Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2014/April

Hitler

I just set out to create a Category:Adolf Hitler, which seemed an obvious choice given recent category best-practice. However, I find it was deleted in 2008 based on a community consensus. I believe the reason for that decision needn't apply now as category practice has evolved and we should be better behaved, but rather than create the category immediately I'm posting here first so folks can object.

It does seem advisable to put a usage note on the category saying it should not be used to index mere demonstrations of Godwin's law. If we want a category for Godwin's law, that's a separate matter; this just means that when somebody does compare someone to Hitler (as North Korea just did the Prime Minister of Japan), the wikilink on the name Hitler will be local to Wikinews. --Pi zero (talk) 21:28, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Pi zero (t · c · b). Category:Adolf Hitler should be for the individual. Category:Godwin's law would be a fascinating idea for a category, as well. -- Cirt (talk) 03:27, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

• I thought it was appropriate then and I think it's appropriate now. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 15:31, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Papua New Guinea Article

I am currently working on a feature article about rugby league in Papua New Guinea. I have a contact who is making a documentary about rugby league in the country and will engage with him to get some more material. I think it is a relevant issue as they have a team competing in the Queensland Cup and there are several NRL players with PNG heritage. Just wanted to give you a heads up on the article that I'll be working on and to get your advice moving forward. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Adam UOW86 (talk • contribs) 06:44, 9 April 2014

Simplifying "protected"

I've just noticed that on commons: a few of their protection related messages use the word "frozen" instead; is it worth updating our interface messages to that too? They still use "protection" for most of the day-to-day things (i.e. it's commons:COM:Protection policy not "Frozen policy"), but it's a neat idea that sums up how Wikinews uses protection: "freezing articles at their publication date" is much more apt than "protecting against anticipated future vandalism". It's certainly worth thinking about altering our terminology to make it clearer. Microchip08 (talk) 00:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Freezing sounds harsher than protecting to me. Non-content edits can still be made (I do them all the time, en masse, when working on categories). "Frozen" sounds like nothing at all can be done.

I come, of course, with the inherent bias of having been used to protection for... How many years? BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:13, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

EC I like "frozen", simply because "protected" seems to imply the edit is a bad one, that must be protected against; "frozen" loses that connotation. Microchip08 (talk) 17:33, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

I too prefer "protected" to "frozen".

I have this notion, that I've not yet decided how to go about (but I'm mulling it over), that users who don't have the privs to actually modify a protected article could go through something very much like editing it, only when they "submit", it would semi-automatically generate an editprotected request on the talk page. It would of course have to boil the request down to some minimal form, and would ideally provide a button that someone with privs could use to set up an edit buffer for making the requested change. And, one would have to think through how multiple pending requests at the same time would interact with each other. Lots to think about. --Pi zero (talk) 17:26, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Something that could be worth thinking about, is putting categories on subpages for articles, á la {{documentation}}. We'd protect the main article, but leave the categories page (un|semi)protected, allowing anyone to edit categories and interwiki (presumably the only non-content edits that are common), whilst preventing them from editing the main body of the text. Microchip08 (talk) 17:33, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

That could complicate such operations, by adding a hunt for the page to do it on. --Pi zero (talk) 17:53, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

There'd be no need for protections, though, which would substantially increase the pool of available users to do it. Especially in a hypothetical Distant Future™ with higher output and userbase. Maybe HotCat could be modified to identify and edit the subpage? I'm certainly not opposed, right now. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:05, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

• If we change interface messages, then I'd say it should only be to use "archived". Adding categories is simply cataloguing archived material; if a mechanism can be found to make that a more-accessible task, great. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:11, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Alas, that not all protected pages (even in mainspace) are archived. These are interesting questions, though. --Pi zero (talk) 18:13, 24 April 2014 (UTC)