Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 111

Difference

I want to know what is the difference between en.wiki and simple wiki?--Ilkinhemidov (talk) 08:34, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

And also i can see little information this wiki about any article--Ilkinhemidov (talk) 08:37, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

This wiki uses simpler and less complex English than en.wiki. It's purpose is a stepping stone for people learning English and younger children. -DJSasso (talk) 13:42, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Suggested move: Low Saxon to Low German

As the article Low Saxon is about Low German, it should be moved to Low German.Sarcelles (talk) 23:25, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Looking at what enwiki has, "Low Saxon" and "Low German" both seem to be ambiguous terms. Enwiki says that both terms are used. Wouldn't we just be changing from one ambiguous term to another? I also note that we have "Low German" as a redirect to "Low Saxon", so we do have both uses covered. --Auntof6 (talk) 08:20, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Note that I am not a linguist, but German is my mother tongue. Note that "Niederdeutsch" (Low German) is the name for a number of dialects spoken in the Northern part of German, and the eastern Netherlands. "Niedersächsisch" (Low Saxon) is more specific for a number of dialects. "Platt"/"Plat" is generally the name for the own dialect. So, no to an extent merging these is probably problematic. --Eptalon (talk) 19:34, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Redefining LGBT Category

Hey, I was wanting to redefine the LGBT category to include people/pages related to LGBTQIA+ that aren't necessarily lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans related. Input? Category_talk:LGBT Gray (talk) 01:19, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Please discuss at Category talk:LGBT, not here. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:24, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Subdividing category "French politicians"...

Hello,

I think it would be a good idea to split the category, as follows:

1. Kingdom of France (843) - French Revolution (1789)
2. French Revolution / Reign of Terror / Napoleonic France (1789-1852)
3. Second Republic / Third Republic / France during World-War II (1852-1945)
4. Modern France (since 1945)

I know that we currently do not have enough entries for all of them, but in the medium term we should consider subdividing the category. Any opinions? --Eptalon (talk) 14:53, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

If we don't have enough for all of them, maybe we could just have two for now -- one for modern France and one for everything before that. How many entries would fit the latter? --Auntof6 (talk) 15:29, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Looking at the category, we get Richelieu (For 1 above, 16th century), Robespierre, Danton and Napoleon (Bonaparte) (2). For the remaining 20 or so, most were active after WW2, but we would have to look at that in detail. --Eptalon (talk) 15:50, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Don't forget the ones in subcategories. Also, could there have been anyone who would fit both? --Auntof6 (talk) 16:15, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

And don't forget not everything needs to be subdivided. There will be categories with hundreds (some even thousands) of articles in them and that is perfectly fine. Trying to come up with arbitrary categories is not really a good idea. -DJSasso (talk) 17:09, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Any categorization that is not purely random is arbitrary. Looking at the subcategories, most of them are either in "Modern France" or "Second Republic...". People such as Charles De Gaulle are likely in both. Looking at what we have, the category (1) may not get three people, but we likely have at least three entries for the others. If there is no formal opposition, I'll therefore go ahead and create categories (2-4) as listed above, at the beginning of October. --Eptalon (talk) 07:42, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Well not really. This is arbitrary because you are choosing random dates as the cut off. And choosing non-defining categories to do so, for example a politician from 843 has little to do with a politician from 1789. That is a 1100 year difference vs Modern which is 70 year category. It is completely recentism as well. You are just creating categories for smaller category sake. When you have them all in one single category in this case then it is easy to see why they are all in one category because they are all French politicians. I don't agree with this subdividing at all. There are only 24 articles in the category, why are we even contemplating subdividing, remember we try to have as few categories here as possible. -DJSasso (talk) 13:55, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I have to agree with DJSasso on this one. Previously I've been sold to the mantra that 'more is better' when it comes to categories, but I've come around to the view that, actually, 'less is more' here - unless a category is getting *massive* (Hundreds, if not thousands of entries) arbitrary splits are pointless and only serve to overcomplicate things. I'd be against this split - it's of more use as a whole. Goblin 14:03, 24 September 2014 (UTC) I ♥ DJSasso!

When I looked at creating the categories I looked at the articles we have. Other than that, French Revolution / Napoleonic France is a grouping commonly found. The same holds for France after the Second World War. Subdivisions make sense in areas where we have many articles. So, yes, we definitely need to talk about the cutoff points. --Eptalon (talk) 17:09, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

It may be a common grouping in general but is it a common grouping for politicians. I doubt anyone would lump politicians from a 1000 year span into the same "category" in the outside world. You have to remember categories aren't just for sorting articles, they are intended to be a defining characteristic of a person, where if you talked about the person you would immediately describe them as being that thing. With such subjective categories you can't do that. There are some categories that just won't ever be split. Take a look at how en.wiki subdivides it. The closest they have to what you are suggesting are very specific types of politicians. For example "Politicians of the French Third Republic" or very specific time periods "20th-century French politicians‎". Not sweeping generalizations. And again they have many hundreds of articles compared to our 24. In most cases here I wouldn't split a category until we fill atleast one full category page (ie 200 or so articles). But that last bit is just my personal opinon. -DJSasso (talk) 17:40, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Look at this Category in FRWP.- To clarify: Ancien Régime is the period 200 years before the Revolution (of 1789); Deuxième Republique (2nd Republic) 1848-1852; Deuxieme Empire (2nd Empire, that of Napoleon III) 1852-1860; 1860-1870 is known as "Empire libéral"; Troisieme Republique /Third Republic 1870-1940; Quatrième Republique: 1946-1958. Regime de Vichy: 1940-1944. Commune de Paris was a brief period of uprising in 1871. As you can see the subcategories I propose are not that far fetched...--Eptalon (talk) 19:59, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

But yours are not like theirs, theirs are for very specific times, ie when France was technically a different country ie the 2nd republic etc etc. You are just lumping large sections of time together for apparently no reason other than to subcategorize. But ignoring all that you are still talking about subcatting a 24 article category which is completely unnecessary on simple.wiki. -DJSasso (talk) 11:46, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

As an example, Cardinal Richelieu was "minister for foreign affairs" (1616/1617), so were Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1797-1799, 1814-1815) , en:Charles de Freycinet (1879/1880,1882,1885/1886), Aristide Briand (1915-1917,1921-1922,1925-1926,1926-1932), en:Paul Baudouin (1940, two terms), Robert Schuman (1947-1948) and Dominique de Villepin (2002). By using the same (or a similar) category for these people, we implicitly say their roles are comparable, when they aren't. Richelieu used his powers to strengthen an absolute monarch. Talleyrand first reported to an assembly, and later was appointed by Napoleon, who saw his strengths. Freycinet helped reorganize the state, in difficult times; he was an engineer, and planned/built many railways in France and Africa. Aristide Briand was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, together with Gustav Stresemann for his work with the en:Locarno Treaties. Baudouin negotiated many important treaties for the Vichy Rŕegime, but was not successful against Pierre Laval and Fernand de Brinon; both Laval and de Brinon were executed for collaborating with the Germans in WW2. Schuman's politics led to what is now the European Union; he is seen as one of its fathers (together with Jean Monnet). While all of these people where "foreign ministers", the governments they worked for were too different from one another to warrant "one" category (this is my opinion). So, the big question becomes: In what way should we subdivide/reorganise the respective categories (French politicians / French diplomats)? --Eptalon (talk) 07:48, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Not that simple!

I just received an email with subject "Carriearchdale left you a message on Wikipedia. May I gently point out that there is more than one Wikipedia. The word "simple" is not visible anywhere in the email only in the target of a "view message" link. — RHaworth (talk) 19:38, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

There should be a link in the email to take you to the right place. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:59, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I frequently get emails like that, but if you click the link in the email, it will take you to the proper wiki. and again, welcome to Simple Wikipedia Carriearchdale (talk) 05:09, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

A new yearly chronological order to WW1

XKiller59- I was editing the wiki and I found that is was very difficult to find the right information as I saw many topics which didnt have any chronogical order, so I suggest that a chronogical order to put as it would be easier to find. the information was very good and informative.

The user made various changes. I have replied to a message on my talk page, making points about the role of talk pages and the need for sources. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:05, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Proposed standard wording re: movie and television reviews

We currently use the word "movie" instead of "film" because it's simpler. Along the same lines, I would like to see a standard wording used when talking about TV and movie reviews. Specifically, a lot of our articles about movies say that the movie "received (or got) mixed reviews". I don't think that's clear to someone with limited English. I also think it's close to being jargon. I suggest it would be better to use words along the lines of "Some movie critics liked the movie. Others didn't like it." If the community agrees, I could go through our movie articles with AWB and make the change. Comments? --Auntof6 (talk) 02:23, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not with this idea. "Mix" is a simple word, and its usage in "mixed reviews" is simple and correct. The circumlocution you suggest is ten words instead of two, and would be just as much a formula. The point to improve is the sources which support the claim of mixed reviews. If they are satisfactory, then "mixed reviews" is satistactory, IMO. Macdonald-ross (talk) 05:28, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Simple doesn't always mean "short". Sometimes it takes more words to have simpler language. "Mix" is indeed a simple word, but only as it applies to the act of combining things. Movie reviews are not combined in that way: they are individual pieces looked separately. To talk about something abstract like that as being "mixed" is not a simple concept, and using the term "mixed" for it doesn't explain what it means. "Review" is not as simple a word. I think it's easier for people to understand if we just say what "mixed reviews" means. Why make the readers figure it out when we can just say it? --Auntof6 (talk) 05:53, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I think the idea of a review is absolutely basic to the arts. When you try and replace "mixed reviews" with a long circumlocution, it runs against almost all the published advice on how to write readable English. What you propose is much more controversial than you think. IMO it would certainly not be right to use an automated procedure to make such a change on a wholesale basis. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:01, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd have to agree with Macdonald-ross on this one. Mixed reviews are a "combination" of bad and good reviews so they are combined. And I certainly wouldn't use AWB for such a change. -DJSasso (talk) 11:43, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, my main point was that I think the phrase "mixed reviews" isn't easily understandable to someone with limited English. Even when individual words in a phrase are simple, the phrase as a whole might not be. The wording I suggested was just one possibility, and I certainly wouldn't have to use AWB to make any changes. But if no one else thinks this would be an improvement, I'll just forget it. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:55, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

The term 'mixed reviews' tells the reader nothing of use. The vast majority of films, TV series, plays etc. are liked by some critics and disliked by others. When 'mixed reviews' is stated, it usually means that the large majority of critics disliked it; this use is a euphemism. Jim Michael (talk) 01:38, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

If reviews are in fact mainly favourable or mainly hostile, then of course an editor can say that so long as the sources support that point of view. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:23, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Auntof6, I like this idea. It also avoids confusion with the truly mixed review ("I liked the plot but not the characters"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Sockpuppet's IP?

May be some suspicious page recreation going on at Aashima Kapoor. Please see this investigation at en.wikipedia. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 21:25, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Chemical engineering

I created WikiProject Chemical engineering. Feel free to join or give suggestions. Thanks. --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 01:47, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd suggest putting something on the page about what your goals are for the project. :) Also, I noticed that one of the pages in your list, Compressor, is a disambiguation page. You probably want to use a more specific link there. Other than that, let us know if you want any information about working on this Wikipedia. I see that you are a brand new user, so you might not understand what is required for articles here: there are several ways that this site is different. The links in the welcome message on your talk page give some helpful information. I also started a sort of list here that mentions some things that often surprise people who are used to the way things are done on other Wikis. Let me know if you have questions, and good luck with the WikiProject! --Auntof6 (talk) 02:23, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for all your suggestions. I added a section about the goals of the wikiproject. Can you check this list and tell me what do you think about it?

Do you think it is a good idea to create categories with "difficult" names like Category:Chemical engineering, Category:Unit operations, Category:Separation processes and Category:Chemical equipment? --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 16:32, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to copy this discussion to the project's talk page and continue it there. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:21, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Problem with templates {{Cite book}} and {{Citation}}, or maybe with ISBN magic word

These templates are inserting extra lines for some reason when an ISBN is specified. The extra line appears at the end of the output and has a period on it. You can see examples in the template documentation, and in the references section of Oviedo Cathedral. When I tried removing the ISBN parameters, the problem went away. The templates haven't been changed in quite a while, so I suspect the problem might not be in the templates themselves.

The templates are fully protected, so only admins can change them, but I'm posting this here because admins aren't the only ones who can trouble-shoot. Does anyone have any ideas? --Auntof6 (talk) 05:06, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

I forgot to say that I also noticed that this problem doesn't appear when the template are used inside <ref></ref> tags. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:28, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

If no-one gets there first I'll try and take a look this afternoon (UTC) to see what the problem is. I'll drop an {{editprotected}} on the talk page if I find what needs doing, as obviously I can't change it myself. Cheers, Goblin 09:15, 10 October 2014 (UTC) I ♥ Kennedy!

Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 22:32, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately I can't provide any fix to this - spent a couple of hours going through the various templates that are included and I can't work out what's causing the extra bits to appear. I had a few theories but once I looked at the code, and made some tests on my own test wiki, I couldn't get any of them to remove the error unfortunately. Best thing I'd suggest would be to transwiki the EN citation templates (All of them that we have copies of) which I guess would cure it... :/ Apologies. Goblin 18:04, 11 October 2014 (UTC) I ♥ TDKR Chicago 101!

I don't know if that's even possible any longer. The English Wikipedia has re-written these templates in Lua modules, and I didn't see any reference to Lua on the /doc pages.

It looks like the problem is that there is a stray line break and space before the closing punctuation. The result is that what should be this:

Source ISBN 1234567890.

is instead being rendered as this:

Source ISBN 1234567890

.

A few spotchecks suggest that it's not just ISBN. Everything I tried in Template:Citation/identifier produced this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:37, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

I was aware of the changes to the enwiki templates to use Lua, and there is no reason why we cannot do likewise - that is why I said if a transwiki is done it should be to all templates and not just certain ones, as they will be incompatible. The problem is definitely not just related to ISBN, but rather (it seemed) any parameter that appears at the end of the template, and is as such producing the line break issues (each parameter has a full stop separator). I couldn't hunt down where this was being introduced, although it's still bugging me and I will try and take another look tomorrow. Goblin 01:31, 12 October 2014 (UTC) I ♥ Yottie!

VisualEditor News #8—2014

Did you know?

TemplateData is a separate program that organizes information about the parameters that can be used in a template. VisualEditor reads that data, and uses it to populate its simplified template dialogs.

With the new TemplateData editor, it is easier to add information about parameters, because the ones you need to use are pre-loaded.

See the help page for TemplateData for more information about adding TemplateData. The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing team has reduced technical debt, simplified some workflows for template and citation editing, made major progress on Internet Explorer support, and fixed over 125 bugs and requests. Several performance improvements were made, especially to the system around re-using references and reference lists. Weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org.

There were three issues that required urgent fixes: a deployment error that meant that many buttons didn't work correctly (bugs 69856 and 69864), a problem with edit conflicts that left the editor with nowhere to go (bug 69150), and a problem in Internet Explorer 11 that replaced some categories with a link to the system message MediaWiki:Badtitletext (bug 70894) when you saved. The developers apologize for the disruption, and thank the people who reported these problems quickly.

Increased support for devices and browsers

Internet Explorer 10 and 11 users now have access to VisualEditor. This means that about 5% of Wikimedia's users will now get an "Edit" tab alongside the existing "Edit source" tab. Support for Internet Explorer 9 is planned for the future.

Tablet users browsing the site's mobile mode now have the option of using a mobile-specific form of VisualEditor. More editing tools, and availability of VisualEditor on smartphones, is planned for the future. The mobile version of VisualEditor was tweaked to show the context menu for citations instead of basic references (bug 68897). A bug that broke the editor in iOS was corrected and released early (bug 68949). For mobile tablet users, three bugs related to scrolling were fixed (bug 66697, bug 68828, bug 69630). You can use VisualEditor on the mobile version of Wikipedia from your tablet by clicking on the cog in the top-right when editing a page and choosing which editor to use.

TemplateData editor

The tool for editing TemplateData has been deployed to 30 more Wikipedias this week. Other Wikipedias and some other projects may receive access next month. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template page or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.

Other changes

Several interface messages and labels were changed to be simpler, clearer, or shorter, based on feedback from translators and editors. The formatting of dialogs was changed, and more changes to the appearance will be coming soon, when VisualEditor implements the new MediaWiki theme from Design. (A preview of the theme is available on Labs for developers.) The team also made some improvements for users of the Monobook skin that improved the size of text in toolbars and fixed selections that overlapped menus.

VisualEditor-MediaWiki now supplies the mw-redirect and mw-disambig class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these types of links can be created.

Templates' fields can be marked as 'required' in TemplateData. If a parameter is marked as required, then you cannot delete that field when you add a new template or edit an existing one (bug 60358).

Language support improved by making annotations use bi-directional isolation (so they display correctly with cursoring behaviour as expected) and by fixing a bug that crashed VisualEditor when trying to edit a page with a dir attribute but no lang set (bug 69955).

Looking ahead

The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon, perhaps in late October.

The team is also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables, and early work for this may appear within the month. Please comment on the design at Mediawiki.org.

In the future, real-time collaborative editing may be possible in VisualEditor. Some early preparatory work for this was recently done.

Supporting your wiki

At Wikimania, several developers gave presentations about VisualEditor. A translation sprint focused on improving access to VisualEditor was supported by many people. Deryck Chan was the top translator. Special honors also go to संजीव कुमार (Sanjeev Kumar), Robby, Takot, Bachounda, Bjankuloski06 and Ата. A summary of the work achieved by the translation community is available. Thank you all for your work.

This was the first translatable VisualEditor newsletter, so thanks to everybody who made this possible! If it hasn't been delivered in your language, and you'd like to help with translations in the future, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre (WMF), so that you will be notified when the next issue is due.

VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.

Please join the office hours on Saturday, 18 October 2014 at 18:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Africa and Europe) and on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC on IRC.

Give feedback on VisualEditor at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. Thank you! —Elitre (WMF)

09:49, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Joseph Goebbels at proposed article demotion

This is a heads up to the community that one of our good articles, Joseph Goebbels, has been nominated for demotion. The discussion can be found here, and feedback from the community would be welcomed. Thanks, Goblin 00:09, 15 October 2014 (UTC) I ♥ Barras!

strange coding in Frankrikes omvandling

I put this article up for QD. Frankrikes omvandling It has like an animated period as the article on read. When you go to change the article it looks clean except for the QD nom tagging. Could this be some sort of .js code or something. Please check and be careful thanks. Carriearchdale (talk) 22:20, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I've had a look at the article and I can't see the problem you're describing - it looks as it should to be, unfortunately! Strange... Goblin 22:26, 16 October 2014 (UTC) I ♥ Jersey!

Selena at PVGA

Hello Simple Wikipedians, currently Selena is at PVGA and it would be great if anyone can lend a comment or two on the article's current state and if its ready to be promoted or not. Thanks everyone, .jona^talk 14:42, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I really don't want the article to fail because of lack of reviews, especially since I've been working on this article for a few years. So please community, if you can lend a review to this article it would be very much appreciated. Thanks so much you guys, .jona^talk 23:31, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Monuments of Spain challenge

Just a heads up for everyone. There apparently is a current contest called the Monuments of Spain challenge going on. see here [1]

The contest may be the reason a few editors were doing those cathedral and monument articles transferred from the spanish wikipedia. I guess they get an extra point for a translated one. I did not really even know about the contest until an editor from there messaged me to let me know I had made some articles that qualify for the contest. The contest runs from October 1 - 31. You might want to keep an eye out! lol Carriearchdale 18:03, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Timetables

I notice our pages on transport companies are chock full of timetables. What is the justification for the timetables? Can we not just put links to the companies' own websites? Many of the pages lack real solid content about the companies, which is what they are supposed to have. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:08, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree. There is no reason to insert an entire timetable to subsidise for the lack of actual content. George.Edward.C ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 08:19, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I also agree. Timetable info is subject to change and is not encyclopedic. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:35, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

By linking to a timetable, it removes the need for us to keep it up to date, and we could spend the energy on real content.--Peterdownunder (talk) 21:04, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

OK, so that's a consensus. Any regular editor can take out timetables from transport company pages. Check the links please to make sure it/they do let readers reach the timetables. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:23, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

What category should I look in to remove these timetables (might be a stupid question) George.Edward.C ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 08:24, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Train operating companies; transport companies... Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:31, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Slightly late to this one as I've been busy IRL, but I agree with all that's been said above. I'm hoping to go through all of the UK transport companies in the near future to tidy up the articles somewhat and remove the timetables and service information, with links to other sites as required. Had been meaning to bring this up myself, so pleased that someone has done it whilst I've been busy! :-) Goblin 00:05, 28 October 2014 (UTC) I ♥ The Rambling Man!

Meta RfCs on two new global groups

Hello all,

There are currently requests for comment open on meta to create two new global groups. The first is a group for members of the OTRS permissions queue, which would grant them autopatrolled rights on all wikis except those who opt-out. That proposal can be found at m:Requests for comment/Creation of a global OTRS-permissions user group. The second is a group for Wikimedia Commons admins and OTRS agents to view deleted file pages through the 'viewdeletedfile' right on all wikis except those who opt-out. The second proposal can be found at m:Requests for comment/Global file deletion review.

We would like to hear what you think on both proposals. Both are in English; if you wanted to translate them into your native language that would also be appreciated.

It is possible for individual projects to opt-out, so that users in those groups do not have any additional rights on those projects. To do this please start a local discussion, and if there is consensus you can request to opt-out of either or both at m:Stewards' noticeboard.

Thanks and regards, Ajraddatz (talk) 18:04, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Languages in censuses

Hello, Dear wikipedians. I invite you to edit and improve this article and to add information about your and other country.--Kaiyr (talk) 12:45, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

That article is on English wikipedia not Simple wikipedia. -DJSasso (talk) 12:50, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Chemistry

I've been wondering? 1.Which type of compound usually has higher melting points: ionic compounds or covalent compounds? What is the reason for this difference in melting points?

2.Do ionic compounds conduct electricity as:

1.Solids?

2.Liquids?

3.Aqueous solutions (when the ionic compounds are dissolved in water)?

3.Do covalent compounds conduct electricity as:

1.Solids?

2.Liquids?

3.Aqueous solutions (when the covalent compounds are dissolved in water)?

173.78.222.115 (talk) 15:28, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I believe that ionic compounds have a higher melting point than covalent compounds. This is due to strong bonds from electrons. This is an exception - diamonds. Diamonds are formed from covalent bonding and is incredibly strong. I am unsure about the rest of your questions but this page is for questions about the Wiki and not questions like this which appear to be homework questions.--Mr Wiki Pro (talk) 16:14, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Banned baby names

I hope we can find a way to use the Huffington Post article's fascinating information without copyright infringement.[2http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/24/banned-baby-names_n_5134075.html2] I remember that until quite recently Norwegian given names had to come from the Bible, but I had no idea that German names had to be gender-specific. The whole subject of baby naming is riveting to some. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:49, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Update on behalf on midterm elections

Since the results of the midterm elections are here then its time for a major update for the senators, governors, representatives, majority leaders, state inboxes, and templates. Can this happen sometime tomorrow or if anyone is available then now, but this needs to happen. --TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 04:47, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

When we do these updates, please let's do them so that the text won't go out of date. For example, instead of saying something like either of these:

John Doe is a United States senator.

John Doe has been a United States senator since January 1, 2000.

say something like one of these:

On January 1, 2000, John Doe became a United States senator.

As of November 4, 2014, John Doe was a United States senator.

Those are a more precise statement, and the text doesn't go out of date right away if/when Mr. Doe leaves office. There is a little explanation of this kind of thing at en:Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch#Relative time references. Let me know if you have any questions about it. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:13, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (November 2014)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today :)

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:

• DeGruyter: 1000 new accounts for English and German-language research. Sign up on one of two language Wikipedias:
  • English signup
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• JSTOR: 100+ remaining accounts for journal archives

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team.23:19, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

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pages being "FAKE' protected by IP editors and other reg users

I thought pages could only be protected by admins. Can admins sign out and edit as an ip to protect pages? Please see this example here [2] Is that just fake protecting by an editor? In the summaries the editor falsely implies there was disruptive editing to the article. All I did was to post a tag to please get a reference. Someone please advise. Thanks. I have seen several instances like this over the last week or so. ciao!!! Carriearchdale 07:26, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It is 100% fake. The ip just added the templates and faked the summary. If he/she could semiprotect the page he/she couldn't then edit it as an ip. Ah3kal (talk) 07:34, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Only admins can protect pages, and they must be logged in to do so. Adding a template does not protect the page. We don't even put protection templates on most of the protected pages. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments and answers. I knew something looked a bit off!!! Carriearchdale 08:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Wow, what a smart IP editor!Amanda Call Me 14:02, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Before, on enwiki, I've seen an IP use STiki which is impossible. Turns out, it is the same as this case here. Eurodyne (talk) 06:46, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Article feedback

Hi! Is there a procedure to receive feedback for my first article? I only found Wikipedia:Proposed good articles, but that's not really what I am looking for. I just need some feedback about the language I used and whether it's simple enough, or any other relevant to language feedback. Thank you in advance. -Ah3kal (talk) 09:05, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Welcome to Simple English Wikipedia! There is no specific procedure for getting feedback, but asking on this page is a good way. It would help if you give a link to the arbutle. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:48, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. The article is Stoa of Eumenes. --Ah3kal (talk) 09:56, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

It looks good. I have a suggestion. I noticed that you used the British way of describing the stories of a building (the ground floor is at ground level, and the next floor up is the first floor), as opposed to the American way (ground floor and first floor mean the same thing, and the next floor up is the second floor). It's okay to do that, but it would be clearer for all readers if you said something like "top floor" instead of "first floor". Other than that, it looks good, and thanks for the new article! --Auntof6 (talk) 10:33, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll change that, I used it because it's also the greek way (my native language) of naming stories. --Ah3kal (talk) 10:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Global AbuseFilter

Hello,

AbuseFilter is a MediaWiki extension used to detect likely abusive behavior patterns, like pattern vandalism and spam. In 2013, Global AbuseFilters were enabled on a limited set of wikis including Meta-Wiki, MediaWiki.org, Wikispecies and (in early 2014) all the "small wikis". Recently, global abuse filters were enabled on "medium sized wikis" as well. These filters are currently managed by stewards on Meta-Wiki and have shown to be very effective in preventing mass spam attacks across Wikimedia projects. However, there is currently no policy on how the global AbuseFilters will be managed although there are proposals. There is an ongoing request for comment on policy governing the use of the global AbuseFilters. In the meantime, specific wikis can opt out of using the global AbuseFilter. These wikis can simply add a request to this list on Meta-Wiki. More details can be found on this page at Meta-Wiki. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on m:Talk:Global AbuseFilter.

Thanks,

PiRSquared17, Glaisher

— 17:34, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey, is anyone else interested? PiRSquared17 (talk) 21:15, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

To be honest, I think we should opt out of this: While on paper, such filters look great, please keep in mind the following:

• An abuse fliter is created as a desire to automatically fight certain kinds of vandalism in an automated manner.
• All abuse filters do is some kind of pattern matching, plus perhaps assessing the group the editor is in.
• Personally, I am fine that a local admin creates or changes an abuse filter on this wiki, in response to abuse that occurs here. I do not feel well with a steward (who is completely outside this community) dictating, that from now on, this kind of abuse should be dealt with in that way. It will only increase bureaucracy overhead, and not give the desired result.
• Another problem: If the abuse filter gives a standardized message, this has to be adapted to our wiki...

In short, I see the creation of some resource listing common filters, and perhaps a global mailing list to discuss abuse filters, I am totally against global filtering, as it curtails our rights as a community to decide what we consider abuse and how we deal with it. --Eptalon (talk) 22:18, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

What he said. -DJSasso (talk) 01:38, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #9—2014

Did you know?

VisualEditor is also available on the mobile version of Wikipedia. Log in and click the pencil icon to open the page you want to edit. Click on the gear-shaped settings button in the upper-right corner to pick which editor to use. Choose "⧼Mobile-frontend-editor-visual-editor⧽" to use VisualEditor, or "⧼Mobile-frontend-editor-source-editor⧽" to use the wikitext editor.

It will remember whether you used wikitext or VisualEditor, and use the same editor the next time you edit an article.

The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. Not all features are available on the mobile website.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and requests, and worked on support for editing tables and for using non-Latin languages. Their weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org. Informal notes from the recent quarterly review were posted on Meta.

Recent improvements

Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in them was just introduced to Wikipedias. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be added later.

To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus are now hidden behind a "More" item, such as "Underline" in the styling menu.

The French Wikipedia should see better search results for links, templates, and media because the new search engine was turned on for everyone there. This change is expected at the Chinese and German Wikipedias this week, and the following week at the English Wikipedia.

The "pawn" system has been mostly replaced. Bugs in this system sometimes added a chess pawn character to wikitext. The replacement provides better support for non-Latin languages, with full support hopefully coming soon.

VisualEditor is now provided to editors who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11 on desktop and mobile devices. Internet Explorer 9 is not supported yet.

The keyboard shortcuts for items in the toolbar menus are now shown in the menus.

VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme from the User Experience/Design group. The appearance of dialog boxes has already changed in the mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. You are welcome to compare the old "Apex" design and the new "MediaWiki" theme which will replace it.

Several bugs were fixed for internal and external links. Improvements to MediaWiki's search solved an annoying problem: If you searched for the full name of the page or file that you wanted to link, sometimes the search engine could not find the page. A link inside a template to a local page that does not exist will now show red, exactly as it does when reading the page. Due to an error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like [3] with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.

TemplateData

The tool for quickly editing TemplateData has been deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November. This tool was already available on the biggest 40 Wikipedias, and now all wikis will have access to it. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData to learn more about it. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.

You can use the new autovalue setting to pre-load a value into a template. This can be used to substitute dates, as in this example, or to add the most common value for that parameter. The autovalue can be overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.

In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog box in VisualEditor will warn editors if they leave a "required" parameter empty, and they will not be able to delete that parameter. If the template can function without this parameter, then please mark it as "suggested" or "optional" in TemplateData instead.

Looking ahead

The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. The appearance of the media search dialog will improve, to make picking between possible images easier and more visual. The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap.

The user guide is being updated to add information about editing tables. The translations of the user guide for most languages except Spanish, French, and Dutch are significantly out of date. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language. Talk to us if you need help exporting the translated guide to your wiki.

You can influence VisualEditor's design! Tell the VisualEditor team what you want changed during the office hours via IRC. The next sessions are on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC and on Wednesday 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC. You can also share your ideas at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.

Also, user experience researcher Abbey Ripstra is looking for editors to show her how they edit Wikipedia. Please sign up for the research program if you would like to hear about opportunities.

If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. Thank you! —Elitre (WMF)

23:29, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Antônio Ricardo dos Santos

Antônio Ricardo dos Santos, politician with extensive coverage of sources. With interwikis, and was summarily deleted? Margarida Seiko Okumoto (talk) 05:08, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

The article was deleted (twice) because it was copied from English Wikipedia without being simplified. You might find Wikipedia:How to copy from another Wikipedia helpful in understanding what is required when copying an article here from another Wikipedia. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:18, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Is an important politician in the State of Paraná, with street name and town squares. I have done a summary. Margarida Seiko Okumoto (talk) 05:38, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that still needed simplifying. It also had some bad grammar in it. Would you like me to restore your original version to your userspace so you can work on it there? Please don't create another version of the article at this time. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:42, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

His Excellency ???

His Excellency, totally pejorative article José Sarney. Removed and reseated. This article only exists in other Presidents, does not exist. Margarida Seiko Okumoto (talk) 05:13, 15 November 2014 (UTC). See Category:Presidents of Brazil. Margarida Seiko Okumoto (talk) 05:15, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't quite understand what you're saying. Isn't the term "His/Her Excellency" used with Presidents of Brazil? --Auntof6 (talk) 05:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Of course not, it's not a country nobly. Margarida Seiko Okumoto (talk) 05:25, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't understand your English. The English Wikipedia article President of Brazil indicates that the president is referred to as Sua Excelência, which is "His/Her Excellency" in English. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:33, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Your Excellency is for Kings and Queens and since 1889 imperial family does not exist in Brazil, so it's a pejorative suit totally unused, so it is not indicated in any President. Margarida Seiko Okumoto (talk) 05:37, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

en:Excellency#Brazil indicates that it is a proper form, and has a reference for that. Also, what do you mean by "pejorative suit"? --Auntof6 (talk) 05:48, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Then finish with this Wikipedia

I don't understand why Wikipedia exists. Articles with sources are deleted, then delete this Wikipedia and save servers. Also don't leave fix derogatory terms that diminish the image of a President of a nation. Margarida Seiko Okumoto (talk) 05:44, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello Margarida!,

I hate to hear you sound so distressed about all of this. I may be able to help you with the article that you want to write. I am fluent in Portuguese, as well as a few other languages. I looked up the info on your wanted article subject, and started a workshop for us in my sandbox if you would like we could collaborate on the article, and prepare it so it could be included in the encyclopedia. It is entirely up to you. But, I just thought that it would be the kindest thing for me to offer that might alleviate your stresses right now. It is located here. [4]

Feel free to edit the article inside the workshop, and maybe can get it accepted here. I will help as much as I can. Please leave any questions on my talk page. ciao!!! Carriearchdale 06:22, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carriearchdale/Sandbox/Antônio_Ricardo_dos_Santos

I appreciate your intention. I have no more interest in editor around here. You can delete the article of your draft page. The article already exists in Portuguese and in English I added and no problems occurred. Therefore, I will never disturb you here. My experience there was unpleasant. Margarida Seiko Okumoto (talk) 16:56, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Germann

Doo you german wikipediaa

Hallo! Der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia finden Sie hier. Eurodyne (talk) 20:39, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Current national leaders

Today I noticed that one of our IP editors has made quite a few edits over the last few months to change the names of national leaders (prime ministers, etc.) None of the changes was referenced. Does anyone know of a place where we can look up the current leaders of various countries (for example, Mongolia) and other organizations (for example, the United Nations)? I'd like to try to get references for these changes and revert any that might not be true. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 02:00, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

This might seem a bit obvious, but I would check on enwiki as a starting point, following links through to the articles if the names do not match, or you want to find refs. Another source is the CIA fact book. --Peterdownunder (talk) 02:19, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

I looked on enwiki, and saw some of these same changes, but also without references. I use enwiki for this kind of thing cautiously, since a vandal can make the same changes in both places. I'll look at the CIA site, thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 03:31, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

This probably won't help either but you could try the Mongolian wiki... Eurodyne (talk) 01:56, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Nope, same issue as with enwiki. Besides, I haven't gotten around to learning Mongolian yet! --Auntof6 (talk) 02:22, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Is there a Mongolian wiki? What is the language code? Eurodyne (talk) 05:13, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there is. The language code is "mn". --Auntof6 (talk) 05:19, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

@User:Auntof6: The resource you are looking for is the en:CIA World Factbook, found at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:42, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Looking for experienced Simple English editors to help mentor student interns

Hi there! I'm working with a growing team of interns who are ready to get some experience contributing to the fabulous "collective body of human knowledge" known as wikipedia! So many of my students have been ESL that I'd love to make sure we're helping build on not just the regular English articles but also adding to the articles here in Simple. It'd be great to find someone who is already an active (several times a week?) editor here to check in with when we have questions. Anyone interested?

DrMel (talk) 15:33, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd be glad to help! Message me if you have any queries. George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 16:16, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd also be willing to help. There is an education program on enwiki which has campus and online ambassadors. Those are more for college and high school students though. Cheers! Eurodyne (talk) 16:48, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

• I'd be glad to help. Rus793 (talk) 17:12, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
• Always available to assist --Peterdownunder (talk) 06:32, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Why is there

Change - <Change source twice? It was never there before. --Windell (talk) 02:42, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Software problems?

We seem to be having some software problems. Anyone know what is going on? Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:16, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? The only thing I've noticed lately is the weird thing with the citation templates. --Auntof6 (talk) 10:32, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, when I press a link I usually get a strange "exceptions" notice, and have to press the reload symbol a few times before the page comes up. It's lasted all this week, so I assumed the tekkies were tinkering with the software once more. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:38, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything like that on either my tablet or my PC. --Auntof6 (talk) 10:46, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm also getting a disturbed dateline/timeline. Now, at realtime 18.00 on 29 November, the edits on New Changes are reading 03.55 on 30 November. There's definitely something going on. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:58, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

No problems here, strangely. Time seems to be correct, no problems editing. Everything seems ok on my end. George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 18:40, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Things look good for me, too. Did your time zone setting get changed? Now that I think if it, one of my settings recently got changed from what I'd always had and I had to change it back. I don't remember which setting it was, but it might have been the time zone. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:44, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Nope, all settings are unchanged, including my time offset etc. --George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 18:51, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, that question was more for Mac, since he said he was seeing something strange with the times. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:45, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, it's very strange. I have found out that the software "knows" what the real time is, but the new changes still shows it as about 16 hours ahead of the local time. And I still have to click a link about three times before it functions. Both problems appeared at the same time nearly a week ago. I can still edit under these conditions, so I think I'll just ignore it. On other sites all is good, so it seems not a problem with my particular system or service provider. Oh I'll mention that the message I get when links don't work is "Unexpected non-MediaWiki exception encountered, of type "Exception". Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:14, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

After some investigation I discovered this problem only occurs on Simple wiki, not on En wiki or other websites. It takes me about ten times as long to edit as it used to, so my contributions for the present may be fewer. It's all very puzzling. Macdonald-ross (talk) 13:28, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone become a "tekkie"? It sounds like a fun thing to do.Amanda Call Me 13:36, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Bit off topic, but yes anyone can, as long as you have the interest and the patience to learn. Bit like everything, really. George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 17:06, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

please check out this article

I just created Common teal. I'm not experienced on the S.E. WP. Would someone more experienced please look it over? And also my question at Help talk:How to change pages#Link to Wikipedia?. --Thnidu (talk) 05:05, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, that was pretty good. I did the changes in source code (which is how you get the tricky stuff into the computer). You find it under "Change source". Once you understand the syntax (that's the how-to-do-it of the source code) then edit there, not on the surface. I like the length and level of difficulty. For practice, you can set up pages for experimenting by starting the page with the general formula "user:Thnidu/whatever". This starts a sandbox page which you can use for any reasonable purpose. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:48, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Instead of a picture, I have added an infobox. I also feel like the article can be simplified down a bit. See Wikipedia:How to write Simple English pages to try and get to know Simple English better. Eurodyne (talk) 01:22, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Looks good to me too, I wish my first efforts were as good!--Peterdownunder (talk) 06:40, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Possible return of the Pakistan POV pusher

We may have another Pakistan POV pusher editing, this time under IP address 2.101.224.186. I have a hard time telling what's appropriate in these edits, since I'm not very familiar with the politics. Could someone take a look at Special:Contributions/2.101.224.186 and see what you think? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 10:47, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I checked six random edits, and found no problems with any of them, and no sign of POV activity. Not everyone who writes about Pakistan will be a POV pusher, but in view of the history of POV and Pakistan, it is probably worth monitoring the edits, and any reverts or POV changes to them.--Peterdownunder (talk) 11:24, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

There are some edits which are verging on problems, and I see that some have been reverted, but I have checked aome others and they still look OK--Peterdownunder (talk) 11:37, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Thanks, Peter. The ones I looked at seemed OK to me, but I don't know enough about it to know what the sensitive or controversial aspects are. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:39, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I have reverted recent edits which contained (in my opinion) clear-cut POV phrases. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:42, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes I saw that and agree - some others too are just cut and pastes from the intros to enwiki articles. While there are only a few at this stage it may be best to try to fix them, if it becomes a flood then that will be more difficult.--Peterdownunder (talk) 11:45, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

The identifying mark of this IP is his insistence that the Kashmiri language and people are Dravidian, which they absolutely are not. I have no idea why he does this, but if repeated yet again I will know what to do. Macdonald-ross (talk) 13:42, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Adding a page to Wikipedea

I would like to post a simple summary of the Rules and Exceptions of English spelling as i have done on my blog http://improvingenglishspelling.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/rules-and-exceptions-of-english-spelling.html because i feel that the explanation on the English Orthography page is much too complicated for anyone who is not a professional linguist. When i follow discussions among teachers and parents, i realise that most are very confused about it and make all kinds of fancy claims and counterclaims. I realise that i would not able to include colour in the formatting and that even just using Bold and Italics would be fiddly and take days. Would i be able to come back to Sandbox for several days?

May i do so? And would it be likely to remain?

Masha Bell Ex English teacher and independent literacy researcher since 1995.

I think this is referring to the page [5] on English wiki. We don't have a Simple version of that. We (and En wiki) do have a page Orthography which deals with the general issues of representing languages in alphabetic scripts. Also, En wiki has a page on spelling reform: [6] which we don't have yet.
I'm assuming this editor realises we're a different wiki from En wiki! Of course we can have a page on this topic. But other editors would watch it closely (there's no ownership of pages here...). An editor wanting to work on a page on their own for a while can set up their own sandbox by typing the formula: "User:[person's handle]/whatever".

Fist step: Choose a handle and register as a user. Look over our introductory pages, and get into the general ethos of what we're trying to do. Most people take a bit of time to get used to our cranky source-code, but if you want to write an article from scratch, you do have to get used to it. Good luck! Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:24, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh, now I see you did register. Sign posts with four tildes (~) and the system will do the work, like so: Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:32, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

We do have the page Language reform, which also includes spelling... --Eptalon (talk) 11:46, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Do we have a new class editing?

I'm seeing new articles by users whose names start with "HUWpm". Does anyone know if they are from a class? If so, do they want us to leave their articles alone for a bit, or not? I edited one before I noticed the other similar names. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:30, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

There was a topic on AN a while ago asking us to keep an eye on them, assumably from their instructor (it should be in the latest archive under "students editing simple wikipedia") --George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 07:21, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

ヰキプロジェクト琉球

Just wanting to announce WikiProject Ryūkyū, which focuses on the history, geography, and culture of the Ryūkyū Islands. Help out if you're interested. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 16:30, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Good luck with your new Wikiproject, @Sturmgewehr88:. You probably know that Wikiprojects here are unofficial. With that in mind, I looked at your project page and I'd like to make some comments.

• Wikiprojects here live in userspace. You would not be able to move the project to mainspace.
• Unlike English Wikipedia, the projects do not decide any policy by themselves, such as manual of style rules.
• We don't put WikiProject banners on article talk pages.
• Any templates that are specifically for this project (not just created by the project, but used only by the project) should be in userspace.

I only mention all this because over the last year or so we made an effort to clean up the Wikiprojects, and some of your project's stated goals would go against that. If the admins can help by importing articles from English Wikipedia to your userspace to be worked on, let us know. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:48, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you @Auntof6:, but allow me to reply.

• According to the Wikipedia:WikiProject page, it's possible to move a project to the mainspace once it's been "accepted by the community" or once SEWP is large enough, therefore I put this as a "long term" goal.
• Who decides MOS rules here?
• Again with my first response, banners are only allowed if the WikiProject is in the mainspace, so I put this as a long term goal also.
• Thank you for pointing this out. I was intending to mostly create templates (infoboxes, quick links, etc) to be used in articles, but of course I would also end up making userboxes, banners, and whatnot.

I'm very active on EnWP, so don't hesitate to remind me of any more differences between here and there. Thanks again! ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 16:56, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

We should probably fix up that page, its quite likely never going to be allowed to put banners on talk pages like on en. WikiProjects are highly discouraged here because of our small editor base. Tagging would be even more so. -DJSasso (talk) 22:44, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Since it's so controversial (and wouldn't happen anytime soon anyway), I removed the offending goals. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 00:21, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Why are the references looking weird?

There are dots between the references at the article Vlad III the Impaler. --Windell (talk) 19:15, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

It's a problem with the citation templates. It has been that way for a while. The templates didn't change at the time we noticed the problem, so I suspect there was a software change that doesn't work with the way the templates are coded. We had a discussion here, but no one knew how to fix the problem. With our small editor base, fixing it hasn't been a priority. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:35, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

The Lightning Thief

Hi everyone.

I nominated The Lightning Thief for VGA on 6th October and it has been there for 50+ days now. The article has received multiple reviews and I have handled most of the issues that were mentioned. It would be great if someone could take a look at the nomination and either leave a comment or close the discussion. Regards, Pmlineditor (t · c · l) 18:39, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be a safe bet to promote the article. The article was up on that page for about three months now, and issues that were brought up have been addressed. In my opinion, it reads simple enough.... --Eptalon (talk) 09:19, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I have promoted the article, and added it to the list....--Eptalon (talk) 11:12, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Patrolling recent album articles

We've been getting a lot of articles about albums lately. I noticed that a lot of them are getting patrolled when they need some copy editing and formatting. A lot of the articles have text similar to the following:

It was first studio album without label Elektra Records. It was first studio album of new material in 5 years.

This needs copy editing. I've been changing it to something like one of the following (I put the changes in bold):

It was the group's first studio album without label Elektra Records. It was their first studio album of new material in 5 years.

It was Smith's first studio album without label Elektra Records. It was his first studio album of new material in 5 years.

It would also help if we can make sure the album names are bolded (only the first mention) and in italics, and that the article has the {{italictitle}} template at the top. Thanks in advance for helping with this! --Auntof6 (talk) 07:59, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Article Lengths

Hi! I am new to simple Wiki having moved from the english wikipedia. I notice that many articles, some of them on rather important topics, are incredibly short with minimal information. They would be called stubs at the other wiki. Is this intentional or just a lack of edits? Also, what sort of biographical information is considered appropriate for Simple WIki (titles, honours, alma mater?) Thanks! Arfæst Ealdwrítere (talk) 14:22, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

We like to keep things simpler, but simpler doesn't really mean shorter. There's going to be long articles and short articles, like there is on En. As for your second question, anything that can be presented in a simple way that could be understood by someone that perhaps does not natively speak English. We do have a fairly small group of active editors compared to En, so we welcome new, experienced editors! Welcome to the Simple English Wikipedia! George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 16:10, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah simple doesn`t mean short (atleast in article length terms). It is mostly a function of having about 20 active editors here for thousands on en.wiki. -DJSasso (talk) 17:34, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay, understood. Thanks! Arfæst Ealdwrítere – talk! 17:36, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (December 2014)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today :)

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

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Other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team.00:22, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

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This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Spaces Between Sentences

In articles, are there 2 or 1 space after a sentence? Eurodyne (talk) 02:31, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I use one, but here is what the MOS says. --Auntof6 (talk) 02:51, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy holidays!

Merry Christmas to all Wikipedians! May you have a prosperous 2015, and enjoy the festive season! Best wishes, George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 19:11, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you too! --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 20:02, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #10—2014

Did you know?

Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from tables at the click of a button.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).

Recent improvements

Basic support for editing tables is now available. You can add and delete tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan and colspan elements, instead of trying to repair them.

You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ^ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.

You can now create and edit simple <blockquote> paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".

Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "* " will make the line a bullet list; "1." or "#" will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change.

There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ^ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.

If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.

You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.

Looking ahead

The current VisualEditor design will be replaced with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at mediawiki.org in late December and on other sites in early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)

The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January.

Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• Translations of the user guide for most languages are outdated. Only Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translations are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.
• Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.
• File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
• The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
• If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. Thank you!

— Elitre (WMF)

18:59, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

UK railway services

I have removed a number of 'Services' sections from UK railway articles, including Liverpool Street station, Euston railway station and Virgin Trains, made variously by Wikigeek3552 and Jamessy2015, amongst others. These sections are entirely unsourced and are regularly changing, and have no place in an encyclopedia - particularly in ours. We are not a travel guide, and nor do we promote regular, minor edits that are simply adding or removing content pretty much depending what day of the week it is! I recall that this issue has also been raised before. If you see any of these sections I would suggest that they are also removed, although if you're unsure please drop me a link on my talk page. I'm hoping to tidy many of our UK rail articles up in due course (I appreciate I've been saying that for about four years!) which will hopefully eradicate the issue. Cheers, Goblin 03:00, 27 December 2014 (UTC) I ♥ Chenzw!

I support this. If possible, it would be good to make sure we give a link to the official website that has the schedule info. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:04, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Good thinking - it probably does want pointing out, but not in the article itself. Every train operating company (TOC) has a link to their timetable on their website, and I will attempt to collate these in due course and put them on the relevant articles. However, this will be much harder on a per-station basis as this information is often only available in the same, full timetables and not on a per-station basis, so is perhaps something to leave out there. I'll do a little more digging around (We may be able to put together a template that links to "live" departure boards, for example?) and see what I can come up with. Goblin 03:19, 27 December 2014 (UTC) I ♥ Jersey!

Yes, we have already agreed in a recent discussion not to allow timetables for exactly the same reasons. Lists of services and other detailed information should not be on our pages if it is easily available from a company website. Otherwise changes accumulate which a copy editor cannot reasonably check, and pages become steadily less reliable, and also less readable. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:43, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I am being threatened with legal action for flagging a page for deletion

Moved to WP:AN#Nominated a page for deletion and am now being threatened

Replied at WP:AN. --Auntof6 (talk) 23:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Participation in Proposed Very Good Articles/Good Articles

It's been a bit inactive in this section of the wiki... Can we get some help over there? Eurodyne (talk) 05:14, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I was already looking at Thumbelina before you posted. :) --Auntof6 (talk) 07:12, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Communes on Corsica

I've just noticed that there is a category named Category:Communes on Corsica. I think this should be Communes in Corsica, as the island is relatively large. Similarly one would say in Sicily, not on Sicily. Any thoughts? Yottie ^=talk= 12:56, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, although for a slightly different reason: because it's talking about Corsica as a region, not as an island. If we're not going to use "of" like enwiki, "in" is fine with me. --Auntof6 (talk) 13:44, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I prefer of, but in isn't really a problem. Thanks, Yottie ^=talk= 13:59, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Our recent spate of new album stubs: a proposal

Recently we've had a lot of new articles created about albums that are basically in this form:

<Album name> is the <nth> album from <name of artist or band>. The album was released on <date>. It was the artist's <nth> album of new material in <x> years. It was his/her/their <nth> album with <name of record label>.

Sometimes there's a note about the album being the nth one with or without a particular group member, or with or not with a particular record label.

I don't think this shows notability of the album. However, rather than delete these articles, I propose we redirect them to the article for the artist or group. If we don't have an artist for the artist or group, we could create a stub article for them, but I think we do have articles for the artists of all the ones I've seen.

I know that expanding the album articles would be the best thing to do, but we have so many of these now that few of us would have the time (or interest) to do that.

I would appreciate comments below indicating "Support" or "Oppose", or making other suggestions. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:41, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Support - If these sort of stubs are unsourced, speedy delete per A3, as they don't establish notability. But I agree, we are getting an overabundance of album stubs. George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 07:36, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I didn't specify, but there are neither sources nor any claim of notability (I don't think just being from a notable group makes an album notable). --Auntof6 (talk) 07:57, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Support. A benefit of Aunt's method is that we don't have to keep re-deleting the same album. Most do qualify for QD, but one knows they will popup again sometime. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:05, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

We might not have to keep re-deletng, but I bet we'd have to keep re-redirecting. By the way, I don't see a QD option that would cover these articles. The QD option for notability doesn't apply to albums. The "little or no info" one wouldn't apply, because there's enough info for a stub, it's just that none of the info there shows notability. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:37, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

• Support redirecting the articles. When there is no article for the artist yet, I think it might be better to just delete the album article instead of creating another meaningless stub. -Barras talk 12:46, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Support. Not only are they unsourced they often contain wrong information. Most frequently the album number is incorrect. If I do source them, I have yet to find anything supporting the "<nth> album of new material in <x> years" statement in any source. Most likely it's OR. I've had to correct (in one way or another) many of those I've patrolled. If we can redirect them to the group, then it becomes unnecessary to have to fix the errors. It's a good suggestion. I also like the suggestion above to delete the stub if there is no group article. Rus793 (talk) 12:55, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

As for the "nth album of new material in x years" thing, I think the author just looked at the number of years since the previous album. That could be of interest if the gap was long, but it wasn't in most cases I've seen -- in one case, it was only one year! My guess is that this info was put in to keep the article from being so short. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:39, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Thanks, everyone, for your comments. Since a week has passed and all comments have been in support of this idea, I am going to proceed with redirecting the affected articles. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:05, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

To my fellow new change patrollers: sorry for the flood

I did give myself the flood flag, but I think I forgot to re-login. You can suppress all those changes by clicking on "Hide small changes". Once again, sorry! --Auntof6 (talk) 06:12, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Watchlist

Have things changed? I have a watchlist, but today, when I wanted to add a page to my watchlist, I could not find a "Watch" button. How do I add a page to my watchlist?Kdammers (talk) 04:09, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Oh, okeh, I found it now. It is the star. Can this be changed? Maybe ti's becuase I'm from an older generation, but I find icons opaque. I only found it by messing around (not the way I think an encyclopedia should work), actually after having given up on finding the "watch" button. Kdammers (talk) 04:13, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I still see "Watch". I think it's different in different skins. To change it, you might have to change the skin you use. --Auntof6 (talk) 04:37, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

How do I change the skin? (Not that I had changed it before.) Kdammers (talk) 05:33, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Top right hand corner, under your user name, the drop down menu has "My Settings", in the settings click on the tab called "appearance". The top section should give you a choice of at least 4 skins: Cologne Blue, Modern, MonoBook, Vector. I use vector without problems.--Peterdownunder (talk) 05:39, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank You. I had it set at vector (labeled as "default") -- and on both my computer running Mozilla and another one running the Microsoft browser, I only got the star. I know that it didn't previously only give me the star. Any-way, I changed to MonoBook, and on my computer I get what I was looking for. Kdammers (talk) 07:37, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah the default changed from words to a star a year or two ago across sites. -DJSasso (talk) 15:44, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Djsasso: thank You for the information. What was the reasoning for changing from words to a star? Kdammers (talk) 05:00, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Mark all pages on watchlist as read/visited

Hi, all. I hope to be back at least a little more frequently after an extended absence. I've noticed that in this wiki, the button to mark everything in my watchlist as read/visited has disappeared. And this is not true on any of the other WP wikis that I look at. Was this a deliberate change? Is it something I can restore in my private settings? Thanks. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:50, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Which skin do you use? I use Monobook, and I started seeing the same thing a while back. I also asked about it here and no one could help. There's no setting that I know of. I eventually noticed that when my watchlist page loads, the button appears briefly and then goes away. Sometimes I'm quick enough to click on it (or touch it on my tablet) before it disappears. I hope that helps. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:38, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I have the button on Vector so I am guessing the Monobook settings are wrong. Let me see if I can see. -DJSasso (talk) 19:13, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Clear your cache and check your watchlist. I think I fixed it. Glaisher made a change to a mediawiki page for the watchlist in July and I think it may have broke things for Monobook. I just tried with Monobook and it is working for me. -DJSasso (talk) 19:29, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

That didn't fix it for me. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:08, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Then I am thinking it is probably something on both your sides because I am seeing it with both skins. Do you have anything in your personal js or css pages. Perhaps there is something conflicting. You could also trying turn off all your gadgets and see if it comes back and one by one turn them back on and if it disappears you know it was the last gadget you added that is causing it. -DJSasso (talk) 23:16, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Also what browser are you using? I am using Chrome. -DJSasso (talk) 23:18, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I have code in my js and css pages. I see this problem in two different browsers: Firefox on my laptop and the Silk browser on my Kindle Fire. When I'm on my laptop again, I'll see if it also happens in IE, and try resetting the js, css, and gadgets. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:08, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Another note; at the time I first started seeing this, I hadn't changed anything recently in my js, css, or gadgets. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:03, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I do, too. I've seen the problem in Chrome on my office laptop, in Firefox on my home laptop, and in Safari on my iPad. I'm using Vector, but the problem showed up in Monobook, too. I also tried resetting most of my gadgets and code in my simplewiki settings, to no benefit. I did not play with the global files, because every other wiki's Watchlist page works correctly with them. So I'm thinking this is still something unique to the coding here in simplewiki.

In any event, I hadn't even noticed the brief flash appearance of the button before. That does help. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:22, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Another possibility is you have plugins in your various browsers (I realize not likely since you have multiple browsers) that could be conflicting. I have it showing on 4 different browsers on 3 different computers at the moment. Ironically I do testing like this as part of my job. So I am just brainstorming hypothesis. -DJSasso (talk) 19:44, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

In the meantime I will look through MediaWiki files that changed the end of june beginnig of july. Since that is when Auntof6 first reported seeing it. -DJSasso (talk) 19:49, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I completely reverted the change that was done at the beginning of July to the watchlist javascript. So give it ago again. That being said this puts us out of synch with en.wiki so I doubt it is that. It still is working for me so at the very least it doesn't seem to have broken it worse. -DJSasso (talk) 19:55, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. That fixed it for me.Debouch (talk) 19:59, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Me, too! What does this mean for the Wiki? Is the change you reverted something that will need to be put back eventually? --Auntof6 (talk) 20:01, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Well I don't think it will need to be put back. But it will probably mean we need to find what exactly in the code wasn't working right and probably have to update another file elsewhere. I am guessing when Glashier updated that page to match en.wiki, it needed something else updated as well that he did not update. So I will see if I can figure out what that might be by looking through edits on en.wiki. -DJSasso (talk) 20:04, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

That did the job for me, too. That having been said ... StevenJ81 (talk) 22:09, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Do any of you three that saw the problem use "Real-Time Recent Changes" there is a comment in the code that says to disable the button for people using enhanced recent changes. And I am wondering if they are referring to that gadget. If they are it would explain why I wasn't having the problem as I don't use that gadget. -DJSasso (talk) 22:22, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't have that gadget enabled. --Auntof6 (talk) 00:18, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Ugh I just had a big response typed out and then edit conflicted with a vandal. I think I found the cause. Apparently there was a massive war on en.wiki about this button. Some wanted it visible to all, some wanted it hidden and opt in, others wanted it gone completely. Apparently they eventually removed control of the button from the common.css to the individual css pages of the skins. So when our common.css was updated to match there's sometime awhile back it removed some stuff it needed but it still worked because our watchlist javascript hadn't been updated to need it yet since we were running a really old version of it from 2009. When Glashier updated it in the summer it suddenly needed it and couldn't find it because it wasn't in our common.css or our skin css files. I have since added it to our skins and could switch the watchlist back to the newest one again but I would want someone around to test when I did. That being said, since were running on the old code for so long there is no reason that I know of that we have to catch up to en.wiki just for this. However, in looking through a lot of these pages. It might be time to talk about upgrading all of our css and js and any appropriate mediawiki files to match en.wiki in one big shot. With obvious simple modifications as necessary. Because this peacemeal updating of one here and there has made an awful mess. Some of ours have barely been touched in 10 years. -DJSasso (talk) 00:41, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I'd be happy to help test. I'm generally in favor of keeping software up to date. I also wouldn't mind learning something about the tech side -- I have a tech background, although in a different area of data processing. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:26, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't have that gadget enabled either. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:41, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

And I haven't used that gadget. Debouch (talk) 16:46, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Related problem (?)

Before that, I would occasionally have the problem that after clicking that button, all of my watchlist pages would show up as unread, rather than read. Now that hasn't happened yet since you reverted, but I'm going to watch it. That, too, was a problem limited to here, and not en or fr or anywhere else I sojourn. StevenJ81 (talk) 22:09, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah let me know if you see it happen. I am not super familiar with the mess of code that is involved in this so it may be beyond me but I will try what I can. -DJSasso (talk) 22:13, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I had that problem too and found that it was due to the "Watchlist Notifier" gadget. I unchecked the box and it stopped. Debouch (talk) 05:02, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it was a side effect of the whole problem you described up above, Djasso. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:41, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I've had a further look at this gadget. The link to the watchlist in the notification itself has to be clicked on or the mark-all-pages-as-visited button does what you describe. Debouch (talk) 02:07, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Project: Wiktionary meets Matica srpska

Hi, we are starting the project related to Wiktionary. The announcement is on this page on Simple English Wiktionary. --Senka Latinović (talk) 15:43, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

En wiki templates too complex for us?

This is something that affects the more technical pages, such as science & technology, and some of the biography and geographical place pages. Users bring over templates by the dozen, and almost all of them are far more complex than our pages require. Take the recent template on Dinitrogen tetroxide. The page was simple, but now it have such a huge template that it looks quite forbidding, and many of the key terms will be quite unknown to most users. This may be useful to graduate chemists, but it is no use to the rest of us, let alone some of our readers. Most of the information is not needed for an understanding of what the chemical is.

The templates for planets might impress some people but, as a communication device, they are utterly ridiculous in my opinion. I mean (see Jupiter) what are we doing with a label saying "Angle between its shortest distance from what it orbits around and where it comes up through the reference plane ("argument of periapsis")" plus a figure to three decimal places? That's supposed to be simple? It's not even necessary. And Jupiter is labelled a very good page.

My experience as an educator is that making things look too complex interferes with the process of learning.

What I suggest is for us to ask editors to edit templates down by eliminating very specialist information. Sometimes this has to be done to the source code of the template, but with other templates it can be done on the source code of an individual page. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:24, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I've noticed this problem too, especially in infoboxes. I will look at the templates and attempt to simplify them. We may also need a bot to change the parameters as well, or we could alternatively keep it the same. Anyways, I will be working on simplifying these templates. George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 12:38, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree, some of the things are quite complex and don't necessarily need to be included on the templates. However, I think we need to be careful about what we remove. Should this be at the discretion of a single editor, or should it be a combined effort on various talk pages (possibly using a temporary page listing templates that need checking or double checking)? This is a collaborative encyclopaedia after all. Information is always useful, but it needs to be conveyed in the correct way. Yottie ^=talk= 12:47, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Just be careful not to make it hard to keep the templates in sync with enwiki's for the parts we do want. I suggest commenting the unwanted parts instead of deleting them. That would make it easier to compare when we want to bring over changes from enwiki. Sometimes those template changes are needed to keep things compatible with software changes. --Auntof6 (talk) 12:49, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Interesting topic, and I think our infoboxes/templates do need simple versions. What happens when we import an newer version of a template? Does it overide our existing ones? Sorting the boxes out could be a good project to work on this year.--Peterdownunder (talk) 01:30, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I made a start on this late last year as I updated a few transport infoboxes - that is, slimming them down to fit our requirements and ensuring that they are not overly complex. *In theory* every individual infobox can be altered to suit our needs and should never be affected if we have to make changes to the 'generic' templates for software reasons. As long as we ensure that the specific templates call the correct parameters, we can update {{infobox}} etc. regularly in line with enwiki and there shouldn't be any problems with, for example, {{infobox train}}. Does that all make sense? Sorry - it's late here and I might not be coming across too clearly. I would be more than happy to assist/co-ordinate a project to start looking into improving our templates here. Goblin 04:00, 5 January 2015 (UTC) I ♥ The Rambling Man!

I think there are a number of issues:

1. We simplify the text, but the infoboxes are usually not simplified, and many of them cannot be simplified except on the template source page. As a result, the infoboxes, and also footer boxes are usually too complex for our needs, and sometimes ridiculously too complex.
2. Second, when it is possible to simplify a box after it is placed on a page, it can be wiped out by anyone who re-imports the box from En wiki, so erasing any simplification which had been done.
3. We need a method of discussion which allows regular editors on content to have a say in the areas where they work. Consider biographies, where two or three put up most of them, but another 12 or so also regularly edit. They need a forum page to talk about their templates and boxes, before any action is taken. It may be that some should be changed and some left as they are. Now take the opposite extreme, say relativity and theoretical physics generally. We haven't really got an expert, and have struggled to improve pages which are far from good. We just have to leave that alone, because trying to simplify templates does require content knowledge.
4. Guidelines: discussions need guidelines. To give you an example from the infobox domain, one might say: As a general rule, a box should only give such detail as makes the page more comprehensible. But it should answer basic questions readers might have. Exactly what questions would vary, of course, according to the type of box. With taxoboxes one might say of a species "which family does it belong to?". You might think that's obvious, but we do have insect pages which say nothing more than "this is a beetle"...
5. Footers: We have some footers that are even worse than the infoboxes. I saw one with about 50 terms, 49 of which were red-linked! That is like putting up a notice saying "go back to English wiki". As a first step, I would suggest that all footers are set as "closed". Then at least they would do less damage. But when editors discuss a particular content area, they might include footers as well as infoboxes.
6. One good approach would be to say that after consensus, changes should not be made, except by small adjustments on individual pages. Not all individual pages need the same detail, so modest adjustments should be possible.
7. Some have mentioned the need to allow regular updating of infoboxes. I can see areas where that would be useful, and I can see areas where it might be destructive. At any rate, if we have a working group on, say, biographies, they could decide what is best in that area (etc). No automatic updating should be done unless it benefits us. To give you an example, En wiki is moving towards taxoboxes base on clades instead of taxoboxes based on Linnaean traditional levels. I should hate to see us do that without discussion! Not only is the Linnaean system very well known for living species, it is also more stable. Clade-based taxonomies are already in trouble, with several versions offered by different authorities. So I think updating should be done in two stages: 1. Ask the group concerned, and 2. Do what they think best.
8. Finally, we come to the crunch: we need a couple of people to supervise the changes in templates. Some templates are very difficult to code properly, at least I often don't get it right! Alas, we have lost the wizard Osiris, but I hope we do have one or two volunteers for the positions. Not everyone who edits on content is competent to fix templates. By the same token, some editors have imported templates without considering their effect on pages. Anyway, the general theme is that discussion would help decide what should or should not be done in various types of content. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:22, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
I'm assuming that what's too complex in infoboxes is the number and detail of parameters. I have a suggestion. Let's start with a small number of individual templates that we think could be simpler, and have a discussion on each template's talk page to work out what we think could be changed or removed. My suggestions for where to start are Template:Infobox country, Template:Infobox settlement or Template:Infobox person, because I think they have a lot of parameters we could remove. The discussions should be well publicized here on Simple Talk. Once we get a few worked out, we should have a better idea of what we're looking for as far as simplifying. How does that sound? --Auntof6 (talk) 09:36, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I'd be happy to start that way. Although my preference would be to set all footers as closed. When we have two articles in a category and a footer with 50+ terms almost all red, it is clear that something is quite wrong. Setting as closed is a simple first step.
But if you'ld like to choose one of the infoboxes, I'll give you some thoughts as to what is least needed. I think a guideline might be reasons for putting the data on the page as contrasted with a link giving the data. That is what we came up with concerning train timetables. The reasoning would be: facts stated need sources, but not all data in sources need to be on the page. Macdonald-ross (talk) 19:51, 18 January 2015 (UTC)