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Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 9

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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I find that when searching through long Wikipedia articles, it is often easiest to use the table of contents to navigate. Therefore, I think that there should be a "back to the top" link directly underneath the "edit" link at every paragraph, because scrolling back to the top is an arduous process for the fast browser. Does anyone else see the benefit in this addition?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.104.101.29 (talk) 20:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

In most browsers, pressing the keyboard's "Home" key will bring you to the top of an article. In addition, the browser's back button can help you jump from a clicked section header back to the table of contents. Hardcoding such a feature into the webpage might be useful for some visitors, although I would personally not get much use out of it. GracenotesT § 18:17, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I think Gracenotes' alternatives are viable, especially since a "back to top" link would potentially clutter the page (which is sometimes already cluttered as it is). EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:06, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Right clicking the scroll bar and selecting "Top" will do it, too. Corvus cornixtalk 19:32, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
In what web browser? Neither Opera nor Firefox has that feature. --Carnildo (talk) 09:43, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
In Internet Explorer. Anyway, I'd think this feature could be useful - navigatibility vs. aestheticness is always a tough one to pick from. I drew something up in my Sandbox - the link doesn't work, but it's what I think it may well look like. To me, this isn't obtrusive. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I think the suggestion was to have it in more than one place, though; specifically, under each heading (which would get very cluttered very quickly). EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:14, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Huh. I never knew that Firefox and Opera didn't have that feature. Well, score one for IE.  :) Corvus cornixtalk 04:14, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

This is actually a pet peeve of mine. The links clutter up the page a bit, and there are lenty of other easy ways to get to the top: Scroll bar, scroll button, Home, and Back. If this were (hopefully not) implemented, it would have to be a changeable preference. Reywas92Talk 23:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, there would always be the option of turning it off via your monobook file. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:45, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

This is already implemented on Wikisource (see for example, wikisource:Gettysburg Address), though there it has to be added manually through a template. I agree Wikipedia would benefit from a similar feature (especially considering the length of some articles), which would however hopefully be implemented as part of the site interface.--Pharos (talk) 06:20, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Multi-Lingual Dictionary/Thesaurus

Greetings to all,

I am new to this area of Wikipedia, so forgive me if my suggestion is not new.

In the spirit of knowledge for all, and a belief that universal knowledge can break down the barriers of ignorance that I sometimes see in my many travels...

I would like to see a multi-lingual Dictionary and Thesaurus as part of the Wikipedia experience. I believe this would go a long way in helping people to understand the many cultures around this great world of ours.

Thanks,

Micheal B.

Kansas City —Preceding unsigned comment added by N0TYM2H8 (talk • contribs) 20:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi, you might want to have a look at our sister project, Wiktionary! -- lucasbfr talk 20:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! N0TYM2H8 (talk) 09:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Recalling admins

It has been suggested in the past that admins should voluntarily make themselves open to recall. A slightly more formalized idea is suggested at Wikipedia:Admin Accountability Alliance; comments welcome. >Radiant< 18:34, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer external links to open in a new window/tab. There should be a preference setting for this. Peter J. de Bruin (talk) 23:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

It's typically not a good idea to force links to behave one way or another. You can, however, put your cursor on a link and click the middle (scroll) button. This will open the link in a new tab. —Remember the dot (talk) 05:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Shift-click will also open in a new window/tab, depending on your browser. A modification that alters the way that pages are presented and linked would probably require a change to the Mediawiki software itself. (You might first ask at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) if there's a way to modify your personal javascript to do what you would like, however.) I suspect that you may have to file a feature request on Bugzilla. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:44, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's one school of thought. The other is that as long as the user is informed in some way that a link opens up in a new window, it's all right. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:43, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I can see the use (for some people who like that sort of thing) of having an option to have external links open in a new window. I hate, however, web sites that force my browser to work in a nonstandard way—for example by deciding that all new links ought to open in a new window, whether I want them to or not. That nonstandard behaviour creates clutter and it makes it more difficult to find out where the thing I just clicked on is supposed to open. Simply forcing a change on our readers wouldn't be acceptable, even if we provided a notice that we were implementing such nuisance behaviour. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:56, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Nothing forces your browser to do anything it wasn't programmed to do; if you don't want your browser to give that power to web pages, install firefox and the "tab browser extensions" extension (click tools -> addons -> get extensions and search). Then you can specifically configure what your browser allows web sites to do. No relevance to the proposal, just FYI. —Jemmytc 23:18, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
That it's "nonstandard" is also debatable. "_blank" is a valid target in most versions of HTML, the last time I checked. Making external links open in a new window is common, and I've never received complaints from any of my sites where that happens. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Target, as an attribute of a link, was deprecated in HTML 4.01. For the attribute, however, _blank is an acceptable value. GracenotesT § 07:05, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Considering that the only web browser in the world that can override an "open in new window" link to open in the current window is Opera, forcing links to open in a new window is bad. --Carnildo (talk) 09:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I wrote a user script that did this a couple of months ago. Let me find it. GracenotesT § 01:13, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, here we go: 

addOnloadHook(function() {
    var alinks = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
    var tablink, sitename;
    for (var i = 0, leng = alinks.length; i < leng; i++) {
        tablink = alinks[i];
        if (tablink.className.indexOf("external") != -1 && tablink.href.indexOf(wgServer) != 0)
            tablink.target = "_blank";
    }
});

To open the link in a new window, replace "_blank" with "_window". To open it in a new tab, replace "_blank" with "_tab" (this only works in Firefox). Leaving the target as "_blank" will result in your browser's default action, and nothing if popups are blocked. GracenotesT § 01:42, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but still, having it available as an optional setting for everyone would be an improvement. Peter J. de Bruin (talk) 12:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)\

Well, we do have a new Gadgets tab (in my preferences) which makes implementing JavaScript user scripts like this a matter of a couple of clicks. (There's a section at WP:VPT about this, at the moment.) So it is possible to offer this to editors as an option. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:30, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I've suggested it here: MediaWiki talk:Gadgets-definition‎. I'm not sure if there is a centralized place for suggesting scripts, though. GracenotesT § 22:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Better cross-referencing between wikipedia and sister projects

Here is a suggestion; I don't know if it has been brought up before or not. I would like to see more cross-referencing between wikipedia and its sister projects...in case this isn't clear, let me explain. There is often a link for wikiquote or wikipedia commons on an article page, but I would like to see more, similar sites linked. For instance, I am a frequent traveler, and I love wikitravel. It would be helpful, say on a wikipedia page on Egypt, to have an "official" wiki link to the wikitravel Egypt article, and maybe a link to the wikiversity page on learning Arabic. It seems like this would create a more cohesive, integrated wiki experience, rather than having to go to each site independently. Amssports06 (talk) 21:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

This does happen to some degree; articles on words often link to the wiktionary definitions. But we wouldn't link to any other travel agency in an article on Egypt, so why would we link to Wikitravel? -Amarkov moo! 01:49, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
You may be surprised to learn that Wikitravel, despite the similar name and the somewhat similar method it operates on, is not actually a sister project to Wikipedia. You can learn all about our actual sister projects at Wikimedia Foundation.--Pharos (talk) 05:51, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
More on this (an active discussion) as a generalized proposal above at #Simple_English_Wikipedia, and #Expand_to_more_generalized_solution. // FrankB 17:46, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

)

Ok, thanks a lot. I am surprised to learn that Wikitravel is not a Wikipedia sister project! Thanks for your input.

Amssports06 (talk) 23:49, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Optional display options panel

This one just struck me. How about an (optional, of course) options panel which has clickable options for such things as "hide links" (which are distracting in overlinked articles), "hide refs" (I've seen objections to distraction from superscripted cite.php ref links), etc. Panel display off/on and panel option population should be configurable in "my preferences", as well as panel placement (top/bottom of article, top/bottom of window, whatever). Clicked options could be saved in cookies or in user namespace, (I'd vote against saving them as cookies) and saving them could itself be an option. I'm not a WP developer, but this is simple stuff to implement for someone with javascript and css skills. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 12:38, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Isn't a better solution to overlinking to just remove some wikilinks? And as for footnotes being distracting, are you really saying that a lot of people find the tiny superscipts (which tell you which statements have a cited source and which don't, and therefore give you clues as to credibility) to be irritating? (If so, then wouldn't you want to also turn off the really big, ugly numbered external links?) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:13, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

A humble request to all the user of Wikepedia...please make active contribution..

I feel sad that despite being one of the 10th most visited site in the world..still the number of people who made contribution is meager ...around 40,000.I would like to suggest that users are ready to donate...but all they need is little more understanding as to how a little contribution from them can make a huge difference...As in my case..it was only during leisure that I accidently clicked on the link that took me to web page and that is how I came to know how a little contribution can make a difference...people are so engrossed in looking for the article ..that they just glance at the message asking to raise funds..moreover the message is not flashy..the color combination is such that it doesn't catch user's attention..

So,I would ask you to please generate more awareness amongst people...just a little realization is all they want..and I bet...people would like to be part of this great cause...and will make our goal..goal of wikipedia that every single human being in this world can freely share their sum of knowledge.

As a suggestion,please change the font color and change it to something that catch user's attention or before allowing user to login...a web page should be displayed ..and it should include a message that would create a great impact on user and will make them realize about how a little contribution by them would play a major role in allowing this portal to be accessible to people who are deprived of it...or after user signout of Wikipedia...a web page must be displayed showing the status of how far are we from our goal and ask user to become active member of this common cause by donating..believe me..it would really allow us to accomplish our goal at fast pace... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.89.42.28 (talk) 01:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it's actually a lot different than you think it is: Wikipedia has arond 60,000 registered editors. 5% of those are admins. So we actually are making an active contribution. Want to see how active? Go here. --Gp75motorsports REV LIMITER 03:07, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

A Sister-project to allow 'Signed Versions' of Articles

Okay, this is a biggie and would need lots of input and thinking before anything like this could ever happen, but it's been in my head for a long time, and I think sooner or later, SOMETHING like this is going to be essential for us.

Technically this calls for a new wiki-project, but since the goal of that project basically to "he Wikipedia in its goal to build a better encyclopedia", I would really like to get Wikipedians take on it, so I posted it here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alecmconroy (talk • contribs) 16:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

A need

The first part of improving something is to recognize a need. We have some problems. Not problems, per se, but needs. Issues that are preventing us from being as good of an encyclopedia as we could. Specifically:

  • Educators and researcher can't trust our articles, because at any given point, our quality can't be assured. While we hope the mean value of our articles averages out to be trustworthy, any particular instance of our article may or may not be trustworthy. This means nobody can cite us as a reliable source, no matter how good an article we have.
  • It's not enough to know about a topic and to be able to write-- if you want to improve Wikipedia, you need a whole third skill of "consensus generation" to get your improvements added to the article. Knowledgeable skilled writers want to spend their time writing, not arguing.
  • Additionally, there's no guarantee that the "best writers" will be the people who are "best as generating consensus". The current system tends to favor "time-rich, ultra-passionate" editors, while disfavoring "time-poor, dispassionate" editors. If you care about a topic immensely and have infinite amounts of time to pour into fighting for a POV, you're probably going to "win" by attrition, as the outside editors who are less passionate get frustrated and aren't willing to devote the same amount of time.
  • Our articles are subject to entropy-- if we got a "perfect" article, it would tend to degrade over time, unless actively "defended" by editors. Time spent being a "defender of the encyclopedia" is time that could be spent improving the encyclopedia.

My wiki-life, two years ago and now

So, let me give examples from my own experience on Wikipedia. As Wikipedia has grown, our focus has shifted from "pouring knowledge into the project" to "stylistic tweaks". A few years ago, my on-wiki time was totally pleasant and highly efficient. It went like this:

  1. Search for something on Wikipedia.
  2. Wikipedia doesn't have the article/fact you're looking for.
  3. Go find the information you're looking for using Google
  4. Add that information to Wikipedia.

Simple. Our "Massively-Multieditor" style works very very well in these instances.

But now, many years later, it's very hard to find information that is completely missing from the project. Instead, at the same time, I still see articles all the time that, although broad and comprehensive, could be improved stylistically-- especially in controversial areas. Here, though, the editing pattern isn't pleasant and efficent, it's frustrating:

  1. Search for information on Wikipedia
  2. Notice that article that has stylistic problems, organizational problems, or balance problems
  3. Do research to figure out how to improve article
  4. Spend 10% of the time improving it
  5. Spend 90% of time debating with other editors to get those improvements actually accepted.
  6. Fight entropy indefinitely, in a never ending battle, as new editors add information that sometimes improves the article, but sometimes degrades it.

I am at the point where, I feel like I could be much more use to the project if I could spend all my time doing rewrites of articles, and less of my time arguing over whether the rewrites are better or not, and then fighting entropy to get those versions accepted. I think there are probably a lot of people like that.

The point being is, when it comes to pouring information in, "Massively Multieditor Collaboration" works very very well. But when it comes to polishing and creating beautiful finished-product articles, "Massively Multieditor" doesn't work as well. Pouring information in is a Bazaar-style task, polishing it to the point of perfection is a Cathedral-style task.

How could we be even better?

So, here's my question: Is there any way we could, through some sister-project, allow forks of articles are instead of being "anyone can edit" are 'signed encyclopedia articles'-- i.e. articles that have one person has editorial control over.

Here's my first tentative thoughts on how something like this would work.

  • Wikipedia itself would stay exactly the same. We NEED a Wikipedia, Wikipedia works incredibly well, we don't want to in any way damage Wikipedia by changing its policies.
  • Wikipedia would still be the "main" version of the article, the default version of the article, the Wikipedia version of the article-- one absolutely anyone can edit, keeping Wikipedia exactly as it is, with no no changes whatsoever to Wikipedia or Wikipedia policy.
  • There is a closely-affiliated "sister project" where anyone can create a 'signed version' of an articl, over which they have final editorial control.
  • Anyone could edit the 'signed articles', groups can collaborate on a 'signed article', but one editor would maintain the final say-so over which edits are accepted. No edit-warring against that editor on the article bearing his signature.
  • Wikipedia readers will have some way of knowing about the existence of 'signed versions of articles', so that they can leave Wikipedia and view the 'signed versions'
  • Editors have some system of "endorsing" the signed versions-- some 'signed versions' will be very popular, whereas signed versions by minority voices will be less popular. When presenting the list of 'signed versions' to readers, these endorsements can be used to rank the signed versions perhaps.
  • The set of articles "an editor has signed or endorsed" can become an mini-encyclopedia unto itself. A credentialed professor, for example, might lend his name or endorsement to a set of articles that he considered to be quality articles-- the professors students could then "trust" those articles and cite them. Etc.
  • People can discuss and debate the merits of signed versions, so that readers can have full access to seeing which 'signed articles' are controversial and which are not.


Pros and Cons

The UPSIDE of such a system is:

  • We get to keep Wikipedia, the "encyclopedia anyone can edit". This is essential, of course.
  • We still have wikipedia, with 100% collaborative articles that no one owns which are required to be NPOV and V and etc.
  • The existence of the 'signed versions' would enrich the main wikipedia articles, because we could copy the best parts from the 'signed versions' into the wikipedia article whenever we want.
  • Since the signed articles have to be free-license, people can can copy anything from the 'other signed articles' into their own signed versions.
  • Like-minded people can collaborate on their own articles, creating a 'signed article' that is still highly-collaborative.
  • People who want to write and only to write have a way to contribute their writings in a way that doesn't require them to spend time edit-warring, fighting, arguing.
  • On Wikipedia, we should see less time spent dealing with POV-pushers, conspiracy theorists, lunatics, etc-- because those people will still have a forum to express their opinions in their own signed articles. They won't feel it's a choice between being "censored" or "being in Wikipedia"-- there will be an easy middle ground they can refer to.
  • The 'signed articles' will be mostly vandalism and entropy-proof. With some minor software changes, "mostly" could become "totally".
  • Writers who like to write can spend more of their time writing. Editors who like to edit and polish can spend more of their time editing and polishing. 'Publishers', who like to find good articles and promote them, can spend time finding the "best signed articles" and endoring them. No more spending 10% of your time improving the project and 90% of the time arguing over it.
  • This would solve our reliability problem-- a 'signed article' which was signed by an expert (or by some peer-review ala FA) would be a reliable source students could cite.

The Downside is:

  • Some signed versions won't comply with NPOV and V. We should expect that many of the 'signed articles' will be very bad-- little more than rambling blogs.
  • If not done carefully, people might tend to confuse this new sister-project with Wikipedia, and get confused about which is which-- which article is the 100% collaborative NPOV, and which article is 'Signed' (and therefore only as good as the person who signed it).
  • Time spent on the sister-project making signed articles will be time taken away from working on the 100% collaborative Wikipedia article. People would have less incentive to work out their differences and reach consensus, since their own 'signed article' could still reach readers even if they didn't have consensus.

Thoughts and discussion

So.. Wow, that's my scheme. I really feel like this, or something like this, will be the next big thing, the meta-wiki. Massively-collaborated and massively-forked, combined with a system to find the "best" of those forks.

One way to accomplish this would be to "fork" the project, to some extent this has already been done. Veropedia and Citizendium could both be regarded as sets of 'signed articles' with an emphasis on Verifiability and Credentialed Expertise. Wikinfo is a set of 'signed article' which experiments with Sympathetic POV instead of NPOV. Conservapedia is a sets of 'signed articles' with a focus on having a Conservative POV. All of these are good things. But instead of someone having to create a whole new project just to make your own 'signed article', I would like Wikimedia to give ALL of us the power to conveniently write our own 'signed articles', without having to bother with servers and software and projects.

One of Wikipedia big guiding principles is "freedom to fork", but at the moment, that freedom is inconvenient to exercise. I think it might be a wonderful wonderful thing if Wikimedia made a sisterproject to host such "article-level" forks, and then provided links from Wikipedia to this sister project.

So... what do you think? am I crazy? is there any truth to this? Am I on to something? Am I the 1000th person to suggest this, but there's a big reason it would never work? --Alecmconroy (talk) 16:50, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Yup, you are about the millionth person to suggest such a scheme :-) On a more serious note, there is this experiment FlaggedRevs that will essentially promote two versions of articles on Wikipedia. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 17:24, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I figured it was too good an idea to come out of someone like me  :). I don't suppose you know where I could find such a discussion, and why it didn't end up happening? --Alecmconroy (talk) 17:31, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
If you check out Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions you get a bit of history. Similar ideas to yours are perenially debated - another credibility idea is just above us at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Important article statistics on mainspace. From my previous reading of similar discussions, two separate problems are often conflated: article degradation and article credibility. Your idea may be unique but the problem is often expressed — many solutions have been discussed — and nothing much comes of it. In addition, it is worth mentioning that there are academic research projects on going looking at client / browser side solutions to the article credibility problem. You may wish to check out these external sites: U of California Santa Cruz Wiki Lab' Wiki Trust Coloring, PARC's Wikidashboard and an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 17:51, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
edit conflicted--new post than above
Think WP:PEREN may cover some of this. But I and my frustrations agree with your problem statement fervently... Sometime back I hypothesized a slightly different approach. Imagine seven to fifteen editors who would act as a committee on matured articles to gate changes. Assume one needs an agreement of four (why below) of these for any proposed change using the {{Editprotected}} method, or better yet, a talk subpage where one can submit a "clean copy" of the proposed edit. The talk pages can be "recycled" using the "whose editing method" of {{tt0}}, {{tt1}}... saving resources.
Now, it is a little known fact that two pages of the project can be compared with diff by manually plugging in the proper syntax to the diff url lines... all one need do is specify the proper hashcodes, the unique page identification numbers. Hence your clean version or mine can be easily compared by the "Pages Editorial committee", however ad hoc it is, or how formal (and signed!)! Jimbo was soliciting Ideas last spring on having editors register their expertise with the foundation,... don't know what happened in that discussion, but the problem is of concern to many of us... Wish I had a tenspot for every good admin or editor who's left the project because of such frustrations! I could ease up retirement planning!
I say four, acting as a rump committee, to ensure the change could be implemented quickly. In my scheme, ideally, the initial seed committee would be at least three admins and two volunteer editors who agree to add others they elect to the committee, and some of those choices should be geographical, so that there is ideally 24 hour coverage by at least one committee member. I imagine the committee would work a lot using intercommittee emailing. If a change is relatively trivial, that one alone can on his/her own authority authorize the update. If more substantial, one would wait for four or more to confer and achieve a consensus or at least a majority—one reason my scheme presupposes an odd number on each committee at all times.
   If controversial, or needed backup up beyond their own knowledge of the subject, the larger committee as a body would deliberate and approve, disapprove, or request a rewrite, or implement the change with their own editorial changes... as all editors do in all publishing houses world wide... hence we'd follow suite, and still retain an ability for a speedy response cycle and content protection. We are, when all is said and done, an e-publisher!!!
Lastly, the committee should probably have term limits... two per year kicked off with a mandatory one year wait before being allowed to resit, and secondly, the committee as a whole should be able to vote off and disqualify anyone who is contentious or wacky, the hardcore pov editors... Anyway, that's the closest thing I can scheme that might have some chance of succeeding here. To my mind, some such scheme is the only way we will gain any sort of respectability in acedemia. You should here the comments I get from my wife AND KIDS!!! (in H.S.) about wasting my time here! I'd like to see something, anything better than what we're doing for sure. It is clear to me the current structure can not ensure reliability nor overall quality. Too much effort is being discarded policing trivial changes, as you noted. Entropy always wins. // FrankB 18:21, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Some may be interested in this Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 54#Question about my Masters project which refers to this User:Thorblood/ Edit This Paper: Truth, Reliability, Consensus, and Wikipedia. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 19:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Throw in some optional advertisements and this sounds just like what Google just announced. Mr.Z-man 01:28, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
My 2cents Well, I always believed, and do still, that a part of the Wikipedia way, even if unintended, is challenging the authority and authorship of knowledge. The moment we start signing articles and judging the value of the article on the value of the author/authority we largely defeat the project. "Anyone can edit" is a biggest commitment in the world of knowledge ever. That needs to be not just the "large part", that has to remain the "only part" of the project.
That's a valid concern-- the point of "signed articles" isn't just to allow signatures, it's more to allow multiplicity of articles on the same topic. Right now, Wikipedia only have ONE article per topic-- a Verifiable, NPOV, Anyone-can-edit, NOR one. That's certainly the most important one to have. But what would be wrong with, somewhere in the wikimedia family, hosting OTHER kinds of articles on the same topic. Once that are unabashedly POV, for example-- "editorial" pieces instead of "journalistically neutral" pieces. Or having one articles that are "ultra-verifiable, and verified" at the expense of "anyone can edit".
If there's only going to be one article per topic, then Wikipedia's NPOV,V,NOR,anyone-can-edit is definitely the one to have. But-- why does there have to be only one? What can't there be multitudes, on some sister project? --Alecmconroy (talk) 18:47, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Add a Slideshow template, based on existing functionality in French wikipedia

This has been discussed here recently, but I'm creating a new topic to specifically request addition of two functions to en:MediaWiki:Common.js that would enable Template:Slideshow. You can see other recent relevant discussions at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#How about Not a picture book? and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 5#Image gallery.

What is it?

Template:Slideshow is a straight translation of fr:Template:Images. It would place a box on a page that displays a sequential selection of images when the user clicks on forward and back buttons. For an example of the French template in use, see fr:Pétra (sections Géologie and Pétra dans les arts, for example). The template recommends all images to be of similar size.

Why is it needed?

Some articles, such as those about artists and series of art works, would benefit greatly from a way to present more images than can be comfortably accommodated by displaying them all at once. English Wikipedia currently has templates such as {{Gallery}} , but these display all images in the selection at once (or thumbnails of all images). In particular, I have wanted to use this facility in articles such as David Roberts (painter) and Boydell Shakespeare Gallery.

What change is required?

The French template relies on two functions (toggleImage and ImageGroup) in fr:MediaWiki:Common.js. I have translated the basic French template (and renamed it as Template:Slideshow). For it to work properly, it needs either those two functions adding to en:MediaWiki:Common.js, or substitute functions identifying or creating.

Arguments in favour

  • Would add a useful and unobtrusive image display for articles that have a legitimate requirement for multiple images in a series.
  • A good example of how Wikipedia can improve presentation of content compared to text encyclopedias.
  • Improves on-screen presentation of multiple for the the bulk of users.
  • Definitely preferable to Template:Gallery in many cases.
  • For users without JavaScript enabled, gracefully falls back to display all images in vertical table.
  • Independently requested several times recently.
  • Gained considerable support in discussions (see links above).
  • Mirrors functionality used successfully on many other reputable sites, such as BBC News

Arguments against

  • Requires more functions in Common.js
  • May encourage inappropriate padding of articles with many images (possibly of dubious merit)
Can be handled by existing or new policy. Template is not infinitely extendable (max: 20 images). User:Rupert Clayton
  • Non-JavaScript users see a vertical table of images that is arguably uglier than Template:Gallery produces
  • Commons already offers the concept of galleries to address this issue.
I feel that Commons galleries serve a different purpose. They're not integrated side-by-side with Wikipedia's encyclopedic content. Many novice users won't make the two clicks required to get to a Commons gallery. Commons galleries generally include all relevant works, not just the selection one would want to present in a Wikipedia article. User:Rupert Clayton
There's a bug report here Bug 5383 that refers to a Commons script that users can add to their monobook.js. The idea sounds good (though I couldn't get it to work, even after a refresh), but it's a different animal from offering inline slideshows on Wikipedia. Rupert Clayton (talk) 19:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Things to check

Could a user with JavaScript knowledge please scan the functions (toggleImage and ImageGroup) in fr:MediaWiki:Common.js to see if there's anything of concern in the code?

Also can someone advise on whether any existing functions in en:MediaWiki:Common.js offer similar functionality? Rupert Clayton (talk) 20:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Well that's my request. I'd be grateful for comments. Thanks. Rupert Clayton (talk) 18:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it at least warrants a couple of weeks of testing it live. I'm not 100% enthusiastic about it, because i'm not sure people will be able to control themselves in adding it to every single article, but it does have some interesting advantages. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Additional note... We should first do some thorough testing on various browsers to determine the technical limitations of this technique. If {{Ambox}} has taught me anything, it is that browsers can do weird things with the most simple html at times. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:35, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Sounds sensible. As this template is already used by the French Wikipedia, presumably we can simply test relevant French pages in whatever browser combinations we want. Any issue with this approach? Is there a list of browsers we should be trying to support, or other info on compatibility testing? Rupert Clayton (talk) 20:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Another thing we should consider is the "non-portable"-ness of this. What if people want to move this to another wiki, or worse to print? It has detrimental effects on the quality of the article in that case. Perhaps we should find a way to switch to a matrix of images in that case, with the matrix similar in dimensions as the original included slideshow. A more unobtrusive way of presenting the images at least. Perhaps AzaToth (Twinkle) or Duesentrieb (wikiminiatlas) has some good ideas. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:23, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

As far as I understand it, if someone wants to include an article from Wikipedia that uses the Slideshow template on another wiki, then it would depend on the configuration of Common.js on that wiki's servers. If the functions are present, they'll get the slideshow. If they're not, they'll get the non-JS presentation. So this issue is another aspect of the failover behaviour. Let's say we have six images 250px wide by 150px high. In the current, French implementation, the failover version shows a table with all six pictures and captions, each at 250px by 150px. Text wraps around this table (in most browsers, not currently IE7, see below), which means the on-screen presentation is still fairly decent, so long as there's a high enough ratio of text to images. Are you suggesting that (in our example case) the failover option would be a single 250px by 150px image with a matrix of thumbnails? If so, that sounds good, but I imagine creating this on the fly wouldn't be easy/possible (particularly without JavaScript). I guess a failover image (possibly a hand-made matrix) could be specified in the template parameters. But that seems like a lot of work to impose. Am I understanding your idea right? Rupert Clayton (talk) 22:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's another idea for failover. I'd appreciate the comments of anyone with more Wikipedia template knowledge than me (err... that's everyone). If JS is not enabled, or the relevant JS functions are not loaded in Common.js, then the first image from the slideshow is displayed in a regular image box at the position the slideshow would have occupied, and the full selection of images is shown in gallery format (horizontal table with multiple rows if needed) at the end of the article. This seems a graceful failover mechanism, but I can imagine it may not be technically possible (especially without JavaScript enabled). Can anyone enlighten me as to whether markup in one portion of a document can reference another portion? Seems like this already happens for reference tags and categories, but I guess those are special cases. Rupert Clayton (talk) 22:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Browser tests

Tested fr:Pétra in Firefox 2.0.0.11 on Windows XP SP2. With JavaScript enabled appears to work fine. With JavaScript disabled falls back to display all images from the slideshow in a vertical table (as intended). Rupert Clayton (talk) 20:55, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Tested fr:Pétra in IE 7.0.5730.11 on Windows XP SP2. With JavaScript enabled there are a couple of glitches: (1) left and right arrow icons do not display, and (2) slideshow box fills entire page width (rather than text wrapping around box). More testing needed to determine cause of each issue here. With JavaScript disabled, IE7 falls back to display all images from the slideshow in a vertical table (as intended). Again, this is within a full-width box (issue 2 above). Rupert Clayton (talk) 21:24, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Tested fr:Pétra in Safari 3.0.4 on Mac OS X 10.5 With Javascript enabled works fine. With JavaScript disabled falls back to display all images from the slideshow in a vertical table ( as intended) --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:23, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Tested fr:Pétra in Opera 9.24 on Windows XP SP2. With JavaScript enabled appears to work fine. With JavaScript disabled falls back to display all images from the slideshow in a vertical table (as intended). Rupert Clayton (talk) 23:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

  • The sound of silence is rather daunting as evidenced in the lack of other users posting here on this... suspect there be a language to brower issue involved, as for me the slideshow alledged in the fr:Pétra is nowhere in evidence in three trips, but it's not a language my browser even has as an alternate. Can the esteemed nominator provide a way to load an English script here which will enable us to view the benefits of changing the .css? Alternatively, a direct link to a commons page where it's been put to use, presuming that css page will load the proper code. Thanks! All in all, if this is feasible it would really help in many articles to unclutter the prose, if used judiciously. I give it a hearty "I hope this works!", and kudos to Rupert Clayton for bringing this to the community. // FrankB 04:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I've just started looking in on this page, and I think this is a great idea. Even if users go a little crazy with it (and I expect they will, even though I haven't seen {{gallery}}s all over the place), the benefits seem to outweigh the dangers. I support the motion. – Scartol • Tok 18:37, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Simplest solution would be to make the whole template noprint class... which as far as I know, means it wouldn't make it to the local browser at all. Someone more familiar with the matter have any insights? // FrankB 18:30, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
  • It seems to work very well in the articles I've seen in French Wikipedia. It seems useful as a more compact alternative to <gallery> especially for groups of closely related images. - Neparis (talk) 21:26, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Comments welcome

Comments would be welcome at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Proposal to reformat ISO dates in footnotes. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:26, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Sign and Save

I don't know if this is the right place for this and it has probably been suggested before but it hasn't been introduced so I'll ask about it here... Why can't discussion pages have a button "Sign & Save" on them so that a user doesn't have to type or press the '~ ~ ~ ~'?

Thanks Shniken1 (talk) 04:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

When you press Save, you cursor could be at any position inside editing window (for example, you just corrected a typo). IMHO the best approach (besides switching to a better forum system) is to simply warn users about missing ~~~~ on saving. This is implemented for unregistered and new users for example in ru.wp (with JavaScript). Another approach is to have the bot sign afterwards ∴ AlexSm 06:27, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Is there a script on the English Wikipedia that an editor could add to their monobook.js page to warn about a missing signature? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes; WP:US/S lists two (User:Olliminatore/sign.js and Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/qSig). --ais523 16:00, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Block specific segments of text

I have a suggestion which I belive would seriously help out with the duties on Wikipedia (I posted this here because I do not know where else to post it). Basiccly, What I'm suggesting is the following:

(only) Segments of text being Protected

What I'm trying to say is this:

You know on say the main page, you can copy the source code but you cannot edit (it's grey and won't accept any text) well, I think Admins should be able to block specific segments of text, e.g the header of the sandox, or say in an edit war, instead of protecting that page, an admin could protect the information that people are conflicting about so people are free to edit the rest of an article without having to request it on the article's talk page.

So, if admins had the privleges to do this, it could lessen out the duties (e.g restoring the sandbox header) so users can concentrate on other things.

For anyone who is reading this- Please don't steal my idea!

thanks, cf38talk 22:08, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

This has been proposed many times before; e.g., bugzilla:4375. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
: Damn! lol; Well, has this been taken into consideration for use in the 'pedia?

cf38talk 15:23, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Main Page Proposal

I think that there should be dates along with the selected news stories on the main page. It's confusing to see "Pervez Musharraf ends state of emergency" at the top of the news section today, 12/17, when it happened on 12/15 . My proposal is that the dates (MM/DD) should replace the bullets in order to lessen the confusion about when things happened. Let me know what you think. Jerse (talk) 00:26, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

What is the 17th month of the year? Shniken1 (talk) 01:26, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh my bad, I didn't know you couldn't read. (MM/DD) meaning month first, day last. Jerse (talk) 02:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Either MM/DD or DD/MM will probably result in this sort of sniping from people who prefer whichever format is not used, even though the formats are easily disambiguated if it is understood that they date recent news stories. IMHO date + 3-letter-monthname, either as "DD Mmm" or "Mmm DD", would be better. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 02:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree, could this be instated? Jerse (talk) 02:57, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Why not just DD, with a header for each month (there won't ever be more than two)? —Random832 18:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

And what about different timezones too? An event could take place on Sunday 12/15 in Pakistan but in New York it would still be 12/14Jerse (talk) 23:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Format would ideally be ISO, which is YYYY-MM-DD . Dates would be relative to UTC. Easy. Not that I see the need, because it's just "recent" news, not necessarily "today's" news. Wikipedia's not a news site, we have Wikinews to worry about that. :) Nihiltres{t.l} 03:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Landmark images

In the last week I've been surveying the site's public domain files for images that could be featured picture candidates. What these files actually contain in greater number are historically important images that don't qualify to become featured because the image is too small, or a poor quality scan, or heavily artifacted. These images still have significant research value and some of them could qualify for featured status if better versions become available. It would be good for the site to have some method of distinguishing them from thousands of others that don't have as much value or potential.

So I propose Wikipedia:Landmark images, which would be a rough parallel to Wikipedia:Good articles. Landmark images would be selected for intrinsic uniqueness and encyclopedic significance. DurovaCharge! 18:26, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Ugh. Another level of "featured" content??? Good Articles is bad enough as Featured Articles Jr. Why not just try and make an exception to the Featured Picture criteria that states landmark, historical images can become featured as uncompromisingly important, even if they aren't quite up to snuff on the size aspect? Seems much less bureaucratic and mind-numbing. Mahalo. --Ali'i 19:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
The featured image guidelines do make some allowances, but in practice these examples are getting thrown back. Have a look at the picture peer review for the first photograph from space and the Commons featured image proposal for the Reims cathedral shot. The result is material that has real importance and potential remains lost in an undifferentiated pool. After reviewing tens of thousands of Commons and WP images I've decided we could do better. For instance, this 1911 photograph of a Moroccan seaport might pass FPC if the artifacts were cleaned up. It would be a useful thing to have some mainspace location where volunteers can pool energies and improve this material. DurovaCharge! 19:22, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
While I support the idea of trying to get better quality scans of old photographs by using higher quality scanners, I'd like to make a plea not to embark on manually "cleaning up" possible artifacts in the photographs after they have been scanned, which is a very subjective process. There is no reliable way to identify and delineate what is an artifact and what is not in a scanned photograph. One person's artifact is another person's evidence — it might be important in some contexts to know that the walls of a particular house really were filthy at the time of a photograph, for example. I place a high value on the historical integrity of genuine uncleaned scanned originals. To sum up: (1) artifacts that are present in the original photograph should be left alone; (2) artifacts that are the result of using a low quality scan of the original photograph should be resolved by re-scanning using a higher quality scanner. - Neparis (talk) 13:14, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Maybe WP:FOTO would be interested in this topic, or perhaps a new WikiProject would like to shepherd a collection. It looks like it would be necessary to recognize which images are Landmarks, and then try to improve them (and WP:FOTO already has a structure for image improvement). -- SEWilco (talk) 19:44, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Good link. Their graphics lab looks like it's set up for different purposes. I may host this in user space for starters and see how well this works. I see a gap that needs to be filled, but if other people's first reaction is bureaucracy then a trial run on an unofficial basis might be the best compromise. Thanks for the feedback. DurovaCharge! 19:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

FWIW here's the page User:Durova/Landmark images in early form right now. A few might already be feature-worthy. Others have issues that could be resolved with better captioning, larger replacements, etc. Teamwork is welcome here; contact me in user space. DurovaCharge! 20:33, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I made a comment at User talk:Durova/Landmark images. Carcharoth (talk) 21:27, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Suggest that all identified school IPs be soft blocked.

It's not news to state that a fair amount of the vandalism around here tends to come from random IPs. It strikes me that a fair percentage of those random IPs are school-based. I would even go so far to say that for every good edit we get from a school IP, we get at least 10 bad ones, and that's guessing on the side of good faith; the difference may likely be higher.

What I therefore suggest is that all IPs that have been identified as belonging to a school and any IPs from this point on that are identified as such be soft-blocked: impossible to post with unless you make an account.

I don't expect this to actually go anywhere as an idea, I'm simply posting to see what others think of it. HalfShadow (talk) 21:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that would be a good idea. You are probably right on the 1:10 ratio (if like you said, it isn't higher), but that just seems to go against what Wikipedia is. The fact that people do not have to make an account is a big deal with WP. - Rjd0060 (talk) 23:15, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Rjd0060 is right. It does go against the guiding principles of Wikipedia. Point 2 from the Foundation issues page on Meta states that anyone should be able to edit without an account. The proposal also goes against Wikipedia:Assume good faith. It assumes that all School IP's are going to be used for vandalism and vandalism only. We block IP's only if they have gone against Wikipedia (vandalism, trolling), not because we think they might. Harryboyles 10:47, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
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