Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 31

Correcting the case of forgetting to log in and submitting an edit
Sometimes a registered user forgets to log in when editing. The result is that the registered user's IP address is displayed in the history instead of the user name. I propose that the registered user be able to go back and change the IP address to the user name. Possible security problems can be avoided if such changes would require the user to have the same IP address at the time of the change as the IP address that was inadvertently displayed in the history. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:34, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to rename the pages called "List of basic x topics" to "Topic outline of x"
This is a follow-on proposal. The initial proposal didn't get enough discussion (there were 3 support votes and a bunch of ideas floated), and it was suggested at WP:ANI that a new proposal be posted, and announced on more pages. (I'll be posting notices over the next day or two).

''This proposal is to rename the set of List of basic x topics pages to Topic outline of x.

Previous discussions are located here and here.

Why change the names? "List of basic x topics" is awkward, because "list" is ambiguous, because Wikipedia has more than one list format, and the title doesn't give any indication of what kind of list the reader will be looking at. Wikipedia has alphabetical lists, unsorted lists, and "structured lists" (lists arranged by subtopic, as these are). "Topic outline" describes the format of these pages much better, and is therefore a more accurate title. "Topic outline of x" is also more concise, having 4 words instead of the current 5.

This set of pages was designed as a whole to be an outline of human knowledge. It also doubles as a table of contents system for Wikipedia. Each page presents essential topics on its subject, and each of the pages shares a standard format. The set can be found at Lists of basic topics, with many more under development at WikiProject Lists of basic topics, including one for every country of the World (over 200!).

The initial proposal was to rename the pages to Outline of x, but this is ambiguous because there are two types of outlines: sentence outlines and topic outlines. This set contains the latter variety. Another ambiguity of "outline" pertains to countries. For some, "Outline of Italy" conjured the image of an old high-heeled boot.

Some people thought "topical outline" was good, but others pointed out that "topical" is ambiguous and its primary meaning pertains to "current topics", and we didn't think of "topic outline" in the initial proposal discussion.

Someone suggested that the pages be renamed to "List of x topics", but that is another set of pages entirely (See Lists of topics). Those are intended to have a comprehensive scope (like the scope of an index), with each page to include all of the topics on  a given subject. Currently that set has no format standards, and the quality of that set is pretty low in comparison to this one. And many of the subjects already have a "List of x topics", making it difficult or impossible to move these pages to that set. The set of pages we are concerned with here are limited in scope to a subject's essential topics. "Topic outline" captures this context very well. Merging them into the other set of topics lists would in effect disband this set and reject its purpose, and disperse these pages amongst a bunch of lists that are in much rougher shape. That is not the intention of this proposal.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to your comments, suggestions, opinions, and ideas. The Transhumanist 06:18, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support - as proposer. The Transhumanist  06:18, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose the articles are lists and should be called such, suggest maybe List of primary subject matter for xxx Gnangarra 10:19, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That is true, they are lists. But if you look at each page, you'll see that there are multiple lists on each (each page is really a list of lists).  That is because these are outlines, a particular kind of list.  More accurate titles are useful, and the new titles would better convey the purpose of these pages.  Together they are an outline of human knowledge.  Not just a hodgepodge of lists thrown together into a bunch.  The Transhumanist  20:31, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yep they are lists, but "Topic outline of x" doesnt convey what the message is where as List of primary xx topics" . Example "Topic outline of Plants" is what one would expect from the article Plant where as a "list of primary Plant topics" is clear. The issues are in the choice of words to me basic, outline are both ambiguous terms as is the lack of identification as to how the information is presented. Gnangarra 02:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support although both names are awkward, the new one is less ambiguous as it pertains to the VA project...Modernist (talk) 10:47, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support As per Modernist, the new name is less ambiguous and therefore preferable. -- Alexf42 11:35, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support It's an overall better name. It's more accurate and more engaging. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 12:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 'Prefer Outline of topics in X as per Jheald.


 * Prefer "Outline of topics in x" or "Outline of basic topics in x" -- more natural and self-explanatory, less of a head-on noun crash. Jheald (talk) 12:20, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Are you sure? :)  What about Outline of topics in Argentina?  I hear there are a lot of topics being discussed in Argentina these days.  ;)  The Transhumanist  20:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose direct migration. But we need both - "basic topics" for fundamental things, and "topic list" to provide an indication of the full range of things covered by a subject-title, with being a full list of all articles cobered by the title.  Melcombe (talk) 12:36, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Someone has directly migrated one of the lists already. See List of opera topics.  I've made a new proposal concerning keeping this set together, below.  The Transhumanist  19:56, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "Topic outline" is ugly, even barbaric, as Jheald noted, and as such is not a reasonable name. The current name is equally infelicitous. "Topical outline" would be better, although I favour Jheald and Melcombe's alternatives over "Topic[al] outline" and Gnangarra's proposal. Angus McLellan (Talk) 13:48, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "Topical outline" comes up 62,300 times on Google, while "topic outline" gets 393,000 hits. The latter term seems to be in much more common use.  The Transhumanist  21:33, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Topical means 'applied on the skin', 'of interest at the present time' and 'relating to or arranged by topics'. It may suggest to many people an "outline of x in current affairs". The Transhumanist  18:32, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * All I can say is that my parser does not like "Topic outline". I have no problem with a rename, only some other form of words with the same sense sense would suit me better. I expect a noun to be preceded by an adjective, not another noun. Adjectiving nouns weirds them even more that verbing does. Angus McLellan (Talk) 22:30, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I thought the same thing when I saw the proposal, but after looking at the evidence Transhumanist has for "topic outline", I'm convinced that it is the more correct phrase in this case. The point of this discussion is not to find the phrase that is the most fun to say, it is to find the phrase that unambiguously and succinctly conveys the meaning of the pages. "Topic outline" does exactly that. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 11:16, 6 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Cryptic, topic is a noun, topical is an adjective, end of story. In the phrase, the first word is acting as an adjective. Need a fix? see my comment below. Pdbailey (talk) 17:24, 6 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support. Better conveys the table of contents type nature of this series.  "Basic" makes it sound like Category:Introductions which is different.  I'm not opposed to some of the variations in wording ("outline of topics in x" or "topical outline" or whatever). Kingdon (talk) 14:06, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Prefer Outline of major X topics, to make clear to both readers and editors that the outline is not, and is not intended to ever be, comprehensive. Otherwise there will be a constant addition of minor topics to the outline by well-meaning editors who don't realize the purpose of the outline. Sure, you can have a statement at the beginning, but if one word can make an important improvement in how well the title describes the page, I say go with it. ike9898 (talk) 14:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Let's try "major" on for size: major earthquake, major industry, major development, major religion, major decision, major volcano, major technology, major river, major opera, major Big Science, major sports, major baseball, major construction, major game, major art, major Asia Major, major Asia Minor, major career, major literature, major crafts, major scholarship, major exercise, major relationship, major politics, and major finance.  What would Outline of major film topics be about? Major films, like Star Wars?  The Transhumanist  22:08, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Big no-no. You stated that "the word 'list' is ambiguous", I believe that "topic" is even more ambiguous because it doesn't tell you what kind of contents it will contain. I also dislike the fact that you're spamming virtually every single WikiProject's talk page to the point that it starts to look like cavassing. Surely you could have posted it on Community portal, attracting more input and spent less time from using AWB? OhanaUnitedTalk page 16:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * How in the world is contacting WikiProjects a bad thing? Many people don't hang out on the community portal (I for example) and would've missed the opportunity to have a say in things. The people who hang out on Wikiprojects are generally those who manage such outlines/lists, to not contact them when decisions such as these are made would be a disservice to Wikipedia. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 16:20, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The last time around, I got bitched out at ANI for not contacting the relevant WikiProjects. So you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't.  You just can't please all of the people all of the time.  In the previous name change of all 400+ of these pages, the editors on a single page complained.  That is, of all of the 400+ pages that were renamed, only one generated complaints.  That's not bad in my opinion, but it's the entire reason this proposal had to be started over again.  It's why we're here right now!  The Transhumanist  19:09, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support in principle, but prefer the modifications suggested by Jheald and ike9898. --Itub (talk) 16:07, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose - For consistency, they should be called lists, as they are lists. Also, what's the benefit to this? Are readers being confused by the current names? Will it somehow make the lists better? Until I can see a tangible benefit, I can't support this. Mr.Z-man 17:05, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The benefit would be to make their purpose clearer. This set of pages is a major component of Wikipedia's table of contents system, or more accurately, its site map system.  At the same time, they are an effort to map out the structure of human knowledge itself.  "List" just doesn't convey these connotations.  The Transhumanist  20:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment "Topic outline..." is just wrong - "Topical outline..." is better. DuncanHill (talk) 17:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose Per Gnangarra. Five Years 17:43, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose as they are lists and should be listed as such. I would support something like List of major x-related topics, however. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:50, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * These "lists" don't come across as mere lists, because they are structured as a hierarchy of subtopics. The hierarchy is presented in the tiered subheadings and is continued to deeper levels in included bulleted lists and their indents.  As a whole, these pages are becoming more refined over time.  For some prime examples, see List of basic history topics, List of basic geography topics,  List of basic Albania topics • List of basic Argentina topics • List of basic Australia topics • List of basic Canada topics • List of basic Ecuador topics • List of basic Egypt topics •  List of basic France topics •  List of basic Germany topics •  List of basic Iceland topics •  List of basic India topics • List of basic Indonesia topics • List of basic Iraq topics • List of basic Republic of Ireland topics •  List of basic Italy topics • List of basic Isle of Man topics • List of basic Israel topics • List of basic Japan topics • List of basic Macau topics • List of basic Mexico topics • List of basic Russia topics • List of basic Taiwan topics •  List of basic United Kingdom topics •  List of basic United States topics.     "List" just doesn't capture the essence of these pages anymore.       There are over 200 more pages like these being developed as we speak - and they are coming along fast.  That's more pages than are in the current set.  "List" just doesn't convey what these pages are anymore, or what they are becoming: refined site maps of their respective subjects, arranged hierarchically.   The Transhumanist  18:42, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you are too narrow in your view of what constitutes a list. Even if organized in an outline form, these are still just lists of topics. A structured hierarchy of topics is still just a list, albeit a structured list. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:25, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * We both agree. They aren't mere lists, but a specific kind of list. Outlines are lists, and these lists are outlines.  So why not make the title more accurate by calling them that?  If you are talking about a small domesticated mammal with pointy ears and  tail, it isn't particularly helpful to keep referring to it as just a mammal.  "Your mammal is cute" makes it seem like you don't even know what kind of mammal it is.  Would you hand a person an outline of a book and say "here's a list of basic topics that the book covers?"  The current titles of these pages are just awkward, and they don't seem to fit common usage.  The Transhumanist  20:37, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support Jheald's alternative: Outline of topics in X. (struck then)
 * Including Outline of topics in the United Kingdom? :)  The Transhumanist  21:23, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I would also suggest renaming most of the pages in Category:Topical indexes to "Index of topics in X". These renames would help clarify the structure and intent of these 2 groups of article-types, and help differentiate them from the usual list-style articles. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:51, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Good point. Then Wikipedia would have indexes and outlines.  Nice combination.  But that will require another proposal, and having that discussion here would just confuse this discussion like it did during the previous proposal to rename this page set.  The Transhumanist  18:56, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sometimes it makes more sense to consider things as a set/group, rather than one by one. And vice versa. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:08, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose - for the obvious reason that these articles are not "topic outlines". They are lists, and calling them anything else is only going to cause more confusion. Gatoclass (talk) 03:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * They are hierarchically structured subject outlines, without the numbering. The Transhumanist  08:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose. These are lists and the titles need to convey that. Topic outline conveys something different to me. Moondyne 04:14, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The numbering in outlines is optional. The Transhumanist  08:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support - An outline is a special kind of list. I'd also support projectifying (where a project on the subject exists). Most projects already have a simple topic outline, which could then link to one of these as a project subpage. --Latebird (talk) 17:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support Many of the above opposers seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what an outline is; they say that "these are lists, not outlines". That is not factually correct, and these votes should be discounted until they explain, which do not correspond to the facts, make sense. Look at some scholarly "topical outlines" -- 1, 2, 3, ect. It is disappointing that The Transhumanist did not highlight his strongest point: that the academic community has what we call "lists of basic topics", and they call them topical outlines. II  23:32, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment so people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the term "outline" because these people arent from an "academic community" and therefore the opinion of these people should be ignored. Gnangarra 03:49, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Proposal Maybe this was proposed before, but anyway. How about "Basic topics related to Italy" or "Core topics related to Italy" It doesn't have "list" in it. Unlike any naming with "outline", it is very clear what the page is about. (By the way, I prefer "core" to "basic" since "basic" sounds like elementary less advanced, which is not an intended connotation, I suppose.) -- Taku (talk) 02:03, 6 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Absolutely not. Neutralitytalk 02:49, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * "List of basic topics in X" just sounds awkward to the ear so I agree some other name would be better. I am not sure "Topic outline of X" is a whole lot better though. I think "core" has a lot to commend it as a descriptor. I know this is really long, but how about "Structured list of core topics relating to X" ??? The "structured" addresses that it's not a random list, bu that it's in outline form, and "relating to" is clearer than "in" I think... "Structured list of core topics about X" would also work I suppose. ++Lar: t/c 03:59, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose this proposal, because it loses the sense of basic, i.e. this is where you should start if you want to explore this area (which is my understanding of the purpose of the structured lists). I don't like Lar's suggestion much either, it's a little wordy. Propose in extension to Taku above: Outline of core/basic xx topics/articles, example is Outline of core Opera articles. Franamax (talk) 04:34, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Many seem to oppose "basic" because of the connotation it carries, I think. Core seems better. I could get behind "outline of core X topics", I proposed "structured list" to assuage those who feel that these still are lists, but address the notion that they are not JUST lists. Mostly I was tossing out ideas, almost any change from current is likely to be an improvement, in my view. ++Lar: t/c 12:32, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. These are fundamentally both lists and outlines, but I think it makes their purpose clearer to lose the "list" moniker, and encourages better organization in the articles proper. I don't think we need to get hung up on which preposition is used, but it might be better to choose a name that doesn't rely on a particular one. I think these articles are valuable ones to have and giving them their own names might help make them more visible. It would also be good to develop a manual of style section dealing with them. --Dhartung | Talk 04:39, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose Both the existing and the proposed forms. These pages are structured lists of links to Wikipedia pages. They are like the index in a book. If you don't like the word list then I suggest we use Index instead. Topic is ambiguous so I suggest we change it to Pages or Articles. My proposal is we rename these 'Index of X articles' or 'Index of X related pages' or just 'Index of X' or X index (UK history index, Chemistry index, etc.). Everywhere we use Topic to mean Wikipedia article I would like to see it changed. Change List of topics to Wikipedia Index .Filceolaire (talk) 11:01, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * They are not like an index in a book. If anything, they are like an annotated table of contents. --Itub (talk) 12:04, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm. They are like a Table of Contents aren't they. I suppose the Index of a book is more like Categories - a machine generated alphabetical list. So if not Index then I think it should beX articles or Major X articles or perhaps List of X Articles. Anything called anOutline should be a summary of or introduction to a subject - Outline should not be used for a list of headings or pages. Likewise we shouldn't say Topic when what we mean is a WP page or article. Filceolaire (talk) 23:15, 6 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Topic is a noun and it is being used as an adjective in this phrase--okay for an email or when talking to friends, but not okay for formal writing. The adjective form of topic is topical, that's what you have to use if you want to use proper grammar. You could argue that Wikipedia should sound more like a friend talking to you then like a traditional encyclopedia which uses traditional grammar rules, but I think that makes the site look more like an amateur site than like a friendly site. While "topical list of x" is a little clumsy for the reasons cited above, I would argue that it should be "outline of [articles related to] x" with the short and long versions being valid, and suggesting that the long version be used at on the page header but that the short can be used in links. This gets around the silly phrase, "outline of Italy." and states much more precisely what the outline is. Pdbailey (talk) 17:24, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose: They are not outlines. They are structured lists with little actual text. I don't see how that constitutes as an outline. — Fatal Error 02:55, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Different name - List of X topics is totally neutral as well as being flexible. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 03:51, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose All other list pages begin with the prefix "List of", and unless we want to change that core principle, we shouldn't make an exception of this particular branch of the list articles. -- Anonymous Dissident  Talk 08:35, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Not true--take a look at Category:Wikipedia featured lists and you'll see that many list don't have "list of" in the title. --Itub (talk) 13:26, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Glossaries are a whole branch of list articles that don't use "list of" (they use "glossary of" instead). It makes sense to differentiate lists by their format, so that readers know what to expect when they open them, and so that they can look for specific types of lists.  For example, glossaries, indexes, and topic outlines.  The Transhumanist  00:12, 8 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll have to oppose the proposed name change as it expands the focus of the lists. However, the word "basic" is not necessarily accurate and may be considered insulting by some. I'd much prefer "List of core X topics", for example, as it retains a narrow scope but is more accurate.&mdash;RJH (talk) 16:13, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

A summary of a written work or speech, usually analyzed in headings and subheadings.
 * Support: These are highly structured lists of information, separated into related sections. See on of the definitions of outline at dictionary.reference.com:
 * I don't even understand why this is a big deal. The discussion is over changing the title around to more clearly express what the purpose of the page is. There is no "List" namespace, and these pages should not be treated as if renaming them will somehow set them loose upon the mainspace. They're already there. — OranL (talk) 16:56, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment: I think it's also worth mentioning that most, if not all, of these pages were created by The Transhumanist, and they would probably not even be there if this user hadn't created them. — OranL (talk) 16:56, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Support — I support this change, but support "Outline of topics in x" or "Outline of basic topics in x" more, per Jheald. Leonard( Bloom ) 04:03, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Counter proposal
Obviously from the above discussion we have a number of issues over specific wording and what they are intended to display. What I propose is that we have a new article space like created along the lines of Wikiprojects and Portals suggest it be called Topic: then each topic could have its own page. Example Outline of topics in Argentina becomes Topic:Argentina; List of basic Egypt topics becomes Topic:Egypt. Gnangarra 04:00, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting. What about Portal:Egypt topics to also avoid the creation of vaguely related namespaces? BigBlueFish (talk) 10:58, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You know, that sounds like a good idea. It definitely helps clarify the rather under utilised portal-space. To do that though, a guideline of some kind should be developed, else these new "topical portals" may be be nominated for deletion by those who are unaware.
 * Yes, I like this idea. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking that "Portal:" could be renamed to "Topic portal:" - further clarifying usage in naming. (And I prefer the term "portal" to the word "outline" or "index".) I'm definitely going to give this further thought. - jc37 00:01, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
 * See Move navigational lists to portal namespace for a recent failed attempt to move these and other pages to portalspace. The main problem was that the portal namespace is not included in the default site-search, and we cannot change that because portals are made up of so many subpages that search results are useless (unless we can eliminate subpages from the search?). E.g. there are 4 Africa-related portals, but if you search for it you get hundreds of results.
 * See also Portal peer review/Contents/archive1 for some very interesting semi-related ideas, to do with improving the Portal:Contents pages, as well as the usual Portal areas, together. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:17, 11 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Quiddity's right. Portal space searches are useless because the search term often shows up in the titles of subpages (typically all of the subpages of a portal if the search term is in the portal's title). The Transhumanist  21:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)


 * oppose, this comes off as completely unnecessary.Myheartinchile (talk) 00:17, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

oppose/support - on the one hand you don't need change for the sake of it. Most people are use to this format. But then again, topic can have its advantages too. Is it not posible to redirect topic to the lists? Lihaas (talk) 22:46, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Search functions for user contributions and page histories
I propose that users be able to search through contributions based upon dates, times, keywords in article names and in edit summaries, and also be able to search through page histories for keywords in edit summaries, contributes, dates and times. I feel that adding such a function would be a big step towards making these parts of Wikipedia more user-friendly. The ability to search through contributions in this manner would be extremely helpful. We already have the ability to search through contributions based upon namespace (which is very helpful in of itself), and the ability to trim the list by placing an upper cap on the date of contributions listed. This proposal would simply be a step forward in this regard. &mdash; scetoaux (T | C)  04:41, 8 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. This is similar to the history options over in Persistent proposals. Get a Bugzilla account and vote for 7988, which is similar as well. Ideally, more on the browsing end, I'd like to look at a user's contributions and collapse them down into articles, sort those articles by date or number of edits, then click on an individual article and see all the edits to that article, sorted by size/date, ect. It would also be nice to list all reverting edits, and reverted edits. II  04:46, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Collapsible reflist
What would user opinions be of creating and implementing a collapsible version of reflist,the refs on pages such as United_States takes up nearly 1/3 of the page. Now in general I don't read the reference unless something seems doubtful to me .If we could hide these using something like Navboxes or a change too reflist it would make getting to the external links and the Navboxes/Categorys which I do read a lot easier.

The second option is to move the refs to bottom of the page past external links/navboxes and cats.Gnevin (talk) 09:29, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose: Hiding the reflist by default means you lose "clickability".Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 11:21, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Support: Agreed. Having a article with a nice amount of sources is good. But not when 99% of the page is a list of references. There should be an option for those that do not care for them to reduce the clutter. Pacific Coast Highway {talk • contribs} 05:36, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose as collapsed sections do not (yet) autoexpand prior to printing. Refs need to be present to the user when they print and take no extra steps, keeping it KISS. --MASEM 05:48, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Even if printing is fixed, a collapsed reflist would still break the in-article reference links, which defeats the purpose of having in-article references in the first place. Anomie⚔ 11:44, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Then have it expanded by default. Those who wish to collapse it, can do so. Or even better, is there way to hide them all together? Pacific Coast Highway {talk • contribs} 18:05, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sure. References are in an ol with the CSS class 'references', so you can easily hide them with personal CSS. Algebraist 18:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment I remember seeing the references in the New York City article contained in a "box", much like a browser window, that you could scroll through. If you were to click on a ref, it would take you to the section however far down the "page" that the ref is in. I wish I could provide a diff, but I wasn't able to find it in the history, because I don't remember when I saw this, just that it was in that article. A setup like that would solve both problems that have been brought up. --Pwnage8 (talk) 02:36, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose — Basically, the scroll box cuts out all of the references not shown when a user prints the page. See this discussion for more details: Templates for deletion/Log/2007 June 11). − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 03:00, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That could be solved by having the printable version show all the refs. --Pwnage8 (talk) 03:09, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Automatic Band Name Redirects
Here's the situation: When looking up bands on Wikipedia, I've got into the habit of typing "(band)" after the bandname (to bring me straight to the article I want), e.g. I'll type "Nirvana (band)" instead of "Nirvana". The problem is, for many articles that don't have "(band)" at the end of their title (e.g. The Rolling Stones), when you type "The Rolling Stones (band)" you don't get a redirect to the proper article. Is their a way to create an automatic redirect for all band articles from "Band Name (band)" to "Band Name"? I've no idea how powerful those wiki bots are nowadays...

Brancron (talk) 02:12, 14 July 2008 (UTC)brancron
 * A bot could do this quite easily, if you want to request a bot to perform this feature see WP:BOTREQ. I am not sure how useful such redirects would be, it is easy enough just to search and any such bot task would have to make thousands of edits/page requests which is a concern of many people. -Icĕwedg Ё  (ťalķ) 07:51, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There are thousands of bot edits every day; the volume needed here is no problem whatsoever. Bot edits can be screened out of most special pages.  -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 14:02, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Problems arise when one, more notable band has the article name Name of Band, and a less notable band is then called Name of Band (Greek band) (for example). This bot would theoretically make a redirect from Name of Band (band) to Name of Band, but this redirect will ignore the existence of the less notable Greek band (although at the top of the Name of Band article it will surely say :…For the Greek band, see Name of Band (Greek band)".


 * Here is specific and actual example: There is an article on The Loved Ones (an Australian 60s group) and on The Loved Ones (American band) (2000s group). Recently I created the disambiguation page The Loved Ones (band) to deal with this. However, if I had not caught on to this, the bot would surely have made The Loved Ones (band) redirect to The Loved Ones, and it would be some time before a user noticed it (and perhaps longer before a user noticed and cared to create the appropriate disambiguation page). There are surely other examples out there. Ideally in these situations, the more notable of the two should be without the parenthetical; the (band) tag should be a disambiguation page; and the less notable band(s) should have (Fooian band) to disambiguate. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 02:20, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

The search box narrows down the results as you type now, so doing this would just clutter up the search field. --Pwnage8 (talk) 02:40, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Perennial_proposals
Regarding the above perennial proposal, has any one proposed setting this as a preference? For example (using the word "colo[u]r"), a template is created that the preference setting will recognize, then a bot goes through WP and adds the template to all "colo[u]r" in an article so it looks something like " " in the article. Then if a user sets their preferences to English=American, all "colour" that are templated appear as "color". However, I don't know if the template function and the preference function can interact as such. Just a thought. Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 12:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't know if it's possible, but if so that is a very good idea. The only problem would be which version new accounts default to.  I have a feeling that would be another huge debate. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 16:53, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that it's a fantastic idea, but the question is indeed whether it would be technically feasible. To solve any possible "default" debate, the preference is simply not enabled at all by default. If such a thing is possible, I say go for it! -- .: Alex  :.  17:08, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea - just don't enable the preference. Now we have to figure out if it's possible... -- Imperator3733 (talk) 17:13, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Does sound good, BUT - what about quotations & names? It would be wrong to change the spelling in quotations or names. DuncanHill (talk) 17:17, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I support this idea in principle, but there are a few caveats:
 * Are spellings strongly enough defined to propose a common standard? Even in some subtypes there are variations: some prefer the suffix -ise while others prefer -ize.
 * Are variation-specific words or word-uses or phrases always "translate-able"? I can forsee instances where words with particular connotations have their meanings changed upon "translation".
 * Is the project worthwhile? We already have a reasonable system of association (e.g. Canada uses Canadian English) and precedent (once an article starts using a variation that can be used as a default), so the massive amount of work involved in creating and deploying such a system might not be worth the effort.
 * I know it'd be nice to have this (especially for its potential to localize units and currencies), but for the time being, is it both feasible and worthwhile? { { Nihiltres | talk|log } } 20:08, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think this is a very bad idea. For a start, there's not a 1-to-1 correspondence - so the American program would have to be converted to British programme when it refers to television shows or theatre schedules, but not to computer scripts. License would become licence when it's a noun, but not when it's a verb. Quotations would have to be special-cased, as would articles discussing the spellings themselves. Nuances would be lost with approximate translation. All existing text would need to be reviewed to see which convention it follows at the moment, since some words have a meaning in each system, or are polysemous in one but not the other. We'd be better off just wikilinking the words and making sure that the linked articles explain the matter. Pseudomonas(talk) 22:03, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That looks like a killer objection to me. The list of words where spelling conversion depends on meaning or grammatical function is huge - e.g. "tire" (US) = "tyre" (UK) when it refers to the rubber on vehicles' wheels, but = "tire" (UK) when it refers to fatigue. Then compound words compound the problem, e.g. one retyres (UK) a vehicle but retires (UK, US) from work. As a further complication, some US spellings should not be converted, e.g. "lite" meaning a dumbed-down version would be spelt "lite" in UK English. It's a nightmare. -- Philcha (talk) 22:46, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * If I'm reading this correctly, I think the intent is that each instance of each word would be put into a template; which would limit widespread use, but may stop some edit warring over it. The obvious way to implement this would use some javascript hack to hide the unwanted variant, so users with javascript would see their preferred version, and users without would see both.  If done in the parser it wouldn't degrade so badly, but it would be fairly complex, requiring another user preference, a new parser function, and more cached versions of each page to track the different spellings. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 22:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * And how would you handle the parlementary procedure of tabling? --Carnildo (talk) 22:40, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Technically feasible, probably. Good idea, maybe. Worth the trouble, certainly not. Besides all the backend technical changes to make this a user preference (it would have to be some sort of magic parser syntax like date autoformatting, a normal template can't do this) the bot would take quite a while to code, due to the intricacies mentioned above with noun/verb use and quotes and it would probably miss a lot or have lots of false positives. Even if it only had to change half of the articles, running at 60 edits/min (far faster than normal bots) it would take nearly 2 weeks of constant editing. Finally, due to the way page caching works for unregistered users, this would only be useful to people with an account, so the majority of users (readers) would never notice. This would also make wikisyntax more complicated, which is also something that should be avoided where possible. Mr.Z-man 22:42, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Really dumb question: For unregistered users, I wonder if it could magically read the "WHOIS" link and determine what country they live in and use that language variation? Just a dumb thought. --Tombstone (talk) 01:39, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, mapping IP addresses to countries is technically relatively easy. Compared to the amount of natural language processing that the bot would have to do, anyway. Not to mention the task of keeping up with new edits. Pseudomonas(talk) 10:54, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Just a note, my IP address here geolocates to New York last time I checked, which is quite far away from my actual location in Ireland, so some way to override automatic detection would be a must! :-) -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 12:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I just had an idea about how to take care of the fact that there isn't a 1-to-1 correspondence: The template should have two parameters, one for American English and the other for British/Commonwealth English.  It would end up looking like this:  .  The template would be designed so that if the preference is for American English, it would output color and if the preference was for British English, it would output colour.  The preference default would depend on the location of the IP, like other people suggested.  What do you think?  -- Imperator3733 (talk) 20:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think its unnecessarily complicated. I really can't imagine someone from the US reading a sentence with the word "colour" and wondering "What the hell does that mean?" Its just another way to overcomplicate wikitext syntax, and if its done using a template, it'll have to be a Javascript hack, so it may slow pageload time, especially for people with slow connections. Also, if we use IP mapping, what do we do with people who aren't in the US or Britain? What will people in Argentina see? Or Korea? Mr.Z-man 21:14, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There was actually an amusing incident a while back where an administrator had blocked someone for a fortnight. He almost immediately found out the extent of the transatlantic language gap when other administrators started wondering what on earth a "fortnight" was!  (if only there'd been an online dictionary or encyclopaedia to hand <tt>;-o</tt>)  My point is that the complexity of the language differences is probably enough to make it too much trouble, compared to just wikilinking or otherwise clarifying terms that could be confusing.  User:Carnildo's comment about tabling is well worth a look, that one's particularly pernicious!  -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 08:34, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Probably a waste of system resources for minimal gain. &mdash; Werdna &bull; talk 04:26, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What a brilliantly constructive comment. People like you promote brainstorming and open-mindedness! --Tombstone (talk) 04:34, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * And that reply added what to the discussion? Instead of attacking the person, why not try to address the comment, otherwise it looks like you either don't care or don't have an answer. Werdna is one of the volunteer MediaWiki developers, if he says something is a waste of system resources (very important as the servers are paid for entirely by donations and grants), it probably is. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 22:54, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * And him being a big shot excuses him from making jerk comments? My bad. A hit-and-run "waste of ... resources" from a developer really shuts down any creative thinking, IMO. I see a lot of that from WP developers; a good faith comment is made by someone with not a lot of system knowledge, and some know-it-all scoffs at them. Maybe what Werdna says carries quite a clout, and has effectively ended this discussion, but maybe Werdna (and all developers) also needs to realizes that there are real people at the end of their "so-be-its" and he should stop making jerk comments (as developers/programmers are apt to do). You are right, though. After finding out it is a waste of system resources (yet not given no real reason whatsoever why he has deemed it a waste), I have lost faith in the Pump and have better things to do on the real parts of WP. (Nothing against you, Mr.Z-man, I've had nothing but positive (if few) interactions with you.) Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 11:39, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Spelling differences are minor compared to other language variety differences, and easy for the human brain. When I was 8, in Scotland, English class included American literature, untranslated. So we taught ourselves the word for the season that follows summer. Thankfully, 8 year olds aren't interest in tabling motions in a debate. But I wish we had U.S. pen friends (who had lost their dictionaries) that we could have confused with an everyday word for two weeks. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 21:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Inadvandalism
Imho, we direly need a shorthand expression to refer to good-faithed bullshit edits. All too often, frustrated editors resort to calling such edits vandalism, which of course those edits are not since they are not intended to harm. My first idea was "inadvandalism" for inadvertent vandalism, which is of course shite. I'd be happy to hear suggestions and opinions on this, thanks in advance. <span style="font-family:lucida sans, console;">user:Everyme 15:45, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I prefer to call such edits unproductive or unhelpful. Even a watered-down reference to vandalism is still calling them a vandal, which is not the case.  <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 15:52, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I find the edit summary of "rv - needs source" works rather innocuously for me. Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 15:57, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What about suboptimal but policy-conforming edits? <span style="font-family:lucida sans, console;">user:Everyme 16:52, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * If they conform with policy but are still somehow suboptimal, we should be fixing them, not reverting them. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 00:07, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I tend to just say "rv good faith edits" to mean that I am assuming good faith regarding the intentions of the editor, but still believe that they don't conform to policy. Confusing Manifestation (Say hi!) 04:26, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * While I disagree with the term I think a name for inexperienced editors who in good faith make bad edits might be a good idea, I think it really should be in line with WP:Bite though, it should reflect the fact that these users tend to be unaware of the policies and aren't doing these things intentionally. Perhaps we could simply call them InEx editors (for inexperienced?)%%<font color="green" face="courier new">-SYKKO- %% (talk to me) 04:36, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Why come up with a "special" name for them or their edits? It seems unnecessary. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 17:03, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Internal conversations mainly, conversations where a term could be useful
 * When discussing a rollback someone made instead of doing an undo with an summary
 * Discussions on helping those types of editors out
 * Arguing that an editor isnt actually a vandal
 * That's just to name a few off the top of my head. The reason a quick term is helpful is because it would make it easier to put a complex definition to quick use: Instead of explaining that you "think this member is acting in good faith but has been counterproductive in the work they have done so far" you could say that you "think this editor is an (insert term here)" I am not so sure that it really should be a policy level thing, but perhaps a casual term that puts some sort of definition would be helpful and could make conversations more efficient. My biggest consern with the idea is more that since WP:AGF is an accepted guideline to have a term that says that you are assuming what all wikipedians are already asked to assume is redundant. Anyway, I am mainly just throwing my opinion in there. I think if a term for this type of editor was widley used that I would be likely to use it myself. %%<font color="green" face="courier new">-SYKKO- %% (talk to me) 17:36, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That doesn't make any sense. Why should we make up a new word when we have perfectly good descriptions for this already? Are we trying to make Wikipedia harder for new users? <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 00:07, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Good point, I hadn't thought about it that way. %%<font color="green" face="courier new">-SYKKO- %% (talk to me) 00:22, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The word exists and is "good faith edits." A vandal is, by definition, a bad-faith editor; WP:AGF does not say always assume good faith; it says, "assume good faith, unless giving compelling evidence to the contrary" or to put it another way, "good faith until proven vandalism." Dcoetzee 06:40, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to rename the articles about different species to their scientific names.
According to this Lion would be Panthera leo. Prietoquilmes (talk) 18:38, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Why? Algebraist 18:46, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This could be useful when there is an edit war for the name of an article but i don´t know of any example (if there is any). So, this would a matter of what "looks" better and the reason why i propossed it is about style...Prietoquilmes (talk) 18:56, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm fine with using this strategy in the event of edit wars. In general, I think it'd be trouble to curate, make things harder to find, and involve a lot of needless redirects. Many common names (which is generally what people are going to be looking for) cover several species. Wikispecies is a separate matter, being more of a taxonomic exercise in the first place. Pseudomonas(talk) 19:08, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * You could raise this on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions, but I expect it won't get a warm response. Our existing rule is to use the "most easily recognized name" for the article subject.  We tend to prefer terms likely to be familiar to lay readers.


 * As noted, about the only place where I can see this might be useful is in dealing with a title dispute, but even then it would only be a good solution if the title dispute were among specialists dealing with a rare, specialized organism, and if there were a question about the validity of any or all of the proposed titles. Where multiple valid names exist for an organism and there is no clear and obvious reason to prefer one name over another, there's no reason not to do what we do in U.S./British English naming disputes&mdash;keep the title under which the article was created, and redirect the other titles.  As well, many topics have articles under both the common names and the 'scientific' binomial names, with the latter often containing taxonomy-related information.  Look at our articles on zucchini, courgette (the British English redirect) and Cucurbita pepo (the binomial name) for one example. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:27, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * In fact in the italian and the spanish wikipedia is as i say, so i was expecting an answer like "this has already been discussed here you have the link". Anyway as it was said this doesn´t seem useful.Prietoquilmes (talk) 19:51, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * One last thing "I think it'd be trouble to curate, make things harder to find, and involve a lot of needless redirects."←←←← the amount of redirects will not increase. panthera leo, for example, already is a redirect.


 * Exactly the point I was about to make. Who's made it, though? Waltham, The Duke of 23:32, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The OP. Algebraist 23:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I didn't mean that there'd be more redirects in the database, I meant that more visitors would be following the redirects as opposed to going to the page they might have expected. Pseudomonas(talk) 09:58, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiLink- A Ready-made bookmark side frame - Proposing more efficient way to use web informations
WikiLink is a social bookmark service that I want to imposing on Wikipedia.

Imagine Wikipedia with a commonly accessible and editable bookmark for its every topics.

The well organized bookmark would avail people to reach to important related sites of the topic more easily and quickly!

As an example, I made a sample with Delicious and Firefox for the case of article on iPod.

Although the picture I made is not a complete version, I hope you could see how WikiLink works.

I guess there should be some technical discussions if Wikipedia will imposing WikiLink and have several suggestions. Firstly it can be imposed as a left-side frame. Secondly,if necessary, Wikipedia could develop a WikiLink program or co-work with social bookmark providers.

-- "abegrasper"


 * Hello: please see IPod, which already provides in-article links to relevant sites. If users want to coordinate "Web 2.0"-y links not embedded in the article itself, you can probably knock something up with a combination of WikiProject User scripts/Scripts and/or GreaseMonkey.  -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 08:52, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the comment and useful recommendations. I know editors can put external links inside the article but WikiLink is different from a collection of relevant web sites. It is simple but I believe it would be very helpful to users who want to conduct a deep research on a topic.


 * The other part of my comment was that you could write something like this and add it to WikiProject User scripts/Scripts. The script could add an unobstrusive interface element to users who choose to employ it, through which they can propose links for the current article or see ones proposed by others.  I suppose it could use a talk-subpage to keep the information on (for example, the links for Foo would be kept at Talk:Foo/LinkSuggest Links (here I supposed the tool would be called "LinkSuggest").  It could be handy where there are links which are useful for editors to research but which don't merit a mention in the article for whatever reason; for example, a site which would be useful for sourcing but for which nothing is currently sourced to it.  Links to external discussion sites might be another example; in most cases they're not eligible to be used as external links or as sources, but would still be a useful jumping-off point for research.  I can see some use for this idea.  -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 12:35, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Move main page to Wikipedia namespace
Comments are welcome in the discussion at Village pump (technical). —Remember the dot (talk) 03:37, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

"Criticism" sections. Shouldn't there be "Praising" sections too?
I've noticed several subjects of popular culture I'm interested in, e.g. Torchwood, are very easy in developing Criticism sections. But wouldn't it be fair if there were "Praising" sections too? It's only logical and fair. I know it's probably a Wikipedia guideline to not promote Criticism sections in the first place but I post this in the hope of creating some awareness of the issue: Just don't forget that negativity with Criticism Sections on articles can be counteracted with Appraisal Sections to be fair. Some fairly big amount of trolling is going in several sections. People spamming their hated subjects with any negativity they can find on "Criticism" sections. Do the opposite it and give them some Praising Sections. hah. --Leladax (talk) 20:13, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Criticism sections in many Wikipedia articles often are used not to host criticism per se, but really refer to critical reception. For example, if you look at Halloween (1978 film), you'll see that section is really about the critical reception the film enjoyed, both good and bad. Your post, though, highlights that this may not be a good word choice. Regardless, you are correct that a section called "criticism" which truly contains criticism only, should be counterbalanced (see WP:WEIGHT for some policy considerations in this regard). Of course, the subject must be considered--criticism in an article on the something generally looked at with horror (Third Reich, Lynching, etc.) does not need to be counterbalanced in the same way that an article on Torchwood might! I don't think we should generally have a "hate" section and a "like" section, a consolidated critical reception section should often be enough. Likewise, we should not be looking for enough praise to near exactly counterbalance negative reception for a subject that was generally panned and vice versa.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:28, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * User:Leladax isn't the first person to get confused by that section name either. Does anyone know why "Criticism" is used in particular?  Every time this subject comes up I see editors explaining it by saying, much as you did, "That section is actually for critical reception" or something similar.  Perhaps "Critical Reception" would itself be a better title for these sections?  Or maybe there is an even better title?  "Criticism" seems to be a perennial source of confusion.  -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 11:40, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Many film articles use "critical reception" (You Don't Mess with the Zohan) or "reception" (Iron Man (film)). --——  Gadget850 (Ed)  <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk  -  16:16, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That should be a common wikipedia Guideline. The confusion is not unwarranted. The use of the word criticism alone usually refers to negative criticism unless defined otherwise. --Leladax (talk) 12:34, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Basically, let me add, "1. The act of criticizing, especially adversely." http://www.thefreedictionary.com/criticism?p --Leladax (talk) 12:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The section above the criticism section is usually the praise section. -- Lester  12:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Criticism sections often contain responses to criticism: but you are right, they are spam and nonsense magnets, as are sections are 'pros and cons' sections. To answer Leladax's and Grey Knight's question:

There is a relevant style guideline (Words_to_avoid), policy page (Neutral point of view), and template (criticism-section.

Hope that helps. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:02, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for those; I found Criticism and Pro and con lists useful reading as well. -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 15:39, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Check out this admin here legitimizing the burying of a tv series on the grounds that it is already burried! Talk:Criticism_of_Torchwood --Leladax (talk) 19:42, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

All code samples should be transcluded
For years, in many articles, errors have been systematically introduced into previously-correct code samples by well-meaning contributors. Whereas a minor error in wording is no big deal, a minor error in source code is the difference between working code and broken code. It would be un-wiki to actually prevent users from editing the source code - they might have spotted a real error after all - but currently, it is difficult to effectively scrutinize changes to source code, because they're mixed in with all other changes to the article. Even tracking down an incorrect change can be taxing. A recent subtle example that popped up in quicksort had been standing for two months, and slipped by me even though quicksort is on my watchlist.

I'm making the suggestion that every sample of source code or pseudocode on Wikipedia should be housed in a template page that is transcluded into the article it is used in. The purpose of this is not to make it more difficult to edit - it might even contain a link to facilitate editing - but to make this high priority content much easier to separately watch and track the history of. This improved scrutiny will translate into fewer subtle errors in code.

The same concept can be applied to any content that is fragile and frequently subtlely disturbed by well-meaning editors, such as mathematical proofs or fancy article markup. I will take care of the hard work of templatizing all the code blocks if consensus favors my position. What do you think? Dcoetzee 00:10, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Are you referring to chembox code as well? I made a chembox and transcluded it over at thiomersal, and was promptly reverted. There's a discussion of that issue over here. The disadvantage seems to be that since less people are watching the chemboxes, they are more easily vandalized. Plus, it is harder for new editors to edit the information. II  | (t - c) 00:24, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Part of the point is that the templates would be less easily vandalized, because people who watch the main articles would be encouraged to watch the templates as well, and when one of these comes up on their watchlist it would be a red flag to inspect the change carefully. The harder-for-new-editors-to-edit problem applies to all templates; many infoboxes deal with this by embedding an edit link. As for the chembox, I think that's a different situation, as that's just an infobox, not code, and is not particularly susceptible to subtle errors, unless people have been randomly moving decimal points in boiling points. Dcoetzee 00:31, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Encouraged how? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that it is irksome to watch incessant changes in example code, and that fiddling should be discouraged, but how? Some changes are legitimate variants with their various parts coherent (and this can be subtle: Quicksort is notorious for <, <=, >, >= in various places) and it is really difficult to distinguish a correct variant as distinct from a confusion because a tediously careful inspection is needed, even for simple algorithms. One could imagine a protocol: a proposed fiddle could be held at bay until some consensus is reached amongst the knowledgeable, but how might this be arranged? It is directly opposed to "anyone can edit". One can make plaintive requests that the code be tested first, but testing is itself a large subject and the fiddle-and-run types as well as the experts know that their correction is correct so no testing is needed. (I have made such a mistake myself, ahem) Conversely, a large discussion in which all possible variants are classified and cross-referenced will likely soon be wrecked (having many more points of exposure), as well as assailed as unnecessarily verbose for a simple algorithm. Isolating the example code snippet should help though that will mean that it and any associated description might drift apart. NickyMcLean (talk) 05:38, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Testing is an even bigger issue for pseudocode, which necessarily has to be translated into a real language to test it; and testing does not detect all bugs. Code this simple can be verified by manual inspection, but it requires careful scrutiny that a lot of drive-by editors don't do. There's the old approach of just inserting a comment saying "please be careful, this code is believed to be already correct!" or even "please discuss any changes on the talk page first" but it seems to make little difference. There could be a standing practice of reverting any undiscussed changes to code, but that's not very wiki and may contradict other policy.
 * The only issue I can see with the template approach is that editors might add the main article but not the templates to their watchlists; a technical solution would be best, but right now I think this can be adequately addressed with evangelism (seeing who edits the article and talk page and dropping them a notice).
 * As for divergence, as long as each template is used in only one article and at least one interested editor knows how to update the template to match description changes, I don't anticipate an issue there.
 * Maybe it would help to do a trial period of this in a small number of articles and see how it works out? Dcoetzee 08:17, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * If this is a problem, I would support moving them to templates and then protecting them (as long as they're correct, there shouldn't be many reasons to edit them). The main problem is that changes to templates are far less monitored than changes to articles and a tampered-with template is even harder for a new user/reader to find and fix. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 17:22, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Protection might work out, but I believe pre-emptive protection is against the protection policy. After some additional pondering here's my new plan to ensure that the templates get monitored closely. I'm going to start with the quicksort article, where code samples will be moved to templates. Links to watch these templates will be added to the top of Talk:Quicksort, and all these templates will go into a category; the related changes link can be used to specifically view changes to code templates. The templates will have ALL CAPS in their names to make them stick out in watchlists. We'll see how this experiment turns out. Dcoetzee 01:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Linking to Disambiguation Page Warning
It's pretty annoying to click on a link in an article and be taken to a disambiguation page, especially if the article that was intended to be linked to is especially obscure and is not included on the disambiguation (this is generally a problem when the disambiguation page is not labeled (disambiguation)). I propose that whenever someone attempt to add a link to a disambiguation page to an article, a warning that a link added is to a disambiguation page should come up before they finalize the change.-Link (talk) 12:56, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * You would need a software change and would run into issues with it coming up every time the article was saved which would be a pain when you consider that disambig pages are often used as holding places for substubs.Geni 14:26, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * What would help would be (a) a bot to go around and post a tag on each such (incorrect) wikilink, such as [ disambiguation link ], and/or (b) a gadget that editors could select that would turn all links to disambiguation pages a different color, such as yellow - or perhaps add a yellow background (then editors adding wikilinks to an article could see, on preview, that they are linking to a disambiguation page, not to an article). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:05, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That probably would work well, but the warning system would work in conjunction with it. However, the warning would not come up every time an edit is made, as Geni suggested, but rather only when the link is added. And, of course, DAB links added with templates would be excluded—they would not prompt a warning.-Link (talk) 13:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I already have a user script that adds the yellow background; if I'm missing any categories that indicate a DAB, please let me know on the script's talk page or on my talk page. I don't know how it could (or if it should) be turned into a gadget. For such a bot, it would have to be programmed to ignore the case where someone explicitly linked to a disambiguation page (e.g. hatnotes, "See also" sections, the rare cases where an article wants to link to a DAB). Anomie⚔ 14:20, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Any DAB link that includes the word disambiguation, such as Wikipedia (disambiguation), could be programmed to be ignored; it is unlikely they would be unintentionally linked to. The problem is DAB pages without the label, such as Corvus.-Link (talk) 15:09, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Which is precisely why (as discussed at WP:VPP), the disambiguation page Corvus really should be a redirect to Corvus (disambiguation). Then it is almost trivial to figure out wikilink errors - they are simply wikilinks that point to a page that redirects to a page with "(disambiguation)" in the title.


 * As for turning an existing javascript into a gadget, I can't see any downside. (Full information about gadgets is at WP:EIW.)  -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 16:15, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to Form a Discussion Group on Formats in Gene, Anatomy, and Physiology Wikis
Dear Readers:

I've been hoping to find some other WIki users who are working in neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, who would like to form a discussion group or forum on article formats - not only for gene articles, but also on neuroanatomical structures, and and neurophysiologic mechanisms (at the cellular and cellular group level).

Please email my or add to this discussion thread. Feel free to cotnact me. Not sure if I should put my email address down here. Can on my next post, if the Wiki moderators/editors suggest it.

PS Hoping to work with others on a bridge format between a genetic database, a mutation database (such as OMIN), and a scientific article format. 17:10, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * First of all, never post your email address. Simply put ~ (four ~ in a row) after your comment, and your user page will be linked to, where people can contact you. Article formats are generally left to the jurisdiction of "WikiProjects"—projects from which users with shared interests can coordinate their efforts. You may find either WikiProject Neurology or WikiProject Genetics helpful. Could you explain what you mean by "neurophysiolic" or "clulluar"? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 03:37, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - I fixed up the spelling. And I'll be reviewing those WikiProjects and their article formats. Appreciate you pointing out the link. My User Name is Menlaus2.


 * I looked into those projects beforehand and didn't find any article formats mentioned. Maybe they are just hidden somewhere, or maybe the projects haven't discussed it yet (the neuro- project is fairly young, so it's understandable that they wouldn't have too much established). If you suggest a discussion on article formats on the project talk pages, members will probably start talking about it. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 11:51, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I've temporarily move my questions about location of articles (which Wiki Project), and formats, to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Neuroscience. I'm also going to be doing some self-teaching on the topic of citations and citation format.


 * It says at the top of WikiProject Neuroscience, "This WikiProject is believed to be inactive.", but that could be a mistake. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 22:53, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Subarticles
A proposal at Wikipedia talk:Notability is that a "subarticle" system be created, whereby once a "parent" article satisfies core criteria, all "child" articles are then exempt from the criterion of having independant secondary sources. E.g. It's accepted that if television series Foo is notable, every episode of Foo can have it's own article without having any secondary sources. (and potentially every character, plot device, monster, location, catchphrase...).

Please discuss there, aplogies if this is posted in the wrong spot. brenneman 03:35, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Usually this happens if the sub-articles would have been part of the main article but would have been split off due to length. To put it another way:  If you have a TV show whose article is 40kb, and it has 8 seasons of 20 episodes each and each episode contains 5KB of unique content, do you want 160 articles of 5KB each + templates, 8 "seasons" articles with 100KB each + season summary and templates, or 1 mega-article of 360KB?  That doesn't even count articles dealing with major characters and other major in-world items.  Would your answer change if the individual episodes had 15 or 50KB of unique content each?  This is a special case of WP:IAR, and is decided by what most editors think would happen if these articles went to AfD to force a discussion on a reorganization.  For well-trafficked articles, the "wisdom of the crowds" produces an acceptable consensus solution.  For lightly-trafficked articles, this can become an excuse for "my favorite TV show deserves 500 articles" and the problem can be reigned in by getting a few dozen pairs of eyes watching the articles and proposing reorganizations.  Technical note:  By sub-article I assume you mean sub- in content, not in name, e.g. "EPISODENAME (SERIESNAME episode)" not "SERIESNAME/EPISODENAME.  The latter isn't used much if at all in main-article space. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  14:20, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose The subsections should have had citations to reliable sources before being split out into separate articles, thus their citations would follow into the new articles. Without citations, the text of the subarticles cannot be easily verified. An invitation to food fights over original research. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 02:07, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. As per WP:SUMMARY, you are describing a summary vs. main article situation. It is the main article (what you call the sub-article) that should be sourced, not the other way around. Emmanuelm (talk) 15:02, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. In many cases Emmanuelm's comment applies. In others, we often have a "whole is greater than the sum of the parts" situation, e.g. a TV series "summary" article might describe how the series was conceived and why it was terminated, and a biology article about a group of related organisms has to discuss how valid it is to consider them related. Either way I don't see a case for any kind of automated transfer / transclusion / whatever of sources in either direction. It might be worth considering a facility to extract automatically into some kind of text box all the main citations used by an article, i.e. those that contain full citation details rather than just ref name="...". That would save a lot of time, especially if an article uses some source umpteen times each. -- Philcha (talk) 13:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Request to restart inactive WikiProject
I would like some editors who have a better mathematics education than I, and perhaps some professional scientists (if they have the time, which I realize they don't) to please consider re-activating WikiProject General Audience. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 01:49, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

<hr style="width:50%;"/>
 * Unarchived to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, 69.140.152.55 (talk)  00:59, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Log and image oversight
What we really need is the ability for oversighters to oversight images and logs. At present, oversighters can't oversight logs or images and that causes major problems - on the image side of things, when personal information has been added to images, we really need an ability for admins not to see them. There's also the problem of child pornography - I know a few admins have had to view such images in the past because the images haven't been oversighted, and that's not good at all. From a log perspective, Grawp has learnt to put personal information in logs meaning at present we have no way to get rid of it. Apparently, revsdel may lead to oversighters being able to oversight images and logs - I'll like to get a consensus her so that the devs will implements revsdel ASAP so that images and logs can be oversighted.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  00:35, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. If it's possible, then I support this completely; it will end a number of problems. PeterSymonds (talk)  00:42, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * See 8196 for a request for image oversight. It's being worked on.  Al Tally  talk  00:58, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well maybe a consensus can hurry the devs up on such an important issue.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  01:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to give Oversighters any more power. Beam 00:53, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * But they're put in a position of trust to oversight legally problematic revisions. Furthermore, they are identified to the Foundation. If we're not giving it to them, who else will we give it to? Certain images and logs need to be oversighted at times, so unless anyone has a better suggestion, the oversighters seem like the perfect choice. PeterSymonds (talk)  00:59, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Images whose mere possession is illegal within the United States should be oversighted. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 00:55, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What a strange thing to say. So you'd rather personal information in logs and illegal images be available to all to see for longer?  Al Tally  talk  00:58, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This seems like a good idea. It doesn't give the oversighters more power, just allows them to perform their function properly, i.e. removing things that even admins should not see, whereever they are. Kevin (talk) 01:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * This is absolutely a good idea and I fail to see how it gives more power. —Giggy 03:46, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I admit I'm a bit wary of changing log entries (perhaps it can leave a note the entry was removed?), I otherwise have seen firsthand how these could be useful tools to have available. – Luna Santin  (talk) 03:58, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Hell No. In light of certain editors' use of oversight to cover up wrong-doing, logs must not be tampered with, period. I will not name names, but those who've been here for awhile know exactly who I mean. Good grief, what a terrible idea. --Dragon695 (talk) 04:34, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * While that's a concerning issue, I believe the oversight log is not all that large. Therefore, oversighters will be able to monitor usage of the tool quite easily. Any abuse, should it happen, will be spotted quickly. Abuse, however unlikely, can still be overturned by system administrators; oversighted material is not irretrievably lost. PeterSymonds (talk)  10:24, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Well Revision Delete will be quite useful to enwiki but I'm not sure how it will be used by those who will have this right i.e CU and oversighters, the bug filed on it hasn't really been given a second thought previously but introducing Revdel will actually need a full community support before it gets implemented, something similar to the [rollback] feature and the log problem was partly fixed but it still doesn't work well as Grawp has proven it, thus revdel is the only option for now...-- Cometstyles 04:52, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I've never been comfortable with the complete lack of accountability for oversight. Even a simple "two log entries have been removed from this user's logs" or "three deleted revisions of this page have been hidden" would be sufficient.  As it stands, oversight has a strong resemblance to a memory hole. --Carnildo (talk) 08:31, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Tend to agree with Carnildo. Would also like to explore the idea that oversighting logs be undertaken by a paid employee of the Foundation with such actions somehow audited. To pay for this position I would suggest allowing adverts on the search page, unless someone has a better idea. Obviously that suggestion will kill the idea, but at some point we are going to have to explore revenue options and the sourcing of paid labour for tasks with a high level of legal responsibility. Hiding T 10:59, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That would be both unpopular and redundant as Brion Vibber is a paid employee who already has the ability to do this. — CharlotteWebb 19:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * All oversighters, like checkusers, are: identified to the Foundation, over 18, and fully accountable for their actions. There is no lack of accountability for oversight. If it's abused, it's removed. All oversighted edits are retrievable, and the log is short, so it can be easily monitored by others. There's not much need for paid positions, given that all credentials given to the foundation are scrutinised, and adverts on Wikipedia is not a good idea. With images such as child pornography, it can only be hoped that an admin doesn't stroll across one. With the proposed introduction of DeletedEdits to non-admins, this is even more of a danger. Furthermore, logs that contain libellous summaries or personal information will need to be removed, and with Wikipedia growing at the speed it is, that need will increase. PeterSymonds (talk)  11:37, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As with Carnilido, there needs to be at least a little visibilty and transparency (ironically enough) in the oversights of logs. It could potentially be open to abuse but with the accountability measures, most of which are described by PeterSymonds above, this may not be as big a problem. Referring back to the first point, it would be a reasonably good idea but I shouldn't think most oversight members will be entirely content with oversighting logs due to the nature of such a measure. Rudget   ( logs ) 13:28, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * No issues oversighting images, or deletion logs, or protection logs, or pagemove logs, but the high probability of abuse of, and low general risk of private info in them, makes me think block logs should not be oversighted.  MBisanz  talk 13:44, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * If an oversighter is abusing their rights, then an RfA should be started. Unless Dragon695 can provide evidence of the abuse, then they're using straw man arguments.   Corvus cornix  talk  18:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I believe you mean RFAR. Due to the oversight logs being non-public, material for the "/Evidence" page would be exceedingly difficult to obtain. God help the fool who requests arbitration against an unknown party effectively on the basis of hearsay. You can decide for yourself whether Oversight's lack of oversight is an oversight. — CharlotteWebb 19:31, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * My complaint is that it is not possible for an ordinary user to know if an oversighter is abusing their rights, except (maybe) by comparing complete database dumps from different points in time. An oversighter could declare a user an "unperson", block them, oversight the block log, and oversight their edits, and there would be no way for an ordinary user to tell this from someone who's created an account but never used it. --Carnildo (talk) 19:51, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This entire thread is a bit silly. The software has been written; it simply isn't enabled. At some point, it will be, regardless of whether or not Dragon695 or anyone else finds it objectionable. Corvus: You mean RfAr, not RfA, right? : - ) --MZMcBride (talk) 18:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Uh, yeah, that. :)   Corvus cornix  talk  18:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Mandatory edit summaries in article and template namespaces
I propose that edit summaries be mandatory for all edits in the article namespace and template namespace. Ignoring any technical hurdles, how does the community feel about this? --- RockMFR 02:23, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I doubt it's really all that useful. People who don't want to write summaries will start using meaningless ones, such as the letter a. Granted, there will probably be some increase in useful summaries too, but the downside is that you'll antagonize a bunch of people. --Trovatore (talk) 03:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Edit summaries are for when an edit need explaining, which is not always. Chillum  04:52, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I often use a . to keep my summaries 100%, when I am editing something repeatedly, or mundanely (like a sandbox). I don't think it'd make much of a difference, and although summaries are nice, people shouldn't have to be forced to add them, as they don't really alter the quality of their work or the article. ~ <font color="#206080">JohnnyMrNinja  06:38, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I do wonder if we can increase the amount of automatic summaries though, to make things a little easier. Such as "Added image", or "Removed section"/"Added section" ect. Just to help when viewing histories, as some of them for articles where many IPs edit can be very difficult as there is no indication whatsoever of what's been done. -- .: Alex  :.  08:31, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I like Alex's idea better. It would be very nice if the software cam automatically put a summary like "its -> it's". Sometimes I'm too lazy to write such summaries, especially when I'm making the same kind of edits en masses. -- Taku (talk) 01:45, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Taku, if you are making the same kinds of edits in masses, you might consider signing up for AutoWikiBrowser, which facilitates such mass edits, and will fill in the edit summary automatically. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 22:57, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The idea of more automatically-generated messages is a great one, but I don't know how that can be done with the Wiki software. Perhaps a browser plug-in or something? ~ <font color="#206080">JohnnyMrNinja  20:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I find that firefox remembers the edit summaries I've typed. --Pwnage8 (talk) 23:19, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I dont like the idea of forcing anyone to do anything, but perhaps I would agree that making the default value for Special:Preferences>editing>Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary>true could be helpful. for IP's who dont have pref's perhaps it could default to ask them as well. When I started editing I didn't know that the preference setting even existed, but once I learned about it I immediately set it to true.... Just a thought, hope it helps %%<font color="green" face="courier new">-SYKKO- %% (talk to me) 01:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Setting it as default for everyone is a good idea. It will not force anyone to do anything, but will heavily suggest it. I found tnhis option annoying when I first started editing, but now I never see it (as I always do edit summaries). ~ <font color="#206080">JohnnyMrNinja  20:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think that feature works very well. Chillum  20:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Specifics? -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 23:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * When I forget to enter an edit summary, it usually does not go off due to automatic edit summaries. Chillum  23:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

A Twitter account to tweet the main page FA
I've created a Twitter account to broadcast the mainpage FA of the day. Read more here on why, and how to participate. Steven Walling (talk) 01:21, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Overlinking report bot
I'd be interested in using a bot that could scan an article, check for duplicate links, then add an overlinking report to that article's talk page (if necessary). This would allow the maintainers of the page to cull unnecessary redundant links, while still allowing some human judgment in the process. Is anybody interested in putting a tool like this together? Perhaps it could become part of the PR process? Thank you.&mdash;RJH (talk) 21:42, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it'd be a great idea, though perhaps instead of a bot it might be best as a toolserver script like the FAC tools. I imagine that it wouldn't be all that hard to do: one could generate a list of wikilinks on the page and then note duplicates and highlight ones in the same or adjacent sections by doing separate checks for each section and then the unions of the sets found for each section for each pair of adjacent sections. It could probably even be done in JavaScript. The main trick would be checking for redirects, though that would be made slightly easier by that redirects are already highlighted by, and so only those links would need to be checked. I could probably whip up a prototype in AppleScript easily, but that wouldn't be useful for most people. Unfortunate that I don't yet understand JavaScript well enough or this would probably be a breeze to create given that that language has enough such functionality to create things like popups. { { Nihiltres  | talk | log } } 23:12, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Please tread carefully... Double links are not discouraged in long articles, where one instance of an item might need explanation and is far from the previous instance. Also, in articles to sections of which lead redirects many links have to be repeated, as one will not read the previous sections. I do agree with the proposed process (reports which will be checked by humans), and, although too much automation might be responsible for massive de forestation linking if handled badly, I have faith in the community. I reserve further judgement until I see more details.
 * Yes, well this is why I was just requesting a report, rather than a script to actually remove wikilinks. I recognize that some human judgement is important when determining what links to remove, and the report can explain that. On the other hand, it is a royal pain to try and spot duplicate links in a long article&mdash;something that can be done easily with software. (At this point it's very tempting just to write my own perl script that I can run on a downloaded copy of a page source.) Thanks.&mdash;RJH (talk) 15:33, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * My own little idea on link handling is, I hope, even more uncontroversial... (I hope I'm not digressing too blatantly; I find this a relevant subject.) "London" displays London and links to London, England, which redirects to London. A useless complication, in other words; I've seen many of them, usually the result of moves. I wonder if that could be automatically converted to "London". Waltham, The Duke of 23:50, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Please read Tools/Navigation popups/About fixing redirects (basically, don't unless it's a double redirect) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:59, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That is, don't fix these redirects unless you are editing the page for some other reason (like to add content). Redirects are handled efficiently by the server, and there is no reason to proactively fix them. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 23:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, I've heard the story... And I agree that there are some kinds of changes that should not be made unless the edit can be actually useful. (I don't add content, but I do copy-edit; sometimes I meticulously check an article for any mistake which I could correct in order to remove spaces around em dashes. It's actually a prime motivator for thorough copy-editing. :-D) It's just that I find this kind of links profoundly silly.
 * Ah, well, I suppose there's manual editing for that—I'm glad I have pop-ups for checking links. Thank you for your input, gentlemen. Waltham, The Duke of 00:12, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Make 'new section' bold and 'edit this page' regular
The sensible way to edit a large, oft frequented discussion page is by clicking on 'new section' or the 'edit' link next to the section of interest. Otherwise, one must search for the relevant section within the edit window and deal with the horror of edit-conflicts. Currently on pages like the Science Reference desk et al., the 'edit this page' link is bold and the 'new section' link is regular, leading to me accidentally being drawn to the bold link when I want the regular one. Indeed, I imagine few people ever need the 'edit this page' button on the reference desks. I suggest that the 'new section' link is made bold and the 'edit this page' link is made regular, so that people are drawn to what is probably the correct link out of the two. Seans Potato Business
 * It sounds sensible, but... Can this be done for a single page? Waltham, The Duke of


 * How about doing it for all talk pages and pages with __NEWSECTIONLINK__ on them? – <font color="90EE90">F ISDOF <font color="D3D3D3">9


 * That might be a good idea. Pity that we seem to have failed to receive enough attention here. I had forgotten about this myself for almost a week... Stupid Pump. Waltham, The Duke of


 * This is a great idea, with no real downside. I do not know how long this topic has been here as nobody has timestamps... weird. ~ <font color="#206080">JohnnyMrNinja  (I won't use one either)


 * It is weird, given that I distinctly remember adding a time-stamp. I suppose someone has removed them to prevent this thread from being archived. Waltham, The Duke of 19:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * If you want to target pages with __NEWSECTIONLINK__ on them, the MediaWiki software would have to be changed. I suggest filing a bug report and requesting this as a feature. —Remember the dot (talk) 06:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This can be done with individual mediawiki messages, or Javascript. No need for a change to mediawiki.  Soxred  93  12:05, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * A MediaWiki message (if it is what I think it is) would probably be the best solution; features useful for all shouldn't depend on individual scripts. Waltham, The Duke of 19:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Making new section bold could be done with CSS - making edit non-bold dependent on the presence of new section cannot. --Random832 (contribs) 20:19, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, someone want to start a poll regarding bolding the "new section" tab (and unbolding the "edit this page"), on all talk pages, so we can see if there is consensus for this? -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 23:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * All talk pages? Can't a bot do it? --Seans Potato Business 17:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Auto-confirm sleepers
While noticing some of the recent page move vandalism today I decided to see what it was they did for their first 10 edits to get auto-confirm status (needed for page moves). This account only has two edits before it started using the page move feature, and their first edit was made on July 4th. I'm guessing the account existed before the auto confirm settings were changed, and got the flag when it existed for more than four days.

I propose, assuming it's possible, that all accounts that have not made any edits that were made before the auto-confirm settings change have their auto-confirm flag removed. Assuming this is possible likely means a dev would be needed to do it, but I thought I would post this proposal here to double check with the community before making the bug report. -- Ned Scott 02:58, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The page was not moved. The edit summary was faked to look like a move. Being autoconfirmed is determined by the current rules, so many existing accounts lost their status when the rules were changed. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:32, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You seem to be mistaken, Prime, because at least some of them were actual page moves. Unless there were 8 deleted contribs that I can't see, then this account does have auto-confirm status based on the old settings. -- Ned Scott 03:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I was referring to the alleged move after two edits. The first real move was made after 7 visible and 3 deleted edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:54, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Number 3 to 7 of the visible edits were dummy edits with an edit summary imitating a move. There were 3 deleted edits on 4 July. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Aaah. -- Ned Scott 04:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Endorse. Would also help a little with the haggar/grawp crap, if that's not what yer referring to in the first place. Tan      39  03:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Now I'm even more confused, as the logs show the account was created on July 4th, 2008. There must be deleted contribs that are involved. -- Ned Scott 03:48, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Raiselived had three deleted contributions on July 3, 2 non-deleted comments on July 3, and 5 "fake move" edits on July 21, for a total of 10 before the first real move. --B (talk) 04:07, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I see what you are saying about dates, though. The difference is timezones.  The account was created July 3 at 21:42 Eastern.  The deleted edits were at 22:21 and 22:22, and 22:25.  All times are Eastern (UTC-5). --B (talk) 04:09, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, I think the reason for Ned Scott's confusion over the July 4 (UTC) creation was not related to time zones. Rather, it was because he originally guessed the account was created before the autoconfirmation requirement was raised on a much earlier date. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:15, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I guess that pretty much explains everything. -- Ned Scott 04:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it wasn't faked, he did move the pages but the autoconfirm settings is 4 days 10 edits and though the account was created on July 4th, he really didn't start vandalising 4 days later because he has previously done this and was "blocked" by the admins over and over again, now what he does is atleast wait over 10 days and in this case, 18 days weirdly and the 10 edit requirement INCLUDES deleted edits, and this way he can easily fool anyone into thinking that he is a newbie by creating fake pages and making multiple dummy edits on it and confidently wait for the admins to delete it, thus though his contribs will show no edits, his deleted edits will show 10 edits which is all he needs and when no one takes interest in that account anymore, he strikes...plain and simple..but a new trend I have seen is that he now creates account names using CAPTCHAS and since most CAPTCHAS  are repeated, its easy for admins who help out in Account creation to see this trend...-- Cometstyles 05:03, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Should autoconfirm be changed to not count deleted edits? -- Imperator3733 (talk) 15:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I suggest not. Someone this clever can simply do edits to the sandbox or his/her user page. There are benefits to simplicity - it's easier to say "all edits", and it's easier if someone isn't going back and forth between autoconfirmed and not autoconfirmed, if/when edits are deleted.  And yes, while the present system can confuse non-admin vandal fighters (who can't see deleted edits), it's better (I think) to work on informing vandal fighters (as needed) than to add yet another complication to our auto-confirmed process.  -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 15:15, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Promote blogging with "this is not a blog" tags
I think "this is not a forum" is really not that convincing or relevant for most occasions. For example, one can easily hijack the rules but just going "blah blah personal opinion blah blah POV POV blah, and here's a source, and here's how to improve the article". i.e. it's not hard to make it seem like non-forum but really being at least 80% blogging. So, promoting blogging and tagging of 'this is not a blog' is more relevant. --Leladax (talk) 06:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Umm ... what are you actually proposing be done? (And would you mind defining "promoting", as you're using the word; I'm having trouble making sense of it?)  -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 22:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

A "resource fork"
Often when I'm researching an article, I'll come across relevant reliable sources that I don't immediately need but might be useful in further expansions of the article. Similarly, there are times when articles are trimmed to remove sections per WP:WEIGHT or WP:SUMMARY and useful sources are dropped along with the edit.

Would it be reasonable to have a subpage (similar to a talk page) that's just a list of resources for future writers of the article? SDY (talk) 18:10, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * You could include these in a section near the bottom called "Further reading". − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 22:51, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Often I'm running into cases where there are quite a few of them (PubMed journal searches, for example) and a long "further reading" section might be kind of cumbersome. I suppose it can always go on the talk page.  SDY (talk) 23:55, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Talk page, or you could comment it out in an appropriate section, like so:
 *   − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 00:45, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Also see the section above where there was some talk of holding these in a sub-talkpage (like Talk:Foo/LinkSuggest links), and having a "LinkSuggest" user-script to conveniently mediate access to them from the article proper. I'd have a crack at writing it if I only had the time.  :-)  For instance, the script might add a "suggested links" option to the toolbox which pops up a list of items and gives controls for adding or removing items yourself.  -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 07:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There is absolutely nothing wrong with posting these on the talk page; most talkpage comments are far less substantive. I have recently begun creating sections titled "Resources relevant to the page" on talk pages. II  | (t - c) 21:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * SDY, I think this is a great idea. Yeah, sure, theoretically this can be put on the talk page.  Sure, there's absolutely nothing wrong with putting it on the talk page.  But that doesn't happen.  The presence of resource forks as a common or universal practice would encourage the posting and collection of resource lists, which would be of IMMENSE help in sourcing articles!  There's no solid reason to oppose this idea that I can think of. Mr. IP (talk) 08:52, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia password limits
Wikipedia's page for creating an account or logging in has a link to the article "Password strength". I have the following questions: -- Wavelength (talk) 02:16, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What is the set of all characters acceptable for use in a Wikipedia password? (Does it include: punctuation marks? Greek letters? Russian letters? Armenian letters? Devanagari characters? Japanese characters? Korean characters? mathematical symbols? webdings? wingdings?)
 * What is the maximum allowable length for a Wikipedia password? (Does one Chinese character count as much as a Latin letter?)
 * Does Wikipedia truncate the password after a specific number of characters, and disregard the rest?
 * Why are the answers to these questions not visible on the page for creating an account or logging in?


 * This doesn't really belong at the proposals village pump - more probably the Help Desk or the tech village pump - but anyway, I can't find anything on Wikipedia about this, and I'm having difficulty locating it on the MediaWiki site as well. Don't leave your fly open should help answer some of your questions, but not completely. I can answer a couple questions, however: the Mediawiki software will not truncate over-long passwords - this would be a terrible bug in the system if it were the case, as it could make logging in very difficult for people who enter an overlong password. If you enter one that is over the software or site limit, it should tell you to enter a new one. I'm not sure what the limit is, however. Also, the answers aren't on the account creation page because nobody's added them to the Mediawiki interface, probably because everyone else is having as hard a time finding the answers as I am. Once they are there, they probably will be added as soon as someone figures out exactly which Mediawiki page that is - very few of them are intuitively named. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Hers <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:gold">fold  non-admin (t/a/c) 02:57, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Probably it would go on one of MediaWiki:Signupend or MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-createaccount. I checked the source a bit, I found that User:isValidPassword checks only against a minimum size.  The password field in the database is just an MD5 hash of the "actual" password, so the only real maximum is PHP's maximum string size, which I believe defaults to around 8 million characters.  That would be a very secure password!  -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 11:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The minimum size is in, which on Wikipedia I think is set to 8.  The check for the minimum uses  , but I imagine Wikipedia is using a UTF8 string with  , which would mean that even "fancy" passwords with Chinese script only count each character as 1.  -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 11:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * For what it is worth, User:Slark has posted the following message (07:39, 20 March 2008) at Talk:Password strength.
 * I just changed my Wikipedia password using KeePassX 0.2.2 (new version 0.3.1! with AutoType!) with maxed out password strength, which has the following options:


 * 1000 characters length
 * Upper letters
 * Lower letters
 * Numbers
 * Special characters
 * White spaces
 * Minus
 * Underline
 * higher ANSI characters


 * KeePassX reports a password generated with these options as either 8000 bit or 12816 bit quality, either way Wikipedia happily accepted it. [end of message by Slark]


 * -- Wavelength (talk) 16:08, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * While MediaWiki indeed accepts such passwords, it's worth noting that they're hashed internally to a 128 bit value (using MD5). Thus, there's no real point in using a password stronger than 128 bits, since you'll start getting hash collisions.  Of course, allowing long passwords is still useful, since passwords that can be memorized and typed by humans tend to have fairly low entropy per character.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 07:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * After reading this post decided to create a script to add a password strength meter on the new accounts form. It doesn't use a checklist like most meters instead opting for calculating the bit strength. I'm centralizing discussion at Common.js.  — Dispenser 00:32, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Semiprotect the entire Template: namespace
We've been suffering a lot of vandalism to templates lately (just check the threads on WP:AN/I and elsewhere). Many of our most commonly used templates have already been permanently protected or semiprotected as "high-risk templates", but a lot have still slipped through the cracks. Therefore, I'd like to toss out a proposal for discussion: how about we semiprotect the entire template namespace?

There are two ways in which we could implement this:
 * 1) MediaWiki has a configuration variable $wgNamespaceProtection which can be used to set a minimum protection level for all pages in a given namespace.  By default, it's only used to prevent non-admins from editing the MediaWiki: namespace, but the Wikimedia sysadmins could use it to semiprotect the Template: namespace.
 * 2) Wikipedia also has the Title Blacklist extension, which could be used to achieve a similar effect by adding the line " " to MediaWiki:Titleblacklist.  This would be more of a hack, but it could be implemented by local admins without sysadmin assistance, and could also allow more fine-grained control.  (In particular, I've proposed elsewhere to use this mechanism to protect subpages of Template:Convert.)

Obviously, this would prevent new and unregistered users from making legitimate changes to templates; however, most users with enough wiki experience to usefully edit templates should probably pass the autoconfirmation requirements anyway. Conversely, I'm aware that a determined vandal can easily register accounts in advance and rack up the required ten edits before vandalizing; but the semiprotection would still serve as a speed bump, and we can still keep fully protecting the highest-risk templates as we already do. Let the comments roll in. Also, feel free to notify any other relevant forums about this proposal. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * TI have thought about this myself in the past few days. The main downside is the foundation principle of open editing, which I strongly advocate. I might be willing to compromise on that in this case, but I don't think the current autoconfirmed standards are rigorous enough that semiprotection would have much effect. I don't think full protection for all templates is a viable option, though. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:20, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the idea has merit and I support it but just something to think about though is that this would make vandalism harder to spot, right now the IP's are easy to spot editing but if the requirement were changed to autoconfirmed status then there would be no way to filter there contributions out from more established users. - Icewedge (talk) 03:46, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There's been far too much limiting of the ability to edit going on lately; it all started with making it harder to get autoconfirmed, and its gotten way out of hand; we have principles, and they're more important than templates that can be watchlisted and reverted. <b style="color:#629632;">Celarnor</b> <sup style="color:#7733ff;">Talk to me  04:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I mentioned this the other day as a facetious comment - while I do see why this would be considered, I don't think it's something we should implement. As mentioned, it limits constructive editing too much. Someone trying to make a useful edit to a template can't do so unless they're logged in. Locking out the entire Template: namespace also prevents additions or corrections to documentation of templates as well. We do have several tools already available to us to help with this - the preview screen now lists all templates used on a page; recent changes can be restricted to Template: edits only, as well as showing only anonymous users; high-risk templates can be protected as many already are. Several administrators, myself included, transclude various templates onto a user subpage with cascading protection (See User:Hersfold/Lockbox - the ones I have listed there are commonly used in coding more complex templates, and could cause severe damage. While most are protected of their own merit, some are/were not: ((, for example, was open to all editing until I locked it manually and added it to the page above for double security.). While template vandalism does take some time and effort to track down, it's not impossible, and usually can be found and corrected within a short time. Admittedly, it is more severe than your run-of-the-mill vandalism, but not to the point it merits such a severe measure of protection, in my opinion. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Hers <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:gold">fold  non-admin (t/a/c) 04:26, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I've given this a lot of thought today. Here's what I've thought of: --- RockMFR 04:52, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Turn on flagged revisions for the template namespace.
 * Good: Should stop vandalism almost entirely.
 * Bad: All the problems that come with flagged revisions.
 * Change the software to automatically full-protect any page transcluded on over XXX number of pages.
 * Good: No high-profile template vandalism.
 * Bad: Requires a change in the software; template edits still need to be watched closely; coming up with a good XXX will be difficult.
 * Full-protect all templates.
 * Good: No more vandalism!
 * Bad: No more edits!
 * Semi-protect all templates.
 * Good: Might slow down vandals.
 * Bad: Probably won't. And anons do make good edits.
 * Delay changes made to templates by non-admins (i.e., won't affect transclusions for X minutes, don't go into the job queue if reverted).
 * Good: Recent changes patrollers can stop any vandalism.
 * Bad: Software changes.
 * Use the filter extension thing.
 * Good: Temporarily stop the vandalism.
 * Bad: Arms race.
 * Continue with what we're already doing.
 * Good: ???
 * Bad: ???
 * The original poster's proposal is a bad idea. Any vandal sophisticated enough to employ template vandalism is generally determined enough to create an account. I don't know how many useful anonymous edits are made to templates - not many, I expect, since anonymous edits are generally by unsophisticated users - but this still happens sometimes, due for example to "edit" links on transcluded infoboxes. Even this small number should not be ruled out for no purpose. Dcoetzee 05:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * User:Jaysweet had come up with an idea to help fight it on Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive450; basically it was a "View Recent Changes to pages transcluded on this page" tool (can AWB do that, or does someone want to have a crack at the toolserver?) with which users can easily find which template is the culprit of such an issue and revert it. Does that sound like it would be useful?  -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 10:12, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It does actually. I also like the idea of templates being automatically protected when they are transcluded on a certain high number of pages. -- .: Alex  :.  12:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I'd bet all we need to do is tag the list of transcluded templates on the edit page that were most recently edited (say within the past 3 hours), similar to how protected templates are already tagged there as "(protected)". Usually, the most recently edited template is going to be the vandalized one. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:47, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Is there anywhere we can list "suggestions for toolserver tools", or is this really a sofixit situation? :-)  -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 15:17, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey, that's a good idea. I wrote a user script to do just that. Anomie⚔ 01:34, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I support this, but only if the default protection level is semi-protected, not fully protected, as there I'm sure there are a lot of non-Admins who edit templates in a constructive way (myself included). It Is Me Here (talk) 12:38, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I strongly second It Is Me Here's point that the default protection level should be semi-protected. WP:CEX uses several templates created / modified by its members. -- Philcha (talk) 13:14, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Regarding Use the filter extension thing: Good: Temporarily stop the vandalism. Bad: Arms race., I disagree with the "Bad" analysis. Figuring out how to evade the settings in a filter extension would (a) be a lot of work and (b) would in no way give the vandal an advantage with regard to human beings spotting and fixing this sort of vandalism.  A better analogy is to something like surveillance cameras or x-ray machines at airports - whether or not you think they're worth doing (primarily because of costs and false positives), they in no way lead to an "arms race".   -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 13:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The extension isn't meant to deal with vandals like this; it is meant to employ filters to deal only with very specific, very easily identifiable forms of vandalism (i.e, the HAGGAR pagemoves); it is by no stretch intended to deal with the vandalism that is reverted by ClueBot and the like. <b style="color:#629632;">Celarnor</b> <sup style="color:#7733ff;">Talk to me  14:12, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There are also lots of anonymous editors who edit constructively, too; are you better than they are because you have an account? Should we really block them from doing so because there are a few losers among the group?  If you think that, then you really should be endorsing full-protection, since autoconfirmed users can be vandals too.  You can even take it a bit further and say we shouldn't have templates at all, since you could work an account up past RFA to vandalize.  Is it really a good idea to inhibit editing by default because of a few losers?  <b style="color:#629632;">Celarnor</b> <sup style="color:#7733ff;">Talk to me  14:12, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This is a wiki. Semi-protecting the entire Template: namespace is a bad idea that will do far more harm than good. Autoconfirmed limits are trivial to bypass and a great deal of legitimate page content is stored in the Template: namespace. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:27, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Doing nothing at all would be worse than the current situation, which is summarised by the instructions here . At present we revert, protect, purge and warn on a template-by-template basis, and we're slowly moving towards protection of most common transcluded templates in an inefficient, time-consuming and piecemeal way.  There's a case for making it less convenient overall for the drive-by template vandal who wants to make a big mess with little effort.
 * I think semiprotecting the whole space is too draconian, but I like the idea of a "View recent changes to pages transcluded on this page" - dead useful if it could be made to work for Popups too. As for the "semiprotect when transcluded to >X pages" idea, I don't buy the argument that it's unworkable because you'll not get consensus on what X is.  We appear to have consensus already on full protection for really important templates, and the judgement about whether to protect is made on the fly by individual admins.  I'm sure a figure for X could be reached by discussion if the proposal was made.  Finally, there's scope for a far better, step-by-step explanation at  as to how non-admins can detect and revert template vandalism: that's where users will go first for guidance, and it's a bit sparse.   I found Hersfold's suggestions above particularly helpful for my own future reference.  Maybe experienced template vandal-fighters could look at fleshing out the section a bit?   Ka renjc 18:11, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * We are going to have to do something about this. This vandal has worked out how to hit hundreds of high-profile pages at once and consequently the number of people who have been affected (and the number who have complained) is huge. I wrote a program to find out how many templates have more than 500 transclusions, and it returned over 2000. Semiprotecting templates with more than a certain number of transclusions looks like the best way to go. <b style="color:#FF0000;">Hut 8.5</b> 18:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Mm-hm. Absolutely. I think we can all agree that a template that is transcluded on 500+ pages is certainly "high risk" and should at least be semi-protected. Of course templates that are transcluded less than that and are high risk are special cases and will likely receive enough attention to be protected without automatic intervention (like the AN templates for example). Some templates, however, get "forgotten" and overlooked and people can therefore miss some large scale vandalism. I don't know whether we should pursue some of the other ideas or not, but I do strongly think that this particular idea should be applied to the template namespace. -- .: Alex  :.  19:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * No. At least, not all templates.  Protecting high-risk templates is within reason -- and established practice -- but not all of them preemptively.  Any serial vandal knows how to register accounts to bypass semiprotection, meaning all this solution will do is exclude honest IP editors from contributing.  I've been collaborating with an IP editor recently, who has made constructive edits to dozens of articles and related templates.  One of the articles we've been working on was semiprotected in response to a conspiracy-theory vandal, and as a result all IPs are now locked out.  I'd sooner just keep reverting the vandal than lose contributors.--Father Goose (talk) 19:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * We aren't talking about semi-protecting articles, though: this is about semi-protecting templates, which are quite a bit more arcane to (most) newbies. In any case, it's considerably quicker and easier to revert vandalism on an article than it is on a template. - Jredmond (talk) 20:40, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I would like to register extremely strong opposition. As Dcoetzee says above, any vandal sophisticated enough to hit templates is sophisticated enough to ripen some accounts.  All this does is shut off another area of the encyclopedia to IP editors.  I have created templates in the past, and I shudder to think that soon I could never be able to do it again under my preferred mode of editing.  IP editors should not be shut out of template space completely.  Ever.  I'm sorry, I understand the intentions here, but an extreme, total, and permanent crackdown on IP editors is going too far. This is just another step toward the total elimination of anonymous users.   Mr. IP,  Defender of Open Editing  16:40, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Good. The percentage of useful edits, compared to vandalism, of IP users is so low these days that anonymous users should be totally eliminated. Great idea for the startup of the project, but with intensely high worldwide visibility now - first hit or two on almost any google search - the concept is outdated and the protection of "the rights of anonymous users" is anachronistic at best. Anyone can register an account, and the positive effect that would have on the reduction of vandalism far, far outweighs any loss of constructive edits from IPs. Tan      39  16:50, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll go you one further, and suggest we eliminate all editors. They are such a nuisance!  Administrators should not have to clean up after them.  Mr. IP,  Defender of Open Editing  09:00, 28 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Agree with Hut 8.5, semiprotect all templates with over 500 links.  That'll at least slow the vandals down.  NawlinWiki (talk) 19:15, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * It's an idea - it doesn't prevent the vandalism, but it's a speedbump, and the template space is sufficiently esoteric that most people contributing are well-established editors, so we get less collateral damage this way than from sprotecting articles. Perhaps more usefully, someone could generate a list of all templates transcluded more than a hundred or so times, and let us start full-protecting them... Shimgray | talk | 20:25, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I can make such a list, but posting it on-wiki is a bad idea as it gives the vandal a list of targets. <b style="color:#FF0000;">Hut 8.5</b> 20:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I like the general idea here. When it comes to editing templates, anybody can comment on the talk page, and any registered user can create a /Temp subpage with a mockup of their changes.  My only major concern here is how effective semi-protection will be against throwaway autoconfirmed accounts. - Jredmond (talk) 20:40, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I personally think all good wikipedians should have account. Idea of semi-protecting templates which are present on more than 500+ pages seems fair and just. It will reduce some load of patrolling. Also good wikipedians who want to do constructive work would pass the basic test easily. This idea will prompt them to come up with an account. Vandals anyway are more interested in dirtying articles which has more visibility than templates which have auto set for hidden than show. -- gp pande  «talk»  20:50, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I've seen little evidence to suggest that semi-protection will be a deterrent to anyone but legitimate editors. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Once we implement automatic semi-protection after the transclusion #500, how long will it be before people start adding more transclusions just to up the count and force protection? IMHO, a preview that allowed you to use the list to toggle which templates are shown would be a better approach to template vandalism, more in line with the "easy to break, easy to fix". -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 21:11, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Highly endorse. As one who believes that Wikipedia has moved past the "startup" where anyone can anonymously edit and into a realm where users should have accounts, and dealing with all the Grawp bullshit lately, this is a great idea. Tan      39  01:35, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Bad idea, agree with MZMcBride, this will only hurt good editors and looks like being used as another step against anonymous editors. Davewild (talk) 07:02, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I downright oppose any indiscriminate protection of pages in any namespace. Protection should be applied on a case-by-case basis, with the potential exception of pages which fulfil certain criteria of high risk of, and vulnerability to, vandalism. Thanks to the raise of the criteria for auto-confirmation, semi-protection is more meaningful than it used to be, and caution and good judgement should be involved in the use of such measures—without exceptions. Waltham, The Duke of 19:43, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have a hard time believing that (a) newly registered users have any need to be mucking around with templates until they have a lot more experience than 10 or 20 edits (if they are "deterred" by semi-protection, that's arguably a benefit, not a problem), and (b) that there are many experienced editors who have been making useful changes to templates and yet haven't figured out the value of having a registered account (personalization, better anonymity, ability to track one's own edits, better reputation, etc.) Why don't we acknowledge that any template that impacts more than a couple of dozen pages is *high risk*, which means that most templates should be at least semi-protected, which means that we might as well semi-protect the namespace and be done with it.


 * The purpose of allowing "anyone to edit" is to avoid stifling viewpoints and encouraging contributions to articles. On the other hand, Wikipedia isn't (and never will be) "the encyclopedia whose software anyone can modify". We only let developers muck with the software - and no one considers that censorship, or a problem.  Templates are code.  In the risk-reward calculation, the risks of vandalism seem far greater than the benefits of contributions by novice and IP editors to templates. Or any "damage" to the concept of Wikipedia. -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 23:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That's an excellent point. Besides, most high risk templates are deemed unsuitible for even registered users to tamper with, hence why they are fully protected. I can't see how semi-protection would be unreasonable. The amount of actually beneficial template edits by IPs is so minimal, that the benefit's of deterring vandalism are indeed much greater. -- .: Alex  :.  14:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * John: With all due respect, you're utterly wrong and you are making statements without any support. Look at the Recent changes feed with logged-in users hidden showing only the Template: namespace (here). Anonymous editors make hundreds of edits to templates every day. And to say that only code is found in templates is simply rubbish. Take, for example, Template:Los Angeles Dodgers roster navbox. That template (and many, many, many others) contain legitimate page content. If we are to allow people to edit page text freely and anonymously, there is no reason to block editors from editing page content inside templates freely and anonymously. While I would certainly agree that the template that Template:Los Angeles Dodgers roster navbox uses (Template:Navbox) should be fully protected, semi- or fully protecting that template is absurd and anti-wiki. One of our guiding principles is the ability to allow anyone to edit, and we restrict such an ability for various reasons (large-scale damage, wasting server resources, content disputes, etc.). I've seen no compelling reason or evidence to flatly restrict the Template: namespace from anonymous users in this discussion. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree; besides, many templates are little more than repeating text or tables. They don't have to be complex. They are easy to edit by anyone without (m)any glitches, and in case of a mistake they are easy to correct. I remind the honourable colleagues that, even though vandalism in a template can be seen simultaneously on many pages, that also increases the changes of someone spotting and correcting it, restoring the balance. And there is something else...
 * Templates are not restricted to the Template namespace. There are templates in the user and project namespaces, and although these are not transcluded in the mainspace, vandalism there can be equally or even more disrupting, depending on the case. These will be excepted by any blanket semi-protection on templates, creating double standards and precipitating unforeseeable changes in template-creation and -editing trends. What's wrong with the merits of case-by-case protection? Why flood the logs for what amounts, in many cases, to protecting templates transcluded in twenty pages? This cannon will kill far more flies than soldiers. Waltham, The Duke of 00:29, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Without addressing the merits of your comment in any other respect, I'd just like to point out, as a minor technical correction, that neither of the suggested methods for (semi)protecting the template namespace would create any log entries. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Duly noted. For all it's worth, I meant it more as a poetic image than literally. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 23:06, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Anomie's userscript solution
I just tried User:Anomie's User:Anomie/previewtemplatelastmod.js script, it seems to work pretty well; it modifies the "list of templates used here" list to show the most recent change instead of just the name of each one. -- tiny plastic Grey Knight &#x2296; 06:58, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Coincidentally, 37927 is now live, so that Special:RecentChangesLinked (listed in the toolbox on the left as "Related changes") now includes changes to transcluded templates. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

user boxen diffused
About a year and a half ago, there was an effort (called Userbox migration) to move templates which display user characteristics—commonly called userboxes and frequently appear on user pages—out of <tt>template:</tt> space into <tt>user:</tt> space. As a result, we now have perhaps thousands of userboxes (or userboxen) scattered all over the <tt>user:</tt> space, under various users' pages.

I have no idea if this has been proposed before, but would it make sense to move them into one easy-to-find place? I propose using user: which I've confirmed isn't available for creation, doesn't have any contributions, and is already used as a "system" redirect to Userboxes. My user page is a rich example of userboxen, but taking a few at random:
 * 1) <tt>User:The Raven's Apprentice/Userboxes/User Firefox</tt>
 * 2) <tt></tt>
 * 3) <tt>User:Menasim/Userboxes/User Google</tt>
 * 4) <tt>User:UBX/Scuba Diver</tt>
 * 5) <tt></tt>
 * 6) <tt>User:Lucasbfr/Admin open to trout slapping</tt>

I notice that even in the highly regarded Babel usage, there are some user space boxes:
 * <tt>:Feureau/UserBox/AmericanEnglish</tt>

In my six more-or-less-random examples, four are under various user's pages and two are in template space, though both the latter "pretend" like they are in user space. All very confusing. It looks like a significant fraction (20%?) of userboxes are under : a good start, and  put a nice directory there. But I'm not surprised it didn't catch on. <tt>UBX</tt> is ugly, and doesn't flow through the mind very well. (It does have good keyboard feel though.)

Should all the user boxes be migrated to be under User:Box? Examples: <tt>, ,  </tt>  —EncMstr (talk) 01:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I think this is a great idea. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 05:22, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I like the idea. <b style="color:#629632;">Celarnor</b> <sup style="color:#7733ff;">Talk to me  05:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Anything that will remove the dozens of Template:User X style boxes is a good thing.  MBisanz  talk 06:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Been proposed in the past but the anti userbox mob objected strongly.Geni 19:53, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Why? <b style="color:#629632;">Celarnor</b> <sup style="color:#7733ff;">Talk to me  19:55, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Because they were the anti userbox mob? I wouldn't worry. most have quit wikipedia or lost interest in the subject.Geni 22:57, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Userboxes already recommends the account User:UBX for this. I had been under the impression that, these days, only "official" userbox templates that clearly facilitate collaboration, such as the Babel templates or, were permitted in Template: namespace, whereas random "personal" templates like "this user likes being whacked with sealife" should stay in User: space to make it clear that they're not part of Wikipedia (the project) proper.  Apparently, however, that isn't quite the case: the guideline only says, in a vague way, that "userboxes in the Template and Project namespaces are expected to adhere more tightly with policies and guidelines".  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:26, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The status of userboxes is under an uneasy truce at the moment. The less shifting around you do with them the better, I think. Stifle (talk) 10:06, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Just as an aside (and probably terribly naive) question: where did this "boxen" plural come from?--Kotniski (talk) 15:19, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * See boxen. Algebraist 16:31, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That half answers it - but whence this habit among some otherwise apparently quite normal Wikipedians for using the specific term "userboxen" (which have nothing to do with the computers that boxen refers to according to Wiktionary)?--Kotniski (talk) 17:12, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I worked for years on Vax computers. How does one pluralize "Vax"?  Vaxen!  (If you like them; Vaxes, if indifferent.)  —EncMstr (talk) 21:31, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * So do we conclude that "userboxen" is used chiefly by computer geeks who think userboxes are a pretty neat idea?--Kotniski (talk) 22:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment: Since User:UBX already exists, I don't really see any strong advantage in moving the numerous userboxes there over to User:Box. However, I would not object if other editors think that this is a good idea. I have the same impression as Ilmari – that the Template namespace is to be used for more official userboxes, while the User namespace is for others. As for placing userboxes in User:UBX or editors' own user pages, the main thing to note is this guideline from "User page": "[B]y convention your user page will usually not be edited by others. ... In general it is considered polite to avoid substantially editing another's user page without their permission." Therefore, I see placing a userbox on your own user page is a signal to other editors that they should refrain from modifying the userbox, whereas they are free to do so if it is put into User:UBX. — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 19:46, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

A template to wecome users with problems with COI
There is already a WelcomeNPOV template. However, it doesn't seem to fit with people who make autobiographies. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 09:47, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * welcome-auto does, though :) Stifle (talk) 10:03, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I didn't know that! It should be placed in Friendly though, along with Welcomeusername. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 10:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a really good welcome template for that situation, Stifle. I shall have to remember it. ~ mazca  t 10:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorting of subcategories
It was pointed out to me that the recent discussion about subcategory placement within a category (alphabetically/at the beginning) is actually an open and really old bug. I have placed my vote there, and any still interested could do the same. ~ <font color="#206080">JohnnyMrNinja  08:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Rollback limit
When the rollback limit was initially created, it was when the flag was going to be given to all autoconfirmed users. As the permission has to be granted by admins manually now, and some degree of clue should be shown before a user receives it, I propose we remove the limit set on rollbackers - we've already shown that if there's misuse, we're effective at removing the permission.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  22:37, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I've got no problem with this. Many users are having trouble keeping up with vandalism because of this limit.  As Ryan said, we're doing fine with removing it when it is abused, so I don't think this should be a problem. - Rjd0060 (talk) 22:55, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I may be wrong on this, but I think the limit was raised to 100 a few weeks ago. Even so, I would still support removing the limit entirely: it's not needed. People who abuse rollback get it removed, and those who use it correctly keep the right, but are hindered by the limit. Let's remove the limit. Acalamari 02:18, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Never even knew there was a limit (is it documented somewhere?) But it sounds from the above that it would be beneficial to abolish it or at least raise it significantly.--Kotniski (talk) 09:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Get rid of it - it's not helping anyone. <b style="color:#FF0000;">Hut 8.5</b> 18:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree, admin judgment is sufficient. Can we move forward with this? Skomorokh  11:50, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Opinion seems to be unanimous here so far. Any objections to taking it to the devs?--Kotniski (talk) 18:56, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't use the tool a ton, but if the limit serves no purpose, lose it. We have enough superfluous processes as it is. S. Dean Jameson 20:36, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The limit can't really be removed without actual development work on the software. But it can be raised to an arbitrarily high number. Currently, it's set to 10 / minute (I believe). Non-sysops can check their rate limits via the API (here). If people are regularly hitting the limit, there's no real reason not to raise it. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:12, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * So, how about asking it to be set to 60 a minute? A limit of one per second shouldn't get in anyone's way.--Kotniski (talk) 08:27, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Assuming (based on the above discussion) that silence indicates consent, I've made a request at Bugzilla (Bug 14967).--Kotniski (talk) 08:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Request: Unwatch button in watchlist
I would like to request the addition of an "unwatch" button in the watchlist. I know this can be accessed by either opening the article or viewing the "manage watchlist" page, but in either case this requires an additional step. SharkD (talk) 22:32, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't fully understand what you want and how this becomes more convenient. Also why use the prefix "un"... Couldn't we use "dewatch". --CyclePat (talk) 05:21, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Unwatch is already in the interface. The point of this appears to be to be able to unwatch pages directly from the watchlist, without viewing the page you want to unwatch; this does make some sense, since the ordering on the edit watchlist view is very different from the ordering in the main view, so that it may be difficult to (for example) unwatch several recently modified pages quickly. Dcoetzee 08:56, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Definitely support this idea. It may not seem a big deal to those of you with fast links, but on a slow link especially every extra step costs time.--Kotniski (talk) 09:14, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree, very useful. Stifle (talk) 10:03, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Installing the user script user:js/watchlist works. However this really oughtta be a permanent feature in the software.  It's listed as request 424 over at Bugzilla.  Anyone willing to submit it as a patch?--Father Goose (talk) 10:17, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * enabling the WP:navigation popups gadget already provides this capability when you hover over the page title on the watchlist {or anywhere else) DGG (talk) 11:49, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As you say, this appears everywhere, not just in the watchlist. As a result, it adds more bloat to pages and causes them to take more time to download. Also, not everyone likes the intrusive nature of popups. SharkD (talk) 18:00, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This is feature creep. --Pwnage8 (talk) 15:36, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Does "this is feature creep" mean anything more than "this is a request for a new feature"? If so, could you provide at least some kind of argument?--Kotniski (talk) 16:42, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, it does mean more than that. Did you click the link? While I'm not sure I agree that it is feature creep, having to paraphrase because you are unable to understand the term is a waste of time... Tan      39  16:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean I didn't understand the term, I just don't see how "this is feature creep" can stand as an argument on its own, without any attempt at justification. It's like writing "this is a bad idea" (with no "because..." after it).--Kotniski (talk) 16:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Too many buttons. Lets just leave it as a javascript add-on Chillum  16:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It could be implemented as an option, removable via user preferences, for those who think it's too much clutter.--Kotniski (talk) 16:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry if I was snappy above. Too much of this last night. Tan      39  16:55, 28 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This is a very good idea and I don't see anything that would prevent this from happening. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 16:48, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Request for Help
Couple of questions.

What do you do if your article gets canceled, and/or the title gets redirected ?

Also, on the question of references, what is the benefit of having references to written material that is not accessible to most people (i.e. is proprietary). Than how do people check on the veracity of the source ? I am going to advocate that people prioritize sources that can be accessed on the Web, or at least are public domain, (and not pay for content, therefore not accessible on the Web in most cases.)

Menlaus2 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Menelaus2 (talk • contribs) 20:56, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The answer to the first question is it depends on the circumstances: a deletion via AfD is very different than a redirect; a redirect by an experienced editor who provides a good edit summary is very different than a redirect put in place by an inexperienced editor without an edit summary; and whether the matter is worth fighting about depends a lot of how much discussion there has been. Take a look at WP:EIW, particularly the subtopic WP:EIW.


 * The benefit of references to sources that aren't online is that (1) much of the information in the world is not online, or accessible publicly online, and (2) if Wikipedia didn't use this information, it would be crippling to many articles. Wikipedia isn't just about recent events and cultural matters.  Online sources available to all are to be preferred if of at least equal quality to restricted or off-line sources, of course, but often that's just not an option.  As to checking on off-line or restricted sources cited by an editor, it depends if the editor is (a) posting controversial or questionable information; and (b) lacks credibility (from prior editing) at Wikipedia.  If both conditions are true, it's highly likely that another editor will track down the sources (something not available to any other editor isn't, by definition, a reliable source) to verify them.  -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 19:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi, Menlaus2,
 * If an article you created got deleted by an administrator, a warning notice was probably placed on the article before this happened. The notice would have stated why it was thought the article should be deleted, and contained a link to a subpage of "Articles for deletion" where the issue could be discussed. Therefore, there should have been an opportunity for you to put forward your views on the matter. Perhaps you were not watching the article, and so missed the notice?
 * If an article gets moved to another article name or turned into a redirect and you don't agree with what has been done, you should post a message on the talk page of the new article and explain your objections so that the matter can be discussed. You may also want to contact the editor who made the change through his or her talk page and mention that you've started a discussion on the matter on the article's talk page.
 * For articles to be properly referenced, it is often necessary to cite not just material that is available freely online but also subscription-only material and print resources. In fact, most good articles and featured articles cite a large number of such references. This is to ensure that the best resources have been consulted; not everything that is important is available on the Internet! If you are particularly interested in the subject-matter of a certain article and wish to verify some references, you may have to visit a library to look them up. Alternatively, you may try contacting regular editors of the article and ask if they can e-mail you copies of the references.
 * By the way, do sign and date your messages by typing four tildes ( ~ ) after them. — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 20:04, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

No trace of a discussion in the subpage "Articles for deletion".

Also, my very specific concern is proprietary information. I do like the idea that references should amplify the ability of a reader to examine the subject more thoroughly. But, from that perspective,  then information resources should be those that do not require a trip to a major academic center to  get an article. Menelaus2 22:11, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Let me try again: When you say information resources should be those that do not require a trip to a major academic center to get an article, you're wrong if by "should be" you mean "should only be". You're correct if by "should" you mean "should, preferably, be".  Wikipedia does not now exclude important information simply because it is not easily available. If you really mean the first of these two, then you should be posting at the talk page of the policy WP:V, because what you're proposing is a major, major change in the way Wikipedia works.


 * And as for the deletion (or redirect) of an article, it would really, really help if you would mention a specific article that you're concerned about. -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 01:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree - paid-access-only academic journals are a curse, but we can't ignore the information contained in them. At least the abstracts are all freely available, and an increasing number of authors are putting their own papers on their websites (making it at least worth web-searching for any individual paper to see if an online copy exists) Pseudomonas(talk) 08:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There's even progress towards real Open access. All articles based on work sponsored by the NIH in the US, and by RCUK in Great Britain, and by several agencies elsewhere, is now required to be available to the public in some form 6 months after publication--either the final published version, or the authors final accepted manuscript. This basically applies to materials published from mid 08 onwards, but will help our authors in a great many subjects, especially in biomedicine. (The concept is the 6 months will not hurt publishers excessively, as researchers in a university will need the material immediately. For general information on this, the best source is the new Open Access Directory wiki. (COI--I'm one of the editorial group there) DGG (talk) 22:18, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that Menlaus is talking about edits he/she made to Psychiatric illness. Corvus cornix talk  18:29, 28 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That would be where he/she changed a redirect into an article, if one wants to characterize unsourced analysis as being an article. In which case, the question should have been What do you do if you change a redirect to an article, and your changes get reverted? And the answer to that would be "If you really think that the redirect should be a separate article, you need to make your case on the talk page of the article to which the redirect points, and see if you can get consensus that there in fact should be separate articles."  -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 17:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Re-add "contribs" link to signatures
IIRC, users' signatures by default used to have a "contribs" link in addition to a "talk" link. I propose that this be reinstated, as it's hard to track down this link. Currently, the only method I know of is to view the history of an article the user has edited and get the link from the log of edits. SharkD (talk) 21:22, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The link can be accessed by clicking on either one of the links in the default signature, then looking for "user contributions" in the sidebar. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:38, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * While I can't say with 100% certainty about how things have been done in the past, the history tab for MediaWiki:Signature seems to show no evidence that a link for user contributions was ever part of the default signature of registered editors. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:21, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The link is in the toolbox on users' talk pages. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  01:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * My memory must be playing tricks on me, because I'm pretty sure it was there. And, the user toolbox link you provided is a good bit easier. SharkD (talk) 23:40, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, MediaWiki:Signature is fairly new (< 1 year). It was added so that we could add the talk link to the default signature. Before that MediaWiki page was introduced, I believe the signature was just a link to the userpage. Signatures for anons always link to contibs though. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 23:57, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Pretty much. A lot of people have added links to contribs but some of us think links to talk pages are excessive.Geni 15:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Cutoff date entry fields in article histories
I would like to request that start and end cutoff date fields be added to articles' History pages. It's currently a very tedious task to locate old diffs for frequently edited pages (such as Talk pages). I know you can enter the dates in your browser's address bar, but this requires the additional step of clicking the "older 100" link first. Also, in my browser (Avant+IE7) the address bar resets itself when the browser looses focus, so this can cause problems when copying/pasting from a text editor. SharkD (talk) 03:00, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Branching articles
I've been working on a proposal at User:Phil Sandifer/Branching to better handle areas where we use multiple pages and articles to cover what would normally be considered a single topic. There's still some technical implementation to be done, and decisions to be made like whether to use the existing sub-article functionality or create a template-based system to handle it, but the basic proposal is there, and I welcome comments on it and thoughts about how to proceed in implementation.

An example of the proposal in action, using sub-articles, can be found at User:Phil Sandifer/Heroes, where I redid much (though not all) of our coverage on the television show Heroes in branching form. All live links are within the branching structure, so please feel free to poke around it. Phil Sandifer (talk) 20:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * As shown here, Wikipedia software doesn't permit subpages in article space - which seems to be what you propose. So you're going to have to demonstrate that consensus exists to change that.  -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 00:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm proposing doing it via templates, actually. But the reason for disabling subpages in article space, so far as I can tell, isn't a consensus-based one, but a technical one - nobody was using article space subpages, and they caused problems with articles like OS/2. So they were disabled, because it was assumed nobody would miss them. I can find no record of an active decision not to use them - it was, as far as I can tell, incidental. And in any case, as I said, I think templates provide better functionality for this, in part for the OS/2 problem, in part because the interface for these should probably be more visible than our default subpages interface. Phil Sandifer (talk) 01:08, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The cricket people tried something simular a few years back. It wasn't popular. We've always found a series of stand alone articles to work better than messing around with templates.Geni 12:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I can't say I would have thought Cricket to be a subject area this was a natural fit for, though I'd be interested in seeing their efforts. But have a look at the three specific examples I offer- I think, for instance, that George W. Bush would be a lot cleaner if organized via branching, and that an article like Jacques Derrida would get a lot, lot better and easier to read if it were better laid out. To say nothing of the obvious benefits for fictional topics. That it's been tried and found wanting in one WikiProject doesn't seem to me that significant a barrier. I mean, notably they've got a version of this working quite nicely on Citizendium, and it's one of the few features they have that I think is clearly better than what we do. So clearly a branching/sub-articles structure can work. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * In fact getting rid of subpages was part of the software upbgrade -not just an unused feature. The earliest software had no distinct namespaces and, for example, all talk pages were made be adding a /Talk link at the bottom of the article. The discussion at Wikipedia talk:Subpages/Archive gives some explanation for why it was disallowed for articles titles. Rmhermen (talk) 17:21, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Though, obviously, subpages are still enabled outside of the article namespace. It looks to me, for the most part, like subpages were a bad solution to a problem that was better solved via parentheses for disambiguation and a proliferation of namespaces, and that this is a very different time - it's worth noting that Larry, who killed them, went on to basically implement them on Citizendium. Which is to say, I don't think that the early decision to deprecate them is strongly binding. Phil Sandifer (talk) 21:57, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * To get back to Phil's point, as this is coming from discussion of notability (particularly in areas of fiction), it has been suggested that adding something to the topic of the page (whether it's a dir-style sub-article approach, or a template to describe the branching nature) would be useful to help immediately identify articles that are meant to be considered as part of the coverage of a large topic.  Part of this is raised by the question of supporting articles having to demonstrate their own notability or not, which is a question for that page, but if you consider it for a larger topic, such as say World War II where there are many notable subpages, does it make sense to have such indication present at the very top of the page to help users navigate larger topics?  --M<font size="-3">ASEM  17:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * And I think there the answer is yes, at least in some cases. Obviously Dwight Eisenhower shouldn't be a sub-article of any sort, but I think collapsing our articles on various WWII battles under the parent article of World War II could be a useful organizational tool. Phil Sandifer (talk) 21:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I guess I have become too much of a fan of WP:SERIES and WP:SUMMARY to judge this proposal objectively. However, I do think the value of those approaches has proved itself over time, not least because allowing an article to standalone allows an article to be used off-line, for example in the Wikipedia 1.0 project or in One Laptop Per Child. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 06:33, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree - but there are topics that don't work well for standalone articles because they get too long. George W. Bush is the subject of a bunch of articles, and should be. This is a proposal to better organize those articles - not to start splitting things that work fine as a single page. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:51, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * But wouldn't Eisenhower obviously be a subpage of U.S. presidents? Who would make these decisions and how often and (pessimist,me) how would they be done consistently? Article series boxes are still used in some article (including some where I have added them.) In fact, I believe they used to be used in the World War II article which is currently hiding most of its links in collapsible boxes at the very bottom of the page where I doubt they are ever noticed. Rmhermen (talk) 14:29, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * No. One thing you'll see, if you look at the proposal, is that I pretty clearly and carefully tried to cut off this problem by noting that branching should not be used where an article could plausibly have multiple parents. So Eisenhower shouldn't branch off of WWII or US Presidents because he could branch off of both. But I see the general objection, and have tried to head it off. The main thing is that I don't see this as something that should be done everywhere - it's a specific tool that's good for a specific type of article - namely one that has generated a large number of pages that are de facto subpages already. The proposal is not to start dismembering articles into subpages, but to start organizing the subpages we clearly already have but aren't organizing sensibly. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:51, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There is nothing that cannot be argued to have multiple parents.Geni 21:46, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There is, however, probably a much more limited set of things that people would actually come to a consensus that it had multiple parents. I think people would have a much easier time nesting Kant's works under Immanuel Kant than they would nesting Niels Bohr under Physics. I mean, I'm just utterly unconvinced this is a major problem in practice. I don't think we're going to run into people who think that Early life of George W. Bush belongs as a sub-article of childhood instead of George W. Bush. Particularly given that it would have to stem out of a specific point in childhood. Remember that part of the idea here is that a branched article can be reassembled into a linear whole in theory. This is a much more rigid hierarchy than categories. Phil Sandifer (talk) 22:13, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Kant is mearly an author. His works come under 18th century philosophy no? Early life of George W. Bush belongs under formative years of US presidents. Your biased tendency to tie things to individuals is showing. I guess you would make Rolle canal a sub article of James Green (engineer).Geni 22:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Geni, are you even being serious here? Read the proposal - neither of the suggestions you're making here - early life under Formative years of US Presidents (is that even an article?) would never pass muster in the article, not because of a question of individualism, but because we'd never break up an article like that. 18th century philosophy (probably an article, though I can't say I'd be surprised if it's a redlink) might - might break down by work, but I'm pretty dubious - generally philosophers are treated as having a coherent system, and so Kant would be treated independently in such an article. I mean, come on. Phil Sandifer (talk) 22:39, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * So how would you suggest we break down a Formative years of US Presidents article other than by person?Geni 22:50, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm struggling to imagine how and why we would even have an article on that - but I would imagine if we had one it would be organized thematically so that points about the overall topic became clear and so that it wasn't just a list of biographies. If we're actually going to have an article on formative years of US Presidents it is, presumably, going to be primarily about what trends and similarities can be found among these formative years. Phil Sandifer (talk) 23:07, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Why? You could equaly put it together through a series of short bios and saveing the comparisions to the end. The category system appears to be scale free which suggests that attempts to enforce a parent child relationship on articls are fundimnetaly flawed.Geni 23:43, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Geni, you're objecting to an organizational scheme because of how an article that doesn't exist might be organized, despite the fact that it would be a completely idiotic way to organize this hypothetical article, which, I hasten to repeat, doesn't exist. I'm not sure how to possibly satisfy your objection, since it doesn't seem based on anything resembling the on-the-ground reality. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:38, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * This is what categories do, surely? ninety:one 22:03, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Categories or appropriate navboxes can do this, yes. The problem is is that you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to discover that.  In the same line, a well-written lead should clearly state within a sentence or two that the article should be considered a child of a larger article, but not all leads are well written. --M<font size="-3">ASEM  22:09, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * So use a skin with them at the top.Geni 22:50, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The category system provides no sense of relationship between elements of a topic. It doesn't matter if it's at the top or bottom, because it's completely inadequate to the task at hand. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:38, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Fe articles fall within one topic area.Geni 00:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * No. But some articles are clearly sub-topics of a parent article. Nobody is seriously going to suggest that Early childhood of George W. Bush isn't primarily a subtopic of George W. Bush, or that Name of the Father isn't primarily a subtopic of Jacques Lacan. This still isn't the majority of our articles, but even "few" of our articles is a lot of articles. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:54, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Categories seem to me a good tool for tracing a thread across multiple articles. But they don't really organize articles in relation to one another. Phil Sandifer (talk) 22:13, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * because as we have learned articles do not relate to each other the way you suggest they should.Geni 22:50, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Baloney. George W. Bush is basically already written this way. Tons of other topics do. We routinely split articles up for reasons having to do only with page length. This lets us do so without losing the overall coherence of the topic. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:38, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well if it is already possible to write that way then no need for a change is there? And you do lose coherence for your method. Suppose I mention GWB's childhood in a third article. Now do a link to your sub article which is going to have context issues or to a main article that only has a summery?Geni 00:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Except that writing that way is an ugly hack right now that causes problems with guidelines like Notability. And nothing stops us from hyperlinking to GWB's childhood elsewhere when it is mentioned. All this says is that in the overall organization of coverage on GWB there would be a point at which a childhood article would clearly branch out. Other points can hyperlink to that point without difficulty - we do section-to-section wikilinks in other articles without trouble. And I don't really see why we wouldn't be able to organize our coverage of GWB without having two separate points where we would want to summarize his childhood. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if our coverage is organized such that we do have that problem, we've probably organized it badly. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:54, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * So to get the content I want to link to to make sense I have to link via a seperate article?Geni 02:02, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Is... that... different from now? Phil Sandifer (talk) 03:13, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There are some article that do relate this way. The problem is deciding which ones they are - and agreeing on it. WP:Series already does something like this, I think. Rmhermen (talk) 23:33, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I strongly agree with this movement. When you're dealing with a single concept, but the information becomes too vast to put on one page, it is much better to have a formal structure wherein the branched pages are necessarily a part of the overarching concept. Caveat: the implementation of this needs to be simple, elegant, and automatic. II | (t - c) 00:10, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I can see two good ways to do it - either use the existing subpage architecture, or use article names similar to subpages but process the names via templates instead of in Mediawiki - thus allowing OS/2 to not automatically be processed as the sub-article "2" of the article "OS". Either way, the heavy lifting should be done in the article title and some template code. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:40, 19 July 2008 (UTC).


 * Phil, I like the concept that we somehow protect the encyclopedic inclusion of sub-topics, where the parent article becomes unwieldy, but the sub-topic does not meet the GNC individually.  But I don't see the need for special templates and software.  Why can't we just place a tag on the top of the talk page similar to what projects place, explaining the nature of the article as a sub-page and the rational.  We are trying to avoid the deletion of subpages, while not making a loophole for abuse.  We do this with articles that survive AfD, providing a link to the previous AfD discussion as rational for continued inclusion.  Can we preempt AfD by linking our tag to an RfC (in an AfD format) where consensus for inclusion is demonstrated upfront?  --Kevin Murray (talk) 23:49, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * If there is, as you suggest, consensus to keep such subpages, why would it matter if they go to AfD? Consensus would then be to keep them. If they're getting deleted at AfD, well then, there is not consensus to leave them around, tag or no tag, subarticle or no subarticle. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Because I don't think that AfD works well. If a decent article ends up on AfD it faces prejudice immediately (e.g., guilty until proven innocent) and gets automatic opposition from deletion-zealots, "drive-by" participants, and ignorant newbies trying to be the worlds greenest admin.  Though I have seen many article improve through AfD, it all depends on who is there that day and how much energy they have to "mentor" an article or author.  I can typically save about two articles a day if I have the energy to do the research and rewrite.  I see that attempts to "legislate" "objective" inclusion criteria as flawed -- we just need better processes to apply logical but subjective guidelines to inclusion selection.  --Kevin Murray (talk) 15:02, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I suppose I tend to disagree there. I agree that AfD doesn't work well, but probably not in the sense you say it&mdash;I see far too much unimprovable garbage retained and too little emphasis on quality control. I see no problem with an objective standard for inclusion, that standard being "Have independent, reliable sources chosen to give significant coverage to this subject or not?" Whichever the answer is, we follow their lead. If they've given significant independent coverage to it, and it otherwise meets our inclusion policies, we write an article. If they've covered it briefly in the context of a parent topic, we cover it briefly in the context of that parent topic. If they've declined to cover it at all, we decline to cover it at all. We do not second guess sources in any other area of our writing, why should we do so when deciding what to include and how to include it? Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:11, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Phil's initiative sounds good. Please note a couple of current AFD nominations which seem relevant:
 * List of Mad Magazine issues
 * List of Mad's movie spoofs
 * These are obviously good appendices to our coverage of Mad magazine and we need a better formal structure for such to avoid wasting time at AFD, where it seems likely that both will be kept. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:55, 28 July 2008 (UTC)


 * While browsing the village pump, I noticed that I had written up some thoughts in the same direction a while ago - see User:B. Wolterding/New subarticle concept. Maybe good as food for thought, plus links to previous use of subpages in article space, etc. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:42, 30 July 2008 (UTC)