Wikipedia:Simple talk

Simple talk
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Italic titles

It is possible to make italic titles with the template '{{italictitle}}'. This is done in enWP for titles of films, books, etc. Should we do this? A recent new page Bal du moulin de la Galette has brought this up. Macdonald-ross (talk) 13:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I believe we already do do it. But alot of pages haven't had it added. -DJSasso (talk) 16:24, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we have that template. I've been trying to add it to everything that needs it, but you go ahead, too! --Auntof6 (talk) 21:19, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Please consider Japanese food dishes like Takoyaki and Okonomiyaki — but not Teriyaki or Sukiyaki which have become English words?

What about Korean food dishes like Jjigae — but not Kimchi because it has become an English word?

Is this template appropriate for these articles and others like them? --Horeki (talk) 15:15, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

IMO italic titles should not be used for titles in foreign languages. enWP uses them for a) titles of books, films &c, and names of biological genera and species. These are clear-cut uses. Foreign words are so often imported into English that we would have a difficult time identifying those that were genuinely foreign from those which have been 'naturalised'. A huge number of words in English are of foreign origin. Macdonald-ross (talk) 15:52, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Macdonald-ross. See en:Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Titles#Italics for the list of things that take italic titles. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:00, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, agree. --Horeki (talk) 19:18, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

• 15:55, 6 March 2012 diff . . (-15)‎ . . Jjigae ‎ (remove italic title template)
• 15:55, 6 March 2012 diff . . (-15)‎ . . Okonomiyaki ‎ (remove italic title template)
• 15:54, 6 March 2012 diff . . (-15)‎ . . Takoyaki ‎ (remove italic title template)

I've just written on my talk page by mistake.

Hello, I am Japanese Wikipedian.
I tried to create my user page. However, I make a mistake, in my talk page, I would write the contents of my user page.
I was a blank page to the users of its own. And, again, I wrote to the same content as the user page.
I Do I have to the procedure of something?
Thank you. --御門桜(MIKADO, Sakura) (talk) 17:32, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello. No you don't really need to do anything, I've put a welcome message on your page to make it look like a proper page, and to just to say welcome! :) Kennedy (talk • changes). 17:50, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I was very helpful. The problem is resolved. --御門桜(MIKADO, Sakura) (talk) 13:50, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Complete, exhaustive vocabulary list

Is there a complete, exhaustive vocabulary list? I look at Wikipedia:Basic English combined wordlist, and I see addition but not additions, page and not pages, overdressed and not dressed, knowledge and unknown but not know or known.

Is there a list of additional words that editors can be exposed to? Wikipedia:Basic English combined wordlist does not, for example, list article, save, title or category. Josh Parris 05:25, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

No, but you don't have to use only the words listed. First, all versions of a noun or adjective are included in the main word listed. Verbs are a bit trickier, but the infinitive plus basic tenses are included. Second, you can go outside Basic English, but take care to explain or 'translate' words readers might find difficult. There is a list of Most common words in English, and you should regard any word in the top 1,000 as being simple. Research has established that the more common a word is, the better it is understood.

I notice you brought over the whole of a rather complex page as your first act. As you were not experienced in our ways, that was perhaps not such a good idea. You could have imported the introduction alone, and worked on that. Or, you could have imported the page into a sandbox and worked on it there. Beware of long, complex pages! They can take a huge amount of work, and often the enWP original is far longer and more detailed than we need here. When all else fails, use common sense... Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:05, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

And I'm still not done! The first pass of translation seems to have produced an article that doesn't hang together very well. Weaknesses in the source article become glaring when simplifying.

It may be good that my first article was too hard; I learned a lot. I didn't realise how much effort is involved in translation, and I didn't realise how poor the support infrastructure here is. On enWP there's no end of policies, procedures, advice, guidelines and processes, and automation up the wasso. If you just invest enough time in reading, eventually you'll come across the answer to just about any procedural question; if you make a mistake, it's noticed fast, probably by a bot. Here it's the Wild West, the pioneer spirit.

It looks like one of the first things I'm going to need to do is write up the BE 850 as an exhaustive list, and then the same for BE 1500. That should provide a basis for the construction of some tools, like reports of the proportion of a page in BE850 and BE1500. I'm going to suggest a that there should be a guideline of "no unlinked words outside of the exhaustive BE 1500". The appearance of {{complex}} ought to be driven by compliance that can be objectively measured. Josh Parris 10:49, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello, and welcome here; before you spend effort compiling world lists, let me point out that the vocabulary used is specific to the domain of knowledge the article covers. It may be possible to write an article about a general subject using the BE850, or BE1500 (word list), but as soon as you write about scientific subjects, this becomes very difficult. In order to be able to write about scientific subjects, we need to use the language that goes with it: biologists, mathematicians, physicists, psychologists all have their own languages; while these people can try to explain the topics really well, it is not possible to model these articles with n basic word forms. As you have seen yourself, the word lists do cover singulars but not plural forms, they also do not cover compoisite words. Another problem few peaople mention: prefer to use simpler word forms, that have fewer, but more specific meanings: extract is better than pull out. Avoid phrasal verbs, because the meaning of the composite cannot be derived from the parts. If I put a book up on a shelf, I put up with not being treated fairly, or I put someone up in a boarding school or mental institution, I always use put and up, but with wholly different meanings. In short: try to explain well, using simpler words. but do not rely on word lists, as they may be false friends and make artticles more difficult to understand than they need to be. It is possible to make a word list based on occurrences of words in all the texts. If we take the correspoding texts, the resulting word list will probably include somewhere between 45.000 and 125.000 word forms; the value of such lists in everyday life is probably limited, though. --Eptalon (talk) 11:26, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

The big thing to realize is that simple english isn't quantifiable like that. Yes we have the basic word lists and we should try to use them as much as possible. But we don't even remotely restrict ourselves to those lists. Basically what we do is any word that is likely to be considered difficult gets wikilinked or replaced by something more likely to be understood. As Eptalon says the basic word lists are fine for very general prose, but you often have to go outside them in any article about a subject that is more than a very basic article. The basic wordlists are just samples to give you an idea of what to strive for, but they certainly are not the be all end all. If you use Firefox there is a dictionary you can download that will underline words considered to be complex as if they are spelling mistakes which some people like. I don't know how good it is because I don't think its the best way to go about it but its worth a shot if you are looking for tools. -DJSasso (talk) 14:20, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Maybe it's not as much Wild West as you think. As far as policies and guidelines, our practice is to use what's on enwiki if we don't have a specific one here. Not much point in duplicating a lot of policies here if we can just point to enwiki. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:52, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Follow English Wikipedia is the practice he is talking about. -DJSasso (talk) 00:05, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Notability of settlements

I see that this has been brought up before with different responses. I'd like to try and get a solid community consensus about whether populated places are inherently notable. Currently, we have thousands of stubs on towns in the United States that were created by AWB. The vast majority of them consist only of the following line:

[City] is a city of [state] in the United States.

An example is Douglass Hills, Kentucky. It gets no hits in the archives of Google news, and nothing at Google books. And this is one of the larger cities. There are others, like Fifty-Six, Arkansas (population 163), that struggle to even get results in a mainstream search. The enwp versions of most of these pages are purely collections of statistics gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau, formatted in prose.

The main issue concerning our versions is that under ordinary circumstances, stating that something merely exists is not an assertion of its notability (prec. Dingus, Kentucky, 2009). I believe that if I created a slew of such stubs on cities in India that basically just repeated the title, they would be deleted on the spot and I would be reprimanded.

So: is there an unwritten exception here to notability policies? If not, does anyone have any ideas about what to do with these pages? I have an idea, that I've hashed out my own idea on my talk page, but I'm open to alternatives/suggestions. Osiris (talk) 13:10, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Note that there are literally hundreds of "X is a city in the U.S. State of Y." articles and "X is a commune in Y." articles. Deleting them all would be extremely tedious for the admins...--195.194.111.196 (talk) 13:13, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not proposing deletion. Osiris (talk) 13:19, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

When something does not meet the criteria for inclusion is it not usual to delete it? If it is decided to add settlements to the notability policy then those articles would be deleted as they do not assert notability (at least those I have seen).--195.194.111.196 (talk) 13:24, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

No. Deletion is one option, but there are always alternatives. Osiris (talk) 13:27, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I know. But please take into account what I said above: There are hundreds of articles of this type. Improving them all will take ages. Not that this comment matters much per what Djsasso has said below.--195.194.111.196 (talk) 13:31, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not volunteering to improve them either, though I will volunteer to merge them if there's a consensus for it. Osiris (talk) 14:01, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Settlements are always notable, just as geographic features. Both are inherently notable. It comes down to the fact that they are always going to be noted in atlases and in various government documents and brochures etc etc. The people that live in the area are obviously going to note them. Remember notability does not have to be world wide. This is a topic that has been beaten to death. One sentence stubs are always preferable to no article and are usually preferable to lists. One thing to remember in doing a google search is that the news isn't the only type of reference that is acceptable. Atlases and maps and any sort of book that talks about the settlements in a location are all acceptable sources. If there are people living in a place you can guarantee that there are papers/books/documents that talk about the town. -DJSasso (talk) 13:29, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree on many points regarding inherent notability. Though I still think the uselessness of these pages as they are needs to be recognised. Readers aren't getting any more out of these stubs by clicking on them than they are by simply reading the names of the links wherever they might pop up. As far as I can see, they aren't articles at all. They're blue links with 10 words and "consist only of a rephrasing of the title". I'm now digressing, but I was piqued—why do you say they are usually preferable to lists? Osiris (talk) 14:01, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Because people are more likely to expand an article than they are a list. If I was a random reader from say Douglass Hills, Kentucky. I am considerably more likely to expand an already existing article on my hometown of Douglass Hills than to create an article from scratch or to take an article off a list and expand it to a bigger article. Basically we capitalize on our casual editors more when there are stubs than when things are merged into lists or don't exist at all. Remember not all people here are regular editors like we are, and we can't do everything so the more we use the resources of the random casual editor the better off we are. As a reader I am generally far more disappointed to find an article that doesn't exist than to find a one sentence stub that doesn't tell me much because atleast the article exists. -DJSasso (talk) 14:14, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
:Notablility should not be the only criterion for inclusion here; As I have pointed out before, if all you can say about a settlement is based on its geography, or census data, then it should not be included here; Positive criteria, where ideally several must be met:

• Established at least 100 years ago
• Historically significant (includes sites of disasters)
• New town or planned city
• Large population growth in recent (say last 50) years
• Current population larger than a threshold, say 50.000 people.
• Administrative center of a larger region/county/...

In addition to meeting three of the six criteria mentione, I strongly suggest that the article must state why the subject is notable. Given that you have at least one sentence for each of the three criteria, we get at least three-sentence stubs. We need to think that probably aobut a third of our current articles are such stubs, so we need to come up with a way of grouping those that would fall through with the proposed criteria. --Eptalon (talk) 14:17, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes by all means people should write those sorts of articles first. But we should strive to have all notable articles here so removing any that don't meet your ideals is counter productive and we are all volunteers, not everyone wants to write about those articles, they want to write about the notable topics of interest to them. The wiki awhile ago decided to drop just writing the common topics and move on to any notable topic. People really need to stop being concerned with stubs existing, they are a good thing. And these one sentence stubs do state why they are notable, they are notable because they are a town in Kentucky or whereever. -DJSasso (talk) 14:26, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

But since they "consist only of a rephrasing of the title", the pages are worthless to the average reader. If someone creates a slew of pages of [Town], Nigeria saying "[Town] is a [town] in Nigeria", it's not an encyclopaedic entry because it only rephrases the title. Until they grow into something worthwhile reading, there's no reason for them to exist on their own. And the issue will continue to be brought up. If some in the community are against deleting them, and others are against keeping them, what other solutions can we come up with? I'm proposing to merge them together into a temporary container list until they can survive on their own. It's a good compromise, because it deals with the mess and keeps the door open for development. Osiris (talk) 05:57, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

2 points 1) Just because an article can be QD by policy does not mean that it should. There are hundreds - thousands of articles here that could be deleted under A4 where the topic is clearly notable (though it isn't stated why - Nickelback doesn't say why the band is notable, just that they made albums with songs on them, and got realy famous when they made one album - "realy famous" is the only claim of notability and its a very weak one that could be ignored in a QD situation - but Nickelback is a notable band even though it isn't stated. A lot of the actor, band, and musician articles could fall prey to an A4 if strictly followed. The key point is that an article can be deleted if it meets the criteria, not that it should/must be. 2) On a technicallity, "Only a rephrasing of the title" does not apply in the example given (and more articles implied here). The article does rephrase the title but adds one other bit of information - "is a town/city/village in". Most non-US ones also tend to include a link to the country as well as the list/article on districts (or the local translation) for that country. (state) --Creol(talk) 06:23, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm only drawing attention to that to show that they arguably could be deleted under the criteria. Or that a proposal at RfD could easily be justified. My proposal is not to delete, but to merge them instead. Osiris (talk) 06:38, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Maybe this is a good time to look forward rather than backward. The massive number of commune/town stubs has been discussed many times before. There has never been a strong consensus to do anything about them and I doubt there will be in the near future. Personally, I don't much see the point of many of them, but the inherent notability argument seems to win. Let's just avoid this issue in the future. I'm not suggesting a rule or guideline, but we should probably discourage any mass creation of stubs by AWB or other means in the future. Most recently, see Japan Football's microstub spree]. Is there a way to throttle new article creation so that no user can create new articles every two minutes until someone notices? Or, is just a watchful group of editors and admins enough? Gotanda (talk) 01:49, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah after that batch of towns the community agreed to stop creating articles by AWB so anyone using AWB to do it will have their access to AWB revoked. As for users doing it manually there is no way to stop them, if the articles are notable they are fair game to be created. -DJSasso (talk) 03:40, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

As written above, below (eventually) and likely sideways of this post, almost all communities are notable. There is a book or magazine or local newspaper out there that has ample information on them even if we can't find it on-line - some reliable source has, in all likelihood, written about every populated place in the well-explored parts of the world (ie, there are likely some non-notable places in Africa, the outback, and the Amazon basin - those are exceptions). The main point against here seems to be the one of the worst ideas ever - limit what notable subjects editors can write about. "We want you to edit here, but only if you do the articles we want and to our standards"... while at the same time pushing the idea of needing more editors. No, these particular edits may not be really useful but they are better than alienating a potential new editor. They are better than nothing at all in that page slot. They are an invitation to another editor (or the same) to add a sentence, and then the next person does the same.. As Djsasso points out, they are a launching point. Some will get used, others won't - neither case costs the wiki anything, there is no wasted paper here.

One strong point here is the usefulness of curbing the desire to create these. AWB should certainly not be allowed for usage in this manner. And this should be pointed out in writing. The AWB page should be imported, cleaned up and simplified (with a "for more information see <this> page on the English wiki" so we can keep it to basics) and the instructions specifically placed that AWB is not to be used for this type of editing and people found doing it will get their access removed.

It is one thing if we are dealing with articles so badly written that we are dealing with disruption due to the amount of time needed to make them understandable (and likely copyright issues - the Pakistani editor), but for concise (if even generally useless) articles, there is little to no negative impact of them existing. Oh, and time limits on creation could potentially get disruptive in the case of templates - for articles it could be fine, but at times multiple pages are needed to get templates working correctly.

As such, I would suggest that it be officially made policy that "AWB shall not be used for the mass creation of pages. Any user found to be in violation of this rule shall have their AWB access removed". --Creol(talk) 05:56, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I can't decide one way or another. I don't see the benefit of "X is a place in Y", and like the idea of creating "List of cities in X". We can always link the more major ones to its own article. As for the Japanese football stubs, I think they (and the other football stubs) actually give a bit more info, such as the persons DOB, POB, height, playing position, teams they played for, managed and some stats; taking Park Young-Ho as a random example. It is my opinion that more than a "rephrasing of the title" is needed. Kennedy (talk • changes). 12:54, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

If we take the Cities in Kentucky (no offense intended to anyone, just an example): There are currently 427 articles in the Category "Cities in Kentucky". Looking at the geography of Kentucky, there are 5 "regions"- Jackson Purchase, Mississippi platau, Cumberland Plateau, Outer Bluegrass , and Inner Bluegrass; this would leave us with about 85 cities per region (supposing they are evenly distributed, which they probably aren't. This means that a "List of cities in the Jackson Purchase" would list 60-70 cities (with 1-2 sentences each), plus perhaps link to the 10-15 cities that have longer articles? - This could laso solve the orphan porblems many of these articles have. What do you think? --Eptalon (talk) 16:47, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

This is a perfect solution to me. I did begin have a go at cramming them all into one list by state, but it was obvious that it would become too long when finished. As I said above, the links will still be available and in most cases the information given will be much more than what's currently on the pages (even if it is all just statistics). Osiris (talk) 16:51, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

And again this would discourage the growth of information for those cities. Not a single person has ever been able to put up any kind of strong argument for how these articles affect the actual readers of the wiki in a negative way. I am not talking editors, actual readers who for the most part only type in exactly what they are searching for and click links from pages. They don't generally just hit random page like is often the argument people make. Frankly if you don't like the articles, don't go to them. Don't damage the wiki by stunting its growth just because you don't like stubs. -DJSasso (talk) 21:04, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I think Djsasso is absolutely correct - and I think if the effort in the discussion above had gone into creating one more sentence in a few hundred stubs, it would have been time better spent. Back to improving stubs and creating new articles. Peterdownunder (talk) 23:13, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Big Bridge Weekend

Building a bridge in 1907 -- starting in the middle

The last full weekend of the month is March 24-25. This will be an informal "Big Bridge Weekend" (BBW).

Everyone is invited to create or expand articles and categories having to do with bridges, including a very wide spectrum of possible subjects:

• mythical concepts? ... Rainbow Bridge in Norse Valhalla?
• historical paintings? ... Rainbow Bridge in China?
• natural rock formations? ... Rainbow Bridge National Monument in Utah?
• large international bridges? ... :en:Rainbow Bridge (Niagara Falls) between Canada and the US?
• small local bridges? ... :en:Rainbow Bridge (Tokyo) in Japan? Rainbow Bridge (Texas) in the US?

A little advance notice gives us time to think about it. --Horeki (talk) 19:23, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Remind me to do something about the Forth Bridge Normandy 22:04, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I enjoy all the Big Weekends, it gives me the urge to create articles, which is good. Looking forward to it. -Orashmatash (talk) 22:06, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Pages that need work

Looking forward to the "BBW", a few starting points might be:

• Bridge is a short article which can be expanded?
• List of bridges? ... red links?
• List of bridges in Canada? ...red links?
• List of bridges in the United States? ...red links?
• List of bridges in the United Kingdom? ...red links?

Your participation could be an opportunity to spark someone else's interest? --Horeki (talk) 01:01, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Page views

Is there a tool for determining "page views per month" for articles here? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:05, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the link is above the history of an article. -Orashmatash (talk) 11:09, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:18, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Turning on WikEd

I find this gadget really makes it easier to edit. Do people know how to turn it on here. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:18, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we have that gadget here. I also find it easier to edit with, though. -Orashmatash (talk) 11:27, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes we do not have it. But we should be able to get it I think? --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:40, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
I added it to my /skin.js page an hour or so ago. Put this in your /skin.js page:

// install [[Wikipedia:User:Cacycle/wikEd]] in-browser text editor
 
importScriptURI('//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Cacycle/wikEd.js' + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');

-Orashmatash (talk) 13:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Nice thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:12, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Traditionally (3 years ago), I edited many Wikipedias by default edit tools and kinda like it. But, I'd like to try this innovation if it really helps. I would like to ask you, if that would be a smart choice for me, to try this tool. Thanks. Alex’s SeaSide 01:16, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes you can always turn it off if you do not like it. The one drawback is that it does slow things down a bit if you are on a slow connection. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Template Wiktionary not working right

In Icon (disambiguation), there is the following line:

{{Wiktionary|icon}}

That should produce a link to "Icon" in Wiktionary. Instead, {{Icon}} is linking to "Icon (disambiguation)" (the full page title). Could someone take a look and fix this? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:21, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Doing... -Orashmatash (talk) 20:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Done. -Orashmatash (talk) 20:27, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 20:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC)