Can you make it so that the sign wave four tildes are appended to any posting to a talk page as part of clicking the "Save page" button? I know there is a Sine bot that tries to do this after the fact, but my suggestion is to add it at the moment "Save page" is clicked. And yes, this signature was added manually: Woz2 (talk) 15:53, 13 July 2012 (UTC) :-)

I'm not sure that'd be the best idea because it's not a hard and fast rule that edits to a talk page have to end in a signature. Plus if you are listing something, oyu dont want a signature after each one. Or maybe you do... or... I can just see many problems with it.

I propose a variant of your proposal.. it is to move the signature button from being at the very top of the editing bar to being right next to the "save page" button.. I think this would make our lives that little bit easier.--Coin945 (talk) 15:57, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

This proposal would make a lot of sense if the only type of edit performed on a talk page was insertion of new comments. This is not the case however as talk page archiving, removal of grossly inappropriate material, untangling edit conflicts, and users correcting/updating their own comments are all commonly performed edits. While I sympathize with the desire to force signatures at the end of edits where they should be, this should not be at the cost of signatures being forced onto edits where the signature does not belong. --Allen3 ^talk 16:06, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, putting the Sign button to the left of the Save Page button would help (to the left because I think in a left to right sequence). Or maybe have two buttons "Sign & save page" and "Save page" side-by-side Woz2 (talk) 16:09, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure that automatic adding of things, such as signatures, is always helpful. Some of the warning templates, like ((nn-warn)), automatically add a ((welcome)) if they're added to a blank page. Others don't automatically welcome. It means an extra preview for me, to make sure I don't have no welcome or two welcomes if I guess wrong about which templates auto-welcome.

As noted above, trying to automatically add a signature would be a bigger can of worms. There are too many times where an edit to a talk page is not adding text to the bottom of the page, so we'd wind up with stray signatures that the editor might not even realize got tacked on. That said, adding a new button and moving the existing one might be good ideas. —C.Fred (talk) 16:11, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not convinced this cannot be easily resolved. I agree for example, that correctly a typo should not include a signature. Easily solved, correcting a typo should be a minor edit, and generally speaking, a minor edit doesn't need a signature. Are there any exceptions? Signbot doesn't add signatures to minor edits, or pure removal of material, so the rules exist.

And if someone forgets to mark an edit as minor? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 18:21, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't think signing should be tied to saving an edit. As noted above, there are situations where an edit to a talk page shouldn't be signed at all. Perhaps someone can make a script that any user could install at his/her own discretion, but making it the default behavior would in my opinion cause more problems than it would solve. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 16:32, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

{od}Signing should be automatic. Almost every discussion forum on the face of the earth automatically signs for you, so new editors are surprised to hear that it is manual. It doesn't need to be. Yes, there are exceptions, which fall into two classes: • People who don’t want to sign – this one astounds me, but it appears that some people don't want to sign. If the community accepts that, I can be handled by a user preference • Places where signatures are not desired – certain pages, obviously article pages, but also RfA, and some other places like some Arbcom pages shouldn't be signed. they can be defined and exempted. This doesn't sound hard. It is astounding that we ask new editors, who have enough to memorize without this, to learn a rule that could be handled better by a computer, and serves no useful function.

The real problem here is that we don't have a discussion system. Talkpages are nothing but wiki pages. And hence everything like signatures and replies have to be done completely manually. We don't even have a indent syntax, much less a reply syntax. These :'s we use are actually creating a mess of definition description elements leading to an absolutely screwed up markup with meaning that is in no way related to what we're using it for. What we need is more support behind the LiquidThreads Project so that it can be developed to a point where Wikipedia will accept it's use as a discussion system. Dantman (talk) 21:18, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we should make it a user preference whether to autosign or not, and that all newbies should be defaulted to autosign. It is ridiculous that the most common feature of welcome pages has to be a sentence explaining about the need to type 4 tildas. But I'd add that we also need a sign/unsign box in the edit screen especially so that editors who have autosign on can tweak their comments without leaving another signature. We need to make this place more newbie friendly and this would be as easy and as big a win as shifting the default skin back to monobook. I'm not too keen about resurrecting liquid threads though, we had it on the Strategy wiki and it was a complete nightmare. The final straw for me was when I returned there from a few weeks of wikibreak and there were so many "new postings in threads I'd participated in" that my system kept crashing. ϢereSpielChequers 10:47, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Not to re-open the pointless discussion, but this was pointy-ness, not a mistimed April Fool's joke. See Meta for the context. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

In light of recent media coverage (this in particular) I invite contributors to discuss Wikipedia's bureaucracy and governance reform. I have started a workshop already that is located in my user space and invite anyone to edit and contribute. I think that it is key that Wikipedians recognize the fact that Wikipedia has become a bureacracy, that Wikipedia has a governance process, and realize that only a comprehensive reform will really resolve many of the problems now facing the project.   Thorncrag  14:52, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I certainly agree with your motives. Having made a proposal to establish a Community Council of Wikipedia, only to have it shot down as "bureaucracy" like any serious attempt to reform the Wikipedia adhocracy, I must say that you are a very brave individual who is willing to risk his (her) reputation on Wikipedia to save the project. Wer900 • ^{talk • coordinationconsensus defined} 00:42, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello,

Few days ago I made a proposal about the Ratiopol project, for an affiliation with the Wikimedia Fundation. If you are interested in politics, you can go here and add your signature at the bottom. Feel free to contact me. Regards, Bretwa (talk) 18:46, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm seeing major problems with this. One of the biggest problems with politics is that most members of opposing sides actually do try act rationally according to the information they deem reliable, in accordance with the economic and social systems they believe most accurately represent reality. And yet, no one seems to agree on a single thing. Furthermore, "reason" actually does not factor into editor behavior here, only summarizing what all sources broadly considered reliable have to say. I do not see Wikipedia benefiting from affiliating with Ratiopol. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:56, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Of course rationality is not the main rule with politics by now. But with Ratiopol, it is explicitly the purpose, trying to be as rational as possible. So the result can't be worse than more common ways to do politics. Bretwa (talk) 19:50, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Many of us do know that the quality of sysops on Wikimedia Commons is not so high as here, in English Wikipedia. Thousands of VfDs either are not closed by a half-year, or are closed hastily, without considering complains in an appropriate way. The Commons' community become accustomed to rely on a few sysops, maybe even on one sysop, to make the bulk of deletions. We all know that it is not the only possible way. A distributed system, where thousands of users have necessary privileges, runs much better.

So, I propose to bring enWP's approach to Commons. Let us arrange a flashmob of dozen, or possibly more, RfAs on Commons. Each candidate should promise to close several VfDs from the backlog, some number per a unit of time, such as 10 per week, or even less, depending on individual willingness. It is not sufficient for one or three such sysops may change the situation significantly, but it may be changed with tens of sysops. Thank you for your attention. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:46, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Its not really appropriate for us to be planning to takeover commons processes. Organizing editors to run at commons RFA here seems problematic, especially if a bunch of people suddenly went over there and started supporting en. candidates. Monty₈₄₅ 13:52, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Commons belongs to the Wikimedia Foundation, just like wikipedias. Commons should serve Wikimedia projects, including English Wikipedia, not to be a self-sufficient web site. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:00, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

You're right, but it is primarily a problem at Commons an the English Wikipedia should not be the only Wikipedia meddling in the affairs over there. If you'd like to drive such a proposal ahead you should do so at all Wikimedia project, including all Wikipedias in all available languages. De728631 (talk) 14:50, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Why necessarily "all"? BTW several users primarily active in Russian Wikipedia may join too. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:56, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Didn't you just argue that "Commons belongs to the Wikimedia Foundation"? By limiting your effort (which I won't support) to a few select projects you would even ignore the fact that Commons serves the broad community. Therefore all WMF projects should have a say in this matter. De728631 (talk) 18:46, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I just trust en.wp the most. I will not obstruct a participation from other wikipedias. Of course, there are tidy, responsive users too. And en.wp, of course, has its own wreckers and bigots – but so few, happily. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:11, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

"Taking over other projects" is so not one of the five pillars. If you have a problem with Fastily's closes, bring it up on Commons. Forum shopping and proposed canvassing will get you nowhere.
Interestingly, Fastily is an en.wikipedia admin, even if he has resigned the tools for the time being; who's to say your proposal wouldn't just attract more like him? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 16:28, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I should clarify that I completely agree with what Rd232 said below. My objection is to "taking over" Commons not to "encouraging more people to contribute constructively" at Commons. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:25, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Hey, ownership can apply to projects as much as it can to articles. Nobody has control of commons, and if you want to come here and attract editors to propose reforms, there is nothing wrong with that.

That being said, Commons is a dung heap. Good luck, and it was nice knowing you ;) - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:45, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

What means "a dung heap"? I did not see major problems on Commons, except that it has too few experienced and responsive sysops really active. I know several guys which have a sysop flag there, but they are not active enough. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:56, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

As a Commons admin, allow me to point out that, as with AFDs here, most of the work on Commons can be done by non-admins, with admins only needed to close the deletion debate and push the button. If people from English Wikipedia or any other project want to go help out with the research necessary to close particular deletion debates, great. There's also a template that may be helpful, commons:template:DR proposed close. And anyone who gets stuck in with deletion debates and develops a track record over a few months (without pissing people off too much...) will have a decent chance at RFA. Rd232 ^talk 13:15, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I do not propose to create yet one or two Commons' sysops "stuck in with deletion debates over months" – this would just slightly increase the number of delete button pushers, without bringing a responsibility to this cause. I ask the people of English Wikipedia to increase the participation in Commons' affairs. But, certainly, English Wikipedians have the right to ignore Commons and its problems. Here is not Spanish nor Portuguese WP, and a file may be uploaded locally in the worst case. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:11, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Given the relatively few highly active Commons admins, if you had say 10 en.wp users who committed to go and participate and try and become competent enough and active enough on Commons to have a chance at RFA there, that would make a difference in itself. And if then maybe half of them would pass RFA within 6 months, that would make even more of a difference, since not having enough active admins leads to backlogs leads to hasty decisions by a few highly active admins. The danger perhaps is that such new users, by learning the ropes of what Commons deals with every day, would "go native" (or else get tired of it and give up)... Most people don't appreciate just what a luxury it is to be able say "sod it, we can't sort this legal issue out, let's just use it as Fair Use". On Commons, you have to sort it out one way or the other, or end up deleting under the precautionary principle. That's part of the reason deletion debates can stay open for months on end, because everyone's hoping that someone will come up some research that settles it one way or the other (preferably with a Keep result). A good example complexity-wise is commons:Commons:Deletion requests/De Kafka Hungerkünstler (1924): it took Peter Hirtle himself (of commons:Commons:Hirtle Chart fame) a lot of words to explain "it's very probably PD". Rd232 ^talk 14:42, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

A small clapping of the hands for Rd232. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:58, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Well said. Also, OP, if you organize your "flashmob", please let me know so that I can go and oppose those RFA nominations on general principle. Resolute 15:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Were sysops of Commons really such precautionary as Rd232 describes, the procedure of file deletion in cases of copyright violation would be markedly different than the current one. We see that doubtful images stay for months perfectly readable by the all Internet. Such VfDs would have to be resolved in two stages (first, removal of the image proper, and much later, the final closure), if they were preoccupied with the possibility of copyright infringement. What one can really see on Commons is such sysops as Fastily which are rewarded for their job by the opportunity to apply and enforce the own arbitrary discretion, to reject objections and not to be demoted. Sysops of Commons―Rd232 says―are so-and-such experienced and can resolve problems so-and-such complicated. Maybe, it is true. But why simpler problems, with trivial copyright infringements (or without any) are resolved so poorly, with half-year-long backlogs and almost random mass-closures? I am sure: because experienced, responsive users from wikipedias pay little attention to Commons' affairs. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 21:01, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, as I said, the basic problem is not enough admins and not enough non-admin input to make admin final decisions easy. This leads to lengthy backlogs, and occasional attempts to clear them which may involve admins making decisions too quickly and making too many mistakes. It's not really mysterious, and Fastily isn't the first to end up in that position. You imply that one solution would be for images subject to deletion nomination or discussion to be immediately excluded from transclusion on other projects (replaced with a suitable message image, I suppose)... and that would certainly get people more involved! But I can't see that happening. I suppose it might just be acceptable if the transclusion exclusion had an appropriate time delay (but then you'd get even more hasty decisions as the time runs out). The situation isn't ideal, and again, the only solutions I can see are (i) getting more people involved and (ii) making it harder to upload things without understanding the basic concept of a copyvio, which far too many users simply don't grasp at all until their images are deleted. Rd232 ^talk 14:59, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Since Commons has had more successful RFAs than en.wp this year, I don't think that the supply of admins is really their problem. It might be helpful to tickle the folks who haven't made their 10 admin actions during the last six months there, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:42, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

As a Commons admin I would welcome more participation from others at Commons, and more running for admin, and would not malign such participants as a flash mob or invaders. We really need more people to address backlogs. I'll endeavor to close more deletion requests myself as I've been busy with other things lately. I will note though that the DRs that remain open the longest tend to also be those requiring a lot of reading and careful analysis, and are not particularly amenable to people with no background in copyright law stepping in and resolving them. Dcoetzee 07:27, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes when using the edit summary box you find that it is already full of text giving your name and other details of the edit. Would it be possible to have an empty box all the time, or perhaps an instruction that you overwrite with your edit summary? It took me a while when I started here to work out that you have to move the cursor to the end of this text and I think that we are losing out on edit summaries because some people either take time to work it out, never do, or simply don't bother. Britmax (talk) 08:50, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi there, I'm writing you on behalf of the WikiAfrica team. We are currently in possession of the updated datas about the administrative divisions of Botswana (up to villages) and we'd like to upload them on en.wp too.

Many data are about divisions or villages that have no article on this version, so what we need is a bot owner that can help us in programming a script and create these articles, if needed.

Since I'm not that practical of projects other than it.wp, I also would like to know if there are any criteria about this kind of articles, i.e. if a certain population is needed in order to create it, etc.

If you are interested in it or you need any clarification, please feel free to contact me in English on my Italian talk page or in this discussion. Thanks. --Sannita - not just another it.wiki sysop 01:01, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Populated places are pretty much always considered notable, as long as you provide proof of their existence, and the same is true of governmental entities, even on small levels. I'd advise you to create a few manually so that we can see what you're talking about, but I doubt that there will be any issues with the idea itself. Nyttend backup (talk) 13:31, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I've thought of an idea that might break our current logjam with paid editing. I'd love your sincere feedback and opinion.

• WP:COI certification

Feel free to circulate this to anyone you think should know about it, but please recognize that it hasn't agreed upon by either PR organizations or WikiProjects or the wider community. It's also just a draft, so any/many changes can still be made. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:50, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Why worry about them? Edit the edit not the editor, by which I mean they either keep to the rules or not, whether they are paid or otherwise. Britmax (talk) 10:57, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Community De-adminship

I've started a proof of concept RfC on community de-adminship. Please do join in. Wikipedia:Requests for Comment/Community de-adminship proof of concept Worm^TT(talk) 18:07, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for removal of adminship

• Wikipedia:Requests for removal of adminship

Comments welcome. - jc37 23:54, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Request for Admin Sanctions

I forgot to put a bump here when Coren and I went live with this. This seems to be a popular topic, I see. Proposal based on WP:WER discussions, as well as Worm's RfC above. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 01:28, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

During the initial-release "Version history tables," a discussion took place which is now copied under an Archive Hat.

In this "upgraded" discussion I've titled "Version history tables" Plus, let's continue that discussion. Judging by Golbez and Penyulap, I'm not the only one who thinks making version history tables (like those of DreamWeaver and Firefox, although aesthetically I like the DreamWeaver Article's color code better, actually the Firefox Article has reformatted its table to be more like the DreamWeaver one, so there you have it) universal to all software Articles. To avoid misunderstanding, I must emphasize that color-coded tables would not be the only way of displaying version history information. Instead, the table would be a summary of information already in the text of the Article. That being said, let's discuss it further (and hopefully do it eventually). The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 05:56, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Altough this is archived, I made a proposal to use an universal standard for Version history tables. As this is exactly the same issue as here, please vote or comment on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Version#rfc_F9E6F14 Jesus Presley (talk) 01:18, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi! There is currently a Community Fellowship proposal to create The Wikipedia Adventure, a learning tutorial/game for new editors.

• Proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Project_Ideas/The_Wikipedia_Adventure

The second proposal is for The Wikipedia Library, a single point of access for approved Wikipedia editors to gain free entry to all participating resource providers such as WP:HighBeam, WP:Credo, or WP:JSTOR.

• Proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Project_Ideas/The_Wikipedia_Library

Feedback on the proposals would be very much appreciated. I should note that the feedback is for the proposal, not the proposer, and even if either Fellowship goes forward it might be undertaken by presently not-mentioned editors. Thanks again for your consideration. Cheers! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 16:41, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

For the first, it could prove challenging to create a game of this type that is appealing to a sufficiently large audience, particularly for adult participants. You may need to resort to an adversarial type of game (zero-sum game), rather than a solitaire simulation. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:00, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

This is probably better called a dynamic interactive tutorial than a pure game. It's like a guided journey with a variety of simulated real-life-like elements. Given that the target demographics the game is seeking are K-12 students, women, global south editors, technically naive editors, and older folks, (basically all the people who don't currently edit) adversarial is probably not the direction we're going to head. There are some realistic elements to the game which require dealing with adversity, for example vandalism, uncivil editors, and a policy dispute. If you're interested you can browse through the game script linked on the WP:TWA main page. Thanks for your feedback! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:17, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay. Well it might work, I don't know. Maybe if you throw in some puzzle games, &c. Anyway, good luck with your project. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:04, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi there! I'm a student who's interested in helping out the Gene Wiki project here on Wikipedia.

I'd like to propose an idea for a 'Social Bot' that automatically motivates users to contribute to the Gene Wiki. (The concept could potentially be applied to the whole of Wikipedia, but for now I'm planning to run it solely within the Gene Wiki portal.)

The aim is to make new/inactive editors feel that they are welcome, and that their contributions are important and appreciated by the Wikipedia community. The Bot would achieve this by automatically encouraging the more experienced users of Wikipedia to check out their edits and get in touch.

That is, for every first edit made by a new or inactive user, the Bot would first identify more experienced Wikipedians who are likely to be interested in that particular edit.

The Bot would then post an automated message to these Wikipedian's talk pages. The message would encourage personal interaction with the newcomer, firstly by alerting the Wikipedian to the edit, secondly by providing a quick and easy way to welcome the user (i.e. a one-click route to posting to their talk page), and finally, by giving general guidance on how to treat newcomers, info on the importance of encouraging new editors, e.t.c.

The result is that the newcomer receives a real welcome, as opposed to an impersonal, automated message from, say, a generic 'Welcomer Bot'. It also provides a contact who has relevant interests and/or expertise, with whom the newcomer can properly relate to.

If successful, the Bot would ultimately benefit the Gene Wiki by increasing the amount and diversity of contributions it receives, as well as generally increasing the level of social interaction within the Wikipedia community as a whole.

There are, of course, many issues surrounding the automatic posting to user's talk pages, and it will be of the utmost importance to ensure the Bot targets the right people, and uses an appropriate message.

If necessary I can go into more detail regarding implementation, but that is the general idea. Apologies if I've done anything incorrectly - I'm relatively new here - but thanks for considering this Social Bot idea, and I look forward to hearing what the community thinks. KimRT (talk) 05:37, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

We have bot based welcome messages on some of our sister projects but sadly we've never managed to get consensus for that here. As for the idea of introducing newbies to relevant old hands, there is some potential, but you'd have to make it opt in at least for the old hands, and I can see that recruiting experienced editors might be difficult. As an alternative I'd suggest working up a personalised welcome that invited people to the most relevant WikiProject based on their first edits. I and I suspect many others who use welcome templates would very happily use ones that did that - provided we didn't have to do the fiddly bit of tracking the most relevant WikiProject. ϢereSpielChequers 17:51, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your reply and welcome. I'd like to make clear that the Bot would not be posting any automated welcome messages, it is not a 'Welcomer Bot' like those that have been disapproved of in the past. It simply notifies the more experienced user of an edit made by a less experienced editor, so that they are more likely to pay attention to the edit / add to the edit / send the newcomer a message if they choose to. They may choose to say welcome or simply talk about the newcomer's contribution / their common area of interest.

The only automated message the Bot would send is the small 'notification' of an edit that is likely to be of interest to the experienced editor. E.g. an edit to a page that they have previously (and significantly) edited. In this way, the Bot is not so much introducing the newcomers to relevant people / WikiProjects (which I think, wouldn't do much to make them feel genuinely welcomed or valued), but rather, it is encouraging the present community to make contact with newcomers / inactive editors, in particular. I hope you agree that this should encourage genuine social interaction rather than more impersonal Bot-based welcomes.

Of course, I understand that receiving these automated notifications won't be popular with everyone. I'd be grateful to hear why you say we would have to rely only on volunteers who have opted-in? I was hoping that if the Bot gained general consensus within the GeneWiki community as well as official approval, we could simply run the Bot with just an opt-out method for those who don't wish to be contacted. Although I admit I don't know whether it is prohibited to send users automated messages without their permission? I appreciate that in the early trial days at least, we would rely on volunteers, but I think once we have perfected a non-obtrusive notification message, it's unlikely to be a problem for users but rather a helpful alert to an edit and an editor who they may well take an interest in. There is definitely no obligation to get in touch with the newcomer or even do anything, if one receives a notification from the Bot. I worry that, like you say, the alternative of recruiting experienced editors beforehand will prove difficult, particularly as it will be hard to demonstrate the full potential of the Bot before we have sufficient participation. Although, of course I am willing to consider this approach if necessary. For example, one approach could be that, in the very first Bot alert that's sent to an experienced user, we ask whether they would like to opt-in, before we send any further messages. This way at least they would get a chance to appreciate what the Bot does.

Sorry for the long message again - I hope I've clarified some crucial points. I would be really grateful for any more thoughts or feedback on getting this idea approved! KimRT (talk) 14:17, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Could be a good thing, depending on implementation. Linking new editors with specialist interests with established ones with similar interests is a worthwhile objective. Rd232 ^talk 10:39, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your encouragement. Since the Bot is already limited to the smaller, specialised community of Gene Wiki, I'm hoping the identification of editors with similar specialist interests will be more feasible. I'd welcome your advice on how to proceed in gaining approval - would it be appropriate to first see if I can gain consensus within Gene Wiki and then if successful, make a request for official Bot approval? I'm afraid I'm not completely familiar with the routine procedure. Thanks again, KimRT (talk) 14:31, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

If you operate this on an opt in basis then it only involves consenting Wikipedians and there would have to be a very good reason to stop it. If you want to operate this on an opt out basis then you don't have consent from people and you have a much steeper test to make this live. That test would include everything from performance effects on low bandwidth users to the general concerns about system bloat. What might achieve your objective would be an update to the watchlist system, currently watchlists are very simple and cease to be fully usable once you have more than a few thousand articles watchlisted. If people could set an option to "watchlist pages tagged to Wikiproject X", and also flag edits by newbies differently to edits by others then I think it might give you much of what you want. ϢereSpielChequers 07:57, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

It may happen that:

• Many pages link to a particular phrase, and it appears to make sense that they should do so, but
• That phrase doesn't warrant its own article, and what appears on its page, if it exists, is only a dictionary definition---thus inappropriate as a Wikipedia article; and
• It's not something likely to appear in a dictionary because it's not just one word, but rather a term of art used in a particular field.

It seems to me it would be appropriate in some such cases to create a sort of multiple-cross-reference page. It would state a definition and then list related topics that would shed light, although their titles are not synonymous with that of the multiple-cross-reference page. A footnote would identify the page as a "multiple-cross-reference page", just as footnotes now identify "disambiguation pages". But it would be very different from a disambiguation page in that nomrally numerous articles would link to it. Like disambiguation pages, this type of page would have a style manual, which would be linked from appropriate other style manuals. It would differ from redirect pages not only in that it would not redirect, but also in its "multiple" nature. Maybe in cases where there would be only a single topic in the list, one would just use a redirect. So maybe this would live in a region somewhere between redirects and disambiguation pages, having some features in common with both but essentially and importantly differing from both.

This idea occurred to me because of a single instance, now being discussed here. I don't know any other good examples right now, but I'd be surprised if there aren't lots of them.

I'm not completely comfortable with the term "multiple-cross-reference page"; are there other appropriate terms?

Opinions? Michael Hardy (talk) 13:33, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

In mathematics, I do see some potential for this idea. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:41, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

How about a glossary type article. A list of terms and their definitions. That can be linked to without difficulty. See also WP:MOSGLOSS. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:02, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, there are many examples of such under Category:Glossaries and Category:Glossaries of mathematics. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:20, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Mathematics, and a number of other scientific and engineering topics as well. I don't know about glossary, but the concept that a bit of jargon not otherwise deserving of an article of its own gets a stubby-list-thing that cross-references to the relevant material would be a very useful tool to readers. — Coren ^(talk) 14:46, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

The problem here (IMHO) is WP:NOTDICT. The prohibition on creating "dictionary entries" is a very fuzzy guideline - and in some senses, an outmoded one. According to the guideline, we don't want an article that provides a dictionary definition of a word like (for example) "jump". In practice, our jump article is actually a disambiguation page that reads very much like a dictionary entry - with sections that describe the many meanings of the word by way of links to articles that expand upon those meanings. It's inevitable that many dab pages end up reading like dictionary definitions because (in a sense) the dab page has to explain the various meanings of the word in order that you can find the article that you're looking for. The jump page would actually be quite a lot clearer if it incorporated some of the Wiktionary material defining the word.

Other (non-dab) articles typically have the dictionary definition of the word right there in the first sentence of the lede: Physics starts off "Physics (from Ancient Greek: φύσις physis "nature") is a natural science that involves the study of matter[1] and its motion through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force.". That's a straightforward dictionary definition, complete with etymology. We can get away with doing that despite WP:NOTDICT because the entire article isn't about the word and it's definition - it's about what physics is all about as a science.

So, I believe that if there is more to say about a word or phrase than just it's definition - then it's well established that's perfectly acceptable (eg Physics) to have an article that starts off by providing a dictionary entry for it. Even if all you have to say about the subject of the article is a definition of the word and a set of "See Also" links - then that's OK too because that's essentially what a disambiguation page does (eg Jump). I don't think it's much of a relaxation of the rules to make a page entitled "Real-valued function" that contains nothing but a definition of the phrase and a bunch of "See Also" links. It's like a disambiguation page - except that the articles linked to don't have "Real-valued function" in their titles. But we break that rule all the time with dabs...as in the jump dab: "JumpDrive, a common name for a USB flash drive".

There is a hole here. When there is a subject for which an article can't be written because of WP:NOTDICT - yet which still is something that relates to a bunch of other article - then this style of page is valuable. What does a MATH-101 student do when asked to write an essay about "Real valued functions" if we don't have an article of that name? Going to Wiktionary doesn't help because it doesn't have copious links to the 23 other places in the encyclopedia that refer to it.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:33, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

example: Real-valued function

In mathematics, a real-valued function is a function whose values are real numbers. See:

• Function (mathematics)
• Real number
• Real analysis

This is a multiple-cross-reference page.

end of example

Note:

• This is not a glossary: it does not give definitions of the bulleted items, but rather it links to articles. Only the initial line is a definition, and that happens in many sorts of Wikipedia articles.
• It's not a disambiguation page since:
  • It's not a list of different things that the same term refers to; and
  • Many pages may link to it.

Michael Hardy (talk) 16:01, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this kind of article; and indeed I see nothing to prevent them now; NOTDICT needs an unhealthy stretch of interpretation to reach it, at worse. In fact, if the current wording of policies or guidelines seem to prevent this sort of article, then they need to be fixed so that they do not. — Coren ^(talk) 16:21, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Would I be correct in assuming that there are several similar type of subjects that might usefully be put into the same article, or are they all so different that they should not be grouped together? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:47, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

They would all be subjects related to, and maybe shedding light on, a topic that might not be worth an article by itself. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:28, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Would they be sufficiently related that a title for the group would be useful? I am thinking of putting them together on a list of similar concepts, if this is logically appropriate, where they could be linked to and from. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:21, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

They would be related to the topic that is the title of the page, as in the example above. Unfortunately I don't have any other examples at hand. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:57, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

I think this is a valuable concept - but I'd like to see changes to WP:NOTDICT to make it explicitly allowed in order that we are clear about where the boundaries lie and not have endless debates all over the wiki about whether or not it's OK. The difficulty that needs to be clarified is how to talk about something that is little more than a dictionary definition with a bunch of "See also" links. Arguing that Wiktionary (or any other dictionary) already has this covered doesn't fly because they don't have links into the substantive articles in Wikipedia that are so valuable to anyone wanting to explore the use of some technical term in more detail. Arguing that this is merely a super-stubby article would be OK if only people wouldn't keep AfD'ing them on grounds of WP:NOTDICT. Hence, making this clear in WP:NOTDICT would be "A Good Thing". Something like:

"An article whose main text is little more than a dictionary definition for a word or phrase of a technical nature is an acceptable encyclopedia article if it contains three or more "See also" links to relevant articles relating to the use of this word or phrase."

SteveBaker (talk) 18:13, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't this fall under the notion of a disambiguation page? In other words, we don't have an article for topic X but we do have the disamb for X, that say "X is used in the following areas..." We don't need to change NOTDICT, just make it clear pages like these are not meant as mainspace articles but navigation/disambigs which are generally treated differently from regular articles and not subject to normal content policies. --MASEM (t) 18:31, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

No! (1) Other pages do not link to disambiguation pages; whereas many other pages would link to a multiple-cross-reference page. (2) Such a page does not link to various concepts identified by the article's title. Rather it links to articles on topics related to the (just one!) concept identified in the page's title. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:04, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

....or, let me put it this way: It resembles a redirect more than a disambiguation page. It is for use in situations where it's not clear what a page should redirect to and there are multiple possible targets, none of which is sufficient by itself, or all of which deserve inclusion. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:40, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. There are disamb pages for title "X" where a valid target listed on the redirect page is an article that is completely named different and not fully about "X", though "X" is a key part of that article. For example, several fictional characters, not notable for their own article, may share a name with people and characters that do have an article; assuming that the character is a likely search team, it usually is included on the disambiguation page. I see no reason why we can't take the same approach here, even when we have a disambig page for "X" and no actual article that is titled "X"; it's *still* disambiguation for navigation. --MASEM (t) 21:29, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

I am well aware of that, but my point stands. A disambiguation page titled "Joker" might link to Batman because there's a character in Batman called "The Joker". But these are intended to be pages that get linked to in numerous articles; disambiguation pages are not (except in disambiguating hatnotes or in redirects, or occasionally in other disambiguation pages). They are not intended to disambiguate the title, but to link to related articles. They are somewhat like redirects except that there's more than one item listed, and the user can choose among them. In cases where there's only one, they should just redirect. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:21, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Then the other alternative, particularly when such terms are common in a field, is to make a glossary page; these are generally accepted over individual DICTDEF pages. The term itself, if unique, can be a redirect to the appropriate section on the glossary. --MASEM (t) 22:41, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Specifiaclly how would all your comments apply to the page titled real-valued function? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:02, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Why not just treat that article as a one-line stub instead of a "multiple-cross-reference page"? I think that by creating these types of pages, we discourage people from actually creating an proper article on the subject at a later stage. When was the last time a disambiguation page was turned into an article? (even thoguh these pages' function is more like a redirect, they look more like disambiguation pages). If the topic is notable, then why not just charge ahead, add a bit of cited text, stick the stub template onto it, and add some "see also" options at the end?--Coin945 (talk) 03:20, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

new page on this topic

See Wikipedia:Multiple-cross-reference page.

here's the "manual" (currently labeled an "essay"):

Here's what it currently says:

end of m-c-r page manual

I dont know why we don't do this, considering we do for ip users... The only criticism I can think of regarding this is that it will ruin some editors' perfectly designed signatures involving careful interplay between the two links. My advice: be creative, and create sonething new!! :)

What do we think about this?? --Coin945 (talk) 17:21, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

With Navigation popups turned on, it's very easy to get hold of a user's contributions just by pointing at a link to the user or user talk page. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:36, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I've got to agree with John of Reading. Popups takes care of this perfectly! Plus it allows you to check the userrights of an editor. Ryan Vesey 17:40, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the great advice :D. For me personally, however, the widgit seems to drift to far into the "making wikipedia look less slick and readable to becoming a technical editing site" territory... Im sure this info will greatly assist other editors though.. :) Who knows, may even change my mind!--Coin945 (talk) 23:16, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

There really isn't any reason editors would need to change their signatures if we just defaulted it to including a contributions link. Afaik, the user page link is totally optional as long as the usertalk link is in it. Monty₈₄₅ 01:12, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

If we default to have all content on one page, people would not need to click any page. I for one don't mind a few clicks more to benefit from a more readable interface, and use popups if I really need quick access. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:19, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

But without the contrib. button, many people would simply not know how to access the page, or know that it exists. This would make it sooooooo much easier. Like, for example, your contrib button in your signature makes it soo easy to access the page. And without it, I'd have to ask myself: hmmm... so how do you do it exactly? What exact text do i type into the wikipedia search bar to find it? Why? What's the point? --Coin945 (talk) 04:19, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

If you go to someone's user page or talk page, a user contributions link appears in the toolbox. Ryan Vesey 04:25, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Many editors don't have a toolbox. I don't have a toolbox. And the point I'm making here is: okay, fine, sure, they may be some other minimally more complicated ways to do it, but if we can make life easier, then why not just do it? Why are people so ready to find any way they can to devalue a new idea, rather than comtemplating its implematation?--Coin945 (talk) 04:35, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

You do have a toolbox. It's the box on the left side of your user page, marked 'Toolbox'. Rivertorch (talk) 05:37, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this is people trying to find any way to devalue a new idea, they are merely pointing out that the tools already exist for anyone to use. What it also does is illustrate how non-intuitive a large amount of the wikimedia user interface is. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:22, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I totally agree with that last point. Never would I ever have noticed those links in the toolbox at all. Thanks for clarifying what Ryan Vesey was talking about, Rivertorch. And perhaps I was a bit quick of the mark to start accusations. Sorry if I offended anyone due to any false accusations. :)--Coin945 (talk) 16:59, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Over the past weeks I've seen a great number of original research essays, neologisms and new apparent terms related to whatever which if you google them are usually totally unsourcable and inappropriate for wikipedia. Earlier I placed a speedy tag on Gratuitous Liking which will never be encyclopedic even in a blue moon and I google searched it and found zilch. However the speedy was declined and its now at AFD. I think there should be a new deletion criteria for db-essay or db-term per WP:NOTNEO which stops wasting people's time and deletes them on the spot if google search picks up nothing.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:24, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

This sounds like an expansion of criteria A7, but I'm skeptical whether it could work as stated. The fact that you needed to perform research to determine whether an article is unsourcable or inappropriate doesn't quite fit into the "speedy" mold. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:23, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I googled Gratuitous Liking and found zilch. I speedy tagged it as a hoax but it was kept and taken to AFD. My point is that such an article which is completely unverifiable should not be allowed to remain and should be speediable.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:35, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

There is a significant gap between "I googled it" and "it is completely unverifiable", and closing that gap is one of the reasons that AFD exists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

There's pretty much no point in proposing anything on wikipedia is there!! Its a complete waste of time trying to even attempt to reduce the time wasting on here. If you google search an apparent "popular" term and it picks up zilch hits the article should be instantly deletable. I disagree with you, if the article subject is on an apparent popular internet term and google picks up nothing then there is no gap whatsoever. I know instantly on conducting a google search whether something is notable or not. Its different if it was say a Burmese or Gabonese local leader or something which might be notable regionally but not yet covered on the internet but its just pointless keeping unverifiable terms that people invent and taking it to AFD when it obviously will never be kept.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:00, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

You seem upset. But I expect most such articles will find their way to the dumpster at some point. RJH (talk)

I have one to propose: Any deletion criterion proposed by someone who calls it "a criteria" should be immediately removed and not responded to 1/2 :-). --Trovatore (talk) 22:10, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Cheers Jack.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:20, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Who said that it's "an apparent popular internet term"? All your web search proves to me is that the title of the page is not a "popular internet term". It does not prove anything at all about the actual subject of the article, which is that people who indiscriminately click every like button they see make life difficult for advertisers that are depending on like buttons to personalize their sales pitches. I'd have thought that sentiment, while not IMO worthy of a separate article, was WP:BLUE enough that it wouldn't necessarily require an inline citation, if mentioned in an article like Like button. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:14, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Its pure common sense that this search proves the article subject is non notable. I can't even believe you would think otherwise.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:22, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Honestly the use of the word criteria in the singular number bothers me sufficiently that I didn't really get into the merits. I take it Jack Osbourne is similarly a stickler for correct word usage? Or I suppose it's possible that you think we resemble one another (we might have, I guess, when I was younger, if I'd had a beard then). --Trovatore (talk) 22:31, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

For the record if you're going to make the argument that a google search for a term determines its notability - at least quote the term for example the quoted search for term, gets significantly different results than the quoted term (I'm not sure if that term belongs in wikipedia, but the search suggests it is being used, although less than two common English words searched for as separate terms, which is not surprising) Jztinfinity (talk) 06:00, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

• This discussion should really be at WT:CSD. If you go there you can see a list of principles that new speedy deletion criteria should follow. One of them is that the criterion should be objective, in that reasonable people should be able to decide whether something meets the criterion or not. "Unsourceable" or "non-notable" are not objective, and reasonable editors disagree about whether topics are unsourceable or non-notable all the time. Hut 8.5 10:55, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

  Good points. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:35, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

  I suspect people have taken to bringing proposals here because there's a larger audience than those that follow the CSD pages. Shadowjams (talk) 09:30, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

  WT:CSD does get quite a lot of input, and someone who is interested in or knowledgeable about speedy deletions is likely to watchlist WT:CSD, but they aren't necessarily likely to read this page. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be a good idea to link to such discussions from here though. Hut 8.5 20:28, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support db-term, but can we please call it WP:SOWHATAPEDIA. Declining speedy keep so that we can cover the history of Liking, when it first started, how it's popular in France, but Greeks think it's a social taboo to tolerate it, the Mongolian governmental response to regulate liking and liking in pop culture, there was that tropfest film remember ? Oh that was good, I loved it. MMmmmm, I'm liking this liking article in the making. I can't wait until it comes out of that AfD process so that I can help illustrate it. I'll go make a few Barnstars especially for the people who help push this one into FA. (back later) Penyulap ☏ 15:39, 25 Jul 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose but we do need speedy snow closures for new CSD deletion criteria. I'd suggest two:

1. Any new deletion criteria that lacks several recent examples of uncontentious AFDs that could instead have been resolved by this speedy criteria.
2. Any speedy deletion criteria that relies on the use of search engines - if you need to look it up then it merits AFD or prod.

ϢereSpielChequers 10:08, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Those criteria are absurdly limiting... comically so when you consider G12 violations to almost require some artful google searching. Shadowjams (talk) 23:33, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

I think WereSpielChequers' point was that determining whether a tagged article falls under some CSD criterion shouldn't require a Google search. In the case of G12, that's not the case - all you have to do is compare the linked URL to the article content. To determine whether something is notable, on the other hand, you have to (at a minimum) Google it. Hut 8.5 20:28, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

The search bots don't find all the copyright-violations. Shadowjams (talk) 21:17, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

• This needs a clearer defining principle, but I support the premise. These obvious essays that are copy pasted in come up with some frequency, and they languish for a week or more in AfD or PROD. But we need a clear way to identify what we're talking about before we make a policy. Shadowjams (talk) 23:35, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it might be a good idea, (I say this from just having sent a few to Prod that had been marked for deletion as test pages), except that I do not think we will be able to find unambiguous criteria. Speedys are limited to deletions that no reasonable editor would question, and that is a very high bar for something as subjective as this. DGG ( talk ) 17:49, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I've run across numerous stub articles where the WikiProject tags in their Talk page indicates that they are start-class, even though the article has a stub tag. User:StubSyncBot is designed to ensure that the WikiProject tag indicates that the article is a stub when the article is in fact a stub. When the article is a stub and the WikiProject tag indicates class=Start, should the bot change it to class=Stub? I want to ensure that I have consensus before I implement that functionality. Personally, I think it should. Jesse V. (talk) 21:29, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I did a run of rating assessments for various hockey players not too long ago and found that in several cases, someone had updated the article to Start class or better, but never removed the stub tag. So there is a question of whether the project rating is wrong, or the stub template is wrong. That said, I'd see no harm in what you are proposing as (a) it wouldn't impact mainspace and (b), it might encourage a human to then go and re-evaluate the article, which may result in the stub template being removed if it is incorrectly applied. Resolute 22:06, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Can you exempt WP:USRD from such a project? Our project handles the difference between Stub-Class and Start-Class a bit differently, and there are valid cases where an article might be Start-Class, but sorted as a stub. Imzadi 1979 → 22:08, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Resolute, thanks for the encouragement. If an editor cared enough about the article to seriously research and expand it, I think it's reasonable to assume that they'd also care about the Talk page as well. I just want to save people the time and effort of doing the cleanup. Imzadi, can you clarify what you mean? Jesse V. (talk) 00:14, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I would normally expect the project rating to be more up to date so if anything the mark as a stub should be removed. I must admit I'd feel a bit unsure and would want to check, perhaps you could do something like just list them somewhere to check if they are smaller than a certain size whcih I think would catcjh most problems. Dmcq (talk) 00:22, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I believe what you are talking about is a separate issue that I'm not prepared to deal with at this time. The bot does not currently remove the Stub classification if the article is not a Stub, that's on the eventual to-do list because I haven't yet figured out how to do it efficiently. AWB's auto-tagger add the Stub tag to an article if it has at most 300 words, and removes the tag if article has more than 500 words. Clearly I would need to confirm that the article was not a Stub before removing the Stub classification from the WikiProject tag. Jesse V. (talk) 06:12, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Aside: AWB adds a ((Stub)) tag when the article has fewer than 300 characters of text, not words. Automatic tagging is only appropriate when there's no chance of error. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:51, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, that count is excluding Categories, Comments, references and infoboxes at least, possibly some more. Kumioko (talk) 07:59, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I like the general idea of this but I think there are going to be a lot of caveats to it. I have also noticed a lot of articles where it would be hard to lineup. Some are assessed as Lists or C-class and have a stub tag. Some are assessed as stubs but don't have the tags. A couple questions:

1. Does the bot do a count of the content on the main article page or just assume the assessment is accurate?
2. How do you identify the WikiProjects in the talk page? Although there is active standardization in progress some projects don't support it and there are a lot of articles that still say something other than WikiProject X.
3. If the article is assessed as Stub but no stub tag exists does it add one? If so how does it know which one to add?Kumioko (talk) 07:56, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I've described how the bot is going to work in User:StubSyncBot. I didn't consider the case where they were listed as C-class or a List; I'll set it to skip those. The bot will not affect any article Talk pages which don't exist or don't have any WikiProject tags. It also doesn't affect Talk pages of articles that don't contain the Stub tag. To answer your questions:

1. Currently the bot does not. It would be pretty straightforward for it to do that, so if you think that's a good idea I'll add the functionality.
2. Again, please see User:StubSyncBot for my initial stab at the regex I'd like to use. The regex currently assumes that the WikiProject tag is all on one line since it normally is, but it can identify ((wikiproject herp/derp derpety herpy_derp)) as a WikiProject tag which contains no |class= nor |importance= parameters.
3. As described in User:StubSyncBot, one of the first steps is to have AWB load a list of all articles which contain the Stub tag. The bot thus won't affect any Talk page nor article where the WikiProject tag says |class=Stub but the article doesn't contain the Stub tag. I suspect there are very few examples of this anyway.

This sort of discussion would better belong over at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/StubSyncBot, but that's not a problem since I can just link to this thread. Whether here or there, I'm happy to address any questions anyone has. Originally I was just looking for consensus on the aspect I've described in title and opening post. Jesse V. (talk) 16:02, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I think that your going to find the BAG reluctant to approve this task. I still think that the idea has merit but think that there are still some issues that need to be refined with the logic. A couple more things worth looking at:

1. The first section of This page lists the 900+ WikiProjects and that have redirects we have discovered so far as well as the redirects associated to those projects. It then normalized them to WikiProject X except for a couple of exceptions. This page is used by several of us and we update it as we find problems so that we all stay in sync. Kumioko (talk) 16:37, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
2. Some projects don't use importance (like WPMILHIST) or call it priority/X-priority (like WPBio)
3. On # 1 above, AWB has logic for counting the characters in an article. I recommend using that rather than reinventing it so we all stay in Sync there too.
4. For #2 above you are going to find that a lot of WikiProjects (WPUS, MILHIST, BIO and a lot others) are going to be on multiple lines.
5. I think adding class and or importance to a basic((WikiProject X)) template is easy enough to do the problem I think you'll run into is folks bickering about the edit not changing the rendering of the page if you don't do something else. Personally, I think that would be a good standardization for Projects that use those parameters.
6. Some stub tags don't dislay as X-stub yet. There are some on the Template redirects functionality page but not nearly all of them yet so you might run into some problems here.
7. There are a lot of articles just in WPUS with class=stub and no stub tag (yet) on the article. Its on my to do list but I'm trying to focus on assessments and some other things at the moment first. I know there are a lot of mismatches witih WP Bio as well, not sure about others. I hope this helps. Kumioko (talk) 16:37, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I think it's important to clarify that this bot isn't entirely automatic. I will be manually assisting it as most people do with AWB, but since I'd like to do this reliably at a high editing rate I figured I'd open a bot account for this specific purpose as AWB's manual recommends. Maybe it could be semi-automatic entirely, we'll see. Responses to the above:

1. Thanks for the link. I'll take a look.
2. That's interesting, I've never seen that before. Why aren't they consistent? Is it possible to assemble a list of the WikiProjects that don't use |class= and |importance=?
3. Yes I'll use AWB's method. Sorry I misunderstood AWB's logic for a moment there.
4. Thanks for the heads up. That's straightforward enough to address, either on the regex front or with manual assistance.
5. To the contrary, it will change the appearance of the page. It will say something like "this article is rated Stub-class on the project's quality scale. This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale". If it's just ((WikiProject x)), new editors have no idea how to fix this, because the parameters is just something you have to hunt down, or you just pick up over time.
6. I'm confused as to what you are saying here. Please clarify.
7. That last item is something that could be automated. It's not something that the bot will do at this time, but its functionality that could be added in the future. Jesse V. (talk) 02:14, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose – A bot should most definitely not be changing the human-rating on an article, unless it is to a human-reviewed setting like GA or FA. Absolutely not; no way, no how. I'm okay with a bot noting the discrepancies, but I certainly do not want our WikiProject ratings changed just because some anonymous individual arbitrarily decided to add a stub tag later. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:08, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Are you personally going to dedicate years of your time to reassessing articles manually and recruit others to join you? If not, please explain how you expect the backlog to clear or articles to be appropriately assessed? Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 01:02, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the rational behind your strong opposition. WikiProject tags have importance and class tags (or some form of "class"). The importance classification could never be performed by a bot, while to some degree the class can. An article is either a stub or it isn't, which ASB is able to determine objectively. It would be impossible to use a bot to change the class to indicate a quality other than Stub/Start. As I've noted above, I could use AWB to confirm that the stub tag on the article is proper. If it's not, then the bot shouldn't change the WikiProject tag from |class=Start to |class=Stub. However, that doesn't imply that if the stub tag is proper, then the bot should change it to |class=Stub. I guess that's also part of the original question. Jesse V. (talk) 02:14, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree, the assessment tags and importances are at best an educated guess. If someone marks an article as a Stub, Start or C its really not a huge deal. It just gives a rough idea of the overall development of the article. If its a little off no big deal and personally I would rather not have to go manually through the thousands of articles awaiting assessment for WPUS. Where it becomes rather important IMO is when you get to B class and above. Just my opinion so I realize that to some these are very important and they feel bots shouldn't do them. Personally I would rather that the bot get close and know that there may be a variance than to have to manually do them all. Kumioko (talk) 02:39, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Precisely. Thank you! Jesse V. (talk) 04:41, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

"Are you personally going to dedicate years of your time to reassessing articles manually...": yes I have being doing so for several years. The scenario I am concerned about is as follows: I rate an article as, say, a 'C' based upon my particular knowledge of the topic as well as research into possible sources, so I remove the stub tag. Somebody else perhaps less knowledgeable of the subject arbitrarily decides the article doesn't meet their criteria for non-stubness and adds a stub tag. A bot comes along and changes the WikiProject class back to 'stub'. Now how is that useful? I have seen people add stub tags to articles that were clearly not stub class. Hence, I have a real concern that this bot will totally eff-up the ratings process. At that point you may as well take the class ratings out of the WikiProject templates altogether and make it a separate template. Regards, RJH (talk)

Replying, but in short, WP:USRD assesses the difference between Stub-Class, Start-Class and C-Class based on the content and how it is organized, not based on the overall length of the article. An article can be legitimately short (say on a short highway) but still have two of the three sections we expect to find in an article, and thus be a Start on our scale. Plus, we assessed all of our tagged articles years ago, audit them as needed on a regular basis and assess new articles frequently as they appear on User:AlexNewArtBot/USRoadsSearchResult‎. Imzadi 1979 → 04:55, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I think in general this concept will work but I think that it should be approached a couple different ways.

1. Projects should opt in rather than just assume they want it or need it.
2. It might be better to just generate a list, maybe by project if the project wants to participate, for a while of the results and see what it looks like. Maybe in time there will be enough support to do something like this but right now I think there are too many unknowns. I would definately support a list being generated somewhere for review. Kumioko (talk) 11:11, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

   Good ideas. A list of discrepancies would be very handy for the type of edits I'm currently engaged in. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:18, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who has done a lot of assessment work over the years: if I said it's a Start-class, and it's still got a stub template on the article, then it's the article, not the talk page, that needs to be corrected. I'd be quite irritated if you screwed up my assessment work just because there was an erroneous stub template on the article.

But if you wanted to generate a discrepancy list (in either direction) and post it for me at WT:MEDA, I'd be grateful and would see that it was manually reviewed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Agree with WID. Stub tags are incredibly laggy - a significant proportion of stub-tagged articles are not stubs by any reasonable definition. I would tend to assume in most cases that if the talkpage has a start rating, then the article tag is probably the inaccurate one. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:58, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll keep that in mind. I'll confirm that the Stub tag on the article is accurate using AWB before changing the Talk page. I don't want to irritate anyone. When I have a bit more time, perhaps I should develop a list of WikiProject tags which don't use the standard |class= and |importance= parameters, and exclude them from anything I'm doing with the bot. Is that what you were referring to? Would that be satisfactory to everyone? Jesse V. (talk) 05:21, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

As a stub sorter, I found early on that a number of projects use different criteria to each other, and to WP:WSS to determine whether something is a stub (eg, some specify a list of topics which should all be covered before something is non-stub), so I decided that assessment wasn't something I should be playing with unless I had time to learn more and/or got more involved with a specific project. Since then I have found most of the stub tags I remove are on articles assessed as Start or even higher, which had the stub tag added when they were only a line or two and simply never removed as the article was expanded. I think that in this case, it is usually the assessment more up to date. (The same could not be said when the assessment=stub - that is more often wrong). All that said, I'd be interested to see the results, if you do do something like generate a list for review. --Qetuth (talk) 04:32, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is clearly no consensus for this proposal. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:32, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

---

Note: Please thoroughly read the proposal below, and User:Timeshifter/More articles and less editors, if you want to make for a more informed discussion. This proposal has been amended since its initial formulation. Amendments directly follow the proposal a little farther down. See discussion about the revised proposal even farther down here.

There are more articles and less editors. Therefore editing must become more efficient for both occasional editors and active editors. The main thing that makes editing less efficient is the lack of efficient content dispute resolution. Solving this problem may also help stabilize the number of editors. For more info on the problem and possible solutions see: User:Timeshifter/More articles and less editors. See proposal based on admin-moderators after the charts below. Moderators are common on many other websites.

Many editors are on full or partial strike from article editing. Editor retention problems: Unchecked admin misconduct, arbitrary guideline interpretation, unresolved content disputes, not enough moderators, rude or speedy deletions, etc. See also.

Proposal of possible solution based on large group of admin-moderators:

Large new class of admin-moderators without blocking, deleting, or undeleting rights

A variation of this proposal. See discussion and straw poll.

The same admin-mod can discuss and decide a content dispute

This is after discussion on the article talk page, and if no consensus is otherwise reached.

These decisions will have a review process

After a period of time a review discussion can take place on the article talk page.

Any other admin-mod can change a content dispute decision

This is after a period of time and after further discussion on the article talk page.

Labeled talk archives for such moderated discussions and decisions

Titled something like "Moderated content disputes". That way it is searchable along with all other discussion for that article.

A admin-mod misconduct noticeboard

This is to ensure admin-mod compliance with Wikipedia guidelines, and if necessary to get rid of biased admins mods who make decisions without adequate discussion, and who refuse to make content decisions according to WP:NPOV.

--Timeshifter (talk) 06:19, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Amendments and clarifications added later by me, Timeshifter:

Editors of an article can always reach consensus on their own

They can change or revise any content decision, even one made by a admin-mod. That consensus has to be genuine though, and not pushed through without participation and discussion. The admin-mod who made the last decision on the issue can reverse it otherwise. Then if an editor is not satisfied a new admin-mod can be called in for another week of moderated discussion followed by their decision. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:58, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Full admins can act as moderators too, not just admin-mods

Some full admins may have the time and interest at times to moderate content discussions. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:53, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

The main point of the proposal is an additional group to resolve content disputes

Admin rights are no longer a part of this group or proposal. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:37, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

---

• If they have no blocking, deleting, or undeleting rights, what makes them any different than any other editor in good standing? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 17:06, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Admin-mods would be more accountable, and there are many other admin tools besides blocking, deleting, or undeleting rights. There are several reasons why they would not have blocking, deleting, or undeleting rights. The main reason is that we need a large group of admin-mods for this to have any chance of making a significant dent in resolving content disputes. That will only happen if the approval process is not as strict as for full admins. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has stated that it only requires such a strict approval and vetting process for admins getting undelete rights. For more info see this proposal. See its discussion and straw poll. We need content dispute resolution far more than we need more admins doing blocking and deleting. Blocking and deleting rights also make admin approval more difficult. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:11, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

• What evidence do you have that lack of efficient content dispute resolution is a major reason why editors are leaving? I'm not necessarily saying it isn't, I just don't know how you could know that. 86.179.3.247 (talk) 17:38, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

It is common knowledge to many longer-term registered users. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:11, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

A lot of things that need improving are common knowledge, such as the quality of NPP for example, but unfortunately very often those who might want to do something about it will only be convinced that the issue exists when they are presented with numerical proof. Ironically, many of those issues just can't be demonstrated with pure statistics and empirical evidence is rarely accepted. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:25, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

• If they are just making consensus determinations based on talk page discussions, how is it any different from an experienced editor closing the same discussion? Also, making a determination on a discussion your involved in is a no go, we don't even let full admins do that. No matter how reasonable the close is, if the result agrees with the closers side of the argument it creates a significant risk that those disagreeing with the close will accuse the closer of being biased, and in the case of an admin, of using their admin bit to "Win" the dispute. A better approach might be to come up with an binding RFC process that could close discussion on a point for a minimum period of time. Monty₈₄₅ 17:39, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Content discussions are never "closed" currently. A binding RFC process is what my proposal is in so many words. What makes it binding in either case is what is in question. Admins close many other things. Why not let them close particular content disputes, followed by a rest period of at least a week or two? Then if necessary, further review could be initiated by anyone to allow additional refinement by consensus, or by another moderated discussion and close by a different admin-moderator. So there would be no permanent "win" concerning any content dispute. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:11, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

But it sounds like you would make it a routine process, instead such binding RFCs should really be the last resort in the dispute resolution process, after formal mediation and regular RFCs have failed. Essentially it is saying, our motto of anyone can edit no longer applies to this content. It is called for in a few extraordinary cases, but we need to make sure that we use it sparingly. Monty₈₄₅ 13:56, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

People will still be able to use regular RFCs first. Anyone can still edit. I doubt people will prefer to go through a week-long process of moderated discussion if they can avoid it. They will know that if they can't come to consensus the normal way they will have to go through a week of moderated discussion to get an admin-mod decision, and then have to wait at least a week before attempting to refine or change that decision through another week of moderated discussion with another admin mod if consensus can not be reached otherwise. So most content editing will continue on as normal. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:53, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

• Question will the same level of care and attention to detail be put into choosing this new class of admin-moderators as is put into choosing admins ? Penyulap ☏ 15:44, 25 Jul 2012 (UTC)

People will be scrutinized but not with the same level of strict requirements as for full admins. This is because it takes a far greater level of trust to give someone undelete tools due to WMF legal worries. Also, they don't have block and delete tools. Also, it will be far easier to admonish misconduct by admin-mods (via the misconduct noticeboard just for admin-mods), and it will be easier to desysop admin-mods. Currently, full admins are rarely desysoped, and I believe that is partly because it is so hard to get new ones. So since admin-mods don't have undelete tools, can be more easily admonished, and can be more easily dismissed, then there is less need for the abusive, strict approval process that full admins go through. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:06, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

• Question Please specify the specific rights that would be included in this group.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:16, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Admin-mods would get all of the tools full admins get except block-delete-undelete. So these admin-mods would be very useful for Wikipedia since they could work on a lot of things. I know there are things I would like to work on. Such as protected templates, and so on. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:08, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Reading the proposal, i would think that the idea behind the extra usergroup is having them resolve disputes. What i don't understand is why someone would need extra rights for that? (EG: What does editing protected templates have to do with dispute resolution?). Also, the proposal on which rights are granted is a bit vague. If you state that admin-mods would receive all rights except delete, block and undelete they would get the ability to edit another users Javascript and CSS code? They will be IP Block exempted? Their rollback will be marked as bot edits? They can edit interface pages such as the main page and other protected interface titles?

If anything i would say that the above proposal is currently to vague in what it suggests and tries to accomplish. While i didn't necessarily agree with everything in Jc37 past proposal, it at least made very clear what it would do and why it would do that. In this variant i just have a hard time to figure that out, since i cannot see the relation between "needing extra rights" and "dispute resolution". Am i perhaps missing something here? User:Excirial|Excirial]] ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 10:28, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I guess it is true that the other admin rights and tools are not necessary for the main goal of this proposal which is granting the power to decide content disputes to this new class or usergroup. So I am not wedded to that part of the proposal. But these admin-mods will not be spending all their time moderating content disputes, or they may not want to. So why waste their talents? If we are willing to trust them to make those content decisions then they are certainly trustworthy to handle the other non-controversial admin tools. I am not an admin though on Wikimedia, and so I don't know if there are other controversial admin tools besides block-delete-undelete. I am a bureaucrat on a Wikia wiki, but there are very few content disputes or other disputes on that wiki. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:17, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

In the above case i see very little merit in the suggestion itself. No one is ever forced to take a certain role on Wikipedia if they don't wish to work in a certain area. What you are suggesting sounds a lot like "Bribing" an editor to work in the dispute resolution department by offering them a set of extra privileges and tools. I wonder how many will apply for the extra tools and don't care in any way about dispute resolution.

Even if i remove the entire "Extra Rights" issue i still don't believe this would be a decent direction to go into. I honestly don't see why we would need to flag some people as "Mod-admins" while a non admin close works just as well in virtually every case. The very basis of Wikipedia is, after all, that everything operates trough consensus, rather them having a set of users that just plain decide everything. Hence, if an admin ever needs to close a discussion, they should simply summarize that discussion rather deciding on their own what they wish. (And if one does, very liberal use of the ((Whale)) template is strongly encouraged)

If anything, i'm agreeing with Steven Zhang's statement below: But in short, we need more volunteers at the dispute resolution noticeboard - not more user rights. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 13:10, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Whales and trouts don't resolve content disputes. And currently there is no non admin close of content disputes. Content disputes are almost never closed. That is the point of this proposal. And as I said I am not wedded to the admin rights. But how is it a bad thing to get more people doing the mundane work of Wikipedia?

And my proposal does not give the power to permanently close a content dispute to an admin-mod. It basically allows an admin-mod to put a pin in the discussion for awhile. The content dispute may only be temporarily resolved. But if more than one admin-mod over time comes to similar conclusions in resolving the content dispute than the editors of the article will stop asking for another moderated discussion over the same issue. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:06, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Section break. Admin-mods to resolve content disputes

Comment. All of my ideas are up for amendment and change. So feel free to suggest changes. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:06, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

• I would strongly suggest you spend your time doing something that has a chance in Hell of being aproved by the community. This type of idea has been rejected repeatedly and recently to the point where it is becoming ridiculously tiresome to see it again and again and frankly this seems like one of the least likely versions of it to succeed that I have ever seen. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:58, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I was wondering when the perennial naysayers, debunkers, and deletionists would step in. Try not to be ridiculously tired. It is bad for your health. Also, you should pay more attention. A similar proposal recently got more support votes than oppose votes in the straw poll. See this proposal. See its discussion and straw poll. Even among many opposers there was some support, and many opposers suggested ideas for improvement. Beeblebrox, you linked to Wikipedia:PEREN#Hierarchical_structures. My proposal is not about a "probationary period". Neither will we "debate who gets full sysop powers versus who gets only partial abilities." People will choose to apply for admin-mod positions. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:49, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I think Beeblebrox is right. No matter how perfect the idea is (I make no comment on that point), I don't think that it has any realistic chance of success. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:47, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't see why not. A similar proposal got more support votes than oppose votes. It was withdrawn though by the proposer. See the reasons here:

Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical)/Proposal by Jc37/3#Withdrawn --Timeshifter (talk) 08:50, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I understand the need to reform dispute resolution - I live and breathe it and have been working on this for a long time. But this is not the way to go about it. This is a technical fix to something that is very much a social and logistical problem. Disputes become unresolvable and thus the viewpoints of parties become more hardened because the disputes are unresolved for long periods of time. If we can resolve disputes in a timely manner before it gets to that stage, then there will be no need for a content "decision" - that's what collaboration and compromise is for. I've seen your graphs many times and I'm not sure how they apply to dispute resolution. The number of articles is Increasing, and the number of active users is decreasing, but the graphs don't show how this is the result of abusive admins, lack of enough or non-admin closures. It just shows a loss of editors. Now, don't get me wrong, dispute resolution is bad. I'd invite you to read the completed survey on dispute resolution which is the basis for my efforts. But in short, we need more volunteers at the dispute resolution noticeboard - not more user rights. Steven Zhang ^{Get involved in DR!} 11:45, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

As I said to a previous commenter it is common knowledge to many longtime users that the lack of content dispute resolution is a major reason why many active editors leave, or pull back a lot from editing. I note from previous interactions that you tend to poo-poo ideas of others concerning other ways for content dispute resolution than WP:DRN (Dispute resolution noticeboard). Just sayin'. But it seems we agree that we need to resolve content disputes in a more timely way. I think my proposal resolves them in a much more timely way than through WP:DRN. I note from your user page that you have been on Wikipedia since Feb 7, 2008. I started over a couple years before that, in October 2005. So I do know a little about what I am talking about. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:46, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Um, if you are going to use experience as an argument, let's check the figures. Your talk page says "This user has made over 24,000 contributions to Wikipedia articles." X!'s Edit Counter makes it close to 25,000 but only 7096 are actually to articles, with another 4705 to article talk pages. Steven on the other hand has made a bit over 34,000 edits, with over 10,000 to articles. I haven't been here quite as long as you have either, but I've made over 84,000 edits, 41,587 to articles. In fact, I've edited about as many unique pages as the total of all your edits. So can I have the final word here? :-) If so, I don't think this is a very workable solution to content disputes. Dougweller (talk) 16:14, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Drat. I knew i should have registered my account earlier - i might have actually managed to get that special founder flag if i has been faster. Timeshifter - you are aware of WP:VESTED right? And you are aware that there is no relation whatsoever between registration date and clue level, nor any relation between edit count and experience? And since you brought it up (Not that it really matters) - you are aware that while you registered in 2005, your first edit wasn't until august 2006? :)

On a more serious note though, please reread your above comment. Steven argumentation is solid, or at the very least raises several valid points. Yet your own response merely repeats your own previous statement without any argumentation or refutation of steve's points, and at the same time accuses steve of "tending to poo-poo ideas of others" while implying that your arguments carry more weight than Steve's because you registered earlier. Personally I remain at my conclusion that the current proposal is to vague in the cause and effect department, and to much of a coat rack for multiple non-to-related changes. If anything i would suggest working together with JC37 on his previous proposal, which was well written and might actually pass (Given a few clarification tweaks here and there). Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 18:06, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

@Timeshifter, I am always open to other ideas for the reform of dispute resolution. At present it is true, the resolution of disputes at DRN is a bit slow (average of 8.6 days in May) - but we're working on that with a multi-faceted approach, and we will see how it goes in August. I've got a baseline for May on timeframes, success rates and volunteer counts, so I can measure improvement easily. I think it's pretty unanimous that social change is needed, not technical change. Binding content decisions should never be the decision of one user - consensus works well for this. If a discussion has 20 participants, 19 of which agree on X, where one disagrees on X, then in a lot of cases X is correct. If the one user continues to edit war or forum shop because they disagree, this could amount to a conduct issue. The consensus is defacto binding. If there are protracted disputes that need some binding resolution, a community-wide RFC should be held, but only as a last resort - SoftSecurity is better. I note below that the ability to view deleted revisions has also been removed - without this there are no logical reasons to have this user rights collection. The community respects the judgment of its administrators because of the RfA requirement - and not even they can make binding - even time-limited - decisions on content. I do not see how this could be accepted by the community, and I think this is a perception by everyone else that has posted here. Steven Zhang ^{Get involved in DR!} 07:51, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Most people have not expressed an opinion. Many have been asking questions. As for getting regular admins to close content disputes on article talk pages, there are not enough of them to take on this added task. Thus my proposal for a new usergroup with an easier approval process. Unfortunately, as with the number of active editors, the number of active admins is also declining over time. See ((NUMBEROFADMINS)): 861. The number of active admins is usually around half of that number. The Wikimedia Foundation requires a strict admin approval process for admins with undelete rights. For admin stats and lists: Wikipedia:List of administrators‎ and Commons:Category:Admin statistics for English Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-18/Investigative report. The report is called "Is the Requests for adminship process 'broken'?" --Timeshifter (talk) 08:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

None of that tells me why we should create another user rights group...I feel you haven't explained that specific point. Can you please re-read my comments and explain? Thanks. Steven Zhang ^{Get involved in DR!} 08:37, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Please see my previous replies, and please reread the proposal. I don't think you understand it, or I need to explain it more. I may have explained parts of it better in replies to others too. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:04, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

I understand your proposal. I do not understand how a) You think a separate user rights group will increase the amount of successfully resolved disputes and b) How you think that the community would accept a proposal that allows one user to create a binding (even temporary) content decision. Steven Zhang ^{Get involved in DR!} 09:09, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

(unindent) Thanks, Steven Zhang, for furthering clarifying your questions. I did not use the word "binding" in my proposal. Because, one week after one mod makes a content decision, an editor of an article has the right to request another admin-mod about the same (or similar) content dispute. That would initiate another week of moderated discussion on the article talk page. The new admin-mod would make a decision about the content dispute.

Editors of articles now have a direct and relatively quick way to get their content disputes resolved. At least temporarily. Which is a vast improvement over the current system. And editors of an article can always reach consensus on their own to change or revise any content decision, even one made by an admin-mod. I need to make that clear in my proposal. Of course, that consensus to change an admin-mod's decision has to be genuine, and not railroaded through without participation of enough of the article's editors. Common sense must be involved, too.

This proposal will require many more admins because intractable content disputes are common on Wikipedia. There is no way that we would get enough full admins approved for this to work. That is why I propose a new usergroup of admin-mods that has an easier approval process because it does not have block-delete-undelete rights. See Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) info on easier approval farther down. A similar recent proposal for admin-mods (but not for the purpose of resolving content disputes) got more support than oppose votes. Because more admins are definitely needed. That proposal was withdrawn by the proposer in order to work on it further.

I added a clarification/amendment to my proposal at the top. It is after the rest of the proposal, and it is time-stamped today. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:56, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

• Comment This is the second (third) time, at least, that someone has tried to re-propose the mod proposal in some form. I personally am waiting at least the typical 3-4 months before proposing again, based upon what we've learned already and in the interim. I think the Wikipedian community won't mind, and may appreciate, the breather. - jc37 16:31, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Could you link to other proposals that give a specified group of users the right to decide content disputes directly on article talk pages? And that require those users to go through an approval process? --Timeshifter (talk) 07:25, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

• I am going to oppose this kind of proposal for the first time I've ever done so. This is because this proposal does not address what I believe are the fundamental issues causing editor leakage.--Jasper Deng (talk) 21:24, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. I specifically removed delete-undelete rights from this proposal in order to avoid the WMF requirement for such a strict approval process as for full admins. I asked User:Philippe (WMF) what exactly the WMF's position is on this. See discussion: User talk:Philippe (WMF)#Admins and undelete rights. I am OK with any other rights being removed that require the strict approval process that is used for approving full admins. He wrote:

Provided that there is no access to delete, undelete, or view deleted revisions, I can't imagine that we'd have a problem with it, but I'd need to see a full rights list to be certain. :)

--Timeshifter (talk) 07:25, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. This proposal does nothing other than create a "privileged class" of editors, with authority to "decide content disputes"....this is a recipe for disaster. Nothing that this group could do appears to be any different than what any editor in good standing can already do. In effect, it is process for the sake of process, that does nothing of any substance to change underlying problems of editor retention. Looking at this proposal, I see the potential for major disruption and drama (fighting over who gets to be an admin-mod, drama over the decision of content disputes, complaining about the inability to use admin tools to actually enforce any decisions made) with zero potential for anything beneficial, since as I noted before, editors can already do all of these things. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 08:16, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Editors can not currently decide content disputes. Content disputes can, and do, go on forever. As for drama, my proposal would lessen the drama, since most drama on Wikipedia is at its root based on content disputes. Full admins can handle personal disputes, and block people. I do not want to grant any rights to admin-mods (such as block rights) that would require a stricter approval process. Otherwise, there will not be enough admin-mods approved to make this proposal work adequately. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:47, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Editors can and do decide content disputes, by imposing consensus. Only consensus is an acceptable way to decide a content dispute. Giving an editor in his or her sole capacity the final say, is a terrible idea and will only result in drama (e.g. an editor of one nationality with admin-mod powers decides repeatedly in favor of their nationality.) But, you will say, it can be overruled by other admin-mods. In which case, it is no different than having editor consensus -- it is creating a prestige class of editors whose say is "more important" than others. This will create immense drama, and I think you really ought to step back and take a look at all the possible ways this could create problems. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 19:43, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Editors currently can not impose consensus. That is the point of my proposal. I have been in various organizations over the years. I have yet to see a consensus decision-making process that did not have a fallback (when needed) to voting by the whole group or by a committee. Intermediate decisions that required timely action were taken by individuals such as managers, staff, the elected leaders, etc.. Subject to review later by the whole group or the committee in charge. Of course some admin-mods will be biased, but they will be counteracted by other admin-mods. Eventually, the mods who can not set aside their biases will be removed by the admin-mod noticeboard, and votes there by other admin-mods. The respect that admin-mods overall have for WP:NPOV will ensure this.

Editors of an article can always reach consensus on their own. They can change or revise any content decision, even one made by an admin-mod. That consensus has to be genuine though, and not pushed through without participation and discussion. The admin-mod who made the last decision on the issue can reverse it otherwise. Then if an editor is not satisfied a new admin-mod can be called in for another week of moderated discussion followed by their decision. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:34, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Please don't interpret this oppose as "I'll oppose any new dispute resolution ideas"; I won't, I think it probably is possible to define new roles and new forums that would have some positive impact. But opposers of similar measures have made many good points over the years, and I'm not seeing any awareness of those points or any attempt to address them. Homework is needed. - Dank (push to talk) 13:13, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like: "I am sorry if this sounds like kneejerk opposition, as per normal at the Village Pump, but my opposition is given without reasons. But trust me, I have my reasons, but I don't explain myself, because I am an admin." Just sayin'.

Now for my 2 cents on the vast divide between some (many?) admins and others. To become an admin, especially lately, one must almost be a saint. But editors of controversial articles inevitably come up against intractable content disputes. Saints walk away since their holiness would be sullied by anger at the poorly-referenced POVs inserted into controversial topics in an unbalanced way. Since saints can not deign to do anything past WP:1RR they are soon waited out by the other editors. If they truly supported WP:NPOV they would enter into many days, months, and even years of fruitless dispute resolution. But that record of dispute would create many enemies who would vote against them in the admin approval process. So admin wannabes, especially lately, walk away, and thus have little real experience or real understanding of what dispute resolution entails.

So rather than posting and running I would appreciate hearing some specific criticisms and suggestions for improvement. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:37, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

TS, I'm just going to comment on this: having read this discussion, your attitude has been towards criticism has been... let's say, not terribly productive. It's no wonder people are tired of explaining their reasons, as you appear unwilling to believe their criticisms are real. And by referring to editors as "naysayers, debunkers, and deletionists" & their responses as "kneejerk," you're really not helping your own cause. I can understand your frustration when editors are unconvinced your proposal is necessary, but you might want to take a bit of a break and come back to this when you've had a chance to detatch yourself from the debate. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:27, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. This discussion is all over the place and unstructured. I should be moved to a separate page and divided into meaningful sections for discussion if proper and significant community input is expected. That said, I agree with the letter of this proposal, but not its spirit. I would definitely support a moderator status, but not necessarily with the goal of helping in content disputes. I like the idea that it would give many good editors an expanded toolset to improve the project (say, by editing protected templates or pages) without the stringent process RfA currently entails, and without requiring/suggesting their involvement in content or editor disputes. --Waldir ^talk 14:28, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

More discussion is definitely desired. It has helped me in amending and clarifying the proposal. It might be good to wait a week before moving the proposal discussion to a separate page. That is because the SignPost just pointed to the proposal here. Or I guess we could leave a pointer here to further discussion elsewhere. I don't know. See "New class of administrator" link from here: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-07-30/Discussion_report. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:21, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Creating 'mods' (Gah, are we turning WP into some kind of run-of-the-mill web forum?) will just give the hat collectors more rights to brag about and won't address any existing issues. A new attempt every four weeks to create some form of admin-lite is plainly ridiculous, as are the patronising replies to Beeblebrox who has accurately summed up the situation. We don't want a whole priesthood of mini sysops popping up everywhere like garden gnomes in the grass. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:55, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Beetlebrox said this has all been proposed before. It has not. The main part of the proposal concerns content dispute resolution. As far as I know my idea of creating a usergroup (call it what you want; admins, mods, facilitators, handholders, whatever) to decide content disputes (at least temporarily) on the article talk page has not been proposed before. The part concerning admin rights is totally secondary to me, and it is fine by me if all admin rights are removed. But as a matter of fact the last proposal for admins with different rights got more support votes than oppose votes.

• Oppose agree with the comments of User:Kudpung and User:Swatjester, among others. Content disputes will not be solved by granting wiki-powers. — MrDolomite • Talk 20:24, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose per others. Timeshifter seems to be under a significant misapprehension of how consensus works on Wikipedia, as his replies to Swatjester illustrate. On a separate note, I think it's about time to start closing admin-lite discussions as WP:PEREN. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 06:07, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

See my reply to the comment higher up by 2. This is not an admin-light discussion. It is mainly a content dispute mechanism. Swatjester is of the incorrect opinion that consensus determines content disputes in the end. That is incorrect. In many cases content disputes are never resolved. Oftentimes there are multiple solutions proposed, none with consensus. People wait out each other. People leave Wikipedia. A new crop of editors oftentimes ends up with similar content disputes concerning the same articles and topics. Even when consensus is reached at one point consensus is lost later. People canvas. It becomes more of a vote than consensus. POVs are inserted by groups. Disagreements are gamed by some editors finding an admin to impose WP:Edit warring arbitrarily on others. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:41, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose par my comments higher up in this proposal, which were not explicitly marked as an oppose. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 14:04, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Revised proposal. Non-admin mods to resolve content disputes

Note: The proposal with revisions is at the top of the thread here.

I struck out the admin parts in my proposal (see top of thread), and added an amendment that the main point of the proposal is content dispute resolution. Admin rights are no longer a part of this proposal. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:28, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

• comment, not specifically on the revised proposal. a couple of previous points: a) I have not read thoroughly, b) I am a former relatively active editor (some months in, some months out). I think content dispute management is very important to get the encyclopaedia going on smoothly and keep editors in. I not so sure that creating yet another role will help that much. As you say at some point, a fall-back voting system is probably needed. An argument for some formal voting system is time span considerations. It is currently relatively simple (though I have no data to support if it is common or not) to have a handfull of editors 'hijacking' a set of articles. Any time a random editor of two try to change it, they overrule with a consensus of 5 against 1 (or 2, or 3) supported on some guideline (of their own devise). (see: Defeat in detail). Some voting system that kept track over longer time spans could be helpful. Naturally needs a carefully thought technical solution, as the voting system could, should, be non-conventional and go beyond a simple head-count, possibly having weighted voting, depending on some factors related to editors (trust, seniority, ...), time (some decay over time, to allow change), etc.. Anyway, a simplified long-term RFC - and your proposal is somewhat leaning that way, no? - could be helpful- Nabla (talk) 22:54, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

The page you linked to, Defeat in detail, is a good description of a common tactic on Wikipedia. See also my last comment concerning other tactics in the previous talk section. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:55, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Your revised proposal seems totally unnecessary. I do not see the purpose of an additional class of editors to decide content disputes when in principle all editors have such power. Content disputes require consensus, and all editors have an equal say. Your proposal seems to be to formally endow some of the editors with the power; the current system goes more informally by relying on editors who in practice have the consent of the community for that particular topic. If someone who does not have such tacit acceptance closes one, their attempt at a close is normally ignored--even if the person happens to be an admin. So would a close by any formally appointed editor unless they have sufficient actual respect in the matter DGG ( talk ) 17:48, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. "Content disputes require consensus, and all editors have an equal say." That is the theory, but that is not what happens. See my previous replies. Mostly it is a waiting game as to who outlasts who. Or editors join the legions of editors who have stopped regularly editing Wikipedia articles. I think the gamesmanship (waiting games, etc.) would be greatly curtailed if moderators were involved early on. Right now there is very little moderation. Guidelines are not much moderation since they are interpreted in many ways, or ignored.

"If someone who does not have such tacit acceptance closes one,..." Well, a moderator has tacit acceptance since they have to be approved to become a moderator, and have to respect WP:NPOV to continue as a moderator. Otherwise, the moderator misconduct noticeboard will deal with them. So when editors in a content dispute ask moderators questions, especially about guideline interpretation, they have some assurance that the moderator knows something about what they are talking about. Many content disputes revolve around divergent POVs. Moderators will know that showing all significant viewpoints on a particular issue is the correct interpretation of WP:NPOV. Many content disputes can be settled by such simple understanding of the guidelines. But how are many editors going to find this out? --Timeshifter (talk) 21:18, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

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

I made the following request at WP:BOTR. It's simple maintenance to which nobody would complain if I did it manually, but someone's still objecting that I need to bother with a big discussion, so I've copied it here. Nyttend backup (talk) 13:36, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Many of the articles in Category:United States Supreme Court cases and its subcategories (all of which I've checked; there are no irrelevant subcategories, such as Category:American military personnel killed in the Gulf War being a subcategory of Category:Morocco) cover individual Supreme Court cases; almost all of these articles are entitled "PARTY1 v. PARTY2". One sometimes sees "PARTY1 v PARTY2" in ordinary writing, and it's easy to omit the punctuation after the "v". Could a bot go around and create redirects for all of these articles, using Virginia v West Virginia as a model? Nyttend (talk) 21:25, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support Seems sensible, though the search box would show these anyway. Johnbod (talk) 16:12, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
• Support don't see why not, and I don't think it needs a discussion here. Hut 8.5 20:21, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
• Of course. Also agree that discussion here shouldn't be needed. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 06:13, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
• Support and agree that this discussion is basically a waste of time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
• Support What's really troubled me (and no doubt I could find deeply buried in some long-forgotten archive) is why Wikipedia article and section titles are case-sensitive to begin with. The few advantages seem to vastly overwhelmed by the enormous disadvantages in wasted time, effort and frustration in trying to remember exactly how to capitalise (for example) New York City mayoral election, 1997. Some would capitalise all five words, some Mayoral but not election and some only New York. —— Shakescene (talk) 22:15, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

But this isn't a capitalisation issue — it's purely a matter of punctuation. Nyttend (talk) 01:25, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

AWB currently auto-adds the "wikify" tag to any article with fewer than three wikilinks (see user manual). This is generally fine, and quite helpful. What isn't helpful is auto-tagging one-line stubs which can't possibly contain more than one or two wikilinks. As a member of WP:WikiProject Wikify, I run into these a lot, and I have to waste a lot of time removing the tags (see, for example, Ñuble National Reserve, Herbert Brunnegger, Mike Conway (politician), and my personal favourite, Epitizide). This is extremely counter-productive, and it's even futile to de-tag the article, since it will only be re-tagged next time an AWB drone swoops past. I understand that Ryan Vesey is working on a way to hide these inappropriately-place templates without removing them (thus removing them from the backlog while ensuring they won't be re-tagged); it's absurd that we have to resort to this. A much simpler solution would be for AWB users (and bots) to stop auto-tagging stubs with "wikify". Of course, some stubs do need to be wikified, but in such cases the tag can be added manually.

A related issue is that the auto-tag feature also removes the wikify tag from any article with three or more wikilinks, even though (as the manual acknowledges) wikifying is a lot more than adding wikilinks. It entails all sorts of formatting/cleanup tasks, like adding or improving the lead, arranging section headers, adding/expanding infoboxes, etc. I've even seen the tag (quite rightly) attached to overlinked articles, so counting the wikilinks just isn't good enough to justify removing the tag.

That was going to be the extent of my rant, but I noticed just now that AWB also auto-adds the "stub" tag to any article with fewer than 300 characters, and removes it from any article with more than 500 characters. WP:STUB says: "There is no set size at which an article stops being a stub. While very short articles are likely to be stubs, there are some subjects about which very little can be written. Conversely, there are subjects about which a lot could be written, and their articles may still be stubs even if they are a couple of paragraphs long. As such, it is impossible to state whether an article is a stub based solely on its length, and any decision on the article has to come down to an editor's best judgement". This isn't my area, so I don't know if rampant mis-tagging of stubs is a problem, but I don't think AWB should be so flagrantly dismissing these guidelines.

These issues (or at least the first two issues) have been repeatedly raised at the AWB discussion board, but the people there don't seem convinced that there's a problem. That's why I'm bringing this here, to get a idea of the wider consensus. In short, I propose that:

1. AWB should not auto-tag stubs with "wikify" (stubs with zero wikilinks can still be tagged with "dead end")
2. AWB should not automatically remove the "wikify" tag from any article - this always requires a degree of editorial judgement
3. AWB should not automatically add or remove the "stub" tag - this is also a matter of judgement, to be decided on a case-by-case basis

I'll notify the AWB and WikiProject Wikify people about this, but I'd be interested to hear the opinions of otherwise uninvolved editors. DoctorKubla (talk) 07:34, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

On the Wikify tagging personally I agree. Frankly I never liked the Wikify tag anyway as the title itself is too vague and meaningless. It doesn't really lend anything useful to most articles and I wouldn't bat an eye if it got deleted one day.

I also tend to agree that most stubs don't need broad spectrum tags like cleanup, Wikify or expand. Its self explanatory in the stub assessment/stub tag. Same with B-class checklists but that's a different discussion. I think for this though we need a change of policy to enforce that for stubs, we don't add these vague spectrum tags.

On the Stub tagging I generally disagree although I could see bumping up the minimum threshold for AWB to remove the stub tag to a higher number. Maybe something like 750 or 1000. Remember though that the count doesn't include infobox's, categories, comments or a couple of other things so the 300 to me is a pretty good base I think to include the tag.Kumioko (talk) 07:45, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I only just started playing with AWB, but I really disliked the way it labelled a page a stub. It was removing the stub template from pages which essentially only had an introductory sentence and an infobox and a navbox. - jc37 07:49, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

On the topic of the Wikify tag, there are many things done through Wikification and a lot of pages that have been improved as a result. I would bat an eye if it was deleted. Ryan Vesey 13:23, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Re stubs - the limits of 300 characters (not words) and 500 words are designed to catch extreme cases where the article is definitely a stub and definitely not a stub. In the range between 300 characters and 500 words, AWB neither adds nor removes the stub tag, leaving it up to human editors to make the judgement. The numbers could be tweaked, of course, but in my 100,000+ AWB edits I've never received any complaints. If AWB/bots did not automatically remove the stub tag, who else would address the backlog of large articles with stub tags? -- John of Reading (talk) 08:03, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Re wikify - I agree that AWB should neither add nor remove the ((Wikify)) tag. I find this an annoying feature of the program; whenever it wants to add or remove the tag, I have to turn off the auto-tagger and re-process the page. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:03, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

The new version excludes infoboxes and drugboxes from character/word count and fixes this problem. See rev 8181. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:05, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

This means a stub tag will be removed if the page has more than 500 words apart from infoxes, drugboxes, persondata, categories and comments. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:06, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

This was not supposed to happen and I can fix this. Exclude wikify addition to very short articles. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:09, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Problems have been reported in Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#Removing_Dead_End_and_Wikify_templates_is_incorrect already and yesterday we had a developer discussion in order to reduce these problems. yesterday I also left a message at Template talk:Dead end about dead end. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:12, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Re wikify: Take also note that if the tag contains the parameter "reason" is not removed by AWB. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:50, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

New snapshot (rev 8207) fixes the infobox/drugbox count for wikify and stub: http://toolserver.org/~awb/snapshots/ -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:05, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

AWB technical issues should probably be brought up on the AWB pages. Shadowjams (talk) 09:06, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

We have brought up these technical issues many times. The AWB devs are generally too busy and spread too thin to deal with it. Ryan Vesey 13:23, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: Stopping AWB from adding and removing Wikify tags is an important first step. The program adds many unneccessary tags that backlog the project. Wikification is also much more complex than adding wiki links. It involves adding persondata, checking for copyvio, adding infobox, converting html, adding sections, etc. AWB cannot recognize those issues and I don't feel that the program should ever remove the tag. The reason parameter is fairly new and not used on a large number of the articles. Since we are discussing it here, I think another necessary step, that was previously denied by an AWB dev, is to have AWB add a reason parameter when it tags an article. The text that I proposed was ((Wikify|reason=Article has less than 3 wikilinks or the number of wikilinks is smaller than 0.25% of article's size. <small>Added using [[Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser|AWB]]</small>)) Ryan Vesey 13:23, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

The response to your feature request was "Please discuss & agree on the template talk page, then we'll do it. In particular cover whether the use of small tags is within usability guidelines." I suggest you update your request to provide a link to the discussion regarding the use of small tags. I hope your request is successful! GoingBatty (talk) 00:47, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Magioladitis, you're too quick for me!  :-) GoingBatty (talk) 00:56, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Our next step is to exclude stubs or pages with very few words from being tagged for wikify. I also can do the last thing proposed, to add a reason tag. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:34, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

As I mentioned above I think that some of Ryans examples should have the more specific related tag rather than the the generic Wikify tag used. As for the Persondata, since that is a bot action we might wanna ask Rj if he can run his bot and fix those again like you did with the Bio articles Magio. That will fix some of those issues. The HTML issues fall under checkwiki errors and IMO shouldn't be counted in this argument. Yobot was working on fixing stuff like this and a couple of users complained about them so if these are a problem (which I agree personally they should be fixed) then they need to be addressed separately so we can deal with them with the bot. Kumioko (talk) 14:04, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Magioladitis, that would be great. The primary reason for that is because it adds the article to Category:Articles that need to be wikified with reasons given. It allows Wikifiers to understand why it was tagged and deal with it more quickly. I was going to work on a parameter for ((Wikify)) that would hide it without removing it so AWB wouldn't re-add it on a short article, but that might not be necessary now. Ryan Vesey 14:07, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what to think of the fact that Category:Articles that need to be wikified with reasons given only has 163 articles. Does it mean people aren't using the reason parameter, or that those articles tagged with a reason are being cleaned up? GoingBatty (talk) 00:07, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: It appears that the definition for ((dead end)) was no links and ((wikify)) was only the number of links, and AWB was programmed accordingly. The definitions for the templates were changed, and now the AWB developers have to play catch up. In the future, it may be better to engage the AWB developers before making the changes. Should there be an AWB version of ((Twinkle standard installation)) to add to the template documentation pages as a reminder? GoingBatty (talk) 00:39, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: There don't appear to be any AWB bug reports related to the improper addition/removal of stub tags that have not been addressed. I find that Rjwilmsi and Magioladitis address most of my bug reports quickly - a much better response than I get from the big software companies that have lots of paid developers. They've recently been extremly prolific - making 110 fixes in the last 19 days! GoingBatty (talk) 00:39, 1 August 2012 (UTC) GoingBatty (talk) 00:39, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

The real question is: If we now have "reason" parameter and other parameters for wikify, why do we really need dead end? Or, we can switch the question and ask: Should wikify deal with wikilinks or leave this job to dead end? -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:41, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

rev 8210 Every time Wikify is added by AWB the will be a reason: "It needs more wikilinks. Article has less than 3 wikilinks or the number of wikilinks is smaller than 0.25% of article's size." Some more job has to been done to synchronise this new tweak with Multiple issues etc. most probably, wikify won't be able to merged into Multiple issues anymore. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:43, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

See Acute Inhalation Injury for an example of ((Wikify)) with a reason parameter inside ((Multiple issues)). GoingBatty (talk) 23:48, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

On DoctorKubla's third proposal, the question of AWB adding ((stub)) tags automatically: a large number of very small list articles (List of colonial governors in 1651 and other years) have recently been tagged as stubs by a bot which is delinking dates and then doing AWB autotagging. These have been around since 2005 and not tagged as stubs, and I believe lists should not be tagged as stubs: this is currently under discussion, but Category:Stubs is currently being overwhelmed by these lists which should, I believe, be tagged as ((expand list)). There's discussion at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#AWB_tagging_short_lists_as_stubs_-_should_add_.7B.7Bexpand_list.7D.7D and User_talk:Hmains#Lists_are_not_stubs. PamD 20:32, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I've notified Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting of this discussion, as that's where Stub experts/ enthusiasts / anoraks are to be found! PamD 20:38, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Apologies - the project had already been notified! PamD 07:13, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with DoctorKublas point that there is a degree of editor judgement needed in certain tags, including stub and wikify. I have no problem with a tool to make it easier for editors to do what they choose to do, but am more cautious of anything automatic. There are many 'short' articles, not just lists, that should not have a stub tag, and a few of these have recently had it automatically added by AWB. Combined with the fact that the specific tag it adds is not the most appropriate tag and needs to be corrected by other editors anyway, I would really like to see this turned off.

I was not aware until seeing this discussion that it also removed stub tags from 'long' articles - this worries me even more. One editor above mentions not having seen any complaints, and yet every article (outside the most recent batch) which has had ((stub)) automatically added has since had it removed by another editor, usually within a few days at most. We have no way (I know of) of examining such a list of articles automatically unstubbed to see if any need it re-added. I've certainly encountered stub articles with a massive character count but almost zero content - although this was usually due to huge mostly empty infoboxes and tables, which I understand AWB discounts. Is there anywhere to see a list of exactly what AWB does and doesn't count in that analysis? (eg picture captions, boilerplate explanatory footnotes, succession boxes). --Qetuth (talk) 09:02, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

The AWB general fixes page states:

• Removes ((stub)) if article has more than 500 words (comments, categories and persondata are excluded from word count).
• Appends ((stub)) if article has at most 300 characters (comments, categories, persondata, infoboxes and ((Drugbox)) are excluded from character count).

GoingBatty (talk) 15:55, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I also see: "Words in bulleted text are divided by 2 to avoid destubbing pages with big lists and little text" which may stop extensive bibliographies on otherwise empty author pages being destubbed. Perhaps the same could be done for tables? --Qetuth (talk) 04:48, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

To summarise a bit:

• Stubs AWB only deals with extreme cases of stub tagging/untagging and after logic improved by including perondata/infoboxes/chemboxes it seems there is no problem anymore.
• Wikify/Dead end there is an active discussion to change/remove wikify and/or dead end: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Wikify#No_more_wikify_template. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:54, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

There is also a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Stub#Can_lists_be_stubs.3F. This also may change the way AWB tags lists. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:12, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I was planning about something like "Featured WikiProject of the month". Featured WikiProjects will be the ones which have a good no. of members, have a specific goal, and is running for over a year. If anyone want to support, please direct;y write Support and those who oppose write oppose and submit. Dipankan ^{(Have a chat?)} 07:22, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

What would be the purpose of this exercise? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:09, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Would not help to build the encyclopedia or Wikipedia's community. Yet a clueless star-sewing campaign which will detract the attention from tasks really important. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:10, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Who's the audience for this? "Established editors" (presumably seeing in-project editing as more effective and productive than a drifting editor) or "New readers" (to encourage joining the community). Where would you be thinking of "featuring" them? I'm not interested enough to get on board it myself, but I wouldn't oppose this. It seems a lightweight way to build on a project structure we already have, and encouraging collaboration within the framework of the projects does seem like something that needs encouragement. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:35, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

The featuring criteria proposed seems really relative. For example, what is "a good number of members"? Do we count inactive members, and if not, how do we consider which user is retired and which one isn't? Do we count user who, for example, signed for wikiproject film when they registered, but then spent all their time in articles about videogames? Do we count the users that mantain the topic articles did not bother to sign for the wikiproject? And, besides, the mere number is not a good measurement of the work being actually done: a single very active user may do the same ammount of work than 10 casual users who make just three or four basic edits per day. Cambalachero (talk) 13:01, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Note there's already a project featured most weeks in The Signpost, e.g. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-08-06/WikiProject report. Anomie⚔ 17:07, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

You are hereby invited to comment on the proposal to promote Wikipedia:Official names to guideline status. See you there. --BDD (talk) 22:29, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest that all articles do get a Feedback section like the oneabout 5% of the Wikipedia articles already have. It is really useful and would in the long run probably benefit Wikipedias article standard.--BabbaQ (talk) 11:09, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

This fall, all articles will get this new feedback tool, called Article Feedback v5. See WP:AFT5 for more info. David1217 ^{What I've done} 17:08, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:36, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

The quest for get Wikipedia editors the sources they need is gaining momentum. Here's what's happening and what you can sign up for right now:

• Credo Reference provides full-text online versions of nearly 1200 published reference works from more than 70 publishers in every major subject, including general and subject dictionaries and encyclopedias. There are 125 full Credo 350 accounts available, with access even to 100 more references works than in Credo's original donation. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.
• HighBeam Research has access to over 80 million articles from 6,500 publications including newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines and encyclopedias. Thousands of new articles are added daily, and archives date back over 25 years covering a wide range of subjects and industries. There are 250 full access 1-year accounts available. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.
• Questia is an online research library for books and journal articles focusing on the humanities and social sciences. Questia has curated titles from over 300 trusted publishers including 77,000 full-text books and 4 million journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, as well as encyclopedia entries. There will soon be 1000 full access 1-year accounts available. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.

In addition to these great partnerships, you might be interested in the next-generation idea to create a central Wikipedia Library where approved editors would have access to all participating resource donors. It's still in the preliminary stages, but if you like the idea, add your feedback to the Community Fellowship proposal to start developing the project. Drop by my talk page if you have any questions. Now, go sign up! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 18:11, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I wish I could apply for these accounts, but my account is only eight months old (plenty of edits, though) . Oh well, maybe some will still be available in November. David1217 ^{What I've done} 23:56, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I think a method of creating a permanent link to discussion threads, that survives archiving, is well overdue. Links to topics on pages with a high turnover (either article talk pages, or, perhaps more often, pages to do with Wikipedia administration) have a very short life, and pretty soon are dead and useless. 86.179.4.43 (talk) 03:33, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I know that there is a bot that goes around and repairs at least some links, though I don't know on which pages. Chris857 (talk) 16:08, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I know ClueBot III does this when it archives a page. Anomie⚔ 20:30, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Oh, thanks, I wonder, then, why I fairly regularly encounter these broken links. Is it because some pages are archived by other methods? I think this is a very useful feature, so perhaps ClueBot III could be rolled out more widely? 86.129.16.51 (talk) 20:53, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Many pages use MiszaBot for archiving instead, which does not perform this fix. Anomie⚔ 21:09, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

This can be a big problem on Reference desk pages, where threads rarely stay current for more than a week, although they sometimes require some reflection, research & discussion, and are often referred to, either on the Reference Desk itself or elsewhere. Searching the original thread or answer isn't helped by the fact that the archive combines threads from all seven Reference desks. I think MiszaBot archives the Ref. desks. —— Shakescene (talk) 21:24, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Could MiszaBot be altered to also perform this? elektrikSHOOS (talk) 06:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

That would be nice. I hate it when I click on a section link, only to find that the section has been archived. I'll notify User:Misza13. David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:11, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I know that I'm not at WP:BOTR; I'm coming here to see if such a bot would be appreciated by the community before asking for its creation.

See the "Question about protection" section of WP:VP/T — an admin recently put temporary full protection on an article that had been indefinitely semiprotected, but due to the nature of protection, the page will be completely unprotected at the expiration of full protection. Since (at least right now) software doesn't permit any alternatives, we'll have to go back to the page and add semiprotection after the full protection expires (or cut short the time for full protection), but this requires that someone realise that it's time to semiprotect. What if we had a bot to post a notice at WP:AN to remind admins to protect pages like this? The bot could have a page in its userspace where someone could list pages that would need protection and times; the bot could be programmed always to notify WP:AN a certain number of minutes before the protection was needed. Because I'm asking only for a notification bot, not a protection bot, we wouldn't need the bot to be an admin, and the list page wouldn't need to be protected. Nyttend (talk) 15:37, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

• Support I take it as obvious that the best approach would be a change tot he software, but this is a temporary measure, until such changes are made. Sounds like a good idea to me.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:07, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
• Support Seems fairly uncontroversial. David1217 ^{What I've done} 17:18, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

User:ItsZippy has filed a bug. David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:09, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

A wall of shame/fame for COI editing to publicize good/bad COI examples that will encourage better behavior and educate folks one example at a time.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by King4057 (talk • contribs) 17:22, July 20, 2012‎ (UTC)

Hmm, interesting idea. It might help cut down on promotional edits and help Wikipedia work together with companies (which we haven't been doing well). David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:36, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Interesting idea. Why don't you go ahead and create it? After it has a few examples, you'd have some basis to discuss whether it should exist on its own or be linked to from the guidelines. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi Wikimedia!

The world is very lucky that Wikipedia exists. I am using it for years on a daily basis.

However, there is one thing bugging me for a quite some time now and I would like to suggest an idea how to improve Wikipedia and even lift it's usability a bit higher.

I'm a native German but read also very often the English articles about a topic. I guess I can call myself a common user. However, if I use the keyword search of the German Wikipedia only German articles are presented to me. That is ok. But if there is no existing article I would like to see immediately if there is one existing in the English Wikipedia. At the moment I have to change the language and search again for the English article what is bugging me because it happens quite often.

I hope you got my point. I would like to see in which language an article might exist that currently not existing in my German (or any other non-English) language.

I guess I am looking for a recommender that suggests certain English articles to my German keyword (which is quite often a word used in English language as well if its not existing in the German Wikipedia).

May be one way to implement this feature is to do an automatically translation of my German keyword using a free translator and then setting up a new wikipedia.org keyword search with it. May be even synonyms could be used.

I think since the most people using Wikipedia are bi-lingual a mojority of users would like Wikipedia to recommend similiar articles in other languages or at least in English language if they exist.

That would be really awesome!

Maybe you can give me some feedback on my idea and if you like it. If you have any more questions feel free to ask!

Best regards, Robert

There are many tools for similar purposes already. See Help:Searching and Wikipedia:Tools#Searching for starters.

For your purpose, http://vs.aka-online.de/globalwpsearch/ might be the best choice. Modifying the main WP searchbox isn't an easy sell. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:31, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Not sure whether the following workarounds might help:

If you know the exact title of the article that you want to check the existence of in another wiki, simply type the title with the interwiki prefix in the search box. It will take you to the relevant page (or to a "create new article" page on the specified wiki if no such article exists, which includes a link to search for articles on that wiki containing the term).

For example, in dewiki, you could type en:highway in the seach box to jump to the English article; or, in enwiki, you could type de:autobahn to jump to the German article.

Unfortunately, to force a search without jumping directly to any matching article, you would need to use the search page prefix and punctuation to confound the automatic redirection. For example, en:special:search/+highway or de:spezial:suche/+autobahn – not so easy to type, but perhaps quicker than navigating there by other means. Or of course you could use Google to search any wikipedia: autobahn site:wikipedia.org

— Richardguk (talk) 21:01, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I feel that these articles already do not meet the GNG and already fall under NOT and especially INDISCRIMINATE. However due to FART some people have their personal lives overeported giving them UNDUE WEIGHT for the most fatuous or trivial events in their lives and this could lead to thousands of articles such as Lady Gaga on Twitter. A recent Village Pump proposal led to a broad consensus that X on Twitter or X on Facebook articles are universally inappropriate but that (with a higher bar than usual) Communications of X, Social Media usage of X, or Public Relations of X may meet the requirements of an article but that they must meet a higher standard than just V RS and "'technical'-GNG" passage. Other unlikely but easy referenced articles could be Stamp Collections of Thomas Jefferson or Shoe Collection of Ms. Marcos, but these belong on the parent article not in their own space. Twitter accounts or YouTube accounts of people that are already independently notable is honestly hyperbole. This should not preclude articles about freestanding accounts unassociated with a public figure however.

• Therefore I ask simply should Wikipedia:Not be codified to specifically exclude cross referencing articles?
• Endorse, per aboveLuciferWildCat (talk) 19:26, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
• [what is this i don't even] — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 23:02, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
• Please refer to Wikipedia:VPP#Appropriateness_of_.22X_on_Twitter.22_.28or_similar.29_articles where this issue has been discussed, though not yet codified. --MASEM (t) 23:07, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
• Endorse - seems like common sense, if we are to retain any concept whatsoever of what constitutes encyclopedic content. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:37, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
• CommentThis is just going to get confusing...Proposer is looking for another way to accomplish what this, this and that have not. Darryl from Mars (talk) 01:21, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
• Just in case though, Oppose, because I rather like having Correspondence_of_Charles_Darwin, and this proposal is far from being well-formed enough to justify having it explicitly ignore notability. Darryl from Mars (talk) 01:26, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
• Endorse with the caveat that topics that have been covered in published books or academic journal articles (which I assume is true of Darwin's correspondence) be excluded from the exclusion, i.e. that these established subjects not be affected by this expansion of WP:NOT. We already have a NOTNEWS policy, and this is simply strengthening it against some rather absurd AFDs. Nyttend backup (talk) 13:51, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose I'd rather deal with these on an individual basis rather than have this instruction creep getting in the way. There are situations where these are appropriate and this decision, even with a caveat, would lead to more of those being deleted. Ryan Vesey 14:03, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
• Endorse, with the general principle that the occasional exception is warranted (Barack Obama may be one such, since his campaign Twitter usage may well be the subject of scholarly study, not just entertainment mags, Darwin is another for much the same reason). That should be the general rule—if the "pop culture" stuff has only entertainment/news rags as references, it does not need its own article. I would bet you I can find "sufficient" sourcing for Wardrobe of Celebrity X or Dining Habits of Celebrity Y, but those are not appropriate for an encyclopedia. We don't need to do a spinout article every time the gossip mags decide to hyperfocus on yet one more mundane aspect of some celebrity's life. Now if it's actually been the subject of significant scholarly study or the like beyond the tabloid flavor of the week, that might be something to consider. There's a lot of cleanup necessary here, and we need to make sure we put a bright line down stating the answer is usually "No, no, no, no, and where did you come up with that????" Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 14:07, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
• As far as I can tell from the description above, Homosexuality and religion sounds like a "cross-referencing article", and therefore I oppose this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:29, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Not really, unless Homosexuality is a pop icon, and the article in question is about his religious views. ~ PonyToast...§ 22:07, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• Comment I believe I made it very clear that topics that are scholarly or academic in nature are clearly the exception to this and that furthermore this is really a focus on piggy backing a non-notable aspect to one that is such as "Religion and Myspace" (instead of Religious use of Social Media) or "Homosexuality and Speedos" (instead of "Fashion of LGBT Americans" or "Cultural Anthropology of Japanese lesbians and gays". Basic Cross Referencing is lazy and often overly specific and dismissive of the broad educational value of a wider cosmovision, a perfect example is how Barack Obama on Twitter is now Barack Obama on social media, something that is relevant as to his usage of the medium to advance politically similarly to previous presidential adoptions of radio, television, or cable tv.LuciferWildCat (talk) 05:36, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose per Ryan Vesey. I usually find these articles NN and vote to delete, but I don't think we need to add to our growing list of rules for them, and I know that some are well-sourced and pass the GNG. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 22:07, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

This page in a nutshell: A minor change to the software to add a box so editors can automatically notify relevant parties would reduce failed notifications. A more ambitious option would help direct posts to the right notice board.

Many users need to make a report to one of the noticeboards. Many of the newer editors, and even some veterans manage to miss one of the critical steps--notification of the involved parties. This sometimes happens out of ignorance, but sometimes the editor is interrupted after adding the report, and doesn't do so immediately. This is a perfect task for a computer.

Simple solution

Whenever a user currently clicks on the link to start a new discussion thread, the usual edit window is presented, with a field for the subject and a field for the body. A better approach would intercept the request, and posts three fields:

1. Subject
2. Main text
3. Notify list

The third item would be a box in which one can enter the name of the relevant user. Each item you enter one, a new box is added, so you can add as many parties as needed. When you are done, click save page as usual, which will fail (once) with a message if you haven't identified a name. The message would say something like "At least one user name must be entered". (There may be legitimate reasons for not using this feature; the first time you try to post it will fail will a message, but if you click Save Page again it will work.) If a name or names have been entered, the thread is created as usual, and each of the names received a notification simultaneously, including a link to the section.

There are obviously some details to work out regarding the form design. This doesn't solve all problems, an editor may need to notify two users, and only lists one, but it will eliminate the vast majority of notification errors.

Ambitious solution

One other common problem at ANI is editors who post there when they really should be posting elsewhere.

When you click the link to add a new section, there are links to bring you to other noticeboards. While that option is used someimes, it is often not used. Almost every day, someone posts to ANI about a matter that belongs elsewhere. In some cases, editors may be deliberately posting at the wrong noticeboard because ANI has more eyes, but that is an abuse of process. Under the present setup, the editor can claim they missed the notice at the top. We know that editors miss notices in big, bold red, and I confess I don't always pay attention to the notices at the top of the page, so I can't fault editors too much. The solution is to make it:

• Easier to post to the correct location
• Harder to post to the wrong location.

I envision that clicking the new section button would be intercepted, and instead of simply two boxes, one for the subject and one for the text, the editor would be presented with four boxes. The first would contain radio buttons, such as:

• BLP
• 3RR or Edit warning

...

• Arbcom ruling
• Dispute resolution
• Other

If any of the first entries are selected, the text next to the entry will change to "This report will be filed at the BLP/3RR/.../Arcom ruling/Dispute resolution/ANI noticeboard"

Then there would be an entry box for subject, one for the test, and one as above, to enter user names. When the user hits page page, the entry will be posted to the relevant board and the editor will be left at that board. Only if the user affirmatively selects the last entry "Other" will the post go to ANI. This means the user has to affirmatively state that the issue is not one of the other items, and they can do so with a single mouse click. They cannot claim they didn't see the list as they can only post of they affirmatively choose from the list. We should debate whether there is a default, but it should not default to the "Other" entry. My first choice is to leave it blank and require that the user pick one. It isn't hard.

This process will help drive the posts to the right noticeboard, at almost no cost to the editor, and major savings because there will be fewer requests to take it tot he right board. This will help newer editors, who may feel that an issue needs admin attention, and know that ANI exists, but aren't aware of some of the other boards.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:00, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Why not customize the talkback feature of Twinkle in the interim to include the various notification templates in addition to the simple tb? It's probably an easy option to address your third point until something that's more elaborate can be worked out. —SpacemanSpiff 09:00, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Twinkle already does have notifications for WP:AN, WP:AN3, WP:ANI, WP:COIN, WP:DRN, and WP:WQA, under "TB" and then "Noticeboard notification". Suggestions for more can go to WT:TW. David1217 ^{What I've done} 17:15, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

What is the context required for making ANI show up as I have never noticed it. The only one of those that I have seen is ARV, and TB if I'm on someones talk page. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 19:00, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't ever noticed the AN and ANI notification under TB. I bet I'm not the only one. My concern is that one still has to go to multiple places: the notice board and the various talk pages, when it could be handled in one edit. Second, I'm not sure how many editors are regular users of Twinkle. It is still the case that people fail to notify every day, and my proposal would virtually eliminate that problem. --SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:25, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Ive just boldly created International sports calendar 2012 (also need help populating it) akin to the national electoral calendar and terrorist attacks pages per year. I proposed a Wikipedia_talk:In_the_news#Permanent_stickies for ITN so as to lie with the permanenet recent deaths (and more notable). People are welcome to comment/add to that page, and or suggest somethign here.Lihaas (talk) 03:23, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

This idea has been in my head for years, but I never got around to putting it forward. It was inspired by several essays which disagree (such as WP:INSPECTOR and WP:BUILDER). Sometimes we agree with an essay, but for different reasons, or disagree with essays. I believe it would be nice for authors to be able to easily mark which essays they are agreeing or disagreeing with. For this I suggest concurring and dissenting essay templates which, like concurring opinions and dissenting opinions, show support or dissent for various reasons. A mockup of the template for concurring essays can be found here though I am not sure if I put it together correctly. One such essay I recently put together can be found here. I would greatly appreciate feedback on this subject. ~ PonyToast...§ 19:22, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

As an addendum, i realize that many essays already do this via cross-links. This would just offer a template specifically for this purpose, for those people who (like me) sometimes spend an afternoon reading Wikipedia essays. ~ PonyToast...§ 19:29, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Essays, and particularly the /Templates subpage. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 08:29, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

The paragraph entitled Criticism and its Controverses equivalent in the French article show significant disparities. The former addresses the scholarly misunderstanding of the ancient Games by Coubertin, while the later explores his unsavory political positions, notably his admiration for Hitler and ensuing glorification of the Nazi regime. I believe a translation of that paragraph would be a worthy addition to his English biography. Thank you. Président (talk) 16:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

This is an issue for discussion on the article's talk page at talk:Pierre de Coubertin. Please start a discussion there. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:30, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

There is a thread proposing whether we should use Top X lists to determine notability for a video game character if it has significant coverage from a reliable source at WT:VG/GL. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:43, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

"BLPPROD"-like modification?

I guess that the original proposal isn't going to be implemented in the nearest future. The main objections seem to be related to possibility to fix such articles. But some of them would indicate a weaker opposition to a "non-speedy" proposal (for example, "[...] the lack of one isn't a problem for discussions or for wait-a-week-before-deletion, but it is for shoot-on-sight." of "Elektrik Shoos"). So, I would like to "repropose" the modification somewhat similar to Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people:

1. Obvious (that is, clearly bad) machine translated articles (and other new articles of such bad quality that they cannot be distinguished from such machine translations - in a sense, "failing a Turing test") are to be marked with some tag.
2. The tag should say that:
   1. It is not to be removed unless the article is cleaned up to the point that (at least) it wouldn't be an obvious machine translation any more.
   2. Anyone who can write at least a short stub is encouraged to do so and remove the previous text (and the tag).
3. If nothing gets done with the article for, let's say, a month, it gets deleted.

Maybe it would be more agreeable? Perhaps later, after some time (maybe a year or two), we would be able to collect some data: how many machine translations have been detected, how many were fixed by writing from scratch, how many were fixed by cleanup, how many were "fixed" by a bad cleanup..? Then the right course of action might become clearer. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 19:04, 17 August 2012 (UTC)