Change "+" tab to "leave a comment"

I've been informally interviewing my friends about their experiences with Wikipedia, and man, do we have a lot of work to do if we want more intelligent, normal people to contribute.

One newcomer couldn't even figure out how to leave a comment on a talk page, so I propose that we change the "+" tab to "leave a comment". She liked that idea.

I believe this is accomplished by editing MediaWiki:Addsection. I'd go ahead and be bold, but that's a little too bold...

What do others think? — Omegatron 16:18, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessary. The plus tab made immediate sense to me, because it represented adding something. But that is just based on my own experience, since I do not know any other Wikipedia editors or serious users. On narrower viewports, it is cumbersome to have lengthy tabs because they are very close to the personal links. Adrian M. H. 20:59, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I worry that changing the plus icon to text that long might break screens at 800x600. x42bn6 Talk Mess 21:16, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't even notice + for a long time, but that's just me. On talk pages, edit this page should be given less emphasis (unbolded) than + because + is probably used a lot more often than edit this page. People should only need to click edit this page when they want to change banners at the top or to refactor the entire page. To respond to an individual section, use the section's own [edit] link. If discussion gets shortened to talk and edit this page gets shortened to edit or renamed to the more intuitive edit entire page, then + can be renamed to add section or something. 800x600 should be able to handle it. –Pomte 21:27, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree wholeheartedly with de-emphasizing "edit" on talk pages and emphasizing "new section" and the section edit links. — Omegatron 01:00, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I run 800x600 and "leave a comment" would fit fine. This, that and the other 07:22, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This would need a lot of testing with various browsers and font sizes at 800x600. When the tabs overflow, they tend to disappear, a very bad thing. — Carl (CBM · talk) 08:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When the talk pages are forum-structured, there will be a "new post" button and everything will make sense. They won't have to know how to create a section header or sign their post either. Dcoetzee 08:05, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, when I set my font size to 40, the tabs overflow; so maybe we should just change them all to single letters.  :-) — Omegatron 15:05, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like the shortest possibler button labels up there. ^(H) 16:16, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are ways to customize everything with javascript and CSS for advanced users and sysops with 15 tabs, but the default user interface should be targeted at the newest of newcomers. "+" is almost meaningless in this context. — Omegatron 19:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I recall this proposal previously got rejected due to historical reasons or some such, but if it does go through, there are some other message in Special:Allmessages that may need changing as well. –Pomte 23:55, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Historical reasons"? Bah.  :-) — Omegatron 00:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If we were to change "Discussion" to "Talk" (see Proposal #39, below), there would be room to change the "+" to "New Post". Two birds in a bush or something like that . . . Bielle 01:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think "discuss" would be better if trying to save space. — Omegatron 00:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

'Edit this page' is an action that applies to the visable page. 'Discussion' and 'article' are places we go. I wonder if removing the grey line under 'edit this page' would make clear what the tab applies to? Then we could change 'edit this page' to 'edit'. That would give us room to change '+' to some friendly verb. Tom Harrison ^Talk 17:50, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't aware of the tab until now. I fully agree with the change. It's a useful tab and there's no reason why editors must wait more than one year (the time I've been editing) to know that it exists. A.Z. 02:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If it gets changed into "leave a comment" then in light of it being very long, I suggest changing "edit this page" on talk pages into "edit". It's good to say "edit this page" on articles, but it's not a good idea on talk pages. --Steinninn 09:21, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One of the reasons I prefer the venerable "classic" skin for Wikipedia. Over on the left side I see "Edit this page", "Discuss the page", etc. -- simple enough for a simple guy like me. I only wish I had the stick-to-it-iveness to learn CSS & help keep that skin up to date. -- llywrch 23:05, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I made the change. As I said in my edit summary, this proposal's been here for nearly a month with a slight plurality support.

This is NOT necessarily final, but should encourage much more discussion and a global consensus instead of a local consensus. If it's causing problems on pages that transclude this message (besides the tabs), feel free to revert it. Otherwise please leave it up so people can see it, decide whether they like the change or not, and reach a good consensus on whether it should be kept. — Omegatron 06:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is way too long, IMO. Call it Add if you want it to be easier to understand, but tabs are getting way too long for example for people that add other tabs to their interface. I now need to be full screen to see my last tab. -- lucasbfr ^talk 10:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, it's way too long to be useful. Either "Edit this page" needs to become "Edit" or this "Leave a Comment" needs to be shrunk back down to "+". I don't care which, but it's way too long right now. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 13:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that "+" means nothing. My suggestion would be "Add" or (preferably) "Add comment". --Edokter (Talk) 13:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Talk Pages

Summary: change the tab title (MediaWiki:Talk label) from 'discussion' to 'talk'.

(the first few posts of this thread were moved from Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Talk Pages)

When I first discovered Wikipedia, I spent much time looking for "talk" pages. I am a native speaker of English and I know that "talk" and "discussion" mean much the same thing, but the omnipresence of "talk page" led me to believe that something less formal was meant. Nowhere have I found a reference to a "discussion page", not then and not now. Why do we not change the tab from "discussion" to "talk" and save all the newbies some confusion? We're not likely to change the editors' text habit. Bielle 15:07, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It couldn't make more sense. I agree with the change. A.Z. 18:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#Discussion Page Guidelines. Calling the discussion pages "talk pages" is jargon that is specific to the English Wikipedia; for example, talk pages on the French Wikipédia are des pages de discussion, while the German-speaking Wikipedianer have Diskussionsseiten. For the proposal to have a chance of having an effect, you should post it at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).  --Lambiam^Talk 19:17, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This probably happens because other languages have no equivalent to "talk pages". A.Z. 19:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What? Of course they have talk pages- take a look at any of the other language Wikipedias, see a list. Friday (talk) 19:34, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Friday, I didn't mean that other language Wikipedias don't have the equivalent to talk pages. I meant that other languages don't have an expression such as talk page, and therefore their only option is to use the equivalent to discussion page. Romance languages and German all have a cognate of the word discussion which means the same thing, therefore making it the most obvious translation. A.Z. 19:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The idea that other languages don't have a less formal word for talking than "discussion" is absurd. Atropos 21:28, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was only referring to English Wikipedia in suggesting the change. I assumed that, whatever the tag in other Wikipedias(-pediae?), it is appropriate to its language, and the use of its language. Is there a need to have some congruence in the tag, as would be represented by the root orthography of "disc(k)uss"? That may be a silly question, now that I look at it, as there wouldn't be any visual connection with Chinese, for example. Thanks for the pointers to the pages where such matters are discussed, Lambiam, and to the better place for its discussion. As for having "a chance to have an effect", I have nothing invested in the suggestion or its acceptance. It merely reflects an editor's interest in (a) ease of use and (b) consistency. Bielle 19:40, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As it is, the tags are inconsistent with the way that all Wikipedians call these pages, and, because of that and other things, they are harder to use. A.Z. 19:48, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have looked at Lambiam's first link above. It asks the same question, but there is no discussion or decision that I could see. Perhaps I don't know how to look for follow-up. I have also looked at the Village Pump's FAQ, Perenial Proposals and current suggestions and could see no earlier similar suggestion. On Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), #33, there is a discussion of the "+" tab. This would appear, then, to be the place to hold a discusion on "Talk" pages. If someone who is following this thread knows how to move the relevant parts of it to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), please BE BOLD. Bielle 20:44, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, an user with the privilege of being able to edit protected pages needs to change this page. The change is uncontroversial and, if I were an user with such a privilege, I'd make it right now. A.Z. 21:52, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know that we can say the proposal is uncontroversial until we have given it some time to be considered. Change is nearly always controversial for someone, and that someone (or those "someones") needs time to be able to respond. That's why there are Talk (Discussion) pages, after all. Thus, even if I had the privilege, I would wait a few days. There is nothing urgent here. Bielle 22:56, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I understand. I would wait a few days as well, then, but I feel this is rather uncontroversial. A.Z. 23:10, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am wondering why we all call these pages Talk pages, the text seems to always have been discussion. Anyway, I think Talk is a better idea, the rest of the interface calls these pages talk pages (even the My talk page link) -- lucasbfr ^talk 13:16, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is a subtle contextual difference between the two words. "Talk" could be interpreted as endorsing "chatting", which is not what they're for; whereas "Discussion" is a synonym with more formal connotations. However, "talkpage" is in general use primarily because it's faster to type, and because it rolls off the tongue/eye better than "discussionpage". If we tried to force everyone to refer to them as "discussionpages", they'd just create an inscrutable acronym! For these reasons, I would doubt any changes to the current state are likely (though anything is possible). --Quiddity 18:09, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quiddity has hit the nail on the head with his description of the 'subtle contextual difference', so I shan't say anything other than to endorse his statement. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

True, there is a "subtle contextual difference". English is full of such things. However, no one is paying any attention to the diifference, as far as I can tell, which may mean it is "subtle too far". "Discussion" could equally well be "chatting"; the difference depends more upon the setting and the formality of the language of the conversation than on its content. Everyone refers to what is linked to the Discussion tab as "talk pages" or just plain "talk" and, whether we wish to encourage it or not, talk and chat do happen there, along with discussion, negotiation, argument, notification, diatribe, rant, positioning, advertising, pleading, demanding, and almost every other actvity possible on screen. The difference between "talk" and "chat" is another example of a "subtle contextual difference". "Chat" has a specific meaning on-line, however, and indeed, it is not what we wish to encourage. "Talk page", however, on English Wiki, means the "discussion page and what actually goes on there". It seems unnecessarily confusing to insist that the tab keep the "Discussion" label merely to make a point that talk isn't chat. (While the WP:POINT being made is not disruptive, neither is it helpful, especially to the newcomer.) Bielle 19:58, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd beg to differ or there would be no need for pages such as Wikipedia:WikiLawyering. I think there are users that will push the interpretation to the limit. For this reason anything that could be misconstrued as chat should be avoided. David D. (Talk) 20:56, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For one thing regarding definitions, talk means to speak, as if with the mouth. Discussion can still mean writing it. The page titles are so because it is shorter. I personally am for continuing using 'discussion' for the tab. Reywas92^{TalkReview me} 22:33, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing needs to be "miscontrued as chat", David D., for chat to happen. It is happening all over now. (I'd link to specific talk pages except that it might embarrass individuals who are no more chatty than a hundred others. For the most part, this is limited to User Talk.) I also disagree with Reywas92. On line, "talk" is understood to mean "write" unless a voice system is specifically noted. There is no doubt that there is a reason why "Discussion" was selected for the tab initially, and Wikipedia:WikiLawyering is a reality for the most minute points. Nonetheless, "Discussion" as a tab remains confusing, and there is a simple way to eliminate the confusion. No one has yet addressed this issue, which is the only reason for the proposing the change. And, in respect of the care and keeping of newbies, please see the opening comment in 33 above, and all the following flac about the "+" sign.Bielle 23:14, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand the confusion. The pages are for the discussion of the article content, that seems to be quite obvious. Agreed one might call it talk but the service that the page provides is apparently quite descriptive. At least, I have never considered it to be an inappropriate name. Are most newbies really that confused? David D. (Talk) 02:19, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can't speak for most newbies. I can tell you that I spent considerable time looking for "Talk Pages". I found the "Discussion" tab and knew what it was for, and what went on there, but assumed, as the name "talk page" was everywhere, that it was something quite different from "Discussion". If you do an internal search for Talk Page you get to read about "Talk Pages" in all their manifestations. "Discuss" and "Discussion" are secondary meanings. The article even notes that you should look for something labelled "Talk" (or "discuss") at the top or side of a page. All I am suggesting is that we reflect the actual use, and what the "Talk Pages" article believes to be the case already, in the tab system so that there is one less hurdle for a newbie. Obviously, all of us figured it out, eventually. (Perhaps it is a secret test to see if a newbie really is Wiki editor material. Perhaps I am a slow learner.) The world will not collapse if we don't make the change. From the resisitance noted here to what I thought was a minor matter, it might be easier to try and get all the editors to refer to "Discussion Pages" instead of "Talk Pages" with the same objective, of being more newbie friendly. I wonder where I would make that proposal. :-)Bielle 02:46, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree with Bielle that "talk" can be used to mean "write", especially online. It means something as "communicate" or "communication". That's why almost all Wikipedians feel comfortable calling them talk pages. Reywas92, do you commonly refer to those pages as "discussion pages"? A.Z. 19:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't get me wrong, I agree that it is very confusing to label the tab "discussion", but have everyone (including the help pages) constantly refer to them as talkpages. Especially so for newcomers, young editors, and ESL editors.

I'm just guessing that it's a perennial proposal, though I can't see it at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals or at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Proposals concerning Talk namespaces (and other discussions). However, here is the correct place to discuss(!) it, and I personally wouldn't oppose the change of MediaWiki:Talk to say "talk", barring any new persuasive evidence that the status quo needs to remain.

Any oldtimers know about any past history of this idea? (they're not exactly "unique terms" to use as search fodder..!) --Quiddity 18:20, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seemed to me such a simple idea that I, too, went looking for a history at all the places you mentioned, and failed to find anything earlier on such a change. I should have said all this in the opening paragraph, and saved others the effort. Anybody find anything? Bielle 23:00, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1. We should really be emphasizing accessibility to newbies above all else. We need to make the site very easy for newcomers to contribute to.
2. Would "discuss" (verb) be a better choice than "discussion" (noun)? — Omegatron 01:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Discuss" suggests active participation better than "discussion", but the confusion about "talk pages" isn't remedied by the change. Unless we have something labelled "Talk" or "Talk Page", the confusion remains. Bielle 01:25, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that we should be emphasizing accessibility to newbies above all else. Openness is the whole idea behind Wikipedia! Imagine if we had suggested ten years ago "let's let everyone edit an online encyclopedia". Someone would surely come up with something like "no, people will begin to chat, it will become a social network, it will never work", and things like that. Imagine that Wikipedia had been created and someone suggested "let's write on the main page that anyone can edit it". Surely someone would say "no, because it will turn the encyclopedia into a huge chat room". It's just fear. Changing the name of the tag will improve Wikipedia by making the website more accessible to new users, as people will more quickly understand what is a core aspect of Wikipedia, namely the talk pages, which will diminish a bit the feeling that Wikipedia is such a misterious place that only a selected few can understand. Letting the links to talk pages continue to be called "discussion" will only make people confused and prevent good editors from participating in the project. A.Z. 02:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To (inaccurately!) summarize people's positions on this:

In favor:

• Bielle: "Why do we not change the tab from 'discussion' to 'talk' and save all the newbies some confusion?"

• A.Z.: Agrees with Bielle.

• lucasbfr: "I think Talk is a better idea, the rest of the interface calls these pages talk pages."

• Omegatron:"We should really be emphasizing accessibility to newbies above all else."

• Quiddity: "I personally wouldn't oppose the change of MediaWiki:Talk to say 'talk', barring any new persuasive evidence that the status quo needs to remain."

Against:

• David D.:"Anything that could be misconstrued as chat should be avoided."

• Reywas92:"Talk means to speak, as if with the mouth. Discussion can still mean writing it."

A.Z. 17:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's a terrible summary of my position! I specifically stated that I wouldn't oppose a change. I was merely pointing out why discussion was the currently used word, and why there was a disparity between the formal-name and the informal-usage. It probably should be changed, as far as I can see. --Quiddity 17:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I changed my post so you are in the group that supports the change. A.Z. 18:02, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks ;) --Quiddity 19:17, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say I was in favor of this change, either. Lumping people into groups based on your perception of their position is usually a bad idea. If you want to see what we actually think, take a poll or something...

Sign under any options that you like. Feel free to add other options. — Omegatron 01:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A poll may be helpful for something, but I hope it doesn't become an election. I think the discussion above and more discussion like that are useful, and a poll would be useful if it were just a part of the discussion. I thought my post was useful because we could easily know who was left to be convinced. A.Z. 02:55, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's been ten days now. We can continue discussing, but I think it's time for an administrator to make the change. A.Z. 03:20, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's been twenty days now. A.Z. 22:34, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reywas92 wrote that "because of parallelism (grammar), 'discuss' just wouldn't work", but there is a button called "edit this page" (perhaps it should be "page edition"?). Their argument for not changing the tab to "talk" is still that "talk" means to speak with the mouth, while discussion can still mean writing it. This is simply not true: people use talk all the time to mean communicating in ways other than speaking with the mouth. They also wrote that "I really don't think something needs to be inviting". Things are supposed to be inviting because of the openness of the project: the more people, the better. A.Z. 22:34, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

tjstrf and Gnangarra have the same argument for opposing the change of "discussion" to "talk": they say that the word "discussion" describes what happens on talk pages better than the word "talk": in their words, "The tabs are worded quite clearly as is and 'talk' is less descriptive, therefore more confusing, not less" and "I prefer 'discussion' as it has an implied context that one should actually listen to opinions of others. Where as 'talk' doesn't relate to an expectation that one should listen to the opinions of others." David D.'s argument is also similar, although he emphasizes a concern with the particular interpretation of the word "talk" according to which the talk pages are "chat rooms".

Nevertheless, the fact is that original argument for changing the tab is that the name of the pages is "talk pages", not that the word "talk" would be a better description of the activity that happens on talk pages. In Bielle's words, "Nowhere have I found a reference to a 'discussion page', not then and not now. Why do we not change the tab from 'discussion' to 'talk' and save all the newbies some confusion?" I have been through the same problem: I didn't immediately understand what people were referring to when they said "talk pages". If the tab said "talk", I would've immediately understood it.

The names of the other tabs are not an attempt to accurately describe the content of the pages that they link to. It's hard to guess what the tab "history" refers to, but people do call those pages "history". Tha sme with "watch": you have to learn what it means somewhere else, likely by clicking on it, or reading about it somewhere. Nevertheless, people do refer to "watchlists" and they do say "I'm watching that page".

No-one calls talk pages discussion pages, anywhere, and that does cause some problems to some newbies, which is the main reason that concerns Bielle and concerns me. Other people seem not to be so worried with newbies, yet they do support the change because it's sort of ridiculous for that word to be there ("discussion"), when there's no reference to it anywhere else. A.Z. 22:51, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am astounded this hasn't been changed yet. Wikipedia usability is horrendous. 129.120.159.176 13:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I made the change to Mediawiki:Talk. As I said in my edit summary, this proposal's been here for nearly a month with a slight plurality support.

This is NOT necessarily final, but should encourage much more discussion and a global consensus instead of a local consensus. If it's causing problems on pages that transclude this message (besides the tabs), feel free to revert it. Otherwise please leave it up so people can see it, decide whether they like the change or not, and reach a good consensus on whether it should be kept. — Omegatron 05:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another user reverted Omegatron's change, without giving any explanation here on the village pump... Now, Andre's decision is being discussed both here and here. I suggest that we centralize the discussion on the village pump, so everyone can participate and it all stays in one place. My opinion is that Andre's argument for reverting the change is wrong: he says that there should be consensus for the tab to be named "talk", but I don't see why it would be any better for it to be named "discussion" when there is no consensus that it should be named "discussion" either. I don't know what is the solution, though. A.Z. 18:20, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Two points: 1. I love how everyone just assumes that it's soooo simple, and seems sooooo obvious once it's actually been pointed out to them, that it MUST have been proposed before! 2. I'm also surprised no one proposed that perhaps the reason they're called talk pages is because they're in the talk namespace. Morgan Wick 06:56, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Poll: discussion tab

"discussion" → "talk"

1. Makes sense to me because of title prefixes like "Talk:" and "Wikipedia talk:". — Omegatron 01:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2. This reflects tha language used throughout en.wiki and will be the easiest for newcomers to understand. This benefit outweighs, in my opinion, the possibility that the change will be seen as an invitation to "chat". Bielle 01:38, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
3. Clearest for newcomers, ESL editors, and young editors. Used almost-consistently throughout the help pages, and consistently in normal usage. --Quiddity 01:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
4. I'm in favor of the change. I explained why on the thread above. A.Z. 03:03, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
5. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 03:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
6. Moderately in favour, only to bring it in line with the namespace. And at least it is short. Adrian M. H. 15:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
7. Strong support - this goes along with the namespace names; it seems to me that the meaning is clear, and it's shorter. Od Mishehu 08:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
8. Strong support - As a new user (and a native English speaker), it took me a few minute to realize that talk and discussion pages were the same thing. In addition to it being clearer, it's shorter -- just as Mishehu said. Spazure 05:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
9. That's what everyone calls them. Why confuse the newbies. --Apoc2400 08:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
10. or "talk" -> "discussion", but, namespace aside, good luck getting everyone to stop calling them talk pages. --Random832 19:42, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
11. Because it's in the Talk: namespace, people are going to keep calling them "talk pages" no matter what they're actually called, and if you're worried that they'll become forums, just add one of the standard "This is the page for discussing article Blah." headers and warn people about what wikipedia is WP:NOT. Confusing Manifestation 03:48, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
12. The shorter, the better. The two meanings are "close enough for computer work". StuRat 23:45, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
13. I agree that it makes since for overall site consistency. LaraLove^T/_C 03:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
14. We already call then talk page, so... -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
15. Short and simple - also works with internal consistency. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 14:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
16. One less piece of jargon for new contributers to learn. --Ybbor^Talk 15:03, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
17. We all call them talk pages. The present linkage system is to [[user talk:NAME]]. And scattered throughout the project there are vast numbers of references to talk pages, including a lot within WP pages. Surely to avoid confusion the tab should say "talk"? --Anthony.bradbury^"talk" 12:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
18. Strongly Support Djmckee1 - Talk 06:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
19. It's in the talk namespace, after all. -- Ned Scott 06:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
20. It makes sense. The user interface should maximise usability and minimise confusion. This change would certainly minimise confusion. --WPholic (talk) 12:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
21. It's shorter and it's what the namespace is called. Perhaps "talk page" would be even better. Kusma (talk) 12:54, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
22. It's called a "Talk" page. --Edokter (Talk) 13:32, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"discussion" → "discuss"

1. Saves space, more inviting than "discussion". — Omegatron 01:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2. Not a bad alternative. I still don't like the idea of "talk", despite reading the many arguments above in favour of such a change. The title of the tab should be viewed as an invitation to discuss the page, or to a discussion. What does an invitation of talk conjure in the minds of editors? A monolog? An IRC channel? A dialog? Discuss represents so much more than these. David D. (Talk) 03:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

   Yes, David D., it does that, but "discuss" does not speak to the initial reason for the proposal: that everywhere on en.wiki there are mentioned "talk" pages, and yet there are no "Talk" pages. You can't read anything on English Wikipedia and fail to come across a reference to a "Talk" page, and yet, they don't exist. Bielle 18:03, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

3. I agree with Omegatron. ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 23:08, July 4, 2007 (UTC)

Don't change "discussion" tab

1. --Steinninn 01:45, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2. I see no reason to change, however, see above for views on discuss which might be a viable alternative if people really find discussion too cryptic. David D. (Talk) 03:43, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
3. It is fine the way it is right now. +spebi ~ 07:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
4. Oppose 'Discussion' could be changed to 'talk', but because of parallelism (grammar), 'discuss' just wouldn't work. The 'article' tab would then need to be changed to 'read', perhaps. Why inviting? + may be confusing (not to me), but 'discussion' says it; I really don't think something needs to be inviting. Reywas92^Talk 14:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

   I don't agree that there is a grammar problem of any sort; "discussion", "article" and "talk" can all be nouns. Bielle 17:49, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

   'Discuss' can't, though. I believe my opinion is made. Reywas92^Talk 13:01, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

   Sorry; I misread your original sentence. Indeed, "discuss" is not a noun; "article", however, can be a verb, if you are a law student. :-) Bielle 17:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

5. Pointless. The tabs are worded quite clearly as is and "talk" is less descriptive, therefore more confusing, not less. --tjstrf talk 17:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
6. — Deckiller 18:01, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
7. I prefer "discussion" as it has an implied context that one should actually listen to opinions of others. Where as "talk" doesnt relate to an expectation that one should listen to the opinions of others. Gnangarra 13:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
8. Leave good enough alone. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 22:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
9. No, it's fine and please advertise this better before changing it. Andre (talk) 06:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
10. "Talk" actually strikes me as likely to be more confusing to an unfamiliar visitor. I prefer a noun over a verb, because a verb implies participation. By contrast, a "discussion" is something a visitor can view passively if they choose. Dragons flight 18:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
11. No change is needed. "Talk" reads like an invitation to banter. However, the talk page guideline is clear that talk pages (except maybe user talk pages) are not used to be for idle chatter and random talk. Their purpose is discussion. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
12. It's fine how it is. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
13. 68.39.174.238 16:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Poll: + tab

"+" → "leave a comment"

1. Clearer for newcomers. — Omegatron 01:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2. Likely the best in terms of new-user comprehension, but may take up too much space. The overall best, then, is "New Post" Bielle 01:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
3. --Steinninn 01:45, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
4. Weak Support. I would prefer just "comment" or "add comment" — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 03:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
5. Yes. This, that and the other _[talk] 07:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
6. Good idea. Not everyone is good at figuring out cryptic UIs. --Apoc2400 08:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
7. Everything needs to be spelled out because we want normal people contributing. A.Z. 18:06, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
8. Probably my favourite out of the options here, but all of them are clearer than '+'. (From my Real Life interactions with non-Wikipedia editors, it's clear that the usability does need a lot of work; for instance, it's not at all clear that you can determine an image's copyright status by clicking on it, and the usual assumption (in my experience; this is anecdotal evidence and therefore probably wrong) seems to be that all Wikipedia images are public-domain. Clearer labels are one way to further this aim.) --ais523 12:41, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
9. I think this is a good idea, although kind of long. I didn't use this tab for months after I started using Wikipedia because I had no idea what it was, and I just didn't click it. Now that I know what it is, I use it frequently. LaraLove^T/_C 03:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
10. I also think its a good idea. Most people don't ever click the + tab because they didn't know what it does and not everybody is "curious enough" to experiment with all the buttons so making it clear what it does is a good thing. --_Hdt83 ^Chat 18:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
11. I loved seeing this change and I'm upset that it got changed back. This is much clearer for newcomers than the cryptic "+" which I remember being puzzled by myself. Haukur 00:23, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
12. Strong Support Clearer for newcomers and looked great when it was changed. Djmckee1 - Talk 06:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"+" → "new post"

1. This is language generally recognized on the Internet and is clearer for newcomers than just the "+" Bielle 01:41, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2. The tab is useful and it's hard to figure out what it means. It's even hard to see. A.Z. 18:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
3. "Add a comment" does not imply it's a *new* comment, so with both systems you have inexperienced users adding a section every time they want to add a reply, which is inefficient and annoying. Implying that every + is a new post will help clear that up. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 18:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
4. If the + has to go, "New Section" would be clearer, since each comment is often referred to as a post. Adrian M. H. 18:14, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"+" → "new comment"

1. Not quite as clear as "leave a comment", but saves space. — Omegatron 01:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2. My second choice, per discussion rationales offered above. --Quiddity 01:57, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"+" → "comment"

1. Not as good as the more verbose ones, but acceptable. — Omegatron 23:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2. "Comment" has a clear advantage over all the other suggested alternatives. "+" is confusing - I had no idea what it meant when I first come across it and had to click on it to find out, which many editors won't do for fear of "crashing Wikipedia". "Add a comment", "leave a comment" and "new comment" waste space with unnecessary words - "comment" is part of the language of the Internet; it isn't unique to Wikipedia. --WPholic (talk) 12:54, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"+" → "add comment"

1. Pretty clear, short. — Omegatron 23:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2. I like this one best. Short and concise. LaraLove^T/_C 03:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
3. My fav. It's concise, and doesn't look awkward. the_undertow ^talk 09:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
4. --Kaypoh 15:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
5. I like this best;the implication of adding something is important. I'd been here 3 months before realizing what the + meant. --Thespian 22:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
6. No room for misunderstanding what it does. --Edokter (Talk) 13:34, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"+" → "new topic"

1. Clearer, more accurate, and shorter. — Omegatron 12:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2. Ditto. --Quiddity 17:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
3. While I still prefer "+", this option would be acceptable as well, as it is clear. (relatively) concise, and most importantly accurate. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 20:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
4. While I personally prefer "+", I recognize that one of these options is probably simpler for newcomers. This one has the advantage of being minimally ambiguous with the idea of adding a new comment to an existing discussion (especially as compared to the other proposals). Nihiltres^(t.l) 01:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
5. I'm fine with just +, but I'm equally fine with this option as well. -- Ned Scott 06:41, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
6. Definitely the most clear, though I'd be fine with no change too. Atropos 00:35, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't change "+" tab

1. I think of it as just a shortcut for experienced editors, plus editing the whole page or just a prior section, gives newcomers an example of wikicode to glance through. --Quiddity 01:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
2. As I wrote when the "+ tab" issue was raised recently, I see no problem with it, based on my own experience of finding my way around WP. It logically equates to adding something new. Adrian M. H. 15:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
   • Please restore the + sign. The width of the tabs is too wide when all tabs are visible, leaving the Twinkle tab for SD right under the watchlist link. Having to make sure I don't click in a hurry. Adrian M. H. 15:36, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
3. Leave it alone or remove it. I see no real need for the tab anyway. If people are curious they can click it and find out what it is. Does everything really need to be spelled out? David D. (Talk) 03:46, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
4. Concur with David – if people are confused about the button, it is easy enough just to click on it and find out. +spebi ~ 07:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
5. Do not remove it, as it allows a more automatic edit summary and goes directly to the bottom of the page. "Leave a comment" is too long. Not to be rude, but it is very simple to realize what + means. If I had to chose, it is the shortest, "new post". Reywas92^Talk 14:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
6. Keep it simple + is a recognised symbol for add, as such its appropriately used. Gnangarra 13:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
7. Once again leave good enough alone. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 22:35, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
8. Yes, please leave it. Andre (talk) 06:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
9. Restore +. If necessary, make a tooltip. Wait, we already have one. It says 'Add a comment to this discussion'. If that isn't clear enough, change it, but leave a message is just taking up space. --ST47Talk 11:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
10. Or something very short, as "Add", but personally I think that "+" was quite clear already -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
11. Restore the +. It's short and concise - and simple enough to figure out. Additionally, the new version is actually more confusing because it implies that to leave a comment you have to use it, when in reality you only use it to add a new section of comments. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 13:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
12. Restore the + This is a well-known mathematical sign which means Add. What could be clearer? --Anthony.bradbury^"talk" 14:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
13. Restore the + - As an administrator, I have many tabs. I'm no fan of the crowding, and "+" seems very intuitive - I understood it on first sight. It's also frustrating because I seem to see a majority of users opposing any change from the original - we need a consensus here, and for site-wide, hugely visible changes like this, it is frustrating to see such a short discussion change the interface against the wishes of many. Nihiltres^(t.l) 14:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Omegatron commented on this post on my talk page, and on reflection, I don't think this comment was the best approach to the problem, or that its rationale was sound: it amounted to a well-written "NOOO CHANGE IT BACK!". While I personally prefer the "+" and find it intuitive, it'll probably be useful to new or inexperienced users to have a more descriptive tab - besides, I can customize my tab text using my personal monobook.js page, a solution I already have set up (but not entirely active) there. Nihiltres^(t.l) 00:43, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

14. Please restore +. I'm sure many people (like me) did not participate in this discussion so far simply because they expected the proposal to fail ∴ Alex Smotrov 17:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    They might have also not participated because they expected it to pass. You can't really guess what someone's opinion is if they don't give their opinion. Tra (Talk) 17:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Hmm… I think it's unrealistic to silently expect something to pass when there are several new options to choose from. Anyway, my point is that most proposals seems to fail rather than the other way ∴ Alex Smotrov 19:34, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Or, as in my case, they may simply not have known the discussion was going on until they saw that the tab had changed. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 17:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    That was the whole point of changing it before the discussion was finished. I see now that his was a dumb idea, though, since people are just going to say "NOOO CHANGE IT BACK" without actually reading the discussion or alternative proposals. — Omegatron 12:38, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Actually, I did read the whole thing - and I suspect that others did as well...most of the comments have well-reasoned statements. Simply because they don't agree with the previous discussion doesn't mean they didn't read it. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 20:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

15. It's a shortcut. It doesn't need to have one of the largest tabs on the list. Dragons flight 18:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
16. Takes up way too much space. Prodego ^talk 18:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
17. Like Quiddity said, it's more of a shortcut for expierenced users than new ones, and gives them a chance to see wikicode. Also, as other stated "leave a comment" would also apply to replying to an existing section, when the tab is really only for new discussion. --Ybbor^Talk 01:33, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
18. No change is needed (or rather, no satisfactory alternative has been suggested). In addition to being longer, "Leave a comment", "New post", "New comment", "Comment", and "Add a comment" all hold potential for confusion since each individual indented edit within a thread can be considered a distinct comment. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:35, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
19. I have quite a few tabs, and after this change they run off the screen for me. And, also, I don't think there's a need for a change. I was never confused by the + tab; since it's not completely necessary anyways, there's no need to make it massive. — thesublime514 • talk • 02:46, July 14, 2007 (UTC)

    If you use "talk" instead of "discussion", there's room enough to change the + to "new post". You can use user css/javascript (not clear on the details, though) to change it back for you alone...

20. +1 on leaving it alone. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
21. 68.39.174.238 16:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stop voting on everything

Oh, and this change is a stupid idea. Don't fix what isn't broken – Gurch 09:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly concur. Haven't they always been like this? Reywas92^Talk 14:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Try not to call people's ideas "stupid". It's rude, especially when there are some obvious, logical, and intelligent reasons behind the discussion (As in, it's the 'talk:' namespace, lots of newcomers have expressed confusion over the years, etc).
• We're not "voting on everything"; this is the first poll I've seen at VPp in a while. They're sometimes useful. An admin started this one.
• Appeal to tradition is one perspective, but it's not an argument ender. --Quiddity 18:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Anything that decreases the chance that a new comer will stay and be comfortable here should be changed to something more welcoming or easier to use. No experienced editor will be bothered by either the "+" or the "Discussion" tabs. We don't know how many potential editors a fruitless search for a way to add a comment or a guide to finding the omnipresent (but entirly absent) "talk" pages has driven away. We do know that some new, but not entirely inexperienced, editors mentioned that they have had some problems with these matters in their early days and were confused by them. Why not just make everything a simple as possible? Bielle 18:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stop voting on everything

This isn't a vote; it's a poll. Both polls and votes are discouraged, but can be useful in certain situations, especially for decisions like this (you have to agree that a UI change is significantly different from an editorial decision about an article.) I've intentionally structured the poll so that people write their rationales for supporting different options instead of just saying "support", and so that new suggestions can be added to take into account different rationales and narrow in on an idea that more people will agree with. It's more like a structured discussion than a vote. I've seen this style used successfully elsewhere and thought it would be appropriate here.

Don't fix what isn't broken

Several people disagree. You should sign under the "no change" section if you don't think it needs changing.

Haven't they always been like this?

Way back in the day it said "Discuss this page", actually (see http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org), but why does that matter? Tradition is completely irrelevant. The user interface should be as usable as possible.

Also, everyone needs to realize that this poll is not very meaningful in the grand scheme of things. There seems to be a consensus that the interface should be changed, so it probably will be. But as soon as we make that change, everyone will become aware of the issue and there will suddenly be hordes of people with opinions on the subject. There will be much more discussion after the change is made, and an even better solution will most likely emerge. Relax. — Omegatron 23:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't change without a consensus -- a plurality is insufficient. Andre (talk) 06:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This whole thing is mountaineering a molehill, but "leave a comment" has to be the worst change possible. Its far too long, and its not very clear. Its very easy to leave a comment in a previous section, as I am doing now. New comment is far clearer and more aesthetic. Atropos 21:19, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And thank god talk was changed back to discussion, I felt so unprofessional clicking it. The idea that the word "discussion" is "jargon" is a little frightening to me. Atropos 21:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I changed them both back, as I don't think there's a consensus for "talk" and "leave a comment" here. Andre (talk) 22:10, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. "Add a comment" is not only too long, it is incorrect, as the action of that button is to start a new section and add a comment to it; most comments can't use that button. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:49, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are several other proposals. You wouldn't be happy with any of them? You wouldn't be happy with something different, like "New topic"? — Omegatron 11:36, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see now that changing it in order to generate more discussion was a bad idea. People are just saying things like "Please change it back, this takes up too much space!", completely ignoring the discussion and several other proposals that do not take up as much space. — Omegatron 12:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the hard work of the volunteers at Wikinews, it seems to be taking a bunch of hits on the chin. I'd like to suggest discussion about something that might help Wikinews and Wikipedia at the same time. It seems there are two big problems:

1. Wikinews could use more people.
2. Wikipedia is overrun with articles that are essentially "news reports".

My suggestion, create a new namespace on Wikipedia for News and establish a simple procedure for moving News: articles into the encyclopedia namespace when they're no longer a "current event", or to an inactive status/archive for when it's not something for the encyclopedia. Advantages: It would dramatically increase the "horsepower" behind the news reporting engine, would provide a place for non-encyclopedic articles that are covering breaking news, and would solve the licensing difficulties that currently exist with adapting Wikinews content into Wikipedia. This suggestion could be dumb, but on the off chance it isn't, I'm suggesting it here to see if any huge flaws can be identified before taking it to a larger audience. PS, please don't kill my family and pets because I suggested this, it's just an idea. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 04:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I oppose this in the strongest terms. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a news service. It is true that they often overlap - Wikipedia will regularly have articles on things that are in the news. However, the style of writing is completely different - we are writing encyclopedia articles about current events, whereas Wikinews is writing news stories about them. The two are not one and the same. Rebecca 04:09, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is worth looking in to. Wikinews is desperately in need of a larger userbase, and many Wikipedians are no doubt capable of writing newspaper style rather than encyclopedia style. Wikinews is too great an idea to let it putter along with less than 30,000 users and 8-10 articles per day. And as the recent New York Times Magazine article suggests, Wikipedia may be strangling Wikinews in the current arrangement.--ragesoss 04:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As I said to you both on IRC, this proposal is fundamentally misguided due to Chairboy's apparent misunderstandings about the purpose of Wikinews. Any material moved from Wikipedia to Wikinews would be useless for the latter; as it would be written in encyclopedia rather than news style, it would at the very least have to be completely rewritten by Wikinews editors, and may still be of no use, since the Wikipedia article would still take the overarching view of one event, rather than the collection of single news stories approach necessary for Wikinews. This makes one of the major goals of this proposal: using Wikinews as a dumping ground for content on current events wanted off Wikipedia, completely unhelpful for all concerned.

As for the second stated intention of promoting Wikinews - did anyone think of talking to the Wikinews people about this first? I fail to see removing the independence of the Wikinews project would aid in getting it any editors. A more helpful approach would be to actually do a bit of useful coordination between the two projects, such as encouraging WikiProjects (particularly those of a geographic nature) to chip in and help at Wikinews from time to time.

Both Wikipedia and Wikinews are profoundly different projects, with a very different way of writing articles, and different editorial policies accordingly. I see no evidence that merging them in this way would benefit either project in the least, and indeed, I would argue that it would do serious damage to Wikinews. Rebecca 04:47, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I'm not suggesting moving Wikipedia content to Wikinews, I think there might be some confusion there. Also, as I mentioned in my initial post, I'm running it up the flagpole here first before bringing it to a wider audience. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 04:51, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The same issue would then apply in reverse. Any Wikinews material would be nigh-on useless for Wikipedia, since it would have to be completely rewritten into encyclopedia format. The practical effect would be that people would have to start from scratch whenever Chairboy deemed the topic to be notable to get an article on Wikipedia. There is also the serious problem of license compatibility between the two. Rebecca 04:54, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why are you making this personal? C'mon now, that's not called for. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 04:56, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If nothing else, we should be much stricter on saying "News gets immediate coverage on Wikinews. It then gets later coverage, if and only if it becomes clear that the event is of lasting and historic significance, on Wikipedia. Don't write "breaking news" articles here, not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Write them there. If one does get written, soft-redirect it to Wikinews until it's clear there's an encyclopedia article appropriate. Don't try to predict when that will happen, wait until it unambiguously has." I actually got the chance to see Wikinews in action today, and it works brilliantly. I don't want to roll it into Wikipedia, but I don't want Wikipedia to choke off its air either—and in this case, its air and the thing that will draw people to it is reporting breaking news. And they're set up to do that much better than we are. So let's let them, we'll write the encyclopedia article a day, or a week, or a year later, if and when it becomes clear there's one to be written. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:04, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ragesoss, would you like to know what I consider Wikinews's primary failing? "Published" articles are no longer editable. Without that, you are just another news source. There is no reason one can't write in news style and focus on current events without wanting to lock everything that goes on the front page. By contrast, as Wikipedia covers items "in the news" the coverage continually improves. Even the AP will submit many rounds of updated stories during the course of major events and other publishers have various correction processes. Once upon a time someone at Wikinews wrote an article about my own real life research, but the article contained many fundemental errors in the basic science and I was told there was nothing I could do because it was "published". If you want to be more than a third tier news service, then I would encourage you to eliminate the concept of publication entirely. In the mean time, us Wikipedians will enjoy crushing you with vastly superior, continually updating coverage of current events. Dragons flight 05:11, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikinews has an incompatible license with Wikipedia. Corvus cornix 04:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. The Free Software Foundation lists version 2.0 of the Creative Commons Attribution license as incompatible with the GFDL; while the compatibility of 2.5 is not listed, if I recall correctly it's incompatible, in which case this entire discussion is moot. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 05:56, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Chairboy suggested that his proposal "would solve the licensing difficulties that currently exist with adapting Wikinews content into Wikipedia". Could you clarify that statement, Chairboy? I'm not sure how that problem's solved at all. Even under a separate namespace, every contribution to Wikipedia must be licensed under the GFDL. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 05:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry! I should have clarified what I meant. Merging the Wikinews activities into Wikipedia would, as a side effect, put it under the same GFDL that Wikipedia uses because it would just be a different namespace of the same project. Past articles would not be affected, there would probably need to be a clean-break point where new stories were created in the News: namespace on Wikipedia while the live stories on the legacy Wikinews would be finished and published and, eventually, would become a static archive. Going forward, the Wikinews: or News: namespace on Wikipedia would be license-identical to the rest of the project. There are probably other viable alternatives if this is unpalatable, this is just the one I thought of initially. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 06:22, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Combining the projects is a good idea. I'm not sure a separate namespace is needed. I can imagine that there could be different standards for "news" articles than for other articles, if necessary. It is true that there is quite a bit of duplication of effort. Since Wikipedia has the bigger audience, articles about breaking news seem to be better at Wikipedia. I hardly ever look at the Wikinews articles because I find out more at Wikpedia.

There is a tendency for many people at Wikipedia to use the word "encyclopedic" to mean "like an encyclopedia" which usually means "like the Encyclopedia Britannica". The other definition, "having a comprehensive scope, especially of information or knowledge (either in general or on a specific topic)" [1] is much better suited to what we are doing. Why do we want to have these artificial constraints on the scope of the project? Wikipedia should be a comprehensive source of information and knowledge, be it old, new, serious, superficial, what-ever. Combining these different forks would strengthen the whole. News articles could have their own portals, wikiprojects, categories, etc... Frankly, I don't see how the policies and guidelines would need to change much. The biggest change is that Wikipedia would have to loosen up on what it calls encyclopedic.

While we're on the subject, there are other projects that should also be incorporated. First that comes to mind is Wiktionary. What is the OED if not an encyclopedia about words. Combined, there would be many less AFDs to argue about. Create a namespace for definitions -- "Word:" and it would so much easier to look up words (there could even be another button "word search" in the search box.) Yet another project to integrate is Wikispecies, with the addition of categorized redirects, we could create category pages at Wikpedia to replace the entire project. For an example of what it might look like, see Category:Genus Panthera. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 07:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm intrigued by this idea, Chairboy. On one hand, it would attract more users there, on the other the two projects are different enough that integrating would be difficult. As far as the issue of published articles, unlike Wikipedia, a Published Article is the same as a local newspaper publishing a reporters piece. Once it's printed, it's done. I absolutely love this feature because I wouldn't want my articles completely messed up by someone who thinks they know something about the subject, although in your case I would have tried to contact you if it was apparent that you were linked to the topic. Rider of the Storm^Aftermath|_Thunder 13:45, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Sam, perhaps people are defining "encyclopedic" to mean "like an encyclopedia" because there are so many places that say "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", not to mention that whole "The Free Encyclopedia" slogan on the logo, and because we have that pesky little page WP:NOT which says Wikipedia is not a news site, dictionary, directory of species, or collection of every little scrap of information that could ever exist or has existed. Oh, and good luck trying to change that page, it's one of the oldest, most beloved pages on Wikipedia. Morgan Wick 17:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a bad idea. If we are here to form an encyclopedia then we are here to form an encyclopedia. If we're a "general information hub" or a "comprehensive source of information and knowledge", then we might as well allow Joe Bob to write an article about his new car and offer driving directions like MapQuest. WP != Google, WP != a dictionary, WP != a news source. I also have misgivings about how WikiNews is operated but that's not really my main concern. The fact they're all Wikimedia projects is enough. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 05:27, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Dragons flight that, as is, there are bi-i-i-ig problems with the publishing system of Wikinews that hampers its usefullness. I think that: 1) getting put on a main page should not automatically publish; and 2) publishing should only occur when the facts are known, with 3) room to correct any erroneous info later. I'd just be up for 3 and it would be a tremendous improvement.

I'm kicking around a potential template to stick on an article that's getting a bit too news-y in my user space, User:Morgan Wick/newsarticle. Morgan Wick 07:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If anything should be adopted into Wikipedia as a namespace, I think it should be Wikispecies. — thesublime514 • talk • 20:19, July 13, 2007 (UTC)

I agree to Thesublime514. Why have different articles on both Wikipedia and Wikispecies on the same species and why have different formats to present them, when the purpose remains essentially the same? The fine guidelines of Wikispecies should be highly appreciated here along with a merger of the two wikis. Aditya Kabir 17:09, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to propose permanently semi-protecting all 366 articles about calendar days. Now I suppose that'll draw some opposition so I figured it would be best to discuss in the widest possible forum and of course there's no rush to do this. Let me first try to carefully state my case.

• These pages are all fairly stable. If one overlooks the vandalism and ensuing reverts, there are really very few meaningful edits on these pages.
• These pages are heavy vandalism targets. As anyone who has ever done recent changes patrol knows, the "1989 Cute guy John Doe is born" is very common.
• The ratio of vandalism-related edits to meaningful edits is about as low as it can get. Speaking recently to Riana, I used January 22 as a random example: out of the last 50 edits, more than 40 have been vandalism-related. The rest of the edits have been mostly cosmetic fixes implemented by accounts which would not be affected by semi-protection (I think this edit is the sole exception).
• These pages are heavily watched so any request for edits by IPs or new users would presumably be quickly implemented. They would also be quite rare since, as mentioned earlier these pages are quite stable.

Now the policy on semi-protection says that indefinite semi-protection should be used for "Articles subject to heavy and continued vandalism such as George W. Bush". There's no question that the calendar days are the subject of continued vandalism but I'll concede that it's not heavy if one compares it to the hardcore hailstorm that affects the beloved GW Bush article. Still, from a cost/benefit point of view, semi-protection would seem reasonable. If I can get consensus here, I'd like to experiment by protecting a dozen of them for say a week or two. We could see how that goes and make a more educated decision afterwards. Pascal.Tesson 04:49, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As long as there woun't be a ugly tag on top of them all, then I'm all for this suggestion. They are a indeed a target for vandals. --Steinninn 04:57, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No need for that, the template {{Sprotected2}} just puts a discrete little lock in the top right corner. Pascal.Tesson 05:02, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Interesting idea. Semi-protection of these pages isn't WP:BITEy in the way that protecting mainpage articles is. I'd support a test. How about semi-protecting alternating days (July 5,7,9,11 for example) and comparing after a set amount of time (say a week) how those look compared to the before-and-after of the adjacent days (say, July 6,8,10,12). The idea here is that whatever the current day is seems to get a fair amount of vandalism. Also try the same with two heavier traffic pages (such as December 25 and January 1). Flyguy649^talk_contribs 05:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seems reasonable to me, those are basically just index pages to begin with. --tjstrf talk 05:13, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Most IP-edits made to "days of the year articles" are indeed vandalism or nonsense, but I'm not sure it has reached a level that permanent semi-protection is needed. Each article on it's own is not heavily vandalised at all, all the 366 pages combined are easily watched (this link gives you all the recent edits), and the standard arguments for why pages should stay open applies. But I'm not strongly against it either. I've grown more and more tired of reverting prank edits myself like those these pages attract, and as articles become better and better, and we have more and more people who bother to sign up an account, I feel we now can afford to be more selective than we used to with who we let edit these articles. So, I guess I'm undecided here. Shanes 05:15, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I oppose semi-protecting these articles. Almost all the vandalism, as has been pointed out above, is of people adding their own name or their friends' names. This is relatively harmless vandalism - if someone reads the article in this state, it doesn't significantly detract from their experience of Wikipedia. In effect, these are harmless test edits, and while we would prefer that people use the sandbox, semi-protecting these articles won't move them in that direction. Some people who cannot edit their birthday article will make similar edits on less heavily watched pages, and others will never try editing at all.-gadfium 06:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While I respect that stand I must disagree. Vandals are for the most part harmless kids. They go to the page of their birthday and think "he he, I'll be funny and add my own name" but I assume that a vast majority of them would, in the event that they can't make that edit, just forget about it. You, on the other hand seem to think they'll say "oh, I can't edit this so let me add my birthday to the article elephant." The problem of course is that we'll never know which of us is right about this. In any case, I believe that vandalism is a significant problem on Wikipedia not because of its malicious nature (by and large they are rather harmless edits) but because of the sheer volume of vandal edits. In any case, I'm certainly well aware that there are drawbacks to semi-protecting any page but in this case I think the advantages outweigh the concerns. Pascal.Tesson 06:50, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think, if the next article they read is "elephant", they are more likely to add a comparison to their sister than their birthday, but in any case I think for someone to make their first edit to any page is important, even if it's not a productive edit and gets reverted very quickly. This has always been a part of the Wikipedia philosophy; it's why we use templates like {{uw-test1}} rather than cracking down hard on inappropriate edits. Test edits are mostly made by teenagers, and once they realise that they really can edit and have those edits appear to the general public, some proportion of them might decide to edit productively.-gadfium 23:43, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But isn't that a bit too idealistic? I've always felt that the philosophy behind WP:BITE is not that "vandals become editors so let's be nice to vandals" but rather "incompetent newbies become good editors" so let's show patience with newbies even those who think their sister looks like an elephant. But all in all, a certain level of reasonable restrictions to IP edits (such as the inability to create new pages) does lighten the load on vandal fighters and I'm not convinced that it so dramatically scares away potential contributors. Pascal.Tesson 23:58, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Wikipedia is an idealistic project. So far, it's worked well that way.

Elephant is not actually a good example, partly because it's already semi-protected, and is probably watched by a substantial number of people. I think it's more likely someone would click on another name from their birthday page, and then add to that quite likely obscure article that 90 years later Tommy Smith was born to carry on their work.

If these pages are semi-protected, then the various year pages from say 1985 to 2000 should probably be semi-protected as well for the same reasons.-gadfium 00:10, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia has done well because it stuck to its idealism for the most part but also because it was able to make pragmatic choices and turn away from idealism for the sake of idealism. Pascal.Tesson 03:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a difficult choice. The conflict as I see it is that we're weighing the labour involved in constant useless reversions against the potential benefit achievable through anonymous edits, and second order effects where test edits might lead to successful recruitment. Because these pages naturally evolve very slowly, it's difficult to find useful anonymous edits. To me, it suspiciously resembles past arguments where some would encourage semiprotection of "finished" or "stable" articles, which I certainly don't support (we should never send the message that "this is done - don't screw with it"). It's for this last reason that I lean towards oppose: we don't want to send that message. Dcoetzee 09:16, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I support the semi-protection. I watch October 4, my birthday, and nearly all of its edits are of this sort. The good edits are nearly always by established users. Because I'm often the first to see it, I'll be the one to take the time to check the article to be sure it's a redlink and then revert it. I also agree that these articles are very static. In my opinion, these test edits will rarely result in recruitment. As said above, most are made by bored school kids adding themselves, unlikely to ever make a constructive edit. I know that I didn't make annoying tests. Regarding Dcoetzee's last statement, I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but for days of the year, it seems they are done, and that we don't want them screwing with it where we then have to revert it. Anyway, if the person has a constructive edit to make, a request on the talk page is encouraged. Reywas92^Talk 14:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm conflicted about this... I'm not usually a big fan of preemptive page protection, and certainly there are few enough of them that a concerted effort to make sure a few people are watching each one is probably sufficient to keep them clean. That said, however, of the ones I watch/see on RC patrol, by far the majority of the changes are new users or IPs adding themselves or other redlinks. I haven't seen any sign that people I've warned about this have turned into serious contributors afterwards, even when I've tried a more personal message welcoming and explaining why their birthday is non-notable by Wikipedia standards. So I guess I'd describe my position as slightly weak support -- I think it would be OK not to protect, but it would save us time to protect without causing much harm. Pinball22 16:14, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also support the semi-protection per Reywas92's comment above. ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 18:25, July 3, 2007 (UTC)

I also support. Almost no IP edits are not reverted and not being able to add yourself to a date isn't going to turn a useful contributor away. Atropos 22:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I support this proposal, as well. The cost/benefit analysis here is strongly in favor of semi-protection for these pages. -Chunky Rice 22:49, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I too support this proposal. — The Storm Surfer 03:14, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your opinion is well thought out Pascal, and eloquently worded, howver I'm afraid I oppose. I am in favour of anonymous editing in all cases, except where sprotection is totally necessary. The point here is, I don't think sprotection is necessary at all. On the flip side, I am perfectly willing to add every single one of these pages to my watchlist to increase their visibility to me, if this helps. --ɐuɐʞsəp (ʞɿɐʇ) 04:33, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I'm sure they're all heavily watched. And I really don't feel so strongly about it: it seems like a reasonable idea to me but I'm perfectly ready to accept that there's no consensus to do this. I just hope that enough people will take part in that debate to gauge the support for it. Pascal.Tesson 04:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

why not make an option on the front page just for birthdays that ppl can post. maybe a separate column, in yellow or light blue frame or something. this will solve part of the problem. and the semi protection does seem reasonable nonetheless. But if the birthday thing is created then there is no need to make semi protection. :DVitalyshmelkin 10:50, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support. The ratio of anon edits that are vandalism vs. constructive edits in these articles is persuasive. One benefit to semi-protection not yet mentioned is that RC patrollers spend time dealing with these edits that would be better spent addressing other needs on Wikipedia. Accurizer 11:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, create 366 templates, with the meaningful data. Transclude the templates on the main article for each day. Casual vandals will just try to edit the day page, and not know/care about how to change the template. But, the main article for each day should be protected (the templates remain unprotected). End of problem?? Neier 11:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support - 99.99% of edits by new/unregistered users to these pages are vandalism. WATP ^(talk) • _(contribs) 12:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support - I've reverted lots of anon. IP edits on these pages, many of which had stayed there - never noticed - for weeks or longer. I too have thought of proposing generic semi-protection for these pages -- so I'm glad Pascal.Tesson finally took the inititative on this issue. Thanks! Cgingold 14:04, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support - As a regular RC patroller, I can vouch for the fact that these are test edit/vandalism magnets. Semi-prot won't harm em, and anyone who really wants to improve them can do so easily. Excellent proposal.xC | ☎ 14:27, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support. Taken as a group, these 365 articles have a very high proportion of IP vandal edits to constructive IP edits (any at all?). Let's free up editors to work on things beside reverting vandalism of these articles. (And, by the way, my brief look at one article seemed to show that it wasn't move-protected - why in the world not?) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't see the need to semiprotect something which is (supposedly) heavily watched anyway, but I think it boils down to the wikiphilosophy you're adhering to. Let's say it like this: There is not enough vandalism to warrant semiprotection right now; just wachlist and revert. And just as a little caveat: if you start with dealing out semiprotection because the edits to an article are more than 90% vandalism, you will have more articles to be semiprotected. Lectonar 15:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I don't think that vandalism level is heavy enough to warrant protection. Vandalism that appears in these pages also tends to be the least malicious kind. I don't think the benefits obtained from this proposal is enough to further compromise our principles of open editing. Borisblue 09:46, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Oppose philosophical approach, I agree with WP:PPOL Semi-protection should not be used With the sole purpose of prohibiting editing by anonymous users. Protection should be used only to prevent continuing disruption. Ultimately we should be striving to uphold the principal of "anyone can edit" Gnangarra 11:51, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, semi-protection in perpetuity is not done. Corvus cornix 18:18, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it is. For instance, pages like Auschwitz are semi-protected indefinitely and the last time someone tried to unprotect George W. Bush it was reprotected immediately with the summary "are you insane?!". There are good arguments against indefinite semi-protection but "it's never done" is not one of them. Pascal.Tesson 18:24, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see the results of this, as a supporter of the proposal. What happened to it? --User:Krator (t c) 23:52, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support a test. As Flyguy649 suggested, a test of this would be interesting, and should be agreeable to most. Maybe July-December, as that is the period we're entering, and provides a clear end date for the test. --Quiddity 00:06, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I totally oppose this. We can just revert vandalism, and those pages have the potential to attract new editors that begin as "vandals" and can eventually become helpful editors. A.Z. 00:33, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Yeah, it's a pain in the butt, but I'd be surprised if we don't have at least one or two "reliable" editors to watch each of the dates. I'll add my birthday to my watchlist now, in fact. Cmprince 03:14, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Support - The concept is good in principal, but if you will notice certain dates tend to get more vandalism than others. Why not instead of semiprotecting all the dates, just semiprotect well known dates. Such as July 4, December 25, February 29, etc. Just a thought. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 22:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support I've had many of these pages on my watchlist for a while and they are a target for vandals and a "my daughter was born on this day"-target for newb editors. It's a pain for the editors that maintain and vandal and vanity edits routinely remain unnoticed for long periods (i've seen 4 months). --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I agree with the previous statement that RC patrollers can focus on other needs. I also like the idea to create templates for each day. Vandals wouldn't care enough to take the time to figure out how to edit the template. Although some may still post nonsense, it may deter many. LaraLove^T/_C 04:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Oppose - Im reaslly torn here. Ever since I started on Wikipedia I've been an RC pattroller, and after seeing how much vandalisim these articles got, I now watch about 5 pages (my birthday, my congressman's birthday, and a few friends' birthdays — this also has the benefit of not making my birthday so obvious if anyone's trying to root out my identity for some reason). Is there a lot of vandalisim? definitly. Would semi-protection stop it? There's little doubt in my mind. At the same time however, semi-protection isn't the only way to deal with this. These pages can be and are closely watched. Semi-protection seems like trying to pound in a nail with a sledgehammer. It's overkill, but not by much. I just think using a regular hammer works fine as-is. I won't be dissapointed if they are s-protected (it'd be less work for me), but at the same time, I don't think it's necessary. (If we still wanted to do something, perhaps a bot could check "births" for each day for redlinks?) --Ybbor^Talk 01:22, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

'Totally unnecessary. I'd be surprised if these aren't among the most-watched pages on Wikipedia; my own birthday (May 21 gets hit about once or twice a day, which isn't really very much compared to a lot of the other pages I watch.--jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 16:06, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The current length limit for signatures is 255 characters. However, it is considered bad form to have long signatures because they take up a lot of space on the source page and can be confusing to navigate through. Also, many users have been warned for having a very long signature that can be simplified. Why not just limit the total length a signature can be?

The same goes for usernames. I'm not sure exactly what its max length is, but it is too long. It is already been disallowed to have very long, repetitive, and/or confusing usernames. Users have even been blocked for having long names. The limit must be shortened. Any comments? Thanks! Reywas92^Talk 15:50, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If we are going to start making more rules, I'd add to the preceding suggestion a related one to eliminate oversized (i.e. font size greater than the normal text size) and coloured user signatures. Creativity is a wondrous thing, but, at the moment any given non-article space seems to be more about editors and less about the subject at hand. Perhaps we could make exceptions for what appears on a User's Name or Talk page. Bielle 16:42, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep by allowing the community to decide which usernames are allowable when cases come up, rather than attempting to forge a controversial general policy. Λυδαcιτγ 16:55, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All I know is, some usernames are a pain when using the Undo function, because it leaves almost no room in the Edit summary for an actual edit summary. - Kesh 16:57, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oops. Thanks to Λυδαcιτγ , I see that in Wikipedia:Signatures, section 4.1, there are guidelines about colour and size of signatures. It would appear, then, that the ones that bother me don't bother anyone else. Bielle 19:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See User:Athaenara/Gallery for the most blatantly annoying. They really irritate me.

I'd very much like to see colour, size, and typeface changes made technically impossible (including sub/superscript). Userpages are suitable for individual creativity, not signatures. --Quiddity 20:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They really irritate me too. -- Hoary 21:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, there's nothing worse than a frivolous signature that uses a different font. Who ever heard of a serious document being signed with a signature in a different font? --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 13:46, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that changing the current technical restrictions will do anything to solve the signature problems. — The Storm Surfer 20:59, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

[scratches head, thinks deeply] Help by rendering problem signatures impossible (other than by copy and paste, etc.)? -- Hoary 21:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On signatures, I don't want to stop customizing of them, only shorten them so they aren't rediculouly long. Reywas92^Talk 13:50, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm someone who you might say likes fun signatures. I don't see any real problem with them. I know you will all accuse me of having a overtly large and repulsive signature, but I'm okay with that. Granted writing an encyclopedia is serious, but some people will start to leave if there is no joy and fun invovled. By the way my signature is only two lines long. Only a few symbols longer than Reywas92. Just a thought. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 22:50, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No reason for further guidelines on this...what we currently have is enough. (Also - with respect to sub/superscript, more people should use them - it makes it easier to find the user's talk page). --Tim4christ17 ^talk 14:05, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think what we have is enough - I know that I designed my signature to be simple and unobtrusive with a few useful links. When I changed it recently, however, I was forced to remove a link to my contributions page because the system would not allow me enough characters for the formatting (which isn't anything ridiculous, as you can see). Further, many users design unique signatures so that they and others can find their comments easily on a crowded talk page. While I think that some signatures may be a bit more garish than others (yes, The Random Editor, yours is a little on the big side ;) ) it's a matter of what's reasonable. If users are asked to change their signatures by the community, it is often enforced to some degree. As long as signatures aren't flashing, using a ridiculous amount of space, et cetera, I don't see the problem with allowing a certain amount of originality. Nihiltres^(t.l) 14:43, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with eye-catching signatures, is the counterpoint to the statement that people "can find their comments easily on a crowded talk page".

They obscure or overwhelm a thread visually, much like gratuitous text-formatting does. They make it harder to pick out the signal (any relevant links), when scanning down a crowded talkpage.

They also make it harder to pick out default-style-signatures, from the mess of bright-custom-signatures.

They're like the WikiProject Stargate banner (see Talk:Stargate) that refuses to adopt the standard color scheme, and thereby screws up part of the intended-simplicity of the talkpage banner system, wherever they are placed.

They're lacking in empathy.

Instead, I'd suggest using Javascipt to highlight your own sig, privately. (just add that code to your monobook.js page, and replace the 2 instances of "ais523" with your own username)

And then be as creative as you desire within your own userpages. --Quiddity 19:43, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To hammer the point home, it's not the aesthetics that are usually the problem (I quite like the letters/font Audacity and The Random Editor are using, and colour choices from editors like Radiant!, etc) it's that they are Distracting, both visually and mentally. --Quiddity 20:15, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a "Look at me! Look at me!" quality to signatures that are larger, brighter and more complicated than the default standard used by most editors. I am tempted to conclude that, if Jimbo Wales doesn't shout, perhaps the rest of us should be equally reticent. Bielle 21:22, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Having recently been in a discussion with someone who uses very long signature (code-wise) for the first time, I have to admit I found it confusing to read the discussion because their signature would fill 5 lines of the edit window. I'm fine with other people using custom signatures, but a lot of times I wonder why they'd spend so long on something so pointless. Atropos 00:41, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it is clear to newbies what the history tab does. I'm pretty sure, say more than a few new users browsing the Poland page have thought that the history tab would bring them to history of Poland. I think this is a simple, uncontroversial change that will help ease the wikipedia learning curve a little (and easier access to the history tab will emphasize to new users that there is *some* accountability to Wikipedia edits, so the articles they are reading might not be completely untrustworthy)

The German wikipedia uses "Versionen/Authoren" (versions/authors) which is also good, especially because it highlights that this is the place where authorship is recorded. Borisblue 09:41, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose there might be some new users who will be confused by the tab name... but after they click on it for the first time they will quickly figure out what it means. It's called "learning by doing". Blueboar 15:12, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That would be true assuming they come back. Hopefully that "moment of discovery" will happen before the anon writes a blog post or news article proclaiming that WP is unreliable because there is no way to track changes. Anyway, given it will be almost completely painless to implement this change, I think there is a lot of benefit that can be gained from this. 16:21, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Painless, hah! Look up a the discussion of the + button, a button which actually IS potentially confusing unlike the history button. No, I think history is as short, sweet and useful as it can get. GDallimore (Talk) 16:31, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: It would make the tab too long, and I don't really think it's confusing. ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 18:59, July 5, 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't want such a change HERE, but I think that this should be proposed on the Simple English Wikipedia. FunPika 22:01, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have run across this problem, 'history' might obviously mean to us that it will show all the past versions, but to passers by I think it's generally confusing. Although a name change would be a somewhat dramatic change, sometimes change is good. --W.marsh 17:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe "Versions" (or "Revisions") would strike the best balance between clarity and succintness. The curious will eventually click on the "history" tab and find out what it is, but not everyone is going to explore, especially not right away. "Page history" or "article history" or "revision history" might also make the tab's function clearer, but not as briefly. --Groggy Dice T | C 01:37, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support any change suggested above. I have always held some reservations about the title of the tab, and I'm glad someone is bringing the suggestion forward. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 04:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A key consideration is that users with small screens and large fonts already run out on room on the tab bar. So the new text shouldn't be significantly longer than the current text. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:58, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

“

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

”

~ Wikihermit 02:51, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've run across the same fragmented conversation talk page problem as most people. This usually is resolved with something like

"If you initiate a discussion on my talk page, I will reply on my talk page, but, I will notify you on your talk page via a short statement (ex. ==RE: Subject== See reply on my talk page) and will do this every time a post a reply. This way, not only are conversations not fragmented, but you will know if I've acknowledged your comment."

I think it would be a nice to have something like a transclusion option located next to "This is a minor edit" and "Watch this page" just above the button where you "Save Page". For example, if the "Transclude this thread" option is checked and "Save page" is pressed, this thread also would appear on my talk page via transclusion and my pressing the thread "edit" link on my talk page for that transcluded thread would bring me back here to post. Any responses posted here, of course, would appear here and on my talk page. I think this will solve the user talk page fragmented conversation problem. Could/would someone create such a "Transclude this thread" option? -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 19:23, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Transclusion may eat up to much resource. How about a bot that goes back and forth between two talk pages using subst: command to substitute thread posts into the otherwise fragmented discussion? -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 19:41, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why can editors not watchlist any talk pages on which they leave comments?? Adrian M. H. 19:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few problems with that approach. If one's watchlist has a lot of active pages in it, it can be easy to lose the talk page in the shuffle. More importantly, the talk page only shows the most recent change, so there's no way to know from the watchlist if someone has responded to your comment unless it is the most recent change; it's only possible to see that someone changed it. Again, on a busy talk page, you can miss the reply if a bunch of other people have posted after your response. I'm not sure a technical solution is a bad idea here. Something easy would be to make the + button create a new transcluded subpage instead of just a section, but I'm guessing that would be an unpopular idea. — The Storm Surfer 22:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But it is not too hard to take a brief moment to check the page if there might have been other revisions that you missed. It is not a bad suggestion, as suggestions go, but I really think that this is a solution in search of a problem. Adrian M. H. 14:33, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this idea has merit. Because of the projects I'm involved in, I utilize talk pages frequently. Often times I forget to check the watch tab and end up forgetting about my message until something triggers an "Oh, yea!" Then, sometimes, it's too late. I tired the posting to both pages; the full response and the "I've replied here" post. That seemed like a waste, so then I tired the "If you post here, I'll reply here. If I post there, reply there" concept. It didn't work for me. Now it just kind of depends on my mood, I suppose. Not considering how much Wikipedia resource this would take, I support this idea. However, if it would be taxing on WP, then I'd oppose. LaraLove^T/_C 04:31, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(undent)I've recently come across this template ({{Talkback}}):

(yes? 68.4.3.164 01:10, 20 July 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Funny you brought it here... I wasn't even aware of this discussion, yet I created this template just a few days ago, just to overcome the problems stated above. I did announce it at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#New template though. --Edokter (Talk) 11:26, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This page gets the most traffic, so I'm posting this here. The above category is ridiculous. Look at some of the articles in it and then Category:Area codes in the United States by state and List of North American area codes. Very few of those articles have any useful/unique information at all. I suggest that they be merged into state articles, such as Area codes in Ohio. Oh, upon further looking, there is List of Texas area codes and two others. These are actually very short lists and I'm sure the information in the area code articles can easily be merged there with room to spare. Every North American area code surely doesn't need its own article; lists must be made.

The sprawl of somewhat notable, though very small, unlikely to grow articles is becoming a huge problem. There are also articles on seemingly every train station and subway stop. See here for a recent thread, which was agreed on and an anti-sprawl guideline is being drafted. I'm here looking for even more input. Reywas92^Talk 22:08, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While you might consider those articles unneeded, I've recently been using them very regularly at work. What is useless trivia for one person, is in many cases valuable information for someone else. - SimonP 13:43, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They will probably be deleted. — The Storm Surfer 00:47, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Care to elaborate? --Golbez 02:21, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is what happened to our lists of ZIP codes at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of ZIP Codes in the United States by state. — The Storm Surfer 03:17, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you think the pages are unnecessary/should be deleted, I'd recommend taking it to AfD. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 14:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"becoming a huge problem"? Do tell. How? Wikipedia is not paper, there aren't any size constraints, so we don't need to worry. Besides, in some cases there are interesting bits of information about the history of the area code, or about its upcoming overlays, etc. --Ybbor^Talk 14:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Surely there have been many occasions where you have wanted to watch a section on a busy page that you don't usually frequent without having all the noise clog up your watchlist. If there was a way to watch only a single section the problem would be solved. It should surely be possible, right? I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I thought I'd get some feedback here. Richard001 05:18, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't possible, and can't be done easily. Prodego ^talk 05:21, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible and difficult or impossible? Richard001 05:34, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right now it can't be done, and to add such a functionality would probably crash the servers from the load. To make this work you would have to completely rework how edits are recorded and pages are watched. Prodego ^talk 05:46, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh well, thanks for letting me know anyway. Richard001 06:48, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

... so do it. Seriously though, I think this feature is a great idea, would the problems caused by making such a change be insurmountable? — The Storm Surfer 00:09, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At least for discussion pages, this is one of the multitude of issues that will be addressed by implementing a proper forum/thread system such as the proposed LiquidThreads. Dcoetzee 08:19, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible to do it externally through PHP, I can think of a couple of ways. Actually looking at it, it would be easier if you didn't want to include a section, but damn excluding all sections except one would take a long time to code.++aviper2k7++ 18:12, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First, "sections" are fragile - titles get changed, sections get merged, subsections get created, sections get moved around (so what was section 4 is now section 3). Second, it's possible to edit a section via editing the entire page - newbies do this all the time; so now the software has to examine every whole-page edit and identify which section(s) were edited. Given how badly the diff software actually performs sometimes, there could be a lot of false positives. Third, if subsections exist, then even the obvious strategy of looking at edit summaries to see if there was either a whole-article edit or a specific section edit will fail, because the subsection name, not the section name, will be in the edit summary. (Yes, this can be gotten around by coding to look for all subsection titles as well, but ...). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:18, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds too difficult to implement, but still it would be useful, especially for huge pages like AN and AN/I. For the others, I've rarely met the occasion where I wish we had that feature. Possibly an automatic change in those two pages format could help? (e.g. like RfA per incident/section -but automatically) Which reminds me that I always thought that pages such as AfD and FAC, RfA etc had too complicated instructions for new users, and that I'd very much like the procedure of inserting {{whichever new editable section to be listed}} to be automated via a bot or something. NikoSilver 23:31, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Different approach. Have an external program compare diff every X hours and disregard sections other than the one we're interested in. If watched section does not exist anymore (section title changed or deleted), also mark it as changed (but no link to section id as thats changeable). Personally, I dont think this can be made to work satisfactorily. If you want to keep track of specific section on a busy page, just bookmark the section title (the part with the #Section_title) and check that page every so often. — Shinhan < talk > 09:03, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's too bad that transclusions can't be specified for just a section of an article. If they could be, then an editor could set up a page of (say) ten or twenty transcluded sections that he/she wants to monitor, and could simply read over the sections, once a day (or whatever), looking for major changes, without having to go to the articles themselves. (Yes, transclusions of parts of articles can be done with include/noinclude tags, but that's a no-no for articles if the purpose is simply to monitor changes; multiple people trying to do the same thing to a single article would have irreconcilable conflicts.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:13, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am always frustrated by the lack of 'logs for this page' link. A logs button in the user (talk) space underneath the user contributions link, or under the 'what links here' link in all spaces could be very useful for quickly identifying blocked vandals or seeing whether a page has previously been deleted. ck lostsword•T•C 23:37, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That would be useful. In the meanwhile, a workaround in Firefox is to add a quick search "log" for http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=&page=%s. Λυδαcιτγ 20:08, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thats what user scripts are for. Checkout Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Logs link. — Shinhan < talk > 09:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that link :). However, I feel that this isn't a low-interest link - perhaps its something that could be useful system wide for all users, rather than only those who wish to install a user script? ck lostsword•T•C 17:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2005/12/wikipedia_will.htm

December 05, 2005

Wikipedia Will Fail Within 5 Years

By Eric Goldman

Over the weekend I had dinner with Mike Godwin, one ...

I am afraid he could be right. The Google Page Rank gives us two problems:

• people want to be on wikipedia to be noticed
• editors are over-zelously fighting external links and articles alike, to avoid hijacking of wikipedia.

Let's request google to not include us any more in their Algorithm for establishing Page Rank.

— Xiutwel (talk) 11:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since that article was written, Wikipedia has used rel="nofollow" for external links, so there is no longer any value for a site's PageRank if they spam Wikipedia. People do still spam for other reasons, however. They might wish that humans will click their links or they may be unaware that the rel="nofollow" attribute is used. Tra (Talk) 12:01, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe be more vocal about it, i.e. in the edit menu? &#151; Xiutwel (talk) 12:11, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(are you sure this affects google's algorithm as well? Loading a link and adding to a counter are not necessarily connected actions &#151; Xiutwel (talk) 12:13, 12 July 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Since Mike Godwin now works for the Wikimedia Foundation, it appears he disagrees with that assessment.  :) Corvus cornix 20:22, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It also appeared so when the page said, "I was surprised when Mike disagreed with my assertion. Mike’s view is that Wikipedia has shown remarkable resilience to attacks to date, and this is evidence that the system is more stable than I think it is." Atropos 05:34, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Marketers will insert links in Wikipedia despite the nofollow tag. See http://www.searchengineguide.com/searchbrief/senews/010298.html. Eric. 13 July 2007

Thx, most interesting ! &#151; Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (talk) 20:32, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Link addition to Wikipedia will be reverted by users and administrators despite marketers. We still have a huge userbase which removes this crap - unless you have a thousand marketers inserting links at all hours of the day, it's unlikely to let spam through. The thesis that Wikipedia will fail within a few years assumes that our userbase will eventually degrade - a critical flaw, in my opinion. Nihiltres^(t.l) 13:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any sort of template that provides information to Wikipedians who understand the basics but are interested in the more advanced aspects of Wikipedia? This sort of thing might be useful if one doesn't already exist. I'd like to see what people think about something like this. It might give links to pages on JavaScript add-ons, advanced template syntax, MediaWiki bug requests, meta-wiki, and things like that. Pyrospirit Shiny! 15:32, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there is an index, not to mention pages like Wikipedia:Department directory and Wikipedia:Quick directory. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:54, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if this exists, but if it does I have not found it. I am a fan of the "random article" link and use it when I have no inspiration of what else to read about. I do however find that there topics (e.g. sport) that keep coming up and are of no interest to me. I suggest that a random article within each portal would be good as it would direct me to, say, a random science article. Answers on a wikipostcard. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.92.40.49 (talk) 17:26, 12 July 2007

There is a method that Portals can use – see Portal:Motorsport for example – that allows the reader to refresh the page and see a new set of featured content. Adrian M. H. 16:43, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Middle-earth has a random article link on the side of the page. Sebi _[talk] 23:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved the relevant threads to Template talk:Intro, to keep things simple/consistent in the long-run. And so that we can watchlist the discussion without also watching the intro itself get test-edited continually. --Quiddity 23:44, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies if this has been brought up before, but I did not see it. Several editors have commented on the talk page for Wikipedia:Introduction that it is strange and ill-advised to allow new editors to edit that page. New editors often remove the intro header (presumably usually by mistake) and thus sometimes we get an introduction page that looks like this. This seems highly undesirable to me (it gives an impression that Wikipedia is easily vandalized--I think the page sat like that for awhile), as the introduction could be one of the first places people new to Wikipedia will go (though I'm not sure how they typically end up there). We already have a sandbox, and the intro page should direct new editors to experiment there, rather than on the introduction page itself. The intro page should probably be semi or fully protected to avoid vandalism (I can't imagine we would ever need to edit it that often). I'm not the only user to bring this up, see Wikipedia talk:Introduction for other comments. I was shocked to see that new editors were encouraged to edit that page, but maybe I'm missing something. If not, let's redirect the new folks to the sandbox and protect Wikipedia:Introduction.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 09:00, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea: I'd suggest transcluding a sandbox into it (once protected) with an edit link so that users can still try out editing from that page, without damaging the page itself. Nihiltres^(t.l) 15:29, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree about the need to separate sandbox edits from the introduction, certainly. Not quite so sure about s-protection: I don't mind it at all, but a lot of editors will feel that it might give a negative signal. We sometimes get comments from new editors along the lines of "hey, why can't I edit page X? Wikipedia sucks". Adrian M. H. 15:33, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's too much of a problem if we have a bot regularly checking the page to restore the "Please leave this line alone" template. If we already have one, crank up its check frequency, and if need be, separate its template-restoring and test-edit-section-clearing powers. Adding a separate sandbox page defeats the purpose of having sandbox space on the Introduction page and its misleading nature might give a bad first impression to new editors. Morgan Wick 17:33, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Except we already have a sandbox. Atropos 20:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right, I don't see why we cannot simply direct new users to the already existing sandbox at Wikipedia:Sandbox from the intro page--it seems the easiest solution.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The intro was previously protected by User:AntiVandalBot until April, when User:MartinBotIV had taken over the duties (See this thread), but Martinp23 appears to be inactive now too. (It's action was to reset the sandbox whenever the template/header text was changed, and every 30 minutes too. It stopped on June 26.)

User:MartinBot is still active, but I don't know who is running/managing it currently? I'm trying to figure these things out now. --Quiddity 21:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Martinp23's back, and will have it fixed soon :) --Quiddity 01:51, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the proposal, and thank you for proposing it on my behalf :) Chrisch^Talk 16:11, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I propose two things: A second 'contributions' watchlist, where one can monitor the contributions of the users watchlisted. This would allow much easier monitoring of vandal contributions. I also make the proposal that the pipe | be implemented into the edit toolbar. The pipe proves to be one of the most used wikitexts, and yet it appears only in the edit toolbox below. I think it needs to be placed among the most important wikitexts, in the edit toolbar, to make access easier. What do people think of this? -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 02:48, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like both of them. How difficult would it be to implement the secondary watchlist? — thesublime514 • talk • 03:04, July 15, 2007 (UTC)

I'll leave it to the devs to answer that 1. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 14:52, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure that we would need an on-screen button for the pipe. When typing, it is always easier to press Shift and Backslash rather than lift your eyes to the screen and a hand to the mouse for one character, then carry on typing. Special characters are only useful on-screen if they are not readily available from the keyboard. Adrian M. H. 14:57, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can easily type ==, but thats still in the menu. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 15:02, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly agree with the secondary watchlist idea - I have often wanted to use a tol like that when monitoring recent changes. However, it could encourage vandals to increase their claims of users 'targeting' them or discriminating against them - TINC, but there is a group of editors watching your every move :P. It also reminds me of the blacklist functions on various anti-vandal tools. Not so sure about the need for a pipe symbol though - although I can see that it might encourage newer users, I think the keyboard shortcut and the wikimarkup symbols section are sufficient. ck lostsword•T•C 15:37, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to be honest. I didnt actually know of the shortcut for the pipe before this. Somehow, i must have missed the shortcut. So that idea can go to the trash, and thats fine. But I think 2nd watchlist is good. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 15:45, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On Windows, use Alt+124 to make a pipe (Windows Alt keycodes), and there is already a way to track contributions: Copy {{subst:js|User:Tra/userwatchlist.js}} onto User:Anonymous Dissident/monobook.js. (User:Tra#User_watchlist). Reywas92^Talk 16:29, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1. thats only for IE 2. its not something in the very topbar; knowledge about it isnt widespread 3. It shares with normal watchlist and 4. I cant even make it work in my IE. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 16:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's not perfect and it often doesn't work for people. Having a tool like this in the MediaWiki source code or as an extension would probably be better so this is more of a temporary solution. Tra (Talk) 16:52, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Post feature requests on Bugzilla. >Radiant< 13:01, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was informed to place my suggestions here, so here goes...

I feel that Wikipedia has way too many pages relating to studio wrestling, and heard that Star Wars has it's own "Wookiepedia", so maybe all of the studio wrestling stuff should be moved into it's own "WWEpedia" or something of that nature. Valid cultural icons, such as Hulk Hogan, or Jesse "The Body" Ventura should be acceptable, however, detailed listings of all of studio wrestling's minor "feuds" and Pay-Per-View events is just so overboard and has no valid historical purpose.

Try http://prowrestling.wikia.com. Morgan Wick 02:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have been watching the following:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Companies in Bangladesh
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Greek companies
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Japanese companies
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of companies (2nd nomination)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of companies
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of British companies
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Singapore companies

All three proposed a mass deletion of the articles listed under Category:Lists of companies by country. The debate is not getting anywhere - one keep verdict is leading to another delete-all proposal. I have been asked to go to DRV with this, instead of a second nomination. But, since it seems to be a bigger issue than a simple-minded DRV I think it should be discussed here first. It is highly possible that an editor with diligence and enough understanding of the policies can go article by article to get them deleted through the proper process. But, it is always better to have broader consensus on a class of articles that keeps harassing the intelligence of many editors.

The appropriate reasons for keeping the articles in this category as well as deleting them have already been, mostly, discussed on the pages I provided the links to. Therefore, I am not repeating them again (WP doesn't have infinite server space and we all can make time for the few seconds it takes to go the linked pages). My proposition is simple - either have policy on inclusion criterion or delete them all. Help Wikipedia from turning into the yellow pages. Aditya Kabir 09:47, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The current format doesnt have any significant difference from the categories, the question is how a list should be displayed IMHO list should really include basic information, like name,ownership,turnover/revenues/profits,primary/core business, head office. Even red links should be required to have this basic to remain on the list. Gnangarra 10:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• In this case I concur with the suggestion to take it to DRV, in particular per the difference between this outcome and this one. >Radiant< 13:01, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's the easy way out. But, DRV may not be the right place to discuss the annihilation of an entire class of articles, especially if it's possible to create a guideline to keep the articles encyclopedic (i.e. inclusion criterion, such as - "no red links, please" - and, organization method, such as - "by existing business organizations categories, please" - and, referencing responsibilities, such as - "unbiased notable third-party references, please"). DRV would only mean only a delete/no-delete verdict, without any scope for further discussion on other prospects. Aditya Kabir 15:21, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • One more question - how to take measure of WP:NOT#INFO and WP:NOT#DIR. I also have found an interesting essay. Aditya Kabir 15:34, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, lists of companies AND basic facts about them would really be useful---but extremely hard to compile and maintain, if possible at all. If the lists are only supposed to be directories of company names, just get rid of them all and use categories. ---The user formerly known as JackLumber 19:25, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

first off, i'd like to clarify that i have problems. quiet a few actually. From time to time, i get this unexplainable urge to ask for help with my problems. so i walk over to my computer, and log into wikipedia(the source of all knowledge), and ask over at the reference desk. as much as i love their help, i can't help but wonder if they have already answered my questions a bazillion and one times before, and as such i find myself searching through the archives of old answered questions. if someone could write a script for searching through those pages only ( i have already searched through wikipedia) the help would be greatly appreciated.and even more so if it could just be added into the reference desks template.Xiaden 14:48, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here you go, use google and type site:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives (what you are trying to find). No script necessary. 68.231.151.161 00:34, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are 2 sets of archives (pre and post October 2006), requiring different searches. I've updated the instructions at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives. Use the 2 links there to search using google.

Ditto for the Help desk. See instructions at Category:Help desk archives (pre October 2006) and Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives (post October 2006) to search those. --Quiddity 17:05, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It does not appear that any guidelines exist for striking comments. I have seen the striking feature used in a very irresponsible way (at least, I think so). Does anyone else have any comments about this? Would this benefit the community as a whole? I think it would Jmfangio ► Talk 16:56, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can you provide an example of what you have seen? Adrian M. H. 17:09, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would hesitate to do so simply because I think people have a tendency to drift attention away from "what" and move it toward "who". Simply put, a user is currently going around and striking comments from talk pages where another user posted to. The original poster is currently banned and has been reported to be a sock. Many of the comments were made over a year ago and don't have anything to do with the "Striker". He is unilaterally striking the comments regardless of their content. It makes it frustrating, if not difficult, when trying to review the discussions. Jmfangio ► Talk 17:30, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that I see the problem and see no reason why we shouldn't have a clear solution at the talk page guidelines. See my proposed solution at:[2]--Kevin Murray 21:45, 16 July 2007 (UTC) (signed earlier post)[reply]

WP:TPG says "Never edit someone's words to change their meaning. Editing others' comments is not allowed." Adding strikethroughs is clearly editing someone else's words on a talk page. So there already is a guideline on this. If that needs clarification, the place to do so is at that guideline, or a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:33, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree and tried to clarify that at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines and was promptly reverted. I think that the prohibition of editing anothers comments clearly includes strikeut, but apparently there is a problem and a new editor has asked for help. I see no problem with adding the clarification. --Kevin Murray 21:45, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problem is that there are, or many believe there to be, valid reasons to strikethrough, such as AfD !votes from a recognised sockpuppet. At least, I've seen that and no-one seemed to complain. It was a clearly disruptive !vote that made malicious use of sockpuppetry, but if that's okay than a blanket ban in policy isn't appropriate. SamBC 21:58, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• I think a strike through outside of a voting situation is very bad. This is what prompted my question. I would say that the vote itself (that is the bold part) should be struck through in situations where it is used by a CONVICTED sock. This could be a problem if someone is falsely convicted, but, because of wiki's fluidity, and because that is the exception, i don't think that should stop us from creating the guideline. Again, in a voting situation, i would leave the explanation but strike through the votes. Outside of that, I don't believe it is appropriate to strike through a user's comments, even if they are banned. While we have some brief comments about it on the TPG page, it needs to be flushed out there OR moved to a separate section somewhere in wiki. Jmfangio ► Talk 22:05, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• I see removal of inappropriate comments including those of sockpuppets as exception to either striking or deleting, and I favor the latter. However, any removal or strikeout should be performed by an admin with good cause. --Kevin Murray 22:15, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a problem that needs to be addressed. A guideline needs to be written by the right people, now. These are issues that relate to civility, the comments of the Wikipedia community, and WP:BITE. We need to have something solid in place to ensure the strike is used properly. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 22:11, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) With regard to AFDs and struck through statements, if they are struck through, it should cover the statement, since the bold word is a mere summary and should not receive the focus of attention. Hence "!vote". With regard to your editor, I think that he is being very over zealous and unhelpful, and it makes it look as if he had an issue of some kind with the blocked/banned editor. Adrian M. H. 22:12, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• I can see your point on the strike through. For me that's not a part of the issue, but my thinking was this: Let's assume that a person uses three socks to make votes on a single vote. It is possible that all three arguments are unique and well thought out. Therefor, while the vote itself shouldn't be considered, a person might benefit from reading it. Perhaps laying out reasons for each choice would be good. Eitherway, I'm so wishy washy on that part of the issue, that I'll let others decide and not "vote" against it. With regards to the situation, it is nothing that can't be repaired once the people who i think are being WikiBullies just move on. I view this as a major issue that should have it's own page. It applies to WP:TPG and WP:CIV and a whole mess of other things as well. Jmfangio ► Talk 22:19, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• The short guideline on striking comments is " Don't ". The slightly longer version adds an exception for striking your own comments, as well as for striking !votes on deletion debates and RFA and such that were made by an obvious sockpuppet or meatpuppet. >Radiant< 10:47, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is a school of thought which is allowed but not sanctioned whereby contributions made by sock puppets to evade bans can be deleted or reversed, but I can't recall that ever applying to talk space. Steve block Talk 12:54, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Radiant - Where is this long guideline or are you just speaking about the WP:TALK page? Steve Block - is there someplace where this is documented? I'm thinking that it would be good to formally establish this guideline. Jmfangio ► Talk 21:58, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• The banning policy, which states Any edits made in defiance of a ban may be reverted to enforce the ban, regardless of the merits of the edits themselves. As the banned user is not authorized to make those edits, there is no need to discuss them prior to reversion. Users are generally expected to refrain from reinstating any edits made by banned users. Users that nonetheless reinstate such edits take responsibility for their content by so doing. Now I'd argue you could argue that gives license to remove comments by a ban evading sock, but I'm not going to argue it does so 100%. :) Steve block Talk 14:41, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• The WP:TALK page now says: "Do not strikeout the comments of other editors without their permission." This was reverted yesterday, but I put it back and the editor who had reverted it seems to have relaxed his oposition after I gave a more detailed explanation of the addition. It seems that this should close the issue. --Kevin Murray 22:06, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I propose the installment of a retractable text function into the Wikipedia page architecture to accompany the internal links in providing additional information to the reader.

Most articles in Wikipedia rely on internal links to other articles in order to facilitate the reader in accessing potentially relevant information. My proposal would provide another method by which editors might expand upon the information presented in an article without distracting the reader from the main focus of the article. The idea would be to create hidden areas of text which would be expandable to be read (or collapsed to be re-hidden) only when a link such as "click here to reveal more", or "click to expand article" has been activated. These "asides" would not replace, but rather accompany the internal links that are already used for the benefit of the reader.

There are several problems with relying solely on internal links that would be solved by the use of retractable content. The easiest problem to notice is the number of broken links. It appears that the editors of some pages are attempting to provide more information to the curious reader, but the article that he or she is attempting to link to does not exist, for whatever reason. More subtly, when the linked article does exist, the information present in it may not actually contain any information that fits in the context of the previous article from which the reader was directed. Such a phenomenon often happens when specific dates are mentioned. In this case, the reader may want to find out exactly what happened on that date, but is instead redirected to a general article that just lists everything that has ever been recorded to have happened on that date. On the other hand, supposing that an article is created and linked with the relevant information, it might be edited by another person without realizing that it was created in the context of another article, and thus lose its intended meaning. Other times, a specific event or circumstance might be mentioned in an article, but no link is provided for further investigation into this event, whether it be because a specific article relating to it has not been created or because the editor has not taken the time to provide the link. All of these issues might be solved by adding the feature described above whereby editors may provide additional information as simple as a small amount of metadata to a paragraph or two summary of the indicated event. Keeping such text hidden until expanded would help to maintain the simplicity and focus of articles for readers who are just trying to get a general understanding of the information in the article, and also keep the article from being cluttered by information which some readers already familiar with the topic would not wish to waste time reading.

The main benefits of retractable text include the fact that it would not require the creation of a separate article, which would probably just remain a "stub" for a long period of time. Furthermore, it would allow the editor of the article to include information that fits in the context of the original article so that the reader does not have to search through another article for relevant information. If a separate article does exist that expands even further upon such a reference, such as a date, then the text could be made available in that article as well, under a heading such as "(blank) in the context of (blank)," or, "(blank) in relation to (blank)." Then, when another editor changes the content of an article, he can be aware that he might be affecting its context in other articles and treat those articles accordingly.

I have no experience with website design or programming and so I do not know whether my idea is easy to add or not. I also do not know if such an idea has been presented before, but I am presenting my idea to any more experienced Wikipedia editors who might be able to implement it. I would greatly appreciate any response just so I know that this idea has been read and considered, but would be especially interested to know if this idea has potential for being incorporated into the features of Wikipedia.

Jacob T. Martin 199.221.7.30 19:51, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The idea of documenting what information pertains to what text, in much more detail, is discussed at the proposed m:Wikicite page. As for bad external links, the problem is that editors are inserting external links rather than citations; with citations, a bad external link can more easily be repaired (or, if necessary, ignored). You also fail to mention that invisible comments are available to editors who absolutely need to communicate to other editors. Finally, Wikipedia:Summary style addresses the issue of providing more information to readers. It's true that the intermediate case - where an editor wants to compress (say) six paragraphs to two, rather than (say) 16 paragraphs to two, doesn't lend itself to a spinoff article, but the reality is that with section headings, readers are free to read a couple of paragraphs and decide if they want to keep reading or go to another section.

In short, Wikipedia already has (or is thinking about having) most of the solutions to the problems you note, and making the editing markup and process even more complicated than it is now isn't generally a good idea: given that so many editors don't even use the footnotes/references format when providing a source for example, why would we expect them to learn and use something even more complicated? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:28, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that speedy deletes are happening so quickly that no-one would stand a chance to add "hangon" to the article before it is actually deleted. I'm not complaining that this is the case (after all, it is supposed in a speedy fashion because the case is obvious), but I am complaining that Template:Nn-warn says that the article can be kept by using it, when in reality, the vast majority of the time it appears there is no chance of that actually being possible.

Proposal: Remove the "hangon" mention from Template:Nn-warn, and any other templates which might get used with regards to a speedy delete. Mrand ^T-C 12:08, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• The hangon is a courtesy, and costs little to extend but evokes volumes if removed. basically, we are offering good faith that an article that may not violate the deletion criteria in question may be being worked on. Since an article which doesn't meet the speedy deletion criteria can be written regardless of any previous speedy deletion, it costs us little to offer the hangon, we're simply evoking the policy and extending good faith. Without the warning, we risk upsetting people who are working on an article in good faith. Your proposition is that because this rarely gets seen, it is worthless. That ignores the few times it does get seen, and the fact that it is an acceptable action to take. It is an accurate offer, and so should not be removed. It would only be inaccurate if no-one responded to the hangon. As to whether our speedy criteria are obvious or not, that is simply not the case, as a trawl through the talk page of WP:CSD will tell you. Speaking as an admin with experience of trawling through WP:CSD on a blue moon, I find one in about fifty to a hundred are misapplied. Given the number of articles so deleted, that's quite a few articles to which the hangon can be fairly extended. Wikipedia is pretty much a balancing act between building an encyclopedia and doing the right thing. Steve block Talk 12:52, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I understand your point. However, the cases I was referring to are where the speedy delete happens within minutes of the article being marked - i.e., for all practical purposes, no human could possibly hope to apply a "hangon" before the article is already gone. So while I appreciate the good faith intent of hangon, my point is that there is a set of deletes that are occuring where I believe are fooling ourselves that it provides anything except a false sense of good faith. Perhaps that set of cases is too small to worry about creating a separate template - in which case I'm perfectly happy to accept that. Mrand ^T-C 14:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, one suggestion might be to have two versions of the warning, one with and one without, but that's trivially useless. The user applying the template has no idea how soon an admin will roll along and agree with the tag. Maybe you can suggest an alternate wording that tells people about hangon without creating false expectations. SamBC 14:28, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I am now not sure I understand your point. Are you suggesting that someone will see the speedy notice, but between reading it and adding the hangon notice the article may be deleted? I'm not sure how long the speedy deletion has been really speedy, there have often been backlogs, and to me this really feels like trying to create a set of processes to cover every eventuality, something I can't really subscribe too. I'm much more a fan of muddling through the best way possible with the best intentions and sorting every thing out as calmly and as helpfully as possible when it all goes wrong. I appreciate the point you are making, I'm not sure there is an answer though. Steve block Talk 15:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Maybe just add "(unless an admin deletes the article between now and when you have added the tag)" or, in the case of {{nn-warn}}, "(unless an admin has already deleted the article by the time you see this)"? (As the title of the section implies, he's not talking about {{db}}, but about a template added to user talk pages, which does survive the deletion of the page.) Morgan Wick 18:46, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Exactly correct, MW. In response to Steve, good point(s). It is certainly not my desire to have rules or processes which cover each and every case (there seem like too many as it is!). But if there is a way to make things somewhat cleaner without much effort... Mrand ^T-C 20:39, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • This certainly would be a good addition. I would change the second paragraph as follows:

          If you think that you can assert the notability of the subject, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on [[Talk:{{{1}}}|the article's talk page]] explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, the article may be deleted at any time.

        • I have streamlined the language a bit without removing any information so that it remains the same approximate length, despite the additional detail.--Fuhghettaboutit 23:09, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • Having neither heard yeah or nay, I have posted the above proposed language.--Fuhghettaboutit 21:35, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The standard Arial font used in EVERY page of wikipedia is not easily legible for everybody. therefore a new feature should be added in my preferences page for setting the font, font size, font- and background color, etc. The font selection might create inconsistency among various OSes but at least the browser's default font should be able to be used in the articles for reading.

You can already set the font you want to use with your Monobook.css file. Just put this in there. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:12, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

body { font-family: Futura; }

the Wikimedia foundation has a burgeoning population of wiki sites, all excellent, all on the same collaborative model (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc.). much as i dislike the word "paradigm," i believe wikimedia may be creating a new paradigm for the web.

why not establish a web ring? i.e. a navigable thread connecting all the Wikimedia project sites (and approved affiliate sites). you could call it Wikiverse, Wikiworld, Wikispace, Wikinet, WikIQ. (i have not checked the availability of these domain names).

Just a suggestion.

--Laurence white 17:30, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what use you're thinking it will have - I believe there are already links to at least most of the sister sites at the bottom of the Main Page. Morgan Wick 18:48, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can we please have the option to hide redirects at special:allpages? — Jack · talk · 19:12, Tuesday, 17 July 2007

• Edit the page User:Jrockley/monobook.css and add the following line:

  .allpagesredirect {display: none;}

• Then do a full reload (i.e. hold shift+control+R). >Radiant< 09:36, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  Depending on which browser you use, the instructions for a full refresh may be different (although the CSS code is the same); see Wikipedia:Bypass your cache for instructions for your browser. --ais523 14:23, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I am unsure where to make this proposal, it might belong outside wikipedia, in a new place in the wikiverse and possibly require some programming

I have read through the FAQ and perennial proposals and I do not see any suggestion like this though it seems obvious to me.

I applaud Wikipedia's endeavour to keep articles unbiased but there should be a place for perspectives that some people would consider biased. There are many huge, ongoing debates in the mainstream media, on Usenet, and various Internet discussion groups where arguments both valid and fallacious are endlessly repeated. I propose that the wiki foundation establish a reference site for summarizing and clarifying these debates with the ultimate hope of raising the level of debate and reducing the endless repetition of fallacious facts and arguments. I also hope that this will reduce inappropriately biased edits to Wikipedia, by provident and appropriate forum for them. It would be would be devoted to the following:

Primary Standards:

A 5 part debate system similar to the California state initiative voter information system, which consists of the following:

A Pro Argument
A Con Argument
A rebuttal to the Pro Argument
A rebuttal to the Con Argument
A reconciliatory view if applicable

Each of these arguments will be subdivided into topic and subtopics that will hierarchically arranged and appropriately cross referenced to other viewpoints and rebuttals.

Though length of subsection will not be restricted. High standards of conciseness and clarity should be maintained.

Lack of redundancy in argument should also be a paramount principle.

Failure to follow the principles of formal logic and rhetoric are also ground to edit or remove an argument. The author should be notified of the breech of protocol and repeated offenders should be banned even if their intent is not malicious.

Failure to provide citation for supporting fact, manufacture of false information, or conflation of opinion with fact are also grounds editing, remove or eventual censure (with prior warning).

Optional principles:

This project may require a higher degree of vandalism protection including any subset of the many perennial suggestions for reducing wikipedia's vandalism.

Users may be required to register on one side or another of an argument.

A message board for less formal discussion of the contents of the debate could be included.

A FAQ explaining why particular fallacious arguments have been removed.

In addition to a reconciliatory viewpoint, we might include space for a fourth viewpoint that disagrees with both sides. I am wary though about the excessive proliferation of viewpoints diluting the utility of this forum by undermining its conciseness.

--Michalchik 22:05, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you wish to create a WikiProject, you should propose it at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. However, it seems to me that you may also be trying to propose a change to Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy - if that is the case, you may want to bring it up at Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 00:33, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to replicate Debatepedia, here, my response would be Why?. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:13, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't know about debatepedia

Issues by topic area (View all)
Article topics (View all)
Biographies	(watch)	{{rfc|bio}}
Economy, trade, and companies	(watch)	{{rfc|econ}}
History and geography	(watch)	{{rfc|hist}}
Language and linguistics	(watch)	{{rfc|lang}}
Maths, science, and technology	(watch)	{{rfc|sci}}
Media, the arts, and architecture	(watch)	{{rfc|media}}
Politics, government, and law	(watch)	{{rfc|pol}}
Religion and philosophy	(watch)	{{rfc|reli}}
Society, sports, and culture	(watch)	{{rfc|soc}}
Project-wide topics (View all)
Wikipedia style and naming	(watch)	{{rfc|style}}
Wikipedia policies and guidelines	(watch)	{{rfc|policy}}
WikiProjects and collaborations	(watch)	{{rfc|proj}}
Wikipedia technical issues and templates	(watch)	{{rfc|tech}}
Wikipedia proposals	(watch)	{{rfc|prop}}
Unsorted
Unsorted RfCs	(watch)	{{rfc}}

I would like to propose that Wikipedia block all search engines from indexing anything that which is not an article. This includes User pages, User Talk pages, category talk pages etc. for the following reasons.

1. Many times people post information on their own user page or talk pages which they later do not want displayed, since it is being used to harass them. The blocking of the indexing of these pages will prevent them from being found in search engines. Removing the content is not always an option, due to scrapers that will still have the old information. Although not all scrapers follow robots.txt, this will help for the majority that do. This would also stop Google and others that cache the page from returning a result with information that is not wanted, as google and others update their cache only once every while.
2. Doing so will help prevent harassment from those posting false information about people on random talk pages, which are not monitored as often and carefully as regular article pages.
3. This will speed up wikipedia tremendously because wikipedia will not have the extra load that the search engines place while indexing the talk pages and user pages.
4. Wikipedia is meant to serve as an encyclopedia, while the user pages and talk pages are helpful for those writing it, they are not helpful for those looking for information. Clicking on a search engine result and ending up on a user page or talk page, is very confusing for the visitor.
5. This will cause more pages from wikipedia to be properly indexed, as wikipedia will have more bandwith and server load that could be used for regular pages.

--PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 22:56, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You more than once made a false assumption. Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines don't impose any signficant load on Wikipedia as we have arrangements in place to provide them with independent dedicated feeds. In exchange for which they have provided material support in the form of servers and space in their data centers. As to the more general point, as an editor I find it useful to be able to use third party search engines to find content from those other namespaces, and in my opinion the rest of your argument don't provide a very compelling reason to stop that. Dragons flight 23:16, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd note that Google would still search the mirror sites - I'm unsure whether this is relevant to the indexing or not (I believe it is relevant to your first point, regardless) ... but a quick Google search for my User page brought up three mirrors - one of which has already caught an edit I made just a few hours ago. [3][4][5] --Tim4christ17 ^talk 00:41, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I often use Google to find templates, I don't think this is a good idea. Tim Vickers 01:23, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For User namespaces only?

I think it would be reasonable to remove the User namespaces from search engines. It aids in the privacy of our editors and discourages user space vanity articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But that's how we find them, too. And spammy userpages. MER-C 03:21, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. We can start talking about this when our internal search engine gets better. Right now, Google is too useful for maintenance work to disable it. Kusma (talk) 09:21, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not liking this idea at all. If it weren't for google, tons of stuff (including discussions, userpage stuff, etc) would easily get lost and not be accessible when it needs to be. It's already a pain in the ass to find stuff, lets not make it any harder. If you do not want the internet to know something, then here's a good idea, stop talking about it in a highly public and visible place like Wikipedia. If anyone is worried about privacy then they shouldn't be putting sensitive information on any page of Wikipedia. -- Ned Scott 03:38, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We also need to search Image space, not only article space. (SEWilco 04:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC))[reply]

What we really need is a bot that could find spammy or otherwise "bad" userpages, to reduce our dependance on Google. Nathanww 14:44, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I personally search wikipedia using a google directed only at the site in my toolbar, and often search for non-articles, including users. This would seriously inconvenience me for the sake of provided privacy.. to people who have published the information on the internet. Everyone with a userpage knows that they have no expectation of privacy.

I also doubt that people searching for a topic in the encyclopedia would be very likely to get a userpage very high in their google results. Atropos 00:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The idea is great in theory, but when you look at it in practice I don't think this is useful. Google searching of all the namespaces is very helpful considering the MediaWiki search engine has a few caveats. If people are using information from Userspace as a source of information it shows that they haven't researched the quality of their source. For example, if I am going to use some information in an article, I make sure that where I am getting it from fits all the appropriate criteria. If I was using Wikipedia articles as sources for something else, I would put a little research into Wikipedia first and realise that Userspace isn't a reliable source of information. Nicko (Talk•Contribs)Review my progress! 03:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with the 1st two sentences: MediaWiki's internal search system is horrible! Frequently it just doesn work and instead... points you to Google and/or Yahoo. If that's still going to happen, we need to make sure what people are being directed to will not be artificially crippled v. the internal system. 68.39.174.238 16:24, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is very useful to be able to search all namespaces. What we could have as a compromise is a template to slap on pages which prevents them from being indexed... that way my templates under my userpage would be indexed while my userpage proper would not (for example). BigNate37_(T) 19:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would take more than a simple template to achieve that - the mediawiki software would need to be changed, or a table of pages that should not be indexed would need to be created. Would that have consensus?

Proposal: opt-in noindexing for user pages

I propose that a table be created that simply lists pages (in user space). Pages in the table would be served with headers to prevent indexing. Users who wish to do so could request to have their pages added to the list. This would require implementation in the mediawiki code. The point is to allow for greater privacy for users who don't want their WP page to appear in Google. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm proposing a rewrite of the guidance offered by the WikiProject Comics, and would appreciate input from the wider community. Thanks. Steve block Talk 15:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

.Here's my point on the spell check many young students use wikipedia and some times it can be a simple mistake or someone may not know the spelling and these can all be solved with the google search but many of the youngster don't always know how to get to that search. I know that a spell check for an encyclopedia may seem like dumbing down to some flamer but it is relay a great feature .... added at 00:56, 19 July 2007 by Unsignedcomment (contributions)

Typographical exuberance doesn't make people mad; it merely irritates them, additionally suggesting that the writer is mad.

Perhaps you can explain your proposal in more detail, particularly in view of the way in which the software here already makes suggestions if the page somebody asks for doesn't exist.

Do remember to sign your comments (unless of course not signing them is your point). -- Hoary 01:09, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This would not function, for the reason that the titles of many articles are deliberately spelled incorrectly for some specific reason. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:34, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

no it isn't a great feature. It is annoying when search engines think they know better than you what you are trying to find. Anyway, this seems to be more of a flamebait than a serious suggestion. There is already a solution to address the most common misspellings, {{R from misspelling}}. dab (𒁳) 07:28, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I might add that my comment on typographical exuberance was in reply to the comment Ah using exclamation marks like that make many of the people who are here that flame newbies mad that is why I use them; the OP subsequently deleted this. -- Hoary 13:44, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is getting out of hand I get a hate mail from "Anonymous Dissident" saying there is no elitism on wiki and say I'm stupid and don't know what I'm doing. I may be stupid but criticizing someone for suggesting a spell check for Wikipedia search then telling them "You can accuse Wikipedia of many things, but certainly not of elitism. WP has an obsession with accessibility to and participation of, to put it bluntly, morons" yes that is elitism and each member of wikipedia is part of wikipedia and your comments ruin the good community of wikipedia. My post was mainly about a spell check a spell check offering suggestions for the search like the one on google yes it is a basic suggestion and not much to it thats why I suggested it I thought it maybe nice and easy to implement. I have learned from my first post everyone on wikipedia is perfect and can do no wrong but some people are not good speller like me I always use spell check on Open Office and it is easy and convenient. I like this response it so nice and polite "no it isn't a great feature. It is annoying when search engines think they know better than you what you are trying to find. Anyway, this seems to be more of a flame-bait than a serious suggestion. There is already a solution to address the most common misspellings" this is flame bait why are you so cranky you don't like it so it is flame bait boom you attack come on this is not the place for that as for thinking the search engine is better than you I just don't know why a suggestion of the correct spelling is so intimidating .My attempt to ferret out people who attack was just that people on many talk pages are mean and nasty and it should stop just because you are typing 10000 Km away. My user name is Unsignedcomment I thought it was mildly funny but even more I was lazy and do not care much but to Anonymous Dissident it is stupid maybe you think that but a user name is so meaningless here's what Anonymous Dissident had to say "To create a user account Unsignedcomment and then make a point of not signing your posts is just puerile obstinacy and doesn't buy you any points." . I have not posted much I just did not realize I had to sign my post some what like a forum I thought it signed the post for you. As for buying points if I get enough do I get a BB gun like with skeet ball tickets (joke in case you don't get it and are angered to the point of Anonymous Dissident ) .sorry for not reading the FAQ but that does not excuse the hat brought about by a mistake none of the geniuses above have read the FAQ or they would know the answer to why this is not possible and would have let me in on it wouldn't they or are the cranky and elitist.And my next proposal will be a proposal to rid Wiki of the intimidation and B!@#$ing above. Maybe you think someones Idea is dumb but does that give you the right to be mean no if someone is a new user help don't hate. Maybe only you guys and doctors should write the encyclopedia oh no that Nupedia what happened to that?-- User: Unsignedcomment 13:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What 'hate mail' are you refering to? I have not spoken to you once before this, and I never said anything remotely hateful to anyone. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 21:26, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

He seems to be under the misapprehension that dab's comment on his talk page, which did not accuse him of being stupid, was from you. I don't quite know where the "stupid" thing has come from. Adrian M. H. 21:39, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This post has become something of a joke I'm sad to say. The user feels that everyone is being 'mean and nasty' to him in what is a clearly civil discussion for something which I am afraid to say will not work. Sorry. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 21:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very confused reading this. Is there another conversation that explains why dab would think this proposal was a flamebait? Atropos 00:15, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok I would erase the whole thing but i'm sure there is a rule that i can't karma points would help kindness maybe be called childis for something as dumb as a dumb screen name is uncivil maybe not maybe your user who flames as well just may.kindness and respect goes alongway —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Unsignedcomment (talk • contribs) 03:04, 20 July 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Atropos, some elements were evidently later deleted by Unsignedcomment, see what Hoary said at 13:44 Nil Einne 14:00, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, this makes sense now. I'm glad you're around when my reading comprehension fails me. :D Atropos 00:51, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This seems obvious enough that it's probably been debated ad nauseum somewhere before (if so, a link to the discussion(s) would be appreciated), but...

Would it make sense to change the way new topics are added to, for example, WP:AN/I, so that each new topic is a subpage, transcluded into the main page? Like at WP:RfA. This would make it possible to watchlist only the threads of interest, and make navigating to that thread easier. As it is now, someone interested in one particular thread on ANI has to reload the whole page, and scroll down. The TOC is so long that even that is hard to use, especially if your thread of interest is somewhere in the middle.

The only drawback I can think of is, I'm not sure if there's a way to see a flag every time any change is made to any thread (i.e. no way to replicate watchlisting ANI right now). But right now, watchlisting ANI doesn't do much good anyway, because so many editors are making so many changes to so many different topics all at once. And I think watchlisting the main page would still notify you every time a new topic was added.

I think the transclusion at RfA is done thru template magic, so someone who knows what they're doing could make it fairly painless for new users to add a topic. I imagine you could even have the template add a time/date stamp of some kind to the subpage name, so the problem of trying to reuse "popular" topic titles like WP:ANI/I have been insulted by another user would be eliminated. Instead, you would soon have WP:ANI/I have been insulted by another user (13:26 July 19, 2007) , WP:ANI/I have been insulted by another user(14:26 July 21, 2007), WP:ANI/I have been insulted by another user (15:26 July 24, 2007)...

Another benefit I just thought of before hitting save: Links elsewhere to that particular thread would not become obsolete when the thread is archived; the transclusions are just taken off the main page after a certain time, and the archived talk template would be added. You'd just move the transclusion to an archive page.

I have 0.01% of the knowledge needed to actually effect such a change, so someone would have to take it on if it were done. --barneca (talk) 19:02, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen this proposal once before, though it's not likely to make the perennial list anytime soon. The objection raised at the time was the one you anticipated - namely, there can be only one subject heading called "Block review", and all others would need a different name. As you point out, this can be resolved by adding a datestamp to the heading.

Another problem, which was not pointed out then, was that the advantage to watchlisters may be offset by the disadvantage to posters on the page. Admittedly, I'm biased - I simply don't use my watchlist, if you can believe that - but creating subpages is a little complicated for new users, and increases server load compared to the sections model. The choice of subpages versus sections can seem arbitrary - note the various XFDs - but for sure, if you want anonymous IP users to be able to file a report, creating a new page will not be possible for them. Also, having lots of subpages will create a large workload for some to-be-determined archiving bot. Finally, most posts on ANI receive fairly low traffic - one to three responses - so the separation afforded by subpages is usually not needed. Shalom ^Hello 06:04, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think I could successfully argue with many of the points you bring up, but this: "but creating subpages is a little complicated for new users ... <clip> ... if you want anonymous IP users to be able to file a report, creating a new page will not be possible for them" is probably a fatal flaw in my plan. If there's a technical way around that, I might be able to salvage it, but I agree a process where IP's are locked out of initiating a report is a non-starter. --barneca (talk) 12:37, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The watchlist issue is another needless problem caused by our ad hoc, difficult-to-manage wikithread system, that would be fixed by a real forum system. See User:Dcoetzee/Why wikithreads are bad. Dcoetzee 01:59, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I propose editing MediaWiki:Watchlistedit-normal-explain (displayed when users edit watchlist) to include the info that you can select many checkboxes at once by shift-clicking "on the other end". This is Mediawiki built-in Javascript functionality. Note that this info was accessible from the old MediaWiki:Watcheditlist (which by the way is no longer a system message and can be deleted, or moved somewhere for "historical puproses") ∴ Alex Smotrov 22:32, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would do no harm to mention that more than box can be ticked, but most moderately internet-savvy people should know that from using forms (because of default checkbox behaviour). I don't think anyone needs to hold the Shift key, though. Adrian M. H. 22:45, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I have to be more specific: this Javascript functionality allows you to select/deselect any number of checkboxes with just two mouse clicks. Click one checkbox, then click some other checkbox while holding shift, and that will change all checkboxes in between.

And it's not limited to any particular page, e.g. Special:Undelete (where admins have to select which edits) to restore will benefit from this notice as well ∴ Alex Smotrov 23:10, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... as regards Special:Undelete, that's very useful to know - last time, I went through clicking 44 times to selectively delete a couple of revisions... very tiresome. In the future, I'll save 42 clicks :). Given that, it might be useful to add such a notice. I suggest you add an {{editprotected}} at that MediaWiki page's talk page. Nihiltres^(t.l) 01:48, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The watchlist is a useful tool for tracking changes to pages of interest, but it could be greatly improved by compassing multiple edits. At present, the watch seems to show only the most recent edit of watched pages.

I propose that with each page on the watchlist, a user may nominate a particular revision by its oldid as the "BASE" of the watch. At present, I am presented with option to click on the diff of the most recent issue only, or look at the history list. I would like also an option to see a single diff from my nominated "BASE" revision up to the current version. The current "watch" button should (by default) establish the revision in place as the base, and when viewing diffs there should also be the option to update the watch with a single click to establish a new base as the last version of the diff being viewed.

I envision this as working by addition of "&oldid=########" on the page name in the current watch list. This could be optional, allowing for continued use without considering a particular base point. If the oldid information was present, the watch list would include a single clickable word "base", to go along side the current links for (diff) and (hist).

Here is a concrete example (without any working links), showing a line from my current watchlist, and another line should my proposal be adopted:

• (diff) (hist) . . Pran Nath‎; 10:06 . . (+370) . . Duae Quartunciae (Talk | contribs)
• (base) (diff) (hist) . . Pran Nath‎; 10:06 . . (+370) . . Duae Quartunciae (Talk | contribs)

The extra base would be the link that gives the diff from the base oldid to the curent version. I don't know how hard this would be, but it might also be possible to give the number of changes since the base version, optionally excluding bots and minors. Proposal submitted by -- Duae Quartunciae (t|c) 00:02, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Without commenting on the proposal itself, I just want to make sure you're aware 1)There's a button in your preferences (under the "watchlist" tab) that says "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" which will show you every change yo pages on your watchlist. 2)Applications like Popups have a feature that allows you to compare revisions since the last time you edited the page. --Ybbor^Talk 00:45, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! That does indeed allay some of my concerns. The major new effect of my proposal would be to allow possibly better ways to organize the watchlist. The popups are handy, but a bit annoying. I'm very new to all of this and so I'll try out the popups for a while. I'm leaving this proposal for comments, as I think there is still some benefit from a simple link to the diffs from some nominated base version than an editor has reviewed and would like to use as a base for considering what has happened since. But your suggestions have certainly given me some valuable immediate help. -- Duae Quartunciae (t|c) 01:13, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Already existing solution that works perfectly for me: in your preferences put Watchlist → 'Expand watchlist' (as stated above), Recent Changes → 'Enhanced recent changes' (so they are grouped together). Get a very useful Watchlist since script. Then dedicate a separate browser window for your watchlist, keep it open and only click the "Changes since last load" link (you should open diffs/articles in new windows). This way every time you will only see new changes in your watchlist items ∴ Alex Smotrov 13:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you also! I'm amazed at how much there is going on behind the scenes at wikipedia. I had no idea... There's only one last small benefit with the proposal I have given, which is that it would allow for a way to have independent check times on different pages. But with the kinds of script stuff I am seeing, I bet that could be added also if anyone really wanted it. I am content. -- Duae Quartunciae (t|c) 13:56, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I propose that words in the source that have brackets around them ([[]]) be linkable just like outside of the source, unless <nowiki> is in force. I think that this would make accessibility much easier. I think that also several aesthetic changes need be made to the source - more useful items to the menu bar, enough to indeed cover the whole breadth of the top of the source. I also think a tab for templates ({{}}) should be added to the menu bar, to be specific. What do people think? -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:27, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's possible to make something "clickable" in a textarea (browsers limitation). "More useful items to the menu bar" is too broad to be a real proposal. Anyway, try wikEd script (a bit heavy, for Firefox only), Extra edit buttons script, check out some other scripts. Anything major is not likely to be accepted sitewide anyway ∴ Alex Smotrov 13:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've made a proposal to expand the review process of the television wikiproject into a fictional article notice board, to discuss the cleaning up of articles in line with the manual of style and that on notability. I think we need an area where we can bring issues within articles concerning fiction to the attention of the wider community, and this seems a useful way of doing it. It would mirror notice boards implemented at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard, Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard. Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Television article review process#Expansion. Steve block Talk 15:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hey guys, check out this Feature Request I submitted and see what you think (read MY comments to see MY idea, because its been shifted about alittle by the repondents. [6]
Ferdia O'Brien The Archiver, Reformatter And Vandal Watchman (Talk) 19:23, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This wasn't an appropriate topic for a bugzilla request, because it involves a major policy change. It also requires a change to the software, but the developers are going to ignore the request unless there is a large amount of community support for it.

The proposal is (in a nutshell):

articles within Wikipedia should have a third page, to supplement "Article" and "Talk". This third page should have a name such as "Repository" and should store all information, that is known on the topic that doesn't fit the specifications of the article, such as layout etc., in an organised fashion. The advantage is that the article would hold all available information (provided it is still referenced) on the topic, while leaving the article clutter free. In the event of an issue arising where there is disfigurement over the validity of information in the main article, it could simply be put in the Repository.

I'll start: (1) A "repository" sounds like a place for massive copyright violations to occur; how exactly does one collect "everything" if most of "everything" is owned by someone else? (2) It's hard to imagine information that is important (for encyclopedia purposes) that wouldn't at least merit being mentioned in an "external links" or "references" or "further reading" section, so what exactly would this repository hold that really would be useful for further work on the encyclopedia (very specific examples would be really, really appreciated)? and finally, (3) the purpose of Wikipedia is to write informative articles, not, per WP:NOT, indiscriminately collect information. If this is a proposal to make Wikipedia into a massive collector of information, discussing that at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not might be a better place to begin, rather than here. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:16, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Or suggest the creation of a new project, Wikirepository. A.Z. 23:48, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jul 20, '07

To; All Wikipedians,

I would like to make a proposal that the editing policy for Wikipedia be changed to resonably limit those individuals who are allowed to edit the Wikipedia. Another recommendation (in addition to) would be to have a serious screening procedure in place, where one must apply in order to be allowed editing of this free online Encyclopedia. The reasons for my making this suggestion I think are quite obvious; serious vandalization of Web-pages on Wikipedia occur rather frequently. The E-article on "Mood Rings" is just one example, among (I am sure) many others. However mundane the topic of Mood Rings might be to some (it is only an entertainment-hobby of mine)- I still would like the information regarding these novetly items to be reasonably accurate. I grow very tired of checking the E-article on Mood Rings from time to time, only to find the Web-article on them to have again been seriously tampered with, which includes; misinformation, incorrect information, crazy & even obscene entries. The "Mood Color Chart" appears to be a favorite target for these vandals. I did edit the entry on Mood Rings with corrections specifically to the Mood Color Chart & made every sincere effort to ensure that my edit was correct.

Please consider this proposal as I think that (considering how the Internet is basically viewed globally)- It is a serious diservice to all who use this free online Encyclopedia to be bombarded with misinformation perpetrated by roving E-vandals!

Thank You for Your time.

Dawnofrabbits 19:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

according to Jimbo, "anyone can edit" is a non-negotiable axiom. You may want to look at Citizendium. That said, we need a more efficient way to kick out people who prove they are morons (check my edit history for today to see that I know what I'm talking about). Don't ban people after four months and two arbitration cases. Ban then as it becomes apparent that they are unable or unwilling to contribute constructively. That isn't a violation of our axioms, just a reasonable tightening of our blocking practice. dab (𒁳) 20:10, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(Edit conflict)Yes, it would be great (in theory) to have only good editors, but can I inject some reality for a moment? Firstly, this is a Foundation principle; anyone can edit and that is not going to change. Secondly, many good (or certainly not bad) contributions come from anon IP users, some of whom are not even regular editors. That is why, on balance, the current system is better, has remained unchanged for this long and will continue to be in effect for the foreseeable future. Adrian M. H. 20:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(Post edit conflict) I have to concur with Dbachmann about the need to tighten up the controls on existing editors who prove to be problematic. Adrian M. H. 20:14, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How about assuming some good faith not every IP is vandal, more over the worse offenders are the registered accounts. At every opportunity we should be encouraging edits not restricting them. Gnangarra 03:40, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep in mind that some very responsible & important people edit Wikipedia from IP addresses. The example I best know happens to Ward Cunningham, who told me that he does so for the simple reason "because I can -- & I think it's cool." (He has recently created a user account on Wikipedia, but I doubt he has used it edit yet.) -- llywrch 19:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The home page http://www.wikipedia.org/ ... sometimes loads quite slowly because of big number of links on it, even with a broadband connection. How about abbreviating the links under the search field to one link like "look for your own language"?

I notice it because I have a macro to look up something on wikipedia, and despite a couple of seconds delay I've added, often the page is not done loading before the macro attempts to paste in the word I want to look up, and it fails.

Yours, Eolake —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Eolake (talk • contribs).

Perhaps change your macro to point to the search page instead? pw 15:35, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not so sure about {{PD-Gutenberg}} for a few reasons, most of which are shared with the now renamed {{PD-NARA}}:

• Not all works on Gutenberg are out of copyright (Echo NARA's "...the vast majority of which are in the public domain")
  • It gives no warning of this and could easily be (Like NARA's old template) used to "PD" something which is copyrighted.
• It gives no reason WHY they're out of copyright (On Gutenberg main, all they check for is United States copyright), hence fails to state that it's potentially only PD-US and may be copyrighted elsewhere (All the Gutenberg download pages state that they ONLY check United States copyright).
• There are multiple Gutenbergs, from the original, which IS mostly PD, to the German one, which claims copyright (!), to the Australian one, which is for Life+50 stuff that's in copyright in Life+70 countries.

As such, I suggest it be redirected to {{PD-US}} or changed to a source tag or just deleted outright. 68.39.174.238 16:17, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd suggest that this would be best discussed at WP:TAG. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 16:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanx, will do so. Also, anyone wants to reply to this, check the new discussion there. 68.39.174.238 01:02, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can it be moved to article page instead of its talk page

Having this category added through and on Talk page makes it less visible can something be done to make it more visible. Vjdchauhan 21:00, 21 July 2007 (UTC).

It is placed on talk pages precisely because it is not supposed to be visible; it is a self-reference. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:12, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do we want to hide (to normal Wikipedians) because there's a self-reference or we want to hide for possible vandal attacks. Vjdchauhan 13:00, 22 July 2007 (UTC).

See Wikipedia:Avoid self-references for the explanation. (and please fix your signature at Special:Preferences to make it clickable. Thanks :) --Quiddity 01:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can we have sub-categories as well

There are around 900 identified notable Wikipedians can we have several subcategories of this category based on occupation/nationality as well. Vjdchauhan 21:00, 21 July 2007 (UTC).

The Village pump is somewhat new to me at this time, so if this has been discussed at length, feel free to send me on my way! Can external links be made to open in a new browser/tab? For some reason, I find this to be valuable when perusing an article, looking at content for an article in AfD, and general editing purposes. I don't mind the 'right-clicking' technique, but I would think that in accordance with keeping users of all types (whether they are simply reading or editing) at the task at hand, it would be advantageous as far as keeping one inside Wikipedia's own domain. Am I just lazy? (Don't answer that.) the_undertow ^talk 07:06, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Try this user script which, uh, I just wrote:

addOnloadHook(function() {
    var alinks = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
    var tablink;
    for (var i = 0, leng = alinks.length; i < leng; i++) {
        tablink = alinks[i];
        if (/\bexternal\b/.test(tablink.className) && tablink.href.indexOf("http://en.wikipedia.org") != 0)
            tablink.target = "_tab";
    }
});

Opens external links in new tabs, unless the "external" link is directed to en.wikipedia.org. It works in Firefox (which I assume you're using). Gracenotes^T § 07:45, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In Firefox, you can use the middle mouse button to open any link in a new tab. Harryboyles 08:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cool suggestions, as I must try the script. I would love to use the middle button as such, but I have it assigned to open Windows Explorer, because I am a C drive nazi, so to speak. the_undertow ^talk 08:58, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In Firefox, control-click opens a new tab; shift-click opens a new window. Λυδαcιτγ 02:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My thanks to Gracenotes – your script works reliably and consistently, which improves quite a lot over the equivalent that I had borrowed from someone else some time ago. Adrian M. H. 19:40, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant - thanks to Gracenotes for creating this script. --Ckatz^chat_spy 20:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My pleasure. (By the way, if anyone doesn't like regexen, /\bexternal\b/.test(tablink.className) could be replaced with tablink.className.indexOf("external") != -1.) Gracenotes^T § 01:49, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am a new wikipedian, and as such have never had my user page vandalised, however I have noticed that several of my fellow contributor's have "This User Page has been vandalised X times."

I know this has probably been suggested MANY times before, however I couldn't find it in the FAQ. I suggest to make it so that only the user that OWNS the user page can edit it (and admins, ofcourse.)

This way, only the owner of a userpage can edit it, ofcourse other members will be able to edit their Talk Page, but this will prevent User Page vadalisms.

This may seem like a massive task, redoing databases, adding new codes to every page, but I believe it could be done quite simply.

I do not fully know how wikipedia codes its pages, but I believe something like this at the top frame (which is the same on every page) would do the trick:

<?php

if page.title = "'User:', +, 'current.user'"

then

display.true "Edit This Page" link (<- not sure about this but because I don't know the workings of this particular section)

else;

display.false "Edit This Page" link (<- once again not sure about this but because I don't know the workings of this particular section)

?>

Obviously this wouldn't be the EXACT code, because I am no "expert" in php, and I am aware that this would only HIDE the "Edit this page" button, and still leave the link to edit (if known) available for attack, however I still believe this would significantly reduce the number of User Page Vandalisms, and could lead to a future code which blocks the link from being accessed unless logged in as the current user..

I am sure that there are several users on Wikipedia who could work this (or a similar) code into wikipedia's own.

Please comment on my idea, and tell me if this is a good suggestion or not, and if it has been suggested before. If it has (which i'm sure it has) then please delete it, as I don't want to suggest something that has been denied in the past.
Gbenemy 19:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In effect, what you are asking is whether semi-protection (excluding the owner) should be applied across the entire User: namespace. In nearly all cases, protection should be and is applied on a page by page basis, because protection detracts from the ideal that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The only cases where it is applied across the board are the MediaWiki namespace (parts of the interface) and every user's monobook.css and monobook.js (and likewise pages for other skins). I'm sure the instances where such pages are vandalised are extremely low. On a technical note, the solution you propose only hides the edit link. Anyone could append "?action=edit" to the address bar to edit the page. Harryboyles 10:02, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is already in effect for users' skin pages: for example, only administrators and I can edit my monobook.js user subpage, and I have made, as an administrator, a very small number of edits to other people's skin pages (mostly for people with a particular speedy deletion script that accidentally inserted their skin pages into Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, had to insert commented <nowiki> tags). On the other hand, for the actual userspace it doesn't seem necessary or appropriate to automatically protect or semi-protect all of them, because the rate of vandalism isn't high enough. By the way, anyone can have their userpage(s) indefinitely semi-protected on request, according to the protection policy, so anyone worried about vandalism to their userspace need only file a request. It might also be disruptive if only sysops were permitted to edit other users' userpages: there is a suprisingly high incidence of spam pages among userpages, and disallowing access to tag a page as such would hinder deletion of this spam and indeed make more administrative backlog. I understand your motivation, but I don't think such a system would be useful in practice or desirable in theory. Thanks for the suggestion, Nihiltres^(t.l) 14:08, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problem: Lots of people enjoy adding unreferenced content to WP articles, even when providing substantiation would be relatively easy, useful and appropriate. This is especially true for "pop culture" topics and articles that attract a "fan base".

Cause: One possible cause for this: citations are a bit cumbersome to add.

Solution: A drop-dead simple search box that allows a user to: 1) type in a query; 2) issue the query to "Google Books"; and 3) obtain a pre-formatted "ref" tag with the fields already filled in; ready to be cut-and-paste into the article text for an inline citation.

Rationale: The easier it is to add properly-formatted inline citations to published works, the better. This would increase uniformity and consistency across articles.

Pitfalls: One potential pitfall: this might encourage people to add references that they haven't actually read, and do not actually substantiate the point being presented in the article. The rebuttal: people who do that will probably do it regardless of how easy it is to add references, this just lowers the "entry barriers" for people who don't have a lot of time to learn wikicode.

I can't be the only person who has ever thought of this, but so far I haven't seen anything. I don't want to start hacking together my own code if someone else has thought about this already. Please provide your thoughts and feedback. Thanks. dr.ef.tymac 20:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another potential Pitfall: The search and the code spat out may have nothing to do with what they are writing about, causing innapropriate references.
"people who do that will probably do it regardless of how easy it is to add references, this just lowers the "entry barriers" for people who don't have a lot of time to learn wikicode."
And members who DO use correct sourcing may be inclined to use this feature, causing them to become inadvertant spammers.
despite this, I like your idea, I hate looking for sources
Gbenemy 20:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I dislike unreferenced material every bit as much as you – probably more so – but I have to echo the above quoted rebuttal, and point out that researching one's material properly and creating footnotes in the usual manner are two important parts of the writing process. Refs are simple to implement and research is essential to developing an understanding of and empathy with the subject, even when already familiar with it on a broad level. Research and reading is part of the enjoyment of creating (or substantially contributing to) articles. Adrian M. H. 20:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree 100%. In fact if any aspect of my proposal could be interpreted as a potential "substitute" for research and topic-familiarity, let me state unequivocally that is not what I am after. Let me state it again: there is no substitute for well-researched content by reasonably informed contributors.

Nevertheless, let's be blunt. It seems very unlikely that someone would use my proposal to add cites to, say, Axiom of choice. If someone is unfamiliar with that topic, and needs to "Google" for cites, they probably should not be editing that article to begin with. I would venture to guess most of the contributors to that article would not even consider using what I am proposing.

However, it is extremely likely that someone might make unsubstantiated edits to Axiom of Choice (band), simply because academic familiarity with the subject matter is ordinarily not regarded as a prerequisite for this kind of subject. Perhaps, it *should* be ... but let's face it. Too many people view WP as a great way to pay tribute to their favorite band/pop star/whatever.

All I'm saying is, perhaps with a few more tools to help this latter kind of contributor, there will be less dispute, fewer excuses and more "peer pressure" to add references. Nevertheless, I know there are counter-balancing considerations here, which is why I admitted "pitfalls" at the outset. I guess it's just a little sad to see so many repeated ignored requests for references, when they would be so easy to obtain. Thanks M.H. for your comment. dr.ef.tymac 21:13, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To throw in my two cents, Wikipedia:Citation templates is my one-stop-shop for writing citations; I just copy/paste, fill out, and remove the newline characters. Actually adding the citation is about 1% of the work (to be fair, software is my living; for others it may be up to 10%), whereas finding the reference is the rest. Manually searching for sources within one's library (mine, for example) and at Google Books/CiteSeer/whatever is probably just as easy as using the proposed search box would be. BigNate37_(T) 20:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I hear ya Nate. I do something similar to your 'one-stop' approach, (see here for example). I would bet, however that your 1% could be reduced even further if you didn't actually have to re-modify the ISBN, title, year etc. every time you do the cut and paste. Imagine all those users who barely understand what "wiki code" actually is (let alone non-programmers) -- although it is a dismal circumstance, I can see why there are so many users who *never* add references, even though it should be De rigueur (ironically ... the article has no references! D'OH!!). dr.ef.tymac 21:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is the reference generator which isn't linked from any templates (I found that through a user page) and Wikipedia template filling which I found from template:PMID. Graham87 00:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are proposals and projects. Read all of WP:FOOT especially near the bottom. (SEWilco 04:06, 24 July 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Often the links provided on banners such as "neutrality disputed", "factual accuracy disputed" etc. etc. take you to the top of a lengthy talk page covering myriad topics discussed over a long period of time. It's often difficult or impossible to discover what specific concern(s) prompted the addition of the banner, what if anything was done about it, and whether the problem is still perceived to exist. To prevent this happening I propose that all these banners should require a reference to a specific talk page section, and, to force people to comply, shouldn't work if one is not provided. Matt 20:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC).

The thing is sometimes, when the neutrality is questioned, the presence of a tag alone may be sufficient for other passerbys to have a closer look at the article to see if it's true. The talk page comments can assist in identifying the problem, but aren't always needed.--Kylohk 05:44, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That wouldn't change at all. People will still see the tag, that will still be sufficient to alert them, and they can still take a closer look if they want to. The point is that they might read the article and not understand why the tag is there. The auto-link to the talk page often is of no help. Either there is no explanation at all at the talk page, or it's unclear which part of the possibly voluminous discussions stretching back many months the tag refers to. My proposal will force people to create a specific section to discuss the tag, so that it's clear to everyone what the perceived issues are, what other people think, and where to add their own comments. Part of the reason these tags hang around for so long is that no-one's confident about removing them even when the perceived problem may have been fixed long ago, because there is no clear history on the talk page of what's taken place. If someone can't come up with a short explanation on the talk page of why they added the tag then they shouldn't add it. That explanation is then the starting point for subsequent discussions that hopefully eventually lead to the problem being fixed and the tag being removed. Matt 13:14, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, having just written all that, it struck me that you may be referring to the problem of tags that are already in place that do not have a specific link. Perhaps my "should not work" was misleading. I was referring only to newly added tags. That is, after implementation, anyone who adds such a tag should be required to create a talk page section and link to it. I was not suggesting that all non-linked tags in existence should suddenly disappear. Matt 13:23, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

A few days ago I posted on WP:VPP about quoting public domain sources and plagiarism. Now I'm proposing a policy or guideline about it. Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Proposed guideline: Plagiarism & join in discussion. Thanks. --Yksin 00:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Because I think that it should be linked to more, and have more entries, I'm mentioning Wikipedia:The Zen of Wikipedia here. That is all. ^Thanks, _{Luc "Somethingorother" French} 13:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, not spam, just a good chance for me to learn about the process of deleting articles in Wiki-space. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to improve my knowledge of Wikipedia processes!GDallimore (Talk) 16:56, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In response to [7] (which was in response to [8]), yes it is spam. This isn't a proposal so it is off-topic for this page, and thus is an inappropriate advertisement (see wikt:spam defn. N1). BigNate37_(T) 16:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My mistake. I appologize. ^Thanks, _{Luc "Somethingorother" French} 17:12, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]