Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 2

Archiving guidelines
Hi, can I get some feedback on how quickly to archive stuff on the main page here? (I think I've been doing OK so far, 'cause nobody's complained, but it would be nice to get something down so I don't have to rely totally on gut.)

In general my policy has been to try and keep stuff on the main page as long as possible, modulo keeping that page reasonably sized. (I.e. I don't move stuff off unless I need to, to bring the size down - better to leave it there in case someone happens by some days later and wants to add a comment.)

My sense is that with questions about specific pages/people, it's OK to archive them as soon as the situation appears to have been resolved, plus a few days grace (2-4). My reasoning here is that there's usually not a lot of policy lessons to be drawn, it's usually just very specific questions ("is anon a.b.c.d really a vandal"). If it's a question about abuse of admin powers, I leave them longer (a full week after the last comment), so as to avoid the appearance of trying to sweep evidence of admin power abuse under the rug before people can see it.

With the "here's something the community might need to know about" (e.g. the request for input on the Wiktionary link thing), I try to leave those as long as possible (modulo size) to give them as wide a visibility as possible. Eventually they are kind of stale, so after a couple of weeks I would move them out.

The general policy questions I try and leave the longest, because those seem to be the things where people seem to come by and add a comment, even after a considerable time has passed.

Does this all sound OK? Do people have recommendations for changes? Noel (talk) 00:37, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. I wouldn't change anything in that policy unless people started complaining. Mgm|(talk) 08:11, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)


 * All, sorry to be archiving stuff fairly aggressively, but the page is growing quickly, and I'm trying to keep the size down. Noel (talk) 04:00, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I would welcome even more aggressive archiving. I would very much like this page page to remain manageable. dab (&#5839;)  12:57, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Seconded. Especially the incidents stuff, most of that can go after 24 hours. --fvw *  13:44, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)


 * OK, I will step it up a tiny bit to try and keep the page size down. Incident reports that don't get any discussion will go after a day or so. Noel (talk) 15:37, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Incident reports with policy discussion
Some incident reports have extensive policy dicussions in them. (See, for example, Administrators' noticeboard/Archive2.) I wish I could do something special with them, separate them out from the vast mass of ordinary incident reports. On the other hand, putting them in the General archive (the solution I've adopted up until now) doesn't seem right either. I was thinking of creating a third class of archive, "Notable Incidents", or something, but I worry that i) I'm getting a little too organization-happy, and ii) that it will make the archive navbox at the top of the page too complex. Am I worrying too much? Is this a worthwhile goal at all? Feedback solicited! Noel (talk) 13:34, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a good idea, but I'd do it slightly different: I'd archive them normally, but set up another page, maybe /Policy precedents, from where one could link to the relevant discussions in the general archive. For instance, under heading "Blocking policy", we could have the entry "Blocking for uploading inappropriate images (pedophilia, pornography, etc): see /Archive 3". Hmm &mdash; how to link between sibling sub-pages? Lupo 13:44, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * There's nothing inherently wrong with uploading pornography; It would be quite appropriate in an article about pornography for instance. Uploading images without using them in an article is always a problem ofcourse. --fvw *  14:50, 2005 Jan 12 (UTC)
 * My entry was just an example and the wording could be improved, so let's not get into a discussion whether an encyclopedia article on pornography needs explicit examples :-) If you read Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#More inappropriate image-loading, you'll see what this was about. Lupo 15:12, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Oooh, excellent suggestion, will do. Noel (talk) 14:56, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK, so I've taken a first crack at this, and produced Administrators' noticeboard/Incident index. It's a bit thread-bare at the moment, additional layout/formatting welcome.

There are only a few links on purpose - I'm trying to filter out only the most interesting discussions. I.e. I considered adding these as well:


 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1 contained some interesting discussion of the limits on admins' powers in dealing with abusive editors
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1 - Discussion of how to handle a tricky potential copyvio problem
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1 - Discussion of how to handle a borderline case of inappropriate content
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1 - Discussion of whether admins can deal with harrassers, and whether it's appropriate to "clean" Talk: pages of offensive comments
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1 - Extensive discussion of the 3RR rule and reversion


 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive2 - Discussion of whether the page is working
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive2 - Revert wars, whether arbitrators should enfore rulings
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive2 - Keeping failed RFC's

which are moderately worthwhile, but I decided not to, because if we kept this level of stuff, in a few months the index would have an amazing arount of stuff on it, and people wouldn't find it useful. So I only selected out the very best discussions to add to the Index.

Anyway, see what y'all think. Noel (talk) 01:01, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

what belongs here?
we seem to get more and more general requests for attention here. I see no reason for '172+Gzornenplatz contribution to the Polish-Soviet War' and 'Rhobite's Misuse of Administrator Blocking' here. this is not rfc. At best, we could have a section with simple links to such issues, but the arguing should take place elsewhere. dab (&#5839;) 09:22, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * The first one I agree with. This isn't the kindergarten monitoring team.
 * The second one I am much more sympathetic with doing here, because I think it's worth having a step less formal than a full-blown RfC when you think an admin has stepped over the line. It's good for both sides, actually, because if it's a frivolous complaint which is intended to do nothing more than harass the admin, it's good for the admin to hear a lot of other admins say "good call". On the other hand, if an admin has been a bit excessive (and we do see some of that), it's good to have a less formal way to let them know a little more gently than an RfC that they went a bit too far.
 * Still, a paragraph at the top saying "this isn't the place to bring disputes over content - we aren't referees, work it out yourselves, using the procedures Wikipedia lays out [here] and [here]" would be a good addition. Why don't you do one and add it? Noel (talk) 12:53, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree, had Ollie not opened an rfc anyway. It's either an informal complaint here, or a full-blown rfc. dab (&#5839;) 13:44, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Good point. When the 'Pedia speeds up a bit (so it's less painful to work on the page), I'll a note about that on the page. Noel (talk) 16:43, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Navboxes
We're shortly about to fill up the first four "Incident" archives, so we have to decide what to do about the Navbox. We can either add a line of four more, which will only put off the day we have to do it again for two months or so (at the current run rate). If we keep adding them, we'll eventually wind up with a huge navbox.

My suggestion is that we have two versions of the navbox - one (used on the main page, etc) which only list the four most recent Incident archives, and the other (used on the various archive pages) which lists all the archives. (I suppose if I were really clever I'd figure out a way to do it with one template that takes an argument, but I'm not sure there is a way to do that, is there?) Noel (talk) 13:47, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * The suggestion sounds good, as for ways to do it with a single template the only thing I can come up with is an ugly hack whereby you pass (parts of)  *  18:21, 2005 Jan 22 (UTC)

I have gone through and done most of the changes discussed above: made the longer Navbox, and switched the archive pages, and the Incident Index page, to use the longer Navbox. I have decided to hold off tweaking the short Navbox to refer to Incident archives 3-6 (I decided it would be too much of a hassle to update it for every new archive, and thought I'd do it two at a time) until I actually start putting stuff in 5. Noel (talk) 02:50, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually, now that I think about it some more, even the longer navboxs will eventually be pretty huge (at least for the IncidentArchives, which really crank up), so I think the in long run the right answer is to have a chronological index at the bottom of Administrators' noticeboard/Incident index. Noel (talk) 16:23, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

3RR reports
I'm thinking we need a seperate project page for 3RR reports and discussions; they're swamping WP:AN otherwise. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 17:47, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * agreed particularly if people are going to fell the need to dabte themGeni 18:12, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't particularly mind them here, but I can see why other people would. Perhaps we should use the village pump model, have several subpages which we transclude into one all-of-them page. --fvw *  18:22, 2005 Jan 22 (UTC)


 * How about we refactor the entire page in the manner of VfD, with included sub-pages? That way people can watch a single discussion, archiving will be easier (and will preserve history), and this page will only pop up in the watchlist when things are added to it or removed from it. &mdash;Ben Brockert (42) UE News  05:12, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * I'd rather not, I generally want to watch all discussions going on here, and watchlisting them all would be a major pain. Also, I think many of the incident reporters would botch the subpage creation+transclusion procedure. --fvw *  05:16, 2005 Jan 23 (UTC)
 * I generally don't want to watch all of the discussions going on here, but do want to watch for new ones. &mdash;Ben Brockert (42) UE News  05:31, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't mind having sup-pages, but I'd rather not transclude them. Yes it makes editing easier (less chance of a conflict), but it makes the main page slower to render (an issue these days with the overloading - try looking at VP, it takes forever to load - it works for VfD because many people go straight to the sub-pages), plus to which there seem to be caching issues, and you don't always get the most recent version of the sub-pages anyway when looking at the top page. Simply linking to sub-pages (as opposed to transcluding) would still get you the feature that you'd see the top page listed in your watchlist when a new item was added. Noel (talk) 14:15, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC) [Contribution reformated & repositioned to its proper logical place by Jerzy(t) 23:59, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC)]
 * Let's be clear: transclusion per se does nothing to ease editing, and sometimes interferes. What happens on VfD is that
 * Transclusion was reasonably promptly enhanced to handle included sections consistently, and
 * Nominators of VfD pages have done a good job of remembering to start with a section heading.
 * To edit anything placed above the heading, you have to
 * Get over your confusion about not finding it when you link via the "[edit]" lk next above it;
 * edit the section next below it;
 * either hit
 * "Save page" and then "Edit" on the resulting (full) subpage, or
 * edit the browser's URL to remove "&section=1" and hit Enter or "Go" (with MS IE).
 * (Similar considerations apply where a subpage gets additional sections (which BTW are usually created at the wrong heading-level).)
 * The amelioration of ed-confs is solely from use of multiple pages (sub- or not). Transclusion actually makes it harder on slow-pipe users, by permitting total-content growth to continue without being reined in in response to ed-conf pressure.
 * Thus all discussion that confuses transclusion with other multiple-page techniques is misguided.
 * Noel is quite correct in criticizing transclusion for compounding the problem of loading the rendered page. (Not everyone will be comfortable with my technique of editing the page instead of viewing it, finding the sub-page i'm interested in, and then viewing or editing just that sub-page. (I don't call that convenient: i call it inconvenient, and no better than dramatically less inconvenient than waiting for the full rendered page to load.)
 * --Jerzy(t) 23:59, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC)

It's very feasible to have a seperate page for 3RR violations, but I personally feel that right now there's not so many that it's difficult to follow. If it does, then I'm all for a seperate page, but for now, it's easier with one. -Frazzydee|&#9997; 23:38, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I think the current format is easier to work with; all the news one one page. Jayjg |  (Talk)  00:12, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree. Sub-pages are a watchlist nightmare. Filiocht 12:06, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * We could really do with a "watch page and all subpages" option. Proteus (Talk) 12:15, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Now that would be a really useful new feature. Filiocht 12:46, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, for more reasons than the noticeboard.
 * But until available, some of the time saved not wading around already-read and unchanged sections can be put into fixing the failures to do the needed linking that can compensate from the "...and all subpages" option's delayed availability. --Jerzy(t) 23:59, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC)


 * Hunh. I never actually read the page, I always keep up with things by using the diff function on the history.... Noel (talk) 03:42, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, but... the page is bloating, sometimes there are edit conflicts, the edit rate is very high, etc. Frankly I'd rather see all the endless bickering about enforcement/etc exiled to a separate page. I worry that people are tuning out because of the rapid churn, etc. Frankly, if I weren't archiving, I'd have probably tuned out by now - keeping up with this has really cut into my article editing. Noel (talk) 14:15, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC) [Contribution reformated & repositioned to its proper logical place by Jerzy(t) 23:59, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC)]

Sections and Subsections
I finally figured out why many people (esp. newbies) were always adding new sections (i.e. with == around them) instead of subsections (i.e. with ===, which we'd always have to then go fix. Simple: the "leave a message" link at the top of the page used "&section=new", which automatically creates a new section! Alas, there doesn't seem to be a "&subsection=new" directive, but I shamelessly ripped off some magic from NickJ's Redirect project stuff and tweaked the "leave a message" link so that it does something which, while very ugly and kludgy, is a little closer. If that hack is so ugly it makes you want to barf, feel free to revert it, but I thought I'd at least give it a try! Noel (talk) 03:39, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Time to split up the board into separate pages?
Well, I'm wondering if the time hasn't come to split up the board. The problems I mentioned above ("the page is bloating .. the edit rate is very high" continue), and deciding what to archive to control the bloat is becoming more difficult. I'd like to leave items about admins up longer, to prevent any claims that we are "sweeping complaints about admins under the rug quickly", but I'm just not sure we can afford to do so any more.

I am also still worried that people are tuning out because of the rapid churn, etc, which would really be a bummer, because it would void one of the reasons this board was created in the first place.

I have carefully reviwed the discussion above (at ), but I didn't detect a consensus about what to do. How about the following suggestion: split the board up into three sections:


 * One for reporting 3RR violations;
 * One for other Incidents;
 * The current board would retain only the current "Tasks/General" sections.

I suggest three sections rather than two to try and get ahead of the growth of traffic through the page, and because if we're going to make a change, and get people used to a different scheme, lets only do it once.

I do not suggest using separate pages for each subsection (and therefor possibly transclusion, which is a separate but subsidiary issue) because I'm not sure there's enough traffic to warrant a separate subpage for each incident, plus to which there is the issue of people not wanting to watchlist sub-pages. 3 pages with fixed names would probably be reasonable, though.

Comments? Noel (talk) 06:40, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Please, this page is constantly at the top of my watchlist with idle chatter. Having separate pages would help admins keep track of what they're interested in. silsor 07:08, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, TBSDY has been bold, so you've gotten your wish!
 * I will wait for the dust to subside a bit before dealing with the archives. (There has been a suggestion that maybe 3RR violation reports belong on a top-level page of their own.) If they do wind up staying here, I will create a third series of archives, for 3RR reports, and modify the Navbox appropriately. (I would also filter 3RR violation reports from the Incident archives across to the 3RR violation archives.) But let me wait and see what people decide to do. Noel (talk) 08:01, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Yay! A big improvement. As mentioned elsewhere, I'd like to have the 3RR board not be a subpage, but that's a minor issue. --fvw *  08:17, 2005 Feb 2 (UTC)


 * Good. Well, it's 5AM my time, I'm off to bed. I'll check in tomorrow to see if we've been hung in effigy yet.. :-) The /Incidents sub-page is still huge, but that's because there are a number of extensive discussions which aren't quite old enough to archive. As soon as those go, it will drop in size sharply. Noel (talk) 09:43, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Now that I think about it, I think actually that if the 3RR stuff stays here, it's probably better not to separate out the 3RR/Incident stuff into separate archives. I mean, what use does it serve, really? As long as the stuff is there, what difference does it make? Separating out the general stuff makes sense, because someone might actually want to read through those archives, but who in their right mind would want to read either 3RR or Incident archives? Plus to which it will mean less files to maintain, etc. Noel (talk) 19:39, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

3RR page?
So where is this new 3RR request page? RickK 06:40, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, if you like gave me 5 seconds to make the edits I'd be able to place my note at the top of this section, wouldn't I? :P Honestly! I only just started shifting these over 3 minutes ago!!!! - Ta bu shi da yu 06:42, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, if there'd been a discussion about this and an agreement to do it, and you'd given us some idea where the reports were going, I wouldn't have had to ask, would I? RickK 06:45, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)


 * And if we'd had a big discussion, nothing would have been done. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:48, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Reporting violations of the three revert rule should be done at Administrators' noticeboard/3RR. Ta bu shi da yu 06:42, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Why is it a subpage of WP:AN? I think it's gone past the noticeboard metaphor and should just be a separate page, just like ViP. --fvw *  06:49, 2005 Feb 2 (UTC)


 * Well, once it's a separate page, if we decide we want to call it 3RR Violation Reports, or whatever, it's a simple matter to rename it. Noel (talk) 07:30, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Ya, if people want that, go ahead. I'm just getting the ball rolling. Sometimes you've just got to get these things started... - Ta bu shi da yu 07:33, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also note that individual incidents seem to go on Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents, at the moment. dab (&#5839;) 10:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, I did already add a link to that in the standard Navbox, for everyone's convenience. I don't particularly care where the pieces (e.g. the 3RR page) wind up - once things settle down, I will fix everthing else up to match - archives, etc. Noel (talk) 18:30, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I have now added a link to 3RR page to the Navbox too. Noel (talk) 19:13, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ack. Re-reading that, I came across as more strident than I meant to do. I'm sorry, it wasn't my intention. RickK 01:06, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

3RR report page
I think having the 3RR page as a subpage of the AN is odd. How about moving it to Three-revert rule violations? --fvw *  17:18, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure how 3RR differs from Incidents and General. Isn't 3RR a kind of incident? It seems that the Mac Mini on Wheels was added to general, why doesn't that go under incidents? Moving it is fine by me though. BrokenSegue 20:15, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Funny you should mention that, I was pondering moving it, actually. Maybe I will, now that I've managed to get /Incidents down a bit in size. Noel (talk) 20:37, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * This was mainly done to keep the page small. - Ta bu shi da yu 23:21, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Now that I've thought about it for a while, I'm leaning towards keeping it here; it has to do with the point I mentioned above (at ) about only having a single set of archives. A lot of things fall on the borderline between 3RR and not 3RR - people get a 3RR block, then they start to edit anyway and get blocked for avoiding a block, etc. The difficulty in trying to categorize them was a big part of why I suggested above to only have a single archive. Really, the split into separate /3RR page and /Incidents page was in large part to i) keep pages small, and ii) reduce the churn rate - it's kind of a semi-artificial distinction, in other words. Hence my lean towards keeping it here. But I certainly wouldn't blow a gasket if we move it (less work for me ;-). Noel (talk) 20:37, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Ok, as long as it's considered it's fine by me. Go ahead and do the archiving thing you wanted to do for its current location then. --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 23:01, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC)

3 Incidents?
why is the list of incidents back on the main AN page now?? sure 3RRvios are incidents. It's just that they should be routine, straightforward incidents, while more general 'incidents' may require discussion. I don't mind either way, I'm just confused because the organisation seems to change every other day dab (&#5839;) 13:01, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * They're not actually on the main page, they are just transcluded - the text is still on the /Incidents page. That was a unilateral change by User:Rdsmith4 without any prior discussion; I don't like it, but have hesitated to revert it unless there is rough consensus that people prefer the other way. If you want to change it back, I would be very happy with it - people seem to be confused by the current layout, and are putting stuff which to me seem like incident reports in the General section. Noel (talk) 14:14, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Also, for the record, here's an update of previous comment left elsewhere: I see two problems with doing it this way:
 * Clicking the edit link next to "Incidents", to add a new section, tries to edit the top-level page, so people will still have to go to the subpage to start a new section (and this probably also broke the "add a comment" link at the top of the main page; I have to go check it).
 * It makes the top-level page larger, and slower to render (a la VfD, and VP, both of which I refuse to visit any more because the load/render time is ridiculous); there are also the usual caching bugs when you transclude a page that changes rapidly.
 * In short, I'm not a big fan of this change, but I'll wait and see what other people say. Noel (talk) 16:11, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I fixed the transinclude... Well, either make the whole AN board as transincludes or put it back the way it was. -- AllyUnion (talk) 18:04, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Ah, right, that's how to make the section edit link work... I knew there had to be a way, because VfD does it right, but I hadn't bothered to go work it out. The "leave a message" link in the opening text is still broken, though, I assume. Noel (talk) 18:46, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I'd prefer to have it moved back. Filiocht 14:34, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)


 * I will post a short note on the main page, pointing here and asking for people to express a preference. Noel (talk) 15:37, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have terminated the transclsion of the /Incidents subpage - it was making life much harder for the archiving (incidents kept getting filed on the main page, and the rapid churn made edit collisions a constant occurence while archiving). Anyone doesn't like it, feel free to change it back - and take over doing the archiving. Noel (talk) Noel (talk) 01:46, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Proposal: General as a transinclude
The noticeboard is getting a bit bigger. I suggest moving it as a transinclude to Administrators' noticeboard/General. I've made the page, but decided against transincluding it until we've reached a consensus. -- AllyUnion (talk) 14:35, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Sounds fine to me. --Slowking Man 02:37, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)


 * The problem I found when someone turned /Incidents into a transclude was that people got confused over which page to put things on, and the resulting confusion and page churn (and resultant editing conflicts) made archiving a lot more work for me, and made it really trying. At the moment, things have gone back to the relatively stable state they were in after we first split /Incidents and /3RR off as completely separate pages, and archiving has once again become a relatively simple, painless and fast operation. I'm really rather non-enthusiastic about anything that might upset that applecart!
 * I am also concerned about making yet another change to the organization after we just got finished with all that turmoil and change. I worry that we'd put people into reorg overload.
 * If you're concerned about the size of the main page, I can turn up the knob on the aggressiveness of archiving there a bit - I try and leave many things in "General" around for quite a while because people often drop in and leave comments after something has been quiet for a while (e.g. the recent comment added to WP:AN, and I see WP:AN just picked up one too after a week or so of silence). Most of the entries are pretty small; only two (#Sockpuppet detection, and #Page-move rollback) are really long.
 * Would slightly more aggressive archiving be good enough? Noel (talk) 04:04, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I have a better idea. Why don't we place any large scale discussions of general into a sub-subpage of the AN?  This way, any debate and/or discussion still going on can be either transincluded or left as an edit link.  Archiving that one particular discussion would be not a problem, as all you need to do is link it, with a notice saying something along the lines of: This discussion was separately archived due to the length of the debate.  Please see this page,, for the discussion. -- AllyUnion (talk) 15:27, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * If I can step back to your initial comment for a second, while I was offline I had an afterthought I wanted to get some info about. I'm trying to understand what problem you were trying to fix by i) moving General to a sub-page, and ii) then transcluding it onto the main page.
 * It couldn't have been the size of the main page for displaying, because the transclusion means its the same size for that. It couldn't have been the size for editing, because the bulk of the page was the General section; e.g. of the current 43KB main page, the General section is 38K - in other words, moving it en bloc to a subpage wouldn't help there either. Similarly arguments apply to the rate of change to the page, either for editing, or for how often it shows up on a Watchlist.
 * I'm guessing from your most recent comment that you may have had similar thoughts, hence your proposal to break the page up into smaller pieces.
 * So what exactly is the problem you're trying to fix, by breaking General up into subpages, with separate subpages for the more popular topics? If I can understand that, that will help me better understand if this is the right solution. Noel (talk) 21:57, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I want to try to make the WP:AN around 32k. Moving large discussions on to pages of their own would solve this. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:32, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * What's the issue with 32K, other than the notice if you go to edit?(That notice could probably be removed now, I think; AFAIK there are no longer any browsers still able to function with Wikipedia that have this limitation, now that using Wikipedia requires HTTP 1.1, etc.) Is there some other problem that exceeding this size causes? Also, note that adding a comment to any section, or adding a new section, doesn't require editing the entire page, and thus shouldn't trigger that warning. (Also note that many content pages are now above 32K, too...) Noel (talk) 17:01, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * The last time I checked, Wikipedia works just fine with Opera 6, and (IIRC) that browser has a problem with pages of more than 32K. It's also usable in Netscape 4.5 if you turn off stylesheets, but almost nobody uses that one anymore.  --Carnildo 20:58, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Still good idea to keep the notice, as some people still use a modem. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:46, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

is this the right place
Where should I be discussing Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Wrongful_block? Is this page the right place? (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 09:31, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * WT:AN is only for discussion about how to organize the noticeboard. Any discussion about the listing you mention should be on WP:AN/I. Noel (talk) 15:50, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I think Sam is asking here (WT:AN) about whether the page (WP:AN) is appropriate. As a question about the purpose of AN, this question is clearly at the right place. dab (&#5839;) 16:09, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * ?? Ah. Perhaps it's a non-native-English-speaker problem? I took "this page" in the original comment to refer to WT:AN, but perhaps Sam meant that to refer to WP:AN/I, or some other location.
 * I would definitely say that WP:AN/I is the right place for that discussion, as it involves a specific incident of whether an admin acted appropriately. Noel (talk) 17:12, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Report template
I changed the report template slightly. The user and article are now linked as and. The Reported by may now also includes comments. This i think is much easier to read. The DiffLink and TimeStamp are now one word only. On my system (firefox), i can now simply doubleclick to select the word, whereas with underscores I always had to select by dragging the mouse over the text. Hope this is ok. -- Chris 73 Talk 00:43, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

"Informal complaints over the behaviour of admins"
Can we please delete this entire section off the project page? If people have problems with admins, they should either take it up with them at their Talk pages or take it to the RfC page. RickK 21:12, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to ask this again. Why is this section on the page? Especially the paragraph which is addressed to me, and has no bearing on anything else on the page? RickK 06:34, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)


 * John has already answered. Read the top of Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. It says "If you want to make an open informal complaint over the behaviour of an admin, you can do so here, but please only do either that, or file a RFC or RFAr, but not both." -- Netoholic @ 06:39, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)


 * And how is your comment about my being stalked a complaint against an admin? RickK 06:47, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, I think he saw it as corroboration of his feelings of persecution regarding his article space. When one becomes reverted repeatedly without the other side attempting discussion, it is hard to assume anything else. As an outside observer, I've been watching Snowspinner coordinate his actions against John Gohde, and the comments he copied are in that context. -- Netoholic @ 06:54, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)


 * And did you bother to real the sentence which comes after the one you listed above? Please be aware that this page isn't the place to bring disputes over content, or reports of abusive behaviour &#8212; we aren't referees, and have limited authority to deal with abusive editors.  RickK 06:49, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)


 * That refers to general disputes. Complaints of admin abuse are an exception. -- Netoholic @ 06:54, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)


 * Where does it make that distinction? RickK 07:04, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
 * In the lines we've quoted. If you have a complaint about admin behavior, you may lodge it here.  If you have an content dispute, take it elsewhere.  -- Netoholic @ 07:11, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)
 * or reports of abusive behaviour . RickK 07:15, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
 * I believe it's clear that refers to "no personal attacks", vandalism, etc. Again, nothing to do with admins, since those are explicitely said to be appropriate for this page.  -- Netoholic @ 07:21, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

WP:AN/I has turned into the "attack admins" page
We need to get all of the nonsense attacks on admins off the page and require users to bring them to RfC. The purpose of this page is as a forum for admins to discuss issues, not for every troll to attack admins. RickK 05:28, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree. the informal "sub-RfC" has not proven very useful, it almost invariably amounted to a "para-RfC". Discussions about whether a particular incident is an really "incident" or just trolling, and if it was handled properly by the intervening admin will not be avoidable here, though, this is the point of this page. And of course, it's not a forum "for admins", but rather a forum about "admin-tasks related issues", meaning that non-admins have every right to participate in the discussions. dab (&#5839;) 06:42, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I find it amusing that the discussion about removing the discussion is longer than the discussion in question. --ssd 15:27, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What's a sub-RFC? You can hardly get less formal than a RfC. You just fill in the blanks and away you go. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 17:53, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Explanation of Tony Sidaway's deletions from this project page
I tend to delete stuff that I don't think belongs here. Minor squabbles between users who aren't doing anything objectively wrong, but are being annoying and not achieving consensus. There is a temptation to list them here in the hope of enlisting the help of a more powerful and knowledgeable person. That may be a good impulse. I happen to think it's inappropriate for this particular page (we could have a Administrators' noticeboard/Advice board instead) so I occasionally delete such pleas as unnecessary fluff after they've been around a day or two. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:27, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I have listed a number of "incidents" that I was seeking wider note of; several which Tony has deleted (and I take no offense; incidents pass). I have not intended annoyance, and apologize to anyone who has been annoyed by my listings. If there is a more appropriate (and effective) page for this sort of incident, I'd like to know about it. Mebbe I'll try Tony's redlink ;-> &mdash; Davenbelle 04:59, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)