Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive

Upload wizard

Commons uses a 'wizard' when uploading, to help people identify the correct licence. There is ongoing discussion about doing something on Wikipedia at MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext#Proposal for mass overhaul, matching Commons. Could people contribute to the discussion there? --ais523 12:45, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia toolbar ?

Hi there, I was wondering - why there does not exist a search toolbar of Wikipedia for internet browsers (like Google's one)? It will make information flow much faster! Any thoughts?

Thanks, S.

See Wikipedia:Tools for the various toolbars that have been invented. (If you use Firefox 2, you don't even need to add a toolbar; click on the dropdown box to the left of the search box, and you can add Wikipedia from there if you're viewing Wikipedia at the time.) --ais523 10:18, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Overhaul of article assessment

See WP:ASO.

WelcomeBot

A new type of welcomebot proposal is being discussed here.

Proposal to add RSS feed for the Featured Content section

I love the featured content...um, feature. I was wondering if there has been thought given to generating RSS feeds for the featured content. This would allow people to see at least a clip of the featured article in their blog-roll / reader software they use. If a small intro blurb to the article was provided via an RSS feed I would think some people would end up more inclined to click through.

It would allow users to see the content easily without having to remember to visit the site daily. Just my two cents, and I apologize if this has already been suggested and rejected, I didn't notice it anywhere on this page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dmcnelis (talk • contribs) 3 August 2007.

User pages in search engines?

Moved to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Proposal:_Mandatory_noindex.2Fnofollow_for_User:_ns

Singular they

The newly written proposal/essay/how-to/whatever Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language and its talk page essentially state that singular they is common practice on Wikipedia, apparently with the intent of promoting this as a good idea, and likewise state that this practice is frequently disputed. Outside opinion is requested on (1) how "common" this practice is, (2) how "frequently" the dispute is, and (3) whether people consider it a good idea. >Radiant< 14:13, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, the article you link to in the subject summarises it pretty well. WP:GNL suggests it as an alternative to gender-specific language but notes that it's objected to, largely because people objected to it during drafting. It could turn into a whole stack of turtles, as some people objected to the objection. This whole discussion was had a week ago, wasn't it? SamBC(talk) 14:17, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Use of "they" and "their" as singular generic pronouns is almost universal writing and informal speech. It's on the level of using "you" instead of "one" or using contractions. It does not stand out as wrong, but rather informal. We try to be a serious reference source, so I think most people try to avoid it where they can. Using "he" or "his" as a gender-neutral pronoun is even more awkward so people try to avoid that too. You can almost always word things without the need for a singular generic pronoun, so that's what people do for the most part in formal writing, including here in Wikipedia. Incidentally, in the history of English, using "he" and "his" to stand for a person of indeterminate sex is relatively new and never caught on. Before 1850 or so "they" and "their" were considered correct, but some succeeded in promoting "he" and "his." That got written into the rules of formal writing but never completely followed or accepted. I don't think the original intent was to make talking about men the norm, and women only by implication, but that's what happened with the new pronouns, and it's the reason why people are moving away from them today. The best advice for main space, I think, is to do whatever you have to do as long as you don't use "he" to stand for "he and she." You'll find that borne out in the articles. It's rare to come across one that uses male pronouns in the generic sense. Wikidemo 16:08, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

As a further thought, I'm not sure anyone wants to promote singular they in any general sense, just to give it as a way of avoiding non-gender-neutral language. SamBC(talk) 16:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

There are ways to use non-sexist language without violating plurality, such as using the word "s/he".ACEOREVIVED 19:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

If you're going to use awkward constructions like that, how about using my favorite: s/h/it? --Carnildo 02:57, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Heh, you have a point; "s/he" is pretty awkward. I'd say just go with the singular "they" where it's necessary and avoid it whenever possible. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 14:57, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it's very clunky when a sentence has s/he. To me, it implies laziness to type he or she and is an admission that the three-word pronoun is awkward as well. The singular they is well established, and according to The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, they is more established than he as the gender-nonspecific singular pronoun.—Twigboy 15:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

In theory "they" is grammatically accepted now, although I have to admit that I cringe a little whenever I read it in a student paper because it *sounds* so unproper. In philosophy classes I was taught to use "one" but I think people read that as British or pretentious. As a feminist I prefer "he or she" or "she or he" because it establishes that both genders are being taken into account, that their is no bias being implied and it doesn't inadvertantly multiply the number of people being referred to and sound as if the numbers are not in agreement. Using "he or she" / "she or he" tells us that we've at least *tried* to take human/sex/gender rights into account. P.S. I *did* sign my comment! Wiki is being weird! Saudade7 18:06, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Short Articles

I'm concerned especially about the short (one to five sentence) articles which describe chemicals, minerals, and the like. An exapmle is MDP2P. Articles like this are marked as stubs and often appear on the list of articles to be reviewed for deletion. I think that these articles should either

1) be protected from stub status;

2) be compiled into one article that describes each item.

The reason for this is that while the articles are short like a stub, and do not give extensive information, they usually give all the information that is available. So, articles such as these should have some kind of special 'acceptable short article' status. Either that, or there should be a Chemicals page (sort of like the list of chemical articles that exists now), a Minerals page, and so on.

This wasn't in the FAQ, so I'm bringing it up. Thanks. OES23 17:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see that anyone's ever nominated that article for deletion. But surely there is more info about MDP2P. Who invented / first synthesized it? What's it used for? Does it have any use, or potential use? What does it do? Does it appear in nature? On and on. I don't think people are all that anxious about notability of chemical compounds but it's the same theoretical issue. If it's not something that anyone would want to know about, it's not notable and it should be deleted or merged. If it's notable it deserves its own article, however short. Better to have one subject per article than to make extensive lists, because lists are unruly, hard to maintain, and messy for hyperlinking. ::Wikidemo 13:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Just to clear things up, I didn't mean this article in particular was nominated for deletion, but I was providing an example of the type of articles that are frequently nominated. OES23 13:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Wikidemo. I clicked on that link and, as a layperson, I don't begin to know what the heck MDP2P is. Therefore the article can be expanded quite a bit. What is MDP2P used for? Is it deadly to me? Will it damage my eggs? Did it come from outer space? Will it reverse baldness? Is it used to make Meth? Has it always been known about since the days of Lucretius? Or did some raver synthesize it while living in Miami Beach or Ibiza. If you had enough of it would it appear blue? Glow in the dark? I think the information that is already there is great for people re-taking O-Chem for a better grade, but it doesn't help art historians at all. Saudade7 12:44, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Inter links, M:TG and ST:DS9

I suggest that interwiki and interlanguage links, at least those with codes less than four letters long, function only if the code is in lowercase. This would accommodate abbreviations such as M:TG and ST:DS9, and I've yet to see an intentional interwiki or interlanguage link that didn't already comply. NeonMerlin 03:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

That problem can be bypassed without anything fancy just use this syntax ; [[:ST:DS9]]. -Icewedge 16:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

In links, that's fine, but what about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST:DS9 (which may, for instance, have worked before the Sesotho-language Wikipedia was established and still have some links left over from then)? What about the link at the top of the search result page (which occurs even with the colon)? I don't think it improves our image if someone ends up at an external site with no idea how they got there and no idea what the page they're seeing says (because it's in an unfamiliar language). Right now, there's a soft redirect back to en.wikipedia or fr.wikipedia (which I made), but what if the Sesotho-speakers decide to delete it, or what if a German-speaker tries http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST:DS9 (in which case I can't make a soft redirect to help them since I don't speak German)? NeonMerlin 00:06, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

A way to organize items in my "watchlist"

I looked to see if this had been proposed and couldn't find it anywhere. I am unsure if this is a "software" issue that I should post on the Bugzilla site or if the software is already there and just needs to be activated. Here's the thing...I just have tons of pages on my watchlist and I would like to be able to create my own categories to organize them on that page, even if it is just under headings I self-create like "Politics" "Mathematics" "Marine biology" etc. The watchlist is a "special page" that doesn't allow for manual editing, or I could just do it. I guess that its interactiveness with the system as a whole prevents it from being *also* editable? Anyway, any ideas? Because there are items on my watchlist that I put there because I had never before heard of them--I just stumbled across them link-jumping--and I wanted to save them, but now I don't know what they are at a glance. A series of cubbyholes could at least help me sort them, so that I would know their main subject matter.

As a side note I would also request that the "Clear Watchlist" button be moved farther away from the "View and Edit Watchlist" and the "View Raw Watchlist" buttons. I am clumsy and since there is no access to "History" on that page, it is a disaster (for me) waiting to happen.

Merci d'avance, Saudade7 12:10, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

No opinion on point 2 (seldom uses either function). There is no way as of yet for point 1, though you can create subpages of links (as your categories) then use the link at the side entitled "Related changes". This takes you to a page where it looks like a watchlist, but on it is all the links of that page. You can see an example of my userpage: Special:Recentchangeslinked/User:X42bn6. That is a slightly crude solution - but the only way I can think of. x42bn6 Talk Mess 12:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I would not worry about clearing your watchlist; it is a two-step process that would be difficult to do accidentally. A backup is sensible, though. Adrian M. H. 12:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks x42bn6 Talk Mess and M. H.. I feel better knowing that I cannot erase my list, but I am still alittle confused about the sub-pages thing. I like having everything all clean and on one page. I have to say that I use "watch" more like "bookmarks" and less as a tickertape of recent changes thing. And I didn't want to take up more wiki space. Oh well. Thanks. Saudade7 12:57, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Featured Content

Something just struck me as odd; I realized that on the main page, and also the featured content page, there is no featured quote (there is also no featured quote on Wikiquote)! Perhaps a featured quote template should be developed. --OES23 12:44, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikiquote is a separate project from Wikipedia so there is no reason for a "featured quote" here. Judging which quotes would be good enough to be featured (it's not like you can rewrite a quote for clarity, etc.) would be a pretty POV process. Wikiquote uses a "Quote of the Day" on its Main Page. Users nominate quotes on the related pages: Wikiquote:WQ:QOTD. Rmhermen 14:18, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Redesign of placeholder images

So we have a few different placeholder images that appear in articles that don't yet have portraits. (Of course a few people think that we shouldn't have them in articles at all. Maybe they don't want the general public to contribute their images? Or they're ashamed of the fact that it's a wiki? But that's beside the point...)

I've thought that the current images were an eyesore for quite a while, looking as if it were thrown together without much thought, and there've been a bunch of complaints on related talk pages, so I tried to make a better version that others could continue improving on. But it's apparently not liked, either, and was instantly reverted.  :-)

I changed:

• The fonts - The mixed fonts look as if it was a mistake to me; meant to be in a font that the SVG renderer couldn't handle and it fell back on serif. The serif looks really out of place in an infobox of all sans. See discussion on the talk page: Wikipedia_talk:Fromowner#Very_ugly_and_distracting
• The wording - "Do you own one? If so please click here" just sounds bad. I used "Click here to upload one", but I'm sure you can think of something better. See the discussion on the talk page: Wikipedia_talk:Fromowner#Wording. Also got rid of the big space between the lines, which also looked like a rendering mistake to me.
• The colors - I first looked around Google Image Search for placeholder images to base the new versions on, and most have a visible box around them instead of being transparent or white on white. I liked the look of the light gray/blue box the best, on a white background with a dark silhouette. (Apparently the blue background - which I got from here - is the most-loathed aspect of my design. I'm completely fine with a light gray background instead.) Here are some other variations to compare to: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
• The building image - Original was kind of crude-looking, so I made something completely different with a skyline.

Compare the originals:

• 
  Male portrait
• 
  Female portrait
• 
  Neutral portrait
• Building photo
  Building photo

With mine:

• 
  Male portrait
• 
  Female portrait
• 
  Neutral portrait
• 
  Building photo

Please provide opinions and alternative ideas. Keep in mind that they are used a few different ways; infoboxes, thumbnail frames, bare images, etc. — Omegatron 08:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

• Support generally as these are improved images that will look nicer on article pages, although to the extent that they're by necessity generic and full of text they remain somewhat ugly. (I see the point. I just feel it's the equivalent of having text in an article that says "...where he died in 1862. Have more information? Click here to edit the article.") Given that I would like at least two more improvements. The "neutral" head should be framed the same way, with the scalp near the top (or the NASA plaque people should have more headspace, but that leaves less room for text). The building image should be simpler and something that can similarly contain the text "No free image". Also, make sure there's enough torso space for the lower text; the woman and neutral silhouettes don't have enough. And not to add to your workload, but why isn't there an even more generic one for topics that aren't people or buildings? --Dhartung | Talk 08:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

There isImage:Replace this image.svg I just don't like it because I would rather things were specialized and the responsibility for sorting out the resulting images given over to wikiprojects.Genisock2 14:47, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Joe Blow
Born	2007-08-26 Wikimedia Commons
Occupation	Placeholder
Known for	Blue background

Jay Gray
Another attempt
Born	2007-08-27 Wikimedia Commons
Occupation	Placeholder
Known for	Gray background, lighter silhouette, bold top text, -"one", no gaps at shoulders, head centered a bit

• Comment: I do overall like the idea. The thing I hated most about the current ones was the wording, and the lack of a comma in the female and neutral ones. I also really don't like the use of "one" stylistically. You also touch on an unresolved issue: how far do we go in directly soliciting help from the general public? If we don't do it in text (as Dhartung points out), then why are we ok with doing it in images? Let's seriously work on the wording here.

I think you've improved a bit on the colours, but it was actually better with different fonts. The key message is "We don't have an image, that's why we're displaying this stupid graphic" - the appeal for help is secondary. So keeping "No free image" big and bold would be good (though without the serif/sans difference). The text smeared haphazardly across the skyline looks bad. Only other comment is I'm not sure I really see the need for male/female versions. Isn't neutral sufficient? Stevage 14:13, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

If you look at how the images are used in articles there generaly are framed either by thumbs or by info boxes.Genisock2 14:47, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

• A welcome improvement. I agree that the use of "one" is not stylistically ideal; does anyone have ideas? --Iamunknown 15:33, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

• "Click here to upload" seems reasonable. -Chunky Rice 16:26, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

• I am among those who would prefer they be removed completely, not because I'm "ashamed that it's a wiki" but because when I visit an article it's 99% of the time to learn something about the subject, and to have this irrelevant template draw my eyes away from the text is really distracting. I think your new images would actually be a step backward from the current images, because the blue/dark gray, while "prettier", is higher-contrast with the white background and therefore even more eye-catching. I like what you've done with the fonts and the skyline, though, and would approve a switch to a version of the images with the same color scheme as before but with those improvements. Redquark 23:27, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

The original colour setup was chosen with the ability to tune out the images in mind.Geni 04:12, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

The building image should be simpler and something that can similarly contain the text "No free image".

Agreed. Need to find a building to trace that's more generic and rectangular and close up.

The thing I hated most about the current ones was the wording, and the lack of a comma in the female and neutral ones.

Yes.

I also really don't like the use of "one" stylistically.

I agree that the use of "one" is not stylistically ideal

Agreed, too. I couldn't think of anything else clear and short enough.

how far do we go in directly soliciting help from the general public? If we don't do it in text

We don't?  :-)

So keeping "No free image" big and bold would be good (though without the serif/sans difference).

Oh. Yeah I'm perfectly fine with the bold on top if that's what people want. The sans/serif mix is what bothers me. I think it should all be sans, and maybe a better-looking sans font, but I don't know which to pick.

and would approve a switch to a version of the images with the same color scheme as before but with those improvements.

Hmm.. I like the darker silhouette on a colored background. Maybe a lighter gray for the background and a slightly lighter silhouette? (Also the shoulders need to extend outside of the image to get a crisp edge.) — Omegatron 00:20, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

• Support. These are a vast improvement - let's implement them immediately unless someone has a serious aesthetic problem with it. wikipediatrix 13:50, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

  Apparently so, since they were reverted the instant I implemented them... — Omegatron 02:22, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

  It was aparently reverted because he though it was just a random bold change, try linking to this discussion next time and it will probably be fine. I'd also like to plug Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Images to improve if people want to discuss further enhancements to the images. --Sherool (talk) 07:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Zee problem is that the new ones are way way to bold. Much harder to mentaly screen out.Geni 07:09, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I prefer the colouring of the originals and the design of the new ones. As Geni says the new ones are too striking when it should be more of a background thing. violet/riga (t) 08:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

The blue or the gray or both? — Omegatron 23:03, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

• The new wording loses the mention of owenership which is meant to reduce the number of copyvios uploaded.Geni 18:40, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

  I think that's an improvement, too. "Fromowner" needs to be moved to something more descriptive, and not be limited purely to images that the uploader actually took. The page should describe how to upload their own pictures, but also point them in the direction of finding images on Flickr, etc. — Omegatron 23:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

  you would appear to be wanting Wikipedia:Upload. Overloading fromowner is a really really bad idea. By the time people are searching flickr for images for wikipedia I think they can cope with our normal upload system.Geni 23:23, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

  So we should just link directly to the upload page? — Omegatron 03:33, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

  If they are not complete newbies yes. Fromowner is built on the basis that the people useing it are. So far the evidence suggests that this assumption is correct.Geni 02:40, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

• Personally, they look great and read well, a big improvement, and I like the blue version. I don't know the issues well enough to firmly support though, so I'll obstain from any comment other than how they look. One slight objection that carries over from the old version. The male and female silhouettes are good quality but they seem to assume middle class, adult, western, etc., in terms of hair and clothing styles, body shape, etc. And the gender-neutral one looks like an extraterrestrial. I'm pretty sure it's possible to abstract them a little more without making them look bad, even a gender neutral one with some hair.Wikidemo 03:51, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

See Template:Infobox Album/No cover for a similar setup. — Omegatron 15:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm aware that people have been looking at that. I'm not going to get involved with something that encourages people to upload unfree pics.Genisock2 10:03, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

The new ones are better. I think we still need work on this though. Some members of WikiProject Cricket are less than pleased with me for putting those images on the cricket articles ... less hideous ones would be a REALLY GOOD IDEA - David Gerard 15:18, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, an improvement. Most importantly for me, the wording is a lot better. The idea that you can "own" photographs, or the entire paradigm of intellectual "property", is a point of view that not everyone agrees with. — Matt Crypto 19:01, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

However it is one the law agrees with which as far as the fromowner system is concerned is what matters.Geni 22:21, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

You don't have to use the language of property and ownership -- you can ask whether someone "holds the copyright" to an image, for example. — Matt Crypto

Holds the copyright is too long and increases the number of people who won't understand what you are talking about. The systems uses original authorship combiened with phyisical ownership to try and get around that problem.Geni 12:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, when a person actually clicks through on the image, they are taken to a page with lots of stuff about copyright and licences. If they don't understand what it means to "hold the copyright", then they're really not going to get very far regardless. To talk about "owning" a photograph is not merely clumsy English, but it's also giving credence to a particular point of view: namely that you can own information just like you can own a physical object. Not everyone thinks that way. The suggested new images are an improvement for this reason. — Matt Crypto 21:24, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. — Omegatron 23:22, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

In this case it is asking about physical or at least digial ownership. The followup page and upload page then concentrait on did you take it yourself.Geni 16:11, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment: You either need a totally generic one, or a great many specialized images. ImageRemovalBot is using Image:Replace this image.svg for infoboxes about aircraft, cameras, caves, athletic fields, lakes, mountains, cell phones, and so on. --Carnildo 23:49, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Depends if you can get the relivant wikiprojects to agree to look after the resulting image stream.Geni 01:19, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I asked for help on Wikipedia:Graphic_Lab/Images_to_improve#Placeholder_images, but no one seems to have noticed. If no one comments in a few days, we should just go with the blue or gray ones, and they can continue to be improved from there (like using a different building as the background). — Omegatron 23:22, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

• Support with modification. I'd like to see the request be small, italic, and bracketed. I came here from WP talk: Avoid self-references; my issue with the proposals is that they mix content and Wikipedia "meta-content" without enough clarity. Most of the meta-content in Wikipedia is italic, including disambiguations, citation needed, and stub notices. (The only meta-content not in italics are framed things like NPOV.) How about either (1) change "Click here to upload one" to smaller text in the top right that says [upload a picture] or (2) get rid of the silhouette and go with a frame that looks more like the NPOV, perhaps with the text "No free image exists. You can help Wikipedia by providing one."? —Ben FrantzDale 01:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Consider these two versions, which make an effort to be clear about what is meta-content:

1. 
2. 

I think these are less like "...where he died in 1862. Have more information? Click here to edit the article." and more like "...where he died in 1862.^{[day of death needed]}" —Ben FrantzDale 11:27, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Support the second one. Avala 23:54, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

A lot of people misunderstand WP:SELF. It prohibits things like "this Wikipedia is about..." in the article itself. It doesn't prohibit "this article needs work" in a maintenance template. Recruiting help from outsiders is what the site is all about. This is just a maintenance template. — Omegatron 03:52, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Well I disagree. This image is completly over the top. As usual Wikipedia is thinking that all readers are stupid and thick, and need spoon-feeding. Well they are not, if they want to upload a photo, they will work out how to do so. I worked it out myself, reading the guidlines and so on, and I didn't some intrusive image that ruins the page to tell me how. There is a big difference between a small, subtle stub notice that categories the article as a stub, and a large intrusive image that encourages people to upload non-free images. Articles requiring an image can have a template added on the talk page and this categorises it. This is all that is needed. I believe this is a violation of WP:SELF but more importantly it is unnecessary spoon-feeding that encourages random images to be uploaded. Why ruin a page?--UpDown 07:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Most people can figure out how to upload an image, but using this sustem they will at least get instructions to only upload images they hold the copyright to and release it under a free license. In my experience there is just no way to spoon feed that enough, copyright and licensing is completely alien to a huge number of users... Granted there are a lot of people who still manage to ignore all the instructions and upload random promo photos regardles, but I feel this is the best system we have come up with so far to make it clear that we want images and we want them to be free licensed. --Sherool (talk) 08:37, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Surely there are instructions on the normal guideline page on how to upload photos? I know I read them. I do believe that encouraging images like this does encourage incorrect images to be uploaded. And also, it looks very bad on the page, an unnecessary intrusive 'image'. If people have a image they want to upload, they will do so. They will work it out. This encourages to upload random photos, and ruins the page in the meantime!!!--UpDown 09:10, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

yes but they are complicated and hard to find. Fromowner puts the uploader on rails and brinks the information they need to them.Geni 14:53, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I disagree as well, that's why I think a typographical distinction is necessary. Also, this is only appropriate for pages for which an image really is reasonable to expect, otherwise we are doomed to have thousands of biographies that will never be finished rather than realizing that they just won't ever get a picture. I prefer the gray version because, as mentioned by others, it is easier to ignore. —Ben FrantzDale 11:27, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Can I just ask, a request was made at the Graphic Lab for improvement of these images, but it wasn't particularly specific on what should be done. We're more than happy to help, but it'd help if there was a summary of the general consensus on what should be done to these images. If I may, my own opinion is that a set of standardized and consistent placeholder images is a very good idea, and that the best model for such images would be those under "Addressing some concerns" on the request page. I'd also suggest that keep the discussion in one place as no-one as really talking to us at Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Images to improve. --Dave the Rave (DTR)talk 17:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I came late to this discussion and don't know where to comment to have an effect. I'll assume for the moment that this is the best place. I agree with those above who have said the current versions are the graphical equivalent of "...where he died in 1862. Have more information? Click here to edit the article." I would like to build concenscious around one of the images I posted above (or something similar) that tries to be the graphical equivalent of "...where he died in 1862.^{[day of death needed]}". I got one "support" but want more than that before being bold on such widely-referenced images. —Ben FrantzDale 15:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I see little point in following the citation needed style in a request for images. in addition I'm unhappy with loseing the intial wording focusing on ownership.Genisock2 04:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I was shying away from "ownership" since I think most people think in terms of copyright. For example, I own an Ansel Adams print, but I don't own the copyright to it. With the wording subject to change, my primary point is that I don't like the fact that the current version does not visually separate the request for help from the content. I just realized that there is an "article message box template", which is the style I think is most appropriate, although probably in image form.

What about that (in an appropriate aspect ratio)? —Ben FrantzDale 11:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Once of the problems with any such setup is that you lose the simplified instructions for putting the final image in the article (Aditionaly if that box has to exist please point it at Wikipedia:Fromownergeneral). In addition is meant to flow with the article somewhat since it is likely to be there for some time.Genisock2 17:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm less particular about the instructions; feel free to reword the above suggestion. I'm primarily concerned with the fact that the present images read to me like "...where he died in 1862. Have more information? Click here to edit the article." —Ben FrantzDale 21:21, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

there is no way to reword it to get around that problem.Genisock2 13:14, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

CD placeholder image

I had a go at making an image like Image:Nocover-upload.png in the style of Image:No male portrait.svg for a 'there is no CD picture' thing. I'd like to know what people think, and if anybody still cares about these placeholder images.

Here's what it would look like in an article.

If you don't mind, can you direct all feedback to Wikipedia:Graphic_Lab/Images_to_improve#Placeholder_suggestion_for_CD. Changing the wording is probably the most important thing that needs doing. --Dave the Rave (DTR)talk 16:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

"Village pump (proposals)/Archive"
Song
B-side	"Foo, Bar... and Baz"

Requiring usernames for editing

I think we need to require usernames for people to edit. 99% of the vandalism I see come from anon users.

Because its so easy to edit wikipedia (just click an article and click "edit") these vandalizers don't need to put much effort messing up pages.

The idea of a "everyone can edit" is ideal, but it doesn't work when we have vandals.

A required username will force vandals to make a username and takes a longer time for them to damage wikipedia. Requiring usernames will also curb vandals since they don't want to go in the trouble of making one. Good friend100 02:00, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

This is suggested quite regularly, and will never happen because it's a Foundation principle that anyone can edit. Quite apart from all the reasons people can trot out as to why anon editing is a good thing. SamBC(talk) 02:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think Wikipedia's hurting itself, and if its suggested regularly, then Wikipedia has some problems addressing their own issues. Its reasonable to say that 99% of vandalism comes from anon users. Good friend100 02:21, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

See WP:PEREN#Prohibit_anonymous_users_from_editing, the section most convinving to you would likely be:

While about 97% of vandalism comes from anonymous users, about 76% or 82% of anonymous edits are intended to improve the encyclopedia. (Prohibiting IP edits would not eliminate 97% of all vandalism, because if they have to, those inclined to vandalism are likely to take the 10 seconds to register.)

--Ybbor^Talk 02:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd just like to add that the concept of "You can edit this page right now" is one the most innovative things about Wikipedia, and what makes it so unique and interesting. It's what got me interested in the first place, and I suspect that's the case with many people. An online community is nothing new -- but when people see that Wikipedia is trusting anyone at all to edit without even requiring registration, that's an especially intriguing concept that gets people interested in learning more. I'd go out on a limb and say that most editors here made their first edits as anonymous users.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 23:43, 09/26/2007

And by the way, you're hurting my feelings. 68.101.123.219 01:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, the Foundation said so, and we're run by the foundation, and, well, you know what happens next. ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 21:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Linking to off-wiki harassment

Wikipedia:Linking to off-wiki harassment is proposed at the suggestion of the arbitration committee. Please have a look. ←Ben^B4 06:08, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Not to be cynucal, but it apears to have been written by a sock puppet, Privatemusings (talk · contribs), and the discussion thus far appears to be dominated by people who oppose having an off-wiki harassment policy. I hope that everyone who's participated will be open to other viewpoints. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 06:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm having trouble understanding how the discussion can be dominated by people who oppose having an off-wiki harassment policy, when they all seem to be supporting the proposal. It does not appear that Privatemusings is an abusive sockpuppet, and it seems he faithfully distilled Newyorkbrad's suggestions. ←Ben^B4 12:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Hasn't BADSITE already been rejected? Atropos 07:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Basic information

I know that a good article would need all the information to comprehend the subject of the article, but certain basics, things that people assume you know, like what the 2 in X^2 is telling you to do, or how to read a graph, would not be able to be mentioned in each article because it would be redundant. However, there is no guaranty that the person reading the article has any idea of what the 2 in X^2 means, or that it's even called an exponent (that alone would make it hard for them to find the article on exponents). That's why I suggest a link to a page that is generated by both pattern recognition for simple things like X^2, and marked images which are marked by the creator or a later contributor to the image. The automatic page would list the original usage of the concept and list different subjects, like Exponent, that a person should know to be able to read it. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 02:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

It can be difficult to predict what people do or do not know. For that reason, the reference desk might be useful for what you suggest—but I'm not sure how many people know about it. Gracenotes^T § 02:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

While the reference desk may be useful, it does have three problems:

1. Like you said, not many people know about it.
2. It can take a while to get an answer.
3. Some people don't feel comfortable asking questions to strangers, I know I wasn't my first time.

Also, the list would be automatic and it would just look for very simple patterns, and each pattern would have it's own entry on a special page that people can add to. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 02:53, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Visualization

I am trying to connect with individuals in the wikipedia community who are interested in working on an open source programming project to create a visualized interface to map wikipedia. I have started to draft a proposal in my Sandbox, but am not sure where the most appropriate location is to post such a proposal or connect with interested people. Does anyone have suggestions, feedback, comments? Thanks! SlvrDreams 20:20, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article improvement

I'm advertising this page here as well because fewer people seem to read Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous). A.Z. 22:49, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

B.C.(E?)

Although this seems like a very stupid question, Should Wikipedia be using BCE and CE instead of BC and AD for Epochs and Eras? BurnMuffin ^{Word, bro.} 17:45, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) contains the current policy on this. Like the question of whether Wikipedia should use British or American English, the BC/AD vs. BCE/CE question has been the subject of a number of discussions and even more pointless edit wars. The issue was ultimately settled the same way that the BE/AE issue was—use whichever format was chosen by the article's first substantive contributor; don't change formats without a very good reason; and don't sweat the small stuff. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

This was also the focus of an AbCom case do to an edit war where the outcome was that no one should switch from one to the other since both were already acceptable. --Farix (Talk) 12:33, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Navigating through diffs of the same contributor the same way we can do it with diffs to an article

Hi. I think it would be great if we could pick a contributor, then pick a diff of theirs, click on a button called "newer", and go their newer diff, then click on "newer" again, and go to the next newer diff, the same way we do with diffs on the same article or talk page. Would this be too hard to implement? Are there reasons not to do it? A.Z. 02:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

One possibility: There may or may not be a way to do this directly through the WP standard web interface. You can, however, get substantially similar functionality through the WP API. Here's a random blog link.

It's possible to query against the contributions for a specific user, and further filter the results according to any arbitrary criteria you prefer. In order to save server load, there is a limit to the number of responses you can get at any one time, but that should not present much difficulty.

Going this route, the question about "hard to implement" boils down to how much sense the WP api makes to you personally, and whether (or to what extent) you are willing to write scripts to get the exact results you want. It won't hurt if you have perl (or anything similar) installed and working properly on your machine. This is just one possibility. There may be other ways that other folks may mention. dr.ef.tymac 09:36, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Newsletter idea

Would it be possible to have a Wikipedia newsletter delivered to users talk pages (perhaps with a bot or something)?--Avant Guard 17:17, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Like the Sign Post? Lara❤Love 17:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

We have Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Tools/Spamlist... Melsaran (talk) 18:41, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Just a suggestion about a survey

I am making this as a very tentative suggestion. On the "Discussion" pages of articles on radio and television programmes, one frequently finds comments where Wikipedia readers seem more keen to give their views onthe programme, than to discuss the article's accuracy, comprehensiveness and style or structure. To prevent this, should we have, each month, a survey where Wikipedia readers can voice their favourite and least favourite television/ radio programmes? We would not even need to use Wiki software to analyse the data. ACEOREVIVED 19:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, God, no. When you encounter people discussing their views of programs on Talk pages, delete them, that's not what Talk pages are for. Let's not encourage personal opinion discussions. Wikipedia is not a forum. Corvus cornix 21:50, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Article proposal

I dunno if this is the right place to come but i think wikipedia needs an article on the causes of anti-semitism, because people know that jew-hatred exists and is one of the most prominent persecutionsin the world, but people don't seem to know anything about why jews are so hated, and what provoked the holocaust. Any thought? --Andrew Hadland 2007 22:46, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

You can request an article at Wikipedia:Requested articles, or start it yourself. Keep in mind WP:OR and WP:NPOV, especially for a subject like this -- and be prepared for a lot of controversy and vandalism. Also take a look at the existing articles Antisemitism and Persecution of Jews, as they may already serve this purpose, although less specifically (I haven't looked through them thoroughly).

Equazcion • argue/improves • 22:56, 09/30/2007

We have a large series of articles on antisemetism. I didn't do a thorough search, but the closest example I found was antisemetic canard, which is about lies used to justify antisemetism. I'm sure the information you look for can be found somewhere in this group of articles. Gosh, Equazcion, how many edit conflicts do I have to have with you? Atropos 23:20, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about the edit conflicts, I have a bad habit of saving my comments prematurely and then editing them. I'm working on that.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 23:30, 09/30/2007

The best page to centralize discussion regarding the creation of a new article is Wikipedia:Article improvement. Merely requesting that the article be created may not cause the article to be created (it may not be notable) and whoever requested it will never know the reason why it doesn't ever get created. Besides that, discussing new articles there may cause people to discover a better way for Wikipedia to solve a content problem (such as covering a topic) different from creating a new article. A.Z. 23:39, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention that requests on WP:RA might sit around for years before someone finds them. Mr.Z-man 03:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't History of antisemitism fit? -- lucasbfr ^talk (using User:Lucasbfr2) 09:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

General review proposal

This follows from the merger thread three up: Wikipedia:General review. Radical streamlining. Marskell 09:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

New template proposal

Erm, I think I'm at the right place to make a proposal. I was thinking that although wikipedia may not be censored, I believe we should have a template that warns users that "this article may contain content that some users may find inappropriate for younger readers." Or something along those lines —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hadseys (talk • contribs) 19:11, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

A better place to ask might be Wikipedia:Requested templates. Andrwsc 19:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Which states "Please do not request or create disclaimer templates, such as "this page contains offensive content". Wikipedia is not censored." so it probably won't be accepted. Adrian M. H. 20:02, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, as we're not censored, that's not going to happen. Disclaimers like that have generally been seen as a form of censorship. Do entries in Brittanica have disclaimers like that? SamBC(talk) 21:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Not that Britannica is our standard... OES23 21:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

It's an example. Encyclopedias don't generally carry warnings about the content of articles. SamBC(talk) 22:11, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

O RLY?.--Ybbor^Talk 22:12, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

That's a disclaimer for the whole of wikipedia. No disclaimers per article, or rather no disclaimers of the ilk of censorship. SamBC(talk) 22:16, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Well then, what about this?68.101.123.219 16:41, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Those are, again, disclaimers that apply to entire resources and not to single articles.... TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:54, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think that if you look up "penis", "sex", "murder", "rape" etc. you know that it's not going to be pretty. Most articles which could be viewed as offensive, are obviously offensive just from glancing at the title. Cheers! --Puchiko 00:31, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Merging Peer review and Good articles

A modest proposal. I post here as neutral ground; on GA talkpages people are naturally sympathetic to GA, while on FA people are often hostile. First, PR is perenially backlogged—plenty of noms, insufficient feedback. Second, there are systemic problems with GA that are brought up fairly regularly. The Wikipedia:Good article review notes rather melodramatically "This is not a Peer Review Process;". I hope that's not a shibboleth of the people involved in the process. I won't get into mechanics yet—there are various ways it might happen. I'd just like to see a show of hands if the idea might be further considered and then a workshop page can be started. Advantages:

• Reduces overhead. While a quick and easy process has long been touted as GA's advantage, Wikipedia:Good article nominations is quite possibly the most cluttered page I've seen in the Wikipedia namespace.
• It merges cohorts and revives PR. Everybody in one place with more eyes on any given review. The central pass/fail structure of GA would remain, while it would take the PR title. (Editors could request a regular PR without a pass/fail.) The review could still be short.
• It finally brings GA into the FA fold. PR is the stream meant to feed FAC. Cosmetic renames of GA pages (candidates --> nominations and review --> reassessment) can't disguise the fact that GA remains a parallel process.
• By moving the reviews off of article talk it avoids buddy-buddy passes. An example was provide here. I don't think this is endemic to GA but surely it must happen sometimes.

As I say, the mechanics can wait. General feedback welcome. Marskell 13:28, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

My initial reaction is negative, to be honest. When you say that the PR name will supplant the GA name, are you proposing that the GA rating will be dropped? If so, will an equivalent ranking be introduced? I am thinking about what happens to articles that are good, but are not going to reach FA standard at any point in the foreseeable future because of the limitations of the subject matter and/or available sources or material. For that reason, I have a vested interest in seeing GA remain as an article rank. How it is awarded is obviously less important from that point of view, so if the system was "improved" in some way, that would be OK. I used quote marks because I do not believe that it needs to be fixed. PR may be quiet (I don't participate in it, but I would if I had the time to spare) but I thought that it was a path on the route to FA, whereas GA may (sometimes must) be an endpoint in article development. I'm sure someone will say that "all articles can be FAs", which I have read before, but that is not necessarily the case in practice. I think that the two systems may be too different to merge. Adrian M. H. 13:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

There would still be an equivalent rank. My preference would be "Passed peer review"; alternatively, "Good article" could be retained. Marskell 13:53, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

In general, I like it; it could help address the backlog at peer review and some of the GA problems at the same time. However, currently peer review serves more than FA/GA needs, so I have two questions. How would a merged process handle

1. an article that has passed GA but wants an additional peer review to help prepare for FAC,
2. an article that isn't nearly ready for GA, but wants a peer review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:04, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

1. The nominator could leave it up as long as useful commentary was arriving; it could pass but still be on the page.
2. Two sections—it wouldn't be unmanageable.

On manageability, I did a quick WordPerfect check: GAC (excluding all the extraneous warnings and messages) and GAR have apx. 1150 words each; FAC and FAR have apx. 750 each (and are much easier on the eyes, IMO). Looking it over, there seems a delirious amount of overhead involved in GA—the exact opposite of what that process is supposed to be about. Marskell 14:19, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The extra words are needed precisely because thr process is lightweight: a single editor can list an article, and a single editor can delist an article. Therefore there need to be more detailed instructions. Some of the instructions could probably be rewritten and phrased more concisely, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. Geometry guy 14:56, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I would be against such an idea. Peer review must surely remain a completely optional and collaborative process, with no stick or carrot involved. It doesn't matter much that the peer review page is backlogged because most of us know that the way to get peer reviews is to ask someone we know, who we think will make useful suggestions; Wikipedia will always lack reviewers in whatever forum. It is rarely that one receives a peer review there out of the blue, though I think it is worth posting requests there, in case Wikipedia appears the work of cliques of friends.

I don't think GAC is equivalent to peer review, because it is institutionally jugemental, like FAC. GA is not a clear process, and we all have different views of it. For me, it is for articles with a smaller range, ones that are perhaps less comprehensive in sourcing. This last point doesn't mean that the sourcing is necessarily inferior: with some topics one learns very little more by turning to more and more sources. qp10qp 14:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair points. So two discreet questions then.

1. Is there anyway to rejig PR to make it work? A list of users willing to help with particular topics and then sub-PR pages? "Most of us know that the way to get peer reviews is to ask someone we know." Agreed—I skip PR and GA both and simply notify people who edit in the topic area when I go to FAC. Perhaps lists of "these are the people to ask" would serve far better.
2. Is there anyway to streamline GA, eliminate the parallelism, and eliminate the inconsistency? I'm sorry, but you can't tell me WP:GAC is a sensible page that speaks to a simple process. I find it confusing as hell (if nothing else, the layout needs a serious overhaul). WP:GAR is 153 kb. Insofar as that indicates people stopping by, good. But why does this apparently streamlined process need to waste so much on its delisting process? I think GA has clearly wandered toward into process over content territory. Marskell 15:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

• Why would we want to merge two processes that are constantly backlogged? That's just going to be a bigger backlog in one place. And then to say that articles could just remain listed on the page if there is a want for further review? No. GA has enough going on, we don't need to complicate the process. And who cares how we compare to FA? It's clear that FA, as a project, views GA as a mentally-handicapped step-brother. You can look through any discussion regarding GA that has FA participation and it's just a bandwagon of hate, disrespect and ignorant calls for project deletion. We're two separate projects, and should remain as such. Just as GA and PR are two separate processes, and should remain as such. Lara❤Love 15:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
• As far as Marskell's last comment, how is WP:GAN confusing? There are 11 main categories with various subcategories. You find the category that your article falls under and list it. Then reviewers, who have interest or knowledge in certain categories go to those to find articles to review. We have tags to let it be known when an article is already under review so no one else goes to review it. We have tags that let it be known when it is on hold and when there is a request for a second opinion. Past that, as far as your last comment, perhaps such judgments should be reserved for those who actually have some knowledge of what's going on in the project, because your comment is completely dated considering all the current changes being implemented. Lara❤Love 15:28, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The page begins with four template notices prior to the content. You then have 1100 words to digest, hard to read with the different width parameters, and including six separate number lists with a total of 27 bullet points. Capped by two large and ugly warning tags. (And why does it need to bluelink every process page after the first mention?) After reading there's just so many instructions that I still don't know what's what. ("Please note, however, that most of the requirements of the Good Article criteria are formal, not substantive"?). I think it's process creep at its worst—and this on a project that claims just the opposite.

And none of this "hate, disrespect and ignorant calls for project deletion." Marskell 16:01, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments on the GAN page. I doubt it is process creep; I suspect that the instructions have not been reviewed for some time — indeed, some are out-of-date. The GAR guidelines have been looked at recently, and are hopefully a bit clearer as a result. I'm having a look at GAN in the light of your suggestions now. Geometry guy 18:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, just to be sure I'm understanding this correctly... You note that there are backlogs at PR and GAN, and that GAN has far too many instructions on the page to the point it's cluttered and confusing. Am I right so far? Your proposal to remedy this is to combine the two backlogged processes into GAN—which would add further instructions and created a double backlog—and encourage it to stay backlogged as nominators could "leave it up as long as useful commentary was arriving; it could pass but still be on the page." Am I missing something? I am blonde, so perhaps I'm completely off, in which case, I apologize. But if I'm not wrong with that assessment, consider this a strong oppose. GAN is not a peer review process. Nor should it be.

Also, as has been stated by FA participants more times than I care to recall, "GA is not and should not be a stepping stone to FA." Do I agree with that statement? No. But that's the feeling that has been expressed by FA on multiple occasions. So it's obvious that FA does not want to be connected in any way to GA, so why would we merge into a process that "is the stream meant to feed FA"? And, last thing, I forgot to respond to earlier. That ArbCom diff from Bishonen is hyperbolized, so it really is unnecessary that it be pasted as an example of GA failing (which I've seen twice today). Lara❤Love 16:31, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

"The backlogs would be combined." Ah, but as I say, the cohorts of reviewers would also be combined. Assume on that basis that the overall backlog will neither increase nor decrease. But it will decrease, for one reason: where there is no loss of process, one page is always better than two. People who were only seeing one of the two will be seeing all of it. Reviewers who don't normally mingle at GA may be more tempted to. "GAN is not a peer review process. Nor should it be." Why this article of faith? We're here for one reason: to improve content. Tagging for the sake it is a waste bandwith. qp10qp's point—that we need a PR without a carrot and stick involved—is a strong one. So perhaps reform can be approached differently.

"GA is not and should not be a stepping stone to FA." I have not argued that. I've taken two articles that were GA to FA this year and have a third posted at this moment. That they were GA was incidental to me—I would have worked on them regardless. I have argued that GA should be married to FA somehow. To do that would require surgery—all of what's redundant between the processes would need to be stripped out of GA and it would need to refocus to fill holes in the larger FA process. Identifying short articles and revitalizing PR seem two obvious areas where that might happen. Marskell 17:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I always thought the way to "fix" Peer Review would be to add a note formally encouraging submitters to also be reviewers. People submitting articles for Peer Review could encourage reviews for their article by reviewing another article already there, something like - "Here is my detailed review of your article. If you liked my suggestions, can you similarly review my article here?". Since there is no carrot of "passed peer review" there won't be any incentive to "pass" the other article, just to get detailed comments and opinions. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:04, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Every PR I've ever seen has been conducted by someone I've seen participating in GA. That's not to say there aren't reviewers that do only PR, but I seriously doubt there would be any that wouldn't know about GA. This proposal makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. I'm fine with putting a length limit on GA and sticking to shorter articles, but that seems unfair to longer articles that can't meet FA standards. But whatever. But GA and PR are not alike. PR points out all of the little nitpicks that aren't required in GA but are for FA. Many GA reviewers, including myself, will go ahead and point those things out as an aside, or just correct them ourselves (use of dashes, for example) but there are too many articles nominated at GAN for us to keep up with at our current level of participation, so there's no way that adding in PR, which sits idle for the most part, is going to improve anything for GA. Lara❤Love 17:22, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The cohorts are the same, you mean? Then the point still holds: same overall backlog. (Of course, they can't be exactly the same.) How do you intend your 'can't' in "...but that seems unfair to longer articles that can't meet FA standards." Fundamentally 'can't' or just aren't there yet? Show me, say, five articles on the current GA list that can't be FA. In short checks previously, I've never seen any. Marskell 17:47, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Im a normal editor. I mostly write articles. I once wrote up an article that I wished to bring up to standards of excellence. I looked at FA and GA both. I felt that FA was a difficult process with a lot of nitpicking forcing me to look up and learn absolutely endless points of wikigrammar. In GA I found, that I could get guidance, encouragement from one person in the process and that they had reasonable standards which seemed achievable to me. It wasn't as easy as I thought but I made it and that article later became GA. Just one article but one of which Im exceedingly proud of.

Later, I wanted to review articles. Again I looked at the three places I could do so, Peer Review, GA and FA. I felt I should do Peer Review only if I had at least some qualification on the topic for me to be a peer - this severely limited the scope of articles I felt I could tackle. When I looked at FA, I found that one had to know all those nitpicking details which require the highest standards to be attained. Now thats far too much hard work! I found GA criteria easy to understand and implement. As I did it I found that I could help bring about tangible changes beneficial to the article in the most important place - content. Hence I did six reviews there and it gave me tremenduous satisfaction. I am not saying that FA is a bad thing or that the reviews there are meaningless. All I am saying there is an optimal set of 'good' standards which gives a great sense of satisfaction to most people, all of whom may not be interested in reaching the rarefied heights of FA. The GA process can also form a kind of mentoring or peer review process while the article improves between reviwer and editors undertaking the changes; whereas the FA process seems to me like an inquisition. Peer review seemed like a place where nobody hangs out much any more. Hence I am of the opinion that I want both to remain - GA and FA. GA to me is like the middle class in my country, the common man. FA seems to me the upper class. Both are required to co-exist. Like the common man may aspire to reach higher status in society I may aspire for some of my articles to reach FA also, so thats how I would like to think of both of them. These are my opinions and I dont speak for anybody else. Hence Strong oppose to merge with Peer Review. Revamp Reer Review and make it relevant. AshLin 19:55, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much for this comment. GA still has a lot of work to do before it can shake off its history, overcome misconceptions, and earn the respect of the community, but this post shows how far it has come on the path to what it could be. It isn't there yet, but the experience you express comes very close to what I think GA should be about. Geometry guy 21:32, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Why don't we just get rid of PR? People just ask people they know to look over articles for them because everyone knows that PR has basically degraded to automated reviews anyway. I get asked all the time to do copy-edits for FA. So why don't we just get rid of PR altogether? That's pretty much all I've got left for this discussion. I don't have time for scouring through articles for this, especially considering I don't get it at all. Just so we're all clear, it a strong oppose from me. Lara❤Love 19:29, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I think internal restructuring of PR seems best as a start, thinking over these comments. Marskell 19:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I think these "automated reviews" might be part of PR's problem. I have never found them actual useful, and I don't think the scripts are at the point where they can actually be useful to improving the article. It just lists a bunch of "issues" with the article, mainly grammar and wikifying-related, and tends to scare people seeking useful information on improving it that might not be familiar with all the copyediting and stuff. Dr. Cash 00:56, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The automated reviews also waste time in pointing out frequent mistakes that aren't necessarily present in the article being reviewed. I put Maroon 5 through PR before going for GA and found it to be a complete waste of time. I spent a good hour looking through the article based on the PR automated suggestions only to find I didn't have many of those problems. So that was the first and the last PR request by me. Lara❤Love 14:12, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

• Support but more the angle of GA assuming PR, not the other way around. I personally believe the sentiment "GAN is not a peer review process. Nor should it be."" is a faulty premise for many of the reasons that Marskell noted-namely that we are here to improve content in the Encyclopedia. I think a lot of the structure that GA has could serve the PR process well and in the end produce better reviews and better articles. I admit a change in culture will be needed to counteract sentiments like "GA should not be PR" and it is those sentiments that caused me to take me a step back from GA and to even stop sending wine project articles there because I felt the quality of the "reviewing" process has degraded to a system of Pass/Fail with little checkmarks and plus signs. For me, the benefit of GA is the dialog between the reviewers and the editors with the common goal of improving the article. One of my most fulfilling moments on Wikipedia was my interaction with the Indonesia article as a GA Reviewer and seeing the response of some incredibly motivated editors who eventually took this article all the way to FA. I'd like to see GA return more to the cause of improving the article and working with the article's custodians rather then view that part of the process as "hand holding" or "babysitting". Wikipedia is a team process and we are all in this for the same goal. I think Marskell idea has some merit and could benefit the project. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 20:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

• Isn't the real problem with peer review the fact that people clog it with unfinished/terrible articles. It is of my personal observance that a lot of the people who want articles peer reviewed have barely worked on or will not work on the article in question, do not really follow defined guidelines and/or poorly source articles providing limited information. My suggestion would be to enforce the "articles that have already undergone extensive work" caution, by systematically removing poor articles, ofcourse the problem with this approach is WP:BITE and avoiding mis-use. Ideas? 74.13.97.237 21:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

• Good points (both anon and Agne). Re anon, we do need to be careful not to have all of our content reviews about our best articles. Indeed, the best argument against my proposal is that it doesn't pay enough attention to those sort of middle-of-the-road articles that aren't really prepped for GA or FA. Reading all, I think a fullscale merger won't work. We should work through the projects and PR as it stands to encourage topic specific reviews on PR. And then move away from this massive, little watched page. And then, maybe, GA becomes unneeded as projects and individual pass/fail groups on sub-PR pages gain legitimacy—declaring, basically, "this is passable for the subject area." Possible... Marskell 21:31, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

A word of caution about Project-specific reviewing-One of the strongest benefits of the GA process is the ability to get an outside, third party view of the article. Sometimes a project becomes so involved with an article that it becomes too close to objectively review the strengths and weaknesses in the article. The structure of GA can serve that angle very well and I don't think project-specific reviewing can replace that. The current PR structure also gives that benefit but the problem it is has is a lack of reviewers. One question that you may want to look at is how does GA & FA attract and retain reviewers while PR goes largely forgotten. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 21:40, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Any articles that are not sufficiently up to scratch for a peer review can be directed to RFF. Adrian M. H. 22:04, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I think one of the main reasons why GA & FA are so successful, and PR is not, in terms of numbers of reviewers, is that GA & FA are both connected to specific criteria and reviewers effectively "grade" an article based on that criteria. PR seems to be just a review, and reviewers aren't grading an article based on specific criteria; instead, they're just offering tips on how to improve the article based on very loose manual of style guidelines. GA & FA ask reviewers to effectively assign a grade (GA status or FA status), based on this criteria. If PR was more closely associated to the rating scale (stub, start, B, A), perhaps it would be more successful and attract reviewers. The difficulty here is that every single wikiproject is going to want to come up with their own criteria, which could be confusing to someone that reviews an article at the main PR page without being familiar with the specific wikiproject criteria. Dr. Cash 00:53, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Excellent points. From a reviewer retention point of view, with GA & FA you have the structure plus a sense of "power" in awarding a designated ranking. PR does seem a bit aimless in that regard and not a very "sexy" project to get align with. The question then is, how do we jazz it up and make it more interesting and intriguing for a reviewer to get involved with? Agne^Cheese/^Wine 01:07, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Ooh, no. In my opinion the best thing about peer review is that the pressure is off and that no one has a sense of power. One doesn't want a rating scale when one brings an article there to see how it is coming along; it may not be the finished product yet, and one may simply be looking for fresh eyes.qp10qp 01:53, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

What about "categories" of article status that one could submit and have their review done under the appropriate light? Such as Category A: Starting pointing, Category B: Pre-GA, Category C: Pre-FA etc. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 07:41, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps if PR had the addition of specific project guidelines for reviewers to user while conducting the review. For example, scientific articles have their own guide, as well as pro wrestling. Without setting standard criteria for PR, it could be topic specific in the cases of those articles that fall under a particular project. Lara❤Love 05:57, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment May not be that relevant, but can I just say that I very much enjoy Peer Review, and see its value as quite different to FA/GA. In a peer review you can just go through all the things that occur to you that would improve an article, without worrying whether you've nailed all the problems. At FA/GA I feel I must go through all criteria, before I can give a pass/fail decision. This is why I very rarely vote at FA, and very rarely pass at GA. :) A lot of GA, and even FA, reviews don't make the kind of systematic assessment that perhaps they should. 4u1e 00:24, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Workshop

Comment There are a lot of assessment and evaluation pages and methods around; GA, FA and PR, of course, but also the League of Copyeditors, and the A and B ratings from the WikiProjects, and the Stub and Start ratings. The current system is not producing top-quality encyclopedia articles as fast as we would like it to, and it can't scale well. There are other problems: for example, a commonly cited one is that it is not easy to find competent reviewers to assess the content of some of the more esoteric articles. These are not problems with any of the methods or pages; they're general problems.

I think it might be productive to establish a workshop page and request participation from all of the above groups, without any assertion that any of them are either the problem or the answer. Perhaps that workshop could address things in this order:

• What are the goals and requirements of assessment methods? Produce quality articles, train editors, provide kudos to dedicated contributors, connect experts to articles needing content review, . . . ?
• What shortcomings are there with the current methods? Failure to scale, lack of reliable content review, shortage of reviewers, too many levels of assessment (Stub/Start/B/GA/A/FA), not enough levels of assessment, . . . ?
• What things get done well by which groups? What volume do they achieve?
• What's the best resource within WP for each of the problems? E.g. can the military history WikiProject assert that it will certify content on military articles? Could a MOS-expert group evaluate solely on MOS-compliance? Could we advertise within WP? Could we provide additional kudos?

At that point there might be enough consensus on some of these issues to be able to go back to the list of existing resources and make concrete suggestions about how to make them all work better. Getting a group together that draws on the good and bad experience of each of these content-quality mechanisms might lead to some synthesis that would have incremental suggested improvements. Working on defining goals before solutions seems to me to have the best chance of succeeding. Mike Christie (talk) 01:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

That's brilliant. But can it be done? Can we get all these projects to work together? A similar idea has been proposed in GA, but it was specific to GA. The inclusion of experts from various projects in the review process of technical articles. To do this project wide would be extremely beneficial, but what are the true chances for consensus on this? Lara❤Love 05:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Mike has a REALLY neat idea there. There has long been some level of animosity between the various methods of assessment, and it would be nice to see some real colaboration to achieve a unified method of article assessment. This seems like the kind of project that could really improve things; I would whole-heartedly support this idea... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like the right approach - surely working together on the problem is the spirit of Wikipedia? If I can add another topic that might be worth discussing in such a group: What does each group expect from the others? It strikes me that some of the friction between groups is down to a mismatch in expectations. 4u1e 09:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

That seems very true. GA and the Math project, for example, have hit rough waters more than once. While things aren't peaches and cream at this point, I think (although I may be wrong) that this may be something they would be interested in. It includes their participation to evaluate the work that they are educated in. It's beneficial for everyone. In fact, in that groups don't get along for such reasons is a very good reason for them to be involved in this. Their participation fills the hole in the review process, which a is lack of expert knowledge, and one of the main problem academic/technical articles have when going through GA and FA. Lara❤Love 12:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

As part of the purpose of this thread was to generate traction for a workshop I have started one: Wikipedia:Content review/workshop. I actually moved the Wikipedia:General review page started earlier. Marskell 12:54, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I will add: I have no desire to repeat the ATT disaster. This needs to work slowly and not on an all-or-nothing basis. Marskell 13:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Then this is not the way to proceed. I also think Mike's idea is great, and agree it needs to proceed slowly. So why set up the workshop page now, while the recent arguments are so fresh, then start to lay out an agenda already? Under "Specific criticisms", the questions raised are loaded, and the statements are not neutral. Compare these with the questions Mike asks above, which are open ended, and present multiple points of view.

Please, can we wait a week or so, and let Mike set up something along the lines he suggested after the dust has settled here. If we are not patient at the outset, the process will be doomed before it even starts. Geometry guy 18:08, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. It's Mike's concept. I think he should set up a page for the beginning efforts to get this going. Discussions should be picked up there and this idea built into a project. Lara❤Love 17:21, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:INSPECTOR

WP:INSPECTOR (currently at User:PHDrillSergeant/house). This is an essay that I wrote today, based of a recent discussion of mine and a stroke of writer's fingers. I am wondering what you think of this, and ways that I can make this better. I doubt this will ever pass into guideline status, but as an essay I think it's great to go alongside WP:STUB. ~ PHDrillSergeant...§ 03:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks good to me. The story help illustrate the problem you're addressing. Od Mishehu 11:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Redirected it to Wikipedia:Don't demolish the house while it's still being built. Any better ideas for a title? ~ PHDrillSergeant...§ 03:19, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

How about Wikipedia:Pro-life, since we're arguing against aborting fetal articles :) Or would that be too distasteful...

Equazcion • argue/improves • 04:57, 10/3/2007

Funny, but yes, distasteful. But funny. ~ PHDrillSergeant...§ 20:10, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Anti-Bugzilla rant

Up at the top of *this* page it says to make software suggestions to Bugzilla. Well I tried and tried but I cannot figure Bugzilla out to save my life. It seems to only be looking for Bugs that one has already encountered. I finally found something resembling a “suggestion box” but when I tried to send it it would say,

"To file this bug, you must first choose a component. If necessary, just guess."

Now as a non-programming type person, I have no idea what a “component” is, which makes it hard to guess. I guessed "Suggestion" but that didn't work, neither did leaving it blank. Or "Help". Then I tried “1.11” - I didn't know what that meant either but I saw it on the page so maybe it meant something...and words weren’t working so I thought maybe it was a numbers thing. To no avail.

This is really bad design. Wiki should not assume that people who contribute and have ideas, questions, and suggestions are programmers. I am pretty pissed that I wasted so much time trying to get the stupid thing to work. I even read all the FAQ stuff, which didn’t help either.

Bad design! Saudade7 13:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. I never use Bugzilla because it is user-unfriendly. Adrian M. H. 13:36, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Adrian M. H. for the moral support. Saudade7 14:19, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

You were looking in the wrong place. "1.11" is the version list. The "Component" list is in the upper right hand corner, and it specifies what part of the software your bug affects - blocking people, editing, etc. If in doubt, I guess you can always choose "General/Unknown". --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 13:56, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I see it now, but I think my point is/was that I wasn't *looking* for a component list in the first place because I didn't even know what that meant! I didn't know what a "version list" was for either! And even now it doesn't make sense that "assign to" requires a "component". What might have made things easier is if that particular box had a drop-down menu with a list of the "components" to choose from (as the box directly above "assign to" has a drop down menu), rather than have something that relates to the problem located in the upper right-hand quadrant of the screen where at least my eye doesn't naturally travel. -- then I could have "guessed" but even my guess probably would have been wrong because the terminology used is programmer-specific.

The point too is that non-programming types don't "assign components", they "ask questions" and "make suggestions". The design as it is, strikes me as a bit exclusive and elitist. It is as if I just assumed that everyone knew the difference between Erwin Panofsky's and Hubert Damisch's approaches to art history. Oh, and Damisch is only on the French wiki! so Good luck with that! See? that would be unkind. God forbid someone on the "Simple English" wiki try to make a suggestion on the Bugzilla site. Sorry, it apparently has me upset. Saudade7 14:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Bugzilla is a program we use. Not one that is part of the wiki or one that we can easily change. Rmhermen 14:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, can't we have the fields ALREADY SET to a usable value? Then the bugzilla people can come in and recategorize them if/when necessary. ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 03:25, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Automatic Deletion of Anonymous IP User Pages

I have a dynamic IP that regularly cycles through a series of IP addresses owned by my ISP, a lot of which have been exposed to wikipedia. As a result I'm regularly getting messages directed at prior users as early as 2004/2005. In one case I got banned because an admin assumed bad faith due to templates left for another editor (I removed an unsourced trivia section, and then found out the talk page for the IP I was using had received the full set of warnings the month before). As a result, there are several problems I can see with retaining messages on an IP talk page:

• IP's are dynamic, the messages will often get directed at the wrong user
• Very rarely will someone leave a message of significant value on a IP talk page (eg discussion on how to improve an article), these tend to be restricted to the article's talk page or that of an identified user
• The messages can paint an editor in the wrong light, causing disruption to their editing
• The messages can scare off users from not only editing wikipedia (and eventually creating an account) but also possibly from reading the encyclopedia at all

Hence I propose that the user/talk pages of anonymous IP addresses get deleted after a period of inactivity on behalf of that IP address (say 1 week or 1 month). That way we avoid sending messages to the wrong person and prevent a clutter of temporary pages that we don't need.

(sorry if there is a technical reason why this cannot be done. I'm under the assumption that the dates from special:contributions can be easily extracted, if this is not possible then maybe the time since the last edit on the IP's talk page should be the determining factor. I'm envisioning a semiautomated bot which can only access IP talk pages, with an admin checking that each one is valid)

124.184.171.224 13:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

A better solution for you and wikipedia both would be to just register for an account and do away with anonymous editing altogether. Most IP/Anonymous users are vandals anyway, offering very little productive edits to the encyclopedia,... Dr. Cash 00:45, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Do you have evidence for that claim? People who've actually studied the matter have found that only about 25% of all IP edits are vandalism. --Carnildo 01:13, 1 October 2007

(UTC)

25% is a very big number, but we should be careful to avoid disparaging the other 75%. The "drop in" IP edits are often very helpful, especially for copy edits to articles they came to WP wanting to read. They repair a lot of vandalism as well, though some of those sorts of repairs are by IP editors removing their own horseplay.Professor marginalia 15:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I could support such a bot clearing of IP talk pages only for cleaning up the old "Welcome to WP but go play in the sandbox" and other minor warnings only. I would not support cleaning up templates or messages which are intended as a "head's up" to inform other editors, especially those working the vandalism patrol or identified sock, etc. 1 week or 1 month are both too short, however.Professor marginalia 15:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Travel Web Site page link idea

Dear Folks, > How about adding a web link to your opening article pages that would link the > encyclopedia web page with the corresponding Wiki travel page? I like reading > your articles but it is awkward to then go to the travel web site page. Thanks > and keep up the good job! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Flfruitcake (talk • contribs) 14:18, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

We do have such a link on some articles. See {{Wikitravel}}, and Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Wikitravel for a list of the pages which include it. Wikitravel is not affiliated to the Wikimedia Foundation, and we have no policy on whether it should be linked to that I'm aware of. If you want to add links to a few of your favourite geographical articles, I doubt anyone will object. If you want to add Wikitravel links to lots of articles, it might be best to get a bit more feedback on the idea first.-gadfium 22:08, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

presedential candidates chart

I wanted to suggest making a summary chart with the presidential candidates and their positions on different issues for the US presidential elections. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.224.208.53 (talk) 15:22, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Such an effort would belong in the article on the 2008 US presidential elections... however, it would be very much at risk of contain original research, particularly improper synthesis. SamBC(talk) 16:21, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Complex issues are not summarized a two-words-or-less position. For example, Senator X who votes against a pork-laden border fence bill could have "Illegal immigration       Approves" in the chart.—Twigboy 18:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

A specific example of my point exactly... SamBC(talk) 21:43, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Because of the potential problems with bias, original reserach, and improper synthesis illustrated very clearly above, such a chart is beyond the scope of Wikipedia. However, our article on the United States presidential election, 2008 does contain a list of all of the candidates along with links to their campaign sites. You should be able to find out each candidate's position that way. Cheers, TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Trivia

Since we have Wikipedia, WikiQuote, WikiNews, etc., why not run a parallel site called Wiki Trivia, and you can finally take all those intersting little factoids and Simpsons quotes that are littering otherwise encyclopedic articles, and find a home for them? 139.48.81.98 17:22, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

See Meta:WikiTrivia. ;)

Equazcion • argue/improves • 17:26, 10/4/2007