That would focus people's attention on improving the existing stuff which often isn't happening. I wouldn't really oppose one week of pure improvement every month to encourage people to improve the existing rather than create more stuff that needs to be fixed. If the stream of crap is stopped in its tracks, I have no problem with putting deletion on hold as well. Mgm

On 12/10/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: Article creation seems to be running at about ~2% of total edits. So I don't expect a massive change in the amount of article polishing. Since a pretty high percentage of AFD is due to articles created on the day I doubt there will be much of a blip. If a major event happens there may be problems. -- geni

David Gerard wrote: Why can't you declare an "article improvement week" without prohibiting people from creating new articles? Volunteer work on Wikipedia is not a "bag of labor" that can be reallocated at will, and I doubt few people who would not willingly participate in an article improvement week would be convinced to do so unwillingly because of a software change that prohibits them from creating new articles they would prefer to work on instead---they would more likely simply leave for a week. I know I would probably leave for the week on principle. -Mark

I think the idea of a heavily promoted Article Improvement Week is a useful one. However, there is no reason to turn off AfD. Indeed, often the reason that articles are in AfD is that the topic is notable but the article is crap for various reasons including: * short and lacking context; * bogus articles on legitimate topics; * lacking references. My main focus in AfD is looking for articles that can be improved and turned into encyclopedia articles. There is no reason that AfD cannot form part of Article Improvement Week. Similarly, not allowing the development of new articles may turn off newbies who came to Wikipedia for the purpose of creating articles. If we were to turn off article creation for the week, we should continue to have Articles for Creation working as well as allowing people to work on articles in their userspace. Alternatively, we could have a situation where articles could only be added by authorisation of an admin who could certify that it meets minimum encyclopedic standards. The main focus of Article improvement week should be to have banners proclaiming it everywhere with a page showing how articles have been improved (ie articles cleaned up, stubs expanded, articles referenced and so on). In summary, the idea of an Article Improvement Week is a useful one and should be pursued. Regards Keith Old Keith Old User:Capitalistroadster On 12/11/05, Brian Haws <brian(a)bhaws.com> wrote:

On 12/10/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: One of my long-standing beefs with the deletion process is that people use it as cleanup, and when you call them on it, they say "But doing it this way gets results under the threat of deletion, while if you list something on cleanup, nothing ever gets done." And then people turn round and say that if anything's ever deleted through AFD, the topic is never again allowed to exist, even if the reason for deletion was that it was a crap article that needed cleanup. More accurately, they can see the positive effects of getting creative with templates, while the negative effects are invisible on the small scale and thus easy to ignore. The discussion we should be having is one of "Should we extend template syntax in order to allow more clever things to be done in a sensible, maintainable way that won't impact system performance?" Ugly template hacks to do logic and programs are not really the way to go there. -Matt

One of my long-standing beefs with the deletion process is that people use it as cleanup, and when you call them on it, they say "But doing it this way gets results under the threat of deletion, while if you list something on cleanup, nothing ever gets done." There is a fine line between an acceptable article and a substandard one. If no one is willing to improve something that is substandard, then why should we keep it around? And then people turn round and say that if anything's ever deleted through AFD, the topic is never again allowed to exist, even if the reason for deletion was that it was a crap article that needed cleanup. That is clearly against policy and such people should simply be ignored. Articles can only be deleted if they were substantially similar to deleted work. Perhaps it would help if we were to require specification of whether someone was voting based on the article subject or the article state? Mgm

On 12/10/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: Examples?

On 12/10/05, Keith Old <keithold(a)gmail.com> wrote: For one week Articles for Deletion is renamed Articles for Improvement (symbolically, if actually moving the page would be technically problematic), and there's no voting or page destruction, just discussion of how to improve the article :). Anthony

On 12/11/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: We used to have a separate page just for "lists for deletion". Lists aren't really ever encyclopedia articles, and the standards for them should be different than the standards for articles.

On 11/12/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: This is a nice idea - and it's excellent if there's an obvious wikiproject, like regional ones. But we have such a plethora of wikiprojects that it's not immediately obvious if we have one for a specific topic, unless you already know about it... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

"Andrew Gray" <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:f3fedb0d0512110649p57e2de49k@mail.gmail.com... On 11/12/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: Maybe if more WikiProject participants put an appropriate notice on the talk pages for their articles, it would be possible to tell easily. But hey, we don't want to make more work for the AFD vultures: why should they bother looking at the talk page if they can simply nominate the article and leave it for others to attempt to defend it? -- Phil [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]

Carbonite wrote: I like it. People insist on using AFD as an editorial tool ... let's go with that and really treat it as one. Add to above: all AFDs to run fourteen days, not five. - d.

On 12/10/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: You wrote: "As long as deletion is a bitter process closure is understandably a welcome result for the deletionists. With a more relaxed process a deletion won't be seen as so much of a campaign, and a general consesnsus for deletion should be more easily achieved." What has this got to do with deletionists? Anyone would be happy with a less tense atmosphere in a wiki. I don't see what that has to do with deletionism or inclusionism? You sound like deletionists want everything on AFD deleted all the time and it is exactly this kind of thing that's causing a poisonous atmosphere. Perhaps there's a few indivuduals, but you can't generalize for ALL deletionists. Mgm

On 12/11/05, Stan Shebs <shebs(a)apple.com> wrote: Those will only interest a limited number of people. Switching off article creation will be slightly noticable. -- geni

So this all started as a fantasy/joke of mine in IRC, but I want to say that so many people have responded favorably that I'm supportive of the concept. One great reason to do all of this is to shake up the cobwebs in our thinking. A lot of our processes are fantastic, organically evolved over time, and shouldn't be changed. But they aren't all perfect and we need to always remain experimental -- it's a wiki after all. David Gerard wrote:

On 12/11/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: More fine tuneing af speedy aparently. -- geni

G'day David, Well, there was geni's intriguingly bad "allow admins to delete anything" idea, which I suggest be expanded to "all admins are allowed to speedy anything they want, without possibility of undeletion and no repercussions". Perhaps we could run it for the same period that AfD is shutdown? Cheers, -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/197 - Release Date: 9/12/2005

On 12/11/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: I proposed requring editors that aren't logged in to enter text into the comment field, when editing the article namespace. This would be done with the intention of extending it to all non-minor edits to the article namespace if the experiment succeeded. In fact, of the 3 non-implemented experiments above, I think this one would be the least controversial. Anthony

On 12/11/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: Logged-in users can always set "mark edits minor by default". It's more controversial for logged-in users though, even if minor edits don't count, which is why my proposal is to test it out on those without accounts first. Personally I think it's worth it. I agree with the others who say that Wikipedia should focus on quality rather than quantity (though I see this somewhat differently than some of them). Anthony

Phil Boswell wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_scripts/Scripts/For… -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

On 12/11/05, JoanneB <joannebennaoj(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hmm. Wouldn't 1 and 2 make vandalism *easier* to spot? Or do you think a significant number of good editors would make nonsense comments or even abusive ones? As for 3, the part I throught was pretty non-controversial would be limited to editors who weren't logged in, and who therefore can't mark edits as minor anyway. I guess I'll have to look at recent changes more closely. I got the sense that the majority of edits by IP users who left no edit summary were good ones. If you're saying that good editors who aren't logged in already leave edit summaries, then I guess forcing everyone to leave them wouldn't accomplish anything. Well, my initial proposal was only to apply to users that weren't logged in, so they don't have a preferences. I'm more skeptical about whether or not it's a good idea for all users. In fact, you're starting to convince me it actually isn't. I'd only want the experiment to affect users that weren't logged in, though. Any extension beyond that would take further discussion and research first. Anthony

1. Switch off anon article creation - in progress. 2. Prefill text for new article creation. 3. Article Improvement Week. 4. Turn off AFD for (a week/a month/ever). 5. Give admins more freedom over deletion. 6. Require "anons" to comment when editing. 7. Pure Wiki Deletion 8. Speedy delete unsourced articles. 8 was another proposal I made. Any article which was created in the last 48 hours and contains no external references whatsoever is a candidate for speedy deletion. Anthony On 12/11/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 12/11/05, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio(a)gmail.com> wrote: Is it so hard to request that you start doing it always? We're not coming down heavy-handedly on people. The fact that the article is deleted should in no way be taken personally. New article creation *is* somewhat of a bigger deal than merely editing. We've already turned it off for users that aren't logged in, and some are suggesting that we should turn it off for users that are new, or that we should turn it off altogether for periods of time. If someone wants to create a new article, that's fine, but asking that they simply locate a single source first is just not a big deal. I've added that the user should be informed of this type of deletion on his or her user talk page. If it was just a simple mistake, the page can be recreated. Obviously an admin shouldn't be deleting an article when it's just as easy to just find the source themselves. I don't think this needs to be written into the rules, I trust admins to not be that lazy. But at the same time, the onus of finding the source should generally be on the person adding the information. Anthony

On 12/11/05, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio(a)gmail.com> wrote: I take your second point first. Being less wiki is not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, being a wiki has taken us far, and making radical changes to our processes without thinking about it first is not a good idea. But we're not wiki just for the sake of being wiki. (In fact, we've already moved quite far from the original wiki principles, to the point where Sunir Shah, one of the early proponents of wikis, claims that Wikipedia is not a wiki.) Your first point is that by making things harder we are less inviting. I think this is a more reasonable concern, but it still needs to be kept in balance. The fact is that typing in what source you happened to use usually takes about 5 seconds. On the other hand, someone who is reviewing the article you created would probably have to take at least a minute to find a source, and that assumes a good source can be found with a simple google search. Like you, I too have created articles without including any references. But if I knew that chances were high my article was going to be deleted if I did so, I would have gladly spent the few seconds to list my source. Do you really think the extra few seconds is going to discourage a user from continuing to contribute? That things will improve in the long run is a given. The question is what do we want in the mean time. We're not forcing people to do good work. We're just deleting stuff which someone added without taking a few extra moments to follow the rules. It's the same as what happens when someone adds an image without a source. I'd be fine with just adding {{unreferenced}} if {{unreferenced}} included a statement that the article will be deleted if no source is added within 24 hours. Is that an adequete compromise? Yes, there's a learning curve. Creating a new article is probably something you should save until you're further along the learning curve. But even if it isn't, I don't see the big deal. Your article gets deleted, you get a note on your talk page teaching you how to create a new article, and if you write back to someone (such as the admin who wrote on your talk page) telling them your source, your article gets restored. You've learned something and Wikipedia has improved in the process. All without relying on someone hunting down a source which the original submitter is in a much better position of providing. But hey, the 24 hour thing seems like a good compromise. Then *anyone* has 24 hours to hunt down a source. And this would only be used for new articles, say ones created within 48 hours of the tag being added, or ones created after a certain date. Again, this is similar to what we did with images. Tagging is the first stage, but just tagging isn't a solution. Anthony

On 12/11/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: It serves multiple purposes. It helps eliminate false information from the encyclopedia. It saves new page patrollers and others time doing research from scratch. And probably most importantly, it provides an incentive to add references. What purpose does deleting images with no source provide? It's pretty much all the same things. I don't see why. The article is still there, it isn't actually deleted, it's just hidden from the view of non-admins. I'd prefer it if non-admins could see the text too, but a different argument. In my opinion it is never acceptable to keep false information in the article namespace. There are places where eventualism is acceptable, but presenting false information as true information is not one of them. Oh well, whatever. Two separate people seem honestly and irreparably opposed to the idea. I'll just drop it. Anthony

On 12/11/05, Sam Korn <smoddy(a)gmail.com> wrote: For some reason I see a huge difference between leaving false information in and putting a disclaimer at the top and moving the information to the talk page. Doing the latter still leaves the information available so anyone can verify it. Unfortunately, talk pages of deleted articles are candidates for speedy deletion. But then again, it really doesn't matter, because history only undeletion can be performed by any admin without a vote. So if any user wants to verify it, admin or not, just look up the title in google, write a couple sentences, and request history only undeletion. Or, alternatively, ask an admin to give you the text of the article. Either way it's not *that* big of a deal, though I do feel things would be better if you didn't have to go through that step. I'm gonna say one more thing (for this message), and that's that the current policy already kind of supports this. Anything that isn't verified can be moved to the talk page, a page which contains no content is a CSD, and a talk page of a deleted page is itself a CSD. Anthony

Sam Korn wrote: The {{unreferenced}} tag pretty much puts this message across, unless the reader is too stupid to breathe without instructions. - d.

On 12/12/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: Either the information is easy to be verified, and we should do that, or it isn't, and we should remove it until someone verifies it. Either way I don't see the point of adding a tag. I'm very afraid that this solution is going to lead to thousands of articles with annoying little self-reference tags on them. And then, what does it mean if an article *doesn't* have this tag? Are we saying that article *has* been verified? I can see it now: "This Buckinghamshire location article does not cite its references or sources. You can help Wikipedia by including appropriate citations." What's next? "This article related to broadcasting in Singapore has spelling mistakes. You can help Wikipedia by fixing the spelling." Fortunately, Magnus Manske is working on task management support. It's my understanding that it's made for exactly this sort of thing. Anthony

On 12/12/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote: If someone cares to propose a potential solution, I won't be sarcastic about it. Anthony

On 12/12/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote: Already 1000 listed there. I wonder, are there any articles that *don't* qualify? [[Westboro Baptist Church]] has the tag, and it has 33 references! BTW, the "Buckinghamshire location article" and "article related to broadcasting in Singapore" quotes were real examples from cleanup tags. So yeah, it was sarcasm, but it was serious sarcasm. Anthony

--- The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com> wrote: Wikipedia's well-recognized remarkable September 11 to the Indonesian Yes, but its really just practice for next year's schedules "lets turn off the internet day." Anyone else hear about that? Stevertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On 12/12/05, The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com> wrote: This could be great for Wikinews, which is where breaking news of import should go nowadays anyway (especially if Wikipedia is going to just repeat false information without attribution, like it did in the [[Jean Charles de Menezes]] article).. Anthony

On 12/13/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm aware of the magnitude of the problem. That's why I'm presenting a proposal of how to start fixing it. Yes, there are lots of articles without any source already in Wikipedia. Let's stop adding new ones. As for whether or not the tag belongs, I don't know if it belongs, because the way the tag is phrased it is fairly meaningless. "This article contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable." I'm sure [[Westboro Baptist Church]] does contain some such information. In fact, I bet at least 95% of the articles in the encyclopedia do, if not more. However, the tag doesn't say which information is not verified, so I can't even tell whether or not the tag is correct, let alone know how to resolve the problem. Anthony

On 12/11/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: Well, I think I've made it abundantly clear I disagree. Those mathematical articles should all be referenced. The person who is in the best position to do that is the original author. Sure, we can grandfather these old ones in, but going forward I don't see why we can't just put in this information from the beginning. (And no, if you make it optional, people aren't going to do it.) Articles can always be undeleted. "Forcing someone" to drop a note on an admin page that you'd like a particular article undeleted so you can add references to it is just not that significant (especially compared to sitting on AFD for 5 days). And like I said before, I'd prefer that anyone can see this deleted text without bugging an admin anyway. Anthony

On 12/11/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: demonstrates that the information wasn't pulled out of a hat. Spangineer/Nathaniel

Anthony DiPierro wrote: I did in fact start it from memory, since it's a standard result that anyone who's taken a theory of computation class would be familiar with. I could retroactively give a source, but any theory of computation book will have it. The interested reader would be best served by consulting whatever book they find easiest to access, rather than having me pick one of them and tell them to use that specific one. (Of course, in things that are only in a few books, or treated significantly differently by different authors, giving the specific reference makes more sense.) -Mark

Delirium wrote: Sourcing standards need to vary from one topic to the next, or according to the nature of the materials. Anything that could libel a living person needs a much stricter standard than basic textbook math. Ec

Anthony DiPierro wrote: It seems totally inconsistent to say that a person can always ask for an undeletion, but then preferring that the admins not need to be bugged with the task. If they are simply tagged nobody will need to bug the admins to do extra work. Ec

On 12/10/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: By George, I think he's got it!

On 12/10/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Blameing the deletionists. Not logical. 133 Inclusionists http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Inclusionist_Wikipedians/Memb… 94 Deletionists http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Deletionist_Wikipedians Deletion requires a 2/3s majority. There is no logical way that the deletionists should be able to win against the inclusionists. -- geni

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote: Any thoughts on my preloaded new article template idea? It's just wikitext, so regulars could do what they liked, but newbies will see a clear indication of what we expect in an article. - d.

Then just call it "references". Newbies are sure to mix up external links with references if you are calling them "external references". 99.9% of them are external anyway unless they are from other Wikipedia articles in which case the original sources need to be copied over as well anyway. Mgm On 12/10/05, Keith Old <keithold(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Keith Old wrote: Bad idea. References are references; links are links. For instance, in the [[iMDB]] article, having imdb.com as an external link would make sense. But a reference would be a specific page on imdb.com about its history, processes or staff, not the main imdb.com webpage itself. John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote: At the moment, starting an article or following a redlink gives you an edit box with nothing in it. My proposal is in this message: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-December/034414.html The version in that is just off the top of my head and could do with tweaking. - d.

Matt Brown wrote: Dittoed. John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])

stevertigo wrote: Democracy is one of those things Wikipedia isn't, and voting remains stupid as well as evil. Anything that's ever been prematurely forced through to a poll was probably a bad idea. If it wasn't a bad idea, decree was probably the right way to do it. - d.

stevertigo wrote: Don't be dense. [[m:Polls are evil (and stupid)]] - d.

stevertigo wrote: Go refute [[m:Polls are evil]], then come back here and fight the power. - d.

G'day Steve, Wikipedia is not the real world. Wikipedia is a website; a particularly extensive and community-driven website, but still a website. Your rights have not been violated simply because Jimbo (or the WMF, or the ArbCom, or the Cabal) fails to consult you every time they make a change. <snip - good for Jefferson /> -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/197 - Release Date: 9/12/2005

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 stevertigo stated for the record: I'm not sure why you don't think that. It doesn't take Tory or a non-Democrat to understand that the tyranny of the masses is the cruelest tyranny there is. - -- Sean Barrett | I lost my Internet. sean(a)epoptic.org | Can you send me another one?

Jimmy Wales wrote: Make it a week - second or third week of January. As proposed elsewhere in the thread, allow article creation in userspace. 'Cos you *know* saying "you can't create articles" will just make people want to create articles ;-) (Expect a flood of stubs the week before!) - d.

Anthony DiPierro wrote: Why soft-ban all of them? Not every new project space page is an AFD subpage. For example, I think it should still be possible to start a Featured Article Candidacy in the cleanup week. grm_wnr

Jimmy Wales wrote: Considering how much I've allowed the books and papers to pile up around me and my computer, my wife would appreciate that. :-) Ec