Wikipedia:Simple talk

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Three new good articles..[change source]

Hello, I just promoted the articles Bradley Winslow, Georg Philipp Telemann and Bob Dole to the status of Good Article. Congrats to all those who helped... Eptalon (talk) 10:13, 6 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Congrats everyone! :D --Ferien (talk) 16:13, 6 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'm not sure there was a consensus for Telemann or Dole. Lights and freedom (talk) 17:24, 6 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Eptalon Are you going to mark the nominations at WP:PGA as promoted and archive them? Lights and freedom (talk) 18:38, 11 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
my honest reaction Lallint (talk) 🍔cheesborger🍔 00:32, 8 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Eptalon Bob Dole did not have consensus to promote. It had quite the opposite, actually. Is it possible to demote a GA solely based on lack of consensus? Lallint (talk) 🍔cheesborger🍔 14:10, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hello Lalint; we are talking about a good article, and not a very good one. When you look at how many of those got promoted, and when the last of these promotions took place, you will probably say that the whole thing is dormant/failed its purpose. When I looked at the Bob Dole article, I had the impression that generally, it was in good shape, so I promoted it. Remember, no one writes perfect articles? Eptalon (talk) 21:13, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
You promoted an article that only you supported the promotion of. You can't just promote an article just because you thought it was a good article. It needs consensus, which it was clearly lacking, having the opposite. I don't mean to sound rude, but I'm pretty sure it needs more than just one person to promote the article. I do agree that it meets GA standards, but there were some unaddressed issues. Maybe the standards for "consensus" are in the core of the earth on simplewiki. Lallint (talk) 🍔cheesborger🍔 22:15, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I was quite strongly opposed to the promotion of Bob Dole for very good reasons and made that clear in the discussion. This idea that the articles can be fixed after promotion obviates the whole process. The nominator had a habit of proposing multiple articles with many factual errors that required careful checking. This places a burden on other editors. --Gotanda (talk) 01:11, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Just spent about half an hour checking a few refs and statement and found several issues. See the article talk page and my edit summaries. That is just for starters. Re this, "so I promoted it. For the issues that are left: they can be fixed later. Note that this is only possible, because we are talking about good articles." Fixing after promotion is not part of the GA promotion process. --Gotanda (talk) 10:15, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Proposed featured article[change source]

Is Bradley Winslow FA material? It meets more than 6 criteria, but it's a bit short. However, Hermann Göring has 6565 Bytes of prose size, with most of its size coming from its very long infobox, and Bradley Winslow has 7241 Bytes. Lallint (talk) 🍔cheesborger🍔 13:29, 8 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Well, I suppose I'd better say the obvious: Hermann Göring was one of the most important people in the world in WWII. No question about his interest to the readership. That can't be said of Bradley Winslow. Macdonald-ross (talk) 05:50, 15 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Macdonald-ross That isn't a criteria of VGA's. Lallint (talk) 🍔cheesborger🍔 22:11, 19 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Well, maybe it should be. Göring is a short article, but such an important person. We don't any longer see readership counts for pages, but I would reckon he gets 50 times the viewership of Bradley. I'd love to see Göring expanded. Guidelines are there to guide, not to be absolute rules. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:58, 20 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Need help on the Wikipedia app[change source]

I logged into the Wikipedia app, and joined the simple wikipedia in it, then I clicked edit on one of my pages and it used source editing and not visual editing, I tried to change it but I couldn't find any button labelled 'Visual editing', I need help to fix this on the app, or should I just delete the app and continue back in the web. Koqkpa (talk) 12:48, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

What platform are you using the app on? I'm not familiar with it at all, I'm just curious because I didn't know there was an app. -- Auntof6 (talk) 05:58, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Koqkpa I have used the app to edit before, and I think you could only edit using source editing and not visual editing. I would recommend editing on mobile web or desktop if you want to edit using visual editing. Jolly1253 (talk) 10:09, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Okay then, I'll delete the app and continue on the web page. Koqkpa (talk) 11:42, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Research Project: Simple English Questions For You[change source]

Hello! I am a master's student working on a project regarding the use of Plain Language, which I believe is a similar concept to Simple English. As the people behind this offering I am wondering if I could ask some questions to someone on this forum regarding Simple English, if you have any statistics on the usage of the Simple English Wikipedia, and how the process goes for translating a page into Simple English.

If this is another forum or channel you'd like me to direct my questions to, or other contacts in the Simple English space please let me know.

If you'd be open to answering some of my questions, I posted some exact questions on on my talk channel and we can discuss there. Thank you for your help :) Primarysorcerer (talk) 20:32, 16 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes! There is an IRC channel for the Simple English Wikipedia. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:32, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
There is also a channel for Simple English Wikipedia talk on the Wikimedia Discord, if you wanted another place that could work for talking about it. 🤘🤘 DovahFRD (talk) 01:50, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Primarysorcerer And there is always the option of talking through talk pages or email. Whichever, you prefer. SoyokoAnis - talk 04:27, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
It seems that's what he meant by "talk channel." I've already given my versions answers to his survey there! But my experience here has been so different that I think more people would be essential. We all know that famous science expression: "Your samples are small, your standard deviations are high, your conclusion means nothing, and you should feel bad!" Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:30, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Primarysorcerer, who are you and where are you doing your master's? You can absolutely set up an alt account here: one for research (real name and transparent affiliation), one for editing. However, your university should be requiring an informed consent agreement from research subjects (if they are not, that is a problem, and you should do it anyway). Research subjects should know where and how their responses are being used and how to contact the researcher. --Gotanda (talk) 10:18, 22 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If you are interested in statistics for this project, we have Wikipedia:Statistics and [1] (from stats.wikimedia.org). MathXplore (talk) 07:45, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Question[change source]

Who has the most edits on the simple wikipedia right now? Koqkpa (talk) 07:31, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

User:Ferien told me at special:diff/8464841 that I was the 5th person on this wiki to reach 100,000 edits. Although, I don't know how the edits were counted, and I don't see that kind of ranking. MathXplore (talk) 07:49, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oh, okay. Koqkpa (talk) 08:34, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Koqkpa It would be hard to know how many people have a certain amount of edits. SoyokoAnis - talk 13:06, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Koqkpa https://simple.wikiscan.org/users has all the answers for you. — *Fehufangą✉ Talk page 13:08, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
https://simple.wikiscan.org/?usort=edit&bot=0&detail=0&menu=userstats for the edits if anyone reading is feeling lazy. Koqkpa, according to this page, Auntof6 has the most edits currently. --Ferien (talk) 16:18, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oh okay I get it. Koqkpa (talk) 16:24, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Starboxes[change source]

I have an another question, How do people use starboxes, I really do need to know about how to use starboxes. How to use starboxes? Koqkpa (talk) 04:20, 18 November 2022 (UTC)(Divided to a new section, MathXplore (talk) 04:23, 18 November 2022 (UTC))Reply[reply]

@Koqkpa Do you mean Barnstars? Barnstars are a way to show WikiLove to another user. Unlike the English Wikipedia, there isn't a button that allows you to quickly give others Barnstars. For more information, please read here. Happy editing! SoyokoAnis - talk 04:33, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
No, I don't mean about Barnstars, I know what they are, I mean this Template:Starboxes. Koqkpa (talk) 04:52, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Koqkpa I've researched and it appears they are infoboxes for astronomy articles. SoyokoAnis - talk 13:16, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
How to use them? Koqkpa (talk) 01:42, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Koqkpa Well typically, you would add the template to any article if it needs it. I've never seen them used before. SoyokoAnis - talk 13:46, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
A note of caution. En boxes on astronomical topics are often far, far too complex for our purposes. They use professional terminology for what is usually a postgraduate topic (most astronomers take a physics or maths degree at undergraduate level). The addition of boxes which would not be understood by our readership runs counter to our remit. After all, readers with knowledge in the area can always go to English wiki, can't they? Remember that astronomy is not generally taught below postgraduate level. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:52, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I beg to differ. I took astronomy in a junior college. For those who may not know, in the US, a junior college is a college that is only for the first two years after high school, so definitely pre-graduate level. -- Auntof6 (talk) 09:59, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Interesting, but it remains true that the En boxes do not suit our readership. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:33, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Why is there a DRAFT?[change source]

Wikipedia:Drafts/Bash_(Unix_shell) is apparently a draft. That’s weird and drafts don’t exist. Could there be drafts in this wiki? SikiWtideI (Speak to the backwards police) 02:47, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@SikiWtideI: There is no draft space here. The system probably sees it as being in Wikipedia space. -- Auntof6 (talk) 02:59, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@SikiWtideI Yep, drafts definitely do not exist here. So I had went ahead and moved the draft to the userspace for future editing. Thanks for telling! SoyokoAnis - talk 04:27, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@SoyokoAnis: You might want to let admins do that kind of move, because 1) it leaves behind a bad redirect and 2) it belonged to another user. I deleted the redirect this time, but feel free to ask the admins to do them in future. -- Auntof6 (talk) 04:45, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Auntof6 Ah okay. Thank you! SoyokoAnis - talk 13:16, 18 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Visual editor for school gateway[change source]

I've been simplifying the school gateway a little bit more and noticed the visual editor doesn't seem to be available there, just source. Especially in the Wikipedia:Sandbox, it would be helpful. Visual editor really makes contributing more accessible and would help students and teachers. Can this be changed? Gotanda (talk) 01:12, 20 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I agree, but en:WP:VisualEditor says that VE is not enabled for talk, template, and Wikipedia namespaces on enwiki and the same seems to be true here. Lights and freedom (talk) 01:17, 20 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Gotanda You can always add veaction=edit to the URL. That enables Visual Editor regardless. SoyokoAnis - talk 01:19, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
For example:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SoyokoAnis?veaction=edit SoyokoAnis - talk 01:19, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
That is a good tip! Thank you, but it is unliklely that newbie student (or teacher) editors will know that. Making the sandbox more difficult to edit than an article is a big obstacle, I think. Maybe itt will get implemented eventually. --Gotanda (talk) 02:12, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Geobox templates have been deleted[change source]

As per a discussion on the (now deleted) talk page of the Geobox template, the Geobox template and all related templates have been deleted. All uses of them in articles were replaced by infobox templates. There are still a few uses of them on user pages. I decided not to update those because enwiki, where the geobox templates were deleted a few years ago, also has some user pages that still use the templates. If the users who own those pages even want to work on their pages again, they can be updated at that time. -- Auntof6 (talk) 15:09, 20 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hotcat on mobile simple wikipedia[change source]

How to use Hotcat on Simple wikipedia website in a mobile? I use a mobile so that is why I am asking. Koqkpa (talk) 05:40, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Koqkpa, I don't think you can use HotCat on mobile. --Ferien (talk) 16:36, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oh. Koqkpa (talk) 02:57, 22 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]


Hi Koqkpa, I use the desktop version on my mobile for Hotcat. Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my User talk) 20:13, 24 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Oh, thank you, I can do that. Koqkpa (talk) 02:33, 25 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Join the Movement Charter Regional Conversation Hours[change source]

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.
More languagesPlease help translate to your language

Hi all,

As most of you are aware, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) is currently collecting community feedback about three draft sections of the Movement Charter: Preamble, Values & Principles, and Roles & Responsibilities (intentions statement).

How can you participate and share your feedback?

The MCDC is looking forward to receiving all types of feedback in different languages from the community members across the Movement and Affiliates. You can participate in the following ways:

  • Attend the community conversation hours with MCDC members. Details about the regional community conversation hours are published here
  • Fill out a survey (optional and anonymous)
  • Share your thoughts and feedback on the Meta talk page
  • Share your thoughts and feedback on the MS Forum:
  • Send an email to: movementcharterwikimediaorg if you have other feedback to the MCDC.

Community consultation hour for the Sub-Saharan Africa region will take place this Friday, November 25, on Zoom. It will be translated into French language. The conversations will not be recorded, except for the section where participants are invited to share what they discussed in the breakout rooms. We will take notes and produce a summary report afterwards.

If you want to learn more about the Movement Charter, its goals, why it matters and how it impacts your community, please watch the recording of the “Ask Me Anything about Movement Charter” sessions which took place earlier in November 2022.

Thank you for your participation.

On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee,

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 11:59, 22 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Lake Como advertising[change source]

An ongoing issue has been the creation of articles about the Lake Como area that are about subjects that are not notable and come across strongly as advertising. There are of course subjects in the area that are notable (the lake itself, mountains, rivers, etc) but tourism sites and hiking paths are most often not notable.


For the most part, many of these articles could be quick deleted as advertising but the line on what is blatant in that regard is iffy. A4 most often does not apply as the subject , while completely not notable, does not fall into the extremely narrow requirements for that rule.


Given how often this seems to occur, I would suggest seeking a community approved decision for the quick deletion of any newly created Lake Como article that an admin deems to be not notable and pretty much pure advertising. This would obviously not include things such as major geographic fixtures (like mountains in the area) and would be left open ended for the admins to decide. They could always be put up for undeletion  is a user feels there was an error or reason reason dispute. As it does not seem most users would object to article such as this not being notable and admin are chosen in part for the communities faith in them generally making the community accepted correct call, this could help limiting the creation as those editors would know that an admin could decide to quick delete based on this president of community decision. End result 99 correct deletes that don't need to waste RfD time and 1 that would need to go through Request for Undelete seems to be a plus for the community.


This would not be an addition to the quick deletion rules. It is more an acknowledgement by the community that an admin could use to validate making the call as either housekeeping or IAR (or pushing it, "similar to previously deleted articles") This will most likely be shot down as concensus is nearly impossible here and most admins have issues with making a decision on their own (Better to ask for forgiveness than permission), but it all needed to be tossed out there. Pure Evil (talk) 19:17, 24 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have blocked the IP addresses related to this as an identified LTA. This should help with the cleanup for now. — *Fehufangą✉ Talk page 23:56, 24 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

CopyPatrol now on simplewiki[change source]

Following the discussion at Wikipedia:Simple_talk/Archive 145#CopyPatrol for simplewiki and phab task T318032, https://copypatrol.toolforge.org/simple is now live!.. and has actually been for quite a few days already. For those who might not know what CopyPatrol is, it is a tool that can be used for finding copyvios onwiki. Simply login using your Wikimedia account and if you believe that the revisions you are shown are copyvios, follow the instructions on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. --Ferien (talk) 22:36, 24 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Over-specific categories[change source]

It's hard to believe we have a category "English blue-eyed soul singers". Isn't this insane? Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:34, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Macdonald-ross: Just to be clear, "blue-eyed soul" is a genre of music. I don't think the category means that the singers have blue eyes. -- Auntof6 (talk) 09:56, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Eventually I got this. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:00, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Gender-related categorization...[change source]

We recently had some gender-related categories that were up for deletion, so I will start a discussion on this issue. I will perhaps start out with what is my personal opinion, which is probably very close to what the policy on this wiki is:

  • By "gender-related category" I mean the classical split into male, or female. Covering the extended spectrum of non-binary gender, LGBTIQ+,people feeling that they were born with the wrong sex (etc) is more complex, and should only be discussed, once this issue is settled.
  • In general, classification by gender should be avoided; in many cases, there are better ways to classify (for example: geographical area).
  • The one big exception where such a classification might make sense is sports. There are male tennis players, and female ones. At least at a professional level, the events where the male ones directly compete with the female ones are rare to nonexistent. In these cases, we must have a male category, and a female category, at the same level of the hierarchy, in order not to be sexist (and yes, I know that's only 2 of the three entries you need for a category...)
  • In all other cases, we should avoid classifying by gender: Male/Female artists/performers, actors, scientists (...) are not a good way of categorizing.
  • Between 1901, and 2020, 876 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to men, 58 have been awarded to women. Does that warrant that we have a category for male Nobel-Prize-Winners, and one for female ones? - Probably not.
  • Don't follow stereotypes. There are male midwives, and female firefighters. Not many, but there are. IMO, this still does not warrant gender-related categories for either.
  • This is Simple English Wikipedia; so even if EnWP has male/female categories at some point, we don't need to follow them. EnWP has many more articles and editors, and one of the things that may make SEWP attractive is that many of the processes are simpler, and less bureaucratic.

Likely, what will follow below is a heated discussion, so:

  • This is a discussion, not a vote; when you express your opinion, try to be as clear as possible. Stay polite.
  • This thing is time-limited. I'll ask a bureaucrat to look at what we have, on December 15, end of day.

Thanks Eptalon (talk) 21:18, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Separate categories for females have been done in a couple of ways:
  • Having a category for males and a category for females. This means twice the number of categories. It also means having to monitor the main category to make sure people are put into the correct subcategory (or not, for example in the case of genderfluid or nonbinary people, but that adds its own complexity).
  • Having a category for females but not for males. (Sometimes the female category is designated as a non-diffusing subcategory, as with Category:Women judges.) Sometimes this is done because there are fewer females in a given area, sometimes because they are seen as somehow unique or rare, and sometimes just because someone wanted to highlight females. In either case, this results in removing the females from the main category, making the pages about them harder to see.
I also wonder if we really need to look at sportspeople any differently than anyone else. We (including me, at times) have said in the past that there should be separate male/female categories for sportspeople because they compete separately. However, how is that any different from actors? Male and female sportspeople do the same sports (with a few exceptions, such as different gymnastics events) but usually compete separately. Male and female actors do the same work, and they also compete separately because that is how the award organizations set up the award categories. Is the difference that sports awards are seen as a bigger deal than acting awards? Is it the general difference in strength and physical ability between males and females, and if so would that be leaning into the stereotypes?
Finally, we should ask ourselves this: if we decide not to have separate gender categories now, will we want to change that in the future when we have more articles? If the answer is yes, are we prepared to do the work of separating categories by gender in future when it will be more work to do so?
For reference, here are some of the categories we currently have where males and females are categorized separately:
And here are categories where we have categories for females but no corresponding category for males (unless I missed it, in which case, please correct me):
There are probably others, but these lists are long enough. Looking at those category names, it looks like we should standardize the names to either women or female.
There is also the question of categories that currently contain only one gender or the other, but which could contain the other in the future. An example is Category:First Ladies; there is no general "first spouses" category, only "first ladies and gentlemen" categories for individual countries -- and they are categorized under women!
Finally, I think it would be good if people didn't jump in and fix parts of this until we have an agreement of how we want to handle the bigger issue. Auntof6 (talk) 22:40, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Although I do accept that upbringing and past experiences will bring a difference between groups of people, I do not see a need to segregate people based on genetic sex, self defined gender, race, religion, age, creed, whatever. There are far too mny ways that each person is an individual. A pedigreed white gay male protestant doctor is different from a doctor who is from an underprivileged background or Asian or sis or trans female or atheist or any combination of traits. There will always be some need to diffuse large categories, but I feel this should be limited to well defined criteria that are fairly well defined or widely accepted and referenced as needed. Gender based in the modern era is not actually possible as gender in no longer accepted as binary but a location on a spectrum defined by the individual.
Categorizing a person is often complicated under the best of circumstances. To add in criteria which is often subjective and poorly defined just makes it less simple. We already deal with people who don't categorize at all, people who try to avoid subjective cats and those that add every possible cat. Adding more to this only complicates things. Ways need to be found to limit the creep that is the cat section of articles, not expand it. --Creol(talk) 23:46, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Neutral opinion needed[change source]

Rather than edit war, I need an outside opinion on the article California Attorney General. Another editor made changes which involved removal of the list of past post holders and moving the infobox from the start of the article. I reverted the change, updated the infobox to match en.wiki's infofox so the info was up to date and did some minor tweaks for style and info. The other editor reverted those changes back to their own version saying it made it look more updated and formal. As it does not look more formal and it is better to be updated rather than look updated, I feel it needs to be reverted back.

As this is leading to the road to edit warring, I ask that someone else make the call as to whether to revert or not. Pure Evil (talk) 23:13, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The infobox should be at the top of the article. It is entirely appropriate to include a list of people who have held the position. I have undone the other user's changes. -- Auntof6 (talk) 00:36, 27 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

How to make a Category[change source]

How to make a category in Simple Wikipedia? (Example: Category:Example). Koqkpa - TALK 10:39, 28 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Please read Wikipedia:Categories. MathXplore (talk) 10:41, 28 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Koqkpa: You can make categories by simply searching for them, and then creating them. Please make sure that it has at least 3 pages included, otherwise it will be deleted. Cheers, Hockeycatcat (talk) (changes) 10:42, 28 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Koqkpa Another simple way to add or make categories is using the HotCat extension in preferences. At the bottom of every article there should be a section for adding catagories. Hope this helped! Happy editing! SoyokoAnis - talk 13:20, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you so much. I now atleast know that how to make Category :). Koqkpa - TALK 10:52, 28 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories is a good guideline the subject. It covers the topic on when a new category should be created and how it should be named. The 3 entry minimum is strongly suggested but there are times it is ignored (it is just a suggestion after all). You should read the section dealing with changes to the guideline on the talk page. These is information there about the common exceptions. One thing to remember is to check that a category does not already exist but has a different name.
As to how to physically create a category, the easiest way is from a red link. These are created on articles that are placed in categories that do not exist or Special:WantedCategories. The easiest way to do this is to edit one of the pages you are putting into the category and adding the category to the existing categories on the page. (or at the very bottom of the page if no categories exist) This will create a redlink to the category. Click it to go to create the category. Add an explanation on what the cat is for. It is often a good idea to include a link to articles that help define the category. Next, add links to whatever parent categories the new category falls under. There should be informtion on all of this on the WP:Categories page. --Creol(talk) 00:47, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Rollback confirmation[change source]

Is there an option I can use on mobile where I have to confirm a rollback before doing it? I keep accidentally pressing it when my phone glitches. Sorry and thanks in advance, Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my User talk) 14:04, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, found it in preferences fortunately. Rubbish computer (Ping me or leave a message on my User talk) 14:06, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Are we doing a good job?[change source]

A little while back, an editor asked about research on making Simple English Wikipedia (SEW) more visible. This led me to look other research on SEW. I found something depressing: " Evaluating lexical coverage in simple English Wikipedia articles: A corpus-driven study", 2017 (https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=3yhBDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA146&dq=%22simple+english+wikipedia%22&ots=q7t-ELnRn4&sig=2YDegKwykjQJJdcMuhTU1IO3VhI ) in particular gave us a negative rating, arguing from a statistical analysis of the encyclopedia's corpus that our lexical range is not much less than that of the English Wikipedia. A more recent article, "Is Simple English Wikipedia As Simple And Easy-to-Understand As We Expect It To Be?" (https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3439231.3439263), also faults us, saying "that simplification operations made during the production of Simple English Wikipedia in many cases do not follow the patterns of the professionally simplified corpora, thus casting doubts on adequacy of using Simple English Wikipedia as training material for automatic text simplification systems" (abstract). What thoughts do You have? Kdammers (talk) 21:27, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There are several factors contributing to too-complex text:
  • We have no way to ensure that people write in simple language, or even that they know how to. In my view, this is partly because one of Wikipedia's tenets is that everyone should be able to edit, so we can't vet contributors.
  • This wiki is aimed at readers whose English is not advanced. (That could be people whose first language is not English, children whose English just hasn't reached a certain level yet, people with learning disabilities, and possibly others.) When those people try to also write here, a couple of things can happen. One is that they often think that, since they don't know much English, then whatever they know must be simple. That is not necessarily the case. The second is that since they're still learning, their grammar is sometimes not good, and they make grammar mistakes. Clear, grammatically correct writing is crucial when writing simple English. These editors have excellent intentions, but some are just not able to write they way that's needed here.
  • Many editors don't realize that it's harder to write in simple language than to write without restriction. Some don't have a good feel for what's simple and what's complex, which you really need to write in simple language.
  • We have a small number of regulars here, so we sometimes try to recruit more people to come and help. But people don't understand the things that are different here--not only that the language should be simple, but also all the other things that we do differently (such as the things on that list I created). Editors come here to help, but sometimes get frustrated and don't stay.
Those are my thoughts, just off the top of my head. (That's an example of non-simple writing -- an expression that wouldn't be clear to many people just learning the language). -- Auntof6 (talk) 23:14, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
A key factor is that we can't control who writes pages. If a research project takes our pages at random they will find all sorts of badly-written stuff. Obviously we concentrate on topics which we think are important. But it's an open system: anyone can write here, and they do. I don't think our science pages do a bad job of simplifying language. Any system which is open to whoever who wants to write is bound to collect all kinds of cruft. It is not the idea of simplification at fault, it is the openness of the wiki. Professional wikis are not open; we are. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:57, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The researchers did not take a random sample. They used the entirety of all articles. Pretty easy to do. That causes some potential difference between what they are measuring and what we think is being used. The thousands of bot-created stubs for places put words like municipality (not very simple) and commune (not simple) way up in frequency here.But, we have other more significant problems:
  • We do not rein in bad actors soon enough and do not remove their "contributions" after they are banned in the belief that some mythical editor will improve them afterwards.
  • We actively promote articles which are not that simple, setting bad examples.
  • We do not use software tools which could automatically highlight infrequent words. These should be built in.
  • We do not flag complex articles often enough. There seems to be a culture that such flagging clutters up the wiki. It has been characterized as "drive by" tagging. Complex articles hang around and any new editor sees them as the norm and does likewise.
Gotanda (talk) 23:29, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Indeed, we have a higher standard for saying "too much work, might as well delete" than the English Wikipedia, which is often concerning. However, there are a good amount of instances where it helpful, though for BEANS reasons I'm not going to name those, haha.
I don't think that study is in any way surprising. Our content oversight isn't particularly great and our capacity to rewrite complex pages, which is by far the largest task to do here, is limited. Many pages made by new users do nothing but create future simplification work for experienced users, which very often simply doesn't get done. Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 04:09, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If anything our standard should allow more deletions. Nothing is lost. Readers can go to the main Wiki and run it through deepL or Google translate if need be. Frankly, I think often deletion is clean up--or it should be. Better to be a smaller, but truly simple, subset of EnWP than an expansive mess that frequently never gets addressed. --Gotanda (talk) 05:25, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Need proofreading and feedback[change source]

Hello, I recently reworded and added to the article Byzantine Empire, proofreading and feedback would be appreciated. Thank you very much. — Fancy Refrigerator (talk) 17:24, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Template:Tools[change source]

{{Tools}} is only linked by two template pages and a userpage, but if it's going to exist, it should probably be made appropriate for this wiki, right? Lights and freedom (talk) 23:26, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Lights and freedom: I'm not sure this is what you meant by "appropriate for this wiki", but I just updated all the links to redirects pages to point to the pages we have here. -- Auntof6 (talk) 00:02, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
That helps. There are some welcome templates that are different than enwiki, or they have different titles. Some templates don't exist: thanks, no-license, no-source, and fringe theories, while other templates are more widely used here, such as complex. Cfd, Ffd, Mfd, Tfd, and PROD don't exist here. WP:Dashboard, WP:Request directory, WP:Department directory, WP:Noticeboards, and WP:Tools don't exist here. Essays, WikiProjects, and Recent changes patrol do exist, but the information is at different places. In the news, Picture of the day, Selected anniversaries, and Today's featured article don't exist, but Featured articles in general do exist.
(I also noticed that Simple English is apparently the world's most spoken language. Interesting, even if not really meaningful.) Lights and freedom (talk) 00:18, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Simplifying United States[change source]

It would be great if editors could look at United States to see how we could simplify it without losing important information. It's fairly complex in general, but I would prefer if the problems could be discussed and solutions proposed before people jump in and oversimplify things. Please keep the conversation on the talk page. Lights and freedom (talk) 03:58, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
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