Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 38

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Village pump (miscellaneous) archive

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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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Page view stats

I've noticed that page views listed at stats.grok.se seem to report separately for multi-word article titles with spaces versus underscores, e.g. "Article title" versus "Article_title". Seems to make counting page views a little more complicated than they would seem. Can anyone elucidate? ENeville (talk) 01:03, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Still listening, if anyone can help. Main concern: how do I get an accurate count of page views? ENeville (talk) 22:17, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I get the same when I enter "Article title" and "Article_title" at http://stats.grok.se/. 5 times in the last 30 days: 1 on April 9, 1 on April 15, 1 on April 20, and 2 on April 23. Do you see different counts? Or did you make up a false example without testing it? I also got the same counts when I tested a few existing pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:47, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Sry, I meant "Article title" as a concept (should have used italics?). The case I ran across was "Catching_Fire_(2009_novel)" (linked from discussion here). The discussion quoted 1.3 million views, but I only got (as I recall) ~800k when I looked. So I removed the underscores and got ~600k. I thought this was a normal I didn't know about. But now I'm getting different numbers (700k for both), and often "internal server error", perhaps because of the cusp fo the new month. Who knows with buggy things. I'll look for more data. Thanks. ENeville (talk) 23:21, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

"multi-word article titles" was the general description. "e.g." means "for the sake of example" and should have been an actual example when you used that term after the general description. Some people confuse "e.g." and "i.e." See wiktionary:e.g. and wiktionary:i.e. http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/Catching_Fire_%282009_novel%29 shows far more views in late March than late April. The quoted 1.3 million views was for the last 30 days on 21 April. It's much lower for the last 30 days now on 30 April. I don't see any signs of a difference between space and underscore. I suspect all your different counts were made on different days. By the way, the reason for the many views in late March was the premiere of The Hunger Games (film), a filmatization of a book where Catching Fire (2009 novel) is the sequel. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:53, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough re "i.e.". I thought I had run into something unintuitive to me but well known to (some?) others, so I was a bit expeditious in my query. As I look at it more, I think what happened was probably that I was unwittingly thrown off by navigating in from the link, and then was inadvertently comparing stats 30-days-back-from-April-27 with those from April as a whole. Ah, well. Thanks for your consideration. :-) ENeville (talk) 00:57, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Please help me "catch" a vandal (or group of vandals)

Hello, I hope this is the right spot for my request, basically... To sum it up: Someone has edited dozens of articles in the past years to include false information about persons who, as I assume, don't exist. In the process, he has used several IPs and different fake names. I first came across those fake entries in 2009, when reading about a German player of the (defunct) American Basketball Association. Anyone possessing a little knowledge about international basketball immediately realizes this cannot be true. However, I only became aware of the hoaxes' spread some months later. In the end, I found the following names to have been added to several articles:

James Couch
Al "Oatmeal" Edwards, Al Edwards Oatmeal
Mike Geselbracht
Adams Hambüger-Hatt, Adam Hambüger-Hatt
Adams Madrid, Adam Madrid, Adam Gama-Madrid

Some of these edits had been reverted, but no one had checked the IP's other edits. In one case, a newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, had taken over the fake information, of course without mentioning their source at all. I didn't tell them, however. So today I wanted to check if the information had stayed in their article. Not surprisingly, it's still there. I routinely checked the related Wikipedia article as well, and guess what - the infomation had been restored, citing the newspaper article. So I started another reverting session. This time, however, I know the vandal won't stop adding that fake information, and it may become impossible to stop those hoaxes' spread if it's transferred to Wikipedias of different languages or to other media sources. I'm still unsure if I have found all fake names, so for now, I'm just listing all IPs involved in that vandalism, including the diff link of the last edit undoubtedly related to that editor:

So what I'm basically asking for is assistance in finding fake names I hadn't identified so far. Of cource, I'd also approve some kind of ban, but what makes this case really remarkable isn't the total number of fake entries, but the spread over a long period of time and range of topics (though it's mainly sports, especially American football, and popular culture), and the amount of proper edits (but also more obvious kind of vandalism) apparently done by the same person(s), partly within the same articles and/or within a few minutes. This may read like the description of several persons's edits being accidently mistaken for a single person's ones, but I'm sure anyone closely examining those IP's edits will come to the same conclusion.

Thanks, --Axolotl Nr.733 (talk) 16:10, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Note: I've added another two IPs. --Axolotl Nr.733 (talk) 18:12, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I've posted a note at WP:AN about this. 64.40.54.97 (talk) 12:47, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Note: I've added four more IP adresses and updated another one. Btw, the clock times are based on CEST. --Axolotl Nr.733 (talk) 13:16, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I didn't check all of these but it appears they are from Citigroup. They should be relatively easy to trace. The three that are obviously different are from Jacksonville FL and nearby Macclenny FL. Joja lozzo 13:45, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree. I've been cheking the range contribs and most of the problems seem to be coming from CitiCorp IPs. Here a list if anybody wants to help.

- range contribs 192.193.0.0/16 CitiCorp
- range contribs 199.67.128.0/18 CitiCorp
- range contribs 66.177.0.0/17
- range contribs 74.178.192.0/18
- range contribs 24.129.64.0/18

Tha vandal also likes to add false information of relaives to BLPs like these; great uncle, great uncle, great uncle, first cousin These are just a few examples. 64.40.57.126 (talk) 18:40, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Unpleasant though the idea may be, this is one case where the use of cookies for tracking purposes may actually be beneficial. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:19, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Template:very long

Template:Very long (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This template has been discussed, especially in User talk:George Ho/Mentorship discussions#Template:very long. I proposed for "deletion", but my mentor convinced me to discuss it. As you see, sometimes "very long" is confused with (mentioned or not) Template:restructure, Template:overly detailed, and Template:cleanup (proposal to mandate "reason" is discussed). I'm still analyzing the transclusion of this template. So far, I have removed this template from 100 pages, and I bet I can remove a hundred more. --George Ho (talk) 15:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

My message cut from Template talk:very long:

This template is becoming more abused and misused. Also, it is vague and problematic, as it may encourage bad editing. The "either split into sub-articles or subsections" thing is good for Template:very long section. However, even if there are suggestions to either split up long page, skim down long page, or restructure long page into subsections, this template is not very good to use, as there are already {{split}}, {{plot}}, {{restructure}}, and {{overly detailed}}. Also, this template is transcluded down from 400 time to 300 times.

--George Ho (talk) 19:41, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Invite to office hours about new team at WMF running experiments on Wikipedia

See: the announcement and WP:E3. Thanks! Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:01, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Logs are available to read now. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:07, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia semi-protected edit requests currently has a large backlog

As of this writing, the backlog stands at 43 pages, which is more than double its official "backlogged" count of 15. Since this is a category in which any autoconfirmed editor can assist in clearing, I figured I'd post here. I'm currently working at getting it down to a manageable count, and I'm hoping others can help out too. Thanks, everyone! elektrik SHOOS (talk) 00:27, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I see that the Category:Wikipedia semi-protected edit requests page has Wikipedia:Edit requests#Responding to requests cited for guidance, but I find the guidance hard to follow. Perhaps you could improve the guidance there, or provide some hints here, for experienced editors who would like to help, but don't quite grasp what is to be done. Apparently, though, some requests are not at all controversial or likely to lead to problems, and could be done without much difficulty, but others are contentious. --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:20, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia mobile a/b testing?

About once a week, the mobile site seems to change slightly. The most recent makes it look like a wikia article. Are these permanent changes or a/b testing? EcheletteLopper (talk) 02:12, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

The changes made today have been in beta since March. They're not a temporary test, but they're the foundation for the next phase of the mobile navigation redesign. See mw:Mobile to keep up to date with our mobile efforts.--Eloquence * 05:33, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Dodgy archiving

WikiProject talk page moves for archiving purposes is not the done think I suspect. If so this needs to be sorted out. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:11, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Night of the Living Dead Class=?

The Talk:Night of the Living Dead says that it is a Former Featured Article, and all the templates say "class=" without any class rating. This means that the Pennsylvania articles by quality and importance table and the Pittsburgh articles by quality and importance table and several others show this article as unassessed. Is there some way to assign a quality rating for this article, and others like it? --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:09, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the same as always. If you click through on the banners, you'll find each project's scale. You may rate any page from Stub to B. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Happy Star Wars Day!

May the fourth be with you. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:17, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Fundraising banner layout

A few minutes ago I loaded an article about a Baroque composer and was startled to see that the subject of the article appeared to be illustrated by a modern color photo of someone who looked awfully familiar. Oops! I wonder if it might be a good idea for the fundraising banner to be reconfigured so that its poster child's image doesn't loom large directly over article titles. Try logging out and then clicking on the dictator, wild animal, extraterrestrial species, abstract concept, deity, or disambiguation page of your choice, and perhaps you'll see what I mean. Rivertorch (talk) 16:36, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry this was so jarring for you and I'm glad you pointed it out -- this particular issue has been brought up before by others over the past few years. The fundraiser is all about experimentation and we're constantly testing to find the best way to engage our audience. I will definitely bring this idea to the rest of the team and see if we can experiment more the picture placement. Thanks! Jvandavier (talk) 23:43, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

No need to apologize. It wasn't jarring so much as surreal, and I ended up rather enjoying the possibilities. Rivertorch (talk) 00:04, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

The 2010 Encyclopedia Brittanica

Well, yesterday I received my copy of the 2010 edition of EB. While reviewing a few articles therein, it became quite clear to me that Wikipedia is vastly superior as an encyclopedia. As such, it occurs to me that an analysis of a well selected set of corresponding articles will be a sound mechanism for showing the superiority of Wikipedia. William R. Buckley (talk) 14:31, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but a selection bias may well suggest a superiority. To minimized that bias, we might want to take our list of independently selected level 2 "vital articles" (Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/2) and see how well they compare side-by-side with the EB articles. There are only three FA quality articles in that mix, so it would be an interesting test. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:15, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Wikipedia CD Selection. This is the primary point behind all those WP:1.0 article assessments. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:02, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. I will look at the level 2 articles, and report on how they compare with the 2010 ECB. William R. Buckley (talk) 18:53, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

You are welcome to add to WP:EBE if you happen to find suitable material during your examination. Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Can somebody help me with the index of Wikipedia, and especially with the best view to take when comparing the Wikipedia index with that of EB? Also, where is best to describe the observations made during my review of WP and EB? William R. Buckley (talk) 15:08, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

For example, WP has articles Automaton and Automation, but EB has only Automation; the next EB article is about Francis Bacon. Further regarding automata, WP has Automata Theory and Automata Construction, while EB has only an Automata Theory article. William R. Buckley (talk) 15:15, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Project to commission CC-BY fantasy art

Editors working in genre fiction topics may be interested in a Kickstarter project to commission "a free library of art representing heroes of all backgrounds" from professional artists, to be made available under the Wikipedia-compatible CC-BY license. I suppose this could be useful for illustrating articles about the standard fantasy tropes. The project's URL is http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sarahdarkmagic/prismatic-art-collection. (I note in passing that the fantasy art on Commons is a rather mixed bag in terms of quality or usefulness.) Sandstein (talk) 16:43, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

.

Why not just grab the art from [[The Battle for Wesnoth]? I note our collection on commons is far from complete.©Geni 03:30, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Education program research planning

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Research and the associated talk page about what kind of data gathering should be done to determine the value of the education program. Please comment there if you are interested. My own opinion is that the education program has the ability to have a far bigger impact (positive or negative) on the encyclopedia than almost any other factor over the next few years, since we are seeing hundreds of classes and thousands of students editing Wikipedia as a part of that program. Getting this right is very high value, and getting it wrong could be a first-class mess, so I encourage everyone to contribute to that conversation. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:45, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Facebook#Impact on philanthropy

Facebook#Impact on philanthropy is about a number of companies, mainly Kiva, Wokai, and Zidisha, but not at all about Facebook. The article gets 80,000 page views per day, and seems to be permanently semiprotected. I made a request to remove the section on the talk page, but it was immediately resolved as "not done" because the request did not have consensus.

On one hand, I imagine that raising consciousness about these charities on one of the most popular articles in the encyclopedia probably does objective good. On the other hand, what the heck? 71.215.84.127 (talk) 08:19, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Well I think the response could have been better, I believe the issue is that since you wanted to remove a whole section (rather than just fix up technical errors or whatever) you need to have a discussion on the talk page first. Look at it this way -- if you have removed it, no matter your intentions, it probably been have been reverted, so it's pretty much the same thing. So just go and have a discussion about it on the talk page, and see what happens. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:27, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Anon. attempted a discussion on May 3, but received no reply. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:22, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Saw this and poked about a bit! Agree that the section is not valid, but it is salvageable. Also noted that a number of other sections need attention to address WP:WORLDVIEW - lack of! Media-Hound 'D 3rd P^) (talk) 21:14, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article size

Must I propose turning this guideline into an essay? Seriously, with guidelines of how to verify notability of a topic, write a great article, reach of conclusion to whether split or keep content, be concise on plot abstracts, and more, must we follow this guideline for the sake of messy articles about non-notable subtopics of a topic? --George Ho (talk) 19:36, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you must discuss and gain consensus to deescalate a guideline to an essay - but this would not be the place to do it. Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) is the place to "discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines." For what its worth, if you propose any such thing, I am likely to oppose demotion. This is a good place to look for and find content on how long articles should be and why. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:49, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Recently, History of Social Security in the United States was split from Social Security (United States). ...Well, both may be notable, yet that leaves History section a need of expansion. Currently, one portion of Cat is proposed to be split from "Cat". Nevertheless, look at Education in Singapore, Primary School Leaving Examination, and Secondary education in Singapore; I don't know what to say about them except they are not that great. --George Ho (talk) 19:49, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

When articles are split like the SS one, the section it was split off should provide a very concise overview of the topic that was split off, repeating details and sources as necessary to make the main page still reasonably comprehensive. Having only just glanced at how it is split, for the SS article, stating when it was established, and that it has gone through many changes over the years, is sufficient for the main SS page, along with the given link. --MASEM (t) 19:56, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Must this guideline mention notability concerns and size quality (not size quantity)? --George Ho (talk) 03:25, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Article size is closely tied in with Summary Style, and from a few years back, notability. There are bad spinouts, but not all spinouts are bad, and thus SIZE provides useful and necessary advice. --MASEM (t) 18:53, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for delay reply. Anyway, how does this guideline relate to the article's quality? --George Ho (talk) 13:18, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

If you have a wide-spanning topic that far exceeds the recommended sizes listed in this, you need spinouts/sub-articles. The selection of what are spinouts from the main article is not a haphazard choice and choosing the wrong spinout can make both the main and spinout article poor quality. For example, we would never remove the core reception section from a published creative work to a spinout because that's a key part of understanding the work; a list of its awards and nominations, perhaps, but not the core prose of such sections. --MASEM (t) 13:23, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

What about List of Codename: Kids Next Door episodes? Removing intricate cleanup and proper formatting should have done the work, not splitting everything up and leaving episode in this condition without time to clean up the page. --George Ho (talk) 13:32, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

It has issues that need fixing and completeness of the tables, but it is certainly not an issue as to prevent splitting out of article. In fact for most TV shows the list of episodes is the first natural split of a larger article. In other words, the split was done right in that it has the right potential to be a good spinout, but it just needs work to get there; that shouldn't stop the spinning out in the first place. --MASEM (t) 13:51, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, but now taking a look at the history: the splitting done to move the over-detailed plot summaries into season articles is improper. Spinning out should be done after other means to reduce size - in this case, trimming the plot summaries - was done, which likely would have not required that. Now, it may be the case - but doesn't seem like it - that the seasons of the show are notable, in which case a separate per-season article is fine. Here, that's not the case, and spinning out before dealing with the plot size is not appropriate. --MASEM (t) 13:54, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Regarding transclusions of Season pages, I tried. However, that resulted the exact transclusion ([1]), not the list version of it or something as you see in List of Friends episodes. --George Ho (talk) 14:00, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure why its not transcluding right at the moment; there's a trick used by the episode guide templates to make that happen right. --MASEM (t) 14:17, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Back on topic, it could be useful.... in many ways. However, some portions may be misleading and could lead to something worse than List of Codename: Kids Next Door episodes. --George Ho (talk) 14:20, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

It's not misleading, as it is longstanding guidance. One bad example is not sufficient to invalidate that. (And importantly, that example is fixable, so its not disrupting the work). --MASEM (t) 14:28, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

A template (similar to cleanup, refimprove, for ex.) to address use of the English language?

(Please feel free to move this if this is in the wrong section.)

Frequently while browsing Wikipedia I will come across articles about something—whether a place, person, location, or institution—outside of the English-speaking world and which has been written by somebody who has commendable knowledge of the subject but who often lacks a complete command of English. I always correct spelling, grammatical, phrasing, and flow errors in articles like these when I see them. However, sometimes they still exist in ways in which I cannot figure out how to fix.

I am all for having natives of non-English-speaking countries edit Wikipedia to help improve coverage of articles in the non-English speaking world. I believe that their contributions should be embraced and welcomed. However, to perfect the article, it is often necessary for a native English speaker to clean up the article afterward.

To make this task easier, I believe that there should be a template similar to Cleanup, Refimprove, Wikify, etc., that would alert native speakers to some errors in the article's use of English and invite them to improve it. If there is such a template, I do not know of it, and I would highly encourage the creation of such a template.

Anyone have any comments?
Thanks!

RedSoxFan274 _{(talk~contribs)} 05:41, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

A quick stroll through Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup finds {{copy edit}} or {{copy edit-section}}. Others may also apply such as {{cleanup-translation}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:00, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Try the copy-edit needed template. If you have Twinkle, it's quite easy to apply it and other tags to articles. dci | TALK 22:07, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Would {{Rough translation}} or {{Proofreader needed}} also cover what RedSoxFan is asking? Wesley☀Mouse 22:20, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Most Important Articles

I am seeking a list of Wikipedia's most important articles (the ones that are most essential to be quality). I saw WP:VA, but was wondering if there are any more updated or better lists before I get started. Thanks. Voyaging (talk) 23:20, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest looking at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team for more information and similar kinds of lists --Robert Horning (talk) 00:13, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I've been checking some lists out. I have some trouble deciding which is most valid though... for example, the editorial team uses Natural science as one of its "Elite 9" while other lists have only Science in their top 10 articles. Respectively, each list leaves out the other. It seems inconsistent. Voyaging (talk) 00:40, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I think this is a useful task to at least attempt, although I do see problems in terms of objectivity and a strong tendency to bias any such list based upon your own cultural upbringing and geographical location. I see in particular with WP:VA a tendency to overcompensate for some biases by introducing others. It suffers from similar problems that are found with WP:NOTE, but on a larger scale because the point is trying to find the articles which are more notable than others. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:41, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

It's undoubtedly difficult to find a good balance that is acceptable to everybody. At least I'm finding the expanded (level-4) VA list has enough capacity to satisfy nearly everybody's interests. But since even the level 1 VA list only has one FA article, one could perhaps question the net benefit of this approach. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:18, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Another measure is given by Wikipedia article traffic statistics. A little out of date but I see Wikileaks, Christmas, Facebook, the TV series Glee, the film Tron, singer songwriter Justin Bieber and the psychoactive plant Salvia divinorum probably should all be included. Science now ... The Big Bang Theory, ulp no, um ah Albert Einstein phew. :) Dmcq (talk) 17:44, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Some WikiProjects include importance ratings, often directly above the article's quality ratings. This could, I suppose, be a way to see how well-done an article is and how well-done it should be. dci | TALK 22:05, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Creating category Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

I would like help in creating the category Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania as a subcategory of Category:Pennsylvania state courts, and then the following articles can be added to the category:

Please help me by creating the subcategory. (Pardon my ignorance on not doing it myself.) I can add the three articles to the category. --DThomsen8 (talk) 16:32, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Whether it's a good idea to create this one, I leave to you. The simple process is this:

Add the cat to one of the articles exactly as if it already existed, and save the page.
Click the resulting red link to edit the (brand new) cat page.
Add [[Category:Pennsylvania state courts]] to the new cat page and save the page.

That's it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:26, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

After following your directions and creating the category, I discovered that there is a category of Judges of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, so I added to the two judges for which there are articles to that category. What I cannot figure out is how to delete the category of Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. Help!--DThomsen8 (talk) 13:16, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

You can just post {{db-g7}} on a page you created that you'd like deleted; an admin will handle it for you. In this case, your request here is sufficient, so I've gone ahead and deleted the category for you. UltraExactZZ ^Said~ Did 14:09, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

RFC: Deploying 'Start date' template in infoboxes

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Bot requests#RFC: Deploying 'Start date' template in infoboxes. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:18, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Green star

It's not that I don't know what a green star is in my watch-list. Its just: why cannot I find an explanation? -DePiep (talk)

(Now helpful editors will say: "just click here". Which is not an answer). -DePiep (talk) 21:45, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

strong.mw-watched a{background:none;padding-left:0;} on your /common.css page will remove them. There's a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) about the issue. --Onorem ♠Dil 21:49, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh...and the explanation is that we for some reason needed a visual aid to help us know which pages have been changed since we'd last been to them. --Onorem ♠Dil 21:50, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Still: (repeat my op)-DePiep (talk) 21:54, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Because the feature has only been enabled for a few hours, and nobody's updated Help:Watchlist in the meantime, possibly because a couple of editors keep changing what it looks like (stars vs bold vs ???). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:58, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

New user support if editing skills doubted

Hi. Can someone please help by pointing me at any policy or projects in this area? I am assuming that we must have something on this (yes, I have read WP:COMPETENCE) but I really want to know what is supposed to happen when someone shows up and makes bad edits which may be well-meant but cause problems, even if they are not vandalism. Where do you go for help with an issue like this? Thanks and best wishes DBaK (talk) 08:53, 10 May 2012 (UTC)... PS As they say in the films, "it's not for me". I am an incompetent but old user - different kettle of fish entirely .... :)

WP:Teahouse, maybe, or WP:Adopt-a-user, I think. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the advice. Just what I was looking for. I have had a look, and passed on the links (or tried to do so) to the editor about whom I was worried. Thanks and best wishes DBaK (talk) 08:32, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Doing better than cargo cult encyclopaedia article writing

The really annoying thing is that it only took about 10 minutes of research and reading for me to come up with a reasonable article rescue plan for this article, dovetailing the subject in with Aftermath of the September 11 attacks. But I'd really like to learn the happy news that somebody else also knows how to do this. It would be really saddening to conclude that the only way that we collectively know how to write articles on jokes and humour is to make a big joke collection, call for other editors to pile on even more jokes, and sit around waiting for actual encyclopaedic analysis and knowledge to arise by magic once the critical mass of jokes has accrued. Or even not write at all. Consider this a challenge, if you need that for encouragement. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 17:47, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Since wikipedia has zillions of articles which are not mere dumping grounds or lists, I think it's fair to say that at least one other person "knows how to do this." - DavidWBrooks (talk) 18:21, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
- You haven't read properly. I did clearly say "articles on jokes and humour" and describe a construction method specific to that kind of article. Uncle G (talk) 18:33, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
  - Fair enough. Still, wikipedia has thousands (tens of thousands?) of articles about jokes and humour that aren't just a listing dump, so it's a bit overblown to imply that you're a wiki-army of one. Having said that, it's certainly true that articles about funny stuff are particularly prone to list-itis. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 18:51, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like WP:ADAM style of writing isn't just a BLP problem. Perhaps those two pages should link to each other. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:56, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

[2] Well spotted. J N 466 07:23, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Excellent essay, Uncle G. J N 466 07:23, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Some websites ignoring NOINDEX tags

I've noticed that sandboxed articles that I've tagged with "NOINDEX" are being copied over to http://www.territorioscuola.com and then appearing in Google searches. Can anything be done about this? — SMUconlaw (talk) 20:44, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm - looks like someone is using a web spider to plagiarise. Same old, Same old. Is blocking the ip appropriate ( and even useful given proxys ), or is there a need for some nice metta language which says to the students using the site "Stop Copying - Do Your Own Homework - Fail!" Just a random though. Media-Hound 'D 3rd P^) (talk) 23:27, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I think there was a recent discussion about NOINDEX not working? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:40, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Please stop fiddling with the watchlist format

Please stop fiddling with the watchlist format. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:49, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I do want an indicator for files changed since my last reading. However it is disconcerting to find the indicator changing between bold and stars and then vanishing and reappearing in the course of a couple hours. The indicator is a great help to me in Commons where my watchlist is over 9,000 and even here in en where it's only 5,534 articles on watch. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:04, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Or if we want to try out different things (personally, I'm satisfied with the bold text/green highlighter approach that Meta uses, but perhaps something better might exist), could we at least limit changes to one every 8 to 24 hours, with proposed approaches being announced and reactions recorded at some sensible place? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

The bold-face approach at least was a little disconcerting, not to mention distracting. For one, there was no explanation found on the page, so the purpose was completely unclear. But the concept of highlighting articles that haven't been checked yet seems sensible. I'd like it to go even further and list the number of edits that have taken place since the article was last visited.

In terms of an indicator, why not a simple ✓ in front of the articles that have been visited? Regards, RJH (talk) 14:50, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Not being involved in this end of Wikipedia, I don't know but suspect that nobody intended to try different things. Rather, a decision was made by presumably competent authorities to implement a feature that had been long and happily used elsewhere. With hundreds of Admins having the power to adjust the configurations but who didn't participate in the decision, several of them took it upon themselves, on an emergency basis, to "fix" it. I figure they have by now decided among themselves, in a quiet forum where we lowly grunts can't or don't look, not to do that anymore. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:17, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Help needed

I am looking for an online support group. My mother died of lung cancer on March 5th of this year. I desparately need someone to talk to. My mother was my best friend. I'm 51 years old,She was 69. I slept in the room with her and cared for her,along with hospice,and watching this beautiful woman go from mom,to someone I hardly recognized,(in just 2 months after diagnosis she was gone,)well I need to talk with others who have experienced the same thing. Thank you,Kelley — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iamkelley (talk • contribs) 19:19, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear of your loss, however Wikipedia is not a support group or therapy. Doing a quick google search I came up with this list of potential palces you could go for help. Hasteur (talk) 23:46, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm so sorry to hear that. Both your local hospice organization and your local hospital will have, or know of, a grief support group (probably several, in fact). This page lists some online groups. You could also contact lung- or cancer-related charities, such as the American Cancer Society or the American Lung Association, and see whether they can recommend any. Best wishes, WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Article for creation backlog

A short while ago, Wikipedia introduced a thing where whenever you tried to create a new page it pushed you to do it in your userspace first and them move it into the articlespace. Then it pushed you to do it via an AfC request. Now, predictable as anything, we have a backlog at AfC of 818 articles. The template says anything more than 120 is a "severe backlog" so I'm not sure what 818 qualifies.

Wanted to flag this up somewhere prominent as I suggest that the poor people at AfC are being overwhelmed. I suggest we need to either:

Recruit a load more people to help out
Introduce some kind of speedy approval process for AfC
Revise the template to encourage editors to sometimes move articles straight to mainspace rather than via AfC.

Or, of course:

Do nothing and piss off lots of new article writers and AfC people at the same time.

What do you think? AndrewRT(Talk) 22:11, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that both #2 and #3 are far more realistic than #1. It might help a bit if some of the existing AFC folks were slightly less stringent, or more focused on what's important (i.e., not being worthy of a CSD). I've seen AFCs declined over trivial things (like the formatting of citations) that should never hold up an AFC. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

2011–12 Premier League

Hi, the articel stands in the Main Page. At 2011–12 Premier League#footer-info stands QuickiWiki Look Up QuickiWiki Look Up. Do you like it? --217.246.223.188 (talk) 23:32, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I have removed it. I think it's added by some browser addon one of the editors must have used. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:04, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Can "article" please be spelt correctly? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:25, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism

User:201.19.98.94 has put false information into the Whatever Works article, (diff) as well as the Vicky Christina Barcelona article. He/she has made a number of edits to other articles (contribs), these articles need checking for similar vandalism. I filed this report at WP:AIV, but that page isnt working properly. -Stevertigo (t | c) 19:04, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism by 201.19.. on film-related articles

On May 15, 2012, it became apparent that a vandal, suspected to be a sockpuppet of Pé de Chinelo, has performed some 2500 edits of mostly film-related articles from hundreds of different IP addresses in the range 201.19/16, inserting generally plausible but false information in over 750 Wikipedia articles.

Your help in cleaning up this mess is appreciated. For coordinating the effort, I've set up a page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Vandalism by 201.19.*.*. The progress can be recorded there. --Lambiam 21:39, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia statistics

I just finished interviewing with my local news station about Wikipedia. I want to tell them how many active contributors their are on the English Wikipedia. The only thing I found was Special:Statistics which only tells me how many editors have contributed at least once in the past thirty days. I only want the count of actual active veteran contributors. Does anybody know of a tool like that? Marcus Qwertyus 18:45, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

What's your definition of "actual active veteran"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:12, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Maybe this would help? It offers statistics for edits who make more than 100 edits a month as well. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:57, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Number of watchers

Does any one know why it is that if you click on the "History" of an article and click on the link that tells you how many times the article has been viewed, you get the figure for the past so many days, but if you click on "Number of watchers" there does not appear to be a time limit like that?ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Basically, they're two different tools, made by two different people, that work very differently. I'm no expert on the workings of either tool, but I'm not sure if the number of watchers is actively logged by any database the way page views are.--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:46, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

See Dispenser's tool (example). See this recent discussion for more information and a script that can replace the default link with Dispenser's tool. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:16, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Is WP:OWN hurting us?

This news story in The Atlantic suggests that some degree of article ownership by the editing community may actually be beneficial. I do know that a certain sense of article responsibility, if only as an illusion of such, is useful for maintaining FA articles at a high level of quality. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:09, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm... well... WP:OWN actually includes a section WP:OAS on how "Stewardship" of an article is a good thing and totally different to what we mean by "Ownership". In the world outside Wikipedia, ownership doesn't have the negative connotations it does here so the author of that news story probably didn't feel the need to play our semantic game.

So arguably we should be doing more to encourage people to feel greater stewardship... if you can feel stewardship.

Or maybe we should drop the stewardship word and just say "this is good ownership" and "this is bad ownership"... but I doubt we'll ever get consensus for that one.

Yaris678 (talk) 19:21, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

It depends on how you interpret "and most users feel little ownership of the content". If he interprets "most users" as the editing community, then that is a bad thing. If he means that individual editors don't feel that they own their articles, then that is an even worse thing. In either case, straight-up ownership is against any wiki principles out there (while the same cannot be said with stewardship). --MuZemike 07:13, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

It can be difficult to distinguish "ownership" from "stewardship" when there are few active editors watching an article. -- Donald Albury 13:26, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to whoever thought of using the green text on the watchlist

Thanks to whoever thought of using the green text on the watchlist instead of that awful bolding. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:16, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Occupy Wall Street needs editors to form consensus

Please take a moment to weigh in on the discussion at the talk page in regards to inclusion or exclusion of disputed material. More eyes on the page could help collaboration form a consensus in either direction. Thanks!--Amadscientist (talk) 18:20, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Checking who Patrolled a page?

Is there a way to determine the identity of the user who marked a page as patrolled?JoelWhy (talk) 14:13, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, go to Special:Log/patrol and enter the page name as the "Target". -- John of Reading (talk) 16:09, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, thanks!JoelWhy (talk) 16:16, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

You can also go to the page history -> view logs -> show patrol logs. It doesn't make sense that the marking as patrolled is hidden by default in the all public logs page, but it is. Monty ₈₄₅ 16:17, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks, that's much more convenient. (I agree that it shouldn't be hidden, especially since an experienced may be prone to use sock puppets to mark pages as patrolled to reduce the risk of pages being closely inspected.)JoelWhy (talk) 16:50, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Watch

Where can i find a list the most visited articles for the month April 2012? Pass a Method talk 21:02, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, there's WP:Most viewed pages, but it's out of date. Then there's Wikipedia article traffic statistics last updated Dec 2010. There's page views for this month at Most visited on English Wikipedia this month. There's the raw compressed data at Pagecount files for 2012-04, but that'd be difficult to sort through. Maybe somebody knows of something else. 64.40.57.98 (talk) 08:38, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Error

Just noticed some sort of error in the Underwater hockey article, can't bring up the page, but can't get into to it fix whatever is happening. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.129.35.214 (talk) 10:30, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

don't worry - already fixed — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.129.35.214 (talk) 10:31, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Lost essay

What happened to the essay about the "Megalomaniac Point Of View"? I thought WP:MPOV used to link to it through a disamb. page, but now I can't find it at all. If it was deleted, could you direct me to the discussion? Thanks, Postpostmod (talk) 12:55, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

This essay? --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:10, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, isn't that a cognitive bias rather than megalomania? Amusing image though. Regards, RJH (talk) 01:06, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Terminal Event Management Policy

This is a thought experiment.

I saw this page recently. The page was originally written as a 2009 April fools, but I thought what if the case described does happen, for example like 2038 problem, or the breakdown of society? What should we do to preserve the knowledge of humans in case the whole internet network is no more? Perhaps preserving a dump in a vault like Crypt of Civilization along with the necessary equipment to retrieve it?

This is a serious discussion. Perhaps we should remove the fun template on that page.SYSS Mouse (talk) 17:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation endorsing Access2Research

Hey all

The Wikimedia Foundation has decided to endorse Access2Research and its petition to make research funded by the US government publicly accessible. This will be done by way of a blog post on Friday morning PST; as noted, we are not trying to speak on behalf of the community, but just the Foundation itself. You can read more in the FAQ, and leave any comments or questions you might have on its talkpage.

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Something weird about this image of depleted uranium hexafluoride cylinders...

Not sure where to bring this up; please advise if this should be asked elsewhere, or just move this question it and tell me where it went.

There is something strange going on with [ File:Corroded DUF6 cylinder.jpg ].[3]

It is used at Depleted uranium with the caption "DUF6 cylinders: painted (left) and corroded (right)"

I noticed that the file did not match the description (no painted left and corroded right) and does not match the links that show it to be sourced from a government site. So where did the image of the "skirted ends of depleted uranium hexafluoride cylinders after being painted to arrest corrosion" image come from and how do I confirm that we have permission to use it?

To try to fix this, I tried clicking the revert button next to to the 19:13, 19 January 2006 image shown in the history. No luck. The revert left me with the same image. I then reverted my revert, and suddenly I have the correct image! One revert does nothing, two reverts make a change instead of canceling?

In the end, the Depleted uranium article ended up with the correct image -- an image that I can confirm that we have permission for -- but still, that was strange. Could someone who knows the image system well please check [ File:Corroded DUF6 cylinder.jpg ] and see if there is something wonky about it? Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 21:41, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

The logs for the image show only one action rather than two, so I'm guessing it was a caching issue with the server or something like that. Also, it's possible to link images by putting a colon in front of file like this [[:File:Corroded DUF6 cylinder.jpg]] which looks like this File:Corroded DUF6 cylinder.jpg. Cheers. 64.40.54.216 (talk) 08:44, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I was starting to think that maybe I should wait to smoke crack until after I finish editing Wikipedia... (smile) We can mark this one as being resolved. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:55, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Certainly you should. I'd loved to be of some help for selecting the better circumstancial joke unfortunately; and I'm too absorbed watching those images from the ISS. --Askedonty (talk) 09:18, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Google's Transparency Report on Wikipedia

Editors might find it interesting to look at http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/wikipedia.org/ , which lists copy-holder requests to remove wikipedia pages from the Google Search index. WP is rarely a target; here's a BBC article about Google's new Transparency Report. 67.101.7.3 (talk) 17:43, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

AWB Requests Backlog

Does the AWB Requests page usually remain back-logged most of the time like it is right now? --Tow Trucker talk 09:04, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

According to the page history the last action was on 23 May (about a week). I'm not sure exactly how the process works over there anymore, as it looks like there is a bot that automates at least some of the tasks. I recommend browsing the history of the page and directly contact one of the admins who handles approvals. Sorry I couldn't be of more help! //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 17:15, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Funnily enough I was going to post that I wished I had some work to do. this would be right up my street. Unfortunately this is work I am not allowed to do. Rich Farmbrough, 03:37, 29 May 2012 (UTC).

Mass deletion?

The number of articles suddenly seemed to drop by some 10,000. What happened, was there a mass deletion of some sort? Lampman (talk) 15:44, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the last few thousand entries in the deletion log, nothing seems out of the ordinary as far as mainspace is concerned. There were a lot of broken redirects deleted, but they were all in the article talk space. --MuZemike 18:07, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Well something must have happened. The daily increase for 2012 simultaneously fell by about 50. Lampman (talk) 01:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Main Page history/2012 May 29 says 3,965,002 articles when the snapshot was made at 11:20, 29 May 2012. Wikipedia:Main Page history/2012 May 30 says 3,957,927 articles, at 11:20, 30 May 2012. That's a drop of 7075 in 24 hours. The numbers are made with {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} which produced 6,908,411 when this page was last rendered. It was deletion of problematic Chinese township articles which were apparently created by a single editor. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/User:Jaguar. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:48, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, that clears it up! Lampman (talk) 19:44, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Notification for Commons Photo of the Year?

Maybe I've missed it, but usually en-wiki puts up a (watchlist?) notice when Commons' Picture of the Year voting is open. Now is that time. --99of9 (talk) 06:03, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Core contest discussion

Right, now to discuss how to proceed from here...figured some folks might wanna add a word or two. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:21, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Hindi Wikipedia on Front Page

I would like to inform you that the Hindi Wikipedia has much more than 50,000 articles due to which I think that it should be included on the main page through this template --Tow Trucker talk 20:48, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe this sort of issue is normally discussed at Talk:Main Page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:16, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Using available translations for non-English works

Look at Talk:Trollhunter, WT:RM, and WT:requested moves/Closure review. Shall we use available translations, which might cause eruption between editors over spelling and such? "The" is optional, yet it is used in some countries. "Troll Hunter" and "Trollhunter" may vary by sources. However, I have done the botched proposal to move it to "Trolljegeren", which is against all policies and guidelines of translations on foreign works.

I don't do translations on Dan dan you qing, bu liao qing, and zai shui yi fang. Nevertheless, even available translations are preferred over original non-English titles in favor of English readers. I don't get it.

Also, the closer of my botched proposal said that the closure of other proposal might have violated WP:consensus. I don't know, but my thoughts were on translations. What do you think it happened? What do you think I should have done? --George Ho (talk) 19:28, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I think we should use whatever name is commonly used by English-language sources (if any), even if that means using a "foreign" title. Available translations aren't always preferable. They are only preferable when reliable sources prefer them.

If you read WP:UE and you did not come away with the impression that we follow the English-language sources, even when those sources choose non-English terms, then perhaps you'd like to weigh in at that guideline's talk page about the proposed section to make this point much clearer (currently blocked over one editor's claim that it's sometimes impossible to tell whether a word is English or not, and another editor's belief that nobody needs to be told basic stuff like this). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:15, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Get a trip to Leuven, Belgium, to write about the World War I !

Are you an experienced wikipedian from Europe and interested in the World War I? We would love to see you in Leuven, Belgium on the 13-15 of June for a Edit-a-thon organized by Wikimedia Sweden and the Europeana Foundation (www.europeana.eu). To make it possible for you to participate and contribute to English or Dutch Wikipedia articles about WWI we will pay you back for your basic costs for travel back and forth and accommodation in Leuven!

Of course you can also participate in the Edit-a-thon online, without actually being in Leuven, but we strongly encourage you to be there as we will have experts in WWI present during the Edit-a-thon and we have organized interesting side activities such as a guided tour of Leuven's historical WWI sites and you can also attend a couple of dinners - all to give you inspiration for writing excellent articles. In addition, through Europeana's portal we will have access to great digitized material about WWI that we will try to make the best use of. We will also give prizes for the best articles written by the participants in Leuven.

You are of course welcome to join us for only one or two of the days in Leuven if you so prefer. The places are limited so please sign up here as soon as possible! For more information about the event and practical details, please see the project page (a shorter summary is also available in Dutch here) or contact John Andersson on his talk page.

We look forward meeting you there!

John Andersson, a.k.a. John Andersson (WMSE), Lennart Guldbrandsson, a.k.a. Hannibal (WMSE), Anne Marie van Gerwen (Europeana) and Thijs van Exel (Europeana) —Preceding undated comment added 23:20, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the reimbursement I encourage everybody interested to have a look at this page that contain information about how it works and what the rules are. The Europeana Foundation is giving us all in the wikimedia community a pretty generous offer, if I may say so, and I hope that we will be able to make this into a great event! Cheers John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 10:10, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Essay about schoolchildren and lego and online communities?

I read an essay about schoolchildren and legos and online communities. Does anyone have an URL please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.126.106.214 (talk) 23:37, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Try the WP:Reference desk. Good luck, WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Difference between "Sam and Diane" and "Arthur Fowler and Pauline Fowler"?

I proposed a separate article about Arthur Fowler and Pauline Fowler as a couple in Talk:Pauline Fowler. Nevertheless, many opposed my idea as a "fansite". I don't get it. Is there something notable or non-notable about Sam and Diane and "Arthur and Pauline"? I proposed it because I figure there could be critical commentary about the couple themselves. --George Ho (talk) 18:52, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

2011 Picture of the Year competition

македонски • norsk • polski

Dear Wikimedians,

Wikimedia Commons is happy to announce that the 2011 Picture of the Year competition is now open. We are interested in your opinion as to which images qualify to be the Picture of the Year 2011. Any user registered at Commons or a Wikimedia wiki SUL-related to Commons with more than 75 edits before 1 April 2012 (UTC) is welcome to vote and, of course everyone is welcome to view!

Detailed information about the contest can be found at the introductory page.

About 600 of the best of Wikimedia Common's photos, animations, movies and graphics were chosen –by the international Wikimedia Commons community– out of 12 million files during 2011 and are now called Featured Pictures.

From professional animal and plant shots to breathtaking panoramas and skylines, restorations of historically relevant images, images portraying the world's best architecture, maps, emblems, diagrams created with the most modern technology, and impressive human portraits, Commons Features Pictures of all flavors.

For your convenience, we have sorted the images into topic categories.

We regret that you receive this message in English; we intended to use banners to notify you in your native language but there was both, human and technical resistance.

See you on Commons! --Picture of the Year 2011 Committee 18:13, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Fix here.)

"Picture of the Year" Watchlist Notice

I have opened a discussion/complaint at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-details#Complaint regarding POTY notice regarding the Picture of the Year notice. Please feel free to give your thoughts on this issue. Hasteur (talk) 19:13, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

2012 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: Call for applications

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional users to the CheckUser and Oversight teams. Experienced editors are invited to apply for either or both of the permissions, and current holders of either permission are also invited to apply for the other. There is a particular need for Oversight candidates in this round of appointments.

Successful candidates are likely to be regularly available and already familiar with local and global processes, policies, and guidelines especially those concerning CheckUser and Oversight. CheckUser candidates are expected to be technically proficient, and previous experience with OTRS is beneficial for Oversight candidates. Trusted users who frequent IRC are also encouraged to apply for either permission. All candidates must at least 18 years of age; have attained legal majority in their jurisdiction of residence; and be willing to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation prior to receiving permissions.

Current demand for users with regional knowledge: Because of the increasing activity from the South Asian, Southeast Asian, or Middle Eastern regions, CheckUser applications are particularly sought from people who not only meet our general requirements but also are familiar with the ISPs and typical editing patterns of any of these regions.

If you think you may be suitably qualified, please see the appointments page for further information. The application period is scheduled to close 15 June 2012.

For the Arbitration Committee, Risker (talk) 02:41, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Discuss this

Wikipedia initial website page for selecting your country needs to be centered further down without having to scroll it down to be able to click on the option for the United States/English. Perhaps, however, it would be better to simply change the options to be a list instead of a circular image/list of countries, but a list that is also centered further down. The circular image is innovative, but innovation is not always what is preferred or most efficient. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.216.82.8 (talk) 04:52, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

A merge discussion

The discussion has degenerated quite a bit, which is not leading to anything. Can someone take a look at comment there? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 05:37, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Photo requests

It should be easy to figure out how to see photo requests for a particular place, but it is not. How do I see a list of photo requests for New Castle County, Delaware, for example?.--DThomsen8 (talk) 14:00, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

The main page is Wikipedia:Requested pictures with shortcut WP:RP. Wikipedia:Requested pictures#Fulfilling a request has a link to Category:Wikipedia requested images. From there you can choose Category:Wikipedia requested photographs, Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in places, and work towards Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Delaware. It isn't subcategorized by county but you can click "Map of all coordinates from Google" to see locations on a map. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:42, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Marking of inactive bots

Anybody please comment on this discussion. I think it's quite an important issue but unfortunately not much conversation is going yet. Rcsprinter (yak) 15:59, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Weird wikipeda-related email spam, about article contributions?

Anyone have a clue what this is about? I don't know what to make of it.

(Spammy email message with full headers, click to show)

Delivered-To: dmahalko@gmail.com
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Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of jeff.anderson011@gmail.com designates 10.180.92.5 as permitted sender) client-ip=10.180.92.5;
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DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
        d=gmail.com; s=20120113;
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         mxnwOw9JIHbCcIg0yeyTj1l43qRF9QbIASMUI9tlfZ7pMYBtsJoXbrbBJW7ZQkBr8Ym2
         Z6RM/LicU9NqWrS+VGSWr/00AxeuO8wDHnnMXggvqJK3UiLNn3pg98e9LEkjM7qxSq08
         U7kIMCjqYhsjlisw/HTgaJbX+s2vWuCCw+aRkhfURNr5EYN2NJkdqmsWDi4tNrOv/LUJ
         Ssr+BU6bH6h7IepgO4Za5H7R9xlECFgk/Qc3Eq/pJRMAsPkRq9sbTkfpp+woOTyBRPDP
         N5mg==
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.180.92.5 with SMTP id ci5mr37697803wib.19.1339592542817; Wed,
 13 Jun 2012 06:02:22 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.227.116.199 with HTTP; Wed, 13 Jun 2012 06:02:22 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 06:02:22 -0700
Message-ID: <CADC06ZHftbgsGTzJBbC5ywKNFpa0EdSqKY4btO2BR59UNqHPmw@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Order
From: Jeff Anderson <jeff.anderson011@gmail.com>
To: andreas.eberhard@gmail.com
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=f46d043892b7a88d5f04c25a317d
Bcc: dmahalko@gmail.com

--f46d043892b7a88d5f04c25a317d
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Good-day Sir/Madam
              I will like to order ( Bale Handling ), Do get back to me
with  the Models and price range on the ones that you carry or customer
made so i can place an order with you or can get back to me with your web
site so  that i can make my selection and get back to you.Also do you
accept credit card?Thank You..

--f46d043892b7a88d5f04c25a317d
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<div>Good-day Sir/Madam</div><div>=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 I will like t=
o order ( Bale Handling ), Do get back to me with =A0the Models and price r=
ange on the ones that you carry or customer made so i can place an order wi=
th you or can get back to me with your web site so =A0that i can make my se=
lection and get back to you.Also do you accept credit card?Thank You..</div=
>

--f46d043892b7a88d5f04c25a317d--

It's obvious to me what relation it has to me.

Some of my past edits to baler:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Baler&diff=224099293&oldid=223916774

I get lots of weird spammy email like this that refer to Wikipedia article subjects that I've contributed to.

The question is why spammers would even do this.

It is such obvious and pointless spam, and in a way I feel bad marking a message as spam from some small-time chinese marketing company asking about prices for my LED fixtures. But they never respond if I try to ask why they are sending me this request at all.

Some of my past edits to light-emitting diode:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Light-emitting_diode&diff=401673761&oldid=401640719

What are these spammers trying to accomplish?

DMahalko (talk) 14:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps they're trying to confirm your email address is valid so they can sell it to other spammers. Rivertorch (talk) 18:49, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

New template for trans women

Right now, Wikipedia articles on trans women have an HTML comment written at the top saying:

However, please notice that sometimes, even Wikipedians who see this comment edit the article to break WP:MOS, and even sometimes edit the comment. I suggest we create a template for trans women that the article should have instead, similar to the already-existent Template:BLP.

The trans woman template should parallel the BLP template with respect to the message it gives. Georgia guy (talk) 17:27, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Just to be clear, is there any reason this proposal is gender-specific or should it also apply to transmen? --Golbez (talk) 17:29, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

If you want it to apply to trans men, you'll have to create a separate template for trans men. Georgia guy (talk) 17:42, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I"ve created a draft at Template:MOS-TW, let's get started talking about the right text. (I'm also open to better names, but I'd prefer the template name include a reference to "MOS", "IDENTITY" or both to relate the template to the particular Wikipedia guideline.) I'll be happy to reflect that into a transgender male template once we've worked out the details of the wording and such. I used Template:BLP as a basic pattern, and tried to make whatever other changes I made for clarity and accuracy. --joe decker ^{talk to me} 18:28, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I've test-applied the two templates to a total of about ten articles. --joe decker ^{talk to me} 22:18, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Editing typos, spelling, word order and punctuation

Hello everyone, I'm sure you'll agree this is also important, as Wikipedia boasts masses of fantastic content that should be read by as many people as possible, and the more pristine the text is, the better! I'm currently looking at articles about Russian cities and Russian history to weed out typos, spelling, word order and punctuation errors. Hope that's greeted at Wiki. And if anyone has input or comments, I'll be happy to hear them.

EngGerm12 (talk) 09:25, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like you want to be a Викигном! People like you are always needed. Welcome. → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 20:43, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Help convert Google groups links to proper citations

User:Sfan00_IMG/newsgroup_links

You can help by:

removing the links that have already been conveted to {{cite newsgroup}}
removing links to forums which are clearly NOT newgroups.
Converting links to {{cite newsgroup}}

Thanks Sfan00 IMG (talk) 21:21, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Possible crosswiki spam

Hi. Sorry about my english. I´m admin in es:WP. Some days ago I deleted an article, Veritas Language Solutions. Seeing contribs and iw I found what I think it´s a possible case of crosswiki spam, because:

It was written by Passionforlanguage in en:, wich almost all his contribs are about this article (SPA?).
Piccolapixxie translated it to es, sk and de, and also edited en:Version
Piccolapixxie has some others editions in en, but not in others languages (in spanish only edited es:Veritas Language Solutions)
Elfie Burgess has only one contrib in en: (in this article), but created it in pl and cy
Only contribs of Elfie Burgess in cy and pl are in these articles
All articles are translated from en:; all articles got same sources, no more, no less, and apparently there is no other sources in Google or similar.

I understand your roules are different from ours, so I give you this information to do with it what you think is best. Chears. --Andreateletrabajo (talk) 20:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I think you should report it to Meta. Thanks. Dede2008 (talk) 23:54, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

As I already says, depends of every WP. In de is in DR. But apparently here no one has any interest in it. --Andreateletrabajo (talk) 16:25, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Abuse from Hullaballoo Wolfowitz

First of all I apologise if this is not the right place to put this in but Hullalloo Wolfowitz has been removing an edit I made at the Fraternity Vacation article. He keeps on disputing why it should be included and it is quite clear he does not know anything about this film otherwise he would understand why it should be included. On his last removal of my edit he was extremely abusive to me with the following comment: "drivel posted by an obsessed adolescent". In addition to me he has sent me an unwanted message to me even I made it clear on my page that I did not wish to receive any messages. Hullallo Wolfowitz is therefore harassing me and I request that he be removed as an editor of Wikipedia.

The Shadow Treasurer (talk) 05:12, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

This appears to be based on a content dispute. I checked the source, and I agree it does not come close to supporting the facts or opinions embodied in the content you add. I commented on the article-talk-page to that effect as well (I had not previously been involved or even aware of that page's existence). Your above statement suggests you think WP:V and WP:NPOV do not apply to you because you know best about the subject and/or he is not familiar with the subject--wrong and wrong. HW appears to be getting (understandably) exasperated that he thinks you are misrepresenting a source to support your piece of article content and edit-warring to insert it. The content and your attitude here do consistent with Wikipedia:Fancruft, so the only remotely problematic aspect of his message is the "adolescent". DMacks (talk) 14:48, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of civility though, I notice you did not bother to alert Hullaballoo that you were talking about him here. I have rectified this situation for you. DMacks (talk) 14:56, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Let's deal with this quickly. TST has repeatedly added various statements of a claim about a "classic nude scene" to this film's article, without any relevant sourcing. This edit (soon retracted) is probably the worst of them [4], and I think anyone who reviews it is likely to conclude that the editor who made it did not intend to edit constructively. The latest version uses a Roger Ebert review as its sole reference; that review may or may not discuss the scene involve, but it certainly does not support a claim that the scene is "classic", just that it is shallow, exploitive and misogynistic.

TST is slow-motion edit warring with a range of editors over his insistence on inserting unsourced or inadequately sourced factoids into various articles, and he's added a malformed and not terribly conspicuous comment on his talk page saying, in effect, that he doesn't intend to discuss his edits. [5] That hardly entitles him to complain about warnings about disruptive editing and about edit warring placed on his talk page, or to vandalize my user page. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 15:51, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Needs help

Here it is...Can someone tell me which one is really Solar energy?

LOL (2012 film)

Hi. Can someone check at this article? It looks like someone copy the intro from an add or something. Include things like: "Lionsgate and Mandate Pictures present a Double Features Films production of a Lisa Azuelos film." Thanks. --Andreateletrabajo (talk) 16:23, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

It looks like an IP pasted that over the original lead, which I went ahead and restored. Chris857 (talk) 17:13, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

volunteer work?

In casual conversation, can I refer to my Wikipedia editing as "volunteer work?" I don't mean on a resume but just in casual conversation. If people try to laugh me out of the galaxy I can always explain that I spend hours and hours each day editing wikipedia and learning how to do it better, and take my activities here very seriously. How do people feel about that? Also, has this question ever come up in your life, and what happened? Guyovski (talk) 20:16, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you are a volunteer. You, I and 99.9% of everybody that contributes is a volunteer editor and most of us take it seriously and try to improve the quality of our project here. Most people I know IRL don't understand that Wikipedia is written and maintained by volunteers like you and I, so I often show them how to edit and they think it's boring. That's just my experience. 64.40.54.83 (talk) 00:17, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

The phrase "volunteer work" has a specific meaning and specific connotations beyond someone performing an activity as a volunteer. It's normally associated with stuff such as lending a hand at a hospital or at the Humane Society. The idea is that it's a respectable, even praiseworthy, way to spend your time either in addition to your job or instead of paid work (especially the latter). In essence "volunteer work" is an unpaid job with all the social cachet of a job but no associated remuneration. So that's what my original question was getting at. Guyovski (talk) 01:13, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Sure you can! In my volunteer capacity, I've been doing it for years. I've yet to manage to persuade my peers to join me, but sooner or later somebody might. :) Most of them are familiar with Wikipedia and impressed and interested to learn more about it, anyway. Beyond that - and the reason I'm responding to this as Maggie Dennis who works for the Wikimedia Foundation and not Moonriddengirl who volunteers - the WMF frequently writes reference letters for college or universities or for scholarships. Sue Gardner recommends asking the staff member you know best (for those intrigued by the idea). If you don't know one, you can always drop me a line or write to my supervisor, Philippe Beaudette. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 02:19, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Cry me a river

I just need to whine to people who might understand; and, since nobody I know IRL edits Wikipedia, this is the only possible place I can do it. I created my very first article. It looked encyclopedic to me, even though it was just a stub and relied on only one source. Seconds later it was being proposed for deletion under "wikipedia is not for reporting news." I went to the article talk page and made a spirited argument against deletion. Then I contacted five more experienced editors who had previously helped me and begged them to join the deletion discussion on the article talk page. Then I looked at the article...and I didn't recognize it. It had been totally rewritten so that it was indeed no more than a bare news report of someone's recent death. That was the form in which it was found by the editor who proposed deletion. Given what the rewritten version looked like, I fully agreed with her that it should be deleted, and was somewhat embarrassed that I had defended a version of the article that no longer exists. Since then the article has been edited several more times so that it's starting to look encyclopedic, but it has absolutely no connection to the article I originally created. I'm forced to accept that I am no longer that article's creator, and I've made my position clear on my talk page and on the article's talk page. It frankly feels, in a minor way, like someone snuck into the hospital nursery and abducted my newborn baby and raised it as their own child, and I never saw the child again before I died of old age. Thank you for listening. Guyovski (talk) 04:19, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, the original does still exist of course. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 06:13, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Editing Wikipedia...

Please see this note: [6] Illia Connell (talk) 01:37, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

What about it? TOW talk 18:09, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Being a Wikignome

Hello Wikipedians, I got a really nice and welcoming response to my last post and had to look for a while before I figured out how to post again... I'd be honoured to be a WikiGnome. Would it be possile to eventually graduate to being a WikiFairy?:-) Thank you for the kind welcome, I look forward to working here! EngGerm12 (talk) 09:23, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Welcome and thank you for your contributions, EngGerm12. We look forward to your participation with our project here. Kind regards. 64.40.54.29 (talk) 21:54, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Update on India Education Program

Just wanted to inform you that we have put up a post about the India Education Program here. Please fell free to initiate, advance or follow the conversation on the same page. Thanks Nitika.t (talk) 10:11, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Four-millionth article on its way

As I'm writing this now, the English-language Wikipedia currently has 3,968,543 articles in its main namespace, growing at a rate of just under 1000 articles per day. At this rate of growth, we can expect the enwiki four-millionth article in a month and a bit. A small celebration might be in order. Perhaps with cake.

And a press release? -- The Anome (talk) 22:53, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Cake should be automatically distributed to all users upon creation of the 4,000,000th article. A press release isn't a bad idea either. :D ʝunglejill 23:14, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I'd rather issue a press release when we reach 5000 FAs (a long way off, so maybe 20,000 FA+GAs) than 4 million articles. Reso lute 23:30, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, 5,000 premium quality articles is a better cause for celebration than 4 million articles that are of somewhat lower quality. Alternatively, we could toot our horn for reaching 15,000 good articles. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:51, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

4 million steaming piles of crap is still an accomplishment, I think. You'd appreciate it if you were a farmer. Equazcion ^(talk) 16:58, 18 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Yes, 40 million flies can't all be wrong. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:13, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation plans to run a blog post about it and is hoping that the community will take lead. :) See Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost#Article 4 million approaching. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping us up to date, Maggie. It is much appreciated. 64.40.54.83 (talk) 23:53, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Advertisements Within Wikipedia Articles

Is anyone else seeing advertisements within Wikipedia articles? Is there some way to make this stop? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael Cockrell (talk • contribs) 05:59, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

What kind of advertisements? Could you link to an example? Rivertorch (talk) 08:47, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

This is propably some kind of malware; there was an article on the Wikimedia blog about this a few weeks ago. --Tokikake (talk) 08:53, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Centered em dash?

Has Wikipedia got a template that is a centred em dash, so that the effect in the empty table cells below can be achieved?

Year	Title	Platform(s)
Year	Title	BB	Mac	PS3	Vista	Win	X360
1999	System Shock 2	–	–	–	–	Yes	–
2002	Freedom Force	–	Yes	–	–	Yes	–
2004	Tribes: Vengeance	–	–	–	–	Yes	–
2005	Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich	–	–	–	–	Yes	–
2005	SWAT 4	–	–	–	–	Yes	–
2006	SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate	–	–	–	–	Yes	–
2006	BioShock	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
2013	BioShock Infinite	–	–	Yes	–	Yes	Yes

- X201 (talk) 09:09, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't know, but the ones above look like en dashes. Rivertorch (talk) 09:30, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

They are, typo on my part. But you get the idea :) - X201 (talk) 09:45, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

An alternative is to apply a "text-align: center;" style to the entire table then left justify the title cells. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:11, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Good thinking Batman. It works well and the code is neater. - X201 (talk) 08:17, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Creating a new user-right group

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Proposal by Jc37 (talk)

New proposal. - jc37 17:08, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Study of interest about edit wars on Wikipedia

Dynamics of Conflicts in Wikipedia I ran across it by accident while trying to find a different study. That is all, carry on. - Tenebris 12:52, 24 June 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.112.29.188 (talk)

Perth requested-move notification

An earlier requested-move survey generated lots of controversy and an arbitration case.

Therefore, this one is being posted here and in many other places, to gather a very wide range of opinions outside of the Scotland and Australia WikiProjects.

A requested move survey was started at Talk:Perth_(disambiguation)#Requested_move, which proposes to move:

Background: There was a previous requested-move survey which ran from late May to mid June. There was a great deal of controversy surrounding the closure and subsequent events, which involved a number of reverts and re-reverts which are the subject of an ongoing arbitration case. There was a move review process, which was closed with a finding that the original requested-move closure was endorsed; however, the move review process is relatively new and untried. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 03:22, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Core Contest

		2012 Core Contest
		Let it be known that the third incarnation of the Wikipedia Core Contest will take place from August 1 to 31 2012 CE/AD.....Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:31, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

U:

I've noticed User:Wavelength has added

{{shortcut|U:Wavelength}}

to their userpage. I was just wondering, is U: an accepted shortcut? Simply south...... always punctual, no matter how late for just 6 years 17:31, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't appear to be banned at Wikipedia:Shortcut, so yes, why not. She/he may start a trend. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:26, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Banned? Not explicitly, but U: doesn't actually redirect to User:, so any pages starting with U: are essentially in article space; so that wouldn't be allowed. Looks like the page has been tagged for speedy deletion already, as it should be. Equazcion ^(talk) 18:53, 26 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Here are links to All pages with titles beginning with U: (two pages) and All pages with titles beginning with UT: (one page).

—Wavelength (talk) 19:16, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

ʻOkina

This ʻOkina is a Hawaiian and Tongan languages. I think that there is a Romanised version. Should this appear in the Latin characters in the editing aids at the bottom of the editing screen? Snowman (talk) 08:41, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Please see Template talk:Okina for the problems displaying this figure in all browsers. Rmhermen (talk) 21:04, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

H. G. Wells RfC

I placed an RfC on the H. G. Wells talk page. This is the first time I have used the template. The text stated that it would be added to the Biographies list, and later that it has been added, but I don't see it on the list, nor has the talk received any attention as far as I can tell. Am I missing something? Regards, nagualdesign (talk) 00:36, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

The RfC bot came on 26 June and made a note. I am not sure what the turnaround time is beyond that. I would think that two days would be a sufficient wait but perhaps not. Everything seems okay about your use of the template. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:51, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

The problem (I believe) is that the "question" was inside the template, which (if memory serves) is how we did this once-upon-a-time, but not any longer. If I'm right, it should be correctly displaying in the next 15 minutes or so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:24, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the assistance. Much appreciated. Kind regards, nagualdesign (talk) 02:59, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.20wmf6 deployment on Monday instead of Wednesday

Apologies for only posting in English. The deployment team here at Wikimedia Foundation has decided to shift the deployment time of MediaWiki 1.20wmf6 from it's usual time on Wednesday, July 4 to an earlier time on Monday, July 2, due to the upcoming U.S. holiday. Full timeline and status updates are available on the MediaWiki 1.20 roadmap page. -- mw:User:RobLa-WMF (talk) 22:07, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

HEH! I thought I trimmed English off the list of VP's that I was hitting, but obviously not. For en.wikipedia.org, the deployment is happening as scheduled. -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 22:16, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Shrimp and Prawn

The articles Shrimp and Prawn do not appear to follow common usage, and I've started an RfC to address this. In particular, according to Wikipedia, Whiteleg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) is in fact not a shrimp. I think that's ridiculous; but my (overwhelming) evidence based on google hits has been rejected as original research. Due to the desire to restrict the scope of the "shrimp" article to a well-defined biological concept, across Wikipedia the term "shrimp" is now reserved for Caridea, which is much more restrictive than most of the world uses. Comments and help with the RfC would be welcome; thanks. 24.84.4.202 (talk) 23:06, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

These is no common usage of these names as they are used differently in American and British English. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:48, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Is "Guest Pic" Excessive?

Berofe reading see those diddly discussions on my talk page and Leftorium's talk page.

I've been reading many articles of the episodes of the TV series (like the Simpsons, How I Met Your Mother, the Office), and found some articles that have a guest pic of the episode, which is little bit like those Showbiz news sites (like E!, TV Guide and TMZ) to me. Some articles are not mentioning reference to another thing, or have a specific section for the references. And some said that "No Guest Pic Articles" is boring? I don't think so, cause it's more informative without the pic.

So: Is "Guest Pic" Excessive? -Mr a (talk) (contrib) 03:17, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Did you know... there is a cartoon on the main page?!?

Believe it or not, right now there is a 20 minute watchable cartoon on the main page from this article!!! Check it out! – Lionel ^(talk) 09:32, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Renaming categories of ex-Project that are now task forces

I have attempted to rename Category:WikiProject Harry Potter into Category:Harry Potter task force. Unfortunately, people just oppose renaming without "Wikipedia" included. Same thing for WP:SEINFELD and WP:HEROES. This may affect all Projects that have task forces. Also, it would be time-consuming to propose renaming of all categories of task forces, such as of Television Project and of Korea Project. --George Ho (talk) 18:27, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Why do you object to having the category plainly labeled as being part of Wikipedia's infrastructure? Is excluding the word Wikipedia really important? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

If it means discussing such as Category:Roald Dahl task force articles, then we must discuss this maybe here. Discussing the same thing in every WikiProject with task forces is time-consuming. --George Ho (talk) 02:12, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Even if this means renaming all task force categories, such as ones in Category:WikiProject Novels task forces, how do we propose it and where if I'm not objecting? --George Ho (talk) 02:19, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Why do the others need to be changed? Why do you care what other WikiProjects are doing?

Look: you proposed a name change. Someone suggested a better name. You accept that, and then you are finished. So why do we need to talk about hundreds of other groups? Why do you care what they're doing? You can leave the other groups alone and go work on the articles that interest you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:22, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Revision history statistics

For some reason, I can't seem to find the revision history stats page for an article. Last month I was on a page that showed a graph of the size of the article over time, a graph of its edits, and many other useful things. For the sake of being generic, say the history of the Wikipedia article. There used to be a link on this page, but now I can't find it. Was it removed? Jesse V. (talk) 23:39, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

There is a discussion at User talk:TParis#Articleinfo tool. The tool is/was located here. Chris857 (talk) 23:52, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the info! Glad to hear that I'm not blind. Hope they get it back. Jesse V. (talk) 04:57, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

This tool needs to be restored ASAP. Its a very valuable and informative tool. We keep hearing that storage space is not a problem at WP, so surely someone can find a server, and grant Tparis the storage space he needs. - X201 (talk) 13:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

English Equivalent

I have created an article in Persian Wikipedia for which I don't know the English equivalent. It refers to an educational method in which some students who have extra abilities pass two educational grades in one educational year. Do you know English equivalent?Ali Pirhayati (talk) 12:06, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

We probably cover this in our Tracking (education) article, although whether tracking, or streaming, expresses precisely the concept you decide I leave to you to judge. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:41, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Try Grade skipping or Academic acceleration. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:18, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a world!Ali Pirhayati (talk) 15:49, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

What Twinkle looks like from the receiving end

User talk:Blingdathersly

See what I wrote at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bart Ramsey. Uncle G (talk) 18:56, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Seems a bit discouraging, doesn't it. 64.40.54.4 (talk) 10:16, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Someone actually did a study on this, where new editors saw these sort of templates and literally thought it was a completely automatic process with no humans involved. Thus, people who use templates literally fail the Turing test. Despite the plausible value of standardised messaging, it turns out that lots of templates are worse than a few human edits, and Twinkle is worse than doing less by hand. Now I can't find the study in question ... anyone remember where it is? - David Gerard (talk) 10:10, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

This one, possibly? Apparently after they are done updating the level-1 user warnings, they might move on to updating the deletion notification templates. David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:30, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Search for TEP

> I would like to suggest the following improvement. > > When I typed "TEP" in the search button, the thing I am looking for > didn't show up. Later I found that TEP meant: Trust and Estate > Practioner. This falls under: financial/tax matters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.65.38.65 (talk) 20:03, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

The second entry at TEP says:

Letters after a name indicating membership of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, founded in 1991.

Where did you look for it? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:21, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Userbox "creator" page

OK, I already asked this question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Userboxes, but I got no response there. This Userbox creator thingy, which is linked from the main userbox navbox, is in the userspace of a permanently blocked user. I think it should it be moved elsewhere. I think it should probably be moved to the UBX (talk · contribs) userspace, which I will ask Mets501 (talk · contribs) about. I will even volunteer to put it in my own userspace if necessary. Any comments from the people here would be appreciated. Eastlaw ^talk ⁄ _contribs 08:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

While it's up, the tag on User:Java7837 that says the account is a sockpuppet of User:Joseph3333 is confusing because Java7837 was determined to be the sock master. Jason Quinn (talk) 03:12, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Yep, sure, feel free to move it to the User:UBX space. —METS501 (talk) 04:34, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion

I suggest to create a page about Alexander Garievich Gordon (born 20 february 1964) from russian wikipedia Scymso (talk) 16:54, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

There's a couple of approaches you could take. One approach would be to add the subject to the appropriate sub-page of Wikipedia:Requested articles. The alternative is to follow the process of requesting a translation at Wikipedia:Translation. Neither approach is guaranteed to succeed, but at least it'll be on a to-do list. Good luck. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:16, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Linking to categories

I just removed Category:Trombonists from Trombone. In a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musical Instruments/Archive 1#Instrumentalist categories at instrument articles, it was explained that this allowed easy linking to lists of musicians when there wasn't a separate list article, such as with Category:Bass clarinetists. However, it seems to me that using cats this way breaks the categorization system. Is there a standard way to say "For a list of bass clarinet players, see Category:Bass clarinetists"? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:21, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

A simple link to the category (like the one you made in your post) in the "See also" section..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:00, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Could be that we just need the categories to be renamed. If it were called "Category:Trombone", putting all trombone-related articles in that category would make sense, yes? I made the same edit on Bass clarinet years ago - the explanation for having that article in Category:Bass clarinetists is on my talk page, FWIW. I think the "connectivity" gained by putting obviously related articles in a simple common-sense category is valuable. - Special-T (talk) 12:54, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

If that category is "Bass clarinet", that makes sense. However, putting the "Bass clarinet" article in the "Bass clarinetists" category breaks WP:Categorization, because a bass clarinet isn't a bass clarinetist.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:17, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I just put this on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Musical_Instruments#The_categories-of-instrumentalists_issue also - Special-T (talk) 19:28, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with what Martynas Patasius said. Also, put a {{Cat more}} template on the category page, pointing to the article about the instrument. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:06, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

ACTA reviving? Oh Canada....

It would seem that despite an overwhelming vote in the European Parliament against the provisions of ACTA the European Commission together with the Canadian government are now trying to bring the very same provisions in through the back door: a trade agreement between Canada and the EU.

See: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6580/135/

Jcwf (talk) 23:21, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Article 4 million approaching

Hi, guys. :) As you are very likely aware, we are at 3,986,676 articles and should be reaching 4 million pretty soon. (Updated tally: 6,908,411) This is a massive milestone that the Wikimedia Foundation wants to be sure is celebrated in its blog, as it did the 3 millionth ([7]). Since it's an English Wikipedia specific accomplishment, they felt like it might be appropriate to bring the community in on writing up the event. I've invited people from the Signpost, but since no specific Signpost writer raised their hands Matthew Roth has started up a very bare bones outline at meta:Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts/EnWP_4_Million_Article_Milestone. We've invited anyone at the Signpost who'd like to help out, but of course it's open to others as well. This is open for editing in the usual manner of our work, but anybody with an interest in contributing who doesn't want to edit directly is also welcome to add suggestions or comments at the talk page there. By-lines, of course, for all major contributors...unless you'd rather opt out. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:26, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, Maggie. I'm hoping one of our veteran editors will jump in here and write up something. I also have a question. The majority of articles that are created end up being deleted through one process or another. How do we determine which article is the 4 millionth if the actual 4 millionth article is deleted? Or do we just use the deleted article? Thanks for any input. 64.40.57.128 (talk) 23:26, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Good question. I don't know when the count is considered "stable". :) I'll ask about that one. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, the 4 millionth article will be the first article to be created and not speedily deleted at a time when there are already 3,999,999 articles. The actual "4 millionth article" may vary with time, as older articles are deleted or merged into other articles or as older redirects are turned into articles, older deleted articles restored. Given that, the most important thing is celebrating the milestone of the 4 millionth article. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Where is an easy link to find the updated article tally? Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 19:46, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

There's a counter near the top left of the Main page - "3,989,883 articles in English" -- John of Reading (talk) 19:56, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

LOL! Gawd, how many have I looked at the main page and never noticed that!?!? :P Much obliged for the enlightenment. Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 20:06, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

4 million total articles, but only about 21,000 are WP:FA or WP:GA. That's a pretty poor ratio of decency to garbage. Congrats, Wikipedia! WTF? (talk) 21:57, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, FA and GA are generally the cream of the crop. Do we know how many are B class or higher? That would give an indication of how many articles have been graded as at least respectable (or at least AfD-resistant). Regards, RJH (talk) 20:22, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Per the known stats, around 100,000 are B or above, and around 225,000 C or higher, out of 3,300,000 which have an assessment. However, this should be taken with a very large grain of salt; our ratings are systemically skewed lower than is really the case, as articles tend to get improved without being regraded, and often lag by several years. We have never systematically had an article-reassessment program! Andrew Gray (talk) 21:30, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

It is a little surprising that so few are at B class; I'd have expected at least 10%. Oh well, more work for us to do then. RJH (talk) 04:24, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Comment I started writing up a draft at meta:Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/EnWP 4 Million Article Milestone#Draft article because nobody else would. 64.40.54.45 (talk) 02:13, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
- By the way: WP:4MIL was created through WP:AFC... mabdul 23:33, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Inline image sizing?

Hello,

Does anybody know if there is a Wikipedia technique for setting the height of an inline image to match the scale of the surrounding span of text? I.e. give it a proportionate size like 1em or 100%. Perhaps a template that applies some sort of CSS fiddliness? Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:58, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know but perhaps WP:Help desk would be a better place to ask. Rmhermen (talk) 15:32, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, will do. Thanks. RJH (talk) 16:44, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

5MP rules

Wikipedia has two 5M pools. Which one will be used to decide who will win the prize when Wikipedia reaches 5M articles?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:02, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

The first starfighter

Created in September 2002, nominated for deletion almost ten years later. This probably isn't the record for Proposed Deletion, but I suspect that it's close. Uncle G (talk) 20:23, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Celebrating 4 million articles with thanks

I'm celebrating the 4 million article milestone by thanking the generous people who help make Wikipedia what it is. I'd like to encourage others to join in the celebration at Wikipedia:Thanks for 4 million articles. Thanks everybody. 64.40.54.141 (talk) 23:21, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

ReferenceTooltips

Background: ReferenceTooltips is a gadget that allows users to roll over any inline citation to see reference information. A discussion on whether to enable the gadget for all users by default went on for about two months before being archived about two weeks ago. (This discussion was mentioned in the Signpost.) The discussion resulted in a some changes to the gadget, such as the addition of a delay to the tooltip, support for touchscreen devices, and an easily accessible settings menu that includes a button to disable RT, as well and options to modify/eliminate the delay, or set the tooltip to only pop up upon clicking the reference link.

The discussion seemed to show consensus in support of enabling ReferenceTooltips by default, though it was never formally "closed" as such before it was archived. Does this matter? Would further discussion be necessary for it to be enabled? Another point: During the discussion, a comment by User:R'n'B suggested users be "informed about the change (maybe by a watchlist notice) before it happens, and given instructions on how to turn it off if they wish". (Turning it off is accomplished by pressing the gear icon at the top-right corner of any tooltip and then pressing the large "Disable Reference Tooltips" button, or alternatively, deselecting the gadget in Special:Preferences.) Does anyone have opinions on whether this would be necessary, and how best to accomplish it if it is? --Yair rand (talk) 19:51, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I didn't follow that discussion, but I can tell you the general rule: 90% of users won't notice or won't care if they do notice, 5% of users will be happy, and 5% of users will be very, very, very loudly upset—but only briefly. A couple of months later, most (NB: "most" ≠ "all") of the users, including most of the noisy opposition, won't even remember what the old system was like.

How much notice you give and how many hoops you jump through to tell people about it depend primarily on how much noise you're willing to put up with in the couple of weeks after the change. No matter how much notice you give, it won't be enough for some people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

A quick glance at the discussion shows 39 in support of the proposal, with 14 opposed. That comes out to about a 74% approval rating, which is probably good enough to enable right away. However, I think we should add a watchlist notice, so that people don't scream the way they did with the watchlist change (what ever happened to that RfC anyway?) David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:00, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

(Actually, several of those opposes were conditional all issues that have since been fixed, so it's really 39-11, 78%.) --Yair rand (talk) 03:17, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'd enable it then, possibly with a watchlist notice (but then you'd have to start a new discussion, and you probably don't want to do that). One thing though: for touchscreen devices, can you make it that clicking anywhere gets rid of the tooltip, instead of just the citation? I've tried it on my iPad, and it annoys me. David1217 ^{What I've done} 04:10, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

The intended behavior for touchscreen devices is that clicking anywhere outside the tooltip makes the tooltip disappear. Unfortunately, I don't have a touchscreen device to test it on. I don't understand what you mean by "just the citation" (Just the citation disappears? Only clicking on the citation makes the tooltip disappears? What does "citation" refer to, exactly?) Could you please clarify? Thanks. --Yair rand (talk) 04:16, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I am on an iPad right now, and when you tap on the citation, the tooltip appears. Unless you tap on the little blue number thingy (made with <ref></ref> tags), the tooltip won't go away. What I'd like is that if you tap anywhere other than the tooltip, the tooltip disappears. David1217 ^{What I've done} 04:21, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the bug. Apparently, in certain situations, iPads won't count touching an element as a "click" unless the user triple-taps. Hopefully changing it to also activate on "touchstart" will fix this. (I've left an editprotected request at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js. Hopefully after the sync the bug will be fixed.) --Yair rand (talk) 05:03, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Great, thanks! David1217 ^{What I've done} 05:58, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Note: ReferenceTooltips is working properly on my iPad now. David1217 ^{What I've done} 05:59, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Does anyone else have a comment on whether to enable ReferenceTooltips by default? David1217 ^{What I've done} 05:44, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Is there a readily identifiable means to turn it off? Regards, RJH (talk) 20:19, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Each tooltip contains a "gear" icon in the top-right corner, that when clicked opens a menu that contains a large "Disable Reference Tooltips" button. Does that count as "readily identifiable"? --Yair rand (talk) 20:42, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Yup, close enough. Thanks. RJH (talk) 16:43, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

So, this discussion hasn't had much participation, and the VPR discussion did result in consensus for enabling the gadget, and it was pretty well-publicized. There probably are some users who went two months without checking VPR or looking at the Centralized discussions list and also missed both Signpost articles mentioning it, and will dislike the gadget, but hopefully those users will be able to figure out how to disable it. If nobody objects within a day or so, I'm going to make an editprotected request to the gadgets-definition page, requesting that ReferenceTooltips be enabled by default. If anyone complains that they can't figure out how to disable it, I'll request that a watchlist notice be put up explaining how to disable it, but I think it's unlikely that people will have difficulty disabling it. --Yair rand (talk) 21:15, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
- Sounds good. Finally we'll have closure. David1217 ^{What I've done} 21:29, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
  - Editprotected request is here. --Yair rand (talk) 00:00, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
  - ...And it has now been enabled by default. --Yair rand (talk) 00:29, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
    - Let's see how long it takes before someone starts yelling. It didn't take long with the watchlist controversy today (see thread). BTW, it's working smoothly when I'm logged out. David1217 ^{What I've done} 00:35, 17 July 2012 (UTC) modified 00:45, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I hope this isn't yelling, but I started seeing the reference tooltips today, and I find them quite annoying. IMO, adding a feature that causes unexpected motion (or "appearing out of the blue") adds distraction in a medium (web pages) that is already crammed with distractions. I'm sad to see this, because one of Wikipedia's great strengths has always been its text-heavy, literate and thoughtful orientation. I think making windows appear in front of text harms readability, and I don't think readers get anything of value out of these little pop-ups that mention sources they've never heard of and mostly don't care about. However, that's JMO, and I think WhatamIdoing's 90/5/5 prediction above is insightful and probably right. Nevertheless, I would like to ask: Is there some way that we can tell what effects the reference tooltips are having on readability? If I'm wrong, and the tooltips don't interfere with readability, that's fine; I'm glad my opinion did not prevail if it was mistaken. However, if the tooltips do distract readers and make articles harder to read, I hope we have some way to find this out and consequently roll back the change. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 03:07, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I actually think they improve the reader experience by making easy to look at references without jumping away from the text—but like you, that's my POV. Short of actually talking to readers for feedback, though, which is probably not a viable option (too much trouble to get something running just to ask if a minor interface change is liked). So, we'll probably just go with what the community of editors has decided. David1217 ^{What I've done} 04:04, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Village stubs

Dr. Blofeld (talk · contribs) has been threatening to launch 15,000 articles about British settlements consisting of no more than "xxx is a village in Cumbria. ref =google maps". See user talk:RHaworth#Stubs. He seems to have modified this proposal somewhat but I would be interested to hear other editors views on how large a settlement needs to be before it qualifies for its own article here. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 21:39, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Mmm, well I don't think it was necessary to begin the message with a disparaging implication like "threatening". But yeah, that's pushing the envelope a bit. There was some similar activity in terms of auto-generating minor planet articles, which I don't think was necessarily beneficial. Perhaps it would be better if this low utility information was incorporated into lists instead? Regards, RJH (talk) 00:02, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

As a courtesy, I've left a note at Dr. Blofeld's talk page informing him of this discussion. 64.40.54.162 (talk) 00:34, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

In what way would such articles damage our mission as an encyclopedia? Phil Bridger (talk) 19:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm struggling to see how these are even stubs; it's one short sentence, followed by a link to a map. I don't necessarily have issues with mass-creating stubs with at least some information, but just saying "xxx is a village in Cumburia" with a Google map link doesn't give readers anything to work with at all. As to the size settlements need to be, I'll defer to people more familiar with classification of British settlements; I've seen such discussions take a couple different tacks, so I won't try to steer it myself. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

It is certainly useful to type the name of a place into Wikipedia and to find some information, rather than finding a red link. That could mean redirects to a list until enough information is available to create a article like the outcome of the minor planets, but there is no established minimum population or notability for settlement articles on Wikipedia. This practice goes back to the days of Rambot and the articles created from the 2000 Census data for U.S. towns. Rmhermen (talk) 15:23, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Again, I'm fine with some information, but what we're talking about above isn't even that. When I've created articles on places (c.f. Noh Poe) I include what I consider some information; a couple paragraphs about the significance of the place and what's happened there. I'd even be fine with less than that, but I need more than just "(insert name of podunk town) exists somewhere in (insert name of country)", because that doesn't really impart any substantial information. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:35, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

The practice we've been using at WikiProject Canada is to redirect these one-liners to an article about a county, township, town or city in which the community is located. For example, Glenville, Ontario redirects to King, Ontario#Settlements. See WP:CANSTYLE for details.I oppose the use of a direct link to Google Maps, as that circumvents the general mapping interface available through the use of coordinate data (that is, by using a direct link, you're forcing the reader to use a specific mapping service instead of choosing a mapping service).Mind matrix 00:37, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Google maps isn't a reliable source of English place-names. If he was citing Ordnance Survey he might have a case.©Geni 13:22, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I was patrolling new pages a day ago and I saw evidence of Dr Blofeld's work - he had created a large number of new articles about villages in Turkey. (I was puzzled because Wikipedia's notability criteria say to me that merely being a widget doesn't qualify for an article - it must be a notable widget, and that makes sense to me.) I don't have a problem with the names of all these villages appearing on Wikipedia, but the appropriate coverage is a list of villages in a region or country. When I create a new article I strive to ensure notability is comprehensively demonstrated, so I find it disappointing when I find others who see Wikipedia differently. Dolphin (t) 08:28, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

It's been discussed ad nausum before (I forget where the main large initial discussion was held). Many of us agree with you and feel that many of them could easily be redirected to a list articles. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:34, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

How are YOU going to celebrate the 4 millionth article

I'd like to find out how YOU are going to celebrate the 4,000,000 article so I can include something about it in the report. See #Article 4 million approaching above. Thanks. 64.40.54.45 (talk) 02:23, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Give some WikiLove to whoever created it! (And possibly some to the editors who created the 3,999,999th and 4,000,001st articles, so that they don't feel left out.) David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:14, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Is it even possible to single out one specific article like that? What if article 4mil turns out to be useless junk and gets speedied before the proverbial "ink is dry"? Roger (talk) 16:35, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

According to a WMF employee in the thread above, it "will be the first article to be created and not speedily deleted at a time when there are already 3,999,999 articles". David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:39, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Why gamble on the quality of a newly-created article? It's just sufficient to note that we passed the threshold without identifying the final addition to the heap. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:47, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

(ec)So it will only be identified an unspecified time after it is created - how long will WMF allow for it to be speedied or not? Rubbish stubs can exist for a substantial time before anyone notices and bothers to speedy it. If a notice was issued asking us to "check this shortlist of "4mil" candidates and please speedy the ones that deserve to die" we might be able to determine the "winner" quite quickly. Roger (talk) 16:52, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

@Roger, looking back through the main page history it seems that over the last 10 days, we been getting about 900 new articles per day. So a rough guess is that we'll be reaching 4 mil on July 14th or 15th. Somebody could post something at WP:AN or WP:AN/I to alert the admins that we're getting close in case they want to speedy the bad ones that show up. 64.40.54.156 (talk) 23:00, 12 July 2012 (UTC) Striking previous prediction. We'll hit 4 million later today with the help of Dr. Blofeld. 64.40.54.88 (talk) 11:19, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I will probably carry on the same as before. But then again, I've always been more interested in building up existing articles and adding meaningful information rather than worry about creating thousands of one-line articles with pretty infoboxes and navboxes merely for the sake of improving the "bottom line". --MuZemike 19:08, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

@MuZemike, I know I've become apathetic and jaded towards the project over these many long years. I'm an IP and I'm treated like an IP. I do this of my own free will because I don't want to be treated special I wish people would stop vandalizing the project and focus on improving our content, but the current situation is what it is. I'm happy the project exists and has become sucessful. I'm guessing it's worse for you being one of our most dedicated checkusers. You see the worst of the worst and I wouldn't be surprised if you've become disillusioned with people. The thing is, this event is going to be reported by the foundation and possibly in the media. That means it's an opportunity for us. I'd like to use this opportunity the say something good about the project because people like you and I put so much time in to it. I feel the general public should know about our efforts and I'd like to bring in more Good^TM people to help with the workload. So I'm looking at this as an opportunity for something good to happen. So my honest question to you is "Do you think we should report that most people aren't going to celebrate the event?" Because I do want to report something about the feelings of the community. Kind regards. 64.40.54.156 (talk) 22:15, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

That's a proper attitude for insiders, since the encyclopedia is on the whole more improved each time an old stub is merged than when a new one is created. Last new article I made was History of Harlem, for the usual reason that the parent had become too big. However, outsiders, that is almost all Wikipedia users, sometimes pay attention to big round numbers, so I hope a period of especially harsh vigilance by WP:New Page Patrol will quicklly winnow the usual flood of hopelessly trivial new articles to leave an arguably worthy four millionth. Jim.henderson (talk) 12:00, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Only 400 to go. Current stats shows 3,999,600 articles. Roger (talk) 12:28, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

300 to go now. So adding 100 articles took about 15 minutes. Roger (talk) 12:44, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

The average daily turnover is about a thousand new pages, so a net increase of 100 articles normally takes about two and a half hours. Given that there's a surge of article creation to make the four-million, it'll probably be over in the next couple of hours depending on how much ongoing deletion there is. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:01, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Less than 250 remain, last I checked. My teeth are trembling as the moment apporaches, and let's hope I launch the Buster & Chauncey's Silent Night page for a milestone too. (No, I'm really working on a long-overdue article with this title right now.) See you soon at DYK and GA! (Oh, and I'll get a screencap of you-know-where.) --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 13:06, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

The counter will surely hit 4 million during the current hour (before 14:00UTC). Now at 3,999,779 Roger (talk) 13:11, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Less than 100 to go now. Took a snapshot, all right! --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 13:56, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Missing my predicted deadline, the rate has noticably slowed in the last half hour or so. Roger (talk) 14:00, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Just missed it! Count is at 4,000,030 now. Roger (talk) 14:12, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

As I count using article counting method used in Indonesian Wikipedia, I think the 4,000,000th article is:

21:09, 13 July 2012 ‎Izbat Al Borg (hist) ‎[2,852 bytes] Meno25 (talk | contribs) (Creating)

Is it right? Kenrick Talk 14:16, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Please no! Not a bleeding one-liner! Roger (talk) 14:20, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Happy 4 million everybody. 64.40.54.88 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:23, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Whew! I wrote an article and clicked the Save button when there were 3,999,995 articles. Then instantly I took a look at new pages and saw another article related to my country which was created nearly at the same moment. Such an excitement! Reminds me those GET posts. Abdullais4u (talk) 14:20, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Th 4 millionth article is Izbat Al Borg according to chat on IRC. --Meno25 (talk) 14:22, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Do you say it because you created the page? Just kidding XD Abdullais4u (talk) 14:30, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, how do I see the log of the IRC chat? And why did you update {{Million milestones}} before asking anyone? Abdullais4u (talk) 15:43, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations!! -- Bustocco (Dimmi!) (Yiyi on it.Wikipedia) 14:31, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations from Italy!! --Erik1991 (talk) 19:53, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

A redirect is the 4 millionth article? How iconic. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:31, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Red dot map for Williamsburg, Virginia

Does anyone here edit those red dot maps that appear on every US city/county article? The one for Williamsburg, Virginia has been incorrect, indicating York County instead, since 2006. Asking on the article's talk page, the talk page of the user who made the map, and have not been fruitful. I haven't found any sort of centralized red-dot-map task force to complain to and lack the know-how to do it myself, so does anyone here edit the things or know how they're made? Thanks! Hiyayaywhopee (talk) 03:14, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Try the centralized red-dot-map task force, they are usually helpful--SPhilbrick (Talk) 14:37, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah, awesome. Thanks a lot. Someone else sent me another map that happens to be highlighting Williamsburg, but it would be great if this one could get fixed too. Hiyayaywhopee (talk) 17:08, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Phantom of the Opera

how does christine get hympnotized in the Andrew Lloyd Webber's edition — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.87.57.159 (talk) 05:52, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

If you can't find the info you want in any of the relevant articles or their external links, you could try asking at the Reference Desk. Rivertorch (talk) 06:21, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

disambiguation

In Wikipedia:Disambiguation dos and don'ts, there seems to be two paradoxical sentences. In the part "don't", it is written "Don't add entries without a blue link." It means we cannot add red links at all. On the other hand, the fourth sentence is "Don't add red links that aren't used in any articles." So we can add particular red links. Isn't it a paradox?Ali Pirhayati (talk) 19:56, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Logic-wise, I suppose it could include sentences that have both a red link and a blue link, as long as the red link is also in an article. But as soon as the red link turns blue, the other blue link would need to be removed. Excuse me, I have to go laugh at what I just wrote...

Regards, RJH (talk) 21:12, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

A list of Dos and Don'ts is not going to give you the full picture. You should read Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages. Generally people are discouraged from putting red links, but they're allowed in certain circumstances which are a bit too complicated to explain in a simple list. Every rule on Wikipedia has an exception, mostly. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:30, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Anecdotal AFT5 information

This is completely anecdotal, but one of the things I've gleaned from AFT5 is that a lot of readers come here looking for the wrong things. While many of these can't be changed (i.e. What is Barack Obama's phone number?), there are a number that are easily solved by our other projects. I've found many that asked for quotes of a person and similar things. Imagine someone wanted to read the text of The Raven. You need to scroll all the way under the sources to find the links. This might not be a problem for those who know other projects exist, but it is for those who don't. Maybe we should find a new location for those templates, the infobox might be appropriate. Otherwise, we need to do a better job of advertising our sister projects. Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:26, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm rather curious now. Where does one view the feedback received through the tool? Reso lute 20:16, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I wish there was an easier way to find it. Personally, I go to Talk:Justin Bieber and click view reader feedback at the top of the page. Then click See more feedback from other pages at the bottom of the Justin Bieber Feedback. (You don't necessarily need to use Justin Bieber, I just use it because I know it has the tool.) As I wrote this I learned that Special:ArticleFeedbackv5 takes you there. Ryan Vesey Review me! 20:23, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. And... oh dear god. Umm, this is undoubtedly better than the old tool, but man, I fear for anyone sifting through those comments for anything that is actionable. At any rate, on the topic you started, I wonder if adding a sidebar box above the foreign language links would give parallel links to Wikiquote and the like the kind of prominence you are looking for? Reso lute 20:28, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

The complete text of The Raven is in Synopsis, the first section after the lead. You see the first stanza, and can get the full text by clicking show. We can't do this for everything, due to copyrights, or the full text may not be appropriate for the article. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:35, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

On the "actionable" front, try the "most relevant" view :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:51, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Please help improve Birth control

Birth control is easy and very important to improve. Please see Talk:Birth control#Reviews on the topic in the Lancet this month through Talk:Birth control#Comparison. 75.166.200.250 (talk) 23:28, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Help decide about more than $10 million of Wikimedia donations in the coming year

(Apologies if this message isn't in your language. Please consider translating it)

Hi,

As many of you are aware, the Wikimedia Board of Trustees recently initiated important changes in the way that money is being distributed within the Wikimedia movement. As part of this, a new community-led "Funds Dissemination Committee" (FDC) is currently being set up. Already in 2012-13, its recommendations will guide the decisions about the distribution of over 10 million US dollars among the Foundation, chapters and other eligible entities.

Now, seven capable, knowledgeable and trustworthy community members are sought to volunteer on the initial Funds Dissemination Committee. It is expected to take up its work in September. In addition, a community member is sought to be the Ombudsperson for the FDC process. If you are interested in joining the committee, read the call for volunteers. Nominations are planned to close on August 15.

--Anasuya Sengupta, Director of Global Learning and Grantmaking, Wikimedia Foundation 20:00, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Fix here.)

Wikimedia France Research Award

Hi all,

Wikimédia France, a non-profit organization supporting Wikimedia projects in France, is launching an international research prize to reward the most influential research work on Wikimedia projects and free knowledge projects in general.

What is quite new about this award is that everyone can participate:

by ranking nominated papers to elect the winner (ranking is shared with the award jury).
by submitting important articles in this field of research for the Award.

Regarding the latter, we are now in the process of proposing papers and we'd appreciate if some of you can lend a hand.

If you consider a paper has been particularly important in the field of free knowledge/Wikipedia studies and must be taken into account, do not hesitate to submit it now! Please use this form

Deadline for paper suggestion is August 1st.

After that, the next phase is shortlisting nominated papers. The Wikimedia Award Jury will study all proposed papers to submit 5 papers to the final vote in September. The announcement of the winner is planned in November.

Please find all details here: m:Research:Wikimedia_France_Research_Award

If you have any questions, please use the project talk page m:Research_talk:Wikimedia_France_Research_Award

Thanks! --Rémi Bachelet (talk) 18:04, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Double-crested Cormorant

Intriguing question here we need opinions on - see Talk:Double-crested_Cormorant#Inclusion_of_colloquial_name_.22nigger_goose.22 (i.e. "nigger goose" wasa historical name - do we include or not, please discuss there) Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:57, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Best browser or settings for editing on an Android tablet

This is going to need a bit of WP:OR but having recently obtained an Android tablet to replace the aging laptop, I have been disappointed in the wikipedia editing experience on the tablet. I'm not sure how much is due to Android and how much is browser related but has anyone else found a good wikipedia editing browser? I like opera on my desktop, but opera mobile 12 seems to crash too often and lose text from edit boxes if I switch windows/multi task and then return ( it reloads the page rather than keep it in memory). I'm trialling maxthon at the moment but it seems slow and also seems to lose text easily. Finally, is there a skin/set of preferences that improves the mobile/tablet editing experience? The-Pope (talk) 02:37, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I have used both Dolphin and Google Chrome on my ASUS android tablet and both work good. GB fan 02:45, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Dolphin was next on my list. The parallel question (maybe more for WP:VPT) is when will the dedicated mobile app support editing, not just reading. The-Pope (talk) 04:23, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Alcohol Blood level chart

I read the blood alcohol level chart and it didnt make sense to me.In many times in my life i have had .5 alcohol blood level or higher,knew this from arrests in the past.And i didnt die, i think the chart needs to be a bit higher.Not here to brag or cause problems.Just a thought.I have quit drinking for the most part these days. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chucksteak60 (talk • contribs) 11:23, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

We do not give out medical or legal advice. For answers to factual questions, please try our reference desk. Your own experience is an example of anecdotal evidence, which is not appropriate for Wikipedia because we rely on citing "reliable" sources in the form of published information available elsewhere. The effects may vary from person to person; the table at blood alcohol content is probably an average of some sort. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 18:52, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I think...

... that there are too many templates in the english wikipedia. The german version is much better, they don't have the stupid stub templates. --93.82.2.91 (talk) 17:42, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Expand the article and simply remove the template. Problem solved. ;-) mabdul 18:05, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Stub sorting seems a harmless activity since the templates appear at the bottom of the page, so I can't begrudge the fact that there are so many of them. However, even with the sub-division into ever finer grades of stubbiness categorization, it's probably not having much of an impact on the actual article population. Most such articles can sit there for years collecting dust with a big mound of stub tags at the bottom. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:01, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

An article should be limited to 3 stub templates, perhaps we should reduce that limit to 2 to reduce the big mounds. Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:18, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

It seems like we should be able to use some type of multi-stub template and consolidate them that way. Perhaps there is a mechanism whereby passing the stub templates as arguments would cause the appropriate categories to appear, but not the text. Possibly it could parse out the information from the asbox-es and present it as a consolidated message. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:09, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

News alert: SOPA back for dessert

...in the form of the Intellectual Property Attaché Act (page does not exist yet). 68.173.113.106 (talk) 23:42, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Correction -- page does not exist with funky diacritics yet. (Hold on and I'll create a redirect.) This page totally exists. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:49, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I saw it. Thanks. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 00:52, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

The article needs more citations than simply 1) the original bill introduced into Congress and 2) an opinion blog. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 18:32, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

What fits into advertising?

I've read through Wikipedia essays and policies, including WP:BANNER, WP:ADVERT, and I want to ask a question. If I submitted an AfC, and I add a link to this, Village Pump, that leads to the AfC submission page in order to get a faster review from Wikipedians, is that considered advertising? If no, then please look at this: Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Wonderfl; if yes, please tell me why and how it is. Greek Fellows (talk) 08:47, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Your question appears to be about what we call WP:CANVASSING, not advertising. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, but canvassing is all about letting other users lean to one side of the discussion that is preferred by the canvassing user. But mine is not; it's just merely letting others see my AfC submission and not insisting you to have it created. Of course, I hope it is, though. :) Worst regards, Greek Fellows". Visit ma talk page and ma contributions. 04:04, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

AFC has been badly backlogged for a while now. Advertising your submission all over WP is unlikely to improve the situation. As a registered user you don't have to use it if you feel your article meets our basic standards. If it wouldn't be speedy deleted go ahead and just post it. If it would be that is all AFC is going to tell you anyway. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:21, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)In the worst case, such a move may be considered forum shopping, but usually it is not. As it is, WP:AfC is severely backlogged, and it would be helpful for there to be a way to get editors to review the articles faster. I must admit that I have never used AfC, but The Golden Rule is typically used to justify or decline the submissions, while articles on services and commercial products etc. are to be written without promoting it, see for example WP:COI - are reviewers welcome to edit AfCs to bring them up to par as we usually are with WP:GAN? ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 18:28, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you are allowed to improve AFC submissions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:29, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Unrequested password email

I'm not sure whether this is the right place to bring it up, but I received an email an email with a time stamp of about 9:30 p.m. US CDT (02:36 UTC) last night purporting to be from Wikimedia saying a password request for my account was requested from the Main Page at the English Wikipedia. The IP listed in the email (24.111.88.58) seems to belong to an ISP in the Dakotas and Minnesota, multiple states away. At the time of the email, the IP was in between edits regarding the the Penn State sex abuse scandal, for which the editor was blocked less than 15 minutes after the email was sent.[8] My only edit in that area was to Penn State Nittany Lions football, a day earlier, to fix dashes and the like. That article was not one the IP editor touched, and I don't know why the editor would have chosen my account since I don't appear to have crossed paths with that IP. Anyway, I'm not sure what if anything I should do; I doubt even changing my password would make much difference. Is there someone who should know about this? Is there any chance IP isn't involved? -Rrius (talk) 22:08, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

This is something that comes up once in a while. In fact I've gotten the same email a few times. What it means is that somebody thought we were stupid enough to set up a system that would email a user's password to anyone who asked for it without making sure they were entitled to it. It's not really anything to be worried about as there is no way they can get your password without hacking your email account first. As far as whether the IP is the same person or not, there's no way to know but it is a reasonable conclusion. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:30, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I didn't expect I was at risk, so sorry I wasn't clear. While I did want to make sure I wasn't ignoring or unaware of some risk, I was mostly wondering if there was some step I should be taking given that this seemed to be coming from someone who was editing (disruptively in fact) during the time the email was sent, and could therefore potentially be dealt with. After starting this thread (yeah, it should have been first), it dawned on me check the blocking admin's page. Apparently another editor who had recently edited a Penn State football page had the same thing happen, so the admin knows. As I said, I doubted there was actually any threat, but I was wondering whether someone needed to know for increasing the block for setting up an effort at block evasion or for some other reason. -Rrius (talk) 23:47, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Equipment exchange

I recently had an interest in donating my old camera to a contributor who will use it to produce free content. I've set up a new forum, commons:Commons:Equipment exchange, to facilitate requesting, donating, selling (at reduced cost), and bartering of items for free content production, including camera equipment, computer equipment, art supplies, and software. If you have any items you'd like to contribute, please add them, or just watchlist it if you're hoping to get access to some good equipment in the future. Thanks! Dcoetzee 23:52, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Review my userpage!

Hi. OK, I know this is a rather unusual topic request for the village pump, and I wouldn't want to pollute all your water supply, but...can somebody here do a userpage review for my userpage? I feel that the content is getting extremely cluttered, or perhaps unreadable, so I need other editors to determine whether my page is readable or presents a good view of Wikipedia editing. Overall, I'd like to attract new editors to edit Wikipedia, and soon I plan to refractor some parts of the pre-section into a box or user subpage, as well as provide new interfaces, such as user-generated examples on how NOT to edit a Wikipedia article, which I have been planning for over four months, possibly more than a year, but which I never got to. Thanks! ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 18:05, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I would also welcome formatting suggestions. In the extreme emergency that my post is not appropriate, please indicate on my usertalkpage. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 18:06, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, your userpage is an overcomplicated mess and it is unlikely anyone would bother reading the whole thing. Luckily userpages are the least important aspect of Wikipedia. I ran you through X's edit counter and it looks like you have a very healthy mix of edits, with almost half your edits being to actual articles. Your focus is already where it should be, I wouldn't worry too much about your userpage. Easiest thing you could do to make it less cluttered would be to remove large portions of it or use {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}} to hide them. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:18, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

You can use subpages to good effect too. Rich Farmbrough, 04:10, 25 July 2012 (UTC).

There used to be a page of "good" designs of User pages which usually was worth stealing a few ideas from. Anybody know where that is? Rmhermen (talk) 21:41, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

The page you are thinking of is Wikipedia:User page Hall of Fame. — Senator2029 • talk 07:14, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Bot recognition

The BBC has run a new article on Wikipedia: Meet the 'bots' that edit Wikipedia. Although it perhaps treats admins a bit too highly, I think this may be the article with the fewest errors about us that I have ever read. And a nice shout-out to all the poor forgotten bots that keep us running so smoothly. Rmhermen (talk) 21:40, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

And they mentioned the Rorsach test controversy here in this article. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:38, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Apparently, the love between us and the BBC is mutual. Mildly concerned about how much youtube and facebook appear in that graph, though. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:29, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Cited Sources

Trying to confirm the YouTube "sources" (and my suspicion that they've counted all external links, not just ones from <ref> tags), I started with an External links search from Special pages, but it includes all namespaces :-( Is there an option to limit the results to the main namespace? Mark Hurd (talk) 08:29, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually the website the above data is from, webempires.org, has its own drill-down details, such as for YouTube here.

On checking a couple of the YouTube references they are (presumably) valid video references, where as at least one of the Facebook "references" seems to be just an "External Link" (since deleted), although another was (again presumably) a valid reference. Mark Hurd (talk) 10:43, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

World Peace Machine Almost Available - Looking for advice

I have a vision for a new social site designed to streamline dialogue so that thousands of people can come together to draft their own legislation. I have no technical training or experience in designing webtools, nor any funding to contribute to people who do have these skills, but I do have a 12-page description of exactly how I see it working that I am willing to share with anyone who wants to make it work and will email to anyone who wants a copy. I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to post the entire description as a proposal for a Wickimedia project or not, and because I have no idea how to build it myself I'm a little afraid of my vision being lost and of not being part of the final project. I don't mind if other projects pop up however similar or different using parts of the idea, but I really want an intact version of the vision to come to life; I really believe it can change the world (and I really want it to). Any advice for an un-technical person with an idea like this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shielding C (talk • contribs) 10:34, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

You might want to submit this as a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. It's not really something to include in an encyclopedia until it has been reviewed and commented on by others. Best regards. 64.40.54.164 (talk) 02:13, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Better to post it as a page on Meta (meta.wikimedia.org) and provide a link from here. Someone may decide that it can be used beneficially to drive a new project. Possibly elements may be retrofittable to Wikipedia's rules creation process. Rich Farmbrough, 17:33, 23 July 2012 (UTC).

Is this a suggestion for global democracy, and would the existence of said website come under its own legislation? See also WP:PGLIFE. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 18:35, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

It is a suggestion for global democracy - or rather, an internet-based direct-democracy tool that people around the world could use in almost any scenario requiring group collaboration. The vision is for the website to be governed by its own efficient direct-democracy system, allowing members to weigh in on any and all decision-making of interest to them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shielding C (talk • contribs) 16:15, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Websites that use WIkipedia material without cc

Hi

Is there any policy/set of procedures about websites that use Wikipedia material and do not say it came from us?

For example the site rtbot.net uses pages and changes the links to almost mirror Wikipedia (including saying "© 2012 RTBot.net"), but there is no mention that their info comes from us, nor can I find any mention of attribution, or even a thank you!

There are other places I have encountered this sort of thing, but after leaving a post and no-one answering it (Originl post about YouTube), and then finding this rtbot site, I thought maybe a wider audience might know.

How should we deal with this? Do we mention it to them and ask them to include something, do we take it somewhere on wiki, is there an agreement with them, do we even care?

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 04:23, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

There's some information on the topic at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks, including a list of known mirrors, I'd start there. Haven't dealt with it myself so I can't provide any useful guidance, but hopefully the link will help. --j⚛e decker ^talk 05:00, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Time to do away with "no spam email" gimmick?

Background information:

So, in order to discourage spambots this little trick is used so that copy/pasting certain email addresses doesn't work. Taking the functionaries as an example,

if you open the edit window you see this: {{NonSpamEmail|functionaries-en|lists.wikimedia.org}}.
On the actual page you see this:functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org
If you copy that and paste it into your email address bar you get this:functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org. No @ sign, and thus your email will not go through.

It was suggested at the oversight talk page that we make it more clear that copy/pasting will not work, but I am more in favor of the suggestion made in the discussion at Commons that we just stop doing this altogether. Spam gets into the queues already anyway, and it is extremely simple to remove it by clicking the "one click spam" button. If we get inundated by spambots to the extent where we can't click that button fast enough to delete it all we can reconsider. Thoughts? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:15, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Until a decision is made, we may wish to add a statement above the email addresses in question that copy/paste will fail. I don't think we need consensus for this as it is just a 'bug' notice. I would do it boldly as done in commons but the page is fully protected.--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:26, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I've notified the functionaries, the arbcom, and OTRS of this discussion. If anyone knows of any other uses of this please notify them as well. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:29, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/General_requests#Email_failures I mentioned it at meta as well. I hope I found the correct forum.--Canoe1967 (talk) 22:02, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
Template:Di-no permission has a clickable email that opens Outlook Express for me. Does anyone know how long this has worked and can we make the others do the same?--Canoe1967 (talk) 01:47, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
That's just a hard-coded external mailto: link. No attempt at avoiding spam. IMHO keeping some spam avoidance is worth while because you'll open up the emails to the simplest of screen-scraper email harvesting. At least with an image @, it needs a human, or a rather directed algorithm, to see/adjust the emails as valid. I'd simply include a tool-tip over the @ (or the whole email address) pointing out the @ won't be copied. Mark Hurd (talk) 02:23, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
A couple of further thoughts:
- Perhaps part of the problem is the image looks too much like the @ sign, so, like the concept of "(at)" as an image, but just using a hand-written @ or one using a very different font from the normal one would be a better option.
- The emails that should be easy to use and the spam possibility has been considered as worth the chance of missing emails should still use an email template, but with a "spam=ok" option so that (1) scraping the edit text doesn't work and, more importantly, (2) it is clear spam avoidance has been considered and overridden. Mark Hurd (talk) 03:27, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

i'm thinking we may need to open an RFC or something about this as this post has attracted too little input to determine a consensus. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:02, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Help with back log

I need help with Category:Biography articles without living parameter. I did more than 40,000 pages using a bot but the rest need human attention. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:23, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

The first three I looked at were all in Category:Year of death missing. Isn't that a reliable sign that the article subject is not living? -- John of Reading (talk) 08:31, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

OK. I am going to do this part with the bot. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:37, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

When there is a Year of death missing, it is better to replace with xx-th century deaths if the century of death is known. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:38, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I did that. 560 pages left. any more good ideas? -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:06, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Now down to 465. From the ones I've deal with I think we're down to human attention - confused/missing cats on the main article, cases where the talk page points to an article with a different title (for good reason) and the like. I've noticed several cases where missing/unknown date was used in place of missing/unknown year- but can't suggest any safe way for a bot to handle. I' ll keep pressing on, though I'm out today with a local conservation group and so will be away from a computer until this evening. -Quiet Editor (talk) 06:33, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Now under 400. I'm chipping away at the old ones, but more help would be appreciated. A steady incoming stream from the 2012 Olympics also coming in.Bot/human assistance on those would be particularly appreciated. --Quiet Editor (talk) 19:46, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

New tool to help find topics for editing

Our research team has just launched a new tool that recommends Wikipedia articles to edit based on news that you're interested in. Most news sites have Twitter or RSS feeds that update as new articles are published. wikiFeed (our tool) invites editors to put in their preferred news sources' Twitter or RSS feeds --- from politics to pop culture, or whatever --- and finds the most relevant Wikipedia articles to edit based on that content.

We're trying to conduct a study on how well wikiFeed works, and so we'd encourage anyone to sign up and try it. Discussion and feedback is welcome, and if the tool is useful for editing, please feel free to use it as you like.

Here's our website, where you can sign up and use wikiFeed:

http://wikistudy.mathcs.carleton.edu

Thanks for your help. WorldsApart (talk) 19:20, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

The Keyhole

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

not related to Wikipedia
Hi guys, if any of you play Kingdom Hearts, please help us edit the Keyhole, (kingdomhearts.wikia.com), one of the largest databases of KingdomHearts materials. We're dying, and could use help. Thanks! Subzeroflames (talk) 21:56, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to the Village Pump. This set of pages is used to discuss the technical issues, policies, and operations of Wikipedia. It is not a place to recruit users for other websites, espescially those not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation. Thanks for your understanding.Beeblebrox (talk) 22:06, 1 August 2012 (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.

Comment neutrally on prod?

In Category:Proposed deletion-related templates, a see templates to de-prod or to endorse a prod, but none to comment neutrally on a prod and add information. Am I missing something? - Jmabel | Talk 05:48, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Normally, the article's talk page is the best place to put in comments regarding the proposed deletion. Moreover, I fail to see why a template is necessary to comment neutrally on a PROD – just make your comment(s) on the talk page. --MuZemike 07:27, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Talk page is where I went; it's just that I can imagine someone seeing 2 PRODs, not noticing extensive discussion on a talk page, and deleting. - Jmabel | Talk 16:43, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

The assumption might be that if there's even so much uncertainty over the PROD that additional neutral information needs to be added about the issue concerned, then it's not uncontroversial enough for PROD, and the PROD template should be removed. (Followed by procedurally nominating it for AfD, if you like.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:36, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Besides using the talk page, I think it might not be unreasonable to add a comment to the prod template (on a new line) using something like the {{TakeNote}} template, then sign it. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:55, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Where can I find wikimania videos?

Have no idea where else can I ask this question.

Thanks in advance :-)

95.167.125.206 (talk) 07:02, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

The last I heard, it was going to be a couple of weeks before the videos would be uploaded. But somebody else probably has more recent info. 64.40.54.25 (talk) 15:03, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm guessing that videos will eventually end up at commons:Category:Wikimania 2012 and somewhere on wm2012:Main Page at some point. 64.40.54.10 (talk) 13:35, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Core contest....

With 250 quid (my damn Aussie keyboard lacks a "pound"symbol...) in amazon vouchers for prizes, get out yer library books...Wikipedia:The Core Contest is a-coming, and have a very literal, verbose, syntactic and referential August, starting on the Horses' Birthday....cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:13, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Alt+156? £? FWIW...♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:41, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Option-3 on a Mac produces £. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

From the editor, choose the 'Special characters' tab, click 'Symbols', then £ is on the fourth row down. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:03, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

dead mans shoes

I don't get this movie at all. How would the brother know who or how many people caused the other brothers death. At the very beginning the one who is supposedly dead points out one who did it. How is that possible?! He points out who caused his death?!? Hes dead!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.116.146.62 (talk) 10:42, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

This is not the best place for your query. Why don't you try the humanities reference desk? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 10:49, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually the Entertainment Reference Desk is the correct place. (Just mentioning for future cases) Roger (talk) 19:03, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

homepage problem

I hope this is the proper place to post about this problem. Lately, it appears that the homepage has been loading out of alignment and it is getting worse. It now shows the main logo with surrounding wiki links all pushed to the left side of the page. Everything below that is fine (for now!). NorthernThunder (talk) 01:31, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

At first I thought you meant the main page, but now I see this must be it. That is odd, but I am frankly unsure whose page that is. It is not part of the English language Wikipedia specifically, it kind of belongs to all the various projets, and none of them. I hate to say it but the this may need to go through Meta Wiki. This seems like it is up their alley. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:59, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

@NorthernThunder, you can report problems with the www.wikpedia.org page at meta:Talk:www.wikipedia.org template. Cheers. 64.40.54.122 (talk) 11:34, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Enderta

The Enderta disambiguation page consists of two definitions of Mugulat, places in Ethiopia. This seems to be wrong, but I am unsure what should be done. Please help. --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:31, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

It appears to have been vandalized (back in April!). I have reverted to the proper state. Chris857 (talk) 00:37, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Making an information page

In June, I noticed the usefulness of WP:PSCOI and decided to replicate it in the field of non-free content. I created WP:PSNFCG, which is somewhat bare-bones right now, but IMHO good enough to be useful. I initially tagged it with {{essay}} since I didn't feel qualified to use {{information page}}. But now I'd like to "upgrade" it to an information page, and I'm wondering what the process consists of... if any such process even exists. Does anyone have any advice on this? Can I just tag it, or is that presumptuous of me? --N Y Kevin 05:22, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

If you were trying to make it a guideline or a policy you would certainly need consensus, but if the purpose of the page is purely informational I think you can just go ahead and tag it as such. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:55, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Done 64.40.54.122 (talk) 11:18, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

For future reference, the documentation at Template:Draft proposal explains how to go about proposing new guidelines and such. -- œ ^™ 06:13, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Query to experts on the history of Wikipedia

Almost certainly, there were several cases of gross misconduct of an administrator which did not result in his/her demotion or personal sanctions, at least did not result in a reasonable time. I am not interested in recent conflicts (of 2012), because it is impossible to assert that sanctions never followed. Please, email me such links, both Wikipedia links and off-site. Conflicts in English Wikipedia only, and a misconduct only by sysops or higher. And I call for a correspondence from established users only, not anonymous nor sockpuppets. I promise not to reveal sources of such hints. Thank you, historians. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:55, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

What do you intend on doing with this information? -- œ ^™ 06:21, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

To use in cross-cultural studies. I seek for evidences that English Wikipedia has a higher level of personal responsibility than an average WMF project with comparable activity. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:53, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

What exactly constitutes "an average WMF project with comparable activity"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:45, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I mean several (few) top wikipedias and Wikimedia Commons. Not Meta.wiki. Do I miss something really active? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:59, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

External sites may be increasing editors

I recently noticed that the facebook Wikipedia mirrors contain a link to edit Wikipedia. Is it possible to encourage more sites to do that? Ryan Vesey 12:41, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Please don't! There is already a stream of posts at the Help Desk about Facebook mishandling/mutilating WP information. So much that there is a standard reply template saying "This is Facebook's fuck-up, not ours". Please don't make it even worse. Roger (talk) 13:31, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Right. I don't think we want to encourage social networking sites to edit. What we really need is a direct edit link on university websites! Or websites of academic organizations and the like. We'd just need to be careful of WP:OR but either way that's a given. -- œ ^™ 06:56, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Why don't we want to encourage people who find it on a social networking site? Ryan Vesey 14:33, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Isn't it Wikipedia policy to try and attract more editors?[9][10][11]etc --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:29, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

External site redesigning Wikipedia

See [12]. Can we hook these guys up with the usability team? --N Y Kevin 18:45, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

If they are willing to do so for free, I'd like to see their comments on the main page redesign proposal and the Athena project. Ryan Vesey 18:49, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm not that impressed with this work. It actually shows that they didn't do a lot of research into what Wikipedia is or how it works (for example, there is no way to view the history of a document - they decided that the "history" button should show your browsing history).

We see stuff like this from time to time where a design firm wants to pad out their portfolio. The proof is in the pudding, though, which comes from research and understanding.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 19:02, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

They do have (real) history. It's under the edit tab, since readers are unlikely to use it very often. --N Y Kevin 19:31, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The fact that they don't understand Wikipedia from a technical point of view doesn't mean they won't be able to give advice from a graphical point of view. I would welcome their comments/suggestions, if they created some ideas we actually used, I'm assuming they'd be happy enough with a WMF press release acknowledging them. Ryan Vesey 21:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Ryan, you may be interested in this.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I haven't read your most recent link yet, but I reviewed the external sites design again. There are a lot of problems. We don't have the functionality to do the "history" and "quote" sections. They downplay the difficulty of creating a visual editor. I dislike their designs for the various sites. The emphasis of the search bar appearing on wikipedia.org discourages readers from going to the main page. Is disciplines a link to the portals? I like the term portals better. Ryan Vesey 22:52, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The most easy way to do as the OP asks would be to post on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Usability. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:06, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I can't get that page to load. 69.62.243.48 (talk) 22:31, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Same here. What is a 500 error? I accessed it earlier today. Ryan Vesey 22:43, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I can access it fine. Anyway can I get this as a skin? LOL. I like the design. The feasibility of the features however... unlikely. Maybe if we had paid legions of programmers like Google or Facebook or something. That said, I really like the map idea.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 22:49, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

If MediaWiki made sharing custom skins simpler then you might see a larger community of skins. Until then you're stuck with mw:Manual:Gallery of user styles and that slightly broken Black-green Wikipedia skin gadget. User:Dschwen and I are working on improving our existing mapping solution, m:WikiMiniAtlas. — Dispenser 17:59, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Nah, I can wait, heh. Re: skins, Jorm's link to Athena above (of which I was not aware of) looks even more interesting. And your map project even more so.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 22:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Whoa. It's functional! Why's it tucked away in a corner though? I'm betting the vast majority of editors (and readers) don't even know it exists.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 22:37, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Considering this is a fairly common occurrence both for Wikipedia and for any popular website, I thought I would provide some of the context in an essay on unsolicited redesigns. I think this helps explain why hooking these guys up with designers is kind of a fruitless idea, and why Jorm expresses doubts above. Steven Walling • talk 22:24, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Burma → Myanmar requested-move notification

Posted here to get as wide participation as possible for a potentially controversial title change.

A requested move survey has been started (by Marcus Qwertyus (talk)) at Talk:Burma, which proposes to move:

Burma → Myanmar

Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 23:29, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Charles Harris (cricketer)

A template in Charles Harris (cricketer) is seriously bad, but I do not know how to fix it. Please help. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:22, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Tassedethe (talk) 17:21, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. "Random article" on the menu sometimes shows a problem I cannot fix, but others can. --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:33, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

"The page as edited on..." isn't necessarily "as on" that date

Look at this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_F._Kennedy&oldid=142514287

Right at the top it says in a pretty pink box that

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 81.173.190.159 (talk) at 19:19, 4 July 2007.

But look down the page and you will find a set of links to all US presidents — including Barack Obama, who in July 2007 was merely a senator and a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination. Likewise there are links to Democratic Party tickets including Obama/Biden, and links to Democratic party conventions including Charlotte in 2012. An actual copy of the page as it existed in July 2007 would not — could not possibly — have included these.

The explanation, of course, is that these links all come from Wikipedia templates that are transcluded onto the page. The function of "oldid" is to select an older version of the main body of the page, but it doesn't affect what version of the templates gets selected.

For many purposes this may be good enough: in this case I suppose all those templates are only growing by accreting new entries at the end of each set of links. (But I don't know that, without checking their own history.) But with other templates this may not be the case; for example, the behavior of some options might have changed, or some explanatory text may have been removed. If Wikipedia's policy is that older versions of a page as it actually was should be available, then it's not being satisfied. At the least, the text in the pink notice box is misleading.

A second reason why an older version of the page might not match what an oldid link actually provides is if it accesses an image file that has been removed or edited. For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bay_Street&oldid=180218109

The way the page actually appeared on the indicated date of December 26, 2007, was that there was a second photo on the right. Now there's just a caption and a red link.

Now, I am not suggesting that Wikipedia needs to keep old versions of images available indefinitely, especially when (as in this case) they were removed due to possible copyright violation. I am not suggesting that Wikipedia needs to automatically access old versions of templates when accessing an old version of a page.

But I am suggesting that the wording of the "This is an old revision" notice should be reviewed, and that — if technically feasible — a way should be provided that makes it possible to access the page with old templates if that is what the user wants.

In addition, if a photo is no longer available when accessing an old version, perhaps a small generic notice could be placed at the position rather than just showing a plain red link.

Please think about it and do what seems sensible.

--142.205.241.254 (talk) 22:05, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

IMHO a good option here would be a new &asof=YYYYMMDDhhmmss parameter that does propagate into templates and files. Mark Hurd (talk) 19:10, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

harrisement

How do i stop a continous harriasement by this guy?????

from my talk page, "You are being offered another opportunity to engage in discussion about your disruptive editing.Novangelis (talk) 16:25, 23 July 2012 (UTC) After having ignored another discussion of your inappropriate talk page edits, there should be no reason for you to resume your advocacy. Please do not edit article talk pages if you are not attempting to participate in constructive discussions about improving that article. Complaining about policies is not article improvement and should be restricted to policy talk pages. (This is not an invitation for you to disrupt policy talk pages with non-constructive complaints in order to make a point.)Novangelis (talk) 03:33, 1 August 2012 (UTC)"

I am as constructive as i can be. he has a attitude that I am at odds with but i do believe that a page titled "controversy" should tell both sides. I am very busy and find little time for this but when I do I would like to be treated with respect. Is there anything i can do or is it a lost cause. Are the rumors that there are Wikipedia Gods that cannot be contested true?

If this is the wrong place where do i go? Quione (talk) 17:55, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Umm, would I be correct in stating that yours is a WP:SPA with a focus upon the topic of the alleged negative health effects of aspartame? In particular, you most recently posted that, "You are right on but the Wikipedia People have no interest in public health. They are single minded, Most likely they are being lead by a very rich industry, and refuse to consider any other opinions regardless of the source. The fact that they do this by invoking health issues to block sources that question aspartame is shamefull." Does that represent your position? Regards, RJH (talk) 19:20, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Harrisement: the act of dressing a person in tweed against their will. -- Derek Ross | Talk 22:38, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I thought it was deportation to Innisfree? -- Ian Dalziel (talk) 20:34, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Quione, please read Wikipedia:Dispute resolution in detail. You will want to follow the steps outlined therein. -- œ ^™ 06:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I went there and tried to register a Wikiquette Assistance but it did not work. It went nowhere. Quione (talk) 19:15, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

The Knowhere Guide

The page The Knowhere Guide was deleted in 2006 as it "does not meet the notability criteria of WP:WEB" at the time.

Now that its absence from Wikipedia has specifically been cited in this article in The Register critical about Wikipedia itself, has it now gained enough notability to warrant undeletion? Since 2006, it has also been mentioned in other news sources.

Not being an admin, I cannot tell what state it is in, though I'm willing to contribute content based on these news reports. cmɢʟee ☎✉ 19:00, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Not really anything worth restoring from the deleted version. If you want to try a rewrite, feel free but expect that someone will probably run it through AfD. It really doesn't look particularly notable to me but multiple reliable sources could tip the balance. Rmhermen (talk) 00:26, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Yep, another good example of how over-constraining WP:GNG really is. Mentions of the Knowhere Guide pop up in many places, but I only found one somewhat in-depth mention:

Ison, David (2005), The Vicar's Guide: Life and Ministry in the Parish, Church House Publishing, p. 178, ISBN 0715140159.

Maybe we need a supplemental Wikibook of reliable lore that doesn't satisfy WP:GNG?

Regards, RJH (talk) 15:24, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

In the news: Mitt Romney is semi-protected

BBC has published it: "The Wikipedia pages of US presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other members of the Republican party who may run alongside him have been locked down." Let's see if the remaining semi-protected pages get the same coverage :) Have fun! --NaBUru38 (talk) 00:06, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

What I don't get is "...Virginia Tech massacre, in which 32 people were killed at an American college, is fully protected..." It hasn't been semi-protected since 2011, and had full protection for only a couple hours in 2007. Chris857 (talk) 00:22, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I talked the journalist through to Special:ProtectedPages and her eye lit upon that one, even though it's only the redirect that's protected. And List of Hannah Montana episodes also caught her eye - David Gerard (talk) 22:47, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Metro papers in Canada had a story (from the AP) last week about how candidates for both parties had their articles semi-protected. IIRC, Stephen Colbert was involved, which is why it became a story. Reso lute 01:36, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

To cap off the story, Micah Sifry acknowledges that the notion basically didn't work at all this season :-) - David Gerard (talk) 11:09, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Promotional userpage

Please see: commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:David Allen Frazee.jpg

User:Dashfrazee is an userpage that can be seen as promotional and might be against userpages policy in this Wikipedia. The author has no other contributions out of his own userpage.

Please check if this issue needs to be addressed according to local policies.--Pere prlpz (talk) 12:43, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Klout now using presence/absence of a Wikipedia bio

Expect an uptick in vanity bios. From Klout's blog post:

Real-World Influence

Our long-term goal is to understand and analyze all the world’s influence, both online and offline. Today, we are entering the early stages of incorporating real-world influence into the Klout Score by integrating Wikipedia. We see a Wikipedia entry as a significant indicator of one’s ability to drive action in the real world. We’ve tested this method over the past several months and the updated Scores of recognized world leaders like Barack Obama and Warren Buffett more accurately reflect their real-world influence. Go here to see examples of how Scores are being calibrated by these new inputs.

- David Gerard (talk) 10:51, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Arabic Wikipedia project drives up editors

See this Blog post. The Arabic Wikipedia drove up editor rates with a new pilot program m:Editor Growth and Contribution Program/Contribution portal - Phase 0. Ryan Vesey 00:34, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

More opportunities for you to access free research databases

The quest to get editors free access to the sources they need is gaining momentum.

Credo Reference provides full-text online versions of nearly 1200 published reference works from more than 70 publishers in every major subject, including general and subject dictionaries and encyclopedias. There are 125 full Credo 350 accounts available, with access even to 100 more references works than in Credo's original donation. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.
HighBeam Research has access to over 80 million articles from 6,500 publications including newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines and encyclopedias. Thousands of new articles are added daily, and archives date back over 25 years covering a wide range of subjects and industries. There are 250 full access 1-year accounts available. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.
Questia is an online research library for books and journal articles focusing on the humanities and social sciences. Questia has curated titles from over 300 trusted publishers including 77,000 full-text books and 4 million journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, as well as encyclopedia entries. There will soon be 1000 full access 1-year accounts available. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.

You might also be interested in the idea to create a central Wikipedia Library where approved editors would have access to all participating resource donors. Add your feedback to the Community Fellowship proposal. Apologies for the English message (translate here). Go sign up :) --Ocaasi (talk) 02:13, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Rename user

Asking administrators for help. Need to rename user Barrister on smth else (0 edition) because I want to create global account. TIA--95.69.206.48 (talk) 16:03, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

We have a special area for these requests at Wikipedia:Changing username. Just follow the directions on that page and you should get the help you need. 64.40.54.119 (talk) 02:07, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Okay then, thanks--95.69.206.48 (talk) 08:20, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Big N

Currently, "Big N" redirects to the variety store. Is there any hard/good/scholarly source that shows that a variety store was commonly referred to as such? Internet search shows mostly links back to Wikipedia. hbdragon88 (talk) 01:13, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Otciapofa

I found this article, to be precise, this version today on the back of NPP queue. I am not exactly an unexperienced user, but this article survived for 30 days. (I made a brief attempt to reference it, but it was unsuccessfull, since I could not find any reasonable sources in five minutes). Not that I want to blame anybody, but (1) does it qualify as the record shortest article which made it for a month; (2) is this normal; (3) what I am expected to do with it provided I can not invest an hour in research in a topic I have no competence? Leave it in peace, PROD it, bring it to the attention of a Wikiproject? Sorry for trivial questions, this is indeed a kind of new experience for me.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:56, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Most sources indicate that this was the name of a Muskogee town, but maybe that's just the same thing? You could always try to expand it.

Regards, RJH (talk) 22:21, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, expanding without sources is ... hmm ... I really do not know whether it was the same thing or not, really far from my expertise. Usually I indeed try at least to source an article.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:26, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems to be a place also known as Hickory Ground, which is on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Elmore County, Alabama. Fences&Windows 23:54, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I posted notes to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Alabama. Fences&Windows 23:59, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:53, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

User: Altairisfar has referenced it now. Reaching out to WikiProjects is often a good solution if your own searching is coming up blank or ambiguous. Fences&Windows 15:05, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Protection for sports athletes pages

The source is Yatchingworld.com Elaine bunting 20 things About Ben anslie which has no sources to state any of it is true88.104.135.120 (talk) 12:47, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

after taking a look at Ben ainslie wiki I realised their were mistakes in their and unreliable sourcing this is the case with most pages to do with sport I go on but I thought I must speak up about it now. So I changed the errors on his page and told the owner of the unreliable source it was partially wrong what she was saying. So can we have some sort of protection or someone to watch over like that robot bug thing thanks.88.104.135.120 (talk) 11:09, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

It was in his personal life saying he's dating marit bouwmeester but I can't find any official source to say they are88.104.135.120 (talk) 11:38, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I won't rest till something is done to stop this happening again88.104.135.120 (talk) 12:47, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The folks who protect pages can be found at WP:RfPP. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 13:53, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok I will do you think my case is enough to get it protected88.104.135.120 (talk) 14:02, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorted this the Ben ainslie page has been protected and other actions have been taken by me for false info88.104.135.120 (talk) 19:36, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

From Wikipedia talk:Meetup: a proposal for a "traveling meetup"

It's my first time to post in the English Wikipedia's Village Pump in the seven years that I've been here, so I hope I'm doing this right. :P

Anyway, I was randomly browsing around when I saw Wikipedia talk:Meetup. Around two weeks ago, an anonymous user posted there, suggesting that the community stage a "traveling meetup" or caravan of sorts. While the idea is indeed interesting (though I'm currently not in Europe), I wonder how other people here might feel about this? --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 16:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Use of Wikipedia text by other wikis without attribution

I wonder what our policy is about the wholesale copying of Wikipedia text by other wiki encyclopaedias without attribution? I recently came across this article at Mises Wiki and noticed that it appeared to be largely lifted from our own article on Full reserve banking. I looked for attribution to Wikipedia, and could not find it anywhere. Browsing through the other articles there, it appears to be a pretty general practice; they copy large amounts of text from our articles, and then apply a POV spin to it. Is this use allowed, or should we be doing something about it? LK (talk) 03:54, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

It's interesting looking at it. I even learned a new word "Austro-libertarianism". I was looking for their licensing info, and it is nowhere to be found, though on their 5 pillars page it says

"Mises Wiki is free content that any user can edit and any reader distribute. However, copyright laws must be respected, and plagiarism is not tolerated. Because all contributions are freely licensed, all of your contributions can and will be mercilessly edited and redistributed. As a result, no editor should think that he "owns" an article."

So perhaps a quick reminder might have some effect.

To directly answer your question though, I don't think that there is anything we can do about it, other than politely ask them to attribute Wikipedia. Perhaps if we got together everybody who contributed to an article, joined in a lawsuit and sued, we might get $10.37. You could ask the WMF lawyers, but do remember that they only can really give legal advice to the WMF. To editors they might be able to explain basic principles. Maybe we could take away their Media Wiki software? Actually, I don't think so. All the best. Smallbones (talk) 04:19, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I've added a disclaimer on the page, and in fact we do attribute most Wikipedia material, this one appears to have been forgotten. Sorry for that.

Perhaps it ought to be reminded that Wikipedia explicitly wants others to use its material and there's probably a trillion other places that copy everything and don't attribute it either (which doesn't excuse us, just to point it out). Then someone modifies the original text by inserting POV, following the original resources and adding others, and things start getting into grey areas.

But sorry for rambling; it is a small wiki and we are actually trying to rewrite and replace everything from Wikipedia, it just might take some time... :)

In general, we do have original content developed independently from WP. If you come across some notable omissions just drop me a line and I'll add the disclaimers where necessary. Pestergaines (talk) 05:46, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

In general, the first thing to do is to ask them nicely. As we see above, assuming good faith is often correct :-) - David Gerard (talk) 10:52, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Fantastic result. Thanks to Pestergaines, especially for pointing out the location of the licensing information. I hope nobody minded my attempts at humor. What follows is not an attempt at humor.

If I may extend this conversation to a related topic. Many people at WP are worried about declining editorship here. I think the A-L type of "fork" is a good antidote for this. Different folks, working on different 'pedias, even with different rules, but with compatible free licenses are free to operate in an editing environment that they consider to be best for them. Borrowing across 'pedias should be simple and quick (with some editing due to different rules of course), in effect making the whole complex one huge meta-encyclopedia (does anybody have a better word?). BTW this meta-pedia would be very stabile in its various forms, e.g. nobody could close it down for any reason (just a few of its parts) unless they close down the entire internet. About the only things now that I can suggest to make this happen would be explicit linking (e.g. in Wikipedia's left hand column (which would be controversial here), or at worst on talk pages) and easy borrowing/linking to Commons. The WMF might be able todo a better job pushing the free Media Wiki software, but they probably do an ok job now.

Maybe just talking about it a bit would help it to happen.

For a completely outrageous application of this idea, I suggest PRpedia. PR firms could borrow whatever they want from Wikipedia (with attribution of course), then fix it up however they want it. They might limit editorship to the firms involved or to their officially recognized PR firms and allow ownership of the articles (different strokes for different folks). This might allow Wikipedians to both borrow the content freely, AND to use it as a reliable source. The firms might take on the minimal cost just so a great pre-formatted Wikipedia article is ready to go, should any non-COI Wikipedia editor decide that their article is better than ours. I don't think they'd take on the minimal cost because they expect lots of folks to come read it directly - after all PR suffers from a certain lack of credibility. What they seem to want is to add some of their material to Wikipedia *because of our credibility*. But letting completely free access to editing by COIs is bound to reduce our credibility - Wikipedia might just become another PRpedia! Having the separate PRpedia and allowing non-COI editors to borrow their articles freely would certainly reduce that problem. Enuf said. Smallbones (talk) 17:01, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

There are several. MyWikiBiz springs to mind. They don't have the cachet, the reputation, or the search engine power that the English Wikipedia has. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Is the GDFL license compatible? It looked a bit clunky with link-back requirements. Frankly I couldn't find anything worth copying at MyWikiBiz with a 10 minute search. I think that's a good indication of the credibility problem. If you don't have any standards, then everything goes downhill, and nobody reads you. Smallbones (talk) 00:02, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

If content is created for the explicit purpose of being ported into Wikipedia by impartial editors, we have AfC and sandboxes for that and I think this is basically the right approach. If someone wants a Wiki-format article that performs ok in search, but they don't want to learn/comply with Wikipedia's rules, MyWikiBiz provides an alternative. A lot of small businesses that don't meet notability requirements could create informative and useful articles on MyWikiBiz that could still perform ok in search, without undermining Wikipedia's rules.

I guess what I'm getting at, I don't see it as problematic content on MyWikiBiz is not suitable for Wikipedia, but really that's what it's there for. User:King4057 (EthicalWiki) 19:55, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't see it as problematic either - for them. But I was suggesting above that it would be nice if there were multiple pedias out there that we could more-or-less copy freely (with reasonable checks and editing to meet our standards). User:WhatamIdoing suggested that MyWikiBiz might be one of these. I have to disagree with him - I wouldn't have any confidence in copying anything from there to here. It would take more time editing it properly than just starting from scratch.

As far as articles for creation and sandboxes, my only reservation is that we cannot verify that the company itself or their official PR agents have produced the material. Even if they state that explicitly on Wiki, how are we to know for sure? It seems to me, if they want to put out information, it's best that they put it out in their own names in places where we can verify where it came from. It might even work out that we can copy parts of an already-Wikified article as a reliable source. Wouldn't that be nice (with quotes if not modified by us, with checks and editing to our standards if modified by us)? AfC and sandboxes, of course have other uses, but reliable, direct-from-the-source, pre-Wikified material is not one of them. Smallbones (talk) 22:23, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

There are valid reasons for copying content from Wikipedia into other wikis, and I'll admit that I'm "guilty" of doing that more than a few times myself. Most of the situations where I've done that is for things like Wikia fansites where I've usually gone through the process of dewikifying the article (aka removing hyperlinks that are irrelevant) and sometimes adding things that may seem like fancruft to editors on Wikipedia (usually well justified I might add). Furthermore, many of those articles I put in hyperlinks that are proper in the context of that wiki and its database where adding those hyperlinks would be inappropriate here on Wikipedia. Generally it is just a small handful of articles that get copied over from Wikipedia and in the case of those fansite wikis such copied content is a stark minority of the site content, but it still can be very useful. A couple of those Wikia sites where this has happened are actually more popular than most of the Wikimedia sister projects, so it is not just a marginal activity either.

In the cases where I find such articles on wikis that I'm participating in (and sometimes acting as administrator) I go out of my way to include usually a hatnote or some other markup on those pages that clearly notes the content is derived from a Wikipedia article, and that is a practice I would encourage for other sites that perform a similar kind of content duplication. Even if you have added original content, it is still useful to note where the content originally came from.

I'll also note that in the early days of Wikipedia, a substantial amount of content was originally seeded from the public domain (aka no copyright) version of the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Yes, it was horribly out of date and the articles desperately needed to be cleaned up in terms of POV tone and other huge issues, but it did provide a basis for development of what we have today. On a rare occasion, I still do trip across such article that were created at that time, a few of which still haven't been fixed up I might add as well (mostly obscure topics that a 21st century reader isn't actively seeking on a regular basis). If you go into the back history of some of even the popular articles on Wikipedia, you may come across some of that original 1911 content as well (sort of fun to see how the articles have changed to do a massive page diff from 1911 to 2012).

I have no doubt that eventually Wikipedia will die as a project in the future, but I also think that in the 25th Century (or whenever it becomes an issue) what everybody is working on today will very likely seed such future compendiums of human knowledge just like Wikipedia has been gifted from a great many other sources to make what we have today. That many people are using Wikipedia to spread human knowledge should be viewed as a good thing. Failure to attribute and plagiarism in violation of the terms of the Wikipedia licenses is bad form, but conforming to Wikipedia licenses are pretty easy to do (since you don't need formal written permission to copy). --Robert Horning (talk) 21:36, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

"Even if you have added original content, it is still useful to note where the content originally came from". Er, no. It is a requirement that this is done. Then again, some other wikis seem to take a slightly 'creative' approach to the issue, even when the material concerned isn't even under a Creative Commons licence in the first place - e.g. this sort of thing:[13][14]. With things like that going on, regardless of what other wikis do with our content, we sure as hell shouldn't be trusting their content to meet the appropriate standards. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:50, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Copying a copyrighted article on copyright does take some cojones, so I won't accuse you of being grumpy ;-) As far as trusting somebody else's material, I think we do it all the time, within reason, and then cite it. More directly to the point, it's a question of can I A) just check the sources, remove doubtful material, add a bit of my own, and then polish it (sort of like editing Wikipedia, but more so)? or B) write the article from scratch? Or perhaps something in between? When it's possible, I'll take A) anytime. "Trust, but verify" might be the watchword here. But if the material isn't verifiable, of course you can't trust it. Smallbones (talk) 22:36, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll note that Wikimedia projects themselves haven't really been faithful in keeping to all of the terms of the various licenses, even when engaging in a transwiki effort to move content between various sister projects or even when page mergers have happened. Some admins are better than others at making mergers or think that a redirect is sufficient after content has been copied over and other various problems that have happened over the years. I could go on, but my point is that Wikipedia isn't perfect either. That a goal is in place to improve is certainly there, and raising standards is useful, be careful where you throw stones. Some of that was simply technical limitations due to weaknesses in the wiki software, but not always.

It is also a gray area when 80%-90% or even 99.9% of all of the content from the original source has been replaced and about the only thing left is the title of the article and maybe a couple numbers that can easily be derived from other sources. If the content has been gradually changed a sentence or paragraph at a time until it is completely different (or almost), is it still a derivative copyright that needs to be linked back to the "original" content that may not even be recognizable as the same? --Robert Horning (talk) 00:18, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Smallbones, my point was only that if a PR company wants to have "a wiki page" for a non-notable company, then there are options out there. I have no interest in porting the stuff back here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:01, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Misuse of content must be addressed by the original authors, if they wish to do so. See Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks#Non-compliance_process for the recommended process. I personally release all my contributions under CC0 and would never choose to pursue a content reuser. Dcoetzee 03:15, 27 August 2012 (UTC)