Wikipedia:Village pump (news)

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The news section of the village pump is used to make announcements of new templates, wikiprojects, and details of any other news that does not fit into Wikipedia:Announcements or Wikipedia:Goings-on.

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Template:Industrial Revolution is open for business

It's still a bit bulky, and I may try and slim it down further. It is a companion to Category:Industrial Revolution. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 00:31, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category maintenance templates

I recently created these two new templates to aid in category maintenance:

Template:Categoryredirect — pretty self-explanatory; full rationale for its existence at Template talk:Categoryredirect.
Template:Reorganizing — like Template:Inuse, but for categories.

Happy wiki'ing, • Benc • 11:00, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fundraising drive

To coincide with the international press release being made on Monday, Wikimedia will be holding a cross-project fundraising drive. The details of this are not yet decided. If you would like to contribute to the decision, there will be a discussion on the #wikimedia IRC channel. This will begin at 20:00 UTC on Friday 17 September, 2004.

If you have any points you would like to make before the meeting, or if you can not come to it, please write your ideas on meta:Fundraising meeting, September 2004. The chat will be logged to Meta for those unable to be there. Angela . 19:19, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

A log of the meeting is now available at m:Fundraising meeting, September 2004/Log. Angela . 23:44, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Disambiguation template

I've created Template:This article is about to standardize and centralize (using what links here) all those disambiguating messages that appear on top of articles. E.g., to render:

This article is about tides in the ocean. For the laundry detergent, see Tide (detergent).

you can use:

{{This article is about|tides in the ocean. For the laundry detergent, see [[Tide (detergent)]].}}

As always, comments and edits to the template are welcome. • Benc • 11:38, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Do you need the first sentence? What "this" article is about should be pretty obvious from the first sentence - compare Template:otheruses (which is about as stripped down as these kind of messages get: a plus, in my opinion, because they can be distracting). -- ALoan (Talk) 13:37, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. Ideally, no, we don't need the first sentence. In fact, it's better without, because it's avoiding Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. I just created this template to match what I saw on the majority of articles — I didn't even know about Template:otheruses, which is a cleaner solution. • Benc • 17:07, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[Removed bot-assisted mass change request, which I've withdrawn. • Benc • 05:33, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)]

Happy one-millionth-article-day, Wikipedia!

Now, which article was it, precisely, that brought the tally to one million? --Ardonik.talk()^* 18:24, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Congrats, now I'm curious as well, I think we should honor that article by expanding it into a featured article, whatever the article is about. -- Solitude 20:33, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is it wrong of me, Solitude, to harbor a mischievous wish that number 1 million was a Pokémon card? ;-) Jwrosenzweig 20:40, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hey! Shouldn't that cake have a million candles? Derrick Coetzee 22:46, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Aw man, at first glance I thought that was a cake that someone had baked and decorated specifically for this occasion. Instead it's a generic birthday cake with... peaches? Oh well... happy 1 millionth, Wikipedia. • Benc • 04:18, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Important stub" template

I have created Template:Importantstub based on the above discussion regarding systemic bias. I think having this notice on significant articles which are underdeveloped will help in at least three ways:

Acknowledging an obvious weakness gains the reader's trust
A more prominent notice encourages development
Having these articles in a separate category is useful both for expanding and analyzing our progress.

The difficult part is of course to decide what an "important subject" is. I have proposed a standard at Category:Important stub: If another general reference work has a detailed article, and we have just a stub, then it probably is in special need of expansion.

I have not slapped this on articles yet, except for Congo Civil War as an example. What do you think about the idea? We can discuss it here for a while and then move the discussion to Template talk:Importantstub.--Eloquence *

YES!! Let's all read "Systemic bias in Wikipedia", then this, (and maybe "Dealing with trolls" ;-) and start working on a good solution! Awolf002 02:28, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I STRONGLY oppose this. It's entirely POV, saying this stub is more important than some other stub. Rick K 02:56, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

I understand your concerns. I agree that the value statement "important" is problematic. I hope you agree that Wikipedia aims to rival all existing general reference works in scope. For those who consider this goal very important, it would be extremely useful to specifically flag those articles we have that are much shorter in Wikipedia than they are in other reference works. Do you see a way the template could be phrased to avoid POV concerns and still fulfill that purpose?--Eloquence *

These sort of value judgments are unavoidable in putting together an encyclopedia. Let's not abuse the term "POV" here. If we're to abandon drawing lines between what is important and what is less important, we should do away with Wikipedia:What's in, what's out. And {{importantstub}} need not bring with it a whole new set of arguments over where to draw lines—it's just a tag, not anything as severe as deletion. Where is the line drawn between a stub and a fully developed article? "Very short"? A paragraph "or less"? Why are some one-paragraph articles not considered stubs? A stub is a stub because somebody says so, not because the stub-p algorithm returns T. Likewise, an importantstub is an importantstub because people generally feel that it is so.

{{importantstub}} is a practical start at a semi-organized means of grabbing visitors who might have something worthwhile to contribute but aren't necessarily geeky enough to be attracted by the idealistic vision of a copyleft encyclopedia on the web. Perhaps there could be a message on the main page like, "Some areas of knowledge are underrepresented in Wikipedia. Can you help?" with a link to a list of underdeveloped categories, each a link to a list of articles or subcategories, as in the main category list.

I can see the objection to the text of the template, though. Perhaps this could be done with just the categorization, and without the message in the articles themselves? --dreish 14:18, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Just pointing out that Wikipedia:What's in, what's out is nothing more than the opinions of a small number of self-selected editors and currently has no official relevance--so there is nothing "to do away with". [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 14:44, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip (I thought it was related to policy), but that doesn't change my point that articles are routinely judged as unimportant and deleted. (Or judged as needing improvement, or judged as being a stub, etc.) Doing something less drastic on the other end—labeling them important and calling attention to the fact that the population of people who could contribute to them is disproportionately small on Wikipedia and therefore, if you're one of those people, please help—is not breaking some sort of POV taboo. There seems to be a view among some people that even though it is common sense to say that the gaps in coverage of the Congo Civil War are more detrimental to an encyclopedia than gaps in coverage of Babylon 5 (were there any), the fact that not everyone shares identical feelings about common sense issues means that they cannot be acted on, even if in a purely constructive project. I don't share this view. --dreish 19:06, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Isn't this what {{todo}} is for? [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 03:03, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

I think the goal is to provide some organized means of directing the attention of people who can contribute underrepresented areas of knowledge to the fact that there is a need for them. The to-do list doesn't really help with that on a large scale. If I'm not mistaken, it is only helpful once one actually visits the page, which is no real improvement on the situation we have now. --dreish 19:06, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Your comment son the Templates for deletion page that somehow I was refusing ot engage in discussion are, of course, false. I was offline until just now. But I don't know that there's really anything more to say. This category is inherently POV, and doesn't help the encyclopedia. Rick K 19:31, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

Please do continue your whinging on the TfD page then, so that it can be easily separated from reasonable debate based on logical arguments.--Eloquence *

Congo Civil War is already long enough that the term "stub" doesn't seem to apply, although I agree that it could be expanded. I also suspect that it's not feasible to make an NPOV decision about which articles deserve to be called "important". So I suggest a different message, saying something more neutral, like "This page is the subject of a request for expansion." The template should be renamed to match the message. —AlanBarrett 21:04, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I looked through the templates, but I didn't notice that one. The word "stub" should probably be taken out of the message (since there are already enough {{xstub}} templates, and an article need not be stub-length to need expansion), but yeah, that looks about right. Is there any way to index those articles by category instead of chronologically (other than by hand)? Or should they be split out into {{history-expansion}}, {{art-expansion}}, etc.? Or should the definition of stub be loosened up a little so that {{hist-stub}} could be applied to Congo Civil War, for example?

I don't think the argument that any of this is somehow POV has legs, but now I agree with Snowspinner's comment on Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion that there are already ample templates related to this issue. --dreish 22:05, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Is this not the purpose of Wikipedia:Requests for expansion? —Stormie 06:08, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Alternative text

I think the following NPOV statement can be made:

This article is currently very short. Other general reference works include more information on this topic. We apologize for the brevity and seek to remedy it in the near future. If you know anything about Village pump (news), please consider editing the article and sharing your knowledge.

How does that sound?--Eloquence *

I don't think we need to apologise for anything... I mean, who is apologizing? Also, very short is POV. How about:

Village pump (news) is underdeveloped as an article in comparison to its entry in other general reference works. Its expansion is a priority. You can help by editing the article to add what you know.

Other such articles can be found in Wikipedia:Important Stubs.

I don't mind this template, but I see no reason for it to be so prominent on the articles. Having it at the end like the normal stub notices is more than enough. Angela . 01:43, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

How about saying "add what you know or are willing to research". Good research is better than trying to get it all from memory. - Taxman 04:35, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

I like that last rewrite if it includes Taxman's suggestion. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 22:23, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

It could also simply say "You can help by editing the article." The rest goes without saying. —Mike 06:43, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately it doesn't go without saying. Way too much of wikipedia is from personal knowledge, and not enough sources are cited in general. Therefore encouraging research is important. So how about "you can help by researching and expanding it."? Added to the below. - Taxman 14:57, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

This article is a stub and has been highlighted as an important topic that should be expanded. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

How's that? violet/riga (t) 11:28, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is much better. The original suggestion is too wordy. --Twinxor 23:02, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Unified Web search page

Just as we have a facility for ISBNs, I created a prototype template page to facilitate Web searching and to eliminate the bias of using Google.

The template is non-functional, but it uses two variables:

ARTICLETEXT - name of the article; underscores are replaced by spaces
ARTICLETEXTURL - URL-escaped name of the article; underscores and spaces are replaced by "%20"

Discuss. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 16:50, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Now you've mentioned ISBNs, I wonder whether that will still work after 1-1-2007, when the size of the ISBN is being increased to 13 digits. -- Arwel 18:27, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

One suspects that it will work just as well as the target sites: if they are willing to accept a 13-digit number in their search URL, we'll be laughing. (I just checked what ISBN 1234567891011 does: the "sanity checker" answers correctly that there are too many digits, while Amazon UK fails gracefully) --Phil | Talk 14:54, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

New Wikipedian listing!

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by birthday. Feel free to change the colors and embellish the page in any way that you see fit, but if you edit it, you must list your birthday on the page. --Ardonik.talk()^* 03:03, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Meta:Wikipedians by birthday already exists on the meta site and is populated..? -- Chuq 04:28, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

At the time I made this announcement, I didn't know that this page existed. I guess an interwiki redirect will be proper, though I'd rather see the meta page moved to here (where everyone at least has a login.) Here is a link that bypasses the redirect (just in case.) --Ardonik.talk()^* 04:43, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Well it was already moved from here to meta [1].

This sounds like an excellent idea for those who want a list of those in the en Wikipedia project and those who feel that this is their community. Jamesday 05:41, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)