continuaran revirtiendo... hasta q encuentren algo mejor q hacer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.130.144.222 (talk) 22:17, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
I have gone through various periods of activity and inactivity on WP. The two most active and enjoyable periods for me were fairly different. The first was editing the article Günther Blumentritt in order to bring it up to B-class. I had in fact created the stub a few years before and then abandoned it. I came back to it out of renewed curiosity and began to improve it. I have no formal training or special knowledge on the subject, but for completely random reasons it caught my interest and I saw that WP needed an article, so I made one. My work was done mostly in isolation and without any kind of communication with others.
We are all familiar with the "low hanging fruit" hypothesis about the decline in contributions to WP. As time passes there are fewer and fewer opportunities for the average person to contribute a new article on a subject that is easy to research and understand. So, opportunities like my experience with my first article become less and less common over time.
The second major period of activity centered around the Hoxne Hoard article and the drive to get it to FA status as part of the Hoxne challenge. In truth, my contributions were fairly minor, partly because I did not have access to the main sources used in the article, but my entire experience of editing WP was transformed by this event. The feeling of teamwork and collaboration was invigorating, and unlike anything I have taken part in before or since. The editors involved talked to each other extensively, but it was about the project.
Right now I make 10 edits on a good day. Mainly reverting vandalism and leaving welcome messages on new user pages. I have almost zero contact with anyone here outside of that. I have many interests, but I feel overwhelmed with the amount of work that needs to be done on literally MILLIONS of articles. I have searched for other opportunities for focused collaboration in a group, but I have not found any.
I am not a particularly social person, and I am fine with that. I don't need or want "like" buttons or small talk with people on WP. However, I do believe that creating and nurturing a more collaborative approach to editing would be a huge boon to WP. It would energize the contributors we have now, and make it far more likely that new editors would stick around. And it would be NOTHING like facebook in any significant way. If anyone reads "facebook" into this post they have missed the point.
Anyway, what do I know? *shrug* Revcasy (talk) 14:26, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
You wonder why authorities on various subjects flee Wikipedia. You wonder why no respectable academic institution anywhere in the world will permit a student or faculty member to cite you as a source. You wonder why, in popular culture, "Wikipedia" is the punchline to a joke. I can tell you this much: Yes, your software is ridiculously hard to use, but your critical problems lie elsewhere.
We can start with the organizing principle of this pseudo "encyclopedia": that fact is whatever one of your child flashmobs says it is. Yes, child. One-third of your editors are high school students, and another one-third are college kids. Yes, flashmobs. Controversies are routinely dominated by a few editors with administrative privileges, most of them having no prior familiarity with the topic. A fact-free environment administered by roving gangs of children can be expected to end badly, as Wikipedia has done. You are routinely manipulated by governments, corporations, political ax-grinders, and p.r. flacks, the combination of which have turned much of Wikipedia into a wasteland.
From there, we can move to your "standards." When controversy erupts -- typically because someone with an interest wants to exclude one or more facts -- the very first thing you can expect at Wikipedia is wholesale flouting of your "standards." When standards are routinely ignored, they don't exist. The result is that Wikipedia's articles, to the extent that any material is a matter of controversy, are a political mishmash. It is only to be expected from an enterprise where, from the beginning, there is no such thing as "fact," but only "consensus."
The only way to rescue Wikipedia would be to make a fundamental change at the core: To put fact at the center of everything here, recognizing that it has independent validity and trumps everything else. Once you do that, you can go to work on your other critical flaw, i.e., the substitution of flashmob tactics for real process here. Until and unless you do those things, Wikipedia will quite appropriately be scorned, derided, and marginalized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.227.188.7 (talk) 18:54, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Why is anyone bothering to respond to this troll? AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:30, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
Here we go. There are many neat tactics to simplify markup (as in "defensive programming"). Remember, anyone can split their userpage into simpler subpages which are very fast to process, such as transcluding "User:Jimbo_Wales/xx" or "User:Jimbo_Wales/birthday" by "{{User:Jimbo_Wales/birthday}}" inside the main user-page. Copy the tedious markup into those fast subpages. Another trick is to then comment-out "<!-- -->" any subpages not needed all the time, so put "<!--{{User:Jimbo_Wales/birthday}}-->" when it is not August. The concept is related to changing a "procedural language" (with all the tedious details) into a "non-procedural language" which just invokes templates with parameters, not requiring procedural loops and branches. Dividing into subpages is a form of software encapsulation. Human factors studies confirm that markup is tedious, but often necessary for special formatting.
I have been working on computer-language design for decades (I might become a volunteer developer), and the design issues are so complex, I advise that markup designers should have advanced degrees in language design, along with human-language linguistics. Here, I must emphasize that the MediaWiki markup is a non-nestable mess, requiring exclamation "{{!}}" to indicate the vertical-bar "|" to bypass parsing restrictions (of nested markup structures), due to fundamental design flaws of the scanner tokens (here, the vertical-bar "|" also used for if/else clauses).
Kids don't do this: Don't ever write a markup language with special tokens in column 1 of each line. The colon-indent ":" should have been "<:>" or similar, to indent anywhere on a line, not just in column 1. Never indent block text by putting spacing before a line; a space should always indicate spacing and nothing else (ever). Such core design issues have been known for over 30 years, but programmers get burnout quickly and stop teaching others the master techniques, and so software such as MediaWiki gets "hacked" into existence, and then takes on a life of its own. This is analogous to "value-added taxes" being superior to income taxes (omitted in Florida/Texas or Europe), but the tax system typically incarnates a life of its own.The same happens in computer software every decade, that's why HTML markup has tag "<center>" as a word-processing directive to auto-center text, but does not allow "<left>" or "<right>" even though it must know both the left-margin and right-margin in order to center text. Just techno-foolish. The World Wide Web was designed by a physicist (Tim Berners Lee), not a typesetter nor computer scientist who might know about "context-free grammar" (etc.), so HTML and MediaWiki have bizarre limits. Wouldn't it be great if all taxes had been designed by financial experts, rather than politicians. Same goes for software designed or marketed by college dropouts or other non-experts: beware the bizarre kludges.I guess we need more essays to provide easier user-page formatting and "WP:Anticipating vertical-bar problems" to better explain the syntax nightmares in the MediaWiki markup language. The separators for if/else should never have been vertical-bar "|" to be confused with separators for template parameters. However, the best news (yes!) is that the MediaWiki markup language could be evolved, over years, into easier syntax forms, such as using #then and #else, rather than vertical-bar "|" to separate if/else clauses. Like many problems in Wikipedia, there are several easy long-term solutions. Computers become extremely enjoyable once the recurring simple nightmares are fixed. -Wikid77 14:24, revised 18:24, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
I would suggest that the best thing Wikipedia could do (for itself) would be to make it easy to add references and photos to an article without having any coding experience -- or to put it another way, without understanding any of what has been said in this thread. I would be interested to know how many good writers do not participate in Wikipedia because they open up an edit window and see a lot of code (starting with "ref" and getting more complicated from there.) I'm talking about the large percentage of humanity that have never written any kind of markup language or code -- the doctor, the lawyer, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. It is kind of a struggle for us non-techies sometimes, who would like to write and edit without worrying about the technical side of things. Neutron (talk) 00:33, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
There are several discussions on BLP/N where even sources like ABC [1] are wikiunreliable to some because they choose to quote an interview done by a gay "activist" (as labeled by the wikidetractors) source instead of doing their own. What is your opinion on this? FuFoFuEd (talk) 12:30, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I think that this page is one of the worst examples I've heard of where Wikipedia has actually maligned someone with notable effect - but this is not be covering sources about someone being gay, but rather, by someone's awkward effort to downplay the issue. In particular this Wikipedia edit led to this gossipy news article, where the reporter seems to take this edit, deleted a little over a day later, as if it were serious. Now while Off2riorob didn't make that particular edit, his suppression of good, sourced material on the topic on several occasions immediately preceding this, including two days before this edit [5], led directly to the information-starved quality of the article and the poisonous editing environment which allowed such a blurb to get through posing as Wikipedia's view of the issue. Whenever he's deleting things Off2riorob poses as the defender of all things BLP, but I've commented before, at Talk:Anders Behring Breivik#Responses from those mentioned:section, that his deleting things from articles can also create BLP problems. The problem with the tiny but remarkably disruptive cabal of deletionists we're encountering here is that they don't recognize that editors need to be responsible about deletions - that deletions can be original research when you remove what you personally don't find plausible, they can violate NPOV when they remove one side's opinion, and that they can violate NOR when you remove the basic known facts about a person. Wnt (talk) 15:33, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Look, kids, if Wikipedia were worth a damn, it wouldn't matter why people come here or who they were. Even if someone was a publicist, or a corporation, or the CIA, or some other government. If Wikipedia was organized on the primacy of truth and fact, and if it actually applied its own "standards" evenly to all comers, the motivation or source of a contributor would be irrelevant. These things only matter in a truth-free environment, where someone's motivation or identity is presumed to have a material impact on their contribution.
The accusation that this or that account is an "SPA" and therefore suspect, powerfully reveals the hollowness at Wikipedia's core. It is a tacit recognition that your founder(s) are uneducated people, unfamiliar with the nature of truth in a society that traces its intellectual roots back to the Greeks. They learned plenty of computer code, but not a lot else. So they, and the one-third of the insiders who have remained as this project has fallen off its cliff since 2007, are unable or unwilling to see or acknowledge the real issue, which is that Wikipedia cannot defend itself because there is nothing to defend.
When you don't believe in truth or fact, and hence have no recognition of the the difference between fact and opinion, and force serious people to spend inordinate amounts of time and energy defending basic fact, you drive them away. Furthermore, you judge content not on its own merits, but on who the contributor is. Is is a newbie making that sharp criticism? Not one of us. Must be an SPA. Easy to do that when you don't believe in facts as facts, but instead are organized around the idea that you can vote something a fact or not a fact. Same goes for your "standards." Once you've decided that truth doesn't exist and is whatever your roving flashmobs say it is, then your "rules" become arbitrary and meaningless, except as tools of retribution.
So keep focusing on who that new contributor is. Don't look at what he or she has contributed. Make it clear that the crowd will decide whether the sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning. And ignore your own rules, until your critic gets boisterous and it comes time for some serious Wikiwagoncircling. And then, as your participation keeps falling off the cliff and the level of world wide derision rises inexorably, tell yourself that your software is the issue, or that it's time to put smiley faces onto people's accounts. Yup, that'll do the trick. Jacksonjake (talk) 20:55, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
One reason why the WP:BLP policy exists, is because WP:V is so religious about "not truth". Instead of "not truth", the BLP policy page says: "We must get the article right." When I expressed a similar sentiment quite some time ago about editing science articles, I was hammered about violating the "not truth" dogma. :) . Count Iblis (talk) 18:37, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm going to leave it to (the people from the preceding section) and whatever source of inspiration you prefer to figure out which Wikipedia should have articles about the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the 2011 Nobel Prizes, Michael Moore's newest movie, etc. And how to refound Wikipedia with elite teams in charge and articles nobody can edit. Fortunately for me, I think the 2007 status quo is just fine, sparing me the need for deep philosophy. Wnt (talk) 00:14, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi Mr Wales, I've just thought of an idea, so I'm posting it here because I think it would receive more readership than other pages. I'm thinking that Wikipedia adopt a system where a page is set up for every WikiProject to allow increased one-on-one collaborations and teamwork, as well as easier venerability.
Essentially, an editor would come along, write down a scholarly book that he or she has access to, so that other editors can set up a joint effort in writing (or re-writing) an article. For example, let's say WikiProject Aircraft creates Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Books. User A writes down a list of books that he/she has, so User B, who owns those books, can communicate with User A and hopefully start a week-long collaboration effort. This system hopefully would abolish the need for an editor to fish around the Project to see if there are editors who have the same sources as him/her. This is one of my ideas which I think addresses the quality issue; a user would normally might be deterred from daunting task of re-writing a page because they think such task this too taxing and laborious. With this system, there is much more potential for an article to be revamped and, hopefully, get promoted to FA status. Furthermore, with the publication written down User C might called User A to verify sources on a particular page, which would otherwise be impossible because User C does not have any knowledge that User A has such sources.
This is only an infant idea – further clarifications to this idea will be carried out should it be adopted. I'd like to hear your comments on this. :D Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 10:34, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
When are we going to have, more or less, one single place for newcomers to go, instead of all these fragmented "welcome to Wikipedia, we would like to help you" pages around? I mean, I don't want to discredit anyone who is trying to help newcomers out (I think they're doing what they can with what they have.), but our help pages are so fragmented all over the place, no wonder why all our help pages looks like the maze in the picture. For example, the Help namespace, where many people would be expected to go, is so confused and convoluted, no wonder why they can't find their way around anything.
I also have to wonder about the amount of "hand-holding" we really should be doing for newcomers. I think of it this way: I would be annoyed a bit if, while walking down a busy street, I run into street canvassers every half-block (i.e. those "Hi! Do you have a minute for the environment/gay rights/etc?" folks). Another example, some would be rather annoyed by seeing the Office Assistant (i.e. the annoying paperclip in Microsoft Office) every time they check out something new.
Long story short, there needs to be a way to be receptive to newcomers without looking like we're looking over their shoulders constantly or being overbearing. We need to bring them to speed with the other regular editors here, not keep them down. –MuZemike 06:59, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
I see the WP:Welcoming_committee currently has 61 members (Aug. 2011) to respond to users who follow the WP:Welcome page. I was thinking to have "1 to 87 welcoming-teams" to focus the follow-up support within each team, but perhaps the common types of questions, asked by newcomers, can be fielded, adequately, by the one large team, as the current one WP:Welcoming committee. Then, from there, some new users could join the various WP:Wikiprojects, where specialized questions could be handled by the skills within each wikiproject.
Regarding: "looking over their shoulders constantly or being overbearing" - I think there needs to be some repeated discussions with each new user, to at least see if their plans would be rejected, if they were left alone too long. However, I can appreciate the fear of a "20-questions" dialogue which could repel some new users. However, that danger should be offset with avoiding a user making big plans to write a large text which would not be allowed, and might likely get deleted wholesale. I just think we should continue discussing the efforts of new users, because there is a lot of work to do, for improving article quality, and we need to have more helpers. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:26, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
What is the incentive for contributing and building an article for Wikipedia? To have it shredded by ignorant louts who know nothing about a subject but get an ego trip from forcing their will on something not of their making?
Wikipedia gives more incentives to kibitzers and parasites than to people who actually build the encyclopedia. The deluded groupthink acceptable criteria for becoming an admin has little to do with the creation of articles; but a whole lot with their removal.
The meme that Wikipedia is inferior because it has too many low quality articles and it needs to be stricter is a sham. The enforcers of that "quality" are the ones turning people off Wikipedia.
Almost every other website takes pride in its associations. They like being associated with other netizens. Wikipedia isn't. Instead of cultivating those relationships, Wikipedia uses them and then dispenses with them. Take for example the editor who writes a wonderful article on a subject for Wikipedia and then keeps an eye on it with the incentive that a link to his website (which is perfectly relevant to the article) is there. Then comes along the "Wikiprotectors" who see the external link and delete it and then hound the erstwhile editor off Wikipedia. Is that really a gain for Wikipedia? Apparently the current calculation is that it is a win for Wikipedia. It isn't being considered that it is a lose-lose situation whereas previously it was a win-win.
But Wikipedia doesn't need such editors some might say. But then who remains? The Wikiprotectors? Too many like to lounge around and stick their nose into other editors' business instead of building articles—and Wikipedia encourages them and people like them, even giving them unique powers.
So make a convincing case why an editor should write an article here instead of setting up their own blog and then making money off of it for themselves instead of contributing to Mr. Wales's legacy?
On the other hand make a convincing case why a Monday morning quarterback personality wouldn't love it here. Lambanog (talk) 15:03, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
I got globally blocked for no reason on Wikia. I am also Spidey665 on Wikia. Can you unblock me there? Thanks. --Mystery UkuleleMan (Talk) 14:04, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
This proposal might be interesting for you: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Option_to_remove_sections_in_User_talk_page. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:47, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
I recognize that experiments on Wikipedia are disallowed for good reason, but there is only one way to actually measure how well "search engine optimization" works within Wikipedia - that is to have a dummy article (clearly marked) and to have other Wikipedia articles which currently exist then link thereto. Examining the Google results for the dummy term before and after the added links would show whether the SEO process within Wikipedia works. I suspect that Google assigns weight to each page based on the source of the link, and it is possible that it assigns a higher weight to WP sources (internal links) than to sources on other sites. Such a test would likely take under a week total. If it shows such a weighting (that is, that adding links within Wikipedia has a noticeable affect), then WMF might ask Google to remove Wikipedia internal links from being used to increase the rank of a result. Clearly Wikipedia has no ability to restrit links from other sites used to make a given term rank highly in searches, but it ought to be able to reduce the internal use of links to make a term rank more highly for a Wikipedia article. Cheers. Collect (talk) 10:48, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Collect, I know Matt Cutts and of course we have good relations with Google, and I think they'd listen to any ideas I might put forward, but I don't understand the point of this. Why would we want to "ask Google to remove Wikipedia internal links from being used to increase the rank of a result"? Can you give an example of where this has been a problem? I think Google should use all the information they can get to improve the quality of their search results. (And I don't really agree fully with our use of 'nofollow'.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:03, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
In reading through this discussion, "Santorum neologism" did flash repeatedly in my mind long before I read Collect's last statement. This is the sort of thing we should be aware of, but not tie all of Wikipedia into knots trying to avoid. 99.999% of the articles are using internal links in a useful, helpful manner for our readers, and that's where our focus should be. If a template is wrong, fix the template. If the body of an article, or an infobox, or a category, or anything else is wrong, fix those. There's no need, imo, to do anything else. If someone is trying to game Google, the answer is not to try to ungame Google, but to refocus on what Wikipedia is trying to accomplish: informing readers by aiming for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If we do that, Google can certainly take care of itself with its ever-changing algorithms. 99.50.188.77 (talk) 14:48, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
SSDPenguin (talk) 05:31, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
I think Google has already provided a neat solution: it now lists 2 WP pages together (senator-bio + neologism), so in the future, a subarticle will not eclipse the bio-page just because of WP:RECENTISM. However, I think, in subarticles which are either legal cases, family feuds, or name slurs (etc.), then show both names, such as:
Also, in the case of wide controversies:
If a fringe topic must be presented, due to clear notability in WP:RS documents, then do not taint the main article, but rather, create a pro/con subarticle where the fringe idea can be expanded without contaminating the main article, and also provide space to "refute" or offset the fringe idea with NPOV-balanced text. Such a case would be article "Alternative ideas of Titanic sinking" where reliable sources report crewman seeing a UFO (not really) which shot the ship using ice-weapons to stop them reporting the sighting. Nowhere within article "RMS Titanic" would the fringe idea ("UFO") be mentioned (unless it later became widely backed by evidence or later research); no, instead, the neutral title would be linked (as "Alternative ideas...of sinking"). In the same way, nowhere in article "Mother Teresa" would "animal cruelty" be stated as a fringe idea of her actions.Using that naming tactic, similar to naming legal cases ("U.S. State of Texas v. John Doe"), then criminal acts are not stated and both parties get named in case the event becomes a smear (Texas is just as likely to be wrong, as is John Doe). Plus, in conflicts, state the aggressor (plaintiff) first, so that the, perhaps blameless, target (defendant), gets lower billing (as in "top billing" of actor names in movie scroll credits). I really think we can learn from the legal system (and film schools) how to avoid sensational allegations and soapboxing of lesser characters, or fringe ideas in main articles, and in page titles. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:19, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
People have noted that filling a BLP bio-page with recent-news allegations can distort the page balance, giving WP:UNDUE weight to insinuations of guilt, in a long-term bio-page. However, splitting that text into a sub-article could cause the allegations to outrank the bio-page in Google, as if recommended by Wikipedia as the most-important page about the person (or concept article). So, the issues of concern involve:
I have just started this tangent topic, very fast, so I am unaware of the possible answers. Perhaps some people are saying there is no easy solution, as a Catch-22 problem, of being damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't when writing allegations. However, I wanted to focus the discussion here, while people are thinking of ways to repeat an outrageous allegation, or fringe theory, without staining or smearing the main article. More later. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:06, revised 10:14, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Ok, I don't mean 'ban' in the sense of a project-wide ban, but here is what I am thinking about.
I just went to edit my own user page User:Jimbo Wales because I noticed someone had placed a photo on there that had nothing to do with me at all. (Lovely photo, but I thought I would just remove it.) And as I was editing, I thought about my keynote speech at Wikimania this year and how I think I should take a leadership role in coaching all of us to make editing easier for relative newcomers. (Think of a wonderful, smart person who would be a good writer, who has just made 2-3 edits and is thinking of getting more involved... but who doesn't know a lot about programming / coding / markup languages.)
My user page is quite pretty, but it is chock full of div tags (and much worse). Please go click on edit and see. Here's a sample of markup: {{#ifexpr: {{CURRENTMONTH}}=8 and {{CURRENTDAY}}=7 |{{!}}- {{!}} style="text-align: center; {{gradient|#ddddff|#eeeeff|vertical}} border: 1px solid #88a; {{box-shadow|1px|1px|6px|#445}} {{border-radius|1em}}" colspan="2" {{!}} [[File:Birthday cake (fun).png|left|200px]] [[File:Birthday cake (fun).png|right|200px]] <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 16pt">{{Break|5}}Happy {{Ordinal|{{#expr:{{CURRENTYEAR}}-1966}}|sup=yes}} Birthday Jimbo, from everyone here at Wikipedia!!</span> }}
So, like, I'm a programmer and I can at least read the general gist of this. Once a year, on my birthday, this will magically change part of my userpage to give me a sweet birthday message. Great, I mean, that really is actually quite cool.
But what isn't cool is some of this markup. Ok, many people can probably roughly guess at what things like "text-align: center" might mean. But what the heck is "{{!}}"??? I know that the curly braces denote a template. Do we really have a template out there named as exclamation point? (The sad answer is yes, yes we do.) What does it do? Why? Why do I need to know this? If the benefit is some minor degree of flexibility/beauty in my userpage, but the cost is that a relatively new user such as myself (haha) feels intimidated from editing, not because I'm dumb and can't figure things out if I try (I am a programmer, after all), but because, jeez, I have a life, and I want to write an encyclopedia not get a diploma in wiki markup.
So here is what I am thinking about. I'm thinking about going through my user page with a chain saw and return it to a 'good old days' style... and to encourage others to do the same... and eventually to encourage the Foundation to develop the visual editing tools to allow a certain amount of beauty but without forcing people to learn this horrifying way of doing things.
But this is my own userpage, so of course within rational bounds I can do what I want. Slightly more controversially, I may start to go through articles on my watchlist that I edit for content (generally, UK peers and BLPs that I help monitor) with a general bias against including div tags and other such monstrosities. Not "with a chainsaw" mind you (that would be disrupting Wikipedia to make a point), but rather with a gentle eye towards making Wikipedia the encyclopedia anyone can edit.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:20, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Some interesting comments from Jimbo, I will say. Sometimes, I feel the same way when I look at my userpage, and I did that all myself :) Anyways, when I was a newcomer here some 3 or so years ago, I have had some RL experience in web design, HTML/CSS, etc., but MediaWiki was brand new to me, though I did experiment with some other wikis back in the day (I'm talking back in 2006-2007). On the other hand, I understand what a black box is. I realized that some things worked for reasons past my level of knowledge because of that "black box", and that, if I wanted to, I could delve deeper into that box anytime and see how the insides work.
Anyways, long story short, if you want to "increase" the size of that black box, then more templates or subpages would be needed; to decrease its size would logically be the opposite. –MuZemike 22:33, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
The other day, I decided to shunt the header and other wiki-markup to a separate template (see [22]), so the only thing there besides the bot-archiving and template transclusion are actual discussions with simple, everyday wiki-markup. Does make things significantly neater, I will say. –MuZemike 22:30, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo's page used to say "Since this page is just so simple and plain, my ultimate dream is that some person who thinks it is fun would come along and make it look perfect, or close to perfect." Has that dream died? Or is Jimbo's position now that it's up to a MediaWiki developer to create intuitive tools to make the page look perfect, rather than up to the average Wikipedia editor using the existing HTML, CSS, and MediaWiki tools to make the page look perfect? I, for one, greatly prefer the latter route, because the former route is closed to so many of us. Powers T 13:51, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo, do you think you could use your influence to put the brakes on the misnamed "referendum" happening now [Meta about the implementation of image filters on Wikipedia? It seems clear that it is premature to be discussing design and implementation before the difficult discussions of classifying images has been done. Some basic questions seem to be unanswered:
It is possible that these questions have been considered and answered. If so, that information needs to be given to the community to digest before asking for their input. If not, perhaps it would be more sensible to pose some of these questions to the community before starting the design phase of the project in earnest.
The most contentious part of this project will be the classification of images. It is foolhardy to expect that this project can be successful unless those difficult discussions are had sooner rather than later. Many people on the referendum's talk page do not seem to grasp that implementation has been mandated by the WMF and seem to think that the referendum is a vote. Perhaps the title "referendum" was a poor choice. I urge you to call a halt to this and ask that people stop work on the design until the process issues are discussed. Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 12:51, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Simply said: The worst piece of shit i have ever seen in my years contributing to Wikipedia. There is no way such a system could be neutral or objective. It's a burden on technical side, on user side and contributers side. It was decided without asking the communities. All they got left is to choose the method on how it should work, not if it should work. Many feel already betrayed by this method. At least we can throw cats around... Does or can it get any stupider? --Niabot (talk) 15:07, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Unless this has already been put up for a vote before, is there any reason why you're not polling for the preference between opt-in vs. opt-out for un-logged-in readers? Since it seems relatively simple to change the preferences using cookie tracking, this seems at least worth consideration (and far more likely to actually address the issue). --SB_Johnny | talk 21:08, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Seriously, go vote!. By the way, was there some sort of watchlist notice that I missed for this vote? I had to go search out a link to vote myself and it really shouldn't be that difficult to do so. SilverserenC 21:56, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
As I understand it, if this proposal is implemented, and a user chooses to do nothing about it at all -- doesn't opt in, doesn't opt out, but just ignores the whole whole thing -- it will not change how he/she views images at all. Is that correct? In other words, that hypothetical user would see exactly what he/she sees now, without having to click anything extra to see any image. Right? (I have already voted, but if the answer is not what I think it is, I guess I have to reconsider my vote.) Neutron (talk) 20:14, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
JIMBO WHY U VANDALISING :P May I ask why you have decided to reset your userpage? No need to answer, but you may if you want. LikeLakers2 (talk) 22:05, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Admirable move Jimbo. I've done my first stab at joining you on this one. ;) Steven Walling • talk 21:26, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
--ARKBG1 (talk) 10:43, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
It would be really great if AWB included a phrase converting all instances of sadly / tragically passed away / died to "died". So unencyclopedic. There seems to be a school of thought that believes sadly or tragically goes with such words in order to make "good writing". I have tried but failed. Kittybrewster ☎ 11:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Is it just me, or does your userpage just not feel like a Jimbo Wales userpage without the "You may edit this page!" thing on it? LikeLakers2 (talk) 17:31, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Your text-only user page is shaping up to be really good. It's suitable, given how bare-bones Wikipedia was when you "joined" it. (Speaking of which, I remember the first time I visited your user page. The picture was of you holding a beer bottle. I was not too impressed.) hare j 23:00, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Urgent_action_required_on_Anders_Behring_Breivik an editor literally said "One editor insists on restoring an image that glorifies Breivik. There is a consensus that this could lead to copycat killings".
Without getting into the merits or demerits of other arguments to include or not include the image, I think it is a seriously harmful thing to the project to say things like that, and it is actually an argument to deploy the filter ASAP, so we can say it is filtered and focus on other, better reasons for inclusion or exclusion, such as copy-vio or illustrative value.
I think it begs a reminder from you as to why WP:NOTCENSORED is such a long-standing view. Unless, of course, you have changed views, in which case I am all ears.--Cerejota (talk) 12:42, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for the response. I mostly agree, but there is a difference between the argument that it might be a "glorification" (a sensible, reasonable proposition - which can be questioned in equally sensible, reasonable ways) and another is to argue that it will lead to copycat killings, which I consider not to be sensible. Feel me?--Cerejota (talk) 13:24, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Comment' I would think a picture of him in a military uniform would be problematical because it could be seen as smearing the military and its members, perhaps reducing the public's trust in them, as opposed to glorifying him and encouraging any sort of copycat killings. If I were a member of the military there, I certainly would be appalled if such a photo were chosen over others. 99.50.191.169 (talk) 00:30, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Regarding the brevik shooter nutter - if you have time Jimbo, please give me your feedback on Talk:Anders_Behring_Breivik#The_Chill_Section as I wonder if this sort of thing could help calm donw conflicts and grudges before they begin. Or maybe I'm just too much of a peacenik
P.S. Were you a local in a past life? Am confused exactly what it is you did - press don't really understand exactly what it is traders do. Am a LIFFE local myself and I'm sure we could exchange war stories, my email (and more) is avaliable if you wish to keep it shtum Egg Centric 21:57, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Are the <span class="plainlinks"></span> tags banned from your userpage too? LikeLakers2 (talk) 16:58, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Respected sir, there is no easy method to complain about actions by editors and their specific guidelines. kindly create the same Thanking you AneeshJoseph — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aneeshjoseph10912 (talk • contribs) 08:45, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks will try thatAneeshjoseph10912 (talk) 12:07, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
The above editor's eighth edit was to create an article about an Indian movie of uncertain notability. When a PROD tag was placed on their article, they removed it (as is permitted), but without an edit summary; User:Dave1185 reverted their removal as vandalism and proceeded to tell them on their talk page that their edit was "Illegal". Dave1185 also posted a giant picture of a rodent on the editor's talk page, telling them that it would eat them if they continued to forget to sign their posts.
When I politely pointed out to Dave1185 that, for people whose first language variant isn't British or American English, such humour, and statements implying law-breaking, might cause misunderstandings, he responded by blanking my comment with the edit summary "cleanups, isn't it obvious?"
What's my point here? Oh, yes. Encouraging more editors from the so-called "Global South" is sensible, but such editors don't always find it easy to deal with Wikipedia's existing practices. Suggesting that they - and their culture - are something that needs "cleaning up", doesn't make that any easier, and is the sort of viewpoint we should avoid any appearance of. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:24, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
It has been reported that television is now teaching children to value fame foremost, whereas benevolence is being devalued. Please see Popular TV shows teach children fame is most important value, UCLA psychologists report / UCLA Newsroom. You can imagine the values that (some) young people bring with them when they edit Wikipedia. (People of all ages are impressionable, but children especially so.) —Wavelength (talk) 16:42, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
More garage-band and my-pet "articles" coming up... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 18:37, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
I just installed and was trying out Google Related. Wikipedia articles are, as I expected, a major link common to all the websites I've checked. Has anyone else tried it out? Thoughts? 99.50.188.177 (talk) 20:57, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
I think you might get a chuckle out of [25] being suggested by a "new editor" with a total of 1 edit. And there are those who think there is no reason for ArbCom to have a general case on BLPs <g>. Cheers. Collect (talk) 01:20, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
We've covered this topic before, so this is just a reminder. Many places (such as public libraries) still have computers that are 6 years old, just as some people drive cars that are almost 10 years old (way back to 2002). Some hotels still use Windows Vista with the IE7 browser, which is basically a refinement of IE6. Hence, trying to drop support for IE6 is like trying to drop IE7. Perhaps Wikipedia should continue to support them until IE7 is ten years old. Next time when visting a hotel, stop by their Internet computer room, click on the browser and check the Help About-box version, as another example that those computers are often 5 or more years old. When waiting in a hospital, or clinic, ask the employees what version of browser their medical records are using. In a library, the front desk typically has computers similar to the membership computer rooms; ask the front desk about their browsers. It is the nature of many computer developers to want to design for the latest gadget, which only 0.1% of end-users will have. I know you realize this, but it is good to keep reminding people. -Wikid77 13:49, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
@Jimbo Wales: what exactly is this 'cost' you write about? My understanding is that the signature will either render as you see it or in plain text. @99.50.188.177: forcing signatures is already available. Just leave your signature off a post and see what a bot will add for you. As for matching usernames and signatures, why not go the whole hog and force everyone to use their real names in both? Or was that a bit of sarcasm from you? @Wnt: if you actually know something about the history and intentions behind the Wikipedia signature, I'd be fascinated to read up on it. Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk 20:42, 22 August 2011 (UTC)