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 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 
Shortcuts 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 consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas.
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For a listing of ongoing discussions, see the dashboard.

The aim of the Village pump (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 Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals).

The formation of this page, and the question of its purpose and existence, are the subjects of discussion on the talk page. Direct all comments on those topics there.


Cross checking categories

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 List of Sega Master System games article doesn't show genres however. What I would like to be able to do is check for games which are in both Category:Sega Master System games and Category:Role-playing video games 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.

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?AerobicFox (talk) 21:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:CatScan is what you want. Yoenit (talk) 23:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Thank you :) AerobicFox (talk) 00:32, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
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 ontology based systems. While content is subject to WP:V and WP:RS 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 Wordnet'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. History2007 (talk) 17:26, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Consider DBpedia. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 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 Category:American actors‎ or another intersection if you have Category:American people and Category:Actors. 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. Superm401 - Talk 05:23, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Redirect procedure for non-notable articles

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.

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. ItsZippy 17:49, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

This already exists. Your desired noticeboard for these discussions is located at WP:Proposed mergers. Your speedy redirect is called boldly WP:MERGEing the pages.
It is relatively rare for a new user to revert a redirect, especially if the merge is done in a way that WP:PRESERVEs the information they wanted to add. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to Misplaced Pages: Now read WP:V and WP:RS

The current, standard welcome message says:

  • The five pillars of Misplaced Pages, How to edit a page, Help pages, Tutorial, How to write a great article, Manual of Style

Now, I can not remember how many times I have had to tell new users to read WP:V (or WP:Truth) as well as WP:RS and not use low quality self-published web sites, etc.

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. History2007 (talk) 09:00, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

But how would that be relevant to those who come here to fix typos or splat vandalism? ϢereSpielChequers 14:33, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
By the way, it would be good to add to that notice that self-publishers such as Lulu (company), AuthorHouse, Xulon Press and iUniverse 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. History2007 (talk) 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. ϢereSpielChequers 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. ItsZippy 16:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Free, globally distributed backup of all Misplaced Pages on Charity Engine grid

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.

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.

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. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.26.249 (talk) 01:36, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Biographical metadata

Originally posted at a template for discussion thread, but was off-topic there so posted here.

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. {{hndis}}) and human surname set index pages such as Fisher (surname) (see {{surname}}). For an example of the former, see the update I made here at Paul Fischer. I had been looking for information on that Paul Henri Fischer (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 lists of people by name that got deleted), but could be automated or semi-automated if the following was done:

  • (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 WikiProject Biography 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 biographical metadata, 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).
  • (2) Ensure all such articles are accurately tagged with DEFAULTSORT 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).
  • (3) Generate the masterlist/database to list all biographical metadata, including all data present in the infobox, in the categories, in the DEFAULTSORT tag, and in the Persondata 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.
  • (4) Generate a similar database for set index and human name disambiguation pages such as Fisher (surname) and Paul Fisher (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.
  • (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 this from 2008: "22,743 suggested surname disambiguation pages, created from the May 24, 2008 database dump").
  • (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 category for articles on living people (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. surname Rabe (currently 14 people) can be compared with Rabe 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.

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? Carcharoth (talk) 23:52, 4 February 2012 (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.
(1) Nearly all bio articles will be listed at a subcategory of Category:Births by year. 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 Leopold and Loeb, Abraham, Murder of Stephen Lawrence, Lucy (Australopithecus), 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"?
(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 Category:Births by year? – Quadell 15:07, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
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 Category:Births by year? It would be nice to track that over time. I would ask for a complete list of the articles in the subcategories of Category:Births by year, 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 ({{hndis}}) and how many surname set index pages are there ({{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 (Category:Human name disambiguation pages contains 35,268 pages and Category:Surnames 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 Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Biography, or at Misplaced Pages:Biographical metadata or at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Anthroponymy. Carcharoth (talk) 16:07, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Alert1! - Single line articles

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. Herve Ebanda, Al-Arabi (Saudi Arabia, basketball club), Ohud Medina (basketball), Suo Ma, Jayson Rego etc.)
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.
Concerns

  1. 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.
  1. 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...
  1. 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

  1. The pages are new and are being worked on - Actually all of these pages are almost a month old. Go check the history.
  2. 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?
  3. 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
  4. 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 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikishagnik (talk • contribs) 10:25, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

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.
  1. He claims on the one hand that the individuals are properly notable, but on the other hand that their notability might be fleeting. Notability is not temporary. If an individual or topic is properly notable now, it will remain so.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 take a break. WikiDan61ReadMe!! 12:32, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't understand how wikidan can totally misunderstand me but let me try and explain again.
  1. 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
  2. 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?
  3. No wikidan, to explain the issue I am quoting directly from Misplaced Pages:Copyright violations 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
  4. 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. Wikishagnik (talk) 14:20, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
  • 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 ϢereSpielChequers 14:28, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
  • 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, WP:NODEADLINE 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. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:48, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

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. WP:BLP1E 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 guidelines for athletes' notability, 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.

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.

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 stub category. ItsZippy 16:27, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

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. --Dweller (talk) 20:23, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

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 "permastub", a stub that cannot be expanded. These should usually be merged into other articles. Dcoetzee 00:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

What type of Wikipedian are you?

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.Simply south...... 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. --Yair rand (talk) 14:34, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
There's Misplaced Pages:Wikipediholism test. 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. —Tom Morris (talk) 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. Sven Manguard Wha? 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. Superm401 - Talk 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. ItsZippy 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. dci | TALK 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. Dcoetzee 00:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
True, and not a bad idea. My problem is this– 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. dci | TALK 03:07, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

More granular anchor links

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.

Note: I don't really know if this is the right place for this suggestion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.229.76.144 (talk) 02:02, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

But what would happen when the order of sections changes, or one paragraph is split into two? Franamax (talk) 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 anchor. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:54, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Create different categories of article deletion

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. 173.180.202.22 (talk) 03:10, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals#Deleted pages should be visible. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
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. 173.180.202.22 (talk) 03:52, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
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. 173.180.202.22 (talk) 03:45, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
The links at Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals#Deleted pages should be visible include suggestions to make some pages visible and not others. PrimeHunter (talk) 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. 173.180.202.22 (talk) 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: Misplaced Pages:Trash namespace, Misplaced Pages:Soft deletion, Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/Persistent proposals/Straw poll for view-deleted#Part 2:What types of deletions should be viewable? Do I also have to point to specific sentences? PrimeHunter (talk) 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, Misplaced Pages:Trash namespace, and Misplaced Pages:Soft deletion 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... 173.180.202.22 (talk) 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. 173.180.202.22 (talk) 03:44, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

engineering celebration

This is about a Fan. That is what I suggest we request from the celebrities (we, the engineers).

http://www.mediafire.com/?ftpnmqob6qbw7za

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?

I'm not going to Push my identity here. Thanks for the pump, village.

I am not sure how else OperationChickenHawk could continue much longer... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.198.165.75 (talk) 19:26, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Enforcement of "Please do not modify it" archival tags

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. — Loadmaster (talk) 20:08, 8 February 2012 (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. ItsZippy 21:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
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 Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive406? "The encyclopedia anyone can edit" is hardly undermined by not being able to edit archived talk pages from 2008. —Tom Morris (talk) 16:07, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Just a thought

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 here or there, and someone who works a lot at the Mediation Cabal might not share a lot of collaborative ideas. Instead, how about this?

  • The Wiki could be divided into ten very loose sectors:
    • Materials for deletion, discussion, and creation
    • Content disputes
    • Inter-user disputes
    • Anti-vandalism tasks
    • Multilingual coordination
    • Technical areas
    • Societal encyclopedic content
    • Mathematical and scientific encyclopedic content
    • Popular culture encyclopedic content
    • Religious and philosophical encyclopedic content.
  • 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 editorial collaboration council (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 ... dci | TALK 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). Superm401 - Talk 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– the only thing that non-representatives couldn't do was edit the page. dci | TALK 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. Sven Manguard Wha? 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? dci | TALK 17:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
You might be interested in WP:COUNCIL, where cross-discipline issues are occasionally posted. (Most of them are listed at the WP:RFC pages, of course.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Okay, I'll check that out. dci | TALK 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. ItsZippy 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). dci | TALK 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 WP:Dashboard. 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: WP:BACKLOG, 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 Wikimedia Commons for cross-linking in German, Italian or any other-language Wikipedias. From working last year with WP:GOCE (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 WP:Dashboard areas, especially for questions at WP:Help_desk, WP:RfC and WP:PUMPTECH to gain more perspective on issues discussed there, as well. -Wikid77 (talk) 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. My76Strat (talk) 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. 28bytes (talk) 05:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
May I ask why you believe it is needed? What problems would it solve? jonkerz ♠talk 05:27, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Notified by whom? Someone with an official WMF account? Nyttend (talk) 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, though I would propose 25. 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 - My76Strat (talk) 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.... Reaper Eternal (talk) 14:36, 9 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. My76Strat (talk) 14:48, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
I personally have no problem identifying to the Foundation – 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. Salvio 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. My76Strat (talk) 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 - TP 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. MBisanz 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. --Errant 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. Sven Manguard Wha? 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. Salvio 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. Lynch7 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. Sven Manguard Wha? 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. Salvio 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 WP:RFPERM the approximate age of each user. Reaper Eternal (talk) 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. My76Strat (talk) 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". Sven Manguard Wha? 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. dci | TALK 17:52, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
What we should be proud of and how we should build infrastructure are two different things. My76Strat (talk) 06:31, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
What I do as an admin really has no requirement for me to identify to the Foundation; period. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 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 - TP 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. dci | TALK 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? Reaper Eternal (talk) 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. My76Strat (talk) 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. dci | TALK 02:30, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

A noticeboard about rude and abusive admins

Moved to Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#A noticeboard about rude, abusive, or policy-abusing admins since it is a proposal. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Improved the link. Quite a low quality move thing you did here, Ts. Any history avaiable for people? -DePiep (talk) 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 Dr. Obar. An overview of the course I am taking can be seen here: Wiki-Project Management. 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. Vert3x (talk) 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: Misplaced Pages:New admin school and Administrators Handbook. 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 wp:Maintenance. Depending on how you define a framework you could see the whole wp:Project namespace 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 (talk)
Oh, we also have Misplaced Pages:Community portal, although I personally never use that. Yoenit (talk) 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 Misplaced Pages:Community portal, 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)? Vert3x (talk) 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 wp:VPI#Admin Resource Page, please comment."). Yoenit (talk) 07:44, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
There is also {{Admin_dashboard}} and WP:Dashboard.--v/r - TP 14:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I keep a log of things to do or review at User:Reaper Eternal/Console. Reaper Eternal (talk) 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. Vert3x (talk) 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 WP:CSD, WP:AFD, or WP:DRV. 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 - TP 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. Vert3x (talk) 18:40, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Idea Lab discussion: Admin Portal Sounds like a great idea. Jeepday (talk) 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 wp:canvass. 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 meatpuppets. ϢereSpielChequers 12:41, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree, and posted a similar critique at Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(proposals)#Idea_Lab_discussion:_Admin_Portal, where this has now moved. Sven Manguard Wha? 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. Vert3x (talk) 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 User:WereSpielChequers/dashboard, 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. ϢereSpielChequers 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? Vert3x (talk) 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 Computer Based Training 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. ϢereSpielChequers 00:28, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Civility Squad - an idea for improving the culture at wikipedia

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? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 07:39, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

No. Malleus Fatuorum 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. Ning-ning (talk) 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. ϢereSpielChequers 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.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 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 ŞůṜīΣĻ¹98¹ 10:50, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe it could be just another tool in the regular admins toolbox? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:32, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I'd suggest that Misplaced Pages's fundamental problem isn't incivility, it's incompetence. Malleus Fatuorum 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.Worm · (talk) 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. Sven Manguard Wha? 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. Gandydancer (talk) 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. ŞůṜīΣĻ¹98¹ 14:41, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
And probably it won't. Malleus Fatuorum 15:53, 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). ItsZippy 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. ) Regards, RJH (talk) 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. Resolute 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 this thread on Jimbo's talk. Misplaced Pages is an attractive place to a lot of highly intelligent people who would rather stay in and edit than go out and party. 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. Pesky (talk) 18:51, 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. dci | TALK 23:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Make all pages edit forms when visual editor is complete

mw:Extension:VisualEditor 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.Jasper Deng (talk) 07:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I believe that that is the intention. --Yair rand (talk) 10:49, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Yuck! I hope that can be disabled! Reaper Eternal (talk) 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. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  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. Anomie⚔ 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"). --Yair rand (talk) 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.Jasper Deng (talk) 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. Sven Manguard Wha? 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? ItsZippy 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, RJH (talk) 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. ItsZippy 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 redirect, when appropriate. That may serve the purpose but not get in the way of the article header. Regards, RJH (talk) 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. ItsZippy 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, RJH (talk) 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! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Per.stefansson (talk • contribs) 22:09, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried resizing your browser? →Στc. 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. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 01:15, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Go to your .css (User:YOU/common.css‎):
#content {
width: 800px !important;
}

something like that. choose whatever width you want. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 09:34, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages needs a training ground

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. Serendious 08:23, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

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 Google Instant). 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.
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.
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. ItsZippy 16:07, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Allow any logged in editor to delete their own U1 and G7 cases

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. For U1 I'd suggest that we 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. 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 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. ϢereSpielChequers 15:34, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

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. ItsZippy 15:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)`
Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals#Grant non-admins admin functions within their user space 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. Anomie⚔ 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. ItsZippy 20:20, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Would this be given out as a user flag to prevent abuse? If so, perhaps -suppressredirect could also be added to the flag. Such a flag would definitely allow more non-admins to help out with non-controversial requested moves i.e. deleting the redirect left behind to do a multi requested move. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 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. ϢereSpielChequers 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.
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. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 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. ϢereSpielChequers 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. ItsZippy 21:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Automatically updating "As Of (date)" template

Hi, I've always thought that instead of using Template:as of, 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"?

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? -Kreachure (talk) 20:35, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

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. 28bytes (talk) 20:40, 20 February 2012 (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 solar system 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, Emma Thompson 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? -Kreachure (talk) 21:15, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
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 WP:NODEADLINE, that might be a long time during which the article will be wrong. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 21:19, 20 February 2012 (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. -Kreachure (talk) 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 WP:V. It would essentially be telling the reader "yes, we checked, and this is still accurate" when we haven't checked. 28bytes (talk) 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{{Please update me|date=20 January 2013}}" for statements that we know needs to be updated at a specific date? jonkerz ♠talk 22:02, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) 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. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 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. -Kreachure (talk) 21:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Exactly. WP:BOTPOL 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. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 22:07, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
But what if there are only 8 planets? My76Strat (talk) 21:22, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
That's funny. Not helpful, but funny. Error fixed. -Kreachure (talk) 21:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
First off, you should propose to create a new template, because {{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 magic words 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 {{CURRENTYEAR}}, 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". jonkerz ♠talk 21:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) This goes against the whole idea of Template:as 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. Barack Obama 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 {{CURRENTYEAR}} and a reuser has software to display {{CURRENTYEAR}} correctly then in 10 years their version of Barack Obama may say "As of 2022, Obama is president". PrimeHunter (talk) 21:42, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

{{ec}} ever since my last comment, and here is the follow-on:

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.

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.

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.

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 Δ lays bare; is at minimum, cautionary! Wiki-love to all - My76Strat (talk) 23:05, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

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