Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-02-22

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2010-02-22. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

In the news: Macmillan's Wiki-textbooks and more (2,257 bytes · 💬)

A bit late and I don't know if it's been already covered: [1] and [2] So much for Wikipedia not giving legal or medical advice! 82.32.238.139 (talk) 13:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Apparently it hasn't been covered, and this week's edition hasn't been published yet, so if you want you can go ahead and write a note. Usually "In the news" focuses on recent media stories though.

The best place to make such suggestions is Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions, where this grave violation of WP:NOT#HOWTO had already been noted.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 14:55, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe some folks were in serious doubt wether the person actually used Wikipedia. Descriptions seem to indicate that it is more likely he used WikiHow. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Interesting to note that we may be getting credited for information from other sites. I suppose the man in question could have seen wiki... and read ...pedia. Still it is nice to have positive feedback. Saga City (talk) 17:44, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. As mentioned in the newsroom suggestion thread, The Sun's article has been updated to say WikiHow, not Wikipedia. Apparently WikiHow is the first non-video Google hit. As many have noted, many others seem to think "wiki" is synonymous with "Wikipedia", that all wikis are run by WMF, that all wiki softwar is MediaWiki, etc. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:11, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

News and notes: $2 Million donation, cybersquatting, comScore statistics and more (2,313 bytes · 💬)

ed. note: including two items for 2005's "this week in history" is intentional. Although I couldn't pass by the historic Gdansk/Danzig dispute, the historical coincidence of February 2005's discussion of whether Google would be supporting Wikimedia's servers with this week's announcement of Google's $2M grant was too striking not to include.

And in 2007, the Signpost covered a story about where traffic to the projects originates from, quoting data that seems similar to this week's story on the comScore analysis of traffic to the projects; if anything, the proportion of hits to Wikimedia that originate in Google searches has increased in the past three years. The relationship of the search engine to the health of Wikimedia's projects and their continued stunning growth has indeed been a topic of discussion and analysis for many years now, and with this week's announcement will no doubt continue to be. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 07:10, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

RFC for BLP

The author is assuming that everyone knows what RFC and BLP mean. Many people reading this article may not Racklever (talk) 13:18, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

• clicking on the link spells it out, and there's also an explanation in past signpost stories; it's a request for comments on biographies of living persons. However, actually explaining what that means and what's going on would take far longer :) I wish I had time to write up everything with context. N&N needs more authors. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 18:15, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

• This week in history - Thanks for adding this section to Signpost. It provides an interesting glimpse into Wikipedia's past. —mattisse (Talk) 16:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Editor statistics

If I am reading those editor statistics correctly, they indicate that the total number of editors has been rising over the past several months, and we are up near the historic total high. Ha! The reports of our impending demise are greatly exaggerated. -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject report: WikiProject Mammals (538 bytes · 💬)

• Just so you know, originally this was supposed to be another WikiProject, so the hint in last week's report may not make sense, just so you know. Thanks! Belugaboy ^{Talk to Me!} 23:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)