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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: 6,937,314) 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)

Well, FA and GA are generally the cream of the crop. Do we know how many are B class or higher? That would give an indication of how many articles have been graded as at least respectable (or at least AfD-resistant). Regards, RJH (talk) 20:22, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Per the known stats, around 100,000 are B or above, and around 225,000 C or higher, out of 3,300,000 which have an assessment. However, this should be taken with a very large grain of salt; our ratings are systemically skewed lower than is really the case, as articles tend to get improved without being regraded, and often lag by several years. We have never systematically had an article-reassessment program! Andrew Gray (talk) 21:30, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

It is a little surprising that so few are at B class; I'd have expected at least 10%. Oh well, more work for us to do then. RJH (talk) 04:24, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

• Comment I started writing up a draft at meta:Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/EnWP 4 Million Article Milestone#Draft article because nobody else would. 64.40.54.45 (talk) 02:13, 12 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)

Is there a readily identifiable means to turn it off? Regards, RJH (talk) 20:19, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Each tooltip contains a "gear" icon in the top-right corner, that when clicked opens a menu that contains a large "Disable Reference Tooltips" button. Does that count as "readily identifiable"? --Yair rand (talk) 20:42, 9 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)

While it's up, the tag on User:Java7837 that says the account is a sockpuppet of User:Joseph3333 is confusing because Java7837 was determined to be the sock master. Jason Quinn (talk) 03:12, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Yep, sure, feel free to move it to the User:UBX space. —METS501 (talk) 04:34, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion

I suggest to create a page about Alexander Garievich Gordon (born 20 february 1964) from russian wikipedia Scymso (talk) 16:54, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

There's a couple of approaches you could take. One approach would be to add the subject to the appropriate sub-page of Misplaced Pages:Requested articles. The alternative is to follow the process of requesting a translation at Misplaced Pages:Translation. Neither approach is guaranteed to succeed, but at least it'll be on a to-do list. Good luck. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:16, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Village stubs

Dr. Blofeld (talk · contribs) has been threatening to launch 15,000 articles about British settlements consisting of no more than "xxx is a village in Cumbria. ref =google maps". See user talk:RHaworth#Stubs. He seems to have modified this proposal somewhat but I would be interested to hear other editors views on how large a settlement needs to be before it qualifies for its own article here. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 21:39, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Mmm, well I don't think it was necessary to begin the message with a disparaging implication like "threatening". But yeah, that's pushing the envelope a bit. There was some similar activity in terms of auto-generating minor planet articles, which I don't think was necessarily beneficial. Perhaps it would be better if this low utility information was incorporated into lists instead? Regards, RJH (talk) 00:02, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

As a courtesy, I've left a note at Dr. Blofeld's talk page informing him of this discussion. 64.40.54.162 (talk) 00:34, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

In what way would such articles damage our mission as an encyclopedia? Phil Bridger (talk) 19:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm struggling to see how these are even stubs; it's one short sentence, followed by a link to a map. I don't necessarily have issues with mass-creating stubs with at least some information, but just saying "xxx is a village in Cumburia" with a Google map link doesn't give readers anything to work with at all. As to the size settlements need to be, I'll defer to people more familiar with classification of British settlements; I've seen such discussions take a couple different tacks, so I won't try to steer it myself. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

It is certainly useful to type the name of a place into Misplaced Pages and to find some information, rather than finding a red link. That could mean redirects to a list until enough information is available to create a article like the outcome of the minor planets, but there is no established minimum population or notability for settlement articles on Misplaced Pages. This practice goes back to the days of Rambot and the articles created from the 2000 Census data for U.S. towns. Rmhermen (talk) 15:23, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Again, I'm fine with some information, but what we're talking about above isn't even that. When I've created articles on places (c.f. Noh Poe) I include what I consider some information; a couple paragraphs about the significance of the place and what's happened there. I'd even be fine with less than that, but I need more than just "(insert name of podunk town) exists somewhere in (insert name of country)", because that doesn't really impart any substantial information. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:35, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Inline image sizing?

Hello,

Does anybody know if there is a Misplaced Pages technique for setting the height of an inline image to match the scale of the surrounding span of text? I.e. give it a proportionate size like 1em or 100%. Perhaps a template that applies some sort of CSS fiddliness? Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:58, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know but perhaps WP:Help desk would be a better place to ask. Rmhermen (talk) 15:32, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Linking to categories

I just removed Category:Trombonists from Trombone. In a discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Musical Instruments/Archive 1#Instrumentalist categories at instrument articles, it was explained that this allowed easy linking to lists of musicians when there wasn't a separate list article, such as with Category:Bass clarinetists. However, it seems to me that using cats this way breaks the categorization system. Is there a standard way to say "For a list of bass clarinet players, see Category:Bass clarinetists"? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:21, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

A simple link to the category (like the one you made in your post) in the "See also" section..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:00, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Could be that we just need the categories to be renamed. If it were called "Category:Trombone", putting all trombone-related articles in that category would make sense, yes? I made the same edit on Bass clarinet years ago - the explanation for having that article in Category:Bass clarinetists is on my talk page, FWIW. I think the "connectivity" gained by putting obviously related articles in a simple common-sense category is valuable. - Special-T (talk) 12:54, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

If that category is "Bass clarinet", that makes sense. However, putting the "Bass clarinet" article in the "Bass clarinetists" category breaks WP:Categorization, because a bass clarinet isn't a bass clarinetist.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:17, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I just put this on http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Musical_Instruments#The_categories-of-instrumentalists_issue also - Special-T (talk) 19:28, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with what Martynas Patasius said. Also, put a {{Cat more}} template on the category page, pointing to the article about the instrument. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:06, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

disambiguation

In Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation dos and don'ts, there seems to be two paradoxical sentences. In the part "don't", it is written "Don't add entries without a blue link." It means we cannot add red links at all. On the other hand, the fourth sentence is "Don't add red links that aren't used in any articles." So we can add particular red links. Isn't it a paradox?Ali Pirhayati (talk) 19:56, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Logic-wise, I suppose it could include sentences that have both a red link and a blue link, as long as the red link is also in an article. But as soon as the red link turns blue, the other blue link would need to be removed. Excuse me, I have to go laugh at what I just wrote... Regards, RJH (talk) 21:12, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

ACTA reviving? Oh Canada....

It would seem that despite an overwhelming vote in the European Parliament against the provisions of ACTA the European Commission together with the Canadian government are now trying to bring the very same provisions in through the back door: a trade agreement between Canada and the EU.

See: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6580/135/

Jcwf (talk) 23:21, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

How are YOU going to celebrate the 4 millionth article

I'd like to find out how YOU are going to celebrate the 4,000,000 article so I can include something about it in the report. See #Article 4 million approaching above. Thanks. 64.40.54.45 (talk) 02:23, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

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