Wikipedia talk:Lost functionalities

And yet, the cup is still half full. ( Radiant ) 15:51, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I. Love. This. Page. (end Steve Ballmer mimic) Though some things are probably imminent in a growing collaborative environment (loss of SQL access), much of what you describe are IMHO very real issues. Your page is a good instruction for the aspiring editor.... Q: When you mention hair-trigger anti-vandalism efforts, are you referring to the 'Bots, or the dilettantes like me who just watch and pounce when we can (sometimes armed with knowledge or experience)? TIA. &mdash; David Spalding Talk / Contribs 17:21, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice page. I particularly like: "The idea of a wiki is that you keep and improve articles over time. However, these days people on wikipedia expect good articles to spring into being fully formed... while at the same time banning anon users (our main contributors) from making new articles.

Asking people to write articles or make major changes in their userspace is not the answer, because that negates all the advantages of having a wiki in the first place."

I recently had to defend an article on AfD that someone had tagged for speedy deletion 26 seconds after it was created. Wikipedia would not have imploded if the article had been left to 'mature' for a week, or even a bit longer. Where should the line be drawn? A week, a month, a year's worth of small edits every week? Carcharoth 13:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

All true, sadly true. Ab e g92 contribs 23:13, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break
Nice page. Very interesting. But it occurs to me that attempts to counter abuse led to the loss in almost every case. That's surely significant. Not sure there's a good solution, though. The tragedy of the commons comes to mind. — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 16:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

link to otoh
Heh ... clever. dr.ef.tymac 19:41, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

My view
I find much of this true as Wikipedia had a more informal character that was gradually lost.

However: "It used to be possible for any small-scale Wikipedia issue - article content disputes, user conduct issues, policy arguments, etc. - to be sorted out simply by some level-headed user going down to the area of dispute, and cooling it down. Blocks were considered a "last resort", and discussion was used before they were put into effect." - I am not sure if this does not happen as often as it used to, but from my understanding it can still happen as long as both sides calm down because of the intervention - However if it gets out of control to a certain point there will be blocks. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I still do it. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 16:40, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

content vs other VERY IMPORTANT STUFF
I would love to know what the ratio of (CONTENT) to (POLICY + GUIDELINES + NOTICEBOARDS + RfC + TALKPAGES FOR ALL OF THOSE + etc) is now, and was in previous years. 87.112.16.11 (talk) 19:16, 18 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Why do you want to know this? -- &oelig; &trade; 22:50, 18 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd use the numbers to draw pretty graphs. It's just interesting. Just a bit of fun. Sure, non-content has increased dramatically, but then content has increased too. I'd like to compare graphics of both.  It'd be great if a proper statistician / mathematician could do graphs of all the various wiki-spaces (talk pages, RF pages, Noticeoards) superimposed. 87.112.16.11 (talk) 11:27, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes that would be interesting, sounds like a lot of work though. Someone would have to go through a database dump with some fancy programming. Database queries might have some useful information. -- &oelig; &trade; 18:53, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've seen stats on that somewhere. Maybe in the Signpost.  There was like 2 or 4 or more times as much non-article stuff as there was article stuff, I think.  The stats were probably half a year to a year old. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 19:32, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Wow. And that's not including the stuff on meta.wikimedia.org I'm guessing. That's sorta depressing. That's why I think WP:NODRAMA is such a great idea. -- &oelig; &trade; 23:29, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Relevant(?) discussion
As this essay touches on the theme of editors and potential editors being dissuaded from contributing appropriate content to Wikipedia, I thought at least one reader or editor of this essay might be interested in my concerns about the effect of the words "accepted knowledge" in the WP:NOT policy, which I've argued create an apparent contradiction between WP:NOT on the one hand, and WP:V and WP:OR on the other (all three of which are policies, not mere guidelines). I'll remove this notice after that discussion is over. (Side note: yes, I know it's ironic that I've used supposedly "technical" abbreviations in a post about putting people off from contributing, but truly it's not at all difficult to find out what the abbreviations mean, because I've provided links to click on.)--greenrd (talk) 09:57, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Restoring Lost Functionalities
I think that the loss of some functionalities was inevitable - due to poor social engineering and misunderstanding of the information architecture requirements. I also think that some of the lost Functionalities can be restored. I have included this in my proposal on Meta http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Project_Ideas/A_Digital_Wiki_Coach_To_Provide_Focused_Advice please take some time out to read it over. I'd be glad for feedback or an endorsement. BO ; talk 22:16, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Turning off outdated skins
Soon more to add to the page! Dragonfly6-7 mentions serif. --Nemo 16:48, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Department of Fun WikiProject
This article is headed by a note saying it is a humorous essay. Should there not be a note on the article's talk page saying it is of interest to Wikipedia's Department of Fun WikiProject?Vorbee (talk) 15:40, 12 September 2018 (UTC)