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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). 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.

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Requested interface change

I have posted a request that requires consensus first at MediaWiki_talk:Common.js#Requested_change_to_Monobook_skin. -- IRP ☎ 22:21, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

My proposal: Good and Featured...Editors!

Hello! As a member of the Wikipedia:Kindness campaign, I wanted to brainstorm an idea for how to show our appreciation for editors. Now, first and foremost, I realize our emphasis here is on content, i.e. article writing in order to contribute to the sum-total of human knowledge as part of a combination paperless encyclopedia-almanac-gazetteer, but Wikipedia is after all a volunteer project and as a way to both recognize our contributors and to present for future contributors Wikipedia as a welcoming environment that appreciates its contrubutors, I propose that we have not just Good and Featured articles, but also Good and Featured editors! I think it would be a really nice thing to every once in a while show-case on the main page some editor who has made many constructive contributions to the site and again, it would give our readership (and potential writership) some examples of model editors as a way of showing them who to emulate and what being a succuessful Wikipedian entails. We can have discussions akin to RfAs and Editor reviews as to who to feature and I am sure we have a handful of editors with no serious conflicts that can receive pretty near universal support (weren't some arbcom candidates, for example, recipients of hundreds of supports with few opposes?). So, what do y'all think? Best, --A NobodyMy talk 03:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I like this idea - but, there are a number of issues to consider:
  1. There is a danger that for any set of criteria you set up, someone may attempt to game them. For this reason it should be emphasized that it's not about satisifying specific criteria but an overall positive contribution.
  2. As with RfA, this can be an excellent forum for constructive criticism, but may result in some hurt feelings. It's important to avoid attaching too much importance to it, to the point where people feel threatened when someone is "threatening their nomination."
  3. Too many levels creates the risk of a social hierarchy. I think just "good" editors would be fine.
Hope this helps. :-) Dcoetzee 23:45, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

As a matter of interest, how would this differ from giving editors barn stars? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:06, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

We already have this. GA needs only one editor's approval, while FA needs the community. Barn stars and adminship are equivalent. –MT 02:33, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Carnildo's bots hiding deleted images

Carnildo's bots like OrphanBot and ImageRemovalBot are currently hiding deleted images like this instead of completely removing them like this. I asked Carnildo about it here and it seemed that a number of people requested this at the time to see where images had been. If there is consensus Carnildo is happy to change it so that the images are completely removed. This would prevent more hidden clutter appearing on articles which sometimes also messes up the spacing. See here (Sometimes it's more annoying). Anyone disagrees? Garion96 (talk) 22:29, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to remove them completely. From what I've seen editors tend to remove them later anyway. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 22:37, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
More input would be welcome! :) Garion96 (talk) 16:59, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
Hiding is definitely a good option. This way all the bot & semi-bot work can be humanly checked at leisure without causing any harm in whatever direction. I myself have come across hidden images and was able to replace them based on the imagename/logs something i would not have been able to do otherwise. Agathoclea (talk) 21:37, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Agathoclea... Having the bots remove the reference to the image entirely seems to hand over too much editorial control to bots... –xeno (talk) 21:42, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps with Orphanbot I can understand that. But what about imageremovalbot? It only removes images which are already deleted. Removing deleted images from a page should be the job of the deleting admin, the admin won't hide them. This bot simply does the job for him/her, why should the bot hide those? Garion96 (talk) 22:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
IMHO, bots already have too much editorial control. I recently came across a case where a logo was converted from gif->png, and changed in the article. Then the gif was marked as redundant by a bot, and deleted; then the page got vandalized back to an old version; then the png was marked as an orphan by a bot and deleted. I'd add that if the image is hidden in a comment, it would be better to also include the reason the image was deleted in the comment, to make human intervention more likely. Ideally, it should replace redundant images instead of just removing them, and not remove images that were deleted as orphans. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 22:11, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
A bot replacing images would really be too much editorial control. Garion96 (talk) 22:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Replacing deleted images with the default "no image - upload one" images might be a good idea. I know a number of templates start with them, being replaced by unsuitable images and then deleted instead of being reverted. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 00:01, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Removing deleted images from a page should be the job of the deleting admin, the admin won't hide them. This bot simply does the job for him/her, why should the bot hide those? Far too often this doesn't occur, and far too often images are deleted via automated process and shallow reviewing by the deleting admin (I can sympathize as we have enormous backlogs...) for simple reasons such as a missing or malformed FUR, which is easily rectified. The hidden comments should remain and be reviewed by a human. –xeno talk 14:07, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
The bot edited 500 pages in only 4 days. It won't be long before every page on Wikipedia will have this hidden clutter. But I guess people like that. :) Garion96 (talk) 16:19, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions

I have a couple of suggestions for the general layout of your website.

You should have you Navigation, Search, Interaction, Toolbox, and Languages boxes – the whole far left column of every screen – scroll down as the viewer scrolls down the article.

This would allow easier access to these features for a viewer if they need to stop in the middle of the article and use any of those features instead of scrolling all the way back up to the top.

Also –

You might want to add a copy or move the exiting field for ‘Categories’ that appear at the end of the article to the left column also. Again, I think this would help in easier navigation by the user.

Just a couple suggestions to make a good website even better.

Thanks, Robert Elkins

The problem with your first suggestion is that not everyone has a screen as tall as you seem to; if the left column is fixed on the screen, then there is no way to scroll down that column to get to anything that doesn't fit on one screen. Anomie⚔ 13:42, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

WYSIWYG tables

I think if MediaWiki had some sort of WYSIWYG table editing system, many more editors would be able to utilize this method of presenting information, and the quality of tables in existing articles would have the potential to be greatly enhanced. I have absolutely no idea whether how difficult this is to implement, or whether it would even be feasible, however I was thinking you would have some sort of 'table editor' page which would allow you to add/remove/split/merge rows and columns. You could also change the formatting of individual cells or other elements. Down the bottom would be an 'insert table' button which would convert the whole thing into wiki markup where you could then paste it into the article. While the table syntax is ok once you get the hang of it, the learning curve is much higher than general editing of the encyclopaedia. Thoughts? Suicup (talk) 08:46, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

A complete overhaul of the MediaWiki UI is in the works, and will come soon to a blue moon near you :D. This is likely to include separation of metadata (refs, categories, tables, etc) from article prose, and possibly a WYSIWYG interface. Which would be very cool. Happy‑melon 09:34, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
Very interesting, but where is it discussed? Ruslik (talk) 12:18, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
There's some interesting stuff at http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/ , among other places… {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 16:51, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
I don't really know anything about the UI overall, but I'd just like to voice my very strong support for a WYSIWYG table editor. I think that's an absolutely fantastic idea. Cool3 (talk) 17:10, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Relocation of arbitration pages

In order to simplify and streamline the arbitration process, the Arbitration Committee has decided to reorganize and relocate various arbitration-related pages, as outlined below:

Phase 1 (administrative pages)

Phase 1A relocates and consolidates the core administrative pages.

Phase 1B consolidates the core administrative talk pages.

Structure after Phase 1

Phase 2 (arbitration requests and cases)

Phase 2A relocates and consolidates the active arbitration case and request pages.

Phase 2B relocates and consolidates the arbitration case and request archives.

Phase 2C relocates and consolidates the active arbitration enforcement pages.

Structure after Phase 2

This proposal was adopted by a 9/0 vote, with one abstention:

  • Support: Casliber, Carcharoth, FloNight, Kirill Lokshin, Rlevse, Roger Davies, Sam Blacketer, Vassyana, Wizardman
  • Oppose: None
  • Abstain: John Vandenberg
  • Not voting: Cool Hand Luke, Coren, FayssalF, Newyorkbrad, Risker, Stephen Bain

Any comments regarding the planned changes should be made by April 25. Unless the Committee determines otherwise based on comments received, implementation of Phase 1 will begin on April 26, to be completed by May 1, and implementation of Phase 2 will begin on May 2, to be completed by May 8.

For the Committee, Hersfold (t/a/c) 02:31, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

Audit Subcommittee procedure, term lengths, and members

The Arbitration Committee has adopted a provisional procedure for CU/OS auditing to be used by the newly formed Audit Subcommittee. The Committee anticipates that the procedure may be revised in the future based on the recommendations of the subcommittee.

The procedure was adopted by an 11/0 vote, with no abstentions:

  • Support: Carcharoth, Casliber, FayssalF, FloNight, John Vandenberg, Kirill Lokshin, Risker, Rlevse, Roger Davies, Sam Blacketer, Wizardman
  • Oppose: None
  • Abstain: None
  • Not voting: Cool Hand Luke, Coren, Newyorkbrad, Stephen Bain, Vassyana

The Committee has also determined that arbitrator members of the subcommittee will be designated to serve six-month terms, and that the other members will be elected to twelve-month terms.

The arbitrator term length was adopted by a 12/0 vote, with no abstentions:

  • Support: Carcharoth, Casliber, FayssalF, FloNight, John Vandenberg, Kirill Lokshin, Risker, Rlevse, Roger Davies, Sam Blacketer, Vassyana, Wizardman
  • Oppose: None
  • Abstain: None
  • Not voting: Cool Hand Luke, Coren, Newyorkbrad, Stephen Bain

The elected term length was adopted by a 13/0 vote, with no abstentions:

  • Support: Carcharoth, Casliber, Coren, FayssalF, FloNight, John Vandenberg, Kirill Lokshin, Risker, Rlevse, Roger Davies, Sam Blacketer, Vassyana, Wizardman
  • Oppose: None
  • Abstain: None
  • Not voting: Cool Hand Luke, Newyorkbrad, Stephen Bain

The initial arbitrator members of the subcommittee will be FloNight, John Vandenberg, and Roger Davies. Interim appointments to the other slots will be announced shortly.

For the Committee, Hersfold (t/a/c) 02:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

Page Preview

It would be really helpful if an (inactive) simulation of the section edit links could be included in page previews. This would help users determine if {{fixbunching}} is required when adding multiple photos or infoboxes. dramatic (talk) 06:05, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:RIP

I've added a proposal to discuss possible practices to be followed at: Wikipedia talk:Deceased Wikipedians/Proposal to establish practices to be followed for deceased Wikipedians — Ched :  ?  16:07, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Where does this proposal go?

I just put a proposal on the talk page of WikiProject Law. (This one.) I'm wondering if someone knows of a more appropriate place to put it, in order to get good feedback & start a discussion. Could you put any responses to my question "where does my proposal go?" on my own "talk" page. Thanks. Agradman (talk) 03:27, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Case milestones on the agenda

As promised earlier, the Committee's agenda has been updated to indicate milestone dates for the Aitias, Ryulong, and West Bank - Judea and Samaria cases. We anticipate that all future cases will be tracked in this manner.

For the Committee, Hersfold (t/a/c) 01:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

Interim appointments to the Audit Subcommittee

The Arbitration Committee has appointed Mackensen, Thatcher, and Tznkai to fill the non-arbitrator seats on the Audit Subcommittee in the interim until elections are held. Together with the three arbitrators whose appointment was announced earlier, these editors will conduct investigations into CheckUser- and Oversight-related complaints, as well as providing feedback to the Committee regarding the provisional procedures established for the auditing process.

For the Committee, Hersfold (t/a/c) 01:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

A proposal to amend our WP:PROD policy

Resolved
 – Might not have been such a good idea. tempodivalse [☎] 19:07, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi, everyone. I was running through some articles in the Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability lists a whiles ago, checking to see if I could AfD something, when I thought of something. Our proposed deletion policy currently isn't very useful, I think, because anyone, even the page's creator, can remove the prod without an explanation, which kind of makes them a bit useless. My idea: make two amendments to the WP:PROD policy. They are:

  1. Change it to say that anybody except for the creator of the page can remove the prod, and,
  2. add that a reason must be given, either on the article's talk page or in the edit summary, why the prod was contested.

If the above criteria are not met, then the prod may be readded. Thoughts? tempodivalse [☎] 17:46, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I feel that prods are there to be contested, because they are designed for non-controversial deletions. If anyone objects, it should be taken to AfD where the truth will out. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 17:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Prod is bad enough as it is, basically a sneaky deletion process, where low traffic articles are swept under the rug while nobody's looking, I fail to see why the creator of an article should be denied the chance to contest the deletion on top of that. Equendil Talk 18:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose The fact that anyone can remove a prod tag is important. By placing the tag you are stating that deletion would be uncontroversial - ie nobody could possibly object. Removal of the tag is an objection, and the article's creator is as entitled to object to its deletiom as anyone else. pablohablo. 18:54, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Hrm.... I guess Pablomismo and the others have a point there, I didn't really think of that. This is why I prefer AfD to PROD, even if the deletion would be uncontroversial. I withdraw my suggestion, thanks for your input. Cheers. tempodivalse [☎] 19:07, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

The AFD system is already strained, putting all PROD articles through AFD would increase the number of AFDs every day by 50-100%, so articles that do need more discussion may not get it as people will be spending more time casting pointless !votes for uncontroversial deletions. Putting articles though AfD instead of PROD also means that a full DRV is necessary to restore it later if someone objects, regardless of how few people actually participated in the discussion. AFD !voters also often put too much focus on notability, such that articles with systemic WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:OR, or even WP:BLP problems may get a result of "keep and cleanup" if the subject might be notable, regardless of how sensible such a suggestion really is. Mr.Z-man 02:27, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • If an article is uncontroversial to the point no one would object, the article is speediable. Equendil pretty much hits the nail on the head. PROD is basically a way to get something deleted without additional eyes checking your work. - Mgm|(talk) 10:21, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Hopefully the deleting admin would use their judgement before deleting. Leithp 12:02, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
  • An improvement to prod would be to not allow removal of the tag without providing a reason on either the talk page or in the edit summary. - Mgm|(talk) 10:14, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Customizable redirect text

I have no idea how hard this would be to implement, but it seems like it might be complicated, so I'm making a post here before going to Bugzilla or anything like that (this is an outgrowth of this discussion).

I would like to propose allowing a small customizable message to be displayed at the top of the target page when a user is redirected, beyond the simple "(Redirected from X)". Instead of just this, some customizable wikitext could be displayed at the top, just a sentence or two. This is not a solution in search of a problem, but rather it would help deal with several issues:

  1. It would eliminate the need for ""X" redirects here. For other uses, see Y" messages if you didn't come to the page from "X". While they're not a big deal, many people find these messages annoying, visually unappealing or distracting. With a customizable redirect message, these would only be shown when you did come from page X.
  2. It would allow for clarification of potentially confusing redirects. For example Bob Dent redirects to Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 and Manuela Testolini redirects to Prince (musician). If you don't know why you're arriving at these pages, it can be quite confusing. A little text at the top to explain why you were redirected (e.g., "Manueal Testolini is the ex-wife of the musician Prince") would be a lot clearer.
  3. It would allow clarification of less common names/nicknames for an event/thing/place that have a redirect, but not a mention in the lead. For example Cowley polytechnic for University of Oxford (if you see reference to Cowley Polytechnic somewhere and type it in, but end up at the Oxford page, it's probably not clear to you what happened, whereas the message "Cowley Polytechnic is a nickname of Oxford University" clears it up quickly.

Your thoughts? Cool3 (talk) 17:52, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea, but it would require a software change I think. --Apoc2400 (talk) 18:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm not technically proficient at this sort of thing, but it sounds like you are proposing a hatnote that only shows up when a page is reached via a redirect. In that case I would echo intuition in WP:HATNOTE and suggest that such material should remain in the body of the main article, rather than being housed on the redirect page and displayed only as a hatnote to some readers. This saves editors from having to maintain all the redirects to an article as well as the article itself, it avoids the danger of content forking, and of hatnotes which make claims that should, but cannot be cited in the hatnote, or which are impaired because of the limited space available in the hatnote. I think we're better off encouraging editors making redirects to include a mention of the redirect subject on the target page, and link the redirect to that section. Baileypalblue (talk) 18:37, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
    Well, I'm not exactly proposing a hatnote. I'm all for maintaining the information in the body of the text, but helping to draw attention to it. In the examples above, the information is always included in the article, just not in the lead (and would not be appropriate in the lead), so what I'm proposing is a way to help people find it so that after being redirected, so they won't think: "Why the heck am I on this page?" Cool3 (talk) 19:33, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
This could be done by editing MediaWiki:Redirectedfrom to transclude a template resembling {{editnotice load}}, something like {{redirect notice load|$1}}. Whether that's a good idea or not, I couldn't say. Anomie⚔ 22:50, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
That's technically possible, since that message takes full wikimarkup (a lot of system messages don't). We would need to approach the idea with some care, and first of all work out where to put the hatnotes, but I don't see a fundamental problem. In fact, it could be quite a good idea. Happy‑melon 09:39, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
If it can be done without a software change, I think it would be worth trying (disclosure: it was my remarks at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Proposal to change the way we implement BIO1E which prompted Cool3 to make this proposal). Guidelines on usage can be readily adapted from WP:HATNOTE. On the other hand, if the maintainability concern is too strong, maybe there's some way to have the hatnote text in the target article, but only displayed when coming from a a particular redirect. Rd232 talk 01:43, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
Many of the benefits of this can be handled by redirecting to a section of an article, not the article itself. The difficult is of course maintaining it; we can put in warning notices, and even anchors in the text, but these are rarely used and often ignored. Fortunately, in case the section part of the link fails, it still redirects to the top of the article, so there is no negative consequence of putting in a section. DGG (talk) 21:22, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
The starting point for the discussion (at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Proposal to change the way we implement BIO1E) is that bio articles are often redirected elsewhere, and there may not be a section clearly dealing with them at the destination. That makes the redirect a bit confusing, though redirecting to a section that mentions the person in passing is better than just redirecting to the article. But redirect + message would be more helpful. Rd232 talk 22:28, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
If you have a redirect message at the top of the page and want it to be seen, you can't at the same time redirect to a #section of the article. So having the top-of-the-page redirect message could make it harder to find the place in the article where the redirected term is mentioned. Unless the redirect message itself contained a #section link to where the redirected term is found in the article. --83.253.240.46 (talk) 11:35, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
This proposal fills a need, and I think it can be accomplished with a simple clarification of policy... though one which is a little counterintuitive. We should allow disambiguation pages for topics with no entry in Wikipedia. Not surprisingly, Wikipedia:Disambiguation doesn't actually address this point, but I think it is the best solution. The only reason why we have any confusion with a redirect like the Bob Dent example is that, remarkably, only one person by that name has come to the attention of Wikipedia so far - otherwise a hatnote at top of the other "Bob Dent" page would say who the other person was, or a disambiguation page would provide the desired information. The disambiguation page would would replace the existing redirect at Bob Dent, so it would not actually increase the total number of articles.
That said, this example is actually one of the cases when this isn't necessary, because a search finds no article of Wikipedia referencing any other "Bob Dent", and a #section link is currently possible in the redirected article. But if either of these things were not the case, I think it would be better to use a disambiguation page. Mike Serfas (talk) 21:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Languages known

I have been thinking about the possibility of adding the languages that are known to biographical subjects. I thought it could be quite useful information, since many biographical articles have translated quotations within. '''wuffyz''' (talk) 04:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand this. Do you mean to list the languages understood by the subject of the article? Or to list the articles in the other language Wikipedias? --Gadget850 (talk) 13:09, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
A list of languages understood by the subject. Wuffyz 00:50, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Propose new "Essay" namespace

I believe that placing essays in the "Wikipedia" namespace is confusing and may sometimes be disruptive. It leads to a lack of distinction between essays (essentially personal comment) on the one hand, and policies and guidelines (essentially expressions, however imperfect, of community consensus) on the other. A new "Essay" namespace would avoid any such potential confusion or disruption. DuncanHill (talk) 15:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you know of any particular examples of "disruption" caused by essays in the project namespace? I'm not bothered by a little confusion, especially if it leads people to WP:IAR, and if they learn to stop caring whether something is a policy, guideline or essay. I tend to disagree with anything that highlights that distinction, and a separate namespace would certainly do that. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:15, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Most of the stuff in the Wikipedia namespace is neither an essay nor a policy or guideline. We don't have people confusing MFD discussions with policies. In any case, I agree with GTBacchus. The message should be what matters, not the tag. Mr.Z-man 16:18, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Agree with GTBacchus and Mr.Z-man; I don't see any confusion or disruption. If it ain't broke don't fix it. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:31, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
  • All of the writings in Wikipedia namespace can be tagged as an essay, policy or guideline if any of those names apply. There is no particular need to make a separate namespace when templates already fulfill that function. - Mgm|(talk) 10:17, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Administrators should have the right to revoke the autoconfirmed status of users

Who supports or opposes this? Do administrators already have the ability to do this? If they don't, it should be made available because it would be useful for dealing with page move warring. -- IRP ☎ 22:28, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I oppose it. Currently, administrators can block users, that's like revoking them. -Porchcrop (talk|contributions) 22:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
Then what's the point of the abuse filter being able to revoke the autoconfirmed status of users? -- IRP ☎ 23:11, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
The abuse filter has the technical ability to block, desysop or decrat users who trigger filters; that's just the way it works. Unsurprisingly, those acitons are not being used, and are not currently available to use on enwiki. Deautoconfirm is equally unused AFAIK, it just happens to be available. Happy‑melon 16:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Recent previous discussion here. Algebraist 23:04, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

'move=sysop' works too. –xeno talk 12:34, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Indeed; I can't think of a situation where it would be necessary to prevent user X from moving a page (without being able to simply block user X) but not to prevent all users from moving the same page. Either there's a move war (in which move-protect), the user is pagemove-vandalising (in which case block), or there's no problem to solve. Unless you can suggest an alternative scenario? Happy‑melon 16:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
To counter the argument about the AF de-autoconfirming: that's just a temporary measure until an admin can review the situation and block if appropriate. –xeno talk 16:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

bot to hard code convert template results

Moved. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#bot to hard code convert template results). —EncMstr (talk) 05:32, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

The point of that notice was to get more eyes on a bot request that may be controversial, not to start discussion in multiple places; note at the end it directed people to comment on the BRFA page. Perhaps it was a bit verbose, but I'm not sure completely removing it was the right way to go. Anomie⚔ 11:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Poll/discussion: on the creation of an 'established' usergroup

There is a discussion/poll on the creation of an established usergroup with autopromotion, intermediary between autoconfirmed and reviewer status for the flagged protection and patrolled revisions trial implementation. Comments welcome, Cenarium (talk) 23:52, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Search Results - Article Creation Wizard

Assumption: many articles which end up speedy-deleted or AFDd are created by people searching for something, not finding anything, and clicking one of the two red links on the Search Result page to create the article. Proposal: Make those two redlinks go to a new page which recommends new users use the Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Wizard, and provides the redlink (and perhaps links to relevant policy) for more experienced users. Rd232 talk 22:40, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

It is noble to try to help those who would like an article. However there is a trade off between overloading the searchers with too much information or helping them with something they may wish to do. Already there are enough options with the red links. Once these are clicked, that is the chance for the AfC process to be advertised, rather than just give an error message for non logged in people. It may end up vastly increasing the number of AfC contributions, so we may need more volunteers. Is it possible to detect non logged in and make the red links do something different? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:16, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
I wasn't proposing more information on the Search Result page; I was proposing a new intermediate page appearing when the two redlinks on that page are clicked, providing a range of Help guidance and options for article creation, one of them the AfC wizard. Yes, this would require more AfC volunteers; but presumably this would be at least balanced by less CSD and AFD work. Rd232 talk 21:35, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
It sounds like I agree with you there then. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:52, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
WP:Article wizard - the framework is there, just needs some people with plenty of time to spend. Mr.Z-man 01:04, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
Hey, did you steal that from ours or did we steal ours from you!? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
The AfC wizard is better developed, but that's a secondary point. I want to know if people think it's a good idea in principle, and if so how difficult it is technically to edit the Search Result page to make the redlinks go to a new intermediate page. Rd232 talk 00:46, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks and sounds a great idea to me. I fully support the proposal. I imagine there's a MediaWiki: page somewhere where the search result text can be edited.--Kotniski (talk) 14:25, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Well thanks to your prompting I've found the relevant messages. One is, I think, appropriately editable: MediaWiki:Noexactmatch provides the Create New Page redlink. The other one seems to be software-embedded in something else (MediaWiki:Searchresults-title?), so would probably need developer intervention. However the Create New Page is more prominent, so we could start with that. The only problem I see is that I'd want to be able to have the appropriate redlink on the new intermediate page, and I don't see how. The alternative would be to expand the Create This Page subsection of MediaWiki:Noexactmatch. I've created a proposal for this at User:Rd232/Noexactmatch/Proposal. Rd232 talk 16:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Requested

I've requested this for MediaWiki:Newarticletext fahadsadah (talk,contribs) 18:52, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

It was rejected there as premature. Also Newarticletext is substantially different in function. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but let's do one thing at a time. Rd232 talk 22:41, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Oh, and it's been pointed out over there that the AfC wizard isn't appropriate for this without adaptation since it's aimed at unregistered users. So if people think it's worth doing, we'd need to copy the wizard and adapt; not a big deal I think. Rd232 talk 02:04, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

New Footnote Tags

I propose that superscripted footnote-tags be created for each of the following six scientific classifications, all of them found in Wikipedia: in vitro, in vivo, in situ, ex vivo, in utero, and even in silico.

Need: to uniformly and concisely impart to the reader the specific nature of the experiment being referenced by footnote. Implementing this change would also effect a needed review of references.

Problem to solve: A footnoted statement of fact in an article may imply, for example, an in vivo context, yet the study referenced may actually be strictly an in vitro one. This proposed change would prevent that confusion by means of an identifier in the superscripted footnote itself.

This seems like a solution in search of a problem. We can always use text to explain what's going on, and that will be much more clear to 99% of readers than cryptic marks on footnotes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Since the OP hasn't bothered to provide it, here is a link to the last time they made this proposal (word for word). Algebraist 01:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
I thought I recognised it from somewhere... Happy‑melon 12:26, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Include EC numbers in Element fact boxes

I suggest to include EC number in Element fact boxes, as CAS number is already. I've made a template for this purpose: Template:Elementbox_ec_number. If accepted, I don't now how to do this for all elements at once (put the field in place, not the actual number). --Eivindgh (talk) 09:06, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

You put the change into effect by changing {{Elementbox}}. Since that template is not protected, you won't need to get an admin to make the change. Please do not make the change before there is consensus on this. At minimum, you need to post to Template talk:Elementbox, not here, because it's quite possible that editors interested in the change don't read this page. You really should also post to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements to make sure that interested editors do see your suggestion. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed wikiproject, Requests for undeletion

Full proposal here. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 20:56, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion

This process page was suggested by User:Ron Ritzman at Wikipedia talk:Deletion process#Proposed wikiproject, Requests for undeletion (permlink) and several of us agreed a central page to request uncontroversial restorations and userfications was a good idea. I've taken the liberty of drafting the page and submit the process to the community for input and further review. Please discuss at WT:Requests for undeletion, not here. –xeno talk 13:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

RFC on the reform of ArbCom hearings

The attention of all editors is drawn to a Request for Comment on a major issue for the English Wikipedia: a package of six proposals to move the ArbCom hearings process away from the loose, expansionary model that has characterised it until now, to a tighter organisational model. The RFC started Tuesday 29 April. Tony (talk) 14:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This problem needs to be fixed one way or another. The problem is that so many internal links appear as external links and so many external links appear as internal or interwiki links. Some examples include:

  • Some Google links appear as internal or interwiki because linking to Google is possible using interwiki links. The interwiki table is not being used for its intended purpose. Google should be removed from the interwiki table as Google is not a wiki. We should use the {{Google}} template to link to Google, which uses an external link.

This needs to be fixed one way or another. Either by

  • Removing the non-wikis from the interwiki table. That's the purpose that external link templates serve, not the interwiki table,
    • Possibly removing all of the prefixes that link outside of Wikimedia from the interwiki table and only leave sites that are part of Wikimedia in place (then use templates instead),
  • Making a change to the Monobook skin so any links containing prefixes in the interwiki table are not marked as external, or
  • Removing the link types altogether if this cannot be fixed

Right now, the link types do not seem to serve their purpose anymore because they are used so inconsistently. If this cannot be easily fixed, it would be better off removing the link types and having all links look the same. -- IRP ☎ 21:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC), modified 22:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

T20562 may be able to help with this; it requests that 'external' interwiki links such as google:Foo, be separated from 'local' interwiki links such as meta:Foo. Unfortunately, such a change requires a significant rewrite of the infamous Parser::replaceInternalLinks() function, which even has a quip from Tim Starling on bugzilla ("Everyone takes one look at replaceInternalLinks and goes to watch TV"). If fulfilled, however, it should help make this distinction easier; for instance, 'external' interwiki links could be given the external link arrow.
While I agree that this is a problem, I think "removing the link types altogether" is both a little severe and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In order to clarify this situation, we need two things to happen:
  1. Links to local wikis formed with the external link syntax [http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Foo] should not get the external link icon
  2. Links to 'external' wikis formed with the interwiki link syntax google:Foo, should get the external link icon.
How these ends are achieved is open to discussion. Happy‑melon 22:22, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
A better idea would be to remove the external prefixes from the interwiki table and use an external link template instead (at least temporarily until Parser::replaceInternalLinks() is fixed). -- IRP ☎ 20:43, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that would be necessary. We can give the external link icon to interwikis with particular targets just as easily as we can remove them from external links with particular targets. There just needs to be consensus to do so. Happy‑melon 12:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
How would that be done? Would it require fixing of that parser function? -- IRP ☎ 20:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
It can be done with CSS, using similar code to what's proposed for the reverse operation: Code like this:
#bodyContent a[href ^="http://wiki.riteme.site/"] {
    background: none !important;
    padding-right: 0 !important;
}
Will hide the icon for links to wikipedia.
#bodyContent a[href ^="http://www.google."] {
    background: url(external.png) center right no-repeat;
    padding: 0 13px;
}
Will add it for google. This code needs to be added to Common.css, not. You are actually incorrect over at the other discussion to continually link to MediaWiki:Common.js when you say "monobook skin". "Monobook" is a group of about 40 files that collectively form a complete User Interface; of which the on-wiki JS file is but a small part. The external link arrow is added via CSS; so it can equally be hidden with CSS. For most users, anyway; the above CSS won't work with all browsers. Happy‑melon 16:04, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Can it just be made to where it isn't added in the first place? That way, it won't appear for the wrong links in any browser. -- IRP ☎ 18:18, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
That would be the "fix Parser:replaceInternalLinks()" option. Happy‑melon 18:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Then we should use the above code as a temporary quick fix until the parser function is working. -- IRP ☎ 18:37, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
(ec) "The interwiki table is not being used for its intended purpose. Google should be removed from the interwiki table as Google is not a wiki." – Perhaps you know something about the intended purpose that I don't, but I thought it was simply to make linking to other wikis more convenient. I didn't know it also works with Google, but now that I know I can simply write [[Google:test]] to produce Google:test, I am probably going to use it occasionally. (There seems to be no way to make this work for several words, though, because spaces are replaced by underscores.)
What I don't understand is why such links appear without the external links icon. This makes sense for other Wikimedia Foundation projects, but for most of the sites in the interwiki table it makes no sense. Currently the icon is added for every external link starting "http:" and to no external link starting with an interwiki prefix. I believe the correct behaviour would be to add the icon to all external links whose server is not in a list of exceptions; whether they are constructed through an interwiki prefix or not, or whether they appear in the interwiki map, should not make a difference. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:38, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I would say that "interwiki map" needs to be renamed to something else if it is going to be used for non-wikis. Also, many proposals have been forgotten about. I would say that m:Developers' noticeboard ought to exist. Should I create it? It seems like that should be a better place for getting the attention of a developer than Bugzilla. Another thing that I would like to address is that we have the same problem with the link types on other projects, so administrators from this project will have to contact administrators from other projects in order for this problem to be fixed on all projects. -- IRP ☎ 23:31, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

No, an on-wiki dev noticeboard will simply be ignored. There are three ways to get the attention of a sysadmin (that is, someone who has access to the wikimedia servers); in order of increasing urgency, file a bug at bugzilla (slow but methodical), send an email to wikitech-l (somewhat pot luck which devs, if any, you get), or log on to #wikitech on IRC (for general chat, but also for total emergencies). For a developer (that is, someone who has SVN commit access and can update MediaWiki, not necessarily a sysadmin) the technical village pump and Wikimedia Forum are also good places, for local and WMF-wide changes, respectively. Senior developers (who also tend to be sysadmins) are rarely available on-wiki.
You say "the interwiki map needs to be renamed" as if it were so easy to do so :D. I can confidently assure you that this will never be done; it's a backward-compatibility nightmare. It may perhaps be repurposed to hold only true 'interwiki' links, but I doubt this will happen either. There is currently a distinction within the table between 'external' and 'local' links. All we need to do is make more use of that distinction. Happy‑melon 11:48, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
See my reply to your previous post above↑↑. -- IRP ☎ 20:47, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Brion, and occasionally Tim read and comment on WP:VPT, but if you want to make sure your message gets read within a week, wikitech-l or IRC is best. You can email Brion directly as well, but the list is generally better, as more people read that than Brion's inbox. Mr.Z-man 21:44, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
This proposal does not require a developer to fulfill. All it requires is an administrator to add a code to MediaWiki:Monobook.js. -- IRP ☎ 22:40, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
There are many non Wikimedia and non wikis on the Interwiki map. There's also magic links like: ISBN 1234567890 and RFC 1234 that turn into links with no brackets at all, but that's a whole 'nother thread. Mr.Z-man 23:27, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Creating a comment on this post so it isn't archived, as there needs to be additional discussion. -- IRP ☎ 20:15, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

From below. Happy‑melon 09:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Happy-melon, I'm not sure if you saw my reply to one of your posts above↑↑. -- IRP ☎ 00:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I saw it. Happy‑melon 13:44, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Then I was wondering why you didn't respond to it. -- IRP ☎ 20:30, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
I assume you're referring to "Then we should use the above code as a temporary quick fix until the parser function is working"? There doesn't seem to me to be anything that needs responding to. You are entirely correct: we should use that code as a fix (although it's unlikely to be "quick") until improvements can be made to link handling. Note that while it would be relatively easy to achieve the functionality whereby interwiki links like google:foo do get the external link icon (it 'only' requires a complete rewrite of one function :S) having external links to wikipedia consistently not getting the icon is rather harder, and is unlikely to be achieved in core code (that is, it will have to be added and then taken away, rather than not added in the first place). Happy‑melon 09:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

minimized font size

Many articles that I (try to) read in Wik start out with a tangle of parenthetical material (e.g., alternative spellings and IPA). On paper, this might not be such a problem, but on a computer screen, I cannot simply read this material, especially since it is usually srinkled with blue words that also impede the reading. I realize that this material needs to be included, and often right at the beginning is the "best" place to do so. But the result is a tangle that causes me -- and I assume many others -- to simply skip the introduction at least on the first go-round, even though that is often all I am afer. Here is my solution: put the material that is in the parentheses in a smaller type so that the eyes can skip right over it to quickly find the end of the parenthetical material.Kdammers (talk) 03:09, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

There is a danger in varying font size - if information is important, people might begin to think it is less important than other information if it is in a smaller font size. Often, brackets serve to indicate a wikilink to another article in Wikipedia, for example, Times New Roman in this sentence. I have heard that Verdana is quite a good font to use for computer screens, although my guess would be that Times New Roman would probably be the most popular font (although I do not have statistics to back me there). Were you thinking merely of variations in font size, or actually variations in font used? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:06, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Just another thought. Isn't some of what you might be referring to already in a smaller font size? I am thinking of lines such as "Typing x redirects here". Or things like "American English spellings" (see the article on aging. Also, if you wanted to make articles more accessible, I would think that having a box on the right of the page that readers would be at liberty skip over might be more suitable than having a smaller font size. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:31, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

On my computer screen, there [[ageing[[ article has the same font size in the entire text. only in the "pre-introductory" part with a redirect notice is there a difference. But that difference used in the intoduction is what I was suggesting. I agree taht a separate box would make for the easiest to use solution. The trouble is, I think, that writing such material in a coherent and useful way might be quite difficultin many cases. Kdammers (talk) 23:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

In the article "ageing", it is the text that says "Redirected from aging" which is currently in smaller font size. I wonder whether this will be the case with other redirected entries in general. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:47, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Exclude blocked users and users who have made no edits from Special:Listusers by default

I am proposing that users who have not edited and who are blocked be excluded from Special:Listusers by default, along with "Show blocked users" and "Show users who have made no edits" links. -- IRP ☎ 20:32, 26 April 2009 (UTC), modified 20:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Why? Do you mean to not let them see the pages, or to not be listed on them? Chillum 20:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
So we don't see all of the vandalistic usernames when searching through Special:Listusers. Currently, we see quite a bit of vandalism at Special:Listusers before we get to what we're looking for. We should have the list filter out the vandalism so we can more easily find what we're looking for. -- IRP ☎ 20:40, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
We won't often be looking for users who have made no edits either. -- IRP ☎ 20:41, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
I don't know about you but I think the purpose of Special:ListUsers is to give a complete list of users that exist, whether or not they're blocked or have edited. If I want to find a particular user, I would use the suggestions dropdown on the search box, since the user I'm looking for would probably have a user page. Also, another thing you would need to be careful about is if you click on the link http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Special%3AListUsers&username=Example+user&group=&limit=50 it would confirm that User:Example user exists. However, since that account has no edits and is blocked, under your proposal Example user would not appear in that list. This would render all similar links useless for determining if a given account exists. Tra (Talk) 21:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Ah, yes that would be a nice feature. Chillum 21:23, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
I support the idea of such a feature being available, but I do not support exclusion by default—not finding something because you didn't uncheck an option is a bad situation. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 21:55, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree; having the ability to filter the lists would be invaluable, but I'm ambivalent about the default setting being to hide them. On the one hand, it would only require us to change the urls we use for such checks to include a few extra values (&hideblocked=0&hidenoedits=0, or similar). On the other hand, of course, it would require us to change the urls we use for such checks ot include a few extra values... it's very much a matter of opinion whether you think the small amount of work justifies the change; it would certainly remove another 'lulz' factor if the top of the list wasn't filled with random vandal accounts. Happy‑melon 22:31, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Off-topic discussion moved to correct thread. Happy‑melon 09:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki: namespace

The "message" tab for a MediaWiki page needs to be changed to "Interface page" because not only interface messages, but skins are stored in that namespace. -- IRP ☎ 03:45, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

As are gadgets and all manner of other things. I'd support this change. Happy‑melon 07:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
As would I. The "message" titling is old and hoary, but that's no reason to keep it. — Gavia immer (talk) 19:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like we're looking at MediaWiki:Nstab-mediawiki; I'll leave a note at the talk page, there, pointing here. – Luna Santin (talk) 21:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm not really sure it matters either way. But whatever you all decide to do is fine by me. - Rjd0060 (talk) 00:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I've WP:BOLDly updated it, with a link here in the edit summary. Let's see if it shakes anything loose. Happy‑melon 09:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Comment requested

Comment is requested at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ListasBot 5 regarding whether or not there should be a bot that would make non-visible changes to the {{WikiProjectBanners}} and {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} templates so that KingbotK would be better able to handle those pages. Matt (talk) 17:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Could a bot authorise automated addition of the "Recent deaths" tag, please?

Tonight (April 28), I looked at the category for 2009_deaths. I noticed that the two most recent entries here did not have the tag which reads "This article is about a person who has died recently" by their names, so I added them manually. However, as addition of this (and removal of the tag after a week or so, which also seems to be done, at least in some instances, manually) can be rather tedious, I wonder whether a bot could be employed for addition and deletion of the recent deaths tag. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The tag is not always needed. Sometimes information does not rapidly changes thus making the template unnecessary. A bot to remove the tags after a week or so has passed might be handy indeed. Garion96 (talk) 18:47, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps this request could be moved/copied to WP:BOTREQ and then closed. –MT

Make each article's class visible to unregistered users

There's near-constant discussion about the addition to WP of what some editors regard as fancruft, e.g. characters in video games and popular fiction. Most proposals tend to strengthen the hands of deletionists, which I think is a bad thing: it's already received unfavourable impression in the press, in which one publication reported the deletion within hours of a new stub article about an obviously notable subject, Political Quarterly; all editors start as newbies, and deletionism drives away some who might become real assets, but can't keep up with the hordes of fan-boys; I dislike the authoritarian idea that WP should contain only articles on subjects deemed worth by "the great and the good", and think such a policy will drive away some readers, some of whom may become good editors, etc.

So I suggest we deal with the presence of "fancruft" and other low-quality articles by making the each article's grading visible to all users, unregistered as well as registered, and link to a short description of the gradings - i.e. one page that concisely describes each of the gradings and what is required to achieve them. Articles which fail WP:N or in which a large percentage of the text fails WP:V or WP:NPOV should never be graded higher than start-class, and the summary of gradings should point out that articles which fail to meet these criteria are considered unreliable by WP.

That sounds like a win-win to me, as it would make it clear to the world that WP, while being "the encyclopedia anyone can edit", does have quality standards. It might even encourage the producers of low-quality articles to start improving them or move on to subjects where there's more scope for improvement.

PS despite my dislike of deletionism in general, I support the swift deletion of articles that violate WP:BLP and / or consist mainly of WP:COPYVIOs and WP:PLAGIARISM, because getting WP sued is A Bad Thing.--Philcha (talk) 14:50, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, define "fan cruft" in a quantitative way, please. No bias in your suggestion, nope, none at all. - Denimadept (talk) 16:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
The point is to avoid the wiki-lawyering and biting that result from attempts to define such things precisely. I dont' think the suggestion is biassed, it's an attempt to find a consensus solution to an issue that causes recurring and often tense debates. I don't know what types of subject interest you and, in the interests of neutrality, have not looked at your contribs to find out. Whatever your interests are, my proposal implies that if an article you edit meets WP:N, WP:V and WP:NPOV it's eligible for promotion to one of the "better" classes and to be advertised as such to all readers. --Philcha (talk) 17:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
It's often difficult-to-impossible to cite how something is notable. Also, it's often the case that fiction component lists are only verifiable in terms of the fiction itself ("in-universe"). Science fiction and fantasy are often like this. While I'll admit that there's a limit to what should be covered, "list of instances where Miles Vorkosigan scratches his balls" is likely over the line, the problem is figuring out that limit and defending it. - Denimadept (talk) 17:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
"list of instances where Miles Vorkosigan scratches his balls" cracked me up, especially as I'm an SF fan. Now if you could get some good 3rd-party sources for that, I might help as I think WP needs lightening up - I think Wikipedia:Fac#Gropecunt_Lane is amusing. --Philcha (talk) 17:42, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
That's kinda my point, that the only source is the original fiction itself. Makes it hard to WP:V without doing the "in-universe" thing. So, how do you determine what stays and what goes? That goes back to my original response. Some people seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. Not you, Philcha, but Certain People. - Denimadept (talk) 17:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm trying to get away from "what stays and what goes" because that approach has so many disadvantages, incl: wastes a lot of time that would be better spent editing & reviewing; causes a lot of time-consuming and often hostile debate; bites newbies and may be losing WP some potentially good editors; is futile, because fan-boys can create fancruft faster than experienced editors can remove it. I'm suggesting that, instead of us chasing the fan-boys, we should force them to chase us - if the carrot of a better grading does not motivate them to improve their contributions, the stick of a "health warning" on their faves is an option, just by varying the text / banner displayed at the top of articles below C-class.
That last point implies something else. Many Wikiprojects do not respond to requests for reviews / assessment. I don't know if there's a central assessment centre, and if there is not I'd help to create and operate one. I review articles for GA status at present, but if necessary would cut back on that to help improve less-good articles and their editors - I'd hope that before too long that would give WP more GAs, editors who know what they're doing, and reviewers, of which WP is short at all levels. --Philcha (talk) 18:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
Okay, I can't argue with that at all. I don't generally review articles myself, as I don't claim to be definitive as to what constitutes a Good Article. OTOH, compare Harvard Bridge with what I'm currently working on at User:Denimadept/Harvard Bridge, I'm told I have some hint by people who have reviewed that pending effort. Still, I often find myself defending what some call "fan cruft". Recently, I couldn't really defend some based on the Honor Harrington books, as they seemed a bit over the line, but others I've fought for tooth-and-nail, such as my bridge articles and articles in the South Park area. What it seems to me is that you're effectively moving the debates from AfD to a reviewer discussion. Is that your intent? - Denimadept (talk) 19:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure the proposal is about "moving the debates from AfD to a reviewer discussion":
  • Reviews are held at the nominators's request, while referral of an article to an AfD is sometimes unnoticed by its creators (especially newbies who don't know about watchlists, etc.).
  • At reviews the burden of proof generally lies on the nominators. In theory at AfD the burden lies on the "delete" voters, per WP:DELETE's "deletion should be a last resort", but I've seldom seen it work that way. If nominators don't reposnd at reviwes, they have no-one top blame but themselves - unlike AfD, which generates a fair number of complaints.
  • AfD would still have an important role in removing (if clearly guilty) articles that are purely promotional or partisan, or where discussion is needed about whether there is doubt that they comply with e.g. WP:BLP or WP:PLAGIARISM. --Philcha (talk) 20:03, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
That strikes me as a wonderful Inclusionist method. Yes sir, I'd back that. - Denimadept (talk) 20:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I like the links to smoot in the infobox and text of User:Denimadept/Harvard Bridge. That's a good example of helping WP to lighten up, and the 2nd laugh you've given me in this discussion. Thanks! --Philcha (talk) 20:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
You're welcome. I'm kinda trolling for critique on that article both while I look for more sources and after. - Denimadept (talk) 20:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You're suggesting doing away with inclusion-requirements (at least to a certain extent) and basing everything on grading? I don't think it's a workable idea, but if it were to go forward, it would be important that lower-class articles have disabled privileges, such as not being indexed by Google, and others I can't think of. In principle it's sort of a neat idea, but then wouldn't normal stubs and starts also suffer? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 19:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the proposal is less workable than the current system, where people spend a lot of time in AfD discussions but it's not holding back the tide of fancruft. I guess I am suggesting we fall back to a more defensible position.
What's a "normal" stub or start?
It might be a good idea to introduce a "poor article" grading with a really prominent health warning, e.g. "This is a poor article because .... We are not confident that its content is reliable. Please help to improve it" with a link to a short, simple set of suggestions, including how to get it reviewed for a higher grading. So an article would initially be "unassessed"; might go to "stub" if too short for any real review; if only OK, then it's start-class; if rubbish, it's "poor".
I'm not sure de-indexing lower-class articles from the searchies would be a good idea. I got into WP by finding an article, spotting flaws in it and editing. My impression from a lot of Talk pages is that a lot of editors start that way. De-indexing would throw away opportunites to get articles improved and to recruit new editors who care. --Philcha (talk) 20:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
If we don't delete them, they're just going to become yet another giant backlog. Deletion may not be holding back the tide, but its at least handling them, and acting as a sort of triage to allow people to save the saveable articles rather than expending effort into categorizing poor articles and attempting to save the unsalvageable. I'm all for not being on a deadline, but this seems more like waving a white flag than falling back. Allowing the creation of a previously deletable class of pages will also likely increase the number of those types of pages created, as the people that deletion did previously deter will also start writing "poor articles" again. Mr.Z-man 21:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
Re "another giant backlog", we're always going to have backlogs because most registered users would rather edit than do maintenance chores - including me.
What evidence is there that deletion deters anyone from writing bad articles? I'd expect reviewing an article and grading it as "poor" would be much less labour-intensive than AfD, so it might make more progress with the backlog of unsatisfactory articles. Then AfD can concentrate on the really serious cases. --Philcha (talk) 21:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
It's deterred me from writing articles about more Connecticut River bridges. Whether those articles would become good or not is unknown. - Denimadept (talk) 21:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
We'll always have backlogs, so let's make another? I'm not sure I agree with that logic. My point is that we basically have a finite number of contributors, as such, we can only work through a certain amount of the overall backlog at a time. If we double the size of the backlog without doubling the number of editors working on it, then we decrease the rate that the overall backlogs are cleared, including the more important backlogs (like unsourced BLPs, currently ~30,000) as people shift to the new backlogs. Obviously this is a simplification, but I don't see how replacing deletion with backlogs solves anything. At worst it will increase the backlog of poorly watched pages, putting more strain on RC patrol as well, and potentially cause another Seigenthaler incident (which I believe was one of the reasons we have the currently notability guideline). It wouldn't even have to necessarily be on one of the "poor articles," those would just have to shift the attention of the RC patrollers.
As for evidence, short of doing statistical analysis on deletion logs and new pages, I'm not sure how one could gather evidence to support either side. The theory of classical conditioning would suggest that deletion would provide a deterrence though. If your articles keep getting deleted, you might change what you write about. As it stands, any grade below GA is essentially meaningless and arbitrary, usually assigned after only a cursory, mechanical review (made worse by "assessment drives" for large projects where people are encouraged to assess articles as fast as possible, then these assessments are copied by bot for the smaller projects), so I doubt getting a "poor article" rating would provide nearly as much negative feedback as deletion. We only have 100-150 AFDs per day, including a dozen or more relists, so we can't be doing that poorly. Mr.Z-man 22:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I have that extension enabled that can detect those things and recolor the title based off the class and change the motto to things such as "A good article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A former featured article candidate." We have the functionality that can do this, though I don't think casual users need to know it was a failed FC or not. ViperSnake151  Talk  00:10, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

How about adding brief definitions to the dialog box so that when I mouse over a link it gives me a brief definition of the term? That would save time since I wouldnt have to click and navigate away from the page Im currently viewing.

I hope you guys agree.

This exists. Log in with a registered user account, go to the "Gadgets" section of Special:Preferences, tick the box marked "Navigation popups", and hit save. :) {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 18:20, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – already implemented under prefs>gadgets>navigation popups. –MT

Can we make a sub-section for intro?

Whenever somebody edits the intro of an article, s/he has to click "Edit this page" at the topbar. Sometimes, multiple editors edit the article at the same time for other materials on the article. So their edits can be conflicted, and sometimes, edit waring can happen based on misunderstading. A whole size of A or B level articles is very big, so if editors just want to change a bit, and previews it, the loading takes very long. So why don't we make a small subsection for the intro just like other sub-setions [edit] Any thought? --Caspian blue 17:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Preferences → Gadgets → checkY Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page. –xeno talk 17:43, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
Oh!!!!!! Thanks! You're truly one of WikiGnomes (do we have "WikiGnome Barnstar"? :-)) .--Caspian blue 17:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
Alternatively, you can take the article url and append "?action=edit&section=0", which is basically what the gadget does but with a nice little button. --Izno (talk) 19:36, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, before gadgets, I just clicked the first section's edit link and manually changed the section from 1 to 0. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:29, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
I added the gadget but I do not see how to invoke it Sphilbrick (talk) 18:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – resolution was: already implemented, see prefs>gadgets>add edit link to lead –MT

Adverising Campaign for Wikipedia

I propose a wikipedia-wide campaign to promote the use of wikipedia as a reliable source. Many teachers and proffesors rule out using wikipedia as a reference for essays and other papers based solely on the fact that wikipedia is edited by users. However, this does not diminish its reliability as a source of information. Often, wikipedia is the best source for information as many other places only have bits and peices of the information provided on wikipedia. I propose a campaign that shows people just how reliable we are and why. Point out to people that while we are user edited, it is a very simple matter for any other user to remove false information, and often admin will ban users from editing if they can't conform to the rules.Drew R. Smith (talk) 02:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

We're not a reliable source, despite usually being a good source. If you want to promote Wikipedia like that, I suggest doing something like what's described in this blog post. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 04:01, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
A site as mercurial as Wikipedia can never be a reliable source, because its content is never in a concrete state. Even full-prots can be bypassed by administrators. -Jeremy (v^_^v Cardmaker) 04:12, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
I was under the impression that encyclopedias in general aren't considered good (or 'proper') sources for research. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:17, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
They are good starting points for research. Citing Wikipedia, on the other hand, is bad academics, unless the subject of the paper is Wikipedia or internet usage patterns or something similar. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:24, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Certainly not. Wikipedia is a very dodgy source. (I happen to think that my own articles are among the exceptions, but then I'm biased.) Now, if there were a campaign to increase scepticism of Wikipedia etc, I might give it my backing. -- Hoary (talk) 11:03, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – consensus was: no need, wikipedia not intended to be reliable in this way. –MT

Talk subpage for references

First of all, this is more of a spontaneous idea than a proposal. I've done some work on external links cleanup a while ago and soon found that most links that I've removed per WP:EL were interviews or newspaper reports that, while not being valid external links, could have been valid sources for the corresponding articles. I didn't have the time (and, often enough, I didn't have the expertise, either) to use these links to improve every single of those articles (there are thousands of articles with too many external links), so I removed the external links with a note in the edit summary about their possible use as a source. I doubt anyone's going to look at the history of the article to find any sources about it, tho, so.. what if an article could have a subpage that would list potential references? So, Blu (rapper) (entirely random example) could have Talk:Blu (rapper)/References, which would contain the links that I just removed in this edit per WP:EL. A template on the talk page could notify our editors that there are references waiting to be used or sorted out, and people could add references to the subpage if they find any (and don't have the time to add them to the article). What do you guys think? --Conti|✉ 22:24, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Two existing approaches would seem to cover this (see WP:Editing policy): unless there are loads of links, just slap them on the talk page with a note. If there are loads, put them on a subpage in your userspace and link from talk. Rd232 talk 05:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
I'd just drop them onto a new section on the talk page, as rd232 says. Happy‑melon 07:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
I've thought about doing that, too, but talk page sections get archived (and forgotten) eventually, making them just as unlikely to be noticed as a message in an edit summary. Having a central place for unused references (which doesn't necessarily need to be a subpage) would make finding those much easier. --Conti|✉ 11:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
Add them to a to-do list as a talk subpage. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 17:48, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
talk page sections get archived (and forgotten) eventually - Actually, that's true only of relatively busy talk pages, a (small?) minority. And even for those talk pages that do have archives, most of the time the archiving is done manually. That means that the editor doing the archiving could (and should, I think) leave alone a section with good but unused sources. So yes, please pop any good ELs you delete that could be, but aren't yet used as sources in the article, into a new section in the article's talk/discussion page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:22, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Alright, I'll do that in the future. I guess I was a bit too pessimistic here, anyhow. :) --Conti|✉ 11:58, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – resolution was: inappropriate external links that are good sources can be moved to talk pages, usually without worrying that they'll be archived and forgotten. –MT

Tracking potentially dated terms

Main pages: Wikipedia:As of and Wikipedia:Updating information

The {{as of}} template works invisibly to the reader to temporally stamp a time-sensitive claim so that it may be revisited when it needs updating. So,

{{As of|June 2007}} [[Juan Carlos]] is the [[King of Spain]]

appears as

As of June 2007 Juan Carlos is the King of Spain

and the article is added to the category Category:Articles containing potentially dated statements from June 2007. {{Update after}} has a related purpose. My proposal is that terms such as "currently" and "recently" be treated in a similar fashion: that there be templates {{currently}} (currently taken) and {{recently}} which for the reader would output the plaintext terms "currently" and "recently", but for the editor would add the article containing one of the templates to Category:All articles containing potentially dated statements. So for example, the line

[[Al Franken]] is {{currently|May 2009}} waiting to be seated in the [[United States Senate]]

would read

Al Franken is currently waiting to be seated in the United States Senate

and the article the line appears in would be categorized in Category:Articles containing potentially dated statements from May 2009

Do editors think this would be a good idea? Any comments, suggestions or ideas appreciated. Skomorokh 17:32, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. I kind of like it. --Golbez (talk) 18:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
We could probably get away with deprecating {{currently}} in favor of {{todo|inner=<content>}}. --Izno (talk) 18:47, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
I like it for "currently." I think the use of "recently" should be discouraged, as its almost always uselessly vague unless clarified by some sort of "as of X" statement; and even then, its not particularly clear (how recent is recently? a week? a month? 500 years?). Mr.Z-man 18:58, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Shouldn't currently be discouraged just the same, and the statement be rewritten as "{{As of|May 2009}} [[Al Franken]] is waiting to be seated in the [[United States Senate]]"? A templated "currently" is certainly better than a plain one since it provides editors with easier means to keep such statements up to date, but a reader won't know how outdated such a statement is. He is better off with a date. Amalthea 21:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
I considered that, but "Barack Obama is currently the president of the United States" sounds better than "As of 2009, Barack Obama is the president of the United States" since barring some catastrophic event, he'll be the president for 4-8 years, which is an eternity in Wikipedia-time. For very short-term things, we should be using specific dates, but for longer-term things, it looks awkward. Mr.Z-man 21:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
"Barack Obama is currently the president", or "is currently‡ the president", or "is currently[nb 1] the president" might all work too. We might also link the word to an actual date. Since the proposal is to modify 'currently' where it is used, I see no problem. Someone should go and create the template. –MT 04:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
I think that option masks the forest with trees; excessive tags (like symbols or note markers) makes the text harder to read. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
Once it's a convention, it'll be very easy to skim over. The point is that there are many options. I don't even notice note markers anymore, just as I've stopped noticing blue links many years ago. Make it a link to a note. Make the color a bit off. Or don't even bother marking it. –MT 08:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
For long-term things, I don't think its necessary. Do we really need to worry that much about articles getting 4 years out of date? Mr.Z-man 15:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

While sympathetic to the dislike of using these terms generally, I'm sensing consensus to implement this for where the terms are already used. Any objections to creating the templates and trying them out? I'd need someone technically able to move and adjust all uses of {{currently}}. Skomorokh 15:34, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that the ideal would be something like {{currently|until=2013-01-20}} for situations where there is a known ending point, along with an automatically generated, hidden category like Category:Articles needing updates on 2013-01-20. And otherwise, exactly why is the word "currently" useful? "Buffett is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway." "Franken is awaiting the outcome of legal proceedings to determine if he will be seated in the United States Senate."
If we really do want to use "currently" when there is an open-ended date and we worry that someone won't notice the change, then maybe {{currently|recheck=2009-10}}, with the automatically generated, invisible category Category:Articles possibly needing updates in October 2009. (I'd argue that rechecks shouldn't be scheduled for more than a year ahead.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
We already have {{Update after}} for claims with a known expiry date. I think the current practice of dating from when the claim was made makes more sense than dating from an arbitrary period in the future, because it does not commit to a certain period which might later need to be changed. And to re-iterate, this proposal takes no sides on when these types of terms should be used, only how they should be treated when they are. Hope this helps, Skomorokh 19:22, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Have redirects to redirects redirect

Hi, currently if a redirect page is redirected to another page, it does not follow the second redirect path.

Reasons why this might be a problem: 1. A page which used to exist was changed into a redirect page. Any pages that redirected to that page will now be stuck on that page (well, the user just has to click the link, which will take them to the right page, but I do not find this to be the best solution). 2. Someone might want to redirect to a redirect page in case the second redirect page becomes independent. For example, I created a redirect page "page proofs" which redirects to "galley proofs." I also created another redirect page "page proof" which I wanted to redirect to "page proofs" in case "page proofs" gets its own page (because "page proofs" are not the same as "galley proofs"). I think this example provides a very unlikely scenario (that is, I do not forsee any creation of a page proofs page), but I think there are some instances where this problem could come up. PGScooter (talk) 13:09, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This was recently discussed this here: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 44#Double redirects. It's technically possible and a very brief glance at that discussion indicates there is consensus to allow double (and possibly even triple++) redirects. –xeno talk 13:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
xeno, thank you for the reference! It seems to have a lot of support, and yet they still haven't implemented the feature. Perhaps they are working on it.PGScooter (talk) 13:46, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
or perhaps no one filed the bugzilla yet... =) –xeno talk 13:59, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
bugzilla:17888 was filed quite a while ago now. Algebraist 18:36, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Names on wikipedia.org page

Hi just a suggestion would it be possible to have say the wiki from whatever Country you are logging in/searching from to appear on this page. To encourage users to also check out and possibly edit less often used wikis. I ask this after reading this thread thanks. BigDuncTalk 16:40, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Technically possible, probably but not necessarily helpful (as some never go to that page and many countries have multiple languages but you can only, I think, have one preference). But I think it is an issue to be discussed at Meta, not here. Rmhermen (talk) 16:49, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply could you give me a link to were would be the place to post on Meta. BigDuncTalk 20:56, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
The text for that page is at m:Www.wikipedia.org template so I'd start a discussion on the talk page there, and also leave a note at m:Wikimedia Forum to get more eyes on the other page. - Rjd0060 (talk) 02:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Will do thanks for the replies. BigDuncTalk 08:10, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – (I think) Request to edit global wiki homepage to include origin country redirected to meta. –MT

Local version of Wikipedia

I'm curious in your consideration about creation of offline version (DVD/Blu-Ray) Of Wikipedia. It will be very useful in regions that still have no sufficient Internet connection.

I understand that it is very expensive and some times useless decision, but if material included will be prepared accordingly to the choosen auditory and subject, it can be widely used in educational purposes. I mean it could be DVD's with General Information about Natural Science, specific DVD's on some concrete subject like History or Mathematics or else...

Wikipedia already contain a good base of information. Needed just some basic verification and selection to compile good interactive interesting encyclopedia for wide range of users need it. Also it could be good support for online project.

All that needed it's just to create department that select, verificate and improve information for choosen offline media.

--NoRad (talk) 14:30, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. –xeno talk 14:32, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – already implemented. –MT

Welcome to Wikipedia (United States)

In the interest of making Wikipedia more of an international representation how about having days in which there is neither article nor comment on 'Welcome to Wikipedia' that relates to the United States of America.

Every day I read the welcome page, and there is always at least one and usually several American references under one or more of the following welcome sections:
Today's featured article
In the news
Did you know...
On this day...

There are over 200 countries in the world, of which (according to Wikipedia) 53 have English as the official language. I get tired of always finding stories on America. Please at least attempt to reduce the American content on the welcome page. I have nothing against America, but look forward to the day on which there is no mention of the USA on the welcome page. B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:11, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

So to combat bias, you would omit all mention of a certain country? And that's not biased? Why not even it out? Also, welcome to Wikipedia! You must be new here or have never engaged in discussions about the main page, because there is a constant argument about whether or not there is too much emphasis on the US. Incidentally, right now, the featured article is about America and Vietnam; ITN has zero stories mentioning the United States; three out of the eight entries on DYK involve or mention America; and one out of the six On This Day entries involve America. So, what exactly is your complaint? Yes, there are over 200 countries in the world - and at least 18 are represented on the Main Page at this moment. So, clearly your problem isn't that there is too much America stuff - it's that there is any America stuff. --Golbez (talk) 23:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
I am proposing that Wikipedia omit mention of a certain country for at least one day out of 365. The USA is the only country in the world that gets a mention 365 days out of 365 on Welcome to Wikipedia. That is where the bias is. B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
You're going to have to show your work on that one. And, so what? The majority of first-language English speakers, and probably editors, are American. Should we give each countrya special day? --Golbez (talk) 23:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Good idea. Better than giving one single country a mention every single day. If you want proof, look through the archives. B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:48, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

The number of English-speaking countries is not what's relevant to such content, but the % of English speakers from those countries. While English may be the official language of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, their total population is only 0.04% of the US. Even the population of the UK is only 23% of the US. Many countries also have multiple official languages. English is an official language of Kenya, but so is Swahili and only 7.19% of the population actually speaks English.[ref] Mr.Z-man 23:42, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as English-language speaking countries go, fair point. Even taking into account the fact there are millions of Americans who have Spanish or another language other than English as first language.
But... the Welcome to Wikipedia page contains references to many countries other than English-speaking ones e.g. (for today) Iraq, Spain, The Philippines, Kenya, Mexico, Iceland, Ukraine, etc. In which case the US has 306 million out of 6,707 million people (4.56%). Of course you could argue that a higher proportion of Americans have internet access than in any other country, but this still does not address the raised issue: why should there always be one or more references to America every single day of the year on Welcome to Wikipedia. B. Fairbairn (talk) 00:09, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Because 1) there are more American editors than any other type, so it makes sense that more is written on American subjects; 2) American stories tend to get more international press than those in St. Vincent, and thus tend to be more prevalent in ITN, and 3) What's the problem, exactly? So what if America is mentioned every day? So? --Golbez (talk) 00:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
I am asking for a change. Just one day (for starters). Is it impossible? Does there always have to be American references? Or is it a condition for Wikipedia - is there a contract clause, something like "Wikipedia must have one American related article on Welcome to Wikipedia every day of the year or the USA will ban Wikipedia"? B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

B. Fairbairn may be interested in WP:Systemic bias, which exists in an attempt to counter systemic bias on Wikipedia. And for what it's worth - in my opinion it's not so much that there is always something about America on the front page, it's that it is so often obscure, un-noteworthy, and "world famous in Hicksville, Alabama" type stuff that annoys me. That and the incomprehensible "all state 8th inning running noses" malarky. DuncanHill (talk) 00:48, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Nice contribution, particularly the "often obscure, un-noteworthy" point.
And often the states of the USA are referred to as though they are countries. With no reference to the USA e.g. in today's welcome, 'former owner of radio station KIHR in Hood River, Oregon, began his career...'. Ask a British, Australian, South African or Swede to name the 50 states of the USA and probably less than one in a thousand would know them all. Or care. B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Which is why Hood River, Oregon was linked in the listing. Mr.Z-man 01:29, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
You are correct. I looked and found references to places in other countries without a mention of the country name, and so withdraw the comment. Getting back to the main issue: there is always the American connection, and the trivial American story or stories. B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
So? You've yet to demonstrate how this is a problem that requires a rule to combat. --Golbez (talk) 02:26, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
As for "trivial stories," the Did you know... section highlights recently created articles. Since we already have articles on pretty much everything "major" (any new "major" thing would likely be in the news section than DYK), the blubrs are generally about trivial things regardless of what nation they relate to. I certainly don't care about the Bigeye sand tiger, but I don't have any problem with it being on the main page. Mr.Z-man 02:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

There is no problem; there is a minor issue, and that is there is always yank material on wiki welcome. Always. Every day.
Now I have nothing against Americans and the US. America is the greatest country in the world. That is my opinion, if it counts for anything.
From nothing the American pioneers built a superb free (apart from 250 years of slavery) nation where each person is the equal of the next and where every person can express their own beliefs (as long as they do not support Communism).
The US did the free world a fantastic service by voluntarily coming in (albeit late) during two world wars and making the difference between equal powers, enabling many people to continue to live free and not under tyranny.
In subsequent years it is unfortunate that the American government got carried away with the "Domino Theory" in Asia, and the American government has at times had a tendency to think it has the right to interfere with the way all other countries are run, but nobody is perfect.
America is the best, and I understand Americans like to read about themselves and their wonderful country, however, surely there is a limit. B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:49, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I would disagree that "America is the greatest country in the world" as you can't scientifically measure its "greatness". Anyway, it's getting off topic: Golbez wrote that (to paraphrase) "...there are more American editors than any other type so it makes sense to [write about their country more]" that is wrong. People come to Wikipedia to find a fairly represented encyclopaedia that doesn't write for one specific audience (bar the language, of course). It's actually a very narrow minded view to have and I'm willing to bet that Golbez is from America himself. I for one support B. Fairbairn's proposal to reduce the amount of American influence in general on Wikipedia (not just on the Main Page). This is an international encyclopaedia; nothing less, nothing more. ScarianCall me Pat! 13:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
It's also a very narrow minded view to assume Golbez is from America himself when he has said nothing to the affirmative nor contrary. ;) --Izno (talk) 13:33, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for your support, Pat. Unfortunately many Americans from an early age are brainwashed into believing America is the greatest country in the universe, and all other peoples are inferior. Getting a significant number of Americans to stop praising themselves is a very difficult task when Americans are trained to love their country above all else (except perhaps money). This attitude is demonstrated by the common American catchphrase "God Bless America". In other words, too bad for everybody else. B. Fairbairn (talk) 13:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Sarcasm and rhetoric does not help your case, B. Fairbairn. --Izno (talk) 13:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
I say it as I see it, Iznogood (a character from an Asterix book). And I try to stick to the point without going off on a tangent. B. Fairbairn (talk) 14:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
I do enjoy Asterix, though I don't recall which book it was from, as I didn't even know the name derived from an Asterix book! :O (I picked "Iznogood" up as a name when I saw a friend using it... that said, Izno is, from what I can tell, a unique derivative!). Still, the sarcasm is not the same as calling a spade a spade, and so you should drop it, as calling a spade a spade would be more skin to your original message: there is systemic bias here. Which we already knew about, and which there are many active editors working to reduce. As with the suggestions below, why do you yourself not turn to aiding instead of insisting it be changed, when we have no control over who edits what when? --Izno (talk) 15:19, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Not Asterix. Same author (Goscinny), but a different artist. Iznogoud --83.253.251.213 (talk) 20:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Ita est (Latin: yes, thus it is). You are correct. And I could swear that somewhere in one of the English translations of the Asterix books is a character named 'Iznogood'. If so, I see now why the name was chosen (the Goscinny link). Cannot remember which book though. Might have been a newer one like 'Black Gold' or 'Magic Carpet'. B. Fairbairn (talk) 02:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Since when is America the only nation that has a motto like "God Bless America?" – God Save the Queen? The US didn't invent nationalism. Mr.Z-man 16:18, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Excellent point with God Save the King/Queen. This discussion is bringing forward some interesting observations. Good on you, Z. That one has got me thinking. Maybe I too have been guilty of being indoctrinated by my country of origin. B. Fairbairn (talk) 02:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
Instead of calling for a ban on US topics, why don't you join in the decision-making processes and promote non-US topics? That would be much more effective than whinging here, and much more constructive than an arbitrary ban or quota. Anomie⚔ 13:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
I have not called for a ban on US topics. Far from it. I have asked for there to be at least one day per year on which there are no American related stories on Welcome to Wikipedia. Once a month would be well beyond expectation. Once a week impossible. I am calling for one US-free day, not a ban. B. Fairbairn (talk) 13:46, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
For one reason or another, more energy is devoted by Wikipedia's editors to articles about the US. They are rewarded for these efforts with a higher proportion of front-page coverage. If you see this is as a problem, the solution is to put your energy into improving the articles on the other side of the scales. Then you will be rewarded to see what you perceive as an imbalance, countered. Essentially you seem to be complaining that one area of Wikipedia is being improved faster than others? Happy‑melon 13:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Why should I have to do anything other than attempt to persuade the numerous people who already contribute material to Welcome to Wikipedia to stop focussing on all things American. I am but one person. It is better to help others try to not be so obsessed with writing about only one country, than to vainly attempt to overwelm all other contributors with material about the rest of the world. B. Fairbairn (talk) 14:07, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Because this is a volunteer project and people only work on what they want to work on. You can suggest it, sure, but anything more than that and you look like you're trying to tell people how they are allowed to CHOOSE to spend their time editing WP. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:48, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Because the way to fight bias and improve the project is to counter it with content that we're currently biased against, not fight it with more bias. Prohibiting certain content, even if its just from appearing on the main page, discourages editors. What you're saying is that you shoudn't have to do any work, and that other people should just listen to you. That's not how it works. As Melodia says, we're all volunteers, we work on what we want to work on. Mr.Z-man 16:18, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Quite right - it is absolutely wrong for someone to try to discuss their concerns, such behaviour is intolerable on Wikipedia! DuncanHill (talk) 16:30, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
I notice that, as usual, hitting random article over and over produces at least half articles that have nothing to do with the USA, including the usual high proportion of non-English-speaking placenames and soccer/football players and teams.
More seriously, we shouldn't respect one person's animosity to US subjects. Mangoe (talk) 17:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

You should have to do more than influence because information on the Main Page is based on contributions. Articles that have been recently created or improved go in DYK; substantial news stories with that have pages created for them appear in In the News; Featured Content contains pages that have been deemed exceptional. If you want more information on the welcome page, you have to contribute to get it there. You can try to get supporters to help you, but an all out ban (even for a day) is not the way to go. You would have to have a day where nothing historic happened in the US, where no substantial US article was created, and where no recent news pertained to the US. This would not only make the page behave differently for a day, but it would also be censoring news if something important were to happen in the US. Rather than creating a special case, you and supporters for your cause can affect the welcome page by focusing outside US scope to create needed articles, contribute news stories, improve topics, etc. You could even plan a day to contribute more than usual to bump US topics off the page. But as others mentioned above, this needs help from volunteers that are interested in the topics. —Ost (talk) 18:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I have noticed that Wikipedia is a rather culturally biassed encyclopeadia, specifically to Northern American and selected parts of Western Europe. It is interesting that if one goes to Criticisms of Wikipedia, a criticism that is mentioned there is Wikipedia's U.S.-centric bias. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:35, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
If you look up the one cited ref there, it refers to a claim by an Aussie Poli Sci Econ prof about editing Hugo Chavez. The article in question is tugged all over the place by everyone, and looking in history I cannot see that this person ever edited the article or made any comment on its talk page-- not that I'm sure he didn't, but there's no obvious evidence that he did. In any case, it's only one article. I personally have run into cases where there were substantial differences in the US and European experience, and was accused of bias for daring to incorporate material from the American side. All around I think this isn't really as bad a problem as claimed, if all that can be found is one IMO dubious and unsupported claim.
The deeper issue is that taking the USA off the front page for a day doesn't do a thing about this. I note that as of this moment, the only items pertaining to the USA are five items in DYK, and at that I had to check three of them to be sure. In that, this is probably a tiny bit unusual, as one would tend to expect at least one item in "On This Day" to pertain to a US event. It's not unusual that the news has no US items, or that the featured article isn't about something in the US. The proposal, it seems to me, is sort of an act of penance to be performed to appease the spirits of anti-US resentment. Mangoe (talk) 20:42, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Hey people (or should I say 'buddies') - it appears that improvement may be happening already. There are only three references to America on today's Welcome to Wikipedia 1) The Treaty of San Francisco, 2) the mention of a very minor dispute (as far as the rest of the world is concerned) between native americans and their invaders, and 3) some completely and utterly useless trivia "that John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, lives in a warehouse he purchased for US$2000". Come on, you can do it.
Briefly skimming through some of the points above I realise now that some material I added does appear to be sarcastic. Some comments were not intended to be that way. I do very firmly believe that the US is a great country. The US government has helped more countries than any other country has. The US has provided a safe haven to more persecuted peoples (e.g. Jews) than any other country has. I think America and the American people have had a really positive influence on the rest of the world in their pursuit of democracy and liberty.
It is just that after a while people from other countries can get tired of being exposed to US attitudes and US ways and US self-righteousness. Many television shows come from the US, most movies come from the US, many tourists are from the US, and the internet is well and truly dominated by the US. And yet only 4.56% of the world's population live in the US. B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:38, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
I can assure you with utmost certainty that your posts here had zero to do with the choices of today's featured article and picture, and the entries for ITN, DYK and OTD. As for being tired of it - Get over it. And enjoy the next century when things will be dominated by China instead. --Golbez (talk) 01:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The 'next century'? You mean the current century i.e. the 21st. I am looking forward to it. At least it will be a change. Gung hei faat coi (Cantonese: Congratulations and be prosperous). B. Fairbairn (talk) 02:20, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Golbez needs to assume more good faith, methinks. And I can think of 101 nicer things to write than "Get over it." Wouldn't you agree? I must congratulate B. Fairbairn on being able to hold his cool; lesser people would've jumped at the opportunity to point out Golbez' failings. ScarianCall me Pat! 12:25, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Pat. Often it is best to refuse to be drawn into a pointless slanging match, particularly when it is exactly what the other individual desires. B. Fairbairn (talk) 10:57, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
I am wondering whether it would really help to solve the problem of Wikipedia's cultural bias simply to have days when some other country than the United States gets prime focus on the main page or on "Welcome to Wikipedia"; if one looks at other articles, one can see that coverage is likely to be better for certain parts of the world than others (indeed, not just the United States, but my own country, the United Kingdom, is likely to get better coverage of topics relating to it than those to do with say, eastern Asia or Africa. An African philosopher-theologian such as John Mbiti currently has less information in his article than one would be likely to find on U.S. politicians, or items in the British media such as Susan Boyle or the row concerning the hoax calls by Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand last autumn. However, one side of me says - one just has to face it, a cultural bias towards selected parts of the world is likely, not just on Wikipedia but on other websites, for a simple reason. Where are people more likely to be using the world-wide web - in the United States, the United Kingdom, possibly Germany or France? Or in Africa or Asia? Perhaps this proposal just hit upon a cultural bias which one is likely to find on web resources in general. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
And, to be fair to Wikipedia and to the world-wide web in general, I do wonder whether the printed Encyclopaedia Brittanica may have shown a similar cultural bias. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:08, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea. Count me in. I have never studied the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, and fortunately now do not need to as long as Wikipedia remains free to all users. B. Fairbairn (talk) 11:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
Based upon past experience at DYK this "solution" will result in one of two scenarios, forced creation of an all-American day for every anti-American day or driving off contributors. Wikipedia is written by volunteers, and volunteers have a strong tendency to contribute on subjects of which they are both interested and knowledgeable. As roughly half of all Wikipedia contributors come from the United States between 40 and 60% all contributions with a geographical bias are thus U.S. related. Designating a non-U.S. day will thus create a backlog of U.S. related topics that when flushed from the queue will by default result in an all-American day. The other option is that you disqualify these contribution from appearing on the Main page and thus remove a primary incentive for contributions by people whose knowledge and interests are in U.S. related subjects. --Allen3 talk 12:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is not easy. Maybe there could be an option added to wikipedia's my preferences - how about American Material on Welcome Page? Yes or No. Selecting Yes would show the usual welcome page, and selecting No would ensure all future welcome pages for the user would not include American events in the Did You Know and On This Day columns. The In the News area would remain as is. When contributors add articles there could be a check box like This is a minor edit called something like American Material, which would be checked by default for those with the American Material on Welcome Page option set to Yes. B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

So I was correct - your problem is that there is any American content on the front page, and you would prefer the option to omit it completely. A question - what if another nation came to dominate in place of America? What if all of the stories, in the absence of any American articles, were mostly about Australia? Would you campaign for an option to omit those as well? --Golbez (talk) 00:00, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
But what is special about American material (other than the fact that you personally would rather there was less of it)?? Wikipedia also has a bias towards content related to obscure sportsplayers and small towns in India; should there be a preference "Footballers on Main Page"?? "African villages on Main Page"?? Why is it necessary to take the trouble to create an "american-free" main page but not one that avoids these other unduly-weighted topics? Happy‑melon 09:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
If you read the start of this topic you can see mention of the fact that there is always American material on the Welcome page. That is what this is about. No other country is mentioned anywhere near as much. Let me give you an example of the effect this has on readers. I work in a section where there are dozens of people with online access, but as far as I know there are only two people who visit Wikipedia - and the excuse for not using it from most of the others is that Wikipedia is too Americanised. I assure people that it is not - that there are thousands of items that have nothing to do with the US. But of course as soon as they open the wikipedia main page there are always a number of American articles (as well as the international ones)... and it turns people away. B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
As I said though, the solution is not to fight bias with bias. All that does is discourage contributors and slow overall growth, which does a disservice to readers. Mr.Z-man 16:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

This is not so much a response to the original proposal as a comment on this discussion in general. To me, it seems that this discussion has been one of the most interesting discussions to emerge from Wikipedia: Village Pump, and I wonder whether this could be the start of a new article in Wikipedia - called, for example, "Cultural Bias in Wikipedia"? For any one who does not think this is worthy of an article in its own right, it could be merged with, for example, Criticisms of Wikipedia or History of Wikipedia. Perhaps we could even extend this and construct an article on "Cultural Bias of the World-Wide Web"? Items here will get archived before too long, whereas an article in the main part of Wikipedia would be visible for many readers well into the future. I do think it would be shame if the fruits of this interesting discussion soon disappeared from easy visibility of most readers of Wikipedia - an article on something like "Cultural Bias in Wikipedia" could use this discussion as a starting point. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay - let's do it. For a start I guess we need to remove usernames, dates, and highly intellectual comments like "Get over it" and "What's the problem". :-) B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:48, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
The opinions and statements of a bunch of random Wikipedia users about Wikipedia is certainly not a reliable source about anything. Mr.Z-man 23:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Keep the facts. Remove the opinions and statements and attacks.
Fact 1: The USA gets one or more mentions 365 days out of 365 on Welcome to Wikipedia.
Fact 2: The USA has 306 million out of 6,707 million people (4.56%). This number is disproportionately low compared to the amount of USA material that appears on Welcome to Wikipedia. B. Fairbairn (talk) 00:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Should we apportion mentions on the front page based entirely on proportion of the population their countries represent? Because I suspect that the Solomon Islands, with .007% of the world's population, might be being overrepresented by being mentioned more than once every 40 years. --Golbez (talk) 00:23, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
B. Fairbairn, I think this is as far as one is going to get in this discussion. I would recommend that you take what we've learnt and go ahead and improve the encyclopaedia to the best of your ability. Golbez: I'm disappointed at your behaviour in this thread. You've been dismissive and sarcastic; never a good combination, sir. ScarianCall me Pat! 00:52, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
I calls em as I sees em. --Golbez (talk) 00:59, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
I haven't read the entire topic (TLDR), but Main Page right now only draws attention to an American topic in a single area right now (today's FA, which is a total crapshoot as far as nationality is concerned). Given my impression of what I have read of the topic, I'd be hard pressed to not respond with a dismissive and sarcastic attitude; the idea that the Main Page is too US-centric (or that it, heaven forbid, mentions the US at all) is pretty silly. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:27, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break: Welcome to Wikipedia (United States)

The "facts" still consist almost entirely of original research by users. While its fine for a discussion or an essay, it makes a pretty terrible basis for an article. Personally, I don't see what's really wrong with Golbez's 00:23 comment. It was sarcasm, but it wasn't attacking anyone, and it raises a good point. If we try to even out the coverage by population alone, you're going to reduce the USA coverage, but 90% of it would just be replaced by coverage of China and India. We could argue that its no longer biased, but it would be far less diverse than it is now. Mr.Z-man 02:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

No. I am not asking for there to be an even proportion of representation from each country; I am asking for there to be a reduction in the number of articles on Welcome to Wikipedia related to the United States of America. It will make Wikipedia more of a pleasure to visit for non-US readers - they will be able to read through the articles on Welcome to Wikipedia without having to wade through US-related tripe. Genuine US news articles and important US items should stay, the same as other for other countries, but let us put American trivia where it belongs: in a section specifically dedicated to the Untied States. I mean, United States. B. Fairbairn (talk) 17:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
So articles on the US are "tripe" now. And I get it, you made a joke about the country's name. That's how you maintain the high road! --Golbez (talk) 17:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict)And to the significant proportion of readers who are from the US ([1] - 22% of visitors for all Wikipedias are from the US, I can't find any stats for just en.wikipedia), we just say "screw you"? What you're proposing is not fighting an implicit bias, its just replacing it with an explicit bias, which is worse. Then we couldn't even say we're trying to fight the bias on the project, because we would be actively trying to make the most visible page biased. Mr.Z-man 17:41, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
It was a genuine typo. I did not correct it because I was mildly amused by the error.

Doing some small research, here is what I found. For Today's Featured Articles for 2009 the following applies: (non-country and multiple country references not included)

Location Articles
Antarctica 2
Australia 3
Canada 3
Central African Republic 2
China 1
Easter Island 1
Europe 1
France 2
Germany 2
Greece 1
India 2
Italy 3
Lithuania 1
Roman Empire 3
Singapore 1
South Vietnam 1
Sweden 1
UK 21
USA 36
USSR 1
Vietnam 1

(Note: 'UK' includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, covering from Stonehenge's creation in 2,400BC to now. The 'USA' articles cover from the first recorded European landing in North America in 1513 to now) B. Fairbairn (talk) 17:32, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Though I don't see how "tripe" could be a typo, your findings are also somewhat dubious. What do you put Acid2 under? What about Sequence alignment, Actuary, Aldol reaction, Oil shale, Saffron, Cystic fibrosis, Infinite monkey theorem, Free will, Parapsychology, Omnipotence paradox, or Intelligent design? All of those are Featured Article quality, and have all appeared on the Main Page as "Today's featured article" at one point or another. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Well, with a calculator you will be able to work out that so far in 2009 there have been 31+28+31+30+3 days. i.e. 123 days. There are 89 days covered in the table above. In the text above the table is the clause "non-country and multiple country references not included". This is where the articles you mention are. B. Fairbairn (talk) 17:51, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I saw that after I posted. However, your table is still deeply flawed information; if you tabulated the number of times a country is referenced in an entire year, rather than just this one so far, we'd have a bit more accurate information. Even then, though, I don't see what the problem is; the Main Page isn't being dominated by the US, and you've made it abundantly clear that you're not looking to counteract bias, you're just looking to be biased in the other direction. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:54, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
However, Easter Island and Antarctica seem to be significantly over-represented. Mr.Z-man 18:07, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
TFA is being dominated by US articles. Followed by UK articles. And one third of a year is a fairly significant representation. Getting back to the point I started making, there is always American material on the Welcome page. Always. Never a day without. No other nationality is represented daily. Is it because American people have to read items about their country every day of the year? Do you continue to require assurance of your importance to the rest of the world, my friends. B. Fairbairn (talk) 18:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm done talking to you after bullshit like "continue to require assurance of your importance". You're obviously trolling, plain and simple. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a strange thread. Someone says that too much of our coverage is focused on the USA, and rather than saying, "how can we get more international featured content?," we defensively argue that there's not really an imbalance? Who cares?

Is anyone actually against the idea of a greater proportion of featured content coming from non-US-centric topics? The suggestion clearly has merit, so why cavil over the wording used in making it? -GTBacchus(talk) 18:11, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The argument isn't being made to have more international featured content, it's to limit US-related topics. It isn't a semantic difference. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
I really don't see that as the main point of the original poster. "A day without coverage of the US" is an unfortunate choice of rhetorical device, but if one looks for the meat of the suggestion, one finds it in the valid premise that we could be more diverse. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:38, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately there are some readers who take the suggestion of reducing American content as a personal attack on themseleves and on their country. Let me assure all American patriots that the 'reduce American material on the Welcome page' suggestion is not anti-American, and not meant to sound anti-American. The USA is a great country, and there are many wonderful people there. No sarcasm intended. It is just unfortunate that some Americans tend to be raised to believe their country is by far the best in the world, and that everyone elsewhere should share this belief, and that everybody else wants to know all about the USA. B. Fairbairn (talk) 18:33, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
I think it's best not to put it in terms of limiting US content, but in terms of expanding non-US content. You'd be much less likely to trigger defensiveness that way. The best strategy might just be to get "I'm So Bored with the USA" up to FA status. ;) -GTBacchus(talk) 18:38, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, reading back over it, the "continue to require assurance of your importance" is a bit below the belt. My statement (a rather disappointing one in retrospect) was prompted by the reading of an article proclaiming the US as the last remaining world superpower. No offence intended EVulta. And no I am not trolling: if you are disturbed by what you read, do not read it. B. Fairbairn (talk) 18:51, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
I would also suggest you not ascribe motives to the people who disagree with you. Perhaps they're disagreeing not because they're all a bunch of flag-waving American patriots but because they really don't think the idea is in the best interests of the project? Just a thought. Mr.Z-man 19:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Exactly. My responses haven't been because I'm an American; it's because I react strongly to stupid ideas. It's one thing - something I strongly support - to advocate more editing and featuring of a wider variety of articles. It's another thing to whine, "There's too much America! Give us the option to ignore it!" and somehow, astonishingly, not see how 1) insulting and 2) stupid that is. B. Fairbairn, you're concerned about too much America? Then dilute it. Get some Australia articles featured. Write some new articles and get them into DYK. Find some interesting things that happened outside America on a particular day. But don't feed us this tripe about how you just want to give the rest of the countries in the world a fair shake. They have one - it's all up to you. There is zero preventing you or anyone else from getting topics on a wider variety of countries on the main page. But you would prevent people from having their work about America being showcased? --Golbez (talk) 19:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

¶ If a large proportion of English-Wikipedia's editors come from North America or the British Isles, then certain things are likely to be true:

  1. the subjects or people with which they will be most likely to be familiar will most often relate to the U.S. or U.K. (had this been a century or two ago, and the editors come from traditional schools, then they'd be equally familiar with Biblical or Classical themes)
  2. there will be likely be more editors (not all Anglo-American) contributing to, and checking on, a U.S. or U.K. theme than on other themes (many eyes, brains and fingers being, of course, an essential part of how Wikipedia as a whole has been able to maintain quality, accuracy and neutrality)
  3. and therefore, there are often better odds for a U.S. or U.K. article like New York City getting Featured Article status.

§ Another parallel cause might be the availability of sources in languages understood by most Wikipedia editors, both on the Internet and in their local libraries. bookstores, and academic classes. For various reasons, some obvious and some less so, it's far easier for them to find such material about North America and the British Isles than about other parts of the world. (Even when a greater proportion of Internet material is in Chinese, Spanish or South Asian languages, that won't mean a corresponding increase in the number of competent English-Wikipedia editors able to convert such material into Good Articles.)
§ This isn't any kind of boast (although I was born in London and live in the U.S.), and even less an attempt to denigrate articles about the Continent, Australasia or the Third World. I just think that the reasons for an imbalance in featured and home-page articles might not be simple chauvinism, narcissism, egocentrism, xenophobia or disdain for other cultures. And the answer is to deal with the underlying cause by recruiting more editors who are knowledgeable and interested in non-Anglo-American topics, or by putting more effort oneself into researching and writing about such topics.
§ I know there's a certain circularity with unfortunate resonances ("if only there were enough qualified X, then..."), but no such arrogance is intended. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:54, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

No arrogance was noted from this quarter. Good to have a contribution from a learned contributor. Skimming through the comments above it is apparent that some contributors can raise very valid points, and some cannot. Below are five of the most useful comments, mixed in with five of the most useless comments thus far presented. Decide for yourself which are pearls of wisdom and which have no use anywhere.

1. "What's the problem, exactly? So what if America is mentioned every day? So?" Golbez
And you have yet to point out the problem, apart from you think there's too much America. You never elucidated how that was a problem that people other than you should care about. --Golbez (talk) 16:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
2. "I have noticed that Wikipedia is a rather culturally biassed encyclopeadia" ACEOREVIVED
3. "Wikipedia is written by volunteers, and volunteers have a strong tendency to contribute on subjects of which they are both interested and knowledgeable" Allen3
4. "Still, the sarcasm is not the same as calling a spade a spade, and so you should drop it" Izno
5. "As for being tired of it - Get over it." Golbez
I can be 100% sure that if everything on the main page was Australian, I wouldn't care a bit. You could learn from my example! --Golbez (talk) 16:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
6. "the solution is to put your energy into improving the articles on the other side of the scales." HappyMelon
7. "22% of visitors for all Wikipedias are from the US, I can't find any stats for just en.wikipedia), we just say 'screw you'" Z_Man
8. "in my opinion it's not so much that there is always something about America on the front page, it's that it is so often obscure, un-noteworthy" DuncanHill
9. "You should have to do more than influence because information on the Main Page is based on contributions" Ost
10. "I'm done talking to you after bullshit like 'continue to require assurance of your importance'" EVula
B. Fairbairn (talk) 10:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
I have been asked which of the above comments fit into which category. In response: numbers 1, 4, 5, 7 and 10 were useless and inappropriate. Number 2 is a valid point. Numbers 3, 6 and 9 were argued from the 'Support the US' side but were also valid points. Number 8 was included because it says what I have been primarily saying.   B. Fairbairn (talk) 22:12, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Because this is the proper way to conduct a discussion - grab 10 nuggets without context for... what, exactly? What is the point of reprinting #10, even though it was a valid complaint against a comment you retracted? Jeez. Stop trolling and move in to actual editing. --Golbez (talk) 16:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
How about WP:DFTT? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:33, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
(ec)Ok, it's clear that you've taken the time to go through the discussion and pick out the salient points. Now, what do you, personally, intend to do with them?? Which school of thought are you going to ascribe to? Happy‑melon 12:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
This proposal's obviously not going anywhere. This looks as good a time as any to stop wasting my time. Mr.Z-man 18:48, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

With slight exception of TFA, there really is no one decision maker on what gets featured on the main page but rather a collaborative effort of volunteers who choose from a pool of contributions. If anyone wants to change what appears on the main page in WP:DYK, WP:ITN and WP:OTD then the simple solution is to produce non-American, "non-trivial" content. As others have noted you really can't criticize volunteers for using their own free time to create "trivial" American content because that is what they enjoy doing. If you want to see different content on the main page, you simply have to offer an alternative by providing different content options. You can't sit around and wait for the content to magically appear. AgneCheese/Wine 12:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I am mosy certainly not having a go at volunteers for using their own free time to create "trivial" American content. What I am saying is that the trivia should not be appearing on Wikipedia's Welcome page. Leave it on Wikipedia - some of it is interesting - but put it somewhere else. I mean, look at today. Who could care less that "Leonard T. 'Max' Schroeder Jr. was the first American soldier to land in Normandy from an assault boat" apart from maybe his descendants.
B. Fairbairn (talk) 12:17, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes...the article Leonard T. Schroeder was created for WP:DYK by an editor with an interest in the subject and it met all the valid criteria to be featured. But the reason why the Leonard T. Schroeder article was featured today and not an article on a West African diplomat is because that article hasn't been created yet! Or maybe it has been created but it is only a 1 or 2 line stub that needs to be expanded? Again, there is an easy solution to change type of content that you see on the main page. You have to offer alternative content to feature that is not US related. Otherwise we are just going to pull from what available content is submitted by volunteers who are dedicating their free time to write about topics that they are interest in. AgneCheese/Wine 12:41, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
I most certainly do not have any objection to volunteers who dedicate their free time to write about topics that they are interested in. As long as it is dedication and not defecation (;-), as in the case of the "first yank on the beach". Come on guys and gals, put patriotic blurb relevant to your country somewhere that your compatriots can read all about it, without having to expose it to everybody else. B. Fairbairn(talk) 13:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia doesn't discriminate and doesn't have dedicated "US-Only" or "Non-US Only" sections" but rather we have "WP:Did You Know, WP:In The News, WP:Today's Featured Article and WP:On This Day sections that are color blind to all races and nationalities. All of these sections to the main page are an open door to the masses that only require one dedicated soul to take an interest in a single article to bring it up to standards and have it featured. What you are proposing is to fight bias with bias, to set up a "US-only" drinking fountain because you're concerned that no one has yet built a watering well for a African village. While the cause is noble, the means are misguided. The solution to countering systematic bias is to roll up our sleeves and bring these under-represented topics to DYK, ITN, FAC and OTD and dilute the concentration of US/UK topics. Creating a "US-Only" drinking fountain does nothing to improve the quality and coverage of this topic because it only pushes the problem under the rug. These non-US articles still need to be created. Making the "trivial US" articles go-away are not going to make the quality and quantity of non-US articles magically improve overnight.Agne Cheese/Wine 13:36, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Formatting of this section

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

While I have been reading this section, User:B. Fairbairn has been busy screwing with the formatting, removing all the indentations that usually give a clue about who replies to whom, and reformatting the signatures to make them stand out even more (I thought it was bad enough as it was with all the play with colours and typefaces in signatures).

What is the point of doing this? Do you think it looks prettier? I just find it annoying. Could you please just restore the comments to the way their authors intended them to look? --Hegvald (talk) 12:42, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

No. It is my proposal. For almost all of it the indentation provided no use whatsoever. I have made it more readable. If you do not like it, sorry.

B. Fairbairn (talk) 13:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Seriously, are you TRYING to get blocks? You're being pretty disruptive by totally changing the normal formatting used on talk pages, trying to single out people as being unhelpful objectively when it's a subjective matter (basically), and you continue to harp on the point after a large number of people tell you that you're WAY over reacting. If I were an admin or even more bold than I am, I'd probably take some action here...but I'm not. I'm tempted to completely revert all your futzing though, even though I know you've probably undo it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:17, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Seconded, I was about to say the same thing. Especially now that I look at the actual rendered wikitext of the section (instead of the diffs, which I had to page through singly because of all the useless edits), and see that B Fairpairn has completely and totally destroyed the threading of the conversation. Anomie⚔ 13:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

It is my proposal. And it was turning into a mess. I have tidied it up, without removing any content. It is easier to follow now. And as for changing it back - do what you like with your own proposals, but leave mine alone please. If you do not like it, boycott it. B. Fairbairn (talk) 13:35, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

You do not have WP:OWNERSHIP over the formatting of this page section and the right to change other editors own formatting of their comments and signatures. AgneCheese/Wine 13:46, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
(ec) It's not "your" proposal, it's a discussion belonging to the community. Your edits may not have lost any of the individual words, but they have lost the valuable information on who exactly was replying to whom indicated by the indentation. Please stop. If you continue to disrupt this discussion, you may be blocked from editing. Anomie⚔ 13:54, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I urge any passing user to revert B Fairbairn if they continue to alter other editors' formatting in a non-constructive manner, and I encourage any passing admin to issue a block for the same. Thank you. Apologies if I missed restoring anyone's comment, I had to go through diff by diff and merge the useful comments without the disruptive formatting changes. Anomie⚔ 13:54, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Second Anomie's reasonable request. AgneCheese/Wine 14:03, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, Anomie. (I just had to undo Fairbairn's reformatting again.) --Hegvald (talk) 14:00, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay guys - I was wrong. Stay out for a little while and I will put it back the way it should be. B. Fairbairn (talk) 14:06, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

There we go. All better now. I am learning a bit more about Wikipedia now and finally see why things are the way they are. I will try not to change others' posts again. B. Fairbairn (talk) 14:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Do or do not - there is no try =) –xeno talk 14:11, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Okay. No need to get upset. I will not change others' post formatting again. Now can we forget my temporary idiocy and continue without further comment on it. B. Fairbairn (talk) 14:15, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Wikipedia: U.S. version: break after formatting changes intermission

B Fairbairn, I take issue with this recent comment of yours: "Come on guys and gals, put patriotic blurb relevant to your country somewhere that your compatriots can read all about it, without having to expose it to everybody else." I think this is a misreading of what's going on. People write what they know, and what they can easily research. Therefore, we have better coverage of topics that immediately surround most of our editors.

I think your proposal, insofar as it is to improve coverage of other parts of the world, is a very good one. However, if you present it in terms of reducing US coverage, then you will inevitably trigger a defensive reaction, which will undermine your ability to float any kind of proposal. Accusing people of nationalism is a terrible way to get them to see the best in your idea and agree with it. Honey catches more flies than vinegar, yes?

The solution to imbalanced coverage is to balance it by adding where there is less. Attacking those who are better motivated and better able to write about their familiar world is unlikely to lead anywhere good. What do you think? -GTBacchus(talk) 19:49, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Please archive

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I suggest that this discussion be archived, as it appears to be going nowhere per Mr.Z-man's last entry.
This discussion is about a proposal to xliminatx any rxfxrxncx to thx Unitxd Statxs on thx main pagx of thx Xnglish Wikipxdia for an arbitrary pxriod, i.x. onx day. As an xxamplx of what such a proposal might accomplish, imaginx if it wxrx mandatxd that xvxry discussion pagx rxquirx at lxast onx paragraph in which xvxry instancx of thx fifth lxttxr of thx Xnglish alphabxt bx rxplacxd by thx twxnty-fourth lxttxr. To bxttxr sxx that thx proposaI itsxlf prxsxnts an unavoidablx contradiction to a common goal of improving thx xncyclopxdia, I rxfxr you to thx final paragraph of thx articlx xntry sxction about Marxist Dialxctics for information on thx nxcxssity of continuxd discussion of this topic. Sswonk (talk) 20:04, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for archiving this. It has got so interesting that I still think that we who have contributed to this one could start a new article for Wikipedia called either "Cultural Bias of Wikipedia" or "Cultural Bias on the web". I do take the comment above that a few opinions by a random selection of Wikipedians (all right, I know in the statistical sense, we do truly constitute a random sample) would not be a reliable source, but if we can find passages for cultural bias on the web, even if just other websites, this could be the seed of a new article for Wikipedia. Can I make a comment though? B. Fairbairn, in raising this topic, appeared to be referring to a U.S.-centric bias, but I would say that there are biasses to other parts of the world, too, for example, I am pretty sure that my own country, the United Kingdom, would get better coverage in the English Wikipedia than say, Sweden or Finland, and certainly better coverage than countries outside Europe or Northern America. If we can do our statistics, this could certainly make for what I would consider a worthwhile answer. I have to confess that I have not observed how much coverage the Solomon Islands get. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:25, 6 May 2009 (UTC)


Yes of course people focus on what they know and are interested in, and the more US people that contribute articles, the more US-related articles that appear. And there are articles about events and people in other countries too, and very possibly a fair proportion of these are also contributed by US citizens. What surprises me is that the US related material is very often about far less interesting events and people. Looking at today's DYK section, there are stories about:

  • A naval battle in 1805
  • An act of battery that took place during a law and order (how appropriate) debate in a state assembly
  • A story about an aide-de-camp to a European King
  • A review of a 2009 television film and some controversy surrounding it
  • An article on a soldier who rose 4 ranks in less than five years (even top soldier Colin Powell took 17 years to do the same)

and

  • A nothing article about some radio station in California
  • A story about a Synagogue in New York that has a temporary dwelling in the basement
  • A story about an American radio show broadcast

Possibly all the more noteworthy US items of interest have already been covered, and US contributors have been left scratching the bottom of the barrel looking for things to write about... B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:30, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

As a matter of record

At the risk of reinvigorating this discussion, I would like to point out that WP:DYK/N says:

"NOTE: Since on average about 50% of hooks on the suggestions page are U.S. related, it is usually appropriate to have roughly half the hooks in any given update on U.S. topics. Thanks.

Assuming that the DYKers are paying attention to this, that would explain the consistent appearance of US items there. Mangoe (talk) 21:18, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

But... just because they are from the US does not mean they must only contribute articles on the US - unless it is only the US that most US citizens are interested in. Considering the number of US citizens who travel abroad and the amount of US foreign aid that goes abroad, it would seem unlikely that most US citizens are only interested in the US. Unless they do these things just to advertise the US and to try to make themselves feel good.  :-) (no inappropriate suggestions or inappropriate comments please) B. Fairbairn (talk) 22:49, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a big difference in interest level between taking a week's vacation in Paris, and researching the history of a Parisian arrondissement to write a featured article about it. As for the note on DYK, I'm guessing that that's more so that the people running it don't fill up the entire thing with US related articles, not to encourage people to write more about the US. Mr.Z-man 06:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
That's at least the second, and I think perhaps at least the third, time you've insinuated that editors write about U.S.-related topics solely to "promote the country" or "make them feel better about it". Stop insulting a vast number of our editors. --Golbez (talk) 06:19, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Did I say 'solely' anywhere? Or did I suggest 'solely'? Or is it only in your mind? Whatever the case it seems I insult you, not them (US editors). None of them has stepped forward and complained. Maybe they have the maturity to accept criticism. You unfortunately, do not.   B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:29, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
You are insulting the many thousands of editors who have contributed US-related work to DYK, TFA, and POTD, which includes me, since of the 5 submissions I've done that made it on DYK and POTD, one involved the United States, which I'm sure is one too many for you. That others are unaware of your insult does not mean it was not insulting. (And I can count at least three people in this discussion who have complained to you about your derisive tone; are more required?) Also, don't tell people "no inappropriate suggestions or comments please"; either the comments are allowed under Wikipedia policy or they aren't. You fortunately do not dictate what type of responses you can receive. --Golbez (talk) 21:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, you did suggest it when you said "... they do these things just to advertise the US and to try to make themselves feel good" (emphasis mine). Mr.Z-man 13:47, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, you got me there - the word 'just' was not a good one to use. It would have been better to say '...most of the time to advertise...'. B. Fairbairn (talk) 05:38, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Stripes & Stars

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

As a small aside, I was wondering why there are stripes on the US flag. Some research showed there are 13 stripes and they represent the thirteen British colonies that were part of British America and later became the United States of America. The 50 stars of course represent the 50 current states. The District of Columbia is not represented.
It seems unusual to me that the stripes have remained on the flag especially seeing as each one represents a former British colony. I was under the impression that America was keen to break away from the British, as exemplified by the cry "No representation without taxation" (or whatever). Would not the 50 stars alone be more appropriate.   B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:29, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

It would be a little more on the mark to say that they represent the thirteen original states. It's true that these had formerly been colonies, but it's also true that it was exactly these who broke away from the British and fought the American Revolutionary War against them. It seems reasonable for a country to honour (or honor, as they'd have it) the ones who actually created that country. —JAO • T • C 09:43, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Fair enough. I see the stripes represent the colonies that broke away rather than the colonies that the British formed. Still the flag would probably be more aesthetically pleasing without the stripes, but of course if the flag ever did change again there would be literally thousands of flags that would need to be replaced. I do not know of any research in the matter but suspect there are more American flags in the world than all the other flags put together.   B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:45, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
I wouldn't be surprised either. I guess flagmakers had good times in 1959 and 1960. —JAO • T • C 10:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
There would have been enough work around to keep them out of trouble!
Getting back to the present topic: come on editors, far more people live, and far more events happen outside the USA than inside. All you need to do is broaden your horizons. B. Fairbairn  Talk  10:46, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Who are you telling to broaden their horizons? Editors in general, or the people who pick what goes on TFA, DYK, ITN, etc? --Golbez (talk) 06:06, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I am asking, not telling, editors in general to stop focussing on the good 'ol US of A. B. Fairbairn  Talk  06:18, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Please make a proposal. You are being disruptive by going off-topic. Do you propose that we impose a rule on those editors who manage the main page? We can't do that. It's not even clear what the rule could be. Do you want one day of the year to be not-usa day? This is weird and pointless. Do you want editors to carefully screen every single day for equivalent usa/otherworld coverage? This is too much work. What is your proposal? –MT 07:22, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I was initially under the impression that Wikipedia is an international phenomenon. As I began using the site more I noted that the Welcome to Wikipedia page always has stories from various countries, and one or more stories local to the US. I wondered why there are always US stories on the Welcome to Wikipedia page, and why one or more of the US stories would not be of the usual standard in terms of event or person importance. It soon became apparent that Wikipedia is primarily controlled, operated and contributed to by Americans.
In the interest of making Wikipedia seem, at least as far as the front page is concerned, more international, I wondered if there was some way in which the American content on the page could be reduced, or even just for one day be removed. My proposal was looking for a way to achieve this (exclusion of exceptionally trivial US entries from the Welcome to Wikipedia page) if possible.
It has since become apparent this is not possible. Non-US users who enjoy reading Welcome to Wikipedia articles will have to continue to ignore the minor US stories on the Welcome page, and advise co-workers/friends/relatives not to be turned away by the apparent US focus and US slant.
Please do not get me wrong: the US is a fantastic country - a comparatively young country that has become, as some point out, the world's richest country, the one remaining superpower, the land of liberty and equality, the country that sets the right example for all other nations to follow. Terrific work, but after a while people from other countries can get tired of the US omnipresence. B. Fairbairn  Talk  11:52, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

So there is no proposal? Happy‑melon 19:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
This might no longer be a relevant question, since the discussion in this section has effectively ended. –MT 19:27, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
It seems that the main page is developed mostly by residents of the US. Perhaps by joining the group that works on the main page and contributing good non-US content, you can sway things. It's unfortunate that we couldn't develop a way to reduce bias. –MT 19:27, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – not possible to implement and enforce, retracted by proposer. –MT
Please do not comment in this section so that it may be archived.

Watchlist alerts

We should have a notice that is similar to the "You have new messages" banner. Something like:

One or more pages on your watchlist have been edited (view watchlist)

-- IRP ☎ 03:00, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

This though would be the most annoying thing ever. The new messages banner annoys me now, and it's rare. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:24, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Opt-out ability for banners

If the banners are annoying, then we should have an option available to allow users to opt out of the watchlist and/or new messages banners. -- IRP ☎ 20:32, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

We should have an alert similar to the "You have new messages" alert when a page on our watchlist is edited (however, it should be an optional feature. Click "show" (above) to see the example). Who supports or opposes this proposal? -- IRP ☎ 00:30, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This proposal was hidden because its mostly unrelated to the proposal that (originally) started this section. Depending on how its implemented, if its implemented, one proposal for watchlists being implemented will not necessarily mean that implementing the other is easy. Implementing either of them in the core software would be a major change and not particularly likely to happen soon (if someone starts working now, I would say a month as an absolute minimum) for reasons similar to a perennial watchlist proposal. The watchlist system right now is rather simple. Most proposals, including some of those made here would be a major change. Mr.Z-man 01:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
The simplest way to do it would be to create a .js file for it instead of a change in the software (just like the proposal above). -- IRP ☎ 02:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
It would be terribly impractical for anyone with more than a handful of articles on a watchlist. I would definitely opt out, lest I have a big orange bar all the time. I wonder how many people would actually find such a feature helpful. LadyofShalott 04:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I have 2,861 items in my watchlist, and it would make simple browsing of the encyclopedia all but impossible. If you want to know if one of the pages on your watchlist have been edited, then... check your watchlist. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:59, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I have to say, that's a really rather radical idea EVula... that aside, I too would opt out, as I have 1,554 items on my watchlist. In all honesty, I can't see anyone with more than around 50 items even considering this... TalkIslander 22:23, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps, you could choose which items would be in this banner. It would be annoying though,  The Windler talk  12:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
That's an excellent idea. Given the 800-odd changes in the last three days, I think I'd be tripping this message on each edit, if not each page load. This would be certainly unfeasible for a large percentage of active editors, although it would be good to have this as a gadget and I'd certainly need this to check for vandalism on things like my userspace (which I rarely visit, yet some pages get >20 hits per month). —Admiral Norton (talk) 17:13, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

The banner is awful, for me it would happen about twenty times a day, and I've got a relatively small watchlist. For those watching WP:AN etc. it would be a nightmare. Opt-out would have to be available. However, I do use this excellent tool, which does roughly the same job and is discreet about it. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 17:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

This sort of feature would be better with an opt-in system where people are not included by default. Or even have it work per page, have a 'watch' and a 'really watch' button. Chillum 17:40, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Tagline

Who supports or opposes this edit to MediaWiki:Tagline? -- IRP ☎ 19:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I would oppose it. My concern is that if a casual reader is looking through Wikipedia pages and they see a blue link 'Wikipedia' at the top of every page, they would probably assume that it's a link to the home page. Taking them to the Wikipedia article about Wikipedia could be a bit confusing for them. Tra (Talk) 20:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Agree with Tra. That message is a self-reference; 'contentifying' it by linking to an article is just confusing. If people don't know what Wikipedia is by the time they get to an article, we really are in trouble :D Happy‑melon 20:23, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
I agree with HM and Tra as well. Its unnecessary. Mr.Z-man 20:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Agree with everyone. Oppose change. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 20:38, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Agreed as well; we don't need the link everywhere. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:40, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Same feeling here. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:04, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – consensus was rejection. –MT

search bar!!

I would like to suggest a very useful feature to wikipedia, the search bar front and center (top) so people can find what they need quickly, which is the sole purpose of wikipedia. The articles can afford to move down a little bit for a more prominent search bar. Being a web developer, its important to create ui for the user that's the ultimate goal. Its kind of annoying to look for the tiny left column search bar and type your keyword that way. I hope you can fix this problem to better the best web resource ever created. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.168.77 (talk) 02:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you'll find much support for moving the search bar in the global interface, but there may be a skin or javascript that can do this for you. –xeno talk 13:33, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
I think that the 'you can use skins or js' response is one of the reasons the wp interface is so painful for editors, and especially new people to use. That said, if she or he is talking about putting a big textbox above article titles, then this is an ignorant or bad idea. I do agree that it should be moved above navigation, or up to the top right, though. –MT 05:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
I agree, the purpose of Wikipedia is not to find what you're looking for, its to read about what you're looking for. We shouldn't give the search bar more prominence than the article text. Mr.Z-man 13:52, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – consensus: a search bar taking space at the top of each article would not help people use wikipedia. –MT

Making the font size smaller for inline citation numbering

I have a very simple proposal that would be relatively easy to implement and which could improve the readability and visual appeal of our articles: decrease the font size for inline citation numbering.[1][2] You know, those big ugly numbers at the end of both the last sentence and the present one.[3][4] We all love citations (or at least we should[5]), but the current numbering is just way too large![6] What with the density of referencing expected of a modern Wikipedia article, the endless accumulation of notes — often multiple notes at the end of a sentence, and more still in the middle[7] — is becoming unsightly.[8] The superscripted numbers are big and blocky, making articles look messy and stranding each sentence far from its neighbors, an effect that subtly discourages flowing prose.[9] Ironically, the more poorly referenced the article, the better, the more dignified, and the more professional it looks, while the better the referencing is, the uglier the article gets...and lord, by the time you're getting into double digits, let alone triples, you're really looking nasty.[10][11][12] This sentence, for example, is farther from its preceding sentence than any sentence should ever be...almost an inch away, wouldn't you say?[13][14] Worse yet, you can find even more egregious examples on any number of Featured Articles...articles which are supposed to be the finest showpieces for our content.[15] Why must our best work be our ugliest?[16] Quadruple-stacked three-digit blocks of big blue numbers, and in the middle of a paragraph, too.[17] Ouch.[18]

I think that many long-time editors have come to see reference tags for what they represent — seriousness and accuracy in encyclopedic work[19] — and that this has slowly blinded them to how ugly articles get[20] when they're are all tarted up with these ugly blocky blues.[21] I've seen several comments from casual WP readers on the subject, which is what prompted me to make this proposal.[22][23]

Anyway, the solution is simple: make the numbers much smaller.[24] We don't have to worry about their readability, because even at a considerably lesser size, they'll still be legible[25] — and anyone with serious access/vision issues will already be using a higher zoom level on their browser anyway.[26] Unless there is a strong technical reason why smaller numbers can't work, I think this is a sufficiently easy and obvious and uncontroversial improvement to the project that it should be made as soon as possible.[27][28][29][30][31] —— Mr. IP 《Defender of Open Editing》 23:32, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S. For a really big improvement, at no cost whatsoever to anyone anywhere, we could also remove those little brackets that needlessly surround every single number, and find a better or at least less obtrusive way to differentiate neighboring cites from each other, like slashes or dashes or such.

REFERENCES

  1. ^ I mean, why do the numbers have to be so big?
  2. ^ They're ugly as hell, and stand out so much that they outshine and overshadow (uh, somehow) the actual, y'know, text of the article.
  3. ^ Big.
  4. ^ Ugly.
  5. ^ As good little Wikipedians..
  6. ^ They could be, like, half the size and still too large.
  7. ^ Look how ugly that is, just sitting right there in the middle of the sentence.
  8. ^ "Unsightly" is an understatement, when "unreadable" is more like it.
  9. ^ This is also why we need to reform the way references are written into raw article text generally, but that is a much taller order.
  10. ^ So.
  11. ^ Damn.
  12. ^ Ugly.
  13. ^ Slightly less than an inch, but close.
  14. ^ Here is another reference, because two are better than one.
  15. ^ Many an FA is just plain hideous on this account, even with all the pretty pictures.
  16. ^ There is, in fact, no reason why our best work must also be our ugliest.
  17. ^ Even if giant number blocks aren't "subtly discouraging flowing prose", they sure as hell are preventing fluent reading.
  18. ^ I LIKE TA MOVE IT MOVE IT
  19. ^ Sometimes.
  20. ^ These are the worst kind: cites right in the middle of a damn sentence, right after a mid-sentence word, no punctuation, nothing.
  21. ^ "Ugly Blocky Blues" — Sleepy John Estes, 1935.
  22. ^ Readers hate these damned things.
  23. ^ Have another! Twice the ugly!
  24. ^ MUCH smaller, seriously.
  25. ^ And how important is the legibility of the numbers, anyway, compared to the readability of the articles?
  26. ^ Or glasses.
  27. ^ I really hope there's no obvious technical impediment, as that would invalidate this whole post.
  28. ^ But even if there is, it would be worthwhile to invest some time in a workaround.
  29. ^ Wait, did I just suggest that an obvious improvement to Wikipedia would be uncontroversial?
  30. ^ There are probably sixteen people who right now are thinking up reasons why inline cite numberings should be bigger.
  31. ^ Because of...BLP concerns!

Comments

  • Technically possible by modifying MediaWiki:Cite reference link and related messages. How much smaller do you want the reference link? [current 0.8em] [0.7em] [0.6em] [0.5em] What do you use to separate the links? 1 2 3 1 2 3 ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:40, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
    Personally, I think that by just removing the brackets, we'd make things a lot prettier. I have no problems with the size. In the above, it's still easy to distinguish one note from another and in other media (books, journals, papers) footnotes are just done with a number without brackets around them. Cool3 (talk) 01:47, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
    Thanks for the responses. I think the second "1 2 3" font size, or a mite smaller, would be about perfect. I figure dashes might the best way to separate out the refs, but I'm not sure. Mr. IP 《Defender of Open Editing》 02:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose: It depends on your screen size. I understand how obtrusive the footnotes can be, but on my own screen and with my adequate but less than perfect eyesight, they're just the right size to be distinguishable without squinting. And the square brackets distinguish them from other things, such as footnotes within a section (e.g. to a table) and exponential powers. Not that I'm wedded to [square brackets]: should someone find something more aesthetic that does the same work, of course that would be great. (One side advantage to the present format is that it's a pretty sure giveaway in other places when someone's just copied and pasted from Wikipedia.) —— Shakescene (talk) 05:17, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose, if it ain't broke... Plus the brackets improve usability by providing a larger mouse target. Noodle snacks (talk) 06:30, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose on grounds of usability. .reference{font-size:80%;} on your personal. stylesheet would resize them, at least. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 12:02, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • If it were possible to reformat citations like this,1, 5, 12, 42, 255 would there be support for that? That could probably be done. Happy‑melon 13:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Support I support this as a person who is starting to have problems reading small print, even with glasses. Why? Because it is rarely necessary to actually read the number. While I haven't read The Footnote: A Curious History (Paperback)[1], I'll bet it points out the early footnotes weren't numbers, they were just symbols. The writer used a small set of unique symbols so the reader could track the symbol in the text to the corresponding symbol at the bottom of the page or the end of the work. I'm sure you know where I'm going with this - that very concept precedes the concept of hyperlinks, and is technically unnecessary when hyperlinks are used. We could use a single common (small) symbol to indicate a reference. Anyone wishing to see the reference would merely click on the symbol. I'm not proposing an amendment to the proposal, there are times the numbers are useful - on occasion, I've read a list of references and to see what the reference supported, so unless there is an easy way to reverse a hyperlink, there is value in unique footnotes, and number is a useful choice. My point is that the number doesn't have to be readable, it merely has to be large enough so that the reader can click on it. If the reader really wants to know the number, in the rare case it is desired, the reader can increase the font size. I'm not supportive of the elimination of the brackets. When I see word2, I think word-squared, not "reference". There may be another way to make it less obtrusive, though.Sphilbrick (talk) 13:17, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
    Footnote symbols, particularly in media without hyperlinks, need to uniquely identify the two ends of the link. In paged media like books, it is possible to 'reset' the symbol set every time you turn the page, and hence reuse the same small set of symbols many times with no loss of semantic meaning. In unpaged media like Wikipedia articles (which can still be printed and hence not have the hyperlink functionality available), that is not possible; each footnote marker must be unique.
    What about putting the whole thing in brackets? So instead of this,[1][5][12][42][255], we get this?[1,5,12,42,255] Happy‑melon 13:58, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure we can do that. I have been looking at how this is put together— I have a rough draft at User:Gadget850/Cite messages. We also need to consider that {{rp}} is used in conjunction with references. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
It could certainly be done with javascript, maybe with CSS for modern browsers; or it can be done in the extension itself if there's support for it. Happy‑melon 14:43, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
We can eliminate or change the brackets and we can change the fonts size by editing Cite reference link, but I don't see any way to enclose multiple inline cite links in a set of symbols without changing cite.php. Anything we do with the messages is going to be global. Could we add a class that defines the opening and closing symbols? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
With CSS, you can detect when one ref follows another (the sibling + selector). You can then use the "after" selector to add a "separator sign". Unfortunately, it will break on IE6 and IE 7. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:53, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose Maybe tweak the size juuust a bit, but they must be readable. Also, the square brackets are a very old established notation for footnotes, even in print. Combining then in one pair would be an implovement, as long as it can be done without performance impact. — Edokter • Talk • 15:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose. We need them, and making them any smaller would make them hard to click. The brackets make them easier to click and make things legible232425. Support adding a button somewhere to hide the damn things using javascript, though.–MT 02:59, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Support in principal - but there must be an easy way to accommodate both as above. EG: I have that thingy turned on where mouse-hover pops up the cite - I'd be more than happy if they were all just superscript sized asterisks.
  • Oppose a blanket change (support a js modification) per Shakescene. Barring medical reasons, I have to add that, while the text may appear big in IE, it is smaller and harder to read in Firefox and a lot of users like me don't have the nerve to look for little dots and commas. The citations are with brackets and of this size just as obtrusive as they should be (fr.wiki uses a different setup that is for me hard to discern). OTOH we might elect to use Harvard citations, which are much less neat and much bulkier. —Admiral Norton (talk) 12:54, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment: this proposal is to make the numbers smaller - proposals to change the numbers to symbols should be a separate proposal. People who have text zoomed have it zoomed for a reason: they have trouble reading anything smaller. Changing it by one pixel is not worth it, changing it by more makes things illegible. Both support votes above support changing the numbers to symbols, and not this proposal itself, so right now we're at 1 Support (the initial proposer), 6 Oppose, and 2 Support (for symbols). This seems to be a consensus against the proposal. If nobody objects, I'll mark it closed and resolved, and suggest that a 'change refs to symbols' proposal be made by anyone interested. –MT 00:08, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

REFERENCES

  1. ^ Grafton, Anthony ((April 1, 1999)). The Footnote: A Curious History (Paperback). Harvard University Press. pp. 256 pages. ISBN 978-0674307605. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Articles on no watchlists

I would like to see a list of articles that are on no editors' watchlists. Articles that are on regular contributers watchlists are more easily maintained and kept up to proper standards while those that aren't are prone to fall between the cracks and contain substandard information. A taskforce of folks dedicated to keeping an eye on these pages and adding then to their lists could help. I have no technical knowledge of how to start such a project but would certainly "adopt" a couple of dozen pages. J04n(talk page) 13:41, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a list: Special:UnwatchedPages. — Edokter • Talk • 13:44, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
I suppose I should have read this proposal page before making my proposal (shame on me). I am not an admin and have no desire to become one but I do enjoy contributing to and maintaing Wikipedia. Since I am not an admin I have no access to the list of unwatched pages. J04n(talk page) 13:54, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Looks like its been broken for years, you can only get the first 1000. That's my experience and commented upon on the talk page. Dougweller (talk) 14:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Oops, that page only being visible to admins slipped my mind. — Edokter • Talk • 15:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Hmmm, thought this was a perennial proposal. Doesn't seem to be, but here's a related one: Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Create a counter of people watching a page. The arguments against that proposal are even stronger regarding this proposal. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps, Autoconfirmed users could have access to the list? I would be suprised if many vandals fall into that category. J04n(talk page) 18:40, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Then you'd need just one vandal to log on, wait a few days, make some edits and copy/paste the list to a website somewhere. Then the whole thing would become public knowledge. Tra (Talk) 19:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Well, don't worry J04n – you aren't missing much. –Whitehorse1 03:16, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
The link target helps illustrate the unwatched; one of the commenters there posted an update all of those, at least, are now watched. –Whitehorse1 03:48, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
This is on Wikipedia:Perennial proposals under Technical. Rmhermen (talk) 18:58, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Near the top of this very proposals page you will find #Watched counter, which a) solves this problem b) solves the problem with Special:UnwatchedPages lag c) leads to solutions to a large number of other serious and popular problems. All of the points made here have been addressed, though you don't need to read that to support the proposal. Unfortunately, nobody pays attention to the upper 80% of this proposals page, so it'll be dead and archived soon. Please consider reading through and supporting that proposal. –MT 03:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Or moving/copying it to the wikiproject WP:PROJPOL for further development. Rd232 talk 03:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan uses User:AlexNewArtBot to track new articles. Could the be configured to notify projects of pages that are not on anyone's watchlist? This doesn't require any changes to Media Wiki. Fg2 (talk) 03:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the proposal mentioned by M is superior (and I've posted a "support" opinion above). Rather than identify targets of opportunity, it identifies articles that have just been edited that were not on anyone's watchlist. In essence, the proposal provides a list of edits that are "worth a second look"; should someone then find vandalism, then they would be inclined to add the article to their watchlist, taking it off such a list. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:29, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Section with logical progression of academic articles within Wikipedia

Having seen Wikipedia's current system of lists and categories, it would be quite useful to create a section with a logical, natural and constructivist list of articles of a specific area. Topics would be ordered based on the knowledge required for the reader to understand it, instead of topics being ordered alphabetically. It could even be portrayed as an article tree, which would be more intuitive. It would not override the current categorizing systems, but would add another way for the reader to reach an article.

This system may have a huge positive impact on the reader, who does not always have the knowledge needed to understand a particular subject and generally leads him/her to search related topics, but with no guide at all (and falls into circular browsing). I think that, specifically in areas like Physics, Chemistry or Mathematics, it would be a great way for people to learn in a more logical order. Of course, these sections would be maintained and created by users, as in the current system. ((unsigned comment by --Elethan ?))

List of calculus topics or WikiBooks? --Izno (talk) 17:28, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
I think you may be trying to reinvent WP:Books. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:37, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Oops, you are right! I'm sorry! --Elethan (talk) 20:51, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved

Make the Watchlist more like an Inbox

In my email inbox, I can mark new emails as read, mark them for followup, and move them out of the inbox. The Watchlist is Wikipedia's equivalent of an inbox, but I can't do any of those things. The most important one would be the ability to mark the recent changes appearing in the Watchlist as "OK, don't show this change on the Watchlist anymore" (but show any subsequent ones, of course). This would allow a degree of processing of the Watchlist in the manner of an inbox, and make it much easier to process very large watchlists. Thoughts? Rd232 talk 20:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I think this could be accomplished fairly simply as a javascript in your monobook.js. I don't really have the time or javascript specific skill to make it myself though. Chillum 20:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Me neither. Any volunteers? Anywhere I can request this from editors who do have the skills? Rd232 talk 23:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Just want to voice my support for this stunningly simple, and brilliant, idea. DuncanHill (talk) 23:39, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
I'd support this, as long as it's an optional feature. –Juliancolton | Talk 02:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
After some thought I'm guessing you're drawing a parallel with emails being marked as read automatically? That's not what was suggested, though as an optional feature, there's no harm in it. Rd232 talk 04:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Tagging articles on our watchlist, so that any notices about them appear in the folder we specify, would be quite nice. That'd make things much easier to manage. I'd also like to set it, so that if something I care about has a tag for deletion or merge discussion, or someone erases everything and puts a redirect there, I'd have it in a main category, so I'd notice right away. There are just far too many articles to keep track of otherwise. If everyone had everything they ever worked on, on their active watchlist, it'd be too huge to pick anything of importance out. So some sorting is going to be quite useful to make sure people can stay aware of what's going on. Dream Focus 04:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki has had at least part of this feature request for a long time. On wikis like Meta, bold entries are the unread changes. When you click the diff and reload your watchlist, the entry is no longer bold. And there's an option to mark all entries as read. (Much like an e-mail client.)

It's not enabled on en.wiki due to ... performance reasons? They tried to enable it a few months ago and it didn't work properly. Or something.

The folders idea is interesting, but would require rewriting the watchlist code significantly, and there's no shortage of other bugs that are already long overdue to be fixed. Someone should still file a bug about the folders idea.

In general, the watchlist code is rather outdated and could stand for a major rewrite (including being able to watch only talk pages, being able to set auto-refresh, inline unwatch links, URL parameterization for things like hiding bots, etc.) --MZMcBride (talk) 06:41, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Didn't it cause the mail server to explode for some reason? I seem to remember Brion strangling someone because it dumped the load of the entire site onto the mail-sending daemon. Or something like that.
I expect the 'folders' idea would be duped to the "multiple watchlists" bug...
Happy‑melon 14:01, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, I totally support something like this. I don't use the watchlist, because it fails to give me vital information and doesn't allow me to check off certain edits as okay or requiring follow-up. These options are really needed. - Mgm|(talk) 09:54, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

'Comment: I didn't really want this to become a shopping list for Things I'd Like My Watchlist To Do. In the back of my mind was that what I was suggesting might be relatively simple technically (as simple as anything is on WP), because it could just be an additional per-user table (edits to be filtered from watchlist). I don't know if the thinking was right (probably not...), but please bear this in mind. That said, I'd love to know more about the idea that some major revision to the watchlist system exploded (and hence might be fixed?). Rd232 talk 01:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The watchlist table contains an item for every page watched by every editor. I have a record in there for every page I watch, and so do you - different records for us even if we watch the same page. For every record, there's a date for the last time you opened the page you watchlisted, but this isn't turned on because it might harm performance (perhaps premature optimization). We could put a button or link (that uses ajax to submit without reloading, like the watch tab does) beside items in our watchlist, with the word "approve". After the editor checks the page's changes, they click the button and it updates that date. We could now make a 'diffs since last check' to make watchlist-checking much easier. Note that this isn't flagged revs - flagged revs is public, and makes a table where people can approve every single revision on wikipedia. This change uses a field that's already in the watchlist table to say "yep, I'm up to date on this article that I'm watching". Will hundreds of editors clicking this button every day/hour/minute cause strain on the database? Perhaps, but then again it should reduce people's messing with diffs, and the editing of an article just to put it to the top of a watchlist - and it would make editing much easier. –MT 22:13, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

That sounds promising and persuasive. This sounds like it deserves more discussion (and some way to collect more support). Since you have a better idea of the issues that I do, could you draft a WP:PROJPOL proposal for it? Rd232 talk 13:06, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

No archiving of proposals [resolved]

If proposals made on this page do not lead to results, then we're not doing much except chatting about neat ideas and informing people of why things are done in certain ways. Proposals should have a clear path of resolution or escalation. Only proposals that have been resolved should be be archived, proposals that have not should either remain or be escalated. The tentative proposal is that

Proposals should not be archived until they've been looked at. Where the consensus is rejection, archive it. Where consensus is approval, keep it until it is implemented - though all discussion except for a nutshell summary may be archived if someone has taken the proposal up. [amended 08:02, 9 May 2009 (UTC)]

Or in specific detail: [amended 08:23, 9 May 2009 (UTC)]

  1. Proposals are not archived until they've been alive for 3 days and have at least 15 participants who supported or opposed.
  2. A proposal is rejected by consensus, or when it has no support. It is then archived.
  3. When a proposal is approved by consensus, it is not archived until it is implemented.
  4. If responsibility for implementation has been accepted, a very brief summary can be placed in a 'todo' section, and the rest archived.
  5. Proposals with no consensus for 10 days can be escalated/moved to central discussion.

The above policy is essentially handled by the archiving bot. If more than 15 people want to keep this page clean by giving feedback to proposals, then size will not be a problem. What this means for this page is that everyone who offers a proposal will see something come out of it. It's likely that this would reduce the size of this page, and kill certain proposals that should have been dead a very long time ago. #2 has two weird clauses: the last-10-votes clause catches swings in opinion (presumably due to some great point just made); the no-support clause lets "requesting feedback on [link]"s to die a normal death - that is, it's not a proposal until someone supports it. The idea here is that some proposers want feedback and a chance to amend if they missed an obvious problem. Objections on the basis of ambiguous proposal wording, the proposal being too long, and so on are all acceptable and encouraged. Thoughts? –MT 06:49, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

  • Oppose - too complicated, too much of a bright line, encourages voting. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 06:56, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
    Well at least let me amend it :) I don't think it's very complicated - I think you might be mistaking formality with complexity. In a nutshell, Where by consensus a proposal is rejected, archive it. Where by consensus it is approved, keep it until it is implemented, though a substantial part may be archived if the proposal is pending implementation. A bot cannot recognize consensus, so I used hard numbers in #1 and #2. Could you explain the problem with bright line rules? –MT 07:19, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
    It's simply complicated. It categorises proposals into three or four complex groups, creates new sections of this page, multiplies bureaucracy. With bright-line rules, I could explain the problem that Wikipedia has, but I reckon that WP:IAR could do it even better. There are always exceptions, and having such a rigid structure is completely un-necessary. Is there anything specifically not working about how we do things now? ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:35, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
    This complexity is handled by the bot, not by you - and for a bot, this is one of the simpler programs. All you have to do is vote on proposals that you want to see canned or resolved. It creates one new section - a very helpful section. I don't see how my summary of the proposal, in italics, is anywhere near bureaucratic. It's simple: stop letting proposals slip away into the archives. If you'd like to see what isn't working, look through those archives. Very few of the proposals in there have been implemented, most of them died because there was no path to implementation. The three proposals at the top of this page are about to be canned even though they look like they have some great potential. And they're the ones we should be paying attention to, not the stuff down here. The fourth proposal seems like it should have been canned long ago, yet it was sitting around drawing attention with what seems to be a single person supporting it. Would you mind unbolding your oppose until I've had a chance to address your concerns? –MT 07:54, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
    No, I will not unbold my oppose. I oppose any bright-line rule of this sort, unequivocally. You seem to misunderstand WP:VOTE. Consensus is not a poll. It is a discussion, where points of view and weights of case and opinion count. Do you propose coding a bot which can evaluate arguments, which would be the only way a bot could judge consensus and archive sections accordingly? Because I think that NASA might be interested, if you know how to create such a program. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:57, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
    Ok - I don't mean that you shouldn't oppose it, I just want to hold off on "voting" until I've had a chance to address any issues that come up. I'm trying to modify the proposal so that you don't consider it to be a bright line rule, though I'm still not sure what that is because WP:IAR is just one sentence long. I've already changed the proposal to not make reference to a vote, so I'm not sure what you're referring to. As for the bot, we could simply have it evaluate "discussion closed, consensus was rejection / implementor found / implementation completed" messages placed at the bottom, as we usually do. –MT 08:12, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
    Your system involves sections of this page being archived differently depending on whether or not they have garnered consensus. However, you've said above, "All you have to do is vote on proposals that you want to see canned or resolved." A bot can assess votes, but not consensus. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 08:19, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
    The bot would only need to look for a template/message placed at the bottom of the straw poll/proposal. This would mean that an editor would have to do that, though perhaps we can use the bot for cases of obvious numerical consensus (e.g. 10 oppositions, 1 support). Do my amendments to the proposal address your concerns? –MT 08:30, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
What makes a proposal with 79% support any less worthy than a proposal with 80% support? —kurykh 07:23, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Nothing - I should amend the proposal (and have now done so) to refer to consensus (though perhaps I should talk about 'structured discussion'). But to answer your question, a proposal with 79% support is only one vote away from approval, while a proposal with 70% may be a lot further away. –MT 07:30, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
If you're going to amend the proposal to refer to consensus, then this proposal is pointless; it merely states the status quo. —kurykh 22:29, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I think this idea is fundamentally misguided (WP:VOTE). I suggest instead moving proposals considered worth developing to WP:PROJPOL for development. Rd232 talk 13:32, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

The proposal doesn't talk about a vote, though have a look at WP:VINE - could you elaborate? This proposal says that proposals need a certain number of comments before being archived. Will proposals moved to projpol have a greater visibility than if they are here, or will this be 'sweeping under the rug'? –MT 15:37, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Your proposal may not be explicitly votey but the underlying WP:VOTE principle is that arguments matter, not the number of participants, and it goes against that. Now I might support the idea that proposals may be archived early on a sort of WP:SNOW principle if the initial poster is notified and anyone may undo the archiving. But no bots, please. (For example I'd count "Local version of Wikipedia" and "Tagline" above as candidates for that.) Rd232 talk 15:55, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Proposals will have a greater visibility than in the VP archive. A link to proposals there (which would only be proposals a number of people think are worth discussing in more detail) can be posted here and elsewhere after being moved there, and even eventually re-posted if appropriate to help keep discussion going, rather than just falling into the swamp of history. Rd232 talk 15:55, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Could you suggest a change to the proposal, then? The number of participants doesn't have anything to do with it being implemented, it only has to do with it not being archived. The problem here is that even proposals that have support and potential are getting thrown into archives. Look at the cancel button proposal at the very top - are you planning to copy it to projpol? Once it's there, what strategy do you have for seeing that it's implemented? –MT 18:39, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Well I'd create a projpol proposal subpage for each good proposal (once a number of people support; see also Wikipedia:WikiProject Policy and Guidelines/Suggestion Box), which would restate the proposal and rationale as clearly as possible, taking into account prior discussion. If it needs further development, that can happen there. Once it's ready, it depends on whether it needs dev action. If it requires a software change, it needs a bugzilla post - and perhaps something resembling a petition, to get dev attention; so find ways to get attention for it. At least without the archiving bot deadline here, that can happen over longer periods. Or if it's just a policy change, once it's ready either go to the specific policy page or pages, or create a new one, and go through the usual discussion processes (but on basis of well-developed and already thoroughly-discussed proposal). But you know this is basically off the top of my head - this is one of the things projpol is for - to figure out how to get good ideas implemented (and possibly-good ideas thoroughly discussed). Rd232 talk 18:59, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Subpages on projects are typically ignored, unless there is some reason for many people to look at them. I don't mind 'escalating' things to projpol, but it should be escalation, not 'sweeping under the rug'. You can have the best intentions to help implement 10 proposals per week, but that's the sort of sustained effort that needs to be based on an established community (the one that reads this page, for example). The proposal above gives a clear path to implementation, because it prevents people from sweeping things under the rug. If you want it gone, you have to say why. I'm still interested in the top 3 proposals, but I'm afraid that expressing that will be bad form. ... –MT 21:35, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
"Subpages on projects are typically ignored, unless there is some reason for many people to look at them." Well the whole idea of projpol is to develop a system where people have a reason to look at these things (summaries of current state of subpages, for example, might help). And I don't quite get your "sweeping under the rug" remarks; I've already said the idea is to find ways to better develop interesting-seeming proposals; which compared to letting VP proposals fall into the VP archive is surely quite a low standard. I wish you'd engage with that instead of persisting with your current No Archiving Until idea which doesn't seem likely to go anywhere in anything like its current form. Consider too that the draft two-step system of WP:PROJPOL is designed to avoid exactly the problem you're trying to address (weeding the wheat from the chaff). Rd232 talk 03:09, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
By sweeping under the rug I mean that people on this page would assume that "someone else will handle it" when it gets taken up by projpol. I think that it's a great idea to develop policy, which is why I'm trying to put all of it on WP:Nutshell (I renamed it) so we can get a feel for how the whole thing really looks (most of policy pages is needless explanation and can be omitted). I think that implementing just the below-bolded proposal for getting more comments on this page will help, no matter what projpol does, so I don't want to give up just yet. –MT 06:45, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

<undent> ...Say someone drops by and makes a great proposal here, and then leaves. It has tons of support, but instead of figuring out how to implement it, everyone is going off to read the latest interesting proposal blurbs. And what about proposals which have no comments? If they were "in line" first, shouldn't we take greater care to comment on them before we comment on whatever the latest thing is? How about just the following proposal:

  • Proposals are not archived until they've been alive for 3 days and have had at least 15 distinct editors who have commented.

This will encourage more feedback, even if it is just "oppose: too confusing/unclear/long/nobody will implement/not really a problem". Is this a good idea? Should we give this level of consideration to all proposals? Would it be harmful to do a test run of this policy? –MT 21:35, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I would oppose this, I think it has too many issues to be workable.
  • Many proposals are either perennial proposals or just really bad ideas. We shouldn't force people to comment just to get it off the page. On the other hand, certain proposals need a significant amount of support where 15 people may be far too few to implement.
  • We don't need consensus to reject; we need consensus to implement. We shouldn't be voting on everything. Just because a proposal has no consensus either way doesn't mean we should let it sit indefinitely.
  • Define "implemented". For a software change, is it considered implemented when a bug report is filed, do we have to wait until the change is checked in to SVN, or do we have to wait until the change goes live on Wikipedia? What if there's consensus that something is a good idea, but implementation would be extremely difficult or even impossible?
  • How will a bot determine whether a proposal has been implemented?
  • I find it very difficult to believe that this will do anything but massively increase the size of this page. Most proposals do not get comments by 15 people, let alone enough to be considered consensus. The largest proposal on this page right now, "Welcome to Wikipedia (United States)," has fewer than 20 people commenting on it, and is 70 kilobytes long (slightly more than 25% of the total page size). Not including my comment, this proposal is almost 13 kilobytes, and has only 3 people who aren't the nominator commenting.
  • Possibly the worst part was the "a proposal with 79% support is only one vote away from approval" - arbitrary cut-offs like that are a terrible way to decide whether or not a proposal is successful.
If nobody who supports it is actually willing to do the work to implement a proposal, perhaps it wasn't that great of an idea after all. Mr.Z-man 23:52, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Getting 15 people to comment should be trivial, and proposals with no bold 'support' can be archived as usual. We're not voting, just leaving comments, and I think that someone who's taken the time to make a proposal deserves some level of feedback: the number of people reading this page vs proposing is approximately 100:1. The very purpose is to attract more comments to proposals, so saying 'look at how many proposals don't get enough comments' only supports my point, I think. The page-size issue is hypothetical and somewhat pessimistic threat - meanwhile, the archives are full of hundreds of dead good proposals. Your points #5 and #3 are not about my current proposal (the answers are "ok" and 'it's implemented when it's live, and it goes into a todo list when someone takes responsibility for implementation'). –MT 01:02, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
So if people support the proposal, but don't indicate their support with bold text, they won't be counted? The page is a discussion already. Making it like AFD or RFA is just going to make it more like a vote and less like a discussion. You seem to have misunderstood almost all of my comments. I'm not saying proposals are getting too few comments, I'm saying requiring 15 users to comment is far too many. If each proposal on this page had 15 users commenting and a real discussion (not an AFD-style pseudo-vote/straw poll), this page would be unusably huge. Its not hypothetical, look at the size of the discussions of the proposals that currently meet this requirement; I'm pretty sure there's only 1 or 2. Even a minor software change might take several weeks to go live (the version of MediaWiki we're currently using is 6 weeks old, while a wait that long is not normal, it is possible), for an extension like AbuseFilter, it might be months before it can be written, reviewed, tested, and deployed. You seem to be contradicting yourself a lot here. On one hand you say we won't be voting, on the other you keep talking about percentages, numbers, and bolded comments. Mr.Z-man 02:54, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm not currently proposing the 'implementation' tracking aspect, so perhaps we should put that aside for now. Sorry about any contradictions, I'm just trying to work out the problems in the proposal. Let me know if you want me to re-state anything more clearly. Getting AFD-style feedback is better than getting no feedback at all. That "discussion" about usa-bias taking up 1/3rd of this page (please support my proposal to manually archive it, if you think I should) is not characteristic. Forget the bolded support thing, I'll bite the bullet on "yes, 15 people comment on every proposal" - #Tagline had no problems being shot down by 6-7 people once the objection had been raised. I think that if more people comment, the exchanges are actually shorter. And more ideas can be thrown out. What do you think? Is there still a problem with getting 15 people to comment? –MT 06:23, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Let's put it this way: would you propose some method to get people to comment on proposals, if there was no problem with getting them, or downside of doing so? But it doesn't seem easy - Wikipedia is not a concentration camp and it's hardly possible to force someone to do some work in here (it is easier to force someone to avoid doing something unnecessary or harmful). So, I'm afraid that many proposals are likely to end up waiting for those 15 people for several months, or else, they would be simply rejected unthinkingly by someone trying to "reduce the backlog". Neither case looks very good...
Finally, what exactly is wrong with the current system? From what I understand, a bot (User:MiszaBot) archives the discussion when at least 7 days have passed after the last comment. Presumably, the discussion is over at that point (although I guess that one may argue about the preferable number of days), with nothing being left to discuss. If no one is trying to implement the proposal then, why would waiting more be likely to help? And if someone is trying to implement it, what is going to be gained by the discussion being "open"? If the one implementing the proposal needs to make an announcement or to "prove" the presence of consensus, using the link to archive might even be preferable, as such a link (and the discussion) would be less likely to change. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 19:22, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I retract the proposal. –MT 21:06, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – lack of support, retracted.–MT

Getting reverting changes to not show up on a watchlist report, again

I would like to repeat a proposal that has been made before; I wonder if this could be moved to the list of perennial proposals.

As the maintainer of a WikiProject comprising several hundred articles, I have a big watchlist and I have to check nearly everything on it, because even vandalism reversions sometimes leave the job incomplete. It would save me a lot of time if changes that have been reverted could be filtered from my watchlist. Specifically, the ideal thing would be that edits made by IP editors that have been rolled back or undone, and the edits that perform the rollback or undo, are omitted from the watchlist. This would probably cut my watchlist in half and save me at least 15 minutes a day. I specified "IP editors" because I like to examine even vandal edits if they are made by registered editors. Looie496 (talk) 23:40, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

You might be interested in #Make_the_Watchlist_more_like_an_Inbox. Do you use the default watchlist, or the one that offers an expanded view? –MT 00:43, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
That's also a nice idea, but the problem it solves is completely different. With 50-100 articles a day showing up on my watchlist, some heavily edited, the expanded list is a nightmare for me. If it could group edits to a given article together and limit the number it shows per article, it would be a lot more helpful. Looie496 (talk) 03:47, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Have you tried http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Help:Watching_pages#Expanded_Watchlist , and how would you want it to be different? Do most of the changes you want to ignore happen in the same day? Would that expanded watchlist be too much of a pain to use anyway? What do you mean by "omit from the watchlist"? Say that I edit some stuff, then an ip comes along and gets reverted. Ip/revert detection "omits" that entry - but of course you still want to see it on your watchlist, since you want to check my edit. What you would need now is a script that checks every single item on your watchlist, and if the last edit content was the same as 2 edits ago, then load the summary text/info of that older edit. Then, after this is done, re-sort the entire list according to dates. Now when you look at the list, you'll start with whatever date you hadn't checked, and move upwards. The problem here is that this is annoying to implement. If, however, that above proposal went through, it would be almost trivial. We'd have your 'last approved' date (something we don't currently have) and the current edit date. Your proposal becomes "If the last-checked and current edits are equal and there is one edit between them by an ip, then auto-approve the most recent edit". This script could probably be written faster than I wrote this reply to you. The first half of this message is a difficult/messy solution to your problem given the current system (maybe someone will come up with something better, or implement it for you), the second half is a very easy solution, but it needs that above proposal to be supported and implemented. –MT 05:59, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Let me try to clarify. What frequently happens is that an IP makes a bad edit or series of bad edits, and then somebody reverts them, often within seconds. I don't feel any need to look at articles where that is all that has happened, but currently I am forced to look at the article history anyway because otherwise I can't tell whether there have been other unreverted edits. The extended watchlist is not useful because it doesn't tell me whether the article contains unreverted changes -- the information is there but is scattered so widely that in practice I can't integrate it. Looie496 (talk) 06:29, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I understand, but the problem is, how will a script know how far back to go? So say you look at it on Monday, Tuesday I edit it, Wednesday you get vandal/revert, and then you look at it again on Thursday. The script doesn't know what the last thing you looked at is. Maybe you looked at it Monday and want to see my edit, maybe you looked at it Tuesday night and already saw my edit. Should the script display it? Who knows! That's why it would have to do all that backtracking and re-sorting - that way you can figure it out for yourself. But that's not fun to program. So what you're asking can be done, it's just messy, tedious, and a lot of work. (The alternative is fun, clean, and fast, though.) –MT 06:57, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
My practice is to go through my watchlist in order, starting at the point where I last checked it, so I can tell whether I've examined an edit by the time at which it occurred. The "mark as examined" change would allow me to be more flexible about the order I do things in, and would reduce the size of my watchlist by quite a bit, but wouldn't actually save me much time. Regarding how far back to go: The script would go back to the most recent edit that is not flagged ignore. Edits are flagged ignore if they are either (1) an IP edit that has been reverted, or (2) an edit that reverts an IP edit. Looie496 (talk) 16:22, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
The software can't mark edits ignored, so the script would have to. So, it takes the most recent edit, and grabs that page's history. It marks revisions ignored as you describe. Then it takes the latest unignored revision and puts it in place of the current revision (which is ignored). However, that last unignored revision might be from two months ago, or from an hour ago. So now you're stuck going through this (though the dates would be there). The script could however just sort them for you, and then you'll have what you want. Each of these steps is difficult to program and server-intensive. I'm not saying that the above proposal is what you need instead of this - what I'm saying is that if the above proposal goes through, your problem could be solved very easily using those tools. –MT 20:07, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

While advertizing is greatly censused to not suit Wikipedia, what about the idea of making a buck through beneficial links?

To me this is more obvious when it comes to books, but it might apply to other thigs as well: When I want to learn about a certain book or essay on WP, I sometimes also want to buy it. If the article had a direct link to a publisher selling the book, then both me, the publisher, and wikipedia would gain from it.

Unlike common advertizing, I don't see how this method can greatly offend the neutrality of the articles, as the fact that a "where to buy" link leads to this and not that publisher should probably not cause someone to over-boast or under-boast the book in a way that damages the neutrality of the article, and even if it does happen by a publisher wanting to boast a book that now leads to their online store, it can still be moderated by the community, I think.

Perhaps theres a place to consider this as an experiment on a small number of items and see how this works? This could develop into a good income stream while improving the service to many users who want the thing they just searched.

WP:PEREN#Advertising. Explicitly dismissed by the Foundation. Wikimedia does not, and will not, sell advertising of any sort. Happy‑melon 08:54, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
However, if you remember to find and add the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) of your footnotes and references in one of the formats that Wikipedia's software can read, it will automatically convert to a Wikilink like this, which in turn, when clicked by a reader, will direct him or her to not only free libraries but to booksellers and publishers, both commercial and non-profit. Whether this can be used as a source of revenue for Wikipedia, and if so, whether this is compatible with Wikipedia's aims and principles (especially neutrality), is an altogether different question. —— Shakescene (talk) 09:01, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
So the non-revenue aspect is already implemented, the revenue aspect has been dismissed by the foundation. Anything else to say about this one? –MT 09:15, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – peren. Please delete this template if discussion resumes. –MT

Suggestion to include eyePlorer into http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Special:Search

Hello. My name is Georg Rehm, I'm a product manager with vionto GmbH which is based in Berlin, Germany. Our product http://eyePlorer.com is an award winning graphical knowledge engine that enables a novel, interactive way of working with concepts, terms and knowledge. We use methods from language technology and computational linguistics in order to analyse and compute knowledge from the German and English Wikipedia, next to selected other highly specialised content sources.

We would like to suggest the integration of http://eyePlorer.com into the Wikipedia search page available at http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Special:Search because we think that eyePlorer.com provides a unique way of exploring and working with Wikipedia concepts and facts (eyePlorer.com is already included in the hub page http://www.wikipedia.de which redirects searches to http://de.wikipedia.org). We would be very happy if you could integrate eyePlorer.com into the list of optional search engines that currently contains Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, Wikiwix and Exalead. One of the developers who work for de.wikipedia.org (Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.) told me that the file http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js/search.js needs to be modified in order to include a new search engine. The line 

selectBox.appendChild(createOption('eyePlorer.com', 'http://www.eyeplorer.com/eyeplorer/', 'conceptTerms', 'language', 'en'));

should insert eyePlorer.com into the menu on the Wikipedia search page; the linking scheme is 

http://www.eyeplorer.com/eyePlorer/?conceptTerms=hand&language=en

Please let me know what you think of this suggestion. Should you have any questions please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

Thanks to Brandon Weeks from the support team for pointing out that the Village Pump is the right place to post suggestions such as this one. -- Georg Rehm (talk) 13:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I see from your message that you think it is useful, novel, and all sorts of other fuzzy things, but what does it actually do, and why would it be useful to wikipedia? As I understand it, those engines are included due to popularity. –MT 02:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Currently listed on http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Special:Search are traditional search engines run by companies (Google, Yahoo, Windows Live etc.). In contrast, eyePlorer.com provides an interactive, graphical, alternative view for Wikipedia articles and relations that exist between different articles, i.e., eyePlorer.com offers a significant amount of added value to those users who would like to explore Wikipedia with an interactive interface. eyePlorer.com is currently specialised on Wikipedia content but additional data will be available in the near future (such as, for example, the Medline database of research article abstracts). Could you please do me a favour and explain why you think that including eyePlorer.com in the list of optional search engines available at http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Special:Search would be "promotional" and why you think that the actual inclusion of Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, Wikiwix and Exalead is not? Thanks in advance! -- Georg Rehm (talk) 12:27, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
The difference is that your proposal is promotional. There is no reason why we cannot add eyePlorer to the Search box, but in general, we prefer to do things like this upon the request of our users, and not upon the request of owners of companies. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:13, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
I think he does make some good points, despite his association with a company. I think MZMcBride nails the bigger problem: M 20:54, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. We need a standardized way of picking search engines or we need to not include any at all. The current selection is arbitrary and I imagine it's the result of the original code writer's preference. Wikiwix and Exalead? Come on. I don't know whether we want to include eyePlorer or not, but we certainly need a standardized selection criteria for what's included in Special:Search. Esp. given that it's viewed over 5,000,000 times a day. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:34, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

We might do this by popularity, but I don't think that's the best idea. Yes, the most popular engines should be included, but if there's an engine custom-built to serve wp that just came out, and performs very well and has specific and verifiable benefits, I think we should include it. We probably need to set up a review for these things. How did we handle the isbn thing? Just list every single online company? M 20:54, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Facilitation rather than Mediation

I would like to suggest our thinking about renaming "mediation", calling it "facilitation" instead, or using facilitation more frequently in known trouble spots so that things don't have to go to "mediation" (or arbitration).

Mediation conjures up the image of one person "in the middle" mediating between "the two sides". The concept is adversarial. Arbitration is even more so. Facilitation, on the other hand, widely used in business, just aims to ensure that everybody's interests and concerns are addressed. It does not start with an a-priori assumption that every participant can be assigned to a "side" and ideally prevents situations coming to a point where mediation or arbitration is necessary. Having participated in business meetings with and without facilitation, I can vouch for the fact that the difference it can make to the pleasantness of the interaction, and the quality of the result, is tremendous.

Looking at the current RFAR involving Mattisse, that is exactly the sort of situation that good facilitation can help to avoid. Clearly, we can't have a facilitator on every WP talk page, but there might be merit to having a pool of neutral facilitators, who in their role as facilitators are bound not to express views on the topic under discussion, but only to comment on group dynamics and the quality of communication, on talk pages relating to important WP processes, like GA and FAC.

Thoughts? Jayen466 11:56, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

It's an in interesting idea, however the problem I see here is that most users won't know that there are issues to resolve until it escalates to a level where there's problems, and informal/formal mediation is requested. Not sure how users would be able to detect problems on an article page without being told. What do you think? Steve Crossin Talk/Help us mediate! 23:19, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for commenting. I am open to ideas ... we could think about adding routine facilitator support to certain processes, such as User RfCs, arbitration, FAC, GAR, AE, AN/I or generally any other area that has historically led to people getting upset. A facilitator's task would be just to look at the quality of communication, and check if people have actually understood what others have been saying, and to help them understand if they haven't. It's a role that would have to be defined. Jayen466 23:48, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Not too sure how workable this is. I'm all for improving communication between users, but I don't really see who would volunteer to do this. Who would have the time to watch every AN/FAC/GAR etc? Steve Crossin Talk/Help us mediate! 23:12, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
"facilitate" sounds like a meaningless buzzword to me. "I'm an expert at facilitating proactive paradigm shifts to leverage the empowerment of all dialogue agents to achieve a solution in which all viewpoints are effectively integrated." Mr.Z-man 06:25, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
"Facilitation"... of what, drama? Zetawoof(ζ) 11:40, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
I see where you're coming from Jayen but sometimes its better, when there are issues (which there always will be on an encyclopaedia), for people to be who they are rather than appear to be somewhat different through the medium of a facilitator. Most editors have an authentic voice which becomes apparent when you deal with them for any length of time. Facilitation might help the appearance of civilised discourse but it won't help actual communication between humans.Fainites barleyscribs 17:42, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
I am not sure you understand what a facilitator does. A facilitator observes the conversation and simply points out when people talk past each other. When people get upset, perceptions suffer, and things often get unnecessarily heated. A facilitator can help bring people back on the carpet, or ensure that they actually address what someone else has said. Jayen466 23:05, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
That sounds like it has the potential to make things worse. Rather than a mediator working toward a compromise, they'll be chiding users for poor communication skills? Mr.Z-man 01:46, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
You can also call it a moderator, as in a moderated newsgroup etc. Jayen466 23:09, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
The term "moderator" has a lot of baggage from web forums and mailing lists, where it generally implies administrative privileges. Zetawoof(ζ) 00:46, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
"Intermediary" (a means through which people communicate)? but then what would be the noun? "Intermediation" is a word, but it means something different. Can someone ask Kofi Annan, Richard Holbrooke or George Mitchell? ;-) Maybe "consultant" and "[mutual] consultation"? —— Shakescene (talk) 01:10, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Diplomat? Carcharoth (talk) 04:38, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

From the original proposal: "Clearly, we can't have a facilitator on every WP talk page, but there might be merit to having a pool of neutral facilitators, who in their role as facilitators are bound not to express views on the topic under discussion, but only to comment on group dynamics and the quality of communication, on talk pages relating to important WP processes, like GA and FAC." That idea may have merit (though I don't see why they should be limited to certain talk pages); but I don't see much point in renaming Mediation - it is what it is. Rd232 talk 02:36, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Facilitators would need great skill, but if such people exist, they should be able to start acting now, rather than wait for a formal process or approval. Just find a dispute and try and calm things down and get people talking again. Do be aware though that one common outcome is this. If on the other hand, the participants in the dispute are willing to climb down and talk more reasonably, then facilitation may help. Carcharoth (talk) 04:37, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

A process would help (a wikiproject would do) to provide a point for people to ask for facilitation assistance. It could also help collect guidance for facilitators. Rd232 talk 18:39, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Agree. A role description is the first thing that would be needed. There is some overlap between mediation and facilitation, and some of the role description would be the same. Jayen466 11:01, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
  • I reject the notion that mediation and facilitation are synonymous. With that in mind, I'd view this thread as a proposal to introduce a system named "facilitation"; being less scrupulous and focussing on the proposal's content rather than its title, I think it to be a reasonably good idea. It's a shame that systems such as facilitation are usually successful or unsuccessful because of the competence of the individual mediator (or equivalent figure); perhaps involving multiple mediators in a single dispute—with maximum co-operation and communication between them—would serve to improve the success rate of systems such as mediation and facilitation. AGK 16:50, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Artificial Intelligence Wiki

Resolved
 – PEREN request for new wiki redirected to appropriate resources  M 

There are various projects currently in development that utilize the vast amount of interlinking wiki articles to create artificial intelligence. This is accomplished by analyzing the content of articles and the relationship to linked to and related pages.

For example, in the article "Automobile" we learn that: An automobile or motor car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor. From this sentence an AI script could deduce that a car has wheels and is used for transporting passengers.

With enough pages analyzed and an intelligent enough parsing engine, we can create an AI that "understands" various objects in the world and how other objects relate to them.

However, even with the fairly uniform article structure at present the articles are maintained by different people and different people have their own style of writing and structuring sentences and paragraphs. This increases the difficulty of parsing the articles and the relationship with other articles.

I propose a structured interrelation wiki format that describes an article and its components in a very basic form, without words to pad the sentence for correct grammar. This could be used for artificial intelligence and perhaps other applications.

With the power of user-submitted and maintained content, the artificial intelligence could truly be a living and ever adapting 'consciousness'.

An article could contain facts in such a simplified manner that parsing it would be easy and also more efficient.

To perhaps jump-start this idea the current pages of Wikipedia could be analyzed and broken down to create the simplified version.

I thought this was a good place to discuss the syntax of the markup and how the relationship between articles could be described.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Thermalite (talk • contribs) 09:17, 2009 May 11

DYK-New Articles or New Content?

There is currently a discussion going on over at WT:DYK regarding the current rules for considering expansions and rewrites, Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#A_graduated_standard_for_DYK?, that has evolved into a larger discussion about what the purpose of DYK is and whether to change the main page title of From our Newest Articles to From our Newest Content. All opinions are welcomed in this discussion. AgneCheese/Wine 16:36, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist in other projects

Can we users having unified logins get links to our watchlist in other projects? Not every single Wikimedia project, but those we've edited. Since I have watchlists on Commons, the Japanese Wikipedia and a couple of other projects, it would be convenient to have the links on my watchlist, just where the Languages box would be in articles. But including projects other than just languages. Fg2 (talk) 03:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Since this is an interwiki issue, may I suggest you discuss it at meta's m:Wikimedia Forum? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 14:41, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
I use a greasemonkey script for a 'global watchlist'; a software-based implementation of this is a longstanding bug request (T5525). Happy‑melon 15:35, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
That appears to be much more ambitious than what I'm proposing. All I'm asking is a list of links to other wikis. The watchlist doesn't get generated until you click the link, which takes you to the My Watchlist page of the wiki and generates it normally. There is no merger of watchlists from separate wikis. Thanks for pointing it out, though. Fg2 (talk) 21:22, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
You mean like this? en:Special:Watchlist, m:Special:Watchlist, wikt:Special:Watchlist? You can find your watchlist at Special:Watchlist on any Wikimedia wiki - and a list of the prefixes for linking between projects is here. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 03:17, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Right -- those are the links. My suggestion is to have Wikipedia organize those links in a box in the left column, beneath the "create a book" box, just like articles have links to their counterparts in other languages. The space is unused in Watchlist, and it would be useful to have those links in it. Fg2 (talk) 04:42, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Most users don't use that, so I would object to adding it globally. If you want me to make you a user script that throws that stuff into the toolbox, give me a list of URLs with titles, and the url of the page where you would like to see it happen, and I'll do this for you. –MT 07:04, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
That's very kind -- thank you. I'll think about it some more and possibly leave a note on your talk page. Fg2 (talk) 08:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Hiding certain edits in an articles revision history for easier readability

Has there been any recent updates regarding pruning article revisions?

I don't know if there's been any proposals in the past about this but it would make browsing through an article's history much easier if there was a way of hiding bot edits in the revision history.

For example, looking at http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=778&action=history you can see that most of the edits are interwiki language links done by bots. These are relatively unimportant if one is trying to study the article's history and they may get in the way.

If at least there was a preference setting to show/hide bot edits (or even automatic reverts) like there is for watchlists that would be nice. Does the MediaWiki software currently allow for this? Or maybe someone out there wrote a script that could do this? -- OlEnglish (Talk) 00:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

In general, it would be good if the features of Special:Watchlist, Special:Contributions and page histories (and perhaps Special:RecentChanges) were consolidated and, where possible, all features should be available on each page. The defaults should be similar to what features they use now however.
Mark Hurd (talk) 03:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

T13181 is relevant; essentially the 'bot' nature of an edit is only retained for 30 days. Happy‑melon 13:27, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Summary List

I'm thinking, couldn't you just put on option for established users to choose one of two options. One can be the normal edit summary, and one can be a check list of things, like spelling check, wording error, etc... It also can work for things that aren't minor edits, like cleaning up bad links, etc.... But as said before, only for established users, as an IP could change "as is" to "fuck", and then say spell check, and it will say they only have -1. Just and Idea. Thanks, Old Al (talk) 12:26, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

The save page button could be a number of buttons. "Submit as spelling", "Submit as rewording", etc. Automatic diffs into the summary would be pretty nice too. –MT 15:37, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Russian Wikipedia uses a small set of boxes between the edit summary box and the minor edit checkbox that dynamically add notices in the edit summary (e.g. clicking "орфогр." and "пункт." puts "орфография, пунктуация" - "spelling, punctuation" in the edit summary box). Try editing a page over there to see what it looks like. —Admiral Norton (talk)
http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Московский_метрополитен&action=edit is a link. Perhaps something like this would increase people's willingness to complete edit summaries? –MT 22:33, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Seems very nice to me. We could at least do it as a gadget. DGG (talk) 06:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone know of any scripts that implement this?   M  15:05, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Asterisk beside resolved proposals

I've been trying to make this page a bit easier to use by slapping "resolved" templates on proposals that are very obviously over (or that seem to have run their course, like the US-bias proposal). If nobody objects, I'd like to add an asterisk to the front of proposals that have been resolved, or perhaps "[resolved]". This might make things easier to navigate in the archives, too. –MT 20:20, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

M; it ain't broke. There are so many hypothetical ways of clearing up this page, but I think it works fairly well as it is. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 20:24, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Treasury Tag. I'm guessing from your comment in the section above that you're waiting to pounce with the {{resolved}} tag there too. It's just not necessary, and it could stifle further discussion. Happy‑melon 20:27, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I've been trying to keep up with every proposal on this page. Though this page might be easy to use if you're just looking at the proposals at the very bottom, it's difficult to keep track of proposals if you're trying to make sure that proposals are addressed. If I have added the resolved tag to any proposal that seems to require further discussion, please let me know. I've avoided putting it on many of the proposals above in favor actually leaving a comment to help try to get them resolved. Not being able to tell which proposals are resolved makes it difficult to find any proposal at all to comment on. I think that this is one of the reasons people tend to ignore proposals at the top, and I think that this will remedy that. –MT 20:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Come to think of it, I've noticed you making quite a few edits to this page over the last couple of days aimed at hastening discussion along so that it can be removed. Your policy suggestion above was just instruction creep, and this page (and Wikipedia) has survived - exceptionally well, as it happens - without such intervention for many years. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 20:32, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
This isn't a policy, I'm just asking if other participants will have serious objections to me adding an asterisk to titles that appear to be resolved. –MT 20:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I didn't say it was a policy, and the fact that you managed to misinterpret my quite simple comment is a strong indication that you shouldn't be, as seems to be your wish, the sole, final and ultimate judge of when a proposal has consensus or not; I'm merely making a general comment that your actions on this page, while no doubt well-intentioned, are overkill, and I urge you to slow down and consider the fact that the system has always worked. Thanks. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 20:45, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, what above policy suggestion are you referring to? Given the number of proposals in archives that have consensus, I don't agree with you that this system works as well as it can, so I'm doing my best to improve it. –MT 20:50, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I was referring to the one in which you proposed a complicated, bot-operated numerical system for judging consensus. And while you may think that the system needs desperate overhaul, the large numbers of people who objected to that proposal, who are objecting to this proposal, and who were a bit put off by your comment in the section directly above this one, should be food for thought. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 20:53, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I think you might be misrepresenting that proposal and my attitude towards this system. –MT 20:59, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
It seems kind of pointless, I don't see many discussions here which need a resolved tag (or an asterisk or whatever). It gets archived anyway by the bot in so many days if no new comments appear. Garion96 (talk) 20:43, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Ok, but do you object to me doing adding the asterisk? It would really help me keep better track of proposals. –MT 20:50, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Since it seems you are the only who wants/needs this. Yes, I object. Garion96 (talk) 21:56, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I didn't say anything before about this, but I think M has really REALLY stepped over the line. I've NEVER seen such major pushing of trying to close discussions on this or any other page on WP before, and it's akin to locking a topic in a forum because the question is answered....except that being WP 'anyone' can do it. This is a REALLY HORRIBLE precident, and I don't mean to assume bad faith, but it's a HUGE pet peeve of mine when threads are not allowed to die their natural death. This page has survived with bot archiving (and manuel archiving before it) just fine, there's no reason not to allow late comers to add their input, even if something is seen by someone else as 'resolved'. It's pretty much the antithesis of what WP is all about. Leave the forced archiving to flamefests and trolls. If I didn't think I'd get reverted, I'd go ahead and remove all the ones M messed up. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:59, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I didn't think I was using the resolved tag to "close" discussions, I was using it to a) mark discussions that were resolved as resolved and b) summarize the outcome of such discussions so that it is easier to look through later. I certainly didn't intend to "close" discussions. Just as I'm able to add the 'resolved' template, anyone is able to remove it. Should I change it to say "please remove this template if adding more comments to this discussion"? Which discussions are you referring to? I looked through them all just now, and most of them seem quite clearly finished. –MT 21:13, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Well I was more talking about the use of the archive templates to prevent further discussion than than the resolved checks (which, incidently, are usually put at the top of the thread). Those are ok if there's actually someone that's been /resolved/ (like a person asking for specific help, or the proposal already fixed), but a simple "no I disagree" by a few people isn't really 'resolution' even if it means nothing will change -- and even with the checkmark people are still free to add their input if needed. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:18, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Oh, ok, sorry about that. I skimmed through that discussion and it seemed that large parts of it were finished. I put tags around it because it was becoming difficult to render this page given that that particular proposal takes about 1/4th of it up when expanded. I added the resolved on that proposal because the proposer seemed to have retracted it. Sorry about that - would you still like me to remove the collapse templates? –MT 22:26, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
No, just don't do anything. We don't need {{resolved}} or an asterisk with every old topic. Garion96 (talk) 21:56, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Well, I'd like to comment on them and say that I think that they have been resolved. That way, people looking through the archives will have a better idea of which ones haven't been. I'd also like to give a summary. How should I do this in a way that doesn't bother you? I'd like to use a small graphic so that it's a bit easier for people to spot later. –MT 22:08, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
  1. Suggestion to make Cancel button noticeable
  2. Watched counter
  3. Make the Watchlist more like an Inbox
  4. Watchlist alerts
  5. [R] Welcome to Wikipedia (United States)
  6. [R] Talk subpage for references
  7. [R] Can we make a sub-section for intro?
  8. [R] Adverising Campaign for Wikipedia
  9. History tab at the top
  10. [R] search bar!!
  11. Tracking potentially dated terms
  12. [R] Suggestion to include eyePlorer.com into ...
  13. Making the font size smaller for inline citation ...
  14. Source verification process
  15. Have redirects to redirects redirect
  16. Articles on no watchlists
  17. [R] Names on wikipedia.org page
  18. Disabling "create a book"
  19. Facilitation rather than Mediation
  20. Summary List
  21. [R] Local version of Wikipedia
  22. Watchlist in other projects
  23. [R] Tagline
  24. [R] No archiving of proposals
  25. [R] Section with logical progression of acade...
  26. Create an article
  27. Getting reverting changes to not show up on ...
  28. Beneficial links
  29. Asterisk beside resolved proposals

The toc would end up looking something like what's to the right. Do others use the toc to find proposals to comment on, or do they just look at the proposals at the bottom of the page? –MT 22:02, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Yep, that's prety horrible and way too much instruction creep. This page works fine as it is. Garion96 (talk) 22:05, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't archive discussions until they are closed

I my view, good idea is to leave discussions on this page until they are resolved, this way, we won't need to add a "resolved" template, asterisk, or "[resolved]" note. When they are resolved, they should be immediately archived. This way, unresolved posts don't get archived. Who supports or opposes this? -- IRP ☎ 21:18, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I get the feeling, given the above responses, that if anyone tried to do this, even for proposals that are very obviously closed, then they would wind up flogged very badly. I've tried to leave a comment expressing my view that they are closed by leaving a signed 'resolved' template, to help people go through this page. I think this is a good alternative, since it lets anyone open the discussion back up - it's much harder to open a discussion if it's been archived. –MT 21:25, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
What is "resolved"? How do you define "resolved"? More importantly, how do you define "resolved" without needless bureaucracy or legalesse? Happy‑melon 21:25, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
You look at the proposal, and if the author says "oh, thanks, that works" (or a clear solution has been given) and nobody's commented for a few days, you use the resolved template to say 'hey, looks resolved to me', and then you hope that nobody disagrees with you. If you're not sure, then you ask participants whether they think the discussion has the capacity to go further. –MT 21:31, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
And this serves what purpose? You're essentially saying we should highlight the set of proposals that every sane commenter can identify, to aid recognition of that set?!? Happy‑melon 22:12, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Right, but instead of having to read through every single proposal to figure out that it's been resolved, they can just look at a little symbol that represents a consensus that the topic is resolved. –MT 22:14, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Or they can actually read the discussion they are interested in, see if they want to comment or not even if the discussion is over. And by over I mean no new comments in a while, I don't mean changing of the header to indicate this, or an asterisk and please not a {{resolved}} tag either. Garion96 (talk) 22:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Or you could do a bit of reading. One assumes anyone coming to this page has that ability (that was a bit of a joke). ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:21, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Well I'm sure that the little R won't induce dyslexia :) They can still read, but they now have a bit more info about which proposals need their attention more –MT
They would also break any links people have made to the section. Anomie⚔ 03:38, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but in that case it'll only take them to the top of the page, and they can find the section from the TOC. And in practice the things we're talking about applying this to are almost never going to be sectionlinked from elsewhere. Rd232 talk 03:44, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
The archive-bot does far more damage to inbound links. –MT 05:47, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
True. Perhaps User:ClueBot III should be used for the archiving? Anomie⚔ 16:15, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
What does that bot do differently? M 20:37, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment - I may be in a minority of two, but I totally see what M was trying to do and would support it. The idea that this page isn't broken is laughable. An aid to readers of this page to skip things that are clearly history (it's not like it's deletion - titles remain, and even collapsed content is still easily accessible) will make it easier to focus on the other things. People's ability to read is not the issue - efficiency is. M's approach seems perfectly sensible and the things he archived in his initial test are things surely everyone can agree with. A standard any higher would be problematic but what he's proposed seems useful to me. I'd certainly support a test - if the sky falls on our heads if people hate it after a week, we can get rid of it... Rd232 talk 03:44, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Discussions here don't need to be "closed" - this isn't a bureaucracy; we don't need to rubber stamp everything. Changing the section heading will break any existing links to the section, so please, if we do have to do this, don't do that, that's, frankly, a really poor idea. From my experience, the resolved template has 2 real purposes: On pages like WP:BOTREQ or WP:HD, to indicate when a task has been quantifiably completed or a question clearly answered, or, on discussion pages, to shut down discussion without actually archiving the discussion. Technically the discussion is still open, but its "resolved" so most people won't comment. I would have no problem with early archiving of proposals where the proposer explicitly indicates they no longer support it, there's no useful discussion other than for the specific proposal, and its clear that it doesn't stand a chance at success. But in any other case I see no reason to stifle or hide a discussion early. Mr.Z-man 04:29, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

People often throw around the words "bureaucracy" and "instruction creep" and the like (usually to kill proposals), but I suspect that these are used more to sway opinion than to describe anything actual. Wikipedia's problem isn't bureaucracy, it's a painful lack of formalized policy. This isn't just my opinion - the recent usability study results back this up. It's hard to figure out what is expected, what should be done, what shouldn't. Our policies and processes, save for a few, are shallow, redundant, and unspecific. Right now on this page we have "someone proposes, a few people comment". I'd like to see it move towards "Proposal, non-hostile suggestions/improvements/criticisms, resolution+death or: specification, support established, determine goal and next-step towards implementation, track it". This isn't a binding rule, it's a way to get proposals implemented. Please find me a proposal that we've seen to implementation, and I'll find you five that we've let die. We need to spend more time developing these proposals. Yes, they become much less fun when you get down to the details. Yes, it's much more fun to see the latest cool ideas, and to fill up 1/3rd of this page with 'discussion' about US-bias on Wikipedia (am I mistaken, or was that a policy proposal?). I wrote a script (screenshot on the right) that now tells me which proposals have consensus resolutions, perhaps someone in HD will find it useful. I still think that [marking] them for everyone would be useful, since it would provide focus. Resolved proposals don't need the inbound links. For continued discussion about my closed archiving proposal, come to my talk; if it's about policy, let's take it to WP:PROJPOL. Otherwise, let's stick to the issue of modifying titles, and avoid calling the addition of an asterisk to help people find things bureaucratic. –MT 05:45, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Putting aside your accusation of me being a straw man, the lack of "formalised policy" is absolutely deliberate. There are always exceptions to everything, and any bureaucratic system is instruction creep. If you click on that link, and read the example given on that page, it says: "Instruction creep begins when someone thinks 'This page would be better if everyone was supposed to do this' and adds more requirements. Procedures are popular to suggest but not so popular to follow, due to the effort to find, read, learn and actually follow the complex procedures." That "example" is precisely what is going on here.
Also, I'd just like to point out that - while you seem to think everyone here is out to get you ("People often throw around the words 'bureaucracy' and 'instruction creep' and the like, usually to kill proposals, but I suspect that these are used more to sway opinion...") I would point out that the numerical count, as well as the weight of opinion, does seem to be firmly against you, and against your actions here. May I just ask; will this encourage you to think more carefully before stepping in to "deal with" discussions here? Or is everyone here wrong? Thanks. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:16, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
(I think you misunderstand what a straw man is.) I want to focus on this proposal, not on policy. If you'd like to do that, come to WP:PROJPOL. If you'd like to talk about me, then come to my talk. Spending your time talking about me isn't going to advance your position. Stop speaking for other people and evaluating consensus on a topic that clearly doesn't have it. Again, let's please keep the comments to the proposal. Should we or should we not establish a rule that prohibits editors from adding an asterisk to headings? –MT 07:33, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, sorry, I do know what a straw man is, I mis-wrote.
Yes, we should establish a rule prohibiting people from messing up the toc with asterisks. It's sad that Wikipedia has existed peacefully without such a rule for many years, but I have a feeling that explicitly implementing such a policy is the only way to prevent you from doing it.
This issue clearly DOES have consensus, and I am not speaking for anyone else. I am reading the discussion, and counting 6 people against your proposal (most of whom have also spoken out, here, in this section, about your general actions on this page) and only 2 for. While that's perhaps not a solid consensus, it's a fair indication, and that's what I was pointing out. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:42, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
By the way, could I just re-ask this? And an answer would be nice. Will the balance of opinion on your actions with regards to this page encourage you to think more carefully before stepping in to "deal with" discussions here? Or is everyone wrong? Thanks. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:56, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
You can ask me this on my talk page. I want to stay on topic. M 08:39, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
<undent>Let's not tally consensus while we're still discussing. What is the problem with an editor adding an asterisk? What is the argument against it? Will links break? Will it be hard to read? Will it be displeasing to the eye? –MT 08:00, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
  • I see no reason not to tally consensus.
  • It will be displeasing to the eye, and it is just un-necessary. It encourages hastening of discussions, such as you've been doing above, sets a harsh workflow on the page, and is an unpleasant precedent.
  • I'm talking about your actions on this page generally. Including the comments like, "Anyone else got anything to say on this?" And the proposal that all ideas with 15 comments of which at least 4:1 support are archived separately, or whatever. And this one here. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 08:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Which discussion has been hastened by that template? What does "harsh" mean? What is it an unpleasant precedent for? Please provide reasons and arguments, not just statements. And please stop misquoting me. –MT 08:20, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Are you just trolling now? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:29, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
I genuinely do not understand what is meant, and am trying to list the specific parts I don't understand. I'd like to know what the harsh workflow is, and what we are on a slippery slope towards. The text in quotes above purports to be mine, but please scroll up and verify that I'd never said that. There's a substantial difference in tone. If you can paste my text, why not do that, rather than put it in your own words? M 20:28, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
From my experience, people generally just throw around "usability problem" when they want to push some new proposal forward, since anyone opposing fixing a usability problem obviously hates new users. I don't see where the usability study results concluded we need more policies, could you link to that? The problem is not lack of rules, the problem is too many rules and documentation, poorly presented. New users can't find the rules, and then when they do, they're overwhelmed. In any case, the usability study was about editing articles, not proposing policies.
The resolved template doesn't hasten discussion, it kills it. Most people will not comment in a thread marked resolved. On some pages, the resolved template will trigger the bots to archive the thread faster.
I don't see why its such a huge deal to require the person who starts a proposal, or the people who support it, to do the follow-through for implementation. Personally, I feel that if you are not able to, or don't want to implement your idea yourself, you should find someone willing to do so before proposing it or make it clear in the proposal that implementation has not yet been worked out. Imagine if real life worked this way: Someone submits a bid to a local government to build a road, then when their bid gets accepted, they turn around and say "well, we don't actually have any construction equipment, or engineering experience." I don't see why we should make it easier for people to do a half-assed job. Mr.Z-man 15:37, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I think you're right about that, though I think I've avoided saying this proposal was a problem for new users. I have a section on my talk page with comments on the usability study and policy. I think the problem is the poor presentation of rules, not the rules themselves. We have rules and conventions even when we don't write them down. If we deleted 3RR, you'd still get blocked for edit warring. But this is a separate (though interesting) discussion.
I agree with the bids example, but what I'm pushing is that we take more responsibility for implementation than we do now. Imagine a company with a suggestion box right outside its front doors. They have a meeting, sort the wheat from the chaff, and then mail the proposal to the person who submitted it saying "great plan, now implement it". I'm not saying that this page is like a suggestion box for a corporation, but it's not like a contractor's bid either. It's something in between. If people are taking the time to suggest, let's spend a bit more time on the implementation aspect, because I think we entirely let that slip by. But this is a separate issue too, and might belong in WP:PROJPOL.
One of the reasons people may avoid commenting on threads marked resolved is that they are in fact resolved. I've been asking for some specific case where that template I added was inappropriate, so that I could understand where the problem is. Do you mean the us-bias thread? I agree that if I had slapped it on any one of the conversations that I've been very careful not to slap it on, then this would be bad. But I think I've applied it appropriately. I don't think it's shut down discussion. And I think that it has made it easier for some editors to find unclosed discussions, because there seem to have been more edits to discussions near the top. I could be wrong! but I'd like more information.M 20:28, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
My comment was based on the actual, published results of the study so far from [2] - "Before subjects even hit the ‘edit’ or ‘edit this page’ buttons, they voiced concerns about the rules, proper etiquette, formatting, and were naturally conscientious of and inhibited by maintaining the community expectations. When a few of them attempted to find answers to their questions about rules and etiquette, they were overwhelmed with the amount of information and documentation they encountered."
I disagree about what the purpose of the page should be. There's 2 common "misuses" of this page that I see a lot.
  1. Technical proposals – Unless its a case of an existing feature where the proposal is just to turn it on/off for the English Wikipedia (a configuration change or installing an existing extension), the existence of a straw poll or a proposal on the English Wikipedia will likely not determine whether a developer works on it. At best it will be an influence. Positive response might encourage a developer with ties to Wikipedia to work on it; negative response might discourage work, but except for configuration changes, the developers are not bound by local consensus.
  2. Vague ideas – I have no problem with people coming here to bounce ideas off of people to see if there's interest, to finalize some details, or decide on an implementation for a real proposal, but such threads should make it clear that they are not a real proposal and that they're looking for comments, not consensus. I've seen people start straw polls on vague, theoretical ideas.
The comment about the resolved template was primarily from other places, mainly WP:AN and WP:ANI where its used to stop a discussion without requiring as much boldness as {{Archive top}}/{{Archive bottom}}. This is why we need the {{unresolved}} template, so that people can boldly restart the discussion. Mr.Z-man 21:17, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Well, there are a couple of reasons to start a straw poll: "hey, is this worth figuring out how to do?" and "ok, here's how - good plan or bad plan?". About developers - the tech VP is for tech support, more or less. Then there's a policy VP. So... what's this pump for? Well, the rest. But if you look at what they come down to, the majority end up being to do with software. Regular readers don't go to bugzilla to sort insects, they come here. If the developers aren't connected to actual requests, like you say, then what are they working on? They're doing a fine job, but I don't think they're reading pages like this - which might be the reason we need a usability study in the first place. "The devs don't look here" isn't a good excuse, I think.  M  02:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
You seem to have somewhat read past my comments. I'm not sure what you mean by "the developers aren't connected to actual requests" - I don't believe I said anything like that. The developers, as volunteers and not all associated with the English Wikipedia, are not required to act on any consensus here, unless its a configuration change for this site only. With the exception of a few paid developers, the developers work on whatever they want to work on. But the English Wikipedia has about as much control over MediaWiki development as it does over the policies of the English Wikibooks. Mr.Z-man 06:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Discussions here won't be binding, but they should be informative. Better communication will make things easier for both devs and editors.  M  06:33, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Um, okay, I'm not sure what that has to do with what I just said though. Mr.Z-man 16:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

After all this discussion, I'm still none the wiser why people oppose this proposal. There's much talk of (a) bureaucracy even though there are no extra hoops for anyone to jump through to get something done; it's just an optional tool for making this page more manageable and (b) of "shutting down discussion", which on the proposed standards for applying these tools just isn't the case (plus this page is different from ANI etc - a good idea can always be reposted, probably in a form which is better for having been discussed previously). (Nor, if anyone disagrees in a particular instance, do we need an "unresolved" template - just remove the resolved template! By definition if someone wants to remove it the issue isn't resolved!)

So let's boil it down: if the proposal was to provide these tools but they could only be used by whoever proposes a particular proposal, if they wish to be helpful to readers of this page (=optional, mmkay?) would that be OK? The only problem I see with that is the section title thing, which is a pretty minor hypothetical benefit (archiving breaks it much more badly; after Resolving but before Archiving you'll still come to the TOC), against the concrete substantial benefit of making this page more readable. Rd232 talk 22:55, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Is there a reason why adding a {{resolved}} tag, like the way we do now, is somehow inadequate? And what is this "concrete substantial benefit" that you speak of? Is the page somehow unreadable at this time? —kurykh 23:33, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
"like we do now"? AFAIK we don't do this now! That's what the proposal is about (I thought)! Also, additionally identifying resolved proposals in the TOC seems obviously helpful/time-saving to me. And yes, the page at the moment generally has too much stuff which isn't worth reading because the issue has already been resolved. Frankly for most of my WP life I've ignored this page because it's just too much chaff and not enough wheat - and I can't believe I'm the only one. Rd232 talk 23:55, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
1) If people start changing section headers to add an asterisk or something, I will be reverting it. An optional thing to help some people should not annoy other people. 2) The added bureaucracy is that proposals won't be archived until they're implemented, or something. This section is titled Don't archive discussions until they are closed - that doesn't sound very optional. 3) A discussion is done when people stop discussing, why must we tag the discussions to indicate this? At best, its making a pointless edit to state the obvious, at worst, it might scare away comments from people who don't want to post to a discussion that's already "resolved." 4) Adding resolved tags doesn't make the page more readable. This argument seems to be based on the reasoning that if a thread has a {{resolved}} tag, people will just skip it, but why would they do that? If they want to see what its about, they'll read it regardless of the tag. If they want to comment, they'll do so regardless of the tag (and if they want to comment, then the discussion wasn't over, and it shouldn't have been tagged in the first place, bringing us back to point 3).
The best argument I've seen here is that it makes some scripts easier to code, which isn't very convincing. Mr.Z-man 02:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
The discussion can deviate from the subheading back to the original topic, and clearly it has. I've changed several headings on this page, and I can't imagine how this could have annoyed anyone. "It annoys me" isn't a good reason - "it's distracting" or "it's rude" or "it breaks links" are good reasons. Some people appreciate a focus on discussions that have not ended, if you want to read everything you are still able to. It seems to me that a discussion is 'done' when it gets archived: I think that a person is a much better judge of "done" than an archive bot.  M  03:02, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Wow. (1) What's so "annoying" about a tiny change to a section heading? This mystifies me. (Apart from the fact that it is a style preference, not an argument.) (2) this point of yours is based entirely on a section heading ("Don't archive discussions until they are closed") added by someone other than proposer with no relation to the proposal. This is not helpful. (3 and 4) your points are contradictory - either you're going to scare people off (from obviously resolved discussions - the standard proposed for Resolved tagging) or not. And it does make the page easier to read/navigate/keep up with / whatever you want to call it. You may not think it worth the cost, but how you can't see this benefit is beyond me. (5) scripts, for me, are irrelevant to this (except that the archive bot already does this "discussion closing" in a much more brutal way - got a suggestion to improve that?) Rd232 talk 03:14, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I don't know about you, but things that are distracting and rude tend to annoy me. On watchlists and page histories, the little arrow in the edit summary links directly to the section, however, if someone changes the section header, like to add an asterisk, they no longer work. My points 3 and 4 are not contradictory, they simply provide 2 distinct possibilities, neither of which are good; not every person will act the same. I disagree that a person is always better. Bots have no biases and can be trusted to apply the same standards equally to all proposals and I disagree that we need something better than the archive bot. If the issue isn't scripts, what the hell is it? What is the benefit to tagging proposals as "resolved"? A discussion is done when people no longer discuss it. Why is this so difficult to comprehend? The bot seems to do it just fine without people fucking with the section headers, or adding obvious-stating templates. How does it make the page easier to read? Just saying it does so does not make it so. People will know what proposals have been declared "resolved" by some random person. But that's likely not going to change whether or not they want to read about it. Do you expect people to think: "Oh, that sounds interesting, but its resolved, so I won't bother reading about it"? If people are interested in something, they're going to read it. It may prevent them from commenting on resolved proposals, but why would we want to do that? I guess to summarize: Why do we not want people to read or comment on "resolved" proposals? Mr.Z-man 06:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
How exactly is an asterisk distracting and rude? Or "[resolved]", for that matter? Inbound links are a non-issue, the bot already destroys them. There's nothing stopping your hypothetical biased editor from messing with this page right now, so I don't see the problem there, either. We have 34 proposals on this page, please don't tell me that this is casual reading material. Do you not see a difference between a proposal where the editor says "oh, that fixes it" and this one?   M  06:33, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Are you really that dense? Inbound links are an issue. After 7 days of no comments, there will be no links to them on people's watchlists, so a bot archiving it isn't a problem. But if the discussion just ended, then people may still see may be following thread on their watchlist. Why can't it be casual reading material? You can't just say stuff like that and declare it to be true. What does there being 34 proposals have to with anything? If there were 15 would it be different? 674? Are you saying that there's a lot of people who come to this page once a day and just read the entire thing top to bottom? That's the problem I have with your proposals! You just keep saying stuff to back up your proposals with no evidence or logical reasoning whatsoever. If you actually read my comments instead of just misinterpreting them, you'll see I did say I have no problem with people tagging obviously implemented or rejected proposals, though I think its a waste of time to state the obvious. My problem is with encouraging it. From what I've seen on other pages, {{resolved}} has 2 uses. About 50% of the time its used to mark an obviously resolved thread. This is more useful for pages like WP:AN, where a significant majority of threads will be resolved quickly. The other 50% of the time, its used when people want a thread to be resolved. The discussion may not be over, and nothing actually done, but the discussion is getting less productive or turning toward an area that someone doesn't want it to. Give some real evidence or logical reasoning, and maybe I'll reconsider. Mr.Z-man 16:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Z-Man - "People will know what proposals have been declared "resolved" by some random person. But that's likely not going to change whether or not they want to read about it. Do you expect people to think: "Oh, that sounds interesting, but its resolved, so I won't bother reading about it"? If people are interested in something, they're going to read it. It may prevent them from commenting on resolved proposals, but why would we want to do that? I guess to summarize: Why do we not want people to read or comment on "resolved" proposals?" I've already explained this multiple times. The fact that you have not yet understood the proposal's advantages helps me understand your confused and unhelpful and increasingly irritated responses. Please go back and read my comments above, especially my comment about an alternative version where only the proposer can close his discussion as a courtesy to others. Rd232 talk 12:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
No, my confused and irritated responses are from you and M misunderstanding and misinterpreting my arguments, then replying with faulty logic and repeated arguments. Mr.Z-man 16:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

★Random section break [☢adding asterixes to resolved sections☂]

Incidentally, I notice that you're very anxious to draw a quick end to others' discussions - how would you feel if someone put something like that on this discussion? You told me off for pointing out a 6-2 consensus against your idea earlier; I think it's a fairly clear-cut issue. So, as a hypothetical test issue, if you came across this proposal, how would you treat it with asterisks? ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:06, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

You seem to favor attempts at caricature of the opposing position. This is fun and popular, but a bad way to argue. Please respond to what I'm actually saying, not to an exaggerated version. You've said discouraging things in this discussion multiple times, but I've toughed it out. It's absolutely not a big deal. You just say "I don't think this is over" and continue the discussion exactly as before. As for this proposal - well, it's not sick, it doesn't need to be treated with asterisks. When it looks like it's over, I'd probably do something like the above. Also, my proposal isn't to insert random meaningless unicode garbage into headings.  M  07:50, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I do favour caricature, yes, it's called humour :-) I'm asking you a direct question; in the link I provided, you were attempting to hurry along discussion and bring it to a close. Would you do the same on this one if your new systems of asterixes were implemented? Thanks. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Caricature is funny, but you can do it without misrepresenting my position. You can call me Ptolemy and talk about how you don't want to see Cassiopeia in the ToC. But you're not being that funny, because all of your arguments are against a position that isn't mine. I see that you put the unicode garbage back. Would I put [resolved] on this proposal once it's clearly been resolved? Yes, of course I would.  M  08:09, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

<< I am arguing against your position, without misrepresenting it. You are misunderstanding my position (did that possibility ever occur to you?). I object not only to your asterixes idea for this page, but also generally to your other proposal above - regarding archival after a certain ratio of support or opposition has been garnered - and to your comments on this page designed to speed up others' discussion... like the one I linked above. You can see how many people agree with you, and you can see how many agree with me. This page has worked well for a long time without comments like, (and I quote) "Anything else to say about this one?" about half-an-hour after the discussion was opened. That is all I have to say on the matter, other than the fact that it's not garbage, it's an amusing hyperbole of your policy idea (I quite like the notion of adding radiation symbols to some discussion threads, come to think of it!) ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 08:19, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Look at the heading of the other proposal - it says resolved. Clearly the addition of asterisks would help you :) I have no idea why you're bringing that up here. And what does my message above have to do with anything? I certainly hope that "look how many people disagree with you" is not your only argument, since that isn't an argument.  M  08:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Shouldn't that be look how many people disagree with you?? Much more importantly, look at the arguments they have presented. The question as I see it is, why is breaking external, internal and historical links, annoying editors who dislike the stylistic changes, actively discouraging further discussion of topics (and proactively closing discussions that in some cases have barely even begun), introducing bureaucratic and legalistic rules for section archiving, removing the incentive for proponents to actually do some of the work of getting their proposals implemented, and making essentially useless edits to state either the dubious or blindingly-obvious, justified by the arguments you present in favour? Naturally that is not the question as you see it; you (must) have an entirely different assessment of the balance of advantages and disadvantages. To avoid TLDR syndrome, it would probably be a good idea to summarise them similarly. Happy‑melon 11:44, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
"removing the incentive for proponents to actually do some of the work of getting their proposals implemented"? It mystifies how experienced editors can get so confused about what a fairly simple proposal is actually proposing. Resolved would not be applied to anything that required future action. Because, erm, that would mean it isn't resolved. Cough. Rd232 talk 12:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
This was point 4 of M's proposal above. To which you or someone else is going to say "yes but that was retracted/rejected..." So what? The 'closing' comment "I retract the proposal" makes the exact same mistake B Fairbairn made above with refactoring discussion: proposals don't 'belong' to the person who suggested them, they don't have 'control' over them. Proposals are considered on their merits (or lack thereof), it's not the OP 'verses' the rest of the community. Which is not to say (to cover the original point) that the OP is not responsible for taking a proposal forward if there is consensus to support its implementation. You're quite right that marking proposals as "resolved" when they have not been implemented would be semantically wrong. M's proposal, seemingly intended to reduce the amount of inactive discussion on this page, ironically required that proposals that had been made and then 'abandoned' by their OPs be left on this page indefinitely, until "responsibility for implementation [is] accepted" by someone. So an OP can make a proposal, then drift away, confident that it will remain here until someone get sufficiently annoyed by its presence to take on responsibility for it themselves. That sounds like removing incentive to me.
Of course I'm treating the two proposals as linked here, when it's true that one (the rejected process) is an extension of the other (this marking 'resolved' threads). But if you make the very small further step of saying that only "resolved" proposals should be archived (and take the very axiom that you note, that proposals requiring further action cannot be resolved" then you immediately reach one from the other. Happy‑melon 12:40, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Inbound links are a non-issue, the bot already destroys them. Should we move on from this, or are there still concerns?   M  13:04, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Oh that's ironic. :D Move on in which direction? Happy‑melon 13:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I don't want to wind up on a wild goose chase. I think most of your concerns have already been resolved. So let's take them one step at a time. Do you have a problem with inbound links?   M  13:24, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Are you joking? When I saw your previous comment, I thought, oh, he has just come to reason, has understood he will never get consensus, and is going to mark this thread as resolved. Not so, apparently. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I have a nice little JS script that activates on viewing diff pages. If the new edit's editsummary contains a section title, the script looks at the target page, calculates the appropriate section number, and appends that to the "edit" link on the diff. So when I click the "edit" link, I can go straight to editing the section. It's a useful script, you're welcome to use it youself if you want (it's in my monobook.js). It will break if you start changing section titles. People often link to ongoing threads on this page; it's accepted that those links will die when the section is archived. However, they are easily accessible by just copying the section fragment from the URL into the 'search archives' box and looking through the archives, where the relevant section is usually at the top of the search list. I don't know if that method will continue to work if you start habitually changing section titles. I have no particular desire to find out. Bugzilla reports for feature requests usually include a link to the discussion that resulted in the consensus the developers need to see; these links should be made permalinks; when they are not, they will break. Yes, I have a problem with breaking inbound links by changing section titles unnecessarily. Happy‑melon 13:47, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Though I don't think the script breaking is a real worry (trivial fix; only one out of the many resolved-marked threads reactivated, so you wouldn't see such diffs), the searching is a good point. Perhaps the bot should be configured to archive resolved discussions more promptly, instead.   M  14:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
That is not the point. Of course the script could be fixed, and in the (rather unlikely it seems) situation where your proposal gains consensus, I will fix it, because I am following this discussion and understand why and how it would be broken. How many people and bots will be similarly affected by such a change? You don't know; you can't know, and unless they're following this discussion, they themselves probably won't know why things are going wrong until the bug reports start flying. Now, why should I be forced to spend time fixing my script, so that you can add little asterisks next to certain threads? Are you going to fix my script for me? And any others that are broken, becuase you put them in the same position? Happy‑melon 17:16, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Though I still don't think that title change is catastrophic for scripts (I don't think anyone's wiki-lifesupport depends on titles, and several titles have already changed without corpses piling up on our doorstep) I think we might want to put that discussion aside, since I agree with your searching point.   M  18:37, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

M, if your only concern is wanting to monitor every discussion why not just use the history page and compare the most recent version with the last one you looked at? Then you can easily read every new comment without losing track. I don't see a problem with a discussion being live until it gets archived after seven days of no activity. That's a pretty good indication it is resolved. David D. (Talk) 13:56, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I do use history, plus the script that I wrote (screenshot above). The problem is that this discussion page contains about 34 proposals. The total time required to read this is 4 hours. Some of these proposals, because a resolution has been reached, are just not worth reading through. Yes, maybe halfway through reading the usa-bias proposal you'll get a great idea about how we can prevent bias on the main page. Probably not, though. There are proposals in the middle (and top) of the page that are as good as the ones down here. I strongly suspect this is because nobody likes sifting through the middle of this page.   M  14:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Is your concern a newcomer? Why would they read every proposal? I only read the ones that have a title of interest, resolved or not. IMO, adding this extra formatting is a classic example of extra bells and whistles that are barely functional but look good. David D. (Talk) 15:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
They wouldn't read every proposal. Perhaps we have different assumptions as to how people approach this page. What purpose does the resolved template serve on, say, helpdesk, and why can't it serve that purpose here?   M  18:37, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I agree they would not read every proposal. But you inferred that when you said it would take four hours to read. Maybe I misunderstood your comment? My main point is that when I look at the pump page i normally look at one or two topics and ignore the rest whether they are resolved or not. The tags would not save me time and I would not use them to direct my reading. Maybe I am atypical? David D. (Talk) 18:51, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I was just trying to give an impression of the size. When I first came here I was overwhelmed by the number of issues to comment on. The easiest thing was to just jump to the bottom, which neglects many proposals. I find that the titles aren't usually a good indicator of interest for me. I can understand that they might be indicators for others. The ones that interest me are the ones that still need attention.   M  21:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


Help desk discussions generally don't need more than a couple people to be involved, and have a lifespan of minutes to hours, not days or weeks. The help desk gets a dozen or two new threads every day. Though looking at it now, the template doesn't seem to be used as much on the help desk as it used to be (only a couple threads each day), perhaps they found it to not be very helpful as well. This is a good summary of the problems with the tag there, some of them would apply here as well. Mr.Z-man 19:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I think that the 'resolved' template is being taken a bit too seriously, though perhaps it could be made more 'passive'. Why should people who come here bother commenting if there are 30 proposals, and half of them look abandoned? The resolved template, aside from providing focus, gives the impression that issues receive conclusive answers. I still have trouble with the 'casual browsing' idea. Resolved proposals shouldn't be kept around so that people could have interesting reading. There's plenty of casual browsing to be had in the archives. Wouldn't you prefer to have a selection of 30 unresolved proposals, rather than a 15, and 15 dead ones? And why even bother archiving if having 30 proposals is no big deal? You might say "well, the bot makes sure it's fair" - but before you say that, show that there's an actual problem of fairness. Where has that template been used improperly on this page? If the bot had a rule 'resolved proposals have a 2-day timeout', wouldn't 'unfairness' be avoidable? To recap: We remove 'resolved' proposals mindlessly using a 7 day rule so there exists a need to remove them; people, though imperfect, are much better at figuring out when a proposal is over than a bot; any 'abuse' can be easily spotted if there's a 2-day delay on the tag.   M  21:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
A discussion is "dead" when people don't comment and that's the criteria the bot uses to archive them, so they aren't going to be sitting around "dead" for very long; just long enough to be sure that they really are dead. Right now, 22 of the 34 proposals on the page have had at least 1 comment in the last 3 days.
  • Why should people who come here bother commenting if there are 30 proposals, and half of them look abandoned? - Because once they comment, its no longer abandoned. Or they can just comment on the ones that aren't abandoned. Why would people just leave without commenting because the page has some dead discussions? How is that any different than any other discussion page?
  • Wouldn't you prefer to have a selection of 30 unresolved proposals, rather than a 15, and 15 dead ones? - This proposal is not to archive things faster, but just to tag them, they'll still be on the page, so I don't see how this is relevant. In any case, "dead" is not really a resolution, just a state. "Resolution" means that there's some consensus either way, "dead" just means people aren't commenting.
  • And why even bother archiving if having 30 proposals is no big deal? - Because we get more proposals as time goes on ... ? Is this supposed to be a rhetorical question? Given the context, I can't tell.
  • show that there's an actual problem of fairness - Right now you're the only person using the tag on this page and have only been doing so for a couple days. You're asking me to prove something using evidence from the future, after this is widely implemented. But since you asked, I would call [3] an improper tagging (or at least the closest thing to one since you started doing it a couple days ago). You were involved in the discussion and had indicated elsewhere that you thought it didn't belong on the page, then you tagged it "resolved" just a few minutes after a comment by someone else, and I don't see where the proposer retracted anything.
  • If the bot had a rule 'resolved proposals have a 2-day timeout', wouldn't 'unfairness' be avoidable - I don't see how. If anything, it could make it worse, as it would provide a way for people to get proposals that they don't like off the page faster.
  • We remove 'resolved' proposals mindlessly - We remove dead proposals. The bot makes no judgment at resolved-ness.
The {{resolved}} template works on pages that have a clear workflow like the help desk and the bot request page. It just doesn't make much sense on a page that consists mostly of open-ended discussions. Mr.Z-man 23:58, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
We don't archive "because we get more proposals" - so what? Just let people keep adding them, and let this page continue to grow. Why do we archive dead proposals, instead of just leaving them?   M  00:30, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
Because letting the page continue to grow indefinitely won't work. We need more space, so given that its a discussion page, if we have to get rid of something, it makes sense to get rid of the things that people are no longer interested in discussing. Mr.Z-man 01:41, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm withdrawing from this discussion. I guess those who see no problem a all with current VP process can carry on as before, because clearly this proposal is rejected. Anyone opposing who sees the problems raised want to come up with an alternative for improving VP? PS In future we might want to bear in mind the self-selection effect of discussing possible improvements to VP on VP: those who can't stand it probably won't see the discussion! Rd232 talk 03:00, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, don't be like that about it. Yes, I'm fairly sure that there is a consensus to reject the proposal, but there's really no need to take the, "Well, more people support it, OK, that's their own funeral," line - really. Encouraging M to make his future proposals somewhere where we won't find them isn't a smart idea, because I have no doubt that he'll follow it - but there we go. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 06:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
(a) what? (b) what? To clarify, I'm not being like anything, this proposal is rejected so let's draw a line under it. There's nothing about "it's their funeral" since I'm asking for new ideas to avoid death! And it is outrageously obvious that I'm not suggesting forum-shopping and not suggesting actively avoiding VP participant input. I mean really. Rd232 talk 07:44, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
OK, I'm really sorry, I obviously misinterpreted your use of phrases such as, "I guess those who see no problem a all with current VP process can carry on as before." ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:47, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
As far as the proposal to add a symbol to the titles, I think that Happy-melon's point of objection above was a good one, though I thought that some discussion of the problem in general and other possible solutions might be worthwhile. You may have a point about this not being an appropriate place to discuss things, though.   M  14:00, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
I think this is as appropriate a place as any. But, as always, you will have a limited and self selected audience. David D. (Talk) 14:30, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
The only other place that would be appropriate would be Wikipedia talk:Village pump (proposals). Making and discussing a proposal to change a page, without at least notifying the people who use the page would be rather inappropriate, and would probably be seen as deceptive or gaming the system, especially given that there's already been 2 proposals on this. Mr.Z-man 16:13, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
Ah, good. I wasn't the only person with that impression after all. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 19:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
<undent> Well, discussing title-changing policy in general might not belong on this page, though of course editors here should be notified. That's not much of an issue though - I certainly won't pursue it. As for this proposal, I think I should resign in my capacity as promoter since, as Rd232 points out, it's a snowball in it's current form. This particular thread isn't exactly an incubator for some alternative way to resolve the page size, so I should avoid that as well - except, is there any chance that the us-bias thread and this one could be manually archived, given that they take up 1/3rd of this proposals page and have been withdrawn by their proposers?   M  02:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
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