Policy | Technical | Proposals | Idea lab | Miscellaneous |
The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas. Before creating a new section, please note:
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Proposals: policy | other | Discussions | Ideas |
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Contents
- 1 "Arbitrator" user group
- 2 Promising articles
- 3 Put Any Wikipedia Article on a Timeline
- 4 Button to turn links in article text black
- 5 Localization Project: Units, Dialect, Pronounciation
- 6 Draftprod
- 7 Found 235 false synonyms on Wikipedia
- 8 Bibliography of Reliable Sources for Parapsychology
- 9 Where would I post/discuss an idea for an offline tool?
- 10 Fission Strategy 'editing Wikipedia for nonprofits'
- 11 Better responses to people who want to know how to add an article about their organization
- 12 Statistics Website
- 13 NPOV Welcome Template
- 14 Few ideas
- 15 BLPCAT, mental illnesses, and learning disabilities
- 16 "Possibly resolved" parameter for cleanup tags
"Arbitrator" user group
So, the Wikipedia:Non-administrator Arbitrators RfC over a month ago did in its closure feature a rough consensus in creating an "Arbitrator" usergroup for arbitrators, but the closer indicated that it would need some development and further discussion. So, now it may be time to discuss how to implement that - assuming that the close still stands. Noting also this revision regarding one possible setup and whether it would be acceptable to the WMF given that it involves sensitive permissions.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:50, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- If I recall correctly, this would not be a foundation problem - provided that any access granted follows the same requirements (community approvals, identification, etc) that is already in place. Creating a new
usergroup
is fairly easy. We would need to decide what permissions are actually required for the group, see example list of all available permissions here. Users can belong to multiple groups, and their permissions merge. So for example, the new group could be granted the ability to view deleted and oversighted (deletedtext
andviewsuppressed
permissions) without the ability to also delete or oversight the pages. — xaosflux Talk 19:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)- This would require the user to ALSO be an oversighter, administrator, etc to gain the additional permissions. This may open the discussion to limit or expand the permissions someone gets just for being on the committee. — xaosflux Talk 19:32, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- Also, by default new groups would only be able to have membership changed by stewards - and if bundling portions of oversight or checkuser the foundation would likely still require this. If they will have equal to or LESS permissions than administrators, then we could also request that our 'crats be able to update the group. — xaosflux Talk 19:35, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- Among the concepts proposed in the RfC was to give this group solely the "view" privileges (that is by my assessment,
abusefilter-hidden-log
,abusefilter-log
,abusefilter-log-detail
,abusefilter-view
,abusefilter-view-private
,browsearchive
,checkuser-log
,deletedhistory
,deletedtext
,spamblacklistlog
,suppressionlog
andtitleblacklistlog
), althougheditprotected
may also be useful if arbitrators have to work within protected pages. And yes, such a group if it includes the "sensitive" permissions (heresuppressionlog
andcheckuser-log
and some abusefilter permissions) it would need to be added/removed by stewards only; if not requested by the WMF, the folks in Phabricator will likely ask for it since non-steward granting of such permissions has created issues in the past.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:34, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- Among the concepts proposed in the RfC was to give this group solely the "view" privileges (that is by my assessment,
I pruned duplicated items that are already in "users", etc - so this could be a request such as:
- Create a new group:
Arbitrators
- Include permissions:
abusefilter-hidden-log
abusefilter-view-private
browsearchive
checkuser-log
deletedhistory
deletedtext
spamblacklistlog
suppressionlog
titleblacklistlog
viewdeletedfile
viewsuppressed
— xaosflux Talk 22:08, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Now, a prime question is - is this moot? Since ArbCom is the deciders of who gets CheckUser and Oversight - if they are going to just assign themselves the permissions then there is no need to include that stuff in here. — xaosflux Talk 22:10, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- If memory serves, some arbitrators have stated that they won't use this full "requestable" permission set, so a more narrow set may be useful. Plus, I am not sure if the OS and CU rights entail all the permissions mentioned before, which may matter in case of a non-admin being elected to ARBCOM.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:27, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
-
- Purely from the perspective of programming and security, it makes sense to have a group for arbitrators. Membership in this group begins when their term starts, and ends when they leave. If an arbitrator gets CU or OS, they may keep it beyond the end of their term, or remove it early. In theory an arbitrator might not have sysop access, or might resign sysop after being elected. We should disentangle the roles so that each hat works independently of the others. Jehochman Talk 22:44, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- Please identify the problem before offering a solution. Why would an arb need all these permissions? Arbitration always takes plenty of time so why can't other arbs provide information that an individual may not be able to access? In an emergency any sensible arb should quickly act on the advice of respected users with the permissions, with a review to follow. Do arbs frequently need to study deleted pages and such like? Johnuniq (talk) 00:56, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
- Do they really need another 'feather' ? I think the voting was done without any user there having any knowledge on how this would be done. Sometimes certain rights are removed when not used such as OS/CU so how would you go about doing that? for example a sitting arbie, AGK lost his CU/OS rights for inactivity but he is still an arbitrator, so would the stewards remove his "bundled" arbitrator right when he isn't active? It would be silly to bundle multiple rights into one cannister especially for a group which will never have more than 15 members at any given point....I think only large groups, or groups that can allow for more users should have their own special usergroup (the only exception is the founder rights ofcourse)..This might need another discussion..--Stemoc 01:48, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
- AGK did not lose his CU/OS access by inactivity, as you can see here. Also, as said here sitting arbitrators are not subject to the (local) inactivity policy. As for deleted pages, yes, I do remember a number of cases where deleted evidence did play a role.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:50, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
- @Johnuniq If we ever elect an arb who is not currently an admin then yes they would need access to deleted and indeed oversighted edits. If they had to rely on other arbs to check deleted revisions and decide which were appropriate to show them as evidence then we would have two classes of Arbs. I would prefer that only those who had been elected as admins were deleting, restoring, blocking and unblocking. But all arbs need to be able to see the same evidence. ϢereSpielChequers 10:29, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
- Do they really need another 'feather' ? I think the voting was done without any user there having any knowledge on how this would be done. Sometimes certain rights are removed when not used such as OS/CU so how would you go about doing that? for example a sitting arbie, AGK lost his CU/OS rights for inactivity but he is still an arbitrator, so would the stewards remove his "bundled" arbitrator right when he isn't active? It would be silly to bundle multiple rights into one cannister especially for a group which will never have more than 15 members at any given point....I think only large groups, or groups that can allow for more users should have their own special usergroup (the only exception is the founder rights ofcourse)..This might need another discussion..--Stemoc 01:48, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
- In reply to User:Jo-Jo Eumerus's comment of 18:50, 30 December 2015 (UTC) at the top of this section: Unless the Arbitration Committee or at least a significant minority of that committee ask for such a feature, I think we are putting the cart before the horse. In any case, if and when a majority of the committee ask for it, as long as it only affects members of the committee and it doesn't give them rights they don't already have, it should be done as "routine maintenance" without further community input. The only reasons I can think of for the community to discuss this is if a significant minority of the committee would like this or if it would be an actual "upgrade" in permissions beyond what the community has already given them. I don't see evidence of either one of these conditions being met right now. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:34, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
- Pretty sure we need a community consensus before any user right will be created. I remember that the developers in Bugzilla/Phabricator require a community consensus for such things, an ArbCom request is not enough.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:59, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
- From a logical point of view, I agree with the concept of creating a usergroup specifically for ArbCom members, namely:
- Permissions necessary for an arbitrator to do the job can be issued directly to the group as opposed to needing to add a given Arb to perhaps two or three groups (sysop, oversight, checkuser - as required). By the same token, at the expiration of their term, it's only one group to take that arb out of instead of having stewards/crats lookup what group(s) the former Arb had and removing the others
- Through use of
$wpAddGroups
,$wgRemoveGroups
and$wgGroupsRemoveFromSelf
Arbs can add/remove specific groups to other editors (class examples: CU/OS)
- Just my two cents (keep the change)
- Dax Bane 01:33, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
- Arbitrators cannot add or remove people from usergroups. When arbcom appoints someone as e.g. a checkuser, they make a request for a steward to add the user concerned to the checkuser usergroup. Likewise when permissions are removed for inactivity, a request is made to the stewards for the permissions to be removed. This will not change if the arb usergroup is created. Thryduulf (talk) 13:17, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
Didn't we already determine that Oversight Access allows for access to view deleted content, and that an ArbCom election was considered RfA-identical enough to meet the Foundation requirement for Oversight access? Therefore the Admin bit is not necessary to view deleted content, if the Arb were given Oversight access? (Note this was never tested practically, but as per before, I would be willing to drop my admin bit for a few hours to try it out, if we wanted to know what one could and could not do for sure.) The CheckUser log access is of little value as it provides little information, also keeping in mind that not all Arbitrators are CheckUsers (by choice). If we had a non-admin Arbitrator, they could be provided Oversight Access, and have all of the tools necessary without creating a new usergroup (plus the ability to revision (un)delete and revision (un)suppress, but not to delete an actual page). I think this is a solution looking for a problem. The idea of creating a new usergroup, for a hypothetical non-admin arbitrator that may or may not get elected in the future, when really all we have to do as give them a single permission, that they are already entitled to. --kelapstick(bainuu) 02:35, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
- Oversighters have all the required permissions to view deleted revisions without the admin flag (though oddly enough not the ability to delete pages, which would be required for some suppressions), and according to the global policy could be appointed by arbcom without being local admins. In terms of a need for the group, maybe? Some projects use one for arbitrators, others don't. If the group had CU or suppression log viewing abilities then it would need to be granted from meta by stewards, but if it just had the ability to view deleted revisions and the like then it could be granted locally by bureaucrats.
- I'm not convinced of the need for such a group myself. You can just give arbitrators an admin flag for their tenure, if need be. Ajraddatz (Talk) 02:45, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
- Arbcom elections and RFA look at very different things. I would be surprised if the community elected an arb who couldn't be trusted with the block button, but it is entirely possible that we could elect an Arb who we wouldn't trust with the delete button. ϢereSpielChequers 19:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Promising articles
So I was looking up some things for a trip to Denmark I'm taking later this year, and was looking at Frederiksborg Castle. I figured it wasn't in bad shape, and I saw the star next to to the Danish language version. I clicked on that and was shown an unusual icon next to the article header. So naturally I clicked on that out of curosity and then ran it through the auto translate to discover that the Danish Wiki has a "Promising article" level in addition to Good and Excellent (our Featured). The summary it gives is as follows [1]: "Promising articles is a project in which Wikipedia's users improve the existing articles, with a view to preparing them for nomination as good articles. For an article can be considered as a promising article, then it must be at a reasonable level. Assessed an article promising so is the lowest rating of three possible ratings on Danish language Wikipedia. Items which are rated as promising, has still some significant gaps that need to be improved before they can be assessed as good articles. See the requirements for a good article for an overview of what is expected of realistic possibilities for improvement of promising articles."
As far as I can see, this has never been discussed at the Village Pump for the English language Wiki, apart from back in 2010 when someone from the Finnish Wiki was looking to create inter-wiki links for them. So I presume this is on the Finnish Wiki and the other Scandinavian ones too.
There is some duplication between this and some WikiProjects B class assessments - but this allows for a cross-project accumulation of articles which are ready to be worked up to GA status. I would think it was appropriate to have a few differences in approach should this be implemented - I wouldn't add an icon onto the main article page itself, but keep it strictly to a talk page thing. Furthermore, I think that should it be implemented, then it must have the requirements for improvement to GA incorporated into the new template as well as the general index page as well. There isn't much point without that or else it simply becomes a new indexing system for B class articles, which we completely don't need. Thoughts? Miyagawa (talk) 16:19, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
- The old/rarely-used-today A-class is a quasi-approximation, although these are frequently better than a GA. "Good article candidate/nominees" are probably the closest project-wide label. Some wikiprojects have lists of articles they are collaborating on to raise to GA status, but until the page is officially nominated as a GA candidate, it won't have and particular marking.
- Even GA-nominees just have markings on the talk page, not on the article page. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:47, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
- Similarly if the project has a full Stub/Start/C/B/A/GA system, that's pretty good as identifying various levels of quality. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:52, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
Put Any Wikipedia Article on a Timeline
Well we have finally accomplished our task of giving anybody the ability of putting most of Wikipedia history on a timeline, at:
Look at this website on the largest computer screen that you can get your hands on. We eventually would like to create a timeline of all history. This was a massive undertaking. For right now, you can add and delete any Wikipedia article you want from this timeline (just click the green "Add" button). Any and all 4 million of them, any 6 at one time. Instructions are included under the heading "New user message". Do you think this would be a good history education tool? From elementary to the collegiate level? I know I would have loved to have a tool like this when I was taking European history in college.
And you can (eventually) put anything on this timeline. Medical histories, legal documents and project plans. Even whole books! The potential is endless.
There are still some bugs and other foibles we are working on, but it is pretty stable now.
Thanks Jeff Jroehl (talk) 09:52, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
-
- @Jroehl: This is a great tool and an amazing bit of coding from what I understand of the NLP paradigm. Kudos!
- I do have a simple feature request I hope you will consider... Allow the tool to accept a Category: namespace URL like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:20th-century_physicists. Parse the page HTML to extract only those items that match the CSS parameter
.mw-category a:link
and build a list of pages to add to a timeline. You have not mentioned if the tool has an upper limit for number of articles per timeline but if there is an issue there just cap the HTML parser to the first NNN a:links with NNN being the max allowed. - Alternatively, extract a single-level of all links from any given article page such as en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element, limiting the extract to only those links inside the mw-content div. This would allow users to see the relevant timeline for a given article. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 12:41, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
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-
- @Koala Tea Of Mercy: Thanks! I will look into the category issue. It sounds like it might have some potential. The timeline, as it is right now, is extremely complex over a whole host of reasons. One issue of (potentially) timelining whole categories, is the fact that the human eye can only distinguish a limited number of colors. For simplicity sake, we are only utilizing 6 colors. Therefore you are only allowed to have 6 articles on any one timeline, at any one time. It is theorized that this could go to 20 colors. Search for "The Tableau 20 colors" for a discussion on that. There are dozens of "feature requests" we would love to add to our curious timeline contraption. I have a long list. We just don't know if investing more time in this tool is worth the effort. Is it really that interesting? If we could get more adoption and interest, we would attempt to add a whole host of new features. Basically, it all comes down to marketing. And since we are relatively unknown people, this is very difficult for us.
-
-
-
- So, unfortunately, we are stuck, after 5 years of development. It is called "The real world" we have to deal with. But we are optimistic!
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-
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-
- I hear you man, living in the real world would be so much easier if it didn't intrude into our online life!
- A thought on the color issue. Take a lesson from sailors and use color combinations. If your timeline bar is just 4 pixels tall that is enough to do two contrasting colors as a pair of horizontal lines (=======, example red on top and yellow on bottom). This alone will dramatically increase your color options. You also could do other color combos like 4-pixel tall, 3-pixel wide diagonal stripes (//////////).
- Just an idea. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 10:02, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
- I hear you man, living in the real world would be so much easier if it didn't intrude into our online life!
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-
-
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- @Koala Tea Of Mercy: Actually, you are correct, the 2 color lines would greatly expand the potential color combinations. Why didn't I think of this? I thank you for this tip!
-
Jeff Roehl Jroehl (talk) 10:12, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Button to turn links in article text black
It would be nice to have a button somewhere that changes the colour of all the links in an article black, for readability's sake. Found this while searching for the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_AD#Changing_link_color
In Firefox there is the Read mode -button built into the browser that really helps with reading long articles, but afaIk no such thing in Chrome. I know Chrome has similar things as extensions, but it would be nice to provide the functionality to all users.
91.152.109.7 (talk) 03:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)J
- I proposed that in May 2014, here. No traction. (I was fairly new then and didn't know that this page or WP:VPR would have been a more appropriate place to pose something like that. But I'm pretty sure the outcome would have been the same.) ―Mandruss ☎ 09:21, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
- Go to any article, then click on the "Printable version" link on the sidebar. How does this differ from your desired goal?--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:36, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
- If the ugliness of the printable version doesn't appeal (and why would it?), there's the option of developing it as a User script or/then a Gadget if not adopted as standard MediaWiki GUI or specifically added as a Wikipedia extra feature.
- A relatively simple matter of adding "the button" (somewhere) and a little CSS to instantly switch the hyperlink color [sic] back and forth. fredgandt 10:44, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
- Add
importScript( "User:Fred_Gandt/subdueLinks.js" );
to your common JavaScript page to have the basic functionality you require. The button will be just below the Wikipedia icon at the top of the left navigation panel. It might not be perfect; it was slapped together ;-) fredgandt 11:46, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
-
- @Fred Gandt: Works great, nice work! It preserves the links while turning them black, and does so without re-rendering the page, which was the best I hoped for in my above-linked proposal. The only improvement I can conceive would be if the button were kept on-screen at all times, regardless of where you are in the article (for that matter, the entire left sidebar should act like that, and should be independently scrollable if it's longer than the window, but that's a different discussion). No idea of the feasibility.
My preference would be for it to be an unconditional thing, since it could then work for unregistered users/readers (including the OP in this thread) and registered ones who don't know anything about gadgets, etc. But I expect that would receive the same opposition that I got in May 2014, which was basically that it sidesteps and masks the real problem, that there are too many links. For now, I'll pass your solution on when I see someone ask for it. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:06, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
- @Fred Gandt: Works great, nice work! It preserves the links while turning them black, and does so without re-rendering the page, which was the best I hoped for in my above-linked proposal. The only improvement I can conceive would be if the button were kept on-screen at all times, regardless of where you are in the article (for that matter, the entire left sidebar should act like that, and should be independently scrollable if it's longer than the window, but that's a different discussion). No idea of the feasibility.
-
- I started a related thread at: WT:Tools/Editing tools#Tool to turn links black. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:10, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
-
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- @Mandruss: I use
importScript( "User:Fred_Gandt/navigationUI.js" );
to affect the navigation UI in ways that amongst other things fixes the position of the left panel. It's pretty trivial to separate out the code to have that functionality without the rest (which is not trivial). See my sandbox for several useful (IMO) scripts (documentation is sparse). - I appreciate that IPs can't use these, but then they can always create accounts ;-)
- For this (OP subject) to be added (more or less) for ALL users, it would be simplest (but not bestest) to just make the printable version less fugly, which is easy and requires no scripting (just CSS). fredgandt 19:12, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
- As for the sidebar, I was speaking in terms of all Wikipedia users, not just myself. It's not worth doing just for myself. After 30 years in mainframe computers, about half of that in software, I can't get used to the idea of all this unlimited personal customization of the Wikipedia UI. Most of this would be pejoratively called "hacks" in the world I come from. The more of that there is, the harder it is for us to help one another with problems and questions, or to even "speak the same language". To some greater extent we need to live in the same Wikipedia world, in my opinion, even if that means settling for less than what we see as the ideal.
I appreciate that IPs can't use these, but then they can always create accounts - Hmmm ... where have I heard that before? ―Mandruss ☎ 19:35, 11 February 2016 (UTC)- @Mandruss: Some of us are vision and/or color-impaired and need the ability to customize. I remember those mainframe green-screens (and amber-screens) and I for one am glad that we have evolved beyond them and embraced color as a tool for communication. Of course you can always tinker with your own WP "common.css" file and make all link types on all wiki pages black for you. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 10:13, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
- Thank you for the comments. The point is to be able to easily switch links between blue and black at will. Sometimes one wants them blue, sometimes black, depending on the situation. Such a button would not force anything on anyone, it would only make easy switching available to everyone, including unregistered users/readers and those who aren't comfortable with fiddling with their local configurations (as I've indicated, my interest here goes beyond my own personal needs and preferences). If the button were never clicked by a user, nothing would change for that user. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:13, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
- @Mandruss: Some of us are vision and/or color-impaired and need the ability to customize. I remember those mainframe green-screens (and amber-screens) and I for one am glad that we have evolved beyond them and embraced color as a tool for communication. Of course you can always tinker with your own WP "common.css" file and make all link types on all wiki pages black for you. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 10:13, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
- As for the sidebar, I was speaking in terms of all Wikipedia users, not just myself. It's not worth doing just for myself. After 30 years in mainframe computers, about half of that in software, I can't get used to the idea of all this unlimited personal customization of the Wikipedia UI. Most of this would be pejoratively called "hacks" in the world I come from. The more of that there is, the harder it is for us to help one another with problems and questions, or to even "speak the same language". To some greater extent we need to live in the same Wikipedia world, in my opinion, even if that means settling for less than what we see as the ideal.
- @Mandruss: I use
-
Localization Project: Units, Dialect, Pronounciation
How about an add-on which can localize pages by default, for easier reading. A Wikipedian could set a locality, and articles would appear with the date/time format, and automatically convert units of measurement to the local standard. It could be taken to the logical extreme, and replace regional language variations (colour vs color), IPA vs US Customary phonetics, as well. Obviously, this functionality would be off by default, but it could ease barriers to understanding. Article or section tags could override the preferences (on scientific articles as an example). The function would also display a warning somewhere, that the page is being automatically localized, and block editing until the function is turned off.
This would help mitigate issues surrounding what version of English an article was started in. superβεεcat 21:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
- We can get round this by stilted writing, but we cannot compensate for other authors prose. This becomes really irritating when you are administering Wikipedia in a school, as you are insisting that your clients use correct English for assessments and exams. We have the {{convert}} to process numbers- but when it comes to words we have been abandoned. The first priorities are the page titles. eg Artificial fibre redirects to Synthetic fiber which then links to other fiber pages. The second priority is the section heads, and the spelling in the wikilinks. Then we can start looking at the text.
- Personally I would default on the ip-address location, which could be over written by cookie, which could be overwritten by the users personal preference.
- I think we should start by implementing a partial system, then users could opt in for a dictionary lookup system to get over the pants-trousers, sidewalk-pavement faux amis, which could be driven from Wiki-Data. I can see that this will transport over to de: who also have problems with swiss German, fr: with fr-be and the multiple varieties of es: Just a few suggestions. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 21:35, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
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- Thanks for the feedback. I like the idea of your "partial system", this makes a lot of sense to me. How does a project like this begin in earnest; a more concrete proposal for village pump? - superβεεcat 20:03, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
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- It's worth noting that several years ago, we had date-format autoconversion; it was turned off after a 3:2 vote. Personally, I think the number of semantically ambiguous variant words is so rare that this kind of complexity is much, much more trouble than it's worth - we'd get untold numbers of false positive conversions. (How does the system know which pants are pants, and which are trousers? Do we need to mark up every instance of a potentially translateable word?) Andrew Gray (talk) 20:27, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
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Draftprod
There have been numerous debates about deleting stale drafts, including expanding G13 or just removing the idea altogether (see VPP's attempt). On the one hand, people argue that no one's old drafts should ever be deleted in favor of editor retention. On the other hand, people argue that they would like to go through and triage places like Category:Stale userspace drafts so removing things will help (currently at 38k or so down from a high of 46k). What do people think about a proposed draft deletion process? It's basically like PROD in mainspace but much more highly restrictive and lengthy. It would cover both draftspace and userspace drafts. I think it could even overrule the need for G13 and cover WP:AFC as well as well as keep MFD from the current flooding of undisputed deletions it currently has. There would be a couple of rules here.
- First, only a draft that itself hasn't been edited in six months can be considered.
- If it's in userspace, following WP:STALE, the original creator and the editor's who space it is in (if they differ) must not have edited anywhere for at least one year.
- If the deletion is proposed, it would go into a category similar to Category:Proposed deletion for at least one month at which time any one can remove the proposal for any reason whatsoever. This is similar to the 5 month notification of Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions with a month before G13.
- After a month with no deletion, an admin can then decide if it's worth deleting.
I also tag draft with WikiProject so I imagine we can have WP:ALERTS for these draft prods similar to Prods so projects can see if there's anything of interest. Any thoughts? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:40, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
- One thing that I'm just throwing out there, is to even have some sort of autodelete, if something is not touched in over a year, and then it's tagged by the bot, and then it's not touched for another month, it should just be deleted. We don't need any intervention. Otherwise, it might (not sure of the backlogs) cause admin headaches. Regardless, we do need to do something. I like your idea, it has safeguards in place so that somewhere along the line users can catch it and edit, and more than enough time elapses to delete. Sir Joseph (talk) 06:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
- Prod has an autodelete in some ways. I'm not sure more is needed. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:11, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
- since this idea lab, I think we should allow moving to article space even when marked. Another use is to copy some content and then redirect. Also I prefer two years of creator inactivity before dispatching or prodding. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:24, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
- I don't think it matters why people deprod them. Prod allows for any reason. If you're deprodding to move into your userspace, to move to articlespace, to merge a bit and redirect it, to move into draftspace or simply because you think more time is needed like Category:AfC postponed G13, that's fine with me. We could probably added a deprod counter if people wanted to, but there's always still MFD if people think the draft is actually problematic or shouldn't be extended but postponements of two years repeatedly are not unheard of. Even then I say that anything that is prodded this way can be immediately restored via WP:REFUND so this kind of merges the AFC system into the wider universe of drafts. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:52, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
- since this idea lab, I think we should allow moving to article space even when marked. Another use is to copy some content and then redirect. Also I prefer two years of creator inactivity before dispatching or prodding. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:24, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
- Prod has an autodelete in some ways. I'm not sure more is needed. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:11, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
- I think there must be some content-based criteria. For example: Has no independent sources; Has no claim of notability (would not pass A7). Simply being old is not enough to auto delete. Alternatively, or additionally, there should be a way for an auto confirmed editor to review and approve a draft as having merit and substance. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:10, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
- A rescue squadron could use any reason they like to deprod and use the content. I don't know what problem deleting the drafts prevents though. Perhaps there could be a limit of 1 per day per nominator to save the rescurers from too much stress. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:23, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
- I suspect it will start like Prod did, with people prodding, people joining and creating rescue squadrons to review and deprod, with some accusing them of being over the top, with some accusing the others of being too deletionist, and over time, a balance will form. As noted above, this would basically make G13 and the AFC system moot and I think we have a good balance there of drafts going to G13 deletion, drafts not going there and basically people on both sides arguing the other one is wrong. G13 currently doesn't make additional content-based criteria, so I don't see a need. It's just the idea lab here so I just want to throw it out there. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:35, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
- I think it sounds like more work than it is worth. A negative cost-benefit. Unlike the massive quantity of worthless drafts created by AfC, userpages are not mostly worthless. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:40, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
- I know it's a lot of work but I think it would be helpful in terms of the potential benefits that come from bringing these drafts to the sunshine so to speak. Also, because deprodding is a one person review, it's more akin to a community vote and community veto than the current MFD set-up. One huge advantage I would imagine would be if the alerts system for projects uses this. An alert would notice that a draft was subject to draft prod (like here and would then archive that title for the project for all eternity. If someone, say years later, was thinking about a subject, they could scroll through the alerts article and at least see the title and possibly ask for restoration. That I think would be helpful for certain places like projects on various television shows, or the math project where there's a lot of stuff out there that can always be written but it's often a matter of WP:TOOSOON or just having lost that person with the interest in it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:49, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
- But drafts aren't usually tagged with project templates or placed into categories, so how would the wikiprojects know? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 12:47, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
- In the chance they are. It's a lot of ifs on whether it's useful. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:49, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
- But drafts aren't usually tagged with project templates or placed into categories, so how would the wikiprojects know? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 12:47, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
- I know it's a lot of work but I think it would be helpful in terms of the potential benefits that come from bringing these drafts to the sunshine so to speak. Also, because deprodding is a one person review, it's more akin to a community vote and community veto than the current MFD set-up. One huge advantage I would imagine would be if the alerts system for projects uses this. An alert would notice that a draft was subject to draft prod (like here and would then archive that title for the project for all eternity. If someone, say years later, was thinking about a subject, they could scroll through the alerts article and at least see the title and possibly ask for restoration. That I think would be helpful for certain places like projects on various television shows, or the math project where there's a lot of stuff out there that can always be written but it's often a matter of WP:TOOSOON or just having lost that person with the interest in it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:49, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
- I think it sounds like more work than it is worth. A negative cost-benefit. Unlike the massive quantity of worthless drafts created by AfC, userpages are not mostly worthless. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:40, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
- I suspect it will start like Prod did, with people prodding, people joining and creating rescue squadrons to review and deprod, with some accusing them of being over the top, with some accusing the others of being too deletionist, and over time, a balance will form. As noted above, this would basically make G13 and the AFC system moot and I think we have a good balance there of drafts going to G13 deletion, drafts not going there and basically people on both sides arguing the other one is wrong. G13 currently doesn't make additional content-based criteria, so I don't see a need. It's just the idea lab here so I just want to throw it out there. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:35, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
- A rescue squadron could use any reason they like to deprod and use the content. I don't know what problem deleting the drafts prevents though. Perhaps there could be a limit of 1 per day per nominator to save the rescurers from too much stress. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:23, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Oppose. This is a nonsense solution to a non-problem. There is no need to delete a single draft. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.170.45.98 (talk) 04:42, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Struck comment by banned user. — JJMC89 (T·C) 21:41, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
Sounds like a somewhat complex plan to make deleting old drafts and problematic user pages easier. How can we make it happen? Legacypac (talk) 06:47, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose. What is the problem being solved? What is the purpose of arbitrarily moving a draft from Draft or User space to delete space...other than to prevent building the encyclopedia? There are different issues for userspace, draftspace, and AfC drafts. For "inactive" drafts in draftspace, the age of inactivity is defined by the work capacity of those working on the inactive drafts. Unscintillating (talk) 07:06, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- Strongly Oppose. Several years ago I helped a Freshman student at my community college work on an new article for WP. By the end of his first year he had several KB of content. During the Fall semester of his 2nd year his class load was pretty heavy and he wasn't able to put in much time even to do the research, let alone the editing. At a request from his family for some quality time he did not do any academic work during the holiday break. Again in the Spring semester he was wrapped up in his Thesis so he ignored WP. For virtually 9 months he did not work on his article at all. Then, just before the start of the next Fall semester he sent me an email with a URL asking me to review the WP page and apparently during the summer break he had become a WP editing machine. I learned later that he had to actually start from scratch because while he was "away" his article had been deleted. My point is that there are many possible valid reasons most of us can't even imagine for why an article could sit dormant for an extended period of time. Now that WP has created the Draft namespace there is no good reason to go deleting articles just for being stale. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 08:06, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
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- Was that an article or a draft? If he created an article and it wasn't "complete" (i.e. didn't qualify) and it got deleted after nine months without his involvement, is that really anyone's fault? This also is nothing like this situation too. If you're talking about a draft, that's fine and all but we use six months for G13 and the current method is through MFD so it's not like people aren't going to discuss deleting these right now and even then I'm still fine with restoring anyone's drafts if they return (a quick browse through their deleted contributions will solve that). In contrast to MFD where you have to essentially form a majority to keep each draft, a prod-based approach only require one person in opposition and not more. On many levels, this gives more chances for a new user than the current schemes. However, if you do stop editing for some period of time (currently I'm proposing a year, not just a summer break), is it wrong for people to look over your stuff to blank/adopt or even delete it? I think everyone agrees that there is some time after which we just assume you've moved on. The discussion at WT:UP had one person propose five years and we've had MFD discussions involving 9-year-old drafts but one year seems to be the majority viewpoint here. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:00, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
Found 235 false synonyms on Wikipedia
The redirect pages "Sooglossus sechellensis" and "Tachycnemis seychellensis" both link to Seychelles treefrog. The problem is that they're two different species, belonging to different families of frog—Sooglossidae and Hyperoliidae respectively, where as the article only refers to one of these.
I've found 235 candidate "false synonyms", similar to this pair, listed here:
I generated the list based on data from the IUCN Red List.
Is there anyone interested in joining the project to either help go through these individual entries or to help coordinate the effort? —Pengo 13:37, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
- Pinging Legacypac who has been going through frog redirects on an entirely different issue, but might be interested in this. LP - these two are not Neelix redirects, but others may be. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:14, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
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- I don't think it any of the redirects have been added maliciously. The example appears accidental based on common name (or similar scientific names), while many others on the list reflect changes and disagreements in taxonomy. —Pengo 01:30, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
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- As to the Moose (one of the articles listed there), Wikipedia says that the moose is one species, Alces alces; yet other sites (such as http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/818/0) ssay that the moose are 2 species, the other one being Alces americanus. If the other classification is listed in significantly many sources, even if not up to our expectation of reliability, then we should have such redirects to make it easy for readers of these other sites to find information on our site. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:47, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
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- I wasn't trying to say all the redirects should be deleted, just that they need to be checked. The North American moose isn't so bad, but perhaps there should be some indication in the Moose article that Alces alces americanus is sometimes elevated to species and that there is debate around it. Amethyst-throated sunangel includes this kind of discussion, for example. I suspect many other redirects are listed for similar reasons, but some are simply wrong, such as the Seychelles treefrogs example I listed at the start. Also I suspect there are many cases where we should consider splitting articles if more recent authors consider them separate species, and in some cases it might be worth creating a subspecies article regardless. Is anyone interested in actually going through some entries in the list and annotating them or cleaning up the articles? —Pengo 07:10, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- It would probably b easier to find someone willing to do so, if you split these up by general groups - no reason that deer, flowering plants, frogs and doves need to be on the same list (you could at least sort it into orders based on the redirect target); and no reason to expect a single user would be likely to be knowledgeable enough in the entire tree of life to do a good job ob the whole thing. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu
- Yep. I was going to do that before posting to various WikiProjects. —Pengo 21:16, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- It would probably b easier to find someone willing to do so, if you split these up by general groups - no reason that deer, flowering plants, frogs and doves need to be on the same list (you could at least sort it into orders based on the redirect target); and no reason to expect a single user would be likely to be knowledgeable enough in the entire tree of life to do a good job ob the whole thing. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu
- I wasn't trying to say all the redirects should be deleted, just that they need to be checked. The North American moose isn't so bad, but perhaps there should be some indication in the Moose article that Alces alces americanus is sometimes elevated to species and that there is debate around it. Amethyst-throated sunangel includes this kind of discussion, for example. I suspect many other redirects are listed for similar reasons, but some are simply wrong, such as the Seychelles treefrogs example I listed at the start. Also I suspect there are many cases where we should consider splitting articles if more recent authors consider them separate species, and in some cases it might be worth creating a subspecies article regardless. Is anyone interested in actually going through some entries in the list and annotating them or cleaning up the articles? —Pengo 07:10, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
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An other issue (not with species, but with higher level taxons) is that some times, the species doesn't have its own article, so in stead tsomeone created a redirect to a higher level taxon. A perfect example of this would be Tuatara. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:21, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- I filtered those ones out and listed them separately under the "Link to higher taxa" heading. The main list is only of species-level pages. —Pengo 02:43, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
By the way, if anyone's interested in learning more about the project this has come out of and lending it some support, I've added Beastie Bot to IdeaLab. I'd appreciate any participants or endorsements. —Pengo 01:30, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Bibliography of Reliable Sources for Parapsychology
Hi, I've created a bibliography of reliable sources for parapsychology, curated to aid other wiki editors who are editing articles in this controversial area. I am inviting comment on this bibliography, and would welcome your ideas on where to best place this resource within Wikipedia. It can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Annalisa_Ventola/Sources_for_parapsychology. Annalisa Ventola (Talk | Contribs) 17:49, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
- User:John Carter has produced User:John Carter/Reference sources and User:John Carter/Reference works. Also, there is Wikipedia:WikiProject Parapsychology/Resources.
- —Wavelength (talk) 13:34, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
Where would I post/discuss an idea for an offline tool?
I have an idea for an offline tool that would help analyze the evolution of an article's contents. This could be helpful when trying to identify orphaned refs and other accidental damage to content. I am aware of WikiBlame but that really is not adequate for what I am considering. Among other things that tool requires separate online searches and is sometimes rather cryptic in its logic for selecting edits. One of the key items my idea would require is a way to download the full (sans admin deleted material) edit history log and files of a single page so that it could be searched rapidly offline for complex strings using regex routines. I believe this would actually reduce the WM server CPU load when working with older and larger articles. An important thing to note is that I am proposing an analysis-only tool, not an offline editor. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 20:37, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- Are you trying to recruit a team of programmers? Just need some guidance? All of our content is already openly available, so nothing is preventing you from taking the data and doing any analysis you want. — xaosflux Talk 20:46, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- I need some technical advice on stuff like "dumping" the history files, and would appreciate any information on prior similar projects, both to avoid re-inventing the wheel and to see how others have approached offline work with wiki data. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 20:56, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- To be more specific on the "technical advice" what I mean is that I know about WP:DD but I am not familiar with XML. I know how to code HTML, some PHP, some Delphi, BASIC/VB/VBA (I know, don't say it) and I am currently learning Ruby ... but I am willing to learn other languages for text parsing (I have heard Perl is good for this) if needed. Ultimately right now I want to know basically three things:
- 1. How to download/dump the full set of history data for a single page only --- in the most WP-server friendly way possible.
- 2. Understanding the dump file format enough to be able to extract the log data to create a standalone log file in text or HTML.
- 3. Understanding the dump file format enough to be able to extract each edit into a separate plain text file of wikitext just as would be seen in the Edit window on WP.
- With those three things I can start to work on this project in my spare time. After I get the basics done I would love to open it up to anyone who wants to help. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 21:26, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
- You can always download an xml dump of all or certain articles (using Special:Export), but this will give you quite a bit of information. If you have a program that can sort through it and pick out what is useful for you, then great. I'm not sure if more condensed information exists unfortunately :( Ajraddatz (Talk) 02:50, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah, I saw Special:Export. I am unfamiliar with XML but if I have to learn it I will. It just slows the process down a bit, but then again I am in no rush to get this done. If there are any opensource XML "extractor" programs out there that I could examine it might be helpful. Like I said, just trying to not reinvent the wheel if someone has already built one. Thanks Ajraddatz! Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 03:37, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
- XML interpreters seem common. --Izno (talk) 12:19, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah, I saw Special:Export. I am unfamiliar with XML but if I have to learn it I will. It just slows the process down a bit, but then again I am in no rush to get this done. If there are any opensource XML "extractor" programs out there that I could examine it might be helpful. Like I said, just trying to not reinvent the wheel if someone has already built one. Thanks Ajraddatz! Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 03:37, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
- You can always download an xml dump of all or certain articles (using Special:Export), but this will give you quite a bit of information. If you have a program that can sort through it and pick out what is useful for you, then great. I'm not sure if more condensed information exists unfortunately :( Ajraddatz (Talk) 02:50, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
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- @Koala Tea Of Mercy: if the export gives the same structure as the total DB dump, the text will be almost exactly the same as you find under "edit source". The only difference is that certain characters like &, >, " are replaced by their html code (&...;) because the xml tags use the characters. Every page starts with page tag, title, namsepace, and pageID, after that you get all the revisions. For IP edits the contributor tags will only contain ip /ip tags with the address. The structure is self-explanatory: Here's the first and the start of the second revision (most text of article replaced by ....):
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<page> <title>Mölln, Schleswig-Holstein</title> <ns>0</ns> <id>102865</id> <revision> <id>379324</id> <timestamp>2002-10-12T19:26:02Z</timestamp> <contributor> <username>Baldhur</username> <id>28358</id> </contributor> <model>wikitext</model> <format>text/x-wiki</format> <text xml:space="preserve">Mölln is a town in .... .... there are several monuments to him in Mölln.</text> <sha1>omx4jn6qc49d5agkvseqpwzxc77t11a</sha1> </revision> <revision> <id>986158</id> <parentid>379324</parentid> <timestamp>2002-10-23T12:02:58Z</timestamp> <contributor> <username>Baldhur</username> <id>28358</id> </contributor> <comment>coat of arms</comment> <model>wikitext</model> <format>text/x-wiki</format> <text xml:space="preserve"><div style="float: left;"> .... ....
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- You can download the full dump, it contains all versions of all articles, and other namespaces as well. The 7z files are about 110 GB in total (don't take the bz2 files, they are ten times as big). Compression rates are very high, starts at 200+ for the first files, drops to less than 100 for the last ones (fewer page revisions so less redundancy). Total data is more than 10 TB, but there's no reason to extract them all at the same time, the zip files contain complete pages (all revisions). The pages are stored in order of ID, the name of the 7z file gives the range of IDs included: example: enwiki-latest-pages-meta-history6.xml-p000623996p000656933.7z contains 623996 to 656933. I've got the October dump, has 37433981 pages (articles, redirects, user talk, article talk etc..). Prevalence 01:12, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
- The idea is to create a tool that anyone can use for analyzing a single article. Downloading 110 GB -- a feat that only a small percentage of the internet has the ability to do quickly -- every time you want to work on the latest revision of a single article is counter productive. I need to convert the XML back to wikitext. What I want to do is create a tool that stays in the same language that users are already familiar with, so that when they go back to edit the page (remember that this is not an editing tool I am designing) they know exactly what to look for. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 19:23, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
- Ah, ok, I thought you meant a tool for people who wanted to analyse edit histories (for a study for example), rather than a quick search tool for normal editors. In that case the export seems the only option, using one or more POST requests with offset and limit parameters to get all the revisions. For the wikitext of the revisions you take the content between <text.. > and </text> and replace the html character references for <, >, ", and & with the characters themselves, (I think it's only those), see HTML#Character_and_entity_references. And for the log data, you only need what's between the timestamp, username (or IP) and comment tags. Minor edits will have a <minor/> tag. But you'll know all that already if you tried the export. Size is something you'll have to calculate yourself. Well, good luck. Prevalence 08:02, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
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- Thanks for the information Prevalence. Sounds like maybe the export files and all those XML fields aren't as complicated as I thought they were. This is not a high priority project for me, but there are times when I run across an obvious text remnant (usually a broken citation or sentence fragment) and I want to find out when it was broken and what was there before the breakage. Currently there is no easy way to do that. Hopefully if I can get this working it will allow me (and others) to focus on a key string of text (the remnant), find out when it entered the article, and then follow it via an animated text display through the article's history to see how and why it was edited over time, in order to either rescue or remove it. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 09:51, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
- Problem is, the export files grow very fast. Mölln, Schleswig-Holstein is a small article, 2,980 bytes, 110 edits, the export is 300k. For an article like E. E. Cummings, 4029 edits, page size 37 kBytes, the export is 110MB, and its for such large articles that one would use it most I assume. Prevalence 12:37, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks for the information Prevalence. Sounds like maybe the export files and all those XML fields aren't as complicated as I thought they were. This is not a high priority project for me, but there are times when I run across an obvious text remnant (usually a broken citation or sentence fragment) and I want to find out when it was broken and what was there before the breakage. Currently there is no easy way to do that. Hopefully if I can get this working it will allow me (and others) to focus on a key string of text (the remnant), find out when it entered the article, and then follow it via an animated text display through the article's history to see how and why it was edited over time, in order to either rescue or remove it. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 09:51, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
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- Ah, ok, I thought you meant a tool for people who wanted to analyse edit histories (for a study for example), rather than a quick search tool for normal editors. In that case the export seems the only option, using one or more POST requests with offset and limit parameters to get all the revisions. For the wikitext of the revisions you take the content between <text.. > and </text> and replace the html character references for <, >, ", and & with the characters themselves, (I think it's only those), see HTML#Character_and_entity_references. And for the log data, you only need what's between the timestamp, username (or IP) and comment tags. Minor edits will have a <minor/> tag. But you'll know all that already if you tried the export. Size is something you'll have to calculate yourself. Well, good luck. Prevalence 08:02, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
- The idea is to create a tool that anyone can use for analyzing a single article. Downloading 110 GB -- a feat that only a small percentage of the internet has the ability to do quickly -- every time you want to work on the latest revision of a single article is counter productive. I need to convert the XML back to wikitext. What I want to do is create a tool that stays in the same language that users are already familiar with, so that when they go back to edit the page (remember that this is not an editing tool I am designing) they know exactly what to look for. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 19:23, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
- You can download the full dump, it contains all versions of all articles, and other namespaces as well. The 7z files are about 110 GB in total (don't take the bz2 files, they are ten times as big). Compression rates are very high, starts at 200+ for the first files, drops to less than 100 for the last ones (fewer page revisions so less redundancy). Total data is more than 10 TB, but there's no reason to extract them all at the same time, the zip files contain complete pages (all revisions). The pages are stored in order of ID, the name of the 7z file gives the range of IDs included: example: enwiki-latest-pages-meta-history6.xml-p000623996p000656933.7z contains 623996 to 656933. I've got the October dump, has 37433981 pages (articles, redirects, user talk, article talk etc..). Prevalence 01:12, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
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Fission Strategy 'editing Wikipedia for nonprofits'
Hi. I've recently read an interesting pair of articles by a specialist marketing company named 'Fission Strategy' on how nonprofits can edit their Wikipedia page (or hire FS for their expertise in doing same). They're here and here.
I find them a bit concerning, since they don't mention any of the guidelines for editing an organisation's own Wikipedia page (I think WP:COI, WP:NONPROFIT, WP:PROMO WP:USERNAME and WP:COPYVIO are the big ones in this area), and just suggest putting up a page as "necessary recognition of the credibility and work of your organization." Would anyone be up for sending them an email or reply of some kind mentioning this to them, if only so if they can't say they didn't know about it? Let me know if any thoughts. Blythwood (talk) 17:41, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- I too find these blogs/ads problematic. To be sure, they are not as problematic as those of PR companies for commercial organizations, but they are trying to put in PR for non-profits. I can think of 2 or 3 possible responses:
- Wikipedia's communication department sends them a polite notice, stating what the problems are and asking them to include some more info.
- If the communication dept won't or can;t do this, then individual editors should. This may bombard them with some conflicting advice, but they might deserve a bit of bombardment!
- Perhaps a small project to help small non-profits do it right. I'm sure I don't have the time to do it on my own, but if others want to take the lead on this, I'd certainly join in.
A word about my POV or biases. I think it's fair to say that I've been among the most active Wikipedians working against abuse by paid editors. I also have worked with WP:GLAM with helping non-profit galleries, museums, etc. getting good coverage in mutually beneficial areas. I have had a bit of concern with GLAM focusing on very large museums, I prefer smaller organizations, and even prefer making the Wiki editor - the person who will make the best additions - the focus of the project rather than the sometimes big corporation-like GLAM institution. I do think WP:GLAM has moved a bit in my direction.
Maybe the proposed new project, say WP:Non-profit organizations, could coordinate with WP:GLAM? I'll ping a few folks. @Blythwood, Wittylama, SLien (WMF), JSutherland (WMF), and Slim Virgin:
Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:20, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks for the thoughts. I have to say, I'm not too interested in setting up some project you don't have time for and I don't have time for, more about looking at this case. The guidelines for COI editors are clear: it's just that this company doesn't seem to be aware that they exist. I'm thinking more in terms of a basic response to this. I might take it to COIN, since they name some companies they work for. But at first glance while I can see some editors on those pages that might be undisclosed promotional editors none of them seem to have been active too recently. Blythwood (talk) 20:54, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
- Just a note that it appears the screen captures on the second blog page were made between 03-FEB and 10-FEB of this year (based on the Edit History screen capture, this diff, and the blog's own date of 10-FEB). Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 00:32, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
Hi @Smallbones:
Sorry for the delay. I spoke to a few of my colleagues at the Foundation, and it sounds like this might be more appropriate for my colleague on the legal team @Jrogers (WMF):. Pinging him for his thoughts here. Thanks. SLien (WMF) 19:47, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
- Following on that, I took a look at their pages. I agree it would be nicer if they explained about some of the conflict policies, but I wasn't able to tell from their site if they're doing anything wrong. They don't throw up any red flags like promising to keep their clients confidential or otherwise saying that they don't disclose their work. I think in this circumstance, it would make sense for a user to email them with a "hey, just so you know" type of email, and if it ends up escalating or it's discovered that they're violating the Terms of Use, then WMF can take another look at it. Also, sorry I'm being somewhat vague about what we'd do here. I'm hesitant to commit because even though it's distasteful, I don't really think it's wrong for people to use promotional language on their own blog to try and get business as long as they follow the rules when they're working on Wikipedia. But having said that, I don't want to say we'll do nothing because it's fully possible that more info could come out linking Fission to a paid editing problem and then we might end up helping. But at this point, I think a message from a concerned editor is the best next step. Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
Better responses to people who want to know how to add an article about their organization
I don’t know where to else to put this but I’m looking for ideas so this seems like a good spot.
Multiple times every day someone writes to Wikimedia (fielded by OTRS agents) asking how they can add an article about their company to Wikipedia. We have a canned response, which takes a lot of words to send the message “don’t”. Many times that answer is sufficient and we do not hear back. In some cases, the person writes back and says we’d really like to have an article, and I see our competitors have articles so how can we have an article?
I know the official response is that there is a place to request an article. I can’t bear to tell them this is as it is my understanding that the request article list is a blackhole. I’ve never heard of an article being developed from that place but maybe someone can give me better news.
I also know that if their competitors have articles the odds are very high that those articles exist because someone ignored the COI policy. I could ask for names of the competitors track the article down search for proof that it’s the COI violation and remove that article, but that’s a lot of work and doesn’t accomplish the goal.
Our official answer is that if they are notable eventually someone will write about them. That answer may have been satisfying a decade ago, when there was a realistic chance a highly notable organization would get an article in short order. Most of the highly notable organizations all have articles, and we are left with marginally notable organizations. The likelihood is that it will be years if ever before someone chooses to write an article about this organization, even though it may be technically eligible.
I don’t like sending them to Wikipedia:Requested_articles because I believe it is a blackhole. I don’t like telling them to just wait, because I suspect the wait may be years. It is very hard to tell him that it is just too bad maybe they will have an article when they know there are articles about less notable competitors.
Anybody got some better ideas?--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:12, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- If they are newish and growing then wait and apply for awards might well be all that is needed. If they are a long established not particularly high profile organisation then I would suggest they release some appropriate images on Wikimedia Commons. Current and former CEOs, notable board members and other publicity shots are welcome though they have to be openly licensed. There may well be things related to their business where images and even video might well be of value; Good quality images of "notable board member xxxx with CEO yyy of redlinked organisation" are worth having and may well bring them to the attention of editors. COI is a very different issue on commons. The other thing you can suggest is to make sure they have a comprehensive "in the News" section on their website showing when newspapers and magazines have written about them. ϢereSpielChequers 16:14, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- I wonder if pointing these folks to AfC would be a better way to handle these requests. AfC does accept submissions by editors with a conflict of interest. However, seeing as I don't work on AfC review we need input from AfC regulars about this idea as well.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:16, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- I have, in the past, written articles from topics that I found on Requested Articles, but back in 2006 it was much easier to navigate. Recent attempts to find something there to write about have lead nowhere. It's no longer easy to find the oldest requests, the way it's broken by broad and then narrower topics is confusing, and most of the suggested articles just aren't stuff I'm interested in writing about. There's got to be a better way. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:05, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, the Requested Articles section could be greatly improved. I think it should provide a separate discussion page for every suggested article, wherein editors can post feedback, note investigation attempts, tag the discussion for tracking, provide closure information, and show a history of when it was posted and by whom. We do this for Afd; why not for article requests? Praemonitus (talk) 17:51, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
- That sounds like a lot of work but might well be useful. (after posting this, I decided I ought to actually look at the page, and see this is done to some extent, although more could be done).--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:45, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
- That sounds gosh-darn like WP:AFC to me. --Izno (talk) 12:25, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
- Why would you think that? WP:REQUEST is not WP:AFC. Praemonitus (talk) 18:00, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, the Requested Articles section could be greatly improved. I think it should provide a separate discussion page for every suggested article, wherein editors can post feedback, note investigation attempts, tag the discussion for tracking, provide closure information, and show a history of when it was posted and by whom. We do this for Afd; why not for article requests? Praemonitus (talk) 17:51, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
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- Sphilbrick I have been experimenting with different messages sometimes in OTRS discussion and beyond. I too would like to sync with messaging from others. I never use the standard OTRS message without deleting the "requested articles" bit. There is no sense in which it is reasonable or fair to send anyone there, except to tell them that the process will not work if they engage it.
- Sometimes I say "I know of no instance in which an organization has had a positive experience editing their own Wikipedia article. So far as I know, no one in the entire Wikipedia community since 2001 has ever seen such a thing go well for the company. If there is a success story, I have never seen it, and I have looked and asked others what they know." Sometimes I say, "The Wikipedia community recommends against this and I am not aware of any good advice on the matter existing anywhere." Many times I have said, "If you are thinking about editing Wikipedia, first start by editing in your field of expertise but in articles that are unrelated to your organization, projects, and products. Wikipedia needs more experts developing general content." I am sure I have told that to 1000 company representatives and so far as I know, for all the years and times that I have tried that, not even one has ever followed through and edited anything other than their company article.
- I would like to turn the conversation about paid editing away from what is theoretical and possible and start giving statements that are practical. Sending people to "requested articles" is not practical, nor are the other available paid editing support channels and processes. At [[[Talk:Louvre_Abu_Dhabi#Requested_edits]], for example, a respected organization has requested edits and paired them with sources. No reply since July 2015. The request is formatted as requested, but still, there is no way a volunteer could easily process this request. It would take 2 hours at least, and probably more. I do not think it is fair to advertise support forums that have a known multi-year backlog at best. Somehow, we should raise the bar for making requests and communicate that Wikipedia requires much more preparation and development from the side of the requester. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, it is very discouraging. I had hoped someone might tell me that requested articles wasn’t the blackhole I feared it was but I think I was right. I love the concept of requested edits, but the execution is failing miserably. I have attempted to work on some of the requests, but as you note on many occasions it would take a substantial amount of time to properly research. I was tempted to characterize this type of work as “mind numbingly boring” which I think is accurate but it doesn’t tell the whole story, because I find myself spending several hours each week working on tasks that would be characterized as “mind numbingly boring”. I know other editors also work on things that might be characterized that way, so it might be helpful if we could tease out what is different about the mind numbingly boring tasks which are not getting done.
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- I know there is a strong consensus against paid editing, but this is one area in which I think it could be cautiously introduced. If we could find a way to fund editors who are willing to work on some of the multiyear backlogs (request edits, requested articles, CCI) perhaps we could clean up some of the backlog. And it isn’t just that there is a backlog, it is that well-meaning individuals want something (an article in Wikipedia) and our best advice is to tell them to do something that is almost certain not to work.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
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- This discussion prompted me to look at wp:Requested Articles ("RA"), and I find myself at least as interested in drafting one of these requested articles and submitting it to AFC, in this case for a nonprofit (whose request helpfully included multiple sources and mentions of awards already), as I would be in choosing an AFD in which to !vote, like I and others very often do. "RAs" could be revamped to be operated more like AFD, which attracts participants and tracks status of requests. Consider the following just-drafted navigation template ({{RequestedArticlesByTopic}}) comparable to {{AfDs}}, one of AFD's promotional signs/tools. This has been adapted partway (so far) for RAs:
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- The date groupings are red-links but the categories link properly to "RAs" of those types. Maybe groupings of requests could be done by week or month? If requests were processed by separate pages like AFDs are done (and like drafts for AFC are handled), those pages themselves could be categorized by dates and by topics sensibly to allow browsing like for AFDs, and each could eventually be converted to article drafts and submitted smoothly into AFC (or categorized as impractical/resolved negatively), perhaps with automatic notice provided back to the original requestor giving the resolution. Requests are like pre-AFC draft items. Currently it's virtually impossible to figure out when any specific request was made and I don't see how requests are turned down, at all.
- I notice the topic categories in RAs are similar to those in AFDs (both have "Biography" for example); perhaps the correspondence could be tightened up. Certainly the AFD category for Biographies could sport a suggestion that the RA category should be looked at, like new {{RAsuggestion}} displays:
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Statistics Website
Hi, since 2011 the website wikiscan.org calculates statistics for French Wikipedia. The project is to transform it into a multi-wiki site with a dedicated site for every Wikimedia wiki with more than 100,000 edits, actually it would make more than 300 sites. I plan to apply for a m:Grants:IEG to achieve this big transformation and also add a multilingual interface with an English version and other improvements.
In summary, the site provides two main types of statistics:
- Statistics by dates, for every day and every month for the wiki history, and for the last 24 hours:
- Most active pages according to several criteria (number of users, edits, revocations, size changes and pageviews when it's available), examples with fr.wp: 1 February 2016, January 2015, January 2015 on archive.org (when pageviews were active, visible in the first column).
- Most active users according to the number of edits, logged actions, revocations and size changes. Examples: 1 February 2016, January 2015.
- General statistics over this period: total number of edits, edits for each namespace, article creations, deletes, blocks, etc. [2] [3]
- Pre-computed statistics for each user, this allows to quickly view the page even with many edits, for example a bot totaling about 2.5 millions edits [4]. A classic edits counter can take more than 2 minutes to load as many contributions or fail [5]. The downside with pre-computed statistics is that last changes may take longer to be considered, on French WP it's actually between one and two hours, for English WP it will probably be more.
- Approximately 30 statistics are calculated: total edits, creations, talk namespace percent, number of days and months with at least one action, the overall diff, the number of small or large changes, estimated time spent doing edits, etc.
- These statistics are available for the total and in tables for each year and month.
- There is also a chart by month and a pie chart by namespace groups.
- A table summarizes these statistics for all users [6], sortable for most statistics. The same table is envisaged for each year and each month.
Would you interested in an English Wikipedia Wikiscan ? the site address would be http://en.wikiscan.org. It is also planned to support other projects like Commons, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wiktionary, etc. --Akeron (talk) 18:09, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
- User:Akeron, looks useful! Fences&Windows 09:25, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
NPOV Welcome Template
Where do I go to propose a change to the NPOV welcome template? As currently worded, the template mentions NPOV but focuses on RS, and I'd like to propose a bit of re-wording there. Rklawton (talk) 14:07, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Rklawton: On the template's talk page. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:42, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
Few ideas
Here are few ideas just to think about. It is not meant to be ever implemented. Just ideas.
- User recieves notice ring if someone proceed the conversation in which he participates, no matter he is not literally mentioned in future posts ({{Ping}}).
- (±123) Page size change in bytes when you preview the page. Easier to decide whether or not to mark a minor edit.
- Slideshow button if <gallery> by default as in Commons
- Edit section0 link by default
- Special:SpecialPages would need interwikis
- Activity light bulb at signature, for example --Example (talk)
15:06, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
Categories
Categories [ edit ]
Show in columns Sort by alphabet
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- Introducing "sectioncat". For most users that would be the easier way to edit categories.
- Options to show categories in columns and/or sorted by alphabet order. The article of Albert Einstein currently (as of March 2016) has 71 categories. The average reader is hard to find the desired category. Maybe even better idea is to show categories in columns by default, as in "What links here" pages and many other lists.
Advanced search options (layers) for admins
Often I miss one of the following options.
Search |
Layers
Live pages Deleted pages Past versions |
Namespaces
(Article) |
--Janezdrilc (talk) 15:56, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
- Some of those options are already available as search parameters (for everyone), e.g.
intitle:
,insource:
. Searching deleted pages and/or past versions would probably be tough, and should probably be a different special page entirely (though WikiBlame covers searching an individual, known page's past revisions somewhat). Searching for redirects would presumably require a special search parameter, because currently search surfaces the target page if a redirect matches a search. Some of the rest … would require the suggestions to be more concrete; does "summary" mean "searching the edit summary field"? {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 17:48, 5 March 2016 (UTC) - Searching within deleted pages is borderline technically feasible and probably won't happen. Searching in past revisions is probably not feasible performance-wise for the same reason. Searching for deleted titles on a different special page is hopefully coming soon. MER-C 05:29, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
That's great. intitle:
and others actually are layers that I had in mind. Maybe they just have to be put in the form of » « (as above in the table). It would be much more user friendly. --Janezdrilc (talk) 11:18, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
BLPCAT, mental illnesses, and learning disabilities
I'm seeking input on how to address a few related issues. I'll try to be brief and clear. My goal is to come up with a coherent proposal to post at WP:VPR, but I need some assistance.
- Area of issue
- Addition of mental illness and learning disability categories to BLP articles.
- Stand-alone lists of people with mental illnesses and learning disabilities.
- Concerns
Mental illness and learning disabilities are highly stigmatized and labeling people with them should be done with the utmost diligence. WP:BLPCAT specifies extra stipulations for categories for sexual orientation and religion in that people must self-identify as a specific identity to be categorized as such. However, there is no such specification for or even guidance for mental illnesses and learning disorders. Given the stigma involved, inappropriate categorization can be tantamount to libel. Unlike categorizing based on other stigmatized labels such as criminality, there's no easily accessible public record of definite rulings. These diagnoses, like most medical diagnoses, are private in nature.
BLPCAT states that "Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each content category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources. Categories regarding religious beliefs (or lack of such) or sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question, and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their public life or notability, according to reliable published sources."
The WikiProject Autism page also states that "The explanation at WP:OCTrivial is worth noting: 'Avoid intersections of two traits that are unrelated, even if some person can be found that has both traits.' For example, celebrities are usually notable for reasons other than being gamers. So while Stephen Wiltshire really is notable for being an autistic artist, people in occupations like dentistry or aviation are not.'" (WP:AUTISM#Lists, categories and templates; thanks to Permstrump for pointing this out).
This issue has arisen a few times the past couple days with people adding such categories to biography pages (e.g., edits by Discott, edits by Pol9, and this discussion on Doug Weller's talk page), as well as finding some stand-alone lists such as List of people diagnosed with dyslexia and List of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Concerns over this issue have resulted in AfDs.
- Quandaries
My first thought (as mentioned on Doug's page) was to suggest individuals must self-identify with a mental illness or learning disability for a category to be applied to their BLP. Doug Weller raised the reasonable point that (1) not all mentally ill and learning disabled people understand/comprehend their diagnosis and (2) many would reject such labeling. This got me thinking about how to deal with the issue. For example, if someone is diagnoses by a court as having a mental illness, would we be in the right to label that BLP with the category, even if the defense presents experts who disagree? Below are some questions I'd like input on and my thoughts on them.
To summarize, I think I'm learning toward suggesting that people should need to self-identify to be categorized as having a mental illness or learning disorder. I would propose editing BLPCAT to include them, but wish to hear input first. Thank you. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:43, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Quandary 1
How do we deal with self-proclamations without evidence of an official diagnosis?
- I'd err on the side of trusting the person, but only if they specifically claim to have X disorder. I think we'd do the same for other illnesses like diabetes or cancer. While self diagnosis of mental illnesses and learning disorders might be more common, in the spirit of WP:TRUTH I'd rather reflect the person's comments and be wrong than disregard their statements. Categorization based on statements like "I was a hyperactive kid" are not sufficient and constitute WP:OR. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- The premise of this discussion that mental illnesses are not like other (real?) illnesses is disturbing, including that "Mental illness and learning disabilities are highly stigmatized" ... well that is not necessarily so in general, and it is a culturally bound determination as well.
- Treating a condition as if it highly stigmatizing is reinforcing the idea that it is shameful or morally bad or whatever. There are some conditions that, in some cultures and some time periods, have clearly been stigmatized, but there is a whole range. Reflecting something about me and how/where I grew up I suppose, I perceive there to be no stigma whatsoever associated with dyslexia, for example. And let us suppose that there "should" be no stigma associated with it. If Wikipedia has to explain that dyslexia is awful, or is widely perceived as dirty in some way, to defend why BLP mentions of dyslexia are to be treated as horrible in many many BLP articles, well then Wikipedia is itself promulgating the conception that the condition is dirty. Of course a historical general perception of dirtiness can/should be described appropriately in the article about dyslexia, but it would unduly perpetuate the presumption if the matter is treated as if dyslexia is dirty everywhere else it is mentioned in Wikipedia.
- There is a biological/genetic/physical basis to many/most of what some might term mental illnesses. If mental illnesses are conditions that are affected by psychology, by situations, then add stress-related disorders like ulcers, and add heart attacks, and add cancer and just about every other "real" illness--in which attitude and psychology do matter in effectiveness of treatments--to the list of "mental" illnesses. Probably religion and sexual orientation are both also partly physically determined and partly situationally. Unless there is some clear distinction proposed that I don't see yet, this discussion should be about all medical disorders, not just "mental" ones.
- Back to official diagnosis: we believed Nancy Reagan when she said she has breast cancer; we don't require copies of doctor reports. Likewise for Barbara Bush having Graves' disease, for Howie Mandel having ADHD, and so on for for notable dyslexics or notable heart attack survivors etc. --doncram 20:45, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Doncram: A point I struggled with and alluded to. There are other highly stigmatized medial conditions (like HIV/AIDS). My reasoning for starting at mental illness is that most (if not all) of it is stigmatized whereas most medical conditions are not, or at least to a lesser extent. The split is not in my view of mental/physical as different but rather in what I see as the difference in society's reaction to them. I didn't want to "jump the shark" by going straight to all medical conditions, but you and Opabinia regalis both mention it so I might include medical conditions in general. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- In my view, it needs to found in a reliable source - one with a reputation for fact-checking. Listing something as a fact in WP's voice that someone says about themselves is not OK generally. If the NY Times reports that Nancy Reagan has breast cancer, that is one thing. If the dailymail reports that Kelly Osbourne says she has misophonia, that is another. Jytdog (talk) 21:33, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- I think that we do, and should, deal with self-proclamations of any medical condition the same way that we would deal with self-proclamations of other personal information. If it's both plausible and reported in a reliable-for-general-news source, then we accept it and give WP:INTEXT attribution: "Shirley Temple announced that she had breast cancer during an interview on television". If it's dubious, then we might omit it or phrase it more circumspectly: "Bob claims to have Fake Disease, which is not widely recognized as a medical condition". WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:14, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Quandary 2
What sources should be trusted regarding reported diagnoses?
- Anything with direct quotes from the person or interviews with them (e.g., [7]). No gossip rags or reports from loved ones. Such reports might be mistaken or amount to outing the person (more of a concern for highly stigmatized mental illnesses). EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- I would expand the range of trusted sources to trusted medical bodies and professionals. On the issue of reports from family members I am a bit more uncertain. On one hand I agree that reports amounting to outing should be avoided. I suspect this might be the root cause of the discomfort I expressed on my talk page about needing a blatant proclamation of the individual in question having dyslexia before they can be categorized thusly when it should rather be the case that they be comfortable being 'out' about having the condition before it is reflected on their article page. This issue gets more complicated for me when talking about people that died before their status was diagnosed, recognised and/or testable. In some cases it is well known by people close to them that X person in history struggled with Y symptoms which are consistent with a known status/condition and that condition is hereditary and that person's family wants to make this status known to fight stigma about that condition/status. And, of course, all this is in a form that can be regarded as a trustworthy reference.
- I must admit that for something like dyslexia (a regarded as a learning 'disability' (a term I strongly dislike as I feel it is a perfectly natural status but one that the educational establishment is prejudiced against in a way that produces a sort of structural discrimination that is similar in some sense to how structural racism operates, I prefer the term learning 'difference')) might be viewed very differently to how mental illness is viewed. Mental illness being regarded as something to be treated whilst approaches to learning disabilities is more controversial as to weather or not it is something to be treated (like a medical condition), adapted to, or catered for (like it were a natural human condition some people just happen to have). This is why I feel there is a good chance we might have to have two very different conversations about mental illness and how we approach it and learning disabilities.--Discott (talk) 16:24, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- the dyslexia article might offer some insight on this question(What sources should be trusted regarding reported diagnoses)...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:15, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- reliable sources that fact-check. it should not pure self-representation. Jytdog (talk) 21:34, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Jytdog: What about in light of WP:SPS and WP:ABOUTSELF? We often treat individuals as experts on themselves. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:05, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- I think that we should accept the same sources that we would accept for other sensitive personal information, e.g., Alice said that she is pregnant, Bob announced that he is engaged to be married, Chris Celebrity said that he is having financial problems, etc. We're not trying to prove that anyone was correctly diagnosed; we're just trying to be responsible enough to not report something that they didn't claim. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:19, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Quandary 3
Should we label people who have been diagnosed (e.g., in court) even if they reject the diagnosis or label?
- Again, I'm erring more toward the side of self-identification here. For court cases, we rarely present an entire court case and without know the full context of the case we may misconstrue the facts. As BLPCAT states, "category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers" so I'd rather leave such information for the body of the article. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- I largely agree but also feel there is also some nuance here. On one hand 'outing' of others is not something that should be promoted or done. On the other hand (as I briefly outlined in my responce to Quandary 2) if the person is dead and the person's next of kin/family want it to be known to fight stigma about the diagnosis/label then it should be allowed. If the person is alive and rejects the diagnosis then their word should be accepted for one of or both of two reasons. One being moral the other being that they are more likely to be an expert about them selves.--Discott (talk) 16:34, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- It was pointed out in a related discussion that a medical diagnosis in court itself may be disputed, that there can be opposing medical viewpoints. If the condition is disputed, then a higher standard of consensus that the condition really is present would be necessary to include the person in a list or category of persons having the condition. A person also does not get a free pass, in life and after life, to disassociate themselves from something they perceive to be negative, just on basis of their false assertion that they did not have a given condition, when there is overwhelming evidence that they do have the condition. What I have in mind are some cases when prominent persons died of AIDS denying that they did and denying relatedly in these cases that they were gay, and everyone knew the truth, and post-death the family immediately issued statement that they in fact were gay and did die of AIDS. --doncram 20:58, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- It is not relevant. it doesn't matter what LPs say about themselves. It doesn't matter what advocates want about anything. We rely on reliable sources. And they should be high quality if the LP contests it, for everybody's sake. Jytdog (talk) 21:35, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Jytdog: Can you please expand on how you see this as advocacy? From my pov, this is about adhering to WP:BLP and addressing how categorization is done with respect to it. We have precedent for changes based on religion and sexual orientation. I see this as a logical extension. Please note that my "quandaries" are just issues that arose while I was thinking of this. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:03, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- above, discott mentioned making decisions about what advocates might want and it has come a few places in this thread. Jytdog (talk) 22:12, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- Discott appears to have said "family/next of kin", which feels rather different from "advocates" to me. But let's be clear: to the extent that some LPs and advocates go to a lot of trouble to get their claims published in reliable sources, it does matter "what they want", because "what they want" affects the contents of the reliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:25, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
- above, discott mentioned making decisions about what advocates might want and it has come a few places in this thread. Jytdog (talk) 22:12, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Jytdog: Can you please expand on how you see this as advocacy? From my pov, this is about adhering to WP:BLP and addressing how categorization is done with respect to it. We have precedent for changes based on religion and sexual orientation. I see this as a logical extension. Please note that my "quandaries" are just issues that arose while I was thinking of this. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:03, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Quandary 4
Should we extend this to other contextless cases like infoboxes, navigation templates, and stand-alone lists?
- Yes, BLPCAT includes those as areas its applies to. Because of lack of context, they should be treated similarly. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- These are not all the same thing. Infoboxes are terribly divisive and in my view the less we put there, the better. If they are "known for" this, then OK, however. The other things are case by case. everything needs reliable sources tho. Jytdog (talk) 21:37, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
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- @Jytdog: Not the same thing, but BLPCAT does extend to them explicitly. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:43, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- What is "this" to be extended? I don't concur that excessive "kid-glove" treatment should be extended anywhere, given that "kid-glove" treatment is possibly/probably the wrong way to go over-all.
- And, if it is acceptable to identify in a person's article that they have a significant association with a given medical condition, then I believe it is absolutely okay to include that in lists, categories and so on. Completely frivolous characteristics (or intersections of characteristics) are not allowed to be categories; what I mean are cases where it is reasonable to say the condition is significant, perhaps the same as saying it is a defining characteristic for the person (e.g. that they have put themselves forward as an advocate related to the condition, or that everyone credits the condition as being the cause for their career success, or similar). Given the substantial association, then Wikipedia cannot pretend we do not identify someone as having X, by not including them in a list and by not including them in a category. What, do we want a Wikipedia-critic website to be the one that provides the list that Wikipedia is too squeamish to present? Either we do say person A has dyslexia or we do not. It is a false, patronizing-like idea that we can "protect" persons by not including them freely in a list or category while we do describe it (even "out" them on it) in their own article. Just assume that there will be a Wikipedia-critic site that does serve up the list if we do not, like there have been sites that serve up deleted articles (some on notable, well-supported, deserving topics) and that otherwise strive to keep Wikipedia honest. So then it makes sense for Wikipedia to do the list or category. --doncram 22:32, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Doncram: I agree with you here. This is not meant to be kid gloves, just a clarification to BLP protections already in place. That doesn't mean we won't categorize or list people with, say, dyslexia. Just that we'd only do so under certain conditions similar to how we already do with religion and sexual orientation. I can see how this might appear to be "kids gloves" though. I'll have to think about thow to address that perception (it's certainly not my intent). EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:48, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Quandary 5
What about other illnesses or disabilities?
- I'd like more input on this. I can reasonably see this issue extended to all medical diagnoses, including disabilities. For now I'm focusing on mental illness and learning disabilities given their heightened stigma, but would like to hear voices on this issue too. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- The WP:WEIGHT of such content gets depends on what sources say. Advocates of all kinds may want to highlight X about someone because they are an advocate about X. That is not what we do here. We are guided by RS. Jytdog (talk) 21:38, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- I wouldn't go quite as far as doncram did above, but I do think there's an issue to be explored here. There's a certain degree of tension between the very understandable desire to be sensitive to the heightened stigma of certain conditions, and the practical reality that doing so may in fact reinforce the stigma (or at least reinforce the perception that there is a robust and well-grounded difference between mental illnesses and other medical conditions). My preference would be that any policy changes about categorizing BLPs be applied to all medical conditions. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:48, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Quandary 6
How do we know if a mental illness or learning disability is notable enough to warrant categorization as mentioned in BLPCAT?
- No clear line here, but I think if RS discuss it in context of the person's career it would be notable. E.g., Octavia E. Butler had dyslexia which would be notable for a famous author. But simple coming out statements by people might not be sufficient. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Good question, I feel that as a rule of thumb it is notable but also that this is not a binary issue as there are different degrees to which a person might be effected by the condition in question. So the acute porphyria of King George IV which played a major role in this life is clearly noteable. Whilst a minor stutter during childhood (to make up an example) or delayed linguistic development might not. Where that line is very hard to say. If it had a significant impact on the person in question's life or is something they are explicit about then I feel it should be regarded at notable. What passes for a "significant" impact on a person is a more difficult thing to work out and is something that will in many cases largely be left to the judgement of the editor editing the page in question. What guidelines might we make help people make that judgment call? Hard to say. Should we make such guidelines? Perhaps, I assume so but cant say for sure or with any conviction.--Discott (talk) 16:57, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Just to clarify, I am advocating for a rule of thumb that errs on the side of notability.--Discott (talk) 16:59, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Let's use Channing Tatum as an example. There is no shortage of coverage referencing statements he made in this NYT interview. During this one interview, he did talk at length about the impact ADHD and a learning disability had on him as a child. We can verify he made those claims about himself, because that link is the original source reporting on the interview and it's a reliable source. There are tons of hits if you google "channing tatum ADHD." HOWEVER as far as I can tell, this is the only interview he's given where he talked about it. It's a human-interest PR piece for Magic Mike 2 though. It's a nice piece and maybe I'm a sucker, but I buy it, but it's still a crafted PR piece. My point is that the notability on the topic is more of a reflection of the notability of the NYT article, not a reflection of how often he's spoken about it. I think it deserves one sentence that says, he talked about his childhood struggle with ADHD and learning disabilities in a NYT interview. The end. When you google it, though, there's so much circular referencing that it would be easy to assume he made this a major campaign, when in reality, he was promoting a movie about a male stripper and his PR person told him to say something that would be endearing. I fell for it hook like and sinker, don't get me wrong, but it's not like he's the world's #1 ADHD advocate now. Permstrump (talk) 22:10, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
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- About Channing Tatum, I don't see the talking "at length" or the talking at all. What the NYT Style Magazine article says is, in full: "As a child he struggled with A.D.H.D. and dyslexia, was prescribed stimulants and did poorly in school." That is without detailed support, actually. There is not even a quote from Tatum supporting the idea that he had ADHD. Neither the New York Times as an organization or the author of the Style magazine article have any credibility bound up in supporting that. Tatum could easily deny that he had ADHD. I saw in another source that was used in the List of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder article (since dropped from the list-article by me) that Tatum said merely he "was put on" Ritalin, notably omitting any assertion that he did in fact have ADHD. We're not disagreeing. This one does not meet any reasonable standard for saying that he has had ADHD, or that he self-identifies as having had it. --doncram 22:04, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- I agree with the comments so far. I think we might need to do major clean up of categories though. A lot of articles are tagged for non-notable cases. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:35, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
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- Let's use Channing Tatum as an example. There is no shortage of coverage referencing statements he made in this NYT interview. During this one interview, he did talk at length about the impact ADHD and a learning disability had on him as a child. We can verify he made those claims about himself, because that link is the original source reporting on the interview and it's a reliable source. There are tons of hits if you google "channing tatum ADHD." HOWEVER as far as I can tell, this is the only interview he's given where he talked about it. It's a human-interest PR piece for Magic Mike 2 though. It's a nice piece and maybe I'm a sucker, but I buy it, but it's still a crafted PR piece. My point is that the notability on the topic is more of a reflection of the notability of the NYT article, not a reflection of how often he's spoken about it. I think it deserves one sentence that says, he talked about his childhood struggle with ADHD and learning disabilities in a NYT interview. The end. When you google it, though, there's so much circular referencing that it would be easy to assume he made this a major campaign, when in reality, he was promoting a movie about a male stripper and his PR person told him to say something that would be endearing. I fell for it hook like and sinker, don't get me wrong, but it's not like he's the world's #1 ADHD advocate now. Permstrump (talk) 22:10, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Just to clarify, I am advocating for a rule of thumb that errs on the side of notability.--Discott (talk) 16:59, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Good question, I feel that as a rule of thumb it is notable but also that this is not a binary issue as there are different degrees to which a person might be effected by the condition in question. So the acute porphyria of King George IV which played a major role in this life is clearly noteable. Whilst a minor stutter during childhood (to make up an example) or delayed linguistic development might not. Where that line is very hard to say. If it had a significant impact on the person in question's life or is something they are explicit about then I feel it should be regarded at notable. What passes for a "significant" impact on a person is a more difficult thing to work out and is something that will in many cases largely be left to the judgement of the editor editing the page in question. What guidelines might we make help people make that judgment call? Hard to say. Should we make such guidelines? Perhaps, I assume so but cant say for sure or with any conviction.--Discott (talk) 16:57, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Quandary 7
1) What terminology should we use to label the diagnosis if the person self-identifies using colloquial, outdated, offensive or inconsistent terminology? 2) And at what point does the use of non-existent or conflicting terminology call into question the reliability of the claim? And which label should we defer to? Permstrump (talk) 18:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- 1) In most cases, I think we should use the same language the person used to self-identify, and use direct quotes if their statement wasn't technically correct. For example, if the person is quoted as saying, "ADD," I will restrain myself from changing it to "ADHD, predominately inattentive type." If the person says "dyslexia," Discott, IMHO we shouldn't change it to, "learning difference." Exception: I’m tempted to say it’s better to change the verbiage to use person-first language though. So if the person said, “I’m ADD” or “I’m dyslexic,” we should write, “He/she has ADD” or “He/she has dyslexia.” 2) I just don’t know. If you look at Adam Lanza, it’s a hot mess. This piece in the Courant says, “Details of a three-hour exam that Adam Lanza had in 2006 with another Yale Child Study psychiatrist, Dr. Robert A. King, were released for the first time Friday…. According to the police files, King said that Adam Lanza "displayed a profound autism spectrum disorder with rigidity, isolation and a lack of comprehension of ordinary social interaction and communications." Lanza was also diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder.” A psychiatrist that actually evaluated Lanza is quoted as saying he diagnosed Lanza with profound autism, but there are tens of thousands more sources that quote his mom saying he had “asperger’s” with no mention of the changes. Google shows 57,300 hits for ”adam lanza” asperger’s -profound, but only 17,300 for ”adam lanza” intext:profound. In this case I think it’s appropriate to neutrally address the discrepancy b/c despite the disproportionate coverage, 17,300 mentions of “profound autism” is still notable. That might not always be the case though. I could imagine some child star with estranged parents who completely contradict each other when they talk to reporters, but only one side received wide coverage. That kind of scenario could present a legal issue if the parent with notable coverage actually had their parental rights revoked or something.
- Side note, I think a policy should direct people to choose the wording very carefully so the BLP doesn’t inadvertently make it sound more official than the celebrity did. So if in a few interviews the person said, “I’m bipolar” or “I have bipolar,” and never alluded to seeing a doctor or therapist or being formally diagnosed, the article shouldn’t imply that the person was “diagnosed” with bipolar. Permstrump (talk) 18:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Interesting quandary... I think it might be a good idea to put category descriptions that say something like "This category is for people who have publicly stated they have condition X or are reported by reliable sources to have had it." I'd rather not try to bifurcate the categories into "diagnosed" and "self-identified"... too much hassle and would seem to diminish self-identified claims. And I doubt we'll ever see official definitely diagnoses from living people anyway. This is why I prefer relying on people's own words. But I do agree we need to make sure we don't categorize someone who flippantly says "I'm schizophrenic some days. You know, where I'm all active one hour and tired the next". That's just colloquial (and improper) use of the term. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:34, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- we can count on high-quality RS to use appropriate terminology, and that is what we follow. Jytdog (talk) 21:40, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, but what about when they don't? (See Adam Lanza example above.) Permstrump (talk) 22:54, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Peanut gallery
Anyone have a suggestion about the best format for responding? I think this thread could get really long, really fast and then it might be hard (for me) to follow the conversation as it branches out to EvergreenFir's different bullet points. From a writing perspective, it would be nice to make a separate comment below each point, but that might make it confusing from a reading perspective. Idk... maybe I'm overthinking this? I think what I'm trying to say is... will it irk people if I comment inline like I'm tempted to do (perhaps in a different color) or should I lump my response it all together at the end? :) Permstrump (talk) 23:25, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Permstrump: I'm fine with whatever. I can number the bullet points if that helps? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:32, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
- It's discouraged to insert comments within a different editor's comments; it makes it more difficult to see who is saying what. I'd make a separate subsection for each bullet point, with EvergreenFir's sig at the end of each bullet point. I suppose you could just add the signatures and omit the extra subsection headings, but the former seems like better organization to my ADD brain. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:56, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
- Anyone is welcome to refactor as they see fit for formatting. Didn't really think about that part, sorry. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:59, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
- @EvergreenFir: Ok, I took a shot at it. I think you should ungreen ({{tq}} is generally for quoting previous comments by others), and add your sigs to each. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:07, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Anyone is welcome to refactor as they see fit for formatting. Didn't really think about that part, sorry. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:59, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
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- @Mandruss: Perfect. One more peanut gallery comment (jk I'll probably think of more questions, but this is at least my last one before I leave work)... I thought EvergreenFir's use of green was nice for reading, because it was easier on the eyes than a block of black text, but I've never seen anyone use green for quoting. A) People should do that more. I'm going to make it a new habit starting now. Thanks for teaching me something new! B) Is it "uncouth" to use different non-green colors or does it only let you use black & green for actual comments and the pretty colors are only for usernames? In general, I've been wishing there was a way to make it more obvious where one person's comment ends and the next one begins. The indentations are kinda subtle and then people always mess it up by accidents anyway. Makes it hard to skim. Permstrump (talk) 01:23, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
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- If there were any guidance on that, it would be at WP:TPG. That page discourages "excessive emphasis" at WP:SHOUT, but the word "color" or "colour" does not occur on the page. Absent any guidance against it, you could try it and see if anyone gripes; maybe that would result in some nice instruction creep added to SHOUT. My take is that good use of indenting (see WP:THREAD) and signatures does the job, and, judging by the fact that I almost never see anyone else using colors, the community agrees with me. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:34, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah, use of color seems to be reserved for {{tq}}. Perhaps consider installing BeeLine Reader, Permstrump? Might help. Mandruss thanks for the formatting help. Now to wait for comments. I'm always wary of suggesting changes as pushback seems inevitable even on the most benign issues let alone a policy change. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:45, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- If there were any guidance on that, it would be at WP:TPG. That page discourages "excessive emphasis" at WP:SHOUT, but the word "color" or "colour" does not occur on the page. Absent any guidance against it, you could try it and see if anyone gripes; maybe that would result in some nice instruction creep added to SHOUT. My take is that good use of indenting (see WP:THREAD) and signatures does the job, and, judging by the fact that I almost never see anyone else using colors, the community agrees with me. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:34, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
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Sorry, people. The last thing I meant to do was create a whole new quandary, but I wanted to expand on something Discott brought up in Quandary 1, so blame Discott. /s Permstrump (talk) 18:40, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Insufficient evidence I am not convinced that this is a practical problem worth addressing. I agree that the issue is raised regularly but I would want to see someone collect a few troublesome example cases before we developed a general rule. The most common "quandary" that I see is not listed here, and that is "an editor insists on adding information without the backing of a reliable source". Wikipedia requires that information come from reliable sources. Insisting on reliable sources resolves most of these supposed quandaries in most cases, because the only common problem I see is lack of reliable sources. Again - I would like to see edge cases when WP:RS is not working, but no such cases are presented here. It would be worthwhile to resolve all of these issues if we had a few cases to which to apply them, and from which we could develop a general rule. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:46, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- Blue Rasberry, I assume the most common one you mentioned isn't on the list because, regardless if people follow them, it's already clearly covered by existing rules. These are some things that have come up, but aren't addressed clearly/explicitly or aren't addressed at all. I will pull together some examples though, because I think that's a good idea. Off the top of my head though: List of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Permstrump (talk) 15:23, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
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- @Blue Rasberry: There's been issues of recently as I mentioned in the beginning. I'm sure I could find more if you feel that I need to show more reason for updating policy. IMO, the real reason to address this is more fundamental and not in response to poor editing. Rather it seems to be an oversight. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:27, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
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- @User:EvergreenFir, I notice you citing WP:BLPCAT, but nobody has yet mentioned WP:EGRS which actually expands on BLPCAT, which is just a summary. The WP:WikiProject Disability/Style guide also has some advice. (BTW Nobody thought to notify WikiProject Disability about this topic.) Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Dodger67: Thanks for pointing out EGRS! I did forget about that. It will help if/when I move to the proposal stage. As for notifications, I didn't notify anywhere about this since it's just in the idea lab. If there were no comments I likely would have started drumming up comments. But lack of notification wasn't meant to be a slight by any means. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:27, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- In addition to your posting on Disability, I posted requests for comment on the Medicine, Categories, and Biographies WikiProject talk pages. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:42, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- Well, since we're talking about it, I guess I should mention that when I saw Roger (Dodger67)'s comment on WP:DISABILITY in my watchlist, it reminded me that I had wanted to leave a note about this thread and also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder on WP:PSYCH, so this morning I posted at WT:PSYCH#Categorization of people with mental illness and other disabilities: Comments requested, but it didn't occur to me to mention it here. Permstrump (talk) 22:51, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- In addition to your posting on Disability, I posted requests for comment on the Medicine, Categories, and Biographies WikiProject talk pages. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:42, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Dodger67: Thanks for pointing out EGRS! I did forget about that. It will help if/when I move to the proposal stage. As for notifications, I didn't notify anywhere about this since it's just in the idea lab. If there were no comments I likely would have started drumming up comments. But lack of notification wasn't meant to be a slight by any means. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:27, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
"Possibly resolved" parameter for cleanup tags
Random brainwave: A big issue with cleanup tags is that they can be applied to newbies' articles, discouraging them, in particular because they feel that they can't remove the tags themselves (not knowing how Wikipedia works).
What if we added a parameter to cleanup tags allowing people to mark individual cleanup tags as (potentially) resolved, which could then be reviewed by experienced editors not afraid to remove them?
Go ahead, tear the idea to shreds; I haven't critiqued it internally myself. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 16:59, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Not a fundamentally bad idea, but it pushes metadata into the main namespace for a potentially-longterm tag, which is typically viewed as undesirable. --Izno (talk) 17:25, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Good point, though … if it's inside the markup used for the tag itself, all that this change would represent is an expansion of "metadata" that's already in the main namespace (the tag itself). I mean, ideally, article tags would be external to article content, but until/unless they change structurally, giving them an extra parameter seems harmless. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 00:35, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- I agree there is a problem, but not sure about the solution. Better would be to replace the cleanup tags with hidden categories. Removing a category that no longer applies is more intuitive and lots of newish editors do learn about categories. ϢereSpielChequers 18:36, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Cleanup tags serve important purposes as a) warnings about potentially flawed content and b) calls to action to improve Wikipedia. I don't think I can support replacing them with categories, unless categories were able to emulate the display of maintenance tags in the first place (not something they can currently do). {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 00:35, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- That's a WP:PEREN suggestion which never finds consensus. As it is, I think having hidden the maintenance categories may have done Wikipedia harm, since that was another entry point for an unlogged-in editor, or a newly-logged-in editor (who hadn't fiddled with his preferences to display hidden categories), to find things to change. --Izno (talk) 13:07, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Nihiltres, I accept that some tags such as unreferenced serve as warnings, but many, including orphan, uncategorised and dead end are simply maintenance matters. I'm all for calls to action, but if we want to recruit newbies with calls to action we should simply change the appearance of the edit box every few weeks. It isn't clear whether maintenance templates attract more newbies to fix them than they deter. ϢereSpielChequers 23:46, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
See this proposal where I outline my idea for a way to resolve this problem. I hope editors will contribute there, as well-received ideas at that location may make it onto the developers list of projects.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:42, 9 March 2016 (UTC)