Wikipedia talk:Help desk/Archive 6

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Help desk. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Help desk regulars: please vote for bug fix

If you're a regular here you must have gotten edit conflicts many, many times. If you have you are likely well aware that when you get an edit conflict anywhere on Wikipedia, instead of being taken to the section you are editing with the conflicting text, the page expands to the entire page. This is a pain everywhere but especially on high traffic, large pages such as this one. Please vote for bug 4745 and let's get this fixed!--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:46, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Hey, is this considered canvassing? (j/k) Yes, this is a really really annoying problem, especially on this page. —Travis ^talk 14:57, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Very very annoying problem! Consider my vote

Done --The Helpful One ^(Review) 16:42, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Archiving of the Help Desk

OK, as the regulars should well know, the help desk is far too large. Therefore, we need to decide how many days of discussions should be kept on the page.

Now my proposal is a maximum of 3 days, too keep the size down. If users wish to look at other days, they can just look at the archives.

I think the easiest way to answer this is a discussion, and voting.

Discussion

You might also want to think about how transclusion figures into the archiving. Currently, the Reference Desks (whose archiver the Help Desk uses) keep three days, and transclude three more days. Currently (per this discussion, and see also here, here, here, and just recently here), the Help Desk keeps three days, and transcludes one day. Obviously there are a number of tradeoffs. —Steve Summit (talk) (operator of Scsbot) 17:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

As of now, 5 days are listed. --The Helpful One ^(Review) 17:49, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, good old fencepost errors. :-)

The way I think about it, when the bot runs, it leaves three full days showing, and one transcluded day. Then, over the next 24 hours, another day's worth of questions builds up. So the total varies between 4 days and 4.99 days. But yes, 5 individual day headers always show. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:59, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh yes, but 100kb is a lot to scroll down through, and for slow internet connections load. The archives are always there to be looked at if required. --The Helpful One ^(Review) 19:49, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the trick is allowing newbies the opportunity to find the answer to a question they might have asked a while ago. If they ask it on Friday and come back on Monday and it is archived could the find it easily? If it was possible it would be nice to have the list of dates and questions on the page (as they exist now) but on clicking on the date or question it takes you to a new page where the answers/discussion take place. Could every day have its own page? Similar to the AFD page except the questions are listed under the dates. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gtstricky (talk • contribs) 02:58, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Voting

Please indicate whether you are in favour, opposing or neutral for this decision. This will close when a consensus is reached.

Support

. As per my discussion above, as a 'nominator' for the voting. --The Helpful One ^(Review) 17:21, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
The help desk is now absurdly long: I think this proposal will reasonably trim it to a manageable size. Charlie-talk to me-what I've done 02:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, definitely - I find it's way too bloated - and most of the older discussions are rarely touched upon after three days anyway. Wisdom89 _{(_T / ^C)} 02:55, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, it really is too long how it is.--Sunny910910 ^{(talk|Contributions|Guest)} 03:00, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
It definitely is way too long. Maximillion Pegasus (talk) 16:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Support a cut by one day, so 3 days are displayed at archive time and it grows to 4 days before the next archive. I think displaying 48 hours right after archiving is too little. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:06, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes! This and bug 4745 hopefully should make the Help Desk load faster on my "high speed" (actually dial-up speed) internet connection. Xenon⁵⁴ 23:33, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
It would definitely make the help desk more readable.--TBC !?! 07:42, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree, my browser has trouble so many times loading the Help Desk because of the length of the size, the Help desk shouldn't be that too long, especially when the user who asked for help may have already seen the response straight away upon receiving the reply. Terra ^{What do you want?} 18:11, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I concur - the present situation is absurd. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Support. I shy away from helping at the help desk because it takes an absurdly long time to simply load so I can see what questions there are. Then, if there is an edit conflict, it crashes my browser as it tries to put the whole page in the edit box. -- kainaw ™ 19:48, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

While I agree that it's very long, the amount of requests is high, so there's not much that can be done. Shortening the already brief period of time that requests are showed on the page would do no good imho. After all, it's not *that* long, and with the section editing, there isn't a big edit conflict problem, I hope. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 23:15, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Is it too late for me to say that the current length of the Help desk hasn't been a problem for me? I have a cable modem connection, and usually I only need a few seconds to display the whole page. I might also mention that the question volume seems to have decreased since we added more instructions to Wikipedia:Help desk/Header (instruction "creep" is not always bad!). In particular, I think the {{Google help desk}} link may be especially effective, because it does answer a very large number of repetitive questions, and usually in the top search results. If we can continue to improve the tools that enable users to look up their own answers, as well as to shrink the size of our replies, the Help desk volume may shrink even more. --Teratornis (talk) 01:20, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Cancel. Sorry, vagued out – wrong desk. Julia Rossi (talk) 07:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Neutral

It makes almost no difference to me how far back the help desk is archived. As your humble bot operator, I will endeavor to implement whatever you decide here. :-) —Steve Summit (talk) 02:54, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Consensus

It maybe too quick to decide, but since opening votes on 2nd March, it seems everyone that it a help desk regular agrees. Is it too quick to decide yet? The Helpful One ^(Review) 20:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, even before you'd posted that, I'd already decided that it was time to at least start moving in that direction, by knocking off one day. When I ran the archiving bot just now, it was with a new set of parameters:

	transcluded	normal	total
once upon a time	3 days	3-3.99 days	6-6.99 days
recently, through yesterday	1 day	3-3.99 days	4-4.99 days
now	1 day	2-2.99 days	3-3.99 days

We can see how that looks for a couple of days, and then if people want to, we can defy PrimeHunter's concern and knock off another. —Steve Summit (talk) 05:20, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe we can try to direct some of the posts to other pages? Wikipedia:New contributors' help page is not linked from the help desk and gets few posts. Wikipedia:Editor assistance is not linked and gets few posts at Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Using Templates

Has there been any discussion regarding using templates to answer some of the routine questions? Maybe for questions that need to go to the reference desk or questions on a specific article topic (Why is Bush president still?). Gtstricky^{Talk or C} 15:18, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Templates are used. See Wikipedia:Help desk/How to answer. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:30, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Dang... I knew I had a good idea :) Thanks Gtstricky^{Talk or C} 15:32, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I have suggested making the use of templates on the Help desk self-documenting by changing the standard response template styles to make them look like messageboxes, and by putting v-d-e links on them (as are common on many navigation templates). Since most volunteers learn to answer questions by reading the answers by other volunteers, the use of standard response templates that look like messageboxes (rather than original replies) would be a useful training tool. Someday I may actually get around to making some examples to show what I'm talking about. --Teratornis (talk) 00:48, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Bully/Canis Canem Edit Page Concern

Hey, I am nearly constantly looking at the page : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_in_Bully to find out about characters and who they are to write things and recently everything was deleted. Now the character descriptions are gone and I'm a bit upset. Does anyone have any answers as to what happened or why it happened? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iluv-garysmith-bully (talk • contribs) 19:19, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what you refer to. I see lots of character descriptions in List of characters in Bully. Try bypassing your cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:05, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

URL in reference

Hey, I figured out how to do a journal reference of an article, but not how to put the link in the footnote of where you can get the article on the web. I see a lot of stuff in other people's references like: |pmid=16754896 |doi=10.1503/cmaj.051688} at the end. I am totally confused. What on earth is that. I am guessing that it is the link because next to each foot note there is a link, but how you put it in is beyond me. HELP! --Saritamackita (talk) 20:02, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

See the documentation at {{Cite journal}} and the linked pages about pmid (PubMed Unique Identifier) and doi (digital object identifier). There is also an ordinary url parameter. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Questions about Wikipedia at Yahoo! Answers

Another editor has noted (at the village pump) that Yahoo! has a page for questions and answers about Wikipedia, and (more importantly) that the answers aren't particularly good.

Perhaps some editors who help out here at the help desk would be willing to register at Yahoo and then provide good answers in that forum? (If so, I'd advise against answering general questions like "Do you trust WIKIPEDIA???", and focusing on questions by editors about how to edit.)

It would also be nice, when answering questions at Yahoo, to provide a link to WP:HD, saying that Wikipedia also has a great internal place to get questions answered quickly and well. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Decrease in question volume?

Does it seem to anyone else that the recent "instruction creep" at the top of the Help desk (specifically, in: Wikipedia:Help desk/Header) has resulted in fewer questions on the Help desk? I suppose if I were not as lazy as I am, I could examine the history of the Help desk header, which has grown and shrunk in instruction content more than once, and see if the volume of instructions correlates inversely with the number of repetitive questions on the Help desk. In particular, I know the Search the Help desk link (which has been on the Header since February 17, 2008) does answer many common questions; for example: how to clear search history comes right up with good answers in the top results. If some fraction of users are actually searching the Help desk archive before asking, they can find answers to many repetitive questions, and it seems this might be working to some extent. The WP:CREEP guideline rather boldly posits that "Nobody reads instructions," but maybe some people actually are reading them. (I don't consider instruction "creep" to be a bad thing; rather, I consider our collaborative editing of instructions to be the basis for Wikipedia's success. We continually add new instructions and improve our existing instructions. Instructions that solve no problems will tend to get weeded out.) It's something to think about, anyway. If nothing else, I guess I'm calling for a little more empirical rigor to back up all the edits to Wikipedia:Help desk/Header - we should try to evaluate the effectiveness of adding or removing instructions. Unfortunately, we cannot tell how many users are able to look up their own answers, because they don't tell us. We only hear from users who got stuck. --Teratornis (talk) 01:11, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Teratornis, all of Teratornis's facts probably have little affect by themselves, but all together there seems to be a drop. I don't consider it bad, yet getting help from a Homo Sapien is usually more comforting to someone who needs help. Ok, DarkZorro 18:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Email addresses, urls

I've just been deleting email addresses from the help desk, but realised people are answering without bothering to edit these, and there seem to be heaps left visible. Is it still the case that emails and urls are deleted as per wiki policy? Julia Rossi (talk) 00:35, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

E-mail addresses, URL's (if they don't pertain to the question) and other personal information should still be deleted. Xenon⁵⁴ 01:05, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that Xenon54. I left one because the answer contained it. Will continue to clean up as and when then. Julia Rossi (talk) 03:41, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Backlogged at all?

I was thinking of diving in to answer some questions, but not if you've got more than enough people to answer questions. What say ye? VanTucky 00:24, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

If you feel you can offer a helpful comment, or you feel somebody missed something relevant, please, feel free to provide it. Cheers. Wisdom89 _{(_T / ^C)} 00:26, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, you are welcome to but I don't think we lack for people right now and actually, we seem to have had a noticeable slowdown recently (I think all the regulars would agree and also look a few posts up). If you want an assistance forum that really needs more helpers, take a look at WP:EAR. These are often far more involved than the questions we get here, requiring the handling of sticky situtations—content disputes and the like.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Help desk/How to answer and note that many posters are new and don't know the right terminology and relevant things. You often have to look at their contributions to give a helpful answer. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:43, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Even if a question already has a technically correct answer, sometimes you can teach the questioner a little more:

See if you can find previous instances of the question in the Help desk archive (use {{Google help desk}} to search). If you find that the question has come up before, showing how to find it may teach the questioner (and everybody else reading the Help desk) how to look up answers to future questions. Most people aren't in the habit of searching for answers first, so they need to see this over and over again to develop the habit. (Teach them to fish, rather than just giving them one fish.)
Some answers are correct, but they don't have enough links on their Wikipedia-specific jargon. (Partly this is due to the frequency of edit conflicts on the Help desk - some volunteers may type their answers quickly and save them, before looking up references for all the jargon terms, because taking too long to edit an answer almost guarantees an edit conflict). Experienced Wikipedians have their own cant, and may forget that the new user doesn't know much of it yet. So if you see a reply that uses terms such as "history," "contributions," "template", "talk page", "article", etc., and those terms don't have links to pages that define the Wikipedia-specific meanings, you can help the questioner by adding a line like:
See Help:History, Help:Contributions, Help:Template, Help:Talk page, Wikipedia:What is an article?
Be alert for possible ambiguities in questions, and the possibility that other volunteers have fixed on one interpretation of the question, while igoring other plausible interpretations. Also note that some questioners will ask how to do something, but what they are asking how to do may not be the most efficient path to their real goal. See How to ask questions the smart way to understand how many people don't.
- Sometimes a question is so ill-posed that it's a puzzle just to figure out what a person is asking for. Here's an example where a user typed an extremely vague question, and formatted it incorrectly, as if it was a follow-on question to the previous question.

--Teratornis (talk) 17:05, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

KURDISTAN- THE UNFINISHED DISCUSSION!

I WOULD LIKE SOME MORE DEFINITE ANSWERS ON THIS TOPIC THAN JUST MERE OPINIONS OF BACK AND FORTH DISCUSSIONS ON THE EXTENSIVE CONTRAVERSY OF THE KURDISH PEOPLE RELATED TO THE PKK,PUK,PJKK, TURKISH GOVERNMENT, AMERICAN GOVERNMENT, IRAQ-IRAN, ETC. MANY PEOPLE POSTED THEIR OPINIONS AND SUPPOSEDLY FACTS??? ON HERE AND I AM JUST TRYING TO FIND SOME OBJECTIVE ANSWERS ON DOING MY HOMEWORK FOR A PRESENTATION ON THE KURDISH PEOPLE FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME UNTIL THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, ATTATURK ERA, AND POST WAR TO THE CURRENT CONFLICTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

PRETTY EXTENSIVE HUH!

IT'S VERY FASCINATING TO HAVE BEEN READING ON THESE TOPICS AND TALKING TO PEOPLE AND JUST SEEING EVERYBODY JUMP OFF THEIR SEAT EVERYTIME I SAY THE WORD "KURDISTAN".

NOT EVEN THE WORD "BIN LADEN" CAUSES THAT ANYMORE THESE DAYS.....

I ONLY FOUND ABOUT 3 DISCUSSIONS ON THAT PAGE THAT SEEMED CLOSER TO HISTORICAL FACTS. THE REST WERE FULL OF FEELINGS...

ONE THING THAT HAS CAUGHT MY ATTENTION IN ALL THIS HAS BEEN TO FIND HOW THE ORIGIN OF THESE PEOPLE "THE KURDS" HAVE MANY VERSIONS. FROM A BIBLICAL POINT OF REFERENCE THE KJV TRANSLATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENTARIAN BIBLE MENTIONS THEM AS A PEOPLE FROM THOSE YEARS(SORRY I AM NOT THE BEST PERSON TO QUOTE YEARS).

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM EDUCATED AND WELL INFORMED INDIVIDUALS ON THIS SUBJECT.

AS A PIECE OF ADVISE TO THE IMPULSIVELY INFORMED PLEASE SPEND SOME TIME LIKE I AM WITH ABOUT 11 BOOKS ON KURDS TO POST WELL INFORMED FACTS!

THANK YOU FOR RESPONDING.

I AM A FIRST TIME USER ON THIS SO PLEASE BEAR WITH ME!

THANK YOU.(????) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.55.108.97 (talk) 05:24, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Please, ask knowledge questions unrelated to Wikipedia at the Reference Desk, not here. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 06:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

And please also do not post in capital letters - on the Internet, this is the equivalent of shouting, and is considered poor netiquette. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 06:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

You might like the new user's guide here: New user help. Julia Rossi (talk) 11:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Help desk/Instructions

I've changed the "click here to ask your question" link above to go to this page I just created - hopefully it'll help prevent some of the questions that just really don't belong here, saving us and the questioners time. /Instructions is fully protected, out of some necessity, to make sure people still ask their questions here, but there's a huge comment header at the top to let people know what's going on if they try to edit that page. If anyone feels anything should be added to it, let me know, or add {{editprotected}} to the talk page. If anyone feels it shouldn't be there without further discussion, feel free to revert me (see WP:HDH) and open up a discussion somewhere. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 03:32, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Good idea, though, not meaning to sound rude or anything, some people are just stupid and make it a point not to read anything before asking questions. This should help it somewhat, though I'm not sure what percentage of people actually click on the link instead of "new section" and unfortunately, a recent change changed the plus sign to a "new section" making it easier to find and I'm afraid not many people will see your page, what if we changed the code on this page so it's impossible to just go "new section" and make the new users read the notices? The Dominator^Talk_Edits 04:26, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

There should be a __NEWSECTIONLINK__ somewhere that we can remove to prevent people from using the "new section" link. Then move the "add a question" to the top, and change it's wording to "Click here to ask a question", and continue to have it link to /Instructions. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 04:44, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I have two suggestions: either only make it editable through the link (even for registered users) or just be stricter on some questions. Immediately move Reference Desk type questions to the appropriate section there leaving a short note on the user's talk page (possibly a template for this, like "Your Help Desk post has been posted on section X on Wikipedia's reference desk" etc.) and just remove blatant bullshit. Like "How can I buy the X that you talk about?", "Can I use your site to advertise?" or "y dos this cite suck so much balls nbdy likes it lol!" should be removed on spot. Though it would probably be less work to just change the mediawiki programming so it's only editable through a link after all the notices. The Dominator^Talk_Edits 04:53, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I changed the header so there's no new section link, and all instructions are on the /Instructions page. I don't really think the /Instructions page should be full-protected, though. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 05:04, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the edit got reverted on the grounds that it won't prevent users from not reading the instructions. Someone may want to redo it. Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 05:09, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

(outdent for readability) In reply to Dominik92: Yes, it won't stop all the inane questions, however it will hopefully significantly reduce them. The header has a long history of changes to it, where we keep trying to make what the help desk is for more and more obvious; this is just the next step. There will never be a "final" step in this regard. Unfortunately, there is no way to protect the page in that manner - people can either edit the page, or they can't. Software changes such as you're suggesting are impractical for a single page on a single project as well - we already have {{RD1}}, {{RD2}}, and {{RD3}} to send people to the reference desk, and that will probably still suffice.

In reply to Calvin 1998: I agree with User:Fuhghettaboutit - We need the partial instructions at the top for those who aren't going to bother clicking through to /Instructions. Leaving them there at least gives us a second chance, and many of the links there help out the helpers as well as the helpees. /Instructions is not intended to be, and should not be, our only attempt to tell people what belongs here. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 05:28, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

It is incredible how people can miss (or ignore) that big message there. I do have one suggestion for a header change (and I do realize this is an inappropriate place for this discussion) due to the large amount of people having no clue what Wikipedia is, I think we should add a little explanation to the bottom of the header that says something like. "Wikipedia is a volunteer-operated online encyclopedia and is not affiliated with any of its articles' subjects". Thoughts? The Dominator^Talk_Edits 05:46, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

If we could get everyone to try searching the Help desk archive with Google before asking a question, we might eliminate most of the repetitive questions, which might be most of the questions. However, it's a basic principle of ergonomics that people come to the Help desk with their short term memory already saturated with whatever problem drove them here. That means the people we are trying to help have very little mental resources available during their time of need to allocate to learning new skills, such as to absorb complex instructions involving lots of terms and concepts they've never heard of before, or to grasp the idea of searching the Help desk. (It's not so much that people are stupid, but when a person is already mentally exhausted by some problem, they tend to become momentarily more stupid when it comes to figuring out even more new material. It's like when they run into that problem which brings them here, it sort of knocked their wheels off, and that is why they miss our "obvious" instructions.) Until computers can pass the Turing test, we will still need experienced users to volunteer on the Help desk and try to decode the cries for help from people who are confused. Everybody who cares about Wikipedia should realize this is extremely important work. Getting that one critical answer in a time of need can make a real difference in the mind of a new user who wasn't already convinced that they can figure out Wikipedia. When people learn they can get answers to tough questions here, that gives them confidence that learning more about Wikipedia won't be a waste of time, since they know where to go if they get stuck. --Teratornis (talk) 05:54, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

To get some idea of how people who are preoccuppied with a problem can miss or ignore our big message, watch this video:

Test Your Awareness: Do The Test on YouTube

I totally flunked. --Teratornis (talk) 05:58, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

LOL, I'll try to help out at the desk some, but I still think we should add a bit about what Wikipedia is at the bottom of the header. The Dominator^Talk_Edits 06:02, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

It's clear that we get a steady stream of questioners who are {{Astray}}. I don't know what the optimal number of header instructions would be. We can probably suppose that the more instructions we add, the lower the odds that people will read a given instruction. We will probably never be able to adequately inform all questioners with mere instructions. What they really need are computers that are smart enough to figure out what page they should be using (don't laugh too hard, I expect computers to get that smart eventually - because people certainly won't). --Teratornis (talk) 06:12, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Can we get back on the subject (which, I believe, was which instructions to keep and how to best redirect users to /Instructions, unless I'm mistaken)? Calvin 1998 ^(t-c) 06:18, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Slightly unrelated: I think we should make the bit about contact details in the header bigger. ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 08:38, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and done it. If you don't like it, change it back. ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 08:58, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Template

I've created {{HD}}. It's not got many parameters yet but it's OK. It needs expanding as much as possible, but I hope it will become widely used. ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 15:11, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

It's not a bad start, but some of it's a bit brusque. {{dyoh}} is better for homework questions, for instance, because it gives a better explanation. I do like the addition of graphical elements, though. If some of the responses were expanded a bit, I think it'd go along way towards standardizing some things here. -- Kesh (talk) 15:45, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. Doing the following might promote its use:

Document it more on Wikipedia:Help desk/How to answer. You already added it to {{Help desk templates}}, but a little more hype might be permissible.
Categorize it. I added it to Category:Wikipedia standard response templates. I see there is a Category:Reference desk templates, but no Category:Help desk templates yet. We have enough Help desk templates to justify our own category now. I'm leaving my computer in a moment; if nobody beats me to it, I'll make that category later when I return.
Make it look like a messagebox template, with a border and a background color. This will help other Help desk volunteers realize they are seeing a template, thereby making the use of the template self-documenting to other volunteers.
Add v-d-e links to it, like the ones that {{Tnavbar}} adds to {{Navbox}}. That will make it completely simple for other volunteers to edit the template and add more response parameters to it.
Figure out some way to make our growing zoo of standard response templates easier to search. I will think about that. Obviously, few Help desk volunteers will use a template unless the template saves them time, which means finding these templates must be fast and easy.

--Teratornis (talk) 15:49, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I've done the border and buttons, and expanded dyoh. I'll leave the category to you (I know how, I just can't be ****ed. I'm about to put it on the how to answer bit. It still needs expanding as much as possible though. ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 16:48, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd suggest making it in-line text, without the border box. The image is a great idea, but putting it all in the box causes things to look clunky, and as I've seen you notice, boxes play havoc with signatures. Looks good, though! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 16:52, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I kinda thought that too. Maybe building the signature into the template? Would adding 4 tildes to the template markup put my sig in the template or that of the user who uses it? ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 16:57, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

(undent)I created Category:Help desk templates and added all the relevent templates to it that I could find (basically, everything that was on {{Help desk templates}}). If I missed any templates, anyone please feel free to categorize them. I noticed that a lot of our Help desk templates do not use documentation subpages. I can't say I feel particularly motivated to do anything about that. --Teratornis (talk) 05:58, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

The template just went through a lot of tweaking. We ditched the boxes but kept the icons so it is more consistent with related templates. You can now add text immediately after the template as desired. We also added reference desk parameters so you can forward the user to a particular desk. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:06, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Search link

I added the following search link to Wikipedia talk:Help desk/archivelist:

Type this	To get this	What it produces, or searches for
`{{Google custom\|{{SERVERNAME}}{{localurl:Wikipedia talk:Help desk}}\|\|Search Wikipedia talk:Help desk and its archives}}`	Search Wikipedia talk:Help desk and its archives	Blank form to search the Wikipedia Help desk talk page and its archives

You can see the search link in the small box at the upper right of this page, below the archive page links. Actually the {{Google custom}} search link searches a few more talk pages of other Help desk subpages that we have floating around. The Help desk has a number of subpages:

See all Help desk subpages
and all their talk pages (the search link searches all of these)

In practice this should hardly make a difference, unless the other talk pages begin proliferating. Some of them probably should move, for example these subpages should probably be in the Template: namespace (where there are redirects to them now):

but I'm too lazy to move them now. --Teratornis (talk) 05:58, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Search link

is it possible to erase my old user name? Now i've another name but there's a link with "Marco Salvalaglio". is it possible to erase it? thanks --M.Salva (talk) 12:05, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Not really, no. Any edits you made still need to be attributed to someone, so since you made a new account, those old edits are going to stay linked to the old account. -- Kesh (talk) 14:11, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

These questions are to be asked on the actual help desk, not its talk page. The Dominator^Talk_Edits 04:20, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I think we gave you the same answers in more detail about two days ago. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 09:37, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Silly trolling style article

Can someone with authority look over the Mornington Crescent (game) article as curently it is all verbiage, the game is a wind-up and wikipedia should say so. It shouldn't be a requirement to have to look at the discusion page and the page's history to find out the facts. I would request that once sorted out the article is locked so that the trolls don't alter it again —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.67.172.157 (talk) 02:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Way too difficult

This set-up for editing is way too difficult, I'll never attempt it again.Sfala (talk) 05:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean signing up? Well now you won't have to attempt it again. Welcome. Grsz ^talk 05:52, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

See WP:EIW#Learn for information about learning to edit on Wikipedia. Also, to add a bit to the difficulty, this page is not for general questions about editing on Wikipedia; please use the Help desk for that. This page is, instead, a talk page on which we talk about ways to improve the Help desk. Basically, this is a page where the people who answer questions on the Help desk think of ways to improve it. --Teratornis (talk) 15:47, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Displaying MediaWiki:Talkpagetext outside of talk namespaces

See my question: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Displaying MediaWiki:Talkpagetext outside of talk namespaces. If there is a way to do what I'm asking, we might reduce the number of unsigned questions on the Help desk. --Teratornis (talk) 15:47, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

New Project

Myself and several other editors have been compiling a list of very active editors who would likely be available to help new editors in the event they have questions or concerns. As the list grew and the table became more detailed, it was determined that the best way to complete the table was to ask each potential candidate to fill in their own information, if they so desire. This list is sorted geographically in order to provide a better estimate as to whether the listed editor is likely to be active.

If you consider yourself a very active Wikipedian who is willing to help newcomers, please either complete your information in the table or add your entry. If you do not want to be on the list, either remove your name or just disregard this message and your entry will be removed within 72 hours. The table can be found at User:Useight/Highly Active, as it has yet to have been moved into the Wikipedia namespace. Thank you for your help.

P.S. - Sorry for posting this here, but I didn't want to post on everyone's individual talk page (I started to, but I felt like I was spamming everyone). Useight (talk) 03:03, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem. It seems that could be useful mentioning that here at the help desk. --RyRy5 (talk ♠ copy-edit) 05:38, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

You might also post about it at Wikipedia talk:New contributors' help page? -- Natalya 13:25, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Will do. :) --RyRy5 (talk ♠ copy-edit) 04:53, 23 May 2008 (UTC)