text:
Talk:Freedom fighter

Biased
As far as i know. The term is generally used by americans in a positive :) sense to refer to the intelligence agents operating in puerto rico to counter the revolution. Correct me if i'm wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.190.179.94 (talk) 12:34, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No, that is an extremely narrow usage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.15.170.229 (talk) 11:17, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Freedom Fighters Manual
The page, should it include info about the US-sponsored The Freedom Fighter's Manual?

Hamas
The article says that its relativistic and then (ostensibly as an example) uses it to describe Hamas. Ridiculous and must be addressed quickly. Noone would stand for it if it was "the Mossad (a terrorist organization) claims to fight for the freedom of Israel to exist". Totally POV and completely inappropriate. Ill wait a few days and if I dont get a response Ill remove that unneccessary example.

Done

I just deleted the part about hamas, only to come into the discussion board and find that i wasnt the first to have done this. I totally agree that specific examples of who is and isnt a freedom fighter/terrorist has no place in this article and i ask everyone who's reading this to try and keep it free of such blatant POV.

What about Samuel Adams? --Cyberman 21:13, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, but I suspect that the dictionary.com definition is an example of hidden bias--not explaining the background. I could be wrong, but I believe (though I have not done any real resarch) that freedom fighter is a Cold War term. --The Cunctator

I thought a freedom fighter was someone who fights for freedom--call me silly... :-)  Maybe we shouldn't be satisfied with dictionary-definition length entries about complex topics.  Obviously, unless somebody just knows this, we're going to have to research exactly who used the term first, how and why it was used, who used it, etc. --Larry Sanger

 * Sure they fight for freedom. Freedom from domination by those particular leaders. There have been few if any figures in history who wanted freedom for all people from all domination. Gandhi and maybe MLK come to mind, seems like Malcolm X was headed that way when he died. Arguably some of the U.S. founding fathers wanted this, but were obviously willing to compromise. Gautama Buddha is another good guess. Seems like those who want complete freedom for all often renounce violence. --JohnAbbe

Looking good--I'm just going to reduce some of the circumlocution. For example, by stating that something is a propagandistic term, we don't also have to say that it's not used in a careful, precise way. That's what it means to be propagandistic. --The Cunctator

George Carlin has the perfect definition, in form of a question: "If crimefighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?" ;) --Magnus Manske

Here's what the OED says:

 * 15. ... freedom fighter, one who takes part in a resistance movement against the established political system of a country ....
 * 1942 J. LEHMANN 40 Poems 32 Their freedom-fighters staining red the snow. 1958 Listener 13 Nov. 786/1 The Hungarian ?freedom fighters?. 1962 Listener 20 Dec. 1042/2 The Information Minister [in Jakarta] had urged the press to support the freedom fighters in northern Borneo. 1964 Ann. Reg. 1963 113 Mr. Obote had played a prominent part in the Addis Ababa conference..offering training grounds for ?freedom fighters? against South Africa. 1969 Daily Nation (Nairobi) 31 Oct. 16/1 Freedom fighters ring Portuguese territories and Rhodesia with the support of African governments, if not always full acknowledgement. 1969 M. PUGH Last Place Left vii. 45 She was a freedom fighter in the sex war.
 * 1942 J. LEHMANN 40 Poems 32 Their freedom-fighters staining red the snow. 1958 Listener 13 Nov. 786/1 The Hungarian ?freedom fighters?. 1962 Listener 20 Dec. 1042/2 The Information Minister [in Jakarta] had urged the press to support the freedom fighters in northern Borneo. 1964 Ann. Reg. 1963 113 Mr. Obote had played a prominent part in the Addis Ababa conference..offering training grounds for ?freedom fighters? against South Africa. 1969 Daily Nation (Nairobi) 31 Oct. 16/1 Freedom fighters ring Portuguese territories and Rhodesia with the support of African governments, if not always full acknowledgement. 1969 M. PUGH Last Place Left vii. 45 She was a freedom fighter in the sex war.

All right. I'm asserting that

 * A freedom fighter is a positive term for a political rebel who uses violence to attempt the overthrow of the established government. With its use of the positive term freedom, this term is subjective and propagandistic, implying that the established government is oppressive and illegitimate.

means the same thing as
 * A freedom fighter is, literally, a person who fights for freedom in a particular place. But, due to the ambiguity of and disagreements over the meaning of the term "freedom," the literal meaning of the term is not particularly helpful. The term has been used and spread in propaganda, and as a result it has usually not been used in any very careful, precise way. It is probably most accurate to say that a freedom fighter is a political rebel who uses violence to attempt the overthrow of an established government considered, by the person using the "freedom fighter" label, illegitimate because it is oppressive of (that person's conception of) freedom.

but is much more concise and correctly emphasized. I believe that it is correct for the entry to begin with the definition of the term, not a literal parsing of the words.

 * I totally disagree, which is exactly why I changed it back. The clearest, most straightforward way to present the meaning of the term is to explain first its literal meaning and then tie that in with how those words, literally understood, are used.  I think your approach is, if briefer, far less clear.

 * I feel very strongly about this. I have spent most of my academic life writing with the aim of making ideas as clear as possible, and I think I know how it's done.  I'll keep arguing with you about it, if you like.

While your text is more detailed, Larry, I do think that it is awkward and repetitive, and doesn't really convey much more than the shorter version. But we are not paper here, so I agree with you that it's more important to be precise than concise. I'll see if I can clarify it. --Lee Daniel Crocker

 * That was not an improvement, Lee, in terms of clarity. I'll wait until tomorrow before I touch the article again, though. --LMS

Really? I must disagree that my version isn't clearer--it's much clearer. The way I read it, it says exactly the same thing your version does, but more simply and precisely --LDC

It's really very simple, Lee. Your version simply doesn't say everything that does need to be said about the term, and mine does. The things your definition does not say explicitly, which mine does, are things that I think need to be stated explicitly. I'm going to restore it and rewrite it slightly, unless someone can convince me otherwise. --LMS

Well, I'm throwing my hat in the ring. I really think I said everything Larry wanted said, without the awkward (to non-philosophers) talk about literal meanings, and semantic imprecision. MRC

Hi Mark, that strikes me as a good resolution. Thanks! --LMS

I like MRC's version, and if you do as well I suppose we're settled. It says the same things but with less philosopher-speak. But you're still just blowing smoke up my ass unless you say what it is, specifically, that is expressed by your version or his that wasn't in mine, and your meaningless statement above is just more evidence. I'm sure you really do understand something I don't here--you're the better philosopher--but you're not making it clear. I'm a writer. I good at making things clear, but I have to understand them first. –LDC - As I see it Larry thinks it is important to at least point out that 1) Freedom Fighter is a politically loaded term, 2) the literal meaning and the actual use are somewhat divergent, and 3) the standard "a political rebel who uses violence to attempt the overthrow of the established government" is not a precise logical definition, but is merely an indicator of common use.

I'm reading a bit between the lines in Larry's paragraph to get this, so some of it may reflect my own bias. However, I think it is essential that we do point out these things. In particular I think it is essential to point out the subjectivity involved in many definitions of freedom and oppression, and to make it clear that we are relying on common use to arrive at the aforementioned definition. I personally would also like to make a much stronger point about the political doublespeak and propagandistic uses of rhetoric which surround the use of this label, but I purposely moved that to the end of the article to improve the flow, in spite of my feeling that it is more important than some of the stuff about the cold war which precedes it.

I think it's essential that at least some hint of the subjective and ambiguous nature of the term be provided in the first paragraph. I also agree with KQ and The Cunctator that it is essential that we make the standard definition as central as possible. Balancing all of these concerns is not a simple process, but I think we're in far better shape than we were yesterday.

Larry's edit of Mark's text was good; your edit may have been a bit more complete but it was confusing, so I rearranged it and I think clarified. Also, Larry's "an often propagandistic term" is far superior to your "a propagandistic term", because the latter is non-neutral; it expresses the opinion that use of the term is always propaganda, which is not true. It is true that terms like "freedom" and "oppression" are ambiguous, but they do have real meanings and real examples, and the term can be used in a straigtforward and meaningful way. Finally, I deleted the links to dictionary articles. I don't think such links are a good idea for Wikipedia in general--the reason we put an article here is because we have more to say about it than a mere dictionary entry. I might be convinced otherwise. --LDC

Did the Soviet Union ever call the Sandinistas "freedom fighters"? If not, I don't think it's quite accurate to say what the article says right now. –LMS

The mention of "guerrillas" as a negative term is incorrect, at least historically. Most of the Marxist revolutionaries in the Cold-War era used that term to describe themselves, including Che Guevara and Vo Nguyen Giap, who both wrote about using guerrilla tactics. We've got this set of loose synonyms: rebel, freedom fighter, guerrilla, terrorist, and revolutionary. (Maybe you can think of more...) And then there's activist, protester, marcher, hippie.... --The Cunctator

If you are looking for a non biased way of defining a freedom fighter, then I think that two elments should be distinguished in this expression. Freedom, which is definitely good, and fight, ie the way a freedom fighter pursues his political aims and freedom. If the fight is violent (the espression non violent fight or nonviolent struggle could be seen as metaphores), then the authorities do have the right to bring those responsible to trial for their violent acts; the authorities have not the right to have those same people stand in trial also for their opinions, which is often he case instead. This means that someone may be right, even if his ways are not, and that our judgement on violence should not influence our judgement on anyone's opinions. Those are two separate accounts which should stay separate. One is not there to balance the other.

Hamas are definetley freedom fighters as they fight to free their country from the ZionistsKermanshahi 15:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Country comparisons
It would seem inappropriate to lump together the savage, Maoist Sendero Luminoso of Peru and the socially concerned, if authoritarian, Nicaraguan Sandinistas; the same goes for the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian rebels v.s. the Afghan Mujahadeen.

This sentence implies that Hungarian anc Czech rebels were savage and the Mujahedeen are socially concerned, while I am pretty sure that the author originally meant to say the opposite. (Or if he didn't, then he ought to.) This should be reformulated somehow... - Marcika 21:29, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

the Sudtiroler freedom fighting heroes should be mentioned on here aswell.

I think the page as it stands seems pretty balanced. I don't know what the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is. Freedom fighter seems to be what people who favor the terrrorist's aims call him or her. Terrorist is what people call those whose aims they disagree with. Both are militant groups fighting for an aim, whether that is shooting at British troop from behind trees, dumping tea in a harbor, or taking down the Challenger space shuttle.

I think that the above opinion says it best. The Americans supported the Mujahdeens'holy war{Taliban} as "Freedom Fighters" when they were fighting the Soviets.Oh the irony of it all. Freedom fighter or Terrorist,its all semantics.

simplify
A freedom fighter is a terrorist on your side. A terrorist is a freedom fighter on the other side. Does it really need to be more complex?

 * Yes, considering that the definition of freedom fighters implies that they are attacking their own governments and not someone else's -- terrorism is a method, not a political goal. I hope. It is also thoroughly unfair to freedom fighters to automatically assume they use the methods of terrorism. Many freedom fighters -- like the French Resistance, for instance -- engaged in strategic guerrilla warfare, not terrorism. While some freedom fighters may use terroristic methods, that doesn't mean all of them do.

 * On the other hand, in what way were the 9/11 terrorists engaging in freedom fighting? Most of them were not Americans, making them instead foreign hostiles. Tim McVeigh was a terrorist who might possibly be considered a freedom fighter; he was, shamefully, an American. My point: there is a really big difference, despite the way the media tosses the terms around as if they were equivalent.

 * But my question is, why is so much of the verbiage in this article made up of questions? I thought wiki was supposed to be straightforward statements defining something, not rhetorical and argumentative questions.

 * "freedom fighters implies that they are attacking their own governments and not someone else's" -- so by that definition everything the US did in Vietnam, Iraq, etc., are terrorist activities, and definitely everything Israel does to the Arabs. Pseudotriton 19:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
 * One more thing, going by the above definition, none of the "home grown" terrorists, such as those UK Musilims plotting to bomb planes can be called terrorists anymore. The distinction between the two terms, as the article points out, is relative. Pseudotriton 20:05, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

 * In the spirit of the name of this section, terrorism is, simply, a tactic whereby a state of terror is induced in a group of people. This is true independent of the reason for employing the tactic.  So, comparing the phrases "freedom fighter" and "terrorist" is like comparing apples and oranges -- what is the point?  Certainly, they are not universally interchangeable, but that does not prevent apologists from doing so in an attempt to legitimize the tactic, which is indefensible. Eegorr 05:03, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Unprotecting
There has been no discussion on the talk page for weeks and weeks and weeks. I'm unprotecting. --Tony Sidaway 18:11, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

phrasing & historical confusion
"This was particularly true in Nicaragua, where the US government was inclined to a favorable view of the Sandinista movement until some time after it accumulated power, when it backed the Contra rebels."

The two "it"s in the sentence are confusing.

The second is gramatically incorrect, since while it apparently refers to the "US government", gramatically it does not.

Perhaps:

"This was particularly true in Nicaragua, where the US government was inclined to a favorable view of the Sandinistas until some time after their accumulation of power, when the US came to back the Contra rebels."

However this still leaves the historical problem that it was more a question of the change in US president that changed US attitudes - the new president had already been pro-Somoza before.

The second historical hesitation I have is that the Contras were basically created by the US government, as has been admitted on the BBC by the CIA officer responsible for the program.

David Vaughn

I think this is a rather good article on wikipedia. I have given in some neccesary changes in the 'examples' section, and the rest of it, well, I couldn't find anything wich aint right, or wrong. Please read my articles: Oh, en Please rate them, or expand them, their both stubs!
 * Lone Horn
 * Touch the Clouds

Mrlob

Hey. I definitely think that this is a biased article. Seeing as I am currently researching the Arab-Israeli conflict, simply calling the Hamas a terrorist group is definetly discrimatory,biased, and very politically incorrect. Not that I am one to be politically correct. Palestinians definitely have a right to be angry. -Me

Delete lists of (self styled) FF organisations
This is inevitably a POV list that adds no value to the article. I propose that it be deleted outright. --Red King 00:55, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe a seperate article like the one for List of terrorist organisations would be better. This list could get very long. IP198 19:38, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I disagree strongly. That article is even more POV and should be deleted too. It is purely subjective. --Red King 20:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I actually agree with you, but i doubt that we will be able to delete that article. Perhaps an afd should be done on List of terrorist organisations, and if it works then this list should go as well. IP198 22:05, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

 * As no one has made a case for its retention, I have deleted the list. Any reinstatement is subject to the standard rules of wikipedia: WP:No original research and WP:Cite sources - and any source has to be independent of the warring parties and their allies. --Red King 20:43, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Freedom Fighters
was a (IIRC) made-for-TV movie that involved the Berlin Wall and a GI stationed in Berlin back in 1961, starring Tony Danza. This is not addressed. -Ich (talk) 04:01, 25 June 2007 (UTC) dumb left wing crap... again i deleted a segment some parinoid 'wanna be' hippie wrote about the Bush term of goverment so that hopefully wont be coming back! j. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.177.225.20 (talk) 01:50, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Moral question
With all the respect to the contributors, in my humble opinion the words "freedom fighter" have a strong political meaning that tend to confuse the public opinion by apealing to emotions. In some cases, legitimite in the eyes of the public, the violation of law and order by the use of violence, implies that the ends justify the means. To talk about freedom fighters and not talk about the moral questions that come from the term is to give un incomplete picture of the words. I believe that is better to explain the discussion than avoid it at all. I think that the purpose of this is to provide more info, even if only creates more questions. This is because through making more questions, we get new answers. Or so I think.

$$pi r2$$ is a forumla
--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)--58.165.87.175 (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Freedom fighter


text:
Flamsteed designation

A Flamsteed designation is a combination of a number and constellation name that uniquely identifies most naked eye stars in the modern constellations visible from southern England. They are named for John Flamsteed who first used them while compiling his Historia Coelestis Britannica. (Flamsteed used a telescope, and the catalog also includes some stars which are relatively bright but not necessarily visible with the naked eye.)

Description
Flamsteed designations for stars are similar to Bayer designations, except that they use numbers instead of Greek and Roman letters. Each star is assigned a number and the Latin genitive of the constellation it lies in (see 88 modern constellations for a list of constellations and the genitive forms of their names). Flamsteed designations were assigned to 2554 stars. The numbers were originally assigned in order of increasing right ascension within each constellation, but due to the effects of precession they are now slightly out of order in some places.

This method of designating stars first appeared in a preliminary version of John Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis Britannica published by Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton in 1712 without Flamsteed's approval. The final version of Flamsteed's catalogue published in 1725 after his death omitted the numerical designations altogether. The numbers now in use were assigned by the French astronomer, Joseph Jérôme de Lalande and appeared in his 1783 almanac, Éphémérides des mouvemens célestes which contained a revised edition of Flamsteed’s catalogue. Lalande noted in his Introduction that he got the idea from the unofficial 1712 edition.

Flamsteed designations gained popularity throughout the eighteenth century, and are now commonly used when no Bayer designation exists. Where a Bayer designation with a Greek letter does exist for a star, it is usually used in preference to the Flamsteed designation. (Flamsteed numbers are generally preferred to Bayer designations with Roman letters.) Examples of well-known stars that are usually referred to by their Flamsteed numbers include 51 Pegasi, and 61 Cygni. Flamsteed designations are often used instead of the Bayer designation if the latter contains an extra attached number; for example, "55 Cancri" is more common than "Rho1 Cancri".

There are examples of stars, such as 10 Ursae Majoris in Lynx, bearing Flamsteed designations for constellations in which they do not lie, just as there are for Bayer designations, because of the compromises that had to be made when the modern constellation boundaries were drawn up.

Flamsteed's catalogue covered only the stars visible from Great Britain, and therefore stars of the far southern constellations have no Flamsteed numbers. Some stars, such as the nearby star 82 Eridani, were named in a major southern-hemisphere catalog called Uranometria Argentina, by Benjamin Gould; these are Gould numbers, rather than Flamsteed numbers, and should be differentiated with a G, as in 82 G. Eridani. Except for a handful of cases, Gould numbers are not in common use. Similarly, Flamsteed-like designations assigned by other astronomers (for example, Hevelius) are no longer in general use. (A well-known exception is the globular cluster 47 Tucanae from Bode's catalog.)

84 stars entered in Flamsteed's catalog are errors and proved not to exist in the sky: All of them except 11 Vulpeculae were plotted on his star charts.
 * Flamsteed observed Uranus in 1690 but did not recognize it as a planet and entered it into his catalog as a star called "34 Tauri".
 * 11 Vulpeculae was a nova, now known as CK Vulpeculae.
 * Many of them were caused by arithmetic errors made by Flamsteed.

List of constellations using Flamsteed star designations
There are 52 constellations that primarily use Flamsteed designations. Stars are listed in the appropriate lists for the constellation, as follows:

• Andromeda

• Aquarius

• Aquila

• Aries

• Auriga

• Boötes

• Camelopardalis

• Cancer

• Canes Venatici

• Canis Major

• Canis Minor

• Capricornus

• Cassiopeia

• Cepheus

• Cetus

• Coma Berenices

• Corona Borealis

• Corvus

• Crater

• Cygnus

• Delphinus

• Draco

• Equuleus

• Eridanus

• Gemini

• Hercules

• Hydra

• Lacerta

• Leo

• Leo Minor

• Lepus

• Libra

• Lynx

• Lyra

• Monoceros

• Ophiuchus

• Orion

• Pegasus

• Perseus

• Pisces

• Piscis Austrinus

• Sagitta

• Sagittarius

• Scorpius

• Serpens

• Sextans

• Taurus

• Triangulum

• Ursa Major

• Ursa Minor

• Virgo

• Vulpecula

In addition, several stars in Puppis, and a small number of stars in Centaurus and Lupus, have been given Flamsteed designations.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Flamsteed designation


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Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Top priorities

This page is obsolete! It is an archive of old feature requests that were still active on 2002 July 20, when we moved from Phase II to Phase III of the software. Many requests were implemented then, while others became obsolete due to being rejected by the community. 'See Feature requests for current requests. '

Top priorities: really important features we still don't have

Search

 * A 'power search' page. For example, a search for 'demon' will list all pages that use the word 'demonstrate' (case-insensitive substring match?). That's okay now, but as the wikipedia grows the lists of false matches will get longer and more searches will be affected by it. A power search would provide options for boolean expressions, exact-phrase, case-sensitivity, etc. --Atlas_2091
 * I second that motion. Attempts to outsource
 * See also : Feature requests OddlyCapitalized links would be helped greatly by a case-sensitive search, so one does not, for instance, have to search through 149 pages with the word "liberal" looking for the ones that are printed
 * See also : Feature requests LiberaL . Of course, the point is moot if 0.92 will include tools to rename pages (and references to them) automatically. --KQ
 * A regexp-like search option might be handy...
 * I would like the search to return those pages more prominently whose title matches the search string. First give me the title matches, then the article body matches.
 * Searches currently turn up only the exact phrase entered, which should probably be one option among many. For an example why, search for
 * See also : Feature requests "John A. MacDonald," "John A MacDonald," "John MacDonald," "John D Macdonald," and "John D. MacDonald."
 * Since I have forgotten what happened in the far past (more than the time that shows up in recent changes) I want other ways to look for articles:
 * Articles sorted by inverse date (show oldest first) - just so I can do a sanity check on things that might have been overlooked.
 * Articles sorted by number of revisions (lowest first} - If it never got revised, it probably needs work unless Larry wrote it. :) -- mike dill

Interface

 * Eventually, a feature to find non-linked mentions of pages could also be useful. --CliffordAdams
 * Anchors (HTML standard) to jump around in a page! Often the text shouldn´t be split but retain its flow, and yet have some navigation and structure, e.g. "contents"

Report features and automation

 * Similar to the What Google Likes| page and the request above: a report for pages visited most often (aside from, say, the Recent Changes and HomePage pages and other usual suspects). (So busybodies like me can know frequently-visited areas possibly wanting improvement.)
 * Generate and place on an automatically-generated R/O page a list of the most popular Wikipedia searches. This would encourage people to write articles specifically on those topics that people search for. --Larry Sanger
 * This would probably be easiest to do outside of the wiki script by processing the server's logs.
 * A script to autogenerate the What Google Likes page once a day or so
 * There are several pages that have comments like "as of (date) we have NNN pages / MMM comma pages...". This information becomes stale pretty quickly. Would it be practical to provide a Wikipedia Statistics page that could be updated fairly often with things like page counts, web server stats, user stats, etc.? --loh (2001-06-21)

Naming conventions

 * Use of (at least) Latin1 characters in links and titles of pages. I can see this vexing the Anglo-American crowd, but it's truly annoying to spell your name in a faulty way, and even more so to spell historical persons wrong.
 * This is already a feature of UseMod 0.92, which is currently in use by the international Wikipedias. When we get around to updating the software here as well, that will come along. --LDC

Wikipedia distribution etc.

 * Since the text within Wikipedia is covered by the GNU FDL there is a requirement that it be available in the most "transparent" form. I would suggest that since the publically viewable form of is HTML but the underlying dataset is stored in the wiki source form it is currently not available in a transparent form. I guess that it is possible to gather this data by using the "edit" button of all the documents and culling the information from the text field, but again this is not very transparent. Even if you do this, you still have lost the version information which could be argued to be a fundamental part of the data. Is there a plan to provide a download format from which a new copy of the data in wikipedia can be generated? -Phillip2
 * At present, no plan, but we would like to do this, of course.
 * I also think this would be a nice service. -- BryceHarrington

Solved

 * Missed searches - user searches that returned no results (from Wikipedia-L)
 * Articles sorted by size - so i know where the articles that need work are.
 * Could we move the search box higher up the screen? It is hard to find right now.
 * I second that, and propose that its placement be made a user preference: top, bottom, or both. --Gimbo
 * Each Wikipedia page could and should have a Talk subpage why not making it default for every new page. Kpjas
 * Seconded. I like the idea of making a default /Talk on each (non-sub)page.
 * Clicking the name of the article at the top of the page searches for occurrences of the page title on other pages, but it would be possibly more useful for that to point to a list of all the pages that link to the page in question. There doesn't seem to be any way to do that at present. --Larry Sanger
 * This is likely to be added eventually, and may even become the default behavior of the page-title link. This was not much of a problem with the old WikiName links because those titles were automatically links. Now with "free links" there may be several pages that use a page title but do not link to it. --CliffordAdams
 * We need a way to let ordinary folks upload files to the Wikipedia server--perhaps the uploads would first have to be hand-processed, to make sure they don't carry viruses and aren't too large. But eventually, it seems to me we're going to need something like this. (Perhaps it wouldn't have to be closely integrated with UseModWiki software, though. We could just link to a Wikipedia upload page, which would run our own unique software.) --LMS
 * I'm quite surprised you don't have a file uploader, actually. I can send you the one used in the WorldForge website: http://www.worldforge.org/website/tools/upload_a_file. I'd be willing to collaborate on adapting this for Wikipedia if there is interest (I will need a similar tool for work soon). -- BryceHarrington
 * TWiki has the notion of adding attachements to a page that can be referenced within that page. IMHO, something similar would be very useful for Wikipedia.
 * Uploading images would be great to build an illustrated encyclopedia :-)
 * Uploading files is only half of the problem. We need a way to refer to those files from within articles, that is a easy to use as Free Links.  Right now they are fully-qualified URLs, which is a pain to type and also is non-transportable.  (Renaming uploaded files would be handy also.)  --Alan Millar

 * See also : Phase II feature requests


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Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Report features

This page is obsolete! It is an archive of old feature requests that were still active on 2002 July 20, when we moved from Phase II to Phase III of the software. Many requests were implemented then, while others became obsolete due to being rejected by the community. See Feature requests for current requests.

Report features

 * Automatically-generated NewTopics page
 * Still considering this, but not for version 0.92. --CliffordAdams

 * Count and publicly display (somewhere) two or three different numbers of Wikipedia pages that are longer than various particulars lengths (to give a more realistic idea of how many actual pages are on the wiki, as opposed to redirection pages, tiny stubs, etc.).
 * A good idea. The only quibble is that it requires opening every page to generate the report, but it shouldn't take any longer than the current search function.
 * If wikipedia articles are stored in flat files, you could just approximate the length based on the file size, right?

 * How's about an automatically generated Wikipedia Contributors page that lists contributors and the number of pages they created or changed? --SoniC
 * Unfortunately, not all contributors use a username or have a single login. Also, not all of the requested information is kept permanently. --CliffordAdams

 * It would be great to have a feature that would identify all orphaned pages. There's a small but growing problem of our having many useful pages that are not linked-to or underlinked-to. It would be great if we could list all pages to which there are no links, or only one link. --User:Larry Sanger

 * I would like a page that is a top list of the most frequently linked-to non-existent page, more or less the opposite. User:Linus Tolke

 * How about a feature that lists all places where the current page is linked from?

 * Provide a batch job that searches for and lists all links along with the page the link is contained in so that we can look for duplicate/slightly different versions of the same link and fix them. Please make this a weekly batch job so that it does not take too much time.

 * Is it possible to invent something to sort lists alphabetically? Take a look at pages like Actresses and you know why this would be helpful...

 * Plagiarism-bot. A bot that goes through Wikipedia pages on a regular basis, does Google searches, and flags pages that it suspects might be plagiarized.

 * Spell check batch job for newly created articles once a week with a link at the end of the article to the incorrectly spelled words. Even better would be one that worked as the "preview" button, before saving, and that marked somehow the suspicious words.

 * Let's have contributors of a given Wikipedia page listed either in the header or in the footer. IP's are skipped of course and if there are more than, say, 10 contributors make a link to a special subpage "Contributors".User:Kpjas
 * If people wish to be listed, can't they simply include their name at the end of the text?

 * Provide a way to search for all the changes made by one user in Wikipedia. For example, if I contributed to numerous pages over a long period of time, then 2 years later, I would need a way to find out whether someone else added to the subject I once touched.

 * See also : Phase II feature requests


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Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Naming conventions

This page is obsolete! It is an archive of old feature requests that were still active on 2002 July 20, when we moved from Phase II to Phase III of the software. Many requests were implemented then, while others became obsolete due to being rejected by the community. See Feature requests for current requests.

Naming conventions (this is all done, but not yet implemented on Wikipedia)

 * The wiki software could be written so that, for example, if I write,  ,  , or  , the page linked to will always be  . In that case, one would be able to capitalize or not in the text of wiki articles at one's pleasure, and only the titles of articles would look strange (in some cases, e.g.,  ). But that situation would be preferable to the current situation, in which some people are capitalizing second and third words of article titles, when, in referring to the subject of the article, one doesn't ordinarily capitalize those words. (For discussion, see naming conventions.) -- User:Larry Sanger
 * This has been done in version 0.92. The canonical form of a page will have all words capitalized, and links can have arbitrary words capitalized. This will be a little strange sometimes, but it seems to be the best solution for now.
 * Ooh, that sounds awful. I hope that's not what'd going to happen, since it violates the naming conventions. --User:The Cunctator

 * Now that we have Free Links, can we have the canonization software allow parentheses, so we can use titles with short glosses rather than awkward compounds, e.g., Nirvana (musical group) rather than NirvanaBand? The downside of this is a little more typing to make a link; the upside is that we get to have titles in plain English. --User:Lee Daniel Crocker and User:Larry Sanger (see Disambiguation)
 * This is in version 0.92. I was surprised to see that parentheses are allowed in URIs/URLs according to RFC 2396, so it shouldn't be hard to add them. --CliffordAdams

 * There's a good reason why we can't use single quotes in titles, right? It sure would be handy to have the use of them, though.
 * After more thought, I've given in on this request also. Single quotes are allowed in 0.92. Please don't ask for any more punctuation, however, or I may scream. :-) --CliffordAdams
 * How about backticks and semicolons? (joke!)

 * Can we please turn off automatic subpages? I'm not suggesting we disallow subpages, only that the software not assume that anything following a slash, even if it's not in brackets, should be a subpage: currently aspirin/Tylenol; Marat/Sade; and Face/Off all want to make a subpage of Feature requests. CSCE/OSCE did want to make one on one of the Hungary pages, but for some reason doesn't do it here. I know the < /nowiki > trick; I just think links should be links when in brackets and not otherwise. --KQ


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Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Cookies, logins, and privacy

This page is obsolete! It is an archive of old feature requests that were still active on 2002 July 20, when we moved from Phase II to Phase III of the software. Many requests were implemented then, while others became obsolete due to being rejected by the community. See Feature requests for current requests.

Cookies, logins, and privacy

 * In addition, given that the certain cookies have stopped working, can't I have a "log in" to confirm my id? Everytime I hit "preferences" otherwise, I get a new user ID.

 * I noticed last weekend that I can set my ID in Preferences to anybody else's, certainly, if they are not using it. I would not care if people had mutlyiple IDs. But, I do see a problem in my setting my ID to, say Larry Sanger and entering content all over which will wrongly be identified as his in recent changes. And possibly elsewhere. RoseParks
 * There is a secure user-ID already--it is the "User ID number" shown on the Preferences page. If you are using recent versions of MSIE or Netscape you can see the ID number and the IP address by moving the mouse over the user name. (A popup saying something like "ID 1622 from 165.79.13.xxx" should appear.) It should be non-trivial for anyone else to use that ID number, since it protected by a random number in the user's cookie (which is compared with a copy on the server). Eventually a more conventional username/password combination may become an option, but this is unlikely to happen soon. --CliffordAdams (or somebody with ID 1675 :-)
 * I second the request for a more conventional username/password combination. This is one thing necessary to make the website fully scaleable. --User:LMS

 * The ".xxx" bit in dynamic IP addresses is commendable, but is there a way to do something similar for people logging in from institutions with static IP addresses ending in letters? The last one I saw listed the entire address. Certainly anyone with a static IP should have a firewall, but I think we've seen enough mischievous people wander through that the precaution of masking the IP still has merit. And no that's not a rhetorical question, as I'll be logging on from a static IP starting in early June 2002. --KQ

I'm not sure "privacy" is a good thing here. The price one pays for freedom is accountability: anyone should be able to edit anything, but I don't think they should be able to do so without being identified (at least with their chosen pseudonym--they can still hide behind whatever anonymity their Internet connection gives them). When I find some vandalism, for example, I look back in the Recent Changes list for that same IP and check those pages--I usually find more. Likewise, when I get to know certain posters, I get to know what might be interesting or important to read. If someone is concerned about privacy, that's his problem, and he should take the burden of using software to anonymize himself (and there's plenty of software available to do that). --LDC

 * I, for one, do not care about anonymity here, but pseudonymity would be fine. We almost have the latter with userids, were it not for the "from IP-Address" misfeature. LDC, if you know that userid 715 broke a page, is it really harder to find all other pages touched by them without knowing three octets of their IP? The main use I see for that is correlating pseudonyms to realnames, which is mainly useful for prosecution (I don't assume that we want to criminalize WikiVandals, though), or ... direct marketing. --Robbe

I think you've misunderstood. What I'm talking about specifically is not having the entire static IP address shown of someone logging in from an address ending in letters. All it would take is to .xxx a portion of it so that the firewall is not constantly fending off requests. This is the same courtesy already extended to people logging in from any IP address ending in numerals. My concern for it stems from the fact that it identifies where the person works or attends school, which if you'll pardon my saying so, is not necessarily anyone's business. If it's not workable then you can expect to have me not continue contributing. --KQ

I usually use a static IP, but Recent Changes (hover over my name) only shows a masked IP, not my domain. Did you see this on the main Wikipedia, or one of the internationals? UseModWiki can turn off name lookup, and I'd assumed from the RC display that it was turned off.

You're asking that mybox.frobnuts.com be masked as mybox.xxx.xxx, (which is a domain name rather than an ip address, to be unnecessarily picky) so that FrobNuts's network (thus their firewall) won't be identifiable?

Even the current method really doesn't provide that level of protection, or much privacy of any kind beyond a casual glance. For example, 111.222.333.444 would display as "111.222.333.xxx", and thus "hide" a specific host, but the network can likely still be identified via a simple whois lookup on "111.222.333". With my usual IP address, the two leading numbers are sufficient to tell you where I'm logged in from; you don't even need the third one. In general, only a residential poster would have some anonymity, simply because the ip address (whether static or dynamic) usually maps back to the ISP, not a specific business or school.

To achieve the equivalent level of privacy you're asking for, even the ip addresses should be masked as xxx.xxx.xxx.444 rather than as they are now. --loh

 * I second the reverse masking of the IP addresses--it still allows identification, but not by geography, etc. Though you'd probably need more than just the last three to make people in dynamic IP networks id'able. eh. no perfect answer. -- TheCunctator

Interesting. I don't remember if it was on the English wikipedia or the Spanish one; it's been some months past. I had two concerns; one was indeed not giving the entire IP address (or domain name); the other was not revealing immediately where contributors post from, leaving it instead to their own discretion. I haven't seen it again; but if it was originally from the Spanish wikipedia that would be because I've contributed nearly all I can in Spanish. :-) I expect that I'll try it from another computer to see how it displays and will be using anonymizer or somesuch if it's not to my satisfaction. Thanks..

 * See also : Phase II feature requests


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Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Other feature requests

This page is obsolete! It is an archive of old feature requests that were still active on 2002 July 20, when we moved from Phase II to Phase III of the software. Many requests were implemented then, while others became obsolete due to being rejected by the community. See Feature requests for current requests.

Other feature requests

 * Marking pages with a page type: article, /Talk, a wikipedians page, pages about wikipedia (policy, requested features, announcements, etc.), redirects, junk, not yet classified. That way we can get a much more accurate count of the number of articles. A link or drop down box at the bottom of a page would allow changes to the page type, which should show up in the revision log. -- Simon J Kissane
 * Automate renaming of pages. I'm sick of copying and pasting and putting in #REDIRECTs. There should be a rename command which creates a copy of the page with the new name, and replaces the old page with a #REDIRECT to the new page. And it should be able to move all subpages (e.g. /Talk pages) as well. -- Simon J Kissane
 * Can we omit /Talk pages from those returned by Random Page (or at least a user option so to do)" -- GWO
 * Could we exclude #REDIRECT pages from "Random Page" results--make it, uh, why not "Random article"? (Maybe exclude user pages too?) Or perhaps add that as an option under prefs?Koyaanis Qatsi
 * I'm not sure if this is a software feature request or a feature request for the sysadmin, but can we make the description metatag for all Wikipedia pages identical to the first 25-40 words of the page contents?
 * Disallow self-referencing wiki links. It is counterproductive to the idea of a cross-linked encyclopedia to link the page the user is currently on to the page the user is currently on. One can easily kill these links when one comes across them, but perhaps it would be easier to simply disallow it in the wiki code?
 * I think the idea here is not to parse a link on the XYZ to the XYZ page as a link.
 * There should be a diff between two adjacent changes. The current diff only shows the change from a given version to the latest version. It would be useful to diff version 1 with version 2, version 2 with version 3, ..., version 14 with version 15 etc. Not version 1 to version 15.
 * I'd like a more precise "diff" feature. Currently if there's a change in a paragraph you have to scan the entire paragraph to find it. Could we mark the changes themselves in some way?
 * I second for this feature. I recently suggested a convention used in entering text on the FAQ page. If each sentence is entered on its own line, the diff will show only the sentence that is changed instead of the whole paragraph. However, if Wikipedia's diff can use color to highlight the changes within the paragraph, then it would work better than what I suggested.
 * Let users "subscribe" to a page: every change to that page will then be emailed to them. AxelBoldt
 * I like this idea very much, but how about sending a daily/weekly/monthly digest instead of one message per change? This would be very nice. sandos
 * the Wikie (erlang wiki) allows for passworded pages, and append-only pages, as well as marked sections as well. These are rather useful as well. The primary use, in my mind, for this wiki would be quoting material from somewhere else, like the US constitution, the text of a speech, the exact program code to do something...
 * Images should automatically be aligned to the left (align="left") so that text wraps around it. Or something. Check out Galileo. There is a huge white space even on 800x600.
 * A standardized method to include grants of permission from sources of copyrighted material, plus a detail on fair_use implied consent on copyrighted material. A statement that this wikipedia.com is either for commercial or educational purposes might help !
 * Tag that would allow Tex Math mode. Like in F = frac{GMm}{r^2}< / formula >. It would be converted to cached imag/png and img tag with 'alt' set to Tex source, like in < img src="texcache/tex01234567.png" alt="F = frac{GMm}{r^2}" > -- Taw
 * This would be really cool. In fact, I'd like to do this on my own site for my own nefarious purposes, so I'm looking into how to pull it off. -- EdwardOConnor
 * Keywords for every page, with syntax like: '#KEYWORDS foo,bar,baz'.
 * It will help getting high locations in web searchers.
 * Some display-all-pages-with-selected-keyword should be provided. It would enhance quality of articles, as an expert on some field could easily see all articles on his field. It would also be good way of checking completeness of article set.
 * Most important would be Recent Changes restricted to some set of keywords. That would be very good peer-review mechanism. --Taw
 * There should be a way to specify alt= and title= of an inline image for the benefit of the visually impaired, the slowly connected, or anybody else using Links or another textual web browser. --Damian Yerrick

 * See also : Phase II feature requests


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Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Completed feature requests

This page is obsolete! It is an archive of old feature requests that were still active on 2002 July 20, when we moved from Phase II to Phase III of the software. Many requests were implemented then, while others became obsolete due to being rejected by the community. See Feature requests for current requests.

Completed feature requests

 * Free Links
 * Renaming/deleting function
 * BackLinks: see which pages links to the one you're at (Click the title of the current page (at the top of the page)--it will do a search for links to the current page)
 * a way to allow non-English characters in article names (in newest version)

 * See also : Phase II feature requests


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Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Really ambitious and fanciful feature requests

This page is obsolete! It is an archive of old feature requests that were still active on 2002 July 20, when we moved from Phase II to Phase III of the software. Many requests were implemented then, while others became obsolete due to being rejected by the community. See Feature requests for current requests.

Really ambitious and fanciful feature requests

 * For famous writers: include pages of the books they have written, taken from the Project Gutenberg Library. PG is a library of books that have fallen into the public domain. Include them as links to the specific .txt files on PG's servers, so we don't have to deal with the endless defacement of Romeo and Juliet. Imagine being able to look up Kipling, read a description of his life, and then read all of his works.
 * This can't be done automatically in any easy way. It's something we're doing by hand. See public domain resources.
 * Make the category an article belongs to a property of the article. So one can look for all Mathematics articles, etc. This can already be done to some extent: you can always create a category page and add the article to it; but if someone forgets to do this the article will be missed. An automatically generated page could exist for each category, listing what articles belong to it; and also an automatically generated page for articles that do not belong to any category, so they can be assigned to one. Also:
 * At the top of each topic page, I would like to see a link to the parent topic. chuckr30
 * These aren't just software feature requests, because it's not a programming task to determine what "category an article belongs to." (What does that mean?) Please see this column. Re: "This can already be done to some extent: you can always create a category page and add the article to it; but if someone forgets to do this the article will be missed." I reply: So? So the page will be (temporarily) imperfect. Better that than a totally controversial hard-wired category scheme of limited value. The content is the category scheme. --LMS
 * I was just thinking about e-mail interface to Wikipedia. What for, you might ask. Sometimes it is for some people hard to get onto the Wikipedia server. I also think it would booster authors' productivity. Off the top of my head I can think of three commands that can be placed in subject line of an e-mail :
 * POST
 * GET - raw text of the page
 * RECEIVE - formatted text of the page
 * of course there should also be 'an article a day' service. POSTing should be reserved to active memebers of this mailing list. There should be some way to safeguarde against accidental overwriting of existing pages. When POSTing raw text in body before '-- ', and author's id from e-mail before '@'.
 * I would like a way for the author of an article to "lock" the article. If someone wanted to add something to it, they would email the changes to the author. If the author approves, the author can post the new article. I think you will see tons of poor quality articles here eventually, because some 12-year old thinks it's cool or funny to deface articles. I think it would be wise to be able to lock the articles. chuckr30
 * There is no such thing as "the author of an article" on Wikipedia, unless it's just an accident that one person has happened to work on an article so far. So this is not going to happen anytime soon. It is totally anti-wiki, for one thing. Eventually, some such solution might be necessary to make Wikipedia fully scaleable--but I doubt it. Right now it is clearly unnecessary: people are our protection against vandals. --LMS
 * I might worry about someone creating a script that would automatically deface pages. As a long term project, consider limiting (throttling) the rate of accepted changes from any one ip address -- Pat Spinler
 * I don't like this idea, simply because I would have been throttled myself several times already. Unless we make the limit to something not humanly possible, or at least extremely unlikely--say, 1 or 2 changes each minute for several minutes straight. And actually I've submitted more changes than that on many occasions, especially when adding CIA factbook info but also when adding country codes to the  pages. Also, I expect Simon J Kissane's contributions would have been curbed a few times as well. --Koyaanis Qatsi
 * I don't quite like this idea either, but it made me think of another thing: It would be nice with the possibility to roll back the latest change from the changes page. If someone defaces a page, I can just click something to get the previous version back, instead of having to edit it by hand. --Pinkunicorn|
 * You can do that, with the View other revisions page...you just view the previous revision, click on the Edit this revision link at the bottom, then save it. It saves over later revisions. --The Cunctator
 * The best way is to introduce a voting+visits system (like Google's PageRank) to make sure vox populi automatically kills unwanted changes. Let's say I want to navigate at 90% assurance. Let all poorly voted pages and corrections be invisible. Then I can change the assurance level and see all stuff - including kid's graffiti, Piotr Wozniak
 * Ick. I can't imagine any better way to ensure total mediocrity. Who cares what the masses think? I want to know what the one or two real experts who cared enough about the subject to slug it out on the /Talk pages finally settled on. --LDC
 * Ability to have multiple revision branches of an article, ala CVS. That way if there is a difference of opinion on how an article should look, different authors can each work on their own branch without constantly overwriting each others work, and then we can choose which one is better to become the main article, or to integrate them.
 * It sounds to me as if this would introduce very much complexity for a rather small gain. I think it's better to create Main/MyView and Main/YourView and have a short introduction to the different views on the main page. Even better would be to have both views presented on the main page (perhaps in different sections), but that can always be arranged once they are "finished"). --Pinkunicorn
 * Giving to the user some 'pagehits per time' information would make Wikipedia even more dynamic. It's motivating for editors when they can see that there's a lot of interest in their work. --Wolfgang Moecklin
 * This partially related to that request for email-submission interface above: Open up the interface to the database in order to allow different front-ends. For example, if I'd want to use an interface with support for off-line working I'd have a data base front-end for that. On the other hand, if I'd want a fancy GUI I'd just write a new front-end. This naturally requires that the database interface is stable (and not continuously evolving). So, what I'd basically want is to open up the open project:) --Tbackstr
 * You might just get that in my Wikipedia PHP script. I already thought of a TCL/TK program as a frontend to reduce the server load that is coming from page rendering. Of course, you can get an article source automatically even today by scanning the edit page of the article. I am working on something like that to copy wikipedia to MySQL format.--Magnus Manske
 * I like Everything2's "soft link" concept: the server monitors the pages from which visitors reach a given article, and the most common such pages are listed at the bottom of the article, to provide context. --AxelBoldt
 * Though I'm not familar with Everything2, it sounds like a good idea. There should be a way to see what pages link to a particular page easily. - Eean
 * Rendering of mathematical formulas and chemical diagrams on-the-fly using TeX, similar to Mathwiki. The Mathwiki code is written in perl and I hear that it is not in very good shape and probably would have to be reimplemented. --AxelBoldt
 * Have an wiki-code to insert the JavaScript for the "tool-tips"-like thing that Nupedia has. Then have a way to turn them off, like in Nupedia. -- Eean
 * Add a Java applet that users can specifically request when editing a page that will allow the user to create mathematical equations that the applet will parse in to MathML.
 * Have the "View other revisions" link allow access to future revisions as well as past ones. This would allow wikipedians to copy text that hasn't been written yet into the current revision, taking a lot of effort out of editing. Of course, there would have to be safeguards to make sure that no paradoxes resulted; some kind of edit lock that only allows a page to be saved when it matches its next predestined revision, perhaps.
 * LOL!! That would save all of us a lot of work... let me know when you get the time machine working :) KJ
 * Have a global find-and-replace to correct spelling errors and alter ALL links to the one article at the same time rather than having to do them all individually. KJ
 * Introduce a 'troll-proofing' scheme, where well-meaning but misguided individuals can be quietly placed under moderation to help preserve the integrity of the Wikipedia. They can make all the crackpot changes and write all the weird-and-wonderful articles they like, but the altered entries are flagged as needing approval before they are released. The moderator can say 'yes', 'no', or alter the text of each article before releasing it from the 'litterbox', rather than people having to follow the troll around with a pooperscooper to clean up their mess! KJ

 * See also : Phase II feature requests


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Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Report features and automation

This page is obsolete! It is an archive of old feature requests that were still active on 2002 July 20, when we moved from Phase II to Phase III of the software. Many requests were implemented then, while others became obsolete due to being rejected by the community. See Feature requests for current requests.

Reports and lists

 * Report showing all orphaned pages (that is, pages that are not linked to by any other page).
 * Report showing all old style link pages that aren't redirects (simplify converting them).
 * Report showing all dangling links (i.e. links which point to pages that don't exist yet.)
 * Automatically updated page giving the 100 or so most common searches over different periods (today, last 4 hours, last month, last 6 months). This information would help us add what people actually want (provided it fits in with what wikipedia should be).
 * How about a feature that lists all places where the current page is linked from?
 * Automatically-generated NewTopics page
 * Still considering this, but not for version 0.92. --CliffordAdams
 * Count and publicly display (somewhere) two or three different numbers of Wikipedia pages that are longer than various particulars lengths (to give a more realistic idea of how many actual pages are on the wiki, as opposed to redirection pages, tiny stubs, etc.).
 * A good idea. The only quibble is that it requires opening every page to generate the report, but it shouldn't take any longer than the current search function.
 * If wikipedia articles are stored in flat files, you could just approximate the length based on the file size, right?
 * How's about an automatically generated Wikipedia Contributors page that lists contributors and the number of pages they created or changed? --SoniC
 * Unfortunately, not all contributors use a username or have a single login. Also, not all of the requested information is kept permanently. --CliffordAdams
 * Plagiarism-bot. A bot that goes through Wikipedia pages on a regular basis, does Google searches, and flags pages that it suspects might be plagiarized.
 * Let's have contributors of a given Wikipedia page listed either in the header or in the footer. IP's are skipped of course and if there are more than, say, 10 contributors make a link to a special subpage "Contributors".Kpjas
 * If people wish to be listed, can't they simply include their name at the end of the text?
 * I like the basic anonymity of the entries, especially if the diff information is actually stored somewhere. -- TheCunctator
 * Provide a way to search for all the changes made by one user in Wikipedia. For example, if I contributed to numerous pages over a long period of time, then 2 years later, I would need a way to find out whether someone else added to the subject I once touched.
 * Alternately, allow users to "monitor" a page, so that they get email whenever that page is edited. Or adds a link to that page to another page, which could be a subpage of their user page. Greg Lindahl
 * I would like a page that is a top list of the most frequently linked-to non-existent page. Linus Tolke

Weed-whacking (tools to help in reining in chaos)

 * Spell check batch job for newly created articles once a week with a link at the end of the article to the incorrectly spelled words. Even better would be one that worked as the "preview" button, before saving, and that marked somehow the suspicious words.
 * Is it possible to invent something to sort lists alphabetically? Take a look at pages like Actresses and you know why this would be helpful...
 * Would someone provide Wikipedia with code for programmatic update of the date on the Homepage? This would certainly make WojPob's life easier ;-)
 * It would be great to have a feature that would identify all orphaned pages. There's a small but growing problem of our having many useful pages that are not linked-to or underlinked-to. It would be great if we could list all pages to which there are no links, or only one link. --Larry Sanger
 * Provide a batch job that searches for and lists all links along with the page the link is contained in so that we can look for duplicate/slightly different versions of the same link and fix them. Please make this a weekly batch job so that it does not take too much time.
 * Automate making old-style links into Free Links
 * This will probably happen soon after the 0.92 release. The wiki code to rename pages is already present, although it is available to wiki administrator(s) only
 * I was trying to find a good way to change the links for the entire UnitedStatesConstitution section so that all the subsections would automatically migrate to United States Constitution. Instead of copying and pasting everything on the web, I figured I could just copy the files on the server from one directory to the other. I tried this and the site broke, so now I think I will just ask if there is a way to do this. So: When we are changing links to the much nicer free link style, is there a good way to get subsections changed as well without having to manually edit each page in the subsection?
 * The wiki admin(s) can use the page-rename commands to move pages. Unfortunately, each individual subpage needs to be moved by this method. I'll consider this to be a feature request for renaming all subpages when a page is renamed. --CliffordAdams

Automatic links

 * For every topic, go through and grep every other topic (maybe just the root topic) and automatically create a link to the topic we are looking for. So eventually every word could possibly be a link. This could be great for people interested in the origins of words and would save topic creators much time too.
 * This is a bad idea. First of all, there are the obvious technical difficulties. More importantly, human beings are much better at deciding when a link is relevant to a given bit of text. Patience--it'll be perfect in the end, trust me. --LMS
 * At the bottom of every article, I would like to have a list of likely related pages, similar to http://everything2.com. These could be computed once a night or so, maybe at the same time the search indexing is done. Criteria for two pages to be related:
 * contain similar words
 * link to similar pages
 * are linked to by similar pages --AxelBoldt

Automatic Empty Page Deletion
The whole Page titles to be deleted mechanism is unnecessarily burdensome. The software should be capable of automatically deleting pages that have no content other than whitespace.

 * It's been discussed - but how do you train the software to distinguish between a blank page which is useless, a blank page which has been vandalised, or a blank page which has been wiped clean pending resolution of a debate on the relevant talk page? Page titles to be deleted is cumbersome, but it preserves the need for page deletions to be conducted with care and judicious consideration. All the history goes as well when a page is deeted - so there is no way back. MMGB

 * I see. I missed the previous discussion. Sorry for retreading old ground. Causing links to empty pages to display as if it were a new page would do as well without the other problems. Attempts to deal with the issues otherwise: wait a few days or even weeks before deleting (anti-vandalism), don't delete if there are subpages (anti /Talk problem)? --Dmerrill

 * See also : Phase II feature requests


text:
Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Interface

This page is obsolete! It is an archive of old feature requests that were still active on 2002 July 20, when we moved from Phase II to Phase III of the software. Many requests were implemented then, while others became obsolete due to being rejected by the community. See Feature requests for current requests.

This is old. The current working document is User interface ideas (see).

Requests for what goes on outside of the entries--the menubars up top and bottom, etc., user preferences.

 * Can we have the "edit this page right now!" link back at the top of the page? Or was that voted down? I like it.

 * I second the above -- User:GWO

 * I would like a link somewhere to my own personal page, since there I have linked pages that are of interest to me (in lack of a 'subscribe' feature =). I always search for my own page the first thing when I surf to wikipedia.
 * When you're logged in, your personal page is linked to on every page. --Damian Yerrick

 * I would like to have a CANCEL Button on the Edits page (Page in Edit mode) added to the two existing ones SUBMIT and PREVIEW. Just to have a clear understanding what is going on and what the system/database is up to. User:StefanRybo
 * How about a "SPELL CHECK" button, too?
 * It would be helpful if the spell checking also check for variations of Wiki links, such as "Recent Changes" vs. "Recent Changes". It can eliminate branching of similar pages.

 * Automatically update the present (server) date. Link the date to that day's page.
 * Fixed. --Damian Yerrick

 * When I'm editing a topic, I'd like to have the search box available at the bottom of the page. User:Janet Davis
 * Works for me in the blue theme. --Damian Yerrick

 * Making the "redirected from" comment at the top of each page an option which is by default off, not on. This feature would clean up wikipedia pages for casual users, and leave the nuts and bolts visible to people who wish to track down the offending OdDlyCapitaliZed links, etc. Of course (if I may say so) ;-) for this option to work, the caching problem would first have to be resolved. --KQ
 * Under this scheme, how could we ever visit the redirection page? By switching a preference? I dunno, seems like we have to edit redirection pages too often. This would just create confusion, wouldn't it? --User:LMS
 * Yes, I think you're right. Maybe if we could just exclude them from "Random Page" results

 * Provide a user preference to include the preview (formatted version of the page) when entering editing mode. (This would save me one click + wait for almost every page I edit. User:Buttonius

 * See also : Phase II feature requests


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Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Interface and user preferences

This page is obsolete! It is an archive of old feature requests that were still active on 2002 July 20, when we moved from Phase II to Phase III of the software. Many requests were implemented then, while others became obsolete due to being rejected by the community. See Feature requests for current requests.

''Please see the PHP wikipedia under development. Most of the requests I see here are already working there. Please help me squish the bugs so we can switch over soon. --Magnus Manske''

Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text ______Next "semi-paragraph": Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text When I use six spaces (instead of the underlines used above) to begin a new "semi-paragraph" (a break not as strong as a <p>) Wikipedia leaves the paragraph unformatted. IMO it was better not to use <pre>text<pre> automatically. And I wonder why xxx doesn´t work, why it can´t become automatically translated to Wikipedia syntax. Sporadic writers like me may want to use simple things like target="_blank" - things that don´t spoil consistency nor security - why not implement better filtering? I see you´re coding Wikipedia in PHP now, so performance should not be a problem. Another thing I´d like to have is modification dates, in an extended view mainly for writers. And tables or div layers to paint colors were cool, maybe even transparent colors (CSS?) to show overlapping and several sucessive changes. User:Grasso

Requests for what goes on outside of the entries--the menubars up top and bottom, etc., user preferences.

 * Currently links to entries which do not exist are formatted with a question-mark at the end. This looks unprofessional, similar to old WikiStyle, and distracts from the text. Cascading style sheets offer the possibility to have links in a color other than the ones defined in -body-. It would be nice to display, by default or as an option in the preferences, links to non-existing entries in a different color, e.g. green. If there are problems with the implementation, please add a note here and I'll try to create an HTML example.
 * This should probably be a configurable option, since people using a text browser may not be able to see coloured links -BD

 * It should be possible to add a page from the search results page. That is, if I type "foobar" in the search, if no page with that exact name exists, the search result page (in addition to showing the matches) should offer me to "Create an entry about 'foobar' now". This way, you would still have to check for possible matches, but could add new pages easier. That's the way Everything2 does it, BTW, and it works quite nicely.

 * Can we have the "edit this page right now!" link back at the top of the page? Or was that voted down? I like it.

 * I second the above -- User:GWO

 * I would like a link somewhere to my own personal page, since there I have linked pages that are of interest to me (in lack of a 'subscribe' feature =). I always search for my own page the first thing when I surf to wikipedia.

 * I would like to have a CANCEL Button on the Edits page (Page in Edit mode) added to the two existing ones SUBMIT and PREVIEW. Just to have a clear understanding what is going on and what the system/database is up to. User:StefanRybo

 * How about a "SPELL CHECK" button, too?

 * It would be helpful if the spell checking also check for variations of Wiki links, such as "Recent Changes" vs. "Recent Changes". It can eliminate branching of similar pages.

 * Automatically update the present (server) date. Link the date to that day's page.

 * When I'm editing a topic, I'd like to have the search box available at the bottom of the page. User:Janet Davis

 * Suggestion: have the search results appear in a new window, so you don't lose whatever it was you're working on. -- User:Gimbo

 * Making the "redirected from" comment at the top of each page an option which is by default off, not on. This feature would clean up wikipedia pages for casual users, and leave the nuts and bolts visible to people who wish to track down the offending
 * See also : Feature requests OdDlyCapitaliZed links, etc. Of course (if I may say so) ;-) for this option to work, the caching problem would first have to be resolved. --KQ

 * Under this scheme, how could we ever visit the redirection page? By switching a preference? I dunno, seems like we have to edit redirection pages too often. This would just create confusion, wouldn't it? --User:LMS

 * Yes, I think you're right. Maybe if we could just exclude them from "Random Page" results

 * Provide a user preference to include the preview (formatted version of the page) when entering editing mode. (This would save me one click + wait for almost every page I edit. User:Buttonius

 * A way to do doublecolumns and/or sidebars (so we can have a list 'o links to the right of the text)

 * Double columns are only natively supported by Netscape. However they could be done by using tables. chuckr30

 * Maybe, if such sidebars could be created automatically and for all articles. But what's wrong with having the links at the bottom of the page? If that's reasonably acceptable, why go through the confusion of having links in a sidebar? --User:LMS

 * A link to How does one edit a page/Quick reference from the editing page, to avoid me having to dive through the FAQ every time I can't remember a special character -- DrBob

 * Seconded. Though in fact the quick reference is now on the main How does one edit a page. -- Tarquin

 * The SEARCH field and button should be located at the top of the page, just like with search engines, because it feels more intuitive that way. At least the main page should have the SEARCH code in the upper part of the page. -- Kahuna "Pierre" Shanx

 * Absolutely! The first thing I want to do if i go to Wikipedia is looking for some word. The way it is now, I always have to scroll down (yeah, my window is small...)

 * Maybe make its placement a user preference: top, bottom, or both? -- User:Gimbo

 * I think both would be best: for example, take a look at the page generated by a succesful Google search, such as http://www.google.com/search?q=wikipedia

 * How about a link at the bottom of each page that would automatically create a bibliography reference (works cited) for a paper? This would probably encourage students to use wikipedia more as a serious reference.

 * A drop down box that allows quick and dirty machine translation into other languages on each article of each language's wikipedia.

 * Could we have a user interface so that it looks like we're on a corporate webpage, so we could read Wikipedia at work without being conspicuous?

 * See also : Phase II feature requests