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I'm trying to read every wiki entry. I have a log of my progress. I'm unavoidably missing some of the best article updates out there - so what's your favorite wiki article? Tell me your favorite wiki encyclopedia entry and I'll tell you the date on which I've read it. Chickenbattered ( talk) 00:55, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
pollockfineart.com seems to reuse wikipedia content with a notice claiming their own copyright, that is unless it is the wikipedia article that has taken material from this site.
http://pollockfineart.com/artists_biography.php?r=e8804c09dbe02a1e42075c30e9011e65 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bellmer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.103.153.48 ( talk) 10:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
Wondering what people think about the new Microsoft Bing search engine. In particular, it's 'enhanced view' option which rehosts entire Wikipedia articles under the Bing domain. For instance, a search at Bing for Love Canal turns up this result with the enhanced view click leading here. As far as I can tell this appears compliant with GFDL, although the GFDL has its obscure side so I wouldn't pretend to be the final word on that. Opinions? Comments? Durova Charge! 20:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Tangentially related (I'm putting this as a subsection of here), perhaps we could add the results of a Bing search to the {{ findsources}} template along with the Google searches provided. MuZemike 21:39, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
Being mostly active at Dutch Wikipedia I am not quite sure how to correct the error I found in Portal:Featured content. This page seems to show abstracts of featured articles in random order. The abstract of the New Carissa text blunders quite badly, stating that there are plans to remove the stern of the ship from the beach while the article says it has already been removed in 2008. Please could someone correct the faulty sentence? Thanks, Bertux ( talk) 23:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Though I've participated in editing a few Wikipedia articles, I, like the rest of the world, am primarily a consumer of the Wikipedia as a source of information.
I don't, a priori, trust or not trust information that I read on Wikipedia. I approach my reading of the New York Times the same way. Where Wikipedia is far superior to the New York Times is that the process of creating the information is transparent due to the "discussion" and "history" functionalites.
I've conducted a small survey which confirmed my guesses: a significant percentage of users have never noticed the discussion link; another significant percentage of people have noticed it but never clicked on the link. A tiny percentage click on the discussion link as part of their regular Wikipedia reading habits.
So here are my questions:
Sam* ( talk) 14:13, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
Using both is discouraged (the need to expand is implicit in the stub message, and having a big box saying it at the top can overwhelm), but what should you do if you do find both used on the same page? Is it worth removing {{ Expand}}, or is that just wasting an edit? What about the other 1215 articles? (Some might have Expand section though). Is mass removal desirable? - Jarry1250 ( t, c) 17:57, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
I've started doing more and more biographies and one thing that I've noticed is quite a few Celebrities or people of note have a section for "Humanitarian work", "Charities", or "Philanthropic activities;" While others who are active with charitable work, is not included. I'm merely wondering if there can be a standard for biographies for those that have documented/well known contributions in the past and present. While I'm not going to hunt down every celebrity article to make the appropriate changes or additions (I'm not THAT Anal!), I would like some sort of standard for it. -- Hourick ( talk) 04:05, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Thought I'd let everyone know that my bot, DottyQuoteBot was approved the other day & is up & working. It imports the quote of the day from Wikiquote every day so you can display it on your userpage/talkpage. See here for more info on the templates to use. Dotty••| ☎ 15:41, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
While I don't expect the average Joe's in the mainstream media and colloquial language to change I do expect a source as veritable and geek ruled as the Wiki to do something about this problem.
Hi, I'm a fellow "North American", no I do not live in the US, but in Mexico. And under the description of North America depicted here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America
Mexicans and Canadians are also North Americans, not only US residents. So I would be very thankful if the term American and North American where used on the proper and broad sense of the word only and not to describe US residents alone.
Starting today I'll simply run a search for the terms, America, American, North America and North American and edit out all of the ones that are used to describe US residents alone.
While I understand it is very difficult to use the proper adjective in the case of the USA and its residents it's not to blame the rest of the continent and sub-continent by stripping us from a geographical adjective that can well be used to describe us all alike.
Thanks and please reply with any views or opinions wether you agree or oppose and plan to edit back my edits.
Joel Hinojosa —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joey22MX ( talk • contribs) 23:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
The on this day page failed to post anything about D-Day. It was on the news stations all day. The president visited a ceremony for it but nothing was mentioned on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mazman34340 ( talk • contribs) 00:35, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Someone deleted quite some (political sensitive but reliable) information from the article on Rohingya people. The entire chapter on Refugees is gone! (before called: Rohingya_people#Refugees). I guess if someone doubts the accuracy of certain information, there are other ways of making this clear than just deleting the entire chapter?! What can be done to retrieve this information/chapter? Regards, User:Mirrormundo —Preceding undated comment added 16:06, 8 June 2009 (UTC).
This is overdue, probably: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Paid Editing. Given that this (and related WP:COI issues) seem to be coming up more and more, I've launched this basic RFC. We've never had an actual community discussion or mandate about this. Please review the statements, leave yours, endorse as you see fit. Should make for an interesting and enlightening discussion. rootology ( C)( T) 19:33, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
I added two new entries in ACE and NME, respectively. However, another person who knows nothing about chemistry deleted the explanation twice. What I added is truth and you can google and check it. Please help to maintain these two pages. Please stop that person. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 20:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Are you sure about the function of disambiguation pages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 21:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Show me clearly the exact sentence please.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
User:Bkonrad knows nothing about the rule.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Some people are very strange. They only use their time to delete useful things but not to build things. Their task is to stop other people to get useful information from Wikipedia. -- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
I think you are really incapable and unwilling to understand and explain the rule in Wikipedia. You said "There is no mention of those terms (ACE or NME) on the linked pages". So tell me clearly please, which sentence supports your action to delete the entry linked to the page without the term? Are you capable to do this? Are you willing to do this? You also said "Disambiguation pages are a navigational tool to link to existing articles". So tell me clearly please, which sentence supports your action to delete the entry linked to a new page? Are you capable to do this? Are you willing to do this?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 06:12, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
User:Bkonrad has admitted by himself that he is really incapable and unwilling to understand and explain the rule in Wikipedia in his talk page.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 11:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Rubbish. I will ignore you.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 11:37, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Only add links to articles that could use essentially the same title as the disambiguated term.
OrangeDog ( talk • edits) 15:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
This sentence does not support the deletion.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:15, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
copied from OrangeDog's talk page:
You know the rule, don't you? So please tell me why the entries should be deleted?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Why could not the article linked be entitled ACE or NME? Do you know those two chemicals?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Could you please google a little bit? I didn't find N-methylamide in Wikipedia, so I linked to methylamide. If you insist, I will change the link to N-methylamide. For ACE, how do you know that article of acetyl is correct?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Have you googled or not?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:41, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
It is relevant because if you do not even google, then how do you know that the link was wrong? Then how dare you to delete the link? It is good for you to google and find a new entry for ACE. I will add this new entry to ACE. What I mentioned is this link http://xray.bmc.uu.se/hicup/ACE/ . It seems that you did not find this page. How about NME?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
First, how do you know it should be *existing* article? Show me the sentence clearly. Second, how do you know that the abbreviation is not used in mainstream?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 17:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Did you find the word *existing*?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 17:11, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
So you did not find the word *existing*. Then why do you rule out new articles?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 17:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I did not find the word *non-existant*. I will not rule out link to existing articles.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 17:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
For ACE, the article even has already been there. Why should you delete it?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 17:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Please have a look at this page Clementine (disambiguation) as an example. There are also red links. I think red links are useful.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 20:13, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Another example with many useful red links is Gilbert House.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 20:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I found such sentence:
I'd hope that those editors intent on removing the links would expend as much effort on improving the links rather than simply removing them. older ≠ wiser 02:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 20:27, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
You are welcome.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 21:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
For the red links, it would be better if you would say it clearly as above when I asked you to do so. The current rule in Wikipedia does not allow to the red link in PMF that I added. I think that rule is stupid. What I have added is useful information and the readers have the right to access such information via Wikipedia. For ACE and NME, there are evidences to support the abbreviation and we should keep the entries.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 21:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Two more examples: Douglas County Courthouse, Washington Avenue Historic District.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 21:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I want to ask a question to those people who deleted the entries added by me in PMF, ACE and NME: what kind of benefit can you get from your deletion? A clean Wikipedia according to your standard but with less information for the readers?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Will you be only confined in the information in Wikipedia itself? If there is no right information in the article of acetyl, then you will claim the ACE is not the abbreviation of acetyl? I simply want to share useful information to other people via Wikipedia. Why should you always delete such useful information? What is the purpose of Wikipedia? Is it not to spread knowledge?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:11, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
What you said is really bureaucratic. The information I added is truth no matter there are other articles in Wikipedia saying it or not. Why is there no space for truth in Wikipedia?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
OK, I use bureaucratic way to deal with your bureaucratic mind. Now I have added ACE into the article acetyl. What will you say?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Did you see the link above when I discussed with Orangedog?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Not you? Even you saw it?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
" Without a verifiable source, it is useless." Are you strict with this?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I see, double standard.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Sure, your common sense is bureaucratic and double standard.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:58, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Who said Rubbish at first?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
This link is without ACE: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I will delete it.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
See, clear double standard.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:07, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I agree that there is no real loss to remove Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. But there is loss to remove acetyl. Without the information I told you, you would never know that ACE can stand for acetyl. Now you knew this information, even it might be useless for you personally, but it is useful for other people. Due to your deletion, other people will loss the chance to access this information via Wikipedia.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
You said the site "with a lot of dead or broken links". Is that true? Show me the links you talked about.-- SayNoToHypocritical ( talk) 10:04, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Good. Ask them.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, the bureaucratic burden here is too much for me. And there are even people who keep deleting what I added.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:41, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Is that site in English or in Swedish? Do you mean Wikipedia only accounts the English words from the mouth of native English speaker? You said "WP is not a directory of acronyms". How did you know this? Here is an example: List_of_acronyms_and_initialisms:_A-- SayNoToHypocritical ( talk) 09:38, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
The natural article title is "Atlantic City Expressway" not "ACE". Therefore there is no conflict between "Atlantic City Expressway" and any articles whose natural title would be "ACE", so no disambiguation seems to be needed. Right?-- SayNoToHypocritical ( talk) 09:46, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
The problems have been solved. I thank people who paid attentions on this issue and I apologize to people with whom I treated impolitely.-- SayNoToHypocritical ( talk) 18:04, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
User:Cubs197 is refusing to talk to me and is giving me vandalism warnings in return for trying to discuss issues with him. 70.29.210.174 ( talk) 05:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I am trying to locate a review of West Side Story by the late Nancy Spain,Daily Express and Manchester Guardian columnist.Died 164 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kensalt ( talk • contribs) 20:10, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm under the impression that now common auto-archiving of talk pages doesn't mesh well with the "neutrality disputed" template (and other templates, but the NPOV one is most problematic.
For an example:
Heck, there's a neutrality dispute since at least December 2007. So what's is disputed and by whom? The link in the NPOV box to the talk page doesn't help at all, as the discussion, if there was one, is archived since eons. OK in this case there are a moderate number of archives so that combing them for the reason doesn't look pointless.
Two suggestion:
-- Pjacobi ( talk) 19:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Maybe when adding tags it's be helpful if an explanation was added to the talk page first, and then the template linked to the diff edit of the history that added the rationale. DreamGuy ( talk) 15:01, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Is there a request template to request an article be transwiki'd to a different language of Wikipedia? As articles show up here in a non-English form and also don't exist on that language's wikipedia... and such a template does not exist at WP:Template messages... it would be useful (And complementary to other transwiki templates), so I expect they exist already and are just not properly listed? 70.29.210.174 ( talk) 05:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
WP:AN is locked down, so how I can I leave messages there? 70.29.210.174 ( talk) 05:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I write about a fairly specialised subject. Another editor has come along and claimed to also know the subject, however, his edits demonstrate that he actually knows very little. Furthermore, after adding or deleting information, he edit wars to make sure his edit stays. Where can I go to get help with this? 80.126.66.106 ( talk) 14:41, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Since September 2008 this template has been a redirect to {{ dubious}}; I just restored it to its old templateness, though, because I think it's useful. I left a rationale at Template talk:Dubious#"disputed", in case anyone is curious, and figured I should just leave a note in case anyone would have a problem with this change. rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 15:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Anybody with access to the LA Times archives want to take a look here and tell me if there's anything usable for sourcing Job's Daughters International? The only thing showing up in the abstract is the Biblical quotation that inspired its name, and I don't want to pay for access if it doesn't actually say anything useful. Also, is there any better place to post questions like this? Thanks. -- SarekOfVulcan ( talk) 15:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
I have no idea what to make of this situation, so I thought I'd post it here for anyone's information. See Talk:Birthday problem#Horrendous Mathematics on Top of Plagiarism. As I commented there, there does not seem to be any plagiarism. But what makes this really weird is the "benchmark article" the user links to. It's clearly written by himself (he's been blocked before for spamming that very domain into related articles, and now he edits very infrequently) and it makes the same accusations of plagiarism against the Wikipedia article. Obviously, this user holds a grudge against Wikipedia. It seems easiest to just ignore this, but I don't know what the common procedure is. — JAO • T • C 20:51, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Is someone with only three edits to their credit, only one to article space which was immediately reverted, a "notable Wikipedian"? See Talk:James von Brunn. Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 01:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
This week I learned that a company called Alphascript was creating so-called books by clumping together enough Wikipedia articles to make some "things" that seem thick enough to be called books. They sell these on Amazon, for prices ranging from $38 to $173. At last count (they seem to be adding more all the time) they had 909 books listed.
The books have absolutely no author listed on Amazon. They are supposed to have been edited by the team made up of John McBrewster, Frederic P. Miller, and Agnes F. Vandome. In fact, it would seem that they have not been edited at all, in the sense understood by librarians. They warn:
"All texts of this book are extracted from Wikipedia… ...Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information. Some information in this book maybe misleading or wrong."
In other words, the three Alphascript editors are just copy-pasting editors and they are washing their hands of any liability that might ensue from reading the so-called books they sell and blaming everything on Wikipedia! This is blatantly using one the requirements of copyleft (stating where your useful, copied information comes from) to try to weasel out of any kind of responsibility.
While they do not list any of the Wikipedia authors/editors on the Amazon Web site, it would seem that they have been scrupulously adhering to the letter of the law, and the Wikipedia "copyleft" licences by printing, in very, very small print the entire list of authors/editors (the anonymous ones included) of each article, among other things.
But in the end, what counts is that those things are not books. They're just copy-pasted messes of haphazard information. That's where the hoax lies. They're passing off for books some things that aren't really anything, even if they do have an ISBN on them.
Real books have ages-old traditional metadata like a useful title. In nearly all their Amazon entries Alphascript editors haven't even bothered to find proper titles for the so-called books. Take a look at this one:
They are also just as nonchalant when it come to finding illustrations for book covers. Take a look a this other one, about the republic of Georgia, in Europe and look up close and you will see that they put up a photograph of the city of Atlanta in the state of Georgia in the United States.
If it were just one book or one dozen, then it would be rather insignificant. When it's 909 books, on Amazon (which has said that it cannot be held responsible for the quality of the books) it's a major trend. I would be tempted to call it a notable trend, in the field of copyleft, copyleft licensing and copyleft commerce.
When I learned about this my first reaction was to start writing an encyclopaedic-level article on this, for Wikipedia, with all the relevant links from copyleft projects and principles and within the context of commercial products derived from copyleft. Unfortunately a Wikipedia article must be based on published sources. It must not be original research. The problem here is that I have not yet found a published source writing up this book hoax.
So, what can I do, what can anybody do with this Wikipedia-tarnishing book hoax? Send e-mails to person who are concerned with general book reviews like librarians, hoping that they'll write this up on the ALA Web publications? And then, after that's done we can finally write the relevant article or articles?
Please don't brush this off by thinking Alphascript will go away by itself. If they do go away, others like them will spring up. This kind of slapdash exploitation makes Wikipedia articles look extremely bad. I can laugh at the very idea of comparing the disorganized Alphascript "books" with the well-tagged, easy-to access, easy to evaluate (just read the discussion pages!) Wikipedia articles I can see on the Web, but other people will not. They will equate the two as being equally made of sloppy cut and paste segments. They will not bother finding out about the copyvio efforts here in the Web Wikipedia, or of other efforts that make the Web Wikipedia a useful tool. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AlainV ( talk • contribs) 2009-06-07 05:44:01
They appear to be part of the VDM Group, a German publishing house according to this [2] - VDM is a print-to-order firm, so far as I can tell, that specializes in university papers. (At least one blogger has stumbled across them [3]) - DavidWBrooks ( talk) 00:01, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Here is the Corporate profile and concept of VDM (PDF). It states that they publishe hard to publish scientific papers, (quote): "In this way we actively promote scientific research and development world-wide." I don't see how copy-pasting a random selection of inter-related Wikipedia articles promotes scientific research and development world-wide. Wolfgang P. Müller is the founder and sole shareholder of the VDM Group. I think he's more concerned with his business than with scientific research and development world-wide. Mirrormundo ( talk) 22:15, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
This is not a new issue. See Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Ghi#Icon Group International. The problems with such things as far as we are concerned are twofold: violation of our copyright (as the people who wrote the text in the first place) if the terms of the GFDL are not complied with, and people who mistakenly use these books as sources (which happened at AFD with the Icon Group books several times until people started to spot it). Making Wikipedia look bad isn't one of these problems, for the simple reason that these books don't reflect on Wikipedia at all. That is, after all, one of the prevalent problems with them: they don't properly credit Wikipedia editors with the authorship.
By the way: People putting free content in book or other offline form is not forbidden, nor even bad. (And the FSF and others will tell you all about why selling free content is not against the free content philosophy: "Selling Free Software". GNU Project. Free Software Foundation. 1996.) Indeed, making Wikipedia accessible to those without on-line access has been a goal that people have worked towards for a long time. We've had a project to do this ourselves, Wikipedia:Wikipedia 1.0, for about five years. Some of the German Wikipedia has been published in book and DVD form long since. Uncle G ( talk) 15:14, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Not a new issue. Before wikipedia people used to do much the same with PD US goverment documents. Geni 21:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
I am certainly confused by the project name Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Near East/Cleanup listing, which contains a long cleanup listing with many articles far remote from ancient times, and far remote from the Near East, for that matter. I stumbled on this project by a What links here entry on an article about a Midwest fair, having nothing whatever to do with the Ancient Near East. Perhaps someone can explain this project, or project name, or maybe this is an intentional cleanup list with a peculiar name. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 15:41, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
french contibutor, my english is'nt good enough : i would like to translate the page Viete in english. I have already made a stub on my own page here User:Jean_de_Parthenay/Viete2/wikipedia (in britain) but, there are probably several mistakes. If somebody shoul be kind enough to see that page again, Hurra ! Jean de Parthenay ( talk) 08:15, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
I am a member of Wikipedia, and I really haven't studied how to make changes myself. I tried to do it once, and made a mess of it in an article on Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and so I gave up trying. But now I have a problem to report. It is not a controversy or a problem of political or ideological opinion, just a factual error in the aticle on Potter Stewart.
The article states that his father was one Potter G Stewart, a mayor of Cincinnati who later became a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court. Potter G Stewart is listed in blue in the article, and I clicked on it. The problem is that it goes, not to an article on the SCOTUS justice's father, but to an article on another Potter G Stewart who was a Hollywood sound engineer. The disambiguation page lists a number of other Potter Stewarts and Potter G Stewarts, none of whom appear to be the SCOTUS judge's father.
This problem begs for correction.
RebLem —Preceding unsigned comment added by RebLem ( talk • contribs) 06:12, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
It's June 15 on my calender. Has Wikipedia switched to cc-by-sa or not? If so, I want to start data-dumping from citizendium. The edit page I'm seeing right now still says "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL.". So, I'm guessing the big switch hasn't happened yet. If not, when does it happen? -- Taku ( talk) 22:01, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I am creating a tree diagram catalogue of everything in "Natura" You can see me progress at User:Drew R. Smith/Natura.
Questions? Comments? Criticism? Any ideas where and how this can be used in article space?
Thanks in advance Drew Smith What I've done 05:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Three points:
At the very least you should interwiki link your Latin language article titles to the correct language Wikipedia. All of these pages already exist on the Latin language Wikipedia and (unlike our Mare article, for example) even discuss the right subjects: Natura, Mundus, Tellus, Universum, Caelum, Terra, Aqua, Aër, Ignis, Mare, Continens, Nubes, Flumen, Venti
Uncle G ( talk) 15:39, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Just pointing out that there is an error on the create an account page. The small text, in regards to e-mails reads "(Your e-mail address is never given to anyone, with one exception: if you e-mail another user, your the e-mail address is provided to the recipient to enable him or her to reply.)"
The word which I have bolded should be removed so this sentence makes sense. That is something that should be corrected. Muffhen ( talk) 10:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I would say for the last four months or so, I have noticed our images either not loading, or loading very slowly, particularly in infoboxes. Is it just me? -->David Shankbone 15:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
The List of Malaysian writers includes five rather brief biographies. Is this usual for a list? I expect a list to include no more material than names, dates, and perhaps a one line identification. In at least one case, I would think the material could become a stub class article. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 22:38, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
This post is a notice for a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Peer review#Renaming "peer review" to "internal review". Please participate in the discussion at the link above. Thanks! Ecto ( talk) 06:24, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Announcing a new page for Wikipedians who oppose ageism. If you appreciate good volunteer work from fellow editors regardless of age, please consider joining. Durova Charge! 23:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
There are a number of pages that may need looking at for licensing changes. For example:
A number of the pages that link to the GFDL article page may also need looking at. -- WOSlinker ( talk) 12:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
There has been a lot of argument about Monsters Inc. 2 on List of Pixar films. Any official confirmation?? Georgia guy ( talk) 14:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi, Could I make an edition on Neologism informing thai it comes from latin and sânscrit if I cite a portuguese reference (it comes from morfologic tree of Neo (new) that derives from latin novus, nova, novum and sanskrit návah<ref>Dicionário Morfológico da Língua Portuguesa, por Evaldo Heckler, Sevaldo Back e Egon Ricardo Massing - São Leopoldo, UNISINOS, 1984. 5v</ref>)?
Thanks for attention, Nevinho ( talk) 10:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Does it make sense to have a user page (with 3 personal images in it) of a user who never made any other edits than the one to create his userpage 4 months ago? See User:Darren O'Connor. Sorry if that's the wrong place to ask for. -- Túrelio ( talk) 09:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
I have seen a deletion template for fixed articles that had copyright issues. I asks an admin to delete out copyright revisions back to a specific point after someone edits out the copyright material, but I cannot seem to find now. Any know what I am talking about?? Thanks! Click23 ( talk) 13:30, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
{{
Copyvio-histpurge}}
.
Click23 (
talk)
15:42, 22 June 2009 (UTC)This a general notice to all AWB users: you can now install the Fronds plugin, and contribute towards improving it. Find/Replace On Demand Services (FRONDS) are collaboratively-created blocks of Find-Replace combinations for AutoWikiBrowser, where knowledge can be shared for maximum efficiency. All AWB users are invited to try them out, and make suggestions. Don't know anything about regular expressions? Fear not, you can still enjoy using the plugin. Fronds is particularly suitable for those collaborating to make repetitive edits. Any questions can be directed to the talk page or my user talk page. Cheers, - Jarry1250 ( t, c, rfa) 19:50, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
WikiProject Citizendium Porting has been proposed. If you would be interested in joining such a WikiProject and/or have comments on the proposal, you are invited to say so at the aforelinked proposal page. -- Cybercobra ( talk) 19:18, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if this is the wrong place, but I can't for the life of me find another place to raise it (although I'm sure there is a proper place). But anyway, I've noticed there a 2 versions of the same image floating around. One is here and the other here. From the research I'm doing I'm fairly sure the second (ie. British caption) image is correct, and this would seem to back it up. Unfortunately the first (ie. Polish) version is linked to a few pages. Is there an appropriate forum to discuss this sort of issue, or is it a case of bringing it up on all the article's talk pages? And how do you go about getting a pic deleted?
Cheers in advance for any advice, Ranger Steve ( talk) 22:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Could someone define how well are the Annonymous editors treated by old users? aghnon ( talk) 17:31, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
If you mean 4chan Annonymous, we generally beat em off with a stick, unless they were good contributors 'before it was revealed that they are Annonymous
If you mean IP's we generally beat em off with a stick. Drew Smith What I've done 15:06, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
That's not very helpful Drew. Contributions are generally judged based on the contribution and not the contributor. Editors are welcome to contribute whether they register a user name or operate "anonymously" via an IP address. There should not be any discrimination against an editor because they choose not to register an account. Likewise, anyone who violates core policy, or otherwise disrupts Wikipedia will suffer various kinds of sanctions. OrangeDog ( talk • edits) 19:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm unclear on something Drew said, & would like a clarification. The phrase "beating them off with a stick" implies something quite different than "beating them with a stick until they go away." I won't belabor what Drew's phrase implies, except that (1) some of us might not find it as unpleasant as the rest of thinks it is; (2) I honestly have a problem visualizing just how this is done; although (3) I'm sure if I look hard enough, I'll find an illustration of this done over on commons. TIA, llywrch ( talk) 21:59, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Why do you think wikipedia is not considered acceptable academic resources for my assignment in school? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.63.10 ( talk) 22:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
People often ask whether or not they should cite a Wikipedia article directly. My favorite answer is this: If it's a bad article, then you shouldn't. If it's a good article, then you won't have to. Simple as that. I also agree strongly with Blueboar's sentiments: as a resource, Wikipedia is unsurpassed. As a source, not so much. Even if you don't intend to compile/check/read an article's references/external links, the article itself is still a great way to get a broad overview of a topic. History of astronomy is a good example. Even though it doesn't have copious inline citations, it provides a solid overview of the subject. -- Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:45, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Inherent notability? Or rather, can notability be safely assumed for any Michelin-starred restaurant? Two stars? Three stars? Assuming, of course, that the article is not overly promotional, etc. WP:Notability (restaurants) isn't exactly clear given the lack of an outcome. Cheers, - Jarry1250 ( t, c, rfa) 13:21, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) encompassed businesses such as restaurants from its very first versions onwards. It even used restaurants as some of its examples, during its history. There is no blanket notability, nor should there be. Notability is not a blanket, and attempting to locate blankets by applying short-cuts, be they stars, number of employees, or other metrics, yields bad results. They get us business directories. Wikipedia is not the Yellow Pages. The primary notability criterion is the one to apply. Uncle G ( talk) 11:32, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
I am comfusing about Jp./Kr. vs. Jap./Kor. in commons:File talk:Dokdo Map.png. I think that "Jap" is irravant in this map.but user Valentim said this are adjectives of the belonging languages.I simply ask that shortened of "Japanese: X" is "Jap:X".I am not native.I want to know native feelings.-- Forestfarmer ( talk) 10:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Almost all of these links (based on the reasoning of one "AlexNewArtBot") make no sense. It wouldn't bother me so much if these links would go away after a while, rather than being archived forever. However it's not entirely the operator's fault as criteria for each assumption are freely editable. Right now the flagging done by this bot has an unbelievable false-positive rate, higher than that of the title blacklist even. Right now I'd like to know if anyone:
One might start by removing words which are ambiguous or simply too common, adjusting the point values, etc. in order to leave a robust set of criteria more likely to produce meaningful data. Obviously this cannot be made perfect—the closest thing would be to ignore everything that's not a category or an infobox (however many articles are created without these)—but there is definitely a vast frontier for improvement. Regards and thank you in advance. — CharlotteWebb 17:27, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Change in license is welcome - there's a couple of places that need the reference to GFDL changed - specifically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Top_questions#Can_I_copy_articles_from_Wikipedia.3F and the template for the mobile-formatted pages ( en.m.wikipedia.org ....) -- O'Prometheus ( talk) 07:40, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Is there a Plumbers Wikipedia Project? Perhaps it comes under something else? -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 13:11, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Should the Cade Metz entry at Wikipedia:Press_coverage_2009#June be removed from that page and moved to Criticism of Wikipedia? Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 21:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
There is some content on a disambiguation page that is non-neutral. Alex Jones is an alternative media journalist. His disambiguation title says "Alex Jones (radio host) (born 1974), radio host, conspiracy theorist, and filmmaker". The point of disagreement is with the conspiracy theorist. The term itself is a push of POV. I don't want to get into convincing you that he is not a conspiracy theorist, that's not the point. It's inflammatory language. I changed it to something more fair and agreeable, and if you look on my talk page, basically you see a user notifying me that it wasn't an acceptable edit because, "It would require an link and you can't have multiple links on a line". I then decide to change "conspiracy theorist" to "paleoconservative" (His article states this). Again, it was reverted by the same user saying "This is what he is known for". What can I do? If I simply keep changing it until he gives up... Well wait, that won't work, he'll probably get me banned for an edit war or some nonesense. How do I eliminate bias from a page without running into "You are not allowed to change this anymore or we will ban you". (that hasn't happened but I know it will).
I believe that the same user that is hawking over this page is also a conflict of interest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Arthur_Rubin/Archive_2009#About_Alex_Jones_and_your_gradeschool_.27conspiracy_theory.27_charges
I should just say this now, I didn't know that I was running into the same issue raised by another editor 3 months ago.
We shouldn't let him/her just push his POV. JeremiahSamuels ( talk) 12:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
The article Swaenajayanti grama swarojagar yojana has a name in a language of India. It needs to be wikified, and it has several cryptic abbreviations. I am not so sure that it is in any way notable, but it could be. Can someone else help? If not, maybe it should be marked for deletion. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 21:31, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Has anyone else noticed that when you click the random article button that you're much more likely to be sent to an interesting article than, say, a year ago? 'Cause I used to click the random page button a lot, but stopped because I always ended up on a sentence long stub about an obscure place or athlete. Now after not having done it for a while I find myself being sent to all sorts of interesting articles, some on major topics. Anyone else noticed this? Is it because Wiki has grown alot, or (more cynically) maybe the programmers changed the algorithm or something and it's no longer directing users to truly random pages any more? Abyssal ( talk) 03:17, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I just stumbled over this project and thought it might be worth discussing it on a broader basis. The project describes itself as a "group dedicated to importing content from Citizendium into the corresponding Wikipedia articles and periodically resynchronize when the Citizendium source articles are modified". I wonder
and, more importantly
DanielRigal, I think you missed the recent license switch: we have switched our license from GFDL to cc-by-sa. As far as the legal issues are concerned, there is no problem. As for the point Jakob.scholbach raised, I'm not sure what exactly concerns him. As for (a), yes, the project is a good way to coordinate works if more than one person is engaging in the importation of contents. As for (b), why not? Since when improving Wikipedia becomes a problem? This may lead to digression, but a fair number of pages in Google's knol is licensed under cc-by-sa; e.g., Pacemakers. While we don't want to data-dump religious craps or advertorials to Wikipedia, I wouldn't be surprised if one finds materials in knol that we lack here. In particular, I remember a study that found Wikipedia often suffers from omission of some important facts regarding medicine and health. Even better, this seems precisely an area that knol is the strongest at. Let me ask this then: should we expand the project to include the data-dumping from knol as well? -- Taku ( talk) 18:48, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
No, no, no. You've got a completely wrong idea. (Of course, the language in the project page is to blame.) As I understand, the idea is to import materials from CZ that could improve corresponding Wikipedia articles. "Sync" is probably a poor choice of wording. It should be more like: when is the last time an editor checked a CZ article to see anything that could be imported here? This way, more than one editor has to compare CZ and Wikipedia articles. It's meant to save time. Obviously, we (members of the project and the other editors in Wikipedia) won't replace our prime number by its CZ counterpart. -- Taku ( talk) 20:49, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Would create licenseing issues since CZ editors have not agreed to atribution by URL.© Geni 00:00, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
The section Clarification is clearly a copyright violation, since it is taken directly from the cited source, and is a very long text, so fair use is not applicable. I have never done a copyright violation procedure, and I am reluctant to undertake one now. The Clarification section is very important to the article, so rewriting is in order. The subject is very technical, and filled with jargon. Please help. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 12:47, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Hey mates. I've created a new article cleanup template at {{ unlinkedrefs}}. See Aqueous normal phase chromatography and 832 Karin for examples of where it should be used. I just posted this here so that more people would be aware of it. Also, I pretty much just copied the code from one of the other cleanup templates. Hopefully those creatures more familiar with template coding can have a look and eliminate unnecessary parts and make sure that bots recognize it properly. -- Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:28, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
What Wikimedia events or activities would you like to see take place in the UK?
We're currently trying to pull together ideas for "initiatives" that Wikimedia UK can support here. There have been lots of ideas posted here which need fleshing out before they can be taken forward. We've also got a list of things that we've already supported here.
We're having an open IRC meeting to discuss possible initiatives, which will take place this coming Tuesday, the 30th June 2009, at 8.30PM BST (19:30 GMT), in #wikimedia-uk on irc.freenode.net . For more information, and to say that you'll be coming, please see [11]
Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, and is set up as a membership-run non-profit UK company limited by guarantee. To find out more information, to join or to donate, please visit our website at http://uk.wikimedia.org/ .
Thanks, Mike Peel ( talk) 17:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Chair, Wikimedia UK - http://uk.wikimedia.org/
Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited. Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom
Hello, Could some neutral observers keep a look at the ongoing discussion about the radon article and (abusive?) usage of references there ? thanks in advance. Biem ( talk) 07:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
So are there any news about the 2009 survey? It is high time to start discussing it; in particular, what we have learned from the 2008 one and how to make new surveys better. It would also be nice if this survey was more transparent with issues such as data availability for future researchers, and the contributors to meta:General User Survey were finally invited to participate in this project... As this is important for the Foundation, organizing the yearly surveys should probably become an official responsibility of somebody. It does appear that relying on random contributors and self-motivated academics is not working out that well for us. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Whenever I visit wikipedia I find it most annoying to have to click on the tiny search box on the left side first before entering anything. The first thing visitors on wikipedia do is search for an article. Therefore the box should jump at you, be bigger and placed at the top of the page, with no need to click on it first. Who agrees with me? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juclael ( talk • contribs) 17:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
accesskey
property on it (default to accesskey="f"
in English), and for logged in users there is a
gadget available in your preferences."--
Commander Keane (
talk)
12:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)Does anyone collect these anecdotes? Wikipedia has a picture of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire painted in 1768. The official site of No 10 Downing street shows this person as a prime minister...... but that one died in 1764. So wikipedia is right and allows edits. The No 10 site doesn't appear to have a place to report errors..... ?? Can anyone confirm I'm right? Victuallers ( talk) 20:44, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I tagged this article yesterday - Nurofen, with the advert tag, but noticed it hasn't gone into any category for any 'Admin' kind of attention. I personally think the whole article needs deleting, and any relevent info from the Nurofen article inserting into the ibuprofen article - such as compound preparations of more than one active ingredient. I notice that concern had previously been raised on its talk page. Regards. 78.32.143.113 ( talk) 07:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Please join the discussion in Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Links_to_essays_in_policy_pages - Altenmann >t 17:27, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
File:ChinaTJC.jpg looks like it's been photoshopped. When I mentioned that to the uploader, their response was, "That is due to the fact that the Chinese govenment does not permit any Christian denomination in China to display the name of their church group on the chapels.". Doesn't that make this image a fake, and not appropriate for Wikipedia? Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 03:01, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
This has been resolved. Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 03:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I suggested a change to the {{ cite book}} template, please see this discussion; any input would be appreciated. Thanks, rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 04:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Random article should not appear on WP's unregistered (IP) editor interface, because:
- Pointillist ( talk) 01:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
We should also remove the ability of unregistered users to type "sex" or "lingus" into the search box. -- Golbez ( talk) 03:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
On August 6 & 7 Wikimedia Australia is hosting GLAM-Wiki at the Australian War Memorial supported by the
In lead up to the event some of the GLAM institutions(Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) have donated items to be given away, Wikimedia Australia has organised the GLAM Challenge which will run from 13th July until 23:59UTC on the 19th July. This is open to all registered editors in any Wikimedia project, you dont need to be in Australia to win as prizes will be posted to anywhere in the world. Nominate yourself by the 13th July, see GLAM Challenge for more details. Gnan garra 11:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I've noticed that some of the articles on Wikipedia contain content that definitely isn't appropriate for small children, yet they could still come upon them accidentally by using the random article feature. Therefore, something needs to be done. Wikipedia isn't censored, so that's not what I'm proposing. Rather, any articles detailing the processes of human reproduction (with or without pictures) or excretion (with pictures), as well as anything else that may be determined inappropriate in the future, should be moved to a separate namespace, perhaps "Adult:" or something similar. Then, on the page for that subject in the main namespace, a warning template should be placed stating that the content isn't appropriate for children and containing a link that a person can click to go to the article if he isn't bothered by the inappropriate content. -- Aruseusu ( talk) 23:08, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) Who will decide what qualifies? With hundreds or thousands of new articles everyday, who is going to check them out?. Exactly what criteria would they use? What is the problem with an encyclopaedia having articles about sex, bodily functions, etc.? What politics do you think are not suitable? Are there books, you would not consider appropriate? Do you think it right that Google self censor the content it delivers in China? Would you think it right that tv and radio and music and books in the library and newspapers and childen in the playground are censored? There are various software devices which uptight parents can use to censor what their children can view on the web, if they so choose. There is no need for this, and no-one to organise it, unless you want to recruit an army of Mary Whitehouses. And despite your statement, your proposal amounts to censorship. What is the problem with a picture of a vagina or penis? Do you really belive that children should not be allowed to havce sex eduction? Jezhotwells ( talk) 23:52, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
(outdent again) Well, I would guess - without casting aspersions - that that was just an educated guess on that editor's part, but I don't think that I did miss the point. Problems come when parents, aunties, guardians don't supervise and don't discuss things in an open and honest way. I had more "problems" discussing issues like nuclear war, war atrocities, crooked financiers, biassed referees, etc. with my children than I ever did with sex (or taking a dump!) Jezhotwells ( talk) 00:44, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
The fact is, no matter how much people cry out for any kind of system for this, it's been proposed tens (hundreds?) of times over the years and has NEVER been implamented. It's not going to happen, nor should it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ ( talk) 01:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Come on, people. Eveyone knows such tagging is a very good way of getting children to read those articles. Peter jackson ( talk) 10:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
If an article has several Wikipedia Projects, all of which were unranked in class, and another editor comes along and ranks the article class=C in just one of the projects, what does that mean?
In this instance, I had already marked the article with the POV template, because the last part of the article is preaching a particular point of view. I may agree with this particular preaching, but this is not appropriate in Wikipedia.
So, can an article be ranked as class=C when it has a serious POV issue? I am reluctant to change other project lines to a class=Start, so I plan to await whatever happens as other editors may respond to the POV template. I would appreciate advice here on the issues: several projects, one ranking; and can class=C be justified when NPOV is a serious issue. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 18:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
I found this article with an AfD notice while clicking on Random article; e-zone, but the discussion page leads to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flawless (Dance_Group). How did this happen and who/what fixes it? Abductive ( talk) 11:02, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
I was wishing to make at least a starter page on Philophobia (fear of being a relationship). It seems there is a band with this name and I don't know how to differentiate and make a separate page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Waldo1967 ( talk • contribs) 16:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello there. I see the community is familiar with alt text for images ( Wikipedia:Alternative text for images). But unfortunately, there is no alt text with most icons, such as stubs icons.
By exemple, when a screen reader reads Template:Album-stub and reads the icon, it reads the name of the file (Gnome-dev-cdrom-audio.svg). As you already know, the name of the file is not a relevant information at all.
This icon does not carry important information, so there is no need of a long alt text. The best solution would be "|alt=Stub icon
".
Here is an example. Since there are hundreds (if not thousands) of templates to edit, I need help. Maybe we could make a
Bot request. Do you agree ?
Dodoïste (
talk)
23:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
alt=""
.
Samulili (
talk)
20:57, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
alt=""
) only if the image is not a link. Otherwise, as Graham87 stated, a screen reader would read the file name. See
using null alt on an image where the image is the only content in a link from www.w3.org, techniques for WCAG 2.0, for further information.
Dodoïste (
talk)
09:54, 5 July 2009 (UTC)It's worth running this idea past Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting. I don't know enough about the technicalities of this proposal, but others there will be interested in commenting, I'm sure. Grutness... wha? 01:00, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
As a screen reader user, I'd prefer some alt text like "stub icon", because the filename is read to me if there is no alt text, and "stub icon" would be more informative than the file name. Graham 87 03:15, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Yes, each icon should have e.g., alt="Nurdsburg icon" or alt="[Nurdsburg icon]". The same words that one would "read in their head" if they could see the image. P.S., == Stubs icons and accessibility == should be == Icons and accessibility ==. Jidanni ( talk) 20:01, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
I have corrected a major mistake in Wikipedia:Alternative text for images. Please reread my poor english. Many thanks. :-) Dodoïste ( talk) 23:35, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
link=
so that the icon does not link. It should be one or the other, not both. There are some portal templates that use {{
portal}} as a meta-template, and some portals in infoboxes. ---—
Gadget850 (Ed)
talk
22:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)Hi all, Over at Wikinews, we are currently looking into the possibility of an iPhone application for the site. Any chance any capable developers could get in touch, either on my talk or by email? Thanks all! Dotty••| ☎ 23:17, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I was doing research for a new article today, when I noticed that my sandbox page was the #1 entry in the Google search. Anything we can do to keep our sandbox pages from showing up in search results? -- Tim Sabin ( talk) 00:34, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Dynamic Vapor Sorption appears to have been copied from somewhere, though I can't find it online anywhere. Any ideas about what to do about it? Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 07:01, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Could use some more participation at WP:FPOC. There is a portal that has been under consideration for some time now, Portal:Statistics, that has not received any comments. Cirt ( talk) 20:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
I would like the article on Shamu the killer whale to be distinguished from Shammu the Indian actress, but I don't know the proper template to make that happen. I am sure other editors can do it, though.-- DThomsen8 ( talk) 21:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Australian_Pink_Floyd_Show&diff=301256213&oldid=301245470
So I reverted a change made by 'bandcorrection'. He had removed an image and a small piece of trivia which was useful to the article, claiming it wasn't relevent, I reverted the edit, and he reverted it back. He also left the following message on my page:
I'm a member of The Australian Pink Floyd Show It's not that it wasn't 'relevant' we've run into a few copyright issues of late, and I didn't want to mention that as the reason for the edit. Roger isn't happy as he's touring The Wall himself this year and doesn't want the competition.We have to respect that! Sorry for the confusion
Now, putting the claim made aside, the items (Picture and trivia mentioning that one member was once in a former PF tribute) removed have nothing to do with violating copyright or competition. Getting into the claims, the first one is unprovable and here-say. The second one doesn't even appear to be true. Rogers had planned on a big show in Israel in June which I believe never went through, and his recent tour ended in 2008, with no mention of upcoming tour plans.
So what should I do? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 04:49, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi all. Participants are welcome for the next Wikivoices Skypecast. See here for more details. – Juliancolton | Talk 01:54, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
As suggested, a dedicated page has been set up, and this discussion may wish to move to its talk page. Thanks! BobAmnertiopsis ∴ ChatMe! 06:35, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
So, eons ago, User:Ram-man programmed a bot to take data from the 2000 US Census and use it to create articles for all the CDPs (Census Designated Places) in the US of A. Well, it's been a while. 2000 has come and gone. Wikipedia has, shall we say, grown and matured. A lot has changed. Now, a new census is coming upon us. This, invariably, will create probz (problems) for Wikipedia.
As it is one of Wiki's goals to be current and timely, the addition of US Census data should be incorporated into articles when it becomes available. However, it is no longer as simple as last time. In fact, it's a whole lot harder.
Many, most likely most, if not all Ram-man's original articles have undergone at least a few edits since their respective creations. This means a bot cannot simply go thru and replace what it identifies as "olddata" with "newdata". I suppose (I'm honestly very unqualified to talk about bots, so correct me if I'm wrong) it would be possible up to a point, for a bot to go thru, looking for certain tags from the original articles (ie, "the city has a total area of x square miles" or "For every p females there were d males") but if that information had been in any way reformatted, it would be far more complicated, if not borderline impossible.
Now, I s'pose it'd be possible to manually go and edit the average per capita income and average family size on every single article, but it would be amazingly time consuming, astoundingly tedious and, in my opinion, dead boring.
So, fellow Wikipedians, I come to you with a question: what the schnitzel do we do? I'd love to get a jump on this problem now, and would love to hear your input. As always, thank you all! BobAmnertiopsis ∴ ChatMe! 02:33, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Obviously the ideal scenario would be if we could simply plug the new data into the bot and have it go through and replace $olddata with $newdata, but the obstacles to this have already been stated : the data sets from the Census Bureau may not be the same, the data format in the article may have changed and become unrecognizable to the bot. Also, it'd be ideal if Rambot can be used for this task again; I would like to mention that I have a (currently inactive) bot that was used to update the infoboxes in US cities and places, and I can reprogram it if Rambot cannot be used. If nothing else, I can start running a survey of random articles over the weekend so we can get an idea as to how hard it would be .. Sher eth 14:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, these new comments have me leaning strongly towards the "bot dumps new demographics paragraph on article talk subpage or section" idea. I am pretty sure that will become widely known and conscientious state project editors will follow up. This would keep the heuristics required and difficulty factor low. Sswonk ( talk) 15:25, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Ok, having taken another look at things, we can also break down the concerns by section. Essentially there are 4 places where the data is likely to change in any article when the new census data comes out. They are:
What we probably ought to do is to come up with a list of variants on the "standard format" statements that the bot can look for. I suspect that with a relatively small amount of work, more than 95% of the work can be done successfully with a bot. The small number of articles that have been sufficiently modified by editors so as to be unreadable by the bot are, naturally, the ones that get a lot of editor attention and those editors would be quick to manually update the information as needed. I for one am fairly optimistic about this being somewhat less daunting than it appears at first. Also - perhaps we should consider creating a dedicated page for this discussion, as I fear it may wind up overwhelming the page before too long. :) Sher eth 15:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
^ Arbitrary break. Regards evolution of language, if we get Ram Man back, or get his data, this job should be made a lot easier. Don't rely on the words. Instead, look at the numbers themselves. Sure, that wouldn't solve everything, but 2432 => 2564 is a fairly easily substitution to make regardless of the words that surround them. That should help with most numbers (where they're not duplicated), but it doesn't get away from the problem of wanting to ensure 100% goodness. Only some serious logic would help with that. - Jarry1250 [ humourous – discuss ] 16:45, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure a bot is necessary. Run a bot/script to gather the data, put it on a page somewhere, and let users introduce it into the articles. With, what, 55,000 Rambot pages? That could be easily done within a few weeks. -- Golbez ( talk) 17:24, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
When I first created all those pages, I had planned to update them all when the 2010 data was published. That has always been my goal, and I always planned on doing it myself, since I created the work in the first place. I suspect that the vast majority of pages are still close enough to the original that a bot could be hand-programmed to replace the data. I have not touched the original data in many years, but I'm pretty sure I have it stored somewhere on my computer. I don't see the need for opt-out lists or anything like that. Anything that can't be done automatically and correctly will be pretty easy to determine. -- RM 00:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
This is a quite interesting knowledge management problem with natural language processing and evolving data format accommodation elements. If properly described and addressed, one might be able to compose either an article for peer review or an abstract for submission to a conference related to this "operation" (I'm thinking about the annual ASIS&T meeting or the JASIST publication, for example). It would be quite a confidence builder for Wikipedia users if Wikipedia editors were to author a peer reviewed research article related to handling a real world knowledge management problem such as this. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 02:38, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
The community's views are needed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Advisory Council on Project Development. Many thanks, SlimVirgin talk| contribs 17:23, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Is there any project about this?
But may be there was a discussion?
P.S. I'm not so good in search, so may be I just missed something.
Besuglov.S (
talk)
07:03, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
See WP:WIKED. Will Beback talk 19:30, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I am looking for a few editors who would be willing to help me significantly expand the list of dermatologists. Would any of you consider working on this project? --- kilbad ( talk) 15:49, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
As I write this on the edit screen, down below it says: "Only public domain resources can be copied without permission — this does not include most web pages or images." According to WP:EMDASH, the spaces before and after the dash (which happens to be an "em dash") should be removed (or use an "en dash" – instead). Most Wikipedians can't be bothered with Manual of Style obscurities, but they should either be enforced or removed, and if the rule is worth keeping, we should set an example on the edit screen. So how does one edit that sentence? Art LaPella ( talk) 19:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I have come across a number of cases recently where searching on one word automatically goes to another. For example if I search for mathematical solution I get equation. I can see that this might avoid Wikipedia repeating itself when, for example, the concept of an equation and its solution are closely related. But I can think of three down sides:
Any thoughts on this issue? Yaris678 ( talk) 21:22, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I remember reading somewhere (maybe the Signpost) that the foundation intended to set up a project to investigate the obstacles placed in the way of new contributers and to "eliminate them one by one". It may have done so already as far as I know. Is this project being discussed online anywhere? I would like to contribute. SpinningSpark 12:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
Hey all, just a quick reminder to check out Wikipedia:The Great Wikipedia Dramaout. Cheers! – Juliancolton | Talk 23:51, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
I am not here to offend, and I apologize in advance if it comes across that way. Unfortunately, we have a large number of articles about South Asian people, places and institutions which are written or edited by people whose English is not the best. These articles also tend to be highly POV, and full of trivia. As someone who has no knowledge of any of the content, I have no idea how to edit these articles to make them work. These editors also tend to add long lists of non-notable people into articles about cities, Indian and Pakistani states, tribes, ethnic groups, etc. Just last night, I ran across Mhow and Indore. Looked at from Western eyes, these articles don't tell us anything. Are the people mentioned notable? Are there articles about them? If not, they shouldn't have importance. The Sports section in Indore is daunting. Is all of this trivia notable? It's not just these two articles, it's practically every South Asian article. I know that people from the subcontinent are highly literate, but they don't seem to understand Wikipedia rules about notability and sourcing. It's generalizing, that's true, but something really needs to be done. Does anybody have any ideas? And please no attacks about perceived racism. This has nothing to do with racism, nothing to do with disdain for people who don't speak English as well as I do (I'm not the greatest writer, that's for sure), all I'm concerned about is quality of articles. Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 20:38, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
This is a major problem on subcontinental articles. Most long-term people only edit their own articles and detail and vandalism is completely neglected. Patrolling for spam, stealth adverts and to clean up disorganised additions are basically never done. It is just the culture there. Some guys they have maybe 50-80% article edits only to those they personally wrote, meaning that they do hardly any 1 percenters. I know some people (now retired) who felt that an FA meant that the article was completely fine in terms of POV etc, when it is not necessarily, and only see FAs as worth fixing and don't care if any old BS is on other articles, eg see Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, etc members of the ruling family. Sometimes a vandalism or a spamlink to an extremist site can last days. In late 2006 NY of 2007, someone wrote that Rahul Gandhi was a rapist and it stayed there for a week. And all sorts like that. Maybe people just won't do the unglamourous stuff. Also many in there (apart from POV pushers mostly) refuse to get involved in any incident or make a stnd against anything. I operate a lot in Australian articles, and there is a much more proactive stance towards fixing and cleaning up stuff. Indian articles are full of cruft, spam, vanity listing, POV accretions. YellowMonkey ( cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:28, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Since the talk page to Template:Distinguish doesn't seem very active, I thought I'd post this here.
Lately, a user with a dynamic IP address has been adding "For the drug, see tobacco." to the top of the article on Žan Tabak, a former basketball player. Tabak is the word for tobacco in several languages, and the page Tabak does redirect to Žan Tabak, but I don't think such a hatnote is needed in the English Wikipedia. Indeed, the hatnote looks very silly to me. Do others think it is appropriate? Thanks, Zagalejo ^^^ 19:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone know who can edit the main text body of http://www.thewritingpot.com/wikistatus/, the page known as "Wikipedia's status"? The updates to the status there are very useful, but pretty much all of the links in the hard text are to pages which no longer exist or no longer show any recent activity. - Jmabel | Talk 00:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Hey guys. I am a Chinese Wikipedian. We are now translating the notability guideline of Wikipedia:Notability into Chinese. However, we do have some translating problem with the "nutshell":
Could you please help me solve those problems? We also welcome the original author of this guideline to answer. Thank you!
(My English may not be so good....)-- Franklsf95 ( talk) 02:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
I was looking around, and I could not find anything like a list of Wikipedia's featured articles that have not been showcased on the Main Page yet. Is there such a page? Thanks for your help! -- Spotty 11222 00:17, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
I am looking for some computer savvy editors to help me style some tables to make them more readable. Basically, several of us editors are working to categorize pharmacology-related articles, and have created some rough draft conversion tables. However, at this time, they need more stylization for readability sake, but we were unsure how to do a few things, like indenting ATC codes in the first column to illustrate the hierarchy. Basically, anything you can do to make the tables easier to use would be great. Please feel free to edit away if you have ideas. --- kilbad ( talk) 19:39, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
I suggested a small addition to all speedy deletion templates; it's explained at Template talk:db-meta#Addition?. Comments would be welcome. rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 22:19, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
I've found myself linking to articles in Newsbank quite often lately. Since most of the parameters in the URL are redundant, I trim the links down to the minimum that will get me to the article. I just created {{ Newsbank}} to help me with this: it takes a parameter for the only field that really matters and generates the minimal URL to display that article. I think. -- SarekOfVulcan ( talk) 20:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
{{cite news |url= {{Newsbank|p_text_direct=0FAFFBB974E01E30}} |title= Rebate processor still works hands-on |publisher= [[Minneapolis Star Tribune]] |date= March 3, 2003 |accessdate= 2009-07-15 }}
which renders like
A naive cut-and-paste of the URL, as supplied by Google News Search, would look like:
{{cite news |url= http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=MN&p_theme=mn&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0FAFFBB974E01E30&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM |title= Rebate processor still works hands-on |publisher= [[Minneapolis Star Tribune]] |date= March 3, 2003 |accessdate= 2009-07-15 }}
which would render like
(which should be identical to the first one). -- SarekOfVulcan ( talk) 17:28, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello there. Just to let you know that I (Kingpin13) have been nominated for BAG membership. Per the requirements, I'm "spamming" a number of noticeboards, to request input at my nomination, which can be found at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Kingpin13. Thanks - Kingpin 13 ( talk) 08:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
As part of an ongoing research project by students and faculty at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science we are conducting a survey of anyone who has participated in the Request for Adminship (RfA) process, either voting or as a candidate.
The survey will only take a few minutes of your time, and will aid furthering our understanding of online communities, and may assist in the development of tools to assist voters in making RfA evaluations. We are NOT attempting to spam anyone with this survey and are doing our best to be considerate and not instrusive in the Wikipedia community. The results of this survey are for academic research, are not used for any profit nor sold to any companies.
Thank you!
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free comment on my
talk page.
CMUResearcher (
talk)
05:17, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
First, I want to make one thing clear. This post is in no way a proposal for change of any sort. I can't imagine that this topic has never come up before, so I just wanted to see what people think.
I understand the technical reasons why talk pages are not currently forums, which at least partially drives the policy ( WP:NOTFORUM) reasons. What I'm saying though is, why not ask for that to be changed? Why not turn all talk pages into a phpbb/vBulletin/(insert your favorite bb system here) style page? It's not as thought the technical requirements for such systems are inaccessable to a system using wiki software. Everything required for a Wiki is the exact same things required by (for example) phpbb.
So, other then that no one has aparently pushed for it and/or some people may not like it, is there a reason not to have talk pages act like a forum?
—
Ω (
talk)
04:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
I "answered" my own question. It looks like the
Wikipedia Usability Initiative has been/is developing an extension dealing with talk pages:
mw:Extension:LiquidThreads
—
Ω (
talk)
05:03, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps a simple solution would be to set up a forum subpage. Peter jackson ( talk) 11:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I made a small mistake. According to the notability guidelines of the German Wikipedia, any ordinary Professor at an established university is notable. Under the premise that this would be similar on the English WP, I thought that it would be sufficient to say that he is "Professor of American History at Pennsylvania State University". I was wrong there, because Wikipedia:Notability (academics) on the English WP says something slightly different. However, if [it] should turn that Wilson Jeremiah Moses is not notable according to the guidelines, then the guidelines must be false. If the guidelines would say that someone who has written 2 books published by Oxford University Press AND 2 books published by Cambridge University Press [is not notable], then we better delete all articles about academics. It would only have required 5 minutes of waiting or a glimpse on the resume of the person which I provided under external links to figure that out, but one editor and one administrator were to deletion-happy for the first option and to lazy for the second. This is not the first time that something as infuriating as this has happened, and already a long time ago this has become unbearable for me. I am quite sure the guidelines say somewhere that you have to wait 30 min before you flag a new article as candidate for speedy deletion, or at least the guidelines used to say that. Now someone please tell me that this is not an intentional manoeuvre to make me quit wikipedia! Zara1709 ( talk) 17:20, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
This is not an intentional manoeuvre to make you quit wikipedia! It's just a well known problem that currently nobody is doing anything about: Spam fighters with a déformation professionelle getting into the way of genuine article creators. Hans Adler 18:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Pursuant to the Arbitration Committee agenda item Review Committee performance, a half-year summary of arbitration activities has been published at January to June 2009 report. Comments and feedback are invited on the talk page. For the Arbitration Committee, Carcharoth ( talk) 04:49, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
I edited a wiki article last night , and this morning i looked at the page and my editing was removed completely. The page said that a section was in need of clarification , I clarified the section , so people could understand the article better and it was deleted. I dont understand why if an article needs to be clarified and it is clarified very clearly someone would erase it.
The article in question is on physics so its not like it was easy to clarify and put it in words that the average person would be able to understand , but I did. I spent my time doing it just to be erased in less than 6 hours , last time i try to help out around here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.25.150.125 ( talk) 13:21, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Ost316 it was the first time i tried to edit a wiki article and was kind of discouraging to see it being removed. As for being verifiable and being written informally i wasnt sure how to format my clarification , but just wanted to make it easier to understand in laymens terms. I will reconsider contributing , I was just a little disappointed in the revert. and I will try to read up on how to post a better clarification before i do contribute again. not trying to clutter up the place just thought i could help. thanks again ost316 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.25.150.125 ( talk) 15:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
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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I'm trying to read every wiki entry. I have a log of my progress. I'm unavoidably missing some of the best article updates out there - so what's your favorite wiki article? Tell me your favorite wiki encyclopedia entry and I'll tell you the date on which I've read it. Chickenbattered ( talk) 00:55, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
pollockfineart.com seems to reuse wikipedia content with a notice claiming their own copyright, that is unless it is the wikipedia article that has taken material from this site.
http://pollockfineart.com/artists_biography.php?r=e8804c09dbe02a1e42075c30e9011e65 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bellmer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.103.153.48 ( talk) 10:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
Wondering what people think about the new Microsoft Bing search engine. In particular, it's 'enhanced view' option which rehosts entire Wikipedia articles under the Bing domain. For instance, a search at Bing for Love Canal turns up this result with the enhanced view click leading here. As far as I can tell this appears compliant with GFDL, although the GFDL has its obscure side so I wouldn't pretend to be the final word on that. Opinions? Comments? Durova Charge! 20:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Tangentially related (I'm putting this as a subsection of here), perhaps we could add the results of a Bing search to the {{ findsources}} template along with the Google searches provided. MuZemike 21:39, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
Being mostly active at Dutch Wikipedia I am not quite sure how to correct the error I found in Portal:Featured content. This page seems to show abstracts of featured articles in random order. The abstract of the New Carissa text blunders quite badly, stating that there are plans to remove the stern of the ship from the beach while the article says it has already been removed in 2008. Please could someone correct the faulty sentence? Thanks, Bertux ( talk) 23:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Though I've participated in editing a few Wikipedia articles, I, like the rest of the world, am primarily a consumer of the Wikipedia as a source of information.
I don't, a priori, trust or not trust information that I read on Wikipedia. I approach my reading of the New York Times the same way. Where Wikipedia is far superior to the New York Times is that the process of creating the information is transparent due to the "discussion" and "history" functionalites.
I've conducted a small survey which confirmed my guesses: a significant percentage of users have never noticed the discussion link; another significant percentage of people have noticed it but never clicked on the link. A tiny percentage click on the discussion link as part of their regular Wikipedia reading habits.
So here are my questions:
Sam* ( talk) 14:13, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
Using both is discouraged (the need to expand is implicit in the stub message, and having a big box saying it at the top can overwhelm), but what should you do if you do find both used on the same page? Is it worth removing {{ Expand}}, or is that just wasting an edit? What about the other 1215 articles? (Some might have Expand section though). Is mass removal desirable? - Jarry1250 ( t, c) 17:57, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
I've started doing more and more biographies and one thing that I've noticed is quite a few Celebrities or people of note have a section for "Humanitarian work", "Charities", or "Philanthropic activities;" While others who are active with charitable work, is not included. I'm merely wondering if there can be a standard for biographies for those that have documented/well known contributions in the past and present. While I'm not going to hunt down every celebrity article to make the appropriate changes or additions (I'm not THAT Anal!), I would like some sort of standard for it. -- Hourick ( talk) 04:05, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Thought I'd let everyone know that my bot, DottyQuoteBot was approved the other day & is up & working. It imports the quote of the day from Wikiquote every day so you can display it on your userpage/talkpage. See here for more info on the templates to use. Dotty••| ☎ 15:41, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
While I don't expect the average Joe's in the mainstream media and colloquial language to change I do expect a source as veritable and geek ruled as the Wiki to do something about this problem.
Hi, I'm a fellow "North American", no I do not live in the US, but in Mexico. And under the description of North America depicted here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America
Mexicans and Canadians are also North Americans, not only US residents. So I would be very thankful if the term American and North American where used on the proper and broad sense of the word only and not to describe US residents alone.
Starting today I'll simply run a search for the terms, America, American, North America and North American and edit out all of the ones that are used to describe US residents alone.
While I understand it is very difficult to use the proper adjective in the case of the USA and its residents it's not to blame the rest of the continent and sub-continent by stripping us from a geographical adjective that can well be used to describe us all alike.
Thanks and please reply with any views or opinions wether you agree or oppose and plan to edit back my edits.
Joel Hinojosa —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joey22MX ( talk • contribs) 23:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
The on this day page failed to post anything about D-Day. It was on the news stations all day. The president visited a ceremony for it but nothing was mentioned on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mazman34340 ( talk • contribs) 00:35, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Someone deleted quite some (political sensitive but reliable) information from the article on Rohingya people. The entire chapter on Refugees is gone! (before called: Rohingya_people#Refugees). I guess if someone doubts the accuracy of certain information, there are other ways of making this clear than just deleting the entire chapter?! What can be done to retrieve this information/chapter? Regards, User:Mirrormundo —Preceding undated comment added 16:06, 8 June 2009 (UTC).
This is overdue, probably: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Paid Editing. Given that this (and related WP:COI issues) seem to be coming up more and more, I've launched this basic RFC. We've never had an actual community discussion or mandate about this. Please review the statements, leave yours, endorse as you see fit. Should make for an interesting and enlightening discussion. rootology ( C)( T) 19:33, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
I added two new entries in ACE and NME, respectively. However, another person who knows nothing about chemistry deleted the explanation twice. What I added is truth and you can google and check it. Please help to maintain these two pages. Please stop that person. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 20:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Are you sure about the function of disambiguation pages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 21:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Show me clearly the exact sentence please.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
User:Bkonrad knows nothing about the rule.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Some people are very strange. They only use their time to delete useful things but not to build things. Their task is to stop other people to get useful information from Wikipedia. -- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
I think you are really incapable and unwilling to understand and explain the rule in Wikipedia. You said "There is no mention of those terms (ACE or NME) on the linked pages". So tell me clearly please, which sentence supports your action to delete the entry linked to the page without the term? Are you capable to do this? Are you willing to do this? You also said "Disambiguation pages are a navigational tool to link to existing articles". So tell me clearly please, which sentence supports your action to delete the entry linked to a new page? Are you capable to do this? Are you willing to do this?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 06:12, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
User:Bkonrad has admitted by himself that he is really incapable and unwilling to understand and explain the rule in Wikipedia in his talk page.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 11:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Rubbish. I will ignore you.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 11:37, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Only add links to articles that could use essentially the same title as the disambiguated term.
OrangeDog ( talk • edits) 15:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
This sentence does not support the deletion.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:15, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
copied from OrangeDog's talk page:
You know the rule, don't you? So please tell me why the entries should be deleted?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Why could not the article linked be entitled ACE or NME? Do you know those two chemicals?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Could you please google a little bit? I didn't find N-methylamide in Wikipedia, so I linked to methylamide. If you insist, I will change the link to N-methylamide. For ACE, how do you know that article of acetyl is correct?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Have you googled or not?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:41, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
It is relevant because if you do not even google, then how do you know that the link was wrong? Then how dare you to delete the link? It is good for you to google and find a new entry for ACE. I will add this new entry to ACE. What I mentioned is this link http://xray.bmc.uu.se/hicup/ACE/ . It seems that you did not find this page. How about NME?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 16:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
First, how do you know it should be *existing* article? Show me the sentence clearly. Second, how do you know that the abbreviation is not used in mainstream?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 17:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Did you find the word *existing*?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 17:11, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
So you did not find the word *existing*. Then why do you rule out new articles?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 17:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I did not find the word *non-existant*. I will not rule out link to existing articles.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 17:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
For ACE, the article even has already been there. Why should you delete it?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 17:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Please have a look at this page Clementine (disambiguation) as an example. There are also red links. I think red links are useful.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 20:13, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Another example with many useful red links is Gilbert House.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 20:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I found such sentence:
I'd hope that those editors intent on removing the links would expend as much effort on improving the links rather than simply removing them. older ≠ wiser 02:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 20:27, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
You are welcome.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 21:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
For the red links, it would be better if you would say it clearly as above when I asked you to do so. The current rule in Wikipedia does not allow to the red link in PMF that I added. I think that rule is stupid. What I have added is useful information and the readers have the right to access such information via Wikipedia. For ACE and NME, there are evidences to support the abbreviation and we should keep the entries.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 21:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Two more examples: Douglas County Courthouse, Washington Avenue Historic District.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 21:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I want to ask a question to those people who deleted the entries added by me in PMF, ACE and NME: what kind of benefit can you get from your deletion? A clean Wikipedia according to your standard but with less information for the readers?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Will you be only confined in the information in Wikipedia itself? If there is no right information in the article of acetyl, then you will claim the ACE is not the abbreviation of acetyl? I simply want to share useful information to other people via Wikipedia. Why should you always delete such useful information? What is the purpose of Wikipedia? Is it not to spread knowledge?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:11, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
What you said is really bureaucratic. The information I added is truth no matter there are other articles in Wikipedia saying it or not. Why is there no space for truth in Wikipedia?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
OK, I use bureaucratic way to deal with your bureaucratic mind. Now I have added ACE into the article acetyl. What will you say?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Did you see the link above when I discussed with Orangedog?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Not you? Even you saw it?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
" Without a verifiable source, it is useless." Are you strict with this?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I see, double standard.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Sure, your common sense is bureaucratic and double standard.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 22:58, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Who said Rubbish at first?-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
This link is without ACE: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I will delete it.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
See, clear double standard.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:07, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I agree that there is no real loss to remove Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. But there is loss to remove acetyl. Without the information I told you, you would never know that ACE can stand for acetyl. Now you knew this information, even it might be useless for you personally, but it is useful for other people. Due to your deletion, other people will loss the chance to access this information via Wikipedia.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
You said the site "with a lot of dead or broken links". Is that true? Show me the links you talked about.-- SayNoToHypocritical ( talk) 10:04, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Good. Ask them.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, the bureaucratic burden here is too much for me. And there are even people who keep deleting what I added.-- 141.89.77.122 ( talk) 23:41, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Is that site in English or in Swedish? Do you mean Wikipedia only accounts the English words from the mouth of native English speaker? You said "WP is not a directory of acronyms". How did you know this? Here is an example: List_of_acronyms_and_initialisms:_A-- SayNoToHypocritical ( talk) 09:38, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
The natural article title is "Atlantic City Expressway" not "ACE". Therefore there is no conflict between "Atlantic City Expressway" and any articles whose natural title would be "ACE", so no disambiguation seems to be needed. Right?-- SayNoToHypocritical ( talk) 09:46, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
The problems have been solved. I thank people who paid attentions on this issue and I apologize to people with whom I treated impolitely.-- SayNoToHypocritical ( talk) 18:04, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
User:Cubs197 is refusing to talk to me and is giving me vandalism warnings in return for trying to discuss issues with him. 70.29.210.174 ( talk) 05:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I am trying to locate a review of West Side Story by the late Nancy Spain,Daily Express and Manchester Guardian columnist.Died 164 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kensalt ( talk • contribs) 20:10, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm under the impression that now common auto-archiving of talk pages doesn't mesh well with the "neutrality disputed" template (and other templates, but the NPOV one is most problematic.
For an example:
Heck, there's a neutrality dispute since at least December 2007. So what's is disputed and by whom? The link in the NPOV box to the talk page doesn't help at all, as the discussion, if there was one, is archived since eons. OK in this case there are a moderate number of archives so that combing them for the reason doesn't look pointless.
Two suggestion:
-- Pjacobi ( talk) 19:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Maybe when adding tags it's be helpful if an explanation was added to the talk page first, and then the template linked to the diff edit of the history that added the rationale. DreamGuy ( talk) 15:01, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Is there a request template to request an article be transwiki'd to a different language of Wikipedia? As articles show up here in a non-English form and also don't exist on that language's wikipedia... and such a template does not exist at WP:Template messages... it would be useful (And complementary to other transwiki templates), so I expect they exist already and are just not properly listed? 70.29.210.174 ( talk) 05:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
WP:AN is locked down, so how I can I leave messages there? 70.29.210.174 ( talk) 05:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I write about a fairly specialised subject. Another editor has come along and claimed to also know the subject, however, his edits demonstrate that he actually knows very little. Furthermore, after adding or deleting information, he edit wars to make sure his edit stays. Where can I go to get help with this? 80.126.66.106 ( talk) 14:41, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Since September 2008 this template has been a redirect to {{ dubious}}; I just restored it to its old templateness, though, because I think it's useful. I left a rationale at Template talk:Dubious#"disputed", in case anyone is curious, and figured I should just leave a note in case anyone would have a problem with this change. rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 15:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Anybody with access to the LA Times archives want to take a look here and tell me if there's anything usable for sourcing Job's Daughters International? The only thing showing up in the abstract is the Biblical quotation that inspired its name, and I don't want to pay for access if it doesn't actually say anything useful. Also, is there any better place to post questions like this? Thanks. -- SarekOfVulcan ( talk) 15:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
I have no idea what to make of this situation, so I thought I'd post it here for anyone's information. See Talk:Birthday problem#Horrendous Mathematics on Top of Plagiarism. As I commented there, there does not seem to be any plagiarism. But what makes this really weird is the "benchmark article" the user links to. It's clearly written by himself (he's been blocked before for spamming that very domain into related articles, and now he edits very infrequently) and it makes the same accusations of plagiarism against the Wikipedia article. Obviously, this user holds a grudge against Wikipedia. It seems easiest to just ignore this, but I don't know what the common procedure is. — JAO • T • C 20:51, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Is someone with only three edits to their credit, only one to article space which was immediately reverted, a "notable Wikipedian"? See Talk:James von Brunn. Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 01:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
This week I learned that a company called Alphascript was creating so-called books by clumping together enough Wikipedia articles to make some "things" that seem thick enough to be called books. They sell these on Amazon, for prices ranging from $38 to $173. At last count (they seem to be adding more all the time) they had 909 books listed.
The books have absolutely no author listed on Amazon. They are supposed to have been edited by the team made up of John McBrewster, Frederic P. Miller, and Agnes F. Vandome. In fact, it would seem that they have not been edited at all, in the sense understood by librarians. They warn:
"All texts of this book are extracted from Wikipedia… ...Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information. Some information in this book maybe misleading or wrong."
In other words, the three Alphascript editors are just copy-pasting editors and they are washing their hands of any liability that might ensue from reading the so-called books they sell and blaming everything on Wikipedia! This is blatantly using one the requirements of copyleft (stating where your useful, copied information comes from) to try to weasel out of any kind of responsibility.
While they do not list any of the Wikipedia authors/editors on the Amazon Web site, it would seem that they have been scrupulously adhering to the letter of the law, and the Wikipedia "copyleft" licences by printing, in very, very small print the entire list of authors/editors (the anonymous ones included) of each article, among other things.
But in the end, what counts is that those things are not books. They're just copy-pasted messes of haphazard information. That's where the hoax lies. They're passing off for books some things that aren't really anything, even if they do have an ISBN on them.
Real books have ages-old traditional metadata like a useful title. In nearly all their Amazon entries Alphascript editors haven't even bothered to find proper titles for the so-called books. Take a look at this one:
They are also just as nonchalant when it come to finding illustrations for book covers. Take a look a this other one, about the republic of Georgia, in Europe and look up close and you will see that they put up a photograph of the city of Atlanta in the state of Georgia in the United States.
If it were just one book or one dozen, then it would be rather insignificant. When it's 909 books, on Amazon (which has said that it cannot be held responsible for the quality of the books) it's a major trend. I would be tempted to call it a notable trend, in the field of copyleft, copyleft licensing and copyleft commerce.
When I learned about this my first reaction was to start writing an encyclopaedic-level article on this, for Wikipedia, with all the relevant links from copyleft projects and principles and within the context of commercial products derived from copyleft. Unfortunately a Wikipedia article must be based on published sources. It must not be original research. The problem here is that I have not yet found a published source writing up this book hoax.
So, what can I do, what can anybody do with this Wikipedia-tarnishing book hoax? Send e-mails to person who are concerned with general book reviews like librarians, hoping that they'll write this up on the ALA Web publications? And then, after that's done we can finally write the relevant article or articles?
Please don't brush this off by thinking Alphascript will go away by itself. If they do go away, others like them will spring up. This kind of slapdash exploitation makes Wikipedia articles look extremely bad. I can laugh at the very idea of comparing the disorganized Alphascript "books" with the well-tagged, easy-to access, easy to evaluate (just read the discussion pages!) Wikipedia articles I can see on the Web, but other people will not. They will equate the two as being equally made of sloppy cut and paste segments. They will not bother finding out about the copyvio efforts here in the Web Wikipedia, or of other efforts that make the Web Wikipedia a useful tool. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AlainV ( talk • contribs) 2009-06-07 05:44:01
They appear to be part of the VDM Group, a German publishing house according to this [2] - VDM is a print-to-order firm, so far as I can tell, that specializes in university papers. (At least one blogger has stumbled across them [3]) - DavidWBrooks ( talk) 00:01, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Here is the Corporate profile and concept of VDM (PDF). It states that they publishe hard to publish scientific papers, (quote): "In this way we actively promote scientific research and development world-wide." I don't see how copy-pasting a random selection of inter-related Wikipedia articles promotes scientific research and development world-wide. Wolfgang P. Müller is the founder and sole shareholder of the VDM Group. I think he's more concerned with his business than with scientific research and development world-wide. Mirrormundo ( talk) 22:15, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
This is not a new issue. See Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Ghi#Icon Group International. The problems with such things as far as we are concerned are twofold: violation of our copyright (as the people who wrote the text in the first place) if the terms of the GFDL are not complied with, and people who mistakenly use these books as sources (which happened at AFD with the Icon Group books several times until people started to spot it). Making Wikipedia look bad isn't one of these problems, for the simple reason that these books don't reflect on Wikipedia at all. That is, after all, one of the prevalent problems with them: they don't properly credit Wikipedia editors with the authorship.
By the way: People putting free content in book or other offline form is not forbidden, nor even bad. (And the FSF and others will tell you all about why selling free content is not against the free content philosophy: "Selling Free Software". GNU Project. Free Software Foundation. 1996.) Indeed, making Wikipedia accessible to those without on-line access has been a goal that people have worked towards for a long time. We've had a project to do this ourselves, Wikipedia:Wikipedia 1.0, for about five years. Some of the German Wikipedia has been published in book and DVD form long since. Uncle G ( talk) 15:14, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Not a new issue. Before wikipedia people used to do much the same with PD US goverment documents. Geni 21:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
I am certainly confused by the project name Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Near East/Cleanup listing, which contains a long cleanup listing with many articles far remote from ancient times, and far remote from the Near East, for that matter. I stumbled on this project by a What links here entry on an article about a Midwest fair, having nothing whatever to do with the Ancient Near East. Perhaps someone can explain this project, or project name, or maybe this is an intentional cleanup list with a peculiar name. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 15:41, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
french contibutor, my english is'nt good enough : i would like to translate the page Viete in english. I have already made a stub on my own page here User:Jean_de_Parthenay/Viete2/wikipedia (in britain) but, there are probably several mistakes. If somebody shoul be kind enough to see that page again, Hurra ! Jean de Parthenay ( talk) 08:15, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
I am a member of Wikipedia, and I really haven't studied how to make changes myself. I tried to do it once, and made a mess of it in an article on Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and so I gave up trying. But now I have a problem to report. It is not a controversy or a problem of political or ideological opinion, just a factual error in the aticle on Potter Stewart.
The article states that his father was one Potter G Stewart, a mayor of Cincinnati who later became a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court. Potter G Stewart is listed in blue in the article, and I clicked on it. The problem is that it goes, not to an article on the SCOTUS justice's father, but to an article on another Potter G Stewart who was a Hollywood sound engineer. The disambiguation page lists a number of other Potter Stewarts and Potter G Stewarts, none of whom appear to be the SCOTUS judge's father.
This problem begs for correction.
RebLem —Preceding unsigned comment added by RebLem ( talk • contribs) 06:12, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
It's June 15 on my calender. Has Wikipedia switched to cc-by-sa or not? If so, I want to start data-dumping from citizendium. The edit page I'm seeing right now still says "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL.". So, I'm guessing the big switch hasn't happened yet. If not, when does it happen? -- Taku ( talk) 22:01, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I am creating a tree diagram catalogue of everything in "Natura" You can see me progress at User:Drew R. Smith/Natura.
Questions? Comments? Criticism? Any ideas where and how this can be used in article space?
Thanks in advance Drew Smith What I've done 05:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Three points:
At the very least you should interwiki link your Latin language article titles to the correct language Wikipedia. All of these pages already exist on the Latin language Wikipedia and (unlike our Mare article, for example) even discuss the right subjects: Natura, Mundus, Tellus, Universum, Caelum, Terra, Aqua, Aër, Ignis, Mare, Continens, Nubes, Flumen, Venti
Uncle G ( talk) 15:39, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Just pointing out that there is an error on the create an account page. The small text, in regards to e-mails reads "(Your e-mail address is never given to anyone, with one exception: if you e-mail another user, your the e-mail address is provided to the recipient to enable him or her to reply.)"
The word which I have bolded should be removed so this sentence makes sense. That is something that should be corrected. Muffhen ( talk) 10:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I would say for the last four months or so, I have noticed our images either not loading, or loading very slowly, particularly in infoboxes. Is it just me? -->David Shankbone 15:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
The List of Malaysian writers includes five rather brief biographies. Is this usual for a list? I expect a list to include no more material than names, dates, and perhaps a one line identification. In at least one case, I would think the material could become a stub class article. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 22:38, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
This post is a notice for a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Peer review#Renaming "peer review" to "internal review". Please participate in the discussion at the link above. Thanks! Ecto ( talk) 06:24, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Announcing a new page for Wikipedians who oppose ageism. If you appreciate good volunteer work from fellow editors regardless of age, please consider joining. Durova Charge! 23:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
There are a number of pages that may need looking at for licensing changes. For example:
A number of the pages that link to the GFDL article page may also need looking at. -- WOSlinker ( talk) 12:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
There has been a lot of argument about Monsters Inc. 2 on List of Pixar films. Any official confirmation?? Georgia guy ( talk) 14:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi, Could I make an edition on Neologism informing thai it comes from latin and sânscrit if I cite a portuguese reference (it comes from morfologic tree of Neo (new) that derives from latin novus, nova, novum and sanskrit návah<ref>Dicionário Morfológico da Língua Portuguesa, por Evaldo Heckler, Sevaldo Back e Egon Ricardo Massing - São Leopoldo, UNISINOS, 1984. 5v</ref>)?
Thanks for attention, Nevinho ( talk) 10:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Does it make sense to have a user page (with 3 personal images in it) of a user who never made any other edits than the one to create his userpage 4 months ago? See User:Darren O'Connor. Sorry if that's the wrong place to ask for. -- Túrelio ( talk) 09:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
I have seen a deletion template for fixed articles that had copyright issues. I asks an admin to delete out copyright revisions back to a specific point after someone edits out the copyright material, but I cannot seem to find now. Any know what I am talking about?? Thanks! Click23 ( talk) 13:30, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
{{
Copyvio-histpurge}}
.
Click23 (
talk)
15:42, 22 June 2009 (UTC)This a general notice to all AWB users: you can now install the Fronds plugin, and contribute towards improving it. Find/Replace On Demand Services (FRONDS) are collaboratively-created blocks of Find-Replace combinations for AutoWikiBrowser, where knowledge can be shared for maximum efficiency. All AWB users are invited to try them out, and make suggestions. Don't know anything about regular expressions? Fear not, you can still enjoy using the plugin. Fronds is particularly suitable for those collaborating to make repetitive edits. Any questions can be directed to the talk page or my user talk page. Cheers, - Jarry1250 ( t, c, rfa) 19:50, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
WikiProject Citizendium Porting has been proposed. If you would be interested in joining such a WikiProject and/or have comments on the proposal, you are invited to say so at the aforelinked proposal page. -- Cybercobra ( talk) 19:18, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if this is the wrong place, but I can't for the life of me find another place to raise it (although I'm sure there is a proper place). But anyway, I've noticed there a 2 versions of the same image floating around. One is here and the other here. From the research I'm doing I'm fairly sure the second (ie. British caption) image is correct, and this would seem to back it up. Unfortunately the first (ie. Polish) version is linked to a few pages. Is there an appropriate forum to discuss this sort of issue, or is it a case of bringing it up on all the article's talk pages? And how do you go about getting a pic deleted?
Cheers in advance for any advice, Ranger Steve ( talk) 22:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Could someone define how well are the Annonymous editors treated by old users? aghnon ( talk) 17:31, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
If you mean 4chan Annonymous, we generally beat em off with a stick, unless they were good contributors 'before it was revealed that they are Annonymous
If you mean IP's we generally beat em off with a stick. Drew Smith What I've done 15:06, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
That's not very helpful Drew. Contributions are generally judged based on the contribution and not the contributor. Editors are welcome to contribute whether they register a user name or operate "anonymously" via an IP address. There should not be any discrimination against an editor because they choose not to register an account. Likewise, anyone who violates core policy, or otherwise disrupts Wikipedia will suffer various kinds of sanctions. OrangeDog ( talk • edits) 19:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm unclear on something Drew said, & would like a clarification. The phrase "beating them off with a stick" implies something quite different than "beating them with a stick until they go away." I won't belabor what Drew's phrase implies, except that (1) some of us might not find it as unpleasant as the rest of thinks it is; (2) I honestly have a problem visualizing just how this is done; although (3) I'm sure if I look hard enough, I'll find an illustration of this done over on commons. TIA, llywrch ( talk) 21:59, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Why do you think wikipedia is not considered acceptable academic resources for my assignment in school? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.63.10 ( talk) 22:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
People often ask whether or not they should cite a Wikipedia article directly. My favorite answer is this: If it's a bad article, then you shouldn't. If it's a good article, then you won't have to. Simple as that. I also agree strongly with Blueboar's sentiments: as a resource, Wikipedia is unsurpassed. As a source, not so much. Even if you don't intend to compile/check/read an article's references/external links, the article itself is still a great way to get a broad overview of a topic. History of astronomy is a good example. Even though it doesn't have copious inline citations, it provides a solid overview of the subject. -- Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:45, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Inherent notability? Or rather, can notability be safely assumed for any Michelin-starred restaurant? Two stars? Three stars? Assuming, of course, that the article is not overly promotional, etc. WP:Notability (restaurants) isn't exactly clear given the lack of an outcome. Cheers, - Jarry1250 ( t, c, rfa) 13:21, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) encompassed businesses such as restaurants from its very first versions onwards. It even used restaurants as some of its examples, during its history. There is no blanket notability, nor should there be. Notability is not a blanket, and attempting to locate blankets by applying short-cuts, be they stars, number of employees, or other metrics, yields bad results. They get us business directories. Wikipedia is not the Yellow Pages. The primary notability criterion is the one to apply. Uncle G ( talk) 11:32, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
I am comfusing about Jp./Kr. vs. Jap./Kor. in commons:File talk:Dokdo Map.png. I think that "Jap" is irravant in this map.but user Valentim said this are adjectives of the belonging languages.I simply ask that shortened of "Japanese: X" is "Jap:X".I am not native.I want to know native feelings.-- Forestfarmer ( talk) 10:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Almost all of these links (based on the reasoning of one "AlexNewArtBot") make no sense. It wouldn't bother me so much if these links would go away after a while, rather than being archived forever. However it's not entirely the operator's fault as criteria for each assumption are freely editable. Right now the flagging done by this bot has an unbelievable false-positive rate, higher than that of the title blacklist even. Right now I'd like to know if anyone:
One might start by removing words which are ambiguous or simply too common, adjusting the point values, etc. in order to leave a robust set of criteria more likely to produce meaningful data. Obviously this cannot be made perfect—the closest thing would be to ignore everything that's not a category or an infobox (however many articles are created without these)—but there is definitely a vast frontier for improvement. Regards and thank you in advance. — CharlotteWebb 17:27, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Change in license is welcome - there's a couple of places that need the reference to GFDL changed - specifically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Top_questions#Can_I_copy_articles_from_Wikipedia.3F and the template for the mobile-formatted pages ( en.m.wikipedia.org ....) -- O'Prometheus ( talk) 07:40, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Is there a Plumbers Wikipedia Project? Perhaps it comes under something else? -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 13:11, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Should the Cade Metz entry at Wikipedia:Press_coverage_2009#June be removed from that page and moved to Criticism of Wikipedia? Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 21:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
There is some content on a disambiguation page that is non-neutral. Alex Jones is an alternative media journalist. His disambiguation title says "Alex Jones (radio host) (born 1974), radio host, conspiracy theorist, and filmmaker". The point of disagreement is with the conspiracy theorist. The term itself is a push of POV. I don't want to get into convincing you that he is not a conspiracy theorist, that's not the point. It's inflammatory language. I changed it to something more fair and agreeable, and if you look on my talk page, basically you see a user notifying me that it wasn't an acceptable edit because, "It would require an link and you can't have multiple links on a line". I then decide to change "conspiracy theorist" to "paleoconservative" (His article states this). Again, it was reverted by the same user saying "This is what he is known for". What can I do? If I simply keep changing it until he gives up... Well wait, that won't work, he'll probably get me banned for an edit war or some nonesense. How do I eliminate bias from a page without running into "You are not allowed to change this anymore or we will ban you". (that hasn't happened but I know it will).
I believe that the same user that is hawking over this page is also a conflict of interest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Arthur_Rubin/Archive_2009#About_Alex_Jones_and_your_gradeschool_.27conspiracy_theory.27_charges
I should just say this now, I didn't know that I was running into the same issue raised by another editor 3 months ago.
We shouldn't let him/her just push his POV. JeremiahSamuels ( talk) 12:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
The article Swaenajayanti grama swarojagar yojana has a name in a language of India. It needs to be wikified, and it has several cryptic abbreviations. I am not so sure that it is in any way notable, but it could be. Can someone else help? If not, maybe it should be marked for deletion. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 21:31, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Has anyone else noticed that when you click the random article button that you're much more likely to be sent to an interesting article than, say, a year ago? 'Cause I used to click the random page button a lot, but stopped because I always ended up on a sentence long stub about an obscure place or athlete. Now after not having done it for a while I find myself being sent to all sorts of interesting articles, some on major topics. Anyone else noticed this? Is it because Wiki has grown alot, or (more cynically) maybe the programmers changed the algorithm or something and it's no longer directing users to truly random pages any more? Abyssal ( talk) 03:17, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I just stumbled over this project and thought it might be worth discussing it on a broader basis. The project describes itself as a "group dedicated to importing content from Citizendium into the corresponding Wikipedia articles and periodically resynchronize when the Citizendium source articles are modified". I wonder
and, more importantly
DanielRigal, I think you missed the recent license switch: we have switched our license from GFDL to cc-by-sa. As far as the legal issues are concerned, there is no problem. As for the point Jakob.scholbach raised, I'm not sure what exactly concerns him. As for (a), yes, the project is a good way to coordinate works if more than one person is engaging in the importation of contents. As for (b), why not? Since when improving Wikipedia becomes a problem? This may lead to digression, but a fair number of pages in Google's knol is licensed under cc-by-sa; e.g., Pacemakers. While we don't want to data-dump religious craps or advertorials to Wikipedia, I wouldn't be surprised if one finds materials in knol that we lack here. In particular, I remember a study that found Wikipedia often suffers from omission of some important facts regarding medicine and health. Even better, this seems precisely an area that knol is the strongest at. Let me ask this then: should we expand the project to include the data-dumping from knol as well? -- Taku ( talk) 18:48, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
No, no, no. You've got a completely wrong idea. (Of course, the language in the project page is to blame.) As I understand, the idea is to import materials from CZ that could improve corresponding Wikipedia articles. "Sync" is probably a poor choice of wording. It should be more like: when is the last time an editor checked a CZ article to see anything that could be imported here? This way, more than one editor has to compare CZ and Wikipedia articles. It's meant to save time. Obviously, we (members of the project and the other editors in Wikipedia) won't replace our prime number by its CZ counterpart. -- Taku ( talk) 20:49, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Would create licenseing issues since CZ editors have not agreed to atribution by URL.© Geni 00:00, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
The section Clarification is clearly a copyright violation, since it is taken directly from the cited source, and is a very long text, so fair use is not applicable. I have never done a copyright violation procedure, and I am reluctant to undertake one now. The Clarification section is very important to the article, so rewriting is in order. The subject is very technical, and filled with jargon. Please help. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 12:47, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Hey mates. I've created a new article cleanup template at {{ unlinkedrefs}}. See Aqueous normal phase chromatography and 832 Karin for examples of where it should be used. I just posted this here so that more people would be aware of it. Also, I pretty much just copied the code from one of the other cleanup templates. Hopefully those creatures more familiar with template coding can have a look and eliminate unnecessary parts and make sure that bots recognize it properly. -- Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:28, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
What Wikimedia events or activities would you like to see take place in the UK?
We're currently trying to pull together ideas for "initiatives" that Wikimedia UK can support here. There have been lots of ideas posted here which need fleshing out before they can be taken forward. We've also got a list of things that we've already supported here.
We're having an open IRC meeting to discuss possible initiatives, which will take place this coming Tuesday, the 30th June 2009, at 8.30PM BST (19:30 GMT), in #wikimedia-uk on irc.freenode.net . For more information, and to say that you'll be coming, please see [11]
Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, and is set up as a membership-run non-profit UK company limited by guarantee. To find out more information, to join or to donate, please visit our website at http://uk.wikimedia.org/ .
Thanks, Mike Peel ( talk) 17:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Chair, Wikimedia UK - http://uk.wikimedia.org/
Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited. Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom
Hello, Could some neutral observers keep a look at the ongoing discussion about the radon article and (abusive?) usage of references there ? thanks in advance. Biem ( talk) 07:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
So are there any news about the 2009 survey? It is high time to start discussing it; in particular, what we have learned from the 2008 one and how to make new surveys better. It would also be nice if this survey was more transparent with issues such as data availability for future researchers, and the contributors to meta:General User Survey were finally invited to participate in this project... As this is important for the Foundation, organizing the yearly surveys should probably become an official responsibility of somebody. It does appear that relying on random contributors and self-motivated academics is not working out that well for us. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Whenever I visit wikipedia I find it most annoying to have to click on the tiny search box on the left side first before entering anything. The first thing visitors on wikipedia do is search for an article. Therefore the box should jump at you, be bigger and placed at the top of the page, with no need to click on it first. Who agrees with me? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juclael ( talk • contribs) 17:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
accesskey
property on it (default to accesskey="f"
in English), and for logged in users there is a
gadget available in your preferences."--
Commander Keane (
talk)
12:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)Does anyone collect these anecdotes? Wikipedia has a picture of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire painted in 1768. The official site of No 10 Downing street shows this person as a prime minister...... but that one died in 1764. So wikipedia is right and allows edits. The No 10 site doesn't appear to have a place to report errors..... ?? Can anyone confirm I'm right? Victuallers ( talk) 20:44, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I tagged this article yesterday - Nurofen, with the advert tag, but noticed it hasn't gone into any category for any 'Admin' kind of attention. I personally think the whole article needs deleting, and any relevent info from the Nurofen article inserting into the ibuprofen article - such as compound preparations of more than one active ingredient. I notice that concern had previously been raised on its talk page. Regards. 78.32.143.113 ( talk) 07:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Please join the discussion in Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Links_to_essays_in_policy_pages - Altenmann >t 17:27, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
File:ChinaTJC.jpg looks like it's been photoshopped. When I mentioned that to the uploader, their response was, "That is due to the fact that the Chinese govenment does not permit any Christian denomination in China to display the name of their church group on the chapels.". Doesn't that make this image a fake, and not appropriate for Wikipedia? Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 03:01, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
This has been resolved. Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 03:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I suggested a change to the {{ cite book}} template, please see this discussion; any input would be appreciated. Thanks, rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 04:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Random article should not appear on WP's unregistered (IP) editor interface, because:
- Pointillist ( talk) 01:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
We should also remove the ability of unregistered users to type "sex" or "lingus" into the search box. -- Golbez ( talk) 03:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
On August 6 & 7 Wikimedia Australia is hosting GLAM-Wiki at the Australian War Memorial supported by the
In lead up to the event some of the GLAM institutions(Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) have donated items to be given away, Wikimedia Australia has organised the GLAM Challenge which will run from 13th July until 23:59UTC on the 19th July. This is open to all registered editors in any Wikimedia project, you dont need to be in Australia to win as prizes will be posted to anywhere in the world. Nominate yourself by the 13th July, see GLAM Challenge for more details. Gnan garra 11:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I've noticed that some of the articles on Wikipedia contain content that definitely isn't appropriate for small children, yet they could still come upon them accidentally by using the random article feature. Therefore, something needs to be done. Wikipedia isn't censored, so that's not what I'm proposing. Rather, any articles detailing the processes of human reproduction (with or without pictures) or excretion (with pictures), as well as anything else that may be determined inappropriate in the future, should be moved to a separate namespace, perhaps "Adult:" or something similar. Then, on the page for that subject in the main namespace, a warning template should be placed stating that the content isn't appropriate for children and containing a link that a person can click to go to the article if he isn't bothered by the inappropriate content. -- Aruseusu ( talk) 23:08, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) Who will decide what qualifies? With hundreds or thousands of new articles everyday, who is going to check them out?. Exactly what criteria would they use? What is the problem with an encyclopaedia having articles about sex, bodily functions, etc.? What politics do you think are not suitable? Are there books, you would not consider appropriate? Do you think it right that Google self censor the content it delivers in China? Would you think it right that tv and radio and music and books in the library and newspapers and childen in the playground are censored? There are various software devices which uptight parents can use to censor what their children can view on the web, if they so choose. There is no need for this, and no-one to organise it, unless you want to recruit an army of Mary Whitehouses. And despite your statement, your proposal amounts to censorship. What is the problem with a picture of a vagina or penis? Do you really belive that children should not be allowed to havce sex eduction? Jezhotwells ( talk) 23:52, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
(outdent again) Well, I would guess - without casting aspersions - that that was just an educated guess on that editor's part, but I don't think that I did miss the point. Problems come when parents, aunties, guardians don't supervise and don't discuss things in an open and honest way. I had more "problems" discussing issues like nuclear war, war atrocities, crooked financiers, biassed referees, etc. with my children than I ever did with sex (or taking a dump!) Jezhotwells ( talk) 00:44, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
The fact is, no matter how much people cry out for any kind of system for this, it's been proposed tens (hundreds?) of times over the years and has NEVER been implamented. It's not going to happen, nor should it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ ( talk) 01:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Come on, people. Eveyone knows such tagging is a very good way of getting children to read those articles. Peter jackson ( talk) 10:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
If an article has several Wikipedia Projects, all of which were unranked in class, and another editor comes along and ranks the article class=C in just one of the projects, what does that mean?
In this instance, I had already marked the article with the POV template, because the last part of the article is preaching a particular point of view. I may agree with this particular preaching, but this is not appropriate in Wikipedia.
So, can an article be ranked as class=C when it has a serious POV issue? I am reluctant to change other project lines to a class=Start, so I plan to await whatever happens as other editors may respond to the POV template. I would appreciate advice here on the issues: several projects, one ranking; and can class=C be justified when NPOV is a serious issue. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 18:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
I found this article with an AfD notice while clicking on Random article; e-zone, but the discussion page leads to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flawless (Dance_Group). How did this happen and who/what fixes it? Abductive ( talk) 11:02, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
I was wishing to make at least a starter page on Philophobia (fear of being a relationship). It seems there is a band with this name and I don't know how to differentiate and make a separate page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Waldo1967 ( talk • contribs) 16:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello there. I see the community is familiar with alt text for images ( Wikipedia:Alternative text for images). But unfortunately, there is no alt text with most icons, such as stubs icons.
By exemple, when a screen reader reads Template:Album-stub and reads the icon, it reads the name of the file (Gnome-dev-cdrom-audio.svg). As you already know, the name of the file is not a relevant information at all.
This icon does not carry important information, so there is no need of a long alt text. The best solution would be "|alt=Stub icon
".
Here is an example. Since there are hundreds (if not thousands) of templates to edit, I need help. Maybe we could make a
Bot request. Do you agree ?
Dodoïste (
talk)
23:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
alt=""
.
Samulili (
talk)
20:57, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
alt=""
) only if the image is not a link. Otherwise, as Graham87 stated, a screen reader would read the file name. See
using null alt on an image where the image is the only content in a link from www.w3.org, techniques for WCAG 2.0, for further information.
Dodoïste (
talk)
09:54, 5 July 2009 (UTC)It's worth running this idea past Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting. I don't know enough about the technicalities of this proposal, but others there will be interested in commenting, I'm sure. Grutness... wha? 01:00, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
As a screen reader user, I'd prefer some alt text like "stub icon", because the filename is read to me if there is no alt text, and "stub icon" would be more informative than the file name. Graham 87 03:15, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Yes, each icon should have e.g., alt="Nurdsburg icon" or alt="[Nurdsburg icon]". The same words that one would "read in their head" if they could see the image. P.S., == Stubs icons and accessibility == should be == Icons and accessibility ==. Jidanni ( talk) 20:01, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
I have corrected a major mistake in Wikipedia:Alternative text for images. Please reread my poor english. Many thanks. :-) Dodoïste ( talk) 23:35, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
link=
so that the icon does not link. It should be one or the other, not both. There are some portal templates that use {{
portal}} as a meta-template, and some portals in infoboxes. ---—
Gadget850 (Ed)
talk
22:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)Hi all, Over at Wikinews, we are currently looking into the possibility of an iPhone application for the site. Any chance any capable developers could get in touch, either on my talk or by email? Thanks all! Dotty••| ☎ 23:17, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I was doing research for a new article today, when I noticed that my sandbox page was the #1 entry in the Google search. Anything we can do to keep our sandbox pages from showing up in search results? -- Tim Sabin ( talk) 00:34, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Dynamic Vapor Sorption appears to have been copied from somewhere, though I can't find it online anywhere. Any ideas about what to do about it? Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 07:01, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Could use some more participation at WP:FPOC. There is a portal that has been under consideration for some time now, Portal:Statistics, that has not received any comments. Cirt ( talk) 20:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
I would like the article on Shamu the killer whale to be distinguished from Shammu the Indian actress, but I don't know the proper template to make that happen. I am sure other editors can do it, though.-- DThomsen8 ( talk) 21:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Australian_Pink_Floyd_Show&diff=301256213&oldid=301245470
So I reverted a change made by 'bandcorrection'. He had removed an image and a small piece of trivia which was useful to the article, claiming it wasn't relevent, I reverted the edit, and he reverted it back. He also left the following message on my page:
I'm a member of The Australian Pink Floyd Show It's not that it wasn't 'relevant' we've run into a few copyright issues of late, and I didn't want to mention that as the reason for the edit. Roger isn't happy as he's touring The Wall himself this year and doesn't want the competition.We have to respect that! Sorry for the confusion
Now, putting the claim made aside, the items (Picture and trivia mentioning that one member was once in a former PF tribute) removed have nothing to do with violating copyright or competition. Getting into the claims, the first one is unprovable and here-say. The second one doesn't even appear to be true. Rogers had planned on a big show in Israel in June which I believe never went through, and his recent tour ended in 2008, with no mention of upcoming tour plans.
So what should I do? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 04:49, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi all. Participants are welcome for the next Wikivoices Skypecast. See here for more details. – Juliancolton | Talk 01:54, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
As suggested, a dedicated page has been set up, and this discussion may wish to move to its talk page. Thanks! BobAmnertiopsis ∴ ChatMe! 06:35, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
So, eons ago, User:Ram-man programmed a bot to take data from the 2000 US Census and use it to create articles for all the CDPs (Census Designated Places) in the US of A. Well, it's been a while. 2000 has come and gone. Wikipedia has, shall we say, grown and matured. A lot has changed. Now, a new census is coming upon us. This, invariably, will create probz (problems) for Wikipedia.
As it is one of Wiki's goals to be current and timely, the addition of US Census data should be incorporated into articles when it becomes available. However, it is no longer as simple as last time. In fact, it's a whole lot harder.
Many, most likely most, if not all Ram-man's original articles have undergone at least a few edits since their respective creations. This means a bot cannot simply go thru and replace what it identifies as "olddata" with "newdata". I suppose (I'm honestly very unqualified to talk about bots, so correct me if I'm wrong) it would be possible up to a point, for a bot to go thru, looking for certain tags from the original articles (ie, "the city has a total area of x square miles" or "For every p females there were d males") but if that information had been in any way reformatted, it would be far more complicated, if not borderline impossible.
Now, I s'pose it'd be possible to manually go and edit the average per capita income and average family size on every single article, but it would be amazingly time consuming, astoundingly tedious and, in my opinion, dead boring.
So, fellow Wikipedians, I come to you with a question: what the schnitzel do we do? I'd love to get a jump on this problem now, and would love to hear your input. As always, thank you all! BobAmnertiopsis ∴ ChatMe! 02:33, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Obviously the ideal scenario would be if we could simply plug the new data into the bot and have it go through and replace $olddata with $newdata, but the obstacles to this have already been stated : the data sets from the Census Bureau may not be the same, the data format in the article may have changed and become unrecognizable to the bot. Also, it'd be ideal if Rambot can be used for this task again; I would like to mention that I have a (currently inactive) bot that was used to update the infoboxes in US cities and places, and I can reprogram it if Rambot cannot be used. If nothing else, I can start running a survey of random articles over the weekend so we can get an idea as to how hard it would be .. Sher eth 14:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, these new comments have me leaning strongly towards the "bot dumps new demographics paragraph on article talk subpage or section" idea. I am pretty sure that will become widely known and conscientious state project editors will follow up. This would keep the heuristics required and difficulty factor low. Sswonk ( talk) 15:25, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Ok, having taken another look at things, we can also break down the concerns by section. Essentially there are 4 places where the data is likely to change in any article when the new census data comes out. They are:
What we probably ought to do is to come up with a list of variants on the "standard format" statements that the bot can look for. I suspect that with a relatively small amount of work, more than 95% of the work can be done successfully with a bot. The small number of articles that have been sufficiently modified by editors so as to be unreadable by the bot are, naturally, the ones that get a lot of editor attention and those editors would be quick to manually update the information as needed. I for one am fairly optimistic about this being somewhat less daunting than it appears at first. Also - perhaps we should consider creating a dedicated page for this discussion, as I fear it may wind up overwhelming the page before too long. :) Sher eth 15:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
^ Arbitrary break. Regards evolution of language, if we get Ram Man back, or get his data, this job should be made a lot easier. Don't rely on the words. Instead, look at the numbers themselves. Sure, that wouldn't solve everything, but 2432 => 2564 is a fairly easily substitution to make regardless of the words that surround them. That should help with most numbers (where they're not duplicated), but it doesn't get away from the problem of wanting to ensure 100% goodness. Only some serious logic would help with that. - Jarry1250 [ humourous – discuss ] 16:45, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure a bot is necessary. Run a bot/script to gather the data, put it on a page somewhere, and let users introduce it into the articles. With, what, 55,000 Rambot pages? That could be easily done within a few weeks. -- Golbez ( talk) 17:24, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
When I first created all those pages, I had planned to update them all when the 2010 data was published. That has always been my goal, and I always planned on doing it myself, since I created the work in the first place. I suspect that the vast majority of pages are still close enough to the original that a bot could be hand-programmed to replace the data. I have not touched the original data in many years, but I'm pretty sure I have it stored somewhere on my computer. I don't see the need for opt-out lists or anything like that. Anything that can't be done automatically and correctly will be pretty easy to determine. -- RM 00:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
This is a quite interesting knowledge management problem with natural language processing and evolving data format accommodation elements. If properly described and addressed, one might be able to compose either an article for peer review or an abstract for submission to a conference related to this "operation" (I'm thinking about the annual ASIS&T meeting or the JASIST publication, for example). It would be quite a confidence builder for Wikipedia users if Wikipedia editors were to author a peer reviewed research article related to handling a real world knowledge management problem such as this. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 02:38, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
The community's views are needed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Advisory Council on Project Development. Many thanks, SlimVirgin talk| contribs 17:23, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Is there any project about this?
But may be there was a discussion?
P.S. I'm not so good in search, so may be I just missed something.
Besuglov.S (
talk)
07:03, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
See WP:WIKED. Will Beback talk 19:30, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I am looking for a few editors who would be willing to help me significantly expand the list of dermatologists. Would any of you consider working on this project? --- kilbad ( talk) 15:49, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
As I write this on the edit screen, down below it says: "Only public domain resources can be copied without permission — this does not include most web pages or images." According to WP:EMDASH, the spaces before and after the dash (which happens to be an "em dash") should be removed (or use an "en dash" – instead). Most Wikipedians can't be bothered with Manual of Style obscurities, but they should either be enforced or removed, and if the rule is worth keeping, we should set an example on the edit screen. So how does one edit that sentence? Art LaPella ( talk) 19:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I have come across a number of cases recently where searching on one word automatically goes to another. For example if I search for mathematical solution I get equation. I can see that this might avoid Wikipedia repeating itself when, for example, the concept of an equation and its solution are closely related. But I can think of three down sides:
Any thoughts on this issue? Yaris678 ( talk) 21:22, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I remember reading somewhere (maybe the Signpost) that the foundation intended to set up a project to investigate the obstacles placed in the way of new contributers and to "eliminate them one by one". It may have done so already as far as I know. Is this project being discussed online anywhere? I would like to contribute. SpinningSpark 12:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
Hey all, just a quick reminder to check out Wikipedia:The Great Wikipedia Dramaout. Cheers! – Juliancolton | Talk 23:51, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
I am not here to offend, and I apologize in advance if it comes across that way. Unfortunately, we have a large number of articles about South Asian people, places and institutions which are written or edited by people whose English is not the best. These articles also tend to be highly POV, and full of trivia. As someone who has no knowledge of any of the content, I have no idea how to edit these articles to make them work. These editors also tend to add long lists of non-notable people into articles about cities, Indian and Pakistani states, tribes, ethnic groups, etc. Just last night, I ran across Mhow and Indore. Looked at from Western eyes, these articles don't tell us anything. Are the people mentioned notable? Are there articles about them? If not, they shouldn't have importance. The Sports section in Indore is daunting. Is all of this trivia notable? It's not just these two articles, it's practically every South Asian article. I know that people from the subcontinent are highly literate, but they don't seem to understand Wikipedia rules about notability and sourcing. It's generalizing, that's true, but something really needs to be done. Does anybody have any ideas? And please no attacks about perceived racism. This has nothing to do with racism, nothing to do with disdain for people who don't speak English as well as I do (I'm not the greatest writer, that's for sure), all I'm concerned about is quality of articles. Who then was a gentleman? ( talk) 20:38, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
This is a major problem on subcontinental articles. Most long-term people only edit their own articles and detail and vandalism is completely neglected. Patrolling for spam, stealth adverts and to clean up disorganised additions are basically never done. It is just the culture there. Some guys they have maybe 50-80% article edits only to those they personally wrote, meaning that they do hardly any 1 percenters. I know some people (now retired) who felt that an FA meant that the article was completely fine in terms of POV etc, when it is not necessarily, and only see FAs as worth fixing and don't care if any old BS is on other articles, eg see Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, etc members of the ruling family. Sometimes a vandalism or a spamlink to an extremist site can last days. In late 2006 NY of 2007, someone wrote that Rahul Gandhi was a rapist and it stayed there for a week. And all sorts like that. Maybe people just won't do the unglamourous stuff. Also many in there (apart from POV pushers mostly) refuse to get involved in any incident or make a stnd against anything. I operate a lot in Australian articles, and there is a much more proactive stance towards fixing and cleaning up stuff. Indian articles are full of cruft, spam, vanity listing, POV accretions. YellowMonkey ( cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:28, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Since the talk page to Template:Distinguish doesn't seem very active, I thought I'd post this here.
Lately, a user with a dynamic IP address has been adding "For the drug, see tobacco." to the top of the article on Žan Tabak, a former basketball player. Tabak is the word for tobacco in several languages, and the page Tabak does redirect to Žan Tabak, but I don't think such a hatnote is needed in the English Wikipedia. Indeed, the hatnote looks very silly to me. Do others think it is appropriate? Thanks, Zagalejo ^^^ 19:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone know who can edit the main text body of http://www.thewritingpot.com/wikistatus/, the page known as "Wikipedia's status"? The updates to the status there are very useful, but pretty much all of the links in the hard text are to pages which no longer exist or no longer show any recent activity. - Jmabel | Talk 00:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Hey guys. I am a Chinese Wikipedian. We are now translating the notability guideline of Wikipedia:Notability into Chinese. However, we do have some translating problem with the "nutshell":
Could you please help me solve those problems? We also welcome the original author of this guideline to answer. Thank you!
(My English may not be so good....)-- Franklsf95 ( talk) 02:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
I was looking around, and I could not find anything like a list of Wikipedia's featured articles that have not been showcased on the Main Page yet. Is there such a page? Thanks for your help! -- Spotty 11222 00:17, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
I am looking for some computer savvy editors to help me style some tables to make them more readable. Basically, several of us editors are working to categorize pharmacology-related articles, and have created some rough draft conversion tables. However, at this time, they need more stylization for readability sake, but we were unsure how to do a few things, like indenting ATC codes in the first column to illustrate the hierarchy. Basically, anything you can do to make the tables easier to use would be great. Please feel free to edit away if you have ideas. --- kilbad ( talk) 19:39, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
I suggested a small addition to all speedy deletion templates; it's explained at Template talk:db-meta#Addition?. Comments would be welcome. rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 22:19, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
I've found myself linking to articles in Newsbank quite often lately. Since most of the parameters in the URL are redundant, I trim the links down to the minimum that will get me to the article. I just created {{ Newsbank}} to help me with this: it takes a parameter for the only field that really matters and generates the minimal URL to display that article. I think. -- SarekOfVulcan ( talk) 20:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
{{cite news |url= {{Newsbank|p_text_direct=0FAFFBB974E01E30}} |title= Rebate processor still works hands-on |publisher= [[Minneapolis Star Tribune]] |date= March 3, 2003 |accessdate= 2009-07-15 }}
which renders like
A naive cut-and-paste of the URL, as supplied by Google News Search, would look like:
{{cite news |url= http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=MN&p_theme=mn&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0FAFFBB974E01E30&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM |title= Rebate processor still works hands-on |publisher= [[Minneapolis Star Tribune]] |date= March 3, 2003 |accessdate= 2009-07-15 }}
which would render like
(which should be identical to the first one). -- SarekOfVulcan ( talk) 17:28, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello there. Just to let you know that I (Kingpin13) have been nominated for BAG membership. Per the requirements, I'm "spamming" a number of noticeboards, to request input at my nomination, which can be found at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Kingpin13. Thanks - Kingpin 13 ( talk) 08:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
As part of an ongoing research project by students and faculty at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science we are conducting a survey of anyone who has participated in the Request for Adminship (RfA) process, either voting or as a candidate.
The survey will only take a few minutes of your time, and will aid furthering our understanding of online communities, and may assist in the development of tools to assist voters in making RfA evaluations. We are NOT attempting to spam anyone with this survey and are doing our best to be considerate and not instrusive in the Wikipedia community. The results of this survey are for academic research, are not used for any profit nor sold to any companies.
Thank you!
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free comment on my
talk page.
CMUResearcher (
talk)
05:17, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
First, I want to make one thing clear. This post is in no way a proposal for change of any sort. I can't imagine that this topic has never come up before, so I just wanted to see what people think.
I understand the technical reasons why talk pages are not currently forums, which at least partially drives the policy ( WP:NOTFORUM) reasons. What I'm saying though is, why not ask for that to be changed? Why not turn all talk pages into a phpbb/vBulletin/(insert your favorite bb system here) style page? It's not as thought the technical requirements for such systems are inaccessable to a system using wiki software. Everything required for a Wiki is the exact same things required by (for example) phpbb.
So, other then that no one has aparently pushed for it and/or some people may not like it, is there a reason not to have talk pages act like a forum?
—
Ω (
talk)
04:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
I "answered" my own question. It looks like the
Wikipedia Usability Initiative has been/is developing an extension dealing with talk pages:
mw:Extension:LiquidThreads
—
Ω (
talk)
05:03, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps a simple solution would be to set up a forum subpage. Peter jackson ( talk) 11:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I made a small mistake. According to the notability guidelines of the German Wikipedia, any ordinary Professor at an established university is notable. Under the premise that this would be similar on the English WP, I thought that it would be sufficient to say that he is "Professor of American History at Pennsylvania State University". I was wrong there, because Wikipedia:Notability (academics) on the English WP says something slightly different. However, if [it] should turn that Wilson Jeremiah Moses is not notable according to the guidelines, then the guidelines must be false. If the guidelines would say that someone who has written 2 books published by Oxford University Press AND 2 books published by Cambridge University Press [is not notable], then we better delete all articles about academics. It would only have required 5 minutes of waiting or a glimpse on the resume of the person which I provided under external links to figure that out, but one editor and one administrator were to deletion-happy for the first option and to lazy for the second. This is not the first time that something as infuriating as this has happened, and already a long time ago this has become unbearable for me. I am quite sure the guidelines say somewhere that you have to wait 30 min before you flag a new article as candidate for speedy deletion, or at least the guidelines used to say that. Now someone please tell me that this is not an intentional manoeuvre to make me quit wikipedia! Zara1709 ( talk) 17:20, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
This is not an intentional manoeuvre to make you quit wikipedia! It's just a well known problem that currently nobody is doing anything about: Spam fighters with a déformation professionelle getting into the way of genuine article creators. Hans Adler 18:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Pursuant to the Arbitration Committee agenda item Review Committee performance, a half-year summary of arbitration activities has been published at January to June 2009 report. Comments and feedback are invited on the talk page. For the Arbitration Committee, Carcharoth ( talk) 04:49, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
I edited a wiki article last night , and this morning i looked at the page and my editing was removed completely. The page said that a section was in need of clarification , I clarified the section , so people could understand the article better and it was deleted. I dont understand why if an article needs to be clarified and it is clarified very clearly someone would erase it.
The article in question is on physics so its not like it was easy to clarify and put it in words that the average person would be able to understand , but I did. I spent my time doing it just to be erased in less than 6 hours , last time i try to help out around here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.25.150.125 ( talk) 13:21, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Ost316 it was the first time i tried to edit a wiki article and was kind of discouraging to see it being removed. As for being verifiable and being written informally i wasnt sure how to format my clarification , but just wanted to make it easier to understand in laymens terms. I will reconsider contributing , I was just a little disappointed in the revert. and I will try to read up on how to post a better clarification before i do contribute again. not trying to clutter up the place just thought i could help. thanks again ost316 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.25.150.125 ( talk) 15:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)