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New ideas and proposals are discussed here. Before submitting: Check if your proposal is already described at Perennial proposals. Proposed software changes that have gained consensus should be filed at Bugzilla. Proposed policy changes belong at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Proposed WikiProjects or task forces may be submitted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. Proposed new wikis belong at meta:Proposals for new projects.	Shortcuts: WP:VPR WP:VP/PR WP:PROPS
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Contents 1 Get rid of PROD 2 Featured content stars for featured pictures 2.1 Alternate implementation 2.2 Possible Solution to Ambiguity 2.3 Subdividing for clarity 2.3.1 Support implementation of featured picture stars in caption boxes and in infoboxes 2.3.2 Support featured picture stars in caption boxes only 2.3.3 Oppose any use of featured picture stars 3 PROposed Redirect similar to PROposed Deletion 4 Rethinking the term "administrator" 5 Proposal for counterhoax unit 6 Wikipedia Trading Card Game 7 Training room? 8 Should a link to a commercial search engine be included in the template Refimprove 9 Mark pages less than 24 hours old for no-indexing 10 Something to add to a warning template 11 Draft namespace 12 Increased usability through breadcrumbs? 13 Ban off topic political debates 14 Proposed new 'small text' button 15 Hypothesis testing for Flagged protection and patrolled revisions 15.1 Are there existing plans to test for success? 15.2 What metrics should be gathered? 15.3 Are specific measures required for valid testing? 15.4 General comments 16 Namespace for books 17 Forbidding programme guides 18 A Permanent Record

Centralized discussion Proposals Discussions Recurring proposals Discussion on promoting Wikipedia:Notability (law) to guideline status Discussion on CfD speedy renaming criteria 6 (disambiguation fixes from an unqualified name). Discussion on refining Community de-adminship (aka Admin Recall) to formalize a RfC. Proposal for achieving infobox-template coherence of properties in Wikipedia(s) Discussion on promoting Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals) to guideline status Note: inactive discussions, closed or not, should be archived. archive • talk • edit • history • watch

[edit] Get rid of PROD

I've been thinking about it for a while now. The process involved in PROD, while ideally designed to reduce the workload at afd, leaves too many articles open for deletion that simply don't have anyone watching them. Articles that have inherent notability (such as many facets of geographical locations. Towns and such in countries that do not have any involved English editors) can often be deleted without notice to anyone. These articles are not "less important" because they do not have any sources, or because they haven't changed in several years, or because they contain a bare minimum of information. These articles have broken the ground where other editors will one day expand upon and fill in information.

In short, PROD only determines that nobody is watching an article, not that its deletion is uncontested. All non-speedy deletions merit some discussion. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 19:20, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of an admin that would delete an article through PROD that they believe has poor reasoning to be deleted... I don't totally disagree with you, but there are people who watch WP:PRODSUM too.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 19:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

This sounds more like an argument of deletionism versus inclusionism. As noted above, WP:PROD doesn't automatically delete pages after seven days. It still comes down to a judgment call by the acting admin. --King Öomie 20:44, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Admins should not be deleting article on-sight merely because they are an expired PROD. Spurious nominations can (and should be) declined. Shereth 20:46, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Well you can look in the deletion log, and ask an admin to have a second look at deletions that look as if there ws a prod on a notable topic. Do you have some examples you would like restored? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

You are assuming an admin opens the article and looks at it. There are several different tools designed to allow one to delete entire categories (like old PROD categories) without the bother of having to manually open each page. Dragons flight (talk) 20:55, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

That would be bad, and I would be disappointed if that occurred (without review). People have been shot down at RfA's for missing a single CSD borderline case. If we have admins deleting entire categories of content without review, that would be a very bad example. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I would expect that an administrator deleting all expired prods without bothering to look at them would be admonished, if not desysopped. That's a severe misuse of tools. -- Atama頭 22:07, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Well perhaps you should talk to the frequent deleters of PRODs and ask them about their process. (The history of PRODSUM makes it easier to identify who is is really doing the deletions.) For example, NuclearWarfare (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · moves · rights) is a frequent closer of PRODs and often deletes 20 such pages in a single minute. I would assume he uses a tool to accomplish deletions at that speed. Now, he could have reviewed every one of those beforehand, in which case there is no issue. Historically though there are certainly examples of people using tools to clear deletion backlogs with no review. For example, I remember someone deleting some 700 disputed fair use images without looking at their content or considering the validity of the dispute. Such people can get yelled at, but they are rarely desysoped. Dragons flight (talk) 22:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that when I was an admin, I often handled several days of PROD at a time. I'd open up dozens or hundreds of tabs, go through them all (removing more than a few nominations, although in general PROD seemed pretty accurate & I consider myself an inclusionist) either editing them or opening up the deletion field, and then I'd make a second pass. So even though the log would show many deletions a minute (and even per second if I was typing particularly fast), I was still reviewing them all exactly as they should've been. Doing it this batch way saved me vast amounts of time because I didn't have to wait for several seconds of loading & rendering time for each page. From the outside, I don't think there's any easy way to see whether NuclearWarfare is employing a batch method or not. (Although I suppose you could look to see whether there are miscellaneous edits or PROD removals in the 20 or 30 minutes preceding a mass-deletion.) --Gwern (contribs) 00:52 10 November 2009 (GMT)

• oppose if an article has no one watching it, I don't see it as much of a step towards creating a genuine article on the topic. Stubs are good up to a point, as sort of an outline for future development, provided it's actually a good outline. But I would think that the unwatched status of unwatched stubs might be correlated with them not being particularly good outline items. In cases where that's not so, the article can always be recreated. There's a legitimate concern that the editors who do care might have large watchlists and not notice the PROD, but that could be dealt with by formalizing the courtesy notices into a requirement. --Trovatore (talk) 20:54, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. Prod is a valuable process. There is a group of regular prod patrollers who could always do with extra help. I regularly prod patrol, and in my experience the vast majority of articles deleted by prod have no chance of meeting our criteria. We delete maybe 60-80 articles per day via prod, and I rarely deprod more than two from a single day. Prod avoids the drama and sucking up of time of editors that AfD involves, and it is less severe than speedy deletion. Admins don't just blindly delete expired prods as they can contest the prod themselves if they see fit, and any prodded article can be restored at any time. Another option if you don't have the time to properly improve a prodded article is to move it to the Article Incubator. Fences&Windows 21:20, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - I wonder what basis Floydian has for this argument, as it doesn't seem to match what WP:PROD states or how proposed deletions are actually processed. Articles that do not have any sources, haven't changed in several years, or contain a bare minimum of information would be as unlikely to be deleted via PROD as they would via AfD or CSD. As said above, every article deleted through PROD has been reviewed by an administrator who uses his or her own judgment regarding the deletion justification given when the deletion is proposed. Should we get rid of speedy deletions because someone might incorrectly put an A7 tag on a notable article subject that isn't being watched? -- Atama頭 22:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - PROD helps keep the workload at AFD manageable. Users' time is not an infinite resource, we should allocate it to discuss articles that actually might warrant a discussion. If anything we need to use PROD more. Any article deleted after a unanimous AFD could potentially have been PROD'ed. Mr.Z-man 23:16, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
• Alternative: WT:PROD#Userfy PRODs instead of delete?. Rd232 ^talk 00:57, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The basis I have, which initially got me going on this idea (aside from my own opinion that as long as an article isn't utter BS of defamatory than it usually deserves a place here) was the over PRODing of articles by Less Heard van U (who is an admin I believe, and may have been deleting those articles after 7 days), who was doing so solely on the basis of A) a lack of sources and B) a certain size requirement. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 03:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

If you think the articles should have remained, tell the deleting admin, and they should restore it as a contested PROD.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 03:09, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

That's an issue to take up with the admin, or his/her behavior. There's no benefit to changing our policy based on one incident. BTW, you can see who deleted an article in the logs. Would be best to do that before making accusations. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:58, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

PROD was intended to replace AFD and CSD. Somehow that process stopped halfway, and now we have 3 systems, instead of one good one. I wonder how much time it would take to take things a few steps forward again, sometime soon? --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:30, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Kim, I think your memory is betraying you on this one. I don't believe anyone seriously proposed PROD as a replacement, but rather it was originally proposed as a way to take some of the load off a chronically overworked AFD. Dragons flight (talk) 01:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I know at least some folks (like me ;-) )wanted it to be side-by-side and then eventually replace, because AFD at the time was really bad, and admin deletion sucks in general. AFD has improved since then, CSD hasn't. It might be nice to actually work on updating the systems with what we've learned since last time, and simplifying besides :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:10, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know why we need multiple systems and huge bureaucratic structures for deletion proposals. There should be one template that you stick on the talk page if you think a page warrants deletion. Have a bot date these templates, then an admin comes round after the appropriate time and decides what to do (based on the arguments given, if any, plus his/her own knowledge about wider consensus). No fuss (well fuss about whether to delete the page, obviously, but no additional complications spawned by the process itself). Ah, but that would be too simple, we have to let the wikibureaucrats have somewhere to play... --Kotniski (talk) 16:14, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

We don't have to let 'em play at all! I think you could sort of treat it like a hygiene issue analogous to -say- malaria at the panama canal: Eliminate the breeding grounds for them and/or the vector (simplify and tidy areas where too much bureaucracy has encroached), and inoculate people against them (by getting people to understand IAR and consensus as early as possible)

Do you think we can still stamp out the disease? ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:21, 5 November 2009 (UTC) To be clear, I'm not sure AFD is as much of a problem area as it was years ago. I think the bureaucrats have retreated to other areas.

Getting rid of PROD would at least concentrate the problem in one area (AFD), rather then spreading it out. The real issue with the current deletion process is simple: it's not structured enough. Surveys and widespread general opinion have shown for quite a long time now that at least the perception, if not the reality of, our current deletion process is simply too random. I know from my own personal investigations that the admins who regularly participate in AFD definitely have a brain on their shoulders, and there is at least a DRV process now in order to take care of the more egregious deletion problems. Those two items make me fairly confident that the majority of deletions that do occur are at least defensible. The fact remains that the process itself is still far too random, however. We all know that there are articles that almost every would agree should be deleted, yet when those articles manage to be identified they can still be difficult to delete. More serious is the fact that many "borderline" articles continue to be deleted on a daily basis. What some deletion advocates seem to (continuously!) fail to grasp is just how permanent and therefore demoralizing and damaging deletion is to author/editors... I don't want to turn this into more of an Inlcusionist rant then it already is, so I'll end here by simply saying that I support deprecating the confusing and unnecessary PROD procedure.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 05:00, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, the majority of deletions are via CSD. In terms of deletions per day, there are about as many articles deleted via PROD as via AFD, and about 10 times as many articles deleted through CSD as AFD and PROD combined. Mr.Z-man 05:33, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. Honestly, I only use PROD if it's only borderline CSD. Most of my prods get deleted under speedy criteria.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 05:43, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

The thing is that you guys are right. Nobody is disputing the point that probably 99.9999999+% of all deletions are perfectly acceptable... but, none of that matters. The 0.0000001% of deletions that are not acceptable are the ones that are noticed, and the fact is that they should be. No matter how much potential good that the proper deletions gain the project, the fact is that the few instances of bad deletions do enough damage to far outweigh the good. At least, in my opinion.

There are those who take similar views and create an ideology that "all deletions are bad", which is just as much of a problem as doing nothing with the current deletion process is. I personally feel that a temporary moratorium on deletions (and a short one at that, possibly even just a few hours) is at least called for. However, that action is predicated on the belief that we can and should actually make a change that will better the project as a whole. Article deletion for it's own sake shold be stopped. Preventing article deletions for the sake of preventing deletions should be stopped as well. The process as a whole needs to be tweaked, at least, and intentionally slowing it all down certainly couldn't hurt (although, admittedly I do recognize that doing so will anger a certain percentage of the editorial population). At the very least, if all but the most egregious deletions take 7 days (or possibly even a couple of days longer)... who or what is harmed by that?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 06:56, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I would say that even if 5% of deletions by Prod were erroneous, the system is working fine. When people notice that their article is gone, they generally contract the deleting admin, and the article is restored. Abductive (reasoning) 07:01, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

No, no, no... anything as "in your face" as deleting articles simply cannot stand up to this line of thinking. If we were talking about normal open editing procedures then I would agree with the point that you're making here, but the simple fact is that we're not.

Article deletion needs to be treated with the same... "respect" (for lack of a better word) that blocking is treated with, and for the same reasons. I'm not arguing that the deletions are a mistake at all, just as the vast majority of blocks are perfectly acceptable. However, in the exact same manner that good blocks still create controversy and emotion, deletions will and should cause the very similar reactions.

Think about this: if there was some sort of a "speedy block" policy/procedure being proposed, what would your reaction be to that? Granted, the analogy is far from perfect here, but at least give it a chance.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:21, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess I was just wondering why you seem to have a problem with the lack of a formal process for PROD and not for CSD, even though PROD can be overturned by anyone for any reason at any time. Why are you assuming that all of the bad deletions come through PROD? It isn't a "speedy" procedure at all, so your analogy doesn't make any sense. PROD takes as long as an AFD. Mr.Z-man 17:05, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, if I had my druthers, I would prefer to severely restrict the use of CSD, along with simply switching the PROD procedure to use AFD instead (which is effectively what we're talking about here). I don't really believe that any change in the deletion process is possible, but this at least started a discussion about it. It's just... complicated. For newer editors, and especially for part time editors (which, in my view, are probably the most important editorial members of Wikipedia), the fact that there are three different processes with a fourth follow up (CSD, PROD, AFD, with DRV to follow up) is simply confusing and overwhelming. The WP:DELETION document is in a perpetually confusing state. Whether someone comes along and decides to start one of the deletion processes on an article is way to random, and CSD and PROD almost always occur too quickly for non-regular editors (and even many regulars) to really follow the process (never mind the fact that there are simply too many deletion discussions to really follow). PROD does take as long as AFD, but it's a mostly silent procedure so the perception is still there of fast change.

Anyway, as I said earlier I don't really think that there are many bad deletions, if there are any at all. This isn't actually a discussion about reality though, it's a discussion about perceptions. All of you who oppose this proposal are on solid factual grounds, but the fact is that doesn't change the perceptions of those who are supportive. We're talking past one another still, at this point.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 21:31, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. The proposer has brought up some hypotheticals, but I don't see any evidence that clearly notable articles or stubs are being routinely deleted via the PROD process simply because nobody is watching them. Sure, it could happen, but it's very unlikely. The system works, there is oversight to it, there's a strong fail-safe worked in to curb abuse (anyone can ask for it back at any time, an article can only be marked with a PROD once and only if it meets certain criteria.), and while having three separate processes can be confusing to outsiders, it's not that hard to explain things. I'm not entirely convinced PROD is necessary anymore, to be honest, since I'm not sure the problem it was intended to solve exists anymore. But I see no reason it should be dismantled because of what might happen in theory (if we're doing that, let's drop CSD first. In theory, one could get the main page deleted that way). --UsaSatsui (talk) 14:59, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. Most PRODs in my experience are merited (and I deleted hundreds if not thousands of PRODs), usually have been looked over by a second user (excluding the deleting admin), and they do us a genuine service in considerably lightening the load on AfD, letting people focus on truly borderline articles. The userfication proposal has merit, but that's a separate issue (though I encourage Floydian to take it up next!). --Gwern (contribs) 00:57 10 November 2009 (GMT)
• Oppose I regularly partrol PRODs, and regularly deprod about 5-10% of what's PROD'ed. I routinely restore prods per request... just check my talk page archives. The problem may be with individual admins not doing their jobs well, but not with PROD itself. Jclemens (talk) 04:23, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's too easy to stop, if anyone really cares. Unschool 06:14, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. PROD is vital for its drama-reducing effect on the deletion process.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 21:49, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, but that's not to say that the process doesn't need serious improvement. Unwatched and uncared-for pages are a problem (I've seen many decent articles go), and the deletions shouldn't be done blindly. That said, the process has its place. As an idea it's much better than what AfD has become. Let's delete AfD instead. I'm not kidding. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 21:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
  • "You are User:Ed Poor, and I collect my 2 pounds", or however the game goes? I'm getting Strong Deja-vu here. ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC) perhaps it's a glitch in the matrix?

• Oppose with alternative - require articles that have been around more than, say, 30 days to have 3 people agreeing to the deletion instead of just 2. This would allow today's "very easy" prods for new articles that weren't speedy-able but have a higher standard for lightly-watched articles. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:05, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Comment while I don't follow PRODs it does seem likely that, as I hae observed with CSDs, they do get deleted on the basis that thye are correctly and validly nominated. When I used to do CSD's it was delete, delete, delete.. wait lets examine this one: edit- not speedy, save - the page has been deleted by someone else - sigh, undelete. It may be better now of course. Rich Farmbrough, 21:19, 18 November 2009 (UTC).
• Comment I don't know what the answer is, but the system as it is doesn't always work as it should. I see a lot of AfDs which were contested PRODs, so although it's designed to lighten the AfD workload it has the potential to add to it instead. I think some editors try to use it as a short-cut process for articles which end up at AfD anyway. Sometimes I wonder how many people actually read the bit that says PROD is supposed to be for uncontroversial deletion candidates. It serves its purpose correctly when it's used for articles like How to be a spy, but on the other hand we have candidates like Wendy-O Matik, which probably has the potential for a decent article even though the current version needs a complete rewrite, and The Novocaines, which looks a perfectly acceptable article aside from the lack of citations and perhaps questionable notability of the subject: since the article was only created in October 2009 it's unlikely to have been completely abandoned by its author, and I think this one would have been better dealt with by tagging it appropriately and perhaps later AfD if concerns were not addressed. I would certainly support Trovatore's suggestion of making the courtesy notices on talk pages a requirement, which would lessen the chances of editors overlooking PRODs on a busy watchlist, but I also think that 7 days is a pretty short time period: editors could return from holiday, internet connection problems or real-life demands on their time to find their articles deleted. This isn't a major disaster with PRODs since articles can be reinstated on request, but it's still a bit demoralising especially for newbies who may be unfamiliar with procedures. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 05:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
• Concur w/CMD. In large part, the problem is editors who do not do a search on their own per wp:before, prior to prodding. The same problem afflicts AfDs.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:01, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per MrZ. ╟─TreasuryTag►stannator─╢ 21:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Featured content stars for featured pictures

Asian Golden Cat
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Felidae
Genus:	Catopuma
Species:	C. temminckii
Binomial name
Catopuma temminckii (Vigors & Horsfield, 1827)

You know how featured articles and featured lists are marked with a gold star in the corner? Let's mark featured pictures too so they're easier to find. Currently, readers either have to browse the featured content galleries or else click a lot of thumbnails to find featured picture needles in the content haystack. Here's an example of how hard it is to tell a featured picture from a non-featured picture at a glance. Several editors at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates have a proposed solution.

Add a small featured star to the caption box near the featured picture. This communicates at a glance that the image meets the site's highest quality standards. Featured pictures hold up to viewing at close scrutiny, and can be suitable for monitor wallpaperand other purposes. At left is an example of a featured star in a taxobox. Below is an example of how the featured picture star would look in an image caption.
The featured picture stars would be implemented and maintained by bot. We think this would make it easier to see and enjoy the site's best content. Bringing the proposal to the wider community for discussion. Durova³⁶⁶ 20:42, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I am something of an anti-star curmudgeon (I don't like seeing FA stars floating around on user pages and all over the place) so you'll have to take my opinion with a grain of salt, but personally I find the solutions presented above to be distracting. FA stars on articles are, at least, somewhat inconspicuous and take up relatively little in the way of real estate; the above stars are intruding on templates and captions and to be honest seem inelegantly pasted in. I also would have some concern as to whether or not the addition of graphics into areas of templates where graphics might not be expected has unintended (and unwanted) consequences in terms of template formatting. So, the short answer is, I'm no fan of the idea but it may be just me. Shereth 21:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm a featured pictures regular, so you'd expect me to support this, and I do. I think that the little stars are unobtrusive, and do the reader a service by signalling that the image really is worth their time. It improves the reader experience at very little cost. Mostlyharmless (talk) 22:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I have an honest question here. I am curious how knowing which pictures happen to be featured improves the typical reader's experience? I'm not trying to question your statement but rather just trying to understand the point of view presented here, since I am having a difficult time seeing the material benefit of indicating, at least within articles, when an image has been selected as "featured". Shereth 22:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

(To Shereth)- I can only speak for myself, but as a "photo-illiterate" who has to rely on others for photos/pictures for articles I create/work on, I often go to other articles and "steal" their photos for my new articles (to represent that existing article name on a new list article, or if I need a photo to represent a particular town and there is a geologic formation in that town with an existing article and photo). If I need a photo and I can tell at a glance which photo is a FP that would help me use the best one for my new article. That is just one example of what this star can help with.Camelbinky (talk) 23:13, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

@ Shereth: It will increase curiosity and hopefully bring people into the project, get them to donate their photos, and maybe even nominated some FPs. I became a member of the project because of some of the beautiful images that were promoted to FP status, and only because I stumbled across some in articles (at first I didn't get the connection between FPs and POTD). Unlike articles though, images can be used in many places, so some rather non-descript articles may have some hidden treasures (which needn't be so hidden if the star were added). My amatuer interest in photography led me to take part in the process and since joining FPC, I've uploaded more than 600 photos, four of which are FPs. Durova is also working hard at getting donations from educational institutions; the opportunity to get on the Main Page sometimes opens up difficult-to-get-at collections. upstateNYer 00:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your replies. I am sympathetic toward those who put a lot of time and effort into creating/uploading images and graphics for use in Wikipedia - I've uploaded over 13,000 on Commons, mostly via bot and mostly graphics as opposed to images but I feel I have a certain amount of sympathy nonetheless. I'll chew over some of this information for a while and see if I come up with some additional insight but I appreciate your responses. Shereth 03:34, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• Strong support with inclusion of infobox stars as well Couldn't have said it any better than Durova, and now that we have a way of getting the star in infoboxes, no FPs will be left behind. upstateNYer 22:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
• I like the idea but agree about screen real estate. It would be nice if one could use CSS trickery to place the star overlapping or on the image (with possibly some ability to set which corner it should be by), but then I worry that for some images, the star could become too distracting. --MASEM (t) 22:30, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong support per UpstateNYer and Durova.Camelbinky (talk) 22:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
• "too so they're easier to find." is a poor argument, given that there are other methods to do so. I'm not going to go hunting for featured images by hunting through articles... It also draws the eye away from the image, unnecessarily so, and Masem's idea would simply obscure the image in question in some part. These are enough to draw me to oppose the proposal. --Izno (talk) 22:42, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support except for the infobox implementation. I find it to be obtrusive as used in the example infobox. The thumbnail view is great since that would be unused space next to the caption anyway. Great feature in an article with multiple angles or views of the same subject. Let's the reader know which one may be the best one to view at full-size. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 22:46, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

• This is a more palatable solution to my curmudgeonly resistance to these stars. I'm still not in support per se but if it has to be implemented I would prefer to see this solution :) Shereth 22:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

• I don't mind one way or the other about this little star, but if it is "hard ... to tell a featured picture from a non-featured picture at a glance", why is the featured picture project of use for Wikipedia, in which images are generally only viewed at a glance? Fences&Windows 22:58, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • There can be times when editors want to view an image in detail. Featured pictures hold up to careful viewing and scrutiny. Durova³⁶⁶ 00:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support as a good way to encourage more good quality photographs in articles and reward editors that produce them. I think some more tough could be put into how the start is displayed - an overlay on the image might make it clearer that it is the image that is being "starred" and might work better in the info box example too. Is there any equivilent for "good articles" status for images? rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 23:40, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • WP:Valued pictures is essentially the equivalent to GA. upstateNYer 00:57, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• I am pro highlighting featured images, but I'm not sure about the best approach. I'd consider adding a star as an overlay on one of the corners (though this may work poorly for some images). Or one could do something totally different like adding a gold border to the image frame rather than adding a star. Dragons flight (talk) 23:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

• oppose - The majority of people who will see those stars (anons, and regulars) will have no idea what the stars are and can lead to confusion, especially when they click on it thinking the star would do something (as might a regular website)b. The current article stars are okay because they're hidden way up in the top corner, but this is right within the article. Perhaps this can be implemented as a gadget for those who see it as beneficial. -- penubag  (talk) 00:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • This argument has already been brought a couple times at WT:FPC and the response has always been, "then what do those anons and regulars do about a star in the top-right corner of an article?" It's the same thing. upstateNYer 00:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I think the star at the top of an article is okay since it's out of the way and necessary to exemplify featured articles. But I personally think it's distracting to have stars in the middle of an article to point out "featured here and there" parts, and unnessary. One of the criteria for a featured article is that is is properly illustrated with images, and adding featured pictures help the final product get renowned. It seems unprofessional to single out good works within an article and advertise them. Shirley, Encyclopedia Britannica, or any encyclopedia doesn't engage in such practice. The image summary featured templates are good enough.-- penubag  (talk) 01:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
      • I dont know what Shirley does in her encyclopedia (Airplane reference, get it?), but for your Enc. Brit. comparison- we arent paper, we can, and often do, do more than an encyclopedia can, we arent limited to doing only what "real" encyclopedias do. That really isnt an argument that can be used against this proposal. Paper encyclopedias dont have templates, infoboxes, wikiprojects, categories, talk pages, and alot of other "shiny things" that we can have being internet-based. This is another thing that helps us make a better encyclopedia, that's my two cents.Camelbinky (talk) 03:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Camelbinky pretty much said what I would have. As for your first sentence, what makes FPs any less noteworthy than FAs? An FA being illustrated is completely unrelated to FPs; it's nice to have FPs in an FA, but not required or even expected. Noting that an image is an FP with a star gives the project some needed press and may cause some new users to start donating their images and nominating good content (not all editors build text content, wikignome, etc - some limit their contributions to image-related tasks; why lose a potential contributor because of an argument over a star in a caption?). It's like when you first discover FA as a new user: "Wikipedia has standards? Gasp!" upstateNYer 04:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
        • What makes an FP less noteworthy than an FA? Nothing, but the images are being presented in an article, so if the article displays a star for being featured, it's okay. We are not reading images, and if we are, the featured star exists on the file description page, which is where it belongs. If "it's nice to have FPs in an FA, but not required or even expected" then why showcase it just when they are??? Camelbinky only talked about one of my points which I admit was poorly crafted, so I retract that statement. Your second point about "lose a potential contributor" is like the argument for having image placeholders which has been rejected by the community. Also, another comment, if this proposal passes, why not have featured stars on featured quotes from Wikiquote? I would love to see that happen. -- penubag  (talk) 06:08, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
          • Identification of quality images serves the same function as identification of other content, such as articles: to get the attention of potential contributors who could donate material at a similar level. The New York Times ran a piece last summer about Wikipedia's need for better media content, which profiled a successful professional photographer who has contributed a featured picture.[1] To highlight only the featured articles doesn't help to improve the media side, since most featured pictures appear within articles that aren't featured. Few individuals are skilled at both media and text contribution; featured articles often display images that are merely adequate. There's even been a problem with non-media editors replacing featured pictures with lower quality images. It's usually done in good faith; they just don't realize the difference. Durova³⁶⁶ 18:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
          • Just as much effort is put into getting an FP as an FA, trust me. The time commitment and the number of gigabytes of photos that I don't nominate or upload is large. As for your wikiquote reference, I'd have no problem with that, but note that you're talking about a completely separate project whereas FP is a WP project. And I didn't know the image placeholders had been poo-pooed by the community; I use them all the time and think they're a great idea! upstateNYer 22:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
            • I was just going to comment that I also never realized image placeholders werent "allowed", I missed that memo.Camelbinky (talk) 02:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - Maybe at some point WP can become more of an encyclopedia for readers and less of a repository for signs and symbols of behind the scenes social activity? --Kleinzach 02:17, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support. I get the feeling that some of the opposes are on the basis that this is merely project-cruft. However, high quality pictures that illustrate articles in highly encyclopedic ways are important to the project. Wikipedia:Feature Pictures places high premium on the "encyclopedic value" of an image in illustrating particular articles - being merely pretty or high quality is not enough. Wikipedia's Featured Pictures are ones that add considerable value to articles, and thus are likely to be images which readers are likely to get value from in looking at more closely. For this reason having a small and unobtrusive marker is going to improve the encyclopedic experience of readers. Mostlyharmless (talk) 02:38, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Fair enough. Can the star be made 'small and unobtrusive'? --Kleinzach 02:44, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I would say the the star is already 'small and unobtrusive'. If this encourages editors and readers to submit more images and allows users to quickly find good images, I would think it is an excellent idea. Definite support. NW (Talk) 03:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support. I find this rather uncontroversial. Having a star on the page isn't going to detract from the quality of the image, nor can I see it confusing new users. We already have this for other featured content, so I'm fine with this. PeterSymonds (talk) 03:16, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Do you find the images to be linked inline with the text in every instance? Say, everything linked to Barack Obama? That is the equivalent of what will be done here, in my eyes. How would you not find that obtrusive? --Izno (talk) 04:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Would you mind elaborating? I'm having trouble understanding your meaning here. Just to cover the base, the plan is to have the stars link to WP:FP in all instances (though you may very well not be referring to that link; again, I was unclear on your statement). upstateNYer 04:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Support — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 06:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Fairly obvious support. Wikipedia is known for its crap photos and this may go some way to correcting that problem (by encouraging new photos and keeping crap ones out of articles that already have FPs). MER-C 07:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• It gets my support too, following on from Mostlyharmless' comment. A wee star saysclick me, and just like the FA star, it tells you you'll be rewarded by spending some time with the content you find when you do. Per MER-C, images on WP are increasingly underrated, under-employed and overlooked, and this may well prove a key element in reversing that trend. mikaul^talk 07:35, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Support When you compare the amount of space advertising "featured articles", the little start is quite minimal. It is also part of a necessary emancipation of the illustration.. remember, a picture paints a thousand words and, many of our articles are overly verbose.. GerardM (talk) 10:23, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Would there be a way to replace "" in thumbnails of FPs with a slightly flashier version - maybe gold background on the larger rectangle, rays, or superimposed star on larger rectangle? No extra screen clutter, easily differentiable for people who are looking for it, and would signify that it's the magnified version that's special. Pseudomonas_(talk) 12:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • We thought of changing that but it would require actual code changes to the wiki, there isn't a template anywhere that would work for that. Then again it's possible to create a custom image box template for FP's that would do as you say, unfortunately that would also be beyond the abilities of us that created the template and proposed the idea. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 16:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose The reason to add this feature is sound and I support it. However, as was stated on the first discussion about this in WP:FPC, this proposal can only works if the star is added through an entirely automatic process (such as "picture has FP tag -> auto include of star whenever picture is included in a page" which would be very tricky to do). Many pictures are featured and some are delisted every week, and all pictures may be included in several places, so ensuring that the star is displayed for the right pictures everywhere is a huge work. Failing to do this properly will merely make this star meaningless, with many thumbnails of FP lacking it, and some thumbnails of delisted pictures having it. Soon, misinformed people will start to add it to any picture they find pretty. Therefore, until someone propose a way to deal with this problem, I oppose the creation of this template which will otherwise probably be misused and then misunderstood. Ksempac (talk) 14:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Part of the closing process (specifically for delisting) could be adding/removing this from pages, generally FP's are not on _lots_ of pages but only a one or two or three rarely more. It wouldn't be that much more of a burden. The bot would just ensure that it's not being used anywhere it shouldn't along with catching pages that a FP is used on later. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 16:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
    • An understandable worry, but easy to resolve the same way featured articles and featured lists get managed. A bot would update the displays per the featured picture templates. So other than coding the bot, this doesn't create any more work for anybody. Durova³⁶⁶ 18:01, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Some kind of tag to indicate a featured picture would be fine, so long as it is not too intrusive. Surely a bot could take care of the maintenance? How are the featured article stars done? Fences&Windows 15:13, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Definitely. As far as I can tell, the worst-case scenario brought up here is that readers will be confused, click on the link, figure it out, and the either a. go "Okay" and get on with their lives or b. get interested and start editing. Where's the downside? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:39, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support. I didn't even know WP had such a thing as featured images until I started reading WP:Signpost. Our featured content (and to a lesser degree our "good" content) is supposed to represent our best material, and we should try to make readers aware of that. --RL0919 (talk) 17:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support - Definitely. We give lots of praise and kudos to the people who work on FAs, but not so much for featured images.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 17:30, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support outside of infoboxes. I'm not convinced from the example above that they look good inside them. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:54, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Weak support for this outside of infoboxes as well. I've given it some thought and while I still find them mildly obtrusive I doubt they would do any harm. I wish there was a more elegant way to perhaps replace the symbol with something indicative of the featured status but that is merely nitpicking on my part. However I will still oppose the inclusion of any graphic symbol within infoboxes, as they do funky things to the formatting and are more than a little intrusive in appearance in these instances. Shereth 18:27, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support, reasonable proposal. Rather uncontroversial addition to the website. –blurpeace ^(talk) 20:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support but not in infoboxes Great idea, it helps readers to find the best of Wikipeda images. It looks confusing in the taxobox-what's it linked to? Let's leave them out of infoboxes, though. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:43, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Note If a bot is going to be used to maintain these, it should be easy for the bot to only add the star for images where the file name is located within [[ ]] brackets, and ignore those without. That would skip any image located in an infobox. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 21:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Comment. Maybe it's just me, but I don't have a problem with how the star looks in the infobox example. --RL0919 (talk) 21:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• Looking at the image above, I don't know what the star is related to. It does not appear, in the infobox with the cougar, that the star is related to the image, but rather that the star is related to the species in some way. Even in this discussion about stars on featured pictures, and knowing exactly what FA and FP stars look like, my first thought was that the star means it's an endangered species or maybe one taken off the endangered list. I want stars on featured pictures in articles, I think it's a great idea, past time to have them. But I don't want to confuse readers, ever. Impossible to reach that goal of never confusing a reader, so I'll settle for eliminating the worst confusion. When I see something that is so confusing, that I'm not sure what it is even when I know what it is, this is, imo, something that may confuse more users than it provides any utility for. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 22:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• Support We do this for other featured content types. — Jake Wartenberg 23:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• Conditional support In thumb boxes, it looks ok. But I agree with those who find it out of place in infoboxes, and I just can't see how it would not look even more out of place on the other types. Anomie⚔ 00:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Thiodina puerpera
Image of a female Thiodina puerpera
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Arachnida

• Support - both infoboxes and thumbs. A star below an infobox image would not look obstructive if there's a caption provided, such as the one on the right. Maybe the FPC process can imply the requirement of captions in infobox FPs, which would also merit the EV an image needs to be featured. ZooFari 01:18, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

• Now it even more appears to be saying the species is rated star for some reason, removed from endangered list would be my guest. My second guess would be the taxon's article is a featured article. The problem is, imo, it appears to belong to the taxon, not to the image. And, I like the idea of attaching the stars to featured images in article space to let users know they're special. But I don't like the idea of attaching stars that don't appear to be for the image. In addition, adding the star to the taxobox will require input from the biology projects. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 01:56, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose - Readers only care about the content of articles (and images), not about those internal mechansms of wikipedia. They care about if the article is complete, clear, well-written, etc; and if images are of good quality and related to the topic, or not. Being featured, however, is only of community concern. The star can be considered a self reference (by being an addition that isn't related with the article at all), but having no text and being at a corner the problem is so small it can be ignored. Those others, however, would be in the middle of it all. Second, have in mind that internal links to featured articles from other articles make no distinction when they link featured articles, there's no underline, bold text or gold link instead of blue. Why should images be any different? And third, an image is featured or not by itself. For an article to be well ilustrated, the image must be related and ilustrative of the topic, not necesarily a featured one. For example, let's say there's an article that talks about an old war: a portrait about such war, even if available at a low resolution, would be far better than a photo of a sunset in the beach where the armies once landed, even if that sunset is a featured image. MBelgrano (talk) 02:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Actually you're overgeneralizing there. Just like an article can't be featured without images, an image can't be featured without being in articles. Encyclopedic value is what makes WP:FPC different from Commons:FPC. upstateNYer 03:29, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia Featured Pictures places a very high premium on the encyclopedic value of the image in illustrating a particular concept with specific reference to the articles. Unless it relates to the text that surrounds it, it won't be featured. WP:FP isn't pretty pictures - they do that at Commons:FP. WP:FP is about illustrating the encyclopedia with the best images. Mostlyharmless (talk) 02:28, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Generally support but reasons for opposes need to be taken into account before implementing. See User_talk:Durova/Archive_73#Implimenting featured picture stars easily for a couple of ways implement this automagically. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I like that idea. Though (as others have said), I'm really not sure about for infoboxes. Pseudomonas_(talk) 10:02, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose in Infoboxes As others have commented, it would not sufficiently clear to the uninformed what the star applies to, possible misinterpretations including the infobox itself or its subject. Also wastes a slight amount of space if no caption is present for the infobox image. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Regarding taxoboxes one of the most encyclopedic uses of high quality images is species identification. Wikipedia's photographers have been doing amazing work in that regard, for example with birds and flowers. It would be a real service to readers to have a cue available when the lead image is that useful. Durova³⁶⁶ 19:05, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

  The concern is that the star does not appear to indicate the picture is featured, when it's in the taxobox. Even coming here to discuss this, knowing that's what the stars are, my first thought was the pictured cat had been moved off the endangered list or something.

  So, if the star is not a cue to the image being featured, but leads to confusion about the status of the species, then it's not a cue about the lead image. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 07:47, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose because it doesn't add value. Rather it adds confusion. Rich Farmbrough, 21:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC).
• Support. Linking the star to Wikipedia:Featured pictures reasonably clarifies any kind of confusion. A bot to monitor them would be good, too. Dan ☺ 21:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Not needed, and causes confusion. I'd rather we start working on improving the encyclopedic content more than adding small features as golden stars in infoboxes for images. warrior4321 22:04, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's metadata, and original research, since there is no independent confirmation of the value of the image. If we want to clue readers on whether it's worth clicking through, add the dimensions in the title attribute.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I've added an endangered species with an image star. It looks like the star is attached to the IUCN red list category in some way, and about the same with a caption or without. Adding this to taxoboxes will require input from biology editors, also. They should be notified of this discussion. Also fossil organisms have age ranges, add the star to the trilobite taxobox with its fossil range to see that it doesn't appear to indicate it's a featured picture. Yes, clicking on it takes you to the FP page, but, it still starts out with confusion. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 07:50, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Barbary Lion
Barbary Lion
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Felidae
Genus:	Panthera
Species:	P. leo
Subspecies:	P. l. leo
Trinomial name
Panthera leo leo

Note Due to the proposal to add the stars to taxoboxes I posted a request for input at the taxobox template discussion page, and at wikiprojects Tree of Life, Animals, Plants, and Fungi. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 08:34, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Alternate implementation

I don't think that the core of this idea is bad, but I think that it's clear that the proposed implementation is lacking somehow. I was just thinking that a good solution would be to use the "Designated Metadata Area" (if that's actually a term) that the current featured article start uses, and to use a different graphic (a graphic of something like a photo would seem to make sense). If the Featured Photo appeared anywhere on a Featured Article then both icon would appear.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:13, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

This makes the most sense. I'm going through this page thinking "caption areas? infoboxes? Thats ridiculous!" Why would these appear anywhere except on the File: namespace for the photo. We don't put stars in the infoboxes or next to the links of featured articles, why should we with featured pictures? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Possible Solution to Ambiguity

There is really nothing to prevent the community from decreeing that the star for FPs be the same star as for FAs. If we had a featured image star that looked unique, it would solve all three different ambiguity concerns that I have seen above. Nezzadar ^[SPEAK] 16:12, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Only for established users who know what the conventions are. For the regular user who just uses Wikipedia as a website, it'd just make things that wee bit more confusing, unintuitive, and excluding. Pseudomonas_(talk) 16:27, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know. That might work. Can you offer a suggestion, a logo about an image that makes it seem the image is unique? I do like the idea of cluing the user in to the quality of the image, particularly since if it's a featured picture it's usually a large file, and, when it's not, it's usually a very important image. This makes finding an image, particularly when it's not your specialty, easier. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:32, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Subdividing for clarity

It appears that most people support the use of featured picture stars in captions and a smaller number support it for infoboxes. In order to clarify matters please state your opinion in one of the following sections:

1. Support implementation of featured picture stars in caption boxes and in infoboxes.
2. Support featured picture stars in caption boxes only.
3. Oppose any use of featured picture stars.

[edit] Support implementation of featured picture stars in caption boxes and in infoboxes

• Per above. Durova³⁶⁶ 22:35, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• As I said above, I think this is a good idea and I don't see a problem with having it in infoboxes. --RL0919 (talk) 22:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Ditto RL0919 upstateNYer 03:45, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support In both places. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 09:07, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support - if the infobox is required to have a caption under the image. Comment - why are we turning this into a vote? We should at least use bullets instead of numbers...--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 13:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  I went ahead and changed the numbered lists in the sections to bulled lists, to keep this as consensus, not voting. I still don't like dividing this into sections, but it's a little late to undo that, at this point.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 13:56, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  Hmm... opposers are quite convincing... going Neutral.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 14:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Support -- ZooFari 23:04, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Weak support This should be judged based on its value to readers (if this is aimed more at editors or some other narrower audience, we can seek another method, like categories or something). My reason for thinking the stars may help readers is that they give an idea of whether it is worth bothering to click on a thumbnail link to see a larger image. But I agree with many of the oppose comments about self-references and self-congratulation and clutter not helping readers, so this is a weak support verging on weak oppose. Kingdon (talk) 15:26, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support I think this is an excellent idea, and, IMHO, the stars aren't distracting. I fail to see how the 'new users won;t know what it means' argument works, as, surely, linking them in to our best content is a good thing? :-) Colds7ream (talk) 07:57, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong support, dont find them distracting, and they are beneficial to those who look for the best pictures so we can use them elsewhere on Wikipedia.Camelbinky (talk) 01:51, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Support featured picture stars in caption boxes only

• Strong, strong oppose - This would be troubling. All FPs should be treated fairly. One of the reasons for stars is the motivation of nominations, and potential FP contributers would be motivated to contribute their images in thumbs only. Taxo bars are what we consider high EV images and we don't want to lower that bar. ZooFari 23:29, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support I find the white space created in the taxobox to look awkward, and the star is not clearly linked to the picture in that location. I also don't agree with the proposal to add a caption in the infobox to fill the white space. Any picture in an infobox should already match the title bar, and a caption would be redundant. They work well in the thumbnail frame, and should be used there. Nothing says that the best picture is going to be most appropriate for the infobox anyway. That one should contain one that will be most recognizable to the reader, whether featured or not. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 00:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• For what it is worth, this is not my preferred solution; I actually have a preference for the below option (oppose all stars), however, for the sake of cooperation and compromise I am willing to support this version. I am still quite opposed to any addition of such stars to infoboxes. Shereth 05:54, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support --Cybercobra (talk) 06:35, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Although, leaning toward the below option, as it is hard to communicate to supporters just how inappropriate they look and how confusing their addition to taxoboxes would be to readers. They're too confusing in the taxobox. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 07:50, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong oppose as this would encourage editors to not put the FP's in any infobox so that the star could be displayed. Inferior photos would end up in the most prominent place (ie- the infobox).Camelbinky (talk) 01:54, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose any use of featured picture stars

• Oppose any use of featured picture stars in article space. Stars linked to internal Wikipedia processes are 'self-referential'. They shouldn't be used in the encyclopedia per se. Nor do I agree that "most people support the use of featured picture stars" (above). The opposition is considerable. How about setting up a thorough-going centralized discussion to see what support this really enjoys? Reg. --Kleinzach 23:19, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

  I note that stars for featured articles and featured lists appear in the mainspace. Anywhow, I agree that the discussion should be fully publicized considering how much input it has already drawn and the diversity of opinion. An RfC with placement on WP:CENT should do the trick. --RL0919 (talk) 23:27, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

  Article stars are a different matter since they appear outside the body of the article; they are as much part of the article as donation banners. If this feature is implemented, we'll have articles literally peppered with stars. mgiganteus1 (talk) 11:05, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  Of course, at the moment, thanks to said banners, the FA stars appear in the article body. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:38, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose featured picture stars. The stars are disproportionately flashy, potentially confusing in meaning (especially in the taxobox), and most importantly, do not improve the encyclopedic merit of the article in any way. The image is already there; it's doing its job regardless of whether a star's next to it. What problem is adding these stars meant to solve? Is there a flood of complaints that unmarked featured pictures are detracting from users' experiences? The point of every Wikipedia article is to present information. Let's keep out unnecessary distractions to that goal, and high-quality images can attract attention to themselves on their own merits. -- Yzx (talk) 09:32, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong oppose Distracting and unnecessary. Woefully inadequate as a way of highlighting quality images in an article, because the number of FP-like images on Wikipedia is very many times greater than the number of official FPs, and this will always be the case. mgiganteus1 (talk) 11:00, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose in article space. What next, stars next to article links? Hesperian 11:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - weakly for thumbnail boxes, strongly for infoboxes. It's all distraction and clutter that bit-by-bit makes Wikipedia less intuitive. Pseudomonas_(talk) 11:07, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Urgh, this is hideous. FA stars are tucked away in the Designated Metadata Area(TM) in the top-right corner, not actually within the main content pane. This is self-referential and a gaudy advertisement, and implementation would be an emormous undertaking. Would that people stopped obsessing over their stars - it's bad enough that people feel the need to tart their home pages up with so many silly boy scout badges without this creeping any further onto articlespace. That said, I would not be opposed on principle to Pseudomonas's suggestion in the general comments section that the "click to view me full size" icon in thumbnails could be overloaded in some way for FIs (certainly not with a flipping star though), but not in infobox templates.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Thumperward (talk • contribs) 12:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  I'd kind of thought of something like but less ugly (that was hacked up in 5 min). Personally I'd be happy to shelve this until MediaWiki allows a parameter for overloading the images - then we could also maybe overload for disputed images &c. Pseudomonas_(talk) 13:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose I don't personally have strong feeling about this, but I think that the oppose commentary here makes for a fairly convincing argument. It's probably a good idea to bring some attention to featured pictures (and other featured content), but this doesn't seem to be the way to go about it. I find the "self-referential" and "not in the content pane" arguments offered above to be particularly compelling.
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:05, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose All the featured content within Wikipedia should be treated the same. We don't add stars to everyplace that a featured article or list links in other articles. The thumbnails in the articles are links to the picture page and from what I have seen, the picture page has the star in the upper right hand corner (like articles and lists) but it also has a banner on the page stating it is a featured picture. We do not need to add additional star everyplace that it links. ~~ GB fan ~~ ^talk 13:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, self-congratulatory and kindergarten-ish. Readers can't be expected to dig through our back-office processes to understand what it means. Changing the color of the little magnify symbol would be a more aesthetically pleasing option if this is felt necessary, but I don't think it would be a positive step in any form. Christopher Parham (talk) 13:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose in article space . An image can be valuable to one article, while being unsuited or even misleading in another. Having the star in article space may give the sometimes false impression that the image is the one best suited for that particular article. Melburnian (talk) 13:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

  Good point, Melburnian. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:09, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Swayed by good arguments of opposers. Self-referential; obscure; distracting; clutter. --Cybercobra (talk) 19:35, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. Classic example of original research: no independent evidence of notability.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  ...huh? not that I disagree with the !vote, since I opposed myself, but... Original research? notability? What does that have to do with anything here?
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  If someone were to add a Wikipedian with many barnstars, many newly created articles, and hundreds of thousands of edits, but who was not notable outside Wikipedia, to a "List of people in Wherever" article, it would rightfully be reverted, since there is no independent evidence of notability. If a bunch of Wikipedians formed a project to issue a list of the ten best English-language movies of the year, based not on external reviews, but on their own opinions, it's hard to imagine they'd get much support to put it in mainspace. How are featured pictures any different?--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  Humm... I don't have any real issue with the Featured Article or Featured Picture process myself. Labeling them as OR isn't really accurate or helpful here though, since the processes themselves are not really what's at issue here. Let's not overstate our case here, and start an argument about something that is really tangential to the proposal. We're hardly going to develop consensus to deprecate those processes out of this discussion, after all.
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 16:43, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  You asked him to explain his reasoning, and he did. He's not starting an argument, nor does he give any appearance of trying to start one or get rid of the FP or FA processes. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 17:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  I have no quibble with having FA or FP, nor do I disagree with the concept of barnstars: All are ways to encourage quality, cooperation, and all the other good things that make Wikipedia work. On the other hand, elevating the identity of the awardees to encyclopedic content seems counterproductive.--Curtis Clark (talk) 18:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  I disagree that it elevates them by using them in article space. I find it helpful to know an article is a FA or an image is a FP because I know it has received some level of scrutiny higher generally than regular articles. (The FP I admit is more about size and technical issues and poorly about EV, but I still find FP more useful, often, than non-fP.) Still, I see you have valid concerns, because of my ()al remark about FPs. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:06, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  I'm just trying not to be confused here, because I am, and we're essentially on the same "side" so that's not a good situation. There seems to be a rather fundamental viewpoint difference here because I don't see FA or FP evaluations as an "award" at all. Classifying them together with barnstars at least sheds some light on the original question that I had about this, but it only creates a new question. There are people that take personal pride in "getting an article to FA" status, and Durova clearly takes pride in doing the same with images. That's great for everyone because ultimately the encyclopedia wins all the way around. The editors are motivated to (continue to) contribute, and the content is vastly improved. However, the FA or FP "award" ultimately belongs to the article or file in question, not the article. So... again, I hardly begrudge the !vote since I'm !voting the same way, but this position concerns me because it seems to be a repudiation of the whole "featured content" system itself, and I don't want to support that.
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:46, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  But you're not supporting any particular other vote by voting the same. Whatever reason you vote, is simply your reason. If someone else votes the same way as you, but for a different reason, there's no assumption that you adopted their reasoning. I've not even heard of that, so I may be wrong about what you seem to be saying. Others' reasons for their votes don't accrue to you when you vote the same. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

  Maybe to you, which is great, but human nature being what it is... Anyway, it's not as big of a deal as we appear to be making it. I was more curious then concerned, really.
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 11:21, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose, of no help to Wiki readers, and featured pictures is a process which gets very limited community input. These proposals are self-referential "creep". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, I think the idea is inherently flawed, as there is no good way to indicate that images are featured without either being confusing or obscuring part of the image. No one's going to understand why stars are appearing in their captions. They will just end up being removed. Kaldari (talk) 17:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose It's not a terrible idea, but I just don't think it really adds anything that would be useful for most readers. And the infobox stars in particular would just be confusing. Reach Out to the Truth 17:32, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
• I had been willing to support a compromise solution but the more I think about it the less I am convinced. The only real argument as to a material benefit to the reader is, paraphrased, "Lets users know which images view well at full size/are worth clicking on to see at full size". This reasoning implies that non-featured images are somehow not worth clicking on to look at in full size, or somehow do not look good at full resolution, and that is patently false. The distinction between an otherwise "good" image and a "featured" image can be marginal at best, and to the untrained eye (or those not familiar with the process) may be negligible. Take the Tower Bridge photos above. The featured photo is clearly superior but the non-featured version is not bad. There really is not a convincing reason to encourage editors to view one image at full size but not the other. I can't see any defensible argument that these stars provide the reader any material benefit and thus no longer see any reason to support any version of the proposal, sorry. Shereth 17:38, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
• As I stated before, stars on featured content are added in the content itself, at an unobstrusive place. Featured articles or lists are not linked from other articles any different than non-featured ones and there is no system intended to make their links more "visible". There's no compeling reason not to do the same with images: if they are of featured quality, and are included in the article, then they are already doing their work. MBelgrano (talk) 14:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per many above. I fail to see how putting a star beside the picture will "draw someone in" that wasn't already interested in the picture or even how that's supposed to be beneficial. "Yes, nice picture. Now what?" If you're harvesting pictures for different articles, you should use the picture that's appropriate, not the one that won the beauty contest. Matt Deres (talk) 01:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] PROposed Redirect similar to PROposed Deletion

When doing NPP I see articles that probably could be PRODded away but instead I redirect. However, what I really would like to do is a "proposed redirect" with a bot doing the work a week later if nobody removed the "dated redirect" template. It's a lot less work for me to slap a proposed redirect tag on something than to slap a merger tag then remember to come back a week later and redirect it.

Before going to the bot approvals group or working out the details, I wanted to see if anyone else would find this useful. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:07, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a pretty sensible idea, I think - a variant on PROD, which retains the automatic "object or let it be" approach but doesn't automatically lead to deletion. Perhaps we could modify the existing PROD templates in order to have an optional "redirectto=pagename" parameter, or something, and blend it in that way? Shimgray | talk | 19:20, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

This is how redirects work already - be bold, redirect, and if anyone objects you're back where you started. --NE2 19:48, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

See WP:BRD for more detail on that, in case anyone doesn't know about it already. Anomie⚔ 20:11, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

NE2, Anomie: What I propose is a bit less bitey and more in the spirit of cooperation than WP:BRD, but much more lightweight and, when there is no objection, automatic than WP:MERGE templates. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:23, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Make the redirect and tell the creator "you can undo it if you want by going to [undo link here]". That's how prods work anyway. --NE2 20:28, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Bold, Revert, Discuss can work in an article, but is far more of a hassle for renamings, merges and redirects, because what's happened is often far from clear to those who might want to discuss (or object to) the action. They just find themselves somewhere strange (or may not even notice that the name has changed). —— Shakescene (talk) 20:29, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm actually not opposed to this. I could certainly do with a "proposed editprotected" and "proposed page move" along the same lines. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposed editprotected would result in every single article being edit protected, since some editors prefer it that way. - we already have a proposed pagemove see the uncontroversial section of WP:RM 76.66.197.2 (talk) 06:13, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I love this idea. PRORs would be much less intimidating to the newcomers who create similar articles but are unware of better ones. They would also give people a chance to chip in before the thing happens, rather than wake up one day and have their articles redirect for reasons they don't understand. BRD is good, but telling people "BTW, I'll redirect this if no one objets" is also good, and much less offputing.

Propose editprotect makes no sense. How could you place the template on the page if it's protected? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea, but what about "be bold" and "bold, revert, discuss"? It seems that they work the same way. If an article is prodded for redirection and another editor opposes it, he would remove the tag and then I assume discussion would occur. Likewise, under "be bold" and BRD, an editor will go ahead with the redirection and after another editor notices it and objects to it than he would revert the first and discussion would begin. In both cases if noone notices or noone objects the redirection would go ahead. I myself prefer the status quo, as that appears to work fine and most incidents with redirection occur when BRD turns into edit warring, which is a behavioural issue and not a content one. The current way of doing things seems less to do the same thing with less beaurocracy. ThemFromSpace 06:31, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

It'd be a hell of a lot easier to just make use of the article's Talk page. Propose the redirect, wait a week, and go ahead if there's no objection. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:24, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Rethinking the term "administrator"

"Adminship is no big deal," right? But the very term "administrator" implies that someone is "in charge." We all know there are plenty of "administrators" who see themselves as masters of the community; we all know there are plenty of people who come here seeking adminship because they're convinced it's some sort of elite status. After all, who doesn't want to be in charge?

But if the purpose of this role is to be the community's servant than its master, its title should reflect that. People who think of themselves as servants rather than masters are more likely to accept that their job is to enforce the will of the community rather than their own preferences; they're more likely to deal with others deferentially and politely; and they're more likely to take a less heavy-handed approach. How could anyone not support this?

Words have connotations, and those connotations matter a great deal in influencing peoples' perceptions. Let's take a step towards making Wikipedia the cordial, collegial, egalitarian utopia we all know it can be. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 18:42, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Which other names do you suggest? MBelgrano (talk) 18:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I've long advocated the term "Community servant" Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I seriously doubt that the reason some administrators exceed their authority is because of the name. ^Chillum 19:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

So you don't think that someone who finds the title of "Administrator" bestowed upon him is likely to think, "Wow, cool, I'm an Administrator! That means I get to be in charge and tell other people what to do!" whereas someone receiving the title "Community servant" is more likely to think "OK, I'm a Community Servant, so I'd better listen to people and see just what it is they'd like me to do for them"? Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

No, not really. People are who they are. Administrators who exceed their authority do not do so out of some sort of misunderstanding regarding their job title, they do it because it is in their nature and they think they can get away with it. ^Chillum 19:31, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

And people who are predisposed to go on power-tripping benders are more likely to seek out positions that they believe put them in charge (thus giving them more power to abuse) than those that they believe make them submissive. And the masses are more likely to resist abuses if they come from those they see as servants rather than those they see as masters. The term "administrator," because of its connotations, makes the view of administrators biased (especially from new people, who don't know the proper role of an "administrator" on Wikipedia yet) towards being seen as masters. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I dunno, we have an office administrator here and they aren't in charge of anything. They do stuff like lock the door at night (protect), make sure the paper shredders pick up our recycled documents (delete), and hand out key-cards to new employees (userrights).Nothing glamorous... –xeno^talk 20:20, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

As has been said elsewhere, the time is far past, unfortunately. If this were 2003, it'd probably be workable, but I think the statute of limitations is way past gone. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 19:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, the name is entrenched. Changing it now would be more trouble than it's worth. –xeno^talk 19:13, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

It's easy to sow the seed, and then it grows on its own. But we have to actually sow the seed first. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

It is the same seed, just under a different name. To extend the metaphor you can call a seed whatever you want, the same plant is going to grow. ^Chillum 19:33, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think your particular extension of the metaphor is quite valid, though. Plants don't have psychologies that are affected by connotations and language; people do. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, we clearly disagree on this matter. You can seek consensus for this idea, but it does not have my support for the reasons I have already given. ^Chillum 20:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, even if you called it a stenchblossom. It would be more effective to rethink the role of the administrators in whatever areas you see as problematic. The name itself means absolutely nothing to those who are aware of their role as an administrator. Only someone who hasn't a slightest clue about what's expected of an administrator is likely to infer a meaning of awesome power from the title of "administrator" and those people will get tarred and feathered at their self-nominated RfA. Not that all self-noms are from the power hungry type, just that most members of the community generally have enough sense to not nominate someone like that in the first place. Big Bird (talk • contribs) 20:47, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there has recently been a similar discussion, to a similar outcome, at WT:WikiProject Administrator. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC) In the year 2006, on BBC Radio 4, Clive Anderson presented a programme about Wikipedia (I think it was called "The Wikipedia Story"). On the programme, he interviewed some one who was a Wikipedia administrator. He asked the administrator whether he saw himself as some type of lord of Wikipedia, and the administrator replied "No - I see myself as being more like a janitor!" So, please do not think that all Wikipedia administrators see themselves as being Wikipedians of high or privileged status. I am not an administrator myself, and I can only say that in my own profession (lecturing in higher education) the term "administration" is often seen as a term used for all the dirty work jobs which lecturers see as the poor relatives of lecturing and research. I suspect this is the same in the health professions. In my own country, the United Kingdom, administration sometimes gets a bad press, as being the term for the boring but essential jobs in one's profession, and I suspect this is how the term is viewed by many Wikipedians. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:18, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

No sane person would say anything else in a public interview--it would be suicide. That doesn't necessarily reflect how they really feel about the job or see themselves, though. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 19:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I would add that what are termed administrators on Wikipedia would really be called moderators on any other web forum. Serendi^podous 23:12, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

It's probably worth noting that on most of the forums I'm on, moderators are a level below administrators. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, on other forums, admins are the people with access to the source code, whereas moderators are the people with the power to block users and delete posts etc. Serendi^podous 02:39, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Moderator probably does fit more than administrator for Wikipedia, but might not solve the problem. Moderator connotes "objective observer" rather than "participant with added duties", and from a power degree standpoint may actually worsen the problem. I'd actually rather see the term changed to something more descriptive of the position as subservient, like "janitor" (as an extreme example). Merely making the position sound less glamorous may decrease the incidence of power-seeking individuals seeking it out, while increasing the number of people who are genuine about wanting to actually pitch in with the workload. Equazcion (talk) 03:13, 1 Dec 2009 (UTC)

How about "caretakers"? Serendi^podous 21:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I've always liked referring the admin package as the "Wikipedia maintenance tools". Forget discussing the person (X is a sysop, Y is an admin) just say User X has access to the maintenance toolbox. -- Avi (talk) 07:17, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Well the user rights group needs to be named something, from a technical standpoint. Equazcion (talk) 07:23, 2 Dec 2009 (UTC)

User-rights - "Maintenance". -- Avi (talk) 07:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I second this proposed renaming. --William S. Saturn (talk) 07:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I think I like "Maintenance" as well. Equazcion (talk) 07:35, 2 Dec 2009 (UTC)

I'm slightly opposed to it, not because I think its a bad name, but because it's trying to fix something which isn't broken, which is always (imo) a bad Idea. Others have stated above some of the reasons why a rename is unnecessary. Kind regards, Spitfire^Tally-ho! 09:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

'Janitor' Josh Parris 00:41, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Like ACEOREVIVED, I was a little surprised by the connotation that "administrator" has in US English. In Ireland too, the term has no connotation of authority. As several have already commented, the problem I believe is to do with perception rather than reality (among admins as well as among non-admins). Deliberately demeaning titles (like "janitor" or "servant"), would do more wrong than right. Every other term will suffer the same fate as "administrator" unless perception is changed.

Like what Avi wrote, I too believe that it's bad practice to refer to any other editor as being an "admin". All editors, admin or not, are equal. It is normally unnecessary to draw a distinction between editors. If you do, just say that they are someone who as access to the admin tools. That really is the only distinction. Never treat any editor differently because they have access to those tool.

Remember too that we do have another term for admins: sysops. Use that word. And don't forget the euphemism that is the "mop". If you feel an admin is going on a power trip, you can simply and gently remind them that there is no need for them to get above their station just 'cos they got a mop. That sort of gentle reminder for an admin you feel needs to be taken down a few notches is better than kicking all admins with titles like "servant" or "janitor". --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 22:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Make admins "Wikifiddlers" cus they generally fiddle with things and it's already used by the popular press. A jokey name? Well adminship is no big deal so why give airs and graces. Nanonic (talk) 01:17, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with User:Josh Parris and have often used the sentence "Remember Admin=Janitor; they are here to clean our messes". Just as a janitor is a school cleans things up, they do not in fact have power to "punish" the students. And neither should admins, unless the Community as a whole wants them to "enforce" a "punishment" decided upon by the Community. Admins need to learn their place and not treat us as children or "beneath" them. We are all equals, and if a name-change is what it takes to teach the few bad-apples among them a lesson in humility then I am all for a demeaning name to replace "administrator".Camelbinky (talk) 01:27, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for counterhoax unit

There is a countervandalism unit, but most vandalism seems so crude and obvious, it will get corrected quickly. A more pressing concern than vandalism is the hoaxes that get into Wikipedia - as happened to the article on Ronnie Hazelhurst in 2007, or the article on Maurice Jarre earlier this year (2009). Do we now need a "CounterHoax Unit"?ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:35, 28 November 2009 (UTC) Just in case any one needs reminding about these hoaxes, I can give more information.

The hoax concerning Ronnie Hazelhurst happened after his death in 2007, when some one stated that he had written a song for S Club 7. He did not, but this - for a time - was hoax that led to quite wide media coverage. The hoax has how been corrected (see the talk page at the article on Ronnie Hazelhurst).

The hoax concerning Maurice Jarre concerns something he was supposed to have said during his lifetime.

Does any one remember either of these incidents? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The Jarre one is linked from his talkpage. The news story is still good. Basically, someone edited the aritcle right after he died to include a quote, and someone (or someones?) wrote an obit based on the WP article, including the quote. Many film score fans were peeved that it was done to Jarre specifically... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Trading Card Game

The Wikipedia:Trading card game (proposed/created by TomasBat), is obviosly a trading card game, but of Wikipedia. It is a project page still, but maybe one day it will be an article. There are several bugs and delays with it as the project started to be in inactivity. I, RatónBat, TomasBat's brother, suggest users to come and help this project. Actually, we are trying to have the rules, but we have 5 proposals, and we decided to make voting sesions (which is at it's discussion page) to decide which will be the rules for the game. So please come and vote so we get to a conclusion and finish this project. Thanks for everything!--RatónBat ^{Talk 2 me!!} 23:56, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

maybe one day it will be an article. Let's all hope not. People should not be creating User space garbage in the hopes that some day it will make it into article space. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 17:49, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

When I said that, I was saying that someday there will be a trading card game of wikipedia, and there would be an article of it.--RatónBat ^{Talk 2 me!!} 00:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Training room?

The recent news that Wikipedia lost 40,000 editors in the first three months of 2009 has got me thinking. When I joined Wikipedia three years ago, it was still possible to start an article that failed pretty much every one of the tests that would today get it listed for deletion. As I faltered and stumbled, I learned the tricks of the trade, I developed the article until I brought it up to feature status. Today, you don't really have the option of faltering, and new users are often turned off by the dismissive nature of reverting or rolling back their edits. Would it be possible then, to create a "training room", where new editors could, under the supervision of a (nice!) experienced editor, learn to edit pages without actually saving anything onto the mainspace? Say you wanted to edit an article, but clicked a "train" icon instead of "edit". Then your changes would appear not on the page itself but on a duplicate of the page created just for you to experiment on. A senior editor would then be alerted and could then explain, in a helpful and not nasty way, how to ensure that the edit survived for longer than three seconds. Seems like a good option to make Wikipedia friendlier to newcomers. Serendi^podous 00:11, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the adoption center needs more highlighting, that´s all. In my opinion, this project can do pretty much of help in this matter, but I don´t see much newcomers to direct themselves there or even notice the existence of that page. - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 18:35, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe a different approach is needed? I'd like to see projects take on 'apprentices' (my word - substitute another if it sounds old fashioned). This would be more successful than a centralized approach, because it is easier for an experienced editor to help a newbie if they are both working in the same field. --Kleinzach 00:36, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:Articles for creation is a non-confrontational environment. Fences&Windows 01:05, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Mmm. Unfortunately the chances of the IP recommending a new angle on Sexual dichromatism (or an article on a town in Sumatra) meeting the right editor through WP:Articles for creation must be close to zero. --Kleinzach 03:20, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, I got some gems when I was doing heavy AFC work a couple years ago I accepted about 50-60 articles over about a month's time. Now how many of them benefited from me being the "right" editor, I can't say. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Should a link to a commercial search engine be included in the template Refimprove

There is a an RFC at Template talk:Refimprove. It would be helpful to include a link to a commercial search engine in the template. But this means that there will be external links outside the "External links" section in hundreds of articles. Do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? See Template talk:Refimprove#RFC: Should a link to a commercial search engine be included in the template Refimprove? -- PBS (talk) 17:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Mark pages less than 24 hours old for no-indexing

Proposal: Mark all newly created pages and all drafts newly moved into article space as "no index" to search engines. After 24 hours, remove the mark.

Purpose: This, combined with Wikipedia:New pages patrol, would discourage vanity and advertising articles, which would in turn lessen the load at NPP.

Possible unintended consequence: Slimy editors would start hijacking existing articles or writing an article likely to slip past NPP then go back a day later and turn it into adcruft. But the not so slimy ones wouldn't bother, so it would be a net good for the project.

Note: This will require a code change or bot to manage. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:45, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

It's critical for new pages on recent events (such as 2009 Jeddah floods or 2009 Nevsky Express bombing) to be indexed as soon as possible, so that they get traffic. Cenarium (talk) 18:57, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Oppose. Articles like 2009 Fort Hood shooting and 2009 Nevsky Express bombing are created in response to current events, rapidly obtain a very high profile, and in my opinion a big part of what Wikipedia can do right. Since Google News started adding Wikipedia results to its listing, it is not uncommon to see such pages listed even within the first 24 hours. In addition, I would say the issue of deciding what to index and how to rank the results is really a problem for search engines and not for us. It goes too far to say that all new wiki pages are bad, but at that same time, I would assume that most search engines would treat new wiki pages as lowly ranked (since they will have few or no incoming links, for example). Also, there is nothing magical about the first 24 hours, except possibly that we clean up / speedy much bad content within 24 hours (and if that's true, then it is already about as strong a deterrent to bad article creation as one could hope for). Dragons flight (talk) 19:04, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
• Partial Support Provided this was amended to noindex on unpatrolled new articles I would support, but as Dragonsflight explains above we need to have articles suddenly on new subjects. ϢereSpielChequers 19:12, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

• Limiting to unpatrolled sounds like a good plan. It will be less abuse-resistant but less harm-inducing. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:56, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
• Aye, once it got patrolled it could be given the green light. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 00:24, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, but it might be better to use an "index this" template of some sort, for those few articles where it actually matters that the thing be indexed right now (not in 1 or 2 days or a week). Some templates like "current events" could include the "indexthis" template automatically. Rd232 ^talk 09:23, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, if _NOINDEX_ is allowed to work (enabled in the software) for the articlespace, then I'm sure that getting _INDEX_ enabled in the article space wouldn't be too far-fetched. That being said, I don't know the likelihood of that happening. Killiondude (talk) 09:33, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I imagined the software doing this automatically, so everything younger than, say, 7 days would be noindexed - unless it was specifically INDEX-tagged. Rd232 ^talk 22:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

If a search engine like Google has detected a page is noindexed then does anyone know how long it will typically take before it discovers a status change to indexed? Google is quick to spot new pages so I fear many of them would be discarded as noindexed and not revisited for a long time. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it takes that long. Pages can also be specifically submitted for reindexing. Anyone have any details? Rd232 ^talk 22:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Something to add to a warning template

something could be added that discusses how easy it is to revert spam, so there should be not point in even doing it.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 20:28, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

No one has anything to say about this?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, give it more time. Less than a day here isn't likely to get many initial comments. Personally, I'd say there's no point; spammers will spam, regardless of how easy it is to revert. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree, you can only do soo much to fend off the idiots. At a point, the information will scare off more of the normal contributors than they will scary of vandals/spammers etc. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

It's also quite simple for one to delete unread spam messages from their email inboxes, but spammers still send spam don't they? PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 04:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Only when there is not a billion of them, and the spam folder dosn't automatically delete its contents.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 17:20, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Draft namespace

Have there been previous discussions regarding a Draft namespace? I'm curious why one hasn't been implemented yet. It could be automatically noindexed from search engines and it could neatly categorize userspace drafts, among other things (like the Article incubator). Anyone have links to a previous discussion or know why it can't be done here? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:50, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be a recipe for lots of half-written articles going nowhere. How would I come across a "draft" and add to it, build it up? Would it not be little different from a userfied page, with just one or two editors working on it? What if two people are working on the same "draft"? Why not just put it in the main space and let everyone work on it (and allow it to build up naturally)?

I don't want to put the idea straight down, those are just questions, it has potential but it would be quite a change to the normal early life-cycle of an article. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 00:23, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, userspace drafts have the most obvious issue of "belonging" to a particular user (which is almost always entirely arbitrary). Namespaces are for content separation and categorization. This mountain of crap content exists already (mostly in the User namespace, though in the Wikipedia namespace to an extent), this would just be a cleaner way to store it. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:37, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good idea. The whole purpose of a wiki is to make articles EASILY findable from the start, so that they can grow organically as people who happen across them and know a bit that's not already in there can add it themselves. Stashing incomplete articles somewhere where they won't get Googled makes this almost impossible. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 01:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Between userspace for 1-person or 1-person-led collaborations and the incubator for peer collaboration I think we have enough places to draft articles. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:29, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The incubator is nice because a common prefix makes for easy exclusion in robots.txt, though a separate "folder" for this kind of content doesn't seem crazy. It's a bit strange how the namespaces are used currently (some breakdown is available here: Wikipedia:Database reports/Page count by namespace). --MZMcBride (talk) 01:33, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I had questioned this proposal above but now have an anecdote from this morning that would cause me to re-think. I am (was?) in a content dispute with another editor. As part of it, the other editor suggested that we bring our dispute to a wider audience. I opened a subpage on a relevant task force and put the bones of an RFC together. I then invited the other editor to put their piece in before the page be advertised. The other editor took offense to this because he perceived that I as jumping the gun and catching him off guard. Fair enough.

Userspace would not have been an appropriate place to create the subpage (it belonged as part of the collaborative effort). Project space proved an inappropriate place also - because it is 'live'. If a Draft namespace existed it would have been clearer that the other user was being given time to get their speak and their references in before we both took it to the wider community. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 16:35, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Increased usability through breadcrumbs?

We have location-based breadcrumbs enabled over at WikiFur. I think they aid usability, and might do so here, especially now Google displays them in search results (example).

I'm aware Wikipedia has an aversion for subpages, in part because there are many potential categories that a topic might belong to. However, for many topics I think it is possible to reach consensus on a single hierarchy that is most relevant/useful. For example, Mint chocolate might have:

Culture > Food and drink > Confectionery > Chocolate > Mint chocolate

Each breadcrumb tree would start from a category within Category:Main topic classifications and work its way down to the "most relevant" category of the article. Of course, if the feature can be designed to coped with multiple inheritance in a sensible, compact manner, so much the better.

The extension WikiFur uses would not meet Wikipedia's needs; it works on a per-category basis, rather than per-article, and only allows administrators to edit the breadcrumb definition page - even on a wiki with 12,000 articles, this page can get rather large. It also does not check for categories efficiently. I'm sure a scalable solution could be created, though.

As for the feature itself, what are your thoughts? GreenReaper (talk) 00:07, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I think "Mint chocolate" should fall under "mint" rather than under "chocolate". --Carnildo (talk) 01:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Then you would be bold and edit the breadcrumb section of the article. If others disagree (I would, since mint chocolate is still a variety of chocolate - it just happens to have the same flavour as mint), then it may be subject to a debate on the talk page, just like any other part of the article. As suggested, it might be possible to have both trees, perhaps in the category bar. GreenReaper (talk) 16:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I would be incredibly skeptical about implementing a bread crumb on article pages. For many of the articles I am involved in wars over "chocolate" or "mint" would be very entrenched and never ending. Breadcrumbs work best also when there is only one taxonomy. We (correctly IMHO) use multiple categorizations, which would result in multiple breadcrumbs.

That said, I have always found Category pages very difficult to navigate. I think a some kind of overview of where you are in the hierarchy on Category pages would be very useful (and auto-gernerate-able) - but we would still have the same problem of some categories being in more than one parent category. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 22:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Ban off topic political debates

Yes, I know it's coming, Wikipedia is not censored. However, I've become aware of an increasing number of off topic political debates going on outside of the main space, and I find it very unprofessional. I've also been seeing a lot of disgraceful suggestions that people vandalize Conservapedia. Regardless of one's political views, we must all see the immaturity in this; suggesting the vandalism of another site is more of what I would expect out of 4chan and Encyclopedia Dramatica, not Wikipedia. At any rate, bringing biased, unneeded policical chatter into talk pages and discussions could cause readers to get the wrong impression of Wikipedia. Many employers, including Hospital Corporation of America (one of the many), has specifically banned off topic political discussion on the company networks, it seems to me that such a ban would also be beneficial to this encyclopedia project. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 04:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

How is invoking WP:NOTFORUM insufficient? --Cybercobra (talk) 04:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that covers it perfectly in most cases, but it seems as if WP:NOTFORUM is under enforced. I have seen cases on user pages however that this would NOT cover, and although I believe users should be allowed to declare what their political views to a certain extent on their user pages, I've seen some political comments on user pages that were just out right uncalled for and I believe a specific policy would fill in that gray area. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 22:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

There is already some history here. I got chastised for advocacy over a signature-line that incorporated an "09f9" protest. If I had merely kept this on a user page, I don't know if it would have been an issue. There has also been at least user-box that was deleted either by the community or by ARBCOM because, while it amounted to a political statement, it presence also invited disruptive editing and was therefore seen as disruptive in the inciting-a-riot sense of the word.

I think the bottom line should be: Is the specific instance causing a problem? If its not, we've got more important issues to worry about. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:32, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I believe there's been politically motivated usernames (ie. User:Hillaryforpresident) that have been declined for WP:UAA, and I personally think that such should be unacceptable as it may leave a biased impression on newbies and readers. Also, imagine if I were to add "vote Republican" or "vote Democrat" to my signature. That would be blatant political spamming, and could be taken the wrong way by readers and newbies. This is why I think we need a specific policy. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 00:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, but what about political but non-electioneering language like "Support Obamacare" or non-political votes like "Vote Fruity Pebbles"? Let's not forget the "for/against flagged revisions" tags on many user pages. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:45, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

WP:NOTFORUM has been enforced regarding this type of behavior, Kirsten Gillibrand (the junior US Senator from NY who took Hillary Clinton's seat, if you didnt know who she is) was "vandalized" on her talk page by an IP who ranted about health care, jobs, abortion, etc (I was accidentally blocked by an admin because they thought it was me wrote the post because I posted at the same time and since the IP didnt sign their post it looked like it had been part of my post, luckily the mistake was caught within minutes and I didnt even know I had been blocked and an apology was put at my talk page). Sometimes though in a discussion at the Village Pump it is necessary to point out the "conservative" elements among us (eg- those who bring their conservative viewpoints about how politics should be run and laws enforced and try to apply that thinking to our Wikipedia policies and way-of-doing things, which is inherently liberal by design as a wiki). But I'm a political science grad student so I tend to think along political lines anyways.Camelbinky (talk) 01:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed new 'small text' button

See commons:File talk:Button small text.png. 91.84.208.36 (talk) 00:06, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Hypothesis testing for Flagged protection and patrolled revisions

My understanding is that Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions is the consensus model that we will "sometime soon" trial on en.wikipedia for two months. A trial implies there is an expected outcome, and that it will be tested. I believe the expectation is that (visible) vandalism will almost disappear, and because of this, vandalism will drop dramatically. Myself, I'm also hoping that my watchlist will become very manageable as others do the watching for me. Josh Parris 01:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Are there existing plans to test for success?

Looking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vandalism studies/Study1 shows that having a statistician involved from the start helps enormously; for a +/-2% band at 95% confidence, apparently we need 475 articles sampled - more, even, given that in a given two-month period many of those articles aren't going to get edited. Study1 found 4.64% of edits were vandalism (actually 1%-9% at 95% confidence). Has anyone got vague plans to gather statistics to test this expected outcome? Or, for that matter, detailed plans? Josh Parris 01:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] What metrics should be gathered?

Has anyone got any specific measures we should look at to evaluate the trial? Josh Parris 01:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Are specific measures required for valid testing?

Should a random selection of pages be thrown into the trial specifically for the purposes of statistical evaluation? Josh Parris 01:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] General comments

All very good questions. I would suggest however that there would be more to flagged revisions than just anti-vandalism. For topics that are heated it would take some of the pressure of editors to get their version out there and so might reduce edit warring. A test would also require some measure of impact on the editor community also. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 19:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Namespace for books

I suggested a separate namespace for Books on the Books feedback page, and another editor felt it'd be better to make the proposal here.

Should we consider splitting Books into its own namespace, so that we'd have, for example, Book:University of Waterloo instead of Wikipedia:Books/University of Waterloo? I think this is a cleaner way to implement the Books feature. This would require quite a few changes (Mediawiki custom namespace config, templates, moving book pages etc.) so if it's a desirable feature, we should do it while there are still relatively few pages that would need modification. Mindmatrix 17:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Strong support, provided we do it smart and synchronize (see note below). I like the idea very much. It's a much cleaner way to do it than what we have now, and less confusing. There's relatively few books now (~500), but it will grow over time so if there's a time to do it, it's now. This would probably affect the other Wikipedias, but they too have books (French, German, Simple, and others are looking into it if I recall correctly).

Note that if we agree on creating the book namespace, it's possible that it would requires a few change to the rendering software so we would need to synchronize with the PediaPress devs, Bot-coders, Mediawiki devs, and Wikiproject WikiPedia-Books. It's possible, and I don't mind coordinating these these efforts, should we agree on the creation of that namespace. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 20:43, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Update He!ko confirmed (email) that the changes would be minimal on the Pediapress side of things and make things easier for them and for editors, and would enabled/improve lots of namespace based features. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 21:12, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds very good. Having a namespace for books would raise their profile and would be a sensible way of arranging them.

Might I also suggest a template that could be placed in the 'See also' or 'External links' section of an article that has a book related to it, like here:

Book link

... Or would that be a bad idea? --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 19:18, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

There's already a template like that ({{Wikipedia-Books}}). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 20:34, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, cool. Thanks. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 21:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Support separate namespace. Adds to visibility and also will probably make it easier to manage books as well. John Carter (talk) 19:27, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I strongly oppose anything which would help enable this feature. As I stated in the past, the feature is little more than an attempt for the foundation to profit off of the free content editors submit here. I would support this feature being indefinitely blocked, and nothing less. The template shouldn't be implemented as well. Books are easily exploitable for POV pushers and basically consist of original research. They shhouldn't be linked to at all from the mainspace. ThemFromSpace 20:05, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you have some misconceptions of what books are. All they are are user-generated collections of articles, they can be download PDF or ODT (completely free), the code used to generate them is open-sourced (again free), and you can print them yourself if you feel like it. It's only the printed book from PediaPress that costs something, because printing and shipping stuff isn't free.

Content problems can be dealt with as any content problem is dealt with anywhere else on Wikipedia. For instance Wikipedia:Books/Hadronic Matter is monitored by both WikiProject Physics and WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, Wikipedia:Books/Japan: Examples of Its History and Culture is monitored by both WikiProject Japan and WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, and so on. If there's POV-pushing (or whatever else), use the talk page, contact the projects, start an RfC, or whatever you think will best deal with the issue, and it'll be dealt with. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 20:28, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Forbidding programme guides

I think we should forbid programme guides like those at some american TV network articles. Those are already at the websites of the networks. This forbidding of programme guides is already at Nl wikipedia. Wikipedia is a encyclopedia not a programme guide KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 20:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

To an extent, I agree with you, but that information is already present on Wikipedia via the Categories of the shows. Linking them to the network article itself just makes that information easier to find on the site. --King Öomie 20:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It is reasonable for a reader of an article on a programming network to want to know what is on the network currently. The grid format presents the information in a clear, concise format. Further, the grids do not present information on a by-episode basis, but only for the current season. There should only be two rounds of changes (fall premieres and mid-season replacements.) In that respect, it's not a program guide. What do you propose as an alternative? The only things I see are prose sections listing the programs or a long See also section with links to the current programs. —C.Fred (talk) 20:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I am wanting the Long See also system KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 20:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Why? How does it make life easier for the reader? —C.Fred (talk) 20:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes but i want a uniform Wikipedia ruleset and this is one of the things of that KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 20:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

This was recently discussed, at length, at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 30#Per station television schedules. I didn't follow it closely - can someone that did please summarize key points?

Afaik, centralizing the schedules at a single location is preferred, such as 2008–2009 United States network television schedule, whereas per-network lists such as Fox Broadcasting Company#Programming are deprecated. But that might be wrong. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Please give an example of a program guide. I'm not sure what you're talking about. - Denimadept (talk) 20:53, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, he's referring to pages like House (season 3) --King Öomie 21:01, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

[Note: Example taken from the article NBC (this diff/section) ]

This:

NBC	7:00 p.m.	7:30 p.m.	8:00 p.m.	8:30 p.m.	9:00 p.m.	9:30 p.m.	10:00 p.m.	10:30 p.m.
Sunday	Dateline NBC		The Marriage Ref		The Celebrity Apprentice
Monday	Local programming		Chuck		Day One		The Jay Leno Show
Tuesday			The Biggest Loser			100 Questions
Wednesday			Parenthood		Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Thursday			Community	Parks and Recreation	The Office	30 Rock
Friday			Law & Order		Dateline NBC
Saturday			Dateline NBC		Law & Order (E)		Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (E)

• Midseason: Breakthrough with Tony Robbins
• Summer 2010: America's Got Talent, Friday Night Lights, Who Do You Think You Are?
• The weeknight late night schedule consists of talk shows The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Last Call with Carson Daly, followed by Poker After Dark. Saturday Night Live and Poker After Dark air on Saturdays.
• From September 14, 2009, the weekday 10:00 hour of prime time will be removed to make way for The Jay Leno Show. Saturday Night Live has its season premiere on September 19.
• During NFL season, the Sunday night schedule airs live across the country, starting at 7:00 p.m. ET/4:00 p.m. PT.^[1][2]

We had something like that at the Dutch Nederland 1 article but i deleted it because it was against the rule sof Wikipedia NL.. as i have said Wikipedia isnt a programme guide KlokkoVanDenBerg (talk) 21:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

There's absolutely zero reason for such tables to be in WP. It's a clear violation of WP:NOT. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 21:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that such tables shouldn't be here. OTOH, the list of episodes such as what Kingoomieiii pointed to, I can see a use for. - Denimadept (talk) 21:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

There's no good reason for the tables, or for the scheduling information. In rare cases changes to a timeslot have historical significance (say, when Bullwinkle became the first primetime cartoon show) — but that can be discussed in individual cases. Also, it's undesirable to get into a controversy between editors on every network, every TV station about whether its past, current, and future schedules are significant. All of them are promotional, all inappropriate. Piano non troppo (talk) 21:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

As I pointed out above, these were discussed in-depth recently. There was a fairly clear consensus that historic lists are relevant/notable/useful. See List of United States network television schedules, and Category:Television_schedules and it's sup/sub cats.

Whether to have the information for current-schedules repeated within each network's article (as is being given as an example above), was the only thing I recall strong disagreement of, but again, I didn't follow the WT:NOT thread closely. I'll ask a couple of the participants there to chime in here.

Someone could also Search through the afds for precedent, if desired. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The result on the most recent link from that search was "no concensus". A weakness in the argument of those in favor is claiming that a past schedule is "historically significant", without saying why. The fact that the timeslot for Show XYZ was taken by Show PDQ is probably no more significant than "executives thought they could make more money" ... and that would be somewhat significant ... if that reason was given a reliable citation. Another compound failing of the "historically significant" position is that the instant a schedule changes, it becomes "historical", on the one hand, that's a lovely way to add relatively promotional material to Wikipedia, and on the other hand, it causes the schedules to be at least always slightly out-of-date. I.e., it's misleading. Unadorned "historical schedules" are in some ways more of a problem than current schedules. Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 22:32, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The result of the debate was no consensus. Historical network schedules, such as 1951–52 United States network television schedule, can easily be sourced (and are) to any number of reliable print references, but the WP:FANCRUFT crowd is so adamant about deleting television content that they would actually delete articles with tons of inline citations from print publications. Firsfron of Ronchester 00:56, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

A list of the programs presented by a network is no more promotional than a list of vehicles currently manufactured by a car company. It is something that a reader of the article will find useful. It makes sense to present it to the reader in an easy-to-use format—especially for US networks that have predictable weekly schedules. The alternative would be seven bullet points with each day's programs in a row. While that works for late night, it's cumbersome for prime time. The table works better; why do we want to hinder the readers? —C.Fred (talk) 03:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

My recollection of the previous discussion was clearly that per-station schedules like the one exampled above (particularly "current" schedules) are inappropriate; the consensus was split, but generally held in favor due to historical reasons of the type of national, larger-picture schedules that compare various networks as 1951–52 United States network television schedule examples were generally ok, as long as they did not take a very fine-grain approach to the schedule. --MASEM (t) 05:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I've been asked to comment here, but I think I'll defer to Masem. By best attempt at summary was here. It wasn't terribly well received by Firsfron and it doesn't offer a hard and fast rule. So I'll agree generally w/ Masem here. Protonk (talk) 02:56, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] A Permanent Record

Wikipedia has a kind of "Institutional Memory" issue with regards to not keeping track of past bad behaviour very well. Unless you get a block, there's no easy to identify record of past bad behaviour that can show a pattern of poor judgement / malicious intent.

This is particular in cases where an Arbitration case has passed warnings or cautions on editors or admin. These are solely recorded on the case, and so people might forget about them or never have seen them, and an editor or admin can revert to their past behaviour when the attention from the case has died down.

Do we need some way of endorsing a permanent record associated with an account when there have been such cautions, or consensus to make such cautions from such as AN/I? Would this be best handled with current tools, or would an extension to the codebase be needed? --Barberio (talk) 15:39, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm against the general idea of permanent records of warnings. ArbCom decisions are a little different, but in the whole, Wikipedia should be forgiving. Past performance should not prejudice the future; people change, and relatively easily. We allow people to remove warnings from their talk for this reason, and I'd like to keep to that spirit. Warnings are just that; they have no permanent value, only temporal. As I say, editing restrictions as imposed by the ArbCom may need to be handled differently. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 15:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

See WP:Editing restrictions and see the log of blocks and bans under each Arbcom case, for example WP:DIGWUREN#Log of blocks and bans. EdJohnston (talk) 16:01, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I know that page, but it's not exactly obvious if you were going to warn someone for their actions. If someone, say, could not edit particular topics, and you went to warn them about 3RR, you wouldn't realise. In any case, that's really a separate debate. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 16:38, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I think there is merit in this idea (the thought occurred to me before). Forgiving is not the same as forgetting. An annotated record created and maintained at admin discretion could allow for old incidents no longer relevant to be removed from the record, and the annotation would permit a better explanation of the issues than the block log does. A user subpage could serve this purpose, perhaps. It's not unproblematic, but it's worth discussing whether or how it could work (eg subpage created only after first block, annotations by admins only, should the record be visible to admins only, etc). Rd232 ^talk 16:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I am against this idea. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and our efforts should be directed toward improving the encyclopedia rather than creating a database of bad editor behavior. Things which don't improve the content of the encyclopedia are tertiary, and efforts spent on editor records will only lead to bureaucracy. Firsfron of Ronchester 18:34, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Hate to break it to you, but bureaucracy is already upon us (as are various forms of editor records). The issue is how to make it as efficient and unintrusive as possible, so it takes least time, energy and drama to manage. Rd232 ^talk 21:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Just because we have some bureaucracy (and way too much already in my opinion) that does not justify having more bureaucracy to deal with the bureaucracy we already have. I have seen (and had slapped on me as well) plenty of useless and wrong "warnings", why have a permanent open easily accessed location where people can see them and get the wrong impression about a user? I was once blocked by accident because someone thought a particularly bad edit on a talk page was done by me (it wasnt, they misread the history of the talk page, it was a different editor) luckily the admin who blocked me realized their mistake within a few minutes and took the block off before I even knew about it, they apologized on my talk page for it and explained what happened. Do I want a permanent record that I was blocked, a record that might not explain the full details of what happened and that I really didnt do anything wrong? What about editors who go around "warning" other editors based on "pay back" for disagreeing with them? This would lead to so much abuse and tarnish good user's names. Everyone please stick to working on an encyclopedia and dont worry one iota about editors being "rude" or warning editors or disciplining them. Waste of time and ridiculous. Stick to editing and improving and adding information to articles if you want to help build an encyclopedia.Camelbinky (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree, to a great extent, with what you've said above. The idea of building and maintaining a permanent record of disciplinary actions has absolutely nothing to do with writing encyclopedia articles, and can only lead to drama and wasted efforts and resources. The effort spending time compiling editor records would be better spent improving encyclopedia articles. Firsfron of Ronchester 21:52, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

For certain kinds of incidents, the record needs to be more open and transparent. There are two reasons. Last year I stumbled across a confrontation-in-progress with a very young Wiki editor, and was invited to contribute. This editor was in the habit of erasing warnings from her talk page, etc. So it took me some time to discover that she'd been warned, blocked, and mentored. One of her critics became an administrator during the resolution, etc. It was a complicated situation that could have been resolved fairly easily — the editor simply was using one device after after another — making promises she didn't keep — to continue her behavior. If the time I spent was any example, a half dozen people spent hours finally bringing her inline. Second, the lack of reporting (in some, limited situations) is an impediment to new-ish editors, who don't know the procedure for researching, and may be unaware that they are dealing with an editor with a troubled history. They may leave Wiki, having had a bad experience — not having any easy way of realizing they themselves, and Wiki as a whole are on the right track. Simpler reports for new users, certainly. Piano non troppo (talk) 22:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

(e/c)The issue is how to make it as efficient and unintrusive as possible - Er, no, the issue is whether we should have it at all. There are some things like ArbCom/RFC archives and block logs, but nothing like what's being proposed here. I agree with Camelbinky and Firsfron, there's simply too little benefit to the project to justify this. Mr.Z-man 23:07, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The issue is how to scope the project. If a new user could push a button and get a summary of an editor's behavior — it doesn't have to use "loaded" language such as "blocked", "banned", "warned" (which a new user won't understand, anyhow) — it would be greatly appreciated by many a new user who has their edits reverted. The report could say, loosely, "This is moderately experienced editor, who is not an administrator, with some experience in administrative issues, who infrequently follows up on edits in a large number of articles, and who strongly defends their position." (That's just one example. Several types of reports are necessary, tailored to specific editor needs.) Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 23:16, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

(ec)"the issue is whether we should have it all" - LOL. I think you misunderstood - "it" in my sentence was the whole existing superstructure, not this suggested record. Or are you suggesting we abolish block logs, ban lists, AE archives et al? The issue is, when all those records are spread around, keeping track. And in some cases, insufficient clarity and context (eg when blocks are overturned or questioned); and in others, massive WP:TLDR. So an annotated central record would have its uses. Drama could be minimised by making it visible only to admins, a suggestion I alluded to above - but obviously at the expense of transparency. Bureaucracy isn't going away, people, just by rejecting any suggestions to make it work better. I'm not saying this incipient hint of a barely-developed suggestion is unambiguously worth doing, but the argument should be on the merits of it or possible variations. As for "focussing on the content" - suspect you're just not familiar with the problem areas of Wikipedia, and its associated various problem types of editor, or you wouldn't say that. These problem editors need handling better, and the lack of a central, clear record is a massive enabler of drama by allowing problems to fester unaddressed for far too long, because nobody can get a handle on the issues. Rd232 ^talk 23:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty used to people citing "That's just extra bureaucracy" when ever there's a suggestion for a process or documentation that'll make editors lives easier... But I think this takes the cake... This is a call to reduce bureaucracy, by centralising all the various hidden areas people's 'behaviour record' are currently kept. Right now, someone's past behaviour can only be found by doing separate searches on their user name, in WP:AN, WP:AN/I, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Motions, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Cases, and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Involved parties as well as the block log. And that won't even show the times when someone has had to give them a very strong warning on their talk page not to do something again. That's a lot of bureaucracy that could be replaced by a single 'conduct history' for each editor. --Barberio (talk) 00:51, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

There is no bureaucracy behind the current records system. Block logs are done automatically by the software, we have discussion archives because its almost as easy to archive them as it is to simply remove them. Having some sort of centrally managed system would need bureaucracy or else it would just be a free-for-all, controlled by whoever can yell the loudest for the longest. Mr.Z-man 02:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

(e/c) Actually, instead of checking all of those places, one can just check the user's talk page history, since it's a requirement that the editors being discussed receive notice of said discussion. This also shows when a user has been given warnings. Maintaining pages containing users' permanent records is bureaucracy, and detracts from the point of Wikipedia: creating a free encyclopedia. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:20, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

"Unless you get a block, there's no easy to identify record of past bad behaviour that can show a pattern of poor judgement / malicious intent." But, it would also behoove us to realize that merely being blocked, however often, does not necessarily show a pattern of poor judgment or malicious intent. People are blocked inappropriately all the time. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 01:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, which further shows how hard it is to get an appropriate user conduct history. There needs to be some way of giving a suitable record of conduct, that can be edited after the fact when needed, and wouldn't be prone to a single Admin's grudges or mistakes. --Barberio (talk) 01:30, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

So who would it be managed by that it wouldn't be susceptible to grudges, biases, or mistakes? Mr.Z-man 02:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I dont understand something, current policy states that if you read a warning then you have the right to delete it from your talk page, it clearly states that. So why are some so intent that warnings must be for everyone to see out in the open and easily accessed? It goes against the core of our "rehabilitate and teach instead of stigmitize and punish" philosophy here on Wikipedia. This, to me at least, is more about changing Wikipedia's core philosophy on how it treats and teaches users than about just a new way of making our current structure work better. This is a pandora's box and leads us down a slippery slope towards punishment, stigmitizing, embarressing, and biting not only newbies but established users as well. Perhaps next someone can propose a "scarlet V" on user pages of those who have vandalized? All in the name of making it easier to know if they have a history of vandalizing should they make the same mistake again of course.Camelbinky (talk) 02:27, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Excellent points, of course. The stigma of having a "permanent record" if they should do something "wrong" (or even the threat of the same) is only going to drive more editors away from WP. Considering the recent news story about the number of editors already leaving WP in droves, is this really a smart idea? Firsfron of Ronchester 03:06, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

A possible technical solution: Improve search, "what links here," and contributions to filter by page or group of pages and look at edit histories. For example, if I am at a user talk page and I can filter "what links here" to just look at Arbitration Committee pages, then it's easier to spot related discussions. Likewise, if I can easily search old edits of a user talk page for warnings, particularly recent ones, then I know if I should give him a level 1 or level 4 warning. Edit summaries sometimes help but some editors are coy in their edit summaries when giving warnings. On the other hand, maybe it's a good thing that I can't easily search old versions, it allows those giving the warnings to be more welcoming. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a very bad idea in my opinion. Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia, not a surrogate for parents or school. Our work here is neither to parent, punish, or create pariahs. We are here to build an encyclopedia. If someone cannot edit adhering to our policies and guidelines, we rescind their editing privileges. They ask for a second chance, or they come back and behave, what do we care what they did in the past as long as they are helping now? We do not "brand" people literally, and we should not brand them figuratively. People who cannot edit within our rules usually make themselves known after a short amount of time anyway, from my experience. -- Avi (talk) 04:55, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Fully agree. If you're a good faith editor, we'll accept you and smack you on the nose if you mess up. If you're not productive, we have various methods of dealing with it. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 05:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)