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Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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Latest comment: 20 years ago by JosephBarillari in topic Always fill the summary field

The proposals section of the village pump is used to discuss new ideas and proposal that are not policy related (see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for that).

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Proposals archive

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Discussion Pages - Bring Modern Interface

Hi,

I'm new to this community, and I intend to stick around as a regular contributer of articles. I've noticed a peculiar problem that I'm sure others have brought up - why does wikipedia use such a cumbersome discussion feature? Why not update the discussion section to look more like more modern and organized thread discussion board systems? The simple appearance can be maintained. Take a look at the software this board uses. [1] Very simple and maintains a tree format too. Currently I believe the peculiar all page edit system in place is unfamiliar to new users (like me), and for those who infrequently stop by will be discouraged from leaving a comment because it does not appear so simple. Also I believe a thread system will be more compact and well organized. What have been the objections to such a system?

Lotsofissues 09:28, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) (<--- Take me some time to remember the tildas)

UPDATE: I did not intentionally make this message look so sloppy. I posted and it was published as one long line and this is what I got after attemption to correct it. Point proven. :-( :-|

Are you volunteering to write the sizable amount of code needed to integrate a web forum into MediaWiki? Development happens solely through volunteers, and none of the ones we have now see doing this as a priority. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:12, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Also, I suspect the reason it hasn't been a priority is that once people master MediaWiki markup and get used to the difference between editing sections and a whole page, they don't have much of a problem with using the same editing interface for discussion and article pages. --Coolcaesar 23:13, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Lot's suggestion. Wiki pages were just not designed for discussion; it's like trying to use a round peg for a square hole. A true forum interface with threading and editable posts would be vastly superior to the current setup. Also, Cyrius is mistaken; there would be no need to write vast amounts of code; open-source forum software already exists. It would be a matter of picking the most appropriate one, setting it up, and configuring the discussion tab to link to a forum thread instead of a talk page. (Current talk pages could be auto-incorporated into the new threads). - Pioneer-12 19:08, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
As Cyrius points out, the developers are volunteers. When I propose we raise more money, I'm told we have more than enough. Time to start paying developers to sit in the rack room and glue the infrastructure together -- not to mention, to improve it. — Xiong熊talk 06:12, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

Even if it were easy to integrate a forum system like Slash (gasp!) or phpbb (shudder), I think it would be an bad idea because it contravenes WP philosophy. The current talk-page format is discussions in the wiki style -- anyone can edit anything. If the discussion is over, the thread can be deleted. If the discussion is splitting into two overlapping threads, an enterprising editor can split them up. If someone disagrees with that enterprising editor, they can revert the changes. Traditional web-boards have none of these features -- in fact, they are designed to make it impossible for non-mods to edit the general thread of discussion. Trying to hack those features into a traditional web-board would be silly -- you would end up with what we have already.

Lotsofissues, I'm curious what in particular you dislike about the current format. It may not be the the same as what newbies would be used to, but it's not very hard to grasp, either. One feature that might make it easier for new people to post would be changing the "+" tab to one that says "Post new topic" -- the "+"'s meaning is terribly non-obvious. (BTW, what is a TTT? The discussion board you mentioned uses that TLA everywhere.) jdb ❋ (talk) 07:34, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

1. First the easiest question - TTT (Third Tier Toilet) is elitist applicant parlance for an all inclusive category of virtually all colleges in this country with the exception of schools determined elite by the elitist standard - those schools being Harvard, Yale, Princeton , Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, UPenn, Duke, Northwestern, JHU, Rice, Oxbridge, and the four premier liberal arts colleges Amherst, Williams, Swathmore, and Ponoma.
Indeed it isn't hard to be competent in this format - but even that skill level requires a bit of accumulated editing experience. I want a system for newbies (casual visitors) to comment as easily as many newspaper article feedback forums attached to the bottom of articles make it. MAKING FEEDBACK REGULAR - instead of occassional - sounds good right? A please comment on this article at the bottom leading to a familiar PHPBB style reply box would actively solicit critical/request info we need. 2. I think in many obvious ways Wikipedia has grown too large for this format. I do janitorial work which requires me to visit the VFD page - this is not fun - in fact, it's so tedious having to load the all of the page that it breaks my healthy editing rhythm. At no point does it become more like work than then. A reformed thread style format would be pleasant. 3. Despite contributer's mastery of this format by now, few would argue phpbb is not an easier format to post in. Contributers will begin to talk more amongst each other; perhaps then it won't take me a full year to become familiar with everyone. Lotsofissues 07:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There is plenty to dislike about the current format. First, "Anyone can edit anything" is just plain wrong for discussion. My comments are my own. Letting anyone edit them only causes problems and irritation. The forum method--that is, limiting editing access to only the poster and administrators--makes sense, saves time, and reduces irritation. Also forums have built in abilities for multipaging, standard formatting of user names, quoting previous statements, searching discussions by date--all abilities that wiki software has no real tools to assist for. Notice that no forums are clamoring to change over to wikis? It's ridiculous that I have to manually indent my posts, that I have to manually add my name to my posts, that there is no standard formatting separating one talk post from another, and that I have to manually add formatting for quotes. - Pioneer-12 09:39, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
People ought to write short posts, and if they don't, people split them up and reply to each point seperately. I'm not convinced about quoting. People sometimes edit your posts to improve your spelling and grammar or to remove personal attacks. Any other editing would probably be spotted and considered vandalism. I do not think there is any major problem now, but you may be interested in the concept of m:LiquidThreads. r3m0t talk 11:09, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

I quite like what we've got already. Contributing to a discussion is the same as editing pages: you only need to learn one approach. I agree that the "+" is non-intuitive: in fact it's so non-intuitive I didn't know it worked.--Dave63 08:01, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are considerable advantages to conducting discussion using a Wiki. The most obvious is that we can remove attacks and trolls, easily refactor long tedious discussions. and archive discussion threads whenever we want to. We can easily go back and retract things we should not have said. Also being lightweight and not obviously discussion-oriented it discourages long posts and point-by-point debate--which isn't what the talk pages are for. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:23, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Tony---Well put -- I think the last advantage is the most important. If anything, WP should discourage the talk pages from being used as grounds for long-running discussions. People who wish to carry on lengthy debates are likely to be unhappy with the WP philosophy of merciless editing, rearranging, and deletion with the aim of reaching consensus, rather than declaring a winner. jdb ❋ (talk) 05:13, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The need for organizing (archive) discussions becomes unnecessary in any modern interface. The need to remove attacks far dimnishes when every single user no longer has full admin power over a discussion page. Cockring.jpg blanketing needs to be removed; a FUCK YOU! thread - whatever. Lotsofissues 07:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
We absolutely should facilitate lengthy discussions. This format suppresses a long diagonal discussion - part of the process in supporting and defending the accuracy and fairness of a complex entry. More than casually critical ppl should not be grouped as unhelpful to the development of entries. Lotsofissues 07:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contributions List

Not highest priority, but it would be nice to have a switch between ascending/descending order on the list so that you can see what is your nth edit (w/ numbering etc.) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 03:40, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorting on different fields, multiple find criteria, switch on sorting order -- all nice bells and whistles. When the time comes, I want them all -- in a to go cup, with Xmas lights on. — Xiong熊talk 05:50, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Either way, it would be nice to see at a glance how many contributions I have made. Perhaps a number at the top, like how on my watchlist it says how many are being watched. CoolGuy 04:15, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Template Flux

I think that Template:Flux was a good idea...Old Text:

This article is in a state of Wikipedia:Flux due to recent heavy editing. Therefore, the article may temporarily appear disorganized.

although I would say something like

This article is in a state of Wikipedia:Flux due to recent heavy editing. Therefore, the article may temporarily appear disorganized or have factual errors.

and I think that perhaps it should be reinstated? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:28, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Looks like someone did earlier today, although the wording's slightly different. JYolkowski // talk 16:55, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

apple OS 10.4 wikipedia dashboard widget

I like to make a proposal for someone to develop an apple OS 10.4 tiger dashboard widget that connects to wikipedia. I am not sure what politics are involved with developing such an application, but I believe that many people will use this and find it very convienent.

I would develop this widget myself and post it as an open source widget under a GPL if given the permission from wikipedia and obtain a copy of the operating system.

All the widget needs to consist of is the wikipedia title, a search bar to enter search requests, a language choosing system and a random page link. This widget would then be placed on the dashboard application for easy access.

Please someone begin working on this soon and post it some where for the general public; or give me the permission to start.

Thanks,

Fung

PS i can be reached at fung81@gmail.com for any questions, suggestions, spamming or communications

You do not need to recieve permission. r3m0t talk 16:08, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
And you can download the software at mediawiki.org. See mediawiki-agora for other MediaWiki-related extensions. Angela. 01:16, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
I've started work on a wikipedia widget, it's not complete yet, but it does everything you've requested. You can grab it at DashboardWidgets. seenyer User talk:seenyer 19:10, Apr 28, 2005

Renaming List of people known by one name

The title of this list is just wrong.

Talk:List_of_people_known_by_one_name#Changing_the_article_title As someone has pointed out with "Christ" and "Jesus" being listed; people with single word pseudonyms are not known by one name — in fact, having a pseudonym often ends up with you being known by several names.

I propose this article be moved to List of people known by single word names or List of people who have names consisting of a single word ors oemthing similar.

Most people are known by only "one name".--ZayZayEM 03:40, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Nobody has responded to this on the pages talk page. Hopefully this is okay to place here.

These people are not known by "one name", they are known by "one-word pseudonyms". Wikipedia should aim to have titles which actually reflect article content. I'm know in favour of a title akin to List of people known by single word pseudonyms--ZayZayEM 08:16, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Agree with ZayZayEM. Mgm|(talk) 08:33, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
  • For future reference, Wikipedia:Requested moves exists just for this purpose. —Korath (Talk) 10:36, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
  • "List of people with a single-name moniker" — RJH 19:38, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I might choose something like "List of people known by a one-word name". Either way, dispense the current title. Deco 03:29, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Then again, maybe it just needs a better name

For anyone interested in the wiki forms of civil debate, concentrated think tanks, classical Greek and Roman "Forum", or other wikireason developments taking shape... please feel free to drop me a line. Although quite young and still developing, this project is intended to offer neutral structure for the incipient manifestations and conflict seen under almost any "discussion" tab. More so, the structure is a listing of current topics of sociological study and public policy, scientific logic process, and reasoned debate by pro/con weights and measures. Y'all gona love it!!! TTLightningRod 23:56, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)


  • old stuff below...

Meatball has some very interesting things going on in terms of conflict resolution. Politeness, among just a few other things, seems to go a long way. Boldness is fine, but should be thin as possible when directing to a group or activity. Offering solution or suggestion instead of calling out the problem, becomes Herculean with positive results.


So those are some of the wikithink outputs to date. The comments below relate to my first winding (now in edit history). Oh, so painful for the reader, I do apologize. I wish to compliment all those I've met here. I'll be haunting wiki for years to come. TTLightningRod 21:41, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Neat. I think you should cross-post this to http://www.halfbakery.com , which is itself a think tank. - Pioneer-12 21:06, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've seen some good ideas there, and some good feedback. (Of course there are also some silly ideas and some poor feedback there too.) I just thought it would be a good place to advertize and refine your theories. (A good "target audience".) You could always just post an entry there inviting people here. - Pioneer-12 22:24, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The rewrite looks good. The proposal is much more cogent and persuasive now. It sounds like you are proposing the equivalent of a new Wikimedia project. See meta:Proposals for new projects. - Pioneer-12 23:05, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No problem, we all had to learn sometime. As far as your proposal, you should be aware that Wikipedia is not a forum, as noted in Wikipedia is not a soapbox. --Sean κ. ⇔ 23:07, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Abolish personalized signatures

It is about time to abolish personalized signatures. Many signatures, if accidentally altered, would do evil things. Some signatures even contain images. -- Toytoy 15:28, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Signatures work like anything else that can be added to a wiki page. There aren't any "evil things" that can be done with signatures that can't be done by simply typing or pasting. What specific dangers do you see here? --iMb~Meow 15:45, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Just minutes ago, a screweed-up signature made the text that follows it <small>. Some users even include pictures in their signatures, therefore, a discussion page could be flooded with dozens of such small icons. -- Toytoy 16:33, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)
Again, how does an error in a signature differ from any other error in wiki markup? It doesn't. It's no big deal, someone will notice it and it will be fixed just like any other error. This has nothing whatever to do with the fact that it was in someone's signature settings, just as taking away the signature feature would do absolutely nothing to prevent people from adding many images to a page. --iMb~Meow 16:41, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Signature files do not carry needed information. If I want to know you, I visit your user page. It is not a good idea to make your signature file a miniature user page. I propose that we shall place some limitations on the use of signatures:
  • No HTML.
  • No more than 32 or 64 bytes.
  • No images.
  • No other external components.
I think Unicode characters are not a deadly sin, but some older browsers may not display them correctly. If we use Unicode characters or HTML tags in an article, usually it's mean to be informative (ideogram characters, math symbols, other symbols ...). Signature files are not supposed to be that informative. It is nothing but a road sign that points to your user page. You don't usually sign your name this way. When you sign your name, you do not write 100 advertising words. Bloating signature files are bad. -- Toytoy 17:12, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

It would be nice if we could customize the rendering of ~~~~. Then the server could enforce any restrictions automatically.

I don't think it would help, though. People leave behind all kinds of non-signature things which have potentially problematic HTML, inefficient table code, and images all over WP. At least we don't have 12-line ASCII art sigs (I bet I could do that in 32 bytes). —Michael Z. 2005-04-19 20:00 Z

I still don't see why this is an issue with signatures. How would the outcome be any different if we just said, "Don't use bad markup that ruins an article," which is probably policy anyway. —Sean κ. ⇔ 20:37, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
When you sign your name on a piece of paper, you do it the most effortless way. When you sign on the internet, either you don't sign it or you advertise it. This is why people abuse it. Leonardo da Vinci absolutely could draw. He did not draw a small Vitruvian man besides his name.
All I know is, I'm gonna start signing my name like this. - Pioneer-12   File:Superman.jpg   File:Vader.jpg File:Concordance of Fealty- A Jedi Tradition.jpg File:Usaf-laser.jpg File:M47-Dragon-firing.jpg   Template:Flag4
John Hancock, eat my shorts.
I know people can work out a way to beat the 32-byte restrictions, if there's such one. You can just copy and paste a 64 K gigantic signature loaded with dozens of animated GIFs each time you finish writing something. But the point is, if the cost to sign fancifully is not zero, much less people would do it. -- Toytoy 01:36, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
Dear heavens. What now? Check your email inbox lately? Or, for the truly staunch, browse Usenet awhile. Sigs of doom, sigs spanning multiple servers, sigs towering not merely over all content, but over thought itself. Singing sigs, smiley sigs, dancing sigs. Oy.
We have it good here, too good to be true. The odd image in a sig, not good. (I did that myself, thoughtlessly, but you see it's Unicoded now, and functional.) The occasional malformed sig, turning all following text green. The very worst sig I've seen is painstakingly rainbow-colored; must weigh in at half a typewritten page worth of markup -- and I can't even read it. None of these are problems that cannot be fixed with a gentle word to the good member.
There are good and fine reasons to personalize sigs:
  • Users should take pride in their handles, and be reluctant to tarnish them with thoughtless comment. This is how users become community members.
  • Our community is already way too large, so that it is very hard to keep track of other members -- the sort of informal, subjective, in-the-head soft reputation management that is the true glue of any community. Distinctive sigs help more than do bizarre names.
  • The default sig sucks. At a minimum, the default should provide a link to the member's Talk page. On the other hand, maybe the default should suck. A nicely-customized sig is one way to tell the Old Heads from the noobies.
  • Messing with sigs infringes on personal choice. I don't refer to style, but to function. My sig -- for example -- provides links to my user page, my email, and my Talk. I do this because I choose to be thus available. Other members choose less availability, and some include links to cherished pages that define their personalities.
But the crowning argument is just that some members will pay no attention to any such restriction! You can fix the engine to abolish sig editing, but users will just create sig templates and drop them in -- and I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut, they will transclude, too -- at least the tildes substitute.
Please, be happy and content with the relative peace which now obtains. Lest we return someday to see Quotations from Chairman Foo and nudie ASCII fancruft art. — Xiong熊talk 05:16, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)
I've been using this plain vanilla signature for over a year. I thought about using "~~~~" as my signature with "raw signatures" selected. Whenever I type "~~~" (without time stamp), the system outputs "~~~~". Four innocent bytes.
This is not the most evil part of my plan. The "~~~~" in the code would soon be replaced to the next contributor's signature and date. What a great plan. I am smart.
Anyway, you must be very happy now to see me use my plain vanilla signature. I am a pacifist. Or I'll be the worst vandal in all human history. Ha! -- Toytoy 05:55, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

I find over-elaborate sigs annoying, but the inclusion of a link to the person's talk page actively useful. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:48, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

To an old crow known and contacted by many people, it is a good idea to provide a speedy link to the personal talk page. Otherwise, you may want people visit your user page before talking to you. I don't find it very useful to provide your contributions, your Kate's Tools external URL or your golden retriver's CitiBank credit card number in a signature which is supposed to be very small. Most decorative signatures are providing too little clues to their functions. You may see a weird Unicode sign but you don't know what the sign means unless you see the link. There are supposed to be some signature etiquette or rules. -- Toytoy 06:04, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
If you want to see where a user's sig links, mouseover it. Depending on your browser or your prefs, you'll get a hoverbox or the link URL in your status bar.
There is de facto sig etiquette: • Keep it short • No images • No templates • No markup that fouls up rendering • Link to your Talk • No blinking sigs •
I only worry that this discussion may prompt the feared action. — Xiong熊talk 06:31, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)
God, I am a nice and creative mother. -- Toytoy 06:45, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
What's that? --{{User:Carnildo/sandbox}}

The "broken" small-tag in the signature I have been using for some time is there intentionally. Nobody ever came to my talk page to tell me they're annoyed by it. If people complain, I will change it. Extremely distracting signatures are bad, but some Unicode and some html tags (font/colour) -- what's the harm in that? dab (ᛏ) 08:21, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Relying on obscure bugs in the parser to render your signatures is a great way to piss off developers. Please stop it. -- Tim Starling 16:26, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
If that's the case, then why have some similar bug reports been closed? -- Netoholic @ 21:04, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)
I am using a black background and amber foreground setting with my browser, I also disabled almost every fanciful things (CSS, <font >, colors ...) so I don't see any of your color tricks. My Mozilla is like a Lynx text-based browser (I was using Netscape 2.x last year). By the way, I only use one font. To make my browsing more vanilla-flavored, I installed Privoxy and customized its filter settings to remove almost every decorative elements in the <body > and elsewhere. I disabled Java, JavaScript, lots of sites' cookies and most plugs-in as well. Why? Based on my personal settings, most of your colored texts would become very difficult to read. I am the reader. I am supposed to be the one to exercise my rights to change fonts and colors. Many years ago when I was using Macintosh, I downloaded no images and filtered even more HTML tags (tables, italic, bold, ...)! I don't want to read anything unless it's like being displayed on an Apple ][ monochrome monitor. -- Toytoy 08:40, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
Why are you telling us this? If you are going to such lengths to have control of browsing (I don't suppose you read print books or magazines, then), does it matter to you if people use different colors or fonts in their signatures? — Knowledge Seeker দ 16:44, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In many ways we, as editors of *articles* leave very few traces on WP ... a little personalisation of handles where they are actually used (talk pages and the like) does little harm but a lot of good (self-esteem, handle recognition, direct link to talk page, etc.) I'm not overly happy of the more complex (I could do without photos and most graphics, thankyou) but each to their own, so long as they spend more time editing than creating wonderful sigs. --Vamp:Willow 17:12, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Customized signatures are really for self-esteem and a bit of fun for some users. If it helps attract people, so be it, in my view. JuntungWu 15:34, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How about a separate scientific Wikipedia?

Hi,

I am a scientist and find this website to be a great resource. But when searching scientific words that have nonscientific counterparts, you have to wade through large numbers of entries before finding what you are looking for. I propose establishing a separate scientific Wikipedia.

--B

Articles with titles that have more than one potential meaning should either be disambiguation pages (pages that list the topics you could be searching for - e.g. Sublime) or should have a link at the top of the page to alternate uses (e.g. Carbon). If they aren't there then you can add them, and if a page links to the wrong article you can change it. If we are missing an article, write it. This is the beauty of wiki. Thryduulf 19:49, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
B, due to a miriad of reason, there will never be a "scientific Wikipedia". The problems you are having are because Wikipedia has a horrible search engine. I personally prefer to use Google (e.g., type in "buffer chemistry site:en.wikipedia.org" to get articles about buffers in chemistry). However, the fastest way to find articles is to guess at what the title would be. A lot of articles have multiple names for that purpose. Thus, if you're looking for Earthquake the movie instead of the event, you would probably type in "Earthquake (movie)". —Sean κ. ⇔ 22:02, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • There's nothing preventing you from setting up your own Wiki, but the idea of splitting off scientific articles seems elitist, to me. RickK 23:34, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)
I agree - lots of browsing of search results. But I hope the solution will be to develop a better search algo. and release of a list of queries that failed to garner a direct hit - that way we can create redirects for nearly all major queries without a matching title. Lotsofissues 05:33, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, the solution is a combination of (1) better searches and (2) clear page organization. Though it sounds like he is able to find what he's looking for, but is just bugged by the presence of disambiguation pages. - Pioneer-12 10:18, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Spell Checker at Edit Pages

I believe that adding a spell checker to the Edit Pages can reduce the number of spelling mistakes in an article.Gaurav1146 19:29, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it would. However, it is very difficult to implement from a coding point of view, would bring big debates like colour/color, specter/spectre, and aluminium/aluminum into play. Overall, it may well be more hassle than it is worth. On the other hand, there is nothing stopping you using a client-side word processor to spell check your end. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 19:45, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I dont agree with the arguments put up by you. As far as issues of American and Queen's English is concerned it can be sorted out after a discussion. One possible solution is that the word processor accepts both the American and the English version as correct. That is it takes both "colour" and "color" as correct but if somebody spells it as "calour" it should report it as an error. The solution that u pointed out of running a word processor at client side also does not seem logical to me. The reason is that not everybody editing wikipedia would take the pains to do that. As far as coding is concerned, I am not very sure abt the kind of expertise required. To conclude I would just say that if it is not technically impossible to add it, then it should definitely be added.Gaurav1146 20:15, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
While it would certainly save many typos, I think the necessary complexity outweighs the benefit. It's bad enough having to wait for the preview to reload, never mind having typos flagged somewhere along the line. Some browsers have spell checking built into them. (At least, the two I use do; Safari and OmniWeb. Not sure how the situation is on other platforms.) Problem solved. — PMcM 20:26, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This is not a panacea, but Wikipedia:Text editor support explains how to interface Mozilla with your favorite editor. Having this configured, one just needs to right click from a text area in a browser, click on the obtained menu, and have the wiki text pop up in the editor. After you edit/spellcheck and save the text, the brower reads it back. Oleg Alexandrov 20:34, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Besides, it's quite satisfying spotting and fixing typos. I guess you could look at all the other editors as being a built-in spell checker/fixer. — PMcM 20:52, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Just noticed there's a more comprehensive earlier discussion on this very page, just up a few days; Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Spell Check — PMcM 22:09, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

BTW: "Queen's English" does not simply mean "UK English", it's rather narrower than that. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:38, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

The only reason I started this discussion was that I observed that spelling errors were quite common in Wikipedia articles. Yesterday I picked two three articles at random, copied them to MS word and looked for spelling errors. There were one or the other spelling error in each of the article. Today I tried the same thing on two featured articles. Even these articles had some spelling errors.Gaurav1146 06:03, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Then fix them. Thryduulf 07:53, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Obviously I did fix them. As there are not many takers for the suggestion,so no point discussing it any further. Gaurav1146 20:19, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

copied them to MS word and looked for spelling errors ... hmmn. 'nuff said. --Vamp:Willow 17:15, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A reason not to do this that hasn't been mentioned yet is that it would consume massive amounts of server CPU. (Or so I've heard.) Nickptar 20:28, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Modify Noarticletext?

I propose that we should remove "yet" from the sentence "Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name." (see Mediawiki:Noarticletext). To me, this implies that we don't have the article now but we should have one. I suggested this at the talk page a couple weeks ago, but there wasn't much response. If anyone has an opinion, please share it at Mediawiki talk:Noarticletext. — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:08, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree with Knowledge Seeker on this one. The implications should go, as should the word "yet". Mgm|(talk) 08:28, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
I removed "yet". We may add "However, you can create one."--Patrick 12:47, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In which case add something along the lines of "Before creating a new article please check the spelling of the title and whether there is already an article here covering the same subject using a slightly different title or name" (only shorter!) --Vamp:Willow 17:19, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
And maybe add something about being sure to use proper capitalization. RickK 23:35, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Publish Unsuccessful Queries

To improve the creation of redirects, can wiki release a list of all user queries that did not land into an entry? Lotsofissues 07:51, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And rank them in descending order by number of tries. Good idea! — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 18:00, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
We used to have this capability, but it went away a couple of releases ago. RickK 23:36, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)
Excellent idea. I want one. — Xiong熊talk 06:03, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)

WikiProject General Election

The United Kingdom general elections are approaching. Considering the popularity and content growth which has resulted from high-interest topics such as the Pope, should we consider having a project to make Wikipedia the definitive source for information relating to the UK general election, in general, and this year's in particular? The national and international interest created by a closely contested and highly charged election tends to get people talking about it, and people like to know what they're talking about (or at least seem to ;-). If the media picked up on the quality of our articles relating to the election, we could harness this interest to bring more readers, editors and content. I personally consider this a great way to combine making Wikipedia better with making the election more interesting, and thus meaningful for people, not to mention the importance of neutral information regarding politics. Here are some things we could do:

  • Create a WikiPortal for this year's election, to provide a nice interface to finding out more
  • Create custom articles for comparison of candidates, platforms, manifestos, etc. using templates.
  • Increase coverage of the developments as the election takes place.
  • Organise and promote election-night coverage (emphasise speed, etc)

Any comments?

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a news outlet. --Carnildo 23:25, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but being a rapidly-updated encyclopedia is still an excellent aspiration. I'm not sure about creating custom comparison articles etc., but if people are interested in updating our UK-election-related articles as events unfold, then that sounds like a good idea to me. — Matt Crypto 02:30, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If there is substantial interest in doing so, by all means. But please specify WikiProject U.K. General Election 2005, or the like to avoid confusion. - BanyanTree 13:27, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Pokémerge

Please contribute to Wikipedia:Poképrosal, a proposal on merging stubs on individual Pokemon characters into comprehensive lists.

Has anyone started an independent wikipedia community board?

The discussion needs of wikipedia are abundant - this edit page format is ungainly in its extra technical barrier to newbies and also slow loading. A php forum site would spurn not only useful discussion but would immeasureably help other members introduce themselves as chit chat would be encouraged. I can understand if the community wouldn't want policy discussion divided across sites, but how about just an explicitly limited chit chat function? Has it been done? Well if not I'll volunteer to buy the ___domain and setup the board. Is there any interest?

Lotsofissues 13:09, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

another interesting idea is to introduce a real-time chat function to further interpersonal discussion on wiki topiks MethodicEvolution 10:31, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
You might want to check out Wikipedia:Mailing lists and Wikipedia:IRC. Be warned, though--that mailing list is very active. Meelar (talk) 13:19, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
Cool there are other options. But I crave for that phpbb style community - does anyone share my sentiments? Lotsofissues 15:48, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If you don't like the deluge of mail, you can read the WP mailing lists in web-forum format or via NNTP at the incredibly useful gmane.org. (I don't think a web-forum format exists that comes close to modern NNTP clients in terms of user-friendliness, speed, and features, but I digress.) jdb ❋ (talk) 19:19, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That would be useful, but talk pages do most of that. Howabout1 18:41, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Lotsofissues.... Ideally, the talk pages should be converted into a forum format (or at least co-linked to forums). But, since the wiki software evolves slowly, a forum site would be nice. It would have to be well-advertized on wikipedia to be of any use, though. Since there already exists mailing lists and IRC for people who prefer those formats, there is definite precidence for this. I think we need a Wikiproject Forums! - Pioneer-12 01:25, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Custom already seems to dictate that we treat talk pages like discussion boards (don't edit others' comments, etc.). It would be all the better if the Mediawiki software could turn them into real discussion boards, with support for inline wiki syntax in messages. It could perform archiving automatically, and maybe even allow for summarizations of threads to be inserted. I would find such features a welcome relief, but it'd be a hell of a project to add it all. Deco 02:11, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Deco and Pioneer-12, you be interested in the comments by r3mot and Tony Sideway above under the heading Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Discussion_Pages_-_Bring_Modern_Interface, which discuss the advantages of the wiki-style approach. jdb ❋ (talk) 05:08, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Somebody could create a Yahoogroup for Wikipedia discussion, but there would probably be disagreement as to who could moderate it. RickK 23:38, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Template:Disambig and Image:Disambig.png

 

Halló! I spend a lot of time that most of the disambiguation templates listed at de:Bild Diskussion:Logo Begriffsklärung.png#Vorlagen - Templates should use commons:Image:Disambig.png. The image should give an indication about the nature of the page and avoid linking between "normal" articles and disambiguation pages. I would be very happy if en: would use one of the images listed in that page. 75% of the 60 listed templates using such an image you can find also ja:Template:Aimai, ka:თარგი:არაორაზროვნება, vi:Template:Trang định hướng etc. Best regards Gangleri | Th | T 06:17, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC)

I like the image. I support. (though I do feel it could do with a nice drop shadow ;) —Sean κ. ⇔ 16:46, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I like the idea of an image; the suggestion is pretty, but why does it show one through route and two dead ends? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:13, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I guess because the red route is the one you go down to find the article you were looking for when you arrived at the disambiguation page, and the blue ones represent other links that were presented to you but were not what you were looking for. I also like the idea of having this, and it can be easily slotted in at the side of the {{disambig}} template. I've always thought it looked nice in the German version. — Trilobite (Talk) 17:35, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I also like it, and would put it in the template immediately. But weren't most of these "decoration" images removed to ease the pressure on the image server? What's the latest on that? -- grm_wnr Esc 22:45, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Maybe, but this image is so simple it can surely be compressed to 1K. —Sean κ. ⇔ 22:55, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The original can't be compressed more, but I could do a much better job of compressing the reduced image used in the templates. 211 bytes:
File:40px-Disambig-1bit.png
Of course, this does nothing about the extra server load from having to send out an additional file for each disambig page. --Carnildo 03:34, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
A disambiguation page icon. What a wonderful idea! Disambig pages are probably the most common special page type on Wikipedia. If any pages deserve "decoration images" (and we have about a thousand of them for stubs now), then disambiguation pages do. Looks pretty, and affirms to the reader that this page is of a special type. Bravo! And the basic "divergent paths" metaphor is excellent. (Someone can add a drop shadow or such if they want.) As for server pressure, not only is this image small, but its reuse (and thus caching by browsers) will mean almost no drain on the server at all. By comparison, a single large image on a popular page can cause a substantial strain on the servers. - Pioneer-12 23:37, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think its great, can you make the background trasparent? --Cool Cat My Talk 11:18, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It looks rather similar to File:LOGO USB.png the USB logo. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 23:42, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I like the image, but until the image server overload problem is resolved it shouldn't be added to such a massively-used template. violet/riga (t) 11:25, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The idea is to have also a second icon mirrored verticaly for "RTL" wiki's as ar:, fa:, he:, yi: and possibly some others. BTW: There are three icons at commons: to "emulate" a reditect:
  1. Image:Redirect arrow.png
  2. Image:Redirect arrow rtl.png
  3. Image:Redirect arrow rtl without text.png
All are made by commons:User:Get It. (See usage at ar:, hi:, he: etc.) Best regards Gangleri | Th | T 16:38, 2005 Apr 24 (UTC)
Sorry; I think it's a great idea, but an unfortunate image. If there's any interest, I will work to put out something better -- talk or email me. But as it stands, it's ugly and, as mentioned, conflicts with USB.
I agree that now is not the time to drop this into en:WP. Jamesday says new servers are on the way, and this is just the sort of thing we should use to eat up the new bandwidth. — Xiong熊talk 05:57, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)

When we get new servers, can we have a contest to design the new icon? It's always so much fun. —Sean κ. ⇔ 03:41, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think we can live without these purely decorative icons. Either we stop the trend right now, or we'll be buried alive by them someday. -- Toytoy 02:22, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
Lewis: He's not breathing Sir, but I can't determine the cause of death.
Morse: Well that's for the coroner to decide... but I strongly suspect, that what we have here, Lewis, is an icon related death.
Lewis: Icons Sir?
Morse: Yes Lewis, icons... innocent enough little creatures on their own, but you have to keep an eye on them. Left to their own devices they can turn feral — and if they start congregating in large numbers the consequences can be fatal. From the look of bewilderment on this poor man's face, I'm quite sure we will find he was buried alive by icons.
Lewis: No point trying to resuscitate him then Sir.
Morse: No Lewis.
  ;-) -- Solipsist 07:48, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

USACOM

Hi, there is no English language post on USACOM. I've been following links from a Slate article (http://slate.msn.com/id/2117172/fr/rss/) and have come across a bunch of U.S. acronyms that I have know idea about.

USACOM is one, ATK is another. ATK kicked me off their site as I wrote this to ensure security, hence they scare me.

I'd love to see you guys post something on the above.


The DARPA entry is fantastic,"ARPA was its original name, then it was renamed DARPA (for Defense) in 1972, then back to ARPA in 1993, and then back to DARPA again on March 11, 1996."

Love the work that is done here.

ruz

Wikipedia:Wikiproject Graphical content problem

I couldnt think of a better name. The template may need improevement. --Cool Cat My Talk 11:17, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_censored — J3ff 12:25, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

WikiLifeGuide and WikiCivicActivator

I apologize in advance for the self-promotion, but I recently came up with a couple new wiki project ideas. Of course, I really don't know if these ideas are realistic or worthy of even becoming projects, but I just wanted to let everyone know about them and perhaps comment about them on their respective talk pages so I can either refine the proposals or decide that they're not worth pursuing. They are follows:

  • WikiLifeGuide — a project that attempts to harness all the How-to guides related to managing one's life that currently exist and maybe even many that don't exist at this time. Alternative names could include WikiLifeManual and WikiLife101. This will ultimately become the How to Do Everything in Your Life Guide. This proposal borrows from the now-deceased Know-How Wiki as well as the current proposal for HowDoesItWorkWiki.
  • WikiCivicActivator — a project that attempts to create a repository of all ongoing and past civic efforts and organization techniques used at all polity levels around the world related to progressive change. Alternative names could include WikiCivicMotivator and WikiActiveCommons. Unlike the Wikipedia, this project could also include theories and original research into ideas for new efforts and yet-to-be-tried techniques.

Thanks in advance for your comments. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 19:50, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You might get more comments at m:Proposals for new projects than here. Thryduulf 22:08, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
They're already referred to on the Proposals' talk page. I was concerned though that not enough eyes were hitting them over on Meta. I assume that most Wikipedians aren't even aware of Meta, for that matter. Thus, my "advertising" here. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 22:24, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The name WikiLife101 is too US-centric. I don't understand the second suggestion. r3m0t talk 23:48, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

I agree re: WikiLife101, which is one reason why I thought WikiLifeGuide sounded best (so far). Re: WikiCivicActivator, there are more in-depth descriptions for both these proposals if you follow the links to the Meta site. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 19:09, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Article rescue contest?

As per a discussion on IRC, there are plenty of people who vote keep on WP:VFD with the reasoning that there is the potential for an article to be encyclopedic—even Brilliant Prose—even though the article that currently exists there is in serious need of cleanup, and frankly, is usually downright awful. Then the VfD is closed, the article is kept, and nobody touches it ever again. (Disclosing biases: I am an eventualist, but an impatient one!) So I'd like to propose Wikipedia:Article rescue contest, to encourage people to actually put their money where their mouths are and do something when they say an article topic has potential. I'll even kick in for a WP coffeemug or something for the winner and do a writeup for the Signpost. Anyone else think this is a good idea? Come on over and help me get it started. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:01, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Maybe if we put more articles on a warning list (we already have the templates) instead of just jumping the gun to Vfd, less good articles would get on Vfd in the first place, and concerned people could spend their time improving the article instead of defending it on Vfd.
I like the idea of an targeted article improvement drive. I do have one minor concern... don't we have something like this already? There already is a "Collaboration of the Week". However, I don't see anything wrong with having multiple collaborations going on simultaneously. The more teamwork, the better. The more I think about it, the more I like this idea. - Pioneer-12 00:21, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
As mentioned on the page itself, I have borrowed liberally from the idea of Wikipedia:Danny's contest (which he doesn't seem to be running anymore), and yes, there's an article improvement drive, but this one is directly targeted in response to something that bothers me. I think there's enough of an editor pool to draw from who might consider this one interesting; we'll see, anyhow. One problem with VfDs is that while the tags exist rarely does anyone jump to save anything until it risks immediate deletion, and then once its continued existence is assured (for a while!) it's not urgent anymore. There are some articles that I think should definitely in theory exist, but need a complete rewrite to be worth existing; however, I also think that sometimes it's better to start afresh from nothing than to keep what's there. So this is a "put your money where your mouth is"; prove that it really should have been kept, and that someone really does think the article really is worth doing something to improve. Besides, I like sending things through the mail. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Great idea. We need to back off from the deletionist agenda -- and not into the far-left inclusionist, either. It's easy to vote either way, harder to actually work to improve something -- but that's what needs to be encouraged. — Xiong熊talk 05:24, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
Mindspillage, if you don't mind, I'll repeat what I wrote on your talk page: "What a great idea! I wish I thought of that..." [2] Zzyzx11 | Talk 05:27, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • We have an article improvement drive and a Collaboration of the Week, but these requires enormous waits and massive voting. The article you'd want to save would be deleted before it was even chosen. I'm all for a project to save VFD candidates. Mgm|(talk) 08:53, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

Ingredient Listings on food items

(Discussion was moved to Talk:Twix) —Sean κ. ⇔ 03:31, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Edit Counts next to names

I mainly reside in the new articles area where I find that nearly every single anon contribution either must be deleted/reformatted/wikied/blanked and redirected - or sent to potential copyright violations. This sorting/work is tedious and overwhelming because of volume and the few editors who seem to be doing this. The volume of anons is so overwhelming that there is no opportunity for me to regularly check the articles of those created by red-link registered users. Occassionally I do check and often find the same problems. If an edit count was included next to the names of all contributers in RC and new articles then I would have a good tool for discerning what work to check - we have limited eyes, we need to rely on these indicators.

Also - Another idea: What about granting admins the power to insert a red dot next to a name that has been warned for malicious vandalism? (hello, does this work? would be spared but sophmoric "David s a big farter!!!" clowns, unlikely to ever contribute anything of value, should be marked for quick examination after edits. Lotsofissues 07:33, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi. I like the second idea a lot. Perhaps you could put a feature request on SourgeForge (I don't know the link). As for the first: I doubt that will be possible, certainly at the moment. I'm not a developer (or a MediaWiki expert) but I understand that Kate's tool, which counts contributions, is not actually part of Mediawiki, but a sort of addon. I expect other users around here would get a little annoyed about judging people by edit count as well. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 18:40, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think they are both good ideas, but I agree with Smoddy on the second one. Howabout1 01:46, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd actually like to see if a certain user was recently blocked (not just warned) when checking Newpages and Recentchanges. It only takes extra time to search VIP and the block log. Mgm|(talk) 08:57, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

A "Featured Stub" section in the Community Portal

What do you think about that? - Stancel

It is oxymoronicMexaguil 00:02, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How is it oxymoronic? It would simply be a place where notable stubs could be shown so more people could improve them. - Stancel

Block compress errors

There are quite a few articles in the main namespace with block compression errors on them. Given that we don't want these pages at all (and particularly not when there might be articles to go instead) I think we could move them out of the main namespace (perhaps into a subpage of VfD?) and delete the redirects. This frees up the main namespace nicely. What do people think? Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 18:51, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What are block compress errors? What do these articles look like to us? Why don't we want those pages? Why do we need to free up the main namespace? r3m0t talk 22:19, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
  • Block compression is the method introduced in the latest version of MediaWiki to reduce the size of the database - older revisions (pre 1 December 2004?) have been compressed.
  • Unfortunately, articles that have been so compresed cannot presently be deteled. This is the error, and it should (will?) be fixed in the next version of the software.
  • Articles (or templates, etc) that have been voted for deletion but cannot be deleted at present should have the content replaced with the {{pending deletion}} template and protected against further edits.
  • I don't know why we need to free up the main namespace.
  • see also: Wikipedia:Deletion process Thryduulf 12:05, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Just to add to that, articles that are to be deleted often have their name appended with "(delete)". It's not really a problem because they are all listed in the deletion category and and not linked to from any article. Moving them out of the main namespace, while avoiding the (highly unlikely) possibility of them coming up as a random page, probably won't help much. The main problem arises when we need to merge the histories of two articles but can't because they are both block compressed – in that case it's dealt with as detailed at WP:RM. violet/riga (t) 12:14, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

wikiProject Ports

I would like to suggest the new wikiProject Ports. with infoboxes and categories and simply expand the whole subject. Since i find there is no article on the biggest port in the world: Port of Shangai The Article Port of Singapore is a good guidline to start but it would need to be expanded too.Mexaguil 23:59, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

biography problem/new tier proposal

having returned I am rather distraught. this idea is so "out there", that I was actually hoping for someone to explain to me why it is bad. I have given it some though and there are some potential drawbacks. I have come up with few of these and they are so trivial I can't recall them now. the least problematic and most beneficial would likely be the first thing I suggested, the idea of a Wiki-based biography project. I still do like the other two though. while there may be some ramifications, In the end I feel the Wiki community could definately benefit. Wiki is becoming such a popular sensation these days that it would likely advance the fields for all of human kind. the art idea, while probably least practical, would also likely have the most impact. the visual arts especially have been falling into the background of society. it would likely help at leas to build and expand a wikibook or wikiversity course on the arts. I will have to investigate. but the bio thing has some serious potential!! MethodicEvolution 04:44, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

below I have made two crazy proposals: a Wiki-project that is a compendium of biographies and also one that is geographical, including all kinds of useful population, demographic, seizmic, and whatever information about a ___location will be posted.

two individules have provided rebuttle, but niether appears to carry much weight. origionally, my proposal was for a biography project in order to expand on wikibiographies(Wikiraphies/Wikiographies)while at the same time taking some of the pressure off of Wikipedia. upon later consideration, I though a geographical or atlas type project sounds like it has some potential as well.

now, while I am making zainy proposals I figure I might as well add another. It would be interesting to have an entire opensourced compendium of art ect. and even artists (or links to their biographies) there could be visual and auditory bits and pieces as well as information. this sounds odd at first, I must say. espeically when various other mediaWiki projects already serve the purpouse. it just seems that if a whole tier were set aside for art, it would grow more then that subject does in this system. biographies, geographies, and maybe even art could be given some special attention while clearing space and navagational integrity for more scholastic material here in Wikipedia.

I realize that people naturally fear change, and that traditions and habits run deep here in the Wiki community. I am one of an apparent few who has conquered the fear of change and in fact prefer it these days. something new is quite often better then what came before. it seems at least possible that the wiki community and the system as a whole could benefit from and even be enriched by such a dramatic change. it is also possible that such a change could be absolutely detrimental, but I just can't see that too well.

in any case, such a change would inevitably require a great deal of effort and even skill on the part of wikians, namely the administrator class of us. this is another factor to take into consideration, but it may just be worth it. . .

again, I am open to refutations from as well as the support of my fellow wikians. for more detailed conversation, please contact me on my user talk page. otherwise, please free your speech here. . . MethodicEvolution 04:52, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)


I think a new wikimedia project should be implimented to house biographies. something akin to "wikiography" would suffice.

I have noticed that there are a great many biographies on wikipedia. in fact, when I press "random page" I have (believe it or not) never ever gotten anything other then biographies! I will assume this is due to a predominance of biographies here. now, I do think it is important for wikians to produce and post biographies, I just don't think it's appropriate for an encyclopedia to be dominated by them. . . it would be nice if they could all be nicely collected in a biography project. I may expand later on this proposal, but any other suggestions or remidies or even stark contradictions are quite welcome. . . (ME) (about 2 hours before his post. . .)

All general encyclopaedias I know of have lots of biographies. Wikipedia should be no different. Properly linked, a biographical article is a window on many other general articles, so broadening the reader's knowledge. Would this be the case if they were collected into 'Wikiography? Apwoolrich 07:24, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I do agree with this notion now that you mention it, but. . . as far as I can tell, this would indeed be the case if they were collected into a 'Wikiography'. it seems that links between wikimedia projects are not uncommon. I would even emphasize a collective attempt to interlink two such wikimedia projects. in fact, with the growth of projects such as 'Wikibooks' and it's sub-project 'Wikiversity,' and even 'Wiktionary' or is it 'Wikitionary', and others. . . I would emphasize an attempt to interlink all thiese things. MethodicEvolution 08:40, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC) (ME)

  • I don't see a particular problem. Normal encyclopedias have loads of bios too. Here, we can provide lists of related names and link them to organizations, years and companies. Breaking it out will only cause people to misplace more of their entries on the wrong project. Mgm|(talk) 09:04, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

yes, this was simply an idea. if it is the continued subject of widespread dispute and rejection, I will subdue. I would though like to clarify my position. I am in favor of biographies, but see the wiki system as a whole. I did an expreiment tonight and tested the frequency response of the random page link I indeed came to the linked article by way of some odd forces. I still contend though that a significant portion of the articles here are biographies and it would be nice to see them all collected into their own tier for growth and expantion. I am a major advocate of organizing information into more expandable, digestable, and navigatable patterns. I reject the notion of Wikipedia as a "normal" encyclopedia. it just seems to me that if one category such as biographies becomes predominant, then maybe it should branch off. also, in this way they would not only clutter this space less, but in their new home could expand into a more complete and diverse (and yet specific) project. it is likely in fact that such a project branch would grow extremely fast, allowing wiki-based biographies to grow even faster then they are here. I am simply suggesting that a collection of biographies may have more use as just that then as an addition to this. also, links between biographies and wiki articles could be maintained and any misplaced entries, much like those moved to the dictionary project, could be moved to the biography project. (I am very tired, nearly 3:00AM here) MethodicEvolution 09:55, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

in addintion, another interesting idea would be a geography project, or an atlas. a wikilas. . . though possibly a less notable proposalMethodicEvolution 09:59, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PD material request project

I have a set of National Geographic 112 Years CD-ROMs and another set of National Geographic Maps. They include many pre-1923 NG photographs and maps. These public ___domain materials can be very useful if I have time to upload them.

See, these images are useful.

No, I don't have to time to see if this picture is useful to that article. So can we create a request page that allows someone with a special demand ask for other people's help?

Let's say I need a picture on page 33 of Nature magazine of March 23, 1876 (I made this up), I'll post a request. Maybe someday someone can get me that information. -- Toytoy 15:02, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

Question: How are people going to know that they want a picture from a particular page of a particular magazine that, presumably, they don't have? Or do you mean they would request an image of, say, peasants and somebody with images could find one? Nickptar 19:02, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Just upload them. If they're useful for other language Wikipedias, consider uploading them to the Commons. Provide a good caption describing the source and context and let others worry about how to use them. If you don't have the time to do all this, tell other Wikipedians where they can buy this CD-ROM so they can help out. :-) Deco 23:30, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Let's say if you're doing research in a library, you may not be able to scan, and color photocopy can be too expensive, or your copy of the book/magazine is too damaged, you may need someone else to supply you that information.
If you are working on a historical project, you tell people you need a PD image of BLAH ... BLAH ... BLAH, possibly I'll look it up in my National Geographics CDs. Maybe someone else who has another PD data souce can do the research.
It took me more than 10 minutes to create and upload each of the above images. I cropped them, added contrast, redone the captions, ... . It is simply impossible that I upload a lot of them and see if anyone wants to use any of them. -- Toytoy 01:38, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Remove useless template icons

A week ago I proposed that we abolish personalized signatures. You hate it. Now I propose that we remove useless template icons.

Do we need so many templates? I guess most of them are needed. But do we need their icons? I guess not. These icons are bandwidth wasters. If you use a 33.6 kbps modem, you'll hate it. Even if you're using a T3 connection, I still don't think most of these icons would help you in anyway.

Wikipedia is supposed to be a reference site. It is not an artist's playground. So far I have seen icons possibly unrelated with the contents and many overformatted templates. What are we doing now? I suggest that we remove some icons and get rid of excess HTML tags. -- Toytoy 17:32, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

I think we can get rid of the Wikiquote, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, ... icons. Are they really useful? I don't think so. -- Toytoy 17:53, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure about the ones you listed, but I would be delighted to see the icons removed from the stub templates. - SimonP 18:25, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

See meta:Image_server_overload_2005-03 (images have been removed from the very common templates) and Wikipedia:Template standardisation. violet/riga (t) 18:30, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I like them.  :-) Can't you access the page with a different skin to not see them? - Omegatron 20:53, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid that's not relevant here. Stylesheets are applied after the page is loaded, at the client side. This has no influence on server load. (Assuming "skin" is done wholly by stylesheets, of course, correct me if I'm wrong.) JRM · Talk 21:03, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)
Oh, and also assuming browsers are too stupid not to load images if they see a "display:none" in the stylesheet they load before the page... That might be incorrect quite a bit sooner. JRM · Talk 21:06, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)
I personally like the Wikisource, etc. images. Makes those links easier to see, which is a good thing for other Wikimedia projects. --Golbez 23:31, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
I like these images. With a little exposure they become so familiar that you don't have to read the message, you just recognise it. They also help separate it; they say "this is about the article, not about the topic." Deco 23:32, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
They're very useful. Especialy stub icons because they tell you where the country is, fo example. Howabout1 00:35, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Icons can be helpful but they are not informative. I want high-resolution images of plants, animals, minerals, vehicles, tools, places, ... . These images are informative.
Some icons are not helpful. They are only decorative (most stub icons belong to this category). I think we can delete them all. Some icons are created for the icon's sake (see: Template talk:Libertarianism). This is ridiculous.
Many icons are useful one way or another. But it will be insane that you use them to replace texts. You may find it useful but a newbie will find the icons and jargons difficult to understand. This is not the average icon-loaden computer user interface (most of them are just ugly). In my opinion, remove them all. Use text. -- Toytoy 02:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
Let's start by using "subst:" when tagging stuff with stub templates. It'll lessen the server load, because it doesn't require to download the template on every visit. I guess some template icons can leave, especially in stub notices, but I find the ones in country articles particularly helpful. We need to find out when something is helpful and when it isn't. Besides a little artistic touch will only make wikipedia look better, and that can't be a bad thing. BTW, who uses 33.6 kbps modems these days? You'd have trouble with the regular pics in articles too. You could just shut them off in your browser. Mgm|(talk) 09:52, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

PLEASE MAKE UPLOADING IMAGES EASIER!

I don't want to have to save the pictures onto my computer to be able to upload them. They should be able to be uploaded from the internet. It's so much of a hassle to have to save images for articles on my computer and then have to delete them later on because they take up too much space. - Stancel April 28,2005 17:49 (UTC)

I can't think of any site that allows uploading of content that allows uploading directly from another website - to do so opens up all kinds of technical and intellectual property hassles, I'd think. --Golbez 22:11, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
Many sites, in fact, but not Wikipedia. If you want Wikipedia to be more efficient, it would make sense to let picture uploading be less of a hassle. - Stancel 28:48 Apr 28,2005 (UTC)
This is silly, because most pictures you acquire online are not under a suitable license anyway, and you should spend more time writing a description than it would take to download it. On the other hand it would be convenient for doing lots of fair use uploads such as album covers. Deco 23:24, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Agreed - should make it as hard as possible to upload unlicenced material. What would be nice is a "save as" function. Wikipedia insists on a useful name, but I don't want to have to manually change it just for one upload. -- Tomhab 00:05, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
A lot of our uploaded material comes from the Library of Congress and other sites which do allow reuse of their content which is in public ___domain. It is definitely a hassle to transfer such LoC content. Also, there are a number of other US government sites which have photographs taken by US Govt photographers. These photos are also public ___domain. Anyway, lots of software allows linked uploads. Gallery is a commonly used opensource program which allows you to grab images from a url into the gallery. Since I often upload files from my own website, I also see a number of sites which do allow me to just put a link from my site in the form and upload that way. --Sketchee 22:45, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

The thing I'd like improved about image uploading is to enable more than one image to be uploaded at one time. Thryduulf 20:26, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Like Wikimedia Commonplace? -guety is talking english bad 01:02, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Category capture at image load

I have been trying to populate the Category:U.S. history images (which was all but empty) and I was surprised to discover that the majority of images used in U.S. history articles had no category assigned to them at all. Thinking about it, I realized that there is no attempt whatever to get users to assign a category when the image is loaded.

Now granted, categorization is a can of worms not to be opened unwarily, but at least an initial gross categorization would seem reasonable and useful to grab at image load time. What I would propose is that the top level categories on the Wikipedia:List_of_images page be presented on the Special:Upload page either as checkboxes (so that multiple categories could be chosen) or, if space is an issue, a dropdown list from which one category could be selected.

Though this would hardly provide a complete solution to the image categoriztion problem, it would at least seem to make a starting point from which more specific categorization could proceed. It has to be a better method than looking for uncategorized images in every articles in a given area and adding cats one by one.

Of course, there is a very low tech solution-- using text in the instructions, something like:

Please include at least one of the following, as appropriate in the Summary text below
[[Category:Architecture]] [[Category:Art]] [[Category:Biology]] [[Category:Flags]] [[Category:History]] [[Category:Logos]] [[Category:Food and drink]] [[Category:Mathematics]] [[Category:Movies]] [[Category:Music]] [[Category:Nature]] [[Category:Objects]] [[Category:People]] [[Category:Places]] [[Category:Stereotypes]] [[Category:Transportation]]

but I think far more users would ignore the request, and/or screw up adding the text (omitting brackets, typos, etc., etc.,) so that the automated process would be worthwhile. -- Mwanner 22:28, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

  • Be careful not to categorize images in article categories. If you do categorize images make sure the word images is in its name. Mgm|(talk) 09:56, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
    • Good point. And in looking around a bit, it appears that image categorization barely exists-- there is no highest-level category for images in culture, e.g., and although there exist categories for images of art and images of clothing, none exist for images of dance or images of architecture (there is a cat for images of buildings, but none for images of churches).
Either my proposal is premature, or a lot of ground work would need to be done building image category hierarchies before it could be undertaken. Anyone see the effort as worthwhile, or should I just keep toiling away in my chosen corner? Mwanner 16:15, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
I think image categories are very worthwhile. I belive they are properly instituted on commons:. As there is significant preference to have free images on the commons, it seems unlikely that image categorisation will take off in a big way over here. Nevertheless, I would by no means oppose you if you tried. Indeed, I would probably come and help... Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 16:25, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I wish I could be as sanguine about the state of categories in Commons, or even the likelihood that most images will end up there any time soon. Though Commons is all of, what, seven months old? we have situations there like the one in Commons:Category:History where subcategories of Commons:Category:History by country and Commons:Category:History by nation both exist, and both are in use. At the same high level are Commons:Category:Battles and Commons:Category:Revolutions which, I would suggest, ought to be subcategories of individual country categories.
The more I puzzle over it, the more inclined I am just to keep working away in one small corner. With a little luck, other people will adopt other little corners and in no time at all... (well, it could happen) -- Mwanner 18:06, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Always fill the summary field

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Always fill the summary field. is Wikipedia policy.

My proposal is that something be done to help decrease the number of edits with a blank summary field. The obvious idea is to not accept a change with a blank summary field. I have my doubts about that, but I suggest that one letter summaries might be a clue that the edit itself is suspect, while a blank summary is now so common it is useless for that. Second idea is a plea to please please put something in the summary. A third idea is ten one word check boxes (revert, spelling, minor, etc) to make checking a box as easy as a one character entry into the sumary field. I'm sure others have equally good ideas. 4.250.132.28 04:56, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Would it be possible to automatically detect a blank summary field and add characters from the edit? Where there are multiple edits, it could prioritise the first human readable change. Just a thought. Bobblewik  (talk) 15:52, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That would be a great idea. I often forget to fill out summary fields. - Omegatron 23:11, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)
Adding code to the software to do this has been suggested several times before, but it was always rejected on the (quite reasonable) grounds that people who can't be bothered to leave a decent edit summary will just put random crap in if we force them to do something. In general, there aren't technical solutions to sociological misbehaviours. I suppose Omegatron's forgetfulness is one reasonable reason to implement this (there are technical solutions to honest mistakes), but don't expect a golden arcadia of well-written edit summaries. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 23:23, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
On a related note, I think I will create a Village pump (perennial proposals) section for things like this which come up often. (I suggested it a while back, too.) jdb ❋ (talk) 00:17, 1 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

Chinese Character Wikipedia.en Area

Working Title: EnHanPedia ? Wiki HanEn? HanEnWiktionarypedia?

The tone of a big wiki chinese word project for en or de or fr readers should take a very fun tone. I think a nice idea is to key to Peng's Chinese Treasury published by Heian out of Singapore to get the idea of it. It just has to be fun, 'cos that's what they are. Fun. I could certainly be a permanent member of a committee to continue writing this material. There should be some kind of sandbox-like area to allow the initial ridiculous sounding material to be viewed by all of wiki. I don't know myself how that would work. There is just so much anecdotal support evidence to create the bases of understanding involved, and these words are always talked about in terms of "I think this one might look like..." or "Does this one look the same to you..." or "I don't think you see what I see." That last one is a quote from Soulside of Dischord Records. There is usually some amount of liberality involved in actually getting to these books, and in my experience romance and moderate amounts of beer or wine have been involved, along with coffee, and even tobacco products, for those who occasionally smoke. Romance in my estimation is a usual upcrop of getting involved in Asian words. It is fun, in other words, and it engenders other fun activities. And under this fun umbrella is it only possible to get to the serious political issues involved, including various characterizational differences between Confucianism and Western religios attitude, and any other hot pepper that might present itself during the course of the fun. There is a lot of back and forth involved, between Ming vases and Conan O'Brien, between Stonehenge and Sailor Moon. It is so interesting. One develops an emotional ability one didn't have before, like learning how to eat peppers, or like guitar players have calluses. The course of thought trends to the group and it trends to the individual. The greatest bug bear is cliche, and realizing how much cliche is involved in our thoughts. One naturally develops a comical attitude to such constructs, and ends up talking and thinking more like Bob Dylan and stand-up comedians than one did before one started. Europe becomes one giant interesting yet newly homogenous place.

If I could offer one suggestion it would be to write En Han material and to forego theorizing, as a time-sink issue. That would be the reason to have a sandboxy place to put the incredibly varied Wikis that would be written about HanEn.

This project direction seems to me to be a central WikiObjective. I hope each and every single one gets in touch with this material. A man named Wu once said that each one is like a friendly face.

I sign off anonymously as I still have computer cookie issues.McDogm--152.163.100.66 07:56, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Despite your hundreds of words above, and as a reader who doesn't speak Chinese, I still have no idea of what you're proposing. Could you tell me in just a few tens of words? What is En Han? Thanks - Adrian Pingstone 08:06, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
En -> English; Han -> Chinese (Hanzi). I know this proposal is truly fun, asbolutely fun and endlessly fun. But I know nothing else about it. :( -- Toytoy 11:06, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Get your votes in now!

Final two days of the vote on Wikipedia:Template standardisation. Ends 23:59 on 01MAY05. Noisy | Talk 12:34, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

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