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<noinclude>{{village pump page header|Idea lab|The '''idea lab''' section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Misplaced Pages issues can be incubated, for later submission for ] discussion at ]. Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas. <br />''Before creating a new section, please note'': <noinclude>{{short description|Section of the village pump where new ideas are discussed}}{{village pump page header|Idea lab|The '''idea lab''' section of the ] is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Misplaced Pages issues can be incubated, for later submission for ] discussion at ]. Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas. <br />''Before creating a new section, note'':
* Discussions of '''technical''' issues belong at ]. * Discussions of '''technical''' issues belong at ].
* Discussions of '''policy''' belong at ]. * Discussions of '''policy''' belong at ].
* If you're ready to make a '''concrete proposal''' and determine whether it has consensus, go to the ]. Proposals worked out here can be brought there. * If you're ready to make a '''concrete proposal''' and determine whether it has consensus, go to the ]. Proposals worked out here can be brought there.
''Before commenting, note'':<br /> ''Before commenting, note'':<br />
* This page is ''not'' for ] ]. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them. * This page is ''not'' for ] ]. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
* Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through ], and ].<!-- Villagepumppages intro end -->|WP:VPI|WP:VPIL|WP:VPD}}__NEWSECTIONLINK__<!-- * Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through ].
Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for two weeks.<!-- Villagepumppages intro end -->|WP:VPI|WP:VPIL}}__NEWSECTIONLINK__<!--

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The aim of the '''] (idea lab)''' is to encourage the preliminary incubation of new ideas in a "non-polling" environment. When you have a new idea, it is not mandatory that you post it here first. However, doing so can be useful if you only have a general conception of what you want to see implemented, and would like the community's assistance in devising the specifics. Once ideas have been developed, they can be presented to the community for consensus discussion at ].

The formation of this page, and the question of its purpose and existence, are the subjects of discussion on the ]. Direct all comments on those topics there.
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== The prominence of parent categories on category pages ==
-->


The format of category pages should be adjusted so it's easier to spot the parent categories.
== Cross checking categories ==


Concrete example:
I find myself often wanting to check for things which fall into multiple categories, for instance I recently wanted to look for RPG's on the Sega Master System; the ] article doesn't show genres however. What I would like to be able to do is check for games which are in both ] and ] at once. Or let's say I was looking for painters born in 1897 in Britain, then I'd like to be able to bring up a list somehow of people who are simultaneously in the Painters category, the people born in 1897 category, and people born in Britain category.


I happen to come across the page:
What I'd like to now is: is there currently a way to do this?(a feature or gadget that I'm unaware of), would anybody else be interested in a feature like this? what would be required to implement something like this?] (]) 21:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
]
: ] is what you want. '''Yoenit''' (]) 23:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
::Thank you :) ] (]) 00:32, 23 January 2012 (UTC)


I can see the Subcategories. Great. I can see the Pages in the category. Great. No parent categories. That's a shame --- discovering the parent categories can be as helpful as discovering the subcategories.
:::''Soapbox time'': Time for me to get on my virtual soapbox and once again say that the entire ''category mentality'' needs to be rethought. As is, the categories are assigned "at will" by editors, just like content. That is done with total disregard for a rich base of research on ]. While content is subject to ] and ] there seem to be no requirements for category assignment apart from an "it looks good to me" assessment by users. Some of the early success of Yahoo came from their ontology design, all carefully hand crafted with much effort. I have for long wished that Misplaced Pages would use some formal, carefully thought-out basis such as ]'s ontology, given that it was a serious Princeton project, and not a random design. As is, the Misplaced Pages category structure is the wild, wild west of scholarship... I do not expect it to change soon, but given enough soapboxing, it may eventually edge that way. ] (]) 17:26, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
::::Consider ]. --User:Ceyockey (<small>'']''</small>) 20:06, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
::::In addition, some categories would not need to exist if intersection was integrated more tightly. Why have a separate ] or another intersection if you have ] and ]. To make this work, it would be important to provide an easy way to query. This would probably need to include both intersection categories that just query the underlying ones, and an ability to do ad hoc queries. This has been discussed before, but I don't have a link. ] - ] 05:23, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


Actually, the parent categories are there (well, I think they are --- I'm not sure because they're not explicitly labelled as such). But I don't notice them because they're in a smaller font in the blue box near the bottom of the page:
== Redirect procedure for non-notable articles ==
Categories: Water | Chemical processes | Technology by type


I think the formatting (the typesetting) of the parent categories on category pages should be adjusted to give the parent categories the same prominence as the subcategories. This could be done by changing:
At the moment, often when New Page Patrolling, if one comes across an article which is not notable, is can be tagged for speedy deletion, PRODed, or nominated at AfD. There are, however, a number of cases where deletion is not the best option. A recurring example is articles on songs which are themselves not notable but should instead be redirected to the artist's article (when one exists). The problem is that these non-notable articles are often created by inexperienced users who are not familiar with our policies on notability (and, when appropriate, on songs). With all other articles, a deletion discussion can be initiated, which will result in a more permanent solution. However, with redirects, such discussions are much harder to have (and attracting attention to them is very difficult), so the article creator can often just revert the redirect. This can lead to a variety of problems, including edit wars, the retention of non-notable articles, and the use of AfD to settle these disputes. I therefore think that some kind of process in which an editor can nominate an article for redirection, in a central place (similar to how AfDs work) would be beneficial. This is because it would allow wider participation in these issues and deliver a more decisive result.
Categories: Water | Chemical processes | Technology by type
to:
Parent categories: Water | Chemical processes | Technology by type
and increasing the size of the font of `Parent categories', or, perhaps better, by having the parent categories typeset in exactly the same way as the subcategories. ] (]) 22:21, 22 December 2024 (UTC)


:Parent categories are displayed on Category: pages in exactly the same way that categories are displayed in articles. ] (]) 04:26, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
I am proposing this here because I can foresee potential problems. Firstly, the procedure which is used would need to be rigid enough to deliver decisive decisions, but flexible enough to perhaps allow speedy redirects, or something similar. In additions (and perhaps more importantly), this would need to be done in a way which does not bite new users; the majority of the users who create these non-notable articles are inexperienced, but good-faith editors who want to improve the encylcopedia. I'm hoping to get feedback and suggestions here, before I put the proposal to the community. Thank you. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 17:49, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
::The purpose of an article page is to give a clear exposition of the subject. Having a comprehensive presentation of the categories on such a page would be clutter --- a concise link to the categories is sufficient and appropriate.
::The purpose of a category page is to give a comprehensive account of the categories. A comprehensive presentation of the categories would not clutter the subject (it is the subject).
::Therefore, I do not expect the parent categories to be presented the same on article and category pages --- if they are presented the same, that only reinforces my opinion that some change is necessary. ] (]) 20:15, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
:::I think the purpose of a category page is to help you find the articles that are in that category (i.e., ''not'' to help you see the category tree itself). ] (]) 21:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
::::Is there any research on how people actually use categories? —] (]) 21:48, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::I don't think so, though I asked a WMF staffer to pull numbers for me once, which proved that IPs (i.e., readers) used categories more than I expected. I had wondered whether they were really only of interest to editors. (I didn't get comparable numbers for the mainspace, and I don't remember what the numbers were, but my guess is that logged-in editors were disproportionately represented among the Category: page viewers – just not as overwhelmingly as I had originally expected.) ] (]) 22:43, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
::::::I'm fine with parent categories being displayed the same way on articles and categories but I think it's a problem that parent categories aren't displayed at all in mobile on category pages, unless you are registered and have enabled "Advanced mode" in mobile settings. Mobile users without category links probably rarely find their way to a category page but if they do then they should be able to go both up and down the category tree. ] (]) 15:39, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
::::Am I missing something? Is there a way of seeing the category tree (other than the category pages)?
::::If I start at:
::::https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Contents#Category_system
::::... following the links soon leads to category pages (and nothing else?). ] (]) 20:20, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::I'd start with ] (). ] (]) 20:49, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
::::::You can click the small triangles to see deeper subcategories without leaving the page. This also works on normal category pages like ]. That category also uses (via a template) {{tag|categorytree}} at ] to make the "Category tree" box at top. ] (]) 20:59, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
::Now there are three words I would like to see added to every category page. As well as `parent' prefixing `categories' in the blue box (which prompted this discussion), I would also like `Category tree' somewhere on the page with a link to the relevant part of the tree (for example, on:
::https://en.wikipedia.org/Category:Water_technology
::... `Category tree' would be a link to:
::https://en.wikipedia.org/Special:CategoryTree?target=Category%3AWater+technology&mode=categories&namespaces=
::).
::I can only reiterate that I think I'm typical of the vast majority of Misplaced Pages users. My path to Misplaced Pages was article pages thrown up by Google searches. I read the articles and curious to know how the subject fitted into wider human knowledge, clicked on the category links. This led to the category pages which promised so much but frustrated me because I couldn't find the parent categories and certainly had no idea there was a category tree tool. This went on for years. Had the three additional words been there, I would have automatically learned about both the parent categories and the category tree tool, greatly benefitting both my learning and improving my contributions as an occasional editor. Three extra words seems a very small price to pay for conferring such a benefit on potentially a huge fraction of users. ] (]) 03:43, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
:::I think it would be relatively easy to add a link to ] to the "Tools" menu. I don't see an easy way to do the other things. ] (]) 07:33, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
::::It's possible to display "Parent categories" on category pages and keep "Categories" in other namespaces. The text is made with ] in both cases but I have tested at ] that the message allows a namespace check. Compare for example the display on ] and ]. ] (]) 18:01, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::How much evidence of community consensus do you need to make that change here? ] (]) 19:16, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::I've looked at what you've done (and hopefully understood). MediaWiki:Pagecategories puts some of the words in the blue box at the bottom of all category pages. But what code makes the category pages (what code calls MediaWiki:Pagecategories)? I think the changes I'm suggested should be made to that calling code... ] (]) 23:35, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::Is the answer to your question "]"?
::::::Every page has certain elements. You can see which ones are used on any given page with the ], e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/Category:Water_technology?uselang=qqx ] (]) 01:58, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::I looked at the MediaWiki Help and Manual. How the formatting of namespaces is controlled might be discussed somewhere, but, at the very least, it's not easy to find (I didn't find it). I've requested this be addressed (https://www.mediawiki.org/Help_talk:Formatting#The_formatting_of_namespaces) but, thus far, no one has volunteered.
:::::::Returning to the issue here, my inference is that `normal' Misplaced Pages editors would not be able to implement the changes I'm suggesting (adding the word `parent' and a link to the category tree) assuming the changes were agreed upon. I therefore also conclude that the changes I'm suggesting do need to go to Village_pump_(proposals). Do you agree? ] (]) 23:29, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::::@] already worked out how to do this change. Go to ] and look for the words "]:" at the bottom of the page. If that's what you want, then the technical end is already sorted. ] (]) 00:12, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::You are right that PrimeHunter's solution works but (not wishing to criticize PrimeHunter in any way --- I'm grateful for their input) I don't think it's the right way to do it. To explain: When an editor adds a section to an article, the edit box is initially blank. There is no code to specify e.g. the font, the size of the font, the colour of the font, the indentation from the margin, etc. These things must be specified somewhere but they are hidden from the editor. And that's a good feature (it enables the editor to do their work without having to wade through a whole heap of code specifying default formatting which isn't relevant to them). PrimeHunter's solution goes against that principle --- it's adding formatting code to the editor's box. You might argue that it's only a very small piece of code, but, if changes are routinely made in this way, over time the small pieces of code will accumulate and the editor's boxes will become a mess. ] (]) 21:00, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::. PrimeHunter has never edited that page. It does not add any code to the editor's box. ] (]) 21:12, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::::Would a simpler cat page be easier for you to look at? Try ] or ] instead. All of the cats on that whole wiki are showing "Parent categories" at the bottom of the page. ] (]) 21:18, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::::Agreed. And (I think you already understand this) that is because PrimeHunter's edit of testwiki:MediaWiki:Pagecategories affects all pages on https://test.wikipedia.org.
::::::::::::Comparing:
::::::::::::https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Category:Misplaced Pages&action=edit
::::::::::::and:
::::::::::::https://test.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Category:Misplaced Pages&action=edit
::::::::::::...adds weight to two of my previous comments:
::::::::::::* The test.wikipedia page has this text:
::::::::::::{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Category|Parent categor|Categor}}{{PLURAL:$1|y|ies}}: Root category
::::::::::::...at the bottom of the edit window (my apologies --- it's not actually in the edit window) --- this is not helpful for novice editors --- they could be confused and/or deterred by it --- it should be hidden from them.
::::::::::::* The en.wikipedia page has nothing analogous to the just mentioned text, suggesting that PrimeHunter's solution might not actually work in en.wikipedia.
::::::::::::] (]) 23:59, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
{{outdent}}
If editors can't see the list of categories that the page is in, how will they add or remove the categories?


On the testwiki page, the example has only one category, so this is what you see in wikitext:
:This already exists. Your desired noticeboard for these discussions is located at ]. Your speedy redirect is called boldly ]ing the pages.
<pre>
:It is relatively rare for a new user to revert a redirect, especially if the merge is done in a way that ]s the information they wanted to add. ] (]) 17:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
]
</pre>
The analogous text in the en.wikipedia page you link is this:
<pre>
]
]
]
]
]
]
</pre>


I thought your concern was about what readers see. You said "But I don't notice them because they're in a smaller font in the blue box near the bottom of the page: Categories: Water | Chemical processes | Technology by type".
== Welcome to Misplaced Pages: Now read WP:V and WP:RS ==


Now you're talking about a completely different thing, which is what you see when you're trying to change those parent categories. ] (]) 02:10, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
The current, standard welcome message says:
:<small>The "pre" formatting doesn't appear to play well with <code>:::</code> formatting. ] (]) 02:12, 21 January 2025 (UTC)</small>
:* The five pillars of Misplaced Pages, How to edit a page, Help pages, Tutorial, How to write a great article, Manual of Style
:Sorry about that.
:To begin again, I think it would be a good idea if all category pages had:
:* a heading `Parent categories' similar to `Subcategories' (the current `Categories' in the blue box is ambiguous and too inconspicuous).
:* a small link near the bottom of the page, the link having text `Category tree' and target the category's entry in the category tree.
:I don't have the technical competence to make either of these changes. Also, given that they would affect every category page (which is a large part of the encyclopedia), before making the changes it would be prudent to check others agree (or, at least, that there is not strong opposition).
:So how to make progress? (It would be great if a Wikipedian more experienced than myself would pick it up and run with it.) ] (]) 23:46, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
::We currently have something like this:
::{{box|]: ], ], etc.|border color=lightgray}}
::I think we can get this changed to:
::{{box|]: ], ], etc.|border color=lightgray}}
::I do not think we can realistically get this changed to:
::{{fake heading|Parent categories}}
::], ], etc.
::Do you want to have the middle option, or is the third option the only thing that will work for you? ] (]) 00:06, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
:::The middle option is definitely a step in the right direction so if you could implement it that would be great.
:::With regard to the third option (and also the link to the category tree), maybe the desirability of these could be put forward for discussion at a meeting of senior Wikipedians (and if they are deemed desirable but difficult to implement maybe that difficulty of implementation could also be discussed --- if the MediaWiki software does not allow desirable things to be done easily, it must have scope for improvement...)
:::Thank you for your assistance. ] (]) 19:55, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
::::We don't have meetings of senior Wikipedians. The meetings happen right here, and everyone is welcome to participate.
::::I'll go ask the tech-savvy volunteers at ] if one of them would make the change to the middle setting. ] (]) 20:11, 22 January 2025 (UTC)


=== Break ===
Now, I can not remember how many times I have had to tell new users to read ] (or ]) as well as ] and not use low quality self-published web sites, etc.
:::::::::::Perhaps I don't understand what PrimeHunter has done. It's hard for me to follow: If I explore the https://en.wikipedia.org domain, I find that one of PrimeHunter's references (https://en.wikipedia.org/MediaWiki:Pagecategories) has been deleted, while, if I explore the https://test.wikipedia.org domain, I find that I cannot see what's in the edit box of one of the pages (https://test.wikipedia.org/Category:4x4_type_square) because `only autoconfirmed users can edit it'.
:::::::::::Given that https://en.wikipedia.org/MediaWiki:Pagecategories has been deleted, maybe PrimeHunter's solution only works in the testsite? ] (]) 23:14, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::::PrimeHunter's solution has only been created . Nobody has ever posted it here.
::::::::::::You do not need to be autoconfirmed to ''see'' what's in the edit box. You just need to scroll down past the explanation about not being able to ''change'' what's in the edit box.
::::::::::::That said, I suggest that you stop looking at the complicated page of 4x4 type square, and start looking at a very ordinary category page like ], because (a) it does not have a bunch of irrelevant stuff in it and (b) anyone can edit that cat page. ] (]) 23:33, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Maybe I'm naive, but I think it must be easy to do the two things I'm suggesting. There is a piece of code somewhere that takes the content entered by a Wikipedian using `Edit' and creates the category page. It's just a case of modifying that code to add one word and two words which are also a link. It must be similar to changing a style file in LaTeX or a CSS in html.
::::Again, maybe I'm naive, but it would seem to me appropriate to move this discussion to Village pump (proposals). Any objection? ] (]) 21:07, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::If @] is willing to make the change, then there's no need to move the discussion anywhere. ] (]) 23:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::We should still have an RFC before changing something for everyone, so a formal proposal sounds like a good idea. Otherwise it may be reverted on the opinion of one person. ] (]) 21:41, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::Do you personally object? Or know anyone who objects? ] (]) 03:45, 23 January 2025 (UTC)


== Pages that use multiple images for the main image need a "randomizer" ==
I think it would be a good idea to change that message to have WP:V and WP:RS in flashing neon colors the moment someone registers... Well maybe not flashing, but certainly in a prominent manner. ] (]) 09:00, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
:But how would that be relevant to those who come here to fix typos or splat vandalism? '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers''</span> 14:33, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
:By the way, it would be good to add to that notice that self-publishers such as ], ], ] and ] are not usable in Misplaced Pages. There are a few more and many users are unaware of this, and one needs to explain it to them again and again. Just takes up time, and should be a message upfront. ] (]) 18:48, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
::Most people have the commonsense not to use such sites. For those who do we should have a specific and relevant message explaining why that site is deprecated, perhaps it could be part of the editfilter. '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers''</span> 14:33, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
:I admire the intention, but I am not convinced that people will read them. Generally, if you give people a list of things to read before they start editing, they won't read them. I know that, when I started, I didn't read much and got stuck in. I made some silly mistakes, people helped me and then I read what I needed to, which is how I learnt (and still learn). The best thing we can do with helping new editors in this way is to allow them to make mistakes and then explain things to them and help them to fix it. Just throwing links to often very long policies and guidelines will put people off. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 16:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)


Lots of articles have main or primary images to show their topic but editors may be in dispute about which particular image best serves the article topic. For example, the ] article has had a number of different images to illustrate this topic, and they change from time to time.
== Free, globally distributed backup of all Misplaced Pages on Charity Engine grid ==


My thought is to have a list of images, one of which will appear on page load at random. That way, every time the page is reloaded, a single image from the list will show up as the main image. If there are only two, then it will flip back and forth, but there could be 10 images in the list. This lets more editors have a say in what shows without having too much conflict. ] (]) 03:12, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Charity Engine is a volunteer computing grid with a storage feature, based on advanced multi-level coding, in testing now. It uses the BOINC software suite.


:Would this be feasible from an accessibility standpoint? ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 03:48, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
The grid will maintain a constantly distributed backup of Misplaced Pages (as well as other large datasets) on thousands of volunteered home PCs. As the data is constantly replicated and replaced as various PCs join and leave the grid, it is almost impossible to destroy.
::If you mean having it work on without JS enabled, yes—just make the "default" behavior be to show all pictures. ] (]) 04:17, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
:It seems like this already exists over at ], but for some reason it's not enabled in mainspace (only on portals). I'd ask on the talk page for it to be enabled elsewhere (or you can modify the code to let it work elsewhere). ] (]) 04:30, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
:If all of the images are relevant, forcing reloads to see them all is silly. We need to illustrate articles in a way that works for readers, not just editors. —] (]) 05:55, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
::Usually, all of the images are already included in the article to illustrate the specific things they illustrate instead of the topic. But the infobox only has one image<br>To Hires: the usual way to solve this is {{tl|photo montage}}. ] (]) 15:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Another option worth considering is to go without an infobox image. —] (]) 17:54, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
:::My thought is that some pages may choose this route rather than a photo montage - it's simply another way to do a main photo. ] (]) 01:59, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::My intention is that a given reader be presented what whatever happens to be the "next" image when that page is loaded. it's not meant to be a series of images that will load/reload via a script while the rest of the page is static.
::A similar analogy is like the Disney ride for Star Tours: you get on the ride, and one of about 5 beginnings is the first part, which then seamlessly integrates with a second middle part, which could also be one of 4, and finally, the end has a similar number of endings - each time you go on the ride, you get a random mix of beginning/middle/end. I think that each time you get to a page, you could potentially see a different image. ] (]) 01:58, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
:This used to be done on ] with ]. ] (]) 07:46, 4 January 2025 (UTC)


== Implemeting "ChatBot Validation" for sentences of Misplaced Pages ==
Charity Engine usually charges for distributed storage and processing on its grid, but strongly supports the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation and will be providing the backup for free. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 01:36, 1 February 2012 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->


Hi, I propose to define a "Validation process" using Chatbots (e.g. ]) in this way:
== Biographical metadata ==
# The editor or an ordinary user, presses a button named "Validate this Sentence"
# A query named "Is this sentence true or not? + Sentence" is sent to ChatGPT
# If the ChatGPT answer is true, then tick that sentence as valid, otherwise declare that the sentence needs to be validated manually by humans.
I think the implementation of this process is very fast and convenient.
I really think that "ChatBot validation" is a very helpful capability for users to be sure about the validity of information of articles of Misplaced Pages. Thanks, ] (]) 10:34, 6 January 2025 (UTC)


:While it would certainly be convenient, it would also be horribly inaccurate. The current generation of chatbots are prone to hallucinations and cannot be relied on for such basic facts as what the current year is, let alone anything more complicated. ] (]) 10:48, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:<small>Originally posted at a template for discussion thread, but was off-topic there so posted here.</small>
::@] The question is
I'm making a plea here for help in improving the organisation of the listings of biographical articles. Several years ago now, I said it would be nice to be able to generate a single master database of all biographical articles on Misplaced Pages. That would help tremendously in updating both human name disambiguation pages (e.g. {{tl|hndis}}) and human surname ] pages such as ] (see {{tl|surname}}). For an example of the former, see the update I made at ]. I had been looking for information on that ] (without knowing his middle name) and though I knew his birth and death years and found his article that way, I had to add him to the human name disambiguation page myself. The point here is that I'm not aware of any systematic effort to keep such pages updated. It is not a trivial proposition (those with long memories will remember the massive ]), but could be automated or semi-automated if the following was done:
::{{Quote|Is Misplaced Pages hallucinations or ChatGPT is hallucinations?}}
*(1) Identify all existing biographical articles (i.e. ones about a single person's life story) and tag them accordingly. This would involve separating out the 'biographical' articles tagged by ] that are in fact group biographies (such as articles about music groups, families, siblings, saint pairs, and so on). Those group biographies will still contain ], but need to include a 'group biography' tag. Not sure how to handle cases where a person's name is a redirect (these are not common, but are not rare either).
::This type of validation (validation by ChatGPT) may be inaccurate for correctness of Misplaced Pages, but when ChatGPT declares that "Misplaced Pages information is Wong!", a very important process named "Validate Manually by Humans" is activated. This second validation is the main application of this idea. That is, finding possibly wrong data on Misplaced Pages to be investigated more accurately by humans. ] (]) 11:02, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
*(2) Ensure all such articles are accurately tagged with ] or some other 'surname' parameter (with the usual caveats about needing to be aware of guidelines in this area and correctly identifying what is the 'surname', which is not always easy and varies around the world, and how to treat people with only one name, and so on).
:::The issue is, ChatGPT (or any other LLM/chatbot) might hallucinate in both directions, flagging false sentences as valid and correct sentences as needing validation. I don't see how this is an improvement compared to the current process of needing verification for all sentences that don't already have a source. ] (] · ]) 11:13, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
*(3) Generate the masterlist/database to list all biographical metadata, including all data present in the ], in the categories, in the DEFAULTSORT tag, and in the ] template. This is the point where the data can be compared and cleaned up if necessary. But for now, the data of interest is the name.
:::If there was some meaningful correlation between what ChatGPT declares true (or false) and what is actually true (or false) then this might be useful. This would just waste editor time. ] (]) 11:15, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
*(4) Generate a similar database for set index and human name disambiguation pages such as ] and ] (different spelling to the one above, which brings up a slight problem in that some alternative spellings are rightly bundled together on one page, and some are not - this may make machine-identification of the right set index pages harder, but not impossible). Also, some are of the form "name (disambiguaton)" or "surname (surname)" or "surname (name)", and that can change over time as people move pages around, but there should be a non-trivial way to address this.
::::@]@] Although ChatGPT may give wrong answers, but it is very powerful. To assess its power, we need to apply this research:
*(5) From the alphabetical listing of all the biographical articles, identify lists of those with the same name and ensure the corresponding surname set index pages and human disambiguation name pages (if they exist) are updated at regular intervals, possibly by bot talk page notification with a list provided by the bot. The bot could generate suggested lists using a combination of the article title (for linking purpose), and the Persondata name, birth year, death year, and short description fields. I think a project took place at one time to keep set index name pages updated, and that might have used bots to generate lists, but I can't remember where that project was, how successful it was, and if it is still going (update: I was thinking of from 2008: ''"22,743 suggested surname disambiguation pages, created from the May 24, 2008 database dump"'').
::::# Give ChatGPT a sample containing true and false sentences, but hide true answers
*(6) Ideally, such a biographical listing of all biographical articles (now approaching 1 million) would be done dynamically by a category listing. But there is no single category for this as yet. The closest ones are the ] (555,778 articles at present) and the listing of articles tagged by WikiProject Biography (which is a listing of the talk pages only). It is possible to generate partial set index names pages using the 'living people' category (e.g. (currently 14 people) can be compared with ] which only lists 12 people, of whom three are dead and one is a redirect), but this only puts those querying the category at the start of any dynamic 'list' of people by name and doesn't take into account biographies of historical (dead) people.
::::# Ask ChatGPT to assess the sentences
Would those reading this be able to say how feasible the above is, what work has already been done or is being done, and what would need to be done to get to the stage where we can be confident that our set index pages and human name disambiguation pages are accurate and updated at regular intervals to stay accurate? Or suggest which places I should go to to see who else might be interested in helping with this sort of thing? ] (]) 23:52, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
::::# Compare actual and ChatGPT answers
::::# Count the ratio of answers that are the same.
::::I really propose that if this ratio is high, then we start to implement this "chatbot validation" idea. ] (]) 11:24, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::There are many examples of people doing this research, e.g. ranks ChatGPT as examples accurate "88.7% of the time", but (a) I have no idea how reliable that source is, and (b) it explicitly comes with multiple caveats about how that's not a very meaningful figure. Even if we assume that it is 88.7% accurate at identifying what is and isn't factual across all content on Misplaced Pages that's still not really very useful. In the real world it would be less accurate than that, because those accuracy figures include very simple factual questions that it is very good at ("What is the capital of Canada?" is the example given in the source) that we don't need to use ChatGPT to verify because it's quicker and easier for a human to verify themselves. More complex things, especially related to information that is not commonly found in its training data (heavily biased towards information in English easily accessible on the internet), where the would be the most benefit to automatic verification, the accuracy gets worse. ] (]) 11:38, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:Have you read, for example, the content section of OpenAI's ? ] (]) 10:53, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
::@] If OpenAI does not content with this application, we can use other ChatBots that content with this application. Nowadays, many chatbots are free to use. ] (]) 11:04, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I'm sure they would be thrilled with this kind of application, but the terms of use explain why it is not fit for purpose. ] (]) 11:17, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:Factual questions are where LLMs like ChatGPT are weakest. Simple maths, for example. I just asked "Is pi larger than 3.14159265?" and got the wrong answer "no" with an explanation why the answer should be "yes":
::"No, π is not larger than 3.14159265. The value of π is approximately 3.14159265358979, which is slightly larger than 3.14159265. So, 3.14159265 is a rounded approximation of π, and π itself is just a tiny bit larger."
:Any sentence "validated by ChatGPT" should be considered unverified, just like any sentence not validated by ChatGPT. —] (]) 11:28, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:: I get a perfect answer to that question (from the subscription version of ChatGPT): "Yes. The value of π to more digits is approximately 3.141592653589793… which is slightly larger than 3.14159265. The difference is on the order of a few billionths." But you are correct; these tools are not ready for serious fact checking. There is another reason this proposal is not good: ChatGPT gets a lot of its knowledge from Misplaced Pages, and when it isn't from Misplaced Pages it can be from the same dubious sources that we would like to not use. One safer use I can see is detection of ungrammatical sentences. It seems to be good at that. ]<sup><small>]</small></sup> 11:42, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
::It's a good example of the challenges of accuracy. Using a different prompt "Is the statement pi > 3.14159265 true or false?", I got "The statement 𝜋 > 3.14159265 is true. The value of π is approximately 3.14159265358979, which is greater than 3.14159265." So, whatever circuit is activated by the word 'larger' is doing something less than ideal, I guess. Either way, it seems to improve with scale, grounding via RAG or some other method and chain of thought reasoning. Baby steps. ] (]) 11:51, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:I do not think we should outsource our ability to check whether a sentence is true and/or whether a source verifies a claim to AI. This would create ''orders of magnitude'' more problems than it would solve... besides, as people point out above, facts is where chatbots are weakest. They're increasingly good at imitating tone and style and meter and writing nicely, but are often garbage at telling fact from truth. '']'' (] — ]) 02:22, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
:Writing a script that would automatically give a "validation score" to every article—average probability of True vs. False across all sentences—would be helpful. (Even if it completely sucks, we can just ignore it, so there's no harm done.) Go ahead and do it if you know how! However, WMF's ML team is already very busy, so I don't think this will get done if nobody volunteers. ] (]) 04:41, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
===Using ChatBots for reverting new edits by new users===
Even though the previous idea may have issues, I really think that one factor for reverting new edits by new users can be "the false answer of verification of Chatbots". If the accuracy is near 88.7%, we can use that to verify new edits, possibly by new users, and find vandalism conveniently. ] (]) 13:48, 6 January 2025 (UTC)


:Even if we assume the accuracy to be near near 88.7%, I would not support having a chatbot to review edits. Many editors do a lot of editing and getting every 1 edit out of 10 edit reverted due to an error will be annoying and demotivating. The bot ] already automatically reverts obvious vandalism with 99%+ success rate. ] <i><sup style="display:inline-flex;rotate:7deg;">]</sup></i> 14:11, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:(paraphrased from my comment elsewhere) I do have a lot of experience with dab pages and the uses and limits of what can be done on an automated basis. In brief, I'll note some facts.
::@] Can ] check such semantically wrong sentence?
:(1) Nearly all bio articles will be listed at a subcategory of ]. Ones that aren't, should be. I see no need to introduce a new criterion; instead, all bio articles should be added to a subcategory of it. (2) Articles which are sort-of biographies, but sort-of not, are not dealt with in a consistent way, i.e., they may or may not have birth categories, persondata, hatnotes to dab pages, etc. Articles of this sort include ], ], ], ], etc. (3) Dab pages are notoriously non-standard, and are often ignored by editors. I'd say 80% of dab pages are either not following the MoS in some way, usually minor, or are missing some clearly-needed entry. (4) My previous bot looked for all bolded terms in the first paragraph of biographical articles, plus the title itself, looking for possibly missing dab entries, and listed them for manual inspection and repair. People really enjoyed working on this. Similar initiatives will likely get high participation, especially if done with a monthly drive or something similar. (5) It is not always clear what dab entries are appropriate. If a man is named "Jeffrey Smith", but was never ever referred to as "Jeff Smith", should he be listed at a Jeff Smith dabpage? How about similar spellings, such as "Geoffrey Smith", or "Jeff Smyth" or "Geoffrey Schmidt"?
::{{Quote|] was an American engineer.}}
:(added for this venue) I don't think it would hurt to have a hidden supercategory of "people", say. But what would be the benefit, over and above the current system wherein all people are given subcategories of ]? &ndash; ] <sup>(])</sup> 15:07, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
::instead of an inventor, this sentence wrongly declares that he was an engineer. Can ] detect this sentence automatically as a wrong sentence?
::The benefit of a single category is outlined in the 'Rabe' example I gave above. Click on that link and scroll down, and you will see how it is possible to query a category providing DEFAULTSORTs are used correctly. It is entirely possible that database reports and/or bot-generated reports will be more comprehensive, but I would like to see such lists compiled and refreshed permanently, not just as one-off projects. There will always be articles about people added to Misplaced Pages, and they represent around a fifth of the articles on Misplaced Pages. I accept that it can be debatable which spelling of the human name disambiguation page or surname set index page to use, but what I want is to aim for every biography article to be present on a human name disambiguation page or surname set index page where they exist, and for a separate list to exist of those biographies that are 'orphaned' (so to speak). There is a valid argument that many of the biography articles (especially the ones in the BLP category) are non-notable, but that should be addressed through AfD, not by leaving them off the set index and disambiguation pages. As a side note, it is possible to have a permanent record with periodic updates of the ''number'' of articles that are in the subcategories of ]? It would be nice to track that over time. I would ask for a complete list of the articles in the subcategories of ], but I fear that is a bit too large. Should I just accept that Misplaced Pages is not set up to handle manipulation of large amounts of data and the generation of large indexes and lists (or is restricted to those with the technical ability)? Other data that it would be nice to know: how many human name disambiguation pages are there ({{tl|hndis}}) and how many surname set index pages are there ({{tl|surname}})? There may be an easy way to find out - the number of pages those templates are transcluded on, the number of pages in categories placed by those templates (] contains 35,268 pages and ] contains 28,988 pages)? But I'd like there to be a page where that sort of information is documented at regular intervals. Either at ], or at ] or at ]. ] (]) 16:07, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
::So I propose to rewrite ] in a way that it uses Chatbots, somehow, to semantically check the new edits, and tag semantically wrong edits like the above sentence to "invalid by chatbot" for other users to correct that. ] (]) 14:22, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:::{{tq|Can Cluebot detect this sentence automatically as a wrong sentence?}} No. It can't. Cluebot isn't looking through sources. It's an anti-vandalism bot. You're welcome to bring this up with those that maintain Cluebot; although I don't think it'll work out, because that's way beyond the scope of what Cluebot does. ] <span style="font-weight:bold">&#124;</span> ] 19:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I think you, {{u|Hooman Mallahzadeh}}, are too enamoured with the wilder claims of AI and chatbots, both from their supporters and the naysayers. They are simply not as good as humans at spotting vandalism yet; at least the free ones are not. ] (]) 20:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:The number of false positives would be too high. Again, this would create more work for humans. Let's not fall to AI hype. '']'' (] — ]) 02:23, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
:Sorry this would be a terrible idea. The false positives would just be to great, there is enough ] of new editors we don't need LLM hallucinations causing more. -- <small>LCU</small> ''']''' <small>''«]» °]°''</small> 16:26, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
::Dear @], I didn't propose to revert all edits that ChatBot detect as invalid. My proposal says that:
::{{Quote|Use ChatBot to increase accuracy of ].}}
::The ] does not check any semantics for sentences. These semantics can only be checked by ] like ChatGPT. Please note that every Misplaced Pages sentence can be "semantically wrong", as they can be syntacticly wrong.
::Because making "Large language models" for semantic checking is very time-consuming and expensive, we can use them online via ] techniques. ] (]) 17:18, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
:::But LLMs are not good at checking the accuracy of information, so Cluebot NG would not be more accurate, and in being less accurate would behave in a more BITEY manner to new editors. -- <small>LCU</small> ''']''' <small>''«]» °]°''</small> 17:24, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Maybe ChatGPT should add a capability for "validation of sentences", that its output may only be "one word": True/False/I Don't know. Specially for the purpose of validation.
::::I don't know that ChatGPT has this capability or not. But if it lacks, it can implement that easily. ] (]) 17:33, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::Validation is not a binary thing that an AI would be able to do. It's a lot more complicated than you make it sound (as it requires interpretation of sources - something an AI is incapable of actually doing), and may require access to things an AI would never be able to touch (such as offline sources). —] ] <sup><small>] ]</small></sup> 17:37, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
:::{{ping|Hooman Mallahzadeh}} I refer you to the case of ], which earned the lawyers citing it a . —] ] <sup><small>] ]</small></sup> 17:30, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
::::@] Thanks, I will read the article. ] (]) 17:34, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
:::{{ec|4}} For Misplaced Pages's purposes, accuracy is determined by whether it matches what reliable sources say. For any given statement there are multiple possible states:
:::#Correct and supported by one or more reliable sources at the end of the statement
:::#Correct and supported by one or more reliable sources elsewhere on the page (e.g. the end of paragraph)
:::#Correct and self-supporting (e.g. book titles and authors)
:::#Correct but not supported by a reliable source
:::#Correct but supported by a questionable or unreliable source
:::#Correct according to some sources (cited or otherwise) but not others (cited or otherwise)
:::#Correct but not supported by the cited source
:::#Incorrect and not associated with a source
:::#Incorrect and contradicted by the source cited
:::#Incorrect but neither supported nor contradicted by the cited source
:::#Neither correct nor incorrect (e.g. it's a matter of opinion or unproven), all possible options for sourcing
:::#Previously correct, and supported by contemporary reliable sources (cited or otherwise), but now outdated (e.g. superceded records, outdate scientific theories, early reports about breaking news stories)
:::#Both correct and incorrect, depending on context or circumstance (with all possible citation options)
:::#Previously incorrect, and stated as such in contemporary sources, but now correct (e.g. 2021 sources stating Donald Trump as president of the US)
:::#Correct reporting of someone's incorrect statements (cited or otherwise).
:::#Predictions that turned out to be incorrect, reported as fact (possibly misleadingly or unclearly) at the time in contemporary reliable sources.
:::And probably others I've failed to think of. LLMs simply cannot correctly determine all of these, especially as sources may be in different languages and/or not machine readable. ] (]) 17:44, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
:I believe someone else had a working implementation of a script that would verify whether a reference supported a claim using LLMs - I think I saw it on one of the Village Pumps a while back. They eventually abandoned it because it wasn't reliable enough, if I remember correctly.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1737391570903:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(idea_lab)" class="FTTCmt"> —&nbsp;]] 16:46, 20 January 2025 (UTC)</span>
::It probably struggles to understand meaning. On the other hand, I reckon you could get a working implementation to look for copyvio. ] (]) 18:02, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
:::It could be great to have an LLM-supported system to detect potential ]. —] (]) 18:06, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Even professional-grade plagiarism detectors are poor at that, generating both false positives and false negatives. That's fine in the environment where they are used with full understanding of the system's limitations and it is used only as one piece of information among multiple sources by those familiar with the topic area. Very little of that is true in the way it would be used on Misplaced Pages. ] (]) 18:49, 20 January 2025 (UTC)


== Alert1! - Single line articles == == AfD's taking too long ==


I've noticed that a lot of AfD's get relisted because of minimal participation, sometimes more than once. This means that in the instance where the article does get deleted in the end, it takes too long, and in the instance where it doesn't, there's a massive AfD banner at the top for two, sometimes three or more weeks. What could be done to tackle this? How about some kind of QPQ where, any editor that nominates any article for deletion is strongly encouraged to participate in an unrelated AfD discussion? -- ]-'']'' -- 06:59, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
''' Issue ''' - Many editors are creating single line pages on people which though meeting the notability requirements for their field are still too short to be encyclopedic (e.g. ], ], ], ], ] etc.)<br />
'''Why''' - This is showing a disturbing trend in Misplaced Pages where many editors are dumping pages with skeleton of data without putting any content. The assumption here is that Misplaced Pages readers are editors, so they will do the actual work. It also creates potential copyright issues as discussed below.
<br />
'''Concerns'''<br/>
#'''Notabilty''' - granted that all individuals are notable as per speific notability guidelines in their fields but all of them fall into the "single event notability" category. Ten years down the line or even twenty, their might not be anything substantial to add to their profiles, which means that they can pottentially always lie around as low quality articles. Considering the number of such people the overall quality of Misplaced Pages will surely take a hit. Sports authors (editors) are highly allergic to developing team or club pages with short profiles of all players. please read the other issues before commenting on this.


:I feel ] is appropriate here. I don't understand why the article banner is a problem? Am I missing something? ] (]) 07:41, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
#'''Copyright''' - Granted, the referenced sources have not been copied and pasted, but the page has little else. If the sources choose to do something (like change the wording of their page or worse, hire some good lawyers) then this will certainly become a copyright issue. And Finally...
::The banners signal to a reader that there's something wrong with a page - in the case of an AfD there may well not be. -- ]-'']'' -- 06:30, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
:::There's often a concern, and all relisted nominations seem to have reason to debate that concern, whether because someone registered an objection or the article was already nominated in the past. ] (]) 12:25, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
:We already have ] which says that if an AfD nomination has minimal participation and meets the criteria for ], then the closing admin should treat it like an expired PROD and do a soft deletion. I remember when this rule was first added, admins did try to respect it. I haven't been looking at AfD much lately—have we reverted back to relisting discussions? ] (]) 08:10, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
::From what I've seen when I was active there in November, ProD-like closures based on minimal participation were quite common. ] (]) 22:47, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
::Based on a recent samples, I think somewhere over a quarter of AfD listings are relistings. (] - 37 / 144, ] - 35 / 83, ] - 36 / 111, ] - 27 / 108). -- ]-'']'' -- 06:43, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Those relisted have more than minimal participation in the soft deletion sense. ] (]) 12:22, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
::::so more than allows for soft deletion but not enough to reach consensus then. -- ]-'']'' -- 02:53, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::yes. IMO that means they have reason for discussion and debate. ] (]) 23:31, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::Okay, and I'm talking about encouraging that discussion to actually happen rather than fizzle out - so we're on the same page here? -- ]-'']'' -- 08:58, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::And that's why there's a banner on the article. ] (]) 16:35, 12 January 2025 (UTC)


== Is it possible to start the process of sunsetting the "T:" pseudo-namespace? ==
#'''Fairness''' - My biggest concern is that this rewards the "smart workers" and not the "hard workers". Think of this as incentives. Its easy to create 20 skelleton pages and take credit for them, than write one good quality article. After all the smart workers will take credit for all articles that get marked as good later on, no matter which hard worker worked on them. How many users on Misplaced Pages are perfectly OK with that? Do we have any idea?
'''Arguments so far'''<br/>
# The pages are new and are being worked on - Actually all of these pages are almost a month old. Go check the history.
# You don't know much about the field - Granted, that's why I am on Misplaced Pages. Are you suggesting that i should use Google instead?
# This person is notable - I am not questioning the notability. I am questioning the content of the article. All notable people can be found on Google. You don't '''have to have''' an article in Misplaced Pages. If the entire significance of this person can be summarized in one line then Google is a better option
# I checked the copyrights section of the source page - Good for you, but if your article has 20 words and your referenced article has 20 words then any good lawyer can turn this into copyrights violation.
'''Suggested Action''' - create a seperate category and possibly even a BOT to track such pages and put them in this category. I think the community should decide what to do with these articles but for now lets start by measuring this problem <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 10:25, 5 February 2012 (UTC)</span></small><!-- Template:Unsigned --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
: Creating a single line entry that is properly sourced and introduces a valid, notable topic is a common way to "get the ball rolling". WikiShagnik's concerns about these pages are confusing.
:# He claims on the one hand that the individuals are properly notable, but on the other hand that their notability might be fleeting. ]. If an individual or topic is properly notable now, it will remain so.
:# He is concerned about copyright violations. Not that the text is currently a copyright, but rather that the text is so brief that it is likely that someone will publish the same text in a copyrighted medium at some future time. This indicates a basic misunderstanding of the copyright laws. If the text was first published on Misplaced Pages, and someone uses the same text later someplace else, ''they cannot then claim copyright on the text'' because they didn't create it.
:# He is concerned about "fairness" -- why is it fair for an author to claim authorship of lots of little articles when other authors work hard on creating larger, more detailed articles. As far as I know, there is no contest going on here. No one really cares how many big or little articles anyone creates here. If WikiShagnik is worried about this, he may need to ]. <font color="green">]</font><font color="green" size="5px"></font><sup>]</sup><sub>]</sub> 12:32, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
::: I don't understand how wikidan can totally misunderstand me but let me try and explain again.
:::# I did not state temp notability. I stated single event notability which means that a person is notable for one event in their life. I did not state that their notability will go away, what i stated was that this will result in a lot of poor quality articles which lack biographical and other details considered to be a part of a good article, because people believe simply adding two sentences about a persons "notable achievement" is enough for an article
:::# I don't know of the concept of ball rolling. Normally before you create a new article you are advised to create a Draft, get it previewed and then if you need help you ask for it. All of these articles are more than a month old and nothing is going on with them. So where is the ball rolling to?
:::# No wikidan, to explain the issue I am quoting directly from ] page ''Even inserting text copied with some changes can be a copyright violation if there's substantial linguistic similarity in creative language or structure (this can also raise problems of plagiarism). Such a situation should be treated seriously, as copyright violations not only harm Misplaced Pages's redistributability, but also create legal issues.'' I cant prove if pages are being copied but if the word count is not going up then something is not right. Check the pages. You will understand better
:::# Let me inverse this argument. If what you say is right then articles like this should not be a problem right. We all believe whats going on is fair and on later dates people should have contributed to these articles "from the goodness of their hearts" right? Go through the articles again. You don't find any substantial improvements for a month. My concept of fairness is not what I plan to teach here. This is a matter of common sense. Now lets visit argument No.1 again. Because of it I believe that these articles will stay of poor quality for quite some time. ] (]) 14:20, 5 February 2012 (UTC)


In the sense that, with the creation of the ] alias in early 2024 from {{phab|T363757}}, I can't think of a single reason why a ''new'' "T:" space redirect would ever need to exist.
* A start is a start. There is no deadline and we should not be worried if some articles aren't expanded in a month. As for the idea of getting "credit". We have FA, GA and DYK for editors who get articles to a certain standard. There is no comparable bling for those who simply create lots of stubs '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers''</span> 14:28, 5 February 2012 (UTC)


Back in the day, well, "T:" has always been controversial even from 2010 and the several RfCs. There was ] and multiple RfCs since regarding ]s. And per ], the "T:" space is listed as "for limited uses only", but even that was added to the info page in that location a decade ago or so.
* The proposed solution does not solve the stated issues. Categorizing a huge number of articles doesn't somehow create more editors who will work on them. More to the point, ] and a month is hardly a lot of time. Misplaced Pages has had one-liner stubs for as far as it existed, and it hasn't collapsed since. In fact, quite the opposite, we get less new articles now; so I doubt the problem is as prominent as it is made out to be. Finally, nothing editors do should reflect on the actual article. If we start changing articles because editors cannot get along and claim "credit" or whatnot, then we have essentially failed the WMF Misplaced Pages mission. —&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;]&nbsp;&nbsp;▎]</small> 14:48, 5 February 2012 (UTC)


Nevertheless, even from the 2014 RfC at ], there was consensus that "new "T:" redirects should be strongly discouraged if not prohibited in all but exceptional cases". It's been over a decade now and we still get a potluck assortment of new T: titles every year.
Putting all of these articles into a category (ignoring any potential technical difficulties) would just create another unnecessary backlog. None of the issues that you raised are valid. Firstly, all of the articles you provided ''are'' notable. I understand your concern with one-event notability, but this is not the case here. ] exists to prevent articles on people who were in the news from something once, and then never again. That is not the case here - someone who is a professional sports player meets our ], often simply by being a professional sports player. They are not notable for just one event, but for who they are and what they do.


The difference is though, now we have the TM: alias. Just as it makes little sense to foster a "W:" shortcut for "WP:" titles, it really does not make sense to keep "T:" around when "TM:" is just another character more. H for Help and P for Portal don't have that luxury of an alias at this time, but templates do. There's hardly anything left on for T: titles. And I don't think we should necessarily delete everything at once. But it might be nice to make a hard rule that we don't need any more T: titles, especially so when TM: is the vastly preferable option at this time, from my POV.
Secondly, there is no more of a problem with copyright than any other article. I see no reason why a single-line article is any more likely to be a copyright violation that any other article. You are correct that text which is only slightly different from the source is still problematic; however, that has no relationship with the size of the article. Big articles can be copyright violations and small articles may not be - I don't see the point here.


I would suggest this as a proposal, but wanted to get feedback to see what else might need to happen in order to start sunsetting? Many of these have little to no links, but a lot of them do. Should these be replaced? Would it be worth the editing cost? I think the payoff is phenomenal - allowing easier navigation to actual articles that start with "T:", of which there are several. <span style="background-color: #FFCFBF; font-variant: small-caps">] <sub>(''']''' / ''']''')</sub></span> 16:00, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Finally, as others have said, there is no fairness issue. To be honest, if someone creates 400 stubs and writes about that on their user page, I'm happy - that's what they've done to help the encyclopedia. I have contributed to 4 Good Articles; some people have contributed to 40 Good Articles. This is not a competition and we should support people in their work here. If people get some kind of satisfaction from creating hundreds of articles, then that's great and they can do that. It means that the people who don't really like creating articles but get satisfaction from improving small/poor articles have hundreds of articles that they can improve.


If you want to improve some of our shortest articles, that is a great thing - take a look at our ]. ] <sup>(] ])</sup> 16:27, 5 February 2012 (UTC) :I wouldn't be strongly opposed to this, but I'd suggest keeping the most-used ones, like ] and ], for at least a few more years. <span style="font:14px Gill Sans;">'']'' (] ])</span> 23:33, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
::For sure. As it happens, ] only has 112 incoming links which almost entirely consist of archives, and it seems like there could be a bot (or a person, honestly) who could run through and fix the links to ] instead. Because this would be a sunset, I predict that ''really'' the only two functions that might actually want to hold onto these for a bit would be DYK and ITN. But even then, I don't necessarily want to delete every single T: title we have right now, but maybe slowly over time we could get to that point. In the interim, anything that T: does, TM: does better in a less harmful way, as TM: works for 100% of templates while T: works for 0%. Creating a note in ] that "Newly created T: titles from the years 2025 and later are no longer permissible / are against consensus" could be a start. If it's indeed true that that is the case, of course, I have no idea. Hence a proposal to see where people are at re: T: titles. <span style="background-color: #FFCFBF; font-variant: small-caps">] <sub>(''']''' / ''']''')</sub></span> 00:54, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I would support at least preventing the creation of new ones, so that the burden doesn't keep increasing and it is made clear that TM: is the recommended one. ] (] · ]) 01:16, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Some might be used as type-in shortcuts (I search for ] almost every day) but page view statistics should tell you how common that is. —] (]) 18:10, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
::Regarding DYK, it currently has a few different T: shortcuts for the preps and queues as well. A sunset might have to exclude potential fiddling in this area. ] (]) 19:05, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
:::If we turned the pages into soft redirects, that would discourage further use. ] (]) 04:37, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
{{od}}
Now at ]. ] (]) 15:50, 21 January 2025 (UTC)


== Category loops ==
Six or seven years ago, IIRC, this was ''far'' more common than it is now. And at least BLP stubs created these days get referenced or deleted very quickly. Furthermore, copyvio tends to be more of a problem with long new articles than very short ones. I don't see there's much of a problem here. --] (]) 20:23, 6 February 2012 (UTC)


A category loop is a sequence of subcategories that forms a ] under the subcat relation, i.e. where a category has itself as a subcategory at some level. This is mentioned in ], but as far as I can tell nothing has been written about them. However, they tend to occur where two similar and broad topic areas overlap, e.g. in an example mentioned at ]. Do you have any other experiences worth sharing about category loops, so that an essay can be written about the topic?
A long time ago, in ancient Misplaced Pages history, some people thought stubs were bad. In fact they're vital to help start the editing process. However there is the problem of the so-called "]", a stub that cannot be expanded. These should usually be merged into other articles. ] 00:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


There should be a ] for category loops — I discovered and fixed two with length 2 in the past 24 hours ({{nowrap|] → ] → ]}} and {{nowrap|] → ] → ]}}). Currently, we have only ] for categories that are direct subcategories of themselves — that is, loops of length 1. –] (]]) 03:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
== What type of Wikipedian are you? ==
: Reminds me of ], although that particular loop is long gone now. If you search archives of various discussion boards you can probably find more examples. ]] 13:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:An anonymous user points me to ], which was last updated in January 2024. I have posted a request to have this list updated periodically. –] (]]) 01:49, 11 January 2025 (UTC)


== Reworking ] ==
I was wondering. There is a test to show how addicted people are to Misplaced Pages. Could a quiz be created to decide best whether you fall into inclusionist, deletionist, eventualist etc or even indeterminatalist? Just for fun.]]....] ''having large explosions for 5 years'' 14:20, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
:I hope not. Breaking people up into conflicting groups/wikiphilosophies is an unhelpful and destructive tendency, in my opinion. --] (]) 14:34, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
:There's ]. But that doesn't really tell you whether you are a deletionist or inclusionist or whatever. Feel free to add some goofy questions about editing philosophy to it. —] (]) 15:55, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
::I agree with Yair rand. Creating and taking tests that people up into groups like this is an exercise best left for social networks. People are, of course, allowed to self identify with a group, however that comes from self-reflection over a long period of time. ] ] 16:20, 6 February 2012 (UTC) (Exclusionism leaning Precisionist, Immediatist, Mesopedian)
::I also think this is unwise. I have no problem with people making this on separate sites, but I don't think it's good to publicize it on Misplaced Pages, since it will tend to encourage factionalism. ] - ] 05:29, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:I don't really think that is necessary. Deletionism, inclusionism, etc exist to allow users to identify with a certain mindset, but it is a free identification according to what a user believes at the time. A quiz like this would add more weight to the different positions; as this is not a political venture but a collaborative effort, there is no need for different viewpoints to be entrenched in this way. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 20:08, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
::Some users prefer not to broadcast their editing philosophy, while others describe it via userboxes on their userpage. Personally, I'm an exclusionist, with some inclusionist tendencies, and I use an exclusionist userbox. Not all users' definitions of their editing philosophies are going to be what's written on the Meta descriptive pages, and I think that, though a quiz would be fine, it would be potentially prone to inaccuracies when it comes to personal views. It seems to me that the userboxes and Meta pages are sufficient for now. ] &#124; ] 20:31, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
:I think some people would enjoy a test like this, since people enjoy taking tests that supposedly characterise their position on issues. I'd say if you want to make it, just write it up on a user subpage, using a simple point system. If people like it I can convert it to an HTML form for you. ] 00:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::True, and not a bad idea. My problem is this{{ndash}} by applying a point-system that makes a loose yet very intricate and non-exclusive set of criteria a very rigid thing, could a quiz mislead some editors? I'm not saying it wouldn't be fun, just that we'd be turning a complex thing into a "this equals this, no matter what" type of game. ] &#124; ] 03:07, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


Per ] at ], there was a nearly an almost unanimous consensus to not constrain ] to ] requirements, but there did seem to be a strong consensus to revisit criterion 5, and possibly some consensus to revisit criterion 6. I've got an updated draft at ] where I tried to reflect this consensus. I basically just re-worked criterion 5 a bit. It now reads: {{tq|
== More granular anchor links ==
# Has released two or more albums on a ], or one of the more important indie labels, before 2010.
}} The note is {{tq|the importance of the indie label should be demonstrable from reliable independent coverage indicating that label's importance}}. The exact cut-off date was debated, but it was around 2006 to 2010. I went for 2010, as that seems to be when streaming really took off. I'd like some input to see if there's any modifications or suggestions before I put this forward at Village pump (proposals). Thank you!--] (] &#124; ]) 13:24, 10 January 2025 (UTC)


:Remove 5 and 6 entirely. ] (]) 02:21, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
When linking to a page it's hard to point out the specific portion of the article you intend to. The content links get you to a specific section, but that's as far as they go. I was wondering on the feasibility of having it so each paragraph inside could be tagged with an id so each could be linked directly with something like http://en.wikipedia.org/Antiform#s1p2 would link to section one, paragraph two (in this case: section one is "Anticline terminology" and paragraph two starts with "An anticline or antiform has a crest"). A completely autonomous implementation would be the goal so nothing would need to changed inside the articles.
::The problem with removing 5 entirely is because that would affect older groups that might not yet have articles. That's why the cut-off date of around 2010 was proposed in the previous discussion.--] (] &#124; ]) 23:12, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
:Remove #6 entirely. ] (]) 03:53, 11 January 2025 (UTC)


== Names of command-line tools in monospace ==
Note: I don't really know if this is the right place for this suggestion. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 02:02, 8 February 2012 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
:But what would happen when the order of sections changes, or one paragraph is split into two? ] (]) 22:49, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::Yes, this would be very unstable. If you must link to a part of section for some reason then place a named ]. ] (]) 22:54, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


Websites such as the Arch Linux wiki frequently use inline <code>&lt;code&gt;</code> tags to indicate that text is either entered into or read from the command line. I did some searches of the MOS and FAQ here on Misplaced Pages, but I was unable to find any policy or guideline formalizing the use of monospaced fonts for command line input and output. Does anyone else actually care about this, and if so does anyone think this should be formalized? Thanks for the input, ] (]/]) 18:50, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
== Create different categories of article deletion ==


:I feel I should also mention the issue of using <code>&lt;code&gt;</code> tags for bold page names (cf. ] and ]). ] (]/]) 18:54, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't know if this was discussed before or not, but I was thinking that maybe deleted articles could be categorized according to the reason of their deletion. Articles deleted because of strict legal issues could be in one category where it's edit history never be seen again, articles deleted because of unquestionably inappropriate content could be in another category where only admins can even view its edit history, articles deleted simply because they don't belong to Misplaced Pages, with no dirty secrets about it could still have its history visible to people who just want to see (why not). I think this won't take up much more storage space because deleted histories are saved anyways. Without discriminating between deleted articles, Misplaced Pages does not appear as "open" as it claims to be since any article that merely lacks notability would have its edit history hidden like some kinda dark secret. When I look at really horrible articles that would be deleted, I would think the edit history of deleted articles must be kept hidden, and when I look at other articles that would be deleted, I don't see why that article's edit history should be hidden, but I used to tell myself that there has to be general solid rules, and that article's history must be deleted according to the rules. I never thought of the alternative of categorizing deleted articles so that there could be both general solid rules '''and''' separating really terrible writings from stuff that simply doesn't belong to Misplaced Pages, but does not have any dark secrets to hide in its edit history. I don't know why I never thought of this before, but I guess it's the same reason this categorizing isn't already in place. ] (]) 03:10, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
:If you ]ly do something and nobody objects, that's consensus. That said, we actually do ask for such markup at ]. ] (]) 19:04, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
::I'm aware of both of these, though I appreciate the consideration. I'm more asking about things that are in a gray area between "code" and "natural language" and whether this gray area should be standardized so we have more consistent style.
::I'll elaborate more if necessary once I get back to a computer; I dislike writing longer messages on mobile. ] (]/]) 19:10, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:::FWIW I use <nowiki><kbd></nowiki> in discussions when documenting my search term, e.g. <kbd> "bright green" cake -wikipedia</kbd>, I'm not sure what the direct relevance of that is to mainspace but is it the sort of grey are you are thinking of? ] (]) 19:16, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Yup, that's pretty much what I was thinking of (also, thanks for the introduction to <code>&lt;kbd&gt;</code>, I think I prefer this for inline stuff because it doesn't have the annoying gray box)! An example that I just thought of could be error messages. For example, would an inline <kbd>404 Not Found</kbd> be preferred over 404 Not Found? (Of course, you wouldn't be seeing this much in a CLI, but I feel 404's the most recognizable error message.) I feel this should be standardized. ] (]/]) 19:22, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::For that one you might wanna consider using <nowiki><samp></nowiki> instead since kbd is semantically "keyboard input". I don't think there's any guidelines about what you mentioned, so probably just Bold it in until someone hates it. ] (]) 01:35, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::Alright, thanks! I'll revive this discussion if/when someone takes issue with this. ] (]/]) 15:58, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Something like <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline><syntaxhighlight lang="shell" inline>ls -alF</syntaxhighlight> (with an closing <code></syntaxhighlight></code> tag) provides both quoting behaviour and (theoretically) syntax highlighting, so it's what I would prefer, but of course it's more typing. (For shell, there isn't much syntax highlighting that could happen anyway, and I can't seem to get any to appear.) Otherwise, <syntaxhighlight lang="html" inline><kbd></syntaxhighlight> is appropriate markup to use for text entered as input. ] (]) 22:41, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
::::{{tag|kbd}} or {{tl|kbd}}? {{tag|pre}} or {{tl|pre}}? {{tag|samp}} or {{tl|samp}}? -- ] (]) 16:37, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::Does it matter? Isn't this just a ] difference? ] (]/]) 16:49, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::Apparently not quite, the ] indicates that it {{tpq|applies some styling to it, namely a faint grey background and slight CSS letter-spacing to suggest individually entered characters}}. The output of the others also differs
::::::*example using none of the elements or templates
::::::*<kbd>example using the &lt;kbd&gt; html element</kbd>
::::::*{{kbd|example using the {{temp|kbd}} template}}
::::::*<samp>example using the &lt;samp&gt; html element</samp>
::::::*{{samp|example using the {{temp|samp}} template}}
::::::*<pre>example using the &lt;pre&gt; html element</pre>
::::::*{{pre|example using the {{temp|pre}} template}}
::::::It seems {{temp|pre}} really doesn't play nicely with bulleted lists, I've not looked into why. I've also not looked into why the templates apply the styling they do. ] (]) 14:33, 14 January 2025 (UTC)


== Better methods than IP blocks and rangeblocks for completely stopping rampant recurring vandals ==
:See ]. ] (]) 03:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


So, I intend for this thread to be about the discussion of various theoretical methods other than IP blocks / rangeblocks that could be used to mitigate a persistent vandal highly effectively while causing little to no collateral damage.
::I'm rather sure that thing was probably decided upon the same reasoning I had before I thought of categorizing. I quote myself: When I look at really horrible articles that would be deleted, I would think the edit history of deleted articles must be kept hidden, and when I look at other articles that would be deleted, I don't see why that article's edit history should be hidden, but I used to tell myself that there has to be general solid rules, and that article's history must be deleted according to the rules. I never thought of the alternative of categorizing deleted articles so that there could be both general solid rules '''and''' separating really terrible writings from stuff that simply doesn't belong to Misplaced Pages, but does not have any dark secrets to hide in its edit history. I don't know why I never thought of this before, but I guess it's the same reason this categorizing isn't already in place. ] (]) 03:52, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
{{collapse top|Some background}}
::And categorizing never implied making all deleted articles visible. I'm guessing that debaters of whether ''deleted articles'' should be visible were too involved to get the idea that it doesn't have to be a yes or not debate. ] (]) 03:45, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages was founded in 2001, a time when a good majority of residential IP addresses were relatively all static, due to the much lesser number of internet users at that time. IP blocks probably made a lot of sense at that time due to that fact - you couldn't just reboot your modem to obtain a new IP address and keep editing, and cell phones pretty much had no usable web browsing capability at the time.
:::The links at ] include suggestions to make some pages visible and not others. ] (]) 04:05, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
::::What links? The see also's? They don't seem to have any categorization, although there are unrelated suggestions of moving certain articles before deleting, and proposals of completely removing the concept of deletion to replace with page blanking, also obviously unrelated to making categories because the reason page blanking wont work is unrelated to making categories. ] (]) 04:23, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::Look again. 3 of the 5 see also links have suggestions to make some deleted articles visible and not others: ], ], ] Do I also have to point to specific sentences? ] (]) 14:47, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::::::You could have gave the dam link in your first reply, cause the article on the other suggestion was deep under an article with
:::::::''I've been asked to step in and give the Foundation's legal view on this question. My view as the Foundation's general counsel is essentially the same as that outlined by Swatjester . Allowing non-administrator users to have access to deleted pages would vastly increase the frequency and volume of legal complaints. (It could have even worse consequences than that in the long term, up to and including corrective legislation by Congress, which would be a disaster.) It is difficult to overstate how much legal and practical difficulty this would cause the Foundation. To be frank, community adoption of such a disastrous policy would create an actual emergency that would likely require Board intervention. I normally favor and support community-driven initiatives, so please believe me when I say I am not raising this set of concerns lightly. The current system is not broken -- so the best advice is 'don't fix it.'''
::::::on top which obviously implied no such suggestion of categories, and still the other two, ], and ] only talks of moving articles to new categories instead of deleting: "Soft deletion" isn't what it sounds like, just another proposal to move to soft "deleted" material another category.
::::::Lol, didn't Misplaced Pages accidentally, inadvertently, set up an excellent system for fooling users to thinking no such suggestion ever existed, and showing them it hidden deep in a maze of text so they'd think they're stupid and forget the whole thing instead of questioning nything... ] (]) 03:43, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
::::::nd I thought I was so creative too... You know when you walk into some room and 2 ppl are arguing over something and you think of a solution to satisfy both you get very disappointed when they say no. ] (]) 03:44, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


Today, the only type of tool used to stop anonymous vandals and disruptors, despite dynamic IP addresses and shared IPs being very common, is still the same old IP address blocks and range blocks. While IP block are effective at stopping the "casual" / "one-off" type of vandals from editing again, when it comes to the more dedicated disruptors and LTAs, IP blocks simply don't seem to hinder them at all, due to the highly dynamic IP address nature. Okay, but range blocks exist, right? Well, unfortunately not all IP address allotment sizes are the same, and it varies a lot from ISP to ISP - some ISPs just seem to put literally all their customers on one gigantic (i.e. /16 or bigger for IPv4, /32 or bigger for IPv6) subdivision, making it straight up impossible to put a complete stop to the LTA vandal without also stopping all those thousands and thousands of innocent other people from being able to edit.
== engineering celebration ==
{{collapse bottom}}
I've always had these thoughts in my mind, about what the Wikimedia team could potentially do / implement to more accurately yet effectively put a complete halt to long-term abusers. But I felt like now's the time we really could use some better method to stop LTAs, as there are just sooooo many of them today, and soooo much admin time/effort is being spent trying to stop them only for them to come back again and again because pretty much the only way to stop them is to literally block the entire ISP from editing Misplaced Pages.


The first thing that might come to one's mind, and probably the most controversial method too, is disabling anonymous editing entirely and making it so only registered editors can edit English Misplaced Pages. Someone pointed out to me before that the Portuguese Misplaced Pages is a registration-only wiki. I tried it out for myself, and indeed when you click the edit button while not logged in, you are brought to an account login page. I'm guessing ENwiki will never become like this because it would eliminate a large and thriving culture of "casual" type of editors who don't want to register an account and just simply want to fix a typo, update a table's data or add a small sentence. It's probably not 100% effective either, as a registered-only wiki still wouldn't stop someone from creating a whole bunch of throwaway accounts to keep vandalising, and account creation blocks on IP addresses could still be dodged by, you know, the modem power plug dance or good ol' proxies/VPNs.
This is about a Fan.
That is what I suggest we request from the celebrities (we, the engineers).


I've noticed some other language wikis like the German Misplaced Pages have "pending changes" type protection pretty much enabled on every single page. I imagine this isn't going to work on the English Misplaced Pages because of the comparatively high volume of edits from anonymous editors compared to DEwiki, as it would overload the pending changes review queue and there just will never be enough active reviewers to keep up with the volume of edits.
http://www.mediafire.com/?ftpnmqob6qbw7za


Now here are some of my original thoughts which I don't think I've seen anyone discuss here on Misplaced Pages before. The first of which, is hardware ID (HWID) bans or "device bans". The reason why popular free-to-play video games like League of Legends, Overwatch 2, Counter-Strike 2 etc aren't overrun with non-stop cheaters and abusers despite them being free-to-play is because they employ an anti-cheat and abuse system that will ban the serial numbers of the computer, rather than just simply banning the user or their IP address. Now, I have heard of HWID spoofing before, but cheating isn't rampant in these games anyway so I guess they are effective in some form. Besides replacing hardware, one could theoretically use a virtual machine to evade the HWID ban, but virtual machines don't provide the performance, graphics acceleration and special features needed to get a modern multiplayer video game to work. However though, I could see virtual machines as being a rather big weakness for ''Misplaced Pages'' HWID bans, as a web browser doesn't need a dedicated powerful video card and any of those special features to work; web browsers easily run in virtualised environments. But I guess not a great deal of LTAs are technologically competent enough to do that, and even if they did, spinning up a new VM is ''significantly'' slower than switching countries in a VPN.
As for "fans" of GeorgeClooney, or just people concerned about his[REDACTED] presence:
it seems that award is not even mentioned, what to speak of what he said?


The second, and probably the most craziest one, is employing some form of mandatory personal ID system. Where, even if you're not going to sign up and only edit anonymously, you will be forced to enter a social security number or passport number or whatever ID number that is completely unique to you, to be able to edit. In South Korea, some gaming companies like Blizzard make you enter a SSN when signing up for an account, which makes it virtually impossible for a person to go to an internet cafe ("PC bang") and make a whole bunch of throwaway accounts and jump from computer to computer when an account/device becomes banned to keep on cheating (see ]). One could theoretically get the IDs of family members and friends when they become "ID banned", but after all there are only going to be so few other people's IDs they will be able to obtain, certainly nowhere near on the order of magnitude as the number of available IP addresses on a large IP subnet or VPN. I'm guessing this method isn't going to be feasible for English Misplaced Pages either, as it completely goes against the simple, "open" and "anonymous" nature of Misplaced Pages, where not only can you edit anonymously without entering any personal details, but even when signing up for an account you don't even have to enter an email address, only just a password.
I'm not going to Push my identity here. Thanks for the pump, village.


A third theoretical method is that what if, the customer ID numbers of ISPs were visible to Wikimedia, and then Wikimedia could ban that ISP customer therefore making them completely unable to edit Misplaced Pages even if they jump to a different IP address or subnet on that ISP? Or maybe how about the reverse where the ISP themselves ban the customer from being able to access Misplaced Pages after enough abuse? Perhaps ISPs need to wake up and implement such a site-level blocking policy.
I am not sure how else OperationChickenHawk could continue much longer... <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 19:26, 8 February 2012 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->


Here's a related "side question": how come other popular online services like Discord, Facebook, Reddit, etc aren't overly infested with people who spam, attack, or otherwise make malicious posts on the site everyday? Could Wikimedia implement whatever methods these services are using to stop potential "long-term abusers"? —&nbsp;] ] 13:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
== Enforcement of "Please do not modify it" archival tags ==


:I just thought of yet another theoretical solution: AI has gotten good enough to be able to write stories and poems, analyse a 1000 page long book, make songs, realistic pictures, and more. Misplaced Pages already uses AI (albelt a rather primitive and simple one) in the famous anti-vandal bot User:ClueBot NG. What ''if'', we deploy an edit filter based on the latest and greatest AI model, to filter out edits based on past vandalism/disruption patterns? —&nbsp;] ] 13:37, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Once a section has been marked as an archive, it is displayed with a ''"Please do not modify it"'' notice. My suggestion is to enforce this by disabling editing of sections (and pages) so marked, except by admins. — ] (]) 20:08, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
::I'll preface this by saying that I have quite a few problems with this idea (although I may be biased because I'm strongly opposed to the direction that modern AI is going); but I'd like to hear why and how you think this would work in more detail. For instance, would the AI filter just block edits outright? Would they be flagged like with ]? What mechanisms would the hypothetical AI use to detect LTA? How would we reduce false positives? And so on. Thanks, ] (]/]) 17:24, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
:I'm not sure this is necessary. Most editors are sensible enough not to edit a section that they've been told not to; those that do are often quickly reverted. I don't really see the need for a technical limitation on something that is not already a problem. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 21:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
:::The AI idea I have in mind is a rather "mild" form of system, where it only works on edits based on past patterns of disruption. Take for example, MAB's posts. They are quite easily recognisable from a distance even with the source code obscuring that makes it impossible for traditional edit filters to detect the edits. Maybe an AI could perform OCR on that text to then filter it out?
::I don't know. We've had problems in the past with things like project namespace redirects getting vandalised, and because nobody watches the redirects, nobody spots it for months. In the project namespace, it seems slightly absurd not to semi/fully protect more. Lots of people have ANI on their watchlist, say, but how many have ]? "The encyclopedia anyone can edit" is hardly undermined by not being able to edit archived talk pages from 2008. —] (]) 16:07, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:::The AI will ''not'' filter out new types of vandalism, or disruptive edits that it isn't "familiar" with. There will be an "input text file" where admins can add examples of LTA disruption for the AI to then watch for any edits that closely resemble those examples. It will not look for, or revert edits that aren't anywhere near as being like those samples. That way I think false positives will be minimised a lot, and of course there shall be a system for reporting false positives much like how there exists ]. —&nbsp;] ] 22:44, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Ah, thanks! I'm immediately hesitant whenever I hear the word "AI" because of the actions of corporations like OpenAI, among others. However, given what you've just said, I actually think this might be an interesting idea to pursue. I'm relatively new to WP and I've never looked at ], so I'd rather leave this to more experienced editors to discuss, but this does seem like a good and ethical application of neural networks and is within their capabilities. ] (]/]) 16:16, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
:{{tqb|The second, and probably the most craziest one, is employing some form of mandatory personal ID system. Where, even if you're not going to sign up and only edit anonymously, you will be forced to enter a social security number or passport number or whatever ID number that is completely unique to you, to be able to edit.}}This means that editors will have to give up a large amount of privacy, and the vast majority of people casually editing Misplaced Pages aren't ready to give their passport number in order to do so. Plus, editors at risk might be afraid of their ID numbers ending in the wrong hands, which is much more worrying than "just" their IP address.{{pb}}{{tqb|Here's a related "side question": how come other popular online services like Discord, Facebook, Reddit, etc aren't overly infested with people who spam, attack, or otherwise make malicious posts on the site everyday?}}They are, it's just that the issue is more visible on Misplaced Pages as the content is easy to find for all readers, but it doesn't mean platforms like Discord or Reddit aren't full of bad actors too. ] (] · ]) 13:38, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
:Portuguese Misplaced Pages is not a registration-only wiki. They require registration for the mainspace, but not for anything else. . (I don't think they have a system similar to our ]. Instead, you post a request at ], which is a type of noticeboard.) I'm concerned that restricting newbies may be killing their community. See ; that's not something we really want to replicate. Since ], every community has to get its next generation from somewhere. We are getting ]. The number of editors who make 100+ edits per year is still pretty stable (around 20K), but the number of folks who make a first edit is down by about 30% compared to a decade ago.
:WMF Legal will reject any sort of privacy invasion similar to requiring a real-world identity check for a person. A ] ban ''might'' be legally feasible (i.e., I've never heard them say that it's already been considered and rejected). It would require amending the Privacy Policy, but that happens every now and again anyway, so that's not impossible. However, I understand that it's not very effective in practice (outside of proprietary systems, which is not what we're dealing with), and the whole project involves a significant tradeoff with privacy: Everything that's possible to track a Misplaced Pages vandal is something that's possible to track you for advertising purposes, or that could be subpoenaed for legal purposes. Writing a Misplaced Pages article (in the mainspace, to describe what it is and how it works) about that subject, or updating ], might actually be the most useful thing you could do, if you thought that was worth pursuing. If a proposal is made along these lines, then the first thing people will do is read the Misplaced Pages article to find out what it says.
:I understand that when Misplaced Pages was in its early days, a few ISPs were willing to track down abusive customers on occasion. My impression now is that basically none of them are willing to spend any staff time/expense doing this. We can e-mail their abuse@ addresses (they should all have one), but they are unlikely to do anything. A publicly visible approach on social media might work in a few cases ("Hey, @Name-of-ISP, one of your customers keeps vandalizing #Misplaced Pages. See <link to ]>. Why don't you stop them?"). However, if the LTA is using a VPN or similar system, then the ISP we claim they're using might be the wrong one anyway. ] (]) 03:58, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
::I dont know exactly what is meant by hardware id (something like ?), but genrrally speaking most things that come under that heading require you to be using a native app and not a web browser. ] is a possible exception but was abandoned. ] (]) 00:13, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I was thinking that it might be something like a ] (for which we had ]). ] (]) 08:00, 21 January 2025 (UTC)


== Page for ABBA's I have a dream links to the wrong year in the UK Charts ==
== Just a thought ==


I don't know if this is the correct place to post this or not, I am only doing so because I am not sure how to fix it myself. ] (]) 02:57, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I was just thinking that, as great as the English Misplaced Pages is and as successful as it's been, it could be far more efficient if a greater system of coordination between various branches could be created. For example, an admin who hangs out around AfD, an inexperienced but knowledgeable content editor working ] or ], and someone who works a lot at the Mediation Cabal might not share a lot of collaborative ideas. Instead, how about this?


:@], is this about ]? Which bit exactly in there? ] (]) 04:04, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
* The Wiki could be divided into ten ''very'' loose sectors:
::Yeah, the citation link for the UK Charts links to december 1969 and not 1979. ] (]) 05:02, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
** '''Materials for deletion, discussion, and creation'''
:::It looks like the citation is built into ], so let's get some help from people who are familiar with that template. ] or ], are either of you around? I think the goal is to have this link to https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/19791223/7501/ ] (]) 06:38, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
** '''Content disputes'''
::::I might have fixed it (). It seems the UK chart functionality requires YYYYMMDD date formatting. ] (]) 07:58, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
** '''Inter-user disputes'''
::::Oh {{u|Sean.hoyland|Sean}} beat me to it. Like they mentioned above, the problem was {{para|date}} You cannot use "23 December 1979" for the date, next time use yyyymmdd, thank you. '''<span style="color:Purple">dxneo</span>''' (]) 08:02, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
** '''Anti-vandalism tasks'''
:It's alright to find random places to help, though the usual forums for this are ] for technical help or ]. ] (]) 12:35, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
** '''Multilingual coordination'''
** '''Technical areas'''
** '''Societal encyclopedic content'''
** '''Mathematical and scientific encyclopedic content'''
** '''Popular culture encyclopedic content'''
** '''Religious and philosophical encyclopedic content.'''


== Give patrollers the suppressredirect right? ==
* Each one of these groups would be assigned something of a "noticeboard." Editors who found themselves frequently at one of these encyclopedia areas could participate in a polling that would take place on each noticeboard. The polling would select two representatives. In the end, the twenty representatives could form an ] (click for more details).

* The members of this editorial collaboration council would meet in a conference once every two months, and would discuss new, problematic, and positive things occurring in their respective necks of the wikiwoods. They would discuss the state of Misplaced Pages, especially regarding new editors, IP editors, and noticed trends occurring on the webpage.

* I'm not sure if it's possible, but, to make council meetings more efficient, could a userright be given to councilors, allowing only them to access the conference page? A discussion page could be set up on which other editors could voice their opinions or make statements.

Just a thought ... ] &#124; ] 03:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:I think this is too much bureaucracy. We already have mostly working processes for these. The people interested in the meta-stuff (e.g. deletion or anti-vandalism) already know where to go for each issue. For the actual encyclopedia, WikiProjects in general do a great job of coordinating topic-specific issues; improvements can be made, but I don't think organizational categories as broad as "Popular culture encyclopedic content" are needed. I also disagree with the idea of creating a new private group or council. I support transparency, except for issues that really need to be private (e.g. CheckUser). ] - ] 05:37, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::Yes, people know where to go, but do different groups with different interests always coordinate with one another and share information? I feel that this would be a way to have representatives from different interest groups come together and discuss exactly where we're at and where we're going, and I think it might be worth a try someday. As for transparency, the conference would be visible to everyone{{ndash}} the only thing that non-representatives couldn't do was edit the page. ] &#124; ] 05:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:I agree that this is not a good idea. Specialists already know where they can go to discuss matters with people from the same specialty. There's no reason to artificially break up the project like this. ] ] 15:17, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::Well, maybe this is indeed a bad idea. However, do you think it might be possible to have a temporary, one-week discussion forum sometime where any number of users could post a reply to a fairly standard question, or one that could help to gauge where Misplaced Pages is at or heading? ] &#124; ] 17:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

:You might be interested in ], where cross-discipline issues are occasionally posted. (Most of them are listed at the ] pages, of course.) ] (]) 19:33, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::Okay, I'll check that out. ] &#124; ] 19:46, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

:I think that the current WikiProject system is a good way to organise this kind of thing. I do agree that some WikiProjects are co-ordinated better than others, but that seems to be based on who is willing to take part in it. Also, I agree that cross-project collaboration may be lacking, and could be improved. DCI, I think that a decent idea could be worked out to solve these issues; however, I think it needs to be within our current WikiProject system. Perhaps you could look at ideas for improving and helping the less active WikiProject, improving the co-ordination of active but disorganised projects, and improving cross-project collaboration. I would be interested in supporting and working with something which attempted to solve these problems with the current system. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 20:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::We could go that way. WikiProject Council could potentially start up an initiative to coordinate far-flung WikiProjects and could perhaps have a forum on its talk page where editors could post concerns and the other things I proposed could be mentioned in a conference (the link is above). ] &#124; ] 22:12, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
* '''Remind everyone about WP:BACKLOG and WP:Dashboard:''' Users who like joining long discussions can pick-a-topic from ]. However, perhaps the single greatest cross-subject "dose of reality" which can wake-up editors to the broad spectrum of Misplaced Pages concerns is, of course: ], with over 70 lists of problem areas which have needed help for months (or rather, years). For example, WP:BACKLOG notes "5,620" pages need editing by subject-matter experts, another "7,728" articles seem slanted (need NPOV), or "14,297" pages have promotional wording to remove (might be adverts or sound like it), and "9,751" images/files should be moved to ] for cross-linking in German, Italian or any other-language Wikipedias. From working last year with ] (Guild of Copy Editors), I can estimate the "4,078" articles which need copy-editing have from 50-450 grammar, awkward wording, or spelling errors, plus need hyphens/commas, and those 4,078 pages require an average of 1-hour sessions of intense editing, often adding 1-3 sources each. Remind more people about the need to meditate and absorb the impact of WP:BACKLOG, to really gain a wider perspective on some of those 70 major aspects of English Misplaced Pages. Meanwhile, remember to scan some of the major ] areas, especially for questions at ], ] and ] to gain more perspective on issues discussed there, as well. -] (]) 01:51, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

== Positions of trust ==

I have recently been notified that I must identify to WMF or be removed from a position of trust I hold. It is reasonable to me and I will shortly accede the demand. It occurs to me that administrators should be no less required, for the same reasons expressed to me. In fact it is remiss to require me, an account creator to identify while exempting the larger group of admins who have the same right bundled. ] (]) 05:00, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:Personally I have no problem identifying to the WMF, but the obvious concern is whether a significant number of the admins doing the heavy lifting at AIV and elsewhere might just say "no thanks" and we'd be out some valuable volunteers for no appreciable benefit. ] (]) 05:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:May I ask why you believe it is needed? What problems would it solve? ] ] 05:27, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::Notified by whom? Someone with an official WMF account? ] (]) 06:52, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

:::I first saw the message when I logged on to toolserve and there was a red message stating that after 1 week if I hadn't identified I would lose the permission. I asked in the irc channel for ACC when the week expired and was told Monday. As I stated I have no problem meeting the request. It does however strike me as odd that administrators who are more exposed to personal information than me would be exempt. Additionally the mandate requires that I be at least 18 years old. Fine, that is reasonable, but again, perhaps our admins should also be at least 18<s>, though I would propose 25</s>. I understand this concept wouldn't be well received, but hey, I can see some benefits too. So I proposed the idea here. I suspect it will be shot down and that is also fine, I'm use to that. Meanwhile I'll simply do what I am being required to do while consensus forms to explain how wrong a notion it is. Cheers - ] (]) 08:22, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::::That would exclude me from the admin corps for a long time, and so far I'd like to think I've done a decent job.... ] (]) 14:36, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::::*Aside from deleting two of my articles, of course. ] (]) 23:36, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::I think you are a good administrator and see your character as rather strong. Your example serves a persuasive argument against. I have stricken the portion where I suggested 25 years old because it is stretching reason. I truly do however believe 18 is a reasonable threshold, but consensus may be clearly against this. ] (]) 14:48, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:I personally have no problem identifying to the Foundation {{endash}} I actually already have. However, as members of the account creation team, we have access to non-public information about editors (e-mail and IP addresses), to which we, as admins, have no access whatsoever. We can discuss whether or not having access to articles deleted per G10 is more sensitive than seeing an IP, but under the current Privacy Policy, admins have no access to data that would require them to identify to the Foundation. <span style="text-shadow:grey 0.118em 0.118em 0.118em; class=texhtml"> ''']'''</span> ] 12:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::Thank you Salvio, that is a very good point. In fact I better understand the situation myself as it was explained to me after my last post that in fact it is the toolserver access I would lose not the AC permission. Consequently an admin who does have the AC flag, does not inherently have with it, toolserver access. So I am glad to see this point corrected for perspective. Nevertheless, as it did occur to me that it seemed reasonable for admins to identify for similar reasons of trust. I hope conversation will continue regarding this idea, in case it does emerge as a supported notion. And thanks to those offering comments thus far. ] (]) 13:29, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:::@My76Strat - My understanding is that the requirement to identify for ACC was due to the nature of the ACC tool rather than the nature of MediaWiki accountcreator right. Users of the ''tool itself'' have to identify. Can you clarify?--v/r - ]] 14:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::::Yes, this is the case. This isn't because it is a position of trust, but rather because they have access to non-public data under the WMF's policy. They want to make sure that only people over 18 and who have known identity are able to see people's IP addresses, which is what ACC on TS can do. Admins can't see non-public information (by definition of what the right includes) and therefore don't need to be identified. ''']''' <sup>]</sup> 14:27, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::::FWIW they check your identity and age, then delete that data. Being "identified" makes no comment about your age, and your name is not stored. I suppose with permission the foundation could pass on this age detail to the ACC admins. But really identification is a "meh" thing, security theatre. --''']''' <sup>(])</sup> 00:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
* I see no reason why we should institutionalize age discrimination, already a problem at RfA, by making identification mandatory for adminship. As for upping the age to 25, that's a terrible idea, it cuts off a large group of users (college students), and offers no benefit to the project. ] ] 14:47, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
**Honestly, I don't believe that to require all admins to be at least 18 is age discrimination... Actually, I would consider it a very sensible idea, as admins have access to material which was deleted and can block other editors: maturity should be mandatory. <span style="text-shadow:grey 0.118em 0.118em 0.118em; class=texhtml"> ''']'''</span> ] 15:01, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Well, one could argue that maturity is not always proportional to age, but requiring admins to be above 18 isn't a very bad idea after all. Admins frequently have to view offensive and sometimes sexually explicit material; something which may not be legal in their country of residence. ''']]''' 15:05, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::::It's not our job to hold viewers hands and coddle them and prevent them from seeing "bad things". This should apply even less for users. ] ] 15:12, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::I agree, but I consider it our job to make sure that admins are mature and professional. And a 14-year-old generally is not; he's just a kid and should not have access to the admin toolset. <span style="text-shadow:grey 0.118em 0.118em 0.118em; class=texhtml"> ''']'''</span> ] 15:16, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::::::I agree with that, but a 14-year-old wouldn't possibly have the maturity or "capability" (that isn't the correct word, but for my life I can't think of the correct one to use!) to pass RFA anyway. You can tell just by reading the requests at ] the approximate age of each user. ] (]) 15:28, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::::I agree it is unlikely a 14 year old could pass RfA, but not impossible. One positive thing that would automatically ensue involves the allegations that "kids are in charge" which I have seen levied. A requirement to identify would allow that kind of innuendo to be dismissed out of hand. ] (]) 15:54, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:Actually we do have quite a few young admins, even young 'crats. You just don't know because they're highly professional, or as some people like to say "mature". ] ] 16:14, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::I would strongly oppose placing an age requirement for administrators. There are many teenagers out there who are incredibly responsible, and are highly-trusted by families, schools, and communities. I see no reason why we cannot extend this same amount of trust to responsible editors on Misplaced Pages who would like to receive additional abilities so that they can help keep Misplaced Pages moving along efficiently. Some say that teenagers aren't mature and may be faced with inappropriate material that they cannot handle. This may be true in some instances, but it is equally likely that a disruptive adult editor could have a less-than-desired reaction or post an inappropriate item on this website. Misplaced Pages should be proud that young people would like to help keep it clean and moving along, and should not be trying to restrict them from doing good work. ] &#124; ] 17:52, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
:::What we should be proud of and how we should build infrastructure are two different things. ] (]) 06:31, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
: What I do as an admin really has no requirement for me to identify to the Foundation; period. (]<span style="border:1px solid black;">'''&nbsp;]&nbsp;'''</span>]) 10:37, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

* Although admins are a position of trust, we don't really have any secret special access that requires identification. We're way closer to users with additional privileges than traditional network or system administrators. We're closer to "moderators" in that sense on a traditional forum software. The traditional administrator would be closer to someone who wore all hats (checkuser, sysop, steward, crat and oversight) and even then that falls short of the traditional administrator role on a website.--v/r - ]] 14:15, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

* I believe that the current criteria for admins should remain in place for some time, with no new additions like age requirements. For admins who act terribly immature or in bad faith, I'd go with the plan linked below, in the next section. I think it's on the Proposals page now. ] &#124; ] 21:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

* Out of curiosity, how would this affect an admin under the age of 18 now who has already passed RFA? Would he be required to step down? And if so, would he be required to re-run through RFA after reaching 18 and identifying? ] (]) 22:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

:* While particulars would require development, I believe there would be strong support to not require a second RfA. More than likely, once a deadline was set, any who remain unidentified on the deadline would be suspended, and the tool reinstated when they did identify. Honestly I don't anticipate it happening but then again, last week I had no idea it would be required of me. So it is worth considering. ] (]) 22:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

** If we must have an age requirement, I would be fine with it being for bureaucrats, as their userright involves even more abilities. I will still strongly oppose any age requirement for administrators that advances to a further stage. ] &#124; ] 02:30, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

== A noticeboard about rude and abusive admins ==

:''Moved to ] since it is a proposal. --] (]) 02:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)''
::Improved the link. Quite a low quality move thing you did here, Ts. Any history avaiable for people? -] (]) 21:59, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

== Admin Portal ==

Hello fellow Wikipedians. As a bit of background to introduce myself, I am a current student of Michigan State University and a participant in the Misplaced Pages Education Program under Teaching Fellow and MSU professor ]. An overview of the course I am taking can be seen here: ].
I have come here to discuss and gather ideas for a class project to design and produce a prototype framework of resources, tools, and communication for current Misplaced Pages administrators, and editors aspiring to become administrators. The framework will hopefully come to serve as a front page and one-stop shop for current and aspiring Wiki admins. If the project turns out to be a failure or if it is not something the community is looking for, we assume that the prototype will be scrapped. Currently, our project groups have come up with several ideas for what we might include in our designs, but with what little idea we have of Misplaced Pages's inner workings, it makes more sense to me to ask the involved community for input. Please discuss what thoughts you might have, and I will do my best to answer any questions that might come up. ] (]) 23:45, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
: Hi, could you provide an example how such a framework would look? We already have some guides for administrators: ] and . However, those are only useful for already appointed administrators, as normal users do not have the tools to block people or delete/protect pages. If I remember correctly your course is actually not about the administrative tasks, but about maintenance tasks (like reverting vandalism, new page patrol, participating in deletion discussions, etc). The only page which I know that tries to provide an overview of that is ]. Depending on how you define a framework you could see the whole ] as the framework for maintenance tasks. Finally, this particular page is poorly watched, you might get more response if you post a notice on the other village pumps asking people to comment here. '''Yoenit''' (])
:: Oh, we also have ], although I personally never use that. '''Yoenit''' (]) 01:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Thank you for your responses Yoenit. Unfortunately, my only clue to what the framework should be like is that it will probably be a Misplaced Pages page which contains some sort of bookshelf. From the assignment, we are not given much of a clue about what the end product should be like; we only have an idea of what we are trying to accomplish. I'm sorry if my previous description was a bit confusing, but I believe the assignment wants us to focus more on the "tutorial" aspect. After taking a look at the links you provided, I would say we are looking to create something like the ], but focused more for aspiring admins. Our class will not actually be doing any administrative or maintenance tasks from what I understand; our only assignment is this project. Thanks again for your input; if I missed any of your points, please remind me, as I am afraid I was a bit vague. Also, I am still a bit new to Misplaced Pages; might I inquire how I would go about posting a notice on the other village pumps (and where/which village pumps)? ] (]) 06:25, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
:::: Ah oke. You might have already guessed that the village pumps are the closest thing to a regular forum Misplaced Pages has. Because of size it is split in five separate pages. If you go to the top of this page ("home" key) you can see links to the other ones: Technical, Proposals, Policy, Miscellaneous. I suggest leaving messages on Proposals & Policy pages pointing people here (start a new section, "Hi, I started a discussion about at ], please comment."). '''Yoenit''' (]) 07:44, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::There is also {{t|Admin_dashboard}} and ].--v/r - ]] 14:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
::::::I keep a log of things to do or review at ]. ] (]) 14:30, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
::I see that there are obviously many Admin tools already in place. In this case, I suggest that my team will attempt to gather these different pages and explain their usage as part of an Admin Tutorial Portal instead. ] (]) 14:36, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Another idea worth considering. Admins generally have their area of interest. For example, I partake mostly in deletion discussions: either at ], ], or ]. What you might try doing is tailoring several different tools that target specific admin interests. So your research project could be to discuss what areas interest specific admins and what tools they use. Then you go out and create a portal that contains subpages with specific dashboards to specific areas of interest. Also include a "General Dashboard" with general areas of interest. What do you think about that?--v/r - ]] 18:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
::::I think that is a great idea. I will communicate this immediately with my team. And before I forget, do any of you think that the current set of tutorials for Admins is not enough or needs to be revised? My professor has communicated to the class that he believes Wikipedians are looking to expand the amount of admins on the site with the correct mentality, attitude, and training, so I am hoping that the project might be able to address that in some way. ] (]) 18:40, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
*''Idea Lab discussion: Admin Portal'' Sounds like a great idea. ] <small>(])</small> 11:39, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
*We have a bunch of admin resources already, I'm sure that a fresh pair of eyes on them would spot some worthwhile updates, especially jargon busting. But the wiki way is for editors to collaborate in improving that which has gone before and only create new things where there are perceived gaps. If you start from the assumption that we don't already have such resources, or that a bunch of non-wikipedians could create something so much better than the wikipedians have already created, then you are setting yourself up to fail. As for having a group of students collaborate off wiki to change things here, I'd suggest you read ]. Students are very welcome to edit here, this is afterall the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. But I'd suggest that you spread yourselves amongst different articles and projects and learn to collaborate with other wikipedians rather than just classmates. Great to ask each other how to fix things you are stumped with such as syntax and jargon. But try to avoid having multiple students from the same course edit the same page, otherwise you risk wikipedians on that page feeling ganged up on and in worst case scenarios getting students getting blocked as ]. '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers''</span> 12:41, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:I agree, and posted a similar critique at ], where this has now moved. ] ] 14:36, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:I am sorry if it sounded like we are trying to fix something that doesn't need to be fixed, but that is not why I am here. The "Admin Portal" title might be misleading, but it is only there because I needed something to call the section. All that I am asking is for ideas that I might revise my project into something that might be useful in some way to Misplaced Pages. If there is already a page for something that I mentioned, I welcome links and criticism. By all means, please tell me what admins already have so that I will not create something unncessary. But if we simply cannot find something that Wikipedians will endorse, I am afraid that our project will have to be useless. On the other hand, if you think that Admins do not need any more resources, perhaps you could suggest something else our class could attempt. This has all been very informative, and I am glad I came to ask you all before starting the project. Thank you. ] (]) 18:40, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
::Hi Vert3x, helping out with admin tools would be difficult for a group of people who don't have admin rights on their accounts. There are various training modules and instruction pages that could do with review, but really they need review by people who have experience of using the tools concerned. I suspect there is also a flaw in the approach, yes there are circa 750 active editors with admin rights, but many of us rarely use the admin tools or are actively editing something we care about and occasionally help out in one or more specific admin queues. Of those who are active as admins I suspect that many have a personalised dashboard such as ], the idea being that this contains some stuff that is relevant to the aspects of adminship that each admin gets involved in. An admin portal sounds more like something for those who concentrate on being admins, getting involved in every aspect of adminship and doing little else here. I rather hope that such a portal is unneeded. Where I think that a clueful external input would be invaluable is in looking at our processes from the perspective of a newbie, pointing out the jargon so that it can be explained and generally trying to make this site more understandable for new editors. If you and your colleagues were to help out in that I would hope that great things would come of the process - but please try to spread yourselves so that existing editors on various pages don't feel outnumbered. If you can do that and make sure that your discussion about changes is always done on wiki in the appropriate talkpages then I'm sure you'll find yourselves involved in some very interesting collaborations. '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers''</span> 15:58, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Thanks WSC for your post. We will be interviewing many Misplaced Pages Admins around the end of the month in order to address our lack of experience with using tools. As for personalized dashboards, would it be helpful to create tutorials or templates in order to encourage newer admins to be more engaged in adminship? ] (]) 16:41, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
::::We have very few new admins. Last year we had 52 successful RFAs and this year I predict 30-36, as the number of new admins per year has been falling by a third each year for some years. The few new admins that we do get tend to include a number who then become our more active admins, I'm not convinced that our problem is a lack of engagement from the precious few new admins that we do still get, I suspect that burnout is a bigger risk there than lack of engagement. There is a much larger group of admins who actively edit but rarely use the tools, another large group who are not very active but are admins, and some hundreds of former admins who no longer edit but could readily resume adminship if they were to return. Encouraging those three groups and particularly the latter two to re-engage with their adminship strikes me as potentially more productive.
::::As for tutorials, I've long believed that there is a substantial need for training, ideally ] for the various admin tools. Many, perhaps most, admins specialise in particular subsets of the tools. Improved training modules would make it easier for existing admins to shift focus, and just as importantly for inactive and former admins to return. The wiki is barely eleven years old, we have circa 750 active admins and nearly twice that number semiactive, inactive or retired; In total over two thousand individuals who have admin rights or could readily resume them if they restarted editing. If we can re-energise a proportion of them each year and also minimise the loss of those that we have, then we have a realistic chance of having at least the minimum amount of admin actions to keep this site running for decades. By contrast the RFA process is broken beyond reasonable expectation of repair and there seems little prospect of it contributing significantly to either renewing or maintaining admin numbers; So rather than focus on our newer admins and those few new admins we hope to get in future, I'd suggest that we concentrate on admin retention. The editors who became admins during the four years from March 2004 to March 2008 are likely to remain the bulk of our admin community for the foreseeable future, increasing the quality of their refresher training and the efficiency of their tools is in my view a more practical and realistic task than further attempts to reform RFA. '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers''</span> 00:28, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

== Civility Squad - an idea for improving the culture at[REDACTED] ==

Hello, I am pondering the creation of a civility squad with the sole power to tag talk page comments with "Remember to Play Nice" (RTPN), or some sexier something with the same meaning. The only two goals are to provide
*(1) educational self-reflection for all editors somewhat akin to a request for user conduct, and
*(2) a way for editors to easily navigate to conversations where an extra effort at civility and consensus on their part could help get things back on track.

Members of the civility squad would need to be nominated, and confirmed, and all they would do is make RTPN tags where they think
*(A) tone and word choice work against a collaborative atmosphere, and
*(B) a good question was asked but no answer was given after a reasonable period of time.

Regarding the latter, IMO silences are often indicative of some sort of not-nice behavior. Sure there are levers one can pull to deal with someone else's not-nice behaviors, but this idea is about preventing difficulties in the first place. Ideally, the possibility of being tagged for silence in the face of a really good question would reduce the number of editors who got involved in the thread on a whim or for battle etc but not because they have a genuine commitment to improving the article. Also, tagging for silence in face of good questions might provide impetus to work towards consensus even with people we do not especially like, personally.

Individual editors should be able to see a iist of DIFFS where that editor received an RPTN, sort of like a watchlist. This serves two goals: (A) Educational, so the editor in question can get feedback on their own civility and diligence in collaborating until a consensus is reached; and (B) easy navigation to conversations that need some improved attention. Admins and members of the Civility Squad should be able to see an editors RTPN list also, but it should be invisible to 3rd party editors (just like watchlists) because making them all public opens the door to stalking tactics by 3rd parties.

Ideally when reading talk pages any given RTPN '''tag would be invisible except to the logged-in editor that received it''', members of the civility squad, and admins. Otherwise they become ammunition for not-nice tactics by 3rd parties.

Breaking with privacy and discretion, we could also attempt to reform (thru shame) any editor who receives some pre-defined threshold of RTPN tags, for example, they receive more than X tags in the last Y months. If that happens, maybe their own talk page gets a big REMEMBER TO PLAY NICE banner, or they might automatically go to request for review of user conduct. Lots of other ideas come to mind also.

I have not given any thought to questions about whether to allow appealing tags, how to prevent abuse by members of the Civility squad, or whether to allow editors to request tagging of someone else's remarks.

Thoughts? Is this worth developing further? ] (]) 07:39, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:No. ] ] 08:04, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
::Shop management compel shop assistants to "play nice" with the customers (there's several threads on Something Awful on this theme). We're not shop assistants, and a blanket imposition of some kind of managerial civility code is going to be deleterious. ] (]) 08:21, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:Whilst I agree that incivility is a problem, I'm not convinced that such a squad would be a worthwhile solution. I prefer the idea that we are, or should be, a self policing community. On that basis our policies on civility and indeed personal attacks are the responsibility of us all and not a particular squad of civility police. As for the idea of tagging such comments, please remember not to template the regulars as it is considered incivil. If an editor writes something that you consider to be incivil the appropriate thing to do is either to ignore it, or to comment on their talkpage requesting that they reword their comment and explaining which words you'd rather they not use and why. Slapping a template on that highlights the phrase without explaining what your concern is would IMHO be incivil. '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers''</span> 10:08, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:*This would make Misplaced Pages more entertaining for persons unable to write articles or uninterested in writing articles and more painful for writers. We have enough Barney Fifes and Gomer Pyles here already. <small><span style="border:1px solid black;padding:1px;">].]</span></small> 14:04, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

If such positions were nominated and confirmed by the general community then their mandate (re: enforcing civility) would be not much different from that of admins and if the current administrators are unable and/or unwilling to persuade certain individuals to maintain civility then a dedicated team (elected in the same manner, by the same core of regular editors) is unlikely to have much more success. I also think that the proposal would rely overly-much on uncivil editors having a constructive attitude, i.e. '''wanting''' to improve their behaviour. And I've seen little evidence of such individuals having the potential for such mature attitudes. As for reforming through shame, there are sadly quite a few self-righteous pricks who take inordinate pride in rants and userpage displays relating to how they've been "persecuted" for "trying to make Misplaced Pages a better place" (etc. etc. etc.) and no doubt they'd delight in the attention they'd receive through attempts to publicly shame them. I appreciate the idea though ]<sup>]</sup> 10:50, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:: Maybe it could be just another tool in the regular admins toolbox? ] (]) 13:32, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:I'd suggest that Misplaced Pages's fundamental problem isn't incivility, it's incompetence. ] ] 12:20, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:I've got to say, I'm a no on this too. This isn't the way to deal with incivility, the best way is talking to the "culprit" and discussing things. Templates will only serve to antagonise. What's more, since we don't have a clearly defined civility policy, and elected individuals will lead to either a cabal (in elected from within), or groupthink (if without). Either way, I don't see an enforcement group as the way to fix things.]&nbsp;<span style="font-weight:bold;">&middot;</span>&#32;(]) 14:27, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
::I agree, to an extent, with Worm, however I think that he puts far too much stock in 'talking to "culprits"', and I tend to be more skeptical than he is about the ability to convert habitually misbehaving users to ones that can work with the rest of us. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I know it's not a civility police force. ] ] 14:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:::It wouldn't work. An emotionally sound, mentally mature editor would be too wise to join the Misplaced Pages Civility Squad. Actually it would draw emotionally immature editors with control issues. Slap a badge on them and this place would get even more irritating than it sometimes is already. ] (]) 14:37, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
::::Perhaps ARBCOM's forthcoming conclusion of their civility enforcement case will set a clear precedent on how the issue should be approached by administrators. ]<sup>]</sup> 14:41, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::And probably it won't. ] ] 15:53, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
*Civility can be improved only by more people actually being civil. Not by a squad. Not by naming some people as culprits. ]·] 14:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
*I would much prefer the effort go to an Article Improvement Squad. There are over ] and ] otherwise tagged as needing attention. That is a much more pressing concern, in my view. ] (]) 15:25, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
*]. ] (]) 15:45, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
* I have to say, regardless of the merit or otherwise of this idea, "Squads" don't necessarily have a good reputation on this wiki. —] (]) 15:52, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

:Though it is great to see people enthusiastic about improving civility at Misplaced Pages, I don't think that this is the right way to go about it. On the whole, people are uncivil either because of their personality, because they are in a stressful situation, or (most commonly) a combination of the two. People with an uncivil personality are unlikely to reacts well to being templated as uncivil - these are the people who tend not to like discussions on civility at all. If they are naturally uncivil, they probably don't want to improve what they don't see as a problem. On the other hand, people who are in stressful situations and acting with poor judgement generally don't respond well to being told as much. If someone is upset, an impersonal tag on their posts won't make things better. A gentle, personal note on an individual basis can work, as it allows people to take into account the situation and the person involved; a catch-all tag will just antagonise. As I said, it cheers me to see proposals for improving civility; however, I believe that a cultural shift is needed more than any policy change (don't ask me exactly how - it's one of Misplaced Pages's greatest enigmas). ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 16:25, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:* I have to agree that a civility patrol probably wouldn't have the intended consequence. As you point out, some people are just unpleasant by nature and there's not really a short-term fix for that condition. I do manage to keep my own talk page at least somewhat civil by the simple expedience of warning visitors that any negativity will be flushed, then proceeding to do so. It seems to cut down on unpleasant exchanges. (Plus I've tried to work on improving my own digital diplomacy. {{smiley}}) Regards, ] (]) 17:52, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

*So, in short, this would be a function by which individual members of a yet another elected/chosen bureaucracy could basically slap a "neener neener neener" tag on someone who failed to make a comment that didn't meet the squad member's thresh hold. And then what? Yeah, no. I can't see any result from this but needless antagonization, and likely the ironic result of driving people away. ]] 16:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
::There are several possible causes of perceived incivility; sometimes it's that the person fully intended to be uncivil, sometimes it arises from a misunderstanding, sometimes it's a reaction to what the other person has said, either person can have misunderstood something about where the other one was coming from (or they both can!). Also, it's worth reading on Jimbo's talk. Misplaced Pages is an attractive place to a lot of highly intelligent people who would ]. So quite a few of us in here have some glitches on the autism spectrum, and it's always worth bearing in mind either that the person one's talking to is having trouble getting a handle on what one's saying in the way one's saying it, or (possibly) that one is somewhere on that spectrum oneself, and not aware of it! That can be a major cause of communication breakdown - and one you're more likely to come across in Misplaced Pages than among the general population. A Civility Squad isn;t the answer; the answer is a ''really clearly defined'' and ''totally impossible to misunderstand'' civility policy, applied equally to all. ] (]) 18:51, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
*No sir/ma'am. ] (]) 23:28, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
::This is a great idea, and it's nice to see someone working on developing positive initiatives, but this might rub some people the wrong way. Seasoned editors might be a bit embarrased, newer ones might be offended and deterred from editing. This isn't something to throw under the bus, but I don't think we're ready as a community for it now. ] &#124; ] 23:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

*To hell with this idea. People should concern themselves with writing articles, rather than making it their duty to become sanctimonious pricks. <span style="text-shadow:grey 0.2em 0.2em 0.1em; class=texhtml">] ]</span> 10:54, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

* Every single editor is, in theory, a member of the civility squad already. WQA deals with "problem communication", and admins block for egregious violations. ArbCom is (in theory) discussing civility overall right now. Heck, I even created a special ] ages ago (]<span style="border:1px solid black;">'''&nbsp;]&nbsp;'''</span>]) 13:08, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

== Make all pages edit forms when visual editor is complete ==

]
When this is complete, how about make every editable page this visual editor, so everyone has a chance to edit? This would be disabled on blocks/protection/etc. . This would be a great way to attract new users.] ] 07:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
:I believe that that is the intention. --] (]) 10:49, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
::Yuck! I hope that can be disabled! ] (]) 13:48, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
:::I would not mind it as a default, but I certainly want the ability to disable it. Novice editors will benefit from the ability to edit without needing to learn markup. ---'''''—&nbsp;]<span style="color:darkblue">&nbsp;'''''</span><sup>]</sup> 14:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
:::: Same here. I also hope it doesn't manage to break things in actual use, either by screwing up the wikitext (or making massive amounts of minor formatting changes) or by "crashing" in some manner when fed hand-edited wikitext. ]] 15:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::They are definitely making it so that it can be disabled, and so that it doesn't break anything, and so that it doesn't make "massive amounts of minor formatting changes" (aka "dirty diffs"). --] (]) 15:18, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
::::::Definitely, we should also have visual diffs as well in addition to our current text diffs. @Reaper Eternal: It can be disabled, with the intention being that it would be the normal read-only version if something like a block or page protection is stopping the editing.] ] 20:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
::I seriously doubt that it'll be enabled for every page at once. Phased rollout is very much the WMF's style. Minimizes the damage minimal if something goes wrong. Of course if it works fine, it'll get implemented project-wide. ] ] 14:35, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

== Creating articles from redirects for new users ==

Recently, while working at the Help Desk, I've noticed a few users struggling to create an article on a subject which already exists, but as a redirect. When they type the name of their desired article into the search box, it redirects them to a different article (and the small text telling them about the redirect is often missed). I think something bigger which notified users when they are redirected, which a much clearer message regarding how to get to the redirect page and how to turn that into an article would be useful to new editors. What do people think? ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 21:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
: At first glance, this situation seems to be a corner case for a small number of inexperienced editors. I'd expect most visitors to a page are there to read the article, so they should really be the priority here. At present the redirect message is small and out of the say, rather than cluttering up the header. (I wish the same were true of the hatnotes.) Maybe we need a wizard mode to make helpful suggestions to new editors who have registered with Misplaced Pages? Or maybe this can be an account-based configuration option? Regards, ] (]) 22:31, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
::I don't deny that this will effect a minority of people visit a page. However, those in the minority are the most likely to become good content editors in the future. They are inexperienced, but they are only inexperienced because they've not been around for long; we can't expect them to stay around much longer if it is seemingly very complex to create the article they want to (and, with no prior knowledge of redirects, it is). I don't think a massive banner would be appropriate; perhaps just an extra link near the top which says 'Create an article on .' I'm not entirely sure what might work (which is why I'm in the idea lab), but it would be useful to have something which says this is how to create the article you want. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 13:59, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
::: Well I can't really argue with your statements about inexperienced editors because we're making assessments based on supposition rather than data. I guess if they arrived at the article via the redirect, then mayhap it would be okay to modify the message since it only affects others who follow the same route. Perhaps a tab could be inserted at the top saying '''Edit&nbsp;redirect''', when appropriate. That may serve the purpose but not get in the way of the article header. Regards, ] (]) 19:58, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
::::That's what I was thinking, yes. Perhaps only a small change, but a change to the redirect message which clearly states both how to get to the redirect, and how to 'create' an article out of a redirect. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 11:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
::::: I can only re-iterate my dislike of adding low-priority clutter at the top of an article. Using an extra edit tab at the top and/or a mouse-over message on the redirect link would be okay though. Thanks. Regards, ] (]) 23:42, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

== Option to *not* view Misplaced Pages in widescreen format? ==


Is there no way that we can have an option to have Misplaced Pages NOT use the full width of a wide screen. It makes it particularly hard to read if the lines are 30-40 cm long! <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 22:09, 18 February 2012 (UTC)</span></small><!-- Template:Unsigned --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
:Have you tried resizing your browser? →<span style="font-family:Euclid Fraktur">]]].</span> 22:10, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
:You are not alone in finding Misplaced Pages pages in widescreen annoying, I agree it's harder to read. What I usually do is when my browser window comes up in widescreen, I click "Shrink" (or whatever it is called in English, I am not using an English language system), the button to the left of the close (X) button. If that doesn't yield the desired result, I just drag the browser window with my mouse cursor in order to make it smaller. ] (]) 01:15, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
::Go to your .css (User:YOU/common.css‎):
<pre>
#content {
width: 800px !important;
}
</pre>
something like that. choose whatever width you want. ] <sup>]</sup> 09:34, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


As part of ], a lot of articles are ], which is done by moving the it to the Draft: or User: namespace. The problem is that without ] rights, patrollers are forced to leave redirects behind, which are always deleted under speedy deletion criterion ]. Giving patrollers the <code>suppressredirect</code> right would make the process easier and reduce workload for admins. What do you think? <span style="white-space:nowrap"><span style="font-family:monospace">'''<nowiki>''']<nowiki>]]'''</nowiki>'''</span> (] • ])</span> 11:02, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
==Misplaced Pages needs a training ground==
:Draftifying is happening far too much. But the idea has merit, as then the last log entry will say the page was moved, rather than a redirect deleted. ] (]) 11:11, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
One of the most pressing problems facing Misplaced Pages at the moment is declining editorship. This is largely due to the fact that Misplaced Pages has become an unwelcoming place for new editors unfamiliar with the rules and mores we've developed over the years. The "Article feedback tool" was one method tried to remedy this, but it has proven largely a joke, at least for the articles I edit. A better idea, I think, would simply be to make Misplaced Pages more welcoming to visitors. Right now, the "how to" sections on Misplaced Pages are faceless, intimidating blocks of text, hidden behind tiny search icons on the side of the page. What is needed is a user-friendly interactive website, complete with audio, video and its own cadre of dedicated users who will handhold new editors through their first attempts. I would also suggest a "training ground" be set up consisting of ~1000 duplicate articles on which new editors can be politely led through the dos and don'ts without getting their heads bitten off by irate editors. <b>]]<font color="#00b">]</font></b> 08:23, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
:Note: This has been proposed before. See {{Section link|Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 203#Give NPR additional rights?}} ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 14:55, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
:The other option would be to not have it automatically given, but to make it easy to grant to new page reviewers frequently doing draftifications, and encourage them to apply. ] (] · ]) 15:36, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
::I don't think this is a good idea. Suppressing the redirect right away (whether you're an admin or not) makes it harder for people to find the page they were editing. ] (]) 18:52, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Opening up the page will show the log entry that the page was moved (allowing people to easily find it). Current policy does not place a time limit on when to delete pages that qualify for ] (beyond the standard wait an hour before draftifying). Once that happens, it's nominated for speedy deletion if the patroller isn't a page mover or an admin. R2s are usually dealt with immediately, so it's not like forcing people to nominate them for speedy deletion is going to accomplish much other than make their workflow slightly longer. ] ] 23:18, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
::This is ''de facto'' already the case. It's quite easy for an NPR to become a page mover on those grounds alone. ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 19:16, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
: '''Reluctantly oppose''' not per WhatamIdoing but because the suppressredirect right has too much ancillary power for me to be comfortable bundling it in like this. ] ] 18:59, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
: I also oppose bundling it with anything else beyond pagemover, per both Pppery and WAID. I'm also minded to agree with Graeme Bartlett that drafifying is happened too often (but I realise that it's been a while since I looked at this in detail). Nobody should be granted the suppressredirect right without it being clear they understand the policy surrounding when redirects should and should not be suppressed specifically. ] (]) 14:21, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
: I agree with {{u|JJPMaster}} that NPPers that qualify for the right don't much trouble gaining it. I think each case should be examined individually because draftifying on a frequent basis isn't required to be a new page patroller. User right requests also provide a chance to double check that such drafticiations are actually being done correctly. ] ] 23:25, 17 January 2025 (UTC)


== Using a Tabber for infoboxes with multiple subjects ==
:I agree - Misplaced Pages has become quite old-fashioned in how it runs - it is not obvious how it works. Many successful website now make it incredibly easy to do something (consider Facebook's removal of the send button in favour or just pressing Enter, or ]). I think large steps will be taken to the effect with the development of the visual editor, and I am really hoping that it will be intuitive and obvious to use. I believe that, if Misplaced Pages wants to attract people beyond those who would edit Misplaced Pages anyway, it needs to become simple to use and move away from the culture of expecting people to read pages of instructions. We seem to expect new editors to read and understand out 5 pillars, our policies on notability, reliable sources, copyright, and original research and to read all the guidance on editing.


There are many articles that cover closely related subjects, such as ] which covers both the Pro and Pro Max models, ] which covers the original, OLED, and Lite models, and ] which covers the A, B, C, and I variants. Most of these articles use a single infobox to display specifications and information about all of the covered subjects, leading to clutter and lots of parentheticals.
:Creating a new page is now very difficult. There is no button which says "CREATE A NEW PAGE BY CLICKING THIS", and there should be. We have the Article Wizard and Articles for Creation but, for a new user, they are almost impossible to find. Unless you somehow know to type "Article Wizard" into the search bar, you'll never get there. We use Wikimarkup because it is much simpler than HTML; despite this, unless you've had prior experience with wikis, clicking the edit buttons can present a page full of complex coding at the top, which can be difficult to navigate if you don't know what is happening.


'''I propose that a tabber, like ], be used to instead create distinct infobox tabs for each subject.''' This would allow many benefits, such as clearly separating different specifications, providing more room for unique photos of each subject, and reducing visual clutter. An example of good use of tabs is one of my personal favorite wikis, https://oldschool.runescape.wiki, which uses tabs effectively to organize the many variants of monsters, NPCs, and items. A great example is the entry for , a very common NPC with many variants. It even uses nested tabs to show both the spawn location grouped by city, and the individual variants within each city. While this is an extreme example in terms of the raw number of subjects, it provides a good look at how similar subjects can be effectively organized using tabs. Using Misplaced Pages's system instead, it would be substantially more cluttered, with parentheticals such as: <small><code>'''Examine:''' "He tries to keep order around here" ''(Edgeville 1, Edgeville 2, Falador (sword) 1...)''</code></small> If you tried to save space using citations, it becomes very opaque: <code>'''Examine:''' "He tries to keep order around here" <sup>...</sup></code>
:There needs to be something where new users immediately go to when the register, which they can find again without having to type something into the search box. Our problem is that some of the very useful pages we have cannot be found unless you know to search for them (and, if you don't understand the Misplaced Pages namespace, even that is confusing). I certainly agree that there needs to be an overhaul of Misplaced Pages's editing guidance, especially for new users, placing big unmissable buttons to the important guides and not relying on a user's ability to navigate our complex web of policy. This needs to be built into the existing systems we have for editing, as well as used as a principle for writing guides for new users. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 16:07, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


Overall I think this would make infoboxes more easily readable and engaging. It encourages "perusing" by clicking or tapping through the tabs, as opposed to trying to figure out what applies where. ] (]) 18:42, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
==Allow any logged in editor to delete their own U1 and G7 cases==
:That would be an interesting idea! To go back to you ] example, a lot of information gets repeated in both tabs – maybe there could be a way to have it so that it only has to be added to the article in one place (even if shown in both tabs) to make them easier to keep in sync? ] (] · ]) 18:46, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Some of our least contentious speedy deletions could be "unbundled" so that the any user can delete their own U1 and G7 pages. This would take a bit of work off our admins, and more importantly it would empower all editors to get rid of their own mistakes and clutter. For G7 I'd suggest that any logged in editor be enabled to delete any page where they are the sole author, you could also broaden that to pages where the only other edits are from bots or were marked as minor.
:If it can print and display without JS effectively. From my testing under these environments, Tabber(Neue) makes these awkward line/paragraph-breaks that don't display the header at all. $wgTabberNeueUseCodex may be promising, but at least with the examples at ], it's even worse: the tabs don't expand for the printing view at all, and the info under the other tabs will just be inaccessible on paper. ] (]) 20:21, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
<s>For U1 I'd suggest that we</s> In either case we need to exclude pages that have moved, otherwise we risk vandals moving articles into their userspace and then deleting them. Otherwise per U1 editors should be free to delete pages in their userspace - though not their usertalk space.
:A couple points at first blush: first, having a tabbed infobox seems like it's a usability nightmare. Secondly, it seems to be doing an end run around the overarching problem, which is that the infobox for ] is terrible. Software and tech articles are often like this (bad) where they try and cram an entire spec sheet into the infobox, and that's a failing of the infobox and the editors maintaining it. Trying to create a technical solution rather than the obvious one (just edit what's in the infobox to the most important elements) seems like a waste of everyone's time. ] <sup><small>]</small></sup> 20:33, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
This would still leave a proportion of U1 and G7 tags for admins to deal with, but hopefully only ones where something needs checking.
:I suspect that our users would not even realise that they could click the tabs to see other info. So it will make it harder for our readers. Alternatives are to have multiple infoboxes, but this does take up space, particularly on mobile. Another way is to use parameter indexing as in the Chembox. Parameters can have a number on the end to describe variations on related substances in the one infobox. ] (]) 20:37, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I haven't fully quantified the number of articles involved, but from my experience it would be many articles per day so thousands of articles per year. '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers''</span> 15:34, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
::Tabs are widely used even on amateur wikis like 90% of Fandom Wikia. I'm sure readers know how to use them. (In fact, the "Article/Talk" "Read/Edit/View history" thing on the top is a tab.) ] (]) 21:27, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Judging by how few readers understand we have or ever see the talk pages, I'm not sure that's exactly a good argument. ] <sup><small>]</small></sup> 22:10, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
::::{{fake cn}} for that. I started out processing semi-protected edit requests and there were a ton of clueless readers' requests. ] (]) 00:00, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Readers and potential editors don't know what the protection, good article, featured article, and other icons mean. I'm just one person but I'd never heard of tabs like that until I read this. ] (solidly non-human), ], ] 01:35, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Sorry. That should read "Some readers..." ] (solidly non-human), ], ] 01:37, 17 January 2025 (UTC)


== dissensus as an alternative to consensus ==
:I like the idea, and the qualifications you've added would solve any potential problems. It would have to be limited, but I think you've covered that. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 15:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)`
: ] touches on this. Is there some huge backlog of U1 or G7 deletions that there is any actual need for this? Also, BTW, you'd have to exclude moved pages from your G7 deletion deal too, or a vandal could move a page to a random title and then delete the redirect left behind. ]] 19:59, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
::There is not a large backlog, but I don't think that should prevent the implementation of such an idea unless there is reason not to implement the idea. The page you linked to mentioned possible security issues; I would be interested to hear more regarding that. Restricting moved pages for G7 sounds like a good idea. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 20:20, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
::Would this be given out as a user flag to prevent abuse? If so, perhaps <small>-suppressredirect</small> could also be added to the flag. Such a flag would definitely allow more non-admins to help out with non-controversial ] i.e. deleting the redirect left behind to do a multi requested move. ] ] 20:24, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
:::I wasn't suggesting this as a separate userright - more that all logged in editors could be allowed to do such uncontentious deletions. '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers''</span> 15:19, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
:::I like the spirit of this proposal. My singular concern is that I prefer a system which incorporates adequate checks and balances. Because every saved edit is an "irrevocable release" of that contribution, I am generally opposed to abilities that could contravene the spirit of that intent. I would rather support a flag that allowed non administrators to accomplish these non controversial deletions, but not where the contributions are their own. I cringe at the prevailing practice where administrators routinely delete their own pages. I just believe deletions should have the endorsement of an additional editor to ensure propriety.


For contentious pages, from what I can tell, there is no way in Misplaced Pages to come to a consensus when both camps are not making a good faith effort, and maybe even then. My proposal is: an expert could start an alternative page for one that he thinks is flawed, and have the same protections from further editing as the original? Then there could be a competition of narratives ] (]) 19:32, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
: As it has already been mentioned, there is one more potentially dangerous way to use such abilities: when a page is moved, the user who performed the move is the only author of the resulting redirect... But it doesn't feel right to let the same user delete such redirects - there is a separate user right for that...
: And there might be some other potential dangers. Furthermore, unless we are going to allow the same users to undo such deletions (and I don't think we can, since that would require to let them view the deleted versions), it might lead to some, er, embarrassing situations (when user deletes something after, er, getting carried away with testing the interface). Thus no, I don't think it is a good idea. It is not very hard to add the template and that lets an administrator to check if the tagged page ''really'' should be deleted (there ''might'' be some reason not to). There is nothing wrong with such deletions taking some time - that just gives some time for the user to think it over. --] (]) 01:46, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
::Good point about moves and redirects - I've tweaked the proposal to exclude any page that has moved. Not just the G7s. I appreciate that it will lead to the occasional request for a restore. But they won't be as much work for the admins as the deletes currently are. As for checks and balances, this is for a very restricted group of pages where checks and balances are not needed due to their being in one users userspace or the sole work of one author. '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers''</span> 15:19, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
::I think WSC has summed up what I would have said in response to the above post, bar one thing. Perhaps with restoring deleted pages, a user would be able to see deleted versions of pages that they have themselves deleted. This would have none of the problems that allowing users to see deleted contributions usually entails. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 21:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


:We call those ]s and we try to prevent them from happening. ] (]) 19:42, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
== Automatically updating "As Of (date)" template ==
:Honestly, the consensus system works especially well on contentious pages, even if the discussions can sometimes get heated. Having ] everywhere would not really be preferable, as, not only would you not have a single place to link the reader to, but you would quickly end up with pages full of personal opinions or cherry-picking sources if each group was given its own place to write about its point of view. A competition of narratives could be interesting as a website concept, but it would be pretty far from an encyclopedia. ] (] · ]) 19:43, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
::The competition would not be the last step. Selection of alternatives could happen by votes, with some cutoffs: if a fork does not get votes above a cutoff, it is eliminated. That would prevent proliferation of narratives. Or you could have the selction criteria be differential instead of absolute: if one narrative gets 2x (for example) more votes than another, the other one is eliminated. Consensus does not work if pages become protected but the disagreement is still strong. ] (]) 19:48, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
::{{tq|1=Honestly, the consensus system works especially well on contentious pages,}}<br>I'd agree, but I'd also say we don't actually use the consensus system for contentious pages in practice—the more controversial the topic, the more I notice it devolving into straight voting issue-by-issue. (Even though that's the situation where you actually ''need'' to identify a consensus that all sides can live with.) ] (]) 21:42, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
:Interestingly, it's been theorized (, pg 101) that we already have a "community of dissensus" whereby contentious and poorly-supported claims are weeded out from our articles until only that which can be verified remains. <sub>signed, </sub>] <sup>]</sup> 19:45, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
::The problems I see are not due to poorly supported claims. They are due to a biased reporting, that is technically correct (e.g. "hostilities erupted", rather than side A attacked side B), or outright omissions (e.g. the leader of said group is not mentioned because of his shady associations with Nazis, whereas the leader of the other group is mentioned many times). ] (]) 20:29, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
:::In that case, we should stick to what sources say, rather than making multiple versions trying to please each editor. If sources mention the names of both leaders, then we should have them both in the article, rather than hiding one in a separate article. ] (] · ]) 20:36, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
::::So that addresses one issue, but evern there, if the page is protected, you can't "mention them both". What about the way of presenting a phenomenon, that while technically correct, is misleading by omission of important details? ] (]) 20:42, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::For both cases: page protection doesn't mean that no one can propose any changes, it just means that you have to go to the talk page and discuss them with other editors (usually, to avoid someone else coming just after you and reverting it). If you feel like the discussion isn't going anywhere, we have channels for ]. ] (] · ]) 20:49, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::That said, there are special restrictions on articles related to Palestinian–Israeli conflicts, and you shouldn't attempt to edit them or discuss them until you have made 500+ edits elsewhere. This will give you a chance to learn our processes, jargon, and rules in a less fraught context. ] (]) 08:13, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:This might be a good idea for social media, but this is an encyclopedia. ] (]) 20:45, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
::Even more important then, so as not to deceive ] (]) 20:48, 17 January 2025 (UTC)


== Making categorization more understandable to the average editor ==
Hi, I've always thought that instead of using ], there should be an "as of" template that properly updates the date of an item when required (Example: "As of 2011, Jimmy Hoffa's body has not been found." would change to "As of 2012, Jimmy..." automatically). What the current As Of template is intended to do is to categorize an article as "will be outdated eventually" after inserting a date manually. Wouldn't it be more convenient if there was a date template that updated itself instead of simply tagging the article as "soon outdated"?


See ]. There is an underlying dispute that caused this but what I'm more interested in finding out how to make ] more helpful to the average editor trying to learn about categorization and when to diffuse/not diffuse because the current text isn't as clear as I think it should be. I suck at RfCs and I don't think discussion is near the point where one should be started yet, so more input really is welcome. ] ] 23:03, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
I've been told that one of the reasons for forcing manual update is that in some cases there is a need for manual checking, as in "As of 2012, Obama is president". Obviously you wouldn't want the template to continue updating indefinitely "As of 2020, ..." but for those cases one would simply remove the template when it's no longer applicable. Are there any other reasons to not consider this type of template that anyone can think of? -] (]) 20:35, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
:I've tried understanding ] and it hurt my brain so I gave up, but kudos for attempting to tackle it. ]&nbsp;] 15:48, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
::It makes my brain hurt too, but I'm hoping enough editors who find it confusing can come together and make this process less of a maze. ] ] 23:32, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
:::One good start might be to move the section on creating categories below that of categorizing articles - there are far more than ] (]) 08:05, 19 January 2025 (UTC)


== More levels of protection and user levels ==
:The main argument against such a template would be that (one hopes) the "As of 2011" is sourced. If the source says "as of 2011", it should stay that way until a new source comes along with updated information. An unsolved math problem, for example, might be unsolved as of 2008, but more investigation is needed to determine if it's still unsolved in 2012. ] (]) 20:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


I think the jump from 4 days and 10 edits to 30 days and 500 edits is far too extreme and takes a really long time to do it when there are many editors with just 100, 200 edits (including me) that are not vandals, they do not have strong opinions on usually controversial opinions and just want to edit. Which is why I want the possibility for more user levels to be created. For example one for 200 edits, and 15 days that can be applied whenever vandalism happens somewhat, in that case normally ECP would be applied however I that is far too extreme and a more moderate protection would be more useful. Vandals that are that dedicated to make 200 edits and wait 30 days will be dedicated enough to get Extended Confirmed Protection. Though I want to see what the community thinks of sliding in another protection being ACP and ECP. 2 levels should suffice to bridge the gap between 4 edits and 500 edits would allow low edit count editors to edit while still blocking out vandalism. This is surprisingly not a perennial proposal. ] (]) 02:19, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
::I see your point. I am talking, though, about instances where only a "precedent" is required to confirm it to the future, and until a new precedent is established. Jimmy Hoffa's body is not the best example, but it illustrates my point. You wouldn't need new sources every year to keep establishing that Hoffa's body hasn't been found yet, right? You would simply need the proper sources to tell you that Jimmy Hoffa's body wasn't found, an is "still" missing. Maybe I need more examples to illustrate: as of 2012, there are 8 planets in the ] and five objects considered dwarf planets. Until a new planet is discovered (if at all), this will be a fact as of 2013, 2014 etc. You don't need new sources every year to tell you this, you would only need a new source when and if the fact changes (i.e. a new planet is discovered). Last example: As of 2012, ] is the only person who has won an Oscar as both a writer and an actor. This fact will be true for all future time except if and when someone else accomplishes this (and only ''then'' would you need a new source). Do you agree? -] (]) 21:15, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
:It's more that editors who have 500/30 generally have been in enough situations to hold Wikipedian knowledge that's in-depth enough. That doesn't necessarily hold true for those you've proposed. Time is part of the intention. ] (]) 02:28, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:{{tq|possibility for more user levels to be created}} I had thought about this before and think more levels (or at least an additional level with tweaks to the current ones) would be a good idea. Something along the lines of:
:1. WP:SEMI - 7 days / 15 edits
:2. WP:ECP - 30 days / 300 edits
:3. WP:??? - 6 months / 750 edits (reserved for pages with rampant sockpuppetry problems, such as those in the WP:PIA topic area). ] (]) 02:50, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
::@] Yes, that may be apart of the intention but I feel like there are editors with under 500 edits who can make just a good enough edit to not get it instantly reverted. Also protection is there mainly for vandalism, if we lived in a perfect society anyone could edit[REDACTED] pages without needing accounts and making tons of edits.
::@] I think 180/750 would be far too harsh, not even the most divisive topics and controversial issues get vandalized often with ECP.
::My idea generally was keeping ECP the same but inserting another type of protection level in-between for mildly controversial topics and pages that are vandalized infrequently. ] (]) 03:25, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Can you give some specific examples of "controversial topics and pages that are vandalized infrequently"? Is there a particular article you want to edit but are unable to? ] (]) 03:29, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
::::SimpleSubCubicGraph, if this is regarding ] (per the comments below), then under my proposed ECP level requirements (30 day/300 edits), you would be able to edit that article. ] (]) 12:35, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:There is not too much utility to creating a variety of new levels, as it generally gets clunky trying to define everything, and it makes the system less easy to grasp. What differentiates 100 edits from 200 from 300? ECP is not usually for vandalism, it is deployed for topics that receive particular levels of non-vandalistic (] is very narrow) disruption. These are topics where experience is usually quite helpful, where editors who just want to edit are more likely to get in trouble. However, it is also a very narrow range of topics, apparently only affecting at the moment, or less than 0.05% of articles. ] (]) 03:39, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
::Isn't EC protection just for contentious topics? I didn't think we were using it just to protect against common or garden vandalism. ] <small>(])</small> 05:59, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:::@] even though there are 3,000 articles that have ECP protection, many articles are often upgraded to ECP in light of infrequent vandalism (once a day, few times a week, etc). I know Skidibi Toilet was upgraded to ECP when the page was vandalized a few times. It was quite hilarious but it demonstrates a wider problem with liberally putting ECP on everything that gets even remotely vandalized. ] (]) 07:06, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Now, are there that many people that care for Skidibi Toilet? No. But it is also liberally applied to other wiki pages that are infrequently vandalized and editors can be there, wanting to edit, but they have to wait until an admin removes the protection which can vary depending on how active they are. It can be a day, to a week, and up to a month if you are really unlucky and the article is not that well known/significant. Which is why another type of protection can allow these editors to edit their favorite subject while still preventing vandalism. There are very few ECP users and that is with counting alternate accounts. So this change will affect a lot with how[REDACTED] works. ] (]) 07:09, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::ECP is not liberally applied. Admins are usually very cautious about applying it, and if there is a particular case where you think it is no longer needed, raise it and it will very likely be looked at. ] (]) 08:11, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
::::It wasn't "infrequent" vandalism. Just look at the page history. Though I would use PC protection instead. ] (]) 15:40, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:500 edits is also when you earn access to ].
:Editors who make it to about ~300 edits without getting blocked or banned usually stick around (and usually continue not getting blocked or banned). So in that sense, we could reduce it to 300/30 without making much of a difference, or even making the timespan a bigger component (e.g., 300 edits + 90 days). But it's also true that if you just really want to get 500, then you could sit down with ] and get the rest of your edits in a couple of hours. You could also sort out a couple of grammar problems. Search, e.g., on "diffuse the conflict": ''diffuse'' means to spread the conflict around; it should say ''defuse'' (remove the fuse from the explosive) instead. I cleaned up a bunch of these a while ago, but there will be more. You could do this for anything in the ] (so long as you are absolutely certain that you understand how to use the misused words!). ] (]) 08:36, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
::'''' Sorry, I must have missed the various RfCs that extended the use outside contentious topics. {{u|SimpleSubCubicGraph}}, if you finding pages that could safely be reduced in protection level, and that don't fall within contentious topics, then you should ask the protecting admin to reduce the level on their talk page. But if you have an urge to edit ] then the simplest thing to do is make small improvements to mainspace for a couple of hundred edits. If you don't have a topic you are interested in that isn't protected just hit random article a few times or do a wikilink random walk until you find something that you can improve. ] <small>(])</small> 08:47, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:::For anyone who wants to run up their edit count: Search for "it can be argued that", and replace them with more concise words, like "may" ("''It can be argued that'' coffee tastes good" → "Coffee ''may'' taste good"). ] (]) 00:27, 22 January 2025 (UTC)


== Ways to further implement restricting non-confirmed users from crosswiki file uploading ==
:::But how would the automatic process know that the fact now needs an update? It would just continue refreshing the date until a human comes by and fixed it. Given Misplaced Pages is on a ], that might be a long time during which the article will be wrong. —&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;]&nbsp;&nbsp;▎]</small> 21:19, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


The whole community ] from transferring files to Commons. How else to implement such restrictions besides an abuse filter that's already done and hiding the "Export to Wikimedia Commons" button from non-confirmed users (])? Someone ] to implement this, so here I am. ] (]) 06:01, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Yes, many articles are wrong and outdated until an editor fixes it. That's how Misplaced Pages works. But there are many articles right now that are wrong because they still say "as of 2011", "as of 2009", etc. The template would at least fix those errors. Of course it wouldn't know when it "starts" being wrong, the same way an article about a person can't "know" it is now wrong because the person died and it still says he's alive. Of course the template would manually need to be removed when it is time, even if it becomes "wrong" for some time. IMO it would help articles stay "right" for longer than they would begin to be "wrong". The idea is that articles remain "right" as time passes instead of remaining outdated. -] (]) 21:44, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::I disagree that "as of 2009" is "wrong" in an article; outdated, yes, but until someone checks to see if what was true in 2009 is still true in 2012 (many things will be, but some things will not be), having it automatically increment as the years go by is a violation of ]. It would essentially be telling the reader "yes, we checked, and this is still accurate" when we haven't checked. ] (]) 21:51, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::Kreachure, to do this automatically will cause too many problems, but what do you think about using "Obama is president<nowiki>{{Please update me|date=20 January 2013}}</nowiki>" for statements that we ''know'' needs to be updated at a specific date? ] ] 22:02, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


== Disambiguation ==
:{{ec}} If the date updates itself then that means it will always stay the most current, in which case you can just use a template with current date. If it will at some point expire, then you cannot have it update automatically, because eventually it will make an error. So unless I'm missing something here, I don't see what this would achieve. —&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;]&nbsp;&nbsp;▎]</small> 21:16, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
::(ec)I guess my point is that there are instances where the fact remains year after year, and that's when this template would be most useful. For cases with a time limit, it would also be useful, and you would simply remove it when it no longer is. If the Obama article has the phrase "as of 20XX" referring to his presidential term, you need to change it manually every year. It's easier to have a template that does this automatically, and then simply remove it by the end of his term. You would ''have'' to edit out the "as of 20XX" manually at the end anyway, template or no template. So at least it prevents edits concerning dates, which I often find on obscure articles, and hence the proposal. -] (]) 21:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Exactly. ] does not allow any automated processes to make errors when we are aware that those errors will happen. Be it 10 years or 100 years in the future, eventually it will make the article wrong. —&nbsp;<small>&nbsp;]&nbsp;&nbsp;▎]</small> 22:07, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
::But what if there are only 8 planets? ] (]) 21:22, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
:::<small>That's funny. Not helpful, but funny. Error fixed. -] (]) 21:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC)</small>
:First off, you should propose to create a new template, because {{tlx|As of}} is already used for something else, namely to mark potentially dated statements. Adding your suggestion to the template would defeat its purpose. Also, there are a few ] to insert the current year and so on, but using these in articles could cause trouble.
:*"As of 2011, Jimmy Hoffa's body has not been found." This should be used when there is a source for the statement, it also gives a hint that it may be found later.
:*"As of <nowiki>{{CURRENTYEAR}}</nowiki>, Jimmy..." should not be used, because it could be false, and we never need to point out to our readers what year it is. Instead, just write "Jimmy Hoffa's body has not been found". ] ] 21:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


I don't know if this is technically feasible or not (advice sought) but would it be possible to create a shortcut for disambiguation? Something like <nowiki>]</nowiki> where the bang causes it to display as ] rather than having to write <nowiki>]</nowiki> which can be error prone. (I am not attached to the form in the example, it is the functionality I am interested in.) ] ] 21:33, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:(edit conflict) This goes against the whole idea of ] which is exactly to say when it was known to be true. Some articles are not edited for years, and even then they may not be updated with current information. ] will presumably be updated quickly when he is no longer president, but his presidency is mentioned in many articles which receive less attention. And articles likely to be updated can still cause problems. Misplaced Pages has many legitimate reusers. Some of them copy articles and never update their copy. If we say as of <nowiki>{{CURRENTYEAR}}</nowiki> and a reuser has software to display <nowiki>{{CURRENTYEAR}}</nowiki> correctly then in 10 years their version of ] may say "As of 2022, Obama is president". ] (]) 21:42, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
:Isn't that how ] works? ]&nbsp;] 21:46, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
{{od}} <nowiki>{{ec}}</nowiki> ever since my last comment, and here is the follow-on:<p>The proposal has merit, you proposed it well, and I'm sure it seemed a no-brainier. Just remember, sometimes you have to deal with people who have no brains; like me. Don't be discouraged, extract the good parts, and "soldier on". Now here's the irony; I proposed the same idea over a year ago, right here. (although my idea was not nearly as well presented as yours) In the end there were to many reasons to not do it.<p>I apologize if my comment about 8 planets seemed callous. I actually got a chuckle out of the deal, and I thank you for that measure of good cheer. Because it so perfectly illustrates a down side. We absolutely wouldn't want it said; "in 2012 there were 9 planets", because no one had updated the information.<p>In my proposal we discussed things like live feeds, automatically updating statistics like population, holders of public office and so on. We even discussed reverse updating, that would be perpetually accurate, when relating prose to the event. For example: "10 years ago the towers fell" would become "11 years ago" on 09/11/2012.<p>Since I've set time for the above; I'll share some insight I've gleaned along the way: There is an institutional nemesis; that prevails at stifling every automated form of editing ever tried! The few that are used, (begrudgingly tolerated) are to be "used at your own risk". And the mere prospect; that {{BCD}} lays bare; is at minimum, cautionary! Wiki-love to all - ] (]) 23:05, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
::Yes. ] (]) 21:52, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I did not know that! I was aware of the pipe trick suppressing the namespaces but not the disambiguation. Thanks for that! ] ] 23:16, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 03:45, 23 January 2025

Section of the village pump where new ideas are discussed
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The prominence of parent categories on category pages

The format of category pages should be adjusted so it's easier to spot the parent categories.

Concrete example:

I happen to come across the page: Category:Water technology

I can see the Subcategories. Great. I can see the Pages in the category. Great. No parent categories. That's a shame --- discovering the parent categories can be as helpful as discovering the subcategories.

Actually, the parent categories are there (well, I think they are --- I'm not sure because they're not explicitly labelled as such). But I don't notice them because they're in a smaller font in the blue box near the bottom of the page: Categories: Water | Chemical processes | Technology by type

I think the formatting (the typesetting) of the parent categories on category pages should be adjusted to give the parent categories the same prominence as the subcategories. This could be done by changing: Categories: Water | Chemical processes | Technology by type to: Parent categories: Water | Chemical processes | Technology by type and increasing the size of the font of `Parent categories', or, perhaps better, by having the parent categories typeset in exactly the same way as the subcategories. D.Wardle (talk) 22:21, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Parent categories are displayed on Category: pages in exactly the same way that categories are displayed in articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:26, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
The purpose of an article page is to give a clear exposition of the subject. Having a comprehensive presentation of the categories on such a page would be clutter --- a concise link to the categories is sufficient and appropriate.
The purpose of a category page is to give a comprehensive account of the categories. A comprehensive presentation of the categories would not clutter the subject (it is the subject).
Therefore, I do not expect the parent categories to be presented the same on article and category pages --- if they are presented the same, that only reinforces my opinion that some change is necessary. D.Wardle (talk) 20:15, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
I think the purpose of a category page is to help you find the articles that are in that category (i.e., not to help you see the category tree itself). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
Is there any research on how people actually use categories? —Kusma (talk) 21:48, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't think so, though I asked a WMF staffer to pull numbers for me once, which proved that IPs (i.e., readers) used categories more than I expected. I had wondered whether they were really only of interest to editors. (I didn't get comparable numbers for the mainspace, and I don't remember what the numbers were, but my guess is that logged-in editors were disproportionately represented among the Category: page viewers – just not as overwhelmingly as I had originally expected.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:43, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
I'm fine with parent categories being displayed the same way on articles and categories but I think it's a problem that parent categories aren't displayed at all in mobile on category pages, unless you are registered and have enabled "Advanced mode" in mobile settings. Mobile users without category links probably rarely find their way to a category page but if they do then they should be able to go both up and down the category tree. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:39, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
Am I missing something? Is there a way of seeing the category tree (other than the category pages)?
If I start at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Contents#Category_system
... following the links soon leads to category pages (and nothing else?). D.Wardle (talk) 20:20, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
I'd start with Special:CategoryTree (example). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
You can click the small triangles to see deeper subcategories without leaving the page. This also works on normal category pages like Category:People. That category also uses (via a template) <categorytree>...</categorytree> at Help:Category#Displaying category trees and page counts to make the "Category tree" box at top. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:59, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
Now there are three words I would like to see added to every category page. As well as `parent' prefixing `categories' in the blue box (which prompted this discussion), I would also like `Category tree' somewhere on the page with a link to the relevant part of the tree (for example, on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/Category:Water_technology
... `Category tree' would be a link to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/Special:CategoryTree?target=Category%3AWater+technology&mode=categories&namespaces=
).
I can only reiterate that I think I'm typical of the vast majority of Misplaced Pages users. My path to Misplaced Pages was article pages thrown up by Google searches. I read the articles and curious to know how the subject fitted into wider human knowledge, clicked on the category links. This led to the category pages which promised so much but frustrated me because I couldn't find the parent categories and certainly had no idea there was a category tree tool. This went on for years. Had the three additional words been there, I would have automatically learned about both the parent categories and the category tree tool, greatly benefitting both my learning and improving my contributions as an occasional editor. Three extra words seems a very small price to pay for conferring such a benefit on potentially a huge fraction of users. D.Wardle (talk) 03:43, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
I think it would be relatively easy to add a link to Special:CategoryTree to the "Tools" menu. I don't see an easy way to do the other things. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:33, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
It's possible to display "Parent categories" on category pages and keep "Categories" in other namespaces. The text is made with MediaWiki:Pagecategories in both cases but I have tested at testwiki:MediaWiki:Pagecategories that the message allows a namespace check. Compare for example the display on testwiki:Category:4x4 type square and testwiki:Template:4x4 type square/update. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:01, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
How much evidence of community consensus do you need to make that change here? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:16, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
I've looked at what you've done (and hopefully understood). MediaWiki:Pagecategories puts some of the words in the blue box at the bottom of all category pages. But what code makes the category pages (what code calls MediaWiki:Pagecategories)? I think the changes I'm suggested should be made to that calling code... D.Wardle (talk) 23:35, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Is the answer to your question "MediaWiki"?
Every page has certain elements. You can see which ones are used on any given page with the mw:qqx trick, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/Category:Water_technology?uselang=qqx WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:58, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
I looked at the MediaWiki Help and Manual. How the formatting of namespaces is controlled might be discussed somewhere, but, at the very least, it's not easy to find (I didn't find it). I've requested this be addressed (https://www.mediawiki.org/Help_talk:Formatting#The_formatting_of_namespaces) but, thus far, no one has volunteered.
Returning to the issue here, my inference is that `normal' Misplaced Pages editors would not be able to implement the changes I'm suggesting (adding the word `parent' and a link to the category tree) assuming the changes were agreed upon. I therefore also conclude that the changes I'm suggesting do need to go to Village_pump_(proposals). Do you agree? D.Wardle (talk) 23:29, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter already worked out how to do this change. Go to testwiki:Category:4x4 type square and look for the words "Parent categories:" at the bottom of the page. If that's what you want, then the technical end is already sorted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:12, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
You are right that PrimeHunter's solution works but (not wishing to criticize PrimeHunter in any way --- I'm grateful for their input) I don't think it's the right way to do it. To explain: When an editor adds a section to an article, the edit box is initially blank. There is no code to specify e.g. the font, the size of the font, the colour of the font, the indentation from the margin, etc. These things must be specified somewhere but they are hidden from the editor. And that's a good feature (it enables the editor to do their work without having to wade through a whole heap of code specifying default formatting which isn't relevant to them). PrimeHunter's solution goes against that principle --- it's adding formatting code to the editor's box. You might argue that it's only a very small piece of code, but, if changes are routinely made in this way, over time the small pieces of code will accumulate and the editor's boxes will become a mess. D.Wardle (talk) 21:00, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Look at the page history. PrimeHunter has never edited that page. It does not add any code to the editor's box. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:12, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Would a simpler cat page be easier for you to look at? Try testwiki:Category:Audio files or testwiki:Category:Command keys instead. All of the cats on that whole wiki are showing "Parent categories" at the bottom of the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:18, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Agreed. And (I think you already understand this) that is because PrimeHunter's edit of testwiki:MediaWiki:Pagecategories affects all pages on https://test.wikipedia.org.
Comparing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Category:Misplaced Pages&action=edit
and:
https://test.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Category:Misplaced Pages&action=edit
...adds weight to two of my previous comments:
  • The test.wikipedia page has this text:
Categories: Root category
...at the bottom of the edit window (my apologies --- it's not actually in the edit window) --- this is not helpful for novice editors --- they could be confused and/or deterred by it --- it should be hidden from them.
  • The en.wikipedia page has nothing analogous to the just mentioned text, suggesting that PrimeHunter's solution might not actually work in en.wikipedia.
D.Wardle (talk) 23:59, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

If editors can't see the list of categories that the page is in, how will they add or remove the categories?

On the testwiki page, the example has only one category, so this is what you see in wikitext:

]

The analogous text in the en.wikipedia page you link is this:

]
]
]
]
]
]

I thought your concern was about what readers see. You said "But I don't notice them because they're in a smaller font in the blue box near the bottom of the page: Categories: Water | Chemical processes | Technology by type".

Now you're talking about a completely different thing, which is what you see when you're trying to change those parent categories. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:10, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

The "pre" formatting doesn't appear to play well with ::: formatting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:12, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
Sorry about that.
To begin again, I think it would be a good idea if all category pages had:
  • a heading `Parent categories' similar to `Subcategories' (the current `Categories' in the blue box is ambiguous and too inconspicuous).
  • a small link near the bottom of the page, the link having text `Category tree' and target the category's entry in the category tree.
I don't have the technical competence to make either of these changes. Also, given that they would affect every category page (which is a large part of the encyclopedia), before making the changes it would be prudent to check others agree (or, at least, that there is not strong opposition).
So how to make progress? (It would be great if a Wikipedian more experienced than myself would pick it up and run with it.) D.Wardle (talk) 23:46, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
We currently have something like this:
Categories: Category name 1, Category name 2, etc.
I think we can get this changed to:
Parent categories: Category name 1, Category name 2, etc.
I do not think we can realistically get this changed to:
Parent categories
Category name 1, Category name 2, etc.
Do you want to have the middle option, or is the third option the only thing that will work for you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
The middle option is definitely a step in the right direction so if you could implement it that would be great.
With regard to the third option (and also the link to the category tree), maybe the desirability of these could be put forward for discussion at a meeting of senior Wikipedians (and if they are deemed desirable but difficult to implement maybe that difficulty of implementation could also be discussed --- if the MediaWiki software does not allow desirable things to be done easily, it must have scope for improvement...)
Thank you for your assistance. D.Wardle (talk) 19:55, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
We don't have meetings of senior Wikipedians. The meetings happen right here, and everyone is welcome to participate.
I'll go ask the tech-savvy volunteers at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical) if one of them would make the change to the middle setting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Break

Perhaps I don't understand what PrimeHunter has done. It's hard for me to follow: If I explore the https://en.wikipedia.org domain, I find that one of PrimeHunter's references (https://en.wikipedia.org/MediaWiki:Pagecategories) has been deleted, while, if I explore the https://test.wikipedia.org domain, I find that I cannot see what's in the edit box of one of the pages (https://test.wikipedia.org/Category:4x4_type_square) because `only autoconfirmed users can edit it'.
Given that https://en.wikipedia.org/MediaWiki:Pagecategories has been deleted, maybe PrimeHunter's solution only works in the testsite? D.Wardle (talk) 23:14, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
PrimeHunter's solution has only been created in the testsite. Nobody has ever posted it here.
You do not need to be autoconfirmed to see what's in the edit box. You just need to scroll down past the explanation about not being able to change what's in the edit box.
That said, I suggest that you stop looking at the complicated page of 4x4 type square, and start looking at a very ordinary category page like testwiki:Category:Command keys, because (a) it does not have a bunch of irrelevant stuff in it and (b) anyone can edit that cat page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:33, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
Maybe I'm naive, but I think it must be easy to do the two things I'm suggesting. There is a piece of code somewhere that takes the content entered by a Wikipedian using `Edit' and creates the category page. It's just a case of modifying that code to add one word and two words which are also a link. It must be similar to changing a style file in LaTeX or a CSS in html.
Again, maybe I'm naive, but it would seem to me appropriate to move this discussion to Village pump (proposals). Any objection? D.Wardle (talk) 21:07, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
If @PrimeHunter is willing to make the change, then there's no need to move the discussion anywhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
We should still have an RFC before changing something for everyone, so a formal proposal sounds like a good idea. Otherwise it may be reverted on the opinion of one person. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:41, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
Do you personally object? Or know anyone who objects? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:45, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Pages that use multiple images for the main image need a "randomizer"

Lots of articles have main or primary images to show their topic but editors may be in dispute about which particular image best serves the article topic. For example, the Cold War article has had a number of different images to illustrate this topic, and they change from time to time.

My thought is to have a list of images, one of which will appear on page load at random. That way, every time the page is reloaded, a single image from the list will show up as the main image. If there are only two, then it will flip back and forth, but there could be 10 images in the list. This lets more editors have a say in what shows without having too much conflict. Hires an editor (talk) 03:12, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Would this be feasible from an accessibility standpoint? JJPMaster (she/they) 03:48, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
If you mean having it work on without JS enabled, yes—just make the "default" behavior be to show all pictures. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 04:17, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
It seems like this already exists over at Template:Random slideshow, but for some reason it's not enabled in mainspace (only on portals). I'd ask on the talk page for it to be enabled elsewhere (or you can modify the code to let it work elsewhere). – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 04:30, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
If all of the images are relevant, forcing reloads to see them all is silly. We need to illustrate articles in a way that works for readers, not just editors. —Kusma (talk) 05:55, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Usually, all of the images are already included in the article to illustrate the specific things they illustrate instead of the topic. But the infobox only has one image
To Hires: the usual way to solve this is {{photo montage}}. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Another option worth considering is to go without an infobox image. —Kusma (talk) 17:54, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
My thought is that some pages may choose this route rather than a photo montage - it's simply another way to do a main photo. Hires an editor (talk) 01:59, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
My intention is that a given reader be presented what whatever happens to be the "next" image when that page is loaded. it's not meant to be a series of images that will load/reload via a script while the rest of the page is static.
A similar analogy is like the Disney ride for Star Tours: you get on the ride, and one of about 5 beginnings is the first part, which then seamlessly integrates with a second middle part, which could also be one of 4, and finally, the end has a similar number of endings - each time you go on the ride, you get a random mix of beginning/middle/end. I think that each time you get to a page, you could potentially see a different image. Hires an editor (talk) 01:58, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
This used to be done on India with Template:Switch. CMD (talk) 07:46, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Implemeting "ChatBot Validation" for sentences of Misplaced Pages

Hi, I propose to define a "Validation process" using Chatbots (e.g. ChatGPT) in this way:

  1. The editor or an ordinary user, presses a button named "Validate this Sentence"
  2. A query named "Is this sentence true or not? + Sentence" is sent to ChatGPT
  3. If the ChatGPT answer is true, then tick that sentence as valid, otherwise declare that the sentence needs to be validated manually by humans.

I think the implementation of this process is very fast and convenient. I really think that "ChatBot validation" is a very helpful capability for users to be sure about the validity of information of articles of Misplaced Pages. Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 10:34, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

While it would certainly be convenient, it would also be horribly inaccurate. The current generation of chatbots are prone to hallucinations and cannot be relied on for such basic facts as what the current year is, let alone anything more complicated. Thryduulf (talk) 10:48, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
@Thryduulf The question is

Is Misplaced Pages hallucinations or ChatGPT is hallucinations?

This type of validation (validation by ChatGPT) may be inaccurate for correctness of Misplaced Pages, but when ChatGPT declares that "Misplaced Pages information is Wong!", a very important process named "Validate Manually by Humans" is activated. This second validation is the main application of this idea. That is, finding possibly wrong data on Misplaced Pages to be investigated more accurately by humans. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 11:02, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
The issue is, ChatGPT (or any other LLM/chatbot) might hallucinate in both directions, flagging false sentences as valid and correct sentences as needing validation. I don't see how this is an improvement compared to the current process of needing verification for all sentences that don't already have a source. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 11:13, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
If there was some meaningful correlation between what ChatGPT declares true (or false) and what is actually true (or false) then this might be useful. This would just waste editor time. Thryduulf (talk) 11:15, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
@Chaotic Enby@Thryduulf Although ChatGPT may give wrong answers, but it is very powerful. To assess its power, we need to apply this research:
  1. Give ChatGPT a sample containing true and false sentences, but hide true answers
  2. Ask ChatGPT to assess the sentences
  3. Compare actual and ChatGPT answers
  4. Count the ratio of answers that are the same.
I really propose that if this ratio is high, then we start to implement this "chatbot validation" idea. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 11:24, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
There are many examples of people doing this research, e.g. ranks ChatGPT as examples accurate "88.7% of the time", but (a) I have no idea how reliable that source is, and (b) it explicitly comes with multiple caveats about how that's not a very meaningful figure. Even if we assume that it is 88.7% accurate at identifying what is and isn't factual across all content on Misplaced Pages that's still not really very useful. In the real world it would be less accurate than that, because those accuracy figures include very simple factual questions that it is very good at ("What is the capital of Canada?" is the example given in the source) that we don't need to use ChatGPT to verify because it's quicker and easier for a human to verify themselves. More complex things, especially related to information that is not commonly found in its training data (heavily biased towards information in English easily accessible on the internet), where the would be the most benefit to automatic verification, the accuracy gets worse. Thryduulf (talk) 11:38, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Have you read, for example, the content section of OpenAI's Terms of Use? Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:53, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
@Sean.hoyland If OpenAI does not content with this application, we can use other ChatBots that content with this application. Nowadays, many chatbots are free to use. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 11:04, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm sure they would be thrilled with this kind of application, but the terms of use explain why it is not fit for purpose. Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:17, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Factual questions are where LLMs like ChatGPT are weakest. Simple maths, for example. I just asked "Is pi larger than 3.14159265?" and got the wrong answer "no" with an explanation why the answer should be "yes":
"No, π is not larger than 3.14159265. The value of π is approximately 3.14159265358979, which is slightly larger than 3.14159265. So, 3.14159265 is a rounded approximation of π, and π itself is just a tiny bit larger."
Any sentence "validated by ChatGPT" should be considered unverified, just like any sentence not validated by ChatGPT. —Kusma (talk) 11:28, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
I get a perfect answer to that question (from the subscription version of ChatGPT): "Yes. The value of π to more digits is approximately 3.141592653589793… which is slightly larger than 3.14159265. The difference is on the order of a few billionths." But you are correct; these tools are not ready for serious fact checking. There is another reason this proposal is not good: ChatGPT gets a lot of its knowledge from Misplaced Pages, and when it isn't from Misplaced Pages it can be from the same dubious sources that we would like to not use. One safer use I can see is detection of ungrammatical sentences. It seems to be good at that. Zero 11:42, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
It's a good example of the challenges of accuracy. Using a different prompt "Is the statement pi > 3.14159265 true or false?", I got "The statement 𝜋 > 3.14159265 is true. The value of π is approximately 3.14159265358979, which is greater than 3.14159265." So, whatever circuit is activated by the word 'larger' is doing something less than ideal, I guess. Either way, it seems to improve with scale, grounding via RAG or some other method and chain of thought reasoning. Baby steps. Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:51, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
I do not think we should outsource our ability to check whether a sentence is true and/or whether a source verifies a claim to AI. This would create orders of magnitude more problems than it would solve... besides, as people point out above, facts is where chatbots are weakest. They're increasingly good at imitating tone and style and meter and writing nicely, but are often garbage at telling fact from truth. Cremastra (uc) 02:22, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Writing a script that would automatically give a "validation score" to every article—average probability of True vs. False across all sentences—would be helpful. (Even if it completely sucks, we can just ignore it, so there's no harm done.) Go ahead and do it if you know how! However, WMF's ML team is already very busy, so I don't think this will get done if nobody volunteers. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 04:41, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Using ChatBots for reverting new edits by new users

Even though the previous idea may have issues, I really think that one factor for reverting new edits by new users can be "the false answer of verification of Chatbots". If the accuracy is near 88.7%, we can use that to verify new edits, possibly by new users, and find vandalism conveniently. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 13:48, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Even if we assume the accuracy to be near near 88.7%, I would not support having a chatbot to review edits. Many editors do a lot of editing and getting every 1 edit out of 10 edit reverted due to an error will be annoying and demotivating. The bot User:Cluebot NG already automatically reverts obvious vandalism with 99%+ success rate. Ca 14:11, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
@Ca Can User:Cluebot NG check such semantically wrong sentence?

Steven Paul Jobs was an American engineer.

instead of an inventor, this sentence wrongly declares that he was an engineer. Can User:Cluebot NG detect this sentence automatically as a wrong sentence?
So I propose to rewrite User:Cluebot NG in a way that it uses Chatbots, somehow, to semantically check the new edits, and tag semantically wrong edits like the above sentence to "invalid by chatbot" for other users to correct that. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:22, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Can Cluebot detect this sentence automatically as a wrong sentence? No. It can't. Cluebot isn't looking through sources. It's an anti-vandalism bot. You're welcome to bring this up with those that maintain Cluebot; although I don't think it'll work out, because that's way beyond the scope of what Cluebot does. SmittenGalaxy | talk! 19:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
I think you, Hooman Mallahzadeh, are too enamoured with the wilder claims of AI and chatbots, both from their supporters and the naysayers. They are simply not as good as humans at spotting vandalism yet; at least the free ones are not. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
The number of false positives would be too high. Again, this would create more work for humans. Let's not fall to AI hype. Cremastra (uc) 02:23, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Sorry this would be a terrible idea. The false positives would just be to great, there is enough WP:BITING of new editors we don't need LLM hallucinations causing more. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:26, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Dear @ActivelyDisinterested, I didn't propose to revert all edits that ChatBot detect as invalid. My proposal says that:

Use ChatBot to increase accuracy of User:Cluebot NG.

The User:Cluebot NG does not check any semantics for sentences. These semantics can only be checked by Large Language Models like ChatGPT. Please note that every Misplaced Pages sentence can be "semantically wrong", as they can be syntacticly wrong.
Because making "Large language models" for semantic checking is very time-consuming and expensive, we can use them online via service oriented techniques. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 17:18, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
But LLMs are not good at checking the accuracy of information, so Cluebot NG would not be more accurate, and in being less accurate would behave in a more BITEY manner to new editors. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:24, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Maybe ChatGPT should add a capability for "validation of sentences", that its output may only be "one word": True/False/I Don't know. Specially for the purpose of validation.
I don't know that ChatGPT has this capability or not. But if it lacks, it can implement that easily. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 17:33, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Validation is not a binary thing that an AI would be able to do. It's a lot more complicated than you make it sound (as it requires interpretation of sources - something an AI is incapable of actually doing), and may require access to things an AI would never be able to touch (such as offline sources). —Jéské Couriano v^_^v 17:37, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
@Hooman Mallahzadeh: I refer you to the case of Varghese v. China South Airlines, which earned the lawyers citing it a benchslap. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v 17:30, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
@Jéské Couriano Thanks, I will read the article. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 17:34, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict × 4) For Misplaced Pages's purposes, accuracy is determined by whether it matches what reliable sources say. For any given statement there are multiple possible states:
  1. Correct and supported by one or more reliable sources at the end of the statement
  2. Correct and supported by one or more reliable sources elsewhere on the page (e.g. the end of paragraph)
  3. Correct and self-supporting (e.g. book titles and authors)
  4. Correct but not supported by a reliable source
  5. Correct but supported by a questionable or unreliable source
  6. Correct according to some sources (cited or otherwise) but not others (cited or otherwise)
  7. Correct but not supported by the cited source
  8. Incorrect and not associated with a source
  9. Incorrect and contradicted by the source cited
  10. Incorrect but neither supported nor contradicted by the cited source
  11. Neither correct nor incorrect (e.g. it's a matter of opinion or unproven), all possible options for sourcing
  12. Previously correct, and supported by contemporary reliable sources (cited or otherwise), but now outdated (e.g. superceded records, outdate scientific theories, early reports about breaking news stories)
  13. Both correct and incorrect, depending on context or circumstance (with all possible citation options)
  14. Previously incorrect, and stated as such in contemporary sources, but now correct (e.g. 2021 sources stating Donald Trump as president of the US)
  15. Correct reporting of someone's incorrect statements (cited or otherwise).
  16. Predictions that turned out to be incorrect, reported as fact (possibly misleadingly or unclearly) at the time in contemporary reliable sources.
And probably others I've failed to think of. LLMs simply cannot correctly determine all of these, especially as sources may be in different languages and/or not machine readable. Thryduulf (talk) 17:44, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
I believe someone else had a working implementation of a script that would verify whether a reference supported a claim using LLMs - I think I saw it on one of the Village Pumps a while back. They eventually abandoned it because it wasn't reliable enough, if I remember correctly. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:46, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
It probably struggles to understand meaning. On the other hand, I reckon you could get a working implementation to look for copyvio. CMD (talk) 18:02, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
It could be great to have an LLM-supported system to detect potential close paraphrasing. —Kusma (talk) 18:06, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
Even professional-grade plagiarism detectors are poor at that, generating both false positives and false negatives. That's fine in the environment where they are used with full understanding of the system's limitations and it is used only as one piece of information among multiple sources by those familiar with the topic area. Very little of that is true in the way it would be used on Misplaced Pages. Thryduulf (talk) 18:49, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

AfD's taking too long

I've noticed that a lot of AfD's get relisted because of minimal participation, sometimes more than once. This means that in the instance where the article does get deleted in the end, it takes too long, and in the instance where it doesn't, there's a massive AfD banner at the top for two, sometimes three or more weeks. What could be done to tackle this? How about some kind of QPQ where, any editor that nominates any article for deletion is strongly encouraged to participate in an unrelated AfD discussion? -- D'n'B-📞 -- 06:59, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I feel WP:RUSHDELETE is appropriate here. I don't understand why the article banner is a problem? Am I missing something? Knitsey (talk) 07:41, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
The banners signal to a reader that there's something wrong with a page - in the case of an AfD there may well not be. -- D'n'B-📞 -- 06:30, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
There's often a concern, and all relisted nominations seem to have reason to debate that concern, whether because someone registered an objection or the article was already nominated in the past. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:25, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
We already have WP:NOQUORUM which says that if an AfD nomination has minimal participation and meets the criteria for WP:PROD, then the closing admin should treat it like an expired PROD and do a soft deletion. I remember when this rule was first added, admins did try to respect it. I haven't been looking at AfD much lately—have we reverted back to relisting discussions? Mz7 (talk) 08:10, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
From what I've seen when I was active there in November, ProD-like closures based on minimal participation were quite common. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:47, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Based on a recent samples, I think somewhere over a quarter of AfD listings are relistings. (6 Jan - 37 / 144, 5 Jan - 35 / 83, 4 Jan - 36 / 111, 3 Jan - 27 / 108). -- D'n'B-📞 -- 06:43, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
Those relisted have more than minimal participation in the soft deletion sense. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:22, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
so more than allows for soft deletion but not enough to reach consensus then. -- D'n'B-📞 -- 02:53, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
yes. IMO that means they have reason for discussion and debate. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:31, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
Okay, and I'm talking about encouraging that discussion to actually happen rather than fizzle out - so we're on the same page here? -- D'n'B-📞 -- 08:58, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
And that's why there's a banner on the article. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:35, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Is it possible to start the process of sunsetting the "T:" pseudo-namespace?

In the sense that, with the creation of the ] alias in early 2024 from T363757, I can't think of a single reason why a new "T:" space redirect would ever need to exist.

Back in the day, well, "T:" has always been controversial even from 2010 and the several RfCs. There was Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2013 November 18#T:WPTECH and multiple RfCs since regarding pseudonamespaces. And per WP:Shortcut#Pseudo-namespaces, the "T:" space is listed as "for limited uses only", but even that was added to the info page in that location a decade ago or so.

Nevertheless, even from the 2014 RfC at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)/Archive 112#RFC: On the controversy of the pseudo-namespace shortcuts, there was consensus that "new "T:" redirects should be strongly discouraged if not prohibited in all but exceptional cases". It's been over a decade now and we still get a potluck assortment of new T: titles every year.

The difference is though, now we have the TM: alias. Just as it makes little sense to foster a "W:" shortcut for "WP:" titles, it really does not make sense to keep "T:" around when "TM:" is just another character more. H for Help and P for Portal don't have that luxury of an alias at this time, but templates do. There's hardly anything left on Special:PrefixIndex for T: titles. And I don't think we should necessarily delete everything at once. But it might be nice to make a hard rule that we don't need any more T: titles, especially so when TM: is the vastly preferable option at this time, from my POV.

I would suggest this as a proposal, but wanted to get feedback to see what else might need to happen in order to start sunsetting? Many of these have little to no links, but a lot of them do. Should these be replaced? Would it be worth the editing cost? I think the payoff is phenomenal - allowing easier navigation to actual articles that start with "T:", of which there are several. Utopes (talk / cont) 16:00, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't be strongly opposed to this, but I'd suggest keeping the most-used ones, like T:CENT and T:DYK, for at least a few more years. Cremastra (uc) 23:33, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
For sure. As it happens, T:CENT only has 112 incoming links which almost entirely consist of archives, and it seems like there could be a bot (or a person, honestly) who could run through and fix the links to TM:CENT instead. Because this would be a sunset, I predict that really the only two functions that might actually want to hold onto these for a bit would be DYK and ITN. But even then, I don't necessarily want to delete every single T: title we have right now, but maybe slowly over time we could get to that point. In the interim, anything that T: does, TM: does better in a less harmful way, as TM: works for 100% of templates while T: works for 0%. Creating a note in WP:Shortcut#Pseudo-namespaces that "Newly created T: titles from the years 2025 and later are no longer permissible / are against consensus" could be a start. If it's indeed true that that is the case, of course, I have no idea. Hence a proposal to see where people are at re: T: titles. Utopes (talk / cont) 00:54, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
I would support at least preventing the creation of new ones, so that the burden doesn't keep increasing and it is made clear that TM: is the recommended one. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 01:16, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Some might be used as type-in shortcuts (I search for CAT:CSD almost every day) but page view statistics should tell you how common that is. —Kusma (talk) 18:10, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
Regarding DYK, it currently has a few different T: shortcuts for the preps and queues as well. A sunset might have to exclude potential fiddling in this area. CMD (talk) 19:05, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
If we turned the pages into soft redirects, that would discourage further use. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:37, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Now at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal to prohibit the creation of new "T:" pseudo-namespace redirects without prior consensus. CMD (talk) 15:50, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Category loops

A category loop is a sequence of subcategories that forms a directed cycle under the subcat relation, i.e. where a category has itself as a subcategory at some level. This is mentioned in WP:SUBCAT, but as far as I can tell nothing has been written about them. However, they tend to occur where two similar and broad topic areas overlap, e.g. in an example mentioned at Misplaced Pages:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2023_July_18#Category:Arab. Do you have any other experiences worth sharing about category loops, so that an essay can be written about the topic?

There should be a database report for category loops — I discovered and fixed two with length 2 in the past 24 hours (Category:InfographicsCategory:Scientific visualizationCategory:Infographics and Category:MultimediaCategory:Digital mediaCategory:Multimedia). Currently, we have only Misplaced Pages:Database reports/Self-categorized categories for categories that are direct subcategories of themselves — that is, loops of length 1. –LaundryPizza03 (d) 03:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Reminds me of Misplaced Pages:Bot requests/Archive_39#c-Anomie-2010-11-07T05:09:00.000Z-Ayceman-2010-11-06T20:21:00.000Z, although that particular loop is long gone now. If you search archives of various discussion boards you can probably find more examples. Anomie 13:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
An anonymous user points me to User:SDZeroBot/Category cycles, which was last updated in January 2024. I have posted a request to have this list updated periodically. –LaundryPizza03 (d) 01:49, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Reworking WP:NBAND

Per this discussion at WP:Village pump (proposals), there was a nearly an almost unanimous consensus to not constrain WP:BAND to WP:GNG requirements, but there did seem to be a strong consensus to revisit criterion 5, and possibly some consensus to revisit criterion 6. I've got an updated draft at Misplaced Pages:Band notability proposal where I tried to reflect this consensus. I basically just re-worked criterion 5 a bit. It now reads: # Has released two or more albums on a major record label, or one of the more important indie labels, before 2010. The note is the importance of the indie label should be demonstrable from reliable independent coverage indicating that label's importance. The exact cut-off date was debated, but it was around 2006 to 2010. I went for 2010, as that seems to be when streaming really took off. I'd like some input to see if there's any modifications or suggestions before I put this forward at Village pump (proposals). Thank you!--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 13:24, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Remove 5 and 6 entirely. Graywalls (talk) 02:21, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
The problem with removing 5 entirely is because that would affect older groups that might not yet have articles. That's why the cut-off date of around 2010 was proposed in the previous discussion.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 23:12, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Remove #6 entirely. Why? I Ask (talk) 03:53, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Names of command-line tools in monospace

Websites such as the Arch Linux wiki frequently use inline <code> tags to indicate that text is either entered into or read from the command line. I did some searches of the MOS and FAQ here on Misplaced Pages, but I was unable to find any policy or guideline formalizing the use of monospaced fonts for command line input and output. Does anyone else actually care about this, and if so does anyone think this should be formalized? Thanks for the input, /home/gracen/ (they/them) 18:50, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

I feel I should also mention the issue of using <code> tags for bold page names (cf. grep and fdisk). /home/gracen/ (they/them) 18:54, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
If you WP:Boldly do something and nobody objects, that's consensus. That said, we actually do ask for such markup at MOS:CODE. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:04, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm aware of both of these, though I appreciate the consideration. I'm more asking about things that are in a gray area between "code" and "natural language" and whether this gray area should be standardized so we have more consistent style.
I'll elaborate more if necessary once I get back to a computer; I dislike writing longer messages on mobile. /home/gracen/ (they/them) 19:10, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
FWIW I use <kbd> in discussions when documenting my search term, e.g. "bright green" cake -wikipedia, I'm not sure what the direct relevance of that is to mainspace but is it the sort of grey are you are thinking of? Thryduulf (talk) 19:16, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Yup, that's pretty much what I was thinking of (also, thanks for the introduction to <kbd>, I think I prefer this for inline stuff because it doesn't have the annoying gray box)! An example that I just thought of could be error messages. For example, would an inline 404 Not Found be preferred over 404 Not Found? (Of course, you wouldn't be seeing this much in a CLI, but I feel 404's the most recognizable error message.) I feel this should be standardized. /home/gracen/ (they/them) 19:22, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
For that one you might wanna consider using <samp> instead since kbd is semantically "keyboard input". I don't think there's any guidelines about what you mentioned, so probably just Bold it in until someone hates it. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:35, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
Alright, thanks! I'll revive this discussion if/when someone takes issue with this. /home/gracen/ (they/them) 15:58, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Something like <syntaxhighlight lang="shell" inline>ls -alF (with an closing </syntaxhighlight> tag) provides both quoting behaviour and (theoretically) syntax highlighting, so it's what I would prefer, but of course it's more typing. (For shell, there isn't much syntax highlighting that could happen anyway, and I can't seem to get any to appear.) Otherwise, <kbd> is appropriate markup to use for text entered as input. isaacl (talk) 22:41, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
<kbd>...</kbd> or {{kbd}}? <pre>...</pre> or {{pre}}? <samp>...</samp> or {{samp}}? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:37, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Does it matter? Isn't this just a WP:COSMETIC difference? /home/gracen/ (they/them) 16:49, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Apparently not quite, the template:kbd indicates that it applies some styling to it, namely a faint grey background and slight CSS letter-spacing to suggest individually entered characters. The output of the others also differs
  • example using none of the elements or templates
  • example using the <kbd> html element
  • example using the {{kbd}} template
  • example using the <samp> html element
  • example using the {{samp}} template
  • example using the <pre> html element
  • example using the {{pre}} template
It seems {{pre}} really doesn't play nicely with bulleted lists, I've not looked into why. I've also not looked into why the templates apply the styling they do. Thryduulf (talk) 14:33, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Better methods than IP blocks and rangeblocks for completely stopping rampant recurring vandals

So, I intend for this thread to be about the discussion of various theoretical methods other than IP blocks / rangeblocks that could be used to mitigate a persistent vandal highly effectively while causing little to no collateral damage.

Some background

Misplaced Pages was founded in 2001, a time when a good majority of residential IP addresses were relatively all static, due to the much lesser number of internet users at that time. IP blocks probably made a lot of sense at that time due to that fact - you couldn't just reboot your modem to obtain a new IP address and keep editing, and cell phones pretty much had no usable web browsing capability at the time.

Today, the only type of tool used to stop anonymous vandals and disruptors, despite dynamic IP addresses and shared IPs being very common, is still the same old IP address blocks and range blocks. While IP block are effective at stopping the "casual" / "one-off" type of vandals from editing again, when it comes to the more dedicated disruptors and LTAs, IP blocks simply don't seem to hinder them at all, due to the highly dynamic IP address nature. Okay, but range blocks exist, right? Well, unfortunately not all IP address allotment sizes are the same, and it varies a lot from ISP to ISP - some ISPs just seem to put literally all their customers on one gigantic (i.e. /16 or bigger for IPv4, /32 or bigger for IPv6) subdivision, making it straight up impossible to put a complete stop to the LTA vandal without also stopping all those thousands and thousands of innocent other people from being able to edit.

I've always had these thoughts in my mind, about what the Wikimedia team could potentially do / implement to more accurately yet effectively put a complete halt to long-term abusers. But I felt like now's the time we really could use some better method to stop LTAs, as there are just sooooo many of them today, and soooo much admin time/effort is being spent trying to stop them only for them to come back again and again because pretty much the only way to stop them is to literally block the entire ISP from editing Misplaced Pages.

The first thing that might come to one's mind, and probably the most controversial method too, is disabling anonymous editing entirely and making it so only registered editors can edit English Misplaced Pages. Someone pointed out to me before that the Portuguese Misplaced Pages is a registration-only wiki. I tried it out for myself, and indeed when you click the edit button while not logged in, you are brought to an account login page. I'm guessing ENwiki will never become like this because it would eliminate a large and thriving culture of "casual" type of editors who don't want to register an account and just simply want to fix a typo, update a table's data or add a small sentence. It's probably not 100% effective either, as a registered-only wiki still wouldn't stop someone from creating a whole bunch of throwaway accounts to keep vandalising, and account creation blocks on IP addresses could still be dodged by, you know, the modem power plug dance or good ol' proxies/VPNs.

I've noticed some other language wikis like the German Misplaced Pages have "pending changes" type protection pretty much enabled on every single page. I imagine this isn't going to work on the English Misplaced Pages because of the comparatively high volume of edits from anonymous editors compared to DEwiki, as it would overload the pending changes review queue and there just will never be enough active reviewers to keep up with the volume of edits.

Now here are some of my original thoughts which I don't think I've seen anyone discuss here on Misplaced Pages before. The first of which, is hardware ID (HWID) bans or "device bans". The reason why popular free-to-play video games like League of Legends, Overwatch 2, Counter-Strike 2 etc aren't overrun with non-stop cheaters and abusers despite them being free-to-play is because they employ an anti-cheat and abuse system that will ban the serial numbers of the computer, rather than just simply banning the user or their IP address. Now, I have heard of HWID spoofing before, but cheating isn't rampant in these games anyway so I guess they are effective in some form. Besides replacing hardware, one could theoretically use a virtual machine to evade the HWID ban, but virtual machines don't provide the performance, graphics acceleration and special features needed to get a modern multiplayer video game to work. However though, I could see virtual machines as being a rather big weakness for Misplaced Pages HWID bans, as a web browser doesn't need a dedicated powerful video card and any of those special features to work; web browsers easily run in virtualised environments. But I guess not a great deal of LTAs are technologically competent enough to do that, and even if they did, spinning up a new VM is significantly slower than switching countries in a VPN.

The second, and probably the most craziest one, is employing some form of mandatory personal ID system. Where, even if you're not going to sign up and only edit anonymously, you will be forced to enter a social security number or passport number or whatever ID number that is completely unique to you, to be able to edit. In South Korea, some gaming companies like Blizzard make you enter a SSN when signing up for an account, which makes it virtually impossible for a person to go to an internet cafe ("PC bang") and make a whole bunch of throwaway accounts and jump from computer to computer when an account/device becomes banned to keep on cheating (see PC bang § Industry impact). One could theoretically get the IDs of family members and friends when they become "ID banned", but after all there are only going to be so few other people's IDs they will be able to obtain, certainly nowhere near on the order of magnitude as the number of available IP addresses on a large IP subnet or VPN. I'm guessing this method isn't going to be feasible for English Misplaced Pages either, as it completely goes against the simple, "open" and "anonymous" nature of Misplaced Pages, where not only can you edit anonymously without entering any personal details, but even when signing up for an account you don't even have to enter an email address, only just a password.

A third theoretical method is that what if, the customer ID numbers of ISPs were visible to Wikimedia, and then Wikimedia could ban that ISP customer therefore making them completely unable to edit Misplaced Pages even if they jump to a different IP address or subnet on that ISP? Or maybe how about the reverse where the ISP themselves ban the customer from being able to access Misplaced Pages after enough abuse? Perhaps ISPs need to wake up and implement such a site-level blocking policy.

Here's a related "side question": how come other popular online services like Discord, Facebook, Reddit, etc aren't overly infested with people who spam, attack, or otherwise make malicious posts on the site everyday? Could Wikimedia implement whatever methods these services are using to stop potential "long-term abusers"? — AP 499D25 (talk) 13:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I just thought of yet another theoretical solution: AI has gotten good enough to be able to write stories and poems, analyse a 1000 page long book, make songs, realistic pictures, and more. Misplaced Pages already uses AI (albelt a rather primitive and simple one) in the famous anti-vandal bot User:ClueBot NG. What if, we deploy an edit filter based on the latest and greatest AI model, to filter out edits based on past vandalism/disruption patterns? — AP 499D25 (talk) 13:37, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
I'll preface this by saying that I have quite a few problems with this idea (although I may be biased because I'm strongly opposed to the direction that modern AI is going); but I'd like to hear why and how you think this would work in more detail. For instance, would the AI filter just block edits outright? Would they be flagged like with WP:ORES? What mechanisms would the hypothetical AI use to detect LTA? How would we reduce false positives? And so on. Thanks, /home/gracen/ (they/them) 17:24, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
The AI idea I have in mind is a rather "mild" form of system, where it only works on edits based on past patterns of disruption. Take for example, MAB's posts. They are quite easily recognisable from a distance even with the source code obscuring that makes it impossible for traditional edit filters to detect the edits. Maybe an AI could perform OCR on that text to then filter it out?
The AI will not filter out new types of vandalism, or disruptive edits that it isn't "familiar" with. There will be an "input text file" where admins can add examples of LTA disruption for the AI to then watch for any edits that closely resemble those examples. It will not look for, or revert edits that aren't anywhere near as being like those samples. That way I think false positives will be minimised a lot, and of course there shall be a system for reporting false positives much like how there exists WP:EFFP. — AP 499D25 (talk) 22:44, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Ah, thanks! I'm immediately hesitant whenever I hear the word "AI" because of the actions of corporations like OpenAI, among others. However, given what you've just said, I actually think this might be an interesting idea to pursue. I'm relatively new to WP and I've never looked at WP:SPI, so I'd rather leave this to more experienced editors to discuss, but this does seem like a good and ethical application of neural networks and is within their capabilities. /home/gracen/ (they/them) 16:16, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

The second, and probably the most craziest one, is employing some form of mandatory personal ID system. Where, even if you're not going to sign up and only edit anonymously, you will be forced to enter a social security number or passport number or whatever ID number that is completely unique to you, to be able to edit.

This means that editors will have to give up a large amount of privacy, and the vast majority of people casually editing Misplaced Pages aren't ready to give their passport number in order to do so. Plus, editors at risk might be afraid of their ID numbers ending in the wrong hands, which is much more worrying than "just" their IP address.

Here's a related "side question": how come other popular online services like Discord, Facebook, Reddit, etc aren't overly infested with people who spam, attack, or otherwise make malicious posts on the site everyday?

They are, it's just that the issue is more visible on Misplaced Pages as the content is easy to find for all readers, but it doesn't mean platforms like Discord or Reddit aren't full of bad actors too. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 13:38, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Portuguese Misplaced Pages is not a registration-only wiki. They require registration for the mainspace, but not for anything else. See RecentChanges there. (I don't think they have a system similar to our Misplaced Pages:Edit requests. Instead, you post a request at w:pt:Wikipédia:Pedidos/Páginas protegidas, which is a type of noticeboard.) I'm concerned that restricting newbies may be killing their community. See the editor trends for the German-language Misplaced Pages; that's not something we really want to replicate. Since editors are not immortal, every community has to get its next generation from somewhere. We are getting fewer new accounts making their first edit each year. The number of editors who make 100+ edits per year is still pretty stable (around 20K), but the number of folks who make a first edit is down by about 30% compared to a decade ago.
WMF Legal will reject any sort of privacy invasion similar to requiring a real-world identity check for a person. A HWID ban might be legally feasible (i.e., I've never heard them say that it's already been considered and rejected). It would require amending the Privacy Policy, but that happens every now and again anyway, so that's not impossible. However, I understand that it's not very effective in practice (outside of proprietary systems, which is not what we're dealing with), and the whole project involves a significant tradeoff with privacy: Everything that's possible to track a Misplaced Pages vandal is something that's possible to track you for advertising purposes, or that could be subpoenaed for legal purposes. Writing a Misplaced Pages article (in the mainspace, to describe what it is and how it works) about that subject, or updating device fingerprint, might actually be the most useful thing you could do, if you thought that was worth pursuing. If a proposal is made along these lines, then the first thing people will do is read the Misplaced Pages article to find out what it says.
I understand that when Misplaced Pages was in its early days, a few ISPs were willing to track down abusive customers on occasion. My impression now is that basically none of them are willing to spend any staff time/expense doing this. We can e-mail their abuse@ addresses (they should all have one), but they are unlikely to do anything. A publicly visible approach on social media might work in a few cases ("Hey, @Name-of-ISP, one of your customers keeps vandalizing #Misplaced Pages. See <link to WP:AIV>. Why don't you stop them?"). However, if the LTA is using a VPN or similar system, then the ISP we claim they're using might be the wrong one anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I dont know exactly what is meant by hardware id (something like ?), but genrrally speaking most things that come under that heading require you to be using a native app and not a web browser. Web Environment Integrity is a possible exception but was abandoned. Bawolff (talk) 00:13, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I was thinking that it might be something like a MAC address (for which we had MAC spoofing). WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:00, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Page for ABBA's I have a dream links to the wrong year in the UK Charts

I don't know if this is the correct place to post this or not, I am only doing so because I am not sure how to fix it myself. EmDavis158 (talk) 02:57, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

@EmDavis158, is this about I Have a Dream (song)? Which bit exactly in there? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, the citation link for the UK Charts links to december 1969 and not 1979. EmDavis158 (talk) 05:02, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
It looks like the citation is built into Template:Single chart, so let's get some help from people who are familiar with that template. Dxneo or Muhandes, are either of you around? I think the goal is to have this link to https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/19791223/7501/ WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I might have fixed it (diff). It seems the UK chart functionality requires YYYYMMDD date formatting. Sean.hoyland (talk) 07:58, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Oh Sean beat me to it. Like they mentioned above, the problem was |date= You cannot use "23 December 1979" for the date, next time use yyyymmdd, thank you. dxneo (talk) 08:02, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
It's alright to find random places to help, though the usual forums for this are Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical) for technical help or Misplaced Pages:Help desk. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:35, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Give patrollers the suppressredirect right?

As part of New Page Patrol, a lot of articles are draftified, which is done by moving the it to the Draft: or User: namespace. The problem is that without page mover rights, patrollers are forced to leave redirects behind, which are always deleted under speedy deletion criterion R2. Giving patrollers the suppressredirect right would make the process easier and reduce workload for admins. What do you think? ''']''' (talkcontribs) 11:02, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Draftifying is happening far too much. But the idea has merit, as then the last log entry will say the page was moved, rather than a redirect deleted. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:11, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Note: This has been proposed before. See Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 203 § Give NPR additional rights? JJPMaster (she/they) 14:55, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
The other option would be to not have it automatically given, but to make it easy to grant to new page reviewers frequently doing draftifications, and encourage them to apply. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:36, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't think this is a good idea. Suppressing the redirect right away (whether you're an admin or not) makes it harder for people to find the page they were editing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:52, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Opening up the page will show the log entry that the page was moved (allowing people to easily find it). Current policy does not place a time limit on when to delete pages that qualify for WP:R2 (beyond the standard wait an hour before draftifying). Once that happens, it's nominated for speedy deletion if the patroller isn't a page mover or an admin. R2s are usually dealt with immediately, so it's not like forcing people to nominate them for speedy deletion is going to accomplish much other than make their workflow slightly longer. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:18, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
This is de facto already the case. It's quite easy for an NPR to become a page mover on those grounds alone. JJPMaster (she/they) 19:16, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Reluctantly oppose not per WhatamIdoing but because the suppressredirect right has too much ancillary power for me to be comfortable bundling it in like this. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:59, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
I also oppose bundling it with anything else beyond pagemover, per both Pppery and WAID. I'm also minded to agree with Graeme Bartlett that drafifying is happened too often (but I realise that it's been a while since I looked at this in detail). Nobody should be granted the suppressredirect right without it being clear they understand the policy surrounding when redirects should and should not be suppressed specifically. Thryduulf (talk) 14:21, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I agree with JJPMaster that NPPers that qualify for the right don't much trouble gaining it. I think each case should be examined individually because draftifying on a frequent basis isn't required to be a new page patroller. User right requests also provide a chance to double check that such drafticiations are actually being done correctly. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:25, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Using a Tabber for infoboxes with multiple subjects

There are many articles that cover closely related subjects, such as IPhone 16 Pro which covers both the Pro and Pro Max models, Nintendo Switch which covers the original, OLED, and Lite models, and Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II which covers the A, B, C, and I variants. Most of these articles use a single infobox to display specifications and information about all of the covered subjects, leading to clutter and lots of parentheticals.

I propose that a tabber, like Tabber Neue, be used to instead create distinct infobox tabs for each subject. This would allow many benefits, such as clearly separating different specifications, providing more room for unique photos of each subject, and reducing visual clutter. An example of good use of tabs is one of my personal favorite wikis, https://oldschool.runescape.wiki, which uses tabs effectively to organize the many variants of monsters, NPCs, and items. A great example is the entry for Guard, a very common NPC with many variants. It even uses nested tabs to show both the spawn location grouped by city, and the individual variants within each city. While this is an extreme example in terms of the raw number of subjects, it provides a good look at how similar subjects can be effectively organized using tabs. Using Misplaced Pages's system instead, it would be substantially more cluttered, with parentheticals such as: Examine: "He tries to keep order around here" (Edgeville 1, Edgeville 2, Falador (sword) 1...) If you tried to save space using citations, it becomes very opaque: Examine: "He tries to keep order around here"

Overall I think this would make infoboxes more easily readable and engaging. It encourages "perusing" by clicking or tapping through the tabs, as opposed to trying to figure out what applies where. DeklinCaban (talk) 18:42, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

That would be an interesting idea! To go back to you iPhone 16 Pro example, a lot of information gets repeated in both tabs – maybe there could be a way to have it so that it only has to be added to the article in one place (even if shown in both tabs) to make them easier to keep in sync? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:46, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
If it can print and display without JS effectively. From my testing under these environments, Tabber(Neue) makes these awkward line/paragraph-breaks that don't display the header at all. $wgTabberNeueUseCodex may be promising, but at least with the examples at wmdoc:codex/latest/components/demos/tabs.html, it's even worse: the tabs don't expand for the printing view at all, and the info under the other tabs will just be inaccessible on paper. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:21, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
A couple points at first blush: first, having a tabbed infobox seems like it's a usability nightmare. Secondly, it seems to be doing an end run around the overarching problem, which is that the infobox for iPhone 16 Pro is terrible. Software and tech articles are often like this (bad) where they try and cram an entire spec sheet into the infobox, and that's a failing of the infobox and the editors maintaining it. Trying to create a technical solution rather than the obvious one (just edit what's in the infobox to the most important elements) seems like a waste of everyone's time. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 20:33, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I suspect that our users would not even realise that they could click the tabs to see other info. So it will make it harder for our readers. Alternatives are to have multiple infoboxes, but this does take up space, particularly on mobile. Another way is to use parameter indexing as in the Chembox. Parameters can have a number on the end to describe variations on related substances in the one infobox. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:37, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Tabs are widely used even on amateur wikis like 90% of Fandom Wikia. I'm sure readers know how to use them. (In fact, the "Article/Talk" "Read/Edit/View history" thing on the top is a tab.) Aaron Liu (talk) 21:27, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Judging by how few readers understand we have or ever see the talk pages, I'm not sure that's exactly a good argument. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 22:10, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
for that. I started out processing semi-protected edit requests and there were a ton of clueless readers' requests. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:00, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Readers and potential editors don't know what the protection, good article, featured article, and other icons mean. I'm just one person but I'd never heard of tabs like that until I read this. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 01:35, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Sorry. That should read "Some readers..." CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 01:37, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

dissensus as an alternative to consensus

For contentious pages, from what I can tell, there is no way in Misplaced Pages to come to a consensus when both camps are not making a good faith effort, and maybe even then. My proposal is: an expert could start an alternative page for one that he thinks is flawed, and have the same protections from further editing as the original? Then there could be a competition of narratives Iuvalclejan (talk) 19:32, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

We call those WP:POVFORKs and we try to prevent them from happening. Simonm223 (talk) 19:42, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Honestly, the consensus system works especially well on contentious pages, even if the discussions can sometimes get heated. Having content forks everywhere would not really be preferable, as, not only would you not have a single place to link the reader to, but you would quickly end up with pages full of personal opinions or cherry-picking sources if each group was given its own place to write about its point of view. A competition of narratives could be interesting as a website concept, but it would be pretty far from an encyclopedia. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:43, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
The competition would not be the last step. Selection of alternatives could happen by votes, with some cutoffs: if a fork does not get votes above a cutoff, it is eliminated. That would prevent proliferation of narratives. Or you could have the selction criteria be differential instead of absolute: if one narrative gets 2x (for example) more votes than another, the other one is eliminated. Consensus does not work if pages become protected but the disagreement is still strong. Iuvalclejan (talk) 19:48, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Honestly, the consensus system works especially well on contentious pages,
I'd agree, but I'd also say we don't actually use the consensus system for contentious pages in practice—the more controversial the topic, the more I notice it devolving into straight voting issue-by-issue. (Even though that's the situation where you actually need to identify a consensus that all sides can live with.) – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 21:42, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
Interestingly, it's been theorized (, pg 101) that we already have a "community of dissensus" whereby contentious and poorly-supported claims are weeded out from our articles until only that which can be verified remains. signed, Rosguill 19:45, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
The problems I see are not due to poorly supported claims. They are due to a biased reporting, that is technically correct (e.g. "hostilities erupted", rather than side A attacked side B), or outright omissions (e.g. the leader of said group is not mentioned because of his shady associations with Nazis, whereas the leader of the other group is mentioned many times). Iuvalclejan (talk) 20:29, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
In that case, we should stick to what sources say, rather than making multiple versions trying to please each editor. If sources mention the names of both leaders, then we should have them both in the article, rather than hiding one in a separate article. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:36, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
So that addresses one issue, but evern there, if the page is protected, you can't "mention them both". What about the way of presenting a phenomenon, that while technically correct, is misleading by omission of important details? Iuvalclejan (talk) 20:42, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
For both cases: page protection doesn't mean that no one can propose any changes, it just means that you have to go to the talk page and discuss them with other editors (usually, to avoid someone else coming just after you and reverting it). If you feel like the discussion isn't going anywhere, we have channels for Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:49, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
That said, there are special restrictions on articles related to Palestinian–Israeli conflicts, and you shouldn't attempt to edit them or discuss them until you have made 500+ edits elsewhere. This will give you a chance to learn our processes, jargon, and rules in a less fraught context. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:13, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
This might be a good idea for social media, but this is an encyclopedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:45, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Even more important then, so as not to deceive Iuvalclejan (talk) 20:48, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Making categorization more understandable to the average editor

See Misplaced Pages talk:Categorization#When to diffuse large categories?. There is an underlying dispute that caused this but what I'm more interested in finding out how to make Misplaced Pages:Categorization more helpful to the average editor trying to learn about categorization and when to diffuse/not diffuse because the current text isn't as clear as I think it should be. I suck at RfCs and I don't think discussion is near the point where one should be started yet, so more input really is welcome. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:03, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I've tried understanding Misplaced Pages:Categorization and it hurt my brain so I gave up, but kudos for attempting to tackle it. Schazjmd (talk) 15:48, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
It makes my brain hurt too, but I'm hoping enough editors who find it confusing can come together and make this process less of a maze. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:32, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
One good start might be to move the section on creating categories below that of categorizing articles - there are far more article categorization changes than category creations Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:05, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

More levels of protection and user levels

I think the jump from 4 days and 10 edits to 30 days and 500 edits is far too extreme and takes a really long time to do it when there are many editors with just 100, 200 edits (including me) that are not vandals, they do not have strong opinions on usually controversial opinions and just want to edit. Which is why I want the possibility for more user levels to be created. For example one for 200 edits, and 15 days that can be applied whenever vandalism happens somewhat, in that case normally ECP would be applied however I that is far too extreme and a more moderate protection would be more useful. Vandals that are that dedicated to make 200 edits and wait 30 days will be dedicated enough to get Extended Confirmed Protection. Though I want to see what the community thinks of sliding in another protection being ACP and ECP. 2 levels should suffice to bridge the gap between 4 edits and 500 edits would allow low edit count editors to edit while still blocking out vandalism. This is surprisingly not a perennial proposal. SimpleSubCubicGraph (talk) 02:19, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

It's more that editors who have 500/30 generally have been in enough situations to hold Wikipedian knowledge that's in-depth enough. That doesn't necessarily hold true for those you've proposed. Time is part of the intention. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:28, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
possibility for more user levels to be created I had thought about this before and think more levels (or at least an additional level with tweaks to the current ones) would be a good idea. Something along the lines of:
1. WP:SEMI - 7 days / 15 edits
2. WP:ECP - 30 days / 300 edits
3. WP:??? - 6 months / 750 edits (reserved for pages with rampant sockpuppetry problems, such as those in the WP:PIA topic area). Some1 (talk) 02:50, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu Yes, that may be apart of the intention but I feel like there are editors with under 500 edits who can make just a good enough edit to not get it instantly reverted. Also protection is there mainly for vandalism, if we lived in a perfect society anyone could edit[REDACTED] pages without needing accounts and making tons of edits.
@Some1 I think 180/750 would be far too harsh, not even the most divisive topics and controversial issues get vandalized often with ECP.
My idea generally was keeping ECP the same but inserting another type of protection level in-between for mildly controversial topics and pages that are vandalized infrequently. SimpleSubCubicGraph (talk) 03:25, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
Can you give some specific examples of "controversial topics and pages that are vandalized infrequently"? Is there a particular article you want to edit but are unable to? Some1 (talk) 03:29, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
SimpleSubCubicGraph, if this is regarding Skibidi Toilet (per the comments below), then under my proposed ECP level requirements (30 day/300 edits), you would be able to edit that article. Some1 (talk) 12:35, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
There is not too much utility to creating a variety of new levels, as it generally gets clunky trying to define everything, and it makes the system less easy to grasp. What differentiates 100 edits from 200 from 300? ECP is not usually for vandalism, it is deployed for topics that receive particular levels of non-vandalistic (WP:VAND is very narrow) disruption. These are topics where experience is usually quite helpful, where editors who just want to edit are more likely to get in trouble. However, it is also a very narrow range of topics, apparently only affecting 3,067 articles at the moment, or less than 0.05% of articles. CMD (talk) 03:39, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
Isn't EC protection just for contentious topics? I didn't think we were using it just to protect against common or garden vandalism. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:59, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
@Espresso Addict even though there are 3,000 articles that have ECP protection, many articles are often upgraded to ECP in light of infrequent vandalism (once a day, few times a week, etc). I know Skidibi Toilet was upgraded to ECP when the page was vandalized a few times. It was quite hilarious but it demonstrates a wider problem with liberally putting ECP on everything that gets even remotely vandalized. SimpleSubCubicGraph (talk) 07:06, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
Now, are there that many people that care for Skidibi Toilet? No. But it is also liberally applied to other wiki pages that are infrequently vandalized and editors can be there, wanting to edit, but they have to wait until an admin removes the protection which can vary depending on how active they are. It can be a day, to a week, and up to a month if you are really unlucky and the article is not that well known/significant. Which is why another type of protection can allow these editors to edit their favorite subject while still preventing vandalism. There are very few ECP users and that is with counting alternate accounts. So this change will affect a lot with how[REDACTED] works. SimpleSubCubicGraph (talk) 07:09, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
ECP is not liberally applied. Admins are usually very cautious about applying it, and if there is a particular case where you think it is no longer needed, raise it and it will very likely be looked at. CMD (talk) 08:11, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
It wasn't "infrequent" vandalism. Just look at the page history. Though I would use PC protection instead. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:40, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
500 edits is also when you earn access to Misplaced Pages:The Misplaced Pages Library.
Editors who make it to about ~300 edits without getting blocked or banned usually stick around (and usually continue not getting blocked or banned). So in that sense, we could reduce it to 300/30 without making much of a difference, or even making the timespan a bigger component (e.g., 300 edits + 90 days). But it's also true that if you just really want to get 500, then you could sit down with Special:RecentChanges and get the rest of your edits in a couple of hours. You could also sort out a couple of grammar problems. Search, e.g., on "diffuse the conflict": diffuse means to spread the conflict around; it should say defuse (remove the fuse from the explosive) instead. I cleaned up a bunch of these a while ago, but there will be more. You could do this for anything in the List of commonly misused English words (so long as you are absolutely certain that you understand how to use the misused words!). WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:36, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
Sorry, I must have missed the various RfCs that extended the use outside contentious topics. SimpleSubCubicGraph, if you finding pages that could safely be reduced in protection level, and that don't fall within contentious topics, then you should ask the protecting admin to reduce the level on their talk page. But if you have an urge to edit Skibidi Toilet then the simplest thing to do is make small improvements to mainspace for a couple of hundred edits. If you don't have a topic you are interested in that isn't protected just hit random article a few times or do a wikilink random walk until you find something that you can improve. Espresso Addict (talk) 08:47, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
For anyone who wants to run up their edit count: Search for "it can be argued that", and replace them with more concise words, like "may" ("It can be argued that coffee tastes good" → "Coffee may taste good"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Ways to further implement restricting non-confirmed users from crosswiki file uploading

The whole community unanimously approved restricting newest, i.e. non-(auto)confirmed, users from transferring files to Commons. How else to implement such restrictions besides an abuse filter that's already done and hiding the "Export to Wikimedia Commons" button from non-confirmed users (phab:T370598#10105456)? Someone at Meta-wiki suggested making ways to implement this, so here I am. George Ho (talk) 06:01, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Disambiguation

I don't know if this is technically feasible or not (advice sought) but would it be possible to create a shortcut for disambiguation? Something like ] where the bang causes it to display as Joseph Smith rather than having to write ] which can be error prone. (I am not attached to the form in the example, it is the functionality I am interested in.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:33, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Isn't that how Misplaced Pages:Pipe trick works? Schazjmd (talk) 21:46, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
Yes. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:52, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
I did not know that! I was aware of the pipe trick suppressing the namespaces but not the disambiguation. Thanks for that! Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:16, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
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