Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-03-16/Discussion report

The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.

Centralized discussions

 * Proposed trial of Flagged Revisions
 * A proposal to trial Flagged Revisions has been opened at Flagged protection and patrolled revisions. The proposition is divided in two sections: flagged protection and patrolled revisions. With flagged protections an article can be protected by an administrator so that the version viewed by readers by default is the latest flagged version. Patrolled revisions add a passive flag used to monitor articles for vandalism, BLP violations, POV pushing, and other editorial issues. Patrolled revisions can be used for all articles, but have no effect on the version viewed by readers. The proposals are independent but supplement each other. They involve the creation of a reviewer usergroup. This implementation can also support secondary trials. The main trial should run for two months if approved, then a community discussion would be planned to decide the future of this implementation.


 * Proposed WikiProjects
 * This week three WikiProjects were proposed. WikiProject Historic Sites is proposed to cover officially designated historic sites world-wide. Currently WikiProject National Register of Historic Places only covers locations listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this project would help provide broader coverage of designated locations. WikiProject Copyright Cleanup is proposed to be a central location where users would work to obtain permission, revise or replace violations, provide commentary at review boards, and delete violations. WikiProject Maintenance is proposed to be a parent project of all maintenance WikiProjects and work with Maintenance. The WikiProject would provide a list of active WikiProjects and Task Forces dedicated to maintenance work and would direct editors to the one suitable for their interests. It has also been stated that the project would attempt to aim editors to specific maintenance tasks when a backlog occurs.

Proposals

 * Proposal to create an external links noticeboard
 * Themfromspace has proposed a noticeboard for the discussions over individual external links on Wikipedia. The noticeboard would be a centralized place to find consensus in disputes involving external links over what should and shouldn't be linked to. Supporters say that having such a noticeboard would be helpful for editorial disputes regarding links that do not fall under the category of spam, while opponents state that the noticeboard may have too much overlap with WT:EL.


 * Proposal to create a genre troll noticeboard
 * Scarian has proposed a noticeboard for handling issues with genre trolls. A genre troll is defined as someone who continually changes genres in the musical artist infobox, or similar locations, to suit their own personal tastes with no reliable sources to support them. The noticeboard would be a centralized place to discuss how to deal with genre trolls. Supporters say that having such a noticeboard would drastically decrease the amount of time that would be spent on dealing with genre trolls, while opponents state that it would be "an incredibly over-specific noticeboard" that would be chronically under-watched.


 * Proposal to introduce non-commercial licensed photos on Wikipedia
 * After recent discussions at Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates, a proposal was brought to the village pump regarding the possible reopening of discussion regarding Wikipedia's non-free content guideline. Voiced opinions have ranged from allowing all non-commercial content, to allowing some non-commercial content as a limited replacement for fair use, to continuing the existing ban on all non-commercial content. Prominent community members Jimmy Wales and Erik Möller have both stated that they oppose Wikipedia using non-commercial content, and note that the Foundation's position is unlikely to change. Supporters of the change state that this would allow Wikipedia to have greater access to non-commercial content and stop companies from "exploiting" Wikipedia's free content.

Requests for comment

 * RfC regarding the status of Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)
 * An RfC has been opened to discuss the current status of the proposed fiction notability guidelines. The proposition states that the guideline should be tagged with rejected, with historical, or restored to a version from August 2007. There is an even amount of users who state that any changes should be made at a later date and state that the proposal should be restored to its past state. In response to the RfC an essay in place of WP:FICT; this proposition hasn't garnered much discussion as of press time.


 * RfC regarding spoilers in the lead of an article and guideline modification
 * An RfC has been opened to discuss whether the spoiler guideline should be modified to exclude plot details that some consider to be spoilers from the lead section of an article. While there is both support and opposition to a change, it is generally agreed upon that what constitutes a spoiler is subjective and they should only be in the lead if notable.


 * RfC regarding what size a bot should use when resizing non-free images
 * An RfC has been opened to determine a specific size oversized non-free images should be resized to. This discussion was started following a BRfA (See previous story) for a bot that would automatically resize non-free images. The non-free image rationale template states that a fair use image should not be more than 300 pixels in width or height, which ensures that the image's resolution is less than 0.1 megapixels. In addition to an appropriate size, discussions are revolving around whether or not a bot should be resizing images at all.