Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) - Wikipedia

The aim of the Village pump (idea lab) is to encourage the preliminary incubation of new ideas in a "non-polling" environment. When you have a new idea, it is not mandatory that you post it here first. However, doing so can be useful if you only have a general conception of what you want to see implemented, and would like the community's assistance in devising the specifics. Once ideas have been developed, they can be presented to the community for consensus discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).

The formation of this page, and the question of its purpose and existence, are the subjects of discussion on the talk page. Direct all comments on those topics there.

Just an idea that occurred to me about five seconds ago: Why isn't there a simple way to share Wikipedia articles? I mean, increasing reach is pretty important, as it's basically what brings increased participation and thus increased quality and thus increased reach (strategy:File:VirtCirc3.png), so why isn't this a priority? A way to share articles, something like what Wikinews has, might accomplish this immensely. Any ideas about the best way to go about doing this? --Yair rand (talk) 06:16, 19 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I think that's probably a good idea. The link could easily be added to the Toolbox at the left, and I expect the actual sharing bit can be done in Javascript. Lots of websites have this, and I see no reason why we shouldn't. Rd232 ^talk 10:27, 21 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I agree. There are on-line services for this (addthis for example) but I don't know if they would appreciate it if we add up to 3 million new entries to their database or if the Foundation would be happy to use any third-party service for this. You might want to propose this at the strategy-wiki. Regards SoWhy 11:52, 21 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Wikia uses what you are proposing on all of their content articles, and allow the user to easily link to that article via Facebook or some other social networking site. It might be a good idea, but it could be easily done. Ajraddatz (Talk) 23:26, 2 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

As someone who uses neither Facebook nor any sharing service, this would only mean one thing: excessive, unnecessary clutter. I know, this just might be a small icon somewhere (= clutter). If it were one of the entries in the menu on the left hand panel of the page, minimal and subtle in its form, not standing out, then why not. --Ouro (blah blah) 05:01, 15 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

• The Signpost just starting doing this, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-09-20/From the editor. The same code could easily be used on articles, and it is very unintrusive. Fences&Windows 00:56, 26 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

What do you think of having a detective agency to track down stuff (such as the Article Alert Bot source code) on Wikipedia? It would be some form of Wikiproject. Arlen22 (talk) 15:25, 9 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

You'll have to explain this thought in a bit more detail. Isn't this the kind of stuff that the WP:VPT deals with routinely? Fences&Windows 22:50, 9 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

A place where people can collaborate to investigate things on Wikipedia. Arlen22 (talk) 11:56, 10 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

What sorts of things? Past projects include Wikipedia:Requests for investigation and Wikipedia:Association of Member Investigations and Wikipedia:WikiProject Vandalism studies. There's also Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations. You'll have to be more specific as to what kind of investigating you have in mind. -- œ^™ 12:10, 10 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Stuff that requires, or is helped by, tight collaboration. Arlen22 (talk) 17:36, 10 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Or in general, any problems that people need help with, especially finding the code for inactive bots, contacting inactive users, etc. Arlen22 (talk) 18:50, 10 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

What would this accomplish that our existing noticeboards, including this Village Pump, do not? Fences&Windows 21:34, 10 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

You tell me, then we will both know. Arlen22 (talk) 17:05, 11 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Please go there and take a look. Search robots are banned! This is a HUGE collection of scientific papers paid for by the US government, particularly the Department of Energy (DOE). I can understand that they might have limited computation time for real-time searches, but why not give a current copy of the entire database to major search engines or us. It would be nice to have here on Wikipedia an advanced search button that allowed searches of the last-store version of www.lanl.gov. It's good for them, too, because the ability to search their database of math and science papers would encourage more on-line publications at this DOE site. Bridgettttttte_babble^poop 03:14, 15 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

The user put this on WP:RFC, but asked me to move it where I thought best; pump/ideas seemed reasonable.  Chzz  ►  22:08, 15 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Wouldn't Wikisource be the place to do this? Fences&Windows 01:09, 17 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

I agree that Wikisource sounds like the right solution.--SPhilbrickT 13:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

It is time to deal with the unreliable history stats function on Wikipedia, once and for all. We must have something that works all the time. This function should be in America somewhere, it must be somewhere in the western hemisphere. Could the Wiki Foundation round up some last generation UNIX Sun Fridge servers (the mother of all servers?) say at a nice isolated State university somewhere in the mid west? So we can see the effects of our edits. For certain and for all time.This is something that you CAN DO NOW and many people WANT DONE NOW instead of pushing useless change that no one wants Chop Chop....--Oracleofottawa (talk) 00:30, 16 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Can you explain what it is you're looking for? What unreliable history stats? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 05:55, 17 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Well I for one wish we had reliable page view stats... but I don't think that's what he meant. Rd232 ^talk 11:01, 17 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

As a busy person, I can only contribute to significant articles with significant errors or omissions but it is not clear which pages are significant without raw or indicative page view stats on each article header. Ballabrewy 15:22 22 September 2010 (GMT) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.137.3.131 (talk)

Hi! Just an idea, but I think it would be really cool to have a superb article assessment category for articles that meet the FA requirements plus all of the following:

1. They have received a stylistic review by two different independent (Outside of Wikipedia) media sources and have been classed as excellent.
2. They have been referenced and referred to directly by a notable figure (unconnected to Wikipedia) on the relevant topic.
3. They have undergone two internal Wikipedia peer reviews by different sets of ten editors and passed.
4. They have not had a edit war for the past year.

The reward for getting an article to superb status could be that the article is mentioned directly during a WikiMania event, and a direct link on the Main page to the list (very small) of all the superb articles on Wikipedia. Any thoughts?--Novus Orator 05:07, 25 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Do any articles actually meet this now? I'd rather see this kind of effort put toward improving the 99.91% of articles that aren't featured, rather than trying to improve what's already our best content. There are diminishing returns on work put into article improvement. Something like this would be a huge amount of effort, but the difference would probably only be noticed by subject matter experts and professional writers. To the majority of readers, it would just be a different icon on the page. Mr.Z-man 18:22, 26 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sorry but i don't know weather i have to write this here but i want to say you that but please can you make the complicated words more easier because it is difficult to understand some words for the students i think because i am also a student.if you want to say anything i am having an account on Wikipedia you can tell me on it. and if you cannot change that words then please write it's meaning in a bracket if you do this i will be very thankful of you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.94.124.223 (talk) 14:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

You could look them up on Wikitionary, or you might like Simple English Wikipedia. Fences&Windows 00:51, 26 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

I think that there should be a chat room where you can set up meetings from a user list so it would just be you and who ever you want talking. It should be linked to your talk or your page

I think that you can get to see other peoples pages and their discussion by ONLY clicking on an easily found link.

I think that their should be an avatar area where you can use an avatar and have a chat about wiki with friends.

thanks hedgehogs1998 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hedgehogs1998 (talk • contribs) 14:37, 26 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

1) We have several IRC channels, it would be more useful if you could see if they're on. 2) Huh? Everyone is suppose to have links to their pages in their signature. 3) Sound alot like social networking, see WP:NOTFACEBOOK. — Dispenser 16:39, 26 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

This is an idea that's been kicking around in the back of my head for a while, as a solution to ugly disputes on some of the more deeply contentious pages on wikipedia (you all know of at least one example, I assume). The basic idea is this: when there's a community consensus that a particular article or topic area has gotten out of control (protracted, nasty, unresolvable POV disputes, for instance), the community can assign a town sheriff to step in and clean the page up. Basically, a town sheriff would be a volunteer sysop (picked from a short list of experienced sysops who have the time and inclination), whose purpose would be to make sure that everyone on the page participates nicely and follows proper consensus discussion practices, and who has a somewhat stronger array of tools than sysops normally use to accomplish that end. A short list of these tools, along with the reasons why they're useful:

• The sheriff would be the only sysop working on that article/topic area as a sysop, unless s/he deputizes other sysops to help (and deputies are required to follow the sheriff's lead).
  • This improves accountability, since the sheriff will be unambiguously responsible for all administrative actions on the page
  • This reduces system-gaming, since editors can't appeal to outside sympathetic sysops or try to confuse issues by dragging in multiple sysops for help
• The sheriff would have very liberal rights to redact, refactor or require that editors reword their posts. This would be used specifically to remove disruptive and distracting material while preserving the meaning and sense of ongoing discussions. It would allow actions like the following:
  • redacting uncivil comments and inflammatory language from within posts so that the debate can progress without stimulating further contention
  • redacting or refactoring duplicate material so that discussions don't get bogged down in endless repetitive cycles
  • redacting off-topic commentary and 'me too' type posts to cut down on page noise (except where they are useful, as in straw polls)
• The sheriff would have the right (generally disapproved of on wikipedia, I know) to impose 24hr (non-cumulative) cool-down blocks/page-bans on editors who are getting excessively heated (basically any sheriff's eternal right to toss someone in the pokey overnight for being drunk and disorderly)
  • This would cut the more intense disputes down to a dreadful crawl, since angry editors would only be able to make a couple of posts a day.
  • This would (eventually) get across the idea that calm civil discussions are more productive than heated disputes - calm, civil people would be the only ones who could post freely and without interruption - which will generally improve the demeanor of the page.

Basically the idea of a sheriff (anywhere) is to use force as needed to preserve the peace and ensure that people interact cooperatively and productively, even where people might be inclined to behave in less savory ways. On wikipedia this means preserving the consensus process against those who (intentionally or otherwise) end up disrupting it. it's self-limiting: sheriffs who start taking sides in the dispute, or start trying to dictate content, or start abusing the extra tools, would be painfully obvious to all and would get themselves replaced in short order, and sheriffs on pages that cool down significantly will find they have nothing to do, and can exit the page gracefully.

Setting up the basic paradigm is easy. it would take me a few hours to list out the rules and create some associated material (such as templates). Teaching people how to do it correctly might take a bit more effort - it sometimes requires a fairly philosophical perspective on the consensus process to distinguish between productive and non-productive speech acts. but it is not outside the realm of feasibility. And frankly, there are some disputes that are not going to be resolved, ever, except by someone putting their foot down and insisting on civil, reasonable behavior. This might be a useful technique to try first if a dispute seems to be on its way to ArbCom anyway.

Comments, thoughts, insights? --Ludwigs2 22:23, 26 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

• Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't have a provision for binding arbitration. Coming up with a "town sheriff" would require the Wikipedia iceberg to change course and there's a whole lot of inertia behind that thing... —Carrite, Sept. 26, 2010.
  • It's not binding arbitration, it's civility enforcement. very different things. Binding arbitration means making a binding decision about content (which is not at all what I'm suggesting here). Civility enforcement means taking strong measures to ensure that normal consensus discussions have a chance to progress. seemingly subtle difference, I know, but with a deceptively large difference in results. --Ludwigs2 18:06, 27 September 2010 (UTC)Reply
• The idea has some merit; in fact, it's to some degree already done in the really combative areas like Climate Change, whenever ArbCom enforces more restrictive editing standards. However, CC in fact points to the problem with this issue--as far as I've read on ANI, what seems to inevitably happen is that, over time, each Admin in charge (the sherriff) inevitably gets tag by one side or the other as being non-neutral, and that admins neutrality itself becomes a bone of contention, until that Admin is either forced to step aside or the other editors stop paying attention to that admin (making end-runs around him/her). Also, I don't like the idea of ever taking away someone's ability to contact an outside admin for help--otherwise, what recourse would someone ever have who feels like the somehow just aren't working well with that specific person (and this can happen even when someone edits in good faith)? Perhaps consider a group of admins working on one article? I'm not sure exactly if there is a way to flesh this out, but there may be something. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:01, 28 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

  Interestingly, it was exactly this kind of situation that I was thinking about when I came up with this, because I've seen it happen myself. There are two reasons why sysops get sandbagged in that particular way when they try to intervene on troubled pages:

  1. They have to assume the authority for intervening in a stronger fashion on their own (it's not given them by the community), and so they get accused of exceeding their rights as a sysop for some imagined 'personal' reason.
  2. They have no guideline for precisely how they should intervene, and (since they have to make it up as they go) they leave themselves open to all sorts of specious interrogations about their behavior. and as we all know, once someone leaves themselves open in that kind of interrogation, they are going to get Ken Starred by someone.

  The way real-world sheriffs handle these problems - because they are just as vulnerable as any sysop to counter-attacks by the people they are trying to cope with - is by (1) having their extra use of power legitimized by the community, and (2) restricting themselves to a clearly defined, pre-sanctioned list of actions. A real-world sheriff is allowed to carry and use a weapon because the community hired him specifically to use force in situations that require it, and a real-world sheriff has a list of things he's allowed to intervene on which states ways he can intervene on each. So long as this real-world sheriff restricts himself to doing the things on that list (and treats everyone more-or-less the same with respect to that list), he's pretty much immune: people can complain about the list of infractions itself, but can't fault the sheriff for enforcing it.

The same thing would work on wikipedia. Obviously people could complain about a TS and accuse him/her of all sorts of things (the rule about the TS being the only active sysop on the page is to prevent editors from playing 'mommy/daddy' games with different sysops, not to prevent people from talking about what's happening on the page). but if the TS has been sticking to the narrow scope of the job, the TS only needs to say: "I am cleaning up the page according to the procedures laid out for town sheriffs, link here, as approved by the community. If this process is somehow flawed, please begin a discussion about modifying that page, and I will change my actions when a new set of procedures is agreed on." The explicitness of the laid-out procedures should end most discussions about TS behavior quickly, and in cases where a TS steps over the line in minor ways, the discussion can be ended by simple clarifications of the procedure. in either case (so long as the TS is not actually overtly abusing the system), any attacks on the TS should quickly get shifted onto discussions about community-approved procedures, which should insulate him/her from witch-hunts. And if the TS is overtly abusing the system... well, I think that situation will take care of itself.

The job would take some cojones, of course - a sheriff has to be willing to do the right thing over strong objections - but the setup would at least keep TS's from the ravening assaults I've seen made on pro-active sysops in the past. --Ludwigs2 01:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

In that case, I guess it would depend on exactly what "authority" such a person would hold. Some of your original suggestions seems good (e.g., redacting uncivil comments) to me, while others (refactoring comments) seem bad. As a side note, what place do you believe would be the appropriate source for the installment of a sheriff? Would this come from ANI? Could someone post a request, much like they do now for an RfC or voluntary mentorship? Qwyrxian (talk) 02:04, 28 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

The precise authorities a sheriff would have would be details we'd need to work out - part of why I posted the idea here in the lab. I have a good idea of the kinds of things that would be useful (based on a fairly extensive knowledge of the pitfalls of discursive decision-making), but I'm not so sure about what the community would be comfortable with. The basic model I have in mind is actually a socialization model - the sheriff working to short-curcuit the various advantages that are derived from improper behavior in a consensus discussion, so that editors will slowly re-socialize to proper consensus behavior because bad behavior would become a less profitable method for achieving article goals then cooperative consensus-oriented behavior. For instance, refactoring comments is one way of offsetting filibuster techniques, where editors individually or collectively keep reasserting the same points endlessly, with the effect that all conversations on the page grind to a repetitive halt. Refactoring or redacting repetitious material removes no substantive points from the debate, but keeps the discussion on that particular point localized to a single place where it has the best chance of being resolved, and removes a tremendous source of frustration for other editors who never know how to deal with that sort of mindless-seeming repetition. I can spell all the points out in detail if you like.

As far as installing a sheriff, that should probably come from wp:AN, wp:ANI, or some special noticeboard created for the purpose. It doesn't really matter where; what matters is that enough people notice that there is an ongoing problem with the article/topic, and the problem has gone on long enough that there's a general consensus that it is an annoyance/eyesore/irritant/whatever. I anticipate at that point that someone will say "Gads, I'm sick of this topic. Should we send in a sheriff to straighten this mess out?", there will be general grunts and grumbles of agreement, and if there seems to be decent consensus they'll get a volunteer from the available sheriffs list who'll take it on. That will involve things like adding a template to the page so editors know what's going on, leaving a notice on wp:AN so that sysops know to contact the sheriff about issues related to the page, and then wading in with warnings first to let people know that the situation has changed. The main concerns, from my perspective, are (1) making it clear and obvious that the sheriff is there at the behest of the community, and (2) going through the necessary bells and whistles to make it absolutely clear that the sheriff has a legitimate right to do what s/he does on the page, based in established community consensus. Establishing and maintaining that sense of legitimacy is by itself a significant factor (in the sandbagging cases we discussed above, this is where the sysops got in trouble - their attackers always relentlessly dogged them on the issue of legitimacy). The message has to be: "The community is sick of this, sheriff X is here to put it right", so it just needs to get started in a venue that makes it clear that the community is fully behind it. --Ludwigs2 07:26, 28 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm seeing potential for a restructuring of the site, come HTML5.

Mainly thinking of something I'm calling "bubble histories".. something like having an always-visible trace of a session inside a browser window, in the form of, lets say, a string of connected bubbles. So that users can see not only current wiki content, but also (at some convenient location within the browser window) this chain of bubbles showing how they've gotten there. At the moment, keeping track of link-jumping is a task seen as being something completely left to the user - (s)he having to manage multiple tabs and keep moving from one to another. From own experience and for wikipedians I know of, this is a pain - anyone from newbie to experienced "wiki-miner" has experienced the many ways of getting lost while searching for information that requires jumping many links.

Having a readily available history of searches, and more importantly, their connectedness, seems an intuitive way of getting around this. The idea seems appealing enough in itself, and could add an interesting new layer to usage. Off the top of my head - bubbles could be sized, so as to intuitively reflect the chronology of paths/branches a user has taken on the site. Hovering mouse pointer over a bubble could have much the same behaviour as hovering over links within a wiki does right now.

There's one more attractive possibility.. one of showing (in dulled bubbles maybe?) links branching off from current wiki - into the future, so to speak.. these will be interesting possibilities for future navigation, personalised for the current user, based on their navigation thus far. I'm looking forward to feedback on whether or not there's a potential for consensus here, why or why not, problems with implementation etc. The essence of this idea could probably be well managed without HTML5, though the latter will be of definite help I'm guessing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gopalkrishnan83 (talk • contribs) 18:24, 27 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sounds like Wikipedia Diver and Wikimedia+ (both add-ons). Fences&Windows 21:15, 27 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Checked these, both are nowhere near what I'd like to have as an average user, always-visible within the browsing window. IMO link-jumping is quite central to Wikipedia usage, optional half-useful apps wont do much help I'm afraid. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gopalkrishnan83 (talk • contribs) 20:24, 28 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Okay, this probably sounds really strange, but today I was commenting on a proposed addition to WP:ELNO (discussion can be seen at WT:EL#Are online petitions a form of social networking?. One of the standard concerns with such an addition is that it creates "instruction creep"--that if we just keep adding more and more "rules," the editing process becomes more and more difficult for new editors and less and less like the original spirit of Wikipedia (whatever that is). In this particular instance, we don't actually need a new rule, because consensus seems pretty clear that the proposed addition is already covered, but since it isn't covered explicitly, a new user may find it difficult to see why.

This triggered in my mind the idea that since our policies are supposed to arise out of consensus, and often out of specific contexts, like a particular problem on a particular page or group of pages, that every policy often has a story--perhaps an ArbCom decision, or an ANI discussion that had wider consequences, a WMF ruling-by-fiat, or even a heavily discussed AfD. Furthermore, every policy has a varying set of interpretations, not all of which are mutually consistent. What I was wondering is whether or not such interpretations and "stories" could somehow be linked to the policies themselves, either via notes, references or some other system? My framing metaphor is the Talmud. For those who don't know, the Talmud is a collection of writings by Jewish rabbinical scholars from the 3rd and 6th century BCE, which provide discussions and interpretations of the Tanakh (which are the actually core holy books/canon of the Hebrew Bible). The Tanakh itself is the "real" authority, but the Talmud provides helpful insight into ways that the Jewish rabbinate traditionally interpreted various parts of the Tanakh. In the present day, different Jewish sects give different levels of authority to the Talmud, but at a minimum, all look to it for insight in how scripture was interpreted in the past. Our "Talmud" would work in much the same way--it would not be binding in the same way that policy/guidelines are, but it would help others see how and why the policies arose, and how they have been interpreted by the community at various points. It would allow us to keep some policies simple and clean, but let the interpretations speak to the details (another metaphor that we could use hereis the way that judicial precedent is "secondary" to law, but is also important and valid when applying that law in the present). It would also be helpful when considering ways of changing policy, because it would let us see what had gone before (i.e., serving a role similar to the WP:PEREN page). Finally, it helps build a sense of community and history, showing new editors where we have been before, and why we made the choices we did. At present, I have only this broad idea, nor any specific idea of how to address this from a technical perspective. Any thoughts—positively, negatively, or otherwise? Qwyrxian (talk) 00:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)Reply