Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 26

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Village pump (proposals) archive
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
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Contents 1 Currency. 2 History Options 3 dedicated polls 4 Replacing Template:Infobox neighborhood with Template:Infobox Settlement 5 BAG Candidacy 6 Wikipedia:List of tips for admins 7 Featured disambiguation pages 8 Saving Energy on Wikipedia 9 Increase autoconfirm 10 Category intersection and unions now possible using search, more changes to come... 11 "Safe Search" or "Adult Filter" function proposal 12 Downloadable spreadsheets on Wikipedia 13 Promote WP:WWII to its own Wikiproject 14 Did you mean? 15 Wikipedia:Noindexing Talk Spaces 16 A class 16.1 Beginning fresh 17 Add contributions total number 18 Making an Ambox like thing for the Wikipedia namespace 19 Make traffic numbers public 20 FOR INTERWIKI BOT 21 Is the redirect retard really necessary? 22 We should rename Verifiability to Credibility 23 Advanced search function 24 New Project 25 Moving the Main Page 26 I want korean language warning templates! 27 Twinkle 28 Method to protect your user and talk page from "quicky" vandals 29 wrong interwiki link is not red 30 Corey Worthington Article 31 Is howto needed if there is guideline and help? 32 Semantic categories 33 Lt. Micheal Moulton 34 "Discussion Links" 35 Shadowing Template 36 Wikipedia Toolbar 37 Multiple columns in {{reflist}} deemed bad 38 Automatic linking whenever possible 39 Modernista! disclaimer in Common.js 40 Requiring some time before uploading ability 41 Wikipedia logo improvement 41.1 New logo 41.2 Fix the logo completely, or not at all 42 Editing and History page issues 43 Suggestions for image pages: Titles and Info Boxes 44 Stub link 45 New idea for redirect templates 46 I want to merge my usernames. 47 An idea for FC recognition 48 Changing assessment levels - please give us your choice 49 Current birthdays 50 favorite pages section 51 Possible "Did you mean " feature

[edit] Currency.

With inflation and the sort often reading numbers of wikipedia can be quite misleading, i purpose starting a policy of tagging all currency with a year. This will allow for possible latter action of:

• All currency to be displayed in local units bassed on exchange rates (e.g uk £, aus AUS$, Canada candian$, etc)
• All currencies to be displayed in equivelent modern day units (e.g modern us$ (should be noted as such)
• A combination of the two.

I realise that there may be some technical barries to either/both of the above 2 but the 1st step would also allow for browser plugins/scripts to do this on peoples machine and get around technical problems, so even if wikipedia never decide to implement the ideas, people will benefit from the extra information.--82.35.192.193 (talk) 06:49, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Dating is easy: just put something like as of 2008 after any currency amounts that are date-sensitive. Conversion isn't so easy. How will you handle things like currencies that don't exist any more or hyperinflation? Adjusting for inflation also has problems: after long enough (about 50 years in Western countries), the relative definition of "wealth" has changed enough that simply adjusting dollar values is misleading. For example, in simple inflation-adjusted dollar amounts, the US has spent more on fighting in Iraq than it did during all of World War II. --Carnildo (talk) 07:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the war in Iraq has cost much less than World War II, just over one-quarter. It is more than World War I, Korea, or Vietnam, but not more than World War II. (source: Congressional Research Service via Reason magazine) Sbowers3 (talk) 23:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction -- that's a hazard of using a newspaper as a source, particularly one that's half-liberal, half-conservative. --Carnildo (talk) 02:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible to link to one or more websites with up-to-the-minute exchange rates? (Please see http://www.xe.com/ucc/.) Is it possible to have the conversion result(s) displayed automatically in a Wikipedia article? --Wavelength (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure where we would want to link to current exchange rates, except perhaps on articles about the currencies themselves. Per the notes above, the relative values of currencies change – sometimes very substantially – with time; automated conversions of historical prices using current exchange rates are apt to be highly misleading. Automatic conversions may or may not include corrections for historical exchange rates and inflation; in the interest of accuracy we should let our readers choose what assumptions and corrections to make to currency conversions rather than deciding for them.

Besides, conversion tools are already readily available from a large number of sources for those who want 'em. Google automatically does currency conversions from the search line: '1 british pound in US dollars', '1 USD in GBP'. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:52, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

To extend my comment, this page is an excellent example of the problem that we would face in trying to present historical values, particularly with conversions. Depending on the way in which you choose to calculate inflation and exchange rates, 1 U.S. dollar in 2000 can have a calculated value in 2007 of anywhere from 0.60 to 0.85 U.K. pounds. Going back thirty years to compare 1977 to 2007, there's a factor of two difference between the low and high estimates. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:11, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

And if you choose to go back 60 years, you'll be at 4 USD to the pound. Oh wait, thats not new pounds. Drat! :) Case in point (and suggested so often that its destined for PERREN) is that automated conversions have no business in an article. -- Fullstop (talk) 00:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History Options

The Recent Changes list allows you to hide minor edits and bot edits. This should be available on all history pages. If you're really trying to track how the content of the page has changed, minor/bot edits can just clutter up the whole process. Those edits would still be shown in diffs, obviously. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:57, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

It would also be great if we could see all of a particular user's contributions to an article in one place.--Pharos (talk) 23:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

And then it would be nice to list the edits by size, both for the entire article and each particular user. Since WP does track the changes in kilobytes, this seems quite feasible. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 23:36, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

It would also be great if we could see all of a particular user's contributions to an article in one place.--Pharos (talk) 23:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Another useful option would be the ability to search past versions of an article for a string literal. I quite often come across articles with orphan named refs (e.g., <Ref name="some name" />) where the parent containing the Ref body has been deleted, usually in the middle of a deleted block or text. Searching for the past edit where the deletion was made is tedious. (Perhaps there's an easy way to do this and I'm not aware of it?) -- Boracay Bill (talk) 23:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

What about some form of grouping a vandal edit with the edit that reverts it? Like if you hit the (undo) button, it will draw a faint red box around your edit and the one you're undoing. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Not disagreeing with the above, but my personal list includes the option to hide all edits that have been reverted, along with the reverting edits, leaving only edits (and editors) who truly changed a page. Software-wise, that would be fairly easy to do, if each version had a hash value (and images already do have has values, for the purpose of identifying duplicates). [Boracay Bill - check the "History (of pages)" topic in the editor's index - you'll find (in the "Tools" subtopic) two things that will do what you want.] -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

But that won't work when there was intervening edits between the vandalism though, which isn't uncommon. Or when the editor/reverter made other edits at the same time. Nil Einne (talk) 04:22, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

True, but perhaps another message could be displayed upon undoing an edit: "For the purposes of tracking article activity, please do not edit this article while also undoing an edit." Or something like that. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 10:32, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The wishlist so far:

• Hide minor edits
• Hide bot edits
• Hide reverted / reverting edits
• Group reverted / reverting edits
• Sort edits by contributor
• Sort edits by size
• Search all previous versions

I can see a use for sorting Special:Contributions by page title, but hiding and rearranging edits in the page history may have a lot of complications. When you do a diff using the "(last)" link, would it diff to the previous revision or the last revision that you can see? If you sort the edits in any way except chronological order the diff links really wouldn't work at all. Mr.Z-man 19:57, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Then perhaps chronological would always be the secondary sorting option. If you sort by author, within each author's section, it will be sorted by time. I don't really see the harm or complication in hiding minor / bot / reverted edits. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 15:52, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like the diff links should be trouble. Maybe they will be, but it shouldn't be that difficult to have the diff link automatically reference to the edited version of the page rather than simply the previous version in the list. If the diff does the former, it's a problem of design which could (and I believe should) be rectified. Sorting a particular user's edits by size would be extremely useful, although the transparency might be frightening for some. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 00:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem with hiding edits, is that when you do a diff, its going to be including edits that you can't see in the history view. When you rearrange them, the (cur) and (last) links could still work as intentioned, but the radio button based diffs wouldn't work at all. Mr.Z-man 01:37, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Even if hiding edits does end up being too complicated to implement, here's an idea that's not: In addition to displaying edits in groups of 50 - 500, we should be able to display all revisions in the previous day / 3 day / 7 days, etc. just like on the Watchlist. This would be really helpful for pages with a lot of traffic, such as WP:AIV. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] dedicated polls

Often we have straw polls or even more official votes for nominations and such. Currently, the convention seems to be listing comments prefixed with a bold "support," "oppose," or some other word. This generally works well, but often people have discussions in the middle of the list of votes or embed their votes in sub-sections and it really makes counting votes hard sometimes. A more serious problem (generally on controversial article talk pages) is when for some reason a bunch of people debate some change to the article and no formal polling takes place. One side will claim there consensus in support, but the other side will claim there is consensus against. It is really hard to actually determine who is for or against certain changes because you have to go through a large rambling talk page to get a sense of who is involved in the dispute and who supports what. I have even seen some talk pages where people argue about the number of supporters/opponents there are in certain arguments. On particularly long pages, it is easy to "hide" polls in the text and get limited (and one-sided) participation which can be used to claim there is consensus.

I would like to suggest having some framework of where users could create dedicated polls off of a talk page that users can vote in and leave comments. The goal would be to provide a simple and hopefully user-friendly way of encouraging polls that are centralized, fully disclosing if there are links to them or something at the top of the talk page maybe, and impartially tallying up votes. Any thoughts? Dwr12 (talk) 20:55, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Establishing consensus is important, and Wikipedia's talk page system is awkward and makes it difficult to follow conversations, but a system that simply summarized binary votes on an issue would fail to capture the diversity of views expressed by its participants and how those views changed during the discussion, which are critical elements of consensus. To make an analogy, Supreme Court decisions may be decided by a majority "vote," but the ultimate long-term impact on precedent and future decisions is decided by their supporting opinions, concurring opinions, and dissenting opinions, which are detailed and well-researched descriptions of their viewpoints. Dcoetzee 21:12, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not proposing any changes to the definition of consensus. I'm proposing a different way of displaying votes. The votes occur whether you think voting is beneficial or not, and the value and interpretation we place on votes is a separate issue. My concern is that votes and polls are abused, or misused at least. I don't know if it could be called prevalent or not, but it does happen. If your concern is about not displaying comments, let me clarify that I am not suggesting replacing discussions with "binary votes." I mean to propose that we somehow isolate any polls and their direct comments and place them in a more accessible location and readable format. Dwr12 (talk) 21:53, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you talking about something like this? Gary King (talk) 03:56, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Not exactly. Having a tool to check for duplicates is good, but what I am after is a user-interface change based on placing any polls in a separate area and clearly indicating their existence. I kind of hesitate to get into specifics since surely someone else out there is better at user interface design/ideas than I am. There are plenty of talk pages gone bad such as this one Talk:Criticism_of_atheism. The page is so long that anyone can make a proposal have almost no one read it or discuss it, and then claim there is consensus. If I were to say there are 7 supporters on the talk page for removing paragraph "x," how do you verify this without combing through the talk page trying to find every last one? The way I have seen most consensus debates work is to have people unambiguously declare their positions (either whether they support or oppose and optionally why). It is rarely done in a clear format like RfA where there is essentially a bulleted list.

What I propose is whenever there is an attempt to assess consensus (which happens often here), it be done in a streamline manner with a dedicated page in which people can easily add their vote and comment and have it displayed in some very readable fashion with possibly a summary of votes. It doesn't always have to be a yes or no poll. I think it would be good if users can add their own voting options onto the poll if they don't like the current options, and of course they should be able to leave a bunch of comments below the poll. Links to "active" polls could be placed at the top of the talk page to draw attention to them so that polls actually get a decent number of participants to weigh in and comment. I'm not suggesting that the polls should carry more weight than they currently do. I just want them done properly and effectively when we do them.

If I am articulating this as I would like to be, you would see that this should change nothing other than physically moving any attempts at making polls or calls for consensus about major changes and placing them in "compartmentalized" locations on small pages linked from the talk page for easy access and readability. I think it would help reinforce attempts at reaching consensus since it would clearly advertise the existence of the proposals and clearly show who is for and against proposals and why. Right now, it is difficult to assess that on most talk pages where there are major proposals. Dwr12 (talk) 07:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Replacing Template:Infobox neighborhood with Template:Infobox Settlement

I suggest replacing the former with the latter, because:

1. They appear to do the same thing
2. The Settlement template is well maintained and documented whereas the Neighborhood template is not
3. The Settlement template is used on a few thousand pages whereas the Neighborhood template is used on only a few hundred

After further inspection, it looks like every field that is in the Neighborhood template exists in the Settlement template already, so simply replacing the Neighborhood template with a redirect to the Settlement template should suffice. Thoughts? Gary King (talk) 02:53, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

You should probably post this suggestion to the talk page of the templates in question. Alternatively, you could request a merge at WP:TfD. Make sure to make it clear that you are suggesting a merge and not a deletion. :) -- Fullstop (talk) 02:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BAG Candidacy

I have accepted a nomination to be considered for membership in the Bot Approvals Group. Please express comments and views here. MBisanz ^talk 08:37, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:List of tips for admins

Would a page at Wikipedia:List of tips for admins listing things like "Protect Grawp and Toofy Userpages" and "block long german usernames" be a helpful addition. A rotating page of things admins need to we watching for at the moment basically. MBisanz ^talk 18:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

We already have the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard‎. Rmhermen (talk) 04:43, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Featured disambiguation pages

Will there ever be featured disambiguation pages? Alot of those pages are very useful and need to be recognized. If every article in a disambiguation page is featured then the disambiguation page should be featured. -- 70.134.89.205 (talk) 02:28, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Not a snowball's chance in hell. "Usefulness" does not equal "interesting to readers". Otherwise, why not featured templates? Featured help pages? Featured article talk pages? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Featured user pages? (evil, meaningful grin) Waltham, The Duke of 01:51, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Saving Energy on Wikipedia

I think I have a good idea, and I also think I'm in the right place to post it. But I could be wrong about both, being not too familiar with the innards of this vast awesome tool. But I was wondering if there was a way to change the wikipedia pages from white to black and the font to white. It's already been done with google(blackle.com) where the purpose is to cut energy consumption since it takes less power to generate a black page then a white one. I thought about how often I use this website and wondered how much energy would be saved by a simple change. Hoopesk2 (talk) 00:52, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

You can select the Gadget labelled "Use a black background with green text on the Monobook skin" to do so. However, be aware that a) the energy savings are marginal or even negative (for LCD screens), and b) you could simply turn off your computer for an hour or so to save more energy than you'd save using a blackened Wikipedia for a year. Nihiltres^{t.l} 01:09, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah this would be useless when using a laptop or any other LCD monitor. - Caribbean~H.Q. 01:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure it saves more energy if the screen is black? According to google it doesn't. "As to why we don't do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display."[1] -- Coasttocoast (talk) 04:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

This has come up several times on VP, and it's downright silly. The amount of energy saved by turning a display black is a fraction of what you'd save by turning off the lights or your car radio. It's the backlight that requires most of the energy, and it's on all the time. Good website design should always take priority. Dcoetzee 08:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Blackle.com#Criticism sums it up. The savings are insignificant, while being much harder on the eyes. -- Kesh (talk) 20:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Increase autoconfirm

Please see: Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed Proposal/Poll (talk)

This is a discussion and poll for whether the requirements for autoconfirmation should be increased. - jc37 20:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category intersection and unions now possible using search, more changes to come...

It is now possible to find articles by how they are categorized using search. To search for articles in a specific category, type incategory:"CategoryName" in the search box. Searching more than one category at the same time performs a rough approximation of category intersection -- finding articles that are common to all the categories searched. For example incategory:"Suspension bridges" incategory:"Bridges in New York City" will return the articles that are common to both categories — the suspension bridges in New York City.

Similarly, an "OR" can be added to join the contents of one category with the contents of another. incategory:"Suspension bridges" OR incategory:"Bridges in New York City" will show all suspension bridges along with all bridges in New York City. This includes suspension bridges which are not in New York City, and bridges in New York City that are not suspension bridges.

The developers have been discussing additional ways of implementing category intersection and unions on the tech mailing list, and community members had previously discussed various changes to the user interface to make this feature easier to use. Unfortunately, the way we have structured categories has made it very difficult to use this feature effectively. To illustrate the problem, searching on incategory:"Suspension bridges" incategory:"Bridges in the United States" yields no results because Category:Bridges in the United States has been diffused into its subcategories by state. Unless categories are reorganized, this feature will have limited valued in Wikipedia. To discuss possible changes to categorization policy see Wikipedia talk:Categorization. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 20:27, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

DISCUSSION MOVED TO Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Category intersection update, PLEASE COMMENT ON THAT PAGE

[edit] "Safe Search" or "Adult Filter" function proposal

Many search engines and websites have something called a "Safe Search" or "Adult Filter" function. Wikipedia does not have such a thing. This causes many parental controls and corporate content filters to block Wikipedia. That sucks. Is there any way we could create such a feature so that Wikipedia would not get blocked? GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 02:11, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored. People who are searching for things like that are going to get what they want. We don't cater to any specific group or party in this regard; we portray these things in an objective, neutral manner that demands no censorship. Sephiroth BCR ^(Converse) 02:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

How do you define "adult content"? --Carnildo (talk) 04:32, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

While Wikipedia is not censored, there isn't anything stopping people from installing filtering software which should block most "undesirable" content, although I must stress the word most. But I don't think anything can be done at the Wikipedia level. x42bn6 Talk Mess 18:43, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

But the problem occurs when the filtering software ends up designed to block Wikipedia as a whole. I'm not saying we need to ban unsafe material, I'm just saying it might be a great idea to have some kind of special system to make it possible to have a "block adult content" feature which could be enabled by the viewers which could be done not only be registered users, but annon IPs as well. The idea would be to have a system similar to the one at http://www.aboutus.org. Another possible idea would be to have a system where Wikipedians could report pages as "adult content" and the word "explicit" would appear in the URL so that the designers of filtering software would block only those articles instead of Wikipedia as a whole. We could also make a policy where all articles containing mature material would have to have "(mature content)" in the title (so basically, if someone searched for "Naked woman" for instance, it would redirect that person to "Naked woman (mature content)"). I don't really see how mandating that all of such content have the text "(mature content)" in the title would be censoring Wikipedia, since the content would still be there and there would be little effect on anyone trying to post such content; the only people this would effect would be those on filtered computers. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 01:27, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Who gets to decide what is "safe" and what isn't? Admins? Consensus? The Wikimedia Foundation? Oppinions as to what is appropriate for minors differ vastly accross cultures and nations. For example, I know a lot of people who would have no problem whatsoever if their 5-year old child saw a (non-pornographic) image of a naked person. But I also know people who would have a huge problem with that. And they don't even belong to different ethnic groups. So which group do we cater for? How to we find a compromise that pleases both groups? We can't really. All we could do is cater for every conceivable group, and soon a large number of Wikipedia articles would be tagged as "unsafe". A much better idea is to let each cultural group censor itself. This is already possible, so why bother with a universal "unsafe" template that can be added and removed by any self-declared moral crusader, and that will achieve nothing but endless edit warring? Cambrasa 23:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

There are no known cases of Wikipedia being completely blocked by parental or corporate content filters. If you know otherwise, speak up, otherwise I don't think you have much of a point. Kaldari (talk) 00:02, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Charlotte County Public Schools blocks Wikipedia for this reason; the only way a student or teacher can access this site from one of Charlotte County's schools is to sneak on through the secured site, which only a few dedicated editors (constructive and destructive) even know exists. As evidence, read this email I received when I emailed CCPS IT requesting that Wikipedia be unblocked:

"(removed for security) <(removed for security)@embarqmail.com> writes: >Why exactly is Wikipedia blocked anyway? > (removed for security),

I take it that you are a student? I could not find a teacher with that name.

The short story is that I have to follow district policy. wikipedia is a very interesting and sometimes useful site. I won't argue about whether or not its all guaranteed to be factual since it is created "by the people for the people". As with anything, consider the source.

You may have noticed that most of the search engines like Yahoo! and Google are forced to use "safe search" settings. wikipedia has no such functionality. It wants to be uncensored. That is all well and good, but because of this, the site includes a porn star database, "recipies" for doing bad or dangerous things (I'm intentionally being vague on that one), etc.

Wikipedia is like the Internet in it's own little world, it has a bit of everything. Because of the "bad stuff" one can find on wikipedia, it is blocked.

I hope that explanation helps. A school district is required by law to provide safeguards and you won't get the freedom you'd expect at home here."

See, there are content filters blocking Wikipedia. If you'd like, you can contact CCPS at web_security AT ccps DOT k12 DOT fl DOT us (but please don't say anything about the secured site, you'd make lunch time awfully boring as I go to the media center to fight vandals during lunch). GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 00:52, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks like this problem has more to do with backward US laws. I'm sure that Pakistani Madrassas censor wikipedia for similar reasons. Perhaps we can deal with this by categorizing wiki articles in such a way to take cultural sensitivities into account. Perhaps this might even allow the Taliban to be able to safely access wikipedia if we can categorize articles such that their browsers will be able to block pages depicting women who do not wear a burqa. :) Count Iblis (talk) 17:11, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This kind of categorisation already exists, plus the tools to block categories. See Category:Bad images. Only problem is that some schools seem to stupid or lazy to make use of these tools. This isn't really our fault. All we can to is try to educate more. But we don't need universal censorship.Cambrasa confab 02:24, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank's, I wasn't even aware of that. However, I think it would be great if we could create a similar catagory for Bad miscellany (this would include articles) or maybe just Bad articles. Also, must a person be logged in to block catagories? GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 23:44, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

A school blocking all of Wikipedia because a few pages have "inappropriate content" is just stupid and a very poor reason to make the significant changes this will require. Either the school is too cheap or paranoid to use filtering software that can block based on page content, or they're just too lazy to configure their filter properly. Mr.Z-man 23:55, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

We're not talking about the school itself, we're talking about the district. The reason it's blocked is 'cause some idiot over at Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda, Florida got the urge to go on here and look up porn stars. If you want, you can email them, but I doubt much is going to change as long as we have one high school in the area (or possibly one more, Lemon Bay) that has malicious students, not much is going to be done to get the site unblocked unless something is changed on the Wikipedia side. Hey, it's not my schools fault that some SOBs from the other schools decided to act like a bunch of jack asses. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 18:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

It's probably not the only issue, but I can pretty much come up with a more reasonable solution for the other issues. By the way, I'm using the secured URL right now, which allows me on here from school for now, but I don't know how long that's gonna last. You might bring your opinion up with web_security AT ccps DOT k12 DOT fl DOT us, but if you say anything nasty, don't point the finger at me, I just think it sucks that at any moment I could get kicked off of this site by filters. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 18:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

There is no reasonable solution to an unreasonably draconian school district. Dude, schools are always going to have students who look up porn. The best idea is probably just to circumvent the school's computers altogether and edit Wikipedia through a mobile broadband modem attached to your laptop. --Cambrasa confab 02:39, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I might as well try and use a secured proxy as to try that. I don't access Wikipedia from a laptop unless I'm at home; I edit from desktop PCs when I'm at school. The district does not allow any electronic devices on campus. It's not that it's as big of a deal for me as it is for other people who would like to use this site on projects and stuff (hey, I fall in that catagory too). Besides, I don't have a cellular internet service, and I hear all of the wireless access points around the school require WEP codes. Also, I wonder how many other districts block access to Wikipedia. I'm sure we aren't the only one. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 18:55, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyone who says that "Wikipedia is not censored" is actually a liar, if it weren't censored, vandalism would never be reverted, the notability policy would not exist, WP:NPOV would be unknown to all, WP:UAA would be tagged as humorous, open proxies would be free to edit, spam would be welcome, attack pages would exist indef, WP:CIVIL would be an essay rather than a policy, page protection would be considered a joke... A more appropriate statement would be "Wikipedia is censored," other sites don't have near as many policies and endless cernsorship as we do. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 19:39, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

You are confusing censorship with moderation. Vandalism, spam, and uncivil comments are moderated because they are are a detriment toward our goal. We have NPOV to ensure balanced coverage. Censoring based on explicit content anymore than the law requires us to would be harmful to the project. Removing spam and vandalism is not harmful and straw man arguments do not help your proposal. Mr.Z-man 23:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so that might have sounded a little extreme, but still, saying that "Wikipedia is not censored" implies that anyone may come on here and create articles about themselves, their friends, their run-of-the-mill elementary or middle school, the run-of-the-mill mom and pop convenience store on down the road, their best friend's wedding, the day their cows got out and shit on a political sign, yesterday's newspaper, and all kinds of other nonsense that will in reality be deleted under the notablility policy. The statement also implies that people can create usernames such as "I f***ed your mom," "Always shop at Kmart," "I am an administrator," "I am an unlicensed bot," and other nonsense usernames banned by the username policy (not that I'm saying that I disagree with the policy or anything). Hey, I ought to propose that "Wikipedia is not censored" be replaced with "Wikipedia has rules," right? GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 00:48, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

You don't seem to understand what censorship is. Censorship is not the removal of inaccurate, unverifiable, and unhelpful content. Censorship is the removal of verifiable and pertinent content because some groups find it objectionable. Or at least this is what we mean by censorship. If you have a problem with that (widely accepted) definition of censorship, I suggest you discuss it on the page Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not. Cambrasa confab 17:11, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

What you are not understanding is this, Wikipedia does have rules, particulary dealing with user conduct, as well as quality standards. However we don't censure things that can be considered "pornographic" or "gruesome" if they are represented accurately since that wouldn't conflict with our quality guidelines, there is also the fact that "acceptable" and "non-acceptable" are a matter of opinion, thus they are in direct conflict with WP:NPOV. - Caribbean~H.Q. 17:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Sure. I kinda disagree, but I'm not going to enflame an argument here; arguments = destruction. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 19:42, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is advocating censoring Wikipedia. What was suggested is a "hook" or an optional feature that would enable people, households or corporations to censor, at their own discretion, a particular brand of content that is often found undesirable. This would enable such individuals to use Wikipedia at their own comfort level. --Eliyak T·C 00:21, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't really see what kind of benefit this would add to Wikipedia. Personally, I don't find much use in a bastardized, half-assed version of something. It would seem that the only argument in favor of implementing such a system would be to help try and convince draconian public schools to unblock the project and allow access. However, at that point, it's essentially up to them to dictate what constitutes a bad article or a bad image rather than by operating by consensus on what constitutes such things, which is a terrible idea. I think it best to err on the side of staying with the goals of the project and providing information to everyone. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 11:07, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I seriously suggest that you start a petition. In this regard, you might like to read Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia and Wikipedia:School and university projects. Anyone who thinks that it would be feasible to implement a system where pages could be flagged on the grounds of their content should take a look at the debates over at AFD. We shouldn't add another layer of administration, policies and rules just because some narrow-minded school districts can't figure out how to configure their net-nanny filters. Wikipedia has information about a wide range of sexual activity, and even some information out how to make certain kinds of infernal machines, but a student who cannot figure out how to build an Improvised explosive device, and can't manage to get internet access through a mobile phone, will probably not get far just by reading Wikipedia. Back in the days before the evils of the internet and The Anarchist Cookbook, my friends at school were successfully building chlorine bombs and match-head bombs. If students are looking at nekkid pictures on Wikipedia when they should be working, or where other students can see and be offended, those students should be disciplined. Honi soit qui mal y pense. --Slashme (talk) 13:54, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the student(s) need to be punished individually. I do believe that it was CHS students, so there's not as much chance that their school would do anything as some of the other schools would; their teachers tend to let them get by with things they shouldn't. On the other hand, I think it was probably more of a teacher there too lazy to do his/her job than anything else; most websites that are blocked by the filters are 1: blocked because a teacher or staff member requests it, or 2: the website is a popular website and is a blatant violation of district policy (examples: myspace.com, torproject.org, hotmail.com). I don't see that Wikipedia is a blatant violation, so I'm guessing some idiot teacher complained, and there's a good possibility that the reason this site is blocked entirely is because the teacher or staff member wouldn't settle for just blocking particular articles or catagories. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 01:49, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored, period. Who makes the decision about what is "family friendly?" Google image searches are one thing, but I'm strongly opposed to having a filter capability on the encyclopedia, there's just too much potential for bureaucracy. What's the next step, requiring age verification with a credit card to perform an uncensored search? No way! If parents, schools, or libraries want to filter out objectionable content on the encyclopedia, they can do that on their end easily enough without blocking the whole site. Mister Senseless™ (Speak - Contributions) 15:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Downloadable spreadsheets on Wikipedia

It would be extremely nice if a lot of the data presented on Wikipedia was downloadable. Specifically, every table in Wikipedia should be downloadable (perhaps csv format). I don't know if this is possible right now, but if it is, it's not quite as simple as I think it should be. It should be a click of a button in a the corner of the table. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 04:22, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

You could convert wikitables to CSVs pretty easily. Just do a text replace, replacing "|" with "," and "|-" with line break. For tables with style formatting there'll be a bit more to remove. It shouldn't be difficult to whip up a script for this though, for someone who's good with scripts (not me unfortunately). Equazcion •✗/C • 05:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

... and non-nested tables can be simply copy-pasted into your favorite spreadsheet app. -- Fullstop (talk) 06:02, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by non-nested? When is HTML not nested? I've been using computers intensively for 8 years or so and I still don't know what you're talking about. Clearly this isn't user-friendly. I haven't encountered a table yet that I can copy/paste. The point is that it should be simple enough for your average WP user, and they shouldn't have to do a time-consuming text-replace. There's lots of publicly available data that we could host, which would be extremely handy for students and researchers. I don't understand the resistance something so simple and obviously helpful. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 06:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I think what Fullstop means by non-nested is that Wikitables have the ability to have tables-within-tables, and that's not something that spreadsheet programs are capable of producing. This isn't exactly resistance you're experiencing; you might see such a feature as obviously useful but I'm not sure how many people agree with you. If this discussion attracts more comments by users who agree with you then then I'm sure it will be given its due attention. Just be patient. Equazcion •✗/C • 06:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

yep. "non-nested tables" means tables that don't have yet other tables inside them. Not only can't these be copy-pasted, such tables also cannot be represented in CSV, and as Equazcion notes, spreadsheet apps can't deal with them either. Ditto tables that use colspan= or rowspan=. -- Fullstop (talk) 02:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

header 1	header 2	header 3
row 1, cell 1	row 1, cell 2	row 1, cell 3
row 2, cell 1	row 2, cell 2	row 2, cell 3

copy-pastes fine into excel for me - You have to start the mouse-drag outside the table for it to paste properly though. --Random832 (contribs) 17:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Still doesn't paste into Excel for me. Strange. Using Firefox. And I did try to start the mouse-drag outside the table. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 07:06, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Promote WP:WWII to its own Wikiproject

Many of you might know about the articles relating to World War II, their importance and varied quality. In fact, the main article on World War II, the beginning of the modern era, is only a B class article despite the slew of excellent sources out there to use. Presently, the only project working on these articles is a task force with enough members for its own Wikiproject. A topic of such importance deserves more attention, don't you think?  Marlith (Talk)  03:23, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. Equazcion •✗/C • 07:20, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, all the sub-areas of military history were converted to task forces in order to minimize the administrative overhead of maintaining fifty different projects, enabling their members to concentrate more attention on article work. I don't think splitting things back out will be beneficial to anyone; certainly, it won't help the WWII article directly, since there will be fewer people available to look at it, not more. Kirill ^(prof) 13:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Two thoughts. First, articles like World War II will always have quality problems because they are plagued by ad-hoc drive-by contributions of little or no value. The higher the profile and the greater the scope of an article the greater the diificulties in getting consensus and so forth. Second, I agree entirely with Kirill: wikiprojects need a good critical mass to handle the wikignoming required for tracking article progress, assessment, updating templates, etc and the bigger the umbrella structure the better, with task forces operating within it with a great degree of autonomy. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 14:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but I fail to see why, if a "task force with enough members for its own WikiProject" isn't making enough progress on what needs to be done, that simply retitling it is going to make that much difference. It certainly would require more administrative effort, that's clear. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:40, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Apologies, my mistake.  Marlith (Talk)  00:01, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Did you mean?

I think in case of spelling errors and such wikipedia should have a search system like googles which provides a did you mean to write this word instead. At the moment wikipedia's searching procedures arent very good at taking spelling mistakes into account --Hadseys 12:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Search should detect spelling errors. And please note that it's good to check the editor's index before making a proposal - sometimes it has relevant information. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

And see the very same proposal further up on this page. Equazcion •✗/C • 16:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Noindexing Talk Spaces

This is a proposal by WilyD, which I think has a lot of merit, in terms of not putting things on Google that really don't belong there. Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Noindexing Talk Spaces. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 00:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A class

Isn't it about time that we have a process to find, review and select A-class articles much in the line of WP:FAC and WP:GAN? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 04:23, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Not really, no. And not just to stop the assessment creep either. A-class is part of a separate, wikiproject-specific assessment process, and has mostly been superceded by the GA process. If anything, A-class should be deprecated, since the only practical difference between GA and A is that A-class articles are reviewed by someone from the project rather than someone from GAN, and usually if your article is under the scope of one of the larger projects, the guy who's doing your GA reviews is a project member anyway. --erachima talk 07:07, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't you find it funny that FA grade articles have guidelines and a dedicated process and so does GAs, but A class articles don't have any? Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index shows that A-class articles come between FAs and GAs on the quality scale. If it stands that way, omitting A-class articles from the system is not resisting that "creep", rather its more like just that, an omission. But, if the quality scale is revised and nothing comes between the FAs and GAs, then the problem is solved, and only the top two grades will go through processes. Otherwise, it isn't working. We have a total of 3840 GAs and 2292 FAs, but only 961 A-class articles. Many articles lie only in the periphery of WikiProjects, many WikiPorjects have no A-class review process, and many other WikiProjects don't have enough participants to do such review. A simple dismissal like the above is not helping the situation. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 10:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Creating an A-Class assessment process would create more problems than it would solve (seeing as it would solve 0 problems):

• If people take part in it, it will add to the red tape required for an article to reach FA.
• If people don't take part in it because they want to save time reaching FA, it is a waste of space, time and effort.
• Your comparison of article counts from different classes show that this process would not be following user consensus.

The better solution is to remove A-class or place it below GA-class. That's what we did at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry, and we're all happy clams. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 10:49, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree; placing A-class below GA-class would remove a lot of confusion; and as it's mainly just a marker used by Wikiprojects it seems like that would make sense. Adding an A-class review, however, is just creep. Nihiltres^{t.l} 15:32, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

It would, indeed, be WP:CREEPy to have assessment and process for A-class; however, I can see value in A being between BA and FA; B-class is "working towards GA", and A-class is "working from GA towards FA", in each case the project suggesting that it's made distinct progress on that goal. SamBC(talk) 15:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

That would create an unnecessary (though solvable) technical problem, since most banners don't allow multiple article classes and A-class pages would then be both GAs and As. A simpler way of looking at the issue might be to consider GA and FA to be two levels of A-class. --erachima talk 00:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

When FA status is reached, the GA status is removed. I am not sure if declaring an article as FA (yes, without a process, one may just go on and declare it an A) would require a removal of the GA status. If it does, pity that a careful review and response may have been replaced with just a conviction. It is only logical to have articles go through stricter quality measures as it goes higher up on the ladder. Thus, a B-grade is assessed by any assessor within a project, an A-grade assessed by more people within the project (provided that there is system for that within the project, otherwise it's much like B, only higher in grade), a GA-grade is assessed by a dedicated process which mostly depend on a single reviewer, and, finally, an FA-grade that requires community participation and scrutiny. Having A-grades between GAs and FAs look much like a relapse in the ladder of incremental progress in quality assurance. That may be a bigger problem than creep, as already the lack of creep is producing a much lesser number of A-grad assessments. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 08:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I have spent a lot of time assessing articles and what I feel is - A class is probably not necessary, GA and FA can very well be the top 2 classes. A GA article is already a good candidate for going into an FA drive, a separate article class is seldom necessary. However, what is really needed is: 2 classes between GA and start (currently there is only one class: B). If we accept that anything slightly more than a stub is a start class article, then there is really a long way to go from that point to GA. So, my recommendation is, either downgrade A class below GA or romove A class altogether and add a new class between B and GA. I agree with Aditya, as it is now the A-class is not making much sense. Arman ^(Talk) 08:32, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

The current system has much in its favour. Military History WikiProject is a good example of a strong wikiproject managing the assessments well across the ratings. GA is awarded through the process you mention. An A Class Military History review is managed in a similar way to a Peer Review: it is listed and comments from other editors welcomed. Consensus awards the A class (or not): basically saying "yes, this is better than GA, but not quite an FA". The comments, advice and suggestions offered in the process are invaluable pointers for anyone then working towards FA. I agree that it works well in a WikiProject setting; by using WikiProject members, an editor can tap into the specific expertise and experience relating to an article. It is not a "relapse in the ladder", but a slightly different approach (and not really "creep" but "review"). An article I am working on has recently had an A-Class review, which I considered a useful and encouraging step on my way to FAC. But I consider it a bonus gained from working within a field of a strong Project; it is certainly not a formal necessity. In other words, Wikipedia itself has formal GA and FA ratings. WikiProjects offer stub, start, B, A grades as part of their own management, review and encouragement processes. Secondly, we need not be concerned about the comparative rarity of A Class articles: it is likely that many editors considered it a stepping stone to FA. You might say that, having brought an article so far, and been recognised and encouraged for it, editors are motivated to take it all the way. Gwinva (talk) 08:57, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I have come into contact with the Military History project, and it's brilliant. I have also come in contact with the Aviation project where Biman Bangladesh Airlines waited an eternity for an A-review, and that not happening it was submitted to FA and it breezed through. This happens even to a strong project like that. With plenty Wikiprojects that are not as strong the process works even less, and many doesn't even have the process at all. For the Militray History project, it may not be a relapse, but for most other projects it indeed is. A quality assessment higher than can not be laid at the mercy of the strength of WikiProjects, which is, in a larger context, fickle at the best. I have this Sitakunda Upazila, a GA, waiting for a go at FAC, and I have absolutely no way of getting an A-review. I propose a quick visit through the projects before deciding if there is enough juice in the projects to have an A-grade assessed higher than a GA. Otherwise the proposition is extremely discriminatory. Some articles will have the good fortune to have the support of a strong WikiProject, and hence an A-review, and other articles that are less fortunate will never have the support. Why do you think the number of A-grades are significantly lower than either FAs or GAs? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 11:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Beginning fresh

In light of this discussion looking at the possibility of putting GA icons on top of articles like the FA icon, I have come to believe that it is even more important to address the issue of the barely functional A-grading of articles. Let me restate the proposal.

Problems first

• A-grading is a prerogative of WikiProjects, but many of these projects don't have a A-review process in place, while many others don't have enough active and experienced editors to keep the process running.
• Without a process A-grading wither becomes arbitrary, or there in no A-grading at all. Naturally, we have a total of 3840 GAs and 2292 FAs, but only 961 A-class articles (three-day old stats here, but much hasn't changed since).
• There are community-wide processes for GAs (including WP:GAN, WP:GAR, WP:GACR, WP:GAPQ and WP:WPGA) and FAs (including WP:FAC, WP:FAR, WP:FARC, WP:FACR and FA directors), but no such thing for A-grading.
• As the quality ladder takes articles through stricter quality measures as they go higher — stubs and starts often graded by creators of the articles, starts and B-grades mostly graded by experienced assessors within WikiProjects, GA assessed by a set of predetermined and elaborate quality guidelines and dedicated reviewers who are open to dispute through a proper process, and FAs measured by community consensus as well as community collaboration.
• On this quality ladder A-grading is much like a relapse in strictness of measurement, as the article falls back from wider community processes to smaller project community process, if there's one, or nothing at all.
• The current system is also discriminatory to articles that are not a part of a strong WikiProjects and, therefore, to editors who have worked on those articles. Quality in no way can have membership of a strong WikiProject as a prerequisite.

Observations next

• There may be a chance that B-grades are seen as a stepping stone to GA and A-grades as a stepping stone from GA to FA. In this case B-grades are the top articles short of processed measurement, but A-grades become kind of ephemeral beings.
• There may be a chance that a lot many people don't believe in the A-grade or take is a waste of time. Therefore, they go directly from GA to FAC. This would be natural, because A-grades don't have as much a semblance of proper review as a GA or an FA.
• There may also be a chance that installing a process for A-grading would be an show of "process creep" and, therefore, would not be very acceptable. But, if we are exchanging a desire for quality with a fear of process then I guess much is lost.

Finally propositions

• Reduce A-grading down, so A-articles are assessed as lower grade than GAs. That way the scale would be B (single assessor) > A (WikiProject community assessment, if any) > GA (elaborate process assessment) > FA (community consensus).
• Install a proper process for A-grading that is acceptable as a step between a GA and an FA. So that, if it comes to that, A-icons can be shown on top of articles as well as FA-icons or GA-icons.There's no need to keep this alternative around anymore. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 15:36, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I am personally in favor of the former proposition, as it also addresses the fear of the creep. Please, comment. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 03:45, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree very much with the idea of moving A below GA and FA; your analysis of the move from low-level involvement relations to wide community scrutiny makes a lot of sense. I still don't see, however, why we should institute some special review process - what does it add besides creep? Within a WikiProject, it makes sense to have a rating system that the WikiProject's focused group can use, but outside of that it seems like wasted effort. There isn't much use in flagging articles as "pretty good" except to focus work on them, and so I don't see the point of an in-between universal process. GA was originally conceived as a lighter-weight rating for decent, usable articles that weren't yet FAs. Do we really need another such duplicate system with yet lower ratings? (By the way, some of this isn't just my opinion, it's also to test the proposal via devil's advocate). Nihiltres^{t.l} 04:22, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

See oppose#54 from the GA poll, where John Carter says "There is currently a proposal to revise the article assessment structure at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment#Overhaul and rewrite of the assessment scheme ..." and more. (just above this section: Wikipedia talk:Good articles#Neutral) -- Quiddity (talk) 06:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, especially for the links provided, though cherry picking one opposition out of the whole discussion or emphasizing the neutral views over support or oppose views. I wouldn't also emphasize too much on the necessity of a new process for A-grading, at least as long as it is possible to evaluate A-grades as lower than GAs (one WikiProject already does that). I also see that a lot of problems identified here would match with the questions raised at the assessment overhaul discussion. As I understand, there has been a tremendous improvement in quality measurements around Wikipedia since the old assessment scheme was devised. A lot of recent GAs may be much higher in quality than a lot of older FAs, and the A-grading has fallen much out of use. By the way, just to clarify, I am not planning to propose any discussion on what else could be put on top of articles beside the FA-icon. All I see is the current awkwardness in the position, use and quality measurement of A-grading, and not necessarily in that order (this WikiProject dependent process doesn't even feature in the system of many WikiProjects). We don't need to support creep, but we don't have to continue a scheme that isn't helping. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 15:32, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I only just noticed this discussion (thanks Arman!), as I've been pretty busy recently. Some good points raised here. I personally don't mind if A is ranked as equal to or even below GA. For the article selection bot, we rank A and GA as worth the same. The original discussion is here, but at that time GA was very new and the quality was very variable, plus there was an emphasis on "short but good" articles.

This issue is not as simple as suggested above, though. Please read my earlier post on this issue. This is why the debate of "above or below GA" isn't so important to me. I accept the criticism that peer review for A-Class doesn't work well at most WikiProjects; perhaps we should recommend that such projects either not use A-Class, or they only promote an article after at least two project members agree on the A (perhaps via a regular talk page)?

We are about to start rewriting the entire assessment descriptions, and hopefully to supply the more detailed guidelines Aditya has asked for! If you'd like to help, please sign up here. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 02:41, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The discussion there looks to be much more elaborate and, yes, the problem does not have as simple a solution I imagined. But, it's not too complicated either, and given a little effort things could improve much beyond the current hotchpotch. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 14:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem in my view is that GA and A both are steps in evolving from B towards FA. They are different, parallel paths. Where GA takes the article from the project and subjects it to a Wikipedia broad assessment, A class subjects the article to a detailed, within project, mulitple editor review process. In the light of the path to FA I would rather remove A-class and replace it with a mandatory peer-review prior to submitting to FAC. Placing A between B and GA will definitely lower the standards for A as I have seen many GA's which would not pass A pocedure (and vice versa); which in turn will likely lower B-class standards. As there are many 100's of article assessors out there, for the sake of consistency and maintainability of the system I would prefer fewer, rather than more levels. Arnoutf (talk) 17:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Two parallel system of assessment? That would be really tough, confusing, and incoherent to some extent. It is always a lot simpler to have one straight path to the top. On top of that, I believe, WikiProjects are here to help the broader community, not the other way round, at least not explicitly. WikiProject assessments should not, ideally, supersede or transcend a community-wide system like Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment or something. My, this assessment thingy is tricky. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 18:10, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

• Lots of comments here:
  • First, you are right-on when you say that A-Class articles are essentially ephemeral. They were, indeed, initially advertised as "articles that are ready for FAC, but need to be nominated or checked just a little bit", if I recall correctly. So, indeed, these ratings don't stay long, because when an editor has taken the time to get an article to A-Class, chances are it will get FA status sooner or later.
  • The A-Class rating is indeed skipped several times on the path to FA, just like GA is. That's really an editor preference.
  • There are several projects with active A-Class assessment projects, so shifting the ranking to be under GA would severely disrupt the assessment operations of those projects.
  • The SSBA scale, unlike GA and FA, were not meant to be public grades of the article's quality. Instead, they're more akin to checklists of the quality of articles. GA and FA are there only to provide general anchor points to the WP:1.0-scale.
• In brief, the three points you present are not really bugs, they're features. A-Class was meant to be a lightweight checkmark. You are also right that there is an increasing demand on the scale to have a rating between Start-Class and GA. I've heard suggestions to move the A-Class rating, but I'm strongly opposed to that, as it would disrupt the operations of the larger projects, and also would remove the "almost ready for FA" bucket that the A-Class rating was originally meant to accomplish. So, what would be better is to introduce a new class between GA and Start.
• One more thing: We're having this discussion in like three different places. Can we try to contain the ForestFire and continue in just one place? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:26, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Add contributions total number

If I click my contributions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/WonRyong

I see at the top of the article:

User contributions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For WonRyong (Talk | Block log | Logs)

I suggest some more.

User contributions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For WonRyong (Talk | Block log | Logs)

This account is created 2005-12-11 22:25

First edit 2005-12-11 23:27:17

This user's total edits: 798

How about this idea? -- WonRyong (talk) 14:29, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

You can see your total edits by going to Special:Preferences. The date your email was confirmed also appears on this page, but no one can see the page but you. You can see when your account was created by clicking on "logs" on your contributions screen, selecting "User creation log" from the pulldown, and pressing "Go" (acounts created more than a few years ago are older than the log, so they won't appear). You can see your first edit by pressing "Earliest" in your contributions page, and scrolling to the bottom of the screen. I think it would be a good idea to add these last two pieces of information to the Preferences page, but they aren't necessary directly on the Contributions page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gadfium (talk • contribs) 20:21, May 9, 2008

I bet that all of that information (excepting account creation date, for example my account was created before that log existed) could be retrieved using the API and some creative JavaScript. Just a random thought. Nihiltres^{t.l} 01:43, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Account creation date is public too. :) -- Fullstop (talk) 23:54, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Editcounters like wannabekate and the like do exactly what you are describing. Anyone can look up this information using offsite tools like that. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 23:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Except that we don't want spread that serious disease. -- Fullstop (talk) 00:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Making an Ambox like thing for the Wikipedia namespace

Well, I see that *box fever has swept the Wikipedia nation over the past few months, the easier and more efficient way to make nice message boxes. But, the Wikipedia namespace doesn't use something like that. I think we should just kinda make a metatemplate for the Wikipedia namespace that uses Ambox, but DOES NOT take on the usual appearance of an Ambox at the same time. Like, it could be made to emulate the usual message box styles used for that namespace, but at the same time, be on a more powerful and consistant platform.

So, anyone thing we should have Wmbox or Wpbox or something like that? ViperSnake151 22:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

While I agree that in the long run it would be nice to have a "{{wmbox}}", for now let's focus on {{imbox}} and {{cmbox}}. Once those are in active use, we can move on to other namespaces. Nihiltres^{t.l} 01:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, we are running out of namespaces... Portals and MediaWiki pages don't have message boxes, and Help pages have very few, if any. Apart from Project, that leaves us with... (counts in fingers) ...Template and User. Not much work to do there, am I right? Waltham, The Duke of 05:50, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, standardized user boxes would be nice. Maybe {{usbox}}? I think {{tempbox}} would just be ridiculous. Paragon12321 (talk) 16:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

That would be {{userbox}} and {{Userbox-2}}. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:40, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Make traffic numbers public

We should be able to see the traffic to each page. Further, there should be some articles devoted to categorizing and listing the pages with the most traffic. If you can suggest a personal hack to do this, cool, but that doesn't distract from the point: I want this built into WP in a simple, obvious manner. This would be useful because some of us don't want people to be misinformed. Thus the pages which have a lot of traffic could be monitored more closely. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 21:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia article traffic statistics. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:36, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, cool. Still would be nice to see these integrated into WP itself. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 22:43, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

It's a common suggestion. Unfortunately, having pageview statistics on the pages themselves would interfere with how Wikipedia survives the load of two billion pageviews a day. --Carnildo (talk) 22:54, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm an old-timer. If I recall correctly, I think we had this functionality back in 2003 or 2002. It was disabled due to the heavy traffic noted by Carnildo. So, the solution is "donate"! -- Taku (talk) 23:02, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Nice sentiment, but donations unfortunately won't cut it either. What Carnildo was presumably referring to is the fact that the caches can't cache if the page changes with every page view (or would be terribly inefficient even if they just synchronized page-hit-count). -- Fullstop (talk) 00:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

As long as the numbers aren't on the pages themselves, but on a separate statistics page, the cache issues wouldn't be a problem. --Tango (talk) 00:09, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

the separate statistics page is here (updated daily). -- Fullstop (talk) 05:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] FOR INTERWIKI BOT

I have a interwiki bot.

Template:...

Wikipedia:...

Thease article's interwiki is too difficult.

Many errors! :(

So, I do not interwiki those.

I suggest.

Make Template:..., Wikipedia:... edit rules for interwiki bots.

Make worldwide rules.

For example,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Changing_username

Where is interwiki?

Bot's task is error.

Make worldwide rules for interwiki bots!! -- WonRyong (talk) 00:21, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is the redirect retard really necessary?

To the best of my limited knowledge, Wikipedia doesn't include redirects for derogatory terms that are linked to the subjects they are describing, and creating such redirects seems to be interpreted is the equivalent of attacking said subjects. There was a user who redirected the page Turd burglar (UK slang for a gay person I believe) to gay and they were severly reprimanded for this, so I'm not sure it the redirect I pointed out should stay. I propose deleting it.--Urban Rose 02:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Well... why would it be deleted, aside from the fact that it's potentially offensive? "Retard", regardless of whether anyone liked it or not, is a term for the mentally retarded, and redirects such as that are there to help people find what it means. See also Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2007 December 17#Retard, Retards, Retarded, Mental retard, Mentally Retard, Half-wit, Half-Wit, 'tard, Tard, Tardster, Imbecile, Imbecility, Imbeciles → Mental retardation, though you are certainly welcome to submit another request for deletion. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Though before you do submit another request for deletion, you may want to read arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, which includes arguments based on the existence/deletion of similar pages. Mr.Z-man 05:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] We should rename Verifiability to Credibility

The much-cited "verifiability" policy is a misnomer. What's important is not so much that the citations are verifiable (especially immediately -- we use print sources) but rather that they are credible. If we keep using verifiable in a way that it doesn't mean, we'll keep having confusion. Ultimately we may even distort the meaning of the word itself. I've raised the issue at the Verifiability talk page. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 07:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Verifiability doesn't refer to the sources but to the information in our articles. That information needs to be verifiable, via sources. You could create a "credible sources" redirect to WP:Reliable sources, as that is a synonym in that case. Equazcion •✗/C • 07:19, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

You're missing the point. If you have a non-fictitious source, that source is automatically verifiable. There's no need to emphasize that point, and indeed the page does not emphasize verifiability. It says nothing about verifiability (the ability to check up on a source). And, in fact, we allow sources which are rather difficult to verify, such as past print newspaper articles. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 15:54, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

And again, you're missing the point. "verifiable" doesn't describe the source, but the content of the Wikipedia article. If an article says "The sky is blue", that information needs to be verifiable. Verifiable means the fact can be found in an outside source. The sources themselves, though, are not what we're describing via verifiability. We don't make our editors verify what's said in reliable sources. We pretty much assume it's the truth. Equazcion •✗/C • 16:01, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Why should we even emphasize verifiability? Why don't we just say that the content should be sourced? Verifiability introduces confusion; its repetitive and unnecessary. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 08:10, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not repetitive. Verifiable is just our way of saying sourced. They're one in the same, for our purposes. Equazcion •✗/C • 13:28, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Advanced search function

Most websites with a search feature have an advanced search, where it is possible to very easily narrow down a search. Why not create such a function on Wikipedia? GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 01:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Could you be more specific as to what you mean by "narrow down" a search. At the moment, for example, it's possible to narrow a search by namespace. Is there something more that you're looking for? (Again, please be specific.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:59, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree, our search page is a bit low on advanced features. I think that's the first shortcoming to Wikipedia that I ever noticed. Just take a look at basically any advanced search page on any other prominent site, a search engine site, even a forum site. We could have an advanced search page with word include and exclude fields, category options, etc, not to mention a better format for our field of namespace options. As I've said before, we're way behind in the search technology field. Equazcion •✗/C • 13:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Project

I know you guys probrably get loads of requests for projects, but shouldn't we have a welcome team? For example, wikiHow do, Wikipedia FR have a few users who welcome you and give some good links to start you off. Thanks -- ♦ { Crimson } ♦ Talk • Contributions 16:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

We already have the Welcoming Committee, if that's the sort of thing you're thinking of? RichardΩ612 Ɣ |ɸ 16:29, May 11, 2008 (UTC)

Thanks ♦ { Crimson } ♦ Talk • Contributions 16:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Moving the Main Page

[edit] I want korean language warning templates!

I am a korean wikipedian. I use en-2.

In ko: wiki, I edit 10,000s and I use ko: wiki for 3 years. I edit en: wiki "sometimes" :)

User talk:WonRyong/Archive1#Replaceable fair use Image:Park_Geun-hye.jpg

In my talk page, above template warnig is there. many.

but, I don't know what means.

because, when I read english, I translate and understand. but that warning is too long. I can't understand what mean it.

so, I sugesst korean translate warnig templates!

Example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-old

I click "한국어(korean)", and I can easily understand what mean.

PLEASE!!! MAKE IT!!! :( -- WonRyong (talk) 12:02, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that I'm active on many, many foreign language wikis. However, to put it bluntly, this is the English Wikipedia, not the Korean. The only projects that I'd expect to have multi-language versions would be Commons, Meta, and Wikispecies, as they are language-independent projects. We have enough trouble getting people to translate everything for those projects; to expect each template to be translated for every other language is a bit optimistic. EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I think what WonRyong is suggesting is that boilerplate warnings link to the Template in question, i.e. where the interwiki links would/could/should appear. At least, that is what I think he/she is suggesting. -- Fullstop (talk) 02:27, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I considered that, but the various Wikipedias have very different policies, making such interwiki linking largely useless from the user's perspective. For example, while we have fairly strict rules about Fair Use images, we at least allow them here. On the Spanish Wikipedia, there are no images; it has to come from Commons or there's nothing, so a Spanish speaker receiving a warning here would be totally lost if looking on their home project for the equivalent (and it's ridiculous to expect all the projects to document every other project's policies not to mention the nightmare of keeping them all in sync). If a user was given an image warning here, the target language that they speak may not have anything for them, or might give them totally contrary advice. Not only that, but internal links wouldn't work; even in cases of similar policies between projects, the instructions would still likely be somewhat different, and again becomes a sprawling amount of effort for everyone to document everyone else.

Trust me, my attitude about using only English on this Wikipedia is not an opinion I generated lightly or off the cuff. I've gone on record as saying that, if a user can't actually contribute in a language, they shouldn't make the attempt. This is not because I'm a jerk (not saying that I'm not one) but because of the logistical nightmare of every project trying to support every language. Each language should support its own language and nothing else. EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:37, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the original matter here has been more or less agreed upon (interwikis/foreign language texts in messages are not appropriate), but the fact that this person who appears to have a decent grasp of English can't understand the message in question would seem to indicate that it's badly written and difficult to understand. Is there any scope for making the boilerplate "Replaceable fair use" talk page message simpler and easier to understand? Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 12:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC).

English wikipedia is not for only native english people.

English wikipedia is not for only en-3 or en-4 people.

So many en-1, en-2 people use English wikipedia. Becuase many information is here.

I suggest...hmmm...

For en-1, en-2 users, make other languages' warning templates, please.

English wikipedia is not meta. English wikipedia is not commons.

But, in some respects, English wikipedia is meta. English wikipedia is commons. -- WonRyong (talk) 12:55, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Twinkle

I really think we need to remove twinkle from gadgets. When it was in monobooks of users, we were able to remove it when problems arose. Now, we're stuck with the only option of blocking a user when it is misused. I have heard that protecting the monobook works to remove twinkle from the gadgets, but I'm not completely sure on this.

I don't think every user here can be trusted to use twinkle constructively, and as it's easy to install in your monobook, being able to remove the tool from a users monobook is one last safety net. Ryan Postlethwaite 17:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

When specifically would taking away Twinkle from someone be warranted while blocking wasn't? It seems to me that inappropriate or disruptive edits made using Twinkle can be handled the same way any other type of inappropriate edit would be; Warn a few times then block if necessary. Equazcion •✗/C • 17:52, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Blocks should be preventative rather than punative. We had the perfect protective measure before, which was being able to remove it rather than block. Having to block an otherwise good faith contributor is silly when we have better options. Ryan Postlethwaite 17:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If the editor is good-faith, then you must mean they're misusing Twinkle inadvertently. Couldn't they just be told, then, how to properly use it, or barring that, to lay off its features or even disable it in their preferences temporarily? Equazcion •✗/C • 18:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Some people just don't learn, but a block is too harsh, especially, as I've already stated, when we have much better methods. I don't know who thought up the idea of putting it in gadgets, but they didn't really consider much when they did. Ryan Postlethwaite 18:04, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

And if/when they don't... then we're forced to block them? That's a less-than-elegant solution. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I will always support removing Twinkle from the Gadgets. The last thing we need is to allow newbies to make mistakes faster, easier, and more efficiently. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

← (ec) Perhaps, but I'm sure we could conceive of a way to disable it per-user even though it's not in monobook.js. I see how you may have experienced trouble due to it, but looking at the larger picture, my concern is that it probably does much more good than harm having it more widely available. Equazcion •✗/C • 18:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive142#Vandal_making_use_of_Twinkle. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 18:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to see the ability to arbitrarily change someone's preferences; that's a somewhat scary thought. What I'd much rather see, however, is for Gadgets not to be implemented without substantial discussion. Call me crazy, but that strikes me as a better (and easier) solution. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Mmmm... I wasn't suggesting anyone be able to change just any preference, just gadgets. If an admin can change your monobook.js, is that all that different? I'm not sure why one is scary and the other isn't. For the future, public discussion regarding new gadgets is certainly required, but removing Twinkle now would mean disabling it for everyone who had it enabled, so I think that makes this a special situation. Equazcion •✗/C • 18:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, aside from the fact that the ability to change someone else's gadgets (you are correct on the distinction, my bad; that is where a lot of my knee-jerk reaction came from) would require a substantial amount of technical mucking, there's still something a bit unsettling about it. Can't quite put my finger on it, but I still consider it totally different from editing a monobook.js file. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:45, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Please bear in mind that Twinkle only works for autoconfirmed users. I'll have to look into additional restrictions when I have time. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 18:41, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Not to sound too draconian, but a user blacklist that automatically disabled Twinkle for anyone listed, regardless of their installation method, would satisfy my concern most of my concerns about a Gadget-installed Twinkle (I still have concerns about someone who doesn't know what they're doing installing the tool and going hog wild, whereas the manual installation adds a step to at least protect us from random "oh, what does this do?"; this would still be an acceptable mid-way point between the arguments). EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:51, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like a good solution to me. Perhaps AzaToth might be willing to add that. Equazcion •✗/C • 18:48, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe another option that avoids keeping a central list of users with Twinkle disabled would be to allow setting a variable in monobook.js and have Twinkle refuse to run if that variable has been set. Tra (Talk) 19:24, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

That would require an admin to change the editor's monobook.js file and protect it. I like the central list idea better; in addition to the overall easiness, it centralizes all admin activity in regards to Twinkle abuse, which is a lot more transparent than having to modify every user's monobooj.js file. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:34, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

A central list would be possible, but not scalable, and might make the devs cry, better then to hack gadgets instead. _→AzaToth 19:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention slow most of the Twinkle functions down by loading the page every time you use it. Mr.Z-man 19:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It would be possible to have Twinkle turn off if the user's monobook.js is protected, but we'd have to set up a fairly complex cookie system to prevent a significant performance burden. We could also restrict the Twinkle gadget to rollbackers. Or we could remove it entirely and go back to users having to manually add it. You decide. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:38, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

restricting twinkle to rollbackers would be a reasonable compromise and have the smallest impact on current users. Gnangarra 01:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed would be a better alternative -- penubag  (talk) 01:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

It's already restricted to autoconfirmed users. Equazcion •✗/C • 02:40, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

And it all comes back to raising the auto-confirmation threshold... :-D (See, Equazcion? It's not just moving...) Waltham, The Duke of 06:10, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's not just moving. That's the problem. As Penubag already suggested at the poll, an added confirmation level could apply to moves and things like Twinkle, while still allowing for a lesser requirement for semi-protected edits. But let's not fragment that discussion. Keep it at the subpage. Equazcion •✗/C • 08:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

• I don't get it. We didn't have a shortage of Twinkle users when it wasn't a gadget, and if making it a gadget causes problems, why do we keep it as a gadget? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 09:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure how you're assessing a "shortage" or lack thereof... Equazcion •✗/C • 09:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Twinkle was widely available well before gadgets even existed, and it was well advertised in pages such as the WP:CUV portal and RC patrol. There were few reports, if any, of users having problems installing the script. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 09:05, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
      • Having it as a gadget makes it available to people who weren't necessarily aware of its existence. I know I hadn't even heard of it until well into my experience at Wikipedia -- surely well after I reached the point where I could've used it constructively. This makes it more widely available, and I think, helps people deal with vandalism etc. Again I know it's caused problems but I think the benefits outweigh the harm -- the harm being all we would really be made aware of. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:11, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
        • I guess I don't agree with that conclusion, as Twinkle was already widely available, without gadgets. But can't there be just installation instructions in Special:Preferences, instead of installing the script outright? That way, we get the best of both worlds. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 09:18, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
          • hehe, funny joke :) _→AzaToth 11:15, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I for one support Twinkle being limited to rollbackers. That way, a user's rollback can be removed if an admin wishes to disable Twinkle, even if it's in use as a gadget. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 11:22, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Can you give multiple examples of misuses of Twinkle that justifies changing the requirements? -62.172.143.205 (talk) 13:51, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Method to protect your user and talk page from "quicky" vandals

About three years ago I recall asking if there was anyway to block a vandal or persistent stalker from posting to your user or user talk page. However, by accident I have recently discovered a way to do just that - at least in terms of a "quicky" vandal who is unwilling or unable to go to the extra trouble it takes to find your user or user talk page and cause trouble. The method is simply to use a different name (such as your real first name) in your raw signature line. The solution is that simple. Thanks. --Taxa 13:48, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

And what about editors that have a legitimate need to contact you? EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:15, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It can still be done but not as quickly. --Taxa 17:04, 6 May 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Taxa (talk • contribs)

This post resulted from me asking Taxa to include a link to their user or user talk page in their sig, per WP:SIG. I agree with EVula; we shouldn't put obstacles like this in the way of legitimate editors in order to make things harder for a few vandals. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 14:47, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Its not a major obstacle and besides the sinebot usually corrects the missing link in a relatively short amount of time. No one should be so disparate to contact you that they can not wait for the sinebot to appear. --Taxa 17:06, 6 May 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Taxa (talk • contribs)

SineBot is not a replacement for normal user signature, it was designed for those who do not know how or forgot to sign. Besides, you admit yourself that SineBot makes your "method" ineffective anyway. Please fix your signature. —AlexSm 17:31, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

This method is also unlikely to have much effect: I find that vandals usually find my userpage (which is semi-and-move-protected) and my talk page (which is move-protected) through my contributions which are reversions of their vandalism. As one's signature does not appear on the contributions page, but instead links to one's userpage, this anti-vandal method is not very effective, either. If you're worried about vandalism to your userpage, request that it be semi-protected at WP:RPP. Nihiltres^{t.l} 15:15, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

In addition to what EVula and Matt said, not linking to either your user or talk page is a clear violation of WP:SIG, which states "at least one of those two pages must be linked from your signature." --Kralizec! (talk) 17:18, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I concur, there must be some link to your user-space in your signature and you must use your signature regularly when editing. MBisanz ^talk 19:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Apart from all these, I should like to draw attention to the lightness of Taxa's signature; many editors will have a hard time reading it, and the lack of a link does not help things in the least. Waltham, The Duke of 19:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

• I propose that it is a requirement of WP:SIG that every user signature must contain a link to one's userspace; it must be a clear link and not concealed in any way. —TreasuryTag—t—c 18:47, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
• See also Wikipedia talk:Signatures#Proposed new section from March (and Wikipedia talk:Signatures/Archive 6#What to do if someone doesn't seem to want a signature? and Wikipedia talk:Signatures/Archive 6#No links in a signature). At least we don't have a problem with images anymore! -- Quiddity (talk) 01:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] wrong interwiki link is not red

Hi,

I made a kind of silly typo, in other language wiki. It looks something like ('(' and ')' are used instead of '[' and ']' to prevent link here)

((:en:exiting page)) instead of ((:en"existing page))

However, on preview, the interwiki link (on left side, which reads "English" was not red, so I did not notice. (so it went out. and when clicked new page for edit pops out)

Is it possible to make it red?

Thank you very much. AIEA (talk) 16:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

This totally makes sense. Red interwiki links would help to identify typos and when articles are deleted in other languages. Interwikis can be accurate without having to rely entirely upon bots. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

While red links for bad interwiki links would be useful, it's probably not trivial to implement. When Wikipedia software builds a page for display, it checks (internal) wikilinks in order to mark them for the browser to display. What is being suggested here is that the software needs to go outside of en.wikipedia.org in order to determine validity. Yes, all Wikipedias run on the same set of servers - but each uses a different instance of the software, including a different database. So now information is going to have to be fetched via an API or other database call - en.wikipedia.org needs to ask (say) fr.wikipedia.org if a given page exists or not. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

How would that be any more difficult than simply checking if the page's edit box has any text in it? Or checking the revision history to see if there are any entries? I'm not much of a programmer, but I can't imagine it would be that difficult to implement. And if it were, so what? John F. Kennedy would want to try it. :) --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I can see how – if not implemented very carefully and thoughtfully – such checks could be quite (computationally) costly. Articles on major topics can have more than a hundred outgoing interlanguage links (see, for example, the city of London). Checking all of those outgoing links every time the article is edited, previewed, or read could cause some very serious issues. As John notes, en.wikipedia would have to send queries to dozens of other wikipedia instances and wait for replies from all of them.

It would be a nice feature to have. Getting it to work in a test instance would be pretty easy. Implementing it in a way that doesn't hammer the servers is hard. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:41, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I also found that broken interwikilink is not red either. ie not red is not red, and if you click this link, the page you get is what red link would show in Italian one. It may not be easy for programmers to fix, but it is not straightforward to users to follow link either.AIEA (talk) 15:14, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Support, though it's not the highest priority. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 18:31, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Corey Worthington Article

Greetings, There is a BIG backstory behind this article. So have a read of this before commenting - please. The two basic reason behind the repeated deletions of the Corey Worthington article have been WP:ONEEVENT and (my personal opinion) the other main reason has been because of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. With his continued coverage in the media over the last few months not relating to the initial event that made him notable, I now believe that ONEEVENT has been well and truly satisfied. To this end, I have been working on the article in userspace but I would now like to promote it to mainspace to allow a broader editorbase to edit it. I have created two subheading below to attempt to contain different disputes about this topic as I am sure it will get into another heated debate - please try to place your comments in the correct one (I reserve the right to move them to the correct heading if they are misfiled) Fosnez (talk) 07:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

This is already been discussed at deletion review here which is where this should probably be discussed. Davewild (talk) 07:30, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Ops... thanks for that. Fosnez (talk) 09:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is howto needed if there is guideline and help?

Let's look at the page WP:MOSLINK#Context. This is a guideline, it provides some rules. Now there is Help:Piped link which is a Wikipedia-specific version of m:Help:Piped link. These are Help pages, they explain technical details. Having these pages (guide + help) I'm starting to wonder... What is the possible reason to maintain yet another howto page at Wikipedia:Piped link? This is an instruction creep, pure and simple! Should be split and redirected. And this is just an example, there are some more Wikipedia:xxx pages that unnecessarily replicate Help:xxx pages (instead of redirecting to them). --Kubanczyk (talk) 13:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

For a respected editor, when seeing an off-topic discussion, he/she could probably post a link to an appropriate website to carry on the discussion -- once in a while. But a designated area for links like that is just asking for advertisements/spam, so it's not a good idea. Equazcion •✗/C • 15:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm? What designated area? --Kubanczyk (talk) 16:57, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

guh...? Either I'm senile at 26 or I inadvertently replied to a thread that was removed from the page just before I clicked edit. In answer to your proposal, I think you're right -- experienced Wikipedians tend not to respect the help pages' value. Those pages in the Wikipedia: space that are more or less identical to a help page should probably be redirected, as long as they're instructions and not guidelines. Guidelines (even rules that haven't been tagged as guidelines or policies) should stay in Wikipedia: space, though. Equazcion •✗/C • 19:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you were replying to #"Discussion Links", way up top. Algebraist 01:04, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

which had no business being there anyway. Rectified. Algebraist 01:07, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Semantic categories

(moved to Wikipedia talk:Categorization. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 19:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC))

[edit] Lt. Micheal Moulton

I beleive that entry is needed for Lt. Micheal Moulton. He was a Revolutionary Soldier and Moulton, Alabama is named after him. He accompananied Gen. Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.222.105.224 (talk) 00:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Please make your suggestion at WP:RA. This isn't the right place. -- Kesh (talk)

[edit] "Discussion Links"

I've noticed that many users will use the discussion page of an article to debate the topic of the article, not the article itself. Instead of simply telling them not to discuss these things, give them a space on the page to put links to other website or chatrooms where they can discuss them. 168.216.176.35 (talk) 14:55, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

For a respected editor, when seeing an off-topic discussion, he/she could probably post a link to an appropriate website to carry on the discussion -- once in a while. But a designated area for links like that is just asking for advertisements/spam, so it's not a good idea. Equazcion •✗/C • 15:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Shadowing Template

I've been experimenting with a shadowing template I created and decided to test it in my Main Page sandbox. Please check it out and give me feedback. ~RayLast ^«Talk!» 02:42, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks neat, but I think the multiple shades look odd. I think just the last, lightest box alone would give a more believable drop-shadow effect. Drop-shadow filters in image editing programs, for example, generally just add the one layer alone. Equazcion •✗/C • 07:06, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks neat, trying to figure out how I'd use it, but yea it is a cool thing. MBisanz ^talk 11:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Equazcion that the multiple shades look wrong. It is simpler to use one single shade. If you are going to use several shades you should not stack them diagonally like you did, instead you should stack smaller and smaller variants over the same centre to achieve a real looking shadow with toned borders.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:10, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I know what you mean. The template has the capability to be used for lighter shadow as well as diminishing the shadow spread which would minimize the effect you mention. With your suggestions I'm planning to add another variable like "simple = true" or something that would only display one shade instead of multiple. As per your comment David, I completely agree with you, but I'm still on the concept side of the development of the template. To create a more realistic effect I would use the same diagonal technique I used but with a lot more shades allowing for a lot less positioning shift from the previous shade since I like drop shadows and not perspective ones. Doing it over the same centre would create kind of a perspective shadow. ~RayLast ^«Talk!» 17:00, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

OK I just added the single shade option using the "simple=true" parameter. Is this what you meant? ~RayLast ^«Talk!» 17:53, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I really like the simplicity and streamlined look of it now, with the "simple=true" parameter resulting in it being all one shade. hmwithτ 18:34, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Toolbar

As some might already be aware, I suggested this a while ago, and when no one was interested I made it myself.

Now, keep in mind as you read this, that presently, this toolbar, well, sort of sucks. It's the first Firefox extension I've ever attempted to write, and I didn't have the inclination to really delve deep into the various possibilities. So while I think it's pretty useful, it's really still quite basic, no-frills, and essentially it boils down to some shortcuts that I sought to make for my own use.

Nevertheless, less than 4 months later, the download count reads 600, and that's just at the extension's Mozilla page.

To give you an idea of the significance of that number:

• If you'll read WP:WPTB, the Mozilla page is actually considered a secondary download site. People who find the toolbar via its Wikepedia page are strongly advised to download from a different external site, the downloads from which I have no way of keep count of. So the 600 count likely doesn't include those who found the extension here.

• Also, the extension is currently not in Mozilla's main public listing. Right now, it's in what they call the "sandbox", where just about anyone can upload just about any extension, and most of them don't get much attention. As far as I can see, the number of downloads this is getting is astronomical in comparison to other non-public extensions.

In the past, I think the mention of a Wikipedia toolbar made people cringe, because they think of crappy ad-campaign toolbars like Google and Yahoo. Had I heard the suggestion I might've thought the same myself. However I'd attest now that a toolbar doesn't need to be something that takes over the user's computer. It can instead be a real asset, especially to WP junkies who spend entirely too much time here (such as myself). My goal here is now to get some more interest going in development of this, perhaps even by Wikipedia's developers. There's only so much I can do here myself, and I think it's a shame that a tool with so much interest and potential has to be so limited.

The fact that this toolbar, in its admittedly very basic form, currently averages over 60 downloads a week, just at the secondary site (and that's a number that's been climbing steadily for as long as I can remember) should surely tell us that this is something worth serious consideration. I'm reasonably certain that a well-written tool could help get more people involved in the project, get more of the casual users to be more involved, and not to mention, make work easier for our current regulars. Equazcion •✗/C • 12:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Excellent idea.! Fully supported :) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Kudos on developing this. There was another Wiki toolbar for Firefox some years back, with some nice features such as custom macros etc. Unfortunately, it seems to have been abandoned and is no longer compatible with current versions of Firefox. I'll check and see if I can find more about it as the features may be useful here. --Ckatz^chat_spy 20:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I took a look at that old one back when I made the initial proposal. It seems to have just recreated some buttons of the MediaWiki edit bar as a Firefox toolbar. That is to say, it was mainly for use while editing a page, rather than a "traditional" toolbar made for navigating/searching. At least that was my understanding -- I couldn't actually install it because it hadn't been updated in a while and wasn't compatible with the current Firefox. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

And thanks for the kudos :) I would like to get more people other than myself involved in development though, like I said. I'm quite beginner at this. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple columns in {{reflist}} deemed bad

"Howzat for a provocative headline, eh?" — superluser_tc

There have been some discussion on Template talk:Reflist about whether to remove multicolumn support from {{reflist}}. The simple solution would be to remove support for it in the reflist template, however, some users suggested it might be better to have a policy change? (I'm guessing they where referring to MoS?). So if you have any thoughts about that please consider taking part in the discussion.
— Apis (talk) 21:45, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Automatic linking whenever possible

I just did my first Deletion review, and as I noted there apparently the Deletion review doesn't drop automatically drop a note on the relevant AfD. That would be convenient for people looking at the AfD later, but even more convenient is that it would let people who are still watching the AfD know about the Deletion review. I think that, whenever possible, we should automatically link relevant things together. Previous AfDs should be automatically linked to later AfDs, previous RfAs should be linked to subsequent RfAs, ect. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 03:07, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

^Agree completely. The fact that people watching the deletion discussion aren't notified that it ended up at DRV is a problem. A link should be automatically generated and placed in the XfD. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:12, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

"Imperfectly informed"... Tell me about it. :-)

I also agree; there is a need for good information flow. There should be a certain degree of standardisation, I suppose... A dedicated section in each page, perhaps, to be added only in the event of further action on a deletion. I don't know the deletion pages that well, but I've seen templates used in some cases; however, template proliferation should be avoided. Any ideas? Waltham, The Duke of 22:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

There's a template to link to previous deletion discussions. I don't think I've ever seen one linking to deletion reviews once a deletion ends up there. Perhaps we just need to create a template, then people would use it. Equazcion •✗/C • 00:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_review#Change_to_DRV_instructions. Equazcion •✗/C • 07:09, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I'll get around to doing it, but I can't make any guarantees. Ideally we should construct a database which automatically links up articles with the same title and transcludes a list of all the old DRVs/AfDs I don't think relying on human input is efficient or long-term feasible -- it requires too much reading and attention. Impin | {talk - contribs} 09:41, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

When there's a renewed deletion attempt of something that previously survived XfD, the new XfD should include a link to the old one(s) (though this isn't always done); but, to spread the notice more widely, the old, archived XfD should be edited to include a link to the new one. In fact, I'm inclined to say that anyone reopening a previous discussion, whether through a new XfD or a DRV, should be required to drop a note on the talk page of every editor who expressed a contrary opinion in the earlier discussion. A prior decision shouldn't be overturned just because the people whose views prevailed then didn't happen to know about the new discussion. JamesMLane t c 15:08, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

That is an impossible task. Why not tell people to keep these things on their watchlists, and then change the old XfD page. It sounds like you're suggesting this, but not realizing that by doing it, you can be informing people efficiently. You need to consider that we're volunteers with limited time. It's not smart to waste that time on endless bureaucracy. Plus, there's often a ridiculous number people weighing in on these things. Impin | {talk - contribs} 09:41, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with that. Magioladitis put something on my talk page about Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Emily Sullivan, which otherwise I would most likely not have known about. Thanks Magioladitis! That should be a required step for new XfDs -- Imperator3733 (talk) 14:51, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Modernista! disclaimer in Common.js

After the deletion discussion of Modernista!/Notice, which thoroughly rejected the idea of a disclaimer on the Modernista! article, a disclaimer of sorts was added to MediaWiki:Common.js that is displayed to anyone coming to Wikipedia from modernista.com. I do not believe there was community consensus to do so and am proposing that this is removed from Common.js. --- RockMFR 19:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

What did/does the notice read? For those of us not familiar with the situation you may need to explain this more. I tried the deletion discussion but it wasn't apparent what the notice said or why it was originally thought necessary. Equazcion •✗/C • 19:53, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Also this is probably better suited to AN or ANI than proposals. Equazcion •✗/C • 19:56, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Requiring some time before uploading ability

I would like to suggest that, like the move feature, we require some time before people are allowed to upload images. I find it quite common to see people who are simply using Wikipedia as their personal image storage place. Besides, there is no reason for someone's first edit to be an image upload. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:16, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

This would also greatly reduce the number of problematic images uploaded. The statistics I've seen are a year or so out of date, but something like 50% of all deleted images were uploaded by people who aren't autoconfirmed. --Carnildo (talk) 00:34, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't I know it. Sometimes it's simply a technical issue. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Support, this would make it much more difficult for fools to upload vandalistic images and copyright violations. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 01:56, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps something has changed, or there is incorrect information at Wikipedia:User access levels, or I'm misreading it, because it seems to say that an editor must be autoconfirmed in order to upload an image. Your statistics may not reflect that.

That doesn't mean (at the moment) that an editor's first action can't be to upload - it just means that the account needs to be at least four days old, so that it becomes autoconfirmed; then the editor can start uploading. And if that seems like a good argument for adding an edit requirement in order to become autoconfirmed, and/or lengthening the amount of time until autoconfirmation, then you might want to express your opinion at Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed Proposal/Poll‎. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd support adding an edit requirement for autoconfirmation. I'm thinking something in the low double-digit range, like 10-15 edits, although that might be a bit low. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 17:21, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Heck, I didn't even know that an editor had to be autoconfirmed to upload; I never paid attention. Oh well, it wasn't my proposal. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 00:53, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia logo improvement

Why does the German Wikipedia logo look so much better than ours? Can we do whatever they did? Notice their smooth anti-aliasing and lack of any white edge around the globe, despite the transparency. Any thoughts?

Equazcion •✗/C • 17:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Even better, would be to fix the errors in the logo.

The last mention was Brion's message in June 2007: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-June/030972.html

The listings at these 2 pages, Wikipedia:Wikipedia logos#The current logo and meta:Logo#Current logos, claim we're using different (fixed) logos, Image:Wikipedia-logo-en-big.png and Image:Wikipedia-logo.png, from the one we actually are using.

From a glance at commons:Category:Wikipedia logos, about 1/5 of the Wikipedias are using an updated/fixed logo:

Everything else I could find (back in Jan 2007) is listed at: User talk:Ambuj.Saxena/Wikipedia-logo#All the related discussion links

I emailed all this to Brion about 3 weeks ago, but he didn't respond. I was going to wait another week, before emailing someone else, but since you've brought it up... :)

Anyone know what's going on, or where/who to ask? -- Quiddity (talk) 18:30, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Well I doubt there is any one person in control of the logo, I'd imagine any admin can change it. I defiantly agree with its replacement, I say just use the exact image that our German counterpart is using, bar the German tag line of course... ☯Ferdia O'Brien ^(T)/_(C) 19:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

On some wikis the logo can be changed by admins at Image:Wiki.png, but that isn't enabled here. A request on Bugzilla could get it changed. Mr.Z-man 22:35, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

This has long been suggested but there's been no activity and has turned largely into a farce. Someone needs to take the initiative and get the mistakes in the logo fixed and the ugly transparency problems and get them included. -Halo (talk) 18:22, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I support switching to the improved logo along with fixing all the logo errors. -- penubag  (talk) 01:31, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the German style is better. Hut 8.5 19:24, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Much better, in my opinion. Waltham, The Duke of 03:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• See bugzilla:14137. If someone knows the exact locations of the logos in use at both English and German Wikipedias, I can composite the image myself and upload it. Equazcion •✗/C • 14:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/images/wiki-en.png and http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/b/bc/Wiki.png Dragons flight (talk) 14:22, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

  Thanks, I'll post again when it's uploaded. Equazcion •✗/C • 14:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

  Oops, please note I corrected the DE link above. Apparently dewiki is configured to draw their logo from a location other than the default. Dragons flight (talk) 14:27, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

  Thanks again. One more question: Anyone have any idea which fonts were used for the banner? I can fix the globe easily by copying the German one, but the English text has aliasing problems and I obviously can't copy the German text. Equazcion •✗/C • 14:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

  PS I just need to know which one was used for "The Free Encyclopedia". "WikipediA" itself can be copied from the German logo as well. Equazcion •✗/C • 14:47, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

  Nevermind, found it. Equazcion •✗/C • 14:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I also like the look of the Simple Wikipedia, it is very crisp and clean. Maybe just a tiny contrast adjustment and it would be better than the German Wikipedia. -- penubag  (talk) 07:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New logo

Equazcion •✗/C • 18:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Let me know what you think. This is Image:WikiNewSample.png, a sample showing the new image, Image:WikiNew.png, against our background. See Image:WikiNew.png for the actual new logo with transparent background. According to the Bugzilla response, when we're ready, the image needs to be uploaded to Image:Wiki.png, then full protect the image description page again, then re-open the bugzilla ticket. Equazcion •✗/C • 15:49, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• Looks much better. Go for it. Can't be letting the Germans out-do us! xenocidic ( talk ¿ review ) 16:20, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• This is so obviously an improvement I see no particular point in waiting. Dragons flight (talk) 16:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• Support changing the logo. Obvious improvement due to the removal of the rather unprofessional white lip. J Milburn (talk) 16:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• Definitely support I don't even know if this is controversial. I mean, it's not like we're changing the logo, it's just a higher quality version than we had before. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 16:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• I honestly can't see the difference. And does it make a difference? Who stares at the logo for hours deciding how transparent the barely visible back layer of colouring is? NIN (talk) 17:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• So...weak support? The difference is pretty apparent to me, now that it's been pointed out. xenocidic ( talk ¿ review ) 18:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• The difference is subtle, but on a site as prominent as ours, subtle imperfections come across as unprofessional. This would also vastly improve the appearance of user pages that have custom background image placed under the logo, such as User talk:LaraLove. I know that's not the most important thing to consider, but it is an added benefit. Equazcion •✗/C • 18:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• i like the crisper look of the old logo. The new one looks too soft. Maybe something inbetween? --Dschwen 18:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

• The new logo is a vast improvement. I definitely support this change. hmwithτ 18:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• We need approval to fix ugly graphics errors? Just do it. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 18:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• Like Lawrence Cohen, I do not really even see a need for a discussion about this, I say apply WP:BOLD and just change it. Tiptoety ^talk 18:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • It needs to be done by an admin. Place Image:WikiNew.png at Image:Wiki.png, then full-protect the image description page again. Once that's done I can re-open the bugzilla ticket and the devs will make the switch. Thanks. Equazcion •✗/C • 18:36, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• As far as I'm concerned, in direct comparison I like the new one better. I'd never notice the difference if they were on different pages. So yes, go ahead... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• The new image has been uploaded to Image:Wiki.png and the request made at bugzilla:14137. Guess now we wait. Equazcion •✗/C • 21:07, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• Belated support. This one looks much cleaner to me. The lack of any halo artifact makes the illusion of depth look much more striking. Note, the new lettering below looks a bit thick/heavy to me but it's still professional and will likely show up more clearly on some displays. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:35, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• Comment. By the way, the Japanese script is wrong. -- Taku (talk) 21:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • See WP:AN#New_logo for a bit of discussion regarding the text errors on the globe. Equazcion •✗/C • 22:43, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• Comment I like the new logo, it appears more crisp without the white "halo". Lazulilasher (talk) 00:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Yep i think we all agree, we can now finish this as a Common Sense outcome. Be Bold my fellow wikipedian! Roadrunnerz45 ^{(talk 2 me)} 01:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes if only it were that easy. I've done all I could, finished and submitted the request as instructed, roughly 6 hours ago, and so far nothing. Sigh. There's a reason Germany is ahead of us in the technology, wokmanship, and logo department. Equazcion •✗/C • 01:44, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Support -- I don't see how anyone could oppose this. (Although it seems that I'm a bit late with my vote. Oh well) -- Imperator3733 (talk) 04:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Support This can be classified under "no-brainer". Noble Story (talk) 05:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Support MilkFloat 12:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Support. This new logo does look much cleaner--thanks for putting it together. --pie4all88 (talk) 18:03, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Support The new one looks much better. This isn't SNOWable, is it? Paragon12321 (talk) 21:37, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Comment - Thanks for all the support. The new logo has been uploaded to Image:Wiki.png. We're now just waiting for a developer to get off his or her duff and make the switch. The request is at bugzilla:14137, in case anyone with a bugzilla account would like to comment there. Equazcion •✗/C • 22:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• Befürworte! Obvious improvement. Thank you equazcion! Iunaw 03:10, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
• Support not that it's needed, but what the heck. Very nice indeed. -- Ned Scott 06:05, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
• I don't really see much difference between the two of them. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 01:11, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fix the logo completely, or not at all

• User:Thue has worked on the character issues that were mentioned in New York Times. It is pending a fix for the tamil character. See below his version.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ganeshk (talk • contribs) 22:55, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, there was an article in the New York Times about this on June 25, 2007. See my other comments at the top of this thread for the relevant links and details. Can nobody figure out how to fix these handful of problems at once?!? There are 2 major character issues (Devanagari and Japanese), and 2 minor misplaced accents (Ώ and Й), plus the aesthetic issues discussed above. I'm going to poke a few other talkpages/people, see if we can finally solve it. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:42, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

"Fix completely, or not at all"... I just love people who say that. How 'bout: "Bitch about it and fix it, but don't bitch about it while demanding that others fix it." It's along the same lines, you see. Complaining is just a partial fix -- the least-helpful part -- and yet, you demand that others either do a complete job or not try at all. Think about it. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:09, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, see WP:AN#New_logo. We discussed this a little. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:15, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm just saying, whilst we have the people together, and the programs open, and the issue raised, wouldn't it be nice to solve the multiple problems? It's shinier now, but it's still wrong. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:39, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's a capital idea. However to say that if all issues can't be fixed then none should be fixed is just wrong. I hope we agree there. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:48, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I just learnt, the character was not tamil, it's khmer. Quiddity, can you confirm what else is pending in Thue's version? Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 03:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It appears that all the errors mentioned are fixed in Thue's version linked above, no?--Father Goose (talk) 05:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, all the character errors seem to be fixed in Thue's version (2 characters, 2 accents).

I don't know the technical details of the transparency/anti-aliasing error, so that might be an issue still? -- Quiddity (talk) 06:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

If the developers change the logo settings to point to Image:Wiki.png, as we want, then the sitewide logo could be subsequently updated by any admin that uploads over that protected image. In other words there would be no bottleneck to uploading further corrections as they became available. Dragons flight (talk) 05:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

See Nohat's comments at the end of Talk:Main Page/Archive 86#Wrong devnagari symbol for "wi" in Wikipedia's logo: "The logo is a trademark of the Wikipedia Foundation. It is not subject to the same editing policies as Wikipedia content. Even if someone were to make an acceptable replacement image, any change to the logo will have to be subject to the approval of the board."

See also his comments at the end of User_talk:Nohat/archive_2005-06-12#The_characters_on_Wikipedia_logos: "The legal status of the logo's copyright is not currently well-defined..."

(Both old threads though).

That's part of the reason I'm suggesting we need get everything fixed at once. Any board members following this thread? -- Quiddity (talk) 06:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The part about the legal status was a comment from April 2005. It has been resolved since then since Nohat signed over the copyright to the Foundation. Angela. 14:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Heaven help us. I know the arguments about WMF copyright as well as anyone, but if we need the Board's approval to remove the white lip from the edges, then we truly have sunk imto a bureaucratic hell. The logo is an unregistered trademark, and it certainly will continue to be their trademark even after the much discussed errors are corrected. And lastly, as a point of order, I believe the WMF executive (rather than the Board) is principally responsible for brand management. Dragons flight (talk) 06:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

As mentioned above, A version of the logo with the errors mentioned in the NYT article is here: Image:Wikipedia-logo_thue.png. Thue | talk 07:56, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• Could the kerning between the D and the I not be as tight as the German version? Phlegm Rooster (talk) 08:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• On the legal issue: That's actually another reason to get the minor change implemented first before worrying about the character errors. This was brought up at the bugzilla ticket, and my only saving grace was the fact that this is such a minor change, and most of all that this change has already been implemented on most other language wikis. If we need to wait for the approval it would take to do something totally different, then we'll be waiting a while. It's better to get this minor graphical error fixed first, get the logo uniform with the other languages, and then start worrying about this more major change. Equazcion •✗/C • 15:32, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• On the Character selection issue: According to Wikipedia:Wikipedia logos#Alphabets represented in the logo, they do represent the "letter from that alphabet that most closely resembles the English "W" as in "Wikipedia"."
  However, according to Nohat at User talk:Nohat/archive 2005-02-22#Trouble in All the Logos!, "only some of the symbols were selected to represent "Wikipedia"— others were chosen at random." 2 threads at User talk:Nohat/archive 2007-06-06 say the same thing. Angela says the same thing in meta:Talk:Main Page/Archives/2006/01#Error in the Wikipedia Globe. Zocky repeats it at Talk:Main Page/Archive 86#Wrong devnagari symbol for "wi" in Wikipedia's logo.
  So, I think we're good to go for replacing the currently in-use logo with Thue's version (if the anti-aliasing issues are dealt with in his version?). -- Quiddity (talk) 19:34, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• I think the aliasing issues were only present as a result of the scaling-down. The original high-res image didn't have those issues, so it would just be a matter of scaling this one down correctly for the small version. Though I do believe as someone said above that such a change would require board approval. Equazcion •✗/C • 19:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I created meta:Errors in the Wikipedia logo to summarize wanted improvements to the logo. Please feel free to contribute. Thue | talk 21:11, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

(ec)My two cents:

1. several glyphs have extra diacritical marks that make them read 'vih' or 'wih', while others have only the base 'vah'/'wah'. All should, I think, be normalized to use the base character, sans diacritic (where possible). For instance, the Devanagri and Tibetan/Bhutanese (far left, respectively 2nd & 3rd from bottom) glyphs read 'vih' and 'wih' respectively -- instead of unadorned व (U+0935) and ཝ (U+0F5D).
2. the Thai symbol (far right, bottom) should be ว (U+0E27 with diacritic วิ U+0E27+0E34) and not ฉ (U+0E09).

-- Fullstop (talk) 21:18, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I am not going to work on that. As Quiddity remarked, making all the characters sound like "W" was not the original priority, and changing it is currently a lot of effort. But you could start a list at meta:Errors in the Wikipedia logo, and then it might be changed if we decide to regenerate the logo from scratch. Thue | talk 09:30, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Editing and History page issues

There are a few things about the basic pages that come up when "edit this page" or "history" is pressed that I would like to improve.

• Above all, it's so aggravating when I accidentally fire off an edit with an incomplete summary (or worse, wasn't even double-checked properly) because I catch the "Enter" by mistake when looking for a punctuation mark typing the edit summary. Enter is supposed to trigger a default action for a Web page, and that action should be show preview, not save page!

• The proximity of the "this is a minor edit" checkmark to the Save Page box is also annoying, especially since style guidelines practically prohibit minor edits, and some people might not see them on edit summaries. I think I only once actually managed to press minor edit and save page with the same click, but it's still discomfiting.

• On the History page, the current GMT time (as of the time the History report is generated) should be printed at the top of the page just above the most recent edit. This way it is possible for people to instantly see how long ago an edit was made without having to check the system clock, do mental arithmetic, wonder if they are set differently etc. This would help with vandalism and inadvertent edit conflicts. It would also occasionally help people to notice if they are looking at an old history page in their browser. Wnt (talk) 16:20, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

• Actually, I rather like the enter key defaulting to save. When I'm done entering my edit summary, my next action is generally to save the page, and I wouldn't want to have to switch to the mouse in order to click the save button (or tab over to it). "Style guidelines prohibit minor edits" -- You might not understand what minor edits are. They're usually for spelling/grammar corrections, versus major removals or additions. They're not prohibited at all. If you look at your preferences under the "gadgets" tab, there's a tool available that will constantly display the current GMT time at the top of your browser. Equazcion •✗/C • 16:35, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

If you want preview to be the default action, then turn on 'Show preview on first edit' in your editing preferences. Algebraist 18:16, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone. The GMT clock is a handy gadget that I'd missed, though it doesn't mark when the History page was actually served. It's also true on reviewing the current guidelines that I've been underusing minor edits; I'm not sure if the policy has evolved or if I just never paid enough attention. Showing the preview on the first edit might serve as a workaround, though it's not quite what I had in mind - but I suppose that if an editor speaks up so soon who likes the current system I'm unlikely to find a strong consensus for a change. Ah well. Wnt (talk) 19:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions for image pages: Titles and Info Boxes

I'd like to suggest two additions to image pages; titles (as opposed to file names), and image information boxes.

My first suggestion is titles. While images that are displayed within a wikipedia entry are in boxes that also contain the image's name and artist/photographer, once you click through to the image's own page, there is no longer a simple artist & title summary, only the file name. There might be comments, or general info on the artist that is not specific to the particular image, but not a dedicated place or requirement for an image title. That leaves it to the uploader to have thought to name the file with the picture's title, or at least something that isn't "IMG-0024", but that is rarely the case with images on the internet.

Here are two pages showing images of the same print of Mt Fuji:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hokusai-fuji7.png
2. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Red_Fuji_southern_wind_clear_morning.jpg

The first example's picture title is "Image:Hokusai-fuji7.png", and the second's is "Image:Red_Fuji_southern_wind_clear_morning.jpg". Rather than having those file names as titles, I think it would be better if each page's title has both the image name and file name, but on separate lines, like so;

Red Fuji Southern Wind Clear Morning, by Katsushika Hokusai
Filename: Image:Hokusai-fuji7.png

It's personal preference that I want the image title to be bigger than the file name. I'd actually like there to be less of a size difference between the two lines, however this is the best I could do with my limited knowledge of html.

My second suggestion is for a standard info box underneath each image, which can be filled in by users. I would suggest the following (example based on page 2 mentioned above);

Artist: Katsushika Hokusai
Title: Red Fuji Southern Wind Clear Morning
Series: 36 Views of Mount Fuji
Date: Original wood print circa 1830
Edition: circa 1930 reprint
Materials: Wood block print on paper

"Materials" could also be "composition", or whatever word is appropriate to represent the many types of art styles as well as photography, diagrams, etc. Or perhaps there could be different options for different image types, whatever you think would work best. There could also be Additional Comments, where further information, anecdotes, et. could be mentioned.

What do you think? Wwoorrddss (talk) 04:45, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Both of those images are on Commons, so any changes need to be applied there. The closest template I know of that does what you want is {{information}}. ----— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:08, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea what any of that means! I'm just a user, I don't know anything about developing the site. I emailed with a suggestion, and was told to post it in the village pump. Is there, or perhaps there could be, a suggestions page, where people like me can add things like this? Wwoorrddss (talk) 12:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

You're in the right place, friend. Thanks for your suggestion! I'll try to break this down for you.

1. The images you linked are on Wikimedia Commons, which is a free image repository that any Wikimedia project (including this one, the English Wikipedia) can use. The tight integration allows us here on Wikipedia to simply link an image on Commons as if it were on Wikipedia itself. Anyway, because those specific images are on Commons, we here at the English Wikipedia can't do anything with them.
2. That said, I believe Gadget850 missed your point. You were merely using those images as examples, not requesting any specific change to those specific images. We do have images here on Wikipedia -- lots of them -- including some that cannot be uploaded to the Commons because they aren't free. Your proposal would certainly apply to those images.
3. Most of your proposal is something that could be done easily by whoever uploads the image. As Gadget850 mentioned, we have a template called {{information}} that includes some of the information you suggest, but any of it could be added free-form without using a template. The catch is that it's up to the person who uploads the image to provide that information.
4. Titling an image is trickier. The software that runs Wikipedia is coded to display the filename at the top of any media page, and I think most of the folks here would prefer it that way because it makes linking the image easier. Plus, a properly constructed filename is almost as useful as a title. Take, for example, one of my own images: Image:Rochester Midtown Plaza - Interior.jpg. It would be redundant to have a title on another line that just said "Rochester Midtown Plaza - Interior".

Your proposal is not a bad one, and most of what you suggest can be done now -- but it would have to be done by the person who uploaded the image. The titling proposal is a technical issue that could be addressed if there was a strong consensus for it. Thanks again for bringing your concerns here and helping to make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia!

-- Powers ^T 12:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Stub link

The stub template currently has two links, one to "wp:stub", the other to "edit this page". See the proposal at Wikipedia talk:Stub#Proposal to change the second link to a short tutorial on how to add to an article, like on the French wikipedia. 199.125.109.126 (talk) 16:09, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New idea for redirect templates

[Note: I take no credit for this idea, I am just the messenger.]
User:Lenoxus has had an idea for standardisation of redirect templates. The idea basically boils down to a meta-template replacing all those separate templates for categorising redirects. This would allow standardisation and easy adding of multiple reasons to redirects. Please comment over at WikiProject Redirects to keep all discussion coherent. Thanks. RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 20:01, May 18, 2008 (UTC)

To clarify — I don't actually intend to replace the other templates, as they are extremely useful for categorization and succinct standard explanations. I might, howver, like to see them change their wording over time. Lenoxus " * " 20:14, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

But surely if the categories and explanations were incorporated into the meta-template, as they can be, then it makes the others redundant? RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 20:23, May 18, 2008 (UTC)

Aha, now we're having a conversation! What I believe makes a templates-based system best is that it allows for shortcuts in a way categories don't. A redirect category and its associated templates can have as long a name as they like, but only templates can be properly redirected, so that, for example, one could enter dab or r dab into the template instead of Redirects to disambiguation pages, the current category.

Additionally, in the preview of the entered text, using templates allows for uniform explanations of why a page of type X should redirect to Y. If editors had to enter the information by hand every time, there would certainly be typos and other errors. Of course, I'm secretly assuming that MediaWiki will eventually be able to properly display all the text on a redirect page… is there a possible technical limit to that?

Oh, and I just realized that you may have pictured this template containing some basic explanations itself (such as abbreviations, plural forms, etc). My problem with that is that I don't want to limit the creative power of template creation for new kinds of redirects. If the meta-template had to be locked, for example, I wouldn't want editors to have to propose a change in order to be able to have the redirect page say whatever they have in mind. Lenoxus " * " 21:25, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem I have with keeping the template-based system is that every single template would need to be modified to have the line removed, and the explanations standardised. Have a look at my example and play around with it. It does include an 'other' option so that people can include a custom reason.

Even if the template was locked, a quick proposal at WT:RE could get things approved and added by an admin, and it is probably not a good idea to have people creating new redirect categories willy-nilly anyway.

The template does have uniform explanations, using the 'abbrev' parameter generates the reason concerning abbreviations, which would be the same on any redirect the template is used on. [I'm the one who said 'comment at WT:RE', and here I am yakking on!. Oh, well, que sera sera!] RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 21:45, May 18, 2008 (UTC)

Moreover, if you were thinking that the template-based system would be easier, then don't worry. The options can be abbreviated, and full documentation can be written, with a guide at WP:RE for new users. RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 21:49, May 18, 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I want to merge my usernames.

I have 3 or 4 usernames.

REASON: forget password, email account is deleted, etc.

I want to merge their edit history, counts, watchlist, etc.

I moved user page and user talk page manually.

But I can not move edit history, edit counts.

make this feature, pleas! :) -- WonRyong (talk) 22:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

This is, I believe, impossible at present. You could file a feature request at Bugzilla, but don't hold your breath. Algebraist 22:31, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

(follow up to Algebraist's response), not currently possible per the first bullet in Wikipedia:Changing username#Notes. --Gwguffey (talk) 18:48, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] An idea for FC recognition

(Duped from here) So we've got stars at the top-right of individual FC items, but there's usually no way to tell if (say) an article's featured unless you go there. What if FC links appeared as a different color than blue, say, green? Since FC articles inevitably touch upon more than just their own subjects, greenlinks could help browsing by steering people to the best prospects for research. It'd also provide an additional reward for FC stuff in terms of added visibility. Thoughts? Cheers, Mdiamante (talk) 13:05, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

No one? ;) Mdiamante (talk) 00:28, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

 :) I think this is thinking more in terms of helping the regular editors than the casual reader, such as say the kind who arrives here via a google search etc. Different-colored links will be confusing and need to be explained. I think this proposal might be helpful but only as a user script or gadget (the kinds of extra tools we have in preferences under the "gadgets" tab). FYI there's already a gadget that colors article page titles according to their class -- green for good, blue for featured, etc. Equazcion •✗/C • 00:37, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Aye, I saw that gadget, but unless I'm wrong, it doesn't apply to links, which is what I'm getting at. I grant that there may be an element of confusion at first, but there could always be one of those hide-able "things you may not know/greenlinks" captions at the top of the article itself. And would one different link color (aside from the pretty self-explanatory red) really be so vague? Cheers, Mdiamante (talk) 15:38, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I struggle to see how this could be technically feasible without putting massive strain on the servers. -Halo (talk) 16:14, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The server already looks ahead at page links to see if pages exist for them, so it knows what to turn into red links. It probably wouldn't be any more of a strain to have it check a new assessment flag and color the links accordingly. I don't think it's unfeasible, but I also don't really see the necessity. Equazcion •✗/C • 16:17, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Its not feasible because the servers know nothing of "FA." Article classification occurs at the "presentation" level; it is not a database thing. -- Fullstop (talk) 17:13, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Hence the "new assessment flag" portion of my comment. Equazcion •✗/C • 02:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

This is possible with FlaggedRevs, i.e. create a "featured" level of assessment that is the highest and that list would be available through some special page. As for the different color links, that's an issue for Bugzilla. MER-C 06:31, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Changing assessment levels - please give us your choice

We've had considerable discussion, and we're considering putting A below GA, and adding a C-Class between Start and B. Please choose your favourite option here. Walkerma (talk) 05:37, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Current birthdays

I have a suggestion. Why don't you include a tab listing birthdays of all notable people for the specific day? The tab could be right next to the "recent deaths" tab. In that way, you can read up on notable people. It should not be too difficult to manage. I find the "recent deaths" very informative, the same will apply here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cozinsky (talk • contribs) 07:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

This is already available from the main page, by clicking on the current date at the bottom of the 'On this day...' box. I agree this isn't as obvious as it might be. Algebraist 09:55, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] favorite pages section

I think there should be a button I can click that lets me save my favorite pages for viewing later like on youtube. Did anyone already think of this yet, it seems pretty obvious. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dcutler (talk • contribs) 08:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

You could bookmark them in your browser, or make a list on your userpage (or subpage). Algebraist 09:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Add said pages to your watchlist, then they can be viewed via "my watchlist" then "View and edit watchlist". -Halo (talk) 16:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

List them on your userpage. bibliomaniac15 02:20, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Possible "Did you mean " feature

Hello, When you type something into wikipedia and mispell it slighty the relavent page does not come up. But if you do the same on google it says " Did you mean.....". I was wondering how hard it would be to integrate a similar feature onto wikipedia. Could you plesae reply on my talk page or notify me on my talk page if you have replied. Thanks Bit Lordy (talk) 21:04, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

This has been proposed before (by me, among other people), and the response is usually that such a feature would be too much of a performance burden. I've disagreed with that response repeatedly, and wish we could try out something like this. Wikipedia is way behind in the site searching technology department. Nearly every other prominent site that features a site search function is light-years ahead of us. Equazcion •✗/C • 21:39, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Can't we introduce this on a small trial basis on Wikitionary or something? Can we put this to a vote? If theres enough Consensus then they will find it hard to turn down. What do you think? Bit Lordy (talk) 21:43, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we can decide things regarding Wiktionary from here. And I don't think a vote would be beneficial here. This should be a discussion by people who know about the technology and can offer educated guesses as to how it would work and what the performance cost would be. I do think a new discussion on this would be a good idea though. Welcoming any comments. Equazcion •✗/C • 21:58, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not just a performance burden, it's also a difficult thing to do if you want it to give decent suggestions. --Carnildo (talk) 02:28, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I think redirects and disambiguation pages work just fine for this purpose. If a redirect doesn't exist for a specific phrase, make one. If a redirect doesn't exist for a typo, learn how to type. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:21, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Funny how for some reason all those other sites don't tell their users to "learn how to type". We must know something they all don't. Or maybe we're just better than them, or expect more from our users. Perhaps we're just very choosy about just who we want to accommodate here -- we wouldn't want just any idiot to be able to use the site. People who don't know how to spell something should really go and check the proper spelling using some other tool prior to searching here. Who needs user-friendliness? That's not our responsibility. Users should just get smarter. This is all sarcasm of course, cause "learn to type" was a ridiculous response. Again, other sites have this feature for a reason. It makes the site easier to use. That's reason enough to want it for ourselves. And if it isn't purely the performance issue that's keeping us from doing it, but rather that the feature is a challenge to construct, then let's roll up our sleeves and rise to it. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:50, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Users should get smarter. That is the purpose of Wikipedia (or of any encyclopedia), right? Let's take our bold goal of free education a step further: let's couple the vast amount of information available on Wikipedia with some classical conditioning. When you type poorly, you don't get what you want. When you type well, you do get what you want. This forces the user to get better at typing. Sounds like a nice educational program to me. That's not to say we would expect users to already know how to spell everything. That's what redirects are for. User-friendliness is only valuable up to a point. Pass that point, and you're training people to be stupid. I think user-friendliness is at a good level right now. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:24, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

You are more than welcome to submit a patch for this feature. It will be reviewed for its performance impact on the site, code quality, and so on. See How to become a MediaWiki hacker for details. — Werdna talk 13:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but this is a proposed change to the site for discussion. Even if I were a developer capable of creating this feature on my own, I wouldn't even start putting in the effort until the proposal gained consensus here. And, we have developers for that sort of thing, so if consensus here is that it would be a benefit to the site, they could take over from there and implement it, as is usually the case for such proposed features. Equazcion •✗/C • 16:58, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The vast majority of technical changes are implemented without any sort of community consensus or announcement. If you plan on waiting for the few paid developers we have to do this because people ask for it (most of the developers are volunteers, who work on whatever they feel like) you may be waiting for a while. Mr.Z-man 17:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm aware of SUL. I created persistent proposals because of it. That's neither here nor there. As with any proposal, we should first decide whether or not it should be done, then worry about actually doing it. That's what this page is for -- proposing and discussing changes. We don't tell people who post here "Well go and make it yourself, then get back to us", so I'm not sure where the sudden attitude problem is coming from. Let's have an actual discussion, thanks much. Equazcion •✗/C • 17:42, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I guess what I was trying to say was, I really don't see this as a controversial change in any way. If someone can code something that won't have a significant impact on performance, I don't see it as being the type of thing that the sysadmins would require a community consensus on every project to turn on, like the AJAX based search suggestions that were just added recently. Mr.Z-man 17:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

When it's been brought up before it was controversial. Also, the point of this page is also to demonstrate interest in a proposed feature. If there is enough demonstrated interest, that would serve as motivation for people (designated developers and others alike) to try and create the feature. A discussion of the feature, its possible benefits, and a simple demonstrated interest by as many people as possible is instrumental in getting a change implemented. At least three people here have so far expressed the feeling that this would be a beneficial addition to the site. Great. Keep them coming. If I could write something myself and bring it to the table I would, but I just don't have the programming ability. Hopefully with enough demonstrated interest, someone who does will take notice.

In other words, you seem to be saying this is a non-controversial change. If it's just a matter of getting someone to create it, then let's do whatever we can towards that end. Equazcion •✗/C • 17:57, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. Can someone please implement this???? It would save so much time correcting little typos.Numpty454 (talk) 18:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for anything that will improve Wikipedia's terrible search function. I too have mispelled things by one letter or something and it comes up with some other results at the bottom which are completely unrelated, but it doesn't come up with the thing I might have mispelled. In fact, sometimes you can have better luck looking up Wikipedia pages on Google than on Wikipedia itself! Please, please, PLEASE do something to drastically improve Wikipedia's search tool. .:Alex:. 18:54, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

See WP:PEREN. This feature exists but is disabled on English Wikipedia for performance reasons - it's not that this would be fundamentally impractical, but that the current implementation does not scale to a wiki this large. Dcoetzee 21:19, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

That's all very well but can't we find a solution to implement it to a large Wiki? I mean if Google the largest serach engine in the world can do it surely the largest Wiki can too :) Bit Lordy (talk) 21:33, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. I'm not sure why this should be given up on just because the existing feature wasn't made for a site this large. If IMDb and especially Google can do it, I think we should be able to find a way, and what's more I think it should be a priority. Equazcion •✗/C • 21:36, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree - it's a matter of finding someone who knows Mediawiki and the approximate query research to do an implementation. I could do this myself, actually, but need to find a bit of time first. Dcoetzee 06:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I think one of the biggest flaws in wikipedia is it has articles on pretty much every subject but it doesn't take into account human error. For example if you spell a word incorrectly it doesnt recognise it as a mistake and come up with a "did you mean"? message like google does; the best you can hope for is a re-direct which in 9 out of 10 cases don't come up. I propose we implement a did you mean thing when displaying search results with obvious spelling errors --Hadseys 12:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Support this change - it is becoming more and more common on other sites, and is very useful to users. I have repeatedly noticed its absence (due to my own poor typing!) Dhollm (talk) 22:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

• What's wrong with redirects and DAB pages? GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 01:13, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
  • There's nothing wrong with them per se. But it's not possible to have a DAB page or redirect for everything. Bit Lordy (talk) 13:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)