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Recurring policy proposals are discussed at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (perennial proposals). If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that Misplaced Pages doesn't have it, please check there first before posting it, as someone else might have found it obvious, too.

Before posting your proposal:

• If the proposal is a change to the software, file a bug at Bugzilla instead. Your proposal is unlikely to be noticed by a developer unless it is placed there.
• If the proposal is a change in policy, be sure to also post the proposal to, say, Misplaced Pages:Manual of style, and ask people to discuss it there.
• If the proposal is for a new wiki-style project outside of Misplaced Pages, please go to m:Proposals for new projects and follow the guidelines there. Please do not post it here. These are different from WikiProjects.

These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

End the edit war once and for all: Stop using noun phrases for red link examples

Moved to Misplaced Pages talk:Choosing intentional red links.

Combine proposals & perennial proposals

I don't like the fact that this page and Village pump (perennial proposals) are two separate pages, and that they're both huge. The P.P. page is nearly 300kb and is unmanagebly large; this page is currently around 125kb and is cumbersome. I propose that we combine this page with that page by using subpages to keep older discussions visible (yet out of the way) to help people from reproposing ideas. NEW proposals would be added below the initial list of subpages. Here is what I am imagining:

Having subpages would also make it easier to archive proposals and keep everything neat and organized. Also, I feel that every reasonable proposal should be easy to find, not just the "perennial" ones. As it is now, I might make a proposal that was already made two years ago, but not know it because it wasn't listed on the P.P. page.

One disadvantage is that it would be harder to watchlist the multiple subpages for archived proposals, but this could be worked around with a Recentchangeslinked page. On the other hand, it might be a good thing to have subpages for archived discussion ... if I don't want to see what other people are gabbing about in regard to vandalism, I don't have to.— Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 21:45, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

That would make this page more like a forum. One disadvantage, however, is that it will not inherit the usability of forums, and the wiki markup will be decidedly newcomer-unfriendly. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 12:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

My proposal isn't to put the current proposals on subpages, but to put old proposals onto subpages categorized by subject. The idea is to keep old proposals more accessible, not to make a new subpage for every single proposal that is made. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 20:16, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Um. You didn't get much feedback on this. I think it's a great idea. If it's going to get done, it looks like you'll have to do it... once it exists you should be able to get consensus to change the link to your version.Herostratus 16:35, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

What Herostratus said goes for me too. I support it. User:Pedant 05:14, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Sources miscellany

One may come across various facts, references, articles, or bits of information that could be useful to an editor interested in using the information for an article. Some sort of area for taking and leaving this information could exist, allowing others to leave facts, images, or links, and allow others to delete them when they are to be used or found to be bad references. A page with seperators for each general category would be more convenient than several hundred links to subcategories, and it would have a sandbox feel to it at first as others add and remove entries. Sort of a scrapbook of knowledge.

<a name="bottomOfPage">-2006-08-04T10:12:00.000Z">

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but:

Would it make sense to add <a name="bottomOfPage"> at the bottom of each Misplaced Pages page? Right where "this page was last modified", "all text is available under..." etc are. That way I could bookmark or link to things like http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#bottomOfPage and get there without click-wait-scroll. Nice for these long talk pages that are often best followed from the bottom up. Or is there already a way to do this which escapes me at the moment...? Weregerbil 10:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)"> ">

If I want to go to the bottom of the page, I just click on the last item in the Table of Contents. I don't think we need to complicate the page code for a feature that would add very little utility. -- Donald Albury 12:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

The browser I use interprets the "end" button (on the keyboard) as "scroll to the bottom of this window". -- Rick Block (talk) 14:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposal on Time

Moved to Talk:Time.

Variety

Moved to Misplaced Pages:Unusual requests

Misplaced Pages articles by classrooms as school projects

In schools worldwide, students often hand in excellent articles of research only to have those papers locked away or trashed. Those thousands of potentially great papers could be used to further knowledge (if submitted in the form of an encyclopedic entry to Misplaced Pages). Since many schools (and most in the US) now have computers, it would be a natural step to combine students' efforts with the goals of Misplaced Pages, especially considering that Misplaced Pages is nonprofit.

The proposal:

A system is created for allowing schools to easily contribute students' efforts. Any teacher that intends to assign students the task of writing a research type paper (in an encyclopedic form) may ask students to find an article on Misplaced Pages that needs cleaning, or to be created from scratch. After the students claim their subject, the teacher can freeze those topics for the few weeks that the students will be working on them (or the students might work in the sandbox and save their work for later, so that the articles are frozen for only a few days instead, when they're ready to submit).

The teacher saves a snapshot of the original article (if there is one), and checks it against the article the student submits. After all the articles are graded (based on neutrality, grammer, etc), only the articles that receive an "A" (or "B+") are allowed for inclusion. All other articles revert back to their original state (before frozen).

While frozen, the article will be clearly identified as being worked by a student as a school project. In the talk pages, credit will go to the school, and if the student wishes, then to the student as well.

A teacher applies for special membership, and afterwards signs in with a regular username to freeze selected articles during future classroom projects. A teacher may deactivate that special membership whenever it is no longer needed.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Boozerker (talk • contribs)

No offense, but that will never work. Most teachers don't value Misplaced Pages articles that much. And also, teachers would want kids reporting on very notable things, and having very notable articles frozen for a month is definitely not a good thing. —Mets501 (talk) 22:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Read ] for an idea on how this is likely to be received by most users. There is nothing currently that would stop teachers from having students change articles, but "freezing" them (or claiming "credit" on the talk page) would likely provoke howls of disagreement from most users. JChap T/E 23:31, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no chances. First, encyclopedic articles are different from research. Second, one-man work can meet our standarts only if he has professional knowledge and encyclopedia-writing experience. Third, we are collaborative, and not competitive.

It would work fine if we had an inherent 2D addressing system, specifically where there is a subject, and for it the definition, the article, a category of alternate articles, a category of books, a category of original works, the link repository, and so on. Something like interwiki, but without splitting and without 1D limit "one subject-one article"; and with less strict rules. At its current (and probably permanent) form, Misplaced Pages is not suited for that. However, another wiki could do the job well (even without software change), and then we could incorporate good articles here. CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 23:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

The optional part is for the student to work on the assignment in the sandbox and save a copy until ready. The article isn't frozen until then, and then it'd be for only a few days (while the student uploads the article). As for teachers dismissing Misplaced Pages, that isn't a fact. Many teachers only recommend caution when citing from Misplaced Pages, and students regularly visit it. Also, any news of teachers dismissing Misplaced Pages is probably slightly biased and mosly pertains to the United States, but even then -- how can can anyone say for sure that many teachers wouldn't have an open mind to such a project? I know teachers who are supportive, and there's bound to be many more out there. And if students are submitting scholastically reviewed articles, the reputation of Misplaced Pages is bound to improve. Boozerker 01:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, no freezing then. But it might still be an excellent move to invite teachers to submit student-written articles (or cleaned-up articles). After the student writes an article, and the teacher views its preview in the sandbox format, it takes one simple click to submit the article to Misplaced Pages. Boozerker 01:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

If there is momentum, I can see a wiki-offshoot (apart from the Encyclopedia project) being created that acts as a sort of "Student Paper Collection"--like Google Jr. Scholar :). I'm not sure who would spearhead the creation of that wiki but if it's wanted badly enough, it will happen. If it's designed well, with a nice search engine, it could actually be used as a means of checking against plagarism. Agne 16:45, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

This sort of project might work if the school were to set up their own installation of the Mediawiki software (the software that we use to edit and display Misplaced Pages, as well as a bunch of other wikis) on which students could work. The students would then be free to add or merge their work into Misplaced Pages as they saw fit, and local adminstrators (teachers, presumably) would be able to control access and freeze articles when desired. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the school should set up their own copy of Mediawiki and give teachers administrator privileges. Obviously, though, having a single student working on each article rather overlooks the benefits of wiki. They would ideally have students review and edit each other's work, as well as provide suggestions on the talk pages. Since it's easy to review who made what changes to an article, as well as all contributions made by a particular student, it wouldn't be hard to assess who gets credit for what. Deco 20:48, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:School and university projects. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:38, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Conflicts of interest with WP

Teachers and students can do what they like off-Misplaced Pages with the Mediawiki software, and of course can integrate their newly learned knowledge and refs into any appropriate WP article. But as a former teacher, I can see real conflicts of interest between the class's needs and Misplaced Pages's needs. For WP's sake, I'd be really against anything that encouraged either of the following two probs:

1. The wholesale replacement of one article by a new version (ie can't follow changes), unless the first is very short and the final article is good quality. (Students would be very likely to replace entire articles with their proud new versions, regardless of quality or POV.)
2. Student articles would have to be in encyclopedic style, not academic "discuss this title" style: there's a big difference, and not everyone seems to grasp it. I've come across wodges of text apparently from essays which need to be picked apart from the top, because they set out to prove a thesis. In fact, since the refs have usually been carefully chosen to precisely support that thesis, and I don't have the full texts, it's very difficult to re-write the article as NPOV.
   
   While students can be set "encyclopedic writing" as a task, this will probably not form the majority of their written work. The investment of time required for a school/teacher to get involved with a formal Misplaced Pages system would encourage max use of it - ie puttting up lots of material, regardless of appropriateness.

So I strongly feel Misplaced Pages should be left as it is. But the suggestions for schools' own wikis are great - like a school magazine with knobs on! They can be oriented to assessment and the requirements of the learning process, rather than ruthlessly to the final outcome, and also showcase students' work (protected when finished). The more I think about it, the more better it sounds, actually. Go for it! JackyR | Talk 17:50, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I think people have misunderstood. First, if Misplaced Pages encourages teachers to participate, special guidelines and suggestions would be created for just for them. Also, since I forgot to mention, it's not for just any teacher of whatever subject, but for those who mainly teach grammar, composition and writing skills. They tend to have a critical eye for structure and format. Second, the students will probably be required to start with an article of poor quality. As a result, students may better grasp what constitutes a poorly presented encyclopedic article. The suggestion for participating teachers to use Mediawiki actually removes the need to edit directly on Misplaced Pages. Boozerker 17:43, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

a list of melting points bot request

In the chemical literature there is a lot of information about physical properties of materials e.g. their melting point. In wikipedia quite a bit of that has already been constributed but usually on the page of the pertaining material. What seems to be missing on line (and elsewhere?) is a list of melting points in order of their temperatures. For calibration purposes (just to name an application) such a list could be very useful. Could somebody write a bot, go to the melting point page, use the 'what links here' button to find all these pages, extract the melting points and make a list?

Rob Wilcox, Jaap Folmer NCSU

Exploding whale

Moved to Talk:Exploding whale.

Should articles reference games? Pull the Plugs.

I have been going around wikipedia and I have seen many articles about middle aged weapons, bronze aged buildings and modern systems reference games, saying it is featured in games like Civilization. I think these references is cruft and the game's own article should reference these weapons, buildings and systems instead. I propose we remove game references that are not highly relevant to an article. This will stop game developers plugging games all over wikipedia, which is spam, and help cut down on article size keeping the most notable parts, thus raising the quality of articles. --OrbitOne 15:43, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

• I agree, but you're understating the problem. The "popular culture" section in lots of articles add very little to the understanding of the subject. "There was an XXX as a subplot in Episode 33 of Futurama" -- so what? "XXX is shown in issue 45 of Beat The Martians comics" -- so what? I don't think the problem is commercial plugging; I think the problem is the lack of distinction between trivia and useless trivia. --jpgordon 16:22, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Ein) I can say for sure that devs have nothing to do with that. It's fans. And it's not exactly cruft.

Zwei) Partial support. I never understood why an article about an ICBM-carrying SSBN must include link to an arcade java or flash game where it's one of 100 units, or to RA game with something vaguely similar. Well, I never remove them, but I just don't think it is relevant. I'd like some advice on whether these refs should be cleaned. Of course, movies (or games) featuring some weapon in the main theme (like Tom Clancy books and movies) are to be kept.

CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 16:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

En) The whole "Popular Culture" area should be cleaned of references unless the reference has had a solid affect on the view on whatever the article is about.

To) I would suggest removing those references, but I have come up against resistance to this, thus I am bringing it up here as a possible policy change.

Tre) Shouldn't we be using English instead of German and Danish?

Although I agree, alot of non-notable stuff can be removed, I would like to focus on commercial plugging as a problem of its own and get a policy in place to remove them.

--OrbitOne 16:37, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with OrbitOne on this one. There is too much useless crap in some "Popular Culture" sections. Quality comes before quantity. --87.52.25.155 17:53, 19 August 2006 (UTC). Forget it. I forgot to log in anyway... --87.52.25.155 17:56, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Un) If we clean it ot references, what will be left?

Deux) I think we shouldn't remove them all. Only ones irrelevant. For instance, if the sub is featured in Silent Hunter, it deserves a mention in both articles. But I support removing refs to games where the subject plays only a minor role.

Trois) Non! C'est amusant! --CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 22:34, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with OrbitOne. I find the "popular culture" sections interesting to read. Moreover, with many phenomena, the popular culture occurrance is the primary way that people are introduced to the phenomenon in question, and thus often determines how they think about said phenomenon. Of course, it's only relevant if the phenomenon figures prominently in the popular context given. It's pointless making pointers from gun to every computer game that features guns. Finally, it's not like we need to conserve space. As long as the section is decently written and correct, I don't see why it should be removed. Misplaced Pages aims to gather knowledge - not to make brief articles. And the popular culture section is usually placed at the end of the article anyway, so if you don't care to read it, just stop reading when you get there.

That said, commercial use of such references is an entirely different problem and something that I do not think should be tolerated. That is, if mention of a computer product or film is inserted into the article on a given phenomenon, not because people in fact know this phenomenon from the given product, but in an attempt to advertise said product, it should be stricken. --Pinnerup 18:05, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

CP/M's second point and jpgordon's conclusion really sums up what I feel: It's useless trivia and should only be kept in case the weapon is a central part of the game. --|EPO| 17:57, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Pinnerup: But what is the distinction of game plugging and a honest reference? What I am against is the reference says simply, "Weapon 'X' is featured in game 'Y'" or variants of this.

--OrbitOne 18:11, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I think you're very much overstating the issue. How are these references hurting Misplaced Pages? In fact, I would even go so far as to say that I'd like to see more of these kinds of references. --Gau 18:18, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I think such references fall under Misplaced Pages:Fancruft. --OrbitOne 18:25, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget that "Fancruft" is just an essay. Something can't be deleted as falling under it, it is nothing more than an opinion of a few wikipedians. --CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 22:34, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

In many cases, it seems to be really stretching. I can imagine games like Civilization to be particularly bad offenders of this. Someone can go through any of the historically motivated movies and find thousands of weapons, etc., that played a very minor role in the work itself. If people are looking for other works that include that minor unit, it seems more like a game/movie related discussion and would fit there instead... If people like seeing a compiled list of references of games/movies/books including these units so much, couldn't we create a page listing such references for that object rather than clutter up an article about the "real" item or building or whatever?

One thing that might be worth considering is that (rightly or wrongly) the popular culture sections are often used to justify the exitance of otherwise unusable images in the articles (since they are discussing the movie or game, they include an image of the movie's depiction of the object, etc.) I have a feeling these sections are often motivated by this more than anything else. When the images are removed, they pop back up with a description of the commercial product to permit their inclusion. Sometimes this seems almost like an advertisement, but without a policy it's hard to distinguish. —LactoseTI 18:36, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

You cannot get rid of these references - believe me, many people had tried. The pop links sprout out immediatelly after you prune them out. What works is to create page "XYZ in popular culture" and move the games etc there, similar to the Gorilla article. Gorilla was once so badly infested that 1/3 of content were popular references, now it is clean. Pavel Vozenilek 20:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I syill want to introduce a policy against plugging games. Right now, there is no well define policy against it. --OrbitOne 21:29, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I would like to cite another user who made a very good point on Talk:Saint_Basil's_Cathedral

I think the game references are simply trivial, whether generic or by name - inside/outside is as likely to be an accidental consequence of game design decisions as anything else, and I don't think anybody would take Civ4 as more authoritative than our actual pictures showing relative position. It would be noteworthy if a whole generation of Australians were confused because of a spectacular mistake in a 1950s textbook - we got any examples like that? Stan 21:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe a test that asks if a generation of people were affected by a references content of any type would be a good standard of determining if a reference is noteworthy or not. Any suggestions as to what the test should be? --OrbitOne 22:01, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

WP:WGAS? --jpgordon 22:25, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

As for a test, how about just asking whether it could stand on its own notability? For example, given some piece of armor X in the game Civilization, would "X (Civilization)" meet the criteria as a standalone article? If not, then it shouldn't be included in the article about X. It might be a bit harsh, but it might capture the idea of something truly needing notability in order to show up. —LactoseTI 04:09, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely not true. There is a much lower standard for inclusion of a fact in an article regarding X than for writing an article about the fact itself. Do we have an article about the birthdate of Abraham Lincoln? That said, there is still a standard which would exclude a detailed list of every mention of the topic in every work of fiction ever. Deco 08:21, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

"Do we have an article about the birthdate of Abraham Lincoln?" Yes we do! Well, not really an article, but it has its own talk page: Talk:Charles Darwin/Lincoln. Eugène van der Pijll 08:35, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I never said this was true, I was proposing it to be a standard for including popular culture references inside the main article itself. Including a reference could have a much lower standard inside a pop culture list article (if one was so created), but I was proposing that standard to cut down on the amount of clutter in articles. The general idea of the above seems to be that we don't want to necessarily just blanket cut all pop references since some are so notable--but the question is how to determine which are notable enough to include in a main article? —LactoseTI 10:01, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

In many cases though, they are vieled directories, which in Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages is not is more or less bannished, their removal is more than warented as a matter of policy. --OrbitOne 23:08, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... I was thinking of another motivating factor for the importance of this discussion. Nearly all Misplaced Pages articles could easily have a "popular culture reference" section--games that feature Einstein, Lincoln, etc.; movies that have evolution or gravity as plot points; books that discuss communism or England... I think there needs to be some very clear guideline as to when such a pop culture section is appropriate, if ever. Is anyone here suggesting that there should almost always be such a section if some video game talks about something or someone? If not, what would the cutoff criteria be? (The cutoff criteria being, ultimately, the guideline.) —LactoseTI 01:19, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I feel like I've heard it somewhere, so it can already be written down. If not, a guideline falling in line with others (which should be established, if it isn't yet), would be something like:

"Appearance in a work of fiction should only be mentioned, if it is non-trivial and significant, and the work of fiction is notable."

For example, a Trade Caravan in Civilization is significant, and the work is notable, but the appearance is trivial.

However, Interstellar Expedition has a non-trivial appearance, being one of the endings in Civilization, and deserves a mention.

"See You Next Wednesday" makes a non-trivial appearance in notable game Deus Ex, but it is insignificant, and shouldn't be mentioned. lbert Einstein makes a non-trivial appearance in Red Alert which has a mission to transport him, but the appearance is not significant.

Any subject may be a central part of some game, but if the game isn't notable, appearance shouldn't be mentioned.

Of course, these examples are not perfect. And one thing... I don't get a good wording for the important note that Significance of appearances should be measured in relation to subject's significance. Or, better, that Significance of appearance should be sufficient to contribute to notability of the subject. For instance, Tank (as a vehicle type) is very notable on its own, and hardly any work of fiction could deserves a mention, even being all about tanks. However, if some semi-experimental, rare tank made its way into a work of fiction, it deserves a mention. And See You Next Wednesday fictional movie should mention, probably, any of its appearances in other works of fiction, even trivial ones. CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 19:52, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

• OK, here's an obvious example. Take a look at the "what links here" for Civilization IV. It's a great game, certainly; my wife recently insisted I put it away because I was spending way too much time at it. (Damn barbarians.) In what way is it important to Steve Wozniak that an aphorism attributed to him is used trivially in the game? In what way is it important to readers of Elizabeth I of England that she's one of the iconic representatives of the English civilization? Etc, etc. Of all of the what-links-here I went through, the only one that really mattered was that Leonard Nimoy did some voiceovers. Why do we need this sort of WGAS cluttering up the articles? --jpgordon 00:27, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

May I offer a case for the other side? The featured list Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc began as a "popular culture" section at the end of the Joan of Arc article. It now includes - among many other categories including operas and literature - twelve separate computer games. To the best of my knowledge, the English language Misplaced Pages is the only resource that collects references to Joan of Arc in popular songs, television, games, anime, and manga. Joan of Arc isn't just remembered as a dusty play by George Bernard Shaw and a statue in Paris's Place des Pyramides: she's an emcee in the 2005 film Reefer Madness and Lisa Simpson plays her in a 2002 series episode. Irreverent? Certainly! Trivial? Not necessarily. This information helps parents and teachers who want to inspire interest in history. It also demonstrates Joan of Arc's continuing relevance to modern life. It's so simple to copyedit and organize and even verify these submissions that I wonder how some editors manage to take offense - and not one of the many entries I verified proved to be a hoax. Durova 16:51, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

But still, irelevant. --OrbitOne 18:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Irrelevant? Tolerance of "crufty" video game references within an article contributed to the creation of a featured list. I call that very relevant. Durova 03:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

It is, indeed, possible to write good "X in (popular) culture" sections or articles but it takes a lot of work and the typical such section is quite poor and possibly worse than nothing. Some of the problems:

• References tend to be contributed by IPnonymous editors unfamiliar with Misplaced Pages style. More experienced Wikipedians are often loathe to improve them.
• The sections tend to be consist of a list of references with no connecting prose and no attempt to put the references in context.
• The references tend to be very haphazard. Typically a popular culture section in article XXX starts with someone adding something like: "In the YYY computer game XXX is the name of a powerful artifact." I'm usually left thinking: "There must be dozens of references that are at least as significant as this one. It's misleading just to list one as if it were special but it would take an enormous amount of work to dig out all the others."
• There is a large bias towards the last few years. Marginally notable computer games released a year ago get mentions. Novels written in the 1960's typically don't.
• Fictional works which draw on a rich cultural heritage can cause a bombardment of "X in popular culture" references. I work on mythology articles and I don't know how many articles I've seen that mention that mythological character so-and-so played a small part in one of Neil Gaiman's works or in the Age of Mythology computer game. I've read many of Gaiman's works - they're excellent. I spent weeks playing that computer game - I liked it. But they don't need to be mentioned in every single mythology article.

I'm currently working on Battle of Svolder. I put a lot of time into writing the legacy/cultural references section and I'm putting that forward as my best attempt on how these sections should look like. It doesn't cover works which only mention the battle in passing, only those where it plays a large part. It's written in coherent prose and illustrated with freely licenced images. It covers works from the 15th century to the 21st, mentioning medieval poems as well as a rock song and a manga volume. Haukur 11:47, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I understand these concerns. Most of the growth to that section at Joan of Arc happened before I became an editor. Soon after I joined Misplaced Pages another editor asked for a list of literary works and I provided one. We wound up moving the cultural references material to its own page after the main article expanded. It turned out the French Misplaced Pages had extensive listings from high art, which I translated. The two types of information dovetailed. Now the cultural references themselves were very nonstandard when I first approached them: the first task was to categorize them. Verification was easy for song lyrics and anything in the IMDB. Just pick a table format, copyedit - there you go. I agree this process has a natural selection bias toward recent releases. That's no reason to exclude verifiable information, though. If we exclude this information now, then in ten or fifteen years it will probably become much harder to recreate. I spent much more time finding additional entries for the film section than I spent organizing the contributions that other editors had already added. Not that I'm an inclusionist by nature - but in this instance inclusionism worked. Durova 03:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to point out Talk:Hwacha as an example of what OrbitOne is referring to. Nowhere in the discussion does he allege that it is developers plugging games. He just seems to dislike game references, even when they are obviously not plugs. He, in my opinion is trying to ramrod the discussion about removing the references. For instance, he has represented that a 2 to 3 vote in favor of keeping the text in question as actually being a consensus. Not only that but he says it is a consensus to delete with only 2 votes to delete and 3 votes to keep. He characterises the text as a 'game directory' when it clearly is not. Personally, I think the game references are worthwhile, as they show the relevance in today's times of what would otherwise be an obscure medieval slingshot. I think that the more crossreferences there are, the better. If we keep the Bajoran wormhole and Muggle, certainly we can keep things that actually exist! User:Pedant 05:21, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I see a real problem here with people not thinking ahead. Sure, right now you look at the pop culture section and say: "wow, one referance to Civilization IV, how useless" but if this can grow over time and become a list that covers (like the joan of arc pop culture article) musical, literary, artistic and contemporary referances, well then the article is quickly becoming a valid resource (even though it may be for some abstract, hard to imagine, purpose). I find these lists interesting and despite what some may think, it is not anyones responsibility to decide which information is useful and which is not. The standard method of handling Trivia is to leave it as a reservoir of "information awaiting intigration" into the rest of the article. If it gets to be a complete mess it can be moved to the talks page or given a seperate article. Outright deletion of trivia is discouraged. I think this seems like a good way of handling Popular Culture referances aswell or anything that sparks an "encyclopedic vs. unencyclopedic" disscussion.--Matt D 15:54, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

New namespace for unencyclopaedic category

Currently all categories are put in the Category: namespace, but I think we have to create a namespace (for example called "WCategory:") to separate categories only used for the Misplaced Pages administration from categories used for encyclopaedic articles. For example currently we distinguish Misplaced Pages:Portal and Portal so I think it would be more rigorous to do the same with and WCategory:Portals. Hence it could be more clear and homogeneous (I mean instead of having category like Category:Misplaced Pages templates and Category:Portals, we will have WCategory:Templates and WCategory:Portals and the top-level category will be WCategory:Administration). Moreover, since I think a such organisation is independent of language, this new namespace should be used in all Wikipedias of different languages. 16@r 00:15, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I hope this is unnecessary, but I prefer this proposal to the deletion of "unencyclopedic" or "metadata" categories. I think we need them. Should we decide to separate these useful categories from encyclopedic content (to achieve some kind of "namespace purity") then such new namespaces are a nice answer. You probably have to ask at WP:VPT about the feasibility of having several namespaces with a category-like behaviour, though. Kusma (討論) 13:52, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. There is so much pure junk and there is almost no support for the standards of WP:V. It's very discouraging. Maybe this would be a way of separating quality from junk. Also, the pure junk (hopefully) wouldn't show up immediately on Google, giving creators and editors incentive to upgrade articles rather than do nothing. Mattisse(talk) 14:37, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe one of the developers mooted something like this as a possibility some time ago, and I'll reiterate my support for it. Specifically, I'd like to see categories restricted on a per-namepspace basis in such a way that pages categorised into the "wrong" namespace don't show up in that category (or else are explicitly rejected when submitted in the edit window). (This would have the further advantage that display of the contents could be simplified, omitting the namespace prefix as implied.) Where it's necessary for category to be "cross-namespace", this could be handled either by a separate markup to note this categorisation as an exception (syntax TBD), or my having a "catch all" category. This way we could eliminate a lot of inadvertent or confused inclusion of talk, user, and project space pages into article-space categories (and vice versa). There's an additional distinction between "proper" article-space categories and "maintenance" article-space categories that might be worth capturing. (The latter might be folded into the above-mentioned catch-all categories. Obviously categories should always be includeable in other categories, so there's no need for a "Category_Category:" namespace, and templates would need separate handling too. Alai 23:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Lists of people with special status

I would like to create some lists of people of special characteristics:

• List of geniuses
• List of polymaths

The list of geniuses just got deleted. None of the reasons had anything to do with whether or not the people on the list were geniuses or not. See Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of geniuses.

A similar fate happened to the list of polymaths not too long ago. See Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of polymaths.

I really liked those lists, and found them quite informative. As far as I could tell, neither of those lists included any information that wasn't included in the articles about the people listed. Both lists were about people who were leaders in their respective areas of endeavor, and very effective achievers. Just the type of people who make great mentors and great exemplars. People worth emulating. Unfortunately, those articles are gone now, and there aren't any other articles remotely similar to them that I could find on Misplaced Pages. (If there are, whatever you do, don't point them out, as someone may immediately try to delete them.)

I tried to create a new list of geniuses from scratch, and it was speedily deleted, so it appears the concept is being censored.

Is it acceptable to censor the above list ideas?

Are these not allowed on Misplaced Pages for some reason?

My question is, how would one go about creating the above lists without them being censored, AfD'd, speedily deleted, reverted, etc.?

My proposal is that we find an acceptable solution for lists of this type to exist.

Any input/advice you could provide would be most appreciated.

--Nexus Seven 04:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC), aka The Transhumanist

I think this is pure censorship if the lists is well-referenced. If it is not then it should be deleted. IMO, these lists should stay on wikipedia if there is no original research involved in their creation. Lincher 13:39, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

The (unanimous) consensus from the above linked deletion discussion was that this list had no objective criteria for inclusion. This point has nothing to do with whether the people on the list are "geniuses" and everything to do with how an editor decides whether to add someone to the list. Without objective criteria, the list violates one or both of Misplaced Pages:No original research and Misplaced Pages:Verifiability. Everything in Misplaced Pages article space (which includes lists) must adhere to the three basic rules of no original research, verifiability, and Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view (and anything that doesn't is deleted or modified until it does - and if you view this as "censorship" I guess that's your perogative) . If editor A were to add someone to this list, how would editor B verify the addition was appropriate? Perhaps "everyone knows" Albert Einstein was a genius. How about Karl Marx, or Hitler, or Osama Bin Laden? Do you see the point? -- Rick Block (talk) 14:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

That's odd. The criteria for inclusion is the term "genius". Although subjective, it is still pretty straight-forward. Either a person is a genius, or he's not. If you cite a reputable source, then what's the problem? The matter should be decided on a genius-by-genius level (on whether he deserves to be listed) rather than disallow the list itself because the term is "subjective". We can't let subjectivity cripple the advancement of Misplaced Pages. See how they dealt with the problem of subjectivity at List of major philosophers. --Nexus Seven 04:09, 24 August 2006 (UTC), aka The Transhumanist

It's still subjective. That's not a minor issue. "Bad", "stupid", "evil" are all straight-forward terms, but the criteria for inclusion is entirely subjective, and is hence original research, a violation of a core Misplaced Pages principle. And as for the philosophy list, that list appears to be currently undergoing a dispute because of that exact same issue: that the criteria for inclusion is subjective. Fagstein 05:09, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

What is "criteria for inclusion?" Are you talking about the name of the page? If you are talking about the subject as listed in the title of the page, please specify this and not use some trumped up jargon that nobody knows what the *&^%$#@! you are talking about. --The Transhumanist 05:36, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

An acceptable solution for this to exist is Wikiinfo. Here not all editors are sure that we need lists at all, and especially questionable ones. While there are lists with verifiable criteria for inclusion (like Prime Ministers of Luxembourg), even they were questioned on AfD, and not always kept. Lists by nazionality had non-unilateral results, though kept on no censorship grounds, like the List of Jews (I think Das Viertes Reich will be very grateful and provide strong support for Misplaced Pages). --CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 18:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I suggest we start a list here, and when it achieves the quality of an allowable list, we move it to the appropriate page. Does anyone disagree that the following individuals were geniuses?

• Albert Einstein
• Aristotle
• Linus Pauling
• Max Planck
• Mozart
• Nicola Tesla
• Plato
• Socrates
• Thomas Edison
• William Shakespeare

Nexus Seven, aka The Transhumanist

Yes. I do. Without objective, verifiable criteria, these people are not geniuses, as far as Misplaced Pages is concerned. Fagstein 05:09, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Can you speak English please? In precisely what context are you using the term "criteria"? It seems to me that you are saying that these people are not geniuses because the word "genius" is subjective. That has got to be the stupidest argument I've ever come across. --The Transhumanist 05:36, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I have to aggree with trans here as these people have gotten to the genius status as we can find references that say they are geniuses and in that matter they should have their list (see List of famous families for another example). There has to be a consensus as to what can be included in those kind of lists and clearly defined criteria about that. Verifiability actually means that if they are referenced lists or footnoted lists ... they are verifiable. As per original research ... if they are referenced then again this argument doesn't stand as tertiary source can be found that can support such claims. Lincher 11:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll try again. The question is how does someone decide who gets included in this list and who doesn't, that's what we mean by "criteria for inclusion". If it even boils down to the consensus opinion of all wikipedia editors, which it would have to without a precise objective definition, then it's original research which violates one of the three core priniciples of Misplaced Pages (see WP:NOR). Misplaced Pages is not a magazine, or a blog - it's an encyclopedia that (by policy) includes only verifiable information from reliable sources (please read both of these pages). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I will rephrase what my comment meant. Lists for special people can be created off of reliable sources and in that matter it is not original research and thus verifiable. For example, is Da Vinci a genius, yes, find any book about polymaths, scientists, painters, etc. and it will explicitly say it. In that matter, lists for special people can exist only if they are well-referenced (meaning, several footnotes per entry) and consensusly accepted. An example of this would be List of famous families where there is now a need for referencing these famous families and as a whole community decide which names should be on the list.

If the NPOVness of the list is disputed then the consensus driven initiative to include or exclude some individual is to be taken into account. Lincher 17:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Now find a source to prove someone is *not* genius. Community consensus is the last resort, when nothing else helps, and one should never introduce something that would rely primarily on consensus into article namespace. CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 17:52, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, "genius" is a widely enough used positive term that it will be attached to people who are not associated primarily with intellectual pursuits. For example, here is a page with two published authors referring to Mohammed as a genius - and if you add him, every other religious leader will want to be added. Here is a book referring to Jay Gould as a genius right in its title . Here is are Misplaced Pages articles about musical albums referring to their artists as geniuses: The Genius of Ray Charles, Genius: The Best of Warren Zevon. And of course Genius (rapper). Are these people you intended to have on your list? Any list of people who have been referred to as geniuses by verifiable sources will contain a noticeable fraction of the content of the Misplaced Pages, and therefore will be useless. AnonEMouse 17:35, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

When WP:VfG gets blue, it will work as... Intended or, maybe, considering it all, not? CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 17:52, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing new light into the discussion. I rest my case as I see that there is no point in arguing since I didn't know the word genius was used to almost all instances in the news and for that matter trying to figure out which sources are good ones and which ones should be left out is too much to put on WP. I agree that once a religious figure is added who knows what will be added next and the list will thus degenerate, go to ArbCom, Disputes pages, be POV and who knows. I also agree that bringing the community consensus into this would make an article really look like original research as there will be disputes to add or delete entries. Lets leave it to Uncyclopedia if they want it. Lincher 19:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Genius is unquantifiable, even though we do have standards above which a person is classified as a genius. We can't, for instance place people with genius scores on the Stanford-Binet test on the same list as people considered to be geniuses. Say Isaac Newton or Leonardo... do they (who cannot be objectively quantified) have to share list space with for instance me? I may have scored genius on the Stanford-Binet test, but I would never put myself on a par with a historic genius... who of course would never make the list because of no quantifiable objective criteria with which to categorise them. I'm not against lists, just that some of them won't work. User:Pedant 05:40, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems pretty straight forward to me. Could one make a list of people who had been called geniuses? Yes. Could one make a list of people who had been called geniuses and be definitivly correct? Probably not. Could one make a list of people who had been called geniuses and not open a pandoras box where everyone from 50 cent to Kim Jung Il could be added? No because at one time or another I'm sure someone has attached the tag "genius" to all of them. It is too bad. A list containing all the "real" geniuses would be very useful. Perhaps finding a differant name for the list could solve this problem.--Matt D 16:08, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Most Wanted Stubs?

Would it be possible for a bot or program similar to that that maintains Most Wanted Articles to create a list of the most linked to stubs, to help target work? smurrayinchester 18:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Forget the bot idea, it seems to be based on SQL querying rather than a bot. Never the less, is such a facility possible? smurrayinchester 18:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes it certainly would be possible, and you're right, a bot would be the preferable method, for "server hog" reasons. (Counting links on the live database for a small number of articles would be fine, but for all half-million-plus stubs would be a "public lynching to loud cheering from all" offence.) I can't do this right away, as I don't have a working copy of "pagelinks", add to which we're somewhat "between database dumps" (and going nowhere fast, it seems), so after the next one might be a better time to do this, rather than starting working with three-week-old information immediately. But is there an actual demand for this information? How would it be presented, and who would actually use the information? Is this something particular wikiprojects would be interested in for "their" articles? Is WP:MWA currently being maintained and used, incidentally? Generating the two lists would be a very similar process, so there would clear advantages in doing both together. Alai 00:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, MWA is certainly being used, with red links being removed daily. I don't know what kind of demand there is for the Most Linked-to Stubs, but it could certainly be merged with WP:COTW, to better target the stubs for improvement. smurrayinchester 07:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

It could be presented in a similar way to Most Wanted Articles where a list of the most wanted stubs is generated and ordered by number of links to each stub in descending order. This list is then put on the most wanted stubs page where links from similar topics can be manually moved around and grouped under their own topic heading. If this topic is associated with a wikiproject, the project page could then either link to the relevant section or copy over the links associated with that project. Tra (Talk) 18:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages For Dummies

I am a semi-regular user and I just wanted to say that their should be a special section for explaining the information in laymen's terms. Several times I have tried to understand what the article is actually trying to say but I have to sift through a bunch of jargon first. Just food for thought.

Try the simple English Misplaced Pages —Mets501 (talk) 20:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Also we are constantly striving to make the articles more accessible, but it is only by comments from readers that we are aware of less than complete clarity. Please comment on the relevant talk pages if you feel something is not as clearas it could be.--Light current 11:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

• Also, we try not to talk down to readers. Some articles need some degree of jargon to avoid being wordy and to still make sense. For example, you can't have an article about acidity without using words like ions and conduction. If you think a specific article is too jargon heavy, bring it up on its talk page. - Mgm| 18:38, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes we as well have two articles on same subject: one technical and detailed, for post-higher education, and generally scientific, another aimed towards readers without technical knowledge, as a popularized science. Some topics can't be explained to one who doesn't know basics, some can - for latter, the solution less detailed, but easy to read articles. CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 18:46, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

New anon talk text

There is a proposal to change the anon talk page text. Please comment at MediaWiki talk:Anontalkpagetext to voice your opinion. —Mets501 (talk) 04:16, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

better research

hello,

i got an idea, may be not the first one, but: what about activating the cursor/field where u can tipe in the word to search for yet when loading the page for the first time. most people wanna find a special article, i guess, and have to click it first.

it speeds up the search and makes it a lot easier.

a good example is "dict.leo.org"

so far

thank u all for that important resource!

Sebastian Hümmeler University of Regensburg

This has been suggested before, but it is seen as very counter-intuitive. Moving the caret to the search box will not occur until the page is fully loaded, which means that focus is lost from whatever you were selecting, highlighting or typing in, all of a sudden (since you begin using the page before it is fully loaded). This even means that if you type in the box before the page is loaded, whatever you've typed may be lost; if the box is selected while there's text in it, the text is selected as well and then immediately removed if you continue typing. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 10:51, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't like pages messing with my focus, for the reasons noted above. *Dan T.* 20:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

• Also, a lot of people come here to edit Misplaced Pages. If the cursor is focused on the search box each time you load a page, editing gets annoying quite easily -- not a good thing.- Mgm| 18:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Rename all Move to templates to Copy to

We have a number of Move to templates, Move to Wiktionary, Move to Wikibooks, Move to Wikisource, etc. I believe they should all be renamed to "Copy to x". First of all, the transwiki process does not move the article at all, it just copies it, so the new names would actually be accurate. Second, there is a problem with the "move to" templates, that being that people will often remove the template in order to stop what they believe will be the removal of the article from wikipedia. This is especially a problem in that there is always a backlog in the transwiki process, putting a Move to Wikibooks Cookbook tag on an article will result in it sitting there for 3 or 4 or 5 months until someone finally gets around to transwikiing it. This is a lot of time for someone else to come along and think, "no, don't delete this wonderful chocolate fudge brownie recipe!", and remove the template. And, note that some of the templates have already had their text changed so that they read, for example, "This page is a candidate to be copied to the Wikibooks Cookbook".

For those who don't understand how this whole process works: putting a Move to x template on an article will (eventually) result in someone coming along and transwikiing it to wikibooks or wikisource or wherever. This simply copies the article there. Then the article is listed here in our transwiki log, where other people will come along and decide what to do with it now that it's been transwikied. If the article contained a recipe, they may simply remove the recipe and leave the rest of the article intact. If the article is nothing but a recipe, they may decide to remove the recipe and expand the article, or they may decide to nominate the article for deletion if expansion into a real wikipedia article doesn't seem possible. As a result of the way this works, having a Move to (or Copy to) tag on an article should not be controversial, because it in itself does nothing but proposes that a copy of the article be made to elsewhere.--Xyzzyplugh 01:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Deletion of Misplaced Pages:List of images and subpages

I am proposing the deletion of this system of listing free license images which is duplicative of WikiCommons. Consensus building discussion is on Misplaced Pages talk:List of images. Rmhermen 15:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Overpossessive editors

On many of the pages on Misplaced Pages that I have tried to add accurate information on there have been people who are very possessive of those articles and delete any info that is put on "their" page. This is very discouraging for anyone, especially new people. I didn't find any policies on Misplaced Pages that deal with this problem. I believe there should be a written policy that states that article are public domain, and warns people not to become possessive of articles. I believe a lot of editing wars a the result of people believing that an article is theirs.

There is a policy on this, and I agree that it's a big problem. See WP:OWN. —Mets501 (talk) 17:05, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you I was unable to find the policy before.

It's a major problem, and sometimes people even start to "guard" articles they made no significant contributions to, often protecting some existing POV. Most of such people can be convinced by policy and consensus. Not much can be done about others (for instance, one editor demanded that "All criticism sections must be deleted", and deletes any hints of criticism from Conservatism article, which is obviously his political position, and a lot of people could do nothing about that, even organized), except bringing it to attention of admins if 3RR is violated, or, in severe cases, further. However, usually you should just point to the policy. CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 22:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

While that may be true for a few individuals, usually a request for comment resolves the deadlock. Most editors concede the point or look at things a different way when a consensus emerges. Durova 23:54, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes a person forms a strong personal attachment to an article. When this happens adding content that does not fit with that person's world view can be extremely difficult. In the case of the Alireza Jafarzadeh article, one particular editor reverted the article a couple of times a week for months. A browse through the history will show periods where one or more people took an interest in the article, improved it, saw their work repeatedly reverted and eventually gave up. Articles where two people, or groups, with opposite views edit may erupt into edit wars. Where one editor is fanatical about a POV and other editors have a mere intellectual interest it may end up as a war of attrition. It is usually the fanatic rather than the intellectuals who have the tenacity to win such a war. This is a serious flaw with the Misplaced Pages philosophy. --Dave 00:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

• Make sure you cite sources for any any additions you make. If your sources are reliable, getting backup from other editors is a lot easier and means the protective editor can't claim he was reverting uncited sources he thought to be vandalism. - Mgm| 18:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Add spell check to search.

Mediawiki really needs to add a spell check to the search. Like what Google does when you misspell a word, Google offers the word spelled correctly. Misplaced Pages needs that.

It exists, but is disabled for performance reasons. See this bug. Fagstein 17:51, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

The History Channel

I often look up information on Misplaced Pages after viewing a History Channel special, only to find the information does not exist in an article yet. While some programs are sensational or speculative, others do have good research and can have the sources and professionals in the shows used as references for an article. Of course other perspectives need to exist if the experts are too one sided. I don't care for the views or opinions as much as the research and accuracy that some of these programs have, and would like to see the important information transcribed into an article. At least for the shows that are well referenced, well cited, and can be backed up with source checking.

Sure. Documentaries are generally considered reliable sources. Let's transcribe and cite relevant portions. Deco 23:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

New Tag for Dysphemistic language in articles

I think there is a need for a new tag like "cleanup" or "advertisement" for articles whose choice of words may be easyly construed as offensive or rather are purposefully use dyspemisms and other potentially POV unconscience terms. I propose it read:

This article may be using dysphemisms and other terminology which may contsrue the conotation of the terminology to incite a POV or opinion. Please help wikipedia by finding alternative wording

The tag could be

Template:Dysphemism

Any thoughts? Qrc2006 01:42, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I do believe this is a separate issue from the NPOV tag since its a subtler incidance which may be overlooked by a NPOV tag, or may remain even after NPOV cleanup and removal of said tag. Qrc2006 01:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I've never heard of this word before, therefore, I declare it to be far too obscure a word to be used as the name of a tag/template. --Xyzzyplugh 03:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure which NPOV tag you think this might be different from (there are a bunch, see Category:Neutrality templates), but it sounds very similar to template:NPOV language to me. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:04, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

New tag for readability

I have found that of course an encyclopedia must use encyclopedic, well wikipedic choice of words that are academic and even pedantic wording to get the point accross the best way possible, but i have run into some articles whose wording uses technical jargon to such an extent that the majority fo readers probably would have a hard time understanding it without looking up several words per senatnce thoughtout the article, this is why i propose a new tag for overly complex and esoteric articles so in the hardest to read places explanations could be provided in parenthases or more common but not laypeople's terms could be used in exhcnage for exessive jargon

any thoughts?

Template:Readability or Template:Too-complex could be it.

Qrc2006 01:48, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like template:technical or template:cleanup-cliche. There are a large number of existing cleanup related templates and categories, please see Category:Misplaced Pages cleanup categories. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:57, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This type of tag is much needed. I recently tried to read about RNA and got nowhere. Two words into the first sentance I has to click on Nucleotide. A few words into that article I had to click Basic aromatic ring. That page said: "A basic aromatic ring is a type of Simple aromatic ring" so I had to click on that. Then Delocalized electron and then Covalent bond. I have to say on the one hand, if I had the time I'd love to learn all about all these things and I certainly don't want wikipedia to "dumb down" but could we maybe get a sister articl or something that could sum up the most vital information about RNA. That way I could learn about that when I want to and worry about Aromatic rings later.--Matt D 16:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

It's really difficult to handle things like RNA without a lot of arcane terms. Even the Simple English pedia had trouble avoiding the word 'enzyme'. --Golbez 16:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Opinions Page

Because wikipedia takes a neutral view on its articles, it would be nice if there was a special link on each page for opinions. For example, for articles on products, the opinions page can include user reviews on whether the product works well, what are some problems they had, etc. This can also be implemented for media such as books, movies, music. Jettabebetta

That's unlikely to fly, it would violate our WP:NPOV policy. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

There are plenty of sites on the web that allow you to do things like that; however, Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, and those sites are not. As said by Zoe, it would violate the Neutral point of view policy, as well as the Misplaced Pages:No original research policy. Picaroon9288|ta co 23:42, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

It's worth noting that we generally don't consider such reviews reliable sources, and for a reason: they're entirely unchecked and unverified, and often unverifiable (I received my X, and it didn't work!) Part of our aim is to create a more credible resource regarding such things. Deco 00:33, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

In the current Misplaced Pages's form it can't be implemented. If we ever make a major change, for instance integrate Misplaced Pages, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, etc, or replace talk pages with integrated forums, it will be possible to consider a branch for generic subject discussion. It's not impossible, some other wikis, like Uncyclopedia, already have integrated wiki/forum hybrids. But currently there are no such plans, and talk pages are intentionally kept from becoming a general subject discussion board. It's also somewhat of an ideological question, not just technical, to keep Misplaced Pages purely an encyclopedia, without generic discussion, what opinion space would effectively be. Considerable, but requires a very serious discussion. CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 02:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Requesting greater detail on subject

You might be able to improve your database by letting people people request more detail in specific areas of the database. A button under subject headers, much like a poll, would make contributors aware that more detail is thought possible in a particular area.

Even allowing people to type in requests would be great.

You can always ask for more information on the article's talk page. Click on the "Discuss this page" link. If you want to add a new article but don't have a Userid, you can go to Misplaced Pages:Articles for creation. If you want to request that somebody write something on a topic we don't cover, you can request it at Misplaced Pages:Requested articles. And please note that, despite what Encyclopedia Brittanica says, this is an encylopedia, not a database. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:52, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Named topic bias

I've brought this up before, but in the interest of permanence and citability I've now written an essay about it at User:Deco/Named topic bias. To quote: "The named topic bias is a particular natural bias possessed by all encyclopedias: a tendency to create more articles — and more detailed articles — on topics with a single, widely-agreed upon name." I'd be interested in any feedback or changes. I do not own this article, so be bold. Deco 01:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Help

Hi, I'm from Slovene Wikipedija. It's medium sized, however us is to little for any more portals. I wnt to make Portal:Help - Help portal. English Misplaced Pages is big and portals revive easily. On this portal I wnt to have three sections:

• Did you knew? - about computer language WikiWiki
• Selected term
• FAQ and
• Help Contents

How does semm to you? Grettings, Mihael Simonič 09:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

• I don't see how that would be different from Misplaced Pages:Help, but I'm not sure if you want to create this on the Slovenian Misplaced Pages or here either. - Mgm| 18:18, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Upload modifications

I think that Misplaced Pages users should be able to upload anything that doesn't violate copyright or have personal attacks, including ZIP files and EXE files, but downloaders of these formats should be faced with a disclaimer about viruses. 'FLaRN' (talk) 19:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

...why? Media like this isn't much use for an encyclopedia, and we're not trying to provide some kind of file-hosting service. Shimgray | talk | 21:11, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry Flarn, but I can't agree with this one. Such files are generally not encyclopedic and while disclaimers may warn off the user, if viruses were contained in such files, they could in theory run rampant on Misplaced Pages's servers and destroy the project. - Mgm| 18:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

User image space

I think we should be able to upload images to our user space, or at least have a namespace for images that would be considered in one's user space. Many people use custom images in their userspace. 'FLaRN' (talk) 19:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

And this would help us write a free (as in freedom) ensyclopedia how? I'm afraid I just don't see any benefit to it, we can community build just fine without unfree images. I know you young ones love to adorn things with pictures of your favourite comics, cartoons, movies or whatever else, but please realise that doing so is not what Misplaced Pages is about. There are tonnes of other sites out there that will let you do such things though, but let's not try to turn Misplaced Pages into one of them. --Sherool (talk) 20:03, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

IT's all right to have one or two public domain or GFDL-compliant images on your User page or in your User space, but galleries wouldn't be acceptable. And I endorse Sherool's comments. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

• I do see some merit in this, although I'm not sure it is worth the work. Of course copyright stuff still applies. But images in that space doesn't have to be encyclopedic and it would make abuse of userspace pics in attack articles and such easier to spot. How often are userspace specific pics abused? - Mgm| 18:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Bureaucrats blocking admins

Would implementing a way so if a 'crat blocks an admin the admin can't unblock his/her self? (other admins could still unblock). This would be a useful feature so if an admin goes on a rampage and there are no stewards around, the b'crat could temporarily "disable" their admin powers but other admins can also "reenable" them too so it would be kind of like desysoping but less powerful. GeorgeMoney (talk) 21:04, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

That strikes me as a solution searching for a problem, as admins 'run amok' pretty infrequently. Moreover, an admin who unblocks himself – except in the case of an inadvertent autoblock – will tend to find himself desysoppped in short order anyway.... I can see bureaucrats being given the power to desysop in 'emergency'-type situations, as the admin can always be re-sysopped if things get straightened out. I strongly suspect that bureaucrats don't want to get involved in any sort of temporary desysopping, for fear of wheel wars and other types of unpleasantness. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:22, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

• The Bureaucrat is not another layer of management at Misplaced Pages, it is just a set of extra tasks we grant to some users. Furthermore, they are selected to be on the front end of the admin process (the selection of admins), not the back end (desysopping or punishments). When we selected them, we did not evaluate their judgement at blocking admins, since that was not a part of the job they applied for. Whenever I see proposals to expand the bureaucrat job (beyond minor technical things) I want to say "Only if all the bureaucrats stand for RfB for the new power, we should be able to approve/disapprove each candidate on whether we are willing to grant them that new power." NoSeptember 12:19, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't know, I think this is a legitimate concern. If an admin account for compromised by a vandal (remember, all our passwords are sent in clear text), it could do deletion vandalism or rampant blocking and repeatedly unblock itself using scripts. We don't have any mechanism to protect against this short of desysopping. Deco 12:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• • • One solution would be to stop admins from being able to do any admin actions when they are blocked, including unblock themselves, then a compromised admin account could just be blocked as any other. Martin 12:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
• Kind of pointless, if there's no steward around, why rely on bureaucrats. If we are to implement some feature that disallows blocked admins from using their tools it should work just as well when a fellow admin blocks them. - Mgm| 18:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Template:IPUser

The anon friendly WHOIS template.. exists now, just thought I'd let you know. Happy editing--{anon iso − 8859 − 1janitor} 23:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

tew tag for innacuracies

i recently had to tag an article (Carriage Hills, Richmond, California) because it was full of inaccuracies, it wasnt a hoax. But for example this person called upper middle class tract houses "estates" and said certain roads went to certain places and she was only half right. so i propose the creation of the neg tag for false statements and inconsistant numbers et cetera

${\displaystyle \bot }$

Sounds like Template:Not verified or Template:Disputed. For other possibilities please see Category:Misplaced Pages maintenance templates and its subcategories. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Random article whithin a category

I think it would be a great improvement to the "random article" feature if one could limit the articles generated to a specific catergory (or categories) as people have fields of interests, and no one is really interested in everything. It could be done in an easy to use way if once the user chose a category in wikipedia's main page, the "random article" buttom will generate only articles from that category.

Please consider

Yair Yairlavi 20:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

• It's not really a bug, but I suggest reporting this to Misplaced Pages:Bugzilla. I've considered it a good idea for ages, but for some reason it's not being done. Reporting it, lets the developers know that's what we want. - Mgm| 18:09, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

searching for meta vocab

Since Wik insists on making the instruction and guide pages extremely hard to find and use, maybe a search function for editing and use vocabulary could help. For example, some-one trying to find out what some (stupid) abbreviation (e.g., MWA) means or how to do a revert could use such a function. Kdammers 02:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

It's the Misplaced Pages:Glossary. —Mets501 (talk) 02:18, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

And where is that to be found??? (Yeah, I can link on Your entry, but where is it (for general use)? Kdammers 10:49, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

It's on the main help page, linked under the first entry, "Getting started". Mike Christie (talk) 12:48, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages:Tips can be helpful too. Just Ctrl+F and search for a relevant word to get a quick consise explanation on pretty much any help topic imagineable. - Mgm| 18:03, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Talk page layout and protocols guideline

I have a proposal on the above topic. Where should it be posted?--Light current 02:53, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Right here if you'd like: depends what it affects. You can post here and if seomeone sees a better place for it they will move it. —Mets501 (talk) 12:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Separation of deletion capability from other admin powers

Carnildo's RfA led me to wonder about separating the ability to delete pages from other admin powers. I'm pretty sure I've read discussion of this somewhere else, but I can't find that discussion at the perennial proposals page, so I thought I'd ask about it here. Carnildo seems a very clearcut case; the community can't agree to entrust him with the blocking bit, but a lot of the opposes and neutrals are indicating they'd like him to have the ability to delete pages, because of his sterling work with images.

I would assume this would require a change to the underlying software, so perhaps this discussion should be at Meta, which I'm not yet very familiar with. If the software supported it, however, then I would assume we would have an RfDb process which allow users to request only the deletion bit; RfA would still result in users being given all the current admin capabilities. Perhaps we could call users with only the deletion bit "Janitors", and have an RfJ process? Mike Christie (talk) 12:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The software can easily be adjusted; it's called MediaWiki for a reason. But the overcomplication of power structure is generally opposed. In my opinion, if one can't be trusted to control user blocks, there is no reason to entrust him to delete pages. Don't forget, that, first, Misplaced Pages is about pages and not users, and, second, that user blocks can draw a lot of attention, and generally are temporary, while page deletion is quiet and rarely reversed. We've got a lot of people who could be trusted both without extra problems.

There are occasional discussions here and there about creating an intermediate "advanced user" access level, which would require only a considerable and clean edit history to get. But, if (when) it works, these users most certainly would not be able to delete pages, probably rather to view deleted pages (to consider undeletion), perform quick reverts, use cyborg tools and so on. CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 23:41, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I once proposed a new level of adminship, called "trial adminship", which would entrust the new admin with a basic set of admin tools, so their admin actions could be reviewed by more experienced admins (not other trial admins), and they could be subsequently promoted to "full admin". This would give Misplaced Pages more admins (there are plenty of backlogs which need admins to clear) with less risk. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I actually think individual powers should be assigned to admins based on the kind of tasks and policies that they are familiar with. This would have a number of benefits such as those described above. Admins needing additional powers at a later time could simply request them and let a brief discussion - nothing as involved as a typical RfA - settle whether they need it. Deco 23:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Give them a warning instead of a locked site

I understand why some people want to change wikipedia to a locked site (where viewers can't see changes till they have been approved by editors).

I make the following counter Proposal:

Instead of hiding edits until they are approved, show them but label them as 'unexamined'.

Color code it as well - unexamined edits could be in pale yellow instead of bluish white.

The first line at the top of the page could say:

This page has recently been changed. It has not yet been examined for accuracy. If you suspect it is in error, click here to request a Misplaced Pages editor examine it.

Links to those pages could also be color coded as dark yellow, instead of the standard blue.

Gurps npc 15:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

And what would you colour information that has been removed? Fagstein 19:40, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

What would color blind people do? Durova 19:49, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

For that matter, what would blind people do? —David Levy 19:54, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I am intrigued as to how blind people use the site ATM. 8-?--Light current 20:47, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Blind people generally use screen readers of one form or another. Use of color to convey meaning is discouraged, see Misplaced Pages:Accessibility. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

But how is this supposed to work? Most of vandalism is either: 1) complete gibberish or nonsense, which is obvious without warnings, or 2) text removal, which these color codes would either not show anyway, or they would obscure legitimate edits.

I'd rather suggest a lighter variant of stable versions, where only unregistered users (and unless they set some cookie preference) would see the last stable version, if present and not more than a week old, or even the last stable+all minor edits, with suggestion to view the new one, and all other would see the latest one. Marking version as stable would be checked by default for any edit by user with over 5 days of experience and over 25 edits (current pagemove and semiprotect bypass requirement), and available to him w/o editing. This would be minimally disruptive to wiki process, but would shield readers from about 80-90% of vandalism.

This is almost unrelated to Misplaced Pages:Stable versions, though, as it is designed not to emulate paper, but just to be a vandalism filter. CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 00:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

A deletion view log

Concerning , does anyone think it might make sense to bring up with the developers having a log visible to admins of who has viewed deleted edits from what articles? This would make it easy to deal with admins who are posting deleted content elsewhere. JoshuaZ 14:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• I think that would come suspiciously close to stalking. It would be akin to running random checkusers. - Mgm| 17:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

cc emails sent by E-mail this user

This doesn't appear to be perennial, so:

• Suggest user has option to cc any email s/he sends via the E-mail this user sidebar link to his/her own registered email address.

If I've missed setting this option or the like, apologies; please indicate. Thanks, David Kernow 14:50, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

This would probably have to be done by sending two separate e-mails. If it's done by filling in the cc field with the sender's e-mail address then the sender would (by looking at the copy they receive) be told what the to address is, therefore a spammer could simply send a load of e-mails to Misplaced Pages users with cc turned on and receive back all their e-mail addresses. Tra (Talk) 15:08, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

It could BCC it to the person it was being sent to. This is a minor detail. JoshuaZ 15:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not sure how your observation relates to the E-mail this user page, Tra; apologies if I'm missing the obvious. All I'm thinking is that once I click on that page, whatever message I've just sent may be lost to me (unless say it's copied to my own email address, or perhaps a "Sent" page in my userspace) because the software automatically loads a 'Your message has been sent' page; if I then try to see what I've sent by stepping back through my browsing history, the message I entered may not be preserved. I'd also say such recourse is inelegant. Regards, David 19:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

  What I mean is that your idea cannot be carried out by using the cc field of the e-mail. Here's an example of what I mean:

• Say bob@example.com wants to send an email to george@example.com. With the normal way, Bob sees this when he sends the e-mail through the website:

From	Bob
To	George
Subject	Hello
Message	This is a test

• Note that Bob does not see George's e-mail address. George, however, can see Bob's e-mail address In the e-mail that he recieves:

From	Bob <bob@example.com>
To	George <george@example.com>
Subject	Hello
Message	This is a test

• However, with cc enabled, Bob would see this when he sends the e-mail:

From	Bob
To	George
Send cc	Yes
Subject	Hello
Message	This is a test

• And George would receive this e-mail:

From	Bob <bob@example.com>
To	George <george@example.com>
cc	Bob <bob@example.com>
Subject	Hello
Message	This is a test

• This is all OK. The problem arises where, because of the way cc works, Bob's copy of the e-mail will be exactly the same as George's, so he will see this:

From	Bob <bob@example.com>
To	George <george@example.com>
cc	Bob <bob@example.com>
Subject	Hello
Message	This is a test

• As you can see, the e-mail that Bob receives contains George's e-mail address, so Bob has been able to obtain a fellow Wikipedian's e-mail address without their consent simply by sending an e-mail. Now, imagine Bob was a spammer. He could just send out e-mails with a bot to loads of other users and receive back a bunch of e-mail addresses and do pretty much anything with them. Therefore, giving the sender a copy through cc is not going to work.

• JoshuaZ suggested bcc-ing it to the recipient. With this technique, George would recieve this e-mail:

From	Bob <bob@example.com>
To	Bob <bob@example.com>
bcc	George <george@example.com>
Subject	Hello
Message	This is a test

• And Bob would recieve this e-mail:

From	Bob <bob@example.com>
To	Bob <bob@example.com>
Subject	Hello
Message	This is a test

• This would work, but it has the disadvantage of George not seeing his own address in the To field, which could be confusing sinc the e-mail is to him. I also suggested sending out two separate e-mails, which would look like this:

From	Bob <bob@example.com>
To	George <george@example.com>
Subject	Hello
Message	This is a test

• And this:

From	Bob <bob@example.com>
To	Bob <bob@example.com>
Subject	Hello
Message	You sent this message to George: This is a test

• A disadvantage of this, however, is that it would potentially increase the load on Wikimedia servers. David suggested that the e-mail is copied to userspace. This would probably not be an actual page in userspace because one of the reasons for using e-mail is that it is confidential. This would therefore require asking developers to modify the database to allow the e-mails to be stored there. Using this option means that e-mails are kept with other Misplaced Pages stuff but they cannot be sorted around using the e-mail program. Tra (Talk) 22:30, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't have e-mail enabled, but if I did, and e-mailed another user through the Misplaced Pages-provided function, could I go to Gmail's "Sent Mail" folder and find the mail?--J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

No, since it isn't sent via Gmail; it's sent via Wikimedia's servers. *Dan T.* 15:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Desysopping Inactive Admins

Should they be desysopped after say 6 months?--Light current 15:33, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Why? Melchoir 16:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• I don't really see the point. I think I've been inactive for 6 months. If I had to bother to get those privileges back, I might not have bothered. The only thing I can see this do is help get rid of some fine admins. They should only be desysopped if they fail to get up-to-date with policy changes that happened in the meantime before they start using their admin abilities again or consistently abuse them. -Mgm| 17:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Why desysop? One can really leave for 6 months, for instance if he serves in military. The admins who cause problems are exceccively active ones, not inactive. I understand the safety reasons, but it doesn't actually matter much whether one is active. CP/M |Misplaced Pages Neutrality Project| 18:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Please see Misplaced Pages:Inactive administrators. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:49, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

THey promised to deliver before they were elected, now they just sit on their hands! Its an insult to the Wikicommunity!--Light current 20:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

A promise to be active forever is not required of anyone who wishes to become an admin. Given your well known biases against admins and irrational cries of admin abuse when you were blocked for being obviously uncivil, your proposal is the insult to the community, not the other way around. pschemp | talk 20:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Im sure you didnt mean that as a personal attack on me! I am biased against unfair treatment of users only. I detect a hint of paranoia here! Anyway you are quite active (maybe too active) so it wouldnt affect you! Any way you had your revenge so leave it!--Light current 22:50, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

One issue with inactive administrators is that they make it easier for hackers to get elevated privilege to the site, since it's relatively easy to crack one password among hundreds as compared to one among dozens. For this reason I think it should after a certain period of inactivity automatically reset the password of admins and send them an e-mail about it. An alternative is stronger, software-enforced password complexity requirements for admins. In any case this problem is best solved by technical means. Deco 23:00, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Search box ideas

For some reason people aren't finding the WP:VFAQ. Newbies still don't know the search index lags behind and even more fail to note the search box is case-sensitive. Perhaps we should put a helpful link to Misplaced Pages:Search in the search box to give them some guidance on how to use it most effectively. What do you think? - Mgm| 17:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

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