Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive P

In the news - pictures

 * copied from Talk:Main Page archive, (removed irrelevant tangent)

Further to people's complaints above regarding how it is confusing at first as to which article belongs to the picture; There is a little (pictured) caption in the text so it's not a huge issue but how about somethig like this?.. (Rough mockup, it might look stupid in your browser)

...to highlight the appropriate article entry? --Monotonehell 06:30, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
 * And maybe a thin blue border for the picture to link them better intuitively. Great idea. --Quiddity 06:56, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Heh I wanted to do that but couldn't work out the wiki-table layout &gt;.&gt; EDIT:messed with it a bit--Monotonehell 07:02, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me – it won't make much of a difference to the page, but if people find the current arrangement confusing, it ought to be changed – Gurch 12:09, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'd still prefer just putting the pictured news on top. Seems like the easiest solution to me..
 * Still, I like your suggestion. Two questions though. Can the border on the pic be a bit larger? It took me a while to actually notice it. second, mort importantly, doesnt this makeup get messy once the news item moves more towards the bottom? The Minist  e  r of War  (Peace) 13:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
 * This is just a QaD mockup in wiki:table markup, I imagine that the CSS for the front page could include a special element for the appropriate box somehow. So yes the border can be any thickness (I couldn't work it out in wiki markup though). It would get separated from the picture if it slid down yes. But if it were the only highlighted entry the viewer's eyes would be drawn to it more quickly than the obscured (pictured) tag. --Monotonehell 14:41, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd still support some changes to show the link between text and picture more prominently. Is this one of those things that everybody is going to agree on, but gets archived without ever being implemented? The Minist  e  r of War  (Peace) 09:06, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, there have been no negative reactions. How do we get this implemented? --Quiddity 18:42, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

wikipedia page layout
I've been using google as the home page for my browser for years now. However, I've recently switched to using wikipedia instead. I don't know how many other people are doing this.

I am finding lately that for most searches, the links at the end of the articles give me much better results than google.

My guess is that the first thing most people do when arriving at wikipedia is conduct a search.

A more prominent placement of the search box, up near the top and centered, and auto-selected like the search box on google would be great. A larger search textbox would be nice. Making the external links more convenient (side column? closer to top?) would be helpful.

Just some suggestions.


 * Wikipedia is currently moving away from having a single "External links" section in articles, toward having a "References" (or "References and notes") section and a "Further reading" section. This makes that part of the suggestion a bit difficult technically. A separate social reason that I would argue against such a design is that Wikipedia deals with a tonne of spam links every day and a prominent placement of external links would only encourage vandals and spammers. And, now that I think of it, it would also make our policy that Wikipedia is not a link directory harder to say with a straight face.
 * However! I like the idea of having a prominent search box for just the main page. &mdash; Saxifrage &#9998; 17:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * We are? I hadn't been informed. IIRC we still keep both further reading and external links; the former is for meatspace stuff, and the latter is for stuff available online. Johnleemk | Talk 17:58, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * The change (and I think it's fairly community-driven) was because that distinction was causing all kinds of problems with where people thought references should go when some were "external links" and some were dead-tree references. It's not very well publicised, but you can see the shift in practice reflected at WP:CITE. &mdash; Saxifrage &#9998; 18:35, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I guess I should have added that reading the wikipedia entry for whatever search term I've entered makes me a more educated surfer before going off to an external link or doing a search via google, etc.

It seems to me that even though "Wikipedia is not many things", for many it is filling the role that the early google did.

For the first couple years, conducting a good factual search at google was easy -- the first page of results wasn't clogged with commercialised links -- it was real, useful, data. I don't know what the future holds for google (they are doing great financially) but to me they are gradually just becoming a glorified advertising engine. This may be hard to believe, but their usefulness might fade over time. What once took me a few clicks on google now requires wading pages deep into the results, carefully constructing queries, etc.

I don't know of any algorithms that are better than a human at sorting good data from junk. So... with that said, it seems to me that working on the search features within Wikipedia could be a good thing. Maybe my post here should have been titled "wikipedia search" ?

Where could I learn more about the roadmap for Wikipedia?

...

..ok, now I've read all the current entries on this page, and I see there is already a discussion about a more prominent location for the search box. If anyone is counting, I vote for top center, just above the "Welcome" and to the right of "your continued donations..."


 * I find myself doing this as well. Wikipedia is like Google except it organizes the best info from the best google results into one neat, concise page. :) --Matt0401 15:55, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikiethics
Please review and make suggestions for improvement and completion of the proposal Wikiethics. Resid Gulerdem 23:57, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Fellow editors please be aware of Wikiethics's previous proposal on Village Pump. Netscott 00:12, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This idea has been beaten to death, polled, and rejected. Time to move on. John Reid 03:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The proposal is active and improving. Community input and constructive suggestions are wellcome. Thanks in advance. Resid Gulerdem 04:24, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * The "Editorial standards" section in particular contradicts itself (with respect to censorship). Ardric47 03:24, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The proposal was/is a mess and has been soundly rejected. Resid Gulerdem is now indefinitely blocked for various misbehaviour. Nothing more to see here, as John Reid says. Sandstein 12:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Item sizes
The max is 500. It would be useful if this was larger. Skinnyweed 22:48, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * You can manually edit the string in the URL to show however many you want, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=1000&target=W.marsh. Use sparingly though because it eats up a lot of your bandwidth. --W.marsh 23:00, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Improving categories
Improving categories proposes Customizable links in category lists : . Please, SUPPORT this proposal. This is a great and simple improvment. &lt;STyx 20:55, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * That it is. Melchoir 21:18, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I registered on meta just to support this! ericg &#9992; 21:20, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Ditto! Melchoir 21:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Local categories for "requested pictures"
Since only a small proportion of picture-lacking articles are listed as requiring pictures, but the category and list for requested pictures are quite large, and additionally it is not generally worth a Wikipedian's time to check either out just in case a local listing has occurred, I have suggested a local (depending on need, by city/region/country) category system for requested pictures. Some comments at Wikipedia talk:Requested pictures would be appreciated! TheGrappler 03:24, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * This may be a good idea. We need to encourage those in the area and who have digital cameras to actually take those pictures and submit them here.  Denelson83  23:54, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I copied this comment to the talk page where the discussion is - hope nobody minds! TheGrappler 05:45, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Deprecating qif
It has been proposed to officially deprecate the mother of meta-templates, qif. Please contribute to the discussion so we can gather consensus over a template which has the potential to crash Wikipedia. Johnleemk | Talk 16:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

proposed change to css (.references)
After seeing a number of articles' references sections use a cite.php tag wrapped in container divs (ie in common.css? It would still have to be used on articles to have any influence. I mean we could then say   to Mediawiki:common.css? This class could be used in the articles instead of
 * like this
 * Or did I misunderstand you? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks! --Ligulem 10:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Or did I misunderstand you? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks! --Ligulem 10:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Or did I misunderstand you? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks! --Ligulem 10:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * (note that what follows is no more than my personal opinion): allowing the class="references-small" has some disadvantages IMHO:
 * It is too inviting to standardise footnotes at 90%, while I would prefer standardization at 100%. If breaking away from that standard of 100%, I think it would be best to allow that only under the "exception" inscribed in the MoS ("Formatting issues such as font size [...] should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases"), so the editor who induces the font resizing, should be able to gain consensus for "special case" on a per article base. Not as a standard call to the css. I'd put that as sharp as possible in the footnotes guideline (that is: sharper than I did yesterday, unaware I could have made a reference to the general MoS principles)
 * The code visible in edit mode ("  and a   which would convert between the two different spelling variations similar to what is done on the Chinese projects(2 rightmost tabs)   and the Serbian projects(4 rightmost tabs)  ? Then an admin can place a spelling variation in MediaWiki:Conversiontable/en-br -{color=>colour}-, in this way everyone will be happy with the spelling!  --Shibo77 10:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * See Village pump (technical). Ardric47 00:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Which is now Village pump (technical)/Archive FWIW. Ardric47 04:57, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Purely on the technical side, there are problems with your solution. Accurate automatic conversion is not possible. Not all instances of "color" can be replaced with "colour", for instance. e.g. the film Colors is always spelt that way, as is the command  in BASIC. And to be self-referential, the sentence above start with "Not all instances of" would be trashed by your proposed enhancement.


 * The only solution that could work reliably would require every instance of every br/am word to be tagged. For example: "The opening scene for Colors uses the red lots." This would require the MediaWiki software to allow templates to access custom user-specific settings, which is not allowed at present (for cache performance reasons). [i.e.  USER:USERNAME/spellingpref  cannot be used to make a choice within template code, because USERNAME is not allowed], see bug 4196


 * Finally, however, I'll address the problem itself. Most people aren't worried about the different spellings, and so a solution to the problem is not a pressing issue. Perhaps it will become more so as teachers find themselves using materials from Wikipedia in classes, and demand their texts be automatically localised correctly (I don't see it, really). Most conflicts come from people who are unaware of the variations and so they "correct" what doesn't need to be, and so finding a technical solution will not make them any more aware of the issue. Hope this addresses your proposal adequately. —Pengo 04:51, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * When the title doesn't need to be converted, type: ; When the page content doesn't need to be converted, type: ; When a particular word doesn't need to be converted, enclose the word in:   s.
 * This is better than using templates and tags. There are many Brit/Amer variants, tags would be a great deal of work and maintenance; However, there are only a few instances where one would not want to convert (such as the examples you've listed, the film, BASIC...), allowing for automatic conversion brings all the spelling issues to a few pages MediaWiki:Conversiontable/en-br and MediaWiki:Conversiontable/en-am. Type  on the page Colors (film); Type   in the article on BASIC.   --Shibo77 17:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I like that idea. --Nintendorulez talk 20:15, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Featured content according to namespaces
We should have featured content according to namespaces. As far as concerned, we have main, image, portal, category, wikipedia, template, user, mediawiki and help namespaces. In which we have already feature status for first three of them. I oppose featured list in article namespace. We should have different namespace for lists, like, simply (List) namespace. For featured topic, I would suggest category space to be featured rather than every article to be featured. I want to make a proposal to be featured for wikipedia namespace, template namespace. Pour in your suggestions. Thank you, Shyam  ( T / C ) 06:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I refer others to previous discussion on the matter at Wikipedia talk:Featured content. Pursuant to my comments there, I believe this proposal fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and function of the featured processes. They are established to promote the merits of Wikipedia as an encyclopædia.--cj | talk 07:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
 * The intent of our featured process is to showcase encyclopedia content of exceptional quality. However, it must be noted that in practice it also involves an element of 'bragging rights'. Having gotten articles promoted to featured status is often considered in RFAs (though it has nothing to do with adminship) and listed on user pages. This is not a bad thing per se... people should feel good about helping to make Wikipedia better. What Shyam is suggesting is an extension of that concept, but I agree with Cyberjunkie that it focuses too much on the recognition of achievement 'side effect' of the current featured process.
 * I think it is fair to say that I am one of the 'top 20' template builders on Wikipedia and that alot of my work would be included in any list of 'featured templates'... which would certainly be personally gratifying, but I don't think it would do much to advance the encyclopedia. Possibly it would make people more aware of what template options are out there, but that tends to happen automatically with the useful ones. There'd be no value to the average reader in knowing that (or whatever) is a 'featured' template. Someone who had never edited Wikipedia or done so only casually would have no idea what a template was or why the page displayed was 'featured'.
 * There would be some benefit to 'advertising' useful wikiprojects and templates and the like to the community of editors, but not to the readers of the encyclopedia. Thus, I don't think that the 'featured' structure is the right vehicle for these 'behind the scenes' items. Featured status is for 'front page' materials that Joe Citizen might find on a Google search. Promotion of other stuff (most active wikiprojects, most heavily used templates, et cetera) should follow a different path - probably in the Wikipedia namespace. --CBDunkerson 12:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, I edit my proposal in points format so that every point can be discussed.
 * Featured lists should be a part of List namespace (which does not exist, need to be created).
 * Featured topics should be a part of category namespace.
 * Some of good quality and very useful project from wikipedia namespace should be featured as featured project (we don't have featured project but according to consensus we can have). It may help to users in contributing more effectively. We can select a collaboration project of the week from featured project, if needed.
 * Some good quality and very useful (in the sense of "they are linked to important and good articles") templates should have featured status. As article contains a template, if a template is of good quality then an article page also looks good.
 * Please suggest your views on each point. Shyam  ( T / C ) 12:46, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Re: #3 and #4 (projects and templates) should be promoted in a different fashion from encyclopedic content, per reasoning of CBDunkerson.
 * I would suggest that they might get added to a Tip Of The Day each. That way they would appear at the Community Portal, and at the Help:Contents page, hence remaining visible only to Editors, their target audience. --Quiddity 19:30, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Re: #1, I agree with ALoan, that lists are just articles with lists in them. A new namespace is not needed or desirable.
 * Re: #2, we already have 1 Featured topic, so i guess you should discuss that with the maintainers of that page? --Quiddity 19:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * What is the criteria to distinguish between a featured article and a featured list? If an article is well-comprehensive and have good numbers of referenced and well formatted tables in it, then should it be a part of either featured lists or featured articles? So, I think we need an extra namespace for all the lists. Many of the articles simply have notaions as list of something, so we can simply move those pages to list namespace. In addition to that for featured topics, if a proposal has been made then we can contact maintainers to make a category which have only those articles which have been featured as a part of featured topics. Shyam  ( T / C ) 20:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think I'm understanding you. What advantage is there to having a separate List: namespace? &mdash; Saxifrage &#9998; 23:33, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

If we create List namespace then firsly we can have all the information regarding datas. We can have some comparison factors in the list namespace. We won't have to the look the full article page for collecting datas. Shyam ( T / C ) 07:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I think there might be a language barrier getting in the way, because I can't make any sense from that. &mdash; Saxifrage &#9998; 08:06, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I wanted to say that if we create a seperate namespace for list. Articles starting from list of.. can simply be shifted to list namespace. All the articles in list category can be shifted to list namespace. We can simply distinguish between the lists and article pages by creating list namespace. Shyam  ( T / C ) 07:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Statistics on anonymous vandalism

 * Copied from Village pump (miscellaneous) as its seems relavant to the discussion here, these figure seem about right to me --Salix alba (talk) 21:22, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I had to do a data collection for a statistics class, so I chose to do it on anonymous vandalism on Wikipedia. I found that 38% (+/- 13.5%) of anonymous edits were considered vandalism by WP:VAN. The confidence interval is 95%. The sampling was done at 19:15 (UTC) on May 4th (a Thursday). The rate of vandalism may change depending on the time of day and day of week, but I didn't need to do that much work for the class project. The sample was the first 50 edits that appeared on the recent changes page (logged-in users hiden). 19 of them were considered vandalism. There were a few edits where my own judgment as to what vandalism is may have influenced the results, but I think the definition, overall, was fairly easy to interpret. On a non-scientific note, I also counted the number of vandalisms that were link spam and the number of vandalisms that were reverted within 20-50 minutes. 5 of the 19 vandalisms were link spam (26.3%), and 11 of the 19 vandalisms were reverted within 20-50 minutes (57.9%). The later statistics did not have a great enough sample size to mean much, but they are still interesting. I know it is a fairly simple study, but I thought some people would be interested, and I had to do it anyway. Does anyone know if there have been other similar studies? I think the amount of vandalism we have to deal with here is quite outrageous. I think further studies on time dependency of vandalism and the rate of vandalism for logged-in users would be interesting. --Basar 20:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes that's interesting. Have there been any studies of anonymous editing in general? I.e. types of articles; IP addresses, &c. It would be nice if registered users could optionally have a summary bar appear at the top of each page showing things like: # edits in past month; % anonymous edits; % reverts, &c. My suspiscion is that vandalism actually only occurs on a relatively small percentages of the pages, so it would be nice if registered users could see statistics to that effect. That might help draw attention and more careful review to those pages. :) &mdash; RJH 17:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Ads poll
Would it be possible to have a poll on whether or not everyone would mind ads on wikipedia if it will make the site better. If the majority don't mind then having a few ads on wikipedia shouldn't be a problem. The poll could be just a small box on the left side underneath the toolbox Pseudoanonymous 01:38, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * No, that's a non-starter. You will drive away long-time editors.  User:Zoe|(talk) 02:05, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm personally in favor of ads, at least before considering how many people would leave if they were instituted. But realistically, this is something that's going to be decided by the Foundation, not us.  (Not to mention that I suspect it would stand a poor chance of achieving any kind of consensus.) &mdash;Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * If there are ads, how much do I get paid for my contributions? --John Nagle 04:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Contributors are not paid. If you do not wish money to be made from your contributions, you should stop contributing to Wikipedia, because there are certainly plenty of mirror sites featuring your articles with advertisements. — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't get this objection. The Wikimedia Foundation has annual expenditures in the ballpark of $1 million.  Why don't you expect to be paid now?  Would it change anything if logged-in users were exempt from ads, so you wouldn't have to see them? &mdash;Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, how might advertisements make it better? Superficially, they make it worse, as I'm sure has been discussed many times before.  Are you suggesting advert to pay for Wikimedia expenses?  I'm opposed in any case, both to advertisements, and to including a poll feature in standard skins. --Cedderstk 14:17, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, advertisements could pay for better hardware, as well as possibly more paid programmers. This would definitely benefit the site.  (I don't think we really need paid admins or supervisors of any kind; one of the better things about Wikipedia is Jimbo's point #2.) &mdash;Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Why are you opposed to a poll feature? What harm would that do? All it will do is allow us to be more in touch with wikipedia's community and everyone who visits here. It will allow everyone to tell us whether or not they want something, and how they want it to be; like the village pump but only faster. Advertisements will wikipedia better because we will be able to have fulltime admins who are paid(who get promoted from volunteer admins or are hired), and we can pay experts to check the accuracy of major articles. Why would people leave just because there is ads? We are not turning wikimedia into a private company, it will still be non-profit, just with more money. With a poll we can help the Wikimedia Foundation make the decision of whether or not to put ads on. If some people are going to leave, they will be back once they see the improved accuracy and the reduced vandalism, if they won't come back then thats exceptable losses. Pseudoanonymous 19:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * As Simetrical said, this is a decision to be made by the Foundation, and any poll of editors will have no weight in the decision. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:18, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, that's a bit too strong. Community opinion will be considered if this comes up, just it won't necessarily be a deciding factor per se. &mdash;Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I think I have a solution to articles with initial lowercase letters.
Uncyclopedia, a wiki hosted by Wikia, found a workaround a while back. All it uses is a a template. You won't see the title show as on the template because for some reason it uses  for when no variable is provided. Ironic, since that makes the template pointless if you don't pass a variable, but whatever... Anyway, you can see it in action at my userpage (here), my userpage (there), iPod (there), eBay (there), and probably more articles too. Nobody seems to have had a problem with it there, but there might be a browser or two out there that wouldn't like this. If nobody can find an incompatible browser though, should I go ahead and edit to finally display lowercase letters? Just thought I'd bring it up here before making such a drastic change to a template used so commonly, in case someone finds an issue with this code. --Nintendorulez talk 01:37, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * No offence intended, but your userpage looks horrible when viewed with the Classic skin on Wikipedia. Quite a few people use Classic, so a change such as you suggest would not be acceptable.-gadfium 04:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * If the class is renamed (e.g. littleletter) and placed in MediaWiki:Monobook.css non-Monobook skins will show the default. This means such users won't see the lowercase letter, but then again would that be any different from the way things are right now? GarrettTalk 06:21, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, we'd just need to change the white background of the template to whatever CSS variable corresponds to the normal background there, right? Then it'll work on all skins. --Nintendorulez talk 19:14, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, I just tried classic, and I see what you mean. I thought it would be an issue of the white background around the box, but it's a bigger problem. Doubt a way could be found to fix that... --Nintendorulez talk 19:48, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The solution is simple. For example, this is Monobook while this is Classic. Classic users don't see anything special, because the table style is only installed for Monobook. GarrettTalk 23:50, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Lowercase letters are technically possible, if they are enabled. Wiktionary is a prime example of thise. However, I believe that initial capital letters were determined to be prefered. Don't hold me accountable for it, though. — THIS IS M ESSED [[Image:R with umlaut.png]] OCKER (TALK) 14:08, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary is case-sensitive in the first character, right? As in "polish" and "Polish" would be two separate articles. This proposal isn't about making Wikipedia more case-sensitive, it's about making articles be able to display a lowercase title on themselves.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  18:28, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It would get annoying... "Chocolate contains milk and sugar" would have a redlink until someone redirects Chocolate to chocolate. And so on. Unless some sort of auto-redirect were implemented... GarrettTalk 23:42, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:on nl


'''The English Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. However, there is a corresponding article on the Dutch Wikipedia.'''
 * [ Start the article on the English Wikipedia] or add a request for it.
 * Search for in other articles.
 * Look for in Wiktionary, our sister dictionary project.
 * Look for in the Commons, our repository for free images, music, sound, and video.
 * Look for pages within Wikipedia linking to this article.

Would using the template be a good or a bad idea? I wanted to propose this template for deletion, but the original author did provide some valid arguments on the talk page, why this template would be useful. —Ruud 16:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I've substed the template and made the category a link so that this page doesn't get added to the category.-gadfium 21:58, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
 * sounds like a good template, but we'd need similar ones for other languages too - it could get messy if we had them for 30-40 languages! Grutness...wha?  01:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't particularly like this idea. Telling someone that we don't have an article on X but the Y language encyclopedia does is only going to be helpful to the small minority of users that speak Y. To use the present example, if every Dutch speaker also knows English then still only 3% of English speakers would know Dutch. Some languages would do better, many would do worse, but on average it would seem to be of only limited utility. At the same time it causes a sort of active harm by turning any page with that template on it into a blue link even though there is really no content. Most of the time when I start new articles it is because I noticed a red link that I know something about. By eliminating those red links it becomes harder to grow this encyclopedia. In my book, this harm, though also fairly minor, outweighs the good. Dragons flight 02:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I also worry about false bluelinks. Perhaps a template like this could be put on nonexistent articles' talk pages? It would be less useful so hidden, but at least it would still categorize the articles and provide a known interlang link if/when the article does get written. Melchoir 02:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Puting it on talk pages would be a good idea! It would be more like something along the liens of "If you create this article, please also add links to and from the nl wikipedia, where an article on this topic already exists." - it would also be a good way to allow searching for pages to be translated while not making the concerned pages blue links :) Flammifer 05:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I think having templates like this on the Talk pages of such non-existent articles is a great idea! It doesn't damage the redlinks, and it provides information that can potentially jump-start the article when it's created. I do think that the template format shouldn't look like the "there is no page here, would you like to create it?" default text of uncreated pages if it's no longer intended to appear instead of that text.
 * I imagine that if we really wanted it to be thorough, we could arrange to have a bot populate the Talk pages of non-existent articles that have corresponding articles at other-language wikipedias. I'm not sure how the current bots that I always see updating interlanguage links work, so I'm not sure if it would be feasible to piggyback on them or to use a similar bot program to do this. I think it bears investigation if this gets adopted as a Good Idea, though. &mdash; Saxifrage &#9998; 23:31, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The way Yurikbot works is by checking each page for links to other languages' pages, and if they exist, making sure a reciprocal link exists. So if he:כלב linked to en:Dog, but en:Dog had no link to he:כלב, Yurikbot would add  כלב  to Dog.  This could be adapted fairly easily for cases where a wiki links to a nonexistent page in another wiki: the appropriate templates could be auto-added to the target wiki.  Put on talk pages, a template like this isn't a bad idea, although I wouldn't call it massively useful. &mdash;Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:41, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Hm, but how often are there interwiki links to non-existent pages? &mdash; Saxifrage &#9998; 04:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this would be a hard talk to do automatically in general, but it should be do-able for articles which have the same title in all languages, such as biographies. —Ruud 22:54, 2 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I realize few people will be able to read a foreign language page, but we could mention in the template that if you are able to translate it for the English Wikipedia, feel free to do so. That would be more than helpful, I'm sure. For all languages. --Nintendorulez talk 01:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Article of the Day
On April 20, I thought that the article 420 (cannabis culture) would receive a lot of attention. I was correct. While it indeed received a lot of vandalism (leading it to semiprotection), a plethora of good came out of it. 4/20 was good for 420. All this positive attention that an article received in one day made me think of something: imagine all the articles that can receive attention if we give them high exposure. That led me to an idea: Article of the Day. Everyday of the year, a random article would be selected and featured as the Article of the Day. The declaration of the Article of the Day could be done by anyone who's fast enough to do it. The article would be declared on the template, which (hopefully) would be posted in many high-profile areas, including the Main Page. While we already have article collaborations, which are good and all, those are more long-term and involve a lot more process. Article of the Day is a more simple, quick version. If 420 (cannabis culture) could be greatly improved within a single day, imagine all the other articles capable of high status from high exposure, especially though vague topics! — THIS IS M ESSED OCKER  (TALK) 21:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Good idea, however finding somewhere on the main page could be hard and although I support, your proposal would probably come under a lot of criticism. Lcarsdata Talk 17:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * The only reason the 420 article was under high exposure is because of the event, not because it was under exposure on Wikipedia. In fact, Wikipedia probably gave it no exposure...that's why your proposal doesn't make much sense (although I'm probably misunderstanding something). --Osbus 23:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This sounds like Collaboration of the week, except there wouldn't be as much time to work on the article, and using Special:Random would result in lots of articles that few editors would want to work on.


 * The idea that I do find interesting is to advertise such collaborations on the Main Page. Newcomers to Wikipedia are unlikely to visit the Community Portal, so they aren't exposed so much to the collaborative project side of Wikipedia, as opposed to just its product. Would it be a good idea for the community to hold a small outpost on the Main Page? Melchoir 00:20, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This is a really interesting idea [User:Messedrocker|Messedrocker]],

Remember when Google spelled their name in Braile and linked to our article as the first hit when you clicked on the logo? Editing on braile went bananas! What should be done, rather than having "article of the day" being random (which is quite like WP:COTW) but having it linked to something relevant to current events, that day in history... That way, issues that a non-wikipedian would be likely to seach for that day would more likely come up with our page. Precisely because of its topicality, they would be more likely to come here, more likely to return here and more likely to improve that article.

In a nutshell, I suggest not an "Article of the day" that is just random but "Article of the day" that has some special significance/importance/topicality. Witty lama 12:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * That's a great idea. I'd check it out now and then. --Nintendorulez talk 01:52, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Userbox matchmaking?
Userboxes can tell us almost anything about a user. Using about 160, I for one have composed a detailed profile. A profile made of userboxes must also be much more machine-readable (at least if the machine looks at the wikicode) than one freely written. I think such machine-readable profiles of people could be used to create a free online dating service. Besides being a great perk for existing editors, this could encourage otherwise non-Wikipedians to create accounts and user pages, and eventually become involved as editors as a result. Here's how it could be implemented with very little by way of server resources, and no financial cost to anyone.

Each Wikipedian interested would use userboxes to make a profile on his or her user page, or a sub-page thereof. (We might consider allowing people to protect their own user pages.) Anyone whose user page contained Template:User friendly, Template:User girlfriend-wish or Template:User girlfriend-wish, and userboxes for a few basic things (such as gender, home city/region and language) would be considered part of the pool, although a more detailed profile like mine would be preferred. Those on other language Wikipedias would be considered if they had matching Babel templates.

When a user was searching for matches, they would run an open-source script that someone would put up on a Web page for the purpose. Because of the scripting involved, this would probably have to be either a special page or non-wiki. The script would tell them what userboxes they would need to add, if any. If they had all the requisite userboxes, they could enter their search criteria (e.g. date must identify as heterosexual, must be between 25 and 30 years old, must be en-3 or higher, must live in Ontario, must not be blocked, must not be an Aspie, must have made 50 or more edits in English main namespace). They would also have options about what to consider (astrological sign? favourite colour? food preferences?) Then, the script would search the User namespaces of all Wikipedias (which it would have downloaded, and converted into a more usable database form earlier that day) and generate a compatibility score for each result. Then, it would output a ranked list of links, with the most likely matches at the top. The open-source nature would mean that those dissatisfied with their results could make or request improvements.

Finally, the searcher would follow these links, read the user pages, and decide whether each one was interesting. He or she would then post to the user talk page of the object of his or her affections, then add it to his or her watchlist. If no reply was forthcoming, he or she could use Special:Emailuser. Boilerplate greetings would be available for this purpose, as would boilerplate replies of both yes and no, but many users would choose to write their own messages. If the person accepted, the two could continue talking on the user talk pages, use the e-mail form to start a conversation that way, or use instant messaging. And they would live happily ever after. The end. :-) Seahen 12:27, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Are you serious? This is an encyclopedia. &mdash;Bunchofgrapes (talk) 21:52, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * And an online community. This sort of thing is the logical extension of The Wikipedia Community! Seahen 22:24, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Not so much mission creep as mission leap off in a completely unconnected direction. Bunchofgrapes is right - we should do what this was set up to do - be an encyclopedia. User pages are to assist in that, not to compete with livejournal or myspace or whoever. Average Earthman 21:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * You said it. Yikes. Incidentally, this is exactly what people were talking about when they said that userboxes were the first step to Wikipedia becoming MySpace. This is horrendous. There are other, far more appropriate places for this. Please don't do it here.--Sean Black (talk) 22:01, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * This is quite pointless, and trying to sort users by categorization based on userboxes has already resulting in desysoping and RfArs. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 22:11, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Um, no. (Doing the Sean Black thing since he didn't) psch  e  mp  |  talk  22:12, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * What are you talking about? Users probably already try to make acquaintances through userboxes, and I'm just thinking of automating it so that Wikipedians looking to date/befriend other Wikipedians can explore more options in the amount of time. Seahen 22:28, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Users do indeed make acquaintance through userboxes for the express purpose of cooperating on Wikipedia. Any other use is superfluous and should not be encouraged. Suggestions like this are likely to lead to more of a crackdown on userboxes rather than a relaxation of the rules. If you can't find an existing wiki on which to play your dating games, try setting one up yourself: setting up a wiki is intentionally easy after all. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 17:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * A reminder from WP:NOT, "The focus of user pages should not be social networking". Dating falls under that category, it shouldn't be done, and an effort to make it easier is ill-conceived. End of story. This isn't myspace, its an encyclopedia.  psch  e  mp  |  talk  22:34, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * What more appropriate places are you thinking of? I think the following are essential aspects of the plan, which we won't get with MySpace or Livejournal.
 * The open-source nature would allow people to improve the classification and match-evaluation systems.
 * An account can be created without giving contact or billing information.
 * There are no fees for the users.
 * Userboxes are easy for both humans and computers to read, and makes it easy to change or organize a profile.
 * At the same time, users can also easily add text or personal photos anywhere on their pages, outside the userboxes.
 * Since the userboxes and many of the user pages and accounts are already on Wikipedia, negligible extra disk space is required on Wikimedia servers. It also means the project will have a well-developed folksonomy and sufficiently large population from the get-go.
 * I could consider doing it on a Wikia instead, but we'd have to copy over the user pages and userboxes, and the images they used, en masse. We'd also need a way to publicize it to Wikipedians. Seahen 22:42, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Please don't manually copy a large number of userboxes to Wikia. We already have them all at wikia:c:userboxes. Be patient... we'll launch this soon. Angela. 13:21, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * See Requests for arbitration/Pedophilia userbox wheel war for a way this system could be abused. It's just a bad idea. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 22:45, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Nice delaying tactic, sending someone to something as heavy as an ArbCom debate. Keeps them away for hours, if they bother to read the whole thing before responding. But all I really needed to read was the TfD debate. But having read that, the summary provided, the findings of fact and the decisions, I feel the userbox should have been kept. I would personally have changed "pedophile" to "boylover" or "girllover," to (a) eliminate the criminal/abusive connotations and (b) imply only the desire and not the act. But I don't see as the userbox's existence would make for bad publicity unless its use was widespread. Even then, the strongest criticism would mostly come from (a) those who don't know that non-abusive pedophilia exists, and (b) the extreme religious right who were trying to ban school sex ed in the 60s. Just because a userbox shows support for activity that is criminal in some jurisdictions does not make it invalid, hence User pro-cannabis. Seahen 23:42, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Seahen, You are ignoring the point that Wikipedia is not, was not, and never will be used for a dating service, as that is *against policy*. It doesn't matter how easy it would be to do, It is *against policy*. Which I quoted for you above. psch  e  mp  |  talk  22:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I would estimate that almost everyone looking for a Web-pal or a date would be interested. Granted, this is by not means all the users, but it's probably at least a large fraction. And my question still hasn't been answered: Is it possible to batch-copy all userboxes, userbox images and facebook images? Seahen 00:13, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep in mind that personal userboxes can be a liability to serious work. For example, your user page tells me that you're a 17-year-old single male with one userbox for every five edits, and you live in Ontario yourself. Call me unfair, but these revelations cause me to doubt your priorities regarding this proposal. Now, I can see you put a lot of effort into it, and this village pump should encourage creativity. So thank you for considering ways to improve Wikipedia, and better luck next time! But this one proposal can't be rejected strongly enough. Melchoir 22:56, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Why not go to myspace or some existing matchmaking site, and list "edits Wikipedia" as one of your interests? That way you get to use their specialized matchmaking algorithms with not much effort. FreplySpang (talk) 23:05, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * MySpace is fine for those who like it, if it has an equally extensive folksonomy and an equally large userbase. But a wiki offers some distinct advantages, as I mentioned above. Would it be possible to batch-copy the user pages and userboxes, and their images, to a Wikia instead? If so, would it address everyone's concerns about doing it on Wikipedia? Seahen 23:51, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, you want a wiki. Well, there are plenty of wiki's that aren't at all related to Wikipedia. Legit or not, I don't think you'd generate much goodwill or buyin by doing that batch copy. FreplySpang (talk) 23:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Why not? And are you talking about copying the user pages, or the userboxes, or both? Seahen 23:59, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Userpages, userboxes, whatever. Anyway, my personal opinion is that you are vastly overestimating the number of Wikipedians who would be interested in this. FreplySpang (talk) 00:04, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I would estimate that almost everyone looking for a Web-pal or a date would be interested. Granted, this is by not means all the users, but it's probably at least a large fraction. And my question still hasn't been answered: Is it possible to batch-copy all userboxes, userbox images and facebook images? Seahen 00:19, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Heh that's an interesting idea (userbox matchmaking). However, as fun as it sounds, we can not implement it. Wikipedia is, as much as it is an online community of the smartest people in the world (wink), an encyclopedia after all. Matchmaking, dating, and such, would slow down our goals for being one of the best encyclopedias in the world. Oh yeh, for all of you who say to this well-meaning user to go to Myspace or Facebook, Myspace/Facebook doesn't have userboxes. All they have is a boring profile, nothing nearly as cool as userbxes. --Osbus 23:43, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I have copied this proposal to PersonalsWiki:Ideas_and_concepts_for_dating_sites. Any further discussion should occur there; I am no longer watching this page. Seahen 14:43, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Acceptance of Wiki Information by Professors
One problem I've run into with my teachers is that some of our articles are so freely editable that teachers see them as unreliable, whatever their accuracy. For most articles, noting their accuracy is unnecessary, but for major articles that aren't the subject of much factual debate and aren't really affected by current events (for example, "John Wilkes Booth") such a confirmation would go a long way to expanding the acceptance of our site.

I propose that for articles that have been around for some time and whose information has been basically confirmed, for us to note the article's accuracy, lock the page down, and push any proposed changes to the discussion page (or a new "Proposed Additions" page) so that Wikipedia content can, progressively, be better recognized for the accuracy of its content and more justifiably cited in academic works. Putting a small icon (maybe of a "school house") right-aligned next to the article's title would indicate that an article would be fact-checked by editors and locked down from easy changes so as to be more easily referenced by curious professors.

One risk would be the perception that there are to tiers of Wikipedia articles -- factually accurate ones and ones of questionable accuracy. But I think checking uncontentious articles for their academic reliability and confirming them as such would prove beneficial to students and Wikipedians alike. All of us are aware of problems that go with a massive and open project like this. Decreasing that ambiguity where we can, however, is something that I think we can do in the case of uncontentious articles.

This doesn't mean the pages would be permanently unchangeable; it would just mean that the pages could only change given some concensus by our researchers, which is already, for the most part, the practice for both contentious and vandalized articles. This change would help convince Universities of Wikipedia's academic usefulness because of this additional oversight. Pat 22:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * See Stable version. Kotepho 22:53, 7 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Academics don't like tertiary sources. Even a reference to Encyclopedia Britannica and similar 'respected' publications result in lower grades. The best solution is to encourage people to put references to primary and secondary sources in their Wikipedia articles. Articles without references should be considered less reliable than referenced work. To please your Professors, follow any references from Wikipedia to 'good' sources and cite those. If the Wikipedia author didn't provide them, use Google with some of the terms in the article, find some 'good' sources for your assignment, then return to Wikipedia and improve the article by inserting references to the sources you found. I have a tool that makes this easier, see my user page. --Dave 01:29, 8 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I certainly agree with that. I guess my point is a bit broader than strictly academic, though I didn't really make explicit mention of that in my first post, and I do agree it's better to go straight to the source rather than cite Wikipedia directly (I've done this many times.) In general, too, I think that letting Wikipedia content be open to editing improves our articles and helps to attract more and more contributors to this endeavor. I am proof positive of this latter point.


 * I believe, however, that locking sections down would be useful in terms of QC because it would help to minimize some of the content policing the folks upstairs (and myself and others downstairs) have to do. As evidenced by Kotepho's link and the discussion therein, the idea of "stabling" articles has been talked about for several months now, especially after the John Seigenthaler controversy. My main point is that regardless of if citing Wikipedia is espcially beneficial to students' grades, I believe that for Wikipedia to stand as a reliable tertiary source, even for non-academic inquiries, it would behoove it to slow the edits to its most reliable articles, and then note those articles as particularly reliable. Especially early on, I would think the practice would affect only a small number of articles, but I think the overall benefit to the site would be great if such a system was implemented.


 * Btw, thanks for your citation tool! It's always fun to see more and more things related to this site. Pat 06:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)