User:SimulatedZero

I am a new user trying to contribute to Wikipedia, to be useful, in my personal User page, I am gonna list things that I feel need improvement within Wikipedia and later suggest ways to improve it as I encounter problems while using Wikipedia as a contributor. Expect this page to be updated as time goes on. Here I am talking to contributors of Wikipedia rather than the general public. i encourage you to leave me feedback on my talk page, i will consider all of your feedback and refine this page accordingly.

This page might sound like WP:OR and I know most of you beloved Wikipedia contributors hate WP:OR and have an urge to delete it at the first sight but hey its still allowed on user pages and its necessary for human kind advancement.

= User interface for contributors = To be honest with you, its 2020, and i can't believe how user unfriendly the Wikipedia user interface is for contributors. why can't we raise a small percentage more for a few years and spend it on improving the user interface. Why don't we still don't have advanced graphical, easy to use interface for contributors?

Tell me why do you think we still don't have a good easy to use interface, because of following reasons?
 * 1) Lack of choice, no competition, only one interface is being developed
 * 2) Getting use to new interface might be difficult
 * 3) We are happy with what we have
 * 4) We got use to the old interface and don't want to change it
 * 5) lack of funding
 * 6) we can not agree collectively what we want in a new user interface

I suggest to:
 * Whatever that is necessary is done to separate the programming code responsible for User Interface from the other codes within MediaWiki.
 * Fund separate competing efforts to develop more user friendly interfaces.
 * Give users ability to choose one of the new competing user interfaces.
 * Use popularity statistics to choose a few of winning interfaces for future fund allocation.

I should clarify that User Interface include underlying programming code that controls the functionality of User Interface and should not be confused with theme (also called skin) that merely changes the colors and appearance of user interface.

No easy and user friendly way to search history of an article with one or many keywords
We want to be able to easily research if specific keyword(s) has been mentioned in the article and removed in the past. this will enable contributors to quickly see if specific point of view or information has been added it the past, and why it has been removed. say we search an article revisions with a keyword, we find a revision containing that keyword within a section that since has been removed, there should be an easy and user friendly way for us to access old discussions related to that removal right where we are looking at the removed section.

No easy and user friendly way to search and access discussions about an article that have been archived
Quote from search box on top of the talk page:"Discussions on this page often lead to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments and look in the archives before commenting." clearly this is wasting a lot of time of contributors, we should be able to search old discussions with specific keyword(s), as each archived discussion has a start and end, we should see a list of discussions grouped by timelines that contain the keyword(s), zooming on one of them, we should not only see the discussion but also what section of article that discussion relates to and how that discussion at its conclusion affected the article itself.

We want to see new comments in talk pages highlighted
When we go back to a talk page, all new comments after our last visit should be highlighted, their should be a slider where we can adjust the timeline of highlighted comments. for example we should be able to highlight all comments added last week excluding today's comments.

= AI Tools for contributors = Where are the Artificial intelligence tools that can help contributors improve Wikipedia. Don't you want an AI tool to show you what other contributors said in other languages when editing a segment within an article? what about contributors that don't speak English, is it bad if an AI tool show them in their language what English and Russian speaking contributors wrote in that section of the article they are editing?? let me be clear that i am not talking about replacing contributors with AI in no way, rather to utilize AI to assist contributors to be more efficient and effective, the same way that bicycle as a tool makes us more efficient. these type of primitive AI tools don't even need much computing power, and they will be only used by contributors who represent only a fraction of the Wikipedia traffic.

= Wikipedia Policies =

Adding Anti Abuse Section to all Wikipedia Policies
As all of us know we should remain neutral and fair to ideas and facts while writing the articles, even due this might seem easy, most of us understand that its difficult to put our personal opinion aside in practice. Potentially each policy can be used unfairly against an idea or point of view because of ignorance or strong opinion held by some contributors.

As a simple example, a viewpoint already published in peer-reviewed journals can be added to a Wikipedia article by a new contributor without adding references, another contributor can delete the viewpoint citing WP:OR without actually researching the viewpoint. In this Case WP:OR policy has been abused against the viewpoint.

As a more complex example, a new viewpoint already published in mainstream newspapers, can be added to a Wikipedia article that already contains 20 other viewpoints, another contributor can delete the viewpoint citing WP:UNDUE doing so without comparing the weight of the new viewpoint to other 20 viewpoints present, but weighing the new viewpoint against his/her personal high standards. therefore preventing a viewpoint, with higher weight than many other viewpoints already present in the article, to be included. In this Case WP:UNDUE policy has been abused against the viewpoint.

I suggest to:


 * Research different ways every official policy can be abused against ideas and viewpoints.
 * Add Anti Abuse Section to every official policy.

soon I will add "Anti Abuse Section" examples, to be continued...

Making Wikipedia's official policies and guidelines shortcuts distinguishable from essays
Shortcuts to official articles should look distinct from essays, by just looking at these: WP:OSE WP:UNDUE WP:NOTNEWS WP:OTHER WP:1AM, i can't say which ones represent official policies and guidelines. this causes following problems:


 * Some contributors use shortcuts to essays as if they are referring to official policies or guidelines.
 * Other contributors (specially new ones) reading comments might assume essays are official policies or guidelines even when writer didn't mean to make it look like that.
 * contributors clicking on links may not notice the "this is an essay notice" and read it believing its official.
 * Even when essay doesn't have direct conflict with official policies and guidelines, When essays get confused with official articles, Instructions within essays can get prioritized against official instructions and guidelines.
 * Too many WP:NAME links are very confusing for new users, not only i can't say what they mean by looking at them, I can't even say if they are referring to a policy or a guideline or a essay or something else; or if they are official.

I suggest:
 * WP:NAME format not be used for official articles, and official policies and guidelines moved to another format like OF:NAME (OF for Official) or PO:NAME (PO for Policy) and GU:NAME (GU for Guideline) or OP:NAME (OP for Official Policy) and OG:NAME (OG for Official Guideline)

If links to essays primarily used to say "for the reasons outlined here", I suggest:
 * Instead of WP:NAME format, use OH:NAME (OH as Outlined Here)