I see a lot of misplaced pages, spam, and utter insanity appear in the main namespace on commons. There is also a lot of confusion about how the main namespace should be used.
What do you think of the idea of moving all the galleries to a gallery: namespace, then reserving the main namespace for main pages and pretty much nothing else. After that point we could prevent main namespace page creation and make the edit page give a nice "You are confused, here is how you find help" message.
The work it would take to accomplish this could be completely automated, although some inter project cooperation would be required to fix gallery linking templates and the like.
I see a lot of potential to reduce confusion, and not a lot of real downsides. So I must be missing something. Thoughts?
On 29/01/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I see a lot of misplaced pages, spam, and utter insanity appear in the main namespace on commons. There is also a lot of confusion about how the main namespace should be used.
What do you think of the idea of moving all the galleries to a gallery: namespace, then reserving the main namespace for main pages and pretty much nothing else. After that point we could prevent main namespace page creation and make the edit page give a nice "You are confused, here is how you find help" message.
The work it would take to accomplish this could be completely automated, although some inter project cooperation would be required to fix gallery linking templates and the like.
I see a lot of potential to reduce confusion, and not a lot of real downsides. So I must be missing something. Thoughts?
It seems unnecessary to me. My feeling is that our mainspace spam is only overly visible due to the facts that (a) we allow anon editors to start articles (and I hope we continue to), and (b) we have very few Special:Newpages patrollers (I have a look from time to time, I know Herbythyme has been doing quite a lot lately).
I think changing the main namespace tab name to 'gallery' has been a great change. What makes you say that "There is also a lot of confusion about how
the main namespace should be used"?
Perhaps all we need is more admins deleting namespace crud. I delete on sight 99% of anything that is only text. Even if it's in another language. A lot of them look like misplaced articles or promo bios.
regards, Brianna user:pfctdayelise
What are you meaning with "reserving the main namespace for main pages"? Do you mean pages that currently reside in the Commons namespace?
Perhaps somebody can run a script through the main namespace that filters out all pages that do not contain images?
Bryan
On 1/29/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/01/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I see a lot of misplaced pages, spam, and utter insanity appear in the main namespace on commons. There is also a lot of confusion about how the main namespace should be used.
What do you think of the idea of moving all the galleries to a gallery: namespace, then reserving the main namespace for main pages and pretty much nothing else. After that point we could prevent main namespace page creation and make the edit page give a nice "You are confused, here is how you find help" message.
The work it would take to accomplish this could be completely automated, although some inter project cooperation would be required to fix gallery linking templates and the like.
I see a lot of potential to reduce confusion, and not a lot of real downsides. So I must be missing something. Thoughts?
It seems unnecessary to me. My feeling is that our mainspace spam is only overly visible due to the facts that (a) we allow anon editors to start articles (and I hope we continue to), and (b) we have very few Special:Newpages patrollers (I have a look from time to time, I know Herbythyme has been doing quite a lot lately).
I think changing the main namespace tab name to 'gallery' has been a great change. What makes you say that "There is also a lot of confusion about how
the main namespace should be used"?
Perhaps all we need is more admins deleting namespace crud. I delete on sight 99% of anything that is only text. Even if it's in another language. A lot of them look like misplaced articles or promo bios.
regards, Brianna user:pfctdayelise
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
What are you meaning with "reserving the main namespace for main pages"? Do you mean pages that currently reside in the Commons namespace?
I think he means http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and translations ;)
Perhaps somebody can run a script through the main namespace that filters out all pages that do not contain images?
Bryan
Would be easier if imagelinks.sql.gz and page.sql.gz were working...
On 1/29/07, Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com wrote:
What are you meaning with "reserving the main namespace for main pages"? Do you mean pages that currently reside in the Commons namespace?
No, the actual commons main pages. (There are many because of the versions in other languages). Such as http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page ...
Perhaps somebody can run a script through the main namespace that filters out all pages that do not contain images?
Sure. I list these all the time...
You can find a copy of a recent run here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/scratch
There are also a lot of junk pages which do somehow manage to have an image in them. I often find them by looking for external links in the main namespace.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Perhaps somebody can run a script through the main namespace that filters out all pages that do not contain images?
Sure. I list these all the time...
You can find a copy of a recent run here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/scratch
Hmm, I see a variety of experiments here, by longtime editors as well as newbs, also some vandalism. Perhaps post to the pump a proposal to whack all non-galleries, and put up the list for everybody to review. For instance, the bird family pages are clearly designed to facilitate organization and monitoring, but at the same time I'm not sure anybody is actually using them - family-level organization is almost entirely category-based (one of the few points of agreement in the ToL area :-) ).
Stan
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Sure. I list these all the time...
You can find a copy of a recent run here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/scratch
There are also a lot of junk pages which do somehow manage to have an image in them. I often find them by looking for external links in the main namespace.
So i have been coding an implemented feature?? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Platonides/without_images
Some inhabitants of the main namespace: *Lists of galleries: Train, List of the German Autobahn... *Species lists, lots of them, probably to make the pages *Galleries with their images removed (favoring categories?) *Article which became categories. *Pages not to be recreated. *Info pages transcluded on categories: Info:Adolf Hitler, Info:Argonaute
On 1/29/07, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
So i have been coding an implemented feature?? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Platonides/without_images
Great minds think alike.
Some inhabitants of the main namespace: *Lists of galleries: Train, List of the German Autobahn...
What should we do with these? A fair number are orphaned too..
*Species lists, lots of them, probably to make the pages
I will withhold comment on anything related to species... Not good to have the TOL folks bring out their pitchforks. :)
*Galleries with their images removed (favoring categories?) *Article which became categories.
I think these should mostly go..
*Pages not to be recreated.
Not an issue if we stop creation of any page in that namespace. :)
*Info pages transcluded on categories: Info:Adolf Hitler, Info:Argonaute
Can someone explain these to me? Why not write on the category page? I fixed Adolf Hitler last night.. It had spent over a week effectively blanked, and minorly vandalized for months before that.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Not an issue if we stop creation of any page in that namespace. :)
The main namespace is also the default one. Should we make into proper namespace thos pseudo-namespaces? COM:, Info: ...
*Info pages transcluded on categories: Info:Adolf Hitler, Info:Argonaute
Can someone explain these to me? Why not write on the category page?
Don't know. Seems a system by Makthorpe
Brianna Laugher wrote:
Perhaps all we need is more admins deleting namespace crud. I delete on sight 99% of anything that is only text. Even if it's in another language. A lot of them look like misplaced articles or promo bios.
Guilty as charged (the not-deleting part, not the promo-bio part). I guess I just assumed nobody was creating nonsense pages, silly me. How many are we talking about?
Proper galleries have at least one image, and not a whole lot of text in any single language. Seems like you could have a bot detect excessive text and mark those for further review, and have a manually-added "yes this gallery has a good reason for large amounts of text". Seems like you'd want this no matter the namespaces, people are always going to be tempted to use commons to park text that has been rejected from other projects.
Stan
On 1/29/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
Perhaps all we need is more admins deleting namespace crud. I delete on sight 99% of anything that is only text. Even if it's in another language. A lot of them look like misplaced articles or promo bios.
Guilty as charged (the not-deleting part, not the promo-bio part). I guess I just assumed nobody was creating nonsense pages, silly me. How many are we talking about?
Proper galleries have at least one image, and not a whole lot of text in any single language. Seems like you could have a bot detect excessive text and mark those for further review, and have a manually-added "yes this gallery has a good reason for large amounts of text". Seems like you'd want this no matter the namespaces, people are always going to be tempted to use commons to park text that has been rejected from other projects.
There are a tone of species pages without any images... there are also a lot of locality (cities, etc) pages which appear to be pre-created and still without images.
If it were possibly to just mindlessly delete these pages (some 900 or so in total), I would set my bot on them and they'd be gone with the hour. ... but with our current practices, it's not possible to do so.
So I must check them by hand. Yuck.
In any case, I'm not so sure that it's "park text which is reject" but more that people end up on commons accidently by following links and then start writing here. We don't see anywhere near so much of this in other namespace. Perhaps we could limit anon page creation to talk pages? That too would help, thoughts?
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
There are a tone of species pages without any images... there are also a lot of locality (cities, etc) pages which appear to be pre-created and still without images.
If it were possibly to just mindlessly delete these pages (some 900 or so in total), I would set my bot on them and they'd be gone with the hour. ... but with our current practices, it's not possible to do so.
You have my blessing to set the dogs^Wbot on them. :-) It seems like a reasonable garbage collection activity; don't want to send readers from WPs to a commons page that is empty because the images had to be deleted, for instance. It's also easy to tell people the rules on the page creation screen - no media, page will go away.
So I must check them by hand. Yuck.
Maybe a seven-day countdown if there's nontrivial history - not unknown for a gallery to be vandalized.
In any case, I'm not so sure that it's "park text which is reject" but more that people end up on commons accidently by following links and then start writing here. We don't see anywhere near so much of this in other namespace. Perhaps we could limit anon page creation to talk pages? That too would help, thoughts?
Unless I'm missing something in my quick little scan, it looks like under 20 bogus page creations / day? That doesn't seem like a killer workload. I've only ever not looked at these because it takes two whole clicks to get to the list. :-)
Stan
Brianna Laugher wrote:
Perhaps all we need is more admins deleting namespace crud. I delete on sight 99% of anything that is only text. Even if it's in another language. A lot of them look like misplaced articles or promo bios.
BTW, I don't see "non-gallery" as a speedy delete criterion for pages. Seems worth adding, if we're doing that anyway.
Stan
Hi,
Gregory Maxwell a écrit :
I see a lot of misplaced pages, spam, and utter insanity appear in the main namespace on commons. There is also a lot of confusion about how the main namespace should be used.
What do you think of the idea of moving all the galleries to a gallery: namespace, then reserving the main namespace for main pages and pretty much nothing else. After that point we could prevent main namespace page creation and make the edit page give a nice "You are confused, here is how you find help" message.
I am obviously against deleting the main namespace on Commons. It has many useful uses. Please see for example for a chronological classification of data, which is not possible with a category: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi Also other namespaces have also a bad referencement.
The work it would take to accomplish this could be completely automated, although some inter project cooperation would be required to fix gallery linking templates and the like.
I see a lot of potential to reduce confusion, and not a lot of real downsides. So I must be missing something. Thoughts?
Regards,
Yann
On 1/29/07, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
I am obviously against deleting the main namespace on Commons. It has many useful uses. Please see for example for a chronological classification of data, which is not possible with a category: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi
You have seriously misunderstood my request. I am sorry that I was not more clear.
I think galleries are useful. I do not think they should be deleted. Instead, I think we should make a new namespace called "gallery" and move all the galleries there.
I think that doing this will prevent confusion.
After we have done that there should be nothing left in the main ns except tests and garbage which we can delete.
Also other namespaces have also a bad referencement.
Can you explain this for me? I do not understand.
Hello,
Gregory Maxwell a écrit :
On 1/29/07, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
I am obviously against deleting the main namespace on Commons. It has many useful uses. Please see for example for a chronological classification of data, which is not possible with a category: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi
You have seriously misunderstood my request. I am sorry that I was not more clear.
I think galleries are useful. I do not think they should be deleted. Instead, I think we should make a new namespace called "gallery" and move all the galleries there.
Well I understand, but I am not sure what is the benefit expected here with the deletion of many pages from main namespace, and I don't see how it will be achieved.
I think that doing this will prevent confusion.
After we have done that there should be nothing left in the main ns except tests and garbage which we can delete.
Also other namespaces have also a bad referencement.
Can you explain this for me? I do not understand.
Commons is generally very badly referenced. I think this is mainly because of the category system (maybe developers could give more hints here). For "Mohandas Gandhi" in Google Images, you won't find any images directly from Commons. That's very surprising seeing that Commons is now the biggest source of free (as in beer) images of Gandhi.
Regards,
Yann