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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Small World?

Inspired by the likely answer to a crossword clue in the London Evening Standard newspaper, I entered Wikipedia to look up Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was staggered to find my quest was the Featured article of the day. Mammaliman (talk) 19:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

wikipedia ads on late nite cable

I can't believe this, I was sitting around drinking in a bar earlier tonite and the TV in the bar kept showing a wikipedia ad ("knowledge forever"). I pulled out my digicam and took a few pictures of the screen which I'll try to upload in the next day or so. I'm amused and appalled at the same time. The mind, as the saying goes, wobbles. Maybe regulars here knew about these ads already but I almost did a spit-take. 75.62.4.94 (talk) 07:51, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Not sure what administrators can do about this. This is the wrong noticeboard. --Rschen7754 08:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 08:21, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Moved from WP:AN
What exactly is your point, do you think its wrong for WP to advertise on tv? If so, why? Roger (talk) 09:35, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
What is the ad like?--Commander Keane (talk) 01:54, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Whoa, which channel were you watching? I don't think wmf actually puts adverts on TV, because wmf is a foundation and WP has enough fame already. This is very interesting though, and I'd like to see the advert myself. :D Kayau Voting IS evil 03:59, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Nothing special. They had them on the TVs on the Rome metro when I was last there. It's probably local chapter funded. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:27, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
The ad showed a wikipedia logo with a caption "knowledge forever", then asked people to donate to the WMF. Yes it may have been done by the local chapter. 67.122.209.167 (talk) (new address) 20:01, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

OfficeTiger

Who deleted Office Tiger's Wiki page?

Hello,

I am reporting on the Congressional race in New York's First Congressional District. One candidate in the race was the former CEO of Office Tiger, a company that outsourced thousands of (potential) American jobs overseas (especially to India).

I recently wrote an article about him and Office Tiger, including a link to Office Tiger's Wikipedia page. Now, a few weeks later, the page has been "deleted" and I cannot figure out how or by whom or why.

Any/all suggestions/comments would be appreciated.

Thank you.

AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR (talk • contribs)

Office Tiger was proposed for deletion on January 14, 2010. Since there were no objections raised, it was deleted 7 days later, as per deletion policy. That's a bit more than "a few weeks".... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:17, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Who deleted Office Tiger (part II)

Hello,

Thank you for answering my question, but I am still not satisfied with the response.

I documented changes to the Office Tiger web page that occurred frequently between 2009 and 2010 - the most recent change occurred on June 29, 2010.

I can't figure out why I can no longer access this page.

It's not possible to edit an article that is deleted, correct?

And there is no record of its deletion post June 29, 2010?

Thanks,

AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR (talk • contribs) 20:15, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

You are correct that there exists no record of a creation of deletion of that specific article past January 22 of this year. You can request a copy of the deleted article, but only if you can convince an admin such as myself that you understand the reasons why it was deleted.
Perhaps you got the title wrong? I've check with a space and without. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 20:22, 11 August 2010 (UTC)


Hello,

I am sure of the name of the company I am searching for: Office Tiger.

There are 2 reasons given for the deletion of Office Tiger in January 2010:

a) Proposed deletion: someone proposed that the page be deleted; no one objected within a 7 day period, so it was

b) Twinkle: a program that helps registered Wiki users perform maintenance tasks and deal with acts of vandalism; it seems drastic in its remedies ("rollback functions," etc.)

AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR (talk • contribs) 20:42, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Twinkle just helps automate things a little. No, the article was deleted in January on notability grounds. I suggest you look at the page I have linked there before requesting undeletion or userfication (moving it into a workspace where you can improve it before putting it back on show).
Well, if you did edit it in June, it wasn't at that exact title (case sensitive). Might you be able to suggest other titles for the article? Office TIGER, OfficeTiger!, etc. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 21:39, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
OfficeTiger was deleted in February 2007. I can't find any other variants. There's no link from RR Donnelley, the parent company, either. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:27, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

To Jarry 1250, Office Tiger

I did not edit the article, ever. I just noticed that there seemed to be an editing war going on over the Office Tiger Wiki page and the last edit happened on June 29, 2010. Therefore, I do not understand how this page was deleted in January 2010.

This is what I know:

-The original Wikipedia entry for Office Tiger was deleted in January of 2006. What I was able to learn about that entry when I did research for the article in June of 2010 was this: “Office Tiger was founded in late 1999 with an innovative approach to global outsourcing. The company’s employees, located primarily in India….” TODAY, this information does not exist.

-A second Wikipedia page for Office Tiger was created on April 27, 2009. Between that date and June 29, 2010 there were twelve edits to the page that were able to be accessed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OfficeTiger. TODAY, this information does not exist.

Any explanation for this?

If you sent me the deleted article(s), they would confirm the above.

AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR (talk • contribs) 21:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

OfficeTiger was deleted in 2006 and 2007; Office Tiger was deleted in 2007 and Jan 2010. I don't see any spelling that existed in June 2010. Rmhermen (talk) 06:43, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Request to restart inactive WikiProject General Audience

Many articles on mathematics and physical sciences are very difficult to understand. Are any editors more knowledgeable than I about mathematics and science willing to consider re-activating WikiProject General Audience?

69.251.180.224 (talk) 05:44, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Relisted from archives[11][31][37] to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, 69.251.180.224 (talk) 03:53, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Might be best to just approach active expert editors who've edited a given article and ask them. I agree that articles need to be as accessible as possible, however they cannot sacrifice accuracy. How about pointing out some articles to look at? Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
If you pick any random article on mathematics, you'd probably find the same problem. Also there is a list of "requests" on the Wikipedia:WikiProject General Audience page. 69.251.180.224 (talk) 03:53, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

merge discussions for Aliens topics are not there

I do not know if this is normal or not, but looking at a bunch of Aliens related topics, like Weyland-Yutani and Bishop (Aliens) and many more, there are these merge discussion tags to Aliens (film) at the top of most of the pages. I wanted to discuss the merge like it says, but none of the pages have any merge discssions anywhere on the talk pages. I looked at the page historys, and some of the merge tags have been on the pages for almost 2 1/2 years but there are no discussions and no one has said if a merge will happen or not. Is that normal and should these be tkane down or something done???Scurrilous1986 (talk) 22:58, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

BAG nomination

Hello everyone! I have been nominated for the bot approval group and would like to invite you all to participate in the discussion at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/EdoDodo. Thanks. - EdoDodo talk 02:46, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia IN YOUR LIFE??

Crazy Wikipedians/Wikipedia stories???

I'm a filmmaker, looking into stories related to Wikipedia and I want to get in touch with folks around the world who are addicted to checking Wikipedia, or who have contributed the most, and for whom this online wealth of knowledge has manifested and possibly changed your life. Please reply to this post - would love to hear from you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.89.146.172 (talk) 00:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I believe many WP contributors (myself included) value our anonimity, so it might be somewhat of a "Mission Impossible" but I wish you luck anyway. Roger (talk) 10:54, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
Please check out Wikipedia culture-related pages, such as WP:WikiFauna and WP:HOLIC. I hope that helps, and I'm looking forward to seeing your film! Kayau Voting IS evil 11:03, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I am willing to give you my opinion! Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 19:28, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Some links for stories on how Wikipedia changed someone's life:

-- Ϫ 02:57, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

GA/FA Helper

Hello all, I was wondering if anyone needed a helper in creating a good article or featured article. I'd like to help make one, but i'm a bit bereft of inspiration on a topic right now. Doc Quintana (talk) 18:44, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Valued Pictures was closed =(

This is as far as I'd gotten to a new logo I was making to suggest to replace the old one shown below, as you can see it's only about half-way done. The idea was shells, which were used in ancient times as money all over the world in spite of geographical isolation, tying into Valued Pictures.

The deed was done by SilkTork not many hours ago after a contentious dispute between over a dozen users on VPC's talkpage, some wanted to keep it, some wanted to delete it. Some wanted to make it historical, some never understood its purpose, but it is my opinion that VPC was very misunderstood and had a potential to be very important and possibly even resolve problems we have with the similar Featured Picture Candidates (FPC) and the connected Picture of the Day projects.

If VPC never rises again then may it rest in peace, the rest of us will just be on the ever persnickety FPC page. --I'ḏ♥One 10:29, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I've reversed that crazy unilateral action, if we're going to shut it down it's going to come after an official MfD, not some convoluted long disjointed discussion on the talk page. — raekyt 12:13, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
Yes! VPC lives to see another day! Thank you, Raeky. --I'ḏ♥One 08:50, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


VPC lives another day!. What about reviivg the project, with a better direction? --Extra 999 (Contact me) 09:57, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Question regarding ancestry tables

There is a discussion taking place here regarding if ahnentafels (ancestry tables) should be uncollapsed by default? SilkTork *YES! 20:46, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Election system of Wikip/media is at risk

Call me a paranoid, but this piece of news has sent a shiver down my spine (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups). I can't help but feeling worried about the current election systems of Arbcom and Wikimedia Board. In their current state (voting rights determined by nothing other than edit counts) both of them are vulnerable to manipulation by organisations of whatever nature, as long as they have a Wikipedia-contributing membership that is sizeable enough. If they have thousands of editors (or to be more precise, monthly-active user accounts with > 150 edits) at their disposal, they could easily act as one in our Arbcom elections / Board elections to outvote the existing Wikipedia community and install their candidate(s). If they have sufficient votes, they could even *take over* the entire Arbcom/all community-elected Board seats. I don't want to name specific political parties or racial organisations here, but I'm convinced that they will consider having a stake/say/control in Wikip/media's governing bodies to be immensely helpful to promoting their agenda worldwide.

Once they take control of the Arbcom, they can censor articles using oversight. Their armies of POV-pushers and vandals can quickly run Wikipedia down without any fear of being banned/blocked (which the Arbcom can always overturn), and/or turn it into their private Press Room or an outlet of their Ministry of propaganda. And that's chickenfeed comparing with what they can achieve if they have a presence in our Board. Board members can obtain secrets held by the WMF - Donor identities, disposal of WMF funds, IP addresses and Browser IDs of every editor from server logs, not to mention the power to perform Office actions which are not accountable to the community. These data and powers could be used in political persecution (e.g. tracking political dissidents), whitewashing and driving the WMF to bankruptcy. Do these sound like fiction to you? Since the WMF is the ultimate controller of Wikipedia, once the Board is infiltrated, there is nothing the Wikimedia community can do to stop them.

Therefore we seriously need a debate on the evolution of our election system. I propose:

  • Logging the IPs of voters (and forbid the use of open proxies), and after elections, release the geographic distribution of voters for public scrutiny.
  • Tightening the eligibility criteria to vote in a Arbcom/Board election.

Any ideas?--Computor (talk) 15:28, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Tin foil hat? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 16:13, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Other than a fear that there might be some sort of political take-over of Wikipedia and its governing board, is there any real evidence that this is going to happen? Supposedly this is the reason for the appointed (instead of elected) positions on the WMF board in the first place. BTW, I think that is a stupid and irrational fear other than the potential that the editors and contributors to the various Wikimedia projects might just for once and for all jettison Jimmy Wales from the project in a governance role.
I don't see any need to significantly tighten election rules, and as long as these groups are coming in and conforming with existing policies and/or working to change those policies through consensus as is typical for the project.... what is the problem here? They are becoming a part of the community, not an enemy at the gates with which we need to fear. For those who engage in a huge number of edits, become involved in the community, and attempt to participate in the "politics" that also happens on this site..... what seems to be the problem?
Those edits which don't maintain a neutral point of view and are consistently reverting the good-faith edits of others can and should be fought against.... where in the long run those editors will be removed from this project. Yes, I know that some trolls on this project can stick around for sometimes years and even get admin status or even get on the Arbcom. It happens.... live with it. It isn't something new. If somebody can get so much support that they get onto the WMF board, again it represents a significant fraction of the community.
I'm all for some process that identifies people who are double voting in these election, and if the point of raising the threshold in terms of edit counts is to restrict that kind of activity.... so be it. You can already spot most of this if you find a large number of accounts voting for a particular slate of candidates that have barely met the qualification requirements. There are some anti-fraud algorithms that could be developed to at least question some accounts without becoming an elitist organization here that excludes a good-faith editor who is new to our community and desires to expand their role by participation in these elections.
It all goes back to my original point: Is there any evidence that this is even a problem in the first place? --Robert Horning (talk) 16:20, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Any system where election to positions of authority over the system can be gamed puts itself at risk. Of course, any army of POV pushers could be countered by other armies of POV pushers (and in practice, we see in contentious articles there is usually a balance of POV warriors for both sides of the issue). I do agree that voting rights should be tightened to include reasonably lengthy tenures (perhaps eight months or a year), regularity of participation over that time, a higher number of edits, and discounting of edits to one's own userspace and meaningless edits (for example adding a space to an article that does not affect the article's appearance). Suppose an army of Ruritarians were to begin editing Wikipedia, how would we know whether their goal was to influence Wikipedia content, or merely to contribute to a free encyclopedia? Make voting rights contingent upon meaningful participation. bd2412 T 16:23, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Encouraging people to panic about this would just make the voting process susceptible to joe jobbing, anyway. Any Arbcom candidate worth considering for the job will have pissed off one dedicated troll in their time here, and attempting to color a candidate with the bad qualities of their supporters would mean that anyone can mangle an election by pretending to be a large number of ominous support voters. On the other hand, the Essjay controversy elaborated itself in a way that suggests that such actions will be self-correcting. I don't see a need for panic here, unless there's a concrete problem I'm missing. — Gavia immer (talk) 16:34, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Note that both the ArbCom and board elections are "advisory" elections. The board (for the board elections) and Jimbo (for ArbCom elections) technically make the actual decision. if there's evidence of fraud or the chosen candidate is unsuitable, they can overrule the community. For the board, only 3 of the 10 members are chosen by the community. The rest are chosen by the chapters and the board. And for ArbCom (or anything in the community), the foundation, which owns the site, can always step in. Mr.Z-man 17:58, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Also, board members do not get universal access to things like server logs like that. They make high-level operating decisions, they are not involved in things like server operations. Driving Wikipedia to bankruptcy would be a violation of the bylaws which could result in a lawsuit (and would also be rather counter-productive if the goal is to use Wikipedia for advocacy). And there is something the community could do. Mr.Z-man 18:11, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Three things as far as the ArbCom elections are concerned from my experience (not necessarily the WMF board as I normally don't care much personally). First is the high levels of scrutiny placed by the community on those serious ArbCom candidates, which I believe ensures a fair representative of the masses on the Commmittee. Second is closed voting; people are able to freely decide without any undue influence or groupthink affecting their decisions. Third is the level of scrutiny in the votes cast (that is, done by scrutineers coming from outside en.wiki); most sock puppets that are normally caught have far fewer than 150 edits to an account. Now, in the case this has been discovered after the fact, and dung is really hitting the fan, we always have that final failsafe – which is that Jimbo can dissolve ArbCom if absolutely necessary; again, this is the extreme case. –MuZemike 19:03, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

For myself, I would rather that Jimmy Wales not have this kind of absolute authority, and it is something that has already come under review in regards to his rampage on Commons and Wikiversity where the community had an "uprising" to strip him of that authority. I know this isn't about Jimmy Wales or his "founder's flag", but to me this kind of dictatorial authority isn't all that helpful either, even if it is from a "benevolent dictator". In every case where I've seen him use that kind of authority without community consensus or in overturning an election, it usually has been to his and the community's detriment. Certainly anything that I've seen over the past 4-5 years. Usually the dedicated and hard-core volunteers who do the daily maintenance that makes these projects successful won't let the project get taken over by a special interest group.... and more often than not they will even try to overrule Jimmy Wales as well. What happened on Commons is a good example of that. --Robert Horning (talk) 21:39, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
For some things, you need an absolute authority, though, and a known one is better than an unknown one - though an unknown one might be better than attempting to manage something like the Wikiversity trolling by committee; after all, they did try to manage it by committee and that's where the trouble really started. People who say that single authorities are always bad generally are thinking in emotive buzzwords, rather than thinking in realistic terms about actual project governance. — Gavia immer (talk) 21:55, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps this is a cultural thing where I live in a country that explicitly lacks any supreme authority (at least in theory). I do believe that Wikipedia could be governed by and largely already is by the contributors themselves. They do a pretty good job of it too. That perhaps there is something to be said for a single person setting up basic social structures perhaps, but once those are built the need for that central authority is no longer necessary. I could also suggest that those who insist upon a central authority to solve all tough problems is full of emotive buzzwords too and not really considering the need of popular support to sustain a project with a large number of volunteers. Major policy decisions need to be sold "to the masses" regardless of who makes the first move to change the policy, unless you are making changes by threat or force of arms. --Robert Horning (talk) 05:00, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Nothing is new under the sun. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 23:08, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I am aware of this incident and the arbitration case resulting from it. To me this is only one of the smaller manipulation attempts that have come to light, and early intervention from the community/Arbcom has put a swift end to this. Yet the Arbcom hasn't produced any actionable measures to counter any larger, more sophisticated attempts on the control of various Wikipedia articles/bodies, and I can see some among us even deny this problem exist in the first place. My point is made to raise awareness on this matter, such that the wider community is constantly vigilant on the risk of elections being manipulated by populous organisations with an agenda, before it is too late and Wikipedia's reputation of neutrality suffers.--Computor (talk) 01:39, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
My main point is that the Wikipedia community is so large that a "take over" by one organization is going to be noticed by others with a stake in the project too. I would suggest that you "trust the community" and not get worried that your point of view is always going to prevail in any discussion. Of course such an attitude applies equally even in this situation. State your concerns clearly and what you might suggest for remediation, and hope that if your viewpoint doesn't prevail that you aren't proven correct in the long run on serious issues. If editors are getting out of line, the time to deal with it is when they are starting to fight against the 5 pillars and on basic principles from which Wikipedia has been established. Anybody working within those parameters is likely making good faith efforts in developing Wikipedia in the first place. Based on this principle alone, I would argue that raising standards to exclude certain editors is by itself contrary to Wikipedia policies and practices. --Robert Horning (talk) 05:00, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The Free Dictionary: What Is It's Relation to Wikipedia?

What is the relation of Wikipedia to the internet site known as "TheFreeDictionary?" (Not to be confused with "wikidictionary the free dictionary.")

Most of the articles I find on TheFreeDictionary (FD) are exact or near exact copies of Wikipedia pages, including the photos, although sometimes the links to the enlarged version of the photos on FD don't work.

TheFreeDictionary claims to have served at this time, 2,227,331,289 visitors. (Found in upper left corner of FD pages under the FD name/logo.)

Several links to The Free Dictionary topics are prominately displayed on the webpage refdesk (www.refdesk.com) every day. refdesk.com is a webpage used by many people as their internet browser homepage. It is a kind of reference page. It contains a lot of links to a variety of popular and commonly accessed information and fact websites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TomBrooklyn (talk • contribs) 05:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

EDIT: This was meant to be posed as a question to Wikipedians, and it was believed it would post on some sort of community forum board. I see it has appeared as part of the main page article. I'm not sure if this is appropriate. I will leave it to others to decide this and redirect it if possible and/or notify me of where and how to post the question appropriately. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TomBrooklyn (talk • contribs) 05:42, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Please see WP:MIRROR. Kayau Voting IS evil C U NEXT YEAR 07:23, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

"lede"?

Who the heck came up with this silly practice, and why? Just curious, really. seems like an odd little meme for an educated collection of people to have come up with.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:10, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

News style: The most important structural element of a story is the lead (or "intro" in the UK) — the story's first, or leading, sentence. (Some American English writers use the spelling lede (pronounced /ˈliːd/), from the archaic English, to avoid confusion with the printing press type formerly made from lead or the related typographical term leading.) Personally I learned it in journalism class and have used it ever since. It makes me feel stuffy and knowledgeable. --Golbez (talk) 14:37, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
"Lede" is the traditional deliberate mis-spelling, for the reason cited above, of an editor/reporter's discussion about the first paragraph or two of a news story. The spelling is no longer necessary but some of us old farts cling to it .... - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:05, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Well, you learn something new every day. Far from appearing "stuffy", I think it looks uneducated (reminds me of txt speak), but Ok. Thanks for the explanation.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 15:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikiproject Watchlists

Hey wikipedians. I'm leaving some spam here about my new tool for wikiprojects. It spits out a watchlist-like feed of recent changes to articles relevant to a wikiproject (articles tagged with the wikiproject's banner). For example, articles with talk pages tagged with {{WikiProject Darts}} have a 'watchlist' here. The tool can be used with any template-based wikiproject. Any and all feedback is welcome. Tim1357 talk 19:49, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Not pissed anymore

For over three months now, I have been trying to contact the Wikipedia:Volunteer response team. Several times now I've send my permission with regard to Talk:Band-e Kaisar, but they all were completely ignored. No response, nada, niente, nichts, nothing. I want to take the shite now down from old granny Wiki. What template can I use for that? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 23:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

What on earth are you on about? Please try again, and this time attempt to explain your issue coherently and without the unnecessary swearing. Fences&Windows 01:52, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
It was somewhat hard to find the correct ticket because this specific case's email seems to have been merged to a different case's ticket (Ticket:2010050610015838 is the right one, but there's also Ticket:2010062410023105). I don't think I can un-merge them. Dealing with it now. Gun Powder Ma, in the future you can contact me, Keegan, or a variety of other OTRS workers to see what's happened. But permissions queues usually take the longest because OTRS is inundated with those. Killiondude (talk) 02:24, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Ok, thanks a lot and apologies for the swearing. Frankly, I don't have the slighest idea how the tickets could have been merged, I only did send one email at one time, with each referring to the one(s) before, but I am glad that you quickly sorted this out now. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 08:53, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
I should have been more clear, an OTRS volunteer merged the emails incorrectly. They just saw that it was from the same email address and must have assumed it was about the same thing. No worries, I think everything's sorted now. Killiondude (talk) 16:10, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
They were about the same thing (= permission for Band-e Kaisar), but I trust you have settled the problem now. If not, contact me via email. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 16:51, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Requested move problem

Yesterday I proposed a move of Computersmarts but it's not mentioned at WP:RM. Why?? Georgia guy (talk) 16:24, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

It seems you have substed the template twice, you should've done that just once. I think I have fixed it, let's see if it works. Svick (talk) 18:50, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Yup, that fixed it. Svick (talk) 19:15, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Update on Checkuser and Oversight appointment process

Following the call for applicants (19 July) and the initial call for comments on the candidates (16 August), this notice is a second call for comments from the community on the suitability of the candidates for the September 2010 appointments for checkuser and oversight permissions. The Arbitration Committee is continuing to review and collate the comments received so far. If you have not done so already, please send in your comments before 23:59 on 25 August 2010 (UTC).

Those actively being considered for Checkuser and Oversight permissions are listed here (same link as above). As the primary area of concern is confidence in the candidate's ability to operate within the Wikimedia privacy policy, comments of this nature are best directed to the Committee's mailing list (arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org).

For the Arbitration Committee, Carcharoth (talk) 21:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Discuss this

File:OPBayonetLightning-2003.12.02.jpg

Can someone tell me what source that file used to hat on the English WP? thx--Sanandros (talk) 14:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Try asking one of these. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 22:51, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
Hey! I'm one of those! The deleted local revisions don't include a source. They say only that it was PD as a work of the US government/military. It also looks like more than one image was uploaded at that title. The description on the first edit suggests a different image than the one that was moved to Commons. Resolute 22:55, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Lanark Grammar School

I plan on organising a research project in school in which several of our students would research the local area then contribute their research to either the English wikipedia or the Simple English wikipedia (dependant on their competancy in English). Each student would have their own account on Wikipedia, which myself and any staff involved would monitor for any vandalism, but the school's IP address is currently blocked due to vandalism by other students. I'd like to create about 3 generic accounts for students who don't yet have accounts. The password for each of these accounts would only be given to one student at a time, so we'd be able to hold students accountable for any inappropriate use of any of the accounts. Would it be okay for me to do this?

Also, I'd like to point out our main areas of focus will be Lanark Grammar School, Lanark, and famous Lanarkians, such as William Wallace and William Smellie. Obvously, we wouldn't be able to do much as only 1 person would be able to edit an article at a time (to prevent edit warring). If there's anything the Wikipedia community would like worked on, we'll be happy to do some research.

Another thing, for the purposes of this project, I'll be using my school username (blackt4098) as I don't want to disclose my username with others outside school. This is just a sockpuppet of this account and will only be used by me. --tb240904 Talk Contribs 17:14, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I would need to use these accounts tomorrow so I've created them. They can always be deleted later. They are Lanark Grammar School 1, Lanark Grammar School 2 & Lanark Grammar School 3. --tb240904 Talk Contribs 22:02, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
Role accounts are not permitted. These ones will probably be blocked. Please see WP:Username policy and WP:School projects for more information. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 22:30, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
Sorry if I was a little short. I didn't mean to give the impression that you were in trouble. Every student should have their own account, and you can rename the ones you've already created if you want. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 08:35, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Actually my understanding is that "role accounts" are permitted as long as they are not used in an abusively deceptive manner. I say abusively deceptive because the page on sock accounts seems sympathetic to people who, say, hide their serious professional side while editing articles on comics, even though this is strictly speaking a form of deception. Britmax (talk) 08:56, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
"accounts shared by multiple people are as a rule forbidden and blocked" - from WP:ROLE. The only exceptions are non-editing "email this user" accounts and bots. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:52, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

2011 wikicup discussion on possible bonus scoring for more "encyclopedic" content

I am posting this to see if anyone wants to add ideas to Wikipedia_talk:WikiCup/Scoring#Award_more_points_for_vital_articles. I have been musing on how to use wikicarrots rather than sticks to influence content development, which as we all know is at the whim of active contributors :) A few of us have been pondering this in discussing point allocation for the 2011 wikicup and whether introducing some form of multiplier for some types of articles might induce development of audited content in areas currently underrepresented or otherwise more "core" content. Essentially, I am trying to think of concrete categories that can't be gamed - so here's a challenge.

A group of articles that is:

(a) reasonably broad (say > 50 articles, preferably >100) (b) An underrepresented part of the 'pedia in terms of audited content (c) Must be concrete qualifying criteria (d) attempt to cover some "core" encyclopedic content and broad articles. not in-universe (e) not contain numbers of esoteric/minor articles

Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like a great idea to me. If people are motivated by awards that is. Pats on back and barnstars work well for some people.Steve Dufour (talk) 02:34, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Pywikipedia

Hello, everyone

Is it possible to create page in a wiki from a list created with special:export ? If yes, how should I proceed ? I am still a beginner on Python 

#1. defining wikis
targetwiki = wikipedia.Site('en', 'wikipedia')
sourcewiki = wikipedia.Site('es', 'wikipedia')
#2. getting category
# (?)
category = page.categories(u'category:abcedfg')
#3. creating page from category page list
# (??)
 pagecontent = u"1234567890"
#4. updating page
targetpage = wikipedia.Page(targetwiki, pagetitle)
targetpage.put(pagecontent)

I am not sure about proceeding in the steps where there are questions marks. So I will be grateful for anybody who can help me. Thanks in advance. --Jagwar - (( talk )) 13:53, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi there! Yes, that would be possible, although somewhat difficult to do in Python because you would have to parse the XML output of Special:Export. If you like, I can write the code snippet for you, but wouldn't it be easier to just use Special:Import? - EdoDodo talk 12:05, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi, sorry for late reply. Yes, if you can write a snippet code for me, please do so. Because big XML files generates server errors when I try to import them in a wiki, so it is for this reason that I wrote a code to get pages from a category. Thanks you for your help ; best regards. --Jagwar - (( talk )) 08:03, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of 2.532 unused PBB Protein-images

I just wanted to inform you that I suggested to delete 2,500+ images here. --MGA73 (talk) 20:19, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Improvements to an article where I have a conflict of interest

As you may know, I work for Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit organization based in Washington DC. Since I work there, it would be quite untoward for me to make substantial edits to the article due to conflict of interest. Likewise, our internet strategist has listened to me when I said that it would be untoward for the organization to edit the Wikipedia article about itself. All of us agree that the article is *very* out of date, and needs to be updated and expanded. I've posted to the talk page about problems with the article, but it appears that no one is watching the article except me. What would the group consider to be a proper way to get others to come to improve the article? Obviously, a GA or FA would be a wonderful thing one day, but it's got a long way before reaching that. So your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks! SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:58, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there a relevant Wikiproject that you can ask for assistance? – ukexpat (talk) 19:46, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
While it is strongly discouraged, editing despite a COI is not expressly forbidden, simply discouraged because of the obvious concerns about writing in a non-neutral way. If you like, perhaps create a draft copy on a subpage: Talk:Food & Water Watch/Draft or User:SchuminWeb/Draft, or something similar, then ask for input as to whether your draft meets policies like WP:NPOV before moving it to the main space. Resolute 20:06, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
FWIW, it's so patently obvious that many people and/or their publicists edit their own Wikipedia entries. Read a glowing bio with plenty of first-person references and you don't have to scratch your head too long to wonder who wrote it. I think that's one (of many) reasons WP is on the wane. The "strong discouragement" only works with people who have a strong ethical sense. IMHO, the fact that the poster here is broaching this topic suggests to me he/she would be more objective than the person who edits his/her own entry while pretending not to, and there's certainly plenty of that. 71.175.4.207 (talk) 21:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
The first thing to do would be to give some indication that your employer meets our notability criteria. The two independent sources in the article only give passing mentions of the subject, and are far from demonstrating that there is significant coverage in independent reliable sources, so there is nothing that helps any other editor to update or expand the article. It seems a little strange that an administrator who seems so keen on deleting articles about other subjects doesn't realise that an article about his own employer needs to meet our inclusion standards. I've just watchlisted the article, so, if you put an independently and reliably sourced draft that meet notability standards on the article talk page, I'll be happy to review it and make the required changes to the article. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:09, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

WP:Stupidity?

Should stupidity be deleted from Wikipedia? :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 00:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course; clearly far too self-referential :p  Chzz  ►  07:58, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Well, if it's only deleted from the English Wikipedia, the size of the 'pedia would be cut down so far that the Germans would overtake us. I don't think unilateral disarmament is such a good idea, since even if we weren't as stupid, we'd be embarassingly smaller. Imagine if we then gained back half our stupidity (which would inevitably happen over time). We'd still be smaller than the German Wikipedia and still be quite stupid. So I would only favor removing the stupidity if other 'pedias do the same, in a similar, coordinated fashion. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:33, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Location of Osama bin Laden

Checking out the Location of Osama bin Laden article, I want to put a section expert template, but I cannot put one on. Anyone know what I should do?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:53, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

This?  Chzz  ►  07:39, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Catholic World Report article

Ok, here is an odd one. I was reading a WP article on the Harry Potter series and there was a section on the Catholic opinion of the books with a reference & wikilink to Catholic World Report. Oddly this wikilink was a redlink which struck me as odd for such a well known publication by Ignatius Press (which is not redlinked). A quick search of en.wikipedia.org (note this was an onsite search, not a Google search) found over 11,000 hits! Yet there is no article on this publication and as far as I can tell never was (I can find no trace of an AFD etc). How very odd don't you think? 66.97.213.52 (talk) 19:56, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi there. You can request this article at WP:AfC. You could also be bold and create the article yourself (you will need to become a registered user first). --tb240904 Talk Contribs 07:55, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Mmm. So, we ought to write an article about it; it seems notable enough (google).  Chzz  ►  07:55, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Some Ukrainian bot has created a user page for me on the Ukrainian Wikipedia

I got an email today -- in Ukrainian (which I thought was Russian) informing me that (what I think is) a bot had created a user page for me on the Ukraininan Wikipedia (which I've never edited). It gave me a link and, sure enough, there I am. [1] Anybody know what's going on? -- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:27, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Since you unified your account, an account there was automatically created for you (there is normally some sort of trigger for this), and it was the account creation on 26 August which triggered a message on your Ukrainian talk page, which triggered the email. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 22:38, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Some other projects are unfortunately set up to aggressively identify SUL accounts this way by mucking about with cookies. If you have a SUL account and visit any page on such a wiki, and you allow cookies, it will create a local account. There seems to be a nearly 100% overlap between projects that think such tactics are a good idea and those that want to leave useless welcomebot messages to everyone who has ever passed through. Before you ask, yes, I think that treads on the thin edge of the Privacy Policy, but plainly the Foundation does not, or they would not support the ability to set such cookies. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:50, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
You are mistaken, when you log into a SUL account you log into *all* wikis that are part of SUL system, which means that you don't have to re-login to every wiki. (The main goal of SUL) Before you can edit on a wiki (and for autoconfirmed userrights and any others that are based on age of an account) a user account creation date must exist. This used to occur when you created an account or logged into an account on another wiki manually, But since the release of SUL you are automatically logged into a wiki when you visit the site, or any page within it (your user account is automatically created, and you are logged into it). When this happens see new user log for reference 00:59, 30 August 2010 Ilviaggiatorefedericiano (talk | contribs) account created automatically the account created automatically means that an account was created via the SUL process. Its in no way an issue with the privacy policy, but rather a normal part of the mediawiki software. ΔT The only constant 01:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
I will admit to not having the details of the SUL login process memorized, and so you may be right about how it is implemented. I do know, because I manually accept/reject cookies from WMF sites, that some wikis do set additional cookies on mere page views, and that wikis that do this tend to create needless user talk pages after a mere visit. As to the privacy policy: the page creation JohnWBarber is concerned about amounts to a disclosure that he has visited the Ukrainian Wikipedia, when that might not be known without the welcomebot page creation. You might argue that this does not, quite, violate the Privacy Policy, but it is too damn close for me to ever like it. — Gavia immer (talk) 01:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
20:43, 26 August 2010 00:12, 18 August 2010 are both logs that show when a local account was created for John (IE he logged into said site for the first time) http://toolserver.org/~vvv/sulutil.php?user=%CE%94 shows 659 records for me across all projects, it also includes timestamps for said account creations too. It is in no means more of privacy violation than the user account creation log here on en.wp. ΔT The only constant 01:30, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
PS Special:CentralAuth/Gavia immer shows all the logs for your account creations. Keep in mind it only shows account creations not actual visits or anything private. ΔT The only constant 01:34, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm a bit confused by all this, but let me see if I've got this right: A bot created a page under my user name at the Ukrainian Wikipedia because I myself logged in on that site some days ago? I don't recall doing that, although I suppose it's possible. On August 17, I replaced an image on the Slovak Wikipedia, and I made a similar edit on the Norwegian Wikipedia. I've got no edits on the Ukrainian Wikipedia, though. Hmmmmmmm. Maybe I just forgot I logged in there. I'm probably just going stark raving mad. Most likely explanation. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 03:42, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Yes, a bot put a welcome message on your talk page on the uk wiki because you likely clicked on a link that took you to the uk wiki which because you have an SUL account meant that you automatically created an account there when you looked at a page there. The bot which probably patrols new account creations then welcomed you on your talk page. -DJSasso (talk) 11:44, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Don't know if I messed up a category for discussion

I nominated a category (Igbo writers by genre) (Category:Igbo writers by genre) to be looked at for deletion, but I don't know if I followed the right protocols. I only became aware of the "Categories for Discussion" pages last week, and I worry that I've done it wrong. I've been editing Wikipedia for a long time, but I've kind of played it by ear, and most of my edits have been really simple. I just cut and pasted code to nominate the category, but I'm not sure it looks right. There seems to be some complicated code attached. As to why I nominated it, I ran across it by happenstance, but it looked weird: The Category "Igbo writers by genre" has no articles, and two subcategories, each of which has only one article in it and it's the exact same article. I also found the Category "Igbo fiction writers" which is exactly the same set-up as "Igbo writers by genre" (in fact the same two subcategories and the exact same single article as the sole entry in each subcategory). I feel the one article which is the sole entry in the four categories under these two categories could probably be classified in one of the other, more populated subcategories of "Igbo writers", such as "Igbo novelists" or "Igbo women writers". But I don't know if I did the right thing and I'm sorry if I messed this up. Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 23:42, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Native-language names in both lede and infobox?

I posted a question about this on several MOS pages but didn't get any responses, so I'm asking here too.

Many articles about foreign topics include a native-language name in the first sentence of the lede, in the infobox, or both. See, for example, Jay Chou and Zhang Yuqi. Sometimes the same information is duplicated across both places. (In my experience, biographies like the ones mentioned above often have the name stuff duplicated, whereas articles about placenames do less so—see for instance Weifang, Wuhan—since I think city infoboxes don't have parameters for that; for places with a lot of names, though, there is sometimes a dedicated box just for that, as in Ürümqi.) Most of my experience with this is in China-related articles, but I'm sure infoboxes related to other places also have this issue.

Anyway, I'm just wondering if there is a guideline about where language information should go in these cases. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:56, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I am starting to gather data for a report on dead links on BLPs, but on a wider note I am doing a general review of links on wikipedia. I checked a number of links on 2008-12-10 decided to re-run the data, its surprising to see the amount of link rot (completely dead) links that are appearing. I know our "policy" states that we should leave said links, but what if they cannot be verified and review/look-up in places like archive.org and archive it fail? should we permanently leave questionable link (and probable sources) that cannot be verified in articles or should they be removed after a period of attempted verification? Should we develop a prod like process for addressing these cases or just leave them and trust that they actually contain the information that is claimed? I know I have seen many many cases where users claim a source states something, only to find out upon verification that the users claims are wrong? ΔT The only constant 02:45, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Dead links to offline sources should be removed (that is the link removed, not the whole citation). Dead links to online sources should hopefully be findable in a web archive, but if not then should be replaced with a better citation. Fortunately, most reliable sources also exists offline. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
See WP:Linkrot (and other pages). Importantly, if the dead link to an online-only source is
  1. in a citation (not an external link),
  2. not in some archive or another, and
  3. not easily replaceable with a source that is at least as good as this one probably was (e.g., a government website should not be replaced by a personal blog, but a blog could be replaced by a government website),
then you should leave it alone. Even if it's a dead link, the URL itself provides useful information (e.g., "Gee, that rather surprising claim is only supported by a link to Blogspot..." or "Looks like this originally came from the US FDA's website, which they rearranged..."). Furthermore, "dead today" doesn't mean "will always be dead", and "I can't find an archive today" is not the same a "no archive exists".
The bottom line is that a working link is ideal, but a dead link is better than nothing at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:29, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Anyone speak Russian?

I need someone who can speak Russian to give the Russian wikipedia a message. There is an image on their servers at [2] that is a copyright violation of an image belonging to Doug Bell. It was deleted from wikipedia servers at File:Pcomo.jpg. Cheers, all! --GrapedApe (talk) 20:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

You may try the Embassy at the Russian Wikipedia. Svick (talk) 22:45, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks.--GrapedApe (talk) 22:52, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Wilco, Benighted

Hi! I can't figure a better way to word my concern. I was checking the WP for a couple of odd words I found in a paper and found that the main entries refer to "Rock Bands", which is kind of misleading. I tried to move the entries to secondary links, and in the case of Wilco some people cried foul: the articles are pretty popular among a relatively large fan base, and involuntarily I was wreaking havoc in all links pointing to that page. I reverted the edits and tried to add a disambiguation entry, but the further editings since still don't satisfy my judgement. I wonder where is the policy regarding how to write disambiguation paragraphs before the actual entry, why these misleading entries stick, and where to discuss the policies. Cheers, Lwyx (talk) 18:34, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:DISAMBIG and WP:HATNOTE may be of help. One thing to note is that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. See WP:NOTDIC. You want Wiktionary for definitions (wikt:Wiktionary:Main page). These entries are not "misleading", they are the primary uses under these names (even if the radio procedure came first). Wilco (disambiguation) is clearly marked, as is Benighted (disambiguation). Your assertion that this is just about fans wanting their bands to have pride of place is mistaken (I wouldn't know a song by either band). Fences&Windows 00:54, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Proper templates for components of an operating system?

In an article dealing with a single component of an operating system, is it proper to use a template for the operating system or operating system family, e.g., to use [[Category:IBM Mainframe computer operating systems]] in Input/Output Configuration Program?

Also, is it appropriate to use a {{helpme}} tag on a talk page to ask questions about which template to use? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Quick question, you mentioned templates but you linked a category. Are you asking about categories or templates?--131.44.121.21 (talk) 19:56, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
In my primary question I linked to Input/Output Configuration Program, but I cited [[Category:IBM Mainframe computer operating systems]], which is a category. I was giving that category as an example for the question.
In my secondary question (metaquestion) I cited a helpme template, asking whether it was appropriate to use it in a talk page when asking about categories in general. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:29, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Marking all edits as minor by default in My Preferences

I don't understand why we still have this as an option ("Mark all edits as minor by default" under "Editing") in My Preferences. Just about every time I see accounts who mark all their edits as minor it seems to be for disruptive/tendentious purposes, as it prevents those who do not track minor edits in watchlists from seeing some problem edits. Users should be checking that box manually if an edit truly is minor. Any thoughts out there? –MuZemike 22:02, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

In general, I agree, although there are circumstances in which this might be appropriate (e.g., a user who only adds interwiki links, only fixes spelling, or a bot that only corrects formatting). I suspect that it causes more problems than benefits. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:15, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Per this discussion and bugzilla:24313, the preference is supposed to have been removed already. Since it plainly hasn't, the solution is to poke the developers. Poke poke poke. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
And, of course, looking at bugzilla, one can see that the discussion has been sidetracked by things that have nothing to do with the original request. That would explain why the simple fix hasn't been implemented. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:31, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I missed the last discussion, but this feature does have its uses. For example, before I had AWB, I used it (on a temporary basis) to hurry up terribly repetitive and uncontroversial tasks like fixing up double redirects after a move. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
But is that feature really needed now? AWB has that easily set, and most bot frameworks have that option to mark all bot edits as minor. There is no more additional utility behind that feature, and it can easily be exploited by those who wish to be disruptive. –MuZemike 22:43, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
The preference is going away as soon as the developers follow through on the bug request. There was some disagreement over how best to implement our request. –xenotalk 14:25, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

An accent in Premiere.

Hello,

I recently came upon the word "premiered" in the article on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, but it had an accent over the second E resulting in "première." I thought this grave accent was unnecessary so I removed it. It was quickly reverted to its original spelling. I've seen this word in countless other articles without the accent. I know the accent alludes to the word's etymology--French, from the word première meaning first--but is the accent really necessary, or even correct given general, modern pronunciation of premiere? Many other conjugates from French no longer retain their accents (List of English words of French origin).

Tell me what you think, Wikipedians. If this is the wrong place for such a question, accept my apologies and please point me in the right direction. Thank you!

(Also, my IP address has a long-standing reputation of vandalism. This does not reflect my actions as I live in a dormitory (Dobie Center) and therefore use a public IP address. This is my first semester here.) 74.202.255.6 (talk) 22:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)Chris Rogers

It is standard in British English, and Shakespeare was almost certainly more British than American. Chambers 20th Century Dictionary uses the accent. DuncanHill (talk) 22:10, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
In British English it's pronounced prem-ee-air, while American has dropped the accent and (incorrectly :p) pronounces it pre'meer. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 11:49, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Alright, thanks guys! 128.62.138.252 (talk) 15:35, 3 September 2010 (UTC) Chris Rogers

Also, given that this is the correct form, here are a British few plays from the same period with the word premier/premiere spelt without the accent that you might enjoy correcting. To me, the most notable is Doctor Faustus, and since Marlowe was almost certainly more British than American...

Doctor Faustus, A Tale of a Tub (play), Volpone, Epicœne, or The silent woman, The Alchemist (play), The Devil is an Ass, The Magnetic Lady, The City Wit, The Northern Lass, The New Academy, A Looking Glass for London, Believe as You List, Sir John van Olden Barnavelt, The Little French Lawyer, The Sea Voyage, The Spanish Curate, The Lovers' Progress, The Honest Man's Fortune, The Faithful Shepherdess, The Island Princess, The Pilgrim (play), The Scornful Lady, Wit at Several Weapons, The Laws of Candy, and others I'm sure.

As for Shakespeare's canon, The Merry Wives of Windsor lacks an accent. It's used sans accent in The Taming of the Shrew in regards to an English actor's adaptation in the 1600s. It's even seen without the accent in Romeo and Juliet--a featured article--in the "Shakespeare's Day" section. 72.29.211.131 (talk) 16:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC) Chris Rogers

Baseco

The article at Baseco is a huge text dump from http://cosca-dlsu-cwts.wikispaces.com/Brgy+649+Zone+68+BASECO+Port+Area,+Manila. Wikispaces is Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Non-Commercial 2.5 License, which I guess means that technically this text can be here, though it needs serious cleaning up, but is the fact that there is no link back to the original location a copyright violation? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 05:50, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Plagiarism

Hello guys,

According to a rumor, it seems a book will be published soon (in French), which will contain chunks of texts clearly from Wikipedia. According to some, it will be the first time, but I have a vague memory that there was already a book published which plagiarized wikipedia, but I do not remember more than this. Anyone remembers ?

Anthere (talk)

Interesting. I know of several books which copied Wikipedia content explicitly with citations as to the source (linking back to the project) but I'm not aware of any blatant plagiarism in the form of a published book. I also know of several websites which have plagiarized content that I explicitly have written, some of them without any sort of recognition as to the source. I've also had some of my photos that I've uploaded for use on Wikipedia plagiarized as well without acknowledgment, and in fact with assertion of copyright under other terms demanded.
It wouldn't surprise me if this has happened in the past, as I've seen almost everything you can imagine in regards to copyright violations and even assertion of copyright on content that clearly was not written by the claimant or even authorized by the original actual author. What annoys me the most are those publishers who assert copyright on public domain materials... which in America is surprisingly not really illegal. Instead it it up to the person who wishes to republish public domain materials to research the copyright and note what the original content actually said, essentially ignoring copyright in that case and saying "sue me, I dare you" to those who would try to enforce such copyright. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:05, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
You are probably rememebering the case of Free: The Future of a Radical Price see this and this.©Geni 19:40, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to remind people that there exists a backward copy vio template for use on the talk page, were a WP article has been published else where without proper attribution. This template aims to prevent editors from rashly tagging valid WP content as copyvio when the situation is really the other way around.--Aspro (talk) 20:00, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Indeed Geni. That's the one I was thinking of. As for the brand new one, the journalist wrote its piece about it. You may see it here http://www.slate.fr/story/26745/wikipedia-plagiat-michel-houellebecq-carte-territoire. Very good author, I feel proud for us :) Anthere (talk)

Here you go:

Uncle G (talk) 13:14, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

How to fix disagreement between two Wikipedia articles?

I am new to this forum but use Wikipedia all the time.

There is a serious difference (error) between two articles related to the deepest canyons in the world.

Under "Colca Canyon," the article states that depth of the Colca Canyon in Peru is 4,160 m (13,648 feet),

However, under "Cotahuasi Canyon," it states that the Cotahuasi's "maximum depth is 3535 meters in the vicinity of Ninancocha, 335 meters more than the Colca Canyon." This would make the Colca Canyon only 11,062 feet deep. That is a difference in depth reporting of over 2,500 feet! Which is correct and how do we correct this?

--InsidePeru (talk) 14:14, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

What do the sources say? Which one is more reliable? –xenotalk 14:24, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
It depends who you ask... "Colca Canyon is 12074 feet (3680 meters) deep";[3] "At 11333 feet (3454 m) deep, Colca is almost twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the United States";[4] "The spring is situated in the shallower part of the Colca canyon, on of the world's deepest canyons (maximal depth of 3 269 m)";[5] "The Colca Canyon in Peru is one of the world's deepest canyons. It measures 10.509 feet (3,203 m) deep";[6] "At a depth of 10607 feet or 2 miles the Colca Canyon is twice as deep as Arizona's Grand Canyon";[7] Fences&Windows 14:42, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
This is exactly the sort of case that NPOV handles well. Since the sources disagree, our article should say something like "There is disagreement on the depth of the canyon. According to source A the depth is X. According to source B the depth is Y." Writing the article like this makes it plain to the reader that there is disagreement (and perhaps confusion) over the information and removes the need for Wikipedians to make judgements and statements that one is right and the other is wrong. -- Derek Ross | Talk 01:05, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Also a perfect example of why "verifiability, not truth" is such an important rule. Roger (talk) 20:43, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Absolutely; stuff that tiger.  Chzz  ►  17:19, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

This VP's title box: proposed changed view

In the Template:Village pump pages/sandbox is a proposed new view for this page's header box. There are demos before/after in Template:Village pump pages/testcases, and notes. Any support? -DePiep (talk) 17:16, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Help needed in cleanup

Main pages: Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Darius Dhlomo and Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Darius Dhlomo 2

Your help in the above cleanup effort would be appreciated. This is not a task that four people can take on alone. It's an order of magnitude larger than the largest of the other currently open CCI listings. Uncle G (talk) 13:28, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

discuss this

Mass blanking of ten thousand articles by a 'bot

It has been proposed that we mass blank articles using a 'bot. For details, see the discussion. Uncle G (talk) 15:01, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

discuss this

We're now at the stage where the 'bot is ready to roll, and no-one has voiced an objection. (Indeed, to the contrary: Several people want to go further, and mass delete the articles.)

If the 'bot goes ahead, this will probably light up some people's watchlists like Diwali. Be warned. Uncle G (talk) 04:33, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Help finding a page

Hi.

Some time ago, I read an essay/page that listed cases where an external article cited Wikipedia as information source, and then Wikipedia cited that article as source, causing a weird loop. ¿Someone knows where is it? I'm not really sure if it was here, or at es:wiki, or if it was at an external website.

Thanks for the help :) --Racso (talk) 15:56, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:CIRCULAR. –xenotalk 15:57, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Category:Images that should be in SVG format is way too full!

This subcategory, Images that should be in SVG format, currently has over 3500 images in it, but I don't feel like reorganizing all these ones manually. If enough Wikipedians can each clear up a particular segment at a time, the category can be cleared enough in less than a day. Any ideas? mechamind90 23:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Re-drawing images in SVG takes time and specialist skills. To do 3500 in under 24 hours would require 150 people working solidly for an hour each (assuming only 15 minutes per image). Complex images will take much longer than that. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 22:08, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
I think you meant Category:Other images that should be in SVG format? 83.81.60.233 (talk) 06:35, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

User:User

I want to redirect User:User to User:Example much like User:Username is redirected to there, in order to free confusion from new users about generic usernames and such, like pointing to user:user accidentally. I think that's why so many pages currently link there. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 04:35, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Good idea. I heartily endorse.oknazevad (talk) 05:02, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Support, seems a reasonable decision. Not sure if previous uses are an issue. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:55, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Done. --KFP (contact | edits) 00:02, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Missing humor line

I think that Wikipedia needs an essay (or a sentence in an existing essay), along the lines of WP:YOULOSE, to encourage sore losers to dispute meta-issues at RFCs, e.g., whether a straw poll should be invalidated because the losers are losing. ("It's absolutely impossible for three-quarters of the community to disagree with a person as reasonable as me, so the fact that I'm 'losing' clearly proves the poll is biased!")

But it seems to me that such a thing must surely exist. Does anyone know where it is? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

If one in four people disagree, that's a pretty significant amount of disagreement that should not be ignored. If there really is bias (which there almost always is to one degree or another) then it could be even more than that. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:51, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
We need a complementary essay WP:GOODDAYSIR. –MuZemike 01:43, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Maybe, and maybe not: Three-quarters on one side is considered a strong showing for some purposes. For example, WP:Requests for comment/Rorschach Test (2010) is running about three-quarters in favor of providing detailed information, and one-quarter in favor of suppressing information (for the readers' own good). I have no doubts about the outcome, and—given that this is merely the latest round of a multi-year dispute, powered by a single editor who has 'lost' every single round so far—I'm thinking that "ignore" may well be the right response. ("Ignore" is certainly a more friendly response than "community ban", which others are advocating for.)
Similarly, if three-quarters of respondents at an AfD make the same recommendation, the discussion will almost always result in that outcome. Closing admins basically never say, "Well, two out of eight people favored X, and the other six all favored Y, so I have no clue what the community wants here..."
Need another example? Three-quarters support at RFA is normally a successful application. What you characterize as a "pretty significant amount of disagreement" is, in fact, routinely ignored at RFA. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Actual numbers are more important that ratios anyway. If 1000 people !vote 4:1 then the "loosers" are a much more significant group than if there were only 4 people involved. (The RfC you linked is (ignoring SPAs) about 6:1.) OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:27, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Along these lines are Wikipedia:The Last Word, Wikipedia:The Most Important Thing Possible, meta:Megalomaniacal point of view, meta:How to win an argument. Fences&Windows 22:13, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

The new judge, Ceoil, will soon announce the winners of the awards for August, July and May 2010, and at the end of this month will announce the winner for September.

He has agreed that we might then change the focus of the competition from individual wikilinks and small groups of wikilinks to whole articles that are badly overlinked. Inevitably, those valuable editors who perform gnoming services are confronted with overlinking throughout whole articles (particularly of "dictionary" items). In almost all cases, this has arisen earlier in WP's history, when there was no coherent strategy for maximising the utility of the wikilinking system. It's a lot of work to clean it up, and the Silliwilli awards was set up to encourage this work.

Therefore, we have decided that from October 2010 onwards the awards should be judged in terms of whole articles. Competitors will still be asked to list individual links (but expanded to six of the funniest, most useless, most inexplicable individual links in the article, as an example of the entry); however, the removal of overlinking from the whole article will be the sole determinant in the award.

All users are welcome to compete. Tony (talk) 04:11, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Can we also have "Silliest delinking of the month", for balance? Fences&Windows 21:56, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Are you volunteering to make it happen? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Is the award really titled, "Silliwilli," rather than "Silliwiki?" Or is the choice intentional double-entendre? Samohtar (talk) 00:38, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
No, I'm just being sarcastic about the delinking crusaders. Fences&Windows 17:26, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Roman to devanagari numbers

Could anyone create a template that if we put roman number then it results devanagari number?

Like this:- {{Devanagari|12345}}
Result: १२३४५


{{Devanagari|5321}}
result: ५३२१ -- Nepab☺y  (talk) 08:21, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

You can file a request at "Wikipedia:Requested templates". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 14:15, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Done. Svick (talk) 14:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

translation

please, help me to translate this inscription http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Biserica_Sf._Constantin_si_Elena_din_Gura_Humorului8.jpg. It's in armenian. Anybody knows armenian? 79.112.27.201 (talk) 13:38, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Google Translate thinks it is Romanian, and here is the machine translation, [8] ~~ GB fan ~~ 14:16, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Possibly the OP meant the inscription in the picture itself. Anyway this seems like a case for Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language, they do a good job at answering those sorts of questions there. --Saddhiyama (talk) 14:19, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Looking for an Essay that tells editiors not to take WP too personally

I'm in a situation where an editor is regarding my reverts and changes to his/her edits as a personal attack. He/she is clearly sincere but has a poor grasp of "Wiki-fu". I once read an essay about exactly this issue warning editors not to get upset if/when their "blood, sweat and toil" gets tossed in the trash by other editors mere minutes after they click the "Save" button. I'd like to be able to point the editor concerned to that essay but I can't remember where/how I found it. Roger (talk) 14:35, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

You could start looking at WP:OWN and WP:DGAF. Hans Adler 14:49, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! DGAF is exactly what I'm looking for. Roger (talk) 15:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Fundraising 2010

Hello! My name is James Alexander and I'm working with the Wikimedia Foundation during the 2010 Fundraiser. Part of my job is reaching out to local communities, including here on English. This year we want to be as community-driven as possible (remember this?) and are looking for input not only with translating messages but also with pointing out messages that won't work well in your country, region or language (or at all) and proposing messages that you think would be work better.

With improvements to the Central Notice system we have a lot of flexibility in targeting specific geographical regions, languages and projects and we hope to use every tool at our disposal to make this year a success. As you may have already noticed over the past couple weeks we are running hour long banner tests (currently every Thursday at around 2200 UTC). These tests and the comments that we get on the meta page (see below) are a big part of how we are choosing which banners to run this year. If it doesn't test well it won't be used and even if we dislike a banner if the community likes it we are very likely to test it out (and could easily be proven wrong).

You can see some of the current suggestions (and propose your own) on the Meta messaging page but I also want to encourage the community to discuss here (if we need to create a separate page for discussion we can). Myself and other staff members will be keeping an eye out to answer questions publicly and we are always available if you want to reach out privately as well.

I look forward to seeing more of you on here and on Meta (if you want to really get involved join us on IRC or join the Committee!) Jalexander (talk) 16:15, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Rename AIV

See here. Aiken (talk) 16:16, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

"Authority control"?

What does "Authority control" mean at the bottom of Hermann Schussler? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 22:27, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Basicaly it's a link to a form of library cataloguing see Template:Normdaten.©Geni 01:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
See Authority control - who'd have guessed that we have an article about it. :) Roger (talk) 12:24, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I already read the article, thanks for assuming good faith. I still don't understand its purpose. When I go to the link, it doesn't give me any information that isn't already in the article. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 17:57, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Indeed, EP, an incomprehensible box. Since the number leads to an external page, shouldn't it just be in "External links"? Or maybe a reference. And why the boxed layout at all? Just inline text & links could do the job. -DePiep (talk) 18:36, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree, I clicked on it and it took me to some content I couldn't understand. --Cameron Scott (talk) 18:40, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
A mystery wrapped in an enigma. It's outside of any of my fields of expertise/knowlege/experience so I really can't be of any further assistance, sorry. Roger (talk) 18:57, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
It's clear then that we should invert the phase coils and that should enable a static warp field to form. (no I have no idea either). --Cameron Scott (talk) 18:59, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Basically, it's a unique identifier, originally developed for library cataloguing purposes, to tie "seperate" authors together. It says that this Hermann Schussler is reference VIAF 1941166, and that - hypothetically - if you have a record for a "Schussler, H" who wrote cheap romance novels but with the same reference attached, they're known to be the same person. Not desperately much use in this case, but you can see the benefits for the John Smiths of the world, or people who use a lot of pseudonyms; it's a way of linking authors (and theoretically anyone) without having to rely on their name being unique, or on it always being presented the same way.
A good comparison might be musical opus numbers (a standard number for a specific work by a composer, but it's not something that I can think of a desperately common example for right now. (ISBNs don't work - they're duplicated, so there's not a 1:1 code:work matchup). I suppose something like an ID card number or SSN to identify someone (assuming, for a second, the system isn't being corrupted) - this code uniquely identifies that person, even if they change their surname on marriage, or insist on being called "X. Mysterioso" at all times.
As to why this is in a Wikipedia article... good question. It definitely is a piece of useful, verifiable, and beneficial information; potentially, it allows for all sorts of interesting semi-automated ways of reusing the content and linking it to other resources, such as deeplinking into Open Library records. (Imagine an easy "hit here to see all this person's published work"). From a day-to-day standpoint, though, it's not immediately useful; perhaps the talkpage, or a hidden template like Wikipedia:Persondata would be the way to go. Shimgray | talk | 20:58, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Lutetium(III) oxide

Something's messed up with the code (the image and some strange text is directly above the article's text rather than in the infobox), but I don't know how to fix it. --71.153.45.75 (talk) 21:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

It's a bug introduced in an August edit to Template:Chembox, but apparently the scenario is rare enough (most chembox images are hosted on Commons and aren't affected) that it has never been caught previously. Should be fixed now. T. Canens (talk) 00:23, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Humour ?

Found this on the "Bistro" on Wikipedia in French : [9], "Au sujet d'un jeu d'échec à New-York et d'un roi qui se fait prendre deux tours par un fou", talking about Chess, one side taken two rooks by a bishop. Is that humour ? Globule99 (talk) 21:20, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

And if it isn't about chess it would mean something quite different: un roi qui se fait prendre deux tours par un fou. Language questions are best addressed to the reference desk. Angus McLellan (Talk) 12:09, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
On a different note, they have quite nice CSS for discussion threads. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 11:40, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Fair-use images of the Holocaust

There's a discussion going on here at files for deletion about the extent to which fair use can reasonably be claimed for images of the Holocaust. J Milburn began it as a discussion about just one image, but the same issues apply to most of the others we use. The discussion has taken a disturbing turn, with Rama claiming that the fair-use polices are somehow similar to Arbeit macht frei, and that some people just loathe working [10] (whatever that means).

Very few have joined in the discussion, so some fresh eyes would be greatly appreciated. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 12:29, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

If this is your perception of the discussion, you might take a break and read it all over tomorrow. From your post #1, two days ago, you have won the Godwin of the thread. In about every post you kept returning to the "Holocaust pics take special treatment", while your opponent keeps inviting you to talk about 'non-free content'. Also, a day off could release you from the chosen oversensitive crying for the quote you put here. Stop the drama. -DePiep (talk) 13:12, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
This is not the appropriate place for this request... I'm going to add a request for eyes in a more appropriate place. J Milburn (talk) 13:46, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Category:The Holocaust in Commons is very well populated of free images. 123 images and 46 subcategories. It's unlikely that a fair use image about the topic won't have a free equivalent somewhere in there to serve the same need MBelgrano (talk) 01:46, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Icon for a lightbulb

Resolved

Hiya all. How could I find the File for a yellow lightbulb? You know, like in the wp:TOTD box, or here Wikipedia:Village_pump, - the big yellow one above "Proposals"?

As well as giving me the direct answer, could you also please advise me how I might have found it myself? I've tried searching on WP and Commons, to no avail. What search method would have worked?

Many thanks, Trafford09 (talk) 13:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Question answered here. Trafford09 (talk) 14:58, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Hundreds of historical Egypt images now available on Commons

There are now hundreds of historical images of Egypt on Commons from the Travelers in the Middle East Archive archive.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 09:38, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Getting an article assessed

I may have missed the obvious, but is there a way to invite an article to be assessed. I was looking at my contributions and there are a lot that need to be processed. --ClemRutter (talk) 17:07, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

You can request a peer review of the article. Just follow the instructions on the link I just provided. –MuZemike 01:36, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

List of essays about values/principles

I've started a list of essays about the community's values and principles at WP:Principles. There are more than a thousand essays out there, so if your favorite isn't on the list yet (assuming that it's about one or more values or principles), then please feel free to add it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi,

Merlino's "Hackers History" page copied content from Timeline of computer security hacker history without referring to Wikipedia.

As I'm not a native English speaker, I won't do the procedure by myself and couldn't find the exact place to report this.

At the beginning, I was trying to find out why there is a sentence containing “…that allowed us to share our current hacks…”. Because of this, the entry looks like a text stolen from the involved hackers group.

Thank you for your attention,
Lacrymocéphale 17:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

This version of the article is an obvious incremental ancestor of the current list, dated December 2006. The external page seems to date to 2008 at the earliest; ergo, it was copied from us. Nonetheless, with such a large list it's possible that someone has simply copied text from elsewhere; if you see some text that you think is a problem, or that has the wrong tone for an encyclopedia (like "our current hacks"), please do feel free to change it. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:56, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_polytope - "Cross polytopes (orthoplexes)"

In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_polytope, in the section "Cross polytopes (orthoplexes)", the zero-dimensional case is called a "point". Shouldn't it be a "nullitope", or something of the sort - since a point has one vertex, which violates the "2n" rule given at the end of the section ?

The main article "Orthoplex" doesn't even cover the zero-dimensional case !

N.B. I'm not an expert, I was browsing here out of idle curiosity. And I've never contributed to WP before. DAC 18-Oct-2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.29.202 (talk) 19:56, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

The place to ask this would be Talk:Regular polytope. However, it does say that the construction starts with a point. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Anonymous User Protection Squad

"This is a squad, and it functions very much like one. It is intimate, united, cooperative, disciplined, dedicated, energetic, and effective; and it is so only because its members believe in its tenets and practices." See meta:Anonymous User Protection Squad (AUPS). LOL. Fences&Windows 23:42, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Long-term page view statistics

Does anyone know about a way to find the list of the top 100 most viewed WP articles over a period of time longer than a month, e.g. a year or two? A. di M. (talk) 09:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Random logouts

I got randomly logged out twice in the past two minutes. Any idea what would cause that? One logout came when I was trying to use HotCat on the article Bob Clarke. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Otters want attention) 22:49, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

How to deal with bullies

Hi. I've logged out so I can ask this question with more freedom. Hope this is the right forum.

When editing alongside an aggressive editor (meaning a little bit rude and mean, blustery, full of hubris, however you want to call it) and that person, obviously a HE, keeps veering into discussions about me as an editor, of course, as opposed to the issues at hand as far as work I'm trying to perform on the article (the editor's basically hanging out there to second guess me more than to contribute original material himself, of course)...what's the best for a person in my situation to take? What I mean is-- Well, the person DOESN'T really talk about issues so much on the talkpage. He only comes on to taunt, but there is always at least a modicum of his taunts having a frame of reference of his being a master Wikipedian. (Not that the person is always right, of course, because quite often his hunger to find mis-steps leads him into assuming things to be eggregious faults in my editing that turn out to be, actually, correct edits on my part). Sorry that this is so rambly but, other than any hoped-for catharsis resulting form simply getting this kind of stuff off my chest, there would also be--and IS--my need to figure out how to act in this situation vis-a-vis this emm gentlemanly colleague.

The thing is, the article talkpage is to discuss the article, in my opinion, not so much to parry and thrust with regard to fellow editors in this fashion. Of this I am absolutely sure. Yet, I cannot possibly discuss things on the editor's talkpage either, of course: it being his PRIVATE DOMAIN not to be sullied by a mere rube and peon such as myself (apparently, from the vantage of this fellow's point of view). Right? Further, I'm not going to start some kind of complaint against the guy. His behavior, truth be told, isn't actually completely over the top. It's just consistenly hyper-aggressive slash hyper-hostile slash hyper-arragant slash hyper rude. But (and this is hard to explain...) it doesn't go so far as his using swear words, his engaging in obviously forbidden behaviors, etc...... It is just, put succinctly, Internet "trolling" / Wikipedia-flavored "flam warring" of me constantly and less than subtly.

So, What does one do in this situation? Any thoughts, advice, info about "push-comes-to-shove" institutional procedures, etc., would be welcome. Thank you for your time, those who make it so far as to read to the bottom of this.

(Oh, and--by the way: I'm not saying I'm the perfect or the model Wikipedian either. But I do try to maintain conduct conducive to collaborative work on the encyclopedia and do my very best to maintain a pretty high standard of editing work, at least in my not-so-humble opinion. Again, thanks to anyone/all who might respond to this question. Sincerely.)--71.187.173.34 (talk) 01:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I can sympathise. It's happened to me too from time to time (and no doubt to many, many others). So what can I advise? Well, the talk page is there to discuss improving the article. That does include improving the editing environment for the article. So if someone is making it difficult for others to edit an article then that can certainly be brought up on the article's talk page. Reference can be made to Wikipedia:Etiquette which covers the sort of problems that you are experiencing. If that doesn't work, you can choose between two paths. The confrontational one, which I'll come back to in a minute and the non-confrontational one.
Which is to switch to another article. There are many nooks and crannies within Wikipedia which are little frequented. Most of them could do with some loving care and attention. For instance when I just want some nice quiet editing with no aggravation, I head to eighteenth or nineteenth century pop culture articles. This is a neglected area with a lot of interesting topics. And you can really make a mark because the articles tend to be underdeveloped and few others are likely to be editing there. Now you may not be interested in the 18th/19th century but I have no doubt that there is some other area which is interesting to you but not to most people. And that's where you should "hide".
But sometimes "hiding" doesn't work. If the "aggressive editor" follows you around where-ever you edit, then you may have a Wiki-stalker. In that case you should take the confrontational route (even though you don't really want to) and escalate. The simplest way to do this is to start a Wikipedia:Requests for comment on the aggressive editor's behaviour. If you look at the RFC page you will see that there are various levels including one for rude editors who are ignoring wiki-etiquette. Read through to find out what can be done.
Anyway, good luck. Whatever you decide to do, I hope things get better. Oh and ignore the master Wikipedian nonsense. We're all experts in some areas and dunces in others. I've been editing Wikipedia since 2001 and I'm still not a master. If I'm not, I doubt that he is. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:03, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
The best thing to do is remain polite. Be penetratingly logical. Be aware that multitudes of other people are watching (whether they are or not), and recall what you obviously know—that there is an element of idealism inherent in the project itself. The activities of individual editors need not succumb to anything less than the idealism that they bring to the project. Translation: be the best you can: in so doing, you will force others to rise to your level (of idealism). Bus stop (talk) 04:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
No, it is not true that she is obviously a HE and I'm wondering what your obvious gender bias is causing you to leave out of the background. Males have no monopoly on bullying, and some studies suggest that female bullies are nastier than male bullies.
If you're not willing to use the wikipedia dispute resolution mechanisms then there's not much that you can do, except perhaps to take a step back and ask whether what you perceived was really what was happening. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 09:41, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
That's a tiny bit bite-y, but I have the same basic concern about the initial question. It's good that you're self-aware enough to admit that you might not be "the perfect or the model Wikipedian" (no such thing!), but your characterizations of your fellow editor seem a bit over the top. If they're truly as bad as you say (I didn't see any charges of "eats babies", but that's where it seemed to be heading...), you may also want to check that editor's contributions to see if there are other people facing the same problem and who might be willing to help out with an RFC/U. If, on the other hand, it seems like you are the only "target" and this editor is otherwise an agreeable person, you may want to double-check your own contributions and make sure that (for example) your innocent actions could be misinterpreted. For example, your question could easily be read as a "personal attack" itself (see WP:NPA, etc.). Matt Deres (talk) 20:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Template for a translated article?

I've seen a template for talk pages that indicates that the article was translated from a Wikipedia in another language. I can't find that template, though, and can't even find the article I first noticed it on. Where is it? I need to apply it to the article Georg Schäfer. — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 20:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

{{Translated page}}. – ukexpat (talk) 20:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I should be able to remember that. — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 20:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Sporcle quiz

Since Facebook was down, I made a quick Sporcle quiz for Wikipedians: an A-Z look at commonly-invoked policies, guidelines and essays. And whatever I could find that began with Z :) Of course, it rather highlights how important knowing all the references has become, and how there is some merit in a thorough knowledge of them all. But on the other hand, it is just a bit of WP-themed fun for those who enjoy that sort of thing... Regards, - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 21:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

thanks! I got 10 correct. AGradman / talk / how this article and talk looked when I made this edit 22:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Cool signature - give it a shot

I've inserted the following code into my signature line:

how the {{subst:freeze|{{SUBST:SUBJECTPAGENAME}}|article}} & {{subst:freeze|{{SUBST:TALKPAGENAME}}|talk}} looked when I made this edit

I thought you might want to try it out. It allows people to see what the article and the talk page looked like when you viewed it, which could be very helpful. See:

AGradman / talk / how the article and talk looked when I made this edit 04:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I understand it reads "before and after", which is nice indeed. -DePiep (talk) 17:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Hm, signatures aren't supposed to have templates in them, see WP:SIG#NT. Of course, if you expand the templates then you break the length limit. –xenotalk 17:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, I was wondering about that. It only uses a substitution template, which becomes a fullurl magic word. I was hoping that it sidesteps the concerns at WP:SIG#NT. If not, maybe there's a way to rewrite the template so it substitutes down to a raw url. AGradman / talk / how this article and talk looked when I made this edit 20:15, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
A very literal read of the guideline seems to permit it. However, as it stands, with longer page names you will be violating the 255 character length limit (sig immediately above is 279 chars). –xenotalk 20:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
The fullurl: magic word is a parser function, and thus would seem to be prohibited anyway. T. Canens (talk) 05:49, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Character Sketches

There is a multi-volume set called Character sketches of romance, fiction and the drama that contains hundreds of high quality black and white sketches. The volumes, which were published in 1892, and 1902 appear to have been largely unused on Wikipedia. I was wondering if anyone is interested (or if its a worthwhile effort) to extract the images and put them in appropriate articles.

Smallman12q (talk) 00:22, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Unnecessary redirect articles

Why on earth is there so many of these seemingly useless articles that keep popping up because users think they are being constructive creating them when really they are utterly pointless? For example, when visitors use the Wikipedia search box and type in "kyle wellwood" it naturally takes them to the rightful article of Kyle Wellwood. Whereas, when people search "heath ledger" it takes them to a pointless article that redirects them to Heath Ledger, when Wikipedia's built-in search box script automatically does just that, without the stupid "Redirected from Heath ledger" subtext underneath the article's header. So what I don't understand is, why do we have these unnecessary capitalization-redirect articles in the first place? — Hucz (talk · contribs) 02:29, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Because we can then link to heath ledger, but we can't to kyle wellwood. Our search function is not the only reason we have redirects. Shimgray | talk | 02:37, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
I understand where you're coming from, but redirecting shouldn't be a way to correct people's grammatical errors in cases where the article is about a person. I don't know, maybe it's just me… — Hucz (talk · contribs) 03:00, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
It's a flexibility of the software. The Book goes to a different place than The book -- there's plenty of article pairs that different caps are different subjects. So to compensate, the redirects are needed, as many people will simply not realize correct caps are needed for searching. It's not a "grammatical error", it's understandable ignorance, and it really doesn't hurt anything. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:10, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Redirects are cheap. Non-disruptive and plausible redirects are generally ok. Plausible is fairly liberally defined, at least in common practice. --Jayron32 05:00, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Also see WP:RFD#KEEP, which contains the above sentiment in point #5. --05:02, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Today's DYK includes a lovely article on the Cyclops class monitor series of vessels. Now, all the traits of the monitor series were "inherited" by the ships in the series. And some of our articles on those ships reflect this: Content from the Cyclops class monitor article appears -- virtually verbatim -- in HMS Cyclops (1871), HMS Hydra (1871).

Is this redundancy a good thing? Part of me says yes: It is good for our articles to be "self-sufficient", so that readers are not forced to read other articles for a full exposition of the topic.

But part of me says no, because (1) if improvements are made to any of these articles, they must be made to all the others, (2) if this kind of redundancy grows unchecked, some individual articles might swell to unmanageable sizes, whereas one of the whole purposes of having wikilinks is to keep the size of individual articles manageable. (Apparently, I wrote more about this a few months ago but didn't get many responses.)

What do you think?

AGradman / underlying article as I saw it / talk 03:35, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Theoretically, WP:SUMMARY comes into play here. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:07, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, my main concern isn't those article in particular. I am worried that Wikipedia will not be able to handle the problem of redundancy -- articles are going to get redundant, WP:SUMMARY style will not solve the problem, and the encyclopedia is going to get bloated and confused. In my opinion, this is already happening. Do you think the "Wikipedia model" is equipped to find a solution to that? There are a lot of things we're bad at, and I think writing long articles is one of them. AGradman / underlying article as I saw it / talk 07:10, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
We need several statements on this, some of which may be there already as pointed out. One is careful forking. Another could be text templates for short material. I tried this once with local legislators. Someone came through and carefully replaced all 20 or so template invocations, with the text itself which completely destroyed the concept of maintenance in one place! So this latter practice needs a policy statement, if editor support is forthcoming.
But the original suggestion of "maintenance in one place" is excellent. That may need support in a policy as well. A summary and a fork, unfortunately seems to cause problems. New material gets placed in the supposed "summary" and omitted from the "fork!" In the worst cases, the summary becomes longer than the fork, which becomes neglected. Note that there are multiple summaries which will now differ substantially. Student7 (talk) 22:31, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
There is already mention about this in a guideline and it says the opposite: “Templates should not masquerade as article content in the main article namespace; instead, place the text directly into the article.” Svick (talk) 22:43, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Update on Audit Subcommittee

The Audit Subcommittee is a subcommittee of the Arbitration Committee, tasked to review and act upon concerns and complaints about checkuser and oversight activities received from the community. Membership consists of three community representatives elected by the community, who serve one-year terms; and three arbitrators, who rotate through this assignment for approximately six months.

In advance of the scheduled election/appointment of community representatives to the Audit Subcommittee, a summary of activity has been posted on the subcommittee's report page.

The community is invited to discuss this report, as well as preferred methods and terms for the selection of community representatives to participate in the audit process. The result of the discussion will inform the Arbitration Committee on how best to proceed before progressing to another election cycle.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Risker (talk) Cross-posted by NW (Talk) 20:42, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Discuss this
Are you in possession of a full deck of cards?--Aspro (talk) 21:19, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Disclosing my real-world identity

I am contemplating disclosing my real-world identity and would like to get some input from others who have done this before, who have always identified themselves, or who know me here on Wikipedia. Is there a good way to do that - for example, an RFC/U on myself limited to that particular question? Is this a good forum? Are there essays on the subject? For what it's worth, after doing so I would likely seek to avoid any further confrontation with editors, and avoid overly controversial subjects. I'm nobody particularly famous, but outside of Wikipedia I am quite open about who I am and I'm not particularly concerned about loss of privacy. Thanks for any suggestions, - Wikidemon (talk) 02:48, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I've never had a problem with it...I disclose only my first name, but that combined with other userboxes and my most edited articles could easily allow someone who was really serious in their pursuits to find me. Then again, I mostly stay out of contentious areas, so I doubt that anyone has tried. Ks0stm (T•C•G) 02:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:How to not get outed on Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Wikipedia is anonymous for some information.
If you decide to disclose your real-world identity, then just put the information on your user page. A "big announcement" is unnecessary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
For myself, I've been using my "real world identity" since I first have been involved with Wikimedia projects. With just a few minor exceptions, almost all of my wiki editing uses this name. On the positive side, I've had people call me up on the telephone and have had other kinds of contact with other editors based upon some basic information I've provided on my user talk pages. The only time this has happened is due to some very complex collaboration that really did need a direct phone call where e-mails, IRC, and notes on user talk pages were insufficient to complete the task at hand. I won't bore you with the details. I do this explicitly to assert formal copyright on all of my contributions so there is no ambiguity over any of the content I've written. I don't insist that everybody do this, and I do stay away from certain kinds of content on this project as a result. I'll confess that I use a sock puppet account on that other stuff if I really feel like I need to get involved... which is very rare. I never use the alternate account for anything other than stuff of that nature and certainly never for discussions.
Many other wikis (MediaWiki wikis) explicitly have a couple of fields that keep track of the "real name" in the preferences area, but for some reason Wikipedia doesn't. I'm not going to go into the politics on that, but that would seem like the most logical way to hand this information, even more so than on the main user page for your account. Still, don't make a big deal about it. Certainly the edit you have done which puts that information on your user page can be verified that you put it on there and not some troll. --Robert Horning (talk) 04:25, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Encyclopedia needed

A group I am in supports three schools in the boonies in Haiti. They have no electricity and no internet. They do have computers (!) powered by solar panels. Would it be possible for them to get several hardcopies, in French and in Simple English, of Wikipedia which is apparently released periodically for use? (I assume there is a general policy regarding this, but couldn't begin to find it). Student7 (talk) 13:35, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

The general policy regarding this is at Wikipedia:Database download. That page contains some information about offline Wikipedia readers and old static HTML dumps. Graham87 10:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Input on ways to improve feedback response

When a new editor to Wikipedia creates their first article, and asks for feedback at WP:FEED, the feedback they get is often the first real interaction they have with the Wikipedia community. Unfortunately, in many cases, the feedback they get is nonexistent. A troubling percentage of requests never get a single response. That cannot possibly create a positive reaction, and may be a turn-off to potential new editors. The problem, in short, is a shortage of Wikipedians willing to provide feedback to the many requests coming in every day.

Obviously, I would like it if some reading this were to help out at the page on occasion, but I'm posting this to note that there is a discussion here on the general issue. Anyone with useful thoughts, or just willing to pitch in is invited to comment.--SPhilbrickT 14:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Support OpenStreetMap!

If you love OpenStreetMap, support me on this page. --TarzanASG (talk) 17:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

In Science We Trust

I came across this article in Scientific American. Unfortunately they didn't include Wikipedia in the poll, but I wondered what we would have scored? I suspect not as high as scientists but more than friends & family and thereby more than journalists. —Ruud 19:23, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Large category of single use templates

I've just come across Category:Periodic table infobox templates, and a spot check shows that all of these templates are used just once in mainspace. I've checked 15 of these, and not found one that's transcluded more than once. Is this really necessary? I realize it adds a convenience factor in editing articles on a particular element in not adding dozens of lines at the top of each one, but really...how often are periodic element articles going to change anyway? This seems like very needless use of template space. Thoughts? --Hammersoft (talk) 20:30, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, with a small modification separate templates for infoboxes can become quite useful: the data become independently retrievable:
  • {{User:Patrick/Template:Infobox helium|User:Patrick/pstp|p=symbol}} → He
  • {{User:Patrick/Template:Infobox helium|User:Patrick/pstp|p=thermal conductivity}} → 0.1513
etc.
Patrick (talk) 23:05, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
There is no reaction yet at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements#Making the data in the infoboxes independently retrievable. I am just saying that it is potentially useful. It can make it easier to create an overview of selected data from infobox templates of various elements.--Patrick (talk) 13:11, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Single use templates rarely survive WP:TFD. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:46, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
reply: Vandalism monitoring. Unlike the main body on articles, the templates rarely need updates, and essentially most of the IP edits are reverted. Without a separate page, the extremely tedious infobox on oxygen would be really hard to keep an eye on. Nergaal (talk) 16:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2008_January_12#Template:Uuo_infobox. Nergaal (talk) 16:40, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Also, Patrick's suggestion is a good one, and it was made on the project talkpage only a week ago. Nergaal (talk) 16:42, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Relevant: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Elements/Archive_10#Template:Infobox<element>_-_why_do_these_exist. Apparently done to reduce vandalism and make the articles easier to edit. --Cybercobra (talk) 16:46, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I think there should be a cut-off where a single-use infobox template becomes more practical than trying to maintain a large infobox within the article. How about 2 Kb?—RJH (talk) 18:04, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Another book seller profiteering?

We received an e-mail at OTRS (Ticket:2010092910008895, for those who have access to that queue) to inform of us of yet another publisher ("International Country Guides") who may be bundling Wikipedia content and selling it without letting buyers know what they're getting. See [11]. He indicates that the publisher may actually be Filiquarian Publishing LLC (the article of which has been deleted on Wikipedia.) If so, we knew about the publisher repackaging Wikipedia in book form, but not necessarily about the imprint. I have not seen any of their books myself, but I wanted to give a heads up and, frankly, had no idea where else to put it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

And another

I just came to post a similar request, this time for information on this book. It's entirely a synthesis of Wikipedia articles from 2009, that much is for sure. But is there any attribution anywhere? I can't find any, but I'm on a tiny netbook and can't efficiently check it all. If there isn't, obviously copyright holders ought to be tracked down. Thanks for any help, - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 20:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

There's no attribution to Wikipedia or its editors anywhere in the book, nor any mention of the proper licensing, as I've just verified. Furthermore, the copyright holder is listed as Global India Publications, and the author is listed as K P Gupta, without any further elaboration. Unlike some of the other "Shredded Wikipedia" packagers, this publisher is not in compliance with the license. — Gavia immer (talk) 01:10, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Maybe someone should contact Amazon about this issue so that they can at least identify the sources correctly. It's really kind of fraudulent for them to sell copies of Wikipedia material without identifying it as such.   Will Beback  talk  09:32, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
"Someone" would have to be one of the copyright holders in the material; e.g., someone who made a substantial contribution to the material actually reprinted in the book. — Gavia immer (talk) 14:35, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
To avoid those articles suffering mass deletions in the future due to any new editors taking them as being copyright violations, we have some templates to go on the top of the talk page advising that a reverse copyvio situation exists. See:Template:Backwardscopyvio--Aspro (talk) 15:31, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

The Tudors Music, season 2, episode 2

I am currently watching The Tudors. In Season 2, Episode 2, I want to report that the music being played during Henry and Anne's visit to France is not original music; it is Eastern European folk music ( possibly Bulgarian or Greek) that is being played while Anne dances, masked, in front of Francois and Henry at the feast. I cannot remember the name of the tune, but Balkan folk dancers would know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.124.115.176 (talk) 23:26, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

US Census 2010

The United States Census Bureau will soon begin releasing the results of the 2010 census. The results will dribble out over the next couple of years, the bulk coming between February and August 2011.[12][13] Thousands of Wikipedia articles had the 2000 census results added by bot. However that material has been changed, moved or deleted in the meantime so it will not be trivial for a bot to come through and change the old data. There was a brief discussion of planning for this big data dump last year. See Wikipedia:2010 US Census and its talk page. However nothing seems to have been done since then. Perhaps it's getting to be time to start thinking about it again.   Will Beback  talk  09:29, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia political system questions

What are the various governing bodies (ex. arbcom), processes (AfD) and other offices of the Wikimedia projects, particularly Wikipedia? Where are they relative to one another?

Also, does Jimbo Wales run the entire Wikimedia project or just Wikipedia? If just Wikipedia, who runs the entire Wikimedia project? Icanhasaccount has an account 21:26, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Dang, just realized I should have posted this at the Help Desk. Icanhasaccount has an account 21:28, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I heard there is a pretty good online encyclopedia that could have few articles about that topic. See Wikipedia, Wikipedia:About, Wikimedia Foundation and possibly Jimmy Wales. Svick (talk) 23:12, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I guess that's helpful. Seems like the only "official" governing comittee present on WP is the arbcom. I still don't know much about the noticeboards, processes, and "unofficial" bodies such as medcab and wikiproject council however. Is there just a straight list somewhere? Icanhasaccount has an account 00:11, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit that works to support Wikipedia and the other projects. The Foundation is governed by a Board of Trustees, and details of the makeup of that Board can be found at the Foundation wiki. Various wikis determine their own governance. Jimmy Wales is considered to have a traditional role within the English Wikipedia. His role on other projects and languages is dependent upon that local community. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 03:17, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
It should be noted that for various internal and external reasons, Jimbo has pretty much given up any special status, in all but name, here at Wikipedia. I think he still officially gives his blessing to ArbCom elections, but that's mainly symbolic. He takes a great interest in Wikipedia, but has not taken any active role in "exercising" any special status beyond that of a regular, experienced editor for quite a while now. He retains the "founder" userright, so technically he could exercise any number of rights that go along with that. He has publicly stated, however, that he has no intention of exercising any special rights for the forseeable future. Every once in a while, a movement starts up at en.wikipedia to strip Jimbo of all of his "special" statuses, even those which are only symbolic, however these usually peter out as "He hasn't done anything wrong, so there's no need to change the status quo". --Jayron32 03:54, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Beat Jimmy

The Fundraising Committee is issuing all interested community members a challenge: we want you to beat Jimmy. The appeal from Jimmy Wales and the corresponding banner have been tested head-to-head with other successful banners, and the results are clear: it's our best performing message... by a lot. This year we have a lofty fundraising goal; we need all of our banners to bring in donations like the Jimmy Appeal, but no one wants to keep the Jimmy banner up for two months. We want to run donor quotes, and other wonderful ideas, but we have to have banners that work as well as or better than the Jimmy appeal.

We've just released the highlights from a donor focus group, and the results of our donor survey. With one month to the launch of the fundraiser, the messages we test must be driven by data from our tests and surveys - we can no longer rely on instinct alone.

We've redesigned our fundraising meta pages with the Jimmy challenge; check out the survey results and propose/discuss banners that reflect these findings. Add the banners you think will 'beat Jimmy' here to be tested Tuesday October 12 against Jimmy. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 03:14, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Looking for a pattern matching tool

I was wondering if there is a tool that could look for articles that are about the same specific astronomical object. What I had in mind is a tool that would:

  1. Recursively search down a category tree to a specified depth.
  2. Look in the article content for strings that match a specified regular expression.
  3. Create a table of paired articles where the matched string patterns are identical. (Or else just build a list of pattern/article matches sorted by pattern.)

The idea would be that astronomical object articles tend to include a list of alternative identifiers. We could use the regular expression to look for those patterns, then the tool can list the possible matches for us to check.

I'm not sure if there are other potential uses for this. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 18:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

AWB does 1 and 2. You could probably write an extension (or use the same framework (or just write the whole lot from scratch in Perl)) to do 3. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:02, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
Thank you.—RJH (talk) 19:23, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Page for questions about English?

Is there a page on WP where non-native editors can get assistance with the English language? Like asking what is the correct expression for something or questions about the grammar. I sometimes need to ask such questions when writing articles. Offliner (talk) 10:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not exactly what you asked for, but WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors comes close. Hans Adler 12:41, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Offliner, do always feel free to ask me, if you're OK with the answer in British English. I went to an English grammar school in the days when they still taught grammar, and I am a published writer (exciting things like "Citizens guide to Council Tax"). --Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:42, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
If you have a specific query the language refdesk is a good place to start. Looking at it the other way, I've asked for - and received - help with other languages for articles there.- Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 17:31, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

User:BD2412/250,000th edit party

Hello Wikipedia! I'm having a 250,000th edit party. You're all invited! Cheers! bd2412 T 14:18, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

persistent vandalism to Salem Witch Trials and its dependent articles

Salem Witch Trials and the articles that it links to in its template seem to have a very high degree of vandalism from unregistered users. My guess is that > 9 out of 10 of these edits are vandalism. This is a very high vandalism area, and I think it deserves protection. I am coordinator of the Salem Witch Trials Task Force. Wikipedia keeps changing and I can't keep up, and clearly I don't have the wikiskills or the computer skills. Anyone out there willing to guide me through this ? John5Russell3Finley (talk) 19:06, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I would start here: Wikipedia:Vandalism#How to respond to vandalism, particularly 1 and 2 at the bottom.—RJH (talk) 19:28, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

User

My english is bad, so sorry if u don't understand. In es:Wiki my user namy is NicolásTM, before was "Trivia Harrypotter", but in this wiki, "NicolásTM" doesn't exist, why? I don't used this account anymore. Somebody can help me? --Trivia harrypotter (talk) 21:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Did you register for single user login using the Trivia harrypotter name? If you want to use the NicolásTM username across all Wikimedia sites, you will have to register it for single user login. --Jayron32 04:48, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Adding biographies as homework?

Something very strange seems to be going on at the University of Hull. It seems that its students have been tasked with writing biographies of artists/academics as homework. So far the only one created seems to have questionable notability. Please see: Talk:Annabeth Robinson.

I am sure that there is no bad faith here but it seems fundamentally misconceived and could cause trouble and bad feeling. We don't want non-notable biographies but we don't want students to get into trouble because we deleted their homework either. Maybe somebody needs to explain to the University why this is a bad idea. --DanielRigal (talk) 22:58, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Academic assignments to add articles to Wikipedia are fully accepted here, and can be excellent things. There are even such project sponsored by the foundation, and many universities and schools have participated. I do not see how this can in any sense by called meatpuppetry. for a description of some of what we do here, see Wikipedia:School and university projects and WP:Schools FAQ .
In general I regard biographies as exactly the right type of articles to begin with. I've advised several projects of this sort, and that's what I always suggest, either for a short project by itself, of as an initial exercise. Naturally, the students need advice, and that's why we have projects to help them and their instructors. The obvious advice is to start with subjects who are very surely notable , and to collect sources first, before actually writing. It is not at all difficult to teach the mechanics of editing Wikipedia, The judgement for selecting article topics can be substantially more difficult, and I--and many experienced editors--am very ready to take a look at prospective topics and make suggestions. I commend any teacher who decides to do such a project, but suggest that they ask for some guidance--and ask first, before the students run into difficulties. Writing articles for WP in university classes is an excellent idea. I and two other experienced Wikipedians were down at my university a few days ago discussing this with faculty and students there, and my WP chapter has offered to help at another university as part of a grant-supporter project in coordination with the Foundation. DGG ( talk ) 02:12, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I was not aware of that we cooperated with projects of this kind. Now that you explain it, I can see how they can yield useful articles provided the project is structured properly. I still have concerns about this particular project given that the first anybody knew about it was when a group of students turned up confused about why an article was being considered for deletion (thus confusing me in turn). If it is possible to get this sorted out so that the students have the support and guidance they need then that is great and I hope that we can get some good articles out of this after all. I hope I haven't frightened them off. I will drop them each a message.
My concerns about meatpuppetry may or may not actually apply to this case but I am sure that an issue could arise under some circumstances. Imagine if a college seeking to raise the profile of its faculty staff handed out a list of the biographies they wanted created to students and set them to it. That would fall into the meatpuppetry category.
As I see it, nobody should be required to contribute to Wikipedia. These projects should be voluntary or have another option other than publishing on Wikipedia. Also, the students should have a significant degree of free choice about which biographies to write, with guidance to help them avoid picking non-notable people. So long as the students are not tied to a specific list then they should be safe from being considered meatpuppets. Working from a list seems like a grey area to me. If the list had an ulterior motive then there would definitely be a problem. --DanielRigal (talk) 10:45, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
Try to make contact with the teacher/professor and get them to "register" their project on Wikipedia:School and university projects. They will then get properly managed assistance and guidance. Roger (talk) 11:10, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
Many thanks for your generous support on this idea. It's great to see that this sort of thing is possible on Wikipedia. I'm the teacher/professor responsible for the actions that triggered this discussion. As suggested by Roger, I have now registered the project on (what is hopefully) the appropriate page. I'm not new to wikis but I've never really been in any way within the Wikipedia community. I'm hoping that this is the beginning of something that will be of benefit to all involved. --ToniSant (talk) 14:12, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Assessment summary page

The Talk:Tammi Terrell page has an assessment summary page listed with the template results, but I don't see how it is connected to anything when I edit the talk page. This is the first assessment summary page I have encountered, so would someone please provide some information about how they work.--DThomsen8 (talk) 12:31, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

That note is automatically added by {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} whenever there is a /Comments subpage. See Template:WPBS#Usage. Svick (talk) 20:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Ah, so someone creates a subpage named /Comments and then the banner shell detects it and provides the message. Perhaps someday I might find this technique useful myself. I generally just comment directly on the talk page. Thanks for the explanation. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:17, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Somehow I thought that a subject/headline should not include a link. I have encountered an article with three headlines with links. See State Line, Pennsylvania. Am I wrong about the Wikipedia style?--DThomsen8 (talk) 23:22, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

From MOS:HEAD: "To avoid accessibility problems, headings should not normally contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked."
Also from Wikipedia:ACCESS#Links: "Avoid putting links in section headings. Some screen readers, such as versions of JAWS prior to 7.1, have significant difficulty correctly rendering such headers."
You're not wrong. -- Ϫ 01:00, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

An article shouldn't identify its subject

I've done more Wikipedia editing than almost anyone, but here's something I never saw before today: A proposal to exclude from an article, as "trivia", the line that tells the reader what the article was about. Its deletion would have left the reader with no clue what the topic was. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:37, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

...specifically? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:15, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
[14] at Proof that 22/7 exceeds π. Lihaas proposes that the proof is trivia, and should be removed from the article...about the proof. Go figure. Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

...and the proof is a one-liner that instantly startles and amazes those who see it for the first time. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:12, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I can move pages over other pages

I was surprised to find that I am able to move pages to locations where something already exists. I thought only administrators were able to do this? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 04:18, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Did it involve a redirect? If so, see WP:MOR. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:34, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
It did.... but is this a new feature? Even over redirects was impossible until recently. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 12:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
If you're moving a page over another page that 1) is a redirect, and 2) has only one edit (in other words, it was created to be a redirect) it's possible for anyone to overwrite it in a move. It's been like that for a very long time, I think. --Golbez (talk) 12:39, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Yep. –xenotalk 13:32, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Announcing the 2010 Arbitration Committee Elections

Main page: Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2010

Preparations are underway for the annual elections to the Arbitration Committee, due to take place mid-November to mid-December. Provisional election pages have been set up based on the model of the 2009 elections, which were conducted using the SecurePoll secret ballot system. The proposed timetable allows for a 10-day nomination period (from Sunday November 14 to Tuesday November 23), a 10-day voting period (Friday November 26 to Monday December 6), and a subsequent period for the vote to be audited by independent scrutineers.

Until the call for nominations on November 14, the parameters of the election are open to community examination and feedback. A draft set of nine general questions to be posed to each candidate has been established (voters will also be able to ask unique questions of individual candidates). Editors interested in helping to organise the elections are encouraged to sign up as volunteer coordinators.

Working as an arbitrator is an important and demanding role, and there is perennial need for new volunteers to take it on. This year, 10 arbitrators are expected to be chosen; experienced and committed editors are urged to seriously consider standing.

Discuss this at the election talkpage.

For the coordinators, Skomorokh 11:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Unsure of "tool offer"

I ran across the link posted invitating editors to download a tool at the top of the Net worth article and I'm not sure whether it is within policy, but would like someone to check it out. --LilHelpa (talk) 20:21, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Whoa, that's a really bad article... — Gavia immer (talk) 20:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Heh, do you mean before or after the revert? I've never been impressed with the quality of our articles on financial topics, and am hopelessly ill-equipped to improve them myself. Try deciding whether put options would be a good strategy for you, based on a reading of our srticle (and the linked articles too if you're really bent on doing yourself harm). ;) Franamax (talk) 20:43, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I was referring to the pre-revert version; the version I reverted to is only sorely lacking in depth, as I agree that many of our financial articles are. — Gavia immer (talk) 21:13, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Sudden rash of vandalism

There seems to be a huge rash of one-time vandals on most pages I am watching. Perhaps one-third or more of the edits are one-time vandalism over the last day or two.

Techniques furnished to editors have relieved us of a lot of the persistent vandalism we saw several years ago. We have the tools to deal with those folks now. But this seems unprecedented. Mercifully, I am a "late" watcher, trailing by two days. By the time I get there most of the vandalism has been reverted by other experienced editors. They have got to be seeing the same thing I am. I have no idea how to cope with this, short of semi-protecting everything!

Maybe wait for the full moon to pass?  :) Student7 (talk) 01:52, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I am expecting a rash of them next week on UK centred articles for the simple reason that it will be half term here. Vandalism seams to me to be highest during the colder and wetter Christmas vacation. It would be interesting to see vandalism plotted against IP address and by date, to see if a pattern emerges. I think most public libraries in the UK have had their IP banned by WP for constant unrelenting vandalism by those school children who do their homework there.--Aspro (talk) 09:21, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

User:Joe Fielder/Morrison Hershfield Page

Hi Everyone,

I am an employee with the engineering and management firm Morrison Hershfield. We would like to have a factual Wikipedia page for our company ideally like the one linked above. I am fairly new to Wikipedia and would like feedback on whether this page meets the notability standards, and as well I am open to opinions on what the article may need or lacks. If you could provide me with any feedback or suggestions it would be very much appreciated. Joe Fielder (talk) 12:28, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Looks very good to me. I'd move it to article space if I were you. Binksternet (talk) 12:51, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Looks fine to me. Very well-done article, thank you. Especially for someone fairly new. They look notable enough to me. I would move it to article space. A caveat: there's a fair chance that somewhere along the line someone might nominate it for deletion. If this happens, it might well survive, but maybe not. And if not, don't take it personally as disrespecting your work or you company; that's just how things get done around here. If you like, one thing you could do - I've never seen this done, but it's perfectly allowable - is move it to article space yourself and then nominate it af WP:AFD, with a comment of more or less "Is this notable or not? Procedural nom, I don't have an opinion." If it then survives, you're basically all set forever, probably; if not, at least you found out right away without having to worry about it for years. Good luck, and thanks again for the article. Herostratus (talk) 17:08, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you both for your very positive feedback I am glad to see it is up to the standards of at least two wiki editors. I have taken your suggestions and moved the page to the article space. But one thing I noticed at the top of the page it displays our company name as "Morrison hershfield" instead of "Morrison Hershfield" is there anyway to correct this h so it is capitalized? Thanks again. Joe Fielder (talk) 18:38, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

WikiBhasha

A really cool tool has been released to semi-automatically translate articles from English to 31 other languages: WikiBasha It is open source and relies on Microsoft Translate, then a very nice user interface allows to proofread and correct the results of the machine translation. By the way: Right now it only allows English as a source language. Any volunteers willing to modify it to allow any language for source? Nicolas1981 (talk) 09:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Just a suggestion but as the bugs are worked out this would be a great bot task for any programmer up to the challange for converting English articles into those other 31! --Kumioko (talk) 17:05, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Do you mean a bot translating articles with no human intervention? I think machine translation will not be good enough for this before at least 10 years... So let's use this tool to semi-automatically translate many articles :-) Nicolas1981 (talk) 01:45, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Not a bad point. It might be possible to program a plugin for AWB that could do it. Then an editor could do it in a semi automated fashion. --Kumioko (talk) 01:57, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Oh, please don't. I'm afraid this gadget can do more harm than good. We'll be flooded with this autotranslated rubbish. Autotranslation isn't advanced enough yet. It may be useful if you're trying to understand a passage in a language you don't speak but treating it as of "release quality" would be a mistake. If this tool should be used then only at its original form, with a human translator correcting every single sentence (which IMHO isn't any better than not using the tool at all). If somebody who doesn't speak English wants to read some of your articles they may use google translate or something. The point of having many different Wikipedias is that they're all written by humans. Lampak (talk) 19:52, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Oh, please no. Maybe it works nice for other languages but certainly not for Polish. As Lampak wrote, virtually every single sentence needs to be reviewed and corrected, which isn't any faster than translating it "manually". And I bet, that it's similar for other languages as well. Masur (talk) 07:37, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Erik Problem

Hello English Wikipedians, i'm have a one problem in Indonesian Wikipedia. Current Vietnamese Wikipedia and Serbian Wikipedia already overtaking Indonesian Wikipedia. Whereas before I had been warned that:

"Come on, time for the entire district article maker that is still more concentrated to a village in Indonesia moved to a commune in a foreign country. As Communes of Oise, France, or else you find. Your stay Copy paste and translate from the English Wikipedia. Let the professional user who completed the manufacturing district in the Java Wikipedia article ago we Copy Paste again in the future. I would never again stingy in making zoning articles (covering a content template) for the progress of Indonesian Wikipedia."

However, they ignore until now. Their remember once blackmail alone wikiwan to not make the article in the same template when I'm making an article. When I want to change them and still remember it. Very egois. --Erik Evrest (talk) 11:03, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

An excellent example of why machine translation is rubbish. The individual words are undeniably English but that is where the intelligibility ends. Roger (talk) 19:28, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Find a Grave is a large website that allows registered users to describe graves. Pages often include names, location of the grave, dates of birth and death, a brief biography, and images. It is linked in thousands and thousands of articles, and questions about its appropriateness arise a couple of times a year.

Should Wikipedia link to this site: (1) As a reliable source, at least when no better sources are available? (2) As an external link, at least when it provides a unique resource rather than duplicating article content? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:20, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

For new participants:
This discussion began almost a week before the above RFC notice. Please try to skim through the discussion, and then add your comments at the bottom. As this discussion seems to recur frequently because of a lack of specific guidance from the community, we would like to see the issues around this website settled. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:24, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Start

Originally at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard#Find a grave After seeing a bio from "Find a grave" i am very concern about this links. Firstly we have them "SPAMMED" everywhere in external links and i mean everywhere. I am wondering how we are allowing this links that lead to unsorced and potentially POV riddled bios. Is there something special about this site that i am unaware of? I can not find anywhere that thinks Find a Grave is reliable. I was wondering were we could talk about this if this is the wrong place. I know this must have comeup before because there bios are so bad. If possible could i be pointed to the right places to talk about this and/or shown links (discussion) to Y this is ok?Moxy (talk) 23:57, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I remove those links as a matter of routine when I come across them. Frankly, I find that Find a Grave adds nothing to most articles. Resolute 00:04, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
I've never looked into it, but I have an impression from other editors' comments that the volume of links might partly be due to a handful of editors who really, really like the website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
I don't think it's that big of a problem. I find it useful for finding out birth/death dates, although I have come across inconsistencies between that and other sites showing a different date so the reliability is questionable. Is it a user-generated content site? Also, it's likely that the Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people project has a lot to do with the large quantity of these links.. whatever is decided about the links themselves I hope it doesn't affect the good new content generating that this project is doing. -- Ϫ 05:05, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
Ok so we have not proven they are reliable in any way right? Even there disclaimer say the site is not reliableThe Find A Grave web site may contain information that is created and maintained by a variety of sources both internal and external to Find A Grave. Some pages are unmoderated and may contain the personal opinions and other expressions of the persons who post the entries. Find A Grave does not control, monitor or guarantee the information contained in these pages or information contained in links to other external web sites, and does not endorse any views expressed or products or services offered therein. In no event shall Find A Grave be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods, or services available on or through any page, site or resource. In most cases the link provides less info then Wiki or the info contradicts Wiki sources. So i am thinking we should see about a bot to remove all this links that have been spammed all over. Not sure how a few editors can by pass or editing policies and seemingly add links at will. Not one past talk shows me that they are valid or should be kept .....In fact i am wondering Y the community has not dealt with this and has seemingly let a few editors bully there way along for so long. If someone can find a reason that this spam should stay pls do so here. I can see them being used as a references for dates but to spam every dead bio with the link is wrong. Should we inquire about a bot to rid ourselves of the site that link to a third party for paid services. Now that is see a group called Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people i am wondering if this people are paid to do this - as this would be against one of our principle polocies of conflict of interest. Am i the only one here that finds this whole thing odd? Moxy (talk) 15:25, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
You're not. I find the whole thing odd, and always have. By the plain letter of our external links policy, it isn't an acceptable external link, since it could be replaced by including verifiable information in the article, and because the theoretical informational purpose of the link (finding a gravesite) is not of any use to the majority of our readers. But it is massively linked throughout Wikipedia, so if you want to change that you will have to make the effort to do so within policy - this probably means running an RfC and advertising it everywhere, which is a huge pain. — Gavia immer (talk) 16:09, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
I don't know about it being a huge pain. But you may want to check past discussions first, it seems this was discussed just 6 months ago. Either way, there is no point in requesting a bot until you have consensus for the bot's task. Anomie⚔ 16:25, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for that link. Now i see people dont even think is reliable to use as a source on Wiki at all. Ok so how do we start the RfC thing, might be best to get someone that has done this before to start it. I am willing to help notify boards. We cant just let this go like the past. Its clear the site has been abused on wiki an many, many, many, many editors keep asking as to Y this is being allowed with no solid answer. Moxy (talk) 16:40, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
See WP:RFC for the procedure, and make certain that if you do this it is advertised widely (at least on WP:CENT, and probably on all the related wikiproject talk pages). If it isn't widely advertised, there will be trouble later. — Gavia immer (talk) 17:15, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Whoa calm down it's just an external link! I give you that it's unreliable but it's not trying to be a source. I don't think it's 'spammed' any more than other templated external links, such as {{MobyGames}} and {{IMDb}}, it may just seem that way because there's a lot more bios than video game or movie articles. And I see nothing 'odd' at all about Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people, it's just a good-faithed group of editors taking advantage of a source to generate new content, good for them. And how do you know readers don't find these links useful? Maybe some do.. maybe a lot do.. and appreciate having somewhere else to go once they finish reading to the bottom of the article. -- Ϫ 22:06, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Just to add my 2 cents. Its true that the find a grave reference isnt the most reliable however this site is pretty much the only site that offers burial and grave information en masse. Its usually reasonably accurate for:
  • birth/death dates
  • birth/death/burial locations
  • a general description of who the individual is.
Its also helpful for identifying family members since they are frequently linked as well as being the only link/general reference that a lot of articles have. If you start removing this link then you are going to find a lot more unreferenced articles. With that said the info in this site is not good for:
  • Images
  • Quoting material
  • As a reference for anything other than birth/death dates or birth/death/burial location. Also, just to save you the trouble this has been written up an discussed numerous times and the concensus was always keep. Also to answer Moxys statements the Find a Grave website is volunteer input like WP is and none of the Folks in the F-A-G WikiProject are paid. The site doesn't make any money other than the adds it displays on its website to stay going. It doesn't get a lot of donations like WP does and has to do something to keep the servers running. --Kumioko (talk) 22:53, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
If by "the concensus was always keep", you mean that the consensus has been not to blacklist the entire website as spam, sure. But individual links have frequently been removed. For example, a link that contains no information that isn't already covered in the article violates WP:ELNO #1, in addition to providing zero additional benefit to the reader.
It sounds like it's an open wiki (any volunteer can add information). If so, then its ability to deal with misinformation, copyright violations, vandalism, hoaxes, etc. needs to be evaluated per WP:ELNO#EL12. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:16, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
This is the problem we seem to be having. I see no pro side being able to cite a Wiki polices as to its value. All i see is violation after violation. The main pro arguments and responses i see do not seem to address any Wiki policy concerns raised, but simply state Y they think its ok. What i see is its good for info that is already covered in the articles like (birth/death/burial locations and a general description of who the individual is). So we are linking this for what value, to confirm what is in the Wiki article? We all agree is reliability is in question. The fact other sites like IMDb have been spammed or its good to have links at the bottom or i think its useful are not a valid reason here at Wikipedia. I cant believe how many polocies this links are violating and the lack of valid pro arguments there are.Moxy (talk) 23:53, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
I always try to look at things from how our readers would view it rather than what the policies have to say (IAR notwithstanding of course) and I see value in the site and the added information it provides for those readers that may want it. Of course it does not need to be on every single dead person's bio and of course there are many articles where the link would not be suitable or beneficial, but those really should be taken on a case-by-case basis. Maybe all that's needed is a visible note in the template's docs instructing users that they should not be adding it indiscriminately. Regardless, I really doubt that you would be able to get clear consensus for an automated mass removal of these links, but you're certainly free to try. -- Ϫ 01:07, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
The site is mostly done on a volunteer basis but it isnt a wiki either. You have to setup an account and follow rules but pretty much anyone can create an account and add grave information. But from what I have seen it is less prone to vandalism that WP is. There is a degree of error sure but thats true of anything, even CNN, MSNBC or the Government sites like DANFS (they do have about 50 million records after all) but there is also a mechanism for fixing that and I have done so and it has been corrected or noted as a point of confusion. I also did a little research and determined it is used on between 12000 and 13000 articles (some articles have multiple transclusions that may not be counted). I will be the first one to admit that it isnt as reliable as say CNN but I also believe that it is useful and should be kept. Additionally, this website is widely well known and respected for what it is. A gravesite locator "tool". You are right though in the statement that it may not be suitable on all articles. For example, for topics like Charles Lindburgh, Theodore Roosevelt or Albert Einstein whose lives have been meticulously documented in every mundane detail it would be useless and would have no value. But in the case of many of the Medal of Honor recipients, lessor known politicians, actors and musicians it could be extremely helpful. --Kumioko (talk) 01:39, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Furthermore, in cases where the actual gravestone is imaged, I would say that gives it a much higher degree of reliability for birth/death dates. -- Ϫ 02:59, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
After doing some more research the number I gave above is far low and represents only the pages that have the {{Find a Grave}} template. I have found more than 30, 000 more that use the actual http link (out of 110, 000 pages searched) before I stopped looking so there are probably a lot more than that. Especially if we include the non english wikis. Additional research shows that there are at least 5000 (and almost definately more) that use ut as a reference in some fashion. Rancho Omochumnes is one example. --Kumioko (talk) 13:46, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Its crazy the amount...Still noone seem to be-able to address the concerns raised at all. What we have is things said like - I could be useful, i think pictures of graves are useful, its the only one like i etc etc. You think its valuable to have this link so people can find a grave... Out of all the info people come here to WIki to find you think a grave site is so important that it needs a special stand alone link? So realy what we have is a site that a few editors "LIKE" and the rest of us have to put up with. If someone could pls try and address the policy concerns raised about the site and not give there POV would be great. The prop side here realy needs a better argument then ..It could be useful, It may have a picture of a grave, I think people want to know were the grave is.Moxy (talk) 14:53, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I am hearing something a little different. I am hearing that several editors have voiced concerns and comments about a website that IS useful and another editor is not hearing those comments and is dismissing them as not good enough for them. Sorry for all the bolds but I want to emphasize certain things. I have already agreed with you that it isnt the best reference but ALL websites are going to have errors and the larger the site the more errors its prone to have and most websites have some sort of disclaimer waiving liability for errors. The Find a Grave site has more than 53 million grave pages... (thats more than 10 times the size of the english wikipedia by the way) thereby its going to have errors. I agree that we shouldnt be using the meaty descriptions in the site and I reiterate that the only info we should be using from it are: Birth Date, Birth Location, death date, death location, burial location, verification of death. If the page has a photo of the gravestone then it could serve as verification of information (that does not mean the photo should be included in WP though necessarily) as the find a grave entry itself does. Additionally, as I stated before this is only a factor for WP articles that have limited references and should not be used for articles were better references are available. I have also found that by contacting the person who created the find a grave entry or added the photo they are very willing to provide the location and source if you take the time to ask. BTW I wouldnt say they are "Spammed" any more than we are spamming the article with links to Portals, links to commons, or the numorous other External links that are found on the majority of Biographies like IMDB, etc. Also, since it bears on the discussion I believe that the state of the Find a Grave link in WP is in a shameless state and have been working to clean it up. I have been standardizing the format, adding info such as author, accessdate and date if its available to the links if they are used as inline citations or general references. I have also been working with several of the Find a Grave entry authors to "Fix or verify" pieces of information (mostly on Medal of Honor recipients" as I find them. --Kumioko (talk) 15:22, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I have used information from Find-A-Grave in multiple articles multiple times. It would be highly inappropriate to NOT link to their site when we're using it as a source. I agree fully that information from more reliable sources is more desirable, but I detest and abhor both the idea of using information without linking to the source and the idea of deleting information that is likely to be true, but where we haven't located a more reliable source yet. Note: I'm ONLY adding the link where I in fact use information from the site. My $0.02. --Alvestrand (talk) 16:08, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

This brings up a good point. As I mentioned before there are a lot of articles that use the Find a grave site as an inline citation so if the decision were made to start removing the 30, 000+ links to the find a grave site how would we go about verifying the information? Or removal of said information once its reference has been removed? Especially since, in most cases, there simply is No Other source with the information. --Kumioko (talk) 16:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I am against the blind insertion of findagrave templates into articles. I am for the inline citation of findagrave as a reference, when appropriate. Binksternet (talk) 17:17, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
...though it's almost always more appropriate to use something else as a reference. A slow-running project to replace them would not be amiss, if someone wanted to embark on it! Shimgray | talk | 18:42, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I dont disagree, but, the point is in many cases there isn't a better reference. At least not without bending the rules about original research. --Kumioko (talk) 18:57, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I've used this site to get a PD picture for a subject. I don't think it's the best reference to use, but I also don't think we should be quick to entirely remove the links from Wikipedia (due to the fact that tombstones are sometimes pictured and death/birth years are usually solid info). Killiondude (talk) 19:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Documentation clarification

Although I do disagree with your desire to purge ourselves of this link, Upon further thought I do think that we need to modify the documentation for the Find a Grave link to clarify what it should and should not be used for as I stated above. I am also going to send the site manager an EMAIL asking about the potential for them to encourage the use of Source information when adding entries or info to the Find a Grave site. When I get a response I will add something here and on the Find a Grave talk page. The following things should be clarified:

  • Images should not be used unless its clear that the image is freely distributable. (this can be determined by contacting the person who added the image or if the image contains information that obviously state its freely distributable such as being made by the government). For example Don Morfe is one of the authors that adds data and images regarding Medal of Honor recipients and on his page he states that the pictures he takes (usually of gravesites) can be used by Wikipedia freely.
  • May be used as a verification of death
  • Only the following information may be used: Birth date, Birth location, Death date, Death location, Burial location, Grid coordinates (if available).
  • If its used as a reference/inline citation for the above information it must include the accessdate, author (who input the Find a Grave entry) and the date it was added to the Find a Grave site.
  • Can be used for Notability but no information in the body should be included in the article. --Kumioko (talk) 16:22, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I think it's time for an update to the documentation for the template. Many (most?) links don't use the template, but it's a reasonable place for people to look for information.
Perhaps "use as an external link" and "use as a reliable source" should be addressed separately on that page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Note: The documentation at Template:Findagrave has been expanded since then. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I think we should be very, very clear about whether we're talking about using the site as an external link or as an inline citation. They're two entirely separate things, with separate guidelines/policies to observe. As an inline citation for birth/death dates, I don't really have a problem with findagrave.com. It's like IMDB in that sense: not the best possible source, but acceptable in most cases. As an external link, though, I still don't see the value in linking to that site tens of thousands of times, since in nearly all the cases the site does not offer any actual information that's not already in the article itself, making it a clear violation of WP:EL. I have not seen any arguments presented above that would make me think otherwise. --Conti|✉ 17:51, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I understand your argument and in a perfect world I would probably agree. But after going through more than 10, 000 articles with the find a grave link I can testify that the majority of them are on articles with less that 5 references and in quite a few cases its the only link/reference at all. So if we were to remove this link it would in essence leave the article without any references or links at all or at the very least with no reference to the birth and death info. --Kumioko (talk) 17:55, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Again, read my first sentence. :) Are we talking about external links or about inline citations here? An external link is not a reference. A reference is not an external link. As far as I know, the majority of the usage of the site consists of external links, and in that case your argument does not make any sense. Removing a link does not remove a reference. And if the external link is supposed to be a reference, then we should fix that and turn the external link into a reference. --Conti|✉ 18:02, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Agree with Conti—I think the findagrave external link template should be removed even from articles with few or no references. Binksternet (talk) 18:38, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
If an external link is not a reference and an article only has the find a grave link under a section called External links then as I understand what you are saying. That article is better off having nothing and beingn completely unreferenced then having the Find a Grave link? That to me is far from sensible. --Kumioko (talk) 18:54, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I can only repeat myself, again. "if the external link is supposed to be a reference, then we should fix that and turn the external link into a reference." And anyhow, the only thing we can use findagrave.com for as a reference are birth and death dates, so these articles are unreferenced (except for one detail) either way. --Conti|✉ 19:02, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Kumioko, an external link is NOT a reference. It's the band's official myspace site, the company's official website. It's the book made available online by Project Gutenberg. If the article is relying on info from Findagrave to verify the text, then it should NOT appear as an external link. It should appear as an inline citation, so the reader knows what info is being sourced to Findagrave.Elen of the Roads (talk) 20:09, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I agree with that however that is not were the link has been placed in the past. Historically this link was placed in the external links section and not in references. To add to that further many articles (incorrectly so I might add) have only an external links section, not a references section because many users are under the impression this section is for links to references or potential references that are "External" to wikipedia and are not used as references. Sort of like a holding pen for links that have the potential to be references but the information hasnt been added or confirmed yet. Right or wrong, thats whats happening. Some users are even creating a subsection under references for External links. I change it as I find it but that is happening. --Kumioko (talk) 20:20, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I see. So you're saying that we should be leaving the link to Findagrave in, because people can't be bothered to make it an inline citation? Or is that harsh? Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:43, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Umm no. Thats not what Im saying. What Im saying is that we dont need to just run a bot as suggested above and erase all the links just cause some people don't like it. If someone can find a book, website magazine or something else that can take the place of the information provided in this Find a Grave website then fine I will be more than happy to run a bot myself and eliminate them but in the mean time they should stay. --Kumioko (talk) 23:46, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
With all this pages linked and a template for the site, I would guess our readers assume that here at Wiki we believe the site is reliable in all aspects. When in fact we all agree that it is not reliable for all things. (even Find a Grave says this). Our readers are not privy to this talks and thus our not aware of how the site is viewed in Wikipedia's editors eyes. So we have a site that to most readers looks like we here at Wiki let spam in external links because we (here at Wikipedia) think is so great we even have a special stand alone template for it. I dont see the fact that a tombstone picture (that may or may-not be there) or a valid date of birth or death can out weight all the violations this links are currently abusing seemingly at will. Not sure how this benefits Wikipedia's credibility or benefits our readers linking them to a site dedicated to one purpose, that is grave locations - not bio's, or pictures, or info that even Find a grave claims may or may not be reliable or personal points of view. The site should be removed from external links and then on each individual article there re-inclusion should be asset for there merit, not the other way around. Just because they have been spammed does not give it any rights to stay or be included. Moxy (talk) 02:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I want to state again that I do not agree with mass removal of this link. Its true its not appropriate on all articles but its also not hurting anything being in external links. Its more important that if its used as a reference, that the referenced material isnt violating one of our policies. If we want to start checking something regarding the Find a Grave site it should be that. On most articles though its just a link that "could" help source currently unsourced info or to help as a general secondary source. If we want to start removing links I would start with all the myspace, facebook and blog links. Those are much much less worthy. But rather than talking about deleting thousands of links why don't we just clarify the information that should and shouldn't be used? To answer another statement we also have lots of links to religious websites so by your logic we must also be pushing religion! We have articles on pornographic actors, actresses and movies so we must be peddling porn! Do these also strain Wikipedia's credibility? Should we start looking at removing those next? In my opinion, obviously no, but others would argue it does and the credibility argument can be tailored to ones opinion or needs quite easily. You mentioned before that you didn't like it because it was a for profit site. So is CNN, MSNBC and virtually all the other major "trustworthy" sites. I also notice that you seem to be particularly worried about the disclaimer on the findagrave site so I found another site with one similar. Its phrased a little differently but its says the same thing:

IN ADDITION TO THE TERMS SET FORTH ABOVE NEITHER, CNN, ITS PARENT, SUBSIDIARIES, ITS OTHER AFFILIATES, NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, THIRD PARTY CONTENT PROVIDERS, LICENSORS, INFORMATION PROVIDERS OR CONTENT PARTNERS BE LIABLE REGARDLESS OF THE CAUSE OR DURATION, FOR ANY ERRORS, INACCURACIES, OMISSIONS, OR OTHER DEFECTS IN, OR UNTIMELINESS OR UNAUTHENTICITY OF, THE INFORMATION CONTAINED WITHIN CNN.COM, OR FOR ANY DELAY OR INTERRUPTION IN THE TRANSMISSION THEREOF TO YOU, OR FOR ANY CLAIMS OR LOSSES ARISING THEREFROM OR OCCASIONED THEREBY. NONE OF THE FOREGOING PARTIES SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY THIRD-PARTY CLAIMS OR LOSSES OF ANY NATURE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, LOST PROFITS, PUNITIVE OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. NEITHER CNN, ITS PARENT, SUBSIDIARIES, ITS OTHER AFFILIATES NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, THIRD PARTY CONTENT PROVIDERS, LICENSORS, INFORMATION PROVIDERS OR CONTENT PARTNERS WARRANT OR GUARANTEE THE TIMELINESS, SEQUENCE, ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THIS INFORMATION. ADDITIONALLY, THERE ARE NO WARRANTIES AS TO THE RESULTS OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE INFORMATION.

I will tell you the 3 things I don't like about the Find a Grave site though.

  1. They dont provide any sources for their info (but then the major news agencies usually dont either)
  2. They have a tacky Claim to Fame category for "Famous" people
  3. They have a "memorials" wall where anyone can leave flowers and messages.

In summery:

  • I don't have a problem with them having a liability statement
  • I don't have a problem with them making a profit (if they do)
  • I don't have a problem with them not being perfect (knowone is)
  • I don't have a problem with them being used as an External link
  • I do have concerns about it being used as an inline citation/source
  • I do not think it should be used if there are better sources with the info
  • I DO think we need to add clarification to the documentation for the template and possibly in the external links documentation. --Kumioko (talk) 03:40, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
I see y this never gets fixed the same arguments come up and are never addressed. I understand Y some people would like them to stay, but dont see how this reasons a valid excuses to violate Wikipidia polices. lets see if its possible we can have answers to the policy s concerns raised because i am still not seeing it. I also think in some cases its ok, but dont think they should be everywhere just because they are already there...we must prove there merit for each article and not allow this kind of random addition of links. Does not matter what other links we have like this we are talking about this links to find a grave. See Wikipedia:Other stuff exists Moxy (talk) 04:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Have you forgot about WP:IAR? Anyway I could throw WP:IDONTLIKEIT right back at ya but my argument wasn't that *I* liked the links, I and others are saying the readers may find it useful, hence WP:IAR. And yes, we could prove their merit for each article, but that can only be done on a case-by-case basis, once again. And yes, we shouldn't allow this random addition of the link that's why I and others have proposed that we add some extra instruction to the template's documentation. -- Ϫ 05:09, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Spam#External link spamming Although the specific links may be allowed under some circumstances, repeatedly adding links will in most cases result in all of them being removed'.
  • WP:ELNO#EL1 - "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article.
  • WP:ELNO#EL12 - "Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors. Mirrors or forks of Wikipedia should not be linked.
  1. When dozens or hundreds of unrelated individuals "repeatedly" add links to a website, then the spam rules don't usually apply.
  2. In some cases, the site is a "unique resource".
  3. It doesn't actually seem to be an open wiki. It's more like a user-generated content site (like videos on YouTube: you can add your own, but you can't change mine).
Because of this, we need to be evaluating these links as a case-by-case, page-by-page, article-by-article link. Mass addition would be thoughtless, and mass removal is equally thoughtless.
My suggestion to Moxy and other 'opponents' is to find and remove the five or ten "worst ever" Find a Grave links. Everyone seems to agree that there are at least a few inappropriate uses, and those should be the highest priority for removal. If you all do that every time you edit Wikipedia, then we'll have the worst of it cleaned up well before the WP:DEADLINE.
Additionally, anyone who wants to help provide useful, practical advice on when to (and not to) link to the site, please add your bit to the documentation at {{Findagrave}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:02, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
I like you WhatamIdoing well done, I see were its not so cut and dry. I will do what you suggest. Moxy (talk) 05:10, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Come to think of it, the documentation at Template:Find a Grave is already quite clear: "To comply with WP:ELNO, only place in External links section if the website contains unique information not already mentioned and cited in the body of the article." The large majority of links I have checked only include birth/death dates and a short biography, which is of course exactly what we're providing. Hence we can remove the link in most cases. --Conti|✉ 05:52, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
I can only hope my students dont use Find a Grave as a source for there thesis. !!!  :) Not sure what educational institution or encyclopedia would allow this types of unreliable references or links. Its a sad thing to see that some people think this links are good even when the site say its not. What we need is a better or more educational related references and links. Moxy (talk) 14:16, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
You seem to misunderstand the difference between external links and references. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Are you referring to my comments or someone elses? --Kumioko (talk) 20:26, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Moxy's of course, which is why I put mine after them. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:06, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I have seen these links pervasively in articles about war heroes and the like, and have previously given little thought of their reliability. However, that surely ought to be the most important consideration, now that the issue has been flagged. Is some, unsourced information better than none? Is some, unreliably-sourced, unverified information better than none? I'd say no to both, on balance. But here, we may be dealing with two questions: are they reliable enough as a source, and are they broadly acceptable enough and compatible with our objectives for us to systematically link to them. I now have some serious reservations about pervasive use as external links until there is a global consensus on this issue. This must apply before we put them on all articles of all our dead subjects' biographies, instead of the current default WP:BOLD or WP:ILIKEIT approach. The only mitigating factor here is that this is only ever used in articles where the subject is dead, so certain considerations do not apply. So, I am to a lesser extent concerned about using these as in-line citations, as the links can be replaced as better sources are found. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 04:29, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

    PS. All the above was written before I read this subsection started by User:Conti, with whom I agree.

Contrary to how it may appear above in my comments I do understand the reasoning behind some editors concerns about the use of this site and I do understand the difference between external links and references. One this that keeps coming up though is the term "Better reference". The problem is that in many cases there is no better reference. Even in the cases where that better reference exists (such as newspaper obituaries) there may be a fee in accessing the information. Thats were this site becomes useful. As I mentioned above if I wanted to find details about the birth, death and burial of Albert Einstein there are abundant references and therefore the Find a Grave link is not needed. To use your reference to military war heroes above, trying to find these same details about say an American Civil War Medal of Honor recipient is a whole nother matter and this site provides that. --Kumioko (talk) 17:03, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
This needs to lead toward an RFC and then towards a consensus...this keeps coming up every few months and nothing has ever been clarified. It isn't clear yet.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 18:07, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I was just directed to this discussion and have scanned the text. It appears that there is some consensus that Find A Grave is not an appropriate external link, although the links should not be removed if the site is being used as a source (but should instead be converted for now from an external link into an inline citation, and later replaced with a reliable source). This mirrors what is currently listed on the documentation for template:Find a grave. Am I reading the consensus appropriately here? Karanacs (talk) 18:12, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I want to make sure everyone is clear that I do not agree with the elimination of this link for the articles but if the consensus is to remove them then I will go along with concensus and begin purging them with AWB. I should be able to knock them all out in less than a week along with tagging the articles with the Unreferenced template or AFD tag if applicable. With that said, This conversation has pretty much been between the same 3 or 4 users with inputs from a handful of others. To me this does not represent a large enough voice of the population to conclude that removal of 13000 links is appropriate. If the Find a Grave link is not appropriate as en external link as you state then it certainly isnt appropriate as a source. And I havent heard any strong reasons as to WHY this link isn't a good one. Of course it would be better if it was an inline citation. And I had that in my plans as part of my ongoing cleanup of that link but to do that for 13000 plus articles will be a challenge to say the least. A couple of things to consider. Does it hurt anything having this link in the article? Is the reputation of Wikipedia going to be hindered more by the retention of this link or the loss of it and the inability to source thousands of details on thousands of articles? Please remember that IF the concensus is to remove the 13000+ links that you will be left, at minimum, with the below problems:
  1. Many articles will no longer have a link/reference because this is the sole link on the article. Whether it resides in External links or references it is still the only one.
  2. You need to also remove the information that is no longer sourced. As a link on the article. Whether its in the references section or external link it provides a source of verifiability of the information in the article. If we remove it then we also need to add either an unreferenced tag OR submit the article for deletion due to lack of sources. Of the 13000+ articles with the Find a grave template, that will be the case for probably close to 2500 - 3000 articles or more.
  3. There are thousands more articles, besides the ones that use the Find a Grave template, that link to the Find a Grave site using the full we address of the database link. You will also need to contend with those.
  4. There is NO other source that provides the same information that the Find a Grave site provides. IF we don't use this as a source, we will be unable to source this information by any other means without treading into original research territory.
  5. Removing a link on masse is rather easy, but if the mood changes later and it is determined that a mistake was made about the Find a Grave site it will be extremely hard to put them back.
  6. If we eliminate this site based on the feelings of a few editors that it is a completely useless and inappropriate source to use as a reference/external link its going to open the box for several others as well (Arlington Cemetery.net, Home of Heroes, Hall of Valor, IMDB, Politcal graveyard to name a few).
  7. We will need to update several points of documentation and eliminate the applicanle templates and WikiProject Find a Grave which will absolutely have a backlash from the editors/members of that project.
  8. We should also prepatare for second and third level effects and unintended consequences from this. Not sure what they would be if any.
So I think we need to think very very hard on whether we want to exclude this site as a reference/external link before we initiate action. Because if action is taken to eliminate these links en-masse it will have far reaching consequences. --Kumioko (talk) 19:11, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
You say that you know the difference between external links and sources, yet you keep mixing these two up again, and again, and again, and again. Frankly, it's getting somewhat frustrating. Anyhow, to make a productive comment: What about we simply don't remove the link to the site on articles that are otherwise completely unreferenced? There are still thousands of fully referenced articles that use the findagrave.com external link (external link, not refernce), we could simply start with those. --Conti|✉ 19:32, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
I think your getting confused in what I am saying. Possibly in the way I am saying. I know what the difference is but thousands of wikipedia editors, who put links in the external links section do not. We could but again, I wouldnt do it unless the article is GA class or better. Heres why. Anyone can assess an article as B class (but many B class articles truly do meet the qualifications). GA and higher require a review process, all the articles information would be referenced (Including the info the Find a Grave link would provide) they would have been reviewed for compliance by at least one other editor and the use of Find a Grave as a reference is discouraged. So if we remove it, it won't be missed. --Kumioko (talk) 19:42, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
I think I know get what you're aiming at, but I still disagree. If thousands of editors make a mistake and are wrong, they're still wrong and the mistake still needs to be fixed. I don't mind starting at GA's and above, though, although I'm not quite sure what the easiest way is to figure out which of the thousands of articles are GA's. --Conti|✉ 19:57, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Figuring them out is easy. There are categories for them (Category:GA-Class articles, A-Class Articles and FA-Class articles) but nevermind what I said anyway. After analysis of the 20, 000+ articles that are GA, A or FA against the 12000+ articles that have the Find a grave link there were Zero matches. That tells me that this problem works itself out as the article reaches maturity/developement...At least for articles were adequate sources are available. The problem that you accidentally stumbled onto in your statement would be though, (as the rules of WP are written anyway) is that if thousands of editors are making the edit, right or wrong, it is concencus.--Kumioko (talk) 20:14, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Are you sure? A quick check shows that two of the articles where I removed the link from were either a FA or a GA (Alan Turing and Albert Speer). Further research reveals two more articles that still have the link (Elvis Presley and Hergé). You must have made a mistake somewhere. --Conti|✉ 20:22, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
HMMM, Im gonna haev to check that closer later. IN my opinion I would say Elvis definately doesnt need it. There should be more than enough references to prove every detail of his existance. Never heard of the others. --Kumioko (talk) 20:28, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
As a contributor to Find-a-Grave I see no reason to remove it wholesale from Wikipedia. I usually add a photo of the gravestone to confirm birth/death dates, but many people don't. I'd prefer to see it as an inline citation, but I think that converting them to such is best left to the individual editor. I think it should be regarded like any other source. If there's a better source for that information, then that should be used, just like for any other fact. If it's not being used in GAs and better then I really don't see a problem as sourcing standards for articles at those levels aren't high and can be improved if an editor wants to improve it for a GA. All that said tombstones are not definitive sources and should not be regarded as such; my great-greatgrandmother has two headstones, dated ten years apart, and her last name is misspelled on one of them. So discrepancies will arise between Find-a-Grave and other sources, but that doesn't necessarily impeach either.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:39, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
They are listed as External links, not part of the article or as a reference to information in the article. I click on them from time to time when I was interested in reading about a person. They're informative but just an external link to a site outside of the Wiki article.Bwmoll3 (talk) 00:49, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Mass removals

This idea of mass removal of tens of thousands of links within the space of a few days makes me very nervous. Mass removals usually result in people pitching a fit, typically on the grounds that they, personally, weren't consulted/weren't editing for several weeks/can't be bothered to keep an eye out on the community's discussions. It's too much, too fast, and someone who really, really likes the website will decide that you're being disruptive. Then we get to have this whole conversation all over again at AN/I, followed by a third round as a formal RfC (as if a long discussion at the village pump weren't sufficiently public -- but NB that even if you've already gone through a month-long RFC, someone at ANI will usually recommend having another, because it's easier [for that editor] to recommend yet another interminable discussion than to admit that some people sometimes "lose").

Rapid mass removals = bad idea. Rate-limited, thoughtful, case-by-case removals = good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Yep, I agree. It makes me real nervous too. --Kumioko (talk) 20:15, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
I see that there is 2 very different views here on this. I dont see that the fact its been spammed everywhere that is has a right to stay. I dont think that it should be in articles as a default just because its already there. I believe it should be removed until its usefulness is proven, not the other way around. Its clear that this were linked in a mass way regardless if the info to Find a Grave was useful. Its clear to me that this links were added with the intent to help Find a Grave not Wikipedia. With over 30,000 articles i dont see how its possible that editors took the time to actually see if the links are more informative or simply regurgitating what is already in the articles. A thoughtful, case-by-case re-introduction of the link is what should take place.Moxy (talk) 21:11, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Mass removal should be undertaken for findagrave templates sitting alone in the External links section. If findagrave is commented upon as an external link, that is, if it was added with an eye to exactly how it helps the article, it should stay. An example might be Find-A-Grave: photographs of the family mausoleum.
No removal of inline links used as references should be considered. Binksternet (talk) 21:27, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to discussion posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places & Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 21:31, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Guys, this isn't about the ultimate outcome; this is about process. As a matter of reality, if you decide to remove "just" one thousand of these links today (a mere 3% of the extant links), you'll probably be blocked well before you get to the end of your list. You've got to go slowly, or you won't get the job done at all. Festina lente is the relevant principle. Try removing five or ten links, by hand, because that's likely to work. Resolve to be nice to whomever happens to revert you or complain at you. Don't do a mass removal with AWB, because that's likely to get you blocked and all the links restored to the article (and possibly even convince some editors that "the community" has a never-changing consensus to always link to this website whenever possible). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:15, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
I realize Moxy feels that the link is "Spammed" but I don't see it that way any more than the other External links templates . I also don;t agree with the statement that it was done in an attempt to help Find a Grave rather than Wikipedia. If the individual cemeteries had Biographies of the people buried there I would say use those. If there was an Obituaries.com website with free access to Obituaries for the world I would say that is fine. If someone created a grave registry through the national park service that would be fine. The fact is this information does not exist in any other place for a lot of the articles that have it. I know that some of the other editors are getting just as frustrated as I am. It seems as though knowone wants to use the Find a Grave site but they don't have a good reason why or have an alternative to use instead. All I get is that its spammed across WP. So is Myspace, facebook, twitter, Flickr and a dozen others appearing thousands of times each. If you want to talk about spam that serves no purpose lets talk about those. And as far as mass removals goes if "Consensus" decides that the Find a Grave link is spam and should be removed then it shouldn't matter if others have problem with it. WP goes by "Consencus" and there are mechanisms for fighting it. If the decision is made we shouldn't need to hide in the shadows and sneak the edits in. We should get it done and move on. I have stated all through this that I dont agree but I am pretty much the only one that has been fighting to keep this site. After spamming links to this conversation over a half dozen projects and talking for a couple weeks already even I am starting to wonder if the community wants it. --Kumioko (talk) 23:40, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
I agree Kumioko (in a round about way) this is just another site that got away with blanket spam - like Myspace, facebook, twitter and Flickr. All should be addressed but we can only talk about one at a time. I see only more to come in the future if the community does not address them one at a time. I am pretty sure when the community wrote Wikipedia:External links this is exactly what they/we/the community were referring to , that is links like Find a Grave, Myspace, facebook, twitter and Flickr should only be used in appropriate places with great consideration. I dont even think Find a Grave should be used as a source, but we are talking about the external links for mass removal. BUT as a references if people cant find a source outside Find a Grave i would question the subjects notability and/or the editors laziness in trying to find a proper source. So what we have is a link sitting in external links waiting for someone to come by and use it as a references? Luck for Find a Grave they have this privilege with us to be added before its value is evaluated. We should be encouraging our editors to find proper sources and not the easy way out. ...........PS this is a great talk.Moxy (talk) 00:20, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Just for clarification, I wasn't including Find a Grave in the category of those other links. MY point was that we should be addressing links like those and probably blogs, not this one. And I don't think this is a "Bad" source. I just think that if there are sources that are better we should use them. I also don't think using this site shows editor laziness. This site has been widely used (obviously) for a long time. It is accepted. And just because they have limited sources doesn't make them non-notable. It just means that they don't have as many sources. Remember the farther back in time you go the harder it will be to find a source. If someone died in 1850 its gonna be a lot harder to find high quality sources than someone who died in 1990. --Kumioko (talk) 00:36, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Kumioko, if you think that dealing with blogs or internet chat rooms or some other type of site is more important, then you should focus your efforts on the problems that you think are most important. If you personally think that a given link is good for an article, then you should leave it alone, no matter what anyone else thinks. Nobody is trying to tell you to remove links that you honestly believe should not be removed. If Moxy (for example) wants these removed, then Moxy can do it.
Getting it over with as fast as possible is not the goal. WP:There is no deadline, and when people start removing links, they often encounter a number of "most interested people", who need to be given enough time to respond. Yes, we could set up a bot to do a mass removal in the space of minutes, or we could blacklist it so that the very next time an editor changed anything in the article, s/he would be forced to remove it, or we could kill every one of them in maybe 50-100 hours of script-assisted drudgery. This would be very quick, but it is a Very Bad Idea, because it gives the other editors no time to talk, think, or complain. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:12, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
We fundamentally just disagree on this point. If Find a Grave has this info it should be verifiable somewhere or its at Find a Grave because its original research or a POV as pointed out by the Accuracy and Content Disclaimer at Find a Grave. In the old days of Wikipidia most references were not simple internet links but references from real books that have been peer reviewed and stood the test of time. It scars me to see this left in external links and then used by editors without realy searching to see if the info is substantiated by real published sources. We are inviting our editors to simply assume the linked info is right. Dame the more i think about this the more it bugs me. Moxy (talk) 01:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing my point on the one issue was that if we are deciding the fate of the link based on "consensus" and consensus determines that the link should be eliminated after all this debate and after all my arguments then I will go along. Theres no reason to waffle and waver then, the decisions been made and "those editors" had plenty of time to argue the plus's and minuses which are all listed above. If we think that someone later is going to come back and complain then...perhaps...we should consider that NOW before we make a decision that, I am quite certain, is going to have far reaching and excrutiatingly painful ramifications. I do have one other possible compromise. We could comment it out so its not visible to the viewer unless they edit it. Then if the complaints start rolling in we can fix the problem and this will allow future editors to use it as a reference later. To respond to your other comment, I don't have any desire to deal with those other links either. If they are under external links I can live with it and in fact the time I am spending fighting this cause would have been far better spent making edits or writing articles. Moxy you still havent given us a good reason WHY this site is bad. And if you could find a book with the birth, death and burial info. Great. If not use Find a Grave until you do. And I still dont know why this link is so scary. Its just a database and website with info just like a million others. --Kumioko (talk) 01:33, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
"you still havent given us a good reason WHY this site is bad" - what??? The website does not mention or site its source for any of the info. Even Find a Grave say its not reliable that i have pointed to many times. A good source would mention its sources as we try to do here at Wiki. A good real academic source would look like this with a reference list. Find a Grave is not a good source and is not used by any academic community and seems to have a bad reputation here on Wiki aswell. Its used by the media for tidbit information not biographical info. Find a Grave is like Wikipedia but without the broad community overview and peer review process. In fact y are we helping to promote a site built up like Wikipedia (a competitor for editors i would say) and that has advertisements? So from all angles its a bad site to me, its written by the laymen and not sourced. From my point of view it looks like Find a Grave is spamming wiki in an attempt to acquire editors to help expand there site not to help us here at Wikipedia expand. We even have editors that have said they edit both places, think of how easy it would be to push a POV by editing Find a Grave then using that POV as a reference on Wikipidia. As an educator i am mystified at Y the site is linked on ever dead bio i see, let alone considered reliable here at wiki. 02:11, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Ok here we go again. As I said before All websites have a waiver of liability statement. Even CNN. Speaking of CNN check this link out: CNN Article it doesnt have any references either. Does that mean we cant use it either? Of course there would be no need for an academic community to need find a grave because they dont have a no original research rule. In fact they are encouraged to find original research and in fact they should verify the information by going to the source...the grave if necessary. Just cause it has ads doesn't make it bad, most sites besides WP do have ads. Its not a competitor with WP any more than Facebook. They have a completely different goal, rules and purpose. The only thing I can agree on is that we should try and use a better source. Obituaries, books about the article, whatever but if we dont have that, which in most cases we dont, then we should keep the link. --Kumioko (talk) 02:42, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
What they are encouraged to find original research?? Do you know what your saying ?? This is the worst thing i have ever heard about the site. Have your ever read Wikipedia:No original research? If this is an official policy at Find a Grave a believe that is should be black listed right now. I see that you dont understand the difference between the news media that is liable for there statements vs Find a Grave site that is not liable. CNN cant say what they wish because they must back up there statements if need be before the law. Can you provide any evidence that Find a Grave is reliable because i cant see how you can rebuff the sites own disclaimer. Moxy (talk) 02:57, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Oh come on man, pay attention to what I said. I said the academic community does original research and that we can't. Thats why the academic community wouldn't have to use the find a grave site. They could just go hunt down the information, talk to the family, whatever. We cannot do that. And Ill grant you that maybe CNN was a bad example. I'm frustrated by this whole waste of time and Im tired cause its late where I am. The bottomline is the Find a Grave website needs to stay on the articles until a better source can be found (period). If the consensus from this conversation decides we need to get rid of it though I will go through with AWB and make the articles conform to consensus by commenting out the link. That way we can go back and fix it when the world comes crashing down and people start screaming and deleting articles as unsourced. I only hope it doesn't come to that. --Kumioko (talk) 03:21, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
No article will be deleted we are taking about there removal for external links. (i wish it was from wiki altogether but thats not what we are talking about) So i take it you have no evidence that its a reliable site. Your main argument is that its already there and should stay until a real references is found. Am i right? Your not arguing that the site is good just that is the only thing thats linked in some articles and thus should stay? O well one can only hope that we get editors that will make an effort to find real sources and not use this links that are on ever dead bio page. All i can say is way to go Find a Grave you got our editors using your links because you were able to get them spammed all over. 04:08, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Yet another break

So far, Kumioko has been been the voice for keeping but he would hardly be alone as previous history has shown when people balk at the removal of the links. Much has been said about the reliability – what is a realistic track record for FindAGrave? Forget the theoretical disclaimers for the moment and discuss real cases. How close to the mark does it get? If it has an odd mistake, that's one thing but if they are riddled with mistakes that is another. The true value of information isn't in site disclaimers. For those people who favor removing, did you find a mass of glaring mistakes at FAG?
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 13:08, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Reliability does not have much to do with whether the site should be used as an external link, and no one's disputing the usage of the site as a reference, as far as I can see. There are two major problems that I see: First, the site simply does not offer anything that's not already present in the article (WP:ELNO #1). It offers the birth and death dates, and it offers a short biography. The other problem are the pictures presented on the site: More often than not, they're taken from other websites regardless of copyright issues. Reliability has nothing to do with it, I'm fairly certain that the site is reliable most of the time. --Conti|✉ 13:30, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
We judge reliability by editorial control - wikis and other user-contributed sites are not generally deemed to be reliable. If you want specific examples of incorrect information, look at [15], the Find a Grave entry for Davy Crockett. It has an outdated number of Texans killed (modern scholarly research says about 250 Texans died in the Battle of the Alamo), it is POV in that it says Crockett was "assassinated", and it is absoluely incorrect in saying "Most speculate that Crockett tried to kill General Santa Anna, and he was killed upon attacking him." The find-a-grave page also shows several pictures of a coffin where Crockett's remains (and those of other Alamo defenders) are rumored to be - scholars say that the remains in that coffin did not come from the Alamo. Also, as has been said above, a tombstone cannot provide conclusive proof of date of death, birth, or even name - I've seen some in my family that have one or all three of these pieces of information wrong. Find a Grave is not a reliable source, and it is not an appropriate external link. Karanacs (talk) 13:38, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Ok, First editor control only brings us so far. Thats why we had to institute tag logic, have various bots running and have started to look into a second certification review control mechanism for certain pages due to frequent vandalism and various other issues. Knowone denies that there is flawed information in the site (it has more than 50 million entries after all) and I have mentioned many times that we should not be using details like the ones you mention for a variety of reasons and I agree we shouldn't be using pictures unless they are clearly marked as freely distributable. Birth date, Birth location, Death date, death location, burial date and location if available and only in cases where a better source isnt available. Davy crocket falls into the category I mentioned above were he is well documented and using this link wouldnt be reasonable. I am going to use a very simple example were this flawed theory of just find a better reference wont work. At least half of the Medal of Honor recipients who currently have articles use the Find a Grave site for some portion of the birth, death or burial information. Not all of them have it as an inline citation but the link is in the external links section. If we do not use this site then that information CANNOT be derived from any other means unless we want to start waiving the original research rule. Its not in a book, its not on the internet, its not in a newspaper obituary. Its on the grave, in cemetery records, family dcoumentation or on the Find a Grave site. Thats it. And the reason why its on the Find a Grave site is because find a grave does not have a no original research rule like we do. They are free to look through records, ask family members, etc. And as far as the logic that its not appropriate in the external links section. One of the main purposes of the External link section is for links that arent appropriate in the references section (personal/company websites, Userpages on myspace, blogs (and I really dont like the last 2 myself)). Using that same logic if its not appropriate in the External links section then its definately not appropriate in the references section. --Kumioko (talk) 14:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Kumioko, you have misunderstood. Karanacs says that one sign of a reliable source is the existence of a proper editor in charge, ideally even with editorial independence from advertisers. Your local newspaper has editorial control: the reporter does not get to publish whatever he or she wants. The reporter must convince the editor to accept it. Wikipedia does not have editorial control: nobody is "in charge". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:48, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
So as per the norm on this topic, although noone thinks its a good site we are still stuck with it. There is clearly no consensus to use it but yet we still have it. This keeps coming up because the site is questionable (all agree with this point). The fact it keeps coming up and that so many have voiced concerns should be a clue to people that the site does not have a good reputation. It discourages me to see that the majority view here is ignored, dont you think its odd so many so many times have brought this up. Any site built up like Wikipedia is not reliable. This would fall under common knowledge for any university educated editor here.Moxy (talk) 14:41, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
Let the individual editor decide how reliable the individual entry is on Find-a-Grave. Many will not be, but those with photographs of tombstones or transcribed and sourced obituaries are perfectly reliable, so let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:04, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Sturmvogel. For the academic comment that Moxy left. Academia doesn't accept WP anyway, and probably never will fro a variety of reasons. --Kumioko (talk) 15:12, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
Y is it linked before its value is determined and not the other way around?. No external link or references for that matter should have the right to be included until its evaluated for its content and reliability. Currently Find a Grave has the status of being in articles before its value is determined. As you say "the individual editor decide how reliable the individual entry is on Find-a-Grave". This was not done before, so now we have to go over ever article to see if the link is proper? Clearly its best to do it the other way and add back the link if its valuable. What is currently happening is that Find-a-Grave is defaulted in because of how many time its been placed without consideration of Wiki policy? Moxy (talk) 17:18, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
I keep seeing this "it was spammed everywhere without any editor every looking at the page" kind of argument, and I'm not buying it. So: Where's the proof that these links weren't added by individual editors, after looking at the link and trying to decide whether it was (in that editor's personal opinion) valuable to the article at that time? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
Why wouldn't it be linked? How often is a source evaluated project wide before individual editors decide to use it or not? And why should it be? Each editor evaluates the source and decides if it's trustworthy enough to use in his article and somebody else can come along and disagree and they can come to some sort of consensus about including it or not. I see no reason to override their judgment without careful evaluation of each individual use. I don't need to clear any source I use with anyone else in Wiki before I use it, which is what you're implying is the actual procedure.
And what exact Wiki policy are you talking about? Can you provide a link? Because I think that you're misinterpreting the policies that do exist.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:56, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
WP:EL # WP:RS Rich Farmbrough, 01:51, 25 October 2010 (UTC).
I'm sorry, you'll need to be a bit more specific.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm surprised F-A-G wasn't added to the blacklist a long time ago, as it was clearly initially added by a mass spamming/linkfarming campaign by the site itself. Every single time we have one of these discussions we always rule that the site is not a reliable source and does not meet our criteria for external links. It's about time someone went through and removed a bunch. I remove them by hand every time I see one, but since they were originally mass added (and the only reason other people knew about them in the first place and found the site was because of the linkfarming) they should be mass removed too. DreamGuy (talk) 20:50, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Got any proof that they were added by a mass spamming?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
Since we are talking in circles and no one feels like linking all above again with that same results ....lets do a simple poll see if there is realy a wide view on the matter and if others realy care.

Quick poll

lets just see if we can get some sort of sense of the amount of people who realy care one way or the other. Think we should ask two questions - first is Find a Grave appropriate for external links and secondly is it reliable an thus good as a references. Moxy (talk) 05:38, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I understand that the wiki-like site can be viewed as unreliable - but for birth and death dates and grave location you must agree that the information is verifiable - you can go there and check the dates, just as you can go to a library a check out what a specific rare book says. In the case of most graves, the information is literally carved in stone. And the folks who do the stone carving, as a group, have an excellent reputation for accuracy. I've used the site once or twice to get an exact death date, e.g. December 12, 1887 rather than just 1887. I trust the site enough if they include a readable photo, but I don't think photos of graves should be included in most articles. External link or inline citation? - obviously inline citations are preferred, but is there a policy that says they are required over external links? For short articles especially, I think an external link is just fine. So please do not resort to a bot taking out all information from this source in the name of accuracy. Sometimes it's the best source we've got for certain specific data. Smallbones (talk) 05:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Overwriting images

I don't know where the proper forum for this question is and I'm grateful for any directions.

The File:MirusiaOperaSinger.jpg, which was originally uploaded on 3 March 2007, has been overwritten with a different image of the subject (Mirusia Louwerser) by the original uploader on 27 September 2010. It says at Commons:First steps/Upload form that this is improper, but I can't find any such guideline on the English Wikipedia nor any forum to raise such a matter. Please advise. Thanks, Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:25, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

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