This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79
A while ago, a discussion at VP(Proposal), also advertised in Signpost, ended with the community support for wider access to HotCat (see Wikipedia_talk:HotCat#Village_Pump_proposal_for_enabling_this_by_default_for_most_editors, which links to that discussion). But a months has passed, and no action seems to have been taken, suggesting there is a missing link between developers and such discussions. How can we make this community decision actually be implemented? Perhaps somebody can forward a link to this to some developer listerv? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:56, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
Though I mostly work on Wikibooks now and my template createing days originate there I wanted to add this template to Wikipedia. Hapgry! You may use it to say your current mood on your user and user talk page! What does it look like? This:
This user is in a good mood. |
or
Downdate is feeling pretty good. |
or
Downdate is angry. |
I'll have more useless templates here soon.
Cheers,
Downdate
Downdate ( talk) 14:15, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to format external links using {{ Cite web}} and related templates or should we always stick to the plain link and description? Ryan Vesey 17:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't have thousands of edits on here, but I have been on here since 2004 and most of my edits are substantial, including major new articles and rewrites of major articles. (I am only posting under an IP address to avoid identifying the editor discussed below, since my intended point is broader than our personal dispute.)
In all that time I've never posted on or read this section as far as I recall, but here I go. I'm really concerned that some of today's most prolific community members have installed themselves as petit tyrants.
To see the creation of WP:LETITGO really saddens me. "In my day" (roll out the zimmerframe) talk pages were dominated with thoughtful, compromise-driven discussion. Now they are dominated by requests for improvement which are not responded to, followed by shit-fights driven by self-interested parties.
I am not about to WP:LETITGO myself as I am determined not to leave a gaping hole in the coverage of the encyclopedia. But I really do worry. I am fundamentally dedicated to the core principles of an open, factual, NPOV, free, libre encyclopedia, and to the principles of participative democracy in collaboration, particularly with regards to the need to listen and to compromise and to adhere to previous consensus positions. I recently made a potentially controversial edit, half-anticipating a WP:BRD cycle-- but the level of fillibuster I copped from this 10000+-edit-person with a chock-a-block vanity page has shocked me. Responses from this person consistently assumed bad faith, disregarded the discussion they purported to respond to, failed to make any practical, constructive suggestions, and adopted a condescending tone both in the text and the logs which bordered on and crossed into personal attack on many occasions.
All of this just makes me want to say, fuck that -- I have better things to spend my time on. But I'm stubborn and idealistic and most of all dedicated to a free/libre, open, verifiable, documented information font for all of humanity, so I will not be deterred. But plenty of people would have the superior judgement just to walk away from such a breach of good faith and never come back.
Might I suggest that this is why WP is losing editors.
Looking at this person's log, he's running around whacking people with a WP police state batten dozens of times a day. My own experience shows that not all of these people deserved the assumption of bad faith. Most likely, quite a number of these people are acting in good faith, will try to enter dialog with this person, only to be ignored and further abused. I would rather not identify this person (although of course the logs are there for all to see) because I am not posting this as an attack on that person. This person is not exceptional. A lot of WP frequent flyers seem to operate this way. Instead I want to point out that I think the tolerance and encouragement of these practices in general is a problem for WP and is probably a major factor behind the decline in editing participation.
Overall, my recent experience of Wikipedia reminds me far too much of the Stanford prison experiment and I think the community needs to reign in the petit tyrants. Let's return to the assumption of good faith I was delighted to see in my Welcome Message, which concluded not by telling me to STFU and go away, but instead by telling me to be bold!-- 144.137.9.60 ( talk) 14:53, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Say I was to commission a professional translator to translate a Wikipedia article for me. Am I correct that I don't need to ask them to release / sell me any rights, as any translation of Wikipedia is, by default, copyrighted by CC-BY-SA, even if the person doing the translation is not a Wikipedia editor? In such a case, how to deal with attribution, when reintroducing the content to Wikipedia? Should I ask the translator if s/he wants to be credited (seems like the best option)?
(Incidentally, since a professional translator is getting paid for the work, I wonder how the "editing Wikipedia for $" crowd would look at this situation :) -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 18:36, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I've full-protected Hurricane Sandy but am doing RL chores on and off today. Can people who have an opinion express it on the page over various disputed sections so we can get some wide consensus? Casliber ( talk · contribs) 00:07, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
The titles of articles dealing with Culture aren't consistent. Sometimes it's "Culture of X", sometimes it's "Culture in X". We have Culture of Paris, yet also Culture in Berlin. So which is it? OttawaAC ( talk) 21:31, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
I propose that we add microformat-style HTML class names to citation templates, to improve their machine readability; please see Proposal: citation microformat and discuss there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:54, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
We have office hours today at 17:30 UTC with Denny, Lydia (and me) from the Wikidata team. Office hours will be in the #wikimedia-office IRC channel. You can join via webchat: http://webchat.freenode.net/ or another IRC client. Cheers -- Aude ( talk) 10:23, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
The Hurricane Sandy article (or wikipedia, take your pick) has received criticism for the absence within it, for a period, of climate change information. The chief criticism is in this Popular Science article, Meet The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia. The question is raised at Talk:Hurricane Sandy#Mention the coverage of lack of climate change info in this article? whether it is appropriate to mention this criticism within the Hurricane Sandy article. -- Tagishsimon (talk) 19:55, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
While doing research for an article I'm working on, I learned of Brikner, Illinois. I looked it up and all I can find is this. Is that enough to create an article saying it is a populated place? Does anyone know where I can find more? Ryan Vesey 21:02, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I was thinking if there was a way to make it so that there would be a way to rework thentalk pages of articles that fall under multiple Wikiproject Scopes so that once an article's quality improves, we dont have to update each class parameter on each wikiproject template on the talkpage. Im no good at making these things but does anyone think it would be easier to handle?
What i had in mind was that separate class parameter and only keep the importance parameter on to its own wikiproject template.
Its hard to explain when i dont even know the name of the template. Lucia Black ( talk) 02:26, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
|class=Stub
for any unassessed article that contains a {{
Stub}} template, and another that updates the class assessment to match the highest class assigned by any other WikiProject.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
22:40, 27 October 2012 (UTC)We have so many templates for warning editors even when they do one single bad edit, and these templates are easy to find, easy to use. I would so much like several similarly easy to find and easy to use templates for a single edit, or a couple of edits that are really good. Something not at all as big as a barnstar, and a bit more specific than the cookies and the kittens. For instance {{good catch!}} for someone who reverts subtle vandalism, {{good writing!}} for somebody who adds nicely written content, or simply {{good work!}}. An easy way to increase the encouragement. What do you all think? Lova Falk talk 20:15, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I am happy you think it is a good idea. Now, does anybody know the procedure for template development?? On what page to ask? Lova Falk talk 17:26, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I didn't know where to find this out, so hopefully someone here can answer or direct me.
The article Eliza_Sam is about a person who has appeared in Chinese TV /film roles. Within the credits section, the Chinese name of these productions is directly linked to the Chinese Wikipedia article about the film/TV show. Is that appropriate? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:35, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi all! How are you doing? I am Everton (or just Tom), a volunteer of the Portuguese Wikipedia and also helping with a education program there. Recently I've been trying to understand some differences between WP PT and WP EN dynamics and I would like to know if you can tell me your opinion on:
I am asking the first question because on WP PT our talk pages are seldom used, whilst here I've seen much more engagement on WP EN talk pages (there are even interesting studies like this one: Dynamics of Conflicts in Wikipedia). And the second question because we have checked most (~95%) of our projects are simply stuck (no collaboration at all!) and we are thinking about gathering dozens of WikiProjects on broader ones with active members (something like 7 or 8 WikiProject). Any help is appreciated! Thanks! -- everton137 ( talk) 01:27, 7 November 2012 (UTC) P. S. corrections on possible mistakes of my English are also appreciatd.
[No response when I asked this on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style ]
I've added a link to Category:Members and Associates of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, in a "see also" section of Royal Birmingham Society of Artists; but that's not very elegant. Is there a preferred way of making such links? Should I format it as, say, Members and Associates? The template we use to link to the related Commons category is much nicer; do we, or should we, have a template for linking to our own categories? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:16, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
How can I find out who are the most active editors on articles within the scope of a particular WikiProject...for the past day, week, month, year, etcetera? Greg Bard ( talk) 12:14, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Just thought I would mention the Signpost is looking for questions on Wikiprojects. I wish others would ask questions too, it is getting pretty lonely out there :-) Ottawahitech ( talk) 19:58, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I've started WikiProject Squatting to address our coverage of squatting-related topics. — Hex (❝?!❞) 10:38, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Nominations for the 2012 Arbitration Committee Election opened over the weekend. There are expected to be 8 seats up for election and experienced editors area always needed to run. If your interested, information on nominating yourself is available at the candidates page. Nominations will remain open until Wednesday 23:59, 20 November. Monty 845 03:57, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello, folks! On December 16 it will be the 10th anniversary of the first Creative Commons licenses. They will be parties around the world. We should put a central message or otherwise celebrate too, I think. Bye! -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 19:49, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
This Answers.com page appears to copy the entire Wikipedia article about slapstick in violation of our license. I would suppose they pirated Wikipedia content for their other entries as well. Do they have permission? If not, I have a cease-and-desist letter (not a DMCA notice) ready to send out. 68.173.113.106 ( talk) 03:05, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi! I was wondering whether an article about a highschool would meet notability requirements. I'm in the 11th grade at a quite prestigious highschool in Romania and I thought it would be nice to have an article on Wikipedia about it, since it is the place where many Romanian personalities studied and also the place where a few later-renowned scientists taught.
I'd like to mention beforehand that I have a 5-year experience with Wikipedia so I know about the NPOV, notability guidelines, need for citing the sources, etc, yet I'm asking you this since I'd like to involve many people from the highschool in the writing of the article and I don't want to have the unwanted surprise of having it deleted in a few days. -- Petru Dimitriu ( talk) 17:57, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
(:etc.) Actually, in the third world there are many 'notable' high schools that have had no newspaper coverage and certainly do not have web pages. I think it's unfortunate that they cannot get into Wikipedia, but that's the reality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.179.19.26 ( talk) 01:15, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I patrol recent changes to medical articles and have noticed a steep rise in vandalism over the last 12 hours. Is this happening in any other topics? -- Anthonyhcole ( talk) 16:46, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Hey all!
I'm happy to announce the start of the WMF merchandise giveaways program. We're asking for community nominations for users who deserve something extra. Do you know a patient mentor? A trusted admin, or amazing photographer? A great writer or copyeditor?
The page, Wikipedia:Merchandise giveaways, and the program in general are very much in beta so we're looking for both nominations and general feedback about the process (how easy/hard it is, questions that aren't answered, prettier awards and page design etc! ). To keep discussion centralized please leave comments and questions on the project talk page. Jalexander--WMF 18:45, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to bring this news to Wikipedia Community's notice:
Thanks, Jacopo Werther iγ∂ψ=mψ 15:52, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
During the recent fundraising test, the Wikimedia Foundation received more than donations - it also received notes of appreciate for what we do. A few of the notes in this batch:
It's amazing how many lives we touch and how much they appreciate the work we do.
To all of you who write articles or fact check them or copy edit them or revert vandalism or supply media or provide support to those who do - thank you. :) It's a great thing we're building here. -- Maggie Dennis (WMF) ( talk) 20:33, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
I have realised that Wikipedia (many languages) is being used to spread a meme. As far as I understand the idea of Wikipedia it wasn't created to spread memes. The meme has been removed from English and German Wikipedias but it's almost impossible to oppose tens of funny editors creating articles in tens of languages. Xx236 ( talk) 08:17, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Asian American#Representative approval. RightCowLeftCoast ( talk) 04:27, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Someone called WikiPlays on YouTube (and also WikiPlays.org) has uploaded 40,000 videos on YouTube, between August and now, made from English Wikipedia articles with speech synthesis and a slideshow of images from the article. Most are new and have zero views. The most popular is Britney Spears with 47,000 views since August 30. -- LA2 ( talk) 02:39, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia allows commercial use. Since the videos are derivatives, they must be released by the same CC BY-SA licence or a compatible one. -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 16:32, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
I just open this page (not because I wanted to add myself, but for another reason) and noticed that most of the transcluded pages do not get any reviews at all. Actually, most of those who got, I could recognize the names, so that I assume people are willing to review users who are visible at the general noticeboards and are not willing to review anybody they do not know. I know a review is an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, especially a review of someone one never heard about, but still I think it is a community service. If we can not provide timely reviews as community, may be we should shut up the Editor review page, or pin a notice that a review has only a tiny chance to go through, or smth. I do not have any good solution, and this is why I am posting this on this village pamp (admittedly the least active one), but may we could treat the absence of reviews similarly how we treat backlogs, or may be someone else has better solutions.-- Ymblanter ( talk) 10:15, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Can someone point me to good readings about "stacking sidebars"? Navboxes as a footer are easy, but sidebars are a topic. Prevalence? Presence? - DePiep ( talk) 19:12, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
User:Michael2012ro, who is also active upon the English Wikipedia, says that all instances of historical-critical information about Jesus and Christianity means using Wikipedia for spreading Anti-Christian propaganda. He says that the information which I have translated from Historical Jesus and Historicity of Jesus upon ro:Isus cel istoric confuses his mind and that it constitutes Anti-Christian propaganda, violating thus WP:NPOV. Consider how many good-faith, competent and experienced editors he has offended by saying this (just look at the history of the two articles). He considers Bart D. Ehrman and Michael Coogan as two Anti-Christian historians expressing fringe views about the Bible and Christian history. He said that since the majority of Romanians are Christians, Wikipedia should render their views as mainstream.
But Michael2012ro is certainly no mainstream Christian, so it is kind of weird for him to play the "Wikipedia should be a democracy" card. The first symptom of this matter was reported at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_136#Mantak Chia on human sexuality (medicine), since Michael2012ro has claimed that Mantak Chia's views stand on equal footing with a medical advice from National Health Service and with peer-reviewed medical studies. The NHS said in a leaflet aimed at teenagers that "an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away" and Michael2012ro sought to counteract this medical fact with Mantak's views about the loss of qi during ejaculation, in spite of being told that it is expressly prohibited by WP:RSMED. Michael2012ro has even said that in a few years the MDs who gave the advice or at least the NHS will change their minds about their advice and that they will embrace alternative medical viewpoints. Of course, I have reported him on ro:Wikipedia:Reclamații but no measure has been taken in respect to his behavior, except some lambasting comment about masturbation made by ro:user:Asybaris01. Tgeorgescu ( talk) 22:15, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Of course, I had no evidence that was not the case, so that's what I assumed. The only thing I can think of would be to start discussion at the talk pages for the en.wikipedia versions of those articles, and invite Michael2012ro to those discussions. Ian.thomson ( talk) 22:46, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
It's such a low quality image. Can we get an OTRS for this image, then digitally enhance it? 68.173.113.106 ( talk) 00:28, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Is it proper use of the language templates to use them within List of United States cable and satellite television networks to identify what language the stations broadcast in? i thought it was for sources only. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:01, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
I just discovered that the Economy of Belize article has claimed that one of the main exports of Belize is dilithium crystals for over a year! I can't imagine how many schoolchildren have reproduced this fascinating tidbit in their reports about Belize. One hopes the U.S. State Department hasn't reproduced it yet, but you never know! Kaldari ( talk) 10:46, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
The 2012 Arbitration Committee Election is now open. Users may review the election page to learn more about the election and determine if they are eligible to vote. The election will run from November 27 until December 10.
Voters are encouraged to review the candidate statements prior to voting. Voter are also encouraged to review the candidate guide. Voters can review questions asked of each candidate, which are linked at the bottom of their statement, and participate in discussion regarding the candidates.
Voters can cast their ballot by visiting Special:SecurePoll/vote/259.
Voters can ask questions regarding the election at this page.
For the Electoral Commission. MBisanz talk 00:00, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello !
Can you welcome me with the appropriate template (like fr:Modèle:Bienvenue nouveau) on my talk page please?
Thank you. -- Orikrin1998 ( talk) 12:18, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Accusations have been made about Ebernesia's non-existence. Some believe that the country does not exist but others know that it is real. There is an established D.R.E. Constitution an government. Although it may not be officially recognized the country exists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.46.208.190 ( talk) 14:39, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I already started an RFC about this, and it's been open for over a week with 0 responses, not even the involved editors have bothered responding. All they do is revent and say, "please don't remove cited material," which, if you've been on Wikipedia for as long as I have, you've heard every POV warrior chant whenever they try to insert poorly sourced nonsense. I'm starting to think that the population of Wikipedia has gotten too low to prevent massive amounts of BS from getting through. No one's watching even highly relevant and current articles.
Anyway, the dispute is over whether or not a highly controversial conspiracy theory by an "unnamed official" in one source is worth a mention. Trivially violates WP:UNDUE, WP:FRINGE, WP:EXCEPTIONAL, and WP:NOT#NEWS IMO.
I'm gonna go browse the RFC list, see if there aren't any other lunatics holding other articles hostage. 159.1.15.34 ( talk) 17:15, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I wasn't exactly sure where to post this, and if you have a better suggestion please let me know. I'm looking for Wikipedia users for a study I'm doing and would like a moment of your time to take a survey, if you can spare it.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QXZ7P9J
Thanks so much. (Also, I'll make sure to clear this out within a few days.)
Kootron ( talk) 02:13, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello:
A simple question -- why is Real Media consistently showing up on the list of blocked tracking companies for the Wikipedia site?
I am using "Do Not Track Plus" in Firefox and it seems to be blocking real media on most wikipedia pages I've visited, including this one.
Thanks D. Morgan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.70.13.186 ( talk) 17:07, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
When I first posted this Real Media was showing up on nearly all the wikipedia pages but now it seems to be on fewer articles. Unless I misunderstand how this works I don't think any company should be monitoring wikipedia.
I didn't expect any tracking on wikipedia which is why it was so noticeable as it was originally showing up on nearly every article. Now it does not, at least on the front-page articles that I checked. Real Media is still showing up on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_%28album%29 as I type this. I wouldn't expect any wiki-contributor to do this intentionally of course but was surprised to see any tracking. To answer point "A" I had only recently loaded the blocking software so I only noticed it a couple days before the first post here. For "B" I haven't noticed any other out-of-place tracking and I have been curious enough to check. Thanks D Morgan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.70.13.186 ( talk) 01:36, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Over this past year there have been 2 fund raising dives for Wikipedia, most recently last week, attempting to raise funds to keep advertizing off the site. I have made an effort to respond to each fund raising campain - as someone who uses the site 3-4 times a week, I feel it is the least I can do. I was truely disapointed when today, November 23, 2012, I looked up a subject only to find advertizements in the results.
I understand Wikimedia is a business with expences and employees - and I applaud their efferts to remain free of advertisments - I am disapointed that we the user community could not step up in their time of need and provide the required capital to keep the pages clean. I hope that in the future if the donations make it possible that the powers that be will remove the advertizing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.71.93.79 ( talk) 04:03, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
I realize that some article topics are ongoing: the Arab–Israeli conflict will probably continue as long as there are Arabs and Israelis. And, for that matter, many other articles are ongoing by their nature: place articles (New York City), astronomy (new observations, etc.). And that is fine with me.
And many articles have a clear ending. For example, the disappearance of Judge Crater, The American Civil War, the Trial of Lizzie Borden. Granted, someone might turn up a new fact, but they would have had to occur during Judge Crater's lifetime or that of his surviving attacker (if any). Or archaelogy or a new letter about the Civil War - all developed in that time frame.
The third category is articles without limit. I won't give a real observation for fear of canvassing. Let's say I choose the Lewinsky scandal and select someone otherwise reliable, who wishes to comment on this really out-of-date event now. Let's say the Pope or Billy Graham or somebody throws out a very public comment about this and it is published. While there is nothing "new" in the comment, the source is new. Is publication required? For me, the issue is closed unless the comment is original, which is quite unlikely at this late date.
What if the comment comes from a reliable source who is "reliable" but not anywhere near that notable? Shouldn't it be original? Can articles with an otherwise "closed" sets of dates go on "forever?"
And is there any policy that addresses this? Thanks. Student7 ( talk) 01:17, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Curious question: why don't IP users get user options (talk and contributions) at the top of the page like registered users? I've noticed that some other wikis show them. The Anonymouse ( talk • contribs) 08:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
I deliver a lot of Wikipedia training, and someone who's asked me to deliver some sessions for them wants something to be given to trainees at the end of the session, saying that they've completed it. before I create my own certificate, or fork a template, do we have a welcome template or barnstar tailored for such purposes, or a PDF certificate that they can print off? I'm not looking for anything that accredits them, but I'd also be interested in hearing of any colleges or similar that give credits for learning to edit or editing Wikipedia, as part of something like a a basic computer literacy or life skills certificate. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:36, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Upon first discovering the wwweb, the most natural human response is to begin work on building the wikipedia. I'm reminded of Lewis Thomas's, "Lives of a Cell". I'm writing because I want to Thank the creators and the minions for the most useful wwweb ideas ever manifest and for what will become the greatest legacy of our race. Thank You All. I donate every year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fdevuono ( talk • contribs) 06:52, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Why does Perpetrator redirect to Suspect? I scanned some dictionaries, which served only to increase my uneasyness. Not being a native English speaker nor a frequent user of the english Wikipedia, I hesitate to request speedy deletion, but I would very much prefer a red link over this misleading redirect. If you agree, please delete this juridical monster or – better still – add useful content if you can. Bertux ( talk) 04:14, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Done Thanks a lot! - Bertux ( talk) 06:10, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Just a reminder that, after an exhausting round of RFCs, WP:Pending changes goes live in a little more than two hours. The policy is in the usual place, at WP:Protection policy. Requests should be handled like any regular request, i.e., at WP:RFPP.
Requests for WP:Reviewer permission can be made at the usual place ( WP:Requests for permissions). Admins automatically have the permission. If you have the permission, you can review changes and will see notes about any articles needing review on your watchlist.
People who are just thrilled about it are reminded that it's for real problems on lower-traffic pages, not for universal deployment, and sincerely, strongly begged not to drown RFPP in requests during these early days.
Good luck, to all of us and the wiki, WhatamIdoing ( talk) 21:30, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Leveson trusted Wikipedia ... and shouldn't have.
This is precisely the sort of nonsense that wider application of Pending Changes or Flagged Revisions might have prevented. Andreas JN 466 15:43, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
See at User:West.andrew.g/Popular pages. Best. Biosthmors ( talk) 16:49, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm rather disgusted by the treatment of a new editor, whose first edits to Sydney Opera House have been reverted, and whose talk page has been hit with a WP:BITEy warning. Rather than get further involved in something that is making me angry, I invite uninvolved folk to review both the edits concerned and discussion on the talk page of the article, and on the talk pages of editors who have taken part. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
The bogus warning issued to the new editor, did not not mention the section blanking, which appears to have been inadvertent.
The full sequence, as can easily be seen, was:
The subsequent allegation that the new user "added or changed content without verifying it by citing reliable sources" is bogus; the sources were provided, in edit #3 above.
At no point before my involvement did anyone reach out to the new editor to offer assistance, or ask what they were trying to achieve.
This is not how new, good faith editors should be treated, and efforts to ensure that they are are treated more reasonably should not be rebuffed, as in this case. As Yaris678's kind intervention seems to have made no difference, I invite other uninvolved editors to review the situation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:59, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Indian cinema task force
Should the award for each language have its own article, or should a few of the articles have their own article and rest be grouped into a common article? Can Punjabi, Manipuri and Konkani be independent articles, or should they be a part of the 'Discontinued...' article? The Discoverer ( talk) 04:42, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Since MfD's are not too populated, wanted to note this: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 17, 2012. Don't care what side you're on, but would like to see a full quorum. Herostratus ( talk) 06:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
CNN.com is running a piece on Wikipedia's upcoming fundraising drive based on a televised interview with Jimbo, and the link on the CNN.com homepage (at least the U.S. edition) says, "Can Wikipedia stay ad-free?" Obviously, the answer is yes. While the link title is most likely clickjacking, both the link and the article are misleading to readers who are not so informed about what Wikipedia is and how it's run. The author also apparently neglected basic research; he calls Wikia a "video gaming" website. Bad article is bad. szyslak ( t) 07:25, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Is there a policy regarding the archiving of active discussions? Will I get in trouble for continuing to contribute to a page that a non-admin has archived out of the blue (yes I admit I am the only person objecting). Ottawahitech ( talk) 14:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Not sure where else to announce this (other than the article's talk page), but an OTRS correspondent writes:
Thought you should know that the Thai Ministry of Communication has just blocked the King of Thailand page (Bhumibol Adulyadej). That's on the English and Thai Wikipedias when trying to view from within Thailand. Checked a few other languages (German, French, Spanish) and they are still working.
Obviously, I'm not in a position to verify that. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:11, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
The Józef Piłsudski Institute of America in NY is looking for a Wikipedian in Residence. Details in December version of the Institute newsletter http://www.pilsudski.org/portal/en/news-and-events/bulletin (direct link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yAqKS0iAfmLmDVGov-vy_C0mBZibov_Qh8OX5LSSTPY/edit). Please pass it along if you think any project of newsletter may be interested! -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:29, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
I couldn't find anything on this, so I was curious as to whether or not we have a policy for this. Should something like "George Washington's policy" be linked as George Washington's policy or George Washington's policy (the former piping the link so the 's is linked. Ryan Vesey 03:13, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Finding some information on how to do things in Wikipedia is still a terrible pain. Why can't we have (or if we have, why isn't it easy to find?) a search tool for the workings of Wikipedia editing. I spent too much time searching around trying to find how to embed a Wikicommons photo into an article. Often, when I am trying to figure out how to do some-thing on Wik, I wind up just going to articles that I hope have already gone through the process I will need. I'd much rather be able to simply type in a search list and get a relevant answer. Kdammers ( talk) 12:34, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't understand how the bold mark-up works. 'If I click on the big bold B, I get an odd number of squotes. And when I type inside, I get this .
or this'. In fact, I need to add a sixth squote. This seems counter-intuitive and a waste of time. Why aren't there six squotes to begin with?
Kdammers (
talk)
12:41, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
If you type '''this''' ( ' ' ' this ' ' ' ) you get this... I don't understand why you get an odd number of quotes. I get three in front and three behind.
Lova Falk'
talk
13:31, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
The B at the left end of the bar above the edit window inserts six ' marks, or if first a section of text that someone wants to make bold is highlighted, it puts three in front and three behind, making the highlighted section bold. Right underneath the B, if the Advanced option is enabled, is a choice of headings, and it possible that was clicked on by mistake. As to why one of the six ' marks is missing, it is easy for the cursor to get moved, causing new typing to be in the wrong place, or to replace existing characters. Show preview is always handy to see that what was intended is what actually will appear. Some of the wiki's have direct save disabled, forcing a preview first. Apteva ( talk) 23:19, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
When there are multiple translations for a name, do we usually prefer siting the article at one of the standard english script versions? Tangarud or Tengerud? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:36, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
The 2012 Arbitration Committee Election is closing today (in about 8 hours). Until then, users may review the election page to learn more about the election and determine if they are eligible to vote.
Voters are encouraged to review the candidate statements prior to voting. Voter are also encouraged to review the candidate guide. Voters can review questions asked of each candidate, which are linked at the bottom of their statement, and participate in discussion regarding the candidates.
Voters can cast their ballot by visiting Special:SecurePoll/vote/259.
Voters can ask questions regarding the election at this page.
For the Electoral Commission. MBisanz talk 15:10, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
As I have expressed before, I am not a fan of our Article Feedback tool. I think it’s an unnecessary alternative to talk pages that does nothing to bring about improvement to the project. That said, if we’re going to have it, our registered users ought to know how to deal with it. I became a bit concerned earlier when I noticed that this comment from the article Barack Obama:
I would like to see the section about Barack Obama's personal life expanded a bit more -- as well as learn more about his family.
had been flagged as "abuse" by no less than five of our registered users. I could be wrong, but I personally don’t see even the faintest hint of anything that could reasonably be called "abuse" in that comment. Do we have a policy or guideline for what constitutes "abuse" of the feedback tool? If so, could anyone elaborate on how this particular comment meets the criteria? This is just one example of many I could have cited. Evanh2008 ( talk| contribs) 03:27, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
has now been flagged by five users. The comment I mentioned previously is up to six. Evanh2008 ( talk| contribs) 12:46, 27 November 2012 (UTC)A timeline would be great
has been flagged four times. Am I seriously the only one concerned about this? Evanh2008 ( talk| contribs) 12:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)The wikipedia on Stanley Ann Durham states that she moved to Indonesia in 1975. It states Dunham completed her coursework at the University of Hawaii for a M.A. in anthropology in December 1974, and after having spent three years in Hawaii, Dunham, accompanied by her daughter Maya, returned to Indonesia in 1975 to do anthropological field work. The wikipedia for Barak Obama states "Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972, remaining there until 1977 when she went back to Indonesia to work as an anthropological field worker. " Stanley Ann Durham was in Indonesia in 1976 to 1994, except in May-Nov, 1986 and Aug-Nov, 1987. Please fix this discrepancy.
I checked the Obama post you mentioned above, and it seems clear that it was only flagged as abuse by anonymous ip numbers. That's not helpful, of course. But neither is it true to say that "registered users" are doing this. (If they were, we could tell them to knock it off.) I think what would be helpful here would be to figure out why people are doing this, and how to encourage them to do something more useful. For example, if you flag something as abuse, should you be required to give a reason *why* you think it is abuse?-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 15:57, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Is it possible to view Feedback Activity Log for specific IP user? I tried but it's not working.-- В и к и T 18:50, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
All these meta-feedback mechanisms ("mark as helpful", "mark as unhelpful" and "flag as abuse") are quite chaotically employed in general. My experience is that most of the chaos comes from anon users who are just as clueless in using these features as in using the whole tool in general. We also get the opposite thing – the tool will let people mark even their own comments as "helpful", so we often end up with blatantly vandalistic comments that allegedly "100% found helpful". As others have noted, other false markings can occur through mistaken attempts at fixing things. This has happened to me before: there appears to be some way of de-flagging an abusively flagged, good comment (at least I've seen such entries in logs); while searching for a way of doing just that, it has happened to me that I inadvertently added another "abuse" flag to a perfectly good comment. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Books generated by automated generation systems:
Examples listed:
I expect very careful study of the frontispiece will be required. Of course, quoted content which is cited within these works should be fine, unless it was also autogenerated. -- Lexein ( talk) 11:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
There seem to be a growing number of new editors who start editing by making huge edits, usually simply wiping out the article as it is and replacing it with a large bulk of text made all by themselves. For instance, Affectional bond, was changed into this. Now this new version was so blatantly erroneous that I felt it was warranted to simply revert everything back, but sometimes it is not that easy. Sometimes the addition is actually improving the article, but at the same time full of mistakes, and it is not much fun to spend hours cleaning up. But not cleaning up and leaving the article with lots of mistakes, increases the risk that the next new editor continues making the same kind of mistakes. Any thoughts about this? Lova Falk talk 20:35, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
When I undo an edit, it says "If you are undoing an edit that is not vandalism, explain the reason in the edit summary. Do not use the default message only." I doubt this wording is ideal. I just made this edit, where I reverted a bad edit that removed a ref tag (it probably would not have qualified as vandalism, I'm not an expert on that definition). But because editing Wikipedia is not compulsory, doesn't it contradict that advice when we tell volunteers to do or not do something in an edit summary? Also, it seems too user-unfriendly, if I have gotten an article up to "good" status but I am unsure as to what this exactly means. Is there a better place for me to go raise this issue? Biosthmors ( talk) 19:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Feel free to join the discussion here. Nirvana2013 ( talk) 12:30, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
One question, please. Can we tag talk pages in articles of Serbian Ortodox churches with {{ WPSERBIA}} if those are not located in Republic of Serbia, but some other neighboring countries? Thanks! -- WhiteWriter speaks 11:36, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Why are some websites blacklisted? In the years I've been on here, I encountered the warning for the first time when trying to cite a source from Examiner.com. Simply south.... .. walking into bells for just 6 years 20:46, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
thanks for letting me join your great site merry xmas john n — Preceding unsigned comment added by John fredrick n ( talk • contribs) 00:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
2602:306:CE3C:50E0:F8EA:4EB8:BC87:5CD1
What on earth kind of IP is this? Half Shadow 01:35, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
$('a[href^="/wiki/Special:Contributions/2"]').each( function(){
if( $(this).attr('href').match('^/wiki/Special:Contributions/2([0-9A-F]{1,4}:){7}[0-9A-F]{1,4}$') ){
if ( $(this).text().match('^[^U]') ) {
$(this).attr('title',$(this).text()).html( '<span style="color:green;font-style:italic">' + $(this).text().substr(0,16).trim(':') + '</span>' );
}
}
});
});
No idea if this efficient or anything; I just copied it from someone else. -- jpgordon ::==( o ) 19:42, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
The scholarly organization, NINES, at the University of Virginia, has re-vamped and released a fully online version of its textual collation tool, Juxta, at Juxta Commons (juxtacommons.org).
This software was originally created to help scholars visualize and analyze differences between versions of a single text (manuscript, proof, printed editions, etc.). However, the new web version should be useful to a wider audience, including Wikipedia scholars and users. Juxta Commons works with the Wikipedia API to allow users to add various revisions of Wikipedia articles as sources, and then collate them to see the underlying edits.
Mitt Romney: A sampling of edits from the month of October http://juxtacommons.org/shares/bkzWRV Feminism: A look at one of the more controversial pages http://www.juxtacommons.org/shares/iskskJ Climate Change: http://juxtacommons.org/shares/vGIldu
NINES invites you to make a free account and try out Juxta Commons on TXT, XML, HTML, and PDF files. And, because we're a tiny R&D outfit at UVa, we'd really appreciate your feedback. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmw6h ( talk • contribs) 16:24, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I've been editing WP for a while, but I've never participated in the enhancement of an article to take it to GA status. I'd like to have this experience.
I don't really care what article it is, I just want to collaborate with other users and take an article (any article) to GA status.
Where can I find other users looking to collaborate to take an article to GA? I'm sure if I see a few articles that people want to take to GA status, I'll be interested in at least one of them and become involved.
Also, if any of you reading this has an article that you're interested in taking to GA status, let me know and perhaps we can work on it together.
Thanks, Azylber ( talk) 08:59, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
According to the Mayan Calendar and Nostradamus prophecy. Prepare for Zombies walking the earth, earthquakes and floods..... :) --
Jondel (
talk)
11:56, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
....uhh, nothing happened?!!--
Jondel (
talk)
01:31, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Why does Wik so often have to follow the most cryptic and unclear and unhelpful ways of the Internet? One of many examples I have run into is the "Hint" at the place where one can get an image (I've forgotten what it's called, and I can get to it from some pictures in Wikipedia (e.g., Hunac Ceel) but not others (e.g., Chicago) - another gripe) which has (on my screen) tiny murky images (buttons) that are supposed to indicate for what purposes the picture is to be used (i.e., Wikipedia or some-thing else, that I don't know). When I clicked on the Wik button, I just got {[file...]]. You might think I obtuse, but I didn't know what to do at that point. I was looking for a verb, such as "Copy the text you see below" and paste it at the top [?] of the article or section you are editing." If that's too long, how about: Cop this? Maybe in a decade or three, the editors will all be converts to Gates's idea that people, not machines, have to change. But right now there are still a lot of us who are humans who use and prefer normal English. Kdammers ( talk) 10:08, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
For the details, see Talk:Genie (feral child)#Article title. Basically, the current titled doesn't seem to quite fit, but there's no immediately obvious better title and none seems to be forthcoming. Thoughts/suggestions there would be hugely appreciated. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 04:59, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
What in the world is going on with the country Niger on Wikipedia? Every link to Niger changes to a bunch of symbols, and links to the @ sign. I tried inserting a hatnote there, but gave up after too many futile attempts. Why is a blatant violation of WP:CENSORED hard-wired into the MediaWiki code? And is there anyone in the world who is actually offended by people calling the country by its real name? Do people walk around saying "I'm from a bunch of keyboard symbols." Do the airport signs say "Welcome to @"? (Sorry for the misplaced punctuation.) It's getting a little ridiculous here. Sorry for ranting, but it's starting to seem like one person with an agendum is trying to impose his views on the community here.
That being said, if there was indeed a discussion about this, I'll be glad to take a look. Even so, the coding is still messed up. (Try clicking on Talk after going to the country's article. -- YPN YPN ✡ 02:08, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
I guess I'll enumerate my concerns more clearly:
YPN YPN ✡ 15:31, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
Hey would anybody please check if when typing in "wiki:vpn" in the search box and click enter that you get redirected to another (malicious?) site? Thanks Hybirdd ( talk) 23:34, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
When this page wili be update for November? [10] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xaris333 ( talk • contribs) 14:55, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
Thx. Xaris333 ( talk) 21:45, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Is there a WikiProject for adding Sources and References in the articles? Xaris333 ( talk) 21:45, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Thxs! Xaris333 ( talk) 15:38, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
I have created a new portal for one of the few remaining countries without a portal. Please check it out: Portal:South Sudan and add more content, change the colors or whatever. And please help me populate the DYK section. It is currently commented out but all it needs is filling in and can be publish. አቤል ዳዊት (Janweh) ( talk) 21:54, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Cheatsheet went up recently in daily views from about 1000 to 4000, any ideas why? Biosthmors ( talk) 06:56, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
We're a bit low on reviewers due to the holiday, and even with a five-day extension, we're still running rather behind. If anyone would like to participate, Wikipedia:Featured_picture_criteria is the criteria featured pictures are evaluated against, and anyone may vote. You may want to review some of the pictures already promoted to get an idea of the quality we're looking for for certain image types. Cheers! Adam Cuerden ( talk) 01:27, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
If after power logging off, how do you log in again to home page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.176.102.243 ( talk) 06:51, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
I'd like a private wiki (some pages may be public) that does not involve me having to learn a new syntax different from Wikipedia's.
I am not a techie and all the descriptions I have found leave me blurred.
What is the best way of setting this up please?
JOHN BIBBY — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jb1944 ( talk • contribs) 09:47, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi! Didn't know where to ask so decided to ask here. I was wondering if there is some toolserver or wiki popular pages rank page (something similar to Wikipedia:WikiProject Latvia/Popular pages or this? -- Edgars2007 ( talk/ contribs) 11:47, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
The Category:2013 North Indian Oceah cyclone season should obviously be the Category:2013 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, and the 2013 North Indian Ocean cyclone season should be in the category. Out of perhaps an abundance of caution, I request a fix. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 22:54, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi, this is just a note to say that the 2013 WikiCup will be starting soon, with signups remaining open throughout January. The WikiCup is an annual competition in which competitors are awarded points for contributions to the encyclopedia, focussing on audited content (such as good articles, featured articles, featured pictures and such) and high importance articles. It is open to new and old Wikipedians and WikiCup participants alike. Even if you don't want to take part, you can sign up to receive the monthly newsletters. Rules can be found here. Any questions can be directed to the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! J Milburn ( talk) 18:55, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
I found this during NPP. Can someone who is halfway knowledgeable about these things tell me if this meets any (any!) guideline for inclusion? I feel it doesn't but I can't PROD or AFD it just because I don't understand it. Ignore the gushy language, that can be fixed. Thanks! § FreeRangeFrog croak 00:59, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
I was looking at the usage statistics organized by operating system and saw there was section titled "Other" that made up a portion. Is that a place where I can get more detailed stats into that "Other" section? Thanks. Wiki131wiki ( talk) 10:37, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Wishes 111Alleskönner |
— Allrounder ( talk) 21:02, 31 December 2012 (UTC) PS: You can insert this with {{User:111Alleskönner/Happy new year|1=~~~}}
Happy new year to all! -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:00, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Just for fun:
Feel free to add to the list. :-) Dcoetzee 00:19, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
seems it is corrupted, shows full junk characters page. i looked some other articales they are fine.-- Kurumban ( talk) 16:18, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
...but I was curious if anyone knows a list of longest article titles here at WP. E.g., United States v. 11 1/4 Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Part Mrs. Moffat’s Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness.... -- j⚛e decker talk 17:58, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I have recently been collaborating with Anamasry regarding his proposal at VPR. It entails the development of an Arabic-to-English articles list, in which articles on the Arabic Wikipedia but not on the English Wikipedia could be found. This would enable interested editors to determine whether or not the subject is suitable for inclusion on the English Wikipedia; of course, a few will not be, but there should be some about which articles can be created. If any editors are fluent in both Arabic and English, their assistance would be greatly appreciated; anyone at all is welcome to participate. dci | TALK 20:18, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm looking for some guidance on tools and best practices for creating multiple articles by importing data from a file (CSV, XML, spreadsheet) into variables in a template, for example, for creating geography stubs. I searched and could not find anything that was very helpful. Many thanks. - Mr X 04:38, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy has been explained - sources refer to the individuals as Palestinian, so we do the same. Topic closed
AndyTheGrump (
talk)
21:49, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
|
---|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Syrian_civil_war go to the section of "i change the "palestine" section in foreign civilians killed" and tell me what should i do.this guy has nothing to say in the discussion and resisting to my simple edith with excusese about sources when its all about logic and common sense and his source dosnt give any information that support his claim and obviously dosnt relate to the chart. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.180.133.107 ( talk) 21:22, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
|
I am currently applying to be a member of BAG and input is greatly appreciated.— cyberpower Offline Happy 2013 13:31, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Hello, to all interested, please note that the Greek Statistics Authority has issued the population data for all Greece, Greek cities/villages after the 2011 census in http://www.statistics.gr/portal/page/portal/ESYE/BUCKET/General/resident_population_census2011.xls . The list is in Greek. It can be used to update the population data in all relevant articles. -- FocalPoint ( talk) 15:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
It appears that SmackBot is one of the first software entities who's personal details have been sought by subpoena. (As to hardware, in 2008 two laser printers were served takedown notices by the RIAA.) Neumont University is seeking from the WMF the personal details (email, IP, phone, address etc.) of all editors who edited their page, as part of their lawsuit (see page for details) against a third party. Needless to say I heartily oppose the blanket revelation of such details (unless they wish to bring a case against SmackBot) as in intrusion into SmackBot's seclusion and solitude, as well as the chilling effect such a subpoena could have on free speech, and as general muppetry.
I shall be contacting both Neumont and their solicitors expressing both my surprise and displeasure at the inappropriately broad range of their subpoena. I would encourage anyone who feels as strongly as I do to do likewise.
Neumont's Las Vegas solicitors are
John L. Krieger Esq. Lewis and Roca, 3993 Howard Hughes Parkway Suite 600 Las Vegas, NV 89169 (702) 949-8200 JKrieger@LRLaw.com
Neumont University is at
10701 South River Front Parkway Suite 300 South Jordon UT 84095 (801) 302-2800 Fax (801) 302 2880 info@neumont.edu
No named contact, unfortunately at Neumont, though the founders are listed on their article page, and plenty of other information is available on the web.
Happy Christmas Eve everyone!
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:11, 24 December 2012 (UTC).
Rich, I can't work out if this is hilarious or worrying. Can you reveal the details of the subpoena? How was it received? Via the "email this user" function? Does it say what they are going to do with this information? Full text would be good.
Anyone know the legal ins and out? Can a company force you to reveal your identity to them?
I think the Foundation should take a position on this. If people with lawyers can force a loss of anonymity, it challenges the whole way WikiMedia projects work.
Yaris678 ( talk) 16:48, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
To summarise, and respond a well as I can, it is both hilarious and worrying. The subpoena was served on the WMF, which is the right place to send it. Obviously I am not worried that the "personal details" of SmackBot go into the pubic domain (I am pretty open about my identity), nor even that worried about the other editors of that page (sorry guys). My concern is the type of subpoena which as Adam says is "over-broad and a fishing expedition". If this type of subpoena is allowed then one can imagine over the course of time a great amount of personal data becoming public in court evidence files, or in the files of lawyers (bless 'em) who specialise in serving WMF. And this could include people who live in repressive regiemes. And it is lawyers practice to reuse the same wording, so if this succeeds it will set a precedent for the approach taken.
WMF have been pretty good notifying those involved, and I assume that they will take the appropriate steps. As to not editing the page to avoid being caught up in the subpoena, that is one option, another is to edit it precisely to be caught up in it as Spartacus suggested. I think the process the lawyers might follow is after email/IP addresses were obtained to serve notice on the email providers/ISPs. The lawyers do not care about the cost since either their client or the defendant will be expected to pay.
I am of the opinion that the lawyers have gone about this the wrong way, and there should therefore be no problem with defusing the situation, but I am also aware that "the law is an ass". It is important that we protect ourselves as individuals and as a community, part of this is the reason we set up the WMF, of course but we cannot wholly delegate it to them. I will attempt to keep you up to date on this issue.
Rich
Farmbrough,
02:12, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
Wikipedia has some different name spaces.
I want to use a tool to show me how big the main article space is, compared to the talk space for those articles, compared to all the other meta Wikipedia stuff.
What tools can I use to do this, and how do I use them?
-- 87.113.161.104 ( talk) 14:07, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
This is some months old, but gives a fair idea.
Namespace | Count |
---|---|
Main | 9,375,576 |
Talk | 4,540,406 |
User | 1,457,343 |
User talk | 7,775,605 |
Wikipedia | 721,450 |
Wikipedia talk | 144,174 |
File | 810,359 |
File talk | 138,924 |
MediaWiki | 1,608 |
MediaWiki talk | 937 |
Template | 424,551 |
Template talk | 177,834 |
Help | 956 |
Help talk | 463 |
Category | 852,775 |
Category talk | 587,880 |
Portal | 109,930 |
Portal talk | 25,669 |
Book | 3,113 |
Book talk | 2,904 |
Total | 27,152,457 |
Basically a tad over 1/3 of Wikipedia is actual article pages, and more than half of those are redirects.
Rich
Farmbrough,
19:27, 31 December 2012 (UTC).
Category:Emblem images that should be in SVG format includes photographs many stitched badges. I am not convinced that these should be replaced with artwork.
Rich
Farmbrough,
00:15, 31 December 2012 (UTC).
Talk:Red (Taylor Swift album)#File:Taylor Swift - Red (Deluxe).jpg proves that it is a redundant predecessor to WP:files for deletion. Also, Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 December 29#File:Robotic Richard Simmons.png proves that almost nobody understands or knows how to elaborately or clearly explain policy. What's wrong with describing images themselves in full? Why explaining policy? -- George Ho ( talk) 19:36, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Through an email from his wife to the the Dinosaur Mailing List, I learned that User:KTDykes has passed away. FunkMonk ( talk) 14:10, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
How do I italicise an article title? Specifically R v Registrar General ex parte Segerdal. Prioryman ( talk) 11:02, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
I put a request to harmonize a Indonesian province article title with titles of similar articles from other countries and to remove ambiguity - no prove for primary topic found: Talk:Bengkulu#Requested_move. AsianGeographer ( talk) 03:18, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Hi everyone in eng wiki,and sorry for my bad eng.
I'm just editing fazhengnian artical,and some user said that my edition used too many sources from primary source.Though I told them that the Chinese gov's source is not a primary source,they still do not truse me,and evenmore try to del it.
fazhengnian is really from Falungong,and it is very funny,though it is really a truth.And many westerner still don't know it,I'm just wanted to told them that Falungong is a humor。Now if you have any source from other media,just write in it,thx a lot.-- Edouardlicn ( talk) 10:22, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
It was suggested to me at Jimbo Wales's talkpage that it would be advisable to post here about an RfC, to gain attention for it: at this one regarding whether to include text about a BLP subject's sex change (when she has clearly indicated she wants the issue to be omitted out of privacy concerns) the RfC is completely overrun by people who have already commented at BLPN, and so it would be useful to get some new voices. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 20:26, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
I just found this map [11] based on the most used words in various "History of..." articles on Wikipedia. It's interesting, but I don't think it tells us much. Ryan Vesey 22:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you to everyone who volunteered last year on the Wikimedia fundraising 'User Experience' project. We have talked to many different people in different countries and their feedback has helped us immensely in restructuring our pages. If you haven't heard of it yet, the 'User Experience' project has the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries (outside the USA) and enhancing the localization of our donation pages.
I am (still) searching for volunteers to spend some time on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.
The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. **All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be very low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)**
By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email ppena@wikimedia.org. All countries needed (excepting USA)!!
Thanks!
Pats Pena
Global Fundraising Operations Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
Anyone know of a page that has the number of all articles in Wikipedia in all 270 some odd languages? Thelmadatter ( talk) 21:45, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I am observing what I believe to be persistent disruptive edits from a specific user on an article page and associated talk pages.
These disruptive edits include: Failure to respond to dispositive talk page questions, apparent collaboration with sockpuppets, frequent use of ad hominum and failure assume good, and inappropriate insertion of discussion on BLPN.
I am not the first person to accuse the user in question of disruptive conduct.
The extensive time spent responding to this users disruptive conduct, and documenting same, would have been unnecessary had Wikipedia guidelines for conduct been followed. How should I address this matter? Deicas ( talk) 21:44, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Below is the full text of my complaint with with disruptive user identification and the pages involved unredacted. Note that aspects of this issue are under discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#talk:Paul_Krugman
I am observing what I believe to be persistent disruptive edits from User:FurrySings at Paul Krugman and talk:Paul Krugman.
These disruptive edits include:
I am not the first person to accuse User:FurrySings of disruptive conduct. [14] [15] [16] [17]
FurrySings is specifically mentioned [18] in an article [19] by William A. Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School. This article was linked to [20] by the very popular [21] blog Instapundit.
The extensive time spent responding to this users disruptive conduct, and documenting same, would have been unnecessary had he followed Wikipedia guidelines for conduct. I suspect that there are others that feel similarly.
How should I address this matter? Deicas ( talk) 01:30, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Apparently, this report is over my stating my belief the Krugman Enron bruhaha was started by unethical political activists, and that I don't see why it should be in the Krugman bio, here. Deicas then accused me of breaking WP:NPA, and I responded by asking him who I was attacking and how I had attacked them. Deicas replied that I had attacked whoever had introduced that section into the Krugman bio. So I'ld like to ask, is saying the incident is an example of swiftboating by mendacious Conservative activists (10 years ago) a personal attack on whoever wrote that section (whoever that may be)? If it's not a personal attack, could someone please ask Deicas to please stop accusing me of making personal attacks? Thanks, FurrySings ( talk) 05:23, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Is this question answered in any of our written policies? -- Anthonyhcole ( talk) 13:25, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I did an interview with a small magazine in Mexico City which asked me how many people from Mexico edit Wikipedia. I explained that its probably impossible to know how many people and why. But they would like some kind of statistic if possible.. I dunno, like maybe the number of edits coming from people in Mexico maybe? Is such a thing possible? Thelmadatter ( talk) 03:16, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
The current Featured Picture is
which is offered in no less than six sizes, one of them quite large:
These five smaller sizes appear to be chosen to fit various displays or something like that. They are fine, but I suggest that when an image is this large, it should also be offered in one or more larger intermediate sizes, so that if people are on a slow or expensive connection (or for that matter if Wikipedia is serving slowly, or they just want to be nice to the servers) they have a wider choice of options. Something like 2,560 × 976 and 5,120 × 1,952 pixels would be appropriate in this case. (Also, I suggest the number of megabytes should be shown for these larger sizes if it is more than, say, 1 or 2 MB.)
This suggestion applies to all large images, not just to featured pictures. But I don't know how the alternate sizes are chosen and generated, so I don't know if this should be considered a technical or a policy suggestion. Therefore I'm posting it here. If someone else thinks that this is a good idea but there is a more appropriate Wikipedia forum for it, please copy and paste this message there for me and leave a note here. In any case please post any direct responses here (and not to the talk page for the IP that I'm posting from, which is shared).
Thanks for your attention. -- 69.158.92.247 ( talk) 11:07, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
01060 $wgImageLimits = array( 01061 array( 320, 240 ), 01062 array( 640, 480 ), 01063 array( 800, 600 ), 01064 array( 1024, 768 ), 01065 array( 1280, 1024 ) 01066 );
I am currently (self) nominated to become a member of BAG (Bot Approvals group). Any questions and input you may have is invited with open arms [[ here. ·Add§hore· Talk To Me! 21:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
Was yesterday our 12th birthday? Seems we got some rare praise on it here.-- Canoe1967 ( talk) 22:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
Hey all,
For those that don't know I'm James Alexander the Merchandise Manager at the WMF ( User:Jalexander as staff, User:Jamesofur as a volunteer ). I wanted to get the sense of the community on some things I would like to do for the Wikipedia birthday coming up (Tuesday January 15th for those who forget :) ). This will be our twelfth birthday and the first one that The Wikimedia Shop has been open for. I don't know how many of you have followed the shop or the Giveaways program I've been running but the tldr is that we're running the shop for a couple reasons:
It is very much not a revenue source for the Foundation and is all earmarked specifically towards funding the giveaways. If you haven't checked out the Giveaways program please do! It's been a great success so far and really the only thing slowing it down is me processing them (which is somewhat purposely slower though I'm picking it up). If it's not obviously I'm giving away a shirt there to essentially ANY editor nominated for any good reason :). The idea grew even faster than I expected, especially given a distinct lack of advertising it and we want to expand it past enWP to the other Wikipedias and projects (Probably Meta at first and then seek help for other languages). As part of that I wanted to test some things out, launch a very limited edition item and see what the interest was going to be... which leads to the proposal:
The Proposal
So, after that wall of text, questions? Thoughts? :-) Jalexander-- WMF 03:27, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I am a scientist in the middle of writing another book. My earlier books were published by major academic publishers, and were reasonably well received both critically and in terms of sales. I am also an occasional WP editor and I have studied WP quite a bit (and published papers about various aspects of it). As I'm writing the book, I have my eyes more on an electronic edition than the paper version, and I'm putting in a large number of hyperrefs, about 80% of which are to WP articles. This gave me the idea of a series of WP Monographs (of which my book could be one) with the following characteristics: (1) written by credentialed experts (2) peer-reviewed (3) POV (4) Initial edition always available (5) Author has the choice to accept or reject edits as long as she maintains the work (6) afterwards maintained as the rest of WP.
Please, before you start hating on POV, credentials, etc, consider the following. (1) On many subjects, WP sorely lacks a unified vision -- I could name many articles in my field where this is evident. (2) The author of a WP monograph is not just giving royalties (these rarely amount to much) but also "impact factor" and "published by a major academic publisher" which are significant factors in the academic life, governing promotions, raises, etc. It has to be a major goal to make the system acceptable within academia, and this is not going to happen without peer review (3) Monograph means POV, no way around it. Later editions may dilute this, but even if they don't it's not a catastrophe. (4) Paper lasts forever, with a WP monographs the author is entrusting the Wikimedia Foundation or some other organization to maintain your brainchild in perpetuity. (5-6) This will keep authors on their toes.
WP, like it or not, is becoming the central repository of human knowledge. The proposed monograph series would help tying it to academia. I expect to get a lot of flak for this, but academia is not organized badly for preserving and creating knowledge, so WP may as well take advantage of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DemiSemi ( talk • contribs) 21:17, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
I looked both at WikiBooks and Wikiversity, and it is precisely their anonymous/NPOV nature that I have problems with. For now, only famous professors at the end of their career (emeriti) who can afford to carefully write a book and not give a damn about credit. Take a look e.g. at Don Johnson's beautiful class notes on statistical signal processing http://www.ece.rice.edu/~dhj/courses/elec531/ to see the kind of textbook I have in mind. Realistically, the time it takes to write a chapter in a book like this is the time it takes to write a paper in a journal with good impact factor, and everything in academia is slanted so that you must choose the latter option as long as you have pay grades to make or grant proposals under review. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DemiSemi ( talk • contribs) 16:00, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
User:Ucycoin/sandbox. Not? If yes, then what? I found it because I left an unrelated message on an admin's page where this user was posting about his deleted page (probably speedied). Aside from the, um, interesting stuff there, not sure if it's promotional or what? Maybe it's a copy of the material that was deleted. Or do we leave those kinds of things alone? § FreeRangeFrog croak 00:58, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
We all have the ability to rake sandboxes. It's the edit tool, which even people without accounts have. Notions of magically setting "precedent" are just silly. We've been able to blank stuff since pretty much the first day of the wiki. And it has been documented at Wikipedia:User page that we edit out stuff from user pages, since 2004. It's the simple answer to problematic userspace content such as this, which clearly only FreeRangeFrog and I have actually read. This request for money along the same lines got blanked with the edit tool, too.
This is the simple, straightforward, and calm option; just rake the sandbox, containing personal information of private individuals and accusations of malfeasance, that hasn't been edited since April 2012. And if it turns out later to be an error, it's an error that anyone also has the tools to rectify, unlike the case of using the deletion tool. It's obviously not an error, seeing what else is in Special:Contributions/Ucycoin, in this case. (No, this is not what sandboxes are for.)
The much less calm but much more usual (clearly Smuconlaw hasn't spent much time at Project:Miscellany for deletion where sandboxes are regularly nominated) option is MFD, waving of the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy, and a large bureacratic fuss about something that can be fixed calmly and in one edit, in the way that the user page guideline has described for eight years.
Uncle G ( talk) 15:58, 13 January 2013 (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.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79
A while ago, a discussion at VP(Proposal), also advertised in Signpost, ended with the community support for wider access to HotCat (see Wikipedia_talk:HotCat#Village_Pump_proposal_for_enabling_this_by_default_for_most_editors, which links to that discussion). But a months has passed, and no action seems to have been taken, suggesting there is a missing link between developers and such discussions. How can we make this community decision actually be implemented? Perhaps somebody can forward a link to this to some developer listerv? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:56, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
Though I mostly work on Wikibooks now and my template createing days originate there I wanted to add this template to Wikipedia. Hapgry! You may use it to say your current mood on your user and user talk page! What does it look like? This:
This user is in a good mood. |
or
Downdate is feeling pretty good. |
or
Downdate is angry. |
I'll have more useless templates here soon.
Cheers,
Downdate
Downdate ( talk) 14:15, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to format external links using {{ Cite web}} and related templates or should we always stick to the plain link and description? Ryan Vesey 17:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't have thousands of edits on here, but I have been on here since 2004 and most of my edits are substantial, including major new articles and rewrites of major articles. (I am only posting under an IP address to avoid identifying the editor discussed below, since my intended point is broader than our personal dispute.)
In all that time I've never posted on or read this section as far as I recall, but here I go. I'm really concerned that some of today's most prolific community members have installed themselves as petit tyrants.
To see the creation of WP:LETITGO really saddens me. "In my day" (roll out the zimmerframe) talk pages were dominated with thoughtful, compromise-driven discussion. Now they are dominated by requests for improvement which are not responded to, followed by shit-fights driven by self-interested parties.
I am not about to WP:LETITGO myself as I am determined not to leave a gaping hole in the coverage of the encyclopedia. But I really do worry. I am fundamentally dedicated to the core principles of an open, factual, NPOV, free, libre encyclopedia, and to the principles of participative democracy in collaboration, particularly with regards to the need to listen and to compromise and to adhere to previous consensus positions. I recently made a potentially controversial edit, half-anticipating a WP:BRD cycle-- but the level of fillibuster I copped from this 10000+-edit-person with a chock-a-block vanity page has shocked me. Responses from this person consistently assumed bad faith, disregarded the discussion they purported to respond to, failed to make any practical, constructive suggestions, and adopted a condescending tone both in the text and the logs which bordered on and crossed into personal attack on many occasions.
All of this just makes me want to say, fuck that -- I have better things to spend my time on. But I'm stubborn and idealistic and most of all dedicated to a free/libre, open, verifiable, documented information font for all of humanity, so I will not be deterred. But plenty of people would have the superior judgement just to walk away from such a breach of good faith and never come back.
Might I suggest that this is why WP is losing editors.
Looking at this person's log, he's running around whacking people with a WP police state batten dozens of times a day. My own experience shows that not all of these people deserved the assumption of bad faith. Most likely, quite a number of these people are acting in good faith, will try to enter dialog with this person, only to be ignored and further abused. I would rather not identify this person (although of course the logs are there for all to see) because I am not posting this as an attack on that person. This person is not exceptional. A lot of WP frequent flyers seem to operate this way. Instead I want to point out that I think the tolerance and encouragement of these practices in general is a problem for WP and is probably a major factor behind the decline in editing participation.
Overall, my recent experience of Wikipedia reminds me far too much of the Stanford prison experiment and I think the community needs to reign in the petit tyrants. Let's return to the assumption of good faith I was delighted to see in my Welcome Message, which concluded not by telling me to STFU and go away, but instead by telling me to be bold!-- 144.137.9.60 ( talk) 14:53, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Say I was to commission a professional translator to translate a Wikipedia article for me. Am I correct that I don't need to ask them to release / sell me any rights, as any translation of Wikipedia is, by default, copyrighted by CC-BY-SA, even if the person doing the translation is not a Wikipedia editor? In such a case, how to deal with attribution, when reintroducing the content to Wikipedia? Should I ask the translator if s/he wants to be credited (seems like the best option)?
(Incidentally, since a professional translator is getting paid for the work, I wonder how the "editing Wikipedia for $" crowd would look at this situation :) -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 18:36, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I've full-protected Hurricane Sandy but am doing RL chores on and off today. Can people who have an opinion express it on the page over various disputed sections so we can get some wide consensus? Casliber ( talk · contribs) 00:07, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
The titles of articles dealing with Culture aren't consistent. Sometimes it's "Culture of X", sometimes it's "Culture in X". We have Culture of Paris, yet also Culture in Berlin. So which is it? OttawaAC ( talk) 21:31, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
I propose that we add microformat-style HTML class names to citation templates, to improve their machine readability; please see Proposal: citation microformat and discuss there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:54, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
We have office hours today at 17:30 UTC with Denny, Lydia (and me) from the Wikidata team. Office hours will be in the #wikimedia-office IRC channel. You can join via webchat: http://webchat.freenode.net/ or another IRC client. Cheers -- Aude ( talk) 10:23, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
The Hurricane Sandy article (or wikipedia, take your pick) has received criticism for the absence within it, for a period, of climate change information. The chief criticism is in this Popular Science article, Meet The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia. The question is raised at Talk:Hurricane Sandy#Mention the coverage of lack of climate change info in this article? whether it is appropriate to mention this criticism within the Hurricane Sandy article. -- Tagishsimon (talk) 19:55, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
While doing research for an article I'm working on, I learned of Brikner, Illinois. I looked it up and all I can find is this. Is that enough to create an article saying it is a populated place? Does anyone know where I can find more? Ryan Vesey 21:02, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I was thinking if there was a way to make it so that there would be a way to rework thentalk pages of articles that fall under multiple Wikiproject Scopes so that once an article's quality improves, we dont have to update each class parameter on each wikiproject template on the talkpage. Im no good at making these things but does anyone think it would be easier to handle?
What i had in mind was that separate class parameter and only keep the importance parameter on to its own wikiproject template.
Its hard to explain when i dont even know the name of the template. Lucia Black ( talk) 02:26, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
|class=Stub
for any unassessed article that contains a {{
Stub}} template, and another that updates the class assessment to match the highest class assigned by any other WikiProject.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
22:40, 27 October 2012 (UTC)We have so many templates for warning editors even when they do one single bad edit, and these templates are easy to find, easy to use. I would so much like several similarly easy to find and easy to use templates for a single edit, or a couple of edits that are really good. Something not at all as big as a barnstar, and a bit more specific than the cookies and the kittens. For instance {{good catch!}} for someone who reverts subtle vandalism, {{good writing!}} for somebody who adds nicely written content, or simply {{good work!}}. An easy way to increase the encouragement. What do you all think? Lova Falk talk 20:15, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I am happy you think it is a good idea. Now, does anybody know the procedure for template development?? On what page to ask? Lova Falk talk 17:26, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I didn't know where to find this out, so hopefully someone here can answer or direct me.
The article Eliza_Sam is about a person who has appeared in Chinese TV /film roles. Within the credits section, the Chinese name of these productions is directly linked to the Chinese Wikipedia article about the film/TV show. Is that appropriate? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:35, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi all! How are you doing? I am Everton (or just Tom), a volunteer of the Portuguese Wikipedia and also helping with a education program there. Recently I've been trying to understand some differences between WP PT and WP EN dynamics and I would like to know if you can tell me your opinion on:
I am asking the first question because on WP PT our talk pages are seldom used, whilst here I've seen much more engagement on WP EN talk pages (there are even interesting studies like this one: Dynamics of Conflicts in Wikipedia). And the second question because we have checked most (~95%) of our projects are simply stuck (no collaboration at all!) and we are thinking about gathering dozens of WikiProjects on broader ones with active members (something like 7 or 8 WikiProject). Any help is appreciated! Thanks! -- everton137 ( talk) 01:27, 7 November 2012 (UTC) P. S. corrections on possible mistakes of my English are also appreciatd.
[No response when I asked this on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style ]
I've added a link to Category:Members and Associates of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, in a "see also" section of Royal Birmingham Society of Artists; but that's not very elegant. Is there a preferred way of making such links? Should I format it as, say, Members and Associates? The template we use to link to the related Commons category is much nicer; do we, or should we, have a template for linking to our own categories? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:16, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
How can I find out who are the most active editors on articles within the scope of a particular WikiProject...for the past day, week, month, year, etcetera? Greg Bard ( talk) 12:14, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Just thought I would mention the Signpost is looking for questions on Wikiprojects. I wish others would ask questions too, it is getting pretty lonely out there :-) Ottawahitech ( talk) 19:58, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I've started WikiProject Squatting to address our coverage of squatting-related topics. — Hex (❝?!❞) 10:38, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Nominations for the 2012 Arbitration Committee Election opened over the weekend. There are expected to be 8 seats up for election and experienced editors area always needed to run. If your interested, information on nominating yourself is available at the candidates page. Nominations will remain open until Wednesday 23:59, 20 November. Monty 845 03:57, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello, folks! On December 16 it will be the 10th anniversary of the first Creative Commons licenses. They will be parties around the world. We should put a central message or otherwise celebrate too, I think. Bye! -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 19:49, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
This Answers.com page appears to copy the entire Wikipedia article about slapstick in violation of our license. I would suppose they pirated Wikipedia content for their other entries as well. Do they have permission? If not, I have a cease-and-desist letter (not a DMCA notice) ready to send out. 68.173.113.106 ( talk) 03:05, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi! I was wondering whether an article about a highschool would meet notability requirements. I'm in the 11th grade at a quite prestigious highschool in Romania and I thought it would be nice to have an article on Wikipedia about it, since it is the place where many Romanian personalities studied and also the place where a few later-renowned scientists taught.
I'd like to mention beforehand that I have a 5-year experience with Wikipedia so I know about the NPOV, notability guidelines, need for citing the sources, etc, yet I'm asking you this since I'd like to involve many people from the highschool in the writing of the article and I don't want to have the unwanted surprise of having it deleted in a few days. -- Petru Dimitriu ( talk) 17:57, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
(:etc.) Actually, in the third world there are many 'notable' high schools that have had no newspaper coverage and certainly do not have web pages. I think it's unfortunate that they cannot get into Wikipedia, but that's the reality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.179.19.26 ( talk) 01:15, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I patrol recent changes to medical articles and have noticed a steep rise in vandalism over the last 12 hours. Is this happening in any other topics? -- Anthonyhcole ( talk) 16:46, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Hey all!
I'm happy to announce the start of the WMF merchandise giveaways program. We're asking for community nominations for users who deserve something extra. Do you know a patient mentor? A trusted admin, or amazing photographer? A great writer or copyeditor?
The page, Wikipedia:Merchandise giveaways, and the program in general are very much in beta so we're looking for both nominations and general feedback about the process (how easy/hard it is, questions that aren't answered, prettier awards and page design etc! ). To keep discussion centralized please leave comments and questions on the project talk page. Jalexander--WMF 18:45, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to bring this news to Wikipedia Community's notice:
Thanks, Jacopo Werther iγ∂ψ=mψ 15:52, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
During the recent fundraising test, the Wikimedia Foundation received more than donations - it also received notes of appreciate for what we do. A few of the notes in this batch:
It's amazing how many lives we touch and how much they appreciate the work we do.
To all of you who write articles or fact check them or copy edit them or revert vandalism or supply media or provide support to those who do - thank you. :) It's a great thing we're building here. -- Maggie Dennis (WMF) ( talk) 20:33, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
I have realised that Wikipedia (many languages) is being used to spread a meme. As far as I understand the idea of Wikipedia it wasn't created to spread memes. The meme has been removed from English and German Wikipedias but it's almost impossible to oppose tens of funny editors creating articles in tens of languages. Xx236 ( talk) 08:17, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Asian American#Representative approval. RightCowLeftCoast ( talk) 04:27, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Someone called WikiPlays on YouTube (and also WikiPlays.org) has uploaded 40,000 videos on YouTube, between August and now, made from English Wikipedia articles with speech synthesis and a slideshow of images from the article. Most are new and have zero views. The most popular is Britney Spears with 47,000 views since August 30. -- LA2 ( talk) 02:39, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia allows commercial use. Since the videos are derivatives, they must be released by the same CC BY-SA licence or a compatible one. -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 16:32, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
I just open this page (not because I wanted to add myself, but for another reason) and noticed that most of the transcluded pages do not get any reviews at all. Actually, most of those who got, I could recognize the names, so that I assume people are willing to review users who are visible at the general noticeboards and are not willing to review anybody they do not know. I know a review is an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, especially a review of someone one never heard about, but still I think it is a community service. If we can not provide timely reviews as community, may be we should shut up the Editor review page, or pin a notice that a review has only a tiny chance to go through, or smth. I do not have any good solution, and this is why I am posting this on this village pamp (admittedly the least active one), but may we could treat the absence of reviews similarly how we treat backlogs, or may be someone else has better solutions.-- Ymblanter ( talk) 10:15, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Can someone point me to good readings about "stacking sidebars"? Navboxes as a footer are easy, but sidebars are a topic. Prevalence? Presence? - DePiep ( talk) 19:12, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
User:Michael2012ro, who is also active upon the English Wikipedia, says that all instances of historical-critical information about Jesus and Christianity means using Wikipedia for spreading Anti-Christian propaganda. He says that the information which I have translated from Historical Jesus and Historicity of Jesus upon ro:Isus cel istoric confuses his mind and that it constitutes Anti-Christian propaganda, violating thus WP:NPOV. Consider how many good-faith, competent and experienced editors he has offended by saying this (just look at the history of the two articles). He considers Bart D. Ehrman and Michael Coogan as two Anti-Christian historians expressing fringe views about the Bible and Christian history. He said that since the majority of Romanians are Christians, Wikipedia should render their views as mainstream.
But Michael2012ro is certainly no mainstream Christian, so it is kind of weird for him to play the "Wikipedia should be a democracy" card. The first symptom of this matter was reported at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_136#Mantak Chia on human sexuality (medicine), since Michael2012ro has claimed that Mantak Chia's views stand on equal footing with a medical advice from National Health Service and with peer-reviewed medical studies. The NHS said in a leaflet aimed at teenagers that "an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away" and Michael2012ro sought to counteract this medical fact with Mantak's views about the loss of qi during ejaculation, in spite of being told that it is expressly prohibited by WP:RSMED. Michael2012ro has even said that in a few years the MDs who gave the advice or at least the NHS will change their minds about their advice and that they will embrace alternative medical viewpoints. Of course, I have reported him on ro:Wikipedia:Reclamații but no measure has been taken in respect to his behavior, except some lambasting comment about masturbation made by ro:user:Asybaris01. Tgeorgescu ( talk) 22:15, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Of course, I had no evidence that was not the case, so that's what I assumed. The only thing I can think of would be to start discussion at the talk pages for the en.wikipedia versions of those articles, and invite Michael2012ro to those discussions. Ian.thomson ( talk) 22:46, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
It's such a low quality image. Can we get an OTRS for this image, then digitally enhance it? 68.173.113.106 ( talk) 00:28, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Is it proper use of the language templates to use them within List of United States cable and satellite television networks to identify what language the stations broadcast in? i thought it was for sources only. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:01, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
I just discovered that the Economy of Belize article has claimed that one of the main exports of Belize is dilithium crystals for over a year! I can't imagine how many schoolchildren have reproduced this fascinating tidbit in their reports about Belize. One hopes the U.S. State Department hasn't reproduced it yet, but you never know! Kaldari ( talk) 10:46, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
The 2012 Arbitration Committee Election is now open. Users may review the election page to learn more about the election and determine if they are eligible to vote. The election will run from November 27 until December 10.
Voters are encouraged to review the candidate statements prior to voting. Voter are also encouraged to review the candidate guide. Voters can review questions asked of each candidate, which are linked at the bottom of their statement, and participate in discussion regarding the candidates.
Voters can cast their ballot by visiting Special:SecurePoll/vote/259.
Voters can ask questions regarding the election at this page.
For the Electoral Commission. MBisanz talk 00:00, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello !
Can you welcome me with the appropriate template (like fr:Modèle:Bienvenue nouveau) on my talk page please?
Thank you. -- Orikrin1998 ( talk) 12:18, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Accusations have been made about Ebernesia's non-existence. Some believe that the country does not exist but others know that it is real. There is an established D.R.E. Constitution an government. Although it may not be officially recognized the country exists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.46.208.190 ( talk) 14:39, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I already started an RFC about this, and it's been open for over a week with 0 responses, not even the involved editors have bothered responding. All they do is revent and say, "please don't remove cited material," which, if you've been on Wikipedia for as long as I have, you've heard every POV warrior chant whenever they try to insert poorly sourced nonsense. I'm starting to think that the population of Wikipedia has gotten too low to prevent massive amounts of BS from getting through. No one's watching even highly relevant and current articles.
Anyway, the dispute is over whether or not a highly controversial conspiracy theory by an "unnamed official" in one source is worth a mention. Trivially violates WP:UNDUE, WP:FRINGE, WP:EXCEPTIONAL, and WP:NOT#NEWS IMO.
I'm gonna go browse the RFC list, see if there aren't any other lunatics holding other articles hostage. 159.1.15.34 ( talk) 17:15, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I wasn't exactly sure where to post this, and if you have a better suggestion please let me know. I'm looking for Wikipedia users for a study I'm doing and would like a moment of your time to take a survey, if you can spare it.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QXZ7P9J
Thanks so much. (Also, I'll make sure to clear this out within a few days.)
Kootron ( talk) 02:13, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello:
A simple question -- why is Real Media consistently showing up on the list of blocked tracking companies for the Wikipedia site?
I am using "Do Not Track Plus" in Firefox and it seems to be blocking real media on most wikipedia pages I've visited, including this one.
Thanks D. Morgan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.70.13.186 ( talk) 17:07, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
When I first posted this Real Media was showing up on nearly all the wikipedia pages but now it seems to be on fewer articles. Unless I misunderstand how this works I don't think any company should be monitoring wikipedia.
I didn't expect any tracking on wikipedia which is why it was so noticeable as it was originally showing up on nearly every article. Now it does not, at least on the front-page articles that I checked. Real Media is still showing up on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_%28album%29 as I type this. I wouldn't expect any wiki-contributor to do this intentionally of course but was surprised to see any tracking. To answer point "A" I had only recently loaded the blocking software so I only noticed it a couple days before the first post here. For "B" I haven't noticed any other out-of-place tracking and I have been curious enough to check. Thanks D Morgan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.70.13.186 ( talk) 01:36, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Over this past year there have been 2 fund raising dives for Wikipedia, most recently last week, attempting to raise funds to keep advertizing off the site. I have made an effort to respond to each fund raising campain - as someone who uses the site 3-4 times a week, I feel it is the least I can do. I was truely disapointed when today, November 23, 2012, I looked up a subject only to find advertizements in the results.
I understand Wikimedia is a business with expences and employees - and I applaud their efferts to remain free of advertisments - I am disapointed that we the user community could not step up in their time of need and provide the required capital to keep the pages clean. I hope that in the future if the donations make it possible that the powers that be will remove the advertizing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.71.93.79 ( talk) 04:03, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
I realize that some article topics are ongoing: the Arab–Israeli conflict will probably continue as long as there are Arabs and Israelis. And, for that matter, many other articles are ongoing by their nature: place articles (New York City), astronomy (new observations, etc.). And that is fine with me.
And many articles have a clear ending. For example, the disappearance of Judge Crater, The American Civil War, the Trial of Lizzie Borden. Granted, someone might turn up a new fact, but they would have had to occur during Judge Crater's lifetime or that of his surviving attacker (if any). Or archaelogy or a new letter about the Civil War - all developed in that time frame.
The third category is articles without limit. I won't give a real observation for fear of canvassing. Let's say I choose the Lewinsky scandal and select someone otherwise reliable, who wishes to comment on this really out-of-date event now. Let's say the Pope or Billy Graham or somebody throws out a very public comment about this and it is published. While there is nothing "new" in the comment, the source is new. Is publication required? For me, the issue is closed unless the comment is original, which is quite unlikely at this late date.
What if the comment comes from a reliable source who is "reliable" but not anywhere near that notable? Shouldn't it be original? Can articles with an otherwise "closed" sets of dates go on "forever?"
And is there any policy that addresses this? Thanks. Student7 ( talk) 01:17, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Curious question: why don't IP users get user options (talk and contributions) at the top of the page like registered users? I've noticed that some other wikis show them. The Anonymouse ( talk • contribs) 08:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
I deliver a lot of Wikipedia training, and someone who's asked me to deliver some sessions for them wants something to be given to trainees at the end of the session, saying that they've completed it. before I create my own certificate, or fork a template, do we have a welcome template or barnstar tailored for such purposes, or a PDF certificate that they can print off? I'm not looking for anything that accredits them, but I'd also be interested in hearing of any colleges or similar that give credits for learning to edit or editing Wikipedia, as part of something like a a basic computer literacy or life skills certificate. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:36, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Upon first discovering the wwweb, the most natural human response is to begin work on building the wikipedia. I'm reminded of Lewis Thomas's, "Lives of a Cell". I'm writing because I want to Thank the creators and the minions for the most useful wwweb ideas ever manifest and for what will become the greatest legacy of our race. Thank You All. I donate every year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fdevuono ( talk • contribs) 06:52, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Why does Perpetrator redirect to Suspect? I scanned some dictionaries, which served only to increase my uneasyness. Not being a native English speaker nor a frequent user of the english Wikipedia, I hesitate to request speedy deletion, but I would very much prefer a red link over this misleading redirect. If you agree, please delete this juridical monster or – better still – add useful content if you can. Bertux ( talk) 04:14, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Done Thanks a lot! - Bertux ( talk) 06:10, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Just a reminder that, after an exhausting round of RFCs, WP:Pending changes goes live in a little more than two hours. The policy is in the usual place, at WP:Protection policy. Requests should be handled like any regular request, i.e., at WP:RFPP.
Requests for WP:Reviewer permission can be made at the usual place ( WP:Requests for permissions). Admins automatically have the permission. If you have the permission, you can review changes and will see notes about any articles needing review on your watchlist.
People who are just thrilled about it are reminded that it's for real problems on lower-traffic pages, not for universal deployment, and sincerely, strongly begged not to drown RFPP in requests during these early days.
Good luck, to all of us and the wiki, WhatamIdoing ( talk) 21:30, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Leveson trusted Wikipedia ... and shouldn't have.
This is precisely the sort of nonsense that wider application of Pending Changes or Flagged Revisions might have prevented. Andreas JN 466 15:43, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
See at User:West.andrew.g/Popular pages. Best. Biosthmors ( talk) 16:49, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm rather disgusted by the treatment of a new editor, whose first edits to Sydney Opera House have been reverted, and whose talk page has been hit with a WP:BITEy warning. Rather than get further involved in something that is making me angry, I invite uninvolved folk to review both the edits concerned and discussion on the talk page of the article, and on the talk pages of editors who have taken part. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
The bogus warning issued to the new editor, did not not mention the section blanking, which appears to have been inadvertent.
The full sequence, as can easily be seen, was:
The subsequent allegation that the new user "added or changed content without verifying it by citing reliable sources" is bogus; the sources were provided, in edit #3 above.
At no point before my involvement did anyone reach out to the new editor to offer assistance, or ask what they were trying to achieve.
This is not how new, good faith editors should be treated, and efforts to ensure that they are are treated more reasonably should not be rebuffed, as in this case. As Yaris678's kind intervention seems to have made no difference, I invite other uninvolved editors to review the situation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:59, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Indian cinema task force
Should the award for each language have its own article, or should a few of the articles have their own article and rest be grouped into a common article? Can Punjabi, Manipuri and Konkani be independent articles, or should they be a part of the 'Discontinued...' article? The Discoverer ( talk) 04:42, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Since MfD's are not too populated, wanted to note this: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 17, 2012. Don't care what side you're on, but would like to see a full quorum. Herostratus ( talk) 06:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
CNN.com is running a piece on Wikipedia's upcoming fundraising drive based on a televised interview with Jimbo, and the link on the CNN.com homepage (at least the U.S. edition) says, "Can Wikipedia stay ad-free?" Obviously, the answer is yes. While the link title is most likely clickjacking, both the link and the article are misleading to readers who are not so informed about what Wikipedia is and how it's run. The author also apparently neglected basic research; he calls Wikia a "video gaming" website. Bad article is bad. szyslak ( t) 07:25, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Is there a policy regarding the archiving of active discussions? Will I get in trouble for continuing to contribute to a page that a non-admin has archived out of the blue (yes I admit I am the only person objecting). Ottawahitech ( talk) 14:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Not sure where else to announce this (other than the article's talk page), but an OTRS correspondent writes:
Thought you should know that the Thai Ministry of Communication has just blocked the King of Thailand page (Bhumibol Adulyadej). That's on the English and Thai Wikipedias when trying to view from within Thailand. Checked a few other languages (German, French, Spanish) and they are still working.
Obviously, I'm not in a position to verify that. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:11, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
The Józef Piłsudski Institute of America in NY is looking for a Wikipedian in Residence. Details in December version of the Institute newsletter http://www.pilsudski.org/portal/en/news-and-events/bulletin (direct link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yAqKS0iAfmLmDVGov-vy_C0mBZibov_Qh8OX5LSSTPY/edit). Please pass it along if you think any project of newsletter may be interested! -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:29, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
I couldn't find anything on this, so I was curious as to whether or not we have a policy for this. Should something like "George Washington's policy" be linked as George Washington's policy or George Washington's policy (the former piping the link so the 's is linked. Ryan Vesey 03:13, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Finding some information on how to do things in Wikipedia is still a terrible pain. Why can't we have (or if we have, why isn't it easy to find?) a search tool for the workings of Wikipedia editing. I spent too much time searching around trying to find how to embed a Wikicommons photo into an article. Often, when I am trying to figure out how to do some-thing on Wik, I wind up just going to articles that I hope have already gone through the process I will need. I'd much rather be able to simply type in a search list and get a relevant answer. Kdammers ( talk) 12:34, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't understand how the bold mark-up works. 'If I click on the big bold B, I get an odd number of squotes. And when I type inside, I get this .
or this'. In fact, I need to add a sixth squote. This seems counter-intuitive and a waste of time. Why aren't there six squotes to begin with?
Kdammers (
talk)
12:41, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
If you type '''this''' ( ' ' ' this ' ' ' ) you get this... I don't understand why you get an odd number of quotes. I get three in front and three behind.
Lova Falk'
talk
13:31, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
The B at the left end of the bar above the edit window inserts six ' marks, or if first a section of text that someone wants to make bold is highlighted, it puts three in front and three behind, making the highlighted section bold. Right underneath the B, if the Advanced option is enabled, is a choice of headings, and it possible that was clicked on by mistake. As to why one of the six ' marks is missing, it is easy for the cursor to get moved, causing new typing to be in the wrong place, or to replace existing characters. Show preview is always handy to see that what was intended is what actually will appear. Some of the wiki's have direct save disabled, forcing a preview first. Apteva ( talk) 23:19, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
When there are multiple translations for a name, do we usually prefer siting the article at one of the standard english script versions? Tangarud or Tengerud? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:36, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
The 2012 Arbitration Committee Election is closing today (in about 8 hours). Until then, users may review the election page to learn more about the election and determine if they are eligible to vote.
Voters are encouraged to review the candidate statements prior to voting. Voter are also encouraged to review the candidate guide. Voters can review questions asked of each candidate, which are linked at the bottom of their statement, and participate in discussion regarding the candidates.
Voters can cast their ballot by visiting Special:SecurePoll/vote/259.
Voters can ask questions regarding the election at this page.
For the Electoral Commission. MBisanz talk 15:10, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
As I have expressed before, I am not a fan of our Article Feedback tool. I think it’s an unnecessary alternative to talk pages that does nothing to bring about improvement to the project. That said, if we’re going to have it, our registered users ought to know how to deal with it. I became a bit concerned earlier when I noticed that this comment from the article Barack Obama:
I would like to see the section about Barack Obama's personal life expanded a bit more -- as well as learn more about his family.
had been flagged as "abuse" by no less than five of our registered users. I could be wrong, but I personally don’t see even the faintest hint of anything that could reasonably be called "abuse" in that comment. Do we have a policy or guideline for what constitutes "abuse" of the feedback tool? If so, could anyone elaborate on how this particular comment meets the criteria? This is just one example of many I could have cited. Evanh2008 ( talk| contribs) 03:27, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
has now been flagged by five users. The comment I mentioned previously is up to six. Evanh2008 ( talk| contribs) 12:46, 27 November 2012 (UTC)A timeline would be great
has been flagged four times. Am I seriously the only one concerned about this? Evanh2008 ( talk| contribs) 12:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)The wikipedia on Stanley Ann Durham states that she moved to Indonesia in 1975. It states Dunham completed her coursework at the University of Hawaii for a M.A. in anthropology in December 1974, and after having spent three years in Hawaii, Dunham, accompanied by her daughter Maya, returned to Indonesia in 1975 to do anthropological field work. The wikipedia for Barak Obama states "Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972, remaining there until 1977 when she went back to Indonesia to work as an anthropological field worker. " Stanley Ann Durham was in Indonesia in 1976 to 1994, except in May-Nov, 1986 and Aug-Nov, 1987. Please fix this discrepancy.
I checked the Obama post you mentioned above, and it seems clear that it was only flagged as abuse by anonymous ip numbers. That's not helpful, of course. But neither is it true to say that "registered users" are doing this. (If they were, we could tell them to knock it off.) I think what would be helpful here would be to figure out why people are doing this, and how to encourage them to do something more useful. For example, if you flag something as abuse, should you be required to give a reason *why* you think it is abuse?-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 15:57, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Is it possible to view Feedback Activity Log for specific IP user? I tried but it's not working.-- В и к и T 18:50, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
All these meta-feedback mechanisms ("mark as helpful", "mark as unhelpful" and "flag as abuse") are quite chaotically employed in general. My experience is that most of the chaos comes from anon users who are just as clueless in using these features as in using the whole tool in general. We also get the opposite thing – the tool will let people mark even their own comments as "helpful", so we often end up with blatantly vandalistic comments that allegedly "100% found helpful". As others have noted, other false markings can occur through mistaken attempts at fixing things. This has happened to me before: there appears to be some way of de-flagging an abusively flagged, good comment (at least I've seen such entries in logs); while searching for a way of doing just that, it has happened to me that I inadvertently added another "abuse" flag to a perfectly good comment. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Books generated by automated generation systems:
Examples listed:
I expect very careful study of the frontispiece will be required. Of course, quoted content which is cited within these works should be fine, unless it was also autogenerated. -- Lexein ( talk) 11:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
There seem to be a growing number of new editors who start editing by making huge edits, usually simply wiping out the article as it is and replacing it with a large bulk of text made all by themselves. For instance, Affectional bond, was changed into this. Now this new version was so blatantly erroneous that I felt it was warranted to simply revert everything back, but sometimes it is not that easy. Sometimes the addition is actually improving the article, but at the same time full of mistakes, and it is not much fun to spend hours cleaning up. But not cleaning up and leaving the article with lots of mistakes, increases the risk that the next new editor continues making the same kind of mistakes. Any thoughts about this? Lova Falk talk 20:35, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
When I undo an edit, it says "If you are undoing an edit that is not vandalism, explain the reason in the edit summary. Do not use the default message only." I doubt this wording is ideal. I just made this edit, where I reverted a bad edit that removed a ref tag (it probably would not have qualified as vandalism, I'm not an expert on that definition). But because editing Wikipedia is not compulsory, doesn't it contradict that advice when we tell volunteers to do or not do something in an edit summary? Also, it seems too user-unfriendly, if I have gotten an article up to "good" status but I am unsure as to what this exactly means. Is there a better place for me to go raise this issue? Biosthmors ( talk) 19:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Feel free to join the discussion here. Nirvana2013 ( talk) 12:30, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
One question, please. Can we tag talk pages in articles of Serbian Ortodox churches with {{ WPSERBIA}} if those are not located in Republic of Serbia, but some other neighboring countries? Thanks! -- WhiteWriter speaks 11:36, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Why are some websites blacklisted? In the years I've been on here, I encountered the warning for the first time when trying to cite a source from Examiner.com. Simply south.... .. walking into bells for just 6 years 20:46, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
thanks for letting me join your great site merry xmas john n — Preceding unsigned comment added by John fredrick n ( talk • contribs) 00:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
2602:306:CE3C:50E0:F8EA:4EB8:BC87:5CD1
What on earth kind of IP is this? Half Shadow 01:35, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
$('a[href^="/wiki/Special:Contributions/2"]').each( function(){
if( $(this).attr('href').match('^/wiki/Special:Contributions/2([0-9A-F]{1,4}:){7}[0-9A-F]{1,4}$') ){
if ( $(this).text().match('^[^U]') ) {
$(this).attr('title',$(this).text()).html( '<span style="color:green;font-style:italic">' + $(this).text().substr(0,16).trim(':') + '</span>' );
}
}
});
});
No idea if this efficient or anything; I just copied it from someone else. -- jpgordon ::==( o ) 19:42, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
The scholarly organization, NINES, at the University of Virginia, has re-vamped and released a fully online version of its textual collation tool, Juxta, at Juxta Commons (juxtacommons.org).
This software was originally created to help scholars visualize and analyze differences between versions of a single text (manuscript, proof, printed editions, etc.). However, the new web version should be useful to a wider audience, including Wikipedia scholars and users. Juxta Commons works with the Wikipedia API to allow users to add various revisions of Wikipedia articles as sources, and then collate them to see the underlying edits.
Mitt Romney: A sampling of edits from the month of October http://juxtacommons.org/shares/bkzWRV Feminism: A look at one of the more controversial pages http://www.juxtacommons.org/shares/iskskJ Climate Change: http://juxtacommons.org/shares/vGIldu
NINES invites you to make a free account and try out Juxta Commons on TXT, XML, HTML, and PDF files. And, because we're a tiny R&D outfit at UVa, we'd really appreciate your feedback. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmw6h ( talk • contribs) 16:24, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I've been editing WP for a while, but I've never participated in the enhancement of an article to take it to GA status. I'd like to have this experience.
I don't really care what article it is, I just want to collaborate with other users and take an article (any article) to GA status.
Where can I find other users looking to collaborate to take an article to GA? I'm sure if I see a few articles that people want to take to GA status, I'll be interested in at least one of them and become involved.
Also, if any of you reading this has an article that you're interested in taking to GA status, let me know and perhaps we can work on it together.
Thanks, Azylber ( talk) 08:59, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
According to the Mayan Calendar and Nostradamus prophecy. Prepare for Zombies walking the earth, earthquakes and floods..... :) --
Jondel (
talk)
11:56, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
....uhh, nothing happened?!!--
Jondel (
talk)
01:31, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Why does Wik so often have to follow the most cryptic and unclear and unhelpful ways of the Internet? One of many examples I have run into is the "Hint" at the place where one can get an image (I've forgotten what it's called, and I can get to it from some pictures in Wikipedia (e.g., Hunac Ceel) but not others (e.g., Chicago) - another gripe) which has (on my screen) tiny murky images (buttons) that are supposed to indicate for what purposes the picture is to be used (i.e., Wikipedia or some-thing else, that I don't know). When I clicked on the Wik button, I just got {[file...]]. You might think I obtuse, but I didn't know what to do at that point. I was looking for a verb, such as "Copy the text you see below" and paste it at the top [?] of the article or section you are editing." If that's too long, how about: Cop this? Maybe in a decade or three, the editors will all be converts to Gates's idea that people, not machines, have to change. But right now there are still a lot of us who are humans who use and prefer normal English. Kdammers ( talk) 10:08, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
For the details, see Talk:Genie (feral child)#Article title. Basically, the current titled doesn't seem to quite fit, but there's no immediately obvious better title and none seems to be forthcoming. Thoughts/suggestions there would be hugely appreciated. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 04:59, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
What in the world is going on with the country Niger on Wikipedia? Every link to Niger changes to a bunch of symbols, and links to the @ sign. I tried inserting a hatnote there, but gave up after too many futile attempts. Why is a blatant violation of WP:CENSORED hard-wired into the MediaWiki code? And is there anyone in the world who is actually offended by people calling the country by its real name? Do people walk around saying "I'm from a bunch of keyboard symbols." Do the airport signs say "Welcome to @"? (Sorry for the misplaced punctuation.) It's getting a little ridiculous here. Sorry for ranting, but it's starting to seem like one person with an agendum is trying to impose his views on the community here.
That being said, if there was indeed a discussion about this, I'll be glad to take a look. Even so, the coding is still messed up. (Try clicking on Talk after going to the country's article. -- YPN YPN ✡ 02:08, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
I guess I'll enumerate my concerns more clearly:
YPN YPN ✡ 15:31, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
Hey would anybody please check if when typing in "wiki:vpn" in the search box and click enter that you get redirected to another (malicious?) site? Thanks Hybirdd ( talk) 23:34, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
When this page wili be update for November? [10] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xaris333 ( talk • contribs) 14:55, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
Thx. Xaris333 ( talk) 21:45, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Is there a WikiProject for adding Sources and References in the articles? Xaris333 ( talk) 21:45, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Thxs! Xaris333 ( talk) 15:38, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
I have created a new portal for one of the few remaining countries without a portal. Please check it out: Portal:South Sudan and add more content, change the colors or whatever. And please help me populate the DYK section. It is currently commented out but all it needs is filling in and can be publish. አቤል ዳዊት (Janweh) ( talk) 21:54, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Cheatsheet went up recently in daily views from about 1000 to 4000, any ideas why? Biosthmors ( talk) 06:56, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
We're a bit low on reviewers due to the holiday, and even with a five-day extension, we're still running rather behind. If anyone would like to participate, Wikipedia:Featured_picture_criteria is the criteria featured pictures are evaluated against, and anyone may vote. You may want to review some of the pictures already promoted to get an idea of the quality we're looking for for certain image types. Cheers! Adam Cuerden ( talk) 01:27, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
If after power logging off, how do you log in again to home page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.176.102.243 ( talk) 06:51, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
I'd like a private wiki (some pages may be public) that does not involve me having to learn a new syntax different from Wikipedia's.
I am not a techie and all the descriptions I have found leave me blurred.
What is the best way of setting this up please?
JOHN BIBBY — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jb1944 ( talk • contribs) 09:47, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi! Didn't know where to ask so decided to ask here. I was wondering if there is some toolserver or wiki popular pages rank page (something similar to Wikipedia:WikiProject Latvia/Popular pages or this? -- Edgars2007 ( talk/ contribs) 11:47, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
The Category:2013 North Indian Oceah cyclone season should obviously be the Category:2013 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, and the 2013 North Indian Ocean cyclone season should be in the category. Out of perhaps an abundance of caution, I request a fix. -- DThomsen8 ( talk) 22:54, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi, this is just a note to say that the 2013 WikiCup will be starting soon, with signups remaining open throughout January. The WikiCup is an annual competition in which competitors are awarded points for contributions to the encyclopedia, focussing on audited content (such as good articles, featured articles, featured pictures and such) and high importance articles. It is open to new and old Wikipedians and WikiCup participants alike. Even if you don't want to take part, you can sign up to receive the monthly newsletters. Rules can be found here. Any questions can be directed to the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! J Milburn ( talk) 18:55, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
I found this during NPP. Can someone who is halfway knowledgeable about these things tell me if this meets any (any!) guideline for inclusion? I feel it doesn't but I can't PROD or AFD it just because I don't understand it. Ignore the gushy language, that can be fixed. Thanks! § FreeRangeFrog croak 00:59, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
I was looking at the usage statistics organized by operating system and saw there was section titled "Other" that made up a portion. Is that a place where I can get more detailed stats into that "Other" section? Thanks. Wiki131wiki ( talk) 10:37, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Wishes 111Alleskönner |
— Allrounder ( talk) 21:02, 31 December 2012 (UTC) PS: You can insert this with {{User:111Alleskönner/Happy new year|1=~~~}}
Happy new year to all! -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:00, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Just for fun:
Feel free to add to the list. :-) Dcoetzee 00:19, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
seems it is corrupted, shows full junk characters page. i looked some other articales they are fine.-- Kurumban ( talk) 16:18, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
...but I was curious if anyone knows a list of longest article titles here at WP. E.g., United States v. 11 1/4 Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Part Mrs. Moffat’s Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness.... -- j⚛e decker talk 17:58, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I have recently been collaborating with Anamasry regarding his proposal at VPR. It entails the development of an Arabic-to-English articles list, in which articles on the Arabic Wikipedia but not on the English Wikipedia could be found. This would enable interested editors to determine whether or not the subject is suitable for inclusion on the English Wikipedia; of course, a few will not be, but there should be some about which articles can be created. If any editors are fluent in both Arabic and English, their assistance would be greatly appreciated; anyone at all is welcome to participate. dci | TALK 20:18, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm looking for some guidance on tools and best practices for creating multiple articles by importing data from a file (CSV, XML, spreadsheet) into variables in a template, for example, for creating geography stubs. I searched and could not find anything that was very helpful. Many thanks. - Mr X 04:38, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy has been explained - sources refer to the individuals as Palestinian, so we do the same. Topic closed
AndyTheGrump (
talk)
21:49, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
|
---|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Syrian_civil_war go to the section of "i change the "palestine" section in foreign civilians killed" and tell me what should i do.this guy has nothing to say in the discussion and resisting to my simple edith with excusese about sources when its all about logic and common sense and his source dosnt give any information that support his claim and obviously dosnt relate to the chart. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.180.133.107 ( talk) 21:22, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
|
I am currently applying to be a member of BAG and input is greatly appreciated.— cyberpower Offline Happy 2013 13:31, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Hello, to all interested, please note that the Greek Statistics Authority has issued the population data for all Greece, Greek cities/villages after the 2011 census in http://www.statistics.gr/portal/page/portal/ESYE/BUCKET/General/resident_population_census2011.xls . The list is in Greek. It can be used to update the population data in all relevant articles. -- FocalPoint ( talk) 15:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
It appears that SmackBot is one of the first software entities who's personal details have been sought by subpoena. (As to hardware, in 2008 two laser printers were served takedown notices by the RIAA.) Neumont University is seeking from the WMF the personal details (email, IP, phone, address etc.) of all editors who edited their page, as part of their lawsuit (see page for details) against a third party. Needless to say I heartily oppose the blanket revelation of such details (unless they wish to bring a case against SmackBot) as in intrusion into SmackBot's seclusion and solitude, as well as the chilling effect such a subpoena could have on free speech, and as general muppetry.
I shall be contacting both Neumont and their solicitors expressing both my surprise and displeasure at the inappropriately broad range of their subpoena. I would encourage anyone who feels as strongly as I do to do likewise.
Neumont's Las Vegas solicitors are
John L. Krieger Esq. Lewis and Roca, 3993 Howard Hughes Parkway Suite 600 Las Vegas, NV 89169 (702) 949-8200 JKrieger@LRLaw.com
Neumont University is at
10701 South River Front Parkway Suite 300 South Jordon UT 84095 (801) 302-2800 Fax (801) 302 2880 info@neumont.edu
No named contact, unfortunately at Neumont, though the founders are listed on their article page, and plenty of other information is available on the web.
Happy Christmas Eve everyone!
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:11, 24 December 2012 (UTC).
Rich, I can't work out if this is hilarious or worrying. Can you reveal the details of the subpoena? How was it received? Via the "email this user" function? Does it say what they are going to do with this information? Full text would be good.
Anyone know the legal ins and out? Can a company force you to reveal your identity to them?
I think the Foundation should take a position on this. If people with lawyers can force a loss of anonymity, it challenges the whole way WikiMedia projects work.
Yaris678 ( talk) 16:48, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
To summarise, and respond a well as I can, it is both hilarious and worrying. The subpoena was served on the WMF, which is the right place to send it. Obviously I am not worried that the "personal details" of SmackBot go into the pubic domain (I am pretty open about my identity), nor even that worried about the other editors of that page (sorry guys). My concern is the type of subpoena which as Adam says is "over-broad and a fishing expedition". If this type of subpoena is allowed then one can imagine over the course of time a great amount of personal data becoming public in court evidence files, or in the files of lawyers (bless 'em) who specialise in serving WMF. And this could include people who live in repressive regiemes. And it is lawyers practice to reuse the same wording, so if this succeeds it will set a precedent for the approach taken.
WMF have been pretty good notifying those involved, and I assume that they will take the appropriate steps. As to not editing the page to avoid being caught up in the subpoena, that is one option, another is to edit it precisely to be caught up in it as Spartacus suggested. I think the process the lawyers might follow is after email/IP addresses were obtained to serve notice on the email providers/ISPs. The lawyers do not care about the cost since either their client or the defendant will be expected to pay.
I am of the opinion that the lawyers have gone about this the wrong way, and there should therefore be no problem with defusing the situation, but I am also aware that "the law is an ass". It is important that we protect ourselves as individuals and as a community, part of this is the reason we set up the WMF, of course but we cannot wholly delegate it to them. I will attempt to keep you up to date on this issue.
Rich
Farmbrough,
02:12, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
Wikipedia has some different name spaces.
I want to use a tool to show me how big the main article space is, compared to the talk space for those articles, compared to all the other meta Wikipedia stuff.
What tools can I use to do this, and how do I use them?
-- 87.113.161.104 ( talk) 14:07, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
This is some months old, but gives a fair idea.
Namespace | Count |
---|---|
Main | 9,375,576 |
Talk | 4,540,406 |
User | 1,457,343 |
User talk | 7,775,605 |
Wikipedia | 721,450 |
Wikipedia talk | 144,174 |
File | 810,359 |
File talk | 138,924 |
MediaWiki | 1,608 |
MediaWiki talk | 937 |
Template | 424,551 |
Template talk | 177,834 |
Help | 956 |
Help talk | 463 |
Category | 852,775 |
Category talk | 587,880 |
Portal | 109,930 |
Portal talk | 25,669 |
Book | 3,113 |
Book talk | 2,904 |
Total | 27,152,457 |
Basically a tad over 1/3 of Wikipedia is actual article pages, and more than half of those are redirects.
Rich
Farmbrough,
19:27, 31 December 2012 (UTC).
Category:Emblem images that should be in SVG format includes photographs many stitched badges. I am not convinced that these should be replaced with artwork.
Rich
Farmbrough,
00:15, 31 December 2012 (UTC).
Talk:Red (Taylor Swift album)#File:Taylor Swift - Red (Deluxe).jpg proves that it is a redundant predecessor to WP:files for deletion. Also, Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 December 29#File:Robotic Richard Simmons.png proves that almost nobody understands or knows how to elaborately or clearly explain policy. What's wrong with describing images themselves in full? Why explaining policy? -- George Ho ( talk) 19:36, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Through an email from his wife to the the Dinosaur Mailing List, I learned that User:KTDykes has passed away. FunkMonk ( talk) 14:10, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
How do I italicise an article title? Specifically R v Registrar General ex parte Segerdal. Prioryman ( talk) 11:02, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
I put a request to harmonize a Indonesian province article title with titles of similar articles from other countries and to remove ambiguity - no prove for primary topic found: Talk:Bengkulu#Requested_move. AsianGeographer ( talk) 03:18, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Hi everyone in eng wiki,and sorry for my bad eng.
I'm just editing fazhengnian artical,and some user said that my edition used too many sources from primary source.Though I told them that the Chinese gov's source is not a primary source,they still do not truse me,and evenmore try to del it.
fazhengnian is really from Falungong,and it is very funny,though it is really a truth.And many westerner still don't know it,I'm just wanted to told them that Falungong is a humor。Now if you have any source from other media,just write in it,thx a lot.-- Edouardlicn ( talk) 10:22, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
It was suggested to me at Jimbo Wales's talkpage that it would be advisable to post here about an RfC, to gain attention for it: at this one regarding whether to include text about a BLP subject's sex change (when she has clearly indicated she wants the issue to be omitted out of privacy concerns) the RfC is completely overrun by people who have already commented at BLPN, and so it would be useful to get some new voices. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 20:26, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
I just found this map [11] based on the most used words in various "History of..." articles on Wikipedia. It's interesting, but I don't think it tells us much. Ryan Vesey 22:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you to everyone who volunteered last year on the Wikimedia fundraising 'User Experience' project. We have talked to many different people in different countries and their feedback has helped us immensely in restructuring our pages. If you haven't heard of it yet, the 'User Experience' project has the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries (outside the USA) and enhancing the localization of our donation pages.
I am (still) searching for volunteers to spend some time on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.
The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. **All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be very low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)**
By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email ppena@wikimedia.org. All countries needed (excepting USA)!!
Thanks!
Pats Pena
Global Fundraising Operations Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
Anyone know of a page that has the number of all articles in Wikipedia in all 270 some odd languages? Thelmadatter ( talk) 21:45, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I am observing what I believe to be persistent disruptive edits from a specific user on an article page and associated talk pages.
These disruptive edits include: Failure to respond to dispositive talk page questions, apparent collaboration with sockpuppets, frequent use of ad hominum and failure assume good, and inappropriate insertion of discussion on BLPN.
I am not the first person to accuse the user in question of disruptive conduct.
The extensive time spent responding to this users disruptive conduct, and documenting same, would have been unnecessary had Wikipedia guidelines for conduct been followed. How should I address this matter? Deicas ( talk) 21:44, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Below is the full text of my complaint with with disruptive user identification and the pages involved unredacted. Note that aspects of this issue are under discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#talk:Paul_Krugman
I am observing what I believe to be persistent disruptive edits from User:FurrySings at Paul Krugman and talk:Paul Krugman.
These disruptive edits include:
I am not the first person to accuse User:FurrySings of disruptive conduct. [14] [15] [16] [17]
FurrySings is specifically mentioned [18] in an article [19] by William A. Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School. This article was linked to [20] by the very popular [21] blog Instapundit.
The extensive time spent responding to this users disruptive conduct, and documenting same, would have been unnecessary had he followed Wikipedia guidelines for conduct. I suspect that there are others that feel similarly.
How should I address this matter? Deicas ( talk) 01:30, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Apparently, this report is over my stating my belief the Krugman Enron bruhaha was started by unethical political activists, and that I don't see why it should be in the Krugman bio, here. Deicas then accused me of breaking WP:NPA, and I responded by asking him who I was attacking and how I had attacked them. Deicas replied that I had attacked whoever had introduced that section into the Krugman bio. So I'ld like to ask, is saying the incident is an example of swiftboating by mendacious Conservative activists (10 years ago) a personal attack on whoever wrote that section (whoever that may be)? If it's not a personal attack, could someone please ask Deicas to please stop accusing me of making personal attacks? Thanks, FurrySings ( talk) 05:23, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Is this question answered in any of our written policies? -- Anthonyhcole ( talk) 13:25, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I did an interview with a small magazine in Mexico City which asked me how many people from Mexico edit Wikipedia. I explained that its probably impossible to know how many people and why. But they would like some kind of statistic if possible.. I dunno, like maybe the number of edits coming from people in Mexico maybe? Is such a thing possible? Thelmadatter ( talk) 03:16, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
The current Featured Picture is
which is offered in no less than six sizes, one of them quite large:
These five smaller sizes appear to be chosen to fit various displays or something like that. They are fine, but I suggest that when an image is this large, it should also be offered in one or more larger intermediate sizes, so that if people are on a slow or expensive connection (or for that matter if Wikipedia is serving slowly, or they just want to be nice to the servers) they have a wider choice of options. Something like 2,560 × 976 and 5,120 × 1,952 pixels would be appropriate in this case. (Also, I suggest the number of megabytes should be shown for these larger sizes if it is more than, say, 1 or 2 MB.)
This suggestion applies to all large images, not just to featured pictures. But I don't know how the alternate sizes are chosen and generated, so I don't know if this should be considered a technical or a policy suggestion. Therefore I'm posting it here. If someone else thinks that this is a good idea but there is a more appropriate Wikipedia forum for it, please copy and paste this message there for me and leave a note here. In any case please post any direct responses here (and not to the talk page for the IP that I'm posting from, which is shared).
Thanks for your attention. -- 69.158.92.247 ( talk) 11:07, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
01060 $wgImageLimits = array( 01061 array( 320, 240 ), 01062 array( 640, 480 ), 01063 array( 800, 600 ), 01064 array( 1024, 768 ), 01065 array( 1280, 1024 ) 01066 );
I am currently (self) nominated to become a member of BAG (Bot Approvals group). Any questions and input you may have is invited with open arms [[ here. ·Add§hore· Talk To Me! 21:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
Was yesterday our 12th birthday? Seems we got some rare praise on it here.-- Canoe1967 ( talk) 22:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
Hey all,
For those that don't know I'm James Alexander the Merchandise Manager at the WMF ( User:Jalexander as staff, User:Jamesofur as a volunteer ). I wanted to get the sense of the community on some things I would like to do for the Wikipedia birthday coming up (Tuesday January 15th for those who forget :) ). This will be our twelfth birthday and the first one that The Wikimedia Shop has been open for. I don't know how many of you have followed the shop or the Giveaways program I've been running but the tldr is that we're running the shop for a couple reasons:
It is very much not a revenue source for the Foundation and is all earmarked specifically towards funding the giveaways. If you haven't checked out the Giveaways program please do! It's been a great success so far and really the only thing slowing it down is me processing them (which is somewhat purposely slower though I'm picking it up). If it's not obviously I'm giving away a shirt there to essentially ANY editor nominated for any good reason :). The idea grew even faster than I expected, especially given a distinct lack of advertising it and we want to expand it past enWP to the other Wikipedias and projects (Probably Meta at first and then seek help for other languages). As part of that I wanted to test some things out, launch a very limited edition item and see what the interest was going to be... which leads to the proposal:
The Proposal
So, after that wall of text, questions? Thoughts? :-) Jalexander-- WMF 03:27, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I am a scientist in the middle of writing another book. My earlier books were published by major academic publishers, and were reasonably well received both critically and in terms of sales. I am also an occasional WP editor and I have studied WP quite a bit (and published papers about various aspects of it). As I'm writing the book, I have my eyes more on an electronic edition than the paper version, and I'm putting in a large number of hyperrefs, about 80% of which are to WP articles. This gave me the idea of a series of WP Monographs (of which my book could be one) with the following characteristics: (1) written by credentialed experts (2) peer-reviewed (3) POV (4) Initial edition always available (5) Author has the choice to accept or reject edits as long as she maintains the work (6) afterwards maintained as the rest of WP.
Please, before you start hating on POV, credentials, etc, consider the following. (1) On many subjects, WP sorely lacks a unified vision -- I could name many articles in my field where this is evident. (2) The author of a WP monograph is not just giving royalties (these rarely amount to much) but also "impact factor" and "published by a major academic publisher" which are significant factors in the academic life, governing promotions, raises, etc. It has to be a major goal to make the system acceptable within academia, and this is not going to happen without peer review (3) Monograph means POV, no way around it. Later editions may dilute this, but even if they don't it's not a catastrophe. (4) Paper lasts forever, with a WP monographs the author is entrusting the Wikimedia Foundation or some other organization to maintain your brainchild in perpetuity. (5-6) This will keep authors on their toes.
WP, like it or not, is becoming the central repository of human knowledge. The proposed monograph series would help tying it to academia. I expect to get a lot of flak for this, but academia is not organized badly for preserving and creating knowledge, so WP may as well take advantage of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DemiSemi ( talk • contribs) 21:17, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
I looked both at WikiBooks and Wikiversity, and it is precisely their anonymous/NPOV nature that I have problems with. For now, only famous professors at the end of their career (emeriti) who can afford to carefully write a book and not give a damn about credit. Take a look e.g. at Don Johnson's beautiful class notes on statistical signal processing http://www.ece.rice.edu/~dhj/courses/elec531/ to see the kind of textbook I have in mind. Realistically, the time it takes to write a chapter in a book like this is the time it takes to write a paper in a journal with good impact factor, and everything in academia is slanted so that you must choose the latter option as long as you have pay grades to make or grant proposals under review. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DemiSemi ( talk • contribs) 16:00, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
User:Ucycoin/sandbox. Not? If yes, then what? I found it because I left an unrelated message on an admin's page where this user was posting about his deleted page (probably speedied). Aside from the, um, interesting stuff there, not sure if it's promotional or what? Maybe it's a copy of the material that was deleted. Or do we leave those kinds of things alone? § FreeRangeFrog croak 00:58, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
We all have the ability to rake sandboxes. It's the edit tool, which even people without accounts have. Notions of magically setting "precedent" are just silly. We've been able to blank stuff since pretty much the first day of the wiki. And it has been documented at Wikipedia:User page that we edit out stuff from user pages, since 2004. It's the simple answer to problematic userspace content such as this, which clearly only FreeRangeFrog and I have actually read. This request for money along the same lines got blanked with the edit tool, too.
This is the simple, straightforward, and calm option; just rake the sandbox, containing personal information of private individuals and accusations of malfeasance, that hasn't been edited since April 2012. And if it turns out later to be an error, it's an error that anyone also has the tools to rectify, unlike the case of using the deletion tool. It's obviously not an error, seeing what else is in Special:Contributions/Ucycoin, in this case. (No, this is not what sandboxes are for.)
The much less calm but much more usual (clearly Smuconlaw hasn't spent much time at Project:Miscellany for deletion where sandboxes are regularly nominated) option is MFD, waving of the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy, and a large bureacratic fuss about something that can be fixed calmly and in one edit, in the way that the user page guideline has described for eight years.
Uncle G ( talk) 15:58, 13 January 2013 (UTC)