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Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 52

< Wikipedia:Simple talk

Wikipedia and WP headings

I think that we should incorporate Wikipedia: and WP: as one heading so if someone wrote WP to simplify, they wouldn't get lost. This is what en.wikipedia does. MathCool10 04:15, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, so you mean that EN does, for example, go to 'Wikipedia:Test' when you type WP:TEST and have no redirect message below the title; or go to 'Wikipedia:This is a test' when you type WP:TEST but show a redirect message saying 'Wikipedia:TEST'?
And If I'm right it will move the WP: namespace from mainspace to the Wikipedia: one and stop new WP shortcuts from appearing the small 'New pages' sidebar? - Æåm Fætsøn /ˈaɪæm ˈfætsən/ 06:49, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I mean the 1st example (where WP:TEST goes to Wikipedia:Test without redirect message). MathCool10 04:40, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I think it should go ahead. - Æåm Fætsøn /ˈaɪæm ˈfætsən/ 10:52, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Since WP:TEST redirects to Wikipedia:Sandbox on English Wikipedia, the redirect link should say something like "Redirected from Wikipedia:TEST", not from WP:TEST. MathCool10 01:22, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And also, when you search, if you type WP:, the search results should be Wikipedia:SOMETHING, not WP:SOMETHING.MathCool10 02:37, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

reset Just thought i'd explain fully how this works. What it requires is for a developer to add some code to LocalSettings.php. This allows for WP: to become a "shortcut namespace" that relates to Wikipedia: without any redirecting. Things with WP: will automatically be in the Wikipedia: namespace. For it to work, everything with WP: will need to be deleted, and it also might be a while before it gets fulfilled. Personally, I think it's an undeeded measure here at Simple at the moment, but if there is consensus for it I will file a bug. BG7even 08:57, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We'll have a vote. MathCool10 02:10, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vote - incorporate WP: and Wikipedia: headings

Support or oppose to making WP: a shortcut (not a seperate heading) of Wikipedia: (see above conversation).


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

The discussion has a consensus to do the change. The motion passes. NonvocalScream (talk) 14:53, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support

  1.   Support. I support this fully (I brought this up) because we will remove a lot of extra pages that we could eliminate. MathCool10 03:18, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support, makes sense --Chris 09:41, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support: hard coding WP pseudo-namespace is a good idea. It works in e.wiki and will work here. Ruslik (talk) 19:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Yes please. PeterSymonds (talk) 19:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  5.   Support - Sounds good. But to address what BG said in the neutral section. I think think you should do it now while it's a small job compared to if you wait.-- ✝ CM16   19:57, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  6.   Support - Stops WP: shortcuts cluttering the 'New changes' and 'Recent changes' sidebar gadgets and makes the search show only Wikipedia: pages if there's no page with that exact name. - Æåm Fætsøn /ˈaɪæm ˈfætsən/ 09:08, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  7.   Strong support I think we should incorporate Wikipedia: headings (i.e. if you type 'WP:VANDAL' it will automatically link to 'Wikipedia:Vandalism' with a redirect message saying 'Redirected from Wikipedia:VANDAL'). Tharnton345 19:56, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  8.   Support - I don't see why not. It would make our lives easier; sesides, we already have ...wiki/SP:USP-type shortcuts Resident Mario (talk) 17:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  9.   Support I don't see why not. Synergy 15:07, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  10.   Support Anything to make life easier is good. --Sultec (talk) 00:55, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  11.   Support Agreeing with Sultec. --§ Snake311 (I'm Not Okay!) 19:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  12.   Support. I like in wikipedia and think it would be usefull here. --Bduke (talk) 10:04, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  13.   Support I think it's a great idea as it'll save a lot of time. --Terryblack (talk) 19:53, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

  1.   Oppose - I have a vague idea what you mean. We dont have any double redirects, so if one types WP:TEST, one would go directly to Wikipedia:Test - There will be a redirect message, but no-one will get lost. Fine as it is. If it ain't broke... Kennedy (talk) 09:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2.   Weak oppose - while I understand the reasonings behind, I do not think it is necessary. It gets annoying while typing on English Wikipedia, and so I've never liked it. Perhaps in the future, if needed, but not now. -- American Eagle (talk) 00:58, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

  1.   Neutral Per my reasoning above, I don't think it's needed at this time. It would also mean that all the current redirects will have to be deleted for it to work. But we can cross that bridge once a bug has been filed (if one is needed!). Cheers, BG7even 09:06, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2.   Neutral I agree with BG. Not necessary now. Also, in my four months editing here, it's never caused me any problems. Yotcmdr✼ Merry Christmas ! ✼ 16:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not change it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No more changes should be made to this discussion.


Comments

If this turns out to be   Support (currently support is leading more than 50%), can someone with the knowledge and the capability of making this bug do it? I don't really know how to code. MathCool10 21:35, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I keep saying, if needed i'll file the bug, but it requires admin help to delete all the current redirects. I'd be happy to do it if my RfA passes that i'm running for in the early new year, but can we wait that long? BG7even 21:56, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be happy to file the bug if needed - I know the code that's required. But first an admin needs to delete all the current redirects else it will create conflicts... BG7even 21:59, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I see... can you change all of the WP: pages to Wikipedia: pages? MathCool10 22:44, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are two ways of doing it. Either recreate them all and delete the originals, or redirect the originals and delete the leftovers. Either way, it's a messy job... And don't start until there is clear consensus! BG7even 22:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When would we have "clear consensus?" MathCool10 22:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(e/c) Oh dear... I see that you have started... just don't do any more, and revert the changes youve made and qd tag the new pages. 7/2/1 isnt clear consensus... and i'm also bordering on oppose as an unecessary evil. BG7even 22:53, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oops! Sorry. I'm too lazy to undo my edits, but I'll do so if I must. MathCool10 22:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(e/c) Clear consensus is normally 7 or 8 to 0. As we have 7/2/1 i'd call perhaps 10/2/1 clear consensus imo, but others may say something else. Either way, there's no need to start till the bug is filed, they take months to go through (as we found with Rollback). Thanks, BG7even 23:01, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

reset Hmmm if you can't be bothered the i'll get GBot2 to do it - it's a simple AWB job (I think...). Cheers, BG7even 23:05, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AWB works on Simple English Wikipedia? I never knew that! I have it on English Wikipedia. MathCool10 17:51, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. Just set up your AWB so you log in to simple.wikipedia. It works across all Wikimedia Foundation projects, as well as some non-WMF ones. If you have it at en.wikipedia, and want it here, ask an admin to add you to the check page. Thanks, BG7even 17:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the info! MathCool10 17:44, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(reset) We're straying a bit off topic. WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO TAKE PART IN THIS VOTE! MathCool10 19:39, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Can we have a consensus that we have "clear consensus?" Sorry for the awkward language... MathCool10 02:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that there is clear consensus yet: 14/2/2 doesn't say that to me. Still, if anyone else thinks it is then i'll file the bug as I know the code ;) BG7even 10:33, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus doesn't come anymore clear than 14/2/2 (well, 14/0/0/ would, but thats besides the point). Synergy 16:00, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, well to me it didn't seem as consensus, but I admit I am an involved party who was against it so I am more than likely biased. Everything seemed to weigh up that there wasn't consensus, but I see your points and so I have filed a bug: it is here. I mentioned in it that we either need the WP: pages nuking or they wait till we've removed them all, unless the WMF has a workaround in place that's not on the trunk downloadable version of 1.14alpha. Cheers, BG7even 19:58, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another censorship debate

Hello all, I do this in a section on its own, because the other two sections above are already getting lengthy. I'll keep it very short, because we already have had this discussion many times before. As was pointed out before, Wikipedia is not censored; this means that we do not adapt our content so it fits special audiences (like children). The proposal has been made to "moderate" Wikipedia in some ways, in that special tags should be introduced. These tags would specify that the content given is of the specified nature, e.g. that a certain article is for an audience "10+" because the article contains certain "features" that make it suitable for that audience. There are several problems with this:

  • Who are we to decide what "features" are suitable for a certain "audience"
  • The article on breasts has images and schematics that show different human breasts; none of them is pornographic in nature. How am I then supposed to rate the article, it has (on-topic) images, has some (on-topic) graphics, and has language fit to describe the subject at hand?
  • If this article is appropriate for the EFL crowd, how would it not be for children?
  • How can I factor in the "cultural" difference? - If it is ok for a 12 year old "western" boy, is it for a 12 year old boy from Arabia, or from Japan?
  • Where do we get the people that rate the articles, and that write the other articles?

In short, trying to "rate" articles probably raises more issues than it solves.--Eptalon (talk) 18:14, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. A cow to me is food, but to someone in India, a cow is holy, sacred. So me seeing a cow being butchered will make me hungry, but my counterpart in Asia will be very offended. Censorship in this way is not possible. Period. Kennedy (talk) 19:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I completely disagree with you two. We're not the ones censoring, if you can call it that. We're simply the ones rating articles. The persons computer is the one censoring. We have no control over that. I think that this rating system is the best idea proposed.-- CM16 MLB  04:34, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But, and using Kennedy's example as a basis, we (non- cow is sacred people) would give a cow being slaughtered a pg-13 (cause it is being killed after all.. ) rating where an Indian person would be up around R or even XXX.. An American would place naked breasts far higher on the rating level than someone from a country were topless beaches are normal. An American vs most Europeans will differ greatly on sexuality. Heck, an American from San Francisco vs one from North Carolina will differ greatly on a slew of topic. What do we base the ratings on? Who's opinion is the one we use as to what is acceptable? Why the hell should we decide what is acceptable to someone else's children?? Only the parent can decide and moderate what is right for their child, and each parent will have a different level of tolerance on each individual subject. My personal opinion vs the original posters ideas are complete opposites (she has 3 boys - any boy who can understand the image pretty much already has a firm understandig of what a penis looks like and likely is looking the topic up only because he is wondering if he broke his when the white gooey stuff came out of it. Not exactly damaging his frail sensibilities by showing him that what he was already doing was a natural process his body was designed to do.) Who's opinion is right? mine or hers? More so, whos opinion was right for the other 10,000 parents out there? And who are we to state one opinion is right for all 10,000? We may not be censoring, but we are being placed in a position to define what should be censored and that is just not our call to make. It is the responsibility of each parent to chose for their own child, they should not push it off on others to take over their responsibility. (and side note - yes, I got issues with failure in parental responsibilty, issues dealing with a recent suicide and crappy parenting.. Parents need to step up and do the job of being responsible to and for their children or quit having kids they are incapable of raising properly for whatever reason.)--Creol(talk) 06:59, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps the proposer still wants some "rating", so why don't we give them what they want: the whole Simple Wikipedia is PG-13. "Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. May contain moderate language, some explicit nudity, intense violence and/or gore, or mild drug content." BTW, this rating confirms my theory that the target audience may be users around the reading level of 8th grade. Cheers, Lwyx (talk) 04:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just something very shortly: those parenting programs are very simple; they install a proxy server. Before the page can be accessed, it will be scanned for certain features (like images). Scanning text is easy, scanning images for certain content is harder to do (so AFAIK it is not done). Rather the program relies on third-party information (an image downloaded from playboy is likely pornographic in nature). These programs have been known to work badly (I have a case in mind of such a program blocking info on breast cancer, based on a text scan (and the word breast)). As Creol states above, they cannot replace parenting, which is often the reason why they are installed. Perhaps my statement will cause an outrage: I'd prefer my children to see nudity, because it's natural. If they ask their other-sex friend in school to undress they will likely see similar things. It is the parents or the society they live in that tabooises nudity. All we could do is tag the respective pages (breast contains images of naked breasts, and the text to describe it; however, given this project wants to build an encyclopedia this is something you'd expect, so does not really need tagging. The argument probably holds for most other articles we have: If you find an image somewhere that you would not expect, the image is probably misplaced. --Eptalon (talk) 10:09, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The point of these programs is to take stress off parent(s) by having the program watch for them...parent(s) CAN'T look over their kids shoulders 24/7 to make sure their kids are looking at what they want their kids to see. Thus these programs were created. By not doing this, we would make these programs useless and make it harder for the parent(s). To answer you problem on what's right? Why not set up a consensus system and average all inputs to a happy medium. But, IMO this has to be done in some way. Thank you.-- CM16 MLB  04:40, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, picture this: The Fluffy Bunnies and Lollypops article is created, specifically about fluffy bunnies and lollypops. So what rating? Well thats easy, U (universal) or its equivilent. But after we create it, and deem it U, some rotten IP gets to it, and adds all sorts of unsavoury words and images. A child clicks on Fluffy Bunnies and Lollypops, and sees pictures of cows being killed or something. The parent sees this, and notices the U certificate which the IP forgot to update when he added images of dead animals. Now, what will the parent think? Who's fault is it? Well, they will blame us, because we rated that article as Universal. I smell a lawsuit. There is a disclaimer saying we cannot guarentee that our content is accurate or even legal. How can we guarentee that it is suitable for children? Kennedy (talk) 08:42, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Parents can watch their children 24/7 (in regards to being on the net). Its quite simple really, you put the computer in an open space like a family room and you only allow your children on at certain times. Parents today always seek to blame others for their kids behavior but more often than not their behavior could have been stop before it even started with a simple solution, sometimes years before the behavior starts. -Djsasso (talk) 14:26, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most parents do DJ, but that doesn't solve the problem that most parents work and are not home 24/7...then what do you suggest? Like I said parents CAN'T watch their kids 24/7. As for what Kennedy said, are you just looking for reasons to oppose or something? I mean, any logical personal can tell when an article has been vandalized or changed to a way that an article isn't meant to be. that would not be our fault and if you Wikimedia were to get sued over that in the USA I pretty dang sure the lawsuit would be thrown out.-- CM16 MLB  19:06, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You lock the computer so they can't get on. There are many ways to watch them if you are worried about these things. An 8 year old shouldn't be using the internet to research by themselves in the first place. -Djsasso (talk) 19:11, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ever heard of homework? sometimes you can't do that cause it stops a kid from doing homework when they need it most. And when the parents aren't there cause they're at work thinking they're kids are behaving they're looking up something bad or accidently clicking on it.-- CM16 MLB  19:14, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If a kid is old enough to be home alone, they are old enough to see any of the content we would have on this wiki. Otherwise I am sure there is some other type of guardian around to monitor them. -Djsasso (talk) 19:18, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm done arguing...my opinions have been expressed and I'm done. I shall be watching though.-- CM16 MLB  19:27, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since I was the one who started this debate again, I will address some of the issues.

  • My oldest boy is 8 yrs old, and the person who talked about a teenage boy wanting to make sure that his body's actions were a wet dream as opposed to gonorrhea makes a good point. (Example from the movie A Chorus Line). One issue is that there are two categories for that page: "Female reproductive system" and "male reproductive system", but it does not contain the parent project category "Sex and Sexuality". There are so many different ways to phrase these topics how does a filtering program know what to look for? Plus how does one distinguish between a page that is generic (text describing what it is with maybe a diagram) and a more detailed article with live person videos? Right now, from what I am hearing, I am not even allowed to create a second article called "Health Education, Ejaculation" that is more along the lines of what one would expect to find in a Middle School Health Education Text Book. By doing that, people are saying it is censorship. "Why are you preventing from putting my video on that page as well?"
  • We cannot stop people from writing bad things on "U" rated pages, but if they are "U" rated the bad stuff can be removed immediately and the person notified. If it was an accident (posted under the wrong article), give a warning. If it was a deliberate attempt to vandalize, then take action according to Wikipedia policies.
  • By having a standard system of terminology and categories in place it allows 3rd party applications like NetNanny to better filter items. For example, breast cancer and foreplay have the potential to contain images of breast or talk about breasts. By marking the breast cancer page as "Health Education, wellness" and the foreplay article as "Sex and Sexuality" it makes it very clear that one is a medical and one is sex talk. But both of these topics should not be in one main article. By breaking them up into sub-articles and talking about different topics accordingly it allows parents to discuss with their children about breast cancer without having to be required to discuss with their children about foreplay.
  • If we take a proactive role in our category naming and we work with somebody on NetNanny's project management team, the two systems can be designed to work together. Then we can advertise that we are NetNanny compatible and NetNanny can advertise that they are Simple Wikipedia compatible. It becomes a win win situation.
  • The cow example ... most parents don't want young children to see a cow getting slaughtered. Therefore, it should not be in the main article about cows. It should be in a sub-article. Then the a person can select that sub-topic to learn all about the slaughtering of cows, including images. Also have a category called "Parent warning: Indian religious culture issue"
  • I don't think that it really matters if the unmarked pages are assumed to be PG-13 and mark PG and G pages accordingly or if the default is PG and mark PG-13 accordingly. We just need to mark pages accordingly. We don't have to use a rating system. Just a standard categorization of names would work: "Parent warning: Sex and sexuality, images" "Parent warning: Sex and sexuality, discussion" "Parent warning: Sex and sexuality, diagrams"
  • People gave examples of different beliefs in different cultures. Maybe we could make a template called "Parental Warning: TTT culture(s) may find YYY an issue. Please see ZZZ page for a more generic version of this topic." This would be displayed at the top of the page and a standard on the site would be that potentially objectionable images should not placed within the 1st screen shot.
  • Having computers in an public area is not the only issue. There is also the question of how do kids to their research. Do I put simple wikipedia on the "Allow" page or do I spend $60/year for a subscription to Britanica? My personal view about wikipedia in general is that it is a good starting point to get an idea of the vocabulary that is involved in a topic. It is also a good place to get images. I don't want to have to "throw the baby out with the bathwater".
  • I don't expect software to take my job as a parent. But I also have to let my children be children. I know that when my boys are teenagers, they are going to look up the sex words and look at the images. It is a normal part of growing up. But the diagrams and diagram videos that are included in Britanica should be enough to answer their curiosity questions. IMO, they don't need to see a live person video. Other parents may disagree. That is where categorizing comes in. It allows parents to make an informed choice to allow or not allow a certain article. Plus by having tagging, it allows the same topic to be discussed at different age levels. How one explains "penis" to a 4 yr old is a lot different than one would explain "penis" to a 13 yr old. This would even be true between explaining "penis" to a girl vs. explaining "penis" to a boy.

Zzmonty (talk) 18:05, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies, Zzmonty, but one of your changes messed up the outline of the debate: you deleted text from other users, so their viewpoints (mine included) were misrepresented. Please restart from this point and avoid editing talk pages as if they were emails. Please don't delete other peoples' text, save for fixing typos and things like that. My apologies to others involved. Cheers, Lwyx (talk) 20:00, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I may be a bit rude, so my apologies in advance: this sort of "parent tagging" is technically impossible on WikiMedia projects, because any editor can remove the tags or place "inappropriate" contents anywhere in the encyclopaedia. You may say that the former may be fixed by protecting every page with the tag "Sexuality", but there is no way to fix the latter without protecting the whole encyclopaedia, and either would betray the stated goal of "The encyclopaedia that anyone can change".-- You're looking for an encyclopaedia explicitly aimed at children, so you must look elsewhere. Cheers, Lwyx (talk) 20:17, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First, sorry for accidently messing up your post.

What I am hearing is that since we can't prevent mischievous people from acting mischievous, we should not do anything. That would be like saying since we can't prevent all spam emails from entering our computer we should not setup any filter system. Anybody who uses wikipedia is going to have to accept the risks. One of those risks is that the articles are biased even though they are supposed to be NPOV. The second risk is that the content is just wrong. The founder of Wikipedia gets 10 emails a week from students who got an F on their paper for using Wikipedia as a main source. The third risk is that you will see or read something that you did not want to see or read. If a parent does not want to accept those risk to any level, they spend the $60/year and get a subscription to Britanica. I am leaning very strongly in that direction. The problem, as stated before, is that Wikipedia commons has a bunch of great pictures.

If a parent is willing to accept some risk, then having tags will help to organize the materials, and creating pages to more directly link to images that kids would use in school reports would improve this site, not harm it.

The sad part of this is that there are a lot of people who are putting in a lot of effort in this project. 95% of the people here, at least, have good intentions for being here. They want to share the knowledge that they have learned with others. Why do I have to prevent my child from reading articles about different animals, because I have personal issues with my child seeing the articles from the project sexuality before he has formally been introduced to that topic by either his parents or through his school?

I know of whole schools that do not allow the children to use the Internet for any school project. The kids must use traditional sources. There is one side of me that can see that point of view, especially reading this discussion. But there is another side of me that believes that there must be a middle ground. Do I really want to go from completely isolating my child to just letting my child loose during college? It seems extreme and very unhealthy.

FYI: I did not say "fix" by protecting a page. I said "fix" by the project leader, aka User:Gwib, monitoring the pages under his project and making sure that people don't remove the tags once they have been approved by the project committee.

As for what rating system to use, this site is out of American (USA), so the standards of ratings of similar materials out of the USA should be used. I did a bunch of research on different rating systems, and Marvel comic books seems to be most in line with what we are doing here (text and images). Plus, I think that their age breakups make sense, as well as the criteria for placing items into a category. On top of that, we can always add standard text to give more information to the potential reader.

Another option is to just use the categories that are used in Vista's parental controls since they have to do with web page content.

Age tags are the easiest to read. On the other hand, the text descriptions are usually useful for the in between stages. Do you allow your 12 yr old who had his first wet dream to read an article about "Ejaculation" that is rated 15+ or 13+? The 15+ one contains a live person video while the 13+ one contains only a diagram and some images of semen. It will depend on the child and the family values.

Zzmonty (talk) 23:11, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As you can read below, I will shortly have a bot operational. One of the things this bot will do is to remove the parent category in an article, if that article is already listed in one of the subcategories. This is done because the subcategories are supposed to be more accurate- it is also the behaviour suggested in WP:CAT. Also note, that the category try is not really a tree, each category can have multiple parents. In your case, this would remove the category Human sexuality if the article is in either male or female reproductive system.--Eptalon (talk) 23:30, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Vista Parental controls handle filtering of Simple Wikipedia properly

I just did some testing with Vista's parental controls and Simple Wikipedia's site. If a person activates "Parental Control" and sets the "Web Restrictions" to medium it will allow access to Simple Wikipedia. Page of the type "penis", "ejaculation", "nudity" will not be displayed without parental permission, but pages like "elephant" will display without a parent having to give permission. If the "Web Restrictions" are set to "High", the user cannot access anything on Simple Wikipedia.

I have not done testing on commons MediaWiki to find out how it interacts there.

Moderator question: If I did some testing, and I wrote an article "Vista Parental Controls and Wikipedia" would that be considered "Original research" and not allowed? Zzmonty (talk) 00:44, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That would be disallowed as an article. However, I don't think that anyone would object if you created an essay in your user space about it, Either way (talk) 00:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia space may also be acceptable. NonvocalScream (talk) 01:06, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, I'd suggest Wikipedia:Parental control#Windows Vista, and add a link from Useful pages. Happy New Year, Lwyx (talk) 15:57, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Debate is over, nothing will be changed on this site -- tags or ratings

Due to the fact that Microsoft Vista out of the box can handle the main parental control / censoring issues with their parental controls, this issue is now null and void and is formally closed. Thank you everyone who participated in this debate and discussion. I think that it has been educational for all involved. Zzmonty (talk) 00:44, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Review of CYBERsitter interacting with wikipedia

Hi, I just wanted to let other users know that if you desire to have your wikipedia filtered CYBERsitter for $40.00 works great for content filtering of wikipedia and other sites. You will need to add words to your custom filter list, but Gwib's Sexual Anatomy project provides a great foundation of filter words. But do go through it, because I did delete a couple of generic words, and added a couple that he was missing.

I have not tried it personally, but I think that if you add {http://www.britannica.com} it will not filter these words for Britannica. That means that you can filter out the sex education from Wikipedia, but still have it through Britannica. Need to do some more testing on this, but it is not a top priority of mine right now.

Zzmonty (talk) 00:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Review of Vista's parental controls with wikipedia

The high setting will block all wikipedia sites, and it works fine for preschoolers. Although I don't think that any preschoolers would be interested in wikipedia at any level.

The medium setting is a joke. It is worse than not having anything, because you think that you have filtering when you don't. There is no ability to add filter items. There is no rhyme or reason to Vista's filtering. Penis is filtered on simple wikipedia, but not on en wikipedia even when they both have the same categories. What is triggering the filtering? Who knows. It is Microsoft. What do you expect.

Zzmonty (talk) 00:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Review of OpenDNS with wikipedia

OpenDNS is a DNS server that allows filtering. All of the wikipedia sites are categorized as reference sites. So the only way that wikipedia sites will get filtered is by the user saying that all reference sites are filtered.

There are people who are recommending other filter categories, but I doubt that they will go through. IMO, wikipedia is in a class of its own. It is not a tradition reference site like Britannica that has an editorial board, but it is also not what some people are suggesting. It falls into a gray area that if somebody does not want to go to one extreme (complete blocking) or the other extreme (completely open) then you need specialized software that can take care of content filtering (see review of CYBERsitter above).

Zzmonty (talk) 00:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Implementing a Rating system

This is wikipedia's policy about implementing a rating system:

The same is true of the Simple English Wikipedia. Their content is regulated by the community which writes it, and they have a content disclaimer as well. In fact, that is the case for all our projects. If the community wishes to put up disclaimers on articles, they are free to do so. If you wish to convince them that a rating system etc is a good idea, you're free to do that as well.
Yours sincerely,
Mike Ingram

I propose that implementing a rating system on this wiki is a good idea, because it would allow filtering software (eg. NetNanny) a better ability to filter out content that some users may feel objectionable. Since there does not seem to be a standard for internet content, using the one published by the Software Rating Editorial Board seems like the best match. They break things up into "children"; "Everyone"; "10+"; "Teen"; "Mature"; "Adults only". This would solve the issue for everyone, because the adults can have their page and there can be a separate page for the students.

I don't really think there is anything "objectionable" to filter out, and it does seem a rather extreme step to take without Wikimedia approval. We'd be completely cutting off access for some users wanting to access pages we'd judged as "objectionable". I doubt Wikimedia would like that very much. There's no content to filter out IMO, and it's just not a decision that can be made by the local community. Archer7 - talk 22:07, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is a difference between censoring and rating. In a censored system, certain material is forbidden on the site. I am NOT proposing censoring. In a rated system, there is a standard reading and content levels (eg. 7th to 8th grade -- standard of writing of most current newspapers and magazines). All pages that are not marked otherwise need to comply with those standards. If there is content that people feel is important, but does not meet the reading level or content level of that range, the page would need to be marked appropriately. Then when somebody does a general search, for example, "nudity" the default page would be the disambiguous page (eg. "Nudity (disambiguous)") On that page it would be broken down to "Nudity, Adults Only"; "Nudity, Teen", "Nudity, 10+ Teen", "Nudity, Everyone", and "Nudity, children". The children's page would explain the topic as one would explain it to a 3 - 7 yr old using words like "Private Parts" or maybe in a question and answer format that a child that age would understand. The Children's page would have the actual words of penis, scrotum, etc., but would not include words like semen. On the 10+ page, it would explain things as one would realistically explain them to a middle school student. The teen one would explain things as one would realistically explain them to a high school student. The adult one can include the everything else that some people feel that adults should know about the topic.
We need to implement a standard for rating these pages, so that filter programs like Internet Explorer, Vista, NetNanny can read that data and display or not display the page accordingly. All of those filtering systems have to be setup by the end user. If the end user does not set them up, they will not be activated. So it will not affect a non-Native Language Adult's enjoyment of reading those adult topics.
In the 1977 case of Nazi vs. Skokie, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Nazis saying that they were allowed to demonstrate in a community full of Holocaust survivors, because it was an expression of their freedom of speech. But there are two parts to that. One is the freedom of the speaker to say what they want to say. The other freedom of the listener to ignore the speaker.
Teens are going to look up those private words, because that is something that most teens do at some point. They should get a hit, because if they don't they will keep digging until they do get a hit. But when they do get a hit, the page should explain the topic in an appropriate way for that age group. A video of a man ejaculating is not something that a high school or middle school student needs to see in order to understand the topic.
As the previous poster said, most of the topics are not a problem. So therefore, putting in a rating system for the few topics that are a problem should not have a major impact on this site. As for wikipedia's view on this, the email I quoted above came from Wikipedia's headquarters. According to Wikipedia Headquarters it is up the community.
Zzmonty (talk) 12:44, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While I personally agree with your thoughts, there is zero chance of a change being implemented as the policy of Wikipedia not being censored apparently overrules all else. And even if rating would not actually be censorship, those who value so-called "free speech" above everything else will disagree Soup Dish (talk) 13:22, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not censored. We shouldn't set up some sort of "filter" to block certain Wikipedia pages from access. We have no illegal images or text on this site, and I really don't see a need for this. SteveTalk 13:32, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmation within 10 minutes. Quod erat demonstrandum - how spiffing! Soup Dish (talk) 13:45, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so does anybody have objections to me setting a up a new WikiProject named something along the lines of "Discovery Wiki" or "Student Wiki"? The goal would be to create a set of categories and pages that aimed at the 3-12 age range including content and images. The overall goal would be to allow parents to access useful wikipedia material that is age appropriate. If a regular page is appropriate, there will be a link to that page. If it is not, then a new page would be created and marked appropriately. I guess one could say it is reverse censoring. All material on this wiki will be assumed to be adult only content unless it is specifically noted otherwise. Zzmonty (talk) 13:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It would be more appropriate to set up a new project for children. That is not what this project is about Soup Dish (talk) 14:09, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Soup Dish. It wouldn't be appropriate for a WikiProject within Simple Wikipedia. HOwever, you can always set up your own wiki at somewhere like Wikia. Either way (talk) 14:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I too will have to agree. It is not appropriate for simple.wiki. And I would echo the sentiment that you check out Wikia. -Djsasso (talk) 16:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest this thread just seems to be a repeat of one above, where we said no censoring and no ranking/rating/filtering etc. I won't echo what everyone else has already said and just say that I agree. Although, I doubt Wikia would even accept such a proposal, as there are already lots of encylopedic sites there, and they would just say that it is a copy of Wikipedia. BG7even 16:30, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Range 3-12? What's common between a toddler and a pre-teen? The toddler doesn't even read, while the pre-teen is able to read the newspaper if he likes to. Children 3-7 need parents reading to them, so the target audience is really the parents; OTOH, children 8-12 are able to go on their own, gaining mastery of their reading abilities. Please narrow down your ranges or else it seems to me you have only hypothetical readers.— I'd say the upper class of these readers (pre-teens [12 years old] or adults with reading level of 7th grade) may be assumed to be the target audience of this "simple" wikipedia. Lwyx (talk) 17:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In any event, how would you check whether the reading/writing level really matches these audiences (roughly, 7th grade children and adults)? Lwyx (talk) 17:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so the final consensus of the community is that it is not physically possible to create a version of wikipedia that can honestly meet the needs of Non-Native English speakers and children within the same wiki. Even if the reading level was not an issue, content would be an issue. Furtheremore, more than likely, there will need to be two children's versions of wikipedia: Children's Wikipedia and Student Wikipedia. I now will go back to wikipedia headquarters and relate to them to final vote of the community -- that a separate wiki is required for children. Thank you everyone for your feedback. Sorry for the confusion, and if an admin wants to delete the pages that I started related to this project, you are welcome to do so. They all begin with MFW.

I did not have any desire to affect this wiki, but I had to go through proper procedure. I had to present the issue to the community and have the community decide on the best course of action. Zzmonty (talk) 00:16, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, where do you get the idea that we "voted" to have a childrens' Wikipedia? So far as I can tell, most people have said it wouldn't be an appropriate Wikipedia and that if you wish you pursue it, you should open one on your own at Wikia or somewhere like that. No one has suggested that you start a proposal for a new Wikipedia through the Wikimedia Foundation, Either way (talk) 00:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is already a proposal to start a Wikipedia for kids here. You may check it and sign up if that's what you were looking for. However, be warned that the discussion about that project already suggests that somehow it overlaps the goals of this project, and that it has some of the same problems: the proposed target audience is too diverse (8-16 years old!); there are no clear criteria to know that younger children (8-12 years old) actually understand what some adults are writing; there may not be enough adults motivated to do the job, etc. Good luck, Lwyx (talk) 03:24, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Donation notice

I was just wondering why when you collapse the donation notice, it doesn't go away, but if you click on the expand button, it does. Why does this happen? MathCool10 20:04, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you trying to make it go away completely? If so, just go to Special:Preferences --> Gadgets, and checkmark the box that reads "Hide the donations site notice." RyanCross @ 20:10, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, what I meant was that when you click "my settings," it still appears; if you collapse the box, then go to some other page, it still appears as collapsed. But now, if you expand it, it disappears. Why doesn't it go away when it's collapsed? MathCool10 20:35, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hey MathCool,
The option to make it disappear doesn't work on the Preferences page, indeed, no gadgets do. The gadget to remove the banner only removes the uncollapsed form, so if you collapsed it om the Preferences page it remains collapsed until you expand it back again, whence it fixes itself.
Not ideal, i'll see if I can create a fix for it that an admin can add in, but the WMF are at something like $4.5M so it's not long before it will go away ;)
Hope this helps,
BG7even 23:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the info! MathCool10 20:07, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wrestling stub template

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

Synergy (talk · contribs) recently deleted a stub template for wrestling located here. Citing it as not being needed. I disagree and according to a discussion the community had months ago (now that I look at it again it was a very big discussion), no one else did. We agreed, to a point, that wrestling wasn't exactly sports but not exactly not a sport either. Thus a more specific template was created to suffice. I think the deletion of this template should be brought before the community to properly discuss whether this template is too much, or just right for the job. Thank you.-- CM16 MLB  23:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify myself, it wasn't hardly discussed but needs to be cause I don't think {{Sport-stub}} is right for the job in this case.-- CM16 MLB  23:42, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion you cite means nothing at this point. No one there even bothered to comment besides me and one other person, and that's because we just weren't ready to handle these issues until now. Furthermore, the community didn't allow it, you were just bold and created it. Now that we have a partial system in the works for creating and using stubs, we need to hold a "real" conversation about it at Wikipedia:Simple Stub Project. Synergy 23:53, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Synergy. PeterSymonds (talk) 23:56, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Moved here.-- CM16 MLB  00:00, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not change it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No more changes should be made to this discussion.


Wikiproject Asteroids

Hi all. I just wanted to let you all know that I have created a Wikiproject for asteroids. If you would like to join, visit the Wikiproject's page at User:Razorflame/WikiProject Asteroids. Cheers, Razorflame 04:48, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Soft Redirects

What are thoughts on these? I dislike them as they clutter up Special:ShortPages. The first SIX are soft redirects:

  1. Feature
  2. Term
  3. Borrow
  4. Unanimous
  5. Commission
  6. WP:BEANS

I would like to QD the lot of them, as they take up space, have no information and encourage readers to leave simple.wiki. Thoughts? Kennedy (talk) 00:29, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you explain how exactly they encourage readers to leave simple.wiki? These are standard links to our sister sites. We can't have articles on definitions obviously, so what do you propose we do to fix the situation (besides deleting things)? Synergy 20:56, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I propose deleting things. Soft redirects encourage the user to go to Wikitionary instead of staying here. And you click a blue link and it goes no-where. I would propose direct linking, with a different colour of blue, instead of linking to the term as if it is an article... Kennedy (talk) 11:36, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, first let me say that your idea still makes people go to wiktionary (which was the whole idea in the first place, since we can't have dictionary definitions in an encyclopedia), so it partially contradicts itself. Currently there are two methods for linking a large word of non encyclopedic value (a definition), and we only need one. I will agree that the one that allows for an article, should be the one not used. So we'll have to add this to any guideline on simple that deals with creating articles, and how to link them to wiktionary. We can't do away with linking altogether, because then we would have no way to explain the words that can't be simplified. You may have noticed that some of the soft redirects were due to articles that were transwiki'ed (merged and deleted, in a way). After this, we won't need to recreate and tag as soft redirect anymore. The only thing I can't say we need to delete, are any articles that begin with WP. These link to en's policies, guidelines, and essays that might be important. So those need to stay. Synergy 15:30, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]


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

Tweaking archiving settings

Hello all, i am tweaking archiving settings for the bot; I reduced "wait time" before archival from 14d to 7d. Is there a way to get the source code for the bot; I have a few ideas I want to implement, namely: - dynamic settings: Its ok to wait 14 days before archiving if the size threshold is not reached; once it is reached though, it should be more important to archive; ie. a lower and upper lifetime on articles. In the meantime I hope drastically reduced article lifetimes will work.--Eptalon (talk) 17:22, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have also Archiving to the Admin noticeboard (14d, 100k archive size)--Eptalon (talk) 23:39, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not change it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No more changes should be made to this discussion.


Inactivity at WP:PVGA

Most of the articles there have been listed well over two weeks and need to be voted on. Could we get some attention there and perhaps get a few people to add the page to their usual work on Wikipedia? Malinaccier (talk) (review) 21:58, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

4 of the 6 articles nominated are up for vote; please stroll along, and cast your vote... Thanks. --Eptalon (talk) 23:04, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Same thing for the propsed good articles. Opened voting on the 4 oldest. --Eptalon (talk) 23:15, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

importing

If I would like to copy over articles, what is the guideline? NonvocalScream (talk) 20:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Convert to simple english, and put a note in the edit summary indicating you are taking some of the content from whatever wiki. -Djsasso (talk) 20:07, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
{e/c)Importing can only be done by admins. What you might mean (I just wasn't sure), is copying content from en.wiki and creating an article here. You can either leave a link to the page in your edit summary, or noting it on the talk page of the article you created. As long as its attributed, its fine. Some editors copy the entire page, and simplify it from there, and other only grab a small amount to identify the subject and simplify. Also, its better if you add all interwiki's, a category, and all the normal things you would if creating an article on en. Synergy 20:12, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a page where import rights can be requested? If not, I just grab the page, paste it, and put the old wiki history link in the history for attribution? NonvocalScream (talk) 20:20, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you just copy and paste. But it should not be the exact same info as en.wiki. It needs to be simplified which is significantly different than en versions tend to be. -Djsasso (talk) 20:29, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) Is there a guide on simple, of what a simple article should look like, perhaps even a transwiki guide? NonvocalScream (talk) 22:25, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:How to write Simple English articles -Djsasso (talk) 22:27, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Alternatively look at any of the Good or Very good articles. --Eptalon (talk) 23:54, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]


WP:CAT made into a guideline

Hello all, WP:CAT has been made into a guideline. There were no edits top it in the last 9 months; which shows that is serves us well. The guideline explains how to find the correct categories for an article. --Eptalon (talk) 11:52, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Categorising...

Hello all,

We currently have two main problems with our category system:

I would therefore propose to make a bot:

  • Flag all categories with less than 5 members for deletion (and merge these into the parent cat)
  • Flag all categories with more than 50 members for review (bot cannot automatically create subcats)

I would also think it would be a good idea to change WP:CAT to say that categories should not be created until they contain at least 5 entries, including subcats. --Eptalon (talk) 15:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This idea came from a conversation me and Eptalon had. I think its a tedious task, and one that needs fixing. It would change how we create and use categories, to the extent that underpopulated categories would be subject to deletion after a fixed period of time (yet to be determined). We currently have a quick deletion criteria for cats (as some of you may have noticed me deleting dozens of them), and after each article has been merged back to the parent cat, we can use this QD to delete the empty cat. We need to stop creating categories we don't need, even if they are on en.wiki. Articles should remain in a parent category until such time as further categorization is needed. So I agree this bot would be beneficial. Synergy 15:44, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

RFA archive box discussion

Since I don't think that the talk page at Requests for adminship gets a lot of eyes on it, I'm posting this notice here to alert everyone of a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Archive_boxes that could use some input. Thanks, Either way (talk) 16:08, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New discussion

I have started a new discussion here that every Simple English Wikipedian should share they're opinion in. Thank You.-- CM16 MLB  08:09, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Peer review limited to 30d.

Hello,

As archiving seems ot work well, I have archived all current requests (before December 08), in Peer review; I have also added the page to auto archiving, with a deadline of 30d, and 100k for the archive size. --Eptalon (talk) 11:53, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I like this archiving bot, I use it for my page on en. And the project I edit in uses it and it has as much or more chatter than this page has and it does well at 30d and 100k. Only once in a blue moon does someone have to manually intervene and archive something early. But that only happens when a couple really contentious topics come up at once. -Djsasso (talk) 16:31, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Flood Flag Proposal

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

Its as easy as the header states. I'd like the flood flag here to prevent flooding (my flooding in particular, I know you've all seen it) when a Crat is not available to grant a bot flag. From what I understand, admins will be able to temporarily grant the flag, and remove it when the user or admin is done. Nuff said. Synergy 15:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support

  1. Synergy (talk • changes • e-mail • blocks • protections • deletions • moves • right changes)
  2. PeterSymonds (talk · contribs) - Yeah, er, what he said
  3. Yotcmdr (talk • changes • e-mail • blocks • protections • deletions • moves • right changes)
  4. Bluegoblin7 (talk · contribs) - I was the first to suggest it on IRC before Synergy stole it... :|
  5. Kennedy (talk • changes • e-mail • blocks • protections • deletions • moves • right changes) - I don't run a bot, but I bet other bots would need a big bot flag bit for bots but not bats.
  6. Jonas_D._Rand (talk · contribs) - unsure of why this was not previously in place
  7. Sure. And why are we using these {{user}} templates here? O_o SteveTalk 23:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Yes, I find nothing wrong with asking about this. Cheers, Razorflame 23:08, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Anything to prevent recent changes flooding. I noticed during the flood one vandalism edit had past by and wasn't noticed until later. We can prevent that from happening if Synergy had the flag (and I think he does already). RyanCross @ 23:12, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I ask for a temp. bot flag when a crats around. When there isn't one, well, thats is why I proposed this. Synergy 23:26, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  10. After reading up on it...I think I get what it is and will support it.-- CM16 MLB  04:29, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  11. --Chris 08:55, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  12. TurboGolf 14:55, 30 December 2008 (UTC) I really want my bot to get the flag.That's bot, because horrible User:Creol won't let me.[reply]
  13. VandalFighterFR(V) Bad warning? 14:02, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  14. This is really needed. Majorly talk 18:56, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

Discussion

With only 40k articles here I don't know that the flooding ever gets bad enough for it to be an issue. That being said I know there are less people here to watch the new changes page so it could be a good thing. -Djsasso (talk) 15:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is mainly useful because recent changes is small. On meta, for example, it was added because recentchanges often got flooded. On bigger wikis, it doesn't really matter, because RC moves so quickly; but here, any quick automated edits quickly flood. I trust the admins here not to abuse it. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 15:11, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, I have no problem with it. Was mostly talking to hear myself speak...or writing to see myself write I suppose. :P -Djsasso (talk) 15:36, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

e/c Note: It's called the Flood Flag, and the WMF recently offered it to all wikis. If there's consensus i'll file a bug ;). If you need me to explain more (Synergy's efforts are, tbh, pathetic :P ;) ) I will. BG7even 15:13, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See what I did there...? :P Kennedy (talk) 15:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
*Deep intake of breath* Nice try... ;) PeterSymonds (talk) 15:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Could somw one explan the flag in a little more detail? I still don't get what it is.-- CM16 MLB  17:48, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It removes edits from the new changes list. The same way bot edits are removed. -Djsasso (talk) 17:56, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CM: Basically what Djsasso said. It removes mass edits from recent changes, so they can't be seen. It would be granted on a temporary basis for editing, and removed when you are finished. Admins would be willing to approve it (this also reduces the need for more crats) for short periods of time and it would be for anyone not wanting a bot account also (like me). Synergy 19:01, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some additional clarification: Admins may grant themselves (only) the flood flag & may remove it from themselves (only) - so you cannot grant it to anyone else, whether they are sysops or not. Additionally, bureaucrats may remove it (in case someone forgets to remove it, or is misusing it). Meta was the first wiki to use this configuration; m:Flood flag is our explanatory page & it would work in the same way here. Thanks – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 23:01, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not change it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No more changes should be made to this discussion.

WikiProject User scripts

Can we start WikiProject User scripts? I would like to upload some scripts I like from the English Wikipedia. MathCool10 04:08, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiprojects are done in userspace here. We are a small Wikipedia, and I don't think there are many such projects that are really taking off. Of course it all depends what kinds of scripts you are talking about. --Eptalon (talk) 09:58, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Some like those here. MathCool10 04:17, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

commas on dates

En has something in their programming or something that automatically adds commas to date, how do we get that here?-- CM16 MLB  20:08, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure I have seen anything that automatically adds comma's. I know that en has (or rather had since its been deprecated) date formating which would change 12 June to June 12 or the other way depending on your settings. -Djsasso (talk) 02:29, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Special:WantedPages update

Hello everyone!

I saw a bug report on the Wikimedia Bugzilla, bugzilla:16871, and decided to do something about it. I have run a query on the toolserver database, and produced a list of wanted pages. However, the list is rather long, 14 megabytes in total (259953 wanted pages), and will probably make your web browser run pretty slowly. This data is out of date unfortunately, as it is an expensive query to run, and the server upon which I ran the query currently has it's database replication disabled, and is already over a week behind.

If you would like me to run the query again at some point, I'd be happy to run it, with a higher limit I think.

Quick comment about namespaces: you'll only see the number of the namespace, not the full title. Take a look at the bug link above to see a list of all the namespace <=> number mappings. If you want me to run this regularly, I'll come up with some way to automatically do that.

Once again, the list is here.

Regards, Stwalkerster [ talk ] 22:23, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

RfA Procedures

I am proposing a major upheaveal of the WP:RfA procedures. You can find my proposal here. Please discuss any amendments on the discussion page. This is something I have thought long and hard about, and believe it is necessary. Please take some time to read the proposal, and give your thoughts. Thanks, Kennedy (talk) 14:49, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

French Communes

Hi everyone. I have got my bot (Yotbot) to write the french communes articles for me. I am checking everyone of them and saving manually. This means They'll soon be finished! Just thought I'd let you know.Yotcmdr✼ Merry Christmas ! ✼ 12:48, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Razorflame said on my talk page that I should have community concensus before doing any more. So I am asking you, do you allow me (and my bot) to be creating all these french commune articles! Yotcmdr✼ Merry Christmas ! ✼ 15:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support

Oppose

Comments

  • The reason why I asked Yotcmdr to ask the community for concensus first is because I, for one, think that the community needs to be together with what is proposed because it would be a big change for all of us. The only other time that I remember a bot going ahead and creating a ton of articles was when W7Bot went ahead and created all those year articles and I remember how big of a problem that turned out to be (We ended up having a long discussion about it and then deciding to delete almost every single one of those articles that it created (and trust me, it was well over 1,000 deletions in one day :))). I wanted to avoid something like this again, so I asked Yot if he could ask the community for concensus first, as this time, if a mistake DOES happen, it wouldn't end up being a huge deletion fest like the last time.
  • I have taken the time to check over some of the edits that you have already made using your bot and the creation of these stubs and for the most part, they look all right, however, I have noticed that even so, there are still a few mistakes that you have already had to correct over the duration of those articles that have already been created. Cheers, Razorflame 15:57, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it sounds risky. But those mistake were wrong links badly typed in the first place. I understand there is no margin for error, but there will not be any more errors! Yotcmdr✼ Merry Christmas ! ✼ 16:01, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some more thoughts of mine of this: I believe that it would work to have your bot create the pages, however, I do not think that they should all be created at once or in one sitting. If this would go through, I think that you should create only a small batch of them a day. In other words, spread out the creations so that you don't just hugely inflate the number of articles that we have on this site. Instead, if you were to create, say, 150-300 stubs a day using this method, I would be fine with it. With this plan, it lowers the risk and chance of a mistake AND you still get the job done, albeit, a little slowly. Cheers, Razorflame 16:12, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I could do a department per day (100 to 500 communes). Yotcmdr✼ Merry Christmas ! ✼ 16:15, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Based upon your answer to my thoughts, and to the quality of the edits that I have seen from YotBot so far...I will support you now. Cheers, Razorflame 17:34, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot! Yotcmdr✼ Merry Christmas ! ✼ 17:36, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Permission request - Importers

Permissions request granted. NonvocalScream (talk) 18:51, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]


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

I would like to use the "importers" permission. (Help:Import) and Simple transwiki log. A direct history import would be advantageous in the event that the article on the source wiki is deleted, so proper attribution is maintained. Currently I am cutting and pasting, placing the gfdl compliance in my creation summary, which is a short cut workaround. The ability to use the import function would allow an easier import, and better attribution. So trust can be established, permissions I currently hold include access to the WMF blog, and m:OTRS. I am asking for a consensus here, so the permission can be assigned at meta. Thank you for your consideration. NonvocalScream (talk) 04:59, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support

  1. Support, has my trust. PeterSymonds (talk) 19:22, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Why not. Synergy 08:12, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  3.   Support Good idea. TurboGolf 18:59, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

I'm not running for adminship here. Do you have any particular questions about the permission I'm requesting, or any concerns I could address? NonvocalScream (talk) 03:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Talk

One thing to note is that even if an article is deleted the attribution is kept, which is why we keep deleted articles. The attribution doesn't necessarily have to be visible to everyone to be valid. Atleast thats what en.wiki goes based on. I assume its the same for all WMF wikis. I also think the importers function has been shot down a number of times because people tend to import and not convert. -Djsasso (talk) 15:31, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I promise that i fI have the permission, I'll do the conversion also. It would make things easier. NonvocalScream (talk) 17:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A steward is able to add the permission if consensus here is that it can be done for me. NonvocalScream (talk) 17:26, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
How does this work exactly? Will an admin or a crat have to "flag" you to use it, or will it be an ability that anyone can use... Synergy 19:25, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Once a few members of the community say it is ok for me to use, I'll go to meta and link this discussion with a request to add the permission. A steward will then assign the permission. Please do however check and see if you have the ability to add it, I'm not sure. If not, a steward can, based on a consensus here. NonvocalScream (talk) 19:41, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, admins cannot. But crats might be able to. Synergy 19:52, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, bureaucrats cannot. Majorly talk 16:39, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]


  • As a means of preserving the history, Import is questionable at best. It only tends to work part of the time and when it does, it will only fully work on articles with under 100 versions. If there is more than 100, it automatically fails to import unless you only get the current version (and only that versions single history). When importing templates, more often than not it fails for me no matter how many versions or whether I go full or single entry. Its usefulness is very limited. --Creol(talk) 16:48, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
So, to clarify, you do/don't support me getting this permission? Also, can you file a bug report, or I will if I can access importers function. I think this may be an easy software fix. NonvocalScream (talk) 22:55, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's not an easy software fix. I can explain the technical details if you like. However, the revision limit is 1000, though errors will probably keep you from ever getting that many. I doubt anything you're importing will be over 50 edits anyways.
However, that is all for transwiki import. You want file upload (XML) import, which isn't burdened by the errors Creol refers to. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 01:50, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The meta request is here. I have placed support/oppose sections below to assist in the discussion. They won't do anything without a discussion. NonvocalScream (talk) 02:13, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not change it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No more changes should be made to this discussion.


Bot Idea

As you can See we have a rather small help namespace. I was wondering if it would be ok if I had my bot copy all the help articles here (which are public domain, so no licensing issues) over here(obviously it wouldn't copy if an article already existed here). Thoughts? ideas? --Chris 02:04, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As long as all were marked as needing Simplifying then it sounds good. Majorly talk 02:09, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I personally don't have a problem but I think you should wait for more opinions to make sure the communities okay with it.-- CM16 MLB  07:01, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, sounds fine. Kennedy (talk) 09:10, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Spoiler warnings

Do we really need spoiler warnings on the plots of works of fiction on here? It seems that every book or film article has this, even for a two paragraph general description of the plot. See articles like Dead Calm or Goldfinger. They seem completely pointless. Our content disclaimer states flat out that Wikipedia does contain spoilers. Do we really need to "shield" people from the plots? Right now we have almost 150 articles with spoiler warnings, it appears, ranging from Harry Potter and Disney Movies to Lord of the Rings and The Wizard of Oz. Either way (talk) 03:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there is a harm in having them. Though I think they are meant for the top of plot sections of article and not the top of the overall article. And how many average readers of the wiki read the disclaimer.-Djsasso (talk) 04:07, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have always looked at a spoiler warning as a courtesy. Something we don't have to do, but we do anyway. I don't want to ruin someone's movie or book to be honest. I probably won't add a spoiler warning myself, however. Best, NonvocalScream (talk) 05:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the spoilers have got to go. They're totally against the purpose of an encyclopedia. You don't want it spoiled? Don't go there. I can't believe this is even still an issue. · Tygrrr... 18:22, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry but we had an Rfd of the template, and it was kept. I don't even know why you're bringing this up again. Yotcmdr✼ Merry Christmas ! ✼ 18:28, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, looking at the RfD for it, I don't see how that was closed as a clear keep. No consensus, maybe, but with four delete "votes" and three "keep" votes, I'm not entirely sure how that was a flat out keep. Either way (talk) 02:39, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Deletion discussions don't seem to get as detailed here when it comes to keep/delete reasons as on en so no-consensus tends to just be a keep. Since no-consensus defaults to keep. However, either result doesn't mean it can't be nominated again. I personally don't add them, but I tend to like them being there as it lets me know where in the article to stop reading so I don't see the spoilers. -Djsasso (talk) 02:43, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Edit count

The "edc" button is messed up; it shows my en.wiki edits instead of my simple.wiki edits. Can someone fix this? Thanks! MathCool10 04:03, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pages for sports results..

Hello,

A number of pages, basically the Columbian Professional Football results from 1948 to 2008 were recently up for deletion; I have made a decision, and you are welcome to comment on it:

  • A single season of sports results (no matter what sport) is not encyclopedic enough to have its own article, especially if the article would just consist of result tables.
  • Grouping these results into blocks (like Colombian Professional Football, 1940s results) covering 5-10 years we might get through classifying them as a list (still not very encyclopedic)
  • Single year of results can be done as a redirect to the respective section in the larger article. (Colombian Professional Football 1949)
  • Certain sports events are encyclopedic, but badly covered; eg. the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin; Our article would certainly be too little, but a coverage in the manner of en:1936_Summer_Olympics would qualify. This does of course not affect article like Olympic Games which cover the event in general, and are not just about the result tables of a given season.

I know that this is rule is quite fuzzy, but I think it allows for both the sports addicts to cover their favorite result tables, and to the more encyclopedia-savy ones to not get too many pages consisting only of sports results.

Any comments (including founded criticism) welcome --Eptalon (talk) 18:18, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am still of the opinion that sports season of major professional leagues are notable enough for their own pages per season. Yes, many of them will start out as results tables but to use an example from en they can end up like this en:2008-09 NHL Season which I think is a perfectly fine article for simple wikipedia as sports results are often used as a way for people to learn a new language. -Djsasso (talk) 18:24, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Romanian Rivers Update

Hi there all. Ever since we have started writing Romanian River articles, we have been in a big struggle as there are quite a few rivers to write articles about. As the main writer of these articles, I would like to say to you all that I am proud to say that we have written 25% or a quarter of all the Romanian River articles that need writing.  :). Cheers, Razorflame 04:34, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's good....but just curious....why did the Romanian Rivers get priority?-- CM16 MLB  04:38, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The reason why I decided to start writing Romanian River articles is because I found their names to be very interesting. Cheers, Razorflame 04:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. *thumbs up* Good work, Razor.-- CM16 MLB  04:50, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Only 25%? Dear god man.... Synergy 04:49, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, either 25% or 30% (I estimated). 2,667 out of about 8,800 articles...cheers, Razorflame 04:53, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This screams undue weight to me, but they are all valid articles so keep going at er lol. -Djsasso (talk) 15:28, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it kinda does scream undue weight, but they are indeed valid articles because of how long they've been kept on en:WP. If they weren't valid articles, they would've been deleted off of en:WP quickly. Cheers, Razorflame 20:08, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You can't really use the fact they stayed a long time as evidence they are notable. Things like this fall through the cracks all the time on en.wiki. That being said I have no opinion one way or the other. Other than to say all these rivers have been getting deleted off the Romanian wiki, which sort of says something perhaps. -Djsasso (talk) 14:44, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I guess that is correct. Yes, the fact that they are getting deleted off of the Romanian Wiki does say something, however, I still believe that they are good for an encyclopedia :). I can find nothing wrong with having pages of rivers in Romania; it is something that does belong in an encyclopedia, so I guess there is nothing wrong ;). Cheers, Razorflame 18:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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