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Some sort of change

This isn't so much an explicit proposal as a request for people to chime in with ideas. I am concerned over the recent de-featuring of Eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace. While there are many concerns about this article, the use of the "readability" requirement for featured articles concerns me. In particular people seemed to interpret this criterion as requiring that FAs be readable by lay readers (there is a similar requirement for good articles as well). I've been worried about this for a long time, and I would like to address it. I use wikipedia as a specialized encyclopedia in my research. Many of the pages I look at contain material that is not accessible to the lay reader. If it were, it would be useless to me because I need highly technical information. I think it's a shame that we have no way of recognizing good articles which are too technical for readers. I really don't want to introduce yet more categories of articles, so I don't want to suggest the creation of Technical Good Articles, or some such thing. Instead I would like to find a way to recognize these articles in one of the existing systems. Either, could we expand FA to include technical articles that are not widely accessible (they probably should never be put on the main page) or could we expand GA to include articles which are not readable by the public (this might require a change in the GA review process). Maybe there is an easy way to deal with these articles that I'm not considering... Thoughts? --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 22:18, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm the one who posted that as an experiment. I was deliberately looking for technical FAs that I understood perfectly well (; but that seemed to me to be probably inaccessible to most lay readers. I can find many more of these, BTW. I just chose that one at random. There are numerous FAs in the medical field which are WAAAAAAAAY beyond me. I was planning to conduct the same experiment with those, but I don't feel like bothering anymore. I think my point is obvious, there are many SUBJECTS that are simply inaccessible to the lay reader. Another thing is, as you have pointed out somewhere, many main articles link to sub-articles where the technical details are discussed FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED in that sort of thing. The information in these sub-articles may be extremely valuable to someone. If the people who find that extremely technical article useful want to recognize it in some way, why should they be overruled by the mass of people who don't understand it and shouldn't even be looking at it in the first place.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:28, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

One thing you can do is to use the A-Class ratings for the relevant WikiProjects (Mathematics in this case?) as the mark of distinction you're looking for; this may work best if you also have a semi-formal process within the project for handing them out.

Beyond that, I think the FA process isn't too harsh on technical articles provided that everything else is up to par; looking at the FAR in question, for example, it seems that there were other issues involved beyond the technical nature of the prose. Kirill Lokshin 22:29, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The thing which first raised my eyebrows about this problem was this FAC discussion. But perhaps it was anomalous. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 22:45, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The problems with that article were not accessibility to laypersons (I'm a math undergrad and a stat/engineering post-grad and *several* math grad students reviewed the article). The problems were with poor English, poor article organization, poor prose, and no one had time or took time to fix them, even though the article was under review for more than a month. A much bigger problem is why we have so many FAs in "technical" or other areas which are so poorly written. There used to be a scientific peer review process, and it failed. We often see FA candidates in technical or medical areas which, IMO, aren't even GAs, and we have numerous old FAs that need to go to WP:FAR. Sandy 22:30, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't mean to rehash the FAR of eigenvector. It may have failed even if it was accessible. But many people did raise that as a concern, and it looked like many people felt this was a requirement for FA. That's my only concern. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 22:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

There was an (inconclusive) discussion of the issue at Wikipedia talk:What is a good article?/Archive 1#Can't "specialist" articles be good?.  --Lambiam^Talk 22:49, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Which brings up another problem: anyone can rate an article GA. This one has more problems than I could begin to list at WP:FAC, not the least of which is inadequate inline citations and text which is highly speculative and unsourced: inline citations are required for GAs as for FAs. If this article were correctly cited to reliable sources, about 1/3 of the text would be removed. This article would have benefitted from a *medical* peer review, but the Wiki Medical Projects weren't involved. The WikiProjects aren't strong enough. The Eigenvalue article got no help from the Math Project: we see it every day on FAC and FAR. I wish a genie in a bottle would grant us stronger, more involved WikiProjects. Sandy 22:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

We're working on it! (But more people getting involved would be very good. There's a tendency for people who show up there to be overworked with their own projects, somewhat limiting our capacity for actually doing stuff.) Kirill Lokshin 23:22, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

To go with you point about I think it's a shame that we have no way of recognizing good articles which are too technical for readers. Then what is the point of an encyclopedia if people can't read the article. Let me argue on that, we want to bring the articles to a status that the encyclopedia were doing it back then, I think. If you look at other encyclopedia, they will go into technical subjects with technical writers/editors and in that way, there is no way a laymen will be able to read any of that stuff for it is too technical and for this laymen, it is easier, normally to go to an encyclopedia to find the basics of a subject explained in his words. But the way you see it and other encyclopedia sees it, these ordinary people (I'd say most of the readers and most of the editors of WP) will unfortunately be rebutted by the technicality of topics and refrain from participating/reading the encyclopedia and we would not have achieved our goal. Another question that can be brought up is where do these people go if they can't find an answer to their question on a technical subject? Back to school because they didn't understand even the basic concepts that led to the current too technical article and WP would not have accomplished its job. Lincher 22:58, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me while I will not delve into the above discussion nor keep this page on my watchlist and thus not respond, but I just wanted to drop in my 3 cents. I understand the issue is that Kzollman refuses to accept that Wikipedia articles should be accessible to non-specialist readers. Well, they should - this is a general reference encyclopedia, not a specialist one, so the interests of the "general" reader should take precedence. While I appreciate the efforts of editors of some specialist articles that made them good enough to be cited in professional work, and it conflicts with their readability, then perhaps separate specialized Wikis for given disciplines could be set up, to serve the needs of given professional communities, while the articles in Wikipedia could be reworked to serve the needs of the "casual reader".
That said, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of creating an article that would be both a suitable for professional and "casual" readers, and I would strive to achieve that in the first place. But, as I said, the needs of non-specialist readers should take precedence. Bravada, talk - 23:20, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid that both of you misunderstand my concern. I agree entirely that articles which, in theory, could be readable by a wide audience should be. However, there are articles which simply can never be readable by a wide audience, because making them readable by such an audience would require teaching them a ton of information they don't currently have (i.e. basically by writing a textbook). Examples of such articles might be, MAPNASH, Woodin cardinal, or Boson. Shall we delete these articles because they could never be read by a general audience? If we decide that is the way to go, the usefulness of wikipedia to me, and to many people, will be substantially reduced. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 23:40, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Woodin cardinal is an interesting example. This article is only going to be of interest to maths post graduates, no matter how well written it is its beyond the scope of a maths undergraduate, much less a lay reader. Further its the sort of article which is unlikely ever to reach GA let alone FA standard. It basically does its job quite well, for those reader interested in the topic it tells them what they need to know. Eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace on the otherhand has a much broader appeal, I was taught this at 17, and it has aplications across a wide range of mathematical and science subject. So to make an aceptable article it greater effort is needed to explain it in understandable terms. What I'd say it that articles should be written at a level appropriate for their intended audience. The audience for Woodin cardinal will be happy with a higher that that eigen vectors, which will be appropriate at a higher level than triangle or elementary algebra. --Salix alba (talk) 00:29, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

No, the point about technical articles not making GA standards in the first place is simply false. I have worked on three, four or five such articles in philosophy: eliminative materialism, anomalous monism, semantic holism. They are ALL relatively technical and they all made GA, under older standards which did not include the statement that "the article must be accessible to the lay reader". In fact, when these were awarded GA, all that was required was the some one person decide that they liked it and put the GA template on the talk page. These, and others of the same general level of difficulty, are ALL now going through GA review. Part of that is simply a question of adding in-line cites, expanding lead sections and so on. But I'm fairly confident that these articles will delisted because, to put it bluntly, the low reading comprehension level of some one, individual reader is enough to get these article removed from GA. That's rather preposterous. Plain and simple. You're absolutely right, articles need to be judged according to the kind of audeince that is going to read the article. What kind of an audience is going to read an article on eliminative materialism? Philosophy undergrads, possible graduate students (if it's good enough) and NO ONE else.

Here's a more general and interesting case though. The philosopher Brian Weatherson once remarked on his blog that he was intersted in transferring some of his, outstandingly well-written but extemely specialized, articles from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy onto to Wikipedia under a free license. Of course, having read the stuff he has written, I would immediately post it for FAC (after adding in-line cites and so on). It would almost surely be shot down by people with weak reading comprehension skills, anti-elitists or what have you. I'm sure Weatherson would not be particularly offended by this, but it is would be an intersting relection on the standards at Wikipedia for what qualifies as a "Good" article!! The current guidline is: "A good article must be non-technical even when it deals with an inherently technical subject". Photon polarization must be held to the same standards of readability (a subjective phenomonen if ever there was one) as Pokemon. Come on, let's get serious here please. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

(after conflict) I just want to add a note on the closure of the review. Joel31 and I close most of them (he closed this one) and follow the same procedure: lots of time to warn, no closing if someone says wait!, etc. The FAR process is very accomodating now—a full month to tackle an article. I left talk messages with four people two days before this closed to ask for further comments, without reply (and, as usual, Sandy left notifications). This review received many early comments and then died, as sometimes happens. The removal process can wait, but not indefinitely—substantial remove comments without substantial keep comments mean the article will lose status.

"This doesn't address Kevin's larger issue of technical v. lay writing. I just wanted to be clear that in terms of procedure this was handled properly. Marskell 23:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we can agree that there are some topics that, by their specialized nature, cannot be made accessible to uneducated and ignorant readers without blowing them up into a full course on the subject, requiring years of study to get to the level required for grasping the topic. Perhaps we can also agree that the latter is not a viable option for Wikipedia – perhaps it is for Wikiversity. Then there seem to be three positions, all of which I've seen being taken: (1) Such articles should have no place on Wikipedia and ought to be deleted, or else dumbed down to something understandable to any ignorant reader even if it means they have no value left for an educated reader. (2) They can be allowed, but shall never be deemed to be "good" articles. (3) They must be allowed and can be good articles; if the current definition of "good" article precludes that it should be adjusted. --Lambiam^Talk 00:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps starting the discussion with the Eigenvalue example was the wrong way to go, as that article had prose problems. The three articles Kevin linked above are perfectly readable and well-structured articles with intelligible prose and flow, and no, I don't think we should talk about deleting such articles. I'm not sure they could be GA, though, without inline citations, and because one might question comprehensiveness on very short articles. My answer is the same: the issue is to strengthen the Projects, and get them rated by quality on the Projects. (And, on that topic, there is currently one Math article languishing on FAC, and another at FAR.) Sandy 00:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the FA and GA stuff is all tied into ego. When it comes down to it, who cares? If you want to write a really good technical article that professionals will recognize as really good, then go for it. That is the type of validation you should go for. Do you really need validation from a VERY SMALL group of editors who control the FA and GA process? If that small group of editors want to deem articles that are more "readible" to be worthy of their little club tag, then who cares? Let them tag all the little articles that they want. It doesn't increase or diminish the value of YOUR article. It not like your article is going to be deleted because it is not FA or GA. 205.157.110.11 00:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

(reply to Lambian, after conflict) Now that I'm watching, I will just add: 1) "They ought to be deleted" is totally a red herring. Show me threads/pages (not one-off troll comments) where people are seriously suggesting we delete our technical articles. No one is saying that—removing FA status is, obviously, not the same as deleting an article. 2) "They cannot be deemed 'good'" is a more subtle red herring. People above are saying, in general, technical articles either a) can be accessible and we should strive for it, or b) cannot necessarily be accessible, but can still be fine in their esoteric way. No one is arguing that a particular status (FA, which matters, or GA, which is sort of a joke) cannot be applied to technical articles. Finally, "uneducated and ignorant" as a descriptor of readers who don't understand a topic is an uneducated and ignorant standpoint. I can be educated generally, and ignorant of a particular topic. The fundamental goal of a general purpose encyclopedia is to enlighten where that ignorance exists. Marskell 00:26, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

(to Marskell) Does this qualify: "I think every article on Wikipedia ought to be written so that an ignorant but intelligent reader can understand it. If an article cannot be made intelligible to such a reader, I'm not sure a general encyclopaedia is really the place for it"? It does not state explicitly that it should be deleted, but isn't that the obvious consequence of the position that it has no place on Wikipedia? This is from the discussion on WIAGA I referred to above. From the same discussion: "Agree - an article which is not accessible to the layman is not a "good article" at all." These were not one-off troll comments. --Lambiam^Talk 10:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, it does qualify for me as further confirmation that GA is sort of a joke ;); note by deemed "good" I do not mean deemed GA. Though you have indeed an example of at least two opinions in this regard, so to rephrase more generally: there is no obvious movement to remove our technical articles and little conceivable way that the powers that be would give it a passing thought. Wikipedia is not paper. Marskell 20:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

No one is arguing that a particular status... cannot be applied to technical articles. I'm afraid people are arguing just that. I linked a FAC above which was rejected for just this reason. Although it wasn't the only consideration, some people thought eigenvalue ought to be removed (at least in part) because it wasn't widely readable. The criteria of GA explicitly require wide readability. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 00:59, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes, on FAC and FAR/C, we find that no attempt is made to open a technical topic to educated but non-specialist readers. This is possible, no matter what the topic; non-specialists can cope with patches of highly technical text as long as they know where it's going. The point of departure for each section is important in this respect. I have to agree with Sandy that much of the problem lies in poor writing. Why make a difficult topic even more difficult? Tony 01:27, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

To expand on Tony's comment, here's an excerpt from the FAC for photosynthetic reaction centre: While it's impossible to gain a working understanding of advanced scientific concepts without years of university study, a good writer can convey basic principles and general concepts to any educated reader. Isaac Asimov made a career of that and I recommend Miller review some of Asimov's essays as models for how to introduce complex topics to a broad audience... Add a background section to bring a nontechnical reader up to speed, then offer a high level analysis of significant concepts with their function and and significance. Ideally this would prepare some readers to at least skim the graduate level technical discussion that concludes of the article. That particular article is now a solid GA. The basic principle of expanding technical articles with nonexpert introductions and background summaries would probably help more pages move up to GA and FA. Durova 05:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

This is starting draw wikipedia into the realms of where the future for this poject lies. As artilces start to expand from the more generalised topic to technical specifics wiki[edia needs to adjust to enable / ensure that these articles achieve a minimum standard. What we wont have is the ability to verify the knowledge of those that are writting/reviewing for this the subject must comply with WP:V and WP:CITE requirements. Additionally Wikipedia needs to look at a tag similar to spolier warnings or NPOV for technical articles. "This article contains technical information the may require knowledge of subject x". That ensures readers know that subject is detailled beyond layman understanding. That said the issue remains as to how GA, or FA review the topic. This where wikiproject could shine, for they do have knowledge, interest and access to necessary resourcs to assess whether an article is well written and comprehensive on the subject. These project should be able to assess and apply GA status to article (providing all other criteria is met). For FA the project should nominate say it been assess to ensure accurant and well sourced information, that when reviewing they can consider the article knowing though they dont understand the technical the preentation of images,prose layout etc are to reviewed. Gnangarra 07:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Ultimately, we must understand that Wikipedia attracts different types of readers. Some may just want to know what X is, but some may wish to gather as much information as they can about X. How do we cater to everyone? By offering different levels of detail. The lead section will satisfy those who don't know anything about X. We have sections which offer summaries for various aspects of X, such as History of X, Criticism of X. And for those who want to know more, there are sub-articles which may cover a specific aspect of X in great detail.

Similarly, all articles will attract both laymen and experts. Laymen usually don't want to understand a topic in its eternity; they just want to have a general understanding of the concept. Technical articles could have sections for laymen and sections for experts. In addition, how much knowledge do you expect a "layman" to have? For example, someone reading an article on the Sicilian Defence probably knows how to play chess. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:33, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a difficult question. There are certain technical topics that, for one reason or another, have become of more popular interest, such as the Millenium Prize Problems, which are all extremely technical and difficult for a laymen to understand, yet are the subject of many a popular magazine and newspaper article (which are typically also technically inadequate). For this type of article I think it's worth investing effort in a gentler laymen's explanation, or at least one requiring less background, such as Complexity classes P and NP. But realistically, every technical article will have to start out technically, because technical articles can easily be written by experts, and it's hard work to bring in the appropriate background and teaching techniques to extend them to laymen. An article written just for laymen that does not comprehensively describe the topic, like your usual magazine article, isn't really very useful and might even be misleading. Deco 07:03, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm in ur wiki, owning ur redirects

WP:PRO is used almost not at all and isn't even listed at the top of this page, so I've stolen it for Wikipedia:Practical process. You've got two more ;-) - David Gerard 16:54, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Neglected Article Review

From one of the above discussions: any page that goes unwatched for a year should probably be deleted anyways. --Arcadian 04:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It actually leads on to something I've been considering for a while. Very often advertising, non-notable, or minor "current event" articles get created by users (to forestall any questions, I'm specifically NOT talking about MAJOR current event articles). These articles are mostly "hit and run" affairs, with very few subsequent edits. If they are not immediately caught by NP or RC Patrollers and are not CSDed, PRODed, AfDed or tagged in any way, these articles can lie for months without anyone discovering them. My idea to have something like a Special:Neglectedpages (or some sort of bot?) which would list all pages that have not been edited in 3 months (or some other suitable length of time. or maybe you could specify the time like you do on watchlists.). This would allow the articles to either be improved or deleted as necessary. False positives would be few, I doubt even Featured Articles remain stable on a time-scale of 3-months. Zunaid 08:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Special:Ancientpages. Deco 08:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It gives zero results. Something wrong with it? Zunaid 08:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't give zero results. Something wrong with your browser? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:19, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The page is cached, and it was updated soon after Zunaid's comment, which might explain the discrepancy. Tra (Talk) 16:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems to turn up a lot of disambiguation pages, which does seem like a case where stagnation is not too surprising or suspicious. So, I'd call those false positives. -Stellmach 21:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

"@" in usernames

Every day newbies create usernames which are an email address. Everyone agrees this is a bad idea and we have templates to warn newbies and policy pages and bots that look for them. I propose we simply disallow newly created user accounts from having "@" in the username. An alternative is for the software to detect and strongly discourage, but allow if the user clicks "Yes, I really want this username." However, I can't think of any good reason to allow "@" in usernames so the MediaWiki software should just disallow it. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-09-22 15:01Z

Discourage but allow makes sense, especially if the confirmation message can clearly state "using your email address may lead to spam or loss of privacy" or whatever. Some people have No Clue™ about the Intarweb... -- nae'blis 16:40, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• Some people like to use the @ as a replacement for the latter 'a'. But yes, if it's technically possible, I would like to see a check step built in. - Mgm|^(talk) 19:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Ah, I hadn't thought about leetspeak usernames. How about this wording: "Wikipedia strongly discourages creating usernames which are or contain an email address. I understand that by creating this user account my email address may be picked up by spammers and that Wikipedia administrators may require me to change my username." —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-09-23 23:13Z

This is a good idea but maybe having .com, .net banned in your username would be a better idea since it will stop people from using their email addresses and letting them use @, and also stopping self promotion--Coasttocoast 01:22, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Pali Proper names dictionary

It seems to be ok to use the entires of the Pali Proper Names dictionary (see User_talk:Samahita). I wonder: maybe it would be good to have a template to indicate this, as is done with the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittannica? But before this happens, we need to be sure it is definitively all right to do so. Greetings, Sacca 06:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Page accessed counter

As a way to gauge interest in a page, I'd like to propose adding a "page accessed counter" to the bottom of each Wikipedia page. For example, I've noticed some wikis that use MediaWiki, e.g., ICANNWiki, have a statement at the bottom of each page like, "This page has been accessed 61,648 times." I believe such an indicator would be another way to help editors decide where the biggest bang for the buck could be gained from various types of article improvement drives. I expect similar insights could be gained from counting pages accessed in other "official" namespaces. Counting userspace page hits probably would be frowned upon by some, so it might be better to not implement counting there if that doesn't complicate implementation too much. Rfrisbie^talk 17:40, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Very Frequently Asked Questions#Are page hit counters available? -- Lost^(talk) 17:44, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Rats! I still think it's a good idea. ;-) Rfrisbie^talk 17:52, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

WikiCharts might help; it gives approximate hit counts for the top 1000 pages. Tra (Talk) 18:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Compiling a list of most-viewed pages has another use: encouraging editors/admins to monitor these pages for vandalism. If an anonymous vandal attacks a highly-viewed page, there is a higher chance that a passing reader will see the vandalism before it is reverted. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Conversely, vandalism to a page less often viewed is less likely to be quickly reverted, making it a good target for sneaky vandalism. This is why we don't allow people to see how many people are watching an article. Deco 21:15, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not suggesting a list sorting articles based on how many people watch them (registered editors adding the articles to their watchlist), but how many people read them (most readers are not editors). If many people read an article, vandalism to it is more likely to be spotted by a reader before it is reverted by someone watching it. Therefore, articles which are read by many should also be watched by many. However, if we make the list publicly available, it will encourage vandals to attack articless which many read, so it should be available only to registered users. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:00, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Would Wikipedia using web analytics so that members or anyone could see how much each entry has been searched be an alternative or would that be the same thing? Perhaps as the mentions above and the listed links's contents explain, Wikipedia itself already implies web analytics, but I still think it would make it better if members or anyone could see how much an entry has been searched for. During my learning process of all things Wiki I tried to just do a test and add a counter to the public access entry but it didn't work. Next I read the entry for web counters or hit counters and saw the link to the entry for web analytics. Now I know that a hit counter might not be a good idea but saw that some other methods might work. Still, I think Wikipedia should do this for members or anyone, and hopefully we're playing a role in making it happen. DavidWJohnson 16:02, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

• On a related point, there seem to be a lot of sites that replicate Wikipedia content - if these download the content periodically and cache it (as many seem to?), rather than going back to the Wikipedia server for each page view, then I guess a Wikipedia page hit counter would not pick up page hits on those up sites? Just my curiosity, but does anyone have any idea what sort of proportion of Wikipedia page views are via these "replication" sites? Matt 01:09, 16 September 2006 (UTC).
• On a related point to my above statements about the learning process in general with Wikipedia, and with my statement about the learning process involved with web analytics, I definitely see Wikipedia as a learning process with our suggestions, and with the topic of page accessed counting in general, and hope we (I don't think it's wise to say "them," "administrators," or etc. We're suppose to be part of the same team.) don't become extreme in deleting newcomers contriubtions to Wikipedia. Ea. In all due respect to BaseballBaby I think, they deleted all of my very first submissions ever to the public access entry with a form letter that others (who had questioned him on his talk page.) and myself saw as adversial. Luckily, afterwards I encountered more polite administrators, then became a member, and I'm learning more and more each day. Yet, I nearly left Wikipedia for good after BaseballBaby's actions. We all have to learn through our mistakes, and sometimes that takes time and understanding. We have a good thing here with Wikipedia. I hope we keep it that way. DavidWJohnson 16:02, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

photo/image uploading suggestion

I am suggesting a wizard for uploading photos. The actual process of uploading the image is easy, but the licensing options, permission/credit text have too many options to remember for trouble free establishment of new images on wikipedia. It seems the howto is dozens of pages long for uploading images.

Not purely a technical suggestion, as it would improve copyright compliance issues as well and encourage more photo illustrations.

I upload photos to wikipedia. Not quite often enough to learn and memorize all the steps and options. Perhaps a wizard to guide a photographer or image creator through the important steps. It's getting sort of away from wiki, but lots of creative people aren't markup language wizards, or don't do it enough to learn it all.

Thanks! --Jp498 00:07, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I know it's possible to link to Special:Upload with the image filename prefilled in but can you link to it with the license tag prefilled? If so, a wizard similar to the one used at WP:AFC could be made, where you answer questions about the source and license of the image, and are either taken to Special:Upload with the correct license tag or, you are told that the image is not suitable for Wikipedia.

This wizard would probably need to be made quite prominent, e.g. replacing the existing Upload file link in the sidebar. The only downside I can think of this is that experienced users may find it annoying to have to answer a load of questions before they upload their image. Tra (Talk) 16:34, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Add deletions to watchlist?

(I don't think this is in the perennial proposals list or in archives...)

Would it be possible to extend the watchlist functionality to include deletion of articles that are on your watchlist? It's sort of an anomaly that any edit, including blanking, conversion to a redirect, etc., are duly noted in the watchlist, but if the article is deleted, it simply and silently disappears from your watchlist with no notice. This would be very useful in conjunction with WP:PROD, and to a lesser extent, AfD (since you can always watch the AfD itself, which is not deleted even if the article is). --MCB 04:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I think having deletions of articles show up on watch-lists is a vitally needed addition. Kdammers 05:09, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

While it's not exactly what you are asking for, one thing you can do is to routinely check your entire watchlist (via the "display and edit the complete list" link at the top). Any watched articles that have been deleted are still on your watch list so they will show up as red. I think having deletions (and recreations) automatically be indicated would be nice, but this is at least an alternative that works now. -- JLaTondre 11:22, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

So, what's the next step for this? I've seen a lot of things posted here to VPP that get a generally good reception, and then nothing comes of them. Is there a formal procedure, like a ticket system, for proposing it to the developers? --MCB 01:30, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

You can take it to Bugzilla. Tra (Talk) 01:50, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Grammar checking

Is there a Wikiproject where one can request some help from Wikipedians with profound knowledge of English language? For instance, a person not so good in English writes an excelent article and wants to nominate it for GA, but knows the article would fail on spelling and grammar errors. Where can such person request help from experts in English? If such place doesn't exist, are there any English language experts here willing to take part in something like that? I would be very glad to organise such a Wikiprojest, but I can't help with improving articles since my English is very very far from perfect... --Dijxtra 10:41, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds exactly like Wikipedia:WikiProject Grammar. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:31, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Also

Can we make it more obveous that you should use the "+" to add to discution pages (at the bottem of the page) Insted of using "edit" to add them at the top?

Can we lock the first line here http://wiki.alquds.edu/?query=Wikipedia:Introduction, so people cant break the page by editing it?

How about a faverotes? like a watch but where it just lists them as pages you like and dosn't watch them all the time, I use watch a lot but not all the stuff I necerraly want to watch every edit.

Can we lock out personal pages?, so others can not edit them. Others could use the discution or talk page for input

Alan2here 19:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Some the more high-profile pages tend to have these sorts of instructions on how to add your comments properly. For other pages, it's not really too much of an issue most of the time.

It's not technically possible to only lock part of a page. I think there is a bot that can restore the correct header if someone removes it.

Strictly speaking, pages in userspace belong not just to you, but to the community, so it is possible for anyone to edit them. Tra (Talk) 13:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

. . . "and give comments that start a new topic ==A Descriptive Header==, placing them at the bottom of the page" . . . is not a good discription at all when all they really need to do it click the "+" button next to the "edit this page" button and the rest is self explanotery, how about changing that whole block explaning how to manually add coments properly with a much shorter one explaning how to use the "+" button. Wiki should be updated tot allow locking bits of pages to be alloud, this save's bots having to continusly crawl cirtain pages all the time to fix problems we cause in them Alan2here 19:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Many of the talk pages use the {{talkheader}} template to give this kind of information. You could discuss changing its wording at Template talk:Talkheader or be bold and edit it yourself.

Bots tend not to cause too much of a problem to Wikipedia. If they did start to slow the servers down, they would not be allowed.

As for adding pages to favourites, you could just add them to your browser favourites or, alternatively, watch the page and go to Special:Watchlist/edit to view the list of pages you have watched. Tra (Talk) 21:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, you'r comments have been verry usefull, the talkheader is indeed much better than the makeshift one I saw once on a talkpage, maybe it should be as default at the top of every talk page. Alan2here 14:53, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Unneccisary Disambiguation

I don't know whether this should go here, or at Policy.

I have proposed a new policy on disambiguation in titles, please could some users give feedback. - Wikipedia:Unneccisary Disambiguation (WP:UNDAB/WP:DND) --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 12:35, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I would humbly suggest that you start by renaming your proposal to Wikipedia:Unnecessary Disambiguation. Pascal.Tesson 15:21, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

sigh. This is either related to the Highways naming convention or the city/state naming convention. I just know it. 205.157.110.11 08:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I find sometimes forcing a disambiguation supplies a context. Many moons ago, I moved all of the Washington Metro articles, most of which I created, to "Title (Washington Metro)", to forever ensure further disambiguation and confusion would not be needed, and it helped explain what "Capital South" was. Same deal with cities - context is very useful sometimes in the article titles. As for highways, not touching that. ;) Also, learn to spell, thanks. --Golbez 09:14, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Organizing watchlist

I don't know if anyone else would find this useful, but I would: My latest proposal is the ability to organize the watchlist into "folders", for which the changes can be viewed all at once or individually. I thought of this because I'm reserving my watchlist for pages I created. --GrayPorpoise^{Phocoenidae, not Delphinidae} 20:30, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I would find that useful. I don't know whether it is possible to implement though. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 12:35, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

You can do something very much like this using the related changes feature. Create a subpage of your user page for each "folder" (e.g. user:Gray Porpoise/subpage1), and on these pages put links to the articles you're interested in. Create another subpage of your user page with transclusions of each of the "folder" subpages (syntax like {{user:Gray Porpoise/subpage1}}). Now, if you visit one of the folder subpages and click "related changes", you'll see the changes for the articles in that "folder". If you visit the "master list" subpage and click "related changes" you'll see changes for all articles in all the subfolders. One notable difference between this technique and using your watchlist is that subpages of your user page are visible to everyone while no one but you can see your watchlist. If keeping these lists private is important to you, I don't know of a way to do what you're asking for. There are a variety of existing enhancement requests related to this idea, for example bugzilla:5875. If you have a bugzilla account voting for these enhancements (or if you're a developer implementing one) is a way to improve the chances that such a feature gets implemented. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:02, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

That sounds really complicated and confusing. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs)

Fair use images in portals

See Wikipedia:Fair use/Amendment/Fair use images in portals. ddcc 21:47, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Links to indicate featured articles

Wouldn't it be nice to know if an article is featured before clicking on its link? It's not a particularly necessary change, but it would be quite useful. Also, I think, people would be more likely to check out an article knowing it's featured. The easiest, most non-intrusive way of implementing this that I can think of would be to change the the colour of links to FAs from blue to gold, thereby making an easily recognisable but not visually clunky or annoying indication that the article is featured. Anybody with me? RWhite 17:47, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

The MediaWiki software is used for many projects besides Wikipedia and, currently, the software itself has absolutely no knowledge of whether a Wikipedia article is "featured" or not. To implement this suggestion, the software would have to be changed to allow some articles to be designated as special in some way, and then allow the link format for "special" articles to be changed independently of the regular link format. I suspect this change won't be made, but you're welcome to suggest it as an enhancement using wikipedia:bugzilla. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Is being featured really so fundamentally critical that it needs to be known before you even click on it? We don't even differentiate between links to different namespaces. Fagstein 06:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for Image Manipulation?

I get really annoyed by all the images out there that could use some editing (usually to remove the background). My idea is to create a page where people with the appropriate software to edit images well can take requests from those of us who don't have such means. (Feel free to play with the title of the page—image modification, for instance.)--HereToHelp 22:53, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, I uploaded a few images which could really do with some photoshopping (which I am not good at). Perhaps a template to put on the image page and a category would be more practical than a Wikipedia page. Like Category:Fair use size reduction request and the corresponding {{fair use reduce}}. Garion96 (talk) 23:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Although on the one hand perhaps it would be more practical for this to be on Wikimedia Commons. (if it doesn't exist there already) Garion96 (talk) 23:02, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

(Edit conflicted) And we'd have to get people with the software capability to actually keep track of the category. The template should include a field of what you want the person to do, and a place for you to sign and date it. As for the Commons...interesting idea, since we can't modify fair use stuff.--HereToHelp 23:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Just try contacting some of the people at Wikipedia:Requested pictures, Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Graphic artists, or even Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates -- many talented graphics folks there who take requests. — Catherine\^talk 05:06, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

RefDesk MUST be Redefined

I spend most of my WP time at the RefDesk. Humanities in particular, as that's where most of my expertise lies. Although I do find the whole thing fascinating, as well as a fun learning experience, I sincerely hope that I'm actually contributing by answering questions to the best of my ability.

One big problem about the RefDesk is that it's very poorly defined. The link to get you there mentions that it's for asking questions like: ""How old is the Earth?" or "What does 'lorem ipsum' mean?". As I've pointed out so many times on the RefDesk, these are very poor examples of questions that are meant for the RefDesk. In fact, if one were to ask the question: "What does 'lorem ipsum' mean?", a clever editor would no doubt point out that the question is inappropriate for the RefDesk, and would direct the questioner to enter: "lorem ipsum" in the search box, as there's an entire article on it!

Similarly, if one were to ask: "How old is the Earth?", the answer to that question would require only very slightly more ingenuity. Simply enter Age of Earth or Age of the Earth and one would be instantly directed to an article with every possible bit of information one could possibly desire concerning the question: "How old is the Earth?"

The RefDesk is a GREAT place (that's why I spend so much time there!) but it's obviously not meant for such simple questions. It's meant for either far more unique questions regarding particular scenarios that may not have ever occurred to anyone before, or for far more nuanced questions, questions that simply have no clear NPOV answer, questions that are clearly meant as invitations for a variety of responses with a variety of opposing POVs.

I think those kinds of questions are great, and I love throwing in my admittedly POV two-cents into them, and I delight in another editor throwing in his or her also POV two-cents into it. I'm a firm believer in the Socratic Method of educating one's self through civil argumentation by editors with a variety of POV's, to arrive at an answer that as closely approaches what one would call an NPOV answer. I sometimes even play devil's advocate, when I see a certain POV not being argued for. This, to me, is the essence of the RefDesk.

Yet so many editors, and apparently admins as well seem so uncomfortable with the idea. Whenever one POV is argued, they reprimand that particular editor by pointing out that "Wikipedia is NOT a soapbox!" Well of course it isn't a soapbox. Of course it's not a place to push one POV over another for the purpose of advancing any particular agenda. Of course it's not a place for editors to go around saying, in a completely gratuitous fashion: "Vote Republican!" or "Enjoy Coca-Cola!". That, I'll admit, is a clear abuse of the RefDesk. Yet I can't seem to understand why some people are so anti-POV. It's true, NPOV should be striven for in the actual articles, but I just don't see any problem with it at the RefDesk. On the contrary, I consider it exteremely informative for a variety of POVs to be canvassed, in as civil a manner as possible, in order to best arrive at the truest and most informative answer to a RefDesk question. It may be counterintuitive, but I actually believe that a fair number of opposing POV answers to a difficult question is actually a far greater method at arriving at a fair NPOV sense of the truth, rather than expecting everyone to keep repeating the same "NPOV" answer over and over again. To me, at best it'll lead to a rather uninformative, unsophisticated answer, and at worst, it'll just propagate political correctness, and I know we've all had WAY to much of that!

Therefore, I have three proposals:

1) The "definition" of the RefDesk as a place to get answers to questions like "How old is the Earth?" or "What does 'lorem ipsum' mean?" MUST be reconsidered, and a more appropriate definition should be applied;

2) The whole "anti-POV" rule, one which I admit is crucial for the "regular" wiki articles, should be greatly relaxed, if not eliminated on the RefDesk; and

3) For goodness sake! Whoever is responsible for "declaring" certain questions as "Answered" and thereby cutting off further debate, PLEASE STOP!! No good RefDesk question is EVER really answered. I actually find it rather arrogant of whoever is actually doing this, to appoint him/herself as ultimate arbiter of when a question has been "answered". It's actually quite rude to the editors engaged in a friendly debate, and ultimately, it's rather stifling for a questioner (as I've been at times) at getting a full answer to the question. I think the old week by week format worked excellently. Obviously debate should be cut off at some point, otherwise it would go on forever. If you haven't said everything you wanted to say after a full week, that seems like an appropriate, neutral point to end the debate and to move on to newer questions.

Thanks to all of you for considering my proposals.

Loomis 19:51, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I love it! Great ideas. Now I just wonder how we can get that implemented... — Mets501  (talk)  22:20, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

The basic question is what do we need refdesk for. It's been used for helping readers find answers to questions, for helping editors find resources, and for a more general enlightening debate. It's certainly most useful when it leads to improvement of articles in some way. Zocky | picture popups 15:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I think I answered why we need the RefDesk. It's for 1)Answering unique questions concerning unique scenarios that could not, by definition be answered in the regular articles because of their uniqueness; and 2) For asking nuanced questions that by definition have no NPOV answer, but rather require the input of several editors with different POV's to at least get a grasp of the issue. Sort of like the Op-Ed or Editorial pages of a newspaper. These sections are crucial to any newspaper, as a break from all the so-called NPOV reporting (similar to our "regular" articles"), and a chance to get an insight into what various people with various backgrounds "think" about a certain issue. I've been to other "discussion pages" and they're utter failures. They're just made up of unintelligent, uncivil people with polarized opinions engaging in a useless shouting match. The amazing thing about OUR RefDesk is that somehow our editors tend to be civil and intelligent, and OUR debates rarely descend into shouting matches. I'm not really sure why we seem to have escaped the ugliness of other discussion pages, but somehow we have, and as such I see it as an INCREDIBLE source for learning from other intelligent editors about subjects that fascinate me. Loomis 15:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

To Add Another,

I would like if Wikipedia had a Korean version. It would be particularly helpful because of the increasing population of Korean speaking persons and the increasing power of the Korean public. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.252.184.1 (talk • contribs) .

There is already a Korean version. -- JLaTondre 23:21, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

But in the home page, there is no version of Korean Wikipedia. There is only a Chinese version. Also, the translated articles have missing information. I would like if the articles were translated fully.

First of all, the main page only lists the ten largest Wikipedias. If you go to the full list, you'll find Korean. Second of all, that's where you come in - we'd love to have you working on it and translating. But we can't. Because we don't speak Korean. And you probably do. --Golbez 09:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

If you mean http://www.wikipedia.org/ -- all languages over 100 articles are there, you just have to scroll down below the search box. Korean is the fourth item under the "10,000+" header. (They currently have 27,839 articles.) By all means, please help to write these articles. Translate from English or any other language if you like, but articles across languages don't have to be translations of each other -- each Wikipedia is permitted to develop their articles independently if they wish. (And indeed, even if one starts out as an exact translation, they soon diverge as different pools of editors work on them.)

I think this divergent development of multilingual content is one of the interesting aspects of Wikipedia that's almost never mentioned in the press, and one that I suspect will be an intriguing project for research papers someday -- comparing and contrasting how different cultures write about the same topic, comparing controversies in article histories, comparing evolution over time, and so on.

Anyway, good luck, I hope the Korean Wikipedia continues its rapid growth so that more people like you can find the content they're looking for. Encourage Korean media to write about it, and maybe we'll attract some more editors there. — Catherine\^talk 04:52, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to change the upload license list

See my proposal at User:Poccil/uploadlist and comment on it. My changes to the list in part reflect practices on Wikimedia Commons. Peter O. (Talk) 04:45, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Optional Image Disabling

While I agree that wikipedia should not be censored, explicit images distract some readers from content and in some ways turn wikipedia into a shock site. For example, while clicking on an unmarked link in the "terminology" section of the Anime article, I was sent to the article for Shotacon which contains an explicit image which would widely be considered offensive. While I do not dispute that the image (and others like it) are legitimate and relavent to their articles, I am confident that many people who use wikipedia would appreciate it if they could read articles on subjects pertaining to material they may find offensive, without the fear of being subjected to the offensive material itself. For example, I wish to read the article on Public Hair to learn about its relation to sanitation and pheremones, but do not wish to be subjected to the nude photographs which accompany the page. This is why I propose that there should be an option for registered users to disable images in wikipedia if they so choose. This would allow users to censor themselves from what they do not wish to see, and would not compromise wikipedia's existing policies. Ziiv 07:28, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree it would be very handy to disable images, not to prevent the display of possibly offensive material, but to speed up delivery of content. A preferences option to disable images and a button in the nav panel to display the images would probably save Wikipedia huge amounts of bandwidth, and users equally huge amounts of time.--Dave 08:43, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Why not get a web browser (or browser extension) that provides this feature. Opera, for example, has such a button and there's probably a plugin for Firefox, too. -- ３２４７ (talk) 13:19, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Putting img {display:none;} in monobook.css will hide the images. However, this includes the toolbar buttons and the enhanced Recent Changes, but the Wikipedia logo and the user icon at the top will not be affected. Tra (Talk) 13:45, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I support the idea for both reasons previously posted: not seeing shock images, and improving performance/loading speed. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:53, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Job Center

In a recent round of debates, one issue surfaced again and again: Most (really, all) of us don't know what other people do on Wikipedia. It's hard to appreciate how much work is done, and it's hard to find out if somebody is already doing something you would like to do. So, I created Wikipedia:Job Center, where we can provide descriptions of Wikipedian jobs, both for newbies to find a niche, and for old hands to have an overview of various "jobs" and contacts to editors who do them.

So, pretty please, provide the description of your job. Zocky | picture popups 04:51, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you suggesting a page where Wikipedians are organized based on their Wikipedia activities (writing articles, fighting vandalism)? I write and re-write articles, aiming to improve them to Good Article statua. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:06, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

It's intended as an overview of "how Wikipedia works", to enhance navigation around the project. Sort of like the left column of "to do lists" at the Community portal, only much improved. Zocky | picture popups 15:01, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

"Did you mean: [spelling suggestion]?"

Sometimes I have a hard time finding an article on Wikipedia because I spell the item incorrectly in the search box. Often, when I don't know how to spell whatever it is I'm looking for, I'll search for it in Google. Google says, "Did you mean: [suggesting a spelling correction]?" Then I copy/past Google's suggestion into the Wikipedia search box.

It would be great if Wikipedia eliminated this intermediate step. Perhaps Google will license the spelling suggestion technology for a reasonable price. Otherwise, I'm sure Wikipedians design such a program.

I'll also note that this would be very useful in application to Wiktionary as well. One reason it would be good is because Google's "spelling suggestor" is better even than that of Microsoft Word's. For example, just a few minutes ago, while writing something in Word, it did not have a spelling suggestion when I typed in "rotweiler," but Google gave me the correct spelling (add a second 't'). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.171.72.48 (talk • contribs)

• You can always search Wikikpedia using Google, if you like. Just add " site:en.wikipedia.org" to a query, e.g. [1]. Because a Google result is seemingly much more likely to point users to the article they want than a search using the built-in engine, I personally think we should probably just have people use Google by default. Adding a "Did you mean" function to the default WP search seems unlikely... someone would have to write it and so on, it seems like a relatively complicated thing to build from scratch. It seems simpler just o use Google's. --W.marsh 00:27, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, if you feel that your misspelling is likely to be common, don't hesitate to create a redirect. I'm confident that redirects like Muriel Hemingway, Ghandi are very useful. (Anyone's got stats on the ratio of searches which redirect?) Pascal.Tesson 14:18, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The redirect and searching using Google suggestions are workarounds. I think the people running this whole thing should talk to Google. You'd be surprised what big companies are willing to do for charity. Google might be willing to charitably license its "Did you mean..." software. Of course, Google might be licensing it from elsewhere.... To make it from scratch--I'm no programmer, but this is what I would think you'd do--any search that doesn't go directly to an article, run through Aspell (an open source spell checker), which would then output a few possible suggestions. Then improve the suggestion software over time through use. In the meantime, however, I'll keep both of those earlier suggestions in mind for my own use. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.228.244.110 (talk) 00:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC).

• I believe the problem isn't that we're unable to code it, but the issue is one of server load. >Radiant< 15:57, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
  • During some times of overload (or perhaps it's timeout) invitation to search via Google appears. Ricksy 22:53, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Google Earth Placemarks

I was wondering if it would be possible in the many geographical articles availble to put a google earth placemark to be able to view the location of the item talked about in the article. Many articles include a Latitude and a Longitude, but its not always easy to locate things that way. Since google earth basic is a shareware that most poeple can download and use free, I think it could be a nice addition that can complement pictures. Artephius 20:11, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

The latitude and longitude is often hyperlinked to a page that displays links to various pages where a map can be generated. The Google Earth link is somewhere near the bottom. Tra (Talk) 20:57, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Watch categories

I am proposing this very important feature to watch articles added to categories. I'm not sure if this has be proposed before, but there are a lot of categories such as Category:Wikipedians looking for help which need users to just enter it all the time to get updated, but users tend to forget, just like what happened to articles before the watch feature was invented. Michaelas10 20:39, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I definitely agree, but this is a bugzilla question, not a question for the village pump. — Mets501  (talk)  22:23, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

This is bugzilla:7148, but it doesn't sound likely to be implemented anytime soon (if ever). -- Rick Block (talk) 23:54, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Unobtrusive Protection Templates

I would like to propose that the set of various protection templates be revamped to be made smaller and significantly less-obtrusive to articles. It is my belief that placing a large template box atop any article that is protected, semi-protected, and so on, qualifies as a glaring and unnecessary self-reference in the form of metadata. Some other template boxes do contain valuable information about an article and its contents, like the set of temporal templates. For example, they might inform the user that the article's content may change with time. However, protection templates reference the inner-workings / security of Wikipedia and have no bearing on the article content. For example, the article on Nintendo's Wii has contained both of the template box-types I have mentioned. As you can see, the box that references vandalism seems out of place because it does not contribute to the article, nor would it necessarily make sense to someone unfamiliar with Wikipedia.

The only benefit that I see to including such a template so prominently in the article is as a service to editors. It informs anyone that wishes to contribute to the current article of what they must do in order to proceed. However, I think that Wikipedia's #1 aim is to be a good encyclopedia, not a tool that is easy to edit. It should always be assumed that the reason a user is visiting an article is to learn about the topic, which need not be marred by the details of the particular page's protection-level.

So, if the philosophy behind why to make this template as unobtrusive as possible is dealt with, I would like to make a few small suggestions for how this could be done. As I see it, the best options are:

• A small padlock icon in a title template, like the featured article and Spoken Wikipedia templates.
• A small sentence of italicized text, similar to disambiguation and redirection templates.
• A simple sisterproject or portal-styled infobox atop the page, containing the [:Image:Padlock.svg|padlock]] icon, and short descriptive text.

Since the last two options are fairly unprecedented uses of those styles of templates, I believe the best option by-far is the first. Some arguments against use of this format might include:

• This template is too small or obscure. Editors could not tell what level of protection is assigned to an article by looking at it.
  • As I noted before, the purpose of the article's main presentation should be to present information related directly to the topic, while attempting to make editor's job as easy as possible as a secondary concern. This could be accomplished by including contextually-valid alt-text for the lock image, which describe the level of protection for the article. The image would lead to a description of the particular protection, and editors would have to visit the talk page to further discuss the issue. This would not sacrifice much functionality from current protection templates, as the only context-sensitive information found in most of them is a link to the current talk page.
• Other title templates have a generally positive connotation, while the lock symbol would not. It would seem out of place.
  • This is true. The current set of icons in the title bar almost represent badges or awards recognizing a particular article for its greatness, either by belonging to the Spoken Wikipedia project, or by being a featured article. However, I think that the current template box used to signify protected articles would have a considerably greater negative connotation for the article, and is by no means less 'out of place'. As I have said, it contains self-references to Wikipedia's inner-workings. Whereas, the title icons do not explicitly appear to be a part of the article. They are simply an identifier for the article's status.

   

So, after all is said and done, here is a simple proposal for how to represent a semi-protected article, in the title bar:

--Inarius 19:33, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree as well, and there has been a huge debate over this at various talk pages (including Template talk:Protected). You should check out what they're saying at the talk pages and try to respond there. — Mets501  (talk)  22:27, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing me to this. I actually did check that page, but I hadn't noticed the discussion under the topic An idea. That is the only section I see that references this issue. Are there others? Also, I originally expected that te proper talk page for such a discussion would be at Category talk:Protection templates, but needles to say, it hasn't been mentioned there. I know that this has been discussed in greater detail on that page, but I feel that perhaps this might be a better location for the discussion since there would be several templates involved. What do you think? --Inarius 22:48, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I am including a conversation regarding this topic (an implementation of the second option that I mention in my initial suggestion above) originally discussed earlier this year in Template talk:Protected. I belive it would be better suited here:

I propose using a smaller version of this box, which could be placed floating at the right side on the article.

Example:

Ths article is currently protected from editing (See why) George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the 43rd and current President of the United States. Prior to his political career, he was a businessman in the oil industry and served as the managing general partner/owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Bush, a member of the Republican Party, was elected 46th Governor of Texas in 1994 and was re-elected in 1998. From there, he moved on to win the nomination of the Republican Party for the 2000 presidential race and ultimately defeated Democratic Vice President Al Gore in a particularly close and controversial [2] general election. In 2004, Bush was elected to a second term, defeating Democratic Senator John Kerry. This term will expire January 20, 2009.

The See why link would direct the user to the article's Discussion page, where he or she would find the full explanation box for the article's protection, as well as helpful links on what to do.

What does anyone think about this? Is it preferably to have a little box in the main article, and then the full box in the Talk page? I mean, do we really need this. Comments? —Cantus…☎ 10:41, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea, but some layout problems may occur in combination with infoboxes, images and other right-aligned elements. RexNL 17:49, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea too. As RexNL said, there could be problems with infoboxes, etc. if placed to the right. A solution would be to place everything to the left. Slightly more intrusive, but gets the necessary attention. ☆ CieloEstrellado 06:53, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

--Inarius 23:07, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

minor categories

Hi. Would it make sense to have a hierarchy of categories? One of the problems with having categories such as Category:Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles actors (see also the long debate here) is, for example, that actors suddelny belong to 50 categories. It would be pretty simple to have some categories marked as being "minor" or "of trivia interest". Articles would, by default, show only categories of importance and a "show all" would allow the full list to appear. For actor categories for instance, we could hide the "X award nominee" and show only "x award winner".

Note that this need not be an attribute of the categories themselves. It's probably much easier to implement by some sort of code in the article so that some cats show and others don't. For instance, this allows us to show category:House actors for Hugh Laurie but only on request for Dominic Purcell. This would allow the survival of somewhat less useful categories without clogging articles with too many categories at once. Pascal.Tesson 15:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• I'm afraid that would not be pretty simple. The software change is not that difficult, but it's hard to define objectively what is a "minor" category. This will quite possibly lead to lots of heated debate. >Radiant< 15:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Well I agree, but I'm a bit more optimistic than you are in terms of the debates that would ensue. I mean, we could have a note about it in the categorization guidelines and say, for instance, that biography articles (which, for all practical purposes are the only ones facing this problem) should try to keep the number of categories shown by default below a certain threshold of X. Take for example Woody Allen. I don't think there would be much debate about hiding "What's my line panelists", "I've got a secret panelists", "Living people", "Greenwich village scene" or even "Best Actor Academy Award nominees". Another advantage I see is that we could automatically hide all the cleanup categories. I don't think anybody will read the Woody Allen article and decide to follow the link to the category "Articles with unsourced statements" but if you're browsing that category, then it's good to have Woody Allen showing up there. This is especially true for categories that result from templates like {{cleanup}} {{nn}} {{wikify}} {{linkless}} {{uncat}} which produce in any case thes big can't-miss'em boxes. Pascal.Tesson 17:52, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Given that all references to the cleanup templates can be found from "whatlinkshere", I fail to see any point to these cleanup categories. Similarly, I think "minor" attributes also should not be categories. I really don't understand why everyone wants to use categories for every trivial attribute. I've nominated the (non-winning) Academy Award nominees categories for deletion (at least once) - lists are a far more appropriate mechanism for these. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• Well as someone who regularly does cleanup jobs, I happen to think that cleanup categories are God sent. As for minor categories, I don't see how they're doing any harm, especially with my proposal of a priori hiding the most obscure. I think you might be taking too extreme a deletionist stand on this. Lists are nice but you don't happen to visit them by accident. I recently remember browsing through the category of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles actors. It's one of those trivial-but-entertaining categories that, like it or not, are part of the fun side of Wikipedia. Now I would never have actually gone and looked for that category had I not been visiting the article of someone who was in the category. That category is a typical example of trivial yet verifiable and perhaps interesting to some information that happens to be available around here. What good comes out of deleting it? I understand that clogging pages with such information actually makes it harder to find the most relevant information but the hiding feature is a better compromise than deleting the whole thing. Pascal.Tesson 22:03, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Publishing original data on Wiki

Hi All. Let me introduce myself: I am postdoctoral fellow at Dept. Neuroscience, Temple Univ. (Phila, PA) and my main occupation is doing research on original topic. As everyone knows, once you have discovered something (literally, everything) you go (run) to publish those new data/results, theories, models, formulas (whatever). Sometimes, it is clever try to patent them before publication, obviously. In any case, my idea/proposal is using Wiki as the first universally accessible able scientific journal for original, genuine discoveries. I am wondering whether someone else has had the same idea of mine and he/she could be interested to expand this area of discussion. It follows my email, please feel free to contact me << E-MAIL REMOVED >> Wikipedia is a widely published site on the net. Putting your e-mail address anywhere on this site is inviting spam. I've thus removed it. Zunaid 09:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot in advance. Best regards, D. Eletto

--Eletto 20:52, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you talking about using Wikipedia to publish original ideas? Or trying to use the software to create a new wiki to publish them? ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 20:59, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I think he imagines a daughter project where people can publish their original research. Without some sort of peer-review, this will be an absolute nightmare, of course. You have no idea about the level of kookery we have to flush from Wikipedia (which has the NOR policy) already :/ But in principle, the idea has some appeal. dab (ᛏ) 21:51, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't the whole idea that the peer review would come from the users? In other words--it would be peer reviewed--by us! It would be WikiJournal.

--A daughter project (obsiously in beta-version) could work - the peer-review issue is a good point (it is THE POINT, indeed), and it is absolutely necessary. How to organize a kind of board of editors, or reviewer commission? Who is the referee? There are a lot of questions (maybe others will come in work in progress phase). Any author should have to declare his/her own affiliation ( a real affiliation). All these rules, even if seeming as a costraint, are currently working for each scientific pubblication (from Science to those ones with the smallest Impact Factor) - I do not see any problem for them being applied in Wiki-Eureka (it could be named as wikieureka!). --Eletto 00:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

One of the most useful functions of universities is to act as a spam filter for the body of human knowledge. On Wikipedia we make use of references to ensure the material we read here is true and accurate. Nevertheless we have a reputation for unreliability. Anyone can write material here but it may be quite some time before it is reviewed by someone expert enough to cull the crap. Even then it can be difficult to convince an Admin who is not familiar with the material to delete what may be (to an expert on the topic) blatant rubbish. How does a Wikipedia Admin know whether User:Dmoss or User:Peterwats is telling the truth, from another continent, without knowing anything about either of them? Wikipedia requires material to be verifiable to get around this problem, but how would an Admin verify original research? Academia solves this problem (or at least minimises it significantly) through the university system. Each academic builds a reputation, first with an undergraduate degree, then through postgraduate work. Peer review and formal examination at each stage establishes the reputation. If someone with a PhD in a topic writes an article about that topic, similarly qualified people soon take the trouble to review it. If User:Dmoss writes an article about the same topic it is likely to be ignored entirely by those best qualified to conduct a review. There is just too much material out there, so genuine experts have to be selective in their reading. Many Academics I have met spend at least 4 hours a day reading qualified material in their field just to stay current. So, a wiki that dealt with original research would have to have restrictions on participation similar to those in the University system to work at all. But that would defeat the Wiki philosophy of "anyone can edit" entirely, so such a project probably doesn't belong here. If you only want to set up a wiki environment so qualified peers can collaborate on research, I'm sure your Uni IT department will help. If not, and you have properly qualified peers lined up and ready, drop me a line and I will make room on my own server for such a project. Its very small, its very slow, but it runs the same mediawiki software as Wikipedia. --Dave 11:31, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

-- The so-called "anyone can edit" section in each original article should be the main part of the Discussion. --Eletto 04:23, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposal - Random article search related to a portal or related to a field

The addition of random article searches within a particular field or related to a subject. For example an adding random search within Philosophy on the Portal:Philosophy page and from any page with a philosophy topics box at the bottom - probably within this box. Could this be driven by searching for the topics boxes within the wiki and then applying random choice? Could be extended further. --The Sage of Brouhaha 14:01, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• That's not a bad idea, but since it requires modification to Wikipedia software you'd have to ask our developers, over at Bugzilla. >Radiant< 15:57, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• Noted. Bug 2170 already appears to be aiming for this. Modification of wikis would be necessary if the random search within a category is made available. I've noticed that a proposal for this is already on Wikipedia_Talk:Portal and think it's probably more sensible to pursue this there. --The Sage of Brouhaha 16:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Working Base and Working Copy Articles

To thwart vandalism, why not allow a principle similar to that of CVS and Subversion where the main article page is a working base page (Article tab) and the non-admin users who try to edit the working base would automatically create a working copy tab (next to the Article tab) that shows their changes, any further modification to the page by non-admin would go directly to the working copy tab. The article is discussed, and once the modifications are approved on the discussion page an Admin would merge the working copy with the working base and the working copy tab is automatically removed. Note: I tried looking perennial proposals and technical pages but didn't find anything similar. Any feedback?? -- Witchinghour 19:55, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

If the reason I'm not getting any feedback is because it's unclear what I'm talking about or you don't know what CVS and SVN are please let me know.
If you do understand what I'm talking about and think this proposal is stupid, useless, doesn't belong here or is a redundant measure for some reason please let me know as well. -- Witchinghour 05:04, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

The first reason is simple: User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles, statement 3. It would make the principle fail.

The second reason: We would need 20,000 admins to deal with the articles, not 1000.

The third reason: Most view admins "pressing" their version with their status, name or WP expericence as at least abusive, although it sounds too mild to represent actual attitude towards such activity. The community would not trust them the right to unilaterally decide on contents.

The final and most critical reason: A page can get 50 edits a day. Imagine what would happen if each was discussed, voted and approved. It would slow down the work drastically, effectively freezing Wikipedia.

CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 08:11, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. It made me think further about this proposal, and I don't think it's as dead or unfeasible as you make it sound. As you know there are a lot of pages tagged with {{sprotected}} which reads: "Because of recent vandalism, editing of this article by anonymous or newly registered users is currently disabled. Such users may discuss changes, request unprotection, or create an account." So this is exactly where the proposal would apply and be most suitable. Also, repeated vandals are eventally blocked, which ironically along with {{sprotected}} make Jimbo's 3rd statement fail. But with a working copy there won't be any need to block anybody, simply apply it to unregistered users, or just IPs and users that are known to have caused vandalism in the past. But if you're a registered user with a good record, the working tab is not created and you can modify an article directly as before. I think that with this proposal in place, unregisterd users with the intent of vandalising an article will eventually get frustrated because all their changes will be applied to a back page instead of the main body, which kills the satisfaction of doing it in the first place. -- Witchinghour 13:17, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, [semi]protection also restricts editing, but it's applied only to about 1000-1500 pages, which is approx. 2-3% of our articles. The system similar to what you propose, however, has already been considered, but in much simpler form, without branches. It's called Stable Versions. The idea is that all unregistered readers see the latest stable version and a link to the latest one; all registered get the latest. Any edit by fresh user or IP works as usual, but only autoconfirmed users can mark versions as stable, which is done either by default or always. The system is currently in testing on the German Wikipedia, and might soon be added here as well; however, the "stabilizer" will work only where toggled on by admins, pretty much like semiprotection, which it aims to eventually replace. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 16:33, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia as hosting

I've come across material which was uploaded to Wikipedia just to (usually temporarily) store it there. I propose modification to the speedy deletion policy to allow speedy deletion of material uploaded to Wikipedia just to store it there. [[User:Nwwaew|Nwwaew]] 22:24, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

No need for extra rules, really; it gets killed in a week anyway. This happens on (almost) all wikis, but it not much of a problem, at least yet. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 00:19, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but by that time, most people have downloaded the file to wherever they need it, and they dont care anymore about what happens to it. [[User:Nwwaew|Nwwaew]] 10:36, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem is lack of strict criteria - how should one decide what was an image uploaded for? It's easier to just kill orphaned ones after a set period, unless it becomes a significant problem. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 13:13, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• I think people looking for free file storage will find more convenient options all over the 'net, so it's not a big problem for us. Still, if you see any, please point them out to us at WP:MFD. >Radiant< 15:57, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Mathematics Portal: justified?

As much as I like mathematics, I doubt it should feature as a high-level portal. It seems it should appear as a sub-portal of the Science Portal.Wikidss 08:03, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

"Reads like an essay" tag should be removed

I dont think wikipedia's "Reads like an essay" tag should be included because prose that is written in this form meets all or most of Wikipedia's editing guidelines. For example, consider the following text that was tagged "reads like an essay" when it clearly makes use of good prose and conveys the necessary information.

"By integrating NEPs with existing public heath programs, IDUs will also benefit from service beyond sterile needles. Robert Heimer states that when NEPs are connected with medical facilities, such as those that are federally funded, they can offer services such as medical care, drug abuse treatment, safe sex supplies, information, and guidance. Heimer continues, “…[syringe exchange programs] can provide IDUs—who are often alienated from the heath care system by their poverty, their criminal status, and their inferior housing status—with these services in a physical and psychological context that fosters the reduction of the risk associated with the injection of illicit drugs” (Heimer 72). Medical services would be difficult to provision from community-based NEPs, in particular those that are loosely organized and inadequately funded. A federally funded program would provide the necessary resources to “foster the reduction of risk” and more importantly, to reduce the incidence of HIV and hepatitis." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teglin (talk • contribs)

Yes, the prose is good, and yes, it conveys information -- but it is also clearly advocating for a point of view, which is what Wikipedia articles are not supposed to do. The text is clearly putting forth the POV "it would be a good thing to integrate NEPs with existing public health programs" and then providing facts in support of that thesis. An essay is supposed to do exactly that, to have a thesis and advocate for that thesis; but a Wikipedia article which does that is violating NPOV. (I must point out that this particular example seems to also becrystal-balling; it states that IDUs "will" benefit from the proposed integration, which while it may be a logical conclusion to draw from the facts, is still a conclusion that should be left up to the reader and not stated by the article.) -- Antaeus Feldspar 14:49, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Reference page navigation bar issue

A discussion is underway which concerns the design of the pages in the above presented navigation bar. It involves the pages Wikipedia:List of portals and Portal:Browse, and which one of these directories should occupy the "Portals" position on the navigation bar. A merge suggestion is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:List of portals#Merge suggestion. Please compare the two portal directory designs, and voice your opinion in the merge discussion. Thank you. --The Transhumanist 16:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

"This page is watched by 145 editors."

I have been wondering about the vandalism problem and reading some about proposals to reduce it.

Might a feature be created that appears somewhere on a page that indicates to a visitor how many people are following (watching) that page? Or does it exist already and I just haven't found it?

I'm supposing that many potential vandals might be put off, knowing their work will be found rather quickly. Then again, perhaps I don't know how to think like a vandal. :)

I'm guessing a feature like this would put some strain on the database if it were re-calculated each time a page is called up. Perhaps instead it could be re-calculated on an occasional basis with the result stored as a numeric field along with the page's database entry.

A feature like this might help a bit with 'public relations' as visitors readily know that WP sites are actively monitored.

It might also serve as a de facto "To Do" item by highlighting pages that need a few extra volunteers to watch that page.

Apologies in advance if this has been already suggested and discarded. -- RayBirks 17:35, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem with this suggestion is just as it might deter vandals from highly watched pages, it might also attract them to unwatched ones. There is a special page, Special:Unwatchedpages, which is accessible to administrators only. It exists to ensure every page is watched. With respect to reassuring visitors there is the {{maintained}} template, which isn't widely used, but might be helpful. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 17:50, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, in my opinion, restricting access to that page is plain weird. It is a wiki, which works by community effort, where anyone can edit - and we hide quite trivial information. It would be easier if more editors simply put these pages on their watchlist. Admins can't watch all the pages; community as a whole can. It is security through obscurity. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 18:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this. The problem is there is no way to make the list available to regular users (who are trustworthy) and not vandals. The worry, I think, is that vandals could use the list to cause trouble prior to every page being actively watched. You're certainly right that it's security through obscurity, but that's not always a bad idea. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 21:00, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

But I don't think it is the best choice on wiki. At least we can set $wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['unwatchedpages'] = true; it will filter most of the quick vandals, while letting people to put all pages on watch.

However, I'm becoming more and more convinced that we need an extra access level. It already de facto exists, like editors with 500+ edits can get AWB, rollback can be issued to reliable editors, etc. There is a lot of functions which were created as admin-only in the early days when adminship was easy to get, but now the threshold is excessive for them. Today there is too large a gap between just contributor and admin. Using unwatchedpages, checking deleted content, rollback, and a few other features don't need as high clearance level as protection, deletion or blocking. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 02:21, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I have previously suggested something similar - called trial adminship. As others have pointed out, allowing users to see how many users are watching an article may attract vandals to less-watched articles. It would also be technically difficult to implement and cause server problems. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:01, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Trial adminship is not similar - it is adminship with some restrictions. I'm talking about a level with minimal checking and defined requirements, like 2 months, 500 edits. And, BTW, how would it be technically difficult? One of the simplest modifications; and servers are doing far more difficult jobs already than just n++ when adding to watchlist. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 03:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree 100%, this is a often proposed suggestion and I agree and think that I and many more could be allowed to have some more buttons, I would suggest almost all that normal admins have except block, but nevermind I will agree to any proposal that gives me more buttons, put the requirement very high to start with as a test, say 10000 edits and 2 years to start with, see what happens, if no disaster reduce to 5000 edits and so on. But this is ALWAYS voted down (often by people with lots of buttons) refering to m:instruction creep. I say we should give users buttons and remove them when abused, admin is no big deal jimbo says, but I do not think he has read WP:RfA lately. I agree, we should not give block button to all, but after almost 3.5 years and never done any thing really bad, I think that I could be trusted with deleting my own talk pages, doing more advanced moves and even do reverts, yes popups and AWB does that and I use both but still that is just showing that the policies is not in sync with wikipedia today. Stefan 13:54, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I wish to express my strong support for this proposal. While vandals would quickly learn which pages were 'vulnerable', users would quickly learn which pages were reliable. And any page that goes unwatched for a year should probably be deleted anyways. --Arcadian 04:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Strong support Besides the fact that it might scare vandals off popular pages, it will also help many editors in many ways. I also agree with Arcadian about unwatched pages. Michaelas10 10:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Support even though it may be unseemly to support one's own motion. :) -- RayBirks 13:42, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

interestingly, i had this exact idea last night.. the obvious problem is that there is a certain amount of privacy users should have of their watchlists. But, i think it would be a great idea to divide the watchlist into "publicly watching" and "privately watching".

Actually, the reason i had thought of this, is to allow WikiProjects to function more effectively; you could see at a glance who is watching which pages within your WikiProject.. since it would obviously only show the "public" watchlist, privacy isn't an issue here.

with this information, each user page could have a link to "watched pages", and each page could have a link to "users watching this page". i think that would be great for many reasons. for vandal fighting, the "publicly watching" users could be like your patrolling police, while the "privately watching" users are like the snipers in the trees, hehe ;) Mlm42 12:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

You can create the equivilent of a public watchlist by making a user subpage, putting a list of links on it then clicking on Related changes. There's no way to find out exactly which users have done this to a particular page but you could look through the What links here list and see if there are any user subpages on the list. Tra (Talk) 16:27, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

New access level

I came up with an idea for a new level of user access. Some vandals create accounts that remain dormant for four days, so they can vandalise semi-protected pages. A solution to this would be for a new user rights level that allows a user to do everything a normal registered user can do, except for edit semi-protected pages. Temporary demotion to this level could be the result of vandalism to semi-protected pages, as a less harsh alternative to blocking or banning. Admins would have the power to demote the users, though most changes of user rights can only be performed by bureaucrats. --Gray Porpoise^{Phocoenidae, not Delphinidae} 21:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that if a user can't be trusted to edit semi-protected pages, how can they be trusted to edit unprotected pages? Tra (Talk) 21:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Demotion to this level... For vandals? They can change account. For violating editors? There's little or no difference between normal/semiprotected pages in this regard - we semiprotect high-profile pages which are targets of vandalism, either constantly like pages about widely hated people, or temporarily in cases of internet flashmobs or the Colbert Report. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 23:06, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Articles with graphical images

{{Graphic warning}}

This is just an example template. I really think that this template is needed in many articles and is requested enough to get its own template. As you can see, in most of the articles with graphic images, such as the one provided above, they have been moved to the external links section, but a lot of articles didn't do it yet. I understand that Wikipedia is not censored, but these images can really turn people off articles and even case health problems to some; nearly all websites with these graphic image warn before showing them to viewers as well.

A proposal has already been made here. Michaelas10 16:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry but Wikipedia is not censored. Joelito (talk) 16:25, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

...I know, I just said so. Yet it would be good to have a warning messege so these images would be moved to the external links section. Michaelas10 16:37, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Bad idea. wikipediatrix 17:38, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think pictures should be linked to in external links just because they are scary or very graphic. We don't censor articles, moving images to external links would be censoring. And we don't need warning templates for articles with graphic pictures, because the fact that we're not censored is already covered in our content disclaimer --`/aksha 02:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• This is a perennial proposal. We've discussed it many times in the past and the decision has always been that we do not need disclaimer templates. >Radiant< 12:23, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

What if Wikipedia were to allow advertising?

I've been thinking that if Wikipedia were to start letting companies advertise via the site, that it could earn a lot of money that way. Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the net, and I'm sure that companies would jump at the chance to advertise here.--Rouge Rosado Oui? 22:29, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

The reason Wikipedia is so popular is, in a large part, because there is no advertising (ecept for the drives...ugh...). Besides, it's distracting (maybe Google text ads?).--HereToHelp 22:53, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that WikiPedia SHOULD have ads, as long as:
1. They are placed on a common "Ads" page and on the closest related page
2. There is a setting which allows users to block ads when they browse. Guests would have the ads up all the time.
--Cricket Boy 03:23, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

No offense, but HECK NO!!!! By doing ads, Wikipedia no longer appears neutral to the public. [[User:Nwwaew|Nwwaew]] 03:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Google AdSense would help fund Wikipedia. In addition, since the ads will be based on the content of the articles, they will be beneficial to the readers as well. They are small and unobstrusive, and most browsers have options for blocking ads (registered users should be allowed to specify in their preferences whether they wish to block ads or not). --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:51, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Many people (wrong or right) would then think that Google might want some control over our content. I know Google has rules for Adsense on forums, so... --Golbez 04:11, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, how could we thenafter claim that WP is non-profit if it then makes money out of it? Lincher 04:24, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, who's to say they would make a true profit? They could simply funnel the moneys from advertising back into the foundation, improving servers, services, etc. This isn't to include their pay. Non-profit organizations are allowed to sell things. --Golbez 04:42, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not going to happen, but I'll point this out anyway: If something like adsense was used, that would give the incentive to advertisers to edit target articles so that their ad gets shown more often. Zocky | picture popups

This is a perrenial proposal that comes up every week or so and has been discussed in-depth many times. We should really list it somewhere for future reference. Deco 08:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

If Jimbo ever decides that Wikipedia needs advertisers, he'll do it. Until that day, we seem to be in no danger of the bills not being paid. wikipediatrix 17:40, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• I'll add it to WP:PEREN. >Radiant< 12:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Copyright advice

I think it might be a good idea to create a place where editors can get decent, though not professional, advice about copyrights. Right now, there is just the Village Pump, which does not have an appropriate page for such questions and is unlikely to attract those who are knowledgeable about copyrights, and the Wikipedia:Copyright problems talk page, which is not very visible or active (It's much better than it was six months to a year ago, but it still is not very active and days can pass between posts. Also, there are only a few truly knowledgeable people that post there. Most are either asking for help, have admittedly little knowledge or are giving incorrect information.). An even worse problem than the lack of a visible, appropriate location is that the advice given in postings at these locations and elsewhere is often contradictory to other postings and/or official guidelines. Disturbingly, the bad advice comes not just from inexperienced editors, but also from veteran editors and administrators.

I suggest that an area be created for editors to go to in order to determine whether something is copyrighted, whether sufficient proof of permission has been obtained and whether something can be used under fair use. There should be instructions for the editor to read Wikipedia:Copyrights first. If their question is not answered there, they should be able to get good advice at a single location. As the project progresses, Wikipedia:Copyrights would be expanded and clarified to reduce the workload of those who answer questions. -- Kjkolb 10:56, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that the talk page at Copyright Problems is as bad off as you describe. I have never seen disturbingly bad advice that is not corrected by someone with better advice. I really don't see how making a new "area" will ensure that editors get good advice in any case. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 22:25, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Well we do have Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, can't claim all the answers will be professional there either, but that will be a problem with any page we set up to handle this. --Sherool (talk) 05:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

In a few cases, I may have seen disturbingly bad advice given without correction, but it probably does not happen often. I know that I have come across cases when the correction came so late that it was almost useless, though. Bad advice given without timely correction is a much bigger problem than never corrected advice. Some of the stuff I have come across went uncorrected for several days or weeks, possibly even months. If the person checks back and only sees the bad advice and does not check again, then the correction only helps those who stumble onto the conversation later. The asker and those who saw the conversation before the correction are worse off than if they got no advice at all. Also, the corrections are often either partially wrong, or they "correct" advice that was actually accurate.

If we want to use the talk page of copyright problems for this stuff, fine, but it should be publicized more and we should try to get more knowledgeable people to answer questions on the page. However, I think that the media copyright questions page might be a better place. We'll need to include text as media or change the name, though. That page really needs to be publicized more. With all of my tagging and reporting of copyright violations, I have never heard of it before now. Although, it has only been around since late March and I do not do as much copyright stuff as I used to. -- Kjkolb 22:38, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps there was some bad image advice lately, or else you have a long memory. I only feel that I am knowledgeable on issues of text and pay little attention to the image questions. It would be helpful if there were more knowledgable people watching that page. If you know of anyone knowledgable, please ask them to start taking part. I do not know of any editors I would go to for advice who are not already regulars there. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 22:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Make note formatting like reference formatting

The way references work is fabulous. You put <ref> and </ref> around a reference and the you add <references /> to the references section and all the references show up. More details available at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php I would like to request the same treatment for notes, i.e. <note> and </note> formatted by <notes />. People currently use the references feature for notes in some articles, and it is frustrating to not be able to have two types of footnotes, appearing in two sections. Albert Einstein is one of many examples of an article that uses the reference formatting feature for notes, so it cannot be used for the references section. — Reinyday, 21:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Is there some other place I should post this request where it is more likely to be seen? — Reinyday, 17:01, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Excellent idea! The best place is probably the talk page for the Meta page you mention above; if you get no response you could also drop a note at User talk:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (he's the fellow who programmed Cite.php). — Catherine\^talk 07:39, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

There's been discussion at Wikipedia:Footnotes, but, so far as I recall, either no consensus or likelihood of action... Personally, as the current cite.php system displays the "notes" in a numbered list, I'd say they're footnotes, i.e. for brief one/two-line notes not end-of-chapter-style notes or references. (Hence, if nothing else, I'd support replacing <ref> etc with <footnote>, <fnote>, <footn> or the like.)  Another issue that may (still) be stalling development is whether the notes are left within the text (the current status quo) or appear together elsewhere; there may or may not be a consensus...

Regards, David Kernow (talk) 07:51, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Reposted to m:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#Request for both notes and references. — Reinyday, 18:28, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Talk header templates

Talk header templates have started cluttering talk pages now that many projects have started to embrace Version 1.0. I am seeing the {{Skiptotoctalk}} template getting used at many places. For example, Talk:India. I took the skiptotalk idea and created this template that can be used to move all header templates to a sub-page (/about). Has this been discussed elsewhere? Are there any other ideas to fix this problem? Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 07:55, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Meh, the templates are sort of meant to be seen; burying them on a subpage isn't likely to help there. In the vast majority of cases, the templates are probably the most useful thing on the talk page; a relatively small number of articles actually have meaningful discussion there. Shrinking them might be possible, but I don't think that hiding them entirely would be beneficial enough to warrant their loss. Kirill Lokshin 23:05, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

More on this. See Wikipedia:Mini Talkpage Template. - Ganeshk (talk) 02:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Administrators' obfuscation of username in signatures

I'm moving this here from WP:AN to get a broader discussion. I've noticed a couple administrators using nick names in their signatures that completely obfuscate their real username. I would think that this would generally be a bad idea; it affects perception of the administrator's accountability.

Some issues with obfuscation:

• Use of nick names makes it difficult for another user to verify admin status at the administrators list.
• Logs only list real usernames, so it makes it difficult to see if the person you were talking to actually performed the block/deletion/etc. It also makes it easier for an admin who participated in a discussion about deletion, for example, and then arbitrarily perform the action contrary to consensus. Since the log would only list the real username, the conflict of interest would not be immediately apparent.
• Requests for comment/arbitration where the subject is a user list the editor by real username. If the subject were to comment on their own RfC/RfArb, it wouldn't be apparent to the casual reader.
• Use of nick names is discouraged at WP:SIG and WP:USERNAME. Administrators should be held to a higher standard when it comes to following policy.

I don't see as much of a problem with abbreviations of a username like Cyde or Doc. And I wouldn't have a problem with someone using their real name in their sig in place of the real username. Users shouldn't be required to click or rollover a link to find out who they are really talking to; administrators should be accessable without detective work. I think it is an accountability problem when a pseudonym is used on top of a pseudonym.

—Malber (talk • contribs) 12:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Just ask them nicely. This doesn't need any kind of regulation. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 16:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• My thoughts exactly. Malber is blowing this way out of proportion. The issue is discussed at length on WP:AN. There is one major loophole in his argument: when people want to know the names of others, they rarely only look at sigs. Thef are far more inclined to visit the person's userpage to check the correct spelling and formatting of the usernames. It's a simple 3-second process. He is simply patronizing Wikipedians by going on about how lost they would be if they didn't see a real name. And to add to that, there has been no complaint from any new/anon users about the issue. Orane (talk • cont.) 17:14, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand why you are taking this so personally. You haven't addressed the concerns I listed. I'm also not certain why you presume to know the minds and inclinations of all Wikipedians. —Malber (talk • contribs) 17:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I haven't had too much of a problem with this but I have found one case in particular to be slightly confusing (though it doesn't involve an admin), that being User:Hildanknight whose signature on talk pages is "J.L.W.S. The Special One". I don't know of any admins where the differences are that drastic, but I can see where it could cause concerns. Notice that this involves a signature that is very different from the username, and has nothing to do with real names. I would be opposed to anything requiring admins or anyone else to reveal their real name if they didn't want to. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 17:19, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I think a partial solution would be to create a redirect from the nickname. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:44, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

What you're talking about is beside the point. If someone has a problem with someone else's signature, they can ask on the talk page. No issue. No difficulty. No regulations or procedure. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 17:48, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you really think that would be effective? —Malber (talk • contribs) 18:39, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, in fact, I do. If the person agreed, you get your way, and if not, we avoid having a big argument over something as trivial as how a sig should look. It's not like you need to be able to force people to change their names. --tjstrf 19:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict :P) Reply to Sam: but that's the problem. Malber has asked me on my talkpage (under "Username Warning" (?!?)) to fix it. However, I like my sig the way it is, and I find no problem with it. I've had many interactions with anons and not one of them was as baffled or as confused as Malber wants us to believe. I will not change my sig, and I find it hard to understand why he has taken on a mission of trying to force everyone to comply with this trivial procedure, first hassling me on my talk page, then moving to WP:AN, then moving here when everyone at WP:AN disagreed with him. Orane (talk • cont.) 19:10, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm relying on people being reasonable folk. If they aren't reasonable folk, there are probably more outrageous things they are doing than having slightly confusing signatures. We don't want a situation where we should be trying to force someone to change their signature. Even if we did want to do that, the existing RfC system would work quite adequately. More regulations we don't need. (Incidentally, I don't have a problem with your signature, but I do have a problem with people going around posting "warnings" when there is no good reason to do so and where a polite would-you-mind would be both more civil and more appropriate.) Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 19:44, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Sounds like instruction creep to me. --That guy with the signature 20:20, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Who are you, are you an admin? —My Name Is Earl 20:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• To reiterate, I believe the problem of confusing people is most easily solved by adding a link from e.g. User:FearÉIREANN to User:Jtdirl. That way people can look up the name and arrive at the right spot. >Radiant< 20:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Carnildo, have you not heard of "anti-instruction creep creep"? People are sometimes too quick to dismiss "something I know and don't need to be told" as instruction creep. Sometimes detailed and clear explanations are needed for those who haven't been here years and need some clear guidance, not just a quick check-sheet that they can use to check they are doing the right thing. I am seriously considering a proposal to have "brief" instructions for those who know what they are doing, and "detailed" instructions for everyone else. This give us the best of both worlds. And even better, people can move instruction creep to the "detailed" page, rather than just delete it. Carcharoth 01:16, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• The very title of this section begs the question. Obfuscation? Piffle. No credible evidence has been provided of any situation where use of nicknames has caused a problem. I actually changed my account to make my Wikisig shorter, and since then I've shortened my original handle to the point where now I use my given name in my sig, but the very short version of my old handle as my username. Has anyone been confused by this to the point of requiring new instructions? I don't think so. Is it better or worse for admins (and especially arbitrators) to sart using their real names instead of aliases? This is a pointless debate about a non-problem. Guy 20:54, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Your new username confused me to death when I first saw it. For an entire 6 seconds until I figured out the abbreviation, even! Clearly this travesty must be stopped immediately and warrants that all of us stop editing articles and instead go campaign for the forbiddal of all confusing usernames. (Especially those with seemingly random letter combinations in them.) --tjstrf 20:58, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
    • The Jocular Supporter of True Reliable Foundations? >Radiant< 21:50, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
      • True Jugglers Should Toss Real Flames? Actually, it's an old username I've had various places online since 1998. I'm just too lazy to change it. According to my userpage, it stands for Tristan J. S. (my initials) the Redwall Fan. --tjstrf 21:58, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
        • Mmmmmmm, Acrophobia. -- nae'blis 22:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
          • That jest? Such tepid, reaching "funniness". --tjstrf 23:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

So this attempt to get a "wider audience" has had a crowd come over here from WP:AN. Anyone see any problems with this? </sarcasm> The real people to ask about this are new users. But they are the people least likely to see these two discussions. I agree with Malber that this can be a problem, and I think that it wouldn't take much effort for people to meet him somewhere in the middle, instead of entrenching their positions. About the actual issues, rather than the nature of the discussion here, see my next comment. Carcharoth 00:53, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I think there is a problem here, and it is to do with stability of sig-names. I think people here will understand the distinction between sig-names and usernames. Sometimes I see people morphing their names (while staying with the same account). Excessive morphing like this can be confusing. I have sometimes read discussions somewhere and only realised that who a particular user was when I bothered to hover my mouse over the signature. I have no problems with people creating an account with one name, and then signing with another name. What I do object to is that person then changing their signature every week to a different name. Even variants on the name can be confusing, as (all names made up, apologies if I accidently hit on a real person) Doc Fred -> Doc -> Fred -> Doctor Frederick -> Doc Fred the Third. This can be bewildering. Carcharoth 00:53, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Why is this a problem? Hover your cursor over the sig and you'll see who it is, or at best, click on it and go to their page. User:Zoe|(talk) 04:42, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Please re-read what I said. I am talking about the practice of morphing one's sig-name to fit the mood you are in at the moment. This makes it difficult to follow who is saying what. Before hovering the mouse cursor, you have to recognise, visually, that the same person is talking. The first step is visual recognition. If that step fails, confusion can result. You appear to be talking about someone consistently using the same sig-name, even if different from the username. I have no problems with that. It is instablility of sig-name that annoys me. Carcharoth 10:43, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm not really the one to complain, as I also sign with a bit different name, but I must say it can be confusing. In my case the difference is only in \ vs. /, and it's well known that name can't include / symbol, but even despite that there was at least one case of well-experienced editor applying nickname with slash in user-template, which as a result linked to empty contribs and logs pages. I didn't intend to cause confusion, just wrote the proper nickname in preferences as soon as I registered, and forgot about it (if I knew it changes the signature back then, I probably wouldn't do it). I didn't want to bloat (customize) signature until there was a good reason; when the reason came and it came to my mind, I decided it's better not to make a sudden change from a thousand of uses and stay with slash.

But with more different names the problem is that one has to remember two names per person instead of one, and people regularly refer to the nickname as a different person than the username, like listing them as two persons. It can be a problem if you deal with a lot of people, and it is a real problem if one changes his nickname. I have internally made such mistakes as well, not recognizing a person after he changed the signature from one nickname to another; well, that had no consequences, but in other situations it could. I think we should discourage use of non-username nickname or nickname changes, explaining to new editors the complications it causes; I would hope that experienced users could at least self-restrict this practice. It's just counter-ergonomic. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 05:21, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

There issue of names is really something that needs some consideration, while the use of a nickname differing from the User name is minor as it a straight forward link to the actual user any way. There is still a concern that a USER reverting when looking at a page history is visually different from the talk page discussions. A bigger problem is where signatures have multiple links like this one Imoeng and that when clicking on the name you dont necessarily end up at a User page. Gnangarra 06:15, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Note I've left a message on this users talk page that I used his signatur as an example Gnangarra

When I want to click a particular signature to get to his/her userpage, usually I will just hover my mouse on top of it and see the link on my browser. If I ended up on the user's talk page, just click "user page" and everything will be alright. Cheers -- Imoeng 06:32, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I can't believe that people are wasting valuable characters on a proposal this lame and inconsequential. And now they've got me doing it too. :P -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 14:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

It should be common courtesy that everyone should use their username, or a reasonable version of it, in their sig. It can be confusing if e.g. someone makes a controversial edit to an article then partakes of the related discussion on the talk page. Not all users will be savvy enough to pick up that it is the same person, and it strikes me as devious when someone uses a radically different form for their sig than their username. Zunaid 18:45, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

List Namespace

I came up with an idea to make a new namespace, called List Namespace for all the articles containing phrase as "list". It will make distinction between lists and articles. Existence articles starting with List of will be associated with List namespace, if my proposal could get consensus. Shyam ^(T/C) 21:41, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

It is a very major and unexpected change but I'd support that. Will there be any differences between the list namespace and the article namespace? How about special templates for lists? Michaelas10 21:49, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I was actually writing something like that up, myself : )
Essentially for the user, it's a change in naming from "List of" to "List:". This should help with searches, among other things. (Clarity is typically a good thing.) - jc37 22:01, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

It would also be nice if there was a tool which does a "down-n-dirty" copy of a category to a rough list format. (This would be very useful for CfD resolutions.) - jc37 22:01, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Interesting proposal. Could we sent trivia lists there too? --W.marsh 21:56, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Probably if the trivia is long enough. Michaelas10 22:00, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I was referring to the any number of "List of trivia from (whatever TV show/movie/etc)" articles, many of which have been to AfD recently. --W.marsh 22:39, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this requires large amount of work obviously but it will make search easier for the list. Some features can also be added in the list namespace to make lists also, but I don't know how feasible is it. There would be no requirement to type List of again and again in search toolbar. We have featured lists which is also in mainspace. That can also be simply replaced in List namespace. Shyam ^(T/C) 22:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

What problem is this actually trying to solve? None that I can see, aside from the fact that some people have an irrational hatred for lists. Besides, how do you define "list" for the purposes of this new namespace? Compare List of Doctor Who serials to List of Doctor Who monsters and aliens -- one is a list pointing to individual articles, in a specific, non-alphabetical order, the other is a collection of what is, essentially, small articles, grouped together because the subjects do not warrant their own articles. Which one is a "list" ? --SB | T 22:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I kind of saw it as a pro-list/trivia thing, it lets people who are obviously interested in reading/writing lists and trivia articles do their thing, without nearly as much interference from MoS, reliable sourcing and other concerns many list and trivia articles tend to run afowl of. I think it could be a lot easier to include lists and trivia if we had a seperate namespace for it, with slightly different rules than for the article namespace. --W.marsh 22:37, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I actually think that it deserves its own Wiki, and I proposed it over on MediaWiki but have decided to not promote the proposal until they work out whether they're going to move the process to the Incubator. There are lots of different types of lists, so I don't see how it would make sense putting them all at List: (unlikely Category:, which has only one format). Besides that, there are a lot of lists that are unencyclopedic, but not without some kind of value, which means that one way or another they'd get deleted from here but could quite legitimately belong on a new wiki with different guidelines. Confusing Manifestation 02:22, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

What about disambiguation pages? Tables? Fagstein 03:14, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation namespace is really a bad idea, since they link to mainspace articles articles anyway, and there are many mixed disambiguation pages. Tables just seem good inside the article, and there are too few of them. Michaelas10 (T|C) 10:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the point of a list namespace. What for? Articles that are currently lists are few. We already have the category namespace. Trivia isn't allowed because wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and trivia doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Besides...i don't think moving articles from main namespace to another namespace is a good idea. The main namespace should contain all encyclopediac articles, moving articles like List of dinosaurs to a list namespace will mean we have two namespaces containing encyclopediac articles. besides list articles and trivia, what else can we put onto the list namespace that doesn't already go into the category namespace? --`/aksha 03:40, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The point is that we can seperate number of articles which are not detailed and having various data mentioned. The artcles having lists are not very few. See Category:Lists for example. This is not trivia as the lists also contain imprtant information and data. One point is that we do not have encyclopediac articles other than main space but I do not see any harm in it. If a person search for a list in toolbar without typing List:, which does not exist in main space (s)he will get search page where he can fount the desired list. If an article with same name exist in mainspace as well as listspace then we can produce a reverse link in the list and in the article as well. I am unable to get what do you mean by what else can we put onto the list namespace that doesn't already go into the category namespace?. Shyam ^(T/C) 08:22, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The persons who have any oppositions to this proposal, please mark your oppositions with valid reasons. Regards, Shyam ^(T/C) 19:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the main reasons expressed here for opposing it are that:

• It can sometimes be hard to draw a boundry between an article with lots of sections and a list
• It may be a good idea to give them their own wiki
• We already have a namespace for categories, so there's no point having a namespace for a list
• Extensive trivia (which has been mentioned) doesn't belong inside an encyclopedia
• Introducing the namespace will mean there are two namespaces for encyclopedic articles

Tra (Talk) 23:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

"Introducing the namespace will mean there are two namespaces for encyclopedic articles" this is the main reason. Two encyclopedia namespaces would be bad, unless there was really a great need for it. The encyclopedia namespace, being the 'main' one, is the actual "Wikipedia". All the other namespaces are more like 'supporting namespaces'. Having two namespaces spreads out the encyclopedia. Plus...places that mirror Wikipedia only mirror the main namespace. people looking for articles know they can just type in the name of the article after "wiki/" on the url. With list, it'll become "wiki/list:". Besides...each namespace has a unique function. I don't see any purpose for the list namespace, it just intrudes into the boundaries of the main namespace and the category namespace. --`/aksha 23:58, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Response from my side:

1. It can sometimes be hard to draw a boundry between an article with lots of sections and a list - Yes, sometimes it can be hard, but by drawing about the boundaries based upon the contextx included in list vs contexts existed outside the list, the problem could be resolved. We have featured articles and featured lists sepeartely. What is the process to choose them wheather it is list or an article? If an article starts with List of then it should go into this namespace.
2. It may be a good idea to give them their own wiki - This is a different issue. I am prposing it to Wikipedia project. It could be better on seperate wiki also. But I am not seeking any harm in it on the wikipedia.
3. We already have a namespace for categories, so there's no point having a namespace for a list - The Category namespace has different purpose behind his set up. It is different from category namespace. The main motive for category space to connect differnet articles which are somehow related to each other what I suppose. The list namespace would be for only a single article which has not enough contexts out of the associated list(s).
4. Extensive trivia (which has been mentioned) doesn't belong inside an encyclopedia - This is not trivia because the lists already associated with Wikipedia have important data and informations. So it could not be said that the list namespace would be a part of extensive trivia.
5. Introducing the namespace will mean there are two namespaces for encyclopedic articles - Yes, I agree at that point that it is a bad proposal at that point. But there is not so big deal to have two namespaces associated with encyclopediac articles if it is worthful to do so.
6. All the other namespaces are more like 'supporting namespaces'. - This would also be supportive. Some special features could be added in the toolbar for this namespace, but I am not sure how could it be?
7. people looking for articles know they can just type in the name of the article after "wiki/" on the url. With list, it'll become "wiki/list:" - Right now we have articles starting with Listof. After introducing List namespace it would not create difficulty rather than solving problem, becuase the they would need to type only List: instead of List_of.

Still is there any issues which could create problem to Wikipedia, please mention them. If I am wrong at any this point to answer, please correct me. Regards, Shyam ^(T/C) 07:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

A "thank you" to Tra for the summary : )

• It can sometimes be hard to draw a boundry between an article with lots of sections and a list

• Which is actually a good reason to have this new namespace. Also, see Wikipedia:List. If you feel it needs more clarity, Either be bold, with all that entails, or feel free to drop some change suggestions on the talk page. I'm sure that there are other concerned editors : )

• It may be a good idea to give them their own wiki

• Perhaps, but whether that's true or not, moving them to their own namespace is a great way to isolate them for discussion. There were comments above which said that they feel that there are not many lists on Wikipedia. I disagree. Would someone provide some data on lists?

• We already have a namespace for categories, so there's no point having a namespace for a list

• I think that any editor who feels that way should read: Wikipedia:Categorization, Wikipedia:List, and most importantly, Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes. There is a distinct difference, and a need for all three.

• Extensive trivia (which has been mentioned) doesn't belong inside an encyclopedia

• One man's trivia is another man's vital information. Dates of historical events is a prime example of "trivia" which I would hope would be present on WIkipedia.

• Introducing the namespace will mean there are two namespaces for encyclopedic articles

• Technically, there is "encyclopedic" information also in template and category space. It could be argued that lists are not articles, any more than categories are. Which, I think, is another good reason for it's own namespace.

I've heard it asked: Where's the good?
The good is clarity, usablity, and readability for the casual reader (as opposed to those of us entrenched in wikipedian policies : )
Also, with it's own namespace, searching would actually be easier. When searching for something, hit "search", rather than "go", sometime. Look at the bottom of the search page. If lists had their own namespace, then you could actually choose to include/disinclude the list namespace in your searches. This would be great for those who wish to limit their searches to articles. Lists tend to duplicate much material in articles, which leads to rather long search results. And the reverse is true. Perhaps you just want a list of something, searching for a noun in article space may get you more results than just the 4 lists in which that noun appears.

Now I want to ask: Where's the harm? If this is done, how would it harm wikipedia, and its readers/editors? - jc37 18:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Moving lists into a separate namespace would take information out of the encyclopedia. Mirrors wouldn't pick it up, and searches of the main namespace would fail to pick it up. I think this disagreement comes down to differences of opinion over the point of lists: information vs. navigation. I think it's the former (like articles), while others think it's the latter (like categories). Fagstein 20:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Fagstein, you made a good point. As mirrors are able to pick up images from wikipedia which do exist in namespace other than mainspace, they can do the same for the lists also. All the existing will be redirected to list space so that the former article space would not lose any kind of information. Shyam ^(T/C) 20:44, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Unless I am mistaken, mirrors can rather easily pick up other namespaces - Wikipedia project space, or Template space, for example. So I don't think that that is an issue. And I agree that the lists are informative, so can templates or categories be. : ) - jc37 21:59, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not seeking any more objections to this approval. So what is the next step for approval of this proposal? Should it move to bugzilla or somewhere else? Shyam ^(T/C) 14:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The proposal has been moved to bugzilla. If you may want to suggest there something, you are welcomed. Bug number is 7561. Regards, Shyam ^(T/C) 18:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the mirror thing will be an issue. Lots of wikis have separated "article" space. I'm pretty sure it would just be a matter of whoever sets this up adding it to the main dumps that we advertise for mirrors.

Generally discussion for the merits of config changes and so on should happen on-wiki, in the community, not on Bugzilla. Bugzilla is to get the devs' attention, not to discuss anything but the technical aspects of proposals. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:04, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems like this proposal would introduce greater complexity without very cleary identified benefits. I'm afraid I just don't see what the point would be. Is there some problem with having lists in the main article space? older ≠ wiser 20:39, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

There are many problems with same namespace for articles and lists. I try to point out some of them. One of the major problems is to search for a list for newbies. They do not know that most of the lists are started with "List of". So it is difficult to search out for a particular list. Once the list namespace is created a particular list could easily be searched in list namespace. Search in list namespace could be set by default to search box, so that newbies could get the particular list. Second one is that it would be easier to distinguish between a list and an article. Third one is some additional features could be made to structure a list in edit toolbox for the same in the list namespace. Fourth one is we have different criteria for selection of featured articles and featured lists from the same namespace which looks technically wrong. Shyam ^(T/C) 20:57, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't see how having a separate namespace for lists will make it easier for newbies to find lists. If anything, the additional complexity will make it more difficult. Why is is important to distinguish between a list and an article? As many have note, there is no clear dividing line -- many lists morph into articles and as articles grow list-like components are sometimes moved into separate articles. I'm not sure exactly what your third point means--do you have something specific in mind? What is the problem with having separate criteria for featured articles and featured lists? Why is that "technically wrong"? I guess I'm still not able to see any clear benefits and a significan cost in terms of increased complexity, additional development, as well as the potential for a brand new venue for interminable haggling over whether an article is or is not a list. older ≠ wiser 02:35, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Anyone could find a list without typing "List of" or "List:", if we set the search tool parameter for mainspace and listspace by default. If someone does not want to look for list namespace (s)he could change the default setting accordingly. But would you explore the additional complexity to newbies by introducing listsapce. The important thing is in list, someone could get informations easily in the list. If someone looks for members associated with a particular group he can look into the list namespace. If someone is interested to get specific data, he could do the same in list namespace. There would be no need to look for the whole article. It would make more efficient and well-maintained to wikipedia. There is no harm to make another namespace associated with list. We can set parameter to make a boundary between the criteria for an article and a list. It could be something like that, contexts not associated with the list should dictate about the list in the list namespace. Lists should not have contexts which are anyhow not related to the list. If it is more elaborative other than list it should go to the article space. If there are many lists associated with that article, then one sepearte list could be created in the list namespace and template format of that list could be associated with that article. About additional features I am not so sure how is it feasible in the point of view as a developer. I do not have any software skills, so there is some need to ask a developer for it. About featured articles and featured lists aspects, how would you distinguish that wheather it should go for featured article or featured list if the article contains list and more elaborative and comprehensive? Or an article could be featured on both the places? Shyam ^(T/C) 07:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand what you've said, as you've repeated it several times now. But I still do not see clear benefits and remain unconvinced. older ≠ wiser 13:50, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I think a lot of articles that are currently list have the ability to become more - possibly a comparison. Moving them into a separate namespace might discourage the addition of prose. For example see Comparison of BSD operating systems, the last 3 sections of which (excluding the notes and references) are in list/table format. Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 21:04, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Bottom of the article page could be shifted to list namespace. Template format of that list could be used on the article. I am not seeking any problem other than that. Shyam ^(T/C) 21:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

That's a great idea. Thanks! : ) I guess I have no concerns about this, then. Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 00:08, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Prior proposals

• Wikipedia talk:What is an article?#Moved from Talk:Main Page - see especially: "A Wikipedia article can be defined as a page in the database that either has encyclopedic or almanac-like information on it ("almanac-like" being; lists, timelines or charts)."
• Wikipedia talk:Wikiportal/Archive 1#Survey of opinion on a separate namespace for portals and lists
• Wikipedia talk:Featured content#Featured project - brief mention by Shyam, then proposed at Wikipedia talk:Featured lists#List namespace
• Wikipedia talk:Community Portal/Archive 10#Create a List Namespace

To summarize, the mainspace is intended to hold all "encyclopedic" pages. Lists are just a sub-type of article.

I think there are more, but I can't find them. This should probably be moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals) (either now or before it's archived).

On a minor issue, the points raised above about template namespace etc not being included in site-mirrors (and cdrom/paper editions) are valid, as those mirrors/editions essentially subst all templates – They use static html pages, and they do not run the mediawiki software required to transclude templates or utilize categories.

Personally, I'm strongly against a List: namespace, as I suspect it would lead to more content disputes, and more fractured disputes, and open up possibilities of additional list-cruft problems. --Quiddity 23:34, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Quiddity for highlighting previous discussions related to introduce list namespace. Sometimes lists could work as a sub-type of an article but to get the information collectively there is no harm to do so. But this is not the case always, sometimes list would be its individual existence, most of the articles starting with "List of" are examples of it. Thanks for discussing about site-mirrors, but I am not seeking any problem with list space if they do not run mediawiki software. Would you explore your opposition for it, which kind of disputes could be raised? Shyam ^(T/C) 07:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to chime in here, but I, too am strongly opposed to any such move. The main namespace is for all encyclopedic content; lists are inherently articles and contain such encyclopedic information. Namespaces are for distinguishing different uses of the pages, and all encyclopedic pages should remain in the main namespace. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 00:20, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, till now most of the encyclopediac informations are associated with mainspace, but this is not the point if Wikipedia gets a quality improvement by introducing a namespace. If you say, differnt namespaces have their differnt purposes then I do not completely agree with you, because Portal namespace and Wikipedia Namespace have the same main motive that people could contibute more effectively. Shyam ^(T/C) 07:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

What could be done to involve more people and get consensus to the proposal. I have left messages to the Wikipedia talk:List guideline, Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and series boxes, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, Wikipedia talk:Lists in Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk:Featured lists. I do not think that the vote procedure is good enough right now because people should know and think first how better or worse the proposal could be? Shyam ^(T/C) 15:00, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

As someone said above, this is 'a solution looking for a problem'. (It doesnt solve anything).

There are no clear benefits to seperating articlespace into 2 sections (only your hypothetical benefits), and there are many obvious drawbacks (increased bureaucracy in more dispersed locations, and increased chance of trivial list additions (counter to WP:NOT), so developers are highly-unlikely to commit time to coding such a complicated addition. (No support at Bug 7561 either).

We need less rules around here, not more. See m:Instruction creep. --Quiddity 19:45, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments Quiddity, It might be a problem initially till the whole process does not complete. At the start it requires a good hard-work, but it would make quality improvement to wikipedia (could be my hypothesis only, according to you). As I mentioned earlier that it would be easier to collect information for a particular institution/group on a single click and with easy search. If you say that there should be no seperate list namespace, then would you please tell me what is the requirement to have two seperate featured contents (i.e. article and list), then according to you we should ban the process for featured lists as well. Shyam ^(T/C) 20:13, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

You're over-stretching the relationship between namespaces and the Featured content status (which is essentially a very large wikiproject, and is complementary to things such as Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics). This is the same problem as with your proposal for a "featured project", "featured template", "featured user", and "featured category" status (linked above). --Quiddity 21:06, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

To explain it another way, making a List: namespace makes as much sense as creating a Timeline: namespace or Glossary: namespace or Year: namespace. Or Infobox: namespace (to address the thread below): an infobox is a template, just like a list is an article. There would have to be a really damn good reason to make it more complicated (which is what this would do). There was more support for a Userbox: namespace, than you are likely to get for this. Sorry :( but there it is. --Quiddity 21:13, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Quiddity, I realise the problem associated with the process. So, I withdraw from this proposal. But, It would be better to archive all the discussions at a suitable place. Regards, Shyam ^(T/C) 06:34, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I thought perennial proposals was an archive. Hmm.

I guess the best way to retain it would be either copying the discussion to a subpage in your own userspace (as I did with my failed highlight search box proposal), or just bookmarking a link to an archived copy of this thread. --Quiddity 20:59, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I still don't see what the problem is. When you search, "default" namespaces are searched. If List has it's own namespace, then it's rather simple to have that be one of the defaults. How is this not better for Wikipedia? Once in place, how would this be "more complex"? We have "featured lists", which is separate from featured articles. It would seem to me that this is already a "de facto" separation, why not recognise that and give it its own namespace? It would also help in other kinds of searching. Go check out "special pages" and see how many nice uses it would have. (Not to mention watchlist use.) I'm sorry, but this really sounds like a great, very useful idea. - jc37 06:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Infobox: namespace...?

Just been pointed toward this thread, so thought I'd add another dimension/spanner to the works by suggesting the creation of an Infobox: namespace. Hopefully the rationale would already be understood; infoboxes seem to be established as part of the Wikipedia furniture, so why not assign them their own (less redundantly-named) namespace...?  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 00:03, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

umm...because infoboxes are templates? --`/aksha 01:43, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, `/aksha; I don't understand, though, why it precludes an Infobox: space...?  Ultimately, aren't User:, Wikipedia:, Template:, etc all wikipages that, in terms of their potential content, applicable wikisyntax, etc, no different from mainspace pages...?  Yours, David (talk) 02:40, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

The purpose of a name space is to make it easier to navigate, categories and name pages on wikipedia. For example, users can have their own pages without needing disambiguiation with actual articles - because user pages are in their own namespace. Similarly, a template and an article can have the exact same name, but both can exist because they're in different name spaces. Namespaces also quickly tell people what they of a page they're looking at (e.g. a encyclopedia page, a user page, a page about wikipedia...etc). The main namespace is for encyclopedic articles. The user namespace is for user pages...etc. There is never going to be a page that can count as both a user page and a encyclopedia page. Where as infoboxes are a subcategory of templates. It basically means we end up with two template namespaces - one for all templates except infoboxes, and one for infoboxes. It also means we need clear cut lines on what exactly is an infobox and what is a template but not a infobox. It's also unessasary. For example, we don't have too many templates that giving infoboxes their own namespace will make navigation easier. --`/aksha 04:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

This has been proposed before. One question that needs to be asked is why infoboxes are important enough to get their own namespaces, and not the other tyes of templates such as navigation bars, talk page templates etc. Tra (Talk) 12:18, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your patience, `/aksha, Tra; I guess (1) I happen to've seen/tweaked many more infoboxes than other types of template; (2) seeing a similar proposal (List:), I thought I'd mention my idea again as it didn't garner as much response as I thought it might. Best wishes, David (talk) 14:14, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Back to proposal

I'm trying to figure out : a new namespace for lists ? Now I am a Wikipedia user and I try and find some info, may it be an article or a list, I dunno. How does WP give me the info : searching across two namespaces each time ?

How many lists do we have ? maybe less (try : "random article") than census results about improbable (not at all non-notable :-)) townships. I really do not see the point, because only Wikipedia editors use the other namespaces, and WP is made for users first. -- DLL ^{.. T} 20:19, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The nominator has withdrawn the proposal, just above. --Quiddity 20:36, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Talk page boxes

As per this proposal, I would like to add

.messagebox.standard-talk {
   border: 1px solid #c0c090;
   background-color: #f8eaba;
   float: right;
   border:1px solid #000;
   margin:1px;
   width:238px;
   font-size: 8pt;
   line-height: 10pt;
   clear: both;
}

to MediaWiki:Common.css and remove the old .messagebox.standard-talk code, which will make all talk page messageboxes small. The only change necessary would be to change a few templates (namely {{todo}}, {{bot}}, {{move}}, {{talkheader}}, and {{warning}}, and possibly others) that should remain large to use .messagebox.alternate-talk which will be large like the current talk boxes. As an example, the difference is this:

Village pump (proposals)/Archive W has been listed as a good article under the good-article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a review.

vs. the one shown floating on the right. Anyone object? —Mets501 (talk) 16:34, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Village pump (proposals)/Archive W has been listed as a good article under the good-article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a review.

Umm, yeah. A lot of templates won't shrink gracefully (or even shrink at all) because the layout assumes a bit more than 238px of horizontal space available. If you want to try this design, add it as messagebox standard-talk-small and convert the templates individually, making certain that they're not horribly broken as a result. Kirill Lokshin 23:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• I support the idea behind this, but simply changing the CSS now is a bit too hasty in the implementation (per Kirill's comment). >Radiant< 12:27, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I rushed too do this too quickly. —Mets501 (talk) 19:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

More on this. See Wikipedia:Mini Talkpage Template. - Ganeshk (talk) 02:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (academics)

Feedback is welcome on this guideline on academic biographies, based in part on the old "average professor test". >Radiant< 17:27, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

"The principal task of the doctoral candidate is writing and defending a major, original contribution to his or her academic discipline—usually a written dissertation ranging in length, per the discipline, from 50 to 800 pages (50,000–100,000 words)." We can assume that everyone with a PhD therefore has written and defended a major, original contribution to his or her academic discipline. This in itself is a notable achievement. --Dave 06:07, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

But then again, we are not here to decide what is the value of one's contributions to humanity. The idea is to make sure that we choose to build articles on subjects for which there are sufficient independent reliable sources that can be used to build the article. Many wikipedians have PhD degrees and I can safely say that most are not notable despite their achievements. Pascal.Tesson 06:36, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Fancruft template and warning?

Fancruft is a huge problem on Wikipedia, particularly with articles about games and media. Most who contribute fancruft are anonymous editors acting in good faith. We should not bite them, as they could become quality contributors if they sign up and learn the ropes, but we must keep our articles fancruft-free and encyclopediac.

Therefore, I suggest we create a fancruft template and place this template at the top of articles which contain excessive fancruft. This template should discourage anonymous editors from adding fancruft, while helping registered contributors co-ordinate their efforts to fight fancruft by identifying fancruft-filled articles in a category.

In addition, we should create a series of fancruft warning templates, to warn anonymous editors who add fancruft to articles. Here's how they could be worded:

{{fancruft1}}: Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia! Unfortunately, your contributions have been reverted because they are fancruft, which is information that would only be of interest to fans of the article's subject. We encourage you to sign up for an account and make further contributions, as long as they are not fancruft. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

{{fancruft2}}: Please do not add fancruft to Wikipedia. Fancruft does not belong in an encyclopedia, and readers who are less familiar with the article subject will not find such information useful. You are welcome to sign up for an account and create further contributions, as long as they are not fancruft.

{{fancruft3}}: This is your last warning. If you continue to add fancruft to Wikipedia, you will be blocked from editing.

{{fancruft4}}: You have been temporarily blocked from editing for adding fancruft to articles. After your block expires, you are welcome to make further contributions, as long as they are not fancruft.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:36, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Uh, when did adding fancruft become a blockable offense? When did we decide adding fancruft to articles is "not allowed"? We have no policy regarding it. Among other problems, the term is poorly-defined and impossible to identify objectively; many serious articles contain information "only of interest to fans of the article's subject", including articles on 17th century painters and mathematicians. Blocking anyone for good-faith edits would be highly controversial. I would object to the use of any of the above templates. Deco 21:52, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

In that case, we should only have the {{fancruft1}} (and optionally the {{fancruft2}}) templates, to serve as general reminders. Although there is no specific policy prohibiting fancruft, there are several other policies which fancruft violates. Fancruft is original research, and is usually presented in a how-to manner (Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information). Because it violates these policies, and makes articles long, and difficult and uninteresting to read, fancruft is a problem, and unfortunately, it is rampant on Wikipedia (because anyone can edit without registering). While fancruft may sometimes be hard to define, most will agree that a list of all NPCs in a game, with descriptions of what they do, or five pages of formulas used to calculate how much damage an attack does, is fancruft. The template will only be placed on articles which contain a lot of obvious fancruft. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

These templates are strikingly similar to vandalism warnings, which is itself a sufficient reason to not consider them (and the blocking thing... were you serious?). For other possible suggestions, there is even no specific policy of fancruft, no consensus even on whether it exists as something separate, let alone on what constitutes "fancruft". Most of the time, fancruft simply fails verifiability or NOR. Thus one should simply point to these policies. That's all. For pieces which satisfy the policies, one should just leave the decision to the editors of the article, because it would be a dispute about legitimate content. CP/M ^comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:36, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I did consult the vandalism warning templates, and wrote them based on the way vandalism warning templates are written. Although I don't think adding fancruft should be a blockable offence, except in extreme cases. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:47, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Fancruft is a bad word. We should be identifying what policies are being broken. Fagstein 07:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• We shouldn't use the word "fancruft" which is both ill-understood by non-'pedians, and offensive to active editors. Instead, how about a template "please don't add WP:TRIVIA to articles"? >Radiant< 14:44, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

But "Please don't add trivia" is confusing. For example, everything that has ever appeared in the DYK section of the main page is trivia... little-known factoids that are interesting and might inspire you to read the rest of the article. Just about any single fact could be considered trivia. Jepordy and Who Wants to be a Millionare are trivia game shows, Trivial Pursuit is a trivia game. The answers to the questions in those games are trivia. Nonetheless, nearly all that trivia is (and should be) in Wikipedia someplace. We don't want to discourage people from adding to Wikipedia; but we do want to discourage them from adding certian things to Wikipedia. However, "trivia" is an even less useful then "fancruft" when attempting to describe what it is that should not be added. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 14:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The nutshell of the guideline Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles reads: "Lists of facts, as found in trivia sections, are better presented within the context of the text rather than in a section of unrelated items." It also says "Lists of trivia can be useful for developing a new article, as it sets a low bar for novice contributors to add information." I think this is consistent with what you're saying. Deco 20:52, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Fancruft is NOT trivia, for several reasons. Fancruft is information only of interest to fans of the subject, while those unfamiliar with the subject may nevertheless find trivia interesting. In addition, fancruft is usually original research presented in a how-to manner, which trivia is not. Fancruft: In RuneScape, you must have an attack level of 30 to wield an Adamant weapon. Trivia: At the age of 9, Megan Zheng became the first Singaporean to win a Golden Horse Award. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:47, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Fagstein and Radiant are correct. We should not use the word "fancruft". I personally think all of the -cruft words are a bit obnoxious. With the exception of vandals, everyone who edits is trying to contribute something that they believe is useful. We need a polite way of saying that the community as a whole doesn't think that content is very useful. — Reinyday, 17:22, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we probably should not use the word "fancruft", because most anonymous editors adding fancruft are unlikely to be familiar with the term. However, I am glad that you appreciate the merits of my idea. We do not need to use the word fancruft to get the message across on templates at the top of articles, and user talk pages. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:47, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

One harmonious solution is to simply branch off the material into its own article and add to Category:In popular culture. Although I'm not generally an inclusionist, let's think long term. A great deal of lost information has been regretted by subsequent generations because nobody thought it was worth preserving. See lost film for examples in just one field and within the last century. Durova 06:04, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Fancruft branched out into its own article is still fancruft. If we were to follow your suggestion, we would have many "game guide" articles. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:47, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

The process I describe is unrelated to "game guide" articles. Try Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc. It grew out of an "In popular culture" section and became a featured list. Durova 03:12, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I think much of the opposition was based on the definition and use of the word "fancruft". It is perfectly possible to implement these ideas without actually using the word "fancruft" in the text of the templates. Fancruft is a specific term used to describe a broad range of information which violates several policies and decreases the quality of articles. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:47, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Renault's Disease

I propose that some one write an article about this.

This is not the place to make requests for an article. If you are interested then please choose right topic from Wikipedia:Requested articles. Shyam ^(T/C) 15:24, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Hi! Thanks for your interest in Wikipedia, but this isn't really the right place for this. To request that an article be written, please follow the directions at Wikipedia:Requested articles. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 15:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

It would be better if Wikipedia had a spell checker

I think it would help people a lot more if Wikipedia had a spell checker when you search for a word. Peopl would look for things it jsut says there is nothing to it and I personally look the spelling on Yahoo and then copy and past onto Wikipedia. So i was wondering if someone could do that...thank you

This has been suggested hundreds of times, but it looks like the developers and community are unlikely to implement this. Apparently, redirects and Google are enough. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 05:32, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

See this thread to know in detail. Shyam ^(T/C) 08:02, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Just install the newest version of Firefox from here, and you'll have a spell checker in the browser, and there are other good reasons to switch! --Espoo 11:13, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

There used to be a spell checker in firefox, but the latest updates say the spell checker is not compatible with them.--Light current 11:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

You're apparently talking about the extension; the newest version at the link i posted has a spell checker and also other features from other extensions built in. Enjoy! --Espoo 11:29, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

You can use Lupin's tools (ie. the Live Spellcheck) for the newest spelling errors. I forget the code to placing it in your monobook, but User:Lupin should have it linked somewhere on his userpage. — Moe 15:23, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Sheet music

There is wikiformat for tables, blockquotes, Egyptian hieroglyphics... Does anyone besides myself believe there should be some for sheet music? --Gray Porpoise^{Phocoenidae, not Delphinidae} 20:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. And the best part is that there already is one, it's just not enabled. (see http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Music). Now, how to get it enabled... —Mets501 (talk) 20:37, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately Lillypond has been deemed inherently unsafe.[3] I have been unable to identify any other active open-source options for this. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 21:10, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Automatically adding pages you create to your watchlist.

Under preferences I've got the button checked that automatically adds new pages I create to my watchlist. By and large, this is what I want. When I create a new article, I want it on my watchlist. If I were to draft a new policy, I would want it on my watchlist. When I nominate an article for deletion and create the deletion discussion page, I want it on my watchlist... etc.

However, when I create a new talk page, (say, for example, that I warn a new user about vandalism and it's the first talk page message) I don't neccessarily want that cluttering up my watchlist. Today, for example, I went through Category:Album stubs and added the Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums message to the talk pages of all the ones through the As, and none of them had pre-existing talk pages; meaning I now have some 50 album stubs that I have little or no interest in cluttering up my watchlist.

Is there a way to change this preference so that it is not affected by the creation of talk pages? If not, I propose that it be added. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 20:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• At the moment, no (although you can use the "watch this page" checkbox whenever you edit a page). If you wish to request a change to the software (a "feature request") you should notify the Developers on Bugzilla. >Radiant< 20:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

If you add the following code to monobook.js:

if ((document.URL.lastIndexOf("&action=edit") != -1) && wgArticleId == 0 && (wgNamespaceNumber == 0 || wgNamespaceNumber == 2
|| wgNamespaceNumber == 4 || wgNamespaceNumber == 6 || wgNamespaceNumber == 8 || wgNamespaceNumber == 10 || wgNamespaceNumber == 12
|| wgNamespaceNumber == 14 || wgNamespaceNumber == 100)) {
   addOnloadHook(wlTickBox);
}
function wlTickBox() {document.editform.wpWatchthis.checked = "1";}

and switch off the setting to add new pages to your watchlist then you should get the feature you're after. Tra (Talk) 22:14, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Add new topic thing on talk pages

I've noticed on some pages, users can click a link which takes them to a clean page allowing them to add a new topic to the page without clicking on "edit this page". (e.g. this is what the RD one looks like)

I think it would be a good idea to put such a link on all talk pages by default, especially the talk pages for the main namespace.

A link that basically says "click here to add not discussion topic" isn't going to be particularly obtrusive (especially compared to the talk pages for some popular articles, where there are tons of template messages at the top of the talk page where you have to scroll down whole screens before reaching actual discussion, e.g. Talk:Charizard)

The link, however, has one advantage in that it should make adding a new discussion topic much eaiser for new users.

The thing is, even though the page is called 'discussion', i don't think it's completely obvious what to do on it when you're making your first edits on wikipedia. With an article, it's glaringly obvious - click "edit this page" and edit the article as you see it. But for a discussion page, it's not so glaringly obvious that people are supposed to edit the entire page like an article in order to post a discussion comment, or start a new topic.

Especially when the talk page doesn't exist for an article. I don't even think anons or new users will be able to start the talk page in that case.

This would mean a talk page will automatically exist when an article does - but it shouldn't be a technical problem, almost all articles have talk pages anyway (in the main space) so it's not like we're increasing the number of pages.

--`/aksha 12:00, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Talk pages already have such a link. Do you see the plus sign (+) next to "edit this page"? (The plus sign does not appear for non-talk pages.) --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:39, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but as is often pointed out, the little + is not very prominent. Newbies don't see it, and if they do they don't know what it's for. It would be better to change the + to an "add new topic" button. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 14:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

It will make the top of the talk page little messy. I would suggest to have edit summary box for this action. They do not have edit summary box. Shyam ^(T/C) 14:46, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

changing the plus sign to something like "add new topic" wouldn't take up too much more room. talk pages aren't articles, they're places for discussion. practicality/usefulness should really be of higher priority than presentation. --`/aksha 22:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not understand the compulsion of replacing "+" by "add new topic". If someone wants to know what "+" stand for, he can know about the function of it by keeping cursor on it. It states "Start a new discussion [alt-+]". So there is no point to make changes. Shyam ^(T/C) 07:36, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

If someone is curious about what the "+" sign is, they can just do that. But if someone who is completely new to wikipedia wants to comment about the article, or leave a explaination about an edit, or ask a question about the article....it's not so obvious what they have to do. The point of having "Add new topic" isn't to cater for people who don't know what the "+" sign is, and don't realize or notice that it's there.

I came across a essay by someone who discussed how anons/new users having trouble figuring out how to edit pages (namely the wierd things like fill in templates and wiki mark up). Or when anons/newbies add content to an article, but keep finding it removed or altered beyond recognition, and deciding they just can't be bothered. I was thinking...they could just explain on the talk page, or (in the case of being unable to figure out how to edit something) ask for help on the talk page. But then it hit me that using the talk page isn't actually intuitive. Yes, "edit this page" is obvious...but i don't think people realize that they are supposed to add new messages by editing the entire page (or an entire section). Anyone who's spent a lot of time posting on forums before becomeing a wikipedian would probably understand what i mean here.

The first solution i thought of would be to have something like a "comment about this article" at the end of every article (kind of like where "Privacy policy", "About Wikipedia", and "Disclaimers" are. But...to make the "comment about this article" obvious means it'll become obtrusive to the article, so it wasn't a solution. So assuming people can take themselves to the tab labled "discussion" when they wanted to comment on an article, the next best alternative would be to actually make the talk page easier. I see a lot of user talk pages that have an instruction box on top - telling people that they should comment by editing on to the bottom of the page and so on. Something like that on all talk pages would be nice. changing the "+" sign to something like "add new comment" or "add new topic" is a simpler solution, but should serve the same purpose. --`/aksha 09:11, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I fully agree with Yaksha. As a new user it isn't immediately obvious how to interact with talk pages (even calling them talk pages when the tab actually says "discussion" is confusing!). It makes sense to change the + sign to something more intuitive, and there are no downfalls whatsoever. Zunaid 13:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• There is one drawback, and that is that the tabs may become too wide for the page. Note that many people have additional tabs because (1) they use Javascript extensions, or (2) are admins; and (3) some people use 800x600 or lower resolutions. Bearing that in mind, what would you suggest? >Radiant< 14:45, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

how about adding something similar to this template:Talkheader to the top of every talk page. The template currently says not to add it to every talk page because its "its impact will be reduced". I can't quite understand why having something like this on every talk page will be bad, especially if we modify it a little so that it is aiming to help new users, as oppossed to existing users who need to be reminded of the rules. The top line should be changed to something like "this talk page is for any discussion relating to the [article name] article". The left side of the template should have instructions to newbies - so a link to add new topic, explain that people reply to topics by editing the page, explain how to sign by typing "~" four times, and possibly a link to the help desk or the FAQ. The right side can still quote some related guildlines.

the template could be included automatically in every article talk page when its created, or a bot could just systematically attach it to every article once. Afterwards, people will have to manually add it into new article talk pages. If people want to edit the message, they can just sub the template into the talk page. Or if, for whatever reason, people don't want the template on a particular talk page, it can just be removed. The template may also be useful on some talk pages for pages outside of the article namespace - so talk pages for guildlines which people may want to comment about, talk pages for projects...etc. --`/aksha 02:14, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Another idea - have the "+" changed to "Add new topic" only for anons. Anons don't see the "move" or "watch" tab, so having "+" become "Add new topic" shouldn't make the tabs too wide for the page. The other alternative is to change "+" to "add new topic", but an option is avaiable in "my preferences" to change it back, so registered users can choose whether they want "+" or "add new topic". That should prevent any problems with the tabs becoming too wide - but it still serves the purpose of helping anons and new users work talk pages. --`/aksha 07:59, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Titles Of All Articles

Aren't the first letter of every word in a title supposed to be capitalized? So why aren't the first letters of all the words in Wikipedia articles capitalized? That would mean the section headings too. And then there's the template that says, i.e.: iPod, the first letter of the article is specifically supposed to be uncapitalized. It teaches the reader how to write iPod, but then none of the articles have a lineatthetop to say [something like] how you're supposed to capitalize the word, when you should, when you shouldn't, i.e.: if it is the first word of a sentence of in a title, or if it compounded into a name, and never in all other circumstances.100110100 07:41, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

messages about how the first letter of the article title is meant to be uncaptilized are not meant to be teaching people how to captilize things. They're a notice to outside readers who may not understand why something like iPod is being titled IPod --`/aksha 08:06, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Capital letters give visual weight to a string of words, making it easier to pick out a title in the Middle of a Block of Text. The capital letters also take a bit more processing power to read, so you slow down when reading over them. Article and section titles do not need to be capitalized because they are several times the size of the article text. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 14:31, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. Thanks, Jonathan!  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 02:45, 14 October 2006 (UTC)