I don't know whether this is technically possible or not, but is it possible to prevent going directly into edit mode when clicking on a redlinked user page? Often I only click on such a page to get to see that users contributions, so it is a bit unnecessary that clicking on the redlink triggers edit mode for that page. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 14:19, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Probably user customization (js or css) can do this [might want to move this to VPT]. Have you tried WP:POPUPS? You can use that to access contribs with mouse-hover. –xeno^talk 14:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, thanks. No I haven't tried popups, as I don't have a need for most of the functionality that script offers and would prefer a standalone solution if one existed. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 14:41, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Last time I checked, I got a link in the “Toolbox” on the left to the user contributions even from the user talk page. ― A. di M.​  23:27, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

One thing I noticed on Commons is that "Hidden Categories" are shown in a smaller font. While one of the reasons for that is because they are displayed by default, which is not the case here. Just wondering what everyone thought about doing that here for those who show the hidden cats. -- WOSlinker (talk) 23:23, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

In the above discussion, it occurred to me that the user name policy is not linked from the plain account creation screen. It might be linked from Outreach:ACIP or some other process. I suppose that is done intentionally as to avoid overwhelming the newbies. On the other hand, I've seen a few blocks for promo user names, so not giving any information beforehand seems to set up a WP:BITE trap for some. Perhaps a nutshell of the policy should be added to the account creation screen? Uʔ (talk) 23:31, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

• Support nothing much else to say. Well summarized. -- fg^TC 23:47, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
• Looks like MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-createaccount? There is a link to the policy in "Simply choose a username", but it's hardly something people would notice. Could stand to make it more obvious. – Luna Santin (talk) 00:14, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
  • I was aware of that link, but I think it's not well contextualized and eclipsed by the one in the previous sentence. I didn't pay any attention to it when I registered my initial account. Because only "username" is linked there, a newbie would probably expect that link to provide a definition of "username" rather than rules of what's allowed and what not in it. If you consider that the "benefits" sentence is in bold and has its own link to a rather long page (Wikipedia:Why create an account?), the reader's attention surely has waned by the time they get back, assuming they're even inclined to read pages linked from that screen. Uʔ (talk) 00:42, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a possible problem with WP:TL;DR to address there. -- fg^TC 00:49, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it could be "simply choose a suitable username..."--Kotniski (talk) 08:12, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

That is probably a good minimal change to make. Uʔ (talk) 15:22, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

• Strongly support this is an excellent idea. I can't count the number of times I've had to report unsuitable usernames to WP:UAA (well, I could, but I've got better things to do. It's a lot, leave it at that). A simple note on the account creation screen dissuading new users from signing up as User:Bob's Autopart Supplies, User:I'vegotamassivetadger, User:WikipediaAdministratorBot or similar would save a lot of work. Yunshui 雲水 08:46, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
• Neutral. It won't really stop anyone with agenda though. At least violating usernames are quick to identify. If User:Bob's Autopart Supplies edits Bob's Autopart Supplies, it's a DUCK COI case. If they decide to go as User:CarFanForever, it'll be tough to tell. On the other hand, users should be made aware of what's acceptable when they register (not that it's so hard to realize trademark or offensive usernames are bad). I'd like to see actual proposed wording, as TLDR is also a concern. For example, more than 2 sentences may be stretching it. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:27, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm not deluding myself about spammers etc. But look at User talk:Theevabaconfanclub for instance. A good faith group of contributors that fouled the user name policy in a couple of ways. Uʔ (talk) 15:19, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
    • Well, yes, I did say ".. users should be made aware of what's acceptable when they register ..". I still would want to see the whole proposed text first. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:03, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
• Comment: A double-edged sword. A comment with a suggestion to keep it short and in the Latin alphabet should be helpful for seriously minded newbies. On the other hand, allowing people to first register with an offensive name may help us to identify potential vandals, and allowing them to first register with company or personal names may help catch COI, spammers, and autobiographers. After they have been requested to change their name, we can still keep an eye on their edits. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:48, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
• I just tried the 'create account' link, and MediaWiki:Customusertemplate-ACP1-signupstart was displayed, followed by MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-createaccount. I definitely think that that screen could be improved, and some short summary of acceptable names would probably be beneficial. But I'd need to see a specific mock-up to support/oppose/discuss it.  Chzz  ►  11:59, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
• We need to make it more clear that company or organization usernames are not allowed. Right now, it's easy to miss that information. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 14:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Rd232 (talk · contribs) has reminded me of the fact that the signup page did once include all this information, so it's just a matter of getting consensus to restore it. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 01:52, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
• See another example of blocked user User talk:Crops for the Future. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 09:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Restore old version

• Stong support fg^t_c 02:06, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
• Strong oppose //Hannibal (talk) 20:47, 30 October 2011 (UTC) (statistics argue against this)
• Oppose. It is quite probable that it could cause the registrations to drop again. Anyway, what I had in mind by "nutshell" was the actual nutshell atop the policy "This page in a nutshell: When choosing an account name, do not choose names which may be offensive, misleading, disruptive, or promotional. In general, one username should represent one person." The old account creation page does look like a laundry list with all those bullets even if it says not much more. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:00, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Question

I see the current version was implemented in May as "test nr 1" [1] What does that refer to? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:52, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

It's explained on the talk page. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand we do need to give newbies as much information as possible without being too creepy but on the other hand, leaving it out is a good way to quickly identify some new users who clearly aren't here to build an encyclopedia such as spammers and trollz-and-lulzers. After all, what's a more obvious block then User:Peter Pan Promotions or User:I boned yo mom. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 20:26, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Former Account Creation fellow's two cents

Hello,

Sorry for being late to this discussion. I have had very little time to continue the Account Creation Improvement Project since my Wikimedia Foundation Fellowship ended. However, this is an interesting queston, so I felt I should jump in. (Thanks to ASCIIn2Bme for poking me.)

The tests that were announced has yet to be closed, although noone is measuring anything at the moment. This means that anyone who creates an account is randomly assigned one of three alternatives. As you can see in this report, we have a very clear positive result for version number 1 (the one starting here. All that is left to do is turn off the MediaWiki:Customerusertemplate function and paste the nr 1 alternative pages onto the old ones. They give us about 9 more active Wikipedians each day than the version we are using today. (And that's people who make at least five edits, not just creating accounts!)

Of course it could be improved, and I in fact think we should make more tests, but my life away from Wikipedia have so far stopped me from making much of those hopes. Anyway, I think including the user name policy is a good improvement, and the way to do it without clutting the page is probably the one that Kotniski suggested previously: "simply choose a suitable username...".

Thanks for reading.//Hannibal (talk) 20:46, 30 October 2011 (UTC) (PS. By the way, we have seen bad user names both before and after this change. If you want to see if there has been a change in this, I suggest you do a comprehensive study. So far nothing suggests that it has inspired more trolls to create accounts.)

Good point about the trolls. Someone who creates an account with a name like "I did your sister" expects to be blocked, he's just here to do one drive by trollsy action or to see how many article he can replace with "POOP" before being blocked. My point is still valid for promotional names though. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 20:56, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, some people want to get caught :-) However, do I take it that you think that there has been an increase in promotional names? And what is that hypothesis based on, please?//Hannibal (talk) 21:14, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Ok, there was an upsurge in registration it seems (it was not just seasonal variation, I presume) but do you have any estimates for how many username blocks were handed out before and after the change? I've seen some anecdotal evidence of good faith editors not reading the linked pages and registering as "fan clubs" etc., which seems to be prohibited. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:21, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

The stats were collected at the same time (people were randomly taken through one of three different account creation processes), and these numbers were then compared both to each other, and to a baseline we had established.

Unfortunally, the project was very limited. We did not test if the number of promotional names increased or decreased. I have seen several people state that the missing user name policy would (or did) increase the number of promotional names), but so far there is only anecdotal arguments to support that. I would rather try to find out which of the following alternatives is most accurate:

• promotional user names have stayed roughly the same after making the user name policy less prominent
• promotional user names have decreased in frequency after making the user name policy less prominent
• promotional user names have increased in frequency after making the user name policy less prominent - in essence nullifying the number of new active editors (e.g. 9 new active editors vs 15 new users with promotional names)
• promotional user names have increased in frequency after making the user name policy less prominent - however, this fact is made less important by the greater influx of new editors (eg. 9 new active editors vs 1 new user with promotional name)

This type of statistics are still possible to get, thanks to the Customerusertemplate function. It's just a matter of actually doing it :-)

Best wishes//Hannibal (talk) 22:01, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, we need these statistics, unless the WMF would like to handle unblock requests made by corporate or organization editors who did not know the username policy. We cannot target the real root of the problem until we know what it is. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 14:29, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposal for minimal change

I've looked through Lennart's report and he does have A/B testing evidence that the shorter page (ACP1) leads to more new active editors registering than when using the old one (ACP3). So, the prudent thing to do here seems to be leave it as uncluttered as possible, and simply change the word linked as proposed by Kotniski, i.e.

changing "simply choose a suitable username..." to "simply choose a suitable username..."

• Support. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:55, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
• Support - common sense, really. Acather96 (talk) 09:39, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
• Support I basically support any change that makes it simpler and cleaner for users to create an account that doesn't immediately get them bitten. I advocate all forms of help for noobs. I would take the idea further than this minimal change but any small change in the right direction is good. fg^t_c 08:02, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Because they always get hit hard by the IPs while the event is going on. I know we don't preemptively semi pages but I can we get a consensus to make an exception?--Adam in MO Talk 04:13, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose On the one hand, I know that there are large numbers of edits to UFC pages when UFC events are going on. On the other hand, they're not all vandalism. I'd be more for the "place admins and vandal fighters on alert and raise the wikiDEFCON when the event starts" tactic. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:03, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose per Svens remark that "they're not all vandalism". fg^t_c 05:38, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

• Strong oppose any preemptive semi on non-critical pages. For the same reason I oppose and will always oppose pending changes : this is a wiki. We are already making the "anyone can edit" slogan into a half-truth, let's not make it an outright lie. Disruptive edits will be reverted, disruptive editors will be blocked, non-encyclopedic articles will be deleted, and that's that. — CharlieEchoTango — 05:46, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - we want to encourage new editors to articles. We shouldn't let the vandals ruin it for others. Deal with the vandalism, and only protect when absolutely necessary.  Chzz  ►  08:56, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Fair enough. I am clearly in the minority. But lets be accurate about this those pages get up to 15 edits per minute, of mostly vandalism. The vandals are ruining it for everyone already. And having your edit conflict time after time because the vandals are moving so fast, and then only then to have it vandalized immediately is not very encouraging to new people. Add this to the racist/homophobic/misogynistic trolling on the page and it seems like a no brainier. I guess it comes down to which philosophy you maintain, openness or accuracy.--Adam in MO Talk 20:40, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

While the vandalism is current and virtually impossible to control I support semi-protection of any/all pages. This is/was a proposal for semi-protecting pre-emptively that flies in the face of one of the main ethics of Wikipedia: The assumption of good faith. If and only when the pages ARE (not might be) under constant attack they should be semi-protected and a template or other suitable message placed at the top of the article encouraging enthusiastic editors to suggest changes to be made on the talk page until the page protection is (and it should be) lifted. fg^t_c 00:14, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Just to play devil's advocate, the user does have something of a point. Those who are saying that we should wait for vandalism to occur may not know that page protection requests can at times sit for half a day before being acted on, long after the article has been thoroughly plundered. For events like these, it seems like most of the insane editing is going to come during and right before the event itself, and I bet it's more likely than not that the protection won't be implemented until after the event is already done. That being said, I'm not really sure that the problem is so horrible that we want to pre-emptively protect pages. Personally, I think this is yet another reason why we need the VandalFighter user right, one of whose "abilities" would be to drop 1-6 hour semi-protections, just to stop such egregious and time-sensitive attacks. There's a lot more vandal patrollers (a meaningful proportion of whom could probably get this right) than there are admins who are patrolling RFPP. My guess is that sporting events may be an extra problem if they take place on a weekend, as I feel that's when admin activity drops down lowest. Qwyrxian (talk) 07:40, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Alternatively if RFPP is too slow and its a big deal that a page isn't protected ANI could be used for its actual purpose. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 07:50, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

There is also no chance of an admin-rights split out to give people the ability to make 6 hour protections - you can't get one to edit full protected pages which is far less serious. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 07:53, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

How about an alternative proposal for software supported automatic protection for pages edited n number of times per hour? The protection being administered in the form of an editing break. The edit tabs all shut down (or vanish all together (better)) for n number of minutes and an automatic header notice opens explaining that "Due to high editing rates this page is too tired to deal with all the stress man. Like I'm having some time off dude! Come back in n minutes." (or words to that effect (I need a cuppa)) Then after n minutes have passed the ability to edit reopens (for refreshed pages (although it could be dynamic people would just wait and try to be first past the post)). Possible, fast, relatively easy to implement, non judgemental (since it shuts everyone out (accept admin)), efficient and would solve the problem for all articles (so not weighted in favour of any particular article(s). fg^t_c 08:16, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

That sounds like not a great idea, as some events more fast and attract large numbers of edits and you want to encourage more editing, not less. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:18, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Although, anyone with something worth waiting to add is more likely to be adding something worth waiting for. Most vandalism seems to be simple opportunism (thankfully little seems to be thought through). If the opportunity is removed only those who are dedicated will come back later and be happy to do so since they understand why they must. Anyway, just a thought. fg^t_c 08:28, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Although people might also not come back later to add good content because life is too short, and they might well come back later and vandalise to show that they can. Its difficult to know what people will do to be honest - its always worth suggesting stuff though - more suggestions are good. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:20, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

It's an utterly horrible idea, because it could very easily lock in a horribly vandalized state. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:54, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

If the page under lock-down defaulted to a safe page version last set as such by an admin and the hatnote (suggested above) stated as much it would not be left in a horribly vandalized state and it would provide breathing space for editors and admin to get organized. It was just an idea. Something to expand on perhaps. We already have word from an admin ((Qwyrxian) who should know what they are talking about) that an issue is often that admin can't respond as quickly as is needed but, with an auto-lock-down, time would be granted. Sure, as I left the suggestion, there would have been the possibility of a messed up page been locked. I did suggest that admin would still have edit access though and if the page is under brutal attack no responsible editor can control, it would be no worse to lock it than to leave it open and in constant and server straining flux. More importantly, if a proposal or suggestion seems floored in any way it is better to suggest how it could be improved upon than to simply toss the baby out with the bath water. fg^t_c 14:29, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't like that idea at all. I don't want our admins to be in the position of deciding what a 'safe' version of a page should be. Content choices are what editors do and should be left to that. A semi would keep the vandals at bay and let the editors fix the damage. I am just trying to brainstorm here and find out what is the best way to mitigate the vandal swarms that pop up from time to time. I think that ultimately the grassroots nature of the project isn't nimble enough to put the fires out fast when these things happen. Waiting it out and fixing the damage seems to be the best course of action at this point.--Adam in MO Talk 04:57, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

According to this; pages delivered to non logged in users (thus those blocked by a semi-protection) are cached anyway. The page as we see it may not be what they are seeing at all. Might explain quite a lot of weird edits and quick reversals we see around the place. Again I have to say that assuming good faith has its obvious merits. An automated system would react rather than preact (ooh! I made a word up!) so no assumption would be made (or could be). As for admins not being accepted as the right people to stamp a page version as good: Who better? They know policy. They know editing. They know how to communicate and thus how to decide what the consensus is. I wouldn't trust the view of an entrenched self appointed protector who's quite likely to have a preferred version over the educated view of an unbiased and previously uninvolved editor with a proven track record. Have you seen the questioning admin applicants have to go through to be seriously considered? I have. They are grilled. See:WP:RFA. It is a difficulty of Wikipedia that pages are open to attack but that difficulty is also its greatest strength. Whatever is thought of my automated idea I absolutely oppose pre-emptive protection. Once one is passed they'll all want it. 6,832,156 articles!! Either they are all (until there is no sensible choice) open or none are. fg^t_c 05:54, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

"Who better?" All of us is better then a few. I know full well what RFA is all about. But we are all in the business of making content decisions not just a few. To those few go the tools and the mops, as it were, to keep the project working and that is it. I think where you and I differ is in timing and scope. I oppose in all forms a full protection, even if automated, unless there is cause, and ip vandalism is never a cause for full protection, logged in users cause that.--Adam in MO Talk 06:33, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Assume good faith is not a suicide pact. We protect FAs when they go on the front page. I don't see why if there is a well-known problem with UFC-related pages during UFC events, it would be so bad to semi-pp them. If there is a well-known problem with this kind of vandalism, that would rather show that the assumption of good faith has been broken. I assume good faith when I walk down the street, but if the street becomes filled with pickpockets, you don't have to carry on believing there is good faith. Assume good faith... but be prepared to find a solution when the person fails to live up to your assumptions. That said, I don't know whether the UFC proposal is a good idea or not. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:55, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Normally, if an article has been nominated for deletion and the outcome of the discussion is "Keep", one clicks on the talk page and click on the hypertext link that takes one to the discussion. We are told in these discussions "Please do not modify it" (the discussion), but how do we know that people really are not modifying the discussion? Is there a technical way to prevent people from editing these discussions - in other words, to protect them? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 22:20, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about others, but if I comment in a deletion discussion, then I add it to my watchlist, and then leave it there indefinitely. So, even if someone modifies it months or more later, I'll still see it. In fact, it can actually be a helpful tip off to someone who intends to do something untoward in actual mainspace (especially when I see someone modify a discussion where the result was to delete). Qwyrxian (talk) 22:26, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Same here. I don't think I've ever un-watched a deletion discussion I've participated in. (Of course, many deletion discussions only have two or three participants, who may no longer be active.) @ACEOREVIVED, is this a preventative suggestion, or have you noticed some vandalism to closed deletion discussions? 28bytes (talk) 22:35, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, the WP:BEANS light in my brain immediately turned on. ― A. di M.​  23:25, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

I doubt a malicious editor has much to gain from changing an old deletion discussion; they can't actually change the end result. Also, very few people would read it again, it's not in article space... so it's hard to do much damage other than waste a couple of editors' time with "Why would somebody edit an old AfD?". bobrayner (talk) 21:03, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for directing to "Don't stuff beans up your nose" or giving a wikilink that directed to that article - I have never ever seen that article before now! ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:51, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Old discussions sometimes get modified several months later from people retroactively changing their signatures after a username change (see the history WP:Articles for deletion/Jan Goossenaerts for an example). It allows people who've decided to edit under something other than their real name to at least try to stuff the genie back into the lamp, which I guess I don't really see the harm in. I can't remember ever seeing anyone do it for malicious purposes, though I suppose it could happen. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:16, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I think that vandalism to old deletion discussions, if it happens, isn't as bad as vandalism to other pages - it's read by few users, all of who are presumably with Wikipedia's "page history" feature, and it's usually simple to know which version is the correct one. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:45, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi there. This might have been discussed before, however I'd like to make the proposal and see if it floats. I believe names using characters that are not used in an everyday language, such as ʔ (recently adopted by User:ʔ), are... well... bad.

It's one thing if you had a name like User:兔子, those are actual characters in a written language, and I am in no way saying that we should do away characters from other languages, however it's an entirely different thing if you choose a name that exists in no language and appears on no keyboard. Windings, phonetic symbols, and the like are difficult to find, identify, or even name, and that presents a large number of communication difficulties. There is little to no redeeming factor that would outweigh the difficulty that these cause.

My proposal is that effective as of this gaining consensus, new accounts using such characters are to be prohibited (users would be asked to pick a new name, and blocked if they don't comply, as is done with other abusive names), but old accounts will be grandfathered in, but strongly encouraged to modify their usernames.

Thoughts? Sven Manguard Wha? 08:01, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

ʔ is an IPA symbol, so it can be surely used to express human sounds, and in this way is more universal than most other scripts, but surely it is a rather technical one. So it's not a "non-language character" as I read that. I'm not the first to use IPA symbols in a user name, by they way. If the proposal is to ban IPA symbols, there should be a widespread RfC, and all users who use these should be notified. And IPA itself is commonly used in Wikipedia, so I doubt there are any printing issues. My signature also contains a Latin character as suggested by WP:SIG#NL. Regards, Uʔ (talk) 08:09, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

When we try to convince IP editors to register and get a name, one of the reasons we give is to simplify communication. A name that cannot be easily typed in the way the user displays it does not simplify communication. HiLo48 (talk) 08:17, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I cannot easily type Chinese, Arabic, and a few other languages as well. How fast can you type, say, Σ, א, خ, or 子? Uʔ (talk) 08:25, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but other users come from other projects that either use those languages as primaries or are multilingual. That's why we don't ban all non-English characters. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:57, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Are User:Σ and User:Δ, just to pick two obvious examples, or even User:Ü mainly editing on other projects? Uʔ (talk) 10:06, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't immediately see how non-Latin usernames complicate communication. How often is it actually necessary to physically type an editor's username? If I want to write Uʔ's name in a discussion, I copypaste. If I want to visit his userpages, I click the links in his signature. If I want to view his contributions, I look at his last edit and use the link there. The fact that I can't type "ʔ" on my keyboard (and I really can't; I have no idea what combination of keystrokes I'd need) doesn't actually inconvenience me or prevent me from communicating with him. Since the username policy specifically states that non-Latin usernames are welcome, I tend to assume that the current consensus does not see them as disruptive. Yunshui 雲水 08:48, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

That assumes that he's already in the conversation. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:57, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I should note that ʔ appears in the "IPA (English)" section of Wikipedia symbol insertion toolbar. If this information shocks someone into realizing their English can be written in IPA as well, then I may have contributed to their sum of knowledge a bit, I hope. There's no easy way to insert Chinese using Wikipedia's toolbar however. Uʔ (talk) 09:05, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

wɛl ðæts kwajt jusfəl. θæŋk ju. Yunshui 雲水 09:10, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Two issues:

1. Most Asian characters for me are boxes so the topmost example of an acceptable user name is unreadable for me whereas the Glottal stop shows up just fine.
2. The bulk of our interactions on Wikipedia are such that we need rarely reference another user by name. As long as the wikilinking works it doesn't bother me if the letters don't even render. If I need to talk to Mr or Ms boxboxbox, I would (in most situations) just click their link and post to their page.

It is the limitation of my own PC that stops it from rendering some unusual characters. The fact that Mr boxboxbox and Ms boxboxbox are hard to distinguish is occasionally frustrating but as I already said, I see User Glottle stop and User Triangle just fine and the family boxboxbox are using accepted characters.

Since there is no way to be sure what viewers will be able to render what characters (outside a very limited selection), if this proposal carried any weight at all, we would have to ban the use of all unusual characters from the whole of Wikipedia. As long as people do good work and/or enjoy reading and can be contacted if needed, I really don't see a problem worth upsetting anyone over. Apart from anything, having a triangle for a name is really rather cool -- fg^TC 09:37, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Yunshui - your posts have simply reinforced my point. You can type my user name directly with the keyboard.. The obvious abbreviation makes it even easier. While it is possible to copy and paste more complicated names, and do all sorts of other tricky things, why make it harder than it needs to be? (A work colleague told me recently that she needs someone to teach her about "this cut and paste thing", so don't assume skills.) HiLo48 (talk) 09:41, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I think it should continue to be up to users' own discretion. No-one's obliged to use a user name anyway, so if you use one that makes it a bit harder to communicate with you, that's a downside that you're presumably prepared to accept. Allowing people to express their identity in ways that appeal to them (as long as they aren't offensive) is one of the things that keep community spirits up.--Kotniski (talk) 09:50, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

That's an odd response. Obviously the user with the weird name is comfortable with it, and "prepared to accept" it. It's other editors that things are being made harder for. HiLo48 (talk) 10:04, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes... so since the user was under no obligation to provide a user name at all, we can't really complain if he/she provides one that isn't quite as convenient for us as it might have been.--Kotniski (talk) 10:08, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

So, having just brushed aside my point about who has to accept it, you now completely ignore the point I made earlier that one of the reasons we give when suggesting that editors register is to make it EASIER to communicate. HiLo48 (talk) 10:13, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, let's ban all unusual characters and give all of us numbers... you can henceforth address me as User:78753965245671 09:49, 26 October 2011

And that response is just silly. (Or was it meant to be?) HiLo48 (talk) 10:04, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

(e/c)Good grief. Let's kill this proposal off and then dump it in WP:PEREN where it belongs (I'm sure we've had it a time or two before, but can't remember where off hand). Since we have global accounts, it makes no sense to ban characters which are part of a language (at least for those languages with WMF projects). Taking that as a given, there is no reason to ban non-language characters: They are no more (and often less) cryptic, hard to render/type, etc. than the foreign-language characters. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 10:11, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

That's a bad faith post. After several editors have given reasons above, you say "there is no reason". Quite insulting really. Disagree with them perhaps, but don't claim they don't exist. HiLo48 (talk) 10:16, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Fine, there's no good reason, as demonstrated by the rest of my post. Jayron32 restates my point, below, in much more eloquent language. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 02:42, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

The proposal is to restrict freedom of expression for some users. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps, it is a comparatively minor restriction, but a restriction nonetheless. The benefits advanced for doing so seem mainly theoretical, rather than practical, and to the extent that they are practical, the justifications set forth for protecting some types of difficult-to-type names but not others are not convincing, to me, at any rate, and I happen to detest IPA characters. --Hobbes Goodyear (talk) 12:33, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

This is covered by WP:DICK, isn't it? If your user name is in Kanji because you're Japanese, that's not a problem. If you're using 〠 as your user name simply because you get a kick out of people having difficulty grokking or replying to your posts, then your standing amongst your peers will be negatively affected. There aren't really enough editors doing this to really justify a rule against it, and you'd imagine that editors who were doing it for kicks would likewise get a kick out of the community running around making special rules for them. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 12:41, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Oppose, obviously. I understand the concern, but this is really venturing into instruction creep territory. Just leave people alone and let the magic of copy-and-paste take care of the "difficulty" of dealing with usernames like 兔子 or Δ or Zoë or whatever. ☂ (talk) 15:03, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

We used to block usernames for this, actually. The practice died out around the same time SUL was implemented. Here's a quick trip down memory lane:

• Wikipedia talk:Username policy/Archive 2#non-latin names
• Wikipedia talk:Username policy/Archive 2#Protest
• Wikipedia talk:Username policy/Archive 3#Non-latin characters and Unified Login
• Wikipedia talk:Username policy/Archive 4#Latin character server suggestion
• Wikipedia talk:Username policy/Archive 4#Latin character transliterations
• Wikipedia talk:Username policy/Archive 8#Non-latin usernames, revisited
• Wikipedia talk:Username policy/Archive 10#Introducing a term: The المستهلك Test
• Wikipedia talk:Username policy/Archive 17#disruptive use of non-Latin usernames

As you can see in archives 3 and 4, the arrival of SUL resulted in a nearly immediate reversal of the old policy. The question was brought up again as recently as August 2011, at Wikipedia talk:Username policy#RFC: Use of non-latin or unicode characters as usernames. – Luna Santin (talk) 21:30, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

• Comment I know this isn't exactly easy, but I would support banning non-Latin characters that look like Latin characters. Stuff like the dotless i, or maybe Greek letters like omicron, if that has a Unicode. Too easy for someone trying to make trouble to register a username that's not the same as an existing one, but looks the same. --Trovatore (talk) 21:38, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
  • WP:IMPERSONATOR forbids these already, and the software actually checks for similarities itself. I know because I had to find a wiki where User:Ü, who is not in SUL, was not registered before I could register User:Uʔ. If you're curious, you can't register User:? at all. Uʔ (talk) 21:58, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

User:☂ says, "…this is really venturing into instruction creep territory."

In fact I don't think it is. This isn't instruction creep because the concern being expressed here does not pertain to the content of articles. Bus stop (talk) 22:08, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Facepalm. Uʔ (talk) 22:40, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

It's another concern entirely. The notion of "instruction creep" would never have arisen in the first place if we were not involved in the ostensible practice of writing an encyclopedia. Bus stop (talk) 22:56, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

This proposal will fail for the same reasons other, similar proposals have failed: (a) There is no clearly definable criterion for what an "uncommon" character is, or just how uncommon it has to be in order to be intolerable; (b) we have to tolerate lots of uncommon characters coming in through SUL from other wikis anyway, so the few users who choose uncommon characters here for frivolous reasons don't really add any significant weight to the problem, in proportion to the many who have them for the obviously legitimate reasons. Sure, choosing a hard-to-type name just for the fun of it may come across as annoying, but trying to stop people from being annoying by making rules about annoying behaviour is an exercise in futility. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:01, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Annoying is debatable. Editing Wikipedia is a political statement as it was demonstrated during the Italian Wikipedia strike. We should keep Wikipedia as open as possible while observing its primary role as an encyclopedia. Uʔ (talk) 23:31, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, this proposal probably won't pass. We have a better chance of amending our signature policy to require that at least a portion of any signature must be in local-language characters on a given local-language wiki (English in this case since we have no jurisdiction over other wikis). In such a case, our example User:兔子 could have their signature appear as '兔子 (English alias)', giving other editors at least something to refer to them as. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 23:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

That already exists; see WP:SIG#NL. Uʔ (talk) 23:40, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I know about that section, but it has no weight. It's a suggestion out of courtesy and countless editors don't follow it. I'm suggesting it be required, rather than recommended. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 23:45, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if that's a good idea. Just consider the editor who makes only a few edits here like interwiki links, etc. After he makes his first talk page post, boom, an admin warning (or block) lands on their talk page requiring them to change their signature. Quite WP:BITE-y. Perhaps have Twinkle detect non-Latin characters in username and add a polite message alongside the welcome screen instead? I would support that. Uʔ (talk) 23:58, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Oppose can we put this under WP:PEREN yet? This discussion happens every few weeks it seems. There's no conceivable reason to have this or way to enforce it. We already have to allow non-Latin characters because of WP:SUL; with all of the writing systems and whatnot, it is nearly impossible to, at first glance, tell if some character is part of another writing system which I am unfamiliar with, or is a non-linguistic symbol. Given the royal pain in enforcing such a proposed rule (does every admin have to scour through pages and pages of writing systems before deciding to block a username for containing non-language symbols?) and the lack of reason why a non-language symbol is somehow more of a problem than a username in Greek or Cyrillic or Japanese, I really don't see any reason why such a rule needs to exist. Let me state that again: There's no reason why a non-language symbol like ʔ or even ♠ is somehow more of a problem than, say, a Japanese character. Given that the latter are allowed, there's nothing disruptive about the former. --Jayron32 00:06, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I did check for a WP:PEREN entry, before making my post above. ;) Might be time. – Luna Santin (talk) 00:08, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - Σ is a character in a written language. There's an old thread on WT:UN that may be relevant. →Στc. 01:45, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
• I oppose a specific criterion. However, I think common-sense should tell us that "User:ʔ" is confusing to the point of disruption, and should be forced to change.  Chzz  ►  03:27, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
  • I don't find it confusing, and certainly not disruptive. I'd far rather someone had a distinctive username like that than something unmemorable like JohnSmith2479. I can't quite type it, but so what - when do I ever need to type someone's exact username? --Kotniski (talk) 08:09, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
    • I need to know an exact user name all the time. You don't always have access to a diff which you can copy. And in this particular case, ʔ is close enough to ? to be actively (deliberately) confusing. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 09:03, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
      • Since there's no active user ?, I don't think it can be deliberate (and hardly confusing either). Can you fill me in on the situations where you need to type someone's exact username, not having a diff or signature or something to click on or paste from? It doesn't seem to happen to me. The thing I find genuinely annoying and confusing is people who sign themselves by one name when their username is actually something else (I don't mean you, since you tell us your real username in your sig).--Kotniski (talk) 10:50, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
        • It'd be confusing if ever I needed to refer to him by his user name without his being active on the page I was referring to him in as I'd need to go poking about looking for a diff or a mention of him to be able to link to him. Additional examples include if I think an editor might have some expertise on an article he hasn't previously edited, and want to visit his talk page, or if I'm referring to an editor on ANI (or any other discussion) for whatever reason, such as past precedent. It is in everyone's best interests if editors pick user names which are easy to write and remember, and deliberately abusing Unicode for giggles does not help at all there. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 11:08, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
          • In the spirit of friendship and compromise, I have created a page you can bookmark that will help you if you ever find yourself in that situation: WP:UUN. ☂ (talk) 18:09, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Non-Latin usernames are just as (if not more) opaque than symbols for most people, so I can see no good grounds to disallow symbolic usernames unless perhaps they're pathologically complicated & unintelligible (e.g. User:₦✠Ωα✄☂☎☣). --Cybercobra (talk) 04:09, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

IPA is a symbol set, not a language, and AFAIK, outside of linguistic circles, is practically unheard of in the USA., while it is use is widespread in multilingual Europe. We've had hundreds of complaints about readers not understanding the 'gibberish' for the phonetic transcription on article leads. I'm fully in favour of the IPA where it is called for (hmm... because I work with it anyway) but I think it is misplaced in usernames. I was also never in favour of non-Latin names on the en.WIki, unless the sig carries a Latin transcription. Normal diacritics such as ü, é, è, ä, are standard keyboard chars and can be accessed through Shift+Option combinations etc. Chinese can't, and can't be pronounced, and hence cannot be retained in memory. Most other common scripts such as Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, and Thai, etc are very easily accessible on a Mac even if most of us can't pronounce them, but I'm not sure about PC if the fonts are not installed. ∑'s sig infuriates me no end, because we collaborate a lot ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:01, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I doubt a useful policy could be drafted that would prevent people from being WP:DICK while at the same time accommodating legitimate names in non-latin writing. However, I think dismissing the problem on the basis of cut-and-paste is wrong. When communicating with, or about, an editor, it is often necessary to cut-and-paste several things, such as the URL of a diff and a passage of text the editor wrote. But there is only one clipboard (or if there is a way to have several, few editors know about it). At some point it becomes necessary to open a separate text editor to hold the various items that need to be pasted, but having a user name that can be typed will reduce the need to resort to opening a text editor. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:46, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

A quick did into Google will reveal a whole host of freeware or very cheap desk accessories that do just that. They will store and insert any number of frequently used characters or even paragraphs on a short keyboard combination. It's also great way to insert your custom 'template' warnings and welcomes. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:00, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I don't use it myself, but I'm informed that Firefox with the Clipple extension makes such multi-copypaste jobs a breeze. Yunshui 雲水 12:02, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

• This is Wikipedia. Arguing about generally confusing usernames is unproductive. Choosing a username that most people wouldn't know how to say (e.g., none of my friends know what a glottal stop is) is unwise. But what's done is done. So let's stop arguing and hope that in the future, people will be more considerate of how others communicate to them by choosing easily typable or referable usernames. (For example, let's say I forget that the symbol stands for "glottal stop", and I'm only trying to refer to that user so I don't have anything to copy-paste ... do you really have to be so inconsiderate as to make my life unnecessarily hard just so you can have the username that is "cool"?) /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 20:14, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
  • "looks like a question mark", "looks like a sickle"? I wouldn't be offended. Actually someone above objected precisely because it looks like a question mark, which can't be a user name on MW anymore. Uʔ (talk) 21:07, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
    • Indeed. Special:contributions:? leads nowhere. Whether or not the interface allows one to create that username, it has a non-negligible chance of annoying and frustrating other editors who wish to get to one's user page / talk page / contributions list / comments one has made. At least with editors whose usernames are obviously in a non-Latin script there is notice in advance. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 22:04, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
      • On a related note, the correct link is Special:Contributions/?. →Στc. 23:07, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
        • Seriously, this is trivial to solve. User:? has been indeffed for years and made no edits anyway, so I redirected his userpage & user talkpage to User:ʔ. Henceforth he can thus be referred to as "user questionmark". Yoenit (talk) 23:28, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
          • I thought that there could be no User:?, but apparently I was wrong. For some reason the account list tool takes forever to list it. There is no SUL for "?", but there are a bunch of unattached accounts on various wikis: [2] (Oddly enough, if you try to click on them from there, you get a "bad title" page on all wikis. Something to do with the URL encoding, I guess.) Anyway, thanks for trying to help me, but that redirect is not really needed anymore because I've changed my user name as you can see. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 15:54, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
          • Once, I thought about changing my username to some frivolous unicode character. But you know what? I used common sense and realized that it would extremely inconsiderate to other users and would furthermore be completely irrelevant to the purpose of Wikipedia. I'm not about wasting other peoples' seconds. If someone else wants to do that, I'll just avoid communication with him or her. Not my problem, not my loss. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 14:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose totalitarian "I don't like it so I'll ban it or tax it" attitude - this is silly. Like many users, I can't type most non-Latin characters, so should we ban zhwiki and jpwiki editors from editing here? Greek? Russian? Nordic? What exactly is the particular issue with symbols that could possibly justify a double standard? To me there is no difference in the amount of effort needed to refer to ☂ or 兔子 in a discussion. It's in both case a small effort to search for the username and copy and paste the characters, perhaps annoying, but hey, life is tough and unfair and what not. — CharlieEchoTango — 23:52, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Since the subject is active: As I stated earlier east-Asian characters don't render for me (I'll get it sorted when I update my old and frankly rubbish PC). When editing pages that have boxes instead of the characters they are supposed to be; I am worried that as I save the page I am destroying the originals and replacing them with boxes. Could someone please confirm that this is not happening? Since I have saved this page and it has boxes (east-Asian (I assume) characters) on it (in signatures and as examples) there is no need to look at other pages I have edited to check. Thanks. -- fg^TC 07:51, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry, you didn't break anything. If you're ever in doubt, you can go to the edit history and look at the diff of your edit; the software will highlight the paragraphs you've changed or added, and if a paragraph with the boxes isn't highlighted, it hasn't been changed. ☂ (talk) 08:24, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Further to what umbrella says: if you see boxes, it means you just don't have the right font, but the underlying character is still there. If you should ever see question marks instead (on a Windows machine), that's a warning sign, because it means some non-unicode program has actually mangled the underlying encoded text. But that should never happen when dealing with wiki stuff on a decent modern browser. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:37, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you both . I've checked edit diffs repeatedly while worrying and so far have seen no accidental changes. For now I shall take your word for it and muddle on. There are good reasons why I really ought to know a lot more about this than I obviously do. I won't bore you with the details. -- fg^TC 09:24, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the proposal is doomed, and I've started a description at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Require_usernames_to_be_easy_to_type. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

This may help

I have created a "unicode usernames" list of active user accounts that contain characters not found on a standard English keyboard, for the convenience of folks who have trouble typing them. You can find it at WP:UUN. Feel free to add any names to it that I've missed. Hopefully this will lower the annoyance people feel when encountering non-English and/or whimsical usernames. ☂ (talk) 18:09, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

• Wow. Lots of Princes running around. :) --Hammersoft (talk) 18:23, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes, we're all special ❆s around here. :) ☂ (talk) 18:38, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
    • Well, at least the flake part ;) --Hammersoft (talk) 18:56, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Ask someone with toolserver access (like Δ) to create a proper list. I'm sure there are thousands of editors that should go on that list. Uʔ (talk) 19:45, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Not sure there are thousands of active editors with that type of name. Rich Farmbrough, 00:27, 1 November 2011 (UTC).

We have two templates for generating image galleries that seem to be redundant to each other, namely ((Image gallery)) and ((Gallery)). I propose to officially deprecate ((Image gallery)) by reaching a consensus here and then presenting it as a bot task at WP:BOTREQ. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Image gallery still works? Then why would you make create a bot (task) and make a number of bot edits for no actual benefit? Perhaps we can focus on things that are truly a problem (copyright violations, hoaxes, missing articles, badly translated ones, unsourced ones, POV articles, articles that need a more worldwide point of view, ...) instead of replacing something that works with something else that works? Fram (talk) 13:25, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe this is the reason for the proposed merge. Merging the two templates seem sensible. Alpha_Quadrant ^(talk) 13:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't see it. Can you give examples of articles where the bot replacement of image gallery with gallery would be an improvement? And can you assure that such bot replacement wouldn't be making things worse on other articles at the same time? Fram (talk) 09:09, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

This sounds like something that ought to be discussed at WP:TFD, as part of a proposal to merge the two templates. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:01, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Feel free to go ahead with it. I'm short on time right now. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 09:58, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

[copied from Village Pump (idea lab)]
All these take up quite some space, esp. when placed at the top of the page; it's distracting, and pushes down infoboxes. I'd like to get some ideas how to make them more effective and less space-consuming. My thought would be to have them as a line, like a header, or some top-icon, or whatever else. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:55, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree they just deface articles, if we were to add these to any article containing foreign languages scripts before infoboxes, the damage to the layout is far greater than the trivial information they bring. It's unfortunate that the MOS doesn't regulate this. The first thing you see in an article about something as important as China is that trivial information box...Some other warning boxes are even longer than the Chinese one.

And what about articles containing more than one script? Using the same logic can a user add 2 or 3 different warning boxes to the top? that would be absurd. On top of that we have the other tags (refimprove, POV, linkrot etc), just picture an article with all of this on top. Definitely their use needs to be regulated. --Tachfin (talk) 07:02, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

So how about the top-icon idea? That would be as un-intrusive as a featured-article star or padlock-icon... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:01, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Great idea, it should be implemented Tachfin (talk) 05:23, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Support—Yes I agree. Anything we can do to reduce the informational distractions from the main topic is likely to be beneficial (in terms of the ergonomic principle of reducing mental work-load). Displaying the foreign character message via an icon mouse-over is a good proposal. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:14, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

[end copy]

We need to bear accessibility in mind when deciding on an alternative. A warning about non-Roman text may seem trivial to readers with good sight, as they can easily see for themselves that such text appears in the article, but for visually-impaired readers that is not so obvious, and there needs to be a clear warning at the top of the article so that they know that if they encounter text that they, or their screen readers, have difficulty reading it may be written in a different script. I would prefer hatnotes to the current boxes, as this is where such metadata usually appear, but would oppose anything that involves mouseover. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:01, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I oppose the "icon" implementation. I suggest widening the box to the width of the info box, and removing the "Image" characters in the left of it. The height would shrink dramatically. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:03, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Well perhaps the box can be presented for those using screen readers, but invisible to those without. There could be some style sheet choice. People with their own .css file could suppress it. It could even be a part of the top icon. For example in 0.1 point font that normal reader cannot see, but that a voice reader would pick up. I always thought that this was for editors that trashed the page by using windows 3.1 or something old taht could not handle unicode. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:35, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Move it around to somewhere less intrusive but still up top, sure. Remove the descriptive aspect entirely, so that only experianced users that already know that what the icon means will know how to proceed? Please no. It is intrusive because it needs to be in order to help the large number of users burdened with Microsoft OSes that have little to no foreign language support. Sven Manguard Wha? 10:38, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Well, as you can see (I hope you read it), the gist of it is that the current implementation is simply distracting, especially when the Manual of style apparently dictates that they must appear over any infoboxes. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 14:21, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
• Question Is it possible to hack it to appear in the sidebar, under Toolbox/Special pages? Designate (talk) 14:02, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I have had peeks at the various extensive pages on Wikipedia like Wikipedia:Most wanted articles, Wikipedia:Requested articles and Wikipedia:Articles requested for more than a year, and have seen the pages upon pages of redlinks. I am not aware if such a project is already out there but I do think that one dedicated to creating stubs, if anything on all these topics would be a great idea. Per WP:IMPERFECT, I think that at least making these articles would go a long way. It is not something that hard to do, and anyone who wishes to contribute can contribute in their own way as per their own proficiency in using Wikipedia. The original intention of Wikipedia (WP:DEV) was that after the articles are made, a slow and steady article progress would commence including many contributors until a final perfected product had been completed. I think that this spirit should continue in a project to build the foundations before building our way up. Obviously improving articles will still be of it most priority, but I do think that getting these many backlogged articled out of the way and de-redlinked is a good idea.

Any thoughts?--Coin945 (talk) 09:25, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

There is a project Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles that you can join. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

That project is comprehensive alright, but it is still not exactly what I want to be a part of. The project describes itself like this: "Wikipedia ought to contain articles on topics that other encyclopaedias contain", i.e, it wants to have an adequate Wikipedia page on every single topic listed in Encyclopaedia Britannica etc. This is not what I am saying. All the random articles that have made their way into huge forgotten lists should all be created. Perhaps someone likes a certain topic but never thought to contribute to its growth because there was no such page on the topic on Wikipedia. I think that working together, all these rogue articles can find a day in the sun and be given the chance to grow and flourish in the future, instead of being forgotten under a hundred-page list of red-links.--Coin945 (talk) 10:59, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery might be the sort of thing you're looking for too. There seem to be loads of projects that encourage page development. I found this at the bottom of a project page I found at the bottom of a project page (and so ad infinitum!). There is one drawback to creating pages for every or any red link; Notability and adequate references that are not primary source would be needed if the article was ever going to be worth the pixels it's printed on. Many red links may be red for good reason. With that said, good luck! Happy editing  fg^t_c 11:36, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, of course I will take notability into account, and I fully understand what you are saying. But there is no denying that there are tons upon tons of article that haven't been created simply due to other articles taking greater precedence, because noone thought to add these completely notable topics before, or just because people couldnt be bothered and have taken a "someone else will sort it all out" attitude towards the whole endeavour. Now obviously creating tens of thousands of stubs/draft articles may arguably not be such a good idea, but I really do think it will have some definite value. I will check out that Wikiproject. Thanks Fred_Gandt. :)--Coin945 (talk) 12:40, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Stubs are fine, so long as you spend the time on each one to ensure that they are well written and have more than one or two sources. There is a small faction that is content with spawning thousands of two line, one refernce stubs semi-automatically, and I've yet to see a batch done that didn't have a ton of problems. Sven Manguard Wha? 13:11, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Ahh yes of course, I understand. When I say stubs, I do mean articles that are readable in their own right, but just havent had the care and love put into them as much as they need to reach their full potential. That is merely due to the sheer scale of articles that will need to be attended to. I only consider a stub to be a paragraph or so long at least, with good refutable sources at least placed at the bottom for someone else to continue doing his/her work, if not properly referenced That should not be a problem at all.--Coin945 (talk) 13:35, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

In my experience such wikiprojects would never work as functionally as they could. Most editors choose to work independently and work at what interest them. We have the missing article project and WP:Intertranswiki and even those are not running as full scale as they could be, far from it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

...ahhhhh... well then I guess it was just wishful thinking.. --Coin945 (talk) 14:59, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I propose to create a tool for detector disambiguations as Spanish Wikipedia (es:Wikipedia:Detector de desambiguaciones, German Wikipedia (de:Wikipedia:Helferlein/Begriffsklärungs-Check), Galician Wikipedia (gl:Wikipedia:Detector de homónimos) and Portuguese Wikipedia (pt:Wikipédia:Detector de desambiguações) have. This tool is used to detect the links that link to articles that are disambiguations. For example, someone put the link Cuatro in an article in a television program, but would have to be this Cuatro (TV channel). And these links are marked yellow. --Vivaelcelta (talk) 14:26, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the link is yellow, because I use User:Anomie/linkclassifier. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:22, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

WildBot used to serve a similar purpose. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:47, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I propose to create a tool, the spell checker (spellchecker) como Spanish Wikipedia (es:Wikipedia:Corrector ortográfico, German Wikipedia (de:Wikipedia:Helferlein/Rechtschreibprüfung), Galician Wikipedia (gl:Wikipedia:Corrector ortográfico) have. This tool marks misspelled words in red, introduced previous in a list. --Vivaelcelta (talk) 14:27, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Support. If you can get people to code it and provide the spell checker with enough of a data set, it could be very successful. On some internet browsers, I believe it is already possible to spell check content, though. Still, I would likely use it if it turns out well. Marechal Ney (talk) 04:34, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Does this mark questionable spellings when the article is viewed, or only in edit more? If only in edit mode, it would be a decent addition. Monty₈₄₅ 05:55, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The FAW box at WP:VPT makes the claim "we will not add a speellchecker" – but I'm not sure why. WP:COFAQ#SPELL, which appears to be out of date, says the contrary. Now might be the time to have one. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 09:21, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Any modern browser now has a spellchecker. How would this interact? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:15, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

"Any modern browser now has a spellchecker"? How do I access the spell checker for Internet Explorer? A deficiency of the Firefox spell checker is it can't ignore wiki markup. A plus of the Firefox spell checker is one can choose between UK and US spelling (but not the Oxford variant of UK spelling). Jc3s5h (talk) 16:02, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

(Sidestepping the definition of modern) IE10 has spell checking,[8] and older versions have had an add-on for quite a while.[9] ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:37, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The spell checker mark the words of the article when it is viewed, but not in edit mode. But that's good, because when we are seeing an article, we see the errors now, without having to view each article to find errror. Incorrect words should introcucirlas in a list like this: es:Wikipedia:Corrector ortográfico/Listado. And everyone can edit. The code is available in any of the articles of the other Wikipedias, simply have to change a couple of facts.-- Vivaelcelta {discusión  · contributions} 17:53, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, this is a little outside the box, but thinking about the some recent pretty contentious kerfluffles over article titles -- James VI and I and Sega Genesis and Mega Drive -- how about this.

In my opinion, it would be functional if we had a chief editor to decide these things. The point is not to make a "right" decision but to make a decision and move on. Granted our rubric is for the community to hash things out and find the best answer and that usually works, but sometimes it just devolves into endless and pointless bickering about trivial stuff that just wastes energy. Anyway, we don't have a chief editor and maybe that's best, but suppose there was a WikiProject composed of people who agreed as a group to step in perform this function.

If a situation came up -- I'm thinking mainly of titles right now -- where these four criteria are met:

1. There's no obvious "right" answer.
2. It's not really important (titles are seldom very important assuming that redirects are in place to get readers to the right article -- it's the article contents that matter).
3. It's contentious and sucking up a lot of oxygen.
4. There's no clear consensus or supermajority emerging -- it's stuck.

Then the members of the project could, after deciding that these four criteria are met, decide by some method -- random number generator, majority vote, pick the "side" that seems to be marginally "ahead", whatever -- which argument to support and go support it en bloc. You know, if you had 20 editors show up and all say "I agree that the title should be 'Shuck and jive' rather than 'Jive and shuck'" or whatever -- that'd help put the matter to bed.

Granted "votes" aren't supposed to count, but realistically, in the absence of agreement, supermajorities have a great deal of weight, often decisive weight. Changing the headcount in a discussion from 13-10 to 33-10 matters a lot. (Note that [[WP:CANVASS (only a guideline anyway) allows (indeed encourages) broadening participation of a neutral and nonpartisan nature, which this certainly would be.)

I dunno. I agree that this sounds very strange, but, you know, it might well be functional. Herostratus (talk) 16:27, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

A pretty interesting idea, but I feel like there would then be too much drama over the composition of the group. Maybe it would be better to have some sort of coin toss page, where each element in a debate gets assigned a number, a button is pressed to draw a number from random.org, and whoever gets it gets their way? That way, it's purely up to chance, without the possibility of even more pointless debate about biases in the chief editor, etc. since there's no human intervention in the decision making. Of course, both of theses solutions beg raise the question: how do you get the debaters to agree to this method? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:16, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that it's actually possibly a good idea but the drama factor would likely be high and it'd be attacked (with some justification) as "un-Wikipedia" (whereas endless sterile arguing is (sometimes) very "Wikipedian", I guess). Well, WP:3O is a kind of random-number solution in that you both agree to abide the opinion of the first editor who happens along. But that's only good for minor small-scale disputes. Hmmmm.... there is ((Random number))... maybe if the debaters are all tired enough there'll come a time when they agree to use it. I'll keep that in mind. (BTW thank you for striking "beg".) Herostratus (talk) 04:29, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Strongly oppose both ideas The idea of an editor group that solves disputes by making a decision and forcing the discussion to move on is intriguing, but fundamentally flawed. When you have issues as contentious as territorial disputes, or other contentious issues, there is no way that this will work. One side is always going to continue to disagree, and unless the "chief editor" has the authority to block upwards of a dozen people, the argumenets will, if anything, escalate.

Secondly, this goes against Wikipedia's model in a big way. Wikipedia dosen't have a "Chief Editor", that's one of the big distinguishes between Wikipedia and other encyclopedias. We have the consensus model, which functions 99% of the time. When it does, you don't hear about it, which is why the number seems high to anyone that watches AN, AN/I, and ArbCom. The creation of something like this would be a massive turnoff, and could cause a mass exodus of editors, as it would mean that our very core is being changed.

Finally, random numbers is an even more terrible idea. The idea of solving disputes by removing context and discussion and making it based on chance flies in the face of our policies, not to mention basic academic integrity. It would ruin Wikipedia's reputation. "The encyclopedia where everything is decided by random chance". Sven Manguard Wha? 05:41, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Lets merge Abuse Response (formerly Abuse reports), and Long-term abuse. Abuse response takes reports from IPs that were blocked and reports it to the ISP (or responsible place). While that, Long-term abuse keeps reports of users of them. The two of them are like sister projects, as Abuse Response and Long-term abuse are specialized places for actionning vandalism. The 2 big and only differences are that 1 takes users, and the other, IPs. The other difference is that for LTA, we normally don't contact the ISP, or whatever (with a couple exceptions). They are just points of reference that aren't used that much. So with a couple of small changes, we could easily merge the two projects (which are pretty disorganized too). ~~Ebe123~~ → report ← Contribs 22:56, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

"Abuse Response and Long-term abuse are specialized places for actionning vandalism" - Well, yeah, they are specialised areas that deal with issues relating to users. However, the idea that all specialised forums are similar in that they're all specialised (in other words, they aren't similar at all) and therefore should be merged into one general forum is fundamentally flawed (yet seems to be something that you have been pushing for insistently recently, e.g. Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism_Unit/Re-formatting/Discussion#Main). Abuse report is a forum that deals with reporting IP address to ISPs; LTA is a forum that documents MOs/other information about long terms offenders (e.g. Scibaby, etc. etc.) for the sake of reference. These are two forums that provide distinctly different services, and merging them without demonstrating any real need for such a merge (or even really demonstrating much understanding of what they are (e.g. "The 2 big and only differences are that 1 takes users, and the other, IPs" is very simplified)) seems unnecessary. Please can you provide an actual reason why they should be merged. Regards, Spitfire^Tally-ho! 20:05, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Long-term abuse doesn't necessarily involve Abuse response and vice-versa. –MuZemike 22:57, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

For background see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 94#Deployment of Feedback Dashboard. Basically, the feedback log is all public (Special:FeedbackDashboard), and this is not particularly obvious to those editors that leave the feedback. We have had situations of WP:NPA violations in the feedback log, and administrators have to police that and smack the users afterwards. Currently the MoodBar gadget has only a tiny link to its terms of use found at foundation:feedback privacy statement, which give general information about the licensing of the feedback information, but no indication that practically everyone can read that feedback, nor any information about behavioral rules that apply. Of course, the English Wikipedia community has no power to alter a foundation page or gadget, but we can ask them to provide a link to a local Wikipedia page as well (either in their foundation page, or in the MoodBar itself), where the community can provide additional information and rules. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 17:28, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible to watchlist a special page, either with a script or some other way? Monty₈₄₅ 18:00, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't know. It's probably best that you ask the developers on WP:VPT. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:02, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't believe there is currently a way to watchlist changes to a special page, though I bet it's theoretically possible for it to be added. There are lots of ideas for the further versions of the tool here, and if you want to do stuff like watchlist changes, you should speak up on the talk page. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:01, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not possible to watch special page because it's a special page not an article, as such has no revisions to watch, anyway it's possible to implement the watchlist inside moodbar special page, so that its changes could be logged on watchlist, it would be complicated anyway, possibly doesn't worth that modification. Petrb (talk) 21:52, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I've just warned a user for a personal attack directed at a specific editor, which was in this thing. But I cannot remove the offending comment - as I would be able to if it were on any other type of page. I think that is a concern; in this specific case, it's really no big deal - but what if it was libellous or a death-threat or something?  Chzz  ►  12:17, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, administrators can hide any of those comments from public view, which is practically the same thing as deleting anything on Wikipedia short of wp:oversight. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:27, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, administrators can - I can't. That means that effectively, these are fully protected pages. There are additional concerns, but I will raise those elsewhere per WP:BEANS.  Chzz  ►  15:18, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Yesterday I requested a oversight of an e-mail-address (which was successfully done). mabdul 08:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

It's pretty easy to extend this for anyone else than sysops. Petrb (talk) 08:31, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

It was hidden (from non-admins); it was not oversighted/suppressed.  Chzz  ►  16:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I am disappointed to see so many westerners editing between 11am and 11:02am today. For next remberance day, how about introducing a feature that asks them if they really really really want to? It should be individual choice of course, but people should at least be reminded. Willothewisp (talk) 11:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not necessarily 11 o'clock in their timezone. After all, you described them as "Westerners" which is incredibly broad. In any case, a script could probably do this. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 11:08, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

We are an international and multi-cultural project. Not everybody in the world observes Remembrance Day, nor can everybody be expected to even know or care about it. Other countries have other days of remembrance. Are we also going to pop up such a message to everybody editing in Israel on Yom HaShoah 10:00? Or to people editing in Turkey on 10 November 09:05? Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:22, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't see why not. Willothewisp (talk) 11:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Strong oppose People, including Wikipedia editors, have the right to observe or not observe such events as they see fit. To prohibit them from editing is to deny them that choice, and is contrary to the spirit of both Wikipedia and the democracy which the remembered soldiers fought to preserve. If people want to observe Remembrance Day, nothing is preventing them from doing so. Yunshui 雲‍水 11:34, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed; it is not our place or mission to proscribe or encourage such things. --Errant ^(chat!) 12:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Although a noble thought, I agree with the last oppositional comments. If any user wants to stop and remember, Wikimedia isn't stopping them and shouldn't provide a guilt trip either. In fact I find that kind of thing (especially around this time of year) quite off-putting. Banners with cartoon pumpkins or holly sprigs in the corner. This is an encyclopaedia not a shopping mall. fg^t_c 11:36, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Huh??? What is a "rememb[e?]rance day", why should I care about it, and what has it got to do with these specific times? So far I thought of myself as a Westerner, but that doesn't seem to be what you mean, either. Hans Adler 12:18, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Remembrance Day fg^t_c

I don't think it's appropriate for a world-wide project such as Wikipedia. If I were going to make such an observance in a more appropriate environment, my first task would be to figure out what time zone, if any, was observed on the battlefield(s) in 1918. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:42, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - Those being remembered fought and died for our freedom to live without others telling us to follow their brand of patriotism. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:48, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Sorry, but this is not a "free encyclopedia that everyone can edit except on a certain time at a specific memorial day of some specific countries". —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:23, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - NPOV. →Στc. 22:52, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - I was wounded in both Northern Ireland and the Falklands and know that respect must be freely given - if it is imposed it is not respect and is meaningless. Kiltpin (talk) 15:05, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
• While I figure it's moot, I'll just point out that, for example, in the United States, Memorial Day is held at the end of May, while November 11 is designated Veterans Day and is meant to pay tribute to all veterans, live or dead, wartime or peacetime service, and we certainly don't designate a specific time of day to do so. rdfox 76 (talk) 16:27, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
• Yeah, and please also on following full days also: Sunday, Friday (for our Arabic users), Volkstrauertag (for our Germans), Christmas (for our Christs), Hanukkah (for our Jews), and other geographic and religious holidays. -_- mabdul 23:57, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm looking for a consensus for new categorization of Current Events contents. Please come here and discuss about that. LyJPedia (talk) 09:57, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

A new proposal for ethnic groups naming conventions can be found here: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#New proposal for "Articles on peoples (ethnicities and tribes)". -Uyvsdi (talk) 19:32, 13 November 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi

See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2011 November 14#Template:Lists of Russians 198.102.153.2 (talk) 21:49, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

All too typically (it seems to me) IP talk pages are only filled with warnings, block notifications and occasionally some short contentious disagreements. Although it is of course at each editors discretion whether or not to individually thank other editors, I have seen very few "Thank you" messages on any IP talk pages. There are however (I have added them myself) welcome templates and messages that seem to be only added following a first time (possible) vandalism. These usually have a less than welcoming tone due to their main purpose being to sternly advise. I have seen time and time again good quality work done by IP editors who might become valued account holders if they were more widely thanked and encouraged.

• I propose that editors make a greater effort to welcome and encourage IP editors who have drawn our attention for doing good work.

We have barnstars but although they serve to award they do nothing to educate or encourage account creation.

• Perhaps a template welcome message could be created by the community that we will then be advised (by community guidelines (such as those that guide us to warn vandals)) and encouraged to add to any IP editors talk page after we see them do good work on any article we may have been watching or simply visiting. I'm not suggesting sweeping change and policy rigmarole. I'm suggesting more of a spirited drive to thank casual editors for their efforts.
• A knock on effect would be that all IP talk pages carrying these "Thank you"s will have as their first message a big helpful thank you message serving to enlighten any new user of that potentially (words escape me) anti-static IP. I hope you'll take this proposal in the spirit it is proposed and even if it leads to no great community effort each reader will consider adopting the proposal in a personal capacity. fg^t_c 21:40, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean that we ought to have something like ((Welcome-anon)) and ((Welcome-anon-vandalism-fighter))? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Yup! And the drive to use it/them. I didn't know of those exact templates but have used similar. I assumed there might be some somewhere that could be used. Maybe I am looking in the wrong places but since signing up I have heard a great deal about making sure vandals are warned and dealing with IPs. I'd like to hear and see more about encouragement and support. If equal or better still greater weight was given to encouragement and support of new users and anon IP casual editors than is given to warning and watching out for and banning and monitoring and blocking with semi-protections, we might see more involvement and less bickering, warring and blatant vandalism. Anyway, I didn't intend this to be my soapbox so that's the pitch! (Thanks for the template links WhatamIdoing) fg^t_c 03:11, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

By the way: a good term for an "anti-static" IP is a dynamic IP. bobrayner (talk) 20:40, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Mhmm that's the one! TY  fg^t_c 00:21, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support This is a very good idea, and it seems to be within the scope of WP:WC, except the fact that the Welcoming Committee only features recently created user accounts, and it is rather tedious to praise IP editors, simply because there are many of them. If an easy, perhaps automated solution could be implemented, such as those suggested by User:WhatamIdoing, I'm sure this would work well. Tarheel95 (talk) 01:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

  WP:TWINKLE offers a semi-automated welcome system that includes several templates specifically for IP users, including the two I linked. Getting people to remember to use them is the bigger challenge. Automated systems have been rejected repeatedly (Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Use_a_bot_to_welcome_new_users). I like to leave the subject-specific ((subst:MedWelcome-anon)) on pages when I see unregistered users doing good work at medicine-related articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:56, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• So, this is pretty much what I'd like to get at with this test :) The difficulty with trying to be nicer to IPs is that their talk pages are cluttered with tons of ancient warnings and block notices. The first step, as I see it, is to clear those away on a regular basis and see what happens when the person getting warned/welcomed/whatever is much more likely to actually be the person making the applicable edits, not some random person who uses that IP a few days or weeks down the line. Also, if you're interested in getting hard data on whether changing the message makes a difference, me and Steven Walling could always design a new, friendlier template and A/B test it against what the community is currently using... have you seen our task force? (Shameless self-promotion!) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 01:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Mhmm. I fully support that testing. Great idea. I recently (due to posts here and there on these subjects) found ((Welcome-to-Wikipedia)) (at this time more suited to welcoming than thanking and account holders than IPs. But the style is great) and am very impressed indeed. I asked Magister Scienta (the creator) to add another feature and he added it almost immediately! I strongly suggest its use and support. What I originally wanted to propose here is a WMF drive to suggest encouraging IP users (whether shared or not) to create accounts by thanking them for their edits (where good) in much the same way we are encouraged to warn vandals. As I stated somewhere above: I have seen multiple times suggestions to warn but very rarely (if ever) seen suggestions to thank. I'd like to see more suggestions to encourage and assist than to deter and dissist (couldn't resist (did it again!) the rhyme). fg^t_c 01:47, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm working on my own version of the welcome template I mentioned above. Just mentioning it. User:Fred Gandt/sandbox/templates/Welcome fg^t_c 07:16, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

• Gee, didn't I just read about something called "WikiLove"? Some folks don't like it because it makes Wikipedia too much like Facebook or some online time sink like that. I don't think we need a guideline to get people to use it, do we? -- llywrch (talk) 20:44, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I would like to propose a new gadget that I've developed in Hebrew Wikipedia which allows auto completion for links and templates in the edit box. The gadget determines when the editor adds text such as double [, or double {, and suggests links or templates the same way the search box does. It does it only when the position of the cursor is in scope of link or template. The gadget already works in Hebrew Wikipedia, where it gain many positive feedbacks. If installed here, it could improve the edit experience in English Wikipedia too. As a gadget, any user can select by himself/herself to use it. The code is in he:MediaWiki:Gadget-autocomplete.js (it doesn't require any internationalization - so it can be used as is). ערן (talk) 17:42, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Any opinion? You can try it by adding

mw.loader.load('http://bits.wikimedia.org/he.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=he&modules=ext.gadget.autocomplete');

to Special:MyPage/common.js. Eran (talk) 21:16, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Snow close. There is a clear consensus against this proposal. Armbrust ^{Talk to me about my edits}_review 02:34, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

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

---

We've all seen, and most of us have used, templates like ((fact)) or ((CN)), which cause the wording^{citation needed} to be added after an unreferenced fact. It's a Wikipedia totem; some of us even have it on T-shirts. However, I propose to change it to ^{please add a citation}, for three reasons:

1. it's far less abrupt, and thus friendlier to the editor, perhaps a newbie, who added a fact in good faith
2. it's a call-to-action, not a criticism
3. we're asking editors to do something for us; we should say please

Though it's a few characters longer (which could be reduced by dropping the "a"; or even reducing to ^{please cite}), I think that's outweighed by the benefits. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:22, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

“Please add a citation” would be too long, but “please cite” would be OK. (On the other hand, I sometimes temporarily put a citation needed tag on statements I add myself, if I cannot provide a precise citation straight away because I'm not home or something; if the tag read “please cite” instead, adding it in such a situation would make me feel a bad person. ― A. di M.​  20:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't think it's an improvement. "Citation needed" isn't particularly abrupt or critical, it's just indicating that the article is incomplete and something needs to be done. I think it's good to promote a skeptical tone when things are uncited, especially as the public has grown more confident in the encyclopedia's reliability. The threshold for verifiability has gone up, not down, in the last five years or so. Our GAs and FAs are more tightly scrutinized than ever. To me, "Citation needed" has become a trademark meaning "This could be false". Everyone gets it. "Please cite" implies that it's true and the paperwork just needs to be filled out. That's the wrong mentality, especially compared to WP:V. —Designate (talk) 21:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Designate. Citation Needed is one of the most iconic things to come out of Wikipedia. In addition, He hit the nail on the head about the assumed meanings of CN and please cite --Guerillero | My Talk 21:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Then again, Jimbo would probably say that if you do not think that “it's true and the paperwork just needs to be filled out” then you should delete it altogether, not tag it. ― A. di M.​  21:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Although I like the idea of a warmer, less officious reading template, I have to oppose this idea. "Citation needed" tells any reader exactly what they need to know: "The statement nearby is not cited". It implies nothing and cannot be misinterpreted. It is remarkably unambiguous considering it can be read at least two ways: Either as a suggestion to try to find a reference or as a note that the statement may not be very reliable (while still not blatantly unreliable). Although I like fluffy, warm cuddles and smilies, I think they have their place. Their place is not in encyclopaedic articles. There we need to be unbiased to the point of cold and hard. However I would support changing the title (in the html sense (hovertext (cringe))) to something more inexperience friendly. Maybe "Another editor has noted that some statements preceding this notice are currently not verifiable via an appropriate citation. You can help Wikipedia by adding one if you like.". This would provide extra encouragement to interested but inexperienced users while implying neither that the info is wrong or right but just that there is no way to tell yet. Something like that anyway. Summary: Keep the current "Citation needed" text but update the hovertext. fg^t_c 06:12, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• An interesting idea and certainly worth considering. I find Designate's counter-argument persuasive though and agree with Fred_Gandt that hovertext would be a good compromise. Uniplex (talk) 08:47, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
• Comment Oppose The tag ^{[citation needed]} just means that, well, citation is needed. I do not perceive a critical tone, nor is it "unfriendly," it only implies that Wikipedia entries must be backed by a verifiable source. I would, however, be in favor of the "please cite" tag, simply because it is more concise. Tarheel95 (talk) 12:14, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
• I do not see any need for this proposal. It's a solution looking for a problem. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:38, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• • We already have a problem: we're recruiting, and keeping, insufficient new editors. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:25, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's fine. In some ways, it is more polite - "citation needed" just acknowledges that it needs improving - by anyone - whereas the 'please cite' thing is asking a person who is reading an article to take action - so you'd be changing it from "here's something that should be fixed" to "fix this". Current wording is perfectly clear; it's even become iconic.  Chzz  ►  17:07, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

  ^ This. Also, "please add a citation" would look awful silly in print. –xeno^talk 17:12, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

  Templates can be made to emit different text in print, to on-screen. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:25, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• "Citation needed" serves as a direct warning to the reader that the tagged text is unsupported by a source and may or may not be accurate. I think changing the text to "please add a citation" (or similar) introduces a subtle, misleading implication that the tagged text is correct and just needs a source added to it. 28bytes (talk) 17:19, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose as Chzz says, it is iconic. But also the harder edge is appropriate. The tone we want is not "it would be awfully nice if someone put in some justification for this statment"; it is more like "if someone doesn't come up with some evidence, this statement could be deleted by anyone." ((cn)) isn't really a request; it's a demand. Mangoe (talk) 17:53, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
  • "…isn't really a request; it's a demand"quite. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:25, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
• Suggestion It would be possible and perhaps beneficial to either extend the function of ((Cn-span)) or create an new similar template with extra functionality. The extension I propose would need to be software supported and would automatically search the history of the article to establish who added the questionable claim, then add to their talk page a message asking that the claim be cited. One possible problem would be establishing who is responsible for the present claim (bearing in mind that it may have mutated by multiple edits). Although we can do this manually, the claim may have been made years ago and (I have tried in the past) can be very hard to find. I could go on but will instead respond to comments on this suggestion if appropriate instead. fg^t_c 02:33, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose the original suggestion per Chzz. Oppose Fred Gandt's proposal because ideally, people place citation needed tags because they don't have the resources avalible to do the citations themselves. Bouncing the message back to them asking them to do it is counterproductive. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:44, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

To clarify: If User:A adds "The thing is red because it is filled with magical pixie dust" and some time later User:B wraps it in ((Cn-span)) (or something like it), User:A gets a message asking "You stated blah at blah. This statement has been called into question. Could you please provide a citation?". If User:A doesn't know of any reference for their statement (we have cause for general concern) they simply do nothing. If User:A added the template themselves (at the same time they added the statement or later) nothing would happen (no message sent). Although, if users are in the habit of adding statements they cannot cite and justifying them by adding a cite-needed-template, perhaps what should happen is that the software disallows the addition in the first place. fg^t_c 09:37, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

There is no reliable way to detect which user added original material; they could have copied, reworded, trimmed, corrected, etc. existing material and revision parser would be none the wiser. Also there is no requirement to add the citation right there and then (WP:NODEADLINE). And there is definitely no way to automatically reliably detect addition of uncited material, besides the point that forbidding such edits is the last thing we want (meta:Founding principles). (misread) —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:54, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting forbidding additions if not cited. I suggested that additions accompanied by cite templates could be disallowed. However that suggestion should not be taken out of context (by "context" I mean when using this suggested (not proposed) new template). I agree that disallowing additions where not referenced is an extremely bad idea. My point was that users adding material they cannot cite is 1/2 or more of the reason we need these templates in the first place. The software could easily find who added the text originally. In fact it would be far easier for software to do it than us. The diffs we see are generated by the software and (I am happy to learn otherwise) while the diffs are being calculated the very info needed to provide the OP would be uncovered. If a statement has mutated by such a great degree (by repeated edit) that its levenshtein difference is greater than n, the template could simply abort its secondary objective (to post a request to the OP). However, this was just some thinking out loud. Maybe something for the future. fg^t_c 11:08, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I misread that. But the fact that software cannot easily find who added what is still true. It will have too many false positives, and it is not as simple as comparing 2 strings. If I copy some content from one article to another (like an AfD closed as "merge"), how will the software detect that? How will it detect vandalism or reversions? How would it detect context change versus non-context change? And most importantly, how would it detect that something needs citing in the first place (basic fact, lead, captions, quotes, etc.)? For example, Cluebot (which is much more useful) was opposed unless it has almost negligible false positive rate. For reference, WikiBlame is a tool that parses revisions to find when text was added. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:32, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I truly do not know. You raise points I cannot begin to answer. I simply have not got the technical knowledge or skill. An aside: "WikiBlame" is an awful name for a tool to find OPs. Why must everything be someone's fault? Thanks for the interest. fg^t_c 11:44, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose to the proposed wording. There may be some hypothetical better wording, but I doubt it. Per Chzz, though not because it is iconic, but because "this needs citation" is subtly different from "would you cite this, please?". —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:54, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose The information is more for readers than editors and warns that an editor thinks a citation is needed. I see no need for please any more than I need in the name of Allah or thanks to the thoughts of Chairman Mao before everything. Dmcq (talk) 12:13, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

It's clear my suggestion is not popular. What about the proposed change to the HTML title attribute? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:25, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any point. I've never noticed that there was a title attribute. If I wanted to know more I'd click on it, not hover. —Designate (talk) 21:56, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

The suggested title text as worded sounds pretty good, if perhaps a bit long. Maybe it'd help to simply extend the current title text with: ". You can help Wikipedia by adding an appropriate citation." I'm not sure what all browsers support its display on hover, though, nor what happens to long texts. And I'll just mention here that it's always kind of bugged me that the reason parameter didn't show up on hover; I have to open up an edit window and find the template to read it. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 23:14, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Example: Hover over me fg^t_c 00:05, 6 November 2011 (UTC) P.S. I think that's too long. Maybe: Something shorter

I remember that some browsers truncate long title texts, and on some browsers they only last a couple of seconds and there's no way to get them back short of reloading the page, but that was a while ago and I'm not sure whether any browser version still in common use does that. ― A. di M.​  16:55, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. The text "citation needed" indicates the present state, quite correctly. But I'm not a traditionalist about this: I think we need fewer superscript annoyances for unlogged-in readers, not more. I've long wished for a reduction of visual impact: shortening to "unsourced"^[unsourced], possibly "citation?"^[citation?] or even "source?"^[source?] or the reductionist "?"^[?] so that reading the article is interrupted less. The current HTML title= text "This claim needs references to reliable sources from November 2011", is okay, but should say "since November 2011", because we're talking about time, not location. And thanks for mentioning ((Cn-span)) - that's cool. --Lexein (talk) 17:41, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

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

The described method encourages large corporations donate funds to Wikipedia.

Display Wikipedia utilization and donation meters at the banner with message from Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales. The utilization meter has a few bars, each one representing visits per month by large companies employees. The donation meter has a few bars, showing the largest donations of the ongoing fund raising campaign.

Here are the examples of the meters visualization:

Wikipedia usage meter
Wikipedia funds contribution meter

I can provide software for this. It is very simple.

David — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mpkmtv (talk • contribs) 23:36, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Tracking vists rather than edits is probably a bad idea - and will companies really welcome publicing how much their employees are (a) slacking off in works time or (b) making company sponsored POV edits.Nigel Ish (talk) 23:48, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

You don't understand. This method is bullet proof!! But yeah, seriously, why would a company want to advertise their employees viewing habits? In any case, selling ad space for company logos is fail city. 31.31.75.216 (talk) 19:38, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

"Slacking off"? In the knowledge economy WP should properly be seen as a tool contributing to productivity. LeadSongDog come howl! 02:23, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Please see my proposed alternative to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship at Wikipedia:Tool apprenticeship. Here's the summary:

In tool apprenticeship, a user who has an immediate practical need for a particular administrator tool or tools, such as deletion or protection, makes a request to receive that tool. Provided the user is in good standing and has a need, they receive the tool on a trial basis for a limited period (weeks to months). When this period expires, the tool is automatically revoked.

After or shortly before the end of their trial, the user can file a request to retain the tool permanently, based on their performance during the trial period, which will be granted if the user substantially used the tool and exercised good judgement. If the request is denied, the user will be given extensive feedback on their usage and may (if their misuse was not too egregious) have the opportunity for another trial period. Over time, a user who performs a variety of tasks may acquire many tools, giving them similar status to current administrators.

To centralize discussion, please leave comments and feedback on the proposal's talk page (Wikipedia talk:Tool apprenticeship). Both objections and suggestions for changes or extensions are welcome, but please read over the whole thing first including the anticipated objections. Thank you! (crossposted to Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship) Dcoetzee 11:51, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I have started a RFC on the purpose of the Portal namespace, which I believe to be useless. You may view it here. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:26, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Request to homebrew programmers to create free applications for Wikipedia allowing to get free Wikipedia to a greater number of people over the world. 88.27.143.215 (talk) 20:31, 16 November 2011 (UTC)