Wikipedia talk:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Old comment

This page is currently quite messed up: duplicated sections, with some conversations proceeding separately in two places. If someone feels like earning some serious karma points, they could sort this out. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:33, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

What a coincidence...

I was just about to suggest a log for showing page moves yesterday. Now today, with the new upgrade, we have a Move Log. --Ixfd64 2005 June 28 03:53 (UTC)

Response templates

These are for our use:

{{VPP-project}}:

Please see the notice at the top of the page - when you are proposing a new wiki-style project, go to m:Proposals for new projects and write about it there, not here. Note that this does not apply to WikiProjects.

{{VPP-bug}}:

Please see the notice at the top of the page - when a proposal involves a change to the software, go to the bug tracker (which also does feature requests) and file a new bug there.

Just write the template name and sign with ~~~~. r3m0t ^talk 12:10, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

Does this mean that there is now a policy against announcing new WikiProjects here? That seems odd. The Village Pump is meant as a place for general discussion for the English-language Wikipedia. Most people involved in the English-language Wikipedia probably never look at Meta at all. And why would a project specific to the English-language Wikipedia belong discussed at Meta? -- Jmabel | Talk 01:46, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

That's not what is meant by "project" here. Project refers to "wouldn't it be great to have a wiki for X?" Like the perennial Wikimaps proposal. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:21, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

The wording is *terrible* then - I'm rewording it a little bit to get the suggestive 'wiki project' phrase out of there. I thought the same thing as Jmabel when I came here. nae'blis _(talk) 22:06, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

help desk idea

heres an idea for wikipedia help:

1.a user lets say me asks a question

2.you follow my signiture

3.give me the answer on my talk page or what ever page i want you to give the answer on

4. you then go back to the question and write thats its been answered by you and add a link to the page with the answer

I think its a good idea becuse you don't need to check for a reply becuase it will say at the top that you've got a reply

do you like it?

--Madcowpoo 13:09, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, see some discussion oh what help-desk answerers think at Wikipedia:Help_desk#idea. pfctdayelise 13:34, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

What do we make of this

Not sure where this should go (clearly not here); if someone moves it (as they should), please leave a note here about where it's been moved to. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:01, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

hello guys i m rookie do know how to do things here just wanna give an idea,i had read an article on defencetalk.com that (Which SAM systems pose the greatest threat? Pilots perspective)

http://defencetalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4448

i just posted the following!!!

((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-to-air_missile

anti-aircraft_weapons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...rcraft_weapons

warfare#Mobility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ai...rfare#Mobility

hey guys check these links i think u will get ur answer there!!!!))

another member of the forum posted the following as an answer to me!!!

((Just a note of caution when citing Wikpedia as a reference link.

Wikpedia is not a validated site. Anyone can post anything and it will not be validated.

Anyone can edit anything - and thus all of it is subject to immediate bias.

As a test I submitted some military entries some 3 months ago that were completely spurious to see how long it would take for people to correct it. No one did and no one has.))

i just wanna say that wikipedia should ask researchers,scolars and professors check all its articles i m sure this will really improve the contents of the encyclopedia!!!

plz tell if i made any mistake i will try my level best never to do that mistake again!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by B@B!Oo (talk • contribs) 12 Jan 2006

I just want to make it clear: the poster above is apparently not the person who submitted the spurious military material.

To User:B@B!Oo: of course we welcome review by "researchers, scholars and professors". But, basically, we rely on a large community cross-checking one another. When people "test" in the way your colleague did, they are basically sabotaging the project. It's a bit like "testing" your neighbor's paint job by running a key along their siding.

If a topic is sufficiently obscure, there is a fair chance that no one has ever looked at the article except its author. If something was totally made up, probably nothing links to it, and no one would be looking for it, so it has a fair chance of passing under the radar, at least for a while. But that is relatively harmless, since there is probably also no one to read it and be misled.

As we say in Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia, an encyclopedia—any encyclopedia—should be a starting point for research, not an ending point. If an article has no verifiable citations, no discussion, and its history shows no contributions by established contributors, I'd be particularly skeptical of its content. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:01, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Shortcut

Anyone else think having a shortcut for this page would be helpful? If so please post some suggestions here: xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 04:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

• WP:VPPROP
• WP:VPROP

We do have a shortcut; WP:VPP. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 04:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC) Err... wait. Never mind. Flcelloguy (A note?) 04:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Here's what shortcuts already exist: WP:VPR, WP:PRO, Wikipedia:Proposals (does that count?), WP:VP (proposals), and WP:VP (pro). Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 04:12, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info User:Flcelloguy, I've added the shortcut box to the top of the page. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 02:30, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Change the Community Portal back, but not THAT FAR back!

I spent months working on the community portal, including creating/installing the Community Bulletin Board, and based on the heavy use the CBB gets, I was under the impression that most people liked the page. Unfortunately, the way the talk page system is set up, it seems like only people with complaints and gripes visit those, so all I seemed to get was negative feedback, on various points and then recently to the design effort itself. I did everything I could to accomodate the specific points (except for a select couple that I really liked). But then people started complaining about the page being changed at all - and it was supposedly an open page! Then somebody comes along and reverts the page to a version that existed months ago, including getting rid of the community bulletin board, soon followed by an admin who locks the page. Luckily another bold admin restored the CBB, but *sigh*, not the rest of the page. So... I called for a vote to get the page changed back! And finally, some encouragement shows up in the form of support votes. Is this what we have to do to avoid the Wikiblues around here? --Go for it! 20:25, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Am I the only one, or has anyone else noticed the apparent process bias towards criticism promoted by the talk page system? --Go for it! 20:25, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, isn't that the point of the talk page? To go there if you have something to say? If a user likes it, they won't go on the talk page and say, "Hey great job, guys". Rather, users go there to object. Btw, please don't change the community portal. My eyes were so happy these past three days b/c it was spared the sight of aquamarine and yellow put together. -Osbus 20:57, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Overhaul for Village pump (proposals)

My proposal is to change the format of Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) as follows: There would be only three sections to this page:

1. Instructions on how to post a proposal and how the approval process works.
2. Links to active proposals, with each proposal posted on its own page. Each proposal would have its own talk page as well.
3. Links to inactive proposals and the decisions that were reached.

Here's a mock up.

Advantages

• The page won't get so long.
• It will be easy to see the results of discussions, and what steps are being taken.
• Discussions will take place on separate pages. This will make it much easier to follow the discussions you participate in or choose to watch.
• Easier to archive discussions.

Disadvantages

• A little more difficult to start a proposal.

-- Samuel Wantman 29 June 2005 06:05 (UTC)

Who decides what's active and what's inactive? I'd say that 95% of ideas here never go anywhere. Nearly everything is inactive here except when someone posts to them. It's not like someone is out working on most of these proposals. This link is Broken 29 June 2005 14:51 (UTC)

Discussion

I prefer to be able to watch all the discussions, which becomes much more difficult with transclusion. Filiocht | Talk June 29, 2005 08:31 (UTC)

Yes, if you are following all the discussions, it would be more difficult. The big problem that I see is that people often just scan the bottom of the page, and older discussions peter out because people are unaware of newer comments that may have been made. There is often no resolution to proposals -- positive or negative -- and this can be a source of frustration. -- Samuel Wantman 29 June 2005 08:43 (UTC)

I think I'm going to come out against this. I guess because I think it's another step into compartmentalisation, which to me runs counter to the idea of a village pump. I don't think the size of the pages is too great if we keep pruning them every week. Yes, the watching of discussions is a pain, I suppose another option is subpaging, but then that may be complicated for newer users. I think it's fairly easy to archive discussions at the moment, if you want it, grab it. Maybe if people started moving conversations off to relevant talk pages once they start flying, with a redirect, that would be a better idea. That's just my initial thoughts, anyway. Hiding 29 June 2005 08:36 (UTC)

I think User:Hiding's suggestion above (or some variation on it) is likely the best way to go. Perhaps one of the archiving bots could be retooled to move a discussion to its own sub-page after the discussion gains a certain length, or has a certain number of responders, leaving a navigation comment/link under the header in the discussion's place. - jc37 15:54, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I always come in through the history page so that I can see what comments have been added since the last time I looked. Breaking out the proposals to their own pages would complicate things for me. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 22:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

as for me, I'd like the change. There are too many parallel discussions and I only want to follow a few of them. Take care in setting it up, so people who want to can see the whole thing. DGG 08:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd like it too. What if each discussion were a sub-page of this one, yet still transcluded to the main page, the way AfDs work? That way people could see individual discussions or all discussions at once, whichever they prefer?

Equazcion • argue/improves • 02:52, 09/28/2007

Alternative

Instead of reorganizing, we could use a (very very) subtle visual highlight for "recent" addition blocks, similar visually to that being proposed for In the news pictures (see image).

Anything in the last 2 days gets an ever-so-slightly darker blue background than normal, and anything in the last 1 day get a slightly-darker-than-that blue background. Everything older than 2 days is displayed as normal. That would also solve some of the issues leading to the perennial proposal - bring modern interface (see image).

I don't know if it's technically feasible though. Somehow integrate diffs with css? not my specialty. --Quiddity 00:25, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

TeX font sizes

This is an equation created with Wikipedia's font for math markup:

$Q\;=\;C\;A\;P\;{\sqrt {{\bigg (}{\frac {\;\,g_{c}\;k\;M}{Z\;R\;T}}{\bigg )}{\bigg (}{\frac {2}{k+1}}{\bigg )}^{(k+1)/(k-1)}}}$

This is the same equation created using WikiCities' font for the very same math markup:

A suggestion has been made at Bugzilla that Wikipedia make the smaller font TeX version, used at WikiCities, available as an alternative option to the current larger TeX font used in Wikipedia. It is quite obvious that the WikCities TeX font is smaller, neater and tidier. It is much closer to the size of the regular text so that the overall look of an article that uses TeX equations is more balanced. Also, the smaller TeX font allows for displaying longer equations, within the display screen width, than does the Wikipedia font.

The larger font would remain just as it is. Users would still use the <math> and </math> tags. If they wanted to use the smaller font, they would use <maths> and </maths> or some similar technique. In other words, when a user creates an equation, he or she would decide which font they wanted to use.

If you agree with this suggestion, visit Bugzilla Bug #4915 at here, scroll down and vote for the proposal. - mbeychok 19:30, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

• I agree on the goal. However I think this should be set in user preferences (with the default being the smaller TeX font). Sorry, I can't vote on bugzilla because it shows e-mail addresses without obfuscation. That's absolutely unacceptable. Since I've voted there I get 150/200 unsolicited mails per day on a virtually spam free account that I have been using for years on every kind of programming newsgroup and mailing list with public archives :-/ In fact, if someone knows where to ask for deletion of my account and of all my posts I'd be glad to hear. Thanks. —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 11:32, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Definitely use the current, larger one. The smaller one is so much harder to read. —Mets501^talk 00:36, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of total stars

I have just started a article with the title mentioned above. Perhaps it would be interesting contributing\starting with me to this list; it might be fun if their is some kind of a competition between several users, to be on top of that list! Maybe some people would go and work harder, do more, contribute more, and vandalise less! So, what do you say?

the Old and respectable Kashwialariski 15:51, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

See my comment on the article's talk page. At present, any editor can award a barnstar to any other editor (except, apparently, to me). If we are going to formalise stars as being a meaningful expression of the view of the community, it must surely be necessary to regulate and formalise the parameters under which they are awarded.--Anthony.bradbury 16:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry

A question. I am fully aware that deleting any comment from any page is customarily, and rightly, regarded as amazingly naughty; in unusual situations, such as the intermittent outbursts on this page and on the project page by sockpuppets of User:Cplot, could an exception not be made? Obviously they are all immediately reverted, and why he does not learn to expect that I do not know, but would not erasure make the point more forcefully?--Anthony.bradbury 00:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, to delete a particular revision requires that the whole page is deleted, then only the revisions that you don't want to delete are restored. This shows that WP:VPP has about 23 000 revisions so this would place a lot of strain on the server and make the page temporarily unusable. The problem is increased when multiple discussion pages are dealt with, and when the whole process has to be repeated each time the page is vandalised. The edits could, alternatively, be oversighted, but they don't come under the oversight policy so a policy change would be required. Additionally, it would cause strain because there are very few users with oversight permissions that can do this. I don't think this would cause much benefit, anyway, because with so many edits to the pages, the page history would probably not be used that often, and unless the revisions are removed quickly, they would still show up on watchlists. Tra (Talk) 03:07, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I would not consider seeking a policy change on oversight, nor, I am sure, would it be agreed anyway. And Stewards have enough to do. It's just that I find User:Cplot's attitude amazingly irritating. Perhaps I'm getting paranoid about it!--Anthony.bradbury 16:07, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it should occasionally be history-archived to subpages. --Random832 20:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I would like to discuss the guidelines for Sockpuppetry more in-depth, including better ways to deal with this phenom when it's clear there are many "users" who are simply the same person. I'm following a specific case study entry where sockpuppetry is abundant and obviously related to an individual who is seeking to make the Wikipedia entry a personal soap box -- or rather a puppet show. Although the person/user is repeatedly told to follow the guidelines, they simply create a new sockpuppet who post their POV edits and claim to not know any better. It is almost a "comedy of (intentional) errors" and I would be interested in following other examples of sockpuppetry and related policy discussions as this has wider implications for best practices around creating authentic shared knowledge repositories of record. Are there algorithms that could determine a fair "one-who-poses-as-many" user policy that flags an entry as being questionable or having a bad case of sockpuppets?

--NewMediaResearcher (talk) 13:48, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

---

A Comment on the Object Design Applied Reasoning Encyclopedia

A semantic network appears to make the search. A good selection as the relation set allows a substantial network. You have a list.

I tried an AI program once and the problem appeared the relation. I was not adept totally and had to define. A set eliminates this open set semantic system.

A sentence writer as a short demonstration is the implication of complete third order testing function.

A subject appears represeted by the letter, A. And to make the sentence requires the A to be defined as a link or not. A desire to infer existence appears the applied semantic relation. A common usage is to invert the appearance of knowledge and discover relations between topics in Wiki. A link as you propose was to imply a relations semantic existence, good idea!

A face value examination was to make it appear simple, but as the set was chosen, abstract, a basic computer appeared! If your list of clauses of semantic relation is closed a search for new relation was impossible. A simple applied search return function allows all clause to be examined as a search. A word outside the link allows this. And the dog was to be inferred. The writer has a search example defining abstract subject as searchable!

The writer of the search engine for the wiki is third order complete in his example! It is an outstanding concept in modern applied reason. It is a real good stuff idea. --Eaglesondouglas 14:44, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

A second engine as the basic method o. o as the word for the object under a d. A d as the abstracted inference. And the, "a" as an example of abstract a or A.

So I defined three sentences. And the code is as follows.

java psuedocode

class a(){ automatically insert link list here!

}

a

A letter a as example appears the runtime to cause a running "a" example.

Title this "a".

This is object design talk and a valid example of just an "a" class appears to control. A search engine text popup example appears a valid a test or inference. All abstract a as definition appears to be a link inserted in the class a. A relation as defined by abstract a allows a redefiniton as equation where class "a" is given symbol. Meaning the popup to search can have a hyperlist of valid a examples, so the relation, "a member of" will popup with all set memebr examples from the whole wiki! And this all revolves around the little little class example given.

SO be careful outthere.

--207.69.138.138 15:26, 13 March 2007 (UTC)--Eaglesondouglas 15:27, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Commons media categorisation

Hello,

I've posted this question to several places more relevant to images, but I haven't really gotten much feedback. I've encountered a user who has created several categories for images as analogues to categories on the Commons based on the idea that then linking those categories to the Commons makes locating images easier, even though there is far less image content on WP and so the result is many categories for a few images; they have even begun categorising Commons media that are not even used on WP (1,2,3,4) so as to populate the hierarchy of categories created (1,2). My understanding was that we were actively in the process of moving all free images to the Commons, and so it followed that if not reducing image infrastructure on WP, we shouldn't be increasing it. After an inquiry to an admin working on image categorisation that recommended that I transwiki to the Commons any images that were on WP, and which led to deletion of one of the images, this user promptly created a page for the Commons image and again categorised it on WP. According to that sort of convention, what stops us from categorising every image from the Commons by their WP description pages, thus pretty much negating the utility of separate projects? Please advise, Tewfik^Talk 18:20, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Is Covert Corporate Advertising Desireable?

I am becoming a little concerned about the growing number of commercial organisations using Wikipedia as effectively free advertising space, by posting pages on themselves and products. Whilst corporate information is obviously useful, these pages are often rather positively biased as you may expect. My personal view is that these postings should be discouraged. Wikipedia... facts not marketing.--David.oconnor 16:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Are you proposing a change to WP:NOT#SOAP? dr.ef.tymac 18:22, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

do your bit right now and edit the ones that are notable to remove the advertising spam. (But remember that product names are considered important in some areas, such as computers and related technology.) As for the ones that are useless altogether, nominate them for deletion -- see WP:AFD, and join the discussions-- the people there need help.DGG 08:00, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

What concerns me more than the addition of non-notable articles is the deletion of useful articles about notable companies and products. Some people seem to have an anti-commercial bias, whereby a minor fictional character or other unremarkable piece of pop culture is worth covering in Wikipedia, but a business service used by millions of people is incorrectly labeled "advertising" merely because the article describes its features and uses. They get deleted, or the material removed, despite clearly satisfying notability guidelines. There's a constant backdrop of spam here, on every conceivable topic. I'm not aware that business articles suffer from that any more than anyone else.Wikidemo 16:01, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Too Cluttered?

The admin of Wikipedia is doing a great job, but I'm worried that it is becoming cluttered. There are coloured boxes on every second page saying the the article doesn't meet the quality standards or needs clean up. They are useful but becoming an eyesore. What about a less obnoxious standard box, in a standardized place at the bottom of the page. --MarcBrackett 9:00, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Perhaps it's best to think of Wikipedia as a gigantic infant being raised by millions of "guardians" — it's only six years old, we can't yet expect it to be 100% clean and referenced. While these standards should certainly be met for each individual article as best as can be done, we wouldn't want to prioritize aesthetics over quality by making the templates you're talking about less obvious. Their obviousness is actually the point — so people can be warned that a given article is not necessarily trustworthy, and/or so that they can offer their help to clean it up. And by the way, there is actually no one "admin of Wikipedia", unless you're speaking generically of Wikipedia:Administration. $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 19:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism protection

I know that some sites, such as this one, have trouble with vandals. I'm curious to know if these vandals can be permanently banned from the sites they vandalize. Brian Pearson 00:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

By "sites", you actually mean articles, yes? See WP:PROT, WP:BAN, and WP:BP. Adrian M. H. 01:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, articles -- sorry. I'm especially interested in this particular article due to recent vandalism. I'd just a soon not have to worry about future attacks from the same individuals for this specific article. Brian Pearson 04:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not theoretically possible. Individual accounts can be banned but new ones can be created. There are things that are available, such as blocking account creation, autoblocks and range blocks, as well as semi-protection and full protection, but this does not stop the most determined of users (see WP:LTA for examples). The only way to block vandalism would be to stop "anyone can edit". x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I decided to try light protection -- the person in question is not an established wiki person -- but a robot immediately removed it. I guess there is a way around that? Brian Pearson 23:41, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything listed at RPP, which is where you need to go to request protection, per WP:PROT. This edit added a protection notification template to an unprotected page, which won't actually do anything. Adrian M. H. 23:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

This important issue needs to be clarified. If we spot an obvious act of vandalism, such as happened to the article on aging,the best thing to do is to go to the article's history, use the "Copy" and "Paste" facilities and insert the earlier version before the article got vandalised. This is what I did to the article on aging on December, 20, 2007. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

If that's tedious, you can simply use the undo function or edit an earlier revision. –Pomte 23:37, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there is any one-size-fits-all solution -- expecially in the case of older vandalizing edits which have gone unrecognized and unfixed for some time. Examples: [1], [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sukyo_Mahikari&diff=159942487&oldid=159930774. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 00:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Archiving

Why are the village pump pages not archived in the same way as other policy pages? After 1 week they move to a single archive each, then after another week that archive is purged and not saved? I think it would be useful to preserve the history of village pump discussions so that people can refer to them. Is there a reason why we do it this way? If not, any objections to my setting up a more standard archiving system like most policy discussion pages have (archive001, archive002, etc)? Wikidemo 02:40, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the reason for the current system is that the discussions are only supposed to be related to the present and that future references to the discussions would not be useful. I would agree that keeping archives would be a better way to handle the discussions. I would also support creating archives of discussions that are not currently archived by going through the history, since their content is already publically available and it would be nice to make it easier to access. I've linked to this discussion at [[[Wikipedia talk:Village pump]] since it affects all of the pump pages. Tra (Talk) 16:17, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps there could be an index of permlinks that between them covered all the threads ever, with the names of the threads that the permlinks covered? This would be a much more lightweight way to retrofit an archive. --ais523 18:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

It would be possible to get almost all of the discussions with few duplicates by taking diffs 7 days apart from the /Archive pages for each pump. These could then be linked in a list. One reason that having the archives on normal pages rather than diffs would be better is that it allows Google to index them, making them easier to search. Tra (Talk) 21:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I've put those links onto Wikipedia:Village pump archive. Tra (Talk) 19:17, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

As for the new archiving system, perhaps the bot code could look something like this:

{{User:MiszaBot/config
|algo = old(7d)
|archive = Wikipedia:Village pump (example)/Archive %(counter)d
|counter = 1
|maxarchivesize = 60K
}}

This would give us page names like Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 1 etc and the size of the page would be slighly smaller than this archive, for example. As for the content at the top of each archive, the default is to use {{talkarchive}} but another option would be to put |archiveheader={{Archive list|root=Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)}} or something similar to allow the other archive pages to be linked. Tra (Talk) 01:31, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I've put in the code for the proposals page. Let's see if it works and if so, it can be rolled out to the other pages. Tra (Talk) 16:40, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

It appears to work, so I've converted the other pages. Tra (Talk) 19:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

LOTD proposal

You may have seen either the original list of the day proposal or the revised version. A more modest experimental proposal is now at issue at WP:LOTDP. Feel free to voice your opinion.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 18:02, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Applicability of the word "terrorist"

We can all agree this word is deragatory. If the word terrorist is to be used correctly why dont we see it by names such as Stalin and the government he ran. In the colonial period the colonists called the colonized who fought against them terrorists, who is the bigger terrorist here, the colonizers or those that defend themselves? This word is really opinionated since someones terrorist might be considered someone else a group that stands for justice, and this word should not be even used unless the borders of which the colonizers setup is removed, especially after they did soo much damage to world history and humanity in general. Just for the intire wikipedia, we are not to show any way favoritism to one side, so lets report facts of what has happened and confirmed rather then putting titles such as terrorists on one onther, since this supposed to show only facts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Logic of History (talk • contribs) 00:03, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have an odd definition of Terrorism. I don't see how Stalin or colonists (I assume you refer to the North American colonial period) could be considered terrorists under modern definitions. Define your terms, rather than classifying every bad guy in history as a terrorist. Sχeptomaniac^{χαιρετε} 16:41, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

This is already adequately covered at Wikipedia:Words to avoid. You may want to ask your question there, as people that monitor that page may be able to provide a more complete answer or engage in a more thorough discussion. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 17:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I think there's as well-established criterion for use of the word "terrorist" - attacking or threatening persons or object not directly involved in supporting the regime to which the alleged terrorist objects. So for example a guerilla attacking government / military buildings or personnel might not be acting as a terrorist, but one who deliberately attacked the general public or families of government / military personnel or the property of these persons would be acting as a terrorist. There are also grey areas in the definition of "terrorist", e.g.: attacks on infrastructure which has some military significance, such as power stations or transport facilities; attacks on targets in countries that provide adequate non-violent means of opposition (free press, free and fair elections; or freedom to emigrate) ). Attacks on government / military targets in countries that provide adequate non-violent means of opposition or emigration are also a grey area: attacks intended to change internal policies or balance of power might reasonably be regarded as terrorism; while attacks by people who might reasonably claim to be oppressed by such countries might not constitute terrorism. Note that these comments do not give a privileged position to "legitimate" governments. Although the preceding analysis is off the top of my head, there's plenty of support for similar reasoning: Ruby, C.L. (December 2002). "The Definition of Terrorism". Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy.; Bica, C.C. (2004). "Terrorism and Response: A Moral Inquiry into the Killing of Noncombatants".; "The Definition of Terrorism" (PDF). Cambridge University Model United Nations Society. 2007. Philcha (talk) 14:55, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

An editor's own characterization of someone/something -- even when in accord with objective guidelines -- is still "original research." This is true for any characterization, ala "Babe Ruth was an awesome batsman" is OR even if the objective batting record says so.

Someone else would have to explicitly use the term in order for an editor to be able to use it. For an extreme characterization such as this, the word should be (in) a direct quotation of a "weighty" source. -- Fullstop (talk) 16:28, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

DHMTL for cladograms / phylogenies?

Large cladograms / phylogenies in biological taxonomy can be hard to read because they can sprawl over several screenfuls. It struck me that this is a fairly common problem on the web, and that a common solution is to provide an expanding / collapsing tree hierarchy, like those use for folders in Windows Explorer and most email programs. Versions implemented on Web pages often have additional facilities, e.g.: "expand all" and "collapse all" buttons; the ability to restore the hierarchy to its last state if the visitor leaves and returns to the page. Doing this on a Web page requires: some special CSS to define the tree's appearance; Javascript to manipulate the tree's appearance and to save its state as a cookie (strictly per session, i.e. vanishes when the visitor quits the browser; no harm done if the visitor's browser is set to reject all cookies). If the visitors' browser is set to disallow Javascript, the tree apppears with all branches fully expanded, i.e. as at present. To cater for printing, the CSS should include an "@media print" section which sets all branches to expanded. Once the relevant files have been set up, an editor who wants to use this technique would: include the script (once per article) by linking to a file; insert 1-2 lines of Javascript code per tree, mainly to pass to the script the HTML id of the specific tree; code the tree as HTML nested unordered lists (UL and LI tags). I know how to produce the necessary Javascript and CSS in a standard Web page as my own site uses this technique. Would it be (a) permissible (b) desirable for Wikipedia pages with with large taxonomy diagrams? I've searched the Help pages and could only find Help:User_style#JavaScript, which refers to User pages. Philcha (talk) 16:31, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

You may like to see and help fix the problems with Template:Clade to start with. Shyamal (talk) 04:18, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I know nothing at present about template construction, so I'm reluctant to modify Template:Clade as I'd probably fail to cater properly for some unusual situation. As far as I can see Template:Clade is based on nested HTML tables, an old-fashioned and inefficient method of Web page design. It also has disadvantages for the reader: a strong tendency to cause horizontal scrolling (one of the two deadly sins of Web page design) if the hierarchy is more than 3 or 4 levels deep; entries take at least as much space vertically as the "ASCII art" approach used on many pages, so there's at least as much vertical scrolling; the root of the tree appears in the middle, so the user has to scroll down to find the root and then up to see the first item in the next level. And it's not great from an editor's point of view if an intermediate level is added or removed (e.g. the insertion of Mammaliformes between Cynodonta and Mammalia), the editor has to change all the level numbers.

Even without DHTML an approach based on nested ULs would be better for the reader: less horizontal scrolling becuase the indentation is reduced; the root appears near the top. And I think it would be easier for editors because level numbers would not be needed, since the nesting of ULs would automatically generate the correct indentation. Philcha (talk) 18:23, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like it might be a good idea as a software extension to MediaWiki, rather than something where the JavaScript is added by admins by hand sitewide. It might take a while to persuade someone to write it, though. --ais523 19:51, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Web-page tool for citation formats?

Recent article reviews mark down articles for using simple Web links in references rather than a citation template. The problem is that using citation template is pain: it's intrinsically fiddly; it's not easy enough to find the relevant Help pages (and don't say "so bookmark them", I have over 500 bookmarks already and I'm sure that's not a record for Wikipedia editors); the Help pages are fragmented (examples of different sub-types of citation template in different pages, none of which contains its own description of the relevant parameters). I suggest a "citation" button be added to the edit toolbar. It should display a form whose contents depend on the citation type; citation types should ideally be radio buttons rather than a drop-down (one less click, and makes it possible to provide tooltips on mouseover); tooltips when the user mouses over a parameter name; clear indication of which parameters are mandatory for a particular citation type; etc. I suspect DHTML would do the job (change the display property of form elements from "none" to "block" if relevant to the citation type). Philcha 19:32, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I've recently noticed Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Put button for "ref" tags in edit window toolbar, which should be considered in conjunction with my proposal as it concerns another aspect of referencing. Philcha 00:19, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

A very convenient tool is the Wikicite program made by User:Dmoss : User:Dmoss/Wikicite. I use it all the time to the cite web, a journal or a book. JoJan 09:07, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I haven't tried Wikicite, but it starts off with 2 disadvantages: it's hard to find, especially for relatively new editors who might know enough of their own fields to make useful contributions; it needs to be downloaded and installed on the user's PC, which will deter many PC users ("what's a Visual Studio .NET project?") and may even put off experienced PC users (need to back up / restore downloads, transfer to a new PC, etc.). Philcha 15:03, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I have one, that I wrote, running on my local network, that I use... But, there's a much better one on the toolserver: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/makeref.php HTH! :) SQL^{Query me!} 15:10, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! So now Wikipedia needs to link to it from the edit form - preferably in a new window, so that the edit textarea retains its current position. I'd suggest 1 improvement to http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/makeref.php - it should have a scratchpad area where the user can paste in the citation as given in e.g. the heading of a journal article's web page, so the user does not have to bounce between pages for each element of the citation. Philcha (talk) 16:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Magnus, could you perhaps make that conform to {{citation}} and not the {{cite|...}} noodlyness? Citations are just ... citations. For example, a journal/encyclopedia/whatever article on the web is not cited any differently than a journal/encyclopedia/whatever on paper. After all, transmission medium does not define content. And a newspaper is cited like any other periodical, including journals. And an encyclopedia is also a book, as is also conference proceedings etc.

-- Fullstop (talk) 16:50, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I think I prefer a form that knows which params are required with each type of cited object, e.g. url for Web, publisher for book, journal for journal, contribution to collection, etc. - it's for people who don't know {{citation}} by heart. But "citation" (general) should be available as a fallback position, although it should be at the end of the list of options. Philcha (talk) 11:49, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

With enough experience you can just type it all in yourself faster than going to a tool. What would be really cool is a browser-based tool that would figure out the cite and load it into your clipboard, based on the url or by scraping the page content of the active window. Wikidemo (talk) 00:33, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Interesting proposal, someone with some java script experience can do the job for you in less than an hour. Λua∫Wise ^{(Operibus anteire)} 19:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

That would be something like this, but better?

And if anyone has found something that isn't listed in the "Tools for creating citations" subsection of the Index, please feel free to add it there. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:31, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

(undent) And why is this thread here (on the talk page) rather than on the proposals page? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I've always used this template filling site for all my citing needs. It can use PubMed ID, ISBN, URL, Drugbank ID, HGCN ID, and PubChem ID to automatically fill out the correct citation template. It's an indispensable tool for citing. bibliomaniac15 21:11, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Archiving is broken

We still have a post at the top of the front side of this page from Christmas. I suspect this is some technical problem related to the large 'hidden' discussion in the Muhammad image controversy. Please someone fix this. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 06:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem was that the posts at the top of the page had timestamps that the bot didn't recognise. The posts should now be archived when the bot next runs. Tra (Talk) 10:29, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Is this the right place for software modification proposals?

A lot of the proposals on the project page involve programming changes. I don't see comments from developers about feasibility, the amount of work required to implement the changes, and other priorities for the developers' time. Without that essential input, making and discussing proposals for what more they should do for us isn't all that meaningful, or at least is missing a very important element. Is this the right place for these discussions? Finell (Talk) 16:50, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Generally, WP:VPT and Bugzilla are better places for asking for programming changes. Proposals is properly used for establishing the consensus needed to change something on the dev's side (as well as our side, of course). I know the dev's read WP:VPT, but I don't know if they read VPP. They occasionally comment there as well. --Izno (talk) 18:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

So why the heck does WP:VPT say "This page is not for new feature requests. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla or the Village pump proposals page because there is no guarantee developers will read this page." -- which I interpret as meaning, "If you don't understand BugZilla, then post all proposals that require any programming changes at VPP, because the devs read VPP, but not VPT"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Probably because whoever wrote it didn't know what they were talking about. Mr.Z-man 21:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

For the most part, this is a silly place for technical proposals that require changes to MediaWiki. The English Wikipedia isn't the only site that uses MediaWiki; the results of a poll here aren't especially meaningful to the developers. At best, it will influence a developer who has ties to this project. Proposals to enable existing features that are disabled by default or proposals to install a MediaWiki extension should be made here, as these require little coding work and only only affect this project. People certainly can make proposals for technical changes here, but they should know that consensus here is no guarantee it will be done and ideally, people should ask about feasibility before they make the proposal. Mr.Z-man 21:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

As a developer, I have an idea about feasibility - however, that doesn't mean I'll want to spend the time to make a feature work with Wikipedia (or encourage others to) until I know that editors will support its inclusion. Making a proposal here seems to be a reasonable part of requirements gathering, especially for features that will have wider implications for editors. GreenReaper (talk) 18:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Archiving problem!

I just found that there is an Archive48 and Archive 48 I don't know how you handle the archives here, but I guess thats not how it should be. Greets --Dbenzhuser (talk) 10:18, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Nobody? Leaving it this way, means that nobody will find those 45 proposals on the first of the two pages ever again. --Dbenzhuser (talk) 23:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I've notified the bot owners responsible. I'll merge the archives after they've had a chance too look at it and figure out what went wrong. —Ruud 01:25, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Fixed the archiving, it was missing a space. I'll fix the archives now. Gimme a minute. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 02:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Another archiving problem?

Please forgive me if this is a false alarm. But Archive 58 ends at 20 February, and Archive 59 starts at 7 March. Seems the messages in between are lost (about 17 days). I made a proposal in 28 February and I can't find it in the archives - that's how I noticed the problem. Also I noticed that Archive 59 is missing the header: {{Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive header}} - Ark25 (talk) 02:25, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Check the page history. ClueBot III has been archiving the archive, moving old topics to a new page. Reach Out to the Truth 03:14, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Well I checked and it looks like the bot simply deleted the proposals, instead of archiving them. Because I can't find those proposals in the Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 59 Ark25 (talk) 03:28, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Of course it deleted them. That's part of the archiving process. Old discussions from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 59 have been "archived" to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 59/Archives/ 48. Incorrectly, obviously. Reach Out to the Truth 04:01, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

D'oh, archiving the archive ! Seems my proposal it's not even in the Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 59/Archives/ 48. Thanks for help. Anyways, someone should tell the guy, before he's making more Hodge-podge. Also, would be good if someone checks for other errors like that. It's a pity to mess the archives. Ark25 (talk) 04:29, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Tagging old proposals for categorization

I think we should consider tagging old proposals with a template such as {{Dormant}} so that they get properly categorized (apart from Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals because they weren't really rejected, just went stale). This way stale proposals that haven't received adequate discussion and input may be much more easily found and revived by browsing through the category. We could add another bullet point in the top menu instructing readers to tag their proposals if they go dormant. Meanwhile we can search through the archives and tag others that maybe potentially important. -- œ^™ 23:42, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Where has the content page gone?

Where has the contents list gone? It used to be the case that one would see a list of titles of proposals here, and one only needed to click on a wikilink to get to a proposal that interested one. Can we go back to doing this, please? Many thanks, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:49, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by contents list? Are you referring to the table of contents? It is there for me. In your preferences under Appearance --> Advanced options, there is a checkbox called "Show table of contents (for pages with more than 3 headings)". Is that box checked? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 20:26, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry - I think I have just found what I was looking for, I had missed the wikilink that says "Show" earlier. What I meant by content list is what one accesses when one clicks on this! ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:10, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Glad you found it. There is nothing to apologize for. :) Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 21:28, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

My proposal

hello,

my proposal was archived by the bot. Now it seems that nobody reviewed my post and closed this to implement this feature. I wasn't informed on my talk pages, so I don't know if someone is doing this or not. Maybe there is already a beta version. Would be glad to see the link to my sandbox. Regards.--♫GoP♫_T^C_N 23:07, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Generally, silence means that nobody else was particularly interested in the proposal, and that it is not going to be implemented. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Great ♫GoP♫_T^C_N 11:41, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I see strong support for the feature as long as it can be opted out of. The way to do this is probably with an "enabled by default" gadget, so your best bet would be to post at Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals with a summary of the proposal and a link to the archived Village pump discussion to show consensus. Anomie⚔ 17:23, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist changes

There was a thread with consensus to enable the recent watchlist changes... whatever happened to that consensus after being archived? --lTopGunl (talk) 23:55, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Where is the best place for my proposal?

I phrased a RfC / proposal on this template talk page. Question: Should I leave it there and just post a link on the Village Pump page, or should I copy it over here? What's best practice? Also, is this the right place or is there a place for proposals, e.g., in Wikiproject software? --Jesus Presley (talk) 00:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I just added it as a link to the proposals page. Y Jesus Presley (talk) 04:21, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

There is fine. It can be added to {{cent}} if needed, and advertised at WP:VPP, as was just done by the user as indicated above. It is automatically linked at WP:RFC and at WP:Dashboard. It really does not matter where RfC's are actually located, but they ideally are on the talk page of the page affected. Apteva (talk) 04:35, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

About a survey

I am going to make a survey about WP anti-vandal tool and WP, vandaliam. Shall I proceed?--Pratyya ^(Hello!) 12:57, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

New village pump header

It seems the village pumps were recently changed to use {{Village pump page header}} at the top. I think this looks good, except for the bullet points. I suggest to either remove them or keep them and make the text left aligned instead. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 11:31, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Not quite; they already used that template but the template was extensively changed by DePiep this morning. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:39, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, okay, thanks for pointing that out. Also, I think it looks good now. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 18:05, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I can't say I like it very much, but then I don't like tabbed browsing, and "pseudo tabs" even less. Was this discussed anywhere? An optimist on the run!   21:44, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Implementing a proposal?

The consensus seemed very strong in the proposal here to test out Template:COI editnotice on the Talk page of a sub-set of articles on organizations. What's the next step to actually implement the proposal? CorporateM (Talk) 15:49, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Edit Counter Optin proposal trolling

This notification has appeared repeatedly on my Watchlist page over the past several weeks: "There is an active discussion about whether or not the opt-in requirement should be removed from the edit counter for the English Wikipedia. [dismiss]". I've dismissed it at least a dozen times. Why does it keep showing up?--Wikimedes (talk) 07:06, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

@Wikimedes: It's controlled by a cookie. Some browsers zap cookies when you close them, which is why the message reappears - there's no cookie telling it not to. Your browser might be configurable to keep cookies until they expire, instead of deleting them on exit. If you're technically minded, the relevant cookie has the following characteristics - host: en.wikipedia.org; name: hidewatchlistmessage-172; expires: 24 May 2014 13:41:04. If you don't want to fiddle with browser settings (or you can't find the relevant one), you can use some CSS to achieve a similar effect:

li.cookie-ID_172 { display: none; }

Pop that into Special:MyPage/common.css and the message will be gone, no matter what your browser does with cookies.

BTW this is really a WP:VPT matter. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:54, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. Oddly enough, it was the unresponsive dismiss button that bothered me more than the notification itself. Now that I know what's going on, it's easy enough to live with. Also thank you for making me aware of VPT.--Wikimedes (talk) 08:48, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Banning changes

May one propose changes to the Banning policy? GoodDay (talk) 16:18, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't see why not, you'll want to do so at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) though. Sam Walton (talk) 16:23, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Don't see why you can't (it would be a good idea to transclude it to WP:VPP or leave a note there though). --lTopGunl (talk) 16:26, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks. GoodDay (talk) 16:25, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Vandal fighter RfC

I'll leave a few notes here at roughly one-week intervals; my tendency to speak up as a closer hasn't bothered people in the previous user-rights RfCs I've closed, and my feeling is that the spirit of NPOV almost requires it, for a discussion that's really never stopped over the last 12 years. (I'm supposed to be reflecting the community's POV, as expressed in this and past discussions, and I don't want to just spring that POV on you at the end.) But there's a problem that overhangs all these discussions, and I haven't even seen anyone try to argue otherwise. We have enough admins and people assisting admins to get the most critical work done now (just barely), but when the current admin corps moves on, the 22 new admins per year that RfA is producing aren't going to be sufficient. This problem has solutions, but the best solutions require helping the new guys along ... and I'm not saying no one is doing this, but we're not doing enough of encouraging and training and vetting tomorrow's admin corps.

The current RfC tries to tackle the problem by letting non-admins get some experience pushing admin buttons, which might also prepare them to move on to bigger things, but this RfC isn't close to a consensus yet for any one position. And I take the bar to be higher than "consensus" in this case, based on past discussions. Most of the admins and people doing similar work who we really rely on, the ones who can grind through heavy workloads while feeling relaxed and focused, are not looking to have a daily fight with the community over the legitimacy and value of what they're doing ... they need broad support, or else their enthusiasm declines rapidly for this kind of self-sacrificing work. If a solid 25% of Wikipedians are pushing back against what you're trying to do every day, you're not going to be effective doing it.

So, for the moment, the big problem remains. Unless the admin fairies start dropping admins out of the blue sky, we're going to have to find something that works better than what we're doing now, or risk the future of the English Wikipedia. Actually, what the supporters and opposers are saying gives me more hope than usual here; many arguments on both sides are sound, and I think we're close to eliminating from consideration all the things that won't work ... which in theory, gets us closer to finding what will work. I can imagine projects that would give non-admins the chance to cover significant bite-sized chunks of the admin workload that aren't currently covered by non-admins. (The reason it hasn't happened yet is simply that it can't be done "on the cheap"; people will need to invest time and commit to making it work.) But that's up to you guys; I'm just a closer. - Dank (push to talk) 23:48, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, very thoughtful comments. Do you intend this as a discussion area (which would seem to duplicate the discussion part of the RfC) or more of a "blog" about your involvement in the RfC? ―Mandruss ☎ 00:36, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Say anything you like, and if this starts overlapping the main discussion, we'll move it there. - Dank (push to talk) 01:02, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I will. The chances of my ever wishing to take on adminship would be greater in multiple small steps than in one giant leap for Mandrusskind. That's pretty much it in a nutshell. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:29, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem, as I see it, seems to be that the community currently insists that admins be generalists. While some administrative tasks, like closing contentious AfD discussions, may meaningfully require experience with making articles, others, like blocking spammers and blatant vandals, do not. Currently, the community insists that candidates at RfA do more or less everything well, and that severely limits our pool of candidates. I think that we will ultimately need a broader acceptance of specialist admins and various forms of "junior admin" status may be helpful for getting more good candidates into that pipeline, although I do not have any concrete proposals right now. Pathore (talk) 01:54, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

• The community would never go for it, and I accept this, but Pathore is correct here. The admin bit needs to be split into two or three specialized set of tasks for content admins (moderators), user admins (SPI AIV UAA etc), and technical admins (sysops). Maybe if we can get some of these lesser bits created they can be developed over time to fill these three rolls, and that is the best I can hope for here. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 02:05, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

  I never said "split" because that isn't feasible. In practice, there is considerable overlap between the needed rights for content and user admins, for example, both of them would need block buttons. Having an "admin" class with all of the tools remains appropriate. I only argue that we need to be more accepting of candidates that would not use all of the tools, at least not immediately. Various "training mops" may be also be useful in that direction, and I could support requiring admin candidates to have held and performed well in a "junior admin" role prior to an RfA for full adminship. Pathore (talk) 21:13, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Meta discussion: RfC process

It has already been proposed that it should be possible to expunge a bad block. That makes perfect sense to me, and it kills the ruined-for-life argument, but it hasn't been added to the RfC. It seems that the RfC can't be modified without consensus on each modification, and there is no mechanism for reaching such consensuses. I don't get it; if there was no consensus required for the original proposal, why would we need consensus to modify it in response to opposers' objections? Sure, people would have to re-evaluate their !votes based on the changes. So what? How is that a big problem compared to the virtually inevitable stalemate that will result without it? It's called iterative negotiation, a part of collaboration and teamwork. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:43, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I can't help by highlighting any one voter comment above the others, but if there's demand for it, I could prepare a survey to present to the voters so that people can indicate which of the main "talking points" they agree with so far. Would that help? - Dank (push to talk) 19:50, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

A summary of the major issues raised could be helpful. I would consider adding a revised proposal if the summary were clear enough and it looks like I could address the objections. Would a revised proposal belong in its own section on the page or in a subsection of the existing proposal? Pathore (talk) 21:52, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Given how much discussion we've had already, I would suggest that iterative improvement should take the form of a new RfC after this one is complete. Changing a proposal after discussion has started opens a can of worms, because the discussion that led to the changes might not make sense afterwards. This is probably why there are "perennial proposals"--no one has worded them well enough for the community to accept on a first try, and the needed iterative improvement has not been done. (On the other hand, some of them may simply be bad ideas. I don't really know.) Pathore (talk) 21:46, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the status of this idea (suppressing bad block log entries) is. However, from looking at phab:9871, I think that User:Aaron Schulz might be the right person to ask. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:09, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

I have a comment on that, but I'll refrain since it would be out of place and therefore confusing. This subsection is a meta discussion about RfC process. Bad block removal was only an example to start the discussion. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:51, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Finding archive

I was looking for an older discussion, which I eventually found in Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 126

However that archive is not shown in the list at the top of the page which only goes through 125. Does that list have to be updated manually or is it supposed to be updated automatically and the automatic update failed with the last archiving?--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:00, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Header

{{Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive header}} should be moved to within the <noinclude></noinclude> part so that it does not get transcluded under Wikipedia:Village pump (all)#Proposals. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:51, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Frustrated

The page --> Village pump is almost incomprehensible, and I say this as someone who has edited and added to this Wiki since it started. Every time I have come to it to try and suggest something, I give up. Except this time. Is their a guide to the page somewhere? Like, for complete newcomers? I am not proposing anything, I am telling you it is daunting in the extreme. Fxmastermind (talk) 12:01, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

What frustrates or confuses you about the village pump? I'm unsure what the problem is. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 14:32, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Your response is an example. I asked questions. "Is their a guide to the page somewhere? Like, for complete newcomers?", and got no answer. Fxmastermind (talk) 14:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I take it you are looking for a user guide on how to use the Village pump itself. I have never seen one and in a quick look I don't see one. You need to take some of the responsibility for the misunderstanding above. Someone answered what you put into the header of this section. You didn't give a good explanation of what frustrates you and that was what they tried to address. So what else frustrates you since you now know there is no userguide to the village pump. -- GB fan 14:54, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

For starters, there is no notification for when somebody replies on a talk page. Why isn't that part of the software? I'm sure this has come up before, but how to search for that discussion?

So there are two issues. Communication is just horrific here. And no idea (or a FAQ to consult) about how to find where (or even if) this has come up before. On the village pump. The internet and apps are pretty slick and easy to use these days. This (talk pages/village pump) is not. I don't even know if this is the place to discuss what I just mentioned. Fxmastermind (talk) 04:53, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Like I said, I just give up. Fxmastermind (talk) 15:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

As I read it, what you're describing isn't unique to VP, Wikipedia is messy, difficult, and confusing in general. This is an apparently inevitable result of an environment built by the masses with no central coordination or control, which is how the community wants it. It's a noble concept, but it has a cost, and you've found part of it. If you have specific questions or problems, there may be specific answers or solutions. For example, notifications and watchlists help a lot without being the ideal, ultimate solutions to anything. We don't know what you already know, so we're somewhat limited in what we can do to help. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:45, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. An example would be this communication effort right here. You and I. There is no notification when somebody responds. This is hard to imagine in this day and age of communications. I don't believe anyone actually wants a system that doesn't allow notification when somebody responds to a message. That's the most basic feature of all communication, it's in use almost everywhere, in many ways. 10 years ago it could be overlooked, but now it's a bad joke. If, as you say, the very nature of communication was built by the masses, it's frankly impossible to believe. The lack of the ability to do almost every last thing involved in communication is not a feature, it's a failing. The question isn't "how can it be fixed?", but "Is it even possible to change anything?". Certainly there are people with code skills who could add all modern features to talk pages with little effort. Right? The problem seems to be, not as you alluded to, "an environment built by the masses", but that it has been built on top of an old and primitive foundation, and there isn't any way to actually change anything. If the masses could change Wikipedia, the communication system would have been updated long ago, with all kinds of wonderful features. You can see these actually working on other Wiki sites.

The complete lack of a quote feature, that's hard to imagine. Here's a specific example. How do I find the way to quote somebody I am responding to? (I'm not asking how, I am asking how to find it, what would you do to simply search for the answer?) Fxmastermind (talk) 14:08, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@Fxmastermind: Ask respondents to "ping" you, then you'll be notified. They simply type {{ping|User:name}}, and you'll get a notice. You can "ping" them also when you respond to them. You are probably reading this now because I pinged you. Hope that helps. Regards, GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 17:00, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@Fxmastermind: As noted above, a replier can send you a notification if they feel one is in order. This evening I replied, "Ok, thanks!" to someone who had dropped me a tip on something. That person might drop in later and see my thanks, or not, but I judged that it would probably be a slightly annoying, slightly time-consuming distraction for them if I sent them a notification about the reply. The notifications don't say what, only who and where, so they would have dropped what they were doing and gone to that page, only to see my "Ok, thanks!" So I chose not to send them a notification. Thus, the lack of automatic notification of replies can be considered a feature. Sure it's a PITA to code that {{ping}} when you want it, it's admittedly clunky by today's standards, but it gets much easier with practice like everything else. I understand you're feeling a bit overwhelmed, I went through the same thing and I suspect most users do.
Re your last question, you probably can't find that on your own, unless you happen to see it done by another editor. Edit the section and note how they did it. Failing that, go to WP:Teahouse or WP:Help desk and ask "How can I x?". The Teahouse is specifically targeted at newer users and the responders there go out of their way to be friendly and help you get that warm fuzzy.
And you seem like a decent enough person, so I wouldn't mind if you asked the occasional question on my user talk page (the phone symbol following my username). You could bookmark that page in your browser, or add it to your watchlist. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:25, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

@GenQuest: I'm not quite sure. But thanks in any case.Fxmastermind (talk) 13:47, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

WikSciTalkia

We cannot have dialoges about new ideas on Wikipedia, thus Wikimedia should create a new site called:

WikSciTalkia

so we can create genuine articles about future research, and the talk page will be more like chat. People need a parallel WikSciTalkia open to new ideas and dialogue! People want to CREATE - NEW STUFF and COMMUNICATE OVER CREATIVITY not only ideas of great others!

Just do it! (ape-man) 21:11, 10 May 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.84.218.150 (talk)

Indeed, this is WP:NOT what Wikipedia is about. You may be interested in Wikiversity, or perhaps Wikia. --Izno (talk) 11:32, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

start thread with rfc

is it normal to begin a pump thread immediately with an rfc (like the recent one)...thought rfc was if/when discussion is at an impasse etc...is it okay to place an rfc at anytime to simply get more input on one's thread?68.48.241.158 (talk) 17:30, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

The lead at WP:RFC does imply that you should usually discuss first, and it in fact states: "RfC is one of several processes available within Wikipedia's dispute resolution system." In practice, RfC is used under any circumstance when wider participation is needed, and it is sometimes the first resort when such need is anticipated. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:05, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

archive

I suggesst the main page of this talk be either be made collapsible or it be archived except discussions which are open --VarunFEB2003 ^{Talk • Contribs • Guestbook} 14:28, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

The sections on the talk page are the open conversations. Any topic that hasn't had any discussion in greater than 7 days is automatically archived. -- GB fan 14:35, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Incorrect close of an RFC at VPP

Why was Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#We should not accept pictures with pixelated people's faces closed as "No concensus" when in fact the proposal got zero support !votes? A "No consensus" close is meant to indicate that neither Support nor Oppose was clearly dominant, but in a case where there is a clear consensus for Support or Oppose the close should say so. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:52, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

• The particular wording was "No consensus to enact the proposal" and no consensus maintains the status quo. It's kind of a distinction without a difference. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:07, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
• Are you seriously saying that there was a consensus to enact that proposal? Because that's completely ridiculous. The proposal clearly has near universal opposition! How can you possibly claim there is consensus to enact it? Seriously?!? And thanks for coming by my talk page to discuss this with me or even notified me that you disagreed with the closure. Now, can you kindly explain how you there there was a consensus to enact the proposal? --Jayron32 00:43, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
• I agree with Oiyarbepsy; no consensus to implement works just fine. The semantics of how the proposal is closed matter less than the actual result, which is that the proposed change will not be implemented. @Jayron32: no need to freak out :). He's just suggesting that maybe the reason could be changed to something like "consensus to not implement". I don't think it is necessary myself, but if you wanted to keep everyone happy you could change it to that. I think the current version works, since there was a specific proposal and the result was no consensus to implement it; the discussion wasn't to obtain consensus to not implement it, so a close reason like that makes less sense. Ajraddatz (talk) 00:53, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

  I'm afraid I don't see how a binary result is altered by the movement of the negative from one location in the sentence to another. But OK. --Jayron32 11:45, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

From my experience over the years I've been here "no consensus" means "not enough support or opposition to give a clear result, so the proposal is not carried out". "No consensus" is the indecisive middle ground between "clearly supported" and ""clearly defeated". As these discussions are not votes the result is not a "binary" where a single vote completely changes the outcome. There is in fact a continuum of outcomes from clearly supported through no consensus to emphatically rejected. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:08, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Support to that comment, Dodger. This isn't that big of a deal and no consensus serves just fine. Fritzmann2002 17:34, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, my point really is that there is a huge difference between saying there is no concensus, i.e. concensus does not exist, thus policy requires that the proposal fails; and the situation in this case where there is in fact an overwelming consensus to reject the proposal, i.e. a concensus does exist. "No concensus" literally means "we could not reach agreement". Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:46, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

There is a difference. I don't know if it's a "huge" difference. But "no consensus" strikes me as being a close "without prejudice"; something you could bring up again after a decent interval and see if people thought differently, though it would be disruptive to do it too often. You could do that even for a proposal with a consensus against it, but the "decent interval" might be longer, and patience for repeated tries might be thinner. --Trovatore (talk) 03:05, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree that there is a difference in meaning between "there is no consensus to do this" and "there is a consensus not to do this". But when the proposal is to change an existing guideline or process, then both of these statements have the same practical effect: No change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Discussion at WT:village pump

I started a discussion at WT:village pump#Slow down the archiving? about archiving. Chime in. --George Ho (talk) 04:47, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Where next when a proposal has support?

I proposed a change to warning templates last month - it got a lot of support over the next few weeks, and was then automatically archived after seven days of silence. Is this how proposals typically end? Am I now meant to raise this somewhere else, pointing to the discussion to show support? (If so, where would be a good place to do that?) --McGeddon (talk) 11:33, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

First try posting on WP:WikiProject Templates to see if there's a known way for the community to directly enable selected warning templates on mobile. If not, we'd need WMF involvement. You could try posting on the talk page for the WMF MW:Reading team.

P.S. We'd probably want to make mini-versions of such templates for mobile. Alsee (talk) 21:56, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. --McGeddon (talk) 10:02, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

This is a good point - I am sure that Wikipedians will like to see good ideas discussed here put into practice. Vorbee (talk) 19:25, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes that's correct.and I am still agree with the terms of conditions

SRubelmehedi (talk) 16:52, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

The Sandbox

Whoever came up with the Sandbox was a genius. The sandbox plays a big role in allowing me to preview and practice my editing without damaging or messing up the work of others. But why does Wikipedia make our sandbox a secret place? What I mean is, when you sign in there is nothing in any menu that leads you back to it. I can't even remember how I went there the first time. I did eventually find it in my edit history and bookmarked it. But how hard is it to just add it to the menu after we log in?

If this disscussion or inquiry is in the wrong area, send me a message and I will move it. JericVgilbert (talk) 08:53, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Isn't there a link to your personal sandbox at the top of every page, next to your username? --TerraCodes ^{(talk to me)} 08:57, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, in your personal menu bar, top left. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:01, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

RfC Announce: Wikimedia referrer policy

In February of 2016 the Wikimedia foundation started sending information to all of the websites we link to that allow the owner of the website (or someone who hacks the website, or law enforcement with a search warrant / subpoena) to figure out what Wikipedia page the user was reading when they clicked on the external link.

The WMF is not bound by Wikipedia RfCs, but we can use an advisory-only RfC to decide what information, if any, we want to send to websites we link to and then put in a request to the WMF. I have posted such an advisory-only RfC, which may be found here:

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy

Please comment so that we can determine the consensus of the Wikipedia community on this matter. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:45, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

This RfC (now closed) can now be found at WP:Village pump (policy)/RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy.
— Stanning (talk) 11:25, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Accomodating multiple varieties of English

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Since the discussion was closed while I was typing my answer I'm adding my answer to that proposal to "the appropriate discussion page"...

Incidentally, on what grounds was the discussion closed?

Isn't that page for discussing proposals?

The only justification for closing the discussion that I could find was the word "No".

Can people just close discussions without giving anything other as a reason than "No"?

Hope to be enlightened.

Anyway... Here is my answer:

Simpler than spliting the English Wikipedia woud be nn option to display AmEng, or BrEng, or AusEng, etc.

If no option is chosen then things would display exactly as they are now. It could work like this: we start with a bit of WP text that contains say the word "jail". Now an editor who prefers the British alternative "gaol" would be able to edit this to: {Eng|jail|Br=gaol}}. If a reader chooses the option "British" they will see "gaol". If they choose any other option that does not have a specific alternative in this case or choose no option it would display "jail". If some Australian wants specific Australian variants or wants to indicate that "gaol" should also be used for "Austrlian English"" they could would edit that thing to: {{Eng|jail|Br=gaol|Aus=gaol}}. The default should be what is already present in the text. For example if somewhere else you've a bit of text containing the spelling "gaol" someone who prefers the spelling "jail" could indicate that with {{Eng|gaol|Am=jail}} which would be displayed to anyone who would have chosen the option "American" while "gaol" would continue to be displayed to everyone else.

Basemetal 17:20, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

I think this is a perennial proposal, which people get tired of responding to. I do kind of agree with you that that doesn't justify rudeness. I think the reasons it's never gotten any traction in the past are still perfectly valid, but let's trot them out again and make sure.

• Splitting en.wiki: I'm completely opposed to this. The differences among the English varieties evoke strong emotions, but that's not a good reason to cut our collaboration by 50%.
• Different spellings rendered automatically: That addresses only spelling; there are still other differences that can't be handled so mechanically. More to the point — what for? Are any of us so fragile that we can't handle the fact that other English speakers spell a word differently than we do?
• Is it broke? I really don't think it is. ENGVAR is not a perfect solution, but it's worked pretty well for, what, a dozen years or so now?

Bottom line, I say we keep muddling through with ENGVAR. --Trovatore (talk) 18:30, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Addendum: When I said the perennialness of the proposal "doesn't justify rudeness", I was relying on my quick reading of Basemetal's characterization of what happened. When I looked up the actual discussion, I didn't see anything particularly rude (and Basemetal didn't explicitly say it was, for that matter; that was my interpolation). --Trovatore (talk) 18:40, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

A clearer close statement would have been "No, per WP:SNOW." The proposal had unanimous opposition and the very experienced closer (and admin) decided quite correctly that it lacked enough merit to discuss further. In this context, anybody could challenge the close by reverting it with explanation, but that would be a bad move in my opinion. That proposal and your alternative proposal are to develop sledge hammers with which to drive thumbtacks, and they both have considerable downsides that you both have failed to consider before making them. Meanwhile, the encyclopedia has more important long-term initiatives that are being neglected for lack of editor time.
This page is not for discussion of proposals. It's for discussion of the operation of its associated project page, WP:VPR, which is why it's rarely used. For example, if one wanted to suggest a change to the auto-archive parameters used for VPR, that could be done here. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:04, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

I give terse closing statements on occasion when it’s something like this. Sometimes less is more and drives home the point that the community is not willing to consider some proposals. I normally reserve it for stuff like starting the American English Wikipedia. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:13, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, IMO the plain ridiculousness of it should make it self-explanatory, but apparently not Galobtter (pingó mió) 03:22, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Finding archived discussions

I recently wrote a script called User:SD0001/find-archived-section that makes it easy to find an archived discussion whose link (link before archival, I mean) you followed. Since archiving occurs quite fast for village pump threads, thought I should post here as it'd be useful for the regulars here ... SD0001 (talk) 06:25, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Wikipedia talk:Village pump (policy) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:15, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 June 2020

If Wikipedia is struggling to stay afloat, why don’t you put ads on the website? At this point I don’t think it would hurt anyone as every single other website runs off ads. 63.142.213.193 (talk) 23:21, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation had $100,000 cash-on-hand last fiscal year according to their financial disclosures so it's not struggling to stay afloat. As for why ads are unlikely to happen, see Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)