Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 46

I have posted a request that requires consensus first at MediaWiki_talk:Common.js#Requested_change_to_Monobook_skin. -- IRP ☎ 22:21, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello! As a member of the Wikipedia:Kindness campaign, I wanted to brainstorm an idea for how to show our appreciation for editors. Now, first and foremost, I realize our emphasis here is on content, i.e. article writing in order to contribute to the sum-total of human knowledge as part of a combination paperless encyclopedia-almanac-gazetteer, but Wikipedia is after all a volunteer project and as a way to both recognize our contributors and to present for future contributors Wikipedia as a welcoming environment that appreciates its contrubutors, I propose that we have not just Good and Featured articles, but also Good and Featured editors! I think it would be a really nice thing to every once in a while show-case on the main page some editor who has made many constructive contributions to the site and again, it would give our readership (and potential writership) some examples of model editors as a way of showing them who to emulate and what being a succuessful Wikipedian entails. We can have discussions akin to RfAs and Editor reviews as to who to feature and I am sure we have a handful of editors with no serious conflicts that can receive pretty near universal support (weren't some arbcom candidates, for example, recipients of hundreds of supports with few opposes?). So, what do y'all think? Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 03:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I like this idea - but, there are a number of issues to consider:

1. There is a danger that for any set of criteria you set up, someone may attempt to game them. For this reason it should be emphasized that it's not about satisifying specific criteria but an overall positive contribution.
2. As with RfA, this can be an excellent forum for constructive criticism, but may result in some hurt feelings. It's important to avoid attaching too much importance to it, to the point where people feel threatened when someone is "threatening their nomination."
3. Too many levels creates the risk of a social hierarchy. I think just "good" editors would be fine.

Hope this helps. :-) Dcoetzee 23:45, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

As a matter of interest, how would this differ from giving editors barn stars? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:06, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

We already have this. GA needs only one editor's approval, while FA needs the community. Barn stars and adminship are equivalent. –M^T 02:33, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Carnildo's bots like OrphanBot and ImageRemovalBot are currently hiding deleted images like this instead of completely removing them like this. I asked Carnildo about it here and it seemed that a number of people requested this at the time to see where images had been. If there is consensus Carnildo is happy to change it so that the images are completely removed. This would prevent more hidden clutter appearing on articles which sometimes also messes up the spacing. See here (Sometimes it's more annoying). Anyone disagrees? Garion96 (talk) 22:29, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to remove them completely. From what I've seen editors tend to remove them later anyway. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 22:37, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

More input would be welcome! :) Garion96 (talk) 16:59, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Hiding is definitely a good option. This way all the bot & semi-bot work can be humanly checked at leisure without causing any harm in whatever direction. I myself have come across hidden images and was able to replace them based on the imagename/logs something i would not have been able to do otherwise. Agathoclea (talk) 21:37, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Agathoclea... Having the bots remove the reference to the image entirely seems to hand over too much editorial control to bots... –xeno (talk) 21:42, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps with Orphanbot I can understand that. But what about imageremovalbot? It only removes images which are already deleted. Removing deleted images from a page should be the job of the deleting admin, the admin won't hide them. This bot simply does the job for him/her, why should the bot hide those? Garion96 (talk) 22:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

IMHO, bots already have too much editorial control. I recently came across a case where a logo was converted from gif->png, and changed in the article. Then the gif was marked as redundant by a bot, and deleted; then the page got vandalized back to an old version; then the png was marked as an orphan by a bot and deleted. I'd add that if the image is hidden in a comment, it would be better to also include the reason the image was deleted in the comment, to make human intervention more likely. Ideally, it should replace redundant images instead of just removing them, and not remove images that were deleted as orphans. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 22:11, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

A bot replacing images would really be too much editorial control. Garion96 (talk) 22:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Replacing deleted images with the default "no image - upload one" images might be a good idea. I know a number of templates start with them, being replaced by unsuitable images and then deleted instead of being reverted. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 00:01, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Removing deleted images from a page should be the job of the deleting admin, the admin won't hide them. This bot simply does the job for him/her, why should the bot hide those? Far too often this doesn't occur, and far too often images are deleted via automated process and shallow reviewing by the deleting admin (I can sympathize as we have enormous backlogs...) for simple reasons such as a missing or malformed FUR, which is easily rectified. The hidden comments should remain and be reviewed by a human. –xeno ^talk 14:07, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

The bot edited 500 pages in only 4 days. It won't be long before every page on Wikipedia will have this hidden clutter. But I guess people like that. :) Garion96 (talk) 16:19, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I have a couple of suggestions for the general layout of your website.

You should have you Navigation, Search, Interaction, Toolbox, and Languages boxes – the whole far left column of every screen – scroll down as the viewer scrolls down the article.

This would allow easier access to these features for a viewer if they need to stop in the middle of the article and use any of those features instead of scrolling all the way back up to the top.

Also –

You might want to add a copy or move the exiting field for ‘Categories’ that appear at the end of the article to the left column also. Again, I think this would help in easier navigation by the user.

Just a couple suggestions to make a good website even better.

Thanks, Robert Elkins

The problem with your first suggestion is that not everyone has a screen as tall as you seem to; if the left column is fixed on the screen, then there is no way to scroll down that column to get to anything that doesn't fit on one screen. Anomie⚔ 13:42, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I think if MediaWiki had some sort of WYSIWYG table editing system, many more editors would be able to utilize this method of presenting information, and the quality of tables in existing articles would have the potential to be greatly enhanced. I have absolutely no idea whether how difficult this is to implement, or whether it would even be feasible, however I was thinking you would have some sort of 'table editor' page which would allow you to add/remove/split/merge rows and columns. You could also change the formatting of individual cells or other elements. Down the bottom would be an 'insert table' button which would convert the whole thing into wiki markup where you could then paste it into the article. While the table syntax is ok once you get the hang of it, the learning curve is much higher than general editing of the encyclopaedia. Thoughts? Suicup (talk) 08:46, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

A complete overhaul of the MediaWiki UI is in the works, and will come soon to a blue moon near you :D. This is likely to include separation of metadata (refs, categories, tables, etc) from article prose, and possibly a WYSIWYG interface. Which would be very cool. Happy‑melon 09:34, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Very interesting, but where is it discussed? Ruslik (talk) 12:18, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

There's some interesting stuff at http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/ , among other places… {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 16:51, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't really know anything about the UI overall, but I'd just like to voice my very strong support for a WYSIWYG table editor. I think that's an absolutely fantastic idea. Cool3 (talk) 17:10, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

In order to simplify and streamline the arbitration process, the Arbitration Committee has decided to reorganize and relocate various arbitration-related pages, as outlined below:

Phase 1 (administrative pages)

Phase 1A relocates and consolidates the core administrative pages.

• Wikipedia:Arbitration policy moved to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Policy
• Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Case handling deprecated and redirected to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Policy
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide moved to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Guide to arbitration
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/How to present a case merged to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Guide to arbitration
• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Clerks/Procedures merged to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Clerks
• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Clerks/Noticeboard merged to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Clerks
• Wikipedia:General sanctions and Wikipedia:Editing restrictions merged to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Active sanctions
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Admin enforcement requested deprecated and redirected to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Active sanctions

Phase 1B consolidates the core administrative talk pages.

• Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Active sanctions deprecated and redirected to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee
• Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Guide to arbitration deprecated and redirected to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee
• Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Policy deprecated and redirected to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee
• Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Procedures deprecated and redirected to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee
• Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement deprecated and redirected to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee

Structure after Phase 1

• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee (with active talk page)
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Active sanctions
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Clerks (with active talk page)
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Guide to arbitration
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard (with active talk page)
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Policy
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration (with active talk page)
  • Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration subpages
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement

Phase 2 (arbitration requests and cases)

Phase 2A relocates and consolidates the active arbitration case and request pages.

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration moved to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests
• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests split into Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Appeal, Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Case, and Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Clarification
• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Appeal, Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Case, and Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Clarification transcluded onto Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests
• Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Appeal, Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Case, and Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Clarification deprecated and redirected to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests
• New cases are opened as Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Case/CASENAME

Phase 2B relocates and consolidates the arbitration case and request archives.

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Completed requests moved to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Index/Cases
• Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Past decisions moved to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Index/Principles
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Rejected requests moved to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Index/Declined requests
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Closed motions moved to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Index/Motions
• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Index/Cases, Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Index/Principles, Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Index/Declined requests, and Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Index/Motions transcluded onto Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Index
• Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Index/Cases, Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Index/Principles, Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Index/Declined requests, and Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Index/Motions deprecated and redirected to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee

Phase 2C relocates and consolidates the active arbitration enforcement pages.

• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement moved to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Enforcement
• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Enforcement transcluded onto Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests
• Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests/Enforcement deprecated and redirected to Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests

This proposal was adopted by a 9/0 vote, with one abstention:

• Support: Casliber, Carcharoth, FloNight, Kirill Lokshin, Rlevse, Roger Davies, Sam Blacketer, Vassyana, Wizardman
• Oppose: None
• Abstain: John Vandenberg
• Not voting: Cool Hand Luke, Coren, FayssalF, Newyorkbrad, Risker, Stephen Bain

Any comments regarding the planned changes should be made by April 25. Unless the Committee determines otherwise based on comments received, implementation of Phase 1 will begin on April 26, to be completed by May 1, and implementation of Phase 2 will begin on May 2, to be completed by May 8.

For the Committee, Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 02:31, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

The Arbitration Committee has adopted a provisional procedure for CU/OS auditing to be used by the newly formed Audit Subcommittee. The Committee anticipates that the procedure may be revised in the future based on the recommendations of the subcommittee.

The procedure was adopted by an 11/0 vote, with no abstentions:

• Support: Carcharoth, Casliber, FayssalF, FloNight, John Vandenberg, Kirill Lokshin, Risker, Rlevse, Roger Davies, Sam Blacketer, Wizardman
• Oppose: None
• Abstain: None
• Not voting: Cool Hand Luke, Coren, Newyorkbrad, Stephen Bain, Vassyana

The Committee has also determined that arbitrator members of the subcommittee will be designated to serve six-month terms, and that the other members will be elected to twelve-month terms.

The arbitrator term length was adopted by a 12/0 vote, with no abstentions:

• Support: Carcharoth, Casliber, FayssalF, FloNight, John Vandenberg, Kirill Lokshin, Risker, Rlevse, Roger Davies, Sam Blacketer, Vassyana, Wizardman
• Oppose: None
• Abstain: None
• Not voting: Cool Hand Luke, Coren, Newyorkbrad, Stephen Bain

The elected term length was adopted by a 13/0 vote, with no abstentions:

• Support: Carcharoth, Casliber, Coren, FayssalF, FloNight, John Vandenberg, Kirill Lokshin, Risker, Rlevse, Roger Davies, Sam Blacketer, Vassyana, Wizardman
• Oppose: None
• Abstain: None
• Not voting: Cool Hand Luke, Newyorkbrad, Stephen Bain

The initial arbitrator members of the subcommittee will be FloNight, John Vandenberg, and Roger Davies. Interim appointments to the other slots will be announced shortly.

For the Committee, Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 02:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

It would be really helpful if an (inactive) simulation of the section edit links could be included in page previews. This would help users determine if {{fixbunching}} is required when adding multiple photos or infoboxes. dramatic (talk) 06:05, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I've added a proposal to discuss possible practices to be followed at: Wikipedia talk:Deceased Wikipedians/Proposal to establish practices to be followed for deceased Wikipedians — Ched :  ?  16:07, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I just put a proposal on the talk page of WikiProject Law. (This one.) I'm wondering if someone knows of a more appropriate place to put it, in order to get good feedback & start a discussion. Could you put any responses to my question "where does my proposal go?" on my own "talk" page. Thanks. Agradman (talk) 03:27, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

As promised earlier, the Committee's agenda has been updated to indicate milestone dates for the Aitias, Ryulong, and West Bank - Judea and Samaria cases. We anticipate that all future cases will be tracked in this manner.

For the Committee, Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 01:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

The Arbitration Committee has appointed Mackensen, Thatcher, and Tznkai to fill the non-arbitrator seats on the Audit Subcommittee in the interim until elections are held. Together with the three arbitrators whose appointment was announced earlier, these editors will conduct investigations into CheckUser- and Oversight-related complaints, as well as providing feedback to the Committee regarding the provisional procedures established for the auditing process.

For the Committee, Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 01:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

Resolved

 – Might not have been such a good idea. tempodivalse [☎] 19:07, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi, everyone. I was running through some articles in the Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability lists a whiles ago, checking to see if I could AfD something, when I thought of something. Our proposed deletion policy currently isn't very useful, I think, because anyone, even the page's creator, can remove the prod without an explanation, which kind of makes them a bit useless. My idea: make two amendments to the WP:PROD policy. They are:

1. Change it to say that anybody except for the creator of the page can remove the prod, and,
2. add that a reason must be given, either on the article's talk page or in the edit summary, why the prod was contested.

If the above criteria are not met, then the prod may be readded. Thoughts? tempodivalse [☎] 17:46, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I feel that prods are there to be contested, because they are designed for non-controversial deletions. If anyone objects, it should be taken to AfD where the truth will out. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. Prod is bad enough as it is, basically a sneaky deletion process, where low traffic articles are swept under the rug while nobody's looking, I fail to see why the creator of an article should be denied the chance to contest the deletion on top of that. Equendil Talk 18:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose The fact that anyone can remove a prod tag is important. By placing the tag you are stating that deletion would be uncontroversial - ie nobody could possibly object. Removal of the tag is an objection, and the article's creator is as entitled to object to its deletiom as anyone else. pablo_hablo. 18:54, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Hrm.... I guess Pablomismo and the others have a point there, I didn't really think of that. This is why I prefer AfD to PROD, even if the deletion would be uncontroversial. I withdraw my suggestion, thanks for your input. Cheers. tempodivalse [☎] 19:07, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

The AFD system is already strained, putting all PROD articles through AFD would increase the number of AFDs every day by 50-100%, so articles that do need more discussion may not get it as people will be spending more time casting pointless !votes for uncontroversial deletions. Putting articles though AfD instead of PROD also means that a full DRV is necessary to restore it later if someone objects, regardless of how few people actually participated in the discussion. AFD !voters also often put too much focus on notability, such that articles with systemic WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:OR, or even WP:BLP problems may get a result of "keep and cleanup" if the subject might be notable, regardless of how sensible such a suggestion really is. Mr.Z-man 02:27, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• If an article is uncontroversial to the point no one would object, the article is speediable. Equendil pretty much hits the nail on the head. PROD is basically a way to get something deleted without additional eyes checking your work. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:21, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Hopefully the deleting admin would use their judgement before deleting. Leithp 12:02, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• An improvement to prod would be to not allow removal of the tag without providing a reason on either the talk page or in the edit summary. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:14, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea how hard this would be to implement, but it seems like it might be complicated, so I'm making a post here before going to Bugzilla or anything like that (this is an outgrowth of this discussion).

I would like to propose allowing a small customizable message to be displayed at the top of the target page when a user is redirected, beyond the simple "(Redirected from X)". Instead of just this, some customizable wikitext could be displayed at the top, just a sentence or two. This is not a solution in search of a problem, but rather it would help deal with several issues:

1. It would eliminate the need for ""X" redirects here. For other uses, see Y" messages if you didn't come to the page from "X". While they're not a big deal, many people find these messages annoying, visually unappealing or distracting. With a customizable redirect message, these would only be shown when you did come from page X.
2. It would allow for clarification of potentially confusing redirects. For example Bob Dent redirects to Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 and Manuela Testolini redirects to Prince (musician). If you don't know why you're arriving at these pages, it can be quite confusing. A little text at the top to explain why you were redirected (e.g., "Manueal Testolini is the ex-wife of the musician Prince") would be a lot clearer.
3. It would allow clarification of less common names/nicknames for an event/thing/place that have a redirect, but not a mention in the lead. For example Cowley polytechnic for University of Oxford (if you see reference to Cowley Polytechnic somewhere and type it in, but end up at the Oxford page, it's probably not clear to you what happened, whereas the message "Cowley Polytechnic is a nickname of Oxford University" clears it up quickly.

Your thoughts? Cool3 (talk) 17:52, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea, but it would require a software change I think. --Apoc2400 (talk) 18:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• I'm not technically proficient at this sort of thing, but it sounds like you are proposing a hatnote that only shows up when a page is reached via a redirect. In that case I would echo intuition in WP:HATNOTE and suggest that such material should remain in the body of the main article, rather than being housed on the redirect page and displayed only as a hatnote to some readers. This saves editors from having to maintain all the redirects to an article as well as the article itself, it avoids the danger of content forking, and of hatnotes which make claims that should, but cannot be cited in the hatnote, or which are impaired because of the limited space available in the hatnote. I think we're better off encouraging editors making redirects to include a mention of the redirect subject on the target page, and link the redirect to that section. Baileypalblue (talk) 18:37, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

  Well, I'm not exactly proposing a hatnote. I'm all for maintaining the information in the body of the text, but helping to draw attention to it. In the examples above, the information is always included in the article, just not in the lead (and would not be appropriate in the lead), so what I'm proposing is a way to help people find it so that after being redirected, so they won't think: "Why the heck am I on this page?" Cool3 (talk) 19:33, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

This could be done by editing MediaWiki:Redirectedfrom to transclude a template resembling {{editnotice load}}, something like {{redirect notice load|$1}}. Whether that's a good idea or not, I couldn't say. Anomie⚔ 22:50, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

That's technically possible, since that message takes full wikimarkup (a lot of system messages don't). We would need to approach the idea with some care, and first of all work out where to put the hatnotes, but I don't see a fundamental problem. In fact, it could be quite a good idea. Happy‑melon 09:39, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

If it can be done without a software change, I think it would be worth trying (disclosure: it was my remarks at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Proposal to change the way we implement BIO1E which prompted Cool3 to make this proposal). Guidelines on usage can be readily adapted from WP:HATNOTE. On the other hand, if the maintainability concern is too strong, maybe there's some way to have the hatnote text in the target article, but only displayed when coming from a a particular redirect. Rd232 ^talk 01:43, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Many of the benefits of this can be handled by redirecting to a section of an article, not the article itself. The difficult is of course maintaining it; we can put in warning notices, and even anchors in the text, but these are rarely used and often ignored. Fortunately, in case the section part of the link fails, it still redirects to the top of the article, so there is no negative consequence of putting in a section. DGG (talk) 21:22, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

The starting point for the discussion (at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Proposal to change the way we implement BIO1E) is that bio articles are often redirected elsewhere, and there may not be a section clearly dealing with them at the destination. That makes the redirect a bit confusing, though redirecting to a section that mentions the person in passing is better than just redirecting to the article. But redirect + message would be more helpful. Rd232 ^talk 22:28, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

If you have a redirect message at the top of the page and want it to be seen, you can't at the same time redirect to a #section of the article. So having the top-of-the-page redirect message could make it harder to find the place in the article where the redirected term is mentioned. Unless the redirect message itself contained a #section link to where the redirected term is found in the article. --83.253.240.46 (talk) 11:35, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

This proposal fills a need, and I think it can be accomplished with a simple clarification of policy... though one which is a little counterintuitive. We should allow disambiguation pages for topics with no entry in Wikipedia. Not surprisingly, Wikipedia:Disambiguation doesn't actually address this point, but I think it is the best solution. The only reason why we have any confusion with a redirect like the Bob Dent example is that, remarkably, only one person by that name has come to the attention of Wikipedia so far - otherwise a hatnote at top of the other "Bob Dent" page would say who the other person was, or a disambiguation page would provide the desired information. The disambiguation page would would replace the existing redirect at Bob Dent, so it would not actually increase the total number of articles.

That said, this example is actually one of the cases when this isn't necessary, because a search finds no article of Wikipedia referencing any other "Bob Dent", and a #section link is currently possible in the redirected article. But if either of these things were not the case, I think it would be better to use a disambiguation page. Mike Serfas (talk) 21:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I have been thinking about the possibility of adding the languages that are known to biographical subjects. I thought it could be quite useful information, since many biographical articles have translated quotations within. '''wuffyz''' (talk) 04:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand this. Do you mean to list the languages understood by the subject of the article? Or to list the articles in the other language Wikipedias? --Gadget850 (talk) 13:09, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

A list of languages understood by the subject. Wuffyz 00:50, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

• It could be encyclopedic, but in my experience such information is usually very hard to verify. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:15, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe that placing essays in the "Wikipedia" namespace is confusing and may sometimes be disruptive. It leads to a lack of distinction between essays (essentially personal comment) on the one hand, and policies and guidelines (essentially expressions, however imperfect, of community consensus) on the other. A new "Essay" namespace would avoid any such potential confusion or disruption. DuncanHill (talk) 15:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you know of any particular examples of "disruption" caused by essays in the project namespace? I'm not bothered by a little confusion, especially if it leads people to WP:IAR, and if they learn to stop caring whether something is a policy, guideline or essay. I tend to disagree with anything that highlights that distinction, and a separate namespace would certainly do that. -GTBacchus^(talk) 16:15, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Most of the stuff in the Wikipedia namespace is neither an essay nor a policy or guideline. We don't have people confusing MFD discussions with policies. In any case, I agree with GTBacchus. The message should be what matters, not the tag. Mr.Z-man 16:18, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Agree with GTBacchus and Mr.Z-man; I don't see any confusion or disruption. If it ain't broke don't fix it. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:31, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• All of the writings in Wikipedia namespace can be tagged as an essay, policy or guideline if any of those names apply. There is no particular need to make a separate namespace when templates already fulfill that function. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:17, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Who supports or opposes this? Do administrators already have the ability to do this? If they don't, it should be made available because it would be useful for dealing with page move warring. -- IRP ☎ 22:28, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I oppose it. Currently, administrators can block users, that's like revoking them. -Porchcrop ^{(talk|contributions)} 22:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Then what's the point of the abuse filter being able to revoke the autoconfirmed status of users? -- IRP ☎ 23:11, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The abuse filter has the technical ability to block, desysop or decrat users who trigger filters; that's just the way it works. Unsurprisingly, those acitons are not being used, and are not currently available to use on enwiki. Deautoconfirm is equally unused AFAIK, it just happens to be available. Happy‑melon 16:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Recent previous discussion here. Algebraist 23:04, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

'move=sysop' works too. –xeno ^talk 12:34, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Indeed; I can't think of a situation where it would be necessary to prevent user X from moving a page (without being able to simply block user X) but not to prevent all users from moving the same page. Either there's a move war (in which move-protect), the user is pagemove-vandalising (in which case block), or there's no problem to solve. Unless you can suggest an alternative scenario? Happy‑melon 16:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

To counter the argument about the AF de-autoconfirming: that's just a temporary measure until an admin can review the situation and block if appropriate. –xeno ^talk 16:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Moved. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#bot to hard code convert template results). —EncMstr (talk) 05:32, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

The point of that notice was to get more eyes on a bot request that may be controversial, not to start discussion in multiple places; note at the end it directed people to comment on the BRFA page. Perhaps it was a bit verbose, but I'm not sure completely removing it was the right way to go. Anomie⚔ 11:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

There is a discussion/poll on the creation of an established usergroup with autopromotion, intermediary between autoconfirmed and reviewer status for the flagged protection and patrolled revisions trial implementation. Comments welcome, Cenarium (talk) 23:52, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Assumption: many articles which end up speedy-deleted or AFDd are created by people searching for something, not finding anything, and clicking one of the two red links on the Search Result page to create the article. Proposal: Make those two redlinks go to a new page which recommends new users use the Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Wizard, and provides the redlink (and perhaps links to relevant policy) for more experienced users. Rd232 ^talk 22:40, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

It is noble to try to help those who would like an article. However there is a trade off between overloading the searchers with too much information or helping them with something they may wish to do. Already there are enough options with the red links. Once these are clicked, that is the chance for the AfC process to be advertised, rather than just give an error message for non logged in people. It may end up vastly increasing the number of AfC contributions, so we may need more volunteers. Is it possible to detect non logged in and make the red links do something different? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:16, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't proposing more information on the Search Result page; I was proposing a new intermediate page appearing when the two redlinks on that page are clicked, providing a range of Help guidance and options for article creation, one of them the AfC wizard. Yes, this would require more AfC volunteers; but presumably this would be at least balanced by less CSD and AFD work. Rd232 ^talk 21:35, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like I agree with you there then. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:52, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:Article wizard - the framework is there, just needs some people with plenty of time to spend. Mr.Z-man 01:04, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey, did you steal that from ours or did we steal ours from you!? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The AfC wizard is better developed, but that's a secondary point. I want to know if people think it's a good idea in principle, and if so how difficult it is technically to edit the Search Result page to make the redlinks go to a new intermediate page. Rd232 ^talk 00:46, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks and sounds a great idea to me. I fully support the proposal. I imagine there's a MediaWiki: page somewhere where the search result text can be edited.--Kotniski (talk) 14:25, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Well thanks to your prompting I've found the relevant messages. One is, I think, appropriately editable: MediaWiki:Noexactmatch provides the Create New Page redlink. The other one seems to be software-embedded in something else (MediaWiki:Searchresults-title?), so would probably need developer intervention. However the Create New Page is more prominent, so we could start with that. The only problem I see is that I'd want to be able to have the appropriate redlink on the new intermediate page, and I don't see how. The alternative would be to expand the Create This Page subsection of MediaWiki:Noexactmatch. I've created a proposal for this at User:Rd232/Noexactmatch/Proposal. Rd232 ^talk 16:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I propose that superscripted footnote-tags be created for each of the following six scientific classifications, all of them found in Wikipedia: in vitro, in vivo, in situ, ex vivo, in utero, and even in silico.

Need: to uniformly and concisely impart to the reader the specific nature of the experiment being referenced by footnote. Implementing this change would also effect a needed review of references.

Problem to solve: A footnoted statement of fact in an article may imply, for example, an in vivo context, yet the study referenced may actually be strictly an in vitro one. This proposed change would prevent that confusion by means of an identifier in the superscripted footnote itself.

This seems like a solution in search of a problem. We can always use text to explain what's going on, and that will be much more clear to 99% of readers than cryptic marks on footnotes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Since the OP hasn't bothered to provide it, here is a link to the last time they made this proposal (word for word). Algebraist 01:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I thought I recognised it from somewhere... Happy‑melon 12:26, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I suggest to include EC number in Element fact boxes, as CAS number is already. I've made a template for this purpose: Template:Elementbox_ec_number. If accepted, I don't now how to do this for all elements at once (put the field in place, not the actual number). --Eivindgh (talk) 09:06, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

You put the change into effect by changing {{Elementbox}}. Since that template is not protected, you won't need to get an admin to make the change. Please do not make the change before there is consensus on this. At minimum, you need to post to Template talk:Elementbox, not here, because it's quite possible that editors interested in the change don't read this page. You really should also post to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements to make sure that interested editors do see your suggestion. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Full proposal here. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 20:56, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

This process page was suggested by User:Ron Ritzman at Wikipedia talk:Deletion process#Proposed wikiproject, Requests for undeletion (permlink) and several of us agreed a central page to request uncontroversial restorations and userfications was a good idea. I've taken the liberty of drafting the page and submit the process to the community for input and further review. Please discuss at WT:Requests for undeletion, not here. –xeno ^talk 13:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

The attention of all editors is drawn to a Request for Comment on a major issue for the English Wikipedia: a package of six proposals to move the ArbCom hearings process away from the loose, expansionary model that has characterised it until now, to a tighter organisational model. The RFC started Tuesday 29 April. Tony (talk) 14:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This problem needs to be fixed one way or another. The problem is that so many internal links appear as external links and so many external links appear as internal or interwiki links. Some examples include:

• Some Google links appear as internal or interwiki because linking to Google is possible using interwiki links. The interwiki table is not being used for its intended purpose. Google should be removed from the interwiki table as Google is not a wiki. We should use the {{Google}} template to link to Google, which uses an external link.

• Many diff links appear as external because many editors do not use <span class="plainlinks"></span> for diff links. It was proposed nearly two years ago at Bugzilla:11477 that such links should not be marked as external, but the proposal has been forgotten about. So I re-proposed it at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Requested change to Monobook skin.

This needs to be fixed one way or another. Either by

• Removing the non-wikis from the interwiki table. That's the purpose that external link templates serve, not the interwiki table,
  • Possibly removing all of the prefixes that link outside of Wikimedia from the interwiki table and only leave sites that are part of Wikimedia in place (then use templates instead),
• Making a change to the Monobook skin so any links containing prefixes in the interwiki table are not marked as external, or
• Removing the link types altogether if this cannot be fixed

Right now, the link types do not seem to serve their purpose anymore because they are used so inconsistently. If this cannot be easily fixed, it would be better off removing the link types and having all links look the same. -- IRP ☎ 21:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC), modified 22:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

T20562 may be able to help with this; it requests that 'external' interwiki links such as google:Foo, be separated from 'local' interwiki links such as meta:Foo. Unfortunately, such a change requires a significant rewrite of the infamous Parser::replaceInternalLinks() function, which even has a quip from Tim Starling on bugzilla ("Everyone takes one look at replaceInternalLinks and goes to watch TV"). If fulfilled, however, it should help make this distinction easier; for instance, 'external' interwiki links could be given the external link arrow.

While I agree that this is a problem, I think "removing the link types altogether" is both a little severe and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In order to clarify this situation, we need two things to happen:

1. Links to local wikis formed with the external link syntax [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo] should not get the external link icon
2. Links to 'external' wikis formed with the interwiki link syntax google:Foo, should get the external link icon.

How these ends are achieved is open to discussion. Happy‑melon 22:22, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

A better idea would be to remove the external prefixes from the interwiki table and use an external link template instead (at least temporarily until Parser::replaceInternalLinks() is fixed). -- IRP ☎ 20:43, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that would be necessary. We can give the external link icon to interwikis with particular targets just as easily as we can remove them from external links with particular targets. There just needs to be consensus to do so. Happy‑melon 12:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

How would that be done? Would it require fixing of that parser function? -- IRP ☎ 20:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

It can be done with CSS, using similar code to what's proposed for the reverse operation: Code like this:

#bodyContent a[href ^="http://en.wikipedia.org/"] {
    background: none !important;
    padding-right: 0 !important;
}

Will hide the icon for links to wikipedia.

#bodyContent a[href ^="http://www.google."] {
    background: url(external.png) center right no-repeat;
    padding: 0 13px;
}

Will add it for google. This code needs to be added to Common.css, not. You are actually incorrect over at the other discussion to continually link to MediaWiki:Common.js when you say "monobook skin". "Monobook" is a group of about 40 files that collectively form a complete User Interface; of which the on-wiki JS file is but a small part. The external link arrow is added via CSS; so it can equally be hidden with CSS. For most users, anyway; the above CSS won't work with all browsers. Happy‑melon 16:04, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Can it just be made to where it isn't added in the first place? That way, it won't appear for the wrong links in any browser. -- IRP ☎ 18:18, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

That would be the "fix Parser:replaceInternalLinks()" option. Happy‑melon 18:27, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Then we should use the above code as a temporary quick fix until the parser function is working. -- IRP ☎ 18:37, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

(ec) "The interwiki table is not being used for its intended purpose. Google should be removed from the interwiki table as Google is not a wiki." – Perhaps you know something about the intended purpose that I don't, but I thought it was simply to make linking to other wikis more convenient. I didn't know it also works with Google, but now that I know I can simply write [[Google:test]] to produce Google:test, I am probably going to use it occasionally. (There seems to be no way to make this work for several words, though, because spaces are replaced by underscores.)

What I don't understand is why such links appear without the external links icon. This makes sense for other Wikimedia Foundation projects, but for most of the sites in the interwiki table it makes no sense. Currently the icon is added for every external link starting "http:" and to no external link starting with an interwiki prefix. I believe the correct behaviour would be to add the icon to all external links whose server is not in a list of exceptions; whether they are constructed through an interwiki prefix or not, or whether they appear in the interwiki map, should not make a difference. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:38, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I would say that "interwiki map" needs to be renamed to something else if it is going to be used for non-wikis. Also, many proposals have been forgotten about. I would say that m:Developers' noticeboard ought to exist. Should I create it? It seems like that should be a better place for getting the attention of a developer than Bugzilla. Another thing that I would like to address is that we have the same problem with the link types on other projects, so administrators from this project will have to contact administrators from other projects in order for this problem to be fixed on all projects. -- IRP ☎ 23:31, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

No, an on-wiki dev noticeboard will simply be ignored. There are three ways to get the attention of a sysadmin (that is, someone who has access to the wikimedia servers); in order of increasing urgency, file a bug at bugzilla (slow but methodical), send an email to wikitech-l (somewhat pot luck which devs, if any, you get), or log on to #wikitech on IRC (for general chat, but also for total emergencies). For a developer (that is, someone who has SVN commit access and can update MediaWiki, not necessarily a sysadmin) the technical village pump and Wikimedia Forum are also good places, for local and WMF-wide changes, respectively. Senior developers (who also tend to be sysadmins) are rarely available on-wiki.

You say "the interwiki map needs to be renamed" as if it were so easy to do so :D. I can confidently assure you that this will never be done; it's a backward-compatibility nightmare. It may perhaps be repurposed to hold only true 'interwiki' links, but I doubt this will happen either. There is currently a distinction within the table between 'external' and 'local' links. All we need to do is make more use of that distinction. Happy‑melon 11:48, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

See my reply to your previous post above↑↑. -- IRP ☎ 20:47, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Brion, and occasionally Tim read and comment on WP:VPT, but if you want to make sure your message gets read within a week, wikitech-l or IRC is best. You can email Brion directly as well, but the list is generally better, as more people read that than Brion's inbox. Mr.Z-man 21:44, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

This proposal does not require a developer to fulfill. All it requires is an administrator to add a code to MediaWiki:Monobook.js. -- IRP ☎ 22:40, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

There are many non Wikimedia and non wikis on the Interwiki map. There's also magic links like: ISBN 1234567890 and RFC 1234 that turn into links with no brackets at all, but that's a whole 'nother thread. Mr.Z-man 23:27, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Creating a comment on this post so it isn't archived, as there needs to be additional discussion. -- IRP ☎ 20:15, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

From below. Happy‑melon 09:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Happy-melon, I'm not sure if you saw my reply to one of your posts above↑↑. -- IRP ☎ 00:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I saw it. Happy‑melon 13:44, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Then I was wondering why you didn't respond to it. -- IRP ☎ 20:30, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to "Then we should use the above code as a temporary quick fix until the parser function is working"? There doesn't seem to me to be anything that needs responding to. You are entirely correct: we should use that code as a fix (although it's unlikely to be "quick") until improvements can be made to link handling. Note that while it would be relatively easy to achieve the functionality whereby interwiki links like google:foo do get the external link icon (it 'only' requires a complete rewrite of one function :S) having external links to wikipedia consistently not getting the icon is rather harder, and is unlikely to be achieved in core code (that is, it will have to be added and then taken away, rather than not added in the first place). Happy‑melon 09:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Many articles that I (try to) read in Wik start out with a tangle of parenthetical material (e.g., alternative spellings and IPA). On paper, this might not be such a problem, but on a computer screen, I cannot simply read this material, especially since it is usually srinkled with blue words that also impede the reading. I realize that this material needs to be included, and often right at the beginning is the "best" place to do so. But the result is a tangle that causes me -- and I assume many others -- to simply skip the introduction at least on the first go-round, even though that is often all I am afer. Here is my solution: put the material that is in the parentheses in a smaller type so that the eyes can skip right over it to quickly find the end of the parenthetical material.Kdammers (talk) 03:09, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

There is a danger in varying font size - if information is important, people might begin to think it is less important than other information if it is in a smaller font size. Often, brackets serve to indicate a wikilink to another article in Wikipedia, for example, Times New Roman in this sentence. I have heard that Verdana is quite a good font to use for computer screens, although my guess would be that Times New Roman would probably be the most popular font (although I do not have statistics to back me there). Were you thinking merely of variations in font size, or actually variations in font used? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:06, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Just another thought. Isn't some of what you might be referring to already in a smaller font size? I am thinking of lines such as "Typing x redirects here". Or things like "American English spellings" (see the article on aging. Also, if you wanted to make articles more accessible, I would think that having a box on the right of the page that readers would be at liberty skip over might be more suitable than having a smaller font size. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:31, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

On my computer screen, there [[ageing[[ article has the same font size in the entire text. only in the "pre-introductory" part with a redirect notice is there a difference. But that difference used in the intoduction is what I was suggesting. I agree taht a separate box would make for the easiest to use solution. The trouble is, I think, that writing such material in a coherent and useful way might be quite difficultin many cases. Kdammers (talk) 23:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

In the article "ageing", it is the text that says "Redirected from aging" which is currently in smaller font size. I wonder whether this will be the case with other redirected entries in general. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:47, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I am proposing that users who have not edited and who are blocked be excluded from Special:Listusers by default, along with "Show blocked users" and "Show users who have made no edits" links. -- IRP ☎ 20:32, 26 April 2009 (UTC), modified 20:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Why? Do you mean to not let them see the pages, or to not be listed on them? Chillum 20:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

So we don't see all of the vandalistic usernames when searching through Special:Listusers. Currently, we see quite a bit of vandalism at Special:Listusers before we get to what we're looking for. We should have the list filter out the vandalism so we can more easily find what we're looking for. -- IRP ☎ 20:40, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

We won't often be looking for users who have made no edits either. -- IRP ☎ 20:41, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about you but I think the purpose of Special:ListUsers is to give a complete list of users that exist, whether or not they're blocked or have edited. If I want to find a particular user, I would use the suggestions dropdown on the search box, since the user I'm looking for would probably have a user page. Also, another thing you would need to be careful about is if you click on the link http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AListUsers&username=Example+user&group=&limit=50 it would confirm that User:Example user exists. However, since that account has no edits and is blocked, under your proposal Example user would not appear in that list. This would render all similar links useless for determining if a given account exists. Tra (Talk) 21:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, yes that would be a nice feature. Chillum 21:23, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I support the idea of such a feature being available, but I do not support exclusion by default—not finding something because you didn't uncheck an option is a bad situation. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 21:55, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree; having the ability to filter the lists would be invaluable, but I'm ambivalent about the default setting being to hide them. On the one hand, it would only require us to change the urls we use for such checks to include a few extra values (&hideblocked=0&hidenoedits=0, or similar). On the other hand, of course, it would require us to change the urls we use for such checks ot include a few extra values... it's very much a matter of opinion whether you think the small amount of work justifies the change; it would certainly remove another 'lulz' factor if the top of the list wasn't filled with random vandal accounts. Happy‑melon 22:31, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Off-topic discussion moved to correct thread. Happy‑melon 09:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The "message" tab for a MediaWiki page needs to be changed to "Interface page" because not only interface messages, but skins are stored in that namespace. -- IRP ☎ 03:45, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

As are gadgets and all manner of other things. I'd support this change. Happy‑melon 07:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

As would I. The "message" titling is old and hoary, but that's no reason to keep it. — Gavia immer (talk) 19:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like we're looking at MediaWiki:Nstab-mediawiki; I'll leave a note at the talk page, there, pointing here. – Luna Santin (talk) 21:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really sure it matters either way. But whatever you all decide to do is fine by me. - Rjd0060 (talk) 00:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I've WP:BOLDly updated it, with a link here in the edit summary. Let's see if it shakes anything loose. Happy‑melon 09:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Comment is requested at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ListasBot 5 regarding whether or not there should be a bot that would make non-visible changes to the {{WikiProjectBanners}} and {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} templates so that KingbotK would be better able to handle those pages. Matt (talk) 17:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Tonight (April 28), I looked at the category for 2009_deaths. I noticed that the two most recent entries here did not have the tag which reads "This article is about a person who has died recently" by their names, so I added them manually. However, as addition of this (and removal of the tag after a week or so, which also seems to be done, at least in some instances, manually) can be rather tedious, I wonder whether a bot could be employed for addition and deletion of the recent deaths tag. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The tag is not always needed. Sometimes information does not rapidly changes thus making the template unnecessary. A bot to remove the tags after a week or so has passed might be handy indeed. Garion96 (talk) 18:47, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps this request could be moved/copied to WP:BOTREQ and then closed. –M^T

There's near-constant discussion about the addition to WP of what some editors regard as fancruft, e.g. characters in video games and popular fiction. Most proposals tend to strengthen the hands of deletionists, which I think is a bad thing: it's already received unfavourable impression in the press, in which one publication reported the deletion within hours of a new stub article about an obviously notable subject, Political Quarterly; all editors start as newbies, and deletionism drives away some who might become real assets, but can't keep up with the hordes of fan-boys; I dislike the authoritarian idea that WP should contain only articles on subjects deemed worth by "the great and the good", and think such a policy will drive away some readers, some of whom may become good editors, etc.

So I suggest we deal with the presence of "fancruft" and other low-quality articles by making the each article's grading visible to all users, unregistered as well as registered, and link to a short description of the gradings - i.e. one page that concisely describes each of the gradings and what is required to achieve them. Articles which fail WP:N or in which a large percentage of the text fails WP:V or WP:NPOV should never be graded higher than start-class, and the summary of gradings should point out that articles which fail to meet these criteria are considered unreliable by WP.

That sounds like a win-win to me, as it would make it clear to the world that WP, while being "the encyclopedia anyone can edit", does have quality standards. It might even encourage the producers of low-quality articles to start improving them or move on to subjects where there's more scope for improvement.

PS despite my dislike of deletionism in general, I support the swift deletion of articles that violate WP:BLP and / or consist mainly of WP:COPYVIOs and WP:PLAGIARISM, because getting WP sued is A Bad Thing.--Philcha (talk) 14:50, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, define "fan cruft" in a quantitative way, please. No bias in your suggestion, nope, none at all. - Denimadept (talk) 16:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

The point is to avoid the wiki-lawyering and biting that result from attempts to define such things precisely. I dont' think the suggestion is biassed, it's an attempt to find a consensus solution to an issue that causes recurring and often tense debates. I don't know what types of subject interest you and, in the interests of neutrality, have not looked at your contribs to find out. Whatever your interests are, my proposal implies that if an article you edit meets WP:N, WP:V and WP:NPOV it's eligible for promotion to one of the "better" classes and to be advertised as such to all readers. --Philcha (talk) 17:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It's often difficult-to-impossible to cite how something is notable. Also, it's often the case that fiction component lists are only verifiable in terms of the fiction itself ("in-universe"). Science fiction and fantasy are often like this. While I'll admit that there's a limit to what should be covered, "list of instances where Miles Vorkosigan scratches his balls" is likely over the line, the problem is figuring out that limit and defending it. - Denimadept (talk) 17:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

"list of instances where Miles Vorkosigan scratches his balls" cracked me up, especially as I'm an SF fan. Now if you could get some good 3rd-party sources for that, I might help as I think WP needs lightening up - I think Wikipedia:Fac#Gropecunt_Lane is amusing. --Philcha (talk) 17:42, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That's kinda my point, that the only source is the original fiction itself. Makes it hard to WP:V without doing the "in-universe" thing. So, how do you determine what stays and what goes? That goes back to my original response. Some people seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. Not you, Philcha, but Certain People. - Denimadept (talk) 17:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to get away from "what stays and what goes" because that approach has so many disadvantages, incl: wastes a lot of time that would be better spent editing & reviewing; causes a lot of time-consuming and often hostile debate; bites newbies and may be losing WP some potentially good editors; is futile, because fan-boys can create fancruft faster than experienced editors can remove it. I'm suggesting that, instead of us chasing the fan-boys, we should force them to chase us - if the carrot of a better grading does not motivate them to improve their contributions, the stick of a "health warning" on their faves is an option, just by varying the text / banner displayed at the top of articles below C-class.

That last point implies something else. Many Wikiprojects do not respond to requests for reviews / assessment. I don't know if there's a central assessment centre, and if there is not I'd help to create and operate one. I review articles for GA status at present, but if necessary would cut back on that to help improve less-good articles and their editors - I'd hope that before too long that would give WP more GAs, editors who know what they're doing, and reviewers, of which WP is short at all levels. --Philcha (talk) 18:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I can't argue with that at all. I don't generally review articles myself, as I don't claim to be definitive as to what constitutes a Good Article. OTOH, compare Harvard Bridge with what I'm currently working on at User:Denimadept/Harvard Bridge, I'm told I have some hint by people who have reviewed that pending effort. Still, I often find myself defending what some call "fan cruft". Recently, I couldn't really defend some based on the Honor Harrington books, as they seemed a bit over the line, but others I've fought for tooth-and-nail, such as my bridge articles and articles in the South Park area. What it seems to me is that you're effectively moving the debates from AfD to a reviewer discussion. Is that your intent? - Denimadept (talk) 19:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure the proposal is about "moving the debates from AfD to a reviewer discussion":

• Reviews are held at the nominators's request, while referral of an article to an AfD is sometimes unnoticed by its creators (especially newbies who don't know about watchlists, etc.).
• At reviews the burden of proof generally lies on the nominators. In theory at AfD the burden lies on the "delete" voters, per WP:DELETE's "deletion should be a last resort", but I've seldom seen it work that way. If nominators don't reposnd at reviwes, they have no-one top blame but themselves - unlike AfD, which generates a fair number of complaints.
• AfD would still have an important role in removing (if clearly guilty) articles that are purely promotional or partisan, or where discussion is needed about whether there is doubt that they comply with e.g. WP:BLP or WP:PLAGIARISM. --Philcha (talk) 20:03, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That strikes me as a wonderful Inclusionist method. Yes sir, I'd back that. - Denimadept (talk) 20:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I like the links to smoot in the infobox and text of User:Denimadept/Harvard Bridge. That's a good example of helping WP to lighten up, and the 2nd laugh you've given me in this discussion. Thanks! --Philcha (talk) 20:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm kinda trolling for critique on that article both while I look for more sources and after. - Denimadept (talk) 20:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You're suggesting doing away with inclusion-requirements (at least to a certain extent) and basing everything on grading? I don't think it's a workable idea, but if it were to go forward, it would be important that lower-class articles have disabled privileges, such as not being indexed by Google, and others I can't think of. In principle it's sort of a neat idea, but then wouldn't normal stubs and starts also suffer? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 19:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the proposal is less workable than the current system, where people spend a lot of time in AfD discussions but it's not holding back the tide of fancruft. I guess I am suggesting we fall back to a more defensible position.

What's a "normal" stub or start?

It might be a good idea to introduce a "poor article" grading with a really prominent health warning, e.g. "This is a poor article because .... We are not confident that its content is reliable. Please help to improve it" with a link to a short, simple set of suggestions, including how to get it reviewed for a higher grading. So an article would initially be "unassessed"; might go to "stub" if too short for any real review; if only OK, then it's start-class; if rubbish, it's "poor".

I'm not sure de-indexing lower-class articles from the searchies would be a good idea. I got into WP by finding an article, spotting flaws in it and editing. My impression from a lot of Talk pages is that a lot of editors start that way. De-indexing would throw away opportunites to get articles improved and to recruit new editors who care. --Philcha (talk) 20:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If we don't delete them, they're just going to become yet another giant backlog. Deletion may not be holding back the tide, but its at least handling them, and acting as a sort of triage to allow people to save the saveable articles rather than expending effort into categorizing poor articles and attempting to save the unsalvageable. I'm all for not being on a deadline, but this seems more like waving a white flag than falling back. Allowing the creation of a previously deletable class of pages will also likely increase the number of those types of pages created, as the people that deletion did previously deter will also start writing "poor articles" again. Mr.Z-man 21:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Re "another giant backlog", we're always going to have backlogs because most registered users would rather edit than do maintenance chores - including me.

What evidence is there that deletion deters anyone from writing bad articles? I'd expect reviewing an article and grading it as "poor" would be much less labour-intensive than AfD, so it might make more progress with the backlog of unsatisfactory articles. Then AfD can concentrate on the really serious cases. --Philcha (talk) 21:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It's deterred me from writing articles about more Connecticut River bridges. Whether those articles would become good or not is unknown. - Denimadept (talk) 21:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

We'll always have backlogs, so let's make another? I'm not sure I agree with that logic. My point is that we basically have a finite number of contributors, as such, we can only work through a certain amount of the overall backlog at a time. If we double the size of the backlog without doubling the number of editors working on it, then we decrease the rate that the overall backlogs are cleared, including the more important backlogs (like unsourced BLPs, currently ~30,000) as people shift to the new backlogs. Obviously this is a simplification, but I don't see how replacing deletion with backlogs solves anything. At worst it will increase the backlog of poorly watched pages, putting more strain on RC patrol as well, and potentially cause another Seigenthaler incident (which I believe was one of the reasons we have the currently notability guideline). It wouldn't even have to necessarily be on one of the "poor articles," those would just have to shift the attention of the RC patrollers.

As for evidence, short of doing statistical analysis on deletion logs and new pages, I'm not sure how one could gather evidence to support either side. The theory of classical conditioning would suggest that deletion would provide a deterrence though. If your articles keep getting deleted, you might change what you write about. As it stands, any grade below GA is essentially meaningless and arbitrary, usually assigned after only a cursory, mechanical review (made worse by "assessment drives" for large projects where people are encouraged to assess articles as fast as possible, then these assessments are copied by bot for the smaller projects), so I doubt getting a "poor article" rating would provide nearly as much negative feedback as deletion. We only have 100-150 AFDs per day, including a dozen or more relists, so we can't be doing that poorly. Mr.Z-man 22:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I have that extension enabled that can detect those things and recolor the title based off the class and change the motto to things such as "A good article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A former featured article candidate." We have the functionality that can do this, though I don't think casual users need to know it was a failed FC or not. ViperSnake151  Talk  00:10, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

How about adding brief definitions to the dialog box so that when I mouse over a link it gives me a brief definition of the term? That would save time since I wouldnt have to click and navigate away from the page Im currently viewing.

I hope you guys agree.

This exists. Log in with a registered user account, go to the "Gadgets" section of Special:Preferences, tick the box marked "Navigation popups", and hit save. :) {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 18:20, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

 – already implemented under prefs>gadgets>navigation popups. –M^T

Whenever somebody edits the intro of an article, s/he has to click "Edit this page" at the topbar. Sometimes, multiple editors edit the article at the same time for other materials on the article. So their edits can be conflicted, and sometimes, edit waring can happen based on misunderstading. A whole size of A or B level articles is very big, so if editors just want to change a bit, and previews it, the loading takes very long. So why don't we make a small subsection for the intro just like other sub-setions [edit] Any thought? --Caspian blue 17:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Preferences → Gadgets → Y Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page. –xeno ^talk 17:43, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh!!!!!! Thanks! You're truly one of WikiGnomes (do we have "WikiGnome Barnstar"? :-)) .--Caspian blue 17:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively, you can take the article url and append "?action=edit&section=0", which is basically what the gadget does but with a nice little button. --Izno (talk) 19:36, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, before gadgets, I just clicked the first section's edit link and manually changed the section from 1 to 0. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:29, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I added the gadget but I do not see how to invoke it Sphilbrick (talk) 18:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

 – resolution was: already implemented, see prefs>gadgets>add edit link to lead –M^T

I propose a wikipedia-wide campaign to promote the use of wikipedia as a reliable source. Many teachers and proffesors rule out using wikipedia as a reference for essays and other papers based solely on the fact that wikipedia is edited by users. However, this does not diminish its reliability as a source of information. Often, wikipedia is the best source for information as many other places only have bits and peices of the information provided on wikipedia. I propose a campaign that shows people just how reliable we are and why. Point out to people that while we are user edited, it is a very simple matter for any other user to remove false information, and often admin will ban users from editing if they can't conform to the rules.Drew R. Smith (talk) 02:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

We're not a reliable source, despite usually being a good source. If you want to promote Wikipedia like that, I suggest doing something like what's described in this blog post. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 04:01, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

A site as mercurial as Wikipedia can never be a reliable source, because its content is never in a concrete state. Even full-prots can be bypassed by administrators. -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Cardmaker)} 04:12, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I was under the impression that encyclopedias in general aren't considered good (or 'proper') sources for research. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:17, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

They are good starting points for research. Citing Wikipedia, on the other hand, is bad academics, unless the subject of the paper is Wikipedia or internet usage patterns or something similar. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:24, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Certainly not. Wikipedia is a very dodgy source. (I happen to think that my own articles are among the exceptions, but then I'm biased.) Now, if there were a campaign to increase scepticism of Wikipedia etc, I might give it my backing. -- Hoary (talk) 11:03, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

 – consensus was: no need, wikipedia not intended to be reliable in this way. –M^T

First of all, this is more of a spontaneous idea than a proposal. I've done some work on external links cleanup a while ago and soon found that most links that I've removed per WP:EL were interviews or newspaper reports that, while not being valid external links, could have been valid sources for the corresponding articles. I didn't have the time (and, often enough, I didn't have the expertise, either) to use these links to improve every single of those articles (there are thousands of articles with too many external links), so I removed the external links with a note in the edit summary about their possible use as a source. I doubt anyone's going to look at the history of the article to find any sources about it, tho, so.. what if an article could have a subpage that would list potential references? So, Blu (rapper) (entirely random example) could have Talk:Blu (rapper)/References, which would contain the links that I just removed in this edit per WP:EL. A template on the talk page could notify our editors that there are references waiting to be used or sorted out, and people could add references to the subpage if they find any (and don't have the time to add them to the article). What do you guys think? --Conti|✉ 22:24, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Two existing approaches would seem to cover this (see WP:Editing policy): unless there are loads of links, just slap them on the talk page with a note. If there are loads, put them on a subpage in your userspace and link from talk. Rd232 ^talk 05:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd just drop them onto a new section on the talk page, as rd232 says. Happy‑melon 07:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I've thought about doing that, too, but talk page sections get archived (and forgotten) eventually, making them just as unlikely to be noticed as a message in an edit summary. Having a central place for unused references (which doesn't necessarily need to be a subpage) would make finding those much easier. --Conti|✉ 11:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Add them to a to-do list as a talk subpage. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:48, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

talk page sections get archived (and forgotten) eventually - Actually, that's true only of relatively busy talk pages, a (small?) minority. And even for those talk pages that do have archives, most of the time the archiving is done manually. That means that the editor doing the archiving could (and should, I think) leave alone a section with good but unused sources. So yes, please pop any good ELs you delete that could be, but aren't yet used as sources in the article, into a new section in the article's talk/discussion page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:22, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Alright, I'll do that in the future. I guess I was a bit too pessimistic here, anyhow. :) --Conti|✉ 11:58, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

 – resolution was: inappropriate external links that are good sources can be moved to talk pages, usually without worrying that they'll be archived and forgotten. –M^T

The {{as of}} template works invisibly to the reader to temporally stamp a time-sensitive claim so that it may be revisited when it needs updating. So,

{{As of|June 2007}} [[Juan Carlos]] is the [[King of Spain]]

appears as

As of June 2007^[update] Juan Carlos is the King of Spain

and the article is added to the category Category:Articles containing potentially dated statements from June 2007. {{Update after}} has a related purpose. My proposal is that terms such as "currently" and "recently" be treated in a similar fashion: that there be templates {{currently}} (currently taken) and {{recently}} which for the reader would output the plaintext terms "currently" and "recently", but for the editor would add the article containing one of the templates to Category:All articles containing potentially dated statements. So for example, the line

[[Al Franken]] is {{currently|May 2009}} waiting to be seated in the [[United States Senate]]

would read

Al Franken is currently waiting to be seated in the United States Senate

and the article the line appears in would be categorized in Category:Articles containing potentially dated statements from May 2009

Do editors think this would be a good idea? Any comments, suggestions or ideas appreciated. Skomorokh 17:32, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. I kind of like it. --Golbez (talk) 18:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

We could probably get away with deprecating {{currently}} in favor of {{todo|inner=<content>}}. --Izno (talk) 18:47, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I like it for "currently." I think the use of "recently" should be discouraged, as its almost always uselessly vague unless clarified by some sort of "as of X" statement; and even then, its not particularly clear (how recent is recently? a week? a month? 500 years?). Mr.Z-man 18:58, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't currently be discouraged just the same, and the statement be rewritten as "{{As of|May 2009}} [[Al Franken]] is waiting to be seated in the [[United States Senate]]"? A templated "currently" is certainly better than a plain one since it provides editors with easier means to keep such statements up to date, but a reader won't know how outdated such a statement is. He is better off with a date. Amalthea 21:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I considered that, but "Barack Obama is currently the president of the United States" sounds better than "As of 2009, Barack Obama is the president of the United States" since barring some catastrophic event, he'll be the president for 4-8 years, which is an eternity in Wikipedia-time. For very short-term things, we should be using specific dates, but for longer-term things, it looks awkward. Mr.Z-man 21:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

"Barack Obama is currently the president", or "is currently^‡ the president", or "is currently^{[nb 1]} the president" might all work too. We might also link the word to an actual date. Since the proposal is to modify 'currently' where it is used, I see no problem. Someone should go and create the template. –M^T 04:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that option masks the forest with trees; excessive tags (like symbols or note markers) makes the text harder to read. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Once it's a convention, it'll be very easy to skim over. The point is that there are many options. I don't even notice note markers anymore, just as I've stopped noticing blue links many years ago. Make it a link to a note. Make the color a bit off. Or don't even bother marking it. –M^T 08:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

For long-term things, I don't think its necessary. Do we really need to worry that much about articles getting 4 years out of date? Mr.Z-man 15:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

While sympathetic to the dislike of using these terms generally, I'm sensing consensus to implement this for where the terms are already used. Any objections to creating the templates and trying them out? I'd need someone technically able to move and adjust all uses of {{currently}}. Skomorokh 15:34, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that the ideal would be something like {{currently|until=2013-01-20}} for situations where there is a known ending point, along with an automatically generated, hidden category like Category:Articles needing updates on 2013-01-20. And otherwise, exactly why is the word "currently" useful? "Buffett is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway." "Franken is awaiting the outcome of legal proceedings to determine if he will be seated in the United States Senate."

If we really do want to use "currently" when there is an open-ended date and we worry that someone won't notice the change, then maybe {{currently|recheck=2009-10}}, with the automatically generated, invisible category Category:Articles possibly needing updates in October 2009. (I'd argue that rechecks shouldn't be scheduled for more than a year ahead.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

We already have {{Update after}} for claims with a known expiry date. I think the current practice of dating from when the claim was made makes more sense than dating from an arbitrary period in the future, because it does not commit to a certain period which might later need to be changed. And to re-iterate, this proposal takes no sides on when these types of terms should be used, only how they should be treated when they are. Hope this helps, Skomorokh 19:22, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi, currently if a redirect page is redirected to another page, it does not follow the second redirect path.

Reasons why this might be a problem: 1. A page which used to exist was changed into a redirect page. Any pages that redirected to that page will now be stuck on that page (well, the user just has to click the link, which will take them to the right page, but I do not find this to be the best solution). 2. Someone might want to redirect to a redirect page in case the second redirect page becomes independent. For example, I created a redirect page "page proofs" which redirects to "galley proofs." I also created another redirect page "page proof" which I wanted to redirect to "page proofs" in case "page proofs" gets its own page (because "page proofs" are not the same as "galley proofs"). I think this example provides a very unlikely scenario (that is, I do not forsee any creation of a page proofs page), but I think there are some instances where this problem could come up. PGScooter (talk) 13:09, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This was recently discussed this here: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 44#Double redirects. It's technically possible and a very brief glance at that discussion indicates there is consensus to allow double (and possibly even triple++) redirects. –xeno ^talk 13:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

xeno, thank you for the reference! It seems to have a lot of support, and yet they still haven't implemented the feature. Perhaps they are working on it.PGScooter (talk) 13:46, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

or perhaps no one filed the bugzilla yet... =) –xeno ^talk 13:59, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

bugzilla:17888 was filed quite a while ago now. Algebraist 18:36, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi just a suggestion would it be possible to have say the wiki from whatever Country you are logging in/searching from to appear on this page. To encourage users to also check out and possibly edit less often used wikis. I ask this after reading this thread thanks. BigDunc^Talk 16:40, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Technically possible, probably but not necessarily helpful (as some never go to that page and many countries have multiple languages but you can only, I think, have one preference). But I think it is an issue to be discussed at Meta, not here. Rmhermen (talk) 16:49, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply could you give me a link to were would be the place to post on Meta. BigDunc^Talk 20:56, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

The text for that page is at m:Www.wikipedia.org template so I'd start a discussion on the talk page there, and also leave a note at m:Wikimedia Forum to get more eyes on the other page. - Rjd0060 (talk) 02:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Will do thanks for the replies. BigDunc^Talk 08:10, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

 – (I think) Request to edit global wiki homepage to include origin country redirected to meta. –M^T

I'm curious in your consideration about creation of offline version (DVD/Blu-Ray) Of Wikipedia. It will be very useful in regions that still have no sufficient Internet connection.

I understand that it is very expensive and some times useless decision, but if material included will be prepared accordingly to the choosen auditory and subject, it can be widely used in educational purposes. I mean it could be DVD's with General Information about Natural Science, specific DVD's on some concrete subject like History or Mathematics or else...

Wikipedia already contain a good base of information. Needed just some basic verification and selection to compile good interactive interesting encyclopedia for wide range of users need it. Also it could be good support for online project.

All that needed it's just to create department that select, verificate and improve information for choosen offline media.

--NoRad (talk) 14:30, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. –xeno ^talk 14:32, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

 – already implemented. –M^T

In the interest of making Wikipedia more of an international representation how about having days in which there is neither article nor comment on 'Welcome to Wikipedia' that relates to the United States of America.

Every day I read the welcome page, and there is always at least one and usually several American references under one or more of the following welcome sections:
Today's featured article
In the news
Did you know...
On this day...

There are over 200 countries in the world, of which (according to Wikipedia) 53 have English as the official language. I get tired of always finding stories on America. Please at least attempt to reduce the American content on the welcome page. I have nothing against America, but look forward to the day on which there is no mention of the USA on the welcome page. B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:11, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

So to combat bias, you would omit all mention of a certain country? And that's not biased? Why not even it out? Also, welcome to Wikipedia! You must be new here or have never engaged in discussions about the main page, because there is a constant argument about whether or not there is too much emphasis on the US. Incidentally, right now, the featured article is about America and Vietnam; ITN has zero stories mentioning the United States; three out of the eight entries on DYK involve or mention America; and one out of the six On This Day entries involve America. So, what exactly is your complaint? Yes, there are over 200 countries in the world - and at least 18 are represented on the Main Page at this moment. So, clearly your problem isn't that there is too much America stuff - it's that there is any America stuff. --Golbez (talk) 23:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I am proposing that Wikipedia omit mention of a certain country for at least one day out of 365. The USA is the only country in the world that gets a mention 365 days out of 365 on Welcome to Wikipedia. That is where the bias is. B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

You're going to have to show your work on that one. And, so what? The majority of first-language English speakers, and probably editors, are American. Should we give each countrya special day? --Golbez (talk) 23:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. Better than giving one single country a mention every single day. If you want proof, look through the archives. B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:48, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

The number of English-speaking countries is not what's relevant to such content, but the % of English speakers from those countries. While English may be the official language of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, their total population is only 0.04% of the US. Even the population of the UK is only 23% of the US. Many countries also have multiple official languages. English is an official language of Kenya, but so is Swahili and only 7.19% of the population actually speaks English.^[ref] Mr.Z-man 23:42, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as English-language speaking countries go, fair point. Even taking into account the fact there are millions of Americans who have Spanish or another language other than English as first language.

But... the Welcome to Wikipedia page contains references to many countries other than English-speaking ones e.g. (for today) Iraq, Spain, The Philippines, Kenya, Mexico, Iceland, Ukraine, etc. In which case the US has 306 million out of 6,707 million people (4.56%). Of course you could argue that a higher proportion of Americans have internet access than in any other country, but this still does not address the raised issue: why should there always be one or more references to America every single day of the year on Welcome to Wikipedia. B. Fairbairn (talk) 00:09, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Because 1) there are more American editors than any other type, so it makes sense that more is written on American subjects; 2) American stories tend to get more international press than those in St. Vincent, and thus tend to be more prevalent in ITN, and 3) What's the problem, exactly? So what if America is mentioned every day? So? --Golbez (talk) 00:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I am asking for a change. Just one day (for starters). Is it impossible? Does there always have to be American references? Or is it a condition for Wikipedia - is there a contract clause, something like "Wikipedia must have one American related article on Welcome to Wikipedia every day of the year or the USA will ban Wikipedia"? B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

B. Fairbairn may be interested in WP:Systemic bias, which exists in an attempt to counter systemic bias on Wikipedia. And for what it's worth - in my opinion it's not so much that there is always something about America on the front page, it's that it is so often obscure, un-noteworthy, and "world famous in Hicksville, Alabama" type stuff that annoys me. That and the incomprehensible "all state 8th inning running noses" malarky. DuncanHill (talk) 00:48, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Nice contribution, particularly the "often obscure, un-noteworthy" point.

And often the states of the USA are referred to as though they are countries. With no reference to the USA e.g. in today's welcome, 'former owner of radio station KIHR in Hood River, Oregon, began his career...'. Ask a British, Australian, South African or Swede to name the 50 states of the USA and probably less than one in a thousand would know them all. Or care. B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Which is why Hood River, Oregon was linked in the listing. Mr.Z-man 01:29, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

You are correct. I looked and found references to places in other countries without a mention of the country name, and so withdraw the comment. Getting back to the main issue: there is always the American connection, and the trivial American story or stories. B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

So? You've yet to demonstrate how this is a problem that requires a rule to combat. --Golbez (talk) 02:26, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

As for "trivial stories," the Did you know... section highlights recently created articles. Since we already have articles on pretty much everything "major" (any new "major" thing would likely be in the news section than DYK), the blubrs are generally about trivial things regardless of what nation they relate to. I certainly don't care about the Bigeye sand tiger, but I don't have any problem with it being on the main page. Mr.Z-man 02:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

There is no problem; there is a minor issue, and that is there is always yank material on wiki welcome. Always. Every day.
Now I have nothing against Americans and the US. America is the greatest country in the world. That is my opinion, if it counts for anything.
From nothing the American pioneers built a superb free (apart from 250 years of slavery) nation where each person is the equal of the next and where every person can express their own beliefs (as long as they do not support Communism).
The US did the free world a fantastic service by voluntarily coming in (albeit late) during two world wars and making the difference between equal powers, enabling many people to continue to live free and not under tyranny.
In subsequent years it is unfortunate that the American government got carried away with the "Domino Theory" in Asia, and the American government has at times had a tendency to think it has the right to interfere with the way all other countries are run, but nobody is perfect.
America is the best, and I understand Americans like to read about themselves and their wonderful country, however, surely there is a limit. B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:49, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I would disagree that "America is the greatest country in the world" as you can't scientifically measure its "greatness". Anyway, it's getting off topic: Golbez wrote that (to paraphrase) "...there are more American editors than any other type so it makes sense to [write about their country more]" that is wrong. People come to Wikipedia to find a fairly represented encyclopaedia that doesn't write for one specific audience (bar the language, of course). It's actually a very narrow minded view to have and I'm willing to bet that Golbez is from America himself. I for one support B. Fairbairn's proposal to reduce the amount of American influence in general on Wikipedia (not just on the Main Page). This is an international encyclopaedia; nothing less, nothing more. Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 13:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

It's also a very narrow minded view to assume Golbez is from America himself when he has said nothing to the affirmative nor contrary. ;) --Izno (talk) 13:33, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your support, Pat. Unfortunately many Americans from an early age are brainwashed into believing America is the greatest country in the universe, and all other peoples are inferior. Getting a significant number of Americans to stop praising themselves is a very difficult task when Americans are trained to love their country above all else (except perhaps money). This attitude is demonstrated by the common American catchphrase "God Bless America". In other words, too bad for everybody else. B. Fairbairn (talk) 13:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Sarcasm and rhetoric does not help your case, B. Fairbairn. --Izno (talk) 13:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I say it as I see it, Iznogood (a character from an Asterix book). And I try to stick to the point without going off on a tangent. B. Fairbairn (talk) 14:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I do enjoy Asterix, though I don't recall which book it was from, as I didn't even know the name derived from an Asterix book! :O (I picked "Iznogood" up as a name when I saw a friend using it... that said, Izno is, from what I can tell, a unique derivative!). Still, the sarcasm is not the same as calling a spade a spade, and so you should drop it, as calling a spade a spade would be more skin to your original message: there is systemic bias here. Which we already knew about, and which there are many active editors working to reduce. As with the suggestions below, why do you yourself not turn to aiding instead of insisting it be changed, when we have no control over who edits what when? --Izno (talk) 15:19, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Not Asterix. Same author (Goscinny), but a different artist. Iznogoud --83.253.251.213 (talk) 20:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Ita est (Latin: yes, thus it is). You are correct. And I could swear that somewhere in one of the English translations of the Asterix books is a character named 'Iznogood'. If so, I see now why the name was chosen (the Goscinny link). Cannot remember which book though. Might have been a newer one like 'Black Gold' or 'Magic Carpet'. B. Fairbairn (talk) 02:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Since when is America the only nation that has a motto like "God Bless America?" – God Save the Queen? The US didn't invent nationalism. Mr.Z-man 16:18, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Excellent point with God Save the King/Queen. This discussion is bringing forward some interesting observations. Good on you, Z. That one has got me thinking. Maybe I too have been guilty of being indoctrinated by my country of origin. B. Fairbairn (talk) 02:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Instead of calling for a ban on US topics, why don't you join in the decision-making processes and promote non-US topics? That would be much more effective than whinging here, and much more constructive than an arbitrary ban or quota. Anomie⚔ 13:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I have not called for a ban on US topics. Far from it. I have asked for there to be at least one day per year on which there are no American related stories on Welcome to Wikipedia. Once a month would be well beyond expectation. Once a week impossible. I am calling for one US-free day, not a ban. B. Fairbairn (talk) 13:46, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

For one reason or another, more energy is devoted by Wikipedia's editors to articles about the US. They are rewarded for these efforts with a higher proportion of front-page coverage. If you see this is as a problem, the solution is to put your energy into improving the articles on the other side of the scales. Then you will be rewarded to see what you perceive as an imbalance, countered. Essentially you seem to be complaining that one area of Wikipedia is being improved faster than others? Happy‑melon 13:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Why should I have to do anything other than attempt to persuade the numerous people who already contribute material to Welcome to Wikipedia to stop focussing on all things American. I am but one person. It is better to help others try to not be so obsessed with writing about only one country, than to vainly attempt to overwelm all other contributors with material about the rest of the world. B. Fairbairn (talk) 14:07, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Because this is a volunteer project and people only work on what they want to work on. You can suggest it, sure, but anything more than that and you look like you're trying to tell people how they are allowed to CHOOSE to spend their time editing WP. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:48, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Because the way to fight bias and improve the project is to counter it with content that we're currently biased against, not fight it with more bias. Prohibiting certain content, even if its just from appearing on the main page, discourages editors. What you're saying is that you shoudn't have to do any work, and that other people should just listen to you. That's not how it works. As Melodia says, we're all volunteers, we work on what we want to work on. Mr.Z-man 16:18, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Quite right - it is absolutely wrong for someone to try to discuss their concerns, such behaviour is intolerable on Wikipedia! DuncanHill (talk) 16:30, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I notice that, as usual, hitting random article over and over produces at least half articles that have nothing to do with the USA, including the usual high proportion of non-English-speaking placenames and soccer/football players and teams.

More seriously, we shouldn't respect one person's animosity to US subjects. Mangoe (talk) 17:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

You should have to do more than influence because information on the Main Page is based on contributions. Articles that have been recently created or improved go in DYK; substantial news stories with that have pages created for them appear in In the News; Featured Content contains pages that have been deemed exceptional. If you want more information on the welcome page, you have to contribute to get it there. You can try to get supporters to help you, but an all out ban (even for a day) is not the way to go. You would have to have a day where nothing historic happened in the US, where no substantial US article was created, and where no recent news pertained to the US. This would not only make the page behave differently for a day, but it would also be censoring news if something important were to happen in the US. Rather than creating a special case, you and supporters for your cause can affect the welcome page by focusing outside US scope to create needed articles, contribute news stories, improve topics, etc. You could even plan a day to contribute more than usual to bump US topics off the page. But as others mentioned above, this needs help from volunteers that are interested in the topics. —Ost (talk) 18:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I have noticed that Wikipedia is a rather culturally biassed encyclopeadia, specifically to Northern American and selected parts of Western Europe. It is interesting that if one goes to Criticisms of Wikipedia, a criticism that is mentioned there is Wikipedia's U.S.-centric bias. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:35, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

If you look up the one cited ref there, it refers to a claim by an Aussie Poli Sci Econ prof about editing Hugo Chavez. The article in question is tugged all over the place by everyone, and looking in history I cannot see that this person ever edited the article or made any comment on its talk page-- not that I'm sure he didn't, but there's no obvious evidence that he did. In any case, it's only one article. I personally have run into cases where there were substantial differences in the US and European experience, and was accused of bias for daring to incorporate material from the American side. All around I think this isn't really as bad a problem as claimed, if all that can be found is one IMO dubious and unsupported claim.

The deeper issue is that taking the USA off the front page for a day doesn't do a thing about this. I note that as of this moment, the only items pertaining to the USA are five items in DYK, and at that I had to check three of them to be sure. In that, this is probably a tiny bit unusual, as one would tend to expect at least one item in "On This Day" to pertain to a US event. It's not unusual that the news has no US items, or that the featured article isn't about something in the US. The proposal, it seems to me, is sort of an act of penance to be performed to appease the spirits of anti-US resentment. Mangoe (talk) 20:42, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey people (or should I say 'buddies') - it appears that improvement may be happening already. There are only three references to America on today's Welcome to Wikipedia 1) The Treaty of San Francisco, 2) the mention of a very minor dispute (as far as the rest of the world is concerned) between native americans and their invaders, and 3) some completely and utterly useless trivia "that John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, lives in a warehouse he purchased for US$2000". Come on, you can do it.

Briefly skimming through some of the points above I realise now that some material I added does appear to be sarcastic. Some comments were not intended to be that way. I do very firmly believe that the US is a great country. The US government has helped more countries than any other country has. The US has provided a safe haven to more persecuted peoples (e.g. Jews) than any other country has. I think America and the American people have had a really positive influence on the rest of the world in their pursuit of democracy and liberty.

It is just that after a while people from other countries can get tired of being exposed to US attitudes and US ways and US self-righteousness. Many television shows come from the US, most movies come from the US, many tourists are from the US, and the internet is well and truly dominated by the US. And yet only 4.56% of the world's population live in the US. B. Fairbairn (talk) 01:38, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I can assure you with utmost certainty that your posts here had zero to do with the choices of today's featured article and picture, and the entries for ITN, DYK and OTD. As for being tired of it - Get over it. And enjoy the next century when things will be dominated by China instead. --Golbez (talk) 01:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The 'next century'? You mean the current century i.e. the 21st. I am looking forward to it. At least it will be a change. Gung hei faat coi (Cantonese: Congratulations and be prosperous). B. Fairbairn (talk) 02:20, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Golbez needs to assume more good faith, methinks. And I can think of 101 nicer things to write than "Get over it." Wouldn't you agree? I must congratulate B. Fairbairn on being able to hold his cool; lesser people would've jumped at the opportunity to point out Golbez' failings. Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 12:25, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Pat. Often it is best to refuse to be drawn into a pointless slanging match, particularly when it is exactly what the other individual desires. B. Fairbairn (talk) 10:57, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I am wondering whether it would really help to solve the problem of Wikipedia's cultural bias simply to have days when some other country than the United States gets prime focus on the main page or on "Welcome to Wikipedia"; if one looks at other articles, one can see that coverage is likely to be better for certain parts of the world than others (indeed, not just the United States, but my own country, the United Kingdom, is likely to get better coverage of topics relating to it than those to do with say, eastern Asia or Africa. An African philosopher-theologian such as John Mbiti currently has less information in his article than one would be likely to find on U.S. politicians, or items in the British media such as Susan Boyle or the row concerning the hoax calls by Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand last autumn. However, one side of me says - one just has to face it, a cultural bias towards selected parts of the world is likely, not just on Wikipedia but on other websites, for a simple reason. Where are people more likely to be using the world-wide web - in the United States, the United Kingdom, possibly Germany or France? Or in Africa or Asia? Perhaps this proposal just hit upon a cultural bias which one is likely to find on web resources in general. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

And, to be fair to Wikipedia and to the world-wide web in general, I do wonder whether the printed Encyclopaedia Brittanica may have shown a similar cultural bias. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:08, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. Count me in. I have never studied the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, and fortunately now do not need to as long as Wikipedia remains free to all users. B. Fairbairn (talk) 11:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Based upon past experience at DYK this "solution" will result in one of two scenarios, forced creation of an all-American day for every anti-American day or driving off contributors. Wikipedia is written by volunteers, and volunteers have a strong tendency to contribute on subjects of which they are both interested and knowledgeable. As roughly half of all Wikipedia contributors come from the United States between 40 and 60% all contributions with a geographical bias are thus U.S. related. Designating a non-U.S. day will thus create a backlog of U.S. related topics that when flushed from the queue will by default result in an all-American day. The other option is that you disqualify these contribution from appearing on the Main page and thus remove a primary incentive for contributions by people whose knowledge and interests are in U.S. related subjects. --Allen3 ^talk 12:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is not easy. Maybe there could be an option added to wikipedia's my preferences - how about American Material on Welcome Page? Yes or No. Selecting Yes would show the usual welcome page, and selecting No would ensure all future welcome pages for the user would not include American events in the Did You Know and On This Day columns. The In the News area would remain as is. When contributors add articles there could be a check box like This is a minor edit called something like American Material, which would be checked by default for those with the American Material on Welcome Page option set to Yes. B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

So I was correct - your problem is that there is any American content on the front page, and you would prefer the option to omit it completely. A question - what if another nation came to dominate in place of America? What if all of the stories, in the absence of any American articles, were mostly about Australia? Would you campaign for an option to omit those as well? --Golbez (talk) 00:00, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

But what is special about American material (other than the fact that you personally would rather there was less of it)?? Wikipedia also has a bias towards content related to obscure sportsplayers and small towns in India; should there be a preference "Footballers on Main Page"?? "African villages on Main Page"?? Why is it necessary to take the trouble to create an "american-free" main page but not one that avoids these other unduly-weighted topics? Happy‑melon 09:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If you read the start of this topic you can see mention of the fact that there is always American material on the Welcome page. That is what this is about. No other country is mentioned anywhere near as much. Let me give you an example of the effect this has on readers. I work in a section where there are dozens of people with online access, but as far as I know there are only two people who visit Wikipedia - and the excuse for not using it from most of the others is that Wikipedia is too Americanised. I assure people that it is not - that there are thousands of items that have nothing to do with the US. But of course as soon as they open the wikipedia main page there are always a number of American articles (as well as the international ones)... and it turns people away. B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

As I said though, the solution is not to fight bias with bias. All that does is discourage contributors and slow overall growth, which does a disservice to readers. Mr.Z-man 16:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

This is not so much a response to the original proposal as a comment on this discussion in general. To me, it seems that this discussion has been one of the most interesting discussions to emerge from Wikipedia: Village Pump, and I wonder whether this could be the start of a new article in Wikipedia - called, for example, "Cultural Bias in Wikipedia"? For any one who does not think this is worthy of an article in its own right, it could be merged with, for example, Criticisms of Wikipedia or History of Wikipedia. Perhaps we could even extend this and construct an article on "Cultural Bias of the World-Wide Web"? Items here will get archived before too long, whereas an article in the main part of Wikipedia would be visible for many readers well into the future. I do think it would be shame if the fruits of this interesting discussion soon disappeared from easy visibility of most readers of Wikipedia - an article on something like "Cultural Bias in Wikipedia" could use this discussion as a starting point. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay - let's do it. For a start I guess we need to remove usernames, dates, and highly intellectual comments like "Get over it" and "What's the problem". :-) B. Fairbairn (talk) 23:48, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The opinions and statements of a bunch of random Wikipedia users about Wikipedia is certainly not a reliable source about anything. Mr.Z-man 23:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Keep the facts. Remove the opinions and statements and attacks.

Fact 1: The USA gets one or more mentions 365 days out of 365 on Welcome to Wikipedia.

Fact 2: The USA has 306 million out of 6,707 million people (4.56%). This number is disproportionately low compared to the amount of USA material that appears on Welcome to Wikipedia. B. Fairbairn (talk) 00:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Should we apportion mentions on the front page based entirely on proportion of the population their countries represent? Because I suspect that the Solomon Islands, with .007% of the world's population, might be being overrepresented by being mentioned more than once every 40 years. --Golbez (talk) 00:23, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

B. Fairbairn, I think this is as far as one is going to get in this discussion. I would recommend that you take what we've learnt and go ahead and improve the encyclopaedia to the best of your ability. Golbez: I'm disappointed at your behaviour in this thread. You've been dismissive and sarcastic; never a good combination, sir. Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 00:52, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I calls em as I sees em. --Golbez (talk) 00:59, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I haven't read the entire topic (TLDR), but Main Page right now only draws attention to an American topic in a single area right now (today's FA, which is a total crapshoot as far as nationality is concerned). Given my impression of what I have read of the topic, I'd be hard pressed to not respond with a dismissive and sarcastic attitude; the idea that the Main Page is too US-centric (or that it, heaven forbid, mentions the US at all) is pretty silly. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:27, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Stripes & Stars

More information This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. ...

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
As a small aside, I was wondering why there are stripes on the US flag. Some research showed there are 13 stripes and they represent the thirteen British colonies that were part of British America and later became the United States of America. The 50 stars of course represent the 50 current states. The District of Columbia is not represented. It seems unusual to me that the stripes have remained on the flag especially seeing as each one represents a former British colony. I was under the impression that America was keen to break away from the British, as exemplified by the cry "No representation without taxation" (or whatever). Would not the 50 stars alone be more appropriate.   B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:29, 9 May 2009 (UTC) It would be a little more on the mark to say that they represent the thirteen original states. It's true that these had formerly been colonies, but it's also true that it was exactly these who broke away from the British and fought the American Revolutionary War against them. It seems reasonable for a country to honour (or honor, as they'd have it) the ones who actually created that country. —JAO • T • C 09:43, 9 May 2009 (UTC) Fair enough. I see the stripes represent the colonies that broke away rather than the colonies that the British formed. Still the flag would probably be more aesthetically pleasing without the stripes, but of course if the flag ever did change again there would be literally thousands of flags that would need to be replaced. I do not know of any research in the matter but suspect there are more American flags in the world than all the other flags put together.   B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:45, 9 May 2009 (UTC) I wouldn't be surprised either. I guess flagmakers had good times in 1959 and 1960. —JAO • T • C 10:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC) There would have been enough work around to keep them out of trouble! Getting back to the present topic: come on editors, far more people live, and far more events happen outside the USA than inside. All you need to do is broaden your horizons. B. Fairbairn  Talk  10:46, 9 May 2009 (UTC) Who are you telling to broaden their horizons? Editors in general, or the people who pick what goes on TFA, DYK, ITN, etc? --Golbez (talk) 06:06, 10 May 2009 (UTC) I am asking, not telling, editors in general to stop focussing on the good 'ol US of A. B. Fairbairn  Talk  06:18, 10 May 2009 (UTC) Please make a proposal. You are being disruptive by going off-topic. Do you propose that we impose a rule on those editors who manage the main page? We can't do that. It's not even clear what the rule could be. Do you want one day of the year to be not-usa day? This is weird and pointless. Do you want editors to carefully screen every single day for equivalent usa/otherworld coverage? This is too much work. What is your proposal? –MT 07:22, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Close

I was initially under the impression that Wikipedia is an international phenomenon. As I began using the site more I noted that the Welcome to Wikipedia page always has stories from various countries, and one or more stories local to the US. I wondered why there are always US stories on the Welcome to Wikipedia page, and why one or more of the US stories would not be of the usual standard in terms of event or person importance. It soon became apparent that Wikipedia is primarily controlled, operated and contributed to by Americans.
In the interest of making Wikipedia seem, at least as far as the front page is concerned, more international, I wondered if there was some way in which the American content on the page could be reduced, or even just for one day be removed. My proposal was looking for a way to achieve this (exclusion of exceptionally trivial US entries from the Welcome to Wikipedia page) if possible.
It has since become apparent this is not possible. Non-US users who enjoy reading Welcome to Wikipedia articles will have to continue to ignore the minor US stories on the Welcome page, and advise co-workers/friends/relatives not to be turned away by the apparent US focus and US slant.
Please do not get me wrong: the US is a fantastic country - a comparatively young country that has become, as some point out, the world's richest country, the one remaining superpower, the land of liberty and equality, the country that sets the right example for all other nations to follow. Terrific work, but after a while people from other countries can get tired of the US omnipresence. B. Fairbairn  Talk  11:52, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

So there is no proposal? Happy‑melon 19:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

This might no longer be a relevant question, since the discussion in this section has effectively ended. –M^T 19:27, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

It seems that the main page is developed mostly by residents of the US. Perhaps by joining the group that works on the main page and contributing good non-US content, you can sway things. It's unfortunate that we couldn't develop a way to reduce bias. –M^T 19:27, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

 – not possible to implement and enforce, retracted by proposer. –M^T

Please do not comment in this section so that it may be archived.

We should have a notice that is similar to the "You have new messages" banner. Something like:

-- IRP ☎ 03:00, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

This though would be the most annoying thing ever. The new messages banner annoys me now, and it's rare. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:24, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Who supports or opposes this edit to MediaWiki:Tagline? -- IRP ☎ 19:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I would oppose it. My concern is that if a casual reader is looking through Wikipedia pages and they see a blue link 'Wikipedia' at the top of every page, they would probably assume that it's a link to the home page. Taking them to the Wikipedia article about Wikipedia could be a bit confusing for them. Tra (Talk) 20:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Tra. That message is a self-reference; 'contentifying' it by linking to an article is just confusing. If people don't know what Wikipedia is by the time they get to an article, we really are in trouble :D Happy‑melon 20:23, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with HM and Tra as well. Its unnecessary. Mr.Z-man 20:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Agree with everyone. Oppose change. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 20:38, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed as well; we don't need the link everywhere. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:40, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Same feeling here. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:04, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

 – consensus was rejection. –M^T

I would like to suggest a very useful feature to wikipedia, the search bar front and center (top) so people can find what they need quickly, which is the sole purpose of wikipedia. The articles can afford to move down a little bit for a more prominent search bar. Being a web developer, its important to create ui for the user that's the ultimate goal. Its kind of annoying to look for the tiny left column search bar and type your keyword that way. I hope you can fix this problem to better the best web resource ever created. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.168.77 (talk) 02:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you'll find much support for moving the search bar in the global interface, but there may be a skin or javascript that can do this for you. –xeno ^talk 13:33, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that the 'you can use skins or js' response is one of the reasons the wp interface is so painful for editors, and especially new people to use. That said, if she or he is talking about putting a big textbox above article titles, then this is an ignorant or bad idea. I do agree that it should be moved above navigation, or up to the top right, though. –M^T 05:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree, the purpose of Wikipedia is not to find what you're looking for, its to read about what you're looking for. We shouldn't give the search bar more prominence than the article text. Mr.Z-man 13:52, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

 – consensus: a search bar taking space at the top of each article would not help people use wikipedia. –M^T