Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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The proposals section of the village pump is used to discuss new ideas and proposal that are not policy related (see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for that).

Recurring policy proposals are discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals). If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that Wikipedia doesn't have it, please check there first before posting it, as someone else might have found it obvious, too.

Before posting your proposal:

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

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Discussions older than 7 days (date of last made comment) are moved here. These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

Wikipedia Kids?

You know, I've seen kids use Wikipedia (Simple English if they know about it) a lot lately and sometimes they can get confused with the whole interface and stuff. Like some kids who wander into the talk pages and kind of "vandalise" it. Also, since this is an encyclopedia, it has articles on many items, some of which are not appropriate for young users. So, maybe, we could design a kid-friendly UI, non editable, and features. I could explain everything right now, but so far, what do you think? Crad0010 00:27, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Sort of like www.answers.com? Anyone could do that, as long as the GFDL is followed. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 01:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Not being able to edit it takes the "wiki" out of Wikipedia. Thanks for sharing your idea, though. (^'-')^ Covington 04:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

And where would the content come from if the encyclopedia is not editable? — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:52, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

As an upcoming father I have to say there should be some places safe from kids, not safe for them. I like that Wiki has curse words (when scholarly appropriate) and adult subject. It's fucking great.--Mark 2000 08:24, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. In addition to wikipedia being simply a plain old encyclopedia without its vast open-source capabilities, I have a positive attitude towards kids getting to see all of the information on wikipedia. The only inappropriate content to be viewed by anyone, in my opinion, is biased content. Wikipedia is not biased. Regardless of the subject matter, I view wikipedia as a great resource to be used by kids. Besides, they'll be exposed to the more "mature" subject matter later on in their lives anyways. Having wikipedia provide a preliminary understanding of these subjects for children as opposed to their peers doing it in an immature and uninformative way has to be a good thing. --Matt0401 22:16, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but protecting kids from Wikipedia is a bad idea. Smoke comes out of my ears and nose whenever I hear someone bring this topic up. --Osbus 01:06, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course, the OP wasn't really suggesting this as the main point. Rather, that Wikipedia should be protected from kids. I'd oppose that too, though, on the grounds that blanket-underestimating kids is a bad idea. — Saxifrage ✎ 07:49, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I have never opposed an idea more in my time at wikipedia. Perhaps you don't realize how many good edits actually come from kids in middle schools and high schools? --Mets501^talk 14:37, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning that too. I myself just recently turned 16. I made most of my wikipedia articles and edits when I was 15. --Matt0401 15:27, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm 15 now, with almost 1000 edits. --Mets501^talk 15:45, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

It's true. I know 8-12 year olds who make good edits, even if the edits are only to The Legend of Zelda and Harry Potter.--Osbus 13:54, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Those edits help too. The entire idea of Wikipedia is for people who know a lot about a certain subject to contribute to Wikipedia about it. 8-12 year olds are actually the people with the most expertise in certain areas such as childrens' literature and things like that. Basically, things targeted towards them. Therefore I disagree with both protecting kids from wikipedia, and wikipedia from kids. Those not mature enough to properly contribute won't be able to figure out how anyways. :P --Matt0401 15:15, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Here's another view. Many schools forbid outside communication, by editing the Wikipedia it could be classed as communicating. If the school finds editing fine, they can unblock the Wikipedia (many schools use a whitelist system). Computerjoe's talk 15:33, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, and here's a problem. No way in hell would schools that block communication agree that editing Wikipedia is fine. --Osbus 19:38, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I am employed by the education department of an Australian state government. I work in schools every day. Unfortunately I am unable to recommend Wikipedia as an educational resource in schools because some of the content is inappropriate. The word inappropriate may not be strong enough. It is actually illegal to expose some Wikipedia content to minors in many jurisdictions.

The only realistic solution to this problem would be to create a seperate project Wikipedia Junior that mirrors copies of Wikipedia articles verified not to contain inappropriate content. Such a project would be massive, but could attract funding from the education departments of countries around the world.

What constitutes inappropriate content is a contentious issue however, and the definition may vary according to culture. Since the content would be protected, a standardised article tagging system could be used to filter content according to each nation's cultural or legal requirements.

--Dave 02:03, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Will kids be allowed to edit "Wikipedia Junior"? --Osbus 14:47, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I suggest not. Uncontrolled editing is a loss of content control. Kids should perhaps be able to submit edit suggestions to a moderator, but direct editing should not be possible. --Dave 15:11, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Earlier discussion of a closely related question can be found here - you may find it interesting/helpful. FreplySpang (talk) 02:21, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I strongly support the idea of a "Wikipedia Kids Edition" or "Wikipedia Junior" for schools. I would suggest preventing any editing of such an edition (which would have a narrower selection of articles too) to preserve quality. For those who object about censorship of Wikipedia - most kids will be able to log on to the regular Wikipedia outside of school anyway, and look up all the taboo subjects they want in their free time. The key thing here is getting a Wikipedia edition out which is usable by schools Bwithh 14:56, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

What this is doing is destroying a great resource for kids who actually do research in their school; not allowing them to access certain pages on Wikipedia. Perhaps if editing is the concern a block on IP addresses registered to schools would be a better idea, although still not ideal. --Mets501^{talk • contribs} 15:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

A Wikipedia edition for kids is not only a bad idea, but a costly one too. Where will we get the money? And to whoever said that edu. departments over the world could help, why would they do this when they already have what they think is a perfectly good resource, other encyclopedias (i.e. Britanica.)? --Osbus 18:17, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

A while back, the Wikimedia Foundation received a grant to get started on a project for making books for children: see m:Wikijunior. —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER (TALK) 00:51, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

• I totally disagree, I am 12 and use wikipedia a lot and although I sometimes have to close a page because it contains cursing (my mum is coming past) - so what? Lcarsdata ^{Talk | @ | Contribs} 12:34, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

The idea is interesting, but I don't think it is fair. I myself am 15 and use Wikipedia for research and browsing. Wikipedia should be about covering all topics, and kids often have more knowledge about certain subjects than adults do (and vice versa). I believe they are an important part of the process. --Matterbug 22:53, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes the law of a country does not seem fair, particularly for those close to the legal age of majority in that country. Here in Australia the legal age of consent is 16. It is illegal to present sexually explicit material to anyone before their 16th birthday, but quite OK a day later. Fair on a well developed 15 year old? Perhaps not. But the line has to be drawn somewhere. Wikipedia kids would allow schools to present material from Wikipedia and stay within the law in their country. Currently they can't do this and many schools simply block the site. Its interesting to note Wikipedia itself has blocked editing by people in all schools in my State, including adults, because of vandalism. Mutual blocking is not a very good solution, but Wikipedia Kids Edition would work well.

I see where you are coming from but from my reading of the proposal, the idea for the Kids Edition was because kids are more likely to vandalise a page. This idea to me seemed quite sterotypical. I wasn't basing my opinion on legal ages and such, more on what was initially proposed. --Matterbug 23:19, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that an edition to be created for schools to allow the Wikipedia content would be a great idea. As was said before, nothing is going to stop kids from viewing the main WP at home, and as it is, they can't see it at their school, so they would only be getting something, and not losing anything. I'm quite certain that funding would be available, as the idea of a Wikipedia Junior would be much better and easier to access than Britannica. To the person that said that "I have a positive attitude towards kids getting to see all of the information on wikipedia. The only inappropriate content to be viewed by anyone"...that's is pretty gross. Are you aware that there is a picture of someone sucking his own penis on Wikipedia..it's called Autofellatio and you can see the picture here if you'd like. If you have kids you can show it to them too. That's all for my sopabox. Chuck 15:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Holy Cow...I just found the Simple English Wikipedia. If we can have this, then surely it wouldn't be terribly hard to create a kids Wikipedia. Chuck^(척뉴넘) 06:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the idea of having a wikipedia for kids, we don't know whether everything on wikipedia is accurate. Even if we have a formal peer review system and checked the accuracy of everything, we still need experts to check everything over. Until we created a stable wikipedia v1.00 I don't think we should make a wikipedia for kids. We know how to use wikipedia, kids don't they will think whatever they read is accurate; and that is fatal on something like wikipedia. I don't want some kid to think that John Seigenthaler, Sr. attempted to kill JFK. Pseudoanonymous 23:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Woman have breast's men have penis's and people do drugs. thats just a fact of life, nothing to hide any one from. user:Zerath13

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Childrens'_Wikipedia may be of interest. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 01:36, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I rather like Dave's suggestion above -- a static copy with content tagged with custom categories, perhaps using Internet Content Rating Association or something else that individual countries/education departments/end users can use to filter the information as they choose. I think many people above are right -- there are many potential teachers and users who would be delighted to have a "safe" alternative to the Wild Wikipedia. I just don't think we should be doing the work of creating that alternative. Any separate group -- a non-profit, a charitable foundation, a coalition of educational organizations, a university, or anyone else -- is free to do this at any time, and I'm sure we'd be happy to help them set it up in a way that's GFDL compliant, and capable of being periodically updated to keep step with the improvements here on the edge. But it's really not within our mission to create a sanitized version ourselves. — Catherine\^talk 01:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Spell checking

Apparently there were proposals for a spell-checker, but they were thrown out because of fears of the software "correcting" things that didn't need correcting. Currently a lot of spelling fixes are done as separate edits, with AWB, Wikipedia:Typo, Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings, Spellbound, etc. Maybe a better method would be to have the Mediawiki software look for words and display them on preview? Like you press preview and it underlines the words a special way or something. "Underlined words may be misspelled." That would help to reduce errors in a human-controlled way while not interrupting work or making tons of extra edits just for spell fixes. — Omegatron 16:20, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This would greatly simplify not only the work of others needing to copyedit articles but also the work of the ones writing the article. It would not increase server load as it would probably be written in JavaScript, meaning it's client-side. Sounds like a decent idea to me. > Iridescence < ^( talk )_{( contrib )} 03:39, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Would it use British or American spelling, or would there be an option in Preferences? A recipe for endless confusion as spelling switches from one to the other and back! - Runcorn 22:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I find that wikipedia's lack of spell check in it's search engine is a more pressing concern. Google's method of suggesting alternatives for probable misspelled words in search queries works very well. Bige1977 05:48, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Apparently the reason for this is that all the good features of the search engine have been turned off to save server load. You can use google to search wp. For great justice. 21:38, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

This has always been the thing that seems glaringly missing from WP - the search functionality. If they've artificially turned off the functions such as spelling suggestions to save capacity then I understand (though I don't agree), but if this function doesn't exist yet then *get it soon* please! Witty lama 14:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Definitely better to use Google than the internal search facility; the only problem is the time lag before Google picks up changes. But that's off-topic. - Runcorn 16:35, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Google Toolbar has a built in spell checker for textboxes and forms on web pages. It functions much in the same way as the spell checker in microsoft word does. Danny Beardsley 08:01, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

The idea of a Spell Checker seems like a good one to me. It should just point out the words, not change them automatically. On the other hand, just copying and pasting the writing into Word or a similar program could also do the trick. --Matterbug 22:55, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the idea, I don't want to copy everything into Word everytime I want to make an edit. But I think we need a spellcheck for the seach engine first. Pseudoanonymous 23:45, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Setting up brit<=>amer variants

Why not set up a en-br and a en-am which would convert between the two different spelling variations similar to what is done on the Chinese projects^{(2 rightmost tabs)} zh and the Serbian projects^{(4 rightmost tabs)} sr? Then an admin can place a spelling variation in MediaWiki:Conversiontable/en-br -{color=>colour}-, in this way everyone will be happy with the spelling! --Shibo77 10:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Spellings. Ardric47 00:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Which is now Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive#Spellings FWIW. Ardric47 04:57, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Purely on the technical side, there are problems with your solution. Accurate automatic conversion is not possible. Not all instances of "color" can be replaced with "colour", for instance. e.g. the film Colors is always spelt that way, as is the command color in BASIC. And to be self-referential, the sentence above start with "Not all instances of" would be trashed by your proposed enhancement.

The only solution that could work reliably would require every instance of every br/am word to be tagged. For example: "The opening scene for Colors uses the {{am-br|color}} red lots." This would require the MediaWiki software to allow templates to access custom user-specific settings, which is not allowed at present (for cache performance reasons). [i.e. [[USER:{{USERNAME}}/spellingpref]] cannot be used to make a choice within template code, because {{USERNAME}} is not allowed], see bug 4196

Finally, however, I'll address the problem itself. Most people aren't worried about the different spellings, and so a solution to the problem is not a pressing issue. Perhaps it will become more so as teachers find themselves using materials from Wikipedia in classes, and demand their texts be automatically localised correctly (I don't see it, really). Most conflicts come from people who are unaware of the variations and so they "correct" what doesn't need to be, and so finding a technical solution will not make them any more aware of the issue. Hope this addresses your proposal adequately. —Pengo 04:51, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

When the title doesn't need to be converted, type:; When the page content doesn't need to be converted, type:; When a particular word doesn't need to be converted, enclose the word in: -{ }-s.

This is better than using templates and tags. There are many Brit/Amer variants, tags would be a great deal of work and maintenance; However, there are only a few instances where one would not want to convert (such as the examples you've listed, the film, BASIC...), allowing for automatic conversion brings all the spelling issues to a few pages MediaWiki:Conversiontable/en-br and MediaWiki:Conversiontable/en-am. Type on the page Colors (film); Type -{color}- in the article on BASIC. --Shibo77 17:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I like that idea. --Nintendorulez talk 20:15, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Article of the Day

On April 20, I thought that the article 420 (cannabis culture) would receive a lot of attention. I was correct. While it indeed received a lot of vandalism (leading it to semiprotection), a plethora of good came out of it. 4/20 was good for 420. All this positive attention that an article received in one day made me think of something: imagine all the articles that can receive attention if we give them high exposure. That led me to an idea: Article of the Day. Everyday of the year, a random article would be selected and featured as the Article of the Day. The declaration of the Article of the Day could be done by anyone who's fast enough to do it. The article would be declared on the template, which (hopefully) would be posted in many high-profile areas, including the Main Page. While we already have article collaborations, which are good and all, those are more long-term and involve a lot more process. Article of the Day is a more simple, quick version. If 420 (cannabis culture) could be greatly improved within a single day, imagine all the other articles capable of high status from high exposure, especially though vague topics! —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER (TALK) 21:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, however finding somewhere on the main page could be hard and although I support, your proposal would probably come under a lot of criticism. Lcarsdata ^{Talk | E-mail | My Contribs} 17:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The only reason the 420 article was under high exposure is because of the event, not because it was under exposure on Wikipedia. In fact, Wikipedia probably gave it no exposure...that's why your proposal doesn't make much sense (although I'm probably misunderstanding something). --Osbus 23:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week, except there wouldn't be as much time to work on the article, and using Special:Random would result in lots of articles that few editors would want to work on.

The idea that I do find interesting is to advertise such collaborations on the Main Page. Newcomers to Wikipedia are unlikely to visit the Community Portal, so they aren't exposed so much to the collaborative project side of Wikipedia, as opposed to just its product. Would it be a good idea for the community to hold a small outpost on the Main Page? Melchoir 00:20, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a really interesting idea [User:Messedrocker|Messedrocker]],

Remember when Google spelled their name in Braile and linked to our article as the first hit when you clicked on the logo? Editing on braile went bananas! What should be done, rather than having "article of the day" being random (which is quite like WP:COTW) but having it linked to something relevant to current events, that day in history... That way, issues that a non-wikipedian would be likely to seach for that day would more likely come up with our page. Precisely because of its topicality, they would be more likely to come here, more likely to return here and more likely to improve that article.

In a nutshell, I suggest not an "Article of the day" that is just random but "Article of the day" that has some special significance/importance/topicality. Witty lama 12:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

That's a great idea. I'd check it out now and then. --Nintendorulez talk 01:52, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Featured content according to namespaces

We should have featured content according to namespaces. As far as concerned, we have main, image, portal, category, wikipedia, template, user, mediawiki and help namespaces. In which we have already feature status for first three of them. I oppose featured list in article namespace. We should have different namespace for lists, like, simply (List) namespace. For featured topic, I would suggest category space to be featured rather than every article to be featured. I want to make a proposal to be featured for wikipedia namespace, template namespace. Pour in your suggestions. Thank you, Shyam ^(T/C) 06:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I refer others to previous discussion on the matter at Wikipedia talk:Featured content. Pursuant to my comments there, I believe this proposal fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and function of the featured processes. They are established to promote the merits of Wikipedia as an encyclopædia.--cj | talk 07:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

The intent of our featured process is to showcase encyclopedia content of exceptional quality. However, it must be noted that in practice it also involves an element of 'bragging rights'. Having gotten articles promoted to featured status is often considered in RFAs (though it has nothing to do with adminship) and listed on user pages. This is not a bad thing per se... people should feel good about helping to make Wikipedia better. What Shyam is suggesting is an extension of that concept, but I agree with Cyberjunkie that it focuses too much on the recognition of achievement 'side effect' of the current featured process.

I think it is fair to say that I am one of the 'top 20' template builders on Wikipedia and that alot of my work would be included in any list of 'featured templates'... which would certainly be personally gratifying, but I don't think it would do much to advance the encyclopedia. Possibly it would make people more aware of what template options are out there, but that tends to happen automatically with the useful ones. There'd be no value to the average reader in knowing that {{conv-temp}} (or whatever) is a 'featured' template. Someone who had never edited Wikipedia or done so only casually would have no idea what a template was or why the page displayed was 'featured'.

There would be some benefit to 'advertising' useful wikiprojects and templates and the like to the community of editors, but not to the readers of the encyclopedia. Thus, I don't think that the 'featured' structure is the right vehicle for these 'behind the scenes' items. Featured status is for 'front page' materials that Joe Citizen might find on a Google search. Promotion of other stuff (most active wikiprojects, most heavily used templates, et cetera) should follow a different path - probably in the Wikipedia namespace. --CBDunkerson 12:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I edit my proposal in points format so that every point can be discussed.

1. Featured lists should be a part of List namespace (which does not exist, need to be created).
2. Featured topics should be a part of category namespace.
3. Some of good quality and very useful project from wikipedia namespace should be featured as featured project (we don't have featured project but according to consensus we can have). It may help to users in contributing more effectively. We can select a collaboration project of the week from featured project, if needed.
4. Some good quality and very useful (in the sense of "they are linked to important and good articles") templates should have featured status. As article contains a template, if a template is of good quality then an article page also looks good.

Please suggest your views on each point. Shyam ^(T/C) 12:46, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Re: #3 and #4 (projects and templates) should be promoted in a different fashion from encyclopedic content, per reasoning of CBDunkerson.

I would suggest that they might get added to a Tip Of The Day each. That way they would appear at the Community Portal, and at the Help:Contents page, hence remaining visible only to Editors, their target audience. --Quiddity 19:30, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Re: #1, I agree with ALoan, that lists are just articles with lists in them. A new namespace is not needed or desirable.

Re: #2, we already have 1 Featured topic, so i guess you should discuss that with the maintainers of that page? --Quiddity 19:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

What is the criteria to distinguish between a featured article and a featured list? If an article is well-comprehensive and have good numbers of referenced and well formatted tables in it, then should it be a part of either featured lists or featured articles? So, I think we need an extra namespace for all the lists. Many of the articles simply have notaions as list of something, so we can simply move those pages to list namespace. In addition to that for featured topics, if a proposal has been made then we can contact maintainers to make a category which have only those articles which have been featured as a part of featured topics. Shyam ^(T/C) 20:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I'm understanding you. What advantage is there to having a separate List: namespace? — Saxifrage ✎ 23:33, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

If we create List namespace then firsly we can have all the information regarding datas. We can have some comparison factors in the list namespace. We won't have to the look the full article page for collecting datas. Shyam ^(T/C) 07:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I think there might be a language barrier getting in the way, because I can't make any sense from that. — Saxifrage ✎ 08:06, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I wanted to say that if we create a seperate namespace for list. Articles starting from list of.. can simply be shifted to list namespace. All the articles in list category can be shifted to list namespace. We can simply distinguish between the lists and article pages by creating list namespace. Shyam ^(T/C) 07:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:on nl

{{on nl}}:

The English Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. However, there is a corresponding article on the Dutch Wikipedia.

• Start the Village pump (proposals) article on the English Wikipedia or add a request for it.
• Search for Village pump (proposals) in other articles.
• Look for Village pump (proposals) in Wiktionary, our sister dictionary project.
• Look for Village pump (proposals) in the Commons, our repository for free images, music, sound, and video.
• Look for pages within Wikipedia linking to this article.

Would using the template be a good or a bad idea? I wanted to propose this template for deletion, but the original author did provide some valid arguments on the talk page, why this template would be useful. —Ruud 16:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I've substed the template and made the category a link so that this page doesn't get added to the category.-gadfium 21:58, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

sounds like a good template, but we'd need similar ones for other languages too - it could get messy if we had them for 30-40 languages! Grutness...wha? 01:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't particularly like this idea. Telling someone that we don't have an article on X but the Y language encyclopedia does is only going to be helpful to the small minority of users that speak Y. To use the present example, if every Dutch speaker also knows English then still only 3% of English speakers would know Dutch. Some languages would do better, many would do worse, but on average it would seem to be of only limited utility. At the same time it causes a sort of active harm by turning any page with that template on it into a blue link even though there is really no content. Most of the time when I start new articles it is because I noticed a red link that I know something about. By eliminating those red links it becomes harder to grow this encyclopedia. In my book, this harm, though also fairly minor, outweighs the good. Dragons flight 02:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I also worry about false bluelinks. Perhaps a template like this could be put on nonexistent articles' talk pages? It would be less useful so hidden, but at least it would still categorize the articles and provide a known interlang link if/when the article does get written. Melchoir 02:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Puting it on talk pages would be a good idea! It would be more like something along the liens of "If you create this article, please also add links to and from the nl wikipedia, where an article on this topic already exists." - it would also be a good way to allow searching for pages to be translated while not making the concerned pages blue links :) Flammifer 05:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I think having templates like this on the Talk pages of such non-existent articles is a great idea! It doesn't damage the redlinks, and it provides information that can potentially jump-start the article when it's created. I do think that the template format shouldn't look like the "there is no page here, would you like to create it?" default text of uncreated pages if it's no longer intended to appear instead of that text.

I imagine that if we really wanted it to be thorough, we could arrange to have a bot populate the Talk pages of non-existent articles that have corresponding articles at other-language wikipedias. I'm not sure how the current bots that I always see updating interlanguage links work, so I'm not sure if it would be feasible to piggyback on them or to use a similar bot program to do this. I think it bears investigation if this gets adopted as a Good Idea, though. — Saxifrage ✎ 23:31, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The way Yurikbot works is by checking each page for links to other languages' pages, and if they exist, making sure a reciprocal link exists. So if he:כלב linked to en:Dog, but en:Dog had no link to he:כלב, Yurikbot would add [[he:כלב]] to Dog. This could be adapted fairly easily for cases where a wiki links to a nonexistent page in another wiki: the appropriate templates could be auto-added to the target wiki. Put on talk pages, a template like this isn't a bad idea, although I wouldn't call it massively useful. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:41, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Hm, but how often are there interwiki links to non-existent pages? — Saxifrage ✎ 04:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this would be a hard talk to do automatically in general, but it should be do-able for articles which have the same title in all languages, such as biographies. —Ruud 22:54, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I realize few people will be able to read a foreign language page, but we could mention in the template that if you are able to translate it for the English Wikipedia, feel free to do so. That would be more than helpful, I'm sure. For all languages. --Nintendorulez talk 01:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Advertisement on wikipedia

I discussed it on the mailing list and I think I'd share some ideas with advertising on wikipedia. As some of you may have noticed, some websites copy the content of wikipedia and have some advertisement on the right-hand side of the page. This is a google-like adword style (nothing flashy) that is related to the text of the article. I know advertising is controvertial but here's a suggestion (it's not only my ideas, others helped).

Advertising on the side of each page with page with google adwords but only to a few users. IP users would not see the advertisement. Registered users would only see advertisement if they turn it on. The default behavior is no ads.

There are several caveats (apparently) with this technique. At least 1/3 of the income must come from donations, so a way to control for it must be found. On the other side, would could advertise that there's a donation matching, like "for every dollar you give, wikipedia receives three". There are also other legal/accounting issues that are over my head. Also, another caveat is the "sell-out" factor. There a concern, legitimate I think, that advertising might go against POV.

Tony Bruguier 15:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC) (please delete this post if it's inapropriate location for such discussion)

If Wikipedia starts accepting advertising, I'd encourage all editors of serious articles to quit contributing. If somebody else is making money off it, we're not going to work for free. Wikipedia will have to start paying people. --John Nagle 17:03, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

You realize that people (e.g. the $100 million market-cap Answers Corporation) are already making substantial amounts of money off it, right? Christopher Parham (talk) 18:56, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Oppose per John Nagle. --Knucmo2 23:49, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Completely ignoring Christopher Parham, I notice. If you don't want people making money off your work, for crying out loud, don't release it under the GFDL. And Wikimedia would only use the profit from the ads to improve the project. It's not like Jimbo is going to be pocketing the money, good grief. (He currently gets paid nothing by the Foundation except business expenses, IIRC, such as travel expenses. The only three paid employees are User:Danny, User:Tim Starling, and User:Brion VIBBER.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Advertising is a bad idea. The internet already abounds with ad ridden information sources. Lack of ads and independence from advertisers is one of the things that differentiates Wikipedia. Here in Australia advertising is a perennial topic with regard to our national public broadcaster, the ABC. The argument always follows the same lines:

• Advertising will raise money and allow the ABC to increase content quality
• Advertising will make ABC beholden to advertisers and influence content.

The same arguments hold true for Wikipedia. The ABC has so far resisted the temptation to run advertising, Wikipedia should do the same. --Dave 00:16, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

If IP users would not see ads and registered users would have to opt-in, who would see the ads? The potential for damage to the credibility of Wikipedia doesn't seem to warrant the trickle of revenue that would come from the vanishingly-small fraction of registered users masochistic enough to actually turn the ads on and who would also actually click the links. — Saxifrage ✎ 01:03, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Very strong oppose Some people seem to want to push advertising for the sake of it. The financial position appears to be sound - sound enough at least for the fundraiser to be late again - and the server reliablility is much better than it was a year ago. There is no current financial problem to address. Wikipedia is pure, so let's keep it that way. One thing you can be sure of is that having ads won't encourage more good editors to join. Sumahoy 02:25, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Financial soundness is not a Boolean attribute. Yes, Wikipedia isn't going to collapse due to lack of money, but it will be slower and less reliable than it would be if it had more servers (which cost money), and the software will improve more slowly than it would if there were more paid developers.

I think it's more accurate to say that some people want to oppose advertising just for the sake of it. As though something is impure about text ads. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Several people have been working on a proposal document discussing this exact topic. Please Help us at User:NeilTarrant/PageAds Danny Beardsley 08:43, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see a need for them, but opt-in ads for registered users would be harmless. The usual knees are jerking, of course. — Matt Crypto 09:02, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

The point of opt-in advertisements is that people who want to contribute money to Wikipedia without donating can do so by turning on the advertisements. This will keep Wikipedia financially stable. I see another advantage to Google AdSense advertising on Wikipedia. If I were to go to the Free web hosting service article, for example, the ads would point me to some good free web hosts I might like to check out.

I've been running a site Plants for a Future which fills a similar role as wikipedia, but with a more specialised scope, specifically about useful plants. We debated long and hard about advertising on site and in the end of the day went for google adds. Whilst our users are more than happy to find problems with the content the one thing they have not complaied about is the adds, a total of zero comments! I'd actually say for that site the ads do actually add value to the site in that it allows people to find supliers of the plants we list. I've not noticed any positive of negative effect on the rate of contributions. That said I don't think Adds are appropriate for wikipedia. Financially Wikipeida could do with a lot more income, more servers are needed to cope with increasing demand and to overcome repeated outages, a few more staff could also come in handy. In idea I've liked is to spin off related projects such as an add supported wiki for all those non-notable bands which are always on AfD. Wikia does this to some respect but I don't know whether the income from this goes to help the foundation in any way. --Salix alba (talk) 11:16, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a bad idea. Introducing any ads is likely to reduce donations. Introducing ads in a way that will only produce a small amount of revenue might reduce donations by more than the amount of new income generated. Bhoeble 23:10, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Would opt-in advertising for registered users reduce the number of donations? People who opt obviously can't/won't donate so they're doing their part by seeing ads. No? I'd support opt in, although I admit it would give ammunition to the anti-wiki trolls (i.e. it would look bad). BrokenSegue 14:57, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Strong oppose. Wikipedia is nonprofit. This goes against the very nature of Wikipedia and will ruin it. The very thing that makes Wikipedia so unique and such a powerful force is its freedom. But that did give me an idea: how about another totally unaffiliated website that skins over Wikipedia that has ads on it, and all proceeds are donated directly to Wikipedia? Sort of like what Answers.com does, only trying to help Wikipedia, not freeloading it. And it will be made very clear that this is not original content, but rather just an optional way for persons who don't mind AdWords to donate financially. It is very obvious that Wikipedia needs more funding. They key point would be that somebody else administers it, and that it is made very clear that it is not affiliated in any way with Wikipedia. It's just a thought anyway. Comments, please. michaelb 19:24, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Um, do you know what a nonprofit organization is? No money goes to the owners of the corporation (who are, I believe, us). It only goes to pay the organization's expenses, such as operating servers and hiring developers. Nobody's proposing to change that. And Wikimedia already makes something in the vicinity of a million dollars a year, in case you didn't know. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Extreme oppose—Not only my personal dislike of internet advertising, but especially to avoid even the mere appearance or rumor of conflicts of interest. Ardric47 07:30, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

More use of semi-protection against vandalism

Wikipedia now supports semi-protection, which prevents editing of protected articles by anons and new users. But semi-protection is granted reluctantly, even for articles where vandalism occurs several times a day. I propose that, as policy, semi-protection be enabled on request for any article vandalized by more than one anon in a one week period. This will slow nuisance-level vandalism down without being overly restrictive. Too much effort now has to be expended undoing vandal edits.

This is a compromise between the "everyone can edit" and "only logged in users can edit" positions. It's weaker than the Wikipedia:Restrictions on Anonymous Editing from Shared IPs proposal. Only a small fraction of Wikipedia articles will be affected.

I suggest, as a 30-day trial, that all the pages on Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages be placed on semi-protection for a month, after which this approach can be re-evaluated. That's easy to do, and it will tell us if this is going to work. Comments? --John Nagle 19:25, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

More than one anon per week? I think that's way too strict. Perhaps more than one anon per day for a period of 3 days or so. Most important articles get vandalized relatively often, and we can't semi-protect the entire encyclopedia! --Mets501^talk 21:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

No...no...just no...sorry. This kind of policy, while well meant, gives vandals too much denial of service and pyschological power, many times I just revert (3) times and they say "ah hell" and leave. When I make a big deal over a few vandalisms, the trolls get more power. Personally, I would like it of every article was "semiprotected" and only "open-task" articles were not, they would act as proving grounds for prospective users...however, that is a different story and it is not responsive to individual vandals; it is also, likely, a serious WP:foundation issue.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 22:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

OK. Let's put a selection of the 300 or so of Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages on someone's watch list (perhaps Voice of All (talk · contribs) would like to volunteer), and make them responsible for fixing those problems. Then at the end of a month, we ask them how much time it took them and evaluate their performance. This will give us a good measure of how much effort is required to fix vandalism manually.

As an example of the problem, Voice of All (talk · contribs) did revert vandalism to the Bill Clinton article on 28 April. But the article has been vandalized and reverted 20 times in the one day since then, with the vandalism repair performed by twelve different editors other than Voice of All. Some vandalism slipped through anyway. This indicates the level of effort required and the failure of the present approach. --John Nagle 17:44, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

If 12 other editors revert around the clock, then good. We have many admins, and each of us may catch a vandal and revert 1-2 times. When 12 admins do that, it kills a lot of vandalism without wasting any one individuals time (a few seconds). If you want to get a High Traffic Page protection policy, then propose it, but I doubt it will get through.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 17:48, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Have you met Tawkerbot2? — Saxifrage ✎ 22:16, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I've met (and unsuccessfully tried to beat to a revert, missing by 3s) Tawkerbot2, but I still see a lot of vandalism going on that is hard to combat with brute numbers and good bots. On the other hand, indefinitely semi-protecting a page invariably leads to the question of Wikipedia's ideals. I myself would give a Weak Support to this idea; if used in extreme moderation it could be beneficial to articles such as Newbie which are vandalized extremely often. Nihiltres 03:32, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

WikiPedia Regional Directory

There is a huge amount of stuff going on on WP - task forces, stubcatting, regional notice boards, wikiprojects, collaborations of the week/fortnight/whenever... I've been thinking that it would be a good idea to have an at least partially definitive "Wikipedia Directory", at least to record what is going on at a national and regional level. Since many new editors like to make contributions about the area where they live, it would be nice to be able to send them to a page where they can find out what we currently have on their local area, what we still need doing there (stub expansions, photo requests, maybe translation requests as well), who is there who could help (there are categories of Wikipedians by region, it would be good to get some mileage out of them!) and where they can go to co-ordinate effort with other editors (regional notice boards, projects, task forces etc). As a taster, would someone like to have a look at User:TheGrappler/North America directory, which is a very rough mock-up of a North America directory of Wikipedia activities. It has a bunch of countries (ranging from the USA, with all of its attached activities, to minor island countries that seriously lack article depth and contributor numbers) presented to a range of detail (I didn't finish sorting out the individual U.S. states and Canadian provinces, but the ones that are complete give a taste of how it could look, with effort). A useful extension would be to include "useful resources" in the table for each country e.g. if there is a handy reference site, or somewhere that provides copyleft images suitable for uploading to Commons. Do people think that what I have produced so far, if extended, would be useful for either themselves or for new users trying to get to grips with the Wiki-myriad? What could be done to make it more useful? TheGrappler 11:55, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Wow, very nice. --Jonathan Kovaciny 14:37, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Nice work. Suggestion: Only include photo requests for articles that aren't marked stubs. Stubs often have plenty of photos available and the issue is really one of completing the stub rather than going out and shooting a photo. --Mmounties (Talk) 21:20, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I do see the point, though I'd contend that there isn't one issue, there are two quite specific issues. Stub or not, an article that would gain from having a picture is an article that would gain from having a picture. One is higher priority than the other, but obtaining a photograph is often a matter of luck, so I don't see that there's any reason to wait until the stub has been expanded to list it as requiring a photo. It may well be inappropriate to add a gallery of pictures to a stub article without expanding it, but I still think it's a good idea to make a request as early as possible. A lot of photos come in as the result of chance such as Wikipedians going on holiday or a business trip, for instance... stub articles can take years to be improved, and it would be a shame if a window of opportunity got missed. There's not competition between the two tasks (i.e. listing something as a photo request is unlikely to shift attention away from stub expansion), in fact the opposite may be true - by attracting attention to an article from two sources (Wikipedian photographers with an opportunity in the locality, and Wikipedians with an interest in expanding that particular stub type) interest in the article may be increased. I suspect that editors who add photos will actually add more content to the article too, even if they weren't originally interested in the article: that has, at least, been my personal experience. Is there a specific rationale for not requesting a photo for a stub article that needs it? There is the possibility of "swamping" the requested photo categories, but the category system is really meant only for "low priority" requests, higher priority ones can be listed on forums like Wikipedia:Requested pictures. TheGrappler 06:33, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Ways of highlighting backlinks

Somewhere here an editor was complaining that another editor persisted in trying to introduce material about Asperger syndrome into the Albert Einstein article. A major article that has to cover a lot of ground cannot often include links to all auxilliary or tangential subjects. without breaking the flow.

It might therefore be useful to have a convention for linking to the What links here page for the article. Something like:

Space does not permit all aspects of this subject to be referred to here. For other articles that may contain further information relating to "Article name", please see What links here or press [alt-j].

This could of course be done as a Template ({{backlinks}}). It would benefit from certain improvements to the MediaWiki software, in particular ability to restrict to the main namespace [1] and to sort according to some kind of relevance or popularity. It would also need consensus to adopt this convention and document it on relevant Wikipedia pages. --Cedders^tk 15:40, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

If there is justification for the link, why not fork off a separate article, such as Albert Einstein and Asperger's syndrome (properly linked from the main Einstein page, of course), and put the link there? If there is no justification for the link, then it shouldn't be there at all. User:Zoe|^(talk) 16:39, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

To clarify, in this particular case (which I can't find now and I wasn't involved in, but it raised some other issues) it was not thought appropriate to have any link or mention in the Einstein article to Asperger, and it's not hard to see why. If every topic that mentioned Einstein was linked to from the main article, there would me scores of unrelated or diversionary sentences at the end of the article. Maybe you could get around this with forks on Einstein's personality, say. Backlinks are available already. To accommodate possible complaints that a particular connection isn't made in cases like this, why not point to them in the text? --Cedders^tk 17:50, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

If there's no mention of it in the text, then clearly, there shouldn't be a link to an external site. User:Zoe|^(talk) 18:05, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

There are no external links involved. These are all within Wikipedia. Imagine a page with a limited number of outgoing links, but a far larger number of incoming links. You can find the incoming links from possible related articles using What links here already. I'm just suggesting highlighting this in some way to tell the reader that there are likely to be several backlinks that cover obscure aspects of the topic (that is, not making direct links to any page that is not referenced, only highlighting a feature that is already partially present). --Cedders^tk 18:47, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, now I'm very confused. If you're talking about Wikipedia links, why is there a link from Asperger's syndrome to Albert Einstein if there is no mention in the Einstein article about Asperger's? They have to verify each other, or there's something wrong. User:Zoe|^(talk) 22:31, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I am talking about Wikipedia links. There is a link from Asperger to Einstein; there is no link in the opposite direction. What exactly is wrong with that? --Cedders^tk 12:53, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that Whatlinkshere has boatloads of totally tangential stuff for pretty much any topic, even if you only count the article space. Pages that are of only the most tangential relationship to the topic at hand are probably of interest to very few readers; if they weren't, they would after all be in the article itself. And there are often pages outside the article space linking to articles, as well as many pages duplicating info already in the linked-to article. So really, I don't think that this is a useful thing to give our readers. It would probably confuse more people than it would help, particularly since you'd have to teach a lot of people how to use "Find" on their browsers to get to the one sentence that mentions Einstein (or whatever). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:07, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are correct. Maybe this proposal is premature and should wait until such time as Whatlinkshere is more useful to readers, allowing parametric restriction to main namespace and sorting by, e.g. page views divided by article size. I have however created template:backlinks in case it should be useful. I do think that sometimes people will be scouring for any information on a particular subject or wondering why the article doesn't mention something that the editors didn't deem sufficiently relevant to include.

On your final point, I guess Whatlinkshere could be improved so the links table included an anchor within the target page, but I expect it would be a lot of programming. Thanks for comments. --Cedders^tk 14:31, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Cedders, I think you may be on to something really worthwhile here. I'd like to spin an idea out of this concept of inter-article relevance for a second. Obviously one of the great innovations of Wikipedia is the ability to quickly follow 'trees' of knowledge both vertically and horizontally, allowing for users to develop a sense of both the breadth and depth of a subject by examining its context and history. As the project grows, it should be possible to become, literally, an expert on a given area of study simply by following enough of the appropriate links. But which links to follow, and in what order, is not always obvious, especially if you want to study efficiently.

In that sense, it could be very useful to have a tool that showed users, for a given article, which articles other users arrived from, and which they departed to. Zooming out, this would allow for a kind of conceptual roadmap -- a set of beaten paths, if you will -- that would not only help users usefully navigate families of concepts, but also provide a set of invaluable data about inter-article usage patterns, and maybe, eventually, the nature of the conceptual relationships themselves. It's the Wikipedia equivalent of "Users who Bought this Book Also Bought" -- except that instead of being a marketing tool, it would be one that streamlined learning.

It takes your garden-variety linking to the next level. The way it is now, all links are created equal, a state that results in lots of irrelevant connections, and does little to reveal the nuanced webs of relevance that bind all concepts. Knowing the best routes between ideas could solve the irrelevant links problem by just showing users what other users have done. Better even than the 'tree' or 'beaten path' or Amazon.com analogy is this: imagine a library where books were connected by glowing threads. The stronger the connection between two books, the brighter the thread would be. Everything is connected, of course, but you'd be able to make out patterns within the web that would indicate which shelf you ought to go to next. Who decides what's relevant to what? Well, everyone, of course. -- HarpooneerX 08:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely! Please don't let this idea drown a quiet death in the village pump - this sounds like a groundbreaking idea that would make Wikipedia even more powerful a tool than it currently is. Where can this idea be taken forward? TheGrappler 21:36, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Ads poll

Would it be possible to have a poll on whether or not everyone would mind ads on wikipedia if it will make the site better. If the majority don't mind then having a few ads on wikipedia shouldn't be a problem. The poll could be just a small box on the left side underneath the toolbox Pseudoanonymous 01:38, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

No, that's a non-starter. You will drive away long-time editors. User:Zoe|^(talk) 02:05, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm personally in favor of ads, at least before considering how many people would leave if they were instituted. But realistically, this is something that's going to be decided by the Foundation, not us. (Not to mention that I suspect it would stand a poor chance of achieving any kind of consensus.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

If there are ads, how much do I get paid for my contributions? --John Nagle 04:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Contributors are not paid. If you do not wish money to be made from your contributions, you should stop contributing to Wikipedia, because there are certainly plenty of mirror sites featuring your articles with advertisements. — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't get this objection. The Wikimedia Foundation has annual expenditures in the ballpark of $1 million. Why don't you expect to be paid now? Would it change anything if logged-in users were exempt from ads, so you wouldn't have to see them? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, how might advertisements make it better? Superficially, they make it worse, as I'm sure has been discussed many times before. Are you suggesting advert to pay for Wikimedia expenses? I'm opposed in any case, both to advertisements, and to including a poll feature in standard skins. --Cedders^tk 14:17, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, advertisements could pay for better hardware, as well as possibly more paid programmers. This would definitely benefit the site. (I don't think we really need paid admins or supervisors of any kind; one of the better things about Wikipedia is Jimbo's point #2.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Why are you opposed to a poll feature? What harm would that do? All it will do is allow us to be more in touch with wikipedia's community and everyone who visits here. It will allow everyone to tell us whether or not they want something, and how they want it to be; like the village pump but only faster. Advertisements will wikipedia better because we will be able to have fulltime admins who are paid(who get promoted from volunteer admins or are hired), and we can pay experts to check the accuracy of major articles. Why would people leave just because there is ads? We are not turning wikimedia into a private company, it will still be non-profit, just with more money. With a poll we can help the Wikimedia Foundation make the decision of whether or not to put ads on. If some people are going to leave, they will be back once they see the improved accuracy and the reduced vandalism, if they won't come back then thats exceptable losses. Pseudoanonymous 19:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

As Simetrical said, this is a decision to be made by the Foundation, and any poll of editors will have no weight in the decision. User:Zoe|^(talk) 20:18, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's a bit too strong. Community opinion will be considered if this comes up, just it won't necessarily be a deciding factor per se. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism is getting too much

When I joined Wikipedia over a year ago vandalism (and general bad editing, such as spamming) was a problem, but it was small enough such that it could be dealt with. Today is seems to me that vandalism is becoming uncontrollable, we seem to have forgotten what we are here to do (make a damn good encyclopedia!), and we seem more focused on "vandal fighting" or whatever, as if that was the original point of this project.

Vandalism is getting so bad now that much is just simply not reverted within a satisfactory period of time, and all too often that which is reverted is not reverted properly, and previous vandalisms are edited into the article.

Monitoring and reverting vandalism also wastes much time, particularly of our best editors, who would otherwise actually be making articles better.

Vandalism heavily damages our credibility, putting off potential good editors, and specifically academics and the like, who ultimately are the key people we need to build a respected resource.

It seems to me that the present philosophy of "wiki" is one suitable to a small project, as Wikipedia was a few years ago, whereas now it is one of the most popular websites on the planet, now we don't need to worry about finding new editors, we need to worry about finding the right editors (i.e. not vandals and spammers etc.).

I think we are approaching a decision, where we either have to decide whether this project is some kind of social experiment, in which case nothing need change, or if this project is to build an encyclopedia, in which case we are going to have to adapt our concept of "wiki".

Two possible ideas are to either only allow editing of mainspace articles for users with registered email addresses, or have some form of stable article, that can't be directly edited by anyone. Either way, something needs to change. Martin 15:04, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I came across Brucella yesterday. I can't remember what it was, but some student had written a silly sentence in the intro. As far as I remember, it was the first time I'd come across a vandalised page accidentally (i.e. without looking at changes on my watchlist or recent changes). So I don't think the problem is massive.

We have to be wary of reading too much into dialogues like "We need to ban new accounts from creating pages!" "Why?" "The number of crap new articles is overwhelming!" "How do you know?" "I was on Special:Newpages looking for them, and I found lots!" which seem to appear quite often. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 15:23, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I understand, but thats not what I meant, I was speaking from my general experience. That said, it is very easy to give examples of vandalism, for example, I just fixed this edit, on an article that is clearly high visibility, 25 hours after it happened. But that is only half the story, as the article was then vandalised again, and reverted improperly, then a bot added some inerlinks that had been removed, then it was vandalised again. So I am not surprised you havent noticed much vandalism, evidently most people don't when reading an article. That is just one example, I could proved hundreds, the really bad stuff is the subtle changing of numbers and facts, which if missed is almost never fixed. Martin 15:40, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Advances in Wikipedia:Wikitechnology are allowing us to cope with the increased load of vandalism. Or so it seems to me. r3m0t ^talk 16:23, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it's getting bad, but also that vandal/spam fighting tools are improving. One thing that I think would help a lot would be to open up semi-protection to all editors, by allowing the {{sprotected}} template to protect an article without any other mechanism (see link). I do not think, though, that more draconian measures are called for. -- Mwanner | Talk 20:33, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that there are two types of vandals: those who are vandalizing because they like to wreck the work of others or harm Wikipedia, and those who are vandalizing because they just realized that they had the power to do so. The first group will always be a problem, but they'll all eventually be banned. The second group is just people who are new to the concept of wikis, and this group will grow for a while but then level off as Wikipedia's growth rate subsides. Vandalism will probably peak (or perhaps has already) and then drift slowly down. --Jonathan Kovaciny 21:02, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. The first group is not that easy to block - there are transparent proxies where every edit arrives from another IP address. The only option is to block the whole range (as happens regularly with the London Grid for Learning, a network of secondary schools) or to allow the vandalism to continue (as happens with AOL). In the worst case there are botnets and other international disasters. As for the second group, it's a big world out there, including kids and luddites. Many of them will turn into the first group, so we will never be able to block all of them. Finally, it's rare to permanently/indefinately block somebody (especially IPs) so people can just keep coming back. It's a problem. r3m0t ^talk 11:36, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Martin. I'm not a vandal fighter, but I recently tested a bit how this could feel like. Ok, you may say, I'm not experienced in doing that. But I felt very bad when doing that. Most annoying thing are those IP's shared by schools. I also feel all these warning messages on talk pages of anons are futile. Why should we care about storing all these streams of vandal edits and reversions? I wonder what a tremendous stream of crap data this produces. All in vain. And all the wasted wikipedian time. Ok, I'm not as long a wikipedian as Martin, so I see only the current sitution. But I feel it is a waste of time and resources. An idea I had is, that every edit should be publicly markable by a second editor as "looked at and checked as not-vandalism". This would help avoid looking at things twice or overlooking edits. That second opinion need not be an admin, but maybe it shold be a non anon, possibly a semi-protected-pages-allowed-to-edit-editor (←is there an offical name for that?). --Ligulem 21:10, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree vandalism is becoming more and more prevalent. In the last few weeks most of my time has been spent on vandalism watch. Yesterday when I signed on to my watchlist 45% of it consisted of vandalism reversions by users. Some articles seem to experience nothing but vandalism, reversion, vandalism, reversion etc etc.

I checked my watchlist too, expecting to find the same as the about. However when I counted there were more typo fixes by anons than vandalism/reversions. So anons are just about a good thing, and remember were were all anons once.

On a related point it would be great if a watchlist could behave like Related Changes, especially with the javascript addon which would allow a quick view of the changes to an article, not just the most recent. --Salix alba (talk) 11:48, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm certainly getting a bit bored of spending more time removing vandalism, out-and-out vanity and downright frauds than actually adding information. Average Earthman 22:04, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I wonder whether anonymous edits should not be banned - so that no one could edit without logging in. This will not prevent people setting up multiple IDs, but it ought to hinder those who work from multiple IP addreses that any anyway merely a series of number that mean little to most of us. There may need to be a slight change to the software, so that one cannot lose an edit in progress, because one's connection or log in fails, for example by ensuring that a page that cnnot be saved automatically comes up as a preview. Peterkingiron 00:07, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. I understand the idealistic, inclusive notions behind allowing anonymous edits; unfortunately it reflects an unduly optimistic view of the world in general and cyberspace in particular. What I've seen of anonymous editors suggests that for every one doing something useful, there are 4 or 5 others who think that acting like the online equivalent of Beavis & Butthead with a spraycan full of paint is, like, kewl man. Expecting them to take on the Wikipedia ethos and act nice is misplaced optimism; they need to be stopped. If someone wants to make a serious contribution here, they are not going to be deterred by the formality of setting up a user id, which should be a process which cannot be done by a bot. If someone can't be bothered or is unwilling to do that, it does in my opinion raise some basic questions about their motivation. --Stephen Burnett 08:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Statistics on anonymous vandalism

Copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) as its seems relavant to the discussion here, these figure seem about right to me --Salix alba (talk) 21:22, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I had to do a data collection for a statistics class, so I chose to do it on anonymous vandalism on Wikipedia. I found that 38% (+/- 13.5%) of anonymous edits were considered vandalism by WP:VAN. The confidence interval is 95%. The sampling was done at 19:15 (UTC) on May 4th (a Thursday). The rate of vandalism may change depending on the time of day and day of week, but I didn't need to do that much work for the class project. The sample was the first 50 edits that appeared on the recent changes page (logged-in users hiden). 19 of them were considered vandalism. There were a few edits where my own judgment as to what vandalism is may have influenced the results, but I think the definition, overall, was fairly easy to interpret. On a non-scientific note, I also counted the number of vandalisms that were link spam and the number of vandalisms that were reverted within 20-50 minutes. 5 of the 19 vandalisms were link spam (26.3%), and 11 of the 19 vandalisms were reverted within 20-50 minutes (57.9%). The later statistics did not have a great enough sample size to mean much, but they are still interesting. I know it is a fairly simple study, but I thought some people would be interested, and I had to do it anyway. Does anyone know if there have been other similar studies? I think the amount of vandalism we have to deal with here is quite outrageous. I think further studies on time dependency of vandalism and the rate of vandalism for logged-in users would be interesting. --Basar 20:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes that's interesting. Have there been any studies of anonymous editing in general? I.e. types of articles; IP addresses, &c. It would be nice if registered users could optionally have a summary bar appear at the top of each page showing things like: # edits in past month; % anonymous edits; % reverts, &c. My suspiscion is that vandalism actually only occurs on a relatively small percentages of the pages, so it would be nice if registered users could see statistics to that effect. That might help draw attention and more careful review to those pages. :) — RJH 17:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

vandalism: helps to fight it

check box

One problem with IP edits is that we have no way of knowing if someone has already looked it over for vandalism. So one edit might be reviewed by twenty users and found OK, while another article's edit might be reviewed by no-one because everyone presumed someone else was doing it. It would be a great help if there was a tick box that admins or general signed in users could tick just to say "User 'x' read this article". That way we could spread our limited checking resources more efficiently.

m:Help:Patrolled edit may interest you. Flcelloguy (A note?) 21:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Can we implement that here? Melchoir 23:24, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it was implemented and people didn't think it was very useful. I think it would be useful for newpages, but not for recent changes (also as I recall marking an edit as patrolled was slowish). It was never clear when you should mark it as patrolled. If its not overt vandalism. If you know the changes to be accurate. Etc. BrokenSegue 14:54, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

One way it would work is that it would enable us to see if a page had been read by a credible Wikipedian. One area I have been involved in is in the co-ordination of style usage in articles on royalty. There are a large number of people who do the same work. If I see that since an edit was done by IP xxxxx User:Deb, for example, has read the page, it is likely that the IP edit contained no vandalism, because Deb is widely regarded as a trustworthy Wikipedian who would spot and remove it. While in theory she might have missed it, in practice she usually doesn't. So I wouldn't feel the need to check the edit and could move on somewhere else. Ditto with certain people who work on pages on Ireland, on pages on politics, on pages on religion, etc. Each "specialised subject" has a group of people who are pretty thorough at spotting vandalism and reverting it. Trust in one colleagues is central on Wikipedia. It would help to be able to see that someone one regards as trustworthy has already been in the page and make it easier to spot those pages where no-one has been since an edit and where, buried in the edit, is a serious piece of vandalism. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 18:54, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

So it sounds like the old system wasn't sophisticated enough. I like the idea in this new proposal to associate a username with patrolling. To differentiate between "not vandalism" and "not inaccurate", there could be multiple levels of confidence. And the speed issue might be solvable. Melchoir 23:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Edit summary with rollback

For admins fighting vandalism, rollback is a vital tool. But it allows no explanation to be given. To leave an explanation, one has to do the slower process of opening up an older version and saving it with an edit summary. An option to type a rollback explanation would be great help, combining rollback speed with the ability to explain. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 21:40, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that being able to explain a rollback without having to do the whole process by hand would be a valuable capability. -Will Beback 21:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

And as a non-admin, I also agree-- it would be helpful looking over an edit history to know why an admin had rolled back a particular edit, especially for articles with dozens of edits per day. -- Mwanner | Talk 22:05, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Rollback needs to be an explicit kind of action, not a save of an old version, so that the history will make more sense. --John Nagle 23:11, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm having trouble thinking of cases where an explanation might be needed for a rollback, which I think is generally used only in cases of obvious vandalism. IMO, the rollback summary basically means "in the opinion of the admin doing this rollback, the previous change was so obviously inappropriate no summary is needed". -- Rick Block (talk) 00:14, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Rick, and might even go further: if the rollback requires an explanation, then it is an abuse of rollback privileges. Ingoolemo ^talk 00:53, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I added a "revert as vandalism" and a "revert (POV)" link using javascript GML. I changed the GML a bit so that they go much faster than normal.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 00:55, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

On a related issue, let's not forget that we now have many non-admins using tools with rollback features. I complained to one editor that one edit he had rolled back didn't look like vandalism. He seemed surprised that I assumed he thought it was vandalism, apparently unaware that rollbacks should only be used on vandalism. -Will Beback 01:40, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

If a rollback requires explanation, then it's an abuse of rollback. Johnleemk | Talk 14:15, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

That's missing the point. A rollback is fundamentally just a fast revert. Rollbacks right now are only for vandalism because you can't leave an edit summary. If you could leave an edit summary, why would it not be reasonable to use rollback for all reverts (leaving exactly the same edit summary, with exactly the same effect, as one would in reverting the slow way)? Reverting the slow way is indistinguishable from rolling back with an edit summary, except that the admin has spent 15 more seconds or so to do it. What's the advantage in that? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 18:23, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that why I added the vandal and unencyclopedic revert. Both are fast, but give summaries, one for CLEARLY bad faith edits (vandal rollback), good faith but bad edits (unencyclopedic) or stuff in the middle (regular admin rollback). I just with Lupin's filter had those too (though I could add title/timing trigged href addition javascript....when I get around to it. Now, I am working on a "check all revision" java for deselecting certain deleted page additions, so I am a bit busy.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 21:33, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Done...that was fast...Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 21:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Block list logic

I am in the unfortunate position that I can edit Wikipedia from home, but not while I am at work. My employer has a proxy server and several hundred thousand people within the organisation all appear to post from one ip address. I am sure this is not the only situation like this around the world. It severely restricts participation from a huge number of excellent potential editors. I suggest the logic of the block list be amended so that the status of a user is tested first, then the ip address they are posting from. If the user is a long term editor with a good record then editing should be allowed regardless of the ip address. Anonymous edits from blocked ip ranges should be blocked as usual. New accounts from people within blocked ip ranges could be set up through administrators, who could require proper identification through an exchange of e-mail.

You may be interesting in MediaZilla bug #550 : [2] — Ilyanep (Talk) 01:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks like its all under control. I voted for the bug fix. Thanks for telling me about it. --Dave 10:38, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Force preview for IP editors

The vast majority of vandalism is just casual joking about and sandboxing by IP users, I suggest therefore that only allowing a change to be saved once it has been previewed will drastically reduce this type of vandalism. Martin 10:52, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

People will oppose this as annoying/restricting casual anon editors. I'm neutral ish. BrokenSegue 15:03, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Support. Good idea. --Ligulem 16:16, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. This idea is ineffective, since unless the anon does not realize that their edit is incomplete, it requires minimal effort to complete the extra step. It also may frustrate otherwise helpful users who wish to remain anonymous. Nihiltres 04:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Oppose This won't do anything to stop vandalism. They can just click save again. It just makes it take an extra 2 seconds. Vandals wont care. Also, there are tons of helpful IPs who just want to be annonomous. All this will be is annoying for everyone. Tobyk777 05:44, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Time based protection

A few of the articles are attacked based around times in schools or geographically. Example - I see a lot of schools IP vandalizing certain articles each morning just prior to school or college starting (?). Sometimes there may be attacks on some controversial articles based on geography. These times are pretty much predictable and repeatable. It would be nice to prevent attack with sprotection and other protection schemes based on time. This would allow anons or even regular users (for full protected articles) to contribute while stopping the majority of attack. --Supercoop 15:29, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

• I'd imagine that the times when articles are attacked are the same times we'd expect to see good edits -- pretty much when the knowledgable people are awake. So this is probably a harmful idea. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:17, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

You would rather have no edits for full protection or no edits for anons for semi protect for the entire protection period? No it can't be harmefull, it would be another option. --Supercoop 19:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Categorize message on New Articles

Could there be a bolded message to categorize new articles when a user is creating a new article. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 22:54, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Both special:Recent changes and an editor's contributions list include an "N" denoting a new article. Is there some other context you're thinking about where this would be useful? -- 00:59, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

i think royboy means when the new user is editing the new article. perhaps some text saying "remember to add a category" could go next to the save button when an article is being edited for the first time? BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 04:26, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, something like that. New articles get created by new users/anons, editors doing new article patrol tend to put "uncat" and it stays like that for a while. Creating a backlog which I (among others) are trying to whittle down. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 14:30, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I think I have a solution to articles with initial lowercase letters.

Uncyclopedia, a wiki hosted by Wikia, found a workaround a while back. All it uses is a a template. You won't see the title show as {{{1}}} on the template because for some reason it uses {{{PAGENAME}}} for when no variable is provided. Ironic, since that makes the template pointless if you don't pass a variable, but whatever... Anyway, you can see it in action at my userpage (here), my userpage (there), iPod (there), eBay (there), and probably more articles too. Nobody seems to have had a problem with it there, but there might be a browser or two out there that wouldn't like this. If nobody can find an incompatible browser though, should I go ahead and edit {{lowercase}} to finally display lowercase letters? Just thought I'd bring it up here before making such a drastic change to a template used so commonly, in case someone finds an issue with this code. --Nintendorulez talk 01:37, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

No offence intended, but your userpage looks horrible when viewed with the Classic skin on Wikipedia. Quite a few people use Classic, so a change such as you suggest would not be acceptable.-gadfium 04:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

If the class is renamed (e.g. littleletter) and placed in MediaWiki:Monobook.css non-Monobook skins will show the default. This means such users won't see the lowercase letter, but then again would that be any different from the way things are right now? Garrett^Talk 06:21, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, we'd just need to change the white background of the template to whatever CSS variable corresponds to the normal background there, right? Then it'll work on all skins. --Nintendorulez talk 19:14, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I just tried classic, and I see what you mean. I thought it would be an issue of the white background around the box, but it's a bigger problem. Doubt a way could be found to fix that... --Nintendorulez talk 19:48, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

The solution is simple. For example, this is Monobook while this is Classic. Classic users don't see anything special, because the table style is only installed for Monobook. Garrett^Talk 23:50, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Lowercase letters are technically possible, if they are enabled. Wiktionary is a prime example of thise. However, I believe that initial capital letters were determined to be prefered. Don't hold me accountable for it, though. —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER (TALK) 14:08, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary is case-sensitive in the first character, right? As in "polish" and "Polish" would be two separate articles. This proposal isn't about making Wikipedia more case-sensitive, it's about making articles be able to display a lowercase title on themselves. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 18:28, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

It would get annoying... "Chocolate contains milk and sugar" would have a redlink until someone redirects Chocolate to chocolate. And so on. Unless some sort of auto-redirect were implemented... Garrett^Talk 23:42, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Honorary Memberships

Hello all, i'm back after a somewhat long respite, with a somewhat strange idea. After listening intuitively to radio shows of Ricky Gervais, i thought of the idea of giving "Honorary Editorship" to people like ricky - celebrities who have expressed an interest in charity and freedom. By "Honorary" i don't mean giving them any special priviledges, just providing them with the idea that we would enjoy them to be a member of the wikipedia -- having seasoned editors and admins just show him the ropes quickly..

I know he's a busy man, but i think it'd be mutually beneficial for both parties because, as you may or may not know, he has recently created an advert for a Prostate cancer charity, and i can't get the idea out of my head that, because he's a very scholarly guy, who has himself admitted to being enflamed by the quest and thirst for knowledge, that he would be very up on the idea. I can't say for definate he will like it, but i have a hunch that he just might.. who knows; if he likes it as much as we do, he may even drop it in some interviews here and there, and get the wikipedia more widespread appeal and attention.

Any feedback on the matter is very much appreciated! The magical Spum-dandy 15:11, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

If you provide his e-mail address, I will write to him. Semi-famous people (such as Jimbo Wales, Chris Crawford (game designer) and Angela Beesley) generally respond to my e-mails when I have a real, meaningful question or proposal. Seahen 21:47, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Eh? SInce being an editor on Wikipedia doesn't give you any special rights or privileges, why would we do this? It seems, well, silly.--Sean Black ^(talk) 21:57, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I expect this would only work in situations where membership is hard to get. In the case where you're a Wikipedian as soon as you visit Special:Userlogin and make up a username, it's not very special to be given honorary membership is it? Angela. 13:27, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

How do you define the top x categories on Wikipedia?

There's a renaming request at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 May 4#Category:Top 10 to Category:Top 8 which seems in violation of the neutral point of view policies, given that we are ultimately arguing over what are the top however many categories on Wikipedia. Steve block Talk 20:50, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

What possible basis do you have for that allegation? You don't agree with the proposal and you have said so at length, but I regard the accusation that is it in breach of neutral point of view as a spurious and irrelevant slur against my intentions, which were simply to tidy things up and make the category more consistent with the main page. CalJW 03:42, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Userbox matchmaking?

Userboxes can tell us almost anything about a user. Using about 160, I for one have composed a detailed profile. A profile made of userboxes must also be much more machine-readable (at least if the machine looks at the wikicode) than one freely written. I think such machine-readable profiles of people could be used to create a free online dating service. Besides being a great perk for existing editors, this could encourage otherwise non-Wikipedians to create accounts and user pages, and eventually become involved as editors as a result. Here's how it could be implemented with very little by way of server resources, and no financial cost to anyone.

Each Wikipedian interested would use userboxes to make a profile on his or her user page, or a sub-page thereof. (We might consider allowing people to protect their own user pages.) Anyone whose user page contained Template:User friendly, Template:User girlfriend-wish or Template:User girlfriend-wish, and userboxes for a few basic things (such as gender, home city/region and language) would be considered part of the pool, although a more detailed profile like mine would be preferred. Those on other language Wikipedias would be considered if they had matching Babel templates.

When a user was searching for matches, they would run an open-source script that someone would put up on a Web page for the purpose. Because of the scripting involved, this would probably have to be either a special page or non-wiki. The script would tell them what userboxes they would need to add, if any. If they had all the requisite userboxes, they could enter their search criteria (e.g. date must identify as heterosexual, must be between 25 and 30 years old, must be en-3 or higher, must live in Ontario, must not be blocked, must not be an Aspie, must have made 50 or more edits in English main namespace). They would also have options about what to consider (astrological sign? favourite colour? food preferences?) Then, the script would search the User namespaces of all Wikipedias (which it would have downloaded, and converted into a more usable database form earlier that day) and generate a compatibility score for each result. Then, it would output a ranked list of links, with the most likely matches at the top. The open-source nature would mean that those dissatisfied with their results could make or request improvements.

Finally, the searcher would follow these links, read the user pages, and decide whether each one was interesting. He or she would then post to the user talk page of the object of his or her affections, then add it to his or her watchlist. If no reply was forthcoming, he or she could use Special:Emailuser. Boilerplate greetings would be available for this purpose, as would boilerplate replies of both yes and no, but many users would choose to write their own messages. If the person accepted, the two could continue talking on the user talk pages, use the e-mail form to start a conversation that way, or use instant messaging. And they would live happily ever after. The end. :-) Seahen 12:27, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Are you serious? This is an encyclopedia. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 21:52, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

And an online community. This sort of thing is the logical extension of meta:The Wikipedia Community#Beers after work! Seahen 22:24, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Not so much mission creep as mission leap off in a completely unconnected direction. Bunchofgrapes is right - we should do what this was set up to do - be an encyclopedia. User pages are to assist in that, not to compete with livejournal or myspace or whoever. Average Earthman 21:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

You said it. Yikes. Incidentally, this is exactly what people were talking about when they said that userboxes were the first step to Wikipedia becoming MySpace. This is horrendous. There are other, far more appropriate places for this. Please don't do it here.--Sean Black ^(talk) 22:01, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

This is quite pointless, and trying to sort users by categorization based on userboxes has already resulting in desysoping and RfArs. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 22:11, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Um, no. (Doing the Sean Black thing since he didn't) pschemp | talk 22:12, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Users probably already try to make acquaintances through userboxes, and I'm just thinking of automating it so that Wikipedians looking to date/befriend other Wikipedians can explore more options in the amount of time. Seahen 22:28, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

• Users do indeed make acquaintance through userboxes for the express purpose of cooperating on Wikipedia. Any other use is superfluous and should not be encouraged. Suggestions like this are likely to lead to more of a crackdown on userboxes rather than a relaxation of the rules. If you can't find an existing wiki on which to play your dating games, try setting one up yourself: setting up a wiki is intentionally easy after all. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 17:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

A reminder from WP:NOT, "The focus of user pages should not be social networking". Dating falls under that category, it shouldn't be done, and an effort to make it easier is ill-conceived. End of story. This isn't myspace, its an encyclopedia. pschemp | talk 22:34, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

What more appropriate places are you thinking of? I think the following are essential aspects of the plan, which we won't get with MySpace or Livejournal.

1. The open-source nature would allow people to improve the classification and match-evaluation systems.
2. An account can be created without giving contact or billing information.
3. There are no fees for the users.
4. Userboxes are easy for both humans and computers to read, and makes it easy to change or organize a profile.
5. At the same time, users can also easily add text or personal photos anywhere on their pages, outside the userboxes.
6. Since the userboxes and many of the user pages and accounts are already on Wikipedia, negligible extra disk space is required on Wikimedia servers. It also means the project will have a well-developed folksonomy and sufficiently large population from the get-go.

I could consider doing it on a Wikia instead, but we'd have to copy over the user pages and userboxes, and the images they used, en masse. We'd also need a way to publicize it to Wikipedians. Seahen 22:42, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Please don't manually copy a large number of userboxes to Wikia. We already have them all at wikia:c:userboxes. Be patient... we'll launch this soon. Angela. 13:21, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pedophilia userbox wheel war for a way this system could be abused. It's just a bad idea. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 22:45, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Nice delaying tactic, sending someone to something as heavy as an ArbCom debate. Keeps them away for hours, if they bother to read the whole thing before responding. But all I really needed to read was the TfD debate. But having read that, the summary provided, the findings of fact and the decisions, I feel the userbox should have been kept. I would personally have changed "pedophile" to "boylover" or "girllover," to (a) eliminate the criminal/abusive connotations and (b) imply only the desire and not the act. But I don't see as the userbox's existence would make for bad publicity unless its use was widespread. Even then, the strongest criticism would mostly come from (a) those who don't know that non-abusive pedophilia exists, and (b) the extreme religious right who were trying to ban school sex ed in the 60s. Just because a userbox shows support for activity that is criminal in some jurisdictions does not make it invalid, hence User pro-cannabis. Seahen 23:42, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Seahen, You are ignoring the point that Wikipedia is not, was not, and never will be used for a dating service, as that is *against policy*. It doesn't matter how easy it would be to do, It is *against policy*. Which I quoted for you above. pschemp | talk 22:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I would estimate that almost everyone looking for a Web-pal or a date would be interested. Granted, this is by not means all the users, but it's probably at least a large fraction. And my question still hasn't been answered: Is it possible to batch-copy all userboxes, userbox images and facebook images? Seahen 00:13, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Keep in mind that personal userboxes can be a liability to serious work. For example, your user page tells me that you're a 17-year-old single male with one userbox for every five edits, and you live in Ontario yourself. Call me unfair, but these revelations cause me to doubt your priorities regarding this proposal. Now, I can see you put a lot of effort into it, and this village pump should encourage creativity. So thank you for considering ways to improve Wikipedia, and better luck next time! But this one proposal can't be rejected strongly enough. Melchoir 22:56, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Why not go to myspace or some existing matchmaking site, and list "edits Wikipedia" as one of your interests? That way you get to use their specialized matchmaking algorithms with not much effort. FreplySpang (talk) 23:05, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

MySpace is fine for those who like it, if it has an equally extensive folksonomy and an equally large userbase. But a wiki offers some distinct advantages, as I mentioned above. Would it be possible to batch-copy the user pages and userboxes, and their images, to a Wikia instead? If so, would it address everyone's concerns about doing it on Wikipedia? Seahen 23:51, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, you want a wiki. Well, there are plenty of wiki's that aren't at all related to Wikipedia. Legit or not, I don't think you'd generate much goodwill or buyin by doing that batch copy. FreplySpang (talk) 23:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Why not? And are you talking about copying the user pages, or the userboxes, or both? Seahen 23:59, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Userpages, userboxes, whatever. Anyway, my personal opinion is that you are vastly overestimating the number of Wikipedians who would be interested in this. FreplySpang (talk) 00:04, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I would estimate that almost everyone looking for a Web-pal or a date would be interested. Granted, this is by not means all the users, but it's probably at least a large fraction. And my question still hasn't been answered: Is it possible to batch-copy all userboxes, userbox images and facebook images? Seahen 00:19, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Heh that's an interesting idea (userbox matchmaking). However, as fun as it sounds, we can not implement it. Wikipedia is, as much as it is an online community of the smartest people in the world (wink), an encyclopedia after all. Matchmaking, dating, and such, would slow down our goals for being one of the best encyclopedias in the world. Oh yeh, for all of you who say to this well-meaning user to go to Myspace or Facebook, Myspace/Facebook doesn't have userboxes. All they have is a boring profile, nothing nearly as cool as userbxes. --Osbus 23:43, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I have copied this proposal to PersonalsWiki:Ideas_and_concepts_for_dating_sites#Userbox_dating_system. Any further discussion should occur there; I am no longer watching this page. Seahen 14:43, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

New color scheme

As wikipedia becomes more all-encompassing, everyone will start to use it alot more as both a reference and for leisure reading. This is a positve development. However, the color scheme of wikipedia is not as easy on the eyes as it could be. Research has been done as to the adverse effects of reading black text from white backgrounds (even in printed text), as well as the problems associated with reading from an electronic display of some sort. As it is, black text on a white background means that readers are essentially starting at a lightbulb while they read, inducing headaches and limiting reading sessions. If the background were to be darker than the text, it would be much more enjoyable. Perhaps black or brown or gray with a yellowish or bluish text? I don't know anything about design prinicples, only that webpages with this sort of presentation are much easier to read for extended periods of time. Is there any way this might happen? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johngalt513 (talk • contribs)

I can understand what you mean and it is a very plausable proposal however, this would seem very bold with a dark background and light texts. It would certainly make it stand out from other wikis. This would be a very radical change to Wikipedia. To be honest, I have mixed opinions on this and am not willing to agree or disagree. -- Erebus555↔^talk

A new skin can always be done, though. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 21:49, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the skins is that they don't use any variation in text or background color. Howe'er, were these components changeable, the idea of multiple skins would eliminate the concern easily. Perhaps instead of considering a redesign of the color scheme, wikipedia users could modify their text and background color in the skins page? 146.151.12.23 14:54, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that the individual ability to modify skins would be preferable to a color makeover, but it definitely does seem a good idea. It gets a little tiresome on the eyes to look so long at a white screen. Eccomi 00:34, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Mfd voting

I propose a new rule saying that in voting:

• Every registered Wikipedian's vote counts as one vote.
• Every unregistered Wikipedian's vote counts as half a vote.

Any objections?? Georgia guy 19:40, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 19:44, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

What does that phrase mean?? Georgia guy 19:46, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

"Hope that helps. Have a nice day."

I also object. --82.18.13.80 19:47, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Why do you see a need for a rule like this? FreplySpang (talk) 19:48, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I think there have been two unregistered votes for keeping Wikipedia:Quadrillion pool and I think we need a rule that registered Wikipedians' votes should count more and this appears to make sense to me. Georgia guy 19:50, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

MfD is not a vote. If two unregistered users show up and make a strong argument, that's worth more than a dozen registered users saying "delete" and nothing more. 61.68.93.85 19:52, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Votes from anon IPs that are unsupported by arguments are already discounted. We don't need *fd to be a mechanistic process of counting points and half points. FreplySpang (talk) 20:13, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

First of all, there is no need for this proposal: closing admins have the problem of sockpuppetry and so on on *fDs well in hand, and there is no suggestion that matters would improve by implementing your nice little bit of m:Instruction creep. Secondly, MfD is not a vote, and that is a Good Thing: your proposal would remove the only positive thing about our *fD procedure, for no good reason. 61.68.93.85 19:52, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

But, I'm sure that registered users' votes are usually stronger arguments. Georgia guy 19:56, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

How nice for you. If we're only looking to the strength of arguments here, then it doesn't matter if those arguments usually come from registered users. Wikipedia still allows edits from people who haven't logged in, and as long as it does I shall enjoy my ability to do so. 61.68.93.85 20:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Any registered Wikipedian have any opinions on what 61.68.93.85 is writing here?? Georgia guy 20:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 20:04, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

That doesn't help. Some registered Wikipedian please give me some info that helps. Georgia guy 20:06, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Why are my arguments less important because I don't have a name backing them up? A good admin, and I should hope a project like Wikipedia has good admins, should judge what I have to say on the strength of my arguments, not on the type of account I'm using. 61.68.93.85 20:10, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

All I've been trying to do is find what to do with the premature pools beyond the 10M pool. I planned on wanting to extend the pools to include a 20M pool when the articles reach 2.5M, a 50M pool when the articles reach 5M, and a 100M pool when the articles reach 10M. Georgia guy 20:14, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Phil, you're not being very helpful... (This is meant in the nicest possible way). Anyway, I'm completely against this proposal as I feel that anonymous editors' views are just as valuable as registered editors. Disenfranchising anonymous editors will make it far harder to attract/retain new editors and thus significantly harm the project. RicDod 20:15, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, what do you think the reason Wikipedians log in is?? Georgia guy 20:16, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Peer pressure, the desire to hide one's IP address from creepy Internet stalkers, and the knowledge that when Wikipedia reaches 2 million user accounts a lucky random winner gets Jimbo's Ferrari? 61.68.93.85 20:19, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Once you've been around a bit you see that there are some benefits. However, these aren't immediately apparent when you're new. And the car (after edit conflict)RicDod 20:28, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Not sure, but whatever it is, it isn't to get better voting rights. --81.104.39.63 20:32, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Someone please study some old Mfd's and show me some with very good votes to keep from un-registered voters. Georgia guy 20:33, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

MfD is not a vote, remember. How about you show us the evidence that registered users never do silly things on MfD, too? Cuts both ways, y'know. 61.68.93.85 20:35, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

What's that got to do with anything, a good argument is a good argument, be it to keep or to delete and be it from an unregistered or registered user. It never was a straight vote. --81.104.39.63 20:37, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I do it for the watchlist mostly. On topic though, NOT a democracy, it isn't a vote, admins already can ignore anons, and I have seen great arguments by anons, new users, whatever on ?FD. Kotepho 20:38, 6 May 2006 (UTC) (ec)

Oppose. Really not necessary. --Mmounties (Talk) 21:31, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Oppose: please consider my comments based on their merits. Incidentally, there is also a question about this on Wikipedia talk:Why create an account?. -Dan 08:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. Since it's not a vote, there's no such thing as voting rights or value of votes. So this was a non-starter. JackyR 12:42, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Georgia guy, have you met User:Iasson? User:Zoe|^(talk) 22:05, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Church of England Cathedral series

I would like to see a series on Church of England Cathedrals, with one of those grey boxes with hyperlinks to articles on CofE cathedrals in the bottom of the article.

Lofty 10:45, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

"Special:Watchlist/edit" text change

It says,

If there are any red links, then the page has been deleted but changes can still be monitored.

but this isn't technically correct as you can "watch" red-linked articles by going to the "create this article" screen. The page hasn't been deleted as it has not been created in the first place. Perhaps have something like,

If there are any red links, then the page does not exist or has been deleted, but changes can still be monitored.

Skinnyweed 15:51, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

new template for review

I have created a new vandal template, template:IPvandal, the main difference from template:vandal being that it removes the pagemove lookup, as such a feature is unessesary for IP users, and replaces it with a WHOIS lookup keyed to the user in question--{anon iso − 8859 − 1janitor} 18:17, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

• thoughts, opinions, comments, if you wish you can delete it--{anon iso − 8859 − 1janitor} 18:18, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikiethics discussion

A new and improved version of Wikipedia:Wikiethics is posted for all Wikipedians to discuss and make suggestions for an improvement... Assert your role in the global Wikipedia community and give your opinion today...it matters! Netpari 20:28, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Ostracism - A Wikimedia Philosophy by Default

The practice of Ostracism in all of the Wikimedia projects, especially in the Wiktionary and Wikipedia projects, has an extremely negative impact on both intellectual and financial contributors and I would imagine on their contributions as well. The practice of Ostracism is as simple as referring to anyone as a troll or making a comment like Don't feed the trolls. Rudeness and arrogance are not what the Wiktionary or the Wikipedia are all about yet the practice of Ostracism is in full swing.

I therefore propose that it be uplifted from the deep, dark and dank quarters of the dungeon guards and be acknowledged as an official Wikimedia Philosophy so that its users can be recognized for what they believe and accepted or rejected by those of a like or differing mind. I make this proposal because Ostracism is being practiced to such a full extent that its existence can be neither hidden or denied. -- PCE 20:53, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Could you be a little more specific about the type and context of interactions you wish to address? It seems to me that your concerns are already dealt with at Wikipedia:What is a troll, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, and especially Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Melchoir 22:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Interlanguage link order (again)

I have made a proposal at Wikipedia_talk:Interlanguage_links#Interlanguage_link_order_(again). Please review it, so hopefully we can finally settle on a standard order for the inter wiki links. Martin 21:33, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Acceptance of Wiki Information by Professors

One problem I've run into with my teachers is that some of our articles are so freely editable that teachers see them as unreliable, whatever their accuracy. For most articles, noting their accuracy is unnecessary, but for major articles that aren't the subject of much factual debate and aren't really affected by current events (for example, "John Wilkes Booth") such a confirmation would go a long way to expanding the acceptance of our site.

I propose that for articles that have been around for some time and whose information has been basically confirmed, for us to note the article's accuracy, lock the page down, and push any proposed changes to the discussion page (or a new "Proposed Additions" page) so that Wikipedia content can, progressively, be better recognized for the accuracy of its content and more justifiably cited in academic works. Putting a small icon (maybe of a "school house") right-aligned next to the article's title would indicate that an article would be fact-checked by editors and locked down from easy changes so as to be more easily referenced by curious professors.

One risk would be the perception that there are to tiers of Wikipedia articles -- factually accurate ones and ones of questionable accuracy. But I think checking uncontentious articles for their academic reliability and confirming them as such would prove beneficial to students and Wikipedians alike. All of us are aware of problems that go with a massive and open project like this. Decreasing that ambiguity where we can, however, is something that I think we can do in the case of uncontentious articles.

This doesn't mean the pages would be permanently unchangeable; it would just mean that the pages could only change given some concensus by our researchers, which is already, for the most part, the practice for both contentious and vandalized articles. This change would help convince Universities of Wikipedia's academic usefulness because of this additional oversight. Pat 22:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Stable version. Kotepho 22:53, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Academics don't like tertiary sources. Even a reference to Encyclopedia Britannica and similar 'respected' publications result in lower grades. The best solution is to encourage people to put references to primary and secondary sources in their Wikipedia articles. Articles without references should be considered less reliable than referenced work. To please your Professors, follow any references from Wikipedia to 'good' sources and cite those. If the Wikipedia author didn't provide them, use Google with some of the terms in the article, find some 'good' sources for your assignment, then return to Wikipedia and improve the article by inserting references to the sources you found. I have a tool that makes this easier, see my user page. --Dave 01:29, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I certainly agree with that. I guess my point is a bit broader than strictly academic, though I didn't really make explicit mention of that in my first post, and I do agree it's better to go straight to the source rather than cite Wikipedia directly (I've done this many times.) In general, too, I think that letting Wikipedia content be open to editing improves our articles and helps to attract more and more contributors to this endeavor. I am proof positive of this latter point.

I believe, however, that locking sections down would be useful in terms of QC because it would help to minimize some of the content policing the folks upstairs (and myself and others downstairs) have to do. As evidenced by Kotepho's link and the discussion therein, the idea of "stabling" articles has been talked about for several months now, especially after the John Seigenthaler controversy. My main point is that regardless of if citing Wikipedia is espcially beneficial to students' grades, I believe that for Wikipedia to stand as a reliable tertiary source, even for non-academic inquiries, it would behoove it to slow the edits to its most reliable articles, and then note those articles as particularly reliable. Especially early on, I would think the practice would affect only a small number of articles, but I think the overall benefit to the site would be great if such a system was implemented.

Btw, thanks for your citation tool! It's always fun to see more and more things related to this site. Pat 06:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Fact Template

I think it would be easier to fill in needed facts if the ^{[citation needed]} template directed a person to an edit screen where they could fill in the reference info and submit it. Chuck^(척뉴넘) 06:12, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Good idea! Does MediaWiki have software to do that that would work for all browsers? Ardric47 07:49, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

no BrokenSegue 11:45, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know very much about computer software, but wouldn't be a lot like the "add a new section" button on talk pages. However, instead of starting with a section header text box, start with the main box with some text already filled in. Chuck^(척뉴넘) 11:47, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, one way to make it easier would be to change the link from Wikipedia:Citing sources to a succinct summary page with all the example code you need in the first scroll window. Wikipedia:How to cite sources quickly or something like that... Melchoir 16:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

This should be, comparatively speaking, not very difficult to implement, but certainly nontrivial. Ideally you'd have a page that would give you a set of radio buttons to select the medium (book, journal, web . . .), then a bunch of forms (first name, last name, article title, work title . . .) to fill out. Unfortunately, this would likely be a low-priority enhancement, but you should feel free to submit it at our Bugzilla anyway. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:48, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Edit SVG images wikistyle

I was wondering if we could have a feature to edit SVG images sort of wikistyle like we do for articles. It would help graphic artists immensely instead of repeatedly uploading large files for minor ammendments. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:30, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

A great idea! --Hooperbloob 16:09, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, this would be very useful. You should file a request at Bugzilla. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:52, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Date on Main page

Why don't we put the date on the front page? The only thing relevant to the date is the "On this day..." But I think the main page would just look "more complete" with a full day.month.year sort of date in one of the corners or at least somewhere on the page. If infact there is already a date (i've tried looking), then maybe you can make it a bit more apparent because I can't seem to find it for the life of me. 17:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)someguy.

Wikipedia browser toolbar

when is wikipedia going to get a browser toolbar, a la google? i keep waiting for them to put one out but they havent done it yet. that would be handy as hell. has this even been discussed? if not you should drop the idea. it would be great. now when i want to wiki something i just type in the thing in google and add "wiki" to my search. would be much easier with a separate toolbar.

The above email was sent from a friend of mine. He has a good point, and I haven't found any related discussion here at wp:vp. I'm not sure a wiki toolbar would ever rival google, yahoo, msn, etc, but it would enhance access to the site. - Draeco 04:58, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but if it is just an easier way to search Wikipedia you want, and you happen to use Firefox, you can just add it to the list of engines for the search box at the top right by clicking Add Engine. -- Wijnand 09:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a good toolbar for Firefox here. It's pretty good, I use it. It has a search box plus helps with wiki formatting when editing a text box, such as helping create tables, insert pics, etc. —Mets501^talk 11:26, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

If you're not using Firefox, you can download the Google toolbar, and then put "site:en.wikipedia.org" into the search box every time you search. User:Zoe|^(talk) 17:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

If you download the beta of Internet Explorer 7 for WinXP, you can choose Wikipedia as your default search engine. --Heron 18:48, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

wikitimeline

Hello,

> > I have a suggestion, can it be possible to arrange all your data in a sort > of interactive, expandable, timeline? One that expands to all areas within > a colapsable timeline and has links to related topics. > Of course it would follow in the spirit of user-made enciclopaedia. > I think it would help the Understanding of Knowledge a great deal to see > time-scaled correlations of knowledge grafically. > I think it would thrive. > > Any way there's my two cents' worth. > > Yours Sincerly, > > Andrés Cañas. > >

proposal

Might i suggest an intresting idea that you could perfomr with your resources, but first af all let me tell you that there are some few things in this world which bring me such much joy and hope in the human race just as wikipedia does, this is such an excitating emotion that only those who have been part of such inovetive project as the French Enciclopaedia, the French Revolution, The Industrial Revolution, Printing Press cloud have felt, i can mearley imagine where this projec might lead us all.

I have an intresting propossal that you might be able to execute, why don´t you do a section of wiki where entire cities are historically portraied so that the people arround the world take good pictures of the important building in their city and us the people produce an acount if each of the cities historical buildings, and the interface of this section could bethat of a touristic guided tour, another idea is to let mayor universities around the world to be entrusted wuth the further progress of a wiki section, for example physich could be entrusted to cambridge and law could be entrusted to harvard.

Thank you so much for the gift that you are creating for humanity evolution all arround the globe.

Alejandro Lyman Chandler

Search engine indexing of user space

Have we thought about making pages in user space not indexed by search engines, so that our internal chatter does not come up on Google, etc? I assume we already do so for article talk pages, since I don't generally see them come up in a Google search.

I think not indexing should be explored for user space for the following reasons

• Our hits are increasingly highly ranked on search engines, and user talk pages with POV bickering can show up quite highly on a Google search - not the face we want to put forward, nor is it responsible information dissemination on our part
• User pages showing up on Google searches may well contribute to people treating wikipedia as a webhost
• Vandalism and other warnings - which we keep in user talk space even when a user has left the project - needlessly impact an identifiable user's reputation in cyberspace. We may or may not want to tar and feather such a user in the Wikipedia community, but we should be mindful of our increasing visibility outside our community and not implicitly broadcast this outwards

In a nutshell, I can think of only one reason to keep these pages indexed in search engines - backup when our search dies - but many why to delete.

Comments? I looked around in perennial proposals and did not find this discussed; if it is, please let me know. -- Martinp 22:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

First, I beleive talk pages are archived by Google. Also, could you clarify if you're only asking about archiving, or also about indexing. I think preventing user space and talk pages from being archived (e.g. a Google Cache is available) would be a good idea, but allowing them to still be indexed (only a snippet appears in search results, but not the full cache) may be necessary, since our internal search engine is pathetic. --Rob 22:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I clarified my wording above; I meant not indexed, i.e. so they do not appear in a Google search. Martinp 23:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this. We shouldn't be clogging the internet with our user/talk pages (Although I think the Wikipedia space is fine). BrokenSegue 02:54, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

The only pages set not to be indexed are currently Search pages and the various deletion debate pages. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:56, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

While I agree that internal chatter may be an irritating result from a Google search, I support its inclusion on Google. Search pages and deletion debates are both fine to block, since their disclusion may be warranted through bandwidth and vandalism, but Wikipedia is meant to be an open encyclopedia. If our internal debates are hidden from the general public as they search for information, then that may mean that we have closed ourselves to the public in a sense, which is unacceptable given general Wikipedia ethos. Nihiltres 03:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)