Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 35

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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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Featured article?

Hey, I read Wikipedia often and noticed something weird. The featured article has been the same for quite a while. Why is this? For as long as I can remember, the featured article changed daily.

Which "featured article", where? A link wopuld really help solve this mystery. Roger (talk) 16:25, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I presume that the question regards "today's featured article" on the main page. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:34, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Have in mind that "daily" for wikipedia means a 24 h. period of time. There's a single time zone where that period changes at 0:00 as the real days, for all others, it changes at some other hour. I'm from Argentina and the "days" change at 22:00 local time. So, if I checked the featured article at 23:00, and then again in the morning, it will be the same Cambalachero (talk) 22:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The comment was made by an IP address that appears to be in New Jersey, which would mean that from that user's prospective, the featured article should change at 19:00 (20:00 during daylight saving time). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Possible shutdown of the Italian Wikipedia

What am I missing here As of a few hours ago, every page on the Italian Wikipedia was replaced with [it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Comunicato_4_ottobre_2011/en this]--it's a notice that Italian laws might conflict with the way that the Italian language Wikipedia is edited. Who cares? Just because it's written in the Italian language, that doesn't affect the Italian Wikipedia--it's hosted in Florida, right? Would laws from Spain somehow stop Mexican Wikipedias from editing es.wp? How is this relevant? I guess there's just something I'm missing here... I've edited it.wp (and I don't know any Italian, except by way of Spanish), so what do I care if Italy has some draconian law? Can someone help me understand this? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:57, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

It's being discussed just a few posts above: #Italian Wikipedia.--Ultimate Destiny (talk) 05:32, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the actual "strike" (as said on Meta) was on their own volition. I mean, my question is, if I were to edit the Italian Wikipedia as an American, would I fall under Italian laws? What about the servers which host all the Wikipedias, none of which are hosted in Italy? –MuZemike 06:06, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Answers already written above: #Italian Wikipedia--Bramfab (talk) 09:02, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I think this law will eventually affect Italian Citizens who edit articles in Italian Wikipedia. Sara Wankel77 (talk) 13:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Right Or any other Wikipedia. The fact that one of them is written in the Italian language should be irrelevant. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:38, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's likely. How could this law affect Italian citizens who edit other wikipedias in your opinion?--Ultimate Destiny (talk) 16:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Why shouldn't it affect editors in Italy who edit other language Wikipedias? I very much doubt that this proposed law only applies to content written in Italian. And, also, I'm getting annoyed with some of the sloppy thinking in this discussion. Both language and citizenship are irrelevant here (except for people with diplomatic immunity). Anyone within the jurisdiction of the Italian courts could potentially be affected, whatever language they are using and whatever citizenship they hold. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:21, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

So basically you think that this law will affect every single website accessible from Italy? Also, what makes you think that the contributors, as opposed to just the publishers (sysops in our case) will be held responsible if the law is not observed?--Ultimate Destiny (talk) 17:42, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I believe the point you're missing is that the Italian language Wikipedia is NOT a website that has anything to do with Italy, the country. The servers are in Florida, and it would be affected by the same laws as the English Wikipedia or any other one. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 18:16, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Persons are affected by different laws than servers. If that law will pass I will be affected by it, because I edit from Italy; every contribute of mine (everywhere! that means also here in en.wiki) is affected by that law.--Nickanc (talk) 18:28, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The only way the Italian authorities will be able to know if an editor lives in Italy is if such an editor says so somewhere on WP. If all Italian contributors to WP were to simply never reveal their location the authorities will have nowhere to deliver their demands. So advice for all our Italian friends: Request revdeletion of all the edits on WP where you have revealed your location, then you will have immunity from this bad law. Roger (talk) 18:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe not. Legal advice from wikipedia editors is worth the amount paid for it.- DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:22, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I should note that IP addresses are logged on Wikimedia projects, even if they are generally hidden from Wikimedia users if you are logged in with a user account. They are mainly used for sock puppets and other trolls, but in a situation like this the logs could be requested by Italian authorities... something that is already covered by Wikimedia policy if a specific legal request for those records are made in some sort of legal due process context (like a court order, search warrant, or something of that nature). Italian authorities can determine who may very likely be Italian citizens in this context, or at least give reason to suspect they may be operating within legal jurisdiction of Italy. It is the nature of the internet that this situation exists, and no you don't have to necessarily have disclosed this information in the past. A Wikimedia conference in Italy would be a travesty at the moment. Security through obscurity doesn't really work in this context. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I've just read some news... "Il comma 29 che aveva fatto temere la trasformazione dell'internet italiana in un campo minato, nel quale ogni informazione pubblicata online, documentata o meno, poteva diventare oggetto di una richiesta di rettifica con pene stratosferiche per gli inadempienti è stato abbandonato in commissione, grazie all'intervento degli onorevoli Roberto Cassinelli, Pdl, e Roberto Zaccaria". It seems that nothing will change! Sorry but my English is not strong, is there any Italian that could translate? many thanks! SaraWankel77 (talk) 19:37, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Translation: "Paragraph 29, which raised fears that the Italian internet would become a minefield where every piece of information published online—whether documentable or not—could become a target for rectification, with hefty punishments being meted out to anyone failing to comply, has been abandoned at the Committee stage thanks to the intervention of the Rt Hon Roberto Cassinelli (Pdl) and Roberto Zaccaria."--MistyMorn (talk) 19:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Google Translate: "Paragraph 29, which had raised concerns the transformation of the Internet in an Italian minefield, in which all information posted online, documented or not, could become the subject of a request for stratospheric adjustment with penalties for non-fulfillment has been abandoned in committee, thanks the intervention of Mr Roberto Cassinelli, PDL, and Roberto Zaccaria." So, good news? Can you link the news site? -- Obsidi♠n Soul 19:50, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Was it even published by a news site? A rapid google search traces it back to some random blog.--Ultimate Destiny (talk) 21:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately the news doesn't seem to be so encouraging as far as Wikipedia is concerned. It seems that the retraction currently only regards blogs rather than registered sites such as WP. Source, La Stampa: "Unica nota positiva, come commenta Roberto Rao (Udc), è il sì bipartisan alla modifica della norma 'ammazza-blog': avranno l’obbligo di rettifica entro le 48 ore solo i siti registrati." ("The only positive note, as Roberto Rao (Udc) comments, was the bipartisan agreement to change the 'blog-killer' norm: only registered websites will be required to publish 'corrections' within 48 hours".) Of course, a lot more could change before the final votes in the two houses. NB I'll copy this news in to the section above, though this duplication is an annoyance - could people kindly post above? Grazie.--MistyMorn (talk) 21:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you know what would be the definition of a "registered site" in this context? Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:46, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

My untutored understanding is that the distinction is between personal blogs and websites with domains, but I can't be sure about that. However, I guess Wikipedia could scarcely pretend to be 'unregistered'? [btw, could you kindly comment in the section above - it is annoying to have to navigate and post news in both - thank you.]--MistyMorn (talk) 22:25, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I was wrong in thinking that Wikipedia is a 'registered' site: apparently that term applies to the press etc but not open community initiatives like Wikipedia.--MistyMorn (talk) 11:47, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

It is a mistake to think that users can conceal their nationality to avoid legal consequences. It's not just when the user says so by himself when we know where is a user from, there are users with Checkuser rights, who can see the IP of any given registered user (which includes the information of where do their edits come from). Among us, we have the policy of not abusing of such userright, and checkusers are only allowed to use it when there's justification to suspect about misuse of duplicated accounts. But the law, the real world law, is above wiki policies (which are closer to "codes of honor" than to real regulations), and if a legal action demands to know the whereabouts of a user who may had used wikipedia to violate the law, then he will be outed. Yes, an absurd and nonsensical law, but it would be the law nonetheless Cambalachero (talk) 21:25, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Your arguments rest on two assumptions: 1- that Wikipedia (based in Florida) has any obligation to abide Italian legislation and 2- that the proposed law would affect contributors, as opposed to sysops. I think you are wrong on both cases.--Ultimate Destiny (talk) 21:31, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

WMF may be immune, but Wikimedia Italia has been sued before, and a user has been sued before. So yes, users falling within the jurisdiction of Italian law can be sued.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 21:57, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely Agree Italy does not have international copyright over the Italian language. I am an Italophone that has never had and never seeks Italian citizensip — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattk0516 (talk • contribs) 01:01, 6 October 2011 (UTC) And let it be known that the day that my right to view wikipedia in Italian is denied me is the day I will never give a dime to wikipedia and will discourage others from doing so either. E si lascia essere capito che il giorno in cui mio diritto per avere l'abilita di vedere Wikipedia nella lingua Italiana e negato sara anche il giorno in cui non daro mai piu un dollare (sono Italo-Americano mica Italiano) e io costringero tutti i miei compagni a fare lo stesso. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattk0516 (talk • contribs) 01:08, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Italophone you said? :-)) -- SERGIO aka the Black Cat 08:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I believe there was a recent case involving Twitter and a "super injunction", in which the American court told the British to get lost -- but only because the company showed some backbone. I don't think that Wikipedia handing over IP addresses should be assumed, especially if the Italians were going on a fishing expedition for people who hadn't previously revealed themselves to be Italian. Wish Mike Godwin were here to advise us now though!

RE Mike Godwin: [1] (via The Signpost)--MistyMorn (talk) 09:18, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

But as for Italy itself, it is instructive to consider the Amanda Knox case - so far as I understand, they've sentenced her to three years in jail for saying, during 50 hours of interrogation, that a restaurant owner might have done it, and they're trying to send her to jail for six years for saying that an unknown cop rapped her on the back of the head during questioning, because she couldn't identify him out of the pictures they decided to show her, and they're trying to send her parents to jail for saying they believed her. There is something desperately wrong with that country and freedom of speech, and whatever amputation from it is actually necessary to protect Wikipedia will have to be done. But that doesn't mean closing the it.wikipedia; potentially, if the U.S. fails to properly protect us from libel tourism, it would mean banning any IP address traceable to Italy from editing or accessing Wikipedia in any language. Wnt (talk) 03:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

(ot) Amanda got a fair trial (she’s free now indeed so no one has to complain about how she has supposedly been treated) and — no matter if guilty of inocent — the worse she could expect here in Italy would be some years of jail and three stages of judgment, not to be killed in some State prison by the electric chair or by a poisoned needle in her arm, so please let’s stop right now this useless rant against the Italian judicial system that at least doesn’t kill inmates making it up as “justice”: what doesn’t work here are representatives who issue senseless laws, not judges who try to do their best in spite of the abovementioned laws. -- SERGIO aka the Black Cat 07:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I was referring to three different criminal libel cases, not the murder case (though spending four years in prison because of trumped-up DNA evidence isn't what I call a fair trial). Bear in mind that she actually, officially served three years for suggesting someone else did the crime during a police interrogation, after being asked who she thought did it. Most relevantly, her parents are facing charges for a Sunday Times interview. See Amanda_Knox#Other_related_court_cases. Wnt (talk) 14:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

As a user of and contributor to Wikipedia in several languages, including Italian, I have posted my comments and suggestions on the present crisis at: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/04/regarding-recent-events-on-italian-wikipedia/. Concerning the "pot calling the kettle black" debate on the respective merits and demerits of the Italian Justice System (hereinafter "Never-ending Story") and the US Justice System (hereinafter "Dead Man Walking"), I would suggest a separate debate to avoid clouding the free-speech, free-press and potential censorship aspects of the it:wiki crisis. My "pot calling the kettle black" remark refers to the fact that both the Italian and the US systems are both extremely "lawyer-ridden" (compare, for example, the number of lawyers in Italy with France, or the number of lawyers in the US with Japan, to remain within the G8).LombardBeige (talk) 06:45, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, looking at other news, it seems a bit confusing... at least for me :-\ yesterday I read that only web sites such as newspaper ones will be "affected" (http://blog.debiase.com/2011/10/il-comma-29-e-finito---la-vitt.html). Instead the "ANSA" web site tells that this law applies to registered sites. What's the difference between the registered and unregistered site? What i wrote in a registered site is different than an unregistered? My thoughts are the same, aren't they? It's a wrong law, that's all. Sara Wankel77 (talk) 06:06, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Delisting featured pictures

Where do you go and how do you nominate a featured picture for delisting? thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

You can go to Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates#Nominations_for_delisting. You'll find the instructions there. Armadillopteryx^talk 22:06, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Much appreciated. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:22, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. Armadillopteryx^talk 23:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

PSP homebrew article from Wikipedia in spanish

Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause, especially not partly in Spanish. Yoenit (talk) 20:23, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Other pages are from creators of homebrew, this homebrew is not sold but free. Other homebrews are not made by one person but by several people in several countries. On the websites of some of the authors they give permission for others to modify their work. The Spanish Law protects the rights against violation of copyright. This pages web referenced in article are spanish pages web, from Spain, against violation of copyright. You can to read it in english in the statutes for example of: http://psp.scenebeta.com/ Spain is a member of European Union. In addition, the article is translated from the Spanish wikipedia. These people that has created the applications do not sell products, not self advertise and many of them do not even transmit information of homebrew in a language other than Castilian. The article discusses how develop the capabilities of the PSP nonprofit and for own use. Personally, one of the things I admire from the creators of homebrew is the young age of many of them. A good portion are under age, around 15 years old and I know an application created by a child of 10 years. Also, most owner people who install homebrew on PSP are minors. For example, The idea of ​​installing a epub viewer in PSP through an emulator java for PSP, come from a child. This is amazing for me. "Alimento para vuestras consolas PSP de Sony, preparad las Memory Stick. Intentamos cada día traeros el mejor contenido, aplicaciones y juegos de la scene homebrew para nuestras consolas PSP y PSP Slim de Sony traduciendolos al español. Además creamos tutoriales para que podais exprimir al máximo vuestras PSPs." "El software, código fuente, logotipos y marcas contenidos en este sitio web son propiedad de sus respectivos dueños y están, o pueden estar, sujetos a derechos y/o licencia de uso. Los anuncios, banners y la publicidad son propiedad y responsabilidad de los anunciantes. Los envíos y publicaciones, salvo indicación expresa en contra, son propiedad y responsabilidad de quien los realiza. El resto de publicaciones, elementos gráficos y contenido es propiedad de "SB IT MEDIA, S.L.". SceneBeta.com, 2005 - 2011 Contactar con PSP.SceneBeta.com - Información legal, términos y condiciones de uso. Todo el contenido excluidos software, código fuente, publicidad, logotipos, marcas y elementos gráficos, salvo indicación expresa en contra, está disponible bajo la licencia "Creative Commons Reconocimiento-No comercial-Compartir bajo la misma licencia 3.0 España" y puede ser utilizado de forma no comercial manteniendo el tipo de licencia y con las restricciones que establece dicha licencia siempre que se enlace su ubicación original citando la fuente y el autor." On the Internet, outside the English wikipedia, it's easy to get information about PSP homebrew. I open this section simply because I admire that can do as young people. All the resources of a large multinational as Sony, can not oppose at these younger and anonymous Steve Jobs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.120.185.55 (talk) 20:09, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Now this is rather wp:BITEY, but I should thank the IP for bringing this up here, as it brought to my attention that he dumped 20 kb of crappy sourced junk in PlayStation Portable homebrew. I have reverted to an earlier version which is properly sourced, if somebody wants to try and salvage it be my guest. Yoenit (talk) 20:35, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

India Education Program

See also: Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors § Concerns over impact on article quality, and Wikipedia talk:India Education Program § Queries from the Wikipedia community

There are increasing concerns that the India Education Program project has gone badly, and is ending in a mass of low-quality articles and copyvio media. This is getting to the point of being a project-level issue. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:40, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

My sandbox and the shutdown of italian wikipedia

Cause of the shutdown, i would like to use my sandbox in en.wiki to write some stubs in italian, to put in italian wiki when the shutdown ends, is this allowed or not? Thanks, sorry for my english.--Seics (talk) 07:18, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I would say, yes, but you will need to accept two things;

1. There will never be Italian-language articles (in mainspace) on en.wiki.
2. If the law goes ahead and the Italian Wikipedia is deleted, the sandbox drafts that you have added, will then need to be deleted also.

Probably you are fine with those two things, so go right ahead.

I leave the space below blank so that anyone who disagrees can wikilawyer about the strict interpretation of WP:NOTWEBHOST under these circumstances :) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 07:54, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Of course, i agree with point one and two, that i forget to specify. I will work on my sandbox, if someone disagree and will erase it, i am only asking for have a copy of my erased sand by email. Thank you very much. One last thing, i will use only one sand. Thanks again, greeting,--Seics (talk) 10:30, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I say since wikipedia is a democracy we try and start a movement rising above the unjust decision to destroy the world's Italian language edition of wikipedia. If they shut it down let's built it back up. We will start a revolution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattk0516 (talk • contribs) 01:10, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is open content. If you are that unhappy with the way the Foundation runs the site, you download a dump of the encyclopedia and put it on your own server. Draw a new logo, and BAM! You've got your own encyclopedia!

However, starting a revolution against the Foundation on servers owned by the Foundation would just be a waste of everybody's time and could possibly even lead to legal action. APL (talk) 03:48, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Say, would it be possible for someone to download a dump of Italian Wikipedia and put that on their own servers? The problem is the Italian government, not the Italian language. Why not have an "Italian language" Wikipedia hosted elsewhere and edited by Italian-speakers in other countries, with a notice at the top that Italian residents are prohibited from viewing it, and do so at the risk of being hammered by their own government? bd2412 T 04:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

That would probably be possible; and it should also be legal, as long as proper attribution is given. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:39, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

As a user of and contributor to Wikipedia in several languages, including Italian, I have posted my comments and suggestions on this issue at: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/04/regarding-recent-events-on-italian-wikipedia/. My proposal is to create a alternative access to a full updated version of it:wiki, fr:wiki and de:wiki to servers located outside of their reference countries, possibly through a "Swiss Wikipedia". This could be the existing Rumantsch-language Wiki (if they agree). Of course, that would not solve the problems of ACTIVE users in Italy itself, but I think both user groups - those in Italy and those in other countries - need to be safeguarded. (Switzerland is the ideal choice for Italian, as it is one of the 4 official languages and, according to a Swiss contributor (Patrizia) to the blog debate, it is spoken by about one million people in Switzerland. LombardBeige (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:59, 7 October 2011 (UTC).

The issue isn't in terms of where the servers are hosted, but rather how those who might be impacted by a law such as the one being proposed in Italy would have in regards to people acting under that law. "Alternative Access" would be open proxies or some other "plausible deniability" in terms of how corrections or edits onto a page might happen. It could be a peer to peer editing system (like the .onion wikis) or some other system that could scramble the origin of whoever posted the material.

The problem with any such "origin scrambling" is that it completely detaches the editor from the contribution. It really is an either-or situation, where you either assert copyright and a legal claim upon a piece of text you have contributed and have that linked to a real person who can be traced to a specific location, or the contribution is completely anonymous but also can't be connected to any particular IP address or country of origin. Both could be used on Wikipedia (and indeed are for the most part anyway) but the origin scrambling system, however it is done, would make fighting trolls much, much harder. Most of the internet troll fighting tools currently used on Wikipedia and other wiki-based projects depend upon IP address blocking and other tools being used to trace who is doing potential damage to an article.

You "can't have your cake and eat it too". This issue is a big deal, and I'm not sure if it is a good idea to anonymize user contributions in an attempt to evade legal responsibility for what is written. Potentially that could land the Wikimedia Foundation into some legal problems as well if this is implemented. While it might be an act of civil disobedience with Italians, I think it could be life or death in terms of helping Chinese contributors to Wikipedia being involved. The situation in Italy isn't unique in terms of trying to suppress the written word. --Robert Horning (talk) 20:24, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

• There is no practical possibility of the Italian wikipedia being deleted, merely (in the worst case) that the Italian language wikipedia needs to move outside of the Italy, the nation. At least until Berlusconi gives up politics and becomes a lamppost inspector. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:37, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Isn't it "outside the nation" already? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 18:10, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

There is in any case no connection between the country Italy and Wikipedia (or more correctly the Wikimedia Foundation) the only countries that the Wikimedia Foundation is "connected" to is the US and Netherlans as it's servers are located there. The Italian language Wikipedia has no connection with the country of Italy. Roger (talk) 18:16, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Maybe not with the country itself, but most certainly with editors who are resident in the country and come under national jurisdiction. Btw, the proposed amendments are due to be debated in parliament next week.--MistyMorn (talk) 19:42, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

AIUI, there is some unknown degree to which the it project is "within" Italy. This may be no more than reasonable paranoia by the WMF with a post office box there, or it may be political soapboxing by Italian wikipedians against this draconian measure (which is again understandable). If the entire project is already clear of Italian jurisdiction (which isn't how I understood the current situation to be) then we should all rejoice and stop worrying that this immediate situation is a problem for the WMF. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:09, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

• This is overreaction. The Italian Wikipedia is not going to be shut down any time soon. At worst, they may delete some articles affected by the law, which would be very bad, but the vast majority are not. And yes feel free to use your sandbox here for preparing articles for when it's up again. Dcoetzee 19:45, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

• There's other places besides Italy where Italian is spoken. Whatever happens even if no-one from Italy could access it there is no reason to delete the Italian Wikipedia. Dmcq (talk) 13:47, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Censorship of dissenting voices at the Italian Wikipedia

Nothing we can do about it here and not relevant to this project. Please discuss concerns about other Wikipedias at those projects or at meta. SoWhy 17:34, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

After a series of posts disagreeing with the decision of a few to give up WP's political independence with the Italian lockdown (paradoxically with the pretext of defending its neutrality), users who didn't like these disagreements started running out of arguments, censoring and protecting discussion pages, and blocking dissenters, tarring them variously as trolls, socks, kids, newbies, etc. The Italian Wikipedia, so far as I can see, lacks an equivalent to an Administrators' Noticeboard, where I (as a dynamic IP) can publicly appeal against this serious and concerning admin behaviour. Please let me know if I am missing it. For those who can read Italian, this is the discussion page. Thanks. 113.197.209.183 (talk) 02:15, 9 October 2011 (UTC) Concerns about the Italian Wikipedia should be raised at the Italian Wikipedia, or on Meta. There's nothing the English Wikipedia can do about it. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:12, 9 October 2011 (UTC) Many thanks. I have posted this on meta. 121.102.113.13 (talk) 03:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC) Thank you for reporting what happened in the Italian page. I knew they were going to censor my post regardless of the fact that it simply expressed an opinion. Now that is what I call going against one's freedom of speech. Not just that: they banned a user who was posting a question (called him a "troll" for disagreeing) and they blocked the page (again, under which authority?). Someone from Wikimedia, keep an eye on these incidents: we need admins, not autarchs! It.wiki is not the wikipedia of the few active users, is the wikipedia of the Italians and of all those who share with us the knowledge of the beautiful language of Dante. Thank you.74.225.89.170 (talk) 05:10, 9 October 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.225.255.11 (talk) There were several dissenting voices in terms of the decision to blank it.wp. From everything I could see from my very rudimentary knowledge of Italian (plus a whole bunch of help from a machine translator) there was a range of opinions in terms of what to accomplish, but that the Italian Wikipedia community did try to reach for consensus on their actions with more than "a few" people participating in the discussion. I haven't done an exact user count involved in the discussions, but it certainly wasn't being done on an obscure page and missed by the community as a whole. If you are having your posts deleted on it.wp.... bring it up and show evidence too. I certainly see no difference between what happened there vs. any other consensus building discussion that happens routinely here on en.wp. That some are upset over the action is understandable, and not all decisions get 100% approval by the whole community. There certainly have been decisions... substantial decisions... that I've disagreed with in the past and my opinion has not been the prevailing consensus. Sometimes you have to agree to disagree and move on. --Robert Horning (talk) 05:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC) Evidence of removing comments, protecting discussion pages and blocking dissenting users are above. The discussion was not advertised, so the decision was taken by the usual suspects that hang around the "bar" (Italian Village Pump). The discussion pages were also either PC-protected or semi-protected pre-emptively. Please let's continue over on meta. 121.102.113.13 (talk) 05:47, 9 October 2011 (UTC) The rhetorical tenor of the anonymous posts above prompt me to give my two cents on the broader context of these accusations. Leaving aside the specific details of what was said and unsaid (overruled?) in the 'Bar', I take issue with the premise there was a decision "to give up WP's political independence with the Italian lockdown (paradoxically with the pretext of defending its neutrality)". It.wp made no reference to party politics or political factions. Rather, it.wp clearly explained its protest in terms of opposing a legal threat to civil liberties and freedom of speech that would directly impact on Wikipedia (cf unsigned comment above, "Now that is what I call going against one's freedom of speech").--MistyMorn (talk) 08:50, 9 October 2011 (UTC) Should I perhaps add that if the it.wp decision was backed by a legal expert such as Mike Godwin (here) and even by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales himself (here), then perhaps concern wasn't altogether confined to the local bar?--MistyMorn (talk) 09:09, 9 October 2011 (UTC) MistyMorn, thanks for elucidating so well the situation. I cannot say that this anonymous user is a troll: I can only say that he's pretending that the real problem on itW is the "cricca", a little ring of admins and ex admins that came out from SPECTRE. According to him/her, the Ring (!!!) - a few people - decided the strike. "La cricca" is the most typical it.wiki conspiracy theory: if you need to troll someone, if you need to troll the world, you just need to embrace the anti-cricca rifle and moan about freedom of speech. It's easy to get eventually to «a strike organized by censors "paradoxically with the pretext of defending its neutrality"», that is put some nonsenseless to all the village pumps I can reach in order to distract attention from mainspaces. Anyway, our IP started with "Shame on you!", so he/she needs to stop insulting as a first thing. And some "I quote Jack" are more for a CU than for discussing.... --Pequod76 (talk-ita.esp.eng) 12:15, 9 October 2011 (UTC) Go on then, I dare you, go for a CU, or even just a quick geolocation. I think you'll find that what you call "our IP" cannot possibly be the same person. Even so, you don't call someone a troll and block them just because they expressed their view. Or maybe at it.wiki you do, but that's not the done thing, I'll have you know. 124.147.105.92 (talk) 12:51, 9 October 2011 (UTC) While I acknowledge that partisan politics or the advancement of an established political group certainly was not the intention of the actions of the Italian Wikipedia community, it was most certainly a political act which was performed, and indeed it gained notice by politicians in Italy (especially the Italian Parliament) because of these actions. To suggest this is politically neutral is missing the point. Still, the issue at hand is over alleged misconduct on the part of Wikipedia administrators on another language. This is a serious accusation, but one that I think is for the most part unfounded. There have been problems with over zealous administrators shutting down alternative viewpoints, particularly on projects with relatively little participation. The Russian-language Wikibooks is one such project where one bureaucrat/admin gained control and completely shut down any alternative viewpoints in a manner contrary to the five basic pillars of Wikipedia policies. While other policies might be much more fluid on other projects and language editions, these are basic and must be followed on all Wikimedia projects. Given the evidence I've seen, however, I just don't see this to be a problem on the Italian Wikipedia. They have a large and diverse group of participants who have accepted contrary opinions from within the community. The actions done there on this particular issue certainly wouldn't have been any different had it been done here on the English Language Wikipedia, other than perhaps having Jimbo Wales more involved before the decision to redirect all of the pages was implemented. That is an important point too, as the WMF and Jimbo Wales didn't get involved until after the decision was made and after the page redirecting took place. A completely separate issue here perhaps IP address contributors and how they might participate in policy decisions, noting most of those tend to be either from outside of the community (or perceived as such) or perhaps even new to the policy making/decision making process typical to Wikipedia. Unsigned comments thrown into a discussion which seem disruptive certainly can be removed, even if when I've moderated such discussions as an administrator I tend to attempt attribution instead of removal. Complaining about the decision after it has been made also makes you seem like a troll. In short, I don't see a problem here. This was a controversial discussion, and attempt to engage the community did happen. If you want to be involved with policy decisions, you need to be involved on those pages where those decisions are being made. The Italian Wikipedia "Bar" pages seem to be just that sort of place and is well established practice on almost every Wikimedia project which has more than a couple participants. Some contributors felt action needed to be taken, addressed the community with a plan for action, attempted to gain consensus that the action was the right thing to do, and then took action once that consensus was reached. Complaining that your perspective didn't prevail and that some grand conspiracy was going on because your POV didn't prevail in such discussion sounds like an attempt to overturn that decision. It is something which really can't happen on en.wp anyway, so this is wholly an inappropriate forum for any action on top of the other problems. Raising the issue here in terms of asking for some people to look at the situation who have experience moderating similar kinds of discussions is appropriate, and I'm saying that has been done. Mine is just one opinion but unless somebody else having years of experience with Wikimedia projects comes along with a contrary opinion, I don't see what else can be done. Thank you for raising the issue and seeking some outside perspective on the matter... and some of the actions do see somewhat questionable. But given the number of participants these actions seem typical for administrative actions on a topic of this nature. --Robert Horning (talk) 13:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC) [Just to clarify: Of course, I do think it is well and good that the it.wp action has got the attention of politicians and the public both inside and outside Italy. But I also think it's important that WP should not be seen to be involving itself in Italian party politics, which—conoscendo i miei polli— I strongly suspect was where certain accusations were ultimately heading. Having suffered personally on another open community site, I am sympathetic to complaints of heavy handed admins and I think that it's good that the question is being looked at elsewhere. But the thrust of the initial argument seems to me to be something else: that a small factional group (those usual suspects that hang around the 'bar') had hijacked it.wp to put forward their narrow agenda, thereby sacrificing "WP's political independence". I feel that message shouldn't be allowed to gain ground. Hence my rebuttal.--MistyMorn (talk) 17:03, 9 October 2011 (UTC)]

Backlog

Where can I find the backlog of things needed to be worked on? Like red-links and uncategorized pages? Thanks... 96.228.42.31 (talk) 16:03, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Maintenance is probably the best place to start. Yoenit (talk) 16:12, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) 96.228.42.31 (talk) 16:40, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Question

What is the difference between the ArbCom and the Mediation Committee? Thanks. 96.228.42.31 (talk) 17:12, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Never mind, figured it out.... 96.228.42.31 (talk) 17:41, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

BAG Nomination

As per WP:BOTPOL, I am required to notify this board regarding my nomination to the Bot Approval Group which can be found here. I welcome any and all comments regarding this. Thank you. + Crashdoom ^Talk 06:45, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Another BAG nomination

Please see Wikipedia talk:Bot Approvals Group#BAG Nomination: Snottywong if you're interested. Thanks. —SW— ^{spill the beans} 23:33, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

GI Forgotten War Orphans Monica Kwon Banks

Hello, my name is Monica Kwon Banks, and I am very proud and excited to be able to belong to The Wikipedia society. I have a deep love of encyclopedias and the knowledge it withholds. I am very excited to be a part of history in being privileged to be able to input and research as well as make 4gotten war orphans part of history and historians have more of a compassion for humanity and activists fighting for human rights of just being born human no matter what color or blood in a nation at war with their birthright parents. This sadly have become a third world nation and is a human race within itself, especially even now with the Wars the United States is still involved in. Humanitarian please reach out and help my cause without the look of conflict of interest, or indifference. Just like the Jewish were treated and Slavery was in effect, both are in the same actions happening today we are not aware of exactly what is happening with these hundreds of thousands of orphans who is not fortunate enough to be in an orphanage or be adopted. These terrible occurrences is happening today. We hurt knowing this is truly happening, not just the starvation of children, but becoming orphans mostly babies and many of them are not even recorded at birth. Just like the governmental red-tape we are not involved or it is simply not our problem, but policing is. This is an article asking for assistance to accept what the nations will not and realize this with common sense could be very possible and true. It is because I was one of them , I survived to tell the story, but not let the story go on and on. We have to have a cause to make a decision on will we acknowledge these children today, and how will we stop future children to be born in this disaster? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monybanks123 (talk • contribs) 02:36, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not at all clear what you're asking for. Perhaps you could give it a second go, with less rhetoric and shorter sentences? --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:54, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

See this editor's user page and my comment on her talkpage. Can someone suggest a good blog site or cheap web hosting. Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:59, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

We may have a large can of worms! Who can help?

I have come across a number of pages about Indian temples whilst working on new page patrol, and am beginning to feel uncomfortable about some (most?) of these articles. Links to many can be found at List_of_Hindu_temples_in_India#Orissa; there are probably other lists of temples that will pull up more articles.

The problems are many, but linked. Quite a few of these articles seem to be referencing the same report from IGNCA (http://ignca.nic.in). There are many reports buried in their documents, which are hard to find if you don't know exactly where to look. Many of the articles have straight copyvio lifts from the detailed reports, and I've had the ones I've come across and can confirm deleted. However, the fact that many erroneously link to the same pdf, even if it's not for that particular site, makes it hard to get to the bottom of this. For example, Dr. Sadasiba Pradhan and team http://ignca.nic.in/asi_reports/orkhurda009.pdf is cited in the article Gopal Tirtha Matha, but when one downloads the pdf it's actually the report for the Arjunesvara Siva Temple, Old Town, Bhubaneswar.

In addition, I'm now coming across ISBN numbers being quoted - but these numbers don't appear to be recognised as valid ISBN's, which concerns me as it's possible that these quasi-ISBN's are being created wholesale from random numbers in order to make the references look "valid", or to distract attention away from the actual source (likely to be the detailed IGNCA documents). A book being cited as "Lesser Known Monuments of Bhubaneswar" by Dr. Sadasiba Pradhan, (ISBN 81-7375-164-1) can't be found on Amazon at all.

I have no idea how many of these articles are going to turn up once one starts really looking for them, but I suspect it's a large can of worms.

With some of the temples on which we have articles, Google finds absolutely nothing. If there really is nothing, this brings up the possibility that we may have a fair few hoax articles on temples and other archeological sites in India which may be entirely the figment of someone's imagination. A detective exercise on the scale of this is quite beyond me (I'm too busy with NPP and Real Life), but it needs to be done, either to clean out what shouldn't be there, or to source these articles properly and get validatable inline citations in them. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 11:52, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, Lesser Known Monuments of Bhubaneswar is a real, if massively obscure, book (details here), and the ISBN does check out (it's an Indian publication, hence the odd-looking prefix). Don't know about the others, haven't checked them yet. Yunshui (talk) 12:28, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Fake citations is something interesting to datamine. I am particularly interested in identifying fake ISBN ones which shouldn't be too hard. The real challenge probably is the valid ISBN entries for irrelevant usage, IE when the covered by the ISBN content and articles content do not correlate. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 12:45, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm currently about halfway through List of temples in Bhubaneswar, checking the existence of the books that are cited - so far I haven't found any fakes, although the vast majority are unavailable online and hence can't be checked to see if they truly verify the facts in the article. The same IGNCA resports do seem to be turning up with alarming frequency, though. Yunshui (talk) 12:53, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Hey thank you very much for verifying the articles, I think there may be few fakes like you found one in Gopal Tirtha Matha. But I am sure the temples listed in List of temples in Bhubaneswar are not fake. The problem is there are users who doesn't know how to cite properly and they write poorly. So please don't tag for deletion without discussion. aηsuмaη ^༽Ϟ 13:59, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I've now finished going through List of temples in Bhubaneswar. I've been able to verify the existence (not the content) of all the books cited in the articles listed there. Rather than go through the vast slew of other Temple articles I'm going to stop there, before my brain goes on strike. However I'm happy to check out any specific book references if anyone has concerns about them; my job affords me a lot more book-finding facilities than just Google. Yunshui (talk) 14:06, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• I would not use the word fake at all. These temples clearly do exist. Many of the articles were crude copyvios of PDFs on the IGNCA website - or, since I detected some differences, from another source also used by IGNCA. Later articles do seem to be somewhat better. My main concern is the obstinate, total refusal of the members of this group to enter into any sort of discussion. I created a project page Wikipedia:Bhubaneswar temples project and most have been told about it. Have they edited it? No. We would like to give them advice but until we know they are listening, what is the point? Any suggestions as to how to make them talk? — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 16:09, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I have a block button, and persistent copyvio is a blockable offence....? Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:49, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

It's relatively new that Indian publications have ISBNs at all; they are almost unavailable through the normal book trade outside of India; and India does not to my knowledge have any sort of centralized union catalog or other help in finding them. Certainly I would not assume that the failure to find one in OCLC or WorldCat means they are not real. The problem of properly citing this material has been long with us; the problem of copyvio or mistaken citations from people there has been long with us also. I agree that it would be wrong to tag for deletion unless an effort has been made for proper sourcing by someone who has access to appropriate sources. DGG ( talk ) 18:32, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Persistent copyvio from people who have not yet been educated is properly met by education; blocking is for those who continue adding them either deliberately or recklessly after appropriate instruction and warning, Wikipedia is, as it ought to be, much less tolerant of copyvio than many educational systems are in practice, especially with respect to close paraphrasing, and editors need a chance to learn our standards. I too have a block button, and I would be very slow to use it on good faith newcomers. DGG ( talk ) 18:32, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• One problem with blocking is that there are two dozen of them. I tried blocking one - they seemed happy to stay blocked! A quick check of the contribs history of some of the group suggests that they have gone away leaving us to clean up the mess so blocking is probably pointless. Elen of the Roads, I know that checkuser rights are jealously guarded - would it be a perversion to do some checks on this group? It might well reveal where this group comes from and I would love to know. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 18:40, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I would check the blocked one if it's recent - a user who seems happy to stay blocked is frequently a sock. If they are from India though, that country seems to have only one ISP covering vast swathes, with endlessly recycling IP addresses that don't geolocate to less than a province, so it's very hard to tell whether you have one editor or 24.Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• What on earth do you mean "hard to tell …"? I pointed you to the list of 24 different user names. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 21:33, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Elen means that when Checkuser gets its information back, it's hard to tell whether that information suggests all of these accounts are the same person. For example: pretend you get information that says all of them are editing in the same city. Does that mean that only one person is doing it? What if there was a temple-related conference in the city, and one of the workshops was on Wikipedia? What if it was a club or school project? What if this is an completely uncoordinated effort prompted by some television news presenter making an offhand remark about how little Wikipedia knows about India's glorious temples? How would you know?

Now imagine that instead of "everyone in the same city", the information says "all these accounts were used in a place the size of the entire UK". They were writing about subjects primarily of interest to people in that local area. Would that make you confident that all 24 of the accounts were a single human? Would you be happy if we assumed that you and Elen are the same human merely because you edited from the same enormous geographic area? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:41, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

The sock possibility is one that had occurred to me, but I really do appreciate the virtual impossibility of checking on this in an area where an IP address can cover such a huge area / number of people. I'm glad to know that the book I noted actually does exist (that's a relief, certainly) - but I thought ISBN numbers were supposed to be unique- worldwide? I was probably wrong on that! Whichever, there's certainly a big problem of one kind or another (or many others), so the more people who can delve into it, the better. If we could just get editors to understand the importance of writing in their own words, and ensuring that any external links and / or citations actually relate to the subject of the article ... I think what may be happening at the moment is possibly that the new articles on these temples are just being created from one template, with references / external links already in there. :o( Unhelpful. Some way of getting access to the obscure books would be good. And citations with page numbers, and inline. Anyone for flying pigs? I hear they're very tasty, roasted, if one can catch them. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 02:22, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Adding: I've just bunged some article-writing and referencing tips onto each of the talk pages of those in RHaworth's list. It may help. It may not! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 03:06, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Point me to discussions with newcomers about notability?

Do you remember any particular discussions about articles (on the talk page – though it helps if it can be read without admin tools, since I can't read deleted edits – or AfD if enough newcomers found their way there) on English Wikipedia where you could see that new editors/outsiders didn't agree with the concept of notability, or how notability is interpreted among (most) Wikipedians? I know that I've seen them, I just can't seem where to find them.

I do occasionally see such discussions on the slashdot web site, but it's mostly by former editors who seem to like to vilify Wikipedia. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:55, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

It is common for those questions to arise in the help channel #wikipedia-en-help, but as there is no public logging, you would need to hang out there for awhile to see it. You could also check Category:Speedy deletion candidates with talk pages, it often has pleas from new editors not to delete their submissions for failing A7, however more often then not the plea is ignored without discussion and the page is eventually deleted by an admin. The most active deleting admins often have discussions on their talk page from those upset over the deletions, and they often provide some discussion. Monty₈₄₅ 15:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:FEED will have some such discussions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:34, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

WT:Notability current and archives will have discussions about the policy, including the rejection of it in toto. It may be difficult to identify which users in the discussion are new. Links to WP:NOTPAPER are also an indicator that one is dissenting from WP:N patsw (talk) 14:39, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

2011 CheckUser and Oversight appointments & personnel changes

The Arbitration Committee has resolved to appoint five editors to the CheckUser team and three editors to the Oversight team pursuant to the CheckUser and Oversight appointment procedures and following the 2011 CUOS appointments process.

Subject to their providing identification satisfactory to the Wikimedia Foundation, the Arbitration Committee hereby resolves to:

(a) appoint the following editors as checkusers:

• AGK (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)^†
• Courcelles (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)^†
• Elockid (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Keegan (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)^†
• WilliamH (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

(b) appoint the following editors as oversighters:

• Courcelles (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)^†
• Fluffernutter (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• WilliamH (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

† Previously identified member of the Audit Subcommittee who will retain the specified permission(s) upon the conclusion of their terms.

The committee thanks the other candidates (28bytes, HelloAnnyong, Kww, and Mentifisto); those who applied but were not put forward as candidates; and the community in bringing this appointment process to a successful conclusion.

The committee also recognizes the departures of Dominic and Nishkid64 from their dual roles on the CheckUser and Oversight teams; along with EVula, Howcheng, & Mr.Z-man from the Oversight team; and thanks these editors for their diligent service as functionaries and their extensive contributions elsewhere on the project.

At the request of arbitrator Iridescent, checkuser and oversight permissions will be removed from their account until such time as Iridescent is able to return to active participation.

Supporting motion: Casliber; Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry; Coren; David Fuchs; Jclemens; John Vandenberg; Kirill Lokshin; Mailer diablo; PhilKnight; Newyorkbrad; Roger Davies; Risker; SirFozzie; Xeno

Not voting/inactive: Cool Hand Luke; Elen of the Roads; Iridescent

For the Arbitration Committee, –xeno^talk 13:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Discuss this

External article: Why did Wikipedia succeed while other encyclopedias failed?

Since I didn't see it on other noticeboards: patsw (talk) 14:32, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

• Garber, Megan (2011-10-12). "The contribution conundrum: Why did Wikipedia succeed while other encyclopedias failed?". Nieman Journalism Lab.

Guidance for those translating from English onto other Wikipedias

To encourage and assist those volunteers willing to translate pages from English into other languages, who perhaps have never edited Wikipedia before, I have started a guidance page:

Wikipedia:Translate us

mirroring the already-existing page for those translating into English:

Wikipedia:Translate

Please feel free to improve or publicise it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:32, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

California hairdresser shooting

Is there any article about Seal Beach , California hairdresser shooting? --Olli (talk) 05:49, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Not that I can tell, though it is briefly mentioned in the article about Seal Beach, California. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 05:53, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Ok, is it notable enough to create a own article to it? In here Finland it has been one of top news today. --Olli (talk) 05:54, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't know anything about it. Perhaps someone else knows? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 05:56, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that one day of being top news is enough to satisfy WP:NOTE... it would need specific coverage from multiple independent sources. SamBC(talk) 23:29, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

And that coverage needs to be enduring, not just a flash in the pan that's in the media this week, and never mentioned again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:38, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

There's WikiNews for this sort of thing.Kdammers (talk) 11:23, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Category Creation

Hi, hope you can help :)

I tried asking about creating importance and class categories for WikiProject Maps - I was told at wikiproject template that I could create them using a bot - they suggested here that I could use this bot without being an admin. But I couldn't see how to do that and so stuck a request here, as that page suggested.

All fine so far - I've not heard back yet from Tinucherian, and it looks like he's gone inactive, someone just posted a message on his page saying his bot has been inactive does he still need global bot status. Which suggests I may not hear back from him.

So is there an easy way to go about creating all those categories (not being an admin) or can someone else run a bot to do it? EdwardLane (talk) 16:48, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

It looks like he's not around much at the moment. Have you tried e-mailing him? I notice that he has made one edit today, so he may answer an e-mail. Alternatively, you can manually create the categories, following the instructions at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot (it has examples, if you don't know what to put in the categories pages). The bot should automatically update the statistics for your project once you've created the categories. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:23, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks EdwardLane (talk) 17:43, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Your template wasn't category-compliant yet, either. I've upgraded your template, using {{WikiProject Iowa}} as a base - if you ever decide you want workgroups, I hid the code for them (inside <!-- --> tags) inside the template with instructions. I can also run the code for you (I hadn't noticed the admin-only "run" button when I posted before).--Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:48, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I was just going to point you at the admin only run button if you would be so kind  :) EdwardLane (talk) 17:52, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

...and it should be  Done. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:16, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Bhai Fauja Singh

Hi,
I've just had a look on the article Bhai Fauja Singh, and I wonder if this article, as it is currently written, is really neutral and encyclopedic...
If someone wants to have a look... (I don't contribute to this Wikipedia) 213.36.11.4 (talk) 06:05, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

No it's not. I'm tempted to tag it G11 and start from scratch, but perhaps someone friendlier than I would like to figure out what on Earth to do with it. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:23, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

What is a revert? Participants needed for revert assessment in research project partnered by Wikimedia

We need people to help us evaluate what edits are actual reverts. Please fill out our short 20 question survey. The results are used for improving Wikipedia's quality in the RENDER research, with help from Wikimedia Germany. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fabian Flöck (talk • contribs) 16:05, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Global Fundraiser Test

Hello Wiki World,

On *2011-10-18* (today)*@ 21:00 - 22:30 UTC*, the WMF will running a global campaign for an hour and a half to test our ability to and strategy for handling donations coming from *every country*! The test will run for every language but will only have English banners and appeals with a link to the translation hub for the fundraiser <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Translation>. The idea being to use this test as an opportunity to recruit more translators as well as test our methods.

If you would like to help with the translations please check the following link:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Translation

Seddon ^talk|^WikimediaUK 21:09, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia

Oh no!!! The United States is again trying to completely dominate the rest of the world on Wikipedia!! Aaaaarrgh!

Although this warning is a slight exaggeration there is overall an increasing proportion of material related to the 'States' appearing on the welcome page.

Looking at the current welcome page: The featured article is about an object in a park in Chicago (a city somewhere in the US).

• 5 out of 7 'In the news' items concern US events or people.
• 5 out of 6 'Did you know...' articles concern the US.
• 2 out of 5 'On this day...' items are related to the US.

A remarkably disproportionate percentage (2/3) considering the US is only one of many countries in which people speak English (or at least a form of English).

Come on people, stop only writing about yourselves.

There are over 200 other countries out there! B. Fairbairn 10:15, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

We have a page discussing this: WP:Systemic bias. This has actually been discussed and studied fairly extensively, and work has been done to try to work against it. However, the fact remains that many more people contribute to the English Wikipedia from the US and UK than from, say, Jamaica. People write what they know. Also, feel free to take part in the discussion at WP:TFA/R, WP:ITN/C, Template talk:DYK, and WP:OTD. —Akrabbim^talk 12:55, 17 October 2011‎ (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:FAQ/Main Page#I think that the articles listed on the Main Page are awful and much more important articles should be there instead. Isn't the Main Page biased towards certain topics? What can be done about it? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:51, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The only one of those I might actually be concerned about is the 'In the news' section; the rest is just representative of the proportion of editors. Making the assumption that domination of Wikipedia equates to world domination seems rather dubious. But, just in case it does, mwahahahaha.... Regards, RJH (talk) 22:20, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

This is the encyclopedia that you edit, so improvement of it starts with you. patsw (talk) 13:06, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Over the last few days the welcome page shows a more diverse collection of material.
The featured article concerns a minor political party in Australia.

• 2 out of 6 'In the news' items concern US events or people.
• 3 out of 7 'Did you know...' articles concern the US.
• 3 out of 5 'On this day...' items are related to the US.
  

A more encouraging percentage (8/18).

In reply to the comments worthy of comment:
"People write what they know": How very true! If only the people who willingly contribute so much material knew a bit more about events and places in countries other than the US!
"Articles listed in the main page are awful": Agreed. The main issue here is that just about everything in the US has already been covered with the result that we are being increasingly presented with mundane trivia.
"Might actually be concerned about is the 'In the news' section": Agreed. Sometimes it can seem like the only newsworthy events are those relating to America. B. Fairbairn (talk) 09:30, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Want to know what the WMF is up to?

The highlights of the September report are posted here. More in-depth information on items of interest can be seen if you follow links. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Interests of commercial photographers

I wrote a blog post, Open-licensing your images. What it means and how to do it, to encourage people to make images available to Wikipedia and WikiMedia Commons. An interesting debate about doing this, vs. the interests of commercial photographers, has developed in the comments. Further input is welcome (as would be pointers to any previous discussion). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:52, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Job Opportunity with Wikimedia UK

This is just a courtesy note to make you all aware that Wikimedia UK are looking to hire an Office & Development Manager: more details are on the UK chapter wiki. The Cavalry (Message me) 15:36, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Outside input wanted

this is already being discussed in other venues, a pointer is more than enough. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:15, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to second that: please comment over there, where your comment will be seen by everyone, rather than here, where it's likely to be ignored. I really do want to hear from as many people as possible. A hundred responses—from men, women, and teens, from editors on every continent, from people who regularly edit articles like Pregnancy and people who would never think of it—would make me happy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:20, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

There is a new RFC at Talk:Pregnancy#RfC:_Which_photo_should_we_use_in_the_lead.3F. The question is basically whether the article Pregnancy should lead with an amateur art nude of a white woman in the middle of her pregnancy, or a fully dressed, multi-racial woman at the end of her pregnancy. (If the nude is not in the lead, it would likely be used lower, with a detailed caption to describe the visible features; feel free to express an opinion on that approach, too.)

The previous RFC involved some confusion about the licensing status of the art nude, which has since been fully resolved as being correctly licensed. It's not clear to anyone how much this concern influenced some previous commenters' !votes against the nude image.

If you have an opinion (either way) about which image is most appropriate for the infobox in the lead, please come to the talk page and share your opinion. The previous discussions have filled two and a half talk page archives with bickering, and I'd really like to have so much participation from uninvolved, non-bickering people that we can actually get this resolved one way or the other. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd advise you to remove the subjective comments from your solicitation as they are bound to bias input. – Adrignola talk 04:02, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

What subjective comments? I can't work out which side of the debate WhatamIdoing is on from that statement. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:53, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I feel that calling the nude image an amateur work is subjective. Different individuals have different skill levels and the images should be evaluated on other merits besides the status of the photographer. – Adrignola talk 14:33, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Is this a vandalism ?

"He currently is the Marie Louise Bailey professor of mathematics at Union College, in Schenectady, New York." in Alan D. Taylor. 95.176.61.166 (talk) 11:11, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

No[2]. Fram (talk) 11:21, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

New page patrol: Survey

Wikimedia Foundation is inviting former and current new page patrollers to take part in a survey. If you have patrolled pages and would like to be included in the survey, and you have not received an invitation on your talk page by Wednesday 26 October 2011 at 23:59 (UTC), please add yourself HERE to receive an invitation. The poll will close on Monday 7 November. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:50, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Vital Articles: Expanded

The Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded page has the goal of listing a "catalog of 10,000 subjects for which Wikipedia should ultimately have corresponding high-quality articles". At present it is getting close to the base target, with a link count of 8,658, or ~87%. Possibly the one major area where it appears decidedly weak is in the Philosophy and religion section, with a meager 195 links. If you have an interest, please take a look at the list and see what should be added. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:04, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Bits and Upload (.wikipedia.org) What are they used for?

(I am unsure wether or not this is the right place to ask this kind of question. Is it?)
When I look up any Wikipedia article, for reading, (I use Firefox 7.0.1) then sometimes the browser spends a lot of time contacting bits.wikipedia.org and upload.wikipedia.org
What are they used for?
--Seren-dipper (talk) 22:18, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Look at the URLs in the page source in your browser. Bits seems to serve CSS and javascript used in the page; upload supplies an image or several. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:31, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

License for texts in Wikisource. CC BY-SA makes no sense

As far as I understand the texts in Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikibooks are published under the same conditions as in the Wikipedia - Creative Commons Attribution / Share-Alike License.

However, I know the author of a textbook on Quantum Physics, who agrees to publish his textbook in one of the sites of the Wikimedia Foundation. However, he agreed to transfer textbook without the right to edit and without the right to commercial use. This author is the rector of a university in Ukraine.

I am sure that the publication of the textbook (it is given only as an example) under the author's terms would contribute to the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation - the spread of free knowledge.

I also do not understand why the license CC BY-SA 3.0 is attributed to texts such as Shakespeare's sonnets, see fr example http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Sonnet_151_(Shakespeare) Editing of such texts makes no sense.

I do not know whether this issue was discussed. --Perohanych (talk) 08:03, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

This is not the place for this discussion, but I can clear a couple of things up:

• The Wikimedia Foundations thinks of itself as a commericial entity, so things must be licensed for commercial use to appear in its projects;
• Shakespeare's sonnets are in the public domain they are not under CC-BY-SA. THe public domain, with no restrictions, is less restrictive than CC-BY-SA so this isn't a problem.

Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 08:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

So, the author of the textbook on Quantum Physics is unable to publish the textbook in Wikiversity or Wikibooks if the author does not want it changed or printed and sold?

What should I suggest to the author? Publish it somewhere with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and then make a link on the textbook in the appropriate Wikipedia Articles ? --Perohanych (talk) 10:21, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, yes. You can use a book as a reference even if it's not online anywhere; if you upload it yourself somewhere, the author can put whatever conditions on it he or she likes. So in short: yes and yes. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:42, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

As a minor quibble, the Wikimedia Foundation isn't a commercial entity, and as far as I know doesn't 'think of itself' that way. (Indeed, it is a registered charity.) The decision to require all contributions to be free for non-commercial and commercial use is a philosophical and ethical choice, rather than a consequence of the Foundation's legal status. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:23, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The issue of requiring commercial use for content on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects is more of a consequence of the GFDL, which explicitly had such a requirement. Since the current license (CC-BY-SA 3.0) is in effect "GFDL v. 3.0" (at least falls under the "or later" clause of the earlier GFDL licenses originally used by Wikipedia), that really is the heritage of the concept. I think it is a good concept so far as it gives "maximum freedom" for others to reuse the content, but it also is an issue due to consistent licensing across all projects. Content on Wikipedia can be move to Wikibooks (and the other way around) or any of the other sister projects. You wouldn't be able to have that kind of freedom with different licensing systems on other projects. Wikinews has a bit of a different kind of heritage, but the principle is the same (and Wikinews content can be added to Wikipedia articles.... just not the other way around).

I don't object to people posting content for "non-commercial use only", as there certainly is a role for content of that nature. Sadly, there are times I would like to use such content for commercial projects, and it gets in the way of being able to offer that content for further distribution when it happens. Publication on something like Wikibooks or Wikipedia is precisely one of those kind of applications, where people may not really be making much in terms of earning money for their efforts, but being prohibited from doing commercial applications get in the way of being able to reuse the content in a meaningful way. --Robert Horning (talk) 21:00, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with GFDL. This is an issue of freedom. [3]. --NYKevin @295, i.e. 06:05, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikisource puts public domain notices on most pages where it applies. Wikisource doesnt put it on every chapter of a book (e.g. s:The Wind in the Willows/Chapter 2 vs s:The Wind in the Willows). Sometimes we dont put it on every poem in a collection of poems. i.e. s:Sonnet 151 (Shakespeare) doesnt contain a PD notice, however s:The Sonnets does have a PD notice at the bottom.

The Internet Archive accepts donations of Creative Commons -ND and -NC works.[4] John Vandenberg ^(chat) 22:54, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

User:BD2412/300,000th edit party

Greetings! Earlier today I made my 300,000th Wikipedia edit, so I'm throwing a party on a subpage. There will be punch and cookies, although, sadly, the cake is a lie. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:42, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

India Education Program is out of control

My observations over the past couple of months, but especially in the last few days, is that Wikipedia:India Education Program, is out of control and has gone badly wrong. Something needs to be done.

A good example is to look at Wikipedia:India Education Program/Courses/Fall 2011/Computer Organization and Advanced Microprocessing. These students have a major deadline today (31 October) and so right now there is chaos in a number of computing-related articles with students from the program posting all kinds of rubbish - including blatant copyright violating text and images, and badly written/punctuated/formatted prose. I have only looked at a very small number of articles, but I suspect if you look at any of the articles highlighted on the course project page you will see problems created by these students. If these were "regular" editors many of them would have been blocked a long time ago, but most of them seem to be getting away with murder. Of course the odd one is blocked, and some of those that are blocked evade by creating a second sock puppet account.

I believe that the whole project needs a fundamental rethink. We do want new editors, but the way these editors are being brought on board - with instructions to edit an article at any costs in order to get a grade in their course - is just plain wrong.

Discuss? --Biker Biker (talk) 15:55, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I have noticed some problems in this department as well. As we all know, editing Wikipedia is not for everyone, but it appears that this project is giving out assignments as though it is. We can't really blame the students, they are just trying their level best to pass a class. I think a long talk with the instructors may be in order. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:36, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

The main and ongoing discussion about the serious issues arising from the India Education Program and the damage they are causing has been taking place on Wikipedia talk:India Education Program. It might be better to keep it all in one place. This specific program was initiated and funded by the Wikimedia Foundation. There is also a discussion at meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation - India Programs/Education Program where you can make your concerns known. Voceditenore (talk) 10:58, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Following on from the above post, there are two updates on the talk page which are of particular relevance: Context on IEP as well as Meeting with Director. We'll also be posting further updates on meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation - India Programs/Education Program. Hisham (talk) 03:32, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

About the "badly written/punctuated/formatted prose" complaint: We don't block people for using bad grammar or having poor English skills. The rule when you find such good-faith errors is WP:SOFIXIT, not REQUIREPERFECTION. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

No one has been blocked for "badly written/punctuated/formatted prose", and as far as I know, no one has seriously suggested this. But quite a lot of these students have been blocked for repeated copyvio. Having said that, I've been working on some of the clean-up, and on occasions the prose was so incomprehensible that it was impossible to know what they were trying to say and therefore impossible to fix. A lot of the "badly written" problems are related to copyvio. They stem from the students copypasting from a web site and then randomly removing some of the words or simply changing them to (inappropriate) synonyms. In at least one case I encountered badly written ungrammatical prose which has been pasted in verbatim from a website likewise written in ungrammatical, poorly punctuated English prose. In any case, the IEP has now halted the program, so no more copyvio will be coming in. But checking for and deleting copyvio from the existing contributions is going to take literally hundreds and hundreds of hours. Voceditenore (talk) 19:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Point of order: they haven't halted the program, as I understand it. They halted the program in one school, out of multiple schools which are running the program. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

The college which has been concluded is the College of Engineering Pune. At they Symbiosis College of Economics, 13 out of 14 classes have already concluded. There are therefore only 2 classes that are currnently active - one class at Symbiosis School of Economics and one at SNDT Women's University. Hisham (talk) 06:35, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Zip Code Articles

A user, Hlecroy (talk · contribs), has started creating article for specific US zip codes. From what I've seen, most zip code articles are redirected to the corresponding city. I can't find any sort of guideline that states this or even shows that a precedent has been set and I can't think of an applicable Wikiproject. Any suggestions? Please either leave a TB for me on my talk page or leave suggestions there. OlYeller21^Talktome 22:28, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

They can easily be included in the corresponding parent articles. And no, currently the consensus is to do just that. I cannot see anything substantive being written on a run-of-the-mill zip code. –MuZemike 23:43, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Here's a more recent precedent that zip code articles are non-notable here. Thanks Secret ^account 20:58, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Redirect and if reverted, take to AfD. Forget notability, I think these are easy WP:NOT material, if not under WP:NOTDIRECTORY or as indiscriminate material, then simply WP:BADIDEA. There may be a few exceptions. 90210 might be able to support an actual article though it is currently a DAB page (I just found this; cute huh?). None of these can.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Hi everyone,
In the article Chronicle of a Death Foretold, in the section Plot, is written: "The night before the wedding day, festivities in preparation for the wedding had taken place at a local whorehouse run by Maria Alejandrina Cervantes, where the narrator had partied with Santiago and the Vicario twins until the early morning."
I think it's false, it should be corrected into something like: "The night following the wedding day, celebrations of the wedding carry on at a local whorehouse run by Maria Alejandrina Cervantes, where the narrator had partied with Santiago and the Vicario twins until the early morning."
Well, English is not my language, I let someone else correct it, 213.36.11.157 (talk) 11:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

New essay

I wrote a new essay WP:NOTGRAVEDANCING. Improve if you like. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 13:32, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Trans women

Look at the contributions of 89.100.150.198 and let me know your opinions about their contributions (someone other than 89.100.150.198 please.) Georgia guy (talk) 23:56, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

89.100.150.198 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:49, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I presume this relates to your edit war on Parinya Charoenphol (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I'm too tired to get involved. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:53, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Sid Melton

When was born Sid Melton? In 1917 or 1920? Scymso (talk) 09:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Our article at Sid Melton says 1917 and the Los Angeles times obituary at http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-passings-20111104,0,2646778.story confirms that. This is a question for WP:RD/M. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:24, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I received a message. Why?

I received a message when editing Tibetan pinyin:

“ Hello! Due to your recent edit war on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Aaron Muszalski, an administrator here on Wikipedia, has flagged your account for one more chance. Your edit below was not saved, but will be saved if you use the "Save Page" button again; if you think your edit may be against Wikipedia policy, please re-think your actions. Wikipedia always welcomes constructive contributions, but we are required to block your access to editing if you violate policy. You may back out of this page without saving your edit by clicking here. Thanks, Aaron Muszalski (talk) 18:55, 4 November 2011 (UTC) ”

But I've never edit The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or Aaron Muszalski as far as I know. Why can I receive this message? ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 19:07, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Somebody hit the wrong button -- it's taken care of.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

How was that performed? I haven't receive any message at my user talk page. Was that message located in my user subpages? ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 19:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

It was an error caused by an edit filter and this edit to MediaWiki:Test. Nothing at all that you did wrong. –xeno^talk 19:42, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I got hit with the exact same editnotice earlier, while saving changes to Noddy Holder, and it has left me rather disturbed ever since... wondering WTF was up with that. I guess I should be thankful to Google, because I would never have found this discussion thread without it. It's nice to finally know that I haven't unknowingly done something wrong.  -- WikHead (talk) 01:33, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Donations

I have become frustrated with Wikipedia this morning. When searching Google for a description of a French food, Wikipedia was the first site that came up. Many times, that is the case, and thank you to Wikipedia for answering my question. Today I noticed that at the top of the page there were messages from two people: Jimmy Wales and Susan Hewitt. These individuals are asking for money on behalf of Wikipedia, and I might have been interested in contributing, but I cannot find any way to contact either of these people, and I cannot find any way to contact any other actual person either. I do not want to post an article or argue with anyone about the content of any articles. I do not want to comment on any other issue other than to request more information about donations. Obviously, Wikipedia does not want to be contacted, and neither do the people soliciting the money, therefore I am not going to give you any. If this page is more like a letter than an article, and that offends somebody, then I apologize in advance, but there is simply no place else that I can find to post. I have named myself impossibletofindone, because Wikipedia rejected my first FIVE!!!!! choices of names. Too bad I probably won't remember what my name is by the next time I might choose to write something, and good luck to you people. Hope you can find some money. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Impossibletofindone (talk • contribs) 19:42, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

You can contact Jimmy Wales at User talk:Jimbo Wales by posting on his talk page. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 19:59, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

You can also try if http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Frequently_asked_questions has the information you want. Or ask here or at Wikipedia:Help desk, but note that we are volunteer editors and not official representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation which has a small staff for an organization running the fifth most visited website, plus many other websites. The English Wikipedia has around 15 million user accounts and a lot of good user names are taken. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:47, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Help urgently needed on unblock-en-l - barnstars available

Who wants to earn some barnstars?

The unblock request mailing list, unblock-en-l@lists.wikimedia.org , is around for blocked users to appeal blocks when they do not know how or are unable to do so on-wiki. Unfortunately, and despite the fact that there are over 100 people subscribed to this list and receiving email from it, I am handling the vast majority of the requests this list receives completely by myself. It's been this way for a few weeks, before which User:DeltaQuad was the only one actively reviewing appeals. In short, we really really really need some help!

If you are not subscribed to this list and would like to assist with reviewing block appeals, please go to https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/unblock-en-l and sign up. Why should you do so? Many of the people emailing us are trying to edit Wikipedia for the first time, but are unable to due to a rangeblock or autoblock on their IP address. By reviewing these appeals in a timely manner, you're helping new editors get started on Wikipedia. Furthermore, there's an added incentive for you...

For the remainder of the month of November, I am offering an Admin's Barnstar to anyone who handles at least 15 appeals send to this list. It may sound like a lot, but this list often receives more than a dozen appeals each day, so you're sure to get there quickly if you check your email regularly. Furthermore, the three admins other than myself who respond to the most appeals for the remainder of November will receive Bronze, Silver, and Gold Wiki Awards for their exceptional service. Fine print follows my signature.

If you want to help but aren't sure how, don't worry - subscribe and stick around for a bit. You'll find a lot of the emails we send are boilerplate text that you can copy from previous responses and then edit as needed. So sign up and help today! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 00:24, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Fine print: In order to receive credit towards either award, any response you send must be cc'd to the unblock mailing list per standard procedure. Each admin may only get credit once per appealing user; i.e., if you respond to an appeal asking for more information, you don't get credit for two appeals by responding again when they user sends the information you need. Also, except where replies are sent within a few minutes of each other, only the first admin to respond to a given stage of an appeal gets credit; i.e., if Admin A responds to a user's request, then Admin B sends another response an hour later, only Admin A is going to get credit because it had already been dealt with. List-only emails do not receive credit. You receive credit just for sending a useful response; you need not unblock (or decline to unblock) a user. Currently subscribed users are also eligible provided they actually start helping like DQ and I have been asking them to do for weeks :-P.

Policy/Legality Regarding Possible Reformatted Wikipedia Website

For years, I've waged an unsuccessful war to remove an ever-increasing tide of Family Guy, comic book, and movie-of-the-week pop culture trivia from Wikipedia articles. Even where I've had some modest success by grinding through the torturous Wikipedia bureaucracy to establish that, no, Green Lantern comic books are not relevant to the biography of Boss Tweed, eventually it always creeps back... with interest. I've finally given up. Wikipedia belongs to the cultureless neckbeards and manchildren. This has, however, given me an idea. I'm considering creating a website which would fetch Wikipedia articles, and strip them of all "trivia" and "in popular culture" sections. I might also, for example, have it remove any sentence which contains stringers such as "The Simpsons" or "Family Guy". The website would be essentially invisible. All it would do is fetch (edited) Wikipedia content. My question is: Would this be (a) legal, (b) in agreement with Wikipedia's license, and (c) ethical? -- SmashTheState (talk) 11:54, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not an expert, but I believe in general that it's OK to reproduce all the CC-BY-SA content (see Wikipedia:Copyrights). The caveat is that you need to list all the authors that have worked on that content (text, images, sounds, etc.) and provide a link to the history of the page(s) you have reproduced so that the original authors receive credit for their work. This is my general understanding, but like I said, I'm no expert. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 12:46, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the CC-BY-SA content would be the stuff Wikipedia editors created (i.e. text and images created by Wikipedians). It would not cover things like quotes and fair use images that we use under fair use laws and our internal policies. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 12:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that under the CC-BY-SA license you can copy any of our content provided you include attribution (who is it BY) and Share Alike (SA) your version. This can be done by a footer like the one used on Wikipedia pages e.g. "Thanks to the editors of Wikipedia who contributed this content. This text is available under the CC-BY-SA license. Additional terms may apply" but I Am Not A Lawyer filceolaire (talk) 14:12, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

What about practicality? How many servers would be dedicated to the task? This would essentially double the amount of internet traffic associated with each request from a visitor who doesn't want to be sullied by such trivia: Download entire article from Wikipedia server, sanitize it through software which remains to be written on servers which remain to be rented, then send 99% of said content out from the sanitizing servers using additional bandwidth. Who is going to pay for the effort to sanitize articles through dedicated servers and for the additional bandwidth? - Ac44ck (talk) 03:44, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, you're right. I could stick Google ads on it to pay for it, but that's more obnoxious than what it's replacing. What about a Greasemonkey script which does the same thing? Are there any legal implications to modifying the content of a Wikipedia page? I remember a bunch of websites suing an ISP years ago (Earthlink, perhaps?) for stripping off their ads and replacing them with their own. -- SmashTheState (talk) 14:54, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Or you could realize that excess trivia on some articles is a minor annoyance that isn't really worth the amount of effort and intelligence you want to throw at the problem. You obviously have the experience, and it sounds like you have the smarts and knowledge, to do big things within wikipedia ... a jihad against excess Simpsons items seems like a pretty feeble target. (And I speak as somebody who gets really irritated with this sort of piffle, too.) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:19, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Just look at the OP's talk page and previous contributions, that might answer your question. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:03, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

How to deal with this stuff:

• Quit believing in the elitist and fictitious distinction between high culture and low culture. The only difference between philistinism and snobbery is the income level. Scatological humor was high culture in Mozart's day; pants as we know them only became fashionable in imitation of the 18th century French working class; Chuck Norris jokes, stories of Paul Bunyun, and the epic of Gilgamesh are different expressions of the same kind of hero; and Bugs Bunny (through Brer Rabbit) is the modern version of the African god Anansi.
• Don't be a dick to other editors because of one's own snobbery.
• Realize that Wikipedia is always in progress, and never see your removal of trivia, vandalism, errors, or POVs as finishing anything but maintaining a living encyclopedia. You are not an author here, you are a white blood cell.
• Cite WP:TRIVIA and WP:NOTE to remove pointless information when it comes up.

Ian.thomson (talk) 21:18, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Just a note that my postings are being removed here by a tag-team for the crime of insulting anime. You win. You can have Wikipedia. I'm done. -- SmashTheState (talk) 03:58, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Your comment implied that a comment about continued behavior mattered less because of a person's choice of entertainment while implying that person was a pedophile. If you don't have the tact to avoid that, and you can't understand that maybe you should leave the site to people who can. Ian.thomson (talk) 11:47, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

You're right. Wikipedia and you lot deserve each other. Enjoy. -- SmashTheState (talk) 12:54, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom RFC Threshold Change

Main Thread: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#ArbCom_RFC_Threshold_Change

I'm copying this post here to make sure there is a maximum audience. I am sure I am going to upset some folks, but it has been brought to my attention that I misunderstood the consensus on the threshold for Arbcom. I've made this edit to correct the mistake and lower the threshold to 50%. I'm sorry to cause the confusion and the drama that I am sure this will cause.--v/r - TP 14:28, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Who is watching Special:FeedbackDashboard?

I am curious to know who else has been watching the new editor feedback dashboard at Special:FeedbackDashboard. I would also like to hear what others think of the responses so far. Thanks. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 12:31, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Hm interesting. Shows that there are problems, vandals and those who leave a blank feedback. Also some happy punters. Interesting that those which are obvious cries for help don't seem to have been followed up. Rich Farmbrough, 03:29, 7 November 2011 (UTC).

Is there a possibility to watchlist them? I will forget that link... mabdul 13:06, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Currently the special page links to the general description of new editor feedback features, but I've just created a fuller page Wikipedia:Feedback Dashboard with a description of the dashboard, suggestions for patrolling it, a place to sign up if you'd like to be part of an informal taskforce for responding to feedback. I've done a few hours of this work in my volunteer time, and it's pretty fun actually. Maryana and I plan on contacting folks who've spent time responding to feedback to invite them. If you want to spread the word, feel free. (And to answer your question mabdul: no, you can't because it's a special page. If you can't edit it, you can't watchlist it. It's a technical barrier at the moment.) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:26, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, Steven. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the work you and Maryana are doing. Actually, I can. I think the work you two are doing to help new users is some of the most important work the WMF has ever undertaken. I can't think of anything more important at this point in time as our long-term future is in the hands of our new users. They are a valuable asset that we shouldn't neglect. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 11:26, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Hydroxonium. That means a lot. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:44, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Hydroxonium! That's so good to hear :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 22:15, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Attribution

I just noticed today that when pages are displayed on the new Wikipedia Mobile site there is no link to the History page. I think this means we are in breach of the "Attribution" requirement of the CC-BY-SA license.

Even on the normal site there is nothing to tell people that contributors are listed on the View history tab. Should we ammend the footer to read:

The copyright to this text is owned by the contributors listed on the
History page and is made available under the
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; additional terms may apply.
See Terms of Use for details.

(Cross posted from Wikimedia Talk:Terms of use) --filceolaire (talk) 13:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Filceolaire,

Thanks for the great question. I asked our legal team, and they had a discussion about it with the mobile team. Here's what's going on regarding this: First, we're in compliance with the license because you can still access the history tab by going to the general site from mobile. That said, it's less than ideal, and nobody thinks that's a permanent solution. There's a team at the Foundation that's working on a redesigned interface for the mobile site as part of our strategic imperative to upgrade usability for mobile users, and the Director of the mobile team (Tomasz Finc) has this high on his list of things to be aware of with the redesign. This was a great question, thanks for asking. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 10:34, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

This is sort of a wikipedia history question

It appears to me that in November 2004 I added a picture [5] to the John LaFarge article. The picture is still there, but when I click on it I find no mention of me in its history. It is not really a big deal, but it is nice (opinion) to be at acknowledged for the work that I do here, or am I missing something? Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 04:13, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

The file was moved to commons, and the original Wikipedia file deleted. You were the original uploader, as can be seen here: [6] (viewable only by admins). I'm not sure one way or another whether or not it is normal to note the original uploader when stuff is transferred to commons, especially public domain material. This is different from text you compose yourself, which is your own original work, and for which Wikipedia's license mandates that you be credited for (via the article history). I don't know that the purely technical aspect of uploading a picture requires attribution as required by Wikipedia's license. It could, but I don't know one way or the other. If you are concerned and wish to persue it, you should probably do so at Commons, as they (and NOT Wikipedia) are currently hosting said picture. --Jayron32 04:22, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy reply J. No, it is not really important, it was just a surprise. I sometimes go to a lot of work finding usable images and don't get a warm fuzzy feeling seeing someone else's name on what I consider to have been my work. Or maybe I just like to see my name in print or something. Carptrash (talk) 04:28, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I think our "move to commons" technology is a bit broken, to be frank. It should be a migration of the database entity - the same way as we can export and import articles - retaining attribution. For even public domain items may involve work we would like to attribute, and in some jurisdictions would be required to (Commons takes a wider view on these matters), and certainly descriptions etec. may well be copyright under CC-By. Rich Farmbrough, 03:37, 7 November 2011 (UTC).

Perhaps another one that Philipe might like to comment on with his WMF hat on (see previous topic). Carptrash, you could drop him a note if you like.Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:23, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Autosigning talk pages

Has it every been suggested/rejected that a preference should be made available to Autosign Talk pages, or failing that a preference to issue a warning when a talk page entry has not been Signed. If not can I place it on the agenda. I would gladly see my Save button replaced by a Sign and save (yes- might not suit all edits). Such a facility would would probably reduce my edit count by 50%- but significantly improve my reputation. --ClemRutter (talk) 10:10, 8 November 2011 (UTC) (remembered!)

You can reenable User:Sinebot for autosign you posts by placing {{YesAutosign}} on your userpage, if you missed to sign. mabdul 09:25, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Google Image Search doesn't have advanced search any more

At least in Australia, Google has redesigned its page options, and you can no longer search by license type for an image. Is there another search engine out there that offers that option? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:28, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Try this link: [7]. Goodvac (talk) 05:44, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. The old page is back up now. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:53, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation "Answers"

Hi. :) I just wanted to let you all know that the Wikimedia Foundation is testing a potential new communication system intended to provide a central address to which community members who need assistance from the Wikimedia Foundation or who have questions about the Foundation or its activities can reach out and find answers. This system is being unrolled on a trial basis to test its efficiency and usefulness to communities.

What happens to your question will depend on what type of question it is. Many questions are general interest, and answers to these are being posted to wmf:Answers. Generally, at least to begin with, I will be writing these answers myself, although staff members have assisted with some questions already and I don't doubt will assist with more. Some issues will not be general interest, but may require attention from specific staff members or contractors. These will be forwarded to the appropriate parties. Questions that should be answered by community may be forwarded to the volunteer response team, unless we can point you to a more appropriate point of contact.

I imagine most of you are familiar with how the Wikimedia Foundation works, but it's probably a good idea for me to note for those who are not familiar that the Wikimedia Foundation does not control content on any of its projects. They can't help with content disputes or unblock requests, and they are not the place to report general bugs or to request features (that would be Wikimedia's Bugzilla). The letters I've answered already have included primarily questions about finances and the Foundation's work. I've been asked to get feedback from staff on diverse subjects ranging from the amount of latitude permitted to a project in drafting their "Exemption Doctrine Policy" to whether or not groups seeking grants need tax exempt status first.

If you have questions for or about the Wikimedia Foundation, you can address them to answerswikimedia.org. Please review wmf:Answers/Process for specific terms and more information. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Botanical Genera Photos

Hello, I want to say to all amateur photographers that botanical genera photos are needed for species such as tropical Lauraceae, but also many other tropical, subtropical or template cold vegetable genera. Please, when you travel to an exotic location or walk near a place that sells plants, or a public garden, take pictures. Sometimes the more inconspicuous plants or plants with smaller flowers are needed. Thanks for your attention. Sonia Murillo Perales (talk) 09:56, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Future of the US Education Program and the Ambassador Project

There is a discussion about the future and the growth of the US education program along with the future of the Wikipedia Ambassador Project here. Please have a look at it. Cheers --Guerillero | My Talk 21:28, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to second Guerillero's request; the USEP has the potential to be a very beneficial program for Wikipedia, but it will have an impact on the general editing community and I'd like to see more people discussing its goals and plans. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:34, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Technocracy Incorporated article among others connected with that subject

No response from other editors on this issue. A small clique of editors are trying to eliminate an historic organizations entry from Wikipedia information that is still operating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Technocracy_Incorporated#Propose_merge_to_Technocracy_movement Johnphos has tried for years to eliminate it... attempt after attempt. There are years worth of edits by Johnphos and his altering in a negative way... non neutral and defaming way, the information.

Scroll down and read about Technocracy Incorporated on this U.S.dot gov. website in the history of the 30's area http://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html

No new editors that are neutral are permitted to edit the article because of this group below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Lawrencekhoo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Johnfos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Beagel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Epipelagic

They think or say everyone is a sock. Those editors edit economics and energy articles primarily and seems to be at issue with ideas related to Technocracy ideas as in wanting to remove them from en. Wikipedia. Is there a way to bring this to the attention of a bunch of Admin's to prevent this group from getting rid of the article?

This was the fastest growing social movement in the U.S. and Canada for a time, and its still around now. Is Wikipedia going to allow it to just be done away with by people that do not like the concept... accuse the article of being commercial or say that it is not important enough for its own article? 175.100.40.61 (talk) 02:13, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

You might like to read WP:ORG (the rules on what organizations qualify for an article entirely about themselves, rather than just being part of a larger subject) and WP:BFAQ. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

You miss my points. I said a group of editors are controlling the Technocracy Incorporated article to a negative effect, have for years... have attempted twice to Article for Deletion it and now are going to make it go away permanently into an article, Technocracy Movement that if anything could be absorbed by the Technocracy Incorporated article... as it is, by far, the most notable group... that is still around connected with Technocracy ideas... and yes Google Technocracy Incorporated if you think according to your link given me that it is not notable.

Do you think that the main social security government .gov site section explaining the movement and it significance have no value? http://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html or that the main writer of the Technocracy Study Course... M. King Hubbert has no effect on notability? Ever heard of M. King Hubbert... maybe the most famous Geo Scientist of the 20th. century?

Wikipedia is a collection of special interest editors at its worst... full of ax grinders on especially economics and energy and political articles. Lawrence Khoo in this case, has to be a prime example of someone that is a mainstream economist that removes alternative information. Look at his editing history and notice how many editing buddies come to his assistance. This whole group uses Wikipedia like a fine tuned block to get their points across. All the little tricky Wikilawyering and techniques.. that ultimately rely on their editing buddies. Disgusting way to run an enterprise. We all know who funds Wikipedia... or at least I do... the big mainstream foundations... and its a pity they seem to influence content but money does that if this article is an example... I think it is.

Technocracy Incorporated was one of the most significant social movements outside of the mainstream in the 1930's. Its still around. It is quoted often in mainstream encyclopedia information from good encyclopedias like http://www.eoearth.org/article/Biophysical_economics E.o.E. or Encyclopedia of Earth. Wikipedia is not peer reviewed I know but the response here to a legitimate inquiry about a special interest group of editors is far from interesting, saying that the article is maybe for advertising, when those editors have stripped that article to the point of removing pictures... the groups web address for a while and more balanced information.

Unless I see some evidence that people are going to curtail the special interest group of several people controlling that article and get some interest here of preserving the article from this group of mainstream marauders against an interesting notable group... that they despise for some reason... I have to put this response into the feeble or useless zone. Thanks for nothing.... not sure how to say that because I am not going to use the play nice say nothing en.Wikipedia speak that lets people clubs/factions destroy or distort interesting topics and groups and articles. 175.100.40.61 (talk) 01:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok, mission accomplished http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Johnfos and his very mainstream editing partner Lawrence Khoo and Beagle have made the Technocracy Incorporated article go away permanently. Three people that hate a subject or group managed to get rid of a current group that goes back to the 1930's that is historic and still operating... why? Ask them but this points out how bad en. Wikipedia treats things in its care http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Technocracy_movement#Noticed_that_this_article_and_others_have_changed_over_the_past_few_years. Three people can pretty much form a team and do as they please and call it consensus and at the same time for years control and manipulate information in a negative way. 175.100.41.60 (talk) 02:14, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Looking for a wrapup on the Public Policy Initiative

Where is a good wrapup on the Public Policy Initiative? Wonder how much it cost, how much "helper" time spent (in addition to students themselves), and what the results were. Was it a success (yes/no/why/how)? What worked well or bad and what do we learn from it. Was public policy a good uni subject or a bad one (for this approach) and how would things look if generalized to other fields (science, literature, history)?

Are there some good talk threads or posts on this? Here or at Meta?

Thanx...71.246.144.154 (talk) 04:20, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

One place to talk about it is at Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:09, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

IPA: /bûbɪ/ => to English

Hello everybody, I need help with transcription word /bûbi:/ (IPA) to English language. It is about a nickname of my friend. I thought it would be Bubbie, or Boobey, but I am not really sure. —Alex ^{discussion ★} 14:00, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

You might have better luck inquiring at the language Reference Desk. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 11:20, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Alright, thanks. —Alex ^{discussion ★} 15:15, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Century start and end years

While idly browsing, I noticed that 20th century says it began in 1900 and ended in 1999. Since I believed this to be incorrect, I went to 1st century, which began in 1 and ended in 100. Similarly, the 2nd century began in 101 and ended in 200. This pattern continued until 17th century, which claims it began in 1600, while 16th century claims it ended in 1600, which means that we currently assign 1600 to both centuries; the pattern then resumes at 18th century (making 1700 not belong to any century) and continues until 20th century, where there is another overlap. Ordinarily, I'd just tag them both with {{contradict-other}}, put a note on one of the talk pages, and move on. But how we resolve this will obviously affect a large number of pages, so I'm bringing it here instead. I'm not about to start putting messages on all the talk pages about this. I note that a while ago there was some discussion about this very issue, but I can discern no consensus from that (short) argument, so I am bringing it here for the attention of the broader community. I will put a note on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years shortly. --NYKevin @151, i.e. 02:37, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

This is one of those constant questions. The century starts at year one and ends at at 100. Simple. So years 1-100 are in the first century and so on. The confusion is caused, in my opinion, by the decade categories which can't be easily placed in the correct century for 20% of them, ie 00s and 90s. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:50, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Should we perhaps incorporate something like a {{faq}} into the WikiProject Years banner indicating this? Or maybe an editnotice? --NYKevin @172, i.e. 03:07, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

It's covered on the Century article, but, perhaps surprisingly, not on the Gregorian calendar article. Some definitive citations on the subject would help. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:04, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

If someone makes a FAQ, it might also be worth clarifying the common confusion over categories like Category:1600s births, which on Wikipedia means "people born in the 10 years 1600-1609", not "people born in the 100 years 1600-1699". --Delirium (talk) 21:16, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Template:Menu

Years ago I created a template called Template:Menu, I'm requesting that some one rename it to some thing more useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bardi1100 (talk • contribs) 00:54, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

While {{User page menu}} would be a better name, I'm not sure you have established that you are Datakid100. However I will move the template since it is not very highly used. Rich Farmbrough, 15:13, 21 November 2011 (UTC).

How to hide all fundraising banners on all Wikimedia wikis until next year

The annual Wikimedia fundraiser is about to start. We're planning on keeping it short for logged in users this year, but if you'd rather not see any fundraising banners at all, just go to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Thank_You/en. That page will set cookies for you for all the projects to hide the fundraising banners until next year. You'll still be able to see non-fundraising banners, however. If you change your mind and want to see the fundraising banners again, just delete the cookies called "centralnotice_fundraising". Either way, you can still donate by clicking the "Donate to Wikipedia" link in the sidebar. Kaldari (talk) 17:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

What do I need to do to block all banners forever? —danhash (talk) 17:35, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I think there's a gadget for that. Kaldari (talk) 19:21, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

No, there actually isn't. There's usually a gadget to hide just the central notice for the duration of the fundraiser, but that gets removed at the end. To hide all banners on English Wikipedia, local and global, permanently, add #siteNotice{display:none} to Special:MyPage/common.css. --Yair rand (talk) 23:01, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Seems like there should be a WP: page with that info. —danhash (talk) 14:38, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Note that the #sitenotice CSS thing will hide absolutely every banner and notice ever. So that includes non-fundraising banners announcing things like board/arbcom/steward/... elections, scheduled technical maintenance, a wiki meetup or conference in your area (using geoloc banners), and basically everything else that anyone might want to announce in that space and doesn't involve asking for money. I realize that some people actually want this because the other banners bother them too, and if you're sure it's what you want then by all means go ahead and do it, as long as you know what you're doing and don't yell at the techies for "not announcing" a software upgrade ;) --Catrope (talk) 23:03, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

See also Wikitech-l: those Jimbo pics are scaring me. Jidanni (talk) 05:39, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Given that I haven't seen any yet, it's possible that ad blocking software stops them. Or perhaps I clicked on Kaldari's link and just don't remember.

(Some of you may be amused by reading User:WhatamIdoing/Fundraising. I need to go look up the current fundraising target, but I think the rest is up to date.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:05, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

School Online Presence

Hi, Always read but this is the first time ive thought about editing (posting this from work which is a school) Ive been charged with increasing the schools online presence and i suggested expanding the Wiki Page the school currently has i couldn't find a suitable place to put this but my "plan" is to expand the page currently there, ("Kingsmeadow community school"), however i know this could be a conflict of interest, and advice on how i should proceed as theres quite a bit more items id like to see on the Wiki Page.

Especially as the latest generation seems to want to search wiki for EVERYTHING before deciding if they should take the time to look at it properly.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Acidphire21 (talk • contribs) 09:21, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

The article on Kingsmeadow Community Comprehensive School could certainly use some work; at the moment, there are no sources cited but the school website, and the article text doesn't even say what country it's in! Wikipedia welcomes contributions, but since the article is about your employer, it's very important to tread lightly. I recommend reading the guideline on conflict of interest, especially the section aimed specifically at editors in your position. And you can always ask for help if you're not sure about what to do. Happy editing! Ntsimp (talk) 18:39, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, my main aim is to give more information on the school and just generally improve the article, but as mentioned ill tread carefully as i don't want it seeming biased.

UK Chapter Board Meeting

Just to let you know: The UK Chapter's board meeting is happening at the moment, and is being streamed live at http://bambuser.com/v/2140298 - Sue Gardner is in attendance. The Cavalry (Message me) 11:31, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

• Part 1: http://bambuser.com/v/2140298
• Part 2: http://bambuser.com/channel/pigsonthewing/broadcast/2140514
• Part 3:
• Part 4:

Rich Farmbrough, 12:03, 21 November 2011 (UTC).

Transclude sections from individual articles to build a long list?

Background: List of city nicknames in the United States is a very long list that consists of sub-sections for individual states. The individual sub-sections have now been split off into separate linked articles, but there seems to be some sentiment for keeping some contents from some lists in the parent article. I am concerned about the situation where state lists and the national list will be edited in different ways; for example, an entry was recently added to the Alaska subsection without also editing the Alaska list.

What I want to do: It is technically possible for this large list to be assembled by transcluding content from the individual state articles, thus limiting the size of the main list file and ensuring consistency between the U.S. list and the state lists. At User:Orlady/Nicknames test I have demonstrated how this could be done, showing just two of the U.S. states. I would like to construct the U.S. nicknames list in this fashion.

The challenge: If the list is built this way, visitors to the U.S. list would be no longer be able to add or edit list entries on that page. They would need to go to the individual state list(s) to make changes. Has anyone developed a clean and efficient way of telling users how to make edits in this situation? It is easy to put notices at the top of the "edit" window for the whole page and for the individual states, but at that point the user does not see a clickable link. I'd prefer to be able to tell viewers of the U.S. page to click on the "main" page for the state to edit its content -- for example, by providing an "edit" link that goes directly to the state page. Has anyone done this? --Orlady (talk) 16:37, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

See WP:EDITNOTICE. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! That works! --Orlady (talk) 17:36, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Where's the discussion page for the new/trial UserTalk PROD message template?

The new/trial user talk page message about an article being PRODded doesn't include the PROD "concern" text which was input by the PRODder and is displayed on the article. Surely it ought to? The text displayed is "because I don't think it meets our criteria for inclusion", which sounds as if it's one person's opinion. See User talk:DVMt.

Of course people can challenge a Prod. The prodder, therefore may be wrong. So stating it as an opinion, rather than a fact might be a good thing. Rich Farmbrough, 11:58, 21 November 2011 (UTC).

I looked at the template applied to that page (I was using Twinkle, if that matters), and the template claims to be {{Proposed deletion notify}}. But the documentation for that template has different wording, saying "The proposed-deletion notice added to the article should explain why.". So I don't actually know which template Twinkle is using to give a user talk page message when I do a PROD, and thus where to go to discuss my concerns about the wording of that template! Any ideas? PamD 20:11, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Last call for candidates for Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2011

This is a last call for any candidates to step forward for the 2011 ArbCom elections; nominations close at 23:59 today, less than 24 hours from now. If anyone is still interested in running for the Arbitration Committee and meet all the requirements, please nominate yourself here. –MuZemike 01:14, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Nominations now open for the 2011 Arbitration Committee Elections

Nominations are now open for candidates to run in the 2011 Arbitration Committee Elections.

The role of Arbitrator is important and demanding, there is a perennial need for new volunteers to step forward. This year, 7 arbitrators are expected to be chosen. Nominations are open to any editor in good standing over the age of 18, who is of legal age in their place of residence, and who has made at least 150 mainspace edits before November 1, 2011; candidates are not required to be administrators or to have any other special permissions, but will be required to make certain commitments and disclosures as detailed in the nomination instructions. Experienced and committed editors are urged to Consider standing.

Nominations will be accepted from today, November 12 through Monday, November 21 at 23:59 (UTC), with voting scheduled to begin on Sunday, November 27. To submit your candidacy, proceed to the candidates page and follow the instructions given. Good luck to all the candidates who decide to stand for election, Monty₈₄₅ 00:01, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

The centre of Wikipedia

Please forgive the indulgence, but somehow today I meandered onto the article for the Bacon number, which of course led me to the Erdős number. I then browsed to the TFA (which as I write is Blackbeard). I then wondered how long it would take to wikilink my way from there to the article Kevin Bacon. I actually did it in a mere 2 steps Blackbeard >> List of biographical films >> Kevin Bacon.

I then wondered what person would be at the centre of Wikipedia (using the interconnected matrix idea behind the Bacon and Erdos numbers). You could extend this to other categories, obviously. It would be a computational feat to figure it out, but it is interesting nonethless.

All just idle musing. Feel free to ignore. Manning (talk) 00:54, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

A minor update - my above claim of two steps is invalid, I did that by comparing the "what links here" pages, but that doesn't mean you can wikilink using the same path. My best genuine alternative so far is Blackbeard >> Pirates_of_the_Caribbean:_The_Curse_of_the_Black_Pearl >> Hugh Jackman >> X-Men: First Class >> Kevin Bacon. I'm sure someone can do better. Manning (talk) 01:14, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy.

—Wavelength (talk) 04:32, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Last time anyone checked the center was at United Kingdom[8].©Geni 06:06, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• In fact, a few people have had the time to create and edit Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia for this type of exercise. Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:49, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Fundraising - Donation payment linmitation (Suggestion)

Hello,

I love your site and I often refer it. I would love to donate money for it but there is a limitation to it. I am based in Canada and though my credit card is visa based (supports international transactions), I am not able to donate. Because you are very specific about the billing address fields. Your province drop-box contains only US based province, and this limits others to pay.

I am sure there would be wide range of people around the world like me who would be interested in donating money but this limitation may be reducing response.

This is just a suggestion, you may want to consider it and open the doors for extended support from all over the world.

Thanks & Regards, Shreya — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.198.223.106 (talk) 19:30, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Shreya! Thanks for the note. I'm really sorry this happened. For some reason the IP you are coming from right now shows up as the US which is why it showed you a more US localized form. We're trying to put an easy way to get away from a localized version like that if it doesn't fit your country but for now if you'd like you can go to either one of our Canadian localized forms where you can select a province or one of our more Generic forms such as this one (which is a bit old) where you do not have to select a province (it will automatically select 'out side of the US'). I'll drop this message on your talk page as well! Jalexander--WMF 22:49, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

IP Localization? Please tell me that Wikipedia localizes a browser that sends an Accept-Language of en-CA to Canada no matter what the IP address is. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:35, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject:Deja vu - 15th MfD

Please !vote there. Rich Farmbrough, 19:08, 20 November 2011 (UTC).

Overly Enthusiastic Portalizing?

I am bringing this up here because I have a question about another user's behavior, and I don't know whether it was correct or not or where the proper place to inquire about it is. User:Sbmeirow recently added a portal box to software testing to a number of pages about computer hardware, such as ARM Cortex-M3, Single-board microcontroller and Embedded system. These appear to have only a tenuous connection to software testing. I don't want to accuse him of doing something wrong when I am unsure whether it actually is wrong, but it seems odd to list hardware in the software testing portal, Where is the best place to ask this question? --Guy Macon (talk) 08:42, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Probably on the software testing portal talk page - Portal talk:Software Testing. Those interested in the portal should be able to / be required to come up with some criteria for articles that should bear the portal link. Also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Software, since they should take an interest. I agree that the articles you've mentioned are only dimly linked to software testing and I agree that the portal links are inappropriate. If you get no satisfaction from those pages, in which case, come back here. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:31, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Done [9] [10] Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 16:27, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Percentage Color

In case Wikipedia needed a template that automagically colors percentages, here is one. User:James1011R/Forge/Templates/PercentageColor. It is currently stored in the forge until it is deemed useful enough to be moved to template namespace, along with one with a reversed color scheme. I think it's User:James1011R/Forge/Templates/PercentageColor more efficient than typing the html code many times. James1011R (talk, contribs) - Visit The Forge 20:37, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• Note: This template has been nominated for deletion. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:06, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Was he a real person?

I'm not convinced that lt:Drąsius Kedys was a real person. My arguments are:

- press reports mentioned that he killed the speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament, but that man is still alive. If he killed Andriu Usa instead, there is no mention of such person on the website of the Lithuanian Parliament. Anyway, Mr. Usa has never been the speaker of the Parliament.

- there are reports of witnesses who saw that his daughter was raped by the speaker or by Mr. Usa. But who would be so dumb as to allow witnesses to see such rape? And what would such witnesses do? Boo or applaud instead of calling the police or instead of stopping the rapist?

- the story was often mentioned on the websites of the extreme right and has received no mainstream media coverage (at least in English), while the users of extreme right forums accused the "Jewish media" of covering up the truth;

- there were press allegations that the murdered judge was also part of that pedophile ring, but how could a judge who knows the penal law allow that his sexual abuse of children be seen by witnesses? Was he mentally insane or something?

- there are other possibilities, too: that Mr. Kedys did exist; in this case Elizabeth Loftus has shown that people create false memories. Killing other people based upon the testimony of a three year old girl is like killing people because your hamster or your cat told you so. A three years old child is no reliable witness by any relevant standard. E.g. in the nl:Schiedammer parkmoord an 11 years old child blamed an innocent person as the murderer of a Dutch girl, due to pressure applied by the police during interrogation. Mr. Kedys could have been paranoid and asked his daughter suggestive questions and her imagination filled in the gaps. The killed judge could have blocked the case since he could have believed that Mr. Kedys was insane or because his proof was the testimony of a three years old child. There were no reports of any DNA evidence in this matter.

- in the case that the story was real, why has it not been investigated by the Lithuanian authorities, after it became a matter of press reports?

These are my reasons to doubt the reality of Mr. Kedys's person and the whole story about his sexually abused daughter. Could it simply be a case of creative journalism, wherein a reporter invented the story? Or could it be fiction? Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:43, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

This is English Wikipedia. If you have concerns about an article on another Wikipedia, you need to raise those issues there. We here at English Wikipedia have no control over the content elsewhere. --Jayron32 01:21, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

The Lithuanian Wikipedia's deletion policy appears to be at lt:Vikipedija:Straipsnių trynimo taisyklės administratoriams. If you want to directly consult an admin there, you can see a list at lt:Special:ListAdmins. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 02:07, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't speak Lithuanian, that's why I wrote it here. I thought that somebody could tell me what I wanted to know. I wasn't directly asking for deletion, since I cannot read Lithuanian press, so I cannot really say if it is real. On the Internet there were people who called the story fake. I will ask somebody on that Wiki. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:18, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I used Google Translate for the links in the Lithuanian article. According to http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=lt&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.policija.lt%2Findex.php%3Fid%3D7232 , it seems that Mr. Kedys did exist and he was wanted by the police. So, assuming that it is not a joke, he was real. However the rest of the story is unclear to me. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:31, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind, but I've pinged an English-speaking admin over there for his thoughts (see lt:Naudotojo aptarimas:Audriusa#A question about Drąsius Kedys). --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:24, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

He posts (on his talk page): "Deciding from Lithuanian sources, probably yes (now he is dead under unclear circumstances). From the Lituanian article it looks like he was blamed for killing two people, one from them a judge, for sexual abuse on his small daughter. Take a good care about NPOV when writing about him. AudriusA 21:52, 24 lapkričio 2011 (EET)" --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

The Lithuanian article ([11]) does not say that "he killed the speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament". It says that "J. Furmanavičių, buvusį Seimo pirmininko Viktoro Muntiano visuomeninį padėjėją Andrių Ūsą ir [...] D. Kedys kaltino [...]" - that is, "He accused J. Furmanavičius, Andrius Ūsas (former "societal adviser" of Chairman of Seimas Viktoras Muntianas) and [...]". And yes, he was a real person and there was a real police investigation (and, in fact, there is another investigation that has to decide if that investigation was done properly).

The moral of the story: feel free to mistrust Wikipedia, feel free to mistrust the journalists, but mistrust "Google Translate" (or any other tool of automated translation) even more. After all, one standard reason for deletion in Lithuanian Wikipedia is "autovertimas" ("automated translation")... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:09, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok, granted. I did not say that the article affirmed that. I read several forum posts about him, and there were several articles posted on the Romanian Altermedia and similar right wing websites, which were available at the time when the story was still fresh. So, it seems that those press reports got their facts wrong. An article about his death even made it into a mainstream Romanian journal, Evenimentul Zilei. My impression was that the story was fake, but if the Lithuanian press reports about such investigations, then he did exist. The claim about "Jewish media" was on a English Pravda forum and at the time I read it, there was indeed no mention of the case in mainstream English language press. I saw some messages on English language blogs, wherein he was acclaimed as a vigilante, while very few comments expressed the idea that he should not have murdered the judge. He was seen on those blogs as a hero. I found something about a video wherein his girl was talking about sexual abuse, but the video was deleted at the time, there was just a photo of her wherein her face was edited out of the photo. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Article

Hi. I am from bosnian wikipedia. I wrote an article about Serbian singer Indira Radić, one of the most popular female singers in ex-Yugoslavia. But my grammar is very bad. Can someone check it... Thanks. --178.222.74.8 (talk) 13:34, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello. You may want to request help from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors. They have a request page.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 20:34, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

College Professors who Teach Kindergarten on WIKI

I was trying to learn some simple notation for guitar tablature here. My specimen-author talked about how to play chords as they appear on sheet music... Fine and all, because one of them was a power chord-that to which I would currently study in tab anyway. Instead, of breaking it down simply from there, (as in what does sign-->2\3\4-->mean?), he starts talking about full chords played in Chuck Berry songs applied to Intonation & the Circle of Fifths. My research could have been completed with as much difficulty, in having my high school's Chemistry Teacher talk to me about guitar... (i could go on further/i think i'll let you fill in the blanks/happy hunting) Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.52.195.234 (talk) 16:56, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what your question is? If you question is about playing guitar or learning about chords, you may want to consider asking at the Entertainment section of our Reference Desk. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:11, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Stalker (stalking)

Hello. I would really appreciate it if someone would take a look at Stalker (stalking), this article is a victim of Google Translate, and tries to fix it or merge it to stalking. Please don't {{sofixit}} me, I am unable to fix it myself. Thanks in advance, Wasbeer 05:12, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Request for Urgent comment, RFC on WP:ACE2011 seats to be filled

Due to unanticipated vacancies, there is a pressing question of how many Arbcom seats WP:ACE2011 should fill. Voting is scheduled to start in about 30 hours. Please comment at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2011#Supplemental_RFC_on_number_of_seats_to_fill:_ACE2011. Monty₈₄₅ 16:15, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Just a thought

Dear wikipedia people:

I sent a mail about 3 days ago and I got a reply that seemed just a little like a computer automated response. I am not blaming you in any way, but on the reply it was suggested to me that I posted my thoughts on this community. I went roughly through all the options to post, and this seemed the one that would give more chance of being listened rather tan archived. Also, when I went through the posts I got the feeling that you are very concerned about policies regarding the quality of the articles, technical issues, etc. But I think you need to look at your best known policy of NO ADDS, because I really believe that mutual collaboration with professional associations might be a nice way of posting adds, and earn collaboration from researchers and professionals in their respective branches of knowledge, and solve many of the other issues.

Again, I am a huge fan of your work, and when I have the chance I'll make a donation. If what Jimmy Wales said on his personal message is true, then I suspect you are a very little team doing an outstanding selfless job without much recognition or proper remuneration.

I'm gonna go ahead and post my little naive, somehow witty email I sent a few days ago, in the hopes that a human being takes a look at it, and just considers it for at least 2 seconds.

Hey!

I know advertising is messed up. I used to work as a market researcher for Procter and Gamble, so I know for sure. But I am also an unemployed well educated person that appreciates proper intellectual content thoroughly reviewed by actual experts in the field and cannot actually afford it. I am not taking a cheap shot at you guys, I really appreciate the work that you are doing, I also believe that knowledge is power and it should be free to help people who cannot afford it. But I have a problem when I find out that Britney Spears actually won the 1993 UEFA Champions League (so you say), because I know that there are persons who do not know that that is just a stupid person messing around with your wiki site. That bothers me very much

It also bothers me that it is a fad to take cheap shots at wikipedia, so I am just giving you my very naive ignorant thought:

Maybe if you team up with professional associations i.e. IEEE for the articles on that specific branch of knowledge, then a little banner with those guys logo wouldn't hurt anyone, would it?? And then, we all can get properly reviewed free information.

I know that you don't have the time read this, and that you probably have received this same email a million times, but then again, think about it a little bit more, would you??

Best Regards Samantha Serna Verenzuela PS: I apologize for any misspelling, grammar or out of context comment, but I am not a native English speaker — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samanthasernav (talk • contribs) 22:51, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your concern Samanthasernav. We are aware that sometimes vandalism can be a problem; with Wikipedia's open-editing model, it is a known concern, however the open-editing model is exactly why Wikipedia is that thing of which you are a "huge fan". If we limited that model in ways in which you suggest, it would be a matter of "Throwing out the baby with the bathwater"; i.e. by making it impossible for articles to be vandalized, we would also make it impossible for articles to be updated and improved in a timely manner. Fortunately, Wikipedia is also patrolled by thousands of editors who try to revert vandalism as soon as it occurs, occasionally something slips through, and I am truly sorry you got to see that. Understand that we are aware of these problems, but on the balance, we think that our model works better than any other would in terms of balancing openness with reliability. --Jayron32 02:33, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Google Knol is scheduled to close on May 1

Apparently Google Knol will be disabled on May 1, 2012, so that posts are no longer publicly viewable. Hence we need to think about what to do with articles that have external links to Knol. There are about 380 such articles right now, and 866 total pages, that have these external links. I made a quick list at User:CBM/Knol. There is still a lot of time to plan out the best way to handle these - archive? remove? - but we should start soon. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:02, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

That is May 1, 2012, isn't it? Another end-of-the-world scenario.— Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I typed the wrong year, it's fixed now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Run a bot task to remove the links when it does shut down? I dunno... I'm more choked at how they keep f#%@ing with the news archive than I am the loss of Knol. Resolute 03:17, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

See http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://knol.google.com.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:44, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Is there a way to let wayback.archive.org know that certain pages should be archived? Is it a simple matter of checking for older versions of each page that we link from? I would hate to see a mass-changeover of knoll links to wayback links only to find that a bunch of them didn't make it into the archives. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Why are we linking to Knol pages at all? They are not a reliable source for anything. bd2412 T 18:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

It's a good question. I think most of them are probably external links, based on a small sample I looked at from my list. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:15, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Our current Knol article (not yet updated to indicate the closure of the project, by the way) states that "All contributions are licensed by default under the Creative Commons CC-BY-3.0 license (which allows anyone to reuse the material as long as the original author is named), but authors may choose the CC-BY-NC-3.0 license (which prohibits commercial reuse) or traditional all rights reserved copyright protections instead." It seems to me that if we want to keep some Knol info for historical value, we should just copy their page here, or maybe to Wikisource. bd2412 T 18:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

what is knol? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.255.28.159 (talk) 08:42, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

There are some nice pictures there, I wonder what the copyright on those is too or how one can find out. It would be nice to have as much of those as possible copied to commons but we'd need someone to automate checking the permissions and getting the author details in plus what they were associate with or annotated as. Dmcq (talk) 16:56, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

commons interwiki

At meta:Requests for comment/Wikimedia Commons there is strong support for "c:" being an alias for Wikimedia Commons. The two roadblocks are:

1. "C:" being an alias for "CAT:" on Hindi Wikipedia (resolved by Hindi Wikipedia community)
2. Projects which have articles that have a title starting with "C:" e.g. Special:Prefixindex/C: (unresolved by English Wikipedia community)

The issues on English Wikipedia are

1. three articles which start with "C:", being C:enter:pound, pound, pound, C:Real & (C:)The Contra Adventure
2. redirects to articles with significant history: C:\
3. redirects discussed at RfD which can be found at [[Talk:C:\Program Files]]: C:, C:\Program Files, C:/Program Files & C:\WINDOWS
4. redirects to articles without significant history: C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control, C:tL and C:KND, C:N ratio & C:enter:
5. redirects to content categories: C:LIP (Lipograms) & C:MS (Microsoft)
6. redirect to admin categories: C:ATT, C:CVSD, C:PROD, C:SD, C:ATTACK, C:HM, C:FUR, C:NNSD, C:OMMONS, C:SPAM, C:AB, C:CSD, C:OTRS, C:UNB, C:NON, C:RTSP & C:Images
   most of these have a "CAT:" CAT:ATT, CAT:CVSD, CAT:PROD, CAT:SD, CAT:ATTACK, CAT:HM, CAT:FUR, CAT:NNSD, CAT:COMMONS, C:SPAM, CAT:AB, CAT:CSD, CAT:OTRS, CAT:UNB, CAT:NON, CAT:RTSP & CAT:Images
7. redirect to wikiproject categories: C:WPCATSUP & C:WPCATSUPT

I think we can address these without too much problem. The only degradation to the project is the three content articles which may need to be moved to a less accurate title. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:24, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Now all of the C: redirects have a CAT: equivalent. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:31, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant all of the C: category redirects. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:37, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I've left a note at [[Talk:C:Real#rename]] and [[Talk:C:_The_Contra_Adventure#rename]], and I see Sven has started an AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/C:enter:pound, pound, pound (I hadnt thought of that approach, but it appear a very reasonable approach). John Vandenberg ^(chat) 21:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Can we keep capital C: for the articles and only use lower case c: for the interwiki to commons? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:56, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

No; because the first letter of page names is not case-sensitive - and a hell of a lot of things depend on that fact.  Chzz  ►  16:34, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I can't see any good reason for doing this, I'd have wondered if this was an April Fool joke causing trouble with C: in windows except we're not near April yet. It is not as though we have a burning need to put in direct links to commons all that often. Dmcq (talk) 17:14, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

The RFC on meta is still open if you want to oppose this. There are over 750 wmf projects which use Commons. Many of these project prohibit local uploads, which means they need to refer to Commons a lot. e.g. when telling a newbie how to upload, they need to link to the policy "commons:Commons:Scope" and friends. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia still has a major quality gap

Only 3% of Wiki eyeballs are on Good+ articles, only 31% on C+ articles.

Vital articles are 85% below Good.

Featured and Good Article programs are spending too much time on obscure subject and tending to become more obscure.

See analysis: PowerPoint: Wikipeida's poor treatment of its most important articles

69.255.27.249 (talk) 14:58, 23 November 2011 (UTC) (TCO)

Well, I think that "Good Article" is something like graduating cum laude: you don't need such mention in order to call yourself a graduate. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:00, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that {{sofixit}} applies here. This is a volunteer service. If someone wants to volunteer to spend months perfecting an article about some obscure subject, then we're not going to stop them. If you want the "important" articles to be improved, then you need to roll up your shirt sleeves and get busy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:18, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

How do you determine whether or not an article topic is vital and requires some action to improve the quality? A lot of the most popular searched articles are on topics like celebrities (Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Drake, Eminem), TV shows (How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory), new movies, and so on. Hey, the people have spoken, and that's what they want to read. (-; For me, anything related to "hard science" is obscure, but I have nothing against anyone taking those articles and improving them to Good or FA article status. In fact, I think it's great. Yes, I also think it'd be even better if more people out there on the Internet would get involved and start improving the quality of articles that interest them. "Rome wasn't built in a day", though. It takes awhile to create high-quality articles on millions of topics through volunteer effort. OttawaAC (talk) 07:11, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

It's quite simple, really: A vital topic is one that I'm interested in; an obscure topic is one I don't care about. The same goes for you and everybody else. (So maybe it's not that simple, come to think of it.) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:42, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I second the comments above. The presentation rests on a set of underlying assumptions which go largely undiscussed. Such as 'pop' = 'important' (with Lady Gaga presumably beating Percy Grainger). That anything popular below GA is "unsatisfactory". And, seemingly, that assiduous Wikipedia contributors should have their time managed to industry standards. But, hey, as WhatamIdoing points out, how about WP:VOLUNTEER? Or the escape slide?--MistyMorn (talk) 20:52, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Albemarle County, Virginia

Someone has been adding Albemarle County, Virginia templates to biographical articles which have no relevance to Virginia. Whoever is doing this, cut it out! And if some fan of Albemarle County, Virginia can take the time, each of the entries in the category should be checked for relevance. I removed the template from Talk:Murray Merle Schwartz, but I am sure there are others. --DThomsen8 (talk) 02:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Looks like it was User:AnomieBOT. Best to leave a message there and see just how many got tagged. Rmhermen (talk) 02:53, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

HTML defect in the copy-paste insertions for websites

I just made a donation online to the Wikimedia Foundation. On the return page there are a number of logo versions with copy-and-paste HTML to insert into one's website to help promote donations to the Foundation. As best I can tell, the coding provided -- while it may work Ok in some browsers -- is not well formed. The one I chose to use fails in my local syntax checker...

<A HREF="https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Support_Wikipedia/en"> <IMG BORDER="0" ALT="Support Wikipedia" SRC="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Fundraising_2009-square-treasure-en.png"> </A>

The SRC="//upload.wiki... portion should read as SRC="http://upload.wiki....

The others that are offered have the same format problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trailride (talk • contribs) 02:28, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Your post refers to wmf:2011/Support/en which transcludes wmf:Template:2010/Donate-support. The source of the latter uses {{filepath:}} which omits http://. Perhaps http:// should be added before {{filepath:}} but I don't have access or expertize. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:16, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I have copied this to meta:Foundation wiki feedback#Template:2010/Donate-support. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:19, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I let the fundraising team know.  :) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:10, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note guys. I don't think anyone caught this because it actually 'used' to give the full url but was changed to just do // because links on the Wikipedia and our other projects are now protorelative (if it sees // it uses either http or https depending on how you are viewing the site). I've tweaked them all to output a full https url that you can copy/paste. Jalexander--WMF 05:29, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Question

Can someone compile the average page views per month using data from October 2011 from stats.grok.se for articles here — to be specific, all articles under "Storm sciences, hurricane seasons and storm effects", "Tropical cyclones: Atlantic", "Tropical cyclones: Eastern Pacific", "Tropical cyclones: Northwestern Pacific", and "Tropical cyclones: Southern Pacific and the Indian Ocean" excluding Maximum sustained wind, Mesoscale convective system, and Outflow (meteorology) (of which those three are under "Storm sciences, hurricane seasons, and storm effects"). Thanks. HurricaneFan25 15:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

(Technical) Wikipedia history

A specific question and more general questions which came out of it:

• When was Oversighting be established and when was removal by direct database access phased out (as far as we know)? Where can old discussion of this transitions be found. Looking into old versions of Wikipedia:Oversight and its talk page doesn't really reach back far enough.
• Generally speaking, is there a good place to look for Wikipedia history outside the article namespace? I mean for technical, policy, and community history?
• I'm also wondering how utopian it would be to not only go back into the history of one page, but set a global date for Wikipedia and browse Wikipedia as it existed on that date. Is there any hope that the database structure could effectively support such a use case?

--Pjacobi (talk) 11:23, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

On #3, I saw someone recently talking about downloading database dumps from a particular day, which would let you browse Wikipedia (sort of) like it existed on that date (sort of, because I have the impression that the database dumps don't include images). I'm not sure what kind of computer set up you would need for such an undertaking. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:38, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

The problem with that is that db dumps exclude deleted stuff. True history viewing would not be that hard technically, in terms of transclusion we have emulated it with template {{Expand}} for example. You could do probably the article level stuff with a little glue sealing wax and javascript. Rich Farmbrough, 17:33, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Why don't articles about cities represent how those cities really look like?

Why don't articles about cities represent how those cities really look like? Take Kinshasa or Cairo as examples. The words "poor" or "poverty" don't appear even once in the article Cairo, even though it is a very poor and dense city where less than 20% of the people have computers. Also take a look at the pictures, they don't represent how these cities look in any way (most of Kinshasa is supposed to be extremely poor and primitive yet it doesn't appear in the article).

It happens in other articles as well, and not only in third world countries. Take the city where I live, Tel Aviv, as an example: over half of the people in southern Tel Aviv are immigrators and refugees from Africa (mainly from Sudan and Eritrea that by the way, are also not represented in a neutral way), yet there are no pictures or information about it. Only the main attractions in the city appear in Photoshopped pictures.

So what can be done with this matter? Most of the articles about cities look like the country's ministry of tourism edited them to make people want to come there. Check out your city's page if you want a proof-- Someone35  19:31, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

If you have established sources that discuss the "ugly" parts of a city (like your examples) and you can get free photos of that, then they certainly can be included into the city article to talk about , for example, the distribution of wealth or immigrants or the like. But you do need sources that affirm this. --MASEM (t) 19:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd pretty much agree with "Someone35" on this. There is a need to have better information about the less glorious aspects of cities, like the poverty and crime rates, the state of transportation and sanitation. I'm sure information about these topics exists (extensively for many cities) yet it seems not to get included in articles. There's a definite tendency for articles to only point-out the good or interesting aspects of a city, and often ignore the bad parts, this is clearly true of photographs. For example, back in 2009 I complained on the talk page of the Baghdad article (here), that there was no mention at all of the war that was then (or still is) raging in the city. No mention of the sectarian civil war, the massacres, the bombings, etc. Now, since then there has been some improvement in that article, but I still don't think it comes close to covering the subject. The article of my own city Dublin has no mention of the major problems like Heroin addiction and Homelessness that are prevalent on the city's streets (and that anyone who's been there will see walking around). I don't really know what can be done about this though, I guess it's a cultural thing, the people who are writing the city articles probably mostly come from those cities, so they don't really want to have negative information appearing about their home town, maybe it needs to be made clear in some of the policies that good and bad must be represented in these articles. --Hibernian (talk) 01:22, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems trite, but WP:SOFIXIT. If it's sourced and not a coatrack, go for it. --Golbez (talk) 06:29, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd say that there are also plenty of articles that have the opposite problem. Particularily small locations, which got mentioned once in Western press on some tragedy get that as their 80% coverage. --Soman (talk) 06:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the only way to fix this is by following the standard wiki process by trying to bring articles into line with our neutrality policy one at a time. I agree with Soman above that this works both ways, and the problem isn't only with non-Western places. Anyone reading Ardoyne would think that this 20,000-strong community only existed as a battlefield. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:12, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

As long as no Wikipedia article ever begins with the words "X is a city of contrasts", then all is good. Rich Farmbrough, 17:23, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Bother. Heilongjiang. Rich Farmbrough, 17:26, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Experimental new banners

We're going to be testing some experimental new fundraising banners in the next few days (for anonymous users). Just a heads up. Kaldari (talk) 22:13, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Like the one that green banner at the bottom of the screen? Great... ĐARKJEDI10 23:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

What green banner? HurricaneFan25 00:02, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

He's probably talking about this one. We're currently testing that one for 1 hour in the US as an experiment. Kaldari (talk) 00:43, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

So... feedback-wise; I loathe it and spent ten minutes trying to find the right page to complain. Not donating to Wikimedia this Christmas. --68.57.11.96 (talk) 00:51, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Please never, ever do anything like this again. --brion (talk) 01:11, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Here's one of the other ones we tried. Much lower donation numbers, but more positive feedback from users (which is about what we were expecting). Kaldari (talk) 00:44, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Time-sensitive redirects

I have just created User:Thryduulf/List of time-sensitive redirects to keep track of redirects like that have a need to be updated periodically (e.g. Recent deaths). Please add any others you know about. Thryduulf (talk) 21:14, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Archving video and audio

So I just learned that the video game magazine GamePro and their website will be going down on December 5. They have some podcasts (I've downloaded relevant ones for articles I work on to my hard drive already), but is there any place anyone knows these could be archived by for archiving purposes? Failing that, any good places I could upload the podcasts to?

What about java-based video such as on youtube (i have a news broadcast that I can only find there)? I'm not certain whether WebCite doesn't appear to archive mp3s or those java videos, especially the latter.∞陣内Jinnai 23:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Concerns about User:Dierk Lange

I posted this nearly 2 weeks ago on the WikiProject Africa talk page (here), where I thought it might provoke some discussion, but since no one there has shown any interest I'm posting it here, in the hope that someone can either begin to deal with it, or at least tell me where would be a better place to bring this up.

Anyway, I have noticed over the last few months that User:Dierk Lange has been extensively editing many articles on African history (such as Kanem-Bornu Empire, Oyo Empire, etc.) and referencing many of his additions with papers and article which he himself has authored. Now I'm not sure what the Wiki policy on this is exactly, clearly people are not allowed to reference things that they have published themselves, but some of these articles he cites seem to have been published in what appear to be real historical journals (Anthropos, Working Papers in African Studies, etc.), though I have no idea whether they are considered legitimate or not. Essentially, Dierk Lange seems to be inserting significant amounts of his own theories into articles, now I don't claim to be an expert in this area, but frankly most of it does not sound like "Mainstream" history (i.e. theories about African kingdoms being founded by the Lost Tribes of Israel, or the ancient Assyrian Empire, etc. You can read all about it at his personal Website: http://dierklange.com/). Some editors have challenged his additions, but there hasn't really been much debate about it (as far as I can tell). As I don't know enough about the subjects, I've felt unable to really deal with it, but seeing more and more of Dierk Lange's theories being put in numerous articles seems (at the very least) to be Undue Weight. Does anyone else have the same concerns, and if so what should be done?--Hibernian (talk) 01:29, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried raising these concerns at WP:COIN? --Jayron32 05:43, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The relevant advice section is WP:CITESELF. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:24, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for those links. I've got somewhat of a discussion going about the issue over at WikiProject Africa, so I'll try to see what other people think before going further (anyone here is also welcome to give an opinion). --Hibernian (talk) 01:52, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Template:map considered desirable

There are lots of templates for tagging an article as needing different kinds of improvements, but there is no template {{map}} — at least, that's what I imagine it ought to be called — to say "this article would be more understandable if it included a map, or a better map than it has".

If there is a template with this meaning already, what's it called? --142.205.241.254 (talk) 00:45, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

This would probably go better on the talk page - there are things like {{Image requested}}. Rich Farmbrough, 17:16, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

In fact what you want is {{Map requested}}. Rich Farmbrough, 17:18, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Thanks! (OP at different IP address) --65.92.2.220 (talk) 07:31, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

RfC about AWB template redirects

An RfC about the changes to template redirects by AWB has been started at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#RfC on Template redirects. Fram (talk) 09:12, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Suicidal editors

I was trawling through Wikipedia when I cam across this, and I was wondering if anyone knew why it was failed. Surely if someone has turned to Wikipedia then we need to get advice from professionals to help train editors to deal with this kind of thing should they come across it. I accept the fact that many of these messages will be vandals but surely we should treat it as serrious until we can confirm otherwise. Oddbodz (talk) 20:23, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

That was supplanted by Wikipedia:Responding to threats of harm. Basically, we are not and cannot expect anonymous volunteers to be able to be trained to adequately deal with the situation. Basically, the current procedure is to email the foundation at the "emergency" email, and let them handle it. --Jayron32 20:34, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh ok. Thanks. Oddbodz (talk) 21:41, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Very few, if any, of us who come across any of the legitimate messages are trained to deal with such responses. In those situations of legitimate suicide messages, you need to forward them to the WMF immediately as well as to anyone admin you can grab (preferably with CheckUser permissions, as they can they and pinpoint where they are at and can get the appropriate police information). While there is a concern with bystander effect in not responding directly, if whatever you say something that makes it worse, and that person ends up killing him/herself, then that unqualified individual who responded will need to take responsibility for any legal actions that may result in said death, in which the WMF may not be able to provide any protection. –MuZemike 22:14, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Consensus for a site-wide banner during elections, yet there isn't any banner

Can users please check out Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2011#Sitenotice and leave comments and suggestions? --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 00:36, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Research about Wikipedia: Methodologies

Hi all, I was wondering if anybody knew some interesting scientific papers about appropriate methodologies in qualitative research in order to study talk pages on Wikipedia. I know the meta research portal ; and I've seen the list of all publications about WP. But it is quite specific and it is a waste of time to read all of them if one of you had some advice. Thanks a lot... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.128.108.84 (talk) 10:33, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Where's the meta research portal and that list of all publications about WP? -Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:43, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

GOD Tech: Mark of the Beast

Simply put.. there is no page on Wikipedia that I can find that relates to my book listed in the subject heading. I havent got anyone else to write about it and Wikipedia advises you dont write about your own story - so what do I do? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Norwayadventure2010 (talk • contribs) 14:35, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Does your book meet the notability guidelines for books? That is, is it given non-trivial coverage by multiple reliable sources unaffiliated with your, your book, or its publishers? By reliable sources, I mean news sources from across the nation (but not press releases), academic reviews, or coverage of it winning major literary awards. Ian.thomson (talk) 14:45, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

No not yet, so now I know what I need, I can get that. Thank you for your help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Norwayadventure2010 (talk • contribs) 14:54, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Statistics page concern

Please correct me if I'm not on the right track. On the Statistics page (click the # of articles link from the Main Page under the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" slogan), I found a curious "stat" under "Founder": "1". I don't know if Mr. Wales had anything to do with this, but I had assumed the arrogant propaganda that he and others have put out insisting that he was the only founder to have died off long ago. He may still think of himself as the sole founder, but I was under the impression that he stopped pressing the issue since the controversy became so well known. So what's going on? Is someone figuring that no one looks at the Statistics page? I do, and I think this subtle omission of Larry Sanger's role in starting this wiki up is stubborn idiocy of the highest order. Larry suggested the wiki format in the first place, among other things. Wikipedia as we know it might have not even existed without Larry--almost 4 million free articles may not have been at our disposal. So if there are Larry haters out there, can they please keep their venomous grudge out of the statistics page? Again, set me straight if I'm off base, but Jimmy_Wales#Controversy indicates that Wales contradicted himself over time to serve his own agenda. He went from calling himself a co-founder early on to editing his own article to remove referenced material which identified Larry as a co-founder. I don't understand why the guy (Wales) who has tried re-writing history to omit Larry's role has always garnered more credibility... 67.182.237.57 (talk) 04:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, also....I'm not sure if this is the right place for me to address this concern. Thanks. 67.182.237.57 (talk) 05:00, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

It's a user-right which gives Jimmy Wales certain privileges at English Wikipedia. It should be noted that he has voluntarily relinquished almost all of these; I believe that the last remnant of his superpowers he still uses the right to appoint the ArbCom members officially (though he always appoints the winners of the ArbCom elections). Yes, Larry Sanger did co-found Wikipedia, but he has not been involved in the project in many years. I think he actually got himself banned at one point. --Jayron32 05:28, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for responding so quick and providing insight. "ArbCom" is the Arbitrary Committee, correct? I didn't know Sanger got banned. If this really did happen, is there any way I can search the Wikipedia archives and try and find out when it happened? I am not sure something that old is readily available; nevertheless, curiosity has gotten a hold of me. Thank you in advance. 67.182.237.57 (talk) 01:06, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

"ArbCom" is the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee, the final stop in the dispute resolution process for when all else has failed. Larry Sander still has a user page - user:Larry Sanger and it seems he still makes the odd contribution to Wikipedia. I don't personally remember him getting banned, but his block log does show a block for disruptive editing in 2010, although this was undone about 30 minute later. Thryduulf (talk) 11:03, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

How to find some source code of bots?

It is said "There are already a number of bots running on Wikipedia and many of these bots publish their source code, which can sometimes be reused with little additional development time. "--Makecat (talk) 01:57, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

See Category:Wikipedia bots with source code published and a search on bot source. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:34, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks.--Makecat (talk) 08:48, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Relaunching WP:Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive (WP:ACID)

I've just decided to relaunch WP:ACID, which has been moribund since January 2011 (actually much longer than that, but people were still adding entries). I've removed all the process-for-its-own-sake stuff, like votes and deadlines, that caused it to flop. It's an important idea - a centralized place to identify articles that:

1. Are important but crap, and need severe overhauling
     or
2. Are stuck in B class and need focused editorial attention to get to Good status (or stuck at Good or A class and need help getting to Featured).

It was just hamstrung by its own anal retentiveness.

It's also a good place to announce inter-WikiProject collaborations.

It could just be redirected somewhere, if something newer has come along and I don't know about it. WP:COTW and WP:COTM redirect there now. (PS: I'm not watchlisting VP; if someone needs my input here, wants to berate me, whatever, please drop me a {{wb}} about it). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 09:03, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Macedonian Wikipedia

Hi! im Vasil1234 from the Macedonian Wikipedia. The Macedonian wikipedia managed to make about 52,000 articles and still is not put on the language bar on the English Wikipedia. May i know why? Cheers --Vasil1234 (talk) 18:44, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

See Template talk:Wikipedia languages#Macedonian wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:08, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

What were the most important discussions of the year?

Hi there, as some of you may know, I've recently brought the discussion report section of the Signpost back from the dead. I'm running it biweekly, and a DR came out on Monday. That means that there are two regular issues left this year, one on Dec 5, one on Dec 19.

I'm thinking of doing a special edition of the DR for the Dec. 26th issue, on "The most important discussions of the year", and for that, I need your help.

What were the most important discussions of the year? They can take any form that I cover in the report (so RfCs, proposals made at the village pump or elsewhere, surveys, noticeboard discussions, etc.). How you define important is up to you, it could be the one with the biggest impact, or one that had the most participation, or one that helped a specific group, changed a specific process, etc., and the discussion could have been closed as anything, successful, unsuccessful, no consensus, even archived without closure, it's all up to you what you want to suggest.

I'll choose about anywhere between a dozen and two dozen of the items brought up here, and include them. I won't accept recommendations posted anywhere other than here, and I won't accept recommendations unless you link me to them. Don't link using the secure server, I can't access it.

This one is all on you guys, I won't do the story if I don't get enough recommendations, and I won't cover any discussions (with the exception of one that I've already chosen) unless they're brought up here. Please get the recommendations in by December 22nd, so I have time to write everything up.

Sven Manguard Wha? 03:44, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles and the follow on RFC Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles/Trial duration had some big implications for Wikipedia, but the Devs basically vetoed the idea, not for any technical reasons, but because they didn't agree with it. It was a bit of a kerfuffle earlier in the year, but it kinda petered out once the Devs put the kibosh on it. See Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed article creation trial and this bugzilla thread. --Jayron32 04:56, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Hyperion Frobnosticating Endoswitch, of course. Chzz  ►  16:43, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Relisted 11:28, 4 December 2011 (UTC) by Sven Manguard Wha?

I think I have the biggest fish Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment February 2011 Everybody loves this can of worms. Hasteur (talk) 20:26, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

E-mail notice to users whose talk page has changed

There was recently an article in the Wikipedia Signpost about a user who had a negative experience and posted a long discussion of it on his blog. Among the negative aspects of the user's experience were that he received the following e-mail:

The Wikipedia page “User talk:Dannysullivan” has been changed on

23 November 2011 by Metropolitan90, with the edit summary: deletion review

See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Dannysullivan&diff=0&oldid=207042508

for all changes since your last visit. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dannysullivan for the current revision.

To contact the editor, visit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Metropolitan90

Note that additional changes to the page “User talk:Dannysullivan” will not result in any further notifications, until you have logged in and visited the page.

Your friendly Wikipedia notification system

However, when he went to User:Metropolitan90, he received the following notice:

My question is: Shouldn't the e-mail notice tell the user to visit the editor's User talk page rather than the editor's User page in order to contact the editor? I don't know where this feature is documented (presumably somewhere in the MediaWiki space). --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:35, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The message is from MediaWiki:Enotif body. It links to the user page with $PAGEEDITOR_WIKI. I don't know whether it can link to the user talk page with the currently available parameters. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:09, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Pattrolling edits to User Talk Pages?

I noticed change in one of the subjects that I've become familiar with and I decided to drop a welcome template on a newly created user's talk page using Twinkle. When I looked at my watchlist later I saw that it was marked Nm!. Now I'm familiar with New and Minor, but the Unpatrolled was new to me. Is it standard operating procedure for user talk pages to be patrolled or have I missed something here? The talk page in question is User talk:Bmonnahan48‎ Thanks Hasteur (talk) 22:20, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I have noticed that recently as well, as far as I know its new, but I haven't seen anything about it. Monty₈₄₅ 22:45, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

There's a short discussion here. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:51, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Ok, so it appears that there will be no granting of the Autopatrolled user right for cases like this [12], therefore I'd like to propose that the Wikipedia Project Space and User Talk Space be excluded from being listed as not patrolled on the watchlist. Hasteur (talk) 19:47, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

New editors need feedback

Hey guys. I feel bad about being here because this is not the route by means of which I ought to be going for this kind of help, but I am over my head and need some assistance. There is a campus ambassador program on Wikipedia wherein university professors have their students edit articles as part of the classwork. I think this is a great way to introduce people to editing Wikipedia, but there are some problems with this new program.

Right now the problem I am facing is that I have a class which made articles and they are saying that they want a little more community review. I would appreciate anyone going to any of their articles and giving feedback on what should be changed - lots of short comments from different people would be great.

For the long term, if anyone has any ideas about how to get support for new users then please join/start conversations on the campus ambassador boards. I have a more full explanation here - User:Bluerasberry/jumpqueue. Thanks for any attention you can give. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:44, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Widespread grammatical issue with collective nouns

As there is no wikiproject English language, I am posting here. There is a widespread issue of poor grammar regarding the grammatical number of collective nouns in Wikipedia. The names of mountain ranges, taxa of living species, military grouping, teams and bands are singular collectives proper nouns and even when these stem from plurals (Pinker's headless nouns), as they often are. E.g. the Alps is a mountain range and the Foo fighters is a band. The problem is that often collective nouns are erroneously treaded as plurals as it sounds "kind of right": *A flock of birds are flying (the asterisk and the bond in the sense following grammar textbooks, not wikipedia forums). This is mistake is so common that often in newspapers it appears either by accident or purposefully to not sound pretentious.
A lot of wikipedia pages about sports teams and musical bands make this mistake, even big ones such as the Boston Red Sox. The Glasgow Warriors is treated erroneously as a plural, while Bath Rugby is correctly a singular noun; the Welsh Guards is treated as singular or plural depending on the paragraph. And so forth.

I should also point out that the name for a subset of members of a team is plural (e.g. The All Blacks, the NZ team, has recently won the RWC. Several all-blacks have hurt themselves in doing some. One all-black has ripped his thigh.)

I do not know how can this problem be fixed. A single person editing each team individually is unfeasible, so it needs to be distributed to the page watchers. How can this be done? Should a banner be made for talk pages? --Squidonius (talk) 21:04, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Before you attempt to 'fix' the problem, I suggest you do a little more research. As far as British English is concerned, the Rolling Stones are a band and Chelsea are a football team. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:14, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I apologise for having to disagree, but I am quite sure the two examples given are not technically correct in both Queen's or US English — but they do sound right at first glance. The problem stems from the concept of "concord", where the subject must agree in gender and number with the verb and subject complement (if present). In the given examples "a band" is singular and the copular verb ("to be") is plural, implying that they are not in agreement. This is apparent if the predicate is transformed into a noun in apposition which must still obey concord: "The Rolling Stones, a famous band, was based in Chelsea." "Chelsea, an English football team, is in the lead." Concord does not apply when the collective names are used adjectival nouns ("The Rolling Stones band plays tonight", "The Chelsea football team plays tonight" and "The Rolling Stones fans cheer".) which is a different kettle of fish.

A lot of article obey this rule, an example of an article written in British English that obeys concord is the page for the Mendip Hills (with a capital H for hills). The English language does not have a central authority, such as the Académie française, so if a mistake is widespread enough it becomes acceptable and is no longer a mistake, such as split infinitives. To the best of my knowledge, concord, however, still holds. --Squidonius (talk) 22:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank goodness we don't have an equivalent to Académie française. French ceased to be an international language because the French language ran out of new 'officially sanctioned' words to describe the rapidly evolving World and modernity. C'est la vie! --Aspro (talk) 23:12, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

On the flipside, if the Académie anglais were to exist, the OED would not have the adjective "bootilicious" as "callipygian" would suffice as it means the same thing — and it sounds infinitely nicer. --Squidonius (talk) 00:17, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I can hardly say touché because their etymology is different. [13] , [14] where the meaning only overlaps in some colloquial usage, common amongst (or restricted to) a few of the lower strata of society who gravitate down to the employment of latter term :-) --Aspro (talk) 01:14, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Are you condoning the inclusion of slang in the OED? (OED entry is bootylicious, I spelt it wrong) Well, if there were an Académie anglais, we would probably still have the letters þ (thorn) and ƿ (wynn) for th and w... I am merely playing devil's advocate as I think the insanity of English language is quite priceless (with its spelling, loanwords, euphemisms and complete lack of a real future tense) and the idea of an Académie anglais is wrong, but it is wrongly quickly dismissed. --Squidonius (talk) 02:30, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

See MOS:PLURALS. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:31, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

You may also be interested in what Fowler had to say about it in his book the King's English in 1908:

Though nouns of multitude may be freely used with either a singular or a plural verb, or be referred to by pronouns of singular or plural meaning, they should not have both (except for special reasons and upon deliberation) in the same sentence...

Which is pretty good evidence that sentences like "the band are playing" have been considered good English in Britain for over a century. garik (talk) 23:32, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I gladly apologise for my mistake (as I have learnt something new today). Thank you, Garik, both for finding the reference and for making it apparent to me that Fowler can be found online — I am quite excited by latter. So a collective noun can be either, depending on which is less awkward: this means that the MOS:PLURALS policy may require correcting.--Squidonius (talk) 00:17, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Bering in mind that collective nouns can be singular or plural, they still have to agree with the subject complement when the verb "to be" is used as a copula ("it is I"/"'tis I" being the most clear example of this). While, "Chelsea are the team" is acceptable, "Chelsea are a team" (equivalent to saying "a band are playing") must be wrong as the article "a" is singular. The OED defines "a/an" as:

Indefinite article (determiner). Used only to modify a singular countable noun head (or in some cases, a plural phrase treated as such).

Please, tell me if I am in error. In most other cases, I must agree that plural works best. --Squidonius (talk) 03:59, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I think you are in error if you think "Chelsea are a team" must be wrong because of the singular article. Compare, "John, Jim and Jacob are a fine band of men". garik (talk) 04:32, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I am of the opinion that to imply that a language has any overriding 'rules' beyond what is is necessary to be intelligible, and to be understood, is a misunderstanding of the purposes of language - or more likely, of the undeniable fact that languages are never static, and where 'rules' are deliberately contested, subverted, and often ultimately rendered obsolete. So no, you aren't 'in error' because there is no possibility of errors where there are no 'rules', only claims (always contested) that such rules exist. As for your particular example, I'd agree that "Chelsea are a team" seems 'wrong' like that, but "Chelsea are a team - they score goals through teamwork" would be acceptable in British English, if a little clunky. I think this relates to Fowler's comments about generally avoiding having both the singular and plural in the same sentence - it just about works in the second case because it is explicitly describing the team both as a collective, and as a set of individuals. Breaking the 'rules' actually helps to make the point in this particular example - and that is what language is for. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:48, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. But the lack of defined rules has resulted in my doing of the classic mistake of affixing the rules of Latin grammar onto English (I could not resist that phrasing, sorry). So "Chelsea are a team" is acceptable by notional concord as Chelsea are a team [of players]. --Squidonius (talk) 05:21, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Acceptable in British English, not usually in American English, though, at least for teams. Rmhermen (talk) 06:00, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Before anyone goes running off to the MoS, please remember that American English treats collective nouns differently than British English does. "Chelsea are a team" is not American English. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 07:06, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Though "The Boston Red Sox" can work with either "is" or "are" - as a non-linguist, I'd guess that it's the "the" that makes the difference. We still can't say "the band are playing" in American English, though. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 07:10, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, spaghetti will always be plural, and nothing at all to do with ragù.

Oh, and Gli Alpi, aka the Alps, Alpes, Alpen, etc, are definitely plural too.

Linguistic raspberries...

--MistyMorn (talk) 00:15, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

As the Bard nearly once saithed...

Plural or singular; that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous convention,

Or to take arms against a sea of gerunds,

And by opposing end them/it.

With apologies--MistyMorn (talk) 09:21, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I appreciated the jovial comments, so no apologies should be necessary... Wikipedia is the work of volunteers, yet the impersonal seriousness is often alarming (in my overly-opinionated opinion). I never though about it but Italian treats spaghetti as a countable and English as an uncountable: the mangia-spaghetti (spaghetti-eaters) take their food very seriously! In England they have supermarket isles for "10 items of less": as less is used for uncountables (fewer for countables) it means food (uncountable) is so unimportant that we cannot be "bothered" to count supermarket items, unlike the continental foodies. They also love their grammar... --Squidonius (talk) 22:31, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Be wary of the conclusions you draw. I would recommend more reading of Language Log.This post is a good place to start. It makes the point fairly well "that the now-standard pedantry about less/fewer is in fact one of the many false 'rules' that have recently precipitated out of the over-saturated solution of linguistic ignorance where most usage advice is brewed." In general, I wish more Wikipedia editors would live by the assumption that if they were taught to treat a common usage as "incorrect" (e.g. split infinitives, end-of-sentence prepositions, "less" with countables, singular they), then the rule they were taught is probably ill-founded, and the usage it condemns probably venerable. This assumption will usually see you right. Unfortunately, many Wikipedia editors are not aware of this and waste time "correcting" what doesn't need correction. garik (talk) 00:36, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject English Language? It's here. Now, there's no definitive solution for this singular/plural thing. Within-article consistency is vital, and consistency between sibling articles is desirable. The flock of birds is/are: 100 years ago that silly old f... Fowler suggested that "is" stresses their whole identity as a flock, and are stresses the individuality of the birds. Not a bad call. I do object to company plurals such as "Caltex are opening a new head office" (there are political undertones here ... manipulative). I've learned to put up with "England are batting this afternoon". Tony (talk) 11:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

If I wanted to never be wrong, I think I should stick to the subject I "pigeon-holed" myself into (microbial biochemistry) as I am getting a lot of flak for being "ignorant" (v. WT:MOS) about thinking that notional agreement is bad grammar. I do not know everything grammar related, but "ignorant" is a strong word. Luckily I operate here under an alias! — I'd have changed that if I knew how to...
Dear Garik, I have never read a blog post from the Language Log, as a result I am sincerely thankful of your pointing it out &emdash; I just spent some time reading it. I find the prescriptivism/descriptivism divide rather interesting: it is spoken of as if it were a black and white issue. I like tradition and rules and, as a natural consequence, I get annoyed when people keenly use text-speak or ebonics and, in a similar way, to people keenly belching or farting in public &emdash; both instances harmless I'll admit (and I assume I am elitist by admitting it?)
Tattoos written completely in uppercase blackletter and Toyota's claim of the plural of Prius to be Prii probably annoy only me, but I like tradition and its details, which are intricately curious. At the same time, I thought Lynne Truss' Panda book was bigoted and overly patronising and I fear I inadvertently behave similarly.
Regarding the rules, I understand the plastic and organic nature of the English language makes most rules futile, but I, as a scientist, enjoy the structure, although I'd admit many rules do not aid in clarity, such as the double negative, which is not a problem in French, Italian or Spanish — Spanish prescriptivists instead lament the slow death of the future subjunctive which reminds me of Douglas Adams' time-travel grammar!
I am sorry for breaching the WP:FORUM rule, but I am enjoying the conversation and I have learnt a lot — I probably will still avoid notional agreement and still discriminate between fewer and less, but I will try and not complain... --Squidonius (talk) 12:42, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Language Wars anyones?--MistyMorn (talk) 08:35, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

How to get a new password?

I'm getting frustrated here. I'm advising a user who has lost his password but still has e-mail. I've looked in the obvious places, and it says all over the place that if users have lost their password, they can get a new one provided they have e-mail enabled. Great. But how are you supposed to request a new password? From whom? Is that supposed to be self-evident? It isn't to me. Grumble.. Bishonen | talk 13:36, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

Help:Logging in#What if I forget the password?. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:57, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I thought it had to be somewhere. Thank you, Inspector Gadget! Bishonen | talk 14:40, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

Psychiatric profile and demographics of Wikipedia editors

Can someone point me to a review of any research into the psychiatric profile and demographics of Wikipedia editors? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:23, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Well there's a few scholar ghits under "wikipedia editors study". None of them quite look like what you're seeking though. My personal experience is that Wikipedia editors are quite a diverse bunch, so I'm not sure you'd be able to pidgeon hole the entire population very concisely. You could probably spot a few trends though. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:46, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I guess you mean psychological instead of psychiatric (which relates to mental health problems). Although the latter is true for some editors best left unnamed ;) S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 17:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikilobbying?

Hi, someone might want to take a look at this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/caught-on-camera-top-lobbyists-boasting-how-they-influence-the-pm-6272760.html

(not the main story about the British government, but the bit about Wikipedia). Reminds me of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-05-19/Wikilobbying

2.24.3.106 (talk) 00:20, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Centralised discussion for this can be found at ANI. Gobonobo ^{T C} 15:20, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Bell Pottinger

There is a post at ANI regarding the recent reports in the UK media about PR firm Bell Pottinger manipulating Wikipedia articles. Please centralise discussion there :-) The Cavalry (Message me) 14:09, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Song Lyrics On A User Page

I have recently come across this user who has posted the lyrics of a song on their user page. Is this against the copywright policy. It should also be noted that at the time of writing, all of their edits have been vanadlism. Oddbodz (talk) 20:49, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Time sensitive request re: survey in the top banner

I need someone who has not taken the survey and plans to do so to screenshot or copy all of the explanation text and email it to me please. I'm writing it up for the Signpost, cannot go back because I've already finished, and don't want to take the study again, which would taint it.

On a related note, if you've taken the study, and want to write a 500-750 word reflection on it, I will be trying to collect a few responses and publish them collectively at the opinion desk. In order for me to run your piece, if you reference numbers I'd very much want to see a screenshot of your "Earnings" sheet (the last one in the survey) to verify the numbers.

Please email either or both to wikipediasignpostgmail.com, with "Attn:Sven Manguard" in the subject. Thanks!

Sven Manguard Wha? 06:26, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

All I get is a blank page with the following source (http://grebdioz.sciences-po.fr/limesurvey/services/login.php):

<script type="text/javascript" src="/limesurvey/scripts/jquery/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
	$(document).ready(
		function() {
			window.location.href = "/limesurvey/index.php?token=774227&sid=56115&lang=en";
		}
	);
</script>

Ian Spackman (talk) 09:50, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom election reminder: voting closes soon

All editors are reminded that voting closes for ACE2011 in just over a day's time (Saturday 10 December at 23:59 UTC). To avoid last-minute technical logjams, editors are asked to vote at least an hour before the close, that is, by:

• Saturday 15:00 (3 pm) on the west coast of North America;
• Saturday 18:00 (6 pm) on the east coast of North America;
• Saturday 23:00 (11 pm) in the UK and Ireland;
• Sunday 01:00 (1 am) in South Africa;
• Sunday 06:00 (6 am) on the west coast of Australia; and
• Sunday 10:00 (10 am) on the east coast of Australia; and
• Sunday 12:00 (12 noon) in New Zealand.

For the election coordinators. Tony (talk) 13:04, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Dec 7

On this day ... of all possible significant news items on this day shouldn't the bombing of Pearl Harbor be given a place on the front page? The article itself is a wonderful starting point to numerous side interests. 108.35.36.227 (talk) 04:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Well the FA is related to it with a clear Wikilink in the blurb. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 05:07, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Should every event that is important to every nation on the planet received front page treatment once per year? :-) Regards, RJH (talk) 05:29, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by a frustrated contributor

Currently Wikipedia users are asked very prominently to donate to the project. I will not do because of frustrating experience when contributing to the contents some years ago (not under this user name). When adding some minor new pages and making small corrections to some ideologically biased articles, these changes were reverted by a few over-eager "administrators". I concluded that one should not count on Wikipedia contents to be correct or complete, and even worse: it is not necessarily worth spending the time trying to improve this situation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DvO (talk • contribs) 08:39, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Please let me know on my talk page with links to the articles, and I'll look into it. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:47, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Kudpung, thanks for your swift and constructive reaction. As far as I recall, those changes and additions were all in German, so I don't know if you can be of help there. I just dug into some page history logs, and unfortunately I was only able to find two of them:

• the tuning of tone/wording on 2007-Oct-17 at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichtreduzierbare_Komplexität, which was reverted two times by "Nina",
• the new page http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namensbestandteil, which was intended to describe a concept used in http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namenszusatz, but was deleted on 2008-Feb-18 by "He3nry".

--DvO —Preceding undated comment added 10:57, 10 December 2011 (UTC).

Hi. I don't quite understand - these are links to de.Wiki, and although I'm bilingual in German, I don't see any correlation. Perhaps here at enWiki is the wrong place to discuss it. If this does concern the English Wikipedia, please continue either on my talk page as requested or ask at WP:EAR where I also work, and where your query will get more exposure. Oh, and please remember to sign your posts ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:54, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I can only say that if I got het up thinking about edits three years ago on controversial articles which got reverted or about minor articles which got deleted I would have died of a heart attack ages ago. I would suggest meditation and Buddhism except they seem to attract the sort of argument and controversy only otherwise seen in game console articles. Dmcq (talk) 12:57, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to boil down this argument to its bare essentials: "Someone disagreed with me three years ago, and I still haven't got over it". Dude: let me give you some advice: get over it. You characterise the problem as being one of "a few over-eager administrators", but it does not seem to occur to you that it might have been your contributions that were the problem. It's not easy for me to judge the pros & cons of edits in a language I'm unfamiliar with. It's remotely possible that your edits were the best things since sliced bread, and they've been reverted by a moron. That would be a bad thing, of course. It's remotely possible, of course, that things are the other way around. But really, FFS, you're big enough to know that this is how wikipedia works. A mass of individuals each with their own views on what does and does not constitute improvements, and willing to act on their beliefs, and with mechanisms, such as talk pages, allowing you to argue your case when someone disagrees - mechanisms that you do not seem to have availed yourself of. And here you are, three years later, crying because someone or other had the temerity to disagree with a couple of your additions. I'm sorry, but objectively, that's really really pathetic, and bordering on infantile.

I looked at your contributions on the EN wiki. Tell me about Western Breach. That wouldn't happen to be a copyvio of http://wn.com/Western_Breach would it? The exact same text is to be found in the source of that page, albeit without the wiki markup. The text inserted into wikipedia when viewed in edit mode has line breaks characteristic of text that has been cut from somewhere else and pasted into wikipedia. What, exactly, was the genesis of that article? --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:19, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Um, I think wn.com may be partially a wp:mirror (see Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Vwxyz#World_News_Network). Chris857 (talk) 19:08, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Police commissioner elections - query

Afternoon.

I am typing this question in a number of different locations to help measure opinion. As you may know, next year should see the England and Wales Police and Crime Commissioner elections, 2012. There will be over 40 concurrent elections in each of the Constabulary areas, with the potential for numerous candidates and the fun and games associated with using STV as a voting system. I want to know how people feel about the election coverage. I have two options in my mind, and want to ask people how we should work on the forthcoming elections.

Option A would be keeping ALL 40+ election results on the same page. This would reduce the amount space used for British elections, reduce the likelihood of AfD discussions amongst the wider community on notability grounds, enable a co-ordination effort for the elections project, and enable editors to enhance their working knowledge on how to election results boxes, source material etc. It would be a very long article, require intense concentration to reduce confusion and enhance clarity, be open to sidetracking conversations about article splitting.

Option B would be starting individual articles for each Constabulary election. These would be easy to watch via bookmarks and watchlist, enable editors to focus on areas they know better than others, enhance the space available for each candidate's profile etc if required, and allow for a greater coverage for the contests in specific electoral areas. However they would be very difficult to watch all 40 at the height of the election period. It would also attract coordinated vandalism.

We have just under a year to decide, though in real terms, the May election period is going to be a nightmare anyway (and that's without tying to keep up to date with the Boundary changes).

Any feedback or ideas?

doktorb _words^deeds 15:32, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The major boundary changes are only coming in in 2013; but anyway, I suggest a single page for commissioner elections, at least for this time. If there are subsequent elections in the future, then essentially you can have a parallel to UK constituencies in this regard. I'm not convinced individual campaigns will have enough to them and that the party message will be more important. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:36, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Green in diffs will now mean *removed*!?

Also cross-posted to Village Pump Tech.

Let's discuss at VP/T only
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Anyone else think the upcoming diff color change (Green will have its meaning completely reversed and counter-intuitively changed from added to removed) is going to be hugely confusing? Perhaps the WMF tech team could be convinced to not invert the meaning of green? --Cybercobra (talk) 05:42, 14 December 2011 (UTC) It's one thing not to be happy about a change. Another to cross post in two threads. Always best to avoid doing so. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:08, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

A plea

Could people please go over to the category Category:Pending AfC submissions? There are over six hundred articles that need reviewing and there is a two week backlog. Normally they are reviewed within a few days and I have never seen this number go above one hundred for this category so urgent attention is needed here. Thank you to anyone who donates a few minutes to review a few articles! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:13, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

RFC needs comments

Contentious RFC: Talk:Indophobia

This RFC of a contentious topic needs neutral comments to develop a bit wider consensus Talk:Indophobia#Merger_proposal. I hope I posted at right place. Reply there, Thanks. --lTopGunl (talk) 15:50, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

RFC requiring expert: Talk:South_Asia

Merging "Indian subcontinent" into "South Asia": Comments needed by experts or informed editors on the topic/similar topics roughly around regions/geography and culture. --lTopGunl (talk) 11:43, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

DBPedia violating CC BY SA license?

The Creative Commons license used by Wikipedia authors requires both attribution and citing the license to guarantee that all later use is also share-alike. DBPedia neither attributes authors, nor cites the license, see e.g. http://dbpedia.org/page/Washington,_D.C. -- Has anyone already take action? This is a major project, live for many years, so I am surprised that this is still violating the rights of Wikipedia authors. --Vigilius (talk) 06:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Also added on Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Def#DBPedia and DBPedia itself. Vigilius (talk) 09:17, 16 December 2011 (UTC)