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:::::::::::PS, we have a [[Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism/TB2|bot subpage]] for AIV. Maybe we could create a bot subpage for AN3? We already handle edit-warring there anyway; I don't see how it would help if the bot reported at some other page. [[User:Nyttend|Nyttend]] ([[User talk:Nyttend|talk]]) 03:13, 30 June 2017 (UTC) |
:::::::::::PS, we have a [[Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism/TB2|bot subpage]] for AIV. Maybe we could create a bot subpage for AN3? We already handle edit-warring there anyway; I don't see how it would help if the bot reported at some other page. [[User:Nyttend|Nyttend]] ([[User talk:Nyttend|talk]]) 03:13, 30 June 2017 (UTC) |
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::::::::::::Go for it, we stand to gain more than lose. If it works well, we have a useful new tool, if it fails, we learn from it why it doesn't work. • • • [[User:Pbsouthwood|Peter (Southwood)]] [[User talk:Pbsouthwood|<sup>(talk)</sup>]]: 16:16, 30 June 2017 (UTC) |
::::::::::::Go for it, we stand to gain more than lose. If it works well, we have a useful new tool, if it fails, we learn from it why it doesn't work. • • • [[User:Pbsouthwood|Peter (Southwood)]] [[User talk:Pbsouthwood|<sup>(talk)</sup>]]: 16:16, 30 June 2017 (UTC) |
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== RfC discussion on May/June events at [[Talk:2017]] == |
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There is an RfC discussion on which event that occurred in May/June 2017 to include or exclude ([[Talk:2017#RfC: Events in May and June 2017]]). Join in discussion. --[[User:George Ho|George Ho]] ([[User talk:George Ho|talk]]) 06:00, 1 July 2017 (UTC) |
Revision as of 06:00, 1 July 2017
Policy | Technical | Proposals | Idea lab | WMF | Miscellaneous |
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New ideas and proposals are discussed here. Before submitting:
- Check to see whether your proposal is already described at Perennial proposals. You may also wish to search the FAQ.
- Consider developing your proposal at Village pump (idea lab).
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- Proposed new articles belong at Wikipedia:Requested articles.
Adding the watchlist button to hovercards
It would be helpful to be able to see whether an article was on your watchlist without having to click it. Would it be possible to add a similar star to the thumbnail of articles so that you can see if the article is on your watchlist (and maybe even add it to your watchlist)? Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 17:20, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
- Interesting idea Absolutelypuremilk. I spoke to the product manager for Page Previews/Hovercards and she created a task to discuss this further. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- Brilliant, thanks! Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 15:35, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Adding {{Redirect category shell}} to all single-redirect-template redirects
Per a recent bot RfA, and Template:Redirect category shell/doc#Purpose, should {{Redirect category shell}} be added to all redirects which only contain a single redirect template? The template documentation explains how it is useful not only for single-{{R}} redirects, but also for 0-{{R}} redirects. Pinging the template's creator, Paine Ellsworth, for input. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:05, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
- To clarify, this is specifically addressing the question "Should a bot do this task?", which is slightly different than whether it should be done. The estimate provided at the BRFA was that this would take 400,000 edits. ~ Rob13Talk 16:20, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
- 400,000 is a conservative estimate. I'll start another database scan with a much higher limit to get an accurate count. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:23, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
- My guess is now ~3 million... AWB's database scanner runs out of memory if I set the result-limit to several million (approaching 1 GB it starts to freeze, emit errors, and misbehave; my system memory still has many GB free at that time). With a limit of 2M, it considers itself ~16.9% done with ~337k matches, corresponding to the saturation limit of 2M (337k/0.169 = ~2M), so I need to raise the limit. With a limit of 5M, it's ~11.7% complete with ~344k matches, or ~3M estimated total. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:40, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
- I think the real question is "should this be done". If yes, then it makes no sense to do this manually rather than by bot. Since I'll evaluate the BRFA assuming there is consensus for this task, I'll recuse myself from giving me opinion here. One thing that should be done is to clearly explain exactly what the benefits of putting single templates within a shell, and what is proposed to be done with uncategorized redirects. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:37, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Headbomb: My point-of-reference is cosmetic-only edits. No-one thinks cleaning up whitespace is a negative, just that having a bot perform high volumes of such edits is a negative. This task has the same potential, in my opinion, although I'm pretty neutral on it for the moment. ~ Rob13Talk 18:20, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
- 400,000 is a conservative estimate. I'll start another database scan with a much higher limit to get an accurate count. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:23, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I can give input on the basic question of whether or not to use the Rcat shell on singularly categorized redirects, but I don't know enough about the needs to speak to whether or not a bot should take up the task.
- Rcat shell may be used to fulfill its primary impact, which is to "standardize redirect templates (rcats). Its basic purpose is to simplify the process of tagging and categorizing redirects.
- The shell template is also used to hasten the learning curve for editors who get into categorizing redirects. No matter how many rcats are needed, from zero to an as yet unknown maximum (usually six to eight rcats), the "manifold sort" can be used to populate the Miscellaneous redirects category. That category is monitored, so editors can check back to see what rcats have been used, and they will know next time what to do with similar redirects.
- The shell has the ability to sense protected redirects, so no matter how many rcats are needed, from zero to the maximum, protection levels are automatically sensed, described, categorized and changed when appropriate.
- For these reasons, it is considered useful to enclose one or more rcats within the Rcat shell, and to use the shell without rcats when unsure of the categorization needs. Paine Ellsworth put'r there 16:58, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
- I would also like to note that if the bare Rcat shell is added without rcats by a bot to a lot of redirects, then the manifold sort category would become too unwieldy for just a few editors to efficiently administer. Please don't do that, because it would effectively defeat the purpose of the manifold sort. Paine Ellsworth put'r there 17:05, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
- Please note, some exact examples of what the change will do are linked from in Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TomBot. — xaosflux Talk 00:13, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
Will the bot add the rcat shell even if there are no existing rcats on the page? If it does, that would totally overwhelm the manifold sort. TheMagikCow (T) (C) 10:55, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Nope; the title of this proposal and the BRfA explicitly & exclusively target single-redirect-template redirects. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 11:19, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oppose making millions of edits to pages hardly anyone ever sees, which don't change the functionality of the page one bit, but which may help other users to make somehow better redirect pages in some way, perhaps. Very unclear which actual issue this is trying to solve. Fram (talk) 12:40, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- The main issue, I believe (but I could be wrong), is that this will automatically include protection levels, improve sorting, and make things more standard. Tom has been doing this mind-numbingly boring task semi-automatically for a while, and doing this by bot makes it much easier to ignore on watchlists, both for people who ignore all bots, or for those who'll ignore TomBot in particular (e.g. WP:HIDEBOTS). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, Wikipedia has both sharpened and dulled various parts of my brain. On balance I suspect it has at least retained its curvature, but I could also be wrong. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:27, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- The main issue, I believe (but I could be wrong), is that this will automatically include protection levels, improve sorting, and make things more standard. Tom has been doing this mind-numbingly boring task semi-automatically for a while, and doing this by bot makes it much easier to ignore on watchlists, both for people who ignore all bots, or for those who'll ignore TomBot in particular (e.g. WP:HIDEBOTS). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support but only just. Adding rcat shell to single-rcat redirects does make a slight cosmetic change; one of the examples given at BRFA is [1] to [2]. Before the edit, the redirect had the text "from a fictional character" floating on the page with no context. Adding rcat shell encloses that text in another text box which adds the contextual information "this page is a redirect:". It's unlikely readers will notice that change, and it's unlikely most editors would not be already aware that the page is a redirect, but this helps slightly. Also standardizing redirect categorization and adding the other technical functionality of the shell. I'm strongly against having a bot add the shell to non-categorized redirects, that's pointless busywork that just creates a huge maintenance chore. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:50, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Is slightly modifying the redirect templates (e.g. R from fictional character) then not the much simpler solution than going to 3 million redirects to add that shell? Just change what, perhaps 100 templates, to make them clearer, and be done with it. Fram (talk) 14:26, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- From a standardization perspective, to eliminate creep/inconsistencies and maintenance/updating, it is best to have 1 wrapper template than multiple {{R}}s that "self-wrap". Furthermore, potentially-"naked" {{R}}s would have to detect whether they have or have not already been wrapped, to avoid unnecessary nesting. If that's easy/not prone to error, then that might be the best way forward. Is that the case, though? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:48, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Perhaps the individual redirect templates can be turned into redirects (hah!) to the shell then? Although I don't really see the need for standardization of the look of pages hardly anyone ever looks at anyway: it is important that these are categorized, but apart from that one could eliminate the text from all of these and nothing really would be lost. Fram (talk) 15:04, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, if all {{R}}s call a module (I suspect it'd have to be a module rather than standard template code) that is able to perform the same duties as {{Redirect category shell}} and were able to sense whether or not the calling {{R}} is wrapped in {{Redirect category shell}}, that would be ideal. I certainly don't have the expertise to answer that question though, and someone should be summoned here that can. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)
- Yeah, I'm not really convinced that the category shell is the best solution to whatever problem we're trying to solve, if the category templates themselves can just be modified to produce similar code. Like, the category shell has protection-level-sensing code, why can't all of the rcat templates have that, and do away with the shell? Since that seems so obvious to me but I'm not a coder, I've assumed that option has already been explored and ruled out, and having the template shell is the only (or most desireable) way to achieve the desired result. If that's not the case, then let's back up. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:09, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, if all {{R}}s call a module (I suspect it'd have to be a module rather than standard template code) that is able to perform the same duties as {{Redirect category shell}} and were able to sense whether or not the calling {{R}} is wrapped in {{Redirect category shell}}, that would be ideal. I certainly don't have the expertise to answer that question though, and someone should be summoned here that can. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)
- Perhaps the individual redirect templates can be turned into redirects (hah!) to the shell then? Although I don't really see the need for standardization of the look of pages hardly anyone ever looks at anyway: it is important that these are categorized, but apart from that one could eliminate the text from all of these and nothing really would be lost. Fram (talk) 15:04, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- From a standardization perspective, to eliminate creep/inconsistencies and maintenance/updating, it is best to have 1 wrapper template than multiple {{R}}s that "self-wrap". Furthermore, potentially-"naked" {{R}}s would have to detect whether they have or have not already been wrapped, to avoid unnecessary nesting. If that's easy/not prone to error, then that might be the best way forward. Is that the case, though? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:48, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- After further thought, I must oppose (and recuse from handling any BAG aspect of the BRFA going forward). The examples given by Tom indicate that the only change being made here is a box that says "This is a redirect". Ivanvector rightly points out this adds context to the redirect page, which initially had me leaning toward support until I recalled that the only way you actually see a redirect page is by clicking the link at the top of the page you're redirected to that says "Redirected from X". That means by the time you've navigated to a redirect page, you would already know it's a redirect. Alternatively, you can navigate to redirect pages by clicking certain direct links that editors leave in discussions, but at that point you're almost definitely in project space and should know what a redirect looks like. Yes, the wrapper template handles protection, etc. That's a good rationale for adding an option to Twinkle to add the wrapper when protection is added to a redirect. Protecting a redirect is very rare (template-protection being the only semi-frequent case that comes to mind), so I don't see that as justifying three million edits. I do want to thank Tom.Reding for quickly bringing this to the village pump when requested, and I will be happy with the outcome of this discussion whatever it is. This is the correct and drama-free way to handle potentially controversial tasks. ~ Rob13Talk 16:17, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oppose as pointless per above. (although I wouldn't object to a bot adding it on all protected redirects). In addition to what BU Rob13 said about "Redirected from" links, all redirect pages have "Redirect page" at the top, just after "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", so the template doesn't actually serve the purpose of notifying people it is a redirect. Pppery 11:50, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support, if the edits are made very gradually. The wrapper template seems like a Good Thing™ on balance. Enterprisey (talk!) 19:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Enterprisey: How "gradual" - at 1epm this would take ~7months running non stop. — xaosflux Talk 22:16, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- We could cut that time in half by going at 2epm :) No deadline, and especially for this not-very-critical task. Enterprisey (talk!) 22:56, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Enterprisey: How "gradual" - at 1epm this would take ~7months running non stop. — xaosflux Talk 22:16, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oppose - adding 3 million entries to the revision table (by making 3 million edits) is not a trivial increase and should not be done without a compelling reason. Bloating the revision table makes almost every process on Wikipedia a tiny bit slower. Of course 3 million isn't a huge number in the grand scheme of things, but it adds up. Kaldari (talk) 22:46, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support. Ultimately, all redirects should contain at least one redirect category, to indicate why such a redirect should exist. bd2412 T 23:10, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oppose, essentially per BU Rob13. This strikes me as allocating a disproportionate amount of resources for marginal benefit. If we ever need to make 3 million edits to fix a problem, the problem should be well worth fixing, and this doesn't strike me as such a high priority issue. Mz7 (talk) 23:24, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- Strong Oppose - It is the choice of those categorizing a redirect whether or not to use {{Redirect category shell}}. For example, see MediaWiki talk:Move-redirect-text#Redr, where no consensus was gained to add the categorization template to MediaWiki:Move-redirect-text. If consensus is gained to add this to every redirect, I wouldn't oppose a bot doing it. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 23:46, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- WT:WikiProject Redirect has been notified of this discussion — Godsy (TALKCONT) 00:01, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oppose This would functionally disable WP:MOR for those editors who can't delete pages. Breaking an often-used function for minimal gain is not a good bot task. --AntiCompositeNumber (Ring me) 03:21, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oppose per AntiCompositeNumber and, to a lesser degree, Godsy. -- Tavix (talk) 22:59, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Absolutely not. Heck, I'm not even convinced that the shell should be added when there's just two cats. But adding it with just one is absolutely be overkill. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:37, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oppose, except for all protected redirects. Limit the scope to just those edits that produce some more tangible benefit. wbm1058 (talk) 12:01, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oppose for now, except for protected redirects. Redirect pages aren't usually read by much anyone, so doing this for hundreds of thousands of rarely-used redirects serves little purpose. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 16:34, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Disable/opt-out option needed for sister projects search results
Do not show search results for sister projects on the search results page" via user preferences. --George Ho (talk) 13:52, 26 June 2017 (UTC); amended, 15:37, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
That about says it. It appears there have been RFCs & discussions about this new feature, I posted a query about it on VP:tech ( see here but apparently I was supposed to post here?... I don't need it in my editing, these sister project results visually clutter up the page plus the results I have been getting are not useful. YMMV, etc, but I'd really like to be given the (checkbox) option to opt-out. I think I am supposed to ping the folks from that discussion to this discussion so here ya go: @BlackcurrantTea:, @Lugnuts: @George Ho:. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 06:05, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- Comment - I added this discussion to Template:Centralized discussion because the search results update affects everyone, including those unsigned (i.e. using IP addresses) and registered editors. --George Ho (talk) 06:17, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- I note that there was a community RFC (on VPP I think) that supported the inclusion of sister project results on the search page. Are you saying you want to make it so they don't appear for you personally? — This, that and the other (talk) 07:02, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- YES. Don't want it, don't like it, glad to have the code-fix posted below, think this should be an opt-in/opt-out checkmark-box under preferences. Shearonink (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- That's what Shearonink is trying to say. Isn't that right? BTW, here's the RfC discussion. George Ho (talk) 07:22, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support Just as Shearonink said, "I don't need it in my editing, these sister project results visually clutter up the page." I edit Wikipedia, or (rarely) Wikidata, not the sister projects. If I'm looking for information and want to include Wikiquote, Wiktionary, or other projects, I'll use a search engine. If I search Wikipedia, then I want Wikipedia results. For example, when I'm fixing typos, seeing that someone spelled "television" as "televison" at Wikivoyage is neither interesting nor helpful. It's visual noise, and I don't want it. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 07:25, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support I don't care about the other projects and this is just clutter. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 07:44, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- YES. SO much this ^^^ Shearonink (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- Already available, just add to your own common.css. By the way, I notice some scarce interaction with sister projects: maybe wait and see for a few days, you could find out that the sister projects contain something of interest for yourself too! --Nemo 09:29, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
div#mw-interwiki-results { display: none !important }
- The search results I have been getting are not relevant to my editing and, also, are useless to my editing at Wikipedia, which is what I am here to do. EDIT. End of story. Shearonink (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- I know how you feel about the updated search results, Shearonink. They can look awkward to or frustrate a user. Therefore, I won't object to having the option to disable/opt-out if a user wants those results disabled. Also, I'll respect your wishes and allow you to make decisions, especially when the "disable" option happens. However, with those search results, more likely some editors would come to those pages and improve existing pages or create new ones. Also, sometimes it helps editors not to create any more dubious articles in Wikipedia or pages that would have meant for other sister projects. It even would prompt some or many editors to create less cross-wiki redirect pages than we have seen lately. Well, I created one page with a German-language title to redirect to a Wiktionary entry, but it got deleted (...because I was convinced into requesting deletion on it). Even when the results from those projects are disabled by user preference, any Wikipedia article may still likely be nominated for deletion, especially due to notability and/or content issues (like "Georgia for Georgians") or because it looks like either a definition page, a travel guide, a mere document, a page of a book, or a collection of quotes. Of course, I was discussing mainspace results. Unsure about what to do with results of other non-article namespaces from those projects. --George Ho (talk) 01:36, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- The search results I have been getting are not relevant to my editing and, also, are useless to my editing at Wikipedia, which is what I am here to do. EDIT. End of story. Shearonink (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- Bam! Thanks - that works a treat. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 17:51, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, thanks for posting the code-fix. I still think it would be great if this feature were available as a checkmark opt-in/opt-out on a registered editor's preferences. Shearonink (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- I agree. Thanks for the css fix; please make it a checkbox on the prefs page. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 03:58, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, thanks for posting the code-fix. I still think it would be great if this feature were available as a checkmark opt-in/opt-out on a registered editor's preferences. Shearonink (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support - I can't think of any reason why we would not make this available as a configurable option in preferences. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:36, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support - It should be an option in preferences. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 00:27, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support opt-out, oppose disabling. I see how others could find this unnecessary and obtrusive, but as someone who occasionally translates stuff from other Wikipedias I find this quite useful. Daß Wölf 02:43, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- I don't think anyone is suggesting disabling the feature (for everyone), but fwiw I would also oppose disabling. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 11:59, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- Nobody had specified it thus far, so I added that for clarity. Daß Wölf 03:33, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oh gawd yes...was just re-reading through this section - Thank you Wölf & Ivanvector. I didn't want this feature deleted, just wanted to be able to turn it off. Thanks for clarifying my somewhat muddy syntax. Shearonink (talk) 15:27, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- Nobody had specified it thus far, so I added that for clarity. Daß Wölf 03:33, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- I don't think anyone is suggesting disabling the feature (for everyone), but fwiw I would also oppose disabling. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 11:59, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- Comment. It is easy to create a gadget. Ruslik_Zero 17:53, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support opt out as a user preference. it shouldn't require figuring out more than that. So far, I too find it unhelpful, and I suspect so will many others as they come to notice it. I predict it will soon change to opt-in. DGG ( talk ) 22:12, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oppose - we already have way too many preferences. The sister project results don't interfere with using the search interface as normal and it's easy for anyone that doesn't like them to hide them using their User CSS. Kaldari (talk) 04:18, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- User CSS is relatively inaccessible. Not everyone knows how to use it. Opt-out tick box is much more accessible. Options should be accessible to all, particularly opt-outs. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 14:39, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Pinging Kaldari for response. George Ho (talk) 17:03, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- We know from Special:GadgetUsage that gadgets that do nothing but disable features are consistently among the least used gadgets. Adding lots of preferences just for the small number of people who don't like certain new features causes 2 problems: It makes the preferences interface overwhelming and less usable for everyone; It means that developers have to support more variations of the interface, slowing down future development. A good example of that is when we had 3 different versions of the WikiText editor depending on how many new features users wanted to opt-out of. This required building 3 different version of any features for the editor, such as RefToolbar. (We finally removed one of the opt-outs from the prefs last month, which hardly anyone had been using anyway.) Kaldari (talk) 17:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- What "future development" do you mean, Kaldari? Do you mean the Foundation's search engine? If that's not it, may you please elaborate further? Thanks. --George Ho (talk) 02:35, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- @George Ho: I mean any future development related to the search page, including gadgets and WMF software. If they have to take into account multiple possible interfaces, it makes development more complicated and slower. Adding this one option may not seem like much, but every option must be multiplied by all the other options. So if I want to write a gadget that reformats the presentation of the search results, I need to accommodate all the possible skins, multiplied by whether or not they are using the new "advanced search" beta feature that is about to come out, multiplied by whether or not they are hiding the sister search results, etc. So this one extra option actually means that I have to accommodate 8 additional UI variations in my software (assuming we aren't even worrying about mobile). Kaldari (talk) 03:04, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- What "future development" do you mean, Kaldari? Do you mean the Foundation's search engine? If that's not it, may you please elaborate further? Thanks. --George Ho (talk) 02:35, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- We know from Special:GadgetUsage that gadgets that do nothing but disable features are consistently among the least used gadgets. Adding lots of preferences just for the small number of people who don't like certain new features causes 2 problems: It makes the preferences interface overwhelming and less usable for everyone; It means that developers have to support more variations of the interface, slowing down future development. A good example of that is when we had 3 different versions of the WikiText editor depending on how many new features users wanted to opt-out of. This required building 3 different version of any features for the editor, such as RefToolbar. (We finally removed one of the opt-outs from the prefs last month, which hardly anyone had been using anyway.) Kaldari (talk) 17:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- I notified communities of just selected sister projects about this proposal. --George Ho (talk) 19:17, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- Is it possible for the interwiki searches to be selective? I, for one, greatly value WP, Commons, and Wikispecies in my play/work at Wiktionary, but would find other projects less useful. DCDuring (talk) 19:30, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- That would take an RfC discussion and a Phabricator task to do so, DCDuring. Right now, due to the results, we don't see multimedia (audio/visual) results from Commons here. --George Ho (talk) 19:38, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- As two of the three projects I am interested in are not-yet/may-never-be included, my enthusiasm is a bit further diminished for the taxonomy-type contributing that I do most often. For other editing, WikiSource is helpful. I expect that those who contribute to en.wikt in languages other than English would value including pedia and wikt projects in their languages of interest. DCDuring (talk) 19:51, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- I made a note at some other venues, including Wikibooks, saying that Wikibooks was included as part of search results by developers. However, they didn't realize that there was "no consensus" to include those results. Therefore, I filed a task at Phabricator. I also noted the error at WP:VPT#Requesting suppression on search result from Wikibooks. --George Ho (talk) 00:57, 23 June 2017 (UTC); modified, 15:25, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- I saw that another proposal to include Wikibooks as part of search system is made at WP:VPP. --George Ho (talk) 22:09, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- As two of the three projects I am interested in are not-yet/may-never-be included, my enthusiasm is a bit further diminished for the taxonomy-type contributing that I do most often. For other editing, WikiSource is helpful. I expect that those who contribute to en.wikt in languages other than English would value including pedia and wikt projects in their languages of interest. DCDuring (talk) 19:51, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- That would take an RfC discussion and a Phabricator task to do so, DCDuring. Right now, due to the results, we don't see multimedia (audio/visual) results from Commons here. --George Ho (talk) 19:38, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- Is it possible for the interwiki searches to be selective? I, for one, greatly value WP, Commons, and Wikispecies in my play/work at Wiktionary, but would find other projects less useful. DCDuring (talk) 19:30, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support Another configurable button (Opt in or out -either works) in preferences won't hurt anything. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 22:09, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- Lukewarm support for a selectable preference. Note that English Wikiquote has all of 30,000 pages, about .08% of English Wikipedia's total. I don't see those search results, at least, as being particularly disruptive to Wikipedia searches. bd2412 T 00:24, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- I have no issue having it as an opt-out capability within preferences, or as a gadget. For the proponents, you completely have the capacity to hide it through your Special:MyPage/common.css and I invite you to use that methodology as that is its purpose; even to add instructions to users on this. I totally dispute the myopic view that it should be automatically done, and challenge those who propose such are very much in the "I don't like it" camp, and suggest that this is a key component of the WMF search team, and is purposefully added to improve the whole product that WMF produces. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:14, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- There is now a gadget available to do this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:33, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- In other words, TheDJ, there is the gadget saying, "
Do not show search results for sister projects on the search results page
", under the "Appearance" section of the "Gadgets" tab, right? Thanks. Pinging Shearonink, "This, that and the other", Lugnuts, Ivanvector, Godsy, DGG, Kaldari, GenQuest, BD2412, and billinghurst. Therefore, they can individually decide whether to click that via user preferences, and done. --George Ho (talk) 13:52, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- In other words, TheDJ, there is the gadget saying, "
Bot to fix certain common comma issues in articles
I've been tinkering with code to fix certain common comma issues in articles in a way that doesn't throw up a whole bunch of false positives. Before I go further, I'd like to see if the community would actually support a bot running this task. To give you an example of the sorts of things I think a bot could do without running afoul of WP:CONTEXTBOT:
Consider phrases of the form "Before 2017". These dependent clauses universally need commas, but there's a potential context issue if they're part of a longer clause (e.g. "Before 2017 buildings were constructed, ..."). They also may not need a comma if they come at the end of a sentence (e.g. "He had never acted before 2017"). My solution is to make the edit only when it is followed by a pronoun or article (he, she, they, it, the, a, an) and only when the first word of the clause is capitalized (fixing the second issue). That limits what the bot would edit to things like "Before 2017, he ...", which unambiguously needs a comma. This is a very common grammatical error introduced by young people or non-native writers.
The regex for this particular fix is currently: ((?:As of|In|During|Before|After|Since|Until) (?:(?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December) )?(?:19|20)\d{2}) ((?:she|he|they|it|the|a|an) )
--> $1, $2
I've found zero errors in about ~300 edits when I've used this code semi-automatically, so it appears fairly robust.
Is this a bot the community would support if it could be demonstrated that the false positive rate is very low (<0.1%) or nonexistent? ~ Rob13Talk 13:26, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- There are few universally agreed-upon rules of English grammar. For example, I don't agree with your statement that "Before 2017, he ..." must contain a comma. I expect that many of the "corrections" you plan to make would be controversial, because of a lack of consensus for your ideas about English grammar. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:51, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Jc3s5h: There are certain types of commas which are controversial (e.g. Oxford comma), but the fact that an introductory dependent clause requires a comma is not one such example. It's an accepted grammatical rule that is present in all style guides, not "my idea". I would obviously never propose to make fixes like the Oxford comma, because those aren't true "fixes". ~ Rob13Talk 17:29, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- Actually, this is outright in our Manual of Style, and it states we need a comma after all dates, not just those in a dependent clause. See MOS:COMMA. ~ Rob13Talk 17:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- MOS:COMMA states we need a comma after all m-d-y dates. It says "Dates in month–day–year format require a comma after the day, as well as after the year ..." It does not say we need a comma after d-m-y dates. It does not say we need a comma when the year only is given. — Stanning (talk) 13:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Actually, this is outright in our Manual of Style, and it states we need a comma after all dates, not just those in a dependent clause. See MOS:COMMA. ~ Rob13Talk 17:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Jc3s5h: There are certain types of commas which are controversial (e.g. Oxford comma), but the fact that an introductory dependent clause requires a comma is not one such example. It's an accepted grammatical rule that is present in all style guides, not "my idea". I would obviously never propose to make fixes like the Oxford comma, because those aren't true "fixes". ~ Rob13Talk 17:29, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- This is the kind of change that should be manually reviewed. There are assisted-editing frameworks that could help, and it is possible to use a database scan to make a list of articles to look at. But each change should be manually reviewed, rather than made completely automatically by a bot. Just as one example of a corner case, "Before 2012 or 2013, she ... ". I'm sure there are more examples like that one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:00, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- @CBM: Well, that edit wouldn't be made by my regex. The point isn't to make all beneficial grammar changes, just the ones we can be sure would be correct. I certainly invite editors to point out corner cases, but what you stated isn't a false positive. I've already run a database scan, and it returned 400,000 pages. That's a bit outside the range of what I can do semi-automatically. ~ Rob13Talk 17:29, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- @BU Rob13: Ah, I see, thanks. I did check MOS:COMMA, which only mentions dates in month-day-year format. I also checked the Chicago Manual of Style, which says "An introductory adverbial phrase is often set off by a comma but need not be unless misreading is likely." (section 6.36) and gives this as a correct example: "After 1956 such complaints about poor fidelity became far less common." (no comma). So there is not a unanimity in style guides that a comma is required. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- @CBM: Well, that edit wouldn't be made by my regex. The point isn't to make all beneficial grammar changes, just the ones we can be sure would be correct. I certainly invite editors to point out corner cases, but what you stated isn't a false positive. I've already run a database scan, and it returned 400,000 pages. That's a bit outside the range of what I can do semi-automatically. ~ Rob13Talk 17:29, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- Hi BU Rob13, personally I don't really support a job of 400000 edits to "add a comma" here; I don't see it is making a significant impact on readers - and don't see it alone as a "hook" if you wanted to scope creep this to 'comma adder + a pile of genfixes'. Seems like this should go in to one of those other "gen fix" piles. — xaosflux Talk 18:28, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
I support this task. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:06, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- As I pointed out above, the MOS does not require the comma, and even gives "Since 2001 the grant has been 10,000,000 Swedish kronor" as an example of an acceptable style. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:10, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
This should be an AWB script, not a bot task. It will inevitably hit some false positives, which aren't worth the minuscule benefit of the change. It should only be done with live human review, IMO. Kaldari (talk) 04:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- BU Rob13, a comma isn't needed after a short introductory clause such as "in 2017". See, for example, Hart's Rules, pp. 75–76: comma not essential if the introductory clause is a short one specifying time or location: "Indeed, the comma is best avoided here so as to prevent the text from appearing cluttered." SarahSV (talk) 06:45, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- I (and my grammar instinct) agree with SV on this point. --NSH001 (talk) 09:51, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Our manual of style disagrees, as do many style guides. MOS:COMMA. In any event, I've pretty much withdrawn this. ~ Rob13Talk 15:06, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Although the proposal may be withdrawn, I want to point out for postierity that MOS:COMMA only mentions "Dates in month–day–year format" - these are not what is being discussed here, which are plain years without month or day. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:10, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Beyond what's said here, consider alternative uses of the phrase. For example, it would be outright inappropriate to add a comma after "2017" in the sentence "Before 2017 concluded, John and Mary had gotten married"; any English-speaking human knows that, but the bot wouldn't. I see that you've pretty much withdrawn this; I'm just throwing this in as a reminder if someone else re-proposes this in the future. Nyttend (talk) 23:55, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Nyttend: This idea is still dead, but just want to note this is a misunderstanding of what I stated. My bot idea was to add a comma after "Before 2017" if and only if it is followed by a pronoun or article, both of which would indicate the start of a new clause. That would rule out "Before 2017 concluded". I was trying to carve out a very niche but common sentence structure that a bot could accurately detect and correct. This of course leaves behind many sentences that would not be corrected, but better to have some fixed than none. ~ Rob13Talk 05:08, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- Beyond what's said here, consider alternative uses of the phrase. For example, it would be outright inappropriate to add a comma after "2017" in the sentence "Before 2017 concluded, John and Mary had gotten married"; any English-speaking human knows that, but the bot wouldn't. I see that you've pretty much withdrawn this; I'm just throwing this in as a reminder if someone else re-proposes this in the future. Nyttend (talk) 23:55, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Although the proposal may be withdrawn, I want to point out for postierity that MOS:COMMA only mentions "Dates in month–day–year format" - these are not what is being discussed here, which are plain years without month or day. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:10, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Our manual of style disagrees, as do many style guides. MOS:COMMA. In any event, I've pretty much withdrawn this. ~ Rob13Talk 15:06, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- I (and my grammar instinct) agree with SV on this point. --NSH001 (talk) 09:51, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
WikiProject Recommendations
Imagine you're a newcomer and you join Wikipedia and make a couple edits on Waffle and 2015 World Pastry Cup. It mostly goes OK. A few minutes later you get a message thanking you for your contributions and inviting you to check out some work lists from User:WikiPancake -- a member of the local "Welcome squad" at WikiProject Food and Drink. I'm trying to figure out how to recommend newcomers to WikiProject organizers or maybe even to recommend WikiProjects to newcomers. What do you think? Check out my project proposal at this meta-page. Bobo.03 (talk) 16:17, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- The projects that most need recruits are excluded from your study. Whether this will introduce any bias is another question. I would guess some but not much. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:44, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, "the projects that most need recruits" are probably identical to "the projects least capable of supporting recruits". I think (having spent many years hanging around at WP:COUNCIL) that we're better off directing all but the most experienced editors to the larger groups. "WikiProject Joe Film" is almost always doomed to failure (usually within a year of its creation) and unable to assist less experienced editors; "WikiProject Film" is not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:56, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
If one goes to the talk page of an article, one normally sees - quite clearly - messages stating that this article is under the scope of several WikiProjects. Possibly, the existence of WikiProjects would be more conspicuous if the "this article is within the scope of these WikiProjects" logo headed the article and not the article's talk page?Vorbee (talk) 15:09, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Wikiprojects are not encyclopaedic content and are therefore unsuitable for inclusion in the main article space. They would indeed be more visible, but would have to be kept out of the actual article text. There is also the problem of inactive projects, and projects where the activity fluctuates unpredictably. Do we want to list them at the top of articles? • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:37, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
I take your point. I have also noticed how often, if one looks at the history of an article then clicks on the "Number of Watchers" icon, then goes to the article's talk page and does likewise, one will get an equivalent number of watchers. This suggests that people who are reading articles are, in general, going to the talk pages, so people should be noting the project pages with associations to the article, as the "This article is linked to these wikiprojects" icon is always linked here. Vorbee (talk) 14:57, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- As both article and talk go on to watchlists together, on most settings anyway, I think they will always be the same. I'm pretty sure that, as the individual page view figures show, hardly anyone looks at talk pages, absent a row going on. Sandro Botticelli gets over 1,000 views a day, the talk page averages 1. Johnbod (talk) 15:24, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Increasing notability requirements in light of plethora of articles created by Third/Second-worlders about local/regional "celebrities"
Hi,
I wanted to share a proposal that involves curtailing the simple notability checks with respect to "celebrities" in the developing nations.
Specifically, I find that the number of biographical pages made for "celebrities" from the developing nations, is extremely large.
- For example, while I haven't counted, it would not surprise me if the number of pages created for Indian actors outnumbers the number of actors who have pages in Hollywood.
I understand that notability criteria must be objective and established so that all administrators/page-approvers can reasonably assess the importance, and make a decision.
However, with the incredibly large population of the aforementioned demographic (3 billion total), it is hard to see why they are deserving of pages on the en.wikipedia.org page, especially when many of the readers/users of en.wikipedia.org do not care about Bollywood.
Is there any way the criteria for notability for these "celebrities" can be applied to the in.wikipedia.org instead of en.wikipedia.org? I am growing tired of seeing these people curate pages for their heroes, where these heroes often have less notability/ability/skills than a first-worlder that is half their age.
Some standardisation and consideration needs to be given to my proposal, as the large population and Bollywood-fanfare has created a recipe of absolute disaster. There are indian politicians from local levels who have pages whereas the same criteria results in a first worlder's page getting rejected.
To be fair, I have also noticed that many of the pages that I feel are undeserving of an entry on en.wikipedia.org (but maybe not in.wikipedia.org), often involve sock puppetry and users using multiple accounts (over time) to first create, then slowly build the page without catching anyone's attention.
Please, let us have this discussion. PLEASE — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.117.121.10 (talk • contribs) 23:32, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- Lets get a few things out of the way:
- There are less than 2000 articles in the subcategories of Category:Actors in Hindi cinema. This actually seems like too few.
- It absolutely does not matter how many readers/users of the English Wikipedia care about Bollywood. Only notability matters.
- Notability guidelines already exist for entertainers (see Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Entertainers).
- I believe you misunderstand how "page approval" works - outside of Wikipedia:Pending changes, there is no page approval. All Wikipedians approve (by doing nothing) or disapprove (by fixing or nominating for deletion) articles they read, regardless of being an Administrator or not. In fact, you too can be a part of this process - if you see an article that you believe doesn't follow the notability guidelines you are free to propose it's deletion.
- in.wikipedia.org does not exist because there is no single "Indian" language, which you have definitely implied. How embarrassing.
- So are you just proposing specific guidelines for developing-nation actors? That seems awfully specific. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 20:34, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- I oppose limitations aimed at reducing the number of "third world" entertainers. Many entertainers from "first world" countries are only notable locally, but they get more press coverage because they come from places with more robust press outlets. The gravamen of this proposal seems to be to give equally situated entertainers short shrift because of the particular location from which their popularity arises. bd2412 T 20:49, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your response.
First of all, no it's not just India, but rather all developing nations. For example, it seems as of late there is a booming interest in the Phillipines for industries similar to India's Bollywood.
Secondly, I am not sure if using the category tool is appropriate here, as it would not surprise me if there are many more actors whose pages have not been put under the category.
- I am not sure those who create the pages care (or, at the risk of being 'impolite': know) enough about categories as much as they do the page itself that can be found via searching the name on google or wikipedia.
Thirdly, when it comes to notability guidelines, how are those guidelines applied to developing nations? India is a great example of the issues I'm talking about, as they have for many years been masters of the media. Two examples:
- A great example of this media mastery can be illustrated by their farcical claim about a fighter jet, which embarrasingly had the Pakistani flag.[1]
- Another example is the purported photoshopping of Modi's visits to the 2015 Chennai floods, which again were taken down shortly after the gaffe was discovered.[2]
So you can see that exaggeration in Indian Media, whether it is on behalf of the Government or Actors/Politicians, is quite common.
- While I may be at risk of "picking on India", surely these examples are not exclusive to them.
Aye, one could probably easily pick out similar instances and abuse of media by Najib Razak in Malaysia, or whoever-the-leader-is of the Phillipines.
What I wanted to communicate, and what I hope the two instances above demonstrate, is that the notability criteria for developing nations must be elevated.
That is, I feel the notability criteria should involve first-world outlets recognising the developing-nation celebrity-hopeful, and even in those cases I think caution must be urged and multiple outlets should be reporting it.
Regarding the lack of an in.wikipedia.org, maybe that is something that needs to be discussed?? Surely a subdomain wouldn't kill User:Jimmy Wales?
- I am not sure how you feel that my point on that matter should make me feel embarrassed, as I was simply alluding to the inapporpriateness of foreign content on what-is-supposed-to-be the First World wikipedia.
- For example, many of these actors' "art" is in a language that is not english (i.e. not the 'en' in en.wikipedia.org), so for them to have a page on the english wikipedia (for english speakers), when the audience cannot understand the foreign dialect, is not reasonable.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.117.121.10 (talk) 20:55, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Additionally, I noticed that User:bd2412 quickly jumped in before I could post my response. You claim first worlders are only notable locally, yet that's exactly what I stated is the case for India and other developing nations but on a larger scale.
- In the developing nations, their typically-larger population densities actually exacerbate the effect you're suggesting (that I originally suggested).
I am not defending "first world" celebrities at all. Indeed I've found some myself on wikipedia who only have entries due to their paid media articles, which are then used as WP:RS to justify curation. I am against that, as well.
- There is a fine line that needs to be walked when it comes to biographical page curation, and I think it needs to be more thoroughly discussed in light of no indian wikipedia (though one should think they should have their own, and in their own language, which I feel would help them much more than the english wikipedia)
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.117.121.10 (talk) 20:59, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- "no indian wikipedia (though one should think they should have their own, and in their own language, which I feel would help them much more than the english wikipedia)" Yeah um. There is no single Indian language. There are dozens. And good news: Every one of them has a Wikipedia! --Golbez (talk) 21:04, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
References
- ^ "Ministry's I-day video shows Chinese jet with Indian flag". The Hindu. 13 August 2016.
{{cite web}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=
(help) - ^ "Narendra Modi 'photoshopped' image of Chennai floods goes viral". The Telegraph. 4 December 2015.
Wording of InternetArchiveBot, et al. with regard to its "friendly" tone
The InterentArchiveBot regularly leaves messages on article talk pages that begin with "Hello, fellow Wikipedians!" and that end with "Cheers!". This was done initially to give the bot a "friendly" feel for readers. However, newcomers to the site who are not familiar with the -bot suffix and used to seeing only people writing to other people on talk pages are bound to be confused by such messages, and not understand that they are from an automated routine rather than a person. I suggested that the bot's operator, Cyperpower678 adjust the wording of the messages but he has asked me to seek some consensus before doing so. That is what I am here to do. I would much prefer that notices from bots make clear in their tone that they are from a bot and not from a human— I don't think this makes Wikipedia "cold", I think it makes it "clear", and I firmly believe clarity is something to be preferred over friendliness any day when we are talking about our articles and their content. But what do others think? KDS4444 (talk) 23:40, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Operator comment: Given there's a consensus, any template-editor or administrator can make the appropriate alterations on the bot's on wiki configuration page.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 23:45, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Support the idea, although I'd appreciate a more concrete proposal. Please either supply wording that you want to see approved, or make it clearer that you're seeking consensus for Cyberpower to adjust the wording as he sees fit. I would be happy to support the second, but if you propose specific wording, please let me know so I can offer an opinion on it. Nyttend (talk) 23:52, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Okay, how about instead of "Hello fellow Wikipedians, I have just modified 8 external links on [this article]. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes..." followed by "...When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know..." and finally "Cheers." to something more like, "The following message has been generated by an automated 'bot' The bot has just modified 8 external links on [this article]. This message is to encourage human editors to review my edits. If you have any questions [aside: questions about what, exactly??] or need the bot to ignore the links [another aside: I don't even know what that means] or the page altogether, please visit this simple FAQ for additional information. The bot made the following changes..." followed by "When an editor has finished reviewing these changes, he or she should set the checked parameter below to 'true' or 'failed' to let other editors know..." and I'd have it end with "Thank you" (rather than "Cheers", as "Cheers" is just not something a bot should be saying). But I would also be very glad to let Cyberpower concoct his own wording if there is anything objectionable at all about mine. KDS4444 (talk) 00:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I'd like to think IABot has it's own basic form of intelligence when it comes to analyzing articles, and don't like the bot referring to itself in 3rd person.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 00:13, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- Okay, how about instead of "Hello fellow Wikipedians, I have just modified 8 external links on [this article]. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes..." followed by "...When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know..." and finally "Cheers." to something more like, "The following message has been generated by an automated 'bot' The bot has just modified 8 external links on [this article]. This message is to encourage human editors to review my edits. If you have any questions [aside: questions about what, exactly??] or need the bot to ignore the links [another aside: I don't even know what that means] or the page altogether, please visit this simple FAQ for additional information. The bot made the following changes..." followed by "When an editor has finished reviewing these changes, he or she should set the checked parameter below to 'true' or 'failed' to let other editors know..." and I'd have it end with "Thank you" (rather than "Cheers", as "Cheers" is just not something a bot should be saying). But I would also be very glad to let Cyberpower concoct his own wording if there is anything objectionable at all about mine. KDS4444 (talk) 00:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I genuinely have no preference towards what the message actually says (I've always ignored everything but the links in the past), but I do have a question - is there really a huge concern about who is placing a message? If a new editor sees a message saying "Hello Wikipedians, these links have been changed" vs "Hello Wikipedians, I'm a bot and I changed these links" is it really going to change their understanding of how Wikipedia works? I mean, if so, go for it, but it seems like we're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Primefac (talk) 00:00, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Primefac: Honestly, I agree with you completely: this is not a big deal, but Cyberpower asked me to seek consensus before changing it, so I am following his suggestion. KDS4444 (talk) 00:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- And I ask for this because IABot posts these messages routinely every day. That's a wiki wide change from my point of view.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 00:20, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Primefac: Honestly, I agree with you completely: this is not a big deal, but Cyberpower asked me to seek consensus before changing it, so I am following his suggestion. KDS4444 (talk) 00:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- Keep same Not saying the current wording is perfect but I've never seen a mythical newbie become confused. Probably a concern is stylistic, some prefer a less casual tone. The reason to keep is practical. If we ever need to go back with a bot and modify or read those notices it will be problematic to deal with changing messages. -- GreenC 00:53, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I am not a newbie and the first several times I encountered this message I had to clarify for myself that it was just an automated message. It's not that I didn't figure it out, it's that I had to spend the unnecessary energy to do it. There I was, confused. Now you've heard it. But have it your way, if you like. Proposal withdrawn. KDS4444 (talk) 09:57, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Request for new tool
I have no clue if this is practical; that's one reason I'm coming here, together with the fact that a single user's request is less significant than a request that got lots of support at WP:VP/Pr.
If an edit war occurs on a less-heavily-trafficked page, and nobody watching the page happens to report it, the chances of the war being caught are minimal, especially if no edit warrior wants to risk a boomerang by reporting at WP:ANEW. What if we had a tool that tracked pages with (1) lots of recent edits by multiple people, and (2) no recent edits to the talk page? It would still miss some edit-wars, and it would find a bunch of pages that aren't experiencing any conflicts, but I can imagine it being useful: people looking at the page's top hits would more easily find an ongoing edit war, thus making it easier for them to report it. Nyttend (talk) 00:01, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I am incredulous that such a tool does not already exist, and that we still have to rely on vigilant third parties to even notice that an edit war is taking place anywhere. We should absolutely have a tool that monitors this automatically so that we can check those articles and see if such a war is taking place. 'Cause many times, it would be! KDS4444 (talk) 00:07, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)Actually, this could be taken one step further. An admin bot that monitors pages being actively edited and checks for back and forth reverts. If it detects a certain threshold of warring it auto protects the page with the minimum needed protection to stop all parties from warring. The affected parties are warned and the page protection lasts 48 hours. This is something I could write up. I have experience with advanced bots and could probably fashion up a good bot to do the job.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 00:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- That would make you my hero. That would be great!!! KDS4444 (talk) 00:12, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I enjoy the idea. It's possible the cluebot also partly does some of this, it can report at AIV and appears to sometimes revert edits simply because they have recently been reverted already (in case it can serve as reference point). Of course, it's focus is vandalism not warring. —PaleoNeonate - 00:17, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I'm really concerned at the idea of an adminbot or anything else that actively does something. Imagine that an article is suddenly in the news, and lots of people start editing the article in a generally collaborative fashion without anybody having reason to go to talk — the page would be reported as edit-warring with my proposed tool, but while a human could easily see that it wasn't, a bot couldn't. What would such a bot do if some people were hitting "undo" or rollback, while others were merely going into the page history and reverting manually? Or what if some editors are warring while others are making productive edits, i.e. a couple of blocks are better than page protection? There are just too many factors for a bot to handle, but given the tool, a human could easily discriminate between war and no-war. Nyttend (talk) 00:40, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- Indeed there are many factors, and I have general ideas on how to account for them. This would be seriously tested before it actually performs any action. I operate IABot, in which the parser, which I designed, has to account for the human formatting factor. So complex operations and analysis is something I am capable of doing. The bot would cache recent revisions and compare new revisions to older revisions and look for matches to determine reverts. It would analyze the ratio of editors reverting to a preferred version. A many-to-one ratio would indicate users reverting possible vandalism. It would keep track of the reverting users and look for patterns spanning over the last 3 days of the article's history. It's certainly doable. The algorithms of how the bot handles the diplomacy can be figured out before the bot goes into development.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 00:47, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- We already have bots that automatically revert possible vandalism and test edits— while a certain degree of careful implementation is clearly necessary with this proposal, I think we'd be fools not to at least see if it can be done. We got the guy with the bot programming skills on board to create the program, let's see what it can do. If it messes up in a trial run, then we can either discard it or modify it. But what if it works?? If it works, then edit wars can no longer hope to go unnoticed. As I said before, I think this idea is one that Wikipedia is long overdue to bring into reality. We say edit warring is bad, we say there are consequences for doing it, but we have no tools to make sure it gets dealt with if it happens and no one is around to notice and report it. KDS4444 (talk) 01:11, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I'd like to suggest we call it "Warbot"! KDS4444 (talk) 01:13, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- [edit conflict] Aside from my hesitation at using an adminbot for anything other than routine issues (e.g. updating DYK, blocking open proxies, adding {{Pp}} to full-protected pages, handling a one-time task approved by the community), I'm uncomfortable with this idea because of the response that it would be designed to make. What if you have a few editors making a mess amidst a lot of editors doing good work? How would the bot know that blocking is better than protecting? I see absolutely no reason for a bot to protect a page when blocking a miscreant or two is a much better response, and aside from open proxies, there's no way that a bot should be blocking anyone without constant human oversight of some sort — people rightly get upset when a misconfigured filter or a mis-understanding bot prevents a specific edit or wrongly interprets a good edit as vandalism, but imagine the effect if they get blocked by a bot, or if the page gets bot-protected in the middle of a good string of edits! Perfect is the enemy of good, but I believe that we're better off with the current system than with a bot doing this. Nyttend (talk) 01:19, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I agree, automated reporting of possible edit wars would be a good addition, but an adminbot that auto-protects such pages could easily end up protecting a vandalised revision, or one with contentious unsourced statements on a BLP. Fixing this would be much harder than e.g. simply reverting Cluebot. Daß Wölf 01:26, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- The bot could also just warn and report users, and not do anything at all to stop the warring. I'm certain a good adminbot could be designed. I do research the topics before designing, but it doesn't have to try and stop the edit war. Like I said designing algorithms for complex cases is something I'm pretty good at. Either way, I merely suggested it, as an option, and like I said in my RfA, any bot using admin permissions would be heavily scrutinized and tested before being allowed to execute any admin tasks.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 01:32, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I like the idea of the bot if it only reports and doesn't take action. If it generated a report on a page we could watch, (AN and ANI would not be good, needs to be dedicated page, like AN/Bot) then we just check when we see changes. This also gives us a good picture of what is going on wiki-wide and the page and archives would be full of interesting snapshots of editor activity. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 01:40, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I can go and explore making a bot the generates a reliable report. The idea of it being an adminbot can always be revisited in the future if it turns out the bot can be trusted with such a task.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 01:48, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- That it could only report at first also seems ideal to me. If it could also make use of the existing edit tagging system, that may also be a plus? This would allow a second stage to include reports at the abuselog if so (it's unclear to me at this point if only edit filters can currently tag edits though)... Another complication is that it might need to take into account common CIDR ranges (and "grow" the network that is to be reported). (Example of someone soapboxing multiple times from 171.78.0.0/16 at History of Earth.) I have some experience dialing with the latter type of scenario since I authored IDS software, but for efficiency at a large enough scale it might require patricia trees implemented in C... —PaleoNeonate - 02:17, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- Just as I wanted a tool to find possible EW situations, I think a reporting bot would be great. It wouldn't be "forced to choose" between blocking and protecting, and false positives could be handled with the undo button instead of forcing us to unblock someone or unprotect a page. Please just be careful to have the bot wait a while (a day or two?) after reporting a page before making the next report about the same page; it really wouldn't be pretty if the bot were determined to list something and got into an edit war with a human :-) Nyttend (talk) 03:11, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- PS, we have a bot subpage for AIV. Maybe we could create a bot subpage for AN3? We already handle edit-warring there anyway; I don't see how it would help if the bot reported at some other page. Nyttend (talk) 03:13, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- Go for it, we stand to gain more than lose. If it works well, we have a useful new tool, if it fails, we learn from it why it doesn't work. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 16:16, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- That it could only report at first also seems ideal to me. If it could also make use of the existing edit tagging system, that may also be a plus? This would allow a second stage to include reports at the abuselog if so (it's unclear to me at this point if only edit filters can currently tag edits though)... Another complication is that it might need to take into account common CIDR ranges (and "grow" the network that is to be reported). (Example of someone soapboxing multiple times from 171.78.0.0/16 at History of Earth.) I have some experience dialing with the latter type of scenario since I authored IDS software, but for efficiency at a large enough scale it might require patricia trees implemented in C... —PaleoNeonate - 02:17, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I can go and explore making a bot the generates a reliable report. The idea of it being an adminbot can always be revisited in the future if it turns out the bot can be trusted with such a task.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 01:48, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I like the idea of the bot if it only reports and doesn't take action. If it generated a report on a page we could watch, (AN and ANI would not be good, needs to be dedicated page, like AN/Bot) then we just check when we see changes. This also gives us a good picture of what is going on wiki-wide and the page and archives would be full of interesting snapshots of editor activity. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 01:40, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- The bot could also just warn and report users, and not do anything at all to stop the warring. I'm certain a good adminbot could be designed. I do research the topics before designing, but it doesn't have to try and stop the edit war. Like I said designing algorithms for complex cases is something I'm pretty good at. Either way, I merely suggested it, as an option, and like I said in my RfA, any bot using admin permissions would be heavily scrutinized and tested before being allowed to execute any admin tasks.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 01:32, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I agree, automated reporting of possible edit wars would be a good addition, but an adminbot that auto-protects such pages could easily end up protecting a vandalised revision, or one with contentious unsourced statements on a BLP. Fixing this would be much harder than e.g. simply reverting Cluebot. Daß Wölf 01:26, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- Indeed there are many factors, and I have general ideas on how to account for them. This would be seriously tested before it actually performs any action. I operate IABot, in which the parser, which I designed, has to account for the human formatting factor. So complex operations and analysis is something I am capable of doing. The bot would cache recent revisions and compare new revisions to older revisions and look for matches to determine reverts. It would analyze the ratio of editors reverting to a preferred version. A many-to-one ratio would indicate users reverting possible vandalism. It would keep track of the reverting users and look for patterns spanning over the last 3 days of the article's history. It's certainly doable. The algorithms of how the bot handles the diplomacy can be figured out before the bot goes into development.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 00:47, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- I'm really concerned at the idea of an adminbot or anything else that actively does something. Imagine that an article is suddenly in the news, and lots of people start editing the article in a generally collaborative fashion without anybody having reason to go to talk — the page would be reported as edit-warring with my proposed tool, but while a human could easily see that it wasn't, a bot couldn't. What would such a bot do if some people were hitting "undo" or rollback, while others were merely going into the page history and reverting manually? Or what if some editors are warring while others are making productive edits, i.e. a couple of blocks are better than page protection? There are just too many factors for a bot to handle, but given the tool, a human could easily discriminate between war and no-war. Nyttend (talk) 00:40, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
RfC discussion on May/June events at Talk:2017
There is an RfC discussion on which event that occurred in May/June 2017 to include or exclude (Talk:2017#RfC: Events in May and June 2017). Join in discussion. --George Ho (talk) 06:00, 1 July 2017 (UTC)