Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals sections when appropriate, or at the help desk for assistance. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Ngrams updated

FYI: Google has recently updated their ngrams to include data up to 2022 (previously 2019, before that 2012). This is great for determining the common names of more recent subjects, among other uses. InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sign up for the language community meeting on August 30th, 15:00 UTC

Hi all,

The next language community meeting is scheduled in a few weeks—on August 30th at 15:00 UTC. If you're interested in joining, you can sign up on this wiki page.

This participant-driven meeting will focus on sharing language-specific updates related to various projects, discussing technical issues related to language wikis, and working together to find possible solutions. For example, in the last meeting, topics included the Language Converter, the state of language research, updates on the Incubator conversations, and technical challenges around external links not working with special characters on Bengali sites.

Do you have any ideas for topics to share technical updates or discuss challenges? Please add agenda items to the document here and reach out to ssethi(__AT__)wikimedia.org. We look forward to your participation!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:19, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Notice: discussions on WMDE sub-reference project in progress at Meta

The WikiMedia sub-referencing project (parent project: Reusing references) is having multiple discussions about the development of a sub-referencing feature by WikiMedia Deutschland Engineering. Your feedback would be welcome at any of the discussons at m:Talk:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing. Mathglot (talk) 21:07, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed that there is also a discussion about this at VPT: WP:VPT#Coming soon: A new sub-referencing feature – try it!. Mathglot (talk) 21:37, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is another at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Sub-referencing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Phobias navbox

I wanted to make a navbox for the different articles about phobias (such as fear of bees). Normally I'd just make it, but Template:Phobias was deleted at Templates for Discussion in 2007 and 2009. I can't imagine it will be an issue to create it since it would be the same as any other navbox, but for the sake of procedure I'm asking the community first, especially since I'd be adding it to roughly 100 articles. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:21, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you want to do this?

Are you trying to make a navbox with "things called -phobia", in which case Photophobia (which is not a specific phobia) would be included but Fear of needles (which was officially recognized in the DSM as a specific phobia 30 years ago) would be excluded? Or are you trying to make a List of specific phobias in navbox form? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The arguments from the AfDs are still good. PamD 04:36, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Less images being uploaded

Why are less images being uploaded today? It wasn't like that from 2006 to 2009, many images were uploaded at that time period. Is there a reason why the image uploads declined after that period of time? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 21:49, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly because images to suit many purposes have already been uploaded, making new ones unnecessary? AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:53, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okay but, why can't we upload new images that replace the old ones? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 21:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing preventing appropriate and policy-compliant images from being uploaded. As to when it is appropriate to replace an existing image with a new one, that will depend on the specifics: newer isn't necessarily better. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:57, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What is the criteria that determines if an existing image should be replaced with a newer and less outdated version? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:00, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If someone finds it worth uploading in each particular instance? I have very little clue what sort of general rule you'd expect there to be. Remsense ‥ 论 22:03, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the response. But how can contributors decide if a new image is worth uploading for a specific article? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:13, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is no general answer to this line of questioning. Improved media are uploaded if editors discover or create them; what constitutes an improvement depends entirely on the media in question. Remsense ‥ 论 22:18, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@MJGTMKME123, what do you mean by "less images being uploaded today"?

Do you mean specifically what's being uploaded today, as in Sunday, the 25th of August? (If so, please go to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) and sound the alarm, because a sudden downturn is probably technical in nature.) Or do you mean "in recent years"?

How much less? Is this like a long-term leveling off? Are you talking about uploads directly to the English Wikipedia, or at Commons? How are you counting the number of uploads? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I meant "in recent years". MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:21, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have made efforts to direct uploaders Wikimedia Commons whenever appropriate, so having less uploads here could be a good thing. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:32, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm talking about image uploads on Wikimedia Commons. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:36, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are you thinking about any images in particular? Again, we can't really answer your question because it's way too broad. Remsense ‥ 论 22:38, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just asking about the trend of fewer image uploads in the recent years, but I understand if it's too broad. I was wondering if there are any topics where image uploads have noticeably declined. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How do you know that there are fewer uploads? What page or tool are you using to determine the number of uploads? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:56, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't actually use a tool. I just noticed that most images were made around that time period by just analyzing the date of random images. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:59, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@MJGTMKME123, I suggest looking at c:Commons:Statistics of uploads vs deletions, which gives the number of annual uploads from 2003 through 2022, and which does not support your hypothesis that there has been a multi-year decline in uploads.

If you know anything about SQL, you can run queries like this and get whatever numbers you want. I use the "check 10 pages in Special:Random" method a lot, but you've got to remember that it's really quite a crude estimate, and if your random images weren't actually random (e.g., they were images used in Wikipedia articles), then you'd be looking at a crude estimate of a biased sample, which is basically worthless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okay thanks, I just realized that there are actually more uploads on the recent years then I expected. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 23:11, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's way more useful data than what I found just below. So uploads to Commons have risen steadily if non-monotonically, and there is no year for which the number of files uploaded was less than ~~any~~ all of the three previous years. Folly Mox (talk) 23:19, 25 August 2024 (UTC) edited 10:16, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This wouldn't account for which images are actually being used in articles (plenty of Commons images aren't), but I'd be very surprised if those are mostly pre-2009. ― novov (t c) 10:10, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think most of them are pre-2009, I'm not entirely sure though. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 11:04, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What do you base that on? The number of articles in the English Wikipedia has more than doubled since 2009 (3,144,000 on 1 Jan 2010, 6,764,355 on 1 Jan 2024), and images in older articles are often replaced, so I suspect a large majority of images in articles have been added since 2009. For your claim to be valid, editors would have had to be preferencially using images uploaded before 2009 to add to articles. However, an analysis of the upload dates of a large enough sample of images currently in use in articles would be needed to support your claim. Frankly, I don't think that is worth pursuing, as I don't see its relevance to building a quality encyclopedia. Donald Albury 13:49, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Donald Albury Thank you for pointing that out. I guess I was mistaken about the upload dates of the images. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 14:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As one potentially interesting pair of datapoints, I see that c:Commons:Database reports/Page count by namespace (current as of June 2014, almost exactly a decade ago) shows 22,097,492 pages in the File: namespace, of which fewer than 2% were redirects. Executing the Magic word {{NUMBEROFFILES}} on Commons today returns 107,994,945. So there have been some uploads. Folly Mox (talk) 22:59, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Folly Mox Thanks for sharing that data, that means I might have underestimated the number of uploads. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 23:04, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On a related point, please consider looking through the popular articles for a favorite subject area – most WikiProjects have a page like Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages – and seeing what new images could/should be added. Not having an adequate number of images in each article is a constant complaint from readers, and it even has benefits beyond the obvious value of the image itself (e.g., helping people with dyslexia keep their eyes on the right part of the article). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:08, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RFC: Which cover for the infobox of And Then There Were None ?

More opinions would be helpful to settle this long-standing issue. Which book cover should be displayed in the infobox of And Then There Were None: the 1939 cover with the original UK title that includes a racial slur, or the 1940 US cover with the current title And Then There Were None? Please help by giving your view at Talk:And_Then_There_Were_None#RFC Deciding which cover should be displayed in the infobox. MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]