Policy | Technical | Proposals | Idea lab | Miscellaneous |
The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas. Before creating a new section, please note:
Before commenting, note:
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Contents
- 1 "Arbitrator" user group
- 2 Statistics Website
- 3 Few ideas
- 4 WikiPolls
- 5 Definition of a stub and automatic removal of stub templates
- 6 IDEA: Watchlist indication/activation from other users' pages
- 7 Research announcement: Learning from article revision histories
- 8 Proposal for Linking of Wikipedia to wiktionary for easy understanding
- 9 Workshopping: Proposed "Page mover" permission
- 10 Automated list of authors
- 11 Wikipedia:WikiGhost
- 12 WP:NOTUSA
"Arbitrator" user group
So, the Wikipedia:Non-administrator Arbitrators RfC over a month ago did in its closure feature a rough consensus in creating an "Arbitrator" usergroup for arbitrators, but the closer indicated that it would need some development and further discussion. So, now it may be time to discuss how to implement that - assuming that the close still stands. Noting also this revision regarding one possible setup and whether it would be acceptable to the WMF given that it involves sensitive permissions.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:50, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- If I recall correctly, this would not be a foundation problem - provided that any access granted follows the same requirements (community approvals, identification, etc) that is already in place. Creating a new
usergroup
is fairly easy. We would need to decide what permissions are actually required for the group, see example list of all available permissions here. Users can belong to multiple groups, and their permissions merge. So for example, the new group could be granted the ability to view deleted and oversighted (deletedtext
andviewsuppressed
permissions) without the ability to also delete or oversight the pages. — xaosflux Talk 19:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)- This would require the user to ALSO be an oversighter, administrator, etc to gain the additional permissions. This may open the discussion to limit or expand the permissions someone gets just for being on the committee. — xaosflux Talk 19:32, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- Also, by default new groups would only be able to have membership changed by stewards - and if bundling portions of oversight or checkuser the foundation would likely still require this. If they will have equal to or LESS permissions than administrators, then we could also request that our 'crats be able to update the group. — xaosflux Talk 19:35, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- Among the concepts proposed in the RfC was to give this group solely the "view" privileges (that is by my assessment,
abusefilter-hidden-log
,abusefilter-log
,abusefilter-log-detail
,abusefilter-view
,abusefilter-view-private
,browsearchive
,checkuser-log
,deletedhistory
,deletedtext
,spamblacklistlog
,suppressionlog
andtitleblacklistlog
), althougheditprotected
may also be useful if arbitrators have to work within protected pages. And yes, such a group if it includes the "sensitive" permissions (heresuppressionlog
andcheckuser-log
and some abusefilter permissions) it would need to be added/removed by stewards only; if not requested by the WMF, the folks in Phabricator will likely ask for it since non-steward granting of such permissions has created issues in the past.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:34, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- Among the concepts proposed in the RfC was to give this group solely the "view" privileges (that is by my assessment,
I pruned duplicated items that are already in "users", etc - so this could be a request such as:
- Create a new group:
Arbitrators
- Include permissions:
abusefilter-hidden-log
abusefilter-view-private
browsearchive
checkuser-log
deletedhistory
deletedtext
spamblacklistlog
suppressionlog
titleblacklistlog
viewdeletedfile
viewsuppressed
— xaosflux Talk 22:08, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Now, a prime question is - is this moot? Since ArbCom is the deciders of who gets CheckUser and Oversight - if they are going to just assign themselves the permissions then there is no need to include that stuff in here. — xaosflux Talk 22:10, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- If memory serves, some arbitrators have stated that they won't use this full "requestable" permission set, so a more narrow set may be useful. Plus, I am not sure if the OS and CU rights entail all the permissions mentioned before, which may matter in case of a non-admin being elected to ARBCOM.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:27, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
-
- Purely from the perspective of programming and security, it makes sense to have a group for arbitrators. Membership in this group begins when their term starts, and ends when they leave. If an arbitrator gets CU or OS, they may keep it beyond the end of their term, or remove it early. In theory an arbitrator might not have sysop access, or might resign sysop after being elected. We should disentangle the roles so that each hat works independently of the others. Jehochman Talk 22:44, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- Please identify the problem before offering a solution. Why would an arb need all these permissions? Arbitration always takes plenty of time so why can't other arbs provide information that an individual may not be able to access? In an emergency any sensible arb should quickly act on the advice of respected users with the permissions, with a review to follow. Do arbs frequently need to study deleted pages and such like? Johnuniq (talk) 00:56, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
- Do they really need another 'feather' ? I think the voting was done without any user there having any knowledge on how this would be done. Sometimes certain rights are removed when not used such as OS/CU so how would you go about doing that? for example a sitting arbie, AGK lost his CU/OS rights for inactivity but he is still an arbitrator, so would the stewards remove his "bundled" arbitrator right when he isn't active? It would be silly to bundle multiple rights into one cannister especially for a group which will never have more than 15 members at any given point....I think only large groups, or groups that can allow for more users should have their own special usergroup (the only exception is the founder rights ofcourse)..This might need another discussion..--Stemoc 01:48, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
- AGK did not lose his CU/OS access by inactivity, as you can see here. Also, as said here sitting arbitrators are not subject to the (local) inactivity policy. As for deleted pages, yes, I do remember a number of cases where deleted evidence did play a role.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:50, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
- @Johnuniq If we ever elect an arb who is not currently an admin then yes they would need access to deleted and indeed oversighted edits. If they had to rely on other arbs to check deleted revisions and decide which were appropriate to show them as evidence then we would have two classes of Arbs. I would prefer that only those who had been elected as admins were deleting, restoring, blocking and unblocking. But all arbs need to be able to see the same evidence. ϢereSpielChequers 10:29, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
- Do they really need another 'feather' ? I think the voting was done without any user there having any knowledge on how this would be done. Sometimes certain rights are removed when not used such as OS/CU so how would you go about doing that? for example a sitting arbie, AGK lost his CU/OS rights for inactivity but he is still an arbitrator, so would the stewards remove his "bundled" arbitrator right when he isn't active? It would be silly to bundle multiple rights into one cannister especially for a group which will never have more than 15 members at any given point....I think only large groups, or groups that can allow for more users should have their own special usergroup (the only exception is the founder rights ofcourse)..This might need another discussion..--Stemoc 01:48, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
- In reply to User:Jo-Jo Eumerus's comment of 18:50, 30 December 2015 (UTC) at the top of this section: Unless the Arbitration Committee or at least a significant minority of that committee ask for such a feature, I think we are putting the cart before the horse. In any case, if and when a majority of the committee ask for it, as long as it only affects members of the committee and it doesn't give them rights they don't already have, it should be done as "routine maintenance" without further community input. The only reasons I can think of for the community to discuss this is if a significant minority of the committee would like this or if it would be an actual "upgrade" in permissions beyond what the community has already given them. I don't see evidence of either one of these conditions being met right now. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:34, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
- Pretty sure we need a community consensus before any user right will be created. I remember that the developers in Bugzilla/Phabricator require a community consensus for such things, an ArbCom request is not enough.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:59, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
- From a logical point of view, I agree with the concept of creating a usergroup specifically for ArbCom members, namely:
- Permissions necessary for an arbitrator to do the job can be issued directly to the group as opposed to needing to add a given Arb to perhaps two or three groups (sysop, oversight, checkuser - as required). By the same token, at the expiration of their term, it's only one group to take that arb out of instead of having stewards/crats lookup what group(s) the former Arb had and removing the others
- Through use of
$wpAddGroups
,$wgRemoveGroups
and$wgGroupsRemoveFromSelf
Arbs can add/remove specific groups to other editors (class examples: CU/OS)
- Just my two cents (keep the change)
- Dax Bane 01:33, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
- Arbitrators cannot add or remove people from usergroups. When arbcom appoints someone as e.g. a checkuser, they make a request for a steward to add the user concerned to the checkuser usergroup. Likewise when permissions are removed for inactivity, a request is made to the stewards for the permissions to be removed. This will not change if the arb usergroup is created. Thryduulf (talk) 13:17, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
Didn't we already determine that Oversight Access allows for access to view deleted content, and that an ArbCom election was considered RfA-identical enough to meet the Foundation requirement for Oversight access? Therefore the Admin bit is not necessary to view deleted content, if the Arb were given Oversight access? (Note this was never tested practically, but as per before, I would be willing to drop my admin bit for a few hours to try it out, if we wanted to know what one could and could not do for sure.) The CheckUser log access is of little value as it provides little information, also keeping in mind that not all Arbitrators are CheckUsers (by choice). If we had a non-admin Arbitrator, they could be provided Oversight Access, and have all of the tools necessary without creating a new usergroup (plus the ability to revision (un)delete and revision (un)suppress, but not to delete an actual page). I think this is a solution looking for a problem. The idea of creating a new usergroup, for a hypothetical non-admin arbitrator that may or may not get elected in the future, when really all we have to do as give them a single permission, that they are already entitled to. --kelapstick(bainuu) 02:35, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
- Oversighters have all the required permissions to view deleted revisions without the admin flag (though oddly enough not the ability to delete pages, which would be required for some suppressions), and according to the global policy could be appointed by arbcom without being local admins. In terms of a need for the group, maybe? Some projects use one for arbitrators, others don't. If the group had CU or suppression log viewing abilities then it would need to be granted from meta by stewards, but if it just had the ability to view deleted revisions and the like then it could be granted locally by bureaucrats.
- I'm not convinced of the need for such a group myself. You can just give arbitrators an admin flag for their tenure, if need be. Ajraddatz (Talk) 02:45, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
- Arbcom elections and RFA look at very different things. I would be surprised if the community elected an arb who couldn't be trusted with the block button, but it is entirely possible that we could elect an Arb who we wouldn't trust with the delete button. ϢereSpielChequers 19:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Comment We at Russian Wikipedia have had the arbitrator flag since June 2013, and AFAIK we've never had any problems with that. It includes 4 rights, namely browsearchive
, deletedhistory
, abusefilter-log-detail
& deletedtext
. P.S. I know the situation here is quite different, I'm just telling you about our experience. -Синкретик (talk) 19:00, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
Statistics Website
Hi, since 2011 the website wikiscan.org calculates statistics for French Wikipedia. The project is to transform it into a multi-wiki site with a dedicated site for every Wikimedia wiki with more than 100,000 edits, actually it would make more than 300 sites. I plan to apply for a m:Grants:IEG to achieve this big transformation and also add a multilingual interface with an English version and other improvements.
In summary, the site provides two main types of statistics:
- Statistics by dates, for every day and every month for the wiki history, and for the last 24 hours:
- Most active pages according to several criteria (number of users, edits, revocations, size changes and pageviews when it's available), examples with fr.wp: 1 February 2016, January 2015, January 2015 on archive.org (when pageviews were active, visible in the first column).
- Most active users according to the number of edits, logged actions, revocations and size changes. Examples: 1 February 2016, January 2015.
- General statistics over this period: total number of edits, edits for each namespace, article creations, deletes, blocks, etc. [1] [2]
- Pre-computed statistics for each user, this allows to quickly view the page even with many edits, for example a bot totaling about 2.5 millions edits [3]. A classic edits counter can take more than 2 minutes to load as many contributions or fail [4]. The downside with pre-computed statistics is that last changes may take longer to be considered, on French WP it's actually between one and two hours, for English WP it will probably be more.
- Approximately 30 statistics are calculated: total edits, creations, talk namespace percent, number of days and months with at least one action, the overall diff, the number of small or large changes, estimated time spent doing edits, etc.
- These statistics are available for the total and in tables for each year and month.
- There is also a chart by month and a pie chart by namespace groups.
- A table summarizes these statistics for all users [5], sortable for most statistics. The same table is envisaged for each year and each month.
Would you interested in an English Wikipedia Wikiscan ? the site address would be http://en.wikiscan.org. It is also planned to support other projects like Commons, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wiktionary, etc. --Akeron (talk) 18:09, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
- User:Akeron, looks useful! Fences&Windows 09:25, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
- Yes. I was thinking of this very concept myself today but more from the point of view of "how many visitors has this page had?" but the other statistics would also be interesting to see how much a particular topic was corrected over time. kk (talk) 23:52, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Fences and windows and Do better: thanks, the IEG is open on m:Grants:IEG/Wikiscan multi-wiki. --Akeron (talk) 16:39, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
Few ideas
Here are few ideas just to think about. It is not meant to be ever implemented. Just ideas.
- User recieves notice ring if someone proceed the conversation in which he participates, no matter he is not literally mentioned in future posts ({{Ping}}).
- (±123) Page size change in bytes when you preview the page. Easier to decide whether or not to mark a minor edit.
- Slideshow button if <gallery> by default as in Commons
- Edit section0 link by default
- Special:SpecialPages would need interwikis
- Activity light bulb at signature, for example --Example (talk) 15:06, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
Categories
Categories [ edit ]
Show in columns Sort by alphabet
|
- Introducing "sectioncat". For most users that would be the easier way to edit categories.
- Options to show categories in columns and/or sorted by alphabet order. The article of Albert Einstein currently (as of March 2016) has 71 categories. The average reader is hard to find the desired category. Maybe even better idea is to show categories in columns by default, as in "What links here" pages and many other lists.
Advanced search options (layers) for admins
Often I miss one of the following options.
Search |
Layers
Live pages Deleted pages Past versions |
Namespaces
(Article) |
--Janezdrilc (talk) 15:56, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
- Some of those options are already available as search parameters (for everyone), e.g.
intitle:
,insource:
. Searching deleted pages and/or past versions would probably be tough, and should probably be a different special page entirely (though WikiBlame covers searching an individual, known page's past revisions somewhat). Searching for redirects would presumably require a special search parameter, because currently search surfaces the target page if a redirect matches a search. Some of the rest … would require the suggestions to be more concrete; does "summary" mean "searching the edit summary field"? {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 17:48, 5 March 2016 (UTC) - Searching within deleted pages is borderline technically feasible and probably won't happen. Searching in past revisions is probably not feasible performance-wise for the same reason. Searching for deleted titles on a different special page is hopefully coming soon. MER-C 05:29, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
That's great. intitle:
and others actually are layers that I had in mind. Maybe they just have to be put in the form of » « (as above in the table). It would be much more user friendly. --Janezdrilc (talk) 11:18, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
- Find a way to prevent Wikipedia Link Rot from occurring in the References section of all possible articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tom mai78101 (talk • contribs) 05:02, 17 April 2016
WikiPolls
As a sister site, WikiPolls feels as though it could be a good idea, but, first, I would like to explain what it is and see whether there are issues to be repaired:
- WikiPolls in my idea is a sister site which anyone can edit and wherein users can post their own topics such as "What World War subject is your most favorite? [Button]—World War I...[Button]—World War II...[Button]—the hypothetical World War III" for users to answer by selecting choices and then clicking on the "Vote" button. Of course, it would be hard to find topics by just searching for their topic names and entry names, so tagging them with words such as "World War" would help making searching much faster, and, to avoid giving in false polls or altering users' initial votes, users would have to vote in order to see results. Also, we would obviously not want to have polls such as "Which Wikipedia user is worse?" and even "Which of the following is the worst terrorist?", for that might otherwise make likers feel upset from seeing negative results after voting, and we especially do not want controversial entries such as "For whom do you want to win after the 2016 elections?", for that can skew general people's votes into getting apparently bad leaders.
This is only an idea, and I am only looking for suggestions. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 02:29, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
-
- why would I want to go there?
- btw, this is the wrong place. If I remember correctly you should put this on meta--Dixtosa (talk) 04:49, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
- I was suspicious that it might have been that place where it belongs, but it was hard for me to tell (EDIT: Additionally, it was made harder because I have accidentally visited MediaWiki on the bottom-right corner of the page layout instead.), and the rules did not say that I must not do that,
but, regardless of what I have said, I shall relocate this topic.Gamingforfun365 (talk) 09:19, 13 March 2016 (UTC)- Even though the official rules for submitting sister project ideas do not exist here, which is very misleading, what do you think of polls? Now, just forget the WikiPolls project for now.
Gamingforfun365 (talk) 09:44, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
- Even though the official rules for submitting sister project ideas do not exist here, which is very misleading, what do you think of polls? Now, just forget the WikiPolls project for now.
- I was suspicious that it might have been that place where it belongs, but it was hard for me to tell (EDIT: Additionally, it was made harder because I have accidentally visited MediaWiki on the bottom-right corner of the page layout instead.), and the rules did not say that I must not do that,
- Sister sites are required to have an educational or informational purpose. This doesn't seem like a good fit on those grounds. It might be popular at some other site, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:05, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
- Such as Wikia, and where is the requirement? Other than that, I am sorry that I had given a lousy idea like that and therefore shown my medium amount of ignorance.
Gamingforfun365 (talk) 05:05, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Such as Wikia, and where is the requirement? Other than that, I am sorry that I had given a lousy idea like that and therefore shown my medium amount of ignorance.
- The proposal would belong at meta:Proposals for new projects. See mw:Category:Poll extensions for existing MediaWiki extensions but it doesn't sound like a project for the Wikimedia Foundation. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:53, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
Are all wiki sites required to be educational in the conventional way that the encyclopaedia is? Presumably not or there wouldn't be ideas for alternatives and have just seen a mention of a wiki poll idea. This may simply be a relatively conventional market research of some sort that people could choose to be involved with instead of the invasive ones that often appear on computer screens as advertisement in some excuse that the owner didn't pay for the software. I am hoping for something I can use as I choose to help evolve and never pay for software as it was invented very many years ago and we are all part of the process. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markostri (talk • contribs) 20:49, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
- All WMF-sponsored wikis are required to be "educational" due to the foundation:Mission statement. The m:sister project committee only accepts projects that are compatible with the movement's general principles (freely licenced, spreading free knowledge, BLP rules), vision and mission statement. They don't have to be "educational in the conventional way", but they do have to be "educational". m:Proposals for new projects lists several wikifarms that are happy to host non-educational projects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:46, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- (EDIT: On the other hand, the only "education" which I would receive from the site would be people's opinions upon subjects about...anything. I also was thinking about providing a little information about subjects to make recognition of the subjects better and a little "educational", but, other than that,) I apologize for bringing up this topic. I wish that I had known about the statement. I feel somewhat embarrassed.
Gamingforfun365 (talk) 17:02, 20 April 2016 (UTC)- Response, please.
Gamingforfun365 (talk) 21:15, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
- Response, please.
- (EDIT: On the other hand, the only "education" which I would receive from the site would be people's opinions upon subjects about...anything. I also was thinking about providing a little information about subjects to make recognition of the subjects better and a little "educational", but, other than that,) I apologize for bringing up this topic. I wish that I had known about the statement. I feel somewhat embarrassed.
Definition of a stub and automatic removal of stub templates
At the moment there isn't really a set definition of a stub. WP:STUB has a very vague description of one, and also states that different editors follow different standards. I think we should create a a definitive number of characters that make an article no longer a stub. Probably somewhere between 500-1500 characters. Once this is decided, a bot could be used to remove stub templates when they no longer fit the requirements to be a stub, so that stub tags could be consistent and accurate among articles. Thoughts? — Omni Flames (talk contribs) 02:54, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- 500-1,500 characters (a.k.a. bytes) make about four or five paragraphs and also about five or six references. A better number might be 3,000 or over.
Gamingforfun365 (talk) 05:21, 27 March 2016 (UTC)- @Gff365: Ah, you're right. Perhaps 2000-2500 bytes would be a more appropriate measure? — Omni Flames (talk contribs) 07:36, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- I am looking at articles such as PlayStation World, and it is currently 3,531 bytes long, yet it in my opinion still constitutes a stub article. I would like to change my mind into saying that around 5,000 bytes might work better.
Gamingforfun365 (talk) 19:11, 27 March 2016 (UTC)- That is not a stub, it has multiple paragraphs, an image, references. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:15, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- The reason that page has that many characters is proabably because of all the templates. But I agree with Graeme Bartlett: that's not a stub. — Omni Flames (talk contribs) 22:55, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
-
- Exactly! That would make the robot want to change the quality level from "Stub" to "Start", and that is my point!
Gamingforfun365 (talk) 21:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
- Exactly! That would make the robot want to change the quality level from "Stub" to "Start", and that is my point!
- I think a very short article with multiple sources can be a start-class article (or even C), while a somewhat longer article filled solely with unsourced plot info can be a stub, especially if it doesn't make use of sections. I don't think it's a good idea to base the idea of "stub" entirely around character-count, as I'd much rather see people trying to write good prose than useless trivia in order to get to start-class. I don't think a hard limit is a good idea. ~Mable (chat) 17:17, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
-
- The reason that page has that many characters is proabably because of all the templates. But I agree with Graeme Bartlett: that's not a stub. — Omni Flames (talk contribs) 22:55, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- That is not a stub, it has multiple paragraphs, an image, references. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:15, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- I am looking at articles such as PlayStation World, and it is currently 3,531 bytes long, yet it in my opinion still constitutes a stub article. I would like to change my mind into saying that around 5,000 bytes might work better.
- @Gff365: Ah, you're right. Perhaps 2000-2500 bytes would be a more appropriate measure? — Omni Flames (talk contribs) 07:36, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Comment I've posted a note about this discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#Discussion_at_Idea_Lab, where the stub experts can be found. PamD 20:48, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
- WP:STUB#How big is too big? says "there is no set size at which an article stops being a stub" and includes a link to the Croughton-London rule, which is a useful way of putting a perspective on it. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:26, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
- Agree with the above. Stubness is not about characters. It is about meaningfull content in proportion to what there is to know about a topic. Short articles about obscure yet important historical persons may give all available information, while adding the contents of the phone book to a further empty article on a major city would not elevate such an article above stub level. (NB I realise this is not the best example as phone books are listed among what Wikipedia is not, but I hope the idea gets across) Arnoutf (talk) 14:13, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
- The term 'stub' has become a justification to junk up the bottom of many articles with those ugly stub templates. Any criteria that expands the range of articles to receive those templates is not an improvement to Wikipedia. Likewise, an article shouldn't need more than one stub template; the categorization can go within the template itself. Praemonitus (talk) 20:16, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, it would be nice to be able to combine all of those stub templates into a single template, just as all of those Wikiproject templates can be combined into one. Probably doable, too: just copy the code from the WikiProjectBannerShell template into a StubBannerShell template, maybe tweak the parent stub template a little, & that part's done. Only step left to do would be to find all of those stub articles with more than one stub template & add it to them. Not more than a few million to check & edit, simple to do. -- llywrch (talk) 18:59, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- WP:AWB has a byte-length definition of not-a-stub, and I believe that's the only (semi-)automatic method for removing stub tags at the moment. The number chosen is rather generous, to err on the side of caution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:58, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Stubsensor exists, although very inactive. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 16:33, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
IDEA: Watchlist indication/activation from other users' pages
This is a problematic editor that I have to watch a little more closely in my capacity as a gnome admin, because I suspect him of sockpuppetry. While scrutinizing his edits I added a bunch of articles he's edited to my watchlist. It occurs to me that it would be helpful if I could add pages to my watchlist directly from his contribution history, instead of having to open each article and click the star. It would also be helpful if I could see in his contribution history which articles we have in common.
I can see this being used in a pernicious way to stalk other editors on Wikipedia, so maybe it makes more sense for admins, although I know a lot of power editors who might also benefit from this. Thoughts? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 02:01, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- As to your wish to compare lists of articles edited by different users, we do have this tool. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:07, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
- The watchlist is already so crowded as to be confusing and difficult for many users, but this seems like the kind of thing you could run a userscript to do. (Bonus: you could turn it off when you didn't need it.) Maybe ask at WP:VPT to see whether any of the script-savvy folks agree with my guess that you could do this in userscript? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:05, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- Od Mishehu, thank you for the tip, although I think you misread my request. :)
- WhatamIdoing, your point is noted about the crowded watchlist, but I'm proposing functionality that would enable me to add articles to my watchlist directly from another user's contribution history. With sock operators, for example, it's necessary to follow them to other pages. Often they have niche interests, so if you start watching pages they are interested in, you will often be led to their socks sooner. I'll ask at VPT, though, to see if anyone can think of a quick solution. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 03:40, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks for the correction; that was sloppy of me. Perhaps some might disagree, but I think that Special:Contributions isn't quite as crowded as Special:Watchlist. It looks like a good script writer over at VPT is interested in this, so you may be able to try it out before long. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:59, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
Research announcement: Learning from article revision histories
I'd like to announce an IEG proposal I'm working on titled "Learning from article revision histories". The basic idea is to develop some web tools for studying article revision histories which would allow, for instance, people to compare historical versions of articles or particular sections. I know there are a number of diff tools available, but as far as I know, there is currently no way to easily put a particular diff up for a vote from a survey of editors. I say "as far as I know" because I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, and it's likely I'm not the first to ask some of these questions. My hope is that tools like this could be used to make editorial oversight easier, and facilitate community involvement when disagreements arise. But the tools I'm proposing are only useful if they are addressing a real need, and I admittedly don't know much about the frequency of disagreement among editors. If you have some comments about whether disagreement is a actual problem that should be addressed, please consider leaving your thoughts on the talk page for the proposal.
Evoapps (talk) 20:52, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- You might want to look into Wikipedia:Labels, which can be used to score/tag individual diffs. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:08, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- I want to let readers know that my "Learning from article revision histories" proposal is much improved based on feedback, and I believe it is now a project that will be much more valuable to editors and researchers alike. Thanks to Whatamidoing (WMF) for telling me about Wikipedia:Labels; my proposal now integrates more closely with the Wiki Labels project as well as the ORES. Others have provided valuable feedback as well about related work that has been done in this domain. Please consider checking the project out! -- Evoapps (talk) 15:29, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
Proposal for Linking of Wikipedia to wiktionary for easy understanding
NimXaif6290 17:37, 15 April 2016 (UTC) M/S wikipedia! It is suggested that you may link wictionary with wikipedia in such a way that pointing towards a general word shows its meaning from wiktionary. This can be applied to the words that are not links. This will make it easy for the readers to learn and to understand wikipedia. I often feel it very difficult to study on wikipedia because I have to search for the meanings as well... Thanks NimXaif6290 17:37, 15 April 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nimrainayat6290 (talk • contribs)
- Hi User:Nimrainayat6290. Some articles do have links to Wiktionary, e.g. Oi (interjection) has {{wiktionary|oi}} at the top, which links to wikt:oi. In the search box at Wikipedia, you can type in wikt:keyword to search for any word (in that case, it takes you to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/keyword). For general use, you can search Wiktionary in several ways, see wikt:Help:Searching. Handy tools are search plugins, which are available for Firefox and Chrome. Fences&Windows 21:51, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Workshopping: Proposed "Page mover" permission
Hey, I'd like some help workshopping a proposed new permission called "Page mover". Please see Wikipedia:Page mover and leave your comments at Wikipedia talk:Page mover (or just go ahead and edit your suggestions in). –xenotalk 23:35, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks for the help, I've moved to the RFC stage: Wikipedia talk:Page mover#RFC - Proposed: "Page mover" permission to be created. –xenotalk 00:26, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Automated list of authors
The article history is a pretty clunky way to do attribution, because there is a lot more noise (edits that don't add text or text additions that were removed later) than signal. It would be better if there was an automated list of authors in a collapsed box at the bottom of the article. The list would be ordered by the number of bytes of text added to the current version of article. It would be easy for mirrors of Wikipedia to take care of attribution as all they have to do is mirror the list, which would say something about GFDL and Wikipedia. Of course you would still need the history to determine which author added which piece of text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.79.99.105 (talk) 09:55, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
- There are quite a few external tools that provide such information; registered users have access to a Gadget that displays some of them in a handy menu (Page > Analysis): see User:MusikAnimal/MoreMenu. I don’t see much advantage in including a list on the article page: even if collapsed by default it would often add a great deal to the page‘s size & loading time, and I imagine the associated database queries would be something of a burden on the servers if they had to keep the list continuously current rather than generating it only on demand. I’m also dubious about the significance of bytes-added as a metric of authorship: if I restore a large section blanked by a vandal, or spam the article with an autobiography that gets promptly reverted, does my ‘addition’ of so many kilobytes make me a major contributor?—Odysseus1479 23:43, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiGhost
This is an idea to seek out and find a new WikiFauna Creature to identify users. I presently have no idea how a WikiGhost would behave, but it might be a good addition. Wyatt Hughes (talk) 23:12, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
- You should probably start by finding a list of behaviors, and then give it a name. I think this strategy makes more sense than starting with a name. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:51, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
- There are probably too many such faunas (see e.g. Wikipedia_talk:WikiFauna#Inclusion_criteria_for_WikiFauna) and if you "have no idea" about this proposed one I suggest exorcising this idea. Fences&Windows 21:41, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
WP:NOTUSA
I'm a bit uncomfortable reading WP:NOTUSA and feel that English-speakers who are not from the USA have a legitimate case to make that the use of US has several problems, not least that there are several other countries which use the words "United States" in their title, that US could be misread to mean "us" and that there seems to be an inbuilt assumption that those of us outside of the USA always know how this abbreviation is being used. I'm not suggesting that all pages should be changed (given that from the context it is fairly obvious in many what is being discussed) but given there are bots which go around changing USA to US, it seems to me that WP:NOTUSA is too prescriptive. For example if one was making a list of countries where something applied, wouldn't it be correct to say "During his career, Henry had academic positions in France, Germany and several universities in the USA"? I'm not quite sure what change I'm suggesting, hence the post here.. JMWt (talk) 15:58, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
- Using upper case letters for abbreviations is a common convention in English. Praemonitus (talk) 16:36, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
- You've misunderstood. This is not about upper or lower cases. JMWt (talk) 20:51, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
- I agree with JMWt. I'd also find it odd to be foreced to use "US", and to be told "Do not use U.S.A. or USA". Is it possible that this style guide was written by someone residing in the U.S. but that for people elsewhere in the world, it makes less sense? EvMsmile (talk) 01:03, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
- Agree with JMWt. Somewhere (I can't find it now) there is or was a recent discussion that suggested putting footnotes in Wikipedia policies and guidelines to refer back to the consensus or reasoning that produced each policy or guideline. WP:NOTUSA is a typical candidate. It says simply "Do not use U.S.A. or USA" (with some exceptions). Why not? Can someone (a) explain here, and (b) add an explanatory footnote to WP:NOTUSA? For a Brit like me, the usage "USA" is normal – why is it apparently anathema to Americans? — Stanning (talk) 16:02, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
- You've misunderstood. This is not about upper or lower cases. JMWt (talk) 20:51, 25 April 2016 (UTC)