Wikipedia talk:Template index/User talk namespace

This is the talk page for discussing Template index/User talk namespace and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

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Bot for Categories

There is currently a BFRA for a bot to remove users from "indefinitely blocked" categories if they are not actually indefinitely blocked. see here. Categories affected:

Your comments are appreciated. ^Avic_ennasis @ 12:20, 28 Tamuz 5771 / 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Ideas for Sandbox

Not sure if this was brought up, but I have decided to create a template for people who post defamatory content in the Wikipedia Sandbox:

Hello and Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. However, adding content that is deemed libelous or defamatory to the Sandbox is not consistent with our Sandbox policy. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you.

Suggestion for new templates regarding off-topic religious comments

When a user inserted The Creator of the Earth made the earth into History of the Earth, none of the existing templates seemed to convey what I wanted to say, so I winged it with this message. Should we add a series of templates that would be appropriate for responding to this kind of edit? Peter Chastain (talk) 02:26, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why not? :) I'm not in favor of creating unneeded templates, but I think you have identified a genuine gap in the current collection. Pol430 talk to me 22:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

{{Uw-npov1}} would seem to be appropriate. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:35, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to agree with Zaphod: a simple NPOV warning is all that's needed here. --Orange Mike | Talk 22:17, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Uw-disruptive4im

I'm not sure that this template's message is supported by the block policy in relation to disruptive editing. Was there any discussion prior to the creation of this template? I can't see anything obvious in the talk page archives. opinions? Perhaps a candidate for TFD? Pol430 talk to me 22:57, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it'll go there immediately. When we're at level 4, there's not much of a difference between disruption and vandalism. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 03:07, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's right here. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 03:20, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, although I have removed the links, in the table, to the vandalism templates because the disruption templates were designed to specifically deal with disruptive editing that is not vandalism. By including links to vand4 and vand4im I feel that sends a message: that continued disruptive editing becomes vandalism automatically. Which, according to WP:DDE, it does not. Pol430 talk to me 16:56, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Your test worked"

Bongwarrior,

You may have noticed that I had changed the phrase "Your test worked" in the revision that you reverted. This wording, it seems, is merely being inappropriate to our contributors, and it violates the Wikipedia policies Assume good faith and Please do not bite the newbies. If you are trying so hard to assume good faith and not bite our contributors, then why would this work for you? Think about it. Bulldog73 ^talk da contribs _{go rando} 19:11, 22 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not following you. I don't see how telling someone that their test edit worked is biting them or displaying a lack of good faith. In fact, I've always been a fan of the uw-test1 template because it seems to be one of the least bitey templates available. --Bongwarrior (talk) 20:26, 22 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you're using a level 1 warning template, that means you're still assuming good faith. If you're in a situation where the lack of good faith is blatant, you may go directly to a level 2 template, which does not talk about a test that worked. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 04:09, 23 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The "Your test worked" wording seems to me to be completely assuming good faith, meaning that they were not making their changes maliciously, but were being bold and "testing" how editing Wikipedia works. I'm not seeing how this isn't assuming good faith? - Sudo Ghost 08:29, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But it may not be a test edit but a serious effort to improve Wikipedia resulted in a bad form because of unfamiliarity with Wiki coding or accidentally hitting a wrong button. Calling an edit "test" certainly is not an assumption of bad faith, but the assumption of "testing" still may be somewhat WP:BITEy. "You have successfully edited a page on Wikipedia." or something that does not use "test" may be better. --Kusunose 01:34, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If it was unclear if it was a test or not, uw-test1 (or similar) would not be appropriate in that case. However, there are situations where, when assuming good faith, the edit appears to be a test, such as when people add '''Boldtext''' ''italics'' to articles (Example). If that situation isn't the case, than the template doesn't apply. There are many templates that would be inappropriate if misapplied, I don't think that makes any of them WP:BITEy. - Sudo Ghost 07:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. I didn't notice that the wording is merely encouraging IPs and users to be bold. Bulldog73 ^talk da contribs _{go rando} 07:30, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In interest of consensus building: I don't see that the phrase "Your test worked" is bitey or patronising. In the case of an apparent test edit it seems entirely appropriate to highlight it as such. Pol430 talk to me 10:01, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I support the wording "You have edited a page on Wikipedia" as being the most informative, least presumptuous, least jargon-y, and least open to misinterpretation. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 10:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That would render the current template: "You have edited a page on Wikipedia, and it has been reverted or removed."—something of a mixed signal? Additionally, that would remove any specific reference to test editing from the template. You could, of course, reword the template to accommodate the new phrase, although it is likely that this would lengthen template, making it less concise. TBH I think this revision is perfectly acceptable; but fail to see that the original text was in any way bitey. Pol430 talk to me 11:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The rest of the template would read something like "...for one reason or another, your edit didn't appear to improve the page, and was reverted or removed. If you disagree, or have a question, feel free to ask on my talk page. If you'd like to learn more about contributing to Wikipedia, please see our welcome page. To make experimental edits, please use the sandbox. Thanks."

I personally don't see the value in making the template more concise. For many new editors, this will be their first interaction with another Wikipedian; should we not go out of our way to try to make it a good one? Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 19:20, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If the wording "your test worked" doesn't apply, then uw-test1 doesn't apply, and another template would probably be better instead. I don't see it as being too concise, because only a very specific type of edit would, in my opinion, warrant this template. - Sudo Ghost 19:52, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's more or less what I was trying to say—perhaps badly... Pol430 talk to me 19:55, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I don't think this template is BITEy; the problem is that "test" is interpretive and jargony. Calling the template "test" is fine — but telling users that their edit was a "test" is not helpful, in my opinion. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 20:04, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't necessarily disagree, if it was a test edit, then they know it was. How about something like this?

Thank you for your interest in editing Wikipedia. Your edit to example article name was successful, but because it was not considered beneficial to the article, the edit has been reverted. If you would like to experiment further, please use the sandbox instead. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you.

I'm sure that exact wording would be objected to by someone, but it was my attempt at saying "your test worked" without actually saying it. - Sudo Ghost 20:15, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this would be a good replacement. I would just change "further" to "with editing" to avoid implying that the first edit was an experiment. I like that your version explicitly says the edit was successful, since this is sometimes a point of confusion for new users who have their edits reverted. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 20:38, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, looks like a suitable replacement to me Pol430 talk to me 20:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and changed uw-test1 and tested it to make sure the formatting was correct. Everything looks correct, but additional eyes on it would be appreciated. - Sudo Ghost 20:50, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

seems to work fine I have tidied up the white space slightly. We should probably look at Huggle version of this template too. Pol430 talk to me 14:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated the Huggle version of this template also Pol430 talk to me 17:52, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The new wording assumes the test edit was an article. I'm going to have to fix up the message half the time I use it. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:18, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's a trivial bit of parser function coding to make the message namespace-sensitive, and it's usually going to have the pagename supplied as the {{{1}}} parameter. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:39, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IMDB

If a user is continuously adding ImDb content to articles, which is by policy not allowed in Wikipedia, which warning should I use? X.One ^SOS 08:06, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming you're not talking about linking to IMDB but rather using IMDB as a source, there isn't really a suitable template for that, but you could perhaps leave a brief message on the user's talk page explaining that IMDB is not a reliable source, citing WP:IMDB/RS. - Sudo Ghost 14:57, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thats what I meant. Thanks a lot. X.One ^SOS 07:18, 28 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A Minor Question

On the article that I monitor ("edit" doesn't quite sound right since there's not too much to do with it), a number of people are editing biased information into the article nearly continuously. If I need to specify I can, but my question is this: I haven't been using a template because it doesn't really seem necessary. While the edit IS biased, and actually could be considered controversial (it has caused wars on other sites), I don't know that it really warrants banning since it's more of an annoyance than anything (although one user that insists on it has made the same edit to the page 30 times in 6 months...). I actually spoke about it on my userpage citing the reason the edit keeps being removed is because:

" *There is still no definitive proof, not by what Wikipedia considers proof.

It is in fact biased. Newcomers to the show are not given the chance to watch and form their own opinion of the pairing.
The edit uses weasel words, which is another no-no.
It often uses words like "seems" or "appear" in order to weasel the reader into taking the statement as fact when it is unconfirmed."

I've been an editor for only a month, so I wasn't there for the initial edits; and while we (all the other editors and me; not just me and that same user I mean) do keep going back and forth, I'm not sure I'd call it an "edit war" since it's not gotten out of hand. (Although 30 times in 6 months and having to create a section on it on my userpage? Maybe it is out of hand and I'm just blind...)

I guess what I'm asking is since it's more of an annoyance and not yet escalated to war status, should I be using a template or issuing actual warnings? Right now, I'm just alerting them to the fact it was undone and why, but do you think it's really risen to vandalism status yet? And is there any reason to create a "stop being annoying" template? (30 times in 6 months? And before you say anything, yeah, I'm using the warning template next time if I don't have to ban them eventually. If I'd known that when I started, they WOULD have been banned a long time ago. [I'm aware they get a few warnings first, I'm not jumping any guns, here.]) After reading the Vandalism page on here, I guess I won't, but the edit has numerous problems is the reason it keeps being reverted. The frequency of it, though... heck, that's why I asked you guys... SmallCheez (talk) 05:21, 3 January 2012 (UTC) Edited SmallCheez (talk) 05:43, 3 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like you may be looking for Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring or Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard. Where content disputes are concerned it is often best to hand-type a message to the user in question. Templates can often make these sorts of situations worst. Pol430 talk to me 18:11, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thank you very much. I knew that templates involved code, and I'm terrible at code (even copying and pasting; sadly I manage to get something wrong), and just typed out messages. Glad to know I did the right thing even though I didn't know what it was. Anyways, it hasn't happened since the last revert, and hopefully, it won't happen again until the content can be confirmed (or denied). Same IP= Dispute resolution; different IP= "Please don't do that" (and then Dispute Resolution if repeated).

SmallCheez (talk) 23:32, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]