Talk:Main Page/Archives/2003
 | Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in 2003, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion or the archives index. |
Multiple main pages
The Main Page style is important for Main Page/temp and alternate main page discussions. Everyone is encouraged to comment on this style proposal, and eventually we'll archive the discussion and this will be a style guide, period.
criticism of project/content/code style
Perhaps that structure was useful when meta was young, but in its recent history it has served as more of a draft policy and dispute resolution mechanism. Also "project/content/code" is oriented more for control-freak type users who want to take a 'god's eye view'.
what do users want?
Remember, your user is not you.
Ordinary users want to know why people are picking on them on wikipedia (etiquette), why there's no recourse (governance), make recommendations on the user interface (usability), and generally get familiar with the form expected and characters influential in the past (history). A tiny minority of those care about how this influences "content as a whole". An even tinier minority contributes to the code or even has the capacity to read it. All that said, yes you could leave things more or less as they are with your 'project' replaced by 'collaborating' or something that more obviously includes the contributors.
meta has a POV
Meta has a POV: project/control/code is definitely a POV. But so is anything we might want to impose. The closest we can get to neutrality is some average of user views, e.g. hundred millionth user or something statistical like that.
Also ordinary users WANT to read pages with one consistent point of view on meta wikipedia, even if we can't agree on one for the regular Main Page (or Main Page Neutral properly speaking). At the very least, they want to read their own language, else we drive them off.
So alternate main pages must be possible, e.g. Main Page Natural, Main Page Catholic. All working off the same basic style template. This should be applicable to any of the pages, but a page other than the Main Page Neutral should be able to adapt it without following it exactly, as they are not as committed to neutrality as the following style is:
Main Page Neutral style prototype
current
What ever is current.
contributing
Everything that a contributor must read to get started, e.g. user interface, NPOV, wikitext, copyright, anti-rules, sister projects so contributions go to the right place.
Most of these will include links to Wikipedia policy space probably. The basic organizing principle here should be FAQ - trying to get questions answered and getting them contributing as quickly as possible, with a minimum of problems actually:
collaborating
More advanced wikipetiquette points or other fine points of etiquette, ethics, process, consensus, community, how NPOV 'just happens' - and disputes of this claim, other points of view that are identifiable or frequently encountered (e.g. religious, ethnic, common fallacies), how governance processes correct things going very badly wrong, sysops and what they do right or wrong.
The organizing principle here should be conflict identification and dispute resolution - typical encounters or conflicts between contributors, and how they resolve those to become actual 'collaborators', and what habits we find lead to that most often.
core or constraints
Basic principles that we just won't or can't seriously violate, to ensure that the number and quality of contributors stays high, and most are interested in collaboration within these constraints - NPOV, basic conduct, especially for the sysops.
Suggestion: Organize this as a priority list of such constraints, e.g. 1. stop vandalism 2. stop any process that drives away collaborators 3. stop any process that drives away contributors 4. correct articles to NPOV 5. reduce power abuses by sysops 6. protect user privacy 7. protect contributor privacy - or whatever the list really is in practice, according to us. If there's more than one view of the core, then that means an alternate Main Page should be created.
content/editing
NPOV defined very exactly with lots of FAQ stuff, straitjackets for types of articles, detailed forms, sources, de facto editors, why formal editors aren't assigned.
Organize this as a set of situations, like 'collaborating', only the situations aren't conflicts of morality that are resolved by ethics, they are conflicts of presentation styles that are resolved by editing. Again an FAQ style is probably most appropriate.
code
Everything below the user interface - organized as per the actual code structure of the *next* code release (except for archived guides to older code versions)
cast
Notable characters, everything stored by author - alphabetical list of contributors, with their contributions as originally named by them - for citation in any of the above categories
Or is it not rather
1. stop vandalism 2. stop any process that drives away contributors 3. stop any process that drives away collaborators ? —unsigned by 212.17.37.162 22:13, 25 February 2003.
- Depends on whether you mean 'collaborator' as a cooperator or someone who collaborates with sysops. ;-)
- Probably better to put this in the terms of the Wikipedia Vicious Cycle —unsigned by 142.177.106.217 00:18, 26 February 2003.
Main Page Alternate
An alternate Main Page is one that takes a radically different point of view of the content of the meta. It might be in another language, e.g. Accueil, Portado. It might be based on another ethical or religious or political point of view, e.g. en:feminism, en:Islam, en:Catholicism, "Natural" point of view. It might be hard to actually tell what the alternate point of view really "is" from the point of view of those reading the main Main Page. But that doesn't matter, since it is up to the collaborators of alternate main pages to define.
Main Page Neutral (for Neutral point of view) should usually point to the regular meta main page, and if it needs neutralization, that should be done on the page named 'Neutral' first - rather than at "/temp" as we are doing it now. If after a while that stands as a more neutral page, then we can just move it to the Main Page and Neutral becomes a redirect. That allows Main Page of Meta to depart from Neutral if it ever becomes necessary, but Neutral to still exist somewhere...
Some issues to resolve:
- should alternate Main Pages be subpages, as this one is? Or just use the qualifier, e.g. Main Page Muslim, Main Page Natural, it adopts for itself?
- should they always be titled and subtitled in one language per page? or be mixed as in Accueil
- should it require a certain Main Page quorum to set a new one up? Say, a pair of people must edit it with more than minor edits within a week, or it is downgraded to something less than an 'alternate Main Page' or some such rule?
- should it require a higher Main Page quorum to change the Main Page Neutral?
- is some formal joining of a faction, tendency, clique or cult required to edit a main page? If so would this require changes or features in Wikipedia4 ?
- should there be a Main Page Troll with no rules whatsoever?
- should there be a Main Page Sysop that only sysops can edit?
- should there be a Main Page Vandal collecting all the stupid stuff for historical purposes? Who knows what people will want to know about wikipedia in 10 years
- should it be possible to enforce a simpler vocabulary on a given main page, so it doesn't get too much into jargon? Present main page can be impenetrable...
- should they all be required to follow a common Main Page style? Would they, even if 'required', given difficulty of keeping it all translated? —unsigned by 142.177.97.225 04:44, 25 February 2003.
- A Main Page Sysop ? I like the idea
- But it would be also be nice if there was a Main page non-sysop, where sysops would not have the right to participate. —unsigned by 212.17.37.162 22:11, 25 February 2003.
- So do the sysops, but they think Main Page is theirs already. Project/content/code is clearly a sysop's list of what's important. People are only there incidentally. It's all top down view. Etc. Main Page Neutral tries to get away from that.
- Main Page Troll could serve that function.
- Also note that Contributor is defined as not including sysops, trolls or vandals. —unsigned by 142.177.106.217 00:21, 26 February 2003.
Main Page Muslim
What would the main page look like, ideally, to a strict Muslim? How would the Islamization of knowledge apply to wikipedia4 or later releases? How would traditional concepts like isnah, fiqh, ijtihad, ilm Ar-Rijal and hadith be integrated and guide the encyclopedia's view? What Islamic terms in Arabic would be incorporated into its user interface? How would it differ from a Catholic, Natural, or Buddhist point of view? Please make proposals for such pages below: —unsigned by 142.177.82.156 22:27, 4 February 2003.
- I would suggest beginning with something that all Muslim agree with. That is the life of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Then from there showing the evolution of the various beliefs from both a historical and theological standpoint. —unsigned by 4.230.156.14 3:15, 8 May 2005.
Main Page temp
This page is dedicated to experimenting with MetaWikipedia Main Page. Hopefully a more readable MainPage will come out of it ;-)
what I propose:
- to reduce the links to the wikipedias to the active ones, add one link to a list
- Bad idea - how are inactive wikipedias to get active if there's no links to them here? Someone who speaks those languages and visits here might go get them going, but they definitely won't if the links aren't visible here.
- take the structure given in the introduction (metaproject, meta-content, meta-code) and sort the articles under these headings (with subheadings when needed)
- Perhaps that structure was useful when meta was young, but in its history it has served as more of a draft policy and dispute resolution mechanism. Also "project/content/code" is oriented only for control-freak type users. Ordinary users want to know why people are picking on them on wikipedia (etiquette), why there's no recourse (governance), make recommendations on the user interface (usability), and generally get familiar with the form expected and characters influential in the past (history). A tiny minority of those care about how this influences "content as a whole". An even tinier minority contributes to the code or even has the capacity to read it. All that said, yes you could leave things more or less as they are with your 'project' replaced by 'collaborating' or something that more obviously includes the contributors. How about:
- contributing (everything that a contributor must read to get started, e.g. user interface, NPOV, wikitext, anti-rules, sister projects so contributions go to the right place)
- collaborating (more advanced etiquette, ethics, process, consensus, community, and how NPOV happens, and how governance processes correct things going very badly wrong)
- content and editing (NPOV defined, straitjackets for types of articles, detailed forms, sources)
- code (everything below the user interface)
- cast (of characters, everything stored by author)
- Perhaps that structure was useful when meta was young, but in its history it has served as more of a draft policy and dispute resolution mechanism. Also "project/content/code" is oriented only for control-freak type users. Ordinary users want to know why people are picking on them on wikipedia (etiquette), why there's no recourse (governance), make recommendations on the user interface (usability), and generally get familiar with the form expected and characters influential in the past (history). A tiny minority of those care about how this influences "content as a whole". An even tinier minority contributes to the code or even has the capacity to read it. All that said, yes you could leave things more or less as they are with your 'project' replaced by 'collaborating' or something that more obviously includes the contributors. How about:
- to use wikipedia:Requests for deletion extensively or create an archive where old and obsolete discussion pages can be stored
- maybe people could rate articles with a "*" which they consider important. Article with many stars move up in the subsection hierarchy while those without stars could be moved to separate tables of contents Good idea - add it to the Wikipedia4 suggestions, since it will require some code changes and we have to flag these long in advance.
Main Page - Hoofdpagina - Hauptseite - Huvudsida - Ĉefpaĝo - Forside - Accueil - Strona główna - Pagina principală - Portada
Meta-Wikipedia is a wiki meant to work alongside the main Wikipedia project. It can be used for several Wikipedia-related purposes:
- Meta-project: Discuss and formulate project-wide (i.e. not language-specific) policies; organize events, contents; philosophical discussions
- Meta-content: Organize and prepare content, e.g. templates, language files
- Meta-code: Coordinate the development process
If you're looking for a place to post encyclopedia articles, head over to the main project sites:
- Castellano - Català - Dansk - Deutsch - English - Esperanto - Français - Frysk - Hanyu - Hrvatosrbska - Italiano - Nederlands - Magyar - Nihongo - Norsk - Polska - Português - Româna - Slovensko -Svenska
Experiment with editing in the Meta-Wikipedia Sandbox!
Wikipedia3 (tentative name for the current wikipedia codebase) Wikipedia4 (just questions, for now, what should this include?)
current issues
(a rough digest of what's topical on the mailing list & elsewhere)
- Help us find a Wikipedia mascot!
- tracking all Wikipedia self-references!
- Paper Wikipedia - and underlying Wikipedia DTD
- wikipedia meetup
- Wikipedia client - offline reader and editor (proposed) important for increasing Wikipedia presence in countries with low broadband penetration and high dial-up internet costs
- Markup extensions
- Math Markup -- inline TeX support for math being implemented now
- Music markup -- inline music notation? (proposed)
- Wikipediatlas -- inline map generation (proposed) - with spacetime DTD
- Wikitax -- a radically altered wiki markup (proposed) - with ideology
- table syntax and simplified tables (proposed)
- Interlingual issues:
- Thoughts on language integration - merge of database
- Ideas on how to write about--and how not to write about--film (KQ and whoever cares to respond)
Core issues: etiquette, consensus, permission, vandals, ethics, morals
- etiquette
- Wikipedia vandalism
- Uploads being abused
- consensus and implications of its definition for all of the core issues
- Simple View of Ethics and Morals
- Be bold in updating pages
- Should talk pages be used for debating?
- Should Wikipedia Use Profanity? (Stephen Gilbert and others)
- Freedom of choosing a username debate
- Standard email texts for asking permission to use texts or images
usability and user interface
- Regarding URLs and change of URL for English pedia
- What to do with www.wikipedia.org
- The provisional portal of Wikipedia
- SVG image support
- Protected pages considered harmful
- Empty page page
- Recent Changes redesign
- Browser issues with Wikipedia
Wikipedia hackfest
- How to become a Wikipedia hacker
- Database queries on Wikipedia
- Text in software
- Math Markup
- RDF spool
- Wiki markup tables -- proposals
- Wiki markup syntax - see Wikipedia DTD
- meta.wikipedia.org technical issues
Sister project proposals
- Wiktionary: a dictionary project now online: http://wiktionary.org
- Wikisaurus: a thesaurus project
- Wikipediatlas - and underlying spacetime DTD
- Wikiteer: a gazetteer project
- Wikews: a newspaper project - and underlying person DTD
- Project Sourceberg (what to do about primary sources - see TIPAESA also)
- The need for some form of Wikipedia Yearbook
- Slotipedia - A Proposal
- Wikipedia Virtual Mind
- September 11 wiki] - Please help build 911 Attack memorial
English usage
- vocabulary - both an educational and an ethical issue
- defining vocabulary - the core glossary, should coordinate with [1]
- trademark - use of terms which are claimed as property e.g. brand names, and degree to which wikipedia should respect such 'ownership'
- Use of the present tense, and overuse of the past tense
copyright
- copyright - what is 'fair use' in quotation and what violates laws? whose law applies? what problems are we actually trying to solve here?
- Avoid Copyright Paranoia!
- Wikipedia and copyright issues
- Copyright bot
Interlingual coordination
- Wikipedia software upgrade status
- Date formats for language linking
- International logo contest
- International promotion material -- new!
- Countries of the world tables
- Wikipedia Machine Translation Project
- International wikipedia question
- Final international solution
- Statistics for International Wikipedias
- There is also a English Wikipedia available -- International help necessary
- Future of international Wikipedias as part of the main community
- Open letter to the Enciclopedia Libre group
- Thoughts on Wikipedia interlanguage priorities
- Mailing list-s
- Wikipedias and cross-fertilisation
- Supporting an English Dialect - Cockney Rhyming Slang Wikipedia
Characters and contributors
- Various Wikipedian essays
- How I became a Wikipedian
- A day in the life of an ordinary Canadian
- Wikipedians categorized by sub-cultural affiliation
- Markup vs MetaForming
- AntonioMartin Autograph collecting do's and dont's
- Larry Sanger
Wikipedia-specific issues
Not tied to the etiquette, ethics, community, or culture questions, just things we truly have to decide in order to get along here and now.
- The ideal Wikipedia board - to decide governance issues like these:
- Wikipedia board manual
- recruiting editors
- recruiting authors
- Wikipedia4 features
- Wikipedia4 timeline
Neutral point of view
- Neutral point of view--draft
- Proposed revision of the NPOV policy
- NPOV as description not prescription
- Systemic Bias of Wikipedia
- Early Muslim view of history - "all records are liable to error..."
- Natural point of view
- NPOV is an ideal
- consensus editing
Form of Metapedia
Meta-Wikipedia is not a disposal site for uncorrectable articles from the different Wikipedias, and it is not a hosting provider for personal essays of all types. If you're looking for a wiki-based community, check out MeatballWiki's community list. If you're looking for free webspace, you can find a list here. If you want to build your own wiki, try SeedWiki for a free wiki or check out the list of wiki engines.
wikipedia:Requests for deletion
Form of Wikipedia
- Consolidating v/s breaking up
- The elements of an encyclopedia project (Larry Sanger and whoever else joins in)
- Breadth and depth (Larry Sanger and others)
- Modular content creation (TimShell and others)
- Wiki is not paper (a discussion about ways to improve upon the traditional encyclopedia concept)
- Kill the Stub Pages (BryceHarrington)
- Improving Portal Pages (BryceHarrington)
- Get rid of subpages entirely (Larry Sanger)
- Format issues under the PHP script
- Appropriate content and plump waterfowl
- Send this article to a friend
- Listing deleted titles
- Presentation Conventions and so forth
- Use pinyin not Wade-Giles
- Technical categories in Wikipedia
- Species names (to be specific) (John Lynch)
People, places, times
- How to write non-American names - see also person DTD
- Dates in Wikipedia - see also spacetime DTD
- U.S. vs. US - see also ecoregion DTD
- "Now" and "currently" : How to say what you knew and when you knew it. Right now (July 31, 2002) I think that wikipedians should datestamp their references to current items So that the information shows its age. -TomCerul
Wikipedia and where it should go
- best cases which wikipedia could realize
- The future of Wikipedia (Kpjas and others)
- visions of what wikipedia could ultimately become (fantasies)
- Wikipedia4 timeline (proposed, very tenative)
- How to Build Wikipedia (The Cunctator) - an open exhortation
- A Better Wikipedia
- WikipediAhimsa
- Search Engine
- Wikipedia cloning project
- Discussion on business models and organizational charters applicable to large free wikis
- GFDL Workshop
- SJKs Wikipedia-Specific License proposal
- Logo suggestions
- Wikipedia Client
- Wikipedia T-shirts (now available in Esperanto!)
- Proposal for an Encyclopedian Recycling Endeavor (BryceHarrington)
Where it actually is
- History of Wikipedia (Wikipedia and where it's been)
- Best debates about Wikipedia articles
- Making Wikipedia profitable (Neeklamy and others)
- The Wikipedia Community - and your own ideas of community
- The importance of being Wikipedia (help spread the word!)
What might damage it (hazards, things that must be done right)
- How to Destroy Wikipedia (The Cunctator) - an open challenge
- threats that wikipedia might face, in your most paranoid nightmare
- worst cases of what could happen to wikipedia (realistically)
- Responding to the Critics (Stephen Gilbert)
- Wikipedia drop-outs
- Discussion about FOLDOC fork
- Wikipedia's first press release--draft for comment
- Advertising on Wikipedia (Jimbo Wales, with comments by others)
- Integrating Two Integrative Sites (a proposal from Kris Roose of the Integration Website
- configuration management
- Wikipedia Governance - Jimbo Wales (Response to 24's governance)
Wikipedia humor
- Logo suggestions/Humorous logos
- Wikipedia Anti-rules (some very productive Wikipedians)
- Wikipedia haiku
- Bushisms
- Gore-ism
Texts about Wiki projects
- Wikipedia -- An Online Collaborative Encyclopedia: an article for the w:The Canadian Writer's Guide (13th Edition), by Mark Jeays
- Wikipedia (Everything2) -- an en:Everything2 node by Axel Boldt
- 24's contributions - Natural point of view, governance, etc.
Old Talk and POV essays
- debate about reorganisation of the mailing lists: Mailing list-s
- Talk:Benjamin Netanyahu On Terrorism
—unsigned by 142.177.9.32 04:59, 24 February 2003. (with edits by 213.164.241.16 15:43, 5 December 2003 (UTC))
Main Page Neutral
Follows Main Page style prototype - a proposal for Main Page temp and Main Page alternate versions - applying NPOV to the meta Main Page
Meta-Wikipedia is a wiki meant to work alongside the main Wikipedia project. It can be used for several Wikipedia-related purposes and complements the Talk pages and User pages - which often comment on issues of more general interest:
- contributing - what makes it easy, what makes it hard, how to do it well
- current events - things that are more urgent or being discussed right now
- collaborating - why you have to, what conflicts typically arise, fixing them
- core elements and constraints; basic ethics of the project, copyright, other project-wide (i.e. not language-specific) policies; moral and philosophical discussions - what's not negotiable about the project itself.
- content editing, style, and form, e.g. templates, language files, formats
- code coordination, and commenting on the development process
- cast of characters: who said what about that, when? collaborated essays (those written by more than one author are in the above, or on User pages).
contributing
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If you're not comfortable doing that yet, or keep running into problems, please remember that we are trying to get questions answered and get you contributing as quickly and effectively as possible, with a minimum of conflicts. Try to:
- experiment with editing in the Meta-Wikipedia Sandbox!
- read some guidelines to get started, e.g. user interface, NPOV, wikitext, copyright, anti-rules, sister projects so your contributions go to the right place and you get off to a good start.
- read the en:Wikipedia:policies - which contains many other FAQs.
If you're having trouble with some fine points of contributing, please see:
- Wikipedia Anti-rules - these may be things that you are actually doing
If your problem is of a more prosaic nature, you should review these views:
usability and user interface
- Regarding URLs and change of URL for English pedia
- What to do with www.wikipedia.org
- The provisional portal of Wikipedia
- SVG image support
- Protected pages considered harmful
- Empty page page
- Recent Changes redesign
- Browser issues with Wikipedia
English usage
- vocabulary - both an educational and an ethical issue
- defining vocabulary - the core glossary, should coordinate with [2]
- trademark - use of terms which are claimed as property e.g. brand names, and degree to which wikipedia should respect such 'ownership'
- Use of the present tense, and overuse of the past tense
copyright
- copyright - what is 'fair use' in quotation and what violates laws? whose law applies? what problems are we actually trying to solve here?
- Avoid Copyright Paranoia!
- Wikipedia and copyright issues
- Copyright bot
current issues
There are things going on right now you can help us with. Here's a rough digest of what's topical on the mailing list & elsewhere
- Wikipedia3 (tentative name for the current wikipedia codebase)
- Wikipedia4 (just questions, for now, what should this include?)
- Help us find a Wikipedia mascot!
- Comment on the style of this and other Main pages
- help track Wikipedia self-references
- Paper Wikipedia - and underlying Wikipedia DTD
- wikipedia meetup
- Wikipedia client - offline reader and editor (proposed) important for increasing Wikipedia presence in countries with low broadband penetration and high dial-up internet costs
- Markup extensions
- Math Markup -- inline TeX support for math being implemented now
- Music markup -- inline music notation? (proposed)
- Wikipediatlas -- inline map generation (proposed) - with spacetime DTD
- Wikitax -- a radically altered wiki markup (proposed) - with ideology
- table syntax and simplified tables (proposed)
- Interlingual issues:
- cleaner topic segregation of the mailing lists: Mailing list-s
- Thoughts on language integration - merge of database
- Ideas on how to write about--and how not to write about--film (KQ and whoever cares to respond)
collaborating
More advanced wikipetiquette points or other fine points of etiquette, ethics, process, consensus, community, how NPOV 'just happens' - and disputes of this claim, other points of view that are identifiable or frequently encountered (e.g. religious, ethnic, common fallacies), how governance processes correct things going very badly wrong, sysops and what they do right or wrong.
Wikipedia and where it should go
- best cases which wikipedia could realize
- The future of Wikipedia (Kpjas and others)
- visions of what wikipedia could ultimately become (fantasies)
- Wikipedia4 timeline (proposed, very tenative)
- How to Build Wikipedia (The Cunctator) - an open exhortation
- A Better Wikipedia
- WikipediAhimsa
- Search Engine
- Wikipedia cloning project
- Discussion on business models and organizational charters applicable to large free wikis
- GFDL Workshop
- SJKs Wikipedia-Specific License proposal
- Logo suggestions
- Wikipedia Client
- Wikipedia T-shirts (now available in Esperanto!)
- Proposal for an Encyclopedian Recycling Endeavor (BryceHarrington)
Where it actually is
- History of Wikipedia (Wikipedia and where it's been)
- Best debates about Wikipedia articles
- Making Wikipedia profitable (Neeklamy and others)
- The Wikipedia Community - and your own ideas of community
- The importance of being Wikipedia (help spread the word!)
- Wikipedia sociology
What might damage it (hazards, things that must be done right)
- How to Destroy Wikipedia (The Cunctator) - an open challenge
- threats that wikipedia might face, in your most paranoid nightmare
- worst cases of what could happen to wikipedia (realistically)
- Responding to the Critics (Stephen Gilbert)
- Wikipedia drop-outs
- Discussion about FOLDOC fork
- Wikipedia's first press release--draft for comment
- Advertising on Wikipedia (Jimbo Wales, with comments by others)
- Integrating Two Integrative Sites (a proposal from Kris Roose of the Integration Website
- configuration management
- Wikipedia Governance - Jimbo Wales (Response to 24's governance)
Suggestion: the organizing principle here should be conflict identification and dispute resolution - typical encounters or conflicts between contributors, and how they resolve those to become actual 'collaborators', and what habits we find lead to that most often. And, of course, historically resolved conflicts.
core issues and constraints
Etiquette, consensus, permission, vandals, ethics, morals we take very seriously. There are basic principles that we just won't or can't seriously violate. To ensure that the number and quality of contributors stays high, and most are interested in collaboration within these constraints we offer:
- etiquette
- Wikipedia vandalism
- Uploads being abused
- consensus and implications of its definition for all of the core issues
- Simple View of Ethics and Morals
- Be bold in updating pages
- Should talk pages be used for debating?
- Should Wikipedia Use Profanity? (Stephen Gilbert and others)
- Freedom of choosing a username debate
- Standard email texts for asking permission to use texts or images
Suggestion: Organize this as a priority list of such constraints, e.g. 1. stop vandalism 2. stop any process that drives away collaborators 3. stop any process that drives away contributors 4. correct articles to NPOV 5. reduce power abuses by sysops 6. protect user privacy 7. protect contributor privacy - or whatever the list really is in practice, according to us. If there's more than one view of the core, then that means an alternate Main Page should be created.
sister projects and proposals
We also believe it's critical to spin off projects Wikipedia is spawning so we don't have to dilute the main project:
- Wiktionary: a dictionary project now online: http://wiktionary.org
- Wikisaurus: a thesaurus project
- Wikipediatlas - and underlying spacetime DTD
- Wikiteer: a gazetteer project
- Wikews: a newspaper project - and underlying person DTD
- Project Sourceberg (what to do about primary sources - see TIPAESA also)
- The need for some form of Wikipedia Yearbook
- Slotipedia - A Proposal
- Wikipedia Virtual Mind
- Sister project for POV essays and debates
- WikiCatalog - A Proposal
- Wikifiction - A proposal
- WikiThought - A Proposal
- [Wikiversity]: a free, open learning environment and community.
Interlingual coordination
Wikipedia refuses to degrade to an English-dominated project. Please help with:
- Renaming Wikisource and Wikibooks modules
- There is also a English Wikipedia available -- International help necessary
- Future of international Wikipedias as part of the main community
- Wikipedia software upgrade status
- Date formats for language linking
- International logo contest
- International promotion material -- new!
- Countries of the world tables
- Wikipedia Machine Translation Project
- International wikipedia question
- Final international solution
- Statistics for International Wikipedias
- Open letter to the Enciclopedia Libre group
- Thoughts on Multilingualism
- Thoughts on Wikipedia interlanguage priorities
- Mailing list-s
- Wikipedias and cross-fertilisation
- Supporting an English Dialect - Cockney Rhyming Slang Wikipedia
growing and managing the community
There are many things we truly have to decide in order to get along here and now. We seek assistance on the following core issues that keep us 'alive':
- The ideal Wikipedia board - to decide governance issues like these:
- Wikipedia board manual
- recruiting editors
- recruiting authors
- Wikipedia4 features
- Wikipedia4 timeline
Neutral point of view
Wikipedia is committed to a view that doesn't favor any one ethics or group:
- Neutral point of view--draft
- Proposed revision of the NPOV policy
- NPOV as description not prescription
- Systemic Bias of Wikipedia
- Early Muslim view of history - "all records are liable to error..."
- Natural point of view
- NPOV is an ideal
- consensus editing
Form of Metapedia
Meta-Wikipedia is not a disposal site for uncorrectable articles from the different Wikipedias, and it is not a hosting provider for personal essays of all types. If you're looking for a wiki-based community, check out MeatballWiki's community list. If you're looking for free webspace, you can find a list here. If you want to build your own wiki, try SeedWiki for a free wiki or check out the list of wiki engines.
wikipedia:Requests for deletion is where you ask for articles that simply do not and cannot meet the core requirements to be removed from the Wikipedia. You can also report Wikipedia:Annoying users who ignore core etiquette and etc..
content/editing
NPOV can be defined very exactly, down into the word-by-word structure of articles. We have straitjackets for types of articles, detailed forms, standard for sources, a few de facto editors, and reasons why formal editors aren't assigned. You can read about all that here.
Form of Wikipedia
- Consolidating v/s breaking up
- The elements of an encyclopedia project (Larry Sanger and whoever else joins in)
- Breadth and depth (Larry Sanger and others)
- Modular content creation (TimShell and others)
- Wiki is not paper (a discussion about ways to improve upon the traditional encyclopedia concept)
- Kill the Stub Pages (BryceHarrington)
- Improving Portal Pages (BryceHarrington)
- Get rid of subpages entirely (Larry Sanger)
- Format issues under the PHP script
- Appropriate content and plump waterfowl
- Send this article to a friend
- Listing deleted titles
- Presentation Conventions and so forth
- Use pinyin not Wade-Giles
- Categorization
- Species names (to be specific) (John Lynch)
People, places, times
- How to write non-American names - see also person DTD
- Dates in Wikipedia - see also spacetime DTD
- U.S. vs. US - see also ecoregion DTD
- "Now" and "currently" : How to say what you knew and when you knew it. Right now (July 31, 2002) I think that wikipedians should datestamp their references to current items So that the information shows its age. -TomCerul
Suggestion: Organize this as a set of situations, like 'collaborating', only the situations aren't conflicts of morality that are resolved by ethics, they are conflicts of presentation styles that are resolved by editing. Again an FAQ style is probably most appropriate.
code
Everything below the user interface, for those of you who can handle it
- Wikipedia3 (tentative name for the current wikipedia codebase)
- Wikipedia4 (just questions, for now, what should this include?)
- How to become a Wikipedia hacker
- Database queries on Wikipedia
- Text in software
- Math Markup
- RDF spool
- Wiki markup tables -- proposals
- Wiki markup syntax - see Wikipedia DTD
- meta.wikipedia.org technical issues
- Markup vs MetaForming
Suggestion: organize as per the actual code structure of the *next* code release (except for archived guides to older code versions) starting soon.
cast
Notable characters abound on Wikipedia. You can see everything stored by author under 'user's contributions' - we will be compiling an alphabetical list of contributors, with their contributions as originally named by them - but for now we offer the following view of what some are starting to consider a 'community':
- Various Wikipedian essays
- A day in the life of an ordinary Canadian
- Wikipedians categorized by sub-cultural affiliation
- How I became a Wikipedian - add your own story here!
The History of Wikipedia has included some characters you should know about:
We also share an odd sense of humor:
Some of us write about wikipedia elsewhere:
- Wikipedia -- An Online Collaborative Encyclopedia: an article for the w:The Canadian Writer's Guide (13th Edition), by Mark Jeays
- Wikipedia (Everything2) -- an en:Everything2 node by Axel Boldt
Some of us care a great deal about current events and do what we can to help:
Some of us ramble on in Talk, taking interesting enough POVs to end up here:
And like everyone else, we have hobbies: