This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
There is a well known team building exercise that involves people writing down compliments about each other and placing them in envelopes to present to a person. This is often a way to help get the team together and to make them feel good about themselves. Because Simple English Wikipedia is, at the moment, in a low point, I would like people to do the same for each other. To do this, I have made a website to collect everyone's answers. I will collate them and present them as anonymous compliments to them. You can do the survey here. There are three pages. Thank you in advance, —MC8 (b · t) 18:39, Wednesday May 6 2009 (UTC)
Random statistic: Most people complimented User:Majorly, with 90% of respondents saying nice things. Cassandra isn't on there because I got the data from the list of current administrators & recent RfAs. Kennedy's on there twice, but it's not possible to remove him as he's now hardcoded into the survey. If you want, "I PROTEST." is quite a popular option ;) —MC8 (b · t) 19:32, Thursday May 7 2009 (UTC)
Seconded; a soft redirect at least directs people to what they're actually looking for, versus a rather unhelpful redlink. EVula// talk //15:00, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed... wouldn't be helpful if someone searched for an article that's a red link, when it was moved somewhere else. — RyanCross (talk) 02:36, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Notability...
Hello all,
I have found out that the following seem to often be subjects for articles:
Musical bands (contemporary ones, like those that can be heard in the hit parades)
Albums, singles or songs of such bands
TV series or episodes of TV series
Computer or video games
Personally, I do see a few problems with such articles:
Is there a way to measure their impact - to determine if they are notable?
Is it better to have a stub about such a subject that will (probably never) be extended/touched again once it is created, rather than no article at all?
Please remember that at the same time, this Wikipedia lacks major articles about history and culture in general.
Is there a way to get a "to-do-list" of articles that we still need to be usable by our target audience? - I mean you cannot blame people for using EnWP (or any other language version), if we simply do not have the content?
Is it better to have a stub about such a subject that will (probably never) be extended/touched again once it is created, rather than no article at all?. Yes, this is an encyclopedia, we may as well cover things.
We could create a to-do list like the articles every wiki should have.
I think not. Encyclopedias involve edits; they don't cover everything. On English Wikipedia, I was a seasoned Inclusionist. But here, with just 58,759 articles, and 867 users who edited in the last month. With a userbase of ten? thirty?, prehaps we should delete all permastubs articles and start again. It's a bad, projectwide case of editcountitis, and this strain is deadly. We should try and concentrate on 'important' articles (although this is subjective). Compare CTV to Vincent van Gogh. Which is more extensively covered? Which is more notable? Which is more worthwhile to have? Yes, it's a VGA, but surely a VGA in othernotablefieldswouldbebetter to have? Sorry, Bluegoblin7... love your friendly neighbourhood metapedian —MC8 (b · t) 14:16, Saturday May 9 2009 (UTC)
I do agree there is a project wide case of editcountitus which leads to things like perma stubs for asteroids and rivers and railway stations and pokemon characters etc etc. That being said, those articles existing isn't harming anything. In fact its probably helping in that of that user base you mention a number of them only edit those sorts of articles, and if you remove those sorts of articles you are probably removing those editors. -Djsasso (talk) 15:29, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Djasso, For an [hypothetical] example: Editors that only create articles about the areas of the shipping forecast, which are permastubs. They are not allowed to edit articles about Dover (shipping forecast area), Wight (shipping forecast area), or Plymouth (shipping forecast area). They leave, instead of writing Geneva Convention, an article that is inherently notable. We lose an editor that makes articles we do not want. This is not any loss. Therefore, I am of the opinion that "omg were losing editars that is bad dont u think?!!!" is a flimsy argument. —MC8 (b · t) 20:40, Saturday May 9 2009 (UTC)
That however, is a fallacy because it is inevitable that someone who edits here and creates articles like above will at points in time contribute to other articles because they are part of the community. Might make a vandal revert, might fix a typo, might add some info to an article they don't necessarily like the best. All editors that aren't vandals are beneficial so any editor loss other than a vandal is a bad thing. Not to mention that these articles do eventually belong on the wiki. -Djsasso (talk) 23:28, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed; one of the benefits to wikis is that everyone can be a niche contributor. Me? I'm pretty crappy at writing articles from scratch (33k edits in 3+ years at enwiki, and 0 created articles). However, I'm great at wikignome stuff (format fixing, interwikis, grammar, etc), so that's what I tend to do. Others are great at writing and source finding, but don't have all the various formatting rules and whatnot memorized; they don't have to, because someone else can and will do it for them. The same goes for specific topics; someone who's passionate about trams is of course going to focus more energy on Crich Tramway Village than on Vincent van Gogh, simply because that's what interests them. We can't dictate what people's interests are, and we'll suffer for it if we try to do so. (within reason; obviously the people that are interested in vandalizing are SOL...) I do agree that we need to focus a bit more on quality over quantity (and being considerably smaller than enwiki allows us to do that a bit more easily), but having semi-permanent stubs isn't actually harming anything, per se. At the very least, it raises the visibility of the project (via interwikis), which I'm hopeful would bring in a bit of fresh blood more now and then. EVula// talk //16:17, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(o/d) MC8 - rather than telling an editor they can't edit in an area, I would recommend to the editor individually that they consider redirecting some of their energy to areas of the encyclopedia that are more "core" but which they are interested. For the person creating stubs about TV shows, perhaps we should point out that the articles on television, fiction (or nonfiction), television network, and media studies are still incomplete and ask them to spend some of their time on these articles. This way we would gain your "valuable" edits to the more central articles from those very editors who would be chased away by a ban. --PhilosopherLet us reason together.00:27, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, that's what I meant to say. @Djsasso: net positive? —MC8 (b · t) 10:34, Sunday May 10 2009 (UTC)
It would really be nice if you could express your opinion on these as well as other candidates in the respective categories. --Eptalon (talk) 09:02, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Our purpose
I have just realised why I don't really work on articles here. It's because Simple English Wikipedia's audience simply cannot work as we are now. According to the Main Page, our audience is for people who are a) Learning English b) Children. This simply cannot work though. Why? The existence of articles such as Autofellatio, Goatse etc. Why on earth would someone want to improve their English by learning about someone sucking their parts, or looking up a man's behind? And obviously, such articles are totally inappropriate for children.
A fairly radical change is needed. I attended the Wikimedia UK AGM on Sunday, where there was a rep from Schools Wikipedia. He mentioned that they used articles from enwiki, and I wondered why they didn't use us? The level of English in our articles is great for school-age children. He explained that our coverage was "sparse". This is because we concentrate our efforts on things that aren't *that* important (e.g. stubs on communes, asteroids, rivers etc), instead of important articles such as politics, protein or potato.
What I suggest:
We change our scope: this is the most radical part. We should only allow articles on topics that could conceivably be taught in school. No autofellatio or whatever. But this could be problematic. Do we allow articles like Playstation, which would obviously not be taught about in school, but children would be familiar with anyway? Or do we say curriculum-based articles only? What do we do with our current articles? Articles on trivia (e.g. from recent changes, List of U.S. state slogans) would go too.
We change our name to something else. children.wikipedia.org, schools.wikipedia.org or something like that. Simple is too broad, and would be associated with our old scope.
We close IP editing. People can go on about how awesome IP editors are, but frankly, the anons I've come across at simple have been more of a hindrance than a help. Removing anon editing would be a step toward legit editing.
We aim articles at a certain age group - e.g. we concentrate on primary age (4-11), or high school (11-16). It would be difficult to mix both. A 16 year old would be bored by something aimed at a four year old, and a four year old would simply not understand something aimed at a 16 year old.
There are probably more things, but I'm just putting these thought out in the open. The problem is, I don't know why I'm contributing to Simple. On English Wikipedia, my articles will be read by anyone interested in the topic who does a google search. On Simple, not so. It's just ridiculous to say this site is for children, when we have articles on sex positions. We need to stop messing about, and get ourselves a proper aim. My suggestion is make the audience school age children, and articles within the scope of anything that could be conceivably learned about, or discussed in a school. Majorlytalk15:14, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I always viewed the child aspect as the secondary goal of this project, sort of like a side effect of writing articles simpler for non-english people. I have always felt aiming for ESL people is the main goal o the project, and as such I have always felt that was why subjects on anything are fair game. As far as your mentioning of the articles above, you are right why would someone want to read them who is learning english. But to that I say why would someone who knows english want to read them. And the answer is probably the same, whatever that might be. School wikipedia is for the children in my view which is why I never felt the strong need to aim towards them. As far as blocking IP editing, on simple I would probably support it since we don't get alot of usefull IP edits, on en.wiki I am strongly opposed to it. -Djsasso (talk) 15:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But the stubs on rivers, asteroids etc are basically the same as the ones on enwiki. There are numerous ways to learn a language, but reading articles here is not a way I'd do it. You have to remember - we are lucky to be here. If our project was to be proposed today, it wouldn't get created, because this is not a language Wikipedia. We are unique. Therefore, we should not have to follow the rules of the other Wikipedias, where it's pretty much "anything goes" (as long as it is verifiable and notable). We should not include every last hamlet, every atom, just to get its own perma-stub entry that's identical to enwiki. As I mentioned, we should be working on the articles that *would* be read to learn English - vital articles. It should not be our aim to create more, but to improve what we have.
I just find it difficult to contribute here because I don't see the point if my work is simply going to be overshadowed by our big sister, enwiki. Majorlytalk15:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As MC8 mentions below, I think if we tried to change our scope like this the language committee would shut us down. As right now we only have a very weak claim to be a language sort of. If we decided to suddenly become a children wiki, they would shut us down. Do I think editors should take it on themselves to be more reasonable and create articles on things people would want to read. Of course I do. Do I think we should legislate it, probably not. Especially since deciding what or what doesn't belong would come down to POV. -Djsasso (talk) 15:40, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(change conflict) Would the languages committee have something to say if we changed our scope too much? Personally, I'd go for 11-16, but this goes against the wiki philosphy of "wiki is not censored", would it not. I'd want some kind of gentle downplaying of such exciting articles, by not linking them unneccessarily, and not linking them from high-profile articles such as the Main Page and United States, and prehaps keeping them away from templates. The problem with this idea, however, is that VGAs might take another hit: these articles would not get work on them, prehaps, if there was no promise of a feature on the Main Page (and thus no reason to get it to featured). Let the drama begin. —MC8 (b · t) 15:32, Tuesday April 28 2009 (UTC)
Hello Majorly, hello rest-of-the-community.
I think your points can be re-stated differently: Some of our problems stem from the fact that our audience is far too broad. While I understand that some people want to re-focus this project to (hopefully) school-age children, I think these should not be our focus. By taking this conscious decision we say that we don't want to bother with anything relating to content unsuitable for the audience. Let us say adults learning English as a additional language, and we no longer have the problem that someone might stumble across an article listing sex positions, be upset about it, and complain to us. On another note: People know us as Simple, changing the name might be bad for the project. So, the real question is how can we focus our target group, so as to perhaps even attract editors (who feel they must write for that target group). As to the other option: cleaning the Wikipedia will be very hard, as everyone can see on my attempt to get about 400 one-line articles (on mostly middle-of-nowhere villages in Kentucky) deleted. --Eptalon (talk) 15:40, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
An even more radical suggestion: I suggest we do not allow stubs anymore. If one wants to work on an article over a period, they should have some time to leave a temporary "stub" notice, but once again, we should be thinking quality, not quantity. Some seem to be on a mission to create every bit of rock or cell that ever existed, and will be perma-stubs of six words that don't teach anyone anything, or are identical to enwiki, which would obviously be first in the results of a search engine. Majorlytalk15:41, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Majorly has some good points and I'd agree we need a purpose. Failing that, Simple is just a poor version of EN. If I had kids, I'd prefer them to use EN than here just because the articles are of a superior quality. Here, it seems, editors can churn out any old rubbish just to boost edit counts. However, I would point out that aiming to an audience of 11-16 is not easy, and there is a reason why teachers are of a certain age and academic background. All in all, I'd support and would go so far as to suggest a "reboot" so that these radical changes can be implemented. Soup Dish (talk) 15:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
@Eptalon - People don't know us as "Simple", barely anybody knows we exist. We probably get more traffic from the Wikipedia Review (*waves at AE*) than we do from other WMF projects Soup Dish (talk) 15:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would disagree, Simple is very well known. Just not respected so it doesn't get much traffic via people coming from en. As I said before its viewed as a rehab colony. -Djsasso (talk) 15:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
On an unrelated matter, our image as some rehab place for banned enwiki users needs to go. By removing some of the "exhiled" editors for a start... Majorlytalk15:54, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You have a point there. Something would need to be done about that as part of the "reboot", I would suggest.
A further point is the actual article quality. If anybody could justify the article on World War II I'd be happy to know. Simplifying is one thing, but it barely makes sense. Take the first paragaph:
World War II was a war fought between the Allied Powers and the Axis Powers. It was called a "World War" because countries from every continent became involved, and fighting took place all over the world. Of all the wars ever fought, World War II involved the most countries, cost the most money, and killed the most people. About 72 million died, making it the worst human disaster of all time. It ran from 1939 until 1945.
Countries from "every continent"? Last time I checked, Antarctica was a continent.l And how about the cost of the war being mentioned before the death toll? Classing it as a human disasater is also dubious. Soup Dish (talk) 15:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Which is why our efforts need to be focussed on such important articles, rather than articles on each cat in your neighbourhood. Majorlytalk15:54, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. We have articles about asteroids such as 102321AE Tittensexen that are unlikely to have any more information added to them, ever! As things stand, we may as well be "RiversAndAsteroidsPedia" because I hate to think what percentage of the project they take up. Yet we can't get half-decent articles on World War Two or London or David Lloyd George! Soup Dish (talk) 16:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well those were an obvious attempt to boost edit count by Razorflame, so I do agree going and creating all those was a bit rediculous. -Djsasso (talk)
I'm just wondering: why should I work here, and not enwiki? We should not just be a simpler version of English. We should be providing a sort of service, be it to children, or be it to those learning EAL. We can't have both though, which is what our purpose seems to be right now. And no one really wants to read a one line stub on an obscure asteroid - especially if it's in an identical form on enwiki. Majorlytalk16:11, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Our purpose: Proposal
Here is a hopefully workable proposal:
Drop the children from our goals. Focus on (adult) people learning English as an additional language. I don't want to deal with censorship issues. Use at your own risk.
From each subject area, work out a list of (say 50) articles. These articles should have priority over the other articles. The articles picket can be chosen based on what is commonly taught in the last year of high-school, and in undergraduate university level.
Identify short (less than 50 words) articles that are dead (have not been edited in half a year, or only have a few edits, all by one user). Depending on the quality/potential of these, we can then decide to delete them. Note this may reduce the number of articles in this WP considerably.
Comments 1) I'd drop the second part and keep the children. 2) I may be wrong, but it seems the majority of our active community haven't actually got a high school education - yet - so that's a lofty goal. 3) Yes, could be delete. 4) Tough love is sometimes the way.
Also, I'd want to create a better definition of what we are, who we are for, then a new QD category to remove articles "out of scope" Soup Dish (talk) 16:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We have a set of basic articles (850 of them?) required in any Wikipedia. Is there a suitable list of "required" articles with a wider scope or are we just down to our own opinions? The Rambling Man (talk) 16:19, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We'd need to agree on a scope first. If we're aiming at 11-16-year-olds, which I'd much prefer to Eptalon's idea, then we'd have to look closely at what would be in scope. Soup Dish (talk) 16:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My two (four) cents. One of the resons of me leaving this wiki for quite a while, is exactly what Mejorly stated above: that I was just not sure what I was editing for and investing my time into. I would basically support anything that would give this project a better direction. 1) I agree with that, Eptalon. The big censorship issue goes against the principles of the wikipedia and a this is not the kids wikipedia, but the simple english wikipedia which should focus on adult english learners. 2) Not a bad idea, but lets take the U.S. State of Maine for example. The 50 largest communes would be for example far too small, to be worth focusing on. (No offense towards Maine intended...). I think this should be determined individually by a wikiperoject/portal, what the most improtant articles of a topic are and how many there should be. And another big arguing point would be, how broad or specific a subject should be and what to include in which subject. 3)Not a bad idea, but this is mainly concerning communes, rivers and asteroids. Maybe one could say that we keep rivers that meet the 50 word goal or have a minimum length of 150 km. Same goes with towns over 25 000 inhabitants. 4) If this goes ahead, you might attract new users, or reactivate old ones, like me.....The life of brian (talk) 20:35, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know, my big area that I focus on, and need to get to updating, are the wrestling articles, what would become of them?-- †CM1621:05, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(<-) I think it is not the time to make lists of articles; would you be able to agree on:
For each subject area, there will be a committee (of at least 3, possibly more) editors. This committee will determine a number of articles which should be given priority over other all the others.
Articles which don't fall into the direct scope of the project, should be kept, if this makes sense. I'll perhaps be blunt: There is no reason to delete the article on autofellatio, seems to be a topic that psychologists talk about from time to time. Of course, if we come to psychology, we will not focus on extending the autofellatio article, as long as there are other more important subjects that are not covered.
It is important that we do not remove the articles related to sex education, contraception/birth control, abortion or certain more common STDs. All these subjects are encyclopedic, and this is an encyclopedia. In short: re-focusing the project should not lead to widespread, wanton deletion of content deemed inappropriate. It is more about filling the gaps.
@CM16: I do see wrestling as some kind of sports, and I would love to have a GA or VGA on a wrestling-related subject. --Eptalon (talk) 21:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would hope not, if wrestling were to be an ok topic you would think a major international sport would be fine....and its things like this that will show you that trying to limit to certain areas is one big POV mess. -Djsasso (talk) 03:45, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Commment I see a problem in all this. If the "for children" part of the reason for the project is dropped, would the project do enough to justify it remaining WMF-sanctioned? As things stand, it is easier for those with a less-than-comprehensive understanding of English to use the well-written EN project than the one we offer here. Removing "for all ages" would put this project on very shaky foundations, in my opinion Soup Dish (talk) 20:21, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to start a few straw polls. Although this is generally a poor way of coming to consensus, I feel that this discussion has reached a bit of a stand-still and I'd like to get an idea of how the community feels on a few proposals:
Simple is not a refuge
For a while, Simple English has been a place where banned en users could continue to edit. Some people may say that we are a refuge and give deserving people a second change. Others would say that someone banned from en should be banned from all WMF projects. Our current policy reads as follows:
"Administrators also have the right to block users who have been banned on other Wikipedias or other Wikimedia Foundation projects. This will be decided on a case-by-case basis. For example, a vandal can be blocked, but a user who broke rules should not be blocked unless it can be shown that they may also break rules on the Simple English Wikipedia."Wikipedia:Blocks and bans
The proposal is to reword our policy to generally not allow banned users from EN to edit on Simple. Also, temporarily blocked users would not be allowed to edit on Simple, either, until the expiry of their block on EN. Those who are able to edit here before an administrator notices the EN block may be permitted to keep editing on a one-strike rule, at the administrator's discretion. Please leave comments beside your "vote". EhJJTALK03:18, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support "Simple is not a refuge"
I support this, but with a clause that still allows admin discretion. For example, (and I hope he doesn't mind) Steve Crossin was a banned en user for account sharing. However, he had always been a net positive to that project and was when he was here, so there would be no reason to block him, especially has he had not shared accounts here and that was a ruling by the ArbCom, something we don't have. In a nutshell: yes, we should have a blanket rule, and it should be regardless of WMF project, however there should always be a clause. Perhaps word it "By default, users blocked and/or banned at other WMF projects will be so here. However, in exceptional circumstances this may be overturned, at an admin's or community's discretion" - obviously with simple wording though. And exceptional, imo, are things like the above. I do disagree with the "noticing/not noticing" part though, and think that should be dropped. If they are indeffed there, then they are here. Thoughts? Goblin09:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Absolutely! If a user shows up at Simple who has just been banned at EN, or very recently banned, do you really think they're here because they want to be? No. They've come here because they need a wiki to edit at, and en no longer wants them. It seems totally silly to allow these users the right to edit for any kind of rehabilitation purpose. They're only here because en: has had enough. Is that really the future we want for simple? PeterSymonds (talk) 18:56, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Peter, but it's unenforceable. If a banned user turns up under a different name and concentrates on different areas, how are we to know? Soup Dish (talk) 20:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well we can atleast stop the ones we know about. That is like saying well we can't enforce blocking sockpuppets cause how can we know? It comes downto we don't know, but if we find out/get proof we block. -Djsasso (talk) 20:07, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support per above. We're writing an "encyclopedia" here. If you're site-banned at en, what are the chances that you're interested in building said encyclopedia? –Juliancolton | Talk21:32, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose "Simple is not a refuge"
Oppose - This rule doesn't seem to make much sense. It is now suggested that a banned user (on another wiki) will slip past the imminent blocking that he will face over here if no administrator notices. If an administrator notices, then he will be blocked. Before we know it, we are going to have banned users complaining about this "unfairness". ChenzwTalk09:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We do indeed need to think about what we do with users who have been banned at other (most of the time EnWP) wikipedias. Our current ruling allows decisions on a case by case basis, which I think is alright for the moment. Please keep in mind that (in most cases, this doe not apply to known vandals active in many wikipedias) we need to decide what to do with a user based on the edits we see of that user in our Wikipedia. In other words, I am against a block by default policy, as the case-by-case (which we currently apply) will give us more flexibility. If anyone thinks that this opens the door for willful actions of malevolent (bad) admins: yes it does, but any block decision can currently be appealed to at any admin, and an outright ban needs the support of the community anyway.--Eptalon (talk) 18:35, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We should go case by case. If we would've done this awhile ago, administrator User:Isis would be banned. There are other cases as well, and we should decide based on the case. TheAEtalk18:42, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There has been some discussion about the scope of our project. Some believe we should focus on children (6-11), others on teenagers (12-16), others on adults with learning difficulties or adults who speak english as a second language. I believe the best option is to write articles that would be readable by people of all ages. Our current scope is defined as:
"Articles in the Simple English Wikipedia use fewer words and easier grammar than the Ordinary English Wikipedia. The Simple English Wikipedia is also for people with different needs, such as students, children, adults with learning difficulties and people who are trying to learn English. Other people use the Simple English Wikipedia because its simple language helps them to understand unfamiliar topics or complex ideas."Wikipedia:Simple English Wikipedia
I think a lot of common sense is needed here. Articles should, for the most part, be written for an adult audience. Most children will not want to read about Rembrandt while many teenagers or adults will. On the other hand, children will want to read about the Sun but to a much more superficial level than an adult reader would also want to read about the Sun. As such, I suggest that we provide, when appropriate, two versions of the article. One that explains complex ideas in simple words (our usual article) plus an additional version that contains only simple ideas in simple words. This would be similar to how the first line of en:General relativity says "For a generally accessible and less technical introduction to the topic, see en:Introduction to general relativity." Please leave comments with your "vote". EhJJTALK03:18, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; I do not wish to get into the censorship side of things. We cater for adults as much as possible. —MC8 (b · t) 12:47, Saturday May 2 2009 (UTC)
When you go to a marketing lecture, they tell you to look at your audience. The better you know your (target) audience, the more success you will have with your marketing campaign. You know the people you are talking to, most of the time, getting a message across will be much easier than if you do not. It is similar with our Wikipedia here: The better we know the people who actually read it, the easier it will be to write the articles for the target group. Given that we are very few people, we need to focus our resources towards a (hopefully common) goal. Changing the target group we write for, will lead to us losing editors (who do not agree with the decision we are about to take). Another thing: The bigger the target group, the less specific the message or article can be: Can you reasonably imagine an article (no, not two versions), that will equally be interesting to an 8-year old, a 14-year old, and perhaps a 20-year old - if you take realistic conditions from different social and educational backgrounds? - It will be very difficult to write such an article. Another thing to take into account is that youngsters often only get a censored access to the net (for the fear that they may read things which they are supposedly not ready for). For this reason, I proposed to focus on adults learning English as an additional language - they may complain about something being inaccurate/tasteless/... but they will understand that they are using this site at their own risk. The better we can define our target group, the easier our task of writing/completing articles will be. For this reason, I have to oppose the motion above. --Eptalon (talk) 18:49, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at List of articles all languages should have you'll find that we have them all, but most of them are not really interesting for young children that are not especially keen on general knowledge. The reason is: SEWP is meant to help WPs of languages with very few editors to create all the articles of this list. - I don't believe in all ideas of Jimmy Wales but I am convinced that it is an good idea to create WPs for as many languages as possible. --Cethegus (talk) 19:44, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as unnecessary. We shouldn't write for adults. We shouldn't write for teens. We shouldn't write for kids. We should write for people who want to read an encyclopedia article written in a simpler language. Take an article like Romania. The lead includes basic facts/principles about the subject, making it easily accessible to a young person with a passing interest. The rest of the article includes more complex content for those (regardless of age) more interested in the subject. There's no need for two articles here because the lead serves as the "simple concepts" introduction to the "complex concepts" article. --PhilosopherLet us reason together.22:09, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
what I write below is longer, as usual, and it is my opinion, so you are free to disagree. I think we ought to do something about the general way the GA/VGA process works. What I say below both apply to GAs and VGAs. The two processes are only different in two or three minor things ,but otherwise work the same way. FOr this reason, I will only speak about VGAs below, but still mean GAs all the same.
At the moment, the process (or the expected process works as follows):
An editor finds an article they think could be made into a VGA with relatively little effort. Over the next few weeks, most edits done to the article will be by that particular editor, who tries to fix the article up, so it can be ready for voting. Imagine a drive by editor, with few edits, but a keen eye for articles with a high potential. Would you rather such an editor spent their time fixing the article to be ready for VGA, or that they spent their time looking for new candidates?
Once the unfortunate editor thinks the article is ready, or time is up, the article will be listed for voting. People will then either approve of the article becoming VGA, or they will oppose that. The problem at this stage is then that (very) often,some of the people who vote have not seen the improvements made to the article in the last step. They then oppose, and base their opposes on issues that could have easily been fixed, had they been known at the start. Given the vote lasts for a week, fixing them might be impossible, mainly out of time reasons.
Another issue is that people vote based on a certain version of the article, but the article is then heavily revised (to meet the opposes certain people put forward). In other words, the old verdict may no longer apply to the changed article.
A third (relatively minor) issue is that people who worked on the article are allowed to participate in the polls. I do probably not have to tell you how they vote.
I think we really need to revise the process, as a whole. In general, I see the following changes:
Getting an article to GA or VGA status is a lot of work, even for articles that are almost there. Having an article that is better than our average article is clearly in the interest of the community as a whole. It should therefore also be the community as a whole taking part in the improvement process, and not only a few editors who work very hard to only get a rejection two weeks later.
Articles that require big changes at the time they are voted on are not ready for the flag.
Is there a way we can exclude editors who worked on the article from voting, without dropping the requirements for a minimal number of votes?
Please note that the current candidates would still use the current criteria; any new criteria or procedures would only apply to candidates submitted after a certain date to be agreed on.
As always, these are just my observations. In the interest of keeping the GA/VGA process alive, I think we had better adapt it. I am open for other peoples' ideas. --Eptalon (talk) 10:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I do not believe that it would be a good idea to disallow the people who worked on the articles to vote on the proposal because what if five different editors worked on the article? That would eliminate 5 people who could vote on the article, which might make it impossible for the article to attain the minimum required number of votes. While I do believe that it might get rid of conflicts of interest, I do not believe that it would help as much as it would if there were hundreds of active editors on here. We just don't have the editor base to support that at this point in time. Razorflame10:41, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This seems to have been inactive for the past 4 or 5 months. However, I'm thinking of maybe taking it over since Gwib's retired and "rehabilitating" it. Would that be OK, and how many would be interested in improving such articles? Meetare ShappyCunkelfratz!20:43, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No need for discussion, Wikiproject sex and sexuality can easily be revived. Can't we focus on WP:HAVE as supposed to less important articles about sex?. On a side note, maybe we should resurrect the other projects on User:Project. Indeed, no wikiprojects seem to be active. —MC8 (b · t) 16:30, Tuesday May 12 2009 (UTC)
After a month's leave, I am back and resuming my duties here on the Simple English Wikipedia. Much has changed since I have been gone (just today discovered that ChristianMan16 got banned indefinitely), but it is still pretty much the same encyclopedia that it was when I left it a month ago. Anyways, hope to see you around the site! Cheers, Razorflame16:44, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Year and day pages
Hello there all. After reverting unsourced additions or removals from year and day pages (1999 and July 21, as examples), I believe that we should enforce a kind of "guideline" for the addition of material to year or day pages.
Here are my suggestions:
Any new additions to year or day pages that do not already have an article on the Simple English Wikipedia needs to be sourced. Any new additions to year or day pages that are not sourced are grounds for immediate removal of said additions.
Any new additions to year or day pages that already have an article on the Simple English Wikipedia needs to have a source on the article of that person, place, or event that verifies the material added to the day or year pages. Any new addition to year or day pages that do not conform to this guideline are grounds for automatic removal of that information.
We could relax the second guideline a bit by removing the requirement of a source on that page. I just put it on there to complete the idea. Good idea, bad idea, suggestions? Thanks, Razorflame18:40, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Some stats
We currently have 251,104 articles.
Of these, 3,071 are one-line stubs on rivers in Romania.
Of these, about 3,250 are one-line stubs on asteroids.
Of these, about 3,500 are (primarily) one-line stubs on U.S. geographical features.
Of these, about 6,500 are (primarily) one-line stubs on French communes.
I've never been a fan of creating stubs en-masse, and really do not see the point. The energy and time spent doing that trying to get as many articles as possible should be spent making our core articles better quality. One line stubs on rivers in Romania and asteroids are practically useless. Majorlytalk19:14, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(change conflict)Stab-stab-stabbity-stab. If over 61% of our articles are stubs, it is surely proof, or near enough, of a project wide case of WP:EDITCOUNTITIS. And it's contagious: we need to stop it now before it 'infects' another three thousand. However, Cities in Kentucky did not pass an RfD, so why would these? Dilemma. —MC8 (b · t) 19:23, Tuesday May 12 2009 (UTC)
(change conflict) My opinion on this has not changed since the last discussion on this. Stubs are the founding roots of a big tree and this is suggesting that we uproot the whole tree all together. The idea of Wikipedia is to create a comprehensive encyclopedia. The only way to be as comprehensive as we can get is by creating these one-line stubs. While they might be seen as practically useless by some, others might find them very helpful and enjoyable to read, as well as informative. People write on what they like to write about, in their own little niches. It should not matter if they are really good stub writers, but sucky long article writers. Razorflame19:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would have to disagree with you on that note. If they were just a repeat of the title, then all they would have is the title. They have more than that. Most of them have infoboxes which give quite a bit of detail into the specific river or asteroid or commune and of those that don't, they still tell where the river/commune is. How is that not informative? Razorflame19:22, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I would be fine with some kind of goal like that. Although I might not be able to help as much as other users, I do believe that setting a goal will get people motivated to complete it. Cheers, Razorflame19:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We currently have 54 better quality articles, we need 59...- I'll let you do the calculations. Small hint: the numbers change too, the more articles we have, the more better ones we need...--Eptalon (talk) 19:27, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(change conflict) We would currently need 58.88 Good/Very Good articles in order to meet this goal. This is too low of a number. Let us shoot for something like 1 in 500 or 1 in 250. Razorflame19:29, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, considering that this is starting to look like someone requesting a mass deletion of all the "one-line stubs", I would like to say that if they exist on the English Wikipedia, why can't they exist here? Furthermore, people have been very opposed to the removal of short stubs because even though they are short now, someone could stumble upon them to add information on them in the future. I think that deleting the articles just because of how short they are is counter-productive towards our goal here of creating a comprehensive encyclopedia in Simple English. If these stubs meet all of the requirements in order to get a page on this Wikipedia, why should they be deleted? What rules do they break other than the shortness of the articles. People just need to learn to accept that a Wikipedia will always have short articles like these short stubs and move on with their lives. It is counter-productive to squabble about short stubs when we can be improving existing articles or writing new ones.
Some people are better at writing stubs than they are fully fledged articles, and therefore, if we stop allowing stubs to be created or make it so that they have to be a certain length in order to stay on this site, you are pushing away potential good editors from this site. Writing short stubs like these are in the Wikipedia spirits, so why should it matter if they exist on the Simple English Wikipedia? Razorflame19:36, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not very likely, but as some people said in the deletion discussion for the Cities of Kentucky, their not existing would be even less helpful than their existing. Plus, is it actually harming the encyclopedia? I don't see any way that it could, so they have no reason to be deleted. Razorflame19:44, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Question for Razorflame. Why did you create all of the stubs when you did? If we can understand your motivation, we may be able to change attitudes in the future Soup Dish (talk) 21:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My motivation is to be as complete as possible with the creation of the articles that I have been creating. I want our Wikipedia to be as comprehensive and simple as possible while still covering every subject matter that can and possibly will come out of it. The only way we can be comprehensive enough is by having the stubs, so that it will be a complete encyclopedia. Razorflame01:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Razorflame, you say "Stubs are the founding roots of a big tree"..well at the moment, I see Simple as a square kilometre of roots, with a pathetic little twig of a tree coming out of it. You can't have all roots and no tree...oh wait, you can at Simple! 9_9 Steve CrossinTalk/Help us mediate!22:17, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it is more like a kilometre of roots with tons of little twigs of a tree :) Each VGA and GA that we have is a fully grown tree as well. We just need to nuture the saplings and water the twigs to make our forest complete. Razorflame01:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
While I hate the idea of deleting stubs, I don't think I realized the numbers of each of those types were that big...that was rediculous to create that many and at numbers that high it quite clearly had to be editcoutitis. -Djsasso (talk) 03:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Why is this such a big deal? The English Wikipedia has HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of stubs, as opposed to our 20,000. Therefore, if a project as big as the English Wikipedia has that many stubs, we should keep ours as well. I do not like the direction that this discussion is heading and I do not like the vitriol that I see in this discussion. Why can't we just drop this and go back to what we do best: writing articles? Razorflame04:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Because the English Wikipedia has well over a million legitimate articles. Moreover, they have several thousand editors; as a result, stubs are more likely to be expanded. Finally, they have articles on all core topics, whereas we're missing vital pages. –Juliancolton | Talk04:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What's to say that we won't become as big as the English Wikipedia someday? What is preventing us from that? I still don't see the need for this kind of discussion because they are perfectly legitimate encyclopaedic articles and they do deserve pages on here. Razorflame04:17, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe the English Wikipedia was a bad comparison because of its' sheer size. Some of the smaller projects have a much higher ratio of stubs to full articles. Just give it time, and those articles will flesh themselves out....you just need to be patient. Furthermore, blocking someone or even talking about blocking someone because they write a lot of stubs is just wrong. Seriously, dude. Not cool. Razorflame06:21, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Look, for fuck's sake, calm down. Let's get back to whining over stubs or better still, improving some of them, rather than question each other's mentality. Okay? GARDEN08:57, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I will explain why this is a big deal. On the English Wikipedia, there are millions of articles on a broad range of topics. On this project, we have a few thousand articles, so this mass-creation of stubs is polluting the project with tiny articles that are of no use to our readers. Simple English Wikipedia is slowly but surely becoming an asteroid and Romanian river depository with a few other articles alongside. This is not a healthy way forward. PeterSymonds (talk) 12:15, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
One of the things I think you are missing Razor, is that they are stubs of all the same subject. Having 50% of the project as stubs would not be a big deal if they weren't all romanian rivers or asteroids. If you could atleast admit that you knew creating this one line stubs was just a way to inflate your (our) numbers then maybe going forward might be easier. It's fairly obvious that these stubs were easy targets as they were one sentence long and didn't require simpliication from the english version. -Djsasso (talk) 14:04, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I did not create them because they were easy to create or to inflate my numbers at all. I created them because they interested me. Why does everyone think that I created them just to inflate my numbers. That simply is not the case. Anyways, this doesn't even need to be talked about anymore because I have not created any new Romanian River or asteroid stubs in about a month, and currently, I've switched focuses onto the United States and creating pages for the counties and cities and towns that we are missing, so can we please just drop this discussion now so that we can all go back to work writing articles? Furthermore, not all Romanian River or asteroid stubs were created by me. I only created half of the Romanian River stubs and about 75% of the asteroid stubs. Lights created about a thousand of the asteroid stubs and afil created about 1,500 of the Romanian River stubs. Furthermore, I don't always create stubs about RR or asteroids....I haven't in a long time. Can we please just drop this and focus on article quality instead of a particular editors' articles that he or she has created? Razorflame19:15, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Second break in the discussion
I propose that we make it a guideline that all articles created from now on must be at least 3-5 sentences long and should include an infobox if one is made for the article. Anyone like this suggestion? Razorflame17:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good start. I'm not one for quantitative rules on sentence numbers, minimum character requirements etc, but an aim to ensure stubs are pushed beyond a single sentence is totally the right way forward. I think that should be quite straight forward if we have a "stub watch" campaign, especially if we are prepared to attribute en.wiki when we expand the tiny stubs. Are we happy with the 20k stubs we currently have though? The Rambling Man (talk) 17:59, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your question, I said "from now on"...meaning nothing should be done with the current 20k stubs that we have (of course we can expand them, but they should not be deleted because they are already made). Cheers, Razorflame19:15, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It seems most of the current stubs could be expanded to a respectable size; the real issue is whether or not everybody has the time or inclination to do so. –Juliancolton | Talk
I would be willing to expand any Romanian River stub or Asteroid stub as best that I can, although I cannot promise to do so in a timely manner. It'll be an ongoing project of mine. I'll try to expand something like 10-15 stubs a day until I finish them all. Therefore, it might take a while. Cheers, Razorflame19:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Simple has lots of problems. One, Simple does not have enough users that know how to write articles, Two, Simple is a difficult project to create articles for, because the project rules makes it difficult to write quality articles. Although, I do not like stubs, the average reader at Simple is not going to care. Remember, this is Simple, and not the English Wikipedia. We shouldn't rely on what en. does. We are a different project with different goals and different ways of doing things. Griffinofwales (talk) 19:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just a quick question, I saw this article, and wasn't sure of its notability. Do you think it should have its own article, or just split into kidney beans and rice? I've done a quick cleanup on it anyway, just incase. NotGiven09:04, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I Need help with user boxes I already said so on my talk page please help now im an aussie (australian) that loves soccer Piedude (talk) 04:34, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't actually see anywhere on your talk page where you ask about user boxes... what exactly do you need help with? EVula// talk //04:37, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
there are very few candidate proposals to the GA/VGA process (and consequently even fewer promotions). So let's look at it from another side; rather than "finding articles that might be suitable", let's ask the community what broad "subject areas" they want covered with a GA or VGA. People are more likely to work on articles they are interested in, even that may mean more work. I will make a start, and tell you what I personally think we still need:
A religious or movement or a kind of philosophy: Most of our editors are probably either agnostic, or they follow one of the many groups called "Christian" - yet we do not seem to be able to get articles about religions, or beliefs to a sufficiently high standard.
A hard-science related article- I am thinking about Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry or Computer-science here. This is probably the hardest to achieve because the people who edit here are mostly not from these fields of science.
A controversial subject - I tried with nudity, but since I am not an ethnographer, it is hard for me to find the refs the article currently lacks. I also tried with abortion, but there I was more or less the only one editing - general disinterest, perhaps?
An article about something very common in everyday life - I was thinking about water, or rice - but anything very common in ordinary life would probably do. The difficulty there is that we will describe something most of the people around the world know, or have seen. So we need to do it really well to make it interesting for them.
Keep in mind that if we do a VGA about a subject, the article will be tagged in other wikipedias. That way we might attract editors as well. But please do leave comments, as it may help "finding common subjects" for better quality articles many people will be interested in. --Eptalon (talk) 10:01, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This idea sounds great to me. This way, we could all get involved personally (which makes it much nicer to work on articles). It spares a great ammount of time since we will no longer have to look for articles. Good thinking! J. B. A. (talk) 10:34, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
DYK 800 character rule
Hi. I propose the 800 character rule for DYK be dropped as otherwise the project will die (unless the people oppsing the change of the rule are willing to maintain it, find hooks, etc...). With the couple of editors helping out, it's very complicated. Regards, Yotcmdr=talk to the commander=10:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely not. 800 characters is lenient. If we want to showcase the project, the articles can't be stubs, and they must be decent. We don't want stubs featured on the Main Page. PeterSymonds (talk) 12:11, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It is very easy to find a hook "close" to the needed 800 characters (lets say 600) and expand it using the wikipedia article and references. I just wrote a DYK candidate (Wijerd Jelckama). Can someone make it more readable, easier without making it shorter? I'm having trouble with that because I am no native speaker of English. -'J. B. A. Evháh'- (talk) 12:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't describe 600 as "close to" 800. DYK is to showcase, as is mentioned by PeterSymonds and while the articles don't have to be perfect, 800 is still lenient. Soup Dish (talk) 12:25, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think each nomination should be taken on a case-by-case basis. Surely we'll sometimes see articles which simply can't be expanded beyond a few hundred characters. –Juliancolton | Talk16:19, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I don't see why. If only a short article can be written about it, something with only 600 characters (which is a few lines), then it shouldn't really be going on the main page at all. Yes, it's unfortunate that a longer article can be written, but that sort of discretion doesn't exist on the English Wikipedia for DYK. I don't see why it should do here. PeterSymonds (talk) 07:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would oppose any changes to the current criteria. Most people are forgetting how many revisions that they have gone through, and how more leniant they are now than they used to be. We are already a lot more leniant than en (for example). I would like to see a rule brought in that says that the user has to have contributed to the article... but I don't see that happening. Therefore, the 800 limit should remain or stay because that way it does at least prompt some editing to the article. Goblin11:38, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I quit. No more finding hooks for me, if you want to keep the limit. Sure, I'll review yours, but no more from me. If you think it's not a problem, how come JC pointed out over half our articles are stubs? It's not that easy, you try and find enough hook to upsate it a couple of times a week. Believe me, it's not that easy. Best, Yotcmdr=talk to the commander=16:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I believe you. But it is very easy to expand and article. When you find an article of 600 characters it is a piece of cake to expand it with at least 200 characters. I see the DYK's on the main page are updated weekly, is that correct? Finding five articles a week (or writing, expanding five) is not so hard, is it? Why don't we start making a list of possible DYK's in advanche, so that we won't run short of them? I would be more then happy to help! J. B. A. (talk) 16:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is just silliness. You have ample time to expand a DYK before it "expires", and you can write them in your userspace first if they're going to be longer. 800 characters is incredibly minimal, and is very easy (I wrote en:Oliver Cromwell's head recently in under 48 hours). I don't see what all the fuss is for. PeterSymonds (talk) 16:56, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It seems as if general consensus here is keeping the criteria at the 800 character rule, or in other words, we keep it as is. Thanks. — RyanCross (talk) 05:56, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
RfA Broken
Ok, it's clear that our RfA system is broken. It's been clear for a while now. But Mentifisto's has done it for me. Just look at the !vote strikes & changes. Users should not be !voting until they are sure of their vote. They should be looking through contributions and assessing the user, not just jumping on the bandwaggon. I don't know how to solve this. Not opening !voting until after a few days? Changing to a discussion format rather than a !vote. All I know, is that we need to fix it, because frankly, i'm getting fed up of this wiki. Big changes need to happen, and NOW. Goblin11:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ahhh, RfAisbrokenitis. I wondered when this would become a pandemic. It's an awful disease; starts with irritable patches, which weep pale yellow drama and deep red incivility. The cure? None is known, but the first step is to let the whole world know you have it. Well done! You're on your way! GARDEN12:33, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I couldn't disagree more, vote changes are supposed to happen in Rfa if someone comes along with a stronger arguement than yours. Rfa already is a discussion format, that is the point and why vote changes happen. The fact you are looking at it as a vote (ie don't vote until you are sure of your vote) rather than a discussion is the actual problem. The reason why people use the word !vote is to point out that it is a discussion format and not an actual vote. -Djsasso (talk) 12:59, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
RfA is always broken. That said, Djsasso has a point. Someone brought up an objection to the RfA that hadn't been considered. Some of the editors who considered it were convinced. They changed their minds. The merits of the objection aside, what exactly is the problem? This is exactly why we a) have a RfA continue for several days and b) allow people to post any comments they might have. --PhilosopherLet us reason together.13:53, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Where's the brokenness, the concerned editor use strike-through for their old vote, and place a new vote. This can be done as long as the RFA is running. It is also explained in our Criteria for adminship which talk about the voting. So, where exactly is the problem? --Eptalon (talk) 13:57, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(unindenting) What I believe Bluegoblin7 is trying to drive at is that most of us do not assess the candidate's contributions thoroughly before placing their vote. Under normal circumstances, the community should be able to spot the low number of edits to Wikipedia namespace. ChenzwTalk15:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I usually almost always assess the candidate before I !vote on them. I did not do this with Mentifisto because I was busy with other things. His is the only RfA in more than half a year with which I did not take the time to go through his edits to base my vote on. Furthermore, after looking through some of our more recent administrators who got promoted, I am shocked to find that Garden passed an RfA here when according to Interiot's tool, he only has 500 edits. IMHO, that is too few to be promoted. Anyways, that is besides the point. People should look at their edit counts and where they edit.
Here is my suggestion: What if we get a bot like MathBot on the English Wikipedia who will post the edit count statistics on the talk pages of every RfA? What do you think about that idea? Cheers, Razorflame15:57, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There is more to adminship than editcount, and Garden had already proved his ability and trust on enwiki. Besides, the guidelines state a few hundred edits are enough. PeterSymonds (talk) 16:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I know that there is more to adminship than editcount, but editcount can show if the user has experience by showing lots of edits in particular areas of the Simple English Wikipedia so that we can avoid such a problem in the future. Cheers, Razorflame16:05, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I've not blown anything up yet, if that's the problem... I don't get how a user with 3,000 edits is any more trustworthy than one with 500. I mean, I for one am not going to suddenly gain intelligence after passing a magic milestone. A user doesn't just "understand" everything after a thousand edits. I mean come on, it's the same person no matter how long you've been here. GARDEN19:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(<-) Hello there. I have not looked at all contributions of the editor in question before voting. Rather, I have voted, based on those edits of the contributor I have seen. Personally, I think that there should be a good mix of contributions, that is they should be distributed over all sections. A very good example for this is this page, end of May 9, my time, we were at a total size of roughly 57Kb for the page; at the time of this posting, 5 days later, the size almost doubled and stands at 93k. If the bot works as planned, its running tonight will archive about half the content (size-wise). How much use has grown out of these 40k added over the last 4 days? - how is what is posted here directly related to improving the Wikipedia? - We have found out that possibly we have a large number of stubs, and that improving them to be useful beyond what they are now might take a long time. We have also seen that the processes behind the two ways we currently have to "focus" people on articles are straining, to the point that they are ignored by a large number of editors. - In that context can I perhaps ask what difference it makes if an editor contributed actively to the Wikipedia namespace before becoming an admin? --Eptalon (talk) 16:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well it basically helps show a persons levelheadedness and ability to cope with heated debate. Which is something that clearly is always considered important towards being an admin or other such flag. -Djsasso (talk) 16:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Who's going to (well, mainly) need to talk here? Admins. Thus, if a user contributes here, that is a good sign in an RfA scenario. GARDEN19:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Remember: Quality, not quantity. What matters in someone's contributions is the value of them, not the number they are making. — RyanCross (talk) 05:17, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Template needed
Could someone who is good at templates, create a Infobox for a Military Person? We have a page for it, but at the moment it is blank. Thanks in advance, --Peterdownunder (talk) 03:41, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Done - seems to me like the best option. Yotcmdr =talk to the commander= 14:59, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Resolved. 
Fixed - Cuban Missile Crisis was demoted, but Cuban Missile Crisis/VGA stub had not been removed from Category:Selected articles. EhJJTALK 02:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
