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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by CXI (talk | contribs) at 15:23, 29 November 2004 (→Proposal to extend Recent Changes flags: Reformatting, implementation details). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Wikipedia toolbar

I was wondering if a IE/FF based wikipedia toolbar exists. vogon77 05:07, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

I suggested this once before, to no response. Hopefully this proposal gets more hearsay. -- user:zanimum
I was actually thinking about that exact same thing a few days ago, I'd like to build a FF extension, but I'm sheer out of time at the moment as I'm doing an internship. If others are interested, we could start up a WikiProject and start writing some requirements. -- Solitude 12:09, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for but Mozdev has a Wikipedia search plugin for mozilla firefox at http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html - Taxman 22:36, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
Few have Mozilla. Go to toolbar.google.com to see the "inspiration" idea. -- user:zanimum
it would be nice to be able to highlight and right-click on a word or phrase and have as options, search for in wikitionary, search for in wikipedia, search for in wikiquote. The bellman 03:08, 2004 Nov 15 (UTC)

Common Images

I sugges a language wikipedia (i.e. spanish) can use the images stored in another one (i.e. the english Wikipedia).

This is very important to spare space and use common images.

I suggest use in the spanish wikipedia [[En:Image:ImageName]] to display an image from the english Wikipedia.

Hopefully soon it will be possible to use images from http://commons.wikipedia.org, which will then be the prime place for free images which are not language-dependend - so you are not the first one who suggested that one, commons has been in discussion for more than 6 months already and is online, but not yet usable from the wikipedias. The reason why it isn't possible to refer to images from any other language wikipedia is the fact that it should be possible to download a complete language edition without the need to crawl through many other wikis to have the images needed. andy 12:43, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have nearly two hundred of my own photographs (all GFDL) that I would like to move or copy from the English Wikipedia to the Commons. Is there a fast way to do this? Fg2 02:14, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

Not yet. – Quadell (talk) (help)[[]] 19:39, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Auto RSS Feeds

Hi,

it would be a good feature if you could just mark RSS in the way that browser can autorecognize their existence and offer users to subscribe.

Currently this feature is supported by Mozilla Firefox (http://www.getfirefox.com), and it allows easy subscription by showing orange RSS in status bar. I guess that you should add this mark to your news page.

This is example of the HTML code that marks RSS for browsers:

<LINK rel="alternate" TYPE="application/rss+xml" TITLE="B92 RSS" HREF="http://www.b92.net/news/rss/rss.php">

so please include it, it would be a nice feature (and it is easy to add it).

Best regards,

Ashley


WTF? Wikipedia doesn't use RSS. Being one of the more influential members at SFX (at least I like to think so), I recognized exactly what you're doing, I read it in RSS campaign: ask sites to add auto-detection. This site however doesn't have RSS, so I just don't get it. --Me at work 21:23, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC) (yes its me)
Actually, we do have both RSS and Atom feeds available for certain utility pages - e.g. Special:RecentChanges. However, as pointed out at Bugzilla:721, the software does in fact have <link>s to these already. However, it seems what was really being asked was whether bots could be created to parse certain "news"/"announcements" pages, and then have this kind of link manually added to the page to point at them. I think. So I guess we're all a bit confused. - IMSoP 21:40, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)


I would like to add another point of view... It would be nice to be able to have RSS feed for all articles. If not for individuals that could be useful to create a distibution net for non-wiki satelite sites, that may be a way to produce controled redundancy, and easy the load on wikipedia. And/or may be the way to let a site that run Mediawiki software update articles in it´s database from wikipedia. Maybe create a new kind of page that could be only be updated from wikipedia. Or could be updated from any system running MediaWiki software. This could create a net of distribution of articles with some very interesting possibilities. Just some thoughts on the subject...
best regards,
Svasti 19:43, 12 Nov 2004

Do we have feeds for anything but Recent Changes? I think there should be one for Featured Articles. Chameleon 16:50, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I second the idea that an RSS feed for Featured Articles would be a good idea. Beyond Recent Changes, more technical feeds for the community could include all the standard Cleanup/Attention/etc type feeds. That might make it easier to get help where it's needed. --thames 21:41, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)


I personally hold an extreme dislike for RSS. I find it chaotic, confusing, and unhelpful. I've never understood the hype.

wikipuliki

On the page too much wiki-stress, Solipsist posted the following suggestion: ...I wonder whether there is a general solution. Rather than all the slightly negative 'Requests for Comment' and the like (which seldom seems to get anywhere), perhaps we need a page where people can say 'I'm feeling too stressed/under seige' in order to illicit positive support (group hug) from others who appreciate their contributions.
Now i think this is a rather cool concept so i combined the hawaiian word for hug with wiki and got wikipuliki. Does anyone else think (esp considering that several high profile users have recently quit, due at least in part to wikistress) that a page whos sole purpose is to give group hugs and other positive type things would be a good idea? The bellman 08:44, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC) Update: i just discovered Wikipedia:Department_of_Fun, which is in a similar vain as my proposal. The bellman 09:32, 2004 Oct 30 (UTC)

comments: What can I Say , great idea —siroχo 10:10, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Only tempts me if it becomes a way to get people to actually come help with the problems causing the stress. See, for example, my recent posting Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Israel.2FPalestine, to which I've had no response in the over 36 hours since I posted it. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:42, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)


Wasn't there a band in the 80s called Wikipuliki. -- Solipsist 08:33, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

WikiAtlas?

I love WikiPedia, I love the random page function.

but ... Is anyone else annoyed at how often small town entries come up? It seems pointless to have "Nuclear_winter" and "Dacula,_Georgia" [with it's pop. of 3,848] in the same place.

A WikiAtlas would be a great project, but perhaps this is not the time.

Is there a way to seperate all these geographic entries from the rest?

I would say that inclusion of Wallaceton,_Pennsylvania is certainly non-encyclopedic ... unless you can open the WorldBook set and find Brights_Grove,_Ontario in there.

I believe that what people are saying when they say such things are unencyclopaedic is that one would not find such articles in a "real" encyclopaedia. Well guess what? Wikipedia is a real encyclopaedia, but is not constrained by the same issues as other encyclopaedias. Having such articles in Wikipedia is "a good thing". Most towns, however small, may even have history or attributes that are interesting to more than just those living in the town. And outside the US (i.e. the vast majority of the world!), this is all the more so the case. Most places in Ireland for example, even if a population of only a couple hundred, have hundreds of years of history and may have points of interest. I won't say notable points of interest, as we actually have "non-notable" castles in Ireland!!! They may indeed all some day have Wikipedia articles though!.
Separating out articles that one considers less worthy is not a sensible idea. It would only leave holes in Wikipedia. zoney ♣ talk 12:41, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
A better solution to the problem of RamBot articles cropping up in random searches would be to implement limiting Random page to include and/or exclude certain categories. There is no reason to factor out all geography articles in a separate project. — David Remahl 13:44, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This topic was originally about the 'random page' link. I think it's a good idea to use a more popular selection of pages for the random pages, (if the point is to promote newcomers). If each small town gets its own page, the set from which the random page is drawn can still exclude those pages. Possible criteria for 'random page' consideration: size of article, number of reads, number of edits, being featured on the main page, etc. rmbh 08:01, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
well, but then it wouldn't be random anymore, would it? One of the uses of the random page button is to get an impression of what the average of those touted 400.000 articles looks like. being selective about them would be cheating, in my view, unless we quoted another number, e.g. "we have 398765 articles, 234567 of them larger than 2kb". use the 'random page' link to see a randomly selected member of the latter set." dab 12:15, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Sure it's still random! It's just not a representative random sampling. For example: all possible combinations of one letter and one number is much larger then the number of bingo balls, but it's still a bonified random sampling when the bingo caller draws one. Still, your point about producing "average" or representative page hits the nail on the head: what is the random page supposed to accomplish? Produce a representative sample of all of Wickipedia, or something interesting to act as a 'hook'? rmbh

[copy from Talk:Main Page]:

I agree that the town entries are fine. The only time where they ever get in the way is the random page button, which is a toy, anyway. However, "WikiAtlas" is an excellent idea! I have been wondering for some time how we could standardise custom maps. When I want to draw a map to explain a point in a specific article, I have to search for a public domain map of the area in question on google, and then maybe remove labels in an editor before adding my own information, arrows or whatever. The Xerox Mapserver has been gone for several years, and I don't know of a similarly useful tool to produce basic maps (e.g., the map of Image:Kurgan map.png is based on a Xerox mapserver map). How about starting a WikiAtlas project that somehow links to all geographical WP articles? There is probably not enough CPU resources to generate maps dynamically, but if we had an application that could generate maps from vector data, we could still make a large collection of ready made maps, and illustrate the location of all these little town stubs. dab 07:32, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There is a discussion of this at meta:Wikiatlas. See also meta:Category:Wikimaps. Angela. 18:10, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)
thank you. dab 10:09, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikiproverb

I really want to have a postal like wikipedia or wikiquote, which is on proverbs and idioms and some useful phrases or phrasal verbs. That would be very helpful for people to learn to write and express their thoughts better. I do believe that this kind of tools are lack of in the market. In light of the success of wikipedia, I hope people will think about this idea.

Proverbs already appear in Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikiquote so I don't think there is a need to create another project for them. Deciding which of these three projects ought to have them and whether the triplication is necessary might be a better idea. See, for example, Wiktionary:English proverbs, Wikiquote:English proverbs, and List of English proverbs. Angela. 00:29, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I want My Word back

I miss the bbc radio broadcast of "MY WORD" are there any sites which still audio stream the program? Are there any radio re-plays in the U.S. (via NPR)? Where can I download or buy editions?

reverend_logan@yahoo.com

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:My_Word%21"

Proposal to extend Recent Changes flags

Okay, at the moment RC displays the m and N flags for "minor edit" and "new page", respectively. Currently, the only other method of edit assessment on the RC page is the username and edit summary, both of which are of limited use, especially in the case of vandalism. This is a proposal for additional RC flags that would decrease vandalism response time and make things easier for RC junkies and admin.

Proposed flags and issues

Note that these flags use a (totally unofficial and made-up) standard, wherein lowercase is used for flags related to the edit, whereas uppercase is used for flags related to the article itself.

  • "+" - Significant addition. Edits that add over a certain amount of characters would trip this flag. Typically this would total a couple of sentences of editing.
  • "-" - Significant removal. Opposite of above. Not triggered if "blanked" (below) is triggered.
    • Possibly "--" and "++" for large addition/removal (for lack of a more original name) These would be triggered by the addition or removal of a couple paragraphs of text. This may just be bloat, however.
  • "B" - Blanked. Triggered if all text has been removed from a article.
    • Is this letter already used for bots? An alternative is "W" for whited out or wiped.
  • "R" - Revert. Triggered if edit matches a previous version of the article.
    • This would require the calculation and storage of the md5sum for every version of a page.
  • "u" - Unwikied text. Triggered if a significant amount of unwikied text is added.
    • The value of "significant amount" could result in improper flagging of minor edits if too low, and miss unwikied stubs if too high. Perhaps should be calculated as a percentage of article size.
  • "C" - Contentious. Triggered by an edit to an article that is {{disputed}} or has received over a certain number of edits in a given amount of time.
    • The former system for detecting contentious articles might flag non-contentious articles with factual problems, whereas the latter might flag rapidly-growing articles.
  • "D" - Recently deleted article. This would trigger upon recreation of a previously (recently) deleted article.
  • "p" - Profanity (or "t" for Trigger). This flag would be triggered if an edit contained any profane or trollish words, as specified in a protected list of trigger words.
    • This would yield a high level of false positives, especially on innocuous articles about reproduction or similar. For this reason, it may be of limited use.
  • "E" - Highly exposed article. Used for articles directly linked to by the front page, or having received a certain amount of hits in a period of time (this should make waves of vandalism immediately following linking in news articles, blogs or on the front page more difficult).


There is further potential for flagging edits to pages containing certain templates. These might include stubs/sectstubs/substubs, cleanup pages, disambigs, etc. There is a huge potential for bloat in that idea, but it may also prove useful for quickly isolating articles that might need work.

Another possibility is a flag for edits by known contentious users, such as those who have been warned for editwars, as one step below temporary banning. However, this may be a bad idea because it overpublicises disputse of that nature. A similar (and just as possibly bad) idea is flagging edits by new users.

Positives

  • Makes vandalism/junk detection easier (Nu = new article full of unwikied text, for example)
  • Changes edit information from user-reliant to program-reliant (m and edit summary rely on the benevolence of the author)

Negatives

  • Additional resource use for calculation and storage of data (such as md5sums)
  • Letters have little intrinsic meaning and are not understandable by new users (requiring added external documentation)
    • Maybe using the <acronym> tag would help. [ alerante | “” 14:07, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC) ]
  • Added clutter to recent changes
  • Breaks the enhanced recent changes page (which currently aligns flags on the left)
  • Not internationalised (what's the first letter of "Revert" in Mandarin?)
  • Vandals will turn to more sneaky vandalism once they know the simple vandalism is traced automatically

Implementation

Solutions to the lack of intrinsic meaning are generally centered around mouse-over explanatory text. Either the <acronym> tag, or a simple link to a page like Wikipedia:Recent changes flags with a title attribute describing the tags in question.

Through surveys on this page and on the #wikipedia IRC channel, it appears that some users are in favour of coloured flags, while others completely detest the idea. Accordingly, if used, this should be a configuration option, defaulting to non-coloured.

Regarding the particular flags and number of flags used, most users seem to be in assent with the general idea and flags, while some feel that the flags may prove to be too numerous. Most people seem in favour of a trial run, in which all the above suggested flags are implemented, with these removed if needed.

Any comments/suggestions/criticisms etc are welcome. CXI 15:23, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Comments

Some questions: Would these have to be manually selected by the editor? If not, how would they work? If so, of what value are they? How do you define 'significant'? Filiocht 09:23, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

No, Filiocht, as it says above, these would be automatically generated. 'significant' would be decided during the process of setting up the feature(or it could probably be changed later(it might even be able to be a pref, like the stub feature)) JesseW 09:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Would you see the minor tag becoming automated? Filiocht 09:49, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)
I wouldn't - what simple algorthm is there for "formatting changes"? ;-) JesseW 10:55, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sigh. I had a nice long, involved response. And I lost it all in broswer crash. Damm. Well, I'll just say it's a great idea, I strongly encourage you to do it, and all that. Damm. Damm. Damm. JesseW 09:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would like to see all of these that don't require too much of a load on the server (R sounds a little risky, for example). Ashiibaka tlk 05:39, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Would someone format each of these ideas as a Mediazilla feature request and enter them in? Please post here after you do it. JesseW 04:23, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

By each of these do you mean each flag? CXI 07:28, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I like this idea. A lot. Some of them would be tricky to implement, but some (such as B) we should have had a long time ago! -- Chuq 23:55, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If the overhead is low enough, sounds like a great idea. Paul August 03:54, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
I like it too -- submit it to Mediazilla! [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\talk]] 10:10, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Would anyone mind giving comments on individual flags? I'm particularly curious about whether anyone has any suggestions or additions, or considers the flags perhaps too numerous. What about the two possibly-bad-idea flags? I have some more ideas for flags, such as 'r' for consecutive edits to a page by one contributor, but I'm worried that polluting the namespace too much will erode the usefulness of the whole idea.

I'm also not sure what to propose regarding the the non-intrinsicness of the flags. Ideally, a key might work, but isn't terribly extensible. Perhaps links for each flag letter, with a mouse-over text containing a description of each. Should they be coloured or not? Grey for unwikied, red for contentious... might be nice, or might look really ugly and be a waste of time. The thought of pretty icons for each flag also springs to mind, except for the effort involved, the loading time, and the general uselessness.

Oh, for the record, the p and E flags were added just before I wrote this. Thus, previous endorsements of the flag system would not include those two. CXI 14:54, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've been considering this one for a couple of days. I fear that the flags might be too numerous, but I can't think of alternatives; color-coding entries on RC would be garish (and not accessible for some), although it might be useful in combination with flags, for high-probability vandalism like blanking.
I've come to the conclusion it would probably be better to go forward with all of the flags for a test period, and then get feedback from users (especially the Wikipedia:RC patrol) on what is useful and what is clutter. At the very least, I think "+", "-", "B", and "U", and possibly "E", should be/would be retained. I share your concerns about "R" and "C" fueling edit wars -- it basically takes those battles currently fueled by watchlists into everyone's turf. Whether this would turn wars into conflagrations, or bring cooler heads in to moderate, is up for debate, and experimentation, I guess.
"P" seems very useful to me, although I've been trying to think of a word other than "profanity" for it; it's not profanity we're worried about per se, it's the "words commonly abused by vandals". Whatever we call it, I think everyone who has spent any time patrolling RC would agree that it would help highlight the common stupidities (nazi, gay, 0WNZ0RED, etc.), and that it would be easy to learn when it produces false positives. It would also be useful if the diff could somehow highlight the word(s) that tripped the flag, for ease of evaluation. Also nice if users/admins can add words to the "flag" list; perhaps admins could be given the right to remove words from it -- this would allow words to be set temporarily, to deal with spam-vandals, by highlighting edits with a certain non-"profane" words or links, until they get bored.
I can't find it in Mediazilla, but I've heard this request before -- a flag that patrollers can set on an article to say it's already been checked. This alone would save huge amounts of time, if we don't have efforts duplicated quintuply or more. The problem is in who you trust to set the flag.... Anyway, those are my thoughts, hope it helps. Good idea! [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\talk]] 05:25, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps coloured flags could be a configuration option. I'm sure some art-capable person would be able to make them look at least slightly nice. About the edit warring thing, I'm also reserved. I think a fundamental wiki assumption is that most people are mostly good, so from that premise I'd hypothesise that more people looking in on an edit war would shorten its lifespan rather than lengthen it. Whether that actually turns out to be the case is anyone's guess, I suppose.
Good point about the profanity flag. I can't think of anything short of "b" for "bad word" or "t" for possible trolling. Neither of those are particularly good, so maybe we could pretend that it's an old designation that couldn't be changed for compatibility. Perhaps the words could be taken from a protected article like Wikipedia:List of Abuse Trigger Words.
That last idea is a particularly good one, though I don't know if it sits with this particular proposal, which is more in the line of automated flags rather than author or viewer set ones. Regardless, I'd be in favour of a "I've checked this edit and it's okay" option, and an equivalent "someone needs to have a look at this" option, which could also be settable during the edit. Maybe those could be displayed in tally form. CXI 15:37, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Yes, the "I've checked this" flag should not be submitted to the developers as part of this proposal, as it would require different functionality, but if submitted separately each proposal should reference the other.
I don't think "++" or "--" would be necessary; I think it would be better to stick to single-character codes, in any case. On the other, maybe "A" for abuse, or "T" for "trouble" or "trigger"...actually, I think I'm kind of partial to "trigger" -- simple to remember, not judgemental like "troll" or "vandal", broader than "profanity". The use of a protected page for it is good too. [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\talk]] 18:18, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

WikiAdvice

Hi. I'm relatively new to the world of Wiki, and it's got my head buzzing. Wow! This is soo cool... I've been thinking about all the other great things can we apply this to...

Anyways, the idea I thought I'd throw out there for feedback is about the viability of having a WikiAdvice site. I was browsing around on the meta wiki, to see where to suggest my idea, and I think they said that if you want to get feedback on a proposal, to go here. The closest thing I could find on the meta wiki site was that some people proposed a WikiHowTo type concept... I think that WikiAdvice could be much more broader and yet compelling for people to post. After all, everybody loves to give out free advice, right?

Anyways, since I am relatively new, and haven't yet made acquaintances with any of the other members of the wikicommunity, I hope that this idea stands on its own, and isn't judged on who's proposing it... I remember that there's a commercial site called ehow, this would be an opensource version...

As for examples, I think most people can come up with a plethora of advice areas at the drop of a hat. I know that since I'm a new father, new husband, have a new house, am in the business world, and I hear and seek advice all the time.

Here's my stream of consciousness list of ten advice articles that people would enjoy writing as well as reading

  • Children: Getting an infant to sleep
  • Homes: When your toilet stops working
  • Business: Using metrics to measure employee performance
  • Recreation: Planning a hike
  • Gifts: Women: 20-30: Good birthday presents
  • Financial: Setting up a retirement plan
  • Pets: Stopping a neighbor's barking dog
  • Law: Avoiding a traffic ticket
  • Relationships: Keeping your marriage strong
  • Addiction: Wikiposters Anonymous

So... comments? concerns? questions? would people contibute to such a site? Frogcat 20:04, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think these sort of how-to guides fit into Wikibooks:. See how to write an essay for an example similar to some of your suggestions. Angela. 18:23, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Product feedback

Please add some type of feedback possibility to pages so that we can say one or some of the following:

- confusing

- did not get it

- too difficult

- too technical

- written for those who already know it

- missing the simple intro paragraph

- excellent

- one of the best

- perfect

- very professional etc. etc.

such feedback would make it possible for the editors to see if they are on the right track. I see them discussing whether to do this or that on an article, but because there is no real feedback from masses, they are left alone with their own personal opinions. This is bad for articles and bad for the growth of the editors.

Quality can suffer if things are not based on quality, but rather than on opinion of how things should be.

these poll buttons could be simple, easy to click links, which do not bring you to another page. One click poll buttons. There can even be a single line of form field, where we can quickly write something.

One may argue "if you don't like it change it", but for many pages things are pretty well fixed, they have been working and discussing on every word of it for a long time, won't let anybody touch a single coma, justly.

One may argue, "add a discussion", but I don't have time to do that in most cases, like many other users. I would press a button, though. Speed matters here.

Interesting, but how could this be done in a way that is faster than pressing talk and edit and typing whatever you like? Actually we want to promote people taking a more active role in the development of the encyclopaedia. A simple popup labeled "feedback" doesn't send the "You can edit this page right now" message. Having a regular user edit a talk page may be an entry point for his/her future involvement as an editor. — David Remahl 22:01, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hi David.
Not a popup labeled feedback. I did not mean that. Tiny buttons or links on the same page. These small differences matter.
I got the survival benefits of not having feedback buttons. This is a serious subject then. Good luck there.
Imagining that it is fine for survival, it is not true that pressing talk buttons and communicating is as easy as pressing passive feedback buttons. Most people will not press the talk button and say "I don't understand what you say here". Very few people can do that.
Another example of necessity of those feedback buttons: In my opinion, many scientific, mathematics, computing pages are written for those who already know it. Normal people can't benefit much from them. They are not encyclopedia articles, one can't read further than the second line. But am I right? If I could vote, and if others also voted in the same way, authors would know if I am right or not. This is an important piece of information for an author, if people are understanding his page or not. 23:44, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think I agree with David -- this is not merely a "product" but a collaboratively built resource. I think letting people cast "votes" about an article isn't all that helpful to me as an editor ("confusing" hardly tells me what confused you, and three votes for "confusing" may be 3 votes that one sentence is confusing, or people confused at 3 different points). I don't think it's too hard to use a talk page -- click "edit", type a little, press "save". I don't believe it's fair to say "very few people can do that" -- it may be fair to say that very few actually do, in which case I agree with you and I'm open to the possibility of making it more obvious and welcoming for people to do that. But I don't see a voting panel as doing anything but increasing confusion on the part of editors as to what needs to be done (as well as making "vote wars" a new tactic at Wikipedia). Our site is remarkable in that, if you're confused, you can actually fix the problem or leave an anonymous note for someone who can. I don't think we need to distract from that great ability with a more constrictive form of feedback. That's just my opinion, Jwrosenzweig 23:53, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I see. Let me tell you that I am not going to -talk- at each problem article and make a critical remark or seem like stupid by saying that I did not get it. That is a slightly disturbing experience for me, not part of looking something up in an encyclopedia, nor part of my usual internet browsing. Especially knowing that I would be resisted and resisted and proven wrong, the way you did here. But I would press a vote button, that's easy and comfortable, no stress. I guess others feel the same way on that, ask them if you don't believe. Would feedback cut down contributions or detailed criticisms? How much would it cut them down? How much benefit would it bring to articles, to wikipedia? These are sensitive calculations, I cannot solve them from where I am. May be one can use the voting panel as an emotional first step and encouragement to editing, or some other mix solution. But, if you don't want that feedback, then you won't have that feedback.
A note about contributing: I guess there is a problem on the contribution flow. People like contributing, it is fun. But there is a serious difficulty, getting the current editors to accept the new contributions to an article. I mean they are right about it, they have spend so much time. But poor new contributors, they also need to have some fun with things, isn't it? May be there can be multiple versions of an article, randomly shown to users, and people would vote for the best etc. 04:56, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There is a rating system being trialed at the Test Wikipedia. It lets users assign a rating for style, legality, completeness, factual correctness and suitability for publication. Angela. 18:19, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

I think that wikipedia needs some link back buttons so people who have web sites can advertise this one if they want.


~~Melissa~~

There are some Wikipedia:Banners and buttons but if there are any designers out there, we could do with some more. :) Angela. 18:17, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Time and Date/Weight and measures.

Is it possible to handle wights and measures with a configurable approach like dates and time. Not just for Imperial v Metric but also to include switching between tonne, gramme and Gigagram. While I'm here is it possible to add DD/MM/YYYY to the date formats?--Jirate 02:01, 2004 Nov 14 (UTC)

The Semantic Wikipedia

I've been thinking about this proposal for some time, but being a proposal, it of course requires comment and refining.

I've been thinking on how to make Wikipedia better, and while reading about Tim Berners-Lee's Semantic Web, it came to me. We need a Semantic Wikipedia. Perhaps I'm using the wrong term, but I like it. :)

The problem with Wikipedia right now is no sense of context. Everything related to something has to be manually added. For example, when we say that someone was born in 1932, that doesn't really mean anything. It doesn't alter the "people born in 1932" pages, it doesn't alter 1932, and it's nothing more than text. Likewise with saying they were born in Lubbock, Texas, or that they were an architect. Furthermore, saying that an object is in Edinburgh doesn't matter much until we tell Edinburgh that.

We need to automate and integrate these issues.

The idea I had was a mix of a template and meta data. For editing, it would take the appearance of a template, but the template would not be required. For example, a "biography" template would include birthday, deathday, primary occupation, secondary occupation, birthplace, deathplace, primary residence, etc. A planetary template would be appropriately different, as would an elemental one, and some things wouldn't use such templates at all, though they could still use meta data.

A major use of this would be for synopses. For example, "Why this person is famous" in one line. This would allow for quick browsing of entries without having to load the entire entry, and it would be automated based on the entry itself, rather than a manually maintained list. So a list of people born in 1932 could also list the synopsis as to why they're famous. This would also ease the process of picking notable anniversaries.

Some of this is managed by categories, but not nearly enough, and I'm not a fan of the categorization system as it presently stands. However, that is for another discussion.

Does everyone know just what I'm trying to get across here? Meta data to help organize and express the information. For example, the header to George W. Bush could include:

So, when looking at a list of people born on 7/6/46, it would say him, along with the reasons he's notable. This could allow for a quick list of automatically generated synopses.

A secondary advantage of using a template in this fashion would be to remove Categories and Interwikies from the main article space, making it easier to edit and comprehend. They would still be there, but exist as meta data, not in the main text area. Footer and header tables could be maintained the same way, removing them from the concern of the main text.

I've been pondering this for a while and finally put it in writing, so sorry if it rambles a bit. It focuses on biographies, but it could be useful for many things. A city template could include its coordinates, state and country, etc, allowing for people to get a quick list of townships in Ontario, for example, without having to rely on a manually maintained list. I guess what this is all about is automating many functions that should be automated.

Any comments? --Golbez 04:25, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

This issue is handled to some degree by the existence of categories. When a cat tag is added to an article, the category is automatically updated - no need for "manually updated lists". So adding Category:1946 births to George W. Bush puts him on that page. Unfortunately, cats aren't always the most reader-friendly - they are just lists with a little header, and they are slightly out-of-the-way at the bottom of Monobook. I think you have a good suggestion with creating synopses based on these categories - maybe somthing along the lines of a WikiReader, but tied directly to categories. The only problem is that this would require the creation of metadata for every article - all 6,937,868 of them. Some stub articles you couldn't even make metadata from. So while I think this is a good idea, it might not be currently feasible, without a huge project to create vast wodges of metadata. Some pages already have semi-metadata - anything that was formatted by WikiProject Elements, for instance, like Hydrogen, has an infobox. But this is the minority of pages. --Whosyourjudas (talk) 03:58, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Categories are inadequate, though, and contain no context. They don't say who the person was, or why that item is included in that category. And categories themselves are manually updated lists. Yes, all 6,937,868 of them, because this is a work in progress, and always will be. Just because there are already so many articles doesn't mean the process can't be refined. Elements has a good idea, but that's just a couple hundred articles - There are many, many more biographies.
I guess my point here is, few articles have any context beyond their borders. We need to connect them. --Golbez 04:25, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)
I think it's a great idea and have had similar thoughts myself (for instance some standard format for someones birth and death dates that can be automatically recognised replacing Categories YYYY Births and YYYY Deaths which do their job but are 'clumsy'). However like the semantic web itself I think it will probably be another 5 years before the underlying standards evolve and 'bed-down' before the MediaWiki software (or successor of) can incorporate them to level discussed above. CheekyMonkey 14:57, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Then there's no harm in starting work on such now. :) --Golbez 23:19, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)
I am very much interested in the Semantic Web, and I have also been thinking about how Wikipedia can be made more "machine readable". The problem is that people are not that used to working directly with metadata, and doing so is not very wiki-friendly, at least if one goes back to the original thoughts behind wikis (granted, Wikipedia has already side-stepped a lot of the original guidelines where it made sense, and for good measure). We would have to make it as easy to edit and expand the metadata as it is to edit the article right now...I think it is a difficult problem to solve (look at how oblivious most people are to the metadata information stored in Microsoft Word documents. Most of the time they're not even aware it's there).
As an aside, I think it is interesting how wikis and Wikipedia have already brought one of Tim Berners-Lee's original thoughts with the World Wide Web to life; that everyone would become a publisher. The easy editing of the Web was not implemented in the ground-breaking web browsers, and was long forgotten, but wikis bring that back. Wouldn't it be great if Wikipedia could be on the forefront of yet another web revolution; the Semantic Web? — David Remahl 23:27, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments, and yeah, it was the articles on him and the Semantic Web that started this churning in my mind. My idea was, there would be templates (like "put date of birth here") but those wouldn't be required; the metadata would be stored with the article text just like categories and interwikis are, causing them to show up in a diff. A side benefit of this would be to also add a separate template text entry section of interwikis and categories, thus perhaps enforcing format rules as to where they belong in the article text. I wonder if Tim Berners-Lee is familiar with Wikipedia? Surely he's heard of it, but how familiar is he? --Golbez 10:30, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
He certainly has heard of it, he even described Wikipedia as "The Font of All Knowledge" in a speech to the MIT Emerging Technologies Conference [1] (penultimate paragraph). CheekyMonkey 14:05, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I like the idea. It is essentially normallizing part of the data (in database terms). It would allow one to use that data programmaticaly. Morris 03:26, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
Right. It would convert the information from pure text into meta data that can be used to ease organization, searching, browsing, and integration of data between articles. --Golbez 18:39, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, I agree such a system is needed. I thought about it also, for country data, because statistics like population or GDP change quickly, so there should be some nice way to update all articles about countries with new data. Samohyl Jan 12:32, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Take a look at Web Ontology Language. There was a long discussion without conclusion, now archived at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Archive_3, just after categories were introduced. See the "Describing the relations" and "Ontologies and OWL" sections for my thoughts. -- Avaragado 19:05, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone want to help clean up the Wikipedia namespace?

The Wikipedia tutorials, policies, guidelines, "clubs", etc. are terribly disorganized, and some of them (WP:NPOV) are plodding and hard to read. Some pages, also, are far more well-written and accurate than others. Some pages are long-dead for lack of incoming links! Shall we start a WikiProject for the Wikipedia namespace? Ashiibaka tlk 05:37, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'd be happy to contribute. I'm already trying to streamline all the style guidance (as opposed to policy) on User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide (though I'll probably call it Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles). But there's a lot of other stuff to consolidate and organise too. jguk 14:19, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Yes, making a WikiProject would be great. I've worked on cleaning up the Research resources, and the Collaboration resources templates, but it would be great to have a central place to share projects and get attention to them. Yes, yes, good idea! JesseW 04:16, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
OK, I'll make a WikiProject: Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia Namespace. Wow, what a lot of copies of the word "wiki". ;-) Anyway, there's the page; I'll update this thread as I add information to it. JesseW 07:15, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Proposal to enforce the Three Revert Rule

There is a vote and discussion on whether and how to enforce the Wikipedia:Three revert rule on Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement and Wikipedia talk:Three revert rule enforcement. Please come and contribute your comments/votes. jguk 14:22, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

List of pages to watch for POV

I think we need a List of pages to watch for POV. Teofilo Vargas Sein is a perfect example of why we need a page klike that; we could keep control over pages that outsiders commonly change to satisfy their own, personal needs. Another good example of a page that could go into that list would be Los Macheteros.

"Antonio Wikipedia Knight Martin"

There already is a Wikipedia:List of controversial issues. Probably this is sufficient. Does it need to be better linked to? zoney ♣ talk 16:24, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it probably does. See above topic on fixing up the Wikipedia namespace... JesseW 04:17, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Homework: wikipedia

The creation and maintenience of wikipedia articles seems like the perfect term project for a college class. The wikipedia would benefit from high-quality, informed additions, guaranteed by the grading policy of the Professor, and the Professor and class would benefit from all the normal reasons associated with schoolwork, AND the warm+fuzzy feeling that comes from making the world a better place.

Assignments could be as small as requiring each student to make one update to one page, to having the whole class collectively create new topics.

To this end, I would like to create an informational document that would explain the concept of the wikipedia to my professors and would encourage them to have their class contribute. It might provide some general guidelines and suggestions for assignments, examples, etc.

What do you all think?

It's a good idea; I think it's been done once or twice already. Stuff has been written about it, try searching the Wikipedia namespace for "schools" or "homework"... Sorry I don't remeber where exactly. But it's a good idea. JesseW 04:19, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In some cases, the results have not been all good. Most recently, the Dartmouth students who created articles on the minutiae of Dartmouth college life. However, the same project did create a high number of valuable additions too. It's important to have a clear and well-thought-through policy for the homework, if possible focusing on the collaborative moment aspect. There may also be copyright concerns, as all content submitted to Wikipedia must be licensed under the GFDL. I'm sure all this is better explained in the link Jmabel provided, so I'll be quiet in class now. — David Remahl 07:33, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The Dartmouth project completely ignored the guidelines at Wikipedia:School and university projects. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:58, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Some things are easier to find in a paper encyclopedia...

because there is a concept that certain things (which come together in alphabetical order) are adjacent in the encyclopedia.

For example: I want to look up information about a certain Mark Green. It turns out that the one I want is "Mark J. Green". On paper, the two Mark Greens would be together so it would be trivial to turn to the correct page in the "G" volume, and find the one I want.

Would it be possible and desirable to have some feature for finding articles which have consecutive titles? Maybe some menu that has the ten articles immediately before and after (in alphabetical order) the one that I'm currently looking at?

That would solve many of the problems of slight variations of middle initials or whatever that make it hard for me to find articles on people.

Other suggestions are of course welcome.

Morris 22:02, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Special:Allpages already does this (example), though it's not exactly the best-known page in Wikipedia. Otherwise there's always proper disambiguation. —No-One Jones (m) 22:05, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
If you click "search" instead of "go", it will bring up all the pages with "Mark Green" in the title, which might help. If search is working. --Golbez 22:13, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
I see your point on Special:Allpages. It would somehow seem more logical to find all of the Green's, not all of the Mark's. Think of like Robert Oppenheimer (who is actually under J. Robert Oppenheimer. I feel like I'd like some way to find articles just keyed from the first few letters in someone's lastname. Think if you're thinking of adding an article about someone, you really have to think of every permutation of given names and initials to make sure it's not already there. That is frustrating.
Although it isn't kept current, there is the List of people by name: Gre. —Mike 04:51, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Well, we usually have redirects for most common versions of the names, there should not be too much problem finding all the Mark Greens. Typing Green, Mark Green or Mark J. Green will all get you there. Intrigue 04:21, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thesean method or thread

I need help in finding a definition of the subject referenced above; Thesean method or thread. dlg

I would assume that it is a reference to Theseus in the labyrinth of Minos. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:53, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
  • If so, the idea was the Theseus went into the maze with a big spool of thread, with the end affixed to the door to the maze. After he killed the monstor, he escaped from the maze by following the thread (which allowed him to retrace his steps).

A tour through math

What: A list page that would walk a reader through the math pages in a sensible order.

Why: Wikipedia has a lot of great math articles. But if you don't already know a lot about a term, you can't really learn it from Wikipedia. An article or category that would walk the reader from one article to the next would allow the neophyte to learn new concepts, then build on them by going on to more complex concepts.

Who: Someone who got further than AP Calculus.

Simple, but powerful. Chris vLS 20:48, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A project for Wikibooks rather than Wikipedia, I think. See wikibooks:Mathematics bookshelf for mathematical textbooks. Gdr 14:21, 2004 Nov 19 (UTC)
Or a Wikipedia:wikireader
Wikireader is close to, but not quite, what I'm talking about in that it leverages existing content. Wikibooks are separately written and thus often incomplete. But, unlike Wikireader, I'm not so interested in the printability and sale. Really I'm just trying to precipitate the current content into a useful form, since today it's pretty hard for a user who wants to learn to actually use our existing content. Chris vLS 20:12, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Actually what I'm looking for is a set of math series, like the New Imperialism series. Chris vLS 20:29, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

New template

Hello, everyone. I don't know if this is the right place to post this, if it isn't please move and let me know on my talk page. I just wanted to make it generally known that I have created a template for user talk pages of users that change/remove the {{sandbox}} header. It is Template:Sbox, but when using it you must type {{sbox|123.456.78.90}}, but putting in the real IP address of the user. It comes out like this:

Template:Sbox

Please (on my talk page) criticize and comment on it. Sadly, it has been vandalised twice in the 10 minutes it's been in existance, so if it looks odd check its history. Thanks,--[[User:Gabriel Webber|Gabriel | talk]] 18:53, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Hello, 123.456.78.90" is a bit of a strange greeting, especially for some people who won't understand that this is their IP number. It's also worth noting that anons who are just editing the sandbox are probably not likely to stay around long enough to see messages left for them. Angela. 21:34, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
I made a new version at Template:Sbox2 so you don't need to put in the IP address. --Sgeo | Talk 13:04, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Approval mechanism for Wikipedia 1.0

I've had a bit of a brainwave after reading various approaches to approval mechanisms. My proposed solution is here. My overriding aim as been to produce a solution which is acceptable to the majority of Wikipedians. I look forward to comments. :ChrisG 19:26, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Random page categories

Would it be possible to add a modifier to the random page tool so that it only selects from specific categories? Just a thought that would make my enjoyment of the random page tool even greater.

Bantman 00:17, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)


I agree completely. Since I usually want science or history articles, the random page feature is often irritating as it gives for example, huge amounts of small towns in the US. I've been thinking this for some time actually, wierd that the day I choose to propose it, I find it has been proposed mere minutes before.

Harley peters 00:56, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Not everything is categorized. The vast majority of Wikipedia articles would never appear. RickK 07:21, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Ah, but those articles are implicitly in the category Category:Articles not in any category. Seriously, lack of membership of a particular category, or of any categories, would be useful search options if such a thing were implemented. -- Avaragado 14:32, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

List(s) of canonical articles?

I am not an admin, and just a minor contributor. I'm aware of the debate in the media about Wikipedia and its utility. It was nice to see Wikipedia being mentioned, if not praised by Bamber Gascoigne on the UK's BBC Radio 4 channel recently.

My proposal is that those wishing to improve the quality and reliability of Wikipedia should form an editorial board (or perhaps several competing boards) and produce lists of versions of canonical articles - i.e. those that have been reviewed by the board and met with approval. Those who agree with the editorial stance of their preferred board or boards could then use the list of canonical articles produced by the board as a filter into Wikipedia. Articles would not then need to be 'locked' against further editing. Ideally, the Wikimedia software could be modified such that an individual could turn on such a filter (or filters) in their preferences i.e. only view or search articles listed by the 'Peer reviewed only' board, or the 'Child friendly' board, or the 'Creationist' board.

This approach does not impose a particular editoral board's view on all users of Wikipedia, and does not hinder the addition of information to articles.

The list of canonical versions of articles would have to be protected to be modifiable only by those authorised by the particular editorial board producing the list.

One possible approach might be to tag particular article versions with a tag indicating approval by a particular editorial board.

I'm not putting myself forward as wishing to set up or participate in such a board - it would be beyond my competence. I think the facility would be useful, and may help to cut down on edit wars.

WLD 10:13, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Its a good idea. In fact it sounds rather like Wikipedia 1.0. See also User:ChrisG's tagging proposal above. -- Solipsist 10:35, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the links to those proposals. The scope of the proposal is not a broad as Wikipedia 1.0 - it's not aiming for publication, simply (user chosen) filtering of the online version. It could be used to aid the Wikipedia 1.0 process 'though. I think, from my reading, that it slightly extends the tagging proposal, as I suggest the use of multiple tags, many of which could apply to any one article version e.g. a tag meaning 'checked for lack of copyright violations', a tag meaning 'approved by the Brobdignagian editorial board' and a tag meaning 'approved by the Lilliputian editorial board' could all be on a single article version. As an approach, it's rather close to 'forking' wikipedia, but if you browse with tag-filtering off, you get all articles - it up to you to set a preference saying you'll only view articles approved by the <whatever. editorial board. WLD 11:01, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The category "Editorial validation" has related material, such as the encyclopedic standards forum. Maurreen 11:13, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think that this is a suitable idea to raise at Wikipedia:Forum_for_Encyclopedic_Standards. I would point out that many of tools to accomplish this already exist:
  • You can link to a specific version of an article. So if any editorial group could recommend specific versions.
  • You could categorise articles that meet your groups standards using the category system.
If you did that you would only have to wait for the validation method chosen for Wikipedia 1.0, which inevitably allow some kind of tagging of article versions and the ability to restrict which version you see.
My difficulty with this idea is that it will produce competing schemes, because different boards will no doubt approve different versions of an article because they will have to edit the article till it meets their standards. You will thus create competing schemes and have no way to bring them together in one article, because the wiki process immediately will create a further versions which may no longer meet the standard of each board.
I could see this working if there was a holistic Wikipedia 1.0 standard which an editorial group worked towards. In effect featuring an article works to an somewhat implicit Featured Article Standard. :ChrisG
Thankyou for your feedback. Please (anyone) feel free to raise at Wikipedia:Forum_for_Encyclopedic_Standards - I'm not sure I know how to do this. I'm glad most of the tools exist as it confirms my understanding of how Wikimedia works, as well as the processes by which Wikipedia is built on Wikimedia. I agree that it would tend to produce competing schemes, but personally, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - competition is often regarded as a good thing, and I think it would be wrong to try and impose a single editorial standard on the articles in Wikipedia. To my mind, the 'Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Board' could the first of many 'edits' of the Wikipedia resource - just as there are different interpretations of symphonies and plays, there is room for different editorial views of Wikipedia. It would also allow for 'sub-groups' e.g. an editorial team that qualifies medical articles, or legal articles, or engineering articles -producing respectively the Wiki Medical Cyclopaedia, the Wiki Legal Concordance and the Wiki Engineering Textbook. I know efforts do this are happening already - I just think (perhaps wrongly) that canonical lists/non-editable tags on particular version could help. Anyway, thanks for listening (reading?) - I have to prepare for my day job now. WLD 22:30, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Personal Pages

I think it would be great if we could have more than one personal page. If we could have a main personal page and two or three other pages listed under our wiki ID, it would be great. --DoubleRing 19:53, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Just create subpages. E.g. User:DoubleRing/Interests, User:DoubleRing/Contributions/Images. - Fredrik | talk 20:15, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Version 1.0?

Sundar and I are discussing the idea of another Collaboration of the Week, or something roughly similar. The purpose would be essentially to find, screen, develop or maintain (or all of those) articles or article versions appropriate for a paper or "release" version of Wikipedia.

We'll probably start at top-level categories and branch out from there, but other options are open. If you're interested (whether in helping or just discussing), please join us at Wikipedia:Breadth and quality. Maurreen 08:54, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

keeping track of FAs

I propose that the Template:Featured put on FA's Talk pages be expanded to include

  • (edit) the date of the featuring
  • a link to the version of the article at the moment it was given FA status
  • a link to the archived WP:FAC discussion

This will make it much easier to screen FAs for deterioration (inspired by yesterday's FA-o-the-day, Talk:Indus Valley Civilization). This proposal is also related to the "WP 1.0" screening suggested above: we need some sort of handy record, what version of the article was screened (yes, the information can always be collected from page history, but apparently that's not good enough, as the version linked from WP:FA is the current version, not the original featured one). dab 11:35, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree with this. I think currently the talk page flags when the article becomes featured; but there is no record on the article itself. The proper process ought to be to resave the version at that time with a edit summary of 'Featured'. :ChrisG 11:57, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
but we need some protection against fake FA's. I can easily "feature" my pet articles without anyone noticing. A link to the FAC discussion is needed to give it some credibility in any case. dab 12:04, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Agree that something needs to be done. Could we see a prototype? Filiocht 12:46, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)
how about Template:Featuredpar? dab 13:40, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Works for me. Maurreen 17:51, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea to me. — Matt 18:02, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. The example template is far too massive. Readers have little interest in the date an article was approved or the debate that lead it to its being featured. Such information is for editors and belongs on the talk page. If we must have such a template it should be something unobtrusive like:
However the example used above, from today's featured article, shows the disadvantages with this idea. The approved version contains a number of factual and grammatical errors that have since been fixed. - SimonP 19:01, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure readers would be disinterested. If you're looking to evaluate how trustworthy the page is, then how long ago it was featured, the actual "Featured version", and the associated discussion are of interest. For example, a reader might be following the advice of Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia#Look_for_comprehensive_review. — Matt 19:09, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The advice of "Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia#Look_for_comprehensive_review" is to read the article's talk page. Readers would be much better served by having all the article's process information listed on that one sub-page, rather than having some of it linked separately from the article itself. - SimonP 19:23, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)
(Just to clarify, I think the proposal is to expand the tag which is included on the Talk: page, not add a new box to the actual article. — Matt 19:35, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC))
Sorry, I misunderstood completely. I read this proposal and the suggested template as a proposed solution to ChrisG's complaint that "there is no record on the article itself" of an article's featured status. - SimonP 20:41, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Downline Clones&Snapshots

Is it a question or a proposal : Can wikipedia integrate as a requirement to down-line clones the acceptance as a condition of their free use that they accept a built in giant wiki RSS-like feed of updates/corrections/expansion? Is it hellish expensive /impossible though aren't Clones feeding from the source already ? Do they just add new pages (as opposed to editing within pages )at present or do they take snapshots at long intervals . Don't Clones who take snapshots and everybody already have to accept conditions for everything ? Clones just show me that they're very slow to renew/correct the data , and since really it isn't even clones but vast website populations referring to single pages that suit them , it means they can feed their own perhaps rubbish into Wikipedia and then get it back out, branded with the good name of Wikipedia as a PR plug for their site's stance. The solution would have to be a feed embedded on every page , so ,and leave with each uptake of data leaving . Yes, it sounds a bit controlling but I ask this as a reaction simply to abuse not use .The present situation means that wiki stuff goes down to a lower level that has no interaction,so no checks and balances beyond that moment of data withdrawal.Flamekeeper 22:11, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The only condition Wikipedia clones and mirrors must accept is the GFDL, under which (most) contributions are licensed. The Wikimedia Foundation does not have the authority to change the terms of the license, as it is not the copyright holder, the authors are. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:24, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The copyright holders don't have the authority to change the terms of the license either (is that correct?) — Matt 00:37, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
That's correct. The GFDL is non-revokable. Copyright holders can choose to offer the material under a different license, in addition to the GFDL, though. — David Remahl 12:30, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

So maybe Debian are right and it doesn't work 'cause it's not editable where I find clones/forks parading the brand. Does this mean the train rolls on forever with a wheel off? What I'm concerned about seems to creep inside and I understand is it that the rules accepted from foundation can't change so nothing can be done .Is everything locked up like making DRM look so yesterday ? So re-start another whole wiki is it that fixes the issue ? I'm sorry I don't get it -surely the wikipedia has to blaze a trail for us all . So otherwise - let me get this, the sum total of knowledge has to go in accord (effectively causing error as much as light) with a copyright that sits in a register as constituted by that body , of how many lines ,and wikipedia cannot develope a better solution . I thought pavlov had a problem...but if you're right, Matt ,still there could be an agreement between the two , given goodwill. These are all nice guys aren't they, there's no money is there, so why not? At this rate no one 's going to change anything , the conspiracy we maybe don't know about will always remain un-branded so the beneficiaries get off again. Flamekeeper 01:08, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What? -- Cyrius|✎ 01:31, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I am told elsewhere(technical) that this proposal to stream-down corrected wikipedia articles would be technically feasible . Flamekeeper 09:22, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

um, what? It's really just the GFDL, we have no control on what they do with the stuff beyond that. The GFDL, however, may be problematic even for the WP editing process (?) dab 13:34, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
But the downstream users would always have the possibility and right to remove any techincal meassures put into articles. — David Remahl 12:30, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The GFDL is not set in stone. There is a migration clause in the version that Wikipedia requires. So if FSF creates GFDL 2.0 then we can choose to use its terms instead. And that goes for reusers too, of course. There is no risk that the GFDL would require RSS feeds, anyway. — David Remahl 12:30, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

New template another

I've noticed that several sysops enjoy leaving this message on vandals' talk pages:

Do not vandalize or you will be prevented from editing. Username, et al.

(without wiki)
Do not [[Wikipedia:Vandalism|vandalize]] or you will be prevented from editing. ~~~~

I think that there should be a template for this, if there is not one already. Here is my contribution at {{ban}}.

See Template:Test, Template:Test2, Template:Test3, Template:Test4, and Template:Test5. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:08, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
we should also think of removing these messages from anonymous talk pages, since users tend to be confused by gripes on their talk that date back to some ancient vandalism that occurred on the same IP. dab 08:43, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have noticed that links to objects in the "Media" namespace, e.g., Media:1000Hz.ogg, are marked with the same icon used to mark external links. That could be confusing for those users who have not customized their CSS to properly differentiate visually between media and external links, because the default shade of blue that marks external links is not quite different-looking from the default shade of blue used to mark media links. So, I drew a new icon () that I propose could be used to mark media links in MediaWiki. What do you think? Denelson83 04:03, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I like it, it's kind of cute. There would have to be controls, however, to allow individual users to suppress such an icon: I know many don't like the external link icon. --Phil | Talk 08:02, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)
I like the external link icon. Helps to quickly determine possible off-site links. Although, I think some reinterruptation for internal links written as external links need to be looked at. --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 09:02, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Mark users unlikely to perform vandalism?

Hey, if people are looking out on the RC page for vandalism, why not have an option to not notice registered users who have made more than (arbitrary numbers) 100 edits or created 10 articles and haven't recieved any warnings or anything? Such people are very unlikely to be vandals (or even make stupid but well-meant edits that need reverting) and it would save time to have an option to not show them. -Cookiemobsta 00:51, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

We already have that, pretty much - click "Hide logged in users" on the recent changes page. Of course, logged-in users are occasionally vandals, and anons are not always vandals, so it's not perfect... Adam Bishop 05:26, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, I know-I was hoping for a way to narrow it down even more and save time for people who are watching the RC page. -Cookiemobsta 19:35, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Proposal for draft pages and a 'chalkboard'

Ramius V. Schweitzer 01:51, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

draft pages

So as to decrease the amount of actual page edits, i propose the ability to flag revisions and/or page creations as drafts until kinks are worked out. I realize that there is a 'preview' button, yet things still can be over looked. The advantage that i see is for when someone (like myself with the clean up of the covenant page) is working with cleaning up an article through the restructuring of information, and distrobution of information to new 'files', they would be able to fine ttune their method without mucking up the 'edit history' page.

Ramius V. Schweitzer 01:52, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

  • Agree. Optionally, drafts can be recorded in page history, but when something is marked as final draft, all previous drafts are wrased 05:08, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
~reads up on 'sandbox'ing~ Ramius V. Schweitzer 05:46, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

chalkboard

Similar to a clipboard, it would function as a place where editors could place things that they cut and paste often. Maybe even advancing the idea so far as to have three sections to a chalkboard: single session, multi-session, and functional. the atributes of the third section would include a tie in to the keyboard so that an editor only need to hold ctrl+1 or ctrl+2 (through zero for a total of ten 'hot keys') to paste an object listed as one through zero in that section. The object being a phrase or a word or internal/external link and the list being changable as the needs change. The 'advancing of this could go so far as to join the multi-session and the functional session by leaving a 'window' where the function number could be assigned. Though i can see how advancing this far could be a hinderance. Note: this feature would be saved on the Wiki servers, however when a user logs in they get transfered to the user's computer space, and saved back to the wiki servers only if there have been edits made to the list.

Ramius V. Schweitzer 01:52, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Deletionism

I noticed the word "deletionism", apparently refering to someone who has a tendency to delete things for whatever reason. It occured to me that a malicious net surfer may be tempted by the format of Wikipedia to simply come in and go through the pages deleting EVERYTHING. It's easy to have revert fights over phrasing or inclusion of certain parts of certain pages, but does Wiki have some way to protect against firebombing of this type?

The worst a random surfer could do is blank the page -- i.e., edit the page, delete all the text and save. We can easily restore the previous text using the page history, as every version of every page is saved in our database -- in fact, it takes us less work to restore than it takes him to do it in the first place. And if he did this to several pages in a row, he would rapidly be banned for vandalism. (See Wikipedia:Replies to common objections for more.)
The only people who can delete a page permanently are admins who are voted for by the community, and even then they have to go through the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion process (except for obvious speedy deletions, like copyright violations and "afdja" and "Matt is gay"). The words "deletionists" and "inclusionist" are used for the spectrum of Wikpedians with differing philosophies on the value of any given article -- inclusionists don't see why we shouldn't have articles on, say, recipes, high schools, web comics, or Pokemons, as long as the information is verifiable and NPOV, where deletionists will tend to try to delete anything that's not encyclopedic and notable. The two also tend to differ on what to do with low-quality "stub" articles (especially on borderline topics) -- should they be left to grow, or should they be deleted? The arguments over what "encyclopedic" and "notable" mean, and what it means that Wikipedia is not paper, and how VFD affects contributors (especially new ones), are ongoing and unlikely to be solved soon. Personally, I think it's the very tension between the two that keeps the thing working reasonably well, just as the tension between liberal and conservative in politics ought to keep us from either stagnating or going off on wild idealistic tangents. But that's just me. Hope that illuminates....[[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\talk]] 04:56, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Even admins can't delete articles permanently: while "deleted" articles are not visible to non-admins, other admins can view and undelete the deleted pages. There is even a page, WP:VFU to vote for deleted pages to be undeleted. Edit histories can be lost if, for example, page moves/merges are screwed up, and deleted images are gone permanently and can't be undeleted, though. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:45, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Users browsing / editing this page...

This might go under technical, but... this is an idea from a forum, where at the bottom of each thread or forum, it has a list of users looking at the page. (With the option to hide your username) Maybe this is a worth wild idea to implement to generate page stats on number of people viewing the page, and what not??? --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 08:59, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Front page for all election announcements

I want to propose that the main page is used to announce the current arbitrators election. And also all elections for administrators etc. At the moment there are around a quarter of a million Wikipedia editors, and a recent "election" for an administrator had only about 50 votes for and 17 against. I know there's a mention on the Community Portal page for the arb-com election but most users/visitors won't see that.

Obviously the users aren't being properly represented and this leads to mainly activists and often unsuitable people dominating the running of The Wikipedia. I suggest a colourful click-able box on the front page. Like the ones that are being touted around various users' pages, (mainly, it seems to me, for the candidates' and their friends benefit rather than the Wikipedia "electorate".)WikiUser 19:01, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This might be better suited for the user page after login. though this is just an observation from a n00b.Ramius V. Schweitzer 19:44, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

That's a sensible suggestion, but I want to make sure anyone who visits The Wikipedia knows about elections and can be involved if they wish.217.204.65.186 20:46, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The above post "217.204.65.186 at 20:46, 26 Nov" was from me (the system told me I was logged in), but administrator Neutrality blocked me as I was trying to helpfully point out that. Fortunately another helpful Admin (I think it was Genteen) must've unblocked me.WikiUser 21:41, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think election announcements should go on the main page. The reason is simple: elections are only of interest to editors of Wikipedia, not readers. That's why talk pages exist: so that editors can discuss article content without disrupting the article itself for readers. The best place for election announcements is the watchlist. All editors have one and see it frequently. -- Avaragado 12:15, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
No, the watchlist is not used by everyone. I didn't start using it until after 1.5 months or so of very regular editing. Jimbo has suggested the Edit page, and it does seem the to be the logical page that every editor sees regularly. — David Remahl 12:22, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
"The best place for election announcements is the watchlist. All editors have one and see it frequently."-- Avaragado. -I don't because I'm not sure I know what it is. Putting the announcement of elections on the main page is sound. What's more important to go on it than who runs The Wikipedia? If they have room for things like this: "Did you know...that some people in the BDSM community are sexually aroused by being gagged?", and a box asking for donations, then they could easily put a box like I suggested on. It's updated every day. I watch out for such matters but I didn't know about the 13th August elections until I came across a mention of them by chance about 3 weeks ago.
Admins have the power to block people permanently and drive away new people but I rarely see an announcement of an admin election, (unless I spot someone asking a friend to vote for them on their talk page). I also think some readers would be interested and then get involved.
"Jimbo has suggested the Edit page, and it does seem the to be the logical page that every editor sees regularly. " — David Remahl - I haven't seen that, is this being discussed elsewhere?WikiUser 20:48, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Admins have the power but not the authority to unilaterally block people. An admin being "elected" is nearly a daily occurance — there are always nominations and votes ongoing on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. You're welcome to participate. Since anything that an admin does can be reverted by another admin (with one notable exception; image deletions), adminship is not that big a deal.
There has been a lot of discussion about election visibility on User talk:Jimbo Wales. I think it might have been on that page that he suggested that the edit page would be an appropriate place for election announcements (though he did not mean admin appointments, these are dealt with on RFA.) — David Remahl 12:32, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

<HotKey>-Click to lookup any word on WikiPedia on Wiktionary?

<HotKey>-Click to lookup any word on WikiPedia on Wiktionary? andor on WikiPedia itself?

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a request to simplify the user watchlist

While going through the watch list looking for new edits and responses to posts on the "village pump" i've noticed that there is no easy way to verify what posts are new verses what are old. there appears to be very little in the way of advancement on that page at all. I say this due to the point i just brought up and another i've been meaning to bring up: as a whole the watchlist is difficult to read. Maybe not difficult, but it could be easier. I propose some sort of flag to recocnize additions to talk pages and reworking the format to which each entry on the list is presented. I feel that truncating information and adding columns (at least one were the posting user is the start of the new column) would make the page less of a hassle. I would make an example of my watch list, but i am unable to edit the format.

I apologize if this was brought up outside of the recent unarchived history. Yet i feel it is important. Ramius V. Schweitzer 22:29, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that it's not a simple thing to implement. It would require quite a bit of code, and potentially break the "edit this page" function (or be broken by it). -- Cyrius|✎ 23:27, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
hmmmm, i see.Ramius V. Schweitzer 23:29, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Auto create edit summaries?

Hey, for certain types of edits (For example, all that is added is the stub message) maybe an auto edit summary should be made-so if somebody marks something as a stub and does nothing else, the edit summary says "Stub". Would save people time making edit summaries. -Cookiemobsta 05:16, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How do I submit an article for consideration?

I'm sure I've overlooked it but I wasn't sure how to submit an article I'd like to have considered for posting on your website? It concerns an Irish priest, Father James Edwin Coyle, who served his priestly life in Alabama (USA)from 1896 to until he was assassinated on August 11, 1921 on the front porch of the old wooden rectory at St. Paul's Catholic Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Shortly before the murder, Father Coyle had presided at the marriage of a minister's daughter who had become Catholic to a dark-skinned Puerto Rican. The girl's father walked up on the porch where Father Coyle sat after supper, fired three shots, two missed but one struck Father below the left ear. He died forty minutes later at St. Vincent's Hospital. In a week-long trial two months later, the shooter was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Father Coyle was 48 when he died. He was a native of Drum, Athlone, County Roscommon, Ireland. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham. His grave is marked by a thick, ten-foot high Celtic cross. The murder took place during a years-long period of unfortunate public anti-Catholic economic and psychological persecution promoted by the Ku Klux Klan and a secret anti-Catholic political society called the True Americans. Their motto was "No Catholics in Public Office". During this tense period, Father Coyle was unwavering in his defense of the Catholic Faith and what Catholics believe. It is believed by Catholics in County Roscommon and in Birmingham that Father Coyle's life should be examined to determine if he was a Martyr for the Catholic Faith and if he is a candidate for canonization as a Saint... written by John Wright, Jr., Birmingham, AL. USA, e-mail: jlwjr1927@cs.com, phone 205-979-6745.

One way is to enter "James Edwin Coyle" in the search box, on the left of the page and click Go. Then click on the red "create article" link. Also read the help pages. See the link at the top left of page. You can register if you wish by clicking the blue "log in" link at the right top of the page. Welcome to this site.WikiUser 21:16, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Or edit a page (any page will do, if you don't save the first edit, but better to find an appropriate one to create link in to your new article), and add [[James Edwin Coyle]], and then preview and click on the red link. Here is a link for free: James Edwin Coyle. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:21, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Given a point I made (see Media of the United States#Internet) about links to organisations that charge to see articles, would it be useful to make a list of newspapers, etc. that charge to see their archives and those that don't? This might be handy for wikipedia editors who want to put a link in to corroborate some part of their article, but who would prefer not to use a source that charges for its material. In the UK, for instance, the BBC and The Guardian seem to keep all old articles on-line for free, whereas The Independent doesn't. It might help charging organisations to change their policy if, say, links/wisits to their web sites were to reduce significantly because wikipedia took a stance to keep its editors informed on this matter. If this hasn't already been done, I propose a List of sites that have a charging policy for access information. Matt Stan 09:51, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A few examples of prominent such sites (pioneering charging for information, high revenue, failed attempts, etc) would be useful, but could be embedded in prose in another article. I don't think a separate list is needed. Wikipedia is not a web directory. — David Remahl 10:33, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
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