Wikipedia talk:Perennial proposals

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[edit] Possible additions

I've written up some blurbs for possible additions to this page. For reference, here's the last version of Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals) before its Esperanzification: [1]

[edit] Create an instant rating system for articles

  • Proposal: There should be an instant "star rating" system for Wikipedia articles, similar to that found on Yahoo! News and in Amazon.com reviews (e.g. "Was this article helpful to you?").
  • Reason for previous rejection: First of all, an instant rating system would require extensive software upgrades, creating a lot of unnecessary work for our developers. Secondly, readers' individual opinions are arbitrary and subjective, especially with questions like "Was this article helpful to you?". An article can be extremely helpful for one reader and useless for another. And finally, the rating system would be far too vulnerable to abuse. Editors could easily use sockpuppets to raise or lower ratings in a content dispute or to promote vanity articles. We already have a process for evaluating articles by quality, along with a featured content program to highlight Wikipedia's best work.
  • See also: Category:Articles by quality

[edit] Talk pages should use forum software

  • Proposal: Talk pages should use Internet forum software instead of wiki formatting. This would give talk pages a more professional appearance, soften the learning curve for users unfamiliar with wiki formatting, and prevent abuses like vandalism and changing other users' comments.
  • Reason for previous rejection: A forum-based discussion system would not reduce talk page disruption. If anything, vandalism and disruption would become more of a problem, because it would be more difficult to remove troll threads and personal attacks. Wikipedia's learning curve would not improve, either. A user unfamiliar with both wiki formatting and Internet forums would have to learn two new skills instead of just one. Finally, wiki-based talk page discussions are an important part of the "wiki process" for content-related decision making.

Thoughts? szyslak 12:49, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am starting to wonder about the purpose of this page in general. First, are all of the things mentioned on this page, and in these proposals for addition to the page, really perennial proposals, or are they things that were proposed once or twice and just never got consensus? Was the rejection overwhelming and unlikely to be reversed in the near future? I suppose it is useful to have this page here so that newbies with policy ideas are aware of the prior debates and what issues they need to address. But on the other hand, sometimes it's good to just restart the debate from scratch after a suitable amount of time has passed and there has been some turnover in the community. I also think that certain items are based on conjecture about what might happen if we implemented a proposal. E.g., the statements that vandals will be encouraged by forum-based discussion systems. Actually, as Larry Sanger notes, most wikis at the time of Wikipedia's founding used thread-based discussion systems and Wikipedia's departure from that made it less wiki-like. Sarsaparilla (talk) 14:55, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I think this page should be reserved for proposals that have been repeatedly rejected for clear reasons. The purpose is to make sure people proposing the same old proposals will make an effort a priori to address objections raised in the past, and if they haven't, not to waste our time.
The first one above is okay. I have not seen the rating system question come up more than once, and I'm a violent supporter of forum-based talk pages. The argument against them above is utterly non-compelling and fails to mention any of the strong advantages of forums. See User:Dcoetzee/Why wikithreads are bad. Dcoetzee 22:58, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Well written, Dcoetzee. Do Sanger's comments on thread mode have any bearing on this discussion? Sarsaparilla (talk) 00:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure we should limit this page to proposals that "have been repeatedly rejected for clear reasons". One example of a listing that doesn't meet the above standards is "Requests for Adminship is broken". There's certainly no clear consensus that RFA is "just fine". And many proposals, such as "Prohibit anonymous users from editing", have support among fairly large segments of the community. I think the fact that a proposal repeatedly fails to gain consensus is enough to land it on this page. In regards to the idea of forum-style talk pages, I now see that the idea has more support than I thought it did. I mostly based what I wrote on the discussion archived at the old Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals), where the idea didn't gain much support.

So, at this point I'll only add the "ban personalized signatures" entry, with some modifications to better conform with previous discussion. The others can be added if anyone else wants to, or if the ideas come up more often. szyslak 10:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Minimum article writing requirements for adminship nomination (or some such)

I've seen many an RfA !voter oppose (or support) a candidate based on their contributions to FAs, GAs, and DYKs that they have as notches on their belts. And several times I've seen it proposes (most recently today) that there should be a minimum requirement for the number of X that a candidate has before they are allowed to self-nominate or accept a nomination for adminship. I think the community, for the most part and by consensus, has rejected the notion that there are any prerequisites for nominating yourself/someone else for adminship (that's not to say that a nomination will pass, mind you). I'd like to see this added to PEREN that there are no prereqs for a nomination for adminship, no prereqs for a candidate to pass a nomination, and any such arbitrary, numerical, and subjective "FA count" has been discussed before, and rejected. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 22:13, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I think any proposal to establish prerequisites for adminship would count as perennial. Aside from FA/GA/DYK count, people also propose minimum edit counts, minimum levels of experience, and even age requirements. szyslak (t) 06:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Good article icon

Has come around again, at Wikipedia talk:Good articles#Proposal; would anyone be interested in adding it? This are some old links I found on that page:

These were first mentioned here: [2] And deleted here, endorsed here and then a few months later here. See also: this and this. --maclean 20:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
And of course Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/archive 1#The good article tag on main article space, Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 2#New template. I think the last endorsed deletion was Sept 2007 here and the last time this was proposed was Jan 2008 here maclean 20:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Commentary

[edit] Favorite page

This is - hands down - one of my favourite pages in the Wikipedia namespace.

It also contains my favourite policy-related sentence of all time. ...while RFA is our most debated process and nearly everybody seems to think there's something wrong with it, literally years of discussion have yielded no consensus whatsoever on what exactly is wrong with it, nor on what should be done about that.

That is pure gold and my congrats to whoever wrote that sentence. Manning 06:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this page has its uses, but the line "If you make a proposal along these lines, it is likely to be swiftly closed for the exact same reason" seems rather counterproductive the way it is written. Some of these proposals have not been rejected because they were opposed but because no consensus was found (ie Requests for Adminship is broken). Why discourage future discussion just because a solution has yet to be found? Joshdboz (talk) 19:48, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I suggest we merely remove the RfA one, and change the advice to something along the lines of "if you re-raise a frequently-proposed proposal, make sure you address rebuttals raised in the past". Dcoetzee 00:25, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm neutral on the RfA remaining; it isn't a single "perennial proposal" but rather a spectrum of proposals with similar intent to solve a recognized problem. So yes, it is perennial, but with the current lead it risks stifling future debate. As for the updated advice, I would definitely agree with your suggested change. Joshdboz (talk) 01:58, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree and am going to be be bold and change it. Sarsaparilla (talk) 04:09, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] One side

There is some really good stuff here, but it usually only presents one side of an issue. — Rlevse • Talk • 21:41, 31 May 2008 (UTC)