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I've used Wikipedia for years. I've had an account for years. I'm posting this anonymously because, in the past, when I've been candid, I've found some people become personally abusive as a result.
Tonight, I happened on a page where perfectly legitimate, double-sourced material was removed as "defamatory" in a POV edit by what appears to be both an ignorant and overzealous "administrator" cum "censor." I checked the administrator's record; he/she has been a Wiki user for less than a year. This "administrator" clearly doesn't understand defamation (I am an attorney -- I do).
To me, this sort of behavior articulates the growing problems with Wikipedia in a nutshell: Wiki used to be about building a big base of free knowledge. Now it's all about people trying to become administrators and their petty powers and suck-up circle. (When I see people asking to be administrators and organizing little suckup campaigns, my first reaction is, "that person does not deserve nor merit to be an administrator.") The levels of bureaucracy and rules and policies and templates here make the DMV look like a lemonade stand. Wikipedia is now an AV Society of Asocial Geeks who are obstructive and self-protective of their ridiculous little circles of power. To preserve that power, they're destroying Wikipedia in the process.
As a result, Wikipedia is narrowing its potential pool of contributors by becoming an entrenched bureaucracy as petty as the faculty of any also-ran community college. Just look how frickin' complex footnotes have become; how is a new contributor supposed to understand all that coding? Who wants to waste time learning? What was wrong with the old, simple footnote policy? How many tasks forces and little online committees and requests for proposals were necessary to come up with that byzantine silliness?
Most dangerously, Wikipedia is now self-destructing with this "living persons" policy which, absurdly, actually is exposing Wikipedia and all of its assets to legal peril. Wikipedia, simply put, is voiding its 47 USC 230 (c)(1) protection with all this heavy-handed screening and editing. You're inviting yourself to be sued by doing this and, in the process, voiding your own legal protections.
So what is my solution? I didn't just come here to bitch. My solution: simplify. Go back to the basics of what made Wikipedia great. Trim back all the bureaucracy and all the layers upon layers upon layers of policies and reviews and tasks forces and procedures and yada yada yada. Make CONTENT king; don't make the petty and monstrous bureaucracy king, as it is now. I can remember when Wiki's policies took ten minute to read. Now it would take ten days to read. That's just absurd.
I will continue to use and contribute to Wikipedia. I was here in the beginning, long before the vast majority of present administrators had even heard of the site and were still busy wasting their time on Friendster. I fear, however, that what made Wikipedia great is being lost. It's about information, people, not the bureaucracy. It's about content, not petty little turf wars and seeing how you can flex your little administrative powers. I'm constantly shocked by the rude and heavy-handed actions by administrators. Police yourself, people, before you try to make yourself look big by being small. 207.69.137.12 05:59, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Not sure whether this anon thinks I have an open mind or am defending my petty fiefdom, but I'll accept the nomination: okay, I'm a Rouge admin. Durova 19:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
We already know about these problems. Do you have a solution? Saying "let's go back to the way things were" isn't a solution. Unless you also want to ban everyone who's joined since then, I guess, and delete all the articles they've created. Things that worked for a wiki that no one knew about with 100 contributors and 1000 articles will never work for a wiki with thousands of contributors that comes up as the first result for many Google searches, is treated as an authoritative source in discussion forum battles, and has biographies about resentful people who want to discredit it. — Omegatron 20:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
I know this does not address the primary theme of the initial post. It does address some of the secondary themes.
The main reason that I have not contributed but have only edited has been the complexity of the site. I have spent many hours wandering around in the guidelines and have yet to find a format for footnotes. I know that Kate Turabian is out of favor and the latest edition that I have of her book is quite old. I am not certain of the current status of MLA but, again, the only version that I have of that is probably older than most Wikipedians.
The number of templates confuses me. The incessant and aggressive use of jargon is distracting and often unintelligible. (From the original post in this subject, “The levels of bureaucracy and rules and policies and templates here make the DMV look like a lemonade stand. Wikipedia is now an AV Society of Asocial Geeks who are obstructive and self-protective of their ridiculous little circles of power.” When I see “DMV” I think “Department of Motor Vehicles” whose rules and policies seem to me to be fairly straightforward. When I see “AV” I think “Audio-Visual” which is obviously not what was meant.)
The only problem that I have with the editing that I have seen is the prevalence of the assumption of bad faith. If something appears to be wrong, instead of attempting to correct the error or giving notice that the contributor of the apparent error will be contacted to make some sense of the matter, the perceived error is deleted, no questions or discussion.
JimCubb 01:55, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I'd say the decline in number of administrators is the reason some of them are grouchy. We are each responsible for the well-being of 1377 articles, if distributed evenly among us, and everything is our fault when one of them goes bad. I have 2,180 on my watchlist (a lot of redirects, I hope) ;-) But it gets taxing. Jimbo's original idea of administrators was just people who had edited a while and proved they were trying to contribute to the encyclopedia; someone that could be trusted not to break things.
I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*.
I think perhaps I'll go through semi-willy-nilly and make a bunch of people who have been around for awhile sysops. I want to dispel the aura of "authority" around the position. It's merely a technical matter that the powers given to sysops are not given out to everyone.
I don't like that there's the apparent feeling here that being granted
sysop status is a really special thing.
— Jimbo
— Omegatron 04:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
To the original poster: I am currently working on an article about the "social aspects" of Wikipedia. I'd be very interested in talking to you about what you view as "suckup campaigns" and the need for people to become adminstrators. If you're interested, please email me at brianwrites@gmail.com
68.39.158.205
02:41, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
User:Iced Kola/T
User:Iced Kola/T2
User:Iced Kola/T3
User:Iced Kola/T4
I'm going to start using these as my warning templates (I love creating them =p), and I'm even going to inset them into my vandalproof. I'm just asking any and all users here on wikipedia if they can check them out and improve them/give me feedback on them. Thanks.
I c e d K o l a (
Contributions)
23:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
~~<includeonly></includeonly>~~
immediately before the closing div tag, so that when it's substituted, your signature appears as part of the message between the lines.
Tra
(Talk)
00:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)For what it's worth I see no citation of a criterion for speedy deletion here. We can't just delete
things that seem non-notable on sight. Please exercise discretion. Deco 11:41, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
It was moved to the user space at User:NEaB/Nowhere-Else and Beyond and then the redirect that was
created by the page move was deleted. RJFJR 16:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I know why it was deleted, I talked with the admin that deleted it and found out why; but there was no citation of a criterion for speedy deletion given on the page which made it a bit frustrating to find. Also, it was not moved to the user space until I requested it for revision. Garth of NEaB 14:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Check this out!! And for about 1 dollar or 2 pounds??? Either this is a joke or our Jimmy Wales has gone Wales over his top. Wikipedia at Ebay for sale. Thanks and God bless you!
Antonio the licka from Puerto Rica Martin
Recently re-read a great article trying to pin down an answer to the question: Who writes Wikipedia? It was so good, I thought I'd post it here so that more people can read it (if they haven't already). Who writes Wikipedia?. Carcharoth 23:33, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Excellent catch! Good job for letting us know, Carcharoth. The work described by the article is excellent and should be read by all big-time editors here, including some of the followup comments. I am impressed that there is a strong case for the common sense argument that the bulk of real information in Wikipedia comes from the many people who actually know something about which they write. I hope that Jimbo Wales has a chance to read it and digest it. Hu 07:29, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
There is a fad right now of blanking pages with nonsense comments and (what makes it a fad) putting the comment into the edit summary. Any clues as to the source of this, such as might it be some campaign cooked up on a juvenile forum or chat room? Hu 20:10, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that there can sometimes be confusing inconsistency between similar articles (especially the technical ones). For example, when looking for information on the terms grain, crystallite and particle, I get slightly different (and incomplete) interpretations of the same idea. Individually the articles are OK, but when looked at overall, there's a loss of coherence. Do people when working on wikipedia keep in mind how other similar or related articles are written? It seems to me there needs to be more people who edit groups of articles as a whole, to maintain a consistent narrative.
I don't know if my above point has been discussed before, which brings me to my next point. The Village pump really needs some sort of search function so that I don't bring up subjects that have already been covered.
User:Nihiltres edited Blue and Black using a rule that you should always use Canadian spelling in color articles. Anyone aware of this?? Georgia guy 15:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
It seems as if there should be a template mechanism that could be used to resolve these dialect spelling issues based on the reader's preference settings. (Although that probably wouldn't work for general viewers.) Perhaps that could be a future wikipedia enhancement? — RJH ( talk) 22:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump
Some articles (such as the recently featured
spyware article) uses references (in this case
The New York Times), which require mandatory registration to be able to see the content. I find this an annoyance, I dislike sites with mandatory registration to be able to access the content and I feel this is a little unfair. I was thinking, maybe there should be a policy or something, to avoid using sites that require registration as references? --
Frap
09:43, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
[End moved]
I'm writing an article on Wikipedia for my university newspaper.There seems to be a debate on campus regarding whether or not Wikipedia is a valid academic source. I have read many entries on Wikipedia itself regarding this, but I was hoping to get some feedback from regular users. Say for example, someone changes the text in an entry- how long does it typically take for the information to be corrected? I have heard a whole range of times, from four minutes to four days, but can anyone tell me- is there some kind of notifier that alerts authors when their text has been edited? How can one keep track of the pages they contribute to, aside from constantly refreshing the page? Being that there are a great deal of properly cited articles in the bibliography section of most pages, Wikipedia is seeming more and more like a viable source for academic work, but how trustworthy is it?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])
- Jmabel | Talk 07:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
-- Kar_the_Everburning 15:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Why exactly are there idiots in the world who pretend to be gangsterrrr rappers and have horribly made MySpace pages, when in reality, they live in the suburbs?
-- Kar_the_Everburning 14:21, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Because they have nothing better to do. Thay also may live with their Mom and also may be total failers in life so let them act Getto and tough thats all they got to live for... A7X 900 21:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Why exactly do people drop biased, personal attack statements into wikipedia, and then don't sign their comments? -- Jayron 32 05:37, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Comparing the message I got as a new user here and in http://fr.wikipedia.org , I think there is a room for improvements here. Just compare Jmfayard 11:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Welcome!
Hello, Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive P, and
welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the
Wikipedia Boot Camp, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}}
on your user talk page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.
Here are a few good links for newcomers:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Mike1024 ( t/ c) 11:58, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
{{subst:Bienvenue | ~~~~ }}
Wikipédia est un projet de rédaction collective d'une vaste encyclopédie réalisé actuellement dans 250 langues différentes de par le monde. Pour t'aider à tout moment, chaque page du site possède en haut à gauche un lien vers
l'aide de Wikipédia.
N'hésite pas à consulter les premières indications pour modifier et rédiger des pages dans Wikipédia avec la syntaxe appropriée. Le bac à sable est tout spécialement destiné à accueillir tes essais. | |
Sur une page de discussion, n'oublie pas de
signer tes messages, en tapant ~~~~ . Cependant, nous ne signons pas les articles encyclopédiques.
Je te conseille un petit tour par les principes fondateurs et les recommandations à suivre ( règles de neutralité, règles de citation des sources, critères d'admissibilité des articles, conventions de style, etc.) et les pages projets, où il y a sans doute un sujet qui t'intéressera. | |
Tu es le bienvenu si tu désires insérer une image ou enrichir les articles, mais il est impératif de respecter des règles très strictes sur l'utilisation des images et le respect des droits d'auteurs. | |
Si tu le souhaites, tu peux te présenter sur le
journal des nouveaux arrivants et indiquer, sur ta
page utilisateur,
quelles langues tu parles et
d'où tu viens, quels sont tes centres d'intérêt...
Enfin, le plus important, je te souhaite de
prendre du plaisir à contribuer au projet ! |
Actually, I rather like {{ en:Template:Welcome}}. I looked at the available templates and decided that I liked {{ welcome}} best (as opposed to more informal templates, or templates like {{ welcomeg}} which is more similar to the French one); I think the French one is a bit intimidating and the English one is more likely to be read by a non-user. It might be interesting to compare the templates; it:User talk:ais523 has the Italian welcome on at the moment (generated automatically by bot, which I also disapprove of), which shows a third style of template. -- ais523 15:19, 13 November 2006 ( U T C)
Welcoming is done by volunteers. Nobody is required to welcome anybody. User:Zoe| (talk) 03:37, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
My initial experience would have been a good deal less frustrating if I had encountered a note somewhere pointing out that if I don't put wikipedia: in front of a search term there's a whole world of helpful stuff I'll never find, or be able to find again. Cryptonymius 18:03, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
(Note: I think Jmfayard was talking more about the general look of the template then the actual words used; but a translation was asked for so here's my (not very good) attempt at translating the words)
Welcome to French Wikipedia (your name here)!
Wikipedia is a project for making a big encyclopedia in 250 different languages from all over the world. To help you right now each page on the site has at the top left a link to the help page.
Don't hesitate to consult the first links for how to edit a page and how to use wiki-syntax. The tutorial is designed especially for you to experiment with.
On a talk page, don't forget to sign your messages by typing ~~~~. However, do not sign encyclopedia articles.
I would advise you to take a look at the founding principals and the rules to follow (rules about NPOV, citing sources, criteria of admission for articles, style conventions, etc.) and the project pages, which you will doubtless find interesting.
You are welcome, if you like, to insert a picture that improves the articles, but it is imperative to respect the very strict rules about using images and respecting copyright.
If you like, you can present yourself at the newcomers page and indicate, on your user page, what languages you speak and where you are from, what your interests are...
And lastly, and most importantly, I invite you to please contribute to the project!
If you have any other questions, you can go to this page to ask them, or contact me.
(And now anyone who speaks French better than I do knows just how bad my French is. ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) 17:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC))
I've just discovered a brilliant new term that should enter every Wikipedian's vocabulary: encyclopidity [2]! A good article is one of "high encyclopidity". A questionable entry is one of "low encyclopidity" or "questionable encyclopidity". And if someone doubts something is appropriate for Wikipedia, why, they can say "I doubt this article's encyclopidity"! -- Ekjon Lok 02:05, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Please join the discussion at Portal talk:China. -- Ideogram 04:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Do you find Wikipedia addictive? I sure do.
oh yeah. - Kar_the_Everburning(not logged in)
Would it be considered spamming to promote WikiProjects, articles in need of attention, and other internal concepts by advertising them in the sandbox, or would it be considered beneficial? -- Gray Porpo ise 21:59, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Can I copy text from Wikipedia into another wiki site that releases its content as public domain rather than GFDL? What if I put a notice at the bottom that said "This article incorporates material from Wikipedia, and some or all of it is subject to copyleft"? A.J.A. 04:26, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I am not sure if this is the proper place for this (please move it to the right place if it is not):
The article Serial Box offers(offered) a link and two images that are directing to a site engaged in theft. In this case, theft of my property.
My company is engaged in producing a shareware product, which means that we sell the registration code for that product. The site referred to by this article is engaged in distributing such registration codes.
Please consider this a fair warning in advance that Wikipedia is actively engaged in promoting and directing to this site. Please also see this as a clarification meant to prevent a claim that you were not aware of this issue. I will not persue legal action if you will quickly move to remedy this but please not that you are now aware of the situation and will have to bear the full consequences of ignoring this. Ori Redler 16:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
I would like to make several comments here:
You've created a legal issue where none exists. You removed the link; it stayed gone. I agree that it was not proper, and in general (and in total I think) we don't link to illegal material. So ... there's no foul here. If someone had put it BACK, you would have a complaint, but basically you yourself removed the only reason for any legal complaint. Thank you for that, but this continued legal discussion is thus no longer necessary. -- Golbez 22:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Please block him! He was a friend that came over to my house (I will not say who he is for personal reason's) and he thought it would be funny to start messing up pages! I found him doing this and told him that people could track this stupid stuff to MY computer and made him get off. Then he told me he thought it would be funny, but I told him it was stupid and to stop. He left not to long ago and he told me he won't and never planned to be a Wikipedia editer. So please block him. A7X 900 17:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
You have only blocked him for only '1' month! Dude, I'm A7X 900's brother and trust me, Murdoc666 is real bad news! Murdoc666 is a nice and funny guy, but he will come back to ruin some pages. Just erase his profile completely! ZeroThomas 17:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Hey R.A Huston, I really like your User page. A7X 900 17:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Can someone tell me the words 2 the song, Albatross , released in late 60s. i believe some of it goes like, Lady comes to the gate dressed in lavendar (sp?) and leather looking north to the sea, she finds the weather fine. hears the steeple bells--ringing thru the orchird -- all the way from town ...... or something like that...... ...young men bringing violets are curious to know it you have cried and ask you why and tell you why and hear the way you answer...
anyway ,the above is all jumbled up so if you kno the acurate ( 1 c or 2? ) accurate lyrics, please send them along 2 me * ) , ;>) anyway, i dont kno how 2 make those little face things
so, thanks huh? and mahalo nuiloa
Block quote
dont kno who wrote the song, just kno judy collins recorded it in the late 60s
* )
This has been bugging me - in the speedy deletion templates, why does "db" stand for? Why is it not "sd"? — Swpb talk contribs 04:35, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Special:Contributions&target=199.120.31.19
Most of these contribs are juvenile. 136.176.88.82 00:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm part of a team in a management & organizational analysis at the Stern School of Business at New York University. We selected Wikipedia as the subject of our final analysis, and are specifically interested in what drives people to participate in Wikipedia. To this end we've compiled an anonymous, 5-minute survey that we hoped the Wikipedia community would take part in, everyone from casual readers to editors to members of the Board.
It's available online at http://tramchase.com/wikipedia-survey
Please be as detailed as possible. Your participation is much appreciated!
I posed the following question which began a thread on the help desk and someone suggested the village pump would be more appropriate venue for this discussion. So if there are any further thoughts or views on this, I'd appreciate hearing them. I've purposely avoided naming specific editors/administrators in this because it's more concern based on a pattern of practice. This sinking sense I got by starting with the linked article through to its talk page and then uncovering repeated administrative maneuvering and contemptuous and intimidating encounters with other editors and administrators it made me want to stay clear of this article. However, I was worried about the reputation of Wikipedia in general. -- 70.8.49.7 01:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering whether the US government is granted special permission to as editors and administrators on Wikipedia? I ask that because many of the articles associated with the September 11th attacks read like press releases from the Whitehouse instead of encyclopedia articles. Also reading through endless discussion pages reveals they look more like usenet newsgroup discussions than discussions about writing wikipedia articles. A core group of administrators and editors pretends to be ignorant of Wikipedia polices and uses they're administrative powers to be disruptive, and intimidate other editors and administrators. They seem to be immune from any disciplinary policies.
I thought about jumping into these discussion, but I do not want to get in any trouble with the authorities. From looking at the history any dispute reolution measures look futile. If these articles are only intended for US authorities to edit, why doesn't wikipedia simply place a notification on those articles to indicate such special treatment. I think we're losing good editors and admins who just don't know these articles are off limits. -- 68.30.94.147 22:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I'll butt in with a hypothetical question of my own here. What if a really high ranking official, say the President, demanded adminship on Wikipedia. Are you obligated to give it to him? Dooms Day349 00:39, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Shimgray, I don't know how you or any editor could be so confident of what you're saying. I mean as a fairly new editor to Wikipedia I would say I would think Wikipedia doesn't grant special permission. However,
it really makes you wonder. I know I said I'd take this to the village pump and I will do that now and stop posting here. -- 70.8.49.7 01:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
end of Held Desk Thread
Given the articles that you're discussing, September 11th attacks, I suspect the answer is relatively straightforward...completely unrelated to any government activity at all, those articles are heavily edited by U.S. citizens. Americans may be a bit schizophrenic on some topics, but we can largely agree that blowing up our skyscrapers is not something we take kindly to. Any bias in the articles almost certainly relates to this, rather than a semi-conspiratorial government intervention. Doc Tropics 01:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC) PS - the cabal made me say that!
Considering that the offices of Congress got collectively blocked for vandalism less than a year ago, I regard it as highly unlikely that any special privilege has been granted with regard to this article. If any credible evidence exists of this thread's alleged exception to site policy, and if an editor who has such evidence fears reprisal, e-mail me off site and I will look into the matter. As a matter of full disclosure I cannot call myself neutral on this issue: I never edit that family of articles because my nearest relative survived the World Trade Center disaster on 9/11 from a high floor and I joined the armed forces and went to war as a result. However, I am now a private citizen and am not beholden to anyone. As one of roughly 5% of administrators who list themselves at Category:Administrators open to recall I welcome scrutiny for fairness from other Wikipedians. My e-mail address is available through my user talk page. Durova Charg e! 02:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. You had brought up fear of repraisals, but I didn't want someone who might be afraid of repraislas to midunderstand the technical issues involved. Obvoiusly we're only talking about Wikipedia here, its not like they're going to face a grand jury or something like that. -- 70.8.49.7 02:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm still waiting for the e-mail with the eye-popping evidence. Come on, brighten up my day here...otherwise it's back to WP:RFI where I get to play Sherlock Holmes over linkspam and Spanish street slang. I'd much rather blow an NSA operative's cover story. ;) Durova Charg e! 22:20, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't believe that Wikipedia gives any undo authority to government officials, but when I read stories that say the military is tightening rules on military bloggers and then I read the Pentagon creates a rapid response team, and then I look at the discussion pages mentioned here, I start to wonder if US authorities are on Wikipedia. In fact, I'm sure they are, and that isn't really bad. What would be bad is if people, in the government or not, are paid to guard or edit articles.— Slipgrid 22:24, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Wow! the article that Slipgrid points to is very disconcerting. I can just imagine the profile of someone they might recruit for that. Some patsy who thought the answer to these attacks was to join the military to fight for Haliburton in Afghanistan. Clearly such a person wouldn't have the skills to think through serious intelligence matters,, but they'd be perfect for an assignment like this. Wikipedia should really take steps to prevent this sort of attack. Its integrity cannot withstand an attack like this..-- Cplot 00:20, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I would add to this discussion that I had been wondering how such behavior could continue unchecked for so long. This would be a good explanation. I've been trying to think of others but so far I draw a blank. I know some may say that's just how a decentered, democratic site works, but that wouldn't explain how so many disruptive editors could also rise to administrator positions. Any other thoughts about explanations? -- Cplot 02:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
After having read oodles of postings to innumerable web forums, over the years, I'm only surprised when people take a rational, moderate, open-minded approach to any discussion on any subject. And some years ago Forbes (I think) published an article about corporate America paying folks to create and maintain stoogeblogs to battle criticisms from indie blogs, and since the government lately seems to be mostly about spin, rather than action, in the real world, as opposed to the fake world of television, I'm hardly surprised to hear suspicions raised about government employees sneaking in and editing things...especially since perception is reality. Cryptonymius 04:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Do you own a few Blogs?
If you do, we pay $5 per post for you to write about our clients if your blogs qualify. You must be reliable and must do your assignments on time. Please send us your blog urls along with a contact number and we'll call you if your blog qualifies.
Wonder how long after you take that job, before they ask you to start editing the wiki.— Slipgrid 04:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm just reading through this stuff starting from September_11,_2001_attacks and just following through from one link to the next. Read the talk pages of these editors. Read the administrative actions they've taken. There's so much questionable behavior it's stunning. Right now there's a group of them going after User:Seabhcan. These repeated frivilous administrative actions typically involve the same group of editors/admins and just seems to be playing the system without regard driving away decent editors or fueling animosity. No good will or assumptions of good faith whatsoever. Even if they aren't paid professionals they're certainly overtaxing the administrative processes of the wiki. When you see how they engage editors before taking administrative it's stern and not quite civil, but almost. But from the pattern, as anon mentioned, you can see how they just seemt to be trying to evoke a personal attacks or violations of the 3rr from those they disagree with. Once they have these personal attacks and 3rr violations in hand they begin more frivilous disciplinary pursuits. It definitely looks like a full-time gig for these folks considering hos much time they devote to the wiki. It's astonishing. At first I thought they just didn't no how to compromise on the talk pages, but when you keep following through and it looks really bad. This is not good. It's hard to tell how many articles have been tainted by this. And sorting through all this evidence would take a full-time staff. -- 67.37.179.61 04:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Mongo, you make a good point. This would be a problem no matter who was doing it. However, the evidence points to people pushing a very pro Whitehouse position. And certainly high government officials have much more pressing matters to attend to. However, as someone said above,. these are not high government officials, but some sort of hardly tie their own shoes types of grunts involved. The US military budget is something like $1 trillion dollars (best spoiken with Dr. Evil's voice). Somewhere I read recently, this budget was greater than all other military budgets worldwide cobined. Surely that hires a lot of thugs at minimum wage. Take a look at the articles Slipgrid posted. They're quite telling.. -- Cplot 05:55, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Omegatron is right: ROBOTS ARE CLEARLY SUPERIOR!!! Cryptonymius 06:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
You want evidence take a look at the history of the village pump. You'll find these messages deleted across every category of the village pump. Check the log, of the IP reporting the Feds inappropriate inovlement and you find it is now blocked. This one will likely be blocked now too. And all that IP did was post to the village pump something that should concern every legitiimate member of the Wikipedia community. There's clear evidence that something is going on here. Sure this evidence either shows inapprorpriate involvement of Federal Authoritieis or it could just be a prank by some editors and administrators trying to fuel "conspiracy theories": so they make it look like that by deleting "controversial" claims. If so then I'm likely in on it too. However, I have knowledge that it's the former (inappropriate Federal involvement)), but even if it's only a prank, it's inappropriate behavior. Something should be done about it. -- 70.8.132.79 21:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
67.37.179.61 brought up User:Seabhcan as one of the targets of these admins. Tom Harrison also pointed me to User:Zen-master as another casualty of these friviolous disciplinary measures. Maybe Village Pump isn't the place for this, but perhaps we could set aside another page to compile the issues together. That way If anyone knew how to reach these lost editors, they could be encouraged to reeturn and appeal or simply return if they were just frustrated away. Obviously it takes a carfeul reexamination of each disciplinary case to see if it fits in this pattern. I don't pretend to know about these cases in extreme detail. But from a first look at them they seem to fit the pattern..
As somewhat of a novice here I had been reading blog rants against Wikipedia complaining it doesn't stand up to its mission and my first thought was: you just don't understand how it works. After reading through this stuff , though I'm thinking: maybe this seemingly crazed blog ratner was one of those editors targetted -- Cplot 06:32, 28 November 2006 (UTC).
This is why you can't win against conspiracy theorists: If you oppose them, you're part of the conspiracy. If you don't oppose them, you become part of the "silent majority" that they claim to represent. If you prove them wrong, they just make more junk up to explain away your objections and claim you're repressing The Truth(tm)! CPlot is being blocked for disruptive behaviour and paranoid accusations towards other editors. -- tjstrf talk 21:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
"If you prove them wrong"
Could someone create a politics userboxes set, such as "This person is a {insert party here}" and like "This person supports/doesn't support our troops", etc? -- WTRiker 02:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
One downside to that type of userbox is how they tend to get exploited if an edit dispute occurs. I don't have any userboxes, but now and then some editor interpolates my username into some sort of pro-Russian bias. Considering that I speak no Russian, don't have a Russian family heritage, rarely edit Russian topics, and am a United States veteran who grew up during the Cold War my upbringing probably attempted to impress the opposite bias...but that doesn't stop intrepid editors from attempting the accusation. Durova Charg e! 04:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi all, I was bold and I added an "Instant messaging" section to Wikipedia:Contact us/Contact a user. This is a presumably high-traffic page: users can get to it just by clicking "Contact Wikipedia" on the left side of any Wikipedia page and then "Contact a Wikipedia user".
Do you think the change was OK? Cheers, -- unforg e ttableid | how's my driving? 00:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I have noted in a couple of articles recently that there is occasionally some obvious bit of vandalism - an added expletive usually - that does not show up when I try to remove it by editing the page. The most recent example is the word "BITCH" added to the end of the Early Life section of the entry for Oskar Schindler. Is there a trick to getting rid of such vandalism? 71.91.125.91 05:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
How is this picture? I recently uploaded it and I would like some feedback on it. Thank you. Ilikefood 23:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Look's GOOD! Who made it and what do you want to do with that good looking picture? A7X 900 23:25, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I made it and I already put it at Pudding. Ilikefood 23:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
What do the editors here make of this? Is Sanger a co-founder or not? — 75.75.151.180 15:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I write on CARM.ORG - CHRISTIAN DISCUSSION FORUMS and I am one of the members at the forum, during one of the discussion I mentioned of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar and their article on: The empty tomb is a fiction -- Jesus did not raise bodily from the dead, and some other topics. Some of the members commented that "Wikipedia is a most unreliable source", and that any body could edit their entries. Jesus Seminar is not a scholarly Christian group. One member is ready to have focused discussion on the above article "The empty tomb is a fiction” and that if I wish I could quote excerpts from their article and they are ready to refute such articles. I require your permission to quote excerpts from the articles of Jesus Seminar. If possible and someone from Jesus Seminar could help uphold their stance on their behalf, I would be thankful to you. It is intended only as a religious discussion, and no commercial benefit is intended. Thanks
Relatively new around here and offering a thought.. Hope this is an appropriate area to post it.
Just reverted some vandalism and followed the users other vandalisms. It seems that double vandalisms, especially section deletions, often results in a half correct revert that only goes back one edit, leaving the first vandalism uncorrected. I had to go back to October to retrieve entire sections for articles that were deleted and never recovered. For this kind of thing, should there not be a failsafe? I understand that individuals watching for vandalism are probably kept busy and not able to check articles thoroughly, but it stands to reason that if somebody edits something twice in a matter of seconds or minutes and one edit is a vandalism, that both edits are vandalisms.. and it should not be so easy to "sneak" such things through. It is rather discouraging to find other users hard work disappear unnoticed so effortlessly.
I guess there is no question to be answered, but something to be aware of.. WarBaCoN 08:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I was searching for info about Alphabet and sadly I found unappropriate pcs...please do something about it...I am not sure how I could do it myself...thank you
frequent user..SK
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.92.166.185 ( talk • contribs)
A while ago, I came across the discussions came up regarding stable versions. Though I never participated in the discussions, I was a supporter of the idea (specifically the idea that the stable versions should be the ones displayed by default, as proposed by User:TidyCat). Someone created a nice graph showing the variation in article quality over time, shown right, and I thought that stable versions would be a great way of ensuring that featured articles remain at least at the standard they were when first featured. But I never really kept up with the discussions, although I did notice a while ago that there were processes in place for proposing which versions of an article should be the reference one, but it all seemed somewhat disorganised.
I was surprised to discover when I recently visited Wikipedia:Stable versions that the whole thing seems to be inactive. So could someone bring me up to speed on what's going on with the idea? I heard that something similar has been implemented at the German Wikipedia; could someone decribe what system they use, and how it compares to those old proposals I've linked to above? -- Nick R Talk 13:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and I've never posted at the Village Pump before, so apolgies if this is the wrong section. :) -- Nick R Talk 13:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm hoping that an uninvolved someone can look into this issue. I've had a disagreement with User:Balliol over the biography of intelligence historian Rupert Allason (aka Nigel West). I noticed that he'd also edited the biography of Rupert Allason's father, James Allason, in October, and that he'd referred to a forthcoming publication (due this month) of the memoirs of Allason senior [3]. The publishers are said to be Blackthorn Press of London. Googling, I could only find reference to a Blackthorn Press of Pickering, who, when telephoned, told me that that they are not the publishers.
I think the references need to be checked for soundness (we can't cite unpublished work, for example) and would appreciate someone who could have a look into this. I don't want to dig in myself, as it would likely inflame bad feelings. — Matt Crypto 14:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Just for the heck of it, try asking for mediation if this happens again. ~ user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 22:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I wrote an article on "the munchies" on one of the effects of marijuana that I thought wasn't to bad. I haven't done much on the Wikipedia and I figured it was a relatively easy topic. I added several cultural references to the term and wonder what was wrong with it. I fully understand if I broke a set standard I was unaware of but The article wasn't changed or improved whatsoever, it was just redirected to Cannabis(drug) almost as soon as I wrote it. I understand getting rid of it if their was something wrong with it (which there very well might have been, it wasn't all that long though the movies I mentioned did reference the term). I would say that if it was a terrible article that needed deletion it should have redirected to Cannabis culture.-- Colin 8 06:55, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Lately I've seen a lot of edit summaries by IPs and new users that say things like, "Replaced page with 'u r a turd'" or "Blanked page" or "Created page with 'blah blah blah'". This seems... odd. I know there had been some talk about autogenerating edit summaries and I'm wondering if that has now been implamented and if that's what I'm seeing. Especially since almost every thing on new pages now has an edit summary that reads like that... When did this happen? And if they are autogenerated, why don't all edits now have some sort of edit summary? ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) 17:15, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Update: they do seem to be figuring this out; I've already noticed a drop-off in the Edit Summaries. It sure was nice while it lasted : ) Doc Tropics 20:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I wonder how they did that... maybe by putting a space inside the edit summary thing? ~ user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 22:35, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
In case you hadn't heard, editor User:Mike Halterman (MikeH on IRC) was involved in a pretty serious car accident last night. However he's going to be alright. I won't repost the whole thing here but from his facebook " I had a mild concussion and kept lapsing out of consciousness. I also injured my knee and had to get a soft cast for it." He's currently on bed rest, so it might be nice to drop by his user talk page and wish him well. ⇒ SWATJester On Belay! 11:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
This is going to sound odd.
I know some of the people who read this are like me. You have a huge thirst for knowledge. You spend your days learning new things on wiki sites etc., you spend your nights trying to remember the stuff you learned during the day. You want to be well read, well versed, scholarly. You can't stop taking in everything. So what is your method for organizing and attacking this desire? What is your method for figuring out where to take the quest next? Is there a place for people like me that I don't know about? Anybody understand what I am getting at? 192.156.58.34 21:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
The library? :-) Steve Dufour 15:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
If you're a zealot looking for a cause, at least pick one that promotes humane values, compassion toward your fellow human beings, a spirit of open-mindedness, a willingness to accept differences, a repugnance towards all forms of violence, and a desire to encourage all people to avoid doing anything that might result, now, or eventually, in the destruction of the human race and its habitat, also known as the planet Earth. Cryptonymius 07:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
This is self-explanatory: [5] A website shows content copied from here (how do I know? because I wrote most of it myself) and they have the nerve to say their page is copyrighted. Thosehere that are in the know aboutthese things perhaps should send anemail to those guys. Anagnorisis 04:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd say you have a strong case for complaining. On 7th Nov 2005 you changed the distinctive sentence:
"She was trapped in the Antarctic ice in the Weddell Sea for 281 days,..."
...to read...
"Endurance drifted for months while remaining beset in the ice in the Weddell Sea and drifted with it."
...which is verbatim what it says here: [6]. According to the www.archive.org site (the wayback machine), the solarnavigator site didn't have an article about the HMS Endurance at that time (although the remainder of their site looked pretty much as it does today). Even as recently as TWBM's most recent archive, (April 2006) there was no article about the Endurance.
It's pretty clear then that SolarNavigator.net (a) Violated the GFDL by not giving us credit for the article and (b) is illegally claiming copyright on text they don't own.
Naughty, naughty. There is a WP: page somewhere for reporting this kind of thing - I don't recall where it is. SteveBaker 05:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
In a convoluted sort of way (imo), they are now giving credit to Wikipedia. Thus, I guess the issue has been resolved. Anagnorisis 22:34, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I was thoroughly disappointed to see the Wikipedia main article today on 'History of Eroticism'. The links that the alleged 'scientific' article brazenly provided leads one to explicit pornographic pictures! What were the editors thinking??? Is this to improve your readership?
I always tell children to use Wikipedia for the wealth of knowledge it provided. But unfortunately one has to be on guard now. The sad thing is Even Net Nanny would not stop displaying such pages since they are coming from the trusted Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.173.58.13 ( talk • contribs) 05:30, 30 November 2006
Two responses to this "controversy". 1) The article is quite an academic, NPOV treatment of the subject. It is definately worthy of featured status. 2) I am speaking as a parent: Censorship is not the solution to the wish of some people to abdicate their responsibility as parents. Merely because you don't want to have to supervise your children while they do Activty XXX does not mean that they don't need supervision. Watch your children as they use the internet if you care about them viewing objectionable content. They are children. They need supervision. There is a word for people that don't need this kind of supervision. They are called "adults". -- Jayron 32 06:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I personally have no problem with this article on the main page. Wikipedia clearly states that it is uncensored and I agree with Sthomson, just put up the Firefox general image blocker and your kids will be fine. A7X 900 23:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Ever notice a common theme with this type of thread? The opening poster does not begin with I'm a concerned parent who wants to shield my children from certain content on Wikipedia. Please tell me some ways I can accomplish this without interfering with anyone else's experience. Instead it begins with Change Wikipedia to suit my convenience and the discussion's initiator usually remains locked on the same point. That's the censorship impulse, pure and simple. Here's someone who proposes a segregation system for Wikipedia articles in which certain pages could never get front page attention no matter how good they are. Who says what goes onto that list, does someone else add AIDS because they aren't ready to explain that reality to a small child? How about if a Chinese government official added Tiananmen Square protests of 1989? People might name Roe v. Wade because of what it represents or 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) because of its title. Every one of these articles got featured because some people cared enough about them to contribute a great deal of unpaid work. One of the few compensations for that labor is the satisfaction of seeing its result on the main page. I spent months improving Joan of Arc to FA, which wouldn't be likely to get sent to the back of the Wikipedia segregaton bus, but I'll fight like hell for the editors whose efforts would get singled out for second class treatment. Go write a featured article, then make your case. Durova Charg e! 21:35, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
If that's the case, then we could always have a "How much content do you want to see" slider in our prefs, much like IE's parental control thing. And by the way, I do not particularly like to see two people in ochre paint going at it. Even if the pic is about 5000 years old.~ user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 21:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Can all the removed info in this edit, and the next two, really be found on subpages, or has it been lost?
What's wrong anyway with having some text about these subjects in the Manual of Style, so that people won't have to look through large subpages to find the basic info? So the MOS is a long page, but it does have a contents-box. Nordlending 14:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Many [8] pages link to ARIA, meaning to link to the Australian Recording Industry Association page. Is there a way to automate converting links to ARIA into links to Australian Recording Industry Association?
wj32 talk | contribs 00:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
In List of programs broadcast by Jetix, there's a mess section: Keys Of Number Which Means In Any Countries. Contributors of that article didn't show any efforts: They added programmes. However, they didn't confirmed "what country airs that programme on Jetix". Instead, they added this useless note: "This programme airs in OOO station in US or UK or elsewhere". I posted a "clean up" idea in Talk:List of programs broadcast by Jetix. Please Help! -- JSH-alive talk to me see my works mail to me 14:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Anyone else noticed that meta-descriptions for Wikipedia article pages are now showing up in Google searches? I did a search on Google for "Symbian OS", and the Wikipedia link that appears in the results has the description of "Article discussing the operating system, its history and devices that use it." How did this become possible, and how could I add meta-descriptions for some of my favourite articles? -- Denelson 83 06:05, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I was browsing wikipedia for mass art, and I was redirected to Massachussetts art. It seems there should be a disambiguation page, since mass art also refers to a new theoretical approach to global art forms (see Noël Carroll (A Philosophy of Mass Art, 1998). I wish I could do it myself, but I'm afraid I don't know how to. Help anyone ? Thanks -- Anne97432 15:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#practical_problem:_destruction_of_verifiability_by_third_parties.
In short, when sources get lost also the articles must be in part deleted accordingly. I can see one way to prevent that (but there may be more):
Of course, this is just one idea as an incentive to brainstorming. It seems rather stupid to put a big effort in something that is preprogrammed to auto-delete for no good reason. Harald88 22:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
"Centiare is an online reference directory. It supports advocate points-of-view (APOV) within protected "user-owned" commercial, non-profit, government, personal, and property Directory listings, and features advanced semantic tagging capabilities to organize, search and report information."
See here. -- Zanimum 14:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Just a note to let the community know that a group of editors is attempting to have the photograph in this article removed. They claim it should be removed because is it offensive to members of their church and doesn't add anything to the article. It has been pointed out that the mere mention of Xenu is offensive to Scientologists and that other photos some people find offensive can be found at Penis also because Wikipedia is not censored for any religious or "moral" veiwpoint. While the photo is admittedly, not a thing of beauty, no editor involved has found or is willing to provide a replacement yet. (The fact that a better illustration could be used is about the only thing everyone agrees upon, but we don't have one.) The whole thing has become a nasty mix of people accusing others of being "pro-Mormon" and "anti-Mormon" and worse, while some editors on the page seem to think that if they get "consensus" to remove the only free image available, that that will override our anti-censorship policy. If anyone is a skilled hand at drawing or has access to a better illustration, please let this talk page know. Anyway, be aware. I suspect this issue will be seeping out into the larger community soon. Oh wait...i just did that... pschemp | talk 06:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Storm Rider, don't accuse others of "gross misinformation". There is a photo of people wearing a garment in an article about the garment, just as there is a photo of people wearing G-Strings in the article about them. Where is the problem? yandman 14:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I would amend Storm Rider's comment to say "misunderstanding" rather than "misinformation", but I do think that the way the controversy is portrayed by pschemp above unduly casts the LDS editors in a negative light. I do not accuse pschemp of bad faith in this regard, that is probably just the perspective that pschemp has taken from the discussion. But please understand that the debate at Talk:Temple garment is a bit more nuanced than a band of LDS editors trying to censor any depiction whatsoever of Mormon garments. There are objections to the photo currently used as an illustration, sure. Its offensiveness to Mormons is not grounds for removing it from the article; most involved in the debate actually do agree on that. But there are a lot of questions about whether the photo is appropriate for other reasons NOT based on whether it offends Mormons. There are questions of provenance and verifiability, of educational value, of what might constitute a more acceptable replacement image and whether one can be found, of the photo's ties to anti-Mormon sites, and so forth. Now that people here at the Village Pump have been alerted to the debate, I respectfully suggest that opinions and commentary be continued at the talk page instead of here to minimize confusion and duplicated comments. alanyst / talk/ 18:44, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Off topic Mormon bashing removed.- Discuss the image or don't make incivil and hateful comments. pschemp | talk 18:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm increasingly noticing that Wikipedia is loosing the battle against vandalism. When I started editing here a couple of years ago, there was a FAQ somewhere saying something like
This isn't really true anymore.
Last night I went over to look for a photograph that I had added to the Guy Fawkes article and was only mildly surprised to find that it had disappeared. Whilst checking to see whether someone had had a valid reason to remove it (they hadn't) I trawled through a large number of diffs and found that the article had steadily degraded over the last month. During that time there were still plenty of reverts, but when there were several bad edits in a row it was often only the last bad edit hat got reverted.
In the same article I noticed that a whole section on 'language' had disappeared, and a sentence in the opening paragraph which used to read 'a group of Roman Catholic conspirators' had been vandalised to 'a group of Roman Catholic' which was then just corrected for grammar to read 'a group of Roman Catholics'.
I think the problem isn't just a rise in anonymous users making random bad edits, but rather an attrition of top flight editors. As a result articles are left with nobody taking a full time active interest in them - some vandalism gets corrected but plenty gets overlooked. It is not feasible (or desireable) for an editor to take ownership of an article and maintain it for the next 20 years, so the system only works if there are enough new good editors coming along who can keep up with the flow of detritus and outweigh the influence of the bad editors. Unfortunately I think the tide started to turn about six months ago.
This isn't an isolated case. I've got several thousand articles on my watchlist that I don't watch avidly, but if I compare an article with its version a week ago, many of them show signs of creeping deteriation. Of course it is much harder to repair an article once bad edits begin to build up, you can't just revert to an earlier version.
The good news is that the Guy Fawkes article is still significantly better than it was a year ago. -- Solipsist 09:18, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Honestly, have people who add this type of edit ever read an encyclopaedia before? How difficult is it for them to add the piece of information in the right place in the article? If the answer is "too difficult", don't do it. The sooner wikipedia restricts the ability for anons to edit, the better. -- Roisterer 23:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Isn't it all a part of the love/hate that is Wiki? I love that anyone can edit and contribute. I also absolutely hate that anyone can use that edit to misinform, pervert and vandalize. How can we have our cake and eat it too? Robovski 00:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I think the only thing able to restore Wikipedia's health in the long term is (1) better antivandal bots and (2) running these bots to analyze the entire history of a page, not just watch recent changes. Once a bot finds a historic vandalism that was never reverted, it is feasible to automatically revert it in the current version without affecting the useful edits that were made in the interim.
Surely no bots can catch all bad edits. But such bots are getting better all the time, and we can rerun them on page histories again and again to fix what was missed last time. It's reasonable to expect that bot intelligence will keep slowly approaching human intelligence - and once it gets close enough, Wikipedia may be considered officially out of danger. Perhaps the main reason for why AI hasn't (largely) happened yet is that so far, it's been something from the "would be nice" category. And Wikipedia is now pushing it into the "essential for survival" category. Trapolator 05:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Speaking as a fairly new editor (I guess it's fair to call myself that now), I can say that there is a pretty steep learning curve to getting the hang of editing--especially editing well. Maybe a series of beginner how-to articles should be linked to in strategic places. For example, when editing an article, when looking at a page history or diffs, etc. The articles should be a mix of how to edit well, and why editing is important and the goals behind good editing. Something like an ethics for Wikipedians or how to be a good citizen of Wikipedia. I am sure that not everyone will read the articles, but it might help those who have the "spark" have an easier time becoming good editors. Otherwise, only people with actual "fire" are likely to push through the frustration and become editors. -- Willscrlt 06:02, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
How can I find out how many edits I've made to Wikipedia? I've been marking a lot of pages as {{db-bio}} and similar lately, and they don't show up on my contribs. It'd be nice to know the total number of edits including pages that have been deleted. Thanks! Jonemerson 07:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi.
I am involved with WikiCast , and would like to say hello
If anyone is intrigued as to what WikiCast is see #Wikicast on freenode. ShakespeareFan00 22:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
i've found something lewd on a page , how do i contact someoen to fix it? and its only there every 5th refresh or so, it'll be there then i'll refresh and it'll say something else, but if i come back its there again, — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.240.75 ( talk • contribs) 20:37, 6 December 2006
At of this moment I am having problems with a rather agressive user in the Wrong Turn 2 article. is there anything I can do against his agressive behaviour? Jamesbuc
The backlog on this is turning into a real shame. Often over half the articles are completely ignored, even articles that appear to be legit; User:Kuru appears to be the only one, until me yesterday, making any regular contributions. Could more people take a crack on this regularly? It's WP:GNOME work if it ever existed, but it really needs to get done. It's absolutely awful form to tell people to create an article, and then ignore it. - Patstuart talk| edits 05:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Roughly what is the rate of new account creation here on the 'pedia? Chris cheese whine 09:44, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
This is a long shot, but it's been bugging me for a while. There was this really good movie on tv a while back. The problem is that a while back was when I was 6-8, and I didn't care much about things like movie names unless it was a cartoon movie that I wanted to own. I think it was around then that I got tainted. That movie dealed with a lot of heavy stuff, and now that I'm old enough, I really want to know what movie it was. I don't know who played in it, or what the name is. I thought the kid was the kid from The Sixth Sense, but I was wrong. And he's aged horribly! And I'm not saying he looks old... He just... He used to be so cute!...Maybe it's the hair... But that's not the point...
All I know that may be helpful is that it might have been a "tv" movie, but I doubt it, because it was a true story. Everyone likes a good dark true story, so it was probably in theatres and on video and stuff.
The only thing I really remember is the story. Sort of.
This lady killed this man. The man may have or may not have been close to her or her family, I can't remember. But she killed the man because he raped/molested her son. Now I was around 8, so the concept of a man raping a boy was more than just a little scary. Still is. But I think I repressed it because I can't remember if that's why she did it. But she killed him for her son, and that was the only scenario that came into my mind that made sense. So she kills this guy, and she goes on trial and argues that it was all for him and stuff. And the female officer who actually looks fimiliar but I can't put my finger on it said to the lady "You're my hero!" It was nice. But what wasn't nice was that her son decides that somewhere close to the end of the movie is a good time to put a revolver to his head. He was supposed to be around my age!! Well, my age at the time. He puts in one bullet, and decides to play a nifty game of Russian Roulette by himself and on himself. Someone stops him, and they cry. Then that scene is over and he's watching TV and sees his mom's trial on(or at least I think so) and he turns off the tv with a look of pure evil in his eyes and the screen goes black. Writing comes up saying that he grew up t be a killer of some sort. Or I'm pretty sure that's what it said...
It's just really bothering me that I can't remember much from the movie. And as you can see the things that I do remember are blurry and only may be true. So... If this sounds fimiliar to anyone, then please tell me what movie it is!
Thanks for your time. I really hope that my typos are readable, because it's 4:01 and this insomniac is more than a little tired.
2 Suggestions:
1. Please provide and publicize a way for users to propose new articles without having to log in and create them. Your volunteers can review this list and decide which are worthy, then either write them or create stubs.
2. Please add a new article for "Prima Nocta", the “right” of rulers to sleep with brides on their wedding night as referenced in “Braveheart”. If it is fictional then state that otherwise elaborate on it.
Thank you
WBFromNJ@aol.com
wikipedia-spam is getting pretty overwhelmed and needs more volunteers to help with reverting linkspam and vandalism. linkspamming external links has recently gotten pretty crazy, and the botfeed simply reports anything with a http://, as well as some other nifty obvious vandal triggers. we could really use the help; this is the associated talk channel - pop in. JoeSmack Talk 02:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Special:Contributions&target=199.120.31.19
Most of these contribs are juvenile. 136.176.88.82 00:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
There is an ongoing debate on meta about problems in ku.wiki. I hereby invite all experienced wikipedians to comment there. -- Cat out 17:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Please check out Yukon Wild Ass. Thanks. Steve Dufour 23:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
I was using my gmail and while trying the google-talk feature, I asked myself whether or not it would be a good idea to have the same type of pop-up shown in wikipedia when someone clicks in a word within an article. I mean while you are reading something and there is a word you don't know with a link to another article, wouldn't it be nice if you just clicked and had an pop-up just like in gmail-googleTalk with a brief piece of information about that word just so you can continue reading without moving to the new article? Inside the pop-up could be the link for the full article besides the brief description. What do you guys think?
See ya
PS: I have just signed in, so I am not sure how I will be albe to see reponses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruminante ( talk • contribs)
With Firefox, when I look at the history of a Wikipedia page and it doesn't do what I want it to do; it simply opens the view menu. Anyone know how to fix this so that I will have a keyboard shortcut for doing what I want when I am at a Wikipedia history page?? Georgia guy 17:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
What happened to the Wikipedia:Template locations project page? I see this page has been changed for the last time in July 2006. Should it be marked as historical? BTW, someone should close the debates there. -- Eleassar my talk 10:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I need to write an "ethnographic reasearch essay" for my university english course. I thought wikipedia would make a great paper, but I need someone to interview...
If there are any takers, just email me and I'll send you a small list of questions.
Thanks!
ColinDC 03:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Hey, I'm not sure where else to post this, so I came here. Could some of you guys add West_Cheshire_College to your watchlist? There's been unchecked slander sitting on the page since early July, and the author has continuously returned to add more. I'm fairly sure he's not done yet. Thanks. - Patstuart (talk) (contribs) 06:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
This is my complaint. Thank You -- Martenal0001 11:32, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I was trying to read the section on gangreen, but was immediately turned off by the images. Although they do fit well into the article, is there any chance wikipedia could have a feature that lets disturbing/graphic images be uncovered by a mouse click? To be quite honest I'm happy to read article on surgery without having to see surgical gore :o/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Swyp ( talk • contribs)
Why is it that the history of deleted articles is removed too? It seems like no matter what, history should be preserved. Goaty 07:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I admit I have one up for review, but I just realized that this otherwise great idea (general input and/or RfA pre-screening) isn't getting a whole lot of help. Would it be proper to start placing some requests on a few talk pages, or should I do that to people who regularly vote on RfAs? -- Bobak 06:24, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus, there's a jpeg, Human_Feces.jpg, exactly what it says. Not surprisingly, it doesn't fit its caption. Not sure how else to report it - and the possibility that this may have been done to other pages -, so I've done it here. 82.138.216.205 21:49, 27 November 2006 (UTC)Barbara Sutton
He makes my articles feel rubbish. Taking the mick out of anything i do and i dont seem to be the only one complaing. I have no connection with Hammersmith123 but he's absoloutly right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stone not Wood house ( talk • contribs)
Somebody put a really long section into the Mena, Arkansas article regarding a local Yu-Gi-Oh tournament, including multiple external links to its website. Now, I'm not familiar enough with that local area or the Yu-Gi-Oh scene to know for sure if it's notable enough to deserve mention, but certainly this seems to be excessive prominence and detail for what seems to be a very minor event. I removed it but was reverted, and don't want to get into a revert war over it; perhaps somebody else should take a look. *Dan T.* 02:23, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
just a suggestion...
why not create a site 'wikipedia people' dedicated to profiles of people? Firstly a great number of people would use it and secondly i think that it would stop a lot of vandalism on the general wikipedia site if people can write about themselves elsewhere...
cheers
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I've used Wikipedia for years. I've had an account for years. I'm posting this anonymously because, in the past, when I've been candid, I've found some people become personally abusive as a result.
Tonight, I happened on a page where perfectly legitimate, double-sourced material was removed as "defamatory" in a POV edit by what appears to be both an ignorant and overzealous "administrator" cum "censor." I checked the administrator's record; he/she has been a Wiki user for less than a year. This "administrator" clearly doesn't understand defamation (I am an attorney -- I do).
To me, this sort of behavior articulates the growing problems with Wikipedia in a nutshell: Wiki used to be about building a big base of free knowledge. Now it's all about people trying to become administrators and their petty powers and suck-up circle. (When I see people asking to be administrators and organizing little suckup campaigns, my first reaction is, "that person does not deserve nor merit to be an administrator.") The levels of bureaucracy and rules and policies and templates here make the DMV look like a lemonade stand. Wikipedia is now an AV Society of Asocial Geeks who are obstructive and self-protective of their ridiculous little circles of power. To preserve that power, they're destroying Wikipedia in the process.
As a result, Wikipedia is narrowing its potential pool of contributors by becoming an entrenched bureaucracy as petty as the faculty of any also-ran community college. Just look how frickin' complex footnotes have become; how is a new contributor supposed to understand all that coding? Who wants to waste time learning? What was wrong with the old, simple footnote policy? How many tasks forces and little online committees and requests for proposals were necessary to come up with that byzantine silliness?
Most dangerously, Wikipedia is now self-destructing with this "living persons" policy which, absurdly, actually is exposing Wikipedia and all of its assets to legal peril. Wikipedia, simply put, is voiding its 47 USC 230 (c)(1) protection with all this heavy-handed screening and editing. You're inviting yourself to be sued by doing this and, in the process, voiding your own legal protections.
So what is my solution? I didn't just come here to bitch. My solution: simplify. Go back to the basics of what made Wikipedia great. Trim back all the bureaucracy and all the layers upon layers upon layers of policies and reviews and tasks forces and procedures and yada yada yada. Make CONTENT king; don't make the petty and monstrous bureaucracy king, as it is now. I can remember when Wiki's policies took ten minute to read. Now it would take ten days to read. That's just absurd.
I will continue to use and contribute to Wikipedia. I was here in the beginning, long before the vast majority of present administrators had even heard of the site and were still busy wasting their time on Friendster. I fear, however, that what made Wikipedia great is being lost. It's about information, people, not the bureaucracy. It's about content, not petty little turf wars and seeing how you can flex your little administrative powers. I'm constantly shocked by the rude and heavy-handed actions by administrators. Police yourself, people, before you try to make yourself look big by being small. 207.69.137.12 05:59, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Not sure whether this anon thinks I have an open mind or am defending my petty fiefdom, but I'll accept the nomination: okay, I'm a Rouge admin. Durova 19:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
We already know about these problems. Do you have a solution? Saying "let's go back to the way things were" isn't a solution. Unless you also want to ban everyone who's joined since then, I guess, and delete all the articles they've created. Things that worked for a wiki that no one knew about with 100 contributors and 1000 articles will never work for a wiki with thousands of contributors that comes up as the first result for many Google searches, is treated as an authoritative source in discussion forum battles, and has biographies about resentful people who want to discredit it. — Omegatron 20:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
I know this does not address the primary theme of the initial post. It does address some of the secondary themes.
The main reason that I have not contributed but have only edited has been the complexity of the site. I have spent many hours wandering around in the guidelines and have yet to find a format for footnotes. I know that Kate Turabian is out of favor and the latest edition that I have of her book is quite old. I am not certain of the current status of MLA but, again, the only version that I have of that is probably older than most Wikipedians.
The number of templates confuses me. The incessant and aggressive use of jargon is distracting and often unintelligible. (From the original post in this subject, “The levels of bureaucracy and rules and policies and templates here make the DMV look like a lemonade stand. Wikipedia is now an AV Society of Asocial Geeks who are obstructive and self-protective of their ridiculous little circles of power.” When I see “DMV” I think “Department of Motor Vehicles” whose rules and policies seem to me to be fairly straightforward. When I see “AV” I think “Audio-Visual” which is obviously not what was meant.)
The only problem that I have with the editing that I have seen is the prevalence of the assumption of bad faith. If something appears to be wrong, instead of attempting to correct the error or giving notice that the contributor of the apparent error will be contacted to make some sense of the matter, the perceived error is deleted, no questions or discussion.
JimCubb 01:55, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I'd say the decline in number of administrators is the reason some of them are grouchy. We are each responsible for the well-being of 1377 articles, if distributed evenly among us, and everything is our fault when one of them goes bad. I have 2,180 on my watchlist (a lot of redirects, I hope) ;-) But it gets taxing. Jimbo's original idea of administrators was just people who had edited a while and proved they were trying to contribute to the encyclopedia; someone that could be trusted not to break things.
I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*.
I think perhaps I'll go through semi-willy-nilly and make a bunch of people who have been around for awhile sysops. I want to dispel the aura of "authority" around the position. It's merely a technical matter that the powers given to sysops are not given out to everyone.
I don't like that there's the apparent feeling here that being granted
sysop status is a really special thing.
— Jimbo
— Omegatron 04:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
To the original poster: I am currently working on an article about the "social aspects" of Wikipedia. I'd be very interested in talking to you about what you view as "suckup campaigns" and the need for people to become adminstrators. If you're interested, please email me at brianwrites@gmail.com
68.39.158.205
02:41, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
User:Iced Kola/T
User:Iced Kola/T2
User:Iced Kola/T3
User:Iced Kola/T4
I'm going to start using these as my warning templates (I love creating them =p), and I'm even going to inset them into my vandalproof. I'm just asking any and all users here on wikipedia if they can check them out and improve them/give me feedback on them. Thanks.
I c e d K o l a (
Contributions)
23:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
~~<includeonly></includeonly>~~
immediately before the closing div tag, so that when it's substituted, your signature appears as part of the message between the lines.
Tra
(Talk)
00:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)For what it's worth I see no citation of a criterion for speedy deletion here. We can't just delete
things that seem non-notable on sight. Please exercise discretion. Deco 11:41, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
It was moved to the user space at User:NEaB/Nowhere-Else and Beyond and then the redirect that was
created by the page move was deleted. RJFJR 16:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I know why it was deleted, I talked with the admin that deleted it and found out why; but there was no citation of a criterion for speedy deletion given on the page which made it a bit frustrating to find. Also, it was not moved to the user space until I requested it for revision. Garth of NEaB 14:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Check this out!! And for about 1 dollar or 2 pounds??? Either this is a joke or our Jimmy Wales has gone Wales over his top. Wikipedia at Ebay for sale. Thanks and God bless you!
Antonio the licka from Puerto Rica Martin
Recently re-read a great article trying to pin down an answer to the question: Who writes Wikipedia? It was so good, I thought I'd post it here so that more people can read it (if they haven't already). Who writes Wikipedia?. Carcharoth 23:33, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Excellent catch! Good job for letting us know, Carcharoth. The work described by the article is excellent and should be read by all big-time editors here, including some of the followup comments. I am impressed that there is a strong case for the common sense argument that the bulk of real information in Wikipedia comes from the many people who actually know something about which they write. I hope that Jimbo Wales has a chance to read it and digest it. Hu 07:29, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
There is a fad right now of blanking pages with nonsense comments and (what makes it a fad) putting the comment into the edit summary. Any clues as to the source of this, such as might it be some campaign cooked up on a juvenile forum or chat room? Hu 20:10, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that there can sometimes be confusing inconsistency between similar articles (especially the technical ones). For example, when looking for information on the terms grain, crystallite and particle, I get slightly different (and incomplete) interpretations of the same idea. Individually the articles are OK, but when looked at overall, there's a loss of coherence. Do people when working on wikipedia keep in mind how other similar or related articles are written? It seems to me there needs to be more people who edit groups of articles as a whole, to maintain a consistent narrative.
I don't know if my above point has been discussed before, which brings me to my next point. The Village pump really needs some sort of search function so that I don't bring up subjects that have already been covered.
User:Nihiltres edited Blue and Black using a rule that you should always use Canadian spelling in color articles. Anyone aware of this?? Georgia guy 15:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
It seems as if there should be a template mechanism that could be used to resolve these dialect spelling issues based on the reader's preference settings. (Although that probably wouldn't work for general viewers.) Perhaps that could be a future wikipedia enhancement? — RJH ( talk) 22:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump
Some articles (such as the recently featured
spyware article) uses references (in this case
The New York Times), which require mandatory registration to be able to see the content. I find this an annoyance, I dislike sites with mandatory registration to be able to access the content and I feel this is a little unfair. I was thinking, maybe there should be a policy or something, to avoid using sites that require registration as references? --
Frap
09:43, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
[End moved]
I'm writing an article on Wikipedia for my university newspaper.There seems to be a debate on campus regarding whether or not Wikipedia is a valid academic source. I have read many entries on Wikipedia itself regarding this, but I was hoping to get some feedback from regular users. Say for example, someone changes the text in an entry- how long does it typically take for the information to be corrected? I have heard a whole range of times, from four minutes to four days, but can anyone tell me- is there some kind of notifier that alerts authors when their text has been edited? How can one keep track of the pages they contribute to, aside from constantly refreshing the page? Being that there are a great deal of properly cited articles in the bibliography section of most pages, Wikipedia is seeming more and more like a viable source for academic work, but how trustworthy is it?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])
- Jmabel | Talk 07:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
-- Kar_the_Everburning 15:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Why exactly are there idiots in the world who pretend to be gangsterrrr rappers and have horribly made MySpace pages, when in reality, they live in the suburbs?
-- Kar_the_Everburning 14:21, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Because they have nothing better to do. Thay also may live with their Mom and also may be total failers in life so let them act Getto and tough thats all they got to live for... A7X 900 21:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Why exactly do people drop biased, personal attack statements into wikipedia, and then don't sign their comments? -- Jayron 32 05:37, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Comparing the message I got as a new user here and in http://fr.wikipedia.org , I think there is a room for improvements here. Just compare Jmfayard 11:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Welcome!
Hello, Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive P, and
welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the
Wikipedia Boot Camp, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}}
on your user talk page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.
Here are a few good links for newcomers:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Mike1024 ( t/ c) 11:58, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
{{subst:Bienvenue | ~~~~ }}
Wikipédia est un projet de rédaction collective d'une vaste encyclopédie réalisé actuellement dans 250 langues différentes de par le monde. Pour t'aider à tout moment, chaque page du site possède en haut à gauche un lien vers
l'aide de Wikipédia.
N'hésite pas à consulter les premières indications pour modifier et rédiger des pages dans Wikipédia avec la syntaxe appropriée. Le bac à sable est tout spécialement destiné à accueillir tes essais. | |
Sur une page de discussion, n'oublie pas de
signer tes messages, en tapant ~~~~ . Cependant, nous ne signons pas les articles encyclopédiques.
Je te conseille un petit tour par les principes fondateurs et les recommandations à suivre ( règles de neutralité, règles de citation des sources, critères d'admissibilité des articles, conventions de style, etc.) et les pages projets, où il y a sans doute un sujet qui t'intéressera. | |
Tu es le bienvenu si tu désires insérer une image ou enrichir les articles, mais il est impératif de respecter des règles très strictes sur l'utilisation des images et le respect des droits d'auteurs. | |
Si tu le souhaites, tu peux te présenter sur le
journal des nouveaux arrivants et indiquer, sur ta
page utilisateur,
quelles langues tu parles et
d'où tu viens, quels sont tes centres d'intérêt...
Enfin, le plus important, je te souhaite de
prendre du plaisir à contribuer au projet ! |
Actually, I rather like {{ en:Template:Welcome}}. I looked at the available templates and decided that I liked {{ welcome}} best (as opposed to more informal templates, or templates like {{ welcomeg}} which is more similar to the French one); I think the French one is a bit intimidating and the English one is more likely to be read by a non-user. It might be interesting to compare the templates; it:User talk:ais523 has the Italian welcome on at the moment (generated automatically by bot, which I also disapprove of), which shows a third style of template. -- ais523 15:19, 13 November 2006 ( U T C)
Welcoming is done by volunteers. Nobody is required to welcome anybody. User:Zoe| (talk) 03:37, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
My initial experience would have been a good deal less frustrating if I had encountered a note somewhere pointing out that if I don't put wikipedia: in front of a search term there's a whole world of helpful stuff I'll never find, or be able to find again. Cryptonymius 18:03, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
(Note: I think Jmfayard was talking more about the general look of the template then the actual words used; but a translation was asked for so here's my (not very good) attempt at translating the words)
Welcome to French Wikipedia (your name here)!
Wikipedia is a project for making a big encyclopedia in 250 different languages from all over the world. To help you right now each page on the site has at the top left a link to the help page.
Don't hesitate to consult the first links for how to edit a page and how to use wiki-syntax. The tutorial is designed especially for you to experiment with.
On a talk page, don't forget to sign your messages by typing ~~~~. However, do not sign encyclopedia articles.
I would advise you to take a look at the founding principals and the rules to follow (rules about NPOV, citing sources, criteria of admission for articles, style conventions, etc.) and the project pages, which you will doubtless find interesting.
You are welcome, if you like, to insert a picture that improves the articles, but it is imperative to respect the very strict rules about using images and respecting copyright.
If you like, you can present yourself at the newcomers page and indicate, on your user page, what languages you speak and where you are from, what your interests are...
And lastly, and most importantly, I invite you to please contribute to the project!
If you have any other questions, you can go to this page to ask them, or contact me.
(And now anyone who speaks French better than I do knows just how bad my French is. ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) 17:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC))
I've just discovered a brilliant new term that should enter every Wikipedian's vocabulary: encyclopidity [2]! A good article is one of "high encyclopidity". A questionable entry is one of "low encyclopidity" or "questionable encyclopidity". And if someone doubts something is appropriate for Wikipedia, why, they can say "I doubt this article's encyclopidity"! -- Ekjon Lok 02:05, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Please join the discussion at Portal talk:China. -- Ideogram 04:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Do you find Wikipedia addictive? I sure do.
oh yeah. - Kar_the_Everburning(not logged in)
Would it be considered spamming to promote WikiProjects, articles in need of attention, and other internal concepts by advertising them in the sandbox, or would it be considered beneficial? -- Gray Porpo ise 21:59, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Can I copy text from Wikipedia into another wiki site that releases its content as public domain rather than GFDL? What if I put a notice at the bottom that said "This article incorporates material from Wikipedia, and some or all of it is subject to copyleft"? A.J.A. 04:26, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I am not sure if this is the proper place for this (please move it to the right place if it is not):
The article Serial Box offers(offered) a link and two images that are directing to a site engaged in theft. In this case, theft of my property.
My company is engaged in producing a shareware product, which means that we sell the registration code for that product. The site referred to by this article is engaged in distributing such registration codes.
Please consider this a fair warning in advance that Wikipedia is actively engaged in promoting and directing to this site. Please also see this as a clarification meant to prevent a claim that you were not aware of this issue. I will not persue legal action if you will quickly move to remedy this but please not that you are now aware of the situation and will have to bear the full consequences of ignoring this. Ori Redler 16:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
I would like to make several comments here:
You've created a legal issue where none exists. You removed the link; it stayed gone. I agree that it was not proper, and in general (and in total I think) we don't link to illegal material. So ... there's no foul here. If someone had put it BACK, you would have a complaint, but basically you yourself removed the only reason for any legal complaint. Thank you for that, but this continued legal discussion is thus no longer necessary. -- Golbez 22:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Please block him! He was a friend that came over to my house (I will not say who he is for personal reason's) and he thought it would be funny to start messing up pages! I found him doing this and told him that people could track this stupid stuff to MY computer and made him get off. Then he told me he thought it would be funny, but I told him it was stupid and to stop. He left not to long ago and he told me he won't and never planned to be a Wikipedia editer. So please block him. A7X 900 17:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
You have only blocked him for only '1' month! Dude, I'm A7X 900's brother and trust me, Murdoc666 is real bad news! Murdoc666 is a nice and funny guy, but he will come back to ruin some pages. Just erase his profile completely! ZeroThomas 17:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Hey R.A Huston, I really like your User page. A7X 900 17:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Can someone tell me the words 2 the song, Albatross , released in late 60s. i believe some of it goes like, Lady comes to the gate dressed in lavendar (sp?) and leather looking north to the sea, she finds the weather fine. hears the steeple bells--ringing thru the orchird -- all the way from town ...... or something like that...... ...young men bringing violets are curious to know it you have cried and ask you why and tell you why and hear the way you answer...
anyway ,the above is all jumbled up so if you kno the acurate ( 1 c or 2? ) accurate lyrics, please send them along 2 me * ) , ;>) anyway, i dont kno how 2 make those little face things
so, thanks huh? and mahalo nuiloa
Block quote
dont kno who wrote the song, just kno judy collins recorded it in the late 60s
* )
This has been bugging me - in the speedy deletion templates, why does "db" stand for? Why is it not "sd"? — Swpb talk contribs 04:35, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Special:Contributions&target=199.120.31.19
Most of these contribs are juvenile. 136.176.88.82 00:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm part of a team in a management & organizational analysis at the Stern School of Business at New York University. We selected Wikipedia as the subject of our final analysis, and are specifically interested in what drives people to participate in Wikipedia. To this end we've compiled an anonymous, 5-minute survey that we hoped the Wikipedia community would take part in, everyone from casual readers to editors to members of the Board.
It's available online at http://tramchase.com/wikipedia-survey
Please be as detailed as possible. Your participation is much appreciated!
I posed the following question which began a thread on the help desk and someone suggested the village pump would be more appropriate venue for this discussion. So if there are any further thoughts or views on this, I'd appreciate hearing them. I've purposely avoided naming specific editors/administrators in this because it's more concern based on a pattern of practice. This sinking sense I got by starting with the linked article through to its talk page and then uncovering repeated administrative maneuvering and contemptuous and intimidating encounters with other editors and administrators it made me want to stay clear of this article. However, I was worried about the reputation of Wikipedia in general. -- 70.8.49.7 01:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering whether the US government is granted special permission to as editors and administrators on Wikipedia? I ask that because many of the articles associated with the September 11th attacks read like press releases from the Whitehouse instead of encyclopedia articles. Also reading through endless discussion pages reveals they look more like usenet newsgroup discussions than discussions about writing wikipedia articles. A core group of administrators and editors pretends to be ignorant of Wikipedia polices and uses they're administrative powers to be disruptive, and intimidate other editors and administrators. They seem to be immune from any disciplinary policies.
I thought about jumping into these discussion, but I do not want to get in any trouble with the authorities. From looking at the history any dispute reolution measures look futile. If these articles are only intended for US authorities to edit, why doesn't wikipedia simply place a notification on those articles to indicate such special treatment. I think we're losing good editors and admins who just don't know these articles are off limits. -- 68.30.94.147 22:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I'll butt in with a hypothetical question of my own here. What if a really high ranking official, say the President, demanded adminship on Wikipedia. Are you obligated to give it to him? Dooms Day349 00:39, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Shimgray, I don't know how you or any editor could be so confident of what you're saying. I mean as a fairly new editor to Wikipedia I would say I would think Wikipedia doesn't grant special permission. However,
it really makes you wonder. I know I said I'd take this to the village pump and I will do that now and stop posting here. -- 70.8.49.7 01:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
end of Held Desk Thread
Given the articles that you're discussing, September 11th attacks, I suspect the answer is relatively straightforward...completely unrelated to any government activity at all, those articles are heavily edited by U.S. citizens. Americans may be a bit schizophrenic on some topics, but we can largely agree that blowing up our skyscrapers is not something we take kindly to. Any bias in the articles almost certainly relates to this, rather than a semi-conspiratorial government intervention. Doc Tropics 01:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC) PS - the cabal made me say that!
Considering that the offices of Congress got collectively blocked for vandalism less than a year ago, I regard it as highly unlikely that any special privilege has been granted with regard to this article. If any credible evidence exists of this thread's alleged exception to site policy, and if an editor who has such evidence fears reprisal, e-mail me off site and I will look into the matter. As a matter of full disclosure I cannot call myself neutral on this issue: I never edit that family of articles because my nearest relative survived the World Trade Center disaster on 9/11 from a high floor and I joined the armed forces and went to war as a result. However, I am now a private citizen and am not beholden to anyone. As one of roughly 5% of administrators who list themselves at Category:Administrators open to recall I welcome scrutiny for fairness from other Wikipedians. My e-mail address is available through my user talk page. Durova Charg e! 02:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. You had brought up fear of repraisals, but I didn't want someone who might be afraid of repraislas to midunderstand the technical issues involved. Obvoiusly we're only talking about Wikipedia here, its not like they're going to face a grand jury or something like that. -- 70.8.49.7 02:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm still waiting for the e-mail with the eye-popping evidence. Come on, brighten up my day here...otherwise it's back to WP:RFI where I get to play Sherlock Holmes over linkspam and Spanish street slang. I'd much rather blow an NSA operative's cover story. ;) Durova Charg e! 22:20, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't believe that Wikipedia gives any undo authority to government officials, but when I read stories that say the military is tightening rules on military bloggers and then I read the Pentagon creates a rapid response team, and then I look at the discussion pages mentioned here, I start to wonder if US authorities are on Wikipedia. In fact, I'm sure they are, and that isn't really bad. What would be bad is if people, in the government or not, are paid to guard or edit articles.— Slipgrid 22:24, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Wow! the article that Slipgrid points to is very disconcerting. I can just imagine the profile of someone they might recruit for that. Some patsy who thought the answer to these attacks was to join the military to fight for Haliburton in Afghanistan. Clearly such a person wouldn't have the skills to think through serious intelligence matters,, but they'd be perfect for an assignment like this. Wikipedia should really take steps to prevent this sort of attack. Its integrity cannot withstand an attack like this..-- Cplot 00:20, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I would add to this discussion that I had been wondering how such behavior could continue unchecked for so long. This would be a good explanation. I've been trying to think of others but so far I draw a blank. I know some may say that's just how a decentered, democratic site works, but that wouldn't explain how so many disruptive editors could also rise to administrator positions. Any other thoughts about explanations? -- Cplot 02:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
After having read oodles of postings to innumerable web forums, over the years, I'm only surprised when people take a rational, moderate, open-minded approach to any discussion on any subject. And some years ago Forbes (I think) published an article about corporate America paying folks to create and maintain stoogeblogs to battle criticisms from indie blogs, and since the government lately seems to be mostly about spin, rather than action, in the real world, as opposed to the fake world of television, I'm hardly surprised to hear suspicions raised about government employees sneaking in and editing things...especially since perception is reality. Cryptonymius 04:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Do you own a few Blogs?
If you do, we pay $5 per post for you to write about our clients if your blogs qualify. You must be reliable and must do your assignments on time. Please send us your blog urls along with a contact number and we'll call you if your blog qualifies.
Wonder how long after you take that job, before they ask you to start editing the wiki.— Slipgrid 04:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm just reading through this stuff starting from September_11,_2001_attacks and just following through from one link to the next. Read the talk pages of these editors. Read the administrative actions they've taken. There's so much questionable behavior it's stunning. Right now there's a group of them going after User:Seabhcan. These repeated frivilous administrative actions typically involve the same group of editors/admins and just seems to be playing the system without regard driving away decent editors or fueling animosity. No good will or assumptions of good faith whatsoever. Even if they aren't paid professionals they're certainly overtaxing the administrative processes of the wiki. When you see how they engage editors before taking administrative it's stern and not quite civil, but almost. But from the pattern, as anon mentioned, you can see how they just seemt to be trying to evoke a personal attacks or violations of the 3rr from those they disagree with. Once they have these personal attacks and 3rr violations in hand they begin more frivilous disciplinary pursuits. It definitely looks like a full-time gig for these folks considering hos much time they devote to the wiki. It's astonishing. At first I thought they just didn't no how to compromise on the talk pages, but when you keep following through and it looks really bad. This is not good. It's hard to tell how many articles have been tainted by this. And sorting through all this evidence would take a full-time staff. -- 67.37.179.61 04:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Mongo, you make a good point. This would be a problem no matter who was doing it. However, the evidence points to people pushing a very pro Whitehouse position. And certainly high government officials have much more pressing matters to attend to. However, as someone said above,. these are not high government officials, but some sort of hardly tie their own shoes types of grunts involved. The US military budget is something like $1 trillion dollars (best spoiken with Dr. Evil's voice). Somewhere I read recently, this budget was greater than all other military budgets worldwide cobined. Surely that hires a lot of thugs at minimum wage. Take a look at the articles Slipgrid posted. They're quite telling.. -- Cplot 05:55, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Omegatron is right: ROBOTS ARE CLEARLY SUPERIOR!!! Cryptonymius 06:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
You want evidence take a look at the history of the village pump. You'll find these messages deleted across every category of the village pump. Check the log, of the IP reporting the Feds inappropriate inovlement and you find it is now blocked. This one will likely be blocked now too. And all that IP did was post to the village pump something that should concern every legitiimate member of the Wikipedia community. There's clear evidence that something is going on here. Sure this evidence either shows inapprorpriate involvement of Federal Authoritieis or it could just be a prank by some editors and administrators trying to fuel "conspiracy theories": so they make it look like that by deleting "controversial" claims. If so then I'm likely in on it too. However, I have knowledge that it's the former (inappropriate Federal involvement)), but even if it's only a prank, it's inappropriate behavior. Something should be done about it. -- 70.8.132.79 21:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
67.37.179.61 brought up User:Seabhcan as one of the targets of these admins. Tom Harrison also pointed me to User:Zen-master as another casualty of these friviolous disciplinary measures. Maybe Village Pump isn't the place for this, but perhaps we could set aside another page to compile the issues together. That way If anyone knew how to reach these lost editors, they could be encouraged to reeturn and appeal or simply return if they were just frustrated away. Obviously it takes a carfeul reexamination of each disciplinary case to see if it fits in this pattern. I don't pretend to know about these cases in extreme detail. But from a first look at them they seem to fit the pattern..
As somewhat of a novice here I had been reading blog rants against Wikipedia complaining it doesn't stand up to its mission and my first thought was: you just don't understand how it works. After reading through this stuff , though I'm thinking: maybe this seemingly crazed blog ratner was one of those editors targetted -- Cplot 06:32, 28 November 2006 (UTC).
This is why you can't win against conspiracy theorists: If you oppose them, you're part of the conspiracy. If you don't oppose them, you become part of the "silent majority" that they claim to represent. If you prove them wrong, they just make more junk up to explain away your objections and claim you're repressing The Truth(tm)! CPlot is being blocked for disruptive behaviour and paranoid accusations towards other editors. -- tjstrf talk 21:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
"If you prove them wrong"
Could someone create a politics userboxes set, such as "This person is a {insert party here}" and like "This person supports/doesn't support our troops", etc? -- WTRiker 02:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
One downside to that type of userbox is how they tend to get exploited if an edit dispute occurs. I don't have any userboxes, but now and then some editor interpolates my username into some sort of pro-Russian bias. Considering that I speak no Russian, don't have a Russian family heritage, rarely edit Russian topics, and am a United States veteran who grew up during the Cold War my upbringing probably attempted to impress the opposite bias...but that doesn't stop intrepid editors from attempting the accusation. Durova Charg e! 04:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi all, I was bold and I added an "Instant messaging" section to Wikipedia:Contact us/Contact a user. This is a presumably high-traffic page: users can get to it just by clicking "Contact Wikipedia" on the left side of any Wikipedia page and then "Contact a Wikipedia user".
Do you think the change was OK? Cheers, -- unforg e ttableid | how's my driving? 00:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I have noted in a couple of articles recently that there is occasionally some obvious bit of vandalism - an added expletive usually - that does not show up when I try to remove it by editing the page. The most recent example is the word "BITCH" added to the end of the Early Life section of the entry for Oskar Schindler. Is there a trick to getting rid of such vandalism? 71.91.125.91 05:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
How is this picture? I recently uploaded it and I would like some feedback on it. Thank you. Ilikefood 23:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Look's GOOD! Who made it and what do you want to do with that good looking picture? A7X 900 23:25, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I made it and I already put it at Pudding. Ilikefood 23:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
What do the editors here make of this? Is Sanger a co-founder or not? — 75.75.151.180 15:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I write on CARM.ORG - CHRISTIAN DISCUSSION FORUMS and I am one of the members at the forum, during one of the discussion I mentioned of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar and their article on: The empty tomb is a fiction -- Jesus did not raise bodily from the dead, and some other topics. Some of the members commented that "Wikipedia is a most unreliable source", and that any body could edit their entries. Jesus Seminar is not a scholarly Christian group. One member is ready to have focused discussion on the above article "The empty tomb is a fiction” and that if I wish I could quote excerpts from their article and they are ready to refute such articles. I require your permission to quote excerpts from the articles of Jesus Seminar. If possible and someone from Jesus Seminar could help uphold their stance on their behalf, I would be thankful to you. It is intended only as a religious discussion, and no commercial benefit is intended. Thanks
Relatively new around here and offering a thought.. Hope this is an appropriate area to post it.
Just reverted some vandalism and followed the users other vandalisms. It seems that double vandalisms, especially section deletions, often results in a half correct revert that only goes back one edit, leaving the first vandalism uncorrected. I had to go back to October to retrieve entire sections for articles that were deleted and never recovered. For this kind of thing, should there not be a failsafe? I understand that individuals watching for vandalism are probably kept busy and not able to check articles thoroughly, but it stands to reason that if somebody edits something twice in a matter of seconds or minutes and one edit is a vandalism, that both edits are vandalisms.. and it should not be so easy to "sneak" such things through. It is rather discouraging to find other users hard work disappear unnoticed so effortlessly.
I guess there is no question to be answered, but something to be aware of.. WarBaCoN 08:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I was searching for info about Alphabet and sadly I found unappropriate pcs...please do something about it...I am not sure how I could do it myself...thank you
frequent user..SK
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.92.166.185 ( talk • contribs)
A while ago, I came across the discussions came up regarding stable versions. Though I never participated in the discussions, I was a supporter of the idea (specifically the idea that the stable versions should be the ones displayed by default, as proposed by User:TidyCat). Someone created a nice graph showing the variation in article quality over time, shown right, and I thought that stable versions would be a great way of ensuring that featured articles remain at least at the standard they were when first featured. But I never really kept up with the discussions, although I did notice a while ago that there were processes in place for proposing which versions of an article should be the reference one, but it all seemed somewhat disorganised.
I was surprised to discover when I recently visited Wikipedia:Stable versions that the whole thing seems to be inactive. So could someone bring me up to speed on what's going on with the idea? I heard that something similar has been implemented at the German Wikipedia; could someone decribe what system they use, and how it compares to those old proposals I've linked to above? -- Nick R Talk 13:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and I've never posted at the Village Pump before, so apolgies if this is the wrong section. :) -- Nick R Talk 13:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm hoping that an uninvolved someone can look into this issue. I've had a disagreement with User:Balliol over the biography of intelligence historian Rupert Allason (aka Nigel West). I noticed that he'd also edited the biography of Rupert Allason's father, James Allason, in October, and that he'd referred to a forthcoming publication (due this month) of the memoirs of Allason senior [3]. The publishers are said to be Blackthorn Press of London. Googling, I could only find reference to a Blackthorn Press of Pickering, who, when telephoned, told me that that they are not the publishers.
I think the references need to be checked for soundness (we can't cite unpublished work, for example) and would appreciate someone who could have a look into this. I don't want to dig in myself, as it would likely inflame bad feelings. — Matt Crypto 14:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Just for the heck of it, try asking for mediation if this happens again. ~ user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 22:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I wrote an article on "the munchies" on one of the effects of marijuana that I thought wasn't to bad. I haven't done much on the Wikipedia and I figured it was a relatively easy topic. I added several cultural references to the term and wonder what was wrong with it. I fully understand if I broke a set standard I was unaware of but The article wasn't changed or improved whatsoever, it was just redirected to Cannabis(drug) almost as soon as I wrote it. I understand getting rid of it if their was something wrong with it (which there very well might have been, it wasn't all that long though the movies I mentioned did reference the term). I would say that if it was a terrible article that needed deletion it should have redirected to Cannabis culture.-- Colin 8 06:55, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Lately I've seen a lot of edit summaries by IPs and new users that say things like, "Replaced page with 'u r a turd'" or "Blanked page" or "Created page with 'blah blah blah'". This seems... odd. I know there had been some talk about autogenerating edit summaries and I'm wondering if that has now been implamented and if that's what I'm seeing. Especially since almost every thing on new pages now has an edit summary that reads like that... When did this happen? And if they are autogenerated, why don't all edits now have some sort of edit summary? ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) 17:15, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Update: they do seem to be figuring this out; I've already noticed a drop-off in the Edit Summaries. It sure was nice while it lasted : ) Doc Tropics 20:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I wonder how they did that... maybe by putting a space inside the edit summary thing? ~ user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 22:35, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
In case you hadn't heard, editor User:Mike Halterman (MikeH on IRC) was involved in a pretty serious car accident last night. However he's going to be alright. I won't repost the whole thing here but from his facebook " I had a mild concussion and kept lapsing out of consciousness. I also injured my knee and had to get a soft cast for it." He's currently on bed rest, so it might be nice to drop by his user talk page and wish him well. ⇒ SWATJester On Belay! 11:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
This is going to sound odd.
I know some of the people who read this are like me. You have a huge thirst for knowledge. You spend your days learning new things on wiki sites etc., you spend your nights trying to remember the stuff you learned during the day. You want to be well read, well versed, scholarly. You can't stop taking in everything. So what is your method for organizing and attacking this desire? What is your method for figuring out where to take the quest next? Is there a place for people like me that I don't know about? Anybody understand what I am getting at? 192.156.58.34 21:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
The library? :-) Steve Dufour 15:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
If you're a zealot looking for a cause, at least pick one that promotes humane values, compassion toward your fellow human beings, a spirit of open-mindedness, a willingness to accept differences, a repugnance towards all forms of violence, and a desire to encourage all people to avoid doing anything that might result, now, or eventually, in the destruction of the human race and its habitat, also known as the planet Earth. Cryptonymius 07:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
This is self-explanatory: [5] A website shows content copied from here (how do I know? because I wrote most of it myself) and they have the nerve to say their page is copyrighted. Thosehere that are in the know aboutthese things perhaps should send anemail to those guys. Anagnorisis 04:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd say you have a strong case for complaining. On 7th Nov 2005 you changed the distinctive sentence:
"She was trapped in the Antarctic ice in the Weddell Sea for 281 days,..."
...to read...
"Endurance drifted for months while remaining beset in the ice in the Weddell Sea and drifted with it."
...which is verbatim what it says here: [6]. According to the www.archive.org site (the wayback machine), the solarnavigator site didn't have an article about the HMS Endurance at that time (although the remainder of their site looked pretty much as it does today). Even as recently as TWBM's most recent archive, (April 2006) there was no article about the Endurance.
It's pretty clear then that SolarNavigator.net (a) Violated the GFDL by not giving us credit for the article and (b) is illegally claiming copyright on text they don't own.
Naughty, naughty. There is a WP: page somewhere for reporting this kind of thing - I don't recall where it is. SteveBaker 05:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
In a convoluted sort of way (imo), they are now giving credit to Wikipedia. Thus, I guess the issue has been resolved. Anagnorisis 22:34, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I was thoroughly disappointed to see the Wikipedia main article today on 'History of Eroticism'. The links that the alleged 'scientific' article brazenly provided leads one to explicit pornographic pictures! What were the editors thinking??? Is this to improve your readership?
I always tell children to use Wikipedia for the wealth of knowledge it provided. But unfortunately one has to be on guard now. The sad thing is Even Net Nanny would not stop displaying such pages since they are coming from the trusted Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.173.58.13 ( talk • contribs) 05:30, 30 November 2006
Two responses to this "controversy". 1) The article is quite an academic, NPOV treatment of the subject. It is definately worthy of featured status. 2) I am speaking as a parent: Censorship is not the solution to the wish of some people to abdicate their responsibility as parents. Merely because you don't want to have to supervise your children while they do Activty XXX does not mean that they don't need supervision. Watch your children as they use the internet if you care about them viewing objectionable content. They are children. They need supervision. There is a word for people that don't need this kind of supervision. They are called "adults". -- Jayron 32 06:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I personally have no problem with this article on the main page. Wikipedia clearly states that it is uncensored and I agree with Sthomson, just put up the Firefox general image blocker and your kids will be fine. A7X 900 23:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Ever notice a common theme with this type of thread? The opening poster does not begin with I'm a concerned parent who wants to shield my children from certain content on Wikipedia. Please tell me some ways I can accomplish this without interfering with anyone else's experience. Instead it begins with Change Wikipedia to suit my convenience and the discussion's initiator usually remains locked on the same point. That's the censorship impulse, pure and simple. Here's someone who proposes a segregation system for Wikipedia articles in which certain pages could never get front page attention no matter how good they are. Who says what goes onto that list, does someone else add AIDS because they aren't ready to explain that reality to a small child? How about if a Chinese government official added Tiananmen Square protests of 1989? People might name Roe v. Wade because of what it represents or 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) because of its title. Every one of these articles got featured because some people cared enough about them to contribute a great deal of unpaid work. One of the few compensations for that labor is the satisfaction of seeing its result on the main page. I spent months improving Joan of Arc to FA, which wouldn't be likely to get sent to the back of the Wikipedia segregaton bus, but I'll fight like hell for the editors whose efforts would get singled out for second class treatment. Go write a featured article, then make your case. Durova Charg e! 21:35, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
If that's the case, then we could always have a "How much content do you want to see" slider in our prefs, much like IE's parental control thing. And by the way, I do not particularly like to see two people in ochre paint going at it. Even if the pic is about 5000 years old.~ user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 21:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Can all the removed info in this edit, and the next two, really be found on subpages, or has it been lost?
What's wrong anyway with having some text about these subjects in the Manual of Style, so that people won't have to look through large subpages to find the basic info? So the MOS is a long page, but it does have a contents-box. Nordlending 14:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Many [8] pages link to ARIA, meaning to link to the Australian Recording Industry Association page. Is there a way to automate converting links to ARIA into links to Australian Recording Industry Association?
wj32 talk | contribs 00:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
In List of programs broadcast by Jetix, there's a mess section: Keys Of Number Which Means In Any Countries. Contributors of that article didn't show any efforts: They added programmes. However, they didn't confirmed "what country airs that programme on Jetix". Instead, they added this useless note: "This programme airs in OOO station in US or UK or elsewhere". I posted a "clean up" idea in Talk:List of programs broadcast by Jetix. Please Help! -- JSH-alive talk to me see my works mail to me 14:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Anyone else noticed that meta-descriptions for Wikipedia article pages are now showing up in Google searches? I did a search on Google for "Symbian OS", and the Wikipedia link that appears in the results has the description of "Article discussing the operating system, its history and devices that use it." How did this become possible, and how could I add meta-descriptions for some of my favourite articles? -- Denelson 83 06:05, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I was browsing wikipedia for mass art, and I was redirected to Massachussetts art. It seems there should be a disambiguation page, since mass art also refers to a new theoretical approach to global art forms (see Noël Carroll (A Philosophy of Mass Art, 1998). I wish I could do it myself, but I'm afraid I don't know how to. Help anyone ? Thanks -- Anne97432 15:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#practical_problem:_destruction_of_verifiability_by_third_parties.
In short, when sources get lost also the articles must be in part deleted accordingly. I can see one way to prevent that (but there may be more):
Of course, this is just one idea as an incentive to brainstorming. It seems rather stupid to put a big effort in something that is preprogrammed to auto-delete for no good reason. Harald88 22:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
"Centiare is an online reference directory. It supports advocate points-of-view (APOV) within protected "user-owned" commercial, non-profit, government, personal, and property Directory listings, and features advanced semantic tagging capabilities to organize, search and report information."
See here. -- Zanimum 14:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Just a note to let the community know that a group of editors is attempting to have the photograph in this article removed. They claim it should be removed because is it offensive to members of their church and doesn't add anything to the article. It has been pointed out that the mere mention of Xenu is offensive to Scientologists and that other photos some people find offensive can be found at Penis also because Wikipedia is not censored for any religious or "moral" veiwpoint. While the photo is admittedly, not a thing of beauty, no editor involved has found or is willing to provide a replacement yet. (The fact that a better illustration could be used is about the only thing everyone agrees upon, but we don't have one.) The whole thing has become a nasty mix of people accusing others of being "pro-Mormon" and "anti-Mormon" and worse, while some editors on the page seem to think that if they get "consensus" to remove the only free image available, that that will override our anti-censorship policy. If anyone is a skilled hand at drawing or has access to a better illustration, please let this talk page know. Anyway, be aware. I suspect this issue will be seeping out into the larger community soon. Oh wait...i just did that... pschemp | talk 06:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Storm Rider, don't accuse others of "gross misinformation". There is a photo of people wearing a garment in an article about the garment, just as there is a photo of people wearing G-Strings in the article about them. Where is the problem? yandman 14:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I would amend Storm Rider's comment to say "misunderstanding" rather than "misinformation", but I do think that the way the controversy is portrayed by pschemp above unduly casts the LDS editors in a negative light. I do not accuse pschemp of bad faith in this regard, that is probably just the perspective that pschemp has taken from the discussion. But please understand that the debate at Talk:Temple garment is a bit more nuanced than a band of LDS editors trying to censor any depiction whatsoever of Mormon garments. There are objections to the photo currently used as an illustration, sure. Its offensiveness to Mormons is not grounds for removing it from the article; most involved in the debate actually do agree on that. But there are a lot of questions about whether the photo is appropriate for other reasons NOT based on whether it offends Mormons. There are questions of provenance and verifiability, of educational value, of what might constitute a more acceptable replacement image and whether one can be found, of the photo's ties to anti-Mormon sites, and so forth. Now that people here at the Village Pump have been alerted to the debate, I respectfully suggest that opinions and commentary be continued at the talk page instead of here to minimize confusion and duplicated comments. alanyst / talk/ 18:44, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Off topic Mormon bashing removed.- Discuss the image or don't make incivil and hateful comments. pschemp | talk 18:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm increasingly noticing that Wikipedia is loosing the battle against vandalism. When I started editing here a couple of years ago, there was a FAQ somewhere saying something like
This isn't really true anymore.
Last night I went over to look for a photograph that I had added to the Guy Fawkes article and was only mildly surprised to find that it had disappeared. Whilst checking to see whether someone had had a valid reason to remove it (they hadn't) I trawled through a large number of diffs and found that the article had steadily degraded over the last month. During that time there were still plenty of reverts, but when there were several bad edits in a row it was often only the last bad edit hat got reverted.
In the same article I noticed that a whole section on 'language' had disappeared, and a sentence in the opening paragraph which used to read 'a group of Roman Catholic conspirators' had been vandalised to 'a group of Roman Catholic' which was then just corrected for grammar to read 'a group of Roman Catholics'.
I think the problem isn't just a rise in anonymous users making random bad edits, but rather an attrition of top flight editors. As a result articles are left with nobody taking a full time active interest in them - some vandalism gets corrected but plenty gets overlooked. It is not feasible (or desireable) for an editor to take ownership of an article and maintain it for the next 20 years, so the system only works if there are enough new good editors coming along who can keep up with the flow of detritus and outweigh the influence of the bad editors. Unfortunately I think the tide started to turn about six months ago.
This isn't an isolated case. I've got several thousand articles on my watchlist that I don't watch avidly, but if I compare an article with its version a week ago, many of them show signs of creeping deteriation. Of course it is much harder to repair an article once bad edits begin to build up, you can't just revert to an earlier version.
The good news is that the Guy Fawkes article is still significantly better than it was a year ago. -- Solipsist 09:18, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Honestly, have people who add this type of edit ever read an encyclopaedia before? How difficult is it for them to add the piece of information in the right place in the article? If the answer is "too difficult", don't do it. The sooner wikipedia restricts the ability for anons to edit, the better. -- Roisterer 23:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Isn't it all a part of the love/hate that is Wiki? I love that anyone can edit and contribute. I also absolutely hate that anyone can use that edit to misinform, pervert and vandalize. How can we have our cake and eat it too? Robovski 00:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I think the only thing able to restore Wikipedia's health in the long term is (1) better antivandal bots and (2) running these bots to analyze the entire history of a page, not just watch recent changes. Once a bot finds a historic vandalism that was never reverted, it is feasible to automatically revert it in the current version without affecting the useful edits that were made in the interim.
Surely no bots can catch all bad edits. But such bots are getting better all the time, and we can rerun them on page histories again and again to fix what was missed last time. It's reasonable to expect that bot intelligence will keep slowly approaching human intelligence - and once it gets close enough, Wikipedia may be considered officially out of danger. Perhaps the main reason for why AI hasn't (largely) happened yet is that so far, it's been something from the "would be nice" category. And Wikipedia is now pushing it into the "essential for survival" category. Trapolator 05:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Speaking as a fairly new editor (I guess it's fair to call myself that now), I can say that there is a pretty steep learning curve to getting the hang of editing--especially editing well. Maybe a series of beginner how-to articles should be linked to in strategic places. For example, when editing an article, when looking at a page history or diffs, etc. The articles should be a mix of how to edit well, and why editing is important and the goals behind good editing. Something like an ethics for Wikipedians or how to be a good citizen of Wikipedia. I am sure that not everyone will read the articles, but it might help those who have the "spark" have an easier time becoming good editors. Otherwise, only people with actual "fire" are likely to push through the frustration and become editors. -- Willscrlt 06:02, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
How can I find out how many edits I've made to Wikipedia? I've been marking a lot of pages as {{db-bio}} and similar lately, and they don't show up on my contribs. It'd be nice to know the total number of edits including pages that have been deleted. Thanks! Jonemerson 07:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi.
I am involved with WikiCast , and would like to say hello
If anyone is intrigued as to what WikiCast is see #Wikicast on freenode. ShakespeareFan00 22:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
i've found something lewd on a page , how do i contact someoen to fix it? and its only there every 5th refresh or so, it'll be there then i'll refresh and it'll say something else, but if i come back its there again, — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.240.75 ( talk • contribs) 20:37, 6 December 2006
At of this moment I am having problems with a rather agressive user in the Wrong Turn 2 article. is there anything I can do against his agressive behaviour? Jamesbuc
The backlog on this is turning into a real shame. Often over half the articles are completely ignored, even articles that appear to be legit; User:Kuru appears to be the only one, until me yesterday, making any regular contributions. Could more people take a crack on this regularly? It's WP:GNOME work if it ever existed, but it really needs to get done. It's absolutely awful form to tell people to create an article, and then ignore it. - Patstuart talk| edits 05:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Roughly what is the rate of new account creation here on the 'pedia? Chris cheese whine 09:44, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
This is a long shot, but it's been bugging me for a while. There was this really good movie on tv a while back. The problem is that a while back was when I was 6-8, and I didn't care much about things like movie names unless it was a cartoon movie that I wanted to own. I think it was around then that I got tainted. That movie dealed with a lot of heavy stuff, and now that I'm old enough, I really want to know what movie it was. I don't know who played in it, or what the name is. I thought the kid was the kid from The Sixth Sense, but I was wrong. And he's aged horribly! And I'm not saying he looks old... He just... He used to be so cute!...Maybe it's the hair... But that's not the point...
All I know that may be helpful is that it might have been a "tv" movie, but I doubt it, because it was a true story. Everyone likes a good dark true story, so it was probably in theatres and on video and stuff.
The only thing I really remember is the story. Sort of.
This lady killed this man. The man may have or may not have been close to her or her family, I can't remember. But she killed the man because he raped/molested her son. Now I was around 8, so the concept of a man raping a boy was more than just a little scary. Still is. But I think I repressed it because I can't remember if that's why she did it. But she killed him for her son, and that was the only scenario that came into my mind that made sense. So she kills this guy, and she goes on trial and argues that it was all for him and stuff. And the female officer who actually looks fimiliar but I can't put my finger on it said to the lady "You're my hero!" It was nice. But what wasn't nice was that her son decides that somewhere close to the end of the movie is a good time to put a revolver to his head. He was supposed to be around my age!! Well, my age at the time. He puts in one bullet, and decides to play a nifty game of Russian Roulette by himself and on himself. Someone stops him, and they cry. Then that scene is over and he's watching TV and sees his mom's trial on(or at least I think so) and he turns off the tv with a look of pure evil in his eyes and the screen goes black. Writing comes up saying that he grew up t be a killer of some sort. Or I'm pretty sure that's what it said...
It's just really bothering me that I can't remember much from the movie. And as you can see the things that I do remember are blurry and only may be true. So... If this sounds fimiliar to anyone, then please tell me what movie it is!
Thanks for your time. I really hope that my typos are readable, because it's 4:01 and this insomniac is more than a little tired.
2 Suggestions:
1. Please provide and publicize a way for users to propose new articles without having to log in and create them. Your volunteers can review this list and decide which are worthy, then either write them or create stubs.
2. Please add a new article for "Prima Nocta", the “right” of rulers to sleep with brides on their wedding night as referenced in “Braveheart”. If it is fictional then state that otherwise elaborate on it.
Thank you
WBFromNJ@aol.com
wikipedia-spam is getting pretty overwhelmed and needs more volunteers to help with reverting linkspam and vandalism. linkspamming external links has recently gotten pretty crazy, and the botfeed simply reports anything with a http://, as well as some other nifty obvious vandal triggers. we could really use the help; this is the associated talk channel - pop in. JoeSmack Talk 02:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Special:Contributions&target=199.120.31.19
Most of these contribs are juvenile. 136.176.88.82 00:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
There is an ongoing debate on meta about problems in ku.wiki. I hereby invite all experienced wikipedians to comment there. -- Cat out 17:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Please check out Yukon Wild Ass. Thanks. Steve Dufour 23:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
I was using my gmail and while trying the google-talk feature, I asked myself whether or not it would be a good idea to have the same type of pop-up shown in wikipedia when someone clicks in a word within an article. I mean while you are reading something and there is a word you don't know with a link to another article, wouldn't it be nice if you just clicked and had an pop-up just like in gmail-googleTalk with a brief piece of information about that word just so you can continue reading without moving to the new article? Inside the pop-up could be the link for the full article besides the brief description. What do you guys think?
See ya
PS: I have just signed in, so I am not sure how I will be albe to see reponses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruminante ( talk • contribs)
With Firefox, when I look at the history of a Wikipedia page and it doesn't do what I want it to do; it simply opens the view menu. Anyone know how to fix this so that I will have a keyboard shortcut for doing what I want when I am at a Wikipedia history page?? Georgia guy 17:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
What happened to the Wikipedia:Template locations project page? I see this page has been changed for the last time in July 2006. Should it be marked as historical? BTW, someone should close the debates there. -- Eleassar my talk 10:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I need to write an "ethnographic reasearch essay" for my university english course. I thought wikipedia would make a great paper, but I need someone to interview...
If there are any takers, just email me and I'll send you a small list of questions.
Thanks!
ColinDC 03:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Hey, I'm not sure where else to post this, so I came here. Could some of you guys add West_Cheshire_College to your watchlist? There's been unchecked slander sitting on the page since early July, and the author has continuously returned to add more. I'm fairly sure he's not done yet. Thanks. - Patstuart (talk) (contribs) 06:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
This is my complaint. Thank You -- Martenal0001 11:32, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I was trying to read the section on gangreen, but was immediately turned off by the images. Although they do fit well into the article, is there any chance wikipedia could have a feature that lets disturbing/graphic images be uncovered by a mouse click? To be quite honest I'm happy to read article on surgery without having to see surgical gore :o/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Swyp ( talk • contribs)
Why is it that the history of deleted articles is removed too? It seems like no matter what, history should be preserved. Goaty 07:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I admit I have one up for review, but I just realized that this otherwise great idea (general input and/or RfA pre-screening) isn't getting a whole lot of help. Would it be proper to start placing some requests on a few talk pages, or should I do that to people who regularly vote on RfAs? -- Bobak 06:24, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus, there's a jpeg, Human_Feces.jpg, exactly what it says. Not surprisingly, it doesn't fit its caption. Not sure how else to report it - and the possibility that this may have been done to other pages -, so I've done it here. 82.138.216.205 21:49, 27 November 2006 (UTC)Barbara Sutton
He makes my articles feel rubbish. Taking the mick out of anything i do and i dont seem to be the only one complaing. I have no connection with Hammersmith123 but he's absoloutly right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stone not Wood house ( talk • contribs)
Somebody put a really long section into the Mena, Arkansas article regarding a local Yu-Gi-Oh tournament, including multiple external links to its website. Now, I'm not familiar enough with that local area or the Yu-Gi-Oh scene to know for sure if it's notable enough to deserve mention, but certainly this seems to be excessive prominence and detail for what seems to be a very minor event. I removed it but was reverted, and don't want to get into a revert war over it; perhaps somebody else should take a look. *Dan T.* 02:23, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
just a suggestion...
why not create a site 'wikipedia people' dedicated to profiles of people? Firstly a great number of people would use it and secondly i think that it would stop a lot of vandalism on the general wikipedia site if people can write about themselves elsewhere...
cheers