Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:20, 2 February 2009

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Recurring policy proposals are listed at Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals. If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that Misplaced Pages doesn't have it, please check there first before posting it, as someone else might have found it obvious, too.

Before posting your proposal:

• Read this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
• If the proposal is a change to the software, file a bug at Bugzilla instead. Your proposal is unlikely to be noticed by a developer unless it is placed there.
• If the proposal is a change in policy, be sure to also post the proposal to, say, Misplaced Pages:Manual of style, and ask people to discuss it there.
• If the proposal is for a new wiki-style project outside of Misplaced Pages, please go to m:Proposals for new projects and follow the guidelines there. Please do not post it here. These are different from WikiProjects.

Centralized discussion Village pumps policy tech proposals idea lab WMF misc Refining the administrator elections process AI-generated images depicting living people Blocks for promotional activity outside of mainspace Voluntary RfAs after resignation Proposed rewrite of WP:BITE LLM/chatbot comments in discussions For a listing of ongoing discussions, see the dashboard. view edit history watch archive talk purge

Community something about ArbCom

Moved to Misplaced Pages:Village pump/ACFeedback

Dated Watchlist items

Proposal: (note, I did search for previous suggestions, and didn't find this one). I propose that a date stamp be added to a watchlist entry. Meaning, when I edit my watchlist, I can see when that page was added to the watchlist.

Reason: Editors often edit many pages in a short time, and often add that page to their watchlist. I'm sure many editors add that page to the watchlist in order to monitor their edits to see if they are providing positive edits, and not simply reverted, or someone finding mistakes that the editor made. Often the editor may not have a particular interest in the topic, but simply want to see how their edits are accepted. If a date stamp is added to the entry that was watchlisted, an editor can see that it was a page that was added over a week ago (an example), and decide that the page is no longer wanted on their watchlist. Stated poorly, I hope the idea is understood Ched (talk) 01:30, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

• Support: as editors often edit many pages in a short time, they will most likely forgot when which page was added, so that would be useful in reminding the user when a watched page was introduced. In fact, it would be pretty sad if I didn't even notice that, considering that I have "3,135 pages on my watchlist (excluding talk pages)" (beat that record, Wikipedaholics!). ~ Troy (talk) 01:49, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to see this added to the “View and edit watchlist” view (and not the regular “Display watched changes” view), along with the option to sort by date added instead of alphanumeric. Anyone know if this data is in the database? —Michael Z. 2009-01-18 04:13 z

Yes yes yes ... is it something that would be very hard to do? Sorry for getting overly enthusiastic, but most servers, databases, and file systems that I've ever worked with do contain a modification date (and time) stamp. I wouldn't think that Misplaced Pages's system would be that far removed from a MySQL type of thing (although I admit to never having read the wiki specifics) Ched (talk) 04:22, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Support Yes, this would be very helpful. Anything that makes it easier to categorize the article's that one is interested in is welcomed by me. Themfromspace (talk) 06:28, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

You are correct, Ched, MediaWiki does use MySQL; see mw:Manual:Database layout for a description. Watchlist details are stored in the Watchlist table, everyone's watchlists bundled together and distinguished by having each entry marked with the user id of the user who watched it. So although the date entries were added to the table is not recorded, it would be possible to order the entries as older ones will be nearer the top of the table and newer ones at the bottom. Iff SQL queries preserve the order of the records, it would be easily possible to order the entries, although an absolute timestamp is not available without a schema change, which is a Big Deal. Happy‑melon 09:56, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, having an actual date/time stamp would require more work than it's worth (no problem). But, it might be possible to add the ability to sort the watchlist in the order that a line item was added (rather than alphabetically). If that's a possibility, then adding it would be great (at least for me). I have tweaked my preferences to display more than the simple watchlist as well by the way. As far as 3,000 items on a watchlist ... whoa nellie ... take a break and enjoy a sunset my friend ... :) Ched (talk) 18:56, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

although an absolute timestamp is not available without a schema change, which is a Big Deal. Why would it be a big deal to add a field to a MediaWiki table? In most applications, this is pretty trivial. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:26, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Doing a schema change with no downtime is hard. Doing it on a multi-terabyte database is harder. --Carnildo (talk) 04:55, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. Wikimedia operates over three hundred servers on three continents, interlocking on an enormous scale. We notice performance degradation when more than about half a dozen servers go offline at once. A schema change is massively more disruptive than that. Most organisations have sufficient resource surplus to be able to take half their servers out of sync for a few minutes without anyone noticing. Even if wikimedia does that at three in the morning, we're usually picking up the pieces for a week afterwards. So yes, schema changes are a Big Deal, and they tend to 'stockpile' them and then do several at once as a consequence. Pretty much the only developers who can authorise them are Brion and Tim. Happy‑melon 15:59, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

How would sorting by order of entry be implemented? Add a link to "Display watched changes | View and edit watchlist | Edit raw watchlist"? And allow clicking on sorted a second time to reverse the sort? Display only the last change for each item? Display the first 20/50/100/200/500 articles? Apteva (talk) 16:37, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Blocking policy

I may not be doing this entirely correctly, but I propose that the terminology of the blocking policy be changed. Currently, the blocking policy states that blocks are not meant as punishment. However, as an elaboration upon that point, the blocking policy states that blocks are intended to deter future disruption.

I have a problem with this. Blocks are punitive, no matter what the policy says. Two things make it quite clear blocks are punitive. First, the policy says they are meant to deter. There are several rationales used by scholars to explain punishment, but I would submit that nearly every scholar educated in penological theory would agree that the two historical justifications for punishment (besides divine revelation) are retribution and deterrence. Like it or not, by conceding that blocks are meant to deter, the policy is contradicting its claim that blocks are not punishment. That’s my substantive problem with claiming blocks are not punishment. My second argument is procedural. The actual administration of blocks is done so in a punitive fashion. Repeat offenders are given longer blocks. More egregious offenders are given longer blocks. That’s a punitive system.

I suggest that the blocking policy be reworded to say that blocks are not for retribution, because they are certainly for deterrence. Those are the two classic justifications for punishment. Blocks deter; that means they punish. However, they aren’t necessarily retributive. This also has some other consequences. I also think that blocked users should be allowed to use “retribution” as a defense against their blocks. If the length of the block or the disposition of the blocking administrator indicate retribution, the block should be shortened or lifted. Hopefully, if applied correctly, this wouldn’t result in more blocks being lifted. Rather, it would result in more blocks being above controversy because removing any hint of retribution would increase transparency on Misplaced Pages. Chicken Wing (talk) 00:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you will never get people to admit that blocks are punitive, even though they frequently are. Same as how people insist that votes on adminship requests are not votes, and that there's no such thing as a cool down block, and so on -- Gurch (talk) 17:36, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Most kind of blocks are punitive. And the fact they get extended is proof they are punishments. And almost every kind of block is a cool down block. Majorly talk 18:01, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I know you know that, but try saying that when asked about it in an adminship request -- Gurch (talk) 19:07, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm just trying to make Misplaced Pages more transparent. I don't think people should fail adminship requests because they stumbled on a trick question, especially when the "correct" answer has no basis in reality. Nor do I think Misplaced Pages should give its critics a foothold by dogmatically holding to patently incorrect policies. In my experiences editing Misplaced Pages, it would appear to me that the legitimate criticism of Misplaced Pages comes from people who are on the wrong end of policy text and policy implementation being at odds with each other. Besides, I don't see any serious harm that could come by changing the policy to say "retribution" instead of "punishment".

And, let me say thanks for the input to everyone who has commented on this. I appreciate it. Chicken Wing (talk) 20:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I mostly agree with this change. Blocks serve essentially three distinct purposes: a preventative measure, to prevent the user from doing further damage, a deterrent measure, to discourage them from taking the same action again once their block is over, and a discouragement to others, who may avoid destructive behavior out of fear of blocking. The analogy with real-life justice systems is clear: we lock criminals in jail so that they cannot commit further crimes, so that they will be discouraged from committing them again after release, and to deter others from committing crimes. However, just as a criminal can get out of jail early if they've shown signs of effective rehabilitation, so may a blocked user; we are only concerned that they do not repeat their disruptive behavior, not that some arbitrary standard justice is meted out. It is in this sense that one can say that blocking isn't punitive (in addition to it not being about retaliation). Dcoetzee 22:57, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Does someone want to link to the text in question? I agree with OP. This sounds like a simple case of poor use of english which should therefore be corrected - the word 'punishment' has been misused - if blocking is intended to deter future transgressions, then it is punitive, punishment, whatever, according to any half-decent dictionary. Even Punishment includes: "Possible reasons for punishment ... Deterrence / Prevention: to act as a measure of prevention to those who are contemplating criminal activity." Jaymax (talk) 22:17, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

This is the Misplaced Pages block policy. The first paragraph of the policy says in part, "Blocks are used to prevent damage or disruption to Misplaced Pages, not to punish users. Blocks sometimes are used as a deterrent, to discourage whatever behavior led to the block and encourage a productive editing environment." It may seem like I'm being trivial in trying to get this fixed, but I'm not. This contradictory policy has been repeatedly use to browbeat unsuspecting candidates for adminship. Chicken Wing (talk) 00:08, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Further agree - the wording does not make any sense using a correct definition of 'punish'. Entirely valid reasons justifying the punishment (incapacitation, deterrence) notwithstanding. Also agree (best guess) the intent seems to be to say that blocks are not reprisal/retaliation against users for breaking rules Jaymax (talk) 00:37, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be based on the premise that since people may use punishment as a means of deterrence or prevention, then deterrence or prevention is punishment. However, observing that "A is used for B" does not imply that "B is a form of A". Deterrence is owning a nuclear submarine fleet. Punishment is launching the missiles after being attacked. SHEFFIELDSTEEL 16:19, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

But we do launch the missiles. Threats of blocking only get so far. Mr.Z-man 17:47, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree with the assessment by SheffieldSteel. To punish is "to subject to pain, loss, confinement, death, etc., as a penalty for some offense, transgression, or fault." A block subjects a user to the loss of editing privileges. A block subjects a user to the confinement of exercising speech in a manner other than through editing Misplaced Pages. A block is the penalty for an offense, violating a rule of Misplaced Pages in such a fashion as to warrant a block. A block is punishment. The goal of the block is deterrence, a legitimate goal of punishment. Your nuclear analogy falls apart because the equivalent analogy would be warning a contentious editor that you own the ability to block. Blocking is the actual use of a nuclear weapon. Through the correct use of your own reasoning, not only is a block a form of punishment, it's analogous to punishment of the nuclear variety. Frightening. Chicken Wing (talk) 20:51, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I find this discussion interesting because I am currently reading The Roots of Evil ISBN 0313201986 which is a history of crime and punishment. The most salient point is that cruel punishments create cruelty in the people. When I was in high school it was explained to me that technologically we live in the space age, but sociologically we are still in the stone age. However, WP is hopefully on the cutting edge of wherever we are. Apteva (talk) 18:28, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Rule regarding edit summaries

This is my second proposal today. If that raises any trolling concerns, let me say that I’ve actually thought of these for quite some time and have just never bothered to come here with them. These proposals are mild enough, so I don’t think there should be a problem.

With that said, another proposal I have is blocking users who fail to use edit summaries. I don’t mean blocking anyone and everyone who ever fails to use an edit summary – not even close. What I’m referring to is editors who make hundreds of minor edits a day and never use an edit summary.

If you’ve edited Misplaced Pages for a while, I’m sure you’ve run into this scenario before: an article is on your watchlist. You see it has been edited. You go to the history, and you see that an article that has previously only been edited twenty or thirty times in a year has been edited a dozen times in one day, all by one editor. Each edit changes one statistic, adds one sentence, or fixes one typo – probably made by the editor in question. You’ve spent considerable time having to look at the green paragraph and the yellow paragraph carefully trying to find the one change that has been made in the article.

That just shouldn’t happen, and currently, there is only one introductory reminder/template to use edit summaries (that I am aware of). I think for editors as described above, there should be escalating templates that lead to a final warning. In my experience, editors as I’ve described above rarely respond to comments left on their talk pages. A block seems to be the only way to slow down this kind of disruptive editing, even if the intent of the disruptive editing is not malicious. Chicken Wing (talk) 00:34, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Oppose. Failing to include an edit summary is annoying, but shouldn't be a blockable offence. I would support a bot which puts a notice on user pages saying 'please use edit summaries - it is very annoying when you don't' or similar. --Helenalex (talk) 00:55, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Strong oppose—edit summaries should not be mandatory. While they're best practice, it's silly to require them:

1. Many probably consider them annoying, especially for minor changes where an accurate summary would be longer than the change itself
2. Being blocked for not providing them would discourage editing, which would be a Bad Thing
3. There are ways to enhance (or customize, at least) the diff view. I've added .diffchange {color:black; background-color:#FF7458; border:none;} and .diffchange-inline {color:black; background-color:#FF7458; border:none;} to my monobook.css, which highlights the changed areas with red rather than using red text; you can do the same to yours.

In any event, edit summaries are a minor issue. They're a great addition to the site, but we could function without them if need be—using them should most definitely not be mandatory (and I say that despite using edit summaries for almost every edit). {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 01:03, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Definitely not. The purpose of an edit is to improve the encyclopedia, not to aid in book-keeping for everyone else. Threatening and ultimately blocking editors for making positive edits is a fast-track to an empty encyclopedia. Happy‑melon 23:02, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

All of the above said, and the simple fact that vandals use fake edit summaries a given, it would be nice if they'd just check the "summary required" box for all new user accounts by default. Would promote best practices without the pushy lawyering called for above, although it would also increase the fake edit summary problem. That said, it would presumably be more along the lines of asdasda than truly malicious edit sums. MrZaius 12:03, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Last week, they booed an RFA applicant for too many edits. Now you equate editing to being disruptive. Cool. One, two, three edits, fired. The South has won, at last :)) NVO (talk) 20:00, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I didn't equate editing to being disruptive. I referred to a specific kind of editing as disruptive. As for your "...three edits, fired" comment, you might take note that in my original post I said, "I don’t mean blocking anyone and everyone who ever fails to use an edit summary – not even close." If people disagree with the proposal fine, but don't create straw men and then attack those straw men with sarcasm. How does that help anyone? Chicken Wing (talk) 00:04, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I want "Misplaced Pages Knol"

Misplaced Pages is successful project.

Misplaced Pages's many features is Excelent!

Misplaced Pages's Good Features:

• Separated Language edition
• Interwiki
• Catergory
• Enable Bot
• Simple link to other articles. ]
• Template
• WhatLinksHere

Etc, many features is good.

But Wikipdeia have also bad features. Google Knol say it.

Misplaced Pages's Bad Features:

• User can not make his own article to same subject.
  • In wikipedia, only one Apple article is approved.
  • This system make so many edit-disputes.
  • Google Knol approve User:abc's edition to Apple, User:efg's edition to Apple, User:easdffg's edition to Apple, etc.
  • Google Knol's plural article system is excellant! There is no edit-disputes.
• Google Knol User can block other user's edit.
• Google Knol User can approve other user's edit.
• Google Knol User can approve other user's limited edit.
• Google Knol User can his own adsense.
• Google Knol User can select many Creative Commons Lisences.
• Google Knol is main writer system. Main writer die -> Article chage public domain. But, Misplaced Pages is only GFDL. 100 years later, Misplaced Pages is GFDL, not Public Domain. :( That article's owner and copyright holder is main writer. That article's legal responsibility is to main writer.
• Korean Google Knol User can be certified to Real Name and Real Social Number. It is user's free choice.
• Google Knol user can use his image as avatar.

I want.

I wnat that above bad features must change to like Google Knol.

Google Knol show to us "How to improve wikipedia". -- WonRyong (talk) 13:21, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, not gonna happen. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:16, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this is not going to happen (and I disagree that most of the so-called bad things are bad). But mostly I would like to point out that the copyright claim is incorrect. Misplaced Pages contributions are copyright of their contributor and as such these contributions will eventually move into public domain. Having multiple and sometimes anonymous authors complicates the issue but eventually the old versions of articles will become public domain. The OP is incorrect that articles on Knol become public domain on the author's death - 100 years after posting is going to be closer to the entry date to public domain for both Knol and Misplaced Pages contributions. Rmhermen (talk) 14:26, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I concur. This will not happen, simply because the changes you propose for these "bad things" are simply unworkable, and besdies, Google Knol is simply a general knowledge database. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, both focus on different things and have very different aims. You want Knol, go back to Google Knol. --.:Alex:. 14:36, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

This proposal is violation of Misplaced Pages's copyright policy.--Kwj2772 (talk) 15:16, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure there's also a policy on not biting the newbies or something similarly titled. Actually two of the "good" features you mention are available on Misplaced Pages. Users can certify their real world identity and copyright, even GFDL copyright, expires eventually putting old articles (I'm not sure how many years, but probably +50) in the public domain. Otherwise Misplaced Pages and Knol are really just too different to really learn anything from each other. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 19:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

You're wrong about the copyright duration: it's much longer: for works of non-corporate authorship (such as Misplaced Pages articles), copyright expires 70 years after the author dies. For Misplaced Pages articles, that means that an old version of an article will enter the public domain 70 years after all contributing authors have died. Given the typical age of Misplaced Pages authors and the state of medical technology, that means that worthwhile revisions of articles will start entering the public domain sometime around the year 2152. --Carnildo (talk) 02:49, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Either make "Help" pages at en.wikipedia into copies of Meta "Help" pages, or stop saying that they *are* copies

Many, probably most "Help" page on the English Misplaced Pages say, at the top, This is a copy of the master help page at Meta. Do not edit this copy. Edits will be lost in the next update from the master page.

In fact:

1. Almost all of these pages in the English Misplaced Pages are edited, and no one reverts the edits.
2. There is no systematic process by which improvements to the English Misplaced Pages version of a "Help" page get copied to the related Meta Help page.
3. "Updating" of English Misplaced Pages "Help" pages by overwriting (with information on the related Meta page) seems to be sporadic at best, presumably because editors realize that such overwriting will remove useful information (see points 1 and 2).

All of which I found to be embarrassing (perhaps my expectations are too high). If we want to systematically keep Meta and en.wikipedia.org "Help" pages synchronized, and we want Meta pages to be the ones that are first updated, then let's do that (and keep the notice at the top of the en.wikipedia.org "Help" pages). Otherwise, let's acknowledge the current reality and remove the notices at the top of our "Help" pages, or modify them to say something like "A similar help page can be found at Meta, which may have different information".

So: what do other editors suggest? Should we keep the notices and actually do what the notices say, or should we modify or delete the notices and continue the current practice of letting the two sets of "Help" pages not be systematically synchronized? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:18, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I must agree that I find the current system bizarre and rather clunky. Although what solution would be viable depends on what is technologically possible, and what would technologically work best. --.:Alex:. 15:25, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

This has been floating around my list of things to do for a long time. I agree that the template is actively counterproductive, suppressing editing where it is most needed. Those pages haven't been updated from meta for literally years. I'm inclined to TfD the template. Thoughts? Happy‑melon 15:45, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

It should also be a trivial task to make a bot that would update the pages at enwiki from meta as necessary, if it's decided that it's best to keep the help pages synchronised. As to what's best, I don't know. Is there reason to assume the pages at meta are updated more often, or are more helpful for some other reason? — Twinzor 16:34, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Originally it seemed like a good idea, back when meta was fairly active compared to the other projects. Now meta has largely stagnated, and more importantly its help content is being moved to http://www.mediawiki.org which is the main website for the MediaWiki software itself. So the meta pages are very definitely not more active than the en.wiki ones. Probably the best-quality ones are at mediawiki.org. Happy‑melon 22:05, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Why do we have to host copies of the pages here at all? Why can't we direct users to MediaWiki.org, and make all improvements there? —Remember the dot 22:23, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I would definitely support such a move. Happy‑melon 22:27, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

There is a feature that just rolled out on Wikia called "wikia:central:Help:Shared Help", where all of the help pages from Help Wikia are embedded into each of the other 9000 some odd projects. This could help (no pun) our situation, though I do not know that the extension is publicly available, however. --Izno (talk) 22:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

It's not that much harder to type mw:Help:Magic words instead of Help:Magic words, and unified Wikimedia accounts can already edit at mediawiki.org without trouble. So, I don't see a lot of benefit to a shared help extension. —Remember the dot 23:00, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Just a suggestion that I thought was pretty neat and which would ensure documentation for all (English) Mediawiki wikis. It could then lead to efforts to ensure documentation for the other languages, something which I'm sure Betawiki would be appreciative of (if not for the extra work >.>). --Izno (talk) 23:15, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

It's not a bad idea, and you're right that it would probably help internationalization. However, in the absence of such a feature I'd prefer simply redirecting our duplicate pages to mediawiki.org. —Remember the dot 04:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

(←) As it happens, just yesterday I wanted to update Help:Edit conflict to fix a broken link. Since Help pages are flagged as "copies" of Meta and I wasn't sure of the procedure, I asked at the Help Desk and was told to "Just fix it on both" (meaning separately). We obviously have a problem with our own Help Desk experts not knowing how this works. Since then I've discovered the template-based technique that was supposed to allow copying help pages from Meta to WP without loss of project-specific help. (For those who don't know, each help page has a ] template for project-specific header info and a ] template for project-specific footer info.) The intended procedure is:

1. If the change applies to all Wikimedia projects, edit the Meta help page and then re-copy it to WP.
2. Otherwise, edit Template:Ph:name-of-help-page (or Template:Phh:name-of-help-page).

Happy-melon, which template are you inclined to TfD? I don't see a common template that says This page is copied from Meta.

Twinzor, pages at Meta are available to be updated by editors from other Wikimedia projects. Even non-English project editors' changes are, theoretically, supposed to be translated and propagated to the English version. So yes, it's possible that valuable edits would be lost in severing the connection to Meta.

Remember the dot, navigating to Meta (or MediaWiki) to get help pages means we'd lose all Misplaced Pages project-specific help. I did a survey of all the Help footer templates. Out of 84 pages, 59 have project-specific information, some of it quite extensive. I don't think we want to lose that. And we wouldn't want to merge that into Meta/MW, where it would confuse editors from other projects.

It seems to me that what we really need is more activity in Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Help. Nobody even seems to be monitoring the Talk page there. I've been looking for ways to expand my contribution to the (overall Misplaced Pages) project, and I'd be willing to help, but I'm too new to the "back office" to feel comfortable taking a leadership role right now. - Unconventional (talk) 20:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

It'd be easy to provide a hatnote to the MediaWiki help page, with Misplaced Pages-specific information below that. That way, there's no duplication and no loss of Misplaced Pages-specific help. —Remember the dot 20:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The template I intended to TfD was {{H:h Help}}, the one that explicitly instructed editors "do not edit this page", which is unhelpful at best. In the end I just blanked it instead, although I'm still tempted to TfD the entire lot of them; they're archaic in the extreme.

The situation here is analogous to WikiProject template sharing, a valiant effort to make robust templates that could be copied without modification across projects. Unfortunately, it made itself so complicated and bureaucratic that it eventually strangled itself with it. I can show you some of the templates that were involved if you like, they are hideous. This is a less choked situation, but it's still analogous: an absolute priority must be to make editing and improving these help pages as straightforward as possible, or editors simply won't bother.

There is a fundamental distinction between help content that relates to the MediaWiki software and help content that relates to site-specific conventions. I am of the belief that the two can be separated without loss of clarity; you notice that there are numerous redirects out of the Help: namespace where pages that describe wikipedia-specific topics have been moved into the Misplaced Pages: namespace. There is actually relatively little content left in our Help: pages.

My belief is that we should be separating those two concepts, and moving the pure technical help to mediawiki.org and the site-specific stuff to appropriate Misplaced Pages: pages. IMO, the Help: namespace is essentially deprecated unless and until the devs give us a method of dynamically including that content from mediawiki.org back here. Happy‑melon 20:57, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Edit button highlighted

I noticed on the fr.wiki that the edit button is highlighted in blue, to attract more attention/raise participation, maybe its discussed before, are there plans on EN to do the same ? Mion (talk) 21:25, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

We already bolden it in Common.css (it's the same as the others by default). Perhaps if we made the 'selected' tab (which is also bolded) normal font, it would increase the contrast? Happy‑melon 22:03, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I like this proposal. Unbolding the selected tab would help a little, but following the French model would help more. » šᾦῥъ 22:31, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the French version is not the maximum amount of attention we can draw with it, would this do ? Mion (talk) 00:21, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

If it's technically feasible, why not? We're supposed to encourage editing by anyone, so let's walk the walk. » šᾦῥъ 01:00, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

If you must go with anything, go with the blue. Something as drastic as a green semicircle would just drive me demented, personally, and probably most other editors too. I do think something a little more subtle would work better overall though, such as underlining it or changing the colour of the font or something. --.:Alex:. 19:42, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Mion was being sarcastic, of course. :-) I hope? Dcoetzee 02:07, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

So technical says it's feasible—what do we do next? Come up with a reasonable color/size scheme and start a straw poll on it? Get the straw poll listed at the top of everyone's watchlists? Some help or guidance from someone who's done it before would be great. » šᾦῥъ 21:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Please no. Think about how absurd some of the possibilities are. Right now, it is simple and elegant. Ottava Rima (talk) 23:01, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. We have far more important things to worry about that bolding the edit button. –Juliancolton 23:02, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

More important things ? Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2009-01-03/Editing stats Mion (talk) 00:19, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, really. The whole "lets not fix this problem because other problems are bigger" argument doesn't make any sense, nor does the "it's a slippery slope to an absurd festive edit button" argument. Now, how do we bring this to a larger segment of the community to get a real consensus? » Swpb 04:10, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I prefer "the suggestions would be way too embarrassing" to be honest. Ottava Rima (talk) 05:01, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

So because some variations would be bad, it shouldn't even be considered? How does that make sense? » Swpb 13:52, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Ugh... no, please. *shudder* EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:20, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Random article in a specific portal/subportal/subject

This is pretty self explanatory, it would be nice to have a "Random article in this category" link so when someone is browsing his favourite subject he can click this button to go to a random page about this very same subject. As an example, when reading about chemistry this link would open a page about something that is in the chemistry portal.Dextor123 24 January 2009.

This is a great idea. It would first have to be decided if it would be based on categories, portals, wikiprojects, or something else. Then we have to find out if its technically feasible. Then we have to get consensus to do it. Anyone else? » šᾦῥъ 19:31, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree, that would be useful, as long as it's technically feasible.--Res2216firestar 23:16, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Knowing little about database, i'm still pretty sure it can be done easily if the database contain the subject as a property along with the article, otherwise it could be possible to add this "property" automaticaly since there's a code that add a "whatever subject" portal button on almost every major "whatever related" article. A automatic script could do the job fast.Dextor123 25 January 2009.

From the technical page: "This tool http://tools.wikimedia.de/~erwin85/randomarticle.php will give you a random article in a given category. This link gives you a random BLP." So there's that. » Swpb 04:12, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Dealing with the obtrusiveness of cleanup templates

A follow up to Misplaced Pages:PEREN#Move_maintenance_tags_to_talk_pages that addresses some of its issues:

Some maintenance tags, like {{unbalanced}}, have possible warning value to readers, but others, like {{capitalization}}, clearly do not. However, the problems with moving these tags to talk namespace have been established. So...

1. Would it be technically possible for certain templates (in article space) to be visible only to logged-in users?
2. Further, would it be possible for logged-in users to hide this class of templates via their preferences or a monobook script?
3. How would one go about getting consensus for such a system?
4. How would one go about getting consensus to include individual templates? Could they be done en masse, grouped by function, or would one-by-one discussions be required?

The wording of the perennial proposal seems to be limited to moving the tags to talk pages, and applying the change to all maintenance tags. I felt this proposal was different enough in both those aspects to be worth bringing up, but I apologize if this idea has already been addressed. Thank you, » šᾦῥъ 22:26, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

We want anyone who can help to help. Why would we want to only show them to logged in users? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:21, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

For logged in users most of them will magicaly dissapear if you add

.ambox {display:none;}

To your monobook.css page (assuming you use the default skin), the ones based on the {{ambox}} "meta template" anyway. --Sherool (talk) 00:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the less important ones should be out at the end of the article. The top should be for warnings that the reader should see before reading the article. --Apoc2400 (talk) 11:49, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Rising funds for Misplaced Pages

I have two suggestions for funding wikipedia

• Why not making NGO's ? In some countries, tax payers can decide that 1% of their taxes to go to a specific NGO. Some people might not have money to donate for Misplaced Pages, but they will be more than happy to direct the 1% of their taxes to Misplaced Pages.
• How about running adds? If Misplaced Pages can make 600 million USD running ads for 5 years, then 5 years of pain will be enough to finance another 100 years of add-free Misplaced Pages. Jim92 (talk) 15:31, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Advertising is a widely-opposed perennial proposal, but the other option might be interesting if demonstrably feasible. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 17:58, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

The first idea is a matter for chapters to handle in those countries where it is possible. The second idea has been rejected hundreds of times before. --Tango (talk) 18:02, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

See meta:Wikimedia chapters for the NGO thing. There are a bunch already where you can donate to. And if there isn't for a country, someone has to found one. SoWhy 22:51, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages should be justified

Well the text anyway. Ages ago I changed my user setting to justify paragraphs and completely forgot that it wasn't the default setting. I just think text looks better than way. Has there every been a debate over what the default should be? — Blue-Haired Lawyer 22:38, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I doubt you could agree on that. I personally would disagree, justifying looks good in paragraphs, even letters but it does not with Misplaced Pages pages. For example if you're using a widescreen monitor like I do, it makes the text actually harder to read, as well as when manual breaks are used. If you like it, you can set it yourself, but there is no reason to make it default. Otherwise people will just complain why align left is not default... SoWhy 22:49, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Justified text also looks bad on narrow monitors, so it really is the worst of both worlds. As you have found, users who wish to see the text justified can trivially do so. Why do you think this style preference should be enforced on the entire readership? Happy‑melon 00:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

That kind of begs the question, why do you think your style preferences should be enforced on the entire readership? I'd just be curious to know out of all the registered users who know about the option, enable it. If I'm in the minority, so be it. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 11:01, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

That's not what I'm saying, although there are some reasons given already: namely that it looks inferior on extra-wide and extra-small screens. I'm mainly saying that this is the default position, both in terms of what's currently the case, and in terms of this is not AFAIK being specified by our stylesheets at all: non-justified text is in most cases the browser default. There should be a good reason to move away from that default position. Happy‑melon 23:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Text with a ragged right margin uses the font's normal word spacing, and the shape of the right margin helps the reader's eye navigate the page. Justified text has the word spacing adjusted differently for each line. It only works well with a fairly short measure (length of line), with hyphenation to help keep the word spaces from growing too large, and with the attention of a skilled typographer. Its disadvantages can also be exaggerated in a flexible-width page design like Misplaced Pages's.

So justified text is likely to be less comfortable for the reader in many or most situations (e.g. different screen resolutions, available fonts, window sizes). This is not just someone's preference, this is based on accepted typesetting principals, and could be confirmed by practical testing. —Michael Z. 2009-01-30 23:59 z

Never mind! — Blue-Haired Lawyer 00:04, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

See also Justification (typesetting). —Michael Z. 2009-01-31 00:21 z

Today's Featured... Bad Article?

How about having featured articles for improvement? For a specific length of time (I think a day may be too short), a preselected (similar to Featured Articles) article would be highlighted as needing improvement. Possible subjects would include stubs, POV articles, and articles needing a rewrite. A featured article for improvement would allow a coordinated effort to improve an article, and would probably be more effective than just putting a template on the article.

Criteria for the selection of an article could include:

Is the topic of the article sufficiently important to make improvement essential?

Does the article have flaws that significantly impair its informativeness?

Is there enough information available for the article to be significantly improved?

Would the article significantly benefit from additional work? In other words, is the article in its current state not "good enough"? (At least relatively. No article on Misplaced Pages is "good enough," our articles are (or at least should be) subject to constant scrutiny and improvement.)

-Link (talk) 01:26, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds very much like Collaboration of the week and the Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive that superseded it. You find these articles for improvement not on the main page (partly because it's mostly visited by people who are only interested in reading, not editing, and partly because it would make them unnecessarily prone to vandalism) but on the Community portal. That portal is almost certainly underused, though. -- Jao (talk) 15:31, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Obscuropedia

This isn't exactly a proposal so much as a shameless promotion, but I figured some editors here might be interested. I've started a new GFDL MediaWiki project dedicated to non-notable topics not covered by Misplaced Pages, called Obscuropedia. This purpose is served to some extent by the topic-specific wikis at Wikia, but this is more general and meant to include literally anything at all, as long as it exists. The policies on BLP and verifiability are modified somewhat to accomodate this. I've trans-wikied some AfDed articles for demonstration purposes. I realize this project might be controversial to some, but I have no extreme inclusionist bent, I just think it's fun to have a place to catalog information on obscure topics and develop articles on topics that may become notable one day. I'd appreciate any feedback on the idea, or any contributions (if you've ever wanted to write an article on your favorite pet this is the place :-P). Thanks! Dcoetzee 05:26, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

You aren't copying the history of the pages, so its not very GFDL compliant. Mr.Z-man 06:01, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

...yes I am. I'm copying them on the talk page, and the article migration guide specifically emphasizes to do this. I might have overlooked something, but I think I'm meeting requirements. Dcoetzee 06:31, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, good, I didn't see that. Mr.Z-man 15:00, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Specifically disallowing articles on topics covered in Misplaced Pages was very good judgement on your part, and makes me perfectly unable to see any harm in your project. A tip: you might want to add Deletionpedia as a suggested source in the article migration guide. With over 63,000 pages, it should be a goldmine for your project—although of course the vast majority of potential Obscuropedia topics were never deleted from Misplaced Pages because they never were written about here in the first place. -- Jao (talk) 15:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

If you would like to keep your project compatible with WP, please keep an eye on meta:Licensing update. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 19:32, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Another way of doing flagged revisions

I think perhaps there's a less painful way of doing flagged revisions that won't cause issues with backlog or adversely affect the instant editing environment. Basically, the idea is that articles would have an extra tab, called "reviewed", alongside the regular tabs. The tab would contain the copy of the latest flagged revision, and could eventually become the default for non logged in users. There are a number of benefits to this approach that I've expounded on here. Also see the page for an image preview of what it would look like, I don't want to screw up the page by putting it here.

Thanks. Phil153 (talk) 17:39, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

That wouldn't address most of the problems that flagged revisions is expected to help with, especially the BLP ones. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 18:01, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

aquarellista

question that I cannot find an answer to:

I have founded a movement, "Aquarellista!" which has as main objective to put the noble art of aquarelle (transparent type of watercolours) out of its niche of old ladies that paint roses/old men that paint landscapes. Reading the "things not to put on Misplaced Pages" I get the feeling that I shouldn't contribute, as the movement (that should be a link somewhere in "aquarelle") is founded by me, the website (under construction btw) is made by me, as is the blog, my website, the manifesto etc. But that cannot be helped as we do not yet have many members because we need to be published etc in order to be taken seriously (and go to Artschools etc to "recrute" other aquarellista's) - chicken and egg problem so to say. We aim to be worldwide, well known and an answer to all that "shocking" art of right now. We're based in france, members dutch, australian, english, irish, american, swedish etc. I'd like some input on this from more experienced wikipediists! Thank you... Marina

The short version is that Misplaced Pages is not the place to promote anything, just to report on movements that are already noted by reliable sources. Try to get your movement noted in art magazines & papers and, once people start writing about it, you should have enough sources to fill in an article. Good luck! — The Hand That Feeds You: 13:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Bad Links Flagging Checkbox

FYI-Suggestion (re response needed)

Running into a lot of bad links (external). Would be user-convenient if a "bad link" check box was available by external links, so that when one is encountered, it can be manually flagged for attention. Dougcouch (talk) 21:27, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Being a wiki, if you find a bad link, you can just edit the article and delete the link. Just point out in the edit summary that the link is bad, and everything will be fine. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

• Adding checkboxes requires complicated coding in the software. You could somply add (dead link) behind the link in question to draw attention to it, or move it to the talk page for other editors to see. Both are a lot easier to accomplish. - Mgm| 12:41, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Question about uncategorized templates (cross-posted from Village Pump-technical)

We have a special page for uncategorized articles, Special:UncategorizedPages. I was wondering if it would be possible to have a similar listing of uncategorized templates (i.e. pages in the Template namespace which do not contain a category). I think this would be very useful for maintenance and organizational purposes. --Eastlaw  · _contribs 21:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

like this? Redekopmark (talk) 06:24, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, sorry. --Eastlaw  ⁄ _contribs 10:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Expand maximum lengths for watchlists

The current maximum length of a watchlist, 7 days or 1000 edits, is sometimes too small. Consider raising the maximum. Also consider adding a "(prev 100)(next 100)" setup like article histories have. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

• Questions for editors: Would anyone else find this useful?
• Questions for coders: Is this feasible?

Yes, there are times when it would be helpful. Someone spammed this page several days ago, for instance, resulting in edits to one page occupying much of my watchlist. The only way I could think of to fix that was to unwatch this page, which I didn't want to do. Please see also this proposal above. Perhaps they could be implemented together. Rivertorch (talk) 06:09, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I would welcome this proposal, as it would greatly enhance the watchlist for me. I use the "enhanced" view (with the 1 000 edit limit) as it is far more detailed than the standard version, but the limit means that my list often stops only half a day back. (I've got a large list, plus many pages that are vandalism targets. A busy day on an admin. noticeboard or a guideline page can involve a hundred or more edits, which uses up ten percent of the list just for that one page.) --Ckatz_spy 06:16, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I would really love to be able to double the current size, and so would many of those of us who have been active for a long while. But what i'd like even more is simple and direct way of having multiple watchlists,. DGG (talk) 09:38, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Repealing of CSD T1

I'm moving for the repealing of criterion for speedy deletion T1. I invite your opinions and discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Removal_of_T1_redux. Dcoetzee 03:07, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Community expectation of Checkuser

In connection with the pending creation of a Review Board to monitor Checkuser and rule on complaints of inappropriate checking, I thought it would be useful to open an RFC to gather the community's views on exactly what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate checking. Thatcher 04:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Central overview page for certain processes

I would like to propose the creation of a page where all the current cases involving disputes etc, are listed in the one place. So, in other words, one would have all the current RFC, RFA and RFAR cases listed, in abbreviated form, so that users could see at one glance who or what was being debated. Part of the current problem we have, I think, is that such processes are scattered around on different pages and obscured from ready view. If we had a central page that listed all such processes, users would know they needed to go to only one page to keep tabs on things, and it might encourage more participation, which is often woefully lacking. Gatoclass (talk) 10:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Support. It absolutely makes sense. Rivertorch (talk) 10:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Search

High (very high), I am Janezdrilc, admin on sl:. I have a proposal how to improve a Misplaced Pages Search options. As admin I miss an option to search within deleted articles, so I thing it would be very handy to have a one little square more on the search site where you could select Deleted articles. And there is one other thing: select all and deselect all options. Ok, those are just two ideas I am expecting to be realised :) Have fun. --Janezdrilc (talk) 12:58, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Very few people know anything about the internal workings of the search function (apparently it's 40,000 lines of code :S), so I have no idea if searching deleted revisions is possible. By "select all" and "deselect all" options, I presume you mean for the namespace checkboxes in advanced search? If so, this is something I noticed a while ago, and I coded a fix for myself - you can see it in my .js files. I'd love to see it implemented either in core javascript or in our own files. Happy‑melon 14:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

• Well, you could search the deletion log, but if you don't have an exact match, it doesn't work. I too would like to see the search box extended so admins can use it to search deleted revisions (or have the prefix coding and the like added to the log pages) - Mgm| 12:39, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Improving Misplaced Pages's credibility

I may well get flamed for this, but my intentions are noble. I'd love your feedback on it. It may well have been dealt with before as I am relatively new to this.

I have often wondered how reliable a particular article is on a subject I know little about; I usually have to cruise through assuming that it sort of sounds right, so it must be. Clearly this is Misplaced Pages's chief challenge; that of credibility.

Three ideas that I'd love your feedback on (and that you may well have considered):

1. What if there were a system whereby contributors could voluntarily publish their full name and credentials directly on the pages they edit? This would require no oversight; the present wikipedia oversight process would suffice (if a false credential or false name were given, it could be removed and locked, for example.)

2. What if there were a place on each page where scholars could give a dated tick of approval to a page that they are a recognised expert in (for instance, astrophysicists from various universities could sign and date their approval of the veracity of information on a particular page)?

3. What if pages (particularly, controversial subjects) were able to have an extra level of credibility attached? For instance, if some scholars wished to edit and peer-review a page, the text that had been peer-reviewed could appear in a slightly differentiated font to edits made after the latest peer review.

I know that I would be infinitely more confident about my usage of Misplaced Pages if such processes were available. What do you think?

Cheers betacrucis

Replies:

• 1) You can use your real name or even "Real Name, Ph.D." as your username, so it shows up in the edit history. Since edits can be made by anyone at any time and your contribution today may disappear one piece at a time over the next few months, putting your name at the end would cause major issues with stale-ness.
• 2) If you use your real name, and you were careful to make sure the entire article met your approval before editing under that name, your edits would gain a reputation as being authoritative. You might want to use a non-realname account for edits to articles you weren't an authority on or when making edits to articles you are an authority on but where you aren't "blessing" the current version.
• 3) We already have WP:Good Articles and WP:Featured Articles. As a counter-proposal, I'd like to see the talk-page templates for GA and FA/FL contain snapshot-in-time links to the version at the time it made GA or FA. The problem with controversial issues is everyone wants to sit on the peer-review committee and nobody wants people who don't share their viewpoint on the committee. As written, your idea would never work for controversial issues due to the conflict it would generate.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:07, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

One problem is how to validate that people are who they say they are. That is bitten WP before. Karanacs (talk) 15:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Surely the best way to establish the accuracy of an article is to verify the content against the sources. SHEFFIELDSTEEL 15:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

See: Citizendium. Arnoutf (talk) 15:40, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I am quite new here and it's a challenge simply to add a reply here... I figured there was a more user-friendly way than literally typing four colons at the beginning of each paragraph and signing my comment with four tildes but alas, it it not immediately apparent to me. Perhaps you can enlighten me.

Meanwhile, Citizendium has nothing on Misplaced Pages; I searched on a topic and the page was bare. I suspect the oversight is too onerous there, combined with a lack of popularity. It's not fair to compare them.

I also disagree that Misplaced Pages "verifiability" is sufficient; the sources that are usually given are frequently unreliable. Something more is needed.

In answer to Karanacs, I agree that this could pose challenges but my interest is first and foremost in gauging your sense of whether providing optional scholarly "seals of approval" and/or optional lists of fully identified contributors would be a useful addition. Identity verification is clearly an issue but could be dealt with if the community agrees that these features would be useful.

I have to say that if a serious, well-respected historian put their name to a dated version of a wikipedia history article, the article becomes infinitely more trustworthy and valuable. How much moreso will credibility be improved with multiple scholarly names vouching for the accuracy of a page (with perhaps some sort of rating system and/or link to a page of each scholar's concerns about that particular page... the possibilities here are endless). This is the one thing missing from Misplaced Pages. It is not right to say "Well, if you want credibility, go to Britannica or Citizendium"; Misplaced Pages can become more credible and it ought to.

I think this is a serious issue for an encylopaedia that is widely relied upon as a source of information, and I think some sort of system of voluntary scholarly/real-name assurance would do wonders for the credibility, usefulness and public image of Misplaced Pages. Betacrucis (talk) 18:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about the brief "See Citizendium". I think the lack of articles on Citizendium is the direct consequence of the demand that editors are experts. Experts are not always as motivated to edit compared to the motivated hobbyist. Hence by demanding expertise, in my view, you would take away one of the strongest points of Misplaced Pages: The vast body of editors. So I would say no to such ideas. Arnoutf (talk) 18:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Arnoutf; to clarify, I am not demanding expertise. I am saying that there ought to be an optional, specialized, rarefied box on each page for which an expert decides to give the page a rating or a "tick" and/or a link to their comments about the article. This would not interfere whatsoever with the normal usage of Misplaced Pages. It would be an optional add-on to articles which self-declared experts decide to rate/comment on the accuracy/quality of a page. I believe this could be done with a minimum of fuss and a very low rate of false IDs. Betacrucis (talk) 18:44, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Think of it this way -- a lot of people who are experts get paid for their expertise. They aren't going to come in their free time and contribute for free, when they already have to deal with (whatever) in their paid time. That's one big reason. Another problem of course is the whole original research factor -- yes, someone may be an expert on a topic, but that could work against them, as they "know" something that most people don't and can't be sourced. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:13, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I like to think good edits speak for themselves. However, a systematic way of fact checking articles would be great. I'd like to hear a reasonable proposal for this, even if it's just based on talk page notes. Dcoetzee 20:15, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

It would be impractical to verify that a person is the expert he claims to be. Using real names and titles on wikipedia is pointless because anyone can claim to be anyone he wants to be.

What if, after a year, someone says he didn't make this or that edit or approval. Has someone been impersonating him? Is he embarrassed because he noticed a flaw in the article and is now trying to cover his mistake? Has he changed his mind? and so on. That sort of thing would just harm Misplaced Pages's credibility.

Just because someone has a ph.d. in a subject doesn't make him right either. There are many scholars with controversial views, and Misplaced Pages should portray the non controversial view.

Any source is unreliable, that is true whether it's Britannica, Citizendium a big newspaper or a government. If it's critical information, you should always be skeptical and check the source and verify with independent sources. On Misplaced Pages this is much easier to do than in almost any other case: you can request citations, check the sources, check the talkpage and can ask other editors for feedback. If you read Britannica you have to take everything for granted and simply trust their editors.

It could always be better of course, and there are undoubtedly nonsense every here and there. Personally I'm very positively surprised over the high quality of many articles though. One of the things I like about Misplaced Pages is that everyone is equal and only defined by their contributions.

(Unfortunately the talk pages aren't very user friendly, colons and tildes are the easiest option).
—Apis (talk) 00:06, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your contributions to this discussion, friends. I multiposted it because of the instructions at the top of this page - "If the proposal is a change in policy, be sure to also post the proposal to, say, Misplaced Pages:Manual of style, and ask people to discuss it there". Perhaps someone might explain to me where I went wrong!

I agree and am often surprised by the quality of the articles on Misplaced Pages. However, I think that Dcoetzee's comment sums up the feelings of many of us (he wants "a systematic way of fact-checking articles"). When I read an article I don't want to have to go and check every source - and believe me, many sources are sitting up here on pages that have clearly not been checked properly by contributors. I'd like something more.

I get the sense that my suggestions are not going to be especially popular but that there is a feeling that Misplaced Pages's credibility ought to be improved somehow. That some mechanism could be introduced to give some old-school cred to Misplaced Pages articles; that the use of peer-reviewed journals and books as sources ought to better encouraged within Wiki's mechanisms.

Any ideas? Betacrucis (talk) 02:50, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

What I see as one the biggest hindrances to this is the fact we tend to say "no thanks" to new users who come in feeling they can offer something useful because they do "know" something. This in itself is not a problem but it is the support of the underlying concept that "merely being true or useful does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia" and that one can always "ignore all rules" that leads into the problem. A new user is not really allowed to "ignore all rules" and tell facts they know because it is OR and, even if the editor is the subject, "merely being true or useful" is not a valid reason for that information to be included. However if it is part of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" it may be. See the core policies already prevent a user from having any sort of "first hand" knowledge of a subject that can be shared and it has turned many people away. What ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ said above it very true, "a lot of people who are experts get paid for their expertise". And that being the case most professionals in a given field are not going to want to "work for free" when they are are challenged at every corner. Another "minor" problem is that one of the criteria we use to "judge" others, or if a source is verifiable as a reliable source, is too see if the source, such as a newspaper or magazine, has a publisher, editors and a staff. Matter of fact if they don't, and it is a "wiki", such as this, we say it is not acceptable to use it. I have said it before but will say it again, here and now, I think that when Misplaced Pages (as a whole) starts to accept that, in order to make certian areas better, "instruction creep" is not always bad and sometimes there has to be a bureaucracy only then will others start to feel it is credible as a source. Soundvisions1 (talk) 18:44, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

As a bare minimum, I propose a {{factcheck}} template, to be used on the talk page. It refers to a specific quotation from a specific revision and a specific source, and states that the person placing the template, who is not the one who added the content, has verified the quoted information against the stated source. It might also be useful to have something in the article, keeping in mind that any such template should be unobtrusive and refer to a specific revision. Dcoetzee 18:42, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Errors turn up in all media sources. Many newspapers have a "corrections" section that lists the mistakes that wound up in print. Absent of employing full-time fact checkers (which some major media companies have), we would have to maintain good faith that the people writing and editing the articles here have all of their facts in place. Pastor Theo (talk) 00:55, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I personally think a new user should NOT be allowed to edit articles until he has logged about 250 edits, thus showing his worth. Let him edit talk pages and policy only until then. Silk Knot (talk) 06:13, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

With all due respect to those who've commented, this is getting away from my suggestion. All I am putting forward is that we allow verified scholars to rate articles on quality. This would not make any difference to the actual content; it would simply provide a point of reference for those who are not familiar with the subject matter of the article to be able to have a rough idea of how accurate/contentious the content of the page is.

As for not allowing a new user to edit articles until 250 edits, SilkKnot, I think that would defeat Misplaced Pages's chief advantage. The vast majority of content on wikipedia is added by anonymous users. See http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia

Betacrucis (talk) 07:40, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

While not fully the same as your suggestion we already have the {{expert}} tag available for use. But, as has been alluded to, because we do not, say, require an OTRS for users there is not a clear cut way to be sure the "expert" user is not a self appointed expert. On the other hand one could suggest that only Featured articles be used to give "a rough idea of how accurate/contentious the content of the page is" as they must follow the "Featured article criteria" in order to achieve that status. But that also leads to the overall issue of "merely being true or useful" not being a valid reason for that information to be included here and that anyone can sill edit the article after it has become a featured article to add or remove information that may, or may not be, "true or useful". Even in your suggestion there would be, currently, no way to prevent anyone from adding, or removing, information once the "verified scholars" have looked over the article and "rated" it. Soundvisions1 (talk) 13:51, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I have myself often wished for way of saying in an article in my subject field, that I have looked at it , and that it meets at least my requirements. This is obviously of no authority except to the extent that people have any particular confidence in my judgment, but in various fields there there are people who judgement tends to be at least taken into account carefully. Sometime it is possible to find away to say so on the talk page, but I usually don't like to say it flat out, unless there is some controversy to answer, because it looks too much like putting myself forward when other do not do it. What I'll sometimes to is congratulate someone else on what i thin is a very good edit. I'm very leery, though, of introducing any more formal structure here--we already have an excessively confusing amount of it.DGG (talk) 09:35, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Random image

Proposal: It would be very useful if a template could be created that could display a random image, selected from a list, every time a page is loaded. For example, I could have a list Image:Example.jpg, Image:Example2.jpg, Image:Example3.jpg, and upon reaching the page a random image would be displayed from the list. Any ideas or comments about this? Thanks, -download | sign! 01:49, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

The utility of this in articles is minimal. I can see it for articles which discuss randomness or articles on topics which embody randomness but not much else. It would be useful for wiki-ads and on user pages but that's not the main purpose of Misplaced Pages. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:17, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

It would be good on pages which have a large number of good, relevant images. At the moment, once there are a few good images of different aspects of a subject, new ones are pointless even if they're really good. This would allow a wider selection to be used. --Helenalex (talk) 02:34, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

You could add a picture gallery (e.g. Tiger#Gallery).
—Apis (talk) 02:53, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Well generating a random image would be much more useful. For example, if you only wanted one image rather than a huge gallery of images. For example, on some articles, there are huge galleries that are very distracting. -download | sign! 02:54, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

To me it seems like a bad idea since every user would get a different version of the article. Isn't it better that the editors decide on some of the pictures? If they are all of equal quality you could just as well throw a dice once yourself.
—Apis (talk) 05:47, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

If an article is being overwhelmed by images, move most of the images to Commons and add a link. That's what Commons is for. --Carnildo (talk) 06:24, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Well just a side comment; if it is decided that a template should be created that does this function, would it be easy to code? -download | sign! 02:38, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

One other major downside: It breaks break the permanence of links to specific revisions. You expect a perma-link to be the same whenever you look at it. This wouldn't be without precedent, there are already things like CURRENTTIMESTAMP that break this permanence. For example, by saying "The current time is 2025-01-07 04:16:23 PM" I just broke the permanence of every revision that contains this text. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:53, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Isn't such permanence already broken by the myriad of templates that can appear on the average article? I don't see it as much of an issue.
As for the code, it's fairly simple; I've got some random text on my header if you'd like to take a look (purge the page over and over to see it in action). EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:03, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

From a user's point of view, there is a practical difference between a template that could change at any time but in reality is stable, and a template or other item like CURRENTTIMESTAMP that changes every time it is loaded or every time the cache is purged. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 13:38, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

This is true, but are images truly so important to a specific revision of an article? If they want that specific image, they can just grab that specific image. *shrug* I can see this being handy for an article where numerous free use images are available, but unfortunately, there aren't many; the only examples I can think of are common animals, like dog or cat. On the whole though, this probably wouldn't be getting used very much. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:31, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

There are two main problems with this proposal: one is that rendered articles are cached for anonymous readers, and this dramatically improves performance. Under your scheme this could not be done, unless it were done on the client side with Javascript or something. The other problem is think of print: someday someone will want to create print versions of Misplaced Pages articles, like a book, and a number of features like sound, animation, and this proposal are problematic in that setting. Dcoetzee 18:38, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Deferred revisions

Misplaced Pages:Deferred revisions is a new proposal to use the abuse filter to defer suspect edits for review without the need to enable 'classic' flagged revisions, but able to work with it. Please express your opinions on the talk page. Cenarium (Talk) 18:37, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

GeoHack analogue for case citations

GeoHack is a wonderful tool for all of those who wish to access maps of geotagged areas through Misplaced Pages. That said, I propose a similar tool for accessing the full text of court decisions, allowing the user a choice of publishers to pick from (e.g. Findlaw/Lexis/Resource.org). Is this feasible? --Hashbrowncipher (talk) 22:51, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes I think so, and I think it's a good idea. We have something similar for books too. I'd post about this on the associated Wikiproject. Dcoetzee 00:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Examples of common names

Time to make the donuts again. Tony Blair, W, are no longer in vogue, and are not even very popular at the moment. I suggest they be replaced as examples of common names with the current PM and current President. This does not happen very often, but does make a simple change. As I see it the two choices are to pick some well known historical examples, like Winston Churchill not Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington (though I can not find any middle names for them!), or use the current PM and President if they have a common name that differs from their full name. W is a particularly bad example at the moment. It is sort of like using Blagojevich or Hitler, as they are once popular but now disgraced. See discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (common names)#Examples 199.125.109.126 (talk) 16:18, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Editnotice for all blps

To see how the blp edit intro works, add the line   importScript('User:RockMFR/blpeditintro.js');   to your monobook.js and edit any blp after bypassing your cache.

I propose to use an editnotice for all biographies of living persons. It would be added to all articles in Category:Living people, similarly to what has been done for disambiguation pages. We may use the text from {{blp}} for example, thus it would render this (from Template:BLP editintro):

I'm sure it would help highly that editors become more aware of the blp policy, and it's prevention, which is particularly important when it comes to blps. We really should try this before considering implementing some drastic measures. Cenarium (Talk) 22:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea - is there an automatic way to do it, or does it have to be done on a per-article basis? Dendodge Talk 22:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

This has been done for all disambiguation pages, see Template talk:Disambig editintro. I've asked at VPT if this is adaptable. Cenarium (Talk) 23:17, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Apparently this can be done. You can try to add User:RockMFR/blpeditintro.js to your monobook to see the result. I'll add this discussion to WP:CENT. Cenarium (Talk) 00:23, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. Sceptre 00:31, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I like this. I think the wording of the editnotice should be changed to something along the lines of 'if you want to add material that might be controversial, make sure it's reliably sourced, otherwise please don't add the material' rather than focussing on what to do after the bad material is added. It would also be good to also have a template which activates the editnotice, in addition to the category. This could be added to certain articles which are not biographies but which contain a lot of content about living people. Tra (Talk) 00:35, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree.Bsimmons666 (talk) 01:43, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The wording can be changed, this is just to begin with something that I used the text from blp. Cenarium (Talk) 15:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

What is the main idea that we want to tell the editor?

1. That they should includes sources for everything they add.
2. That there is a Misplaced Pages policy that covers articles on living persons.
3. That vandalizing an article on a living person is bad and can have real-life consequences.

The editnotice should focus mainly on one thing, and it should be the thing that causes the most problems. In my opinion, it is #3. --- RockMFR 06:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

To be blunt, we're dealing with people that have trouble with the concept of "saying someone is dead when they really aren't is a bad thing." I don't have much faith that an editnotice will actually have any positive impact. I'm not trying to rain on the parade here, just pointing out the obvious. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

• I'm bearish on the idea of edit-notices that admonish people to not vandalize or otherwise fool around actually working. One of the reason edit notices...get noticed (Sorry) is that there aren't many of them. The dab edit notice jumps out at you because you aren't used to seeing edit notices. Before we consider reducing the overall effectiveness of edit-notices in general, we should be pretty sure that this one will actually stop people. Unless we can be sure of that, I'd rather we not have one. Protonk (talk) 07:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  • It's not about asking people not to vandalize (to which I'm also opposed), it's rather to spread the knowledge of the blp policy and explain to editors how to deal with blp issues (and how to report them: at the blp noticeboard). It's wrong to say that users breaching WP:BLP are necessarily evil, vandals, etc, some are just not aware of blp policy and the consequences of their edits, so it's also preventive. Cenarium (Talk) 15:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal regarding "moving pages"

I'd like to make a proposal regarding the "move page" feature to stop users vandalising via moving pages to "vandalistic" locations. My proposal would only make the "move page" feature available to:

1. Administrators (it should be included in the administrative tools)
2. Good-faith users accepted via a new process similar to the rollback acceptance process.

Thoughts? D.M.N. (talk) 13:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I see this as well intentioned and totally unworkable. Most page moves are valid. Those that are bad are easy to police. I oppose this proposal. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 14:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree, this needs to be available to most users. Many many pages are named incorrectly, but innocently so. I just moved on a little while ago. Sure as I have rollback I'm sure I'd get the level easily enough, but remember that rollback is just a speed tool -- anyone can preform the same basic function with a couple extra clicks; what you're proposing is an extra level that of user that we don't have already. Remember people need to be registered and auto-confirmed to move pages, that already takes care of a large majority amount of the vandalism. Sure it's not all, but almost inevitably anyone who goes to the trouble will be moving a highly watched page in the first place. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Either Flagged protection or Delayed Revisions would be better able to prevent vandalistic page moves. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 14:37, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

What fraction of page moves are vandalism, right now? (We'd need some good numbers on that before I'd support this proposal.) I suspect that limiting page moves in this way might reduce vandalism somewhat, but only at the cost of drastically increasing the number of cut & paste page moves. The latter are generally far more work to clean up than the former if not caught right away. Vandalism page moves are usually obvious enough to be detected and reverted immediately; cut & paste page moves may linger for months and lead to unwanted content forking and required complex history and content merges to repair. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:37, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

We get this on Wikiquote all the time as well, and it has led me to think of a solution in algorithmic terms. Rather than making a move require a higher level of authority, we ought to tie the number of moves and the type of pages that can be moved to the potential mover's level and quality of participation. Simply put, a relative newbie with few edits should be able to make perhaps three page moves in a 24-hour period (if they try to make more, they would get a "move limited reached" message and be directed to an admin for assistance). The number would go up incrementally as the account persisted and good edits were made from it. This would not apply to the newbie's own userspace (move to your heart's content there). But other kinds of pages would require a longer edit history or a higher status to move. For example, there is no reason anyone but an admin should be able to move a page in another user's userspace, or in project space or template space (with the exception of a newly created page being moved by its creator, if that creator is the sole editor). The older a page is, the harder it should be to move because if it has been there a long time, there is probably nothing wrong with where it was; the more editors a page has had, the harder it should be to move. So, those four factors should basically balance out in a formula, which would make it well nigh impossible for a submarine newbie vandal account to move a large number of pages. bd2412 T 18:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed already does most of what you want. I don't know if autoconfirmed can be disabled but a "noautoconfirmed (expires=date)" flag would be a useful tool to combat page-creation and page-move vandals who do not otherwise vandalize the project. Or, a "block=nomove expires=date" or "block=nopagecreation expires=date" would do just as well. I haven't checked lately, these might already exist. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

You're kidding right? Are there any examples of users who vandalize through pagemoves but otherwise constructively contribute? Mr.Z-man 01:38, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Rising funds for Misplaced Pages trough Wikimedia chapters

original proposal here Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(proposals)#Rising_funds_for_Wikipedia In some countries, people can choose that 1% of their tax to go to a specific NGO. Did any of the Wikimedia chapters tried to do raise funds that way? Jim92 (talk) 15:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Forum for Misplaced Pages

I think it would be very useful to have a web forum for Misplaced Pages. A web forum has certain advantages, comparing to the village pump. Threads are easy to follow, non-wikipedians are encoruaged to come with ideas too. I am not suggesting that village pump should be replaced with a forum. I am only saying that a web forum would be a great addition. A forum where all wikians (not only wikipedians) meet would be a great place to exchange useful ideas and information good for all wikis. Also a place where people can meet to talk about creating new Wikis. Jim92 (talk) 15:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

There has been discussion about LiqiudThreads being integrated into the wikis, but this hasn't happened yet. In the meantime, the village pumps do serve that purpose reasonably well. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Idea for blocking

It would be useful to have the ability to block an IP or username from editing a particular article. Yes, Article bans exist, but they are community enforced.

To assure that there wouldn't be abuse of such a feature, we could make a policy that it could only be used to enforce community bans, repeat offenders of edit wars or vandalism. Kingturtle (talk) 17:55, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd support that idea, very useful from an editors perspective. However, when an editor is banned from editing an article, it tends to be pretty mainstream and any additions are quickly undone, and the user is blocked. I'm not sure this would add much to that, since people watch these pages anyway. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 18:03, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a counter-productive perennial proposal. No, if we take away the free will element, we won't know which users would otherwise edit in defiance of their topic ban. This creates a deceptive situation where one appears to gain trust by "behaving" and respecting their ban (from the forbidden fruit article perhaps), but it doesn't really meaning anything just because the server said "no" every time they tried to edit it. Seriously, how do we decide whether and when to lift a user's topic ban or ban them completely (when we don't know how reckless they'd have been up until now if they had a choice in the matter). — CharlotteWebb 18:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm aware of a recent issue that was finally submitted to Arbcom where a per-article block option might have saved a lot of time. (The editor has now been indef blocked). Editors at ANI sometimes agree on article bans but the discussions are long and exhausting. My prediction is that these bans would be easier to agree on if the end result was a simple technical step, where an admin pushes one button and sets an expiry date. Occasionally indef blocks are handed out that would be unnecessary if article-level blocks were possible. EdJohnston (talk) 19:20, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what case you are talking about, but had there been a technical way to lock somebody out of one or more articles, you're right, the user(s) would probably not be completely banned yet. Sure we'd have a fool-proof way to keep them out of a small set of articles for a certain duration of time but we don't know what they'd be doing meanwhile. Sure, they could be learning from their misfortune and becoming "reformed", or they could be waiting in the weeds for the page-specific block to expire or be lifted, or they could be causing trouble somewhere else and drawing less attention. If they can't control themselves, if we are suddenly asking Brion to develop an automatic way to baby-sit certain users by keeping them out of certain articles, why trust them to edit at all? Please answer this. — CharlotteWebb 20:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Because sometimes very good editors get too involved in one or two articles, where WP:OWN starts becoming an issue. This isn't to say they can't be useful elsewhere, but it means we can lock them out of certain articles to prevent them causing a fuss there. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 22:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The Arbcom issue was due to this editor. If you check USS Liberty incident, there are at least two editors who've been blocked in the last three months, whose blocks would be unnecessary if they could be locked out of that article. (They truly have no other interests on Misplaced Pages). I would have proposed a 6-month article ban for each if it could have been done by technical means. I doubt they would have done any damage elsewhere on Misplaced Pages, so there would have been no need for other babysitting. Yet we could avoid the indignity of an indef block. EdJohnston (talk) 23:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Strong support with respect to IP addresses and net-blocks, providing that time-limits would be the same as for a sitewide block under the same conditions: It's a lot less disruptive to put a 3-day IP article-block than the same 3-day IP site block. Limited support with respect to usernames: An alternative would be two per-user configuration pages that contained a list of pages not to edit. If a user attempted to save a page in either list, he would be warned not to do so. The first list would be for admin use, read-only for the editor, to "remind" people of article bans. The 2nd use would be for personal convenience, as a tool for wikiholics and others trying to moderate their own editing. The admin list would eliminate the "oh I forgot" excuse, the personal list is just a case of "we made the technology, might as well kill two birds with one stone." Optionally: Have an admin-only watchlist for edits made in contravention of the admin-watchlist. Such a watchlist eliminates the honor system though, so CharlotteWebb's objection above would still remain. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Enable suppressredirect rights for sysops on the English Misplaced Pages

The suppressredirect right allows a user to move a page without creating a redirect. For admins, it is silly to have to create a redirect when you move a page, and then delete the page you just moved, if you are, for example, cleaning up page move vandalism. For non admins it is a bit of a problem, because normally you can't do a multiple page move that has the effect of replacing a page with an entirely different one (A->B C->A). But for admins this isn't an issue, they can do that anyway. This right is already given to users in the global bot, global rollbacker, and steward groups. This right is already possessed by administrators of the German Misplaced Pages, and there is a proposal on meta to enable it on all wikis. Prodego 01:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

As far as I understand, all bots have the right; I remember giving myself a bot flag on Wikispecies (I'm a bureaucrat there) when reverting a load of vandalism and having a button suppress redirects. I just confirmed that. (User:Maxim on an alternate account.) maxypoda kiss! 02:20, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

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