenda, is to eliminate wasted time in repetitive discussions. A default to include would be far preferable to him than the status quo, as he has clearly stated several times throughout this saga. So stop with the accusations, please. ―Mandruss☎10:25, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
Stepping up and starting something in plain sight is overtly leading it. You certainly aren't evil for preferring to abolish the current system rather than waste time continuing to fight for exclusion in every case. But this preference means you have a vested interest in achieving that result, so might (in theory) tilt this formulation so the actual result suits you, not everyone. InedibleHulk(talk)11:28, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
Hmmm, I'm not sure how one would start a public discussion not in plain sight, but whatever. Some people would thank me for helping move things along, but I don't need that. Regardless, my comments weigh no more than anybody else's just because they occurred first. This one was not about formulation, I digressed there and you're free to collapse it as off topic if you like. Otherwise if you see me actually tilting any formulation, feel free to speak up. Barring that, your concerns appear to be unfounded. And I expect someone will be along soon to collapse this whole line of discussion as off topic personalizing. ―Mandruss☎11:46, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
One would start a private discussion not in plain sight, which would make one the covert leader, which you clearly are not. Not sure why you denied moving things along publicly then, and seem to want thanks for it now. If you're outright hoping this is hushed up so you can continue on leading us forward instead of someone more suitable, you're still leading (as in directing, suggesting and maintaning your vision of order). Thank you for your assistance, now please pass the controller to a new player. InedibleHulk(talk)12:11, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
I hereby cede my nonexistent leadership to anyone who wants it. I will continue to comment in this discussion, as I believe I have something to contribute, so ceding my nonexistent leadership will have no effect on anything. How that be? ―Mandruss☎12:16, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
If you can comment without steering, governing, dictating, ruling, overruling, coercing, shaping, ensuring, motivating, demoralizing or pointing to where you want us to go, you can stop leading. Just stop being the prominent figurehead and driving force for a day. They call it "being relieved" for a reason, commander. InedibleHulk(talk)12:31, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm not unreasonable and I consider myself a team player. So if I hear a second on your motion but no opposition to it, I'll retire from this discussion for a full 24 hours. Otherwise I'm afraid you don't have the authority to relieve me; that would make you the commander, right? I protest this coup against my nonexistent leadership! This is a fun and stimulating exercise and I continue to dance with you only because I know it will ultimately be collapsed and so do little harm to the discussion. ―Mandruss☎12:37, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm not trying to pull rank, we're both frontline grunts and have bonded in the same phony trenches. As your unpaid work friend, I'm just a bit worried about you going mad with power. Take the easy way out or leave it. InedibleHulk(talk)12:56, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
I do feel a wikibreak coming on, but that's my choice not yours; and it's probably more likely if I'm not being pushed; that's just human nature. I'll see how it goes. ―Mandruss☎13:02, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
I still think a good starting point is existing Wikipedia guidance. In general, 1) we discourage lists where information is better presented by prose ([7] and Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lists#Use_prose_where_understood_easily) and 2) We discourage bare lists of otherwise non-notable (i.e. would never merit a Wikipedia article) people (WP:LISTPEOPLE, to wit "A person is typically included in a list of people only if all the following requirements are met: 1) The person meets the Wikipedia notability requirement. 2) The person's membership in the list's group is established by reliable sources." bold mine). I'm not entirely sure why people who were killed in some unfortunate way (natural disaster, accident, mass murder, etc.) suddenly become exempt from these principles. If people are worth mentioning in the article for something more than merely dying (like if they did something important to the narrative), write about them in the prose. If all we have to say is "they died", then don't. If we have guidance, the guidance should be "don't treat these situations differently". Just as we don't create a list of every alumni of a university, we don't create a list of every employee of a company, etc. we don't need to create a list of every person who has died. Any new guidance should make clear this is NOT new policy or guideline, just a restatement of existing policy and a reinforcement that it still applies for these situations. --Jayron3214:23, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
@Jayron32: There has been some confusion about the purpose of this discussion, and I now believe it's the result of disagreement about what a proposal should look like. If we want a binary up-or-down like the last one, which would necessarily be some variation of inclusion or some variation of omission, then it makes sense to discuss the merits of both here. On other hand, if we want something like the three-way I suggested above, it's more of a neutral question than a proposal, and it doesn't make sense to discuss those merits here; that discussion would be saved for the RfC. Therefore I think there needs to be a decision about that before we do anything else here. ―Mandruss☎15:03, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
This is a workshop. It isn't a proposal. We're just throwing ideas out and brainstorming stuff. This isn't a vote. These are my thoughts. --Jayron3215:17, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
You don't think the workshop should start with a decision on whether the RfC should present a three-way neutral question or a two-way non-neutral proposal? I do. ―Mandruss☎15:26, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
No, workshops don't make decisions. They collect ideas. See the instructions at the top of this page: "The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas." (bold mine). If you had wanted a vote, you should have started the discussion at WP:VPR. This is a "give us your ideas" place, not a "vote on my proposal" place. --Jayron3215:47, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
We appear to disagree about the purpose of this workshop. A decision on whether the RfC should present a three-way neutral question or a two-way non-neutral proposal is not a !vote. It is a framing question, and the first one. It's precisely the kind of thing a framing discussion (workshop) should decide. It has been my understanding that this is a framing discussion. ―Mandruss☎15:56, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
You know what, have your own workshop. You asked me for help a few days ago. You also literally said in your first post above "I don't know how to get that started except to just start talking about it and hope something useful comes out of that." I spent some time giving the issue consideration. After careful thought, I threw out some ideas I thought would be helpful. That's it. Given the deep levels of ownership you seem to want to have over this discussion, including the walls of text you keep adding, the repeated attempts to collapse parts of the discussion you don't personally like or agree with, and the continuous badgering of good faith comments by others, including myself (who, I might add again, you contacted about the issue and brought me in on this), and your desire to carefully control the discussion and steer it only in the direction you want it to go in, consider my hands washed of the matter. Have fun doing this by yourself. It seems like what you really want anyways, given your actions. Vaya con dios, amigo. --Jayron3216:09, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Ok, it seems my participation here to date is not widely appreciated, and I don't know of a different way to participate, so I'll exit this workshop. Sincere best wishes on developing a viable and useful proposal. ―Mandruss☎16:42, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
User:Jayron32, I'm thinking that there are two sets of options, which might be rendered something like this:
Should we include a bulleted list or a table of victims' names?
None
Some (e.g., if it's short, or only notable people)
All
Should we include the victims' names in the article, but not in a list?
None
Some (e.g., if it's short, or only people who were involved in some element of the "plot")
People might feel quite differently about these two presentation options, and just as strongly as they do about whether any given name ought to be mentioned. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:55, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Question: Would a no-victims-list decision also extend to talk pages? Do those BLP concerns apply to the talk page as well as the mainspace, or would it be alright to include a victim's list in talk page discussions about the number of casualties? If this is an issue, perhaps it could be included in the RfC. – Reidgreg (talk) 16:01, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
Please note that possible canvassing has already taken place by TheHoax in their mass message — I attempt to address it here. As mentioned there, I hope this will not end up tainting the proposal before it is even had a chance to be formulated! El_C17:35, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
These are the users that were mass messaged by TheHoax:
In addition to the mass message being problematic in itself, the only names I recognize are ones who support inclusion. If that is, indeed, the tendency, we may have a serious problem to contend with, and as a result, perhaps it would be best to suspend the proposal for a month or two. Note that, for now, I have topic banned TheHoax from Gun control, broadly construed. El_C17:53, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I think it would be easy to spot any adverse effects of the canvassing. Like if a list Supporter argues for elimination of "default to omit" as an option, that's a red flag, or at least a dark pink one. I think it would be premature to postpone at this juncture. ―Mandruss☎ 17:59, 18 November 2019 (UTC)Stricken per comment below. ―Mandruss☎10:36, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
I, actually, am not sure it would be that easy. We may have to postpone, so brace yourself for that possibility. I want this process to be as fair as possible. Having double digits number of editors canvassed may prove to be too much of a hindrance to this process. El_C18:06, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I'm going to place more weight on opinions from those users who have not been canvassed. This is not your fault, but it's just the way it is. El_C18:37, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Canvassed or not doesn't make my opinion invalid, this has been a hot ongoing debate for years now on Wikipedia and will attract a ton of editors. I am not sure what "fairness" you are looking for? If the include arguments are weak then omit would be in favor. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:41, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
And yet, I still place less weight of it, since you now, unwittingly, have a temporary conflict of interest. It would be to your side's advantage if the canvassed proposal was launched. Fairness as in a proposal that has not been tainted by canvassing. El_C18:54, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
if the canvassed proposal was launched. Ah, I didn't think of it that way. Canvassing here taints discussion there, since one follows closely after the other. I get it now. ―Mandruss☎19:08, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I was one of the users canvassed by TheHoax. Since the current discussion has become tainted, I would suggest closing this entire discussion and starting entirely from scratch, with notifications being sent to a broad range of users who have participated in the discussions on including/excluding victims names for various articles. It may in fact be a good idea to work out here, at this page, the list of users who would be notified, first, before such notifications are sent out. Nsk92 (talk) 16:58, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
I also am a canvassed editor, my opinion isn't really changed by the message, I was aware of this discussion before I got canvassed. If it's the best option, I'm fine with just staying out of the discussion also. Puddleglum2.0 Have a talk?21:30, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Off topic. (Unless you wish to discuss the canvassing and resulting possible postponement of the proposal, please do not comment in this subsection.) El_C18:16, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
In the end it comes down to you having to make the case that not including victim names improves Wikipedia. Consensus is measured by argument strength and not by votes. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:09, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Like TheHoax above, you are off topic. This is about the formulation of a proposal. One's opinions about the merits of the lists have no place in this particular discussion. ―Mandruss☎18:13, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Default to Include Victim Names – So, what exactly are we "voting" on? I read the above discussion. And I am not quite 100% sure. But, I think there are three choices: Default to Include; Default to Exclude; No Change. I am going on that assumption to place my "vote" here. Also, whether I was "canvassed" or not should not "discount" my vote or comments or opinions. I have been weighing in on this topic repeatedly and consistently for, what, years now. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:08, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Like TheHoax and Knowledgekid87 above, you are off topic. This is about the formulation of a proposal to be presented at WP:VPP or WP:VPR. Should there be a proposal at this time, or is too soon since the last one? What exactly should be proposed? How should the proposal be framed? What should the options of the proposal be? And so on. So, what exactly are we "voting" on? Well, we weren't "voting" on anything, per se, until you created a subsection called "!Vote". We're just talking at this point, batting ideas back and forth (this page is Village pump (idea lab)". Feel free to join that. ―Mandruss☎20:33, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, El_C, for spotting and mopping up the canvassing. Not sure what to do about the proposal; putting it off might be best for the reasons described above. Also maybe as a deterrent to future canvassing attempts. – Levivich00:26, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Don't worry about artificially lightening my opinion to ensure business as usual, El C, I'm blowing this fugazi carnival stand and the whole assclown circuit. No offense you fine jugglers, ringleaders, trapeze artists, midgets, giants, lions, lizard people, bearded ladies, unitarded unicyclistic unicorns and ushers, but this media circus act ain't what she used to be. Too political, too regulated, too expensive. I've given up seven potential marriages for this Great Kabook of Knowledge since the dark night rose over Aurora and enough's enough. You want to promote murderers and bury the dead, go for it. I've had enough blood and fear and bureaucracy. Exodus, anyone? InedibleHulk(talk)04:44, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
As someone who, to my recollection, hasn't commented previously in this debate, I suggest not worrying about a handful of canvassed editors and instead focusing on casting a wide net to get other potentially interested editors involved. Hopefully the result will be a fairly concise request for comments, which is going to be put forth to the entire community anyway. isaacl (talk) 19:54, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Proposal phase postponed until 2020 — Workshop phase remains open, of course
I have decided, with some misgivings, to postpone the proposal phase until 2020 at the earliest. It's just better, I think, to be sure that the process is as fair as possible, than have a decision that may be later marred with claims of impropriety. Sorry for the delay, at any case. El_C20:00, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
@Nsk92: Sure. It's already started in this subsection's parent section. It can continue in that section and/or in one or more new subsections not yet established. How to organize the process to make it manageable is TBD, but I question whether simply dumping comments into a continuous series of "arbitrary break" subsections is likely to yield usable results. Any suggestions welcome. We almost need a workshop to decide how to run the workshop. Anyway as it stands today there's nothing stopping you from just adding comments to the parent section. ―Mandruss☎10:51, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
I personally think that Mandruss' idea on a three way system, (Default to omit, Default to include, No change) Is the best way to go about the proposal. And I am also thinking that some of the merits of each option should be included with the proposal. --NikkeKatski [Elite] (talk) 14:29, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
What if we rival Google and YouTube?
It sounds dumb, but don't we have the resources? And, Google and YouTube are censoring creators, and wikipedia, as a free into source, can compete. What do you guys think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by New340 (talk • contribs) 20:36, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Its a dumb idea, but who knows? We are the free Infomation website. YouTube is censoring creators of all kinds. Same with Google's bias to right side sources. What do you guys think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by New340 (talk • contribs)
I can see your intentions for wikipedia are good, you seem to have intentions of expansion. The hard part of a successful Internet business idea is not coming up with the idea, the hard part is to get it to spread, to be widely known. This is where wikipedia comes in; global "brand name" recognition. New or old business models can be catapulted by the wikipedia brand name, for wikipedia and by wikipedia community. If wikipedia markets its own sister spin-offs, there is no risk of corruption from outside commercial forces; something that could be a reality by allowing external forces to market themselves on wikipedia. Per in Sweden (talk) 08:20, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Video content? Informational YouTubers censored elsewhere could contribute to WikiBooks, WikiNews, WikiVoyage or Wikiversity. The format would change: a WikiBook with a series of videos isn't quite the same as a YouTube playlist, but its an analogue. Most of what we're talking about has too much original research for the Wikipedia encyclopedia, and there's not really a Wiki for entertainment, but yeah, if you're making quality informational videos on sex ed or politics or whatever I don't see why you couldn't migrate to WikiMedia commons and present them as a WikiBook or WikiNews story. Work adapting to their formatting and style and such would be involved. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:02, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
We do migrate content from YouTube to Commons all the time, that is, content that is appropriately freely licensed. The vast majority of content on YouTube is not. GMGtalk21:24, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
A baby shark, unlike the young of decidedly less interesting fish, is called a "pup". Isn't that amazing? If you'd like to help shark puppies (including dog shark puppies) maintain their stranglehold on the marine human knowledge market, leave a comment below about how octopus afficionados are racist virgins who live in their mom's basement and support Donald Trump on Patreon, or suggest future sea animals to undermine and discredit. Be sure to check out InedibleHulk bandanas, mystery crates of chewable(?) vitamins or oversized foam novelty hands on AliBaba and don't forget to smash that Watchlist button to see this channel grow. The 1,000th stalker will win a chance to receive weekly notifications of authentic shark-based YouTube videos from around the web, signed by the Hulkster himself! InedibleHulk(talk)00:16, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
You think Discovery didn't steal Ancient Aliens from a bunch of dudes and a smaller bunch of dudettes on the Internet? Or Vikings? Or mermaids? What goes around comes around, nothing new under the sun. Even our current viewer retention strategy (sitting around waiting with our carpet-like oral discs extended) was directly ripped off from watching sea anenomes do their thing on screensavers and wallpaper in '98. If we can kill and eat Britannica, we can kill and eat anything we set our mind to. InedibleHulk(talk)08:16, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
I think the answer to the first question, "don't we have the resources?", is a clear "no". To run a search engine or video-sharing site with anything like the popularity of Google search or YouTube would require far more server capacity that any non-profit like Wikimedia could possibly afford. But anyway, as PrimeHunter points out, this is a matter for Meta rather than the English Wikipedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:32, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
@New3400: Just to give an idea of the scale of the resources needed to run a video-sharing site on a large scale, Netflix's annual electricity usage is roughly 250 GWh. To put that in perspective, the total electricity usage of the Wikimedia Foundation is roughly 3 GWh per year. That's before you factor in the cost of buying servers, network access charges, cooling systems, employing maintenance staff for all this new equipment, and before you take into account that Netflix largely has a single job—show a list of videos and stream them on request—whereas to replicate Google would not only mean all the above, but also the computing power needed to acquire, store and catalogue vast quantities of data and process it on demand. (Google's annual electricity usage is 11 terawatt hours—that is, they use roughly 3000 times as much electricity as us just to keep the lights on. To put that another way, there are more than 100 countries in the world whose total electricity consumption is less than Google's.) So no, we don't have the resources, and even if we did have the resources it wouldn't be a sensible use of them to replicate a service already provided elsewhere since Google et al can raise money through advertising, cloud computing, hosting and data mining to cover their costs whereas we're reliant on donor funds and few donors would consider this a sensible use of their money. ‑ Iridescent00:53, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
For the benefit of those who weren't around a few years ago, this is what happened when the Wikimedia Foundation tried to rival Google, which was probably the single most disastrous episode in Wikipedia/Wikimedia history and caused damage, disruption, mass resignations and a loss of goodwill from which we've yet to recover fully. The likelihood of the board approving another attempt is near enough zero as to make no difference. ‑ Iridescent18:41, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Wow! many thanks for that link. I'm browsing the breadth and depth of the Village Pump before making my first posting here, but that's fascinating stuff. [For UK editors] makes Midsomer Murders look like a vicarage tea-party. Scarabocchio (talk) 19:57, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
Guys, I did not expect this! I'm pleased with this. When I was talking about censored creators, I was talking about people like Mark dice. He has been losing money, the algorithm hates him, yet he still keeps doing what he loves to do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by New340 (talk • contribs)
Iridescent, what do you mean? Explain like I'm 5. (Yes, it's a Reddit meme) — Preceding unsigned comment added by New340 (talk • [[Special:Contributions/— Preceding unsigned comment added by New340 (talk • contribs) |contribs]])
As a notable person, if Dice wants to freely license his videos, then they would probably be welcome as uploads to Wikimedia Commons. I doubt he would want to do so, and if he doesn't, well...we're in the business of giving stuff away, and most other people aren't. GMGtalk20:47, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
I provided a link to the full annotated history of Wikipedia's brief attempt to rival Google up above, but a super-short summary would be "The WMF decided it wanted to try replicating Google, then realised it wasn't just a case of adding some additional off-the-shelf code but would be very difficult and extremely expensive and cut their losses, but not until they'd spent a lot of time and money and a significant number of employees had resigned in disgust".
On the specific point of Mark Dice, tread very carefully. As I suspect you know if you've tried to edit Mark Dice this is a topic with long-term issues of disruptive editing, and it's subject to discretionary sanctions—that is, people deemed to be acting disruptively in relation to him won't be afforded the usual assumption of good faith we extend to editors but will be expected to work entirely within Wikipedia's rules. ‑ Iridescent22:54, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Meh. Commons still considers appropriately licensed videos by notable people to be within c:COM:SCOPE. Does it matter? Probably not. Because if the proposal is to turn Wikimedia projects into an outlet for content creators to make money, then it's a non-starter. GMGtalk00:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Definitely agree with those who say "No Way!" This is an encyclopedia, not a "let's upload every video we can get our hands on" site. A key question with respect to Google is "are all Wikipedia articles findable via Google?" across all languages. I've not seen an analysis which confirms that all of our content is accessible via Google, and I think this, along with an eval of other major search engines, is something that would be useful to determine. Lastly, what about our linked content - does Google follow all of our verrrry many links to external-to-WP resources and index those? Would be useful to know whether any of that content is blocked by Google or other search engines. I think that we are doing Google a solid by unearthing things from the far edges of the internet and adding them here as sources; that enriches the Google search indices, as well as those of other engines (looking at you, DuckDuckGo). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:13, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
My response to this sort of idea is always the same: Why would we want to, and what exactly would be the benefits of such a change?
Some of you are probably familiar with Discogs.com, arguably the world's (or at least one of the world's) "biggest and most comprehensive music database and marketplace[s]", to quote their own mission statement. Occasionally someone will surface over there asking why Discogs doesn't appear in the first 10 Google search results for whatever artist or song title, and offering suggestions for making that supposed goal happen. In a response to one such discussion, I wrote the following. (I promise I'm going somewhere with this.)
For most mainstream artists, their Discogs artist page isn't going to be ranked very high by Google. Nor, arguably, should it be.
When you're Googling "Justin Bieber" — think about this from the perspective of his fanbase, not the discogs userbase — it's unlikely that what you want is his Discogs artist profile. So, while there are techniques for increasing the PageRank of a particular site/page, to push your content closer to the top, it isn't within discogs' charter to have the highest-ranked Justin Bieber profile page on the web. Discogs doesn't need to be in the top 10 of every Google search. It would be doing a disservice to the Internet community at large if it attempted to goose its ranking, in fact.
And that's the thing. Due to the nature of its focus, Discogs isn't, and shouldn't be, a "bigger deal" in the online music community. It's not a popular-interest music site, and its content is not of interest to most people, at least in comparison to other resources they might access instead. Discogs is doing what it does, as a result it occupies a certain place online, and that place is where it belongs.
I view Wikipedia much the same way. It's already the #1 knowledge resource for a good portion of the Internet, and probably the most recognizable name in online scholarly / encyclopedic websites. Wikipedia is where you go to learn something about pretty much anything. That's... pretty damn good, right? That's a pretty lofty goal being achieved right there. And not only is Wikipedia's position and status impressive and laudable, but Wikipedia itself is important. It does more than just about any other site to expand and disseminate the sum total of human knowledge. It is a wealth of genuine, verifiable, factual information in a post-truth world.
Still, should Wikipedia be shooting for more than that? Well, not just "no need", in my opinion, but "absolutely not, under any circumstances!" Wikipedia could't be bigger than it is right now, without becoming something other than what it is right now. And that would destroy the thing that it currently is, which is pretty great and worth preserving.
The world already has a Google and it already has a YouTube, and there are plenty of competitors trying to oust them from the top spot in their respective niches. (Though, Google has expanded into so many areas these days that it's hard to claim it really has any one "niche". It's still at the top of search, sure, but it's also at or near the top of 50 other areas as well.)
The world only has one Wikipedia, though. (Well, OK, it has 16 even if you only count the languages with million-plus article counts, but you know what I mean.) Wikipedia is the biggest site doing what it currently does, and with very little exception it's the only site doing what it does. There are very few rivals for Wikipedia's current crown, unlike the ever-ongoing fights for Google's or YouTube's. So, why would Wikipedia want to give up what it has now, in order to join those other rivalries? (And if the answer is, "It shouldn't, it can do both!", I simply call bullshit.) -- FeRDNYC (talk) 01:28, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
If you search for "Justin Bieber", Discogs doesn't even get listed on the first two pages. If you search "Justin Bieber"+ the name of one of his albums, Discogs doesn't even get on the first two pages. If you search "Justin Bieber Discography", Discogs isn't even first on the list. It's third, after Justin Bieber discography and Justin Bieber in that order. In fact, depending how you look at it, that makes sense... ~ R.T.G22:23, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
@RTG: Agreed, I'd say it makes perfect sense. Unless you're a Discogs user, you're more likely to be interested in Justin Bieber discography than Justin Bieber's Discogs artist profile. But if you are a Discogs user, or curious to find out whether you'd want to be, it's right there for the clicking. (Or you can search for Justin Bieber discogs in which case it's right at the top.) -- FeRDNYC (talk) 00:40, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
@feRDNYC, what do you mean by few rivals? I'm new340, but forgot my password, so I made this account. We have wikibooks, wikidictionary, and more. We don't have much rivals besides nupedia. (Insert Larry Sanger joke) New3400 (talk) 01:54, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
@New3400: Wait, you lost the password to an account you created four days ago?!? 🤯
...Aaaaanyway, moving quickly on: Wikibooks, Wiktionary, etc. are sister sites, they're other Wikimedia projects. So, they're not really relevant to Wikipedia in terms of either rivalry or focus. (Unless your question is really "Why doesn't Wikimedia rival Google or YouTube?", in which case you're in the wrong place, since the Village Pump is for discussion of English Wikipedia only — though I'm not 100% sure where the right place would be.)
As for rivals, there are some. Were more. About.com is the one that immediately springs to mind. There's also britannica.com, of course. Quora, to some extremely-disorganized extent. (Talk about a site that's lost its focus trying to become more than it was, maaaan...) Then there are other Q&A sites like Stack Exchange and Yahoo Answers. (...Is Answers even still a thing?) Google Scholar is also considered to be in somewhat the same vein as Wikipedia, broadly.
Now, you might not consider most of those sites, which typically have a far narrower focus and generate far less comprehensive content, to be serious Wikipedia rivals. I would agree, they don't really measure up. And that's kind of my point: Wikipedia is the best at what it does, and it shouldn't lose sight of that trying to be other things or worrying about competing with other sites that it isn't, in fact, actually in any sort of competition with. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 07:53, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
@New3400: Nothing specific happened, Quora just sucks now IMHO. The beginning of the downfall was when they eliminated all support for question detail, and required that all questions be limited to basically a single sentence. And then suddenly people started filling it with crap questions like "How do I uninstall Google Firefox internet browser software?" — crap that's not even worth asking, never mind answering. Focus lost. Bigly sad. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 22:53, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
What about it we use invidious as a source instead of YouTube. It's an alternative to YouTube with every video from youtube. You can make an account and stuff. Not trying to push it. The link is invidio.us. Make a note that it sometimes crashes. New3400 (talk) 16:10, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Invidious is just an alternative skin for Youtube's front end; the videos you're watching there are still hosted by and streamed from Youtube, and if linking a video you should link to the original Youtube link rather than a referrer site. (If any site were to be stupid enough to try to duplicate Youtube, Alphabet's lawyers would shut them down within minutes.) The circumstances in which you should be linking to Youtube videos on Wikipedia are minimal at best, and not something you should be doing until you're much more familiar with our guidelines for external links; much of the content of Youtube and other video sharing sites has the potential to get you in serious legal difficulty if you add a link to it, and much more of it is never going to be appropriate. ‑ Iridescent18:29, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
The purpose of Wikipedia is not to provide a platform for creators, and censorship/blocking on other platforms does not affect our content decisions. Although anyone is welcome to contribute, much of the content that is considered unsuitable for YouTube et al is also unsuitable for Wikipedia for the same reasons. If New340(0) is proposing that we use Wikipedia to amplify the likes of Mark Dice, this proposal is a non-starter. –dlthewave☎16:21, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
Hey dlthewave, I did not mean it like that, I was pointing out him! No offense to you. Also, does anyone know any YouTubers that can migrate or work on Wikimedia and youtube? New3400 (talk) 19:50, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
Youtube is a social "space" site, takes 300 hours of video uploads per minute and has 1.9 billion individual users per month streaming and uploading video. Google search is taking 5.6 billion searches a day of which 15% have never been searched before. ~ R.T.G20:20, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
@New3400: To add to RTG's point about scale, and as GreenMeansGo also said at least once in the preceding discussion, the issue is that most of the content on YouTube — nearly all of the content on YouTube, in fact — is not appropriate for Wikipedia. YouTube is a personal content-sharing site, and other than its community standards and its active copyright monitoring it has no restrictions on content — you can do or say whatever you want, however you want, as long as it's not against their rules. Many of the content creators who contribute to YouTube do it, in whole or in part, for the exposure, and YouTube has created its fair share of genuine celebrities from among its most-watched personalities.
Anyone looking to "migrate" from YouTube to Wikipedia would have to be willing to give up ALL of that. As an Encyclopedia, Wikipedia has no room for "personalities". It has no room for personal views, only facts. It expects that all contributed content uphold the five pillars. Unlike on Youtube, Wikipedia content must be neutral — no editorializing, viewpoints, or personal perspectives. Unlike on YouTube, Wikipedians contribute in relative anonymity — editing an article doesn't provide an editor with any "exposure" beyond their user ID listed in the article's edit history. Unlike on YouTube, nobody owns the content on Wikipedia — contributors agree to give up all control over their contributions, which any other editor may change at any time without the previous contributors' permission or involvement.
We do all of this, willingly, because we're not here for the clicks, or the views, or the likes, or any personal benefit. And anyone who feels the same is welcome to join us. But for most people posting videos on YouTube, what they're looking to get out of it is very different. (And that's not a criticism or a judgement. It's merely an observation that, for the most part, users of either site are going to be happiest where they are now.) -- FeRDNYC (talk) 04:26, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
How about Wikipedia create a market place to compete with EBay or Amazon instead it would be a good source of income for both editors and Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dq209 (talk • contribs) 17:21, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
I recently tried to add an individual Patreon page as part of their external link. But I found out that my link got deleted. The person stated that wikipedia doesn't support crowd funding and was inappropriate. Websites like news sites and newspaper pages require subscription services, so does wikipedia. Why can't a Patreon creator not have such a privilege? All their materials are copyrighted by the individual. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roddie83 (talk • contribs) 04:23, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm a little confused why you say that Wikipedia requires a subscription, because it definitely doesn't – not even to edit. There are no copyright concerns here, but I suspect that since Patreon is primarily a fundraising service, people are leery of linking directly to it. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 04:32, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
@Deacon Vorbis: What Roddie83 (talk·contribs) originally wrote, making that argument, is Plus wikipedia itself includes crowd sources in terms of fiance's. Including an individuals Patreon pages should be related to such standards. (In other words, "Wikipedia takes donations!") Which is... true, I just don't see how it's relevant.
Wikipedia asks for donations from people who visit Wikipedia. A Patreon user asks donations of people who visit their Patreon page. Both of those are fine. But how does the former obligate Wikipedia to provide links to the latter? We're certainly not asking people who are the subject of Wikipedia articles to solicit donations on Wikipedia's behalf — in fact, it would be highly unethical to do so, as it would create a "paid publicity" sort of arrangement to the Wikipedia article, which is supposed to be neutral and encyclopedic.
As that last link will tell you, @Roddie83:, "Wikipedia is not...":
We link to relevant source materials that inform our article about a particular topic, not whatever promotional resources the subject would like us to link to. They can do their own promotion using whatever online presence they maintain, something we typically do link to as long as it's relevant. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 08:10, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
And yet we have no problem linking to Adobe's website (or Apple's or Microsoft's) and those are just as commercial (areguably much more so). Patreon is a useful resource for people without the means to create their own website market; I don't see how linking to John Doe's official Patreon page is any different than linking to his main website (or to Disney's). Matt Deres (talk) 16:50, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
@Matt Deres: We link to www.patreon.com in the Patreon article, too — it's relevant there, because the article is about Patreon. The same way we link to www.apple.com in the article about Apple Inc., and to www.adobe.com in the article about Adobe Inc.. It's only relatively recently (the past decade or so) that companies like that have started using their official company sites for online sales first and foremost — it used to be, you went to store.apple.com to shop for Apple products, and we didn't link to that site, because it's not relevant information for someone who's looking to gain an encyclopedic understanding of the Apple computer company.
Every offsite link in a Wikipedia article is subject to strict requirements, listed at WP:EL. General links to a person's Patreon page would violate a number of the prohibitions:
Individual web pages that primarily exist to sell products or services, or to web pages with objectionable amounts of advertising. For example, the mobile phone article should not link to web pages that mostly promote or advertise cell-phone products or services.
The linked content primarily covers the area for which the subject of the article is notable.
Official links (if any) are provided to give the reader the opportunity to see what the subject says about itself. These links are normally exempt from the links normally to be avoided, but they are not exempt from the restrictions on linking. For example, although links to websites that require readers to register or pay to view content are normally not acceptable in the External links section, such a link may be included when it is an official website for the subject. This exemption does not allow for additional "official" links such as those found on fundraising websites. — External links: Official links
Information from a person's Patreon page can be cited, if it's relevant to the contents of the article... but that would require being able to link to the individual content (not the Patreon page in general), and it's incredibly rare that something a user posts on their Patreon page will qualify as a reliable source for an encyclopedia article. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 07:23, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
Bot to remove sister project templates with no target
Could there be/should there be a bot to remove sister project templates with no target?
Among moth articles, and I suspect many others, there are sometimes template links to Wikispecies and Wikimedia Commons but there's nothing at the target location in the sister project. I'd love to see a bot which could go through and check these and remove the deceptive templates.
Yep it seems like a good task for a bot, I saw it at BOTREQ but don't have the time right now, perhaps I'll take care of it over Christmas. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 00:06, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
hi. Have created a new type of overview article, to provide standard overview of political history for one decade. this includes an article providing an overview of multiple countries, and also decade overviews of individual countries. here are two such articles. item: 2010s in political history, and 2010s in United States political history. feel free to let me know what you think. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 04:57, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
The main concern (there are others) that I have with these "articles" is that this format is in some instances original research (unless sources present certain events as the significant events of the decade, we are conducting OR and breaching WP:WEIGHT in deciding what to include. I have seen a format like this used to present a significant and slanted POV, in the decision of what to include and in presenting a series of links to other articles designed to imply a conclusion not supported by reliable sources.
I am also unconvinced that articles with many sections that contain ZERO content (only links) should be labeled as articles; 2010s in political history should be moved to List of 2010 political events, and as in all lists, the inclusion criteria should be spelled out.
Overview articles intending to be of this type are not new, but articles formulated as lists are better written as lists.
those are good suggestions. I appreciate those! thanks. I will take a look at the articles' contents and format, and think about the points that you raised. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 16:18, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
If I attempt to publish an edit with no changes, I am unable to. However, if I delete then re-add a character in an article, it allows me to publish my changes (despite no changes being made). I think we need something that can check if no changes have been made, and either prevent the user from publishing, or not saving the edit (which is similar to what is used on Wikisource). Thanks, ThatoneweirdwikierSay hi20:10, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
I don't think I can replicate that: I've just tried publishing an article edit without any changes and it went through as normal. And I don't see why there should be any restrictions on that: null edits (as they are known) have their uses. – Uanfala (talk)20:50, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
Uanfala, while I do understand these benefits, it must also be considered that users who wish to earn a service award can simply do this simple trick on any article of their choosing. It is different in this case because, in the case linked to, no removal and re-addition of text is made whatsoever (presumably in the Source Editor). However, my scenario is intentional exploitation of the 'null edit' in the Visual Editor (as Izno described) to raise edit counts for goals that other users have worked hard for. Thanks, ThatoneweirdwikierSay hi22:05, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
As far as my experience with the sourcecode editor is concerned, making a null edit forces reparsing etc, but it does not count as an edit (e.g. in the page history or in the editor's contribs). – Uanfala (talk)22:09, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
Thatoneweirdwikier, service awards are nice trivialities of almost no significance to anyone. I post mine for fun but care very little about them. An editor who tries to pad their edit count by making many inconsequential edits in an attempt to "game the system" will be detected, and any advanced permissions will be revoked. Cullen328Let's discuss it08:10, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
It would be extremely helpful to have the ability to add only a section of a page to my watchlist rather than the entire page, or in other cases to be able to add only the talk page. This isn't currently possible, but have folks on the technical/developer end considered making it a feature? Sdkb (talk) 05:21, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Nice idea. I think it might be hard to do, but I haven't written the software, so the experts will have to explain. I have another related idea. --David Tornheim (talk) 05:57, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
The mw:Editing team is talking about it. However: it will require "small-to-moderate" changes in everyone's everyday editing, it won't work perfectly (unless you want to deal with "major" changes), and they might not get much further than laying the ground work for it, and hoping that it'll be extended in a future project. Feel free to put mw:Talk pages project on your watchlist; whatever they're working on will get mentioned on that page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:32, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Would it be possible to have multiple watchlists? Often my interest or focus in a set of articles that are related changes, and I want to review changes in some different collection of related articles or topic areas.
It would be nice to have multiple lists for that. Otherwise, when you have something like AN/I or other very active pages, it dominates the single watchlist.
Perhaps it could be done with a filter on the main watchlist, but it would be nice to include saved filters like saved queries on a database. The filter that go with the watchlist can't do topic areas to the best of my knowledge, like say politics or philosophy, or a place to stuff all the things I only occasionally want to monitor.
I believe that the only way to acieve this currently is to use multiple userids. That is not classed as sockpuppetry if it is done transparently. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:08, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. One thing that might help is the ability to have multiple edit filters. These can be saved and recalled, as explained here: here. --David Tornheim (talk) 13:27, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Categorization has a fatal flaw. Here's how to solve it.
In the past year or so, one of my holy crusades has been to uphold WP:CATV and its companion WP:EGRS. CATV is not often quoted or bandied about, and I can see why. It is most often observed in the breach. Every time I spot-check an article, particularly a BLP of a very prolific person with lots of categories, I can identify several to delete, because they are not sourced and there's not even any support in the article for them. This is a systemic problem throughout Wikipedia. For example, I recently demolished Category:Youth rights people which was probably misunderstood, and had been applied to 55 BLPs where it did not belong. When I was done, we were left with a mere 13 BLPs in the category where it was sourced and supported. That's emblematic of the problem and par for the course. Folks, that's an 80% failure rate for WP:V!
The problem, as I see it, is that categories are added to an article, often in good faith and with supporting sources, and then the article's body text is modified without regard to the categories. Especially in a BLP, assertions are challenged, and removed, and cats are left "dangling". Another pathological example was the case of Adolf Hitler. He was in 6-8 or more categories which he definitely belonged in, but there was no textual support in the article. The decision was finally in my favor, to remove the categories. But tonight I came up with a solution: {{catspan}}.
catspan is a proposed template that will marry categorization with its supporting text. It will work like this: (Article: Henri Matisse) {{catspan|This project was the result of the close friendship between Matisse and Bourgeois, now Sister Jacques-Marie, despite his being an atheist.|French atheists}}
The catspan template can take text to put in the article and one or more categories to go with that text. Therefore, both are strongly correlated. If the text is challenged or removed, then the category can be addressed at the same time. Removing the whole template here would have the effect of also removing the "French atheists" category.
WP:CATV IS AN ABJECT FAILURE UNLESS WE CAN TIGHTLY COUPLE CATEGORIES WITH THE TEXT AND SOURCES THAT SUPPORT THEM!!!
So that's my spitballing for now: any comments? Elizium23 (talk) 07:03, 31 December 2019 (UTC:
"Categorization has a fatal flaw"? Please provide rock solid evidence, Elizium23, that categorization has a "flaw" that is "fatal", and that your "holy crusade" is something more than your own personal agenda. Keep in mind that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Bring that evidence forth, please. Cullen328Let's discuss it07:15, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
I just gave you two examples of evidence already. Was that not good enough for you? I've been working on this project for months, if not a year. Check through my contributions, just search for edit summaries containing "CATV". Elizium23 (talk) 07:22, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
@Elizium23: Categorization would benefit from a complete rethink, but your solution is only tinkering at the edges. Your Matisse example purports to show the evidence for the category 'French atheists' but there's no indication of Frenchness in the linked text. Categories should become single attributes, with Matisse having the simple attributes of 'French' and 'atheist', rather than the compound 'French atheist'. Sourcing proofs for compound attributes in most cases is going to be almost impossible. Scarabocchio (talk) 10:05, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
There are many areas of Wikipedia that would benefit from a complete rethink. The problem is that we are not starting from scratch but from an existing nearly 20-year-old encyclopedia with millions of articles. In those circumstance it is extremely difficult to implement any radical change. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:36, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
deWP works much more in the way I have suggested .. very greatly reduced numbers of categories on most articles. Standard simple categories of 'Mann' and 'Frau' on person articles etc. Existing enWP complex categories could be disassembled automatically: 'French atheist' has two attributes, and these can be derived with very little effort. Scarabocchio (talk) 10:44, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
(contd) Disassembling 'French male sculptors' 'French male painters' 'French printmakers' 'French atheists' to 'French | male | painter | sculptor | printmaker | atheist' allows new combinations : people who are BOTH painter AND sculptor, and new intersections not possible at the moment: male AND printmakers. Scarabocchio (talk) 13:22, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
Categorization certainly has flaws, as does nearly everthing, but I think it is gross exaggeration to say that it has a fatal flaw. If such a system was introduced it would make adding obviously correct categories a lot slower and more complex, hence more error-prone, so I believe that it would cause at least as many problems as it fixes. I seem to remember that a rather similar system was tried many years ago to indicate the scope of a reference better, rather than have it source an indeterminate number of words preceding its location in the article, but the system fell into disuse because editors found it too laborious. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:36, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
The flaw now is that categories are far too easy to add without justification, and moreover, it is far too easy to leave them "dangling" even after the article has been gutted of any textual or citation-based support for the categories in question. It should(n't have to) be standard practice for anyone editing any fact in an article to check if there are categories that should be deleted now that said fact is deleted, or vice versa. And that simply doesn't happen - at all - now. It's lazy and it's causing articles to rot. And article rot is a fatal flaw. Elizium23 (talk) 11:02, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
And I'll tell you what is "too laborious" - it is me manually checking whether each category applies to a large article. This cannot be automated - I have to comb through manually - sometimes using a search term works, and sometimes it doesn't. It is tedious, time-consuming, and Sisyphean, because people are probably leaving dangling categories much faster than I can clean them up. Elizium23 (talk) 11:04, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Lmaltier, I will second Donald's suggestion. I'll also suggest you take a look at Wikispecies, which is a rough analog to your proposal. Also consider whether coins or maybe other collectibles should also be included. In light of the wiki species project, stamps alone seems like a very narrow topic, so perhaps broadening the topic, with the consideration of piloting it with stamps alone, might justify the creation of a separate project. S Philbrick(Talk)17:35, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
The proposal is not limited to stamps alone, but also includes all other philatelic "objects" (e.g. cancels, etc.) It's already huge but it's difficult to evaluate the order of magnitude: how many millions? It might be extended to coins, etc. but I'm not sure that this is a good idea.
Visual Editor autocorrect and autocorrect in general
Hi. I added a script for a VE autocorrect -- User:Nux/veAutocorrect. This is the autocorrect as known from Word and OpenOffice etc. I'm wondering if this should be enabled by default? Also what sequences should be predefined? Do you think replacing "standard quotes" with “fancy quotes” is good or not?
Note I also made a similar gadget for the old/classic editor. This is enabled by default on Polish Wikipedia for about 9 years now. As you can imagine it is very efficient -- it worked on computers that were old 9 years ago 😉. This gadget could easily be included by default as it can be disabled dynamically (in Advanced settings of the editor). I can port this to English Wikipedia, but I don't know if there is any interest in this?
Oh, you have policies for that, great 🙂. So as seem you only need dashes part for now (WP:DASH). So e.g. replacing "--" with dashes. --Nux (talk) 12:35, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
@DMacks: You would just need to brake the sequence. So you can write "-" then use left arrow and write "-" again. I guess you could also disable the sequence if you write it a lot. Also in wikicode mode default autocorrect is a bit different (at least at the moment). The sequence in wikicode is " - " (with spaces) so you can write "--" normally. --Nux (talk) 11:59, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi, User:Nux. Safari's spell check works in VisualEditor (visual and wikitext modes). I keep it turned off, but that's my personal preference. What advantage does your script provide, compared to what the user already has easy access to? Is it really just for punctuation, which is also available natively (and even easy on a Mac)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:40, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
User:Whatamidoing (WMF) the script provides the same advantage as any autocorrect -- makes writting faster. Sure, there are ways to add special characters -- e.g. on Windows 10 you can use [Windows]+[.] shortcut to choose special characters. But you have to find them. Autocorrect is like a shortcut to a specific character. So you just write "--" and get a en dash add a 3rd and you get a em dash. It's just faster and more natural that any other way. You might even reconsider your quotes policy. Before my tool was born we didn't use proper quotes on Polish Wikipedia. It just wasn't feasible. With autocorrect script it became feasible and not using proper quotes is now considered an error. Search&replace tools also helped (we use my fork of User:Zocky script for that).
And this is not only about punctuation nor just about special characters. You can add more sequences. Personally I write a lot about web-dev (obviously 😉). So I have a sequence that changes "[[JS]]" into "[[JavaScript|JS]]" and another that changes "[[CSS]]" to "[[Kaskadowe arkusze stylów|CSS]]". This is for wikicode though (not sure if that would be possible for VisualEditor version of autocorrect). --Nux (talk) 11:32, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Comment: For me, my browser's spellcheck does not work when I have syntax highlighting on, and neither does Grammarly. >>BEANS X2t18:40, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Maybe I'm just an old dinosaur, but my experience of autocorrection has always been that it causes more problems than it fixes. I simply want the sequence of characters that I enter to be respected, not second-guessed by some piece of software whose authors think they know better. If I get something wrong then it usually only takes a second or two for me to correct it myself. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:22, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
You are talking about autocorrect of spelling errors in phones etc. This is a different thing and I also find that what you say annoying (and usually disable it 🙂). I'm talking about a different type of autocorrect, with a short set of replacement sequences that are described here: User:Nux/veAutocorrect (and maybe just a few more). And also you can always disable them. I think that proper autocorrect is just easier for beginners and can be powerful for power-users. Would also be great if that would integrated into editors with options to easily customize sequences. Nux (talk) 20:37, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
I wouldn't call this autocorrect, it is an automatic text replacement for specific things. I guess the dashes could be useful for Windows users. Overall, having optional scripts that do such text replacement in a browser- and OS-independent fashion could generally be helpful, but should be user scripts that require manual installs by those who wish to use them. —Kusma (t·c) 21:21, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
It's been called autocorrect long before iPhone was born 😉... It is still called like that in MS Word and was since it was made to my knowledge [8] (see especially "replace text as you type" part). Same in OpenOffice [9]. The function evolved into replacing common spelling mistakes and more, but it started with simple replacements. Nux (talk) 00:23, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
If you make this live, you need to make it opt-in only and give an appropriately dire warning to editors before they opt in that they'll be held responsible for any disruption, regardless of good faith or not. Wikipedia has a long history of people who've been blocked for unintentional disruption after installing search-and-replace plugins which ended up changing other people's words. Net-nanny software that blanks out anything potentially offensive even when the offensive language is specifically the topic of discussion is a particular regular, and anyone around a couple of years ago will have an un-fond memory of the plugin that had the side-effect of replacing every instance of "Donald Trump" with "Drumpf" on any page the editors who had it installed tried to edit. ‑ Iridescent18:01, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
@Nux: I think this is a fantastic idea! I don't really care about the dashes or quotes, but I want really my htes to be autocorrected to the just like in Word. Is there a way for users to extend the replacement sequences, so that I could probably import my autocorrects dictionary from Word? SD0001 (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
@SD0001: My autocorrect for the standard editor? Yes. See: pl:Wikipedia:Narzędzia/Autokorekta#Własne_sekwencje. To make it work that would need to be gadget though. Visual Editor would require a bit of a re-wrtie to make similar options possible. Or you could make your own fork and add sequences. A more user-friendly version would also be possible, but I guess that would have to be a MediaWiki Extension to use ResourceLoader in full. And that would probably require some commitment from Wikimedia 😉. --Nux (talk) 11:37, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
What if we did something like this ( May 18, 1987- disappeared September 21, 2002- found dead August 12, 2003.) We separate the day they went missing, and the day they were found dead using d for disappeared and fd for found dead. New3400 (talk) 23:00, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Not sure we should mess with the two-date system of birth-death or birth-disappeared. If they disappear and later found dead they are no longer disappeared and it reverts to a standard birth-death. The history of their disappearances would be in prose format in the lead/body section. Trying to create a short-hand system for tracking DPs opens a pandora's box as there are edge cases and details specific to the case. -- GreenC02:37, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Greetings! The Project Grants program is accepting proposals until Feburary 20 to fund both experimental and proven projects such as research, offline outreach (including editathon series, workshops, etc), online organizing (including contests), or providing other support for community building for Wikimedia projects.
We offer the following resources to help you plan your project and complete a grant proposal:
@Headbomb and Donald Albury: Thank you *very much* for your comments - and your time with this - seems some may think the content worthy (please see "an earlier related discussion") - some may think otherwise - nonetheless, seems the content may not have a place anywhere here on Wikipedia at this time - yes - *entirely* agree - the content could be presented in some better form - may work on this at some better opportunity - in any case - Thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 23:19, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
That still doesn't answer what this is even supposed to be. What's the goal? Where would this be? And that's beyond the other issues of accuracy and sensationalism. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}23:32, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
@Headbomb: Thanks for your comments - and questions - initially, the "User:Drbogdan/ScienceNews" template was a test/study to see if there may be a concise way of presenting some very basic and worthy (and verifiable) scientific knowledge that many (at least, young students) may not fully understand - and in a form that might better catch their attention - in my teaching experience, for example, many (including some very well educated university students) didn't seem to fully understand that the planet was moving at all (at least not that fast) while they were standing still; also, many seemed to think that traveling to the stars would be much, much easier than it really might be; and so forth - iac - hope this helps in some way - Thanks for your questions - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 00:10, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Something like this could be useful for Portal:Science. It does get about 1k views a day and could probably use some inventive ways to showcase new and changing content. May want to consider reaching out to related to WikiProject to see what they think, though it's anybody's guess how active they each may be. GMGtalk14:12, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
NOTE: a new version (hopefully improved to the better Wikipedia standards) of the template has now been created - and, if interested, may be viewed below and/or here => "User:Drbogdan/ScienceFacts" - Thanks again for all the earlier comments - newer Comments Welcome - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 16:25, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
^Bogdan, Dr. Dennis (February 16, 2020). "The one particular chemical is Nucleic Acid - a basic chemical for all known life forms - in the form of DNA - and/or - RNA - that defines - by way of a particular genetic code sequence - all the astronomically diverse known life forms on Earth - all such known life forms are essentially a variation of this particular Nucleic Acid chemical that, at a very basic level, has been uniquely coded for a specific known life form". Dr. Dennis Bogdan.
errrr, guys...? is there any page where we can all go to celebrate this? just wondering. please advise. thanks!!! --Sm8900 (talk) 03:11, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
Terrific. thanks. but why was there no link posted? Could you please tell me where the original link or notice for this was originally posted? thanks!! sorry for the additional question!!! --Sm8900 (talk) 03:21, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
@Sm8900: this just happened a few hours ago, so far there is a link posted on the Watchlist notice, there is ongoing discussion about what/how/where else to provide links. I think the signpost is going to include this in the next edition as well. — xaosfluxTalk03:23, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia paid editor "licensing" or "preferred editor list"
An idea occurred to me as I was reading about Status Labs this morning. There's obviously a demand for competent Wikipedia editing on behalf of various companies/individuals. I suspect that most of the time, a company would go with Wiki-PR not because it's discrete, but because of a sense that it's competent and it's visible, and it feels like there's less risk than just hiring an individual whose background is unclear. What if we, as a community, did the vetting for them, though, and had a highly visible list? Something like an informal license that a paid editor would apply for, would be based on consensus, and could be taken away at any time. A list of users who have demonstrated not just a high level of understanding of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, but of paid editing best practices. If it became visible enough, the only reason companies would have to go elsewhere is for the shady stuff. Legitimate paid editors win because it would increase their visibility as compared to others, Wikipedia wins because it would increase community oversight, and companies win because there's an easily accessible way to find legitimate paid editors. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 15:52, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
It's not who's allowed to do paid editing; it's a list of people identified as knowing what they're doing and subscribing to certain principles. As such maybe what it's called matters, but the main idea is the same. I don't know why this would be any more of a legal concern than, say, topic banning someone from an area they're paid editing in or blocking a paid editor for something other than a ToU rationale. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:28, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
Eh. I get that, but I think people really underestimate the extent to which this is going on. PR is a massive industry and Wikipedia is one of the most important public-facing websites. Ideally, no, we would have no paid editors, but we do have them. Lots of them. And it's better to have someone who does it right, so why not make it easier to find people who do it right so everything's transparent. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:28, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
User:Rhododendrites - I don't think that editors underestimate the extent of paid editing. More precisely, I am aware that some editors underestimate its extent, but that many editors are aware that it is a very large problem. I have a few questions. First, would certifying a few paid editors slow or accelerate the rate at which Wikipedia will become a tool of the advertising community? Once paid editing becomes the norm, Wikipedia will not be what it is now, and it will be nearly impossible to re-create it. This may be inevitable. Wikipedia may be a victim of its own success in a free-market economy. Second, but perhaps less importantly, what is "doing it right" for paid editors? Is there any such thing as "right", or is this just a case of minimizing and slowing the damage? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:49, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
slow or accelerate the rate at which Wikipedia will become a tool of the advertising community - I don't know how to answer that. It's possible that by taking steps to ensure that any paid editing follows all policies and guidelines that paid editing on a whole will increase. But that strikes me as worth the trade-off. What we don't want are promotional/non-neutral articles (whether paid or not), so taking steps to address that seems like a good thing. victim of its own success in a free-market economy - I think that to some extent we've been there for years. I mean we already have big firms developing elaborate, sneaky practices to promote their clients. what is "doing it right" for paid editors - There seems to be a fear of paid editing in general because it's this big scary force that we can't really do much to stave off, so we keep pretending like paid editing is always disallowed despite our rules to the contrary, pushing it into the shadows. By doing it right I mean following our policies and guidelines, ensuring that material is well sourced, neutrally written, etc. There may be something to be said about the argument of "is it better to keep it in the shadows". In the US, for example, there was a lot of talk about that with regard to these white supremacist groups that came out in force starting a few years ago. Some people said they were just in the shadows before, and it's better to keep them in the light so we can see them better. I tend not to take that point of view, because I think when they're in the light it becomes more acceptable -- people need to understand this is something to be absolutely rejected by society. There's an analogy with paid editing, I suppose. The difference is that while we all agree that undisclosed/promotional paid editing is bad, paid editing that follows the rules isn't the same amount of bad but visible -- it's actually better. It may not be the ideal of volunteers writing about what they're interested in, but a paid editor can absolutely improve the project if going about it in the right way. Unfortunately, they're the exception, but maybe we can change that... — Rhododendritestalk \\ 15:18, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
Just commenting on this - I recently went back to tracking paid editors, and was very surprised at how much it has changed in 6 months. The number of jobs on offer has increased as has the difficulty in identifying the articles and paid editors involved. I feel like we've gone backwards rather than make any inroads into the issue.
With that said, I've had a hard time finding paid editors who are open about what they do and who are able to continue doing it. On the whole, the undisclosed paid editors get more jobs, make more money, and mostly get away with it, while the disclosed ones are under increased level of scruitiny, can take fewer jobs, and make less. (I'm looking right now at an undisclosed paid editor who was community banned 8 years ago, but has made $4000+ this month doing undislosed paid edits with socks). I'm sure that there are situations where being a disclosed paid editor is productive, but what we are up against is people desperate to get links to their sites into articles, or to have an article that proves they, their product, or their company matters, and in the end they will always turn to someone who makes the right promises rather than someone operating openly. If we want to have an system where paid editors can both disclose and be in a situation where disclosing is better than hiding what they want to do, the solution isn't so much a list as changing the environment - either by working out a way of making it harder for undisclosed paid editors to operate without causing even more harm to the disclosed ones, or by changing the community's attitude towards disclosed paid editing.
However, at this point I'm willing to try most things. We are losing, so why not try different approaches? - Bilby (talk) 16:02, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
I would hope that a list does change the environment. My thinking is that it would give companies a place to look first, before going the shady route. It's true that if you want dirty business done, you'll need to go elsewhere (and you'll probably have to pay more for it). That's true for any dirty business, and we'll never completely stifle stop that. But we can take all of the could-be-legitimate business away from the shady paid editors and turn it into something that follows our policies and guidelines. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 15:23, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
Sadly, I think we might be overestimating the pressure companies would feel to go the ethical route. While we, the community of Wikipedians, take undisclosed paid editing very seriously and recognize the damage it does to the information ecosystem, I think most of the general public remains largely unaware. Add to that the POV bias a corporate executive has for their own company, and I'm not sure most of them would even realize that undisclosed paid editing is unethical, let alone feel guilty about it. Take, for instance, the North Face debacle, where even an egregious paid editing violation was basically forgotten after a bit of bad press and an apologetic reply tweet. Sdkb (talk) 09:00, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
An interesting parallel might be the open source software world. There's a mix of people who write code for purely altruistic reasons, but there's also a lot of open-source activity that's driven by money. Companies open-source projects because doing so helps build their customer base. Or grows the ecosystem in which they play. Or gives them a seat around the table to push standards in the direction they want to see them go. I suppose it's possible there's sockpuppetry going on in the open-source world, but for the most part, contributors are up front about their corporate relationships. Same thing in the academic world; the corporate and non-corporate denizens work and play well together. Open up any major scientific journal and scan the author list; it'll represent a mix of universities and corporate research labs. So, while on one level, I don't think anybody should be using wikipedia for profit, the far more serious problem is people doing so covertly. That's fundamentally wrong and needs to be stopped. If some sort of certification/licensing process is a way to stop it, it's at least worth considering. -- RoySmith(talk)16:34, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
At the end of the day, no matter how much I hate hatehate paid editing, I am forced to agree. Known paid editing, that is carefully monitored and potentially even done by trustable individuals, is better than the fundamentally unethical covert paid editing that is commonly done now. Potentially, further guidelines for paid editors, actually designed to help with ethical paid editing and encourage it as long as it's done within site guidelines, would be beneficial for everyone. It could, for example, help keep various corporate articles, even potentially neglected ones, up to date, in a clean, policy-compliant manner (updating dates, statistics, etc, in places the volunteer community no longer really pays attention to).
We are, at the end of the day, volunteers. We have no obligation to keep every little statistic and fact up to date, and articles exist where the last statistical update was many years ago. We could benefit from the fact that paid editors would be able to enhance the site as a full time job, not just as a hobby. moonythedwarf (Braden N.) 16:53, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
This would only have a marginal hit to the demand for undisclosed paid editors - even if our ongoing vetting was flawless, we'd still have loads of companies, business men and women, products etc, that would have to be declined by a "legit paid editor" but would still want their article. Legit, disclosed, paid editors are pretty good about verifying notability, and avoid outright puffery. However it's still common to see a whitewashed article - that is, they'll create something with the positive content in, without including the notable negative coverage. "We could benefit from the fact that paid editors would be able to enhance the site as a full time job, not just as a hobby. " is both so counter to our ethos I cannot accept it, plus the fact it suggests that ongoing vetting could be a significant time loss. I'm tempted to suggest name and shaming as a more active effort. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:06, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
Regarding, paid editors ... counter to our ethos, consider WP:GLAM/Wikipedian in Residence as a counter-example. I suspect most people are OK with the WiR concept. So, the problem is not so much that the editor is getting paid to edit, but whether the edits they make further the goals of the encyclopedia. The problem is that so much (if not most) paid editing is 1) covert and 2) contrary to our goals, but we shouldn't conflate being paid with editing contrary to our purpose. -- RoySmith(talk)16:36, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
My view of paid editing is that is should be treated just like any other source that is likely biased when done by businesses, in the sense that:
it should be cited just like if the business wrote a book about its history
the author should be named, but the "sponsorship" should also be noted.
the business should take clear responsibility for text that is included here, i.e. they shouldn't be able to say "this drug is approved by the Food and Drug Commission" one day and then say "we didn't make that statement. We don't even know who User:Badexample is. He's responsible, not us."
All the current requirements under WP:PAID, need to be met. This is in addition to WP:PAID, not a replacement.
If you can't do that there's no way we can include that source in the article.
So how can we insure that such biased *self-sourced* material is properly cited and cleared beforehand by a volunteer editor - the same as if a volunteer just ran into the sponsored company history in the library?
1st - make sure it is written down somewhere off-wiki and attributable to the business that wrote it, as well as the business that paid for it. The 2 obvious ways are
in a press release published on a "reputable press release site." (they exist IMHO)
or on the company's website (either the writer's, or the sponsor's, but both names must be mentioned per TOU)
The companies involved can license the material CC-By SA if they'd like to make it easier to include in the article, but they must make clear the copyright status.
2nd - allow the paid editor to post a a notice on the article's talk page, maybe even at WP:AFC. But they must declare their paid status there *and* on their user page. They may not edit anywhere else, unless they are invited by a volunteer, e.g. at WP:COIN.
3rd - if a volunteer want to include the material in the article, they must cite the source with an inline reference. e.g. "Bob Smith said that "Our new drug is now approved by the FDC."[1]
The volunteer must never have done paid editing on Wikipedia - not even for another firm.
^Smith, Bob. [www.PR.com "Press release from Smith Drugs, Inc"]. PR.com. Retrieved 30 January 2020. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
The above is clearly related to WP:RS, especially the sections WP:BIASED, and WP:SELFSOURCE and the sections in between those including WP:QUESTIONABLE. Given the relation of this to WP:RS, perhaps the best way to get this through on an RfC, would be to put it as part of WP:RS. BLPs have a similar section there.
If all that goes through, I'd have no objection to having a list of "approved paid editors" along with a list of "banned paid editors" (or at least a short-list of the worst) Smallbones(smalltalk)18:21, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
Taking up the specific category of paid editing to promote businesses or individuals, which I think is the primary concern of most of the discussion here: I believe the only best practice that would garner consensus support is to propose edits on the talk page, and then largely disengage from the ensuing discussion — perhaps only offer responses to direct questions. The problem as pointed out already by others is that it's not appealing to the clients. Even in the most benign scenario, where the client wants to correct wrong information, a declared paid editor can only offer the hope of getting a change made. Large companies could possibly get pressured into signing onto a declaration of not employing paid editing, for the goodwill it would generate. I think it would be much more difficult to get other companies to adopt: they'd continue to use the shield of an intervening PR firm (and probably a few layers of contractors below that). For better or worse, I think the only ways to combat unpaid editing is to have greater editorial control in some form. This will raise the barrier for everyone to edit, which I know is a deal-breaker for many in the current community. isaacl (talk) 18:26, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
Regardless of what our best practices are, creating a central resource like this, with people who know what they're doing wrt following paid editing best practices, also serves to communicate what those best practices are. I think it's independent from any changes we choose to make to those best practices. I.e. if we say paid editors can only suggest edits, such a directory would only include people who know/practice that. It's a matter of "what it means to be on this list" and "what happens if I work with someone who doesn't subscribe to these best practices". I also think something like a signed declaration is potentially complementary rather than in competition with this idea (but I'm skeptical that it would really gain much traction without a huge marketing push by the WMF). — Rhododendritestalk \\ 18:51, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
I just don't think companies will look on Wikipedia for a list; they'll look online for publicity and reputation management firms. Lots of little companies think that's the way to get more hits. Wikipedia:WikiProject Cooperation (I hate how this WikiProject and Wikipedia:WikiProject Integrity chose these very general concepts as names (I know the first deliberately chose its name as a counterpoint to the second)) was, as I understand it, intended to be a central resource for best practices and advice for paid editors. isaacl (talk) 19:10, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
I think allowing some paid editors is entirely the wrong approach. My preference is that in the particular areas that are most vulnerable to spammers we raise the bar re sourcing. A CorpProd similar to BLPprod, but this time requiring a couple of reliable sources. Plus maybe we use AI and some edit filters to start rejecting over promotional language. Protection is also worth looking at, if we have an article that PR folk want to remove a sourced but negative factoid from, lets make that a valid reason for applying extended confirmed protection of that article. If we force spammers to do better editing to hide themselves then we lose some spam and the rest becomes better quality. ϢereSpielChequers09:21, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
Idea: new namespace, entitled: "GROUPS:"
Hi. I have an idea for a new namespace. It would be called "Groups:" It would be for any group of editors who wish to work together, whether due to shared interests, common goals, shared editing on particular topics, or a shared sense of problems that they wish to address. basically it would be for any kind of group here other than WikiProjects. we don't need to add to the existing quantity of wikiprojects, many of which are already excessive in number.
what we need is a vastly different and new way for editors to find others of similar views and interests, and provide a whole new workspace for them to work together. in this age of social media, online collaboration, and vast and numerous ways of common editing and collaboration, it is high time for Wikipedia to adopt this idea. okay, what do you think? Please feel free to share any thoughts, please. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 01:50, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
No. Assuming we accept your premise that we don't need to add to WikiProjects, then we don't need a GROUPS namespace because what you describe ("[a] group of editors who wish to work together, whether due to shared interests, common goals, shared editing on particular topics, or a shared sense of problems that they wish to address") is exactly that, a WikiProject. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}01:56, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
yes, it could be; or it might just be a group. why require a group of editors to set up a new WikiProject, if they don't want to, and when we already have too many that no one uses?? and also, why should they need to create a whole WikiProject, if all they want to do is simply work together??? --Sm8900 (talk) 03:16, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
The creation of a 'WikiProject' is no more or less complicated than the setting up of a 'group'. Create Wikipedia:WikiProject Foobar like any other page, and putting up whatever you want there. That's no different than creating Group:Foobar like any other page, and putting up whatever you want there. As for why create a WikiProject if all one wants to do is work together, I'd ask you the same thing about why you need to create a group. Because that's literally what WikiProjects are: groups of people working together. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}05:37, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't foresee a need for a separate namespace. Why not just use the talk page for an appropriate WikiProject, and create any subpages as desired? It's not clear to me that setting up a parallel system of collaboration groups would be any better than the current set of WikiProjects, which already has an infrastructure that can be used. isaacl (talk) 06:24, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
I am not sold on the new namespace, but we could certainly think about what parts of WikiProjects do or do not work, and try to set up other collaborative infrastructures. What do you have in mind and how is that going to work? Maybe create some mockups in your userspace? —Kusma (t·c) 16:10, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Kusma, I agree with you. I am doing so now. I will send you some links soon. on the other hand, if you look at my contribs history, you will already see where I have been discussing some ideas. feel free to do so, and to chime in there if you wish. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 16:32, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
@Kusma:, I am trying to create a forum where various WIkiProjects can exchange ideas and information about their best ideas, efforts, methods, and accomplishments. I am the Lead Coordinator at WikiProject History. I tried to create an active exchange at WikiProject Council, but did not get very far when I tried to do so.
I would like to get some interested editors together who might be interested in helping with this idea, either with getting WikiProject Council moving again, or creating a whole new WikiProject to do so. You can sign up to help at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editors Forum/Members. Right now, this page is a redirect to a draft in my user space; we will move it to the project space as soon as we have ten people signed up.
eventually, the goal would be to have a few people from a wide variety of WikiProjects and various topical areas, working together at WIkiProject Council, to help us create a forum and an exchange for ideas and information. Would you be interested in helping with this? Please let me know. If you wish, you can simply comment on my talk page to let me know any comments or thoughts on this. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 12:02, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
Sm8900 Isn't that what this is? Or am I missing something?
I have an idea: possibly create a WikiProject that allows you to create new projects easily-- like the New Article Wizard.
She noticed that for certain topics in English and in Japanese, the content can be different. Sometimes this reflects a difference in knowledge that an editor might have due to cultural understanding: Onsen in Japanese has more content than Onsen in English.
Sometimes it can reflect bias: Nanjing Massacre in English is different in tone and content than the Japanese version. Take that for what you will.
Languages are boundaries that Wikipedia can and should break down to spread knowledge and curb bias. This will make all editions of Wikipedia better.
Idea:
For most readers, it is not intuitive to read a Wikipedia article and then have the idea to read the same entry in another language. However, by guiding the reader toward alternate entries of interest, we can inspire thoughts to flow more freely between languages and countries. This could have the effect of breaking down remaining barriers to freedom of information and thought.
Method:
By visiting a topic, a bot could pull from a given language (ex. Japanese), translate that entry through a translation tool (ex. Google Translate) into English. It would then compare the English translation to the English entry. A NLP algorithm (LSA) would output the similarity between the documents. The bot then continues to do this for more languages. When it discovers the language pair with English that is the most dissimilar, it would add an entry to the 'See Also' section mentioning that the language of choice could provide more or differing information to explore. It would also provide a direct link.
Result:
More information for the reader to explore, which in turn could shape the content of the English entry. The same could be done in reciprocal for the topics in the other language editions. This will help readers unlock ideas from cultures around the world, and spread knowledge.
Status:
I made the bot. It works, but I'm busy updating instructions so that people can use it. Right now it only gathers articles and compares them--I realize that I need the community to give me permission to edit articles.
I've gathered and compared ~4800 articles so far, and there is ample evidence that articles vary according to their language edition. It does seem that there is more knowledge to be shared among established topics. I can work on making some charts, and if anyone is interested in taking a look for themselves to do a little data science, I'm happy to share the db.
If this interests you, please help me by checking out the code, giving insights in how to craft a proposal, spreading the word, or showing me where I could go to find the right crowd here on Wikipedia to make this happen.
There isn't a single entity called "Wikipedia"; each of the 297 Wikipedias is an independent entity with its own rules on sourcing, notability, scope, bias, and what constitutes appropriate content. Except for the most basic inconsistency in facts (e.g. "Latin Wikipedia says that the Battle of the Alamo took place in 1835 but English Wikipedia says that it took place in 1836"), I doubt comparing-and-contrasting would be a particularly useful exercise. When the community of another language Wikipedia deems their version of an article to be of particularly high quality, it's already flagged as such in the interwiki link sidebar on that article (see the aforementioned Battle of the Alamo for an example). I'd also worry that any kind of plugin linking to machine translations would—regardless of intent—lead to editors copy-pasting machine translated text into en-wiki articles, which will get them blocked and the bot shut down very quickly; see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT for some previous discussions about the role of machine translation on en-wiki. ‑ Iridescent15:52, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for the initial feedback. I'm not suggesting that we correct other Wikipedias. What I am suggesting is that we use this bot to create a greater awareness that other Wikipedias have information worth considering, when such differences exist. The bot can (does) point these differences out. The main benefit is to readers, and of course if someone wishes to translate information from one Wikipedia to another, that is a net benefit to both.
I should also clarify that the bot doesn't point to an English translation--I wouldn't know where to store such a thing at present. What I'm suggesting is merely a link to the original content along with a note to the reader saying that the content is different enough to warrant 'See Also' consideration--it would be on the reader to run it through their favorite translator.
Last, although Wikipedia editions are run by different crowds, there is only one Wikimedia Foundation (to my knowledge). Its mission statement is to, "...empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." I see this as a way to disseminate educational content effectively and globally.
What else is needed to develop this idea into something that works with the rules of Wikipedia? I hope you can see that it complies with its ethos. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Theory42 (talk • contribs) 17:32, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
@Theory42: How are you assessing "different" - a badly written stub article on one wikipedia would be more different to a good en-wiki article than a well-written, but heavily differently positioned article. You state the ethos being met as a given, but I'd want to see that, at least the vast (90+%) majority of the time, it was a genuine difference in position/tone that was giving the #1 different article, rather than quality issues - before even moving onto other aspects. Non-controversial articles of equal quality are less likely to be different. We have a great deal of concern of directing readers to controversial articles in other wikipedias without someone giving them a once-over to check they're legit. For example, the Azerbaijani wikipedia article on Armenia, its history, and such are very different. However, that Wikipedia is currently under meta discussion to strip every admin of their position because (amongst other things), many of them are accused of having interfered in the content to prevent a neutral article. Sending a reader to something like that would be counter to our ethos. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:15, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
@Theory42: This is interesting work! I wanted to point you to some research in this area that could perhaps give you more ideas and guide your work. First, there's some recent work on aligning articles across different languages and building a recommender system to suggest new sections to add to articles based on content in other languages. Secondly, going back almost ten years now, there's a couple of papers that looked specifically at differences between languages and how to enable exploration of that. The Omnipedia paper builds a visualization tool based on differences in links used in the articles (and also builds an algorithm to discover additional links). The Manypedia paper is similar to yours in that it uses machine translation, but in this case has a user interface that puts two articles up side-by-side so the user can explore them. Hope these are useful food for thought and inspiration! Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 16:27, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
I like the idea in principle. I'm wondering about how articles are identified as sufficiently different. Could we have a look at some results? I'm particularly interested to see some controls, like the results for articles that we know to be related (e.g. articles on other language wikipedias that we know to have been recently translated from the English one). Implementing the proposal is going to be logistically difficult though: to get the bot to edit on any language wikipedia will need the approval of that wikipedia's community, and that's a separate process for each of them (for the English wikipedia, the main page is at Wikipedia:Bot policy, and the approvals process is linked from there). I believe some wikipedias will be favourable to such a proposal, but I do not believe the English wikipedia will be among them. There's a general aversion here to any large-scale bot edits that touch on matters of content, external links to content in other langauges is discouraged (WP:NONENGEL), and there are often legitimate concerns about the neutrality of whole swathes of articles on other language wikipedias (the Croatian Wikipedia, which has been taken over by neo-Nazis, is only one extreme, though by no means unusual, example). – Uanfala (talk)16:32, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Thank you all for your replies. Your comments have given me a lot to consider. Addressing the comments in order:
@Nosebagbear: I will run some tests this weekend to see how comparisons work between very short texts and long texts, by using an example text and extracts of itself in increasingly small samples. Will let you know what the effect is. Given what I know of how the comparisons are made, I believe that even a stub that uses the same wording as found in a longer article will show a high correlation, but it does need to be tested. The larger issue of legitimacy in controversial articles hits upon a part of why I'm interested in this topic--I want to help point people to different perspectives who may be in a thought bubble. You bring up a good point that the sword could cut both ways by introducing a reader to different content that is of questionable quality.
@Nettrom: The links you've provided are excellent. Some of the code pointed me to an alternate way of getting to some machine translation as well. With these other, very similar attempts, I am only left to wonder: why did they choose to make their own offsite apps instead of using what they made to improve Wikipedia?
@Uanfala: Thank you for the suggestions--I only have time to do this on weekends, so it might be some time, but the proof you're asking for is something I'd like to show. Give me some time and I'll do it...up to now all I have is what's stored in a database and what I saw scrolling in my output. Needs to be charted and prettified. I think you're right about the approval for most Wikipedias, although I hope you're not correct about En. Ideally I would not be the only one running this bot, as the translation interface is a bottleneck for one individual (machine translation in bulk has costs, but free accounts can get a certain quota). Part of my motivation for this is to shed light on bad/biased articles (as well as point to good) because I think there is a responsibility for this site to be of high quality. From the sound of it, many editors are well aware that there are articles in other languages that are not in the spirit of what the site should be about (your Croatia example). How is such a thing even tolerated by the Wikimedia Foundation, when millions (billions?) rely on this information? I don't get it. This might be a harder problem than I realized. Theory42 (talk) 13:59, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
@Theory42: Thanks a lot for undertaking this! There is a great dearth of machine learning research and software on Wikipedia. I don't think a consensus can be established to allow you to directly put the links on the articles (per comments above). But what you can do is create an external tool in which one can enter an article name and get the list of other wikis which have significantly different articles on the same topic. You can host it on your domain if you have one, but Wikipedians generally prefer to use tools hosted on the Toolforge - you'll have to request an account there. This will help editors to easily find articles on other wikis with different content, for translating from. SD0001 (talk) 07:51, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
@Theory42: I agree a similarity index could be helpful, and where the best article across the language versions has already been identified, this should serve as the comparison baseline, so others can then see how far they're off, and investigate further what they need to do to close the gap (where best versions have not been identified, the English version might serve as the baseline, since these are often best). However, I believe it would help to provide other metrics beyond just a similarity index. It appears the LSA metric you’re using is based on comparisons of relative word frequencies (such as tf-idf) across documents. Thus it would be helpful when comparing 2 language versions, if the list of words with the greatest difference in relative frequency was also shown. This could be done in a number of ways, and by glancing at these words editors could then gain better insight into what is driving the difference – e.g. is it bias, or is one article simply missing certain information, etc. Since I am very interested in detecting bias I’d be glad to help anyway I can – e.g. provide suspected biased articles for testing, review and comment on the results, etc Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:00, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
@SD0001: Thanks for the tip about Toolforge. I'm going to sign up for it soon. Its nice to know that projects like this can have a cloud hosted home. Theory42 (talk) 02:58, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
@Thhhommmasss: These are good suggestions. I can say that the way I've structured the bot so far, its English centric as a 'primary' language. That could easily be adjusted by others, but I guess it kind of meets the intent of your first improvement idea, at least in a broad sense. I get what you're saying about using TF-IDF to narrow in on the sections of documents that are most different--but if you want to elaborate, please do. I'll need to think a bit more about the idea to know how to implement it. If you want to send articles of interest my way, please do. The best avenue for that is probably the Issues page on the Github, but you can put them here as well. Theory42 (talk) 02:58, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
Update: I had a bug in how the scores were being stored in the db, and managed to clean that up this weekend. Through the suggestions here, I was also able to find something that the Wikimedia Interlanguage team is doing that is similar: Suggestions for Sections. There is a tool called Content Translation that Wikimedia makes available for bilingual people to translate pages. Up to now, this tool has only been available for use when a given article exists in one language, but not the target language. This new feature will suggest 'sections' of articles that exist in one language, but not another. This means that there will soon be a mechanism for editors to add content to articles using suggested content from another language's established content, where there exists extra sections in one but not the other.
I don't view this as exactly hitting upon the problem set I'm interested in, but it is getting close. Does anyone here think that it overlaps enough, or do you think that the idea of pointing out differences in articles across languages to the readers of Wikipedia (my approach) is still a good path to try and go down? Thanks, Theory42 (talk) 02:58, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
Maybe you can combine the two since I see advantages to both – they identify missing sections, but particularly if you add info on differences (Diff) in relative word frequency between 2 articles it can offer further insight. E.g. you could calculate:
where j=1..N is number of unique words across both articles. Results could be presented as a list, such as: Word1(Diff1), Word2(Diff2), Word3(Diff3)….Word19(Diff19), Word20(Diff20), where these are 20 words with the greatest absolute Diffs in relative frequency, ordered from most positive (where relative frequency in English article is higher) to most negative (where relative frequency in English article is lower). I believe -1<Diff<1, so positive Diff Words could be highlighted Green while negative Diff ones Red. Looking at these words with the greatest Diffs, could provide further insight into what is driving overall differences between 2 articles – bias, missing info, something else.
It’d be even more useful to show English and German articles side-by-side, and highlight the 20 words with greatest Diffs in both articles, so users can see sentences these words appear in, for an even better sense of what is driving differences. If an Editor wanted to make German article more like the English one, they could look at English article sentences where the Green-highlighted, positive Diff words appear, and then add more of this specific info to the German article. For sentences in the German article where the Red-highlighted, negative Diff words appear, they could delete or change these sentences, to make the article more like the English one
So this would provide more granular, sentence- and word-level info on the differences, beyond just missing sections. Btw, I wonder if such Word Diffs might also help in comparing 2 regular WP Version diffs. For example, inside the current Version diff comparison, calculating and highlighting the Words with the greatest TF-IDF Diff between the 2 Versions, might help editors at-a-glance see which words are the key to the changes Thhhommmasss (talk) 00:03, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
@Thhhommmasss:@SD0001:@Uanfala:@Nettrom:@Nosebagbear: I took the essence of Thhhommmasss's suggestion and managed to create an initial result. The new algorithm finds the article with the greatest content distance from the primary language (ex. English). It then chops up the article into sentences and compares each to the primary language document. The output is the translated sentences with different content, most different to least different. You can see an example here. The first few results represent image captions, I believe. Scroll down a bit and you'll see some coherent sentences.
I like your idea of having a web interface for editors and readers to quickly discern these sentences by highlighting them. However, this represents a huge amount of work to make happen. Right now my bot/app is backend only, and ideally I would like to point out content differences using edits to Wikipedia. If this turns out not to be possible, I guess it could be a stand alone app. I get the sense that this would reach FAR less people though, and that makes me reticent to dive right in.
@Theory42: This is very nice. I think it is significant both that the Japanese version is furthest from the English, and the individual sentences that are furthest off indeed start to provide a sense of what is causing the differences - bias and different sources used (which are no doubt the source of the bias). Btw, it would also help to do the reverse calc - i.e. English version sentences most different from the Japanese version
This needs a front-end to be useful. The above-mentioned Manypedia already has some of the front-end UI elements (e.g. side-by-side comparisons of different language articles), and the Wikipedia Interlanguage Team might also be interested in incorporating this, so I’d suggest you contact them. Since I’d be interested in using this, I’ll be glad to add my thoughts on how it could be most useful Thhhommmasss (talk) 21:11, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
I decided to rip through everything I have in my database so far. You can see results from a bunch of entries here. As for what you just said about a front end...I need to chew on the idea a bit. Sounds like a next weekend project for now. Cheers! Theory42 (talk) 23:17, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
All: I've thought about it, and I want this to become a proper bot. The idea of turning this into an improved version of Manypedia is a bad effort/outcome ratio (many months of work on my part for perhaps 10s of users). The far better outcome would be to propose a bot version that can make a minimal reference on pages which points to dissimilar content. This work is mostly finshed, and could improve the Wikipedia experience for a lot more people over time. I am therefore seeking any final thoughts for how to implement an editing function for the bot before I send it up for proposal. Alternatively if anyone can put me in direct contact with the interlanguage team at Wikimedia to see if they find any of these capes useful, that's another road to go down. I've had limited success so far. Thank you. Theory42 (talk) 17:56, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
@Theory42 Not sure what you mean when you say “editing function for the bot”, but here are 2 thoughts: (1) If you are just comparing another language version with the English, then one simple approach would be to let users input the URL of the other language version (e.g. Japanese article on Nanjing), and then have the bot output the most dissimilar sentences from the English version, sorted from highest to lowest. (2) Another useful thing would be to let users find most dissimilar articles on a topic, e.g. user inputs the URL of English version of the article, and then the bot calculates and reports the dissimilarity scores for all the other language versions. This could be output as a simple table, with Article name at top, language version name in 1st column and dissimilarity score for each in 2nd column, with the language versions sorted on dissimilarity score, from highest to lowest. As others have noted, dissimilarity will also be a function of the completeness of the various versions (e.g. are we comparing a stub article to a full-fledged one), thus it would also be useful to report in 3rd column the article length (e.g. in thousands of characters). This could better help users find outlier versions for specific articles they are concerned about. Then they could input a specific language outlier version - as in (1), above - to see what is generating the differences Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:05, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Make wikipedia more editor frendly
Add some sort of "backstage wikipedia", that would make it simpler to navigate between the "backstage areas" of wikipedia.Bossburns (talk) 01:56, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
(talk) 17:11, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
– Levivich 03:27, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
--Sm8900 (talk) 14:22, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
.jpg)
Perseverance rover & Ingenuity helicopter => 1337 sols (1374 days) (3 years, 279 days) (landed February 18, 2021).