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Minor edits should be limited to a user group

I would like to propose that the ability to label edits as minor edits should be restricted to a specific group of users (and bots) in the same way that rollback rights are. With any luck we could revive the minor edits function so that edits that are labelled as minor actually would be and we could safely chose to ignore minor edits. Admittance to the group would be fairly easy to achieve: basically someone who has been editing for a while, who has read and understands Help:Minor edit. Editors who mislabel edits would be excluded. — Blue-Haired Lawyer t 13:05, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

  • I don't believe this is a big enough problem to merit yet another level of user rights. If a particular user is misapplying the minor edit flag they can be dealt with on an individual basis. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:12, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I appreciate the thought, but this would just force new accounts to mark their spelling corrections as major edits. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:21, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I don't really even use minor or pay attention to major versus minor. It's a wholly subjective and not so useful label. I'd sooner just get rid of it then make it into a user-group. That being said, I'm opposing this for three reasons.
    1. It's unnecessary bureaucracy creep.
    2. For the people that do use the minor button, this makes their lives more difficult.
    3. After watching file mover rights for a while, I am of the position that there exists a group of careless admins that are doing an outright pathetic job with assigning user rights. I have seen filemover given arbitrarily to users that do not need and did not ask for the right (which I'm mildly miffed with), given to users that asked for it at the requests page but by no definition meet the qualifications (which annoys me), and even in one case, saw it given to a user that asked for it at the requests page, was denied it for lack of qualifications, then changed his/her name and requested it on an admin's user talk page, where it was granted, despite the user having a track record of policy violations in the file namespace (which pisses me off to no end). Until admins can get desysopped for giving clearly unqualified people userrights, user groups are essentially the same thing as giving everyone access, which is what we have now for minor edits.
    Sven Manguard Wha? 20:03, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
    Re #3: I would assume you brought up those cases with those admins...? It would seem that they could use the feedback. --Izno (talk) 05:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
    That last one, I brought up via email. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose, but I agree that the "minor edits" feature is basically useless at this point, and I would support its removal. --joe deckertalk to me 20:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
    I use it on a regular basis. "Basically useless" is a fairly subjective statement which is (un)supported by the data you have not produced. :) --Izno (talk) 05:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
    I use it, in the sense of marking my own edits, on a regular basis, but I do not use it, in the sense of being able to get any use at all from other people's use of the flag. The only value of "minor" outside of the value that is redundant with the edit summary (really, do you need to tell me that "typo" should be minor?) is the ability to hide minor edits in a watchlist. However, setting that flag is only useful when people reliably do not mark major edits as minor. Which they do, sometimes abusively, on a regular basis. I'm not going to call out names, this isn't ANI, let's just say that trying to sneak POV edits into battleground articles by marking them minor is a pretty standard form of abuse. I'll turn this question back on you--do you use the "hide minor edits" flag? If so, why? --joe deckertalk to me 17:30, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - There is no need to make this more inconvenient just because people have abused it before... Ajraddatz (Talk) 04:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose as well. Adding another user right for minor edits just seems silly to me. For the people who use it correctly, it adds semantic meaning to their edits (whatever meaning that might be). For the people who really need to care whether an edit is minor, they disregard it equally. --Izno (talk) 05:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose "mark edits automatically as minor is alreay removed and was causing the most harm. If you find it being abused just resolve it with the user in question. Yoenit (talk) 11:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
    Too many users abusing it, or more often not using it, for that to be practical. As above, we have absolutely no consensus that not even using edit summaries is a problem, apathy is tenfold on the minor edit flag. And that's just fine, but it does make, in my own view, the minor edit flag a wasted bit of code and user complexity. --joe deckertalk to me 17:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Remember to assume good faith everyone. I'm sure alot of new editors use minor edits for spelling corrections or small grammatical errors. New accounts shouldn't be assumed vandals until proven otherwise. BurtAlert (talk) 18:38, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Restricting basic UI functions to certain users is just counterintuitive. Personally, I'd like the see the entire function done away with. I share the sentiments above that it's a largely vague and pointless feature, given that it is frequently abused. It would be far more useful for all edits in the history to automatically show the change in bytes in the same manner as watchlists do. That would be a much more accurate indicator of "minor" or "major" edits. --Dorsal Axe 19:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose While I don't agree the feature is useless, it is often misused. But a new usergroup is not going to solve that. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:55, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Absolutely not. This would not only add a layer of bureaucracy but it will also create another user right for users to show off on their user pages. The template will probably be located at Template:User wikipedia/minor and it would look something like this:
This user has minor changes rights on the English Wikipedia.

Yes, minor is abused, but creating a separate user right will not solve the problem. Alpha Quadrant talk 02:44, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Clarify userbox restrictions

In light of the discussion following a recent non-deletion decision, I propose clarifying Wikipedia:Userboxes#Content restrictions to more accurately reflect current practice on leeway given to userboxes in userspace. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 19:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal: Files for Discussion

Per WT:FFD -- Files for Deletion does not want to expand its scope, but some missing processes were identified in the discussion.

So a WP:Files for discussion is needed to

  • Handle file renaming, when a discussion is needed, since all links to the file will need to be renamed when the file is renamed (otherwise an identically named file on Commons will appear in place of the renamed file, leading to articles showing the wrong file, should such a file exist on Commons)
  • Handle requests for reversion for a file which need discussion.

65.93.12.101 (talk) 14:13, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

huh? why does FFD not want to handle such requests? It seem creep to create a separate board for this, unless there is a significant number of requests per day. Yoenit (talk) 22:40, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Good question, the answer is they don't want to cover anything except deletions. Before this proposal was made for a separate discussion area, a proposal was made at FFD to expand their purview to cover it, and they more or less unanimously refused to expand their area of coverage. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 05:35, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Why can't file for rename just use the WP:RM procedure with a discussion on the file talk page? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:07, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
The problem was explained at FFD, when you rename a file, if a file with the same name as the old filename exists on Commons, the Commons file will be shown instead of the Wikipedia file, unless you change all file links on Wikipedia. As RM doesn't rename any links in the course of its normal actions, taking that into account would be a more special process. It was pointed out previous in various RM discussions that RM does not handle files also. Pointed out at FFD, all file renames require an administrator to perform them, while most page renames in other namespaces do not need administrator intervention. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 10:07, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
So the basic problem is that if you want a file renamed, FFD and RM both say that it's the other guy's problem? We need some way to deal with this. Does anyone know how it happens at the moment? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:49, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
You ask an administrator directly... same thing with file version reversion. (Well, there's also WP:AN) 65.93.12.101 (talk) 06:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
And is that process written down anywhere? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
Not that I know of. (of course, there's no community discussion if you ask an admin directly) 65.93.12.101 (talk) 11:32, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
Wow, okay let's bring some saintly back here. I am a filemover, and interact with several of the more active filemovers often. The general procedure is as follows: 1) Someone tags a file with a rename media tag or we see a file that needs renaming. 2) We preform the move. 3) We then use the what links here function on the old name (now a redirect) and then go to each of those pages and update the name from the old name to the new name. 4) Depending on the user performing the move and the old file name itself, the old name (again, now a redirect) may be put up for deletion.
Also of note: File movers cannot move files into names where there exists a file of the same name on commons. Admins can do this, but they get a warning message, and most admins are competent enough to pick another name after getting the warning message. If the overlap happens on the commons page, a rename request can be made at either commons or at the local project, I'd err on whichever one is being used less. Many file movers on English Wikipedia are filemovers on Commons as well.
As for file reversions, there are only three cases where this becomes important, and all three involve admins normally through other established channels. First, there are upload edit wars, where two or more users upload different versions of an image in the same name. It's rare, but disruptive, and covered by 3RR. Admins get involved in this through 3RR, or for the nasty ones, AN/I. Secondly, there are vandalism uploads, where someone will upload a shock image over a regular file in order to, well, be a huge dick. That's vandalism, it gets reverted, and then an admin comes in and revision deletes the bad image. Not sure how admins get told about those, but not worth creating a noticeboard just for that. Third is fair use image resizes, where overly large non free images are shrunk and then an admin comes by and revision deletes the large version. There is a template system with categories that is used for this, and it works fine.
In the end, I think this proposal is unnecessary, and therefore in the interests of efficiency, I Oppose this proposal. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:39, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
That still doesnt' result in a community discussion on choosing names for files, unlike naming pages in other spaces. File contents are still editorial content. Which version of a file is the best representation to use can and have been contentious; there is no common community discussion forum for this either. Not all reversion of files is dealing with accidental overwrites or vandalism.
Yes, a new process is a bit heavy, it would be easier to add it to Files for Deletion, they do not wish to expand their purview though, so a separate centralized discussion forum is therefore needed. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 22:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
There are two major reasons why I don't like that component. First of all, no community consensus is needed. File names are back end stuff, like template names and infobox coding. Unlike article names, where the name is visible and sets the tone for the page, almost no one ever sees file names. File names really only have to have three requirements. First, they have to be accurate, i.e. you can't have a picture of a fish with the file name "File:Tree.JPG" or "File:DSC00023.JPG". Second, they have to be at least relatively tasteful, i.e. names like "File:I_F**ked_Your_Mother.JPG" are renamed on sight. Finally, the file extension has to match the file type, i.e. if an image is a sound file, it has to be "File:Example.OGG" instead of "File:Example.JPG". As long as a file name meets those three requirements, it generally does not get changed. This is because of the second reason; that moving files is much less stable than moving other pages. When you move a file, it actually moves that file on the physical storage on Wikipedia's server farm. When you move a non-file page, it dosen't. I don't know the details, and I know that since a large file loss almost a decade ago when Wikipedia was very young that there's been a ton of improvements to make sure files don't disappear, but still, the technically knowledgeable people I talk to are a tad skittish about unnecessary file moves.
TLDR: I fail to see why a special forum community discussion on the back end technical stuff is needed. If a file needs renaming, use the {{rename media}} template, and someone will just do it. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:41, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
There's a templated requested to rename a file. Either a file is renamed, or it isn't. However, the selection of the target name does not have a consensus building process, and it should, as should everything on Wikipedia.
That still doesn't cover file version seleciton.
65.93.12.101 (talk) 17:37, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't support any new meta-discussion boards for content. If anything we should be consolidating this maze of process, merging them all together. Gigs (talk) 14:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I would have expanded Files for Deletion to cover it. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 17:37, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
All I really want is someone to write down the directions in some sensible place, so that if I ever want to do it, I can figure out how to do it. It sounds like there's some "rename media tag". That should be conspicuously documented somewhere (or several somewheres, i.e., at any page that has ever declared itself to be the wrong forum for that process).
I strongly doubt that we encounter so many disputed image-move requests that we really need a special noticeboard to discuss them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

How to attract and retain new editors (again)

I know this will probably duplicate part of one of the previous discussions, but I think this is a very important problem for a volunteer community like Wikipedia. In my opinion, the major problems Wikipedia has with new, inexperienced editors or even non-editors are:

  • Many people outside Wikipedia (as mentioned earlier) think that Wikipedia is some kind of insider club managed by a few "moderators" (from discussions I have seen on facebook).
  • I might be mistaken, but I think for most new editors their first experience with Wikipedia is a negative one. At least it was for me. I don't know if this story is representative, or if it simply was a very exceptional case of "My First Wikipedia Experience". One of my first activities as an editor was to create an article about a subject already covered by another article. I thought my article was important enough to have its own place on Wikipedia alongside the already existing article, in fact even more important (at that time I also didn't know that articles can be renamed by moving them). With this misconception in mind, I proposed to merge the existing article into my new article, simply because I thought the title was more appropriate for the article. This consequently triggered a negative response from another editor of the existing article, seeing me trying to perform the "final step in a unilateral process carried out by a single editor to rename this article the way he wants it". He then I "should have just posted a proposal to rename it instead of trying to undermine its legitimacy". I now know, after I gained tons of valuable editing experience, that I should have tried to reach consensus on that. But at that point, I simply did what I thought was right and didn't even know that consensus is one of the most important values of Wikipedia, in order to prevent cases like the above. As a final point I would like to point out that I didn't really bother to read through all the pages in my Welcome message, which I had received before this "incident". Again I don't know if this case is in any form representative of most newcomers experience. I also think the reason why this didn't scare me off simply was because there was (and still is) a lot of stuff missing in Wikipedia in terms of new articles or additions to new ones. Now I have built an impression of how Wikipedia works, edit articles on a broad range of topics and I am also actively providing assistance on help desk, often also to new editors.
  • As the above example shows (and please correct me if I am mistaken) the real fun and enjoyment of being a Wikipedian develops with time. Thus I think the chance of an editor staying away from Wikipedia after they've made a mistake is inversely proportional to the time this editor has speant on Wikipedia.

Just some input from me. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 10:02, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems a bit weird that you refer to a dispute which took place 3 months and some 200 edits after you starting editing as a "first experience". Yoenit (talk) 10:40, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
It was at least a first experience wrt coming in direct touch with other editors. All edits I made before mostly were left uncommented by other editors and thus I saw no reason to question the legitimacy, correctness or usefulness of these edits. If you want to consider this a weakness or defect of my personality by all means do that, it might be true or not, I don't know or even care. Also my wording in the above statement was not meant to justify these edits in any way. I have made quite a number of edits till now and some of them (some not used here to mean few) are questionable or even in violation of consensus or policy (I don't remember each single edit I made in detail though). If you find my behavior questionable, feel free to report me to Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#Request_comment_on_users. Also this was only meant as a helpful contribution to this discussion. Sorry for taking your time. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 12:10, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Huh? I was just pointing out an inconsistency. We have a tendency to remember only the bad things and forgot about the good ones. The other users response to your merge proposal was a violation of assume good faith and no doubt stressful to deal with, but it did not occur to you when you were still a new editor (in the definition commonly used). Your first edits and communications with another user were actually on Talk:Wieferich prime, where you seem to have had a fruitfull discussion with several other editors. Yoenit (talk) 12:28, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
What, exactly, are you proposing? — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 12:52, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Please ignore this thread. I think I should take a Wikibreak and apologize for my above comments. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:20, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with your comments or anything to apologize for. All reports of new editors' experiences are valuable, even if they don't come with a specific proposal attached, as they supply data to help our combined minds come up with ideas for improving editor retention.--Kotniski (talk) 13:25, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Several editors have told their stories at Wikipedia talk:Wiki Guides/What was your new user experience. You could post there, perhaps? -- John of Reading (talk) 20:33, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
I will consider this. Thanks John. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 21:43, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
I added something at Wikipedia talk:Wiki Guides/What was your new user experience. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 23:34, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

How to Attract Thousands of New Editors

Why don't visitors edit? Figure that out, and our cup will runneth over.

My friends all think:

  • 1. "Because it's edited by anybody, it's mostly just made up."
  • 2. "Some mysterious body within Wikipedia vets edits."
  • 3. "It's a profit organization."

Survey visitors about Wikipedia with open questions, and I think they will all say exactly that: It's not credible. How it works is unknown. It's a company that is out to make money.

My suggestion:

  • Enlighted them, and sneak in a step-by-step of how to make an edit.
  • Get the visitor to make a single edit, THEN, help that editor improve.
  • Do that by thinking like an advertising agency: Sell it! Make it ADD-friendly, just like this proposal.
  • Put a banner at the top of every page:
WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT WIKIPEDIA

Link it to a page that is "for dummies" - short and sweet, easy read:

WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT WIKIPEDIA
  • When somebody adds something, other editors check to see if it's true. If not, it is deleted.
  • There is no committee that checks contributions. Wikipedia is just a bunch of editors.
  • Wikipedia is nonprofit.
How to add something made easy:

1. Take the info from a good site: "Apples grow on trees." from www.apples.com/apple-trees.html

2. Rephrase it: "Apples come from apple trees."

3. Click "edit this page" at the apple article.

4. Paste in "Apples come from apple trees."

5. At the end of the sentence paste in: <ref>www.apples.com/apple-trees.html</ref>

6. Click save.

7. You are now a Wikipedian.

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 14:02, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Re: "1. "Because it's edited by anybody, it's mostly just made up."" - I've seen a lot of that in various forums I frequent. A lot of people only accept knowledge from "authority", and they assume that because Wikipedia can be written by just anybody, it can't be trustworthy. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:07, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Right! So educate them without a wall of text. It's still the MTV generation. Lots of enthusiasm, but zero attention span. They don't read lectures on the truth of Wikipedia. But they will read slogans.
Yep, short and snappy messages get the eyeballs where long-winded essays don't. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:27, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Do you really think people with an attention-span of zero can be constructive and useful here? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 14:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Comment: Wikipedia doesn't advertise, except for itself to raise money to survive. But what we need is an army of new editors. Where is the advertising for that? So many visit yet relatively few editors join. Harness that immense visitorship. Draw them in with a snappy banner. They just need very simple instructions to make their first edit. Then they will make a second, etc... Anna Frodesiak (talk) 14:19, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The people who still believe 2. and 3. are the people who believe Obama is a Muslim and the earth is flat. Neither slogans nor dissertations will change that. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 14:31, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure about whatever that thing is above, but I really like the idea of conducting a general survey to visitors, and using the data to work out a way to attract people to edit Wikipedia and correct some of the misconceptions of Wikipedia that are out there. We make so many assumptions; let's see what the masses really think. I think devising a suitable survey would indeed be the best place to start. --Dorsal Axe 15:18, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I like it. My friends and family all have similar misconceptions. As for the counter-suggestion I'm not a big fan of surveys. Wikipedia's generally been most successful when it didn't conduct itself as a corporate mass. Let's just act on what we all know to be true already rather than conducting market research. IMHO. Equazcion (talk) 15:22, 23 Feb 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Why not notify the people at Wikipedia:OUTREACH? Also, I suggest we make the advert a bit less flashy and obtrusive. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 15:29, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm against putting that banner on Wikipedia pages. Yes we have attraction problems, but numerous editors I've talked to, among them members of WP:CONTRIB and a smattering of arbs, all say that the biggest issue we have with attracting editors is that we treat them so poorly. We need not just to get out the word about what Wikipedia really is, but make it easier for new editors to feel like they fit in and be less hostile towards each other as a whole. Since civility blocks are looked down upon, we need some other option, or a combination of other options. I've heard quite a few and some of the better ones include being much stricter on 3RR, pushing mediation heavily, and putting tighter controls over the IRC wikipedia-en-help channel, which often does more to scare off users than it does to help them. Just some thoughts. Sven Manguard Wha? 15:49, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
If you're acknowledging the attraction problem I'm not sure why you'd be against remedying it, despite there being another more prominent problem at hand in your eyes. Just cause we're out to fix one thing with this particular suggestion doesn't mean we'd be abandoning others. You haven't really given any reason that you're actually against a banner like this. Equazcion (talk) 16:02, 23 Feb 2011 (UTC)
Because you are solving problems out of order. Opening a big, welcoming door for a bunch of potential new users does no good if that door is placed on the edge of a cliff. As far as a survey banner goes, I've no opposition to one, but man, something less gaudy than that, please! Resolute 17:00, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
We're too far from solving the civility issue to allow it to hold up expanding the project in general, if that issue can even be said to be solvable at all. So we attract a thousand new editors and a certain percentage end up staying after seeing the community's flaws. Still means we end up with more editors. We can work on becoming a perfect society at the same time too. Equazcion (talk) 00:16, 24 Feb 2011 (UTC)

The banner is only one line, but it certainly is RED, isn't it? Maybe tone down the color? But, heck, it is only ONE LINE. Under my proposal (below) it wouldn't have to run on all pages anyway. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 19:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

We at WP:MED have done this. It was lead by User:Anthonyhcole and can be seen here [1] Currently the active trial has finished and data is being analyzed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:22, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Really wanted?

  • OK, I'll be the bad guy here: Do we want an influx of new editors? Now, OK, granted, we certainly don't want to turn people away. Every time that I see someone talking about how the sky is falling because our registration numbers are decreasing, I can't help but wonder... do we really want the "AOL crowd" to come rushing in? Now, before anyone goes ballistic on me, I want to say up front that I believe that I'm more accepting of new editors then most. Call me egotistical if you'd like, but I've seen the "massive influx of new users" several times in the past, and 9 times out of 10 it's a net negative.
What's the answer then? I'd add my voice to those above in saying that the problem is simply how we deal with new users. We collectively need to institute an attitude of acceptance among ourselves, somehow. Slow, steady growth is what we need. However, slow steady growth in registrations is the wrong metric to be seeking. We need slow steady grown in the number of en.wikipedia "heavy editors" (defined as those who make... I think that it's 100 edits/month, now?).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:25, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
Are there any concrete stats about the historical effects of a user influx? I know there's the perceived negative aspect, but it might be the case that more users simply means more idiots as well, and thus it seems like a failure, when it might actually be that the benefits outweigh the downfalls, but they are just not as visible.
In any case, I think that teaching readers about how editing is easy is a generally good thing. A good tie in with this program would be to make a thank you message for anon users after they edit, as well as a link to register an account. It could very well do this now, I don't know, but it seems like everyone likes to be thanked, even by a machine, and registered users are probably way more likely to recontribute. Once they make an account, then they're hooked, we give them a welcome message from the good will committee, and then shebango, we turned a reader into an editor.
It sounds simple, but I think the basic concept is there. Entice them with how easy it is to edit, thank them and ask them to register an account, and then welcome them to the wiki with some basic instructions on how to get involved in specific areas. --NickPenguin(contribs) 06:23, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
I gathered some stats last year about new user retention. See User:Mr.Z-man/newusers. The majority of new accounts never make a single edit. And of the ones who do, only a few percent actually stay around and become regular editors. Mr.Z-man 16:21, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
If anyone wants concrete stats on new user activity, then this might help (It's not entirely relevant, but it gives you a rough idea). I help out at WP:ACC. Out of the 50-odd accounts I've created , one reverted one instance of vandalism , another wanted help with the API, and a third actually got around to create an article which got AfD'd. If you want better data, check out January's account creation log for blue "contribs" links. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 13:07, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
Well, it looks like from those stats, roughly 2% of editors stick around once they've registered an account, regardless of wither their first edit is kept or not. That's a pretty small number. So roughly for every 10,000 registered users, we get maybe 200 from the bunch that stick around to become semi-regulars, and an unknown number of those ones become heavy users.
If my rough evaluation is correct, then if we can raise our retention level by a percent or two, then we can gain a couple hundred users each go. So in order to increase regular users, we would have to: increase the sheer number of registered users and/or figure out how to entice people who register an account to stay. The first bit can be done with a message like Anna Frodesiak suggests, the second bit, we might need to have some discussion on.
I think if new users immediately saw the wiki as a community as opposed to a bunch of people working independently at their computers, they would be more inclined to stay. I myself made an account in 2005, but I didn't start editing regularly till two years later when I saw that template:trivia was nominated for deletion, and I got involved with the discussion. Then I saw that it wasn't a bunch of articles, it was a bunch of people, and it became fun, like a game. --NickPenguin(contribs) 17:10, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
Note that that's 2% of users who stick around after making at least one edit. If you include the users who never made an edit, it's 0.68%. Mr.Z-man 17:31, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
The "community" aspect is something that I think we should highlight more often. The best part about doing so is that it really doesn't require much in the way of changes. Some technical changes (the first thing to come to mind would be Liquid Threads) would assist us handily in being more "social". Unfortunately, there's a rather ingrained field of thought here; including a rather extensive "institutional memory", if you will; against such sociability. The most common refrain can be paraphrased with something like: "If it doesn't directly affect the mainspace, then it's a waste of time and resources." So, historically, social networks revolving around Wikipeida has largely been pushed off-site. Even more unfortunately, it seems as though the more... shall we say, "hostile elements" to the goals of Wikipedia are the social groups which seem to prosper in such a manner. It's a shame really.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:19, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
With that in mind, what is really going on with the welcoming committee? The members list seem more than a little outdated, and the welcome page and the committee page have basically remained completely unchanged for several years. This makes me wonder if we are really doing a sufficient job in this area. It seems the nature of the wiki is doing a fine job bringing both readers and editors, but how do you think we can show people enough reason to stay? --NickPenguin(contribs) 04:27, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
No, of course we don't want any new editors on Wikipedia. It is fine as it is, with a steady decrease. What, you don't think that Wikipedia would be much better without people to maintain it,because I certainly do. Setting the sarcasm aside for a second, we need every editor we can get. For every thousand new ones, we might get five great ones that stick around, but even that makes it worth it. Now, if we were to stop biting the newcomers, we might get ten instead of the five - there, already ten more great editors than we already have. Definitely worth it. Ajraddatz (Talk) 03:46, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I have a life

I'd like to add my self to the discussion here, but I warn you, I am going to come off like a total bad guy here. Please read objectively though. I'm someone who has been editing since 2006, but I hardly edit at all. I have had peaks in where I edit some articles, mostly based upon some interests like movie awards or wrestling, but I don't think I've ever done "heavy editing" as described above. The main reason is because I have a life. After studying business, I'm currently in my 3rd year of a Biology B.S. and I also have a part-time job, a girlfriend, etc. I have hobbies, I play tennis, I take part in Tae Kwon Do training and I like having time to read books, watch movies, go to the beach and go to my fraternity's awesome parties. My point is that the people who visit Wikipedia aren't editing because they're afraid, they aren't editing because THEY DO NOT WANT TO SPEND THEIR TIME EDITING AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. Yeah, there are some of you out there who have dedicated a grand part of your lives to this website. Some of you go as far as to join the ArbCom and some have north of 100k edits. That's cool for you, but that is not "normal" to everyone else. No one wants to do this. The only people that actually want to do this might chime in now and then because they find Wikipedia interesting (like me), but no one wants to stay editing an encyclopedia. A lot of the editors here think this is the most important thing in the world. They write a lot of articles, get some FAs, run for adminship, fight about wether an article uses to much weasel words, etc. Most of you who comment here, in the Village Pump, you're probably in this category. I'm not knocking you, I like this place and maybe in a few years, I would be interested in adminship, but in no way will I ever live this like a lot of editors do. Sure, I take part in AFDs, I've read most of the guidelines, I consider myself a constructive editor, I like debating article content and I take my time to write a long paragraph in the Village Pump, but I won't ever dedicate whole hours to editing articles like people do here. Even Jimbo only has 1200 article edits. Wikipedia is just a website. Press X and see what happens. Feedback ☎ 05:09, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Looking at your contributions, you have over 500 edits since September. If the working definition of a 'heavy user' is more than 30 edits a month, then you're it. And the beauty of it is that you can lead a perfectly functional life, just like the rest of us, and still have a meaningful part in developing the wiki. Now, how do you feel the community would be able to attract more like minded individuals? --NickPenguin(contribs) 05:33, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
You could say the same thing about lots of things, yet they still manage to attract people. People spend hours and sometimes even actual money playing games like Farmville and Frontierville on Facebook - things that only their friends will see and that have absolutely no consequence anywhere. World of Warcraft has more than 12 million subscribers. The goal is not to get everyone to spend hours each day on Wikipedia (though that would be nice), but to get them to do something. Right now, for every 10,000 accounts created, maybe 70 will still be editing, even sporadically (>1 edit per month), 6 months after they create their account. Mr.Z-man 06:20, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
That's true; but I think the idea behind this comment is more to dispel the equivalent of the Anglo-American notion that every person on earth would gladly and jubilantly assimilate to the Anglo way of life, and most of them just don't know it yet. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 06:57, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
Thread-killer. ;)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:52, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Google

Unless I missed it, one point has not been made here which surely should be made here - Wikipedia frequently has a high Google search. Since Google is probably the only search engine most people use nowadays, surely this in itelf is going to help to attract new editors to the Wikipedia project. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:10, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Why I don't contribute

Hello, I'll add my $0.02 to this, and why I am incredibly reluctant to contribute anything to Wikipedia until some problems are resolved. Please have a look at my user page. People, eg new editors, or existing editors are very much off put by having their stuff deleted. Granted there needs to be guidelines to have good articles, but good articles have to start somewhere, and if Wikipedia's first response is to just delete them, then why even bother? I get that the stuff that I have written may be not worthy about being included in Wikipedia, but there has got to be a better solution than to just delete it; it needs to be mentored by the community. I will further add that my father who is a world renowned Adam Smith scholar made some edits to the Adam Smith article a few years ago that where reverted. Compound this with the nonsense surrounding the Old Man Murry debate. Stuff like that does not advertise well for new editors. This 'deletionist' movement has to be curtailed.
I regularly use Wikipedia to look up various computer and programming information, and while the articles are very much useful to me, they are not always referenced well. Many have signs on them that they could be improved. Could some of the people who are taking the time to put those signs up, take the time to improve the articles? Yet some people edit articles to the detriment of the article _why. _why has significance to the Ruby community, that most newcomers have trouble grasping at first, but notable none-the-less. In short, Wikipedia comes across to new and novice editors as being smug, elitist, cliquey, bureaucratic and generally unwelcoming: "How dare I put an article that doesn't meet all notability and significance requirements." I have also run into problems where I was told because I worked for an organization, I could not edit it. I have a fair few friends who are Veterinary Medical students, who are told flat out by their professors that Wikipedia is a waste of time. Furthermore, when a site like Old Man Murry is deleted, there are a group of Editors/Admins that refer to 'new' people as Sockpuppets or Meatpuppets.
These are real problems that I have witnessed, or experienced myself. I think there needs to a better moderation system for articles, a way to mentor new articles, Wikipedia needs to find a way to be more inclusive, and offer positive feedback to authors. Should new articles be sandboxed somehow until they are of sufficient quality? Recently, I wanted to add an article about Cardinal, a implementation of the Ruby Programming Language on the Parrot Virtual Machine. It was a start of an article, but I don't have a day to sit down, plan and write it out, so I just started it, but my start did not meet the minimum threshold for an article, so it was rejected. Are there some good examples of articles from which to model an initial attempt? I couldn't find any.
It takes work, and it takes time to develop a high quality article. Wiki's fosters collaboration, so promote that, and understand that improving articles is an incremental process that takes time. Perhaps what I had written really belonged in the Ruby_programming_language article? I don't know, it was just declined. My experience so far with Wikipedia has been, on balance, negative. While Wikipedia claims to be an encyclopedia that 'anyone can edit' that has not been my experience, and many others, and this is something that needs to be fixed. Hackbinary (talk) 12:11, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
That's part of the problem, but "don't do that" isn't really a solution. There are hundreds, if not thousands of new pages created every day, but the majority of the reviewing work is done by a small group, probably fewer than 20 people. Though you did identify what I've thought to be one of the key problems – we basically encourage new users to write new articles, which is a difficult task, then chide them when they (almost inevitably) screw it up. Rather than continuing to encourage people to write articles, I think a better solution would be to get people to contribute to existing ones. From my experience, collaboration really doesn't happen that often. It tends to occur more for well developed articles. For example, in the last 9 days of February, 190,000 users edited 428,000 articles. Of those articles, only 3,400 (0.8%) averaged more than one user per day editing it and only 118,000 (27%) had more than one user in the entire 9-day period. Having more articles is almost counterproductive in terms of fostering collaboration. We have so many more articles than we do active users, it's much easier to work alone than to find someone else to work with. Mr.Z-man 17:29, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
So therein lies the main problem. Wikipedia has the feel of being a bunch of individual editors working mostly independently from the rest. And appears that way because that's exactly how it is. It seems like part of the way to encourage more editors is to encourage more collaboration.
Along those lines, are wikiprojects an effective way to get users to collaborate? From my perspective it seems like most wiki projects start out with a big push, and then 6 to 8 months later they remain relatively inactive as the members move onto other tasks. Or, the project page stays up and a slow trickle of users "join", but with no centralized leadership, just a broadly stated mandate and perhaps a list of short term goals. --NickPenguin(contribs) 20:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
I'd like to highlight Mr.Z-man above: "we basically encourage new users to write new articles, which is a difficult task, then chide them when they (almost inevitably) screw it up." He's exactly correct, of course. More importantly though, this is a symptom of the larger "disease" which we are collectively suffering from. My question is: why in the world do we countenance any user "chiding" any other user, for anything? We're all going to screw something up here, eventually. It's a wiki though, so once the mistake(s) are identified, just fix the dang problem and move on! Quit trying to be "cool", and try actually accomplishing something.
Wikipedia certainly is made up of a bunch of individual editors working individually (except for the occasional, transitory, collaborations on popular/notorious articles). I'm often poking aroudn the Village Pump advocating for the development or improvement of our social resources, and this is the reason why. Wikipedia certainly doesn't need to turn into Facebook, or the like, but the attitude that "anything that makes us more like Facebook is bad for the Encyclopedia" is just as damaging, if not more so at this point, then the "turning Wikipedia into Social Media" bugaboo is.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:15, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
So if there was somehow an integrate of the social web into the wiki, in what ways do you think would be most helpful? I mean, taking into account the problems we have now (civility, quality standards and such) and what would most help the wiki in the long run, how could the social web improve the quality of both existing articles and all the new articles being created? Maybe we do need a facebook app, I think one of the main drawbacks of editing the wiki is that it's really a thankless job, there's no better way to get street cred among your peers than showing the quality of the work you do, and the improvements you make. Maybe attaching wiki usernames to social profiles will discourage stupid edits and encourage more positive contributions. It might even encourage competition among peers, or at least bring more awareness to what people do here. When I mention to people I edit wikipedia, some of them are shocked to actually meet someone who contributes regularly. --NickPenguin(contribs) 03:24, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
I can tell that you're already grasping what I'm trying to say. The only thing that I would adjust is that I don't think that we should directly connect to Facebook, or any other external site for that matter. Within Wikipedia, however, the social aspects could certainly be improved. Talk pages in general desperately need to be updated. I mean really, MediaWiki's default talk page system is straight out of the mid-90's! However, there's already a solution in the works for that issue: Liquid Threads. The only problem there is that, unless forced on us by the Foundation (which I'd be supportive of, but it ain't gonna happen...), the conservative bent of many Wikipedia editors means that Liquid Threads is likely to never be turned on, here. That's sort of a separate issue, though. Really, aside from the technical aspect, the largest issue I see is the disjointed, fragmented nature of discussions on Wikipedia. Granted, I'm used to webforums and message boards (I've been using them since the late 80's, during the dial-up BBS era... [remember Prodigy, or CompuServe? hehe]), so I'm partial to that sort of setup, but something should be done to reduce the "one talk page per regular page" syndrome. The system software itself works to create the "individual editors working mostly independently from the rest" feel.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:50, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
I see how liquidthreads will be a dramatic shift in how discussion occurs, it will be simpler to add to a discussion, and it won't be like editing a text file anymore. As far as ending discussion fragmentation I'm not seeing that bit. The nature of the wiki seems to resist centralized discussion, but as such it seems a variety of venues have sprung up (WP:CENT, the village pump to a lesser extent). It used to be that the only way to get attention on an issue was to make a big fuss at AfD. I'm not sure if liquid threads alone would cause a mindshift in how we discuss large issues.
Aside from that, don't discredit facebook integration out of the gate, it still might be useful, but we should focus on thing inside the house before we work on the rest of the neighborhood. --NickPenguin(contribs) 04:11, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
I have two suggestions that may help: 1. Articles should be rated/ranked, and the higher their score, the more they adhere to being a good quality article, eg NPOV, references, notability.
2.) New articles, stub articles would sit in a incubator, until they had reached sufficient quality to be put into Wikipedia. Articles could just sit in the incubator, and evolve into quality articles, or perish from inactivity. If an article hasn't been visited in a 2 to 3 years, it could be purged. Articles in the incubator may or may not be indexed by search engines. This would also allow (new) articles, writers and editors to be mentored, and facilitate incremental improvement directly. Hackbinary (talk) 14:24, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Far afield

This discussion has gone rather far afield. Nevertheless, there turned out to be one good link above — the one to http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Invitation_to_edit . It seems the project there is a positive, forward-looking endeavor, and I am inclined to take part in it as a fine response to the original poster in this thread — user:Anna Frodesiak, the editor with the spiffy new barnstar. Your sincerely, and moving on — GeorgeLouis (talk) 21:12, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Pay users to edit and you'll get millions more. Feedback ☎ 05:43, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
And article quality goes waaaay down (Aside from the budget problem). People edit for fun and satisfaction. Paying them makes it into work. Nobody outperforms at work (unless you want a promotion)

ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 08:39, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Editing paid and sponsored, say, by academic institutions would be a net plus. The problem of paid editing is COI editing for private companies or self-promotion, but fostering professional paid Wikipedians to take care of specific subject areas just like institutions pay librarians or curators would be a definite improvement. I would personally love to do that as a job. --Cyclopiatalk 12:43, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Article complexity level

In the strategy - March 2011 update it's concluded that the number of editors that stay around longer than a year is on the decline. One reason for this may be that the complexity of the articles is on the increase, such that the level of knowledge required in order to make a useful contribution is also on the increase. I also agree that the "deletism" is too often a shoot at sight, rather than a wait-and-see. Electron9 (talk) 04:18, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I sometimes roam Wikipedia on topics that I am good at to find something to improve, only to find that either it is well written or that I don't know much about it.--Netheril96 (talk) 15:14, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Why don't people contribute

I believe there's two, interrelated reasons. The first is that people, even now, don't think that they can edit Wikipedia; the fact people get their first edits reverted only works to confirm this belief, even though (AFAIK) it's not correct. The second reason is that they don't have the confidence to edit. (Sheesh, why else would someone turn down the chance to write something that will be read by thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people? Even under the current dysfunctional system it's far easier to get an article into Wikipedia than a letter to the editor published.) As Ohms law points out above, Wikipedia is the product of countless thousand individuals who have surprisingly little interaction with one another; & I'm sure the majority of newcomers, even after making the first few hurdles of acceptance, continue to lack confidence in making contributions -- which could be resolved if we were more social, & supported each other. (Then the fact that one unpleasant encounter with another contributor -- be the person an established editor, another newcomer, or a 24-karat loon that soon after is banned from Wikipedia -- can drive any contributor away.) And this small, quiet suspicion sometimes never goes away: many spectacular Wiki-burnouts happen because the person never was convinced their presence & contributions were properly valued. Outreach to new groups will only address the symptoms; fixing the problem means we need to fix the community. -- llywrch (talk) 05:09, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Why not try to invite more 'natural proofreaders' and other frustrated intelligent types?

It seems to me that one way we could encourage people to dip their toes into the water and get used to the idea of editing, without running the risk that their efforts will be immediately pounced on and removed, is to get the message out there that we could really do with people whose reaction to a spelling mistake or typo in anything they read is to grind their teeth and wish they could correct it. And if we could combine this with some way of 'targetting' (I hate that concept, but no other word will do!) those people who maybe don't "have a life". I'm thinking of people who either temporarily or permanently are housebound, or relatively immobile, or who just have a lifestyle which means that although they themselves are mentally active and physically able, they're just frustrated at not being able to 'do something more intelligent / useful'. Like, for example, full-time carers, young mums ... whatever. People who are tied to the house because of someone else's needs, but who can fit in some 'housekeeping' edits between responding to someone else's demands.

And having started like that - with nice, non-controversial, approved-of, fairly-easy stuff, they may well get hooked into doing maybe not a spelling correction, but re-phrasing a sentence that they felt 'read choppily'. And then continue to evolve. We could end up with some really good editors that way - no 'chucked in at the deep end' shock, and so on. Any ideas on how to attract that kind of person to contribute? Pesky (talk) 04:37, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Mini-ads on the main page? A little box saying "We need <spelling and typo correctors!> Can you help out?" and various different alternatives of the <insert phrase here> bit? Pesky (talk)
  • (add a suggestion)

Vandalism

  • As vandalism is an issue on Wikipedia, more then 10 reverts/min, at 135 edits/min is a lot.
  • As pending changes is a tool, only. It won't change much the vandalism.

I propose:

  • To change the Recent changes on the left Special:RecentChanges, in some subcategories.
    • Use the categories on Category:Main topic classifications. First category of an article will be used for it.
    • Use the same layout as on New pages Special:NewPages. Yellow highlights indicate pages that have not yet been checked by somebody with at least rollback rights.
    • The lists would be three days long.
  • Rationale:
    • I understand just science.
    • I don't understand well sports and media hypes.
    • Most of the recent changes would be systematically checked. Now, some get 50 visitors after a change, others keep their vandal edits for ages. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 21:55, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
This is kind of hard to follow, are you saying you want recent changes automatically broken up by category when viewing it? Beeblebrox (talk) 23:22, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Yup, at least after the first screening by the Recent Changes Patrol (so without the reverts). --Chris.urs-o (talk) 05:48, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
This would basically involve pending changes or something similar for every article, otherwise you won't know what's been "checked". I doubt that's a good idea; it would require that every single edit, must be clicked "OK". Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 06:28, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
No, recent changes patrol (RCP) does its reverts, there are the lists on the left (recent changes as it is now and subsections from Category:Main topic classifications after the RCP), the lists are only 2 days old, the lists only tells you if an user with rollback rights or more viewed the change, there is no ok as in pending changes, it only tells you that the link was used once. Or the links viewed don't appear anymore. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 13:39, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Being able to split RecentChanges by category would be useful, I would think - but harder and more resource intensive than it sounds, especially if you want to be able to aggregate the page's categories into broad classifications. The closest we have at the moment is the External Watchlist for Wikiprojects, eg here. Rd232 talk 08:10, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

What's wrong with Special:RelatedChanges? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:43, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Nothing, but it doesn't do anything like what we're talking about, whether you use the "linked from a page" or "linked to a page" approach. now if it worked on Categories... Rd232 talk 12:46, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
At the moment, watched pages get viewed 40 times after a change, and some vandalism still survives. I wish a list that shows only changes that were neither viewed (let's say at least 3 times by a rollbacker) nor reverted. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 05:43, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
It does work on categories. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:16, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Don't know how...--Chris.urs-o (talk) 05:43, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Architecture (or whatever) -- John of Reading (talk) 16:20, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

You are right that vandalism is a big issue on Wikipedia, but I am sure that I once heard on Radio Four that it typically only takes four minutes for vandalism on Wikipedia to get corrected. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:37, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

It's evil, a big time sink, voluntary work time should be better used, it hurts credibility on English Wikipedia and a lot remains after 4 minutes, User:WereSpielChequers (and his bot) would agree with me. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 05:36, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Permantly nuking age-old deleted articles

Not an immediate emergency, but it's time to start thinking about this after 10 years. I'm sure there are deleted articles from 2001. I propose erasing 10-year-old deleted articles from the database permanently. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 11:25, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Why? (not trolling, this is a serious question. What advantage would permanently removing these pages from the database have, besides saving diskspace) Yoenit (talk) 11:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) If you're proposing this for "Save Server Space" reasons, I think doing this at Commons maybe would be helpful, since articles take up only a few KBs, and most files take up MBs... :) Rehman 11:32, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
It is for saving diskspace. Like I said, not a pressing issue, but 20-30 years from now, it could be. Every year, we're asking for donations. Part of that pays for hosting stuff no-one will ever see. I posted the question here, but then it occurred to me that it is better as a separate topic; does anyone know how many KB/MB/GB of "hidden" junk there is in the database as of now? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 11:38, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
With 2TB drives going for under $100, I don't think this is a huge issue. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Hm. I s'pose; I'll be back in 50 years :P Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 11:59, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
If Kryder's Law hold true we will be getting petabyte drives for a penny by then, while wikipedia is 5-20 times it's current size. Yoenit (talk) 12:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Have to reiterate same question -- why? There do not seem to be any performance issues with keeping them. Various WMF chapters and projects take much more finances than server hard drives. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
DB server drives are just a minor fraction of the tech budget, most of that goes into servers, resources, and media storage. there is minimal cost for drives now a days. ΔT The only constant 13:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
PS if that ever becomes an issue the devs have stated that they hold the rights to purge all deleted material. Articles and media. ΔT The only constant 13:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I would like to also point out that this information is of interest to researchers studying WIkipedia behaviour and in the future may be of other types of research as well so I would not favour absolute deletion even if it can't be quickly or generally accessed. Dmcq (talk) 17:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I would answer to this proposal with the cliche "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" MBelgrano (talk) 18:33, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
What about all the personal and libellous information that's contained in these data? Do we really want to leave it lying around until someone hacks in and puts it all on Wikileaks?--Kotniski (talk) 18:39, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
WikiLeaks doesn't publish non-significant vandalism from publicly editable sources. In fact, I doubt anyone would bother, since it's all non-factual or trivial. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:06, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

In fact I'd prefer to see deletion of all the vandalistic edits that were immediately reverted. These don't just take up disk space, but consume bandwidth and server load, and cause user inconvenience, whenever we try to find anything in page histories.--Kotniski (talk) 18:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

-> m:The Wrong Version ;-) Also I don't see how they consume bandwidth and server load. Dmcq (talk) 12:51, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Well, when we browse histories, the server has to seek out all of these worthless edits and then send a list of them to us, then supply us with the diffs if we click on them to see whether they were anything significant... In fact I suppose the burden on the server isn't particularly significant considering how many ordinary readers it has to deliver articles to (it's the inconvenience to editors that's the main problem), and I don't really want the edits deleted, just have them excluded from page histories by default, so it's not really an on-topic suggestion.--Kotniski (talk) 13:22, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Some of the external links at the end of articles get warnings from anti-virus systems and some are outright blocked as dangerous. It would be good to have some type of bot that runs through external links and checks that they are not virus prone, etc. And deadlinks can be marked at the same time, etc. Overall, I think Wikipedia is becoming an external link magnet unless more protections are put in place, and Wiki-users should be more protected from lesss than healthy sites. This should eventually be proposed at WP:BAG but ideas for supporting it should probably be discussed first. I do not look here that often, so for now I will just leave it as something to ponder about. Cheers History2007 (talk) 13:39, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

There are a whole bunch of bots that check references and citations and external links for dead links and things like that, see User:Citation bot 1 for but one of them. I can't, offhand, name another but I know they exist and are quite active. If you want to introduce some additional functionality to one of them, the best thing to do is contact the bot operator and see about the feasibility of your proprosal; though I am quite sure that all of the functions you describe are already handled. --Jayron32 13:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, but do they check for malware? Anyway, I left a message for Citation bot. History2007 (talk) 16:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
The answer was: "Citation bot doesn't do this. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 20:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)" I do not think there is a bot that checks malware. History2007 (talk) 16:16, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Support This is a really good idea... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:27, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Request for a new list

If go you to the history of each article and press on "Page View Statistics" you will see the number of times an article has been viewed. Can we please have list of the ten or so most commonly viewed articles in Wikipedia somewhere? I know that awiki is the ninth most commonly viewed article but it would be nice to know the eight articles which were viewed even more frequently. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

http://www.wikiroll.com/popularity_en.cgi?lang=en. Yoenit (talk) 08:01, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


Thank you for that - that is the type of thing which I had been looking for. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 16:11, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

HTML/Unicode symbols

As I see it, the HTML code "&ndash;" and similar, including "&nbsp;" is confusing technobabble to new/inexperienced users, given it's not at all obvious what that comes out as when the page is saved. I am aware that AWB already changes this to – (Unicode) but it would be preferable to go further. The output to the reader, in the form of the source HTML for a page, already replaces the HTML with Unicode To this end, I believe we should aid users in changing these across, preferably by converting them during the saving of a page. Of course, we are usually opposed to changing what people actually wrote during saves, but there is no difference to how they come out. I welcome any suggestions and/or comments on the feasibility of my initial suggestion. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:37, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

WikEd can simply rectify that problem.--Netheril96 (talk) 07:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
  • I strongly oppose this. Hyphens, emdashes and endashes look almost identical in a fixed-width font (- – —), and I'd guess well over 95% of Wikipedia editors use a fixed-width font as their edit-window font. Replacing them with unicode would make things more confusing, not less. – iridescent 20:26, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Only admins should be allowed to close discussions on WP:AN

It seems like nobody cares so I withdraw the proposal -- Hpvpp (talk) 23:00, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Issues are raised at WP:AN for the attention of admins. Non-admins removing or closing discussions defeats the purpose of having WP:AN in the first place. Ergo, only admins should have the capability of removing or closing discussions on WP:AN. -- Hpvpp (talk) 06:22, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Eh, if it should be closed it should be closed, doesn't matter who does it. If it shouldn't be, nothing stops anyone from reopening it. Prodego talk 06:29, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
(e/c)If a non-admin closes a discussion inappropriately another editor or admin can simply re-open it. Admins are not supposed to be above other editors, so if the admin tool-set is not required to carry out the consensus once the discussion is closed, why should closing it be restricted to admins? Monty845 06:32, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
I have to agree with Prodego and Monty here. Plenty of knowledgeable non-admins watch WP:AN, no reason they can't save the admins some time by closing discussions that need closing. 28bytes (talk) 06:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

The idea is to prevent foul play. -- Hpvpp (talk) 07:20, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

It's a highly watched page. Any ill-advised closures can be undone and dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Killiondude (talk) 07:22, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Killiondude. I haven't seen any great problems with things slipping by under the radar there. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:47, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
I agree with the above that anyone should be allowed to close AN (and AN/I) discussions, and each discussion can be dealt with on an individual basis. I appreciate that this is a good-faith suggestion, but I've seen some very good rationales for closing discussions given by non-admins, and I'd rather not lose that input. Acalamari 20:58, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia editor as a source

When myriad published sources are wrong the Wikipedia editor should include himself as a source somehow. An example is the subject of government finance. It is obvouus common sense that the government can coin money and therefore does not need taxes, yet where are the books which say so? Important a posteriori facts should not be excluded just becasue there are no books on the subject. Maybe there are no books on a subject because of censorship. Even Fox New’s “tea party” movement appears to be censoring the merits of fiat money out of their discourse. In a case when an obvious truth is not in the sources available, there should be some way for the Wikipedia editor to include the fact without waiting for it to be published elsewhere. The editor could write an essay which explains the fact and use that essay as a source, and the article could keep that source for at least until an independent source becomes available. In other words, "all knowledge" includes common sense and experience. --Rhbsihvi (talk) 20:53, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth is a good essay on this subject. 28bytes (talk) 21:17, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
WP:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue is the relevant advice on obvious, well known facts. Krashlandon (talk) 22:59, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
That's true, but I think I must point out that the OP's claim that "It is obvouus common sense that the government can coin money and therefore does not need taxes" is highly likely to encounter some challenges from editors who disagree, so, not "obvious common sense". HiLo48 (talk) 23:42, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Exactly. If the government coins money, they effectively reduce the value of the money and they haven't accomplished anything but producing inflation. The government doesn't even use coins/bills. They do everything on debt, like bonds and bank transactions. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 01:19, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
Ah, I see what he means. Though, I'm sure there are a few sources on that point. Bad example? Krashlandon (talk) 02:30, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
In contentious topics such as climate change it is common to meet demands for justification of even the most basic facts. It wouldn't faze me a bit if someone demanded references for the color of the sky. Eventually you learn that it's easier just to give the damn references than to argue about it. See also here. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 04:42, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Temporary adminship for Coaching

How about when a experienced user applies for Admin Coaching, and a bureaucrat accepts, the applicant is temporarily an sysop, but the applicant asks the coach before doing any action. If would be good to learn the special pages and how to use them. It would be just temporary and the coach would have to accept any action that the applicant does. ~~EBE123~~ talkContribs 12:11, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that there are two separate parts to admin-ship, first does the community trust the candidate to use the tools in good faith and with an appropriate temperament; and second does the candidate have sufficient experience and understanding of practices and policy to use the mop properly. I think your idea makes great sense in regards to the second part, but as applied to the first, you would have us give a user the admin tool-set before the community has a chance to decide if they are trust worthy. It also runs the risk that a competent admin makes it all the way through the mentoring, only to have the community reject them on trust grounds. I would propose instead that RFA candidates who would have passed if trust was the only concern, but who failed due to concerns about their knowledge of policy, be made probationary admins. They could then be followed closely and either mentored or admonished to be sure they fully research and understand a policy before taking related admin actions. A much lower standard then what applies to current admin removal could then apply to probationary admins who don't seem to be clueful when using the tools. Monty845 17:27, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
Ebe123, if you'd like to be the first participant in any such program, I'd oppose it. But I'd oppose it anyway, because admin coaching is complete unofficial and this proposal would formalize it with some sort of bureaucratic policy that gets in the way of how each coach, well, coaches. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:17, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't see this before. It is that at the test wiki, there is a list of places to test them out so, I am asking to close this proposal. ~~EBE123~~ talkContribs 19:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

'Introduction to _' or 'Beginners _' pages.

For many people, from university students to consumers, Wikipedia is both the first port of call and the last word on any topic they wish to research. But Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, is often written only as the latter - it has to be right, not necessarily easy to learn.

What I propose is a sister institution to Wikipedia dedicated to being a teaching guide, helping people understand just what the Wikipedia article on a given topic is saying. So, in the pages for quantum physics or DDR SDRAM there could be a link to a simpler page written more like an introductory lecture as opposed to a course summary.

Jezaraknid (talk) 05:46, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

We have a few of those, for example: Introduction to quantum mechanics. If you think another topic should have such a introduction page feel free to write it. Yoenit (talk) 15:32, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
I wonder if perhaps it would help if more people were aware of {{wikiversity}}? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:08, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to rename 'confirmed' usergroup to 'preconfirmed'

FYI, this is proposed here. Cenarium (talk) 21:54, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Patient information boxes

At the recent Wikimedia UK/Cancer Research UK collaboration, the question of patient information links on disease-related articles came up. Charities, governments and health providers have a motivation, almost a duty, to ensure that reliable, high-quality information is provided to people who have or believe they may have a particular disease. It is in Wikipedia's interest that people who have diseases take what they read on Wikipedia with a grain of salt. Many people use Wikipedia as a source of medical information: someone told me that a survey of doctors in the U.S. found that 50% of them have used Wikipedia in diagnosis. In this week's Signpost In The News section, I wrote up a story of a man in Britain who has diagnosed himself on Wikipedia. There have been other stories similar to this.

As it currently stands, there is a potential WP:COI issue if representatives from charities, patient advocacy groups and health information providers like the National Health Service start adding links to the External Links section of articles about diseases, medical treatments and so on. The other issue is that patient information links take Wikipedia slightly away from the encyclopedic mission of the project, and potentially some might feel there are WP:NOT-concerns. For instance, we don't link to "cult deprogrammers" as, I dunno, "Cult information" links from articles like Church of Scientology. The difference here is that whether we like it or not, people are using Wikipedia as a source of medical information. It is in our interest to ensure that people reading Wikipedia get reliable medicine information (just imagine the furor around the inevitable "Wikipedia's dodgy medical information leads to toddler death!"). And Wikipedia is already providing some links to patient information pages, but without overall co-ordination.

The other issue is that there is an inherent POV in linking to patient advocacy, non-profit and governmental websites about a particular disease: they all advocate treating that disease. They are inherently anti-disease and pro-treatment-of-disease. I can't quite think of why anyone in their right mind could be, say, fervently in favour of arthritis. There are certainly people who are pro-suicide, and there are a few things that are widely considered diseases for which there are vocal communities who disagree with the assessment of it as a medical condition: there are people who are "pro-anorexia", people who think autism and other autistic-spectrum disorders like Asperger's Syndrome are not medical conditions but are just variations from that which is considered "neurotypical" by society, and there are people who think being overweight or obese is not as medically dangerous as mainstream medicine makes out. And then there is the rabbit hole of alternative medicine. But, there is already an argument over this: firstly, these are borderline cases. Really, there is not a significant or notable body of people out there who are pro-cardiac-arrests or pro-cancer. Secondly, we already have policies to deal with this: WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE and for external links, WP:ELNO.

The proposal then is roughly like this: for medical articles, we have a template of some description that includes 'deep' links directly to patient information pages from reputable, recognized governmental, non-profit, patient advocacy and charitable sector institutions. Preferably, these sources would match the rules given by WP:RS, WP:EL or both. Examples of such groups include the National Health Service, the National Institutes of Health, the Centres for Disease Control, the Red Cross, the American Lung Association, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the British Dental Association, Scope (charity) etc. Further examples of the sort of bodies we might link to can be found in Category:Medical associations and Category:Health charities.


I've mocked up an example of what one would look like using lung cancer as an example. It's on the right (it's being transcluded from my user space: see User:Tom Morris/Disease Information. I'm not a very good template designer, so obviously, other suggestions and designs are welcome.

I guess the questions are:

  1. Does this seem like a good idea?
  2. Does this fit in with the project scope of Wikipedia?
  3. Are there possible WP:COI or WP:NPOV problems here?
    • To avoid the appearance of impropriety, we could test this first with topics other than cancer.
  4. Would specific guidelines be needed, perhaps medical-specific external links guidelines?
  5. How could we co-ordinate this? Perhaps through something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine?

Feedback welcome. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:24, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying this is not a good idea, but just pre-supposing one likely objection (and playing a bit of a devil's advocate), while your suggestion that "no one is 'pro-cancer'" may be true, that is not going to be the issue. The issue is there ARE people who are 'anti-cancer-treatment' for some treatments; if Wikipedia appears to endorse one view of treatment of cancer over others, it could be said to be taking a non-neutral point of view. Personally, I disagree on the grounds that there are clearly treatments that work, and those that don't, and Wikipedia should ideally favor coverage of those that work regardless of people's opinion of them. However, my biggest issue is that Wikipedia not give the appearance of attempting to be a medical resource. We have no control over what purposes an end user may do with information at Wikipedia. Wikipedia should strive to be as accurate and reliable as it possibly can be, and this applies to all articles, not just medical articles. We bear no special responsibility in getting a medical article "right" over that of any other article. WP:BEANS may be the most appropriate guide here; we cannot presuppose every way someone may use Wikipedia to screw themselves up, and we may actually do unforseen harm if we attempt to "head-off" every single such misuse of information. --Jayron32 12:43, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
I think that it seems a pretty sensible idea. Worth making sure that we include links relating to services etc. in other English-speaking countries / areas as well as the USA and UK. Pesky (talk) 12:48, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  1. We already link to the NIH (medlineplus) for all disease articles within the disease box in the lead. There is a proposal in place to also link to the NIH for article on medications in the drugbox [2] and to drugs.com which contains FDA info and info from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists
  2. I support linking to information from major governmental and scientific bodies and we frequently do in the external links section. In general linking to charities and patient advocacy groups though is not a good idea. Too many of them are of a commercial nature. There are also false patient groups created by the pharmaceutical industry as a means of promoting a disease.
  3. Do we need a special box in the external links section to display this? While I guess it would be an option. But we already have all this information so I am not sure it is really needed. Would wish to see some example of this before I decide if I would support it or not.
  4. BTW if you look at the EL at obesity the first one is patient info from the WHO [3] if you look at lung cancer you see pages from the American Cancer Society [4] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:49, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose as spambait and unfairly anointing "the usual" websites rather than selectively choosing the best for any given situation. Many such links fail WP:ELNO for duplicating article content or each other. The regular external links section, with the regular guidelines, is good enough. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm against this as a template: I'm not against the links themselves, if relevant to the article and from trusted sources. However, putting them in a special box gives them some special status they don;t deserve. I disagree with WhatamIdoing above; these resources are likely to provide information (in the form of more links, contact details, etc.) that fits fine with the spirit and indeed mostly to the letter of WP:EL. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:04, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
    • It gives as much as it takes away: yes it gives them a special status, but it also hides them away in a collapsed box. —Tom Morris (talk) 16:22, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
      • I am generally against putting information in a collapse boxes and our current arrangement gives these links sufficient prominence. But I guess the next question is how can we best get the experts who are interested from Cancer Research UK involved with improving medical content on Wikipedia?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
      • While you propose for the box to be collapsed by default, I don't expect it to stay that way, because WP:ACCESS gently discourages most collapsed boxes as being unusable for some readers with disabilities. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Some years ago, I made a plea for a similar point - that medical articles should have a disclaimer, to the effect of "Do not take this as a substitute for advice from a medical professional". It was pointed out to me at the time that there are already disclaimers (including a medical disclaimer) in Wikipedia. However, that said, I would be all in favour of making these disclaimers more visible. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 16:16, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose, WP:NOT seems the driving force here. We are here to serve every reader, not just for patients looking for information about their disease. There are already several ways by which this information can be linked. JFW | T@lk 22:57, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose 1) Wikipedia is not and should not be in the business of vetting good sources of medical information from bad ones. 2) What do we do when homeopathic advocates say they want in, or non-Western medicine sites? ArbCom restrictions aside, I don't want every medicine page to become a battleground. 3) This already exists in the See Also section and/or the Sources section at the bottom of the page. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:32, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WhatAmIDoing. I'm actually uncomfortable with many of the external links we already have in disease/drug info boxes. These templates encourage a fill-in-the-blanks approach that works against the thinking that is required to see if the link really does meet our WP:EL policy. Some charities and government bodies do have excellent web sites that are a worthy resource to link to, but we need to consider each on its own merits per article. I think the box would encourage the addition of links merely for completeness, and different editors would pile on links for every English-speaking country and US state. Colin°Talk 07:44, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
    • I wasn't intending to increase the number of links with this but rather cluster them together by type and make them easier to find. I'm not trying to use this to make it so links avoid scrutiny and none of this would change the applicability of existing WP:EL guidelines. —Tom Morris (talk) 07:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Wikipedia is prone to misinformation. Let's not make it a lethal fault. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 09:56, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Could you elaborate? Why would standardising the way we link to a certain class of pretty reliable information providers increase the likelihood of spreading misinformation and potentially lethal consequences? Indeed, providing a way of finding accurate, locally-relevant information for patients is the point of the proposal. —Tom Morris (talk) 10:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • On the whole I support helping patients to find reliable information, but Sven Manguard makes a compelling point about homeopathy. And I can imagine the boxes becoming a battleground for more contentious medical issues like abortion or some mental health problems: we'd need clear guidelines. Is there a big advantage over leaving things in the external links section?--Physics is all gnomes (talk) 21:52, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose, Wikipedia is not Boots. Stifle (talk) 10:00, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to make userrights self-sufficient

In view of the fact that adminship is not presently a social requirement for higher privileges such as CheckUser, Oversight, and Bureaucrat, it is proposed that these user groups be made self-sufficient by adding certain rights (currently found in the administrative toolset) to each bundle.

This discussion is intended to focus on addressing the technical limitations present in the current makeup of user groups/rights. The related question - whether the administrator privilege should be a social requirement for such privileges - is being discussed elsewhere, and carrying out this technical change would not preclude the ability of the community to implement such a requirement if consensus were found for the same.

Discussion initiated by –xenotalk 15:13, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

This proposal is being considered at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Make userrights self-sufficient. –xenotalk 15:38, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for Highlight

{{VFHnominee}}

I want this page to be official.

I have the VFH page suggested code (With 1 example nomination!)

VFH Draft

Welcome to the Wikipedia Votes for Highlight page. To nominate an article, type the name into the box below and follow the directions.
  • Vote for an article you find excellent.
  • Previous featured articles can be found in the VFH archive.
  • Voters: be constructive with criticism. Writers: Be open to criticism.
  • Articles from all namespaces (including Main, Wikipedia, Category, Book, etc.) are eligible for VFH.
  • If a nomination disappears from this page, it is likely to be found in either the recently featured or recently failed nomination lists.
  • If your article doesn't get featured, don't despair. It may be eligible to be a Good Article so long as it meets certain criteria.
Shortcut






Nominate

Self-nomination regulation: self-nominated articles (i.e. you write an article and then decide to nominate it yourself) must receive at least one critique via Peer Review before nomination. Articles nominated by people other than the author can still be nominated at any time and require no review.

VFH is not a discussion page. If you'd like constructive criticism for your article, please submit it to Wikipedia:Peer Review.

All nominated articles

Wikipedia:Votes for Highlight

Score: 1 vote for highlight

Support. A totally awesome Wikipedia page James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 17:12, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Talk About Proposal

NOTE: This is a serious proposal, not a April Fools Joke

I would like to use the new VFH soon. James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 17:12, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

What is this? a proposal to replace wp:Featured Article Candidates? or is it supposed to run parallel to our current grading scheme? Yoenit (talk) 17:31, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
It is supposed to run parallel to that James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 17:32, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
What would be criteria for a "highlighted page"? Yoenit (talk) 17:36, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
Currently the same as for a featured or good article (It also gets marked as such) but that could change. James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 17:39, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
If they use the same criteria, why would need an additional process? Is something wrong with FAC/GAN? What are the advantages of this proposal? Yoenit (talk) 17:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
The Advantages of WP:VFH over WP:FAC and WP:GAN

1: No more submitting articles to WP:FAC and then finding out it's only a good article and then being forced to submit it to WP:GAN!
2: Support for all namespaces (WP:FAC and WP:GAN only support the main namespace)
3: Awesome header
4: No more confusion with the two pages!
5: Score meter that is required to be updated for each vote. (i.e. +1 for Support, -1 for Oppose)
6: Archives
7: Much better name
8: An overview. WP:FAC and WP:GAN do not have one.
9: Ergonomic look
10: You can brag about WP:VFH successful nominations, unlike WP:FAC and WP:GAN
James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 18:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

So is this basically a "Like" feature, i.e., someone can "Like" a page on Facebook? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) "Awesome header" does not convince me this is a serious proposal. Your other advantages are just as bad. The only one worth commenting on is number 2: Images, Lists, Sounds, Portals, Topics can already be featured, and featured content in the other namespaces (talk, wikipedia, cat, user) makes no sense. I also get the feeling you are suggesting a form of popularity contest, which is a very bad idea. Yoenit (talk) 18:51, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose FAC and GAN work fine, the last thing we need is a third/fourth (if you count A-class) review process. --Jayron32 19:02, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Comment I thought there was no A-Class nomination thing. Well, WP:VFH does A-Class too!
  • Support This is a human-usable version and is also a very powerful tool as a template is required to be put on the article (It's part of VFH process!) automatically categorizing the page under VFH nominees James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 02:15, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose To be blunt, it's a useless and arbitrary system, which from my perspective, exists only to allow people to inflate their own egos. I see plenty of potential for antagonistic behavior and chaos, and no potential for this to be a constructive addition to Wikipedia. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:14, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Comment Score is a poor indicator to if the article will pass VFH. The actual FA/GA/A-Class guidelines and the discussion have more weight. --unsigned comment by James1011R
      • I don't care what metrics you use, what I object to is that you're seeking to create what is ultimately a poorly defined process with an unclear scope and no benefit to the project. FA/A/GA/FP/FT/FL/FS/FPortal all recognize or 'highlight' the best content. They have much, much better defined metrics and a clearer sense of purpose. I see this as becoming another "Valued Pictures" type process, i.e. where second rate content is given a near useless stamp of approval by a group of editors that favor idealism over experience, practicality, or quality. And that's the best case scenario. The more likely scenario is that it'd get hijacked by an egotistical and insular group of people interested only in scratching their own and each others' backs. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:49, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
        • Important There are rules for VFH, just they haven't been developed yet. It is possible to vote to delete nominations made in bad faith, to increase someone's ego, or made as jokes. VFH is an extremely powerful tool and should only be used on truly excellent articles (i.e. ones that exceed the Featured article criteria [Ones that meet the criteria are WP:FAC content]). James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 21:04, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
          • Do you understand why I believe that your unsupported assertions that something "should" be this way represent wishful thinking? Do you understand the difference between "should" and "will"?
            Let me tell you about the dancing bears problem:[5] Imagine that you run a business, and you tell all of your users, "You may get e-mail promising you a video of dancing bears. DO NOT click on the link. DO NOT watch the video. It's a computer virus and will destroy your computer." Do you know what happens if the users receive this e-mail? Nearly all of them click the link. Nearly all of them care more about the possibility of fifteen seconds' fun than about protecting their computer. You told them they should absolutely not click on this link, but the users do not do what they should. The users do what they can. If you're in charge of the IT infrastructure, your only effective protection is to design a computer system that makes it impossible, or at least extremely difficult, for the users to click on the dangerous link.
            You have designed a process that as designed has people doing nothing more than voting for articles, with the implied promise that if enough people vote for the article, they'll be rewarded with a main page link. You can keep saying "Only vote for articles that are really excellent" until you're blue in the face, but you have designed a system that cannot stop someone from voting for an obviously lousy article as a joke, or because it's about the person's favorite musician, or any number of other stupid reasons -- or, indeed, because the person has absolutely no clue what is considered an excellent article -- and that rewards them for voting for these articles. Maybe they "should" vote only for really excellent articles, but they will vote for whatever they like. This is a Bad Idea. No matter what it "should" do, it will reward subject-matter popularity rather than excellence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:31, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I think VFH will appeal to different users than FAC or GAN. It could work out the way it should. And this page has been nominated for VFH. James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 23:03, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict) Very well put WhatamIdoing. I suppose one other thing that needs mentioning is that this goes against the grain of what a good encyclopedia is. A good encyclopedia is a comprehensive, high quality reference work. Those are the three core traits: It covers all or almost all things notable, it is of a sufficient quality as to be useful (this also means it's factual and neutral), and it it is composed of freestanding units of information (articles) that can be accessed individually. No where in that definition does popularity, political correctness and acceptability, degree of mainstream versus esoteric, or comparative value come into play. The featured assessments all follow this definition. If you look at them, they check for quality, neutrality, reliability, and their ability to stand alone. They strive to use objective, rather than subjective, means of assessment. Your system relies on subjective assessment, the "I want this" factor. Well there is a heck of a lot of things I want and a heck of a lot of things I don't want, but that does not factor into my assessments of featured content. I personally hate Christmas carols (worked service sector, heard them for four months straight, it got nauseating,) but that wasn't grounds for me to oppose them when some appeared as Featured Sounds candidates. Wikipedia cannot accept subjective rating systems, it would make rating worthless, and it would destroy the credibility of the project. Sorry, I know this seems like I'm going on a rampage here. I have nothing against you personally, I am just making these comments because I believe it's what's best for the project. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
      • One more thing: For the future, it's not a good submit an idea until it's fleshed out. You're asking us to approve something that we know at most a third of the details of. Things can be changed once the idea is submitted (as requested by the community) but going in with a proposal that isn't finished makes people nervous about supporting it. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:16, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
        • I would have stated the rules, but I believe that would get me blocked for taking a proposal too far. The Feature queue, Recent features, and Recently failed are of no purpose until VFH is actually being used. The awards need a great image designer to create. I have the overview, nominations, archive, and VFH nomination template (why isn't it here yet?) done. James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 23:28, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • The suggested interface/header looks atrocious. The thought process behind it doesn't seem any better. Killiondude (talk) 03:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • The listed benefits are, frankly, nonsense. How can non-articles meet the same criteria as FAs or GAs which are inherently designed for articles? A score meter sounds like a terrible idea. An ergonomic look? The comments put forth by the proposer seem to be contradictory. In the initial proposal he states "VFH is not a discussion page", but in response to a comment by Sven states "guidelines and the discussion have more weight" - which is it? Is there no discussion, or does the discussion have more weight than the votes? Mr.Z-man 17:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Reply "VFH is not a discussion page" means don't submit your articles there to get discussion on them. Use Peer Review instead for that. If the discussion is bad (e.g. the article is POV) but the score is good the VFH will most likely fail (This will most likely be listed in rules). It is the good article version of AfD. If someone submits a Bad Article to VFH it would fail and the VFH be deleted even if the score was like "100 miles" (VFH is not a popularity contest!). Scores like "-50 Articles in Wikipedia" will fail even if the article is excellent according to the featured article guidelines, it just isn't reviewed good by Wikipedians. James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 22:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • This sounds inferior to / duplicative of FAC+GAN, with no significant countervailing benefits. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:15, 3 April 2011 (UTC)


I think we can close this discussion as {{rejected}}. James currently has four (4) undeleted mainspace edits. Perhaps when he is more experienced, he'll understand the unanimous objections more clearly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Oppose. The scope and purpose are not clearly defined; it appears to be redundant to existing processes. I do not see how benefits of an additional parallel layer to GA/A/FA will outweigh the problems with additional bureaucracy. Our FACs and GANs work "well" enough, so I am yet to understand how this proposal improves the existing system? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:39, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Comment The purpose is to highlight excellent articles (will be added to summary if this goes through). This may allow a quicker way of highlighting excellent articles if it's used enough. (Support and Oppose are clearly defined). Can I use FAC and GAN as VFH if this fails? James1011R (talk, contribs, log, boxes) 02:06, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose if this was an april's fool joke, give it a rest, that was a week ago. But if it's really serious, let me point the flaws. First, it is redundant, we already have systems to promote good or featured articles. The best way to avoid (1) is to nominate for GA first, and then for featured (if there are no concerns, you may try higher, but if the article still needs improvement, GAN is better to realize it or decline if the work is too large). (2) it says that it would support all namespaces, but which would be the "talk page featured criteria"? (3) An awesome header is not a reason to use a new system, we can always improve the headers of FAC or GAN if needed. (4) See "1" (5) Nominations are based or arguments, not votes, and it's for the best that it is that way. The facebook-styled "I like it"/"I don't like it" would not be productive here, as we promote or demote articles, not the subjects of articles. (6) and (8): already used at the other projects. (7) and (9): see "3" Cambalachero (talk) 21:17, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Let's get rid of hangon template

I think we should get rid of the hangon tag, because it appears to confuse new editors while being redundant. It is not common for new editors to manage to use it properly, despite plentiful instructions: hangon is often placed in the wrong place (cosmetic problem only), used to replace speedy deletion template, placed on the article's talk page, the creating/deleting user's talk page or anywhere else. Quite often no reasoning is given, so some new editors seem to think (again, despite instructions) that placing the tag is enough to prevent deletion, while in fact, hangon in itself does nothing.

The contesting process could be simplified by losing the hangon template. To contest the speedy deletion, the user would be directed by the speedy deletion templates to make their arguments on the article's talk page, removing the extra step of hangon in between. This would also make the actual essence of all the templates clear to the user: one really has to explain why the article should stay. Zakhalesh (talk) 18:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that it's quite likely the reviewing admin won't read the talk page if there's no tag to remind them to check there. Many of them don't check the page history despite the fact they're supposed to. Hut 8.5 18:59, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm not a template specialist, but the hangon template displays a special text if no reasoning has been given. I assume the same behaviour could be incorporated into DB templates - I could show big flashing text (figuratively speaking) if the talk page is edited. Zakhalesh (talk) 19:06, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
Templates such as {{db-a7}} currently advise you to edit the article to add the {{hangon}}, and then to edit the talk page. They could instead advise you to use the one-step process: {{hangon|The plea goes here}}. Would that be simpler for the new editors to understand? -- John of Reading (talk) 20:21, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
I second John of Reading's suggestion. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:36, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
I proposed this a while back on wt:CSD, but never went anywhere with it. Technically the hangon tag is completely redundant. You can make a link in the speedy template "click here to contest this speedy", which allows the user to create a new section on the talkpage/subpage. The template can then detect the existence of a talkpage/subpage and show up as contested. I even had the template transcluding the reason the new user provided, but there was some resistance to that. You can find the sandbox version here. Yoenit (talk) 22:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
Hangon tag already has that functionality. I was surprised when I saw that for the first time. Zakhalesh (talk) 04:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Support with comment I suggest getting rid of the hang on template altogether, it does not really seem to serve much of a purpose, and revising the speedy deletion tag wording, and related policy wording, to stipulate that no one should remove the speedy tag except the reviewing admin. This would prevent article authors circumventing CSD policy by logging out of their account or using a different account to remove CSD tags and go unchecked by User:SDPatrolBot. Pol430 talk to me 23:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Wow, serendipity. Yoeneit, what do you mean it never went anywhere? I posted to your talk page a few days ago that we should hammer this out and present it to the community. You never responded and archived the post. It just happens I was working on it tonight and came across this discussion by pure luck, noting the post at the help desk. Since you reverted my last edit to the template but we discussed on my talk page the problem with making the text transclude in the db=templates themselves, I have been working on the next implementation at {{Db-meta/sandbox2}}. For everyone, this was discussed at WT:CSD, here, and there's some discussion at my talk page about the implementation, here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Is there any actual opposition? Some specific issues that haven't been addressed already? Zakhalesh (talk) 17:38, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

We can't just stop using hang on cold. We need a replacement for its functionality--there has to be a process in place to take up where hang on leaves off. That is exactly what Yoenit suggested a few weeks ago, was worked on, and I have been tailoring for the past few days with {{Db-meta/sandbox2}}. One kink left is that I need to get it to include {{Hang on/notice3}} with a parser function when the talk page exists (when there is no talk page it displays {{Hang on/notice2}}, which is a folded in feature from Hangon, tweaked for the new way the process will work. I have a request out to a template guru to help with that (though writing that here might just get me that help, nudge, nudge, wink wink). Also, this is a very small group to reach consensus on such a wide change affecting a process so many regulars and admins are involved in. If I were just bold and replaced db-meta with the sandbox, I'd guess I'd be reverted very quickly if more formal discussion had not taken place (the community has become much more conservative about change, and reverts just because a large discussion hasn't taken place are now common [as opposed to actually analyzing whether a change is good or bad]). I had planned on writing up a more formal proposal, explaining exactly what the new template does, why hangon is unecessary, how this is better, and so on. Maybe a will be bold once the last tweaks are in place—I think it's much, much better than using hangon—but this may ultimately require a strawpoll.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:24, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Well I boldly added it to db-meta but for some reason the notices that inform users to edit the talk page it it doesn't exist, or for admins to check the talk page if it does exist, did not work when it was passed through to the db templates. I have no idea why. It works flawlessly in testing.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:48, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I didn't mean that we should rush for it. When the new DB works, does anyone have any concerns why they'd rather use hangon? Zakhalesh (talk) 04:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Could I request some clarification? 1) Is SDPatrol's proposal to not allow anyone to remove the CSD tag a part of this proposal to remove of hangon? 2) What exactly is going in its place--a link on the speedy template that automatically opens up a discussion on the talk page? If so, does the db template itself get reconfigured so that an admin sees that something has been added to talk? If not, something else? 3) Are the notification templates being similarly changed (the ones we put on the user page of the creating editor)?

1) I won't comment much on this one, and it's not a part of my original proposal. At least in some cases the author/other non-admin must be allowed to remove DB-templates. For example, the placer of the template should be able to remove it, and G7 (author requests deletion) templates should be removable by the author. I don't think we'd lose anything for keeping the SDPatrol system like it currently is. 2) What I thought about was that DB-templates would, instead of recommending the use of hangon, direct the user to the article's talk page, and if the article has a talk page, it would in addition remind the administrator to check the talk page before making a decision. 3) If this change is agreed on, the notifications must be changed, naturally. Zakhalesh (talk) 16:01, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Woah, it's been done. Thank you, everyone who has been working on it! Zakhalesh (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
I wholly support this improved system and like using it. I have made two small suggestions for improvement on the template's talk page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:33, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Edit test cleanup bot

I have proposed writing a bot (discussion here) that would clean up editing tests in the mainspace. This bot would undo edit tests and "accidental mouse click" edits where the following strings (and similar) are added to articles:

  • '''Bold text'''
  • ''Italic text''
  • <big>Big text</big>
  • [[Link title]]
  • [http://www.example.com link title]
  • == Headline text ==
  • [[File:Example.jpg]]

Here is a recent example of such an edit. Previously there was an edit filter that would catch these, but currently the cleanup has to be done manually. I've cleaned up a few hundred of these manually, but I think a bot would be better suited to this work. The Bot Approvals Group has suggested coming here to gain a consensus for such a bot, so here I am!

There are two types of cleanup the bot can do: simple cases (where the entire edit is editing tests, like the example above) and complex cases (where the edit test is part of an edit that includes other changes, like this attempted edit). I believe (I hope, at least) the "simple case" cleanup task will be non-controversial, but there are some things to consider regarding the "complex case" cleanup, so I will outline the "complex case" options separately below. 28bytes (talk) 17:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

"Simple case" cleanup

Any edits that consist entirely of edit tests or accidental mouse clicks (as described above), the bot will undo.

Support

Oppose

"Complex case" cleanup

There are a number of ways "mixed" edits can be handled:

Option 1 - Partial undo
Remove the edit test part of the edit, but leave the rest of the edit alone. For example, in this edit, the insertion of "* Increasing blood flow to the brain" would not be undone, but the rest of the edit (the insertion of the "example gallery") would be removed.
Option 2 - Complete undo
Undo the entire edit.
Option 3 - Conditional partial undo
Undo the entire edit, unless referenced material is added, in which case only the "edit test" part of the edit would be undone.
Option 4 - Conditional complete undo
Undo the entire edit, unless referenced material is added, in which case the entire edit is left alone.
Option 5 - Do nothing
Do nothing (leave the edit alone.)

Discussion

Please add your comments here regarding the "complex case" options above. 28bytes (talk) 17:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


Support

  • I would opt for "Option 1 - Partial undo" if that is feasable. HenkvD (talk) 18:04, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support option 1 for now. If this task is deemed not allowable, I doubt many editors would volunteer to work on cleaning up all 100000+ test edits manually. It will probably just end up going back to the edit filter again, which would bring back all the problems we had before that led to the filter being disabled.Also, 3 and 4 are good in theory, but not every valid edit has a ref tag in it and even some referenced edits will not use actual ref tags if it's from a new editor who isnt familiar with the interface. —Soap— 20:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Option 1. I don't see any harm in this, as long as the bot performs as expected. The worst that would happen is that vandalism is left on the article, but it would happen even if the bot had not come around. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:21, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Option 1 sounds like it ought to have a low enough error rate to be a good idea. Perhaps, to assuage concerns about causing problems, the bot could initially just log actions it would have taken, so we can see how well it works. If that looks good for Option 1 (after say 1000 logged "would have done" edits?), then experiment with logging potential actions for complex cases, and see how the error rates look for that; if seeming OK, discuss that further. Rd232 talk 12:39, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Oppose / Do nothing

  • Only a human can assess the intent of the edit(s) and make the choice between {{uw-test1}} and one of the welcome templates. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:37, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree with John. This bot would be good, but I think only for the simple cases described above. These edits will get caught by vandal-fighters pretty quickly anyways. Regards, MacMedtalkstalk 20:14, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Unless it can be shown (using an analysis of some large sample of partial test edits) that whatever method is chosen will work reliably. Bots with high error rates are not acceptable. Both undoing a (partially) valid edit or leaving inappropriate content in an article would be errors IMO. If a human has to follow it around and make sure every edit is correct, it defeats the purpose. Mr.Z-man 21:38, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
  • I have reverted a small number of these test edits and I do not recall seeing any useful edit mixed in with the problems, so if an analysis of a representative number of complex cases showed that (say) 95% were all junk, I would support the bot reverting all edits. However, I oppose a bot that would revert only some of the edits because that would give a false air of "checked as ok" to the non-reverted edits, meaning that some bad edits would not be inspected for a significant time. Also, a human who might have been able to just click "rollback" would have to do something a little more complex and hard-to-follow to clean up if a bot had reverted some of the edits. Johnuniq (talk) 07:57, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • I oppose 2-5, I think you need to get human eyes on an edit before deciding on any of those choices, I'm not really sure on method #1, but if you could get it to work very reliably I would consider supporting it. Monty845 03:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Option 1 without warnings was tempting, but in the end, there are too many variables. I'd still like to see what you come up with, but I'm not sure it'll work in the end. Sven Manguard Wha? 07:03, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • The "test edits" probably co-incide with other problems with the edits; only a human can assess the relevance of the other parts of the edit. I may support proposal 1 if the bot would additionally make a report on some human-patrolled page. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:39, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Comments

My 2 proposals

When reading a piece of opinion on wikipedia, I got this idea. It is that a IP could submit a page for reviewal by a new page patroller and if the NP Patroller accepts, it can get seen by anyone. If not it just disappears. There would be a log of these. ~~EBE123~~ talkContribs 22:15, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

You should check out Articles for Creation WP:AFC, IP editors can already create articles there that are then reviewed, and if accepted moved to the article space. Monty845 22:28, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Merge of Special:Contributions to Special:Log. How about merging Contribs with Log, because that it has the same format, and it is like a log. It's really a log of edits. ~~EBE123~~ talkContribs 22:15, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
The Log and Contributions are separate because the MediaWiki software has them separated and with good reason, the log is for NON-EDITS, blocks, moves etc. and Special:Contributions is for edits ONLY. —James (Talk • Contribs) • 10:55pm • 12:55, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Moving categories

I propose that the ability to move categories be included in the autoconfirmed user rights bundle or created as a separate right. Admins would be able to do more important tasks and we could all resume business as usual. Thoughts? —James (Talk • Contribs) • 10:52pm • 12:52, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

?? No one is able to move categories. Mediawiki doesn't support it. --Yair rand (talk) 12:56, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Category renaming is done via bots. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:15, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

This article should not be speedy deleted because...

Replace this text with your reason for contesting the speedy deletion and then click "save page" below. MiszaBot II (talk) 06:44, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

</nowiki>

And then they type their message immediately afterwards or even copypaste what is displayed above. I don't know if there is a way hide this instruction (i.e. via commenting out or something else) without getting in the way of those who are a bit on the slow side? Commons uses various user scripts, many of which are fairly clean and newcomer-friendly, to handle many deletion requests over there; we could implement something like that with this, if site-wide scripts are desired. –MuZemike 09:21, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

It was originally commented out, but this was replaced by the current message because of fear users would break it and end up commenting out their entire post. I can think of two possible alternatives:
  1. Use an editnotice to convey the information
  2. Change the text to something like this:

Protected pages

When I was at the protected pages category (Category:Wikipedia protected pages) most of the reasons were because of edit wars concerning a small amount of people (around 3). I am not going to say usernames but how about when possible, we do not do full protection on pages but instead, we do bans (when possible). We remove the bans when they have discussed it on the talk page and a consensus has been made. Like that, if there is a person (that wasn't involved) that would be doing a good edit, they may do it efficiently (I do not really think that a person requesting an edit on the talk page and getting approved by an sysop is efficient). ~~EBE123~~ talkContribs 22:25, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Because blocking, to most users in good standing, is considered a direct attack on their character (hence why the extremely high probability on unblock requests for those). Whereas, full-protecting a page is more of a "play nice, now" gesture, forcing both sides of the dispute to get together and discuss. –MuZemike 00:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
EBE123 said ban, not block. Whether xe meant that or not, I have toyed with that idea in the past: that we should make more use of a sort of informal, temporary, page ban, say of the type "for 3 days, you can't edit page X, on pain of being blocked", to force talk page discussion by recalcitrant users without punishing everyone. Trouble is, the ability to impose (and how to appeal/enforce) such bans is a bit of a can of worms. It might be possible to figure out how to handle it, but I'm sure more than a few would say it's too much trouble. Rd232 talk 03:56, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I think that if its more than a few it would get more and more difficult so in that case, the page should be protected. But protecting a page affects everyone. Even the ones that were going to do good edits. ~~EBE123~~ talkContribs 18:42, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Issuing a WP:TOPICBAN usually requires the admin to take sides. To give a current example, there's a fixed IP user who has been disrupting The Man Who Would Be Queen off and on for a couple of years now. The undesirability of these changes are pretty obvious, since it includes things like re-wording facts like 'The book ends with this scene' to 'The book end with this alleged scene' and a variety of grammar errors, as well as some ham-fisted POV pushing and BLP denigration.
Over time, these changes have been reverted by half a dozen unrelated editors, and I think that the repeated discussions of why editors can't spam "he alleges" into statements that they happen to disagree with now fill the equivalent of two full talk page archives. But to stop the problem would require an uninvolved admin to spend enough time figuring out the situation and reading source like this one to decide to issue the warning. So far, nobody's felt it worth the time to do so. It's far faster and far easier to protect the page or leave even-handed "everybody stop edit-warring and start discussing (oops, I didn't notice the enormous discussions already on the talk page)" comments, so that's what the community gets. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps it would help if you look at it as two weeks of peace and quiet? I agree with your assessment that the IP is not gonna stop, so discussion with him on the talkpage is useless at this point.Yoenit (talk) 20:31, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Two weeks?! I saw some protected pages that is indefinite, and it discourages users that were goin to do good edits. ~~EBE123~~ talkContribs 21:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
In the context of that article I suspect "him" may be particularly inappropriate. Peter jackson (talk) 10:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Opt-in advertising

I am surprised to read comments from people who install an advertising-blocker extension to their browser, such as AdBlock for Chrome, but choose to not censure Google's AdSense, as to "give back" to Google for the services provided. In a similar vein, some people might wish to voluntarily accept limited advertising on Wikipedia articles. For such users, I propose that opt-in (and customizable?) advertising be made available on Wikipedia and its sister projects. Do you think this is acceptable/doable/profitable for the WikiMedia foundation? Cheers, Randomblue (talk) 20:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

This has been suggested and gone through many, many times. Getting any source of advertising revenue could be really problematic, and risks compromising Wikimedia neutrality. In my opinion, the only way to have any form of opt-in advertising would be to have it enable-able from off-site (browser extension) and coming from a "mostly-unaffiliated" source, that would take the money and donate it to the WMF, with the WMF never acknowledging it as a distinct, separate source of income. Then again, maybe even that would be too dangerous. --Yair rand (talk) 20:32, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:PEREN#Advertising --Cybercobra (talk) 00:16, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
Per the link above, the answer is "over just about everyone's dead bodies"... Sven Manguard Wha? 03:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
The day Wikipedia allows advertising will be the day I vanish from the project and regret the 100s of voluntary hours I spent on it. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:50, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
An interesting idea, but I think the current approach of opt-in donating is the better and less contentious road to take. And quite possibly the overhead of managing such a project would cause the WMF to lose money if an insufficient number of people opted in. 28bytes (talk) 04:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, they'll lose millions and then die. If they place ads in Wikipedia, a significant majority of the 10,000 active editors quit en masse, causing a drop in donations from editors. As for the non-editor donors, the loss of editor will allow vandalism to rise, quality to drop, and the site to gradually become unusable, thus causing non-editors to go somewhere else, taking their money with them. In short, if the WMF does ads anywhere and in any form, everything it touches will die. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:52, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Newbie warning

There seems to be a theme on Wikipedia to "protect" newbies. When I edit articles, I often look at the article's history, but don't bother visiting every userpage. Edits by newbies don't stand out right from the history page. I may be more tactful reverting an edit from a user I know is a newbie, rather than an edit from a random user. I propose to think about developing better signalling of newbies. Would such "discrimation" be positive or negative? How could this be done? Drakefjustin (talk) 13:28, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

You can often tell newbies because the links to their userpage and talkpage are red rather than blue, meaning the pages haven't been created yet. Unfortunately, I think newbies are sometimes given less benefit of the doubt in terms of reverting unsourced changes, because some new accounts are used for vandalism or sockpuppetry. --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 13:36, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
You can view Recent Changes restricted only to those contributions by newly-registered accounts here. – iridescent 14:55, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Signing in talk namespace

According to WP:SIGN#When signatures should and should not be used, editors should sign their posts in WP:Talk namespace. The preferred option seems to be to use ~~~~. However, there are also the options to use ~~~, which produces only the signature and ~~~~~, which produces only a timestamp. Why do these options exist, if they are clearly not to be used? Another thing is, we have User:SineBot, which marks all unsigned comments in talk namespace as unsigned and automatically produces a signature and a timestamp. Why isn't this bot just reconfigured to properly sign your posts on talk pages? This would eliminate the need to remind lots of editors of signing their posts (which the bot eventually handles for them anyway) and would eliminate these awful looking signatures produced by SineBot, when someone doesn't sign their posts despite being reminded of doing so. I just wonder why these things are the way they are. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 23:41, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

There are other uses for the substitutions besides signatures. The ~~~~~ option is handy for templates like {{Talkback}}, where a timestamp is desired but not a signature.
Also, SineBot isn't perfect: it occasionally signs things that shouldn't be signed. That's one reason it's best that SineBot's applications of people's signatures should not look identical to people signing messages themselves. —C.Fred (talk) 23:47, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Sinebot also misses signatures from time to time, especially on heavier used pages. It will only sign the last edit made to the page so if two edits are made back to back and the first one is not signed it will not sign it. GB fan (talk) 23:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Sounds all reasonable to me. Thanks for the information. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 00:01, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to convert CSD A7 and A9 to a PROD

  • With the ongoing dearth of new users, and
  • With the frequent criticism leveled at New Page Patrollers as a cause,

I'd like to propose:

the removal of speedy deletion criteria A7 and A9 and their replacement with an irremovable 10-day prod, with the admin mandated to review the state of the article, and with the prod automatically adding NOINDEX to the article.

Reasons follow:

  • A lack of asserted notability is not as bad as vandalism, copyright violations and nonsense articles. The latter are articles that should not or cannot be on Wikipedia in their current form. By comparison, notability is a minor issue. It should not be treated with the same deletion method.
  • BLP referencing is a serious issue due to the increased risk of defamation in unreferenced BLPs and the subsequent legal issues. Assertion of notability, by comparison, is minor. This is not reflected in their respective deletion processes, namely the harshly prompt speedy deletion process compared with the mediating nature of the BLP PROD process.
  • Speedy deletion offers little chance to explain to a new user inexperienced in the nuances of Wikipedia procedure what is wrong with their article. Speedy deletion criterion A7 is probably one of the most used speedy criteria overall as well as one of the most used on new pages. If that's the case, it suggests that a lot of new article creators are somewhat ignorant of the notability requirements. With so many pages and pages of policies and procedures and guidelines and rules, this is hardly surprising. A ten-day prod, like prod-blp, will allow time for issues to be communicated, explained and, possibly, resolved. If the article is then deleted, it won't be so much of a blow to the new user.
  • If the only people who see an A7-tagged article are the article's creator, the deletion nominator and the deleting admin, then there is little way a potentially good article could have been saved. The article rescue squadron can try to save a tagged article but often the person with the most knowledge about the topic is the article's creator, the new user with the least knowledge about Wikipedia's policies and processes. What we need to ask ouselves is whether a simple failure to assert notability (in other words, making the mistake of assuming others know what they're talking about) is sufficient cause to summarily dismiss a contribution as insignificant.
  • Tagging a good-faith contribution for speedy deletion and then ignoring both it and it's creator is not a constructive attitude. We should be making the effort to communicate with new users, and not just with a generic welcome tag on their talk page. A notability prod will aid this. Critics might complain about a perceived increase in workload, but all we'd be doing is exchanging one deletion tag for another. (And if people are perceiving Wikipedia as work, then clearly they have the wrong hobby). All in all, what is wrong with taking the time to say, "Hello. I'm so-n-so. Can I help?" I'm sure most of us like helpful shop assistants, so let's extend the same courtesy to our new users.

Don't misunderstand me, though. By all means, let's extend extreme discourtesy to those who would deliberately harm the 'pedia, be they vandals, spammers or worse. But we shouldn't apply the same attitude to people who simply thought their great-aunt Gladys' ability to play the bongos with a pair of walking sticks rated a mention on Wikipedia. There is nothing deliberately harmful about a non-notable article, so let's try to be more understanding, and more welcoming.

LordVetinari (talk) 12:12, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Support, largely for the reasons given (which, full disclosure, I had an incredibly minor role in drafting). Ironholds (talk) 12:16, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - the reason given above are persuasive and with the drop in new editors we need to do something to keep editors. This is a step in the right direction. GB fan (talk) 13:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - a sensible improvement to the system. The 10-day existance non-notable articles won't harm readers because they're NOINDEXed and have a PROD tag to alert readers to the problem. It will help new editors by giving them time to fix problems in cases where they're fixable.--Physics is all gnomes (talk) 14:07, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • As long as removing it w/o adding refs will result in escalating vandalism-warnings... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 14:18, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose - I would support a shorter time period, maybe 72 hours, no more than a week. If a new user doesn't come back in 3 days, they probably won't come back in 10. But with 10 days, at any given time we might have a pile of 2000-3000 articles to sort through. Finding a salvageable article in these is like finding a needle in a haystack, except there may not even be a needle. Also, NOINDEX does not work on articles. This was an intentional design decision by the WMF technical staff. If they're unwilling to change their minds on this, this would have to use a separate process like the incubator. Finally, if this still uses templates and warnings similar to what we currently use, I doubt this will help anything at all. I doubt that the act of deletion is the only factor in driving away new users, and not the giant unfriendly warning we slap on their talk page or the big red tag on their article. Mr.Z-man 14:38, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
    • It should also have an exception for articles about minors, for privacy reasons. Obviously blatant attacks are dealt with, but minors shouldn't have their personal information floating around on the internet (even if it is hard to find) just because their friends thought it might be funny. Mr.Z-man 14:50, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. This makes a whole lot of sense to me, although, like Seb, I'd like to see it be a sticky prod, since the creator removing a prod on a non-notability-asserting article puts us right back to where we started. Speaking as someone mildly terrified of tagging new articles with A7 and A9, largely because they're somewhat ill-defined and potentially bitey, I would very much like to see A7/9-prod become an option for NPPers instead. I would be ok with a length of time other than a week for this prod, though - as Mr. Z-man suggests, perhaps a few days. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:41, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. As Floquenbeam pointed out in an AfD, WP:NOYOUDONTGETTOKEEPYOURINJOKEONWIKIPEDIAFORSEVENDAYSJUSTBECAUSETHATSWHATTHERULESSAY. Ten days only make it worse. The idea that anyone can create an article about their garage band formed yesterday and have it hanging around for 10 days is simply ridiculous (NOINDEX does not work in mainspace anyway; even if it did it will not stop in-site searches or from someone facebook/twitter/emailing the links). Retaining new editors != keeping crap around for all the world to see. T. Canens (talk) 14:46, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • I've argued before that simply NOINDEXing new articles as standard for a day or two would be good (with perhaps a way to override this where there's good reason). This proposal has some appeal, but I'm a bit concerned that the complexity of it might have unexpected perverse consequences. I think Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#requiring_autoconfirmation_to_create_articles is probably preferable, and covers much of the same ground, and could be combined with standard noindexing for articles less than (say) 1 day or 1 week old. One advantage of this approach, though, is that it could probably be implemented more quickly, so we could try it and see how it goes whilst still thinking about the alternatives I mentioned. Rd232 talk 14:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose what is needed is a proper use of the A7 tag. It is also the tag I decline speedy reasons with the most. While I appreciate the OP wishing to "save" the occasional good article, and while I also appreciate that newbs need educating, keeping articles which state "Johnny sits next to me in english class and he's really cool" is NOT going to do that. Johnny is not worthy of an article for more than 5 minutes, period. A7 was never intended for subjects of possible or marginal notability, and instead we need to work on getting people to apply it correctly. A sizable number of A7 tags (probably the majority) do not belong, and should have been PROD or AFD tags to begin with, and its just experienced editors who are too lazy to write an AFD page that gets them there. However, there is no need to keep crap articles around for 10 days. If the article is about a subject which has a chance, use prod or afd, but don't pretend that Johnny from English Class has a shot if only we did some research. A7 has its place, and if used correctly it works. --Jayron32 15:10, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose I believe that the A7 criteria is over-applied by some NP patrollers, and I've seen admins delete articles where A7 did not apply; however this is a matter of education and better enforcement of the A7 guidelines. The large amount of vanity articles demonstrating no notability whatsoever that are added to Wikipedia on a daily basis is huge and A7 serves an important function in providing a quick and easy means to identify and clear them out. I understand the desire to run a "kindlier, gentler" process as an option, however it should be applied in conjunction with A7/A9 speedy deletion, it should not replace it entirely.--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 15:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Fair points, Jayron and Ponyo. Could the proposal be amended to be supplementary to A7/A9, to make something between AFD (quite "hard") and PROD (quite "soft" as so easily removed), i.e. a PROD which, like BLP-PROD, can only be removed when the concern has been addressed. Rd232 talk 15:15, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
      • Why is something needed between an AFD and a PROD? Seriously, if it needs to "stick", what is the problem with AFD? --Jayron32 15:33, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
        • That's a good question, here's one answer. AfD is overloaded already. Some fraction of AfDs, even on BLPs, close (after a couple relists) for lack of participation. The additional A7/A9 load, which may actually be larger than the existing AfD load, may actually cut into the viability of AfD as a process. (Haven't decided what I think about this proposal, but I did want to answer the "why not AfD" question.) --joe deckertalk to me 15:44, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I am thinking about making it exactly the same as BLPPROD and requiring at least one single independent reliable source? I honestly can't remember a single case were an unreferenced article in the A7 categories (individuals, animals, organizations, web content) survived AFD, so this would not affect our current standards, we would just be more up front about it. I think some form of A7 will still be necessary however to get rid of the true junk. Yoenit (talk) 16:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose: eliminates a useful tool, causes process bloat, likely to make the problem worse in some ways. A7 and A9 work fine for the situations they are intended to work: the garage band started last night, dear old Aunt Gladys who played the bongos, the corner grocery store, the mixtape your garage band just made. Yes, there may be people applying A7 and A9 tags when they don't apply, but that's a matter of usage, not a flaw with the underlying criteria. If anything, taking away the A7 and A9 criteria will make the problem of CSD abuse worse: more of the articles will start to be tagged G11 (you're promoting your garage band you started last night) or G3 (the twelfth mixtape article for your garage band is getting disruptive). As an admin, I don't even deal with all A7-tagged articles the same way. Some I delete on sight; some I contact the creator and say that the article is up for deletion, but if you can make clear how the person is notable, the article has a chance of staying; some I decline the speedy but prod; and some I decline the speedy, clean up, and help get on its way as an article about a subject that turned out to actually be notable, once a little digging was done. That said, I don't need a special "prod-A7" tag for the articles that should be prodded; all that's required is an explanation for the prod saying that while there's an assertion of significance/importance, it doesn't appear to be enough to meet the notability criteria. —C.Fred (talk) 16:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose, many of these pages should be immediately deleted and we don't need ruleslawyering about them. On others, anyone can remove the CSD template and go to PROD or AFD instead. If you see a page that has potential, remove the CSD tag and talk to and work with the original author. Totally agree with C.Fred. —Кузьма討論 16:39, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose, although I empathize with the goal here. What I'd really like to see (and would support wholeheartedly) is A1, A3, A7 and A9 converted to "speedy userfies" instead of speedy deletes, so the editor could work on building legitimate articles and finding sources at their own leisure without having to scramble to "defend" the article with a hangon tag and pleas to the CSD tagger. But there are lots of newly created A7s that genuinely need to be removed from the mainspace quickly, mostly of the "here's my resume" and "she is a friend from my class and is really cool" variety. 28bytes (talk) 16:45, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose for the reasons stated above by Jayron32. I also agree with him and others about the over zealousness of some new page pouncers and we need a better way of reining in editors who treat Special:Newpages as a shooting gallery. As long as they are not being blatantly disruptive there's not much we can do about them aside from opposing their RFAs if they run. Anything with even the slightest chance of being an encyclopedic topic shouldn't be tagged for speedy deletion. However, we shouldn't be required to keep articles on garage bands and "Jimmy the awesome grape seed spitter at Buggerville High School" for 10 days for the greater glory of not biting the newbies. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 17:12, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Well if we don't want this, we need some alternative. Whilst NPPers are vital, there is a problem with trigger happy ones which we just don't seem to do anything about. --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 18:23, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose The idea of "delayed speedy deletion" has been repeatedly rejected. Recently, I might add. This is the same idea with a different mechanism. Well intentioned but will cause more problems than it would solve. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:09, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose - Why should we keep "John Q. Doe was born in 1996, hates homework, and is currently writing this page in the third person"? Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:17, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose There exists a problem. There exists a solution to the problem. This is not the solution to the problem. As my idea won't be popular, I'll abstain from mentioning it. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:49, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose – Jayron32 hit it on the nose. We should not be inadvertently rewarding those who create John Smith is the most awesometastic person ever!!!; the Dunning–Kruger effect comes to mind. What we need is more vigilant reviewing (from admins, mostly) of A7/A9 to make sure we are deleting what needs to be deleted. –MuZemike 02:50, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose; although I appreciate the intent here, there are two issues. One, I haven't seen a huge amount of evidence that we NPPers are doing such a horrible job with A7/A9. Second, we don't need things like this floating around for 7 days; Floquenbeam's AfD comment basically sums it up. We need less garbage floating around here, not more. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support I have recently proposed something like this (as an experiment) elsewhere. I find A7 speedies the hardest to decide, as notability may be implied or potential in an article without an explicit claim. Implementing this change should not change the work load for anybody, as it would merely delay when an admin would be looking at an article to decide if it should be deleted. I also see a change like this as a way to test the assertion that new editors are being driven off because their first attempt at writing an article usually gets deleted. This would be an opportunity to help new editors learn the rules by helping them improve an article rather than deleting it. Of course, that would require extra effort from editors whose chose to help, but I don't think we can solve the new editor retention problem without experienced users helping them. -- Donald Albury 12:06, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
    • If you have to think about it more than 2 seconds, as an admin, just decline it or convert it to a PROD or AFD. If you have to think about "Johnny from English Class" more than 2 seconds, you should reconsider whether working on deletion work is the proper area of Wikipedia for you... --Jayron32 12:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
      • Please don't misconstrue what I said. I am quite capable of distinguishing crap from articles that are merely poorly written. But, as it stands now, if I think an article with an A7 tag is borderline, I have a choice of deleting, potentially driving away a new editor, or declining the speedy, potentially leaving a unsourced and poorly written stub to sit for years. I can PROD it, in hopes that someone will improve it, but the usual response to a PROD is to just remove the notice. I am neither a deletionist not an inclusionist. I have nominated my share of articles for PROD and AfD, and about half of my AfD noms get deleted, which I think puts me somewhere in the middle. I have also !voted to keep articles at AfD. I keep seeing talk about how we are discouraging new users, with some proposing that we let all edits and new articles from new users stand, at least for a while, so we don't discourage them. I'm trying to find a way to avoid unnecessarily discouraging new users without compromising the quality of WP. Where is the great harm in allowing an article that may not meet the notability criteria to exist for a few days? Of course, the best way to encourage new users is to help them. I know that takes time and commitment. I am trying to do a little, and I know it is not enough. -- Donald Albury 15:50, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose for several reasons. If the intention is to rescue more articles created by new users then this will result in a lot of wasted effort. We get through about 7-8000 A7 deletions per month, which compares to about 2000 each for AfD and PROD. Most A7ed articles can't be salvaged so attempting to put a similar level of scrutiny on them as AfD or PROD candidates will be largely a waste of time. I see a lot of new users complaining when their articles are nominated for deletion through PROD or AfD, and I think that new users are turned off by the fact that the article was deleted rather than the process used. If a user spends time trying to clean up an article to avoid deletion through the proposed mechanism and the article still gets deleted it could be even more BITEy than speedy deletion. If we want to improve new page patrol then better solutions would be to require autoconfirmation for creating pages and greater review of speedy deletions (such as taking more problematic ones to WP:DRV). Hut 8.5 14:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The articles that I have deleted as A7s were not the sort of articles that one would want cluttering up PROD lists, and the number of correctly-deleted A7s is too large to fit that process. There is an issue of abuse of these tags which is something that should be dealt with, but not by removing them. The standard for A7 *must* be much lower than the standard that would see an article kept at AFD - too many editors tag articles inappropriately as A7's, and some also tag articles as A9 before the artist article is deleted. What we need is more scrutiny of the tagging of these articles and removal of rights from editors who repeatedly abuse them. A7/A9 tagging minutes after articles are created, often while it's clear that the editor is building the article up over several edits, is also not helpful. Some sort of time allowance for this sort of article would be useful, but difficult to apply without also allowing the real crud to hang around much longer than it should.--Michig (talk) 16:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Completely unworkable and unrealistic. Our backlogs are growing not shrinking. Putting aside the fact that the majority of articles deleted under A7 are not just properly deleted according to the criterion's terms, but would not survive a deletion debate on the merits at AfD, if implemented we would vastly increase our workload and we can't handle that increase. If every one of the approximate 7,500 articles that would have been valid A7s were prodded (which would never happen; also, prodding takes more time which would itself also be an increase in the workload) and just 10% of those the prods were removed, we would have 750 extra AfDs to write, debate and close per month. Of course, this would not happen. Instead we'd still get a large increase, but also a large increase in properly deleted articles escaping. A7 is a doorkeeper process and it is the most important of the CSDs, that would not scale to prodding and AfD. Yes, it would be great if A7, like all of our processes, was not flawed in implementation resulting in a bad outcome for a small subset. Getting rid of A7s because that subset exists here is is a very extreme cutting off our noses to spite our faces form of reaction.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:51, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - per Ron Ritzman and Michig. Recent research (although the proof was not necessary) has demonstrated that New Page Patrol is in a mess and is largely carried out - in good faith - by the newest and least experienced users. The error was made way back when anyone was allowed to be a new page policeman without any training whatsoever. Even after repeated gentle requests many continue to use it as the fasted way to bolster their edit counts and do not appear to understand the requirements of WP:NPP and WP:DELETION. The solution is to encourage NPPers to slow down and take more time to read what they are tagging. If this is not possible, other solutions are to either turn NPP into a right, such as reviewer and rollbacker, speedy userfication (per 28bytes), or simply to put all new pages (except those created by autopatrollers) into an incubator for 24h so that they can be reviewed by competent editors before being allowed to go live. No new article is so urgent that it must go online as soon as two words have been created - many ordinary web forums require all new posts to be reviewed by a moderator before they are accepted. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:54, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support/Oppose I am one of the most avid critics of A7/A9 misuse and I frequently argue to be very strict in its application. That said, I'm not completely convinced by any proposal to remove those criteria completely. There are a lot of articles that really need A7: Highschool kids writing about their friends, MySpace bands trying to use Wikipedia to promote themselves, unknown webpages that seek to gain attention etc. There is no point to keep such pages that really will not have a snowball's chance in hell to survive any review and those new users that create those pages usually know that Wikipedia is not the place to talk about their best friends or similar subjects. That said, I do support an attempt to make A7/A9 stricter and to have such a PROD-alternative for articles where it's not clear cut. How about this as a compromise: Let's keep A7/A9 for clear-cut cases and have a PROD-like process like the one proposed here for all other cases, possibly combined with a list of criteria that make a case non clear-cut. Regards SoWhy 17:11, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Nice idea on the one hand, but I have no wish to see the majority of A7 and A9 stuff hang around for 7 days. I think speedy deletion is better Pol430 talk to me 23:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - The current NPP system is in such disarray for the reasons I stated above, that creating even more options or criteria for NNPers to have to think about would be counter productive - many patrolers are unable to tell the 'clear cut' difference between a hoax and an attack page, a no context and a no content page, and a spam and a non notable page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I would have liked to have added some comments here earlier but my internet connection went on holiday and is taking the scenic route home. Jayron's comments seem to best summarise the criticisms, so I'll respond primarily to those. This isn't to disparage the weight of other users' comments, however. I'll set aside for the time being the issue of whether the proposed prod should be 10, 7 or 3 days. As it is, I'm beginning to think a shorter time may be better.

First of all, I note that several of the examples used to demonstrate articles that should be deleted under A7 could just as easily be deleted on the grounds of lacking context, or for being nonsense or test pages. Crap articles are not the one's in question here.

As alluded to above, A7 is being used on subjects of possible or marginal notability. I agree that this is a problem, but I disagree that re-educating NPPs will work. To begin with, too many people have too many views of what constitutes notability, admins included. This, combined with the incredible diversity of new articles, means that there there can be no clear-cut definitions of what constitutes notability: there will always be something new that tests the boundaries. That's why we only have notability criteria for some general umbrella topics (e.g. people, businesses) and for only a few specific sub-topics (e.g. academics). Additionally, any re-education would need to be total to be effective. There is no point one admin reminding a NPP to rein in their enthusiasm if another admin is doing the precise opposite. When we consider that NPPs, like other editors, come and go all the time (I've known day-old accounts to become NPPs), any re-education effort would be an unending drain on time and resources.

It's been pointed out in this discussion that “a sizable number of A7 tags do not belong and should have been PROD or AFD tags to begin with”. This is obvious and is exactly the point of the proposal, but the proper tagging just won't happen. First of all, it is far easier (even with Twinkle) to select an existing CSD tag than to write a PROD or AfD. I don't think I ever sent an article to AfD until I learnt Twinkle. It was just too complicated. As for PRODding, in the absence of a pre-written PROD for notability, which is what this proposal is about, CSD tagging becomes a far simpler option. The second reason why people choose CSD over PROD is that a CSD sticks. I rarely touch PRODs other than BLP simply because anyone, article creator included, can remove it without resolving the issues being highlighted. Such removal is supposed to require a justification but this is not and cannot be enforced. If I want to see an article deleted, a PROD is the least effective and least guaranteed means to do so. Hence I, and other NPPs, have often opted for CSD, even in borderline cases.

I also note there is a PR aspect in the proposal that doesn't appear to have been addressed in this discussion. Namely, that a new user's article gets deleted with little more than a generic "F*** off and don't come back until you have something decent." How welcoming is that? The proposal urges NPPs to make the effort to gain the trust and respect of new users. Basically, if an article is truly crap, there are several CSD tags that can do away with it. And if an article is borderline in its notability, the NPP should make the effort to discuss it with the new user, help them to improve the article where it can be improved and help them to do better next time if their article ends up being deleted.

All in all, I'm a bit disgusted that the current attitude appears to be to focus on backlogs and workload rather than on people. If the purpose of the Wikipedia project is to build an encyclopaedia, than I would have thought the emphasis would be on quality rather than quantity. When I worked in fast food, I quickly learnt that the most important customer was the one I was serving, even if there was a long queue waiting to be served. By encouraging my staff to have the same attitude, my store (under threat of closure when I started) became one of the fastest growing in my state with almost half my customers being repeat customers. With this proposal, I'm urging the Wikipedia community to apply the same attitude here. Don't focus on the backlog because we have the rest of eternity to finish that. Instead, focus on the new user. If you find an article with borderline notability that could or should be deleted, don't tag it and forget about it. Talk to the article creator and discuss it with them. At the end of the day, the aim here should not just be to delete the garbage but also to nurture every new user. As I tried to say in the proposal, a constructive edit is still a constructive edit even if notability is in question. Notability is not in the same league as vandalism and spam and should not be treated teh same. The person who created the article should be nurtured, encouraged and helped.

From the progress of this discussion, I can see the main point on which both camps can agree is that CSD A7 can be misapplied. I'd therefore like to change the original proposal from a single yes-no choice to two possible choices, as follows:

A: The original proposal of replacing A7 with an irremovable prod-notability (length and noindexing status open to discussion), OR

B: Keeping A7 but still creating the aforementioned prod-notability for use when notability is possible or unclear. This option can reduce the number of AfD discussions as well as offering an equally simple, and better, alternative to mistagging with CSD.

LordVetinari (talk) 02:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Strong oppose. Most of the stuff deleted under A7/A9 is rubbish that no waiting period will overcome. Introducing a waiting period means we have cruft lying around for longer reducing the reputation of the encyclopedia, and there's more time for people to remove the tag inappropriately, causing the article to stay around forever (unless you have very dedicated people following up on their taggings).
    To LordVetinari's most recent points, I'm sure we would love to focus on people, but we need to keep it realistic as well. Wikipedia does not need people's business. Unless you have a large army of experienced users ready and willing to work with newbies who are trying to promote their garage bands (etc.) then the suggestion that these articles should not be deleted will generate further backlogs. I have no objection to backlogs as long as they are not being created at a rate higher than they are being cleared; that, by definition, is unsustainable and unmanageable.
    Finally, there is no need for a "prod-notability" tag; a normal PROD will do just fine. Stifle (talk) 10:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't see how a new editor expanding their article for 10 days only to be deleted afterwards is any better that having it deleted straight off. I don't buy that given enough time the article will somehow pass notability, which is not related to the article's quality. The few occasional notable topics falsely deleted will get re-created properly (with assertion of notability) eventually. Nuances of Wikipedia are not explained in the articles and keeping an article solely to educate newcomers is not the way to go. Nobody is keeping the editors from communicating with the newcomers, whether their article is deleted or will be in x days. All that said, a "NPROP" for questioned notability, but not clearly A7/A9 could work, but that is a different proposal. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Stifle is correct that most of the stuff deleted under these criteria is rubbish. The problem is dealing with the not-quite-rubbish, and that is a much subtler problem. New editors are not helped by being encouraged to work on hopelessly unacceptable articles, they are helped by being guided how to improve those that are presently unacceptable, but capable of improvement. To the extent the we use A7 and A9 on such articles, they're being used wrongly, and any cases noticed should be discussed with the deleting admin, or the new editor should simply be encouraged to rewrite more acceptably. (There is no real point in bringing borderline cases to deletion review , because rather than being immediately restored, the discussion will normally close as rewrite and resubmit, which does not take deletion review.) And I further agree with Stifle that a normal Prod works very well--as long as it is explained to the new editor that there is no point removing the prod tag unless they can show notability -- the message I use when I place such a prod, in addition to the standard notice, is: "If you decide that the article cannot presently meet our standards, you can facilitate matters by placing at the top a line reading : {{db-author}}. When you have the necessary material, then try again. I do not want to discourage you, but to urge you to write a proper article if it is possible; if it is not yet possible, please help us by improving our other articles on related topics." If properly guided, very few new editors will force it into AfD. This is not a question of deletionism/inclusionism--no one should want to include the impossible or delete the possible. DGG ( talk ) 00:32, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Thank you for your support. I should also have been clear in my post that the way of dealing with misapplications of A7/A9 (which I will confess to having engaged in myself sometimes) is to address it with the user, rather than revoke the criteria. Stifle (talk) 11:12, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I suppose the claim is that we're losing good content because of A7 and A9 deletions, or that it's MEAN to delete recently created articles too fast and we're therefore losing too many new editors, or both. Like all valid CSDs, A7/9 cover cases where it is impossible or extremely unlikely that an encyclopedic article can be written about the subject in question, based on either the subject itself or the current condition of the article. I'd like to see the advocates of this proposal demonstrate that the encyclopedia is losing out on good content because admins are deleting A7/9s too fast. We already have a solution for the rare cases where an A7/9 actually does describe a valid, encyclopedic topic: Post a new article on the subject that asserts its importance. So instead of "Foo McFooey is like soooo tight I have english with him!!!!!", write "Foo McFooey is an American musician who has released four platinum albums[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] and won three Grammys[2][3][7][8][9][10][11][12]". As for the issue of being kind to newbies, we'd be showing them even more unkindness if we gave them the impression that such content is acceptable on Wikipedia. Yes, maybe deleting A7/9s hurts the creator's feelings, but our job is to create a neutral, verifiable encyclopedia, not make all our participants feel good. There are much better ways to retain new users. szyslak (t) 04:00, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose A/Question on B. I think A7 should be kept for articles that really do make no assertion of notability at all. Maybe A7 could be rephrased to make it clearer to inexperienced editors how to apply it properly. As for part B, would the notability prod be removable by other editors who dispute it like a CSD? If so that would seem fine, but it is not clear, and could be read to prohibit any non-admin from touching it which I would strongly oppose. Monty845 02:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose- we say that the tag is "irremovable", but inforcing that is difficult; and most of these articles wouldn't survive anyway. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose as a lot of the above users said, most of the articles tagged under A7 and 9 are junk articles that shouldn't exist. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is only slightly out of order, why opt for mass change? —James (Talk • Contribs) • 10:17pm • 12:17, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to include an AFD check in the CSD templates

This is a followup to a discussion I started at Criteria for speedy deletion.

The speedy deletion templates used in the article space should incorporate a check that will cause a warning to appear in the template if it is on a page that has been subject to an Articles for Deletion discussion. The Proposed deletion template already has this feature.

Initially I had proposed that the change just apply to the A7 template, where a previous AFD would almost certainly be outcome determinative, either resulting in a G4 if deleted, or ineligibility for A7 if the article had been kept at AFD. Consensus at the previous discussion seemed to be in favor of a broader application of the idea, as an AfD history would likely be relevant to most article speedy deletion nominations, even if not as determinative as it would be in the case of an A7. While the original discussion had pretty strong consensus in favor, it was suggested I post it here to seek broader consensus. Monty845 17:38, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Perma-hiding latest entry of protection logs from IPs

I propose that the latest entry of the protection log that appears on a protected page when a user edits it be hidden completely from IPs, when a vandal targets a page and they find it's been protected they'll often look to see when the protection expires and if it's very recent, one can only expect all hell to break loose, it wouldn't be much but it'd probably deter IP vandals that timetable their vandalism sessions. —James (Talk • Contribs) • 10:40pm • 12:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Why would you prefer unpredictable vandalism over predictable vandalism? If a page is vandalised directly after the protection expires it will get indefinite protection soon enough, so this actually seems counterproductive. Yoenit (talk) 12:57, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Um, that's a bad idea. That feature exists so that the IPs and users editing in good faith know why that the page was protected, so they can find some other way to contribute, and to let the people who edit in bad faith know that we do have humans which are able to stop their actions - a win both ways. The fact that one or two dedicated vandals abuse this is no reason to completely remove it. Ajraddatz (Talk) 18:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Most pages protected for short times are protected due to some event increasing the popularity of the subject. Once the popularity subsides, people no longer care. The majority of vandalism is not done by determined vandals who "timetable their vandalism sessions." Mr.Z-man 20:24, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

We should not remove accessibility for the sake of anti-vandalism efforts. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:25, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of it that way. What about preventing blocked IPs from seeing protection logs for the duration of their block? —James (Talk • Contribs) • 7:12pm • 09:12, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Won't deter anybody who is determined, and inconvenience lots of other people. (The prevention will have zero effect unless it also prevents logged-in users on that IP, which is not such a great idea). —Кузьма討論 09:15, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
You're right, those using shared IPs would be confused. This proposal was stupid to begin with :S —James (Talk • Contribs) • 7:30pm • 09:30, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Query requests from article tables?

I wanted to answer the question which free non-linear video editing software is available for BSD (linux alike) operating systems. So I took a look at the Comparison of video editing software article. It's very nice and pretty. It's possible to sort and search. But it's not efficient. If one instead could ask "Platform=Linux Price=Free License=GPL/BSD" then the question could be answered much faster and reliable. Would such "mini-SQL" be something worthwhile to persue? Electron9 (talk) 16:35, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like Freebase, Semantic MediaWiki, and/or the proposals for "Wikidata" --Cybercobra (talk) 22:56, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
The idea would be to be able to view the page "as usual" or to query. Ie both ways to take part of article data. Those sites seems to build on the concept of data-only. Though maybe wiki article tables could be built as dependencies (import) from a free database, which is automatically kept in sync by wikipedia.org Electron9 (talk) 07:33, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Make prompting for a missing edit summary the default

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is insufficient consensus here to go ahead with a even a trial of this. While it appears there is a small majority in support, I don't believe that such support is enough. In addition, my analysis of the arguments raised leads to the conclusion that the opposers have the stronger argument with the priorities the WMF has issued lately (new user retention, etc.), though that itself was a minor point of my analysis—I don't wish to substitute my views for those of the community. NW (Talk) 13:52, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Currently, users are only prompted to provide an edit summary when they click Save page with a missing summary if they have turned on the option "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" in their Edit preferences. The default is to give no warning.

In the course of an earlier discussion on a proposal to force new users to provide an edit summary, Kayau made a simpler and less drastic proposal to turn this around, by making giving the missing-summary reminder the default. Only registered users would then be able to turn the option off. The text of the reminder has now been adapted to allow for this change, making it more explanatory (and also more friendly in tone).

I hereby reiterate the proposal embedded in the earlier discussion: let us make prompting for a missing edit summary the default.  --Lambiam 08:50, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

  • I think that this is a good idea. It would quickly introduce new Wikipedians to our culture of explaining edits (after which they could easily turn off the warning in their preferences), and potentially cut down on rapid vandalism edits without summaries by mandating an extra step in submitting an edit.--Danaman5 (talk) 09:21, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support - I have always personally felt that es should be mandatory for everyone for all pages except perhaps their own user pages - so I agree wholeheartedly with the proposal to make an es prompt as the default. --Kudpung (talk) 09:32, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support - edit summaries need to be the norm, especially for newusers. MarkDask 11:40, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support, simple and hopefully effective. Thryduulf (talk) 12:49, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Neutral. A tiny step towards mandatory registration, ie. a net-good for us that also goes against some fundamental guiding principal about keeping things just as simple for new/unregistered users. Can't really bring myself to support or oppose. Equazcion (talk) 12:59, 20 Mar 2011 (UTC)
  • Support... for edits to articles. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:06, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support Don't know why this wasn't done years ago. And if somebody could fix it so I still get a reminder when I edit a section and don't put in a comment I'd be very grateful. Dmcq (talk) 13:45, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support, about time... Rehman 14:13, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support I am supporting this ~~Awsome EBE123 talkContribs 16:13, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I originally supported this proposal, but on further reflection, I can't really support anything that makes editing more difficult. We're trying to justify this by making it sound like it has some huge benefit to newbies, but we all know the real reason it to make it easier for us to determine whether a new user is a vandal. One thing I should point out – if a vandal uses an edit summary, then we won't get the automatic "blanked page" or "replaced page with" summaries. Mr.Z-man 16:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
    While this is objectively true, if you look at a slightly larger picture I'd say that this will make it easier for newbies to make edits which are not reverted in a discouraging fashion. You can still very easily tell the difference between an edit for which the edit summary is an inconvenience (probably unconstructive) and one for which the edit summary is an "oh, I need to do that? Let's see..." (more likely to be constructive). We can very easily replicate the blanked/replaced autosummaries with tags from the EditFilter, if we don't already, which would actually be a productive step anyway as it would then be independent of whether the vandal is intelligent enough to add a summary. Happy‑melon 17:09, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
    It still sounds like the reason is "We're too rude and impatient. So instead of changing our 'revert first and ask questions never' approach, we're just going to make newbies do more work to make them prove they're not vandals." This makes things easier for experienced users by making things harder for new users. Editing is already confusing enough, let's not make it worse. Mr.Z-man 18:00, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
    I said something along these lines above already so I of course kinda mostly agree sorta -- You can always wax Machiavellian and twist a benefit to you into a benefit for them; There's always a way to do that. Wanted to add that I just tested the "reminder" feature myself and I see that the entire editing window reloads with the small one-line message on top. It's extraordinarily easy to miss, and if I hadn't been looking for it I probably would've just tried re-submitting the edit a few times thinking there was some sort of glitch. I think this'll generate a lot of new confusion. (I'd suggest a javascript popup message instead, but only if such a feature is absolutely needed). Equazcion (talk) 18:52, 20 Mar 2011 (UTC)
    Not all users may have popups enabled – I for one have them blocked in my browser preferences. Personally I wouldn't mind a much more attention-drawing delivery of this reminder (see the orange version in the middle of the discussion at Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages#Proposed change for MediaWiki:Missingsummary), but it was objected to: it was said to "shove this notice down people's optic nerves". If you reread the earlier discussion, you will see, by the way, that the "Machiavellian twist" has more than incidental support as an expected benefit – not for "us" or "them", but for the Wikipedia project.  --Lambiam 22:16, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
    Ordinary popup windows are different from javascript dialogs, and the latter is what I meant. While many people have ordinary popups blocked since it's a default for many browsers and security software, the people most likely to miss edit summaries are also least likely to have explicitly blocked javascript dialogs. As far as risk to the optic nerve, I think the message if implemented should be treated as important enough to warrant the forced attention so as to reduce frustration with tryign to figure out what went wrong with the initial edit. The current feature was created for the purpose of allowing users to voluntarily request a reminder, so they know to look for it; whereas this proposal is to present new users with a warning, a very different scenario that should implement a more noticeable message. Equazcion (talk) 22:28, 20 Mar 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. I also agree with Dmcq's "if somebody could fix it so I still get a reminder when I edit a section and don't put in a comment I'd be very grateful." --Philcha (talk) 18:12, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. Insignificantly more difficult, noticably less BITE in the end. If I'm a newbie and you'd like me to do something a particular way, don't wait and yell at me later, don't delete my article (even in a borderline case), help me do it right the first time. (As an aside? Do you want to make newbie's lives better? Put in *more* automation before accepting an edit, not less to give immediate feedback on edits rather than simply biting them a week, a month, or in the case of one of our backlogs seven and one-half years later because they've failed to read a couple dozen policies. The friendly path is not to have standards, it is to help newbies understand those standards with immediate, clear, constructive, supportive feedback.) --joe deckertalk to me 18:40, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
    For a new user, it's really not that simple. "Edit summaries" are a very Wikipedia-specific thing. To compare it to other sites, when you update your status on Facebook or comment on a blog post, you don't have to include a second comment explaining that your first comment was a comment. I've seen new users take our current instructions a little too seriously and write an entire sentence to summarize a single spelling correction. It probably took them five times longer to write the summary than it did to make the edit. We provide very little guidance except for the typical overly-complex "help" page at Help:Edit summary, which is more than 1,500 words. Mr.Z-man 23:10, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
    Wikipedia is not a social networking site so the comparison with Facebook is adrift. There may be social interaction here but its purpose is to build an encyclopedia. Everything we can do to ensure in the nicest and easyest way possible that people understand that goal, is a positive step forward - and that includes making edit summaries by default. I have never seen summaries of the kind Z-Man describes, but I have been infuriated by the thousands of blank ones. Pop ups works - (sometimes) depending on the speed of your connection. Kudpung (talk) 06:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
    The type of site is mostly irrelevant. What does being an encyclopedia have anything to do with edit summaries? All that matters is that its a site that the user contributes to. Unless they've contributed to another wiki running MediaWiki, they will likely have never heard of an "edit summary" before. And unless they've contributed to the English Wikipedia, they likely will have never seen such obsession over it. At least you're willing to admit that the main reason for this is to help experienced users first and foremost, not new users. Mr.Z-man 12:43, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
    For an example of overly long summaries by newbies, see [6]. I've seen more extreme, but this is the most recent. Mr.Z-man.sock (talk) 14:44, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
    Z-man, I don't doubt the existence of long edit summaries, and I'm sympathetic to not liking the way things are right now. But the place where someone doesn't enter an edit summary is precisely the moment to teach the user the one bit of information we'd like them to learn here. What I think would best address both our concerns would be for the the prompt screen to have a little more explanation, perhaps a couple of examples, and a lot less of anything else. Get rid of the article edit window on this page, it's not technically necessary (the data can be hidden). Get rid of the summary of the 50 transcluded templates (Transcluded? what's that? Template? What's that?) at the bottom of the page. Just tell them what we want, clearly, and given them a single box to enter that information in. That is constructive, supportive, and friendly.
    As far as the edit summary utility, in the course of processing PRODs and BLPPRODs I always check article history to sniff at it's history. Sometimes I find the article was entirely salvageable at some previous point in its history. It's simply not plausible to think that admins stare at the full text of every single edit before hitting delete, fewer edit summaries imply to me that I'm going to salvage fewer articles. I believe we lose a small number of otherwise salvageable articles this way, disproportionately those authored by new users, and I consider the BITE of unnecessarily deleted articles to be very high. --joe deckertalk to me 17:56, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Mr.Z-man. Ruslik_Zero 19:54, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support Unexplained changes are one of the banes of RCP, and this would encourage by education in advance, rather than chastisement afterward -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:04, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
    • The problem with RCP is that Hugglers are blindly reverting without bothering to ask the user why the change was made. Obviously, this would be easier with edit summaries, but if a new user has no clue what that is or doesn't notice the edit summary input box at first, there won't be an edit at all. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 00:38, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Mr.Z-man and because there are two cases here:
    • New users—why complicate things for them? I see new users who do use edit summaries and those who do not. What if they don't even see the little box for edit summaries (it sorta blends in ...)? They won't have any idea what the heck they need to do.
    • Experienced users—if someone doesn't want to use an edit summary, what the hell. You can't reason with some people. Ask them nicely, then forget about it. We should only change this option to default if policy mandates edit summaries, which it currently does not.

/ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Oppose per Fetchcomms's view directly above. He is 100% correct; I really have nothing more to add. Guoguo12--Talk--  02:19, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Edit summaries are - frankly - not always useful. Let them be reserved for the occasions on which an edit really deserves a thorough explanation. What I might support is the addition of some kind of drop down box of "common edit summaries" like "spelling/grammar correction", "copyediting", "adding/removing content", etc. Dcoetzee 06:24, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
    Strange how opinions differ - I have always found edit summaries to be one of the features I look at most often. Perhaps editors who don't do NPP, RCP, vandal fighting, or checking for sockpuppetry, don't realise the huge advantage of just being able to scan quickly down a whole list of diffs on a log or history to see things that stick in they eye. Using popups is a pain, they stick on the page or are just too slow to use most of the time. Kudpung (talk) 06:52, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Waste of time. Having it switched on implies that all new edits by new users are trusted based on their edit summary. Only needs a smart vandal to add things such as "added reference", etc, to mask an unconstructive edit. Or worst still, just filling in the edit summary with a fullstop or other token character. Lugnuts (talk) 08:38, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
    • So, what on earth is stopping vandals from using edit summaries to hide their vandalism now? And why would it be a problem if they used a token edit summary? The goal behind this is not vandalism prevention, but reducing the number of good faith edits reverted. Yoenit (talk) 08:50, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose as a gradual creep that makes editing more irksome without providing tangible benefits to the encyclopedia. This proposal is for the benefit of editors only - and it is of limited benefit. I sometimes find edit summaries useful when tracking down when or who added something to an article, however we have WikiBlame and WikiTrust for that, so they can be used instead. The other use is to prevent inappropriate edits with the notion that by making editing more difficult it will put people off editing. Yes. However, it will put off good editors as well as bad. Edit summaries are useful, but they are not essential. If I want to know what somebody has added to an article I use the "prev" button- that is far more accurate and reliable. I have sometimes found edit summaries to be misleading - (both unintentionally and intentionally) - and nobody makes (or should) a decision on reverting or leaving an edit stand purely on the edit summary. That a vandal says - "adding a reliable source" - should not be a reason for not looking at what the person has just added. SilkTork *YES! 10:17, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
    I don't understand the sentiment behind "for the benefit of editors only". Isn't anyone who edits a Wikipedia article an editor? The proposal is meant to be for the benefit of Wikipedia. You may expect that the net effect will actually not be beneficial to our project, but please don't frame this in such a strange way.  --Lambiam 15:03, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
I see that my comment wasn't clear. Yes, anyone who edits a Wikipedia article is an editor. However, such people make up a small fraction of Wikipedia users. There are around 300,000 regular editors compared to 12 million daily readers. This is a proposal that isn't aimed to improve the reading experience, but is looking to make editing a little easier, therefore it is not a priority or high value proposal. Added to which, the value to the everyday editor is questionable - it would make editing more irksome for many, and its value in reducing inappropriate edits would be limited and possibly negative. In short, it's a low value, irksome and potentially negative proposal. SilkTork *YES! 08:51, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose per many of the concerns listed. I would add that, in minor edits such as fixing words, wikilinking, categorizing, adding or removing templates as needed, adding an edit summary may be more complicated than the edit itself. Usually, I only use edit summaries for actions that may seem questionable on first sight. Besides, there is another problem with edit summaries: users may use them to "discuss" between themselves, when they should do so at the talk page, so a mandatory use of edit summaries may increase the number of edit wars. MBelgrano (talk) 11:51, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Per Z-Man & Creep. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 13:30, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. The edit summary prompt needs to be a little bit better, in that it needs to have the edit summary box in the user's field of view when the enter-a-summary prompt is displayed, or something. Other than that, I understand the opposition, I just think that overall it's likely a net benefit. Herostratus (talk) 06:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support—every edit on Wikipedia, whether making a minor typo correction or massively restructuring an article, should have an associated edit summary to allow other users to understand your intent in making the change. Too often on Recent Changes patrol I saw IPs or new users removing sourced sentences or sections—is this an attempt to remove something biased, something irrelevant, or just vandalism? Without a thorough understanding of the article and its sources it is often impossible to tell. Activating the blank edit summary warning for everyone with an opt-out for registered users would increase our ability to understand the intent of people's changes; users who really didn't want to provide an edit summary could just click submit again or leave an edit summary such as "x", but that alone might communicate to Recent Changes patrollers that their edits might be in less-than-good-faith. I personally use the tool and have found it very helpful in warning me when I have accidentally forgotten to provide an edit summary; I wonder how many IP and new users either just forget to provide a summary for their edits or don't realize that the edit summary function even exists? –Grondemar 12:32, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
    • You write, "Too often on Recent Changes patrol I saw IPs or new users removing sourced sentences or sections—is this an attempt to remove something biased, something irrelevant, or just vandalism? Without a thorough understanding of the article and its sources it is often impossible to tell." Well, the easiest way, and the best way, is obviously to ask. This is an excellent example of how we can promote communication with new users/IPs instead of blindly reverting, or staring confusedly at, an edit. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 21:43, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
      • You can ask; my experience oftentimes has been that the IP never responds to the message on their talk page, and never repeats the edit. Does that mean their previous edit was vandalism, or did the person simply move on to a new dynamic IP, or perhaps they didn't understand the "You have new messages" orange bar and were frightened away from Wikipedia forever? Asking isn't reliable, and besides, it should be the obligation of any editor to provide at least some basic reason for their edit, rather than expect that later editors will chase them down to ask what they meant. This is especially true when looking at historic edits; even an active editor would likely be hard-pressed to remember why they made a particular edit after a year or two if they left no edit summary. Asking simply isn't reliable; prompting for justification upfront is. –Grondemar 03:58, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - as proposer (sort of) I probably shouldn't put a 'support' in bold hence the 'comment. First, I think the 'blanked the page' point is adequately EditFilter. Secondly, I don't think we're 'robbing the newbies to help the experienced' by doing this - edit summaries are generally believed to be necessary for mainspace edits, especially major ones. However, the warning message at the present state, even after the change, may not be sufficiently newbie-friendly. For instance, where on earth is the edit summary field? How do I stop this bleeding thing from bugging me every time I leave out the edit summary field for minor edits? Also, the gadget could be disabled for minor and userspace edits. Kayau Voting IS evil 15:33, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
    • As for the edit filter, sure, we can do that, except the EF is essentially a limited resource. We can only have a set number of filters (sort of), why should we use them to do something that the MediaWiki software already does? We're already maxing it out on ~1% of edits. Anonymous users cannot mark edits as minor, so that change wouldn't help them. Mr.Z-man 22:17, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
      • I don't think it's right to discourage the use of edit summaries to trigger the automatic edit summaries. Maybe some people will not make the test edit they wanted to make if they realise that they're dealing with serious stuff here (since they're to give an edit summary). Plus, some vandals may put in edit summaries like 'I added some nonsense to/deleted(pseudo-deleted, for blanking) this page! Mwahahaha! I'm so evil!' That makes it even more obvious that it's vandalism. Only a through a trial run can my point be proven (in)valid though. Kayau Voting IS evil 14:59, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
        • Where did I say anything about discouraging the use of edit summaries? Not shoving our collective obsession over edit summaries in new users' faces when they're just learning how to edit is not the same thing as discouraging them from using them. It used to be we only expected high edit summary usage for admin candidates, and even then just for major edits. Now we want users to have 100% edit summary usage from their first edit? Mr.Z-man 21:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. Makes very good sense, and is, very simply, helpful. I don't agree with the objections that have been raised, since it is simply asking, in a helpful way, users to do things in a manner that is good for the project overall. Someone who feels strongly that they don't want to use an edit summary could still do so, and they would hardly be put upon to have been given the reminder. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:15, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support, but in article pages only. Talk page entries and other pages shouldn't require an edit summary. StuRat (talk) 17:24, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - A sensible approach to encouraging more edit summaries which are helpful when patrolling recent changes, watchlists, and the like. Like Tryptofish, I also differ with those who feel that this would "complicate things" for new users. No one is being "forced" to do anything or made to jump through hoops should they choose not to provide an edit summary. They are merely being given a friendly reminder. Per StuRat, I also support the idea of applying the policy to article pages only.--JayJasper (talk) 17:42, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - After reviewing the many good arguments made through the course of this discussion, the benefits of such a system seem to far outweigh potential negative results. And personally, I always mean to include a summary but sometimes move too fast hitting the "Save" button, so an unobtrusive mechanism to help me in those cases would be appreciated  :) Doc Tropics 18:00, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
    • As an established user, this proposal would not directly affect you. The mechanism already exists for you to enable in your preferences. Mr.Z-man 22:17, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose Not because I don't like edit summaries, but because this will discourage editing. You'd be surprised at the number of casual editors who won't bother to repeat an edit if it doesn't go through the first time. This is why vandalism filters cut down significantly on vandalism, even if a determined vandal can just ignore the warning. This might be equally effective at discouraging non-vandalistic edits. 169.231.53.195 (talk) 02:59, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose until I see evidence that there's a problem. Juliancolton (talk) 12:43, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support making the default preference to prompt for missing edit-summaries. This has many clear benefits (the main one being that it encourages people to include an edit-summary but does not force this in the [few] cases where it would be inappropriate or unnecessary) and no obvious downside, provided the prompt was clearly worded and there was an ability to alter this default situation via Special:Preferences for people who frequently need to save edits without a summary for a specific reason. And there aren't many of those. ╟─TreasuryTag►Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster─╢ 05:46, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Weak support if the reminder does not require the page to be reloaded (i.e. using Javascript) or a dialog to be dismissed; otherwise, weak oppose. Rd232 talk 15:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose to making the default preference to prompt for missing edit-summaries. If someone doesn't want to write an edit summary the will just turn it down, or write meaningless edit summaries. For example if I used for this edits edit summary: "x", then it would be meaningless. Armbrust WrestleMania XXVII Undertaker 19–0 22:30, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support I'm fed up with seeing users not using the summaries. Near enough every person who edits on Tennis articles do not use an edit summery, so its really hard to see wheather something is a vandal act or not. Although I do see the point of the put a random word in to by pass it as being a problem KnowIG (talk) 22:42, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support; failing that, revert the reminder text to the old version: the new one is too patronising if it only shows up to people who deliberately enabled it and hence presumably already know what edit summaries are good for. --A. di M. (talk) 12:04, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support I've thought that this should be made the default for a long time now. That being said, the "You have not provided an edit summary..." notice is not very noticable at all, and I can see unfamiliar users missing this and getting frustrated when their edits don't go through. Therefore, I think that we should make the reminder much more prominent and noticable, before we entertain the idea of enabling it for everyone. It might also be worth investigating a redesign of the gadget, as someone has suggested below. A pop-up of some sort would be much better than reloading the entire page. --Dorsal Axe 16:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. Revision history is hard to sift through, and this will make that task easier, esp. for newcomers.  – OhioStandard (talk) 02:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Although I agree that edit summaries make it far easier to see what the editor was trying to achieve, I'm opposing per Z-man and Fetchcomms points. Noom talk contribs 21:32, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Sends away users who are doing small edits. Also per Z-man. Stickee (talk) 02:28, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Oppose per Z-man. Not needed, one still needs to check edits regardless of summarizes. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Oppose from ceyockey — A part of me says "YES! do this", but that is the part which set the default on my configuration to prompt for edit summaries. I agree with those who argue that edit summaries are a hurdle which will turn away novice editors. Instead, I would suggest that some "good reasons for including edit summaries" be articulated for people who become relatively regular editors to encounter and adopt ... if they find those reasons good for them. Lead by example and expedience rather than by policy. --09:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
  • P.S. from ceyockey — Using both Firefox and Chrome, I gain great benefit from previous entries in edit summaries being available for selection. In regard to 'minor' edits mentioned above, it is (almost) trivial to type "typo" or "copyedit"; more complicated edit summaries like "added x-ref to es.wikipedia", for instance, are easy to add when the autocomplete features of firefox or chrome are available. --09:24, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support, it surely won't save the world, but surely the time of an editor every now and then. Believe me, it's really not that difficult to write a short summary, I mean, there's no problem using abbrevations and the like... --The Evil IP address (talk) 18:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support for edits made in article space, per my comment at the previous proposal. RashersTierney (talk) 13:49, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose – Mr.Z-man sums it up very well; essentially, it defeats the purpose of AES, which is fairly useful most of the time, and helps with removing vandalism. —mc10 (t/c) 23:33, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose Having this nagging feature will frustrate new users and turn them off from the English Wikipedia just because they are not entering edit summaries. We want to encourage new editors, not nag them. Logan Talk Contributions 20:26, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support - absolutely. It's not too much to ask, for a little short comment on each edit - I really don't think it would discourage anyone - and, they could just click again and ignore it. The potential benefit is huge. New users would get the idea of good practices from day 1, and they'd not get a warning about failing to use edit summaries. It's not nagging; people are perfectly accustomed to having to fill in similar boxes when saving a page on other websites. And we are not insisting on it. This should be the default; absolutely.  Chzz  ►  21:14, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support - this will make anons and new users more likely to use edit summaries - which will make the good edits less likely to be reverted, make it easier for Edit filter false positive reports to be handled better, etc,. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:46, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose Originally I intended to "click link" ... "!vote support", but in reading the existing persuasions, I tend to agree with Mr. Z-man. To be honest, the only time these edit summery things seem to generate any impact whatsoever to the project is when (1)Someone vandalizes, (2) Someone gets uncivil or delves into a personal attack, or (3) We look for something to complain about at RfA. They (edit summaries) can be a nice touch, but hardly something that really adds much to the project that everyday people read. — Ched :  ?  01:57, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Trial?

May I propose we figure out a way to trial this for a bit? Perhaps enable it for 50% of new accounts created for a few days and then compare % of edits reverted, average number of edits and number of editors still active. That way we would actually have statistics to back up this idea, rather than just assumptions. I am honestly unsure whether this is a good idea, but it definitely has enough support to warrant further investigation. Yoenit (talk) 08:50, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Either that or simply turn it on for a month and see the impact it has on the inclusion of edit summaries and the number of IP and new edits. I sincerely doubt that this is going to have any significant negative impact. –Grondemar 12:32, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
There seems to be enough to support to begin duscussing a trial, but wouldn't a 30 day trial on all accounts be more useful? There's no question this can help experienced editors as much as newcomers. Doc Tropics 18:00, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support for a trial. But, per comments in the next two threads, the "prompt" that we trial should not be the present one (which involves reloading the entire page) but a small box saying "Please enter a brief description of your edit in the field below or select a description from the drop-down menu." And a "skip edit description" button. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:59, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support More edit summaries = Less bitey-ness. --Cybercobra (talk) 04:40, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Modify. Prompt for an edit summary, but not every time. Either do this conditional on missed summaries in an editor's first [50 edits], perhaps until auto-confirmed even, and then stop it. Or, at point x, only prompt for blank summaries [25%] of the time, decreasing as the number of edits/time editing increases. Ocaasi c 21:24, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose Often an unnecessary hassle. We really shouldn't be going out of our way to make editing less convenient. Abyssal (talk) 03:33, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support: anyone wanting to edit an encyclopedia should be willing to spare a few keystrokes to explain what they are doing. It will help us to support new editors, and help them to understand what has been done to their work by later editors. (In fact I'd happily see edit summaries made compulsory!). PamD (talk) 18:53, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I am seeing a lot of opposition to this, moving forward with a trial without consensus would be unethical. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:21, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Sven; no real consensus for a trial. We should work toward a redesigned system as discussed elsewhere (popup prompt, selection box, etc.) first. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 23:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support a trial. But not just a "flip the switch and see what happens" trial. I think we should be very particular about it, and redesign the gadget to suit the trial better. It should only affect mainspace edits, and we should consider only doing this to users who do not leave edit summaries often. Both excellent points/ideas raised above. --Dorsal Axe 16:07, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose the benefit is so small, the risk big... Do not support a trial.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:42, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Is there actually any reason to believe that any trial will actually turn out to be a trial? "Trial" doesn't really mean much since PC... --Yair rand (talk) 21:34, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose – Absolutely not, if it isn't supported above, a trial shouldn't start. —mc10 (t/c) 23:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose See above. Logan Talk Contributions 20:26, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support - sure - if the proposal doesn't succeed - why not? Why can't we just give it a try, see what happens? As long as the trial is for an absolutely, set-in-stone, fixed time - at the end of which, regardless, it'd be turned off. And then we could discuss it again, evaluate the results - before working up a fresh proposal.  Chzz  ►  21:14, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - I like the trial idea- I'm not sure yet if I am on board with the proposal, I would like to see if it makes a difference first. Or see if new users find it to much of a hassle and take off.Nightenbelle (talk) 19:16, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose And oppose a trial as a means to "convince" the opposition. We don't need another trial with a pinky swear end date. Trials should be reserved for ideas that have general community consensus but a lack of clarity on the implementation details. I don't see a benefit from requiring edit summaries and I'm frustrated by the continual insinuation that wikipedia needs to deal with its shrinking editor base by adding to editing friction. Protonk (talk) 17:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose While trials may appear good on paper, and in theory, in practice they seem to generate more heat than light. — Ched :  ?  01:57, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose A lot Wikipedia's best contributors often don't use edit summaries, User:Tony1 comes to mind. Edit summaries help, but sometimes it's hard to properly summarise an edit. —James (Talk • Contribs) • 10:01pm • 12:01, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: nudging

Moved to separate section, under #Dropdown of common summaries. Rd232 talk 15:40, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: update notification scheme

Moved to separate section, under #Reminder design. Rd232 talk 15:40, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Local Copy Key Content Hosted on Commons

As a response to Commons deleting an image used hundreds of times on Wikipedia without telling us about the deletion discussion and giving us time to prepare I propose the following safeguards

  • Any file that has achieved featured status (Featured Sound or Featured Picture) on English Wikipedia should have a copy hosted locally.
  • Any file used on more than 25 pages should be hosted locally.

I have no problem with keeping a copy on commons, but I don't what their unwillingness to communicate with Wikipedia to continue to cause damage to this project. If something heavily used on our project goes up for deletion on commons, someone would have to run a deletion discussion locally. We might end up deleting it too, (or reach a different decision), but at the very least, we'd notice that there was a deletion discussion itself and take corrective steps (finding replacements or delinking) before the image disappears, not after. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:05, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Support Sven Manguard Wha? 21:05, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support the local deletion discussion. Make them mandatorily post IFDs on all wikis which use an image more then 'x' times. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 03:54, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. I remember from my time at featured pictures that I had to occasionally browse through the FP collection and summarily delist anything that had been deleted on Commons in the meantime. It's annoying, and a waste of time. MER-C 10:15, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. Haven't been there, haven't done that, don't have the t-shirt, but this sounds sensible and reasonable. A mechanism for Commons to notify WP of commencement of and results from deletion discussions there would be a plus, but such a mechanism outside of WP control shouldn't be relied upon by WP. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:34, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. Lambanog (talk) 13:02, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Strongly support. I'd go even further and move it to "all files currently in use on an en-wiki article are hosted locally", leaving Commons as a strategic reserve of unused images and backup copies of images which other projects may also want to use. The "{{movetocommons}}→deleted on en-wiki→Commons decide it doesn't meet their copyright criteria (which are wildly different to en-wiki's, as en-wiki works on US law and Commons works on law-of-the-country-of-origin)→Commons deletes their copy without bothering to notify anyone" cycle is one of the most irritating experiences Wikipedia can throw at editors, and I'm coming to believe that as a project it's outlived its usefulness to en-wiki. – iridescent 19:40, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose. Copyright must be taken into account seriously. It is right that en.wiki allows images under similar licences than commons, under the licence of being PD in the US but not at the home country, or under non-free rationales, but the last two must not be moved to commons anyway, and for the first group, the rules are the same. If we don't clearly use any of the last two types, the rules on what is or isn't a copyright violation, a derivative work, an unsourced image, a treshold of originality, etc; must be the same. To upload a copyright violation or any image with doubtful copyright on purpose here, rather than in commons, counting on that "it won't be noticed", is unacceptable. A copyright violation must be deleted regardless of how many times it is used, and even if it gets featured status (we may decline speedy deletion in such circumstances, but do not ever think that featured images are beyond copyright if the licence details were wrong and nobody noticed it). If the image is free, if you can (as you must) provide the evidence to confirm it's free, upload it to commons and there won't be anything to fear. If it is not free, or you don't know, don't upload it as a free image, anywhere. And if you think that commons deleted an image that was indeed free, appeal the deletion and request that the image is restored. Cambalachero (talk) 20:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
    • I take copyright very seriously, and if something is in fact not free use and does not qualify for fair use, it should be deleted. However if something is widely used on this project, we need to be involved in the decision making process. Nothing is to stop the person that nominated the file for deletion from nominating it on Enwiki, where it would proceed like any other FfD. However forcing them to use a local process means that we know that it's up for deletion, and can take corrective steps. An image used hundreds of times suddenly disappearing is disruptive to the project, and as I said below, many on commons see that as "not their problem." Sven Manguard Wha? 21:55, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
      • There's another requirement I forgot: unlike free images, that may be used anywhere under just the limits of style, non-free images must have a rationale for each usage. There is no fair use image out there used "hundreds of times", and if there was image in commons used hundred of times and deleted as a copyright violation, I doubt fair use would have allowed to keep that state of things anyway. As for the "not their problem", that's a misunderstanding: that's not a principle of "commons take priority over other projects", but "copyright concerns take priority over other concerns". Cambalachero (talk) 01:52, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. The proposed approach is just a hack. A few years ago the German Wikipedia got bitten after they moved most of their files to Commons (since they have a policy of not using fair use images anyway) and then some of them were deleted due to nuances of copyright law. What we really need is a community that does not stop at the border between different wikis. The easiest way to get such a community would be WikiMedia-wide watchlists. Hans Adler 20:24, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Everything I have come across has told me that won't happen. There are good people on commons, but there are also uncaring zealots. The "that's not my problem" attitude is not only prevalent, but widely accepted. Until they change policy to mandate communication, we cannot trust that they will speak with us when they should. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:55, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I have recently implemented the Commons fair use upload bot, which is designed to re-upload images to En as fair use candidates before deleting them on Commons, which will obviate this issue as soon as people start using it. Dcoetzee 20:28, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
    • off-topic, but I think that bot is a very bad idea. There are too many cases where a copyright violation can't be hosted as fair use either: unused images, images whose usage do harm the hability of the copyright holder to exploit the image (such as collect-cards), images for an article that already includes fair use images and the new ones can not be justified, unpublished derivative work images (such as fan art), duplicated images, etc. Fair use images should always be uploaded by a human, after considering the context and the expected usage. Cambalachero (talk) 20:48, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
      • The whole reason this proposal is necessary is that many Commons users really don't care how their actions affect the other projects. What makes you think that they would expend any of their precious, precious time to upload back to local projects when they are not willing to expend any time telling the local projects that files those projects use are up for deletion? No offense, but I fully predict that this bot will be very much underused. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:04, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
        • As I understand it, the proposal is that the bot will automatically monitor Commons' deletion log, and everything they don't see fit to grace the hallowed turf of Commons will be automatically deleted there and dumped on en-wiki with a pre-formatted deletion debate, along the lines of "we don't want this, so discuss if you want it or if it should be deleted altogether". The principle is sound, although I suspect the net result will just be that it swamps WP:FFD with 200+ pages at a time and gets blocked for disruption. – iridescent 22:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
      • @Cambalachero: you don't understand how the bot works. Images are uploaded into a special category Category:Fair use candidates from Commons and reviewed by users on En, and deleted if nobody wants to keep them after a certain number of days (or at least that's how I propose the policy will work). @iridescent: FFD will not be flooded - preventing this is precisely the purpose of the proposed speedy deletion criterion. @Sven: Because the bot automatically informs articles which use the image, I don't believe any high value images would slip under the radar in my proposed system. This bot has already been approved for a trial via the En bot approval process. I think this is a much more practical solution to the problem than the maintenance nightmare created by this proposal's needless duplication of content. Dcoetzee 00:22, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Copying images with 25+ uses over will not solve the issue unless you want to go and duplicate Commons one-to-one. I would like to remind you that the deletion of the image that spurred the previous discussion leading up to this one was not a result of a deletion discussion but rather a "no permission" tag. There are images lacking permission from the source the uploader specified, images without sources, images without licenses, images stated to have permission sent in to OTRS but never received, images that had emails sent to OTRS that were insufficient. It's taken me quite some time just to bring some of those backlogs to the point where the by-date categories don't go back into last year. I can barely keep up as it is, much less make notifications for a prod-type situation for the hundreds of non-deletion-request images I manage to process in a day, then track which ones I or someone else made notifications for and keeping in mind a seven day period after that (which won't match the day that the other tag was applied), then come back a second time and check all talk pages on all projects for the uses of the image for any objections before finally deleting. And that doesn't take into account that I only know English and would be unable to notify any non-English projects! All that as opposed to deleting after the uploader has been notified and the tag placed on the image for over a week and most times longer. The backlogs I've been going through have had a lot of images used here in only one or two instances. You should direct your wrath to those who don't properly gain permission for their uploads or provide sources and then put the images in use here. A better solution would be to have one of the talented bot operators here monitor the deletion requests, but also no permission/no source/long-pending OTRS/unresolved OTRS tags. The frequency of my actions on the latter can rival others' on the former. Adrignola (talk) 02:39, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose No, it would split off enwiki files from Commons discussions. If a Commons file is deleted as a copyvio (yes, this has happened to FPs), then what if the local one is not deleted, either? The problem appears to be Commons; we need to change that or set up a system like Adrignola suggests, with a bot or similar mechanism. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment In addition to the Commons fair use upload bot described above, I am planning a bot that will inform local projects (on article talk pages, in their own language) whenever any Commons images is under threat of deletion for any reason (deletion request, no permission tag, no source tag, etc etc). I think this warning will increase engagement of Commons with concerned local editors before the deletion occurs. Dcoetzee 04:18, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose as pointless. We can reupload the image here if needs be. Stifle (talk) 11:42, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Support The "commons" experiment is a failure. Gigs (talk) 13:30, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
    What is that supposed to mean? --Yair rand (talk) 14:23, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. --Yair rand (talk) 14:23, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. What Stifle said. A sledgehammer-nut scenario. Angus McLellan (Talk) 23:59, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment: Adrignola's bot idea is a much better solution all round. We should have a bot to monitor (mirror?) Commons deletion/problem tags and/or make a central list of files affected here which are "key files" per criteria above. Rd232 talk 10:26, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Allowing users to upload from URLs

Uploading files from URLs would certainly be beneficial for those that participate at WP:FFU. Would bundling it with File mover be feasible? —James (Talk • Contribs) • 7:24pm • 09:24, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

  • I've wondered about this myself. My guess is that it's just never been implemented, technically.
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 13:41, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
    • I wouldn't add anything more to filemover. The whole "you must display basic competence in files before getting this right" theme has been heavily ignored. It's being given out to "good editors" who have no experience in files, let alone fair use. More than two thirds of FFU submissions are improperly labeled as free use, when they are in fact copyrighted. Sure, not implementing this won't prevent copyvio uploads, but with my great deficit in trust on the issue of fair use, I certainly don't want to make it any easier. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:03, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
  • At first I thought this was about putting in images directly from URLs rather than submitting them for review. I was thinking "What a perfect way to flood the place with goatse and gore." But I see now it is something else. @Sven, but wouldn't having the original URL for a file help to (occasionally) see who the original owner of the image is? Or am I misunderstanding this completely, which I wouldn't put past myself on this topic. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Say Shalom! 22:24, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
What we really need is a bot that can upload approved FFU submissions. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:05, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Every bot that's attempted to get approval to upload anything has been shot down in a ball of flames (that I'm aware of). The few that have run seemed to have done so without approval, and their edits stood because what was contributed wasn't that bad, at least (not counting the ones who were mass-rolled-back, of course). Trying to get approval for such a bot strikes me as an exercise in futility.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 15:14, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
There are a few on Commons, however (mainly running through a Toolserver frontend). It would be a large project, but FFU is pretty poorly managed, IMO. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 23:14, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm not there as much as I should be. The admin Graeme Bartlett psudo-mentored me in that area when I was getting started, I'd be fine with putting him in charge if organization is needed, which I've never thought before. Sven Manguard Wha? 00:31, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
It's just that a) new users usually get the formatting horribly messed up; b) the whole system is antiquated—one long giant messy page; c) everything is manual (there's not even a script for closing requests); and d) it's usually backlogged. I think if an automated file upload system was implemented, it would make people more willing to help out. I got tired of having to save each image to my own computer and then upload them one-by-one. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 01:16, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
What Fetchcomms says is true, FFU often gets horribly backlogged and requests are often very malformed or empty or have the Lorem ipset typeface test >.> a bot that would upload and tag FFU files WOULD certainly be a welcome change. —James (Talk • Contribs) • 12:33pm • 02:33, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Search results

Why don't we show popular search results on the search page? You know, how some places show the cloud of results, with the more popular ones in a larger font and less popular ones in a smaller font (isn't there code for that in the phpBoard source?)? We don't even have to use that format... just showing, say, top 10 searches would be nice.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 13:39, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean like Wikipedia:What Google liked?—RJH (talk) 22:18, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Close. You guys have never seen the "search results cloud" thing anywhere? Where you see some things in really BIG fonts, and others in small font?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:50, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
If I understand your proposal we will simply be listing the top ten things adolescent boys and girls are searching for at any given time, i.e., what the people who have the most disposable time and are on the Internet look for. It would probably resemble the list at [7].--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:52, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
And the problem with that would be... what, exactly?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
It would distract from what people are actually looking for, without any clear benefit. A separate page with the most popular searches may be an option. Fram (talk) 12:38, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

You're thinking of this, right? I don't think a cloud with a big "penis" or "fuck" in the middle is very useful ... /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:07, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Man... you guys really do think the best of people, don't you? sheesh.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 15:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Blacklist double "Category" prefix?

Feel free to participate in the discussion at MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist#Blacklist double "Category" prefix?. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

2 years till adminship?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Closing as opposed per WP:SNOW. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 15:20, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I propose that to become an administrator you have to have at least two years experience before becoming admin material. The reason I hope this idea goes ahead is for the following reasons:

  1. Admins-to-be should have considerable experience before requesting the mop (and if your wondering where I got this from, see here.)
  2. Two years is quite a long time; therefore, the community can judge the actions of one user in the months and days preceding adminship requests.
  3. Also, by two years, you should know most, if not all, of the rules inside-out.

--The Master of Mayhem 15:10, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Oppose while I agree that a 6-9 months minimum (The semiofficial rule of thumb) is often too short for all but the most integrated editors... Two years would seem way too long. I would suggestion a year but there are so many variable between editors... its simply "Clue level" some people get clued in and other never do. Simply creating an arbitrary buffer of two years fails to do anything. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 15:28, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose any set rules for adminship, because it varies case by case. There are some great users who get the mop after 6 months, and some who don't have it after 10 years. Each candidate varies, and I see no reason to make and enforce a rule which would prevent us from sysopping some good candidates. Ajraddatz (Talk) 15:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment With the fact that anyone could edit under an IP (including at least one who was actually offered adminship) for as long as they want, there's no way to prove how long anyone's actually been around. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 18:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose The standard is arbitrary, an editor could have more experience and policy knowledge in a month of extensive editing then they may get in 2 years of casual editing. Also some people catch on quicker then others. For both reasons candidates should be evaluated on their actual contributions, not an arbitrary criteria. Monty845 18:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Please state if you are admins or not.--The Master of Mayhem 18:36, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Why do people need to state if they are an admin? Everyone's opinion should be based on their reasoning not based on their access level. GB fan (talk) 19:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Because admins have a tendency to oppose any measure that upsets the status quo that gave them power. Malleus Fatuorum 19:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Why would that be true? Wouldn't admins, having the power already, be all for raising the bar and keeping it out of balance if the power is what they value? Why would they argue for a system that would put others in power more quickly? </puzzled> --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:13, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
Have I misunderstood the proposal? I thought that it was indeed for "raising the bar", to require a two-year tenure. As it happens I think that the proposal is hopeless anyway, because anyone who's been here for two years will have made enough enemies to sink an RfA. So from that perspective I'd be inclined to support it. If I cared. Malleus Fatuorum 00:33, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
Yea, you got me. The only reason that I edit here is to become an admin, and darn it, I don't want to two year rule stopping me from getting teh powers@@@
Beyond that, there is no reason for admins to point themselves out here. All users are equal, and something that people need to understand is that sysop tools are just that - a few tools, and not any different than other users when it comes to discussions like these. And please, don't give me the "everyone is opposing because they want to be an admin" crap, because that really offends people like me who are here to try and build an encyclopedia. Ajraddatz (Talk) 00:46, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
You need to try reading things more carefully Ajraddatz, and perhaps even make at least a token effort to understand what's being said. Nobody has said that "everyone is opposing because they want to be an admin". Malleus Fatuorum 04:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Either you've misunderstood the proposal, or I have. :) So far as I know, it's for new admins; there's nothing said about deadminning those who already have passed RfA, but only "that to become" one must have the time. Personally, I think we need more admins, not less. Many hands, light work; I sure could use more help. :/ We just need an easier process for reviewing and addressing admins who turn out to be unsuited. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:49, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm afraid that I'm just not following your banter. Of course this is a proposal for new admins, raising the bar for entry to the elite caste. Where has the idea of de-adminning anyone sprung from? Malleus Fatuorum 04:18, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
All right, I'll back up. :) You say that "admins have a tendency to oppose any measure that upsets the status quo that gave them power." If a desire for power is what motivates these particular admins (which I took, perhaps from overreading your "gave them power"), then why would admins not be supportive of a measure that makes the power more exclusive? They've already got it; raising the bar does not harm them. If power is what they desire, it is to their benefit to make the position more difficult to obtain, as the power (such as it is) would be less watered down. Those who support raising the bar once they've cleared the hurdle at a lower setting would be the ones to watch, in that case. But perhaps I was misled by the "gave them power" part of your sentence into mistaking your meaning. So I'll ask directly: why do you suppose that admins are more likely to support the system that gave them power? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:56, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
Because raising the bar for entry makes their position even more exclusive and (in their eyes) high status. Malleus Fatuorum 12:59, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
This proposal raises the bar and makes it harder for someone to become an admin. Based on that and your opinion that the current admins want the bar raised, shouldn't the current admins be lining up to support this proposal? So far only one editor has supported the proposal (a non-admin) and at least 4 admins had opposed the proposal. GB fan (talk) 13:34, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
I think the more relevant question is "for those people commenting here who are admins, how long after you started editing Wikipedia did you enter this role, and did you seek it out or were you invited?" --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:27, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
P.S. For your reference, see Wikipedia:List of administrators. The group is not a hidden cabal, but openly stated. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:29, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose because the scrutiny at RfA is designed to determine who is appropriate to be an admin and who not. We don't need arbitrary rules. ╟─TreasuryTag►Counsellor of State─╢ 18:39, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Time ≠ experience. An editor who is very active for a few months and demonstrates competency is a far better candidate for adminship than somebody who has done very little over two years. No need for an arbitrary time limit. I wouldn't have magically become a better admin candidate just because I passed my second anniversary. —C.Fred (talk) 18:54, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Each individual should be evaluated based on their experience and not on some arbitrary number. GB fan (talk) 19:09, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose; fixing requirements like this might be a good idea, but this seems rather arbitrary. Why not focus on terms for admins (i.e. 2 years and then you have to pass a new RFA). That would be something useful. --Errant (chat!) 19:28, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
That was discussed here with inadequate consensus.--The Master of Mayhem 19:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, but that proposal also would have prohibited consecutive terms, which clearly drew strong criticism. A proposal that simply required terms/reconfirmation would draw more support than the one you linked to. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 20:57, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose The adminship standard is already approximately at or above this level in practice; I see no need for adding policy creep by codifying an arbitrary numerical standard. -- [Non-admin] Cybercobra (talk) 21:02, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Some editors spend a lengthy time "lurking" (reading and learning without posting) before making that first post. Others edit only as IPs.
  • Oppose per many reasons above. Time isn't the same as policy competency or social skills. Sven Manguard Wha? 00:33, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose I am an admin, and fully believe that the bar for admins is already too high as it is. It should be easier, rather than harder, for people to become an admin; its too precious a thing already, and the difficulty in becoming an admin makes people place more value on it than it really should be worth. --Jayron32 03:19, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Who would want to spend two years of their life playing the Wikipedia Game™ and not even get to the bureaucrat level? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:11, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose—I agree with the notion stated earlier that time or degree of activity shouldn't be a blocker to adminship; if someone who has been working here for a handful of months and made major positive contributions and has accepted a nomination to the role and passes the approval process, it strengthens Wikipedia to add them to the cadre of admins. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:24, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Terrible idea. Standards are high enough as it is, and your reasoning behind making it two years could apply to a year as well. Many good admins had fewer than two years' experience, so this is a proposal which is not solving anything, but making things more difficult. AD 13:29, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. We should be making adminship easier to get not harder - it is not an "elite" group or status symbol. Indeed back when I became an admin in 2005 it was "no big deal" - which is the philosophy we should be returning to. Thryduulf (talk) 14:59, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Citizenship and Nationality

Hello everybody, I wish you well and come up with a probably important subject.

Council of Europe, in 1997 has signed the European_Convention_on_Nationality trying to resolve several issues concerning one's nationality. I will not even touch the details of this convention which is trying mainly to deal with multinationals. Actually the important part in the convention is the article dealing with definitions (Article 2) where the synonymousness of "citizenship" and "nationality" is implored referring to the "Nottebohm case" addressed by the International Court of Justice (1; and where "nationality" is defined as the "legal bond having as its basis a social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties" (Nottebohm case, ICJ Reports 1955, p. 23) but "the legal bond between a person and a State and does not indicate the person’s ethnic origin". I don't know the differences between these two concepts in various other countries (presumably including the US), and I suppose I'm not the only one (considering Wikipedia is not explanatory enough on this issue); but still I suppose they are almost totally the same thing. Also, if we do not include the ethnic origin in the concept of "Nationality" (which the convention is also not doing); then the ethnic origins of an individual is merely their ethnic origin, nothing else. It neither has no jurisdiction over nothing in law; nor the law makes any distinction between different ethnic groups. So perhaps we should not define anybody in the introduction of their biographies with their ethnic origins; or otherwise should not intervene with anybody including the ethnic origin of an individual in the introduction paragraph.

So, despite I strongly would like to see these two articles merged, I would like to see some opinions on the issue before the proposal for a merger. And the reason I'm posting this on the Village pump is because I think a lot of people would be interested; and the general convention in Wikipedia may be alterede after the discussion (so it is not simply a matter of the articles themselves. But still, if deemed inappropriate, any administrator may move the issue to the proper talk page.) I hope I have not offended anybody and made myself clear.

Cheers --Stultiwikiatext me 15:36, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

There are a few differences between U.S. nationality and citizenship, which are outlined at United States nationality law#Nationals who are not citizens. Although only a small fraction of people living in the U.S. would be non-citizen nationals, there would be some noticeable consequences for those people. For example, they would have to become naturalized citizens before they could vote, according to the laws of most or all state. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:56, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
What we include in our article introductions depends not so much on the distinctions that the law makes, but on the significant facts about the subject (according to what reliable sources say). So if the sources on, say, Billy Connolly make much of his being Scottish, then it serves little purpose for us to describe him in the introduction merely as a "British" (or "United Kingdom") comedian, just because there is no legal definition of Scottishness. --Kotniski (talk) 16:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

There is no standard in biographical articles' introduction then? Like any preference of Wikipedia (i.e written (or to be) in MoS) to include which of nationality, citizenship or ethnic origin as a standard? --Stultiwikiatext me 18:13, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

WP:OPENPARA, point #3. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:05, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
I think that the articles need to remain separate partly because they were historically separate concepts. I believe that we would correctly describe Paul the Apostle, for example, as being ethnically Jewish, a national of Israel, and a citizen of Rome. Slaves, serfs and peasants were nationals of whatever place was their (owner's/master's/liege's) permanent home, but not citizens of anything. There are many people who consider themselves nationals of more than one country, but citizens of only one (and the other way around). The fact that the two are the same for the majority of modern people does not mean that the words are actually synonymous. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

OMG, Cybercobra, thanks, I'm sorry to have not seen that (actually I thought I had looked over that, but whatever, there it is). And WhatamIdoing, great comments and examples, the historical perspective is enough to keep them apart, supported with people's preferences; but still, I think the articles need improvement to give coverage of these terms in a broader sense, geographically, politically and historically specifying the exact differences (according to different countries' laws and historic alterations). (Also, because this issue is a subject of dispute in many many locations, like Spain, Israel and Palestine, China, Turkey or Africa) Cheers, --Stultiwikiatext me 20:44, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

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