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Welcome to the Village Pump. This set of pages is used to discuss the technical issues, policies, and operations of Wikipedia, and is divided into four village pump sections. Please use the table below to find the most appropriate section to post in, or post in the miscellaneous section. You can view all village pump sections at once here. Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~ or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar).	Shortcuts: Wikipedia:VP Wikipedia:PUMP Wikipedia:VILLAGE Wikipedia:VILLAGEPUMP	It can only be speculated that, like the modern office Water cooler, the Village pump must have been a gathering place to discuss ideas for the improvement of the locale in which its members dwelled.
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Policy

Field-specific guidelines

That said, understanding that notability as it is treated today as one swing of the pendulum of self-correction on WP is probably a bit too heavy-handed but also a bit too unfocused. I think most editors know how to use notability, but it is clear that most of this inclusist vs deletionist war that's been going on is due to a vicious circle of events that typically start with a heated argument at AFD and lead to ranges of articles being contested. This is often fueled by disagreement for what is appropriate coverage of certain fields relative to other fields (a fact often joked at by the press, which fuels the battles further) - I know one of the biggest is concepts from fictional works (characters, etc.) which some believe are important to be covered but rarely can be covered by secondary sources, thus making the present Wikipedia:GNG statement difficult to work with. But this is also true for schools, sports figures, etc.

It is not that notability isn't a bad idea, nor one to be abandoned, but we need to remind people that we a combination of an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac - to that end, we should be asking ourselves, first and foremost, what is it that we want to cover, and not the negative of what we don't want to cover. Given any field, we should be able to say "Ok, topics that satisfy these conditions from this field that demonstrate notability within that field should be included", and list out specific criteria that avoid subjection assessments. This may not be possible for some fields, but I think most fields can provide a good swath at appropriate topics that, with reasonable assurance, would be part of the encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac. To that end, we already have the various sub-notability guidelines (SNGs) that provide that. Failing the SNG then drops you to our next goalline, the general notability guideline, which says that a topic that shows notability via secondary sources should be included. Mind you, many topics that would meet the field-specific guidelines likely would meet the GNG, but this should not be taken as a sign that the GNG is more important. The GNG is the fallback position of a topic doesn't meet its field's guidelines or if the field lacks any guidelines or falls outside of any known field. When viewed like this, this can significant help discussions at AFDs where notability is in play, because we're not talking about the presence of sources but the appropriateness of the topic for WP: if it is notable in the specific field but lacks sources, we should be more open to keeping it than deletion.

The problem we stuck with is this impression - when you read through policies and guidelines and AFDs - that the only good encyclopedic article is one that has third-party, secondary sources. Granted - verification and avoidance of original research and bias are all important, and third-party, secondary sources are a strong way to get there. But that's satisfying the "encyclopedia" part of WP's mission - gazetteers and almanac are works that tend to just cite facts and not attempt analysis or the like. Not every article on WP needs third-party secondary sources to meet WP's mission. That's not to say that we open the door to thousands of articles by allowing primary, first-person accounts as the only sourcing metric, and that's why, again, the field-specific guidelines of what is actually notable should come into play - there may be some topics within a field that should be included even if the sourcing is otherwise not as strong as one that is provided through secondary sources. Failing the field, then the lack of secondary sources will mean the topic fails the GNG, and we likely would not have a separate article on it.

We still need to make sure that field specific guidelines for inclusion are not overly inclusive compared to others. For example, if a guideline says that a one-time cameo fictional character always gets an article, while we exclude an amateur that plays one time at the Olympics through an athlete-field guideline or a single mom-and-pop business through a business-field guideline, we've got a problem. These field guidelines cannot be developed in a vacuum and should be challenged if they are overly inclusive - or overly exclusive too. We also need to realize that not every topic easily shuffles into established fields, or that new fields may become more obvious over time as we work towards this. We still have the GNG for those.

Basically, the "tl;dr" version of the above is simply that we should be asking ourselves, "what do we want to include in WP" instead of always playing the negative "This doesn't belong in WP". We want to assure ourselves we are covering all topics within individual fields well enough to meet the mission of WP, and being overly reliant on the GNG is harmful. (An argument I've had to point out several times is that while the property of having significant coverage is usually the result of something being http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/notable, it is not true that having significant coverage is what makes something http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/notable. There is a small but significant gap between GNG-based notable topics and dictionary-definition-based notable topics. We need to find out how to fill that gap, and field-specific guidelines are one way to do so.) --MASEM (t) 16:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

This has some merit. But it might be hard to do in practice. That is, a list of included fields could be too long. Maurreen (talk) 17:19, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

A complete switch to this approach is not something to be done overnight. But the framework is there, in how the existing SNGs (like Wikipedia:BIO, Wikipedia:BK, and Wikipedia:MUSIC already are written towards this idea. It would be a gradual change. The only immediate switch is applying to all editors the general understanding that the GNG needs to be treated as the fallback for notability, not the first barrier. --MASEM (t) 17:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense.

In one of the sub-guidelines, I don't remember which one, is something like "has made a major, lasting, contribution to his field." I think that is a good guideline in general.

The question then would become, "When is a field to small?" But that could be addressed gradually and organically, as you suggest, such as by adding sets of sub-guidelines. Each set of sub-guidelines could be addressed specifically. Maurreen (talk) 18:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like Wikipedia:CREEP to me. I dunno; I always felt our ultimate goal was well-researched articles regardless of the field. Fundamentally, I see Wikipedia as the biggest Literature review in existence. Nifboy (talk) 00:16, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! Finally someone with brains. (Ok, I'm gushing ;) Paradoctor (talk) 00:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Technically it is not creep as the framework is in place, though yes, as more field-specific guidelines are added, that increases the size, but I don't see that changing the general ways things are done. And while I do agree with you about WP being a literature review, that itself can be conducted, with care, in the absence of secondary sources which is why the GNG should fallback over topic-inclusion guidelines if it is a topic we decide we want to cover. --MASEM (t) 00:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm still not reading you right. I see "in the absence of secondary sources" and read it as "in the absence of anything resembling a decent article at all." Then again, I'm most active in a project with a big list of things not to do because GameFAQs, TV Tropes, Wikia et al do them better (see Wikipedia:VGSCOPE); those sites are not constrained by things like Wikipedia:OR. What Wikipedia does better than any other place on the web is source compilation and summary. The notability guideline emphasizes that, and I like playing to our strengths. Nifboy (talk) 01:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

That point of view is starting from the possibly flawed opinion that secondary sources are necessary in a good article. I will content that it is likely difficult, working from non-secondary sources, to make an article as strong as one that is backed by that, but that it is not impossible. The reason I consider this possibly flawed is that what we consider an "encyclopedic" article is so disputed to know if this is consensus or not. I propose that being more open about topics but still alert to indiscriminate incluse, what we include will tell us better what we expect of "encyclopedic" articles. --MASEM (t) 04:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

You probably could make a good article, but I don't think it would be a Wikipedia article, if that distinction is at all meaningful. Nifboy (talk) 05:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

If we were just an encyclopedia, yes, I argue for what you're saying, but the fact we're more than just an encyclopedia means that we may have articles that don't fit the pattern of an encyclopedia but nevertheless part of what we considered to be covered. --MASEM (t) 05:48, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

We are? And here I thought Wikipedia was just one of many different knowledge bases on the internet, willing to let other projects pick up subject matters where we're weak, typically due to our policies. Nifboy (talk) 06:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

We're an encylopedia that anyone can edit, but we're still just an encylopedia. People forgetting this is possibly the single-most cause of drama and conflict here. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I do agree that where a MediaWiki sister project exists or has the possibility of existing, we should consider moving non-encyclopedic material to there. I also agree we are to be summarizing knowledge, not simply reiterating it, and pointed to reliable sources outside of the Foundation should be encouraged, but that's after we've summarized the topic here. I also point to the difficulty that many editors have resolving the first pillar in what "encyclopedia" means when we have elements of more datum-driven works like almanacs and gazetteers as elements of WP as well. This, in part, is the problem of notability, is that it is a way to drive home one's own opinion of "encyclopedic", when I doubt anyone can say exactly where the consensus stands on what "encyclopedic" quality really is. The bounds of that opinion are likely much narrower than they were 4-5 years ago before notability, but it is still a very fuzzy line and one that we need to be careful of.

That said, even if we take a stronger concept of what we expect a good WP article to be (a point I contend against, but will assume for this discussion), I would still assert that field-specific inclusion guidelines are needed. There are likely topics we want to include because they are in fields that are core to human knowledge, but due to difficulty in getting sources (due to rarity, age, cost, etc.) may not easily be expanded in the short term. It is better to put out the article with what limited verified information we have and hope that anons and other readers can expand it before those sources can get added, than to have no article at all. Eventually we hope that article gets to this "encyclopedic" quality, but there is no need to have it off the bat. That's the benefit of being a continuous work in progress with community additions. --MASEM (t) 15:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that Masem is trying to adapt the inclusion guidelines so cater for poorly sourced articles, but no amount of rule changing can make up for poor content. The idea that Not every article on WP needs third-party secondary sources to meet WP's mission is essentially a rejection of inclusion based on good sourcing in favour of questionalble sources. However, Masem forgets that secondary sources are needed as evidence of notability and enable articles to meet Wikipedia's content policies.
The problem with field-specific guidelines is deciding what will be the basis for incluision? There are only two choices available: notability or subjective importance. It seems to me that Masem is proposing the latter, based on the idea that a topic gets its own article if it can "prove" its coverage is of "encyclopedic" quality, but what he really means is that topics can have their own articles based on editorial opinion not veriable evidence of notability.
Masem's proposal for field-specific guidelines amount to little more than special pleading for badly sourced articles that fail Wikipedia:NOT. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:06, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Since what is http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/notable is determined by the subjective measures of mankind, subjective definitions that gain consensus to define field-specific inclusion guidelines seems perfectly acceptable to define those topics, by nature of being an encyclopedia, gazetteer, and almanac, that we absolutely must cover regardless if there is in-depth, secondary sources or not. --MASEM (t) 14:41, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Except http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/notable has not really ever been the standard of inclusion. It's been Wikipedia:Verifiability + Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, which Wikipedia:Notability essentially defines the minimum standard for: A single source is not NPOV, it's just one POV. Therefore, we want enough sources to write a half-decent article. The term "notable" is just a word we've appropriated for our own uses, because it's about as close to the concept as we can get without making up words. We do this all the time: Daniel Brandt's article got deleted after 14 attempts for Wikipedia:BLP concerns, even though we didn't have a name for BLP yet, much less a policy. Nifboy (talk) 15:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

It is possible that a single source - likely tertiary in nature - can be neutral. But this isn't about single sources or the like. This is about understanding that we have two issues in conflict: what we should be including as an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac work, and what type of sourcing do we expect at bare minimum an article to show. There is a large fraction of editors (I wouldn't necessary say "majority" necessarily based on past RFCs) that use WP:N to connect these two points. This is not that WP:N is bad - when we get to topics that are not traditionally covered by printed encyclopedias/etc., and thus where we don't know exactly how we should cover something, WP:N provides a good way to make sure the topic can be fairly covered on WP. But, WP:N is a bridge between the two issues and only spans so much. That's why there are people that insist WP:N is rubbish because it is used in a overly-enforced manner to demand sources without considering the first part of this issue, what WP should be covering in the first place. Mind you, this is not diminishing anything about sourcing requirements per WP:V and the need to avoid bias and synthesis in writing articles. This is: if we as editors under consensus expect that people will turn to WP to learn about certain topics from specific fields, we should damn well have some article about it, even if it is basic factual information.

I'm aware this statement is tricky: I know there's been arguments in the past that readers come all the time to learn about fictional characters from WP (judged by view counts) and that deleting these "harms" WP. Which is why it is important to understand that these critical field-specific topics are ones that have global consensus. Maybe the global consensus is that we should have an article on every fictional characters for our readers (I doubt it, just an example). We can't know that under we get over this stigma that WP:N and sourcing is the first barrier for inclusion and in actuality should be the fallback consideration for inclusion after we've tested a topic against field-specific guidelines. I would still argue that knowing the general population of editors that global consensus on field-specific inclusion guidelines will nearly always lead to an topic that can be secondary-sourced, but that needs to be considered a happy circumstance of determining what we should be covering as a combination encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac. --MASEM (t) 16:12, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Turning people away because Wikipedia isn't what they think we are/should be is not something new, especially in fiction. I don't know if you were around when webcomics were this huge issue (circa '05) because 99% of their articles were close to what is now CSD criteria. That's just how the field is; there's very little criticism or analysis that goes on outside each individual comics' forums. We spent a freaking long time and an ArbComm case trying to draft inclusion criteria that got in all the webcomics we wanted; it didn't help that the whole thing was kicked off when Websnark (the closest thing to a webcomics "expert") suggested a very lenient inclusion criteria based on archive size. We went over Wikipedia:ALEXA and all that other nonsense. It wasn't until something very similar to Wikipedia:N came along that I personally realized, "Hey, this is actually rooted in policy! I like it!". Nifboy (talk) 16:41, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I suspect what Masem is actually proposing when he talks about an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac is a comprehensive directory of fictional elements, that would encompass characters and episodes from films, TV shows, comics and other forms of fiction in which Backstory is a significant component of a fictional work. In some ways this might be a good idea (it would certainly appeal to fans of fictional charcters for instance), and like a TV guide, a detailed description of every character and episode would be used as reference source by the readership. This is approach used by TV guides or forums such as TV Tome, but there is example is of questionable relevance to Wikipedia.
The one big sticking point with this approach and that is there is not much you can write about a fictional character or a TV episode that is anything but plot summary.
Starting with Wikipedia:NOT#PLOT, it is the general consensus that plot summary on its own is not encyclopedic coverage, i.e. plot summary is more immersive than it is informative. It is also the consensus that too great an emphasis on plot summary (particularly fictography) results in an over-reliance on a perspective that is in universe and should be avoided in accordance with Wikipedia:WAF. There is also the consensus on Wikipedia that articles should not be split and split again into ever more minutiae of detail treatment, with each split normally lowering the level of notability and giving undue weight to elements of fiction, rather than the works themselves.
On the one hand, I can see where Masem is coming from, but on the other I do not like the implications, for what he is proposing is effectively a watering down of policies and guidelines that have widespread support. I don't honestly know how our opposing prespectives can be reconciled. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:18, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

(ec)That's a good example of what field-specific guidelines should not do, and agree with the end result, in this particular case since it is not true that identifying web comics is a core part of being an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac. However, this is one case. The cases that we do have today, namely things like every village/town, or every professional sports player, are the ones that call to mind of where there is a need to understand field-specific inclusion guidelines and what these should and should not do. In my opinion, we're in part a gazetteer, so it makes sense to have an article on every village, even if the only source is a government census that identifies the name, location, and that X people live there; on the other hand, while I can argue every sports team and respective seasons should be outlines (as part of an almanac), every individual player is not necessary a topic we should be covering per any part of the mission. But that's my opinion. The point though is that we would need global consensus to determine these and make sure that one field does not try to stack out a larger piece of their field than we've limited other fields to; again, I think most would agree that the present allowance on Wikipedia:ATHLETE for any professional athlete of any sport to have an article is much much looser than any other Wikipedia:BIO-related allowance.

Realistically, our first shot at any field-specific guidelines need to be short, simple "all-or-nothing" statements; eg: I would doubt anyone would be against assured inclusion of every single country in the world, every single known chemical element, every single President of the US, and so forth. Now, I know that in these examples, every single case likely can be met through normal WP:N standards as well (if they aren't already present and accounted for), but this exercise is for understanding what "field-specific inclusion" guidelines should be bounded by. If we go to biology, for example, is there a certain Taxonomic rank where every known classification in that is considered appropriate for inclusion? Given the simple points above for other areas, maybe its not the case that every species should be included, but maybe at least every genus or family. Again, simple, all-or-nothing classifications as a starting point would help this approach and avoid what you've described happened with webcomics. Heck, I'd argue at the initial pass, most contemporary topics would not have such field-specific guidelines until we understand how best to use them (leaving the current SNGs in place until such a time has been determined). --MASEM (t) 17:23, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

And to Gavin, there is a possibly that there could be fiction-based field specific guidelines, but certainly not as an immediate result, nor would I even suspect that such field-specific guidelines would result in ones for every character or every episode (as there's no easy way I can see an "all-or-nothing" inclusion standard that doesn't add a lot of nuances to assure meeting it). Now, you may be speaking the other aspect, which is, once a topic is included, what is appropriate coverage for it, but that's is completely separate from this discourse. This is simply realizing that there are topics that, through global consensus, need to be in the work regardless of sourcing or meeting notability guidelines, and providing high-level field-specific guidelines for those will help the work out in the long run. --MASEM (t) 17:27, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I can see what Masem is trying to do, but there is just no framework of policies or guidelines to support this approach. All the content policies generally require reliable secondary sources to demonstrate that article content can meet Wikipedia's standards for encyclopedic coverage, and are they are the source of external validation used to settle editorial disputes. Even if he were to create special guidelines, there would be no content polices to support them, and as I have mentioned regarding fictional topics, they would probably conflict with existing policy. I don't see a way to make his proposal work, because of content polices just don't work if you make lots of exceptions to the existing rules. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 18:59, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

No content policy require the presence of secondary sources to justify the presence of an article; verification yes, but this can be through primary or tertiary third-party sources. Now one can of course argue if a topic isn't shown to be notable it should be deleted, but what is notable or what we want to include is what we as the collective group of editors can decide. Which is why if we decide that we allow specific types of topics due to field-specific guidelines to be included because they are part of the core knowledge WP should be coverage, pressing for their deletion because they lack sourcing is inappropriate. But this is important: we have to be set that field-specific guidelines are appropriate to describe what topics we want to cover; if we try to use field-specific guidelines that do not have global consensus, we'll be seeing topics at AFD all the time that may have been included from these. This is why I'm saying that its doubtful that implementing field-specific will, at least initially and until well established, allow for a fiction-relation inclusion guideline because we don't know what these guidelines for core topics of key academic interest would even look like to start with; I would dare not attempt to start this process with an area as heavily contested as fiction. But I don't rule out the possibly that if you set in place field-specific topics for several other academic areas and make sure they work for a long-enough period of time, that eventually we could establish one for fiction.

The problem you're having, Gavin, is putting the "requirement" of sourcing before anything else. Sourcing is important, but WP is based on common sense and good faith editing; good in-depth sourcing is only required for highly contentious statements and for avoidance of editor-claimed synthesis. If someone put forth an article on a topic that has encyclopedic value due to its academic nature (falling into a proposed field-specific inclusion guideline), but no one could easily provide in-depth sources on it due to limitations on achieving those sources, should we delete it? In our present attitude and environment, there would be editors that clearly would AFD that article citing "no secondary sources, fails WP:N", but that's the wrong attitude. We want to have these fundamental articles that fall into classes we have determined to be core to WP to be visible, inviting readers that do have that knowledge to add to it. Using field-specific guidelines would allow retention of that article and allow it to be improved over time without concerns of deletion. --MASEM (t)

"good in-depth sourcing is only required for highly contentious statements": You mean, there are uncontested statements in Wikipedia?!? Paradoctor (talk) 19:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:LAME is proof that any statement can be "highly contentious". Nifboy (talk) 23:08, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I can see where Masem is coming from, in the sense that most fictional elements are pretty harmless, so as long as they are not the subject of "highly contentious statements", in which case then any editorial disputes can be resolved by "common sense and good faith editing". This might be true 95% of the time, so Masem has a valid point.
However, despite the fact fiction is one of the less controversial subject areas in Wikipedia, compared with say religion or politics, its not a controversy free zone. Fiction has always been written to reflect real world controversies and tensions, often with real-world implications, such as the Lady Chatterley's Lover legal case. Although our views about "public decency" have moved on, there are still topics that are taboo today. If we want to write articles about these topics, we still need content policies to defend our right to create articles, and defend them, if need be, against arbitrary deletion proposals. I agree with Masem that I often put the content polcy anything else, but it precisely these policies that provide us with freedom to write about what ever we choose.
Even without controversial topics, I have to to agree with Nifboy that editorial disuputes are all too common. It only takes two editors to start a dispute, and issues such as original research (e.g. Kender) or content forks (e.g. Terminator (character) vs. Terminator (character concept)) won't ever go away. If field-specific guidelines conflict with content policy, then they will be a source of conflict, rather than building block of consensus. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:46, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

• There's a nice paradox in the above reams of Wikipedia:TLDR. Those who maintain that there should be strict standards of inclusion which forbid personal essays on subjects of choice, nevertheless go on and on endlessly in talk pages like this. And all their maundering, repetitive, stream-of-consciousness thoughts will be preserved here for all eternity. In centuries to come, there will be terabytes of this stuff. But the actual encyclopedia will still be unfinished. For example, it seems that the real issue is creative control. But notice that our article on the subject is poor. The equivalent policy page, Wikipedia:OWN, on the other hand, is better. The players here want to be directors rather than spear carriers and so it goes ... Colonel Warden (talk) 21:59, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I have to stop you there. Who are "Those who maintain " and where have they "personal essays on subjects of choice"? I say now you are making this up. Cite your sources or forever hold your peace. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:58, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

There is another, and also very good, reason to insist on independent sources. When an editor writes an article based solely on the work of fiction it is extremely difficult to determine where their reporting of the primary source crosses the line into inappropriate interpretation, speculation or editorializing, or where they place undue weight on one element or another. And it is also true that such articles tend to be very badly written, consist mostly of plot summary without balanced discussion, and can be difficult for subsequent editors to work on. Independent sources mitigate all of these factors.

Masem pointed out that it can sometimes happen that a worthy topic might come along, where everyone can see it's important but by some fluke the sources don't exist or are extraordinarily hard to get at. This is true. It happens. But it does not happen very often, and it's for cases like this that the old motto ignore all rules should be applied. By all means break the rules when it's obviously the right thing to do. We should not generate a set of blanket exemptions to catch the occasional freakishly sourceless worthy topic- because we'll catch so much crap along with it as to make the whole thing more trouble than it's worth. This is especially true in coverage of fiction because the exemptions will inevitably be misused, often deliberately. I would like to make it clear that I don't want to generalize because I know there are a lot of good-faith editors doing a lot of good work in that area, but the sad fact is that when spurious, misleading and irrelevant sourcing happens it's almost always when someone tries to defend a fiction-related article from AfD. Take away or lessen the requirement for independent sourcing and the problem will just get worse. Reyk _YO! 10:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

• If the people driving this battle are doing so because they worry about Wikipedia being mocked, we've already lost everything we ever hoped for. See you on the other side. Hiding T 23:20, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
  • How is this unreasonable? Do you think, instead, we should be emulating TVTropes and Wookieepedia in all things? I aim for a decent encyclopedia that can be trusted and be taken seriously, full of well-written and informative articles that present their subjects in a neutral and balanced way. And not being made fun of for having inappropriate obsessions, glaring systemic biases and over-the-top fannish enthusiasm is part of that. I don't know what you've been hoping for, but if that's not at least part of it then perhaps it really is time you and the 'pedia part company. Not that I think that's how you feel; I think we just differ on how to achieve it. No biggie. Reyk _YO! 05:04, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Indeed, Reyk, I will agree that those 2 questions, is it true and why should I care, are essentially what we are after. However for some items, such as Probability amplitude it is self-evidence that they are encyclopedic even if we only ever find just one reliable source. Removing it because it fais the GNG would harm, not help, Wikipedia.
  • The question as to is it important, however, does not necessarily need significant coverage by independent secondary reliable sources; there are other ways of determining it, such as sales figures, citing by research that something is a major influence to other unrelated topics, etc. Of course the quality of these sources should not be someone's personal blog, but they don't have to be more than one that is significant to show that it is if it is generally agreed upon by others in the field.陣内_Jinnai 05:24, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
    • Hi Jinnai, needless to say I disagree but you make some decent points that deserve a thoughtful response. Sales figures (I assume you're just talking about the number of copies sold, without accompanying commentary) can be included in the article as a verifiable fact, but their ability to confer notability is very limited because that number needs to be interpreted. For instance, say we have a source that says only: Issue 14 of Captain Freaktacular sold 10,000 copies. You might consider 10,000 copies to be a lot, but I might go "Pff. Only 10,000? Clearly not notable". It's not an asertion of notability because it requires the reader to judge it. If the source said With 10,000 copies sold, Issue 14 was the third highest selling single comic book issue of the year then we're getting somewhere.
    • Regarding "citing by research", I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean that Wikipedia's editors should show the influences of the fictional work on unrelated topics? That would be original research and is not allowed. Or do you mean that we should cite the research of others? Because that would substantial coverage in reliable independent sources. Can you clarify? Reyk _YO! 05:55, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
      • For sales figures, I meant more in relative terms, ie, makes NYT Bestseller list. Absolute numbers are good to know, but they are sometimes hard to figure out what is a good qualifier.
      • For the second, no. I mean say we have Superman and pretend we are trying to build an article from scratch. All that we can find on him from RSes with significant coverage is research by someone recognized by his peers in the field as a qualified researcher citing that "Superman is influential in the development of the Superhero genre." and then he goes on to describe how this is. Everyone other respected researcher in the field we find cites him, but only ads 1-2 other lines generally agreeing. There's also some tertiary stuff like awards, sales figures, etc. No reviews from RSes with significant coverage or anything else that would qualify. There is a significant amount of creation info from the creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster though.
      • With that, he'd fail the GNG because he lacks more than 1 significant source because no one feels a reason to further look into Superman specifically because they feel the researcher did a good job. They use bits and quotes from his research to support his argument, though in other books with other research not directly related to Superman, at least not enough to constitute significant coverage of the character itself.
      • EDIT: In addition with regard to fiction specifically, we often have works that reuse the same characters and worlds and those overlap. The information, if copied and pasted (with some tweaking) in each article would repeat a lot of plot info in each one. That is a valid argument for having separate list/article because we want to limit the amount of repeat plot.陣内_Jinnai 04:45, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I think Jinnai is ignoring my earlier point, that lists of characters should not be created for their own sake, as this would be giving undue weight to elements of fiction, rather than the works themselves. Rather, a more balanced approach is to omit those characters who are best summarised as part of the overall plot summary. Giving undue weight to characters and episodes that are not the subject of significant coverage simply reduces the quality of coverage by reducing the context afforded to the reader through commenatary, crtiticism and analysis. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 18:00, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

No, I wasn't. My point is, in lengthy and/or complex works you cannot always summarize down without destroying content necessary to understand why a work became notable.陣内_Jinnai 03:22, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Granted, Hawking will get published as a matter of course, so presumably the stuff will get out there sooner or later, and filter back to Wikipedia. But one of the virtues of this encyclopedia, over any other in the world, is that it can promulgate information very quickly relative to a dead-tree publication process that can take months to years. And for every Hawking there are ten thousand perfectly competent scholars, not a few of them without institutional affiliation, doing perfectly sound original work even while primarily engaged in some other discipline. (The translation of the Old West Saxon poem "The Wanderer" by the late attorney Clifford A. Truesdell IV is a good example of this, published three years ago on line but as far as I know still unavailable in hard copy.)

The error, I think, lies in an assumption that original research is somehow unverifiable. But those two assertions are by no means fungible. Independent scholarship can be very sound, and readily replicated by anyone who is willing to take the trouble, while on the other hand there is a great deal of piffle that finds its way into print anyway, even from university presses that should know better (I've worked for some of them). Just because a press publishes something, even a careful scholarly press, is not an absolute guarantee that it is true; and just because a epiece of research hasn't been published yet does not mean that its findings are ipso facto false.

It seems to me that on the one hand, Wikipedia exuberantly celebrates (and rightly, in my view) the ability of regular folks to be self-starters in the collection, editing, and dissemination of information; yet this very same principle seems to me to be flouted in its institutional unwillingness to allow itself to be (on rare occasions, to be sure) a primary source, written by the people who are in a position best to know whereof they speak. That "original research" should instead appear in this connection as though it were a term of opprobrium seems, at least to this independent scholar, both contradictory and more than a little counterproductive.

75.33.43.107 (talk) 23:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)Nick Humez 14 March 2010

Popular Science

I think you want to know about http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly. Paradoctor (talk) 10:45, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. After browsing for a bit, it looks like that project so far has a tiny subset of the magazine, so my question stands. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:24, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

As long as they are indeed public domain, you are quite within your rights to crop off or otherwise remove text. Whether you should, well, that's up to you. As for getting other copies of them, sometimes Google provides a "download as PDF" (or somesuch) button; you may also want to try archive.org. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 17:45, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

There are some complicated legal questions lurking in this area, which I'd be curious to hear informed commentary on. Suppose I publish a book of photos, and included are some public domain photos. Clearly I have copyright on the work as a whole, even if not on the PD photos individually. Are you allowed to copy the PD photos from my copyrighted book? What if I've modified them before publishing them? How much modification is needed before I can assert copyright on the modified version? --Trovatore (talk) 21:52, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Reprinting public domain materials does not give you a new copyright in them, so you can always copy a public domain photo from wherever you find it. Even a book entirely composed of public domain materials may have a copyright in that particular compilation--in your selection and arrangement of them--but that would just prevent you from copying the book exactly as is and keeping it in the same arrangement. As far as "how much modification," 10 lbs worth. It's really not a meaningful question in the abstract, beyond answering that the modifications have to be "creative" or "original" in some way; these things always have to be discussed case by case. postdlf (talk) 22:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Citing evidence of an occurrence within subject.

Now when recently removing some of these to clean the article up, I was asked to provide citable references that they were *not* one shot which I could do for two of the videos. I also added a section explaining why they were not One Shots. The problem now exists that for many there is no academic study/analysis of this field from which a secondary source can be drawn. I did attempt to cite the Primary Source (including the Timecode of the cut) but this has been removed by another editor - citing this reference as "Original Research" because the cut may not be apparent to a casual viewer.

This leads to a rock and a hard-place; if the references stay in we get further tertiary sources taken from Wikipedia. If we remove them entirely they simply get them re-added.

So the question of Wikipedia Policy Remains, is it/should it be acceptable to cite the event within the primary source when there is a lack of secondary sources? I asked the question of do we require a secondary source to cite that Moby Dick begins with the words "Call me Ishmael"? Or do we require to assume a certain level of ability on the part of the reader - i.e; citing the Timecode is not enough because it requires a certain level of technical knowledge to understand what is being seen. A similar literary equivalent might be House of Leaves where the Editor has cited sections of the book which contain Codes but a request for further citations has been made.

My personal opinion is that in either case these videos need to be identified to prevent further error, even if a reliable secondary source cannot yet be found. Then marking the video as Citation Needed or Citing Timecode will encourage further editors to search for sources in places I have't even thought to look for them - or possibly encourage reliable third parties to carry out the required research so that a subsequent editor can cite their work.

Thoughts, additions and comparisons? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 10:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

In this particular case you could try pointing out that they've got it the wrong way round. Under Wikipedia:V it's up to them to provide citations to show they are OSVs, not for you to show they aren't. Peter jackson (talk) 11:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Peter, I agree but I'm Pre-Empting a wave of errant secondary sources being cited. For instance the OK Go video This too shall pass was the one that led me to start editing this article. I noticed it only because Edgar Wright declared it OSV when it clearly wasn't; it was one that I was able to cite Damian Kulash from the band themselves as proving it was not one shot - but if Damien had not been citable; Edgar could have been cited as an errant Secondary Source. For the other video for the song, "The Marching Band" there is a cut that is clear to anyone versed in editing but there are errant secondary sources that claim is OSV yet no secondary sources to back the opposite position.Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 11:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Then my understanding of policy is that you're not allowed to do anything about it, unless there are so few reliable sources on the topic that it could be deleted. Peter jackson (talk) 18:19, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

• They should just call the list, Videos that seem to be done in one shot as perceived by Wikipedia editors, unless they have sources for the additions to the list. I think Wikipedia:BURDEN covers this well. Angryapathy (talk) 18:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Or perhaps List of videos that do not credit an editor? :{O User:LeadSongDog come howl 19:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: Option to disable images

I propose a simple new feature to be added to any article in Wikipedia that may contain images of a graphic nature - this would basically consist of a small button somewhere on the article giving the user the option to block all the images on that page.

I propose this feature due to the fact that some articles that are fairly neutral in nature tend to contain images that are unsightly, graphic, explicit, and which make it hard to read the text near them (e.g "Nail").

The feature would be as non-intrusive as possible and its purpose is certainly not to patronize users.

Perhaps the feasibility of this option could be reviewed.

Regards --188.220.173.129 (talk) 22:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)tpos1an--188.220.173.129 (talk) 22:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Can you give some examples of pages you think this would be useful on? I can't think of any myself... ╟─TreasuryTag►inspectorate─╢ 22:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You can switch off images in many browsers. For example in Firefox it's: Tool -> Options -> Content. Untick the load images and save with ok. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 22:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this has been discussed before, but it seems unlikely to be something that the WM devs would spend time on. Have you considered a browser plugin such as Adblock - it will let you block images on a page, or a whole domain. I mostly use it to block creepy images on fellow Wikipedians' userpages (e.g. commons:File:Jimbo Peeking.gif), personally. :D – Toon 22:19, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

+1 to Adblock, it works great. –xeno^talk 22:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Which comes first? They'd have to actually look at the image before pushing the "button" to hide said image which seems a bit pointless to me. Why not consider rating potentially disturbing images and allowing users to download an image filter tool or select an option in their preferences akin to the Google Images "SafeSearch" functionality which would filter out flagged photos for that individual user while not disrupting the articles at all. Nefariousski (talk) 21:52, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

CSD A1 and CSD A3 tagging moments after creation

It's possible that someone may be creating the article "piece by piece": a bit now, save, another bit, save, etc. That would be a legitimate way of editing, and tagging it would bring unneeded grief and discussion. That's why it's better to tag articles when they have been stable at their current version long enough to confirm that they are actually a page without context or content and that nobody is working in them. MBelgrano (talk) 00:40, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I Jujutacular. I am the culprit on that edit (to address the same issue I previously created {{Hasty}}). I added the text on December 3, 2009 (diff), following this discussion. The topic—the inappropriateness of tagging articles as A1s and A3s seconds after creation—has been discussed many times at WT:CSD, including here, here, here, here, here and here. The long and short of it is that while the consensus is pretty clearly on the side of viewing it as bad practice to tag as empty or lacking context immediately after creation, we have not yet come up with a workable technical way to apply it to the tagging, such as having the tag not propagate into CAT:CSD for a set time after an article's creation. As to the time span of delay before tagging and deletion, 48 hours or a day as has been suggested, is far too long, one minute after creation is far too short, while about an hour allows a creator who didn't realize there might be any problem with posting and then working on it, plenty of time to add enough content to meet the very low threshold to avoid A1 and A3.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:07, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I build articles this way. I make sure to always slap up a CONSTRUCTION banner. { {construction} } So far it has kept the boogeyman away... Carrite (talk) 03:41, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

@Fuhghettaboutit: Thank you for that. I mainly ask just because I still see pages being tagged immediately, and administrators still deleting fairly soon after. Specifically, I saw Parisjohansen was tagged at 23:06 and deleted at 23:15. I'm not sure exactly when it was created as I'm not an administrator. I was considering leaving a message on some talk pages, however I couldn't find anything written in policy. What should be done in these instances? Jujutacular ^T · C 18:36, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

That particular page was clearly non-constructive - I can't see that there could be too much drama in getting rid in pretty short order. There's certainly no reason to Wikipedia:CREEPily sustain this nonsense for 48h. Anyway, FYI Parisjohansen was created at 2306. --Xdamr^talk 23:41, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, that particular page had content when created and thus not an A3 anyway. Should have been A7 deleted, so it's not a good example. But anyway the point is that pages should not be tagged A1 or A3 hastily because with those tags it's much more likely that the reasons for deletion might disappear with further edits by the page creator - but that does not mean that exceptions cannot be made if it's clear that further improvement is impossible or very unlikely. Regards SoWhy 23:58, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:ELG

A recently started discussion, which I and a couple others from outside of the United States are questioning, aims to add an amendment to this "guideline". I however, would like to question it's status. This was a guideline discussed by American editors in the American roads wikiproject, and then applied to Wikipedia as a whole as if it were the international standard without ANY discussion outside of the US. As it stands, no project besides the US roads wikiproject, and Canadian road articles created by the members of the US road wikiproject, follows this hidden jem of the manual of style. When I asked that any discussions amending a worldwide guideline be brought up to every road wikiproject that is active, I was refused because it's too tedious. This nullifies the guideline as any sort of non-US standard, and many of the administrators involved in it seem oblivious to the fact that if you aren't discussing this with wikipedia as a whole, it's not a guideline.

I would like to see this demoted as a guideline, and potentially moved from its current title to reflect that it is an American standard. The rest of the world is not going to spell it 'color'. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:52, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems like the best thing to do in this case would be to tag it disputed, and start an RfC on the talk page neutrally summarizing while you feel it is not an appropriate guideline. However, as it has been around since 2006 and seemingly undisputed before, it will likely be argued that it has de facto community consensus (many of the guidelines that exist today started in the same fashion around that time). -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 17:07, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. Well, it's time these policies come to light and get decided by something other than a straw poll of a very narrow demographic. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Why are IP's allowed to edit?

I don't think that requiring editing from a registered account on all cases would be a good idea as a lot of people wouldn't have the ability to log in or register as they are intensely private people and don't have the patience to learn how to log in or create an account on here. This is a very complex process and it would behoove us to respect those people that cannot bother to log in ans they provide useful information to the articles and what not, you know what i am getting at here Sapporod1965 (talk) 21:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

This has been proposed before and it's been rejected everytime. I agree with those rejections, but I would support quicker blocking of IPs that commit Vandalism. SMP0328. (talk) 21:51, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:PEREN#Prohibit_anonymous_users_from_editing --Cybercobra (talk) 22:08, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Poop!! 89.195.91.244 (talk) 18:20, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

If you've been reverting vandalism, you should have noticed that most edits are legit. Anyways, we urge IPs to create accounts with {{Createaccount}}ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 02:31, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

IP's are allowed to get away with all sorts of tomfoolery, as one of the core policies of wikipedia is that "anyone" can edit. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:35, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

And 67% of percentages are just numbers made up to support an argument with no real data or evidence backing them. Mr.Z-man 03:49, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Dilbert, that's been verified by 87 studies. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:01, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

It is true that 98% of vandalism is from anonymous IPs. It's also true that we'd have somewhat less vandalism if users were required to register to edit (not 20 times less, since many vandals would register). However, we'd also lose a lot of constructive edits, and a lot of new users. It's not worth it. Small wikis, without the manpower for vandal patrol, often decide differently. Dcoetzee 04:20, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes the amount of vandalism that Wikipedia gets does make it a lot less fun. And I would not doubt that it drives away some of our most productive editors and keeps people who are very competent or experts in the subject from editing due to their lack of desire to deal with vandalism. I think flagged revisions would be a great compromise especially for medicine article which get more than their share of vandalism ( thinking specifically about sexually transmitted diseases ).

Registering actually gives people more autonomy in a way as it hides your IP address. Wikipedia will eventually need to address the problem of allowing IP to edit. We have IP addresses that have made hundred of blatant vandalism edits and are allowed to continue to make more. This one [1] finally got a reasonable block.

Another possible would be to require all IPs which vandalism two or more times to create an account. Thus everyone can edit at the start but only if they continue to have a good record. The reason why this keeps getting brought up over and over is many people see an undressed problem ( the large amount of vandalism from IPs and only minor positive edits ). Many of use consider writing an encyclopedia to require a certain dedication and have concerns that if someone is unwilling to put in the effort to register there maybe a good chance they will not put in the effort to edit constructively. My first edits were as a registered user. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:34, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but your post is wrong in several ways. First of all there is a stack of evidence showing just how much good Ip editors do, every day I see IP's reverting vandalism, tagging for speedy deletion, adding good content. Second, we don't block IP addresses indef because they change so frequently, I have a new one every few days, many change even more often than that. Thirdly, if we indef block IPs forcing them to log in that will do two things. The helpful people will be pissed off and not come back, and the vandals will just register accounts. This proposal has been rejected time and time again for the simple reason that blocking anonymous edits will have a proven negative effect on the encyclopedia. Its never going to happen--Jac16888^Talk 21:35, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

First, could you cite the studies that show how much good IP-editors do on en.wiki? I know of a couple on French Wikis, but IP behavior is very different there (most semi-protected articles on en.wiki don't even need protection on French Wikipedia).

Second, I know of no study showing a "proven" negative effect of not allowing IPs to edit. This would need to be randomized and prospective, since any retrospective study of IP edits that is used to project what would happen if registration were required, would be forced to make assumptions about what those great IP-editors would do, if forced to pick out a name and password. The truth is, we don't know. They might be so "pissed off" as to quit. Or not. And in the meantime, other good name-users might become so "pissed off" by IP-user continued vandalism to their work, that THEY might quit. It's a total guess as to which one wins. Personally I think anybody who goes through the arcane work of leaning how to make edits that "stick" on WP, is not likely to balk at the very simple task of registering. You don't even need an email address to do it. Third, if you yourself edit from and ISP where your IP changes often, you're either editing from a proxy (a no-no) or one of those ISPs with rotating IP-exits, which are EXACTLY the sort of IPs that need to be soft-rangeblocked (with account creation enabled). The reason being that such ISPs are a perfect hide-out for vandals, who cannot be blocked by any means when using them. Best to force vandals who use those ISPs to take a name which CAN be blocked, and (in the meantime) cannot edit semi-protected articles. Persistant vandals from rotating-IP-exit type ISP services have had their entire ISP IP ranges soft-blocked, with NO-account creation enabled (which means only previously-resistered users in that range can use them, but no new users can register), which is even more draconian. But it's within policy. SBHarris 05:03, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

User:Dragons flight/Log analysis shows that anonymous users make ~40% of non-reverted edits and almost 80% of IP edits are not reverted. I don't know of any newer statistics. Mr.Z-man 05:11, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

It looks to me like an IPs is 4 times as likely to make a reverted edit as a name-user, an 10 times as likely as an admin. The only reason they only contribute less than half the reverted edits is that there are fewer of them. If there as many IPs as name users, they'd be contributing 80% of the reverted edits or vandalisms. Anyway none of this tells us what would happen if we forced these people to register. The assumption that all IPs would simply disappear, is unfounded.SBHarris 08:06, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I like the suggest from Doc James (20:34, 13 March 2010) and Immunize (21:28, 13 March 2010) - allow "good" IPs to carry on, but indef block IP vandals and force them to register after just 2 incidents. As another discussion recently commented, most vandals won't have the patience to register.

I also support Sbharris's comment (05:03, 14 March 2010) that we should be quick to block shared IP ranges. Their users would have to register at any other site, e.g. a forum, so it's hard to justify making vandalism easy on WP. And if the organisations running shared IP ranges complaint, WP's response is: editing WP is a privilege, not a right; it's the job of shared IP ranges to police their users. --Philcha (talk) 05:59, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind we don't even have to total-block IP ranges. A "soft block" can still let users from that range edit, but only if they become a nameuser. Which takes 10 seconds. So why does it matter, and won't IP-vandals just get a username, and then still vandalize? No. You know why. Because individual name-users are treated far more harshly than IP addresses, which are apparently fantasized in administrator minds to all be be shared junior high library computers, or something. SO the coddling of IP users is endless. Anything to make them take usernames, is to be encouraged. SBHarris 08:06, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I oppose the proposal to prevent IP addresses from editing, as many of their edits are good-faith, although I support the thing with blocking the vandals. 112.203.184.112 (talk) 01:05, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

The success of Wikipedia is largely built on the concept that any reader can edit any page, right now. And that's built into Wikipedia's core principles. The gain to Wikipedia from that perception vastly outweighs the inconvenience of vandalism. Experienced editors would also be aware that a huge number of constructive edits are made every day from IPs, and while we'd all love them to create accounts, that doesn't make their contributions any less valuable. On a more specific level, the majority of IP vandalism comes from schools; on a purely philosophical level I think the lessons learned about knowledge (and the reliability of information) that students acquire from editing from IPs vastly outweighs the inconvenience their vandalism causes us. - DustFormsWords (talk) 01:46, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Speak for yourself. I wish there was some way that we could separate out people who feel as you do, and actually give you all the IP-vandal-revert tasks. Then the rest of us could put our feet up, perhaps sipping a drink with a little umbrella in it, and say "Snap it up a little, will ya? My favorite science article still says magnesium is gay."

To be a bit more serious, I find your argument a big disingenuous. It is not true that any editor can edit any page RIGHT NOW. Semi-protected pages make you wait FOUR DAYS. Now, you're promoting the idea that it will destroy WP if we make some people wait the 30 seconds it takes to pick a username and password. Come, now! It takes about that long for a new editor to figure out how to save their new edit. And far longer for a new editor to learn enough rules that their new edit is likely to "stick" and not disappear. Having your edit disappear must be far more disconcerting than getting a message that says "Hi, there! Please pick yourself an anonymous username and a password." So, I don't buy it. SBHarris 20:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

However, these editors would be just as likely to become productive even if we blocked their IP, as the majority would create accounts and go onto become productive editors. Immunize (talk) 17:54, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

• The question is not "why are IP's allowed to edit," but rather, "why aren't autoconfirmed users allowed to block IP addresses." The answer is "because that's not easily doable in the current version of mediawiki." Hipocrite (talk) 18:21, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Actually, both are trivial to do, each requires a single change to LocalSettings.php; however, neither is done in the English Wikipedia because they are both very bad ideas. I also vehemently oppose the idea that blocking IPs doesn't prevent them from registering accounts and becoming productive editors - while there are no technical restrictions (unless the blocking admin specifically prevents account creation), the fact of being blocked is itself a significant deterrent to further contributions for new editors, in effect saying "we don't value your edits, and we don't want you here". 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 20:31, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Request for Comment on BLP

I believe the discussion is already happening at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_Prod_workshop --Cybercobra (talk) 22:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Exceptions to Wikipedia namespace restrictions

French wikipedia have simplified their policy

This seems to me rather sensible, provided you can define what an Encyclopedia is in the policy. I think they've more or less succeeded.

The problem with the English Wikipedia's policy (which doesn't define encyclopedia in policy, but does so in article space) is that the Encyclopedia article space doesn't really know either, and many encyclopedias are very different from the Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia article has to cover all of them.

• French version of WP:ISNOT google translation, note that google translates essai as 'test' which doesn't seem correct, it means essay.

  The word essay originally came from essai, and "try" is the original meaning of the word. "This page is a test" and "This page is an essay" both seem to work equally, so Google Translate chose the more used version of essai, which is "try" (essai is a deriviative of the french essuyer, which means "to try"). If Google had read the second line, it might have realized that it means "essay", but that would require a few more years of data as Google is a Statistical machine translation software. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 05:33, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

• French Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia (google translation )

I like their "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" page. It might not be the best idea to overwrite or displace our Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia page, however. Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is is a redirect to Wikipedia:5P -- perhaps we could repurpose that page.

No, I don't think so. The page at Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia logically has to say what Wikipedia is, not be a list of 6 or so things it isn't. That's what the French enc does, and it works. The en page is underperforming; it just doesn't say what the wikipedia IS, it says what it isn't..- Wolfkeeper 15:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Turning just about any policy or guideline into an essay on en: is going to be a steep battle. Wikipedia:BURO and Wikipedia:IAR aside, we have a very legalistic culture here.--Father Goose (talk) 21:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

That's an essay, we need a policy. If you could refine it so that its more neutral etc., we might be able to incorporate it. Actually, we should have a concise set of policies. Right now, we have tons of policy pages, and each one is quite large. We should have a policy cheatsheet which has the "nutshell" text, commonly used acronyms (those acronyms are aggravating for a newcomer), and a little description. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 05:33, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

You seem to have misunderstood; they've rewritten Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia to be most of the policy, in the French Wikipedia it actually says what the wikipedia is. By doing that, they've been able to turn most of the other policy into essays.- Wolfkeeper 15:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia doesn't define what an Encyclopedia is in the policy anywhere, and it pays the price, because you end up having to say it in the negative, it's not this, or that or the other... or whatever... it goes on and on.- Wolfkeeper 15:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Impact factor depreciated

Wikipedia:Quotations is being proposed as a guideline

PRODding images?

The purpose of the category is as a collection point for incorrectly tagged files needing correction (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_deletion/Archive_9#Files_proposed_for_deletion). --Allen3 ^talk 03:11, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I am pleased to note that it is empty ( and should be empty). Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:33, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the clarification; it does seem like a good idea. Any idea why we don't have categories for templates, categories, Wikipedia space, talk pages, etc.? Nyttend (talk) 13:30, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Categorising human settlements

The issues are too wide-ranging to be resolved in the format of a CFD discussion, so I have opened a centralised discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorization/Categorising_human_settlements to try to find a consensus on how to proceed.

Your contributions will be welcome. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:43, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:NS2 has been marked as a guideline

This was the result of bad redirect syntax; now fixed — Gavia immer (talk) 02:08, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:User pages has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:User page no longer marked as a guideline

These two are merely the result of a page move from the singular to the plural. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:08, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Global sysops

Discussion as to the propriety of using 'hat' templates to bring closure to discussions

"Reliable" or "Authoritative"?

Also it looks like the use of "reliable" sometimes has side effects ([2], [3])... That name might seem to imply that we want sources that report information accurately (do not lie etc.), while in fact it would probably be more accurate to say that we want sources that are known to report information accurately... "Authoritative" would seem to be more accurate in this respect...

Now, of course, "reliable" has one major advantage: it is currently in use. Thus trying to change it at once might not be a good idea. But maybe it would be reasonable to consider changing "reliable" to "reliable, authoritative" in at least some cases? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:47, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you would just be substituting arguments discussions about what is and is not "authoritative" for the current ones about what is and is not "reliable". – ukexpat (talk) 21:16, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Of course - after all, the actual requirements would stay the same. But maybe in some (rare) cases the decision "This blog is not authoritative." would be slightly easier to accept than "This blog is unreliable."? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 21:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Changing the wording for what is basically a Term of art anyway doesn't seem worth the effort. Ultimately whatever the phrase is, the meaning is something like "acceptable for use as a source in Wikipedia articles, per the detailed standards discussed in the relevant guidelines". No short phrase will carry that as its obvious meaning to anyone who isn't versed in wiki-culture. --RL0919 (talk) 22:01, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Many sites which are not authoritative (i.e. are not the authority on a subject) are nevertheless reliable. Consider science reporting in a newspaper; the newspaper is not an authority on science, but it reports it reliably. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:05, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

To a native speaker of English, reliable implies breadth of consistency, as in Tagishsimon's newspaper example: a reliable newspaper reports across many subject areas, and is considered to have a careful editorial policy in all of them. But in any one subject area, an international peer-reviewed journal would be more authoritative in depth. - Pointillist (talk) 22:17, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Not sure that's such a good example. Science reporting in most newspapers is spotty at best. RS is not a one-or-zero proposition, and I certainly wouldn't want to assert that one can never cite a newspaper as an RS about science, but I think their limited reliability in the area needs to be kept in mind. --Trovatore (talk) 22:18, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

A major sporting event might be a better example. A newspaper report would be expected to reliably provide the final result, statistics appropriate to the type of contest, and other details about what occurred during the event. The event's sanctioning authority (league, commission, athletic association) would however be the only authoritative source as they are the only entity with the ability to officially verify the final results. An example of an event without an authoritative source would be a military battle, there is no official or referee to decide which army won. --Allen3 ^talk 22:35, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I was just re-using Tagishsimon's newspaper example, maybe I should have stuck with my my first thought, which was to say New Scientist might be reliable but in any one subject area, an international peer-reviewed journal would be authoritative. We're talking here about secondary sources: the "sanctioning authority" in Allen3's example would be a primary source, where "authoritative" has a different meaning. - Pointillist (talk) 23:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

"Authoritative" would be much more precise than "Reliable." But I am ambivalent about whether the change would be worth making. Maurreen (talk) 00:01, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

No, it would not be more precise, Maurreen, but rather an entirely different thing. There is a world of difference between a reliable source and an authoritative source. We've tried to illustrate that difference in the last few posts. It is not a simple question of wording, would represent a colossal change, and is not a good idea owing to the relative scarcity and primacy of authoritative sources. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree there is a huge difference between "reliable" and "authoritative". For example, I wrote all of the content in Paramount Television Network and about 50% of the content in DuMont Television Network, and used some of the same sources in both articles, all of which I considered reliable. However, Bergmann's book, Weinstein's book, and several other books cannot be considered an authoritative source on the Paramount article because they don't even mention the company's network operations (it's hard to be "authoritative" on something you don't even mention).

For this reason, I'd resist any proposal to change the current wording here. Other examples could be given. Firsfron of Ronchester 00:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I think Maurreen got the right word - "reputable". It mirrors "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". It can even use the name short same, Wikipedia:RS. And it also reminds us that an reputation can be deceptive or unearned or tarnished. --Philcha (talk) 00:48, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

"Reputable" makes me think of something having a good reputation. Would it not then change the onus of editors to try to "prove" that a source was held in high esteem? That seems quite different than just determining if a source is reliable (though there is obviously some overlap between the two sets). Firsfron of Ronchester 00:51, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

It is easier for editors to check and argue reputation than to check how well a given source is "engaged in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing" (from Wikipedia:RS). Maurreen (talk) 03:36, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

In informal discussion, I tend to use the term "valid" source. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:03, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Maureen's hit the target again - how can we check how well a given source is "engaged in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing". We can't check the source's timesheets. We can't how thoroughly the check was - the spectrum may be from Wikipedia:V to a casual phone call. We don't know the source's objective(s) in the check, e.g. an academic source may want to support or undermine a hypothesis (so the check would be rigorous) while a commercial source might be happy to avoid risk of a lawsuit. --Philcha (talk) 05:04, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh come off it. We have a good idea about how much of the media, academe, government works, because we work in the media and academe and government. We have much less to go on, as well as n different opinions, when it comes to "repuation". Let me illustrate: we have a fair idea about BBC editorial guidelines. But if we deal with it from th reputational point of view, do we, for instance, agree with the Tories that it's the last bastion of commies and pinkoes? But interesting as this discussion is, could we start by establising that there is any problem here to fix? --Tagishsimon (talk) 05:14, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Tagishsimon, no need to be huffy just because people disagree with you. Maurreen (talk) 05:42, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry. Reading "Maureen's hit the target again" shortly after reading your '"Authoritative" would be much more precise than "Reliable."' assertion followed by your horse switch to "reputational" just made me wonder about the extent to which brains are engaged tonight. You didn't hit it on the head the first time around nor the second. And to be honest, I don't think my response was huffy, merely somewhere between flabbergasted and incredulous. --Tagishsimon (talk) 06:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Policy in development

Resolved: Abandoned draft redirected to Wikipedia:Administrators. –xeno^talk 14:44, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell there's nothing there which isn't already on Wikipedia:Administrators in fact much of it appears to be copied from there--Jac16888^Talk 00:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually all of it is, I can't see any difference between the two--Jac16888^Talk 00:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

By we, you mean the 3 people who knew of that page's existence before today [4]? Mr.Z-man 01:06, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

What exactly is the proposed change? The only difference between the two is content that isn't on Wikipedia:Administrator policy, all the text is copied from the original. Is it proposing Wikipedia:Administrators be cut down?--Jac16888^Talk 02:22, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Please see the page history. -- IRP ☎ 03:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I've looked at the history. It was a redirect, then someone dumped part of Wikipedia:Administrators, then removed a couple of arbcom quotes , then someone else came along and removed a category, then you came along and decided it was a proposed policy, then a draft of proposed changes. None of which answers my question, could you please give a proper answer, its nearly 4am, I'm very tired and find your inability to give a straight answer very tedious. What is the proposed change? Why is it any better than the current? Why can't we just restore it to a redirect? and What do you want someone to do to it?--Jac16888^Talk 03:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

My thought was that somebody was proposing changes to Wikipedia:Administrators and then the changes went un-commented-on, as far as I could see. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that if this proposal (of edits) was finished being reviewed and worked on, then it would have been converted right back into a redirect, rather than left to sit. Do you see what I'm saying? -- IRP ☎ 04:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Not really, pages like that get lost and forgotten about all the time, there's no reason to believe anything would have come of it, Rich may have just forgotten. Anyway, I've asked him User talk:Rich Farmbrough--Jac16888^Talk 04:24, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Internet Off-Broadway Database

Wikipedia:RSN might be a better place to ask this question. I'm presuming you mean the one at [5]? I'm inclined to say it is since its a database from a professional theatrical foundation. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 05:05, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, please do check with Wikipedia:RSN. The Internet Off-Broadway Database is run by a not-for-profit organization, the Lortel Foundation, and works from verified sources such as theatre contracts and Playbills. It is not a commercial operation like IMDB, and is no more connected to it than the Internet Broadway Database, which is run by the League of American Theatres and Producers, is.

In the meantime, please do not use deceptive edit summaries such as "improving ref", when, in fact, you deleted a ref. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:31, 17 March 2010 (UTC) Striking comment that appears to be incorrect -- it looks as if I viewed the article when FSF when in the middle of changing the format of the ref. My apologies. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. Sometimes I don't always know where to find stuff, so I appreciate the assistance. Your responses are satisfactory to me; it looks like the evidence supports the site's reliability. I haven't been aware of it up to now; it may be a good source to use in the future. So thanks. And BMK is right; that's totally what happened! We're all good now. --Christine (talk) 12:47, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Wiki Now Shilling for Commercial Companies?

With all the articles carefully rejected because folks reach deep to find a way, here is an article solely devoted to a change in product size?

WTF?

But of course it is carefully footnoted and obviously meets Wiki's quality review standards.

What next? Articles detailing the various Snickers bar weights? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.111.252.18 (talk) 14:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Added link to article: Coke mini. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 14:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Would suggest a merge and redirect to Coca-Cola#Brand portfolio. –xeno^talk 14:38, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) {{PROD}} or Wikipedia:AfD are thattaway. Inappropriate articles on wikipedia are ten a penny. They do not need to be raised to the Village Pump when there are perfectly good channels by which they can be disposed. I'll assume good faith, that you were unaware of this, 71.111.252.18. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:41, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

AFD is here, please vote: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coke mini- Wolfkeeper 19:50, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Snowball. I've merged and redirected to Coca-Cola. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

You can't simply do that, so I reverted it, the AFD has to complete first.- Wolfkeeper 23:03, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Technical

testing templates (continued)

Inline template wikitext formatting

Talk subpages and TOCs

For example, if Talk:Foo/Comments exists with 3 sections, then Talk:Foo will include those 3 sections in its TOC; clicking on the links has no effect. The 3 sections can appear multiple times, presumably once for each projbanner that makes use of {{WPBannerMeta}}'s Comments parameter. Thanks. –Whitehorse1 20:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

This is a frequently asked question, but doesn't seem to be properly documented anywhere. To avoid these problems it is best not to have any headings on comments subpages. This is one of the reasons that the community has decided to stop using these subpages in the future. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:41, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, M. I vaguely recall the village pump discussion on phasing them out. Would changing the existing headings to, say, bold larger type plus <hr> tags work as an interim step do you think?
I ask because the suggestion at the page you linked, of subst'ing the comments subpage to the talk page and then deleting it, might cause attribution problems with the page being larger than one or two comments. For that matter it looks like 2 sections were copypasted into it, without histmerging, from the wikiproject's talkpage. Or would license compliance not be a problem since regardless of where they were originally submitted, the comments themselves are signed? –Whitehorse1 22:06, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the last discussion was Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 57#Talk pages: the repeating table of contents (TOC) problem. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:58, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I've just changed them to use ; and that sorted out the repeated TOC on that page. It might be better to move those comments to the main talk page and then blank or redirect the subpage. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:02, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Martin and Gadget. I was just looking at the last discussion link suggesting '''<big>''' with ; after submitting that addition to my comment, when you added a note you'd kindly fixed the markup. Thanks! Ideally, the deleting the subpage route sounds preferable to save having to put one of those {{copied}} templates on the Talk pages. Will the attribution thing above be an issue with that solution? –Whitehorse1 22:12, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there is an issue with attribution on talk pages, because editors' signatures would seem to do it perfectly well. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:18, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

It would seem so to me as well. (Unsigned comments until they're fixed aside obviously.) Anyone know for sure, or are you confident on that point? –Whitehorse1 22:22, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

There's no problem with attribution, as long as the comments are signed. Of course a short note would be nice, saying that it was copied from the "/Comments" subpage, but most people leave notes when they're copying discussions from one page to another. However, there's no reason to delete the page history of those "/Comments" subpages, and they should probably be redirected rather than blanked, since blank pages are liable to be deleted in the future. Graham87 00:50, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually redirecting is problematic because then the wikiproject banners will try to self-transclude. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:03, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking that there should be a way to noinclude a redirect so that it would redirect if you visited the page, but it wouldn't transclude the target of the redirect. Alas the following didn't work on Talk:Halloween/Comments:

<noinclude>
#REDIRECT[[{{FULLROOTPAGENAME}}
</noinclude>

Any suggestions? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:50, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Aren't these being deprecated anyway? –xeno^talk 13:54, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes they are, but the question of what to do with the pages has not been fully decided upon.

1. Delete (loses history)
2. Redirect (causes problems with self-transclusion)
3. Blank (may be confusing)
4. Replace with message (seems a bit overkill)
   — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:48, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all. <abbr title="As I understand it">AIUI</abbr> the general view seems to be it's best to subst the Comments page contents to the main Talk page, which satisfies history & attribution through the signed-dated comments themselves, followed by deleting the—now-redundant Comments subpage using noinclude tags, as outlined at the discussion Martin linked. –Whitehorse1 19:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Special Pages: Problem?!?!

Thx for the reminder below :D. I actually asked about this on IRC 2 days ago, which led to a very interesting conversation that concluded with "nobody knows". After that MZMcBride tracked the bugticket https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21837 as being related, and after more and more talk, the cause was found (apparently some process didn't fully finish during an upgrade of the mysql databases). This problem has been corrected, and after the scripts have run (which can take 2 weeks for some pages), the pages should start to come back online again. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:27, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

They are back online, however, they list several diffs of the same page. Will this resolve itself because the pages are just back up, or is there another bug requiring fixing? And thanks for looking into it! Brambleclawx 02:32, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Asking. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:49, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

It has been resolved. Brambleclawx 18:45, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Good to hear !! —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Job queue problem?

You are not the first to make this observation. The jobqueue seems almost empty, but some of these category changes take ages none the less. Up to 2 weeks these days (1 week was definitely the max in the past) before some categories are updated. I'll ask around if anything changed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:51, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I left a message several days ago at Help talk:Job queue#Stuck queue which is being ignored. Where is the proper place for requesting job queue assistance? --Redrose64 (talk) 12:41, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Probably https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=. or mail one of the system administrators directly. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:18, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Who would be a suitable sysadmin? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:19, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Character change count on history pages, just like on watchlists?

I agree: that would be very helpful. - Pointillist (talk) 23:17, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

No particular reason they don't. They display the size in bytes instead. We probably don't want to display both the size and change, it would be too cluttered. Actually, the history page is probably already much too cluttered. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 23:23, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I think characters are more informative than bytes, so if given a choice, I'd replace the latter with the former. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 02:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

That was my opinion, IIRC, but Brion disagreed. He pointed out that the exact number wasn't important anyway, so being off by a small fixed factor for a given language doesn't really matter. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 19:31, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Guess you're not too good with mental arithmetic? =) I think a script could probably be written to provide this functionality. –xeno^talk 23:58, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree too, this is just what's needed—I was thinking the same thing recently. The total size is almost incidental; it's the number of characters added/deleted that's of immediate interest about each change. The watchlist view (especially aided by the colours) provides this information directly in a single history record in just the right way. ("Guess you're not too good with mental arithmetic" indeed! PL290 (talk) 09:02, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Consensus to change mediawiki default behaviour cannot be had by a handful of users on the pump. –xeno^talk 19:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I also agree it would be helpful. One side question, if the history shows no page size, how can a page size of an article be found? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 12:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

To get total size, not change size, one way is to add Doc PDA's script to your monobook.js. PL290 (talk) 13:20, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, sounds useful--I'll take a look. PL290 (talk) 13:35, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Given any string <syntaxhighlight lang=javascript enclose=none>​s​</syntaxhighlight>, <syntaxhighlight lang=javascript enclose=none>​s.length​</syntaxhighlight> will give you the character-count and <syntaxhighlight lang=javascript enclose=none>​encodeURIComponent(s).replace(/%../g, "_").length​</syntaxhighlight> will give you the byte-count. ―AoV² 10:33, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that there has been a misunderstanding here. The original question is not about bytes versus characters, it is about showing the change in page size (as per the watchlist) versus the total page size (as per the page history). Consider this edit - in watchlist, it shows as "(+246)", whereas in page history it shows as "(80,847 bytes)". The original poster merely wants consistency. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:36, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

bunching problem

Cenarium fixed it by removeing __NOEDITSECTION__. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:14, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) Yes, the magic word __NOEDITSECTION__ was on it. Though I see that it's also on a hundred of articles which would need fixing too. Cenarium (talk) 00:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

What is the purpose of that anyway? I don't recall ever seeing it before. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

It removes all of the edit section links; it's used most notably for archives (archive templates like {{talkarchive}} include it), on the main page and other pages where showing edit section links wouldn't make sense. Some lists like List of woredas in the Amhara Region or List of current NFL team rosters use it too, though it's pretty rare. Otherwise it should definitely not be used in articles. Cenarium (talk) 02:48, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I removed most of them, except where it seemed that the __NOEDITSECTION__ is reasonable, like “List of …” articles, or Results of the Canadian federal election, 2000. Svick (talk) 17:18, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense. I still wonder why someone chose to put in the carrot article, but that's another matter. Thanks for clarifying, no matter how long you edit here, there's always something else to learn about how it works... Beeblebrox (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Searching for unrendered wikitext

Unrendered wiki-text? Could you be more specific? Do you mean hidden comments, templates...? (The best approach would be to use Regex).Smallman12q (talk) 02:10, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I believe that he is probably referring to incorrectly entered wikicode which appears raw as the software doesn't recognize it. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks. -- IRP ☎ 03:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

The database scanner in AWB will search within unrendered wikitext. Graham87 04:01, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

The (one? a?) current HTML idiom for accomplishing this seems to be e.g., Doe, John (2010) ''A fictional account''. However, articles exist with the now-broken and now-deprecated <cite id=... tags in them. I'm asking whether anyone knows how I could search for such articles.

Graham87, thanks for the pointer to AWB's database scanner. I currently favor an Ubuntu Linux platform and haven't used AWB lately. I think I've got too much on my plate just now to consider coming back up to speed on AWB and dealing with multi-gigabyte downloads of database dumps. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:16, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

If I can get a download, I will take a stab at it. This was on my todo list anyway. We will probably find more wonderful reference templates not on my list. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 02:03, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd appreciate a note on my talk page about whatever you turn up. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:11, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Downloaded in about 2.5 hours; extracting now. I will play with it later tomorrow. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 05:56, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

See User:Gadget850/dbsearch/cite 2010-Feb-03. About 75 templates and 2500 articles. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:42, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Entire ISPs unable to read Wikipedia

Best if they join #wikimedia-tech on the IRC freenode network and ask mark or domas. Otherwise they might be helped with the wikitech-l @lists.wikimedia.org but that will take longer, this route also works but is still longer :D

Helpful information for solving this problem, is the best estimation of the affected range, their ASN and traceroutes. Are there issues with just wikipedia, or also commons.wikimedia.org ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:44, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I've passed along the information you gave me and have asked the questions you suggested. We just today received a complaint from a third ISP in yet a third country. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:01, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, no, we are not told what to do with these issues. I always thought it was conspicuously missing from the OTRS instructions. Is there a particular SysAdmin that would be best to receive these types of complaints? I do have all of their email addresses. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:48, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Just track someone down on #wikimedia-tech like Werdna suggested. Or if it's not urgent, try e-mailing wikitech-l; makes sure all the right people see it, even if replies aren't instant. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 17:07, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Redirect links

I think you mean "related changes" right ? (i'm personally not aware of such a tool btw but my CSS always shows redirects as green links in a page). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:46, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, related. Where do I get a CSS/how do I use it show I can see redirects in green? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 15:50, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Remember that linking to redirects is perfectly OK; there is no general reason to change links to bypass redirects. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:54, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. The purpose here is for knowing 'related changes' in a similar way to watchlists. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 15:58, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Just answered this at Wikipedia:Help desk#Gadget to display disambiguation links?. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:08, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Redirects often exist because of typos— fixing those is perfectly acceptable. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

a.mw-redirect { color:green} a.mw-redirect:visited { color:darkgreen}

Thanks all! Redirects are cheap and good things. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 16:46, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js is wonderful; identifies redirects, disambigs, and also fair-use images and pages marked for deletion. Happy‑melon 21:27, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Including alt text in the File: namespace

• Mediawiki software generates alt text for every image. To use the example of the current main page and to further chose one image from that page at random, we have File:Icos Laboratories.JPG. On the main page, the file has no caption, but the image link does have the title "Laboratories at Icos" and the image itself has identical alt text. If you go to the page in question, this image is used with the caption "Laboratories at Icos", but the alt text reads "A woman in a lab coat takes glass vials out of a machine. A computer displays a spectroscopy graph."
• Wikipedia guidelines at Wikipedia:ALT demands that "Every visible image should have alt text, unless the image is purely decorative, that is, it has no function and is used only for visual formatting or decoration." And furthermore "Alt text is not the same as a caption. Alt text is meant for those who cannot see the image, whereas the caption is intended for all readers."

1. Junk alt text is automatically generated, apparently just to pass validation. In the example above, the alt text on the main page is "Laboratories at Icos", which is also the caption at Icos. This alt text is completely useless to anyone who cannot see the image. "Laboratories at Icos" does not tell me what this picture looks like (except in the vaguest possible terms), which is exactly why Wikipedia:ALT requires descriptive alt text, such as the one used on that article, "A woman in a lab coat takes glass vials out of a machine. A computer displays a spectroscopy graph." Furthermore, Wikipedia:Featured article criteria demands alt text, so this had to have been added to this article prior to it reaching the main page. Why would the article itself be required to have useful alt text as a prerequisite to get the to main page, when the main page ends up generating useless junk text? The purpose of alt in HTML is congruent to the guidelines on Wikipedia: alt text gives a description of an image, whereas title and the purpose of captions on Wikipedia is to provide supplemental text that contextualizes an image or gives additional information that enhances the use of that image within a document.
2. Not only is bad alt text being generated—in contravention to the purpose of the tag in HTML, the usability it provides to readers, and the guidelines of Wikipedia—but different alt text is being generated for the same image. File:Icos Laboratories.JPG is the same on both Main Page and Icos (the only difference being its dimensions). Therefore, while a caption at either page might be different—at Icos it might read "Laboratories at Icos" but at Women in science it might read "The 1990s saw a greater influx of women into technical fields."—the alt text should ostensibly be identical. The same image is being described by alt text in either place, so there is no purpose in having it be described in two different, conflicting ways. It also creates an extra burden for Wikipedians to write up alt text repeatedly for the same image. To use another example, File:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg is used in over 50,000 pages. Sometimes, it is included in the page through a template, such as Flag of the United Kingdom, where it is in {{Infobox Flag}}. This template has an Alt field, but it is presently unused. Other times, it is transcluded through a template such as {{UK-poli-stub}}, which has no option for alt text (cf. The Angry Brigade.) Finally, the file can be added simply through the use of [[File:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg]] in an article. In the first example, the alt text reads "See adjacent text." In the second, it says "Stub icon". In instances of the third usage, anything can be the alt text, but it is mostly likely that none is employed, generating the generic, "Flag of the United Kingdom.svg". Furthermore, at File:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg itself, the alt text for this image is the completely useless "File:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg". This serves even less of a function than if it said "Flag of the United Kingdom"; at least in that case a reader could have a good guess at what the image displays if he's ever seen that flag before, but who knows if "File:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg" is accurate or if the flag of the United Kingdom has changed since you last saw it? For that matter, "See adjacent text." and "Stub icon" are completely useless and even confusing. They cause more harm than help to anyone using a screen reader or a browser that doesn't display images.

1. Is this feasible?
2. Does anyone have any better suggestions on how to fix the problems of no alt, junk alt, and conflicting alt text?
3. Does this belong somewhere else (e.g. mediawiki.org or Meta)?

See https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19906. Stub icon alt text can be changed by using "imagealt" on the stub template. –xeno^talk 20:42, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

1. absolutely, but who is gonna do the work ? See https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19906, as xeno said.
2. well i would like to point out that it should always be possible to override the 'default' alt text, because different alt text for different context can certainly be useful. (Think of an image of a president next to the oval office desk. The image description might focus on different details depending on being in the article of the president in question, or being in the article on the oval office desk). Next, i think any auto generated description is probably than NO description, and the File: prefix does provide a function there in making sure that people will realize that it is not human generated I think, though perhaps a different prefix ("File: ")might be something to consider.
3. It has been discussed a few times, and having the ability to add a default alt text to an image is definitely something we would like to have I think. So it's more an issue of who is gonna write the code (see bugzilla). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:08, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

TheDJ's right about the need to override any default. As for the main page, the alt text for its photo should be better, but that's up to the people who maintain the main page. If you edited Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 16, 2010 right now, for example, you could fix its alt text. Would you like to volunteer to do that? Ideally it'd require only one edit per day. Eubulides (talk) 01:21, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

You might find http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/steal_alttext.py useful for filling in alt texts until the bug is resolved. — Dispenser 06:45, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Search problem

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=census_nigerian_copyright_scholars_photo_variety_context_limbaugh_samarkand_klutz_prefix%3AWikipedia_talk%3A&fulltext=Search&ns0=1&redirs=1
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=census_nigerian_copyright_scholars_photo_variety_context_limbaugh_samarkand_klutz_prefix%3AWikipedia_talk%3AI&fulltext=Search&ns0=1&redirs=1

That's because it is not under Identifiying reliable resources/Archive 21, it is at "Wikipedia talk:Reliable resources/Archive 21". At least it was the last time the search index was updated. And that is not as often as the pages are edited/moved/deleted. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:18, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

So my first guess was on the money, thanks. BTB, how often is the search index updated, typically? Paradoctor (talk) 23:18, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Found it, thanks. My brain is in slomo today. Paradoctor (talk) 00:03, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Job queue expedite

If you e-mail a list of affected articles to me at firstinitial surname at wikimedia dot org (my name is Andrew Garrett), I might be able to look into it. — Werdna • talk 06:29, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Currently, there's no such problem. But I've seen it happen, where there's some template vandalism which has been reverted but the revert hasn't gone live. I was looking for a group (a la Oversighters) who have access to the job queue. The problem with sending a notification about the affected article by email to just you is that there will still be some time until you see the mail, and by that time its probably already fixed. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 10:50, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Firefox 3.6 - loss of edit window content

Resolved: Redrose64 (talk) 16:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

• click edit, the edit window fills with text
• make a change
• click "show preview"
• the upper part of the screen is blank, and the edit window is now entirely empty - both my changes and the original section content have disappeared

I have used Firefox 3.6 on Windows Vista with hundreds of edits and have never experienced this. You could try reinstalling, or logging out and testing Show preview many times to see if something in your account settings affects it. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:45, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

You aren't using Beta (clicked the "Try Beta" link) or wikEd (Gadgets tab in Preferences), are you? Not sure about now, but those are problematic (at least they used to be). wikEd in particular. I stopped using it weeks ago in favor of the "sans-serif font" Gadget because of copy/paste issues in Firefox 3.6. Please'Stand ^(talk) 16:10, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

No gadgets. No beta. No vista (Windows XP). Tried logging out and logging in again, and it's happened oncetwice again; this timeboth these times on a "Save page" - clicking that gave the same effect as above (didn't save, but behaved as if I'd used "Show preview", and cleared the edit window). Regarding Beta: when it first became available, I tried it for about two hours and then gave up because there was little discernable difference between blue (unvisited) links, purple (visited) links and black text. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:24, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

By "the edit window is now entirely empty", do you mean that you are left staring at a completely white screen, without even the Wikipedia logo? There are various issues that can cause this, including having a particular Firefox extension installed. And of course don't forget the possibility of Malware causing problems. Please'Stand ^(talk) 00:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not a completely white screen. What I mean is that the edit box itself is completely empty. To simulate the effect that I see: use any graphic-based browser (firefox, IE, chrome you name it), go to any page, edit any section, delete everything in the edit box, click "Show preview". That is what I see approximately one in every four edits that I make. It never happened when I used Firefox 3.0.18, and only began after installing Firefox 3.6 - and it began immediately. It is definitely not my preferences, because yesterday I logged out before shutting down, then today I turned on, started Firefox, went to Wikipedia, picked an article, made changes, went for "show preview", repeated last 2 steps 3 more times and- bang! All gone. That was as an IP user. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:15, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I was able to reproduce your problem, thanks to Mozilla bug 547525. The fix? Go to the Firefox preferences, Advanced section, Network tab, and Settings button. Make sure that the "no proxy" option is checked ("auto-detect" is the faulty setting). If the correct setting is already selected, do another check. Type about:config into the address bar. Click the button. In the Filter box type network.proxy. Right-click network.proxy.type and click Modify. Change it to 0 (the faulty setting will probably be 4). Wikipedia should load much faster and work much more reliably. And this issue is supposed to be fixed in the next update to Firefox 3.6. Please'Stand ^(talk) 22:13, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Since the above, I got a worse error: one time only, on going for "Save page", it didn't just blank the edit box, but also threw:

Warning: An administrator deleted this page since you started editing it. Please check the deletion log to see the reasoning.

on a pink background; however on going to the page in a different tab, it definitely wasn't deleted.

Anyway, have now changed setting from "Auto-detect ..." to "No proxy". Bed-time now, see if it behaves tomorow. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:27, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

The above has fixed the problem. No trouble for over 24 hours. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Any known reason Watchlist 7-day view won't work?

Resolved

It works for me. What happens if you select "show my edits"? There are a few edits of yours that should be displayed in that case. Hans Adler 14:59, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that reply: it wasn't "show/hide my edits" (mine were not hidden) but on learning that full history works for you, I tried deselecting " Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" in my preferences, and that turns out to be what was causing the issue. PL290 (talk) 15:17, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

In the preferences, under the Watchlist tab, you can set the "maximum number of changes to show in expanded watchlist" up to the maximum of 1000 changes (default is 250), if you would like to keep the expanded watchlist. Depending on the pages you are watching though, you probably will not see the full seven days, even using the maximum setting. Hint: unwatch busy pages you are not interested in anymore. Please'Stand ^(talk) 15:59, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Hey!

Resolved:  – ukexpat (talk) 04:06, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

What happened exactly? Sometimes pages you move, edit, or create are added to your watchlist, depending on your prefs (watchlist tab, bottom of page, the 3 checkboxes saying "add pages I * to my watchlist") Your watchlist can't be edited by anyone but you and sysadmins (These are not sysops). Check what pages you're watching here. If there are some pages which you haven't edited at all, then your account might have been hacked. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 06:13, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Uh, somebody added "pages" to "watch" with tiles such as "LOL WIKIPEDIA SUCKS", gibberish, and so forth. I am an admin and for this and other reasons hacking of my account is problematic. I'm hoping that there was some known bug which has been fixed which allowed watchlists (only) to be hacked? Anyone know? Herostratus (talk) 06:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

DON'T PANIC. Do you have an example title that indicates this hacking? I imagine it's simply the result of page move vandalism. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:46, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't havy any examples any more - I removed them from my watchlist, and I don't know of any way to get a history of the watchlist. Except for one I missed, so-called article HАGGＥR? Ÿ, is still there. Are you saying that these article names are the result of actual articles being moved to names like LOL WIKIPEDIA SUCKS or whatever? But there are so many, wouldn't the normal restoration of the article result in the watchlist being healed? All the bogus links were redlinks. Thank you for your help! Herostratus (talk) 06:53, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, usually if there's an entry on your watchlist that you really don't recognize, it's the result of page move vandalism. For example, Yo to the NyMpHo is on my watchlist; this was the result of this vandalism. All the unfamiliar titles are red links because the vandalism has been reverted and the redirects were deleted. This issue is https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13602. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:01, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, now I understand! Thanks so much for your help! Herostratus (talk) 10:57, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Help with javascript-based notice

The code for displaying the BLP editintro is here (and the currently live code for it is in MediaWiki:Common.js). I'm afraid my javascript skills are not up to the task of adapting it to the request I'm making here.--Father Goose (talk) 05:33, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

What's wrong with templates and bots ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

It shouldn't go in the article proper. See down at the bottom of this page where it says "Contact us"? We want to replace that text with something a little more verbose when the page has the BLP category on it.--Father Goose (talk) 19:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, this is NOT tested for IE or with anything but Vector. But I have created something here, that you can test with this link. It loads the HTML from Template:BLP footer (including "noinclude" elements, so don't add documentation). It blocks on loading this notice, so it will currently slow pageloading (might be fixed later, but makes it more complicated). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:13, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Outstanding. I think I can tweak it from there. Thanks so much for your help. Looks good so far under Monobook, IE 8, FF 3.6.

The place where this is being developed is at Template talk:BLP help, by the way, with prior discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#Helping_non-editors_fix_BLPs.--Father Goose (talk) 23:36, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Confirmed that it works in Monobook. Link here. —MC10 (T•C•GB•L) 05:03, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, TheDJ. That's very helpful. Maurreen (talk) 19:26, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Toolserver.org

Still down or down for me. Can anyone else confirm this behavior? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 01:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

"sig=yes" not working on uw-ablock

You need to subst the template, then it should be fine - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 13:45, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

(Strikes self on head with large trout) Thanks! JohnCD (talk) 14:09, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Can expr not take a supplied parameter?

Yes, this is a known issue, see Help:Substitution. I typically just run a script to expand them myself when I need to. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 16:23, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response =) –xeno^talk 16:29, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Any progress on a __NOTIDY__ magic word?

This thread is follow-up to wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 71#Template:Blockquote --Redrose64 (talk) 12:26, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

well, I ran into the problem again, and I'm curious whether any progress has been made on the issue. does anyone know? --Ludwigs2 23:58, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

bug 22786http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22786 was recently opened. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:09, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

ok, I've added a comment. I find myself wondering if it's just a misconfigured tidy installation, though - tidy just seems to be over-eager about closing tags when it runs into carriage returns. that question is out of my league, though... File:V= --Ludwigs2 00:36, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Quite fresh bug report. From my experience, don't expect a solution any time soon. And, by soon I mean the next two to three years. Things in mediawiki seem to be moving slowwwww... I voted btw. --JokerXtreme (talk) 00:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

And, while we're at it. Please vote for this too:[6] --JokerXtreme (talk) 00:39, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

that's because the entire technical side is staffed by beetles; why do you think they call it bugzilla? Beetles are efficient, but never hasty. --Ludwigs2 00:59, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I prefer ants. Equally efficient and get the job done quicker:P BTW you should use the vote option on those bugs. Bugs that have more votes are prioritized (theoretically). --JokerXtreme (talk) 10:11, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Let's get these sorted first. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:10, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Putting _NOTIDY__ on a template wouldn't be very helpful; we would still need to tidy the HTML for the articles the template is included in , in case other things on the page were incorrect. The underlying solution is to fix Mediawiki so that the HTML it produces is acceptable to the tidy program, in these cases. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:47, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

well, as I said above, it may be something as simple as changing the tidy prefs - the problem is that tidy is adding tags where logically it shouldn't, so clearly tidy is parsing the text incorrectly to begin with. I mean, I assume HTML tidy has a 'settings' file where there is at least some control over its behavior. does anyone know where that file would be? I deeply suspect that what's happening here is that tidy is expecting definition data blocks to be single paragraphs, and so is mindlessly retagging things to make sure that definition data blocks are single paragraphs (that seems to be the effect, at any rate). --Ludwigs2 16:27, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I checked this, it's not tidy, it's the wikicode parser or the sanitizer that simply adds dd or li endtags, regardless of wether it should (basically a side effect of the limited syntax used to create lists in wikicode). It might be that setting tidy's "ignore: auto" in the config might improve it a BIT, but it doesn't solve the core issue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:32, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

It would be useful to document known issues with HTML Tidy— either a section at Help:Markup validation or its own help page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:44, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

can you provide a link to the code? I'm curious whether there's some way to scam or sidestep it - basically some way of encoding a block of text so that the parser doesn't realize it's reached an end-of-line, or is fooled into thinking a correct token follows, or something like that. or maybe this would be the place for a magic word - __NOBLOCKEND__, say - that would keep the parser from crapping out. heck, mostly I'm just curious about the code. File:V=. --Ludwigs2 23:39, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Search for "function doBlock" in Parser.php. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 17:32, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Got it, thanks. --Ludwigs2 20:22, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The server committed a protocol violation

The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseStatusLine

responses from en.wikipedia?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:52, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Using what client? How often? Making an edit, viewing a page, doing what? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:17, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Saving a page to the server, using C#. I figured it out though. Had to switch down to use HTTP version 1.0 (.NET defaults to HTTP 1.1). I'm not really sure why that matters, and honestly not sure that I care (although I'm curious), but it works fine now.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you giving a user agent with your headers? Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 09:45, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

owner@lappy:~$ wget "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VPT" --user-agent=
--2010-03-16 __:23:16--  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VPT
Resolving en.wikipedia.org... 208.80.152.2
Connecting to en.wikipedia.org\|208.80.152.2\|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
2010-03-16 __:23:16 ERROR 403: Forbidden.
owner@lappy:~$
owner@lappy:~$ wget "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VPT" --user-agent=makesomethingup/1.1
--2010-03-16 __:24:58--  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VPT
Resolving en.wikipedia.org... 208.80.152.2
Connecting to en.wikipedia.org\|208.80.152.2\|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VPT [following]
--2010-03-16 __:24:58--  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VPT
Connecting to en.wikipedia.org\|208.80.152.2\|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 178124 (174K) [text/html]
Saving to: `Wikipedia:VPT'

Because if you say you are using HTTP 1.1 (which you probably should be), you have to actually follow the specification (rfc 2616). OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:08, 16 March 2010 (UTC) Sorry, didn't realise our servers were so '90s. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 23:17, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Yup, that's the problem right there. Kind of a pain, but it's an easy fix. It would be nice if the software were updated, but... *shrug*
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

on white-space (2)

foo{{code|int main(void);|cpp}}bar

foo <span class="mw-geshi cpp source-cpp"><span class="kw4">int</span> main<span class="br0">(</span><span class="kw4">void</span><span class="br0">)</span><span class="sy4">;</span></span></code>bar

Not sure if this is a typo in SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi::parserHook():

      if ( $enclose === GESHI_HEADER_NONE ) {
        return '<span class="'.$lang.' source-'.$lang.'"> '.$out . '</span>';
      } else {
        return '<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">' . $out . '</div>';
      }

The code above seems to insert a space after the opening span of inline tags. Taking a wild guess, maybe HtmlTidy is moving the space outside the span, which would then explain the space added in the output before the tags.

— Richardguk (talk) 08:25, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Based on the spacing convention of the <syntaxhighlight lang=text enclose=none>​else​</syntaxhighlight> path, I′d tend to agree this is unintentional. It does appear to render without an extra space when <syntaxhighlight lang=text enclose=none>​$enclose != "none"​</syntaxhighlight>. This largely concerns me because I had a {{code}}-wrapped word immediately after a left-parenthesis of default font. In the worst case, I could rephrase the sentence. ―AoV² 08:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, i believe one of the things that htmltidy does, is to move spaces inside spans, to the outside. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:23, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22848 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:42, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

syntaxhighlight (2)

<syntaxhighlight lang="foo">0</syntaxhighlight>

Note, I was able to fix this (in the {{code}} template at least) by adding padding the parameter with zero-width space. Let me know if anyone has a better way. ―AoV² 09:35, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

leave edit page dialog

Edit bars

Bug with pipe trick?

You're right, and it's a known issue. –xeno^talk 18:36, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Generally a good idea to never rely on the "pipe trick." It fails in a lot of cases, as xeno noted. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Thanks, I didn't know it was already known. The "pipe trick" is so nice when it works. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 18:41, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

A lot of things do not work when placed in markup. There's a bug about it in MediaWiki's Bugzilla, that's been there for five years. The pipe trick works fine elsewhere, just like most other things outside reference markup. Gary King (talk) 18:47, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Reference statistics bot

Essentially, the questions I'm looking to answer right now are the following:

1. Which external sites are most commonly referenced on Wikipedia as a whole, both in external links and in inline citations? This could be done by gathering all of the external links from each page, and tallying them by domain name.
2. For each of the categories in Portal:Contents/Categorical index, which external sites are the most commonly linked to in articles in these categories?

Thanks -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 18:53, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

If you are thinking about a bot that downloads all the articles on Wikipedia one after another and analyzes them, then that is prohibited, because it wastes too much resources. You should instead download the database dump in XML format and analyze that. I think it should be quite easy to do. Also, if you want really precise statistics, templates like {{imdb title}} could cause you problems, because they don't look like an external link in the source code, but render as one. Svick (talk) 19:12, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Svick -- I am downloading the dump at the moment, and it looks like it will be rather easy to do with the currently existing Perl modules available on CPAN. Appreciate your help! -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 19:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Thumbnailing of animated GIF's

Commons:Graphics village pump ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:39, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

That will be a handy link to bookmark. Thanks! Franamax (talk) 03:36, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Why is autoconfirmed not at Special:ListUsers

autoconfirmed is not a true group. You could call it a status. On every action of a user, it is determined if at that point the user has "autoconfirmed" or not. You can gain it and loose it automatically (connect with TOR for instance). It is possible to explicitly make people confirmed btw. There are no tools to see if a user is autoconfirmed I think, but the user can look at the source of a page for "wgUserGroups" and it will show if the user is autoconfirmed at the moment he requested the page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:39, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Ahh, I see that's true, but it's only for the user account which you're logged into, I'm asking because I was wondering if there would be a way for User:KingpinBot to recognise when confirmed user requesters already have autoconfirmed? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 09:02, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

No, it's personal and action based, so another user cannot know. It does not exist from the viewpoint of other users, it only exists for actions of your own account. It might be possible to guess, but again, I'm not aware of such tools. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:46, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:DRACU. –xeno^talk 12:09, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it is possible to determine if the user is autoconfirmed. The Edit Filter can do this, for instance. Autoconfirmed is a true group, but it is an implicit group with automatic promotion. Ruslik_Zero 17:04, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

It would be perfectly possible to tell whether a user is autoconfirmed, just have something expose the info from $user->getEffectiveGroups() somewhere. Of course it might vary based on the time of day or who knows what, but explicit groups can vary too, via explicit granting and revocation. We don't seem to do this anywhere, though. It's possible it would leak information about the user, like whether their e-mail address is confirmed, based on the particular wiki's configuration. Also, as pointed out, enwiki's autoconfirmed configuration works different for TOR users, so that could be confusing.

Looking at this, it seems like the current code for Special:ListUsers goes out of its way to avoid computing groups for most rows. It'd be pretty easy to get it to display all groups, including implicit ones, but I'm not sure what the performance implications are, so I've left it alone for now. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 17:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

inline NavFrame collapsing?

My question is whether this be a worthwhile addition, or at least worthwhile enough to justify the effort? what do you all think? --Ludwigs2 00:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Simple Change Proposal

No, see the second item at the FAQ for this page. Graham87 01:18, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

But there is a gadget that will do just that: Special:Preferences --> gadgets tab --> check the Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page. box --> save and bypass your browser cache. – ukexpat (talk) 01:34, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Help required in creating a code

We'll need some1 at MediaWiki to make an extension for it... I'm gonna start at MW soon, but not now (I hafta first learn PHP, then learn my way around MW, &so on&so forth). Why not request it there? ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 11:43, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

You don't need an extension to do this, nor do you need any changes to MediaWiki itself. From (what I read on the proposal) you want a bot to block users if N number of rollbackers have reverted them. That's something for a bot or toolserver script to do, not an extension. As a minor sidenote: I don't think that got nearly the feedback it needs, a proposal to allow non-admins to have a direct role in blocking is a pretty far-reaching change. I'm going to drop a note on Wikipedia:AN pointing here. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:41, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

if then parser functions / magic words

Editor adds only one parameter:

{{User:DASHBot/Wikiproject|WikiProject Syria articles}}

Template creates:

Unreferenced BLPs from [[Category:WikiProject Syria articles]] are provided at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Syria/Unreferenced BLPs]].

{{User:DASHBot/Wikiproject|WikiProject Syria articles|New Blps}}

Template creates:

Unreferenced BLPs from [[Category:WikiProject Syria articles]] are provided at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Syria/New BLPs]].

Unreferenced BLPs from [[:Category:{{{1}}}]] are provided at [[Wikipedia:{{{1}}}/Unreferenced BLPs]].

Unreferenced BLPs from [[:Category:{{{1}}}]] are provided at [[{{{2}}}]].

{{#if:{{{2|}}} |[[:Category:{{{1}}}]] are provided at [[{{{2}}}]]}}.

thanks in advance! Okip 08:50, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you're basically there, aren't you? You can do it like this:

{{#if:{{{2|}}}|text for if there are two parameters|text for if there is one parameter}}

--Kotniski (talk) 09:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Is User:DASHBot/Wikiproject/sandbox what you're looking for? It's not quite as you asked, since some of the things you said contradicted each other. So instead of {{User:DASHBot/Wikiproject|WikiProject Syria articles}} you use {{User:DASHBot/Wikiproject|WikiProject Syria}}, and instead of {{User:DASHBot/Wikiproject|WikiProject Syria article|New Blps}} you use {{User:DASHBot/Wikiproject|WikiProject Syria|Wikipedia:WikiProject Syria/New Blps}}. I can change the latter to be {{User:DASHBot/Wikiproject|WikiProject Syria|New Blps}}, with the out put of where they are listed still being wikipedia:WikiProject Syria/New_Blps, but my way provides a little bit more functionality (for example, you could still get it to work if the category and WikiProject have different names. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 09:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I've also made so that you can hide the "articles" suffix to the category by entering the parameter |noarticles=yes - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 09:23, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Geo coordinates query

They are on the edit page; they're the values of "latitude" and "longitude" under "Infobox UK place".--Kotniski (talk) 13:55, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I've emended the coordinates in the article. Deor (talk) 15:55, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Do I live near San Francisco? No I bloody well don't!

Adware? ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

No, it's a Wikimedia usability survey thing or something. And apparently nobody can be fucked to include some geo IP code, so it shows to a lot of people unnecessarily. Such is life. Such is Wikimedia. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Yep, and even if you click on it there's no option to contact the muppets responsible to complain. DuncanHill (talk) 22:22, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I've emailed Ethnio, the company responsible, to complain. DuncanHill (talk) 22:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

E-mailing Ethnio is utterly useless; it's just a platform we use to recruit participants for a usability study. guillom 22:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Who is this "we" of whom you speak, why do you subject people thousands of miles from San Francisco to this advert, why is there no "hide" or "dismiss" option, and why is the identity of those responsible hidden? DuncanHill (talk) 22:37, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

"Live near San Francisco, or in the US, and have an hour to help Wikipedia?" - banner has just appeared.

No, I don't live in the USA; believe it or not, some Wikipedians are not in America. You can tell by our IP address.

Why is this spam permitted, and why is there no 'dismiss' option? Grr.  Chzz  ►  22:29, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

• If it looks like spam and it smells like spam then..... When did the foundation go into the spam business anyway. –droll [chat] 23:20, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I've had it five or six times, without leaving Wikipedia in between. Thanks for the code, but editors really shouldn't have to resort to fiddling about with javascript (which most of us don't understand) to get rid of irrelevant and annoying banners. DuncanHill (talk) 23:56, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

When you see it for the first time, it tries to set a cookie for like, several years. If it succeeds, it won't display again. Are your cookie settings or a third-party security program preventing Javascript set cookies? If so, my code won't help you... What browser/security software are you using? Ale_Jrb^talk 00:00, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Chrome on WinXP, and AVG. No special settings AFAIK. But that is irrelevant to my point that there should be a dismiss or hide option, and to the point made above that it shouldn't be randomly targetting people from all over the world. DuncanHill (talk) 00:09, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes there should, and no it shouldn't be... but it does sort of have a dismiss. If you see it once, you shouldn't see it again - you don't even need to click a dismiss link (when it's working properly heh). I'm not sure when or why this one was implemented though, and I had a little look. Hmm... Ale_Jrb^talk 00:12, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I shouldn't see it again, but I have seen it again, about 20 times (Vista, Firefox 3.6, AVG). Please just make the wretched thing hideable, because your javascript thingy clearly is not doing the biz. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

The tagline is inaccurate; the Mar 30th date is for San Francisco views, while the Mar 31st is for online interviews. This is actually an issue for the interviewing company to fix. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:25, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Cookies/javascript unblocked for whom? Ethnio.com?

And, my IP range is very firmly and consistently in Canada. Someone needs to update their geoIP listings. [pile-on-comment]

And, around 6-16 March 2009 we were also discussing ethnio! ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 00:48, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll point out that I am in no way related to the usability initiative, I did not write the code, and I have no control over its implementation. Did you try the code I posted above? If so, and it doesn't help and you don't want to block the whole central notice system, this should be a little more aggressive:

Sigh. Perhaps people should demand less, and request more..... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, first things first. What are people thinking directly emailing ethnio ? This is Wikipedia and any technical issues should be filed in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=, any other issues should probably be communicated through the foundation, with which this company has a contract.

Secondly, I asked online. The banner should be online only for 3 days or so (1,5 have already passed). Also, there are currently requests for 2 studies (multimedia upload, and wikipedia usability) in 2 modes going on (San Francisco interviews and online interviews). The exposure is a bit higher than usual because of this.

• https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22873
• https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22874

And the bugreports. Please add your information there. Some browser config info might be useful to add to the 2nd bug. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:01, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Why did I email Ethnio direct? Because there was no indication whatsoever in the notice that anyone else was involved. If the Foundation was responsible for the banner, then they should have said so in it. As for bugzilla - user friendly it isn't. I came to VPT because it's a very helpful place full of very helpful people. DuncanHill (talk) 02:15, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

And further, re Bugzilla, I'm buggered if I'm going to post my email address publically on it, so I can't have a log in, so I can't report things there. DuncanHill (talk) 02:20, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

If just any organization could hijack Wikipedia pages, then we would have a security issue and then you should definetly turn to the foundation. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

But we've got no way of knowing if it's the foundation, some wikichapter thingy or just a mad admin plating with sitenotices. DuncanHill (talk) 02:50, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

We ? You might not know. But others clearly do. Don't make rash actions if you don't understand what is going on, just hang out and sit tight and wait for people that do understand what is going on. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:17, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Rash actions? You mean like asking what it is and who is responsible? That's hardly rash in my book. DuncanHill (talk) 03:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

#siteNotice { display: none; }

Indeed. The ratio of useful information to rancid shit in the sitenotice dropped to near zero years ago; I've had it blocked for years and never missed anything that needed my attention. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:10, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I was wondering what this thread was referring to for a while, then started seeing the sitenotice, only within the last 5 minutes for some reason. No hide link? Since when? Not good. Not good at all. Yeah I know about CSS. Still, not good. Equazcion ^(talk) 02:24, 18 Mar 2010 (UTC)

I believe the remote interviews are being done by phone. Mr.Z-man 03:37, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Just a minor point, but for those who want to block the sitenotice, the CSS code you really want is

These merely will hide it after it already has loaded. Barring a user-preferences option to disable it completely (uh-huh), the best approach is ABP or some other way for your browser to ignore “centralnotice.js” outright. ―AoV² 05:00, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Weird "Retrieved..." text at bottom of article

Sounds like you are bothered by a non-complete download of the page CSS. Happens sometimes. Just clear your browsercache and you should be fine again. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:01, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Photo upload log

Hows this [8]?--Jac16888^Talk 03:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposals

Resurrected: Wikipedia:NOTNEWS, news belongs on Wikinews

This is, to summarise, changes to existing templates to direct people to write news articles where they belong - on Wikinews.

Impacted templates are:

• {{Recent death}}
• {{Current}}
• {{Current related}}
• {{Obituary}}
• {{Recentism}}

Examples of the changed templates

• Where Wikinews has an article (embedded titles link to nonexistent pages)

This article is about a person who has recently died or has recently been reported dead. Some information, such as that pertaining to the circumstances of the person's death and surrounding events, may change as more facts become known. Obituaries are not appropriate for Wikipedia; please consider contributing to the obituary on Wikinews.

This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses. Wikipedia is not a news site; please consider expanding Wikinews coverage, or writing a follow-up.

This article is related to a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses. Wikipedia is not a news site; please consider expanding Wikinews coverage, or writing a follow-up.

This article reads like an Obituary. Wikipedia is not a memorial site and articles should have a neutral point of view. Please help edit it to help achieve a neutral point of view, or discuss changes on the talk page. Wikipedia is not a news site; please consider expanding Wikinews coverage, or writing a follow-up.

• Where Wikinews does not have an article:

This article is about a person who has recently died or has recently been reported dead. Some information, such as that pertaining to the circumstances of the person's death and surrounding events, may change as more facts become known. Obituaries are not appropriate for Wikipedia; an obituary would be more appropriate on Wikinews, see here.

This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses. Wikipedia is not a news site; in-depth news coverage is more appropriate on Wikinews.

This article is related to a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses. Wikipedia is not a news site; in-depth news coverage is more appropriate on Wikinews.

This article reads like an Obituary. Wikipedia is not a memorial site and articles should have a neutral point of view. Please help edit it to help achieve a neutral point of view, or discuss changes on the talk page. Wikipedia is not a news site; in-depth news coverage is more appropriate on Wikinews.

Sounds like a very good idea. Strong support. --Yair rand (talk) 04:10, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Strong supportCamelbinky (talk)

Support also per something among the same lines as Yair rand. --Mikemoral♪♫ 04:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose current proposed wording. Some directing to Wikinews seems like a good idea, but some of that language seems to send a confusing message, as if the subsequent content on tagged pages is being criticized for being on the wrong wiki. Equazcion ^(talk) 04:40, 8 Feb 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't seem like that to me. Do you have a better wording? --Yair rand (talk) 05:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• I'm certainly happy to try and improve the wording - if I can have specific actionable points. I think the proposed changes to {{Recentism}} is the only case where there may be 'active' criticism of Wikipedia content where the template is in use. ---Brian McNeil /^talk 10:29, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I agree with concerns about the wording. We don't want the template to send the message "don't add anything about recent events to this article," but rather "the article should reflect a long-term view of the subject." Dcoetzee 10:37, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• • I agree, the current phrasing might be interpreted to "don't add anything recent". Instead of the current comment, "Wikipedia is not a news site; please consider contributing to the obituary/article", perhaps something along the lines of "Although Wikipedia permits content regarding recent events, it should have a historical perspetive, as this is not a news site. In-depth news-style coverage is more appropriate on Wikinews", with a link to Wikipedia:NOTNEWS? But I don't have any real objections to the current phrasing either. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:47, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose The existance of Wikinews has no bearing on Wikipedia content. --Apoc2400 (talk) 13:06, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

  This is a baffling view, to me. It's not as though we'll be creating links to Google news, or even something like the NYT with this. Wikinews is a fellow WMF project, so the statement that it has no bering on us is simply silly, to me. I'd be very interested in hearing a reasonable explaination, though.
  — V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 22:04, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

  Per Wikipedia:SISTER and longstanding co-operation between projects and our general view of 'we can't use this, but they'd love it over here' being a helpful way forward to violators of Wikipedia:NOTNEWS it does. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:56, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

  Wikipedia should be the best encyclopedia possible. That a sister project also covers similar content does not matter. I you think Wikipedia should limit the content about recent events, then just say that instead of referring to Wikinews. These additions seems to imply that recent events should not be mentioned on Wikipedia because of Wikinews. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:27, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

  We can only really agree to disagree here, I suspect. I have stated below that I believe this helps creates recruit better contributors to WP as well as WN. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:01, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

  I think that we can do better then agreeing to disagree here though, which is specifically why I challenged this oppose. There's a bit of a disconnect between differing viewpoints here, and their not mutually exclusive (meaning that both the opposition to the proposal and the willingness to disagree are somewhat misplaced). The main issue here is exactly what you said yourself Apoc: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not a news source. On the other hand, Wikinews is not an encyclopedia. It's generally a good thing to define goals and structure for participants, especially in a collaborative, "headless" environment such as our WikiMedia Foundation projects. What I'm really curious about is this: what is it about the proposed changes that makes you believe that the proposal is attempting to convey that "Wikipedia should limit the content about recent events"? I don't see that assertion being made myself (at least, not so bluntly), but as an advocate I'm perfectly willing to admit that my own bias may be affecting my judgment.
  — V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 19:26, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support  The existence of Wikipedia policy does have bearing on Wikipedia content. (In case this isn't blatant enough: When content is inappropriate for Wikipedia according to Wikipedia policy, it is then appropriate to direct prospective constributors to the project where that content would be appropriate.) --Pi zero (talk) 13:54, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support per Brian McNeil and Wikipedia:NOTNEWS. The existence of Wikinews has direct bearing on Wikipedia and its content. Although I think articles on recent events are okay on Wikipedia, they should have a long-term view over the topic, and people should know that there is a more suitable venue if they want to add certain things, such as obituaries (if someone very famous dies, for instance). One suggestion - don't italicise "Wikinews", I think that looks a bit out of place. considering "Wikipedia" is never italicised. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:47, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support as a strong believer in decentralisation and promoting the sister projects :) --Skenmy^(t•c•n) 17:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose; just seems to make the templates more obtrusive without offering any concrete advice for reader or editor. Any relevant Wikinews content should already be linked as a sister project link. None of the new links do much to explain how to write content in a manner appropriate for Wikipedia. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:22, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

  Perhaps a link to Wikipedia:NOTNEWS would solve that problem? Also, I'm not sure how adding a single small, barely visible line to the template makes it much more obtrusive than it already is. *shrugs* Tempodivalse [talk] 21:06, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

  I think you miss the point of the templates in the first place Christopher; to tell people certain content is inappropriate for Wikipedia. The addition is one line, one small line, suggesting where the content may be more appropriate. --Brian McNeil /^talk 21:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support A fairly logical way forward with Wikipedia:NOTNEWS. It helps keep WP's content from spiraling into recentism without making contributors feel discouraged that their contributions are unwanted. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:56, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
• Strong support - This is good for Wikipedia, and good for Wikinews. We already tell people when content is inappropriate for Wikipedia; we should continue to do so. While we're at it, it's a good thing to tell them where the content really should go.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:18, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support It stikes a good balance between letting contributors know that their contributions are valued and finding the correct project for those contributions. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs 23:25, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support - the logical extension of WP:NOTNEWS. - Philippe 00:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support with an improved wording so people don't think that all information about recent events is inappropriate for Wikipedia. Reach Out to the Truth 14:53, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

  At the risk of repeating myself, what are the proposals for an improved wording? I was, in crafting these changes, very concerned to keep the size increase on these templates to an absolute minimum. The proposed change by Tempodivalse above is really overly verbose; are there changes to the existing wording which I've not touched which might address this and keep the Wikinews-related small line a single line? --Brian McNeil /^talk 15:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

  The Wikinews line seems OK. I think that people are mostly complaining about (our own) text above that. People don't seem to realize that these templates already exist, and the only addition that you're proposing is the addition of one line, in small font, with a link to Wikinews in it.
  — V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 18:03, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support Though I do fear that most people simple don't understand that they are writing an obituary into the Wikipedia article. I'd be interested to see if this would drive any measurable amount of traffic to Wikinews. It can never hurt to a least run an experiment with something like this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose First, {{Obituary}} and {{Recentism}} are not only used on articles on recent events, so wikinews is irrelevant. Second, we shouldn't use our articles as proxy for wikinews per our policy of neutral point of view. We already grant enough leeway to post relevant sister links, but prominently linking to wikinews on articles related to recent events, which gamer lots of views, would be way over the top. Third, the first three templates are principally directed for readers, not editors; they're some sort of disclaimer to alert people that the information can change; so saying that 'Wikipedia is not a news site' out of the blue is totally inappropriate. It gives the impression that the article may somehow content inappropriate 'news content' while it may not be the case at all; and Wikipedia sometimes contain completely appropriate in-depth coverage of recent events, much more developed than wikinews (such as sport events, elections and so on), so linking to wikinews would be a disservice to readers, and unhelpful and confusing to editors.
  Finally, there seems to have been some inappropriate canvassing, see http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/wn:Water_cooler/miscellaneous#Wikipedia.2C_again, which explains why several wikinews admins, Jimbo Wales and Philippe came here to support the proposal. Cenarium (talk) 18:55, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

1. Please provide examples where {{Obituary}} or {{Recentism}} are not used on articles related to recent events.
2. As you apparently seem to be wilfully ignoring, Wikinews is a Wikimedia Foundation project and all projects are subject to a Neutral Point of View policy (see http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:NPOV).
3. I strongly object to your characterisation of the solicitation of input from people who care about projects other than Wikipedia as "inappropriate canvassing". I would ask you to retract that accusation, and the implication that Wikimedians who are not primarily active on Wikipedia are not acting in good faith; all have justified their reasons for supporting this proposal and you are suggesting that such votes, including that of Jimmy Wales, be discounted on your say-so alone. --Brian McNeil /^talk 20:59, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Would you care to explain in what way WP:CANVASS is violated? Cross-project co-operation is a cross-project issue. That's like notifying a WikiProject of an AfD. It is in each project's interests to know how they are used by each other. As for Jimbo, he had already expressed an opinion and hence an interest. Does my opinion cease to count because I contribute somewhere this affects? I have edited here since 2006; I am a long-serving WP admin. I am also a WN admin and Arbcom. Do you really view these as incompatible where interlinking and Wikipedia:SISTER/Wikipedia:NOTNEWS is discussed? Surely contributors to both projects are best suited to appreciating the intricate differences - and overlaps - in their respective missions. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:20, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I would have no problem with letting know wikinews editor of this, if it were done in a more neutral manner (cf the diagram or the section 'campaigning' from the guideline) and not be emphasizing Jimbo's opinion (sought off-wiki). I's been some time since those changes are proposed (cf http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_talk:Obituary_from_Wikipedia#Promotion_on_Wikipedia) and it's not this way that you'll make a difference (nor by calling naysayers those who disagree). The way it's carried out just doesn't inspire confidence or look like collaboration, but rather like campaigning. I point this out so that consensus can be appropriately weighted, it has no other implication. I'm not 'against' sister projects or whatever (I use and add links to wiktionary quite regularly for example).

1. See Category:Articles slanted towards recent events which includes articles tagged as far back as January 2008 (so the recent events are anterior to that). Those recent events could be from the previous decade or before; most of the time this tag is applied considerably after the related events. Recent can mean decades ago in a historical perspective, there are many examples (here's one). As for obituary, this is not even event-related (though it implies the person has died), and could be applied to any dead person (example from a 1998's death). So for those two templates, mentioning that wikipedia is not a news site or wikinews wouldn't make sense.
2. I've argued this point a bit quickly. We've extended NPOV far beyond its original intent, for example Wikipedia shouldn't be used as a mean of promotion. Of course we have a special relationship with other wmf projects, but we should keep the former in mind nonetheless. In my opinion, we should not use our articles (and templates therein) as a mean to promote sister projects. Promotion is not the intent of sister links (though in effect it does..). Linking at the top of articles or sections on recent events to a particular news source doesn't go well with our policy of neutrality. For another example, if the Wikimedia foundation were to advocate for some issues (see strategy:Task force/Advocacy Agenda), then Wikipedia should remain neutral on those issues nevertheless; in any case we would as a community. I appreciate that those proposed changes are primarily aimed to direct editors to more 'appropriate' places and wouldn't mind to stop arguing in this sense to appease the debate, but my first and third points remain.
3. You didn't address my third point, which is similar to what said other commentators in prior discussions: the recent events templates are disclaimers for readers, they're not there to remember policy; they are applied to pages where the content can be in full conformity to the policies and guidelines on recent events. Suggesting that there is a problem where there is none is bad; for our readers who are confused, and even more for our editors. It may even discourage editing. Cenarium (talk) 16:38, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

   Just out of curiosity, do you also object to notices in articles that say things like "Please help improve this article by expanding it.", "This page is a candidate to be copied to Wikibooks", or "This article contains instructions, advice, or how-to content. The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to train. Please help improve this article either by rewriting the how-to content or by moving it to Wikiversity or Wikibooks."? Do you see these as "promotion" and a violation of NPOV? --Yair rand (talk) 19:01, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

   (Disclaimer, for what it's worth: I am an arbcom member and bureaucrat at en.wikinews) Indeed. I fail to see how this proposed template is any more "promotional" than is {{transwiki}}. By the same reasoning, we should not promote ourselves either, or even encourage people to edit our articles such as in the templates {{cleanup}}, {{expand}}, etc. Also, I understand and agree with your argument that certain templates like {{recentism}} doesn't always refer to events that have happened within the last few days (and perhaps we shouldn't add the wikinews notice to them), but there are many others, such as {{current}} and {{recent death}}, that do. Tempodivalse [talk] 20:10, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

   FYI: the criticism with respect to {{recentism}} (and elsewhere, for that matter) is easily addressed with the addition of a named parameter which could turn off the Wikinews message anyway. This whole line of criticism is really a completely irrelevant red herring, although it at least brought the subject up now so that we could talk about the issue prior to implementation. I don't think much of the other criticisms either, personally, but I found the point about the message possibly being irrelevant to be particularly artificial.
   — V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 04:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

   Yair rand: I don't 'object', I say that we should consider the issue of promotion, intended or implied. I think that the cleanup templates asking to edit wikipedia, or to transwikify, are in their current state not overly self-promoting and appropriate for our projects which rely on user participation. However, I would have a problem if it were overly promotional (e.g. "Wikipedia is the number 4 site on the web, you should edit it too!" and such). I think this is an aspect to consider in fund-raising campaigns too: not being overly self-promotional, and there's actually been much criticism on those grounds in the latest campaign. We should apply policies with due diligence and not indiscriminately, but it doesn't mean we should completely disregard them in some instances when it comes to us (for another example, undue weight given to some events where wikipedia is involved comes to my mind).

   Tempodivalse: By the same reasoning, we should consider (self-)promotion in regard to those templates, which is very reasonable, and as I said above, I would have a problem with such templates if they were overly self-promoting; but in their current state, they're OK to me. Policies should be applied on a case by case basis, neither indiscriminately, neither wholly ignored, and never on their sole basis.

   Ohms law: Not addressed like this, see unindented comment.

   Overall, in the present case, I do not believe that we should use recent events templates for promotion of wikinews, as too opportunist; however this is a reason among others for me to object, and the least - no need to make a big deal out of this. Cenarium (talk) 03:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I really don't see the problem. The Wikinews discussion has been done from a Wikinews viewpoint, and it has been agreed that WN would easily benefit from receiving such unwanted contributions from Wikipedia. With that out of the way, I come here to consider an entirely different question: What is right for Wikipedia? Had I honestly believed this was not in WP's best interests then with my WP hat on I would have opposed what I supported on Wikinews. Naysayers has no negative connotations; I am proud to be a naysayer on many subjects. I have, in fact, carefuly steered clear of the benefits to WN in this thread; they are irrelevant here. Obviously, since the idea initiated in The Other Place the benefits to WP were of relevence on loose terms over there ('is there any reason they require this?' - otherwise developing further would have been pointless).

1. Is constructive. I have no further comment on that, other than that some slight reword may be required on the appropriate templates.
2. That is largely already responded to earlier in this reply; although I again draw attention to Wikipedia:SISTER and Wikipedia:NOTNEWS in combination, noting my previous description of how these apply.
3. Wikipedia aims to attract new contributors. That is fundamental to WP - and to all the projects. How discouraging is it to someone who sees 'may change rapidly' and thinks "wow cool!" and races to update with the latest, only to see Wikipedia:NOTNEWS chop it out? That is very sad, and means someone who would be interested in both projects would be end up a member of neither. I can't see this 'poaching' editors; rather, I see this as forming more users who are able to do as I do, and straddle accross both projects, trying to help them compliment each other the way they are supposed to. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:35, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

This is still not a way to attract people to support one's position that I found legitimate, but I have no wish to argue on this now. Reply to the other points in my 'unindented' comment. Cenarium (talk) 03:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

As far as Cenarium is concerned, I will debate no more on the points Xe raised; I feel others have cast reasonable doubt on Xe's interpretation of the purpose of the templates I propose modifying. Incidentally, good luck getting Flagged Revisions on Wikipedia – if you look into my background on Wikinews you'll see I've been involved for over five years; I was the driving force in getting FlaggedRevs implemented there, as well as a project 'crat, Arbcom member, checkuser, Wikimania 2008 attendee, press corps member & speaker. And, I recently resigned from the Wikimedia Foundation Communications Committee rather than play politics and toe a partei line (just since this seems the section for willy-waving). I'm not out to discourage people from contributing to Wikipedia, quite the contrary. Wikinews and Wikipedia are meant to be complimentary projects – as, in fact, are all WMF projects. I feel I am entitled to be proud of my contributions to Wikinews, which include several featured articles. Over the years I would estimate I've spent well over $1,000 of my own money supporting Wikinews - not including donations to the Wikimedia Foundation's general fund; I'm the first member of Wikimedia UK based in Scotland, and every single person in WMUK knows full-well where I stand and what I think. Too young to 'technically' qualify for the moniker curmudgeon; too old to still qualify for the once-applied label of "angry young man". Yes, I am impatient, I am unreasonable; to quote George Bernard Shaw, "[t]he reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --Brian McNeil /^talk 23:56, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Right, I'll tell you something of my experience too (I'm just a sysop here, fwiw). When you bring up some proposal, of course you'd like that everyone support it right away and that it gets implemented as soon as possible. But in most cases, there's going to be problems and such after the implementation, it's going to need some fixing, and it may well end up in complete failure; because you needed an outside point of view, that some other people made a real, serious review of your proposal, find potential problems, possible improvements and so. From my experience, criticism is good. I'm probably the only one commenting here who made an in-depth review, I actually spent hours on this by now. I've decided to oppose those proposed changes, I've given my justifications, this is fair and helpful. I've pointed out some pretty obvious flaws that would have gone unnoticed otherwise. Interestingly, sometimes when someone reviews an issue for real, rather than taking a cursory look and giving some nice but useless comments, their intentions (or more) are attacked.

Re unrelated FlaggedRevs: My proposal (wikipedia:FPPR) is quite different from 'classic' flaggedrevs; there's consensus for a two-month trial but we're still waiting for the implementation. Cenarium (talk) 03:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

1. (unindent for clarity) I've checked all of the transclusions of {{obituary}}, here, and there is not a single one used on an article on a person who died in the latest few months, most of them died years or decades ago. So it is totally irrelevant that wikipedia is not a news site or that people can contribute to wikinews.
2. I've checked all uses of {{Recentism}} in the recent months to see if it had been applied because of recent related news. The vast majority of uses are for articles or sections which put too much emphasis on the 2000s or latest decades. When it's been applied because of recent news, it's mostly trivial things like sport performances which then tend to accumulate, that's insufficient for a wikinews article. And in all cases, wikinews can be relevant only for the time just after the events, so you'd need a separate template to subst (like prods) so that it's hidden after some time. However, I'm still to find an example where it would be relevant. Incidentally, Wikinews is mentioned at Wikipedia:Recentism.
3. In the situation Blood Red Sandman describes, then I'd better see him/her editing, being bold is actively encouraged. There's only going to be a small minority of cases where Wikipedia:NOTNEWS will be a reason in and of itself to revert the edit. That person could be made aware of wikinews, which is mentioned in the relevant guidelines anyway. We should not discourage people from editing by citing potential but very theoretical policy violations. Only when there's actually a problem we should say it, while those templates take the position by default that something is wrong, and this is not acceptable, per Wikipedia:BOLD, and because our policies are non-prescriptive. Cenarium (talk) 03:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

   What about instances where these templates are applied, then the article is edited and the tag is removed? I think that it'd be a fairly obvious sample bias to use currently in use template instances as being completely representative here. Regardless, {{Current}} doesn't seem to suffer from any of the criticisms that you're bringing up, which begs the question: is your opposition centered on adding it to only a few of the templates, or is it a general objection? Do you criticize adding a link to Wikinews (or any other sister project) in general? How do you feel about the use of {{Wikinews}}, {{wiktionary}}, and similar templates? (Incidentally, User:Blood Red Sandman does plenty of content editing, from what I've seen. It'd be nice if we could avoid the personal stuff here).
   — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:23, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

   If you read more carefully what I said you'll see that I was referring to the hypothetical person in the situation which Blood Red Sandman described (otherwise it wouldn't make any sense..). My objections are specific: my first point was about {{obituary}}, the second one about {{recentism}} and the later about the current events templates. The representative bias you allege (which I had considered) is negligible with obituary and recentism, since the removal of those templates is largely independent of the characteristics I evaluated, plus I had the time to check several times for new ones in the last few days and it didn't differ; and my objection for the current events templates was not based on a statistical analysis but on the non-disputable fact that not all content about recent events is removable per Wikipedia:NOTNEWS (probably only a small minority, but even if were half of it, it would not justify a default position against the coverage of recent events; said otherwise, we should not assume that any content on recent events is bad/to be deleted). I said already that I had no issue with sister links but I prefer them at the bottom of articles for consistency and because wikinews links become outdated very quickly. I use wiktionary often, and place the template and edit the project from time to time; fwiw I've redesigned Template:Wi. Really, I've no issue with sister projects... Cenarium (talk) 04:26, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

   Lies! Seriously though, I'll re-read through the above tomorrow. It would be interesting to hear a counter-proposal and/or a suggestion to make this more acceptable, though.
   — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 05:15, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

   The results are comforted by a very simple analysis of the situation: there are many articles about dead persons, and among those where {{obituary}} is applicable at a given time, a very small minority will be dead recently (in the last few days). Actually it's much more likely for such an article to be created in the form of an obituary initially, and much after the death, rather than existing prior to the death and being transformed to the point of reading like an obituary thereafter (this can be 'statistically' verified, :). For recentism, it's very similar: there are many articles covering content which can be subject to recentism (which can go from the latest hours to the latest decades or more), and at a given time, only a small minority will be about events from the last few days (so be relevant to wikinews).

   For the recent events templates, a possibility to make this more acceptable would be to create an option to enable the warning about NOTNEWS and wikinews (default not shown), which was the initial proposal, and would be much less problematic, however it should be enabled only when the content is found to be in violation of that policy (cf my objection that warning about policy should be done only when presently justified). Although in such cases, a template like recentism would probably fit, so there's no real need for this.

   Thus my suggestion would be to use an option in recentism which can be enabled to show the message about wikinews, but only for, say, 5 days after the given timestamp (which is supposed to be the date of the event), since after a few days wikinews is no longer relevant. A secondary template could be substed, so that we can quickly enter the current time as timestamp (like we do with Template:Prod). Cenarium (talk) 06:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

(Unident) So, can we all be in agreement that it is essentially a good idea, but there may be issues with ensuring the text appears only when relevant? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 13:01, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

• Strong support. Very sensible. Wikinews exists for a reason. Durova⁴⁰⁹ 16:53, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
• Strong support - I can't see why anyone would oppose the general principle of this, to be honest. Wikipedia and Wikinews are sister projects, with the same fundamental goal - to spread knowledge freely. If we don't want content on one Wikimedia project, then why not direct that attention to a project that does want that content? We can haggle over the details as problems emerge, but let's give this a go and see what comes out of it. Mike Peel (talk) 23:51, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

  I am fundamentally opposed to templates which take the default position that there is something wrong in writing about recent events, and mentioning wikinews while most of the time, it will be irrelevant because the event was days ago. However, I have nothing against collaborating with Wikinews. Cenarium (talk) 03:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

• Srong oppose. This is a solution looking for a problem. If people are worried about recentism, we should add Wikipedia:BLP1E to the speedy deletion criteria: that would solve several problems all at once! If a page reads like an obituary, it should be tagged with {{inappropriate tone}}; but let's not forget that obituaries are often useful sources of information for biographies, and that includes obituaries written fifty years ago. There appears to be some idea that an item cannot have a Wikipedia article just because it happens to be in the news, which is, frankly, ridiculous: it is ignoring our readers for the sake of an artificial criterion. Physchim62 (talk) 10:02, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. Unless you're saying that no recent news should be in articles, which I consider absurd, the new text is inappropriate for most of the templates. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:34, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

• I must ask both the users above to avoid creating strawmen. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:42, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

• Strongly support the principle even if language may need to be adjusted. Speaking with my Wikipedia hat on (before someone brings up the fact that I am indeed an admin on Wikinews), policy is very clear that Wikipedia is not a news site. There is nothing wrong—quite the contrary—in having the most recent information available on Wikipedia; however as an editor I am aware of the huge difference in writing styles between an encyclopaedia and a news site. -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 20:22, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support - Directing people to the right Wikimedia project is a good thing, and the other projects do need more advertising exposure. But the wording should probably be tweaked, since the main purpose of the current events templates is to inform readers that those articles might be rapidly updated at the moment. We don't want to discourage people to edit those articles. --David Göthberg (talk) 23:19, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

News belongs on Wikinews, section break

• Comment This template is, once again, not intended to discourage people from adding information about recent events. It is about *how* the information is presented. On Wikipedia, things can be written on things that have happened, heck, several minutes ago, but should be written from a historical perspective, whereas on Wikinews, they are written from a very recent perspective, like what one would find in a newspaper. The latter style is inappropriate for Wikipedia, according to Wikipedia:NOTNEWS; if people want to write things from a more "recent" point of view, as i've seen many Wikipedia newbies do, it *is* more appropriate at Wikinews and I feel that contributors should know that there is a place where certain info is more appropriate so they can contribute there, rather than their contributions be lost/reverted altogether. I frankly don't see what's "discouraging" about the template; for instance, we indicate that many other types of writing styles are not appropriate for Wikipedia (such as Wikipedia:NOTHOWTO and Template:Howto), and actually redirect people to Wikiversity/Wikibooks to write about topics in that manner, so why not extend that to Wikinews as well? If you believe the proposal implies that *no* recent events coverage is appropriate, please suggest a better way to phrase that. I think my original suggestion of the statement "Although Wikipedia accepts coverage of recent events, it should be written from a historical perspective; in-depth, news-style reportage is more appropriate on Wikinews" with a link to Wikipedia:NOTNEWS solved this rather well.
  The "It's irrelevant because the templates don't always refer to very recent events" argument doesn't make much sense either to me; sure, templates like {{obituary}} aren't necessarily used on such (and perhaps we shouldn't add the wikinews notice to them, or just make it an optional parameter), but there are many others, such as {{recent death}} and {{current event}}, that always do; imho that negates that argument. Tempodivalse [talk] 15:42, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

  That last argument was specific to recentism and obituary.

  The big difference is that Template:Howto and other cleanup templates like recentism are applied only when it has been observed that in the current state, the article doesn't respect policies or guidelines. While if we put this in current events templates, then it assumes that there is something wrong inherently, initially, with writing about recent news. This is incompatible with Wikipedia:BOLD and the nature of our policies which are not prescriptive. The policy message of your proposed rewording is strikingly similar to that of recentism, so it would be akin to put a recentism template with mention of wikinews after all recent events templates. Again, this assumes that there's something wrong while there's not in most cases. Only when justified we should make prominent mention of policy, and never suggest that there is a problem where there is none.

  It may not be intended to discourage people from editing, but in effect, it will do it. As I said, I wouldn't object to mentioning wikinews in the template recentism, but only when relevant, not days or more after the event; now that would be in line with what we do with other sister projects. It only just require some template magic similar to Template:Dated prod so that the message about wikinews is displayed only for a few days after the event (if we simply put it in option, then people would forget and it would remain there). Cenarium (talk) 16:50, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

  I have to say, the one thing that this has started me thinking about is the possibility that we should probably TFD {{obituary}}. Being worried that a link to Wikinews is incompatible with Wikipedia:BOLD, or that it would somehow discourage people from editing, strikes me as a preposterous argument. The wording could certainly be tweaked, and the templates that the statement would be used on could definitely be changed, but to take those criticisms in order to use them for panning the entire proposal is unnecessarily dramatizing the issue. The idea is simply to provide a link and a nudge, saying: "if you want to, we have a content space over here for news items".
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:37, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

  User:Ohms law pretty much sums up my position on it, although he phrased it much better than I could have. I just *don't* see how the inconspicuous link, quitetly informing readers that certain styles of writing are inappropriate for Wikipedia, can be that harmful. I still think the proposed wording in my above posts solves any concerns with "discouraging editing" that some people perceive. It seems that it would be a good thing, and easier on us, not to have to bother with perpetually reverting newbies' obituary-style additions to our articles regarding recently deceased people (which I've seen quite frequently) by instead pointing them to a sister project where said additions are appropriate. Tempodivalse [talk] 19:17, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

  I'm not opposed to any link in any form, in fact I have proposed an alternative. To say it differently, I think the policy message driven by the proposed wordings is uncalled for in general. Making pre-emptive mention of policy, such as by alluding that something is more appropriate at some other place that on Wikipedia, will deter some editing, some of which could be bad, but some of which could be good too. That's why we make mention of policy only when justified and not indiscriminately, and why we have specific templates like recentism, obituary and so on instead of a list of things to do and not to do that all editors must read prior to editing. Bringing up Wikipedia:NOTNEWS for all articles on recent events seems indiscriminate, and I fail to see a wording which could be appropriate. For example 'in-depth' can be misleading: for 'news' events, Wikipedia often serves as a source for 'background' information, and presents a wider view of the topic, which could be considered 'in-depth' (and Wikipedia is often applauded for this), while news reports are more superficial, on the moment. Well that's the difference between encyclopedic style and news style which you try to point out, but it's not really feasible in a one-line sentence, and can give impressions that were not intended, that can be wrong or contradictory, especially when used indiscriminately. Instead, I propose to continue using {{recentism}}, when justified; with an option for temporarily mentioning wikinews. Cenarium (talk) 00:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comment - Yesterday we added a line about Wikinews in the system message that is shown when creating a new article: MediaWiki:Newarticletext. (Note, that message looks very different in different namespaces.) See the discussion on its talkpage. --David Göthberg (talk) 23:25, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support People seem to think here that sister projects must be treated like any other site and that linking to them must follow standard linking guidlines. Wikipedia:SISTER as it stands does not say that and in fact encourages linking whenever useful. All the foundation projects function together, NPOV only applies where the project is talked about and discussed (see Wikipedia:SELF), rather than merely linked. I agree that promoting Wikinews on an editorial level (not on a content level) would help their cause and reduce recentism here.--Ipatrol (talk) 21:02, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

  This is an important distinction, but we've extended our pledge for neutrality beyond the content level. For a recent case, see Template talk:Refimprove#RFC: Should a link to a commercial search engine be included in the template Refimprove. The issue is on whether it's actually useful, it may be good to let people know of wikinews but not at the expense of discouraging editing. Cenarium (talk) 00:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

  Does it matter? NPOV has no real bearing except to the actual wording should we decide to implement. Wikipedia:SISTER is pretty clear; where appropriate, do it. If you interpreted NPOV in that way, WP:SISTER would have to be nominated for deletion. While the link is interesting (thanks!), I do think the distinction is big enough that it probably has no direct bearing. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)}

  Yes, it has no direct bearing. Neutrality would matter more if promotion were the only or major intent, but this is not the case. Here it's to point readers to more appropriate venue for some content, and for sister links, it's to provide related content. Cenarium (talk) 13:23, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

• Unless I'm mistaken (which is a significant possibility), there seems to be pretty clear consensus at the moment to have some kind of Wikinews link in at least some articles with these templates. There are some concerns that the wording could have unwanted effects and that an option to show the extra note with the default being the current version would be better than having the extra note shown by default, but there's pretty clear consensus that something like this should be done. Would it make sense to temporarily change the templates to have a switch-on version of the added note for now, until someone can think of a better wording and we can figure out whether having a switch-on or switch-off addition is better? --Yair rand (talk) 04:12, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

  I say yes, that would make perfect sense, but then I'm a partisan here...
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

  I too say consensus seems pretty clear. I attempted to clarify that above, but I think people missed it in the midst of the long discussion. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 09:39, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

  I think the reasons for not adding it on obituary and recentism (without time option) have now been agreed upon. If we add an option to the recent templates, then we should think of when it should be used. I'd say when the adding editor feels that the article contravenes Wikipedia:NOTNEWS, similarly to when we add cleanup templates. Cenarium (talk) 13:23, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

  So... any news (pun completely intentional)
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:18, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

  Yeah, this discussion has stalled; any chance we can work on getting this implemented in some form, as consensus generally seems to be to do so? Tempodivalse [talk] 03:54, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• I think the template(s) should be used in this manner on any event that is still unfolding and where it is already suitable to have the template(s) in the present form. There could be a date set and this could be reset whenever there were upadates; at such time as we reached 2-3 days from that date the Wikinews section of the template would 'expire' and disappear. This is why we are having the wording issue; doing it only where there may be a Wikipedia:NOTNEWS vio substantially changes the proposal. However, I do like where you're going with that; perhaps a better idea would be to create a brand-new {{Notnews}}, which would be a tag for when there was a perceived problem and would read something like:

Again, the Wikinews bit would expire 2-3 days after whatever date was given. How does that proposal strike everyone? To be clear, this idea is not intended as an alternative to the above - which consensus is generally for, with a nod to wording - but to compliment it. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 15:43, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• I really tend to agree with Blood Red Sandman here; yes, I do have a somewhat 'selfish' issue of trying to promote contribution to Wikinews. It strikes me as a good compromise to have a Wikinews-specific message be time related. If there is an "added=<date>" parameter then, addition of such cautions can appear for a limited time. I'd wonder about having an alternative parameter "reported=<date>", and possibly even a "wikinews=suppressed". The contexts within which such templates may be used would merit all three of these options. For example, labelling someone's hagiographic bio as an obiturary may have no relevance to Wikinews if the death was decades ago; however, it could be as a result of a new report into the circumstances of someone's death decades ago, and be news - meriting a "reported=" parameter.

My template-fu is not at expert level, I'd be delighted to see someone take the copies of these templates I've created and work in solutions for more complex situations. I do, based on many of the above comments, think there's a need for those contributing significantly on Wikipedia to go back to the original templates and think through the wording they have. It's frustrating to me how slowly some things work on Wikipedia, but I'm happy to see that hashed about and sooner (please, rather than later) some proposal that has a reasonably wide consensus be put forward.

WP:NOTNEWS->Wikinews Break

As I say, take copies of the templates and, well, be bold!. --Brian McNeil /^talk 19:47, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Having a timer automatically eliminate the message after a certain time limit is not possible because of the way pages are cached; the template will only be re-processed when the page is edited. A wikinews=suppressed option could be done by putting {{#ifeq:{{{wikinews}}}|suppressed||Wikipedia is not a news site; in-depth...}} in the template. --Yair rand (talk) 04:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

We manage it somehow on http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Abandoned, although you can subst it as well. Then here there is {{Prod}}, which only works when substed unless I'm very much mistaken (I rarely use PROD, prefering AfD since low-traffic articles can just vanish under PROD without anyone realising). Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:30, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know exactly what those templates do, but I'm pretty sure that #if,# ifeq, and #switch functions are only recalculated when the page is edited. To have a specific message go away after a certain amount of time (which is what I'm assuming Brian McNeil was suggesting) the page would have to be edited or purged after the set time for the timer to update the message. (There's a decent possibility that I'm wrong about this, though.) --Yair rand (talk) 22:47, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

• An awful lot is done by bots following recent changes. In such a way it is possible to have a log of pages to recheck, do a null edit, and expire the template - or section thereof - as required. --Brian McNeil /^talk 19:04, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, using a bot to update the templates is a possibility. --Yair rand (talk) 04:39, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Bump thread to avoid being archived. This needs to be implemented ... Tempodivalse [talk] 20:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Why doesn't someone just add the stuff to the templates and then put in a request at Wikipedia:Bot requests? --Yair rand (talk) 05:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Delete all lowercase -> uppercase redirects

For example, if I type "George w. bush" into the search field and click Go, my address bar will say ".../wiki/George_w._bush" and the article will be titled "George W. Bush", but with a subtitle saying "(Redirected from George w. bush)", because there is a redirect from "George w. bush" to "George W. Bush". However, if I type "rick perry" and click Go, I will be taken directly to Rick Perry because the article Rick perry does not exist. In my opinion, this is the preferred behaviour.

MediaWiki automatically makes the change, and does so more neatly and seamlessly than we do manually by adding such a redundant redirect. There must be thousands of such redirects, mostly for major subjects with proper nouns, which are not only unnecessary but actually negatively impact, if only in a small way, the Wikipedia experience. Furthermore, they would have to be manually updated should the proper noun article be moved, adding an extra layer of unnecessary annoyance. —INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs) 04:03, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

"they would have to be manually updated" I take it you haven't encountered the double-redirect fixing bots. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:18, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Yea OK, but we really shouldn't rely on bots... their great for convenience, but there's really nothing to say that they will be around, you know? (that that I necessarily support this, but it's got me thinking about it)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 06:25, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

These redirects came from somewhere. Presumably people are under the false impression that they're needed. I don't see that changing, so if we deleted the existing ones, they'd keep getting created. Unless I've missed something.Equazcion ^(talk) 06:32, 26 Feb 2010 (UTC)

If we could have a bot perform the proposed task (i.e., identifying unneeded lowercase redirects and either listing them for deletion or, in the case of an adminbot, deleting them), then that might address the issue of continuing creation of such redirects... In light of Ohms' point above, I should probably amend my comment to include: "as long as the bot is active". :) -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 06:40, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

lol... that's taking my point above a bit too far. if a hypothetical "list/delete unneeded redirect bot" actually existed, I wouldn't expect most editors to notice the fact that it went down. At least, not right away.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 06:49, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Redirects also support incoming external links; I don't see the problem with leaving them in place. Josh Parris 06:41, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

As well as internal ones, I notice. Maybe it's better to keep mistakenly-cased links blue rather than red? Not sure myself. But the external links are probably a better point anyway. Equazcion ^(talk) 06:47, 26 Feb 2010 (UTC)

For "normal" redirects this obviously applies (and is embodied in the RFD policy). In this particular case, since the software itself takes care of the problem, it's probably actually better not to have a redirect. That's why the OP actually made the proposal.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 06:51, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

The software only takes care of it for article titles typed into the Go box. Internal and external links don't work without correct casing. Equazcion ^(talk) 07:40, 26 Feb 2010 (UTC)

For external links, I've personally always discounted this criticism. If our pages change, then that should break hard-coded links to the page from outside of the site. Keep im nind that visitors to such a "broken" external link won't get anything like a 404 error, they will land on the search/edit new page, so it's not as though they'll be lost. For internal wikilinks... in this particular narrow case, I really wonder if we would be better off if these sorts of links were redlinked. I mean, it's not as though the example above for rick perry is grammatically correct, after all. This is the only aspect of this proposal that gives me pause in actually supporting it, though.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 08:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

• Strong Support. I've been meaning to suggest the same thing myself for months. (Mixed case redirects would need to be left in place, eg The Ascent of Man needs a lowercase redirect (The ascent of man), but all-uppercase targets don't need all-lowercase redirects, eg My bloody valentine) -- Quiddity (talk) 07:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  Not so. I had some trouble finding an article where there was no such redirect in place, but try searching for "barefoot in athens". No redirect, mixed case, and yet the correct article still appears. —INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs) 08:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  Nifty. Things have been fixed since I last investigated this then. I've struck my inapplicable comment. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:24, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

• The software automatically fixes case mis-matches for searches; it doesn't take care of the problem for someone actually making an internal link with faulty capitalisation... Shimgray | talk | 08:00, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  If an editor adds to an article a link to an incorrect capitalization of another article's title, is it better for that link to appear blue (and thereby give the impression that all is right) or red (and thereby indicate that the linked title does not exist)? In my opinion, it would be better for the link to be red, which would prompt the editor to fix it. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 08:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  I agree. Nobody should be referring to proper nouns in lowercase in our articles, either. —INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs) 08:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  If this is your concern, don't worry about it. Tag these redirects with {{R from incorrect name}} and a bot will fix them - see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot 4. Josh Parris 08:47, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  How does that address the concern that the redirect is actually getting in the way, in this narrow case? That's the whole reason that WildBot could gain approval for that task, is that those redirects are somewhat harmful. As a matter of fact, seeing as how WildBot already has approval to fix cases that have been identified as using these sorts of redirect links, that tends to push me even further into the support camp for this proposal.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 08:55, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, I think this is a good idea (though not an urgent priority). But the bot should always check that there are no incoming internal links for a particular capitalization before deleting it. (The bot won't be able to distinguish between legitimate and erroneous alternative capitalizations, so it shouldn't make any existing links go red.)--Kotniski (talk) 09:03, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  Maybe we could have a template to add to the redirect to tell the bot "no, we've given this some thought, and it really should be here"... —INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs) 09:25, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  It should be fairly simple for such a bot to: (1) generate a list of all targeted redirects with incoming links, and avoid touching any that do have such links (a human editor could check them); and (2) avoid touching other redirects on a Whitelist. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:07, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  You appear to misunderstand the bot. It bypasses all valid redirects marked with {{R from incorrect name}}, altering the originating wikilinks to point instead at the redirect target. So, if someone linked to George w. bush and that redirect was marked with {{R from incorrect name}} the bot changes the article to read George W. Bush. Editors can use incorrect names, the encyclopedia remains robust until the bot fixes the link, and incorrect names are generally not used. Everybody wins. Josh Parris 05:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

  Putting a tiny hatnote of text at the top of the page is hardly getting in the way. Josh Parris 05:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• Objection - not everyone uses the search for finding articles. :) Until we get to such a point that Rick perry will automatically point to Rick Perry in wikilinks and links to the full URL too, then we should keep these redirects in place. I'm happy for bots can go around and update the links as appropriate to avoid the redirects, but that doesn't help for new ones. Note that sometimes it's not particularly obvious that the capitalization in a link is wrong - not every case like this is a person's name. Mike Peel (talk) 09:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  There are a very few cases where capitalization is ambiguous, and redirects are warranted there. I'd say 95%+ of these redirects are unnecessary per my original argument, though. One case where it might be warranted is in various capitalizations of in/the/and/etc., like the example I mentioned earlier, where both "Barefoot in Athens" and "Barefoot In Athens" would be acceptable. However, these are not lowercase redirects, since the redirect title has some capitalized words as well, so it need not be effected by the change. —INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs)

• Objection redirects are useful and redirects are cheap. Though where there are incoming links from an incorrect capitalisation as opposed to a correct one I can see a case for fixing them. In some cases there are edit histories behind the redirect or disputes that have only been resolved by making redirects for all valid permutations of the casing. ϢereSpielChequers 09:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  These last two replies seem to have ignored the commentary above...
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 10:49, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  The one where you said changed article names should break external links, and improperly-cased internal and external links shouldn't rightly work to begin with? I don't really follow your reasoning there. If Wikipedia is less finicky about links than other websites are, I'd see that as a good thing, rather than something that should be fixed so that links become broken just as often as they do on other sites. Equazcion ^(talk) 13:48, 26 Feb 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose any blanket deletion, and this should really be discussed at Wikipedia:Redirect. –xeno^talk 18:17, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

  Probably true. Since discussion is already established here, I'll just post a link to this section on the talk page over there. —INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs) 00:51, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• Terrible idea. Redirects are cheap and they don't hurt anyone. And you risk breaking links people might have put on their sites, bookmarks, etc. All because you want the title to redirect transparently. And remember: the auto-fixing of links on 'Go' only works for go. Type 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_perry' into your browser and you'll go to a dead page. Of course it could be fixed, but I wouldn't count on it anytime soon. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 01:34, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose this will mess up too many internal links and as mentioned could screw up attribution requirements and so be a copyright infringement, removing people's attributions. For some titles it is not clear what is correct, so both should be kept, eg Blue wren or Blue Wren. Manual more careful deletions can be done if there are no incoming links or history. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:07, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't use the search bar. Plus redirects are cheap and that bit of text on the top of the page does not detract from the reader's experience. Tim1357 (talk) 06:46, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
• An alternative solution... If people are deeply concerned that capitalisation redirects cause a problem in one specific circumstance, viz the searchbox, then the best approach would be to find a way of getting around them in that specific circumstance. Rather than delete all capitalisation redirects, for example, we could ask someone to write a piece of code to suppress them in the search-box autocomplete code. Problem solved without producing further problems. Shimgray | talk | 11:31, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support Let's do it now before we end up with 10 billion redirects. These redirects served a purpose before search box becomes case sensitive. Of course they can be some exceptions but for person names we certainly should do that. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:32, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose and question/alternative proposal. I've thought about it a while. It looks like a neat idea, but it is true that it could break links (within WP and elsewhere) and it doesn't seem worth the hassle. There is a real -if small- problem, that is: redirects do not really "redirect": the URL is indeed unchanged. This can be somehow annoying when one wants, say, to copy and paste somewhere the correct URL to the Wikipedia page. Why aren't redirects real redirects? Can we propose to the developers to make them so (maintaining the reidrect subtitle)? --Cyclopia^talk 13:48, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose any blanket deletion. Use for wikilinks, exernal links, tracking the history of a redirect (when ambiguous), maintaining discussion for the redirects (when ambiguous), etc. Well worth their cost. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:40, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose blanket bot fix but Support as a general principle - The example given by the nominator holds up for the names of many people but not for other things (or all people e.g. Bell hooks, where many will spell her name as Bell Hooks in wiki links). An example of an appropriate redirect that a blanket ban or "fix" on such redirects would break is Irish Nationalism vs. Irish nationalism. Both capitalisation are correct. The current manual of style is to use the non-capitalised version but a redirect from the capitalised version is necessary because it is quite common for editors to spell it like that (and equally correct). -- RA (talk) 16:33, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose proposal, I really don't see how this will help. How does it hurt for there to be a redirect? Our hit counter shows that George w. bush typically gets over ten thousand hits daily; why would you want to tell those 10,000+ wannabe readers that "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name"? Nyttend (talk) 17:03, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I believe the hit counter automatically follows redirects, the properly capitalized page has the same numbers. Mr.Z-man 18:12, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
    • No, it does not automatically coalesce redirects. I can provide examples if you want. Maybe it handles redirects that differ only in capitalization, but in general redirects don't count towards the hitcounts. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
      • Sorry, I was unclear. I was just pointing out that the number of hits for that redirect Nyttend linked to were also including the hits for the rest of the article, so it can't be used for determining the usefulness of the redirect. Mr.Z-man 03:33, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. Per Nyttend. Useight (talk) 18:00, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Who apparently doesn't understand the proposal - no redirect is needed in order to get from george w. bush to George W. Bush, so those 10,000 people would still get to where they are going.--Kotniski (talk) 18:06, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• I would oppose deleting current redirects since this would just be arbitrarily breaking links. But I would support a prohibition or restriction on future redirects like this for proper nouns. Mr.Z-man 18:12, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose per ^demon. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 10:14, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose I have recently created a new page which redirects to S-L-M, but if that was moved (Which I might do in a moment), that would explain my reason. Minimac (talk) 11:30, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose, no real advantages (who cares that there is a small "redirected from X" link at the top?). Incorrectly capitalized names are a problem with e.g. Flemish and Dutch names (Flemish generally capitalize intermediate "Van" or "De", Dutch don't), so the incorrect Jan Van Eyck has over 30 article links, and the incorrect Vincent Van Gogh has more than 100. Bob de Moor is the name used on the English Wikipedia, but the Dutch (who should know how it is) use Bob De Moor([9]). If (as suggested above) people see a redlinked incorrect name, there is as much chance of them correcting the redlink as of them creating a new (duplicate) article at the incorrect spelling instead. With the redirects, we avoid the duplicate article at incorrect names. Fram (talk) 12:08, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. This has been discussed before and rejected. See Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 May 4/template:R from other capitalisation. -- œ^™ 14:34, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

No offense, you are completely wrong about this. Redirects are not copies of the original article, and they do not take up excessive space. But even if they did there is a general principle Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:47, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I was talking about the squid (cache) servers. See a discussion here. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 03:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It's true that having copies of redirects in cache may increase the miss rate for other articles, but the site admins will be the ones to complain if the miss rate is too high. As a regular user, when was the last time that you looked to see what the cache miss rate on the squids is? This is why it's better to simply not worry about performance. Even if the miss rate was too high, the site admins have lots of ways to fix is (allocating more storage for the cache, or adding an additional tier of squids, for example). — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:05, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

• comment What was the original rationale, does anyone know, for making article-name-matching case-sensitive in the first place? In my opinion, whatever the reason was, experience has shown that it's more trouble than it's worth; when two pages have names distinguished only by case this is almost always a bad thing and should be fixed by renaming or disambiguating one or both of them. I know this is radical and would entail considerable work on the part of both developers and editors, but — how about just making the names case-insensitive? --Trovatore (talk) 02:30, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia started off using CamelCase!
    As for your question, I think we generally redirect case-variations to the main article, but the only example I can think of offhand is Pattern Recognition. Hmmm, Dead air vs Dead Air vs Dead air (disambiguation) doesn't follow that. Odd.... -- Quiddity (talk) 03:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
    • That was before I knew about Wikipedia, but yes, I know about the CamelCase legacy. Surely that can't be very important anymore, though. In some cases there are GFDL attributions encoded in the histories yada yada yada but the abstract question should be, Is case sensitivity still worthwhile? If it isn't, then the question, What if anything should we do about it? would be the next one.
    • My assertion is that pairs like Dead air/Dead Air are bad and should be fixed. In this case I think Dead Air should be moved to Dead Air (novel) — either that, or Dead air, which seems a rather marginal article, should be merged somewhere. --Trovatore (talk) 03:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
• I also don't agree with the proposal. I don't use the search bar; I usually simply re-type the article name into the URL bar. Until the software accepts that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_washington without a redirect, the redirect needs to stay. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
  • I have to say that seems like doing it the hard way. Are you using a text-based browser or something? --Trovatore (talk) 02:53, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
    • No, but the search bar is not always the most convenient place to type. I have to scroll to see the search box, but the URL bar is always there. Also, there are web tools that make links of that form. Also, I can type the title into the search box and type "Go" instead of "Search", and that will make the link above. This makes sense since I don't want to search for an article; I know we have the article, and I want to "go" to it. I agree that it would be nice if the software tried a case-insensitve match if a case-sensitive match fails. This is discussed at Case sensitivity of page names. There seems to be some issue that Tim Starling was worried about with that, but I don't understand it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:59, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
      • Oh yes, of course I meant using "Go", not "Search". I use the "Go" button easily twenty times as often as the "Search" button. The "Go" button does in fact fall back to case-insensitive matching. It's only URLs and internal links that don't. --Trovatore (talk) 03:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
      • (Well, that is, I don't literally use the "Go" button. I enter text into the search box and hit the "Enter" key. That's the same as using the "Go" button.) --Trovatore (talk) 03:18, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

      About scrolling to see the search box.. you can simply use a keyboard shortcut to bring the cursor directly into the search box from wherever you are on the page.. so you don't need to scroll to it. -- œ^™ 16:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

      • • As far as I can see the shortcut keys don't work on my browser (vector skin on firefox 3 on linux with a sun type 6 keyboard), and I am not going to spend much time investigating how to set up modifier keys in order to access the shortcuts. The URL bar is conveniently at the top of the browser all the time. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:13, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose I see no harm in the existence of such redirects, particularly if tagged with {{R from incorrect name}}. If a user, particularly a relatively inexperience user, creates a wikilink to such a title, and finds it red (because the redirect was deleted or not created) then the user may be tempted to create a new article at th4e apparently missing title. If this happens we then have an article to merge, or we must Wikipedia:BITE the newcomer by speedy deleting under Wikipedia:CSD#A10. Haivn the newcommer fiond the proepr articel via the incorrect link instead is a much better result. DES ^(talk) 23:50, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Soft-block of school IPs.

This isn't an question of assuming bad faith, this is a question of putting our foot down and saying 'enough'. Soft-blocking school IPs would literally cut vandalism in half. HalfShadow 19:36, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

How could pre-emptive blocking ever possibly not be assuming bad faith? --Cybercobra (talk) 22:20, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Apparently you haven't been keeping your eyes open. And before you say: 'But HalfShadow, not all school-IPs have been trouble!', I defy you to show me three. HalfShadow 22:25, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Non-problematic IPs wouldn't be subject to the addition of a sharedIPedu template. –xeno^talk 22:28, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose, per Wikipedia:5P. –xeno^talk 22:27, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I am relatively new here, but already I have found an instance of a registered user connecting (from school, or course) without logging in so he wouldn't be tarnished by his wilder edits. Quite aside from the question of whether anonymity is a good thing or a bad thing, schools (I am shocked to observe!) seem to be a plague of hit-and-run immaturity. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:33, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I sometimes wonder if that's not coming from the teachers telling their students that Wikipedia is unreliable and should not be used in school. They must be thinking, "Hey! Teacher sez it's unreliable and we shouldn't use it so it's ok to mess with it!" Sad. -- œ^™ 02:53, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. If a school is a real problem, do as I have done and contact the school with the diff. They act on the information in my experience. Getting your retaliation in first is using a sledgehammer to do something or other inappropriate. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 22:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

  I wonder if it's good policy to scare of a vandal by a "I know where you live" template which basically says: "Hello there, we know that you're from this school and we shall notify your school if you continue". The school info is easily gleaned from a WHOIS, and by a little research (most schools have their own websites), we can get the name of their principal. That will really scare them off and they'll tell their friends that "Wikipedia knows where we are" etc. and they won't dare vandalize WP again. I'm just worried that that may scare off legitimate contributors. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 02:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose Per Xeno. We can handle individual schools if and when needed but we should never simply block an institution just because their members might vandalize. The project is built on the very idea that everyone should be able to contribute easily without having to create an account and the proposal here conflicts with this basic principle. If we start now with schools, how long until someone says "well, it worked for schools, let's just ban IPs altogether and we can get rid of much more vandalism that way"? That anyone can edit is a founding principle after all. Regards SoWhy 22:49, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
• Support It's not a block-- anybody can edit by merely picking out a password, making ten good edits, and waiting 4 days. Of course, that's not good for vandals who are into immediate gratification. The real problem, of course, is that we don't treat school IPs like other IPs, and we don't treat IP-users like we do nameusers. It's rare to find ANY kind of long block (more than 48 hours) on IP users, even when not identified as shared or school. So it's already vandal paradise. A nameuser can be indef blocked for being rude to an admin, but I've seen IP users respond to block threats with "suck my *&^%". And you know what? It still doesn't earn them a long block. My personal advice for wiki-vandals: whatever you do, just don't register a name. Don't put anything on your userpage, and don't put anything on your TALK page that suggests you might NOT be a school library. Let admin imaginations run wild, thinking they're about to harm a whole junior high full of inquiring minds. And there you are: more or less immune. That's the only rule for success. Example: [10] SBHarris 22:58, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

  What if they don't have a computer at home to make an account? –xeno^talk 19:03, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. School IPs should not be blocked simply because they are school IPs. IPs should be blocked when there's enough of a pattern of vandalism that a block is clearly preventing further disruption. (And yes, I've seen several IPs—some of which are schools—with blocks of anywhere from 3 months to 2 years, based on the amount of recurrent vandalism from the source.) The distinction is that with a school/shared IP, the block should be soft, because there's a more likely chance of multiple users of that IP. With a static IP, you can build a case that it's a single person making the edits, so a hard block is warranted. —C.Fred (talk) 23:14, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
• Comment - what is the proposal concretely suggesting? Soft blocking all known school IPs indefinitely? Quite a few school IPs are more or less there anyway, being soft blocked for 6 or 12 months at a time, til the vandalism starts again (school year...) and another block comes. So not much difference for those. Other known school IPs are presumably not blocked because they're not enough of a problem, or there's enough good edits in there to let it go. In general, a common argument against blocking IP edits is that IP vandalism is easier to spot and new accounts are too easy to create. This certainly applies here. Even for the current soft blocks, how much of that vandalism is popping up elsewhere in harder-to-spot form? Rd232 ^talk 23:26, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose per C.Fred and xeno. The problem looks worse than it is because we only notice the problematic ones. Timtrent makes a good point as well. ISPs don't give a crap about normal vandalism, but schools will actually take action, and in some cases do so proactively. Mr.Z-man 00:35, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

LOL. By doing what, exactly? Disabling access to Wikipedia? Disabling outgoing mail from their SMTP? These are far more draconian solutions than what is proposed! If your goal is to allow individual students as much access as possible while still differentiating the good from the bad, you will force the creation of student individual accounts. A teacher can stand and watch to see that this is done (good luck) or you can do it using a computer! It's called a "soft-block." It can be done from the WP end, but I doubt many secondary schools have the sophistication to program it from THEIR end. If the schools do LESS than this, the policy has failed, since they should be doing at least this much. So the argument that it should be left to schools fails on all counts. Schools aren't the experts on how to limit editing from a single shared IP to WP. Wikipedia is. If we abbrogate our own expertise and responsiblity, the job will be done FOR us, by people who don't know what they are doing. With less than optimal results, no matter what they do. Sorry, but this is a responsiblity you can't just pass off in the usual wiki-way. It ends up hurting both the good students AND Wikipedia. And by the way, any security system of ANY kind assumes some amount of bad faith from somebody in your society (sorry). There's difference between doing it on an individual basis, and doing it on a population basis. SBHarris 01:22, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Schools actually can prevent specific students from editing, something that we cannot do. I fail to see how contacting problematic schools is worse than just blocking all of them. I'm pretty sure it is the school's job to make sure that students aren't misbehaving during schools hours while using school property. And "responsibility"? What? Just because someone started a discussion about it means that we all of a sudden have a "responsibility" to prevent vandalism from schools? I'm a volunteer, I don't have a responsibility to anything like that. Mr.Z-man 02:26, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Support soft-blocking every school IP. I see very few good edits from school IP addresses. Fences&Windows 01:25, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Support soft-blocking. About half of volunteer energy is consumed with censorship matters, it seems. Let's put the bureaucrats out of work by eliminating much of the problem at the source. Carrite (talk) 01:59, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Suggestion - A specific, more aggressive anti-vandal bot for problematic IP ranges. Sole Soul (talk) 02:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Good Suggestion - I'd support this. --Ludwigs2 02:45, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
  • That could work - an anti-vandal bot that works differently for schools. What exactly would it do differently though? Possibly a lesser version of this proposal would be for such a bot to (among other things, like reverting more readily) automatically impose softblocks on known school IPs under certain conditions. Also, maybe an aggressive school edit filter could be made, preventing some behaviours from being saved in the first place. Rd232 ^talk 08:27, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Cluebot has nearly no false positives, but that is because it is too cautious. You have to raise many red flags to be caught by Cluebot. Sole Soul (talk) 16:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the vandal-bots work, exactly. if they only look at individual posts, then you'd need to add the range IPs in as requiring a higher level of suspicion. if the bots keep track across multiple posts (looking for patterns) then you need to tell them to treat the range IPs as a single user. Either change should produce faster response and lower threshholds. --Ludwigs2 16:41, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose blocking, we should treat school IPs the same way as we treat all other non-open-proxy IPs. However, I'd like to see a more thorough use of warnings: it seems that we issue a level 1 warning for virtually any vandalism if it's more than about a week after the last warning. We shouldn't restrict editing from IPs whose users haven't caused problems, but we should have a more effective response to IPs whose users have caused problems. Nyttend (talk) 03:35, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Nyttend has a point about how we use warnings and the warning texts themselves. I would support adding text to a level 2 warning for repeat IP vandals pointing out that there is a history of vandalism for the address, and a level 3 warning that includes something along the lines of "If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, you—and all other users of this server for some time to come—will be blocked from editing."

(On the flip side, my personal practice is to give an IP whose sole contribution to Wikipedia is a mild vandalism "one free bite." I'll revert it with no warning (or just an anonwelcome). If they commit a second vandalism, especially to a different article, now they've shown they intend to cause trouble—and I go straight to a level 2 warning.) —C.Fred (talk) 17:45, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Suggestion - Instead of blocking schools when they are a source of vandalism, dispatch a hit team to find the little vandals and give them a nice thorough spanking. We'll need volunteers with the ability to violate habeas corpus and a large amount of ready cash to buy plane tickets on short notice. - Denimadept (talk) 17:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
  • oh, I don't know... I think the foundation would be willing to pay for professions spank-squads, don't you? some things just shouldn't be trusted to amateurs. --Ludwigs2 17:36, 3 March 2010 (UTC)