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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 October 22

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October 22

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Jesus' boss

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From 1954 to 1974 who were J. J. Angleton's direct supervisors? Who did he report to w/i the agency? Did he report to anyone outside the agency? If so who? During the above named period of time was he ever asked to take a polygraph test? Did he ever take a polygraph test? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.240.77.215 (talk) 10:50, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can you provide a link to whatever it is you're talking about? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots11:28, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm guessing James Jesus Angleton is the subject here. --Onorem (talk) 11:30, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Logically an "associate deputy director" would report to a deputy director and, of course, the director. Rmhermen (talk) 16:03, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Catch phrase?

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Has Wikipedia ever thought of using a catch phrase? I think it should be "Get your Wiki up." That's what I tell people when I don't know about something, as in, "I'm not sure about that, but I can get you an answer in just a few minutes, as soon as I get my Wiki up and read about it." There are enough of us around that remember what a wickiup actually is to explain the joke to the kids. Just a thought. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.91.252.129 (talk) 13:07, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A better place to follow this up than the ref desk would be Wikipedia:Community_portal, perhaps the link there for wikipedia proposals. μηδείς (talk) 16:40, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can't see Wikipedia using it unless enough people are prepared to drop the issue of Don't call Wikipedia Wiki. I had no idea what a wickiup was until I googled it, and now that I know I cannot see why it is in any way relevant. --ColinFine (talk) 17:02, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I thought their catchphrase was, "The encyclopedia anyone can edit." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots18:37, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As someone in IT, the OP's phrase would really grate on my nerves due to the inaccuracy of calling Wikipedia or one of its articles "wiki". Dismas|(talk) 21:04, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To properly explain this distinction: There are many "wiki" - there is only one "Wikipedia". Wiki software comes from many companies and OpenSource groups - List of wiki software lists about 50 of them. Each piece of software is probably used on hundreds to thousands of different web sites - each of which is "A Wiki". So "Get your Wiki up" could mean anything from going to Wookieepedia (the Star Wars wiki-based encyclopedia) to visiting the wiki-based private web site that I use to upload and display baby pictures and other stuff for my family. Businesses, clubs, social groups of all kinds have wiki's. The idea of a Wiki (a communally edited, agressively hyperlinked, self-maintaining database) is applicable to a gazillion different things - not just encylopedias. My wife's business (http://RenaissanceMiniatures.com) uses the exact same software as Wikipedia as a store-front and a place to provide public access to instruction manuals...http://lyrics.wikia.com/Lyrics_Wiki has the lyrics to close to three million songs...I store all of my laser cutter CAD files in a private wiki! SteveBaker (talk) 18:33, 24 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One quibble here — the different language versions are sometimes described as "Wikipedias", so in that sense there's more than one. --Trovatore (talk) 18:50, 24 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How do I flag a translated article

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As a researcher that prowls for information sometimes I see articles that in English are fine but when I look at the translation are extremely modified (usually much shorter) and some that seem to have pointers to businesses rather than information. For an example I recently did a search on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia

The Thai translation, https://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/หญ้าหวาน, contains 4 external links, one broken, one to a blog site, and 2 to Thai MLM's selling Stevia products. I am not a full time editor but will change something in English that I find wrong and I am not fluent in Thai enough to edit in Thai but using the Thai translation page as a pointer to businesses doesn't seem so good. So knowing what the procedure is for bringing this activity to a senior editor seems to be a good idea. Worse this example isn't the first I've seen and not only in Thai. So what to do? regards Dave Harris trihent — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trihent (talkcontribs) 21:21, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Dave. I had to read your question a couple of times before I worked out what you were asking, and I think that this is because you are under a misapprehension: Most (or at least, many) articles in different language Wikipedias are not translations of each other. A few are, and these we refer to as translated articles. But the Thai article on Stevia is very likely to be a completely different article - about the same topic, yes, but written independently. When an article in a Wikipedia is translated from another language, it should be flagged as such for reasons of attribution, and I thought that was what you were asking about (see WP:Translation).
I think that what you're asking (correct me if I'm wrong) is, How do I flag an article in the Thai Wikipedia as inadequate. I'm afraid the answer is to follow whatever procedures the Thai Wikipedia has for this case. It is nothing to do with the English Wikipedia, or anybody who works on it (unless they happen also to work on the Thai one). --ColinFine (talk) 22:22, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Templates are sometimes the same (or work) between wikipedias. (I have seen this happen in Spanish and German wikipedia, and others when I have added images.) You can try using the appropriate English template, see if it populates in Thai, then do a reverse translation at google translate. μηδείς (talk) 02:44, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to indicate that an en.wiki article can be improved by translating some material from another wiki, you can use one of the templates from Category:Expand by language Wikipedia templates. I assume that some foreign-language Wikipedias have similar templates... -- Vmenkov (talk) 18:22, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]