Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 23

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (idea lab). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Question redirects

What about a supplemental set of redirects, which are questions, and which point to the answer in the encyclopedia? The question redirects could be prefixed with "Q:" or something. Such a system could be worked on by editors and bots. Thoughts, more ideas?The Transhumanist 21:06, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

A bot could be created to capture questions asked for which we don't yet have a Q:redirect for, and place it on a backlog list of such question redirects to consider. The Transhumanist 21:10, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Your suggestion to harvest questions is a good one, and many variations on the idea have been suggested before. When I first started working on search I thought it’d be great to harvest any query that gets no results, too. A couple of things stand in the way. General queries that get no results tend to be pretty low quality. I actually researched that and did a write up on it: Top Unsuccessful Search Queries. Questions without redirects are a different class, but I wouldn’t expect a ton of great stuff there either. I could be wrong, and I’d look into it, except that there’s a much more important issue, also addressed at the link above: privacy. There doesn’t seem to be any good method that guarantees the privacy of users. People accidentally search for all sorts of private info. It doesn’t happen at a high rate, but with millions of users, it happens a lot. Requiring a high frequency of queries or a large number of IPs to have made the search all fail to filter out personally identifiable info. TJones (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

• I agree, if we end up with all the "agents" belonging to multinationals, humankind's status will be at risk.
• I further agree that a lot of the technology is available. These are problems I have been thinking about since about 1972/3 and while they are by no means trivial, the apparatus is there.
• I don't have significant time to devote to this now - the years I was intending to spend on similar Wiki problems were unfortunately disrupted.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:19, 27 March 2017 (UTC).

(Though the "stock questions and stock answers" machine has already been made by a company in Cambridge.) All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:21, 27 March 2017 (UTC).

I tried out some questions in the search box...

"Who is John Wayne?" returned John Wayne at the top of the search results. Why shouldn't this be reprogrammed to go straight to the article instead, and save the reader a point and click?

What is the meaning of life? actually points somewhere. :) Unfortunately, it is just a reasking of the question, rather than an answer. But at least it gets you to the right page.

Who killed Abraham Lincoln? returns Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter at the top of the list.

How far is it to Washington D.C.? gets Save Outdoor Sculpture! as the top result.

The search box currently isn't very good at answering questions, but it answered two of the questions above correctly! Maybe this warrants more testing. The other two may indicate another way to generate semi-random links. :) The Transhumanist 22:05, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Has anyone working on this talked to the researchers at OCLC about their QuestionPoint product? It does a lot of this already and connects to a real librarian via chat or email (library decides format) when there isn't a stock answer. TeriEmbrey (talk) 14:50, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Of the four questions you give, one is not answerable by a simple redirect, one already redirects somewhere useful, and two give search results that provide the answer: while Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is the top search result for "who killed abraham lincoln", Abraham Lincoln is the second result and assassination of Abraham Lincoln the fourth.

More generally, I would like to know more about how this proposal could work. Obviously it would be impractical to create redirects for every conceivable question that is answered by any of our articles. Does wikipedia collect statistics on what the most common search terms are? If it did, could we parse those to find questions? Probably not accurately without a lot of work. How else could we do this? Leave it up to editors' judgements? Is there anything stopping editors creating these kinds of redirects already if they think they are useful? Clearly some of these kind of redirects already exist: see What is the meaning of life?

Alternatively, we could create a set of automatic redirects for a limited subset of possible questions: say, any search in the form "Who is foo?" which doesn't itself exist as an article could automatically redirect for the article for foo. But I can think of only two ways of doing this: 1) use a bot to automatically create these redirects, which would leave us with millions of redirects, many likely to be totally unused, all of which would require editorial maintenance, or 2) patch the search software, which would require persuading a developer that this would be sufficiently useful to be worth development time – and I am not sure that it is... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:55, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

"Is there anything stopping editors creating these kinds of redirects already if they think they are useful?" Yes. The type is not included at WP:POFR, and they get targeted for deletion via WP:RFD, or speedy deleted. It would take a proposal, which is why we're banging the idea around here first. The Transhumanist 22:57, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

The sole work on this that I know of is this very discussion. Thanks for the QuestionPoint link. I had never heard of that. The Transhumanist 23:00, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

"Does wikipedia collect statistics on what the most common search terms are?" I don't know. I've posted your question over at WP:VPT, so we will soon find out. The Transhumanist 23:08, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

See:

http://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T115085

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-July/084745.html

The Transhumanist 00:57, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

"How else could we do this?" Perhaps with WikiBrain? See its homepage on Github The Transhumanist 23:12, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

What is the meaning of life? only exists because it is the topic of an article section. Likewise, Who am I? is the title of many works, and has a disambiguation page. I was thinking that questions would be prefaced with "Q:", in order to avoid clashing with article titles. The Transhumanist 23:17, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto: Concerning automatic "redirects", that would most likely be a search engine function. The Transhumanist 23:20, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

“Does wikipedia collect statistics on what the most common search terms are?” The WMF doesn’t but we could. I spend a lot of time looking at queries (usually ones that don’t get results, but sometimes successful ones, too). I don’t usually look at individual terms within a query, but I do look at whole queries. Detecting questions doesn’t have to be too smart, since most queries ending in question marks look like questions (see my analysis below).

I agree that the right approach is to look for patterns in queries, like “Who is X?”, “How tall is X?” “Who is the X of Y?” and others. The problem is that big NLP projects like that take a lot of work, and you have to do it for each language individually. It’s not something we would never consider, but given the frequency of questions and the language-specific nature of the work, it’s definitely not a priority right now—and wasn’t when I looked at question marks in search. TJones (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I’m happy you searched on Who is John Wayne? and it worked—I did some work to make that better! Originally, ? was treated as a wildcard, and required wayne to have another letter at the end of it—which is disastrous for giving good results. You can search who is john wayne\? to see what the results would have been before. “Wayne’s World” (redirect from “Waynes World”—there’s that extra letter) is the top result, which is awful.

One of the great things about this fix was that it works for a lot of languages. I did an analysis of Dropping Final Question Marks in the Top 10 Wikipedias before we decided to implement it.

Also in that analysis, I was able to get info on the prevalence of trailing question marks (indicative of a possible question). There were only 289 in a corpus of 100,000 for English—so it happens, but not at huge rates. (Though as before, with huge numbers of users, it still happens a lot—which is why I worked on the fix that I did.) TJones (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Creating a set of redirects is a kludge. It would be better to improve the search engine, which is clearly possible: if I type the first three questions into a very popular search engine, an appropriate Wikipedia page is either the first answer or among the top three results. The last question doesn't seem to be suited to an encyclopedia, but the search engine answers it quite effectively. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:34, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

But how is the search engine doing it? With a table of redirects? Regex parsing? Something else? The Transhumanist 00:20, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

The search engine uses the redirects and keyword searches of title and content. This is not always fantastic, especially when the search includes a mis-spelling: the engine will prioritise articles with redirects from the mis-spelling, rather than synonymise the word. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:29, 29 March 2017 (UTC).

What's the search engine and extensions used for Wikipedia? The Transhumanist 00:59, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses mw:Extension:CirrusSearch. Special:Version has a list of installed extensions at the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:00, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

While search engine intelligence is great, redirects are a Chinese room type of AI. Clearly there are context issues which could not be covered well by such a mechanism "Who did John Smith marry?" would do better to redirect the disambiguation page than to any section on any article about a John Smith. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:27, 29 March 2017 (UTC).

Theoretically, Wikidata is just great for this. There is one tool ask (which probably isn't finished), which can answer to some questions. And with SPARQL queries you can query for many things, like distance between Kanzas City and Washington. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:57, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

If my Firefox can pass a search argument to Google Search, I don't see why Wikipedia couldn't do the same with site:en.wiki.x.io appended. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:26, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia/WMF could. It's not technically difficult, and some other Wikipedias make the option available, like French Wikipedia. The reason we don't is that we put a very high value on privacy. If Google got your query and your IP, they could do something with it, even if it is only to archive it. The WMF holds on to queries for a short while (long enough for me to take samples and do analysis—see above) but not forever. TJones (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Question redirects in general are a disservice to our readers because it conditions them to search in an unfeasible manner. Even one question redirect for every topic we cover (not just page titles, think existing redirects and sections as well) would be insurmountable and inadequate, and that's before we get in to the matter of different ways to phrase questions. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 04:45, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Hah, that's exactly the right link! TJones (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

This very issue has come up at redirects for discussion at least twice that I'm aware of (here and here in August 2015, tested again here in November 2016). I am of the opinion that question-title pages which redirect the asker to relevant information are useful, as evidenced by a search for When is Christmas? which returns a page telling the reader the date on which Christmas occurs in various religious traditions. Compare search results for When is Chanukah? - the search results aren't useless, but they could be better. Godsy and I are of opposite minds on this issue, but the discussions have invariably ended in no consensus. If the search engine can be improved to better parse these queries and return useful information, of course that's an improvement over redirection. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 20:21, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

References

Reducing one line pages

There are a lot of one line small pages, which do not add any value to wikipedia. I would like to propose to develop a mechanism to either merge them or delete them. They can be converted to redirects to relevant topics, till there is enough content to qualify a separate article. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 07:30, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Stub, Wikipedia:Substub and Wikipedia:Permastub. Such a mechanism already exists for redirecting/deletion, as with any other article and very short pages can be monitored. But we need to assess each stub case-by-case and follow best practice before removing content to make sure we don't unnecessarily remove articles with potential. After reading those guidelines and essays, are there any specific changes you might propose? Fences&Windows 17:16, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I like to drop a word with their creators to ask them to write more. People that make these are part of the Wikipedia:WikiFauna, the CreatorElf. If the page is truly useless, without potential, and no one cares, add a prod to it, to drop it from the system. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Universal Search Box

Hi all,

I'm a multi-language Wikipedia user (mainly English, Persian, Arabic, and German) and I do a lot of searches in Wikipedia. The thing is that I have to switch between different Wikis when I change language. This is redundant and tedious for me and I would like to have a functionality where I can "turn on" different languages and have results from those wikis when I search. I raised the issue here: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse#Searching_in_multiple_Wikipedias_simultaneously in Tea House and was told that it does not exist. I was also told that it wouldn't hurt to raise the subject with you guys other than being laughed at ;D.

Would love to have your feedback.

Cheers Alireza1357 (talk) 08:09, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

@Alireza1357: There is an ancient phabricator task at phab:T3837. As we can presently activate "multi-project" search (I don't know if that's used here or not off the cuff), I expect that you will be able to multi-language search sooner-rather-than later. But no, you cannot do this at present. --Izno (talk) 12:19, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Alireza1357: - we have an update coming soon to all wikis that will display additional information for each search result returned, to include the languages that are available to read that article in. You can read more on our A/B testing page and our self-guided testing page would be a wonderful read for you too. Basically, by enabling a small change to your common.js file (once you've logged in), you can see these 'explore similar' results right now. We're working on setting up the actual A/B tests for the explore similar feature now, and would love to hear your feedback on what we've got accomplished so far. It's not exactly what you've asked for in your posting, but we hope that it'll help you out regardless. Cheers, DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks @Izno: and @DTankersley (WMF): Looking at the material you provided, it seems to me that the project is heading in the direction where such or similar functionality will be included. But what I was looking for is (IMHO) simpler and a little bit different than what is there right now. Do you think it is worth further exploration? Has it a chance to be accepted and implemented? Do I need to further clarify what I had in mind? Thanks in advance Alireza1357 (talk) 08:18, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

LTA KnowledgeBase follow-up

@There'sNoTime and Samwalton9: There was a bit of delay, but as per the closing statement, the proposal for an LTA KnowledgeBase has been accepted by the community, and the closers have indicated a few things to resolve before we move forward. Now might be a good time to plan how we're going to set up the discussion that'll hammer those "finer details" out. The two questions (in summary) are: 1) what are we going to do with the existing LTA material, and 2) who should have access to the LTA KnowledgeBase?

The closers indicated that the first question may not require a formal, structured RfC to discuss, as most were in agreement that existing LTA reports were to remain on-wiki, and that "generic information" will continue to be provided on-wiki regarding reports in the KnowledgeBase. Just to throw an idea out, this information could perhaps be a list of usernames of sockmasters and their SPIs.

According to the closing statement, the second question likely requires a more thorough discussion. Here are a few ideas for the required experience level to have access to the KnowledgeBase that were thrown out in the first RfC, from most restrictive to least restrictive:

• Option A: "somewhere between that of NPP and OTRS, requiring sufficient time and experience working on anti-vandalism work" - from the original proposal
• Option B: "anyone with any of the various admin-granted user rights (rollback, reviewer, autopatrol etc)" - from Hut 8.5
• Option C: "extended confirmed" (500 edits, 30 days account registration) - various people suggested this one
• Option D: anyone who is generally "a good contributor" in the eyes of a tool admin - from my and Dat Guy's comments

The goal is to reduce the problem with WP:BEANS while maintaining a degree of transparency. I believe there was also some talk of separating the ability to view LTA pages and to edit them. I'm thinking we could have an RfC where editors can vote on these options. What do you all think? Mz7 (talk) 21:17, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

A couple notes:

1. It didn't end up in the close (Primefac drafted and I didn't care to move too far away from his fairly-reasonable draft), but I noted during my review that there were several editors who said "at least all admins", which I would guess no-one has an issue with. This is actually the most restrictive option I believe, if the RFC is anything to go by (there are more restrictive lists, but I think those are neither practical nor obviously supported in 'preliminary' RFC just-closed).
2. It did end up in the close, but you didn't mention it above: The privacy aspects of the data on the private database need to be sorted, and we kind of shoehorned that into the first bullet.
3. Also another set of comments that did not end up mentioned in the close but which immediately puzzled me--why is this a separate tool and not a simple (private) wiki being proposed?

In addition, I had a separate comment: There is a technical solution to the concern above providing "enough" information on-wiki while preserving some amount of consistency on the private wiki, and that is to mirror pages here (using a bot, probably) based on pages there which are dedicated to summarizing the LTA's activities. It was, however, explicit in the close that the current pages should be preserved, so perhaps some research into the depth of which the current pages go into might be a desirable activity prior to proposing this part of the RFC. You might consider broad classes of information as well as the depth of each class, and whether the BEANS implications are relevant to each class of information, each as a question or two in the RFC. --Izno (talk) 21:59, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

To be honest, given that Community Tech is going to be building some kind of harassment/LTA tool, I think we should put discussions about access level on hold until we see what it looks like and what content it holds. I'm sure the RfC we held will still usefully feed into that work. Sam Walton (talk) 22:32, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles to get a format like the standard scientific articles

I recommend to Wikipedia to give to each article a format similar to the scientific articles. For each Wikipedia article should be provided an Editorial Information just like it is the case for scientific articles. For example, when Imake a citation to an Wikipedia Article, I want just to write in this way: Wikipedia- bird, Wikipedia Publishing, 004567-263 (article code), 2017-05-16 (the date of last update from Wiki), 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tbaracu (talk • contribs) 12:25, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

On any article in main space there will be a group of tools on the left hand side. Look for "Cite this page" (probably the last-but-one tool) and click on it. You will see Bibliographic details and citations for the page in a selection of styles. For instance go to the page Text messaging, click on the tool and you can see that the appropriate Chicago style citation is:

Wikipedia contributors, "Text messaging," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Text_messaging&oldid=780667303 (accessed May 16, 2017)

Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

About creating CAS redirect pages of chemical substances

For example, 13160-06-0 redirects to 3-Pyridylnicotinamide. A chemical compound may have different names. It's easy to find whether one chemical exists in Wikipedia or not by typing CAS numbers. Moreover, when the name of a compound is complicated, CAS number will be a good way to search the compound. --Leiem (talk) 09:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Religions various time lines

 Religions  various  time lines -Could i suggest 

could i suggest and request a page that or pages that lists time lines for various religions , particularly say Judaism starting from say200BC or life of Abraham if he is indeed the starting point and progress gradually thorough to say year 1AD or 314 AD or even up to modern times. It sounds simple but i cannot find this information online . also a time line of the different religions that preceded Judaism would be nice also to help me and others understand what religions were actually practiced in the middle east prior to modern day monotheism , particularly say in the Saudi area and other middle eastern societies in times prior to Islam

hope this makes sense ,

yours gratefully simon from Australia — Preceding unsigned comment added by Simonsbd (talk • contribs) 22:45, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Simonsbd:

• Timeline of religion
• Timeline_of_Jainism
• Timeline of Buddhism
• Timeline of Jewish history
• Timeline of Christianity
• Timeline of Islamic history--S Philbrick(Talk) 22:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Only allowing administrators to edit policy pages in order to solve the problem of instruction creep

Would only allowing administrators to edit official policy pages help to solve the problem of instruction creep? Uncle dan is home (talk) 06:29, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

IMHO, yes; but should the question be asked at WT:Village pump (policy)? — Stanning (talk) 11:22, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

I'll take begging the question for $100, Alex.

Do our policy pages suffer from appreciable, significant, and harmful instruction creep?

Taking the first core policy that I can think of, WP:NPOV, is it really WP:CREEPy?

• The page has only seen five edits this year (2017). Two were the addition and removal of a nitwit April Fool's edit, two added a link to WP:RECENTISM to the list of 'Other resources' at the bottom of the page, and the last one added anchors for incoming shortcuts. None changed the body of the policy.
• Here's the diff of all changes made last year (calendar 2016): [1]. It's essentially all trivial wordsmithing and formatting, and not very much of it at that.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if you're seeing serious instruction creep on a 'policy' page, it's probably because...

• it deals with such narrow interests that very few editors will bother to watchlist (and maintain) the page;
• it deals with such trivial details that almost no one cares what the document actually says; or
• it's still in flux and probably shouldn't be tagged as a 'policy' in the first place.

Do you have a substantial number of particular examples that would demonstrate that this is really a widespread problem requiring a broad and draconian solution? I note that WP:NPOV muddles along just fine with semi-protection, and that only to keep a lid on vandalism. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:18, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not seeing what benefit this brings either. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:24, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Were you really thinking of policies (only), or of policies and guidelines and other pages that aren't technically either but might as well be? There are a few dozen policies, and they're pretty stable. There are hundreds of guidelines and thousands of similar-ish pages, and some of them change quite a lot. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: (since your "you" link is directed at me) – yes, I was thinking of policies only. I think that by this time WP should be mature enough to have policies which are near-enough fixed, so changing them should be exceptional and unusual, so the ability to make changes should be restricted to the higher ranks. You may say (and I might agree) that WP isn't mature yet, as evidenced by the amount of argumentdiscussion on the guideline talk pages, which is why I wouldn't yet fix the guideline pages in the same way. — Stanning (talk) 14:39, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

It won't work. The problem is real enough, but your proposed solution won't actually have any effect on it.

Your target is wrong (policies don't get changed very much right now, and they aren't a significant source of instruction creep anyway), and your solution is irrelevant (admins often have no special talent at writing policies – WP:Policy writing is hard, and admins are basically selected based on whether we expect them to get mad and block us or delete our favorite pages, not because they can construct a policy statement – and they've actually got more of an incentive to add to instruction creep to WP:GAME disputes than the average editor, because more rules/more specific rules makes it easier to prove the other guy wrong). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: FWIW, it's not "my target" or "my solution". Refer to the top of this thread: the OP was User:Uncle dan is home. I don't really have a dog in this fight so I'm retiring from this discussion. — Stanning (talk) 09:24, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sorry about that. That was sloppy of me. Please accept my apologies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks — Stanning (talk) 12:42, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

This would be the last thing we want...many old timers like me belive thoses that enforce policy should not be writing said policies. Many old timers like me think it's best that writers of P/Gs stay above the frey. Never a good idea to have police write laws. ...pls see User talk:Moxy#About becoming an administrator for what I think is best. --Moxy (talk) 20:37, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely not. This would itself be a dramatic bit of role-creep for admins; functionally, it would give them a special voice in setting, modifying, and wording policy that they don't currently have. More importantly, every current admin was selected without this in mind - they were evaluated based on their ability to adhere to policy, and their knowledge and understanding of it, rather than based on what policies they would prefer if they were among a select group empowered to make changes. Giving them any more voice than a normal user in setting policy would also have the practical effect of completely-politicizing RFA (more than it is already), and turning it into a constant referendum on what direction people want policy to go in. Finally, I would point out that as a practical matter this could easily accomplish the exact opposite of what you intend - yes, only admins could make changes, but that would also mean that only admins could revert changes, meaning that a dramatic expansion to a policy would require convincing fewer people. (Yes, I know, obviously the admins would consider the consensus on the page even among non-admins - but there's no avoiding the danger of it becoming a "supervote", since we wouldn't be able to rely on the hard limitations against modifying protected pages if we want policy to be something we can update at all. And, of course, if admins were flawless at evaluating consensus on the talk page and always perfectly reflected it, this suggestion would have no impact - you are implicitly assuming that they will put their "thumb on the scale", and even if we accepted that as desirable there is absolutely no reason to think they would always use that extra influence to oppose rather than promote instruction-creep.) --Aquillion (talk) 16:08, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikinews: Less Violence, more Knowledge / Science / Art

Dear All,

Lately an observation which was forming for some time now became too obvious to ignore: front page of wikipedia always shows me terror, murders, war etc. in the news section, with some sport news once in a while. I am an active reader and supporter (donor in Germany) of wikipedia. I owe much to it, and I think it is a great achievement of humanity.

Yet what kind of influence does it have to structure / filter world news like that? There is a lot happening in the world, which is both more positive and more relevant to people's lives. They can still find news about dangers in their regional newspapers. Every news site will bombard them with sad, violence-filled news for click-through rates. But why does wikipedia do it?

Regards, Ilya — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ikamenshchikov (talk • contribs) 09:08, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ikamenshchikov: Wikinews refers to a separate wiki with no relation to the "In the news" section (called ITN) at Main Page. Wikipedia:In the news shows some criteria and Wikipedia talk:In the news is the place for general discussion. Specific stories are nominated at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates where all users can comment. See also Wikipedia:In the news/Recurring items. ITN has many elections and other kinds of non-violent stories, and we do include some science stories that general news media wouldn't prioritise. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:50, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Archiving pages before deletion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I've started this thread, in part, to address a concern aired by GoldenRing at the Administrator's Noticeboard. The comment is as follows, with the relevant parts highlighted:

G4 is often tricky because the people tagging it usually don't have access to the previous version to assess whether or not the versions are substantially identical; when I'm working through CAT:CSD, I always find articles tagged G4 take more effort than many other criteria for this reason. I've also got a lot of sympathy for admins declining CSD in general; articles where CSD is declined can always be sent to AfD, while speedy-deleted articles are relatively difficult for ordinary editors to recover. TL;DR: If you think the reasons behind the previous consensus to delete still apply, nominate it at AfD. GoldenRing (talk) 13:01, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

As an editor with minimal experience in deletions, this is something I've wondered about. Admins are barely able to keep ahead of the requested deletions and other backlogs. Mistakes can and will happen. There needs to be some way for non-admins to find and fix those mistakes.

Here's an idea: Could a bot be used to archive all pages tagged for deletion, other than those that shouldn't appear anywhere (attack pages, copyright violations, etc)? Ideally, such a bot would archive a page after it's tagged, but before the page is added to the categories that alert administrators of pages needing their attention, to avoid suspicious 'sniping' deletions before archiving, be they unintentional or otherwise. This would help to allow non-admins to check whether pages really qualified for deletion, and potentially recover useful content, without having to bother admins with restoring copies of the pages. This could also help stave off any more perennial proposals to unbundle the tools or make admin rights easier to get.

To be clear, I'm suggesting that pages about to be deleted should be archived off-wiki, something that I couldn't find in the perennial proposals. Much of what is deleted is inappropriate for Wikipedia, but acceptable elsewhere on the internet. Once again, this automated archiving would exclude select, legally-actionable categories, such as attack pages and blatant copyright violations.

There are a few independent Wikis already attempting something like this, including Deletionpedia and the Speedy Deletion Wiki. Neither of them seem to be archiving all deleted pages in most deletion categories, which is what I'm suggesting. Specifics such as which bot and archive website to use can be hammered out in future discussions, if there's any support for this idea. ʍw 14:26, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Clarifying statement: I'm suggesting nearly all pages about to be deleted be archived, not just G4. My apologies for any confusion. ʍw 03:00, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Clarifying statement part II: I've struck the quote that's been misleading too many people. Please at least read everything above this point if you're going to respond. Thank you. ʍw 12:42, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Support. From time to time I've created an article with the same name as one that's been deleted. It's not always easy to find out even whether the subject is the same or another. It'd be very helpful to be able to see what the deleted page said. — Stanning (talk) 15:56, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
• Comment What if someone adds a promotional copyright violation (for instance), and it gets deleted as promotional without anyone ever realising a it was a copyright violation? Pppery 00:08, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Giving non-admins a way to view deleted content would make it more likely that such a copyright violation would be found and dealt with (eventually). Until then, frankly, it'd be the other website's problem. I'm sure archive.org (for example) has mechanisms in place to deal with what they consider to be copyright violations. Wikipedia takes a relatively hard-line attitude towards copyright, compared to other websites yet, as far as I know, even deleted copyright violations are kept, hidden somewhere in the WMF servers. (I'll add, that's a rather specific hypothetical situation.) ʍw 02:37, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose: I've always viewed G4 with the same suspicion: is this criteria intended for admins only, and the occasional editor who keeps local copies of articles he nominates for deletion (or has a memory like an elephant)? My answer is, yes. As the proposal notes, archiving deleted pages is a perennial proposal that has never been accepted, for very good reasons that I don't think the "off-wiki" solution remedies. To widen the scope of G4 we should perhaps change its wording from "sufficiently identical copies ... of a page deleted via its most recent deletion discussion" to "re-submissions of a page deleted via its most recent deletion discussion if the same deletion reason still applies". It is obvious that whatever the deletion reason, G4 can be presently bypassed by writing the exact same garbage but in completely different words. I can re-submit a non-notable/promotional/WPNOT entry with 100% of the words changed. No deletion reason – except for G4 (and copyright violations) – have to do with exact wording, because the verbatim content of the article rarely determines what it actually is and says. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:36, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Note that the idea (not proposal) is to archive nearly all pages put up for deletion, not just G4 (but an admin airing concerns similar to mine seemed like a good opportunity to start a discussion). According to the perennial proposals page, deletion improves Wikipedia by removing the worst parts. With this idea, the "worst parts" are still removed, but a few other things happen in the background during the deletion process. How could archiving such "worst parts" to somewhere else hurt Wikipedia? It would still be clear, to anyone searching for them, that they were removed from Wikipedia itself, while allowing for content to be salvaged, and allowing non-admins to find and fix admin mistakes (of which, I'm sure there's more than we realize). This should appeal to inclusionists who want to preserve content, and deletionists who want to keep Wikipedia free of inappropriate pages. ʍw 02:37, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

• Comment - Is there some reason why we can't simply give new page patrollers the ability to view deleted content? If deleted content is already in the database, I don't understand the value of making an off-site archive of it. - MrX 02:46, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

There's (old, stale) consensus against such a solution. Also, I'm suggesting we make use of an existing archive website, not start a new one. It's not the most elegant solution, but it should work. ʍw 03:00, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I guess I don't understand why there would be a consensus against a simple, obvious solution, but hope for consensus for a more complicated solution. By the way, you don't need permission or consensus to copy content from Wikipedia to an offsite archive.- MrX 03:15, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

The consensus is against unbundling the tools, which is what your idea sounds like. From previous incidents, it seems unwise to try anything even remotely involving Wikipedia on a large-scale without community input. I, alone, couldn't implement the idea, as it would require modifying deletion templates, and creating or modifying a bot working on-wiki to find pages tagged for deletion, copy them to an archive, then remove them from the old 'awaiting archival' category and add them to the 'awaiting deletion category. I'm not nearly technical enough to know how to accomplish all of that, though based on what we and other wikis already have bots doing, it seems very possible.

This idea is still in the embryonic stage, so if you can improve on it, please do. ʍw 03:26, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

If the objective is to determine if a new page is sufficiently similar to a page deleted via AfD, and if unbundling is off the table, I would suggest having an admin bot do the whole thing. A bot could compare titles between newly created pages and AfDed pages, and any that are an approximate match could be compared. Anything matching 90% or more would be tagged G4. I made a similar proposal at WT:NPR.- MrX 03:43, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

The goal is to preserve as many pages as possible, not just those relevant to G4, though your idea for a G4-specific bot (or bot task) seems a worthy goal itself. ʍw 04:12, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

There are sound reasons for restricting access to deleted revisions, which still stand today. Deleted pages (or deleted revisions) may contain personal information (added inadvertently or by vandals, stalkers, or doxxers), libellous material, or other generally 'sensitive' content to which it would not be appropriate to grant broad access. Dramatically expanding the pool of individuals who can dip into that content and disseminate it on- or off-wiki is likely to expose Wikipedia and the Foundation to substantial additional legal liability. Wikipedia:Viewing deleted content discusses this in more detail.

In principle one might partly ameliorate those problems by drastically expanding the pool of editors who can use the Oversight tool (and greatly broadening the situations where it would be used), but that approach would carry generate its own set of equally-serious headaches. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:00, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

If legally-actionable pages are tagged correctly (as copyright violations, attack pages, etc), they wouldn't be subject to archival, as noted above (bad tagging is a preexisting issue this idea is not meant to address). Any archived deleted pages would only be publicly-viewable on another website, deflecting some liability from the WMF (...I assume; in addition to not being a technical expert, I'm also not a legal expert). ʍw 04:13, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

"If...". That's a big "if". You'll recall that this whole thread started as an overreaction to a dispute over whether or not G4 CSD tags were being applied correctly. Expecting all admins to adopt and perfectly correctly apply an unnecessary set of new deletion tags and templates when they perform basic housekeeping tasks is not a plausible outcome. You can't just casually wave away the problem as something that you don't want to address.

And it's best that you not try to make legal judgements. If Wikipedia/WMF endorses and encourages the use of such a system – for example, by creating a policy and insisting we use a set of elaborate and unnecessary new deletion templates to manage publicly accessible archives of deleted-but-not-really-deleted pages – it doesn't matter where the no-longer-really-deleted pages are hosted. Your heart's in the right place, but this scheme isn't going to happen. It's too much work for too many people, and creates more – and more serious – problems than it might solve. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:06, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

First, this thread was not "started as an overreaction to a dispute over whether or not G4 CSD tags were being applied correctly", but I see the quoted comment at the top is misleading far too many people. I've struck the quote as unimportant.

The deletion templates would only have been modified to change the categories pages were added to, and not in any other obvious way. The real work would have been the bot, though I suspect an existing bot could do the task. I'm very, very concerned by the fact you seem to think that deleting taggers and admins are making lots of legally-actionalable mistakes, but we're hiding them well enough from average users that we don't need to do anything. If anything, your reasoning makes me think we need something like what I'm suggesting even more. A wise editor once said: "You can't just casually wave away the problem as something that you don't want to address." In a project like Wikipedia, sweeping the mistakes under the rug only creates more problems down the road. My solution might not be perfect, but I think it's on the right track, hence why we're in the idea lab. Do you have any constructive criticism to offer? I appreciate the comments nonetheless, as examples of the opposition I'd face if this were a real proposal. ʍw 12:42, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

It sounds like you don't quite understand the argument, here. The "legally-actionable mistake" would be archiving deleted pages in a publicly-accessible manner. Right now, it doesn't matter which CSD tag or template or categories were (or, more importantly, were not) applied to a page prior to its deletion—the page is deleted, hiding it from view and limiting our liability. Creating a system that automatically captures and reproduces about-to-be-deleted content would require (at least) a second layer of much riskier screening, where admins would not only have to determine whether or not a page was deleteable, but also additionally ensure that it was flagged with whatever extra tags would indicate that it contained copyright violations, libel, or just plain unencyclopedic stuff that it wouldn't be appropriate to republish.

Suppose, for instance, someone tags a page for CSD A7 (no assertion of importance). The hypothetical bot dutifully copies the article, preserving it in a publicly visible form and potentially drawing extra attention to it. An admin comes along, sees that there is indeed no assertion of notability, and deletes the page. But...the page also happens to contain some libel or a copyright infringement. It would have qualified for deletion under G10 (attack page) or G12 (copyright infringement), but the first person to tag the page happened to use the equally-applicable CSD A7 template instead, so the bot doesn't 'know' about the defamation or copy-pasting. Now we have a page of libel and copyright infringement preserved and enshrined at our request. Does that make the trouble clearer? (Heck, there's plenty of opportunity for abuse if someone wanted to game the system....)

Under the existing system, admins don't need to identify and log every criterion supporting deletion of a page, they just need to confirm that at least one criterion does apply and hit delete. Regardless of the templates applied to the article or the entry used in the deletion log, every deleted page is hidden from public view; we're (mostly) protected from liability. Under the proposed system, deleting admins would be responsible for identifying all the applicable deletion criteria and tagging or re-tagging the page to be deleted (hoping that the bot would pick up any changes and respond appropriately). If the deleting admin doesn't carefully (and correctly) screen every single page for legally- or otherwise-problematic content, then Wikimedia starts getting cease & desist letters. It's an extra level of potential liability and exposure that admins probably shouldn't have and almost certainly don't want.

As you say, you don't have a lot of experience with deletion; you would be well-served to spend some time working in the area to get a better feel for how the policies are applied in practice, and how the process works now, before suggesting major changes. Right now, the proposal seems to be a very elaborate solution to a poorly-elucidated problem. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:59, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I believe I understand your concern. Yet I feel you're basing your entire argument on an unlikely hypothetical situation, and I still feel the benefits of my idea (with some refinement) could outwiegh the risks. I knew bad tagging was an issue, but I didn't realize what a hole we'd dug ourselves into thanks to complacency over bad tagging and trigger-happy, heavy-handed deletions. If the system is in such bad shape, I'm not sure what's to be gained by studying it further, but I realize that in any other situation that'd be good advice, and it's certainly something I'll consider. I was hoping that by bringing this early concept to the idea lab, experienced editors would help fill in the blanks left by my inexperience (something I see you're trying to do, in your own way). It's funny, I agree with many of your arguments, but from the opposite perspective; "there's plenty of opportunity for abuse if someone wanted to game the system" - I couldn't agree more. ʍw 16:00, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

"I didn't realize what a hole we'd dug ourselves into thanks to complacency over bad tagging and trigger-happy, heavy-handed deletions. If the system is in such bad shape..." If that's what you read from my remarks, you've again missed the point entirely. The deletion system generally works quite well for its designed purpose—pages which do not contribute to our goal of building an encyclopedia get deleted; some of those pages might also expose us to legal liability (or just make us bad neighbors) if left up, and we're glad they're gone. None of what I said suggests a problem with "bad tagging" or "trigger-happy, heavy-handed deletions"; it seems like you're making stuff up.

You seem to be looking for something that was never intended to be part of the system: a carefully curated archive of unencyclopedic, deleted content. It's unsurprising that such a thing doesn't exist, since it doesn't help Wikipedia accomplish its goals. I won't waste more time on this thread, but I will oppose it both vociferously and successfully if you bring it to the community as a formal proposal. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:02, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The Issues

I came here to inform that the format of the pages in not very interesting. It is plain, with lines, and infested with words. Maybe a little color splash would work, eh? Or maybe a whole makeover would work, and you could make a Twin Version while rebuilding the site. The format is not attractive, and the site is not backed with media. I hope you change these things, it would surely help on such as great site! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2606:A000:43C2:4C00:4468:AE6D:C76A:F2C5 (talk) 00:45, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

You will need to elaborate with what you mean. Are you talking about color-coating Wikipedia, instead of the white background and black text, we would have sections of the page be red, blue, purple, etc? I don't know what you mean by "Twin version" either. Tutelary (talk) 15:19, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia; it was not designed with aesthetics in mind. If you want to change the way that Wikipedia looks to you, try changing your skin. --Joshualouie711^talk 14:14, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Logged-out users (such as the OP here) will have difficulty doing that. However, s/he might prefer the mobile site, which can be used on both desktop and mobile systems. You can either change the URL to start with "en.m.wiki.x.io" or click the link that says "Mobile view" at the very end of the page (the very last words, after the links to the privacy policy, etc.).

Regular editors should keep this comment in mind: Readers really do want pictures, diagrams, and even video. This is persistent, frequent request. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:12, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

'Talk' tabs

How about replacing the 'talk' tabs at the top of articles with one that says 'discuss' – ??

This thought came to me recently after a chat with a grocery store clerk who, noticing my Wikipedia T-shirt, told me what a great thing he thinks Wiki is and how much time he spends with us. In the ensuing conversation, I mentioned that the 'talk' tabs lead to 'talk' pages where, in the case of controversial topics or details that aren't fully documented, one can find arguments, questions, advice on sources, and so forth. This guy, who said he'd been reading Wiki for years, had never noticed the 'talk' tabs. (I've talked to others who've said the same.)

I suspect that many readers, if they do notice 'Talk,' just shrug their shoulders and move on. Perhaps if we changed the label to Discuss that would give them a better idea of what those pages are about, and more would be drawn in.

Comments?

Sca (talk) 22:20, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Previous discussion: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 84#Call talk pages "Talk" ʍw 23:18, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Thus endeth the discussion? Sca (talk) 00:11, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Mysterious Whisper (TMBG song reference?): When Sca raised the topic on my talk page, I replied with a summary of the past changes to the tab (including a link to that discussion and an earlier one) and suggested revisiting the matter here before proceeding with any sort of concrete proposal.

Rather than focusing solely on the idea of changing the tab label, I was thinking that the discussion could be framed in the broader context of improving talk pages' prominence and clarity of purpose. For example, one alternative approach might be to create a global edit notice for the article namespace (which would be stored at MediaWiki:Editnotice-0, I believe) containing a brief explanation of talk pages and how to access them. —David Levy 02:35, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Wow. I'd totally forgotten it used to be called "Discussion". Anyway, this proposal will not gain traction. But as for the clerk who never saw "talk", I too have noticed that even long term readers are completely unaware of the talk page. I think it's a symptom of people in general just being oblivious and clueless rather than a problem with the prominence of the talk page. The prominence is fine by me. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:40, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Canned edit summaries issue

When Wikipedia previews your edit on mobile, there is a text box with your edit summary. It has "example: Fixed typo, added content". This leads to over 400,000 actions on the edit filter, and that's just "Fixed typo", "added content", or two word edit summaries. There is and will be much more, including "content", "added facts", etc. The majority of these canned edit summaries are unconstructive edits. This misleads people, which is what I hate. So instead of making this problem worse, can someone change "Example: Fixed typo, added content" to "Describe your changes" or something? That is what it reads on visual editor: "Describe your changes". That is why there is (almost) no canned edit summary issues on Visual editor. Someone please make the mobile edit look that way. Wikipedia will look significantly better because of less misleading edit summaries. Is there anywhere else I can put these comments, too? What I suggested here will help Wikipedia look so much better. Examples

http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Thomas_M%C3%BCller&diff=783988446&oldid=783362248

http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Captain_Underpants&diff=784001544&oldid=783954424

http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=In_the_House_(TV_series)&diff=784067332&oldid=784029543

Wikipedia vandalism may still exist after these changes are made, but at least they don't have these edit summaries. No more "facts" "content" etc. 68.228.254.131 (talk) 06:18, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Admittedly, whenever I see the canned edit summary tag on my watchlist, I assume vandalism or at least cluelessnees, and thus some degree of cleanup required; and generally that proves true. I don't think these prefabs are doing much good other than giving vandals/CIPs an easy camouflage option. The above suggestion might be a sensible approach. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:04, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

On the other hand, some of these are obviously good edits with accurate edit summaries, e.g., [2][3][4]. I looked through ten just now, and a majority were constructive edits. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:27, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Greetings User:WhatamIdoing, Community Liaison for Wikimedia Foundation Product Development. As you're editing from your personal account, I'm sure your comments won't be influenced by any professional relationship you have with the WMF and its products. Do you believe the edits you looked at are a truly representative sample of the overall success rate for the canned edit summaries? As a liaison for product development, would you be able to provide more detailed statistics for much larger samples of edits using canned edit summaries? Thanks. ʍw 00:22, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, when I post from this account, I am speaking as a volunteer. I have never used this feature, and if the WMF has an official position on canned edit summaries, then I've never heard about it.

Looking at the ten most recent edits in Special:RecentChanges is never perfectly representative, and since I looked at the ten most recent hits on the abuse filter, it's even less representative. However, as a point of data, the IP said that "The majority of these canned edit summaries are unconstructive", and my own experience is "the majority are constructive" (although a sizable fraction have problems). Perhaps it was just an overstatement for dramatic effect? Perhaps the IP is looking at a different time of day/day of the week? Perhaps the IP is making this comment from memory, which is of course affected by saliency bias (in this case, that bad edits are easier to remember offhand than good edits)? Perhaps the IP isn't actually focused on mobile editing and the canned edit summary feature in Mobile Web at all, since the first diff given was done on a desktop system? I don't know; I only know that my spot-check of actual mobile edits that were probably using the canned edit summary feature indicated that the asserted factual basis might be shaky.

If you'd like better numbers, then you could send a request to the analytics mailing list. (This is reportedly the best method of getting data inquiries like that.) Before doing that, you'd need to decide what to compare against: the constructiveness of edits by IPs on desktop vs mobile web? IPs on mobile web that use edit summaries vs those that don't? Logged-in editors who use the built-in canned edit summaries on mobile web vs logged-in editors who use the canned edit summary gadget on desktop? If you want something to determine whether the canned edit summary accurately reflects the content of the edit, then I think you could train an mw:ORES dataset for that, but that's a lot of work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Seeing whether a page is on your watchlist in the thumbnail

It would be helpful to be able to see whether an article was on your watchlist without having to click it. Would it be possible to add a similar star to the thumbnail of articles so that you can see if the article is on your watchlist (and maybe even add it to your watchlist)? For example, I wanted to add all of the MPs elected in the UK 2017 general election by using the list of MPs elected, but had to click on each article in order to see whether it was on my watchlist and then add it. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 22:22, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

@Absolutelypuremilk:, Watchlist indication in navpops sounds interesting, I suggest you follow up at: Wikipedia talk:Tools/Navigation popups; as for what you wanted to do - the navpops, ACTION menu has un/watch list controls in it. You could just click watch on them all, the watchlist will automatically prevent duplicates. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:34, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, I will suggest it there. I'm not sure what the ACTION menu is, how do I find it? Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 07:27, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

@Absolutelypuremilk: see the image to the right (click to expand). — xaosflux ^Talk 17:42, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Watch dialog in popups.

…assuming that you're using WP:NAVPOPS (a local gadget) and not the "Page Previews" Beta Feature. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:48, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I was using the Page Previews feature, but I have now discovered the NAVPOPs feature, which is very helpful! Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 21:53, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

WikiSandy (Contextually Enhanced Search)

WikiSandy proposed project

Provide a Wikipedia search service that indexes Wikipedia data semantically, based on sentence structure; subject, subject complement, or direct object, etc. versus just key words. Recognize information that is not directly communicated by the author, by relating acronyms, abbreviations, and compound nouns to appropriate subject matter within an article. Results will be ordered and prioritized by the strength of the correlation of search term to the sentences returned. Results will provide full sentences where possible, with deep links to those sentences, making it possible for users to jump directly to those sentences of interest. Such a tool will improve the search experience within Wikipedia and increase the value of the Wikipedia data. Any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

See a demo at www.wikisandy.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandypondfarm (talk • contribs) 14:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Regards Thomas Cowley [[5]] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandypondfarm (talk • contribs) 13:57, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

An example might help. I don't have the first clue as to what this initiative would achieve.--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:27, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for asking

What’s unique about WikiSandy?

• WikiSandy is an en.wiki.x.io specific experimental search engine that indexes Wikipedia data semantically, based on sentence structure; subject, subject complement, or direct object, etc. versus just key words.

• It typically returns full sentences for the user to review.

• take Me there (tMt) links to sentences in the actual source articles allowing the user to jump directly to that sentence no matter where it is in the article!

• WikiSandy answers follow-up questions maintaining context. This means you can search for Abraham Lincoln, get results, and then ask, “What did he do?”, and get relevant results.

• Click aLike to view other documents with the same sentence discovered by WikiSandy. This shows you other articles on the same topic.

• Tell Me Something will bring you to random query results.

• Example Questions will give you some demo queries.

• View the User Guide for more details.

Please feel free to test drive http://www.wikisandy.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandypondfarm (talk • contribs) 13:19, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

These search results tend to be superior to the default Wikimedia search results (at least for wikipedia), compare (inventor of radio vs these (note you'll need to type the search). It finds "Guglielmo Marconi" which wikipedia doesn't even return as a result. The context based approach is generally superior, except for technical searches. The first step is probably to create an Extension or a plugin to improve upon the default search engine (Extension:Cirrussearch. Perhaps you're confusing a "Wikimedia project" (e.g. wiktionary:) and so forth with a tool (e.g. extension) to their default software.

Filing a phabricator task about adding context based search (with a link to your work) to Mediawiki / MediaWiki extension might be a good first step. You might want to read up on mw:Review_queue to deploy an extension, and maybe contact the Discovery team to get their feedback.

This is pretty novel and useful work ...

20:09, 7 June 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.111 (talk)

Wow - this is pretty useful stuff! I entered a specific individual and it returned an Aladdin's cave of info, with references and further pointers. I have no doubt that I could have gotten to all the same info eventually, but it would have taken a lot of effort and a lot of time. This returned a result in seconds ...... 80.192.223.213 (talk) 08:42, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

"Hey you! Look at your talk page!"

An issue that seems to crop up fairly often is that of the well-intentioned new editor who, in good faith, keeps repeating some action that causes increased work load for others. But at the same time, they are unaware of the concept of "talk page", and specifically of the fact that they have one themselves; that it might be bristling with slowly escalating comments; and that the little numbers next to the bell and the... thing... at the top of the screen are of any importance.

I am only aware of a single thing that currently can direct someone's attention forcefully to their talk page, and that is a block of the "attention-getter" variety. That often seems a rather harsh approach, and runs various risks: if it's too short, the editor might miss it entirely; if it's too long, it might put them off editing for good; it sticks in the block log (which they might care about somewhere down the road); and anyway being blocked is likely to give the message "We don't want you here", while in these cases there is generally a good chance that the editor would happily adjust their behaviour if they knew that there was a problem.

So I'm wondering if there might be some mileage in creating an admin feature that allows placing of a splash screen, like the one you get on receiving a block, with the difference that a) it only triggers once, on the first login after placing; and b) it merely says "People are trying to talk to you, please go to your talk page located at foo and engage". (- If anything like this been discussed before, pray point me in that direction :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:28, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

As for why I'm bringing this up now: there's currently someone busily wikilinking every. single. country. name. in bird species articles, and I would dearly like them to stop... --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:28, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Sounds like the orange bar of death needs to make a comeback, haha. Another way we could implement such a splash screen is getting the editor's attention right before a save is made: maybe the splash screen would come up as the save button is clicked and prevent saving until the message is acknowledged? Editing restrictions are definitely going to be noticed. Enterprisey (talk!) 16:26, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

User:MER-C/payattention.js is something that was written for such eventualities, I think. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:33, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Interesting! If I understand this correctly, it triggers on editing any page other than the user talk page? That kind of thing might do it. Is it available to general admindom, and/or seeing any use? Are there even any provisions for using this type of custum script on individual editors? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:20, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Only admins would be able to do this (a user could do it to themselves) - and it is generally not recommended to muck around with user .js files. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:27, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Eh, I didn't propose any user should be able to place it :) - clearly this is an admin action. What I mean is: if I asked admin X to place such a note, would they be aware of its existence, would they know how to insert the script, and would they even be within their rights to muck with user.js? If the answer to any of these is No (I suspect it is, in order, No - Maybe - Yes), then maybe that's a point worth improving. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:14, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

So I'm an admin if you asked me those questions:

1. ["Aware of this"]:Not really, especially with it sitting in MER-C's userspace.
2. ["Know how to"]:I would, but would strongly not expect every admin to know this (How have you demonstrated javascript experience? isn't a popular RfA question)
3. ["Should they"]:This is murky - I wouldn't force this script to be loaded to another editor, maybe if it was hosted on a MediaWiki page; and I don't like the instruction to protect the editor's .js file. If they went in there to remove it they obviously know there way around, and their removal would be plenty indication they read it. If a user is disruptively editing, that's what blocks are for anyway. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:30, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

That being said, I'm not opposed to the concept of some sort of "urgent message" functionality - though it would be good if it included logged actions "e.g. User:Admin set urgenttalk on User:Elmidae" and "User:Elmidae dismissed urgenttalk on User:Elmidae" being in a log; perhaps with some large on-screen banner that it was set. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:50, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I believe that we have that concept, only it's labeled "Block". ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:27, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

How are search results from sister projects prioritised?

As the title suggests, this is as much a question as it is a suggestion. I'm enjoying the new feature that shows search results from sister projects alongside search results from the encyclopaedia. I'm wondering, however, why these results appear in the order they do, and whether that could be improved. (There doesn't seem to be any documentation of the new feature, which is unfortunate.) Look, for example, at the results for the word "vatic", which doesn't seem to be mentioned in any Wikipedia articles, but has a Wiktionary entry. The sister project results include that Wiktionary entry alongside a Wikiquote page that uses the word, and Wikibooks, Wikivoyage and Wikisource pages that do not. The Wiktionary result is second in the sidebar; at the top is a Wikisource page which uses "vater" multiple times but never "vatic". Clearly, in this situation and others like it – in which a user has searched for a term that is the title of a page at one project, and only used in the body, if at all, in other projects, that one project ought to take precedence over the others (and perhaps even over the Wikipedia search results). If we could do this I think it would potentially cut down the number of unnecessary WP:DICDEF articles mistakenly created on Wikipedia, and maybe render the {{wi}} soft-redirect template redundant. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 13:36, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Hey there, Arms & Hearts. The cross-wiki search results are announced at the miscellaneous subpage. Currently, there is a proposal to have an option via user preferences to disable/opt-out the cross-wiki search results. BTW, I agree with everything you said. To let you know, the RfC discussion led to results from other projects not appearing in English Wikipedia. Some other language sites have results from all other projects, but... they are languages that I mostly don't understand. --George Ho (talk) 17:01, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Arms & Hearts, good question. Someone had the same question over on MediaWiki.org just the other day. There an analyst and engineer on the team replied. The pertinent bit, "Absolutely, the wiki blocks are ordered by recall. Large wikis are likely to be ordered first frequently. Concerning wikivoyage there's a small variation. During the RFC it was requested to strongly filter wikivoyage results on title.". All other language variants of Wikipedia show the full lists of sister projects in their results. You can see the original announcement of the sister search results in the VP (Technical) archive and learn more about the projects, future testing, and more potential updates on MediaWiki.org. Hope that helps! CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 13:59, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Just in case the link doesn't work, here's the link to the MediaWiki discussion. --George Ho (talk) 14:50, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Create the eliminators user group

Hello community, i like to receive opinions from this proposal: create the eliminators user group. This user group exists in the lusophone Wikipedia and in some other wikis, and i think bringing it for here will be a good thing. Yes, i am perfectly aware that the reality from this Wikipedia to the lusophone is pretty diferent, and because of this, te reasons i made this proposal is diferent. Think in this situation: a user isn't good enough to be a administrator to be capable to eliminate a page, but know the deletion policy, and would know when to eliminate a page, when not to eliminate a page, etc. The user isn't ready to be administrator, but know the deletion policy, therefore the community will lose a good user to eliminate pages because this user can't be admin. Also exist the case of a user that is ready and confiable enough to eliminate pages and be a admin, but don´t want be a admin but want the ability to delete pages. I know this Wikipedia has 1,256 administrator and i note that this wiki don't suffer problems related to deletion, but i think it´s constructive that users prepared to delete pages but don´t ready to be or do not want be admin can delete pages by an other user group. Jasão (msg) 09:38, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

In the past when this sort of proposal has come up here, it has usually been rejected on the grounds that someone who can't be trusted with the other admin tools isn't trusted with the ability to delete. See also Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Hierarchical structures. Anomie⚔ 11:45, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

When things are deleted on Wikipedia, they can be easily restored so it would be no big deal to create a deleting only group (The Elimination Group sounds awesome). However, as Anomie said, it's been discussed so many times, and it always boils down to something along the lines of "trust to delete == trust to be an admin". We should be focusing efforts on making RfA more open and less toxic -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 11:57, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Anomie and There'sNoTime: Thanks for the opinions, i see that the proposal would not have support to move forward. Jasão (msg) 13:25, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jasão: Not a problem :) it's a shame, because fundamentally it's a great idea -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 13:27, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Change the autopatrol user right

Hello community, i have the proposal to change the autopatrol right. The workload for a recent changes patroller is pretty big, don´t exist a system to show the edit was verified as a good edit, what complicates the RC patrol. My proposal is to adopt this system: when a user whithout the autopatrol right makes an edit, the edit will get a red exclamation indicating that the edit was not patrolled. Any user can patrol a edit, and i propose create the Special:Log/patrol to register who patrol a edit. So, if the proposal be approved, as well as creating pages that comply with the rules an user who wants the autopatrol right must make good edits, what will probably ocurr, a user who make good pages make good edits. Jasão (msg) 10:41, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jasão: we used to allow everyone to patrol, it wasn't working out too well and the community decided to qualify patrollers, see this RfC from October last year: Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC for patroller right. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:32, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

And also Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC for patroller qualifications. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:35, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thank you for the information. I see that allow everyone to patrol pages doesn't work in this community. So check this proposal: administrators, bureaucrats, rollbackers, new page reviewers, autopatrolled editors and pending changes reviewers have the permission to patrol editions, in order to ensure that the edits will be patrolled correctly. What do you think? Jasão (msg) 12:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jasão: administrators and bureaucrats (by nature of also being administrators) can already patrol; rollbackers and new page reviewers are primarily invovled with antivandalism and don't normally also patrol - but they are welcome to also become patrollers (apply at WP:PERM). I'd support autopatrollers getting patrol access - but there was community resistance last time it was discussed. Pretty much anyone that has a bit of experience that wants to patrol can - read much more at WP:NPP. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:36, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Ok. I think the proposal is ready to be made in the village pump. You have some idea to improve the proposal? Thank you very much for the help you gave. Jasão (msg) 04:50, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jasão: You certainly can, but if you haven't read through the prior RFC's yet, read them first. You may also want to drop a note at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers for feedback from the people that do this the most. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:22, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thank you very much for the feedback! Jasão (msg) 17:57, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Add language links for user pages/main talk pages

Given the Unified log in, it would seem to be easy to have links under languages for the main user page and main user talk page for a user to any page which exists. So for example, since es:Usuario discusión:Naraht exists, it should have a link on the left to en:User talk:Naraht and vice versa. However since nn:Brukardiskusjon:Naraht does not exist, there would be no link to there from either page. Not sure it makes sense to do this all the time (gadget preference or tool would be fine, I guess)Naraht (talk) 16:46, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Given welcome bots on some wikis, though, you can't really assume that an existing user talk page is particularly relevant. Anomie⚔ 17:43, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Granted. But even so, it does mean that the user has edited that wiki. I'm not sure under what circumstances bots would create a user talk page with no edits on that wiki. And yes, I'm very likely to hit that, since I have edited many language wikis changing "John Hopkins University Press" to Johns Hopkins University Press". Naraht (talk) 20:57, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

On some wikis they do indeed create the user talk page as soon as a local account is created, which happens the first time you visit the link while logged in with SUL. Anomie⚔ 11:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Anomie: even just the same functionality as articles could eliminated lists of interwikis on each wiki - by moving a 'wmfuser' object in to wikidata - or possibly in where ever the wishlist "global preferences" could be stored? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:53, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata rejects items dedicated to Users (see d:WD:N). However, see below. --Izno (talk) 02:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't know it's done that way, but some wikis create a welcome message when you visit it and are logged in. For example, I had a welcome message on my talk page on Meta Wikipedia for years before I ever made an edit to it. isaacl (talk) 02:52, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I like this idea. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:13, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I was fairly sure there was a general request for this functionality on Phabricator, but all I can find is the recently-filed phab:T168792. --Izno (talk) 02:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I like the idea, in these days i was even thinking in make this proposal in the lusophone Wikipedia. Jasão (msg) 08:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Make wikipedia readable again

Hello folks

I've been unsatisfied with Wikipedia user interface for years. When modern websites showing texts such as Medium, the main newspapers websites, Gitbook, etc display text on a narrow column with a high font size and space between lines, Wikipedia has still a very old fashioned way of displaying full width text with a very small font-size. This makes it very hard to read since your eye have to follow very long lines.

I'm not a web developper but I had just the idea to write a few lines of CSS to make wikipedia readable again. My idea was just to get inspired by Firefox reader's mode. So with a few lines of CSS, I was able to really improve my user interface.

I've edited my vector.css file.

• The first point is to reduce the width of the main text :

  max-width: 800px;

  .
• The second point is to add right padding. I've chosen right padding as 40% :

         padding-right: 40%;

• Then I've used the Helvetica font

  font: Helvetica;

• Font size is 1em

  font-size: 1.0em;

  and line-height 1.6

  line-height: 1.6em;

• Text color is grey

         color: #333;

Therefore adding this text to vector.css make Wikipedia really really nice :

#firstHeading {
       width: 100%;
       margin-left: auto;
       margin-right: auto;
       padding-right: 40%;
       max-width: 800px;
}

#bodyContent { 
       width: 100%;
       margin-left: auto;
       margin-right: auto;
       padding-right: 40%;
       background-color: #FFFFFF;
       color: #333;
       max-width: 800px;
       font: Helvetica;
       font-size: 1.0em;
       line-height: 1.6em;
}

I think that this can be useful for many people.

Any CSS specialist wanting to help me improve this CSS is welcome.

--PAC2 (talk) 19:26, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

"Modern" websites don't imprison their content in the center fifth of the window because that makes it more readable. They do it either so they can cram more ads into the sides, or because it's easier and cheaper than doing things right. —Cryptic 06:58, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

This is untrue. I just pulled off the top of Google this article. Some of them are in-fact designed this way for something more than advertisements or navigation or whatever else one might find in a another column on your screen. The Minerva skin (not yet a true skin, but soon-to-be separated from MobileFrontend) takes these factors into account in its design. --Izno (talk) 12:34, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

@Izno thanks for the tip. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PAC2 (talk • contribs) 13:00, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a lot of skins, see your Preferences for different looks. Also, you might be very interested in Help:Mobile access and/or Wikiwand, both of which are Wikipedia in a different and arguably more appealing interface. As for myself, I simply zoom in the font size (with my mouse wheel) and manually narrow my viewing window if I find the lines are too long to read comfortably. The problem comes when an article has many images, which crowd out text if the window is too small. Softlavender (talk) 09:50, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello, I use a 750px width since 2013 (although I had it as fixed, not as max). With about 100 characters per line, text is much easier to read. I would also support such a (configurable) limit, although with a better layout (I get a huge blank area between the page text and the left column). --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:53, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: I feel like I've seen you talk or work on stuff like this before, or at least know who has poked at it in WMF land. --Izno (talk) 15:45, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, PAC2 might be interested in my User:TheDJ/responsiveContent and responsive Vector experiments. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:27, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Strongly oppose any "max width" pixel value for content - Wikipedia is used many ways, including on projectors, huge screens, etc. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:13, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

You probably don't own a 27" retina screen.. Wikipedia's vector looks ridiculous in fullscreen mode on that :) I have it limited to 1200px content + 700px of sidebars and that makes it 'doable'. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:27, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

A max pixel size would still be bad design, it should use ems or other responsive units so it doesn't break if people change their base font size. Personally, I just don't full-screen my browser to get a narrower line length for most browsing. Anomie⚔ 12:52, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Citation count by source

Hi. This will not really useful to everybody. But IMO, it'll be handy to have an option (gadget) to display a citation count next to each source in the sources section of an article. For example,

• Sarkar, Jadunath (1960). Military History of India. Orient Longmans. pp. 75–81. [cited 11 times]
• Chandra, Satish (2005). Medieval India (Part Two): From Sultanat to the Mughals. Har-Anand Publications. ISBN 9788124110669. [cited 5 times]
• de la Garza, Andrew (2016). The Mughal Empire at War: Babur, Akbar and the Indian Military Revolution, 1500-1605. Routledge. [cited 1 time]

This would count,

• ^ ^abc Sarkar 1960, p. 77.

not as 1 citation of Sarkar but 3.

Such a feature would allow editors/readers to evaluate (across reflists, notelists, etc.) which sources the article largely relies on. It might also be useful to sort the sources list by citation count.--Cpt.a.haddock (talk) (please ping when replying) 09:25, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Encouragement to proofread

As someone who has spent years correcting typos on Wikipedia, I have found many errors that could have been avoided by the original author proofreading his creation. Can we not do something more to encourage contributors to proofread? Or even automatically suggest corrections as WP:AWB or Grammarly do? Even a pop-up window upon submission of a new article or a notice to a talk page would likely be helpful. --LilHelpa (talk) 11:32, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi LilHelpa I might be one of the people you are talking about and I agree somewhat. However for folks like me who are translating a page across wikis and sometimes simultaneously improving that article, the folks like you who do those little cleanups are an amazing help!. The cognitive load for some tasks like these requires frequent breaks. When I do return afresh to do some proofreading, some saint has already helped out. So that makes my job more efficient. As long as some kind of prompt to proofread didn't compete for my attention while I was doing step-wise translations (i.e. one sentence/one paragraph per edit at a time) then this would be great. Dr.khatmando (talk) 04:45, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Dr.khatmando as you make some valid points. I don't see much value to nagging every edit step. I do understand the difficult task of translating which you describe... and thank you for accomplishing that. Copy editing is also a task that needs to be efficient. To that end, many do not seek to cooperate in the slightest. --LilHelpa (talk) 12:12, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

LilHelpa Indeed. I know we value the same things have the same goals in mind. Dr.khatmando (talk) 12:32, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Not everyone can proof read well, most of us have problems spotting our own mistakes, and I suspect many of our contributors are doing so in a second language and part of their motivation is getting people like LilHelpa and myself to fix their mistakes. The point about crowdsourcing is that people contribute content and others improve that, I don't see any benefit in making it harder for the content contributors, or rather if there was one change I'd make to contributors it would be to prompt for a sources where they appear to be adding unsourced content. ϢereSpielChequers 11:10, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

While sourcing is certainly more important (and more difficult) than proofreading, it is because of the ease of proofreading that encouraging proofreading may have a better return. Even conscientious article authors often do not carefully review their work. Nobody knows better than I that people make mistakes... and I agree that even a careful proofreading may miss some. However, it is those "contributions" that ignore capitalization and spacing (and IMHO could be considered vandalism) that are most trying. Somewhere in between are lazy editors who need a small push and encouraged to take more pride in their work. It doesn't have to be harder for the contributors (as with a pop-up), it just needs to be more portrayed as valuable. Cleanup needs to be efficient, too.--LilHelpa (talk) 12:12, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

It would be good to get a study done on this, but my experience is that many individuals do pay attention to what happens to their contributions and learn from the correction of their mistakes. Typos that I patrol will usually shift genres as people editing in one subject area take note of the corrections I have made and new people start. We could of course make preview a mandatory phase before saving, but I suspect the WMF would very sensibly veto that as an extreme measure that would undermine open editing and make people's first edit a bit more difficult and complex. ϢereSpielChequers 06:19, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Typos are one of those things, like dab links, which appear very significant when you work through a massive database report that lists thousands of these errors, but which are really one of the last things we should worry about. Not that fixing them isn't important – I hugely appreciate (and have benefited from) the efforts of the editors who fix them. But when you're spent ages researching a topic and then drafting and redrafting your text, and when you've then gone over it alongside the sources to double-check you've represented them fairly, and when you've then edited your text for readability and made sure all the wikilinks go where they're supposed to and that all the ref anchors work, after all this two things are certain: 2) it's very ease to become incapable of noticing your own typos, and 2) the last thing you need at this stage is having another hurdle to stop you from publishing your work. And as for the editors who consistently make gross errors with spacing and capitalisation, well, I think these errors aren't going to be among the most problematic aspects of their contributions. Text that looks really bad should either be removed or left as it is, the character of its spelling and punctuation being a self-referential indicator of the quality and reliability of its content. – Uanfala 18:10, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Dispute resolution RfC

Hello. You are invited to comment on this RfC, which seeks to reform certain aspects of Wikipedia's dispute resolution processes. Biblio (talk) 15:47, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Seeking feedback on addition to What Wikipedia is not: Wikipedia is not the final arbiter of truth

I'm looking for feedback on my initial draft of a proposal for a new section added to the policy What Wikipedia is not. It distills the long established practice of not taking sides in disputes, and giving due weight to significant dissent. I've noticed that sometimes IPs and SPAs are on a mission to change an article to take unresolved questions and resolve them. Marketers often want articles to say definitively that their company's product is the leader in its category. Quite a few want ownership of inventions assigned unequivocally to one nation, and no other. Many are partisans, many are just using Wikipedia for its most popular purpose: answering questions. When it's for a trivia quiz or to settle a bet, many readers won't accept anything but an either/or answer, when the sources are telling us is "it depends".

Wikipedia is not the final arbiter of truth

Wikipedia is not written to settle bar bets.

The policies requiring a neutral point of view and verifiability, and prohibiting publishing original thought, mean that Wikipedia editors, and the articles they write, cannot judge who is right in an entrenched disagreement. Articles focus mainly on facts that are most widely accepted and established, giving little space to on fringe ideas, but nonetheless, significant dissent from mainstream views is given proportionate attention. When views are divided, Wikipedia struggles to accurately portray that division, not oversimplify it.

Wikipedia cannot resolve questions that established experts have not themselves fully resolved. The ambiguities and contradictions of real life cannot be artificially made simple and tidy by Wikipedia. Articles can strive to give simple explanations for complicated concepts, but they cannot do away with complexity itself, nor make a roundabout series of events into a straightforward narrative. This does not mean Wikipedia should present facts as if they were opinions, only that Wikipedia does not add weight to the judgement of reliable sources.

An encyclopedia article is not the place to find the definitive answer to the question of whether the motorcycle is a German, French, or American invention. Wikipedia can verify that for a long time, most mainstream authorities agreed it was the Daimler Reitwagen, but the muddy and complicated picture made by reputable dissenters who bring up earlier steam motorcycles cannot be neatly cleaned up by Wikipedia editors. The International Astronomical Union's mission may include announcing, once and for all, that Pluto is not a planet, but Wikipedia's mission is only to describe the IAU's statements, and the significance and influence the IAU represents, but not to give or withhold a Wikipedia seal of approval. An encyclopedia of unlimited size can give a plot summary and production details of the Friends episode that featured the practice of going commando, but Wikipedia cannot change from opinion to fact the assertion that Friends is almost solely responsible for popularizing the slang term for not wearing underwear.

Changing an article, or requesting that it be changed, to give answers unambiguous enough to settle your bar bet is contrary to Wikipedia's core principles.

I threw in a few colorful illustrations from my own editing experience. I'm sure there are some issues of this type that I'm not familiar with. I'd like to draft a proposal that doesn't get bogged down in choosing the perfect wording, and can simply gauge consensus for or against the basic idea of this kind of addition to WP:NOT. Thanks in advance! --Dennis Bratland (talk) 06:27, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Dennis, if you don't mind, what distinguishes this from Wikipedia:NOTTRUTH ? ☆ Bri (talk) 22:24, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

NOTTRUTH is an essay, this is a proposed amendment to a policy. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:36, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

I think it's fair to say it's related to the essay Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth. But I'm totally serious when I say this is about bar bets, or similar trivial hairsplitting. People like to win contests, or pick winners, over what is the first or best or which country invented the whatever. And they want Wikipedia to settle those questions. They want answers, not shrugs. And they want short answers, not long, complicated explanations that raise more questions than they answer.

Just like people turn to Snopes to debunk internet memes. Or PolitiFact or FactCheck.org to adjudicate public statements. Perhaps I should adjust it to include "Wikipedia is not your Snopes, or PoliticFact or FactCheck.org." It's not that we don't dabble in that, for example at List of common misconceptions. The central point is that we don't feel obligated to issue a ruling on every question. Many of these "lie checkers" have a bias toward giving some kind of answer, even if the data doesn't fully support a definitive conclusion. So the driving force behind my proposal is the No original research policy. Fudging, or erring, or ignoring contrary evidence, ignoring dissenting points of view, because we want articles to offer clear solutions or conclusions or judgements not fully supported by the sources.

Or because we want to define or categorize things. I guess you could call me one of the editors who thinks Wikipedia:Categorization is broken. It is mostly wonderful, but there is pressure to pigeonhole things into one category or another, but not both, not neither. "A place for everything". What if nature doesn't give us things that have a place? What if our taxonomy is flawed? Often, the taxonomist isn't a reliable source, it's a Wikipedia editor. Creating a taxonomy out of whole cloth violates WP:NOR. What if the sources don't tell us what category something belongs in? The intent of this WP:NOT addition is to offer support for editors who resist forcing an article into a category for the sake of sticking it somewhere rather than nowhere. I don't have a proposal that would fix the categorization policy, but I think this small addition to WP:NOT could help editors resolve some disputes, and help educate the general public about what we really do.

--Dennis Bratland (talk) 01:23, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Is this even necessary? Most of this seems already covered by WP:NOTSOAPBOX. —Farix (t | c) 01:41, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this bears a relationship with WP:NOTSOAPBOX, as it does with WP:NOTTRUTH. Thanks for bringing that up.

The difference is that soapboxing or promotion means one supports one point of view, and opposes others. Editors seeking clarity and simplicity, or answers that can let them score trivia night, don't necessarily care which side 'wins'. They aren't even that concerned with 'truth'; as long as they are given one and only one answer to their question, giving that answer the Wikipedia seal of approval. Similarly, editors who definitively categorize a topic when the sources don't support such certainty aren't using Wikipedia as a soapbox or means of promotion. They just want things to be neat and tidy, and perhaps they think Wikipedia's policies encourage neat and tidy versions of facts, and discourage uncertainty.

There are are often overlong, and redundant, discussions that usually reach the same conclusion, since the NOR, RS, and V policies don't support pat answers unless sources to justify it. These redundant discussions might be avoided if WP:NOT said explicitly that Wikipedia is not here to give easy answers, and policy doesn't favor either certainty or uncertainty, only faithfulness to sources.

--Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:26, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

• Aside from whether you agree this proposal should be adopted, does it have much chance of success written in this form? Is it too long? Do the examples (motorcycles, going commando) help or not? Would it be better to make two proposals, one seeking support for adding some kind of 'not your Snopes' addition, and a second one if that succeeds to settle on the wording? Or does it work better to just ask for up or down consensus on the proposal as written? Thanks! --Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:26, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Another one of Anna's jugheaded ideas

Is anyhow familiar with the Kim Jong-un non-free image thing?

The community has now wasted hundreds of hours on reads and keystrokes over this matter.

Do you remember Wikipedia:Donated artwork?

Bottom line:

It listed BLP articles with huge hits needing any image. Artists make a one-hour drawing to get credit and half a million views a year. No money offered. No takers. Artists are poor. Asked at WMF and it was all hoops to jump through to loosen the purse strings.

What if Wikipedia:Donated artwork tendered? An off-wiki crowd-funding/donation thing? Would-be WMF donators sick of the pile of unused loot instead put their cash into something direct. Thoughts? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:28, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Alright. No interest. I get it. I had to try. Please hat. Thanks for the read. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:15, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Well give it a couple more days. It's a little off the wall for rapid responses :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 00:56, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't really see how this is a solution to the Kim Jong-un problem. I've never follow the situation but a quick loook suggest to me that AFAICT, there are already multiple free content sketches of him. These have been used on and off in the article since early 2015 or earlier. The primary object to them is not due to questions over whether they are free content, nor to do with the quality, but that some people feel there should be a photo. The only person I've seen objecting to the quality is you. Possibly 1 or 2 other people although I'm not sure about these since their comments were ambigious, I think they just don't want the sketches because they don't think any sketches will do. In others perhaps this will resolve your objection, but it's just going to be a waste of the artist's time since there's a fair chance the problem will still exist and I'm not even sure that this sketch will be more popular than any of the other current ones. Nil Einne (talk) 08:00, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

I've now looked more carefully at the discussion. I found one other person who seemed to be objecting specifically to the sketch nearly 3 years ago since they said it was cartoonish although this was when there were fewer options and I'm not convinced they would have been happy with artwork. As said, there are other people who made less specific comments like "ugly" but I'm even less convinced these people will be happy with any artwork. One comment which caught my eye was "A talented portrait artist working in a hyper-realistic style could create an original image, or painting, of Kim Jong-un based on study of many photos rather than copying one photo. If that artist donated the image under an acceptable Creative Commons license, then this problem would be solved." I think this comment may have partly inspired this proposal but I'm not convinced it's true. Personally I share Jack Upland's view in that same discussion, and this is IMO supported by previous discussions for this very issue (as well as previous ones I remember seeing). Even hyperrealistic professional art is likely to have problems since people simply object to the idea of art instead of a photo since they either don't understand or don't share our free content goals. (Although it's true very high quality photorealistic art can be very difficult to distinguish from an actual photo so many casual observers won't know. But then again I get the feeling this is going to increase the objections of those who feel there's something wrong with using art instead of a photo.) In any case, even if something like that would be acceptable unlike the other sketches so far, while I'm not an artist I'm pretty sure it's not something that is going to take only an hour but many hours. Nil Einne (talk) 09:12, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

To put things a different way, most of the discussions have actually been about why there's no photo and whether or not we should allow an NFCC photo and whether our policy on that is a good thing etc or not. While it's often hard to tell due to the lack of clear commentary, when there has been discussion of the sketch it's often been about which one is preferable. When people have objected to all the sketches and suggested no photo is better rather than simply saying we should use a photo, I've seen almost no one saying the current options are too poor but a better sketch would be okay. As said, their reasons aren't always clear but with a few of them I get the feeling they either don't think any sketch will ever be acceptable to the community and so prefer to keep it out to reduce controversy, or they personally feel that all sketches are too poor a subtitute for photos. It's possible some or many of them haven't considered truly photorealistic art, but as said earlier it's also easily possible the objections will remain with that, or even increase. It's true some articles on living people have survived for years with sketches of various kinds, but these have tended to be less high profile and their sketches weren't necessarily any better than what we already have for Kim Jong-un. Note that none of this means that the idea won't be helpful elsewhere, simply that the cited example doesn't seem to help the case. There's a fair good chance even if someone did pay for art 3 years ago, we would have spent the same or more time on discussion at Kim Jong-un. And actually, it does highlight one of the risks of paying for art, there's no guarantee consensus is going to be in favour of including it no matter how good it is. Nil Einne (talk) 09:12, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Maybe people don't understand the proposal? I'm a native speaker of American English and have never in my life seen the verb tender as in "offer payment". I wouldn't donate to that cause, but maybe some people would. Ntsimp (talk) 14:31, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Then it must be a AmE/BrE thing. "to tender" is perfectly standard English, as in the phrase "legal tender". I must confess I haven't regularly used buses for a couple of decades, but on one man operated buses you often saw the notice "please tender exact fare". Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:11, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

The fixed phrases "legal tender" and "to tender one's resignation" do survive in American English, but note that Anna used "tender" intransitively. Is that standard in British English? Ntsimp (talk) 02:24, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

The transitive use you queried 'the verb tender as in "offer payment"' is fairly common, not just in fixed phrases (see my comment about bus notices). Anna's precise use is more akin the the tender process whereby contracts are offered and accepted. "Acme Engineering tendered to manufacture 1,000 widgets" for example. I would use the word when I was giving payment to a request, as in "tender correct fare" or "tender cash" (as against debit card), rather than initiating the transaction when "proffer" might be more appropriate. All IMHO of course, I'm only an ageing observant amateur not an academician. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:58, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Nil Einne. I think you're probably right. It just pains me to see all those keystrokes landing there instead of in the mainspace. I do say "probably" because the current artworks are really lousy. If a great pic of the man were to be added, I do think it would at least reduce the amount of wasted resources. And a decent drawing wouldn't take long. We're not talking oil paint here, just a good sketch by someone who could really capture him. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Ntsimp and Martin of Sheffield. Tender, yes, okay, I think I got the wrong word. I've seen ads in newspapers headed "Tender" with the text reading '"...100 park benches required...place your lowest bid...", that sort of thing. The idea was to put a price on an image to be created, or maybe to see what people would bid, or maybe for people to link to their creation, and financial donators would offer money for the one they prefer. You know, 'tender'. Something like that. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Request for tender, that sort of thing. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:00, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Enlightening images and text - tied together

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) § Enlightening images and text - tied together

 – ―Mandruss ☎ 08:25, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

First I must say that also from a technical perspective, is Wikipedia a really great invention. But we have text and we have images (and also moving images). But if it's possible from a technical aspect, would I propose a third such option. In which one or a few images can be "tied" to a certain text, for explaining reasons. I imagine some kind of "block of image(s) and text", which could be included inside articles, at any location in the text. Just as an example (nothing else). A four stroke piston engine. One picture of each of the four strokes (and how the valves opens and closes), with a specific text tied to each of the images. (I know this nowadays can be done even better with a moving illustration, but this isn't about the example, but in general) This "block" of one or more images with one joint text or one text per image, should still be able to edit and can be moved. But if the common text either before or after "the block" becomes shorter or longer, will the "block" still remains as one unit. Another point here, is to be able to have several images on the same line (and from left to right, normally). The "block" becomes a "stand alone" object. Sometimes doesn't illustrative images quite fit horizontally with the explaining text. And common image texts are to be brief. The so called "block" can be edited by any contributor, but when other texts (located above or below a "block") changes size, should the "blocks" be intact. I hope this idea is understood. Usage can be for any type of processes (within history, math, physics etc) or for exemplification, that is best presented all across the screen horizontally. They also ought to be removed if their purposes are not obvious, and are not intended for, for instance picture galleries etc. An overflow of such "blocks" isn't what I hope for. There must be either "a line of explanation" or (in cases with a single image) an explanation which really needs to be tied to a specific image. Boeing720 (talk) 00:50, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

So templates ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:52, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

First I thought no. But the infoboxes have similarities. Main issue is to glue a certain text to one or a few images, for illustrated explanations purposes. I presume (what I like to call) "blocks" have a start point and an end point in the syntax. (And include at least one image) If the text above this "block" expands, will the "block" including its images follow, etc. (Unless a contributor finds it proper to move it/edit it/delete it) The "blocks" should be able to edit just as everything else. But as long as changes are not about the "block" itself, will it remain as it is. Today may explaining images stand to the right of a text which deals with other matters. Although the image once corresponded to the correct text.

While infoboxes are meant to be seen and noticed, is my idea sooner that such "blocks" shouldn't look differently from ordinary texts to our readers. The technical way to achieve this possibility, am I not really familiar with. Boeing720 (talk) 20:37, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

By the way, I noticed your four points about discussions. I liked them. And I "stole" them. I hope that was OK, elsewise will I remove them again, naturally. Boeing720 (talk) 20:51, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it appears you're proposing templates, which are used for many things besides infoboxes. Or possibly just images with captions. Anomie⚔ 12:05, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Had a look. What I'm after is pretty much inline with that, but what I really would like to have (if it's possible from a technical perspective), is an option to "glue" text and pictures together, but in such a way, that our readers just see it as common text inside the text. Only when editing should it be obvious that there is a syntax which "glues" image(s) on to a certain part of the text. Have a look at for instance Complex numbers. Never mind the math, but this article is rather well illustrated. And perhaps the images fit the text on the left, but there is no guarantee for it to always remain like that. If someone adds some 15 lines below a headline with an image to the right, that image will no longer fit the corresponding text to the left. That's the main reason to why I've brought this issue up. But also the image texts are rather long. What I'm after, is way to locate such images into the ordinary text, and if the article grows, should this part of the text with its corresponding images not be affected. (Not until someone decides to edit inside this part). I hope I'm making myself clear enough. Boeing720 (talk) 22:25, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

You do seem to be having trouble making yourself clear here. The only way the images in Complex numbers will be separated from the adjacent prose is either (1) if someone inserts more prose between the image markup and the intended prose, or (2) someone puts so many images with so little prose that the images get pushed down the page. There's no real technical solution for #1 since it's an editorial problem, and #2 is just the way HTML works and there's little we can do about it without adding big blobs of whitespace in such a situation instead. Anomie⚔ 22:45, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Sister project for references

Since the citing system (references) has become quite complex over the years and can vary a lot throughout the Wikipedias and other sister projects, I started to think about special project that would deal just with references.

The main idea is to collect data of publications (similar to library identifiers) that are used as sources in articles. Every "unit" would be given it's own number (U9748 for example or something else, similar to Wikidata's "Q") that would be cited in the code of the article (Some statement.<ref>U9748, pages 123–127.</ref>). Every Wikipedia should then create it's own module with definition of style of citing.

The project could probably be offering automated categorisation of publications by authors, years, languages ... Every unit would have the list with global usage, similar to Commons. One of the advantages of this feature is also a simple tracking of fake sources. User identifying one can easily see wherever the unreliable publication is cited. Besides, codes of articles would become much lighter, since all citing templates are minimized. --Janezdrilc (talk) 19:48, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

@Janezdrilc: You will be interested in meta:WikiCite. --Izno (talk) 19:56, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for link. I didn't know it before. But, still I wonder if it's better to have WikiCite within Wikidata and not separate - as independent project with Wikidata engine. --Janezdrilc (talk) 17:04, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

@Janezdrilc: Which, regardless, is not really something regarding en.WP. Feel free to introduce yourself there and see if anyone there agrees or disagrees. It's probable that they've talked about that already--which, for the most part, we won't have talked about here. --Izno (talk) 20:25, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Change FAC to A-class style review

Background: Over the past few years, I've been working on the Leo Frank article, receiving a peer review at the end of 2014, nominating it for GA in 2015 (the first time was quickfailed due to an edit war from a sock, and the second passed after an extensive review from SilkTork). I nominated it in FAC in the fall of 2016, but came up just short after another arduous review.

Recently I've considered reviewing the first FAC, making any appropriate changes, and renominating at FAC. But I realized after considering the process so far that I don't have confidence that a second FAC would actually improve the article. This is because of the time invested by one reviewer at GAN versus the comparatively ad-hoc nature of FAC.

To illustrate this, have a look at the article I worked on and mentioned above, Leo Frank. To a casual observer who's not familiar with him or his murder trial, it may seem long-winded for a Wikipedia article. Indeed, the GAN process significantly elongated the article, going from 78K characters in August 2015, peaking at over 125K in the review process, and back down to 108K in October after a considerable amount of trimming at the end by the reviewer. The article still grew by 30K, and this was a point of contention in the FAC. Brian Boulton recalled from the 2014 peer review that the article had grown considerably between that review and the FAC, and he and Sarastro encouraged me to further remove some of the content. I was reluctant to do so, and this became a point of contention between myself and Sarastro during the review. He felt that I was ignoring his comments, when I simply didn't want the work I had done in GAN to largely be reverted.

I realized that the reason for this difference in opinion for article length between reviewers who are all highly experienced and skilled, namely SilkTork versus Brian and Sarastro, is a matter of the review format. GAN allows one reviewer to dive deep into a subject, as SilkTork did with this article. He learned about Frank, his trial, and the source material extensively as to give a high-quality and thorough review. FAC reviewers, on the other hand, have a higher number of articles they are concerned with at any one time and generally just go through the bullet points, doing basic copyedits, source reviews, image licensing checks, etc.

I feel like the GAN process was a better system despite the lower standards. I also think there should be something that goes beyond GAN that includes a more stringent criteria for passing and solicits feedback from more than one person. A-class does this, using three reviewers with expertise in the area (military history and tropical cyclones being the two prominent examples currently) and a higher bar than GA while slightly short of FA.

My proposal is to make the FAC process more like A-class, while retaining the FA criteria and gold star. We could keep A-class for the WikiProjects that choose to use it, but have a pool of FA reviewers and have any three (or whichever number we decide by consensus here) review a particular article. The reviewers could decide which articles they want to review based on their interests and expertise, while not needing to be a part of any WikiProject. That way, you don't have the ad-hoc issues in FAC of reviewers coming and going to a particular article, and the A-class problem of not enough skilled reviewers in all but two projects to make it happen, in addition to the other issues outlined above. This will make FACs more thorough and completed in a shorter time frame. I'm open to any feedback below and will condense this into an official Pump proposal if there is enough interest. Tonystewart14 (talk) 19:08, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

The problem with A-class reviews – and the reason that MilHist is pretty much the only project which still does them – is that in most areas, there simply aren't enough specialists active on wikipedia who are willing to put in the time to review articles in-depth in the way that ACR and FAC require. (And, notwithstanding your experience with the GA process, most GA reviews are not by people who are experts in, or put the time in to learn about, the article they are reviewing.) I also am unconvinced that the suggestion would actually solve the problem you had – an editor who thinks an article is too short and one who thinks it is too long just fundamentally disagree.

I have added a notification of this discussion at WT:FA. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:45, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't think this proposal would solve the problem you want it to solve, which is to get a dedicated reviewer who thoroughly engages with the article. This does happen at FAC, and in my experience it happens a bit more often at FAC than at GAN. A good reviewer is worth a lot in any process, and WP:PR, for example, can yield better feedback than either GAN or FAC if you're lucky. The changes you're proposing don't make it more likely that an article would receive the in-depth review that you (and we all) would like, do they? I also think it's an advantage at FAC that you can have many more than three people show up; sometimes that's necessary for a thorough review. Re the Leo Frank article: I think good editors can legitimately disagree about the level of detail needed in an article, but a discussion between those editors is likely to be of value to the article. If that discussion is not resolved, I don't think it would be appropriate to award an article A class or FA class; consensus needs to be reached first. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:13, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Or we don't think it's important. WPMED has the experts, but we don't care enough about the ratings to bother with A-class. Or FAC or GA or PR, for that matter: sometimes people nominate articles, and we usually pitch in on the reviews, but going through an official process does not seem to be a priority for the group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

We should be able to thank anonymous users

I really like the Thank user for edit feature of wikipedia, and I think we should also be allowed to thank IP editors for good edits. I think this would help spread wikilove and positivity! --HighFlyingFish (talk) 19:52, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

IPs are almost always dynamic. Since the person using the IP at the time you thanked it would almost certainly not be the person who made the edit for which you're doing the thanking, the only effect this would achieve would be to confuse the new user as to why they were being thanked for something they'd never done. We discourage people leaving messages on IP talkpages for the same reason. ‑ Iridescent 20:08, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that about IP talk pages. So there is no good way to communicate with an IP except to drop a message in some other talk space (article talk, noticeboard, etc.) and hope they happen to see it. As the collaboration process relies heavily on communication, add one to the long list of reasons not to allow unregistered editing. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:45, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Not really. If you know that the IP isn't dynamic and that only one person uses it—a situation which is fairly rare, except in some rural areas and a few fiber-optic providers—then you can leave a message on the talkpage as you would any other user. In most cases—particularly in areas with heavy internet saturation like the UK, New York City and California, which unfortunately are where Wikipedia's editors disproportionately are, the number of IPv4 addresses has long since run out, and your ISP will just allocate you a temporary one on the fly each time you log on—thus, the person using a given IP address at present won't necessarily be the same person who was using it ten minutes ago. (You can test it for yourself—go to www.whatismyip.com to find out your current IP, leave a message on that IP's talkpage, switch your router off and on again, visit Wikipedia logged-out, and see if you get a "You have new messages" notification in relation to the message you left. Or, just go to www.whatismyip.com, switch your router off and on, and go to www.whatismyip.com again and chances are it will have changed. And that's just for wired home/workplace connections—if you're using a cellphone or a mobile broadband connection, your IP address will quite literally change every time you go under a low bridge.) Even in those situations like academic institutions and big corporations with dedicated lines where the IP address don't change, you still have no way of knowing who you're addressing when you leave a message for an IP since the message will in that case be seen by the next person who happens to use that computer to read a Wikipedia page, whoever that person happens to be. ‑ Iridescent 16:42, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh I'm all too familiar with IP addresses that change frequently. I recently spent way too much time - over a span of days - trying to communicate with one such user about their ongoing activity. By the time I saw an edit fitting their pattern, in their IP range, and dropped a message on their talk page, it was not their talk page anymore. Again, again, and again. I finally gave up in frustration, unsure whether they ever received one of my many messages on their many talk pages. And that is my point. The only thing that was news to me was We discourage people leaving messages on IP talkpages for the same reason. - that the community consciously acknowledges that (most) IPs cannot be full partners in the collaborative process. As I said, that's only one of the many serious problems with unregistered editing, but there are still plenty of experienced editors who defend WMF's unyielding position on unregistered editing. In my opinion that is one of the few most pressing problems with the project today, and it's getting no attention aside from occasional scattered, off-topic comments like mine above. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:52, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

While I don't personally agree, I can at least understand the WMF line—most Wikipedia editors began as someone who just wanted to correct a typo or a minor error but end up staying, and those people who aren't intending to stay probably won't bother setting up an account. I think it creates more trouble than it's worth, but it's certainly a legitimate position. ‑ Iridescent 21:04, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I too understand the WMF line. At some point a position is so indefensible that it can't be called "legitimate". The cost/benefit fail here could not be much clearer. IP editing was clearly needed to get the encyclopedia to a certain point of development, but we're years past that point. We could do more to clarify that registration requires absolutely no personal identifying information, not even a throwaway Yahoo email address. And we could stop calling unregistered editors "anonymous" while they are exposing their IP addresses to the world. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:18, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

• You can thank such editors, and publicly too. Instead of the thank feature or the user talk space try the talkspace of the relevant page, hopefully that's usually going to be an article talkpage. A section saying thanks to whoever fixed my typos/added the flora section/ or just thanks for this (diff). If they are interested in the article they edited they may well see your note. ϢereSpielChequers 21:02, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

• Or there is no good way to communicate with an IP except to drop a message in some other talk space (article talk, noticeboard, etc.) and hope they happen to see it, in other words? ‑ Iridescent 21:04, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Reading List

I often find myself stumbling upon Wikipedia articles that I would like to read, even though I don't have time to. To resolve this issue I would suggest the implementation of a basic "read list" feature. This would just be a simple (ordered by priority or date added) list that is tied to ones account. It would be added to and then removed from once the user has finished with each respective page. When the user then views a page again, they can see whether they've marked it as read. This kind of idea could then also be extended in a variety of ways. I also fail to see any technical constraints that may be involved. --Sherbet-head (talk) 14:54, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

This can be requested at Phabricator, see Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests for how to request it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:00, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Such a thing already exists (at least in the android app), with the same name as the heading here. See:

• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Reading_Lists
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Android_FAQ#What_features_are_available_on_the_Android_app.3F
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Synced_Reading_Lists#Saved_Pages_on_iOS — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.41 (talk) 11:30, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

It did exist on the desktop as mw:Extension:Gather but was killed due to wikidrama. It will probably go next to the mobile web. 11:19, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean having a summary or abstract at the top of each article? It is a good idea and I rather like it. Vorbee (talk) 17:52, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I'm the product lead for the "reading team" at the foundation. Just a heads up that we are looking to enable folks to synch reading lists across devices (apps, desktop, and mobile web). This is briefly alluded to in our portion of the Wikimedia Foundation's annual plan: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Final/Programs/Product#Program_2:_Better_Encyclopedia (Objective #4). We are starting with the apps, which are simpler, but will bring it to the web at some point. A complicating factor on the web is that we tend to get more friction (rightly so) in rolling things out and by the presence of the Wikipedia "book creator" tool on desktop, which serves a similar purpose but creates a list that is public and anyone can edit. One of the mistakes we made with mw:Extension:Gather was making the reading-lists public. I would expect that Android app lists will synch across devices in the next quarter, but it might be more than 6 months before the iOS has it. It is unfortunately not part of our web plans for this fiscal (ending July 2018). Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts about thisJkatz (WMF) (talk) 00:07, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

ANI reform RfC

Hello. You are invited to comment on this ANI reform RfC. Please do not comment in this thread; post all comments on the RfC pages. Thanks, Biblio (talk) 19:29, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Subject IDs for noticeboards

I've come across situations where looking through a public noticeboard fails to find an item of interest because it has been renamed since the discussion was archived. Examples:

• Articles - articles are moved or merged
• Editor account names - editors can rename themselves including the "vanished user" rename
• Sockpuppet investigations - the sockmaster under which the SPI is filed can be reassigned

Is there a technical solution to this, such as searching the archive for a certain code like the WP database page ID for users, or a Wikidata Q-code ID for an article? Could certain things be annotated automatically to make future searching more tenable, like the {{la}} and {{userlinks}} templates for instance? ☆ Bri (talk) 20:35, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

3-segment wikilinks

• For use in making wikilinks, particularly in languages with case-endings and similar, try allowing 3-segment wikilinks:-
  1. [[X]] displays and links to X , as now.
     • [[X]]Y links to X and displays XY , as now.
  2. [[X|Y]] links to X and displays Y , as now.
     • [[X|Y]]Z links to X and displays YZ , as now.
  3. And idea: let [[X|Y|Z]] link to XY and display XZ . For example, "he [[procrastinat|ion|ed]]" would be more compact than "he [[procrastination|procrastinated]]".
     • And if so, [[X|Y|]] would link to XY and display X .
  • Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:24, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

That could be interesting. --167.58.26.73 (talk) 19:55, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

• I don't think this is that much needed on the English wikipedia, but it could be massively helpful for other language versions. I think this should be proposed at the next Wishlit Survey (the last one was in 2016), with input sought from the other language projects. – Uanfala 11:10, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Commenting exclusively on English as it's the only language I'm fluent in, my concern here is that while "[[procrastinat|ion|ed]]" is marginally more compact than the current "[[procrastination|procrastinated]]", it's significantly less readable, and requires the reader to parse the string in their head. Reading it for the article that will be linked to (procrastination) is still fairly trivial, but the text that will be displayed in the article ("procrastinated") is far less clear and obvious. Whereas the current form, while perhaps not perfect, explicitly displays both of those pieces of text.

The ability to append characters to article links (e.g. [[link]]ing) is a nice shorthand because it's still easily readable as both the article name (inside the brackets) and the link text (ignore the brackets). The expanded form "[[link|linking]]" would contain two adjacent instances of the same string (in bold), so it's convenient to "reduce" them for clarity and conciseness. But by chopping up the non-redundant bits of the text, and reducing strings that aren't adjacent, isn't that conciseness coming at the expense of both clarity and convenience? -- FeRD_NYC (talk) 03:47, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

ooh yeah. it looks like great feature. wow. I'm going to want it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NostalgicColorBird (talk • contribs) 13:20, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Text searching

Currently the searching templates {{look from|xxxxx}} and {{intitle|xxxxx}} seem to look only for letters and numbers and ignore punctuation etc. This can be a nuisance, because, currently there is a policy to remove the comma when a page name ends in ", Sr." or ", Jr.", and to help to do this work, there is no easy way to search for these two character sequences, but someone must look at every page name by eye, and requests to remove these "senior and junior commas" come in endlessly in dribs and drabs instead of someone being able to quickly call search for ", Sr." and ", Jr." and get the job complete and done and over. Please provide an option for Template:look from and Template:intitle to search for all characters, not only for letters and numbers. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:34, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

The latter is phab:T156510. I'm not sure how you mean to use the former for your use case, but it doesn't seem reasonable off the cuff. --Izno (talk) 12:31, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: As regards Template:intitle , what is the likely progress with http://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T156510 ? Ability to search for characters other than letters and numbers would be useful. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:17, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

I do not know. That is something to ask on the phabricator task. :D --Izno (talk) 13:37, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

There is a beta search tool on wmflabs that uses regexp to search article titles. Unfortunately, you're on your own for constructing efficient regexp searches. Also, the tool can be very slow and can return a LOT of results if you put in a too generic a regexp. For example, this search for ", Sr." took quite a while to run, but it looks like what you describe. (and I'll refrain from commenting on whether it is a worthwhile use of time to "fix" such trivial formatting differences). older ≠ wiser 14:11, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Having regular expressions in page search seems a bit excessive. With a one-character sign ('.') and an any string sign ('*'), that should be enough. --167.58.26.73 (talk) 19:58, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Are you just looking for http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?search=insource%3A%2F%5C%2C+Sr%5C.%2F&title=Special:Search&profile=default&fulltext=1 or for something else? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

• @Whatamidoing (WMF), Izno, and Bkonrad: That search is finding ", Sr." indeed, except that it is searching in the texts of pages, and what is needed here is an option for search for ", Sr." and ", Jr." only in page names. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:48, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

  @Anthony Appleyard:, the search I gave above only searches article titles. older ≠ wiser 23:00, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

  You'll have to use Bkonrad's link to tools.wmflabs.org, then. It's https://tools.wmflabs.org/grep/index.php?lang=en&project=wikipedia&namespace=0&pattern=%5C%2C+Sr%5C.%24&limit=on Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:09, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Tool that suggests images to add to articles without an image (using Wikidata item's image)

Many Wikipedia articles have no image despite the associated Wikidata image having a P18 (image) property.

For instance, the article Thug Behram has no image, despite the Wikidata item having a perfectly usable image. Wikidata has more images because in non-English speaking countries (ie most of the world) the local language article is usually the best illustrated, and images make it to Wikidata via infobox harvesting or WDFIST.

Idea: How about having a tool that would suggest images for articles?

Use case: I am presented with an English Wikipedia article on the left, and an image (together with its title/description/categories/discussion) on the right. If I find the image fitting, I press a button and the image is automagically added to the article. Ideally the image is added to the article infobox if there is one with a recognized image property.

Images make Wikipedia articles much more attractive and informative, so I believe that would help a lot. Such a tool could then be ported to other Wikipedias too. Is there maybe such a tool, and I have not managed finding it? Cheers! Syced (talk) 03:28, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. — InsertCleverPhraseHere 04:18, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

There is an opportunity to go in multiple directions here. It isn't just Wikidata that has images. Many articles have an image from commons in one language but not in several other language versions. Lots of species have a category on Commmons but no images in articles, or only in one language. I do a bit of categorisation on Commons and I sometimes add images to species articles when I create a new species category on commons. There are big opportunities for apps that make it easy to add images, and if you speak the language to add a caption. We have done proof of concept editathons as long ago as 2011 in London inviting donors in and showing them how to add images, even quite hesitant people got very confident when you explain that a computer can suggest a dozen images for an article, but we still need a human to choose the image. Unfortunately we lost access to the donor data when the fundraising as centralised in San Francisco. ϢereSpielChequers 09:50, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, the tool could be extended once the low-hanging fruits are harvested. The low-hanging fruits are Wikidata, because if Wikidata has an image then you can be 100% sure this image is a good addition to the article. On the opposite, pictures from the Commons category can be a bit random, and many are only remotely related to the topic, for instance most pictures in the category about Jonan Island are pictures of airplanes rather than pictures of the island. I am not saying Commons categories are bad, I am saying Wikidata is probably easier to start with. Thanks for the idea, and thanks for adding images to Wikipedia articles! :-) Syced (talk) 14:44, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

VE already does this. If you open Thug Behram in VE, and choose Insert->Media, it will suggest the image. I believe it simply searches based on the article title, and perhaps a more sophisticated search would be useful, but as it stands I've found this feature very helpful. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:51, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Interesting! Unfortunately 1) that takes many clicks 2) Image metadata is not available so it is hard to tell whether the picture is actually appropriate or not 3) Most importantly, going through all Wikipedia articles without pictures and opening VE for each of them hoping that some pictures will be suggested would be very inefficient. The VE approach is great for people who know what article they want to add images to. Thanks for your input! :-) Syced (talk) 14:44, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

What metadata do you want? Right now, if you click a plausible looking image, then it gives you size, license, author, etc. data on the next screen. What else would be helpful? (Please {{ping}} me.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF): When I add an image, I look at the image's categories, as they often give hints about what is going on in the picture. For instance, if there is a "Chess World Cup 1987" category then I can write a better caption like "Tom Beh at the Chess World Cup 1987". If the image has a category "Joe Csze" then I will double-check who is really pictured. I also look at the discussion page in the rare cases where it is not a red link, because any information there is often useful, for instance an anonymous saying "This is not Tom Beh this is his brother" is a valuable tip. Also, a really neat thing would be to see all articles the image is used in, together with the caption for each (most writers can understand several languages so that would help a lot when writing the caption). Thanks! :-) Syced (talk) 05:48, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

When you click on an image in the media dialog, it lists some machine-readable information (e.g., license, upload date, image size, file type, etc.) Then it has a link labeled "More information", which takes you to the Commons page. I think that you would probably find that the most useful approach, especially if you want to read the talk pages at Commons. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:21, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Interesting idea. Building a naive tool do to this is trivial. The problem is dealing with all the drama that comes with it and the mangling that may happen in complicated cases.

There also aren't that many apparently. A bot could probably add all images within a day or two, less than a week for sure. The problem of course is that it has false positives because it relies on mw:Extension:PageImages, and some images may come with all the drama that naturally follows any automated task of that nature. Any semi-automated tool doing this on a continuous basis would fail miserably without a lot of work because of the unstructured nature of wikitext, the inconsistent way in which templates add images to pages, and a lot of edge cases.

It might be easier to make a bot that suggests such images on the talk page, and then editors can easily add (or not) them as needed. This would also reduce the need to randomly come across an article that needs file. Currently though, it might be better to create a bot that suggests images that are used in linked interwiki pages, maybe if 3 wikis or more are using the same image it then adds it to the talk page (and / or wikidata).

See also: https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/wp_no_image/enwiki.html , http://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T54464, http://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T53031 . 197.218.80.151 (talk) 21:14, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

197.218.80.151: The wp_no_image page is great, it could be used as a source. I don't think a bot add images automatically, because only a human can write captions. Adding to infoboxes might be an exception, as some infoboxes do not require a caption. "Lot of edge cases"? I would put the image just before the first line of text that does not start with "{", if you know articles where that would not work please send me the wikilinks, thanks! Syced (talk) 06:43, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

It is possible to generate simple captions automatically, after all the data stored in wikidata is structured.

There are so many edge cases that are easy to find, you've already mentioned the most common, many articles have template (e.g. notices or warnings) in the first line and no image at all elsewhere, along with other issues:

Templates in first section but without images:

• Valérie_Bazin-Malgras
• Lazy_(Orlová)
• Stone_picker

Images in another section

• • GPS_Exchange_Format
  • Schrödinger_equation
• Might deliberately have no images due to some guidelines (see comment in one of the infoboxes)
  • http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=The_Jungle_Book_(2016_film)&oldid=794692750

The funny thing about "wikidata no image" is that in some cases even if the image is added it might continue showing up there because of how the pageimage extension works. The images need to fulfill certain criteria (e.g. certain resolution) before they are labelled as "page images". Just to be clear, this is a good idea, it just needs a good implementation that won't cause more problems than it solves ... 08:54, 10 August 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.88.131 (talk)

197.218.88.131: No problem with "Templates in first section but without images", I can automatically find a line to put the images in such cases. No problem with "Images in another section" as these articles will not appear in the list of articles with no images. No problem with "The_Jungle_Book" and similar, as Wikidata is much more stricter on copyright than wp.en: For instance, Wikidata does not contain any "fair use" image. Syced (talk) 02:25, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

With no provenance suggesting that it might have been drawn from life, the Thug Behram image linked from Wikidata blatantly fails WP:PORTRAIT. It should not be used as is. My fear is that making bots or automatic tools suggest the addition of such images means making the rest of us spend too much more of our time policing the articles they're added to and undoing the damage. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:40, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

David Eppstein: You raise an important point, Wikidata items may contain a mistaken image. Google Scholar does not have many papers about Thug Behram, and even less about its portraits. How about limiting automatic import to Wikidata images that have a reference? By the way, what do you think a reference for an image should look like? Do you have good examples that I could study? Thanks! Syced (talk) 02:25, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

In this case it's not mistaken (I have good faith that the artist really did intend to depict Behram) so much as valueless (if we don't know the context for the image then we can't put it into context in an article and we certainly can't use it without context as if it were an actual photographic depiction of the subject). In contrast, looking for other people from around the same time period found File:JOHN ADAIR colour corrected.jpg, a painting for which we know the artist, date, and that it was painted from life rather than from the imagination. That's the sort of information I'd look for when determining whether a painting or drawing should be used. But I got all that from its page on commons; on Wikidata it is just an image with no references. I conclude from this that the metadata on images that we're placing into Wikidata is still too sparse to be useful for this task. And because Wikidata only seems to allow "references" on image links, not any other kind of metadata, it will remain too sparse until the schema changes. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:02, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

In the idea proposal, I wrote that the tool should show the image's "title/description/categories/discussion" to the user. That's because I believe this information enables the user to decide whether an image is usable, and know what to write in the caption. Syced (talk) 05:29, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

At the very least there needs to be a way of flagging an image as unsuitable (making any such tool automatically skip it) so that people don't keep trying to add it over and over and over and over and over and... —David Eppstein (talk) 06:28, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, the tool should include that flagging feature, similar to WDFIST. Syced (talk) 07:46, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

There's an image adding section at Wikidata:The Game. --167.58.55.39 (talk) 15:05, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikiproject Members

Currently members have to be added to Wikiproject directory manually. Is there a way to auto-populate the list based on certain criteria like User pages with Userbox WikiProject, etc.? Also to know more about the level of user, his permissions and contribution history links can be shown. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 08:09, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Userboxes usually add users to a category, which can be used to list participants who added it to their user page. A bot task could produce a more detailed or prettier list, but I'm not sure if a currently active bot does this. —PaleoNeonate – 23:44, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

You might be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Directory/All.

Mind the gap between "happens to work on these articles" and "actually wants to work as part of a group to work on these articles". Only some editors want to be part of a WikiProject (a WP:WikiProject is the people, not the subject area). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:58, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

That's quite nice, thanks for the link. —PaleoNeonate – 01:54, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing:That is indeed great, thanks! Is it possible show these results in Wikiproject page? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 02:34, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

You could transclude a subpage, e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Directory/Description/WikiProject Mythology (just pretend the page is a normal template, wrap it in curly braces, and the contents will appear on another page), but it's not very elegant, especially if you have a long list (WikiProject History's page, for example).

User:Harej is probably the best person to ask about this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:33, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikiproject articles by size

A list of articles by size and quality comparison would be good, just as we have importance and quality comparison. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 07:14, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Rather nice idea, I like it. Vorbee (talk) 07:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Improving Merge procedure

Article Merger procedure is pretty slow and cumbersome, and most editors choose to stay away from the same. Category merger and template merger procedures have improved over time, but article Merger hasn't progressed as much as it was required to. Few of the major factors include lack of standardisation, non-effective templates, complex process and no bots involved for any of the tasks. I would like to invite suggestion to improve upon the same. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 02:54, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

On the contrary: The process is quite easy. You turn on Twinkle, nominate the pages for deletion, write a brief note, and determine if there's any opposition.

The problem is getting someone to actually merge the pages. This is easy, but it requires someone to care enough to actually copy content out of one page, paste it into the other page, and then copyedit the results. If you've got maybe 100 edits and know how to create a redirect, then you already have all of the skills. You just need the time and interest in doing important but slightly boring work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Or, Capankajsmilyo, you can use the RfC process instead. But, like WhatamIdoing said, merging is a lot of work with needed skills. --George Ho (talk) 20:27, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Some areas of Wikipedia require you to do one before nominating one, eg GA and DYK. This is a QPQ. Perhaps nominating for merge should be the same. Nominators have to do a merge before nominating another page for a merge. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:07, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

• How about the proposal given at Template talk:Merge#Adding criteria to template itself for a start? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 15:24, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Unsourced info

Would it be a good idea to involve bots in the process of removing unsourced info from Wikipedia? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 02:56, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Capankajsmilyo: I dont think so. First of all, it will be very difficult to explain "what unsourced content is" to a bot. How do we define it? "a citation after every fullstop"? or "a citation after every 15 words"?
I have seen content in which an entire paragraph is covered by only one source, as well as content where just one sentence requires 4-5 sources.

How do we tell the bot to handle the paragraph mentioned above? He might keep only the last two sentences of the para, and remove everything preceding to it as "unsourced". If we need a bot to this task, the bot would require artificial intelligence. I couldnt find the essay/policy where I read it, but I think a bot with artificial intelligence is not recommended on wiki projects. —usernamekiran(talk) 13:31, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: ClueBot NG is an artificial intelligence as we use the term when applied to bots. --Izno (talk) 13:42, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: Yes. I think it was related to Clue family where I read about it. There is a cap/upper limit for the IQ of bots. —usernamekiran(talk) 13:54, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

To start with such a bot can start cleaning those articles and sections which don't have even a single source / cite. I am sure this simple logic can be fed into a bot. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 15:21, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Why do you think that is a good idea? --Izno (talk) 15:37, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

To support WP:V and reliability of info on Wikipedia I guess... -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 16:00, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Even that isn't as simple a problem as one might think. A naive approach would be to consider any article without any <ref> tags as uncited, but that is vulnerable to both false positives (articles which use {{sfn}}, articles which use plaintext references in parentheses) and false negatives (explanatory notes in ref tags which do not cite any articles). A limited approach could be to work on category:All articles lacking sources, but even that category contains articles which have external links to sources supporting claims in the article, even if they are not explicitly used as references (Special:RandomInCategory/All articles lacking sources gave me BoyBand (film) in four tries, for instance). Even if we could target this bot precisely, however, there's still the issue that we would be losing a significant amount of potentially valuable content (over 200k articles are tagged as having no references at all) without any oversight. Even if 99% of that is crap which is better off being TNT'd, that's still 2,000 articles which have value which we are losing. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:02, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

A possible solution to preserving that information could be to move that info to talk page for active editors to consider. Then they can decide whether to source it properly and restore or to let it die. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 17:23, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

How abo(u)t we have a bot add the "No references" template to articles with no references?--NostalgicColorBird (talk) 21:20, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't know if I'm alone in that, but I see {{No references}} ideally as indicating that a person has had a look and has decided that the given article has a particular need for being sourced. Having said that, I understand that many editors would automatically slap that template on anything at all that doesn't look like it's got sources, sometimes with a level of discernment below that of the average bot. – Uanfala 21:48, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

About offices

First of all, does every conceivable type of office really need its very own Infobox? For example, Template:Infobox Political post, Template:Infobox Bishopric, and Template:Infobox Monarchy are all arguably merge-able into Template:Infobox official post. Political posts, bishoprics, and even monarchies are all examples of offices, right?

Also, the Article Acting president is less than a stub and could easily be a Section of another Article, or maybe 2 other Articles. I could see a sort of fork-merge where it is "merged" into both Acting (law) and--hear me out on this--Regent. There are countries that don't fit neatly into a single category. The United Arab Emirates, although it consists of monarchies at the local level, actually has a President and not a King at the national level. (Although the Presidency is customarily held by the Emir of Abu Dhabi, strictly speaking the Council could elect someone else as President if it saw fit.) North Korea behaves exactly like a hereditary monarchy where the actual means of succession is concerned, but all 3 of its rulers have still insisted on calling themselves "President" and not "King." Here on Wikipedia we insist on calling Vatican City a "monarchy," but that is not what the Roman Catholic Church teaches! The Church's teachings are very clear that the Pope is not a King, but rather, a servant of Jesus Christ the King. (And this is coming from a Catholic.)

It is, however, quite cut-and-dry as to when an office is technically vacant and has a placeholder or substitute to tie things over. My point is this: The concept of a placeholder or substitute for a vacant office is much clearer than the exact borderline between a monarchy and a presidential republic. The qualifier "acting" and the title "regent" are 2 names for the same concept, albeit usually the application of that concept in different forms of government.

I know not which one of these 2 office- and officeholder-related issues to bring up first, which is why (for now) I brought them both up in the Idea Lab area of the Village Pump. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 03:08, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

A doubt regarding generalised notability

While reviewing new pages, I am often seeing articles of the pattern "List of programs broadcast by <TV channel>". I have even nominated an article for deletion before. Even though wikipedia has list articles, I am not sure about encyclopaedic nature of the lists of TV shows, as such a list is ever on-going, most of the lists are but this list would be increasing a lot as there are obviously many shows in a given month on a TV channel. Even though such a list would be "harmless", I believe it would not be an encyclopaedic one. (I cant think of any reason that would make such lists encyclopaedic.)

I am not sure what's going on with me. Maybe, with time, my expectations for standards of the term "encyclopaedic" have gone very high. But talking about these lists, I am not sure if a person checks such lists to find a show. If a particular show is notable enough for enwiki, the article obviously explains on which TV channel(s) it was/is broadcast. If a show doesnt have an article but is mentioned somewhere in another article, it can be mentioned where the show ran. Not exactly, but it is sort of "existence is not notability" here.

Do we have to create lists of everything that exists? These lists of TV shows are exactly same to "List of United States Armed Forces employees". A common argument to defend that list is "it is list of shows broadcast by a notable TV channel, it should be kept". A same argument can be made: "it is a list of employees of a notable armed force". Do we include only the subjects in the list who have their own article (TV shows, and employees of armed forces)?

What I am trying to say here is, I think the lists are not encyclopaedic, and we should come up with a guideline regarding the lists. Kindly let me know what you think. —usernamekiran(talk) 13:06, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

WP:LISTN exists; I suspect that the argument for notability for many/most channels's lists can be made based on that current guidance. Where these pages might fall afoul of current PAG is WP:NOTDIR. --Izno (talk) 13:24, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: Apologies for not mentioning the WP:LISTN in original post. After the failed nomination I did go through it carefully, along with many other policies. Cant/shouldnt we make appropriate changes to this criteria, being a little precise about list of TV shows without being too hard/strict? —usernamekiran(talk) 13:42, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran and Izno: WP:LISTN is a terribly weak guideline. It lists one accepted notability criteria for lists, implying that other implicit criteria exist. For complex "List of X of Y" lists (which probably most lists are, including "List of programs broadcast by <TV channel>"), it simply notes that there is no consensus. In practice this is interpreted that such lists are always notable, which is terrible and the opposite of what notability guidelines are supposed to do. We should arrive at a consensus regarding this and make the implicit assumptions in LISTN explicit. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:25, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

List articles, such as list of programs that have been aired on a network, are frequently seen as split-off material from the main article on the network itself (in this case); if we didn't have WP:SIZE issues, that content would be part of the article on the network. Assuming we're talking only the programs that the national broadcaster airs , and not all the other programming its affiliates have, this can be historically relevant information if it is presented appropriately (eg by decades at a high level). However, wit SIZE, we often delegate such information to a separate page, and this is where and why LISTN has to be vague because there is no consensus that such splits have to have separate notability. LISTN prefers if you can, but if you try to make it stronger, there can be other valid lists that, as a whole, don't have notability as a list but are valid list in en.wiki's eyes, such as the numerous "List of people from (place)". I've offered the idea long ago that while these don't have inherited notability, which such lists are otherwise natural parts of coverage of a larger topic and just split off due to SIZE issues, that's a reasonable allowance for such lists. --MASEM (t) 16:46, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

External links to religious texts (e.g. Bible)

I noticed that quite a few articles contain biblequotes that have external links. Why don't we replace them with a link to Wikibooks-hosted version of the bible? I assume its public domain by now. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 21:01, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

such as wikisource:Translation:Genesis#Chapter_1_.E2.80.94_Originally ? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:09, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Exactly. I don't see the point of linking to an external site when we (can) host these texts ourselves. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 21:36, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea, although the choice of translation(s) should be made, the external links are likely to remain when refering to a specific translation that is not locally hosted. —PaleoNeonate – 00:12, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: I am not an expert (I am an ignostic theological non-cognivist who knows next to nothing about copyright law) but I think that for example the King James Version can be hosted on a Wikimedia project, copyright-wise, and it seems to be widely used in the areas where most Wikipedians come from. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James). Of course there may be a minority of links to translations that cannot be hosted on a Wikimedia project, but I think that that will be a small minority. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 00:41, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Some of these are incorporated already, see {{Bibleverse}} — xaosflux ^Talk 02:27, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

We should assume that when the article links to a certain translation, it is done on purpose. Namely, the translation is the exact source that was consulted and that verifies the article content. For quotations this is painstakingly obvious: you can't quote one translation and add a citation to something entirely else. Why that particular translation is cited or quoted in the first place is a different question (for instance, KJV is not considered a particularly good translation and that is why modern academic scholarship doesn't reference it). We obviously cite the best, most reliable sources, not those that we can hoard to Wikisource. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 10:40, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, we should only do this when it is the same translation. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 19:34, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Talk header

Would it be a good idea to add talk headers to all article talk pages? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 09:34, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

The template documentation currently reads: "In accordance with Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, this template should not be added to otherwise empty talk pages"; I myself for a short while was adding it to talk pages as part of routine citation cleanup but have stopped when an editor pointed me to this. Some (like the recent deletion nominator) have suggested to replace the talk header by automatic messages which would be another possibility... —PaleoNeonate – 17:14, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Removal of subject's name

It is not uncommon for someone to write into Wikimedia (OTRS) expressing concern that a search engine search of their name produces some hits in Wikipedia. We have well-established procedures in the case of two situations:

• Existing article If there is an existing article about them, we explained that we do not simply delete upon request, but we show them how they can request deletion (which they typically cannot do on their own) and offer to nominate at AfD if they need help. We encourage them to express their views in the AfD as some editors feel that in the case of a borderline case the subject's views ought to be considered.
• Afd In some cases, an article about them has been deleted but the AfD discussion has some commentary about them that, while it might not qualify as an attack, is nevertheless not very positive. In those cases we may use {{Xfd-privacy}} which hides the discussion from immediate view but is easily accessible for knowledgeable editors. It will also be found in a search of their name. (As an aside, we are discussing whether this ought to be done automatically upon request or whether it should be more selective but will sort that out.)
• Other mentions In other cases, the name may be mentioned in pages such as this archive page or this archive . It is is clear to me how this should be handled which is why I am posting this, to get community feedback. On the one hand, these archive pages may be viewed as necessary for editors to keep track of various things, and the fact that it mentions that an article about John or Jane dough has been deleted is a fact and we shouldn't go out of our way to hide it. On the other hand, some people are extremely concerned about privacy, and perhaps we shouldn't tell them simply that it is too bad, we insist on retaining the information in an easily accessible way. While no indexing might make it invisible to search engines, I think we ought to be careful about overuse of no indexing, and it may turn out that no indexing makes it difficult for editors to find (some still use internet search engines rather than the internal search function.)

I'm currently looking at a real live request (ticket:2017080410013898) where a person's name is mentioned in the page I linked and they have requested that we remove it. How does the community think we should respond?--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:05, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

AFD is currently NOINDEXed, so they are getting to those pages some other way. --Izno (talk) 20:39, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

...assuming that the page is somewhat recent, and that the page wasn't mirrored to another site, and that the web search engine they use respects the NOINDEXing request, and... WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

No: AFD is categorically NOINDEXd and has been since 2006. My comment is true regardless of your other caveats--those are all other ways of reaching the page in question, as all of the major search engines respect NOINDEX. --Izno (talk) 02:55, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

I wonder what the effect would be if you set up a redirect to an AFD page, or if you transclude the AFD page onto another one (e.g., User:Example/AFD's I'm watching).

I don't believe that it's reasonable to assume that NOINDEXing the XFD pages is a complete solution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Did someone suggest otherwise? --Izno (talk) 19:42, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

I had forgotten that AfD was no-indexed. I can think of one plausible possibility. Many people right into complain that an article about them is deleted, and and we commonly point them to the AFD page. Even though it is no index, obviously they can reach it if they have the actual URL. I thought we were getting requests for removal of information as a result of a Google search but it is possible they are seeing the page because we told them about it; I'll have to watch these careful in the future to find out if they are true search engine hits.

However, whether it is indexed or not or whether there are clever or alternative ways to get around it, misses the main point of the request — given our interest in protecting the privacy of people at some level, should we accede to requests that a mention of a name in the list of deleted pages should qualify for removal. Our interest in protecting the privacy of individuals is in support of removal while our interest in monitoring our own workflows is in opposition to the request. Is there a way to accomplish both?--S Philbrick(Talk) 01:04, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

In this sort of case I cannot see a reason to try to hide the information. Just having a name listed for deletion does not prove it was the same as the person requesting anyway. The fact that there was such a name on Wikipedia in the past is not a secret. However if a name of a page is outing, for example Jone Doe born 16 November 2007 Denver Sands phone 555-1234-123 then perhaps a bit of log hiding or oversighting can take place. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 13:22, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Watchlist

I suggest a slight modification to user watchlist pages. Instead of just showing pages updated since the last view with a green dot, the modification proposed is to show the number of edits since the last view - say, a number following the dot or a number within a larger dot. The utility of the proposed would facilitate whether the user chooses the dif option (to see just one change) or the hist option (to track all changes since the last view). Regards Cinderella157 (talk) 08:17, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree that it would be nice to see a pending changes count. I myself generally click on the history by default, because multiple edits may have occurred. However, with the multiple option, it is possible to see a certain number of recent edits. I don't use this feature because I find it more difficult to follow efficiently. For discussions I more often click on the little arrow before the edit summary, although oftentimes this is missing depending on the editor in use or if the user left a summary. What I find the most difficult is tracking new messages in huge threads where editors also comment anywhere instead of at the bottom. In this case I generally resort to using the diff (or the history if I've not tracked it recently enough). I also enable the bold option for unchecked edits because the green bullet is very small; making this bullet larger may be a good idea. A larger edit summary arrow would also be welcome as it is difficult to quickly click. I tried using custom css to make it larger but I couldn't target it without also affecting other unwanted elements. —PaleoNeonate – 10:18, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Classified index or subject-tagging for Village Pump discussions

Recently a proposal came up on a wikiproject talk page, and it turned out this was something that editors recalled having seen proposed on the Village Pump before, but no-one was able to locate it. This situation I think highlights a general problem with accessing past discussions. Currently, all we can do is search for the words or phrases that we reckon a relevant thread might have contained, but this doesn't always work as there is a huge number of ways that the idea could have been worded and it's not possible to anticipate them all. The other option is browsing through the titles of all previous discussions, but that's not humanely possible as there are thousands of them.

The solution I can think of is the introduction of a system of tagging Village Pump discussions. If a new thread is started, then an editor will tag it for relevant topics using a controlled vocabulary of a few dozen terms, and then a bot will add a link to this thread to a master index, which will be arranged and browsable by these tags. Would this be workable? It takes an initial effort to program the bot, and then a small amount of tagging work each time a new thread is started, but in the long run it will probably be the only way to make past discussions actually findable. Any thoughts? – Uanfala 19:01, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

It's been tried before, in various forms. The problem is that it's got just about 0 priority in the list of things to do. One other problem, perhaps specific to the index in question, was that it was used as a bit of a POV fork. I personally find that Special:Search works just fine, but maybe I just have a good-enough memory to make it work. --Izno (talk) 19:35, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Nearly any method of grouping, other than which part of VP it was on, is significantly subjective. I doubt you could find a completely objective grouping, or even a nearly objective one other than its timeframe. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:03, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Upgrading Authority control

I guess the time has come to upgrade {{authority control}} to a core component of wikipedia. As it already uses wikidata, it would be a good step to show authority control bar above categories on pages by default, if it has values and get rid of the manually added templates in all the articles. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 07:24, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Authority control is not always applicable to every topic. Also strictly speaking these are controlled topic identifiers (e.g., we also have LCSH in there and strictly speaking that is not authority control) that are most often in the form of external links (I know some editors have confused them with references). If your intention is to make this some sort of core component (which I am not sure we are ready for), methinks it might be more interesting to put these vertically in the navigation sidebar, e.g., under the interwiki and interlanguage links. 50.53.1.33 (talk) 01:42, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I am proposing it as a core component only. The locations you have proposed seem good too. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 15:26, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree it should be included in all pages that has some kind of authority control in wikidata. I think most humans are indexed in some authority database, as well as institutions, organizations, buildings, etc. and we shouldn't have to go like bots adding this template.--Zeroth (talk) 04:08, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Proposal for a new policy for articles about individual films and perhaps other works of fiction: Make the plot summary collapsible and perhaps collapsed by default.

I've never done this before, so hopefully if I am off-target about the right way to do it somebody can assist.

I have recently read a few articles here on movies just aiming to get an idea whether or not I wanted to see them. I noticed that there is usually a plot summary and of course there should be. However I don't want to read that when I haven't seen the movie and I am deciding whether or not to buy it on disk or go and see it at a cinema. The same may apply to people seeking more information about a novel. Wouldn't it make sense to have a policy of making this item collapsible so it is easier to avoid reading that part of the article? Perhaps even a policy that reviews of any work of fiction could be written with the plot summary collapsible and possibly already collapsed by default. This would leave the plot summary freely available to those who want it but easily avoided for those reading such articles for reasons similar to mine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Portobello Prince (talk • contribs) 00:27, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@Portobello Prince: You are in the right place--thanks for commenting. Have you seen Wikipedia:Spoiler? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:04, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Notes: collapsed material is subject to technical limitations: users who disable Javascript or use browsers which does not support it see everything expanded, because of limitations of declarative CSS and HTML which must be compensated with control-flow Turing-complete scripts. Having a policy not to include spoilers would also result in incomplete articles. As already pointed out in the guideline, serious reviews also don't include spoiler warnings or censorship features. Moreover, I guess that this could apply: Wikipedia is not censored (WP:NOTCENSORED). —PaleoNeonate – 02:04, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately besides the plot, sometimes character lists give away huge hints for example: Star_Trek_Into_Darkness#Cast. Unfortunately we have NOTCENSORED and Spoiler. Hasteur (talk) 02:21, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Modifying search results from sister projects

I want to develop another proposal to modify cross-wiki search results from sister projects. The only option we have in user preferences to modify the search results is opting the results out, i.e. hiding them while logged-in. Maybe we can add more options in the user preferences to modify the results. Indeed, I realize that modifying the results can be done via user preferences or user scripts.

Personally, I am no fan of user scripts as I can see them as special treatments for individual users or something like that. Well, I used to have one user script, but then I had it deleted and am not planning to re-create one at this time. Nevertheless, I can request one if having another proposal discussion is too soon.

Per RfC discussion, the results from Wikimedia Commons, Wikiversity, and Wikinews are disabled. I thought about having individual options to opt-in the results from either Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, and/or Wikinews (without enabling the results for logged-out users). I don't mind opting-in the multimedia results from Commons (especially by typing at least one word) as long as the multimedia results are hidden from logged-out users (i.e. IP addresses) per discussion. As for Wikinews, well... I know that Wikinews has... issues. I have no opinion on Wikiversity results. Personally, I would like to include them while logged in my account. We wouldn't show those results to general audience, would we? Instead, we can have the results from those projects restricted to logged-in users via user preferences.

I also thought about proposing individual options to opt-out either Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, and/or Wikibooks. Personally, I want to opt-out either Wikivoyage and/or Wikibooks. However, I don't travel a lot, so I would opt-out just Wikivoyage.

People have questioned how cross-wiki search results can improve English Wikipedia. To me, the results can reduce likelihood of problematic articles that do not belong in Wikipedia. Also, I don't have to create redirects to Wiktionary entries, do I? Of course, experiences can be different individually. Still, I wonder whether I can start another proposal discussion or request a user script. --George Ho (talk) 19:19, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Olympic event sidebars

Howdy all. I'm looking for some people who might be interested in helping me do some template work. What I'm looking at doing is converting the many, MANY olympic event sidebar templates (Template:GymnasticsAt2012SummerOlympics or Template:SwimmingAt2000SummerOlympics for example). Ideally I'd like to make use of {{sidebar}} but they may require a custom template from the ground up. Right now I'm just brainstorming but wanted to see if there is anyone that would be interested in being involved? --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 18:19, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

A bot that adds navboxes to articles that those navboxes link to?

Navboxes at the bottoms of articles are a useful part of any article: they help to seat the article in a wider theme or setting, and link the wiki together. However, some articles are linked to by a navbox, but then do not have the navbox itself in the article. This presents a number of issues:

• When travelling to the article by the navbox (as part of a long browsing spree), it is a navigational obstruction, as the navbox that was used to reach the article cannot be directly used to continue.
• When travelling to the article by search or other means, it makes the article seem isolated even though it is part of a greater continuum of related knowledge.

I think these issues are worth resolving, as my contributions reflect, but the edits involved strike me as something that could be automated easily. I have some thoughts on how a bot that performs these tasks could work, but details like that aren't worth discussing unless there is a potential use case for a bot, and there is also the chance that a bot or something like AWB can do (or is doing) this already. Any thoughts? --EnronEvolved^{My Talk Page} 18:13, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

# as used for numbered lists

# at the starts of lines makes a numbered list, as is well known. But how can I make the sequence of numbers start with 0 rather than 1? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:14, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

• @Anthony Appleyard: #<li value="0>text. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:01, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
  • 0. This is number 0.
    1. And this is number 1.
    2. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:49, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
• Thanks. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 21:25, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
  • @Anthony Appleyard and Od Mishehu: The list still starts with number 1 even with Koavf's suggestion. The only way to actually start with 0 is to manually type the numbers with a period after, like the following:
    • 0. Zero
    • 1. One
    • 2. Two
  • Without the asterisks, "<br>" would have to be placed after every item except the last. GeoffreyT2000 ^{(talk, contribs)} 04:20, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
    • @GeoffreyT2000: It starts with "0" in the example above by Od. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:21, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
• @GeoffreyT2000, Od Mishehu, and Koavf: It worked OK with me in Vitamin C#Biosynthesis. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:45, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Let editors ask for review?

I recently noticed on another editable website site that when you try to save your edit there is a prompt like "Ask another editor to review this edit?". I thought this was a marvelous idea. I was a new editor there and the editing was quite complex so I could really relate to the feeling of uncertainty that a new editor feels. When the site asked me to ask another user to review my edit, it felt nice and it was a great way for me to signal that I was uncertain if I'd done something right and I needed help until I get more familiar with the editing on the site. It also tells other users that even if I screwed up an edit that I was participating in good faith. I think such an idea might really work well at Wikipedia too. Perhaps a proposal might be to have by default all edits by IPs and new accounts asking if the editor would like such a review. We'd also have to think about how we'll handle these requests; so ultimately we'd have to upstream a proposal to Mediawiki as a feature request, but what are your general thoughts on the impact on users? Would it help them? Help reader retention? New editor uptake? Etc. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:15, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

The idea sounds good on paper but who will actually review those edits? We already have a review system at WP:AFC which is extremely backlogged, not to mention all other reviews that need to be done. I'd love to see this idea in action but unless the Foundation starts employing reviewers, there will likely not be enough people to handle such requests in a timely fashion Regards SoWhy 16:02, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

This idea is really, really good. I can see no drawbacks at all of this idea, and I completely agree with all of the upsides you mentioned. If someone can work on this, that would be awesome. Maybe we could start with a default-on gadget that sends an API call off to a toollabs tool, which logs the edit in a database and makes it visible to a dashboard that volunteers would look at? (I also disagree with what SoWhy said - AfC and all of the other "review" systems that he brings up are for the page creation process, which is necessarily heavyweight. But looking at individual edits would be lightweight, so the backend systems should be correspondingly simple and not complicated.) Enterprisey (talk!) 00:08, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Not a technical editor but it seems like implementation might be similar to the (likely abandoned) WP:Deferred changes project, where tagged edits will appear at Special:PendingChanges. Rolling out this feature should be done cautiously to prevent pending changes from being severely backlogged, though. Perhaps someone could even finish the deferred changes project while working on this, though that seems unlikely. Darylgolden^(talk) Ping when replying 05:29, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Draft of proposal regarding WP:OR and terrorism

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Problem:

• Terrorism-related pages, especially lists of terrorist events, are plagued by original research and synthesis by editors. On list pages, often list entries are made where the source does not support the label of "terrorism" (e.g., [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]). Other times, the mere mention that ISIL, Al Shabab, or the PKK are suspected appears to prompt editors to add events to the lists, even if terrorism isn't mentioned (e.g., [11], [12]). The issue here is the assumption that all acts by these groups are, by default, terrorism and not some other form of violence such as insurgency, guerrilla tactics, etc. This assumption, while perhaps often correct, still constitutes original research as it is the editor making the connection, not the sources. Currently, the lists of terrorism incidents address this latter issue by including "attacks by violent non-state actors for political, religious, or ideological motive".
• Related, articles about events often are labeled "terrorism" without proper sourcing or prematurely. This prompted EvergreenFir to make WP:HOLDYOURHORSES because breaking news and first responders too often mislabel events in the initial aftermath. The mere rumor of someone hearing Allahu Akbar sends news reporters and editors into terrorism-labeling mode long before such information is verified by investigators. Examples are the initial reporting on 2011 Norway attacks and 2016 Munich shooting.

Proposed solution: Address this issue by amending WP:OR (or similar policy?) to require:

1. Reliable sources explicitly label an event or related individuals as "terrorism" or "terrorist" in their own voice or that Reliable sources report that some official related to the investigation of the event (e.g., mayor, police chief, government spokesperson) has used the label "terrorism" or "terrorist". I am hoping that VPIL can help determine exact wording.
2. Cases where terrorism is "suspected" should be labeled as "suspected" by Wikipedia as well until this suspicion is officially confirmed or denied.

Comments: We understand that carving out a specific topic for special attention in policy pages is undesirable to some editors. However, we believe this deserves special attention because of (1) the seriousness of the label "terrorist", (2) the persistence of the problem across multiple articles, and (3) the contentiousness of the topic vis-a-vis politics and religion. We already have discretionary and general sanctions related to this area (WP:ARB911, WP:ARBAP2, WP:TROUBLES, WP:ARBPIA, WP:GS/ISIL), demonstrating it is a perennial topic for disputes. As such we believe that this broad topic warrants specific attention by Wikipedia policy. The goal of this proposal is to provide clarity to editors and to establish a community norm regarding the application of the label "terrorism".

Signed, EvergreenFir and Doug Weller; Posted by EvergreenFir (talk) 18:40, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Anyone have any suggestions? EvergreenFir (talk) 20:10, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

An anti-WP:SOAPBOX task force/notice board?

The below is transposed from Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not: it got a fair amount of support there (and do please read that conversation), but I'd like to take it a 'level up' and transform it into a concrete proposition, so any input and help would be appreciated.

Since Wikipedia is (one of) the world's most consulted website-references that 'anyone can edit', that makes it a prime target for anyone seeking to WP:SOAPBOX-'broadcast' it. I've seen this a lot in my ~13 years here, but have seen little done to counter it.

It takes a contributor/admin with a lot of patience and experience to see a widespread, organised 'slow attack' pattern any given conflict (because where there's soapboxing, there's most always conflict), but most are too busy/'here and now'-focused to see any larger pattern, and any admin intervening towards the end of such a conflict will find an unreadable talk-page mess almost impossible to unravel, which makes one tend to take claims at face value and only deal with the behavioural aspects of the situation, and this too works to the soapboxers' advantage.

Most of the tactics used to impose and 'enforce' non-WP:V is a 'slow attack' that often passes under the radar (and over the head) of beleaguered admins and Wiki in general. Namely:

1. Refusal to engage in discussions over challenged content *
2. Off-wiki networking *
3. 'Us' and 'them' behaviour *
4. Poisoning and 'drowning' debate *
5. Targeting the opposition *
6. Multiple accounts and frequent name-changing *

While soapboxers learn from their successes and failures, Wikipedia does, too, but soapboxing seems to be still both above and below Wikipedia's mostly 'here and now' radar. But if some patience-laden people conscious of this trend were to populate a task force or notice board dedicated to countering it, it might focus and streamline efforts in that direction, as well as raising vigilance against future occurrences. TP ✎ ✓ 20:10, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

• Comment - While I don't object, we also already have WP:NPOVN for point of view issues (including soapboxing) and WP:COIN which can also be used in cases of self-advertizing. We also have WT:WPSPAM where people experienced with link spam can add links on a list to be automatically reverted, or add a pattern to a blacklist. —PaleoNeonate – 21:21, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I've seen these, but they seem to be efforts to treat 'here and now' dilemmas; soapboxing campaigns are often both discreet and long-term (one instance I was involved in (countering) lasted a decade). TP ✎ ✓ 21:28, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Second chance for requested articles

Wikipedia has Wikipedia: Articles for deletion, and it is not all uncommon for an article to go through a second nomination for deletion there. Wikipedia also has Wikipedia: Requested articles, and some requests - such as the request I made some time ago for an article called "Parametric data" - have been there a long time. Would it be possible to have a box in the requested articles box called "Second requests?" I do not know how long articles can remain at Wikipedia: Requested articles without been removed, but if articles cannot remain there indefinitely, this idea might help Wikipedia. Vorbee (talk) 15:47, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

There was an old project called Wikipedia:Articles requested for more than a year that has apparently become defunct. That's unfortunate. Personally I think the whole "requested article" process could be greatly improved. For example, it should track the original poster, the date posted, allow for a longer description, have a way to add suggested sources and/or signed comments, flag when a request is older than some interval, and have a process to remove completed or non-notable requests. Right now it's too informal and subject to vandalism.

As for parametric data, isn't that covered by parametric statistics? Or do you have something else in mind? Praemonitus (talk) 22:13, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Does the requested article process actually work at all? Does a significant number of articles get created after being listed there? These are not rhetorical questions, because I don't know the answer, but it would be useful to know whether there is actually any point to this process. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 17:52, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

I did type in a couple of names in the category "People in Medicine" which subsequently got articles created on them, so my guess to the answers to your questions is yes, the space in Wikipedia for article requests does have some merits. Vorbee (talk) 15:38, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

OK. I guess the point of my question was whether the process just needs minor tweaks, such as you suggest, or a fundamental overhaul which would be necessary if it isn't working now. I have no experience with this process, but would suggest, if that doesn't happen already, that requests should only be removed from the list if they are about topics that blatantly shouldn't have an article, and that there should be a mechanism for people to add their support to requests. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 18:16, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Adding a new feature "concise" on every article page to display concise or shorter version of the article

I want to propose a new feature. We can add a new button "concise" on every article to display a shorter version of the article which contain only most important or necessary information.

This can be achieved on client side only without increasing any extra load on server.

We have to add an extra tag < n> something like this

Wikipedia article

information1

information2

<n> information3 <\n>

information 4

<n> information 5 <\n>

end of article

where n denotes necessary.

By default the user will be given the full article. But when user will press the "concise" button given at top of article the article will change to shorter version like this

Wikipedia article

<n> information 3 <\n>

<n> information 5 <\n>

end of article

Here the <n> tag will help in filtering of most necessary information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kuldeep ra1 (talk • contribs)

This is the purpose of the WP:LEAD. In other words, long articles that are halfway decent already provide a concise version of the article in the lead, while short articles do not need this. --Izno (talk) 05:17, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

• Definitely a good idea. This is something I've previously felt the need for. Leads, and to a limited extent infoboxes, do indeed ideally provide a concise summary of the article, but for longer and well developed texts we definitely could do with an intermediate level of organisation: a way of marking up the level of detail that a given passage contains. – Uanfala 08:53, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with Izno that the purpose of the lead should be to summarize the article already. We also have notes for offline text. If we begin marking parts of the article as vital, WP:WEIGHT issues would need to be solved twice for every contentious article... —PaleoNeonate – 19:46, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

• Who is going to go back and edit thousands of articles to add these new tags? Will the average article still make sense after "less important" paragraphs are removed? Who decides what's "important" and what isn't? On what criteria? What happens to references that are located in the hidden paragraphs? Seems like a lot of hassle for limited gain - couldn't the reader just skim-read the full article and focus on the paragraphs that (s)he finds important? As noted, the lead often acts as a concise version of the article anyway. Chuntuk (talk) 14:51, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
• I thought the lead sentence was supposed to do this. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:56, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Dedicate a namespace to (table) templates editable with the VisualEditor

A lot of articles move tables into templates to be able to use these tables in more than one article. See Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2017 1#Is it possible to enable the VisualEditor for some templates?

Problem is that for templates, the VisualEditor isn't enabled and probably never will be.

There is a work-around, but it's cumbersome:

• Copy template into a user sandbox using the source editor.
• Edit the sandbox with the VE and save the changes.
• Switch back to the source editor.
• Copy the edited sandbox back into the template.

Using sub pages in the article namespace just for tables (to be transcluded in the main article) apparently isn't allowed.

Presumably the Draft namespace can't be used either, as it is strictly separated from the article namespace.

Technically I could create an article in a new namespace myself, though again this probably isn't allowed (yet).

So I propose to add (allow) a new VE enabled namespace to be used for templates which are awkward to edit without the VisualEditor.

Again, the usage I have in mind are tables, so if generally allowing all sorts of templates is a problem, maybe limit it to just tables and name it "Table:" for example.

--Pizzahut2 (talk) 01:30, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Traffic watchlist

I'd like to be notified when an article has an unusual spike in page views/traffic. This usually means there has been a news story or event, typically signaling the article needs updating with new information/sources. -- GreenC 03:58, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

@GreenC: I'm not sure about a "notification" but phab:T168527 may be of interest to you. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:26, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

The annual Community Wishlist survey is coming up in a month. I'll add it there as a feature request. If anyone wants this feature please support it during the survey. It starts in November. -- GreenC 14:42, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia needs a Favorites/Bookmarks feature

Is there any way that a Wikipedia user can create a list of favorite pages and entries, i.e. a favorites/bookmarks list just like one would find in any Internet browser?

if this function does not currently exist, then is there a way that we could please create this? if so, could we also create a feature that would allow the user to see the number of edits that have occurred since their last visit there? I appreciate any help. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 02:18, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

@Sm8900: You absolutely CAN do this, though the interface isn't that pretty. You can just go to your user page (i.e. User:Sm8900 and add a section like:

My Favorites

• TRAPPIST-1
• Grover's algorithm

... etc.

Alternatively you can use table format and get fancier...

My Favorites
TRAPPIST-1	A star with seven earth-sized planets so close they probably share the same exosphere
Grover's algorithm	An explanation of how much quantum computing can speed up computation, and its limits

You can also start user subpages if you want, but it's probably more useful to keep it right on your user page if you want people to see it.

That said, it might be useful to write up a help guide with a bunch of prefilled syntax people can copy-and-paste to make up their own favorites lists. We might even want to write up templates (but they probably already have been if you search hard) so that you can put your favorites list in a simple format and the template does the graphics work, and if someone else wants to copy parts of your favorites list they can do so easily and yet be able to readily put it in their preferred format. Wnt (talk) 13:13, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

I can't help thinking that developing Mediawiki code to implement something that browsers already do very well would not be a good use of resources and, with all respect to Mediawiki developers, could not be done as well as, say, Google can do it with its massive resources. I keep all my Wikipedia bookmarks in my browser and it's very easy to organize - it's all under a folder on my bookmarks bar (and it also has the advantage that I can mix bookmarks from different Wikimedia projects). The Mediawiki search thing comes to mind here too - I rarely use it because Google search is so much better. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:19, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Howdy. There is work underway to bring synched Reading Lists to the mobile Wikipedia apps (enwiki announcement). Reading Lists will allow readers using the Wikipedia app to bookmark pages into folders to read later and access between multiple devices (like phone and tablet). This includes reading saved articles offline. Handy when there's spotty or no Internet access. There is a potential for the feature to be available on the web in the future. Folks saying, "I'd like that" helps to influence product work. I'll be sharing this with the rest of the Readers team. :) CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:09, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

@CKoerner (WMF): I think that developing special features for people who use "apps" is a bad idea. Wikipedia should be about free content, which is to say, content that is the same for everyone on every conceivable platform. Apps are about control, about announcements from on high -- and I don't just mean WMF. Every nickel you put into an iOS app on the Apple Store (and I don't mean to suggest Google is different) is a nickel you make hostage to Apple's good will. It is becoming not merely impractical but impossible to evade the platform-dependent censors of "apps". And the more money you ante up to that kitty, the more they can make demands. I think it is inevitable that they will start ordering you around with traditionalist sex censorship, telling you what images you can't and can't show the readers they control. But I would expect it to go beyond that, to touch on matters of whether, say, Wikipedians can link to instructions on how to "jailbreak" a phone, or even reports simply critical of the company. And there also is no guarantee they'll be content to censor only the app; this will be a naked exercise of power where they could start demanding anything, who you hire, who you fire, whatever. The more money you ante up to be under their control the more control they will have. So just don't. Please, focus on organic Wikipedia development outside the tainted wasteland of "apps". Wnt (talk) 19:50, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Folks saying, "I don’t like that" helps to influence product work. I'll be sharing this with the rest of the Readers team. Thanks. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 04:43, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

@Sm8900: Is something wrong with using the Watchlist? If you have a page on the watchlist, it shows up in the watchlist when the page is updated, and wikipedia can tell you (when you look at the history of the page) how long ago it was since you last looked at it. Unless I'm totally missing something this seems like it's already covered in existing functionality. Hasteur (talk) 02:08, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I'd add that your watchlist is automatically updated if a page is renamed, and you can simply look at your whole watchlist, not just the pages that have recently changed. ϢereSpielChequers 06:01, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia graphic designs

Hello

I am a Farsi (Persian) Wikipedia user. So forgive my language flaws!

I've designed some designs for Wikipedia. To promote wikipedia and its users. I raised this issue here, and my question is: Is there an internal page for similar designs? And can anyone help me with delivering these designs to their audience? I printed them on t-shirt and it was very cool.

Page on commons

thanks, Seyyedalith (talk) 16:22, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Cooperation in Wikipedia Community	Taking care of wikipedia	Unity of the Wikipedia Community
Wikipedia logo with the community - Based on the Giulia Forsythe's design	Colorful puzzle globe	Wikipedian at night

No comment on any of the others, but what on earth is #6 ("Wikipedian at night") supposed to convey? "Wikipedia editors don't sleep"? ‑ Iridescent 19:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors are hardworking and do not sleep! Seyyedalith (talk) 11:32, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Seyyedalith! I really like versions 2 and 4. --NaBUru38 (talk) 19:17, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm glad! Seyyedalith (talk) 11:32, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

I like these designs, for what it‘s worth. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 06:52, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

• These are pretty cool. The only fault I can see is that number six would give people like Stephen Colbert more ammo to make fun of us; they could say we are crazy and obsessed. :-) PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 14:42, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Make new tables created in VE sortable by default

Wikimedia received a suggestion from a reader who thought that all tables ought to be made automatically sortable. While I like sortable tables, I think the literal suggestion is a nonstarter as I suspect there are some tables which wouldn't work well if they were simply transformed to be sortable.

However, it occurs to me that we might make sortable the default. Obviously, if you decide to create a table from scratch using WMediawiki markup or some of the tools designed to create tables you have to make that decision on your own, but if you use VE to make a table it does so fairly nicely, except that the table is not sortable by default.

(As an aside, if you do work with tables and haven't tried the VE table creation, you should. You can simply grab a rectangle of information from a spreadsheet and paste it in. You then may need to specify a header row, but it's quite easy.)

When you create table this way the table starts with certain default properties of which one:

Styled (wikitable) - Has the default setting "on"

While another:

Sortable - Has the default setting "off"

What would happen if the initial default were changed to "on"? It's probably not quite that simple, but what are the downsides?

On occasion, someone will create a table and want it not to be sortable and have to turn it off but that's not very hard to do. I suspect that many people creating tables aren't even aware that sortability is an option and this would help them understand that it is available and easy.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:10, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure there would be some downside in terms of slowing down the load times of pages. That isn't a consideration for those users with fast connections, but many of our readers have slow connections and some have to pay per gb downloaded. So we'd need first to know what the extra I/O overhead is. On a broader note, if I see the little icon showing that a table is sortable on a particular column I rather assume that someone has taken a conscious decision that sorting on that column might be interesting or useful to someone. If we make tables sortable by default we can expect a bunch of trolls asking questions such as "Why does Wikipedia make so many tables sortable by month, I find the traditional January, February, March - December sequence so much more useful that Wikipedia's April, August, December - September sequence". ϢereSpielChequers 12:32, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Warn editors before saving if they add certain tags without closing them?

I have a tendency to forget to write </small> after parenthetical comments and have to go back. I've also noticed that the cite template puts a big red text about not having a closing /ref but can't really do anything about it. I'm sure there are other tags which, when added without a closing tag, tend usually to be problems. Is there a practical, not too intrusive way to warn editors on saving an edit that there's a problem, without actually stopping them just in case it's something that actually needs to be done? Wnt (talk) 21:19, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Currently, Extension:Linter makes this trivial to do (with its API), see Special:LintErrors/missing-end-tag. But doing it for everyone would make saving slow for everybody, because it needs to expand all templates to detect whether the content generates unclosed html tags. If there are no templates or extension tags on a page then it is even easier to detect without even clicking the save button. On simple pages, this should be easily detectable with something like Extension:Codemirror or really any html validating tool.

Due to performance reasons this would probably work best as an opt-in userscript or alternatively the linter extension could do it (http://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T163072) during preview as people already expect that to be slow. 16:53, 23 October 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.92.26 (talk)

Make new IP edits CC-SA

It seems a nonsense to me that we require attribution to IP addresses - if you want your work attributed to you create an account under your name or a pen name. Attributing edits to an IP address when that address may represent many different people is not really attribution. Changing the IP editing screen so that future IP edits are licensed CC-SA as opposed to CC-BY-SA for edits made by registered editors would be a sensible clarification of the difference between the two types of editing. ϢereSpielChequers 08:28, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

That would mean that some pages are irreversibly doubly licensed. Such might have problematic implications that I don't see. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:53, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't believe there is such a thing as a CC-SA license, WereSpielChequers. As far as I know, all Creative Commons licenses except CC0 require attribution, so they're all at least CC-BY. Imzadi 1979 → 07:07, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

OK that's a fair point. In that case why not default future IP edits to CC0? ϢereSpielChequers 09:09, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus We already have multi licensed pages. Some contain Fair Use images, others contain imported PD text such as out of copyright quotations. Including material that is under a less restrictive license isn't problematic, certainly not as problematic as including Fair Use images which can't be reused under CC-BY-SA. ϢereSpielChequers 09:09, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose - It's impractical. Edits are generally attributed to "Wikipedia contributors" anyway, not individual editors. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 01:22, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

  Listing contributors to an article is one of the attribution methods listed in the terms of use Obviously if an editor released content without requiring attribution they would be waiving the right to be listed as an author. ϢereSpielChequers 09:09, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Again, I point to practicality. If we change this, what about the thousands, if not millions, of IP contributions already existing in articles? Besides, is it really less silly to attribute a contribution to "User:Bubblegum Lolipop Girl" than to attribute a contribution to an IP? That's why I personally prefer attribution to "Wikipedia contributors" with a link to the article. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 14:30, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

This is why the proposal only refers to future edits. We can't change the past ones, but we can change the licence used by IP edits in the future. As for User:Bubblegum Lolipop Girl v an IP. Each user account should relate to one individual, an IP address doesn't. A user name is a clear indication that someone wants to stamp all edits with that username as done by the same person, under an ID that they control. An IP edit is logged under an IP number that an ISP may reassign to others at any time. ϢereSpielChequers 12:44, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

In all fairness, I can see a problem, but the proposed solution to the problem does not solve the problem I'm seeing. If someone edits from XYZ Corporation's headquarters, attribution to an IP address isn't attributing the author, it is attributing XYZ Corporation, which creates a copyright problem if XYZ Corporation's employee handbook says that anything they do with the corporate computer network is company property. Technically, that's a problem even if the user is logged in, but it seems like a bigger problem if we attribute the edit to their corporate NAT. The only two things that would address this issue would be a) identify all companies with policies like that and block them, or b) disable IP editing and make everyone get an account. It's a perennial proposal, but it seems like the most practical solution to this hypothetical problem. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 20:08, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

• Here's a thought: For all intents and purposes, Wikipedia contributors are anonymous whether they are IPs or registered users. The foundation literally does nothing to verify anyone's identity, except checkusers and a few others. If we do make any kind of a licensing change, why not make it across the board? I still oppose because this will complicate the process of reusing content, since older content would be under a different license than newer content. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 14:37, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

  Checkusers don't verify identity. They connect IP addresses (which are anonymous) to account names (which are anonymous). Wikipedia makes no effort to identify any account or IP address to any real live person against their wishes. Actually, per WP:OUTING, it is bedrock Wikipedia policy that, as an organization, Wikipedia will NEVER do that. --Jayron32 20:27, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

  Correct, I meant we verify the identity of the CheckUsers themselves, as in one has to reveal his or her real life identity to the Wikimedia Foundation to become a CheckUser. There are a few other instances where we have to verify identity, such as a famous artist confirming his or her authority to release a well-known work under Creative Commons through OTRS, but otherwise contributors are anonymous. Sorry for the confusion. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 20:30, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

  Any registered user has a pen name that we attribute their edits to. Whether that name is real and whether they choose to make use of that attribution is up to them, but as long as they retain the password it is easy for them to prove who they are if they so wish. IP edits are in a sense throwaway as the IP address attributed might not be under the sole control of the editor at the time of editing and may be lost to them and even reassigned to others through circumstances out of their control. ϢereSpielChequers 20:25, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose because I don't see any actual benefit - but I'm open to changing my mind if there is one. We don't actually "require attribution to IP addresses", just to the article itself via URL. The "list of all authors" thing is only one of the accepted methods of attribution, and I seriously doubt there are many (any?) re-users out there who do that - and even if they did, surely it would be more work for them to filter out the IPs from the copy they make of the history page? I honestly don't get the point. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:43, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

The main page

Has anyone ever proposed redesigning the main page, but first having an RfC (or reader survey) to gauge if people actually want the main page to be redesigned? I don't want to dig much into the archives but I haven't found any attempts to obtain a real, solid consensus of "the main page should be redone". Jc86035 (talk) 15:57, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

The most recent links etc should be in Wikipedia:Main Page (2016 redesign). — xaosflux ^Talk 16:02, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I don't think that one's particularly helpful, since the talk page died and the proposal was basically Edokter's design or no change. Jc86035 (talk) 16:13, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

@Jc86035: see also Wikipedia:Main page redesign proposals for a list. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:15, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: It looks like it was asked in the 2011 RfC but the sample size was probably not large enough to be considered consensus (and the closer didn't think the RfC was very good?). Thanks. Jc86035 (talk) 16:21, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

The ideal starting point would be a series of questions on the current main page and then see what improvements might be made. Example questions might be:

• The main page is too cluttered (yes/no)
• There should be a Featured Article on the main page (yes/no)
• There should be ITN on the main page (yes/no)
• There should be DYK on the main page (yes/no)
• There should be POTD on the main page (yes/no)
• There should be OTD on the main page (yes/no)
• There should be a link to Portals on the main page (yes/no) - if "yes" keep as broadest, or rotate random ones could be another question.

and so on with all the elements currently on the main page, as well as a list of potential elements to include.

Then open up voting for a month and see what happens. With "no consensus" on any item defaulting to status quo. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:27, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

@Casliber: I would probably also ask questions about whether or not to make the layout responsive, to change the colours(?), to change the layout, to have animated/interactive elements like the English Wikivoyage, etc.

Would it be a good idea to just throw an RfC into one of the village pumps if someone does it, or have a discussion asking if we need one of those RfCs first (if that's a thing)? (Having a discussion prior would probably also help with finding questions to ask.) Jc86035 (talk) 13:00, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Having an RfC and proposal to change the main page is fine, the key is having enough structure and relevant detail to get a consensus. Have you looked at the old ones? Maybe a two stage process is good actually. Stage 1 is RfC to gain consensus on style, design and elements of main page, and stage 2 is specific proposals that must abide by the constraints of stage 1. Or somesuch. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:19, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes. I think the process could be - (1) Decide what we want to do with the first page and why we want it; (2) figure out how do we do with the first page what we want; and (3) check what we can retain and what needs to change. Does that make sense? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 18:10, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

@Aditya Kabir and Casliber: Okay. Would the first part be an open RfC (i.e. anyone could add questions/statements to be !voted on) or would these be set beforehand? Jc86035 (talk) 08:21, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Ok be bold and start off something at User:Jc86035/mainpageredesign before moving it to mainspace. Just structure it as above - it needs a lot of structure to avoid walls of text. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:47, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Have a look at WP:PEREN#Redesign the main page? Check the links there. We have discussed redesigning the main page many times in the past. Take a look at how it happened, what was discussed and what gained consensus. Keep in mind that WP:CON#Consensus can change, so there's no problem in returning to a problem that's been settled in the past. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 17:09, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

I couldn't help but notice...

...that a very long list of "distinguished" Wikipedia editors/administrators is on the "block list" for SOCKPUPPETING and that even though every one of them has blocked or has supported the blocking of "IP editors" and "sockpuppet editors" for days to months to "indefinitely", their blocks only seem to be for 24 hours according to the "countdown clock". Even more strange is that where a BLOCK NOTICE can be found for the FEW of them that aren't being PROTECTED by having their blocked "status" made "public" on their user/talk pages, the notices seem to claim they've been blocked for 72 hours. And why are their "distinguished" user names not showing up on the "sockpuppet" list? Obviously the actual word SOCKPUPPET isn't being used to DESCRIBE those exalted Gods of Wikipedia, but there are links to the "sockpuppet" list here and there depending on what links one follows from the block list page and clearly they weren't blocked for the "acceptable" use of "alternate accounts. Its interesting that their block notices also state that they will be WELCOME to edit Wikipedia again. No "community discussion" to determine if "sanctions" should have been applied to begin with or what they should be. No kangaroo court of holier-than-thou blowhards holding for from on high about anything and everything BUT "creating an encyclopedia". But then again, given that list of blocked editors/administrators is comprised OF most of the "judges" that SIT on those kangaroo courts or at least arbitrarily take various punitive action against "IP editors" and "sockpuppets" that lead TO kangaroo courts, its not surprising there's no one left to convene one. Kinda gotta wonder just how "thorough" whatever investigation of their sockpuppets actually was and who it was conducted by.

Sure seems like a heck of a good opportunity to make an example out of a bunch of editors/administrators who certainly never hesitated to make an example of others. But there really aren't any CLEAN HANDS around here the way it seems. Who knows HOW LONG the "innocent" editors/administrators who finally were forced to "out" longtime sockpuppeteers have actually known about it but were silent only because of what is in their OWN closets. I do have to say that I'm amazed ANYTHING happened to them. I've "known" or rather have "suspected" For a LONG time that just like MOST "holier-than-thou" power-tripping "authority figures" tend to be excessively judgmental because they're overcompensating for their own "guilty conscience" in part and as bluster to LOOK beyond reproach to scare anyone who might peak in their closets away, not only were that many "judge/jury/executioner" types highly unlikely to ALL be pure as the driven snow OR as "friendly" to so many others JUST LIKE THEM. And when such DEDICATED and COMMITTED WP editors/administrators seem to have nothing but time to spend playing KGB agent investigating OTHERS and time ONLY for their own self-appointed "duties" and "tasks" because anytime they're ASKED to comment on something or contribute to some other way or contact someone on their talk pages they're "busy" or "ill" or on a "Wikibreak" etc, but yet they seem to MAGICALLY SHOW UP on OTHER USERS' talk pages to answer questions asked of others when those others are "busy" or "ill" or on a "Wikibreak", only somebody who lives in a fantasy world of computers and bits and bytes and "academia" with little or no social interaction with "common folk" in the "real world" where people learn to "read" other people while they learn nothing but "code" could believe that's a COINCIDENCE over and over and over.

I could get into how many OTHER Wikipedia "policies" that they've "violated", which honestly is MOST Wikipedia "policies" when you get right down to it and how every one of them has in the past and will in the future block anybody for MANUFACTURED "violations" of "Wikipedia policy" once they "apologize" for their "mistakes", but there's really no point. Anybody "accomplished" and "experienced" long-time editor will have accumulated enough "dirt" on the remaining "legit" Wikipedia power elites to make their lives uncomfortable, and current/former admins/bureaucrats will no doubt have used the "tools" to build their OWN dirt databases probably sufficient to maybe destroy WP as a WHOLE, so they'll come back after about another 23 hours of their "72 hour" blocks, jump through the hoops necessary to get new user names, it'll be in the best interests of the "community" to pretend it never happened and all the "evidence" of their behavior will get flushed down the memory hole. They'll be more careful about how they build their NEW sock farms and they'll continue to do nothing but destroy content for whatever third party is paying them to DELETE CERTAIN INFORMATION just like OTHER "distinguished" editors who righteously block "COI" editors are getting paid or otherwise compensated for doing THAT. It just goes to show that they're all human and fallible after all. And that's the last thing they ever wanted exposed on Wikipedia. Otherwise they wouldn't have been using "alternate accounts" to begin with. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.234.100.169 (talk) 17:59, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Can you give any example? Anything that someone other than you can check, to find out what happened? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 18:06, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I recall User:David Shankbone was blocked for six months for disruptive activities. Of course, one may argue that someone less valued would have been blocked longer, but there's usually a reason why they are less valued; David Shankbone contributes to the project in big ways, compared nineteen-year-olds who have done nothing for Wikipedia except try to add pretty emojis to articles from their dorms at UC Berkeley and get blocked for vandalism. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 20:39, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

How is that an example of something like "current/former admins/bureaucrats will no doubt have used the "tools" to build their OWN dirt databases probably sufficient to maybe destroy WP as a WHOLE, so they'll come back after about another 23 hours of their "72 hour" blocks, jump through the hoops necessary to get new user names..." etc.? Also, minor vandalism "never" gets blocked. And, remember that 19 year old kids are the people who built this encyclopedia. No Wikipedia:Ageism, please. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 17:56, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Note: there's no point in arguing or trying to understand, the original poster was blocked (trolling LTA). —PaleoNeonate – 18:25, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

The OP seems to be just ranting "oh, it's not fair, admins let established users get away with things that newbies can't get away with, favoritism!", I wanted to refute it, and while I don't believe David Shankbone is an administrator, he's certainly higher on the food chain than the average bear in my opinion. Of course, there's always bonafide administrators like User:Ed Poor who have been blocked (I didn't think of him when I wrote the earlier reply). As for ageism, I was 15 when I started here, and we've had great contributors who were middle school students; if you really want to talk about ageism, lets talk about all of the school blocks we have discouraging "19 year old kids" from becoming Wikipedians, including on institutions like Berkeley. As PaleoNeonate said though, the OP is a troll, so there's no discussion left here. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 01:53, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

LOL. Is that really happening? I didn't know. I jump at all hints of ageism (which obviously you didn't have, but I imagined you to have), because two of the best editors I have seen were 14 and 74 years old when they were interacting with me. And, I know for sure that I have not grown much since I was 13. :) Happy Halloween. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 02:17, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Re: Schoolblocking, look at all of the IPs that link to the template. I'm honestly quite annoyed by the ageism as well as it, in my opinion, violates WP:AGF. On the other hand, I wish sysops would be a little more ageist for the sake of common sense; any school with hundreds or thousands of students is going to generate vandalism, just as my own /16 DSL range with CenturyLink is a source of vandalism, but if a school or anything slightly resembling a school (banks, hospitals, retail chains, government agencies, and insurance companies are just a few examples) occasionally vandalizes, it gets {{schoolblock}}ed or {{anonblock}}ed, to the point that I think most K-12 school districts and community colleges in my area of the world are blocked. Even big universities here like Florida Gulf Coast University is blocked, and the University of South Florida has been rangeblocked in the past. Then there's the well known Bob Jones University blocked for a whole three years in 2015, the United States Naval Academy once blocked for a month, the United States Military Academy whose old IP was blocked for an extended period of time when it was using a shared NAT. If blocking schools isn't bad enough, there are networks like this one that pretty obviously belongs to CenturyLink's business office that admins assume to be a school because they make silly edits, which is very definitely ageism. Sometimes these IPs and IP ranges need to be blocked, but the problem is sometimes these blocks happen over a couple of edits, as if the sysops seriously expect school/college students or employees of large corporations to be perfect angels who never vandalize. However, I don't have high hopes of anything changing. I think the only major educational networks I've seen that hasn't been the subject of an extended block at some point is Pensacola Christian College and the Santa Rosa County School District; SRCSD is not tagged as an educational institution and I don't intend to change that, and most of PCC's IPs were not tagged until I tagged them rather recently (possibly a mistake, we'll see). PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 23:40, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, what is your idea?--Ykraps (talk) 07:51, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes these IPs and IP ranges need to be blocked, but the problem is sometimes these blocks happen over a couple of edits, as if the sysops seriously expect school/college students or employees of large corporations to be perfect angels who never vandalize. Uh... yeah, people shouldn't vandalize. That's not a hard concept. When they do, we block them. --Izno (talk) 12:30, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

It's 2017; if a truly "persistent vandal" wants around a block, they literally only have to go around the block to a business that has open wi-fi, unless we are to really start blocking entire towns and cities. Sometimes it makes sense, like with Sarasota Memorial Hospital where one person kept hitting the same article with the same statement over the course of seven years, someone else was PR pushing, and there were no good anonymous edits over the course of seven years, although if the vandalism persists after their block expires, a call to the IT department is probably in order to hopefully put a swift end to that behavior. Then there's IP addresses with thousands of users that generate vandalism, and sometimes more vandalism than good edits, but do generate good edits, and if there's not an actual pattern of vandalism we're trying to curtail other than edits being silly or around the same time, it's like burning a house down to treat an insect infestation. But... you've only reinforced my statement that nothing is going to change; at this point it's more of about minimizing the collateral damage rather than stopping it. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 03:52, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Requiring extended-confirmed to upload files

Recently, there's been some extremely substantial forms of abuse when it comes to file uploads. First, the WP0 abuse from Commons has been drifting our way. These are editors who game their way to autoconfirmed status then immediately use Wikipedia as a warez service, uploading blatantly copyrighted files en masse (music files, entire episodes of TV shows, movies, etc). Second, it is very common for undisclosed paid editors to game their way to autoconfirmed and upload copyrighted company logos. Both of these abuses can be hard to spot, and they sometimes take substantial amounts of time before editors identify and remove the copyrighted material.

I'd like to test the waters on raising the bar for uploading files on enwiki. Right now, the bar is autoconfirmed - 10 edits, 4 days on site. Uploading files is a rather "niche" activity, and newer editors often misunderstand what they can and can't upload. I would say most files that new editors upload that I've encountered are either promotional, copyrighted, or useless. Further, newer editors often upload free images on enwiki, which really should be going to Commons. If we were to raise the bar on uploading files to extended confirmed, we would eliminate this abuse, new editors could still upload free files on Commons, and we could more thoroughly vet non-free files at WP:Files for upload before they're accepted.

Alternatively, if 500/30 is too high a bar, we could use an edit filter to raise the bar to some intermediate level. 100/15 or something like that. What are the community's thoughts on this possibility? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 13:58, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia Zero abuse  • Restrict Video Uploading  • Global Abuse Filter 144—logging only [1]  • AbuseFilter for cross-wiki uploads (non-WP0). — Dispenser 16:04, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

I'd say paid editors uploading company logos are not a problem. Using company logos - whether public domain or under a fair use claim - on the company articles is very well established. I know about the WP0 issue - for those who aren't aware, there are groups of people who upload large amounts of clearly illicit stuff like pirated films and share them over Wikimedia projects, exploiting the fact that it takes time for a copyvio to be removed and the stuff can be shared widely in the meantime - but is it a problem here on Wikipedia as well?

Perhaps it might help to have a sample of new editors' uploads and a comparison to the uploads of non-new editors. When people raise the bar for new contributors, I always worry that good stuff will be lost. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:51, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Only on October 31 (two days ago) according to the logs. — Dispenser 16:16, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

I've found at least three accounts engaging in WP0 abuse (now locked by stewards) today alone. This is definitely making its way to enwiki. That Phab log does not contain all reports. @Jo-Jo Eumerus: I'm more saying that if we were to vet those logo uploads, we'd be catching many paid editors. More of a happy side effect than anything else. The WP0 abuse is the real issue. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:17, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: I've spent 0 time looking in to this - but can AbuseFilter filter on upload size? — xaosflux ^Talk 02:02, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Yes, via the file_size variable. We could choose to limit non-extendedconfirmed editors to only relatively small uploads in order to prevent this abuse, although this has the unexpected side effect of "encouraging" the upload of low-quality free images when a higher-quality version exists. Then again, if it's free, it should go on Commons anyway. If the community prefers that route, I can draw up a filter. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 02:05, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Pick an arbitrarily big number, and set to log - lets see what fish we catch. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:06, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I believe Commons already does this. Let me look at their abuse filters and see if it is public. --Majora (talk) 03:22, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I was mistaken. They don't. But they do tag zero uploads and the user_wpzero variable can be used to do so (see c:Special:AbuseFilter/149. Perhaps we can just disable zero uploads directly to enwiki? I'd be ok with that. Perhaps even include a notice to ask them to file a request at WP:FFU. That request page is kept pretty clear so it is not like they would be waiting long. --Majora (talk) 03:26, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to echo Jo-Jo Eumerus above. There are some possible solutions being discussed but I think we would benefit from seeing some data showing the problem first. Sam Walton (talk) 11:31, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Just implement the end game: T167400: Disable serving unpatrolled new files to Wikipedia Zero users. Add a like so WMF takes action. — Dispenser 21:18, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Um, I am fairly sure that likes and that does not get that task priority over all others. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:22, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Revision in Context (RIC) centers desired rev on history page

I would like to have better access to the rev history page from a diff, with the particular revision I am interested in vertically centered on the page (i.e., displayed at #25 on a 50-count page).

I envision a slight modification to the diff page to add two new links called "Revision in Context" (RIC). Clicking a RIC link would bring up a standard rev history page with 50 revisions (or whatever the default is) but with the selected revision in the center of the page, so that one can more easily see its historical context.

Often, I want to see what happened just before and just after—did they revert something? has there been an edit war? did it go on?—centering the selected rev would provide this. Currently, it's quite awkward to go back half a page worth, and I have to play around with the back 100, forward 50 trick, or use the year-month drop-downs when that happens to place the rev in question at the desired spot (not very often).

For the choice of name, I was inspired by KWIC.

If that is too difficult implementation-wise, then as a next best, I'd like to see a link at the bottom of history pages "+/- half-page" which would move the view portal half the current &limit= value. A better version of this would be to hyperlink the bullet indicator of each rev (is that even possible?) so a click on the bullet centers that rev vertically. Mathglot (talk) 21:39, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: You should have access to the revision slider on your diff pages? (Documentation.) That should get you mostly there. --Izno (talk) 01:35, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Contribution workflow suggestion

After making a contribution and getting to the "confirmation/here's what else you can do" page, it would be nice if there was an obvious option to return to the previous WIki page. OR the whole payment process should have opened up a new tab so when it's closed I still have my previous page available. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Misscking (talk • contribs) 16:52, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Abandoned pages and articles

Is there already a list of pretty much abandoned and isolated articles in Wikipedia? If not, I highly recommend it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OfficialNeon (talk • contribs) 20:41, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Possibly useful may be Wikipedia:Dusty articles (not always up to date, not automatically updated), User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report (for Draft space), Category:Stale userspace drafts (these may be blanked with {{Userpage blanked}} if WP:FAKEARTICLE, may be nominated at WP:MfD if inappropriate or used as the basis for a new article if the notability is good enough). Category:All orphaned articles can point to articles that were never completed or linked anywhere. Also useful to find articles which need work may be Category:All stub articles, Category:All articles to be expanded, Category:Pages missing lead section, Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit, Category:All pages needing cleanup, Category:All articles needing cleanup, Category:All articles needing rewrite, Category:All articles needing additional references, Category:All articles with unsourced statements. Others may also have further suggestions, —PaleoNeonate – 23:18, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Newsletter: What's up with ArbCom

With the upcoming ArbCom election, my proposal is a newsletter delivered to talk pages of subscribers every week or month. This will help people interested in the cases of the ArbCom. The newsletter will describe cases currently at ArbCom, and other happenings. A sample is included below:

What's up with ArbCom? (This line will be titled)
New Requests: Example 1 (Link), Example 2 (Link)
Opened Cases: Example 3 (Link), Example 4 (Link)
Closed Cases: Example 5 (Link), Example 6 (Link)

If you are interested in helping with this, the WP:Signpost, though not recently, includes this. Maybe you should go help. --Izno (talk) 13:58, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Line numbers

I have done a diff on a talk page- there was a change at line 273- I clicked on the link and just like the autolinks for reference- was taken to that pont in the text, but double-clicking by mistake, the text editor opened and the cursor was on line 272. I don't know how I ever managed without it! Dreaming again- but what a pleasant dream.--ClemRutter (talk) 19:38, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Wait, how do you turn this on? Line numbers in the editor are my #1 most wanted improvement, next to WMF taking harassment and coordinated paid promotional editing at all seriously. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 20:21, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Line numbers are already displayed by default, but only when editing in the Module namespace (though of course this is still far from the situation in ClemRutter's dream). – Uanfala 12:03, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikinews: revival and on the main page

Okay, I know what you're thinking. Hear me out.

This RfC proposes to reduce the enforcement of WP:NOTNEWS to increase news coverage on Wikipedia.

The rationale is "Wikinews is dead". You know, sure. It's not the most popular WMF project - not by a long shot. However, the problem is mainly that:

1. No one seems to know it exists (except the more active Wikipedians)
2. Not many non-editors go there
3. No one seems to know it exists (again, I know, but no one does)

Whether or not it's a good or bad idea to put news in Wikipedia is not a discussion for here. However, why does wikipedia not try to increase awareness of sister WMF projects? enwiki is in a good place to do this, it's one of the most popular websites in the world, and is renowned for its impartiality and stunning dedication to consensus. WN is much the same, but without participation. If we could increase participation and awareness (the two go hand in hand, just look at the growth of the number of editors on enwiki), then it could be a quality news source that people rely on.

Isn't it already on the front page? Yes, technically. By the links for Wikibooks and the other pet projects of the WMF. However, if we could link to it more prominently (eventually link to WN articles in the In the News section, perhaps), it would grow a lot more.

Haven't we given it up for dead? They're still publishing articles over there, although admittedly few. We could do a lot better!

I'd just like thoughts at this point. Thanks. ProgrammingGeek ^talktome 15:56, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

This does not address the fundamental problem of; consumer demand of recentism and Wikipedia quality vs. Wikipedia's rigid stylistic form and immediate publishing vs. copy cat news website that usually publishes after people stopped showing interest in the topic, if at all. We have created this situation to reflect our reality, but we need to recognize that it is not a situation that a consumer will ever consider logical. As such we cannot fix the problem unless we start bending either Wikinews or Wikipedia to closer match the desire of real consumers of the information. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:20, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

There's several concurrent discussions related to NOT#NEWS in general, but one of the issues that comes up is the "consumer" aspect - that we do know people are coming to Wikipedia for current news articles. The problem is that an encyclopedia should be the last place you come to breaking news, as we're supposed to be summarizing news with a long-term view. There are stories that we can write on en.wiki with that perspective, but it is a very careful approach, but vastly different from how one would write a standard newspaper article (eg what would be more appropriate at Wikinews). Unfortunately, there's a fair number of editors that like to write recent news, and no end of consumers for that. That said, we have in the past taken steps to cut off content that may have been consumer-driven: for example, early on was the removal of endless lists of fiction-related elements that were only sourced to primary works (eg Pokemon lists). They may have been popular pages, but as they were written then, not encyclopedic content. We have to have a consensus decision to cut off current event articles and move them elsewhere, and these concurrent discussions suggest that's not going to happen easily. --MASEM (t) 19:02, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Masem, exactly. We have a ready-made location for this sort of content. I don't want it to seem like we're outsourcing the problem, but if people know about Wikinews, we won't be inundated with these articles. ProgrammingGeek ^talktome 19:11, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

To raise awareness of other Wikimedia foundation projects, could we not put information about them on Wikipedia: Main Page? The main page is one of the most viewed articles on Wikipedia, if not the most viewed, and putting information about Wikipedia's sister projects on the main page would seem a good way to raise awareness of them. Vorbee (talk) 18:23, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

The Main Page of Wikipedia has a section in its top right-hand corner called "In the news..." ... it should not prove too difficult to put in a note that there is such a website as Wikinews there.Vorbee (talk) 20:14, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

• I support linking to Wikinews articles in the "In the news" section of the main page because Wikipedia is not for news, but Wikinews is, and if we're going to mention news on our main page, we should link to our sister project, not just Wikipedia articles. Conservapedia has a similar section on its main page, commonly known as "mainpageright," it has included links to external sites for a long time, and it is one of the most popular features of the wiki. PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 22:10, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• This does seem like a useful idea, regardless of other developments (unless there is a vested interest in actually having WikiNews wither on the vine). --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 09:25, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps we could have a note at the bottom of the Main Page's "In the news" box saying "For more information on news stories, see Wikinews". Vorbee (talk) 16:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Useful discussion. I'm a newby and I browsed through the different projects (including Wikinews) to find out what they were. I can't remember ever finding Wikinews items via Google though they do turn up). I'm aware that I (based in the Netherlands) have free access to a wide range of News sites from which I can form my own opinion. There are many countries where this is not the case. Good comments have already been been made by others. A couple of additional comments from a newby perspective:

• I think a consumer-focused, integrated presentation of information from different Wiki sources is important and will only become more so. As an example, there are news items presented via en.WikiNews.org and other news items (linked to external sources) sourced from the Wikipedia Portal:Current_events and presented on the main Wikipedia page. On the portal, I don't see any references to WikiNews as a source. The same is true the other way around: items on the current events portal do not appear on WikiNews. As a consumer, I would expect the news items on the main page to be on WikiNews too but that is not the case. I would also expect news items to include links to background information on Wikipedia, etc. IMHO consumers need just one consistent, integrated 'front-facing' portal on 'News and current events'. WikiNews can be part of this as a source of original news items and as an outlet for news items from across Wikiprojects and external sources. I do understand that the goals and standards of WikiNews are different to the 'Current events' portal. But those involved in both channels need to work out how to cooperate more IMHO.
• Much like Wikipedia, one way WikiNews could 'add value' would be in curating more external content and replicating less. This is basically what the current events portal does. WikiNews could go further and periodically review and approve the editorial policy and processes of selected news outlets. So they become one of WikiNews's 'trusted' news outlets. In short, WikiNews and Wikipedia current events would become partners in a network of trusted News outlets. Just a thought.
• If in some countries, access to politically and neutral news sources is restricted then I wonder whether access to WikiNews is restricted there too. So the question of who has free access to WikiNews (but not, for example to sites like BBCNews or Reuters) is relevant.
• I have no idea how WikiNews (or other project) items are found or accessed by whom but I'm sure that the info is available through some Analytics software (filtering out editors). If the main page has a high (non-bounce) hit rate and click-through, then yes it would be well worth giving other media types (=projects) more prominence. Something like Google where you know that by clicking on the 'çube', you can quickly click on the sub-site for that service (e-mail, maps, books, docs, etc.). The cube is always there at the top on every site.
• There is a mismatch between the desktop version of the main page and the app version. Both have a 'magazine' design and I wonder whether this design matches the intended audience. The 'above or below the fold' decision about where to put newspaper articles based on their newsworthiness still applies to (News) websites too. What visitors first see on their screen (desktop or mobile) gets the most attention. They may or may not scroll further or click on buttons. In the current 'magazine' design of the main page:
  • 75% of what I first see on a desktop screen is stuff I'm really not interested in: Today's featured article (on an extinct sea mink), Did you know? (no, but who cares?) and On this Day (Nothing interesting today). These have no relation to my personal interests or to anything that's going on in the world right now. The same applies to "today's featured photo" (below the fold). I'm sure much cleverer and more informed minds than mine have made the current design with good reasons so I'm probably one of a minority that doesn't like it. Links to other media types (=sister projects) and other languages are all 'below the fold' (if you scroll past the featured photo). 25% (top right) of the 1st screen is "In the News" with 6 items (text), all in different News categories.
  • On the app screen "in the News" is right at the top (with photos). My first thought is "this is relevant and well presented" Then (unfortunately) comes the sea mink ;) A great feature not on the desktop version is "Trending" (similar to Twitter). These may not be articles I'm interested in but it's relevant to see what other people are interested in. Most of these are related to current events.

Coming back (after this long rant) to WikiNews revival, I think the bigger picture of "News" (added value, accessibility, sourcing, presentation, standards, curation, etc.) needs to be clarified first. Maybe this is already part of the 'Strategic Direction 2030'. But the first step I think is for the folks at WikiNews and the current events portal to decide - together with the folks that maintain the Design of the main page - which news items are going to be presented via which channels and which ones are going to be sourced/curated by WikiNews. It would be an interesting exercise to compare some of the past WikiNews items with the equivalents sourced by the current events portal. Mikemorrell49 (talk) 14:19, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

• I have no ideas, but two observations. First, Jimbo has started a project that directly competes with Wikinews, using a core of paid journalists: Wikitribune. Secondly, having similar thoughts to the OP and not being aware of this discussion, I decided a little while ago to put my toe in the water over at en.Wikinews and have written a couple of news articles—but looking further in the course of doing that, I discovered that at least some of the sister Wikinews projects in other languages are far more active. de.Wikinews in particular really impresses me with the range on its front page. So we shouldn't consider en.Wikinews in isolation in either respect. Although I still think the best solution is for people who like working on news articles to contribute to en.Wikinews, whether it's in addition to here or instead. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:47, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Make wikipedia more user friendly

I think it will be better if users will able to highlight their text(only at their device,also for as much time as they want). This is an issue of your technical team but it will definitely make your organization(software) better and user friendly. By this change , researchers will feel much comfortable in their work and also a great amount of users - "students" will feel more friendly and its really become helpful for them to making notes and many more aspects. Thanks . Will Feel great if I see these changes in my wikipedia.

Sangharsh Vyas (talk) 18:01, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

• When you say “highlight text”, do you mean that they can mark text in a distinct way (e.g. yellow background) and have it remain visible to them if they return later to view the page? I like the idea. This is information that could be stored in a local cache on their device, but would not be visible on other devices. One option would be to store it with their account on Wikipedia if they have one, but that might be burdensome for the servers. — Andy Anderson 21:46, 27 November 2017 (UTC)