Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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New ideas and proposals are discussed here. Before submitting:

Keeping sports stats up-to-date

I’m the founder and CEO of StatSheet, Inc. (http://statsheet.com), a sports media company that specializes in making sports stats easy to integrate across the web.

There are thousands of sports pages on wikipedia that get out of date quickly because the articles contain sports stats related to a team or player.

Would you have any interest in StatSheet providing a service to Wikipedia contributors that allowed them to embed a snippet of Javascript, which updated those stats/standings/etc in real-time? The embedded content could look like it is part of the page — not an outside add-on.

We have a service called Embed StatSheet that does exactly this: http://embed.statsheet.com

Look at the football standings table on the following page to get an idea of what I'm talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_A%26M#Athletics

Robbie

While such a service would certainly be useful to Wikipedia's sports team pages, and if it was implemented we would certainly be willing to attribute the content as we do any other entry, I'm somewhat doubtful it will work out due to a combination of Wikipedia's copyright status and our editors generally being opposed to advertisement. I suggest you post this message to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports, where our sports-related article editors congregate, and you may wish to also visit more specific venues like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject American football. --erachima talk 23:46, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As a sports editor, my first inclination is to be a skeptic. I can say up front that the use of a stat service like this that carries a note like "statistics provided by company" simply will not fly. It actually runs counter to several policies related to promotion (and in your case, self-promotion). I think that given the promotional use of your company name is extremely unlikely to be agreeable to the community, the fact that you would not be paid for the use of such a service, and the requirement that contributions be released under a free license makes Wikipedia a very unlikely client for your services. Doubly so given the fact that if there was such a need, one of our more technical editors could likely be convinced to write a bot that would accomplish the same function. Resolute 23:55, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
a note like "statistics provided by company simply will not fly; Yeah, at most, people might be willing to give them a footnote as a source citation. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:17, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, this idea is bad because it is provided by a company, which means it is commercial, which conflicts with wmf's goals. Kayau Voting IS evil 13:33, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If we got it through a free service, that would be acceptable, but anything that uses a "commercial" service is a no go. Though users are more then welcome to cite your statistics. Sadads (talk) 13:44, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's about the source. What's important is under what terms would be the stats released. If it was free license compatible with the current Wikipedia license, this would be great. If not, then, yeah, it's probably impossible. Svick (talk) 13:46, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Can the numbers be copyrighted? I'm sure any interpretation, analysis or layout can be copyrighted, but I don't see it for the raw numbers. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:42, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hence proper citations, Sadads (talk) 15:47, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Article rating systems as an informative tool about vetting

Currently, the vetting (review) processes on Wikipedia is poorly understood by the general public. Wiki is often judged privately and publicly on articles that may or may not measure up to our highest standards. This leads to mixed opinions about the content, as well as sharp criticism and general distrust by the public and within the academic community. This in turn could complicate efforts to develop expert review systems in an atmosphere of distrust and misunderstanding.

In order for a reader to assess the Wiki-rated quality of a non-GA or FA article, they must select the Discussion tab (if the article is rated at all). If the article lacks a talk page or does not even have a header with a rating, no information is provided. If a rating is provided, it may either link to WP:ASSESS or an assessment page for a specific WikiProject. The pages often provide little information in a format that would be engaging to the average reader. Furthermore, ratings vary between projects, and many pages are rated inaccurately. The higher-quality content offered on Wiki, in the form of A-class, GA, and FA are not always perfect, but sweeps and reviews have improved the content within the past few years. The latter two even provide a link to WP:GA or WP:FA respectively from the article itself, in the form of a green plus or a bronze star icon. In short, article ratings and communication about those ratings are inconsistent and offer little "reader-friendly" information about our vetting process.

I would like to start by making a very general proposal. (In other words, don't read more into it than what it says.)

Proposal:

To begin a process with the goal of finding ways to utilize some sort of rating system to inform readers about the quality of the content of the articles they are viewing and inform them, as simply as possible, about our vetting system(s).

The proposal is being left very general for a reason. There have been many deadlocked issues that tie in with this topic, and I don't wish to address those details now. The purpose is to get consensus on whether or not to move forward with this general idea. More proposals will come, becoming more and more specific as we collectively find the most agreeable solutions.

Reason to support:

  1. You feel that informing the reader of an article's general quality is helpful and could build trust and understanding between Wikipedia and the public.

Reason to oppose:

  1. You feel that any sort of article rating system should be viewed only as a tool to editors, not readers.

These are the only points I want people to focus on for this round of the discussion. Again, please do not read more into than this than what is explicitly stated. – VisionHolder « talk » 16:01, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. Support the idea in principle and am prepared to facilitate other issues to effect this (i.e. antiquated grading) Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:16, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  2. We need to make the program more broadly accessible, it is a serious issue when we are interacting with traditional Academic communities. They just don't understand that we don't promote everything as being of high quality. It scares them that people are always going to trust everything on Wikipedia. Sadads (talk) 18:04, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  3. (Sort of) I support this idea in general, though I agree with the opposers in that I think it is probably too early to implement. If we can reduce variation between WikiProjects and reduce outdated assessments, this would be an excellent development. Walkerma (talk) 02:47, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    A graduated deployment, first to registered users then to the general public with a 6 month period to clean up the outdated assessments? Would that be the kind of approach you would like?Sadads (talk) 11:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I would like that a lot. However, I think we need to hold off for a year or two, to reduce variation. Walkerma (talk) 03:57, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Six months to clean up oudated assessments? The GA sweep exercise took years.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:06, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support, though I would prefer a graduated deployment along the lines of Sadads's comment. --Yair rand (talk) 01:39, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  1. Trying to apply any kind of quality assessment system across Wikipedia's 3.3 million articles consistently seems set to fail. There are widely varying standards in what constitutes start- C- and B-class that aren't applied uniformly; as long as there is inconsistency, telling readers that an article is B-class for example is a bad idea as it may lull them into a false sense of security. Wikipedia should be read with a sense of scepticism. Nev1 (talk) 16:16, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  2. As Nev1 says, start- C- and B-class are applied inconsistently and there are reassessment procedures for GA and FA. I'll add that there are well-defined criteria for GA and FA. --Philcha (talk) 17:08, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    As stated above, please discuss below. I was wanting to avoid lengthy discussions in these subsections. The two of you are also assuming too much. I'm not even thinking about Start-, C-, and B- classes as this point. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:12, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I completely agree with what Nev1 said, just seems set to fail. -- Jack?! 18:43, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    This proposal seems to be based on the premise that a general reader is not capable of evaluating an article; and must therefore be "force-fed" with a quality symbol on the article. Firstly, I would suggest that it is not always necessary to look at the talk page of any article to see whether it is "good" or "bad". Some articles are very short, have no references and may even have a {{stub}} template at the bottom of the page and possibly no illustrations; in contrast other articles are well referenced and well illustrated. At this level a reader should be able to informally "rate" it in his/her own mind as a high, medium or low quality article. Secondly, the reader can go to the talk page to see if the article has been graded (perhaps readers need to know this). However, there are a number of problems with Stub/Start/C and B-class ratings: C-grade is a newish grade and is not accepted by certain WikiProjects (such as MilLHist, but there are others) so an article that appears to be C-quality has to be either up- or down-graded by those WP's that don't accept C-grade; it may have been graded too high or low a few years ago before WP:verification was tightened up, some previously B-rated article have been re-rated as C-class; the article may have been improved, but the grading has not been adjusted to take account, or it may have been extensively vandalised or copious uncited material added, so the current grading is too "high". Pyrotec (talk) 19:46, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Quite frankly, alot of readers (think high school students and people without full high school educations) don't have the skills to evaluate the quality of research or presented information. Just think how common quackery is on television and in advertising. Sadads (talk) 18:08, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Or they can't be bothered paying attention even if they do have a university degree, which is why politicians just go for out-of-context and misleading one liners. And it happens on Wikipedia with grading metrics as well, so even if people make the "consumer reports" easy to obtain, the WikiProjects will inflate/game them anyway as the leaders and article owners and whatever other stakeholders have an interest in doing so. So many WikiProjects have silly marketing gimmicks nowadays YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    But some consumer report is better than no consumer report. At least the people that will look for one will appreciate it.Sadads (talk) 02:13, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  3. I don't think making B/C/Start tags more formal/prominent would actually work and it would just lead to edit wars on history pages, especially on non-western world topics. Most history/politics/culture articles in those parts of the world are deliberately POV, and most of the owners including admins typically always remove any tags even if the article is unsourced etc or POV tags. So people will either edit war to make their POV more prestigious, or there would just be massive grade inflation, of which there is heaps already, particularly with many wikiprojects led by people who are politically conscious or obsessed with their image; there is at least one Wikiproject and likely more where the median B class article is less than even 10kb (even though the examples on the assessment guides are always 30k) despite the invariable claims of pursuing a standard higher than everyone else (I'm aware that some topics don't have much info, but there are always incentives as you get the same number of points etc if it reaches a certain "class" so people are more likely to write on dead-end topics and get nominally better stats). I wonder whether WP will descend into political marketing as an increasing number of "leaders" try to offer more and more incentives to try and lure the remaining would-be writers to serve them and bump up their stats YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:48, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  4. This proposal is built upon the false assumption that article ratings are sufficiently accurate that they provide useful information. Even when reviewers have a working knowledge of the rating system and take the time to read the article before making an assessment, two conditions that are routinely violated, assessments a frequently more a practice in WP:ILIKEIT than a meaningful rating of an article against an established set of criteria. Through in problems of reviews needing to be redone following significant changes to an article and the difficulty in finding reviewers with enough knowledge of the subject to determine the level of article coverage (many subjects are still waiting for someone with enough knowledge to write the article) and there is no reason to believe meaningful assessments will be available in the foreseeable future. --Allen3 talk 01:39, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Yes, the assessements are useful just for Editors. However, I just wanted to add that it would be really helpful to add an extra note to Editors, in the template or all wikiprojects - leading newbies to the Assessment rules, the process and WHO actually does the assessments. There's a bit of information overload in trying to get to the write place to get help about assesements. It's probably dumb, but I've been editing for a year and only just realised that the the assessments can be done by each wikiproject rather than a faceless approved specialist Assessment team. Teine Savaii (talk) 09:15, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • This proposal is very poorly thought out. You've simultaneously made it too vague and too specific to have any useful results. Attempting to support or oppose requires pigeonholing your opinion into one of two specific options (which are, I might add, heavily skewed towards support), and because there's nothing concrete to the proposal it's impossible to give an honest assessment. Also it's on the Village Pump, which is not an avenue well-suited to long term discussion, and this is an issue that will require long term discussion. In conclusion, I'm sure you're trying to help, User:Visionholder, but I cannot possibly envision anything productive coming out of this topic. --erachima talk 16:15, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal has been mulled over for over a month. Following a prior proposal at WT:ASSESS, where people focused too much on pet issues and couldn't address the general concern, I've taken a step back and tried presenting it in a more general fashion. So if I add specifics, the topic gets bogged down in deadlocked topics, and people come out in opposition because I either included or omitted references to controversial things like A-class. If I'm general, then I'm not being specific enough. I'm also confused because people complained that the last proposal wasn't in a more visible place, such as the Village Pump. Once I put the issue up here, I'm told that this is not the right place either. ... And we wonder why relatively few people stick around long enough to become dedicated editors. The reasons: thing's poorly explained, there's little consistency, and most editors would rather grumble, revert, delete, and criticize than act constructively. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:09, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Upon further reflection, I'm going to go cool down for a few days in another part of Wiki. We'll see how this proposal develops or rots. Whoever wants ownership of it can have it. Obviously if I'm not capable of coming up with a well-thought-out proposal, then I shouldn't be conducting one. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:32, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • You don't need a proposal to have a discussion. Just start it. You only need to get a consensus when you want to say "Here's our idea for a new assessment system, should we use it?" Mr.Z-man 16:28, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My initial wording focused on a "task force", but I was advised against it. Maybe this should have been a discussion, but I wanted to see a consensus from a vote. I guess it's still young — we could scrap the vote section and re-title this to a discussion. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:09, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My point is that there is currently nothing to get consensus on. You don't need a consensus for a discussion, and this would be far too vague to use as proof of consensus for any actual implementation that may result from such a discussion. Mr.Z-man 18:40, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • As this is a brainstorming session rather than a proposal, please move it to WP:VPI. I've removed the notice about this from {{cent}} to avoid wasting people's time. Fences&Windows 20:31, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Absolutely - there is interesting fodder for thought, but I see the need for more discussion before coming up with a concrete proposal, which epitomizes the very rationale for WP:VPI--SPhilbrickT 16:11, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Indeed; in future, it would be best to create a WP: page with the proposal, the WT: page can serve to discuss it, and then place a pointer on the pump to the proposal. –xenotalk 18:14, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure I agree. This was a more specific proposal but got bogged down in specifics, so Visionholder tried a different approach to see if folks were agreed in principle to the idea of some form of article grading more easily visible to readers. I agree that many many pages have old gradings on the pages from before the wholesale move to inline referencing. I suspect many B-class need to be moved to C-class as the biggest shift needed. If a push to do this results - a good thing?Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:15, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think a lot of the reasons for opposing are valid - there are significant variations between projects, and many assessments are out of date. I think these prevent us from using the system at present (although our system is already much better than most online rating systems on other sites!). However, there is a HUGE amount of value in showing valid assessments to the public, if we can reach that point. Whenever I've shown our assessment system to librarians, they get very excited, and feel this should be more widely known. Our assessments are done by subject-experts, which means they can be more nuanced than an average reader; I think the assessment would be very useful to students. I also think that there are a lot of metadata available in our assessments for academics to use in analyzing Wikipedia trends, etc.
A simple way to implement this would be to improve something like Pyrospirit's script (only works on the old skin), and make this visible to all users. It would need some discussion on which assessment would take priority when differences occurred. I think this is probably premature until the information is more reliable, but I hope we will be able to implement this one day. Walkerma (talk) 03:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You have new messages

There is a WP feature that shows an indication (depending on the skin, I think) that someone else has edited your personal Talk page. This is a great feature. My proposal is to add an Email Preference to send an email to the user, in addition to setting the indicator. This preference would take priority over other Email Preferences so the email can be sent even when the user wants privacy for the other email features. David Spector (talk) 16:08, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki has this feature, but it disabled on the English Wikipedia, if I remember correctly, it is because of performance reasons. For example the Czech Wikipedia has this option enabled. Svick (talk) 19:45, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd hate it. I don't want that much email. Vandals might love it. Dougweller (talk) 17:09, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with everything Dougweller said and then some (and there are WP:BEANS considerations as well). Allowing a preference for messages on your own talk page to be forwarded to email might be acceptable, though the WP:BEANS considerations still apply. — Gavia immer (talk) 17:20, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I wasn't clear: it is an option in preferences. Svick (talk) 17:25, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's more likely that I wasn't clear, actually, which would be my fault. An option such as is described at your link is no huge deal, apart from the performance issue. David Spector appears, to me, to be requesting an option to push messages to another user's email whether they want it or not, and even if they have specifically tried to opt out of such emails. That's a bad idea. Of course, it may well be that I have his idea wrong, in which case it would be nice to have a clarification. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:43, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, you're right, I didn't read the original comment properly. And I agree with you that it would be a bad idea. If I don't want to receive e-mails from Wikipedia, I shouldn't be forced to do so, under normal circumstances. I don't see the need for this and it could (and would) be abused. Svick (talk) 11:28, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To summarize the comments: there has as yet been no objection to the proposal as stated. David Spector (talk) 23:49, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to object, if that's alright by you. I simply do not see the point. If anybody is interested in the collaborative side of Wikipedia, then they will most likely use the site. Even if they do not keep an eye on their watchlist, the orange "new messages" banner will always alert them if anybody wishes to get in touch, no matter what page is being viewed at the time.
For active editors such as myself, whose talkpages frequently receive upwards of fifteen edits in a day (including minor edits, spelling-corrections, bot archival, template notifications etc.) this would mean receiving as many emails. Not only is that a lot of bandwidth, but it is also completely un-necessary, not to mention potentially irritating for the end user. Yes, I know they could turn it off, but it's worth pointing this out anyway.
And while I am not exactly worried about performence, for the reasons stated above, any needless drain on the Wikimedia Foundation's (charitable) resources should not be contemplated. ╟─TreasuryTag►quaestor─╢ 12:08, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Again, like the other folks, you appear to have missed the point that this would be an option, by default off. That means that the current functionality would not change unless you want it to change. David Spector (talk) 17:01, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) You appear to have missed the point that this would be an option – I distinctly said, "Yes, I know they could turn it off, but it's worth pointing this out anyway." So what made you think that I'd missed the point? ╟─TreasuryTag►secretariat─╢ 19:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I support it. I know if I didn't spend every waking moment plugged into Wikipedia I would want to get e-mails when I have something on my talk. It would be like what I do with Facebook (silly silly website). Sadads (talk) 17:08, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There was an option to have an email sent when your talk page was updated, it was disabled by the developers for performance reasons. I doubt they'll re-enable it. –xenotalk

As a semi-retired software engineer with about 40 years' experience working with computers, including 18 years of Windows programming, I can't see how sending an email to those who want one whenever their Talk page changes (or going even farther, when one of their watchlisted pages changes one or more times within a window of 30 minutes or so) would create a performance problem.

Presumably, WP data resides in a database handling thousands of transactions a second. Handling a few more every now and then wouldn't seem to be a problem to me. The actual email sending is also not a load; it can be handled by a lower-priority process. They'd have to convince me it would either load the servers or slow response time significantly.

This is a Proposals page. I assume that means that every proposal will be considered for implementation on its merits, not on some memory of 'they already rejected that'.

Concerning misuse by malicious users (vandals), I think this is not a significant addition to the tools they already have, principally too much time on their hands.

There's a lot of strong conservatism (in its meaning of 'opposition to change') here in spite of WP:BOLD, one of the most valuable of the founding principles of WP. I believe that "do the right thing" is a better attitude than "that's not the way we do it here."

Of course, if there really would be a performance problem, or this proposal turned out to help vandals significantly, then this proposal should not be implemented. David Spector (talk) 19:59, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) It was disabled by the developers for performance reasons. I doubt they'll re-enable it. > As a semi-retired software engineer with about 40 years' experience working with computers, including 18 years of Windows programming, I can't see how [the proposal] is a performance problem. Perhaps you don't see. That is precisely why we have a team of dedicated experts to make such judgements. It's all very well pontificating about your decades of erudition, but (alleged) familiarity with the 40-year-old Datapoint 2200 is scarcely of any use around here. ╟─TreasuryTag►secretariat─╢ 19:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I've never heard of a Datapoint 2200. My first computer was the LINC, a breakthrough for its day and quite possibly the world's first practical minicomputer. I've been responsible for systems programming as well as application programming for such companies as DEC, Prime, and Honeywell, as well as many startups (including my own). I've designed and implemented improvements on a time-series, multidimensional OLAP business database system for Dun and Bradstreet. I improved the runtime performance of the Multics linker by 27%. I currently do database development for another startup of mine. I understand performance issues well. What I don't understand is the unncessary but pervading atmosphere of viciousness here at WP. David Spector (talk) 20:09, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I've never heard of a Datapoint 2200. My first computer was the LINC, a breakthrough for its day and quite possibly the world's first practical minicomputer. I've been responsible for systems programming as well as application programming for such companies as DEC, Prime, and Honeywell, as well as many startups (including my own). I've designed and implemented improvements on a time-series, multidimensional OLAP business database system for Dun and Bradstreet. I improved the runtime performance of the Multics linker by 27%. I currently do database development for another startup of mine. I understand performance issues well. Whatever.
Surely you realise that I simply do not care about your professional history. It is not verifiable and it is completely irrelevant to this discussion. We have developers to make decisions about performance. If you consider this apportionment of functions according to expertise to be "vicious" then perhaps Wikipedia is not the right environment for you. ╟─TreasuryTag►ballotbox─╢ 20:15, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Whenever I encounter this user it is abusing or sneering at other users. This behaviour is toxic to those around it and destructive to the project.Does anybody else think TT needs to learn some manners? Anthony (talk) 20:27, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is not the venue for a behavioural discussion. I would direct you to WP:WQA, WP:RFC/U or WP:RFAR. ╟─TreasuryTag►sundries─╢ 20:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't talking to you. Anthony (talk) 20:31, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But I was talking to you. I don't want to pollute this overall discussion (about "you have new messages") with any more of this crap so I'll let you have the last word. ╟─TreasuryTag►Captain-Regent─╢ 20:33, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to pollute this overall discussion Could have fooled me. Anthony (talk) 20:38, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Whoah! ╟─TreasuryTag►sheriff─╢ 20:39, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On some pages I believe you can subscribe to an RSS feed. Is this true of user talk pages? It might be especially useful on your own, and you could set up (email or other) alerts yourself using this. Verbal chat 20:46, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(Back on topic) The vast majority of editors spend very little time on Wikipedia. A feature like the one proposed would be very useful. I'd use it. (Assuming, of course there are no performance issues.) Anthony (talk) 20:53, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support proposal, at least as a trial to see how it affects performance - it's available as an option on Commons, and I've often wondered why it isn't available here. Alternatively, would it be possible to set it up as an RSS feed (as watchlists can)? —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 08:19, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ignoring the ridiculous and unwarranted side-tracking in the thread above, IIRC the reason the $wgEnotifUserTalk is not enabled is because there is no consensus to enable it in enwiki. (Don't worry about performance and such...) There is Bug 5220 filed in BugZilla about this, so you might be better off asking at WP:VPT whether anything has changed in the technical feasibility arena, as developers have a higher chance of reading that page than this one. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 09:43, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support enabling this option if developers find it feasible. I have used it on Commons for years and it works very well. It's especially helpful for people like me who still want to contribute to the project but don't have as much time as they had before. Royalbroil 02:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support but do not enable by default, as this is helpful to only some people. It's helpful because I never check commons or wikinews talk pages. Even though I do check wikibooks often, it feels good to have an email. I will not use it because I don't want to receive an email for every talkback, though. Kayau Voting IS evil 02:57, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support -- Some weeks I edit Wikipedia every day. Other times, I'm occupied elsewhere and don't frequently check my talk page. As an administrator, I would very much like to be notified of talk page changes so I can be more responsive on my non-wiki days. I'm not concerned about system resources based on Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. --A. B. (talk • contribs) 03:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - many Wikimedia projects, including Commons, have this enabled for users who choose it. For some projects that I have made contributions to but rarely check, I have chosen to get an email when my talk page is changed. There are editors, I'm sure, who would find this useful for them on EN, and we should offer it. Not as the default, but as an option. Jonathunder (talk) 04:09, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Other than any possible performance issues, I see no logical reason to not have an option allowing editors to get an email when their talk page is changed. If you don't like that function, then don't check that box in your preferences. Seems pretty simple.--Rockfang (talk) 04:39, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I didn't realize this wasn't an option here. Every other Wikimedia project has it as an option in the preferences that can be turned on or off. If you don't want to get the e-mail, just turn it off in your preferences. I would definitely turn it off in my preferences, as it would drive me nutso to get e-mail every time my talk page is changed, but if it's helpful for other people (e.g. people who barely edit anymore but still want to know when there's a problem with an image they uploaded), it should be available as an option. +Angr 06:18, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as opt-out - This is going to help us draw back editors who took a wikibreak and didn't know they had messages. Enable it for everyone, and make it crystal-clear how to manually opt out. If a spam problem develops (NOT likely!), toggle to opt-in after a week. It's highly valuable; worth the controversy. as OPT IN. On second thought, opt-out would be a disaster. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 06:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I support the general concept, and I'll let the programmers sort out the details. I have Commons set to e-mail me when stuff on my watch list changes. That's very helpful when my talk page there gets notices. It's helpful to me because I don't go there much as mostly a writer, but I upload all of my images there. I can imagine that some people don't check in here daily, or even weekly, so they might want the notice. I agree: leave the option off by default, and let users who want it enable it. Imzadi 1979 → 07:29, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. No reason not to, as long as you can decide not to use it. --Conti|✉ 07:46, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can't we just ask the sysadmins whether or not this is doable before even considering enabling it? -- Luk talk 12:10, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support. Provided the default is to have this off. (This should also help with the performance issues; for most users, this will be a flag check added to the existing notification software.) I do not want to find this has happened with a whole flood of e-mail from Wikipedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:25, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support re-enabling this feature with the default setting at off. – allen四names 14:31, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as an opt-in. Very beneficial change. ThemFromSpace 15:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Obviously should be opt-in. Also, people really ought to note what A. B. said above—it isn't the place or remit of everyday contributors to worry about system performance issues. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:25, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • As long as it is an opt-in this looks good to me. I know I really do appreciate the emails from many of the other wikis, but would find it an utter pain here; for less active contributors it would be a godsend. sonia♫♪ 15:30, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. From experience, this is very useful for less active contributors. decltype (talk) 15:34, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a way to deal with citing flash pages to cite core and related templates

A recent interview posted about Dragon Quest IX has brought up a major problem. The site is entirely in flash and contains multiple videos and there is no clear way to distinguish which video one is referencing because they are all on the same page. Unlike some flash pages which can be saved to specific pages within the flash page, this one cannot be saved to a specific movie.陣内Jinnai 02:13, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would treat it in the same manner as citing a portion of dialog from a video game, as is commonly needed for our higher quality CVG articles: cite it normally, then quote the important part of the interview you're referencing directly using the "quote=" field. This is good practice for anything where the source is hard to get at. --erachima talk 02:46, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion Questions on Potentially-Objectionable Content

Hello, I'm Robert Harris, the consultant who has been hired by WMF to conduct a study on Potentially-Objectionable Content within the projects. I've posted a series of questions for discussion to begin consultation within the communities at the Meta page devoted to the study (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content). Although the main focus of this specific set of questions is Wikimedia Commons, I'd be very interested in what all Wikipedians have to say about these questions, especially since policies on Commons obviously affect every other project, and the handling of images in Wikipedia is often subtly different than that of Commons. Robertmharris (talk) 12:23, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Option to select which system of units to use (Imperial or Metric)

  • Background

While for the US/UK readers the imperial system is relevant, it doesn't happen the same for the rest of the world. In some articles both information is displayed, but it is not the common rule and makes the articles unnecessarily longer and more complicated to create (or edit).

  • Proposal

Create a wikimedia symbol to input units and give users the option to select which units system to use. For instance {{meters|30}} which would display "30m" for users with the option "Metric system" activated and "98ft" for users with the "Imperial system" option. --Micru (talk) 14:45, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  • Sadads (talk) 14:50, 22 July 2010 (UTC) In principle I support, thought it may have alot of programming before the deployment, but that sounds great.[reply]
Oppose
  • Not really. WP:UNITS suggests always using both sets - that is both informative and robust. A conversion is not. How would you encode "Today it was 25 °C, 5° less than yesterday"? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:08, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Way too much programming, no discernible benefit. This kind of automatic conversion would create lots of false precision, unless you required people to put both 30 meters and 98 feet. In which case, it wouldn't save on editing time at all, so the only benefit would be a tiny amount of improvement for readers at the expense of programmer time and processing time. --Golbez (talk) 14:53, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on how you do it. Processing time, probably not to much, but you would have to find a development team to make sure that a whole slew of templates could support that, and then develop a good sized chunk of code for the mediawiki. Sadads (talk) 14:58, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think that false precision is not a problem, see how {{convert}} handles it. On the other hand, I don't think this would be worth the work from both developers and editors, especially considering that most readers are either anonymous or wouldn't set the preference one way or other. Also, if you want to show imperial units to anonymous Americans and metric to the rest of the anonymous world, it would require geolocation and, as far as I know, Wikipedia doesn't do this now, so that would be additional work. Svick (talk) 15:15, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ooh, that's a huge point - the vast, vast majority of our reading population is anonymous, and therefore wouldn't benefit from this. --Golbez (talk) 15:30, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The current system of using {{convert}} or just doing the conversion manually to include both units works just fine. Using both units is basically like adding a single word to a sentence; its not increasing the length by a significant amount. There's no reason to overcomplicate things. Mr.Z-man 22:03, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I didn't know about the existance of the template {{convert}}, and the anonymous users argument is indeed too powerful to overlook. I would suggest to close this discussion and focus in making the {{convert}} tool of widespread use. Would it be possible to modify the WP:UNITS guidelines to recommend the use of {{convert}}? --Micru (talk) 08:45, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hard-coded "preferences" disrupt usability. I'm from a metric land, but when it comes to American road distances or British gun calibers, I prefer the native imperial units. Current wikipedia convention fits this pattern: the choice of (primary) units follows the subject. Your proposal replaces this diversity with a black and white one-way choice. If I choose metric units, the articles on old England will look funny... If I choose imperial... Why? East of Borschov 09:04, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just plain unnecessary — an overly complicated solution to a fleabite of a problem. By the way, please do not refer to US customary units as Imperial. --Trovatore (talk) 05:16, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Would make any page that used the option not cacheable slowing down Wikipedia. Rabbitfang (talk) 00:20, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion

Please move this to a subpage, the pump is not well-suited for extended discussion, polling, etc. You create a subpage with the proposal and link to it from here. (In respect to the proposal, this looks like just going back down the same road of the date autoformatting saga with units, and we all know how that turned out). –xenotalk 15:13, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I know the result, but I am not sure exactly why we did that. Sadads (talk) 15:19, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Improve awareness of new RfCs

Does anyone have a good way to be alerted when a new RfC is created? I tried watchlisting pages such as Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines (which is what the links at Wikipedia:Requests for comment imply we should do), but that involves wading through a diff, where the bot may have both added and deleted stuff, so it's not very clear in Popups what the change is. This seems a significant deterrent to widespread use of an important function—even assuming users take the step of watchlisting. If anything, wouldn't it be better if the system automatically alerted all registered users when a new RfC is created? PL290 (talk) 08:01, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mass user messages are never a good idea. Not all people will be interested in joining any discussion even if being aware of it, they may not want to do so (for any reason) or know anything about the topic and don't want to risk saying something silly or follow some common misunderstanding. Messages must be kept for small and specific cases, such as something involving a article created by the user, a user that had previously agreed to receive such messages, etc. Otherwise, they would become spam. And the problem with spam is that if people gets used to the idea that the orange "you have new messages" is about discussing whenever the articles involving some small island should use imperial or metric units first, or someone should be called by first or last name, or other such things, people would begin to simply ignore the new messages as a "white noise" and not notice when they receive a message that is important MBelgrano (talk) 12:50, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I wasn't thinking so much of messages, but some other means such as those info alerts at the top of the page (Input is invited on the subject of "xxxxxxxx" [hide])—in fact those seem ideally suited to this. Unless, of course, our agenda is to hide RfCs from all but those who know about them. :) PL290 (talk) 13:30, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are newsletter delivery bots. The ideal solution, probably, would be for someone to adapt such a bot so that people can sign up to have messages on whatever RFC topics they want. The bot would need to be able to figure out how to produce neat, non-duplicative messages from the RFC page updates; not sure how hard that would be. Rd232 talk 13:50, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If the general view is that it's best kept as an opt-in alert, perhaps the RfC bot could simply use a more informative edit summary (e.g., "RfC 'xxxxxxxxxx' created; RfC 'xxxxxxxxxx' amended ..."). PL290 (talk) 14:00, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That would certainly help, and should be easy. Drop a note to the bot operator and see if they can do it. Rd232 talk 10:45, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adding to a talk page

Today I revised two questions I asked on reference desks. I used this method to show where I was deleting what I had said. Is there an equivalent if you add something to a previous statement?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:57, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:REDACT. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:50, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that works. I should have just asked under Technical because they had surely thought of this.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:59, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Raising economic barriers to malicious editing.

I don't know how big a problem "vandalism" is on Wikipedia but I have developed a simple idea that may provide a disincentive for new users to make bad or malicious edits. This idea is so deliciously simple I don't know why it hasn't been thought of before. Namely, upon registering an account, a new user must use a credit card to "deposit" a sum of at least $20 in a Wikipedia trust account, although a user could choose to deposit more if he desires. For each edit the user makes that is flagged as "vandalism" or "non productive," a fraction of the deposit (perhaps $2-5) is forfeited to the wikipedia administration. If the user continues to make non-productive edits, the entire sum will be soon forfeited. Once the user's funds in the trust account are depleted, the user is banned from wikipedia. If, however, the user is not banned, the entire sum is refunded to the user's credit card within six months of registration, or within the first ten edits, whichever comes last. Wikipedia can also keep all the interest generated by this aggregate trust account, which mayhap would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thus the tangible threat of economic loss will serve as a powerful disincentive to vandalize wikipedia. Your suggestions are of course welcome. Thank you. DeepAgentBorrasco (talk) 05:08, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

...at which point, we would lose all our volunteer editors expect the ones who have funding behind them to push POVs. Bad idea. :-( --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 05:10, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Someone who wants to make a simple edit - like fixing a typo - isn't going to be willing to put up with such hassle. The problem with this suggesting is that it raises the cost of editing overall, not just for vandalizing. Prodego talk 05:15, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is it April 1st already? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 06:17, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Gratis editing = more editors = more people to revert vandals. --Cybercobra (talk) 07:46, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But not everyone reverts ill-faithed edits though. With this system, there would be very little vandalism to revert, leaving editors more time to work on articles. DeepAgentBorrasco (talk) 08:08, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When I decide that your posts are vandalism, and you disagree, who decides? At the moment, it's only a matter of ego and pride. As soon as money is involved, the consequence of your post being defined by me as vandalism is a bit more serious. Keep money out of the right to edit. HiLo48 (talk) 08:22, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"The Free Encyclopedia" Tim1357 talk 09:18, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Promotes an even more slanted contributor base than we currently have. I wouldn't, as a new user, have been able to give $20, nor willing. After all, who knows if the money will actually get back to me or if Wikipedia is an elaborate scam? The only new users who will be keen enough on editing to pay $20 before getting hooked will be those who already have experience with this sort of thing, and we want a broader group of contributors and less bias, not more. sonia♫♪ 09:21, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note that I was around 8 when I registered, and it would be total bosh if I'm asked to give the wmf 10 dollars. Not to mention that when I was 8 I had no idea what 10 US dollars was worth in HK dollars. And, as Tim1357 said, this is a FREE encyclopaedia. Besides, the WMF has had enough controversy these days - I don't think Jimbo needs a visit from the ICAC. Kayau Voting IS evil 09:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Respect points like slashdot might be an idea so people who like that sort of thing can display them. I wouldn't have it meaning anything more than number of edits though. I wouldn't want to go into a spending war with some of the nutter organizations that try pushing their view here never mind the spam merchants. Dmcq (talk) 13:36, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I wish someone comes and screams "innocent!", but I guess we are not in december yet. MBelgrano (talk) 15:03, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Page Deletion (and move maybe) Protection

This proposal in a nutshell: Have a list of pages protected from deletions or moves (even by admins) to prevent accidental deletions/moves.
In order to prevent deletions like these that have caused Wikipedia harm, I was wondering if a solution could be made that would prevent pages from getting deleted. I suggest a kind of MediaWiki:Pages protected from deletion page that would not allow any page listed on it to be deleted (preventing moves as well as deletions might also be a good idea). This would only prevent accidental deletions of the listed pages. If an admin really wanted to delete one of these pages, all he/she would have to do would be remove the page from the list and then delete the page. However, doing so would make it obvious that the deletion was intentional. When an admin presses the delete tab or navigates to the delete page for a page in the anti-delete list, they will not be shown a form to give a reason for the deletion but instead be given a notice that the page is protected from being deleted and must be removed from the list in order to be deleted. The notice would be shown before not after submitting the delete request to prevent certain people from thinking that the page is in the list when in reality, it is not. I would suggest the syntax to be similar to MediaWiki:Bad image list (separate lines for each entry, entries are links, wild cards accepted (somehow), and other entries on the same lines as exceptions (i.e. prevent WP:Sandbox from being deleted but allow its subpages to be deleted)). The list should only be populated with pages that would disrupt access to Wikipedia or pages necessary to the operation of Wikipedia (i.e. Wikipedia:Administrator's Noticeboard). Also, if implemented, releasing the source code would be great. If someone comes up with a better wording for all of this, please feel free to add it below. Rabbitfang (talk) 03:13, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not to sound like a blithering idiot, but doesn't move protection exist already? Kayau Voting IS evil 05:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes (WP:MOVP), but it does not affect the ability of admins to move the page. Not that I think this proposal is necessary. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:40, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the proposal is not one of those 'we need this now!' types of things (more of a 'nice to have') but it would prevent some accidents like those from happening in the future. Rabbitfang (talk) 17:57, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking feedback on essay

I wrote an essay recently and would appreciate feedback on it (either here or on its talkpage) or improvements to it: WP:Wikipedia is amoral (WP:AMORAL). I have no aspirations of trying to elevate it beyond a mere essay. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:24, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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