Misplaced Pages

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Category:Pages automatically checked for accidental language links

Article 4 million approaching

Hi, guys. :) As you are very likely aware, we are at 3,986,676 articles and should be reaching 4 million pretty soon. (Updated tally: 6,943,682) This is a massive milestone that the Wikimedia Foundation wants to be sure is celebrated in its blog, as it did the 3 millionth (). Since it's an English Misplaced Pages specific accomplishment, they felt like it might be appropriate to bring the community in on writing up the event. I've invited people from the Signpost, but since no specific Signpost writer raised their hands Matthew Roth has started up a very bare bones outline at meta:Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts/EnWP_4_Million_Article_Milestone. We've invited anyone at the Signpost who'd like to help out, but of course it's open to others as well. This is open for editing in the usual manner of our work, but anybody with an interest in contributing who doesn't want to edit directly is also welcome to add suggestions or comments at the talk page there. By-lines, of course, for all major contributors...unless you'd rather opt out. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:26, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, Maggie. I'm hoping one of our veteran editors will jump in here and write up something. I also have a question. The majority of articles that are created end up being deleted through one process or another. How do we determine which article is the 4 millionth if the actual 4 millionth article is deleted? Or do we just use the deleted article? Thanks for any input. 64.40.57.128 (talk) 23:26, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Good question. I don't know when the count is considered "stable". :) I'll ask about that one. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, the 4 millionth article will be the first article to be created and not speedily deleted at a time when there are already 3,999,999 articles. The actual "4 millionth article" may vary with time, as older articles are deleted or merged into other articles or as older redirects are turned into articles, older deleted articles restored. Given that, the most important thing is celebrating the milestone of the 4 millionth article. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Where is an easy link to find the updated article tally? Agne/ 19:46, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

There's a counter near the top left of the Main page - "3,989,883 articles in English" -- John of Reading (talk) 19:56, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

LOL! Gawd, how many have I looked at the main page and never noticed that!?!? :P Much obliged for the enlightenment. Agne/ 20:06, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

4 million total articles, but only about 21,000 are WP:FA or WP:GA. That's a pretty poor ratio of decency to garbage. Congrats, Misplaced Pages! WTF? (talk) 21:57, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Renaming categories of ex-Project that are now task forces

I have attempted to rename Category:WikiProject Harry Potter into Category:Harry Potter task force. Unfortunately, people just oppose renaming without "Misplaced Pages" included. Same thing for WP:SEINFELD and WP:HEROES. This may affect all Projects that have task forces. Also, it would be time-consuming to propose renaming of all categories of task forces, such as of Television Project and of Korea Project. --George Ho (talk) 18:27, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Why do you object to having the category plainly labeled as being part of Misplaced Pages's infrastructure? Is excluding the word Misplaced Pages really important? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

If it means discussing such as Category:Roald Dahl task force articles, then we must discuss this maybe here. Discussing the same thing in every WikiProject with task forces is time-consuming. --George Ho (talk) 02:12, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Even if this means renaming all task force categories, such as ones in Category:WikiProject Novels task forces, how do we propose it and where if I'm not objecting? --George Ho (talk) 02:19, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Why do the others need to be changed? Why do you care what other WikiProjects are doing?

Look: you proposed a name change. Someone suggested a better name. You accept that, and then you are finished. So why do we need to talk about hundreds of other groups? Why do you care what they're doing? You can leave the other groups alone and go work on the articles that interest you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:22, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Revision history statistics

For some reason, I can't seem to find the revision history stats page for an article. Last month I was on a page that showed a graph of the size of the article over time, a graph of its edits, and many other useful things. For the sake of being generic, say the history of the Misplaced Pages article. There used to be a link on this page, but now I can't find it. Was it removed? Jesse V. (talk) 23:39, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

There is a discussion at User talk:TParis#Articleinfo tool. The tool is/was located here. Chris857 (talk) 23:52, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the info! Glad to hear that I'm not blind. Hope they get it back. Jesse V. (talk) 04:57, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

This tool needs to be restored ASAP. Its a very valuable and informative tool. We keep hearing that storage space is not a problem at WP, so surely someone can find a server, and grant Tparis the storage space he needs. - X201 (talk) 13:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

ReferenceTooltips

Background: ReferenceTooltips is a gadget that allows users to roll over any inline citation to see reference information. A discussion on whether to enable the gadget for all users by default went on for about two months before being archived about two weeks ago. (This discussion was mentioned in the Signpost.) The discussion resulted in a some changes to the gadget, such as the addition of a delay to the tooltip, support for touchscreen devices, and an easily accessible settings menu that includes a button to disable RT, as well and options to modify/eliminate the delay, or set the tooltip to only pop up upon clicking the reference link.

The discussion seemed to show consensus in support of enabling ReferenceTooltips by default, though it was never formally "closed" as such before it was archived. Does this matter? Would further discussion be necessary for it to be enabled? Another point: During the discussion, a comment by User:R'n'B suggested users be "informed about the change (maybe by a watchlist notice) before it happens, and given instructions on how to turn it off if they wish". (Turning it off is accomplished by pressing the gear icon at the top-right corner of any tooltip and then pressing the large "Disable Reference Tooltips" button, or alternatively, deselecting the gadget in Special:Preferences.) Does anyone have opinions on whether this would be necessary, and how best to accomplish it if it is? --Yair rand (talk) 19:51, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I didn't follow that discussion, but I can tell you the general rule: 90% of users won't notice or won't care if they do notice, 5% of users will be happy, and 5% of users will be very, very, very loudly upset—but only briefly. A couple of months later, most (NB: "most" ≠ "all") of the users, including most of the noisy opposition, won't even remember what the old system was like.

How much notice you give and how many hoops you jump through to tell people about it depend primarily on how much noise you're willing to put up with in the couple of weeks after the change. No matter how much notice you give, it won't be enough for some people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

A quick glance at the discussion shows 39 in support of the proposal, with 14 opposed. That comes out to about a 74% approval rating, which is probably good enough to enable right away. However, I think we should add a watchlist notice, so that people don't scream the way they did with the watchlist change (what ever happened to that RfC anyway?) David1217 16:00, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

(Actually, several of those opposes were conditional all issues that have since been fixed, so it's really 39-11, 78%.) --Yair rand (talk) 03:17, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'd enable it then, possibly with a watchlist notice (but then you'd have to start a new discussion, and you probably don't want to do that). One thing though: for touchscreen devices, can you make it that clicking anywhere gets rid of the tooltip, instead of just the citation? I've tried it on my iPad, and it annoys me. David1217 04:10, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

The intended behavior for touchscreen devices is that clicking anywhere outside the tooltip makes the tooltip disappear. Unfortunately, I don't have a touchscreen device to test it on. I don't understand what you mean by "just the citation" (Just the citation disappears? Only clicking on the citation makes the tooltip disappears? What does "citation" refer to, exactly?) Could you please clarify? Thanks. --Yair rand (talk) 04:16, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I am on an iPad right now, and when you tap on the citation, the tooltip appears. Unless you tap on the little blue number thingy (made with <ref></ref> tags), the tooltip won't go away. What I'd like is that if you tap anywhere other than the tooltip, the tooltip disappears. David1217 04:21, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the bug. Apparently, in certain situations, iPads won't count touching an element as a "click" unless the user triple-taps. Hopefully changing it to also activate on "touchstart" will fix this. (I've left an editprotected request at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js. Hopefully after the sync the bug will be fixed.) --Yair rand (talk) 05:03, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Great, thanks! David1217 05:58, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Note: ReferenceTooltips is working properly on my iPad now. David1217 05:59, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Does anyone else have a comment on whether to enable ReferenceTooltips by default? David1217 05:44, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

English Equivalent

I have created an article in Persian Misplaced Pages for which I don't know the English equivalent. It refers to an educational method in which some students who have extra abilities pass two educational grades in one educational year. Do you know English equivalent?Ali Pirhayati (talk) 12:06, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

We probably cover this in our Tracking (education) article, although whether tracking, or streaming, expresses precisely the concept you decide I leave to you to judge. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:41, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Try Grade skipping or Academic acceleration. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:18, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a world!Ali Pirhayati (talk) 15:49, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

What Twinkle looks like from the receiving end

• User talk:Blingdathersly

See what I wrote at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Bart Ramsey. Uncle G (talk) 18:56, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Seems a bit discouraging, doesn't it. 64.40.54.4 (talk) 10:16, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Someone actually did a study on this, where new editors saw these sort of templates and literally thought it was a completely automatic process with no humans involved. Thus, people who use templates literally fail the Turing test. Despite the plausible value of standardised messaging, it turns out that lots of templates are worse than a few human edits, and Twinkle is worse than doing less by hand. Now I can't find the study in question ... anyone remember where it is? - David Gerard (talk) 10:10, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

This one, possibly? Apparently after they are done updating the level-1 user warnings, they might move on to updating the deletion notification templates. David1217 16:30, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Search for TEP

> I would like to suggest the following improvement. > > When I typed "TEP" in the search button, the thing I am looking for > didn't show up. Later I found that TEP meant: Trust and Estate > Practioner. This falls under: financial/tax matters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.65.38.65 (talk) 20:03, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

The second entry at TEP says:

• Letters after a name indicating membership of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, founded in 1991.

Where did you look for it? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:21, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Userbox "creator" page

OK, I already asked this question at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Userboxes, but I got no response there. This Userbox creator thingy, which is linked from the main userbox navbox, is in the userspace of a permanently blocked user. I think it should it be moved elsewhere. I think it should probably be moved to the UBX (talk · contribs) userspace, which I will ask Mets501 (talk · contribs) about. I will even volunteer to put it in my own userspace if necessary. Any comments from the people here would be appreciated. Eastlaw  ⁄ _contribs 08:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

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