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We've been featured in the New York Times: Growing Wikipedia Revises Its 'Anyone Can Edit' Policy. Apparently they've just started to notice page protection. All in all though, a pretty good read. - Loren 06:52, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
It's nice to have the project so prominently featured, and may cause another surge in the site's popularity statistics, but the headline is rather misleading; it implies that there's been a recent change in Wikipedia policy that drastically alters its traditional openness, when in fact no such thing has happened. The change to allow semi-protection of articles (which is what the headline is apparently referring to) was made months ago, and is only a minor "speed bump" in the way of anybody who wishes to edit one of the affected articles. The full-protection of articles (which is more of an imposition on the "anyone can edit" concept) has been around for years, since pretty much the beginning of the project. And, as the Times notes themselves, these protection policies affect only a tiny number of articles compared to the over a million which exist. So there isn't actually any "news" here; it must be a slow news day for this to make the front page. *Dan T.* 17:45, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
What I found interesting was that they made a big deal about them doing in-depth reporting to find the list of protected pages (hmm), and that Wikipedia is this very small community with 10 guys writing every article from scratch to Featured status. They didn't slam WP as others have done, but I await the day one of these articles that treat Wikipedia as an open community and not a cabal of five nerds on laptops. - Mysekurity [m!]] 03:07, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to announce three new templates for use in creating multi-column page sections. They are very simple to use. Just do this:
{{MultiCol}} This text appears in the first column. Long lines are wrapped appropriately. {{ColBreak}} This text appears in the next column. Long lines are wrapped appropriately, and a small right margin is included to prevent text in adjacent columns from touching. {{ColBreak}} There can be any number of columns. Long lines are wrapped appropriately. {{EndMultiCol}}
The above example is rendered like this:
This text appears in the first column. Long lines are wrapped appropriately. |
This text appears in the next column. Long lines are wrapped appropriately, and a small right margin is included to prevent text in adjacent columns from touching. |
There can be any number of columns. Long lines are wrapped appropriately. |
The
MultiCol template takes one parameter: the width of the entire group of columns. If a percentage is given (e.g., {{MultiCol|80%}}) it refers to a percentage of the page width. The background of the underlying table is set to transparent, so the background of the enclosing block shows through. Naturally, you want to use at least one {{ColBreak}}
, otherwise you end up with a single column, which is probably not what you want. I hope people find this useful. —
franl |
talk ✤
04:31, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
{{MultiCol}} Column 1 {{ColBreak}} Column 2 {{ColBreak}} Column 3 {{EndMultiCol}} |
{{Col-begin}} {{Col-3}} Column 1 {{Col-3}} Column 2 {{Col-3}} Column 3 {{Col-end}}
|
Napster has an ad on its site recommending people place Napster Links on Wikipedia. These are links to songs that only play after (free) user registration. Napster imposes a limit of 5 plays and requires a paid subscription for further plays, or to download the song. The purpose of the links is obviously advertising. Thus, they seem to clearly violate Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. I've sent them an email asking that they take the ad down. Either way, I think people should remove these links on sight. Anyone disagree? Superm401 - Talk 02:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Although I condone Napster for this ridculousness, I also see it as flattery of possibly the highest kind for Wikipedia. -- Osbus 00:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm putting a copy of this over at WP:AN where it may be more relevant. JoshuaZ 21:51, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Alex Marrache (Alex.Marrache@napster.com) responded today, saying "While we do not believe that we are in violation of your policy, we have stopped encouraging people to add links to the site." Unfortunately, this is flagrantly inaccurate, as both http://m.2mdn.net/1155087/amplify_links_160ww.jpg and http://www.napster.com/player/player_video_v2.swf?fileType=swf&clip=http://ad.doubleclick.net/adx/naps.player/g_1;dcmt=text/plain;sz=320x240;ptile=1;ord=5498709629239128 were served to me when I checked tonight. I responded to Alex, noting this somewhat important fact; I'll post again if/when anything else happens. Superm401 - Talk 02:36, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
A link removal bot would do the trick on this or any other spam attack of this nature. It would just require a SQL connection, a select based around the offending string, and a replace of the offending string. Sjc 05:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
"Is the rule here that no content can be of potential commercial gain to anyone?": No. The rule is that external links should be kept strictly relevant; that typically, external links to services that require the viewer to pay are generally not very accessible and so aren't of great value to our readers, who can probably find places to buy commercial products themselves in the unlikely event they want to (the vast majority are looking for info about what they type in, not the thing itself); and that if we do include commercial services, we should try to provide a scrupulously wide selection of them.
See Special:Booksources for a search by ISBN that we've made available. It triggers automatically whenever someone enters "ISBN" followed by an ISBN number (e.g., ISBN 1234567890). A similar scheme could be worked out for items that do not have ISBNs, such as musical pieces, if a developer finds the time to code it in. It should be straightforward to adapt the existing ISBN feature to ISMNs, although of course that's not a guarantee anyone will be interested in doing it. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 01:54, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
"There is a need to create a more formal definition of how a community conclusion is made": Many people believe that. Others disagree, feeling that a quasi-anarchic lack of firm rules is necessary for a wiki to function properly. See also Wikipedia:Ignore all rules.
"Also in the case of Napster you are allowed a limited free use of the audios in question, so you are only required to pay after so many views." Wikipedia's primary purpose is not as a portal to get links to download songs. It's to provide second-hand information, not first-hand content. While providing links to songs is useful to our readers and should for that reason ultimately be encouraged, the cause is not so important to our purpose as to make it reasonable for us to favor one provider so much as you would suggest we do. If all major providers of the music were provided, by an interface like our current ISBN interface, I doubt anyone would object. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 22:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
.-- Rhooker1236
Dear Wikipedians: I, like you, am an editor; I create articles and make edits. But, many, I am sure many other people out there, are tired, frustrated and angry with the behavior of many Administrators. I am certain that it is appallingly easy to revert an article that someone has undoubtedly spent a lot of time and effort writing. I have, in the past, spent hours researching, planning, writing, checking and revising an addition to an article only to have the whole lot deleted forever three minutes afterwards.
I know that deletion of material is essential in a free-to-edit encyclopedia, but if you see an article that someone has anonymously devoted their time to writing, why could you not revise it, change it or give a reason for your action? They deserve one.
I know all Administrators are not all Drunk-With-Power-Trigger-Happy-Nazis, many of you do an excellent job and you know who you are.
In closing: Create, don’t Destroy. Make a distinction between “what is right, and what is easy”. Be enriched and enrich others with the knowledge of other people.
And keep that finger off the trigger.
(If I don't cop flack for this one, I will climb the Reichtag Bulding in a Spiderman outfit).
Dfrg.msc 07:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Letter here: [3] The only other community-drawn board member Anthere recently posted a harsh essay against the policy direction of the Wikimedia board and its effective control by Wales and his Bomis friends. [4] If this crisis does not lead to greater user-input into organizational policy, Wikipedia's future is clearly in doubt. Tfine80 01:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
My email was certainly an open criticism, but it was meant to be constructive and to inform the community of one of the many challenges the organisation is right now facing. However, your caracterization of "Bomis friends" is definitly debateable. Only one board member is a Bomis person (Tim Shell). He is imho a kind person and I look forward seeing him again at Wikimania this summer. This said, he is not really active on the board and would qualify as a "friend". He will resign from the board in the next few months. Michael has never worked for Bomis (he is involved in Wikia), he is definitly involved in all financial issues and is a great help in running the project from an administrative point of view. I certify that he is a free mind, and vote/participate as an independant human. Angela is not on Bomis, but working for Wikia.
Whatever the direction the Foundation takes (Business-like or Community-like), I do not think Wikipedia's future is at stake. What is more at stake from my perspective is whether we'll become a global organisation or a local US-based, US-driven organisation. And whether we'll focus in becoming more a political strength (with lawyers on the board to work on free licences in our rich-world) or a charitable one (trying to disseminate knowledge everywhere). And whether we'll just become a Foundation supporting financially and technically our projects, or something so much more exciting, with multiple projects and dreams we could hope to become true.
This is, imho, what is JUST at stake now.
Anthere 18:15, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm happy to see some interest in Foundation matters here on Wikipedia. The main place to discuss these issues is foundation-l. I would like to encourage everyone here to make their voices heard in the debates about openness and participation that are going to happen in the coming months. I personally believe in a model where the Board is community-elected (my favorite idea is that of a "Magnificent Seven", with 4 community-elected people, Jimmy, and 2 appointed experts), and that there should be an additional Advisory Board of experts who have no legal authority, but who are consulted frequently. However, if the community wants to see that happen, it needs to get involved!
Those who care about the organizational side of things should start by reading the article about the Wikimedia Foundation and closely studying and watching the Foundation Website. Board Resolutions (such as the decision to hire Brad Patrick as Interim Executive Director and Legal Counsel) are published there. Also study the Foundation bylaws, and read past debates in the foundation-l archives, such as the important debate started by Anthere, linked to above. If you need more pointers to reading material, leave a note on my talk page and I'll be happy to give you a few links.
If you would like to get involved in actual Foundation work, apply for membership in the Wikimedia committees. It is my personal belief that this structure in particular needs some reform to guarantee transparency and participation. I've been pushing for this in the past, however, my experience has been very disheartening -- there is very little interest from the community in those matters, and the debates tend to be dominated by those who have shaped the structures as they exist today. One recently formed committee which is fairly open is the Fundraising committee -- we need volunteers, so please do sign up on the page if you think you can make a meaningful contribution to this topic.
Angela has been a voice for the community for two years. Her departure in particular makes it important that more people join the activities of the organization. Why is it important? Because Wikimedia is more than just a hosting service for the projects. We have the potential to build hundreds or even thousands of partnerships with educational institutions, with charitable organizations, and (within reasonable limits), with for-profits -- especially to bootstrap our existing projects like Wikinews and Wikibooks. For instance, there are thousands of local "citizen radio" projects around the world which are now starting to take notice of the Internet. If we play our cards right, we can position Wikinews so that it becomes part of a global movement to create local "media centers" -- not institutions of propaganda, but of free content news and original reporting. There is huge interest in Wikibooks, and we need to get academia involved in order to provide free educational resources to poor people. We need a nice DVD version of the English Wikipedia, we need evolution of our software such as Multilingual MediaWiki or m:InstantCommons or WiktionaryZ, we need better methods to distinguish trusted users from untrusted ones, and, and, and ... And as Anthere writes above, we need an international organization that truly promotes the ideals of Wikimedia on a global scale. In matters which are fairly clearly in our interest, Wikimedia can also join political initiatives, such as a reduction of international copyright terms (currently life of the author + 70 years).
All of this requires an organization with strong community leadership in order to get off the ground. If the Wikimedia Foundation continues to operate as it does today, it will be succesful at keeping things running, which is good. But in order to move things forward, we need far more involvement from the level of the Wikimedia projects and languages.-- Eloquence * 23:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Reuters has an article concerning recent activity on the Ken Lay article: Ken Lay's death prompts confusion on Wikipedia. The article goes over the large number of changes the Ken Lay article underwent as news of his death came in. To quote the article:
In other news, the Sun rose in the east today... - Loren 22:35, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
This from a press group whos stories show up on google news as "UPDATE 27 Katrina.........."-- mitrebox 23:17, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
This story itself got a correction from Reuters, irony apparently unintended. Ashibaka tock 01:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Followup from the Washington Post: Death by Wikipedia: The Kenneth Lay Chronicles. - Loren 08:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Of images which are uploaded under fair use claims, I have found that roughly 93% of them do not comply with the simple requirements of a rationale and a source; it may be necessary to more aggressively scour the namespace. Full results at User:ESkog/ImageSurvey. ( ESkog)( Talk) 06:12, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Check out the new Wikiproject Ice Cream. Tasty! -- Blackjack48 18:06, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
The TTABLOG reports that the Commissioner of the International Trademark Association has sent a letter to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to formally request that trademark examiners be prohibited from citing Wikipedia as a source. bd2412 T 16:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Did anyone else notice a Wikipedia mention by Stephen Colbert a few weeks ago on his show? I can't find any reference to it in the Signpost, and I can't remember exactly when it was. Or maybe it was just a dream...? It was a satirical comment about the factuality of Wikipedia content. Nathan Beach 21:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Per request of Effeietsanders, I'm inviting you to take a look at an announcement (and invitation, naturally) for a Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland! You can read more about it here: User:Effeietsanders/WCN. If this is not the best place for this kind of announcement, please let me know! Kind regards, -- Joanne B 20:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I compiled some statistics: how many articles from non-English Wikipedias are translated into English, and how many notable topics from specialized databases are covered on Wiki so far. My conclusions: there are about 2 millions articles in need of translation, and more then 400 million of specialized topics in need of creation :) See User:Piotrus/Wikipedia interwiki and specialized knowledge test for details.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus talk 18:38, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia has a new featured users page, featuring Wikipedia's best contributors. If you believe you are a gooduser, please sign up to become a good featured user at Wikipedia:Featured users, cheers — M in un Spiderman 18:34, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
You can read it online in its entirety for free. Here's the link for those who may not have seen it. It's in the July 31, 2006, issue, which hit the streets today. -- 4.232.201.186 20:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence. Better be on the lookout for new edits to the articles mentioned. - Loren 01:07, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
According to Talk:Mini Mammoth#Article_for_Deletion the Australian DJ's Jay and the Doctor today encouraged their listeners to add a spoof article to Wikipedia. Uncle G 02:19, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps not in the same league as the recent article in the New Yorker, but you may be interested in an article in the current Mendip Times (a monthly covering the Mendip Hills area of Somerset, England. You can access it at: Mendip Times but you have to click on "click here to view the magazine online" & then scroll to page 37 as it's on Macromedia Flash Paper. — Rod talk 13:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations is now being updated with an automated bot that attempts to identify copyright violations from newly created articles.
(Note: if this is not the appropriate place to announce this, feel free to remove this message). -- Where 23:39, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Historian Marshall Poe has written a long and fascinating article for The Atlantic Monthly about the history and aims of Wikipedia, titled " The Hive". It's very thoughtful and ultimately very pro-Wikipedia. It includes discussion about starting a one-line article about himself, and watching the ensuing AfD.
There are also a couple of in-depth sidebars, including " Common Knowledge", an interview with Poe about the article and Wikipedia, and " A Closer Look at the Neutral Point of View (NPOV)". — Catherine\ talk 04:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
A Disney WikiProject has been proposed here, interested Wikipedians need only sign their name on the list. >< Richard 06 12 UW 10:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Progress made on deletion reason 'human dignity' as per 'Jimmy': {{ Dignity}}. Hope you like! :) Red Baboons 04:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure where this should go, but I'm gunna be bold and put it here anyway. A page has been created (not by me) for you to leave your birthday messages to Jimbo Wales who created the English Wikipedia. You can leave your messages here. Abstract Idiot [ Talk • Contribs ] 03:42, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I've made a searchable repository of questions (and answers) frequently asked by newcomers to Wikipedia. It's available at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/nubio/. It currently has 70 entries (many of the entries have been scraped off WP:FAQ and the various related pages, and some answers to the Help desk). If possible, I'd like to receive some feedback on the project, and see what people think. I'm open to suggestions on how to improve it and where to link to it. Cheers, Tangot a ngo 18:52, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia makes the gossip page of Melbourne broadsheet The Age today. A minor revert war on the Sam Newman page is described as being "nail-biting stuff." Drett 17:37, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I make a suggestion, a Wikipedia Bill of Rights to protect the rights of people making a good faith effort to expand Wikipedia.
1. No one under 21 years of age shall delete content (age restrictions are common, younger people can post content but not destroy it. I find teens are better at making than destroying).
2. No one shall delete more content in any month than they create, no member shall make the collective information smaller.
3. Deleting bots can only be used by a governing board elected.
4. Each year there shall be an election of all registered individuals who have been active editors to elect a government of Wikipedia who will have the responsiblity to deal with abuse, they will monitor the size of Wikipedia and will have the power to restrict deletions or increase them, only they can exercise the power to run bots.
5. Any deletion can be over ruled by a vote of 3 active editors, and as long as they are active no deletion against a site can take place, though edits are allowed. To edit shall be the means of dealing with questions.
6. Because Google each payment for every search entered, constituting a tax on the Internet, Wikipedia understands the value to linking content to external web sites, including does that conduct economic activity via the Internet. These links shall be clearly marketed as FOR PROFIT sites.
-- Rhooker1236 21:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC) Robert Hooker July 2 2006. Support Good Wiki Government. Email removed because it attracted nothing but African based get rich Spam.
Hi RH, I'm still largely a wiki-newbie too, with only 100 Mainspace edits, but I'd like to share my views on the points you've raised. You seem to have a major concern about deletions, which can certainly be a touchy topic, especially for the authors of articles that get nom'd for AfD. There are a couple of things you can do to try and avoid AfD, and the single most effective is this: add content, maintain NPOV, and cite your sources. If you work slowly, like I do, it can help to create a temp page in your Userspace and work on the article there first. When an article does get nom'd for AfD, then it becomes important to participate in the process. Make your own points as clearly and concisely as you can, and be sure to read (and think about) the points that other editors are making. Be prepared to change your mind. If you find that consensus is against you, there might be a valid reason for it. More than once I've changed my 'vote' in AfD after being presented with sound reasons; I've also deleted content that I put up when I came to realize that other editors made valid points against its suitability. Regarding your comments about 'underage' contributors and more governance on WP...well, it might sound like a good idea to you, but these kinds of proposals have a history of being soundly defeated; most wikipedians seem to be reasonably content with the structure we've got. It works for me :) -- Doc Tropics Message in a bottle 15:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)#
There is no situation where one administrator can unilaterally delete a page without appeal. You can always bring the matter to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion or, if you didn't get there in time Wikipedia:Deletion review. Both invite broad participation.
NPOV is not about utter objectivity. It is about a style of writing that tries to make clear when opinions are expressed whose they are. Part of this is that our own individual, unsourced opinions don't belong in the article. If you want to write opinionl-laden material, start a blog. Opinions expressed here should be the cited opinions of people who are reasonably authoritative on the topic. Why? Because we are trying to build an encyclopedia. No one turns to the encyclopedia to find out the opinions of a bunch of random individuals. - Jmabel | Talk 22:54, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Jarod Lanier uses his dissatisfaction with his WP article as a springboard for discussing what's wrong with WP. [7] His suggestion: put WP through a low-pass filter. Zora 00:19, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I find it satisfyingly ironic that his name is actually "Jaron Lanier" and not "Jarod Lanier". Vmand 23:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
FWIW, complaining about blandness and erasing contributors' identities is in no way inconsistent with complaining that a particular article has no coherent single voice. One of the downsides of our approach is what I've called "the war on prose". Almost any well-turned phrase expresses some degree of POV. Our effort to be NPOV is not easily compatible with strong authorial voice. For the opposite extreme in encylopedia-writing, consider the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh Edition). It's a wonderful, well-written, highly opinionated encyclopedia, the culmination of Victorian- and Edwardian-era scholarship. I love it. An equivalent today might be a fascinating document. If someone wanted to create one, I'd love to see them draw heavily on our material to build it. But it would be a very different work than we are creating. - Jmabel | Talk 22:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Newest in the line of peer-reviewed articles about Wikipedia and one of very few not from the field of computer sciences, this recent (June'06) publication in Journal of American history is nicely written (no dense 'sholarese') and rather positive of Wiki. Enjoy! -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:27, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
The article also, alas, accurately pinpoints our biggest weakness, and the reason that professional historians (it examines only history, but this applies in other fields) can continue to exist in a wikipedia world, if I may quote a chunk:
- DavidWBrooks 23:13, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
In any case, a great article. I've added a link from Wikipedia:Researching With Wikipedia; I'm sure there are many other things that should link to it. Also, someone should go through and use it as a resource for its many specific criticisms, pretty much all of which look valid. - Jmabel | Talk 00:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I've added a proposal to the Wikipedia Village Pump:Proposals that may help with this. It's title is "Wikipedia articles by classrooms as school projects". I don't know how to add a timestamp to it, so if anyone wants to please do so for the date of August 14, 2006 (5:57 pm EST).
Apparently Stephen Colbert vandalised Wikipedia live on his TV show. Looks like we have a trend. Wikipedia is seen by the conventional media as an enemy and they want to discredit it by any means necessary. Grue 18:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
There is too much truth available on wikipedia, and in much too handy of a format. It is a threat to certain types of people who rely on the ignorant populace remaining so. User:Pedant 03:40, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
"At home, Mr. Wales has honed the good-enough style so well -- or rather, not honed it -- that the place will not even remotely be featured in House & Garden. He dresses casually, Florida-style, goes by the nickname Jimbo, and although he does drive a foreign car, it's a Hyundai Accent.
It's sort of like an appliance as a car, he said. He bought his DVD player at Wal-Mart, and his television set has something inside it called a cathode ray tube. Heard of it, kids?
About the only thing he has that aspires to a higher ideal is, of all things, a flashlight. The SureFire M6 blasts the competition, which averages 60 lumens, with a 250-lumen light beam. The company bills it as a searchlight disguised as a flashlight and boasts that SWAT teams use the lights to temporarily blind suspects at night.
Who needs a baseball bat? said Mr. Wales, who keeps his M6 on his bedside table not as a weapon but in case he, you know, needs a flashlight. You have to love the kitsch of that, that there's an assault flashlight now.
The $400 M6, which is eight inches long, holds six lithium batteries and is housed in aerospace-grade aluminum, is the product of a design school that might be called Modern Militant, the most familiar example of which is the Hummer. It's really, really, really, really bright, Mr. Wales said. Anyone who tries to one-up me with their fancy car or whatever, I've got 'em. I say, 'Well, I have a brighter flashlight.' "
—New York Times, August 13, 2006
What happened to the Times? lots of issues | leave me a message 23:12, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
this is messedrocker
(talk)
21:04, 14 August 2006 (UTC)Via Pharyngula comes this story of deceit and conspiracy. I mentioned this over on the Signpost tip line, but it might belong here too. Interesting story. . . if true. Any gumshoes feel like following it up? Anville 03:39, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, sort of. http://de.wikiversity.org/ has been active for more than a year, but that is a different discussion for a totally different forum.
This is the first day that http://en.wikiversity.org/ has been up and running, where there has been quite a bit of activity today from those who are participants with Wikiversity. Wikipedia now has a new sister project up and running, even though it is really a brand new project. Undecided yet is how to do the inter-wiki links between Wikiversity and the other sister projects, although several suggestions have been made. If you want to be in on the ground floor of a new Wikimedia project, today is the day to get things rolling. -- Robert Horning 23:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
In most cases, it should now be possible to drop the parameter when using Template:Lowercase. That's because I've added a default value of {{LCFIRST:{{PAGENAME}}}}. Neon Merlin 17:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Lots of articles in the news today about Congressman Gutknecht's staff attempting to whitewash his Wikipedia article. See [10] for one. User:Zoe| (talk) 22:53, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Due to the recent turmoil on community pages, a large community straw poll is being conducted. Wikipedia:Communities strawpoll is now open for voting. Despite resolutions made on this page, many others are facing turmoil similar to what this page is, or once did face. In an effor to solve the issue, I invite all Wikipedians to vote there by September 18th on this page following the procedures and ballot instuctions explained there. Thank You. Ericsaindon2 06:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
There is a test Wikipedia in Quenya opened in the Incubator: [11]. Everyone is welcome to participate. -- Djordje D. Bozovic 12:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
An anonymous person, using the infamous 1&1 web hosting service, has created onlinereference.info, a domain which contains complete (albeit old) copies of en:Wikipedia [12], en:Wiktionary [13], and en:Wikiquote [14], even including user pages. These copies do not give attribution to the projects; they claim to be the projects. According to m:Talk:Wikimedia trademarks, there seems to be some disagreement over whether Wikimedia should attempt to enforce or even register its trademarks. From my own point of view, I have enough problem fighting identity theft without allowing someone to copy my user pages to a mock-Wikimedia project and allowing strangers to register my username there, pretending to be the person who wrote all my comments. I've registered my username on this counterfeit on all three subprojects. (Thanks to q:User:Rumour for bringing this to en:Wikiquote's attention.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 12:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Interesting change to their "Template:In the news" at http://encyclopedia.onlinereference.info/index.php/Template:In_the_news .. doesn't appear to take effect on main page though. -- Chuq 14:29, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
suggest that all bureacrats create accounts on the fake sites and turn everyone into sysops there and all admins create accounts and start vandalbotting and deleting at top speed... since they have no labor force, it would be fairly tough for the fake sites for a while... User:Pedant 03:13, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Their entire Recent Changes page looks like vandalism by User:Pedant and some interesting spam postings. I don't think anybody over there pays attention to what's going on. User:Zoe| (talk) 02:20, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
direct quote from the main page: "In this English version, started in 2001, we are currently working on 18446744073709551591 articles." 18.4 billion billion. that's a lot of articles.. maybe they're referencing the whole internet, and more? -- naught101 23:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
This appeared in Newsweek:
"Wales admits that sometimes the lack of an all-controlling editor leads Wikipedia to sometimes indefensible imbalances (for instance, the entry on Star Trek's Mr. Spock is more than twice as long as the item about Flaubert). But he contends that's just a temporary effect of the geeky flavor of the burgeoning Wikipedia community in this early stage."
Is there a defensible concept of 'imbalance' when including more text has nearly zero marginal cost? It is understandable that traditional encyclopedia editors agonized over the amount of space to give one topic vs another, but this is not suitable for wiki potentates to worry about. When there is no reason not to say more (if it is relevant and correct) it is merely a matter of social prejudice to determine whether Mr Spock 'should' have more or less space than Flaubert.
One thing that Wikipedia could try to do more systematically is to have reasonably short articles that then link to longer articles about the same subject. This is done in a few places now, but I currently can't find an example.
-- wellsoberlin 01:35, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Stephen Colbert's wikiality, created in reference to Wikipedia, has been named a television buzzword of the year. [16]. Dragons flight 20:39, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
ALSO, AN APPLE HAS FALLEN FROM A TREE. MORE AT 11. Good god.
On this morning's The Stephanie Miller Show, a listener called in to discuss a bit that they had done last Friday where the show's "voice monkey", Jim Ward, had done a Somerset dialect. The caller said that to him, the dialect had sounded like pirate speech, so he had gone to Wikipedia and sure enough, Wikipedia had confirmed it. I assume he was talking about our article at West Country dialects. User:Zoe| (talk) 17:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/14308789p-15199046c.html
OK, who's Wayne Saewyc? 'Fess up. And why are they claiming we clamped down on Congressional staffers last week? That was months ago. User:Zoe| (talk) 18:01, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
And now see this - http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/politics/15381771.htm. Wayne Saewyc again. Who is this guy? User:Zoe| (talk) 02:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Wayne Saewyc = user:Amgine. When it comes to press stuff, he's a magician. Raul654 02:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
This article on game cheating in the Washington Post refers to mycheats.com as "a Wikipedia for the gaming set". Is "Wikipedia" becoming a generic term for online reference sites (especially those that are editable by their readers)? *Dan T.* 03:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
According to the now-deleted article at Wikipedia Inc., there's a Japanese software company calling itself Wikipedia Inc. at http://www.wikipedia.co.jp. I wonder if the Wikimedia Foundation is aware of this? User:Zoe| (talk) 17:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
BBC website has an article detailing the proposals for stable versions on Wikipedia apparently written by a Wikipedian (and journalist) Bill Thompson. A rather sedate discussion compared to many mentions Wikipedia gets in the media: [17] Rmhermen 13:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
The 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica is now available in a wiki at http://1911encyclopedia.org. Intended usage is to only edit the article pages for scanning errors, links, categories and such, but to give freedom to write your own material about a subject at the talk page.
Note that this project is not a Wikimedia project. It is a commercial site (using adverts) and its only relationship with Wikipedia is that it uses the same wiki software. Nevertheless I would like to invite anyone interested to come over and take a look, maybe make an edit. - Andre Engels 15:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't look like the complete 1911. My litmus test is to see if they left the anachronistic material in the "race" acticle. Sure enough, its gone.
Yakuman
06:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Dear all,
please note that numerous articles published at Croatian section of this project represent direct, shameful and blatant insult to any civilized person due to glorification of Nazi war criminals. It is pathetic to describe mass murderers as "novel authors, statesmen or war leadres" and not even mentioning attrocities they have commited. Examples:
http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrija_Artuković http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ante_Pavelić http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavko_Kvaternik http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jure_Francetić http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Boban
I hope that Wikipedia's policy is not language-specific, ie. if Nazis are not glorified at English Wikipedia, they should't be grorified elsewhere, should they?
Regards,
Velimir Dedic
ChaCha.com is a new human intelligence based internet search engine. You speak with an live guide and they will try to find the information you're looking for. While it was just released and goes offline frequently, it's worth a try. Blackjack48 16:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia was mentioned in today's FoxTrot comic strip.
First panel:
Second panel:
Third panel:
Fourth panel:
Thie article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/technology/02shortcuts.html repeats the librarian position that Wikipedia is not a source to use for research. Did it get discussed, and if so, how can I find the discussion? - Jaysbro 18:17, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Some subjects, in particular famous people, for which we would like to have free images, only provide good photography opportunities at specific events. I thought it would be good to have a calendar of such events, so we can increase the chance that there are Wikimedians making photographs and donating them to Commons (or Wikipedia or whatever). Those who are interested in such a project, please check out Commons:Commons:Photography event calendar and cooperate in making this thing work. Thanks in advance! - Andre Engels 11:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Folks ought to know about Danny's contest! As you can read in more depth at WP:DC, Danny is running a new contest (his 3rd), this time with the goal of improving articles, specifically focusing on references... there are hundreds of thousands of articles on the english wikipedia that don't have any references at all, including some shockingly important ones. Danny is putting up prizes for the most improved one or ones, to be judged by a panel of 5 judges. If you know of an article that you're interested in, and that needs improvement (and there are over 200,000 that do!) why not enter today? There's plenty of time, as the contest will end on 7 October. Please spread the word. ++ Lar: t/ c 03:10, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
A long debate facilitated by the WSJ
EXCELLENT JIMBO. You're showing spine against these fools. For too long we took crap from their executives, editors, and
a pensioner even, and you didn't defend us.
lots of issues | leave me a message 20:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Wikipe-tan, the Wikipedia OS-tan has found its way into the latest edition of games™ magazine (issue 48). It's found on page 30 beside a regular column on the Japanese Gaming scene by correspondant Tim Rogers. The article is absolutely nothing about Wikipedia, but instead about the maid cafe culture in Japan. - Hahnch e n 01:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The page for candidate statements is now open but elections are not for anther 2 months so no need to hurry:
Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Elections/December 2006/Candidate statements
Geni 00:06, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Once you've read Wikiruth, it's hard to think of Wikipedia as anything other than an autistic care group for the obese and the underemployed. - Andrew Orlowski, The Register [18]
Oh yeah, 'n Sanger is no Super-Sales Wales, never mind Citizendium is the lamest name ever. I mean, what is with the friggin' Latin thing anyway? edia-endium my Aunty Fanny :) Wyss 19:31, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know if this email I got is legit or phishing? (no I haven't responded to it)....
"Dear Rlevse,
We are conducting a study of people's motivations for writing and editing in Wikipedia.
We would be extremely grateful if you could help us by filling out the questionnaire at http://faculty.poly.edu/~onov/wiki1 - it should take no longer than 10-15 minutes. The questionnaire is anonymous and your responses will be used for research purposes only.
We would be happy to share our findings with you, which will be made available online once we complete the data collection and analysis.
With many thanks!
Dr. Oded Nov, Polytechnic University, New York onov at poly dot edu"
Rlevse 22:09, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
I just wanted to point out a tool that I ran across on :FR. It lists the most-viewed articles and works on many different language wikipedias. Check it out. -- Zantastik talk 22:37, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Per a discussion in #wikipedia-en: Certain pages on Malayasian subjects on enwp were recently discovered to be inaccessable from at least one ISP (singnet.com.sg), such as (not a full list):
Some things to note about these:
Test results on [[Malaysian_Malaysia]] Inaccessable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian%20Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%61ysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Malaysian+Malaysia Accessable: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=-&curid=1890739 http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=50951374 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%4D%61%6C%61%79%73%69%61%6E_%4D%61%6C%61%79%73%69%61 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%4D%61%6C%61%79%73%69%61%6E_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_%4D%61%6C%61%79%73%69%61 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Malaysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Malaysian https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Malaysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%61laysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%61l%61ysi%61n_Malaysia Also accessable (nonexistant/other): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_Malaysia_Blahblahblah_missing_page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1ysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maaysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%62ysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%4Dalaysian_%4Dalaysia http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Malaysian_Malaysia
Can any other Singapore users verify or deny this? (Move this to the appropriate VP section if misposted, but this seemed like news) -- Splarka ( rant) 00:25, 4 October 2006 (UTC) (I am not in Signapore, but am posting this on behalf of a wp user who is)
I submitted Jimbo's $100 million inquiry to Slashdot today. Seems to have provoked quite a discussion. The meta discussion page is seeing a lot of traffic (someone might want to keep an eye on it). Broken Segue 00:30, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Colleagues of mine are doing some evaluation of a technique that they propose for finding "related articles" in Wikipedia. Please consider answering their page. David.Monniaux 13:20, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
During my time on English Wikipedia, I’ve come to realize just how male dominated it is (I myself am male). Seriously, how many Wikipedians are female? If these legendary creatures do exist, they would be classified as “rare and endangered”. But perhaps they are more common than I think, as it is difficult to tell and we tend to assume the user is male. But I digress; Female Wikipedians are few and far between. Unfortunately - we need Female Wikipedians, to continue effectively as an encyclopedia, as they can offer insights that males cannot. Male/female insights and interest differ radically. Compare:
The truth lies within the Article quality. How can we overcome this?
If I am wrong, and every second editor is female – correct me. I also apologize for stereotyping and generalizing. I am also unsure of how Wikipedia’s Homosexual community rates i
-- Michael Van Locke 03:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)Men dominate the world, it is only natural that women are prejudiced against in Wikipedia. History is literally HIS story of the world. I think that he should include HERstory too. It is the greatest story never told. Wikipedia can help bringHERstoryto the eyes of the public! -- Michael Van Locke 03:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
User:Dfrg.msc User talk:Dfrg.msc 06:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the examples picked were stereotyped, but I believe the point holds. The very fact that a man trying to make the point picked these examples speaks volumes. Male contributors, even well intentioned ones, often don't know what topics women are likely to want to read or write about. The gender imbalance results one of the more significant unintended biases of Wikipedia. - Jmabel | Talk 22:47, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
No offense, but I was just wondering what this discussion could possibly achieve. -- Nscheffey( T/ C) 00:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Maybe wikipedian women just have better taste than the music and clothing you've picked. soccer is BY FAR more popular than netball. I think I know just as many women who listen to system of a down as men. your point is probably true in anycase, but by stereo typing what men and women are interested in, you're probably making the problem WORSE, not better. perhaps you should be looking more at truly gender specific topics, such as erectile disfunction Vs breast cancer. personally, I can't see any solution anyway... hey, wait! why don't we change the theme colours of wikipedia from blue to pink! -- naught101 23:15, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I suspect this has more to do with presumptions than anything else. Despite my username's derivation from the first female officer of the Russian army, and a statement at the top of my userpage to that effect (including a portrait), when other editors refer to me by a personal pronoun it's usually "he." I've created nine new warfare categories and quite a few military articles, but have yet to edit Madonna. Maybe I should change my username to G.I. Barbie. Durova 04:36, 23 August 2006 (UTC):
The gender of people from nationalities other than European/American may not be obvious to Europeans and Americans. Most people get MY gender wrong, even though I'm here under my given name. (PS: this seems to be catching, because now at least one South Asian has got it wrong as well. How mortifying.) The gender imbalance is probably going to change in the future. I suspect many women edit without logging in, as they may not necessarily want to have to deal with user talk and community stuff as well as simple edits. I used to do that before I created a user ID. PS I'd also like to say that all your examples are very occidental. I have played and liked Half Life (not 2, it hasn't come to these shores yet) but neither Prada nor netball have any associations for me. Nor does Madonna. -- Rimi 13:14, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm guessing that this topic has already been much discussed and researched on WP:BIAS. nadav 08:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
I have come across a strange statistic recently, apperently the amount of IT Consultant's nowaday's employed, roughly 60% are male and the rest of the percentage (40%) are female. Now it also states that the amount of employed female Consultant's is growing. The thing is though, i have noticed a more female based subject at academic level that is web design and media. The other subject's such as networking & programming tend to be more male based. I suspect that Wikipedia number of user's could be evident of this, and i beleive the ratio to be somewhat similiar to the IT Consultancy figure. The answer is yes female user's are amongst us. I have noticed from my personal experience, women can be quite creative and effienct in thier task's where as men take a logical approach. Again both genda's can have these both trait's and are not limited to one or if two at that.
Anti argumentum ad hominem 05:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with NScheffey - I fail to see any purpose of this discussion. Let's examine the facts: 1. Wikipedia has, as of this moment, 2,502,620 editors. 2. Of those 2,502,620 of editors, 100% are volunteers (unless I missed the article about indentured servitude among Wiki members). 3. Of the volunteers, some unknown, but (let's assume) high percentage are male. Assuming we accept these facts, what exactly are we supposed to do about it? I see several possibilities: 1. Assume a sexist bias on Wikipedia. OK, considering fact #3, this seems fairly obvious, but only if we accept the (as yet unjustified) premise that all men are naturally sexist. But I don't accept this. To assume that all males naturally write sexist articles is as bad as assuming all women are interested in Prada and cooking. Let's give our male editors a little credit for putting their brains ahead of their testosterone. But, even if this isn't true, I go back to fact #2 and ask, what are you going to do about it? I know, we can have a new guideline stating that all articles must be reviewed by a female - but wait, that would be sexist, and also untenable. 2. Get more women to be editors. But refer to fact #2 - what are you going to do, institute a bizarre internet version of the draft? Should we force women to write for Wikipedia? Oh I know, we can start a corporation of women writers who are paid to write articles... no, the idea paid writers has already been shut down. 3. Sit around as a bunch of men and make ourselves feel better. "Wow, we're a pretty sexist crowd! Gosh, that stinks. OK, let's get back to editing." Oh wait, that's what we're doing... Bottom line: even if you accept the assumption that Wikipedia is sexist (I don't), I fail to see any reasonable solution. Roachmeister 12:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
History literally means His story? Even if English were the only language in the world, that wouldn't be taken very seriously. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Toomanyprotestsingers ( talk • contribs)
I'm in China and Wikipedia has been inaccessible here for a year or so. Today I followed a link and noticed it led to WP and it worked.
Of course, there's no guarantee it will last. Pashley 05:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
The English language wiki is available, but the Chinese language wiki is blocked, at least in Shenzhen. m.e. 09:28, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
On november 7/8, Reporters without Borders is organizing a day against Internet censorship. Unfortunately, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects are censored by various governments (in particular, the People's Republic of China censors us off and on). David.Monniaux 08:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is the subject in a multi-page feature article in the Telegraph magazine, the saturday supplement to The Daily Telegraph, a British broadsheet. The article "Wiki's World" by Mick Brown appears in the October 28 2006 of the Telegraph magazine and features illustrations by Brett Ryder. The article starts off with Wikipedia history and goes onto to explore the many facets of Wikipedia, elaborating on NPOV disputes, Wikipedia bureaucracy (admins, bureaucrats, mediation cabal, arbcom etc) and Wikipedia's drive for quality. The author also speaks to Jimbo Wales, Danny Wool, David Gerard and William Connolley about various Wikipedia aspects. Users mentioned directly in the article are User:SimonP and User:Lord Emsworth. There's also a picture of Jimbo in a god-king style pose, although it's not as good as this classic.
If you would like a copy of this article, I can provide scans. You either need to drop off your email address on my talk-page or use Wikipedia email to contact me. - Hahnch e n 00:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article in which they got three professors to grade an article in the specialty. Please see the the subpage at Wikipedia:External peer review and help fix identified concerns. - Banyan Tree 15:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I just found this item thru Google New's service. According to Lucia Bill, writing in the Arizona State University's student website, The Web Devil, "it is a well-known fact that if you cannot find it on Wikipedia.org, your prospects are not looking up." Wow. I never knew all of my roughed-out articles on local districts in Ethiopia were helping college students from being flunked out of school. ;-) -- llywrch 05:10, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Published by the Wikimania 2007 Taipei Team, Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin provides the latest news of the Team's organizing work to everyone who is interested in Wikimania; it also gives the Team chances to announce calls for help/participation, so assistance in human and other resources can be sought in a wider range. Team Bulletin is published at the official website of Wikimania 2007 and released to the public domain. Issue 1 and Issue 2 has already published.-- 218.166.212.246 00:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
In his latest column of Savage Love, the venerable Dan Savage provides much needed information about the Donkey Punch. AxelBoldt 22:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
From The Onion, 10/31/06 8:07 AM:
"KITTERY, ME—Even after spending 18 hours on Wikipedia, area resident Matt Alpert had to admit to himself that he was still nowhere near having a firm grasp on the continuity of the DC Comics Multiverse."
-- John Nagle 08:07, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Again? They love us. I don't see it either though... what category is the article under? -- tjstrf Now on editor review! 09:02, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
This mosaic is intended to commemorate the one millionth uploaded file at Wikimedia Commons. We ( user:pfctdayelise and myself) chose the Wikimedia Foundation logo because it would be easy to represent well at a fairly coarse resolution, because it is a relatively simple image, and because it represents the Foundation itself.
The point of this mosaic is to visually represent the breadth of images that are available at Commons. We picked a representative starting set but we need more images in it... That's where you come in! You can read more about how exactly to contribute at the construction notes page, but it would be swell if en:wp folks added an image (replacing one of the repeatedly used ones, not one someone else added) to help celebrate Commons getting 1,000,000 media files!
Feel free to spread the word to other projects, and check out the history to see the folks that have already added images to the commemorative mosaic project. ++ Lar: t/ c 03:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I've added another thumbnail so people can see how much the image has improved as people have added, adjusted, moved and generally improved this mosaic. Several folk have crafted tools to help editors as well. Come on over, there are still duplicate pics to replace! ++ Lar: t/ c 21:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
•S e an•gorter• (T) (P) is now giving away signatures! Be sure to tell Sean gorter that you want a signature in his signature shop! •S e an•gorter• (T) (P) 03:25, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Sean is doing a generous little thing here and running it with humor. I can think of 19 other things that need improvement when I hit random changes 20 times. Let's be gracious about this. Durov a Charge! 15:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
The German Heise news is reporting that a malware attack has been made using the good name of Wikipedia to encourage users to click on a link to a server from which the malware was downloaded. In a mass e-mail, recipients were told to download a "security update" for windows from a Wikipedia article. Even though the links placed on Wikipedia were quickly removed the emails linked directly to an historic version so for some time the scam was able to go on operating. Lumos3 23:42, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
A PR flack has followed Jimbo's explicit instructions that they should only post on Talk pages, rather than try to edit articles directly. As a result, Kamichat is experimenting in good faith with a question at Talk:Mobile home. If you know enough about mobile homes to discuss this matter (or know another Wikipedian who does), I encourage you to answer her very reasonable questions there. After all, people are watching, a failure to respond constructively to a good faith attempt to play by our rules could lead to harm to our project. -- llywrch 00:59, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Did anyone else notice this $10,000 donation by the W. Glen Boyd Charitable Foundation, back on October 10th? Maybe we should have something on it in the Signpost... — BRIAN 0918 • 2006-11-08 03:44Z
Pamela Samuelson and Mitch Kapor are currently teaching a seminar on Open Source at Berkeley. Yesterday they covered Wikipedia; before they talked about Open Source Biology, Open Journals, and of course Open Source software development and business models. Videos are online. AxelBoldt 03:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
The edit option on all of the pages is pretty dumb. I recently changed information on a page and it was left like that for about a week. This "tool" could be potentially dangerouse to all Wikipedia users. I sugest that you get ride of this iption or find away to make it more... safe. By the way, I kindly went back and changed teh information back to its origanal form before I did my little "test." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.255.109.142 ( talk • contribs) 18:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
We need to remember that Wikipedia is for everyone and can therefore be used by everyone, besides, some people may notice information about a subject that many others missed. If that person could not edit the page, then potentially useful information will be withheldfrom the public. -Charlie34
Hello, hola, bonjour, buon giorno, bom dia, здравствуйте, konnichi wa, ni hao, jambo, annyong ha shimnikka, al-salaam a'alaykum...
All those interested in or already involved with translating articles from other Wikipedias now have a new way of doing so, explained at the main project page and further at its help page.
Please remember to sign up by using the new userboxes, as explained in the "How to sign up" section of the main page, or you will not appear in the lists of translators available. This is important as it is imperative that we should be able to communicate with each other quickly and easily.
We hope you will like the new project. Any questions, comments or reports of technical glitches should be communicated to us on the project's talk page. As with all big changes, it may be confusing at first, but rest assured that we will do everything possible to guide you.
Happy editing!
Marialadouce | parlami 13:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC) and Jmfayard
A Graphics Lab has been created on Wikipedia-en. Based on the highly successful French and German graphics labs, it seeks to better organise and coordinate our graphic design and photo-editing efforts.
The EN graphics lab was just established by a French wikipedian working on that wikipedia's graphics lab. The French group has produced a ton of amazing, high quality work -- everything from svg diagrams and maps to photo retouching. Check it out to see some of their work. Though EN is more advanced than FR, they are far superior in this field. Now, though, we have the proper infrastructure; all we need are skilled graphic artists. Have a look at the graphics lab; maybe you can help. -- Zantastik talk 02:24, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
There was a Cisco advertisement on the television last night. During the first scene it showed wikipedia on a person's web browser. Did anybody else catch it? I thought that was kind of cool. — RJH ( talk) 18:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
It's not a very big sample, but ...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061127-8296.html
User:Zoe| (talk) 23:12, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand the significance of these results. Yes, it's great that experts found Wikipedia accurate, but what's the significance of experts' opinions vs. those of non-experts? After all, if a non-expert finds error, it suggests that said non-expert knows [i]something.[/i] ~Kazu 23:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Wikimedia Commons now has over 1 million uploaded files! There is a press release about the achievement, which also serves as a good introduction to Commons for anyone not familiar with it. the wub "?!" 18:05, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The 1,500,000th article has been created. Anyone know how to tell which one it was? -- Xyzzyplugh 21:09, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Yay go Wikipedia 1,500,000 not long to 2,000,000 now! :) -- WikiSlasher 01:15, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
The anouncement says the lucky article was Kanab Ambersnail, although the creator's Talk page seems to indicate that it was one of four possible candidates, and the others were inconsequential. It looks like we'll never know. -- Ybbor T 22:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm amazed that someone out there not only understands Wikipedia this well, but can write jokes about us that are funny. -- llywrch 00:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
the DE-WIKIPEDIA reached 500,000 articels -- Dirk | <°°> 01:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I've done a couple of changes to
MediaWiki:Searchnoresults, to include links to site searches on the three linked engines - what with the index being so far behind (and the mediawiki search engine being so rubbish not very good). As this is likely to affect most people at some time, I'm posting here to invite discussion (crossposting to
WP:VPT, please comment on that (
WP:VPT) page). Thanks --
M
a
rtinp23
22:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
:D
--
SonicChao
talk
17:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)Israel is commemorating the 120th anniversary of the development of Esperanto with a stamp featuring its inventor L. L. Zamenhof, and parts of the text of the Esperanto version of his biographical article (thankfully it's featured there). I don't see any obvious GFDL logo on the stamp, but surely this is more flattery than plagiarism. What's next? Perhaps someone could mine Portal:History for applicable narratives to carve in stone on national monuments? The more prosaic explanation would I suppose be that Wikipedia was "honored" in this way because of the role of the Esperanto Wikipedia among modern Esperantists. Anyway, see this detailed description of the stamp and this color image. -- Pharos 07:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
He just wrote an article for MercatorNet laying into Wikipedia...
How much did his vanity bio getting whacked play into it you think? Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John C. A. Bambenek (3rd nomination) -- Narciblog 06:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
This is John Bambenek portraying Doug Whiner. His consistent complaint seems to be that Wikipedia is incomplete. Well, duhhhhh! Also, he complains that (paraphrased) "busy people are too busy to edit". Duh again. Otherwise, his complaint seems to be more about the "wild west" quality (both positive and negative) of the Internet as a whole rather than of Wikipedia in specific. He would shortchange all the great quality work here for the remaining work that has yet to express quality. The worst part of his article is that he is disrespecting Wikipedians, most of whom are performing a great service for humankind, something he cannot claim for himself. What has he done to help his fellow humans understand more? Trashing a great phenomenon and benefit to humankind is tantamount to a monkey throwing their crap. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 17:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Announcing the founding of WikiProject Resource Exchange. The Resource Exchange is dedicated to organizing and sharing the vast resources available to wikipedians to aid in verification.
The project is designed as a way for wikipedians to share the benefits of access to difficult to find references. Many rural areas have limited or no access to much of what other wikipedians take for granted. Some users have access to resources that are truly difficult to find or are cost-prohibitive for most people. --- J.S ( T/ C) 20:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
In case you didn't know, there's a Wikipedia Folding@home team. Please join in! Dan100 ( Talk) 12:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The January 3 2007 issue of the French newspaper Libération featured an extensive portrait/bio of Florence Devouard, aka Anthere, head of the Wikipedia board. Coverage was positive both towards Anthere and Wikipedia. Rhinoracer 15:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
In order to reduce Wikipedia's reliance on fair use recordings of music which is in the public domain, Wikipedia:Requested recordings has been started. It works on the same principle as Wikipedia:Requested pictures, hopefully connecting musicians with music which needs to be recorded. Please sign up if you have resources which could be used, or propose a work to be recorded. Thanks, Mak (talk) 22:11, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20005257,00.html User:Zoe| (talk) 05:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
she could be the one who edited that article. SummerThunder 04:41, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
If you want to spend it at Wikipedia check Wikipedia:Wikipedians spending New Year's Eve on Wikipedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Romihaitza ( talk • contribs) 20:10, 31 December 2006 (UTC).
it looks like the edit count on the Special:Statistics page rolled over to 100,000,000 edits recently.. break open the champagne? 81.168.22.81 00:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Template talk:In the news#Redundancy at Haditha. - Banyan Tree 04:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
CIO-Today Report: [22] Given the indirect support Google has obviously given Wikipedia and its ability to substantially reduce Wikipedia's traffic, could it be dangerous for Wales to use such rhetoric? Shouldn't Wales also be more cautious when connecting independent Wikipedia's "popularity" to a commercial venture supported by Amazon.com and positioned against Google? Tfine80 22:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
"Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap,"
Who hasn't run an occasional Google search and received a load of spam? Today I browsed Wikipedia and eventually reached sex symbol, which was tagged for lack of sources. So I thought I'd run a quick search for definitions and commentary from reputable sources. Surely Harper's or Vanity Fair occasionally run articles on the subject. There really wasn't much of use in the top 100 Google returns. [23] Wikipedia was at the top, followed by an image gallery, then a Wikipedia mirror. The fourth return looked promising: a New York Times article. That discussed a current fad for bearded men - too specialized for a general article about sex symbols. Fifth was an online quiz; sixth, an overview of current Bollywood stars; seventh, a very short biography of Theda Bara. Then (and it surprised me that this sort of thing placed no higher) sex advice. Ninth was some avatar downloads. Then a blog about Jon Stewart. The rest were about the same: an algorithm's regurgitation based on superficial text analysis and website prominence rather than an intelligent human being's assessment. Some people would run this search more for personal amusement than research purposes, but even for that the results were quirky: none of the summaries mentioned Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, but Hillary Clinton and Pee-Wee Herman turned up. There's no accounting for taste... Durova Charg e! 01:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
$186,648.00 has been donated to WikiMedia by an Anonymous Donor, with description "This person wishes to remain anonymous. Roger donation made with stocks." Wow. — Dark Shikari talk/ contribs 18:52, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
According to this December 24, 2006 article in the Guardian, Jimmy Wales is "set to launch an internet search engine with amazon.com that he hopes will become a rival to Google and Yahoo!". Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 20:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Information Week posted another article about this today. The search engine is code-named Wikiasari. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 21:04, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm running the Wikipedia Cafepress store for the moment, and we're making an attempt to bring it up to date. We've started a new line of posters with the tagline "Think Free" (an apple parody, kind of). Let us know what you think.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Think_Free
Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 18:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
In an unusual turn of events, Wikipedia arbitration dispute has ended up with a factual finding that the well known UK encyclopedia Spartacus is "propagandistic" and too unreliable to even cite in Wikipedia. Citing a policy governing "extremist" organizations, the Wikipedia arbitration panel has banned Spartacus from use as a reliable source.
As background, a group of complaining editors are attempting to ban me on a quickly mutating set of charges which now include being guilty of citing Spartacus. The group of complaining editors seem to be ready to strip references to Spartacus from Wikipedia. As the defending editor in the arbitration, I was surprised to see this happen. The nature of the arbitration, in other respects, has been quite unusual but I am surprised at the intense hostility directed at myself and now Spartacus. Upon hearing of the charges against Spartacus, John Simkin, of Spartacus, sent a message to the arbitration panel stating among other things:
RPJ 18:57, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Does this mean that all citations to Spartacus Schoolnet should now be considered invalid? I would imagine that there are several thousand. I'm not sure of the extent to which an ArbCom decision like this sets general policy, as against being a ruling on how a source was used in a particular article. - Jmabel | Talk 08:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
In a story dated December 21, 2006, The Guardian places Wikipedia among The new 100 most useful sites. Wikipedia is the first site in the "Reference" section of the article:
“ | Wikipedia now dominates the reference side of the web, partly because its pages are ranked so highly in Google. User-written, it's not always reliable, but is usually a good place to start. | ” |
Per discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive#Popular culture and law reference desks, we have a new entertainment reference desk. (The archiving system still needs to be configured for the new desk.) Neon Merlin 23:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
According to the BBC, "Wikipedia" was the sixth most popular search term on Google during 2006. The article doesn't state whether any terms which would appear on the list have been censored. Warofdreams talk 17:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
User:SimonP is profiled in TIME magazine - http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570732,00.html. User:Zoe| (talk) 07:35, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I wrote a little essay explaining my belief that References don't increase Wikipedia's reliability. Cheers, AxelBoldt 23:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
[28] Tyrenius 03:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
In today's (January 23) strip, Sally is upset about turning 40, and her husband is trying to calm her about it, but she reminds him of his bad reaction on his turning 40. There's a flashback where he is saying, "If you don't say it, it won't happen." His defense is, "I read it in an unverified Wikipedia article." User:Zoe| (talk) 02:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Some good publicity in this Reuters article. - Nunh-huh 21:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
This story has an interesting take on a situation between Wiki and an outside company that tried to create articles on the wiki for profit. -- Measure 19:22, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
See the following interesting blog post from today:
—Steven G. Johnson 02:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Link to story on CNN, but in all reality it's word-for-word the same as the MSNBC one. It's from Associated Press, so who knows who else has picked it up. ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) problem solving 20:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Instead of typing wp(shift);vp to get here I redirected it to just wpvp try it yourself...although it may stand for Working People's Vanguard Party, but it doesn't stand for much else so it should be acceptable, much faster to just type wpvp Pseudoanonymous 20:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Complains that our hindi article was vandalised and some comments about indian goverment blocking policy: http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2007/107020105.asp
Geni 12:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Voting is now open at Commons to choose the finalists for Picture of the Year 2006. The voting page is at Commons:Picture of the Year/2006. All editors having at least 100 edits either here or on any Wikimedia Wiki are welcome to participate. -- MichaelMaggs 06:58, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
On December 17 2006 the Israeli postal service issued a stamp celebrating the 120th anniversary of the international language Esperanto. The artist who created the stamp, Moshe Pereg, created the figure of Zamenhof, the creator of Esperatno, using the very text that describes the biography of Zamenhof in the esperantic wikipedia. Beautiful idea! -- Civitano de la tero 16:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Jeremy Clarkson in The Sunday Times today has these kind words:
Tyrenius 17:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Some may recall 2 months ago when I posted something about a merge proposal for game-related fair use templates. After waiting a while with no objections I performed the merge. It has now been reverted by someone who thinks I did not make enough of an effort to contact interested persons to obtain concensus. So here we go again. ANYONE INTERESTED IN Template:Game-cover, Template:Boardgamecover, OR Template:RPG-artwork IS INVITED TO JOIN A DISCUSSION AT Template_talk:Game-cover#Merge ABOUT MERGING THESE THREE TEMPLATES. I'm cross-posting this to all the Village pumps. ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) problem solving 20:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
February 06, 2007: wikilobbying
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wikilobbying&defid=2230719
The act of paying others money to edit [Wikipedia] entries in order to cast the employer's company, product or point of view in a better light. Coined by [Stephen Colbert] of [The Colbert Report].
When money determines Wikipedia entries, reality becomes a commodity.
"IBM could throw some of their money at perception and make their product 'objectively better', then Microsoft can just fire their cash cannons back and we're off to the races. This is the essence of wikilobbying." - Stephen Colbert
-- Barringa 22:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I have compiled a list of studies published in Wikipedia space, as well as various useful tools developed for reesearch purposes and published on Wikipedia (mostly): see Wikipedia:Researching Wikipedia - and old, forgotten 2003 essay that I hijacked for that purpose. On the sidenote, it appears that OR is allowed on Wikipedia, as long as it is 'about Wikipedia' and put in Wikipedia namespace. I wonder how many pages should be in this list but I missed cause they were never categorized...-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 18:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Karim R. Lakhani, and Andrew P. Mcafee of the Harvard Business School have used an Afd as an example of Wikipedia's Governance process. The article in question was Enterprise 2.0. See http://courseware.hbs.edu/public/cases/wikipedia/ Lumos3 16:58, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Gendale, A Morality WikiPlay in Four Tabulated Acts. Itayb 14:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Introducing Wikipedia:WikiProjects noticeboard, which is like Wikipedia:Community noticeboard only for WikiProjects. It's a page where you can announce things relevant to all WikiProjects. Check it out! — Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 20:18, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Users should be aware that an adminstrator was recently granted the right to vanish and return with a new username, with adminstrative rights. There is no obvious connection between the old username and the new user name. I have strong concerns that this action goes against our requirements of adminstrative actions being reviewable (the only actions that are not reviewable are oversights), and am strongly opposed to allowing adminstrative access to continue to a new account without a public linking of the two accounts. Obviously, the user could vanish, return, regain the communities trust and reapply for adminship. To do an end-around hiding ones history and not having to reprove oneself to the community at large is not acceptable. In this specific case I was finally able to conclusivly determine the username and am satisifed that the administrator was not "under a cloud," but the principal is highly disturbing. Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
If a new account were to appear with administrative functions and no corresponding RFA, the promoting bcrat would have an obligation to explain why the promotion was made, right? And, whatever private evidence he might have to link the two accounts would be meaningless to the rest of the community. Friday (talk) 17:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I just redesigned the Wikipedia cafepress store. Let me know what you think. Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 05:16, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Really it's not the best way to make an income for wikipedia Kben 15:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Werdnabot has now been blocked for several days following a malfunction. Werdna does not appear to be around to deal with the problem. It may be worth considering switching the archiving to MiszaBot II (for project talk pages and noticeboards) and MiszaBot III (for user talk pages), especially if talkpages are getting very full. To have either of those Bots handle archiving, make a request at User talk:Misza13, including the following information:
Hopefully that should keep everything functioning smoothly... WjB scribe 15:05, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (news). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
We've been featured in the New York Times: Growing Wikipedia Revises Its 'Anyone Can Edit' Policy. Apparently they've just started to notice page protection. All in all though, a pretty good read. - Loren 06:52, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
It's nice to have the project so prominently featured, and may cause another surge in the site's popularity statistics, but the headline is rather misleading; it implies that there's been a recent change in Wikipedia policy that drastically alters its traditional openness, when in fact no such thing has happened. The change to allow semi-protection of articles (which is what the headline is apparently referring to) was made months ago, and is only a minor "speed bump" in the way of anybody who wishes to edit one of the affected articles. The full-protection of articles (which is more of an imposition on the "anyone can edit" concept) has been around for years, since pretty much the beginning of the project. And, as the Times notes themselves, these protection policies affect only a tiny number of articles compared to the over a million which exist. So there isn't actually any "news" here; it must be a slow news day for this to make the front page. *Dan T.* 17:45, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
What I found interesting was that they made a big deal about them doing in-depth reporting to find the list of protected pages (hmm), and that Wikipedia is this very small community with 10 guys writing every article from scratch to Featured status. They didn't slam WP as others have done, but I await the day one of these articles that treat Wikipedia as an open community and not a cabal of five nerds on laptops. - Mysekurity [m!]] 03:07, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to announce three new templates for use in creating multi-column page sections. They are very simple to use. Just do this:
{{MultiCol}} This text appears in the first column. Long lines are wrapped appropriately. {{ColBreak}} This text appears in the next column. Long lines are wrapped appropriately, and a small right margin is included to prevent text in adjacent columns from touching. {{ColBreak}} There can be any number of columns. Long lines are wrapped appropriately. {{EndMultiCol}}
The above example is rendered like this:
This text appears in the first column. Long lines are wrapped appropriately. |
This text appears in the next column. Long lines are wrapped appropriately, and a small right margin is included to prevent text in adjacent columns from touching. |
There can be any number of columns. Long lines are wrapped appropriately. |
The
MultiCol template takes one parameter: the width of the entire group of columns. If a percentage is given (e.g., {{MultiCol|80%}}) it refers to a percentage of the page width. The background of the underlying table is set to transparent, so the background of the enclosing block shows through. Naturally, you want to use at least one {{ColBreak}}
, otherwise you end up with a single column, which is probably not what you want. I hope people find this useful. —
franl |
talk ✤
04:31, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
{{MultiCol}} Column 1 {{ColBreak}} Column 2 {{ColBreak}} Column 3 {{EndMultiCol}} |
{{Col-begin}} {{Col-3}} Column 1 {{Col-3}} Column 2 {{Col-3}} Column 3 {{Col-end}}
|
Napster has an ad on its site recommending people place Napster Links on Wikipedia. These are links to songs that only play after (free) user registration. Napster imposes a limit of 5 plays and requires a paid subscription for further plays, or to download the song. The purpose of the links is obviously advertising. Thus, they seem to clearly violate Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. I've sent them an email asking that they take the ad down. Either way, I think people should remove these links on sight. Anyone disagree? Superm401 - Talk 02:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Although I condone Napster for this ridculousness, I also see it as flattery of possibly the highest kind for Wikipedia. -- Osbus 00:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm putting a copy of this over at WP:AN where it may be more relevant. JoshuaZ 21:51, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Alex Marrache (Alex.Marrache@napster.com) responded today, saying "While we do not believe that we are in violation of your policy, we have stopped encouraging people to add links to the site." Unfortunately, this is flagrantly inaccurate, as both http://m.2mdn.net/1155087/amplify_links_160ww.jpg and http://www.napster.com/player/player_video_v2.swf?fileType=swf&clip=http://ad.doubleclick.net/adx/naps.player/g_1;dcmt=text/plain;sz=320x240;ptile=1;ord=5498709629239128 were served to me when I checked tonight. I responded to Alex, noting this somewhat important fact; I'll post again if/when anything else happens. Superm401 - Talk 02:36, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
A link removal bot would do the trick on this or any other spam attack of this nature. It would just require a SQL connection, a select based around the offending string, and a replace of the offending string. Sjc 05:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
"Is the rule here that no content can be of potential commercial gain to anyone?": No. The rule is that external links should be kept strictly relevant; that typically, external links to services that require the viewer to pay are generally not very accessible and so aren't of great value to our readers, who can probably find places to buy commercial products themselves in the unlikely event they want to (the vast majority are looking for info about what they type in, not the thing itself); and that if we do include commercial services, we should try to provide a scrupulously wide selection of them.
See Special:Booksources for a search by ISBN that we've made available. It triggers automatically whenever someone enters "ISBN" followed by an ISBN number (e.g., ISBN 1234567890). A similar scheme could be worked out for items that do not have ISBNs, such as musical pieces, if a developer finds the time to code it in. It should be straightforward to adapt the existing ISBN feature to ISMNs, although of course that's not a guarantee anyone will be interested in doing it. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 01:54, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
"There is a need to create a more formal definition of how a community conclusion is made": Many people believe that. Others disagree, feeling that a quasi-anarchic lack of firm rules is necessary for a wiki to function properly. See also Wikipedia:Ignore all rules.
"Also in the case of Napster you are allowed a limited free use of the audios in question, so you are only required to pay after so many views." Wikipedia's primary purpose is not as a portal to get links to download songs. It's to provide second-hand information, not first-hand content. While providing links to songs is useful to our readers and should for that reason ultimately be encouraged, the cause is not so important to our purpose as to make it reasonable for us to favor one provider so much as you would suggest we do. If all major providers of the music were provided, by an interface like our current ISBN interface, I doubt anyone would object. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 22:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
.-- Rhooker1236
Dear Wikipedians: I, like you, am an editor; I create articles and make edits. But, many, I am sure many other people out there, are tired, frustrated and angry with the behavior of many Administrators. I am certain that it is appallingly easy to revert an article that someone has undoubtedly spent a lot of time and effort writing. I have, in the past, spent hours researching, planning, writing, checking and revising an addition to an article only to have the whole lot deleted forever three minutes afterwards.
I know that deletion of material is essential in a free-to-edit encyclopedia, but if you see an article that someone has anonymously devoted their time to writing, why could you not revise it, change it or give a reason for your action? They deserve one.
I know all Administrators are not all Drunk-With-Power-Trigger-Happy-Nazis, many of you do an excellent job and you know who you are.
In closing: Create, don’t Destroy. Make a distinction between “what is right, and what is easy”. Be enriched and enrich others with the knowledge of other people.
And keep that finger off the trigger.
(If I don't cop flack for this one, I will climb the Reichtag Bulding in a Spiderman outfit).
Dfrg.msc 07:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Letter here: [3] The only other community-drawn board member Anthere recently posted a harsh essay against the policy direction of the Wikimedia board and its effective control by Wales and his Bomis friends. [4] If this crisis does not lead to greater user-input into organizational policy, Wikipedia's future is clearly in doubt. Tfine80 01:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
My email was certainly an open criticism, but it was meant to be constructive and to inform the community of one of the many challenges the organisation is right now facing. However, your caracterization of "Bomis friends" is definitly debateable. Only one board member is a Bomis person (Tim Shell). He is imho a kind person and I look forward seeing him again at Wikimania this summer. This said, he is not really active on the board and would qualify as a "friend". He will resign from the board in the next few months. Michael has never worked for Bomis (he is involved in Wikia), he is definitly involved in all financial issues and is a great help in running the project from an administrative point of view. I certify that he is a free mind, and vote/participate as an independant human. Angela is not on Bomis, but working for Wikia.
Whatever the direction the Foundation takes (Business-like or Community-like), I do not think Wikipedia's future is at stake. What is more at stake from my perspective is whether we'll become a global organisation or a local US-based, US-driven organisation. And whether we'll focus in becoming more a political strength (with lawyers on the board to work on free licences in our rich-world) or a charitable one (trying to disseminate knowledge everywhere). And whether we'll just become a Foundation supporting financially and technically our projects, or something so much more exciting, with multiple projects and dreams we could hope to become true.
This is, imho, what is JUST at stake now.
Anthere 18:15, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm happy to see some interest in Foundation matters here on Wikipedia. The main place to discuss these issues is foundation-l. I would like to encourage everyone here to make their voices heard in the debates about openness and participation that are going to happen in the coming months. I personally believe in a model where the Board is community-elected (my favorite idea is that of a "Magnificent Seven", with 4 community-elected people, Jimmy, and 2 appointed experts), and that there should be an additional Advisory Board of experts who have no legal authority, but who are consulted frequently. However, if the community wants to see that happen, it needs to get involved!
Those who care about the organizational side of things should start by reading the article about the Wikimedia Foundation and closely studying and watching the Foundation Website. Board Resolutions (such as the decision to hire Brad Patrick as Interim Executive Director and Legal Counsel) are published there. Also study the Foundation bylaws, and read past debates in the foundation-l archives, such as the important debate started by Anthere, linked to above. If you need more pointers to reading material, leave a note on my talk page and I'll be happy to give you a few links.
If you would like to get involved in actual Foundation work, apply for membership in the Wikimedia committees. It is my personal belief that this structure in particular needs some reform to guarantee transparency and participation. I've been pushing for this in the past, however, my experience has been very disheartening -- there is very little interest from the community in those matters, and the debates tend to be dominated by those who have shaped the structures as they exist today. One recently formed committee which is fairly open is the Fundraising committee -- we need volunteers, so please do sign up on the page if you think you can make a meaningful contribution to this topic.
Angela has been a voice for the community for two years. Her departure in particular makes it important that more people join the activities of the organization. Why is it important? Because Wikimedia is more than just a hosting service for the projects. We have the potential to build hundreds or even thousands of partnerships with educational institutions, with charitable organizations, and (within reasonable limits), with for-profits -- especially to bootstrap our existing projects like Wikinews and Wikibooks. For instance, there are thousands of local "citizen radio" projects around the world which are now starting to take notice of the Internet. If we play our cards right, we can position Wikinews so that it becomes part of a global movement to create local "media centers" -- not institutions of propaganda, but of free content news and original reporting. There is huge interest in Wikibooks, and we need to get academia involved in order to provide free educational resources to poor people. We need a nice DVD version of the English Wikipedia, we need evolution of our software such as Multilingual MediaWiki or m:InstantCommons or WiktionaryZ, we need better methods to distinguish trusted users from untrusted ones, and, and, and ... And as Anthere writes above, we need an international organization that truly promotes the ideals of Wikimedia on a global scale. In matters which are fairly clearly in our interest, Wikimedia can also join political initiatives, such as a reduction of international copyright terms (currently life of the author + 70 years).
All of this requires an organization with strong community leadership in order to get off the ground. If the Wikimedia Foundation continues to operate as it does today, it will be succesful at keeping things running, which is good. But in order to move things forward, we need far more involvement from the level of the Wikimedia projects and languages.-- Eloquence * 23:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Reuters has an article concerning recent activity on the Ken Lay article: Ken Lay's death prompts confusion on Wikipedia. The article goes over the large number of changes the Ken Lay article underwent as news of his death came in. To quote the article:
In other news, the Sun rose in the east today... - Loren 22:35, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
This from a press group whos stories show up on google news as "UPDATE 27 Katrina.........."-- mitrebox 23:17, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
This story itself got a correction from Reuters, irony apparently unintended. Ashibaka tock 01:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Followup from the Washington Post: Death by Wikipedia: The Kenneth Lay Chronicles. - Loren 08:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Of images which are uploaded under fair use claims, I have found that roughly 93% of them do not comply with the simple requirements of a rationale and a source; it may be necessary to more aggressively scour the namespace. Full results at User:ESkog/ImageSurvey. ( ESkog)( Talk) 06:12, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Check out the new Wikiproject Ice Cream. Tasty! -- Blackjack48 18:06, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
The TTABLOG reports that the Commissioner of the International Trademark Association has sent a letter to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to formally request that trademark examiners be prohibited from citing Wikipedia as a source. bd2412 T 16:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Did anyone else notice a Wikipedia mention by Stephen Colbert a few weeks ago on his show? I can't find any reference to it in the Signpost, and I can't remember exactly when it was. Or maybe it was just a dream...? It was a satirical comment about the factuality of Wikipedia content. Nathan Beach 21:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Per request of Effeietsanders, I'm inviting you to take a look at an announcement (and invitation, naturally) for a Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland! You can read more about it here: User:Effeietsanders/WCN. If this is not the best place for this kind of announcement, please let me know! Kind regards, -- Joanne B 20:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I compiled some statistics: how many articles from non-English Wikipedias are translated into English, and how many notable topics from specialized databases are covered on Wiki so far. My conclusions: there are about 2 millions articles in need of translation, and more then 400 million of specialized topics in need of creation :) See User:Piotrus/Wikipedia interwiki and specialized knowledge test for details.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus talk 18:38, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia has a new featured users page, featuring Wikipedia's best contributors. If you believe you are a gooduser, please sign up to become a good featured user at Wikipedia:Featured users, cheers — M in un Spiderman 18:34, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
You can read it online in its entirety for free. Here's the link for those who may not have seen it. It's in the July 31, 2006, issue, which hit the streets today. -- 4.232.201.186 20:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence. Better be on the lookout for new edits to the articles mentioned. - Loren 01:07, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
According to Talk:Mini Mammoth#Article_for_Deletion the Australian DJ's Jay and the Doctor today encouraged their listeners to add a spoof article to Wikipedia. Uncle G 02:19, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps not in the same league as the recent article in the New Yorker, but you may be interested in an article in the current Mendip Times (a monthly covering the Mendip Hills area of Somerset, England. You can access it at: Mendip Times but you have to click on "click here to view the magazine online" & then scroll to page 37 as it's on Macromedia Flash Paper. — Rod talk 13:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations is now being updated with an automated bot that attempts to identify copyright violations from newly created articles.
(Note: if this is not the appropriate place to announce this, feel free to remove this message). -- Where 23:39, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Historian Marshall Poe has written a long and fascinating article for The Atlantic Monthly about the history and aims of Wikipedia, titled " The Hive". It's very thoughtful and ultimately very pro-Wikipedia. It includes discussion about starting a one-line article about himself, and watching the ensuing AfD.
There are also a couple of in-depth sidebars, including " Common Knowledge", an interview with Poe about the article and Wikipedia, and " A Closer Look at the Neutral Point of View (NPOV)". — Catherine\ talk 04:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
A Disney WikiProject has been proposed here, interested Wikipedians need only sign their name on the list. >< Richard 06 12 UW 10:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Progress made on deletion reason 'human dignity' as per 'Jimmy': {{ Dignity}}. Hope you like! :) Red Baboons 04:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure where this should go, but I'm gunna be bold and put it here anyway. A page has been created (not by me) for you to leave your birthday messages to Jimbo Wales who created the English Wikipedia. You can leave your messages here. Abstract Idiot [ Talk • Contribs ] 03:42, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I've made a searchable repository of questions (and answers) frequently asked by newcomers to Wikipedia. It's available at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/nubio/. It currently has 70 entries (many of the entries have been scraped off WP:FAQ and the various related pages, and some answers to the Help desk). If possible, I'd like to receive some feedback on the project, and see what people think. I'm open to suggestions on how to improve it and where to link to it. Cheers, Tangot a ngo 18:52, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia makes the gossip page of Melbourne broadsheet The Age today. A minor revert war on the Sam Newman page is described as being "nail-biting stuff." Drett 17:37, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I make a suggestion, a Wikipedia Bill of Rights to protect the rights of people making a good faith effort to expand Wikipedia.
1. No one under 21 years of age shall delete content (age restrictions are common, younger people can post content but not destroy it. I find teens are better at making than destroying).
2. No one shall delete more content in any month than they create, no member shall make the collective information smaller.
3. Deleting bots can only be used by a governing board elected.
4. Each year there shall be an election of all registered individuals who have been active editors to elect a government of Wikipedia who will have the responsiblity to deal with abuse, they will monitor the size of Wikipedia and will have the power to restrict deletions or increase them, only they can exercise the power to run bots.
5. Any deletion can be over ruled by a vote of 3 active editors, and as long as they are active no deletion against a site can take place, though edits are allowed. To edit shall be the means of dealing with questions.
6. Because Google each payment for every search entered, constituting a tax on the Internet, Wikipedia understands the value to linking content to external web sites, including does that conduct economic activity via the Internet. These links shall be clearly marketed as FOR PROFIT sites.
-- Rhooker1236 21:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC) Robert Hooker July 2 2006. Support Good Wiki Government. Email removed because it attracted nothing but African based get rich Spam.
Hi RH, I'm still largely a wiki-newbie too, with only 100 Mainspace edits, but I'd like to share my views on the points you've raised. You seem to have a major concern about deletions, which can certainly be a touchy topic, especially for the authors of articles that get nom'd for AfD. There are a couple of things you can do to try and avoid AfD, and the single most effective is this: add content, maintain NPOV, and cite your sources. If you work slowly, like I do, it can help to create a temp page in your Userspace and work on the article there first. When an article does get nom'd for AfD, then it becomes important to participate in the process. Make your own points as clearly and concisely as you can, and be sure to read (and think about) the points that other editors are making. Be prepared to change your mind. If you find that consensus is against you, there might be a valid reason for it. More than once I've changed my 'vote' in AfD after being presented with sound reasons; I've also deleted content that I put up when I came to realize that other editors made valid points against its suitability. Regarding your comments about 'underage' contributors and more governance on WP...well, it might sound like a good idea to you, but these kinds of proposals have a history of being soundly defeated; most wikipedians seem to be reasonably content with the structure we've got. It works for me :) -- Doc Tropics Message in a bottle 15:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)#
There is no situation where one administrator can unilaterally delete a page without appeal. You can always bring the matter to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion or, if you didn't get there in time Wikipedia:Deletion review. Both invite broad participation.
NPOV is not about utter objectivity. It is about a style of writing that tries to make clear when opinions are expressed whose they are. Part of this is that our own individual, unsourced opinions don't belong in the article. If you want to write opinionl-laden material, start a blog. Opinions expressed here should be the cited opinions of people who are reasonably authoritative on the topic. Why? Because we are trying to build an encyclopedia. No one turns to the encyclopedia to find out the opinions of a bunch of random individuals. - Jmabel | Talk 22:54, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Jarod Lanier uses his dissatisfaction with his WP article as a springboard for discussing what's wrong with WP. [7] His suggestion: put WP through a low-pass filter. Zora 00:19, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I find it satisfyingly ironic that his name is actually "Jaron Lanier" and not "Jarod Lanier". Vmand 23:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
FWIW, complaining about blandness and erasing contributors' identities is in no way inconsistent with complaining that a particular article has no coherent single voice. One of the downsides of our approach is what I've called "the war on prose". Almost any well-turned phrase expresses some degree of POV. Our effort to be NPOV is not easily compatible with strong authorial voice. For the opposite extreme in encylopedia-writing, consider the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh Edition). It's a wonderful, well-written, highly opinionated encyclopedia, the culmination of Victorian- and Edwardian-era scholarship. I love it. An equivalent today might be a fascinating document. If someone wanted to create one, I'd love to see them draw heavily on our material to build it. But it would be a very different work than we are creating. - Jmabel | Talk 22:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Newest in the line of peer-reviewed articles about Wikipedia and one of very few not from the field of computer sciences, this recent (June'06) publication in Journal of American history is nicely written (no dense 'sholarese') and rather positive of Wiki. Enjoy! -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:27, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
The article also, alas, accurately pinpoints our biggest weakness, and the reason that professional historians (it examines only history, but this applies in other fields) can continue to exist in a wikipedia world, if I may quote a chunk:
- DavidWBrooks 23:13, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
In any case, a great article. I've added a link from Wikipedia:Researching With Wikipedia; I'm sure there are many other things that should link to it. Also, someone should go through and use it as a resource for its many specific criticisms, pretty much all of which look valid. - Jmabel | Talk 00:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I've added a proposal to the Wikipedia Village Pump:Proposals that may help with this. It's title is "Wikipedia articles by classrooms as school projects". I don't know how to add a timestamp to it, so if anyone wants to please do so for the date of August 14, 2006 (5:57 pm EST).
Apparently Stephen Colbert vandalised Wikipedia live on his TV show. Looks like we have a trend. Wikipedia is seen by the conventional media as an enemy and they want to discredit it by any means necessary. Grue 18:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
There is too much truth available on wikipedia, and in much too handy of a format. It is a threat to certain types of people who rely on the ignorant populace remaining so. User:Pedant 03:40, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
"At home, Mr. Wales has honed the good-enough style so well -- or rather, not honed it -- that the place will not even remotely be featured in House & Garden. He dresses casually, Florida-style, goes by the nickname Jimbo, and although he does drive a foreign car, it's a Hyundai Accent.
It's sort of like an appliance as a car, he said. He bought his DVD player at Wal-Mart, and his television set has something inside it called a cathode ray tube. Heard of it, kids?
About the only thing he has that aspires to a higher ideal is, of all things, a flashlight. The SureFire M6 blasts the competition, which averages 60 lumens, with a 250-lumen light beam. The company bills it as a searchlight disguised as a flashlight and boasts that SWAT teams use the lights to temporarily blind suspects at night.
Who needs a baseball bat? said Mr. Wales, who keeps his M6 on his bedside table not as a weapon but in case he, you know, needs a flashlight. You have to love the kitsch of that, that there's an assault flashlight now.
The $400 M6, which is eight inches long, holds six lithium batteries and is housed in aerospace-grade aluminum, is the product of a design school that might be called Modern Militant, the most familiar example of which is the Hummer. It's really, really, really, really bright, Mr. Wales said. Anyone who tries to one-up me with their fancy car or whatever, I've got 'em. I say, 'Well, I have a brighter flashlight.' "
—New York Times, August 13, 2006
What happened to the Times? lots of issues | leave me a message 23:12, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
this is messedrocker
(talk)
21:04, 14 August 2006 (UTC)Via Pharyngula comes this story of deceit and conspiracy. I mentioned this over on the Signpost tip line, but it might belong here too. Interesting story. . . if true. Any gumshoes feel like following it up? Anville 03:39, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, sort of. http://de.wikiversity.org/ has been active for more than a year, but that is a different discussion for a totally different forum.
This is the first day that http://en.wikiversity.org/ has been up and running, where there has been quite a bit of activity today from those who are participants with Wikiversity. Wikipedia now has a new sister project up and running, even though it is really a brand new project. Undecided yet is how to do the inter-wiki links between Wikiversity and the other sister projects, although several suggestions have been made. If you want to be in on the ground floor of a new Wikimedia project, today is the day to get things rolling. -- Robert Horning 23:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
In most cases, it should now be possible to drop the parameter when using Template:Lowercase. That's because I've added a default value of {{LCFIRST:{{PAGENAME}}}}. Neon Merlin 17:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Lots of articles in the news today about Congressman Gutknecht's staff attempting to whitewash his Wikipedia article. See [10] for one. User:Zoe| (talk) 22:53, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Due to the recent turmoil on community pages, a large community straw poll is being conducted. Wikipedia:Communities strawpoll is now open for voting. Despite resolutions made on this page, many others are facing turmoil similar to what this page is, or once did face. In an effor to solve the issue, I invite all Wikipedians to vote there by September 18th on this page following the procedures and ballot instuctions explained there. Thank You. Ericsaindon2 06:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
There is a test Wikipedia in Quenya opened in the Incubator: [11]. Everyone is welcome to participate. -- Djordje D. Bozovic 12:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
An anonymous person, using the infamous 1&1 web hosting service, has created onlinereference.info, a domain which contains complete (albeit old) copies of en:Wikipedia [12], en:Wiktionary [13], and en:Wikiquote [14], even including user pages. These copies do not give attribution to the projects; they claim to be the projects. According to m:Talk:Wikimedia trademarks, there seems to be some disagreement over whether Wikimedia should attempt to enforce or even register its trademarks. From my own point of view, I have enough problem fighting identity theft without allowing someone to copy my user pages to a mock-Wikimedia project and allowing strangers to register my username there, pretending to be the person who wrote all my comments. I've registered my username on this counterfeit on all three subprojects. (Thanks to q:User:Rumour for bringing this to en:Wikiquote's attention.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 12:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Interesting change to their "Template:In the news" at http://encyclopedia.onlinereference.info/index.php/Template:In_the_news .. doesn't appear to take effect on main page though. -- Chuq 14:29, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
suggest that all bureacrats create accounts on the fake sites and turn everyone into sysops there and all admins create accounts and start vandalbotting and deleting at top speed... since they have no labor force, it would be fairly tough for the fake sites for a while... User:Pedant 03:13, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Their entire Recent Changes page looks like vandalism by User:Pedant and some interesting spam postings. I don't think anybody over there pays attention to what's going on. User:Zoe| (talk) 02:20, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
direct quote from the main page: "In this English version, started in 2001, we are currently working on 18446744073709551591 articles." 18.4 billion billion. that's a lot of articles.. maybe they're referencing the whole internet, and more? -- naught101 23:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
This appeared in Newsweek:
"Wales admits that sometimes the lack of an all-controlling editor leads Wikipedia to sometimes indefensible imbalances (for instance, the entry on Star Trek's Mr. Spock is more than twice as long as the item about Flaubert). But he contends that's just a temporary effect of the geeky flavor of the burgeoning Wikipedia community in this early stage."
Is there a defensible concept of 'imbalance' when including more text has nearly zero marginal cost? It is understandable that traditional encyclopedia editors agonized over the amount of space to give one topic vs another, but this is not suitable for wiki potentates to worry about. When there is no reason not to say more (if it is relevant and correct) it is merely a matter of social prejudice to determine whether Mr Spock 'should' have more or less space than Flaubert.
One thing that Wikipedia could try to do more systematically is to have reasonably short articles that then link to longer articles about the same subject. This is done in a few places now, but I currently can't find an example.
-- wellsoberlin 01:35, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Stephen Colbert's wikiality, created in reference to Wikipedia, has been named a television buzzword of the year. [16]. Dragons flight 20:39, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
ALSO, AN APPLE HAS FALLEN FROM A TREE. MORE AT 11. Good god.
On this morning's The Stephanie Miller Show, a listener called in to discuss a bit that they had done last Friday where the show's "voice monkey", Jim Ward, had done a Somerset dialect. The caller said that to him, the dialect had sounded like pirate speech, so he had gone to Wikipedia and sure enough, Wikipedia had confirmed it. I assume he was talking about our article at West Country dialects. User:Zoe| (talk) 17:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/14308789p-15199046c.html
OK, who's Wayne Saewyc? 'Fess up. And why are they claiming we clamped down on Congressional staffers last week? That was months ago. User:Zoe| (talk) 18:01, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
And now see this - http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/politics/15381771.htm. Wayne Saewyc again. Who is this guy? User:Zoe| (talk) 02:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Wayne Saewyc = user:Amgine. When it comes to press stuff, he's a magician. Raul654 02:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
This article on game cheating in the Washington Post refers to mycheats.com as "a Wikipedia for the gaming set". Is "Wikipedia" becoming a generic term for online reference sites (especially those that are editable by their readers)? *Dan T.* 03:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
According to the now-deleted article at Wikipedia Inc., there's a Japanese software company calling itself Wikipedia Inc. at http://www.wikipedia.co.jp. I wonder if the Wikimedia Foundation is aware of this? User:Zoe| (talk) 17:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
BBC website has an article detailing the proposals for stable versions on Wikipedia apparently written by a Wikipedian (and journalist) Bill Thompson. A rather sedate discussion compared to many mentions Wikipedia gets in the media: [17] Rmhermen 13:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
The 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica is now available in a wiki at http://1911encyclopedia.org. Intended usage is to only edit the article pages for scanning errors, links, categories and such, but to give freedom to write your own material about a subject at the talk page.
Note that this project is not a Wikimedia project. It is a commercial site (using adverts) and its only relationship with Wikipedia is that it uses the same wiki software. Nevertheless I would like to invite anyone interested to come over and take a look, maybe make an edit. - Andre Engels 15:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't look like the complete 1911. My litmus test is to see if they left the anachronistic material in the "race" acticle. Sure enough, its gone.
Yakuman
06:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Dear all,
please note that numerous articles published at Croatian section of this project represent direct, shameful and blatant insult to any civilized person due to glorification of Nazi war criminals. It is pathetic to describe mass murderers as "novel authors, statesmen or war leadres" and not even mentioning attrocities they have commited. Examples:
http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrija_Artuković http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ante_Pavelić http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavko_Kvaternik http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jure_Francetić http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Boban
I hope that Wikipedia's policy is not language-specific, ie. if Nazis are not glorified at English Wikipedia, they should't be grorified elsewhere, should they?
Regards,
Velimir Dedic
ChaCha.com is a new human intelligence based internet search engine. You speak with an live guide and they will try to find the information you're looking for. While it was just released and goes offline frequently, it's worth a try. Blackjack48 16:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia was mentioned in today's FoxTrot comic strip.
First panel:
Second panel:
Third panel:
Fourth panel:
Thie article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/technology/02shortcuts.html repeats the librarian position that Wikipedia is not a source to use for research. Did it get discussed, and if so, how can I find the discussion? - Jaysbro 18:17, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Some subjects, in particular famous people, for which we would like to have free images, only provide good photography opportunities at specific events. I thought it would be good to have a calendar of such events, so we can increase the chance that there are Wikimedians making photographs and donating them to Commons (or Wikipedia or whatever). Those who are interested in such a project, please check out Commons:Commons:Photography event calendar and cooperate in making this thing work. Thanks in advance! - Andre Engels 11:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Folks ought to know about Danny's contest! As you can read in more depth at WP:DC, Danny is running a new contest (his 3rd), this time with the goal of improving articles, specifically focusing on references... there are hundreds of thousands of articles on the english wikipedia that don't have any references at all, including some shockingly important ones. Danny is putting up prizes for the most improved one or ones, to be judged by a panel of 5 judges. If you know of an article that you're interested in, and that needs improvement (and there are over 200,000 that do!) why not enter today? There's plenty of time, as the contest will end on 7 October. Please spread the word. ++ Lar: t/ c 03:10, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
A long debate facilitated by the WSJ
EXCELLENT JIMBO. You're showing spine against these fools. For too long we took crap from their executives, editors, and
a pensioner even, and you didn't defend us.
lots of issues | leave me a message 20:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Wikipe-tan, the Wikipedia OS-tan has found its way into the latest edition of games™ magazine (issue 48). It's found on page 30 beside a regular column on the Japanese Gaming scene by correspondant Tim Rogers. The article is absolutely nothing about Wikipedia, but instead about the maid cafe culture in Japan. - Hahnch e n 01:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The page for candidate statements is now open but elections are not for anther 2 months so no need to hurry:
Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Elections/December 2006/Candidate statements
Geni 00:06, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Once you've read Wikiruth, it's hard to think of Wikipedia as anything other than an autistic care group for the obese and the underemployed. - Andrew Orlowski, The Register [18]
Oh yeah, 'n Sanger is no Super-Sales Wales, never mind Citizendium is the lamest name ever. I mean, what is with the friggin' Latin thing anyway? edia-endium my Aunty Fanny :) Wyss 19:31, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know if this email I got is legit or phishing? (no I haven't responded to it)....
"Dear Rlevse,
We are conducting a study of people's motivations for writing and editing in Wikipedia.
We would be extremely grateful if you could help us by filling out the questionnaire at http://faculty.poly.edu/~onov/wiki1 - it should take no longer than 10-15 minutes. The questionnaire is anonymous and your responses will be used for research purposes only.
We would be happy to share our findings with you, which will be made available online once we complete the data collection and analysis.
With many thanks!
Dr. Oded Nov, Polytechnic University, New York onov at poly dot edu"
Rlevse 22:09, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
I just wanted to point out a tool that I ran across on :FR. It lists the most-viewed articles and works on many different language wikipedias. Check it out. -- Zantastik talk 22:37, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Per a discussion in #wikipedia-en: Certain pages on Malayasian subjects on enwp were recently discovered to be inaccessable from at least one ISP (singnet.com.sg), such as (not a full list):
Some things to note about these:
Test results on [[Malaysian_Malaysia]] Inaccessable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian%20Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%61ysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Malaysian+Malaysia Accessable: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=-&curid=1890739 http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=50951374 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%4D%61%6C%61%79%73%69%61%6E_%4D%61%6C%61%79%73%69%61 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%4D%61%6C%61%79%73%69%61%6E_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_%4D%61%6C%61%79%73%69%61 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Malaysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Malaysian https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Malaysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%61laysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%61l%61ysi%61n_Malaysia Also accessable (nonexistant/other): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_Malaysia_Blahblahblah_missing_page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1ysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maaysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%62ysian_Malaysia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%4Dalaysian_%4Dalaysia http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Malaysian_Malaysia
Can any other Singapore users verify or deny this? (Move this to the appropriate VP section if misposted, but this seemed like news) -- Splarka ( rant) 00:25, 4 October 2006 (UTC) (I am not in Signapore, but am posting this on behalf of a wp user who is)
I submitted Jimbo's $100 million inquiry to Slashdot today. Seems to have provoked quite a discussion. The meta discussion page is seeing a lot of traffic (someone might want to keep an eye on it). Broken Segue 00:30, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Colleagues of mine are doing some evaluation of a technique that they propose for finding "related articles" in Wikipedia. Please consider answering their page. David.Monniaux 13:20, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
During my time on English Wikipedia, I’ve come to realize just how male dominated it is (I myself am male). Seriously, how many Wikipedians are female? If these legendary creatures do exist, they would be classified as “rare and endangered”. But perhaps they are more common than I think, as it is difficult to tell and we tend to assume the user is male. But I digress; Female Wikipedians are few and far between. Unfortunately - we need Female Wikipedians, to continue effectively as an encyclopedia, as they can offer insights that males cannot. Male/female insights and interest differ radically. Compare:
The truth lies within the Article quality. How can we overcome this?
If I am wrong, and every second editor is female – correct me. I also apologize for stereotyping and generalizing. I am also unsure of how Wikipedia’s Homosexual community rates i
-- Michael Van Locke 03:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)Men dominate the world, it is only natural that women are prejudiced against in Wikipedia. History is literally HIS story of the world. I think that he should include HERstory too. It is the greatest story never told. Wikipedia can help bringHERstoryto the eyes of the public! -- Michael Van Locke 03:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
User:Dfrg.msc User talk:Dfrg.msc 06:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the examples picked were stereotyped, but I believe the point holds. The very fact that a man trying to make the point picked these examples speaks volumes. Male contributors, even well intentioned ones, often don't know what topics women are likely to want to read or write about. The gender imbalance results one of the more significant unintended biases of Wikipedia. - Jmabel | Talk 22:47, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
No offense, but I was just wondering what this discussion could possibly achieve. -- Nscheffey( T/ C) 00:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Maybe wikipedian women just have better taste than the music and clothing you've picked. soccer is BY FAR more popular than netball. I think I know just as many women who listen to system of a down as men. your point is probably true in anycase, but by stereo typing what men and women are interested in, you're probably making the problem WORSE, not better. perhaps you should be looking more at truly gender specific topics, such as erectile disfunction Vs breast cancer. personally, I can't see any solution anyway... hey, wait! why don't we change the theme colours of wikipedia from blue to pink! -- naught101 23:15, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I suspect this has more to do with presumptions than anything else. Despite my username's derivation from the first female officer of the Russian army, and a statement at the top of my userpage to that effect (including a portrait), when other editors refer to me by a personal pronoun it's usually "he." I've created nine new warfare categories and quite a few military articles, but have yet to edit Madonna. Maybe I should change my username to G.I. Barbie. Durova 04:36, 23 August 2006 (UTC):
The gender of people from nationalities other than European/American may not be obvious to Europeans and Americans. Most people get MY gender wrong, even though I'm here under my given name. (PS: this seems to be catching, because now at least one South Asian has got it wrong as well. How mortifying.) The gender imbalance is probably going to change in the future. I suspect many women edit without logging in, as they may not necessarily want to have to deal with user talk and community stuff as well as simple edits. I used to do that before I created a user ID. PS I'd also like to say that all your examples are very occidental. I have played and liked Half Life (not 2, it hasn't come to these shores yet) but neither Prada nor netball have any associations for me. Nor does Madonna. -- Rimi 13:14, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm guessing that this topic has already been much discussed and researched on WP:BIAS. nadav 08:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
I have come across a strange statistic recently, apperently the amount of IT Consultant's nowaday's employed, roughly 60% are male and the rest of the percentage (40%) are female. Now it also states that the amount of employed female Consultant's is growing. The thing is though, i have noticed a more female based subject at academic level that is web design and media. The other subject's such as networking & programming tend to be more male based. I suspect that Wikipedia number of user's could be evident of this, and i beleive the ratio to be somewhat similiar to the IT Consultancy figure. The answer is yes female user's are amongst us. I have noticed from my personal experience, women can be quite creative and effienct in thier task's where as men take a logical approach. Again both genda's can have these both trait's and are not limited to one or if two at that.
Anti argumentum ad hominem 05:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with NScheffey - I fail to see any purpose of this discussion. Let's examine the facts: 1. Wikipedia has, as of this moment, 2,502,620 editors. 2. Of those 2,502,620 of editors, 100% are volunteers (unless I missed the article about indentured servitude among Wiki members). 3. Of the volunteers, some unknown, but (let's assume) high percentage are male. Assuming we accept these facts, what exactly are we supposed to do about it? I see several possibilities: 1. Assume a sexist bias on Wikipedia. OK, considering fact #3, this seems fairly obvious, but only if we accept the (as yet unjustified) premise that all men are naturally sexist. But I don't accept this. To assume that all males naturally write sexist articles is as bad as assuming all women are interested in Prada and cooking. Let's give our male editors a little credit for putting their brains ahead of their testosterone. But, even if this isn't true, I go back to fact #2 and ask, what are you going to do about it? I know, we can have a new guideline stating that all articles must be reviewed by a female - but wait, that would be sexist, and also untenable. 2. Get more women to be editors. But refer to fact #2 - what are you going to do, institute a bizarre internet version of the draft? Should we force women to write for Wikipedia? Oh I know, we can start a corporation of women writers who are paid to write articles... no, the idea paid writers has already been shut down. 3. Sit around as a bunch of men and make ourselves feel better. "Wow, we're a pretty sexist crowd! Gosh, that stinks. OK, let's get back to editing." Oh wait, that's what we're doing... Bottom line: even if you accept the assumption that Wikipedia is sexist (I don't), I fail to see any reasonable solution. Roachmeister 12:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
History literally means His story? Even if English were the only language in the world, that wouldn't be taken very seriously. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Toomanyprotestsingers ( talk • contribs)
I'm in China and Wikipedia has been inaccessible here for a year or so. Today I followed a link and noticed it led to WP and it worked.
Of course, there's no guarantee it will last. Pashley 05:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
The English language wiki is available, but the Chinese language wiki is blocked, at least in Shenzhen. m.e. 09:28, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
On november 7/8, Reporters without Borders is organizing a day against Internet censorship. Unfortunately, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects are censored by various governments (in particular, the People's Republic of China censors us off and on). David.Monniaux 08:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is the subject in a multi-page feature article in the Telegraph magazine, the saturday supplement to The Daily Telegraph, a British broadsheet. The article "Wiki's World" by Mick Brown appears in the October 28 2006 of the Telegraph magazine and features illustrations by Brett Ryder. The article starts off with Wikipedia history and goes onto to explore the many facets of Wikipedia, elaborating on NPOV disputes, Wikipedia bureaucracy (admins, bureaucrats, mediation cabal, arbcom etc) and Wikipedia's drive for quality. The author also speaks to Jimbo Wales, Danny Wool, David Gerard and William Connolley about various Wikipedia aspects. Users mentioned directly in the article are User:SimonP and User:Lord Emsworth. There's also a picture of Jimbo in a god-king style pose, although it's not as good as this classic.
If you would like a copy of this article, I can provide scans. You either need to drop off your email address on my talk-page or use Wikipedia email to contact me. - Hahnch e n 00:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article in which they got three professors to grade an article in the specialty. Please see the the subpage at Wikipedia:External peer review and help fix identified concerns. - Banyan Tree 15:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I just found this item thru Google New's service. According to Lucia Bill, writing in the Arizona State University's student website, The Web Devil, "it is a well-known fact that if you cannot find it on Wikipedia.org, your prospects are not looking up." Wow. I never knew all of my roughed-out articles on local districts in Ethiopia were helping college students from being flunked out of school. ;-) -- llywrch 05:10, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Published by the Wikimania 2007 Taipei Team, Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin provides the latest news of the Team's organizing work to everyone who is interested in Wikimania; it also gives the Team chances to announce calls for help/participation, so assistance in human and other resources can be sought in a wider range. Team Bulletin is published at the official website of Wikimania 2007 and released to the public domain. Issue 1 and Issue 2 has already published.-- 218.166.212.246 00:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
In his latest column of Savage Love, the venerable Dan Savage provides much needed information about the Donkey Punch. AxelBoldt 22:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
From The Onion, 10/31/06 8:07 AM:
"KITTERY, ME—Even after spending 18 hours on Wikipedia, area resident Matt Alpert had to admit to himself that he was still nowhere near having a firm grasp on the continuity of the DC Comics Multiverse."
-- John Nagle 08:07, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Again? They love us. I don't see it either though... what category is the article under? -- tjstrf Now on editor review! 09:02, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
This mosaic is intended to commemorate the one millionth uploaded file at Wikimedia Commons. We ( user:pfctdayelise and myself) chose the Wikimedia Foundation logo because it would be easy to represent well at a fairly coarse resolution, because it is a relatively simple image, and because it represents the Foundation itself.
The point of this mosaic is to visually represent the breadth of images that are available at Commons. We picked a representative starting set but we need more images in it... That's where you come in! You can read more about how exactly to contribute at the construction notes page, but it would be swell if en:wp folks added an image (replacing one of the repeatedly used ones, not one someone else added) to help celebrate Commons getting 1,000,000 media files!
Feel free to spread the word to other projects, and check out the history to see the folks that have already added images to the commemorative mosaic project. ++ Lar: t/ c 03:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I've added another thumbnail so people can see how much the image has improved as people have added, adjusted, moved and generally improved this mosaic. Several folk have crafted tools to help editors as well. Come on over, there are still duplicate pics to replace! ++ Lar: t/ c 21:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
•S e an•gorter• (T) (P) is now giving away signatures! Be sure to tell Sean gorter that you want a signature in his signature shop! •S e an•gorter• (T) (P) 03:25, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Sean is doing a generous little thing here and running it with humor. I can think of 19 other things that need improvement when I hit random changes 20 times. Let's be gracious about this. Durov a Charge! 15:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
The German Heise news is reporting that a malware attack has been made using the good name of Wikipedia to encourage users to click on a link to a server from which the malware was downloaded. In a mass e-mail, recipients were told to download a "security update" for windows from a Wikipedia article. Even though the links placed on Wikipedia were quickly removed the emails linked directly to an historic version so for some time the scam was able to go on operating. Lumos3 23:42, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
A PR flack has followed Jimbo's explicit instructions that they should only post on Talk pages, rather than try to edit articles directly. As a result, Kamichat is experimenting in good faith with a question at Talk:Mobile home. If you know enough about mobile homes to discuss this matter (or know another Wikipedian who does), I encourage you to answer her very reasonable questions there. After all, people are watching, a failure to respond constructively to a good faith attempt to play by our rules could lead to harm to our project. -- llywrch 00:59, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Did anyone else notice this $10,000 donation by the W. Glen Boyd Charitable Foundation, back on October 10th? Maybe we should have something on it in the Signpost... — BRIAN 0918 • 2006-11-08 03:44Z
Pamela Samuelson and Mitch Kapor are currently teaching a seminar on Open Source at Berkeley. Yesterday they covered Wikipedia; before they talked about Open Source Biology, Open Journals, and of course Open Source software development and business models. Videos are online. AxelBoldt 03:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
The edit option on all of the pages is pretty dumb. I recently changed information on a page and it was left like that for about a week. This "tool" could be potentially dangerouse to all Wikipedia users. I sugest that you get ride of this iption or find away to make it more... safe. By the way, I kindly went back and changed teh information back to its origanal form before I did my little "test." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.255.109.142 ( talk • contribs) 18:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
We need to remember that Wikipedia is for everyone and can therefore be used by everyone, besides, some people may notice information about a subject that many others missed. If that person could not edit the page, then potentially useful information will be withheldfrom the public. -Charlie34
Hello, hola, bonjour, buon giorno, bom dia, здравствуйте, konnichi wa, ni hao, jambo, annyong ha shimnikka, al-salaam a'alaykum...
All those interested in or already involved with translating articles from other Wikipedias now have a new way of doing so, explained at the main project page and further at its help page.
Please remember to sign up by using the new userboxes, as explained in the "How to sign up" section of the main page, or you will not appear in the lists of translators available. This is important as it is imperative that we should be able to communicate with each other quickly and easily.
We hope you will like the new project. Any questions, comments or reports of technical glitches should be communicated to us on the project's talk page. As with all big changes, it may be confusing at first, but rest assured that we will do everything possible to guide you.
Happy editing!
Marialadouce | parlami 13:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC) and Jmfayard
A Graphics Lab has been created on Wikipedia-en. Based on the highly successful French and German graphics labs, it seeks to better organise and coordinate our graphic design and photo-editing efforts.
The EN graphics lab was just established by a French wikipedian working on that wikipedia's graphics lab. The French group has produced a ton of amazing, high quality work -- everything from svg diagrams and maps to photo retouching. Check it out to see some of their work. Though EN is more advanced than FR, they are far superior in this field. Now, though, we have the proper infrastructure; all we need are skilled graphic artists. Have a look at the graphics lab; maybe you can help. -- Zantastik talk 02:24, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
There was a Cisco advertisement on the television last night. During the first scene it showed wikipedia on a person's web browser. Did anybody else catch it? I thought that was kind of cool. — RJH ( talk) 18:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
It's not a very big sample, but ...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061127-8296.html
User:Zoe| (talk) 23:12, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand the significance of these results. Yes, it's great that experts found Wikipedia accurate, but what's the significance of experts' opinions vs. those of non-experts? After all, if a non-expert finds error, it suggests that said non-expert knows [i]something.[/i] ~Kazu 23:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Wikimedia Commons now has over 1 million uploaded files! There is a press release about the achievement, which also serves as a good introduction to Commons for anyone not familiar with it. the wub "?!" 18:05, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The 1,500,000th article has been created. Anyone know how to tell which one it was? -- Xyzzyplugh 21:09, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Yay go Wikipedia 1,500,000 not long to 2,000,000 now! :) -- WikiSlasher 01:15, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
The anouncement says the lucky article was Kanab Ambersnail, although the creator's Talk page seems to indicate that it was one of four possible candidates, and the others were inconsequential. It looks like we'll never know. -- Ybbor T 22:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm amazed that someone out there not only understands Wikipedia this well, but can write jokes about us that are funny. -- llywrch 00:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
the DE-WIKIPEDIA reached 500,000 articels -- Dirk | <°°> 01:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I've done a couple of changes to
MediaWiki:Searchnoresults, to include links to site searches on the three linked engines - what with the index being so far behind (and the mediawiki search engine being so rubbish not very good). As this is likely to affect most people at some time, I'm posting here to invite discussion (crossposting to
WP:VPT, please comment on that (
WP:VPT) page). Thanks --
M
a
rtinp23
22:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
:D
--
SonicChao
talk
17:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)Israel is commemorating the 120th anniversary of the development of Esperanto with a stamp featuring its inventor L. L. Zamenhof, and parts of the text of the Esperanto version of his biographical article (thankfully it's featured there). I don't see any obvious GFDL logo on the stamp, but surely this is more flattery than plagiarism. What's next? Perhaps someone could mine Portal:History for applicable narratives to carve in stone on national monuments? The more prosaic explanation would I suppose be that Wikipedia was "honored" in this way because of the role of the Esperanto Wikipedia among modern Esperantists. Anyway, see this detailed description of the stamp and this color image. -- Pharos 07:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
He just wrote an article for MercatorNet laying into Wikipedia...
How much did his vanity bio getting whacked play into it you think? Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John C. A. Bambenek (3rd nomination) -- Narciblog 06:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
This is John Bambenek portraying Doug Whiner. His consistent complaint seems to be that Wikipedia is incomplete. Well, duhhhhh! Also, he complains that (paraphrased) "busy people are too busy to edit". Duh again. Otherwise, his complaint seems to be more about the "wild west" quality (both positive and negative) of the Internet as a whole rather than of Wikipedia in specific. He would shortchange all the great quality work here for the remaining work that has yet to express quality. The worst part of his article is that he is disrespecting Wikipedians, most of whom are performing a great service for humankind, something he cannot claim for himself. What has he done to help his fellow humans understand more? Trashing a great phenomenon and benefit to humankind is tantamount to a monkey throwing their crap. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 17:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Announcing the founding of WikiProject Resource Exchange. The Resource Exchange is dedicated to organizing and sharing the vast resources available to wikipedians to aid in verification.
The project is designed as a way for wikipedians to share the benefits of access to difficult to find references. Many rural areas have limited or no access to much of what other wikipedians take for granted. Some users have access to resources that are truly difficult to find or are cost-prohibitive for most people. --- J.S ( T/ C) 20:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
In case you didn't know, there's a Wikipedia Folding@home team. Please join in! Dan100 ( Talk) 12:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The January 3 2007 issue of the French newspaper Libération featured an extensive portrait/bio of Florence Devouard, aka Anthere, head of the Wikipedia board. Coverage was positive both towards Anthere and Wikipedia. Rhinoracer 15:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
In order to reduce Wikipedia's reliance on fair use recordings of music which is in the public domain, Wikipedia:Requested recordings has been started. It works on the same principle as Wikipedia:Requested pictures, hopefully connecting musicians with music which needs to be recorded. Please sign up if you have resources which could be used, or propose a work to be recorded. Thanks, Mak (talk) 22:11, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20005257,00.html User:Zoe| (talk) 05:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
she could be the one who edited that article. SummerThunder 04:41, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
If you want to spend it at Wikipedia check Wikipedia:Wikipedians spending New Year's Eve on Wikipedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Romihaitza ( talk • contribs) 20:10, 31 December 2006 (UTC).
it looks like the edit count on the Special:Statistics page rolled over to 100,000,000 edits recently.. break open the champagne? 81.168.22.81 00:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Template talk:In the news#Redundancy at Haditha. - Banyan Tree 04:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
CIO-Today Report: [22] Given the indirect support Google has obviously given Wikipedia and its ability to substantially reduce Wikipedia's traffic, could it be dangerous for Wales to use such rhetoric? Shouldn't Wales also be more cautious when connecting independent Wikipedia's "popularity" to a commercial venture supported by Amazon.com and positioned against Google? Tfine80 22:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
"Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap,"
Who hasn't run an occasional Google search and received a load of spam? Today I browsed Wikipedia and eventually reached sex symbol, which was tagged for lack of sources. So I thought I'd run a quick search for definitions and commentary from reputable sources. Surely Harper's or Vanity Fair occasionally run articles on the subject. There really wasn't much of use in the top 100 Google returns. [23] Wikipedia was at the top, followed by an image gallery, then a Wikipedia mirror. The fourth return looked promising: a New York Times article. That discussed a current fad for bearded men - too specialized for a general article about sex symbols. Fifth was an online quiz; sixth, an overview of current Bollywood stars; seventh, a very short biography of Theda Bara. Then (and it surprised me that this sort of thing placed no higher) sex advice. Ninth was some avatar downloads. Then a blog about Jon Stewart. The rest were about the same: an algorithm's regurgitation based on superficial text analysis and website prominence rather than an intelligent human being's assessment. Some people would run this search more for personal amusement than research purposes, but even for that the results were quirky: none of the summaries mentioned Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, but Hillary Clinton and Pee-Wee Herman turned up. There's no accounting for taste... Durova Charg e! 01:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
$186,648.00 has been donated to WikiMedia by an Anonymous Donor, with description "This person wishes to remain anonymous. Roger donation made with stocks." Wow. — Dark Shikari talk/ contribs 18:52, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
According to this December 24, 2006 article in the Guardian, Jimmy Wales is "set to launch an internet search engine with amazon.com that he hopes will become a rival to Google and Yahoo!". Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 20:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Information Week posted another article about this today. The search engine is code-named Wikiasari. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 21:04, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm running the Wikipedia Cafepress store for the moment, and we're making an attempt to bring it up to date. We've started a new line of posters with the tagline "Think Free" (an apple parody, kind of). Let us know what you think.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Think_Free
Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 18:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
In an unusual turn of events, Wikipedia arbitration dispute has ended up with a factual finding that the well known UK encyclopedia Spartacus is "propagandistic" and too unreliable to even cite in Wikipedia. Citing a policy governing "extremist" organizations, the Wikipedia arbitration panel has banned Spartacus from use as a reliable source.
As background, a group of complaining editors are attempting to ban me on a quickly mutating set of charges which now include being guilty of citing Spartacus. The group of complaining editors seem to be ready to strip references to Spartacus from Wikipedia. As the defending editor in the arbitration, I was surprised to see this happen. The nature of the arbitration, in other respects, has been quite unusual but I am surprised at the intense hostility directed at myself and now Spartacus. Upon hearing of the charges against Spartacus, John Simkin, of Spartacus, sent a message to the arbitration panel stating among other things:
RPJ 18:57, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Does this mean that all citations to Spartacus Schoolnet should now be considered invalid? I would imagine that there are several thousand. I'm not sure of the extent to which an ArbCom decision like this sets general policy, as against being a ruling on how a source was used in a particular article. - Jmabel | Talk 08:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
In a story dated December 21, 2006, The Guardian places Wikipedia among The new 100 most useful sites. Wikipedia is the first site in the "Reference" section of the article:
“ | Wikipedia now dominates the reference side of the web, partly because its pages are ranked so highly in Google. User-written, it's not always reliable, but is usually a good place to start. | ” |
Per discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive#Popular culture and law reference desks, we have a new entertainment reference desk. (The archiving system still needs to be configured for the new desk.) Neon Merlin 23:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
According to the BBC, "Wikipedia" was the sixth most popular search term on Google during 2006. The article doesn't state whether any terms which would appear on the list have been censored. Warofdreams talk 17:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
User:SimonP is profiled in TIME magazine - http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570732,00.html. User:Zoe| (talk) 07:35, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I wrote a little essay explaining my belief that References don't increase Wikipedia's reliability. Cheers, AxelBoldt 23:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
[28] Tyrenius 03:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
In today's (January 23) strip, Sally is upset about turning 40, and her husband is trying to calm her about it, but she reminds him of his bad reaction on his turning 40. There's a flashback where he is saying, "If you don't say it, it won't happen." His defense is, "I read it in an unverified Wikipedia article." User:Zoe| (talk) 02:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Some good publicity in this Reuters article. - Nunh-huh 21:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
This story has an interesting take on a situation between Wiki and an outside company that tried to create articles on the wiki for profit. -- Measure 19:22, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
See the following interesting blog post from today:
—Steven G. Johnson 02:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Link to story on CNN, but in all reality it's word-for-word the same as the MSNBC one. It's from Associated Press, so who knows who else has picked it up. ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) problem solving 20:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Instead of typing wp(shift);vp to get here I redirected it to just wpvp try it yourself...although it may stand for Working People's Vanguard Party, but it doesn't stand for much else so it should be acceptable, much faster to just type wpvp Pseudoanonymous 20:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Complains that our hindi article was vandalised and some comments about indian goverment blocking policy: http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2007/107020105.asp
Geni 12:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Voting is now open at Commons to choose the finalists for Picture of the Year 2006. The voting page is at Commons:Picture of the Year/2006. All editors having at least 100 edits either here or on any Wikimedia Wiki are welcome to participate. -- MichaelMaggs 06:58, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
On December 17 2006 the Israeli postal service issued a stamp celebrating the 120th anniversary of the international language Esperanto. The artist who created the stamp, Moshe Pereg, created the figure of Zamenhof, the creator of Esperatno, using the very text that describes the biography of Zamenhof in the esperantic wikipedia. Beautiful idea! -- Civitano de la tero 16:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Jeremy Clarkson in The Sunday Times today has these kind words:
Tyrenius 17:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Some may recall 2 months ago when I posted something about a merge proposal for game-related fair use templates. After waiting a while with no objections I performed the merge. It has now been reverted by someone who thinks I did not make enough of an effort to contact interested persons to obtain concensus. So here we go again. ANYONE INTERESTED IN Template:Game-cover, Template:Boardgamecover, OR Template:RPG-artwork IS INVITED TO JOIN A DISCUSSION AT Template_talk:Game-cover#Merge ABOUT MERGING THESE THREE TEMPLATES. I'm cross-posting this to all the Village pumps. ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) problem solving 20:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
February 06, 2007: wikilobbying
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wikilobbying&defid=2230719
The act of paying others money to edit [Wikipedia] entries in order to cast the employer's company, product or point of view in a better light. Coined by [Stephen Colbert] of [The Colbert Report].
When money determines Wikipedia entries, reality becomes a commodity.
"IBM could throw some of their money at perception and make their product 'objectively better', then Microsoft can just fire their cash cannons back and we're off to the races. This is the essence of wikilobbying." - Stephen Colbert
-- Barringa 22:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I have compiled a list of studies published in Wikipedia space, as well as various useful tools developed for reesearch purposes and published on Wikipedia (mostly): see Wikipedia:Researching Wikipedia - and old, forgotten 2003 essay that I hijacked for that purpose. On the sidenote, it appears that OR is allowed on Wikipedia, as long as it is 'about Wikipedia' and put in Wikipedia namespace. I wonder how many pages should be in this list but I missed cause they were never categorized...-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 18:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Karim R. Lakhani, and Andrew P. Mcafee of the Harvard Business School have used an Afd as an example of Wikipedia's Governance process. The article in question was Enterprise 2.0. See http://courseware.hbs.edu/public/cases/wikipedia/ Lumos3 16:58, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Gendale, A Morality WikiPlay in Four Tabulated Acts. Itayb 14:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Introducing Wikipedia:WikiProjects noticeboard, which is like Wikipedia:Community noticeboard only for WikiProjects. It's a page where you can announce things relevant to all WikiProjects. Check it out! — Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 20:18, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Users should be aware that an adminstrator was recently granted the right to vanish and return with a new username, with adminstrative rights. There is no obvious connection between the old username and the new user name. I have strong concerns that this action goes against our requirements of adminstrative actions being reviewable (the only actions that are not reviewable are oversights), and am strongly opposed to allowing adminstrative access to continue to a new account without a public linking of the two accounts. Obviously, the user could vanish, return, regain the communities trust and reapply for adminship. To do an end-around hiding ones history and not having to reprove oneself to the community at large is not acceptable. In this specific case I was finally able to conclusivly determine the username and am satisifed that the administrator was not "under a cloud," but the principal is highly disturbing. Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
If a new account were to appear with administrative functions and no corresponding RFA, the promoting bcrat would have an obligation to explain why the promotion was made, right? And, whatever private evidence he might have to link the two accounts would be meaningless to the rest of the community. Friday (talk) 17:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I just redesigned the Wikipedia cafepress store. Let me know what you think. Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 05:16, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Really it's not the best way to make an income for wikipedia Kben 15:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Werdnabot has now been blocked for several days following a malfunction. Werdna does not appear to be around to deal with the problem. It may be worth considering switching the archiving to MiszaBot II (for project talk pages and noticeboards) and MiszaBot III (for user talk pages), especially if talkpages are getting very full. To have either of those Bots handle archiving, make a request at User talk:Misza13, including the following information:
Hopefully that should keep everything functioning smoothly... WjB scribe 15:05, 10 March 2007 (UTC)