Template talk:Watchlist-notice

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Notice

Wikipedia has three kinds of top of page messages that admins can edit:

  • MediaWiki:Anonnotice – Visible on top of all pages for not logged in users. If this message is empty then the system instead shows the sitenotice to those users. A trick is to set the anonnotice to for instance <p></p> so it doesn't display anything but still prevents the not logged in users from seeing the sitenotice.
  • MediaWiki:Sitenotice – Visible on top of all pages for all users. Anonymous users see this one too if the anonnotice is empty.
  • {{Watchlist-notice}} – Visible on top of the user watchlists.

Contents

[edit] Rollback

{{editprotected}} It's really a bad idea to use the watchlist notice for such a disputed and half-baked process. -- Ned Scott 05:09, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Not done. Please behave. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Excuse me? We have a rather large and growing number of respected admins who are outraged by this, and you have the nerve to suggest that I am misbehaving by saying there shouldn't be a watchlist notice about this? -- Ned Scott 06:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, I was referring to your behavior in general, but the comment applies here as well. If a member of one of these hordes of enraged admins cares to remove the notice, they're free to. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:16, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Early on I blanked the page, and that's about the only unreasonable thing I've done, so I take offense to the suggestion that my "general behavior" has been inappropriate. Next time I see Doc glasgow, Carcharoth, GlassCobra, Sean William, Earle Martin, FayssalF, or AuburnPilot (for starters), I'll ask them to remove the notice. Heaven forbid I make a reasonable request to someone uninvolved. -- Ned Scott 06:27, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

Per NedScott's wishes, please change the wording of this message to "Users can now acquire rollback through a disputed and half-baked process." – Gurch 06:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I actually thought it was much more neutral to simply remove the notice, but if you think that wording works.. -- Ned Scott 06:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, I think the process is more overdone than half-baked, myself. It has literally been argued to death – Gurch 06:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Argued to death, but not baked. -- Ned Scott 06:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

"If you want to slow things down or stop things, you should remove the message from users' watchlists, that says "Users can now acquire rollback on an individual basis." Even if there were full consensus on the implementation of this feature, it would have been better to allow requests to trickle at first rather than notifying every editor of the new feature's availability and having a flood.--Srleffler (talk) 06:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)" [1]

That guy brings up a good point, eh? -- Ned Scott 06:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't we stop advertising WP:RFR here until there's no dispute over it anymore? --Conti|✉ 15:17, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

I was hoping this whole thing would just be worked out (one way or the other) over the next week or two, and so comment here wouldn't be needed. But apparently, Jimbo has spoken, and sent this to ArbCom for them to decide. He specifically said "I recommend that people basically do nothing at all here, i.e. please don't go awarding this ability to lots of people in an effort to create "facts on the ground" about how it is used." To avoid stirring things up more than absolutely necessary, maybe the watchlist message should be removed until ArbCom decides. Not saying it must/should be, but wanted to point it out. Feel free to ignore. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 01:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree, and have therefore removed the notice. --Conti|✉ 01:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unrelated

On an unrelated note, just out of curiosity, why do we use a second template for the notice instead of MediaWiki:Watchlist-details? -- Ned Scott 06:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps so the "dismiss" button only dismisses this bit and not the whole message? I could be wrong, I'm not exactly sure how this works – Gurch 06:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
It only dismisses the part under the div ID. I was actually playing with it in my sandbox a little while ago :) (yes, you too can make your very own dismissible message!) -- Ned Scott 06:52, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm, indeed you can. Now if only I could think of some useful way of using that feature – Gurch 07:04, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
It was recently split off of the MediaWiki message so that it could be used in multiple MediaWiki messages without duplicating the dismiss code. Specifically, on MediaWiki:Recentchangestext and MediaWiki:Watchlist-details. One dismiss button can then be used to hide the message in multiple places. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Oh, ok, that does make sense. -- Ned Scott 04:47, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ipblockexempt

Since this effects a lot of editors / would be editors

{{editprotected}}

Can you phrase and link to

Wikipedia talk:Blocking exemption policy? Thanks, M-ercury at 23:40, January 14, 2008 Edit the template to say:

There is currently a discussion on whether to allow editors to edit via Tor or other proxy, overriding the IP block on a per user basis. The proposal is at Wikipedia:Blocking exemption policy and the discussion is located at Wikipedia talk:Blocking exemption policy

That page doesn't look ready. Nakon 23:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Might be ready now. Second look at editprotected? M-ercury at 04:00, January 15, 2008
Not done. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:03, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Why? John Reaves 13:42, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
This proposal really needs more feedback before I can call it consensus and open a bug. M-ercury at 13:43, January 15, 2008
Isn't WP:CENT enough for this? Kusma (talk) 13:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Cent did not generate the volume of audience in the /Tor nodes discussion that this IP exempt would require. M-ercury at 13:54, January 15, 2008

Why not just toss {{cent}} into the watchlist, outside the dismiss box? Any objections? —Random832 16:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I object. The whole point of the watch list is to look at articles that we're interested in, not what other people think we should be looking at. – Tivedshambo (talk) 16:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
The watchlist notice is not to be abused. It reaches a very wide audience very effectively, and as such, only genuinely important things should go in it. That is, no {{cent}}, please. As for this particular discussion, it seems as though a lot of the people who are currently being blocked or would be affected by the change would probably be IP addresses, or so it seems to me. And obviously, IPs don't have watchlists. Either way, if one thing was learned from the great rollback debacle it was that inviting the entire community for technical discussions is usually not the best idea. Also, it's unclear what a watchlist notice would even say. Are you looking for more discussion? A vote? A poll? And have the CheckUsers been consulted as well as the other necessary people before we waste everyone's time with a proposal that could (and from what I can tell will) never happen. Having this particular user group is a perennial proposal that has been rejected multiple times before. Even with an overwhelming show of community support, the sysadmins are under no obligation to oblige, and frankly, a new user group and more bureaucracy doesn't seem to be what's needed here, so who can blame them? Not done (again). --MZMcBride (talk) 18:43, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is asking for a poll. This proposal has support, however, it has not enough visibility. I've published it otherwise, however, I believe this to be of importance to the community. I think a small blurb would be appropriate for a few days. I have re enabled the edit protected again. It is my hope that with this rationale it will be accepted, however, if declined, I won't touch it again. Best regards, Mercury at 20:50, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] RFC on television episodes

There's an rfc on television episodes at Wikipedia_talk:Television_episodes#RFC:_Notability_of_individual_television_episodes and it would be great if we could get the participation of as many editors as possible to build the widest consensus possible and hopefully successfully settle the issue one way or the other for the time being. This is an issue which has escalated up to arbcom and back, and is dividing sections of the community. Is it possible someone technologically savvy enough could add a link to this template? Hiding T 09:54, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this issue merits a notice on the watchlist, too, though apparently User:Phil Sandifer is against the move. He reverted the addition, thus I asked him to comment here. - PeaceNT (talk) 15:12, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
This just sets too massive a precedent - the watchlist notice, historically, has been used for a very narrow set of things - feature announcements, arbcom and Foundation elections, etc. Stuff that impacts every editor. This marks a shift to using it for stuff that might be of interest to a lot of editors - a major difference, and one that opens the door to a flood of watchlist notices whenever somebody has a policy issue they want to get attention for. With no clear line that seems drawable after "will impact every editor," that's just too wide open a barn door. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:16, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
You have yet to give a reason why all editors should be denied the right to know about this important RFC. There's no guideline concerning this, so you shouldn't just revert. Previous episodes discussions, RFCs and an arbcom (which I think bore no fruit) haven't attracted enough attention, not because the issue itself is unimportant, but rather that the community are not aware of the related events. This has been going on for more than half a year, and a simple notice here would solve many problems. Why, exactly, are you against it? (and do not use the precedent argument, later events, if controversial, could be discussed here, too.) Regards, - PeaceNT (talk) 15:28, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Do stop with the hyperbole - nobody is being denied the right to know. I am pointing out that you cannot change the way we use a sitewide notice without consensus and discussion. Wikipedia has policy that extends beyond written guideline pages - and tradition is a big part of that. Tradition has excluded notices like this. And the argument is not a slippery slope argument. By tradition, we have a particular requirement for watchlist notices. This does not meet that requirement. If we allow this, we move that requirement. There are reasons that we have not used the sitenotice for other widely but not all-inclusively interesting issues. Among them are that the watchlist notice exists as a particularly loud form of notification. Short of the actual sitenotice, it is our most widespread and thus most important communication medium. Should it become overcrowded it becomes useless. So we put very few things out on it. This is not like anything we have put out on it before. Thus the onus is on you to explain why either our past threshold has been too conservative or why this actually does meet that threshold. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:36, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
To give you an idea of the comparatively narrow scope of this RFC, right now Wikipedia has 2,182,086 articles. There are, in a week, 19 prime time hours of television programming, currently distributed over five networks. If we assume that each network produces 22 new hours of programming a year for each of those shows (i.e. that every show they run gets a full season pickup), that they have done so since 1955 (when television was widely introduced in the US, which they obviously haven't as several of them haven't existed that long) and that we have an article on every one of those episodes (which we don't) we are talking about less than 5% of the articles on Wikipedia. And, as I said, in practice that number is going to be wildly lower. There is no standard by which this is an issue of broad concern to Wikipedia. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:43, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
"...you cannot change the way we use a sitewide notice without consensus and discussion." Hmm, I thought a user started this thread for a day and no one replied? Sorry for taking it as given that silence implied agreement, but still, you're using a slippery slope. Nothing indicates that the watchlist-notice will become overused after this; inappropriate notices in the future will certainly gather enough opposition to be shut down, (but it seems to me you're the only one objecting this addition). I seriously doubt there're too many matters that have effectively resulted in several ANI subpages and two arbcom cases, like this one. There's no need to be bureaucratic and bring up cold statistics, IAR may be invoked here, consensus is desperately needed and we only need a notice here to draw any attention we could get to this RFC. Also, it's not only the number/percentage of the articles but also the interests of the readers (for example) that should be taken into consideration (if you prefer stats, you may take a quick look at the list of pages most viewed on Wikipedia [2] - a number of 'TV series' and 'list of episodes' articles are in the top 100, thus I'm quite not convinced that this issue is not of "broad concern to Wikipedia") Anyway, please show me a place where the "requirements" you mentioned are given in black and white, and I'll desist. - PeaceNT (talk) 16:23, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy does not work in black and whites. The issue is that this flies in the face of what has been done in the past, and does so without good reason. Phil Sandifer (talk) 16:25, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Oh right, so we're having a de facto policy that is stated no where but users are expected to understand, that's good to know.- PeaceNT (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Yep. It's not like you're being punished for not knowing the tradition surrounding the Watchlist notice. Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:06, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

(Deindent) Regardless of what's been said already, I think a watchlist notice would be beneficial. Put it up for 3-5 days = better consensus = solve escalating dispute. I don't think that's a "good reason" to use the notice, I think that's a great reason. Seraphim Whipp 02:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Seraphim's comment above. A link to the RfC in watchlist is a wise proposal. @pple complain 14:41, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Sometimes it truly isn't best to try to get everyone involved, especially people who have no idea what's been going on with the RfC and will simply show up for a hit-and-run comment because they feel they have to. Also, there are constantly RfC's and AfDs and MfDs and RfAs, etc., is there any reason this one is more notable or would require getting the entire community involved? Or at least getting the entire community aware of it? --MZMcBride (talk) 15:56, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
It's a problem that has been going on for nearly a year (?) now and stable consensus still can't be reached. I agree with the hit-and-run analysis though and that would be a problem. Seraphim Whipp 16:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
This is not an attempt to get everyone involved, most editors wouldn't participate in the RfC anyway if they are not interested. The point here is to make a public announcement that may reach as many users as possible, so we may eliminate the concern that there are editors who care about this issue but unaware of the on-going debate. It's step to get closer to an acceptable consensus. Also, this is not a regular RfC, MfD, RfA; as Seraphim Whipp pointed out, a-year-long dispute is not very common. - PeaceNT (talk) 16:30, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Year long disputes are actually pretty common. But still - target the relvant WikiProjects, look for editors actively editing television articles, etc. 95% of the project has nothing to do with this, and it's a poor idea to spam them with a watchlist notice. Phil Sandifer (talk) 16:52, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Agreed in its entirety. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
This question is being discussed on the administrator's noticeboard.[3] Rather than fragmenting the conversation, let's move it there, since AN is a much more visible page than this one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:47, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Overlinking

Quote:

Help is requested to identify bugs in the upcoming MediaWiki preprocessor before it goes live. Please visit m:Migration to the new preprocessor for details.

Umm ... overlinking? Even though I already knew about the issue, I had to waste some time checking the extra links to see if there's some new info. Why don't we make it one line, and put all extra links and explanations in the beginning of m:Migration to the new preprocessor? ∴ AlexSm 22:59, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Not everyone speaks a lot of English, and bugs could be terribly confusing. If you have a suggestion for a shorter alternative, please feel free to post one below, bearing in mind that people are going to need some sort of idea why there's a watchlist notice in the first place. And, by the way, I'm not sure the Manual of Style applies to the watchlist notice. : - P Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
For example,
"Help is requested to identify bugs in the upcoming migration to the new preprocessor.
Manual of style was linked as an example of common sense. In any case, mw:Manual:Parser.php page is not helpful here ∴ AlexSm 01:46, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Done. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:11, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] More than one dismiss

Would it be possible, in theory, to have something like the dismiss button on more than one item? For example, two messages, and each one with their own dismiss button. -- Ned Scott 10:54, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I think so, but it would require someone to write the code and update Common.js. I've suggested it before, but so far, no one's actually written / implemented it. As for the current dismiss button, it actually is set to expire after a week of being hidden, I believe. That expiry could probably be extended. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Wikipedia takes the world 2008

{{editprotected}} Could anyone add a notice that says:

"Wikipedia takes the world 2008 will take place from June 6 to June 8. Please sign up and take photos that are needed for articles without them."

STORMTRACKER 94 Go Irish! 09:32, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

N Not done flash a link to a page with only one participant and three real edits into the face of every logged-in user? Forgive me if I suggest that you might be aiming a little high for an initial advertising run :D. Seriously, the village pump would be a better place to recruit. Happy‑melon 21:43, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Board Election

{{editprotected}}

In the past this message has been used to advertised Board Elections, and it's that time of year again.

Suggested message:

The Wikimedia Foundation is now accepting candidates for the 2008 Board of Directors election.

Dragons flight (talk) 04:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Done. Though I switched "Board of Directors" to "Board of Trustees," because I figured it was just a typo. Let me know if that was actually intended. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:10, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, and yeah that was just a mistake. Dragons flight (talk) 05:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Display/remove option for "Bot stub" notice

Resolved. Problem solved. El_C 16:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Can we get this implemented as per the above (bd vote) msg? I couldn't quite figure out what to do. Thanks. El_C 16:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Merging works for me. El_C 16:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple watchlist messages

Is there any demand for having multiple dismiss buttons on the watchlist notice? This would require changes at MediaWiki:Common.js/watchlist.js, but can be done if there is a need. --- RockMFR 22:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Has been requested in multiple locations (including a VPT "How do I un-dismiss one of the messages"), support would be good to have, shuld have read here before trying to implement. If memory serves me, we used to have this functionality. — xaosflux Talk 01:50, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Such as back here. — xaosflux Talk 01:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
As far as I'm aware, it's never been possible on en.wiki to have multiple dismiss buttons. The diff directly above looks as though you were fixing a copy-paste error. At some point, I added code written by Splarka that allows "invalidating" the old cookie and forcing a new one, similar to what is done with the Sitenotice. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Without wanting to experiment live, if there are two cookie_id's in here, will dismiss dismiss both numbers, or just the lower one today? — xaosflux Talk 11:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Please, it would be appreciated if we could dismiss individual messages. I raised a thread at VPT asking how to undismiss the watchlist messages, as I had tried to dismiss one message, but lost the foundation election message at the same time. When there are more than one message, editors may not wish to dismiss them all - only those they have already responded to, or find irrelevant. Others they may wish to keep, as a reminder to mull something over before acting upon. DuncanHill (talk) 21:23, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Code updated at testwiki:MediaWiki:Common.js/watchlist.js and being tested there. See formatting at testwiki:MediaWiki:Watchlist-details. You can also test it there without logging on, on test.wiki the code is temporarily active on all page loads, not just on the watchlist. Note that the outer div defined by ID is deprecated but will be useful to keep for 30 days as the wikimedia javascript maxage allows browser caches to keep old javascript that long.
Also per "but lost the foundation election message", you can always just go to MediaWiki:Watchlist-details or Template:Watchlist-notice on en.wp to see the messages. --Splarka (rant) 23:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Implemented. Bypass local cache to see the new dismiss buttons. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, works great! — xaosflux Talk 02:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Excellent - thank you and well done. DuncanHill (talk) 11:52, 5 June 2008 (UTC)