Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

The proposals section of the village pump is used to discuss new ideas and proposal that are not policy related (see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for that).

Recurring policy proposals are discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals). If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that Wikipedia doesn't have it, please check there first before posting it, as someone else might have found it obvious, too.

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Before posting your proposal:

If the proposal is a change to the software, file a bug at Bugzilla instead. Your proposal is unlikely to be noticed by a developer unless it is placed there.
If the proposal is a change in policy, be sure to also post the proposal to, say, Wikipedia:Manual of style, and ask people to discuss it there.
If the proposal is for a new wiki-style project outside of Wikipedia, please go to m:Proposals for new projects and follow the guidelines there. Please do not post it here. These are different from WikiProjects.

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Proposals archive

Discussions older than 7 days (date of last made comment) are moved here. These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

Funding the Wikipedia through selling DVDs

What about selling the Wikipedia written on CDs or DVDs so that everyone who wants, could have his/her own Wikipedia without the need to surf at wikipedia.org {especially now it would be quite needed, because the servers of Wikipedia are overcrowded and it takes several seconds-minutes to upload a page}. Also by selling such DVDs, CDs {with encouragement to copy them and establish on your own servers} could be some money raised. Or even better, such CDs or DVDs would be given to the supporters of Wikipedia or could be sold for symbolic price to the supporters. Of course there is an issue how to make such a CD/DVD, in which languages, which articles should be taken into and which not, how many CDs/DVDs would be needed for 1 000 000 articles {with photos, sound files, etc}.

But on the other hand, I haven't heard about Wikipedia CDs/DVDs so I think it would need some kind of research to get to know if it is commercially realizable {maybe, I alone am in need of such CDs/DVDs :) }.

The German Wikipedia has one already. --cesarb 21:55, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why would anyone buy an instantly-out-of-date CD or DVD (which is bound to have bits of frozen vandalism in it). Would you even look at it, or just put it on your shelf? T-shirts or mugs would make more sense. Text ads would make even more sense... nobody boycotts an otherwise indispensible resource just because of a few unobtrusive text ads (how many of you have stopped using Google?). -- Curps 22:25, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't be bothered by Adsense. Why? Because my Firefox extensions block it automatically. And people could still choose to view the ads (by using a browser which doesn't have an adblocking capability, or by turning it off) and support the project in that way if they didn't wish to support it by donating their time.Cynical 21:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC, the German DVD was combed before hand to make it publisizeable, removing all vandalism and such, and also limiting the size of it by removing stub articles etc. And what to use with it? Well, there probably are quite a lot of coauthors that actually would want one on the shelf. Also, imagine offline browsing? Not even in Europe everybody has broadband internet connections. Now think about the third world and consider the possibilities - especially considering that one of Wikipedia's goals, according to Jimbo at least, is

"Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."

In today's world, doing that distribution online is not possible. DVDs wouldn't really cut it either (limited computer availability), but at least it's a bit better. TERdON 01:15, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah the German DVD sold pretty well, but it was done by a private company that only donated some portion of the proceeds. Basically to do it for English it would take a group to organize the vetting, a lot of time to do that, and somebody that had the ability to produce and sell it. The other problem of course is the space it would take up. According to Carnildo's post on the reference desk just the text from current revisions of the English Wikipedia is 8Gb and images add another 76GB or so. So a text-only version could fit on one dual layer or two single layer DVDs, but adding images would spread it to about 9 dual layer discs. So it's a good idea, just someone has to spearhead it and make it happen. - Taxman ^Talk 20:35, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fine then. Put text ads on Wikipedia, which given our Alexa numbers should raise, oh, a million dollars a month. But make it clear upfront that half of the windfall will be spent for third-world charitable purposes. Spend some of the rest on servers and also hire several more developers, so badly needed bug fixes and enhancements can happen a lot quicker. Everybody's happy.

I'm not sure I buy into the third-world story though. For most places in the third world, your CD or DVD will just be a frisbee, due to lack of computers or a reliable electrical power grid. And the places that have the latter two will almost certainly have telecom connectivity for Internet too. In fact, in many places telecom infrastructure is being created before any computing or electrical grid infrastructure: in Africa, cell phones are booming (they get recharged from car batteries). -- Curps 05:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that CD and DVD editions for English Wikipedia are a good idea. I would also remind Curps that plenty of Wikipedia users are staunchly against ads. I and many other contributors would immediately fork. Superm401 - Talk 04:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC) (adding back in comment removed without explanation by User:Thsgrn Superm401 - Talk 22:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC))[reply]

You can't run a top 25 website on a shoestring. The current MediaWiki software is inadequate in many ways and the pace of bugfixing and upgrades is far too slow. Objections to text ads can be easily met: just let anyone who can edit semi-protected articles turn off text ads in their preferences page. -- Curps 08:17, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. We already are running it on a "shoestring" (if that's what you call hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations). The MediaWiki software is adequate; otherwise, you wouldn't be seeing this post and we wouldn't have 900,000 articles. I think you mean it's not satisfactory, and I disagree with even that. The reason I object to Wikipedia serving text ads is not because I don't want to see them. I already block all google ads and can block even a completely plain text ad using greasemonkey. However, I refuse to provide free content to a site that is showing ads to anyone. Superm401 - Talk 23:29, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've got news for you: you already are. You do understand the nature of the GFDL? Reference.com is about 130 on Alexa, they mirror our content and put banner ads on it. Same for all the other mirrors out there, especially the ones that work the art of high Google ranking. -- Curps 02:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This developer is of the opinion that current fundraising methods are more than sufficient to meet the needs of hosting all of the projects the Foundation is hosting without compromising the ethical position of the projects with ads, which already caused a major fork of the hosting and then content of the Spanish language project. Of course, if a different foundation wanted to do things like sell DVDs to raise money to do things like donate computers with Wikipedia on them to the poor, that would also be a good thing and an act I'd be happy to support. Likely fundraising this year is in the million dollars range and that's more than ample. If you want to produce such a DVD, please do feel free to do so - it's your right under the license all of us authors are granting. You're entirely welcome to donate all the funds from that activity to the Foundation or anyone else. Jamesday 17:27, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the "access for Africa" theme, while what Curps says is true about wireless telecoms overtaking electrical grid infrastructure, for broadband you actually need cable (at least to the neighbourhood). That's a bottleneck for the millions in towns who have electricity (at least part of the time). Even where there are telecoms cables, increasing capacity to meaningfully accommodate non-voice uses is a long way off. Check out Freedom Toaster for good description of challenges and solutions. JackyR 16:45, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about an 'ad mirror'? Loads of sites mirror with ads. Why not create a separate foundation whose purpose is to run an ad funded mirror (under the GFDL this is fine) and donating profits to WP? No one would fork, because it wouldn't be Wikipedia doing it. People who hate on it could hate on it. Who cares, it would be legal. And ... 3. Profit! For great justice. 18:38, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was just thinking maybe it would be less attractive to actually put ads on Wikimedia pages, but what if Wikimedia sold web hosting--I mean Wiki is hot right now, everyone wants to have their own Wiki site, people would pay for this kind of stuff. Or, you could give it out for free and put ads on people's individual wiki sites. Either way, you'd make tons of money. Sure, you'd need more servers just for the personal wiki pages, but if you could get it to generate enough money to pay for itself and then some, it'd be great. I mean, I'd be willing to pay for my own wiki site, and I definitely wouldn't mind being given one for free, even if it did have ads on it. --Gandalf 04:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good news and Bad news

Good news

The number of articles at Special:Statistics is getting closer and closer to an exciting number that we have less than 13,000 to go before we can reach!

Bad news

Another number also kept track is not far behind, the number of registered users. It is getting big too quickly, many of which want to register so that they can have the right to move pages by vandalism. I think there needs to be some way to allow this to be altered so that it will not include indefinitely blocked users. Georgia guy 19:53, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Right now, you can register 10 usernames a day per IP. Reducing this would probably be a good idea. Raul654 19:57, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you try it, Raul654?? Georgia guy 19:58, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Only the devs can do it. It hammers the AOL users though. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 21:12, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I brought this up in #wikipedia, and Mindspillage informed me that we've already gotten a few complaints about this limit. It also hits hard on schools when (for example) an entire class of 30 students register at the same time. Raul654 22:49, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is a dev?? Georgia guy 22:37, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A developer of the software Wikipedia uses. -- Kjkolb 22:40, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone contact the developer of the software?? Georgia guy 22:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. There's a list at m:Developers if you want to pick one or you can post a message on the Technical Village Pump where one might see it or you can try the technical mailing list where it will certainly be seen. You should be aware that they're very busy, however, and may take some time to respond.--Cherry blossom tree 10:58, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could the IP addresses of blocked and indefinitely banned users be gathered, without the usernames, so that we can tell where the most vandals come from? Once we have the IP addresses, contacting the ISP might be useful when it is a school, company or there is only a few people involved in vandalism (AOL probably can't do much). Also, if there was a spike in blocked or banned users from an IP, the number of accounts that the IP can create in a day could be reduced. Finally, it may allow persistent vandals to be identified. -- Kjkolb 22:40, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not really, AOL randomly allocates IPs from a big basket, and schools, companies, congress etc have multiple people using the same IP. For great justice. 18:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Minimum length on random article?

Just a quick suggestion.. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people like myself, who having a general interest in everything, enjoy passing the time by using the 'random article' menu option and seeing what fascinating snippets wikipedia will throw at you. The problem however is that 80% of the time it just returns small articles with minimal information (stubs?) or disambiguation pages etc. It would be nice if the pool of articles from which the random feature chooses from was restricted to perhaps a 500 character minimum or some other restriction that increases the chance that the article you are presented with contains something of interest. As a side benefit it may reduce the load on your servers slightly as there might be less consecutive requests for random articles if it returns more interesting results.

That's a good idea. I'm not sure why its not done. also, if done, I would like to see a "Preferences" setting, for users to control this. Some editors will wish to see the substubs (to fix them), while the readers wish to avoid them. --Rob 05:44, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I assume the reason it hasn't been done so far is because a very good way to improve WP is to just mash random article until you find one you consider poor quality and/or severely lacking. A preferences setting, though, would go a long way in improving that, I suspect. I'd like to see it as well. Michael Ralston 05:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of a preferences option for the random articles. By default it could be set to a wordcount for newer users/readers that could be turned off by editors. youngamerican (talk) 00:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doing this by word count might be a bit tricky. It would be easier to exclude articles tagged as stubs. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)^(Talk) 11:40, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Word count is a specific field in the database, so probably wouldn't be that hard to implement. The question is whether it's worth it. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) (not a developer) 12:10, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the information. I'm learning something new every day. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)^(Talk) 13:06, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another one would be random article from a given category. violet/riga (t) 12:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Featured Article interlanguage link style

I noticed that on articles like Lilium, where one of the other language Wikipedias have a Featured Article about the topic, the FA barnstar appears before the link. This puts the link text out of alignment with the other links in the list; would it be desirable to change the CSS so that the barnstar replaces the list bullet, rather than being added on next to it? Phoenix-forgotten 08:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That would be pretty cool. youngamerican (talk) 14:58, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ESBN

I am thinking that someone should get the Wikipedia ESBNs. Would it be possible for some kind of adjustment to be made in the code to support ESBN? Anyway, just your thoughts. Thanks! Compu terjoe 19:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think ESBNs are for fixed versions only (since submission requires upload of the work). If we'd need to get a different ESBN for every modification that happens to an article, it wouldn't be practical and would probably hog the ESBN's number space. Phoenix-forgotten 18:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The alternative would be to contact the runners of ESBn and ask permission for a 'blog' style registration for the Wikipedia. Compu terjoe 17:37, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

hitman

it strikes me as odd that the games in the hitman series do not have separate pages. i may be wrong, but it seems obvious that more information on these games could be conveyed if they only had individual pages. please donate opinions. 86.135.228.177 16:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. User:Zoe|^(talk) 17:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arts Contribution of the Week

We should have this, because many of the arts articles on Wikipedia need work. Osbus 23:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

its more a wikiproject thing that anything else. there are a few wikiprojects that it could be suggested to like Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts. theyd probably be interested. or better still theres Portal:Art. get them interested there and itll be up and running :) BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 23:22, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Locking the 1,000,000th page

Would it be possible to lock the page of the 1,000,000th page to prevent vandalism? Administrators could do edits and suggestions for improvements could be given on the discussions page? Right now it is being vandalized due to the attention given it. / MoRsΞ 14:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, considering how it's grown after being made I think we should leave it open and free as an example of Wikipedia. But that's just me. --Golbez 15:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For the same reason we don't protect (or even semi-protect) articles featured on the main page, we shouldn't protect the millionth article. Johnleemk | Talk 15:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Censorship?

Hello. I think that maybe there should be some censorship for Wikipedia, or at least some sort of icon saying that there might be some inappropriate language or pictures in a specific section or page, because I know a fair amount of children use Wikipedia. Thanks for reading this.

Red Alien | 19:35, March 2 2006

That's why Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not used to have a section called Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors, to warn parents. Dictionaries no longer remove the 'bad' words, even though children use dictionaries all the time. You'll find very little support for your position among Wikipedians. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)^(Talk) 00:35, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, OK, then. Sorry... I'm just new here...

Red Alien 19:40, March 2 2006

Children grow up fast these days...what age group are you speaking about? Because if you are thinking of the 13+ demographic, I'm not sure some inappropriate language/pictures would affect them much. Osbus 01:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can also look at Wikipedia:Censorship, even though it's only a proposed Wikipedia policy. Gerard Foley 23:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sort of talking about 8-10 year olds. I do know that a lot of 8-10 year olds use Wikipedia. I know that 13+ year olds aren't really affected by language, but 8-10 year olds may be... Red Alien| 19:35, March 3 2006

Main page redesign vote

The official vote on the proposed main page redesign, for replacing the current main page, has started and will end at 23:59 UTC, March 18, 2006. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 02:08, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Inserting thumbnails without sizes

When inserting thumbnails, sizes should not be used (unless there is a special reason for using them), because otherwise the preferences for them have no effect. The Adept 19:59, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hit counter for individual articles

A way to find out the number of views of any individual article would, I think, be interesting and encourage contributions. I don't think it ought to be anything up-front displayed to all users but rather something that an editor could, if he so wanted, could get to on some backend page. I don't know how much stress this would put on the servers. - Centrx 16:34, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It has been tried, and unfortunately it was too much of a strain on the servers. Wikipedia does a lot of caching of pages, so most page views are handled by the squids with no hit on the main database. Adding a page counter requires writing to the database for each page view. The page counter was abandoned over a year ago; our traffic is vastly higher now. See also Wikipedia:Technical_FAQ#Can_I_add_a_page_hit_counter_to_a_Wikipedia_page.3F.-gadfium 20:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Watch sections

I was just thinking, that when i make edits to a section of a large (and especially frequently edited) article, I add that article to my watchlist, but all i really care about watching is that one section that i edited. I propose that there should be some way to watch just a section of an article, rather than the whole thing, in the same way that you can choose to edit just a section and not the whole thing. For example, after posting this, i will only want to watch this section, to see if someone replies, i don't really care about the rest of the page. If such a thing already exists, and i just havent found it, please let me know. --Someones life 17:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

1 Vote for Yes

I vote yes on Someone's Life's proposal...if there isn't a feature like that already available on Wikipedia.

-- JJ

ok, so... how do i get someone to pay attention to this and do something? --Someones life 18:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since the smallest discrete unit of material in the database is an article, it is easy to check whether or not articles have changed. Checking that sections have changed would require processing and tracking information on each section, and/or changing the database structure. I do not beleive implementing what you are asking for is a practical near term goal. Dragons flight 18:39, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

damn. --Someones life 06:01, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Default list items in Special pages

There is already a preference to show a certain amount of edits in the Recent Changes special page, so why isn't there such a preference for other special pages, like Contributions and What links here? My proposal is basically to make such an option (in preferences) for as many special pages as possible. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 22:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, I think that option already does that. I still propose that it be made more clear though. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 20:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Altering the tagline

I'm a little hesitant to point this out, because of the huge mess it has the potential to become, so please try not to create a big clutter over a small issue. Wikipedia's tagline is currently:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Our slogan is "The Free Encyclopedia that anyone can edit", and this is what is listed on the Main Page:

Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

Some have proposed that we change the tagline to match the slogan, to make the source of our articles a little more obvious to newcomers. It's not something to be ashamed of and hide behind links that the casual Google reader won't ever see, etc. Jimbo said:

The idea is to brainstorm something which is neither too long nor too boring nor too timid, but which helps the reader understand that Wikipedia is a work in progress, so that they can evaluate it properly as such. I don't know what the right answer is, exactly. 'that anyone can edit' is my current favorite, but I wonder if we perhaps haven't yet thought of the right answer.

Another similar proposal is:

From Wikipedia, the community-written free encyclopedia

Others say we should leave the tagline as it is, for tradition's sake. There is a straw poll about these three variants on MediaWiki talk:Tagline.

A similar proposal got really huge and didn't accomplish anything, so please make your comments brief and don't add 500 alternative taglines that only vary by one word. — Omegatron 15:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Austin Wikiproject?

Is anyone interested in a Wikiproject devoted to creating and improving articles related to Austin, Texas? I love this city and would love to have a team to collaborate with on articles about it! There are a lot of places, people, events, and businesses in Austin which are notable but not yet represented in Wikipedia, or whose articles are stubs. Thoughts? I have also mentioned this on Category talk: Austin, Texas. Kit O'Connell (Todfox: user / talk / contribs) 23:54, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Advertisement board

Although advertisement is not allowed on Wikipedia, I propose that there is a special area where advertising is allowed. That way, people can advertise on Wikipedia, a popular website, for free. It should be linked to from the Village Pump, and maybe even the Main Page.

FLaRN2005 04:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And what does Wikipedia gain from this? --Golbez 05:27, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe advertisement would decrease elsewhere. But probably not. r3m0t ^talk 11:32, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why should advertisers get free adspace in Wikipedia? It would just be unencyclapedic and silly, not to mention that this would severely hurt our credibilty. Deathawk 19:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Italicization

Is there some sort of way to educate people on when to use italics for movies, books, short stories, and CD titles? I find it really quite irksome when I come to a page and find that things aren't italicized when they should be (it's especially true with CD titles.) Now, obviously this isn't as pressing a matter as formulating a definitive policy on censorship, but I'd still like to see something done about the lack of italicization. Perhaps some sort of bot? Maybe a reference page? I mean, there's obviously always the option of correcting these italicization problems as you come across them, but even then, I don't see any sort of movement to do so. Just a thought (and some bitchin' about a peeve.) --66.229.183.101 07:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Surely the manual of style has something on this. Johnleemk | Talk 07:40, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (italics). As for applying this, just do it where you see it. It's a never-ending job, but that's WP for you... :-) JackyR 16:01, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism

It seems to me that Wikipedia policies or guidelines should include a discussion of how criticisms of topics fits into the Wikipedia articles about those topics. For exmaple Igor Stravinsky contain's a "Criticism" section while the criticisms of Country music where removed from that article and, presumably, some articles have criticism in each appropriate section (hypothetically, criticisms of Stravinsky's rhythmic prodedures could go in the "Rhythmic procedures" section of his article). Anyone else feel this need? Anythoughts on a guideline? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hyacinth (talk • contribs)

I agree - Criticism sections in most cases should be like trivia sections; if it isn't imporatant enough to be mentioned in the main article sections then it is not appropriate to create a specific place for it. --Neo 13:10, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I assume that you agree that there should be some guideline about criticism. I actually created the criticism section of the Stravinsky article, but I would be fine with its incorporation into other sections (or an article like Reception of the music of Igor Stravinsky or Opinions of Igor Stravinsky's music).

I do actually think that every article should include criticism of its subject, with the exception such as numbers (one would probably need criticise the entire system of numbers, and that would belong on the article about that system, not necessarilly and certain not in entirety on the articles about every part of that system). Hyacinth 18:37, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Article structures which can imply a view. Hyacinth 12:13, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regional Wikipedias

A lot of contention is over whether or not topics that are of great interest to a certain, limited geographical area belong in the general Wikipedia. Perhaps a solution to this would be to, in addition to the main Wikipedia, have regional Wikipedias (perhaps per-state in the US, per-province elsewhere, etc.) that are dedicated to content solely of interest to that region.

And a hierarchy could develop--for instance, each US State Wikipedia could have several per-county Wikipedias under it for topics of interest solely to that county.

This could also resolve a lot of the friction over whether or not to include schools--no one can doubt that a given school is notable WITHIN ITS OWN COMMUNITY. So schools that aren't especially notable for some other reason (famous alumnus, originator of some trend that spread nationwide, etc.) and would possibly get deleted in the main article namespace (although lately they haven't, thankfully--I hold that everything that exists deserves an article) could instead be created within the regional Wikipedia.

There's nothing technically stopping me from doing it now, but I'd like some input nonetheless. Kurt Weber 18:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My view is in the long term, anything that could go into a regional Wikipedia will go into the Wikipedia, with an Alberta portal, California portal, New York City portal, etc. --Golbez 19:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As an extreme inclusionist, I hold that EVERYTHING that exists belongs in the encyclopedia. However, there are those that disagree with me, and as a result an article on Bob Zasadny (a local activist who is certainly of interest to residents of Gibson County, Indiana but of no interest to anyone else) would almost certainly be deleted if it were put in the main article namespace. Thus, the regional Wikipedias would be a place for articles on topics of interest solely to that region but would not make it in the main namespace. Kurt Weber 20:41, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Call me a temporal inclusionist. In time, all things that are worthy will make it. But hey, if you want to make your own wiki, go for it. Your example is a good one. I doubt it would be hosted by Wikimedia, but you could definitely check with Wikicities. It could be fun. --Golbez 21:25, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, no, you're missing the point. The Regional Wikipedias would be sub-parts of Wikipedia itself, existing in their own namespace but as part of the main Wikipedia site (for instance, Indiana:, Mali:, Arkhangel'sk:).

Of course, I could go ahead and just create a page at Indiana:Main page and go from there, but unless the namespace Indiana: is actually created, linking and stuff would be weird--and it'd all be liable to be deleted anyway. Kurt Weber 21:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're answering your own question, then. The best you'll get here is an Indiana portal. --Golbez 18:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New keyboard shortcut

I was wondering if it would be a good idea to create a keyboard shortcut for the admin [Rollback] button, like there is one for random page (alt-x) for example. This would help out on edits like these where you have to scroll to find the rollback button. There are even trickier instances like this where you spend about one minute trying to find the actual button! What does everyone else think? — FireFox • T • 20:06, 5 March 2006

That would be useful, yeah. --Golbez 20:14, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. (ESkog)^(Talk) 20:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this would be useful.--Shanel 20:24, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: this might be useful for PC users, but remember there are quite a few mac-using admins, too. making it something that can be used by both types of computer would be an advantage Grutness...wha? 00:32, 6 March 2006 (UTC) (who doesn't have an "alt" key)[reply]

Rank the pages, improve Wikipedia reliability

I believe Google does something like this. One of the biggest complaints about Wikipedia is that because anyone can edit it, articles could be rife with errors. I do not find this to be a problem with large, high-traffic articles such as World War II or something along those lines. The risk of bias is far higher, however, with more obscure articles created by one person with an axe to grind that may sit up there for a while before an accuracy-conscious editor looks it over.

I think a ranking system would deal with this problem and warn people of dubious articles while reassuring them of articles that are well-kept and accurate. My personal system is to look at an article's discussion page. If it has even a moderately long one, it's a pretty safe article. Those with short or no discussion pages I am wary of and on the lookout for errors. I don't know if the ranking system should follow this pattern or if users who visit the page could vote on it. Maybe an article should have a low ranking for sheer lack of votes.

What do you all think? Wouldn't an article-ranking system dramatically improve the trustability of Wikipedia as a whole? I can't imagine that it would be that difficult of an improvement. Aplomado 02:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good idea. Already planned with m:Article validation though. --mav 14:46, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RfC Simplification

I find RfCs far too complex and formal. I suggest they are made more like RfAs. I propose for user conduct RfCs a new layout. Depending on your opinions and suggestions on the proposal of simplication, I'd be more than happy to design this. Compu terjoe 20:36, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reduction of excess spacing (white space) in posting

Hi. I was just wondering, whenever someone clicks the button to add a new section to a talk page, it always puts spaces between the == and == rather than ==and== which is all that Wikipedia requires to read it anyway, It also puts a line after it, but you don't need that either.

Since it's adding characters Wiki doesn't need to read (or really, to navigate the source), have they considered removing that from the function? Tyciol 03:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of people like the spaces, I think, as they make the source a bit less dense and easier to read. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And, to paraphrase another Wiki saying, white space is cheap. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)^(Talk) 12:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In some cases, I agree. In some others, not. For example, you don't really need them in the title, it's just distracting, it's better when nicely sandwiched between the equals sign pairs. Same with a white space after the title, it separates the title from it and it's hard to tell which title goes with which paragraph. In cases of short responses, it's unneeded. I agree however that with active discussions, spaces between large paragraphs are needed as it otherwise gets confusing, especially when the conversation is happening in multiple chains from similar branches. In linear ones though, since you just add to the bottom it probably isn't.Tyciol 16:40, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How do you pronounce that?

I don't think I should have to read the entire IPA article to figure out how something is pronounced. Even skimming it, I have no idea what that means. Opinions on having approximate translations for proper names without having to record an OGG audio file? For example, to find out the pronounciation of Kauai, I had to google it to find out it's like Hawaii with a K. Ka-WHY-ee. Imperfect, but sufficient for someone just wanting to know how it sounds. TransUtopian 05:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is supposed to be the function of the IPA chart for English article, a simple pronunciation chart like you would find in any dictionary or reference work. From what I've been seeing this chart seems to be too hard to find / isn't linked well enough, so it would be nice if people could work on linking to it in a more prominent way where necessary. I really don't like "ad-hoc" pronunciations like "Ka-WHY-ee" because their interpretation can vary from reader to reader and between speakers of different dialects of English, and they just plain look unprofessional.

Also, your "imperfect" pronunciation is downright wrong. As I understand Hawai'ian spelling, Hawai'i would be pronounced "ha-why-ee" but Kaua'i would be pronounced "cow-ah-ee". DopefishJustin 06:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And, just to emphasize the inaccuracy here... I pronounce "why" in a way that doesn't fit into "Hawai'i". For me, "Hawai'i" is pronounced "ha-WYE-ee". FreplySpang (talk) 16:44, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Several people have brought this up, only to run into what I would call intransigence from IPA supporters. My suggestion is to use both the IPA, for those who want a super-exact pronunciation and are familiar with or have the time to learn the IPA, and the "ad-hoc" English approximation for those who are just looking for a quick reference. Unfortunately, WP:MOS discourages anything other than just IPA. -- Mwalcoff 06:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As has been pointed out above, ad-hoc English approximations often work only for speakers of the same dialect of English. We could have edit wars over the correct ad-hoc approximation. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)^(Talk) 12:18, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've put the chart link in Template:IPA notice and made the template actually work again, so feel free to stick that anywhere potentially unclear IPA appears. Adding ad-hoc pronunciation in addition to IPA is also fine in my opinion, as long as unambiguous IPA is there too. DopefishJustin 22:16, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any speech synthesis engines for IPA we could use? Seems like it's more structured than written English, so it would produce pretty unambiguous results. — Omegatron 05:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Earl of Clancarty

Hi I created an entry for the First Earl of Clancarty today and tried to edit the entry for The Second Earl of Clancarty as I have distant connection with this family so I have become familiar with their details. I hope no one minds, I hope I did okay as I'm new to Wikipedia though I heard about the project before and was recommended by a friend from Thenewscentre.com. as an exciting project. Please let me know if you have any grounds for objections. I hope to create a piece on Cambrio-Normans in due course. Newsgirl 22:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)Newsgirl[reply]

as long as you keep a neutral unbiased point of view it should be fine. if noone here edited things they had 'inside information" on thered be a lot less stuff on wikipedia! the only real rule is not to write articles on yourself and thats broken quite a lot anyway!as long as the subject is notable (and earls are) then what youve done is fine. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 23:20, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there I have done editting on Joseph Ransohoff, who was my grandfather. There is no conflict of interest as long as you keep your edits NPOV. I have had no issues with my article. It definitely helps if you cite your sources though, just like anywhere on the Wikipedia. Welcome to Wikipedia. Kit O'Connell (Todfox: user / talk / contribs) 23:55, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

against any deletion / erasing policy

I'm stunned on how far we can forget the primary goals when we get immersed into a good project. I've done this several times myself, caught myself going too far into a way because it sounds and look right, but I'm just forgetting what I was supposed to do in that project at first.

I feel like all wikimedia foundation projects are going that way today, specially when considering how difficult it might be to realize that deleting an article is just totally against any of the primary goals. And it happens for obvious reasons: there's no space for every single little thing.

Is that true?

The way wikipedia is done comes to avoid ambiguity in a very logical and simple way: there's a limit of characters, so all that's needed to do to keep it within the limits is calculating how much hardware space is needed to a certain number of total characters for any article. That will bring the theoretically infinite number to a real amount that we can deal with.

The vote for deletion attacks me so deeply in what I believe it's better for this community that I get even disturbed, so I might say things I don't want to, but the idea is just proposing to change the way articles get deleted. There are several things that could be done.

Please, refer to my user page to read the rest. I'm not sure where to put this suggestion (although I believe now the rright place is the Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)), and I'm getting tired of rewriting it. I just hope the right people can read and comment on.

Thanks.

--Cacumer 01:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for potentially offensive images

I think I have a way to (at least partially) satisfy both the people who are offended at images like the Muhammad cartoons and those who are consider removal of such images to be a violation of WP:NOT.

My idea is to tell users that if they think an image may be offensive to some people, or if they are offended by an image, they should relocate it below the fold -- that is, down far enough into an article so it would not show up immediately upon navigating to the page. The editor would then add a template like the following:

Note: This article contains an image of {{{potentially offensive image}}}. If you wish to read the article without seeing the image, please click here.

Clicking "here" would generate the same page without the image in question. We would need a change to the program that would allow for pages that are identical except for the inclusion or lack thereof of one image.

This would be a significant improvement from the current solution, which requires users to edit their monobook.css file (something most people don't know they have.)

Mwalcoff 04:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that'd be helpful. -Will Beback 06:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a perennial proposal - see also Wikipedia talk:Content labeling proposal for some of the pros and cons that have been raised in the past. If you really want to get into it, look at Wikipedia:Toby and its talk page too. FreplySpang (talk) 14:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I participated in that discussion on the "no" side. I am against anything that seeks to make any judgement about whether something is "decent" or appropriate for young people. I don't think my proposal tries to make the same sort of value judgements. -- Mwalcoff 23:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is what was done with Bahaullah, but it was rejected on the Muhammed cartoons controversy, as the cartoons themselves were the subject of the article, whereas the image of Bahaullah was not the subject of the article. User:Zoe|^(talk) 17:24, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly, I've been pondering what to do about Brazilfantoo (talk · contribs) (and various IPs I suspect to be the same user), who has been uploading rafts of pictures of nude celebrities under fair use claims (explicit example: Image:Warrengmagazine5.jpg). I'm pretty firmly in the anti-censorship camp and don't have a problem with the autofellatio pictures and such in the appropriate articles, but I just consider most of these additions to the celebrity articles to be in poor taste. Obviously the "fair use" claims can be challenged for each individual picture, but I hate to look like a "censor" for being the one to pursue it. Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with the situation overall? — Catherine\^talk 19:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Translating articles

The way it is right now, the english version of Wikipedia has loads and loads more articles than any other, I see this as a problem. Wouldnt it be a good idea if there was a link that said "translate an article for [insert language] wikipedia" or something of the like? What I mean is that if the [insert language] wiki is missing an article on say Alabama or something or other, that text could be translated from another language.

And it wouldnt just benefit the small wiki's, I bet there are articles on romanian phenomena, people, places etc etc that arent on the english one

It would mean that the smaller wiki's would get articles that are more complete and it would, of course increase the number of articles. I know that at least in Sweden, there are a lot of people who are quite prominent in english who would be happy to perform such services for the community

Just a suggestion //bara_bg

PS This could also be a way of rectifying the problem with an english article being 5 000 signs long, and the french one 500 DS

See Wikipedia:Translators available, and links from that page (especially the sidebar) for people who are doing just that. Thanks for the suggestion! — Catherine\^talk 21:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Criteria for WP:BIO to be like WP:CORP

I have suggested adding WP:CORP-like criteria to WP:BIO, which considers being "...the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent..." a sign of notability. Similiar wording is in WP:WEB, and more recently in WP:MUSIC. Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#WP:CORP-like wording. --Rob 14:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cultural divide

We are an international digital community and we must do something to minimize the effect of cultural divide which I feel affects our abilities to interact and communicate. This inability may be gradually sabotaging the Project in various ways. Thanks. --Bhadani 15:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reply Template

I propose a template {{Reply|User|Header}}:

<div style="background:white; text-align: center; border: 1px solid #aaa; width:60px"> [[User_talk:{{{1}}}#{{{2}}}|Reply]] </div>

to be used on talk pages to indicate where a message should be replied (see Wikipedia:Talk_pages) --Fasten ^talk|med 20:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiquote: proposed feature for "proverb of the day" subscription by email

I noticed Wikiquote has quite a lenghty list of proverbs from various cultures and languages. I wonder if there is a feature for "Proverb of the day" where subscribers can receive "proverb of the day" emails from Wikiquote's database of proverbs. If not, it would be a nifty feature.

This is a question that must be asked on Wikiquote. Wikipedia has no jurisdiction there. --Golbez 04:21, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Option of invisible links

Hello, first of all, let me thank you for your wonderful Wikipedia! I find it very helpful!

I've got an proposal concerning linking between the wikipedia pages - i find very distractful to read a page with lots of emphasized links, eg. in the text on Microcanonical ensemble: "..is the simplest of the *ensembles* of *statistical mechanics*.."

I thought that it would be easy to add an option on the left bar, which would enable using another stylesheet, which would make the links look like an ordinary text. Technicaly this should not be a problem and it would make life easier for readers sometime.

What do you think?

Petr Danecek

Stale IP talk pages

We have CSD:U2 which states to delete stale IP talk pages so they don't confuse potential new users, upon a bot request I had set my bot to add stale (older than 180 days) talk pages in a category for speedy deletion. I let the bot run for an hour and we had some 500 pages, they came faster than admins could delete. I then had a request here at Talk: criteria for speedy deletions which the consensus was to blank the pages to keep the history and to not delete them. After reaching this consensus, the bot ran for a few days until I recieved a message from DropDeadGorgias who asked for where the consensus for the bots operation was, reading it she requested that I stop the bot which I have done.

The question arrises, what do to with the stale IP talk pages. I basically see 3 options a) Keep them as is and do not remove anything (with the disadvantage that this could confuse new users) b) Delete the old pages c) Blank them keeping various templates (including sharedip and it's subst'ed version) and possibly adding a message saying why page was blanked.

Comments? -- Tawker 11:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]