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Having started some Wikipedia articles and added to others, I have the following questions and suggestions:
Why are there four different reference templates, when they all have roughly the same content?
Why does one template call it “Journal”, and another call it “Work”?
Why does there need to be a Page slot and a Pages slot? (printer drivers handle both together)
Should there not be one uniform format for all references when published? (see "Notes", David Graham Phillips: six different references, six different formats)
I suggest there be one reference template that has places for all necessary content, and that all references follow the same format when published:
Template
Title of source _________________ URL ___________________
Last name of source creator _________________ First name ________________________
News agency _____________________ Website name ___________________________
Name of journal, magazine, newspaper, etc. ___________________________ Volume _____ Issue _________ Page(s) ________
Name of publisher ________________________________ Location of publisher _________________________
Date source published __________________ Date source accessed____________________
Ref name ________________ Ref group __________________ Ref ID for anchor ___________________
There are quite a few more citation templates, it is just the four most commonly used that are available in the tool bar. All of the citation templates use the same set of fields, and you can build a citation from scratch using Template:Citation. The four citation formats available in the tool bar just start you with the fields most commonly used for each type of citation. You can leave fields empty, and you can add other fields as needed, as is needed when citing a chapter in a book, for instance. Donald Albury18:53, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a minor correction, not all of the CS1|2 templates support the same parameter set. For example, as of 2023, calling {{Cite book}} with the parameter |website= (or any of its aliases, like |work=, |journal=, |periodical=, |magazine=) will cause a template error, and add the article to Category:CS1 errors: periodical ignored (23,080).To address the substance of the OP, that there is any consistency among the most commonly used citation templates is the result of years of effort and discussion. The multiplicity of display formattings is a feature, not a drawback. There will never be just one single citation template, uniform in formatting across all sources and transclusions.Pbergerd, if you want the input fields in whatever editor you're using (not clear from tags in your contribs) to match the displayed format of those templates, that would best be addressed to whomever maintains your editing interface of choice (if anyone). The formatting will not be changed in the other direction (i.e. display matches input field ordering). Additionally, to my knowledge no citation template display leads with the title when the author is known, so I doubt you'll find consensus for your specific implementation proposal anywhere. All the best, Folly Mox (talk) 18:39, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a less gloomy follow up, our editing guideline WP:CITEVAR allows for articles to maintain the style used by the first major contributor or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page. So if you feel strongly about title-headed citations, you can implement your preferred formatting on articles you create, or unreferenced articles you provide the first citations for. But don't be surprised if bots come along and change it.With respect to your specific example David Graham Phillips § Notes: three two of the six citations – Fellow, Mencken, and Ravitz – are manually formatted (not the result of any citation template) and shouldn't be used as examples of a surfeit of citation formats. Two of the three four sources used in citation templates do not provide any authorial or editorial attribution (verified in sources), so naturally the format will differ from that of sources where the author is known.Tangentially, it is somewhat common for articles to use a mixture of Shortened footnotes and regular "defined in place" citations. Usually this is unintentional, as editors new to an article will almost never add citations in shortened format, except improperly, adding to Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors (4,771). Converting all the new sources to shortened footnote form happens very irregularly. Sometimes articles will intentionally adopt a mixed style, where "main sources", multiply cited sources, or sources cited at more than one in-source location (a subset of the previous criterion) will be formatted in shortened form, and the remainder in the standard fashion. Folly Mox (talk) 19:22, 9 November 2024 (UTC)corrected per below 20:38, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are plenty of reasons not to use shortened footnote templates, and the lack of support for extra parameters is a feature (the footnotes, after all, are supposed to be short).I'm wondering why |access-date= in particular would ever be helpful to support: it's one of the cruftiest parameters, displaying rather a lot of text for information only really needed during archive snapshot hunting; it's not useful for print sources, which have a stable form per publication date, and are the most common types of sources where shortened footnotes are used; and why would you have different access dates for different sections of the source? Can't it just be added to the full citation template the shortened footnote links to?Quotes are another matter, but are easily included within the <ref>...</ref> tags following a harv family template like {{harvp}} or {{harvnb}}, which can be embedded within ref tags. Folly Mox (talk) 15:51, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The attributes I mentioned were just random examples, but, e.g., |sectionlink= certainly seems important, and lots of printed sources are also available as PDF. Placing detail as free text in <ref>{{harvnb}}...</ref> does not create the proper metadata, so while it might work for |quote= it does not for other attributes. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:40, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the OP that it's silly to have lots of different templates for citations – {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, etc. But there is a generic template for this and it's {{citation}}.
I usually use {{citation}} so that if, for example, I'm citing the Times using a URL, I don't have to worry about whether it's a web site or a newspaper when it's obviously both.
The main problem nowadays is that the Visual Editor generates the more specific templates rather than the generic one. I usually switch to the text editor to correct it but that's a nuisance.
"The article cites more than one reliable source and is better developed in style, structure, and quality than Start-Class, but it fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements, or need editing for clarity, balance, or flow."
The heuristic for C-class is "substantial but is still missing important content". The heuristic for Start-class is, similarly "developing but still quite incomplete": not very different. As an alternative, you can try to determine whether the article is "Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study" or "Provides some meaningful content, but most readers will need more."
And here's the military history version of C-class:
"The article meets B1 or B2 as well as B3 and B4 and B5 of the B-Class criteria.
Here, rather than having to make a difficult heuristic judgement between C-class and start-class, clear criteria determine whether an article is start-class and other clear criteria determine whether it is C-class. It seems to me to be a reasonable formalization of the two heuristics (referencing and completeness) used to determine C versus Start class anyways. I think if Wikipedia adopted this generally, it would make rating articles much faster and simpler and less confusing given that the criteria for distinguishing C-class articles are formalized rather than subject to essentially how complete the article feels. When I rate articles, I usually spend a good bit of time worrying about whether it is C-class or Start-class -- a major part of the decision making currently is informed by observing other people's decisions. WP:MILHIST has basically solved that and added a FAQ.
Has anybody ever proposed using the MILHIST criteria before? I do remember seeing proposals (not successful) to merge C and Start class, but not this specifically. Mrfoogles (talk) 08:55, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Making the assessment process any more formalized than it is is a non-starter when we have hundreds of thousands of articles that aren't assessed at all. PARAKANYAA (talk) 15:32, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My experience is that any article ratings other than those which are part of a formal process (i.e. all those except GA, A, and FA) tend to be assigned based on vibes rather than any strict concern with the criteria, and mostly are not updated when the article changes. If assessments are largely made without reference to the criteria, I'm not sure that changing the criteria will have much effect. Even assuming for the sake of argument that people are carefully rating articles based on the assessment criteria, ratings are updated so infrequently that there's no guarantee that they are still appropriate at any given time. I don't object to clearer criteria for what is a start/C/B class article, but I also don't know that I really see the point: at this point in Wikipedia's development, what if anything do people actually use these ratings for? Generally I agree with the view which has been expressed by various people in the past (I know Iridescent used to make this point, as in this thread) that the distinctions between start/C/B class are pretty pointless and we'd be just as well off scrapping them entirely and ending up with a scale which goes stub/standard/good/featured or even unassessed/good/featured. (You mention proposals to merge start- and C-class, but I cannot find them in the archives of Wikipedia talk:Content assessment or WP:VP) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 12:58, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd pretty much agree with this, adding that in my experience most ratings are assigned almost entirely on article length, and also that nearly all our readers and most of our editors never look at them. Johnbod (talk) 13:37, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They are pointless, generally speaking, other than that it's nice to say you've improved the quality of X article to Y, which can be a nice achievement. You might be right than eliminating the distinctions might be a good idea -- stub/start/C are very difficult to distinguish meaningfully, and checking that everything is cited correctly in B requires a mini-GA review level of work for long articles. Mrfoogles (talk) 02:58, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given the reception, probably not going to propose this. What the system really needs is a reform based on determining what purposes it actually serves. Mrfoogles (talk) 02:59, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The rating system was created by, belongs to, and primarily benefits the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. This group is still active, even though they do most of their work via specialized off-wiki tools these days (so don't be fooled if you look at the page history and don't see any recent edits; that's not where the action is). AFAICT it serves their purpose (i.e., selecting articles for offline distribution based on a multi-factor calculation that reflects centrality [most internal links work], popularity [students want to read it], and quality [via ratings]) well. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:57, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My impression is that the ratings are associated with the projects such as Milhist but the project templates seem to be placed in an indiscriminate and rote way.
It would be good to rationalise the ratings in a functional way. For example, what I notice is that DYK and ITN perform their own independent quality assessments without regard to the project assessments. The {{article history}} attempts to pull all these things together but is only used on 50,000 pages. There ought to be a standard talk page template to unify these things.
Hi. Before i joined Wikipedia, i always wanted a way to save my favorite articles somehow. When i logged in, i was excited to see a star button on a article (which signaled it was a sort of a favorite button) but to my disappointment it just made articles go on the watchlist. So what if there was a way to save certain articles to, say, read later or gather a collection for a school assignment. This would be very useful to both logged-out and in users. This could mean good for Wikipedia editing too! If you favorite a article, there should be a way to easily come back too it. This would make more efficient editing, rather then a confusing “watch list” of articles. Another way to implete this idea is to add it to a group, where you can come back to later. But either way, there should be a way to save articles to a dedicated area, logged in or not. Edit: I apologize if this is the wrong area,i couldn’t quite figure out if i should out this in Proposals or here.K.O.518 (talk) 06:49, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note that the “View and edit watchlist” tab of the watchlist has a list of all your watched articles in alphabetic order, which could be used as a favourites list. novovtalkedits10:44, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve often noticed confusion on the part of both general readers and editors about what Wikipedia articles are AND aren’t. Truth be told, I suspect all of us editors probably had it not only before becoming editors but also well into our Wiki work.
So I got thinking that perhaps a cute (but not overly so!) little information box that would fly in or otherwise attract attention upon accessing a new article could help halt some common misunderstandings or lack of awareness of general readers. Because I think most editors here at the Pump would be aware of many such examples, I hope you’ll forgive my not providing e.g.’s.
(Of course if such an info box were put in place, there’d also need to be a way for readers not to see it again if they so wish.)
I started to check elsewhere at the Pump to see if a similar idea had ever been submitted before, but I couldn’t figure out a relevant search term. And I didn’t want to suggest an outright proposal if anything similar had in fact ever been proposed. So IDEA LAB just seemed a good place to start the ball rolling. Looking forward to seeing where it leads. Augnablik (talk) 10:58, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a strong supporter of providing more information about how Wikipedia works for readers, especially if it helps them get more comfortable with the idea of editing. Readers are editors and editors are readers—this line should be intentionally blurred. I don't know if a pop up or anything similar to that is the right way to go, but I do think there's something worth considering here. One thing I've floated before was an information panel featured prominently on the main page that briefly explains how every reader is an editor and gives some basic resources. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:49, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with putting stuff on the main page is that many (probably most) readers get to Wikipedia articles from a search engine, rather than via the main page. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:57, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The main page gets 4 to 5 million page views each day. And even so, I would guess that people who go out of their way to read the main page are better candidates to become frequent editors than people who treat Wikipedia like it's part of Google. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:12, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't thinking of the main page. What I had in mind was that whenever someone requests to go to an article — irrespective of how he or she entered Wikipedia — the information box would fly in or otherwise appear. Augnablik (talk) 17:30, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Khajidha, i don't see the box as ONLY to dispel confusion but ALSO to point out some strengths of Wikipedia that probably readers wouldn't have been aware of.
A few things that came to my mind: although Wikipedia is now one of the world's most consulted information sources, articles should be considered works in progress because ... however, there are stringent requirements for articles to be published, including the use of strong sources to back up information and seasoned editors to eagle-eye them; writing that is objective and transparent about any connection between writers and subjects of articles ... and (this last could be controversial but I think it would be helpful for readers in academia) although not all universities and academic circles accept Wiki articles as references, they can serve as excellent pointers toward other sources.
if the idea of presenting an information box including the above (and more) is adopted, a project team could work on exactly what it would say and look like. Augnablik (talk) 18:58, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that considerably overstates reality (the requirements are not stringent, sources do not have to be strong, many things are not checked by anyone, much less by seasoned editors, hiding COIs is moderately common...).
Ooops. Well, if stringent requirements, etc., overstate reality, then official Wiki guidance and many Teahouse discussions are needlessly scaring many a fledgling editor! 😱 Augnablik (talk) 19:40, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All of these points also fall into the "well, DUH!" category. I did, however, want to respond to your statement that "not all universities and academic circles accept Wiki articles as references". I would be very surprised if any university or serious academic project would accept Wikipedia as a reference. Tertiary sources like encyclopedias have always been considered inappropriate at that level, as far as I know. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:38, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Point taken about encyclopedias being generally unacceptable in academic writing.
But as we’re having this discussion in an idea lab, this is the perfect place to toss the ball back to you, Khajidha, and ask how you would describe Wikipedia for new readers so they know how it can be advantageous and how it can’t?
As I see it, that sort of information is a real need for those who consult Wikipedia — just as customers appreciate quick summaries or reviews of products they’re considering purchasing — to get a better handle on “what’s in it for me.” Augnablik (talk) 20:05, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the logo at the top left already does a pretty good job: "Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia". Especially if you look at the expanded form we use elsewhere: "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:39, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Khajidha, a mere tag saying "The Free Encyclopedia" seems to me just a start in the right direction. The addition of "that anyone can edit" adds a little more specificity, although you didn't mention anything about writing as well as editing. Still, I think these tags are too vague as far as what readers need more insight about.
I'm working on a list of things I'd like to bring to readers' attention, but I'd like to put it away tonight and finish tomorrow. At that point, I'll humbly request you to "de-DUH" your evaluation of my idea. Augnablik (talk) 17:01, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to me the problem is that people don't understand what an encyclopedia is. That's a "them" problem, not an "us" problem. And what exactly do these readers think editing the encyclopedia would be that doesn't incude writing it? User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 17:45, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is very different from the historical concept of encyclopedia. The open editing expands the pool of editors, at the expense of accuracy. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk)
Wikipedia may have put traditional general encyclopedias out of business, or at least made them change their business model drastically, but it does not define what an encyclopedia is. One example is that Wikipedia relies largely on secondary sources, but traditional encyclopedias, at least for the most important articles, employed subject matter experts who wrote largely on the basis of primary sources. It is our job to explain the difference. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:03, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
After a little longer gap between than what I thought it would take to create a list of things I believe all readers need to be aware of from the git-go about what Wikipedia is and isn't, due to some challenges in other departments of life, here's what I came up with. It would be in sections, similar to what you see below, each surrounded by a clip art loop, perhaps golden brown, and perhaps a few other pieces of clip art to set it off visually.I wish I knew how to separate paragraphs with line spacing ... I know this looks a little squished.
_____________________________________
New to reading Wikipedia articles? Here are some helpful things for you to be aware of about Wikipedia. They'll help you get more clearer ideas of how you can use the articles to best advantage.
If you'd like to go into more depth about all this, and more, just go to the article in Wikipedia about itself by typing WIKIPEDIA in the Wikipedia search field.
Wikipedia is a different kind of encyclopedia.
— Its articles can be written and edited by anyone.
— They’re supposed to be based completely on reliable outside sources.
— They can be updated at any time, thus allowing for quick corrections or additions if needed.
— Wikipedia is free.
That’s the main difference between Wikipedia and traditional encyclopedias.
BUT:
All encyclopedias serve as starting points where readers can find out about information — especially the main thinking about particular subjects — then follow up as they wish.
Students and researchers: keep in mind that schools and professional research journals don’t accept encyclopedias as references for written papers, but do encourage using them to get some ideas with which to go forward.
Wikipedia has become popular for good reason.
— Wikipedia is the world’s largest-ever encyclopedia.
— It’s consistently ranked among the ten websites people visit most.
— Because it’s all online, it’s easy to access.
— Because it’s highly interactive, it’s easy to move around from topic to topic.
Quality standards for writing articles are in place and in action behind the scenes.
— Wikipedia has high standards for choosing the subjects of articles.
— Wikipedia also has high standards for writing articles, especially freedom from bias.
— Certain editors are assigned to ensure that articles follow Wikipedia standards.
— Although differences of opinions naturally arise about whether a particular article does so, there are sets of procedures to work them out and arbiters to step in as needed. Augnablik (talk) 10:18, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why would you put information about "reading Wikipedia articles" in an editing environment?
Also, several things you've written are just wrong. Wikipedia is not considered a "highly interactive" website. "Certain editors" are not "assigned to ensure" anything. Wikipedia does not have "high standards for writing articles", and quite a lot of readers and editors think we're seriously failing in the "freedom from bias" problem. We might do okay-ish on some subjects (e.g., US political elections) but we do fairly poorly on other subjects (e.g., acknowledging the existence of any POV that isn't widely discussed in English-language sources). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I think a more magnetic format for this tool I'm hoping can one day be used on Wikipedia would be a short series of animated "fly-ins" rather than a static series of points with a loop around each set thereof. Augnablik (talk) 13:51, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Idea Labmates …
Because I had such high hopes of being on the trail of something practical to help prevent some of the main misunderstandings with which readers come to Wikipedia — and at the same time to foster awareness of how to use it to better advantage — I wonder if a little spark could get the discussion going again. Or does the idea not seem worth pursuing further? Augnablik (talk) 11:05, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would happily pay 25 cents per query if Wikipedia had its own AI chat interface. I use the Co-Star app (astrology) in this way already. I find the cost is worth the value. Free AI summaries available in search engines suffer from having too much garbage input (aka, the unrestrained data of the internet) to produce viable output. I would find it useful to have an AI interface built into Wikipedia. I already trust the information here and all "training data" for the hypothetical bot would effectively be open source. I would trust an AI bot managed by Wikipedia much more than I would trust an AI bot managed by any other entity. And I would be willing to pay for the service more often than I would be able to continue supporting the site through donation. 2603:6080:9F00:B05D:6205:4DF2:8C83:4343 (talk) 22:14, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Wikipedia is free and open-source, so we won't be implementing a paid AI chatbot on principle. Regarding the idea of an AI chatbot in general, they are often prone to hallucinations and not necessarily as accurate as they are confident. And they can't be edited by individual users in case they were trained on factual errors, which again goes against Wikipedia's principles. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:22, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are many edits often made where a large amount of information is added without citations. For new users, wouldn't it be good if it was detected when they go to publish an edit lacking citations with a large amount of text, and came up with a popup of some sort directing them to WP:NOR, and asking them to confirm if they wish to make the edit? I think you should be able to then turn it off easily (as in ticking don't remind me again within the popup), but my impression is that many make edits without being familiar with the concept of rules such as WP:NOR. 𝙏𝙚𝙧𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙢𝙖𝙣地形人 (talk) 01:36, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I'm thinking of the right tool, there was a discussion (at one one of the village pumps I think) that saw significant opposition to deployment here, although I can't immediately find it. I seem to remember the opposition was a combination of errors and it being bundled with VE? I think Fram and WhatamIdoing were vocal in that discussion so may remember where it was (or alternatively what I'm mixing it up with). Thryduulf (talk) 15:21, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Aaron Liu, Edit check is available on the visual editor. Having it on wikitext won't make sense as the goal is to teach users to add citations, not to teach them both about citations and wikitext. Let's reduce complexity. :)
And the visual editor is still not the default editor at de.wp or en.wp. I advised to work on deploying both in parallel so that newcomers would have a better editing experience all at once (less wikitext, more guidance). Why am I not working on it now? Because it would take time. Now that the visual editor was used for years at all other wikis to make millions of edits, we should consider making it the default editor at English Wikipedia for new accounts. It could be a progressive deployment. I've not yet explored past reasons why English Wikipedia didn't wanted to have the visual editor being deployed, again for time reasons. But we would support any community initiative regarding VE deployment for sure.
We could deploy Edit check without VE, but I'm afraid of a low impact on newcomers: they are less likely to be helped as long as VE remains the second editor.
@Thryduulf, there were a discussion about Edit check in the past, you are correct. It covered multiple topics actually. I let you re-read it if you like; I didn't found "significant opposition" there, more questions about Edit Check, VE, citations and more, concerns on Edit Check and VE integration, and support for a better experience for newcomers (as long as it doesn't impact existing personal experiences).
If you didn't see "significant oppo sition" there, then perhaps reread it? The tool you deployed elsewhere had no measurable positive impact (when tested on Simple or French Wikipedia). As for past reasons why enwiki didn't want VE deployed, let's give you one: because when VE was deployed here, it was extremely buggy (as in, making most articles worse when used, not better), but the WMF refused to undo their installation here (despite previous assurances) and used enwiki as a testing ground, wasting tons of editor hours and creating lots of frustration and distrust towards the WMF. This was only strengthened by later issues (Flow, Gather, Wikidata short descriptions) which all followed the same pattern, although in those cases we eventually, after lots of acrimonious debates and broken WMF promises, succeeded in getting them shut down). As shown in the linked discussion, here again we have two instances of WMF deployments supported by test results where in the first instance reality showed that these were probably fabricated or completely misunderstood, as in reality the results were disastrous; and in the second instance, Edit Check, reality showed that the tool wasn't an improvement over the current situation, but even when spelled out this was "misread" by the WMF. Please stop it. Fram (talk) 15:50, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you provide a couple of links to comments from people other than yourself, and which specifically opposed EditCheck (not the 'make the visual editor the default' or 'Citoid has some problems' sub-threads)? I just skimmed through the 81 comments from 19 editors in the proposal that Robertsky made, and while I might have missed something, your first comment, which was the 69th comment in the list, was the first one to oppose the idea of using software to recommend that new editors add more citations.
Most of the discussion is not about EditCheck or encouraging refs. Most of it is about whether first-time editors should be put straight into the visual editor vs asking them to choose. The responses there begin this way:
"I thought Visual Editor is already the default for new accounts and unregistered editors?" [1]
"In theory, this sounds like a great idea. I'm eager to try it out..." [2]
"I'd support making Visual Editor the default..." [3]
"I totally agree that VE should be the default for new users." [5]
which is mostly not about whether to use software to encourage newbies to add more citations (the second quotation is directly about EditCheck; not quoted are comments, including mine, about whether it's technically necessary to make the visual editor 'the default' before deploying EditCheck [answer: no]).
Then the thread shifts to @Chipmunkdavis wanting the citation templates to have "an easily accessed and obvious use of an |author= field, instead forcing all authors into |last and |first", which is about how the English Wikipedia chooses to organize its CS1 templates, and @Thryduulf wanting automatic ref names that are "human-friendly" (to take the wording RoySmith used), both of which entirely unrelated to whether to use software to encourage new editors to add more citations.
I see some opposition to putting new editors into the visual editor, and I see lots of complaints about automated refs, but I don't see any opposition from anyone except you to EditCheck itself. Please provide a couple of examples, so I can see what I missed? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"which is about how the English Wikipedia chooses to organize its CS1 templates" is perhaps one way to say that the VE has no functionality to accept the synonyms, which I discovered in a few disparate conversations following that thread. I still have a tab open to remind me to put a note about phab on this, it's really not ideal have VE editors shackled with the inability to properly record author names. CMD (talk) 01:42, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
VisualEditor is perfectly capable of accepting actual aliases such as |author=, and even non-existent parameters such as |fljstu249= if you want (though I believe the citation templates, unlike most templates, will emit error messages for unknown parameters). It just isn't going to "suggest" them when the CS1 maintainers have told it not to do so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:12, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you know how to solve the problem, please solve the problem. Per Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 95, "The solution to the ve-can't/won't-use-already-existing-alias-list problem lies with MediaWiki, not with editors adding yet more parameters to TemplateData". As it stands, VE doesn't do it, and I've seen no indication that they consider it an issue. CMD (talk) 12:00, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you want this wikitext:
{{cite news |author=Alice Expert |date=November 20, 2024 |title=This is the title of my news story |work=The Daily Whatever}}
which will produce this citation:
Alice Expert (November 20, 2024). "This is the title of my news story". The Daily Whatever.
then (a) I just did that in the Reply tool's visual mode, so it obviously can be done without any further coding in MediaWiki, VisualEditor, or anything else, and (b) you need to convince editors that they want "Alice Expert" at the start instead of "Expert, Alice" of citations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't have to convince editors that they want "Alice Expert" instead of "Expert, Alice". The issue is, as covered in the original discussion with some good input from others, non-western name formats. It is a cultural blindspot to assume all names fall into "Expert, Alice" configurations, and it seems that it is a blindspot perpetuated by the current VE expectations. CMD (talk) 01:39, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Chipmunkdavis, I guess I'm having trouble understanding what you want.
You said in the linked discussion that "My understanding is that the VE tool does not allow for the use of aliases". I'm telling you: Your understanding is wrong. It's obviously possible to get |author= in the visual editor, because I did that. Either this diff is a lie, or your understanding is mistaken. I'm going with the latter. |author=Mononym is already possible. So what change are you actually asking for?
The linked discussion seems, to my eyes, to be a long list of people telling you that if you don't like the description used in the TemplateData (NB: not MediaWiki and not VisualEditor), then you should change the description in the TemplateData (NB: not MediaWiki and not VisualEditor) yourself. You say the devs told you that, and I count at least two other tech-savvy editors who told you to WP:SOFIXIT already. Neither the part that says "Last name" nor the part that says "The surname of the author; don't wikilink, use 'author-link'; can suffix with a numeral to add additional authors" is part of either the visual editor or MediaWiki. Any editor who can edit Template:Cite news/doc can change those words to anything they want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:22, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Having to type source wikitext completely defeats the purpose of the visual editor; why not just type in the wikitext editor. This "solution" is a blaring technicality.Perhaps you should read the last four replies in the linked discussion. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:00, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right, this is the sort of odd reply this topic inexplicably gets. You can just type in source code in the visual editor, I mean, why have visual editor at all. Just change the description so people can pretend someone's name is their last name, now being suggested yet again as a simple SOFIXIT, and no I'm not going to deliberately and formally codify that we should mislabel people's names, for what I did think before these various discussions were obvious reasons. CMD (talk) 02:08, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I type |author=Sting vs |last=Sting, will this make any difference to anyone (human or machine) that ►is not looking at the wikitext. That last bit about not seeing the wikitext is the most important part. If the complaint is entirely about what's in the wikitext, then Wikipedia editors should treat it as the equivalent of a whitespacing 'problem': it's okay to clean it up to your preferred style if you're otherwise doing something useful, but it's not okay to force your preferred style on others just for the sake of having it be 'the right way'.
The options are:
Those two are used as exact synonyms by the CS1 code, in which case it make no practical difference which alias is used, or
Those two are handled differently by the CS1 code (e.g. emitting different microformatting information), in which case the CS1 code should not declare them to be aliases. AIUI aliases are only supposed to be used for exact substitutes.
Misnaming someone is not a style choice. (It is literally an item explicitly mentioned in the UCOC.) Even if it wasn't, your professed solution is that a new editor open up the visual editor and see "Last name: The surname of the author; don't wikilink, use 'author-link' instead; can suffix with a numeral to add additional authors. Please also use this field for names which don't have a first name last name structure."? That doesn't seem sensible or effective. CMD (talk) 00:12, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Where does the "misnaming" happen? To be clear, I'm expecting an answer that either sounds like one of these two:
"Only in the wikitext, but that's still very bad".
"In a reader/user-facing location, namely _____" (where the blank might be filled in with something like "in the COinS microformatting").
I would refer to the previous discussions above and elsewhere where it has already been extensively covered that both of those options are true. It would in the wikitext, and is currently in the visual editor citation creator. CMD (talk) 08:34, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Both of those options are true" is not possible, when you name as the two locations:
a place readersdo not see ("in the wikitext") and
another place readers do not see ("in the visual editor citation creator").
It feels deeply uncivil to say "So again" for a question you haven't asked before. It is really surprising to see "misnaming" quoted as if it's something incorrect; it's hard to word this but that comes off as a shocking level of continued cultural insensitivity. At this point the various questions at hand have been answered multiple times in the different discussions, and we're wandering again towards odd red herrings that have little relation to the fact that VE source generator users are forced into a single naming system, something long solved by the non-VE source generator. I recommend the link RoySmith provided in the previous discussions if you haven't already[6], and remain hopeful one day that others will try to care about the non Alice Experts of the world. CMD (talk) 02:13, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1. How did you do that? 2. The author parameter is useful and used iff the author has no last name; e.g., byline being an organization, mononymous person, no author stated, etc. This is documented at the citation-style help pages. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:11, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The |author= parameter behaves the same as the |last= parameter, so there's little point in changing the wikitext to say |author=.
(In this case, I took the quick and dirty approach of typing out the template by hand, and pasting it in. The Reply tool's visual mode normally won't let you insert a template at all, because block-formatted templates completely screw up the discussion format. Normally, if there's no TemplateData to provide you with the options, then you'd click on the "+Add undocumented parameter" button and type in whatever you wanted. If there is TemplateData, then see my earlier comment that "It just isn't going to "suggest" them when the CS1 maintainers have told it not to do so.") WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:08, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's semantically different, like the em tag vs italicizing and whatnot. And as I've said before, the documentation doesn't suggest it so that the clueless will not use both |last and |author. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:57, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If someone adds |authorn= as a separate parameter, I fear that we will see an increase in the number of articles that populate Category:CS1 errors: redundant parameter because OMG!-there's-an-empty-box-in-the-form;-I-must-fill-it. This is why I suggested radio buttons for aliases; something that MediaWiki would needs implement.
You missed that none of them tested it or checked it on other wikipedia versions, and that no support came along after I had tested it and posted my results? No surprise here... Fram (talk) 19:17, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's a big gap between "The discussion stopped" and "There was significant opposition in this discussion".
In terms of EditCheck, I found most of the discussion to be off-topic, but I can honestly only find one editor (you) who opposed it in that discussion. I assume your failure to provide links to any other statement of opposition means you also honestly can't find a single comment in that discussion from anyone who agreed with you – just an absence of further comments, and an unprovable assumption on your part that its due to everyone agreeing with you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:28, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Didn't stop you from making any assumptions or presentings things in the most WMF-favorable light. Seems like VE all over again, only then you had the excuse of being paid by the WMF. Fram (talk) 19:45, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think I presented the discussion in the most WMF-favorable light. The discussion started off pretty enthusiastic, but it was mostly enthusiastic about something other than EditCheck itself. It then turned into a long digression into something completely unrelated.
(My own contributions to that discussion were technical in nature: It doesn't require the visual editor as the default; code may already exist for an unrelated change that someone wants; stats may already exist for something close to the numbers someone else wants.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:56, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Fram, this is precisely because I reread the conversation that I wrote my previous message. We have the right to disagree, but it should remain civil and not convey accusations of bad faith. The way you try to depict me as a dishonest person is not acceptable at all.
I let other participants have a look at the previous discussion we linked, also take a look at the data we provided, and make their own opinion. We aren't the two people who will decide of a deployment here: I'm just the messenger, and you are not the person who has the final word on behalf of everyone. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 18:00, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tough luck. You posted a dishonest reply last time we had this discussion. If it had been a genuine error in that previous discussion, you should have just said so. Instead, you not only let your error stand, but then come here and claim that there was no significant opposition to Edit Check in that previous discussion, ignoring the one person who tested it and posted results. And like I said in that discussion, the data the WMF provides is not to be trusted at all, as seen from other deployments. Which I already stated and you again ignore completely. But, like I said, the WMF (and previous WMF employees like Whatamidoing) are very good at civil bullshit, while I am not so good at the civil part but rather good at cutting through the bullshit. Fram (talk) 19:17, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since there are non-native English speakers in this discussion, I'd like to clarify that "dishonest", in English, means that the person deliberately told the opposite of the truth. For example, it is dishonest to say "I love Windows ME", when you actually hate it.
However:
Having incorrect or outdated information is not "dishonest".
Caring about a particular benefit more than a different problem is not "dishonest".
Disagreeing with you, or with a hypothetical average reasonable person, is not "dishonest".
There's a reason that English has an idiom about an "honest mistake": It's because it's possible to be factually wrong without being dishonest. For example, if you say "Oh, User:Example said something yesterday", but upon further inspection, it was a different user, or a different day. Or even if you say "The previous discussion shows significant opposition to EditCheck", but upon further inspection, nobody except you publicly opposed it. Such a sentence is only dishonest if the speaker believes, at the time of speaking, that the statement is factually wrong. Unless the speaker believes themselves to be speaking falsehoods, it's not actually dishonest; it's only a mistake or an error.
"Using someone's affiliations as an ad hominem means of dismissing or discrediting their views" – Claiming, or even implying, that WMF staff have a tendency to be dishonest is probably a violation of this point in the policy.
"Insulting or disparaging an editor is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done." – Claiming that anyone is "dishonest", especially when the difference between your view and theirs is a matter of opinion, is very likely a violation of this policy. It doesn't officially matter if the manner in which you say this is "you are dishonest" or "your replies are dishonest"; it's still insulting and disparaging another editor.
Like I said, one can post all distruths one wants as long as one does it civilly. Reminds me of the discussions we had about VE when it was disastrously deployed but all you did as a liaison was defend the WMF no matter what. And I didn't say their replies were dishonest because they are a WMF employee, just that it is typical behaviour for many of them apparently. Perhaps reread the breakdown of the Gather discussions I gave below, or reread the countless discussions about Flow, VE, descriptions, ... There are some good apples among them, but not too many. Fram (talk) 19:51, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
2013, not 2023. July was early days in VE testing, when I still thought you were helpful. A few months later I had become wiser. Fram (talk) 20:20, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For what its worth, I do think a RfC can be made once the proposed details of the deployment is firmed up:
Do we make VE as the default for new editors?
Do we enable EditCheck as it is?
Current pop-up for new editorsAside, if we retain the current arrangement, i.e. letting new/anon editors selecting their preferred editor, can we change the buttons to be more balanced in colours and sizing? These do affect one's preference in choosing which button to click. – robertsky (talk) 18:16, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
robertsky, that's two RFCs, and – respectfully – conflating the two questions was a primary contributor to how far off the rails this conversation got last time.The UX alterations are probably best brought up at meta or mw for the skins devs to consider. Folly Mox (talk) 18:55, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Gather was dropped after 3 months (without any "broken WMF promises" nor any time for them to have given such promises or to have acrimoniously debated), and Wikidata SDs seem to be deployed and working completely fine. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:25, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Gather was deployed in March 2015 and immediately got severe backlash at the announcement: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive270#Extension:Gather launching on beta. No good answers followed. So three weeks later we get Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive270#Moderation of Collections?, where we get (laughable) promises of what the WMF will do to solve some of the most basic problems of this tool they rolled out on enwiki but hadn't really thought about at all it seems. Instead, they created a new Flow page on enwiki for this tool (Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Gather/User Feedback) despite Flow being removed from enwiki long before this. So in January 2016 (hey, that's already 10 months, not 3), Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 130#Disabling Gather? was started. On 22 Januuary 2016, an answer was promised by the WMF "next week" (section "A WMF reply next week"): "by next week, the Gather team will have a major update to share about the feature". Things escalated, so another WMF person came along 6 days later to promise "we will be putting together this analysis starting now with the intention of sharing publicly next week with a decision the week after." (section "A Response from the WMF"). So instead of some great announcement after 1 week, we are now 6 days further and will get big news 2 weeks later... So, more than 2 weeks later, 12 February, we get "the analysis has taken longer than I anticipated. I'll post the results as soon as I can." So, on the 19th, they posted a "proposal" to which others replied "that proposal is an insult to the community." and "his smacks of yet more stalling tactics and an attempt to save face". Only when the RfC was closed with truly overwhelming supprt to disable it did they finally relent.
Do you really need a similar runthrough of Wikidata short descriptions, which are (or should be) disabled everywhere on enwiki and replaced by local descriptions instead? Or will you admit that perhaps you didn't remember details correctly? Fram (talk) 19:41, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah man I don't remember anything well, I wasn't there. I'm just reading random things I can find to see what you're talking about, such as the MediaWiki page that states development was suspended by July 2015, but as you've pointed out, that is different from disabling, and thank you for helping me to find. Thanks for your links on Gather. By no fault of its own, Shortdesc helper made me conflate WD descriptions and SDs. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:42, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I never suggested deploying it on the source editor. Having not fully read the above discussion yet, it currently seems unreasonable that it's not deployed in the visual editor on enwiki and dewiki (while preserving the current "level of defaultness" of the visual editor itself instead of increasing the defaultness). Aaron Liu (talk) 16:30, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Aaron Liu, I never implied you suggested it, I was just one step ahead telling you that it is not available on source editor. :) We can deploy Edit check without changing the "level of defaultness" of the visual editor itself, but the impact might not be the same. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 18:09, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Probably Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive_213#Deploying_Edit Check on this wiki. Having reread that thread, it combines all WMF rollout issues into one it seems, from starting with false requirements over a testing environment which isn't up-to-date at all to completely misreading everything that is said into something supposedly positive, ignoring the stuff that contradicts their "this must be pushed no matter what" view. But all in a very civil way, there's that I suppose... Fram (talk) 15:39, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What an utterly weird objective for that tool "Newcomers and Junior Contributors from Sub-Saharan Africa will feel safe and confident enough while editing to publish changes they are proud of and that experienced volunteers consider useful." Very neocolonial. Fram (talk) 15:25, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Different parts of the world have different responses to UX changes. A change that is encouraging in a high-resource setting (or an individualistic culture, or various other things) may be discouraging in others. It is therefore important to test different regions separately. The Editing team, with the strong encouragement of several affiliates, decided to test sub-Saharan Africa first. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can't help it if you don't see how insulting and patronizing it is to write "Junior Contributors from Sub-Saharan Africa will feel safe and confident enough while editing". Fram (talk) 20:26, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redone my check at Simple wiki, looking at the most recent edits which automatically triggered this tool[7]. 39 instances were automatically indicated as "declined", the other 11 contain 3 edits which don't add a reference anyway[8][9][10] and 6 edits which actually add a reference[11][12][13][14][15][16] (though 3 of these 6 are fandom, youtube and enwiki). And then there is this and this, which technically add a source as well I suppose... Still, 3 probably good ones, 3 probably good faith bad ones, 3 false positives, and 2 vandal ref additions. Amazingly, this is almost the exact same result as during the previous discussion[17]. Fram (talk) 16:21, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think just creating one good source addition is enough cause for deployment (without making VE the default editor), especially since it doesn't appear to be causing additional harm. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:59, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If it doesn't create more good source additions than we had before the tool, then there is no reason to deploy something which adds a popup which people usually don't use anyway. Without the popup, there also were new editors adding sources, it's not as if we came from zero. No benefit + additional "noise" for new editors => additional harm. Fram (talk) 17:10, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what that has to do with my reply. Fram was disputing that the source additions were good and useful, and I was replying to him that some of them were good, hence edit check should be deployed (plus I'm fairly sure there's another check in the works to check reference URLs against the local RSP) Aaron Liu (talk) 18:21, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What you observed (Editors who got a popup did not originally give a source when attempting to publish) is shown in the data we shared.
We already deployed checks to verify if a link added is not listed in rejection lists and make it more actionable by newcomers. Some users at other wikis expressed a need to have a list of accepted links (the ones that match RSP), but other said that it could prevent new good sources from being added. Thoughts?
Isn't that the programmed heuristic for when the popup appears? I don't get what this has to do with any stats.Only URLs in the spamlist are blocked. Edit check should strongly warn against adding sources found generally unreliable by consensus summarized at RSP. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:59, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure to understand, sorry. Stats are about users adding a citation when asked compared from where not asked. It is not connected to RSP.
Like I said, of the 11 supposed additions, 5 need reverting (as far as the source goes) and 3 didn't add a source. I don't trust WMF numbers at all, but 5/8 needing a revert is hardly an overwhelming success. Even assuming that the 3 good ones wouldn't have added a source otherwise, one then has to make the same conclusion for the others, and the 5 bad ones wouldn't have been included otherwise either. So where is the net benefit and the no harm? Fram (talk) 19:54, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't trust WMF numbers at all
I'm new to all this, could you elaborate on why?
the 5 bad ones wouldn't have been included otherwise either
The 5 bad ones would have included no source at all if Edit Check wasn't there. I don't see how adding a blatantly terrible source is worse than adding text without a source at all. Both are checked the exact same way: eye-scanning. So there you go, net benefit and no harm. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:11, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No. I explained it already in the previous discussion. You have made false claims about Gather and so on, but can't be bothered to reply when I take the time to give a detailed answer; but now you are apparently "new to all this" suddenly and want me to again take some time to enlighten you. No. And an unsourced statement is obvious to see, a statement sourced to a bad source is much less obvious. Fram (talk) 20:24, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Aaron Liu, I think this is a "reasonable people can disagree" thing. Some RecentChanges patrollers just revert any new unsourced claim, so if it's unsourced, it's quick to get out of the queue. Faster reverting means success to them, whereas encouraging people to add sources is like whispering a reminder to someone during a game of Mother, May I?: It removes an easy 'win' for the reverter.
OTOH, having a source attached to bad information has other advantages. It's easy to determine whether it's a copyvio if you have the source, and if you're looking at an article you know something about (e.g., your own watchlist rather than the flood in Special:RecentChanges), then having the source often means that you can evaluate it that much faster ("This is a superficially plausible claim, but I wouldn't trust that website if it said the Sun usually rises in the East").
For content that shouldn't be reverted, then IMO encouraging a source is always a good thing. For content that should be reverted, there are tradeoffs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:22, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I miss things, especially on a workday. Sorry about that. I think the mobile short-descriptions thing is believable, as users . This is a case of the methodology being technically correct but misleading, which I don't see for the edit check study, unless you're willing to provide an argument.
an unsourced statement is obvious to see, a statement sourced to a bad source is much less obvious.
IMO, only slightly. Often, only users of experience patrol pages when reading them. (The unacquainted are also sometimes able to realize something's probably wrong with a swath of unsourced text, hence they make up part of the aforementioned "slightly".) And blatantly bad sources jump out to those experienced from the references section. Sources in the middle ground can often link to good sources, though there is a debate on how good it is to have both additionally middle-ground and bad sources vs. no sources at all. Personally, I think it's better. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:47, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given that there are several editors here interested in the feature turning on, I would like to propose the following question and a brief/neutral backgrounder to be asked for the RfC:
Background: Edit Check is Wikimedia Foundation's product to encourage new editors to add citations to their edits, by prompting them with pop-ups before publishing. The pop-ups will work under the following default conditions (points 2 - 4 can be configured further):
If editing is done through Visual Editor.
≥40 consecutive characters added.
All accounts with < 100 edits
All sections*
For point 4, I also propose to modify the configuration to exclude this feature from the following sections:
lead section, as we don't not require leads to have citations
Notes section, usually handled by {{efn}} in content body, etc.
References section, no citation required
External links section, no citation required
See also section, no citation required
And any other sections (that I have missed out, and in the future) that do not require citations.
For future changes of the configuration setting, this can be done on wiki through modifying MediaWiki:Editcheck-config.json file after discussing in an appropriate venue. This also means that other than the initial activation, we do not require further changes in the backend (and if we would want to rollback before deactivating in a server update, we can set the max edit count to 1 as a temporary measure).
It would save time to have a true template but what would the word list be; y/Y/yes/Yes/YES n/N/no/No/NO t/T/true/True/TRUE f/F/false/False/FALSE? Anthony2106 (talk) 05:21, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In templates like plot and AUD they have an option for "true" e.g {{AUD|10,000|link=yes}} putting "True" in place of "yes" does not work, so this functionality could be added into the AUD template or AUD could use a istrue template - a global template that has all the yeses and no's, so AUD would have a template in a template. This way each template that needed a yes/no could use this global template. Anthony2106 (talk) 07:32, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You see, if someone edits Wikipedia and they are not signed in, their IP address is exposed. That means one could track where they live and dox them further. So yeah, don’t put the Ip adrees. But what if the person does an edit that ruins the page, or something bad? you see Wikipedia will have the ip address, and all what they have to do is report the anonymous person, Who will have a name, like not logged in or something, then Wikipedia will block it. Have a good day. Bye bye! Datawikiperson (talk) 09:46, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IP addresses will give the location of the ISP node, or if the router has a location recorded with the ISP it will show that, most private routers do not show their location and will just show the ISP node. Try it yourself on a website like https://www.iplocation.net/. But you're right, sometimes it can that's true. 𝙏𝙚𝙧𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙢𝙖𝙣地形人 (talk) 18:12, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The disaster of "IP masking" is that it will give all the different IP addresses used by the editor over the past 90 days, and of course you can keep sampling so you can effectively build up a profile of the editor's movements in perpetuity. This highly personal information is made available to autoconfirmed editors, so virtually everyone. This is dynamite, and the GDPR has specific safeguards so that the editor can see what she is getting herself into before she commits herself. The Foundation knows nobody would ever accept these terms so lies by omission - it simply says "a temporary account will be opened for you" without warning that the editor's control over her personal information will be cut off. They run a talkpage over at Mediawiki, but even when they are pinged they ignore the awkward questions. LD asked a question of Niharika Kohli at 13:22 on 15 November and is still waiting for an answer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.25.132.250 (talk) 14:24, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree that the requirements should very much not be available that easily (although the actual terms are 6 months and 300 edits). I wouldn't be opposed to making it available only to CheckUsers or administrators, as they actually have some level of community vetting (or to make a new specific permission for that purpose). Another possible thing that could be done would be to log the IP checks to ensure transparency. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:08, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I'm not the most versed on that technical issue, one of the important points raised during Graham's RRfA was that admin tools were needed for him to do history merges and deal with more complex imports. Since Graham will no longer have these tools as an administrator, would there be a way to add these capabilities to the importer role? It could also help make the latter more accessible for non-admins potentially interested in helping out with this. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 11:26, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it would be possible. Need (a) a community discussion that supports adding the (mergehistory) permission to the import group, here on the English Wikipedia. Then (b) a configuration request can be made to add such. — xaosfluxTalk11:29, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
{{Infobox officeholder}} already has a parameter for "Other political affiliations", which might be what you are looking for. Otherwise, yes, a section in the article text can be written if there are enough sources to position the person on the political spectrum, but there shouldn't be a strict guideline mandating it to be present, especially since these affiliations can be controversial or contested. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 12:02, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Dead pixels, an expansion to WP:CITEWATCH, a new noticeboard?
Bit of a long one... more of an essay at this point really, but IMO, it might be worth it to prevent editor burnout and bring in new users, so here goes: You know how once one spots a dead pixel, they can't seem to ignore it? Then one starts wondering whether the monitor vendor has either: gotten sloppy with their work... or if they just got unlucky given the volume of monitors that get put out by the vendor. Then the dread of calling the warranty department...
Just like the analogy above, the news and research outputted by reliable sources is generally problem free. But because of the volume of information, occasionally errors will get in. Sometimes even unscrupulous outlets gets in. But unless one is motivated or knowledgeable enough, few will go through the effort of comparing what the reference says to its references (reference-in-reference). This is the dead pixel problem I'm talking about, and just like a dead pixel, annoys the crap of the person who sees it, for better or worse. Then comes the process of "fixing" it: currently, original research issues, and reference-in-reference issues are handled in science by PubPeer, whose extension is used by a paltry number of users. Response times by authors take days, maybe years even with relentless journalism. At any rate, most people who feel compelled to edit Wikipedia due to accuracy problems have probably never heard of PubPeer. And as for issues with regular journalists, I suppose one could turn to opinions by third parties like NewsGuard? And meanwhile, they can usually get away with publishing contradictory health news without being called out for it.
All made more worrying given that impact Wikipedia has on the real-world non-Wikipedians, like judges and scientists. Recent political developments, as well as LLM usage (see WP:CNET), mean that once reliable sources could suddenly hallucinate or contradict other sources on a whim. Maybe the errors made daily won't be indicative of LLM usage... but they could. In any case, we don't currently track these issues, so whose to say what patterns unreliable sources follow?
Mistake or no mistake, when the inaccuracy is inevitably spotted (probably by us, I wonder why...), an attempt will probably be made to re-balance the article or add footnotes following WP:Inaccuracy. This works great... if you are the only editor of a given article. For everyone else, because not everyone will necessarily see a dead pixel as a big deal, the actions may seem disproportionate and/or violate certain consensus policies, and the talk page will go on and on, maybe then to WP:DRN driving away casual but knowledgeable editors, all of which will be seen by hardly anyone, let alone the original author of the source. One could then go to WP:RSN, but that noticeboard is really only equipped to handle the most problematic and fringe sources, not really the daily errors that get published by sources day to day. We burn out, and the world, by and large, hardly notices the dispute.
To solve this, I propose some sort of objective-ish tracking in WP:CITEWATCH of reference-in-reference accuracy (in line with Wikipedia's policy of WP:NOR) as well as other issues like typos, linking issues, cotogenesis, copyright violations, notable omissions, and most importantly, corrections (sure sign of a RS), and the time elapsed from error spotting to correction for refs, all heuristics that, when aggregated, could be indicative of a sloppy copyeditors or cursory peer review. Editors could put in a template with the relevant issue, hidden by default until patrolled. If there is a dispute, a new reference-in-reference noticeboard, split into categories (typos, copyright violations, etc.)
Bonus benefits - we might finally:
Know which MDPI journals have decent peer review, allowing them to build a reputation?
Create an easy place to show that the consensus on WP:ALJAZEERA is justified?
Create an incentive to keep more accountable (especially on health related topics)? As well as obscure sources on obscure topics that may only be read by the Wikipedian.
Reduce biting and attrition by creating an easy place for sub-WP:RSN issues to be reported, counted and easily exportable to PubPeer or elsewhere?
Problematically high counts could then easily be reported to WP:RSN without the need for extensive, hard-to-read discussion.
Other references
External videos
No, Sabine, Science is Not Failing, Somewhat related video by Professor Dave that was coincidentally published while I was thinking about this. Mentions PubPeer. See also WP:WTW.
Older pre-internet sources might be less affected by ref-in-ref errors, since the reader could be reasonably expected to check the sources, necessity.
WVhere ref-in-ref notices go to the reader: Probably inside ref tags, after the chosen citation template?
This proposal could involve multiple changes to various guideline pages. WP:Inaccuracy will probably be changed the most by this proposal.
Patrolling - Mostly in anticipation of misunderstanding of policy, and WP:NOR.
Noiceboard name - RRN, reference-in-reference noticeboard? To avoid flooding the noticeboard, require discussion on talk page first? Split noticeboard into categories?
Categories - Categories will be separated into errors that will be reported to readers when patrolled, and those that will just be tracked by an expanded SOURCEWATCH table, for later discussion on RSN.
General typos - just track, probably a mistake, and shouldn't happen often with vigilant peer reviewers.
Ref-in-ref notable omission - Things like not disclosing a certain ref-in-ref is a preprint, failed, etc. Probably should report to the reader.
Ref-in-ref typo - Linking to the wrong paper in the paper's references. This should be reported to to the reader.
Ref-in-ref contradiction - Errors in copying data from another paper to the paper, making statements that are not supported by the other paper. I feel like this should be reported, like other the other Ref-in-ref categories
Copyright violation/plagiarism - Ref should be removed as soon as possible. If not, report, provide copyvio report.
Verifably illogical - Claims such as "birds don't exist" or "FDR invented the Federal Register" that would require overlooking enough sources to be problematic. This is mostly a catch-all category, for LLM hallucinations or otherwise, that should be used with caution, and should probably just be tracked.
Citogenesis/Citing Wikipedia - Apparently it's still a thing, but I'd prefer sources be honest rather than hide it (see [20][21]). Policies should encourage the use of permalinks to properly cite Wikipedia. Speaking of perverse incentives...
Perverse incentives? Less citing of sources overall? Counterpoints: Existing incentives to cite to increase impact or whatever. Could be solved with another category:
General contradiction - Tracking only, focus only on all refs that were ever cited on Wikipedia to reduce scope. Some contradictions are expected, but an excessive number of contradiction notes - more likely to be fringe?
Rolling this out might take an extended period of time, and will probably involve the WMF as well as new templates, modules, instructions, etc. Thoughts on this, as well as how improvements could be broken up or rolled out? ⸺(Random)staplers03:56, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[…] non-extended-confirmed editors may not make edits to internal project discussions related to the topic area, even within the "Talk:" namespace. Internal project discussions include, but are not limited to, Articles for deletion nominations, WikiProjects, requests for comment, requested moves, and noticeboard discussions.
Of those discussions:
WikiProjects, RfCs, and noticeboards aren't visible to readers, so non-extended-confirmed editors are less likely to encounter them.
RMs are the exception – they're advertised on the relevant articles, and they're held on article talk pages. These talk pages are only protected sparingly (in response to significant disruption), since there are legitimate reasons for non-extended-confirmed editors to be editing them.
Currently, the only way for non-extended confirmed editors to know that they're not permitted to participate in these RMs is to:
Spontaneously scroll to the top of the talk page.
Read the entire GS notice, and understand that requested moves are an exception to the exception to the extended-confirmed restriction.
Click on the "extended-confirmed editors" link, learn what the term means, and understand that they are not extended-confirmed.
I think this is a highly implausible sequence. If we want non-extended-confirmed editors to stop participating in these move requests, we should put a template in the RM section that instructs non-extended-confirmed editors, in plain language, not to participate in them. The {{if extended confirmed}} template could be used to directly let editors know whether they are extended-confirmed (and possibly tailor other parts of the message as well). jlwoodwa (talk) 17:43, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Then I wonder if we should only be displaying the {{requested move notice}} to extended-confirmed editors, on those articles where the ECR forbids non-extended-confirmed editors from participating in RMs. On the other hand, extended-confirmed editors might be reading Wikipedia while logged out, who would log in and participate if they see the notice. jlwoodwa (talk) 20:17, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not a bad idea, and yes I could still see where some would object because an EC editor might encounter an article while logged out, seems enough of an edge case to where hiding might be worth it anyway. The other concern is that even people who only ever read should be alerted that something might happen to the page that has come up in discussions about the utility of AfD notices for example, but in considering the tradeoffs hiding from non-EC may well be the least bad option here, though it's certainly no panacea. 184.152.68.190 (talk) 20:59, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since move discussions normally result in working redirects, I don't think that there's a need for non-editors to be warned that the page's title might be spelled differently in a week or two. The argument with AFD is that the article might cease to exist, so the non-editor might want to save an offline copy in case it disappears altogether. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:54, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good point, and further strengthens the case for hiding, can be combined with the originally proposed notice in hopes of reducing numbers a little further still. For the remainder maybe some type of user talk page notice that explains what happened and why as gently as can be managed while still stressing the seriousness of GS restrictions. 184.152.68.190 (talk) 02:16, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think a page informing the readers of Wikipedia features would be helpful, since the public largely do not know much about Wikipedia's backend even though billions visit this site. Topics featured can be looking a page history, talk page discussions, WP:Who Wrote That?, etc. I imagine it woule be placed under the Today's featured picture, since we want to showcase quality work first. I've made a demo here: User:Ca/sadbox. Catalk to me!13:11, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good. And it's fine if we recycle them fairly rapidly, since these are things can be easily reused – in fact, I suggest cycling this weekly instead of daily. Cremastra ‹ u — c › 15:56, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The nature of MediaWiki: pages is always such that there will almost never be deletions. And when there are, it is because some message is no longer used. Because of the very technical nature of MediaWiki: pages, I don't think WP:MFD is a suitable venue, since not all users at WP:MFD will have the technical expertise to determine something like whether a MediaWiki message is used or not, etc.
We have WP:TFD primarily for templates and modules. I want to see maybe we can workshop a proposal for determining if, when, and how MediaWiki pages are deleted. I do wonder if maybe due to the nature of MediaWiki: namespace that maybe it should be exempt from most of the speedy criteria and only deleted after a discussion at WP:VPT, where editors can discuss the MediaWiki software, etc.
No matter where the discussions are hosted, it will still be true that "not all users...will have the technical expertise to determine something", or anything, about the page. This is a case where the hosting location is much less important than the efforts to advertise the discussion in suitable places. Fortunately, since there are very few discussions about deleting those pages – 49 since MFD's creation, and only one this entire calendar year that wasn't started by you – it won't require be a significant burden to make sure that those few get advertised. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:00, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm... That is also true. The closest thing I can think about for technical discussion of pages, etc. would be WP:TFD. We could probably rename that process "Technical pages for discussion" and then it would include MediaWiki: pages as well (as well as maybe user scripts). WP:VPT and WP:TFD seem to have the highest number of technical editors discussing functionality, etc., so maybe we should lean there. AwesomeAasim16:49, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per MOS:BOLD, the first appearance of an article's titular subject should be bolded, as should any alternate names for the article. When I first started editing Wikipedia, I was surprised that those were just manual boldfaces with HTML tags. I was wondering whether it would be better to apply it with something like this: " {{article main name|Apples}}, also known as {{article alternate title|Oranges|oranges}}, are a fruit. " which would display as "Apples, also known as oranges". The two templates would auto-populate the title and short description into a disambiguation page if there were multiple instances of the same name. Further, a hatnote would be auto-created (if there were multiple instances of similarly-named pages, the hatnote would lead to the disambiguation page, and if there was only one, it would lead to the other article).
I think that this would vastly improve the simplicity of maintainging disambiguation pages and hatnotes. However, it could increase barriers to entry for new users, but that could be mitigated with editnotices, template documentation, etc. It may also be difficult to implement, but I foresee bots being able to implement the work.
"Apples, also known as oranges"? I'm not sure I understand your use case for making such pages so inaccessible and code-ridden for newcomers. Aaron Liu (talk) 04:09, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Aaron Liu - Yeah, I see what you're saying, but I think most of the learning curve could be eliminated if, when someone tries to edit a disambiguation page, an editnotice of some sort appears and recommends that they go edit the source page.
