Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 72

Schoolblock
How about when sysops do a schoolblock, the administrators do not disable account creation so that an student / pupil that is uninvolved and the IP (Internet Protocol) is blocked can make an account for himself / herself. EBE123 talkContribs 18:33, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sometimes admins will do that. I think it is already recommended that admins do so.  -- Jayron  32  21:21, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Article wizard extension
There is currently a discussion on restricting article creation to confirmed users. Independently of this, we could request that an extension be developed to provide for a wizard/guide on creating an article, this would be an improvement to the article wizard. When a user (registered or not) attempts to create an article (by editing a nonexistent article), they're directed to a special page which acts like a wizard. The pages of the wizard can be customized by admins on mediawiki pages. There should be a way for users to bypass the wizard and deactivate it completely at least when they're autoconfirmed. This would detect if the user is unregistered or not, and confirmed or not to give the appropriate creation options. This would be of great help for new users who most often don't know how to create an article. As an intermediary between the current status and full restriction, there is the possibility that new users could be required to use the article wizard for creating articles, without having to put them to AFC. Until such an extension is made, we could try to see if there are reasonable ways to approach the desired result, such as using javascript to direct new users to the article wizard. Cenarium (talk) 20:57, 12 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I've kicked around similar ideas in the past. It would require a little bit of user testing and acceptance, but I think the overall idea is solid.  SDY (talk) 15:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Cenarium, what is it you don't like about the updated wizard (which now gives AFC, draft and live article creation options)? Seems excellent to me, and my suggestion is that it become the required method of starting the first article for all users.  Yes, a veteran editor might be quite well versed in policies, but the wizard is useful for checking these off.  And it's only about half a dozen clicks to get through it.  This would also be in the spirit of avoiding a hierarchy - a core principal.  RedactionalOne (talk) 17:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * This is not that I don't like it, but most new users don't get to it and instead create their article on the fly, a special page would present them straight away with an article wizard, the form of which can be the same of the current article wizard. Cenarium (talk) 10:55, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I support RedactionalOne's suggestion of making use of the updated article wizard the required method for all users starting a first new article (or perhaps even the first several articles). I agree that the updated version is user friendly, and this method would be greatly beneficial to first-time article creators in determining whether or not the article about to be created meets the basic WP guidelines or whether it would be best for the user to utilize AFC before proceeding further. This would benefit WP in general by likely reducing the number of unencyclopedic articles created as well as improving the quality of new content added.--JayJasper (talk) 17:49, 13 April 2011 (UTC)


 * We should have a culture of improving existing articles, not making even more stubby ones. New editors with an idea for a new article should be encouraged to discuss it and get advice/help from experienced editors before they even start to write it.  There should in general be fewer forms and wizards, and more human interaction. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 07:54, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * On the "human interaction" point, there are now (small) links to live chat from the wizard, and for articles that may not be notable there is a (not overly helpful) suggestion in the wizard to seek out an experienced editor. I've wondered how we could do better, and not immediately come up with any good answers. Rd232 talk 11:41, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The "live chat" link really needs to be made more prominent before this can become the pathway for all new users to create articles. Ideally, it should be a big green button that says "Get Live Help Now" or something similar, and links to the web chat. Forget the IRC chat, a lot of browsers can't load that directly, and most non-technical users don't use it.--Danaman5 (talk) 12:47, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I've tweaked the link at Article wizard (cf WT:WIZ), anyone want to draft something for greater prominence? Rd232 talk 21:35, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

(I commented here earlier but it got deleted somehow, so re-posting.) I don't like the idea of an extension, because it essentially means a few devs or a WMF "usability" team will make the major decisions and the community will not get to choose exactly how they want it (cf. Commons UploadWizard, which still does not have an "I don't know the copyright license" choice. Utter foolishness.). But I do agree that a more interactive wizard would be nice. If an extension is the only way to do that (which I suspect it is), then an extension it is. But the community gets to design it. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  01:47, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * An extension isn't needed for the purpose Cenarium describes. All that's really needed is a way to funnel editors to the existing community-editable Wizard; that may even be doable without a software change, but if a change is required, it could be a very minor tweak. For instance, it could just funnel all page-creating users to a MediaWiki-defined location (if a certain global MediaWiki setting is engaged) and only allow actual page creation if the referring URL is the Wizard; and then allow individual users to turn off that behaviour in preferences (with some MediaWiki settings to limit who can turn it off). That's a little bit of a work (mostly on checking compatibility with existing code and behaviours) but it's not really extension-worthy. Rd232 talk 00:41, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It should be possible to make pages editable via mediawiki namespace. Cenarium (talk) 12:36, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

One obvious wizard "extension" is to split AFC by subject, with new article submissions handled by wikiprojects instead of a catchall AFC page. The wizard would ask the submitter to select the article subject from a menu, and then it would post the new article to an appropriate wikiproject noticeboard instead of AFC. If the person chooses "I don't know" as a subject, then a general AFC reviewer would classify it by subject and route it to the right wikiproject. All new authors should get some kind of human feedback about their submission, from someone who actually knows something about the subject matter (that's where the wikiprojects come in). One knowledgeable human comment about article content is a billion times more reassuring to new users than a billion roboticized wizards and welcome templates. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 03:41, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The general principle of getting WikiProjects to pitch in helping new articles that fall on their turf is an excellent one, but there substantial practical issues, not least because most wikiprojects aren't active enough to ensure a prompt response. A starting point might be some kind of bot notification system, so that AFC reviewers could classify new articles, and that classification is translated to a notification to the relevant project. Or something else. Anyway, it's certainly very worthwhile, but it'll be a lot of work to set up, so unless someone grabs the idea and tries to run with it, it won't happen. Rd232 talk 00:48, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * A system like deletion sorting or RFCs by subject area would be good, I think. I suspect that at least the larger projects would be able to find a few people to keep an eye out for them.  Given the current volume and the users' lack of experience, the RFC model (nine general areas) is probably better than the deletion sorting model (hundreds of subcategories).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems like maybe this improvement has three steps: a) Tweak the first step of the Article wizard so that, for all users, if they have more than one mainspace edit recorded a Skip button* is added optionally taking them to Step 6 (so as to still give the choice of where to create the article), b) allow the wizard to accept optional info (switches) in the URL calling it, like redlink title, and automatically fill in the 3 boxes in Step 6 with it if specified (the user could still edit the title), and c) make a dev request for redlinks to direct to the wizard instead of a blank article, with a URL that includes article title in the agreed format. Requesting a preference for redlink article creation to totally skip the wizard would probably also be a good idea - for one thing so this function is still possible if the wizard blows a fuse.  * This would be useful in general, for instance for quicker access to AfC, if its article page is to be made less discoverable because we're largely channelling people to the wizard.RedactionalOne (talk) 16:05, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Educator's Approval
Whenever a project is assigned at my school, the teachers always announce that we can't use Wikipedia because it isn't always a reliable resource. Since I am a wikipedian, I know that most of the time articles are completely reliable. So I thought that there should be a mark or something on top of reliable articles called the "Educator's Approval" or "Reliable Article." The mark indicates that the article has been read and approved as reliable for students to use in projects and stuff. Once an article receives this mark, it is locked to lower level users to edit. Toontown59153 (talk) 21:04, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * See WP:PROT and WP:Pending changes for schemes vaguely similar to what you suggest. I highly doubt that anything else has any possibility. ╟─TreasuryTag► estoppel ─╢ 21:06, 20 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The problem is that an article may be reliable for the information it provides, but may benefit from being expanded to provide more thorough coverage of a topic, or otherwise improve the article. Blocking new users from doing that will stifle the improvement of articles once that meet some threshold of reliability. We don't even lock down feature articles, that have been through an extensive review process. Monty  845  21:15, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Cf. Stable versions --Cyber cobra (talk) 22:57, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Our friends at Citizendium have "expert-approved" articles (all 155 of them; they just dropped one not that long ago), but we do not want to go that route. The closest thing we have to that here is an FA.  Otherwise, you're kinda on your own; although the purpose of Wikipedia is to be the starting point for research.  Check the sources in the articles and read through those, and you should have a feel for how accurate the article is. The Blade of the Northern Lights  ( 話して下さい ) 03:17, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The whole idea is wrong. If students extract the parts they need. And then verify those with the sources provided. Or simply! find a source on their own to verify with. Then even the teacher can't know if it's from wikipedia or anywhere else in practice. Of course just copying facts from articles without checking them could go wrong. But that's quite obvious. But that also applies to "established sources" .. Electron9 (talk) 07:40, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Blade: "Check the sources in the articles and read through those, and you should have a feel for how accurate the article is." Actually, no. What about all the sources that aren't cited through ignorance or bias? They may say something totally different. Peter jackson (talk) 10:18, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I said "a feel for" and not "it's the end-all be-all" for a reason. "A feel for" is just a basic idea, or at least that's what I was trying to say. The Blade of the Northern Lights  ( 話して下さい ) 22:31, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * In short: we do not expect you, your teachers, nor anyone else to trust us. My views are encapsulated there; take Wikipedia for what it is, as the above posters have suggested. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:21, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Once I got past a certain point in school (somewhere in high school, if I recall), we were no longer allowed to use any encyclopedia as a source. We were supposed to go to the secondary sources ourselves and extract the information from those. In that regard, I agree with a statement by a teacher that Wikipedia may not be used as a source cited in the paper. Nothing prevents a student from looking up the Wikipedia article, going to the references section, and consulting the referred-to works directly. Yes, there are vandalism and missing-source issues, and that means people should think as they read and not take what they see for granted. At the end of the day, though, we aspire to be an encyclopedia—and teachers don't like students using encyclopedias as sources. —C.Fred (talk) 16:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think WP should ever directly be used as a source, but it can be assumed that a featured article is probably as reliable as WP is going to get. My tip would be to use the references an article provides, rather than the article itself, as WP is subject to change moreso than print or other web sources. In any case, WP will never introduce brand new ideas, per WP:OR, so everything that is stated in an article is going to be information from elsewhere. AD 17:41, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with C. Fred. Using tertiary sources is for little kids. If you can write a Wikipedia article based on secondary sources, you can do it with an essay, too. Also, nothing is guaranteed true or reliable. Even the Encyclopedia Britannica had faults. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  02:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Heh. Since at least the end of World War II, school kids have written their research papers based largely, if not solely, on the contents of an encyclopedia. (In some cases this research consisted of copying an entire encyclopedia article by hand, then putting their name at the top of the page.) For at least as long as that, teachers have told their students not to use the encyclopedia; this has at least kept the problem to a manageable minimum. I figure this abuse of encyclopedias will continue as long as students wait until the night before an assignment is due to start researching & writing their research papers. (For some reason, many school kids have better things to do with their time than homework. ;) -- llywrch (talk) 19:44, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Article suggestions
Sometimes when I type in an article name for which there is no article, I get prompted to suggest it but am forbidden from writing it without an editor ID; other, rare times, I am allowed to edit; and still other times, I am not given the link to the well-hidden page for making article suggestions. I wish this could be made a lot more user-friendly. But I know that repeated requests in the past have been ignored and ridiculed. Anyway, I'd like to suggest an article on the Couture Culture or Complex (http://www.ontarioarchaeology.on.ca/summary/middlew.php; The Archaeology of Southern Ontario to AD 1650MJ Shott - American Antiquity, 1993 - JSTOR ). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.34.163 (talk • contribs)
 * Request added to Requested_articles/Social_sciences --Cyber cobra (talk) 01:18, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Necro-bump: Soft-block of School IPs
We spend far too much time with IP editors. 97% of vandalism is done by an IP.1 Schools may be able to be blocked for years, but in general, IPs can wreak much havoc and destruction before getting blocked.23 Therefore, I propose that all school IPs should be softblocked. If they wish to edit, they must log into an account. Incentives for students to vandalize include, but are not limited to the following examples:


 * Anonymity
 * With hundreds of students identifiable by 1 IP for 6 hours a day, Idios D. McSlackerus CXIV will believe that nobody will bother combing the school to find a vandal.
 * Because he will be identifiable by that IP for only 6 hours a day, Mr. McSlackerus will believe that even if he gets blocked, he can resume his vandalism at his house.
 * Because the IP identifies the school, and Mr. McSlackerus hates school, he will replace content with "FUCK" to deface the school's reputation as an example for the country's education system. And nobody will know that McSlackerus was the perpetrator.
 * Bigheadedness
 * Wikipedia is notoriously famous for being an "unreliable source". Therefore McSlackerus may think "Miss Leed says Wikipedia is unreliable, so we shouldn't use it. Time to mess it up!"
 * Anyone who's been to New Page Patrol must've seen (and hopefully CSD tagged) a self-glorifying or an attack article. McSlackerus may be bullying Corphon Retrosubnum for the roots of his name (body-sound back-under/beneath) and to give his friends a laugh (and to torture poor Corphon) makes an attack page on Wikipedia. Such vandalism is just more fecal material that the CVU and other people will need to clean.

The only reason McSlackerus will log on at school is so he can disrupt Wikipedia. The only reason McSlackerus will log on at school is to vandalize anonymously. He most likely will never bother creating an account, and will take advantage of "anyone [being able to] edit".

Who thinks this preëmptive blocking is bad? I ask you to find 10 school IP edits that aren't vandalism.

This isn't an question of assuming bad faith, this is a question of putting our foot down and saying 'enough'.

I hope this proposition garners a good discussion. --43?9enter ☭msg☭contribs 00:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It violates core principles, and you're basing your argument on a pre-Siegenthaler study. The likelihood of the WMF permitting pre-emptive blocking (other than the exceptional case of open proxies) is virtually nil, regardless of what "the community" decides. – iridescent  07:12, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Oppose
As 1. One of the two or three editors/admins who have been carrying  out  an in-depth research for several  months into the quqlity  of New Page Patrolling, with  thousand of patrolls made myself, and 2. As a coordinator of the Wikipedia Schools project, I can confirm  that  1,000s of perfectly  good edits are made to school articles by  IP users. School articles are indeed perhaps more susceptible to  vandalism  than most, nevertheless it  is quickly  caught  and reverted. There is also a  bot  that  returns a special school  article watchlist. Only in the most  serious cases do  we need to  impose a schoolblock. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:37, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment This and this school IP's edits are mainly vandalism-only. --43?9enter ☭msg☭contribs 22:41, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Commenting on comment School IPs do not always have to vandalize the school's article. --43?9enter ☭msg☭contribs 21:34, 17 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose per my comments in the section above. Your argument is based on a single out-of-date study; while there's a case to be made (albeit one I disagree with) for mandatory account creation, pre-emptive blocking of accounts with no history of disruption is so blatant a breach of Wikipedia's principles, there's no realistic possibility of it happening. – iridescent  07:48, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose I don't see enough upsides over the current escalating block approach. How are we going to identify the IPs anyway? Monty  845  07:56, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment This helps. --43?9enter ☭msg☭contribs 21:34, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose: the fact remains that school IPs are regularly blocked anyway, if they're disruptive, often for long periods of time. This system removes a vast majority of the vandalism, and doesn't put nearly so many people off. We risk alienating school-age students (who make up a significant proportion of editors as it is, and even more so of "future editors"), for little benefit. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:54, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment But they can begin editing at home. Remember I am suggesting that only school IPs to be blocked. --43?9enter ☭msg☭contribs 17:27, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * (ec) Oppose — Despite my annoyance at the antics of some users, I don't think an IP vs. login provides a fair profiling mechanism for identifying troublemakers. If we want to encourage people to use logins rather than IP addresses, provide an easier way to generate a login.  For instance, an auto-generated username and password could be presented to any IP user so that one-click would provide them with a non-ip login.  The username could be their IP address followed by a sequential alphanumeric code; the password could be quite simple (low security).  I think that you would find a substantial number of current IP users would pick up this auto-generated login and say 'thanks ... I just didn't want to go through the rigmarole of creating one myself; now I just tell my computer to remember this and I'm off'. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 13:59, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Nowhere in this proposal was it mentioned how to identify the school IPs. In my experience, I've seen many IPs that look like they're used by a school (large proportion of edits are vandalism, lots of the vandalism focused at one or two schools' articles), but the WHOIS just resolves to an ISP's IP address pool. The current approach seems not only much fairer but also much more feasible: the addresses that need to be blocked to prevent vandalism announce themselves by making said vandalism. —C.Fred (talk) 14:10, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment School IPs don't always vandalize the school's article. --43?9enter ☭msg☭contribs 21:34, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose - If you can show me how we can automatically identify all public institutions' IPs, then I'd be more willing to support. However, consider that some IPs do make constructive edits, and we do have lots of people playing the countervandalism game... Ajraddatz (Talk) 14:11, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment Above IP and this IP was identified as a school's (although I don't know how) --43?9enter ☭msg☭contribs 17:27, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose - Frankly, casual vandalism is not that serious of a problem. It's probably the only area of abuse mitigation where tools for fighting it have increased significantly in efficiency while the level of sophistication of the abuse has remained constant. I also agree with Iridescent that we shouldn't be basing anything on a 4 year-old study (and even 4 years ago it had some serious sample size issues for the level of detail that it reports). Mr.Z-man 16:12, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It's been my experience that admins are not shy about blocking school IPs that have been used for vandalism, so I think the status quo regarding school IPs is preferable to a "preemptive strike" on all schools. 28bytes (talk) 20:23, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose Because I know plenty of students using school computers and school networks to make good edits anonymously. (Actually, we should be blocking less and contacting problematic schools more.) / ƒETCH COMMS  /  01:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment Why don't they make an account then? As I suggested, it would be a softblock. --43?9enter ☭msg☭contribs 02:01, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * For the same reason that other IP editors choose not to? Monty  845  04:22, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose IPs are innocent until their actions prove them guilty. While blocking is a necessary evil to stop constant sources of problems, pre-blocking IPs which have done nothing wrong serves no benefit to the encyclopedia, and only serves to harm its core mission.  -- Jayron  32  04:54, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose Violates core principles, doesn't have a snowball's chance of ever happening. Guy Macon (talk) 00:00, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose, but thanks for the good laugh. I needed that. Ironholds (talk) 23:57, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Brief explanation of what the issues are here
Since the OP appears to be missing the point(s) or misunderstanding the arguments here, the reasons this is not going to happen are:
 * 1) "Anyone can edit" is a core principle of both Wikipedia and Wikimedia. Even if this discussion were to produce a vote in favor of this proposal, it would be vetoed by the WMF and the devs would refuse to implement it. If an admin were unilaterally to embark on a preemptive blocking spree, they would be promptly desysopped.
 * 2) Preemptive blocking would be a major cultural change, and the damage caused by the subsequent resignations would hugely outweigh any putative gains.
 * 3) Softblocking is not a solution. People are (rightly) reluctant to enter their login information on public terminals owing to the potential for abuse by whoever comes after. "Use the secure login" is not an option; most casual users are unaware that it exists, and many (perhaps most) public terminals have https access disabled.
 * 4) The statistic that "97% of vandalism is done by an IP" is based on a single, five-year-old study, on the pre-Siegenthaler Wikipedia which did not have most of the current checks in place, which looked at a tiny dip-sample of 100 randomly chosen articles. Any results from it are meaningless regarding the current Wikipedia.
 * 5) IP "poop!!!" vandalism is a minor issue and is generally caught quickly by the bots and NPP. Problematic vandalism on Wikipedia is the insertion of inaccurate but plausible information on high-traffic pages and biographies of living persons, not the froth of minor goofing around on extremely low-traffic pages. This proposal does nothing to resolve that issue.
 * 6) (most pertinently) Except in a few cases where the school owns its own server and is identified as such on a whois search, there is no way to identify school computers, and thus it would be technically impossible to implement this proposal even should we choose to do so. – iridescent  09:12, 18 April 2011 (UTC)


 * On point 6: Even if the IP can be reliably associated with a school, there's rarely any way to differentiate between the IPs in the student computer lab vs the IPs in the teacher's work room.  You'd hardly want to discourage teachers from improving articles solely because they used the same general network as the students.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Welcome email
Hello,

When people create an account on Wikipedia, the last step of the process is this: if the person has entered an email adress, the system sends a confirmation email. The text in that email is currently this:

"Someone from the IP address $1 has registered the account "$2" with this e-mail address on the English Wikipedia.

To confirm that this user account really does belong to you and to activate e-mail features on Wikipedia, please open this URL in your browser:

$3

If you did not recently register for Wikipedia (or if you registered with a different e-mail address), click the following link to cancel the confirmation:

$5

This confirmation e-mail will automatically expire at $4 (UTC).

~Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org"

I don't know about you, but I feel it could be more welcoming. As it is, there is not even a sign that there are people behind Wikipedia, which makes vandalism more likely. It is also a missed opportunity to teach people how Wikipedia works. It doesn't matter if all of the new account-holders read the email - they have it in their inbox. I have looked at similar confirmation emails from a bunch of different websites and noticed that many of them are far longer (Skype's email is for instance more than four times the length of this), friendlier ("Hello", "See you on X", "Thanks") and contain advice on how to use the site. Inspired by their versions, I wrote a new confirmation mail: "Hello $2,

Welcome to Wikipedia! You have just joined the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. To confirm that this user account really does belong to you and to activate e-mail features on Wikipedia, please open this URL in your browser:

$3

This link expires at $4 (UTC).

With your new account, you can among many other things:
 * keep track of any changes on your favourite pages using your watchlist
 * write about yourself on your userpage
 * edit without your IP-adress being visible
 * use more advanced editing tools
 * send, and occasionally receive, emails to other users.

Naturally, we hope that you start editing the articles. It's the best way to make Wikipedia better. This is how easy you edit Wikipedia: 1. find an article that you want to contribute to 2. click "edit" at the top of the article 3. make your changes in the edit box 4. click "save page" below the edit box. Now, you're done and the page is updated immediately!

Be bold! Edit an article today. It's how every Wikipedia article was written. But remember, all edits you make are checked by volunteers. Click the star at the top of the page to follow any changes to the article.

Learn more about how Wikipedia works by clicking ”Help” in the left hand menu on any page of Wikipedia or by downloading this guide: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Welcome2WP_English_082310.pdf

Thanks!

– the other volunteers behind Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org

PS. If you didn't register an account on Wikipedia, feel free to disregard this message or click this link: $5"

I know that this version is not perfect, so feel free to dissect it and make better versions below. A few questions that you can think about:
 * 1) should we include more links, to for instance their watchlist and the Help page?
 * 2) should we make it more visually interesting?
 * 3) can we make it even friendlier?

I would like to at least try out a new version of this message in a few days' time, so please help out in making it better.

Best wishes, Hannibal (talk) 14:45, 19 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Agree. I was wondering why this is the way it is too. I support improving the welcome mail. But I think this is not the right place to propose this, since it is the same with other sites like Commons or Meta. Maybe post at Meta? Reh  man  15:07, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the support, Rehman.
 * Well, the confirmation email is actually used on almost any MediaWiki site so it should really perhaps be held on MediaWiki.org at this location. However, since this is the largest wiki in the world, I thought that it would be easier to crowdsource it here. However, I suggest that we ask for help from Commons and Meta, as well as other language versions, and keep the discussion here.//Hannibal (talk) 15:15, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow. That is one soulless form letter. Your draft is very good. Some suggestions.
 * IP-adress → IP-address (misspelling)
 * With your new account, you can among many other things:
 * Two additions to the list that follows the above message :  and
 * keep track of any changes on to your favourite pages using your watchlist
 * send, and occasionally receive, emails to other users.
 * Naturally, we hope that you start editing the articles. It's the best way to make Wikipedia better. This is how easy you edit Wikipedia: 1. find an article that you want to contribute to 2. click "edit" at the top of the article 3. make your changes in the edit box 4. click "save page" below the edit box. Now, you're done and the page is updated immediately!
 * Hope this helps.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:38, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It certainly does, Fuhghettaboutit. Thank you. As you can see, I used a few phrases from WP:Why. Are there other sources we can borrow from?//Hannibal (talk) 14:27, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * One suggestion I have is that it be made clear that the email is computer generated, and that replies won't get a response. That's the sort of mistake an inexperienced internet user just might make.--Fyre2387 (talk • contribs) 20:49, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Good catch, Fyre2387. By the way, the email is sent from wiki@wikimedia.org. Is that an adress that we could redirect to info@wikimedia.org? See also Mono's version on the Outreach wiki.//Hannibal (talk) 22:00, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I didn't even know it was possible to change that email message, or I would definitely have proposed a change earlier. I have a slightly different idea: that email is for emailconfirmed status (or whatever it's called), and we should focus on making that brief, to the point, and clear on how to confirm their email address. But after they click the confirm link, is there a way we can send out a second, better welcome message? I'm concerned that the first email will get too long if we explain what confirming the email does (we should mention more detailed what the benefits of confirming the email are), or people will read the welcome part and forget to actually click the confirmation link. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  02:12, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Fetchcomms, for your comments.
 * Everything can be changed. You just have to know where the text is and have the user rights to do it :-)
 * Your idea is interesting. However, there are two arguments against it: first, it is significantly more difficult to send two emails than one, and, secondly, most other websites have one email message with these two purposes. The version I presented above have the two purposes clearly divided in separate paragraphs. There is also another angle on this: as long as we only use the system to send one message to their email adress (something I think we should change later on), we should take that opportunity to tell them something that most people still don't know: how Wikipedia works.//Hannibal (talk) 14:37, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's a new version with all the above comments implemented:
 * "Hello $2,


 * Welcome to Wikipedia! You have just joined the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.


 * To confirm that this user account really does belong to you and to activate e-mail features on Wikipedia, please open this URL in your browser:


 * $3


 * This link expires at $4 (UTC).


 * Among other abilities, your new account will allow you to:


 * keep track of any changes to your favourite pages using your watchlist
 * create a user page
 * edit without your IP-adress being visible
 * use more advanced editing tools
 * send and receive emails from other Wikipedia users
 * create new encyclopedia articles on notable topics
 * customize the way the site displays with different "skins"


 * Naturally, we hope that you will help improve Wikipedia's article content. This is how easy it is to edit Wikipedia:


 * 1. find an article that you want to contribute to
 * 2. click "edit" at the top of the article
 * 3. make your changes in the edit box
 * 4. click "save page" below the edit box. That's it – the page is updated immediately!


 * For much more information about editing Wikipedia, please consider trying out the Wikipedia tutorial at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial


 * Be bold! Edit an article today. It's how every Wikipedia article was written. But remember, all edits you make are checked by volunteers. Click the star at the top of the page to follow any changes to the article.


 * Learn more about how Wikipedia works by clicking ”Help” in the left hand menu on any page of Wikipedia or by downloading this guide:
 * http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Welcome2WP_English_082310.pdf


 * Thanks!


 * – the other volunteers behind Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org


 * This email is computer generated. You cannot respond to it.


 * If you didn't register an account on Wikipedia, feel free to disregard this message or click this link:
 * $5"
 * What do you think? How about we try it and see what happens?//Hannibal (talk) 20:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Looks generally good. I would suggest two slightly-unrelated things (other than a few copyedits/rewordings here and there for your message): one, is there a way the WMF can create a survey/feedback form that we can link to in this message, so it's a better "test" or trial, and so we can get a better idea of what new users like and don't like?; and two, if we want to link to the PDF, I think it would be great to create an onwiki version (like Contribution_Team/Welcome2) as the PDF is slow to load for me, and starting onwiki might lead to immediate contributions. These aren't ideas that directly impact the message itself, but I think a feedback form is especially a good way to gain insight into creating the best welcome possible. I especially think a non-onwiki feedback option is better (survey.wikimedia.org?) because it's confusing to edit for the first time, and all such onwiki feedback pages are either poorly formatted, or unwatched. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  23:18, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I did not know about the Wikipedia:Contribution_Team/Welcome2 page. Really neat.
 * About the survey. Of course, we would like more data. But surveys take time and my Fellowship ends in June. But, again, we like more data. So here are two suggestions: 1) someone else, like you, run the survey. When we did some surveys for the Account Creation Improvement Project, we first used SurveyMonkey, and then LimeSurvey (which WMF has its own version of at http://survey.wikimedia.org/). It's fairly easy, if the community decides it wants to do a survey. 2) The other suggestion is that we rely on the results. We have pretty stable numbers for how many start edit, and if we tweak this email, this is where the interesting stuff happens, not in a survey. But that's just my two cents. Anyone else?//Hannibal (talk) 13:27, 23 April 2011 (UTC) (PS. Please copyedit as you see fit. English is not my first language, and you always go blind with your own texts.)

Side comment: "English Wikipedia"
Looking at the message text quoted above, I'd like to suggest that "English Wikipedia", if not removed as per at least one draft above, should be changed to "English-language Wikipedia". Regulars know that Wikipedia is partitioned by language, but this message is to new people and invites the misinterpretation that "I registered with the wrong national version; I live in Australia/Canada/Scotland/USA, not England." --70.48.230.31 (talk) 19:59, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see the phrase "English Wikipedia" above. Am I missing something?//Hannibal (talk) 12:09, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Online now
I have now edited the page to the version above, with a few minor changes. Let's see in a few days if we see any difference in how the newcomers react.//Hannibal (talk) 20:59, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Advocating Firefox
Whenever I hover on a video, you are advocating for the use of Firefox. I thought Wikipedia is neutral and does not advertise/promote any other products. :/ Please remove this feature --Tyw7 (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 01:47, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Um.... what, where, when? Your statement lacks key examples of when this is happening. How are we supposed to remove something if we have no clue what specifically you are talking about? Ajraddatz (Talk) 03:21, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * No it's a suggestion and it's because you have the Multimedia Beta gadget enabled and it's best supported on Firefox with the Firefogg add-on, please make sure you check the documentation. — James (Talk • Contribs) • 6:28pm • 08:28, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Twinkle update
Twinkle probably needs new options in automatic warning notices. For example "Addition of duplicate material" would be helpful. Pass a Method talk  09:55, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You may be looking for WT:TW. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:58, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * cheers Pass a Method talk  10:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Previewnote
It's been suggested to make MediaWiki:Previewnote more graphical, as it is in the French Wikipedia. See MediaWiki_messages. Rd232 talk 22:28, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Contested Deletion
This page should not be speedily deleted because...
 * The first option would removed the text completely, while in the second scenario the user hopefully understands he can continue the sentence with his rationale. Yoenit (talk) 10:29, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the second is likely to work much better than the current and can be changed immediately. Let's try it. Not sure about a editnotice. AFAIK that require a separate page to be created each time in the form Template:Editnotices/Page/Talk:NAME. So every speedy deletion protest will create a new page that would only be applicable to the creator and each one would have to be separately deleted when the speedy deletion is done.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:45, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The "--[[User:Fuhghettaboutit|Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:47, 11 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I like this idea a lot. The only concern I have is time-lag. A user can add a hang on tag in a very few seconds, then take his/her time composing the full reasons why the CSD criterion does not apply. A good admin will check the timestamps and should grant a few minutes, maybe even an hour or so for the comments to show up on the Talk page. With this process, users have a bias toward making their case in that very first post. While a longer, slower and more detailed message is better for the discussion, it's going to be counter-productive if the page gets deleted in the meantime because no one knew that you were working on your explanation. Can a button perform two functions - first to add some small flag that a comment is coming (maybe by posting the section header) then a second to open the edit pane? Or is there some other way to solve the time lag? Rossami (talk) 20:56, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * There is no way to make the pressing of the button itself cause a message to be place in the article, or at least I was told it was essentially impossible when I asked one of our best template programmers how to do this. My impression from experience is that the placement of hangon tags themselves rarely delays deletion, though I have no empirical study on this (and of course you may always do this and be an exception). But if that's a sticking point, and there is no workaround, then it comes down to a balancing test. Do the problems with hangon that are solved by this outweigh what we lose?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:11, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I do see the hangon tags getting some deference, at least for articles that look like they're being started in good-faith. The speedy-tag is being used almost as a "please fix this immediately" tag rather than for it's original purpose. You're right about the balancing test.  If there's no other way around it, this is still an improvement.  Maybe two related tags instead?  A first button click that creates the section header on the Talk page and transcludes a second "click here to explain your reasons" button which opens the section and allows the overwriting of the "click here" line?  I'm hoping that's not as complicated as it sounds. By the way, if this process is adopted, we will have to update the user-notice tag as well.  Do we have a draft of that one yet?  Thanks again for taking the initiative to work on the problem.  Rossami (talk) 21:31, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The two clicks is a really interesting idea! Let me think about that. I'll work on the user tags directly.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:15, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I just played around with how to do this but I'm afraid it's beyond my coding skills. I thought maybe I could use a preload template containing hangon and created Hangon click preload for this, but as far as I can tell there's no way to get a preload url to work to place text on an existing page and in a specific spot on that existing page.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:15, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding a draft for user warnings, I've just put one up at Nn-warn/sandbox. Obviously this will need to be tweaked for other warnings, but the gist is there.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:33, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If we write (or have someone else write) a javascript that does it, we can add it to the link using "&withJS= ". Cheers.  lifebaka++ 04:11, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support - Wording of the statement opened by clicking the button is a bit long, with all the who-ha about tildes and such, but the idea is a five-star winner. Simplification is good. Carrite (talk) 22:26, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support - Agreed about the inefficacy of the existing '{hangon}' process. Quarl (talk) 01:40, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support Sensible proposal that is worth a try. Goodvac (talk) 01:49, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. This seems like a well-designed solution to an obvious problem. I agree with Carrite about dropping the tilde reminder; it's just one more thing for an article creator to stress over and it's really no big deal if they don't sign their plea on the talk page, since the admin can easily figure out who wrote it. 28bytes (talk) 02:06, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support, but prefer an easy javascript solution. See below. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  03:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Per opinions above I have shortened the talk page preload by removing the signature instructions. Being unsigned is no barrier for us, whereas the instructions may be a complicating barrier for some users.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support This is a good proposal.  EBE123  talkContribs 19:12, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes Newbies screw up hang-on tags more often than not. It's not reasonable to expect them to get it right. Gigs (talk) 20:00, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support Lets be bold and implement this right away.  Lugnuts  (talk) 07:00, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The only thing we would need to wait on is making the (many) user notices we will need including those that Twinkle uses. The form is at nn-warn/sandbox and I'll get the equivalents for the others done tonight.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:50, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support, though this could make opposing speedy deletion without understanding of CSD much easier. I'd also support Fetchcomms's idea, if implementable. Guoguo12 <font color="blue" size="1">--Talk--  20:20, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * We're up and running. I have changed numerous templates to conform with the new process and am looking for those I missed now.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:12, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I think I;ve got them all, I've also requested full and indefinite protection for the button image on Commons and will go protect the templates the new db-meta transcludes.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:35, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Neutral — the button itself looks dreadful, and sits awkwardly in the centre of the template. It'd be much more preferable to replace it with a similar line of text. Mephistophelian (talk) 16:14, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support: Out of my time patrolling new pages, most of the article creators have failed to correctly place the hang on. --43?9enter ☭msg☭contribs 21:44, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. Pure genius. Implement it now. Herostratus (talk) 00:18, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support A little on the ugly side, but a definite improvement in usability. Kudos! --<font color="#990000">Ja <font color="#000099">Ga <font color="#000000" size="-1">talk 17:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Support Newbie friendly and easy to use, exactly what we should be trying to do as often as possible. oknazevad (talk) 17:57, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

New category
As noted, one thing we have lost is the category for contested candidates for speedy deletion. Even though it wouldn't be as targeted, what does everyone think about having a category for speedy delete candidates with existing talk pages? (I'm not sure of the title to use). This would be added to Hang on/notice3.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:27, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I have implemented the new category: Category:Speedy deletion candidates with talk pages. It is limited to tagged articles in the mainspace that have talk pages. It shows at CAT:CSD as Possibly contested, and is named that way since it cannot detect whether pages actually have protests but only whether the talk page exists so not all pages inside it will always have protests.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:25, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Alternative solution
Go to Wikinews and pick out an article in the "In development, undisputed" section. Notice how the blue message box has a button that says "change", which, if clicked (if you click it, be sure to revert yourself), removes that template and adds a different one. We implement the same javascript on enwiki, put it in the CSD templates, and if a user clicks the button, the js automagically inserts a hangon tag. All we really need to do to make this perfect is for a js popup to prompt for why the page should not be CSD'd, and put that as a parameter in the hangon tag. This would let the reviewing admin look at the reasoning directly on the article (like a prod), instead of opening the talk page as well. Can a techy person look and see if this is feasible? / ƒETCH COMMS  /  03:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Interesting possibility. It couldn't work just by replacing the CSD template with the current form of hangon tag, or we would be forced to go to history and to the prior version each time to see what the article was tagged with, plus we would lose the ability to have the deletion dialogue preload the deletion summary from the db templates. So I suppose this would need to be coded to detect which speedy template was used and include that with the hangon? I imagine if so we would need either a different version of hangon for each speedy deletion template, and which one would automagically replace the CSD template would be detected by what species of db tag was placed (though multiple tags might be a problem), or alternatively, the new form of hangon would have some kind of multi-parser that would draw from a pages with text for each db-rationale. Anyway, we would need someone very technically proficient and interested enough to help.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:51, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the code could be tweaked just to add the hangon without removing the original CSD, or to have a parameter in the hangon that says which CSD tag was originally on. (I don't think the technical part is very hard; just wanted to see if anyone thought this would be a more newbie-friendly solution than preloading text/bringing them to a whole other page and possibly confusing them in the process.) I'll ask around to see if this could be done; if it can, do you think it would work or be easier than the original proposal? / ƒETCH COMMS  /  21:48, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You know it's hard to say until you see it in a test form, which may reveal options we can't think of now as well as limitations resulting from the mechanics. However, if it can be tweaked so that clicking the button places the hangon tag on the page automatically but still functions the same way to take the user to the talk page with the preload, that would certainly be an improvement, would require changing nothing in this proposal, and is what I ideally wanted to do from the get-go but was told was technically impossible. That would also save the contested CSD category. However, unless we see someone willing to take on the full task very soon, I think we should go ahead and implement this. I will happily do the heavy lifting, such as creating forms for all warning notices that refer to hangon.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)


 * Very strong support' on multiple levels. Not only would this be great for allowing new users to get familiar with how Wikipedia works, and allow the page to not have two massive templates that makes it unreadable, but it would also promote discussion and not just arbitrary decision. Full support. Ajraddatz (Talk) 01:44, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, with the help of, I have an example up at User talk:Fetchcomms/Sandbox 5. It will require this code in your user js:

addOnloadHook(function {    var changeCSDToHangon = document.getElementById('hangonbutton');    if (changeCSDToHangon) {        try {            importScriptURI('https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikinews/en/w/index.php?title=user:Bawolff/mwapilib2.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');            var button = document.createElement('button');            button.type = 'button';            button.appendChild(changeCSDToHangon .firstChild.firstChild);            changeCSDToHangon .replaceChild(button, changeCSDToHangon .firstChild);            button.onclick = function  {                var hangonReason = prompt("Why should this article not be deleted yet?", "");                if(!hangonReason) return alert("You must provide a reason for why this page should not be deleted!");                if (this && this.firstChild && this.firstChild.data) this.firstChild.data = "Loading ..."; api(wgPageName).getPage. setDefaultSummary("Please do not delete this article yet"). replace(/^/, "\{\{hangon|" + hangonReason +"}}\n"). savePage. lift(function {                        alert("Tagging successful!");                        location.reload;                    }). exec; }       }        catch (e) {} } });


 * Can a few people try this? I'm still trying too see how to get it to prompt for a reason for the hangon, however. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  23:48, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I now have it where a prompt appears and passes that as the reason param in the hangon tag. Please try the updated code in the above collapse box and see if it works. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  20:11, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It works great! This is much better than the current proposal, IMO. However, make sure to give some more space for the rationale in the prompt, both to allow more text to be written without the beginning of it sliding out of sight, and to encourage better thought-through rationales. --Waldir talk 00:47, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * This is very interesting. It shows there is a possibility to place the hangons back in an effective way. However, I think it should work in a quite a different way. What I would imagine would be ideal would be as follows. When a person clicks the button they are transported to the talk page just as they are now, where they can write their rationale with the preload instructions in place. Meanwhile, the clicking of the button would also place the hangon on the article to show that the button had been pressed. providing the normal hangon alert (which would also get back the full functionality of the contested category). The way it operates now is not ideal for a number of reasons. (to lurkers, none of this will make sense unless you try out the code to see what it does).


 * First, people need to be able to read the text they write as a unified whole; to go back over it; to compose a complete response possibly over a few paragraphs; to be able to preview it and so on. Writing text in a small text field is incredibly hampering (this format also pretty much guarantees that posts will never be signed by new users).
 * The protest needs to be placed at a discussion format, i.e., a talk page. The way this is set up, after the initial post appears in the hangon, there's effectively no way to respond but to click edit this page on the article, then figure out that the text posted is the parameter in the hangon tag, then use relatively advanced markup right next to the text, such as using  to offset a response, and then saving. This will not format well, but it would work somewhat as a response but many users will not know how to post a response at all, and very few creators will know how to respond thereafter. There are often talk page backs and forth on contested deletions and this simply will not allow that or make it so unwieldy to do so that it might as well be seen as a complete bar.
 * I don't think the protest should be in the article at all. As someone who has reviewed thousands of db-tags, I can tell you that sometimes we get "FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!" and much worse, such as BLP violations, as the talk page response; now they will be on public view in the article.
 * We occasionally see a reason to keep talk pages of CSD discussions even when the article is deleted, but now the discussion is part of the page, so if we delete it, perforce, we delete the discussion. And if we keep the article, the normally behind-the-scenes deletion discussion is permanently part of the page history barring revdeletion. Would we want that?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 06:03, 17 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I like the + talk page combination, if that can be made to work. We shouldn't rely on editors having JavaScript turned on. With JS off, at least they'd get their message onto the talk page. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, so I've created User:Fetchcomms/hangon.js, which creates the button, adds the hangon when clicked, and then redirects to the talk page editing screen with current preload text. Instead of adding all the code to your js page, just add  to it and try this at User:Fetchcomms/test (because my previous test page was on a talk page already). Thanks for the feedback, / ƒETCH  COMMS  /  20:01, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, I'll need to tweak the code to work on non-mainspace pages, so don't try that just yet! / ƒETCH COMMS  /  20:03, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You were too slow with your second post, and I had already tried it. The button changed to "Loading..." and nothing else happened. I didn't manage to add a "hangon" tag to your test page. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:12, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Hm, can you try purging and trying again? I fixed the code and it's now working for me. If it still doesn't work, wait for a bit and see if it's just the js being slow; otherwise, I'm not sure what's going on. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  20:52, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Two messages on the Firefox error console when I press the button: (1) Empty string passed to getElementById (2) api(wgPageName).getPage is not a function - is there some other stript I have to load before hangon.js will work? -- John of Reading (talk) 21:15, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks nice :) Two things:
 * Change the wording of the message "you're not done until, etc." to something maybe like "A hang-on notice has been added to the page. You must now add your reasons in the edit box that will show up next, otherwise the request to stop the deletion process will be denied."
 * Use the editintro url parameter to provide further instructions, guidelines, links, etc. It could link to an empty page right now, which can later be filled with relevant content. --Waldir talk 22:56, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * John, the script utilizes wikinews:user:Bawolff/mwapilib2.js, but that's for creating the button (I think that's the main thing it does), so I'm not sure what's causing your errors—I'm asking someone with a background in javascript to take a look. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  01:56, 18 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Support Much more newbie-friendly and easy, it'd save NPPers, admins and CSD patrolling users a lot of hassle. — James (Talk • Contribs) • 9:39pm • 11:39, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * What a great combination! Works great. Thanks for working on this Fetchcomms. I suppose the next step is to talk to developers about adding this to the sitewide js file (no idea what it's called)? Have you spoken with anyone yet? User:Tim Starling might be the right person to talk to, though I'm not sure. I would change the text a little bit. Right now it tells the user, in part, "If you do not explain why, your request to prevent deletion will be denied", which implies that if the person adds a reason to the talk page, the page will not be deleted, regardless of the reason provided. The text also assumes it's an "article" and it doesn't tell the person what the purpose of the hang on tag is, as the prior text in db-meta did when it decribed placing the hang on tag. Also, I think hang on should be in quotes here. I would suggest changing it to just: --Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, any admin can add it in now to Mediawiki:Common.js. However (after I tweak the message as you said), there are two concerns I have that I'd need someone who knows js well to look over: 1) It will work for users with js disabled (just need to change the link in my actual sandbox/test page to the preload one), but I'm not sure about overall accessibility. I'd like some wider testing, at least, first—can you ask a few NPPers or something to check out this thread and test out the js? 2) Bawolff, who was the original author of the base button code, told me that, because this uses a custom javascript library (the Wikinews thing I linked to above), it's slightly hacky and not perfect—good enough for us, yes, but probably not for all users, registered and anonymous. As a result, he suggested the button-creating code be rewritten in jQuery; however, I only know enough to tweak existing code, not devise something from scratch. I'll ask a few javascript wizards to see if they have time to do this, because the current code probably shouldn't be in Mediawiki:Common.js at this point. Thanks for testing the code! / ƒETCH COMMS  /  02:37, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I was asked to comment on this, and I'll reply in more detail later - probably over the 4 day weekend! A few brief initial comments. 1) If supporting non JS users is trivial, lets do it, otherwise I wouldn't worry about it. Every remotely modern browser (even IE 6) supports Javascript, and if users choose to deliberately disable it they'll be techies and expect that stuff won't just work™ when they are using the internet. 2) Redoing in JQuery sounds like a good idea, as JQuery works in every browser including IE 6 whereas specific normal Javascript may not work, I can take a look at this over the weekend probably.
 * Finally someone needs to QA the script in IE 6 on Windows XP before the code goes live, we do need to support those users. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 20:48, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Obviously, once this change is made, db-meta will need to be tweaked contemporaneously. Db-meta/sandbox2 now contains the text I would propose to be added upon the change.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:31, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Instead of adding an additional template hangon to the page, could you just add a new parameter (e.g. yes) to the CSD template? By making a small change to db-meta we could create the same appearance but it may be neater and allow for additional functionality and flexibility. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:45, 20 April 2011 (UTC)


 * That makes sense to me, although I'm not sure exactly how to change the script to add a parameter instead of a whole template. It's not a terribly big deal right now, but combining the two templates would be reasonable in the long run. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  04:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

addOnloadHook(function {    try {		var thisOuter = this;        $('#hangonbutton').click(function  { var hangonReason = prompt("Why should this article not be deleted yet?", ""); if(!hangonReason) return alert("You must provide a reason for why this page should not be deleted!"); if (thisOuter && thisOuter.firstChild && thisOuter.firstChild.data) thisOuter.firstChild.data = "Loading ..."; api(wgPageName).getPage. setDefaultSummary("Please do not delete this article yet"). replace(/^/, "\{\{hangon|" + hangonReason +"}}\n"). savePage. lift(function {                        alert("Tagging successful!");                        location.reload;                    }). exec; });       }        catch (e) {} });

OK, the above uses JQuery and should work - I haven't tested it though. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:56, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Hm, it doesn't do anything for me—also, is it still reliant on wikinews:User:Bawolff/mwapilib2.js, or does it stand on its own? I think Bawolff was saying that this custom library shouldn't be used for sitewide js. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  22:59, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It should be standalone. Where's the test page? -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 18:36, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * User:Fetchcomms/test (might have to change it to work in userspace?). / ƒETCH COMMS  /  05:04, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I've made some progress with displaying the message with User:Eraserhead1/hangon.js and that creates and styles (with JQuery rather than straight CSS unfortunately) a "button" and a dialog is shown. Unfortunately I'm having an issue with Firebug claiming that it cannot find the variable 'api' and its not working 100% yet. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 20:51, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I get the same issue with the other button as well. I don't think its a JQuery issue. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 16:38, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

A problem
The recently implement changes direct editors (who don't carefully read every word of the db warning) to place their hangon rationale at File_talk:Speedy_delete_contest_button.png. One has already and I expect more to come. The button should probably be unlinked from the user talk page notice, but I can't do that myself unless the license is changed from CC-BY-SA to PD. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:48, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Damn, I'm sure it's something from one of the talk page notices, not the db-tags. Let me start testing them.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:52, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I meant the talk page notices. I haven't noticed any problems with the article tags. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:56, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, I know what's going on. Some of the talk page notices actually provide the button with the same capability as the button in the db tags (where the template always has the article name as a parameter so that that can be passed through to { } ) and some of them say instead "If you do not believe the article deserves to be deleted, then you may contest the deletion by clicking on the button that looks like this: Speedy delete contest button.png which appears inside of the speedy deletion... Of course some percentage of users aren't going to read and will click on the button, if it's clickable, so I need to go make it unclickable where it's used like this.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:01, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * All fixed—the image links in the notice templates are now unclickable. Thanks for looking out!--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:18, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Looking at how it is now being used, all editors, not just the author, are likely to use the button, instead of doing what they are actually directed to do, which is to simply remove the db template and say why on the talk p. or the edit summary. A rewording (and drastic shortening) of the template might help, and I'm going to try one.    DGG ( talk ) 04:16, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Preload content
Thanks, Fuhghettaboutit. The new button is nice. Now that it's been implemented do you mind moving the discussion to Template talk:Db-meta? One issue I've noticed is that hangers-on, who are 99% newbies, don't understand Wiki markup or HTML. So they write their don't-delete rationale inside &lt;-- --&gt; comments, which may be missed by the admin. I suggest we replace the comment characters with language that makes it obvious the template language needs to be replaced. Quarl (talk) 04:32, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Now that you raised it, it's pretty obvious that this would be happening. It's also no burden on us if the preload text is left in place sometimes. I'll remove the comment out tags now. So, do you think we should just copy the entirety of this discussion to the template talk page?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 10:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

On the talk pages of articles I look through for speedy deletions, I still see the default message up, which doesn't get replaced:

This article should not be speedy deleted because...
Replace this text with your reason for contesting the speedy deletion and then click "save page" below. ~

And then they type their message immediately afterwards or even copypaste what is displayed above. I don't know if there is a way hide this instruction (i.e. via commenting out or something else) without getting in the way of those who are a bit on the slow side? Commons uses various user scripts, many of which are fairly clean and newcomer-friendly, to handle many deletion requests over there; we could implement something like that with this, if site-wide scripts are desired. –MuZemike 09:21, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It was originally commented out, but this was replaced by the current message because of fear users would break it and end up commenting out their entire post. I can think of two possible alternatives:


 * 1) Use an editnotice to convey the information
 * 2) Change the text to something like this:

Contested Deletion
This page should not be speedily deleted because...
 * The first option would removed the text completely, while in the second scenario the user hopefully understands he can continue the sentence with his rationale. Yoenit (talk) 10:29, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the second is likely to work much better than the current and can be changed immediately. Let's try it. Not sure about a editnotice. AFAIK that require a separate page to be created each time in the form Template:Editnotices/Page/Talk:NAME. So every speedy deletion protest will create a new page that would only be applicable to the creator and each one would have to be separately deleted when the speedy deletion is done.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:45, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The syntax allows for a parameter "editintro=PAGENAME" which makes PAGENAME act as an edit notice. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:41, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Neat. So I created an editintro for the preload, Hangon preload editintro, but I don't know if we should use it, or at least use it for the purpose of telling them to leave the tildes in place. You can view what it looks like in the preload at this URL. What seems silly to me is that following the editintro text, quite redundantly at least in part, the sitewide talk page notice already says " This is a talk page. Please respect the talk page guidelines, and remember to sign your posts by typing four tildes (~) ". Please do edit this editintro template, possibly removing the stuff about tildes entirely with a different relevant message.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 08:37, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right, the signature isn't that important. With a bit more effort, there could be one editintro for each speedy deletion criterion: "To contest an A7 you need to show..." -- John of Reading (talk) 08:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure your are referring to an editnotice— an editintro is a bit different. See WP:EDITINTRO. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 22:44, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah— inputbox uses the term for something different. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:04, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the signature should be dropped from the edit form presented when clicking the button - I haven't seen a single case yet where a new user hasn't placed their actual reasoning after the signature, which looks weird and might discourage new users, while having no signature hardly matters. Zakhalesh (talk) 18:22, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Timestamp to prevent Miszabot's auto-archival mistake. :| TelCo NaSp <font face="Showcard Gothic" color="blue">Ve :|  07:13, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

New "rank"
To prevent vandalism, I would like to suggest a new rank higher than autoconfirmed but below synops. This would prevent very very new account/account that have been recently unblocked to edit "sensitive" pages like Death of Osama bin Laden --<i style="font-family:Kristen ITC; color:green;">Tyw7</i> (☎ Contact me! •  Contributions )    19:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Meh, more ranks might start creating the impression of wiki-elites and such. =p The situation on things like Osama will eventually calm down though. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Say Shalom! 19:22, 3 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I follow you. If an article is semi-protected (as Death of Osama bin Laden currently is), very very new accounts can't edit it anyway. 28bytes (talk) 19:27, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Very very new accounts that have passed autoconfirmed (which IMO is too low). 10 days+100 edits (can be anywhere even his talk/user page!) --<i style="font-family:Kristen ITC; color:green;">Tyw7</i> (☎ Contact me! •  Contributions )   Changing the world one edit at a time!  19:34, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you mean protection level? If so, a new user group would need to be created or the right would have to be added to older user groups like rollbacker, reviewer and autopatrolled, as well as sysop so they could edit.  Hazard-SJ  ±   00:56, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * There is already a protection level that does this, one of the pending changes levels only allows those with the reviewer flag to edit or approve changes. Extremely controversial even when it gets set to only enforce pending on editors who are not auto-confirmed, I can only imagine the hue and cry if someone set that on a hot article like the death... Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  01:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The issue is that semi-protection / full protection are very "hammer," when sometimes you need something a bit more flexible. You should be able to easily configure any page to have arbitrary restrictions. For example, some pages should require over 100 edits, while others should require a certain amount of time editing, or require that editors be in certain user groups, etc. Something like this is vaguely possible with the AbuseFilter currently, but it's clunky as shit and not very efficient. A native solution that kills the current rigid page protection setup is what you're after, I imagine. A random new "rank" isn't a real solution. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:18, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Since this is a proposal for a usergroup permission higher thatn autoconfirmed this is in relation to editing through full protection. Full protection is very sparingly used. When it is used it's because there has been a consistent demonstration of disruption on the page from multiple editors that are already confirmed. The only people we let edit through a full portection are administrators, bureaucrats, and Jimbo. For the most part these are for valid reasons. If a user who isn't a sysop wants to propose a change they can do so through editprotected. The user must present their case for why the edit should occur and if it's consistent with WP policy, the administrator will apply it to the article. This request is very similar to one about editing through full protection on Templates for non-administrators at the Policy board currently. Hasteur (talk) 15:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose This new rank isn't well defined, and there dosen't seem to be a consensus that any new userright or usergruop is needed.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  08:54, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose : Wikipedia is already rather bureaucratic, let's not make it worse. Plus, we'll have tons of those rights-hungry people trying to attain the new right (When filemover was introduced, lot's of unrelated people joined..and have done nothing...). Manish Earth Talk •  Stalk 16:06, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose, as there seems no real need with Pending Changes and normal protection already in use.  Hazard-SJ  ±   20:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Template for articles inherenting notability
At WP:HD I was told to bring up this issue here, so here I am. I nominated Angekommen wie nicht da for WP:AFD (see Articles for deletion/Angekommen wie nicht da). The outcome of the discussion was, that the book which is the subject of the article in question is notable, because its author won a Nobel in literature. Since this article doesn't prove its notability through sources, but rather inherents its notability through the fact, that its author received this price, I created a talk page template for pointing out this fact on the talk page per suggestion by another editor (see WP:HD). The template can be found at User:Toshio Yamaguchi/Template:Inherent notability. I would like to hear the opinions of other editors before moving this template into mainspace. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 00:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)


 * You have misunderstood the outcome of the AFD. Nobody has said that the works are inherently notable, or that they inherit notability from their author.  What the editors said is this:  If you are unable to find sources about the major works written by the winner of a Nobel prize for literature, it is only because you did not search effectively for them.
 * Note, please, that it is the existence of the sources, not the naming of the sources in the article, that matters for these things.
 * If I have not too badly misunderstood the German-language sources, then ISBN 9783860997765 gives the title as an example of her concise and densely meaningful writing style on page 14, and ISBN 9783906759982 says that the work addresses the psychological pain of waiting for arrivals and departures on page 76. Another appears to deal with the issue of paradox (a loose translation of the title might be "We have arrived, but we are not there").  There are certainly more sources where these came from.  It would be silly to delete an article simply because one editor was unable to find sources for it.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:47, 5 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Then the articles should at least be tagged with a cleanup template requiring more citations or something similar. And there were arguments like It's a very safe bet that literary works by Nobel laureates in literature will have received the coverage required to establish notability. Instead of annoying other editors with such a nonsense, sources should have been brought up at the AfD. Only because a book was written by a Nobel laureate doesn't automatically mean this work has received coverage by third-party sources. Yes, I believe it is in fact possible for a Nobel laureate to write a non-notable book that shouldn't have an article on Wikipedia. The only exceptions are books by authors who are considered so significant that each of that authors works will be notable. I don't see that Herta Muller satisfies this condition. And still all the books need sources confirming they satisfy one of the conditions in WP:NBOOK. Otherwise I fail to see where these books established their notability. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 18:42, 5 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The very concept of "inherent notability" is controversial. Note that the link for the term in your proposed template goes to an essay, not a policy or guideline. AFD may decide that an article should be kept, but such decisions don't typically declare a subject to be "inherently" notable. If moved into template space, an article tag making such claims would probably be deleted on "misrepresentation of policy" grounds. --RL0919 (talk) 15:03, 6 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Toshio, I agree that in the best of all worlds, the folks at AFD would have found the sources I did and told you about them, so there could be no doubt left in your mind. But in the best of all possible worlds, you would never have nominated it for deletion, because you would have found the sources I did.  Sadly, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds, and we are thus left with this confusion and frustration.  It is not their fault that you did not find these sources, just like it is not your fault that they failed to tell you about them.  The important thing is that the sources do exist, and the article was correctly kept.  We can therefore all move on to more important things.
 * You should feel free to leave a note on the article's talk page about these sources; there's no need for the next person to wonder whether any sources exist.
 * (And, yes, you should expect that template to be deleted. I suggest tagging it with db-author.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:45, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

What language Wikipedia am I reading?
I'm almost certainly in the wrong place, but I can't read most of the language names on the left side of the page where the links to each article in other languages are found. If I somehow end up in another language's Wikipedia (I'm not saying how I would, but if I did), how could someone reading English figure out what language it was? Surely there is already a way to do this. I thought of the idea for labeling each page and then realized it would have to be done for every language, which is impossible. But English speakers developed it so maybe the language could be identified for English speakers, and then too bad for everyone else.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 22:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * List of Wikipedias tells you what each of the prefixes mean. When you hover over (for example) the "العربية" link on the left side of this page, you'll see the page it links to starts with " http://ar.wikipedia.org/ ". From the List of Wikipedias, you can see that "ar" means it's the Arabic Wikipedia. (It's possible I'm misunderstanding your question, of course.) 28bytes (talk) 22:28, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's really that big a deal. Someone can easily look up the two letter language code (is it ISO?) in front of wikipedia.org to see what language they were reading. BurtAlert (talk) 22:30, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm inclined to agree with you; I don't think this is a big deal. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 05:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, I get that I can see the two-letter code in the URL, but is there a list of these in alphabetical order somewhere? Actually, the reader of English who has somehow ended up in another language's article still doesn't know this or where the codes are without asking someone.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 17:53, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Fill your boots. A hypothetical reader who ended up on another language Wikipedia could always click the link that says "English" at the side of the page. – iridescent  17:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * But I'm thinking the reader might want to see what language that is where he or she is. Okay, I have all I need to know, so thanks.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  ·
 * Yes but not someone stumbling upon the Wikipedia due to queries on the IRC's etc. By knowing what language the Wikipedia is written in, appriopriate help can be asked quickly.  This can be used in deciding who is best suted to fix/solve the problem ie asking a French Wikipedian to help with technical aspect of the French Wikipedia, German Wikipedian with German Wikipedia, etc.  Perhaps we can add a small word saying "English" at the bottom of the globe figure? --<i style="font-family:Kristen ITC; color:green;">Tyw7</i>  (☎ Contact me! •  Contributions )   → Careless edits costs reputations 00:49, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * So there should be a small block of English on every single language edition of Wikipedia? What about Korean readers; they might not know the difference between the Spanish and French editions, and an English tag wouldn't help them... do you see my point? Why would we favor English in this, especially if it's not really a problem? (if someone is jumping on IRC to ask a support question, I think it's reasonable to assume that they're technologically savvy enough to figure out what the ISO codes are) EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 05:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It would be nice if appending "?uselang=en" while viewing a foreign Wikipedia would not only translate the user interface to English, but additionally give you an indication of the language's English name. —Кузьма討論 08:07, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding the question "What about Korean readers", I did make the point when I first asked the question, although I didn't make it in such a way that it was obvious.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 18:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't remember where, but I think I saw a gadget that translated them. In any case, couldn't one be created here and made available for use?  Hazard-SJ  ±   20:40, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The gadget you might want is this one. Actually, it's an extension of User:Tra/sidebartranslate.js (which for some reason has gone bye-bye). Tra's script translates the sidebar into English. My script does the same and also adds a tiny link to google translate for the page. Manish Earth Talk •  Stalk 04:23, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
 * You could try using this
 * <tt> javascript:var%20t=((window.getSelection&&window.getSelection)||(document.getSelection&&document.getSelection)||(document.selection&&document.selection.createRange&&document.selection.createRange.text));var%20e=(document.charset||document.characterSet);if(t!=''){location.href='http://translate.google.com/translate_t?text='+t+'&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie='+e;}else{location.href='http://translate.google.com/translate?u='+escape(location.href)+'&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie='+e;}; </tt>)
 * in a toolbar bookmark. – Allen4names 02:26, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Text in Edit Summary slot
When you are reverting, and intending to write an edit summary go to the slot provided you are presented with a slot full of text. This information comprises details of the edit you are reverting. Would it not be possible for the slot to be presented blank? I ask because when I started editing here it was a while before I worked out that you are supposed to move your cursor to the end of the text and add your edit summary. I think that some people would either not understand that this is what you do or, once they find that you have to do this, cannot be bothered to do it. I think we are losing edit summaries this way. Britmax (talk) 09:43, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Signpost and Main Page
I've wondered in the past if we shouldn't expose a bit more of Wikipedia's innards on the Main Page (a section of it for highlighting backlogs, for instance). And I've just noticed that the section "Other areas of Wikipedia" only covers half the page. Why not use the other half to show the WP:SIGNPOST headings? Rd232 talk 02:15, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think the Signpost should be for the general public. However, I agree that a bit more of the inner workings of Wikipedia (as opposed to a finished-looking project) should be visible from the Main Page. Most other Wikipedias (ok, I just checked German, French, Spanish, and Polish) have much more visible content about the project or suggesting contribution than we do. Even just making the "Other areas of Wikipedia" stand out more (it has no images, and is low on a page full with images and information) might help draw people to the Community Portal, where the Signpost is included. I guess the next redesign of the Main Page should focus more on "free" and "anyone can edit" than "encyclopedia". —Кузьма討論 11:09, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Linking the Signpost on the Main Page has been suggested before, see here, here and here. Regards, HaeB (talk) 12:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The advantage of the Signpost is that there's something ready to slot into an otherwise unused space. Anything else will take vast amounts of time and effort to agree on, and could easily take years. Of the three links you provide, only one (the last) is a substantive discussion, from nearly a year ago, and the arguments are unconvincing. The "main page is for readers" as an argument against is founded on a fundamentally unwiki divide between editors and readers. I also can't see that the Signpost will actively confuse anyone; and even for readers who wish to remain readers, a sense of the inner workings would be helpful. Rd232 talk 20:03, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Strongly oppose this. I agree with every word of this IP's comments the last-but-one time someone suggested this; the main page is supposed to be useful to the 99% of our readers who have no interest in how Wikipedia operates, not an ego boost for the couple of dozen people involved in the Signpost. – iridescent  21:15, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Most of the Main Page (everything except In the News) is an ego boost for a handful of editors. So adding the Signpost wouldn't change that. —Кузьма討論 21:26, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Um, what? I'm not proposing it from the point of view of "recognition" of Signpost contributors (and for the record I'm not involved myself). As I said initially, I think it would be valuable in giving people more of a sense of the Wikipedia community. People complain constantly about editor decline, but the biggest single obstacle to really tackling it seems to be admitting that there is a community. Wikipedia is not just a bunch of servers and a MediaWiki installation. For exactly the same reason, my metric for success on a trial of requiring autoconfirmed status in order to create articles (without assistance) is an increase in the number of editors who are reasonably interested in really contributing to the project, rather than self-promotion (measured tentatively as, say, 100+ edits to >3 articles and >5 talkpage posts). Rd232 talk 21:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Your belief that the section "only covers half the page" and that the proposed addition would fill "otherwise unused space" is based upon your personal display settings. Under my configuration, the longest item spans more than 4/5 of the page's width.  For others, the full width is used (possibly with some of the text wrapping to a second line).  —David Levy 22:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, that's true. But at the end of the day, at present it's effectively one column, compared to the top two sections (Featured Article and In the News) occupying two. So even if adding a column would make the existing text wrap on smaller displays, it won't wrap any more than those two sections already do. Rd232 talk 23:43, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I don't mean to suggest that the idea isn't technically feasible.  However, I don't personally regard such content as appropriate for the main page (though the addition of a Signpost link might be an acceptable compromise).  —David Levy 00:54, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think putting a link to the Signpost on the Mainpage would be a good idea. People often come to the Wikipedia main page because they're curious about Wikipedia, and while about Wikipedia would be the natural link for that, some people main be curious with what's going on with Wikipedia now. As a general rule, whenever I go to a website main page I always like to checkout what's new with the site, if just for my own curiosity. Jztinfinity (talk) 18:01, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Can't we just put a collaspable section of the transcluded sign post? --<i style="font-family:Kristen ITC; color:green;">Tyw7</i> (☎ Contact me! •  Contributions )    23:10, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Combatting linkrot
It is my opinion that WP:LINKROT is a major problem for Wikipedia. Yet no consensus seems to have been reached over an efficient working solution to this problem. There is this toolserver WebCite App which can be used to archive urls at WebCite (see also WP:WEBCITE) using a script by User:Δ. Is it possible, for example, to incorporate this script into the WP:TOOLBOX? This would allow all editors to archive references directly when adding references to an article. Also I think many editors are not aware of archiving services like WebCite. If not already preemptively archived when being added to an article, when a source dies it is in most cases already too late to do something about it. I would welcome the addition of this script to the toolbox with a permanent edit notice in the edit window pointing editors to this tool in the toolbox. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 15:36, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
 * IIRC, the problem has been that WebCite has had uptime/throughput issues, so there's a continually growing backlog. There was talk of having the WMF sponsor WebCite, having the WMF brew its own archival tool, or using Archive.org's service, but I don't recall any action being taken. Perhaps someone can locate the past discussion in question? --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 00:05, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I used to relatively frequently archive material via WebCite, until it became clear that a reasonable large fraction of complex sites (such as almost all modern news sites associated with paper newspapers) archive in a mangled or poorly rendered manner. Though we would like for everything to be available online, the reality is that we must support the use of citations which are not available online, which includes, for instance, microfilmed newspapers in public libraries and physical books which have not been scanned for free online reading.  Linkrot is not the primary problem; lack of supporting citations is. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 02:22, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree linkrot isnt as bad as a lack of supporting citations in the first place. And of course it has long been established that physical books, magazines, newspapers that are not available at all online are perfectly fine and on equal footing with online sources. The loss of a link to a newspaper site doesn't invalidate the citation because a physical copy of the newspaper exists in some form somewhere and that is all that is needed, removal of the url from the citation keeps the citation valid because "someone, somewhere CAN" check the source themselves. Linkrot becomes a problem when the link is to something ONLY online, and I've personally come across links that I put in that later die and I can NOT find the same information ANYWHERE online. Even though I know it to be correct information it becomes either cited to a deadlink or it becomes uncited, which it then can be removed at will by any jerk. What is the recourse then?Camelbinky (talk) 02:31, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The solution depends in part on what the nature of the source is. If it is something governmental which can also be considered public domain, putting the content into Wikisource could be a solution.  WebCite remains a valid tool, with a few technical and performance bumps.  If something disappeared recently (??how much time??) then it might still exist in a Google Cache form which could be captured via WebCite; this is true of other search engines as well, that there might be fading copies extant (I'm not sure which search engines retain cached copies in addition to Google).  Another option is to quote (using quote parameter in a citation template) the salient passage from a potential transient web site; that at least would preserve the snippet, albeit in an unverifiable form.  It would be useful to collate a set of source type which fall into the 'unrecoverable' class to use in considering additional options. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 03:00, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I just want to clarify that there are no problems with WebCite. They have submissions throttled to reduce spam and have specifically said that anybody from Wikipedia can be whitelisted for full speed submissions. - Hydroxonium (T•C• V ) 16:47, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * As I recall though, there were load problems when WebCiteBot was running. Not massive ones, but intermittent problems throughout (EDIT: as noted by CC above). - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 16:53, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * There are some technical problems related to website formatting. For instance, a news outlet that I use frequently, The News Journal (a Gannett property), has their DelawareOnline website configured in a manner that a) only the first of a multi-page web article can be archived effectively and b) it is not possible to archive a full article via the print function (some websites assign a recoverable url to ready-for-print articles; not so in this case).  I'm not sure how widespread such is among other reliable source sites. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 17:02, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I fail to see how a solution that has some issues is any worse than no solution at all. WebCite might not be ideal to archive everything, but there is a lot of stuff it can handle. For the stuff it can't handle, other solutions would need to be found, but until this happens we should have a solution that already works today (with some issues). Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 17:47, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Did I say anything about "avoid WebCitation.org"? No.  Please be more circumspect in your critiques. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 18:25, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Accepted and I apologize for my misinterpretation and misrepresentation of your comment. And I agree that Wikipedia should not entirely rely on online available sources. All I say is if it were possible to integrate something like Δ's script into the Wikipedia interface (for example into the toolbox), this possibility should be taken into a more serious consideration. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 18:59, 8 May 2011 (UTC)