Wikipedia talk:Village pump/Archive 2

Copyright: Translation
I wish to translate materials from the English 'pedia and use them on the Chinese 'pedia. Do I need to acknowledge it? If so, how? --Menchi 23:45 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)


 * If the Chinese wikipedia is under the same license (which I assume), then there is absolutely no problem. --snoyes 00:42 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)


 * It's a wise idea to mention in the edit summary field where you got the material. Even simply "translated from English Wikipedia" should be sufficient (since you'll be including a language link to that article anyway!) Aside from the attribution issue, it's just a good idea to keep track of things; if the contents are questionable, the source can be easily determinted and consulted. --Brion 01:17 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Can someone trim the Village Pump down? It's over 32k, and I can't post a question (or, for that matter, trim it myself) -- Crenner 02:49 May 11, 2003 (UTC)


 * One possiblity in such a case would be to rename Village pump to an archive name and create a new page. What people want to keep they can move to the new page. Patrick 09:06 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

--

The pump is 39 ko full. Letting my comment here right now.

I find some of the edits made today by http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=66.82.44.235 quite suspicious. Could someone knowledgeable look at them please ? Anthere


 * Yes, quite a POV rampage, wasn't it. Fixed now, Anthere. Tannin 11:05 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the right place to ask this is. I asked a question at Wikipedia talk:Disruption. Could someone perhaps have a look at it? Thanks... -- Timwi 20:37 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * Q A'ed. --Menchi 21:42 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

---

Could someone clean the pump please ? Anthere 04:51 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * Certainly, sir! :-) -- Timwi 17:47 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I am not a sir :-). I am a mom used to diapers, laundering, cooking, washing dishes, and even cleaning the lavatories. But I can't clean at the top of furniture as I am not very tall. And can't clean the pump when clogged. :-)


 * Ahh... we usually try to be a bit more selective about what we archive. Like not archiving discussions still in progress, and like that. -- John Owens 17:51 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * That was an amazing cleaning !!! Come over here, I have a job for you at home !
 * I never saw the water level so low... User:anthere
 * Yeah... I'm sorry if I moved too much stuff over. As I already said on User_talk:Timwi, I thought the discussions I had archived were sort of over. Anyway, next time I'll follow your advice and clean just half of it. (And then another half, and then ... ;-) just kidding) -- Timwi 18:33 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The Reference desk is very sleepy. I think that it should be linked to in the big, bold Related pages heading up at the top.


 * I see that has just been done... -Smack 07:29 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Archiving
move to wikipedia talk:village pump

I know someone out there likes archiving and cleaning the pump.. it's time.. --Dante Alighieri 00:36 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Tsk, tsk. You're obviously one of those people who finds ordering about easier than doing. Hang on, I'll do it. -- Tim Starling 02:07 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * I'm one of those people who knows that as soon as I start archiving things, something that is "active" will get archived and people will yell at me for trying to hide things. ;) --Dante Alighieri 02:27 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Don't archive the page then - just move bits of the conversation to the relevant talk pages. You're allowed to do that even for active conversations. Plus, it's better (if more work). Martin 09:56 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It would be really helpful if we could protect the village pump during archiving and just one person archives it. Otherwise the edit conflicts make it nigh on impossible. Good idea? CGS 22:41 21 Jul 2003 (UTC). [[Wikipedia:Village pump


 * It might be good to put a note with a timestamp at the bottom saying it's being archived and please don't edit for a few minutes, then remove it when you're done. I'm kind of against protecting it, since invariably someone will forget to un-protect it. Edit conflicts are annoying, but they aren't really that hard to work around if you're just deleting stuff that no one's editing. -- Merphant 04:29 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * Speaking of which... -- Merphant 04:41 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Should all queries on the page now be given titles so the TOC works properly? It doesn't seem so useful if half the questions aren't listed in it. Angela 00:34, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * The policy of "title your questions" has always been there. It's just not followed by 90% of the users. It takes 5 sec to do it (by the original author, who knows what his/her Q is about). Just need to make that policy clear. --Menchi 00:47, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)

"Post a comment" feature -- Village pump should be a talk page
You may have noticed that there is now a "Post a comment" feature for talk pages. The advantages of this feature are:


 * 1) Appends directly to the page. No need to load whole page into edit window.
 * 2) Because it only appends, it can never cause an edit conflict.
 * 3) Encourages proper use of headlines -- this in turn makes replying easier because you can just edit the section instead of editing the whole page.

The Village Pump, unfortunately, is not in the Talk: namespace, so the "Post a comment" feature is not available there. I propose moving it into the Talk: namespace and redirecting the main page there. Any objections? &mdash;Eloquence 01:27, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * No objection. Should the same be done for the reference desk? Angela 01:36, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Probably. These are both essentially discussion pages.&mdash;Eloquence

Remainder of discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Software updates

Number of Pump comments
As there are an awful lot of entries on the Village Pump about the new features, it may be better to create a separate page for them. There are now 64 sections on the page. I would do it but I need to get up for work in four hours! Angela 01:45, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Now there are only 43??? Angela 01:50, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * I see only 33. Did something happen? --Menchi 02:11, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)

There were always 33 really, it's just that some of them had been duplicated due to a little bug (now fixed by Eloquence). --Camembert

See Software updates --Jiang

The name
I find the name to be a little obscure. Maybe we should have a sentence or two of explanation... maybe something about scuttlebutt... or maybe that's even more obscure. -Smack 00:30, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's obscure. I added two sentences. Feel free to clarify and improve that intro. --Menchi 17:57, Aug 7, 2003 (UTC)

Previous page move discussion

 * /Agora

Pump moved to talk namespace
I have moved the pump to the talk namespace so the "Post a comment" feature can be used. This makes attaching comments easier, as it does not require loading the entire page and it cannot trigger edit conflicts.&mdash;Eloquence 01:26, Aug 8, 2003 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, the move breaks the interlanguage links because these are always rendered in-text on pages in the talk namespace. Have to think of a solution for that problem ..&mdash;Eloquence 01:28, Aug 8, 2003 (UTC)


 * I've put it back for now. (By the way -- it takes a long time to rename a page with a hojillion history entries like this. If at first it looks like the history is gone, please wait a few minutes; it should turn up soon.) --Brion 02:01, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * That's not good. All the redirects are now broken. That was unnecessary, just for the interlanguage links, which were still accessible anyway.&mdash;Eloquence


 * Or rather, all the redirects are now fixed. --Brion 02:52, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * I still think moving it back was unnecessary, especially given the mega history which we now will have to move one more time. The last time something seemed to go wrong as the move returned an error after 2 minutes of churning, but the page was still moved. I presume it may have something to do with the page being edited during that period. Each move of this page is a risky procedure. I also think the interlanguage link behavior on talk pages and article pages should be identical anyawy.&mdash;Eloquence 02:58, Aug 8, 2003 (UTC)


 * Where do we go if we want to talk about the Village Pump, now? &mdash;Paul A 01:31, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Just do it here.&mdash;Eloquence


 * Nope, do it here. Martin


 * Right [_] there? SEWilco


 * Moving the Pump is annoying because the main page link no longer points to the Pump proper, (the discussion area). Elde 18:25, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Or is this a job for Wikipedia talk:Village pump/Village pump pump? SEWilco

Time in Meta
This page seems to now have spent a time in the Meta, where I found it quite easily except it moved again before I could finish my editing. The link from the talk page that said it was to the Meta then brought me back here. Confused? I was for a while. I suggest a cooling-off period and some more discussion before any more moves. Andrewa 02:29, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

My comments above apply to the page to which they were first posted, of course. That is, the 'view meta page' link took me instead to Village Pump, which is what I meant by 'this page'. Still confused? Andrewa 17:13, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hmmm. And as I write this, the link below labelled 'view meta page' still links to

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump

which is not in the Meta space of course, at least not right now. Trivial point I guess. Andrewa 16:05, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * View meta page does not mean the page is at Meta. It simply means the page that this talk page is talking about. It is this way for all pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Talk pages in the main namespace will have view article and those in the user namespace have view user page. The same applies here and at Meta. Angela


 * Hmmmm. OK. That hadn't occurred to me... and it's not very intuitive IMO. I think I actually took a copy of the page while it was in the Meta (I thought) so I could check where it actually was at that time... but the point is simply that it had moved again. I think that putting it in a namespace that allows "post a comment" is an excellent idea. But if it moves again let's try to make that move the last one for a while. Andrewa 21:21, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

page size
Are we going to continue to keep the pump a reasonable size, or just let it grow now that we can edit by section? CGS 14:13, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC).


 * Judging by what happened at VfD recently, I assume people still have a problem with size issues, so probably best to keep it smallish. Angela 18:36, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * And we have the read-problem. With a modem you probably are faster editing, but reading/loading the whole page still takes some time... Fantasy 06:34, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * The "pump" is now 100KBs! Can we do nothing about this, or do we expect bad things just not to happen? &mdash; Sverdrup (talk) 23:01, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

When you move a discussion...
move to wikipedia talk:village pump

Can people please remember to update the list of moved discussions when they move a discussion off the page? It's hard work keeping the list up to date retrospectively. &mdash;Paul A 04:18, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * I think it's a little nicer to have the moved notes inline, where the conversation used to be - easier to see where the discussion has gone. What do you think? Martin 09:32, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * I partly agree but they can't stay there forever. Perhaps add a date when you remove something and then after a week remove the link as well? Angela 18:53, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * I normally remove them when they reach the top, but yours is a good solution too. Martin 22:09, 10 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * It probably doesn't matter too much as long as things are cleared out fairly frequently so there aren't too many of them. They were annoying earlier today though as there were 60 topics so you had to scroll through two pages of TOC! Angela 22:38, Sep 10, 2003 (UTC)

If you're going to leave the moved-to notices inline, please leave them with headers as well, even if it does make the TOC longer. The currently popular bullet-point moved notes keep getting absorbed by the preceding sections (because people go to add to the bottom of a section and fail to realise that the bullet point is supposed to comprise a new section). &mdash;Paul A 09:19, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * Nominations for de-adminship -> done

When to move
User:David.Monniaux accused me of incorrectly moving his notice on the Village Pump regarding inaccuracies in the Association page, see the disucssion: here

What is one to do in the case of such an accusation? Alex756 19:26, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * I think the comment was best on the talk page of the appropriate article. I didn't see why it was on the Village pump in the first place. It was also unclear what the problem actually was and it was phrased in such a way that made it seem applicable only to the association article, rather than being a general plea. If his aim was to "tell people who write entries in general to be prudent before writing generalities that they are not sure about" then he should do this on appropriate page such as one of the guides to editing. A pointer to the discussion was left for those who had not seen it, so it isn't like you were hiding anything. The Village pump needs to be kept smaller than it currently is so I don't have a problem with this move. Perhaps an alternative would have been to refactor what he said to make it more generally applicable to those reading the village pump, and to move the association-specific part to the association talk page. His comment could then have remained until it reached the top of the page and was removed. Angela

Go to the bottom link
It would be nice if there was a way to get to the bottom of this page as it tends to get rather large (even if you click on the last section of the TOC, which itself might be too large, the last section could be long). On my talk page (User talk:Dori), I just made a new section and linked to that, but every time someone uses the post a comment link, the bottom will not be at the bottom anymore. Does anyone have any ideas on how to accomplish this? I also tried using html anchors, but that didn't work. Maybe I'm the only one who gets annoyed at the scrolling :) ¬ Dori 18:00, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * I just hit END on my keyboard (and HOME to return to the top). Works for any web page. It's that simple (unless I've misunderstood you)
 * Adrian Pingstone 18:12, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * Well, I'll be damned. I've been using browsers for many years, and I didn't know they behaved this way (at least it seems to work with Mozilla). I always associated End with going to the end of the line. You learn something new every day I guess. Thanks, this helps, but somehow I really like that link, so if someone has any other ideas, I'd like to know about it. ¬ Dori 18:17, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * I've added a notice to this affect at the top of the village pump page, as this discussion will probably be archived soon. --HappyDog 21:54, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

variable performance
I'm puzzled by the variety of performance I get from wikipedia. On my machine at home, on a DSL ethernet, the pages do not come up at all. At work, with a T2 there is no difficulty; etc. Is this a cookies thing? Mkmcconn 16:54, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Performance fluctuates due to time of the day, and due to weird server problems which cause the site to occasionally slow down or stop. -- Tim Starling 23:22, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)


 * Not the issue in this case. I get reliable performance in one place, and bad performance in another place, at the same moments in time. Mkmcconn 22:32, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Might have something to do with mru/mtu settings, needs to be much less than 1500 for dsl, especially if you nat a lan. Which os? Gabriel Wicke 02:31, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Header

 * Post a question now if you don't want to wait for the whole page to be loaded. But consider skimming to see if your question was already asked. Also, do not push the "save page" button multiple times when posting this way! The server is overloaded but it will usually respond eventually and add your question to the page multiple times!

Is the header on the village pump obsolete now we aren't having regular server problems? Could it be reduced to just include the Post a question link? Angela. 07:46, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Probably not a good idea, but a reword should be in order. In fact I will do it now... -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 08:08, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)


 * There's a rogue tr at the top of the page. I reckon it's probably to do with the table anchoring the illustration but I cannot for the life of me spot the little wretch. FWIW shouldn't this be adjusted now to use the new WikiTable syntax (or whatever it's called)? Phil 18:25, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)

Ask Wikipedia
Given the number of 'where can I buy dogs' questions that appear here, do we need a Ask Wikipedia page? I think it a good idea. Anyone agree? Bmills 13:15, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * I think that is a more intuitive name than Reference desk which currently performs that role. And intuition is especially good here - n00bs are the ones doing the asking. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:51, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Ask Wikipedia about what? Questions about Wikipedia still need to go here. Ask Wikipedia would in fact confuse things more than they are now. --mav 16:03, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Oops, yes, I can see the ambiguity from that point of view. The question to be resolved is what do we do with the "Where can I buy..." "Which universities do Masters in...."-type questions that appear daily on the pump. They normally end with "...please email me at FOO@BAR.COM with the answer". Should we just delete the inquiries? And risk alienating potential contributors? Or should we shift them to Reference desk as usually happens now? Is that a good name? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:18, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Those questions should be moved. Perhaps increasing the profile of Reference desk at Contact us would help... But really, many of those type of questions should go to Study help desk. --mav 17:04, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I think Reference desk is counter-intuitive for people wanting to ask general questions. Bmills 09:20, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Here's my take - the problem is the (IMO) horrible introduction at the top of this page. I've been meaning to rewrite it for some time, to make the distinction between the village pump and the reference desk more obvious. Also, this page gets more traffic because it is more prominently advertised on the main page, which is why the clarification should go here and not on the reference desk. &rarr;Raul654 09:23, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)

Village pump is overpopulated / Suggestion: faculty rooms

 * It's a fact: Village pump is Overpopulated! How can we keep the page less than 32Kbytes if only a day of discussions tends to fill the pump so much? If left unarchived for some time, it tends to reach the 80-100KB levels... We need to find some way to keep VP small so that people with slow Internet connections and certain browsers will be able to participate in VP without problems. Please post your ideas and suggestions. Optim 18:17, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

(moved from the village pump itself) The pump fills up quickly, and Recent Changes is harder to work with. A year ago, I could put a question in the comment line of an edit and hope that someone would catch it, but these days I wonder how long before it is seen. Therefore, I suggest we create "faculty rooms", which would be like Village Pumps centered on different subjects. To start with, maybe just science / humanities / arts, but see how it goes from there. These would be places to discuss new projects and mention pages that need attention -- Tarquin 13:58, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't know if that would be successful. It's true that the pump fills up, but that's because everyone knows it and it has a lot of publicity due to the following. These are pages will not be as followed, simply because people can't follow everything. In fact, sometimes I will write something on a talk page, and then advertize it here (I've seen others due this too). But then again, those interested in such topics, might follow them. Dori | Talk 14:21, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)

(end moved text)


 * After a section gets a reply or two, we move that section and its replies to WP:VP/sectionname and we link to it from the VP. That might work.  Another idea is to keep the parent on vp, copy the parent to VP/sectionname, cut the replies from vp, and put them on the vp/sectionname page. Sennheiser 18:26, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree (in a modified fashion) with Sennheiser. A more agressive move/pointer policy would help. The two questions on redirects could have been moved to to Talk:Redirect, and an introductory paragraph and pointer left on the Pump. (This serves to alert people that a discussion on redirect philosophy in in progress, and archives that discussion on a more relevant page.) The same thing for the discussion on the new image syntax. New meta pages (or pump sub pages) could be created to technichal discussions (like the complaints of 'pedia malbehavior last night). As the 'pedia grows, this problem is only going to get worse. Elde 18:45, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. I'd still like to see faculty rooms to better coordinate work on clean-up, factual questions, discussions on new projects etc - Tarquin

I strongly object to the WP:VP/sectionname idea. Do not use subpages! If the content needs to be kept, find a proper title for it; it doesn't need to be kept as a subpage of the village pump. Perhaps people need to be encouraged to start the discussion elsewhere and just link to it here. For exmaple, if it's a question about copyrights, discuss it on wikipedia talk:copyrights. I don't think <32kb is a reasonable aim. Less than 70 would be good though. Angela. 20:33, Jan 31, 2004 (UTC)


 * Something definitely needs to be done though. I agree in avoiding sub-pages, as policy has already been made on this.  I quite like the faculty idea, although perhaps the title is wrong.  Faculty is america-centric after all (in England we would use department).  Also, faculty implies it is for questions about the topic (a la Reference Desk).  One problem is that Village Pump  doesn't lend itself to a set of articles in the same way that, say, Contributor Questions (which could link to Contributor Questions (science) etc.) does. (In fact, while we're on the subject, when I first joined I thought the Village Pump was a kind of idle chat place and kept well away, so perhaps the name is too misleading anyway - though that's a separate issue!).


 * In summary, I agree in dividing up the page into broad categories (which can then be split further if necessary) and that sub-pages shouldn't be used to do this. I disagree with the use of term Faculty, but think we need a unified title (e.g. Contributor Questions) is required in order to unify the pages.


 * --HappyDog 21:49, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't think new faculty areas are needed. We already have too many pages in the Wikipedia namespace, and the vast majority of what goes on the village pump could have been placed on one of those pages, with a link to it from the pump to gain people's attention. For example, "animated gif" could have been written at wikipedia talk:image use policy, "orphaned redirects" at wikipedia talk:redirect, "US national archives photos - public domain?" at wikipedia talk:copyrights, "How to use new Extended Image Syntax" at wikipedia talk:Extended image syntax, "Fanny Kaplan vs Fanya Kaplan" at talk:Fanya Kaplan and so on.

There is very little here that can not be placed on an existing page. I don't see the need to create further confusion with new pages. Angela. 22:00, Jan 31, 2004 (UTC)


 * There is a big problem with that though. It's a lot harder to find the correct page to begin the conversation, and then to find it again and continue the conversation. The Village pump is just a visible place. I like starting discussions in one place, and then continuing them elsewhere while keeping a link on VP. The problem is that someone has to keep moving discussions around. Dori | Talk 23:40, Jan 31, 2004 (UTC)


 * There is a big problem with that though. It's a lot harder to find the correct page to begin the conversation, and then to find it again and continue the conversation. Thats why you post to the pump, then someone moves/posts a pointer to the appropriate page, then your watchlist helps you follow the conversation. Elde 23:45, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

One way to take a few bytes off this page is to move all the static header info to one of those things in the MediaWiki namespace (like was done with the sandbox until recently; see MediaWiki:Sandbox). Other than that, I guess we should just be vigilant in moving older (oldish?) discussion. --Minesweeper 22:18, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * That's an excellent idea. I've created one at MediaWiki:Villagepump. Angela. 22:30, Jan 31, 2004 (UTC)

In principle I favour having one central location to discuss all these issues: It is easier for both the users and the administrators that must take care of it. However, if we have come to the point that it is no longer possible to manage it as a single page, then three subdivisions are apparent. The page currently seems to deal with: Maybe one or more of these general categories could be moved to a different space.
 * 1) - policy issues (like the current discussions of page overpopulation and level of writing)
 * 2) - technical issues (like the recent problems with RC, image disappearance, and page blanking)
 * 3) - pedagogical issues (like people wanting to know how to use the new image markup)

As for the idea of faculty rooms, I like it a lot. Seeing as I limit my contributions to the business and economics faculty, it is a natural for me. However, most of the issues on the VP are not limited to any one faculty, so this may not be a good application for faculty rooms. mydogategodshat 22:45, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't think that would work. We already have a separate page for bug reports (MediaWiki feature request and bug report discussion), but no one uses it. They always post here. Angela. 22:50, Jan 31, 2004 (UTC)


 * Seeing as I have recently been guilty of using VP instead of the bug report page, I certainly can't argue with you. mydogategodshat 23:53, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Minesweeper that we can place the VP header in a MediaWiki message and I support its implementation. Also, the header is too big and could be smaller. Sennheiser's suggestion about subpages is interesting but it may create confusion. What if two sections/discussions have the same name? So I would suggest not to implement this subpage idea. Angela says "I don't think <32kb is a reasonable aim. Less than 70 would be good though." but 70Kbytes is too big. Several browsers have problem editing >32kb pages. Not all users have high speed net connections and many of them pay for each minute they are online or for each megabyte they download. Pages that I would participate more if they were not so big include the village pump, the reference desk, the votes for deletion and the current events. Also, it is very difficult to edit a huge page and search for text in it while you edit it. Sections help, of course. It would be very nice if no page was bigger than 32kb. I am opposed to the use of the word Faculty, but the idea is interesting. We should consider creating a page like Forum with sub-fora for ore specific subjects. Newcomers may don't understand what VP and Reference desk is. Certainly they don't understand the reference desk and so they put questions in VP. But everyone understands what a forum is, so we can have Wikipedia Forum which will include a category for Wikipedia-related questions (Village pump), a category for general encyclopaedical questions (Reference desk) etc. The linkto the forum will be included in the main page. The newcomer will visit the Forum page and choose a sub-forum to post his/her message. If we choose good names and write nice explanations, we will get rid of Referencedesk-questions in Village pump. Currently RD and VP are unrelated with each other, except from the links at the top of the pages which many newcomers don't read. Making VP and RD as subcategories of a Forum will help to make newcomers consider in which category they should post. .·. Optim 23:04, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC) .·.


 * Congratulations Angela for implementing the MediaWiki Villagepump message! .'. Optim 23:09, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC) .'.


 * Don't congratulate me. It was Minesweeper's idea. I should also point out that Brion dislikes it as it "makes it harder to get at and edit the stuff at the top". Angela. 10:09, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)

If, as is claimed, most of the content on the pump can be moved to more suitable places, then may I suggest that we adopt a more stringent archiving policy. I recommend that no topic be archived until at least 3 full days after the most recent addition to the discussion. Any topic that belongs elsewhere can of course be relocated immediately, with an appropriate link in the moved discussions table. The moved discussions table should always be at least 3 days long (actually 4, to ensure 3 full days), with older notes being archived as they currently are.

This will, of course, require a clear and concise statement at the top of the page to ensure that people know how it works, possibly replacing some of the existing notes (or as a separate article if more appropriate). It will also mean that anyone archiving will have to check the topics a little more carefully, rather than just removing the top n topics. If this is too much work then don't archive.

If this solves the problem, then great. If not then we have demonstrated by example that the pump is too busy to remain as a single page.

Finally - good work on the msg tag Angela. However, it seems to me that the size of the page when editing is the smaller problem, and that a lot of mentions have been made to download time, which of course this won't fix. Still a good action though. --HappyDog 23:56, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In reply to angela: I realize that main wikipedia articles shouldn't have subpages, but the village pump is an entirely different issue. All the reasons against subpages in your article don't apply to the use of the village pump. I realize that this is probably not a perfect solution, but you need to realize that (realistically) we have no other choice when dealing with issues that might not fall under any category. Sometimes a discussion changes direction so it might not be appropriate to be in Wikipedia:copyrights in the end. If pages fell under categories, we wouldn't need the village pump! On another issue Minesweeper said:


 * One way to take a few bytes off this page is to move all the static header info to one of those things in the MediaWiki namespace (like was done with the sandbox until recently; see MediaWiki:Sandbox).  Other than that, I guess we should just be vigilant in moving older (oldish?) discussion. 
 * This doesn't take any bytes off the page in reality. It just decreases the size of the "edit this page". (you probably knew this, but i want to make sure everyone understands) Sennheiser 01:09, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

My suggestion, which several others have also made, is that we should be more proactive in moving conversations to appropriate existing pages with a link from the pump. Perhaps it would help to make it plain that people are welcome and even encouraged to do this, I have been reluctant to initiate it myself for fear of treading on toes. I think if we do this the pump could be kept below 32K, it's the few long conversations that take the space. I think a similar principle should be applied to VfD. Andrewa 01:46, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * this sounds good to me. Mabye it will solve the problem after all. Sennheiser 03:06, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Overpopulation policy, a survey, a solution?
It's under 32kb now. I haven't looked after the village pump for the last couple of weeks, and it seems that whilst other people have been looking after it, each person has a different way of dealing with it. Perhaps we need some agreed-on ways of doing the archiving. Some questions...
 * 1) Are the moved links going to be listed at the top?
 * 2) *This takes more effort, and I'm not convinced it's useful. Most people seem not to bother doing it. Angela
 * 3) *It's useful if people check there, and it keeps the page size down. However, I think most people (myself included) look down the page for their discussion so probably not worth it. HappyDog
 * 4) *No. It takes too much effort and nobody cares. Optim 10:56, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * 5) Are links to be left inline. ie - if you move something on copyrights from section 7 to wikipedia talk:copyrights, do you leave a link to that talk page in section 7, or somewhere else?
 * 6) *I think inline (same reason as previous). HappyDog
 * 7) * Agreed Elde
 * 8) *Yes, inline. Optim 10:56, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * 9) If links are left inline, how long do they stay there?
 * 10) *Personally, I think a week is enough for someone to check the page and see where the discussion has moved to. Angela
 * 11) *Also, I think if it had no responses before it was moved it could be deleted and a note left on that user's talk page instead. HappyDog
 * No, leave it for a few days at least so other folks can see it. Elde
 * 1) *The links will stay as long as the discussion is still active and the VP page size is below 32kb. If the VP becomes larger than 32kb, they will be deleted/archived/moved/whatever in order to keep VP below 32kb, no matter whether the discussion is still active or only one or two days have passed since the link was placed there. Optim 10:56, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * 2) *I strongly disagree. If active topics are being archived simply because the page is too long then the problem is one of space, and therefore more than one page is required.  I have no problem with articles being moved to more suitable places, so long as the link is left here (with the current concensus seeming to indicate that it stays in-line for a day or two, then moved to the more compact header).  There should definitely be a policy on how long a moved discussion should stay on the page once it's been moved, and how long a discussion must be inactive until it is archived, and this should be based on time, not page size!.  I think this is vital, otherwise the page becomes useless. HappyDog
 * 3) **In my view if we follow a policy based on time, after some months we will face problems. Let's sat that currently VP has a readership of X people. After 2 months it may be 1.1X. After 6 months it may be 1.5X. After a year it may reach 3X etc. Wikipedia is becoming more popular and VP tends to fill up more quickly than before. So we may decide to let the content stay for a week in VP, but after some time the policy will become obsolete because of the increased traffic, so we will face the dellema either to continue using the 1-week policy and live with a 100kb+ VP or to change/update the policy (for example making it 5-day or 4-day). Instead of facing this dellema every time the Wikipedia traffic increases, why not have a policy based on page size, which solves the problem forever? When the traffic becomes so much that the VP content is removed very quickly, we should solve the problem by other means such as creating more pages etc... Optim 13:13, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * 4) ***You've missed my point! You have offered two solutions to what would happen if we had a minimum length of time before articles are removed:  The page size gets massive, or we have to change the policy to a shorter period.  Your answer is to set a page size limit instead of a time limit to avoid both these problems.  But you're missing out the very important third option which is that the page could be split into several sub-pages.  From my point of view the pump is useless if active conversations are being archived in a couple of days and this third option will still allow a week's worth of discussion without an arbitrary byte-limit.  However the suggestions already made here may decrease the size of the pump if people are vigilant about moving things that should be kept elsewhere, in which case no further change will be  needed.  If this doesn't solve the problem then we need to look at it again and think about how best to divide the page. --HappyDog 02:56, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * 5) Do they need to go somewhere else once they are removed?
 * 6) *I don't see any point. Does anyone else? Angela
 * 7) *Possibly useful for when people are away from Wikipedia for a while, so they know how and where (and if) the issue was resolved. HappyDog
 * 8) *Move inline links to the top after a week, then delete when the list at the top grows too long?Elde
 * 9) *No. There is no need to keep them. Optim 10:56, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I also think the guidelines should also note that pointless things need not be archived. If something has been fixed, just delete it. If something is already covered by the help pages, delete it. etc. Any objections? Angela. 03:51, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)
 * Only those raised above. My personal feeling is that everything should be archived, but that's probably just my compulsive personality and not necessarily sensible :) HappyDog
 * I'm halfway in-between. Things (pointers) should be left on the page (in-line or at the top) for a reasonable period, then deleted. Elde
 * No objections. Optim 10:56, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Currently the pump looks more like a list of headers for moved discussions and topics still very active yesterday disappeared. I doubt this is the purpose. -- User:Docu


 * If it's going to stay under 32kb, it will always look like that. That's why I suggested 70 might be more reasonable. Angela. 10:09, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)


 * It seems very nice to me. And it is below 32kb. I think it's better VP to serve us as a discussion directory/list rather than a discussion forum. Those who want to participate in a discussion just click the link and discuss. It's great for me. I agree to keep VP like this. Optim 10:56, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I think myreddice just illustrated the danger of this move-to-subpage sillyness that's been going around. 6 hours ago, I made a request for a feature. CGS replied. I wrote a reply to CGS, and went to save it, only to find that (after a grand total of 6 hours) my request had been moved to the Ignored Requests page. I couldn't even roll back because reddice had been 5(!) subsequent moves. So I lost a perfectly good (long) reply. &rarr;Raul654 13:26, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)


 * The top of the page explains that the village pump is not for feature requests, and gives two alternative places. Of course, you didn't read that. But you'll know for next time. :) Martin 13:30, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * On a subtly more friendly note, if you get a complex edit conflict, copy your text into notepad, or an edit window elsewhere, for safekeeping. Then you can remerge at your leisure.


 * This is partly my fault, and I make no apologies at this stage, because I think as we grow we'll see more and more need for this sort of structure. It also reduces edit conflicts. Andrewa 09:11, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Interlanguage links
I notice that the interlanguage links were moved off the pump and over to MediaWiki:Villagepump to save KB. However, am I the only one noticing that they don't actually show up on the Village pump unless they are actually located on the page? They should be moved back otherwise... --Minesweeper 13:36, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Evidently not. :) Minesweeper


 * Obviously they did. BTW Sandbox has now the same problem. -- User:Docu


 * External links are broke too, but they concern me less at the moment. Martin 13:46, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * See MediaWiki talk:Villagepump. -- User:Docu


 * Okay, something is up. I guess my edit to MediaWiki:Villagepump can be reverted once this problem is sorted out. --Minesweeper

Summaries?
We can add one-line sumamries of the discussions we move from VP to other pages. How do you rthink? example: for "Openoffice software documentation" we could add the summary (before the link to the openoffice talk page): "A discussion on whether Wikipedia should host software documentation for OpenOffice". Optim 15:07, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes. That was the original intent behind my suggestion, one or two line summaries, or even the whole original paragraph, so that readers of the pump can make an informed decision on whether or not to follow the link. Elde 17:51, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * So add them. *shrug* Martin 18:22, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. If we just start to add them, and they work, it will soon become the practice. Much better this way than to formalise anything. Andrewa 09:14, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * The problem is, we have a user who insists on moving the items without leaving a summary behind. I've already asked him once to leave summaries, but he seems unwilling to do so. Elde 19:34, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * He seems like a nice guy to me. Sennheiser


 * Hmm... I hope this isn't about being a nice guy. Let's take that as given and deal with WikiWork independently.  The less personally we can take our work, the more productive we can be.  We've seen things get ugly on the list and on-site; we all know we don't want that.  Cheers. --Spikey 04:04, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I meant, "his intentions seemed good enough to me". Elde phrased his request ambiguosly and Myreddice seemed to respond with good intentions.  I am sorry you interpreted my response in the wront way. Sennheiser 04:25, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * EDIT: Sennheiser now realizes that he made a stupid comment about Myreddice being a nice guy. He would like to retract his replay to Spikey as it seems innapropriate.


 * Noted. :) I hope I didn't sound accusatory; I just wanted to clear the brush before the flames broke out.  Cheers. --Spikey 13:37, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Deletion of discussion started by and involving Sennheiser
Sennheiser was annoyed when he saw that material, of which he contributed to, was deleted from the page without being moved. In place of the discussion, was something even more annoying. The text had been replaced with "see FAQ at top of page." It took Sennheiser more than 5 minutes to find this FAQ, which was much more annoying than being directed to the old discussion. Whoever did this terrible thing should be ashamed of himself/herself. Sennheiser! 00:03, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * That was me. Sorry!  It's been mentioned several times on the pump in the last few days and there's a message in bold at the very top of the page.  You're right it was a bad summary of your query and its answer.  As I'm writing this I just noticed where your links point to - very creative!  I didn't realsied we had an article on felching, I'll go and have a look at that.  fabiform | talk 00:51, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What the heck is happening with this page?
I put a question on here two days ago, and it's already been deleted. I had to dig through the history to find out that somebody had responded to it. I realize that the Pump is a busy place, but please give the people who post questions at least a couple of days to read the responses before you delete things! RickK 01:50, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I agree. I had the same problems. Sennheiser! 01:51, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * The problem is that this page is very busy. In a couple of days it will have gone from 20k to 60 or 90k.  One thing to do is to ask for replies to be posted to your talk page if you know it will be several days until you can come back.  If you're talking about your question "(Yerzoplazistonian) Civil War Civil War" it's in the archive, which there are two links to at the top of the page.  Sorry if you think I moved it too soon. Village pump/February 2004 archive 1.  If people prefer I will stop this agressive archiving.  fabiform | talk 04:53, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Archiving and moving is fine, but instead of putting the moved links at the top, I would leave the section header where it is, and put the link right under it. That way, those who posted the question can find it more easily. The headers, with the links themselves should not take much space, so they can be archived after a few days. Dori | Talk 04:59, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, at the moment the two work in parallel. The most recently moved discussions have their heading left in the TOC and the redirect is placed beneath it (along with a summary if appropriate).  The next time the page is archived these are moved to the top of the page.  I haven't been marking the discussions that have been moved to the archive, but perhaps that would be a good idea!  Bear with me (and anyone else) while I sort myself out.  Does this sound OK to everyone who cares?  fabiform | talk 06:29, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Sounds fine, as long as the second archiving isn't less than two days from the time of the original posting. RickK 22:23, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Miscellaneous talk from 2004
''I've moved a section under the heading "Thumbnail size" to the Pump itself, which is the place to talk about this kind of thing. This is the page for talking about the Pump. (confusing, I know) - IMSoP 17:37, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)''

Why are we making the pump redirect to itself? I am confused. -- Wapcaplet 19:54, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * IMSoP waits expectantly for a sysop/admin to come along and sort out the mess. Lord alone knows what's going on right now. - IMSoP 20:10, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Spots note now added to page. Starts waiting more patiently.
 * Join the IRC channel #wikipedia on irc.freenode.net to join in the fixing of the VP page. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:11, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * It was a result of User:Zap (now banned) trying to move the page. Moving a page with such a large edit history takes a long time. The same happened with VfD, though with that the history was actually lost until Brion could run an update query on it. Angela. 12:54, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)
 * Given the difficulty in undoing this move (whatever the motivations were), it makes partially-protected pages (i.e. pages that can be edited but not moved) a priority feature request. I'll see if there is anything at sourceforge. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 13:14, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Request at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&atid=411195&aid=899556&group_id=34373. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 13:23, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Timestamp on moved discussions
Would it be possible for people to put a timestamp on notes of moved discussions, to make it easier to track when things happened. (In fact I'd be in favour of having more timestamps available all over the place, it can be very difficult to track a conversation when stuff is spatchcocked into the middle.) --Phil 09:08, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)


 * Spatchcocked - What a brilliant word! --HappyDog 12:41, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

dari and Farsi
Moved to Village Pump

Comment from a Chinese reading friend who visited Wikipedia for the 1st time
Quoted from an e-mail:

"I visited the "Wikipedia" website, and I found something needs to be corrected.

From the many languages presented, I chose Chinese (the traditional one), I found out that it's not really  traditional Chinese but a mix.

There are Simplified Chinese characters and Traditional Chinese characters from which you can choose.

And, when I went to traditional Chinese, I found out that it's not really traditional Chinese but a mix of traditional Chinese with simplified Chinese.

In this case, Wikipedia made a big mistake!

I want to protest about it but I don't know how to contact them and tell them to correct it.

If there are two Chinese languages (tranditional and simplified) on the website, then it should be very clear which one is which.

If I choose to read traditional Chinese, why are there many simplified Chinese characters in it?

And if there are simplified Chinese characters in the traditional Chinese languages, then it shouldn't be called traditional Chinese.

It's very confusing.

I grew up with traditional Chinese so it's very difficult for me to read the other one.

I don't like it at all."

Can anyone explain why Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese is getting mixed up? Is there a way to clarify the difference for contributors?

This is a knotty problem, but my guess is that the Wikipedia will be much more useful if this problem could be addressed.

Please respond if anyone has any thoughts.

-- Anon


 * "I don't know how to contact them"?! The Chinese Village Pump.... &#20114;&#21161;&#23458;&#26632;. Go yap in English there if you want (as I sometimes do), but in a nutshell:
 * A) that we discussed the Simplified-Traditional issue for monthssssss, but it's all talk and no deed. The deed, in a computer world, needs, intuitively, a computer guy.
 * B) Our consenus (including mine, a Traditional user) is the one Chinese WP site at zh.wikipedia.org will be the one site for the one language of Chinese. Schism will halving our effort. Not to mention more prone to depriving ourselves the fun of cross-straits conflicts in forms of wiki-arguments.
 * Unfortunately, no existing ZH Wikipedians are comp sci wiz. Crawl over the the ZH Pump and suggest better stuff there or volunteer or whatever. And...any non-Chinese computer programmers who want to give a hand or five, you're welcome to drop a note in English there too. --Menchi 10:50, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I found that problem too. One reason is the new format of the main page: there is only one Template:Dyk, Template:Itn etc. in Chinese WP, we have to decide which Chinese they go into. I also want to point out that, the differences between Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese are less than 25%, and there is no need to separate them into two different websites. Stop protesting but give more practical solutions! That's not Simplified Chinese invading Traditional Chinese! I guess the Chinese community has asked for help many times in En WP and Meta WP without any responses! What we need is a computer programming genius who would like to help out how to solve this problem for Chinese WP, but not argument! This problem is quite urgent; i know how inconvenient it would be for traditional Chinese readers. but the majority contributors in Chinese WP is from simplified Chinese community. we are just expecting more traditional readers come here and make contributions. --Yacht 01:08, Mar 1, 2004 (UTC)


 * I would like to echo the frustration. I can read some simplified Chinese. Often, it's the one or two words/characters critical to the understanding of a sentence that was displayed in the wrong version of written Chinese and stumped me.  (So I have been staying on the English side these days....)  For a first-time user who doesn't know what Wikipedia is all about, the disappointment is understandable.  On the bright side, we can label such "contaminated" wikipages as Pages needing attention, and invite newbies to do some copyeditting.  Hopefully, as the number of users of tradition Chinese grows, things will get fixed along the way.  Please don't feel offended when someone is not really protesting but lamenting the fact that something so good as Wikipedia is so accessible and inaccessible at the same time. How's that ? -- PFHLai 03:10, 2004 Jun 17 (UTC)

"remove 13kb of spam"
Possibly more text got removed than intended, that's why I rolled back the edit. -- User:Docu


 * I've no idea what happened there. I thought I was just removing one post that had been some strange advertising that took up 13kb and had no relevance to Wikipedia. But that doesn't seem to be in the page history at all, and it looks like I just removed random things from the page! Weird. Thanks for reverting it. Angela.


 * Could it have been that someone else started reverting the page before you and finished it earlier, so when you submitted your edit, it was compared to the new version, not the one you had edited? Ambush Commander 00:08, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Moving things to the reference desk
Following a question about the "Remote Possibilities" game...

Isn't it a bit odd that so many questions of this sort get asked. What is about our pages that causes people to think we can answer these sorts of things? And besides the Oscars were held on the 29th and All about Eve and Titanic still jointly have the most nominations (14), IIRC. Lord of the Rings equals Ben-Hur and Titanic in having the most wins (11). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:28, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Not only is it odd, I'm now tempted to write a love letter to my ex and post it to the Pump. And she's not even a Wikipedian. --Charles A. L. 16:28, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
 * I think one reason that so many are posted is that most get answered. Wikipedians seem unable to resist helping someone outwith a bit of research. Not necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps we need a special page for it. Mark Richards 21:23, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * We have a special page for it. Reference Desk.  moink 21:25, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Er....not to be too elitist, but those of us who keep up with RD regularly really do hate to be seen as the people who handle any question. :) RD is designed to handle reference questions, not the questions of people who don't know what Wikipedia is. :-)  Frankly, people like Nichole (no offense, Nichole) rarely seem to return to see if we answered their question....at least, we never see evidence that they did.  I think explaining who we aren't and letting it sit here a few days is fine, personally.  Redirecting them to RD where they will be told the same thing isn't a good idea--believe it or not, RD is about as crowded with posts as the VP is, usually. :-)  That's my 2 cents, Jwrosenzweig 21:30, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Hey, I keep up with RD as well! No, Nichole's question would not be answered any better there.  But Mark's point about helping someone out with research refers to the reference desk as the right place.  moink 21:36, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Sorry, moink! I phrased that badly.  I get tired of the Village Pump's tendency (in my experience) to dump just about any question on the Reference Desk, especially when it sometimes seems like there are only about 4 or 5 of us trying to answer questions at the RD.  I didn't mean to imply that you didn't though -- my bad.  You are right....helping out with research is definitely in the RD's purview.  I was just looking at this particular question and thinking "this doesn't have anything to do with research or reference questions".  Didn't mean to be grumpy -- I'll go make some productive edits as penance. :-) Jwrosenzweig 21:39, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Protected?
Could someone explain the on this page? What page is protected? Apparently not this one... --Spikey 20:19, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Last night, a vandal attacked a few pages, uncluding this one. the attack continued for over 3 hours, so some of the pages were protected. when the protection was removed from this page, the notice was not. Kingturtle 20:46, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What happened to leaving links to moved conversations?
I'm annoyed. From the summary above:
 * Optim proposed adding one-line summaries of moved discussions we move from VP to other pages. Many people agreed.

So why on earth do I now have to dig through archive sub-pages to find a link to a discussion which was on the pump just 2 days ago? Please, please, let's have a proper policy on this and stick to it. Moving discussion may be necessary to keep the pump usable, but visible pointers are equally necessary if it is to be useful! - IMSoP 18:20, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * People come up with these great archiving policies, everyone agrees that they're a good idea, but nobody is motivated enough to perform them on a regular basis. Instead everyone avoids archiving for fear of being attacked for doing it wrong, and the size of the pump reaches 100-150 KB. As someone who often uses a 56K modem with a download-dependent charging plan, I'm quite happy for links and recent discussions to be lost if it means I only have to download 50 KB rather than 150 KB every time I view, click edit, get an edit conflict or save the page. If you want a policy to be stuck to, do it yourself. -- Tim Starling 23:28, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC)


 * As the person whose been dealing with those articles that have reached 5/6 days on vfd for the last week, all I can say is that I heartily agree with you Tim. In some ways it is pretty amazing that with all the contributors to vfd and the pump, how few people we've been relying on to try and keep on top of things. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 23:44, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Just to throw out an idea, say the pump should be archived every two days (leaving recent discussions in place, of course). It's not much work to do it once, even with leaving the one line summary.  We could work out a schedule for anyone that is willing to do it, so that one person is assigned to archiving for a particular day.  With only fifteen volunteers, it would be only a few minutes of work a month (assuming every two days is a good rule, and I just made that up, so it probably isn't). Tuf-Kat 23:52, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC)


 * OK, then, I will do it myself. In fact, I'm going to be rather harsh with refactoring, because I think that's preferable to just having tons and tons of archives hidden away. Obviously the refactored version can then be archived later. Point is, I hope I don't offend anyone by cutting out their discussion. - IMSoP 00:03, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Gosh, archiving's hard work, isn't it? ("Yes," says everyone who has done it before). I'll have to stop soon, and get to bed: UTC==localtime for me. - IMSoP 00:54, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It sounds a nice idea to say "leave links to moved discussions", but leave them for how long? There was a complaint about one section I moved that was relating to a question a week old. This was on a day that the pump had exceeded 150kb. I removed 78 sections. Do you really want 78 headers left in place, in addition to the 40 that remained after the archiving? I used to do that, but it just isn't realistic anymore. The pump was only archived yesterday, and already it is 80kb again. Endless headers are not the solution, and this is not a question of motivation. It really is time for a more radical change to this page.

Ignoring my own objections at the end of January, I now re-propose mydogategodshat's idea of splitting the village pump into
 * 1) - policy issues (like the current discussions of page overpopulation and level of writing)
 * 2) - technical issues (like the recent problems with RC, image disappearance, and page blanking)
 * 3) - pedagogical issues (like people wanting to know how to use the new image markup)

I'm not sure these are the best category titles, but I do now think splitting the page is necessary. 150kb is not acceptable, and neither is having 100 section headers. It's useless. As these subpages get too large, we need to further specialise and have additional subpages, but I think for now between three and five would be a good start. Angela. 08:50, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)


 * Personally, I'd prefer it if the pump became nothing but the headers - after all, if you split it up, and somebody left a note on the "wrong" sub-page, how would you let them (and anyone else who was waiting for an answer) know where you'd moved it to? You'd have to leave a pointer, wouldn't you?


 * Whereas, if we make it official policy to start a conversation somewhere else, and then draw attention to it with a link on the pump, "archiving" would become completely trivial, since it would just consist of moving the top-most headers & their links into the appropriate /archive subpage, and a header with a couple of sentences of summary and a link doesn't take up many kb, either...


 * OTOH, I reiterate my request of a few weeks ago that there be a page for leaving transitory notes to sysops/admins - requests for page merging and the like. Such a specific page could have a "once done, delete" policy. Or maybe there is a broader category of request for which this could be done?
 * - IMSoP 10:01, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * There's no reason this page can't have a policy of requests being removed as soon as they are fulfilled. Why do you think it would be beneficial to have a separate sysop page to implement that? Maybe we need a poll to see if people would support the idea of moving all discussions elsewhere and leaving only links here. A similar thing is done at WP:RFC, which seems to be working ok. I think we would still need a page for miscellaneous discussions though. Not everything will fit neatly onto an existing page, and some things are better archived and forgotten about than scattered around in the Wikipedia talk namespace. :) I wonder if a subpage for proposals would be a good idea. Often these are sections that don't fit neatly elsewhere, so moving them is not an option, and creating new Wikipedia namespace pages for every proposal would not be a good idea. Having one page, where proposals that never took off could be archived, might be useful, and could prevent people suggesting the same things over and over again. Angela. 17:11, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)


 * Re: page for proposals (and similar categories of discussion) - I think the point is that they needn't be Village pump subpages - just pages, generally in the Wikipedia_talk: namespace; sometimes Talk:; possibly occasionally on meta:, although I personally find the purpose of meta to be somewhat ill-defined (and the lack of unified logins & watchlists is off-putting for many). So yes, by all means have a page to discuss proposals, as a class, but why not call it e.g. Proposals, rather than e.g. Village pump/Proposals? - Do not use subpages (the "rigid hierarchies are awkward" argument applies, IMHO)


 * Re: admin/sysop page and "remove on fulfilment". I guess there isn't any reason for this not to happen on the pump - but it doesn't. Maybe if the ethos of the page were changed to a sufficient extent, we could get into the habit of doing so (and saying "I've fulfilled your request" on the requester's User_talk: page, as I originally envisaged).


 * So, how about: "The village pump is a place to start discussions which you are not sure of a home for, or to draw attention to discussions which have found their home. Where possible, find a more permanent home for the full discussion as soon as possible, so that there is room for more summaries to be visible on this page."
 * Interestingly, it's actually far more useful to have archives organised by category than by date; an entire conversation stored in Village_pump/Month_year_archivenumber is unlikely to be found by all but the most determined digger. An archive of all discussions on a particular topic, however, is instantly more useful, and the archive for the pump itself would become a kind of log of what conversations were brought to the attention of the community when. - IMSoP 18:34, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree that titles like Proposals would be a lot more useful than Village pump/Proposals. If there is no existing page to start a discussion on, I don't think there is any harm in creating one. It can always be moved elsewhere or redirected later on if it is not going to be a useful page to keep. If an issue relates to more than just the English Wikipedia, there is an advantage in having it at Meta so that the other projects can input as well. I know it's difficult to find things at Meta, but I believe that is a sign it needs some more organisation, not a sign it should be avoided altogether.


 * It seems there are two options; either have a variety of village pump pages for different topics (bugs/ help/ policies etc), or have one village pump that has only links and no content. The second has the advantage of being self-maintaining as the discussions will already be in the right place, whereas the first will still require people motivated to archive it, and will eventually run into the same page-size issues as we have now. This already happened with VfD. It was split into a number of subpages (foreign, images, lists, copyvio and redirects), but a few months on, the page is too large again. Angela. 02:02, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)