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Shortcut
The proposals section of the village pump is used to discuss new ideas and proposals 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.

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.


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.

New magicword <<DYNDATETIME|ZONE>>

NOTE: To avoid my text being interpreted as code, I replaced all curly brackets ({{) with triangular brackets (<<). They really should be curly brackets in the actual implementation.

BACKGROUND:

Many articles have specific dates and times in them. Currently these dates are fixed as simple text, and all users, regardless of their timezones, see the same number.

In many cases this is the way it should be, e.g. historical articles, events where the time of the day is important etc. But in many other cases, mostly in current event and schedule-specific articles, the ultimate objective is to convey the actual time of the event to the reader, as opposed of presenting the perspective of a local time.

For example:

"On January 1, 19XX, at 16:00PM country A declared war on country B."

In this case, the local time is important, to show the historical perspective. This date and time should stay constant to all readers, and not be adjusted for timezone.

But in another example:

"The semi-final is scheduled on August 10, 2006 at 16:00 PST"

The focus is more reader oriented than local oriented. The objective is to let the reader know when exactly the event takes place, for example so they can watch it in real time.

PROPOSAL:

For accomplishing the latter case, have a magicword of the following format:

<<DYNDATETIME|ZONE>>

For example, the article text contains:

<<2006-08-10 16:00|PST>> (Let's not get in a fight over the date format in the tag, it can be MMDD or DDMM or whatever, that's not the point of this suggestion.

What this would do is convert the displayed date and time according the user's timezone settings in Wikipedia (preferences -- time zone). It would then display the date to the user according to their specifications under preferences under "date format" section.

Thus, a user with time zone of -8 and long date preferences would see on the page something like:

August 10, 2006 16:00 GMT-8

A user with the same style but in timezone +3 would see:

August 11, 2006 03:00 GMT+3

And a user with short date preferences and offset 0 would see:

2006-08-11 00:00 GMT

In a nutshell, it would make dates displayed more dynamic, more suitable to user preferences, and most importantly, timezone-adjustable. So next time, for example, I won't have to recalculate all the times on my favorite football match when reading Wikipedia.

Of course, ALL CONVERSIONS WILL BE DONE BY HAND AS APPLICABLE. I am not suggesting that a bot do that, because in many articles the date and time should stay as they are (that is simple text). This is not intended to be a lighting-fast change, but rather gradual introduction in articles which could benefit from dynamically-adjusted times, mostly indended for current events and especially sports and other competitions.

Of course, we could also make a format like <<DYNDATETIME|FIXED>>, where it would adjust the style of date and time, but not adjust it for timezone.

Finally, users should be able to turn autoadjustments on or off in their time/date preference settings. If they turn it off, they will always see date and time for the same zone which was written in the article. And article writers, when writing dates and times using this magicword, should always use local time for the event as the base case.

Elvarg 18:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, do not write in all caps in your proposal. It is considered rude. Now, about the proposal; I disagree. All events should have the local time of the place where the event took place, instead of the reader's local time. It is much more confusing when, for example, there's a sports game, and you write: "the game was a night game, starting at 6:00 AM EST," or something of that sort. — Mets501 (talk) 14:02, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Mets501. The current practice is, in my view, better than this proposal. — Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mets501 has a great point. I'll also throw in the monkey wrench of Old Style and New Style dates which make an automated date or time conversion process for the years 1582-1752 difficult or impossible. --ElKevbo 04:15, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Uh just a comment, you can just use "nowiki" in "<" and ">" instead of using "<" and ">". Unfortunately, I can't type that in without it disappearing. --Terrancommander 04:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

World map

I was wondering about the plausability of some sort of Wikipedia Atlas, where simply clicking on the country links to the article. I've created a (very rough) proof of concept at User:Smurrayinchester/Map (only Iceland, England, Wales and Scotland have been set up so far). smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 12:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That does seem to work quite well, though it will break down when the geography gets a bit more unusual. Your version does seem quite a bit better than my own somewhat functional clickable map prototype at Wellington Street. - SimonP 20:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, there will always be geographical areas where control is contested or controversial (Taiwan and Israel being two contemporary examples). But that's unavoidable and we'd just need a policy to deal with it consistently like every other group in the world (particularly the map makers).
It's also important to recognize that a map is a snapshot in time. Add a slidebar at the bottom or some other interface that allows one to change the date and the map change, too, and then you'd have a really cool tool. Add some way to explain why the map changes over time (grey zones for areas in dispute which link to the article describing the dispute?) and you've got a real winner. --ElKevbo 04:21, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your proof of concept is quite elegant! — Reinyday, 14:49, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

New User categories

Hello,

My Question relates to the possibility to add a category such as category:public lectures in Town (replacing public lectures by org. name & town by the real name of the location) and invite user to add their user accounts in it ? (relating them with a main article Template:catmore which shall describe the community as a wikipedia encyclopedic article).

The aim is to give some newbies the feature of registering as members of that group, so that they could meet thereafter.

My point is to add brand new users that share the follow-up of philosophy-related lectures ; those are not the teachers, but they search a place to share the knowledge they acquired throughout a community.

I proposed wikipedia, which I know through another wiki identity. So that I just started this account creation to enhance their initiation to the wiki (people come from the course, and are basically unaware of wikipedia guidelines).

Yours,

--Lilliputian 12:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Forgive me, but I'm not sure if I understand what you're proposing. I'll give my best try, though. You've attended (or will attend) classes or lectures of some sort, and a large number of people from those classes have joined (or will join) Wikipedia? And you're proposing a category or categories to help the people from these class(es) find each other and communicate? Am I right? Luna Santin 08:42, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes you've got the idea; I assume that a simple user box in a user's page would be enough to group them using the noinclude ; category:acme user stuff. Later idea is to handle collaborative work through the wiki environment (this is not a negative "group ideology" thing, Let's say the lectures help understand many things about the past & the way history is currently told : hence, historiography by nation instead of one history). Overall issue shall not be reduced to History, though.
Anyway, is a user box the answer ?
--Lilliputian 15:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
note : talks can continue there.

New accounts

Hello! I was amazed by how there is no verification to sign-up. It's pleasant that there is no e-mail hassle but a keyboard verification might be good to keep off the spam. Thanks! — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pawel z Niepolomic (talk • contribs) .

The commenter is probably suggesting the use of captchas during signup. The one possible use for this that I can think of is preventing massive automated account creation for the purpose of bypassing semiprotection. Deco 14:14, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly believe that there should be e-mail address verification, so that if a member misbehaves, not only can the account be blocked, but so can the e-mail address, so they would have to get a new address, which is easy to do, but is time consumming and annoying, so it would act as a deterent. -Wser 15:21, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think that is perfectly sensible. Also, I assumed we already used captchas, because when I signed up on some other language wikipedias they did. Martin 15:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

History Tab usability

The History tab is very daunting for new users; it's very busy and just about everything can be clicked on, so it's confusing as to what one should do. At a minimum, there should be a link to Help:Page history in some obvious place near the top.

Are there any other ways it could be made more usable or intuitive? Could there be a "simple" and "advanced" version of the history tab (chosen in My Preferences) so that new users would see only the most essential information (hiding the "talk|contribs" links for each user, for example)? Could it be redesigned into more of a table format so the columns could be labeled? I know a lot of this would involve a MediaWiki software change, but I thought I'd get some feedback here first. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 04:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could an admin please at least add a link to Help:Page history? It would help a lot of people and would hardly be any trouble at all. If you want to go a little further, I would suggest changing the current History page text from:
To view a previous version, click the date for that version.

Legend: (cur) = difference with current version, (last) = difference with preceding version, m = minor edit

... to ...
All versions of this article are listed here in reverse-chronological order.
  • To view a specific version, click a date.
  • To compare an old version with the current version, click cur.
  • To compare a version with its predecessor, click last.

Minor edits are denoted as m. For more help, see Help:Page history.

Thank you! — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 22:11, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I like this idea. I've long been concerned that Wikipedia's processses are too opaque to new editors and outside observers.--Pharos 22:33, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't. Not every newbie is a moron or a computer illiterate. Write wordy tutorials for people who want them, but don't cut interface functionality because you assume people are incompetent. Disclaimer, I do in general hate Wikipedia's tendency to talk down to readers, link "difficult" words, go off on illustrative "dumbing down" tangents, etc., we are an encyclopedia, not high-school-level education software (unlike, arguably, simple:). dab (ᛏ) 22:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia processes are a lot less "obvious" than you, as a well-experienced user, may think. Every time major news organizations have written feature articles on Wikipedia, they have demonstrated some fundamental misunderstanding of the system.--Pharos 23:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think more explanations is enough. The history interface is useful and shouldn't be dumbed down but it isn't obvious. Not saying that it is hard to understand just that it isnn't obvious which is fine. The a bit longer explanantion should be enough but it is hard for me as a wikipedian to judge. Jeltz talk 23:45, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, and would give strong support to this proposal. When I first looked at the History tab, I was blown away by it. It was only by experimenting for a while that I managed to bumble through it. I think A short explaination would be perfect and would help a lot. Perhaps it'd also be good to include a short sentence on how to revert pages, too. I remember reading about reverting all over Wikipedia but having to hunt through several layers of help pages before I arrived at an explaination of how to revert something.Lor 09:38, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Changes made to the protected message at MediaWiki:Histlegend -- it looks a bit bulky, but definitely more helpful than what was there previously. We'll see how others like it. — Catherine\talk 17:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Any option on how to remove that in one's preferences? It's just too big. Wouldn't just a link to Help:Page history be sufficient? Garion96 (talk) 17:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like it myself, but I can see that it might be informative for new users. But if it stays, it should be possible to turn it off in ones monobook or somewhere. Shanes 18:00, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What can I say but UGH!. This huge box simply wastes a full third of the space on the history screen. What's more important: the history or the instructions? It should be a small link, or at least a single line (as it was before). I'm not opposed to the idea, just to the amount of space it wastes. For now, I'm reverting to the previous revision, but keeping the link to the help page (which is a good idea). --cesarb 18:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Btw, I agree with keeping the link. Garion96 (talk) 18:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good compromise. The Help link is prominent, but the header doesn't eat up all my screen real estate. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
With due respect to the editors involved in this, I find this change to the page history an extremely unpleasant one. On a 1024x768 screen, it puts this legend directly smackdab near the center of the screen, where the eye naturally goes for whatever they're searching (in this case, history data). The amount of spacing and whitespace makes it an unusually large box. It makes extremely prominent functionality that most Wikipedians know after a short period of time. At the very, very least, please put a CSS class around it so that people can display:none it in their monobook.css file. —  Mike (talk • contribs) 18:17, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How about the following (with a border around it for visibility), since each user only has to learn how to use the History page once. There's no need to see the Legend every time, is there?
For help using this page, see Help:Page history.
— Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 18:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Again: what's more important: the history or the instructions? Drawing attention away from the history and towards the instructions is plain wrong in this case. Less visibility is better. --cesarb 18:41, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. The instructions are the first thing that a new user should see, since the page by itself is far from intuitive. By the time a user becomes comfortable using the page history, the instruction link (even if it is a visual standout because of a border) will no longer be prominent because our brains are wired to ignore things that aren't needed and don't change. A highly visible link to the instructions will become less visible to each user as time passes.
After seeing the "bulky" instructions put to use temporarily, I agree that they were too much, and I now prefer the very succinct "For help using this page ..." notice. This reduces use of screen real estate without cutting usability. I also agree with Mike that it should have CSS class so people can display:none it if they wish. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 19:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The instructions should definitely be visible, after all, why even bother with them if they aren't? I like the new, more succinct notice though. For myself at least, the current: "Legend: (cur) = difference with current version, (last) = difference with preceding version, m = minor edit." is/was extremely confusing. We need a more visible link to the help at least. --Lor 21:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
shoving instructions into people's faces is patronizing. Don't assume every newbie is a moron. Place an unobtrusive "help" link for people who need it, but for the love of god don't clutter a perfectly user-friendly layout with infoboxes and talking office clips! dab (ᛏ) 00:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dealing with vandals

I see that a lot of the warnings to vandals have been standardised ("Thank you for experimenting..."). I think that including the following sentence in the standard response can further reduce the frequency of vandalism:

"If you feel the need to be funny, try editing on Uncyclopedia. Uncyclopedia is a parody of Wikipedia where anyone can add jokes or funny pictures to articles."

- sYndicate talk 12:50, 09 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support this in the first warning (apart from blatant vandal). Why don't you go over to the template talk page and suggest it? --Oldak Quill 19:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find any vandal templates? -  sYndicate talk  23:00, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Vandalism — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 16:20, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Found it, thanks Jonathan. -  sYndicate talk  03:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Annoying "new messages" boxes

On various User and Talk pages, for example, GeorgeMoney (in the past) and Moeron (now), I have found fake "You have new messages" boxes. My proposal:

  1. Put something into the relevant policy, that although it isn't, lists this as an example of what is not allowed.
  2. Eradicate the existing ones (bot maybe?)
  3. If the problem still persists, have the developers make a change to the software that disables the real new messages boxes (user preference) and showing new messages other ways, such as the background color of the talk page link.

Seems to have come from this: User:Zappa.jake/templates/new_messages Invitatious (talk) 02:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree; the practice of spoofing the "new messages" alert is juvenile and irritating. I have asked a few users to remove them, but apparently their amusement at tricking others outweights my irritation and time wasted. It's rude, to say the least. — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:13, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One time I was on someone's talkpage and they made a what they called a "joke" and it forced me to laugh for several seconds when I could have been using that time to write the encyclopedia, so I'm proposing a NO JOKES AT ALL policy.

Seriously, come on... this is too much. Let it be. If someone you interact with has one, let them know of your displeasure and let peer pressure work its magic... vote against them if they ever come to RfA if you like... but making this a policy issue is overkill. — Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I also find the spoofs annoying. Maybe it was funny the first few times, but it long since lost any appeal it had. However, the comment above makes me wonder. Is it possible right now to alter my style sheet so that real message boxes appear to be a non-standard color? Dragons flight 03:22, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you can change the settings for the "usermessage" class to your liking. Unfortunately, most (all?) of the people involved are aware of this, and use the same class in the div tag for the fake bar. Kirill Lokshin 05:28, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Where is the real notice in the page in relation to the other classes and IDs? Invitatious (talk) 15:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Bunchofgrapes, that was unhelpful. Just because I don't find a particular action amusing does not mean I lack a sense of humor. At the hospital at which I work, we must use Internet Explorer, which means I don't have access to a tabbed browser. Furthermore, and I'm not sure why, but loading Wikipedia pages (even going back and forth in the history) takes at least 15-20 seconds, sometimes more. To go to someone's page (the most recent time for me was responding to an unblock request due to being autoblocked), seeing the message, and following the link wastes at least 30 seconds to a minute while I sit and watch the screen. It may not seem like a lot but it really is quite irritating. Your analogy is not accurate; laughing out of amusement is enjoyable; staring at my's computer screen waiting for pages to load because a user thought it would be amusing to deceive me is not enjoyable to me. In general, I am opposed to any spoofing of or interfering with the standard Wikipedia interface; this includes obscuring the standard layout with absolutely positioned divs, using protection templates on pages that aren't protected, forging notifications, and so on. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am surprised, truthfully, that this is considered this permissible under the existing rules. Spoofing the Wikipedia interface in order to confuse other editors is plainly disruptive behavior; we shouldn't need new pages of rules specifically forbidding it to say that. There's some room for jokes, of course, but if someone objects or indicates that they find it genuinely confusing then it ought to be fixed. --Aquillion 15:51, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's certainly childish. Disruptive... maybe. The bottom line is not to go to "new message" pages if you're on a user page, but even that's annoying. Those of us armed with WP:POPUP escape that, of course.TheGrappler 16:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

True, this is annoying, it shouldn't be accepted as WP intends to be a serious project and these childish behaviour add to the non-respect of the encyclopedia. It shouldn't be a stand-alone policy but be added to some existing unaccepted behaviour page. Lincher 17:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If some people find it disruptive I understand, but let's not call these people childish or disruptive for doing something that they honestly thought was innocent and playful. Only vandals enjoy wasting people's time. If you just tell them that some people find it confusing, I'm sure they'll understand and remove it - if you make a giant fuss about it they'll just go on the defensive. Deco 23:46, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When I see the new messages indicator, I always eyeball the destination of the link before I click to it. Not sure if your browser selection doesn't display the link distance if your hover your mouse over it, though. --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I always do that now whenever I see one on a user page (with popups). I would still like to get rid of these anyway. Invitatious (talk) 01:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would recommend removing it on sight, dropping them a note, and protecting their page for awhile if they fail to take the hint. Faking the interface is dangerous and disruptive. --Improv 12:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the real "new messages" box is suboptimal in any case, since it looks like part of an article and can interfere with layout testing (especially if you need to determine the height of a page). I'd suggest changing the "my talk" link to read "my new messages." This would work on all skins. SeahenNeonMerlin 18:45, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, something like this (maybe with different wording, or the option to change the tab color, but this basic idea) is the obvious way to go. Gavia immer 18:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Going back to the original subject, I would class this as talk page vandalism. I feel that there are two possible options:
  1. An outright ban
  2. Make all users who post these use a different colour background.
Personally, I prefer the first option. --GW_Simulations|User Page | Talk | Contribs | E-mail 18:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

11/03/2004 Spanish Trains Bombing

Warning for English users and Administrators :

There exists in Spain a small group of fanatics who think that the Madrid Train Bombing March 11th bombing was done by the current Spanish governement that was at that time the opposition party. They have now landed on English wikipedia and have started to shape the article to fit their madness.

They have many picturesque and bizzarre ways to state this non-sense and some variations involving secret services from France or Basque terrorist organisations (you will get painfully familiar with this crap so it is no needed that I give you details). The only solution is to block them and all their IPs. If you do not do this ASAP you will have all their rambling atrocities written again and again. In Spanish Wikipedia we are sick of these guys trolling tactics regarding a so sensitive issue. A more soft solution, could be to give them a special page for their deliriums as had been done with other conspiranoics. It is up to you. My message is that I cannot double my activity and control this nuts in English Wikipedia and many colleagues in the Spanish wikipedia are in the same situation. So it is up to you what to do between the next given three posibilities.

1-Allow them to publicize their aberrations spoiling the credibility of Wikipedia (currently happening)

2-Give them a page to at least have the damage controlled

3-Block them forever.

The 11-M were islamic terrorist actions as anyone with brain can see so I do not thing they will convince nobody but is really anoying to see their dirty lies shown as the truth. If someone wants to do something, please do it understanding that netiquette is used by them as a tool for their trolling. Enjoy.

--Igor21 16:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC) link addedFilceolaire 22:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is an article-specific dispute that should be resolved through Talk:11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings and, if all else fails, through Requests for arbitration. You might solicit admin attention on Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard. In any case, this is not a proposal. Deco 03:37, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

US Cities in French-language Wikipedia

A bot is currently needed to create articles on US Towns and counties on foreign language wikis. Much of North America is absent from these wikis. Policy has already been adopted in order to counter eurocentric and francocentric editing. ADM

Hmmm - a specific effort to increase systemic bias? I'm not impressed unless you're also planning to run a bot adding cities and towns from every other country in the world to these wikis. Grutness...wha? 00:08, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please explain how adding North American cities to the other language wikis is adding systemic bias? I find your comment unbelievably offensive, Grutness. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:40, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not nearly as offensive as I find the suggestion of deliberately favouring (oh, sorry, that would be favoring, wouldn't it?) one country in all language wikipedias at the expense of the rest of the world. And I bet I'm not alone in that thought. I've no objection to a bot creating articles on places worldwide on other language wikipedias, but suggestng that it shoulld be done for one country and one country alone seems apallingly parochial. Hell, the original suggestion didn't even mention the possibility of adding places in both the US and Canada to bump up the number of North American articles - no, it was the US alone. Grutness...wha? 02:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Funny, last I looked, North America was not a country. And I am boggled at the prospect of intentionally omitting information on any wiki because you personally don't like the country it comes from. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:41, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Nitpicking. There was absolutely no reason to switch the region on him. Partially a slip on Grutness's part, since he assumed that since the United States was specifically mentioned, it usurped the definition of North America, but I probably would have made the same mistake myself. — Edward Z. Yang(Talk) 22:09, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ack, unexpected tab reset, whooops. (Comment retracted). — Edward Z. Yang(Talk) 22:10, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly my point on both counts. North America is not a country - so why did the original suggestion imply that the way to improve coverage of this region was by adding only US places, omitting Canada, and, for that matter, how would adding information about just one part of the world reduce any form of bias? It would simply replace it with another bias. There is no reason at all why Canada should be omitted from this plan, or anywhere else for that matter. There is no way that adding information about only one country can counter systemic bias - it will simply skew the encyclopedia in another dirction. This scheme, if done, should be worldwide, not simply for the US. This is not a US encyclopedia. As to whether I personally like or dislike a country, that has no relevance whatsoever to my views on whether this idea would address the problems it sets out to address. I would feel exactly the same way if someone suggested adding information from my own country in order to reopresent its continent under the guise of removing a Eurocentric bias. Turn it around. How would you feel if someone was to say "let's remove the Eurocentric bias of the french language wikipedia by adding articles for everywhere in China with a population over 1000 - but not add anything from the rest of the world". Would it remove systemic bias? No. It would replace a bias in one direction with a bias in to directions. What if they said "let's make the French language Wikipedia represent Asia more fairly by adding places in China." Would that make it fairly represent Asia? No. it would only bias the Asian articles in favour of one country. so, as I said, originally, before you got hot under the collar about it - "I'm not impressed unless you're also planning to run a bot adding cities and towns from every other country in the world to these wikis." Grutness...wha? 03:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I would expect other wikis to endeavor to eventually create articles on all cities around the world, so it is not a choice between adding cities in the U.S. or adding cities in the rest of the world. The English Wikipedia can and does welcome articles on cities from around the world. If we could get a bot to create articles on all of the cities in France or Argentina, we'd be thrilled. Also, cities in the U.S. are apparently what the other Wikipedias are lacking, so they would be countering bias on their Wikipedia by adding them. What is on other Wikipedias, like the English Wikipedia, is irrelevant because they are completely separate and most people are not multilingual. We should not cover the just the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand cities in the English Wikipedia, Spain and Latin America in the Spanish Wikipedia and China in the Chinese Wikipedia. I don't know why the bot proposal is currently limited to the U.S., but it might have something to do with our readily available computerized records, which would be useful when using a bot to create articles. Finally, what they are talking about needs to be made clear. North America is not made up of the U.S. alone, or even the U.S. and Canada. It also includes Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. -- Kjkolb 03:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(post edit conflict) As I already said, we (the English Wikipedia), would love it if we could get a bot to create articles on cities, even if it was from a single country, no matter where in the world it is. We don't have to chose which cities to cover. We intend to get around to them all eventually. -- Kjkolb 03:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It may help this discussion to point out that many of the current articles on U.S. towns and cities were originally produced by Rambot using information pulled from the United States Census Bureau and other U.S. government agencies. As not all countries provide similar information, or place copyright restrictions on the information that effectively prevent wholesale usage of the information, it may not be reasonable to expect similar automated article generation for non-U.S. locations. I would suggest the requester contact the bot owner for information on current translation efforts. --Allen3 talk 03:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly, more articles is always a good thing, and generated articles from public domain US census data is relatively easy for a bot. If this exists in a machine-readable form for Canada or other countries, great, but I'm not sure if it does. It's complete bullocks to say that creating articles on US cities is somehow biased. If we can do it easilly, we should. Applies to articles on cities from any country. --W.marsh 22:15, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Creating articles on only US cities - which is the original proposal - is extremely biased; this is a comment I stand by and nothing to do with oxen. Grutness...wha? 22:41, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So we should create no articles instead of creating some articles? That's a terrible approach. If someone wants to create some good articles, the last thing we should do is tell them not to. --W.marsh 22:48, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's quite clearly not what I said. Creating some articles is always better than creating none (assuming they're encyclopedic), but creating some in a balanced way, rather than specifically favouring one topic, is far better still, and creating articles on only one area while ignoring all other areas is bad, especially if it is done by bot in such a way that theoretically thousands of articles could be created on one area, and even more so when it would be simple to create articles on a large number of places from across the planet. All of them exist in machine readable form - a form called called "Wikipedia articles". Anywhere which has an en.wiki article could easily have an equivalent created in French by bot as a babelfish-like translation at least. Those articles would be no worse than a lot of the garbled-English articles which are readily cleaned up on en.wiki. There is no reason on Earth to only limit this to one area. Grutness...wha? 06:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Added tags/templates be seen in summary

I propose that the addition of tags such as NPOV tags and cleanup tags or any other tags be also duplicated (by the mediawiki or the wikipedia) in the summary box. This would help in two things, first, to know which version of the article was POV-oriented in order to work with the history more easily ans also, it would allow bots to recognize these tags right in the summary box thus helping with the FA and GA criteria. Lincher 19:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That might be expensive in server processing. At first glance, the diff between the old and new versions could be parsed for well-formed templates in the new, but not the old version. However, if a template was not entered correctly, it wouldn't be picked up because a well-formmed template did not show in the diff. If the template was corrected on a later effort, it still would not be picked up in the diff. To avoid this, the program would have to parse all of the new version noting templates, then parse all of the old version, and then compare the lists of templates to see what well-formed templates were in the new version, but not the old. The program would also have to deal with templates being moved around in the article. And all of this processing would have to be performed on every edit. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 20:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the fast answer. Didn't know it was THAT tough to do and that it would consume that much server processing. Well, it was an idea. I'll ring in if I have less expensive ones. Altough we can now ignore the idea, it would be nice to have somekind of a bot that would search articles that are added a tag like cleanup or NPOV to monitor the GA and FA lists. Lincher 01:30, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Did you delete the talk page?

I originally wrote this to the technical page of the VP... it seems technical considerations have been addressed successfully, so I'm bringing it here to the proposals page. One thing I've run foul of two or three times when deleting pages is forgetting to check whether there was a discussion page... sometimes leaving a lone talk page floating in the void. I propose putting a message in large friendly letters on the "page deletion complete" page which will come up if there's an undeleted talk page that needs dealing with. Grutness...wha? 22:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some talk pages shouldn't be deleted... per WP:CSD, if "they contain deletion discussion that isn't logged elsewhere or notes that would help in creating an article". Other than that, yeah... generally there's no point of keeping talk pages that I'm aware of. Some kind of warning would be helpful I guess so admins can check... though I'm not sure if the software supports it right now? --W.marsh 00:25, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That was all gone over at Wikipedia: Village pump (technical)#Did you delete the talk page?. It seems that it can be done. As for some pages needing to be kept, that was also mentioned, and there was a suggestion that some kind of {{deletedsubject-because}} template could be added to the talk pages kept to expalin why they were kept, which sounds a good idea to me. Grutness...wha? 00:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, why not? Titoxd(?!?) 23:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

change the power structure of wikipedia

I move to simplify the de-sysopping process and to establish clear and easy criteria for the Rf adminship. Unlike stated in all statements of how wikipedia should work, there is a group of editors who are a sort of an "inner group" on wikipedia, and these are the admins. They do not always follow the policies, they interpret them as they like and use their privileges in content disputes, especially if there is no admin on the other side (because in that case there will be no wheel warring). In my opinion, any editor who reaches 1000 mainspace edits and has no history of vandalism or uncivility should be given the administrator status, without long and stupid discussions if he/she really "needs the mop". Arguments like "I dont see where he could use the admin quack" are only used by people who are exceptionally zealous and proud of what good they have done on wikipedia. Look for what they did in real world and you will find that they are 15, have problems at school because they spend all the time RC patrolling, RfA discussing, AfD nominating, prodding etc. But they believe that wikipedia is the real good of today's world. Admin privileges should be easy for everyone to reach and equally easy to lose, should one prove, that he is not capable of having some responsibility. Azmoc 15:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. I think that it may too easy to reach adminship. Admins are entrusted with certain tools that can be misused. Mere edit counts do not establish that someone can be trusted with those tools. I could rack up 1,000 more edits in Main space in a couple of weeks if I wanted to, but that would mean nothing about my understanding of Wikipedia. Understanding of Wikipedia and judgment are important considerations in choosing an admin, edit count is not. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 15:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It takes a lot more than a specific quantity of edits and the ability to avoid calling someone a jerkface to justify entrusting a user with the ability to prevent others from editing, be it by blocking users or protecting pages. Too many people would be inclined to use these tools as bludgeons in content disputes with new / anonymous users. -/- Warren 15:39, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yet again the case of a supposedly brand-new user, who has yet to make any edits to article space, trying to tell us how to run Wikipedia. Yawn. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yet again a supposedly silly comment from someone who thinks he/she is running wikipedia. Yawn. It is possible to be editing without an username for a long time, then create one. I said, adminship should be easy to gain and easy to lose, your arrogant ad personam argument now violates the NPA in case I am experienced and BITE in case I am not, and in my opinion, you should lose your admin privileges now and re-gain them when you learn how to behave. Azmoc 08:12, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You are exactly the type of person who would use his privileges in a content/conduct dispute. I find your stated belief that you are running wikipedia more than the other (yet inexperienced) users unbelievable. Azmoc 08:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Azmoc, are we supposed to believe that you have come here with suggestion after less than a week on the project and almost no mainspace contributions? Special:Contributions/Azmoc refers. Have you previously edited under another account? It would help to see your full edit history. Also, please remain civil. Just zis Guy you know? 12:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The cabal rejects this proposal. That is all. Just zis Guy you know? 12:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
JzG, who I am, or under which IP I have edited before is no bussiness of yours. I will ignore your elitist ad personam argumenting, you should however note, that any ad personam argument is considered uncivil. I could also place a warning template on your talkpage. Your comment above doesn't concern the content of my proposal, just me. Stop that please. Azmoc 12:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Did you even read WP:TINC? There is no cabal. There never was. Just zis Guy you know? 08:00, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While the identity of a person should not and does not affect the validity of arguments given by them, there is another side to Ad Hominem that is valid. Being busy Wikipedians, we don't have time to read/comment on every proposal that flies our way (the size of this proposal page is a tribute to this). Senior Wikipedians have what is called a BS-detector, which helps them quickly go through proposals like these and find the ones worth thinking and discussing about. A common indicator is a low-level of contributions. If a person with 50 edits and a person with 5000 edits have a proposal, whose would I read first, think about and comment on? Seniority gets preferential treatment in terms of consideration.
This is extremely important, and writing up a proposal, getting the necessary consensus on it, and putting it into action is an extremely labor-intensive process. If we tested every proposal that came by... we'd have no time for editing Wikipedia!
Nevertheless, occasionally, a "newbie" comes up with a good idea. If it doesn't seem immediately good to senior contributors, he will have to fight for it. Dalbury and Warren have come up with a good responses to your proposal, yet you have not addressed any of his concerns. Please do so. :-)
By the way, Zoe, please don't bite the newbies. — Edward Z. Yang(Talk) 15:55, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't bite newbies. I do, however, bite sockpuppets. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:13, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Assume good faith then. Are abrasive comments really that hard to avoid? -- bcasterline • talk 20:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, when they are in response to people with vested interests in stirring up trouble and not in creating an encyclopedia. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:40, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The desysopping process is quite simple. If you cause serious disruption to Wikipedia, you will end up desysopped. Most admins are perfectly reasonable, and thus willing to discuss any decisions people would wish to clarify in an appropriate forum, and would welcome input from their peers. I see no value in having clearly defined standards at RFA, Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, being an admin requires more and less than simply ticking boxes on a checklist. It requires the trust of your peers. Steve block Talk 22:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sombody emailed me about this discussion here, because of the sockpuppet suspicions against Azmoc, and because he was unsure if it was me (obvious similarities in username). So, for the record: it's not me! If I wanted a sockpuppet, I'd pick a less obvious name... Azate 03:47, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, I think he's Ackoz (talk • contribs • [page moves] • block user • [block log]), who stopped editing just before Azmoc started and was active on some of the same content, and who appears to have fallen foul of at least one admin (per block log). Sounds like garden-variety rouge admin abuse with a dash of sockpuppetry thrown in, nothing new. Just zis Guy you know? 07:59, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Organized cleanup effort

I recently looked at Wikipedia:Cleanup and said to myself, "Wow, that's a lot of articles." After a bit of glancing about, I found that on average there's about 4 or 5 articles listed for cleanup in any given day. I then looked at Category:Cleanup from June 2005, and realized how unintimidating that list looked compared to the huge list of two thousand plus (I don't even want to guess how large it is). I searched around a bit to see if there was an organized wikiproject to deal with cleanup, and found Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce, though it appears to be long dead/dying and I don't particularlly like the way it's set up myself. Basically, I have in mind a wikiproject that would act similar to WP:AID, only there would be one article from the category of pages in need of cleanup a day(starting from June 2005 and moving towards more recent months). This would mean that, should it get dedicated people, there is a specific goal of at least 7 articles getting cleaned up a week, meaning the backlog would slowly deteriorate. This would take some effort to get started, such as getting people who are interested in glancing at the page every once in a while to see if the current article in need of cleanup has not been looked at. How does that sound? I am more than willing to start such an effort myself. Cowman109Talk 23:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anything that would get people doing more maintenence work and dealing with our extensive backlogs is a good thing, so I'd support anyone who can do that. You might try revitalizing the existing cleanup taskforce/project though, one centralized effort works best, I think... better able to get and maintain the critical mass of volunteers needing to keep a project going. As for your one a day approach, I hate to say it but an article is tagged for cleanup every few minutes, so you'd need to clean up quite a few every day just to compensate for the new stuff being added to the queue. --W.marsh 00:22, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, right. I was foolishly going by the list at Wikipedia:Cleanup. You're right that the extent of the cleanup additions is much larger, so the goals could start out small (ie one a day) and once it grows, could focus perhaps on more at a time. The only problem I see with changing the cleanup taskforce is that it's a completely different method (and looking at it further, it appears to have a complex system of assigning certain pages to members that is completely different from my proposed method. I don't think cleanup should necessarily be restricted to certain categories, and believe that anyone could theoretically go into any article needing cleanup and improve it in some way. If I created a project like this, I fear it would be an alternate process (similar to how we have 3 current different forms of going through a mediation process:WP:MEDCAB, WP:MEDCOM,WP:GUERRILLA). Cowman109Talk 00:36, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Protecting users from vandals by highlighting in red the most recent additions/changes to an article.

I was reading about how the creators of the movie Elephants Dream relied on Wikipedia to help create subtitles. They needed the Catalan word for Catalan. They wound up using an offensive word that a vandal had placed on the Catalan language page.

It occurs to me that users of Wikipedia might be helped by highlighting in red that text that has been recently altered (say within 2 days). This would alert them to suspect or unstable content.

Such as scheme also has the additional benefit of bringing users' attention to new parts of articles that relate to currently developing events without forcing them to skim the entire article looking for changes. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.88.76.22 (talk • contribs) .

Well highlighting in red might have some theoretical usefulness for purposes of editing, but it would be a terrible thing in terms of keeping encyclopedia articles looking like encyclopedia articles, and for purposes of being able to be read by members of the general public without something glaring interrupting the flow of reading. It would be a form of imposed textual self-reference.
Your suggestion is really to fix a problem which doesn't exist because we already have such an ability, albeit with one easy additonal step, but in a far more systemized way than just showing changes for the last two days. We and you don't need to skim the entire article looking for changes. Go to any article and click on the history tab on top. This field allows you to compare text in any two versions of an article in lo and behold, changes are in red! This also functions with a Watchlist, which allows us to monitor all pages we have "watched" for changes. You can only access this feature if you sign up for an account.--Fuhghettaboutit 16:25, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The point is that unstable/recent information should not look like it's (yet) part of an encyclopedia article. It should cause an interruption in flow so that users don't get burned like the subtitler did for Elephants Dream. Besides, if a page is stable for two days, nothing would be highlighted. The article will look like a reliable page from an encyclopedia.
Dynamic, changing, unstable, vadalized articles don't deserve to look "pure". They need to express to the casual reader that the reader needs to be on the alert. That should be Wikipedia's way of helping to protect its credibility.
The point is to help the average user that comes to Wikipedia looking for reliable information. Very few average users even bother looking through the history of changes. They look at what is on the main article page and believe that to be the best of what Wikipedia has to offer on the subject. And they don't want to sign-up for an account just so they can follow a developing story. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.88.73.35 (talk • contribs) .
Well, they probably should look at the history tab. I believe Jimbo has said himself that people should not cite Wikipedia for hard facts. People should know better and use Wikipedia as a reference, and then double check such information (which is why citations are so important). Cowman109Talk 16:57, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Your comments remind me of those of auto-makers before seat belts and soft dashboards. They believed that drivers should simply drive more safely. They had to change the way they make their cars, though, and auto fatalities per auto have greatly declined over the years.
At the moment, Wikipedia is like early automakers and our sub-titler from Elephant Dreams is an early victim. Oh, sure, he should have checked multiple sources for the translation of a single word, but he didn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.88.73.35 (talk • contribs)
You can help you know. Sign up for an account and put some pages on your watchlist. Then, check them for vandalism. Also, please sign your posts with four tildes (~). Best, JChap (Talk) 01:36, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think highlighting might not be such a bad idea; it is easier than calling up the history and diffing (although Wikipedia:Popups do make history and diffing more convenient). I'd suggest, though, making it optional. Put in a link that says "highlight recent unpatrolled edits." (If there were no new unpatrolled edits, this link would be hidden. Edits by admins would be assumed to be self-patrolled.) This could be implemented using CSS and JavaScript: new edits would have a special CSS class, but one that doesn't have any CSS properties unless the user wants it to. Also make it a user preference, where it would be on by default.
Only, instead of something that looks confusingly similar to a red link (like this one), why not use a mild highlight with a border, so that it can also apply to tables, images, block elements, and already coloured text?
One could extend it further. If a category or interlanguage link has recently been added, highlight it. Maybe consider a different highlight for links to pages with new unpatrolled changes.
I think a jumble of highlighting would be overwhelming to the casual user. And I'm afraid attaching a class for age information to each chunk of text in the rendered page might be expensive for the servers.
However, if it's technically possible, I'd certainly find it useful as a proofreader/vandalfighter. Maybe it's something you could choose in Preferences, or add with a javascript plug-in (like navigation popups). Or perhaps we could add a link/button/toolbox item on the article, allowing the user to "highlight recent changes to this article" (so that it's not just restricted to logged in users). An interesting idea! — Catherine\talk 15:26, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
An alternative proposal that I've brought up before is to have Wikipedia show visitors the most recent version of the page that survived at least X hours without being editted, where X is some value that is greater than the amount of time it takes to identify and revert most vandalism. This would ensure that most vandalism never reaches the pages shown to people who are just visiting. Dragons flight 18:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But if the visitor were inspired to try adding something to the article, they would have to find the most recent version to do so. This could be a big inhibiter in recruiting new editors. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 20:21, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Calculator

This is supposed to be the sum total of human knowledge, so how about a calculator function in the search window, that would follow something like this format: Calc:3*12.7. I know it would require a dramatic software change, and I know most computers have a calculator function, but any way this could be achieved would be a step closer to universal knowledge. AdamBiswanger1 17:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why, when Google already has a very powerful calculator? No use reinventing the wheel. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 18:52, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well I suppose that dictionary.com is 100x more reliable than Wiktionary, one can find most of the primary sources on Wikisource on Google. The periodic table is online plenty of places, so why include it on Wikipedia? It is more of an idealized effort to include information on all branches of human knowledge, regardless of what else is on the internet. AdamBiswanger1 19:28, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not meant to be the sum total of human knowledge. It's an encyclopedia, and there is lots of factual information we leave out (phone listings, baseball box scores, etc.) There's no reason for the answer to 134*897 to be in an encyclopedia. Andrew Levine 23:09, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why the harsh response? Do you see any harm in including a calculator, or do you simply want to conform to the rigid definition of "encyclopedia" for mere principle. There is certainly something wrong with including "phone listings and baseball box scores", and those comparisons are absurd and entirely irrelevant to the argument. Wikipedia is a place where people get answers, and anything in the field of academia should certainly not be excluded. AdamBiswanger1 01:30, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We need to stay focused. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, "a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge." A calculation tool falls outside this scope. The harm would come from the fact that it'd consume valuable developer and test time when they should be more focused on tools that would make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia. Nobody is going to think to go to an encyclopedia to get an answer to 134*897, because an encyclopedia isn't a logical place to go for that... so why would our developers waste time on this? -/- Warren 04:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What operating system has a web browser and doesn't have a calculator? --John Nagle 04:30, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think all the benefits of having our own calculator can be achieved by having WP:RD/MATH link to Google's calculator help page. If wiki editing required specialized calculators, we could consider hosting them at the toolserver, but I don't think it does. SeahenNeonMerlin 18:28, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Block templates

{{block}} includes instructions for what to do if you are blocked; most of the other block templates do not. It also includes text addressed solely to admins, which is arguably unnecessary (should be in the text of the Unblock page instead). I propose that we standardise on a form of words for all block templates to point to a single Help subpage on what to do if you find yourself blocked, listing the unblock-l list, emailing the blocking admin, {{unblock}} and how to use it; also we should amend the templates to automagically include the name of the blocking admin and for preference a {{{duration}}} argument. Just zis Guy you know? 16:23, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well the blocked user gets most of that stuff in the block message when they try to edit. (MediaWiki:Blockedtext), so I would suggest adding that lot to block templates is pretty redundant. --pgk(talk) 21:59, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also the people who seem to get the most legitimate use of the unblock systems are the cases of collateral damage, where they won't have a block template on their own talk page. --pgk(talk) 22:17, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Neutrality Project

I'm currently working on creating (exactly, recreating) the Wikipedia Neutrality Project, or WNP. Its purpose would be to deal with articles containing significant bias, and in general ensure sufficient neutrality for all articles.

I also plan to make WNP the primary group for deciding to help editors resolve disagreements about whether POV-related templates are in place on specific articles. I believe this is really needed, since there's no procedure for this, and many editors hesitate to make such changes alone, or, worse, jump into edit wars about this. (We have dispute resolution methods, but they are focused on more serious issues).

To be specific, I suggest following types of action:

  • Review. Any editor can post a request, and the article will be reviewed by our members, making suggestions or just changing POV-related details.
  • Watch. Articles with frequently appearing significant bias will be added on a collective watchlist to be checked by our members time to time.
  • Assessment. We will discuss and suggest whether a POV template should be placed or removed on a specific article. This is what's really needed, since there's no procedure for this, and many editors hesitate to make such changes alone.
  • Dispute resolution. We will provide quick suggestions for resolution of NPOV disputes in cases where there is no personal conflict, but just contradicting views on a subject.
  • Correction. When we find an article with significant POV issues, we'll repair it, neutralizing biased statements, replacing speculations with reliable information, checking for adequate representation of views, and ensuring article no longer has a general bias.

If you are interested and want to join the WNP, just visit the project page.

All of this is for now not decided: something might be added, removed or changed. Please comment if there are any objections to our proposed tasks, or any suggestions.

CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 03:43, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The way you have phrased this makes it sound like you want WNP to own POV-related templates. If that is so, you will meet considerable opposition. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 11:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, of course, I mean no ownership or any extra rights. We'll just provide a quick third opinion to resolve disagreements, and, if debate goes on, join the discussion. Actually, anyone can do it, WNP would just be a place to ask.
However, if there still are objections, I'd like to know. CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 16:52, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Then why do you say, I also plan to make WNP the primary group for deciding whether POV-related templates are in place on specific articles? No, that isn't nearly Ownership. Oh, wait, yes, it is. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, now I understand it sounds too bold. I'll rephrase it, then. Is now anything wrong in the proposals? CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 12:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Choosing intentional red links.

Perhaps spelling suggestions for the search engine?

I think that Wikipedia users would benefit greatly from a "Did you mean" feature added to searches. Most search engines (e.g. google, yahoo, etc.) have a feature that suggests a different spelling to the search terms in case you mispelled a word. It is quite annoying to search something on Wikipedia and have no spelling suggestions. In one such case, I actually had to revert to searching for my desired topic on Google just to get the correct spelling. To cite an example of what I am trying to say, lets say you would like to search for "xylem" (a biological term) and spell is zylem, it is highly unlikely that the user would guess to substitute the "z" for an "x" when the word is clearly pronounced "zylem". Perhaps this addition has already been discussed and denied or in the works; I have no idea, I do know that this would be greatly appreciated though. Any thoughts or comments please let me know. Thanks. Patbaseball2221 01:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whose version of English gets precedent? If somebody types in colr, do we suggest color or colour? User:Zoe|(talk) 02:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Whichever the choice, it would be more user friendly than the current implementation. Many users I know use Google for almost every search on Wikipedia. It is almost invariably faster to google "apollo project wikipedia" than to try and find the same article via the "search" box in the project. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 02:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
From Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Better search feature, please see bugzilla:974. Until such time as this exists in Wikipedia's search engine (and I would not recommend holding your breath until then), you can use google (or most any other search engine) restricting its results to the wikipedia site. For example, adding "site:wikipedia.org" to a google search does this. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:05, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Is it really that hard to add that feature??? Patbaseball2221 01:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The challenge in better searching is not supplying suggestions, but supplying useful, relevant suggestions. Simply substituting X for Z, as in your example, would turn up frequently spurious results. Deco 01:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's difficult enough that it's not trivial, and searching is a distinctly secondary feature of the software. These two things combined mean it does not occupy a high position in the prioritized list of requested changes to the software. Most of the software development is done by volunteers. The Wikimedia Foundation currently has only two developers on its payroll, see meta:Wikimedia staff. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Swap Tab

This is a great idea I have. Instead of swapping pages the old way, what if there's a swap tab that takes you to a page where you swap it with an existing article? This would eliminate A to C B to A C to B delete C snd would be easier to non-administrative users. This optoin would only be available to registered users, like me and anyone else with a login. It could also be reverted. Would it be possible? Pronoun 10:11, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea, but rarely useful. Deco 01:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Historical information

Wikipedia:Historical information (WP:HIST) is a proposed guideline which is still very much a work in progress. I ask people to contribute to it and/or its talk page.—msh210℠ 06:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have been using your “Wikipedia-the free encyclopedia” over the internet quite frequently.

I must say that it is one of the perfect places to get complete information on an article.

To further improve the wikipedia, I would suggest that you upgrade and develop your software so as to include “A view and listen to the correct pronunciation of all the words” in the encyclopedia+. This can easily be done by clicking the “Sound icon along with the phonetic spelling next to each individual word.”

Hope you approve of my suggestion as it will be a benefit to many.

Awaiting an early reply.

Yours sincerely,

Minoo.

General User Survey

I am trying to revitalize meta:General User Survey. In essence this would be a Wikimedia-wide polls of users, giving us much needed statistics about the editors (us :)). The sooner this is done, the better for all of us. Any assistance appreciated.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That would probably be beneficial to a few things currently being discussed on the Wikipedia. What sort of assistance do you need? I suppose we need foundation permission? How do we get that? Steve block Talk 15:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like a great idea! How do we go about doing it? —Mets501 (talk) 17:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An award to the most unique, most organized, and overall best userpages in Wikipedia! Viva La Vie Boheme 17:53, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Esperanza/Programs#User_Page_Award :) Cowman109Talk 18:38, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment : Doesn't this divert the point of the encyclopedia to something like blogging where we give as much credit to Userpages as articles (It shouldn't be the case on an encyclopedia). Lincher 18:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hear, hear. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And there is already a userpage barnstar. Herostratus 05:22, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pornography warning

NOTE: Don't be scared off just because I have the word "pornography" in the name; I don't mean to describe anything like that.

I was wondering if we could get a pornography warning just like we have a spoiler warning: {{spoiler}}.

I looked at Wikipedia:Pornography; appearantly Wikipedia's reaction to pornography was to keep it, but only so long as it's encyclopedia-like. Well, Wikipedia also has spoilers, but we're allowed to warn people who don't want to see them. Can we warn people who don't want to see any pornography also?
If no one disagrees, I wouldn't mind making this warning myself. --Jonathan talk 22:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This has been discussed AT LENGTH and the answer is no, absolutely not. Raul654 22:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, it justs a terrible idea. If an image is just random out of context porn, it should be here per inclusion standards anyway. Pornagraphic related topics are part of the encyclopedia if notable, since it is not censored. Nude/sex-related images will be included wherever they add informative value, as again, this encyclopedia is not censored and strives to be "the sum of all human knowledge".Voice-of-All 23:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ideally, we'd eliminate all spolier warnings. - Nunh-huh 23:20, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I somtimes find those "plot details follow" warnings kind of silly. If you don't want it spoiled, either don't read the article, or maybe just glance through the intro.Voice-of-All 23:29, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if there were a "safe for work" mode. WP may not be censored, but most of our workplaces are. --W.marsh 00:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We have warnings for outside links that contain porn, as we should. But I don't think this is a good idea, per above. As Nunh-huh notes, it would be much better if all spoiler warnings were excised (and the content replaced by relevant content that didn't spoil unnecessarily). zafiroblue05 | Talk 00:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'll copy and paste in an answer I gave last week to a suggestion that Wikipedia pages with offensive content should bear a warning label.
We don't censor Wikipedia, but we try to adhere to a 'Principle of Least Astonishment'. That is, material that under some circumstances might be considered offensive or inappropriate for minors should only appear in articles and locations where one might reasonably expect to find such content.
In other words, if someone goes looking for the article fuck, one should not be surprised that the article contains profanity. Similarly, a reader that goes to the article list of sex positions might reasonably expect to encounter descriptions and diagrams of sex acts. On the other hand, one wouldn't expect to find pictures of sex acts in our article on Minnesota, and such images would be removed.
The disclaimer that you propose is, unfortunately, much too general to be useful. It might best be applied to all of Wikipedia — in fact, it's part of our Content disclaimer. Trying to decide whether or not content should bear a specific additional warning is an invitation to endless argument:
You can see the problem. If someone is going to look at a particular article, we try to ensure that the images and text are appropriate to that article; that's the best we can do. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In other words, it's impossible to decide what ought to bear a warning, and individuals who go looking for an article about the penis ought not be surprised to find a picture of one there.
Note also that such a system would be impossible to maintain without major changes to the Wikipedia software—how do you evaluate whether an image is pornographic, add the label, and make sure that the image and label aren't changed? Individuals attempting to rely on such a censorship mechanism would encounter periodic failures (technical, social, vandalism- or newbie-related) and be exposed to objectionable content anyway (resulting in angry parents screaming at us). Vandals would start labelling harmless images as pornography or graphic sex, just to black out the pictures in articles. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:13, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh and that too :). We give minimal considerations for shock value, such as not bothering to remove images of cloud pictures that are not necessary but removing shock images that are pointless, or moving high stigma pages down on the page somewhat or making a link to them if the article is to small for the first method. Thats about all we should do, as anything else, as TenOfAllTrades has shown, would spiral into impracticallity.Voice-of-All 00:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I follow your logic about how if you go looking for obscenity you'd find it. I'm not going to try to make a pornography warning. Thanks for discussing this! --Jonathan talk 01:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Irrelevant talk

The lines distinguishing unrelated points and related ones are unclear. In the space of 5 - 6 hours, some guy(s) deleted 3 of my comments on the talk page of this article, saying it is irrelevant. I can't be bothered to search through all the edits of that page during that period of time to revert my edits, but I hope something can be done to distinguish this line further. Like that, anyone, including anons, can just delete someone else's comment on the basis that it is irrelevant. --Terrancommander 04:18, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not even considered acceptable to remove your own comments from an article's talkpage, much less someone else's. The only exception to this (that I'm aware of) would be blatant vandalism. --Doc Tropics Message in a bottle 22:03, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mobile/PDA version of wikipedia?

I love using wikipedia, but my biggest peeve is needing a computer to use it at. I have a palm pilot and a cellphone but viewing and searching topics on wiki is a huge hassle. The screen does not resize correctly, and many other problems arrise.

I have seen PDA/mobile versions of many news sites, including google's homepage.

Is it possible to convert pages of wiki to something like a mobile version? (small width, small page size, less photos, and perhaps some special code?)

What has been shared about this is at Wikipedia:Browser notes#PDA & cell phone browsers (and the page it references, Wikipedia:Wikipedia on PDAs). If you find anything else useful, please share your findings on these pages! -- Rick Block (talk) 04:37, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Service awards

Not really a proposal, just a series of barnstars for service -- time and number of edits. Like most barnstars, this is generally discussed on the barnstar page: Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals#Editor service awards. But this is a just a heads up to get more comment, if anyone finds the idea odious or otherwise, before moving these into template space. (A post for a significantly different version of this was made here on July 11.) Herostratus 06:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Editcountitis is evil. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This heavily promotes editcountitis, which we seem to be struggling enough with on RFA's. A user's worth should not be measured by their editcounts - someone may have made 199 mainspace edits but those edits could have all been making featured articles from scratch, for all we know, and promoting people to make many smaller edits promotes quantity over quality. Also, I don't believe such a project should be converted to the template namespace. If anything, I believe it should remain userfied as it has nothing to do with the main article space. Cowman109Talk 20:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Trivia sections

I think that we should eliminate all trivia sections in articles. Most of the time (see The Colbert Report for examples of this) the Trivia section of an article is simply a repository for unencyclopedic factoids that aren't important enough to go into a different section or their own section. C. M. Harris 14:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. But since we already have a rule that content should be encyclopedic, there's no need for a new policy. HenryFlower 14:09, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Now, we just need consensus that trivia is not encyclopedic. Personally, I believe that trivia is covered by Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, but that section does not mention trivia by name, and many editors will argue to keep the trivia, preventing consensus to remove it on most pages. I think it's better for now to require proper references, which will push the rumors and urban legends out of the trivia sections. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 17:05, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to see "Wikipedia Popular Culture" as a separate system, like Wookipedia but bigger. Then transwiki almost all popular music, TV, game, sports, and movie content over there. The main Wikipedia would retain only historically significant items, at the Academy Award for Best Picture/Best Actor level. The Popular Culture Wikipedia would have lower standards, allowing all the fancruft that fans love to put in, plus all those garage band articles we have to constantly fight to keep out of the main Wikipedia. This would keep the fans happy while substantially reducing the cleanup effort needed on the main Wikipedia. --John Nagle 18:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I totally agree with the no trivia in article idea ... I always though it was coverd by the WP:NOT too but they keep fighting to have their trivia section in articles. In the GA project we have come to the consensus that there will be no trivia section in articles and the FA will probably ask that as well in a near future as it is unencyclopedic and being, almost all the time, list items it is tough to read that section as there is no prose and sometimes no logic between one item and the other. Lincher 18:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've advocated a new project called WikiTrivia. Like it or not, many people vastly prefer getting and contributing information in a fast, 1-3 sentence bulletted format rather than "boring" prose. Insert gripe about the MTV generation. At any rate, people like Trivia-style information and we shouldn't totally discount that... a project just for trivia would probably be quite popular, and we could send it the endless trivia people add to WP articles. I'm mostly serious about this, in case anyone's wondering... --W.marsh 19:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes yes. This is a perennial proposal. There's a draft proposed guideline at Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections. Deco 19:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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