Misplaced Pages

World Knowledge Base

had an idea for the editors of wiki

googled for the concept of a World Knowledge Base. Nothing there. > > World knowledge base is kind of a generalized idea about a compliation of all info about all subjects on the planet. Kind of like how our civiliazion has developed to the current state. i.e. what does free speech or freedom mean. how the people on a beach should know to run when the tide goes out. How to make widgets. whatever. an informal concept about all knowledge on the planet. The knowledge base is being developed on wiki and google and yahoo and other sites there is just no concept found by searching that describes the effort being accomplished. For instance when you call a help desk for MS Word (if you can reach them) the help desk has a knowledge base about word. So there is now being developed a World Knowledge Base that describes everything. There is just no searchable page on google or wiki or sites that describes the concept.

Wold knowledge base does not does not reside at any single location but is available through spoken, written, and internet exchange of information - at least so far.. > > If you choose to add the concept I am certain someone can do a much better job > of writing the description - I just had the concept.

thanks dwallace1@att.net

We have an article on knowledge base. Superm401 - Talk 04:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

See also World Brain, Project Xanadu, etc. Intellectuals have been musing over variations of that idea since at least the 1930s (and maybe even the 1910s if one includes Paul Otlet). --Coolcaesar 02:11, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

WP:PANIC

I've created Misplaced Pages:Don't panic in response to the recent handling of the user_pedophile template incident. It is a proposal for a guideline and I request comment as to whether or not it should be adopted. The shortcut I have suggested for it is WP:PANIC, and I hope that it can be a tool to help identify and stop quickly developing and emotionally charged incidents in the future. The current form is embyronic, of course, and if the community decides it can be of use, I hope you will all help develop it further. Best regards, CHAIRBOY (☎) 19:00, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I really like it. --unforgettableid | talk to me 22:46, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

It's really good - but how long do you think it'll be before someone suggests putting a link to it in big friendly letters on the main page? Grutness...wha? 08:10, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Would that be a bad thing? These collective panics (Kelly Martin's RFC, the user_pedophile template, et al) are really getting tiresome Cynical 18:32, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

A proposal that might eliminate 50% or more of vandalism

• This discussion was moved from Vandalism in progress to the Village pump on 17:10, 9 February 2006 (UTC) by Pathoschild (admin / talk).

Dear fellow vandalism patrollers,
I've been involved on some cult related pages which it is my guess, probably suffer some of the highest rates of chronic vandalism within Wiki. The cult that I believe probably tops the list is Scientology, and related articles. I just did a review of the last 50 edits on the main Scientology article page. Of these last 50 edits, 14 were vandalism. This pattern of heavy vandalism by multiple seemingly random IP's at this page seems to possibly be an orchestrated strategy to encourage cult members to make frequent anonymous vandal attacks. Having thousands of members, obviously all they would need to do is to get a handful of volunteers to do this, and much key-pounding and frequent logins by vandal-patrol-editors become necessary in order to maintain any reasonable semblance of a good article there. Of the 14 vandalism edits, 12 were done via anonymous IP, and 2 were done by sock-puppets that had been created within the previous 20 days.

I have a humble proposal that I believe might be able to reduce the workload of vandal-patrolling by 50% or more.

Create a restriction on page editors, that could be called something like the Controversial material- editing restriction rule.

Then set this editing restriction up so that the only editors who will be permitted to edit these pages must:

• Be registered.
• Have been registered for at least one month.
• Have at least 25 edits in their contributions file.

I know that all 14 of the recent vandal-edits the the Scientology page would have qualified for blocking under these rules. My guess is that probably at least 50% of these attempts would have been completely stopped, discouraging the prospective vandal from going through all of the trouble of jumping through all of the hoops, before doing the vandalizm. Perhaps even 90% or 95% would have been stopped, who knows?

Two further consideration about when such restrictions could be placed and/ or lifted.
(Please also note -and/ or comment on- the counter-proposal as discussed by Sherool and Scott P. in comment section below.)

For placing the restriction: Perhaps such a restriction could only be placed on pages for which:

• Three or more editors had petitioned for such a restriction.
• The article clearly showed at least a 1 month history of an average of one or more vandal-edits per day.
• A discussion about the validity of the claim of such frequent vandalism was allowed for, that lasted 15 days, and which the outcome was that these vandalism-edits did indeed meet the criteria for frequency.

For removing the restriction: Perhaps such restrictions could only be removed by a special vote that required a 75% consensus vote.

I don't know. I am new to this page. Maybe this type of anti-vandalism measure has been proposed before. If so, still I would like to know why it hasn't been acted upon, and what others think about this proposal designed to cut down significantly on vandalism to high-vandalism types of articles, without significantly restricting access to serious editors.

Such suggestions have been made before, but there has always been disagreement about the specifics of implementation; who would write new software and what metrics would be used. I like to say of such recommendations : this sounds good, but rather than preventing anyone from editing, perhaps you can simply make it more difficult for them to edit. For instance, redirect them to the talk page, with polite instructions to post both the existing text and their suggested changes. +sj + 21:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Please let me know what you think about this by preceeding your comment with one of the following:

Support:,
Oppose:,
Neutral: or
Other/ reason:
(Note, before placing comment or vote, please review Other comment by Sherool, and followup comment by Scott P. below.)

Thanks for reading this,

-Scott P. 21:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

PS: I am not entirely familiar with what the software requirements would be to accomplish something like this, but if it appears that this proposal is met with a positive consensus here, I will promise to bring this proposal to Jimbo Wales' attention, and to make certain that the results of this interaction with Jimbo are reported here, whatever they might be. My sense is that it would probably be technically possible to do this, but might possibly be somewhat time consuming to write such a program.

Support

1. Not necessarily support, but don't instantly reject. Right now we only have "unprotected" (anyone can edit it) and "protected" (only admins can edit it). It's not necessarily unwiki to have an intermediate "semi-protected" status, where only "users in good standing" can edit it. It may or may not be a good idea, but it's not necessarily "unwiki" to suggest it. However the normal status for nearly all Misplaced Pages pages at nearly all times should be "unprotected", not "protected" or "semi-protected" (with perhaps a handful of exceptions like the Main Page... remember we permanently protect the Main page by necessity, no matter how "unwiki" this may be... many pages that are currently permanently protected could become "semi-protected" instead, which would be a good thing). Read this insightful article by Clay Shirky and remember what Misplaced Pages is not: it's not a democracy. Right now sock puppets and anon IPs are actually more powerful than registered users in any edit war because they're effectively immune from 3RR, and that's not a good thing. When an edit war flares up, users in good standing should at least be on a level playing field, and quite possibly ought to be at an advantage. Again, read the Clay Shirky article (the part about "core group" and "members vs. users"). -- Curps 22:43, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
2. Support Misplaced Pages will never be a real encyclopaedia until it adopts and enforces encyclopaedic standards, and one of the steps necessary to achieve that is doing something to deter vandals, particularly cranks and cultists. There is nothing in this proposal which would prevent or deter genuine editors from editing articles, and therefore it does not contravene Misplaced Pages's open access principles. Adam 22:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
3. Support I'm supporting this, even though I don't necessarily the right implementation. But it doesn't matter. What matters is supporting people like you trying to make a difference on the wiki. If you listen to some people around here, you'll hear stuff like "Vandals cant' just be banned outright has they have equal rights and may become valuable editors anytime" - Yeah right! As if the schoolkids who write 'cunt' on 16 different pages of the wiki will ever notice the err of their ways and become valuable editors. Ha! You, on the other hand, will probably be slammed by the wiki jihad who will remind you that 'edition of editing by anyone' is one of the 5 wiki pillars. What those people don't understand is that because the man-hours of good editors are limited, reverting vandalism actually HAS a cost - unlike what the propaganda says. Anyone who has ever tried to combat vandalism is probably familiar with the 16 consecutive revert dance, followed by unanswered complaints to a non-existent or overworked admin. Then the vandal notices your warning on this page and stalks you, or revert your edits to that very page (because vandals have rights, remember?) Finally, if you are still part of the wikipedia after your ordeal (during which you could have read a book or spent time with your kids), the admin may freeze the page, but very rarely blocks an IP for more than a few days (after which the vandal comes back if he hasn't already via a sockpuppet). Adidas 23:33, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
4. Support in principle, with details TBD. The number of pages that would need some kind of guardianship would be very small, the "open to all" provision would not be compromised (hang around just a little while and you can touch anything) and articles that are now functionally damaged goods would rise in quality. I had a page I cared about which is subject to constant reverts, edits, sabotage etc. I now ignore it because I don't have time, and other pages have collaborative work by editors. That means the "shout them down" people are winning. Thanks for listening. Coll7 01:04, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
5. Support. I don't see this proposal as creating even more restrictions to users, but as removing some restrictions. The "semi-protected" articles could replace many of the completely protected ones, giving a chance for non-vandals to clean up and article and still add to it without giving the responsibility of cleaning up an article to an admin. Because of this, an article may be semi-protected for a shorter time than if one were completely protected. These semi-protected pages would not be permanent, but in some cases could be. The Main Page could even become semi-protected giving even more credit to the anyone-can-edit philosophy. Zhatt 21:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
6. Support. I agree with Zhatt; it's more wiki to have some pages semi-protected long-term than to have them fully protected some of the time and constantly vandalized the rest of the time. And it isn't just cult articles like Scientology, it's articles on topics the immature find funny as well, like Homosexuality and Obesity. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 21:39, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
7. Support. Details TBD. No need to repeat all the good reasons given by others. Brandon39 12:27, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
8. Support. Unfortunately, rules like this will become indispensable with the growing popularity of WP. Just no way around it. I foresee a time when a certain class of editor will need to be defined: not Admins, but sort of "known and trusted editors". Contributions/edits to certain articles by all users not in that class will have to be "submitted in advance" to an editor in that class who has assumed "oversight" duties for that article. JDG 22:10, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
9. Support. It's better than any anti-vandalism idea I would have had. Since the controversial pages are the ones most vandalized, and since RUs don't vandalize (as much, since we can catch you guys), it will definitely cut down on vandalism. Better idea: Perhaps we could even restrict editing to RUs. Davidizer13 17:06, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
10. Support. This will allow the trimming of vandalism. I imagine that some work will need to be done on determining when the semi-protection can start and how long it can last, but it will reduce the incidents of vandalism. --Habap 14:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
11. Support For all the reasons stated above. Template:DaGizza/Sg 08:34, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
12. Support It's a good idea as an alternative to full blown protection. Agree with many points others have made too Nil Einne 15:27, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
13. Support Also, people should be required to provide their email address in order to be able to access pages under these restrictions. Asdquefty 16:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
14. Support - Together with WP:Semi-protection, it is a good way to keep Misplaced Pages manageable. JoJan 18:35, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
15. Support as long as only used for very heavily vandalised pages. Hopefully, this would also allow us to reduce the number of protected pages. Average Earthman 20:05, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
16. Support. The requirements are too stern. Why not just have it like the semi-protection policy (no anons, and users who have been members for a few days)? I still think it's a GREAT idea. Gflores 02:33, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Strongly oppose: This proposal is in complete contravention of what Misplaced Pages is, and I don't think you will find many people who support it. User:Zoe| 21:11, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

   Zoe, could you point to any guidelines or policies that might support what you just said? It seems to me that Misplaced Pages is a place designed to encourage honesty, community, and the free flow of information. Vandalism opposes all of these things. It is true that such a rule might place some minor restriction on some of this, but just as some rules are necessary for the betterment of all, even if they sometimes do create minor inconvenience for some, I believe that the net effect of this would be to free many of us up to focus on real edits, creating a better flow of information, rather than having to concentrate so much on vandalism. Also, can I take it that you would oppose this? -Scott P. 21:16, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

   I would strongly oppose it. See Misplaced Pages:Five pillars: "Recognize that articles can be changed by anyone". User:Zoe| 21:40, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

   All but heavily vandalized pages could still be changed by anyone at the spur of the moment. Heavily vandalized pages could be changed by anyone with a little patience. That would be the only difference. No?-Scott P. 22:22, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

   Actually, it isn't against the concept of Misplaced Pages. It is similar to protected pages. This type of page protection just restricts some edits instead of all edits. Similar to page protection it can be for a restricted amount of time. - Tεxτurε 21:24, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

   I don't see the proposal as being temporary. It seems to be permanent unless there can be a 75% consensus to unprotect it. User:Zoe| 21:40, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

   Zoe, how would you feel if some less restrictive unlocking rule were used instead? -Scott P. 21:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

2. Oppose: This is unwiki.—encephalonὲγκέφαλον  22:02, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

   The problem here is a fundamental one. It goes to the heart of what a wiki is. It is proposed that new registered users be barred from editing certain articles, through no fault of their own, for a month. A wiki simply does not work that way. It must virtually always be open to editing—page protection must be applied with the greatest reluctance, for the strongest of reasons (ie. concerted, unrelenting, continuous, damaging vandalism or edit warring), and for the shortest possible time. And it must be open to every good faith user—registered, anonymous, steward, newbie—one and all. The solution to vandalism is not to lock down pages from users. It is to fight the vandals.—encephalonὲγκέφαλον  22:57, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

3. Oppose. Misplaced Pages is not a clique, and we should not support the formation of such. siafu 22:34, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
4. Absolutely not! I have to oppose this for all of the above reasons. It would also initiate voting, which is not tolerable. And a consensus has little to do with a hard number. And it's simply unwiki. --Phroziac 00:16, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
5. Noooooooo. There's absolutely no way I would support this- the point of Misplaced Pages is to be open. Most controversial pages are the ones anons/new users want to edit, and in many cases, the edits are _GOOD_. There's no need to create another block for users to edit. And, as Ryan Delaney says below, Jimbo will never let it happen (rightly so). Ral315 00:26, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
6. Oppose in its current form. However, a similar temporary flag to be used as an alternative to full page protection and in the same fashion as existing page protection might be useful--a temporary flag that prevents all anons or users created after the protection was placed from editing the page. It shouldn't be placed on pages forever, though, just for a brief period on pages facing a specific persistant vandal, the way full protection is occasionally used against vandalism now... and the only time I'd support that is when the alternative is having the page protected completely just to stop one persistant vandal attacking it via socks. Aquillion 00:28, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
7. Completely and Fundamentally Opposed This is a terrible idea. It is entirely against everything that makes Misplaced Pages daring and innovative. The whole idea of Misplaced Pages comes down to freedom of everyone to edit everything (with a few exceptions where it is impossible to maintain any kind of consistent quality without some limits.) This is why there is so much concern about keeping pages linked from the main page open to edit; it is our ideology. The implementation of this proposal would essentially cut Misplaced Pages out from under its knees.
8. Opposed, but not due to any non-wikiness. Mostly because controversial often means little-known in a lot of ways, and one-off anon editors could also have a lot of value to put into those articles. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 17:16, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
9. Well-meant idea; opposed to it as currently presented. It makes sense to make it slightly harder for unknown users to contribute -- throttling the frequency with which they can edit certain pages, asking them to verify they are not a robot, or directing them to talk pages during an active controversy. It does not make sense to make certain articles entirely 'off-limits' to new editors, or to say to them "sorry, we don't want your input". +sj + 21:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
10. You are kidding, right? As someone who edits controversial material about Malaysian politics all the time, I can tell you that despite 90% of all anon edits being vandalism, I appreciate the 1 out of every 10 edits that contributes something to the article. This proposal essentially amounts to semi-protection for all controversial articles. THIS IS NOT HOW A WIKI WORKS. ANONYMOUS EDITING IS A NECESSARY EVIL. Johnleemk | Talk 09:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
11. Strongly opposed Well-meaning concept, but would substantially reduce the differences between Misplaced Pages and any other online purveyor of information. We'd lose more editors by denying them the rush of the first-time edit to a topic they care about than could be justified by any reduction in vandalism. Anything that reduces the ability of new users to jump into the mix harms our ability to maintain a community. User:Adrian/zap2.js 09:31, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Neutral

Other Comments

• If the same rules that apply to "regular" page blocking now where applied then I think it would be a good idea. It could be the first line of defence against vandals. Temporarily block anonymous users and very young (think a month is a bit long though, maybe use the same rules that apply for accessing the "move" feature) registered acounts only from editing for a brief period rather than blocking everyone like we do now. That way vandal blocks would be less intrusive for normal contributors, while still very effective against your average vandal. I do however not agree that all controversial pages should have this installed as a permanent measure. Strictly on a case by case basis just like page blocking works now. --Sherool 22:19, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

  Thanks for that idea Sherool. I think everyone agrees that Wiki's current page locking policy is beneficial. How about if we had a rule that said that if the vandalism-edits clearly exceeded 1 vandalism edit per day, for 1 week, then the restriction could be applied for 1 week (and if abused, could be removed prematurely by a sysop)? Would you support this? -Scott P. 22:32, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

  • • Well as I said I think it would make a good alternative to the current "full block" protection we currently use, but I rely don't think we should apply it much more liberaly than we currently are. One or two vandalism-edits per day is not realy that much of a problem on an active article, and a week sounds a bit long. IMHO the first goal should be to get such a limited block feature actualy implemented into the software and then use it instead of regular page blocking (as a first resort anyway). If it works out we can discuss the finer points of when to use it and for how long at a later date. --Sherool 23:21, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose, Undecided. I think it's a good idea, but the problem is that it has an unintended side effect: namely, a group of devoted people who wanted to prevent anons from editing some pages might then vandalize some pages with the intent of getting this sort of block placed. I don't think we want to give people an additional motivation to vandalize. If this concern can be addressed somehow I would strongly support. Colin M. 22:47, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

You think anti-vandals will suddenly vandalize pages in order to get them semi-protected? Are they doing this now, when they can get full protection by being enough of a bother? I don't think that people who are anti-vandals would find it worth their time to game the system this way. Of course, with billions of potential editors, it is possible that someone besides you would think of this. --Habap 14:35, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

• This is against the will of Jimbo, so this whole vote is pointless. It will never be implemented, regardless of the result of this straw poll --Ryan Delaney 00:19, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

  I know that Jimbo wants Wiki to be available to all users. But he also wants 3 revert rule violators to cool off with a lock. Do you know for sure that he doesn't want vandals to cool off at all? -Scott P. 00:46, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

• While I agree that in the context of making decisions and setting policy for the community, it is important to differentiate between user account holders (for whom there is at least a somewhat accountable record) "in good standing", and anonymous or new users, this solution would institutionalize the idea that anonymous and new contributors are not as worthy as other users as editors. I don't see a way reconcile that conclusion with the spirit of wikipedia and 5P. siafu 00:29, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

  I think the right implementation would be to set a bar for "good standing" which any well-meaning editor could meet in a matter of minutes. I do not think that requiring a few minutes of non-controversial contribution is in any way against the spirit of 5P. +sj + 21:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

• While I think that this proposal would make certain Misplaced Pages articles better, on the whole quality would suffer Makenji-san 23:16, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
• I'm sure I've seen related proposals to give admins the additional power to "intermediate-protect" a page, as a less restrictive option than "protect". The problem with that was that if you merely excluded anonymous users, you encouraged vandals to sign up and vandalize, which is slightly harder to spot, and wastes account names. And a "good standing" criterion to get around that is a whole big nasty kettle of fish. Rd232 20:42, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
  • The obvious fix to that is to make it apply to users who had thier first edit after the protection started. Ofc this may encourage account stockpiling as our old friend willy does now for page moveing. Plugwash 01:05, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
    • The original proposal mentioned that only users that have been registered for at least one month and have at least 25 edits in their contributions would be able to work on these semi-protected pages. I believe that minimum number of contributions may need to be a bit higher (~100-500), but that should be able to remove the account stockpiling side of things. Zhatt 21:55, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
• Maybe we should redirect some vandals to Uncyclopedia. That site is pure vandalism (and very fun, too!). Davidizer13 22:10, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
• Deciding policy is beyond the scope of Vandalism in progress, so I've moved the page to the Village pump. // Pathoschild (_admin / ) 17:10, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • And in any case, it has been implemented (or a variant). See Misplaced Pages:Semi-protection. Sam Vimes 17:19, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Classification of articles

Misplaced Pages is growing by the second (just click recent changes), but we've got a lot of rubbish in among the features and the useful. Just recently, we've had the little star added to the top right of featured articles. Although some have reservations about this little self-referential icon, I believe that such things could help keep Misplaced Pages goal oriented — encourage to write more, better articles. I believe that Misplaced Pages could benefit from having its articles graded into a small number of classes based on their content. At the top, we would have the featured articles, continuing to demand high criteria for inclusion. At the bottom, we would have a new class of sub-standard articles, the contents of which could go one of two ways: improvement or deletion. Into this bottom category would fall all articles tagged for clean-up or non-neutral point of view, as well as those listed for deletion. All articles that meet certain basic standards would be standard articles and sit a step above the non-standard. This could be the default for all articles: we would have to demote them to sub-standard. Once an article is resting comfortably in the standard category, it could be listed to be promoted to good article status. We already have good articles, but we could with a simple, clear process for promoting standard articles to good articles (probably based on fairly loose criteria). Then, if candidacy for featured status was dependant on having already gained good-article status, we would have a simple ladder of quality control. I believe that such a system would not create too much bureaucracy, but would help marshal our contents more effectively. If we need little icons, we could have bronze/silver/gold stars (back to school), one/two/three stars or different Pokémons! Here come the nice bullet points:

• Featured articles — high criteria, not given lightly
• Good articles — good, all-round articles that we can be proud of, yet aren't quite as good as they could be
• Standard articles — stuff that doesn't make us howl acronyms (AFD, POV)
• Sub-standard articles — stuff that does

What do you think? --Gareth Hughes 20:13, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand. How is that different from what we already have? Mark 21:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Gareth proposes that each of these categories of articles be marked with an icon in the corner appropriate to that category.

As to the proposal, I there would be a lot of unnecessary effort in classifying. The distinction between good and standard is also quite hard to draw, although, I know, there are already markers for good articles. It also makes it more effort to add "acronym" tags, because we have to change the icon. Finally, there are some good articles on controversial topics that are occasionally, if not permanently, given POV/disputed tags.

I don't think the icons should be different coloured stars. FACs already have the symbol of the star with a corner removed and I think this would be a good symbol to use for good/FAC articles. The others, I'm not sure. jnothman 23:09, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really so keen on the icons, but more on the process of improving articles. Currently, only a tiny proportion of articles have featured status, and I would like to see a more obvious staircase up which articles can climb towards featured status. At the moment, we have al sorts of ways to mark our disagreements with articles, but no way to say 'this is an article with which no one can disagree'. I feel that's the first step, the next is that hard-to-define 'goodness' level, on the way to featured status. Saying that the English Misplaced Pages has just under a million articles is impressive, but I would like to be able to put a number on quality as well. The random article test (click through random articles to see what you get) can be very depressing. --Gareth Hughes 00:40, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

You may be interested in Misplaced Pages:Stable versions, currently undergoing discussion and experimentation. Deco 10:33, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Some WikiProjects already do this, for example Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Chemicals/Worklist. Physchim62 (talk) 14:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The discussion at stable versions is along these lines, but seems to focus on the top end of the spectrum: it's about getting the best articles into print. The system at WikiProject Chemicals/Organization is closer to what I am suggesting: it classifies the entire gammut of articles by quality as a means to their improvement. The featured-article system is good, as it gives us a clear definition of quality. I believe that it would be good to have a graded system of quality definitions that covered the entire project. --Gareth Hughes 16:11, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Not exactly. It's more a process for creating alternate versions of articles that are stable, reliable, and have been fact-checked. It can be applied at all levels equally well. Deco 00:41, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Maybe a star system; five-star articles are featured, one-star articles are sub-stubs.--Keycard 09:56, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

No, classification of articles in Misplaced Pages is bad. We shouldn't make the reader unconfortable when he reads a "one-star" article and make him trust blindly wikipedia when he reads a "five-stars" article. Stars judge articles on their quality, whereas stub status is put according to the content. And besides WP:FA there's no "formal" status or categorisation of articles in Misplaced Pages "regulated" by WP:FAC and WP:FARC. If we put the stars system, any user will classify articles according to his likes and dislikes, whereas featured articles are chosen by vote and discussion, that's why it may be the only category where a star should be allowed. CG 13:58, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Purge cache (Sidebar)

This can be very useful when the page you are browsing is not refreshing when you clear your cache. Hope you find this useful. --MarioJE 01:06, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:purge-url

(the link ifself)

{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=purge}}

MediaWiki:purge

("purge cache" or something similar)

Purge cache

MediaWiki:Sidebar

(at the bottom of the Sidebar)

** purge-url|purge

Protection against vandal images

Could there reasonably be a form of protection developed that only restricted the changiing of images in an article? For example, if someone added a new "Image:Something" that wan't there before, the edit just wouldn't take. Having an option like this could cut down on the worst vandalism on our main page FAs while still leaving them generally editable.--Pharos 01:22, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

An interesting proposal; keep in mind that the reciprocal would also have to be blocked, i.e. you can't remove image tags either. Because if you could, then a vandal could go in, remove them, then we'd have to wait for an admin to readd them. --Golbez 01:36, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Another and probably easier to implement alternative is to simply not allow very new accounts to upload images. Sort of permanently sprotect image uploads. It might be a too radical change, but it sure would solve this problem on FA's as well as image vandalism in general. And as an added bonus reduce the number of copyvio-images that new users in particaular tend to upload. Shanes 05:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Shanes, that's not the point. You don't have to upload pictures of penises; they're already on Misplaced Pages. That's what Pharos is proposing preventing, new images from being added to an article, not necessarily new images being uploaded. --Golbez 07:04, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I think there is already an embargo on image uploads before someone made has some minimal number of edits. But whether that number should be raised or prospective uploaders otherwise educated is another matter; as Golbez says, there are already plenty of images appropriate for, say, gentitalia articles, that are mighty embarrassing on computer science articles.--Pharos 16:58, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, images are embedded in wikitext and can be transcluded through multiple levels of templates. This makes them very difficult to exclude, even if we wanted to. Deco 10:13, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

There would only be a couple of templates on any one article, and these could either be subst'd or easily "i-protected" as well and put in a temporary category. And I would not assume that vandals are always smarter than us; indeed experience shows that most of them are rather clueless– remember WP:BEANS--Pharos 16:58, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but sophisticated vandals such as Willy on Wheels vandalized templates transcluded onto the Main Page and Mediawiki messages. Also, I don't think it's much more obscene to replace an article with pictures of penises than it is to replace it with erotic stories or reams of profanity in all caps. Deco 00:40, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Contrast showers

Can someone write up an entry about contrast showers? It's apparently a method of detox or cleansing that involves alternating between hot and cold showers every few minutes. I was hoping to learn more from here only to be disappointed there exists no entry for "contrast showers".

Never have I ever come across such a wonderful site as this. Very informative. I found myself addicted to reading stuff for hours.

Thanks for the compliments. I just wrote a short article on the topic on Contrast showers. -- Chris 73 | Talk 08:39, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Auto-Detect Capitals Mistakes in Search

When I search for, say "George bush", if there wasn't a redirect then I might get a "this page doesn't exist" message because the page is actually at "George Bush". In most cases you'll get a search result that has "George Bush" with 100% relevancy, but there ARE some cases in which bad capitalisation leads to an all out red link.

When I search for something, and when anyone searches for something, chances are they will type it in all lowercase. So the suggestion is this: that if an article can't be found, the engine automatically looks for alternative capitalisations - if there is one, then it goes straight there.

So if you searched "emperor foo", it would also check "Emperor foo", "emperor Foo", and "Emperor Foo" before telling you there's no such page. -- Alfakim --  talk  14:40, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

We have a system in place for this: Category:Redirects for alternative capitalisation. I believe that programming a system like this would be unfeasible, but you can always take it to Bugzilla if you're willing to defend your proposal against possible problems (such as disambiguating between two articles spelled the same with different capitalizations). — Ambush Commander 20:46, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

This would probably entail storing and indexing capitalization-normalized versions of every page name. This wouldn't be too hard on the database, but it would certainly require a not-insignificant amount of effort to code. If it were done, however, pages like EBay could drop the damn capital at last.

This would probably be more noticed by coders if you posted it at Village pump (technical). No doubt there's a long-standing Bugzilla request for this. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:30, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Show Last Editor's Comment When Editing

A simple proposal that the edit summary from the last edit gets included somewhere on any edit page, eg in grey at the bottom.

This would be useful for many reasons (particularly collaborative ones), but a specific reason is thus:

Often, if someone makes an edit, they will include as a summary "Changed X because of Y, see Z." Or similar. This message will only reach watchers of that pages - if someone else comes, they may be likely to be unaware of Y or Z, and thus may change X back. This is sometimes very tedious. -- Alfakim --  talk  14:40, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

If you're talking about reverting to an earlier version, you must go through the History page, so you see the edit summary. If you're talking about someone *actually* editing the page and changing it, well, the problem is what if the change was three edits back? In cases where something could be disputed but was already resolved, HTML comments, e.g. <!-- PLEASE SEE TALK PAGE AND DO NOT REMOVE --> can be used to notify prospective editors. — Ambush Commander 20:27, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Unanswered Questions

I am sure most regular users would have had the experience of asking a question on a talk page, and receiving no answer for a long time (in some cases, never). The answer would in most cases be known to someone who doesn't happen to have that particular article on their watchlist. Would it be possible to automatically copy all talk page questions that haven't been answered for, say, 2 weeks, into a common "Unanswered Questions" page where everyone can have a go? Eg. the regular contributors to the Reference Desk are full of never-ending knowledge about, well, just about everything, and would welcome the opportunity for almost unlimited ego-gratification (all in a good cause, of course). Why not bring the questions to them? JackofOz 02:24, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe a really good solution to this would only be possible as part of the proposed conversion of talk pages to a message board format (which I think is a good idea anyway). Then there could be forums that automatically view unanswered posts from talk page forums, without any forking or other issues associated with copying of content. Also, if we were to do this now, any attempt to determine what's a reply to what by parsing wikitext would be a nightmare to implement and occasionally wrong. Deco 02:28, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Frank Ticheli Page

Hello. I am new to the editing aspect of Misplaced Pages, so I apologize if this sounds dumb. I was looking through the encyclopedia, and I discovered that it lacks a page for the great American composer Frank Ticheli. Now, I have tried to look into the Misplaced Pages rules, and I think this page is perfectly inoffensive. Ticheli is very well known (in fact, my all-district honor band just preformed a piece by him earlier today...), he has numerous pieces out, and just about every band director I know has at least three of his pieces. So, if it's not too much to ask, can I or someone else please write a page for him? I think it would greatly benefit the Encyclopedia.

Thank You

--24.99.38.182 03:04, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, how would I not know him (our regions band and my high school have played his American Elegy! And Misplaced Pages, it seems, knows him too: Frank Ticheli. P.S. It seems that something real hokey was going on a few minutes ago as when I checked the first time Ticheli didn't exist. Ah well. — Ambush Commander 03:18, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh! Good! Thank you! I was rather frightened when I didn't see it. (By the way, American Elegy is probably the most beautiful piece ever. My brother's All-state band played it (with him as the conductor) two years ago, and they even sang the Columbine School Song (which ticheli wrote) beforehand. I must say... there wasn't a dry eye in the audience.)

Anyway, thanks again! Sorry for the confusion.. --24.99.38.182 03:21, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Deleting replaced fairuse orphans quicker

I've suggested we allow admins to delete promptly (on-sight, not 7-days) nonfree orphaned fairuse images, if an adequate free image is in place. Please discuss at Misplaced Pages talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#fairuse replaced: should they be speedied faster?. --Rob 04:43, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Analogies to understand Disciplines

An analogy can be used to understand a concept. For example, transistor be explained using the concept of handpump. Misplaced Pages contains a lot of terms belonging to different fields/disciplines of Science, Engg, Arts. And I am sure people who are not experts in the field/discipline can understand them using analogies. If we could contribute by adding analogies that really made sense, it would be really great. In this fashion we can help build our understanding across different fields/discipline in less time.

From College Paper to Wiki?

There's a nearly infinite number of term papers being submitted in college that get read only by the professor and the n thrown away. What if a system was created for having professors assign topics that are needed for wikipaedia, so after they are marked they could be integrated in the project? The professor could have every student select a username, and the article could be locked until the professor has marked it to make sure that no one modifies it. For example a botany professor could assign each student a couple of species to write the paper on, and that would mean 30 articles or so per class, per semester. This would help 'recycle' the tremendous amounts of time wasted on papers only one person ever reads. Obviously this could be organized in various ways depending on constraints. For example contributing to wikipedia could be an extra activity for bonus points. Sensitizing college professors to the issue could yeld tremendous benefits. Redfax 13:35, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

They'd have to be created in userspace (i.e User:Foo/My article), and comply with our no original research and neutral point of view policies. If there's anyone willing to put in the effort to ensure such compliance, then go for it. Johnleemk | Talk 13:40, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

That is essentially the problem: college papers tend to present theses, not to summarise existing knowledge. User:Fuzheado does something like this with his students, but he's working in a specialist area which is amenable to encyclopedic writing. Mark 14:44, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

This is already been done at several universities, to some success. Please see Misplaced Pages:School and University Projects. --best, kevin 17:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I personally recommend that school papers get posted to your userpage or a subpage thereof, and links added to the talk pages of relevant articles. Interested contributors can extract and fix up information from the paper. You can do this with practically any document (well, as long as the people on MFD don't get to you). Deco 23:43, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Annotation

Soliciting comments on Meta about m:Annotation. Essentially, once implemented, it will be a tool that will let you view the wikitext of any article and see who wrote what and when (on a word by word basis). There are a few crucial interface issues that need to be resolved, no developing experience necessary! Please comment. — Ambush Commander 21:32, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Awww... :-( No one cares about annotation. Maybe I should look for something else to implement. — Ambush Commander 03:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I care! I think it would be awesome. It's very time consuming at the moment to locate the editor that first added a certain piece of text. I'm afraid I just don't have much else to say about it except, er, good idea. :-) Deco 04:06, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm so glad someone answered! Yay! So, if you were to use the Annotation tool, you'd have a specific piece of text on the page that you'd want to look up. You (somehow) enter it in, and then the site tells you who did what. A few questions: how exactly would you plan to tell the software exactly what fragments you wanted to check? And also, if the fragment contained more than one author, how would you expect the software to show it to you? — Ambush Commander 04:47, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I made a mockup for you of the way I imagine it:

The text is automatically segmented into portions. The blue portions are those written by a single editor, while the yellow subportions are based on the edits of two editors. Hovering the mouse over a portion shows some info, much like a mixture of history and diffs, detailing changes to that specific portion. "bunnys" looks bolded in the first change, but it's not supposed to be. If I hovered over "But also evil" I would see DcoetzeeBot's edit adding that phrase with that part of his diff (which is not included when I hover over the other part). Just a concept. Deco 07:36, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

It's an exciting idea, Edward; I look forward to seeing how you work out the details. I don't know how you will decide where to start the annotating process -- not all bits of text will have a clear "starting place" in the revision history. But those details are yours to sort out -- you're asking about input and output

Ideally, I'd want to be able to click-and-drag to select text, then hit a button or choose a command from a right-click menu to submit that text to the tool. Given that there's no other click-and-drag function on Misplaced Pages (yet), the next best thing would be to be able to copy and paste a selection into a text box -- perhaps something down below the "Save Page" buttons and such, or in a pop-up window or new window or tab.

It's hard to visualize the output (which is why you're asking, I'm sure). I see perhaps three options. The first would break the output into color-coded rows based on editor. The second would be the same, sorted by date of edit instead of order of text (eek, sounds confusing). Something like this:

Text: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

The third option would be more like a sequence of diffs, sorted by date. With a large text this could obviously get quite long and complex. (Having spent the time to lay this out, I like this one better.)

I'm sure there are other ways, but that's what I've come up with so far. This doesn't deal with the subtleties of deletions, reversions, spelling corrections and such; it would just show the most recent editor to be responsible for a given word or phrase. Who gets credit/blame for a word if a later editor only adds a missing letter? Would there be any way to tell that there had been a previous editor who inserted that word?

I think it would be a necessity to provide links to the actual revisions or diffs to allow people to explore history more thoroughly, and to explain how the mechanism works so that faulty attributions are harder to make.

Let me know what you think. — Catherine\ 07:19, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Before that, I have to think. Both of you presented things that I immediately dismissed as impossible when I started thinking about it, which means I'm in a rut, which means I need to think. Feel free to incorporate your ideas onto m:Annotation. — Ambush Commander 02:32, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

New user talk page template

I don't know where I need to be to propose a new user talk page template (or if this is covered by WP:BOLD), so I'll do it here. I regularly patrol Recent Changes and Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, and I come across a lot of recreations of deleted articles. I have a feeling that in many cases, the creation was a test or an error by a confused newbie. They create an article, upon returning they see that it has been deleted, don't know what is going on and recreate the article thinking there may have been a technical glitch. Many recreations are currently treated as vandalism. I believe that we need a softer notice for probable newbies, telling them that an article they have created has been deleted, and that they shouldn't recreate the article, but have to go to Deletion Review instead and plead for the article's merits there. Aecis 22:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

• I should be bold, so that we can see the proposed wording and maybe use it ourselves! Physchim62 (talk) 02:28, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
  • The wording I had in mind is something like this: "You have recently created the article <name>. This was deleted in accordance with Misplaced Pages's deletion policies. Please do not recreate the article. If you disagree with the article's deletion, please go to Misplaced Pages:Deletion review and plead for the article there." Aecis 08:41, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
• Something like {{Recreated}}, for example? (I edited the wording a little). Physchim62 (talk) 23:16, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Exactly :) Thank you! Aecis 09:34, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to use the template on User talk:Hindol, who had recreated Robbie van Leeuwen, but the name of the article didn't show up in the message. I've looked at other templates, and they have a colon in front of where the page name goes. I added the colon to the template, but that didn't help either. Aecis 18:42, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Change election standards?

I have been looking at some of these elections, and emphasis is mostly put on number of edits and such. It just kind of bothers me that that seems like the determining factor of being elected admin, etc. Maybe some users just don't know enough to make that many edits, such as myself, but are useful in other ways such as settling disputes. I have been watching the arbitrator position elections for a while, and it seems to me that the best people for the job aren't getting elected because of their edits. But the way candidates with few edits conduct themselves around Misplaced Pages seems better than those elected on the basis of their edits. I don't know, maybe there should be a distinction.Osbus 02:14, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

What you're referring to is called "editcountitis". Editcount is one factor taken into consideration at RFA, sure, but it is far from the only one. The reason for it being a factor at all is that when voting for an admin, we need to be sure that the candidate understands all the features of Misplaced Pages and is confident and competent in its use. If a person only has a small number of edits, and all in one space, hen there's no way of guaranteeing that. If you look at Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Standards, you'll see that many regular voters a AFD have set standards that cover a large number of different factors. Vrtually none of those standards listed have editcount as the only - or even the main - determining factor. Grutness...wha? 21:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Autoblock on inactive new accounts

New account formation is currently running at over 250 per hour (that's faster than new page creation). Many of these are surely dormant accounts for future trolling/sockpuppeting/vandalism. Would it be possible to autoblock a new account which has not been used for editing after, say 72 hours? Physchim62 (talk) 02:32, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

That's a lot of accounts. Has there been an increase lately? I would be cautious in blocking such accounts. Once someone realizes that that happens, they will just make an edit after creating each account. Also, some people are overly cautious when first signing up and may not may an edit for a little while, or they could sign up one day after exploring and then either not come back to Misplaced Pages for a couple of days or not even go online for a couple of days. -- Kjkolb 03:34, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Blocking would probably upset some legitimate users. Would it be reasonable to simply delete these accounts if they haven't been used to log in for a month? ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 03:18, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Note that some idle accounts serve a legitimate purpose, for example for reserving a username for a pending username change, or for preemptive protection against Doppelgangers (Misplaced Pages:Doppelganger). However, both of these really have better potential solutions in the software. Deco 03:52, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Doppelgangers shouldn't have to worry about blocked accounts, and usernames which are "reserved" for a username change (I'm not sure that's really encouraged) could be unblocked when needed. I'm not sure how deleting the accounts would be any less upsetting than blocking them... Physchim62 (talk) 00:36, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

A lot of sites do expire inactive accounts eventually. I think people wouldn't be surprised if an account they'd never used disappeared. If they decided they wanted the account, it'd be easy for them to recreate it. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 00:53, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Click here to see the current rate of new account creation! Physchim62 (talk) 00:39, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Whilst I agree inactive accounts should expire after some time, 72 hours seems far too short a time. I did not make an edit with my account for several weeks after signing up for it, and probably wouldn't have if I had been blocked without doing anything. Chairman S. 10:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Not all people use accounts for editing. Some people use accounts just to be able to change the preferences (for instance, the skin). So, blocking accounts just because they don't edit is completely inappropriate. --cesarb 15:49, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

How about blocking accounts that have not made a single edit for a time period equal to the period one is required so that they can edit semi-protected pages? And of course warning every user that creates a new account about this! --Michalis Famelis 21:18, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I occasionally use non-English wikis and forks (mostly to enter the interwiki links). I can edit something on a Japanese or Georgian wiki only once a half-year, but still would be upset if somebody would block my account there. If we suspect that somebody could create dormant accounts for a sock farm able to circumvent the semiprotection and/or suffrage, can we do the other way around and count only the "active time" that is like 1 day around an edit. Thus, if I appear on a Japanese wiki only twice in my wikilife, then my experience there is two days despite the first edit been around 7 months ago. It would mean that I can not edit sprotected articles and vote there, that I think is fair. This way there would be not much use in creating dormant accounts for the sinister purposes abakharev 07:51, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that requiring them to make edits is silly - but why not require at least one subsequent login in the next few days? Michael Ralston 04:47, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Exploding Wales

Recently, Jimbo Wales de-adminned several users for their participation in a wheel war concerning a userbox that claimed its user was a pedophile, clearly an example of dark humor. Among these was Radiant!, who attempted to uphold policy by unblocking the creator of the userbox. Radiant! left the project on February 7.

We've seen on numerous occasions that Jimbo simply does not have the requisite respect for the community for a social project of Misplaced Pages's size, nor sufficient respect for the core values of the project (witness, for example, his editing to Jimbo Wales). I think we need to reassess the saying "Misplaced Pages is not a democracy". We have no recourse against people with too much power going off the hook. That needs to change. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 05:56, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do, short of forking. Jimbo runs the Foundation which runs the servers. (I've already blabbered on about this on my talk page and the talk page of the proposed decision in the pedophile userbox case, so I'm not about to repeat myself here anymore than necessary.) Johnleemk | Talk 08:10, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Minor correction. Jimbo did not desysop Radiant!. He did 'reprimand' him for removing the block, but also later apologized for doing so. Unfortunately, by that time Radiant! had apparently already left. --CBDunkerson 22:48, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

This unhappy event is not alone. For example, User:Weyes and User:Rl left after getting besmirched in RfA. Simply, those people who devote lot of time and dedication to Misplaced Pages need to be treated with utmost respect. Danger of being misunderstood and mistreated on electronic medium is very high. That's quite normal for human nature. Pavel Vozenilek 23:05, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Jimbo's ultimate veto powers are written into any Wikimedia governing documents, but I could be wrong. De facto, the arbcom has upheld that he does have them. If the board truly felt Jimbo's actions were not in the best interests of the Foundation's goals, they could remove his rights as they deemed necessary. You could take up whatever petition you felt necessary to gain support for having the board take such an action. I just think you'll find very weak if any significant support for it and the process would liekly be a net negative for the community and for the project's goals. Overall the biggest miss in your comments above is in thinking that the social project is the important part. We are an encyclopedia and that takes precedence. Diseminating free information is the goal, not having a social project. - Taxman 23:36, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

But it is a social project. Without the community, the encyclopedia would not exist, and could not progress. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 00:29, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes it takes people to accomplish important things. But I would ask you to consider if your current actions are the best thing that you could be doing to build and strengthen the community to meet the project's goals. Is building dissent helpful, or would time be better spent knowing that while people are flawed and will make mistakes, overall they can still be doing the right thing. - Taxman 04:03, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't always agree with Jimbo's actions, but I can't think of anyone who could does what he does better. If we did start to become more of a democracy then the project would become very difficult, I couldn't see that working at all. Martin 23:42, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, only the English Misplaced Pages is under his direct control. The projects in other languages seem to have done fine without his influence. What essential work does he do within en:? I'm not necessarily saying someone else should do what he does in dealing with the outside world, but the level of authority he's given within the project seems to be a mistake. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 00:29, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The only Misplaced Pages comparable to the English one is the German Misplaced Pages, and it is operated by a cabal with powers delegated from Jimbo. Most other wikis are sufficiently small that they can run themselves; the English Misplaced Pages is unique in that its consensus mechanisms have not scaled with the size of the community, ocasionally leading to impasses. There's also the fact that the English Misplaced Pages is the most well-known one, which thus forces the Foundation to devote much of its time to it. (Because, believe it or not, what goes on in here has a lot of effect on what people think about us.) Don't get me wrong. I'm not a Jimbo sycophant. I think he fucked up WRT Radiant, and I think he's capable of fucking up further in the future. But I haven't seen any other way to butt in and handle the tough problems the community can't tackle alone (cases in point: the autofellatio controversy, appointing the arbcom, and more recently, the pedo case -- yes, Jimbo fucked up WRT Radiant, but he did the right thing by desysoping the most egregrious wheel warriors). Johnleemk | Talk 06:18, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

It's a fact of life on the Internet that He Who Sits at the Keyboard makes the rules. He could voluntarily restrict his power, but he could also voluntarily expand it again. Our only real recourse is to fork, and the damage would be irreversible - just look at Wikinfo's article count (35,000). It would also simply place us at the behest of a new hardware owner, and also sacrifice our access to the valuable Misplaced Pages name, logo, and Google rank. I think most of his actions have been either quite positive or at least not so bad - for now I'm willing to stick things out and I hope everyone else will too. Deco 02:15, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

But if enough of the Misplaced Pages community threaten to leave the project unless Jimbo does, then hopefully he would listen to our grievances Cynical 18:36, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

And what are your grievances? Or are you throwing him out just for the heck of it? Johnleemk | Talk 18:41, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Making major policy changes without any community discussion (see CSD T1), pressurising the ArbCom not to take action against admins who delete out-of-process, de-sysopping people (and driving others from the project) for upholding policy. Cynical 19:12, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, and the major policy change has affected us detrimentally *how*? (Oh, yes, I agree it has been abused by some -- but so have a lot of other policies.) Just because Jimbo pushed it through without discussion doesn't automatically make it bad. If you ask for a more general "consultation with the community", I'd agree, yes, this principle is good -- there have been cases where people not subscribed to the mailing list were almost totally in the dark WRT policy changes. And again, if the out-of-process deletions were bad, where's the proof? If the net effect of the out-of-process deletion is to reduce the crap we have here, then it's good. And honestly -- I don't see why anyone should care that a pedophile userbox was deleted. A vast majority of userboxes have never been touched by the "deletionists". And kindly point out where Jimbo has desysoped people for upholding policy (and why this particular action here was bad). Last time I checked, it wasn't policy that people have a right to self-expression on their userpage. (WP:USER has loads of exceptions, and presumably Jimbo was pointing out one of those in this case.) Nor was it policy to call for the banning of all self-identified pedophiles from Misplaced Pages (nor to block them). Neither is it policy to indefinitely block people who have committed the aforementioned actions. The only action I think you could be alluding to is Jimbo's desysoping of Karmafist for wheel warring with him, but I don't see where Karmafist upheld policy. Johnleemk | Talk 19:26, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe Cynical was referencing the desysoping of people who had engaged in the pedophile wheel war, some of whom merely unblocked users who were blocked out of process, if I recall correctly. I think the idea was to nip the whole war in the bud, but it was quite a drastic action. I oppose CSD T1, on the basis of it not being sufficiently objective, but not Jimbo's right to create such a policy if he so chooses - I just hope as its danger becomes evident that the community will come to a consensus to remove it. Deco 20:41, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Complexity Relevance (Voting)

Recently I've been browsing mathematical terms' entries, and it's accentuated something I've thought about before to the point of me digging out this section of WP.

Many entries on WP are highly technical - which is great; repository of knowledge and all that... But if I want to understand the basics of something, often the first paragraph, there are so many links to referenced terms (in the interests of brevity for experts I guess) that I have to choose between spending a couple of hours with my head approaching detonation (because the problem is recursive) or just taking what little I can, knowing that a much more basic (although, perhaps a little longer) introduction would have given me much more and what I wanted.

I offer 'polynomial' as today's example.

The issue I want to raise is one of feedback - sure, I could add to the few comments in the discussion page with a 'me too' - but I'd be doing that for a number of maths and other pages - and what would it mean? Who would really care? Those looking to add definitions are involved in the subject, more interested in providing deeper, not shallower description.

I wonder how many other visitors to expert-intolerant pages feel the same as me? How would anyone know?

If there was, whether on the main page or on the discussion page, an option to indicate (whether on a sliding scale or not) an easy way for those coming to the entry to say 'less expert definition PLEASE!' then it would be possible to gauge the importance (to the caring experts) or providing a more simple or a more expert sub-entry, based on the experiences of those visiting that entry.

Some pages have the 'This entry is in need of attention by a subject expert' tag, but never is there a 'This entry is need of attention by a subject expert with a knack for explaining things to the plebs' tag...

So that's it - give us plebs a way to easily indicate a desire to understand the topic more readily, and I suspect the experts, appreciative of the interest, will try to accommodate. At the moment, they have no way of knowing what the interest level (and hence worth) of adding decomplexifying examples and definitions might be.

(NB: WikiExperts, please feel free to edit / enhance text above for conformity) --Jaymax 01:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The templates you're looking for are {{technical}} and {{technical (expert)}}. There's a project to address this issue — WikiProject:General Audience. We also have a very controversial style guide at Misplaced Pages:Make technical articles accessible. A lot of people agree that accessibility is a useful goal, but what isn't agreed on is how to achieve that. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 01:12, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I am personally interested in adding more intuitive explanations to many mathematical topics and other technical topics. The only problem is that making complex things simple without creating a misleading or blatantly incorrect impression is really hard. I've seen some articles do an excellent job of this, though - give it time. :-) Deco 02:19, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Penis vandal

I want to see if anyone can identify penis vandals; namely, vandals who put a picture of a penis in a Misplaced Pages article. I want to know if anyone can create a template for penis vandals' talk pages. Georgia guy 01:16, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

This is much too specific a vandalism to create a template for. This falls under the more useful broad umbrella of "obvious vandalism". Deco 02:07, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

How is it too specific?? I think it is so common among kinds of vandalism that I think it deserves a template of its own. Georgia guy 02:07, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't it become a badge of honour? Your average adolescent male would see a template like that and think, can I have one too... JackyR 02:16, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

{{bv}} and {{bv-n}}. Johnleemk | Talk 06:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

WP:BEANS. User:Zoe| 21:31, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Article Webs

I sent this message to Misplaced Pages's email before I knew about this proposals board. Now that I know where to put it, I thought someone might be interested in trying to accomplish this with the articles.

  I have been glancing through pages on Misplaced Pages for the last few weeks and 
  it is igniting inquiry for every possible subject related to the main topic 
  Im looking at.  I thought it would be a nice feature to make a link that 
  presents an entire web of every link in an article and its related topics so 
  that they would pop-up in order in printable versions, with each closing of 
  one window initiating the next window to open.  Of course someone might get 
  caught in a web too large to tackle at once so there would need to be a 
  "terminate chain" link somewhere on each page to stop it.  And also, if you 
  could make a cookie that would allow them to resume the chain later, Im sure 
  that would be appreciated as well.  I figure since Misplaced Pages is a free 
  encyclopedia it might as well be useable offline as one.  And this way, the 
  user would be getting just what they wanted and nothing extra that was 
  useless to them.

I also looked through some of the Wikibooks, they kind of touch on this idea just because of the fact that they encompass all of one subject and dont go too far away into further-defining links of other words in the article. But it still doesn't quite give the simplicity of just reeling off a full, in-depth definition of one full subject in the few minutes that it takes for your printer to get it all done.

You mean you want Misplaced Pages to become an electronic Memex that prints the content of associative trails as hard copy? I'm not sure that's a good idea. Laptops and electronic paper are going to become ridiculously cheap in the next five years in the First World, so printing hard copy of Misplaced Pages will become less and less of an issue. As for developing countries, the last time I checked, there has been a lot of talk about a special offline paper version of Misplaced Pages for such audiences. --Coolcaesar 02:22, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Well it doesn't have to be printed out, it could display online. There are connection mapping tools like this and they are very handy to visually see the links a topic has. Think of the music map thing that by default shows two links deep, and clicking on another moves the center of the map to that artist. It would be a useful visualization tool, but like any other good idea is unlikely to be implemented unless someone steps forward with the code. - Taxman 17:02, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for deletion/Patch

My proposals (please respond/discuss/vote on sub page so as not to disrupt regular discussion here)

1. I am quite satisfied with the m:9/11 wiki move proposal argument style and I propose it here for all deletions.
2. I also propose the merging of Misplaced Pages:Requested moves and Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion (Articles for deletion). Perhaps a system that takes care of both moves (renames), deletion and keeps would be more productive.
   • Articles for deletion is misleading, this is not a page where only deletions are determined. Many (if not most) end up as keep or move/rename as well as delete. Also the process is more like a vote which is easily infested by "vote only accounts" and other nonsense

--Cool Cat 02:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

You are welcome to make alternative proposals. Also please explain why you support or oppose a particular view point. --Cool Cat 02:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for deletion/Patch

Warning icon for headings

I propose that a small warning icon, such as (which has the benefit of being scalable with the browser font), be available for addition to specially designated headings. If someone typed a heading

==Safety precautions== __WARNING__

or some such thing, the icon would appear both in the heading itself and its ToC entry, and the latter might appear in bold or highlighted in some other way. This would draw attention to those sections needed to protect users' personal, family or property safety, without being a disclaimer template. Of similar benefit would be making it appear near the link to Misplaced Pages:General disclaimer and following the example of the French Misplaced Pages in moving said disclaimer link to the top screen (a more conspicuous place). Seahen 03:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Attracting contributions from older, highly qualified people

I'm a retired chemical engineer with a 55-year career in designing, commissioning and operating petroleum refineries, petrochemical plants, natural gas treating plants, and similar industrial plants in the USA, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and South Africa. Most of my career was spent in the USA and in England. I have written two published engineering text books and I am a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

I am not trying to boast about my accomplishments, but my career experience is pertinent to what I want to say here.

About 2-3 weeks ago, I decided to contribute some of my knowledge to the Misplaced Pages, so I submitted some articles. Before doing so, I spent about 2-3 days reading the Help, the how-to use Wiki markup language, the how-to use TeX math markup, the Wiki style guidelines, etc. The amount of material available to read was completely overwhelming. And, in my opinion, most of that available material was way over the head of a newcomer, unless the newcomer was a computer guru. In fact, most of that learning material seemed to be written by computer gurus for reading by computer gurus rather than by newcomers wanting to learn.

Other than a welcome letter posted to my User Talk page, nobody stepped up to offer help or guidance on how to get started. In effect, I was expected to have learned how to start a page, how to format it in Wiki markup, how to use TeX to create math formulas, and to be completely conversant with the Wiki style guidelines when I submitted my first article. That would have taken weeks to do.

So I did my very best (and I am quite comfortable with HTML which I used rather than Wiki markup) and I submitted some articles. Within a short time, some administrators not only did major edits of my articles but I was also criticized for using HTML for my text and for my formulas. I was also criticized for using .jpg graphics for some of my formulas and for one of my tables because they were not in the spirit of the Wiki collaboration methodology.

I admit that most of the criticisms were completely justified. However, in most cases, what was lacking was any discussion or explanation of most of the edits and criticisms despite the fact that I took great pains to ask for explanations on the Talk page for the articles I contributed. With a few notable exceptions, none of the editors and critics responded to my asking for explanations and for help. In fact, my articles were twice posted with Cleanup Needed tags ... but no explanation or help offered on what needed cleanup and how to do it. The only way I even knew who had posted those tags was by looking in the History pages. It seems to me that common courtesy would have been to at least explain on the Talk pages why the tags were posted and by whom ... and perhaps to offer some help on how to comply.

If you want contributed knowledge from older, experienced people, you must find a better way than expecting them to spend weeks learning how to create and format contributions. Here is what I suggest:

• Get some of your best volunteer administrators to become person-to-person editing helpers for newcomers.

• On the Main Wiki page, clearly invite newcomers to submit articles written either in Microsoft Word or in HTML.

• If the person-to-person editing helpers agree that the article is worthwhile, then they completely Wikify the submission and have it reviewed by the submitter. When both the submitter and the editor have agreed on the final version, then publish it on the Wiki.

Before rejecting this proposal out of hand, just ask yourselves how would you handle a submitter who was a Nobel prize winner and who did not want to spend weeks learning how to Wikify a submission.

Which is most important to you? Is it the substantive quality of the published material on the Wiki or is it getting everyone to become experts in Wikifying an article before they make their very first submission?
mbeychok 07:31, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Although you're absolutely right that we should have done more to help teach you and answer your questions, please don't think your contributions are unwelcome. Even if you were a user who uses no markup, no links, and uploads all sorts of images in the wrong format, you would still be valuable to us, because any contributor on here can fix up an article - not all of us can write about advanced chemical engineering. Although talk page comments can sometimes be strongly worded, we really only intend it to be friendly advice, and you are not obligated to follow it. We appreciate your feedback and I hope you'll stay.

As for doing something about improving the user experience for people like you, I think part of the problem is that it's hard to identify users who really have something to offer and need our help. Maybe if we made more of an effort to learn a little about all our new users and their experience it would help us to direct this effort better. Thanks again. Deco 09:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, in all fairness, we rarely get competent people willing and capable of contributing in arcane areas such as advanced mathematics (which require learning LaTeX and all that) -- and wikimarkup is fairly easy to learn. It's sort of a chicken and egg thing, really. People won't make room to accomodate people who know their stuff but need some guidance unless such people are coming in droves. :{ Johnleemk | Talk 09:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

It should be noted that there is now a way that newcomers can ask for help. The standard help template (Template:Welcome) explains that if a user places {{helpme}} on their talk page, someone should show up to provide assistance. Jacoplane 09:44, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

My experience differs somewhat, but still points to a problem in bringing in new editors. The last 20 years of my career involved supporting computers, and I have a lot of experience in working in on-line forums, so I was fairly comfortable starting in Misplaced Pages. Nevertheless, after six months I'm still finding policies, guidelines and resources I didn't realize existed.

The "welcoming" processed is flawed. There has been some recent discussion about the impersonal nature of slapping a "welcome" template on a new editor's talk page, sort of the equivalent of the Welcome Wagon throwing a basket at your front door as it drives by. In my case, I never have been "welcomed", although after 6 months, 4700+ edits, 65+ images uploaded and 80+ articles and 7 categories created, I don't think I need to be welcomed now.

I have found individual editors and admins very helpful when I've asked for advice, and occassionally have received useful responses to questions on talk pages. It is true, however, that talk pages are often black holes. I suspect too many editors like to slap a template on an article and move on, never to look at the article again. If I put a template on an article, it stays on my watchlist, and usually goes on my suspense list (although I have trouble finding time to get back to it). -- Dalbury 12:23, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The appearence of the learning material seeming to be written by computer gurus for reading by computer gurus is not really an appearence — it's true, and an unfortunate reflection of the systemic bias caused by the fact that the initial contributors to Misplaced Pages mostly came from a formal or informal Computer Science background. The main obstacle to making it better is that, by the time you know enough about how it works to enhance the documentation, you aren't bothered by it anymore. There are projects to enhance the documentation, but I haven't seen much change. Also, the documentation is helplessly fragmented into a large number of pages, making it harder to find what you are looking for. --cesarb 17:47, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

A proposal for simple "no image loading" preference on Wikimedia related sites

Note: This proposal is not about content filtering but simple user definable image load, no load settings.

Greetings,

After doing a cursory perusal of this proposal Wiki area, I could not find a similar proposal however if my following proposal has already been made please do direct me to it!

On a number of sites on the web it is possible to have a user defined user experience relative to these sites. For example most search engines have a type of 'Safe Search' where once activated allows the engine to censor out certain material that certain individuals would find disagreeable (ie: to block pornography,or for parents who want to restrict what content their children see). While I do not find such functionality useful in my own use of the web I can appreciate why such functionality exists.

Lately as I'm sure many of you are aware of there has been much vandalism by certain individuals regarding the display of the caricatures depicting Muhammad in the Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy. In the discussion area for that topic some who have provided thoughtful input regarding this issue, have proposed making 'activate image' links on that particular article with the images being 'invisible' by default. This has been overwhelming opposed (thankfully in my opinion) by the majority of editors who have voted about this issue. Others have wondered if the images could be censored so as not to alienate Muslim contributors (to me, a sensible question). Of course the images have been vandalized hundreds (if not thousands) of times already. What this has lead me to wonder is if WikiMedia could put in place a simple (one click) link (or button) that any person using the sites could click to disable the loading of images for that session? And possibly an actual preference item to disable image loading?

Outside of this current controversy (and plenty of others I'm sure) it seems to make sense to me to have such functionality for those wanting to do research on sensitive image oriented topics in public places (like cyber-cafes, libraries, in classes, etc).

Now I am quite aware that most visitors have the option to disable image loading for a given browser, however for those in public places using publicly accesible computers (and the technically challenged) it can be a bit difficult (or even impossible on restricted systems) to do so.

Does such an idea make sense?

Thanks!

-Scott Stevenson

Netscott 21:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC) <-- signature got deleted with poll.. heh

For further clarification on this proposal I'm adding this code below which would appear in a small and discreet way perhaps under a user's name in the upper right hand corner of any page (under Username | my talk | my preferences | etc. | etc.) (which granted would look nothing like the final UI) but just for clarification: