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Latest revision as of 15:46, 19 January 2025

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The proposals section of the village pump is used to offer specific changes for discussion. Before submitting:

• Check to see whether your proposal is already described at Perennial proposals. You may also wish to search the FAQ.
• This page is for concrete, actionable proposals. Consider developing earlier-stage proposals at Village pump (idea lab).
• Proposed policy changes belong at Village pump (policy).
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• Proposed WikiProjects or task forces may be submitted at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Council/Proposals.
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Transclusion of peer reviews to article talk pages

Hello,

First time posting here.

I would like to propose that peer reviews be automatically transcluded to talk pages in the same way as GAN reviews. This would make them more visible to more editors and better preserve their contents in the article/talk history. They often take a considerable amount of time and effort to complete, and the little note near the top of the talk page is very easy to overlook.

This also might (but only might!) raise awareness of the project and lead to more editors making use of this volunteer resource.

I posted this suggestion on the project talk page yesterday, but I have since realized it has less than 30 followers and gets an average of 0 views per day.

Thanks for your consideration, Patrick (talk) 23:07, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't see any downsides here. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:55, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Support; I agree with Voorts. Noting for transparency that I was neutrally notified of this discussion by Patrick Welsh. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 21:04, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

• This is a great idea, it's weird that it isn't done already. Toadspike 21:13, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

So far this proposal has only support, both here and at the Peer review talk. Absent objections, is there a place we can request assistance with implementation? I have no idea how to do this. Thanks! --Patrick (talk) 17:23, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

It might be useful to have a bot transclude the reviews automatically like ChristieBot does for GAN reviews. AnomieBOT already does some maintenance tasks for PR so, Anomie, would this task be a doable addition to its responsibilities? Apart from that, I don't think any other changes need to be made except to selectively hide or display elements on the review pages with <noinclude>...</noinclude> or <includeonly>...</includeonly> tags. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 17:28, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Since ChristieBot already does the exact same thing for GAN reviews, it might be easier for Mike Christie to do the same for peer reviews than for me to write AnomieBOT code to do the same thing. If he doesn't want to, then I'll take a look. Anomie⚔ 22:41, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't have any objection in principle, but I don't think it's anything I could get to soon -- I think it would be months at least. I have a list of things I'd like to do with ChristieBot that I'm already not getting to. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:54, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

I took a look and posted some questions at Misplaced Pages talk:Peer review. Anomie⚔ 16:14, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

• Support, I've submitted a couple of articles for peer review and wondered when I first did it why it wasn't done on a sub-page of article's talks the same way GAN is. TarnishedPath 02:24, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Support. This would be very, very helpful for drafts, so discussions can be made in the Talk pages to explain a problem with a draft in more detail rather than only showing the generic reason boxes. Hinothi1 (talk) 12:56, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Sections

I noticed that some sections are written like: == xxxxx == and some are written like ==xxxxx==. Some have gaps and some do not. Won't it be better if it was standardized? I prefer the one without gaps because it should save space. TrueMoriarty (talk) 06:47, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Such a proposal is infeasible, as we have over 6 million articles in a mix of both styles. Although a script would probably handle 90% of them there'd be heaps of edge cases among the remaining ones to consider. Also that's assuming that editors would actually agree on a single style; given our track record with such things I think that's unlikely.  novov talk edits 09:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, or shall we have an inconclusive discussion that lasts for months and involves hundreds of editors? Phil Bridger (talk) 09:14, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

What else is Misplaced Pages for?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 14:25, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

That means only 700,000 articles would be left. New editors can fix the others as a beginner's task.

TrueMoriarty (talk) 12:20, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

So Misplaced Pages adopts a novitiate/apprenticeship system? I like the idea of that, so long as it's not mandated at all but voluntary. I don't think this particular task would be of any help or use, though. It really doesn't matter.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 14:25, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Istruggletothinkofabiggerwasteoftime,thoughofcourseweshouldalldoourparttosavespace.– Joe (talk) 09:15, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Joe, where should I send the the 0.00000004 cents that it would cost for you to use spaces? Phil Bridger (talk) 09:21, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

This would fall under WP:COSMETICEDIT, because the spaces (or lack thereof) has no change in visual output. It's not worth our time to fix something that has no real effect on pages, flooding watchlists and annoying people in the process. Also, ironically, the heading for this thread is written with spaces. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 12:52, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

That is likely because as far as I've seen most of the software and scripts add spaces. CMD (talk) 13:59, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

It's potentially worth making a call on what's considered ultimate best practice, just so that the software and scripts can be aligned. But agreed that this is far too cosmetic to be worth changing, even within something like the GENFIX set. Sdkb  23:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Good Article visibility

I think it would be a good idea to workshop a better way to show off our Good, A-class and Featured articles (or even B-class too), and especially in the mobile version, where there is nothing. At present, GA icons appear on the web browser, but this is it. I think we could and should be doing more. Misplaced Pages is an expansive project where page quality varies considerably, but most casual readers who do not venture onto talk pages will likely not even be aware of the granular class-based grading system. The only visible and meaningful distinction for many readers, especially mobile users, will be those articles with maintenance and cleanup tags, and those without. So we prominently and visibly flag our worst content, but do little to distinguish between our best content and more middling content. This seems like a missed opportunity, and poor publicity for the project. Many readers come to the project and can go away with bad impressions about Misplaced Pages if they encounter bad or biased content, or if they read something bad about the project, but we are doing less than we could to flag the good. If a reader frequents 9 C-class articles and one Good Article, they may simply go away without even noticing the better content, and conclude that Misplaced Pages is low quality and rudimentary. By better highlighting our articles that have reached a certain standard, we would actually better raise awareness about A) the work that still needs to be done, and B) the end results of a collaborative editing process. It could even potentially encourage readers who become aware of this distinction to become editors themselves and work on pages that do not carry this distinction when they see them. In this age of AI-augmented misinformation and short-attention spans, better flagging our best content could yield benefits, with little downside. It could also reinject life and vitality into the Good Article process by giving the status more tangible front-end visibility and impact, rather than largely back-end functionality. Maybe this has been suggested before. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. But thoughts? Iskandar323 (talk) 15:09, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

With the big caveat that I'm very new to the GA system in general and also do not know how much technical labor this would require, this seems like a straightforwardly helpful suggestion. The green + sign on mobile (and/or some additional element) would be a genuinely positive addition to the experience for users - I think a textual element might be better so the average reader understands what the + sign means, but as it stands you're absolutely right, quality is basically impossible to ascertain on mobile for non-experts, even for articles with GA status that would have a status icon on desktop. 19h00s (talk) 16:43, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

While GA articles have been approved by at least one reviewer, there is no system of quality control for B class articles, and no system to prevent an editor from rating an article they favor as B class in order to promote or advertise it. A class articles are rare, as Military History is the only project I know of that uses that rating. Donald Albury 17:16, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I totally agree we should be doing more. There are userscript that change links to different colours based on quality (the one I have set up shows gold links as featured, green as GA, etc).

If you aren't logged in and on mobile, you'd have no idea an article has had a review. Lee Vilenski 20:15, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

A discussion was held on this about two years ago and there was consensus to do something. See Misplaced Pages talk:Good Article proposal drive 2023#Proposal 21: Make GA status more prominent in mainspace and Misplaced Pages:Good Article proposal drive 2023/Feedback#Proposal 21: Make GA status more prominent in mainspace. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:20, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien: Is that feedback discussion alive, dead, or just lingering in half-life? It's not obviously archived, but has the whole page been mothballed? So basically, there's community consensus to do something, but the implementation is now the sticking point. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:57, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Basically, most of the progress made is listed on that feedback page and the project has moved on from it. There were a few options, like the visibility one, where it was agreed upon and then didn't really go anywhere. So there are some ideas there, but we'd basically need to start fresh in terms of implementation. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:16, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

• Tracked in Phabricator
  Task T75299
  You're barking up exactly the right tree, Iskandar323. Regarding showing the icons on mobile, that's a technical issue, which is tracked at phab:T75299. I highlighted it to MMiller (WMF) when I last saw him at WCNA, but there's ultimately only so much we can push it.Regarding desktop, we also know the solution there: Move the GA/FA topicons directly next to the article name, as was proposed in 2021. The barrier there is more achieving consensus — my reading of that discussion is that, while it came close, the determining factor of why it didn't ultimately pass is that some portion of editors believed (wrongly, in my view) that most readers notice/know what the GA/FA symbols mean. The best counterargument to that would be some basic user research, and while ideally that would come from the WMF, anyone could try it themselves by showing a bunch of non-Wikipedian friends GAs/FAs and asking if they notice the symbols and know what they mean. Once we have that, the next step would be running another RfC that'd hopefully have a better chance of passing. Sdkb  06:50, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

  It's great that I've got the right tree, since I think that's a village pump first for me. It seems that the proposer of that original 2021 discussion already did some basic research. Intuitively, it also seems just obvious that an icon tucked away in the corner, often alongside the padlocks indicating permission restrictions, is not a high visibility location. Another good piece of final feedback in the GA project discussion mentioned earlier up this thread by TBUA is that the tooltip could also been improved, and say something more substantial and explanatory than simply "this is a good article". On the subject of the mobile version and the level of priority we should be assigning to it, we already know that per WP:MOBILE, 65% of users access the platform via mobile, which assuming a roughly even spread of editors and non-editors, implies that 2/3 of contemporary casual visitors to the site likely have no idea about the page rating system. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:31, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

  my reading of that discussion is that, while it came close, the determining factor of why it didn't ultimately pass is that some portion of editors believed (wrongly, in my view) that most readers notice/know what the GA/FA symbols mean This is not my reading of the discussion. To me it looks as though a major concern among opposers is that making GA/FA status more prominent for readers is likely to mislead them, either by making them think that GAs/FAs are uniformly high-quality even for those which were assessed many years ago when our standards were lower and have neither been maintained or reassessed, or by making them more doubtful about the quality of articles which have never gone through the GA/FA process but are nonetheless high quality. By my count at least ten of the 15 oppose !voters cite this reason either explicitly or "per X" where X is someone else who had made this point. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:18, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

  I've also encountered a fair few instances of older, lower standard GA articles. But I also think greater visibility (effectively also transparency) could also benefit in that area as well. If GA status is more prominent, it provides greater cause to review and reassess older GAs for possible quality issues. Also, most of the worst GAs I have seen have come from around 2007, so it seems like one sensible solution would be for GA status to come with a sunset clause whereby a GA review is automatically required after a decade. Maybe I'm getting a little sidetracked there, but this sort of concern is also exactly what I mean by greater visibility potentially reinjecting life and vitality into the process. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:15, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

  I think you're right about that being the most major source of opposition, but most major is different than determining — I don't think those !voters will be open to persuasion unless the quality of GAs/FAs improves (which, to be fair, it definitely has somewhat since 2021). But the "they already know" !voters might be more persuadable swing !voters, and it would have passed with their support. Sdkb  19:02, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

  I think that's a fair reading of the discussion. But, I suppose the best way to be more transparent is to tell a user that it has been rated GA after a peer review, but that doesn't mean that the article is perfect... Which is what GA (and FAs) also say. Lee Vilenski 19:54, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

• My radical proposal would be to get rid of the whole WP:GA system (which always came across to me as a watered-down version of WP:FA). Some1 (talk) 16:31, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

  Why? TompaDompa (talk) 16:38, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

  It is a watered-down process from an FA, but it is also the first rung on the ladder for some form of peer-review and a basic indicator of quality. Not every subject has the quality sources, let alone a volunteer dedicated enough, to take it straight from B-class to Featured Article. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:17, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

  That's literally the point of it. Lee Vilenski 19:52, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

RSS feed for Portal:Current events

An admin suggested that I make this a proposal here so here it is:

Unlike other Main page sections such as On this day (RSS) or Featured article (RSS), daily entries from Portal:Current events do not yet have an RSS feed. This has been requested several times on the Portal's talk page over the years, but never gained traction: 2006, 2010, 2013, 2020.

Adding a feed via MediaWiki's FeaturedFeeds extension should be relatively straightforward (for an admin with access to extension settings):

1. Create the feed page under MediaWiki:Ffeed-currentevents-page ("currentevents" would be the feed's name). Requires admin access.
2. Add the following as the page's source: Portal:Current events/{{#time:Y F j|-1 day}} (This should set yesterday's current events to today's feed entry.)
3. Configure the new feed in Misplaced Pages's FeaturedFeeds settings (adapting from extsting settings from other existing feeds like On this day). I'm not sure exactly what access is required here, or whether this can only be done by a WMF staff member.

I may be biased, but I don't see any good reason not to provide Current events as an RSS feed: it simply gives users another way to access this fantastic content using their favorite feed reader. Thoughts? Robinmetral (talk) 08:09, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Makes a lot of sense to me. Feels like it should be doable but phab:T160561 gives me pause. I would drop a link here at WP:VPT to get some technical eyes on this that can make sense of exactly how to implement. Trialpears (talk) 01:56, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the ref to phab:T160561! I agree that it might make more sense to move this over to WP:VPT by now, since there doesn't seem to be anyone opposing this in principle. I just reached out on the ticket thread to see if anyone involved in this at the time still remembers what happened. If there doesn't seem to be any technical blockers, I'll move this proposal to WPT to hopefully find someone who can implement it. Robinmetral (talk) 04:03, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Update image of Template:Template category

Proposal to update image used in Template:Template category:

Currently it looks like this:

The pages listed in this category are templates. This page is part of Misplaced Pages's administration and not part of the encyclopedia. Further template category notes This category contains pages in the template namespace. It should not be used to categorize articles or pages in other namespaces. To add a template to this category: If the template has a separate documentation page (usually called "Template:template name/doc"), add  ] to the <includeonly> section at the bottom of that page. Otherwise, add  <noinclude>]</noinclude> to the end of the template code, making sure it starts on the same line as the code's last character.

I propose we change the image to:

The pages listed in this category are templates. This page is part of Misplaced Pages's administration and not part of the encyclopedia. Further template category notes This category contains pages in the template namespace. It should not be used to categorize articles or pages in other namespaces. To add a template to this category: If the template has a separate documentation page (usually called "Template:template name/doc"), add  ] to the <includeonly> section at the bottom of that page. Otherwise, add  <noinclude>]</noinclude> to the end of the template code, making sure it starts on the same line as the code's last character.

-- waddie96 ★ (talk) 22:26, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

This is too big a venue for this discussion. In any case, I don't think it's an improvement — better to keep it simple. Sdkb  03:06, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Replace abbreviated forms of Template:Use mdy dates with full name

I propose that most transclusions of redirects to {{Use mdy dates}} and {{Use dmy dates}} be replaced by bots with the full template name.

Part of the purpose of {{Use mdy dates}} is to indicate to editors what they should do. Thus, readability is important. I propose all of these redirects be replaced with their target which is:

1. More easily understood even the first time you see it.
2. Standardized, and thus easier to quickly scan and read.

The specific existing redirects that I suggest replacing are:

• {{Mdy}} → {{Use mdy dates}}
• {{MDY}} → {{Use mdy dates}}
• {{Usemdy}} → {{Use mdy dates}}
• {{Usemdydates}} → {{Use mdy dates}}
• {{Use MDY}} → {{Use mdy dates}}
• {{Use mdy}} → {{Use mdy dates}}
• {{Dmy}} → {{Use dmy dates}}
• {{DMY}} → {{Use dmy dates}}
• {{Usedmy}} → {{Use dmy dates}}
• {{Use dmy}} → {{Use dmy dates}}
• {{Use DMY}} → {{Use dmy dates}}
• {{Usedmydates}} → {{Use dmy dates}}

1. I would probably leave alone the redirects that differ only in case, namely {{Use MDY dates}} and {{Use DMY dates}}, which are sufficiently readable for my concerns.

Daask (talk) 20:30, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

In principle I like this idea (noting my suggestion to bring it here). My only concern would be about watchlist spam, given that, while this may not technically be a cosmetic edit, it's only a hair above one. But there's only a few thousand transclusions of these redirects, so if the bot goes at a rate of, say, one per minute, it'd be done in a few days. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 21:09, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

It looks like most or all of these are already listed at Misplaced Pages:AutoWikiBrowser/Template redirects, so whenever anyone edits an article with AWB, they'll already be replaced. No strong view about doing so preemptively.

However, if our goal is to ensure that these templates are actually meaningfully used, then we have some bigger fish to fry. First of all, even the written-out form isn't sufficiently readable/noticeable — many newcomers may not know what it means, and many experienced editors may miss it if they aren't happening to look at the top of the article. Ideally, we would either offer to correct the date format if anyone enters the incorrect one via mw:Edit check (task) or we'd include it in an editnotice of some sort.

Second of all, roughly 2/3 of all articles still don't have a date tag, so we need to figure out better strategies for tagging en masse. There are surely some definable groups of articles that are best suited to a particular format (e.g. all U.S. municipality articles I'd think would want to use MDY) that we could agree on and then bulk tag. Sdkb  21:50, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

It's definitely a cosmetic edit, in that it only changes the wikitext without changing anything readers see. But consensus can decide that any particular cosmetic edit should be done by bots. As proposed, there are currently 2089 transclusions of these redirects, 1983 in mainspace. Anomie⚔ 14:21, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

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