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Is there any policy/guideline for how to deal with names that vary from different pieces of media across multiple articles. The issue that brought this up at WP:WikiProject Anime and Manga was the naming of Roronoa Zoro from One Piece who also goes by the name Roronoa Zolo in several pieces of media. It was decided for the main article and the character list to use Zoro as the more widely recognized English name after an exhaustive debate. However One Piece: Grand Adventure uses Zolo as the game when it was released in the US uses Zolo. 陣 内 Jinnai 22:55, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
WP:MUSIC is apparently well-embedded (if that's the right expression), but the shortcut doesn't point to WikiProject Music. It points to Wikipedia:Notability (music). This is obviously confusing. Is there a technically-adroit way of fixing this? -- Klein zach 05:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Consistency needn't be had. The point of short-cuts is to cut short the time (and characters) it takes to type a frequently used link. It wouldn't matter if WP:Q went to Wikipedia:Arbitration committee. The only person who needs to know where it goes is the person who types it. For those who don't, they can click it, hover over it or look it up in WP:Alphabet soup. In any case, the nature of the system means we can't change any of them without careful bot assistance, even if it did matter. (c.f. Tiny URL) OrangeDog ( τ • ε) 18:53, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
This is a small note to draw attention to the massive overuse of the opinions of film critic Roger Ebert in talking about the reception of films. He pops up in pretty much every article and one gets the opinion that he is some sort of demi god within the film industry whose opinions on every picture are somehow particularly important. This is not a troll post, I love Wiki and am extremly gratefull to have it around, I am simply trying to draw this massive inbalance to SOMEONES attention....we shall see. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.97.250.112 ( talk) 23:11, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
When citing reviews of film critics in an article's "Critical response" or "Reception" section, WP:MOSFILM asks that we use reliable sources to show how the film was received and it goes on to state that "sources that are regarded as reliable are professional film critics"; Roger Ebert most certainly is a professional film critic. WP:RS separately goes on to state that a reliable source would be either "published materials with a reliable publication process" ( Chicago Sun-Times certainly meets this criterion) or "authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject in question" (Ebert certainly meets this criterion when the subject in question is a film). Being a nationally known film critic whose expertise is not usually questioned, Roger Ebert's reviews are normally listed at the very top of the "External reviews" section for every film on IMDb and he is also included in the "Top Critics" list on the aggregate review website Rotten Tomatoes. WP:UNDUE does not apply when using Ebert's reviews to show how any individual film was received because the determination (if there is one) of whether the film was received well or poorly will usually be made based on the percentage of positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, not based on Ebert's opinion of the film. Ie, Synecdoche, New York was named by Roger Ebert as the best film of the decade yet the Wikipedia article clearly shows a 67% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 67/100 on Metacritic while selectively citing both positive and negative reviews. The issue of WP:UNDUE would only be a problem if we decided to use Ebert's opinion as the ultimate authority on how well the film is received which we certainly do not as per the previous example. Please also keep in mind that we never attempt to even suggest to a reader that a film was good or that it was cinematic drivel, we simply quote others who have done so and we make sure that the ones we quote are authoritative, reliable and well-known to readers ( WP:NF, among other things, presumes a film notable if it receives multiple reviews from "nationally known critics") and Ebert meets all of this criteria. His opinion should not be used to skew an otherwise neutral article, it's should not be used out of context and should not be used to deliver a statement of fact. It should only ever be used as an undisguised personal opinion and that's the exact purpose and usage of his reviews. If used in such context, there should be absolutely no reason to discontinue or reduce the amount of film articles where his opinion is used because such usage is encouraged by WP:RS and WP:MOSFILM and does not in any way violate WP:NPOV or any other policy or guideline that might be concerned with Ebert as a source. Big Bird ( talk • contribs) 21:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Users are advised that His Grace the Duke of Waltham has announced the Silliest wikilink of the month awards at WT:LINK. There are five monthly winners (August–December 2009) and an overall winner for 2009. The Duke's private secretary, Harold Cartwright, has emphasised that no correspondence will be entered into regarding the awards: His Grace's decision is final. Tony (talk) 10:29, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
Hello. I wonder if anyone can tell me what the artist's name on File:Head drawinga.gif is? To me it looks like H. A. Cronit, but I'm not finding anyone of that name. Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:24, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi folks. We have a need for some new clerks at WP:SPI, the sockpuppet investigations process. At SPI, clerks help the checkusers maintain the page by keeping cases organized, archiving them, tagging confirmed socks, endorsing checkuser requests and occasionally declining them. All final decisions, of course, rest with the checkusers. Both administrators and non-administrators can be trainees and full clerks. For example, Nathan, one of the clerks who has been there the longest, is not an administrator.
A few things to keep in mind if you think you might like to help us keep the sock menace down: (a) we generally don't take trainees with a recent block log or history of disruptive editing, (b) we would prefer trainees who can be regularly active and (c) we often use the IRC channel #wikipedia-en-spi on Freenode, which can be accessed using one of these tools or links, for coordination purposes. Please e-mail myself, Nathan, MuZemike or PeterSymonds if you're interested.
On behalf of the SPI clerk team, NW ( Talk) 03:53, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
I recently discovered the British-Pathé website/archive of thousands of news clips and stock video footage from the 1890s to the 1970s, and want to ask here where it would be best to post to draw people's attention to what looks like an under-used resource (about 130 pages link to that website at the moment), especially for the clips from the first half of the 20th century, where there is lots of historical stuff likely not available elsewhere. The website is here. As they are a proprietary site, selling access to the high-resolution versions of the clips (the free previews are low-resolution), what I propose to do is:
What I wanted to ask here was whether anyone knows what the page on Wikipedia is that lists similar news/video archives? And can anyone think of which WikiProjects would be interested in knowing about this? And are there other places on Wikipedia where I could tell more people about this resource? Carcharoth ( talk) 06:27, 14 January 2010 (UTC) Updated with diffs and links. 08:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I don't know if this is the right place to ask for opinions on this, or even if there is really a right place for that. In any case, it can't hurt....
Quickly put, I would like some third part opinions about the use of large (complete) citations of Medal of Honors as used in:
Generally speaking, I believe the articles would look more encyclopedic without them. Maybe Wikisource is a better place for this amount of primary-source material.
Thanks, -- Damiens.rf 12:19, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Please, opinions based on the policy cited are welcome (conjectures about editor's intentions are not). I'll be doing the Wikisource thing within some days... any concrete objection? -- Damiens.rf 14:51, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
It's unfortunate the issue seems so poisoned that we can't really discuss it on arguments grounded on policies, guidelines, etc.. -- Damiens.rf 13:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Alconétar Bridge currently applies for GA status and being the main contributor, I am looking for some help with how to put one sentence (lead, 2nd paragraph). Which version sounds best?
Well, all a bit awkward, not? Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 19:01, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Just dropping a note here that the Mediation Cabal is backlogged, so we need help. Please see Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal#Backlog for details about the cases we have available. Thanks, The Wordsmith Communicate 17:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
From the Wikpediholic test, I've gotten to thinking that this is possible. I'd like to do so. Any help? Buggie111 ( talk) 01:18, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Hello: I've added a category to IExpress. But when I go to it ( Category:Installation software) there is no link to the stated article. But if I log in Wikipedia it appears. If I log out Wikipedia it disappears again. Strange, isn't it? Thanks, -- Edupedro ( talk) 21:40, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Hey Wikipedians, I am here to advertise my nomination to be on the Bot Approvals Group. Take a look if you have some time. Tim1357 ( talk) 02:22, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
I have been speaking with one of the principals of the New Georgia Encyclopedia, an online-only collection of about 2,200 professionally written and well-sourced articles relating to the state of Georgia, and about 5,000 corresponding images, about potentially migrating their entire collection to Wikipedia. My rough estimate is that this would include at least a thousand new articles, and the remainder would need to be maintained in Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state) project space until they could be fully merged in to the appropriate existing articles. In each case, proper attribution to both the origin project and the original authors would need to be maintained in the article, along with a link to the original article. Three to four of the authors who have worked on those articles would also likely be joining Wikipedia, and that WikiProject specifically, in order to watch these articles as they are transitioned into our system (I have already cautioned them not to expect to be able to assert ownership of the content once the articles are here, and that objections to changes will have to be addressed by discussion and generating a consensus). If the remaining principles of the New Georgia Encyclopedia are agreeable to our incorporation of their work, this could provide substantial new opportunities for Wikipedia to incorporate similar works, and could generate some good publicity regarding the reliability and utility of Wikipedia. They may wish to begin by allowing us to import a small number of articles as test cases, to see how they fare in terms of vandalism and other issues that may arise in this process. Please let me know if you have any particular concerns or thoughts about this, as I will hopefully be having a conference call with all of the principles within the next week. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:01, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
As most of us already know, much of the public domain Encyclopedia Britannica 11the Edition (1910-1911) has already been incorporated into Wikipedia ( as noted in this discussion topic). However, looking at this Britannica article's edition listing shows us that all others editions up its 14th, which was published from 1929–1933, are already over 77 years of age, and may also be in the public domain in the U.S. Are any copyright experts able to elaborate on this? If the 12th thru 14th editions are available for inclusion into Wikipedia, that could become the basis for another important WP project. Best: HarryZilber ( talk) 17:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
But of coarse its much easier to cut-and-paste! That's the whole point! -but remember that Wikipedia forbids original research, while in college our profs want somewhat the opposite (depending on your level and assignment) in order to actually make you work at thinking. That doesn't make articles copied into Wikipedia any less valid, because accurate, verifiable knowledge is Wikipedia's end product, not the fashion it was produced in.
As for examples, here are two 12th edition quick picks pulled at random out of Google; however I don't have any idea whether or not they're representative of that edition as I've never seen the three volumes involved:
I would guess that the latter article would fall into the 10-15 hour research time estimated earlier, while the former would probably easily exceed that. So again, why reinvent the wheel if you don't need to? Our 'salable' product to the lay public is accurate knowledge, not originality. Best: HarryZilber ( talk) 23:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I started a wikicommunity help action at the Dutch wiki, and imagine that we can help on all wiki's as humans helping humans. We can support all victims in Haiti by placing a small 'banner' on our User and Talk pages. I used this one:
Code:
<div style="margin:1; background:#074074; font-family: sans-serif; font-size:100%; font-weight:bold; border:1px solid #cef2e0; text-align:center; color:#FFFFFF; padding-left:0.4em; padding-top: 0.2em; padding-bottom: 0.2em;"><Big>I'd like to express my support, my compassion and my humanity to the victims of the human catastrophe in Haiti.<br/>'''''Please, donate to your local Aid Agency or the RED CROSS'''''</BIG></div>
I think from the humanitarian perspective we now need to support all those there suffering from this horrible catastroph. Let's step a bit over the 'wiki-only' horizon, and let's do a bit of support where we can! I hope this initiative will get noticed and followed by all other users! (You also might use other places like Facebook, Myspace etc for this!)
Yours Sincerely, Tjako ( talk) 22:25, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Hello, i m sorry, i have some problems to speak english. I noticed that in Wikipédia people mixing between Western sahara (a territory) and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (proclaimed by the Polisario) which is an entity. But in the encyclopedia, is used both as if they were the same. According to the UN, In 1990, the General Assembly reaffirmed that the question of Western Sahara was under the decolonization process that the people of Western Sahara had not yet completed. And SADR is an entity not recognized by the UN and only by a number of countries that vary from year to year. The encyclopedia do the flag of the SADR in articles concerning the Western Sahara, which isn't neutral position.-- Kafka1 ( d) 04:37, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
The New York Magazine is reporting that the New York Times is going to cease providing free content and will install a "metered" payment system. Please see Wikipedia:Using WebCite for information on how to archive NY Times articles in Wikipedia before they disappear behind a paywall.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Blargh29 ( talk • contribs) 23:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Lately I have been wondering that quality enlargement of wikipedia in 2010 is much more polarised than the past - namely that many many articles more or less stagnate unless there is a sudden concerted effort by one of a small percentage of editors - i.e more than ever we need dedicated content contributors (feel free to include this in any missive). I only base this on my impressions of the edits on my 6000-odd article watchlist. (might post at village pump about this...). Has anyone else felt this to be close to the mark or am I way off? Feel free to argue.... Casliber ( talk · contribs) 08:54, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
It was always like this, but a year or two ago one could still just about beleve that sooner or later someone would come along & improve the text, whereas by now one has realized they probably won't except on a glacial timescale. There's nothing more depressing than doing a diff over a couple of years, and a couple of screens, worth of changes, and seeing that the actual crappy text has barely been touched, & there's just MOS, format, categories, interwikis & the other peripheral stuff. But this is now the case for the majority of articles. Johnbod ( talk) 19:37, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Wikimedia UK, the UK chapter, is organising an event called Britan Loves Wikipedia. Britain Loves Wikipedia is a cultural event bring organised in partnership between Wikimedia UK, the Collections Trust and the MLA (Museums, Libraries, Archives Partnership) starting on January 31 which will encourage members of the public to visit certain participating museums around the UK and photograph certain exhibits and make those photos available for use on Wikipedia, and other projects, through Wikimedia Commons. There will then be various prizes given out based on the pictures people produce. For this event, we need a logo. While we are getting quotes to have a professionally produced logo made, we would much prefer one produced by a member of the community. The community has produced excellent logos in the past and we are sure it will be able to provide us with one that is just as professional looking as what we could get by paying an enormous amount for it. If you would like to have a go, the brief is as follows:
Unfortunately we have very limited time so deadlines for this project are as follows:
We understand that that doesn't give you much time, and we're sorry we didn't organise this sooner. Hopefully a few people can knock something up in that time! If you want to have a go, please let us know here. Thanks!
-- The Wikimedia UK Board
Posted by Seddon talk| WikimediaUK (WMUK Director) @ 15:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
hi I am new here and don't know what I am doing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lion131996 ( talk • contribs) 21:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You_Think_You_Can_Dance_%28UK%29#Elimination_chart Apparently, wikipedia knows the results of this show without being over yet. How is that possible? -- Leladax ( talk) 21:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't know much about symbolism, but it seems to be a rather important topic and the article has more than 800 links to it. I just cut some fat from the article (belonged in Symbol, if anywhere), and now there is hardly anything left. Anyone want to take a whack at expanding it? Perhaps a specific project should address it, but I am not really sure what it falls under... psychology, anthropology, philosophy, evolutionary biology? It is a pretty wide-ranging topic. It's even listed as a literary technique. — Epastore ( talk) 23:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I read these at On Wikipedia and thought I'd share them with folks here as they're pretty interesitng.
80.7% of BLPs are of men (and thus 19.3% are of women). 48.5% of BLPs are about subjects from Canada, the United States, or the UK. (see Who's On Wikpedia: Part 2). Personally, I think this is shocking and Wikipedia needs to diversify its coverage a little more.
Furthermore, 36.7% of all BLPs are of athletes (and out these 39% are of soccer players). There are more BLPs of soccer players than of politicians, and more soccer BLPs than BLPs of all businessmen, lawyers, government officials, and scholars (see Who's on Wikipedia: Part 3). What can we do to address these issues and help Wikipedia diversify? HH Nobody ( talk) 18:06, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Maybe if we had an stricter notability criteria for areas like athletes (and other popular famous people), we would be wasting more time writing and maintaining articles about politicians, business people and non-anglo-saxon folks.
The mentality of WP:NOTPAPER is usually broken in that, from the fact that we're not limited by the availability of paper, it infers that we have infinite resources for writing articles, reviewing, fixing, tagging, categorizing, discussing... -- Damiens.rf 18:53, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I see - I had missed the point. Your concern is not that there are lots of crappy articles, as I had thought, but that there are lots of crappy articles about living people that might cause them to sue WP or get their country to pass laws limiting it, or get so upset they do something bad to themselves or others. I hadn't thought of that, but I'm also not sure what to do about it. - DavidWBrooks ( talk) 16:32, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
I've been meaning to post this here for days now, but keep forgetting. I'm fairly certain that there are many of you who are involved in the "BLP problem" who already know about this, but there are probably many who are not (and several who may not have thought of this methodology). Since most BLP's are categorized into the Living people category, it's easy enough to use
Special:RelatedChanges to keep track of what's up without cluttering your watchlist with 400,000+ articles. Feel free to copy the link to your userpage, or bookmark it, or whatever else would be convenient for you (the URL is all you really need, but I provided a beautified plainlnks presentation for those who might want it). The url encoded query travels really well, so you should be able to do what you want with it. Enjoy!
—
V = I * R (
talk to Ohms law)
21:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Here is an example of a Wikipedia article about a female subject which is in danger of being removed for lack of citations at Wikipedia: Ethel deNagy Gabriel (born November 16, 1921) is one of America's first female record producers in American music business... Ottawahitech ( talk) 14:41, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I ran into this image: File:Ghostworld rebecca.jpg and checked the article. Now, while the use may well fall under fair use, it's not well handled on the image description page. For it doesn't display information on the author, the source (an url to a file found on the net is not a proper source attribution), etc.
I don't know much about it, but perhaps someone could take a look and fix the missing details. The uploader was blocked on 2007 for copyright violations (thus perhaps another look at his uploads may be in order). -- m: drini 18:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Some recent afd discussion have raised attention to a notability guideline that says that every Playboy playmate is indisputably notable. This is item 3 of Wikipedia:PORNBIO.
I believe this is arbitrary and problematic in that in many cases it goes directly against WP:BLP1E and the overall spirit on WP:N. -- Damiens.rf 04:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Lots of yummy UK data is now released on http://data.gov.uk/ Much to my amazement the terms and conditions say:,
Wowzers! -- h2g2bob ( talk) 01:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Does anyone know the answer to this? Do images claimed as PD on Wikipedia have to be PD in the U.S., or is it enough that they be PD in their country of origin? I'm not talking about the Commons, which is discussed here. I'm asking only about Wikipedia. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 03:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I left a note on that topic at Wikipedia_talk:GFDL_standardization#Images_uploaded_before_2004 but maybe it is not a place others look very often so just wanted to leave a note here.
My thought is basicly that if disclaimers was first introduced in February 2004 then an image uploaded before could NOT have disclaimers. Example File:Ac.adamattemple.jpg. -- MGA73 ( talk) 12:46, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
They seem to have become part of the landscape. The problems associated with their use are being discussed here. Tony (talk) 11:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Is it accepted, that User:Crystal Phuong uses his userpage for advertisement? - as far as I see she is active in several electronis platforms to become known, and she has no other contributions. Some of her picture are qualified as "unsourced" in the commons Plehn ( talk) 21:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I have a pdf article in French that I would like to use as a source for a dermatology-related article. Is there anyone that could help me translate it? ---kilbad (talk) 22:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I am currently standing for BAG membership. Your input is appreciated. ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 02:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't pretend to know enough about this really to go and start making reverts and changes, but an editor is changing many many bus and coach stations to lower case titles. The biggest coach station I know is Victoria in London - this though, has managed to remain Victoria Coach Station.
As this is the name of the station, capital C and S for Coach Station seems justified in the title. Newcastle coach station, Bristol bus station, Birmingham coach station to name a few, have all been changed recently. A quick search of google would suggest that most sources, newspapers included, use capital letters to denote coach stations. National Express website also uses capitals for their coach stations, ie. "Bristol Bus Station".
Also, is it a tad controversial moving all these pages without any mention or discussion on the articles talk pages - I know that in cases of train stations, ie. Talk:Birmingham New Street railway station, where "railway" has been added against consensus, and Station changed to station, it has kicked up a bit of a storm as the actual name of the station is "Birmingham New Street Station"... "If it ain't broke don't fix it" or "fixing something for the sake of fixing it" comes to mind.
Any thoughts? Willdow (Talk) 17:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
The Venezuelan-only POV that parts of Guyana belong to Venezuela is being used in this map as if it is an established fact. The Venezuela article needs a more NPOV map. Am I wrong here? Woogee ( talk) 00:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
im older user of top and its papers my eyesight suffers just a sugestion how about making the glue side easier to see mayby a color change? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.114.120.213 ( talk) 03:52, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
I've asked a question at the bottom of Talk:Tuple that nobody bothered. Some expert please respond. Georgia guy ( talk) 23:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Britain Loves Wikipedia, a free photography competition / scavenger hunt, launches this Sunday at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and then runs in 21 museums across the UK throughout February! Full details are on the WMUK blog, and http://www.britainloveswikipedia.org/ . If you're around the UK this next month, then please come along and join in. :-) Any questions, please let me know. Mike Peel ( talk) 23:20, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
We're just doing the runaround at Talk:Cantonese (Yue) and desperately need outside editors, since the article wildly gets renamed every which way every other month.
70.29.210.242 ( talk) 04:49, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
I recently created the redirect Cecil Godfrey Rawling to point at Cecil Rawling, and while checking "what links here" for the redirect, I came across User:David Kernow/List of Royal Geographical Society Gold Medal recipients (20th century). I went to that user's talk page to tell them that a redlink on their list had turned blue, but they have not edited since June 2007. At some point, I might be interested in taking the list that he started and finishing it and moving it into article space. I would leave a note on his talk page first, and also try e-mailing him, but if I get no response to either of those attempts, what should I do? Carcharoth ( talk) 01:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Many seemingly POV editors (most coming from Punta Gorda, Florida based IP addresses) seem to object to the "Criticisms" section at Charlotte High School (Punta Gorda, Florida), which basically just points out, with references, what Charlotte High School is commonly known for. It's been on the article for quite some time, and has never been contested by an experienced editor. I've even seen it mentioned by members of Tarpon related Facebook groups (some actually agreeing with it). The problem is I'm POV myself, so perhaps a neutral party could provide an opinion in this matter, or make suggestions? PCHS-NJROTC (Messages) 20:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
I've posted a requested move at Talk:List of mass murderers and spree killers by number of victims: Mass murders#Requested move; requested moves tend to get very few participants, so I'm asking for a few extra commentators on this one. Thanks.-- Father Goose ( talk) 20:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
The Community Health task force (formed as part of Foundation's strategic planning process) proposed that a survey be given to former contributors to fill out in order to better understand why they are no longer editing.
Philippe notified us that very preliminary interim results are available.
Former contributors survey:preliminary interim results.
Information from this survey can help us better understand user editing experiences and might be useful for developing a better experience for new editors so they get off to a good start, and stick around and improve their articles. FloNight ♥♥♥♥ 19:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I have made a web tool that automatically makes a citation based on a Google Books url. Input a URL for a book, and the tool will pull information such as title, authors, publisher and isbn from Google Books. It will also produce a {{ cite book}} template that can be copied and pasted right into an article. As a web tool, no installation required.
The tool will also check if the authors have articles on Wikipedia, which can be put in the authorlink= parameter. For convenience, there is a preview area that shows what the citation will look like in an article.
It probably has bugs and may not be compatible with all browsers. Comments bugs and ideas are welcome here or on my talk page. For example, is the big table of text fields too overwhelming? -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 22:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
As a new editor, and one probably not as versed in wikitools/scripting/etc. as others, I find that the process for adding Redirects for Comment, Articles for Deletion, and other basic tasks on Wikipedia is not user-friendly and discourages new editors from participating in improving the encyclopedia.
I wasn't sure how or where to post to get the community to look again at addressing the problem of getting new editors more involved the encyclopedia by making it easier for them to do simply tasks like RfC. If anyone can help me understand the community consensus on not wanting to make this task easier, please provide input or links to relative previous discussions. If this posting was put in the wrong area, please move to appropriate page. Thanks! 172.130.48.125 ( talk) 20:44, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
Please be advised: there is a rational and orderly discussion at Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2010 January 28#File:JD Salinger.jpg.-- Blargh29 ( talk) 07:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Excluse me if this is not the right place for this, but someone should look at the recent edits by Bowei Huang 1 ( talk · contribs), which are quite bizzare. Also sorry for not signing this properly, but the tilda on my computer does not seem to be working. jbhood —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbhood ( talk • contribs) 13:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
User:Madjidi has been adding spam to a bunch of pages. He's gotten a couple of warnings; I dunno if it's time to block him, but someone with more time than I should go through and revert anything still there. (I took care of code reviewand software review.) Ma t c hups 03:51, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
The intention has never been to be spam. I added external links that are appropriate for Safety Critical Engineers to know. I have no idea why you are attacking my additions. I will review the guideline and will add the links back to be in compliant. Madjidi ( talk) 10:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
I have been nominated for Bot Approvals Group membership by MBisanz, and I am posting a notification here as encouraged by the bot policy. If you have time, please comment at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/The Earwig. Thanks, — The Earwig @ 03:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed a few articles that make such heavy use of inline citations that they create readability issues. One example is here, where in one case 51 citations are used in a 200 word paragraph [final paragraph]. What would be a good way to deal with it? I don't have access to most of the sources to see if they're necessary or not, and bringing it up on the talk page hasn't proved very useful. Is there a common practice to dealing with issues such as this, or is it simply not considered an issue? There's also the issue that the section relies almost entirely on primary sources, which seems to be the reason there are so many of them, primary sources backing-up primary.. Rehevkor ✉ 05:50, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
.reference {display:none}
to your user CSS, the footnotes will not be displayed. With ECMAScript this can be toggled with a click. Hmm, just had an idea...
Paradoctor (
talk)
16:15, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
This topis is also being discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive_72#Can too many references be a bad thing?. Might be good to just stick to one forum for easier discussion. -- AnmaFinotera ( talk · contribs) 17:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
For anyone interested, User:Dendodge has written a Wikinews article on this.
I came across this pdf produced by the Indiana Department of Homeland Security for racial profiling and found that in it, and found that the vocabulary section on page 3/4 are copied from wikipedia, yet there is no attribution to Wikipedia or even a mention of it...
The purpose of the pdf is "To research positions related to the topic of racial profiling post September 11, 2001 with a primary focus on citizens of Middle Eastern descent, and to give an informative speech."
It uses 7 terms from Wikipedia:
Racial Profiling,
USA PATRIOT Act,
Bigotry,
Internment,
Terrorism,
Counter-terrorism,
The War on Terrorism.
(For those who can't count)
The following is excerpted from the pdf.
-
Racial Profiling is the inclusion of racial or ethnic characteristics in determining whether a person is considered likely to commit a particular type of crime or an illegal act or to behave in a “predictable” manner.
- The
USA PATRIOT Act, commonly known as the “Patriot Act”, is a statute enacted by the United States Government that President George W. Bush signed into law on October 26, 2001. The contrived acronym stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (Public Law Pub.L. 107-56). The Act increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records; eases restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States; expands the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and entities; and enhances the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The act also expands the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.
-
Bigotry- A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one who regards or treats members of a group (e.g. a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance. Bigotry is the corresponding mindset or action. The term bigot is often misused to pejoratively label those who merely oppose or disagree with the devotion of another. The correct use of the term, however, requires the elements of obstinacy, irrationality, and animosity toward those of differing devotion.
-
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement[1] of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) gives the meaning as: “The action of ‘interning’; confinement within the limits of a country or place”. Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction between internment, which is being confined usually for preventive or political reasons, and imprisonment, which is being closely confined as a punishment for crime.
-
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. One form is the use of violence against noncombatants for the purpose of gaining publicity for a group, cause, or individual.[citation needed] At present, there is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism. Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts that are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants.
-
Counter-terrorism (also spelled counterterrorism) refers to the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.
-
The War on Terrorism (also referred to as the Global War on Terror is the common term for the military, political, legal and ideological conflict against what the effort’s leaders describe as Islamic terrorism and Islamic militants, and was specifically used in reference to operations by the United States and its allies since the September 11, 2001 attacks. The stated objectives of the war in the US are to protect the citizens of the US and allies, to protect the business interests of the US and allies at home and abroad, break up terrorist cells in the US, and disrupt the activities of the international network of terrorist organizations made up of a number of groups under the umbrella of al-Qaeda.
It should be noted that some government documents use wikipedia as a source, and thus should not be used as a reference.
Should the pdf attribute wikipedia as per the Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License? Anybody have any thoughts on this? Smallman12q ( talk) 18:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
The content organization, graphics, design, compilation and other materials on or related to the Portal are protected under applicable copyright, trademark and other proprietary and intellectual property rights. In most cases, the content is owned by the state agency choosing to make its information available through the aI service. The copying, redistribution, use or publication by you of any such materials or any part of the Portal, except as allowed for in the Limited Right to Use section below, is strictly prohibited. You do not acquire ownership rights to any content, document or other materials viewed through the Portal. The posting of information or materials on the Portal does not constitute a waiver of any right in such information and materials.
the portal's terms of use, section "Copyright"
Seems the document has been removed. Now we can start checking the other brochures. Paradoctor ( talk) 07:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
The New York Times is moving to a restricted model where access will be paywalled after a certain point. This follows similar moves by the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, and in the current advertising climate we can expect this practice to become more prevalent.
This presents a serious issue to accessing reliable sources in the future, which we may not be able to do much about (
WP:REX-type initiatives notwithstanding). It also threatens our reader's access to existing hyperlinks we use as references and external links. The question arises, how do we steal their content while we have the chance pre-emptively protect the references to guarantee their future use? Is mass-archiving through
WebCite for instance a feasible or even legal course of action? Thoughts, comments, suggestions welcome.
Skomorokh
21:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOARCHIVE">
, and so are other major news websites like
http://www.ft.com,
http://www.economist.com,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk and
http://www.telegraph.co.uk. I pointed this out ages (well, months) ago and AFAIK no-one cared....
Pointillist (
talk)
22:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)Yes this is a serious drawback. In Canada it is quite common for the media to remove articles from the web within hours/ days of publishing. This makes it very difficult to hold any subjects of articles accountable, and is a serious threat to democracy. Just my $.02 Ottawahitech ( talk) 22:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOARCHIVE">
, e.g.
http://http://www.nytimes.com,
http://www.ft.com,
http://www.economist.com,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk and
http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Are you suggesting we should ignore NOARCHIVE and go ahead and archive individual stories on these sites anyway? -
Pointillist (
talk)
12:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I know that there are guidelines for WP:BLP. I was wondering if there are comparable guidelines for what can be said about corporate entities.
User:Playmobilonhishorse has placed an unsourced statement on the VDM Publishing House page that seems to accuse them of behavior that is arguably unethical, and perhaps even illegal. Here is the edit. I added a fact tag, but I was wondering if things like this should be reverted rather than just tagged. (That's what would be done in the case of BLP.) — Lawrence King ( talk) 04:27, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I could not find anybody to ask this question. I wanted to ask if i created timeline ( WP:Timeline) of events in Aafia Siddiqui, then will it be ok according to WP policies? This is due to the fact that her case has many intricate details and all of which should not be put of article since they may make the article more complex. But a timeline will be very helpful in getting a good chronology of events. — Hamza [ talk ] 05:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
The New Georgia Encyclopedia ("NGE") has authorized Wikipedia to import and/or merge the following ten articles, which I have copied to project space:
Our goal is to get these articles in top shape and merge or move them into mainspace as quickly as possible. If this turns out well (as I am confident it will), the NGE will permit us to import their remaining body of over 2,000 well-researched and well-written articles, which could pioneer a trend for other private owners of encyclopedic content to release their materials into our corpus. I would deeply appreciate any help that we can muster in accomplishing this. Please note that the original NGE articles (now linked in the required attribution section of each of the above articles in project space) have images, but NGE is unable to convey those to us at this time, as they are individually licensed by NGE. Finding equivalent images would, of course, be helpful. Also, please note that the NGE would like for us to parallel their selection of internal links (where they link to an internal NGE article, they would like for us to also link to our equivalent Wikipedia article). The first import, Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Jesse Hill, is substantially finished in this respect. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:09, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Congrats for your hard work! Thelmadatter ( talk) 23:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
please can someone enlighten me -"does kingdom drive an Alvis and if so what model?" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ewahewah ( talk • contribs) 21:57, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Hello,was reading your explanation of Stormtroops,and thought i could add something that may be helpful.Where you did mention Canada it wasent that the Canadian Corp had a stormtroop,it was more that after the German army ran into the canadians they started calling THEM the stormtroops.I will say again THE GEARMANS called the Canadian Corp STORMTROOPS.If you know the details of the Canadians under General Currie that is explanation enough —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.54.22.203 ( talk) 01:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Is there a tool, the equivalent of Wikistalk or Overlapping Contributions, which will allow you to input a number of articles and return with the users who have editing those pages in common? Thanks. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 23:14, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Does anyone know the name of a template to go in an article to encourage edits to translate from other language wiki's. I've seen them on the french wiki's but I can't recall an exact french article or work out what the template might be called. Regards, SunCreator ( talk) 16:15, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
May I bring to everyone's attention Wikipedia:2010 US Census and it's associated talk page, where comment is needed as to how to handle updating demographics data in articles after this upcoming census. Ks0stm ( T• C• G) 21:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I just created {{
Currency}} in order to do currency formatting values inline with the MOS guidelines at
WP:MOSNUM. The template is currently functional for a decent selection of the largest currencies, but it's nowhere near 100% complete yet. Value ranges need to be added as well, along with conversions from one currency to another (which I think that I'll use {{
Currency value}} to provide). Feel free to jump in and change things though, if you'd like, as I generally dislike working alone anyway. Regards,
—
V = I * R (
Talk •
Contribs)
03:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I have considered this for years.
New Editors complain a lot about abbreviations, and it is really annoying to have to look up what editors are talking about.
I have a simple solution. Simply create a template and add a 1 to most of the common abbreviations. The template would have the full name.
Instead of typing:
....1 extra character, and : WP:Assume Good Faith would be on the page.
If necessary we could have a bot scour wikipedia to change the acronym templates to full titles.
Of course, no would be required to use this. Ikip 10:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
{{
cite xxx}}
some time back since I used it so much. You should probably bring this up at
Wikipedia:Help Project. ---—
Gadget850 (Ed)
talk
18:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
User:Ikip/alphabet shows that of all the rules on WP:Alphabet soup templates with the exact same acronyms there are:
I think something like a 1 like {{AGF1}} or some other way would be best, to make things standard. Ideas? Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 10:54, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Just for fun, the official site of the Afghan National Army links to Wikipedia biographies for all its Senior Officers (scroll to bottom (of page). This might be the first government endorsement of our BLPs! Joshdboz ( talk) 13:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
For the attention of the Administrator
Please clean up the vandalism at the Skype page. The first sentence in the second paragraph and the first phrase in the 'Features' sub-section should clearly be removed; there may be other vandalism I have not seen. Suggest semi-protection and punishing the perpetrator. ~~
I have accepted MBisanz's nomination of myself for membership of the Bot Approvals Group, and invite interested parties to participate in the discussion and voting. Josh Parris 03:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Why is the hullaballoo WP:BLPs about sources instead of being about libel or harmful material?
Is there any way this energy can be redirected toward larger problems? Or at least that people would realize that this is whitewashing the situation? Maurreen ( talk) 10:21, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm trying to fill out a 3O request, but the request for a second dispute keeps getting removed from the noticeboard and the article's Talk page. See here. The volunteers think it is simply a duplicate of the first, when there are really two issues at stake. Would appreciate some help in making this clear on the 3O discussion page. Or, should I just skip this step and move on to the next avenue? SharkD Talk 16:44, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
I just noticed that there has been a quite number of changes in film titles from "name (film)" to "name (year film)". this has led to to uncorrect language links in other Wikipedias (I only speak now of fi.wiki). For example the fi.wiki article about Speed (1994 film) led to "Speed (disambiguation)" because the original page was moved to a new page and the old one was changed to a redirect page. And worse is still to come: "Seventh Heaven (film)" was moved to "Seventh Heaven (1927 film)" and a bot changed automatically (!) the language link in fi.wiki to the incorrect "Seventh Heaven#Film, television, and theatre". For that film there are now seven wrong links in other Wikis. It appears to me that you are doing a lot of these changes. Has anyone thought of the consequencies across all Wiki languages?-- Nedergard ( talk) 14:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Compare
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=American_Liberty_League&direction=next&oldid=156894417
with the later-published
http://books.google.com/books?id=T1_tElpa2x0C&pg=PR23&dq=prescott+bush+%22liberty+league%22
I discovered this by accident when I was looking for sourcing for the claim that Prescott Bush was a leader of the Liberty League. As best I can tell, the Wikipedia article that was plagiarized was apparently wildly inaccurate: there's no evidence that Prescott Bush ever had anything to do with the Liberty League; it was uncited information added into the article without an edit summary. I emailed Professor Barrow multiple times about this, and never got a response; a reporter I spoke to shrugged, saying that Wikipedia plagiarism stories have been done before. I do have a concern about the possibility of future bootstrapping, when inaccurate Wikipedia information ends up getting copied by a "reliable source," and then fed back into Wikipedia at a later date. Anyway, not sure where else to take this, so thought I'd raise it with the community. (Update: Yes, this is a 1944 book by Beard. I'm referring to the introductory essay published in the 2008 edition by Barrow. This should be obvious by the passage's reference to "George W. Bush, Jr." [sic], but some people have trouble understanding these things apparently.) THF ( talk) 04:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC), updated 09:22, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Racquet Club of Philadelphia has been the victim of vandalism, but I am unsure how to fix it. There does not seem to be any place to report the vandalism for others to fix, unlike the vandals themselves, who can be reported. Should I plunge in with undos, or try to edit out several problems? Yes, I am reluctant. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 14:28, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
The New Georgia Encyclopedia has released an eleventh article to Wikipedia under the CC-by-SA license (I think this is a good sign for the project). They expressed to me their interest in seeing how we are able to merge their more thorough materials into our existing articles relating to Delta Air Lines. bd2412 T 16:51, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Angchonglai is a "selftaught multimedia-artist" - he uses his userpage for selfpromotion and has no other edits - even his discussion page is a copy of his user page.... I have just found his art in the commons. I doubt that his userpage and - in parts - his art in the commons is in scope of the wikimedia projects ?! (despite his art has some aesthecial values) Plehn ( talk) 09:20, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
I posted a request to
MediaWiki talk:Statistics-footer#Change one link in Other Statistics, but I'm posting a notice here because nobody watches that page. Feel free to jump in an comment (or even make that change. That would be nice!).
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs)
19:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
{{
editprotected}}
to bring the request to attention of admins.
Svick (
talk)
20:23, 15 February 2010 (UTC)How responsibly would the wikipedia cover another Richard Jewell incident?
For those too young to remember a bomb was exploded during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Richard Jewell, An alert security guard was reported to have had his suspicions triggered by the apparently abandoned package that turned out to be a bomb. He was reported to have started to clear the area, helping to prevent the casualty count being larger. On the day or so following the incident Richard Jewell was described as a hero. But then the FBI Director revealed that Jewell was the prime suspect, based on the notion that he fit some kind of profile of a cop-wanna-be, who would plant a bomb himself, so he could set himself up to be the hero who saved the day. Jewell's home was beseiged by reporters, who wanted a reaction. The press reporting included some extremely irresponsible elements.
Five or six years later the actual bomber confessed -- an anti-Abortion kook with zero ties to Jewell.
In a recent {{ afd}} another contributor cited the Jewell incident as a cautionary example, and wrote that thinking about how the wikipedia would have covered the Richard Jewell incident, if it had existed in 1996, made him or her "shudder". In other {{ afd}}s I have written that I think the wikipedia has higher standards than the mainstream media, and that I think our coverage of the Richard Jewell incident would have been an island of responsibility and neutrality in the sea of irresponsible speculation.
I bring this up because of the coverage of a recent incident where an American GI has been charged with child abuse for repeatedly immersing his four year old daughter's head in water. This disciplining technique is being widely described as instances of the use of the controversial " waterboarding" technique. I recently added a section to Waterboarding in the 21st century#Use of waterboarding to discipline children about this incident.
Since then I came across this article in Salon magazine from Dahlia Lithwick, who is a lawyer as well as a journalist. She comments on the nature of other reporting of the incident -- noting how newspapers that had not been prepared to describe waterboarding as torture when it was used against terrorist suspects had not hesitated to call the technique torture when practiced on an innocent person, like a four year old girl.
The reporting on this incident reminds me of the reporting on the Richard Jewell allegations. In this instance it might be worse -- different accounts report details that are inconsistent. I suspect this is due to professional reporters allowing unprofessional editorializing slipping into reports written as if they were straight factual reporting, and possibily the simple human inability to fully face all the horrific details.
We don't normally cover child abuse incidents. We wouldn't normally cover child abuse, just because the alleged abuser is a GI who has recently served in Iraq and Afghanistan. In my judgment call is that the commentary that the GI is alleged to have used techniques that GIs are now specifically proscribed from using against the USA's enemies lifts this incident out of the ordinary. In my judgment commentary like Lithwick's makes the GI's behavior worthy of greater coverage.
In my user space I have started working on a draft -- User:Geo Swan/Yelm, Washington 'water-boarding' incident. I invite comments.
I put 'water-boarding' in quotes in the title of my draft in the interests of neutrality. Among the controversial aspects of this incident are what the GI actually did, and whether what he actually did is close enough to the CIA waterboarding that it should be called waterboarding.
How detailed should our coverage of the incident be?
Cheers! Geo Swan ( talk) 20:26, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Mission of Honor is suffering from plotdump syndrome. I tagged the article as a excessive plot but the primary author of the article removed the tag with the reasoning that IP users shouldn't tag the problem, even though it is a problem (see Talk:Mission of Honor).
So, should I just go ahead and delete the plotdump?
70.29.210.242 ( talk) 07:41, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
The sentencing table is supposed to reflect the presence of four zones (A, B, C and D), as seen at U.S.S.G. § 5A (scroll down a little ways to see the table). It's possible to color-code the cells by zone, but I would prefer to reproduce the staircase-resembling borders. Can anyone help? Thanks, Tisane ( talk) 00:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
My adoptee is writing an article, and she wants to add an external link to a pdf file she has saved on her computer. She asked me how to do this, and my best guess was to use one of the many pdf hosting sites (that show up on Google), but she wants to know if there's a different way to host them. So, anyone have any idea what a good way to host a pdf file online is? I suspect your only option is to either 'use your own site or find a site to host it', but I figured I'd ask around. Swarm( Talk) 23:11, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Anyone have a good picture to add to Template:WelcomeBack? Be bold and add one, I can't think of one. Thanks a million in advance. Okip BLP Contest 12:41, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Including the huge number of verbose American books written in the same gushing style but supposedly relating to business. Such as this one for example: Growth leadership.
My question is, would Wikipedia be able to detect if someone has been paid to write articles like this, to promote the books? I recall seeing many similar articles about obscure fadish business-self-help books on Wikipedia all written in the same infomercial style. 89.242.89.218 ( talk) 14:49, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
If an established Wikipedia editor with "connections" were to request that a certain piece of information be mentioned in an interview by a relevant person, and if this piece of information were published in a reliable secondary source, that editor weaves the information into an article "legally". No policy is knowingly violated. Has this ever happened before? Or not to anyone's "knowledge"? – Kerαunoςcopia◁ galaxies 06:41, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers so far! (And apologies Ohms law for not being clear.) I was asking because I'll read these incredible stories by actual band members about some crazy fact regarding the making of an album (that could be extremely relevant to the outcome of that album), but because they only share the story in online forums, I find myself being tempted to ask them to repeat their stories to the press. I have no doubt that I'm the only one to think this, especially with matters (and therefore, articles) far more important to the casual Wikipedia peruser. – Kerαunoςcopia◁ galaxies 09:40, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Please take a look at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Citation discussion#Inline template wikitext formatting and comment, when you have a chance to do so. Thank you. 08:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi everyone,
The Living Persons task force is having a meeting on IRC in about 28 hours, in the channel #wikimedia-strategy connect on the server freenode. If you need help accessing this channel, please see Wikipedia:IRC#Accessing IRC. The time of the meeting is at 0:00 UTC on Monday, 22 February, which you will notice if you have been in previous meetings is several hours earlier than usual. The meeting will be publicly logged (see past chats) and will generally follow the structure laid out at the agendas page. strategy:Task force/Living people has more information if you're interested. Be sure to read our current project, a set of recommendations to the WMF Board of Trustees, if you plan to come.
Please do email myself or Keegan if you have questions on how to participate!
Yours sincerely,
NW ( Talk) 19:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
I’m not sure who would be the appropriate person to address with this question – I would greatly appreciate any suggestion as to who this should be sent to?
I have been working on the health care reform issue as a volunteer with Organizing for America and have been amazed and horrified at the power of pro-industry forces to conduct a campaign of disinformation so effective that it has derailed meaningful health care reform at a time when 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of access to health care.
At the same time, I have found it difficult to get really balanced and truthful accounts of what is happening, and end up relying on progressive news sources which makes me uneasy because I don’t know how much bias there might be in their coverage.
For a democracy to thrive, there needs to be ways for citizens to become easily informed in what is really going on, along with easily available mechanisms to dialogue with others and participate in the political process.
I am wondering if there is not a way for Wikipedia to play a role, beyond being the wonderful source of basic knowledge that it is. Might it be possible for Wikipedia to launch a venture aimed at ‘civic knowledge’, with panels of people on all sides contributing to a truthful, factual array of sociopolitical realities, with divergent opinions noted in a concise way that is easy for readers to follow and understand.
For example, there could be a description of key provisions of the Senate health care proposal, with a panel of volunteers making sure that all the objective facts were correct, and panels of volunteers from different political orientations summarizing a succinct interpretation of those facts, in a few paragraphs. A split screen could be employed with the key objective facts on one side and a list of links to brief interpretation summaries on the other side.
Perhaps in providing something like this, Wikipedia could become a central institution in the democratic process, which so needs renewal at this point, especially in light of the Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance.
I would very much like to know if this is something Wikipedia could explore, or if it is something that has already been considered.
I would be very grateful for any response you can provide to this request.
Thank you!
Judy Morgan Austin, Texas —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.174.66.178 ( talk) 22:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Judy about the danger to democracy in general (not specifically about Health reform which is more of interest to Americans). The media is getting too concentrated in too few hands. Corporations with other agendas are taking over manufacturing/stifling of news; Organizations such as MSN in the USA, or BCE in Canada.
I am not sure how Wikipedia can solve this problem, but I didn't like the way Judy was being patronized in this discussion, so decided to speak out. This discussion is related to the one that precedes it here imo. Ottawahitech ( talk) 05:24, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
I think that Wikipedia could be one vehicle for a "truthful, factual array of sociopolitical realities, with divergent opinions noted in a concise way" on health care, but that this would also take a great deal of work. Consider Health care reform in the United States: this article is a terrible mess. Not surprisingly it's rated C-Class by its WikiProjects. Why? I would guess because there are so many editors with strongly-held and conflicting opinions working at the same time that it produces chaos. You cannot create a featured article on such a contentious topic because someone will immediately insert misleading sentences that detract from the main issues at hand, which you will then have to spend time fighting, and when you are done, another person will soon come along, and the cycle will repeat. Would I read this article? Heck no. It's terribly written. If my own experience is any guide, this article is relatively highly ranked (7232) only because so many wandering souls are looking for guidance on the issue. They find the Wikipedia article because it is Wikipedia, then realize how terribly written it is and leave to find better sources.
By the way, Organizing for America is simply the Barack Obama political machine. Though it does have differences with "pro-industry forces," including the insurance industry, I would argue that it is more sympathetic to the health care industries, including insurance, pharmaceuticals, doctors, and hospitals, than opposed to them. Actual opposition organizations like Healthcare-NOW and PDA are much smaller than OFA and HCAN. ( See this link for more information.) —Khin2718 ( talk) 17:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I was wondering if anyone would like to share their opinion on what the hell went wrong with this RFA that drove Dr Dec ( talk · contribs) off of Wikipedia. Look at the opposes. Dec said he wanted the tools for vandalism fighting, yet there were opposes because: "Vandal-fighting is stated as candidate's primary need for the tool, but only 70 reports to AIV." They had over 2200 edits with Huggle alone, and there were multiple instances of opposes based on that. Okay, maybe not the biggest of deals in the world, but other comments in the oppose section were much worse.
Dec made what appeared to be a tongue-in-cheek that said "Imagine a project without my anti-vandal edits: Barack Obama would be 307 year old Chinese farmer with 29 children, born in Sydney Australia." He was then pretty much lambasted for being arrogant, despite his attempts to clarify what he meant. Some responses were:
Dr Dec also requested that the discussion not be SNOW closed so they could "get feedback" from the process. Response?
In case you're curious, Dr Dec's responses to this included "Let's call it a day, could someone please close this RfA. I hadn't realised that I was such an arsehole. Thanks for pointing out how much you all hate me." and "Don't these people realise that there's a living, breathing person behind the user name; some one that laughs and someone that cries? I've not felt this low for a long time, and for what — a bloody website!" (on [ this revision] of their talk page) They then retired. I suspected they would return, but it's been a month so this is obviously not an "I'm pissed off so I'm retiring for a week to be dramatic" situation.
Everyone knows all RFAs can be brutal, but this just seemed ridiculously extreme. I mean, is it common practice to criticize someone so harshly that they leave the project? Honestly, what went wrong here? Am I crazy for seeing this as a problem? Polite and constructive discussions usually don't have this effect, so I'm assuming I'm not. Swarm( Talk) 06:56, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
An editor of this template keeps insisting on adding "link=" elements to two images being used on this template, but is doing so without supplying any actual link ( example). The result is the template prevents editor from clicking through to the source images with no apparent justification for doing so. I've asked him not to do so [5], and his response on justification was that all Indian writer templates are constructed this way [6]. I've checked a bunch of Indian writer pages, finding none with templates constructed as he suggests.
Thoughts? -- Hammersoft ( talk) 21:29, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Take a look at the history for File:Darren.jpg. There are four different images in that file's history, four different people have put four different people's faces into the file's history. This needs to be sorted out. Any ideas how? Woogee ( talk) 00:09, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
User:WildBot comes in and sticks a notice on an article's Talk page, even if there's a speedy deletion tag on it. If the creator of the article comes along after that and adds a hangon tag, the bright red warning that they haven't explained on the article's Talk page what notability they're claiming with their hangon tag won't show up, because WildBot has already created a Talk page. Any way that the hangon tag can check to see if the person who adds the hangon tag has commented on the Talk page, or else ignore any Talk pages created by WildBot, and add the warning anyway? Woogee ( talk) 00:43, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Why does the hangon tag depend on the fact that there is no talk page? I'm sure there are many reasons that a speedied article will have a talk page, not just because of WildBot. OrangeDog ( τ • ε) 23:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
I read that three Google executives were convicted by an Italian court for invasion of privacy due to Google Video hosting a video of an Italian schoolboy with autism being bullied. [7] The video was taken down when Google was contacted by the Italian police, but the execs were still prosecuted in absentia and convicted. Those found guilty include Google's Global Privacy Counsel, Peter Fleischer, whose response is that "The judge has decided I am criminally responsible for the actions of some Italian teenagers who uploaded a reprehensible video to Google Video. I knew nothing about the video until after it was removed by Google in compliance with European and Italian law."
Does this ruling now mean that executives of the Wikimedia Foundation could be liable in Italy for content posted on Wikipedia? (I know you're not lawyers, before anyone chimes in). Fences& Windows 19:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Statistics on all Wikipedia articles are not available for the last two days. Anyone know what to do? Ottawahitech ( talk) 11:28, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
I see some video popping up on YouTube of course, but If anyone has personal video of the earthquake, the after effects, or the tsunami and it's after effects available, it would be great if you could upload a version here (well, to
Commons:Upload would be best). We can't use YouTube videos directly on
2010 Chile earthquake, and EL's to YouTube cause problems. Commons has
Commons:Category:2010 Chile earthquake to add anything uploaded to, FYI. Thanks!
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs)
00:40, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
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Is there any policy/guideline for how to deal with names that vary from different pieces of media across multiple articles. The issue that brought this up at WP:WikiProject Anime and Manga was the naming of Roronoa Zoro from One Piece who also goes by the name Roronoa Zolo in several pieces of media. It was decided for the main article and the character list to use Zoro as the more widely recognized English name after an exhaustive debate. However One Piece: Grand Adventure uses Zolo as the game when it was released in the US uses Zolo. 陣 内 Jinnai 22:55, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
WP:MUSIC is apparently well-embedded (if that's the right expression), but the shortcut doesn't point to WikiProject Music. It points to Wikipedia:Notability (music). This is obviously confusing. Is there a technically-adroit way of fixing this? -- Klein zach 05:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Consistency needn't be had. The point of short-cuts is to cut short the time (and characters) it takes to type a frequently used link. It wouldn't matter if WP:Q went to Wikipedia:Arbitration committee. The only person who needs to know where it goes is the person who types it. For those who don't, they can click it, hover over it or look it up in WP:Alphabet soup. In any case, the nature of the system means we can't change any of them without careful bot assistance, even if it did matter. (c.f. Tiny URL) OrangeDog ( τ • ε) 18:53, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
This is a small note to draw attention to the massive overuse of the opinions of film critic Roger Ebert in talking about the reception of films. He pops up in pretty much every article and one gets the opinion that he is some sort of demi god within the film industry whose opinions on every picture are somehow particularly important. This is not a troll post, I love Wiki and am extremly gratefull to have it around, I am simply trying to draw this massive inbalance to SOMEONES attention....we shall see. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.97.250.112 ( talk) 23:11, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
When citing reviews of film critics in an article's "Critical response" or "Reception" section, WP:MOSFILM asks that we use reliable sources to show how the film was received and it goes on to state that "sources that are regarded as reliable are professional film critics"; Roger Ebert most certainly is a professional film critic. WP:RS separately goes on to state that a reliable source would be either "published materials with a reliable publication process" ( Chicago Sun-Times certainly meets this criterion) or "authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject in question" (Ebert certainly meets this criterion when the subject in question is a film). Being a nationally known film critic whose expertise is not usually questioned, Roger Ebert's reviews are normally listed at the very top of the "External reviews" section for every film on IMDb and he is also included in the "Top Critics" list on the aggregate review website Rotten Tomatoes. WP:UNDUE does not apply when using Ebert's reviews to show how any individual film was received because the determination (if there is one) of whether the film was received well or poorly will usually be made based on the percentage of positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, not based on Ebert's opinion of the film. Ie, Synecdoche, New York was named by Roger Ebert as the best film of the decade yet the Wikipedia article clearly shows a 67% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 67/100 on Metacritic while selectively citing both positive and negative reviews. The issue of WP:UNDUE would only be a problem if we decided to use Ebert's opinion as the ultimate authority on how well the film is received which we certainly do not as per the previous example. Please also keep in mind that we never attempt to even suggest to a reader that a film was good or that it was cinematic drivel, we simply quote others who have done so and we make sure that the ones we quote are authoritative, reliable and well-known to readers ( WP:NF, among other things, presumes a film notable if it receives multiple reviews from "nationally known critics") and Ebert meets all of this criteria. His opinion should not be used to skew an otherwise neutral article, it's should not be used out of context and should not be used to deliver a statement of fact. It should only ever be used as an undisguised personal opinion and that's the exact purpose and usage of his reviews. If used in such context, there should be absolutely no reason to discontinue or reduce the amount of film articles where his opinion is used because such usage is encouraged by WP:RS and WP:MOSFILM and does not in any way violate WP:NPOV or any other policy or guideline that might be concerned with Ebert as a source. Big Bird ( talk • contribs) 21:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Users are advised that His Grace the Duke of Waltham has announced the Silliest wikilink of the month awards at WT:LINK. There are five monthly winners (August–December 2009) and an overall winner for 2009. The Duke's private secretary, Harold Cartwright, has emphasised that no correspondence will be entered into regarding the awards: His Grace's decision is final. Tony (talk) 10:29, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
Hello. I wonder if anyone can tell me what the artist's name on File:Head drawinga.gif is? To me it looks like H. A. Cronit, but I'm not finding anyone of that name. Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:24, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi folks. We have a need for some new clerks at WP:SPI, the sockpuppet investigations process. At SPI, clerks help the checkusers maintain the page by keeping cases organized, archiving them, tagging confirmed socks, endorsing checkuser requests and occasionally declining them. All final decisions, of course, rest with the checkusers. Both administrators and non-administrators can be trainees and full clerks. For example, Nathan, one of the clerks who has been there the longest, is not an administrator.
A few things to keep in mind if you think you might like to help us keep the sock menace down: (a) we generally don't take trainees with a recent block log or history of disruptive editing, (b) we would prefer trainees who can be regularly active and (c) we often use the IRC channel #wikipedia-en-spi on Freenode, which can be accessed using one of these tools or links, for coordination purposes. Please e-mail myself, Nathan, MuZemike or PeterSymonds if you're interested.
On behalf of the SPI clerk team, NW ( Talk) 03:53, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
I recently discovered the British-Pathé website/archive of thousands of news clips and stock video footage from the 1890s to the 1970s, and want to ask here where it would be best to post to draw people's attention to what looks like an under-used resource (about 130 pages link to that website at the moment), especially for the clips from the first half of the 20th century, where there is lots of historical stuff likely not available elsewhere. The website is here. As they are a proprietary site, selling access to the high-resolution versions of the clips (the free previews are low-resolution), what I propose to do is:
What I wanted to ask here was whether anyone knows what the page on Wikipedia is that lists similar news/video archives? And can anyone think of which WikiProjects would be interested in knowing about this? And are there other places on Wikipedia where I could tell more people about this resource? Carcharoth ( talk) 06:27, 14 January 2010 (UTC) Updated with diffs and links. 08:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I don't know if this is the right place to ask for opinions on this, or even if there is really a right place for that. In any case, it can't hurt....
Quickly put, I would like some third part opinions about the use of large (complete) citations of Medal of Honors as used in:
Generally speaking, I believe the articles would look more encyclopedic without them. Maybe Wikisource is a better place for this amount of primary-source material.
Thanks, -- Damiens.rf 12:19, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Please, opinions based on the policy cited are welcome (conjectures about editor's intentions are not). I'll be doing the Wikisource thing within some days... any concrete objection? -- Damiens.rf 14:51, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
It's unfortunate the issue seems so poisoned that we can't really discuss it on arguments grounded on policies, guidelines, etc.. -- Damiens.rf 13:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Alconétar Bridge currently applies for GA status and being the main contributor, I am looking for some help with how to put one sentence (lead, 2nd paragraph). Which version sounds best?
Well, all a bit awkward, not? Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 19:01, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Just dropping a note here that the Mediation Cabal is backlogged, so we need help. Please see Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal#Backlog for details about the cases we have available. Thanks, The Wordsmith Communicate 17:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
From the Wikpediholic test, I've gotten to thinking that this is possible. I'd like to do so. Any help? Buggie111 ( talk) 01:18, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Hello: I've added a category to IExpress. But when I go to it ( Category:Installation software) there is no link to the stated article. But if I log in Wikipedia it appears. If I log out Wikipedia it disappears again. Strange, isn't it? Thanks, -- Edupedro ( talk) 21:40, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Hey Wikipedians, I am here to advertise my nomination to be on the Bot Approvals Group. Take a look if you have some time. Tim1357 ( talk) 02:22, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
I have been speaking with one of the principals of the New Georgia Encyclopedia, an online-only collection of about 2,200 professionally written and well-sourced articles relating to the state of Georgia, and about 5,000 corresponding images, about potentially migrating their entire collection to Wikipedia. My rough estimate is that this would include at least a thousand new articles, and the remainder would need to be maintained in Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state) project space until they could be fully merged in to the appropriate existing articles. In each case, proper attribution to both the origin project and the original authors would need to be maintained in the article, along with a link to the original article. Three to four of the authors who have worked on those articles would also likely be joining Wikipedia, and that WikiProject specifically, in order to watch these articles as they are transitioned into our system (I have already cautioned them not to expect to be able to assert ownership of the content once the articles are here, and that objections to changes will have to be addressed by discussion and generating a consensus). If the remaining principles of the New Georgia Encyclopedia are agreeable to our incorporation of their work, this could provide substantial new opportunities for Wikipedia to incorporate similar works, and could generate some good publicity regarding the reliability and utility of Wikipedia. They may wish to begin by allowing us to import a small number of articles as test cases, to see how they fare in terms of vandalism and other issues that may arise in this process. Please let me know if you have any particular concerns or thoughts about this, as I will hopefully be having a conference call with all of the principles within the next week. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:01, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
As most of us already know, much of the public domain Encyclopedia Britannica 11the Edition (1910-1911) has already been incorporated into Wikipedia ( as noted in this discussion topic). However, looking at this Britannica article's edition listing shows us that all others editions up its 14th, which was published from 1929–1933, are already over 77 years of age, and may also be in the public domain in the U.S. Are any copyright experts able to elaborate on this? If the 12th thru 14th editions are available for inclusion into Wikipedia, that could become the basis for another important WP project. Best: HarryZilber ( talk) 17:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
But of coarse its much easier to cut-and-paste! That's the whole point! -but remember that Wikipedia forbids original research, while in college our profs want somewhat the opposite (depending on your level and assignment) in order to actually make you work at thinking. That doesn't make articles copied into Wikipedia any less valid, because accurate, verifiable knowledge is Wikipedia's end product, not the fashion it was produced in.
As for examples, here are two 12th edition quick picks pulled at random out of Google; however I don't have any idea whether or not they're representative of that edition as I've never seen the three volumes involved:
I would guess that the latter article would fall into the 10-15 hour research time estimated earlier, while the former would probably easily exceed that. So again, why reinvent the wheel if you don't need to? Our 'salable' product to the lay public is accurate knowledge, not originality. Best: HarryZilber ( talk) 23:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I started a wikicommunity help action at the Dutch wiki, and imagine that we can help on all wiki's as humans helping humans. We can support all victims in Haiti by placing a small 'banner' on our User and Talk pages. I used this one:
Code:
<div style="margin:1; background:#074074; font-family: sans-serif; font-size:100%; font-weight:bold; border:1px solid #cef2e0; text-align:center; color:#FFFFFF; padding-left:0.4em; padding-top: 0.2em; padding-bottom: 0.2em;"><Big>I'd like to express my support, my compassion and my humanity to the victims of the human catastrophe in Haiti.<br/>'''''Please, donate to your local Aid Agency or the RED CROSS'''''</BIG></div>
I think from the humanitarian perspective we now need to support all those there suffering from this horrible catastroph. Let's step a bit over the 'wiki-only' horizon, and let's do a bit of support where we can! I hope this initiative will get noticed and followed by all other users! (You also might use other places like Facebook, Myspace etc for this!)
Yours Sincerely, Tjako ( talk) 22:25, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Hello, i m sorry, i have some problems to speak english. I noticed that in Wikipédia people mixing between Western sahara (a territory) and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (proclaimed by the Polisario) which is an entity. But in the encyclopedia, is used both as if they were the same. According to the UN, In 1990, the General Assembly reaffirmed that the question of Western Sahara was under the decolonization process that the people of Western Sahara had not yet completed. And SADR is an entity not recognized by the UN and only by a number of countries that vary from year to year. The encyclopedia do the flag of the SADR in articles concerning the Western Sahara, which isn't neutral position.-- Kafka1 ( d) 04:37, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
The New York Magazine is reporting that the New York Times is going to cease providing free content and will install a "metered" payment system. Please see Wikipedia:Using WebCite for information on how to archive NY Times articles in Wikipedia before they disappear behind a paywall.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Blargh29 ( talk • contribs) 23:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Lately I have been wondering that quality enlargement of wikipedia in 2010 is much more polarised than the past - namely that many many articles more or less stagnate unless there is a sudden concerted effort by one of a small percentage of editors - i.e more than ever we need dedicated content contributors (feel free to include this in any missive). I only base this on my impressions of the edits on my 6000-odd article watchlist. (might post at village pump about this...). Has anyone else felt this to be close to the mark or am I way off? Feel free to argue.... Casliber ( talk · contribs) 08:54, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
It was always like this, but a year or two ago one could still just about beleve that sooner or later someone would come along & improve the text, whereas by now one has realized they probably won't except on a glacial timescale. There's nothing more depressing than doing a diff over a couple of years, and a couple of screens, worth of changes, and seeing that the actual crappy text has barely been touched, & there's just MOS, format, categories, interwikis & the other peripheral stuff. But this is now the case for the majority of articles. Johnbod ( talk) 19:37, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Wikimedia UK, the UK chapter, is organising an event called Britan Loves Wikipedia. Britain Loves Wikipedia is a cultural event bring organised in partnership between Wikimedia UK, the Collections Trust and the MLA (Museums, Libraries, Archives Partnership) starting on January 31 which will encourage members of the public to visit certain participating museums around the UK and photograph certain exhibits and make those photos available for use on Wikipedia, and other projects, through Wikimedia Commons. There will then be various prizes given out based on the pictures people produce. For this event, we need a logo. While we are getting quotes to have a professionally produced logo made, we would much prefer one produced by a member of the community. The community has produced excellent logos in the past and we are sure it will be able to provide us with one that is just as professional looking as what we could get by paying an enormous amount for it. If you would like to have a go, the brief is as follows:
Unfortunately we have very limited time so deadlines for this project are as follows:
We understand that that doesn't give you much time, and we're sorry we didn't organise this sooner. Hopefully a few people can knock something up in that time! If you want to have a go, please let us know here. Thanks!
-- The Wikimedia UK Board
Posted by Seddon talk| WikimediaUK (WMUK Director) @ 15:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
hi I am new here and don't know what I am doing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lion131996 ( talk • contribs) 21:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You_Think_You_Can_Dance_%28UK%29#Elimination_chart Apparently, wikipedia knows the results of this show without being over yet. How is that possible? -- Leladax ( talk) 21:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't know much about symbolism, but it seems to be a rather important topic and the article has more than 800 links to it. I just cut some fat from the article (belonged in Symbol, if anywhere), and now there is hardly anything left. Anyone want to take a whack at expanding it? Perhaps a specific project should address it, but I am not really sure what it falls under... psychology, anthropology, philosophy, evolutionary biology? It is a pretty wide-ranging topic. It's even listed as a literary technique. — Epastore ( talk) 23:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I read these at On Wikipedia and thought I'd share them with folks here as they're pretty interesitng.
80.7% of BLPs are of men (and thus 19.3% are of women). 48.5% of BLPs are about subjects from Canada, the United States, or the UK. (see Who's On Wikpedia: Part 2). Personally, I think this is shocking and Wikipedia needs to diversify its coverage a little more.
Furthermore, 36.7% of all BLPs are of athletes (and out these 39% are of soccer players). There are more BLPs of soccer players than of politicians, and more soccer BLPs than BLPs of all businessmen, lawyers, government officials, and scholars (see Who's on Wikipedia: Part 3). What can we do to address these issues and help Wikipedia diversify? HH Nobody ( talk) 18:06, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Maybe if we had an stricter notability criteria for areas like athletes (and other popular famous people), we would be wasting more time writing and maintaining articles about politicians, business people and non-anglo-saxon folks.
The mentality of WP:NOTPAPER is usually broken in that, from the fact that we're not limited by the availability of paper, it infers that we have infinite resources for writing articles, reviewing, fixing, tagging, categorizing, discussing... -- Damiens.rf 18:53, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I see - I had missed the point. Your concern is not that there are lots of crappy articles, as I had thought, but that there are lots of crappy articles about living people that might cause them to sue WP or get their country to pass laws limiting it, or get so upset they do something bad to themselves or others. I hadn't thought of that, but I'm also not sure what to do about it. - DavidWBrooks ( talk) 16:32, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
I've been meaning to post this here for days now, but keep forgetting. I'm fairly certain that there are many of you who are involved in the "BLP problem" who already know about this, but there are probably many who are not (and several who may not have thought of this methodology). Since most BLP's are categorized into the Living people category, it's easy enough to use
Special:RelatedChanges to keep track of what's up without cluttering your watchlist with 400,000+ articles. Feel free to copy the link to your userpage, or bookmark it, or whatever else would be convenient for you (the URL is all you really need, but I provided a beautified plainlnks presentation for those who might want it). The url encoded query travels really well, so you should be able to do what you want with it. Enjoy!
—
V = I * R (
talk to Ohms law)
21:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Here is an example of a Wikipedia article about a female subject which is in danger of being removed for lack of citations at Wikipedia: Ethel deNagy Gabriel (born November 16, 1921) is one of America's first female record producers in American music business... Ottawahitech ( talk) 14:41, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I ran into this image: File:Ghostworld rebecca.jpg and checked the article. Now, while the use may well fall under fair use, it's not well handled on the image description page. For it doesn't display information on the author, the source (an url to a file found on the net is not a proper source attribution), etc.
I don't know much about it, but perhaps someone could take a look and fix the missing details. The uploader was blocked on 2007 for copyright violations (thus perhaps another look at his uploads may be in order). -- m: drini 18:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Some recent afd discussion have raised attention to a notability guideline that says that every Playboy playmate is indisputably notable. This is item 3 of Wikipedia:PORNBIO.
I believe this is arbitrary and problematic in that in many cases it goes directly against WP:BLP1E and the overall spirit on WP:N. -- Damiens.rf 04:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Lots of yummy UK data is now released on http://data.gov.uk/ Much to my amazement the terms and conditions say:,
Wowzers! -- h2g2bob ( talk) 01:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Does anyone know the answer to this? Do images claimed as PD on Wikipedia have to be PD in the U.S., or is it enough that they be PD in their country of origin? I'm not talking about the Commons, which is discussed here. I'm asking only about Wikipedia. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 03:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I left a note on that topic at Wikipedia_talk:GFDL_standardization#Images_uploaded_before_2004 but maybe it is not a place others look very often so just wanted to leave a note here.
My thought is basicly that if disclaimers was first introduced in February 2004 then an image uploaded before could NOT have disclaimers. Example File:Ac.adamattemple.jpg. -- MGA73 ( talk) 12:46, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
They seem to have become part of the landscape. The problems associated with their use are being discussed here. Tony (talk) 11:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Is it accepted, that User:Crystal Phuong uses his userpage for advertisement? - as far as I see she is active in several electronis platforms to become known, and she has no other contributions. Some of her picture are qualified as "unsourced" in the commons Plehn ( talk) 21:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I have a pdf article in French that I would like to use as a source for a dermatology-related article. Is there anyone that could help me translate it? ---kilbad (talk) 22:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I am currently standing for BAG membership. Your input is appreciated. ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 02:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't pretend to know enough about this really to go and start making reverts and changes, but an editor is changing many many bus and coach stations to lower case titles. The biggest coach station I know is Victoria in London - this though, has managed to remain Victoria Coach Station.
As this is the name of the station, capital C and S for Coach Station seems justified in the title. Newcastle coach station, Bristol bus station, Birmingham coach station to name a few, have all been changed recently. A quick search of google would suggest that most sources, newspapers included, use capital letters to denote coach stations. National Express website also uses capitals for their coach stations, ie. "Bristol Bus Station".
Also, is it a tad controversial moving all these pages without any mention or discussion on the articles talk pages - I know that in cases of train stations, ie. Talk:Birmingham New Street railway station, where "railway" has been added against consensus, and Station changed to station, it has kicked up a bit of a storm as the actual name of the station is "Birmingham New Street Station"... "If it ain't broke don't fix it" or "fixing something for the sake of fixing it" comes to mind.
Any thoughts? Willdow (Talk) 17:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
The Venezuelan-only POV that parts of Guyana belong to Venezuela is being used in this map as if it is an established fact. The Venezuela article needs a more NPOV map. Am I wrong here? Woogee ( talk) 00:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
im older user of top and its papers my eyesight suffers just a sugestion how about making the glue side easier to see mayby a color change? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.114.120.213 ( talk) 03:52, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
I've asked a question at the bottom of Talk:Tuple that nobody bothered. Some expert please respond. Georgia guy ( talk) 23:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Britain Loves Wikipedia, a free photography competition / scavenger hunt, launches this Sunday at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and then runs in 21 museums across the UK throughout February! Full details are on the WMUK blog, and http://www.britainloveswikipedia.org/ . If you're around the UK this next month, then please come along and join in. :-) Any questions, please let me know. Mike Peel ( talk) 23:20, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
We're just doing the runaround at Talk:Cantonese (Yue) and desperately need outside editors, since the article wildly gets renamed every which way every other month.
70.29.210.242 ( talk) 04:49, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
I recently created the redirect Cecil Godfrey Rawling to point at Cecil Rawling, and while checking "what links here" for the redirect, I came across User:David Kernow/List of Royal Geographical Society Gold Medal recipients (20th century). I went to that user's talk page to tell them that a redlink on their list had turned blue, but they have not edited since June 2007. At some point, I might be interested in taking the list that he started and finishing it and moving it into article space. I would leave a note on his talk page first, and also try e-mailing him, but if I get no response to either of those attempts, what should I do? Carcharoth ( talk) 01:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Many seemingly POV editors (most coming from Punta Gorda, Florida based IP addresses) seem to object to the "Criticisms" section at Charlotte High School (Punta Gorda, Florida), which basically just points out, with references, what Charlotte High School is commonly known for. It's been on the article for quite some time, and has never been contested by an experienced editor. I've even seen it mentioned by members of Tarpon related Facebook groups (some actually agreeing with it). The problem is I'm POV myself, so perhaps a neutral party could provide an opinion in this matter, or make suggestions? PCHS-NJROTC (Messages) 20:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
I've posted a requested move at Talk:List of mass murderers and spree killers by number of victims: Mass murders#Requested move; requested moves tend to get very few participants, so I'm asking for a few extra commentators on this one. Thanks.-- Father Goose ( talk) 20:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
The Community Health task force (formed as part of Foundation's strategic planning process) proposed that a survey be given to former contributors to fill out in order to better understand why they are no longer editing.
Philippe notified us that very preliminary interim results are available.
Former contributors survey:preliminary interim results.
Information from this survey can help us better understand user editing experiences and might be useful for developing a better experience for new editors so they get off to a good start, and stick around and improve their articles. FloNight ♥♥♥♥ 19:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I have made a web tool that automatically makes a citation based on a Google Books url. Input a URL for a book, and the tool will pull information such as title, authors, publisher and isbn from Google Books. It will also produce a {{ cite book}} template that can be copied and pasted right into an article. As a web tool, no installation required.
The tool will also check if the authors have articles on Wikipedia, which can be put in the authorlink= parameter. For convenience, there is a preview area that shows what the citation will look like in an article.
It probably has bugs and may not be compatible with all browsers. Comments bugs and ideas are welcome here or on my talk page. For example, is the big table of text fields too overwhelming? -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 22:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
As a new editor, and one probably not as versed in wikitools/scripting/etc. as others, I find that the process for adding Redirects for Comment, Articles for Deletion, and other basic tasks on Wikipedia is not user-friendly and discourages new editors from participating in improving the encyclopedia.
I wasn't sure how or where to post to get the community to look again at addressing the problem of getting new editors more involved the encyclopedia by making it easier for them to do simply tasks like RfC. If anyone can help me understand the community consensus on not wanting to make this task easier, please provide input or links to relative previous discussions. If this posting was put in the wrong area, please move to appropriate page. Thanks! 172.130.48.125 ( talk) 20:44, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
Please be advised: there is a rational and orderly discussion at Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2010 January 28#File:JD Salinger.jpg.-- Blargh29 ( talk) 07:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Excluse me if this is not the right place for this, but someone should look at the recent edits by Bowei Huang 1 ( talk · contribs), which are quite bizzare. Also sorry for not signing this properly, but the tilda on my computer does not seem to be working. jbhood —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbhood ( talk • contribs) 13:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
User:Madjidi has been adding spam to a bunch of pages. He's gotten a couple of warnings; I dunno if it's time to block him, but someone with more time than I should go through and revert anything still there. (I took care of code reviewand software review.) Ma t c hups 03:51, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
The intention has never been to be spam. I added external links that are appropriate for Safety Critical Engineers to know. I have no idea why you are attacking my additions. I will review the guideline and will add the links back to be in compliant. Madjidi ( talk) 10:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
I have been nominated for Bot Approvals Group membership by MBisanz, and I am posting a notification here as encouraged by the bot policy. If you have time, please comment at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/The Earwig. Thanks, — The Earwig @ 03:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed a few articles that make such heavy use of inline citations that they create readability issues. One example is here, where in one case 51 citations are used in a 200 word paragraph [final paragraph]. What would be a good way to deal with it? I don't have access to most of the sources to see if they're necessary or not, and bringing it up on the talk page hasn't proved very useful. Is there a common practice to dealing with issues such as this, or is it simply not considered an issue? There's also the issue that the section relies almost entirely on primary sources, which seems to be the reason there are so many of them, primary sources backing-up primary.. Rehevkor ✉ 05:50, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
.reference {display:none}
to your user CSS, the footnotes will not be displayed. With ECMAScript this can be toggled with a click. Hmm, just had an idea...
Paradoctor (
talk)
16:15, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
This topis is also being discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive_72#Can too many references be a bad thing?. Might be good to just stick to one forum for easier discussion. -- AnmaFinotera ( talk · contribs) 17:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
For anyone interested, User:Dendodge has written a Wikinews article on this.
I came across this pdf produced by the Indiana Department of Homeland Security for racial profiling and found that in it, and found that the vocabulary section on page 3/4 are copied from wikipedia, yet there is no attribution to Wikipedia or even a mention of it...
The purpose of the pdf is "To research positions related to the topic of racial profiling post September 11, 2001 with a primary focus on citizens of Middle Eastern descent, and to give an informative speech."
It uses 7 terms from Wikipedia:
Racial Profiling,
USA PATRIOT Act,
Bigotry,
Internment,
Terrorism,
Counter-terrorism,
The War on Terrorism.
(For those who can't count)
The following is excerpted from the pdf.
-
Racial Profiling is the inclusion of racial or ethnic characteristics in determining whether a person is considered likely to commit a particular type of crime or an illegal act or to behave in a “predictable” manner.
- The
USA PATRIOT Act, commonly known as the “Patriot Act”, is a statute enacted by the United States Government that President George W. Bush signed into law on October 26, 2001. The contrived acronym stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (Public Law Pub.L. 107-56). The Act increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records; eases restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States; expands the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and entities; and enhances the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The act also expands the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.
-
Bigotry- A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one who regards or treats members of a group (e.g. a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance. Bigotry is the corresponding mindset or action. The term bigot is often misused to pejoratively label those who merely oppose or disagree with the devotion of another. The correct use of the term, however, requires the elements of obstinacy, irrationality, and animosity toward those of differing devotion.
-
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement[1] of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) gives the meaning as: “The action of ‘interning’; confinement within the limits of a country or place”. Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction between internment, which is being confined usually for preventive or political reasons, and imprisonment, which is being closely confined as a punishment for crime.
-
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. One form is the use of violence against noncombatants for the purpose of gaining publicity for a group, cause, or individual.[citation needed] At present, there is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism. Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts that are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants.
-
Counter-terrorism (also spelled counterterrorism) refers to the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.
-
The War on Terrorism (also referred to as the Global War on Terror is the common term for the military, political, legal and ideological conflict against what the effort’s leaders describe as Islamic terrorism and Islamic militants, and was specifically used in reference to operations by the United States and its allies since the September 11, 2001 attacks. The stated objectives of the war in the US are to protect the citizens of the US and allies, to protect the business interests of the US and allies at home and abroad, break up terrorist cells in the US, and disrupt the activities of the international network of terrorist organizations made up of a number of groups under the umbrella of al-Qaeda.
It should be noted that some government documents use wikipedia as a source, and thus should not be used as a reference.
Should the pdf attribute wikipedia as per the Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License? Anybody have any thoughts on this? Smallman12q ( talk) 18:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
The content organization, graphics, design, compilation and other materials on or related to the Portal are protected under applicable copyright, trademark and other proprietary and intellectual property rights. In most cases, the content is owned by the state agency choosing to make its information available through the aI service. The copying, redistribution, use or publication by you of any such materials or any part of the Portal, except as allowed for in the Limited Right to Use section below, is strictly prohibited. You do not acquire ownership rights to any content, document or other materials viewed through the Portal. The posting of information or materials on the Portal does not constitute a waiver of any right in such information and materials.
the portal's terms of use, section "Copyright"
Seems the document has been removed. Now we can start checking the other brochures. Paradoctor ( talk) 07:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
The New York Times is moving to a restricted model where access will be paywalled after a certain point. This follows similar moves by the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, and in the current advertising climate we can expect this practice to become more prevalent.
This presents a serious issue to accessing reliable sources in the future, which we may not be able to do much about (
WP:REX-type initiatives notwithstanding). It also threatens our reader's access to existing hyperlinks we use as references and external links. The question arises, how do we steal their content while we have the chance pre-emptively protect the references to guarantee their future use? Is mass-archiving through
WebCite for instance a feasible or even legal course of action? Thoughts, comments, suggestions welcome.
Skomorokh
21:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOARCHIVE">
, and so are other major news websites like
http://www.ft.com,
http://www.economist.com,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk and
http://www.telegraph.co.uk. I pointed this out ages (well, months) ago and AFAIK no-one cared....
Pointillist (
talk)
22:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)Yes this is a serious drawback. In Canada it is quite common for the media to remove articles from the web within hours/ days of publishing. This makes it very difficult to hold any subjects of articles accountable, and is a serious threat to democracy. Just my $.02 Ottawahitech ( talk) 22:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOARCHIVE">
, e.g.
http://http://www.nytimes.com,
http://www.ft.com,
http://www.economist.com,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk and
http://www.telegraph.co.uk. Are you suggesting we should ignore NOARCHIVE and go ahead and archive individual stories on these sites anyway? -
Pointillist (
talk)
12:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I know that there are guidelines for WP:BLP. I was wondering if there are comparable guidelines for what can be said about corporate entities.
User:Playmobilonhishorse has placed an unsourced statement on the VDM Publishing House page that seems to accuse them of behavior that is arguably unethical, and perhaps even illegal. Here is the edit. I added a fact tag, but I was wondering if things like this should be reverted rather than just tagged. (That's what would be done in the case of BLP.) — Lawrence King ( talk) 04:27, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I could not find anybody to ask this question. I wanted to ask if i created timeline ( WP:Timeline) of events in Aafia Siddiqui, then will it be ok according to WP policies? This is due to the fact that her case has many intricate details and all of which should not be put of article since they may make the article more complex. But a timeline will be very helpful in getting a good chronology of events. — Hamza [ talk ] 05:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
The New Georgia Encyclopedia ("NGE") has authorized Wikipedia to import and/or merge the following ten articles, which I have copied to project space:
Our goal is to get these articles in top shape and merge or move them into mainspace as quickly as possible. If this turns out well (as I am confident it will), the NGE will permit us to import their remaining body of over 2,000 well-researched and well-written articles, which could pioneer a trend for other private owners of encyclopedic content to release their materials into our corpus. I would deeply appreciate any help that we can muster in accomplishing this. Please note that the original NGE articles (now linked in the required attribution section of each of the above articles in project space) have images, but NGE is unable to convey those to us at this time, as they are individually licensed by NGE. Finding equivalent images would, of course, be helpful. Also, please note that the NGE would like for us to parallel their selection of internal links (where they link to an internal NGE article, they would like for us to also link to our equivalent Wikipedia article). The first import, Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Jesse Hill, is substantially finished in this respect. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:09, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Congrats for your hard work! Thelmadatter ( talk) 23:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
please can someone enlighten me -"does kingdom drive an Alvis and if so what model?" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ewahewah ( talk • contribs) 21:57, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Hello,was reading your explanation of Stormtroops,and thought i could add something that may be helpful.Where you did mention Canada it wasent that the Canadian Corp had a stormtroop,it was more that after the German army ran into the canadians they started calling THEM the stormtroops.I will say again THE GEARMANS called the Canadian Corp STORMTROOPS.If you know the details of the Canadians under General Currie that is explanation enough —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.54.22.203 ( talk) 01:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Is there a tool, the equivalent of Wikistalk or Overlapping Contributions, which will allow you to input a number of articles and return with the users who have editing those pages in common? Thanks. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 23:14, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Does anyone know the name of a template to go in an article to encourage edits to translate from other language wiki's. I've seen them on the french wiki's but I can't recall an exact french article or work out what the template might be called. Regards, SunCreator ( talk) 16:15, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
May I bring to everyone's attention Wikipedia:2010 US Census and it's associated talk page, where comment is needed as to how to handle updating demographics data in articles after this upcoming census. Ks0stm ( T• C• G) 21:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I just created {{
Currency}} in order to do currency formatting values inline with the MOS guidelines at
WP:MOSNUM. The template is currently functional for a decent selection of the largest currencies, but it's nowhere near 100% complete yet. Value ranges need to be added as well, along with conversions from one currency to another (which I think that I'll use {{
Currency value}} to provide). Feel free to jump in and change things though, if you'd like, as I generally dislike working alone anyway. Regards,
—
V = I * R (
Talk •
Contribs)
03:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I have considered this for years.
New Editors complain a lot about abbreviations, and it is really annoying to have to look up what editors are talking about.
I have a simple solution. Simply create a template and add a 1 to most of the common abbreviations. The template would have the full name.
Instead of typing:
....1 extra character, and : WP:Assume Good Faith would be on the page.
If necessary we could have a bot scour wikipedia to change the acronym templates to full titles.
Of course, no would be required to use this. Ikip 10:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
{{
cite xxx}}
some time back since I used it so much. You should probably bring this up at
Wikipedia:Help Project. ---—
Gadget850 (Ed)
talk
18:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
User:Ikip/alphabet shows that of all the rules on WP:Alphabet soup templates with the exact same acronyms there are:
I think something like a 1 like {{AGF1}} or some other way would be best, to make things standard. Ideas? Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 10:54, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Just for fun, the official site of the Afghan National Army links to Wikipedia biographies for all its Senior Officers (scroll to bottom (of page). This might be the first government endorsement of our BLPs! Joshdboz ( talk) 13:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
For the attention of the Administrator
Please clean up the vandalism at the Skype page. The first sentence in the second paragraph and the first phrase in the 'Features' sub-section should clearly be removed; there may be other vandalism I have not seen. Suggest semi-protection and punishing the perpetrator. ~~
I have accepted MBisanz's nomination of myself for membership of the Bot Approvals Group, and invite interested parties to participate in the discussion and voting. Josh Parris 03:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Why is the hullaballoo WP:BLPs about sources instead of being about libel or harmful material?
Is there any way this energy can be redirected toward larger problems? Or at least that people would realize that this is whitewashing the situation? Maurreen ( talk) 10:21, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm trying to fill out a 3O request, but the request for a second dispute keeps getting removed from the noticeboard and the article's Talk page. See here. The volunteers think it is simply a duplicate of the first, when there are really two issues at stake. Would appreciate some help in making this clear on the 3O discussion page. Or, should I just skip this step and move on to the next avenue? SharkD Talk 16:44, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
I just noticed that there has been a quite number of changes in film titles from "name (film)" to "name (year film)". this has led to to uncorrect language links in other Wikipedias (I only speak now of fi.wiki). For example the fi.wiki article about Speed (1994 film) led to "Speed (disambiguation)" because the original page was moved to a new page and the old one was changed to a redirect page. And worse is still to come: "Seventh Heaven (film)" was moved to "Seventh Heaven (1927 film)" and a bot changed automatically (!) the language link in fi.wiki to the incorrect "Seventh Heaven#Film, television, and theatre". For that film there are now seven wrong links in other Wikis. It appears to me that you are doing a lot of these changes. Has anyone thought of the consequencies across all Wiki languages?-- Nedergard ( talk) 14:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Compare
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=American_Liberty_League&direction=next&oldid=156894417
with the later-published
http://books.google.com/books?id=T1_tElpa2x0C&pg=PR23&dq=prescott+bush+%22liberty+league%22
I discovered this by accident when I was looking for sourcing for the claim that Prescott Bush was a leader of the Liberty League. As best I can tell, the Wikipedia article that was plagiarized was apparently wildly inaccurate: there's no evidence that Prescott Bush ever had anything to do with the Liberty League; it was uncited information added into the article without an edit summary. I emailed Professor Barrow multiple times about this, and never got a response; a reporter I spoke to shrugged, saying that Wikipedia plagiarism stories have been done before. I do have a concern about the possibility of future bootstrapping, when inaccurate Wikipedia information ends up getting copied by a "reliable source," and then fed back into Wikipedia at a later date. Anyway, not sure where else to take this, so thought I'd raise it with the community. (Update: Yes, this is a 1944 book by Beard. I'm referring to the introductory essay published in the 2008 edition by Barrow. This should be obvious by the passage's reference to "George W. Bush, Jr." [sic], but some people have trouble understanding these things apparently.) THF ( talk) 04:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC), updated 09:22, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Racquet Club of Philadelphia has been the victim of vandalism, but I am unsure how to fix it. There does not seem to be any place to report the vandalism for others to fix, unlike the vandals themselves, who can be reported. Should I plunge in with undos, or try to edit out several problems? Yes, I am reluctant. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 14:28, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
The New Georgia Encyclopedia has released an eleventh article to Wikipedia under the CC-by-SA license (I think this is a good sign for the project). They expressed to me their interest in seeing how we are able to merge their more thorough materials into our existing articles relating to Delta Air Lines. bd2412 T 16:51, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Angchonglai is a "selftaught multimedia-artist" - he uses his userpage for selfpromotion and has no other edits - even his discussion page is a copy of his user page.... I have just found his art in the commons. I doubt that his userpage and - in parts - his art in the commons is in scope of the wikimedia projects ?! (despite his art has some aesthecial values) Plehn ( talk) 09:20, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
I posted a request to
MediaWiki talk:Statistics-footer#Change one link in Other Statistics, but I'm posting a notice here because nobody watches that page. Feel free to jump in an comment (or even make that change. That would be nice!).
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs)
19:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
{{
editprotected}}
to bring the request to attention of admins.
Svick (
talk)
20:23, 15 February 2010 (UTC)How responsibly would the wikipedia cover another Richard Jewell incident?
For those too young to remember a bomb was exploded during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Richard Jewell, An alert security guard was reported to have had his suspicions triggered by the apparently abandoned package that turned out to be a bomb. He was reported to have started to clear the area, helping to prevent the casualty count being larger. On the day or so following the incident Richard Jewell was described as a hero. But then the FBI Director revealed that Jewell was the prime suspect, based on the notion that he fit some kind of profile of a cop-wanna-be, who would plant a bomb himself, so he could set himself up to be the hero who saved the day. Jewell's home was beseiged by reporters, who wanted a reaction. The press reporting included some extremely irresponsible elements.
Five or six years later the actual bomber confessed -- an anti-Abortion kook with zero ties to Jewell.
In a recent {{ afd}} another contributor cited the Jewell incident as a cautionary example, and wrote that thinking about how the wikipedia would have covered the Richard Jewell incident, if it had existed in 1996, made him or her "shudder". In other {{ afd}}s I have written that I think the wikipedia has higher standards than the mainstream media, and that I think our coverage of the Richard Jewell incident would have been an island of responsibility and neutrality in the sea of irresponsible speculation.
I bring this up because of the coverage of a recent incident where an American GI has been charged with child abuse for repeatedly immersing his four year old daughter's head in water. This disciplining technique is being widely described as instances of the use of the controversial " waterboarding" technique. I recently added a section to Waterboarding in the 21st century#Use of waterboarding to discipline children about this incident.
Since then I came across this article in Salon magazine from Dahlia Lithwick, who is a lawyer as well as a journalist. She comments on the nature of other reporting of the incident -- noting how newspapers that had not been prepared to describe waterboarding as torture when it was used against terrorist suspects had not hesitated to call the technique torture when practiced on an innocent person, like a four year old girl.
The reporting on this incident reminds me of the reporting on the Richard Jewell allegations. In this instance it might be worse -- different accounts report details that are inconsistent. I suspect this is due to professional reporters allowing unprofessional editorializing slipping into reports written as if they were straight factual reporting, and possibily the simple human inability to fully face all the horrific details.
We don't normally cover child abuse incidents. We wouldn't normally cover child abuse, just because the alleged abuser is a GI who has recently served in Iraq and Afghanistan. In my judgment call is that the commentary that the GI is alleged to have used techniques that GIs are now specifically proscribed from using against the USA's enemies lifts this incident out of the ordinary. In my judgment commentary like Lithwick's makes the GI's behavior worthy of greater coverage.
In my user space I have started working on a draft -- User:Geo Swan/Yelm, Washington 'water-boarding' incident. I invite comments.
I put 'water-boarding' in quotes in the title of my draft in the interests of neutrality. Among the controversial aspects of this incident are what the GI actually did, and whether what he actually did is close enough to the CIA waterboarding that it should be called waterboarding.
How detailed should our coverage of the incident be?
Cheers! Geo Swan ( talk) 20:26, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Mission of Honor is suffering from plotdump syndrome. I tagged the article as a excessive plot but the primary author of the article removed the tag with the reasoning that IP users shouldn't tag the problem, even though it is a problem (see Talk:Mission of Honor).
So, should I just go ahead and delete the plotdump?
70.29.210.242 ( talk) 07:41, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
The sentencing table is supposed to reflect the presence of four zones (A, B, C and D), as seen at U.S.S.G. § 5A (scroll down a little ways to see the table). It's possible to color-code the cells by zone, but I would prefer to reproduce the staircase-resembling borders. Can anyone help? Thanks, Tisane ( talk) 00:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
My adoptee is writing an article, and she wants to add an external link to a pdf file she has saved on her computer. She asked me how to do this, and my best guess was to use one of the many pdf hosting sites (that show up on Google), but she wants to know if there's a different way to host them. So, anyone have any idea what a good way to host a pdf file online is? I suspect your only option is to either 'use your own site or find a site to host it', but I figured I'd ask around. Swarm( Talk) 23:11, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Anyone have a good picture to add to Template:WelcomeBack? Be bold and add one, I can't think of one. Thanks a million in advance. Okip BLP Contest 12:41, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Including the huge number of verbose American books written in the same gushing style but supposedly relating to business. Such as this one for example: Growth leadership.
My question is, would Wikipedia be able to detect if someone has been paid to write articles like this, to promote the books? I recall seeing many similar articles about obscure fadish business-self-help books on Wikipedia all written in the same infomercial style. 89.242.89.218 ( talk) 14:49, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
If an established Wikipedia editor with "connections" were to request that a certain piece of information be mentioned in an interview by a relevant person, and if this piece of information were published in a reliable secondary source, that editor weaves the information into an article "legally". No policy is knowingly violated. Has this ever happened before? Or not to anyone's "knowledge"? – Kerαunoςcopia◁ galaxies 06:41, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers so far! (And apologies Ohms law for not being clear.) I was asking because I'll read these incredible stories by actual band members about some crazy fact regarding the making of an album (that could be extremely relevant to the outcome of that album), but because they only share the story in online forums, I find myself being tempted to ask them to repeat their stories to the press. I have no doubt that I'm the only one to think this, especially with matters (and therefore, articles) far more important to the casual Wikipedia peruser. – Kerαunoςcopia◁ galaxies 09:40, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Please take a look at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Citation discussion#Inline template wikitext formatting and comment, when you have a chance to do so. Thank you. 08:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi everyone,
The Living Persons task force is having a meeting on IRC in about 28 hours, in the channel #wikimedia-strategy connect on the server freenode. If you need help accessing this channel, please see Wikipedia:IRC#Accessing IRC. The time of the meeting is at 0:00 UTC on Monday, 22 February, which you will notice if you have been in previous meetings is several hours earlier than usual. The meeting will be publicly logged (see past chats) and will generally follow the structure laid out at the agendas page. strategy:Task force/Living people has more information if you're interested. Be sure to read our current project, a set of recommendations to the WMF Board of Trustees, if you plan to come.
Please do email myself or Keegan if you have questions on how to participate!
Yours sincerely,
NW ( Talk) 19:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
I’m not sure who would be the appropriate person to address with this question – I would greatly appreciate any suggestion as to who this should be sent to?
I have been working on the health care reform issue as a volunteer with Organizing for America and have been amazed and horrified at the power of pro-industry forces to conduct a campaign of disinformation so effective that it has derailed meaningful health care reform at a time when 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of access to health care.
At the same time, I have found it difficult to get really balanced and truthful accounts of what is happening, and end up relying on progressive news sources which makes me uneasy because I don’t know how much bias there might be in their coverage.
For a democracy to thrive, there needs to be ways for citizens to become easily informed in what is really going on, along with easily available mechanisms to dialogue with others and participate in the political process.
I am wondering if there is not a way for Wikipedia to play a role, beyond being the wonderful source of basic knowledge that it is. Might it be possible for Wikipedia to launch a venture aimed at ‘civic knowledge’, with panels of people on all sides contributing to a truthful, factual array of sociopolitical realities, with divergent opinions noted in a concise way that is easy for readers to follow and understand.
For example, there could be a description of key provisions of the Senate health care proposal, with a panel of volunteers making sure that all the objective facts were correct, and panels of volunteers from different political orientations summarizing a succinct interpretation of those facts, in a few paragraphs. A split screen could be employed with the key objective facts on one side and a list of links to brief interpretation summaries on the other side.
Perhaps in providing something like this, Wikipedia could become a central institution in the democratic process, which so needs renewal at this point, especially in light of the Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance.
I would very much like to know if this is something Wikipedia could explore, or if it is something that has already been considered.
I would be very grateful for any response you can provide to this request.
Thank you!
Judy Morgan Austin, Texas —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.174.66.178 ( talk) 22:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Judy about the danger to democracy in general (not specifically about Health reform which is more of interest to Americans). The media is getting too concentrated in too few hands. Corporations with other agendas are taking over manufacturing/stifling of news; Organizations such as MSN in the USA, or BCE in Canada.
I am not sure how Wikipedia can solve this problem, but I didn't like the way Judy was being patronized in this discussion, so decided to speak out. This discussion is related to the one that precedes it here imo. Ottawahitech ( talk) 05:24, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
I think that Wikipedia could be one vehicle for a "truthful, factual array of sociopolitical realities, with divergent opinions noted in a concise way" on health care, but that this would also take a great deal of work. Consider Health care reform in the United States: this article is a terrible mess. Not surprisingly it's rated C-Class by its WikiProjects. Why? I would guess because there are so many editors with strongly-held and conflicting opinions working at the same time that it produces chaos. You cannot create a featured article on such a contentious topic because someone will immediately insert misleading sentences that detract from the main issues at hand, which you will then have to spend time fighting, and when you are done, another person will soon come along, and the cycle will repeat. Would I read this article? Heck no. It's terribly written. If my own experience is any guide, this article is relatively highly ranked (7232) only because so many wandering souls are looking for guidance on the issue. They find the Wikipedia article because it is Wikipedia, then realize how terribly written it is and leave to find better sources.
By the way, Organizing for America is simply the Barack Obama political machine. Though it does have differences with "pro-industry forces," including the insurance industry, I would argue that it is more sympathetic to the health care industries, including insurance, pharmaceuticals, doctors, and hospitals, than opposed to them. Actual opposition organizations like Healthcare-NOW and PDA are much smaller than OFA and HCAN. ( See this link for more information.) —Khin2718 ( talk) 17:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I was wondering if anyone would like to share their opinion on what the hell went wrong with this RFA that drove Dr Dec ( talk · contribs) off of Wikipedia. Look at the opposes. Dec said he wanted the tools for vandalism fighting, yet there were opposes because: "Vandal-fighting is stated as candidate's primary need for the tool, but only 70 reports to AIV." They had over 2200 edits with Huggle alone, and there were multiple instances of opposes based on that. Okay, maybe not the biggest of deals in the world, but other comments in the oppose section were much worse.
Dec made what appeared to be a tongue-in-cheek that said "Imagine a project without my anti-vandal edits: Barack Obama would be 307 year old Chinese farmer with 29 children, born in Sydney Australia." He was then pretty much lambasted for being arrogant, despite his attempts to clarify what he meant. Some responses were:
Dr Dec also requested that the discussion not be SNOW closed so they could "get feedback" from the process. Response?
In case you're curious, Dr Dec's responses to this included "Let's call it a day, could someone please close this RfA. I hadn't realised that I was such an arsehole. Thanks for pointing out how much you all hate me." and "Don't these people realise that there's a living, breathing person behind the user name; some one that laughs and someone that cries? I've not felt this low for a long time, and for what — a bloody website!" (on [ this revision] of their talk page) They then retired. I suspected they would return, but it's been a month so this is obviously not an "I'm pissed off so I'm retiring for a week to be dramatic" situation.
Everyone knows all RFAs can be brutal, but this just seemed ridiculously extreme. I mean, is it common practice to criticize someone so harshly that they leave the project? Honestly, what went wrong here? Am I crazy for seeing this as a problem? Polite and constructive discussions usually don't have this effect, so I'm assuming I'm not. Swarm( Talk) 06:56, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
An editor of this template keeps insisting on adding "link=" elements to two images being used on this template, but is doing so without supplying any actual link ( example). The result is the template prevents editor from clicking through to the source images with no apparent justification for doing so. I've asked him not to do so [5], and his response on justification was that all Indian writer templates are constructed this way [6]. I've checked a bunch of Indian writer pages, finding none with templates constructed as he suggests.
Thoughts? -- Hammersoft ( talk) 21:29, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Take a look at the history for File:Darren.jpg. There are four different images in that file's history, four different people have put four different people's faces into the file's history. This needs to be sorted out. Any ideas how? Woogee ( talk) 00:09, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
User:WildBot comes in and sticks a notice on an article's Talk page, even if there's a speedy deletion tag on it. If the creator of the article comes along after that and adds a hangon tag, the bright red warning that they haven't explained on the article's Talk page what notability they're claiming with their hangon tag won't show up, because WildBot has already created a Talk page. Any way that the hangon tag can check to see if the person who adds the hangon tag has commented on the Talk page, or else ignore any Talk pages created by WildBot, and add the warning anyway? Woogee ( talk) 00:43, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Why does the hangon tag depend on the fact that there is no talk page? I'm sure there are many reasons that a speedied article will have a talk page, not just because of WildBot. OrangeDog ( τ • ε) 23:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
I read that three Google executives were convicted by an Italian court for invasion of privacy due to Google Video hosting a video of an Italian schoolboy with autism being bullied. [7] The video was taken down when Google was contacted by the Italian police, but the execs were still prosecuted in absentia and convicted. Those found guilty include Google's Global Privacy Counsel, Peter Fleischer, whose response is that "The judge has decided I am criminally responsible for the actions of some Italian teenagers who uploaded a reprehensible video to Google Video. I knew nothing about the video until after it was removed by Google in compliance with European and Italian law."
Does this ruling now mean that executives of the Wikimedia Foundation could be liable in Italy for content posted on Wikipedia? (I know you're not lawyers, before anyone chimes in). Fences& Windows 19:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Statistics on all Wikipedia articles are not available for the last two days. Anyone know what to do? Ottawahitech ( talk) 11:28, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
I see some video popping up on YouTube of course, but If anyone has personal video of the earthquake, the after effects, or the tsunami and it's after effects available, it would be great if you could upload a version here (well, to
Commons:Upload would be best). We can't use YouTube videos directly on
2010 Chile earthquake, and EL's to YouTube cause problems. Commons has
Commons:Category:2010 Chile earthquake to add anything uploaded to, FYI. Thanks!
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs)
00:40, 28 February 2010 (UTC)