Wikipedia:Simple talk

Simple talk

WP:ST

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Main Page idea

I was wondering if there was a way that we could add something relating to Wikipedia:Good Articles on the main page? Something that could create viewer engagement right off the bat. Seeing as how there's a little over 100 GAs, I figured it'd be nice to shed some spotlight to those articles especially since naturally they may be harder to find/appreciated. I know it's not common at English Wikipedia to spotlight Good Articles, but seeing as how we're a small community and how we have 102 GAs, I feel like that wouldn't be a bad touch. I was thinking perhaps adding some language to the VGA section of the main page. Something like: "Other very good articles – Proposals – Requirements – Some good articles". Thoughts? TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 07:14, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's a good idea. We could also think about creating (shorter, without image?) teasers for GAs. And then list one GA teaser as well? Eptalon (talk) 07:59, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would support more visibility of the GA process. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:50, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Completely agree. For a community as small as ours, 100 GAs is fairly good, so why not showing them on our Main Page? That'd probably even courage people to work on them and get them to VGA status. -Barras talk 17:57, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Should we add a small section of GA article previews like the VGA articles on the main page or a simple mention of Good Articles like how I suggested above? TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 19:27, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If we agreed,I would say a GA blurb should be noticeably shorter than a VGA blurb, and we need to write 100 blurbs first Eptalon (talk) 20:29, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. I’ve noticed some of the VGA blurbs are rather small compared to the leads they have on their articles. We could expand the VGA blurbs a bit and follow what Eptalon is suggesting: Two sentence blurbs for GAs? TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 00:04, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree also. fr33k man 01:09, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps what we could do is expand the "About Wikipedia" section to make it more elongated like the DYK section and then beneath the "About Wikipedia" section we could have a "Selected Very Good Article" (left) and "Selected Good Article" (right) previews? TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 23:05, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've also created a sanbox that depicts how the GA blurbs would ideally look like for the newest 10 GAs :) I was also thinking for VGA blurbs and possible GA blurbs that are about shows, characters, books, movies, etc. that don't have a picture, we could place an image of a person related to them such as how I did for the Big Break blurb. English wikipedia does this for featured articles that have copyrighted images that can't appear on the main page. TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 23:31, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you mean to make the "About Wikipedia" section cover the full width of the page and not go down so far. That's a good idea. ~2025-61813-2 (talk) 13:36, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yep! The About Wikipedia be expanded horizontally much like how DYK is and then beneath that section we could have VGA (left) and GA blubs (right). TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 19:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I like what you did with the sandbox. How many blurbs do you propose? fr33k man 20:18, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was prepared to draft blurbs for all 102 good articles. Would that be a bad idea? TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 02:39, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We can probably just write a new one every time a new article is promoted to GA. I would suggest having a dedicated page somewhere to be able to see all blurbs at once which could be admin protected, then in the talk page, people can suggest revisions, (grammar, spelling, linking, etc). MrMeAndMrMe_Talk 02:59, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Any other feedback from users who haven't chimed in? If this is the direction we'll be moving to, is there anyone who's willing to get the ball moving on this in terms of formatting the main page? --TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 20:04, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:OL

It is my view at this time that, mostly, en:MOS:OL shouldn't apply on this wiki. For readers using simple, links for things like London or England could be useful. For example (to use a language I speak), in Spanish "London" is "Londres" and "England" is "Inglaterra". Does the community agree with me, because I don't recall any consensus on the subject. --IWI (talk) 02:48, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

With that being said, I also think for some examples, OL would apply. There is no need to link "kilometre" for example. --IWI (talk) 02:49, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Kilometre likely is a bad example, as it is a common unit of measurement (even though the SI unit is the metre/meter). While SI units generally have a base 10, this is not true for imperial units (1 gallon = 4 quarts =8 pints, which happens to be around 4.5 litres). So depending on the context, linking a unit of measurement might make sense. Eptalon (talk) 02:59, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree so long as it's not taking the mick by linking every single little random thing - although I'd hope that is obvious! --Ferien (talk | join TBA!) 20:34, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I remember another discussion about this, where I made the same point you do, that people whose first language is not English might not recognize the English words for things. The example I used at the time was Florence/Firenze. So, yes, I think we should link important terms. Keeping in mind that we (at least theoretically) have a multi-lingual user community, we need to link more than they would on enwiki, but not necessarily every single word. -- Auntof6 (talk) 23:57, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Red Hot Chili Peppers demotion

I have proposed Red Hot Chili Peppers for demotion from Very Good Article (VGA) to Good Article (GA). Your input is requested at Wikipedia:Proposed article demotion#Red Hot Chili Peppers. canadachick (talk) 02:35, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The instructions say to inform users who helped promote it to VGA, but none of them seem to be active anymore except Fr33kman. canadachick (talk) 02:38, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can only do what you can do. People come, people go, sometimes they come back. You've done all you can do :) fr33k man 00:39, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Help close out Phase IV of Total Backlog Annihilation

Phase IV of the Total Backlog Annihilation has focused on clearing out Category:Pages with broken reference names. The project is housed at User:Ferien/WikiProject TBA/Phase IV. It started at 847 in July and is now down to 20 articles! The last few could use some brain power as many of them aren't simply just finding it in the article history or the current (or even past) version of the English Wikipedia article. I've laid out some of the concerns for some of the remaining ones at the project page. Thanks for any help you can provide! CountryANDWestern (talk) 01:51, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All done, I did the mosque one (took an hour to get all of the sources) Plutus^{💬 🎃} — Fortune favors the curious 13:31, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome! Thanks to everyone who helped finish this in the last dozen or so hours! CountryANDWestern (talk) 13:55, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the Mamie Eisenhower one. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 19:01, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to work now on Category:Articles with broken file links which was Phase II of the project. It's back up over 100 entries after getting down to 5 in May 2024. If anyone who is Wikidata inclined is looking for a task, the Special:UnconnectedPages] category, which was the original backlog annihilated, is up to 183 entries. Some of these are ones that can be handled here on Simple, but others may require some Wikidata work. CountryANDWestern (talk) 14:30, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What are we up for next with the total backog annihilation Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 19:01, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification of the sock puppetry policy regarding temporary accounts

I would like clarification regarding the sock puppetry policy here when using temporary accounts. Is it perfectly legal to make new temporary accounts for different edits, assuming one isn't violating other rules such as Edit warring, POV-pushing, disruptive editing, harassment, "Good hand, bad hand" accounts, etc.? If this is legal, I think that should be stated in the policy that "using multiple temporary accounts without violating other rules is not considered sock puppetry". That way it couldn't be applied to anonymous users to apply pressure on them. ~2025-26680-95 (talk) 18:35, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Whilst I guess we could add something specific regarding temporary accounts, in my eyes it is no different from logging out of a main account. There are perfectly legitimate reasons (as outlined) for using more than one account, including those that you don't disclose (fresh start, etc.)

Temporary accounts work just like IPs, so changing the account name could be considered fine as if you were just changing IPs. I'm not sure we need to explicitly state this though, I don't think we should be encouraging this use. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:35, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. Also temporary accounts lasts for 90 days only, after that the account will change or assign to new one. And checking other accounts of an temp account, who is not disrupting Wikipedia, is not permissible, as this are logged and probably it can be checked by administrators. So explicitly stating is redundant. 🪶-TΛNBIRUZZΛMΛN (💬) 08:47, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"I don't think we should be encouraging this use" - It's either permitted or not permitted. I'm assuming that it would not be allowed if a person created a (normal, registered) account, made three edits, created a new account, made one edit, and so on. Or maybe it would be allowed. If temporary accounts are different in this way, it needs to be stated somewhere in a policy or guideline. Otherwise it's open to arbitrary enforcement. What if an administrator disagrees with you? What's going to stop them from blocking the accounts/IP's anyway? ~2025-26883-73 (talk) 13:41, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sockpuppetry is defined as using multiple accounts to circumvent the rules. If a person wants to make different accounts (perm or temp) to keep track of various edits they've made then that's up to them I think it sounds like a lot of work but it is permitted. fr33k man 00:45, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Help with a biography of a living person

I am writing a biography of a living person User:Immanuelle/Frank Amodeo and I want to make sure that this fulfills the requirements of biographies of living people. Can anyone look over it to make sure that it satisfies the requirements? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 20:22, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think you've cited what needs to be cited. BLP is about avoiding libel so if someone did something that reflects poorly on them as a person then as long as it's cited in reliable sources then it's fine to include it in the article. fr33k man 00:51, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great. Then I will focus on simplification. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 01:48, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does simple english wikipedia have categories for discussion?

I want to propose Category:Movies based on short movies for discussion to be moved to Category:Long movies based on short movies. Is there some kind of procedure for renaming categories like this aside from manually moving the category and changing it on every page? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 19:17, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure we need to shorten the scope of this category. Is this to distinguish between another category about short films based on other short films? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:36, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Immanuelle: You just described the procedure. Category moves don't move the content. You have to move the category, then move the contents. Cat-a-lot can make the content moves much easier. We might also have a bot that would eventually move the content. -- Auntof6 (talk) 23:03, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is the bot a known thing? enwiki has it but not sure about here Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 09:28, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Immanuelle It is Special:Contribs/RussBot; it runs twice per month. ~2025-27225-16 (talk) 15:34, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The luck of the draw (or are more of the articles 'seriously challenged')

One (new) user,
simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/~2025-27102-45
,has created c. six articles today.--One i have taken for QD (promo).--Another article seems to say, that "About 40% of Western Australia's wheat is grown 'near Merredin".--Please consider asking that user, something like: Are you using A.I. to write articles, or might there be another reason why some of your articles do not seem encyclopedic.--For now, i will pass on reading the '4 other articles'.--Good luck while i fix other articles for free. ~2025-27027-53 (talk) 15:57, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just curious: How is Cowaramup, Western Australia promo? Plutus^{💬 🎃} — Fortune favors the curious 09:07, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not trying to be rude: I have put tags back into the article.

simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cowaramup%2C_Western_Australia&diff=10545026&oldid=10542360
.--I will try to let you know, when the article gets 'near where it should be', in regard to not using 'phrases that sound like a tourist pamphlet/brouchure'.--If that comes across as helpful, then fine. ~2025-27264-18 (talk) 20:39, 1 October 2025 (UTC) /~2025-27027-5[reply]

Alexandra Bridge, Western Australia.--Same (unspecified) problems, new IP, and quite likely the same user as above.--No 'crime' committed, except article not ready to stay published.--When this IP moves on, then i plan to tag his/her one, last article: "Tone", and "POV".--"Tourist-brochure wording", is the 'dead giveaway'.--No one has yet written on their talk-page: Within a day or two, then i might write: "Hi! Your articles do not seem ready to stay published.--Are you using A.I. to create articles? Bye for now, while i ask the community to put limits on (arguably) your daily publishing of too many articles, that do not seem ready to stay published.". ~2025-27264-18 (talk) 14:14, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discord and arbitration

Hey all. I know Discord is pretty popular here with SEWP contributors, so I want to give you a heads up. If you actually read the new Terms of Service that they started requiring today, there's an opt out clause. You send them an email at arbitration-opt-out@discord.com and tell them "I opt out of the binding arbitration clause." There is a time limit on this. Thirty days from today.

That means that if there is a problem between you and Discord later, they can't say "Ha ha ha, you HAVE to go to binding arbitration and you are NOT allowed to do a regular lawsuit in public court because you agreed to it."

Nobody needs that drama. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:27, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a thing from 2024, isn't it? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:42, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is it just me or is there a lot more unhelpful changes being made recently?

I noticed a lot of unhelpful changes in the past few hours. Is this actually abnormal or am I just looking at Special:RecentChanges more today and noticing more? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 03:36, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Considering it's just a few LTA (sometimes)/cross-wiki abusers, it's quite normal. Plutus^{💬 🎃} — Fortune favors the curious 03:39, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh didn't catch that they were LTAs. Were all of those people LTAs doing some kind of coordinated attack? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 03:41, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

LTA's usually just vandalise until they get blocked and after a few hours come back. Plutus^{💬 🎃} — Fortune favors the curious 03:44, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is content translation now using an AI simplification from English to Simple English?

I saw the pages created by SchoolWikipedian (talk · contribs · logs) and was wondering whether they simplified them themself. canadachick (talk) 23:57, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Canadachick personally looking at their page Taita white-eye I think it is insufficiently simplified. It has slightly but barely changed content. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 02:30, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They were deleted Plutus^{💬 🎃} — Fortune favors the curious 12:34, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

when I did some translation perhaps 1-2 weeks ago, there was no automatic simplification of English to Simple English Eptalon (talk) 14:26, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They may have been insufficiently simplified, but no, I do not know of a way to automatically simplify English to Simple English. I accept that there are issues with my approach for simplifying only the terms that seem complicated to me, and I am sorry if this has been causing issues. Have a great day! SchoolWikipedian (talk) 14:54, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Igor Stravinsky

I want to attest that Igor Stravinsky lived in Paudex Switzerland in the year 1944 where with my family we also loved in Paudex. ~2025-27131-14 (talk) 16:06, 2 October 2025 (UTC) My parents, Gualtiero and Juliette Croccolo visited the composer Igor Stravinsky in hi home situated in Paudex Switzwrland in the year 1944. ~2025-27131-14 (talk) 16:14, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@~2025-27131-14 Hello and welcome to the Simple English Wikipedia. We cannot use your testimony as a source to uphold the statement that Stravinsky lived in Paudex. You will need to show this from reliable sources, as Wikipedia is about verifiability. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 13:30, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mathematics

The article mathematics is too complicated I think. ~2025-27494-08 (talk) 18:48, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have undone the recent edit that added the complex words and notified the editor who added it. Ternera (talk) 19:00, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Help with a template issue

On the page Great Mandala of Nichiren the Template:Nihongo seems to be broken. I’m not sure what is happening there, but can someone take a look at it? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 15:10, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]