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Inspired by the likely answer to a crossword clue in the London Evening Standard newspaper, I entered Wikipedia to look up Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was staggered to find my quest was the Featured article of the day. Mammaliman ( talk) 19:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
I can't believe this, I was sitting around drinking in a bar earlier tonite and the TV in the bar kept showing a wikipedia ad ("knowledge forever"). I pulled out my digicam and took a few pictures of the screen which I'll try to upload in the next day or so. I'm amused and appalled at the same time. The mind, as the saying goes, wobbles. Maybe regulars here knew about these ads already but I almost did a spit-take. 75.62.4.94 ( talk) 07:51, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello,
I am reporting on the Congressional race in New York's First Congressional District. One candidate in the race was the former CEO of Office Tiger, a company that outsourced thousands of (potential) American jobs overseas (especially to India).
I recently wrote an article about him and Office Tiger, including a link to Office Tiger's Wikipedia page. Now, a few weeks later, the page has been "deleted" and I cannot figure out how or by whom or why.
Any/all suggestions/comments would be appreciated.
Thank you.
AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR ( talk • contribs)
Hello,
Thank you for answering my question, but I am still not satisfied with the response.
I documented changes to the Office Tiger web page that occurred frequently between 2009 and 2010 - the most recent change occurred on June 29, 2010.
I can't figure out why I can no longer access this page.
It's not possible to edit an article that is deleted, correct?
And there is no record of its deletion post June 29, 2010?
Thanks,
AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR ( talk • contribs) 20:15, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello,
I am sure of the name of the company I am searching for: Office Tiger.
There are 2 reasons given for the deletion of Office Tiger in January 2010:
a) Proposed deletion: someone proposed that the page be deleted; no one objected within a 7 day period, so it was
b) Twinkle: a program that helps registered Wiki users perform maintenance tasks and deal with acts of vandalism; it seems drastic in its remedies ("rollback functions," etc.)
AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR ( talk • contribs) 20:42, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
I did not edit the article, ever. I just noticed that there seemed to be an editing war going on over the Office Tiger Wiki page and the last edit happened on June 29, 2010. Therefore, I do not understand how this page was deleted in January 2010.
This is what I know:
-The original Wikipedia entry for Office Tiger was deleted in January of 2006. What I was able to learn about that entry when I did research for the article in June of 2010 was this: “Office Tiger was founded in late 1999 with an innovative approach to global outsourcing. The company’s employees, located primarily in India….” TODAY, this information does not exist.
-A second Wikipedia page for Office Tiger was created on April 27, 2009. Between that date and June 29, 2010 there were twelve edits to the page that were able to be accessed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OfficeTiger. TODAY, this information does not exist.
Any explanation for this?
If you sent me the deleted article(s), they would confirm the above.
AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR ( talk • contribs) 21:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Many articles on mathematics and physical sciences are very difficult to understand. Are any editors more knowledgeable than I about mathematics and science willing to consider re-activating WikiProject General Audience?
69.251.180.224 ( talk) 05:44, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Relisted from archives
[11]
[31]
[37] to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,
69.251.180.224 (
talk)
03:53, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
I do not know if this is normal or not, but looking at a bunch of Aliens related topics, like Weyland-Yutani and Bishop (Aliens) and many more, there are these merge discussion tags to Aliens (film) at the top of most of the pages. I wanted to discuss the merge like it says, but none of the pages have any merge discssions anywhere on the talk pages. I looked at the page historys, and some of the merge tags have been on the pages for almost 2 1/2 years but there are no discussions and no one has said if a merge will happen or not. Is that normal and should these be tkane down or something done??? Scurrilous1986 ( talk) 22:58, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello everyone! I have been nominated for the bot approval group and would like to invite you all to participate in the discussion at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/EdoDodo. Thanks. - EdoDodo talk 02:46, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
Crazy Wikipedians/Wikipedia stories???
I'm a filmmaker, looking into stories related to Wikipedia and I want to get in touch with folks around the world who are addicted to checking Wikipedia, or who have contributed the most, and for whom this online wealth of knowledge has manifested and possibly changed your life. Please reply to this post - would love to hear from you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.89.146.172 ( talk) 00:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
I am willing to give you my opinion! Suomi Finland 2009 ( talk) 19:28, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Some links for stories on how Wikipedia changed someone's life:
-- œ ™ 02:57, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello all, I was wondering if anyone needed a helper in creating a good article or featured article. I'd like to help make one, but i'm a bit bereft of inspiration on a topic right now. Doc Quintana ( talk) 18:44, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
The deed was done by SilkTork not many hours ago after a contentious dispute between over a dozen users on VPC's talkpage, some wanted to keep it, some wanted to delete it. Some wanted to make it historical, some never understood its purpose, but it is my opinion that VPC was very misunderstood and had a potential to be very important and possibly even resolve problems we have with the similar Featured Picture Candidates (FPC) and the connected Picture of the Day projects.
If VPC never rises again then may it rest in peace, the rest of us will just be on the ever persnickety FPC page. -- I'ḏ ♥ One 10:29, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
There is a discussion taking place here regarding if ahnentafels (ancestry tables) should be uncollapsed by default? SilkTork * YES! 20:46, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
Call me a paranoid, but this piece of news has sent a shiver down my spine ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups). I can't help but feeling worried about the current election systems of Arbcom and Wikimedia Board. In their current state (voting rights determined by nothing other than edit counts) both of them are vulnerable to manipulation by organisations of whatever nature, as long as they have a Wikipedia-contributing membership that is sizeable enough. If they have thousands of editors (or to be more precise, monthly-active user accounts with > 150 edits) at their disposal, they could easily act as one in our Arbcom elections / Board elections to outvote the existing Wikipedia community and install their candidate(s). If they have sufficient votes, they could even *take over* the entire Arbcom/all community-elected Board seats. I don't want to name specific political parties or racial organisations here, but I'm convinced that they will consider having a stake/say/control in Wikip/media's governing bodies to be immensely helpful to promoting their agenda worldwide.
Once they take control of the Arbcom, they can censor articles using oversight. Their armies of POV-pushers and vandals can quickly run Wikipedia down without any fear of being banned/blocked (which the Arbcom can always overturn), and/or turn it into their private Press Room or an outlet of their Ministry of propaganda. And that's chickenfeed comparing with what they can achieve if they have a presence in our Board. Board members can obtain secrets held by the WMF - Donor identities, disposal of WMF funds, IP addresses and Browser IDs of every editor from server logs, not to mention the power to perform Office actions which are not accountable to the community. These data and powers could be used in political persecution (e.g. tracking political dissidents), whitewashing and driving the WMF to bankruptcy. Do these sound like fiction to you? Since the WMF is the ultimate controller of Wikipedia, once the Board is infiltrated, there is nothing the Wikimedia community can do to stop them.
Therefore we seriously need a debate on the evolution of our election system. I propose:
Any ideas?-- Computor ( talk) 15:28, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Three things as far as the ArbCom elections are concerned from my experience (not necessarily the WMF board as I normally don't care much personally). First is the high levels of scrutiny placed by the community on those serious ArbCom candidates, which I believe ensures a fair representative of the masses on the Commmittee. Second is closed voting; people are able to freely decide without any undue influence or groupthink affecting their decisions. Third is the level of scrutiny in the votes cast (that is, done by scrutineers coming from outside en.wiki); most sock puppets that are normally caught have far fewer than 150 edits to an account. Now, in the case this has been discovered after the fact, and dung is really hitting the fan, we always have that final failsafe – which is that Jimbo can dissolve ArbCom if absolutely necessary; again, this is the extreme case. – MuZemike 19:03, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Nothing is new under the sun. Everard Proudfoot ( talk) 23:08, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
What is the relation of Wikipedia to the internet site known as "TheFreeDictionary?" (Not to be confused with "wikidictionary the free dictionary.")
Most of the articles I find on TheFreeDictionary (FD) are exact or near exact copies of Wikipedia pages, including the photos, although sometimes the links to the enlarged version of the photos on FD don't work.
TheFreeDictionary claims to have served at this time, 2,227,331,289 visitors. (Found in upper left corner of FD pages under the FD name/logo.)
Several links to The Free Dictionary topics are prominately displayed on the webpage refdesk (www.refdesk.com) every day. refdesk.com is a webpage used by many people as their internet browser homepage. It is a kind of reference page. It contains a lot of links to a variety of popular and commonly accessed information and fact websites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TomBrooklyn ( talk • contribs) 05:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
EDIT: This was meant to be posed as a question to Wikipedians, and it was believed it would post on some sort of community forum board. I see it has appeared as part of the main page article. I'm not sure if this is appropriate. I will leave it to others to decide this and redirect it if possible and/or notify me of where and how to post the question appropriately. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TomBrooklyn ( talk • contribs) 05:42, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Who the heck came up with this silly practice, and why? Just curious, really. seems like an odd little meme for an educated collection of people to have come up with.
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs)
14:10, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Hey wikipedians. I'm leaving some spam here about my new tool for wikiprojects. It spits out a watchlist-like feed of recent changes to articles relevant to a wikiproject (articles tagged with the wikiproject's banner). For example, articles with talk pages tagged with {{ WikiProject Darts}} have a 'watchlist' here. The tool can be used with any template-based wikiproject. Any and all feedback is welcome. Tim 1357 talk 19:49, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
For over three months now, I have been trying to contact the Wikipedia:Volunteer response team. Several times now I've send my permission with regard to Talk:Band-e Kaisar, but they all were completely ignored. No response, nada, niente, nichts, nothing. I want to take the shite now down from old granny Wiki. What template can I use for that? Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 23:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Yesterday I proposed a move of Computersmarts but it's not mentioned at WP:RM. Why?? Georgia guy ( talk) 16:24, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Following the call for applicants (19 July) and the initial call for comments on the candidates (16 August), this notice is a second call for comments from the community on the suitability of the candidates for the September 2010 appointments for checkuser and oversight permissions. The Arbitration Committee is continuing to review and collate the comments received so far. If you have not done so already, please send in your comments before 23:59 on 25 August 2010 (UTC).
Those actively being considered for Checkuser and Oversight permissions are listed here (same link as above). As the primary area of concern is confidence in the candidate's ability to operate within the Wikimedia privacy policy, comments of this nature are best directed to the Committee's mailing list (arbcom-llists.wikimedia.org).
For the Arbitration Committee, Carcharoth ( talk) 21:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Can someone tell me what source that file used to hat on the English WP? thx-- Sanandros ( talk) 14:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
I plan on organising a research project in school in which several of our students would research the local area then contribute their research to either the English wikipedia or the Simple English wikipedia (dependant on their competancy in English). Each student would have their own account on Wikipedia, which myself and any staff involved would monitor for any vandalism, but the school's IP address is currently blocked due to vandalism by other students. I'd like to create about 3 generic accounts for students who don't yet have accounts. The password for each of these accounts would only be given to one student at a time, so we'd be able to hold students accountable for any inappropriate use of any of the accounts. Would it be okay for me to do this?
Also, I'd like to point out our main areas of focus will be Lanark Grammar School, Lanark, and famous Lanarkians, such as William Wallace and William Smellie. Obvously, we wouldn't be able to do much as only 1 person would be able to edit an article at a time (to prevent edit warring). If there's anything the Wikipedia community would like worked on, we'll be happy to do some research.
Another thing, for the purposes of this project, I'll be using my school username ( blackt4098) as I don't want to disclose my username with others outside school. This is just a sockpuppet of this account and will only be used by me. -- tb240904 Talk Contribs 17:14, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
I am posting this to see if anyone wants to add ideas to Wikipedia_talk:WikiCup/Scoring#Award_more_points_for_vital_articles. I have been musing on how to use wikicarrots rather than sticks to influence content development, which as we all know is at the whim of active contributors :) A few of us have been pondering this in discussing point allocation for the 2011 wikicup and whether introducing some form of multiplier for some types of articles might induce development of audited content in areas currently underrepresented or otherwise more "core" content. Essentially, I am trying to think of concrete categories that can't be gamed - so here's a challenge.
A group of articles that is:
(a) reasonably broad (say > 50 articles, preferably >100) (b) An underrepresented part of the 'pedia in terms of audited content (c) Must be concrete qualifying criteria (d) attempt to cover some "core" encyclopedic content and broad articles. not in-universe (e) not contain numbers of esoteric/minor articles
Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 23:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello, everyone
Is it possible to create page in a wiki from a list created with special:export ? If yes, how should I proceed ? I am still a beginner on Python
#1. defining wikis
targetwiki = wikipedia.Site('en', 'wikipedia')
sourcewiki = wikipedia.Site('es', 'wikipedia')
#2. getting category
# (?)
category = page.categories(u'category:abcedfg')
#3. creating page from category page list
# (??)
pagecontent = u"1234567890"
#4. updating page
targetpage = wikipedia.Page(targetwiki, pagetitle)
targetpage.put(pagecontent)
I am not sure about proceeding in the steps where there are questions marks. So I will be grateful for anybody who can help me. Thanks in advance. -- Jagwar - (( talk )) 13:53, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
I just wanted to inform you that I suggested to delete 2,500+ images here. -- MGA73 ( talk) 20:19, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
As you may know, I work for Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit organization based in Washington DC. Since I work there, it would be quite untoward for me to make substantial edits to the article due to conflict of interest. Likewise, our internet strategist has listened to me when I said that it would be untoward for the organization to edit the Wikipedia article about itself. All of us agree that the article is *very* out of date, and needs to be updated and expanded. I've posted to the talk page about problems with the article, but it appears that no one is watching the article except me. What would the group consider to be a proper way to get others to come to improve the article? Obviously, a GA or FA would be a wonderful thing one day, but it's got a long way before reaching that. So your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks! SchuminWeb ( Talk) 18:58, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
Should stupidity be deleted from Wikipedia? :-) Steve Dufour ( talk) 00:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Checking out the Location of Osama bin Laden article, I want to put a section expert template, but I cannot put one on. Anyone know what I should do?? Georgia guy ( talk) 14:53, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
Ok, here is an odd one. I was reading a WP article on the Harry Potter series and there was a section on the Catholic opinion of the books with a reference & wikilink to Catholic World Report. Oddly this wikilink was a redlink which struck me as odd for such a well known publication by Ignatius Press (which is not redlinked). A quick search of en.wikipedia.org (note this was an onsite search, not a Google search) found over 11,000 hits! Yet there is no article on this publication and as far as I can tell never was (I can find no trace of an AFD etc). How very odd don't you think? 66.97.213.52 ( talk) 19:56, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
I got an email today -- in Ukrainian (which I thought was Russian) informing me that (what I think is) a bot had created a user page for me on the Ukraininan Wikipedia (which I've never edited). It gave me a link and, sure enough, there I am. [1] Anybody know what's going on? -- JohnWBarber ( talk) 22:27, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I nominated a category (Igbo writers by genre) ( Category:Igbo writers by genre) to be looked at for deletion, but I don't know if I followed the right protocols. I only became aware of the "Categories for Discussion" pages last week, and I worry that I've done it wrong. I've been editing Wikipedia for a long time, but I've kind of played it by ear, and most of my edits have been really simple. I just cut and pasted code to nominate the category, but I'm not sure it looks right. There seems to be some complicated code attached. As to why I nominated it, I ran across it by happenstance, but it looked weird: The Category "Igbo writers by genre" has no articles, and two subcategories, each of which has only one article in it and it's the exact same article. I also found the Category "Igbo fiction writers" which is exactly the same set-up as "Igbo writers by genre" (in fact the same two subcategories and the exact same single article as the sole entry in each subcategory). I feel the one article which is the sole entry in the four categories under these two categories could probably be classified in one of the other, more populated subcategories of "Igbo writers", such as "Igbo novelists" or "Igbo women writers". But I don't know if I did the right thing and I'm sorry if I messed this up. Artemis-Arethusa ( talk) 23:42, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
I posted a question about this on several MOS pages but didn't get any responses, so I'm asking here too.
Many articles about foreign topics include a native-language name in the first sentence of the lede, in the infobox, or both. See, for example, Jay Chou and Zhang Yuqi. Sometimes the same information is duplicated across both places. (In my experience, biographies like the ones mentioned above often have the name stuff duplicated, whereas articles about placenames do less so—see for instance Weifang, Wuhan—since I think city infoboxes don't have parameters for that; for places with a lot of names, though, there is sometimes a dedicated box just for that, as in Ürümqi.) Most of my experience with this is in China-related articles, but I'm sure infoboxes related to other places also have this issue.
Anyway, I'm just wondering if there is a guideline about where language information should go in these cases. rʨanaɢ ( talk) 00:56, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
I am starting to gather data for a report on dead links on BLPs, but on a wider note I am doing a general review of links on wikipedia. I checked a number of links on 2008-12-10 decided to re-run the data, its surprising to see the amount of link rot (completely dead) links that are appearing. I know our "policy" states that we should leave said links, but what if they cannot be verified and review/look-up in places like archive.org and archive it fail? should we permanently leave questionable link (and probable sources) that cannot be verified in articles or should they be removed after a period of attempted verification? Should we develop a prod like process for addressing these cases or just leave them and trust that they actually contain the information that is claimed? I know I have seen many many cases where users claim a source states something, only to find out upon verification that the users claims are wrong? ΔT The only constant 02:45, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I need someone who can speak Russian to give the Russian wikipedia a message. There is an image on their servers at [2] that is a copyright violation of an image belonging to Doug Bell. It was deleted from wikipedia servers at File:Pcomo.jpg. Cheers, all! -- GrapedApe ( talk) 20:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi! I can't figure a better way to word my concern. I was checking the WP for a couple of odd words I found in a paper and found that the main entries refer to "Rock Bands", which is kind of misleading. I tried to move the entries to secondary links, and in the case of Wilco some people cried foul: the articles are pretty popular among a relatively large fan base, and involuntarily I was wreaking havoc in all links pointing to that page. I reverted the edits and tried to add a disambiguation entry, but the further editings since still don't satisfy my judgement. I wonder where is the policy regarding how to write disambiguation paragraphs before the actual entry, why these misleading entries stick, and where to discuss the policies. Cheers, Lwyx ( talk) 18:34, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
In an article dealing with a single component of an operating system, is it proper to use a template for the operating system or operating system family, e.g., to use [[Category:IBM Mainframe computer operating systems]] in Input/Output Configuration Program?
Also, is it appropriate to use a {{ helpme}} tag on a talk page to ask questions about which template to use? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul ( talk) 16:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
I don't understand why we still have this as an option ("Mark all edits as minor by default" under "Editing") in My Preferences. Just about every time I see accounts who mark all their edits as minor it seems to be for disruptive/tendentious purposes, as it prevents those who do not track minor edits in watchlists from seeing some problem edits. Users should be checking that box manually if an edit truly is minor. Any thoughts out there? – MuZemike 22:02, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Hello,
I recently came upon the word "premiered" in the article on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, but it had an accent over the second E resulting in "première." I thought this grave accent was unnecessary so I removed it. It was quickly reverted to its original spelling. I've seen this word in countless other articles without the accent. I know the accent alludes to the word's etymology--French, from the word première meaning first--but is the accent really necessary, or even correct given general, modern pronunciation of premiere? Many other conjugates from French no longer retain their accents ( List of English words of French origin).
Tell me what you think, Wikipedians. If this is the wrong place for such a question, accept my apologies and please point me in the right direction. Thank you!
(Also, my IP address has a long-standing reputation of vandalism. This does not reflect my actions as I live in a dormitory ( Dobie Center) and therefore use a public IP address. This is my first semester here.) 74.202.255.6 ( talk) 22:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)Chris Rogers
Also, given that this is the correct form, here are a British few plays from the same period with the word premier/premiere spelt without the accent that you might enjoy correcting. To me, the most notable is Doctor Faustus, and since Marlowe was almost certainly more British than American...
Doctor Faustus, A Tale of a Tub (play), Volpone, Epicœne, or The silent woman, The Alchemist (play), The Devil is an Ass, The Magnetic Lady, The City Wit, The Northern Lass, The New Academy, A Looking Glass for London, Believe as You List, Sir John van Olden Barnavelt, The Little French Lawyer, The Sea Voyage, The Spanish Curate, The Lovers' Progress, The Honest Man's Fortune, The Faithful Shepherdess, The Island Princess, The Pilgrim (play), The Scornful Lady, Wit at Several Weapons, The Laws of Candy, and others I'm sure.
As for Shakespeare's canon, The Merry Wives of Windsor lacks an accent. It's used sans accent in The Taming of the Shrew in regards to an English actor's adaptation in the 1600s. It's even seen without the accent in Romeo and Juliet--a featured article--in the "Shakespeare's Day" section. 72.29.211.131 ( talk) 16:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC) Chris Rogers
The article at Baseco is a huge text dump from http://cosca-dlsu-cwts.wikispaces.com/Brgy+649+Zone+68+BASECO+Port+Area,+Manila. Wikispaces is Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Non-Commercial 2.5 License, which I guess means that technically this text can be here, though it needs serious cleaning up, but is the fact that there is no link back to the original location a copyright violation? Everard Proudfoot ( talk) 05:50, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Hello guys,
According to a rumor, it seems a book will be published soon (in French), which will contain chunks of texts clearly from Wikipedia. According to some, it will be the first time, but I have a vague memory that there was already a book published which plagiarized wikipedia, but I do not remember more than this. Anyone remembers ?
Here you go:
Uncle G ( talk) 13:14, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I am new to this forum but use Wikipedia all the time.
There is a serious difference (error) between two articles related to the deepest canyons in the world.
Under "Colca Canyon," the article states that depth of the Colca Canyon in Peru is 4,160 m (13,648 feet),
However, under "Cotahuasi Canyon," it states that the Cotahuasi's "maximum depth is 3535 meters in the vicinity of Ninancocha, 335 meters more than the Colca Canyon." This would make the Colca Canyon only 11,062 feet deep. That is a difference in depth reporting of over 2,500 feet! Which is correct and how do we correct this?
-- InsidePeru ( talk) 14:14, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
In the Template:Village pump pages/sandbox is a proposed new view for this page's header box. There are demos before/after in Template:Village pump pages/testcases, and notes. Any support? - DePiep ( talk) 17:16, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Your help in the above cleanup effort would be appreciated. This is not a task that four people can take on alone. It's an order of magnitude larger than the largest of the other currently open CCI listings. Uncle G ( talk) 13:28, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
It has been proposed that we mass blank articles using a 'bot. For details, see the discussion. Uncle G ( talk) 15:01, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
We're now at the stage where the 'bot is ready to roll, and no-one has voiced an objection. (Indeed, to the contrary: Several people want to go further, and mass delete the articles.)
If the 'bot goes ahead, this will probably light up some people's watchlists like Diwali. Be warned. Uncle G ( talk) 04:33, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi.
Some time ago, I read an essay/page that listed cases where an external article cited Wikipedia as information source, and then Wikipedia cited that article as source, causing a weird loop. ¿Someone knows where is it? I'm not really sure if it was here, or at es:wiki, or if it was at an external website.
Thanks for the help :) -- Racso ( talk) 15:56, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
This subcategory, Images that should be in SVG format, currently has over 3500 images in it, but I don't feel like reorganizing all these ones manually. If enough Wikipedians can each clear up a particular segment at a time, the category can be cleared enough in less than a day. Any ideas? mechamind 9 0 23:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I want to redirect User:User to User:Example much like User:Username is redirected to there, in order to free confusion from new users about generic usernames and such, like pointing to user:user accidentally. I think that's why so many pages currently link there. :| TelCo NaSp Ve :| 04:35, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I think that Wikipedia needs an essay (or a sentence in an existing essay), along the lines of WP:YOULOSE, to encourage sore losers to dispute meta-issues at RFCs, e.g., whether a straw poll should be invalidated because the losers are losing. ("It's absolutely impossible for three-quarters of the community to disagree with a person as reasonable as me, so the fact that I'm 'losing' clearly proves the poll is biased!")
But it seems to me that such a thing must surely exist. Does anyone know where it is? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 18:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
The new judge, Ceoil, will soon announce the winners of the awards for August, July and May 2010, and at the end of this month will announce the winner for September.
He has agreed that we might then change the focus of the competition from individual wikilinks and small groups of wikilinks to whole articles that are badly overlinked. Inevitably, those valuable editors who perform gnoming services are confronted with overlinking throughout whole articles (particularly of "dictionary" items). In almost all cases, this has arisen earlier in WP's history, when there was no coherent strategy for maximising the utility of the wikilinking system. It's a lot of work to clean it up, and the Silliwilli awards was set up to encourage this work.
Therefore, we have decided that from October 2010 onwards the awards should be judged in terms of whole articles. Competitors will still be asked to list individual links (but expanded to six of the funniest, most useless, most inexplicable individual links in the article, as an example of the entry); however, the removal of overlinking from the whole article will be the sole determinant in the award.
All users are welcome to compete. Tony (talk) 04:11, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Could anyone create a template that if we put roman number then it results devanagari number?
Like this:-
{{Devanagari|12345}}
Result: १२३४५
{{Devanagari|5321}}
result: ५३२१
--
Nepab☺y
(talk)
08:21, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
please, help me to translate this inscription http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Biserica_Sf._Constantin_si_Elena_din_Gura_Humorului8.jpg. It's in armenian. Anybody knows armenian? 79.112.27.201 ( talk) 13:38, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm in a situation where an editor is regarding my reverts and changes to his/her edits as a personal attack. He/she is clearly sincere but has a poor grasp of "Wiki-fu". I once read an essay about exactly this issue warning editors not to get upset if/when their "blood, sweat and toil" gets tossed in the trash by other editors mere minutes after they click the "Save" button. I'd like to be able to point the editor concerned to that essay but I can't remember where/how I found it. Roger ( talk) 14:35, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Hello! My name is James Alexander and I'm working with the Wikimedia Foundation during the 2010 Fundraiser. Part of my job is reaching out to local communities, including here on English. This year we want to be as community-driven as possible (remember this?) and are looking for input not only with translating messages but also with pointing out messages that won't work well in your country, region or language (or at all) and proposing messages that you think would be work better.
With improvements to the Central Notice system we have a lot of flexibility in targeting specific geographical regions, languages and projects and we hope to use every tool at our disposal to make this year a success. As you may have already noticed over the past couple weeks we are running hour long banner tests (currently every Thursday at around 2200 UTC). These tests and the comments that we get on the meta page (see below) are a big part of how we are choosing which banners to run this year. If it doesn't test well it won't be used and even if we dislike a banner if the community likes it we are very likely to test it out (and could easily be proven wrong).
You can see some of the current suggestions (and propose your own) on the Meta messaging page but I also want to encourage the community to discuss here (if we need to create a separate page for discussion we can). Myself and other staff members will be keeping an eye out to answer questions publicly and we are always available if you want to reach out privately as well.
I look forward to seeing more of you on here and on Meta (if you want to really get involved join us on IRC or join the Committee!) Jalexander ( talk) 16:15, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
See here. Aiken ( talk) 16:16, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
What does "Authority control" mean at the bottom of Hermann Schussler? Everard Proudfoot ( talk) 22:27, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Something's messed up with the code (the image and some strange text is directly above the article's text rather than in the infobox), but I don't know how to fix it. -- 71.153.45.75 ( talk) 21:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Found this on the "Bistro" on Wikipedia in French : [9], "Au sujet d'un jeu d'échec à New-York et d'un roi qui se fait prendre deux tours par un fou", talking about Chess, one side taken two rooks by a bishop. Is that humour ? Globule99 ( talk) 21:20, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
There's a discussion going on here at files for deletion about the extent to which fair use can reasonably be claimed for images of the Holocaust. J Milburn began it as a discussion about just one image, but the same issues apply to most of the others we use. The discussion has taken a disturbing turn, with Rama claiming that the fair-use polices are somehow similar to Arbeit macht frei, and that some people just loathe working [10] (whatever that means).
Very few have joined in the discussion, so some fresh eyes would be greatly appreciated. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 12:29, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Hiya all. How could I find the File for a yellow lightbulb? You know, like in the
wp:TOTD box, or here
Wikipedia:Village_pump, - the big yellow one above "Proposals"?
As well as giving me the direct answer, could you also please advise me how I might have found it myself? I've tried searching on WP and Commons, to no avail. What search method would have worked?
Many thanks,
Trafford09 (
talk)
13:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
There are now hundreds of historical images of Egypt on Commons from the Travelers in the Middle East Archive archive.-- Diaa abdelmoneim ( talk) 09:38, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I may have missed the obvious, but is there a way to invite an article to be assessed. I was looking at my contributions and there are a lot that need to be processed. -- ClemRutter ( talk) 17:07, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I've started a list of essays about the community's values and principles at WP:Principles. There are more than a thousand essays out there, so if your favorite isn't on the list yet (assuming that it's about one or more values or principles), then please feel free to add it. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 04:59, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi,
Merlino's "Hackers History" page copied content from Timeline of computer security hacker history without referring to Wikipedia.
As I'm not a native English speaker, I won't do the procedure by myself and couldn't find the exact place to report this.
At the beginning, I was trying to find out why there is a sentence containing “…that allowed us to share our current hacks…”. Because of this, the entry looks like a text stolen from the involved hackers group.
Thank you for your attention,
Lacrymocéphale
17:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_polytope, in the section "Cross polytopes (orthoplexes)", the zero-dimensional case is called a "point". Shouldn't it be a "nullitope", or something of the sort - since a point has one vertex, which violates the "2n" rule given at the end of the section ?
The main article "Orthoplex" doesn't even cover the zero-dimensional case !
N.B. I'm not an expert, I was browsing here out of idle curiosity. And I've never contributed to WP before. DAC 18-Oct-2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.29.202 ( talk) 19:56, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
"This is a squad, and it functions very much like one. It is intimate, united, cooperative, disciplined, dedicated, energetic, and effective; and it is so only because its members believe in its tenets and practices." See meta:Anonymous User Protection Squad (AUPS). LOL. Fences& Windows 23:42, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Does anyone know about a way to find the list of the top 100 most viewed WP articles over a period of time longer than a month, e.g. a year or two? A. di M. ( talk) 09:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I got randomly logged out twice in the past two minutes. Any idea what would cause that? One logout came when I was trying to use HotCat on the article Bob Clarke. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ( Otters want attention) 22:49, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I've logged out so I can ask this question with more freedom. Hope this is the right forum.
When editing alongside an aggressive editor (meaning a little bit rude and mean, blustery, full of hubris, however you want to call it) and that person, obviously a HE, keeps veering into discussions about me as an editor, of course, as opposed to the issues at hand as far as work I'm trying to perform on the article (the editor's basically hanging out there to second guess me more than to contribute original material himself, of course)...what's the best for a person in my situation to take? What I mean is-- Well, the person DOESN'T really talk about issues so much on the talkpage. He only comes on to taunt, but there is always at least a modicum of his taunts having a frame of reference of his being a master Wikipedian. (Not that the person is always right, of course, because quite often his hunger to find mis-steps leads him into assuming things to be eggregious faults in my editing that turn out to be, actually, correct edits on my part). Sorry that this is so rambly but, other than any hoped-for catharsis resulting form simply getting this kind of stuff off my chest, there would also be--and IS--my need to figure out how to act in this situation vis-a-vis this emm gentlemanly colleague.
The thing is, the article talkpage is to discuss the article, in my opinion, not so much to parry and thrust with regard to fellow editors in this fashion. Of this I am absolutely sure. Yet, I cannot possibly discuss things on the editor's talkpage either, of course: it being his PRIVATE DOMAIN not to be sullied by a mere rube and peon such as myself (apparently, from the vantage of this fellow's point of view). Right? Further, I'm not going to start some kind of complaint against the guy. His behavior, truth be told, isn't actually completely over the top. It's just consistenly hyper-aggressive slash hyper-hostile slash hyper-arragant slash hyper rude. But (and this is hard to explain...) it doesn't go so far as his using swear words, his engaging in obviously forbidden behaviors, etc...... It is just, put succinctly, Internet "trolling" / Wikipedia-flavored "flam warring" of me constantly and less than subtly.
So, What does one do in this situation? Any thoughts, advice, info about "push-comes-to-shove" institutional procedures, etc., would be welcome. Thank you for your time, those who make it so far as to read to the bottom of this.
(Oh, and--by the way: I'm not saying I'm the perfect or the model Wikipedian either. But I do try to maintain conduct conducive to collaborative work on the encyclopedia and do my very best to maintain a pretty high standard of editing work, at least in my not-so-humble opinion. Again, thanks to anyone/all who might respond to this question. Sincerely.)-- 71.187.173.34 ( talk) 01:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
I've seen a template for talk pages that indicates that the article was translated from a Wikipedia in another language. I can't find that template, though, and can't even find the article I first noticed it on. Where is it? I need to apply it to the article Georg Schäfer. — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 20:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Since Facebook was down, I made a quick Sporcle quiz for Wikipedians: an A-Z look at commonly-invoked policies, guidelines and essays. And whatever I could find that began with Z :) Of course, it rather highlights how important knowing all the references has become, and how there is some merit in a thorough knowledge of them all. But on the other hand, it is just a bit of WP-themed fun for those who enjoy that sort of thing... Regards, - Jarry1250 Who? Discuss. 21:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I've inserted the following code into my signature line:
how the {{subst:freeze|{{SUBST:SUBJECTPAGENAME}}|article}} & {{subst:freeze|{{SUBST:TALKPAGENAME}}|talk}} looked when I made this edit
I thought you might want to try it out. It allows people to see what the article and the talk page looked like when you viewed it, which could be very helpful. See:
AGradman / talk / how the article and talk looked when I made this edit 04:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
There is a multi-volume set called Character sketches of romance, fiction and the drama that contains hundreds of high quality black and white sketches. The volumes, which were published in 1892, and 1902 appear to have been largely unused on Wikipedia. I was wondering if anyone is interested (or if its a worthwhile effort) to extract the images and put them in appropriate articles.
Smallman12q ( talk) 00:22, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Why on earth is there so many of these seemingly useless articles that keep popping up because users think they are being constructive creating them when really they are utterly pointless? For example, when visitors use the Wikipedia search box and type in "kyle wellwood" it naturally takes them to the rightful article of Kyle Wellwood. Whereas, when people search "heath ledger" it takes them to a pointless article that redirects them to Heath Ledger, when Wikipedia's built-in search box script automatically does just that, without the stupid "Redirected from Heath ledger" subtext underneath the article's header. So what I don't understand is, why do we have these unnecessary capitalization-redirect articles in the first place? — Hucz ( talk · contribs) 02:29, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Today's DYK includes a lovely article on the Cyclops class monitor series of vessels. Now, all the traits of the monitor series were "inherited" by the ships in the series. And some of our articles on those ships reflect this: Content from the Cyclops class monitor article appears -- virtually verbatim -- in HMS Cyclops (1871), HMS Hydra (1871).
Is this redundancy a good thing? Part of me says yes: It is good for our articles to be "self-sufficient", so that readers are not forced to read other articles for a full exposition of the topic.
But part of me says no, because (1) if improvements are made to any of these articles, they must be made to all the others, (2) if this kind of redundancy grows unchecked, some individual articles might swell to unmanageable sizes, whereas one of the whole purposes of having wikilinks is to keep the size of individual articles manageable. (Apparently, I wrote more about this a few months ago but didn't get many responses.)
What do you think?
AGradman / underlying article as I saw it / talk 03:35, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
The Audit Subcommittee is a subcommittee of the Arbitration Committee, tasked to review and act upon concerns and complaints about checkuser and oversight activities received from the community. Membership consists of three community representatives elected by the community, who serve one-year terms; and three arbitrators, who rotate through this assignment for approximately six months.
In advance of the scheduled election/appointment of community representatives to the Audit Subcommittee, a summary of activity has been posted on the subcommittee's report page.
The community is invited to discuss this report, as well as preferred methods and terms for the selection of community representatives to participate in the audit process. The result of the discussion will inform the Arbitration Committee on how best to proceed before progressing to another election cycle.
For the Arbitration Committee,
Risker (
talk) Cross-posted by
NW (
Talk)
20:42, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
I am contemplating disclosing my real-world identity and would like to get some input from others who have done this before, who have always identified themselves, or who know me here on Wikipedia. Is there a good way to do that - for example, an RFC/U on myself limited to that particular question? Is this a good forum? Are there essays on the subject? For what it's worth, after doing so I would likely seek to avoid any further confrontation with editors, and avoid overly controversial subjects. I'm nobody particularly famous, but outside of Wikipedia I am quite open about who I am and I'm not particularly concerned about loss of privacy. Thanks for any suggestions, - Wikidemon ( talk) 02:48, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
A group I am in supports three schools in the boonies in Haiti. They have no electricity and no internet. They do have computers (!) powered by solar panels. Would it be possible for them to get several hardcopies, in French and in Simple English, of Wikipedia which is apparently released periodically for use? (I assume there is a general policy regarding this, but couldn't begin to find it). Student7 ( talk) 13:35, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
When a new editor to Wikipedia creates their first article, and asks for feedback at WP:FEED, the feedback they get is often the first real interaction they have with the Wikipedia community. Unfortunately, in many cases, the feedback they get is nonexistent. A troubling percentage of requests never get a single response. That cannot possibly create a positive reaction, and may be a turn-off to potential new editors. The problem, in short, is a shortage of Wikipedians willing to provide feedback to the many requests coming in every day.
Obviously, I would like it if some reading this were to help out at the page on occasion, but I'm posting this to note that there is a discussion here on the general issue. Anyone with useful thoughts, or just willing to pitch in is invited to comment.-- SPhilbrick T 14:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
If you love OpenStreetMap, support me on this page. -- TarzanASG ( talk) 17:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I came across this article in Scientific American. Unfortunately they didn't include Wikipedia in the poll, but I wondered what we would have scored? I suspect not as high as scientists but more than friends & family and thereby more than journalists. — Ruud 19:23, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I've just come across Category:Periodic table infobox templates, and a spot check shows that all of these templates are used just once in mainspace. I've checked 15 of these, and not found one that's transcluded more than once. Is this really necessary? I realize it adds a convenience factor in editing articles on a particular element in not adding dozens of lines at the top of each one, but really...how often are periodic element articles going to change anyway? This seems like very needless use of template space. Thoughts? -- Hammersoft ( talk) 20:30, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
{{User:Patrick/Template:Infobox helium|User:Patrick/pstp|p=symbol}}
→ He{{User:Patrick/Template:Infobox helium|User:Patrick/pstp|p=thermal conductivity}}
→ 0.1513Relevant: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Elements/Archive_10#Template:Infobox<element>_-_why_do_these_exist. Apparently done to reduce vandalism and make the articles easier to edit. -- Cybercobra (talk) 16:46, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
We received an e-mail at OTRS ( Ticket:2010092910008895, for those who have access to that queue) to inform of us of yet another publisher ("International Country Guides") who may be bundling Wikipedia content and selling it without letting buyers know what they're getting. See [11]. He indicates that the publisher may actually be Filiquarian Publishing LLC ( the article of which has been deleted on Wikipedia.) If so, we knew about the publisher repackaging Wikipedia in book form, but not necessarily about the imprint. I have not seen any of their books myself, but I wanted to give a heads up and, frankly, had no idea where else to put it. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I just came to post a similar request, this time for information on this book. It's entirely a synthesis of Wikipedia articles from 2009, that much is for sure. But is there any attribution anywhere? I can't find any, but I'm on a tiny netbook and can't efficiently check it all. If there isn't, obviously copyright holders ought to be tracked down. Thanks for any help, - Jarry1250 Who? Discuss. 20:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I am currently watching The Tudors. In Season 2, Episode 2, I want to report that the music being played during Henry and Anne's visit to France is not original music; it is Eastern European folk music ( possibly Bulgarian or Greek) that is being played while Anne dances, masked, in front of Francois and Henry at the feast. I cannot remember the name of the tune, but Balkan folk dancers would know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.124.115.176 ( talk) 23:26, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
The United States Census Bureau will soon begin releasing the results of the 2010 census. The results will dribble out over the next couple of years, the bulk coming between February and August 2011. [12] [13] Thousands of Wikipedia articles had the 2000 census results added by bot. However that material has been changed, moved or deleted in the meantime so it will not be trivial for a bot to come through and change the old data. There was a brief discussion of planning for this big data dump last year. See Wikipedia:2010 US Census and its talk page. However nothing seems to have been done since then. Perhaps it's getting to be time to start thinking about it again. Will Beback talk 09:29, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
What are the various governing bodies (ex. arbcom), processes (AfD) and other offices of the Wikimedia projects, particularly Wikipedia? Where are they relative to one another?
Also, does Jimbo Wales run the entire Wikimedia project or just Wikipedia? If just Wikipedia, who runs the entire Wikimedia project? Icanhasaccount has an account 21:26, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
Dang, just realized I should have posted this at the Help Desk. Icanhasaccount has an account 21:28, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
I guess that's helpful. Seems like the only "official" governing comittee present on WP is the arbcom. I still don't know much about the noticeboards, processes, and "unofficial" bodies such as medcab and wikiproject council however. Is there just a straight list somewhere? Icanhasaccount has an account 00:11, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
The Fundraising Committee is issuing all interested community members a challenge: we want you to beat Jimmy. The appeal from Jimmy Wales and the corresponding banner have been tested head-to-head with other successful banners, and the results are clear: it's our best performing message... by a lot. This year we have a lofty fundraising goal; we need all of our banners to bring in donations like the Jimmy Appeal, but no one wants to keep the Jimmy banner up for two months. We want to run donor quotes, and other wonderful ideas, but we have to have banners that work as well as or better than the Jimmy appeal.
We've just released the highlights from a donor focus group, and the results of our donor survey. With one month to the launch of the fundraiser, the messages we test must be driven by data from our tests and surveys - we can no longer rely on instinct alone.
We've redesigned our fundraising meta pages with the Jimmy challenge; check out the survey results and propose/discuss banners that reflect these findings. Add the banners you think will 'beat Jimmy' here to be tested Tuesday October 12 against Jimmy. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation ( talk) 03:14, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
I was wondering if there is a tool that could look for articles that are about the same specific astronomical object. What I had in mind is a tool that would:
The idea would be that astronomical object articles tend to include a list of alternative identifiers. We could use the regular expression to look for those patterns, then the tool can list the possible matches for us to check.
I'm not sure if there are other potential uses for this. Thank you.— RJH ( talk) 18:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Is there a page on WP where non-native editors can get assistance with the English language? Like asking what is the correct expression for something or questions about the grammar. I sometimes need to ask such questions when writing articles. Offliner ( talk) 10:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Hello Wikipedia! I'm having a 250,000th edit party. You're all invited! Cheers! bd2412 T 14:18, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
Salem Witch Trials and the articles that it links to in its template seem to have a very high degree of vandalism from unregistered users. My guess is that > 9 out of 10 of these edits are vandalism. This is a very high vandalism area, and I think it deserves protection. I am coordinator of the Salem Witch Trials Task Force. Wikipedia keeps changing and I can't keep up, and clearly I don't have the wikiskills or the computer skills. Anyone out there willing to guide me through this ? John5Russell3Finley ( talk) 19:06, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
My english is bad, so sorry if u don't understand. In es:Wiki my user namy is NicolásTM, before was "Trivia Harrypotter", but in this wiki, "NicolásTM" doesn't exist, why? I don't used this account anymore. Somebody can help me? -- Trivia harrypotter ( talk) 21:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
Something very strange seems to be going on at the University of Hull. It seems that its students have been tasked with writing biographies of artists/academics as homework. So far the only one created seems to have questionable notability. Please see: Talk:Annabeth Robinson.
I am sure that there is no bad faith here but it seems fundamentally misconceived and could cause trouble and bad feeling. We don't want non-notable biographies but we don't want students to get into trouble because we deleted their homework either. Maybe somebody needs to explain to the University why this is a bad idea. -- DanielRigal ( talk) 22:58, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
The Talk:Tammi Terrell page has an assessment summary page listed with the template results, but I don't see how it is connected to anything when I edit the talk page. This is the first assessment summary page I have encountered, so would someone please provide some information about how they work.-- DThomsen8 ( talk) 12:31, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
{{
WikiProjectBannerShell}}
whenever there is a /Comments subpage. See
Template:WPBS#Usage.
Svick (
talk)
20:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Somehow I thought that a subject/headline should not include a link. I have encountered an article with three headlines with links. See State Line, Pennsylvania. Am I wrong about the Wikipedia style?-- DThomsen8 ( talk) 23:22, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I've done more Wikipedia editing than almost anyone, but here's something I never saw before today: A proposal to exclude from an article, as "trivia", the line that tells the reader what the article was about. Its deletion would have left the reader with no clue what the topic was. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:37, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
...and the proof is a one-liner that instantly startles and amazes those who see it for the first time. Michael Hardy ( talk) 14:12, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
I was surprised to find that I am able to move pages to locations where something already exists. I thought only administrators were able to do this? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 04:18, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Preparations are underway for the annual elections to the Arbitration Committee, due to take place mid-November to mid-December. Provisional election pages have been set up based on the model of the 2009 elections, which were conducted using the SecurePoll secret ballot system. The proposed timetable allows for a 10-day nomination period (from Sunday November 14 to Tuesday November 23), a 10-day voting period (Friday November 26 to Monday December 6), and a subsequent period for the vote to be audited by independent scrutineers.
Until the call for nominations on November 14, the parameters of the election are open to community examination and feedback. A draft set of nine general questions to be posed to each candidate has been established (voters will also be able to ask unique questions of individual candidates). Editors interested in helping to organise the elections are encouraged to sign up as volunteer coordinators.
Working as an arbitrator is an important and demanding role, and there is perennial need for new volunteers to take it on. This year, 10 arbitrators are expected to be chosen; experienced and committed editors are urged to seriously consider standing.
Discuss this at the election talkpage.
For the coordinators, Skomorokh 11:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I ran across the link posted invitating editors to download a tool at the top of the Net worth article and I'm not sure whether it is within policy, but would like someone to check it out. -- LilHelpa ( talk) 20:21, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
There seems to be a huge rash of one-time vandals on most pages I am watching. Perhaps one-third or more of the edits are one-time vandalism over the last day or two.
Techniques furnished to editors have relieved us of a lot of the persistent vandalism we saw several years ago. We have the tools to deal with those folks now. But this seems unprecedented. Mercifully, I am a "late" watcher, trailing by two days. By the time I get there most of the vandalism has been reverted by other experienced editors. They have got to be seeing the same thing I am. I have no idea how to cope with this, short of semi-protecting everything!
Maybe wait for the full moon to pass? :) Student7 ( talk) 01:52, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Hi Everyone,
I am an employee with the engineering and management firm Morrison Hershfield. We would like to have a factual Wikipedia page for our company ideally like the one linked above. I am fairly new to Wikipedia and would like feedback on whether this page meets the notability standards, and as well I am open to opinions on what the article may need or lacks. If you could provide me with any feedback or suggestions it would be very much appreciated. Joe Fielder ( talk) 12:28, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Thank you both for your very positive feedback I am glad to see it is up to the standards of at least two wiki editors. I have taken your suggestions and moved the page to the article space. But one thing I noticed at the top of the page it displays our company name as "Morrison hershfield" instead of "Morrison Hershfield" is there anyway to correct this h so it is capitalized? Thanks again. Joe Fielder ( talk) 18:38, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
A really cool tool has been released to semi-automatically translate articles from English to 31 other languages: WikiBasha It is open source and relies on Microsoft Translate, then a very nice user interface allows to proofread and correct the results of the machine translation. By the way: Right now it only allows English as a source language. Any volunteers willing to modify it to allow any language for source? Nicolas1981 ( talk) 09:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Hello English Wikipedians, i'm have a one problem in Indonesian Wikipedia. Current Vietnamese Wikipedia and Serbian Wikipedia already overtaking Indonesian Wikipedia. Whereas before I had been warned that:
"Come on, time for the entire district article maker that is still more concentrated to a village in Indonesia moved to a commune in a foreign country. As Communes of Oise, France, or else you find. Your stay Copy paste and translate from the English Wikipedia. Let the professional user who completed the manufacturing district in the Java Wikipedia article ago we Copy Paste again in the future. I would never again stingy in making zoning articles (covering a content template) for the progress of Indonesian Wikipedia."
However, they ignore until now. Their remember once blackmail alone wikiwan to not make the article in the same template when I'm making an article. When I want to change them and still remember it. Very egois. -- Erik Evrest ( talk) 11:03, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Find a Grave is a large website that allows registered users to describe graves. Pages often include names, location of the grave, dates of birth and death, a brief biography, and images. It is linked in thousands and thousands of articles, and questions about its appropriateness arise a couple of times a year.
Should Wikipedia link to this site: (1) As a reliable source, at least when no better sources are available? (2) As an external link, at least when it provides a unique resource rather than duplicating article content? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 02:20, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Originally at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard#Find a grave After seeing a bio from "Find a grave" i am very concern about this links. Firstly we have them "SPAMMED" everywhere in external links and i mean everywhere. I am wondering how we are allowing this links that lead to unsorced and potentially POV riddled bios. Is there something special about this site that i am unaware of? I can not find anywhere that thinks Find a Grave is reliable. I was wondering were we could talk about this if this is the wrong place. I know this must have comeup before because there bios are so bad. If possible could i be pointed to the right places to talk about this and/or shown links (discussion) to Y this is ok? Moxy ( talk) 23:57, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
Whoa calm down it's just an external link! I give you that it's unreliable but it's not trying to be a source. I don't think it's 'spammed' any more than other templated external links, such as {{ MobyGames}} and {{ IMDb}}, it may just seem that way because there's a lot more bios than video game or movie articles. And I see nothing 'odd' at all about Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people, it's just a good-faithed group of editors taking advantage of a source to generate new content, good for them. And how do you know readers don't find these links useful? Maybe some do.. maybe a lot do.. and appreciate having somewhere else to go once they finish reading to the bottom of the article. -- œ ™ 22:06, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
I have used information from Find-A-Grave in multiple articles multiple times. It would be highly inappropriate to NOT link to their site when we're using it as a source. I agree fully that information from more reliable sources is more desirable, but I detest and abhor both the idea of using information without linking to the source and the idea of deleting information that is likely to be true, but where we haven't located a more reliable source yet. Note: I'm ONLY adding the link where I in fact use information from the site. My $0.02. -- Alvestrand ( talk) 16:08, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Although I do disagree with your desire to purge ourselves of this link, Upon further thought I do think that we need to modify the documentation for the Find a Grave link to clarify what it should and should not be used for as I stated above. I am also going to send the site manager an EMAIL asking about the potential for them to encourage the use of Source information when adding entries or info to the Find a Grave site. When I get a response I will add something here and on the Find a Grave talk page. The following things should be clarified:
I think we should be very, very clear about whether we're talking about using the site as an external link or as an inline citation. They're two entirely separate things, with separate guidelines/policies to observe. As an inline citation for birth/death dates, I don't really have a problem with findagrave.com. It's like IMDB in that sense: not the best possible source, but acceptable in most cases. As an external link, though, I still don't see the value in linking to that site tens of thousands of times, since in nearly all the cases the site does not offer any actual information that's not already in the article itself, making it a clear violation of WP:EL. I have not seen any arguments presented above that would make me think otherwise. -- Conti| ✉ 17:51, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I want to state again that I do not agree with mass removal of this link. Its true its not appropriate on all articles but its also not hurting anything being in external links. Its more important that if its used as a reference, that the referenced material isnt violating one of our policies. If we want to start checking something regarding the Find a Grave site it should be that. On most articles though its just a link that "could" help source currently unsourced info or to help as a general secondary source. If we want to start removing links I would start with all the myspace, facebook and blog links. Those are much much less worthy. But rather than talking about deleting thousands of links why don't we just clarify the information that should and shouldn't be used? To answer another statement we also have lots of links to religious websites so by your logic we must also be pushing religion! We have articles on pornographic actors, actresses and movies so we must be peddling porn! Do these also strain Wikipedia's credibility? Should we start looking at removing those next? In my opinion, obviously no, but others would argue it does and the credibility argument can be tailored to ones opinion or needs quite easily. You mentioned before that you didn't like it because it was a for profit site. So is CNN, MSNBC and virtually all the other major "trustworthy" sites. I also notice that you seem to be particularly worried about the disclaimer on the findagrave site so I found another site with one similar. Its phrased a little differently but its says the same thing:
IN ADDITION TO THE TERMS SET FORTH ABOVE NEITHER, CNN, ITS PARENT, SUBSIDIARIES, ITS OTHER AFFILIATES, NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, THIRD PARTY CONTENT PROVIDERS, LICENSORS, INFORMATION PROVIDERS OR CONTENT PARTNERS BE LIABLE REGARDLESS OF THE CAUSE OR DURATION, FOR ANY ERRORS, INACCURACIES, OMISSIONS, OR OTHER DEFECTS IN, OR UNTIMELINESS OR UNAUTHENTICITY OF, THE INFORMATION CONTAINED WITHIN CNN.COM, OR FOR ANY DELAY OR INTERRUPTION IN THE TRANSMISSION THEREOF TO YOU, OR FOR ANY CLAIMS OR LOSSES ARISING THEREFROM OR OCCASIONED THEREBY. NONE OF THE FOREGOING PARTIES SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY THIRD-PARTY CLAIMS OR LOSSES OF ANY NATURE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, LOST PROFITS, PUNITIVE OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. NEITHER CNN, ITS PARENT, SUBSIDIARIES, ITS OTHER AFFILIATES NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, THIRD PARTY CONTENT PROVIDERS, LICENSORS, INFORMATION PROVIDERS OR CONTENT PARTNERS WARRANT OR GUARANTEE THE TIMELINESS, SEQUENCE, ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THIS INFORMATION. ADDITIONALLY, THERE ARE NO WARRANTIES AS TO THE RESULTS OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE INFORMATION.
I will tell you the 3 things I don't like about the Find a Grave site though.
In summery:
PS. All the above was written before I read this subsection started by User:Conti, with whom I agree.
(ec) I was just directed to this discussion and have scanned the text. It appears that there is some consensus that Find A Grave is not an appropriate external link, although the links should not be removed if the site is being used as a source (but should instead be converted for now from an external link into an inline citation, and later replaced with a reliable source). This mirrors what is currently listed on the documentation for template:Find a grave. Am I reading the consensus appropriately here? Karanacs ( talk) 18:12, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
This idea of mass removal of tens of thousands of links within the space of a few days makes me very nervous. Mass removals usually result in people pitching a fit, typically on the grounds that they, personally, weren't consulted/weren't editing for several weeks/can't be bothered to keep an eye out on the community's discussions. It's too much, too fast, and someone who really, really likes the website will decide that you're being disruptive. Then we get to have this whole conversation all over again at AN/I, followed by a third round as a formal RfC (as if a long discussion at the village pump weren't sufficiently public -- but NB that even if you've already gone through a month-long RFC, someone at ANI will usually recommend having another, because it's easier [for that editor] to recommend yet another interminable discussion than to admit that some people sometimes "lose").
Rapid mass removals = bad idea. Rate-limited, thoughtful, case-by-case removals = good idea. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:58, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Invitation to discussion posted at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places &
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► (
(⊕))
21:31, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
So far, Kumioko has been been the voice for keeping but he would hardly be alone as previous history has shown when people balk at the removal of the links. Much has been said about the reliability – what is a realistic track record for FindAGrave? Forget the theoretical disclaimers for the moment and discuss real cases. How close to the mark does it get? If it has an odd mistake, that's one thing but if they are riddled with mistakes that is another. The true value of information isn't in site disclaimers. For those people who favor removing, did you find a mass of glaring mistakes at FAG?
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► (
(⊕))
13:08, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Frankly, I'm surprised F-A-G wasn't added to the blacklist a long time ago, as it was clearly initially added by a mass spamming/linkfarming campaign by the site itself. Every single time we have one of these discussions we always rule that the site is not a reliable source and does not meet our criteria for external links. It's about time someone went through and removed a bunch. I remove them by hand every time I see one, but since they were originally mass added (and the only reason other people knew about them in the first place and found the site was because of the linkfarming) they should be mass removed too. DreamGuy ( talk) 20:50, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
lets just see if we can get some sort of sense of the amount of people who realy care one way or the other. Think we should ask two questions - first is Find a Grave appropriate for external links and secondly is it reliable an thus good as a references. Moxy ( talk) 05:38, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
I understand that the wiki-like site can be viewed as unreliable - but for birth and death dates and grave location you must agree that the information is verifiable - you can go there and check the dates, just as you can go to a library a check out what a specific rare book says. In the case of most graves, the information is literally carved in stone. And the folks who do the stone carving, as a group, have an excellent reputation for accuracy. I've used the site once or twice to get an exact death date, e.g. December 12, 1887 rather than just 1887. I trust the site enough if they include a readable photo, but I don't think photos of graves should be included in most articles. External link or inline citation? - obviously inline citations are preferred, but is there a policy that says they are required over external links? For short articles especially, I think an external link is just fine. So please do not resort to a bot taking out all information from this source in the name of accuracy. Sometimes it's the best source we've got for certain specific data. Smallbones ( talk) 05:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
I don't know where the proper forum for this question is and I'm grateful for any directions.
The File:MirusiaOperaSinger.jpg, which was originally uploaded on 3 March 2007, has been overwritten with a different image of the subject ( Mirusia Louwerser) by the original uploader on 27 September 2010. It says at Commons:First steps/Upload form that this is improper, but I can't find any such guideline on the English Wikipedia nor any forum to raise such a matter. Please advise. Thanks, Michael Bednarek ( talk) 07:25, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
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Inspired by the likely answer to a crossword clue in the London Evening Standard newspaper, I entered Wikipedia to look up Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was staggered to find my quest was the Featured article of the day. Mammaliman ( talk) 19:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
I can't believe this, I was sitting around drinking in a bar earlier tonite and the TV in the bar kept showing a wikipedia ad ("knowledge forever"). I pulled out my digicam and took a few pictures of the screen which I'll try to upload in the next day or so. I'm amused and appalled at the same time. The mind, as the saying goes, wobbles. Maybe regulars here knew about these ads already but I almost did a spit-take. 75.62.4.94 ( talk) 07:51, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello,
I am reporting on the Congressional race in New York's First Congressional District. One candidate in the race was the former CEO of Office Tiger, a company that outsourced thousands of (potential) American jobs overseas (especially to India).
I recently wrote an article about him and Office Tiger, including a link to Office Tiger's Wikipedia page. Now, a few weeks later, the page has been "deleted" and I cannot figure out how or by whom or why.
Any/all suggestions/comments would be appreciated.
Thank you.
AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR ( talk • contribs)
Hello,
Thank you for answering my question, but I am still not satisfied with the response.
I documented changes to the Office Tiger web page that occurred frequently between 2009 and 2010 - the most recent change occurred on June 29, 2010.
I can't figure out why I can no longer access this page.
It's not possible to edit an article that is deleted, correct?
And there is no record of its deletion post June 29, 2010?
Thanks,
AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR ( talk • contribs) 20:15, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello,
I am sure of the name of the company I am searching for: Office Tiger.
There are 2 reasons given for the deletion of Office Tiger in January 2010:
a) Proposed deletion: someone proposed that the page be deleted; no one objected within a 7 day period, so it was
b) Twinkle: a program that helps registered Wiki users perform maintenance tasks and deal with acts of vandalism; it seems drastic in its remedies ("rollback functions," etc.)
AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR ( talk • contribs) 20:42, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
I did not edit the article, ever. I just noticed that there seemed to be an editing war going on over the Office Tiger Wiki page and the last edit happened on June 29, 2010. Therefore, I do not understand how this page was deleted in January 2010.
This is what I know:
-The original Wikipedia entry for Office Tiger was deleted in January of 2006. What I was able to learn about that entry when I did research for the article in June of 2010 was this: “Office Tiger was founded in late 1999 with an innovative approach to global outsourcing. The company’s employees, located primarily in India….” TODAY, this information does not exist.
-A second Wikipedia page for Office Tiger was created on April 27, 2009. Between that date and June 29, 2010 there were twelve edits to the page that were able to be accessed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OfficeTiger. TODAY, this information does not exist.
Any explanation for this?
If you sent me the deleted article(s), they would confirm the above.
AAH —Preceding unsigned comment added by InDpendentThnkR ( talk • contribs) 21:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Many articles on mathematics and physical sciences are very difficult to understand. Are any editors more knowledgeable than I about mathematics and science willing to consider re-activating WikiProject General Audience?
69.251.180.224 ( talk) 05:44, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Relisted from archives
[11]
[31]
[37] to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,
69.251.180.224 (
talk)
03:53, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
I do not know if this is normal or not, but looking at a bunch of Aliens related topics, like Weyland-Yutani and Bishop (Aliens) and many more, there are these merge discussion tags to Aliens (film) at the top of most of the pages. I wanted to discuss the merge like it says, but none of the pages have any merge discssions anywhere on the talk pages. I looked at the page historys, and some of the merge tags have been on the pages for almost 2 1/2 years but there are no discussions and no one has said if a merge will happen or not. Is that normal and should these be tkane down or something done??? Scurrilous1986 ( talk) 22:58, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello everyone! I have been nominated for the bot approval group and would like to invite you all to participate in the discussion at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/EdoDodo. Thanks. - EdoDodo talk 02:46, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
Crazy Wikipedians/Wikipedia stories???
I'm a filmmaker, looking into stories related to Wikipedia and I want to get in touch with folks around the world who are addicted to checking Wikipedia, or who have contributed the most, and for whom this online wealth of knowledge has manifested and possibly changed your life. Please reply to this post - would love to hear from you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.89.146.172 ( talk) 00:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
I am willing to give you my opinion! Suomi Finland 2009 ( talk) 19:28, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Some links for stories on how Wikipedia changed someone's life:
-- œ ™ 02:57, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello all, I was wondering if anyone needed a helper in creating a good article or featured article. I'd like to help make one, but i'm a bit bereft of inspiration on a topic right now. Doc Quintana ( talk) 18:44, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
The deed was done by SilkTork not many hours ago after a contentious dispute between over a dozen users on VPC's talkpage, some wanted to keep it, some wanted to delete it. Some wanted to make it historical, some never understood its purpose, but it is my opinion that VPC was very misunderstood and had a potential to be very important and possibly even resolve problems we have with the similar Featured Picture Candidates (FPC) and the connected Picture of the Day projects.
If VPC never rises again then may it rest in peace, the rest of us will just be on the ever persnickety FPC page. -- I'ḏ ♥ One 10:29, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
There is a discussion taking place here regarding if ahnentafels (ancestry tables) should be uncollapsed by default? SilkTork * YES! 20:46, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
Call me a paranoid, but this piece of news has sent a shiver down my spine ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups). I can't help but feeling worried about the current election systems of Arbcom and Wikimedia Board. In their current state (voting rights determined by nothing other than edit counts) both of them are vulnerable to manipulation by organisations of whatever nature, as long as they have a Wikipedia-contributing membership that is sizeable enough. If they have thousands of editors (or to be more precise, monthly-active user accounts with > 150 edits) at their disposal, they could easily act as one in our Arbcom elections / Board elections to outvote the existing Wikipedia community and install their candidate(s). If they have sufficient votes, they could even *take over* the entire Arbcom/all community-elected Board seats. I don't want to name specific political parties or racial organisations here, but I'm convinced that they will consider having a stake/say/control in Wikip/media's governing bodies to be immensely helpful to promoting their agenda worldwide.
Once they take control of the Arbcom, they can censor articles using oversight. Their armies of POV-pushers and vandals can quickly run Wikipedia down without any fear of being banned/blocked (which the Arbcom can always overturn), and/or turn it into their private Press Room or an outlet of their Ministry of propaganda. And that's chickenfeed comparing with what they can achieve if they have a presence in our Board. Board members can obtain secrets held by the WMF - Donor identities, disposal of WMF funds, IP addresses and Browser IDs of every editor from server logs, not to mention the power to perform Office actions which are not accountable to the community. These data and powers could be used in political persecution (e.g. tracking political dissidents), whitewashing and driving the WMF to bankruptcy. Do these sound like fiction to you? Since the WMF is the ultimate controller of Wikipedia, once the Board is infiltrated, there is nothing the Wikimedia community can do to stop them.
Therefore we seriously need a debate on the evolution of our election system. I propose:
Any ideas?-- Computor ( talk) 15:28, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Three things as far as the ArbCom elections are concerned from my experience (not necessarily the WMF board as I normally don't care much personally). First is the high levels of scrutiny placed by the community on those serious ArbCom candidates, which I believe ensures a fair representative of the masses on the Commmittee. Second is closed voting; people are able to freely decide without any undue influence or groupthink affecting their decisions. Third is the level of scrutiny in the votes cast (that is, done by scrutineers coming from outside en.wiki); most sock puppets that are normally caught have far fewer than 150 edits to an account. Now, in the case this has been discovered after the fact, and dung is really hitting the fan, we always have that final failsafe – which is that Jimbo can dissolve ArbCom if absolutely necessary; again, this is the extreme case. – MuZemike 19:03, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Nothing is new under the sun. Everard Proudfoot ( talk) 23:08, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
What is the relation of Wikipedia to the internet site known as "TheFreeDictionary?" (Not to be confused with "wikidictionary the free dictionary.")
Most of the articles I find on TheFreeDictionary (FD) are exact or near exact copies of Wikipedia pages, including the photos, although sometimes the links to the enlarged version of the photos on FD don't work.
TheFreeDictionary claims to have served at this time, 2,227,331,289 visitors. (Found in upper left corner of FD pages under the FD name/logo.)
Several links to The Free Dictionary topics are prominately displayed on the webpage refdesk (www.refdesk.com) every day. refdesk.com is a webpage used by many people as their internet browser homepage. It is a kind of reference page. It contains a lot of links to a variety of popular and commonly accessed information and fact websites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TomBrooklyn ( talk • contribs) 05:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
EDIT: This was meant to be posed as a question to Wikipedians, and it was believed it would post on some sort of community forum board. I see it has appeared as part of the main page article. I'm not sure if this is appropriate. I will leave it to others to decide this and redirect it if possible and/or notify me of where and how to post the question appropriately. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TomBrooklyn ( talk • contribs) 05:42, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Who the heck came up with this silly practice, and why? Just curious, really. seems like an odd little meme for an educated collection of people to have come up with.
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs)
14:10, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Hey wikipedians. I'm leaving some spam here about my new tool for wikiprojects. It spits out a watchlist-like feed of recent changes to articles relevant to a wikiproject (articles tagged with the wikiproject's banner). For example, articles with talk pages tagged with {{ WikiProject Darts}} have a 'watchlist' here. The tool can be used with any template-based wikiproject. Any and all feedback is welcome. Tim 1357 talk 19:49, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
For over three months now, I have been trying to contact the Wikipedia:Volunteer response team. Several times now I've send my permission with regard to Talk:Band-e Kaisar, but they all were completely ignored. No response, nada, niente, nichts, nothing. I want to take the shite now down from old granny Wiki. What template can I use for that? Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 23:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Yesterday I proposed a move of Computersmarts but it's not mentioned at WP:RM. Why?? Georgia guy ( talk) 16:24, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Following the call for applicants (19 July) and the initial call for comments on the candidates (16 August), this notice is a second call for comments from the community on the suitability of the candidates for the September 2010 appointments for checkuser and oversight permissions. The Arbitration Committee is continuing to review and collate the comments received so far. If you have not done so already, please send in your comments before 23:59 on 25 August 2010 (UTC).
Those actively being considered for Checkuser and Oversight permissions are listed here (same link as above). As the primary area of concern is confidence in the candidate's ability to operate within the Wikimedia privacy policy, comments of this nature are best directed to the Committee's mailing list (arbcom-llists.wikimedia.org).
For the Arbitration Committee, Carcharoth ( talk) 21:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Can someone tell me what source that file used to hat on the English WP? thx-- Sanandros ( talk) 14:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
I plan on organising a research project in school in which several of our students would research the local area then contribute their research to either the English wikipedia or the Simple English wikipedia (dependant on their competancy in English). Each student would have their own account on Wikipedia, which myself and any staff involved would monitor for any vandalism, but the school's IP address is currently blocked due to vandalism by other students. I'd like to create about 3 generic accounts for students who don't yet have accounts. The password for each of these accounts would only be given to one student at a time, so we'd be able to hold students accountable for any inappropriate use of any of the accounts. Would it be okay for me to do this?
Also, I'd like to point out our main areas of focus will be Lanark Grammar School, Lanark, and famous Lanarkians, such as William Wallace and William Smellie. Obvously, we wouldn't be able to do much as only 1 person would be able to edit an article at a time (to prevent edit warring). If there's anything the Wikipedia community would like worked on, we'll be happy to do some research.
Another thing, for the purposes of this project, I'll be using my school username ( blackt4098) as I don't want to disclose my username with others outside school. This is just a sockpuppet of this account and will only be used by me. -- tb240904 Talk Contribs 17:14, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
I am posting this to see if anyone wants to add ideas to Wikipedia_talk:WikiCup/Scoring#Award_more_points_for_vital_articles. I have been musing on how to use wikicarrots rather than sticks to influence content development, which as we all know is at the whim of active contributors :) A few of us have been pondering this in discussing point allocation for the 2011 wikicup and whether introducing some form of multiplier for some types of articles might induce development of audited content in areas currently underrepresented or otherwise more "core" content. Essentially, I am trying to think of concrete categories that can't be gamed - so here's a challenge.
A group of articles that is:
(a) reasonably broad (say > 50 articles, preferably >100) (b) An underrepresented part of the 'pedia in terms of audited content (c) Must be concrete qualifying criteria (d) attempt to cover some "core" encyclopedic content and broad articles. not in-universe (e) not contain numbers of esoteric/minor articles
Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 23:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello, everyone
Is it possible to create page in a wiki from a list created with special:export ? If yes, how should I proceed ? I am still a beginner on Python
#1. defining wikis
targetwiki = wikipedia.Site('en', 'wikipedia')
sourcewiki = wikipedia.Site('es', 'wikipedia')
#2. getting category
# (?)
category = page.categories(u'category:abcedfg')
#3. creating page from category page list
# (??)
pagecontent = u"1234567890"
#4. updating page
targetpage = wikipedia.Page(targetwiki, pagetitle)
targetpage.put(pagecontent)
I am not sure about proceeding in the steps where there are questions marks. So I will be grateful for anybody who can help me. Thanks in advance. -- Jagwar - (( talk )) 13:53, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
I just wanted to inform you that I suggested to delete 2,500+ images here. -- MGA73 ( talk) 20:19, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
As you may know, I work for Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit organization based in Washington DC. Since I work there, it would be quite untoward for me to make substantial edits to the article due to conflict of interest. Likewise, our internet strategist has listened to me when I said that it would be untoward for the organization to edit the Wikipedia article about itself. All of us agree that the article is *very* out of date, and needs to be updated and expanded. I've posted to the talk page about problems with the article, but it appears that no one is watching the article except me. What would the group consider to be a proper way to get others to come to improve the article? Obviously, a GA or FA would be a wonderful thing one day, but it's got a long way before reaching that. So your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks! SchuminWeb ( Talk) 18:58, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
Should stupidity be deleted from Wikipedia? :-) Steve Dufour ( talk) 00:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Checking out the Location of Osama bin Laden article, I want to put a section expert template, but I cannot put one on. Anyone know what I should do?? Georgia guy ( talk) 14:53, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
Ok, here is an odd one. I was reading a WP article on the Harry Potter series and there was a section on the Catholic opinion of the books with a reference & wikilink to Catholic World Report. Oddly this wikilink was a redlink which struck me as odd for such a well known publication by Ignatius Press (which is not redlinked). A quick search of en.wikipedia.org (note this was an onsite search, not a Google search) found over 11,000 hits! Yet there is no article on this publication and as far as I can tell never was (I can find no trace of an AFD etc). How very odd don't you think? 66.97.213.52 ( talk) 19:56, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
I got an email today -- in Ukrainian (which I thought was Russian) informing me that (what I think is) a bot had created a user page for me on the Ukraininan Wikipedia (which I've never edited). It gave me a link and, sure enough, there I am. [1] Anybody know what's going on? -- JohnWBarber ( talk) 22:27, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I nominated a category (Igbo writers by genre) ( Category:Igbo writers by genre) to be looked at for deletion, but I don't know if I followed the right protocols. I only became aware of the "Categories for Discussion" pages last week, and I worry that I've done it wrong. I've been editing Wikipedia for a long time, but I've kind of played it by ear, and most of my edits have been really simple. I just cut and pasted code to nominate the category, but I'm not sure it looks right. There seems to be some complicated code attached. As to why I nominated it, I ran across it by happenstance, but it looked weird: The Category "Igbo writers by genre" has no articles, and two subcategories, each of which has only one article in it and it's the exact same article. I also found the Category "Igbo fiction writers" which is exactly the same set-up as "Igbo writers by genre" (in fact the same two subcategories and the exact same single article as the sole entry in each subcategory). I feel the one article which is the sole entry in the four categories under these two categories could probably be classified in one of the other, more populated subcategories of "Igbo writers", such as "Igbo novelists" or "Igbo women writers". But I don't know if I did the right thing and I'm sorry if I messed this up. Artemis-Arethusa ( talk) 23:42, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
I posted a question about this on several MOS pages but didn't get any responses, so I'm asking here too.
Many articles about foreign topics include a native-language name in the first sentence of the lede, in the infobox, or both. See, for example, Jay Chou and Zhang Yuqi. Sometimes the same information is duplicated across both places. (In my experience, biographies like the ones mentioned above often have the name stuff duplicated, whereas articles about placenames do less so—see for instance Weifang, Wuhan—since I think city infoboxes don't have parameters for that; for places with a lot of names, though, there is sometimes a dedicated box just for that, as in Ürümqi.) Most of my experience with this is in China-related articles, but I'm sure infoboxes related to other places also have this issue.
Anyway, I'm just wondering if there is a guideline about where language information should go in these cases. rʨanaɢ ( talk) 00:56, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
I am starting to gather data for a report on dead links on BLPs, but on a wider note I am doing a general review of links on wikipedia. I checked a number of links on 2008-12-10 decided to re-run the data, its surprising to see the amount of link rot (completely dead) links that are appearing. I know our "policy" states that we should leave said links, but what if they cannot be verified and review/look-up in places like archive.org and archive it fail? should we permanently leave questionable link (and probable sources) that cannot be verified in articles or should they be removed after a period of attempted verification? Should we develop a prod like process for addressing these cases or just leave them and trust that they actually contain the information that is claimed? I know I have seen many many cases where users claim a source states something, only to find out upon verification that the users claims are wrong? ΔT The only constant 02:45, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I need someone who can speak Russian to give the Russian wikipedia a message. There is an image on their servers at [2] that is a copyright violation of an image belonging to Doug Bell. It was deleted from wikipedia servers at File:Pcomo.jpg. Cheers, all! -- GrapedApe ( talk) 20:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi! I can't figure a better way to word my concern. I was checking the WP for a couple of odd words I found in a paper and found that the main entries refer to "Rock Bands", which is kind of misleading. I tried to move the entries to secondary links, and in the case of Wilco some people cried foul: the articles are pretty popular among a relatively large fan base, and involuntarily I was wreaking havoc in all links pointing to that page. I reverted the edits and tried to add a disambiguation entry, but the further editings since still don't satisfy my judgement. I wonder where is the policy regarding how to write disambiguation paragraphs before the actual entry, why these misleading entries stick, and where to discuss the policies. Cheers, Lwyx ( talk) 18:34, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
In an article dealing with a single component of an operating system, is it proper to use a template for the operating system or operating system family, e.g., to use [[Category:IBM Mainframe computer operating systems]] in Input/Output Configuration Program?
Also, is it appropriate to use a {{ helpme}} tag on a talk page to ask questions about which template to use? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul ( talk) 16:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
I don't understand why we still have this as an option ("Mark all edits as minor by default" under "Editing") in My Preferences. Just about every time I see accounts who mark all their edits as minor it seems to be for disruptive/tendentious purposes, as it prevents those who do not track minor edits in watchlists from seeing some problem edits. Users should be checking that box manually if an edit truly is minor. Any thoughts out there? – MuZemike 22:02, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Hello,
I recently came upon the word "premiered" in the article on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, but it had an accent over the second E resulting in "première." I thought this grave accent was unnecessary so I removed it. It was quickly reverted to its original spelling. I've seen this word in countless other articles without the accent. I know the accent alludes to the word's etymology--French, from the word première meaning first--but is the accent really necessary, or even correct given general, modern pronunciation of premiere? Many other conjugates from French no longer retain their accents ( List of English words of French origin).
Tell me what you think, Wikipedians. If this is the wrong place for such a question, accept my apologies and please point me in the right direction. Thank you!
(Also, my IP address has a long-standing reputation of vandalism. This does not reflect my actions as I live in a dormitory ( Dobie Center) and therefore use a public IP address. This is my first semester here.) 74.202.255.6 ( talk) 22:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)Chris Rogers
Also, given that this is the correct form, here are a British few plays from the same period with the word premier/premiere spelt without the accent that you might enjoy correcting. To me, the most notable is Doctor Faustus, and since Marlowe was almost certainly more British than American...
Doctor Faustus, A Tale of a Tub (play), Volpone, Epicœne, or The silent woman, The Alchemist (play), The Devil is an Ass, The Magnetic Lady, The City Wit, The Northern Lass, The New Academy, A Looking Glass for London, Believe as You List, Sir John van Olden Barnavelt, The Little French Lawyer, The Sea Voyage, The Spanish Curate, The Lovers' Progress, The Honest Man's Fortune, The Faithful Shepherdess, The Island Princess, The Pilgrim (play), The Scornful Lady, Wit at Several Weapons, The Laws of Candy, and others I'm sure.
As for Shakespeare's canon, The Merry Wives of Windsor lacks an accent. It's used sans accent in The Taming of the Shrew in regards to an English actor's adaptation in the 1600s. It's even seen without the accent in Romeo and Juliet--a featured article--in the "Shakespeare's Day" section. 72.29.211.131 ( talk) 16:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC) Chris Rogers
The article at Baseco is a huge text dump from http://cosca-dlsu-cwts.wikispaces.com/Brgy+649+Zone+68+BASECO+Port+Area,+Manila. Wikispaces is Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Non-Commercial 2.5 License, which I guess means that technically this text can be here, though it needs serious cleaning up, but is the fact that there is no link back to the original location a copyright violation? Everard Proudfoot ( talk) 05:50, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Hello guys,
According to a rumor, it seems a book will be published soon (in French), which will contain chunks of texts clearly from Wikipedia. According to some, it will be the first time, but I have a vague memory that there was already a book published which plagiarized wikipedia, but I do not remember more than this. Anyone remembers ?
Here you go:
Uncle G ( talk) 13:14, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I am new to this forum but use Wikipedia all the time.
There is a serious difference (error) between two articles related to the deepest canyons in the world.
Under "Colca Canyon," the article states that depth of the Colca Canyon in Peru is 4,160 m (13,648 feet),
However, under "Cotahuasi Canyon," it states that the Cotahuasi's "maximum depth is 3535 meters in the vicinity of Ninancocha, 335 meters more than the Colca Canyon." This would make the Colca Canyon only 11,062 feet deep. That is a difference in depth reporting of over 2,500 feet! Which is correct and how do we correct this?
-- InsidePeru ( talk) 14:14, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
In the Template:Village pump pages/sandbox is a proposed new view for this page's header box. There are demos before/after in Template:Village pump pages/testcases, and notes. Any support? - DePiep ( talk) 17:16, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Your help in the above cleanup effort would be appreciated. This is not a task that four people can take on alone. It's an order of magnitude larger than the largest of the other currently open CCI listings. Uncle G ( talk) 13:28, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
It has been proposed that we mass blank articles using a 'bot. For details, see the discussion. Uncle G ( talk) 15:01, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
We're now at the stage where the 'bot is ready to roll, and no-one has voiced an objection. (Indeed, to the contrary: Several people want to go further, and mass delete the articles.)
If the 'bot goes ahead, this will probably light up some people's watchlists like Diwali. Be warned. Uncle G ( talk) 04:33, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi.
Some time ago, I read an essay/page that listed cases where an external article cited Wikipedia as information source, and then Wikipedia cited that article as source, causing a weird loop. ¿Someone knows where is it? I'm not really sure if it was here, or at es:wiki, or if it was at an external website.
Thanks for the help :) -- Racso ( talk) 15:56, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
This subcategory, Images that should be in SVG format, currently has over 3500 images in it, but I don't feel like reorganizing all these ones manually. If enough Wikipedians can each clear up a particular segment at a time, the category can be cleared enough in less than a day. Any ideas? mechamind 9 0 23:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I want to redirect User:User to User:Example much like User:Username is redirected to there, in order to free confusion from new users about generic usernames and such, like pointing to user:user accidentally. I think that's why so many pages currently link there. :| TelCo NaSp Ve :| 04:35, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I think that Wikipedia needs an essay (or a sentence in an existing essay), along the lines of WP:YOULOSE, to encourage sore losers to dispute meta-issues at RFCs, e.g., whether a straw poll should be invalidated because the losers are losing. ("It's absolutely impossible for three-quarters of the community to disagree with a person as reasonable as me, so the fact that I'm 'losing' clearly proves the poll is biased!")
But it seems to me that such a thing must surely exist. Does anyone know where it is? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 18:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
The new judge, Ceoil, will soon announce the winners of the awards for August, July and May 2010, and at the end of this month will announce the winner for September.
He has agreed that we might then change the focus of the competition from individual wikilinks and small groups of wikilinks to whole articles that are badly overlinked. Inevitably, those valuable editors who perform gnoming services are confronted with overlinking throughout whole articles (particularly of "dictionary" items). In almost all cases, this has arisen earlier in WP's history, when there was no coherent strategy for maximising the utility of the wikilinking system. It's a lot of work to clean it up, and the Silliwilli awards was set up to encourage this work.
Therefore, we have decided that from October 2010 onwards the awards should be judged in terms of whole articles. Competitors will still be asked to list individual links (but expanded to six of the funniest, most useless, most inexplicable individual links in the article, as an example of the entry); however, the removal of overlinking from the whole article will be the sole determinant in the award.
All users are welcome to compete. Tony (talk) 04:11, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Could anyone create a template that if we put roman number then it results devanagari number?
Like this:-
{{Devanagari|12345}}
Result: १२३४५
{{Devanagari|5321}}
result: ५३२१
--
Nepab☺y
(talk)
08:21, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
please, help me to translate this inscription http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Biserica_Sf._Constantin_si_Elena_din_Gura_Humorului8.jpg. It's in armenian. Anybody knows armenian? 79.112.27.201 ( talk) 13:38, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm in a situation where an editor is regarding my reverts and changes to his/her edits as a personal attack. He/she is clearly sincere but has a poor grasp of "Wiki-fu". I once read an essay about exactly this issue warning editors not to get upset if/when their "blood, sweat and toil" gets tossed in the trash by other editors mere minutes after they click the "Save" button. I'd like to be able to point the editor concerned to that essay but I can't remember where/how I found it. Roger ( talk) 14:35, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Hello! My name is James Alexander and I'm working with the Wikimedia Foundation during the 2010 Fundraiser. Part of my job is reaching out to local communities, including here on English. This year we want to be as community-driven as possible (remember this?) and are looking for input not only with translating messages but also with pointing out messages that won't work well in your country, region or language (or at all) and proposing messages that you think would be work better.
With improvements to the Central Notice system we have a lot of flexibility in targeting specific geographical regions, languages and projects and we hope to use every tool at our disposal to make this year a success. As you may have already noticed over the past couple weeks we are running hour long banner tests (currently every Thursday at around 2200 UTC). These tests and the comments that we get on the meta page (see below) are a big part of how we are choosing which banners to run this year. If it doesn't test well it won't be used and even if we dislike a banner if the community likes it we are very likely to test it out (and could easily be proven wrong).
You can see some of the current suggestions (and propose your own) on the Meta messaging page but I also want to encourage the community to discuss here (if we need to create a separate page for discussion we can). Myself and other staff members will be keeping an eye out to answer questions publicly and we are always available if you want to reach out privately as well.
I look forward to seeing more of you on here and on Meta (if you want to really get involved join us on IRC or join the Committee!) Jalexander ( talk) 16:15, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
See here. Aiken ( talk) 16:16, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
What does "Authority control" mean at the bottom of Hermann Schussler? Everard Proudfoot ( talk) 22:27, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Something's messed up with the code (the image and some strange text is directly above the article's text rather than in the infobox), but I don't know how to fix it. -- 71.153.45.75 ( talk) 21:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Found this on the "Bistro" on Wikipedia in French : [9], "Au sujet d'un jeu d'échec à New-York et d'un roi qui se fait prendre deux tours par un fou", talking about Chess, one side taken two rooks by a bishop. Is that humour ? Globule99 ( talk) 21:20, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
There's a discussion going on here at files for deletion about the extent to which fair use can reasonably be claimed for images of the Holocaust. J Milburn began it as a discussion about just one image, but the same issues apply to most of the others we use. The discussion has taken a disturbing turn, with Rama claiming that the fair-use polices are somehow similar to Arbeit macht frei, and that some people just loathe working [10] (whatever that means).
Very few have joined in the discussion, so some fresh eyes would be greatly appreciated. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 12:29, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Hiya all. How could I find the File for a yellow lightbulb? You know, like in the
wp:TOTD box, or here
Wikipedia:Village_pump, - the big yellow one above "Proposals"?
As well as giving me the direct answer, could you also please advise me how I might have found it myself? I've tried searching on WP and Commons, to no avail. What search method would have worked?
Many thanks,
Trafford09 (
talk)
13:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
There are now hundreds of historical images of Egypt on Commons from the Travelers in the Middle East Archive archive.-- Diaa abdelmoneim ( talk) 09:38, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I may have missed the obvious, but is there a way to invite an article to be assessed. I was looking at my contributions and there are a lot that need to be processed. -- ClemRutter ( talk) 17:07, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I've started a list of essays about the community's values and principles at WP:Principles. There are more than a thousand essays out there, so if your favorite isn't on the list yet (assuming that it's about one or more values or principles), then please feel free to add it. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 04:59, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi,
Merlino's "Hackers History" page copied content from Timeline of computer security hacker history without referring to Wikipedia.
As I'm not a native English speaker, I won't do the procedure by myself and couldn't find the exact place to report this.
At the beginning, I was trying to find out why there is a sentence containing “…that allowed us to share our current hacks…”. Because of this, the entry looks like a text stolen from the involved hackers group.
Thank you for your attention,
Lacrymocéphale
17:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_polytope, in the section "Cross polytopes (orthoplexes)", the zero-dimensional case is called a "point". Shouldn't it be a "nullitope", or something of the sort - since a point has one vertex, which violates the "2n" rule given at the end of the section ?
The main article "Orthoplex" doesn't even cover the zero-dimensional case !
N.B. I'm not an expert, I was browsing here out of idle curiosity. And I've never contributed to WP before. DAC 18-Oct-2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.29.202 ( talk) 19:56, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
"This is a squad, and it functions very much like one. It is intimate, united, cooperative, disciplined, dedicated, energetic, and effective; and it is so only because its members believe in its tenets and practices." See meta:Anonymous User Protection Squad (AUPS). LOL. Fences& Windows 23:42, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Does anyone know about a way to find the list of the top 100 most viewed WP articles over a period of time longer than a month, e.g. a year or two? A. di M. ( talk) 09:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I got randomly logged out twice in the past two minutes. Any idea what would cause that? One logout came when I was trying to use HotCat on the article Bob Clarke. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ( Otters want attention) 22:49, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I've logged out so I can ask this question with more freedom. Hope this is the right forum.
When editing alongside an aggressive editor (meaning a little bit rude and mean, blustery, full of hubris, however you want to call it) and that person, obviously a HE, keeps veering into discussions about me as an editor, of course, as opposed to the issues at hand as far as work I'm trying to perform on the article (the editor's basically hanging out there to second guess me more than to contribute original material himself, of course)...what's the best for a person in my situation to take? What I mean is-- Well, the person DOESN'T really talk about issues so much on the talkpage. He only comes on to taunt, but there is always at least a modicum of his taunts having a frame of reference of his being a master Wikipedian. (Not that the person is always right, of course, because quite often his hunger to find mis-steps leads him into assuming things to be eggregious faults in my editing that turn out to be, actually, correct edits on my part). Sorry that this is so rambly but, other than any hoped-for catharsis resulting form simply getting this kind of stuff off my chest, there would also be--and IS--my need to figure out how to act in this situation vis-a-vis this emm gentlemanly colleague.
The thing is, the article talkpage is to discuss the article, in my opinion, not so much to parry and thrust with regard to fellow editors in this fashion. Of this I am absolutely sure. Yet, I cannot possibly discuss things on the editor's talkpage either, of course: it being his PRIVATE DOMAIN not to be sullied by a mere rube and peon such as myself (apparently, from the vantage of this fellow's point of view). Right? Further, I'm not going to start some kind of complaint against the guy. His behavior, truth be told, isn't actually completely over the top. It's just consistenly hyper-aggressive slash hyper-hostile slash hyper-arragant slash hyper rude. But (and this is hard to explain...) it doesn't go so far as his using swear words, his engaging in obviously forbidden behaviors, etc...... It is just, put succinctly, Internet "trolling" / Wikipedia-flavored "flam warring" of me constantly and less than subtly.
So, What does one do in this situation? Any thoughts, advice, info about "push-comes-to-shove" institutional procedures, etc., would be welcome. Thank you for your time, those who make it so far as to read to the bottom of this.
(Oh, and--by the way: I'm not saying I'm the perfect or the model Wikipedian either. But I do try to maintain conduct conducive to collaborative work on the encyclopedia and do my very best to maintain a pretty high standard of editing work, at least in my not-so-humble opinion. Again, thanks to anyone/all who might respond to this question. Sincerely.)-- 71.187.173.34 ( talk) 01:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
I've seen a template for talk pages that indicates that the article was translated from a Wikipedia in another language. I can't find that template, though, and can't even find the article I first noticed it on. Where is it? I need to apply it to the article Georg Schäfer. — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 20:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Since Facebook was down, I made a quick Sporcle quiz for Wikipedians: an A-Z look at commonly-invoked policies, guidelines and essays. And whatever I could find that began with Z :) Of course, it rather highlights how important knowing all the references has become, and how there is some merit in a thorough knowledge of them all. But on the other hand, it is just a bit of WP-themed fun for those who enjoy that sort of thing... Regards, - Jarry1250 Who? Discuss. 21:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I've inserted the following code into my signature line:
how the {{subst:freeze|{{SUBST:SUBJECTPAGENAME}}|article}} & {{subst:freeze|{{SUBST:TALKPAGENAME}}|talk}} looked when I made this edit
I thought you might want to try it out. It allows people to see what the article and the talk page looked like when you viewed it, which could be very helpful. See:
AGradman / talk / how the article and talk looked when I made this edit 04:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
There is a multi-volume set called Character sketches of romance, fiction and the drama that contains hundreds of high quality black and white sketches. The volumes, which were published in 1892, and 1902 appear to have been largely unused on Wikipedia. I was wondering if anyone is interested (or if its a worthwhile effort) to extract the images and put them in appropriate articles.
Smallman12q ( talk) 00:22, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Why on earth is there so many of these seemingly useless articles that keep popping up because users think they are being constructive creating them when really they are utterly pointless? For example, when visitors use the Wikipedia search box and type in "kyle wellwood" it naturally takes them to the rightful article of Kyle Wellwood. Whereas, when people search "heath ledger" it takes them to a pointless article that redirects them to Heath Ledger, when Wikipedia's built-in search box script automatically does just that, without the stupid "Redirected from Heath ledger" subtext underneath the article's header. So what I don't understand is, why do we have these unnecessary capitalization-redirect articles in the first place? — Hucz ( talk · contribs) 02:29, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Today's DYK includes a lovely article on the Cyclops class monitor series of vessels. Now, all the traits of the monitor series were "inherited" by the ships in the series. And some of our articles on those ships reflect this: Content from the Cyclops class monitor article appears -- virtually verbatim -- in HMS Cyclops (1871), HMS Hydra (1871).
Is this redundancy a good thing? Part of me says yes: It is good for our articles to be "self-sufficient", so that readers are not forced to read other articles for a full exposition of the topic.
But part of me says no, because (1) if improvements are made to any of these articles, they must be made to all the others, (2) if this kind of redundancy grows unchecked, some individual articles might swell to unmanageable sizes, whereas one of the whole purposes of having wikilinks is to keep the size of individual articles manageable. (Apparently, I wrote more about this a few months ago but didn't get many responses.)
What do you think?
AGradman / underlying article as I saw it / talk 03:35, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
The Audit Subcommittee is a subcommittee of the Arbitration Committee, tasked to review and act upon concerns and complaints about checkuser and oversight activities received from the community. Membership consists of three community representatives elected by the community, who serve one-year terms; and three arbitrators, who rotate through this assignment for approximately six months.
In advance of the scheduled election/appointment of community representatives to the Audit Subcommittee, a summary of activity has been posted on the subcommittee's report page.
The community is invited to discuss this report, as well as preferred methods and terms for the selection of community representatives to participate in the audit process. The result of the discussion will inform the Arbitration Committee on how best to proceed before progressing to another election cycle.
For the Arbitration Committee,
Risker (
talk) Cross-posted by
NW (
Talk)
20:42, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
I am contemplating disclosing my real-world identity and would like to get some input from others who have done this before, who have always identified themselves, or who know me here on Wikipedia. Is there a good way to do that - for example, an RFC/U on myself limited to that particular question? Is this a good forum? Are there essays on the subject? For what it's worth, after doing so I would likely seek to avoid any further confrontation with editors, and avoid overly controversial subjects. I'm nobody particularly famous, but outside of Wikipedia I am quite open about who I am and I'm not particularly concerned about loss of privacy. Thanks for any suggestions, - Wikidemon ( talk) 02:48, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
A group I am in supports three schools in the boonies in Haiti. They have no electricity and no internet. They do have computers (!) powered by solar panels. Would it be possible for them to get several hardcopies, in French and in Simple English, of Wikipedia which is apparently released periodically for use? (I assume there is a general policy regarding this, but couldn't begin to find it). Student7 ( talk) 13:35, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
When a new editor to Wikipedia creates their first article, and asks for feedback at WP:FEED, the feedback they get is often the first real interaction they have with the Wikipedia community. Unfortunately, in many cases, the feedback they get is nonexistent. A troubling percentage of requests never get a single response. That cannot possibly create a positive reaction, and may be a turn-off to potential new editors. The problem, in short, is a shortage of Wikipedians willing to provide feedback to the many requests coming in every day.
Obviously, I would like it if some reading this were to help out at the page on occasion, but I'm posting this to note that there is a discussion here on the general issue. Anyone with useful thoughts, or just willing to pitch in is invited to comment.-- SPhilbrick T 14:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
If you love OpenStreetMap, support me on this page. -- TarzanASG ( talk) 17:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I came across this article in Scientific American. Unfortunately they didn't include Wikipedia in the poll, but I wondered what we would have scored? I suspect not as high as scientists but more than friends & family and thereby more than journalists. — Ruud 19:23, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I've just come across Category:Periodic table infobox templates, and a spot check shows that all of these templates are used just once in mainspace. I've checked 15 of these, and not found one that's transcluded more than once. Is this really necessary? I realize it adds a convenience factor in editing articles on a particular element in not adding dozens of lines at the top of each one, but really...how often are periodic element articles going to change anyway? This seems like very needless use of template space. Thoughts? -- Hammersoft ( talk) 20:30, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
{{User:Patrick/Template:Infobox helium|User:Patrick/pstp|p=symbol}}
→ He{{User:Patrick/Template:Infobox helium|User:Patrick/pstp|p=thermal conductivity}}
→ 0.1513Relevant: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Elements/Archive_10#Template:Infobox<element>_-_why_do_these_exist. Apparently done to reduce vandalism and make the articles easier to edit. -- Cybercobra (talk) 16:46, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
We received an e-mail at OTRS ( Ticket:2010092910008895, for those who have access to that queue) to inform of us of yet another publisher ("International Country Guides") who may be bundling Wikipedia content and selling it without letting buyers know what they're getting. See [11]. He indicates that the publisher may actually be Filiquarian Publishing LLC ( the article of which has been deleted on Wikipedia.) If so, we knew about the publisher repackaging Wikipedia in book form, but not necessarily about the imprint. I have not seen any of their books myself, but I wanted to give a heads up and, frankly, had no idea where else to put it. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I just came to post a similar request, this time for information on this book. It's entirely a synthesis of Wikipedia articles from 2009, that much is for sure. But is there any attribution anywhere? I can't find any, but I'm on a tiny netbook and can't efficiently check it all. If there isn't, obviously copyright holders ought to be tracked down. Thanks for any help, - Jarry1250 Who? Discuss. 20:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I am currently watching The Tudors. In Season 2, Episode 2, I want to report that the music being played during Henry and Anne's visit to France is not original music; it is Eastern European folk music ( possibly Bulgarian or Greek) that is being played while Anne dances, masked, in front of Francois and Henry at the feast. I cannot remember the name of the tune, but Balkan folk dancers would know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.124.115.176 ( talk) 23:26, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
The United States Census Bureau will soon begin releasing the results of the 2010 census. The results will dribble out over the next couple of years, the bulk coming between February and August 2011. [12] [13] Thousands of Wikipedia articles had the 2000 census results added by bot. However that material has been changed, moved or deleted in the meantime so it will not be trivial for a bot to come through and change the old data. There was a brief discussion of planning for this big data dump last year. See Wikipedia:2010 US Census and its talk page. However nothing seems to have been done since then. Perhaps it's getting to be time to start thinking about it again. Will Beback talk 09:29, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
What are the various governing bodies (ex. arbcom), processes (AfD) and other offices of the Wikimedia projects, particularly Wikipedia? Where are they relative to one another?
Also, does Jimbo Wales run the entire Wikimedia project or just Wikipedia? If just Wikipedia, who runs the entire Wikimedia project? Icanhasaccount has an account 21:26, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
Dang, just realized I should have posted this at the Help Desk. Icanhasaccount has an account 21:28, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
I guess that's helpful. Seems like the only "official" governing comittee present on WP is the arbcom. I still don't know much about the noticeboards, processes, and "unofficial" bodies such as medcab and wikiproject council however. Is there just a straight list somewhere? Icanhasaccount has an account 00:11, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
The Fundraising Committee is issuing all interested community members a challenge: we want you to beat Jimmy. The appeal from Jimmy Wales and the corresponding banner have been tested head-to-head with other successful banners, and the results are clear: it's our best performing message... by a lot. This year we have a lofty fundraising goal; we need all of our banners to bring in donations like the Jimmy Appeal, but no one wants to keep the Jimmy banner up for two months. We want to run donor quotes, and other wonderful ideas, but we have to have banners that work as well as or better than the Jimmy appeal.
We've just released the highlights from a donor focus group, and the results of our donor survey. With one month to the launch of the fundraiser, the messages we test must be driven by data from our tests and surveys - we can no longer rely on instinct alone.
We've redesigned our fundraising meta pages with the Jimmy challenge; check out the survey results and propose/discuss banners that reflect these findings. Add the banners you think will 'beat Jimmy' here to be tested Tuesday October 12 against Jimmy. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation ( talk) 03:14, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
I was wondering if there is a tool that could look for articles that are about the same specific astronomical object. What I had in mind is a tool that would:
The idea would be that astronomical object articles tend to include a list of alternative identifiers. We could use the regular expression to look for those patterns, then the tool can list the possible matches for us to check.
I'm not sure if there are other potential uses for this. Thank you.— RJH ( talk) 18:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Is there a page on WP where non-native editors can get assistance with the English language? Like asking what is the correct expression for something or questions about the grammar. I sometimes need to ask such questions when writing articles. Offliner ( talk) 10:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Hello Wikipedia! I'm having a 250,000th edit party. You're all invited! Cheers! bd2412 T 14:18, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
Salem Witch Trials and the articles that it links to in its template seem to have a very high degree of vandalism from unregistered users. My guess is that > 9 out of 10 of these edits are vandalism. This is a very high vandalism area, and I think it deserves protection. I am coordinator of the Salem Witch Trials Task Force. Wikipedia keeps changing and I can't keep up, and clearly I don't have the wikiskills or the computer skills. Anyone out there willing to guide me through this ? John5Russell3Finley ( talk) 19:06, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
My english is bad, so sorry if u don't understand. In es:Wiki my user namy is NicolásTM, before was "Trivia Harrypotter", but in this wiki, "NicolásTM" doesn't exist, why? I don't used this account anymore. Somebody can help me? -- Trivia harrypotter ( talk) 21:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
Something very strange seems to be going on at the University of Hull. It seems that its students have been tasked with writing biographies of artists/academics as homework. So far the only one created seems to have questionable notability. Please see: Talk:Annabeth Robinson.
I am sure that there is no bad faith here but it seems fundamentally misconceived and could cause trouble and bad feeling. We don't want non-notable biographies but we don't want students to get into trouble because we deleted their homework either. Maybe somebody needs to explain to the University why this is a bad idea. -- DanielRigal ( talk) 22:58, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
The Talk:Tammi Terrell page has an assessment summary page listed with the template results, but I don't see how it is connected to anything when I edit the talk page. This is the first assessment summary page I have encountered, so would someone please provide some information about how they work.-- DThomsen8 ( talk) 12:31, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
{{
WikiProjectBannerShell}}
whenever there is a /Comments subpage. See
Template:WPBS#Usage.
Svick (
talk)
20:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Somehow I thought that a subject/headline should not include a link. I have encountered an article with three headlines with links. See State Line, Pennsylvania. Am I wrong about the Wikipedia style?-- DThomsen8 ( talk) 23:22, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I've done more Wikipedia editing than almost anyone, but here's something I never saw before today: A proposal to exclude from an article, as "trivia", the line that tells the reader what the article was about. Its deletion would have left the reader with no clue what the topic was. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:37, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
...and the proof is a one-liner that instantly startles and amazes those who see it for the first time. Michael Hardy ( talk) 14:12, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
I was surprised to find that I am able to move pages to locations where something already exists. I thought only administrators were able to do this? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 04:18, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Preparations are underway for the annual elections to the Arbitration Committee, due to take place mid-November to mid-December. Provisional election pages have been set up based on the model of the 2009 elections, which were conducted using the SecurePoll secret ballot system. The proposed timetable allows for a 10-day nomination period (from Sunday November 14 to Tuesday November 23), a 10-day voting period (Friday November 26 to Monday December 6), and a subsequent period for the vote to be audited by independent scrutineers.
Until the call for nominations on November 14, the parameters of the election are open to community examination and feedback. A draft set of nine general questions to be posed to each candidate has been established (voters will also be able to ask unique questions of individual candidates). Editors interested in helping to organise the elections are encouraged to sign up as volunteer coordinators.
Working as an arbitrator is an important and demanding role, and there is perennial need for new volunteers to take it on. This year, 10 arbitrators are expected to be chosen; experienced and committed editors are urged to seriously consider standing.
Discuss this at the election talkpage.
For the coordinators, Skomorokh 11:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I ran across the link posted invitating editors to download a tool at the top of the Net worth article and I'm not sure whether it is within policy, but would like someone to check it out. -- LilHelpa ( talk) 20:21, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
There seems to be a huge rash of one-time vandals on most pages I am watching. Perhaps one-third or more of the edits are one-time vandalism over the last day or two.
Techniques furnished to editors have relieved us of a lot of the persistent vandalism we saw several years ago. We have the tools to deal with those folks now. But this seems unprecedented. Mercifully, I am a "late" watcher, trailing by two days. By the time I get there most of the vandalism has been reverted by other experienced editors. They have got to be seeing the same thing I am. I have no idea how to cope with this, short of semi-protecting everything!
Maybe wait for the full moon to pass? :) Student7 ( talk) 01:52, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Hi Everyone,
I am an employee with the engineering and management firm Morrison Hershfield. We would like to have a factual Wikipedia page for our company ideally like the one linked above. I am fairly new to Wikipedia and would like feedback on whether this page meets the notability standards, and as well I am open to opinions on what the article may need or lacks. If you could provide me with any feedback or suggestions it would be very much appreciated. Joe Fielder ( talk) 12:28, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Thank you both for your very positive feedback I am glad to see it is up to the standards of at least two wiki editors. I have taken your suggestions and moved the page to the article space. But one thing I noticed at the top of the page it displays our company name as "Morrison hershfield" instead of "Morrison Hershfield" is there anyway to correct this h so it is capitalized? Thanks again. Joe Fielder ( talk) 18:38, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
A really cool tool has been released to semi-automatically translate articles from English to 31 other languages: WikiBasha It is open source and relies on Microsoft Translate, then a very nice user interface allows to proofread and correct the results of the machine translation. By the way: Right now it only allows English as a source language. Any volunteers willing to modify it to allow any language for source? Nicolas1981 ( talk) 09:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Hello English Wikipedians, i'm have a one problem in Indonesian Wikipedia. Current Vietnamese Wikipedia and Serbian Wikipedia already overtaking Indonesian Wikipedia. Whereas before I had been warned that:
"Come on, time for the entire district article maker that is still more concentrated to a village in Indonesia moved to a commune in a foreign country. As Communes of Oise, France, or else you find. Your stay Copy paste and translate from the English Wikipedia. Let the professional user who completed the manufacturing district in the Java Wikipedia article ago we Copy Paste again in the future. I would never again stingy in making zoning articles (covering a content template) for the progress of Indonesian Wikipedia."
However, they ignore until now. Their remember once blackmail alone wikiwan to not make the article in the same template when I'm making an article. When I want to change them and still remember it. Very egois. -- Erik Evrest ( talk) 11:03, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Find a Grave is a large website that allows registered users to describe graves. Pages often include names, location of the grave, dates of birth and death, a brief biography, and images. It is linked in thousands and thousands of articles, and questions about its appropriateness arise a couple of times a year.
Should Wikipedia link to this site: (1) As a reliable source, at least when no better sources are available? (2) As an external link, at least when it provides a unique resource rather than duplicating article content? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 02:20, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Originally at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard#Find a grave After seeing a bio from "Find a grave" i am very concern about this links. Firstly we have them "SPAMMED" everywhere in external links and i mean everywhere. I am wondering how we are allowing this links that lead to unsorced and potentially POV riddled bios. Is there something special about this site that i am unaware of? I can not find anywhere that thinks Find a Grave is reliable. I was wondering were we could talk about this if this is the wrong place. I know this must have comeup before because there bios are so bad. If possible could i be pointed to the right places to talk about this and/or shown links (discussion) to Y this is ok? Moxy ( talk) 23:57, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
Whoa calm down it's just an external link! I give you that it's unreliable but it's not trying to be a source. I don't think it's 'spammed' any more than other templated external links, such as {{ MobyGames}} and {{ IMDb}}, it may just seem that way because there's a lot more bios than video game or movie articles. And I see nothing 'odd' at all about Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people, it's just a good-faithed group of editors taking advantage of a source to generate new content, good for them. And how do you know readers don't find these links useful? Maybe some do.. maybe a lot do.. and appreciate having somewhere else to go once they finish reading to the bottom of the article. -- œ ™ 22:06, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
I have used information from Find-A-Grave in multiple articles multiple times. It would be highly inappropriate to NOT link to their site when we're using it as a source. I agree fully that information from more reliable sources is more desirable, but I detest and abhor both the idea of using information without linking to the source and the idea of deleting information that is likely to be true, but where we haven't located a more reliable source yet. Note: I'm ONLY adding the link where I in fact use information from the site. My $0.02. -- Alvestrand ( talk) 16:08, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Although I do disagree with your desire to purge ourselves of this link, Upon further thought I do think that we need to modify the documentation for the Find a Grave link to clarify what it should and should not be used for as I stated above. I am also going to send the site manager an EMAIL asking about the potential for them to encourage the use of Source information when adding entries or info to the Find a Grave site. When I get a response I will add something here and on the Find a Grave talk page. The following things should be clarified:
I think we should be very, very clear about whether we're talking about using the site as an external link or as an inline citation. They're two entirely separate things, with separate guidelines/policies to observe. As an inline citation for birth/death dates, I don't really have a problem with findagrave.com. It's like IMDB in that sense: not the best possible source, but acceptable in most cases. As an external link, though, I still don't see the value in linking to that site tens of thousands of times, since in nearly all the cases the site does not offer any actual information that's not already in the article itself, making it a clear violation of WP:EL. I have not seen any arguments presented above that would make me think otherwise. -- Conti| ✉ 17:51, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I want to state again that I do not agree with mass removal of this link. Its true its not appropriate on all articles but its also not hurting anything being in external links. Its more important that if its used as a reference, that the referenced material isnt violating one of our policies. If we want to start checking something regarding the Find a Grave site it should be that. On most articles though its just a link that "could" help source currently unsourced info or to help as a general secondary source. If we want to start removing links I would start with all the myspace, facebook and blog links. Those are much much less worthy. But rather than talking about deleting thousands of links why don't we just clarify the information that should and shouldn't be used? To answer another statement we also have lots of links to religious websites so by your logic we must also be pushing religion! We have articles on pornographic actors, actresses and movies so we must be peddling porn! Do these also strain Wikipedia's credibility? Should we start looking at removing those next? In my opinion, obviously no, but others would argue it does and the credibility argument can be tailored to ones opinion or needs quite easily. You mentioned before that you didn't like it because it was a for profit site. So is CNN, MSNBC and virtually all the other major "trustworthy" sites. I also notice that you seem to be particularly worried about the disclaimer on the findagrave site so I found another site with one similar. Its phrased a little differently but its says the same thing:
IN ADDITION TO THE TERMS SET FORTH ABOVE NEITHER, CNN, ITS PARENT, SUBSIDIARIES, ITS OTHER AFFILIATES, NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, THIRD PARTY CONTENT PROVIDERS, LICENSORS, INFORMATION PROVIDERS OR CONTENT PARTNERS BE LIABLE REGARDLESS OF THE CAUSE OR DURATION, FOR ANY ERRORS, INACCURACIES, OMISSIONS, OR OTHER DEFECTS IN, OR UNTIMELINESS OR UNAUTHENTICITY OF, THE INFORMATION CONTAINED WITHIN CNN.COM, OR FOR ANY DELAY OR INTERRUPTION IN THE TRANSMISSION THEREOF TO YOU, OR FOR ANY CLAIMS OR LOSSES ARISING THEREFROM OR OCCASIONED THEREBY. NONE OF THE FOREGOING PARTIES SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY THIRD-PARTY CLAIMS OR LOSSES OF ANY NATURE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, LOST PROFITS, PUNITIVE OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. NEITHER CNN, ITS PARENT, SUBSIDIARIES, ITS OTHER AFFILIATES NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, THIRD PARTY CONTENT PROVIDERS, LICENSORS, INFORMATION PROVIDERS OR CONTENT PARTNERS WARRANT OR GUARANTEE THE TIMELINESS, SEQUENCE, ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THIS INFORMATION. ADDITIONALLY, THERE ARE NO WARRANTIES AS TO THE RESULTS OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE INFORMATION.
I will tell you the 3 things I don't like about the Find a Grave site though.
In summery:
PS. All the above was written before I read this subsection started by User:Conti, with whom I agree.
(ec) I was just directed to this discussion and have scanned the text. It appears that there is some consensus that Find A Grave is not an appropriate external link, although the links should not be removed if the site is being used as a source (but should instead be converted for now from an external link into an inline citation, and later replaced with a reliable source). This mirrors what is currently listed on the documentation for template:Find a grave. Am I reading the consensus appropriately here? Karanacs ( talk) 18:12, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
This idea of mass removal of tens of thousands of links within the space of a few days makes me very nervous. Mass removals usually result in people pitching a fit, typically on the grounds that they, personally, weren't consulted/weren't editing for several weeks/can't be bothered to keep an eye out on the community's discussions. It's too much, too fast, and someone who really, really likes the website will decide that you're being disruptive. Then we get to have this whole conversation all over again at AN/I, followed by a third round as a formal RfC (as if a long discussion at the village pump weren't sufficiently public -- but NB that even if you've already gone through a month-long RFC, someone at ANI will usually recommend having another, because it's easier [for that editor] to recommend yet another interminable discussion than to admit that some people sometimes "lose").
Rapid mass removals = bad idea. Rate-limited, thoughtful, case-by-case removals = good idea. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:58, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Invitation to discussion posted at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places &
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► (
(⊕))
21:31, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
So far, Kumioko has been been the voice for keeping but he would hardly be alone as previous history has shown when people balk at the removal of the links. Much has been said about the reliability – what is a realistic track record for FindAGrave? Forget the theoretical disclaimers for the moment and discuss real cases. How close to the mark does it get? If it has an odd mistake, that's one thing but if they are riddled with mistakes that is another. The true value of information isn't in site disclaimers. For those people who favor removing, did you find a mass of glaring mistakes at FAG?
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► (
(⊕))
13:08, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Frankly, I'm surprised F-A-G wasn't added to the blacklist a long time ago, as it was clearly initially added by a mass spamming/linkfarming campaign by the site itself. Every single time we have one of these discussions we always rule that the site is not a reliable source and does not meet our criteria for external links. It's about time someone went through and removed a bunch. I remove them by hand every time I see one, but since they were originally mass added (and the only reason other people knew about them in the first place and found the site was because of the linkfarming) they should be mass removed too. DreamGuy ( talk) 20:50, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
lets just see if we can get some sort of sense of the amount of people who realy care one way or the other. Think we should ask two questions - first is Find a Grave appropriate for external links and secondly is it reliable an thus good as a references. Moxy ( talk) 05:38, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
I understand that the wiki-like site can be viewed as unreliable - but for birth and death dates and grave location you must agree that the information is verifiable - you can go there and check the dates, just as you can go to a library a check out what a specific rare book says. In the case of most graves, the information is literally carved in stone. And the folks who do the stone carving, as a group, have an excellent reputation for accuracy. I've used the site once or twice to get an exact death date, e.g. December 12, 1887 rather than just 1887. I trust the site enough if they include a readable photo, but I don't think photos of graves should be included in most articles. External link or inline citation? - obviously inline citations are preferred, but is there a policy that says they are required over external links? For short articles especially, I think an external link is just fine. So please do not resort to a bot taking out all information from this source in the name of accuracy. Sometimes it's the best source we've got for certain specific data. Smallbones ( talk) 05:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
I don't know where the proper forum for this question is and I'm grateful for any directions.
The File:MirusiaOperaSinger.jpg, which was originally uploaded on 3 March 2007, has been overwritten with a different image of the subject ( Mirusia Louwerser) by the original uploader on 27 September 2010. It says at Commons:First steps/Upload form that this is improper, but I can't find any such guideline on the English Wikipedia nor any forum to raise such a matter. Please advise. Thanks, Michael Bednarek ( talk) 07:25, 24 October 2010 (UTC)