Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 12:16, 24 June 2014

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• Discussions of technical issues belong at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical).
• Discussions of policy belong at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy).
• If you're ready to make a concrete proposal and determine whether it has consensus, go to the Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals). Proposals worked out here can be brought there.

Before commenting, note:

• This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
• Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals, and Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/Persistent proposals.

Village pumps

policy

tech

proposals

idea lab

WMF

misc

• Refining the administrator elections process
• Blocks for promotional activity outside of mainspace
• Voluntary RfAs after resignation
• Proposed rewrite of WP:BITE
• LLM/chatbot comments in discussions

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• history
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• archive
• talk
• purge

URL Shortener update - better idea

The topic of Misplaced Pages and other Wiki sites using an URL shortening service has come up several times here. The proposal has been something along the lines of wi.ki, wiki.to, wikipedia.co, and so on. My understanding was that one of the concerns with this was the cost of maintaining the other domains, and I think I might have a solution I wanted to float here.

Obviously other sites are built on a MediaWiki platform from the Wikimedia Foundation, and so they could conceivably benefit from the URL shortener as well. The idea is that Wikimedia/MediaWiki would own the domain, but the costs would be subsidized by other wikis who use the shortener. Only those who use this, for a small fee (maybe a few dollars a month or year depending), would have access to it. All of the Wikimedia projects would be using it too, but again the costs are paid by those using Wikis who want to use this as well. Again, I'm not saying people who use MediaWiki, but those who wish to utilize a shortener would pay a very small part of the percentage of the costs it takes to maintain it. 4jonah (talk) 23:41, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

As a general note, there's an unofficial shortener for the English Misplaced Pages at enwp.org. For example: http://enwp.org/Example . — Scott • talk 15:08, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of that but for something like http://enwp.org/Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, it wouldn't be as useful as say, wiki.it/Wr9q41sR — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.110.90.85 (talk) 03:55, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

When I hover over a link, I like to know where it's taking me before I click it. wiki.it/Wr9q41sR could be anything: the only clue there is that it's a wiki (of some sort: not all Wikis are Misplaced Pages) and that it's based in Italy. Other than that, I have no idea, so wouldn't click it. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:15, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

URL shorteners have plenty of problems. It'd be best if we didn't encourage them. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:48, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

New way to contribute money!

How about introducing a new way to contribute? How about an option where you can contribute by viewing ads of your choice but only on a page meant for that purpose? (an article free page) The advantage is if you can't contribute real cash it could be possible to bring in small revenue without it being invasive. Another problem may be the bandwidth it would consume. (I don't mean there should be an ad-on-every-page option for those users who opt in for it - that would defeat the point) It's likely to be more attractive. Ads you choose when you want to see them and what you want to see. You could select 'household' and 'stationary'. However it would be a bad idea to incorporate it to go to a wiki page on 'stationary' as this might offer incentive for brands to unfairly edit the article to include their names or inadvertently promote brands(like in 'hardtack'). PencilPapers (talk) 14:47, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I understand your idea, but would this cause an increase in server load? That's what I'm wondering. Dustin (talk) 14:54, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Where is the need of more money? The Wikimedia Foundation have enough money. 78.35.225.154 (talk) 01:34, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

?? Any non-profit enterprise is always in need of money. But as for the proposal, I can't see anyone going out of their way to visit an ad page. Besides, wouldn't this still violate the rationale for not having ads in the first place? That editors might feel inclined to "gently handle" advertisers? — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 12:34, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

The WMF stops its annual fundraiser when it has met its target, so in a very real sense it does have enough money. This idea avoids some of the pitfalls of advertising in article space, a separate page for ads would avoid both the scenario of company x advertising on the page about itself with material that we would reject in an article due to POV phrasing or primary sourcing, and the reverse scenario of Company Y advertising on the page about its competitor company X. However the link to the page on ads would itself be clutter, unless it was done by replacing the current donate link in the sidebar with support which would be just one letter longer and could lead to a page that gave people the option of supporting by giving money, watching ads, taking photographs or doing some edits. But the risk of that would be that some of the people who currently give money would switch to supporting by watching ads, and the value of getting a few hundred thousand people to look at an ad on the internet is much less than getting a few thousand people to give ten dollars each. So perversely it could get us less money, and of course any reopening of the debate about advertising, even if some of the normal objections are overcome, risks tearing the community apart. I still don't see any advantage in reopening the advertising debate until such a time as our current method of fundraising stops working. ϢereSpielChequers 11:17, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

validate identity

The university professor has a profile on the university website, if he puts a link there to his wikipedia profile we know exactly who he is. Validating personal identity is THAT EASY and everyone is doing it already.

I would like to use the example situation where that what was published elsewhere contradicts the views held by the person. Who is right? The person or the citation? Do we desire to fabricate other peoples opinions and advertise them as such on-line? It is not something a decent person would do, even if it was desirable.

There are also situations where we have an empty article + thousand scientists who are more than willing to write down their thoughts specially for us -- this while wikipedia pretends them to be unreliable. By in stead using oblivious journalists we look to people who are completely clueless for advice. It is not something an intelligent person would use.

In the real world it is wikipedia, the wikipedians and the newspapers that are unreliable, the experts in a field of research are both more notable and more reliable sources. Why should we pretend it to be the other way around? Specially when our stuff is incorrect it makes for a ridiculous way of doing things. Argue all you like, it is not what a sane person would use, it just isn't.

If our goal is to write great articles we can use all the help we can get. There are lots of ways to implement a real identity and lots of benefits for the encyclopedia. It is as simple as that anonymous editors officially don't know anything.

Your thoughts?

84.106.27.204 (talk) 11:00, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Supposed experts often disagree and some of them would like to use Misplaced Pages for promotion of their own theories and beliefs. Expert editors willing to reveal their identity are greatly outnumbered by non-experts and editors unwilling to reveal their identity. Should a validated expert be allowed to control an article against a bunch of experienced editors who agree the expert is wrong or biased? Should other editors be disallowed to demand a reliable published source or remove claims which go against reliable published sources?

Should expert editors with validated identity be allowed to make edits with no indication in the rendered article of where the claim comes from? Should others then examine the page history and be disallowed to remove claims which were added by an expert? Or should the experts cite themselves, for example by first saving a claim and then adding a reference with the diff of their own previous edit so others can verify it was added by an expert editor? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:53, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello, thanks for the response.

• "Supposed experts often disagree and some of them would like to use Misplaced Pages for promotion of their own theories and beliefs...."

The assumption of good faith instructs us to judge editors by their own deeds. Technically, we cant have a categorical accusation like this, even if it was true.

• "...Expert editors willing to reveal their identity are greatly outnumbered by non-experts and editors unwilling to reveal their identity...."

Editors unwilling to reveal their identity are considered non-experts.

• "...Should a validated expert be allowed to control an article against a bunch of experienced editors who agree the expert is wrong or biased?"

1) (Experienced) editors should add sources to everything. 2) If the sources are bad but the topic is notable we go with the professional opinion. 3) If the sources are slightly better we describe how they are different from those held by the professional. 4) If the sources are reliable enough we have no use for experts. 5) Any alternative views must have sources to establish notablity.

A consensus is useful to tell 2 from 3 and to establish 5.

• "....Should other editors be disallowed to demand a reliable published source or remove claims which go against reliable published sources?"

If you think an unsourced sentence written by a professor is ever so slightly dubious you should certainly put a citation needed tag on it and/or delete it. Would an anonymous user write the same thing it would be deleted sooner.

• "Should expert editors with validated identity be allowed to make edits with no indication in the rendered article of where the claim comes from?"

To some extend, sure.

• "Should others then examine the page history and be disallowed to remove claims which were added by an expert?"

Editors can delete the whole article, that is within their power. It is just much less urgent to challenge everything.

• "Or should the experts cite themselves, for example by first saving a claim and then adding a reference with the diff of their own previous edit so others can verify it was added by an expert editor?"

That should work. It would allow the fast editors to see the difference. The expert could also write a note in the references section (much like an edit summary) I think they might just be really good at that. 84.106.27.204 (talk) 05:14, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

"what was published elsewhere contradicts the views held by the . Who is right?"

It is not a matter of "who is right" but "which is verifiable". In that situation, we go with the reliable, published source because an editor can go to the publication and verify that the information is present. There is no way for any other editor to verify that a so-called "expert" is correct without a reliable, published source.

"Editors unwilling to reveal their identity are considered non-experts."

To the contrary, there may be a number of reasons why an expert does not want to reveal their identity on Misplaced Pages, usually related to harassment and online stalking. Just because they don't reveal their identities doesn't mean we assume they aren't experts. Instead, we judge them on the quality of the sources they bring to Misplaced Pages.

"If the sources are bad but the topic is notable we go with the professional opinion."

Nope, we go with what is verifiable through reliable, published sources. A so-called professional or expert cannot override a reliable, published sources if they don't have one of their own to back their claim.

"To some extend, sure."

I would completely disagree with that. Experts are required to back up whatever information they add to Misplaced Pages with reliable, punished sources just like every other editor. The only difference between an expert and a regular editor is that the expert has better access to said sources and able to find mistakes quicker because of that. —Farix (t | c) 12:03, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Addendum: In most cases, those experts are more than willing to work within Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines as they appreciate the need for all information to be verifiable. But every once in a while, we do get someone who believes that their expertise can contradict reliable source or that they are are free to ignore Misplaced Pages's policies against original research. —Farix (t | c) 12:27, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I wrote:

"The university professor has a profile on the university website, if he puts a link there to his wikipedia profile we know exactly who he is. Validating personal identity is THAT EASY and everyone is doing it already."

Your response:

"It is not a matter of "who is right" but "which is verifiable". In that situation, we go with the reliable, published source because an editor can go to the publication and verify that the information is present. There is no way for any other editor to verify that a so-called "expert" is correct without a reliable, published source."

What part of THAT EASY was so hard for you to comprehend?

Is your so called "expertise" failing you?

84.106.11.117 (talk) 22:37, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

It is easy to confirm that "expert" really is who he claims to be (assuming he cooperates). It is much harder to know if the expert is right. Let's take an extreme example. I hope you'll agree that an article on Nazis written by Goebbels is not something we'd like to have in Misplaced Pages. And yet, would you want to argue that he is not "an expert" (probably with him personally)..?

Now, of course, we won't end up with the same case. But Citizendium had some similar problems: is a homoeopath an expert on homoeopathy (see Talk:Homeopathy/Archive 39#Citizendium porting for a mention)..? Speaking of which, maybe you should have a look at Citizendium? It might be similar to what you want. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 23:17, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Time to revisit schools?

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I am getting seriously tired of all the, to be extremely blunt, crappy articles about this or that college, that because of the near automatic presumption of notability are littering Misplaced Pages. It's becoming rare for me to get through a single page of new articles on NPP without running into one or more of them. They are often completely unsourced and highly promotional. Even the one's that do have some sources, are often so poor and or obviously promotional that they would get nuked in an AfD discussion if the topic was anything other than schools. WHY ARE SCHOOLS A SACRED COW ON WIKIPEDIA?

I am considering putting up a proposal to require that all schools and colleges be subject to the exact same standards as any other topic, specifically significant coverage in multiple reliable sources to be considered notable. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:02, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

It sounds like you need to take a break. You yourself could look for sources. For current schools there are almost always plenty of sources around, but they may be newspapers in languages that you don't know. However there could be lots of "colleges" which are just some private training company set up recently, without notability. These are the kind of article that should not have the presumption of notability. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:08, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

I think you are missing the point. As long as it can be established that a college exists, and that it's not a degree mill or something similar, then it is de-facto notable, extensive RS coverage or no. I also don't think it's right to attempt to shift the burden for hunting down sources on editors who are dong NPP, though I don't mind a little here and there in most cases. But there is a widespread pattern of abuse going on with way too many school related articles that would in the normal course of things, not even come close to meeting our notability standards getting what amounts to a free pass. So I will ask the question again... Why are schools a sacred cow on Misplaced Pages? -Ad Orientem (talk) 00:43, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Because otherwise we will spend half our time at AfD debating the intricacies of just what sources are sufficiently "substantial" and "reliable", and will probably end up debating this not just for all the secondary school and colleges, but all the primary schools. Depending on whether you want to keep them or not, it is possible to interpret the sourcing requirements of the GNG to produce any wanted result for almost all articles of this nature. The current system is not, as you seem to think, an inclusive rule only, it is equally an exclusive rule, for not giving articles to primary schools, of which there are many times the number compared to secondary schools. The probable accuracy or even repeatability of our AfD determinations back 7 years ago was about 80% at most, meaning that almost any school could be removed after 4 or 5 afds, & those who wanted to avoid school articles did just such nominations. Simultaneously, those who wanted to keep the articles spent most of their time here on finding recondite secondary sources,which in general are available for most primary as well as secondary schools if you look hard enough, though it can take hours. And what's the point of it all? If, like now, we cover about 20 or 30% of secondary schools that would have trouble passing the GNG interpreted rigidly, WP is not paper; if we merge all the primary schools into the school districts as at present, the key links for the information are still available.

What we can not accommodate is wasting the energy of all of us interested in notability, inclusionist-minding and exculsionist-minded both, at these afds, when there are so many really harmful articles, especially promotional articles and poorly sourced BLPs, that we need to remove. It's a matter of practicality, not of principle.

The real problem here , is that similar decision points would be useful for many other types of articles, particularly those subject to WP:LOCAL. where the same ambiguity of the detailed specifications of the GNG can yield any wanted result. (And again, with almost random results, except when do we have such convenient cut off points as local or state branches of national organizations.) DGG ( talk ) 02:35, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

• I'ld say, keep the policy for real schools and colleges, but make it clear that this policy does not apply to those wannabe commercial 'colleges' those are nothing more than fronts for paid training programs. (i.e. any organization can call itself a 'college', but only include for our policy those that fit the traditional description of a college. ) However, based on CSD criteria, we should also delete all articles that are blatant promotion and advertisement (G11. Unambiguous advertising or promotion), or are largely copied from the college's website or informational material (G12. Unambiguous copyright infringement). @Ad Orientem, perhaps that addresses your major concerns? Darx9url (talk) 00:53, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
• I agree with the sentiment behind the proposal, at least to a degree, in that a locale shouldn't be made continuously more granular by breaking out articles about other items within the locale unless there is substantial reliable material and independent notability. For schools we seem to have moved too far away from this and now presume that they all justify an independent article. Some of the school articles have no more sources available than my local bus stop does - a primary source website and a couple of minor mentions in the local press when a bus broke down there. I think WP:NSCHOOL should have a line added, based on WP:NSONG, along the lines of "Notability aside, a standalone article is only appropriate when there is enough material to warrant a reasonably detailed article; articles unlikely ever to grow beyond stubs should be merged to articles about the town or locale." QuiteUnusual (talk) 09:26, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
• I agree with Ad Orientem that this is out of control for new articles. We need to remove the exception to db-A7 to solve the initial filtering issue. Nothing else has exemption so why should schools be any different? I don't get the concept of why if a college/high school exists it is somehow automatically notable. This does not apply to any other type of building so its anomalous to say the least. That's the CSD part.
  

As for Afd, DGG is spot on about the wasted energy. Everytime a nomination in this category comes up (with the exception of primary schools, which are thankfully under control with the redirect concensus), the discussion seems to involve once more explaining to people how the GNG overrides essays like SCHOOLOUTCOMES and why all educational institutions are not automatically notable. IMHO we need to tighten up NSCHOOL and remove the presumption of automatic notability. However, if we institute criteria based on article size using QuiteUnusual's nifty bus stop analogy, I can see people simply falling back on WP:DEADLINE. "It might be long enough one day..." What we need are better guidelines.  Philg88  10:02, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

• It's all volunteer work and while Misplaced Pages attempts to be encyclopedic, the only people researching such schools are likely going to people who either already went there, are going there, or are planning on enrolling there, it's not as if the low-quality information people provide is going to be used in anything scholarly or, well, serious. If the subject matter were serious, I'd say we need to be more proactive in eliminating low-quality pages which might very well be nothing short of promotion or propaganda, but it sounds like what you're evaluating is pretty uninportant. I'd say there's no problem that needs to be addressed, just a desire for better quality which is difficult to achieve since we're all volunteers. Damotclese (talk) 16:56, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

IP disruption proposal

I have drafted an idea at User:Spinningspark/IP disruption proposal which I would like some comment on. Basically, it is to ask IP editors to accept a cookie which can be used to identify them rather than the IP address. This avoids the collateral damage of blocking IP addresses or ranges and has the added benefit of protecting the privacy of IP users since they cannot then be geolocated or their institution identified. SpinningSpark 16:06, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Obviously, this will require the devs to do some work on the core code to implement it, but I think we need to see if there is some traction for it in the community before raising it on Bugzilla. SpinningSpark 16:13, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

@Spinningspark: Interesting idea - not sure what I think of it yet.

Question: It might get rid of the IP-hopping problem, but then I imagine it would introduce a new problem of computer-hopping. Assuming an anonymous editor has access to multiple computers and/or mobile devices, couldn't a blocked URID simply shift to another computer on the same network, which would have otherwise been blocked from editing with an IP block? If so, this could also be harder for editors to track anonymous users, since we can't go off of geolocation. I'm not sure if developing and implementing the system would be worth it if it would just shift the problem, but correct me if I'm wrong. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 18:04, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Sure a vandal can switch devices, but typically they will have far fewer physical devices available to them than IP addresses. The IP pool of a dynsamically allocated large ISP might be half a million addresses. We simply are not allowed to block a range that big, even if we manage to track the vandal as he hops around. Compared to that, the number of devices available is tiny. Think how many do you have? Typically, it is in single digits. A prolific troll will soon run out of devices to switch to as they get blocked one by one. I don't think lack of geolocation information is a serious problem. After all, a disruptive editor who is trying to hide that need only start creating a string of socks. Checkuser will soon find them out in both cases.

This is not meant to be a cure-all. It is just another tool in the box for fighting disruption.

The proposal as written is probably not going to fly. It is getting a lot of criticism at VPT due to the difficulty of retrieving MAC addresses. However, a simpler cookie could still be useful. It would be vulnerable to the user deleting it, or not accepting it in the first place, but 90% of problem editors probably don't know how to do this, or wouldn't think to do it. SpinningSpark 18:40, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks for the reply. Just curious about one approach versus the other. As long as it would have concrete results compared to the current system, it sounds like a good idea to me, minus all the technical aspects (privacy policy, actually developing it, etc.). ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 18:47, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I think getting the MAC address is more than just difficult. Without using something obtrusive like a Java applet or browser-specific like ActiveX, I'm pretty sure it's impossible. As for a regular cookie, while most problem users probably don't know how to delete cookies, the ones who are the most problematic are probably going to be the ones who figure it out pretty quickly. It could also have problems with shared computers that are set to delete cookies when the browser is closed. Mr.Z-man 19:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Right, any half-competent troll is very soon going to figure out that they can circumvent this block by deleting cookies. However, I suppose if it thwarts even a few... 86.179.119.9 (talk) 21:04, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Mobile talk page

I'm not quite sure where to post this and this is a proposal for the mobile website for what I consider a vital missing part.

Copied from WP:VPM

There is one thing I do request when it comes to using Misplaced Pages on mobile. This is a simple request yet I feel it is fundamental to the whole of Misplaced Pages. When editing on mobiles, it is hard to access the talk page unless you actually know of the link. Could this be added to the mobile menu?

Simply south ...... time, department skies for just 8 years 18:26, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Simply south – if you opt into the beta version of the mobile site (go to the top-left navigation menu, go to Settings, toggle to opt into Beta), you'll actually see the talk page as an additional menu item along with edit and add image :) The reason we haven't been exposing this to all users is that talk pages themselves render quite poorly on mobile – the formatting and threading makes them very difficult to read – and we don't want to serve millions of mobile readers a broken/confusing experience. But we're doing some work to spruce this up (you can see an early stab in Beta) and will probably continue to do so over the next year. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Basics suggestions

Some pages are too technical to be understood. Like those that deal with mathematical theories, politics, law or such. How about a basics suggestion box, based on the articles, that will fully enable you to understand the article in question? (at least to let you know what you require or should look for;what you should read first; to build on.) It shouldn't rely on books for obvious reasons. 117.199.15.181 (talk) 16:38, 18 June 2014 (UTC)BY-SA

The lead for all articles should be digestible by all readers. If they aren't, they are lacking. But some articles are written by experts in the subjects and it's hard for them to understand what they consider fundamental is incomprehensible to others. Also, some topics are so advanced that it's nearly impossible to explain them to laymen in simple terms.

I don't know if a "basics" box is feasible because how could it account for every user; every user has their own level of understanding of any given topic, so how would it know what the user needs guidance on?

IIWY, I would just post on the Talk page of the articles you found unapproachable and ask for a more basic lead. I have, and the principle author(s) generally come back and ask "What don't you understand?", I tell them, then they post a revision and see if I understand that. It goes back and forth until I, a layman in the subject, can understand it. I can't guarantee it will work in every case, but it's worth a shot. If you don't get an answer on the Talk page (give it a day or two), most articles belong to a WikiProject or two, and you can raise the issue there. YMMV. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 17:15, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually I found out that there is already a hierarchy at the bottom illustrating some of the basics you need in order to understand the article you're on. Could this be incorporated into "The Misplaced Pages Adventure"?(So people know about this? At the mention of the words linking to articles would be a good idea.) 117.199.15.181 (talk) 17:49, 18 June 2014 (UTC)BY-SA

Korea Artists

Hello all,

This is my first time proposing and idea on Misplaced Pages, and I have no idea if this is the right place/way to do so. Please go easy on me if not ;)

I have been a resident of Korea for the past 8 years and am now fluent in Korean. I have noticed a distinct lack of English information on some fantastic modern Korean artists and would like to start a project to add them to Misplaced Pages. But along with that also comes a lack of English language sources, so I am wondering what the procedure is for verification in this case.

Please get in touch if you have any tips or would like to be involved.

Marie — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marie.frenette (talk • contribs) 02:23, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Marie Korean artists isn't a relevant topic for this page. May I suggest that you post a message at the WP:Wikiproject Korea talk page? Best,  Philg88  08:56, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Welcome, Marie.frenette! Please WP:Be bold in creating or improving articles about WP:Notable Korean artists. It does not matter if all of the sources are in Korean. Our official policy is WP:NONENG: Sources do not have to be in English. If you can find English-language sources, then that is great; if you can't, then please use the best non-English sources you can find. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Reveal anchor links for headers in articles to increase usability

I propose to reveal anchor links for headers in articles to increase usability.

This idea has been inspired by what GitHub has done when rendering Markdown files in repositories. For instance, in jQuery’s repository, hovering over any headers reveal an ‘anchor’ or a ‘chain’ to its left, whereupon if the user clicks on it, a fragment identifier is appended to the URL. Any existing fragment identifier in the URL may be replaced by a new one.

This allows the user to share articles directing to a specific section or sub-section. One way users can generate the URL with a fragment identifier is by clicking on the links in the article’s table of contents. However, scrolling up to the TOC is an anti-pattern for web usability, especially if an article is long.

Thus, I’m proposing Misplaced Pages (or MediaWiki) to implement header anchor links much in the same manner that GitHub has done. This would increase Misplaced Pages’s usability in sharing articles.

As far as I know, I’m unaware if this idea has been proposed/suggested. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dashed (talk • contribs) 02:43, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

A template redirect?

I came up with this idea viewing template pages. Couldn't we use "T" To abbreviate the word template Like "WP" Is used for Misplaced Pages? I don't see why it can't be used. Lor 08:01, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Several T:s are used as shortcuts, see Special:PrefixIndex/T:. A general abbreviation is not necessary, as most template pages are rarely referred to (other than by transclusion). —Kusma (t·c) 09:06, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Unless, that is, you find yourself working on them much of the time... Sardanaphalus (talk) 16:13, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Another problem is that T: is ambiguous - it could mean Talk: --Redrose64 (talk) 12:54, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps a Preference or the like might be made available which, when enabled, interprets "T:" as "Template:" or "Talk:" or "Template talk:" or something else, depending on the option the user selects or defines? Sardanaphalus (talk) 16:13, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

That wouldn't work. You might type please see ] which would show as "please see T:Example" - upon clicking that (assuming that it's not a redlink), some people might be taken to Template:Example, others to Talk:Example. It would cause much confusion with people reaching a page other than the one that you had intended them to reach. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:59, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

@Lor: I feel the {{tl}} template already alleviates this problem sufficiently, and helps by showing the template link in a manner reflecting normal usage for templates. I find using this template more intuitive than a (potentially ambiguous) "XX:" shortcut prefix. SFB 17:50, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Which also suggests the most promising template namespace shortcut, ie "TL:". But more than having it available for links like ], which is no simpler than {{tl|documentation}} it would be nice to have "TL:Documentation" supported in the search bar. VanIsaac_WS 19:18, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

We need a way to pique the interests of bored readers!

Hi everyone. I love reading Wiki pages. I love to soak up information, but currently there is no reliable way to find new and interesting articles daily which I might find interesting. In fact, I find myself coming to this place to read interesting arciles as a result of Reddit.

So why is it we rely on Reddit to tell the world about the interesting articles here? Why can't we have our own page which allows users to submit their own links, perhaps even allow a reddit like discussion on them. This would mean that.. even if I don't really know what I'm looking for, and I'm just bored and looking to learn something interesting, I can navigate to this page, and read through the most popular articles of recent-- submited by users.

Not only would this allow for more casual browsing, but this would get users to sign up, and become more involved with Misplaced Pages.

I am a web developer, and my company is www.soulcreative.org. I would be happy to contribute to the creation of such a page if it were to gain the support of Wiki staff. Even, though, if they believe that is not necceary, I would simply be happy to see this solution come to life. It's very simple, but it would really help both Misplaced Pages, and users who enjoy light, casual, educational reading.

Thanks,

Luna Prey — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lunaprey (talk • contribs) 06:01, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

• The main page has a "Did You Know" section that sort of functions like your idea.AioftheStorm (talk) 06:10, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
• There is also a 'Random page' button on every page. It's amazing where you can get with that. Peridon (talk) 14:37, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
• Three thoughts:
  1. Sounds good to me.
  2. Any web developer or other interested people should see mw:How to become a MediaWiki hacker.
  3. This is really a content question, which "the Wiki staff" (meaning the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation) leaves to the community—which includes you! You don't need to convince "staff"; you just need to either WP:Be bold or get support from other people in the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

I think that portals should be improved and promoted heavily. They would help for the purpose that Lunaprey has described. I've done some of that in the Spanish-language Misplaced Pages. --NaBUru38 (talk) 01:44, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Extant Organizations Noticeboard

About one year ago from today, User:Jayen466 gave me a barnstar for creating a COI submission wizard (which to this day is still just in user-space) and said they had - for the longest time - felt a BLPN equivalent for companies should exist ("Extant Organizations Noticeboard"). I've been spending some time at BLPN and I quite enjoy it. Both attack pieces and promo pieces are brought there for broader scrutiny and while I find negative material is often removed even when BLP-compliant sources are easily found that can support similar content, all-in-all editors that participate there are fairly neutral and even-keeled. It doesn't feel like a drama board to me.

Company articles are subject to all the same types of POV pushing as BLPs and an Extant Organizations Noticeboard seems overdue. One could be created in literally an hour. I was wondering if there was a reason nobody has started one yet? CorporateM (Talk) 19:17, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Article links to indicate quality of linked article

This discussion led me to think about a particular bugbear of mine: "tiny stubs" that amount to no more than one or two sentences (example). I find redlinks a really useful way to identify where we have topic gaps. I find these tiny stubs problematic as they cause me to miss the fact that significant work is still required on the topic (i.e. the real article, rather than just a short description, often no better than something you might see at a disambiguation page).

Extending the logic of colouring, I'd like to see the class of a linked article by the colouring of the internal link, perhaps based upon the colours and functionality used in the User:Pyrospirit/metadata gadget. Would this be possible or would it simply be too much of a drag on the server for the benefit? Would it be possible to assess the size of the article's prose, and not just its byte-size? Also, I see that under the "Preferences-->Appearance-->Advanced option" there is a stub threshold limit (though I've only just found that now while looking for the origin of the text coming from the metadata gadget, so that could perhaps be better advertised). SFB 19:26, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

The "metadata gadget" is "Display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header (documentation)", comprising MediaWiki:Gadget-metadata, MediaWiki:Gadget-metadata.js, MediaWiki:Gadget-metadata.css --Redrose64 (talk) 19:59, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

I think he's looking for having that information available on links to that page instead of having to navigate to them to find out their assessment. So a link to the stub article Pinnacle Peak (Washington) would show up as Pinnacle Peak (Washington), while good article Mount Rainier would be Mount Rainier, or something like that. VanIsaac_WS 21:20, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

@Sillyfolkboy:s idea is worthy of future study, imo.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:23, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Sillyfolkboy! You could also check Wikiprojects, where there are tables of articles by assesment and importance. There you could find Stub articles by topic. Good luck! --NaBUru38 (talk) 01:46, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

@Vanisaac: Thanks for demonstrating the idea. It's interesting that we have the choice of coloured font vs. coloured background. It might be a worth doing a mock-up to show the difference/benefits. @NaBUru38: my idea is to bring this information out of tables and talk pages and into the context of real content – with the stub threshold tool, for example, I can see instantly on the main page that motorsports is a very small article. I think expanding the variety of what we can show this way could change editors' perspectives on the red/blue link binary (which can often be crudely interpreted as "done/not done"). SFB 06:37, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

The background vs text color for the demonstration was actually practical: I don't know, off the top of my head, how to set link color in CSS, but I could see in Redrose's sig how to set the background. So background it was. VanIsaac_WS 07:21, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

In my sig I set both background and text colour for the same part of the link, using <span style="color:#a80000; background:#ffeeee; text-decoration:inherit">Red</span> which shows as Red; for the background, it doesn't matter whether the link is inside the <span>...</span> or vice versa, but to set the text colour, it only works if the <span>...</span> element is inside the wikilink: Pinnacle Peak (Washington); Mount Rainier

But since this is going to be a gadget, where Javascript and/or CSS files are used to add and modify styling, it may be easier to forget about employing inline styling and instead use the :link and :visited pseudo-classes. You need to set both of these for each different article assessment class, for example

a.assess-ga-link:link,
a.assess-ga-link:visited {
  color: #007700;
}
a.assess-stub-link:link,
a.assess-stub-link:visited {
  color: #990011;
}

- if you set only the :link, it'll go back to purple as soon as you click it; if you set only the :visited, it'll be blue until you click it. Setting the :visited to the same as :link avoids the need to set up two different colours for each different article assessment class, but means that the distinction between unvisited and visited links is lost. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:58, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

• If I'm reading your request right, all that you need is Anomie's linkclassifier. — {{U|Technical 13}} 12:16, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

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