Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 22

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Link rot Userboxes

I think link rot is one of the biggest threats to Wikipedia's future, so I designed three userboxes to spread the word about link rot and how to combat it with WebCite and the Internet Archive. Please help spread the word.--Blargh29 (talk) 04:14, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

• archiveurl=This user combats link rot when creating citations

• WCThis user uses WebCite to prevent link rot.

• IAThis user uses the Internet Archive.

I use User:Dispenser/Checklinks through the user script toolbox.js. Protonk (talk) 04:51, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

You are right about link rot being a problem, but I have not achieved the skills needed to combat it. Perhaps this is not the best place to discuss it, but where would an experienced editor start? Suppose I am creating a new article about a US Government official in my sandbox, and I want the inline citation references to not experience linkrot. How to I do it? --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:00, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

There's a great bot that combats link rot by automatically archiving with WebCite any new citation links. See User:WebCiteBOT. I love the userboxes btw.-- œ^™ 18:02, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Article Assessment tables

When do the article assessment tables get updated? I thought maybe overnight, but I have waited several days, and no update so far, at least not on the Puerto Rico project. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:51, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The quality assessment tables get updated every few days by a bot, here is the history of the Puerto Rico table - it looks like it was last updated on September 4, so it should be updated again within a few days. (It looks like the bot is running smoothly, it just has other projects to get through before it gets back to Puerto Rico.) I'm not sure of the technical specifics, but it seems like the average time between updates is something like five or six days or so, although once I had to wait almost two weeks on a different wikiproject a few months ago. In any case, it will most likely be updated again in a few days. AlexiusHoratius 13:58, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for that very detailed information. I worked fairly hard to reduce the number of importance=none and class=none articles on this and some other projects. I gather from your information that different WikiProjects are done at different times. --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:43, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Correct - the bot basically goes down a list, as opposed to everything being updated all at once. I'm not sure how closely related this index is to the list it goes through, but it seems to have something to do with it. AlexiusHoratius 17:53, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

List of zombie novels

List of zombie novels - a huge list of non-notable novels by non-notable authors. This would be like putting all of the bands that don't meet WP:BAND into List of punk albums What's the consensus on lists like these? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 05:07, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I think of lists like that as wikipedia's equivalent of honeypot traps - they lure in a certain type of editor and occupy them with endless, pointless fiddly work, keeping them busy so they don't wander around and clutter up valuable articles. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:19, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Well many bands that don't meet WP:BAND would do very well in a list. Notability is the criterion for having an article, not for inclusion in other articles. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 00:37, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Lists, whether they are embedded lists or stand-alone lists, are encyclopedic content as are paragraphs and articles, and they are equally subject to Wikipedia's content policies such as Verifiability, No original research, Neutral point of view, and others.. As far as I'm concerned, that "others" includes notability. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:34, 2 September 2009 (UTC

WP:Notability isn't a content policy. "Notability determines whether a topic merits its own article", not the content of that article. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 02:47, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes it is, it defines what content we include in the encyclopedia. I think what you probably meant by content is 'style.' → ROUX ₪ 12:54, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

The notability guidelines address the level of notability required to have an individual article on a topic. They do not address how notable something has to be to be mentioned in another article. Powers ^T 13:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Lt has it right. I find it is a common failing across Wikipedia that people fail to distinguish between what articles should exist (notability) and what should exist in those articles (verifiability and other content poilicies). OrangeDog (talk • edits) 01:37, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Honey lures in the flies, but so do piles of something less sweet smelling. With all due respect (where it is due), this list is more akin to the latter. I am not sure if there is any kind of consensus to be found on these things, but I still believe that they serve as little more than a dumping grounds for things that just don't warrant a mention, at all. Shereth 20:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm always curious about this train of thought. Why don't they (whatever "they" are) merit any mention in the encyclopedia at all? That seems rather extreme to me (of course, full disclosure: I likely wouldn't support deletion of articles about each individual book/band/movie/etc...).
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 08:12, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

See WP:N and WP:INDISCRIMINATE for the answer. → ROUX ₪ 12:54, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't answer my question. I know quite well what the guidelines are purported to represent, I'm asking about this interpretation of them. If someone or something is important enough to mention in Wikipedia at all, then why shouldn't they/it have an article (with proper references, of course), even if all that is possible is a stub? How is the Notability guideline an objective measure of anything when it comes to a question of inclusion in the encyclopedia at all?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:20, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I suggest you re-read those links, because all of those questions are answered there. The simple basic fact is that we do not include everything that exists; we have a threshold. So does Britannica, so does any book or website about anything. → ROUX ₪ 13:49, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

<Intentionally self redacted reply>
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 14:25, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh grow up. → ROUX ₪ 14:30, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

</self censoring> You're saying that to me?! uh... I suggest that you take your advice. Actually answering the question that I was asking rather then quoting a guideline that I seem to have a better grasp of then you do would be a start.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 15:37, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, um, no. Posting a comment to make the point that you are not posting a comment is pretty much the definition of childish. What part of "the simple basic fact is that we do not include everything that exists" doesn't make sense to you? What part of that is not explained by the policies with which I am actually quite familiar? (PS, you meant to use 'than,' not 'then'). The question you are asking appears to be carefully designed to elicit only the answer you want, while carefully ignoring the true question which you should be asking: why are these things included on these lists (which should be bluelinks or redlinks with the capability of becoming bluelinks) when they do not meet the threshold for inclusion? The answer is, of course, they should not be on such lists, given that lists "[[WP:Source list|...are encyclopedic content as are paragraphs and articles, and they are equally subject to Wikipedia's content policies such as Verifiability, No original research, Neutral point of view, and others]]" including, of course, WP:N. → ROUX ₪ 16:21, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Roux, while I agree with your view about inclusion in lists, you should be reminded that WP:N is a guideline, not a policy. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:37, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

←You're framing your responses just as I'm framing my question (since, for example, I would ask "why aren't these things on the list" rather then "why are they"). We're obviously on opposite sides of the underlying question, and I was interested in having a civil discussion about it. Since civility seems to be beyond your grasp here however, I'm simply going to walk away. Enjoy your "victory".
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:03, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Beyond my fucking grasp? Are you joking? Which one of us started with the childish comments? Hint: it was you. FFS. → ROUX ₪ 10:34, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

To directly quote WP:N: "These notability guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article. They do not directly limit the content of articles." OrangeDog (talk • edits) 01:43, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Not directly, no. But again, lists should be of articles. If the article doesn't and will not exist, then it shouldn't be on the list. This really is very simple. → ROUX ₪ 16:42, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Unless this is one of the "list articles that are created explicitly because the listed items do not warrant independent articles", which may/should or may/should not be the case. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 23:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Um, why don't we move this to one of you two's talk pages, so you can argue there.

Roux, the only comments I have seen from you today, in three threads and two pages, have been rather angry ones. I am sorry you are having a bad day, WP:TEA Ikip (talk) 17:32, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Bad day? Hardly. → ROUX ₪ 16:42, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Notability

I'd like to request a general moratorium on the use of the phrase "is not notable". That's a value judgment about the subject of an article, and can have BLP implications. "Does not show evidence of notability" is a value judgment about the article itself, and is appropriate in deletion discussions and elsewhere.

Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled ranting. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:34, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

You may also want to read User:Stifle/Don't say non-notable. MuZemike 17:02, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to request a general moratorium on the use of the phrase "is not notable". You might as well ask for a moratorium on people saying "it's cruft" and "fuck" because it's just not happening... --Cameron Scott (talk) 17:04, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

• Indeed. Saying something "is not notable" is very different from an article not showing evidence of notability. The latter is about content, and can be remedied. For example, if our article on Einstein just said "Einstein was a man who was smart" and had no sources, it would show no evidence of notability, while the subject is indeed notable. The former implies that the subject of the article does not meet our guidelines for inclusion. It is not a comment on the subject (re: BLP) but rather our inclusion criteria. ~ Amory (user • talk • contribs) 17:24, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
• Why the fuck not?--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:34, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
• For advice on what is appropriate in deletion discussions, see User:Uncle G/On notability#Giving rationales at AFD. Uncle G (talk) 04:35, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
• "BLP implications"? I think FUD is a better description. Saying that author X or musician Y is not notable is everybody's right, unlike stating that X or Y is responsible for the murder of JFK. In deletion discussions, it doesn't even matter if the article "shows evidence of notability": there must be evidence available (online or offline) of the notability of the subject of the article. If you want to replace "is not notable" with a more PC version, use "doesn't meet the requirements set out in our notability guideline". In the meantime, I'll continue using "is not notable". Fram (talk) 11:54, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Colour coding in Wikipedia

I have just watched this video which seems to suggest that content in Wikipedia articles is now colour coded in terms of its reliability (based upon contributor history etc). However, I can't see any such colour coding. I have created an account and am now using the Beta version, and even performed a small edit myself but cannot see any colour coding. Is this feature now in place, or is it just planned? If it is in place, how do I use it, please? Spin Dryer (talk) 23:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

It had not yet been deployed and the coloring will not be displayed by default (though there will be a tab to access it). Further details: WP:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-08-31/In_the_news (see WikiTrust). --Cybercobra (talk) 00:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Spin Dryer (talk) 00:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. thanks for sharing. Ikip (talk) 14:16, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

influencial editor

closed nm

I got to thinking, I can name some really influential editors who tend to support deletion, architects of many of our current policies, but I can't think of any editors who are super influential editors who support inclusion, or saving articles. Who is, in your opinion the most influencial editor who supports inclusion, or saving artilces? I am talking about editors who are admins or arbcomes, who have created policy and been very influential in that respect. I am looking for names, and why please. Thank you in advance. Ikip (talk) 21:08, 9 September 2009 (UTC) How exactly is this helpful? I do know of some deletionists and some inclusionists but I think the emphasis on "camps" creates unnecessary division. Orderinchaos 03:46, 10 September 2009 (UTC) What's this about? Article Canvass Squad on a recruitment drive? --Cameron Scott (talk) 07:22, 10 September 2009 (UTC) Indeed, what is the point of this? As Orderinchaos said, this insane desire to classify people into inclusionist and deletionist camps is divisive and antithetical to rational thought or encyclopedia building. → ROUX ₪ 14:09, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

My new template.

Hey guys, I decieded to make this into a template. I have always used it on my talk page to thwart unwanted and even digusting messages from appearing on my talk page. I originally created a page with it, which can be found here, back in 2008. Other people have used it and even edited it at times. Let me know what you think about it. I don't see it being a legal threat but instead a valid warning. Thanks. --A3RO (mailbox) 23:23, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Help with formatting.

I edited a table to fix the formatting a little, but now the center part of the table is no longer centered. Help?

Here's a link to the table.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine#Action_of_an_alpha_type_Stirling_engine —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.61.90.27 (talk) 04:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

That was me btw. ;) -- Markspace (talk) 04:35, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I tried updating the table so that the 4 upper pictures were all in equal-sized cells, but I failed. I'd know how to do it in HTML (yes, I'm a geek), but not in Wiki coding - I'm too new. In HTML, the tag would need the width parameter: . I tried something similar in Wiki but it gave me garbage.

If this is still a problem later, I'll try then (after work). --Tim Sabin (talk) 13:23, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Done. The 4 top cells are all equal size now. All 4 pics are left-aligned. If you'd rather the 2 right pics be right-aligned, change halign="left" to halign="right" for those cells. --Tim Sabin (talk) 01:38, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Undeletion of fair use images from 2006

I've been tagging a lot of talk pages with a wikiproject tag lately. As I've been through, I've noticed about 95% of the musicians, albums, songs, and groups that aren't "known" (by anyone not specifically into that band, really) have had their fair use images removed by bot. The bot posted on the talk pages, asked for a description, and deleted the image a mere week later, as obviously nobody provided a description.

With very few exception, most of these images were acceptable fair use for identifying the album, and were simply deleted by a (In my opinion, moronic) automated process. If nobody watched those articles, the bot tagged and deleted the picture, simply on the grounds that nobody noticed and added "This is fair use because it..." in the short lived week.

If I were to provide a list of these images, can they be undeleted, and have a generic fair use explanation added that they represent a work for which no free image can be made available? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 01:10, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Was that User:BetacommandBot perhaps? A number of people got annoyed with it and it has since been indefblocked. As far as I know, any administrator could undelete the images. I doubt that a mass automated undeleting would be acceptable though without carefully restricted criteria. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 03:40, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:PROGROCK would be able to go through the ones that I present in my list. I'm sure there are thousands of pictures though outside that scope. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 13:57, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

{{Do move to Commons}}

I created this template [This template], the opposite of {{Do not move to Commons}}, [exists] for a number of reasons, but I would like to know if there's a better solution and generally what everyone thinks. Hopefully we can agree that the problem exists at least (except if you disagree about the utility of Commons, in which case this thread may not be for you).

The problem is thus: only some of the many images tagged as {{PD-US}} are suitable for transfer to Commons. In certain circumstances content created in other countries can be used on Wikipedia quite happily under PD-US but is totally unsuitable for Commons, which requires that it be public domain in its country of origin and the United States. Until now, there has existed a useful way of acknowledging that an image isn't suitable for Commons, {{Do not move to Commons}}. But it isn't used widely enough that we can safely (by any measure) deduce that "all files not tagged with that are suitable for Commons". Instead, each must be reviewed by hand - a long, tiresome process, which introduces the occasional human error.

I think I'm right in saying that the "It exist happily on Wikipedia, then it was moved to Commons, deleted there as unsuitable, and never seen again" argument is a reasonably common complaint of the system at the moment. Hopefully we can sort a bit of this out. My idea is thus: rather than / as well as having lots of different templates with varying criteria for saying something can be moved to Commons (e.g. the various bot-transfer templates), we have [increase the usage of this] one clear, obvious template. It could also be included by default in templates which always mean that a file can be transferred. Alternatively, we could not [persuade people to] use this template, and instead prefer to use a new parameter of {{PD-US}} for this purpose. Would there be support for a push of this kind to get all PD-US files clarified in some fashion?

I didn't intend for this to be quite such a long post, so if any further clarification is needed, just ask. - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 18:36, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Why not simly use the existing template {{copy to commons}}? Garion96 (talk) 18:48, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I thought there had to be. The point still stands though, do we make efforts to get all PD-USs tagged as they are uploaded / ASAP / in general? - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 19:03, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

For "make efforts" read "badgering" through to "stop people adding PD-US without either template". - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 19:12, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Where did Wilhelm Dilthey die?

For those familiar with the history of South Tyrol. It is certain that Wilhelm Dilthey, God bless his soul, died on 1 October, 1911, but it is less certain where he died. Did he die in

• Seis am Schlern, Austria-Hungary?
• Siusi allo Sciliar, Italy?
• Seis am Schlern, Italy?
• Siusi allo Sciliar, Austria-Hungary?

It is easy to commit an anachronism here. What do the WP regulations say about cases such as this? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 17:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

You always go with the naming and ownership of the place at the time of birth/death. It appears to me that the town was part of Austria-Hungary in 1911. As for which name to use, that's a problem for the South Tyrol folks to figure out, I know there's a linguistic question there, but not (so far as I can tell) an anachronistic one. If it's anachronistic, and positively only one name was being used in 1911, then it should be a simple answer. --Golbez (talk) 04:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Note: this thread has been moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 18:49, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

The Foundations, 60's English soul group. Vandalism etc

Below is a C&P from the the Village Pump archive. I have included it here so that the path of discussion can be easily referred to. There were three people on that thread. The first was Pat Pending, the next was - Tagishsimon and lastly 24.172.36.194[1] or Dave Huffman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(assistance)/Archive_9

This is a problem that has not gone away and I fear that it may get worse as this person has now threatened to edit the page daily. What it's all about is the English Soul group, The Foundations who had the classic hits in the 1960's, Baby, Now That I've Found You and Build Me Up Buttercup In the past this person has blanked the article page and he's done it on more than one occasion. He's come back now and it's likely that this disruptive vandalistic behaviour will continue. Besides blanking the page when he can't get his own way he has popped message on it saying "come and visit us at" and he gives his website url. He has also posted threatening legal warnings on the article page as if it was a signpost outside private premises. He has also on more than one occasion put all the songs of his CD album individually as if they were single releases. He mixed them in with the Foundations discography.

I've carried on the thread and I've replied to Tagishsimon, hopefully he and others will read it and understand what's really at stake here. (George-Archer (talk) 16:23, 4 April 2009 (UTC))

The Foundations (April 2008) (Please don't edit this section)

Hello, will someone please help me. There is someone from the USA by the name of Dave Huffman laying claim to the name "The Foundations" who keeps inserting his "legal claim" into the article. To the best of my knowlege, there are only two people who "own" the name in the UK - Clem Curtis & The Foundations, and Colin Young & The New Foundations. Will someone please advise. Pat Pending (talk) 12:32, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I suspect this might be a US law versus UK law type issue ... neither jurisdiction can bind the other. That said, I agree that the person adding the US claim is misusing wikipedia. I've deleted a section on trademark ownership (complete with shouty captal letters) and will look at the article again this evening, probably to shorten it and try to prevent it being a battleground. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:47, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

This person is not "laying claim" to "The Foundations" name but has legally owned the name and all performance rights to "The Foundations" in the US since the mid 70's. This was obtained when both Clem Curtis and Colin Young left the group after breaking ties with their management company in 1970. Both left the group under their own free will to pursue other projects. All of the other "original" UK members of the group also returned home and gave up any rights to "The Foundations" name at that time. I really appreciate you ignoring the legal aspects of this discussion. I have been performing with and recording with the group legally longer that any of your so called "original" members. This is my last statement on Wikipedia as I have learned that this website is a total farce not at all interested in the true facts and they are as follows:

Clem Curtis left the group even before Buttercup was recorded. Colin Young left the group shortly after. The group did not disband in 1970 as stated but was reorganized in the US and has been recording and performing ever since. Believe what you wish but there are apparently three "Foundations". One owned by Clem Curtis? One owned by Dave Huffman One owned by Colin Young?

The question marks are there due to the fact that I have not checked to make sure that they have legal rights in England but I'm assuming that they do.

You seem to be willing to accept the English groups but not the American group that has been in legal existence longer that either of the British groups. That is your God given right to hide your head in the sand and ignore the facts but it is my God given legal right to state the true facts and you, Sir have taken that right from me. Hope you're satisfied. I'm through trying to have the facts stated correctly on Wikipedia.

Dave Huffman The Foundations US www.thefoundations.us

The Foundations: Continued discussion from April 4 2009

Tagishsimon, firstly the main issue is accuracy of history. Dave Huffman's claim that the Foundations were kept going is only backed up by him. To the best of my knowlege there is no fact and nor any kind of reference anywhere else except for what he has put on his own personal website that can back up what he says. I've seen a couple of experienced wikipedia users actually interacting with his claims as if there were some foundation to them. From what I can see there is absolutly none. His claims conflict with everything that has been written in books about the Foundations. From what I can see his claims about his connection originate soley from himself. Anyone anywhere can make a claim that they were a member of a band and there have been some that have gotten away with it for a while. But this one in particular seems to be the most inane outlandish of claims that one has to pinch himself to see if he's dreaming or not. So what's the point in all of this ? Why is he an American, claiming a connection with a British soul group from the 1960's. Why is he claiming that his group is the Foundations ? Why has he threatened to sue Clem Curtis or Colin Young, the original members of the Foundations if they dare step onto American shores as The Foundations ?

Besides the continued outlandish claims from this person and his camp, we've had to witness an arrogant and insulting claim that has been directed at the original Foundations members. Huffman and or co have made the claim that Clem Curtis and Colin Young both failed in their solo careers so they have tried to cash in on the name and fame of the Foundations. He's basically saying here that he is the rightful leader of The Foundations. How can this be ? He makes accusations that more or less translate to a claim that these men who recorded those hits are nothing more than hangers on, and cashing on to the fame of The Foundations. Well isn't that what he's doing ? And what makes it worse, he's hangin on and cashing in on the fame of a band that he has never had anything to do with ? (George-Archer (talk) 16:23, 4 April 2009 (UTC))

Note: this thread has been moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 18:49, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Creation portal:Lyon

• We are creating a new portal portal:Lyon it's my first experience so everybody can give his help Lulu97417 (talk) 17:53, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Note: this thread has been moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 18:49, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Cab Kaye

dear Wikipedists,

who can help me translating the additional information in the dutch article on Cab kaye at http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cab_Kaye to the English one? --NorbertvR (talk) 17:31, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Note: this thread has been moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 18:49, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Photos at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry

Does anyone have a photo of the Travel Air Mystery Ship "Texaco 13" that is on display at the museum. I would like to use a PD image to illustrate an article on Frank Hawks. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 21:04, 4 July 2009 (UTC).

Note: this thread has been moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 18:49, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried running a search on flickr.com ?©Geni 23:58, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Here, just found it on Flickr and uploaded it to Commons; File:Texaco No. 13.jpg. :-) Killiondude (talk) 00:05, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Basque Wikipedia

Hi from the Basque Country!
This is a message to the administrators of English Wikipedia or for someone who can help me with this issue:

I´m an user and contributor of the Basque Wikipedia., Basque language is one of the oldest in Europe and the world, it has thousands of years old and is one of the few languages that survived the arrival of Indo-Europeans to Europe. Perhaps being one of the oldest nations or countries of the world not even have our own state, but our language is our homeland and pride. It put us on the map and give a reference recognizable to English speakers, the city of Pamplona (Iruña in basque language), where they celebrate the internationally famous festival of San Fermin is in the Basque Country.

After this brief introduction I would kindly ask you this request:

On July 15, 2009, in the Basque Wikipedia we exceed the figure of 40,000 articles, today (August 26, 2009) we have 42,000 articles, achievement of which we are very proud, because if we compare proportionately the number of speakers of the Basque language (about a million) with other Wikipedia versions of languages spoken in more than one state or nation in the world with millions of speakers is like to be proud.

Because one of the aims of Wikipedia Project in addition to expanding human knowledge worldwide is also to expand the knowledge of all languages of mankind: From the Basque Wikipedia we wanted to make the request to the users and particularly to the Administrators of the English wikipedia would be possible if you put the link to Basque Wikipedia in your English Wikipedia´s language list of everyone in your main cover ("Languages" section: as is currently the case Galician or Catalan language) and the Wikipedia list of more than 40,000 items that is below your main entrance page ("Wikipedia languages" section). Since English is currently the most powerful, influential and widespread in the world (your wikipedia already has 3,000,000 articles), the presence of Basque Wikipedia in your list of the world would be a great help to supervival of our language and their knowledge in the world.

Awaiting your reply.

Greetings from the Basque Wikipedia.
. --Euskalduna (tell me) 15:05, 26 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.86.101.120 (talk)

This has recently been done :-) See Template_talk:Wikipedialang#eu:wp_on_interwikies.3F.--Commander Keane (talk) 00:15, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Note: this thread has been moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 18:49, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:DERM:MA

We are making a lot of great progress with the Bolognia Push 2009. If you are not currently involved, perhaps consider contributing as we are always looking for more help at the dermatology task force. Feel free to e-mail me for all the details. ---kilbad (talk) 22:47, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

redlink search option gone!

anybody know what happened to the search option when clicking a redlink? apparently a new template is being used, and it's been omitted. --emerson7 18:26, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't know where it's gone, but I for one really miss it. Does anyone know how to make representations? Jan1nad (talk) 16:25, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Edit_a_new_page_notice. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:47, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Protest against other users

I have to protest that User:Mrlodotcom have not repsect other users (me). He said my manner is uncivilized, and said I am low-level, as he has better English level than me.--Antonytse (talk) 13:50, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Don't let one negative user spoil your Wikipedia experience. If you have something to contribute on a subject, that's great. If you don't feel completely comfortable with your level of English, that's OK. Just ask someone to copyedit / proofread it. And make sure it's someone that speaks the style of English you want. For example, I'm a native U.S. speaker. There are many others on here that are native British speakers, or that are Australian, Canadian, or from New Zealand. --Tim Sabin (talk) 14:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Dispute re: photo at Phil Hartman‎

I am involved in a minor dispute at the above article. This dispute does not involve any policy or guideline issues... it is purely an editorial disagreement over whether to include a particular photo or not. (see Talk:Phil Hartman#Photos for the arguments). We could use some outside opinions to resolve the dispute. Blueboar (talk) 16:43, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Sergei Tumansky

In this article, it is written that Tumansky had received an award in 1946 (Gospremii of the USSR). What is this award? The USSR State Prize? or something else? Thanks for your help. Skiff (talk) 08:10, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

The source [2] says "Лауреат Государственной премии СССР (1946)" which is the USSR State Prize. --Apoc2400 (talk) 12:26, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Skiff (talk) 23:16, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Featured portal candidate discussions

There are three featured portal candidate discussions that could use some input. Comments would be appreciated at the individual discussion subpages. Please see WP:FPORTC. Cirt (talk) 03:32, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Cheesepuff

I made a template called Template:Cheesepuff but no one is using it. How can I make it more popular? Please don't ban me for editing pages because I adding wrong stuff to a page once before I made an account. Dipotassitrimanganate (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 15:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC). Dipotassitrimanganate (talk) 15:34, 9 January 2009 (UTC) 15:34, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is that no one, perhaps for the exception of you, knows what it means or finds it funny? — Frecklefσσt | Talk 16:00, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

How do you plan to deal with an Ilbas (e.g., "'Ilbas,' creamed Peter; he was turning into a creamery, and said 'Ilbas' a lot.")? Btw, an Ilbas is someone who says "Ilbas" frequently or inappropriately. 24.6.146.73 (talk) 06:41, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Note: this thread has been moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 18:49, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Template was deleted in April. Nothing more to be said now. - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 19:23, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

current logos of sports teams vs. historical logos on season articles

It's come to my attention recently that we have a large number of "<year> <sport team name>" (example) articles where we have logos created after that year being placed on that year's season article. Continuing the above example, the current logo for the University of Pittsburgh Panthers sports teams is File:PittPanthers.png. This logo was created by the university and put into use in 2005. Yet, the logo was/is being used on season articles that predate 2005 (see the above example for the 1975 Panthers).

I feel that this use is revisionist history. Logos created after a particular season are not the logos of the team for the year in question. They operated and performed under a different logo, and their identity is tied to that logo, not a future logo. Encyclopedias encapsulate history, not revise it and update it to current marketing materials.

I'm finding I am being reverted by a particular user. A discussion has evolved on my talk page at User_talk:Hammersoft#Pitt logos. I'd like to see a wider discussion here on this forum regarding this issue.

Should current logos of sports teams be used in the infoboxes of earlier iterations of the team to represent that team when the team predates the current logos? --Hammersoft (talk) 12:30, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that "came to my attention recently" accurately describes your involvement in this issue. this search turns up about a half dozen times that you have been the center of almost idenitical discussions, included multiple RFC's, ANI discussions, and failed requests for mediation and failed requests for arbitration dating back to June of this year. It may still be an open issue the community needs to resolve, but this is hardly one you were unaware of. The issue is a highly controversial one, and you are well aware that (right or wrong), others are going to object to the use of sports logos you describe. To claim that you could not have anticipated such objection before you started this latest round of adding the sports logos is disingenuous. For the record, I generally agree with your position, but I also recognize that there is a long-standing dispute over this, and even though I feel that your use of sports logos is probably within policy, I also don't think its wise to, every once in a while, start re-adding them to articles when you know that its just going to fire up the same problems that went down last time. --Jayron32 12:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

• Jayron, assume a little good faith please? The issue of whether to include logos in season articles at all is a separate issue entirely. I am not debating that at this time. Please do not accuse me of being disingenuous. The issues are entirely separate. In fact, in the particular case I outlined above, and where there is currently disagreement, it has to do with a logo that enjoys no copyright protections at all. The issue you are pointing to has to do with non-free logos. This isn't about the copyright status of the images and our non-free content policy in any respect. It has nothing to do with that. Thank you, --Hammersoft (talk) 12:45, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

• As an opposite case, where the historical logos were added in when the current logo was removed; I removed File:University of Houston Logo.png (entirely free of copyright by the way) from 1989 Houston Cougars football team [3]. In response, User:Brianreading uploaded the classic logo that was in use at the time to Commons at Commons:File:University of Houston classic logo.png, and applied it to the article [4]. Perfect! --Hammersoft (talk) 13:16, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

There is also a discussion about this issue here on the College Football Wikiproject if anyone is interested. CrazyPaco (talk) 20:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

New Article about highly controversial person

Hi. I am working on a new article about Steven Hayne, the primary medical examiner for Mississippi, and while it is NPOV and very well sourced, much of the content is negative, (this negativity is an accurate barometer of the sources I've been able to find so far). The sources I've found also show him to be very litigious (http://www.reason.com/blog/show/129975.html), so what is wikipedia's policy with regard to individual contributors when faced with a defamation lawsuit? Huadpe (talk) 05:54, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

See: WP:BLP
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 15:22, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I think he means "if they come after you" - basically you are on your own - the foundation will not lift a finger to help you. --Cameron Scott (talk) 15:23, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Is there any information online about Wikipedia editors being sued for contributions of this nature? --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:34, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I've never heard of such a case (which isn't really saying much, but still). You can get your own contributions redacted if the need is there anyway, which should prevent any actual subject vs. editor lawsuits from getting anywhere. If there's no libelous content actually published, then what would the subject have to sue for anyway? Aside from that, as editors we shouldn't even be in a position to be sued in the first place, since we should simply be repeating what others have said. An editors statement(s) are WP:OR, and should be removed (note that even if the editor is the original author, say the editor is actually a NYT reporter or some such, directly stating things in Wikipedia is still OR. There is no identity confirmation on Wikipedia or anything, so as editors we're all on equal footing here.)
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 18:56, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Sergei Tumansky

Hello,

In his artcle, it is written that he was made Honorary Citizen of Kuybyshev in 1982, but the link to this city is a disambiguation page. So he is Honorary Citizen of which city? Thanks for your help. Skiff (talk) 07:42, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Vetting of prospective admin candidates

As a result of a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship#The "no negative comments" stipulation, and an alternative, the page Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Vetting has been created. This is not an alternative to RfA; the whole point is the potentially disheartening stuff is said in private before a prospect agrees to go through RfA. — Sebastian 22:22, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

No references template removed

If the no references template is removed by an editor, but no references are in or have been added to the article, what should be done next? I added the no references template in July. I added it again today after seeing that it was removed, and I will watch to see what happens, but perhaps there is something else I should know or do.--DThomsen8 (talk) 17:25, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Add a reference?

Seriously though, there's nothing about those templates that make them necessary or required, and there's really nothing wrong with removing them. Over tagging\Over templating in general is a problem in some places anyway. Their only real purpose is to add a (hidden) maintenance category to the page, but there so over used that those categories are overflowing. I can't and won't stop you or anyone else from adding them any more then you or anyone else can stop others from removing them, but I can recommend not being concerned with the addition or removal of those templates because it's just a poor subject to argue over.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:15, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Add it back and warn the user. Start at {{subst:uw-tdel1}}, and go up from there. MuZemike 22:22, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Warn the user? For what exactly, and why?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 22:56, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

If I see a template added to an article I wrote or seriously improved, I often try to remedy the condition that another editor is telling me about. I would not remove it without any changes. But, of course, that is just what I do, and not every editor thinks that way. In this particular case, I plan to await developments, but I will look at whatever advice I get here. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:39, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Good on you! Seriously, kudos, as that's the way that it's supposed to work. Those tags are not really supposed to be even semi-permanent additions to an article, which is why the "warn the user" reply piques my curiosity. Anyone can easily assert that a tag is not needed and shoud then be free to remove it without fear of retribution. If there's a mindset that has developed that there must be some sort of significant edit prior to removing any maintenance tag, that is something which I believe we should push back on. Obviously, every tag should not mindlessly be removed any more then they should be mindlessly added, but if the addition or removal of a tag is reverted then that would at least indicate something to have a conversation about. Starting a discussion seems much more productive then starting a lame edit war and issuing impotent warnings over (seriously, has any admin ever blocked a user simply for maintenance tag removals?).
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 01:49, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

It really depends, if the tag was placed in bad faith or in ignorance then it would be fine for anyone to remove it without making any prior edit and without having to be warned about doing so. But if someone removes a tag only because they think it's "ugly and stupid" then keeps removing a tag after several warnings not to do so then they're just being disruptive and it's up to the admin's discretion if they want to block. -- œ^™ 02:20, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I just don't see the need to escalate (de)tagging to the edit-war\warning level, I guess. I can see a case for it being viewed as disruptive (in either direction, removal or addition), but it's just not that serious of an issue in my view. I'm a fairly controlling person when it comes to my things, but if there's one skill I've picked up over the years that I've spent online it's the ability to let the small stuff slide (usually). I just can't imagine this being a serious issue, for any article.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 02:36, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Sound restoration

I've just made a fairly comprehensive how-to for sound file editing, using the free software program Audacity, at Wikipedia:Wikivoices/Episode_48. Would this be useful more generally? Shoemaker's Holiday ^{Over 206 FCs served} 08:28, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Help with this error, possible vandalism

Please help. This is not in the text of the article. In fact, I don't even know if it is an error. Who is Parr?

See John F. Kennedy, Jr., at the very bottom, there is a blue box. Parr killed JFK????

I would like to fix this if this is an error or vandalism. But when I click "edit this page", I can't even find the Parr word. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 21:22, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

1. Explain to me who is Parr.

2. Should this be fixed?

3. How to fix it?

[User:Suomi Finland 2009|Suomi Finland 2009]] (talk) 21:24, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Vandalism repaired

Thanks for raising this: the template {{John F. Kennedy}} (which is transcluded into the John F. Kennedy, Jr. article) had been vandalised by Scanzy5 (talk · contribs). I've repaired the template and warned the user. - Pointillist (talk) 21:37, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Historical text highlighting wiki gadget

HAPPI historical content highlighting

I'm sure many of you caught the news article about Adler and Alfaro's research in wiki trustability being applied to live Wikipedia. It just so happens that I have been working on a similar problem from a completely different direction during my research and am ready to share this work with the community. I have designed and implemented a user script modification that I call HAPPI and am currently running a non-profit/academic analysis of its usefulness. The script adds a couple of new controls that will appear over the edit pane. These controls will allow you to toggle the highlighting of wiki text while you edit it. If you'd like to give it a try, please see the documentation page for more information. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:05, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Very cool! I tried it and it's very interesting. One thing: Could you make it just show a button first, and only load the word state when I click the button. Now it delays the other editing buttons for a while, which is annoying. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

We originally had persistent state load only when the button was clicked, but that seemed to make the whole interface more sluggish. It seems odd that loading the state would slow down the display of the button toolbar since the button images should be cached on your machine. What browser/version are you using? If I can replicate the problem you are seeing, I should be able to figure out a solution. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:22, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

It happens on a fresh testing account without other gadgets and scripts too. The other buttons don't appear until HAPPI finished loading. --Apoc2400 (talk) 09:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Could you tell me what browser/version you are using? --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Firefox 3.5.2 on Ubuntu Linux. Same with Firefox 3.0.14 on Ubuntu and Firefox 3.5 on Windows XP, but not with IE8 on XP. Is this a Firefox issue? --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:39, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I've found the bug and uploaded a fix. Bypass your cache and let me know what you think. --EpochFail ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Need Help with a repetitively disruptive editor

First of all, I wrote for help in the dispute resolution section and after 5 days got zero response. I'm not trying to cross-post but I need help here.

Northport, New York (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) User:Tavix has repeatedly removed large amounts of well referenced/cited content from Northport, New York with complete disregard for prior or post discussion with other editors, explanation of existing Wikipedia policies disputing his edits, and multiple editor warnings. He has removed the names of nine people from the article without any justification despite that most have perfectly valid source reference citations from trustworthy sources. I have explained how his edits were both destructively unnecessary (a few just needed a 'citation needed' tag and somebody could have easily added it) and often against Wikipedia policy (removing valid newspaper article references only because the link was no longer online), to other edits which I can't even figure out why he arbitarily decided he didn't like it (no explanation is also against WP policy). He has not only refused to justify or explain his edits but he has three times re-reverted back to his destructive mass removal edits. He has refused to discuss the changes (one or two may be valid removal candidates but certainly not obvious), ignored multiple warnings, and continues to (at this point) vandalize the article. I would also like a temporary ban be placed on this editor so he can learn to stop being destructive and start being constructive and cooperative.

• Here's a link to the article's recent history [5] (since it's multiple edits I couldn't show just one edit)
• Here's a link to the relevant discussion on the talk page[6] where I explain the reasons why most of these names should not be removed, and Travix subsequently doesn't reply but just re-reverts the article again.

--Fife Club (talk) 03:31, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems that this user has not touched the Northport, New York after your post here. Perhaps he saw this post and has stopped. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:40, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Well I haven't reverted his edits again... yet, so except for one corrected typo it's still on his last edit. --Fife Club (talk) 16:15, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikibank link from 2004?

I'm trying to find the old WP: namespace page where people stored wikicurrency (in Wikis, of course). You can see the symbol for the currency on things such as this postage stamp. Can someone point me to it? It was active as a toy project around 2004/5, and listed how many Wikis each of a few hundred Wikipedians had. Thanks, +sj+ 21:00, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiMoney? - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 21:11, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

That article confirms the statement that this currency has not been used for several years. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:35, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

The future: Google vs. Wikipedia ?

Please read here. What about the press links in our articles ? To analyse, you can translate this coming from es Wikipedia. What can we do ? Manuel González Olaechea (talk) 15:59, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

What does that have to do with Wikipedia? There is no "us vs. them" issue here. If some (or even most or all) news organizations end up behind subscriptions, that doesn't affect Wikipedia itself in any meaningful way.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I think he meant the news web sites that we use as references. If they become subscription-only that would make verification of sources much more difficult. -- œ^™ 21:05, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

It would make verification more time consuming, but not really more difficult. In a way that could actually help the encyclopedia, in the long run. An increased reliance on book references and other physical media references certainly wouldn't hurt. Just because some things require subscription doesn't have any real impact on Wikipedia, though.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 00:40, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Good point, maybe it would encourage editors to get off their ass and actually put some effort into researching sources for content instead of just doing a Google search for a quicky url to cite. -- œ^™ 01:56, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of whether it's a good thing, I say it will make things different. If you are willing to pay for sources then fine. If not, then what? Books and other physical media references are good but other then being more time consuming access is likely to vary a lot particularly without payment. If you are at an academic institution you probably have access to a decent library and database. If you are a postgraduate student or staff member you may even have free access to an interloan system. But many people are not. You hopefully still have access to a library but the stuff available will vary greatly. You probably don't have free interloans. Access to newspapers outside your country other then perhaps a few very well known stuff like the IHT is likely limited. Some people may be willing to pay the money and spend the time, many may not. Furthermore finding some of the more obscure stuff particularly for recent events without full text search is going to be a lot more difficult. I'm not saying that we should all start panicking and it's the end of the world, in fact I think there's a big 'so what' aspect here since there's a good chance this won't take off to any significant extent. And even if it does take off, things may or may not be better with less recentism, reliance on higher quality sources etc. But I think it's fair to say if it does take off there's a fair chance it will change things in numerous ways. 15:50, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Things will be different, there's no argument from me on that point. Aside form the "so what?" aspects to this (a movement to paid access has been building for years now), I still don't see what this has to do with Wikipedia. I hear some nebulous fear of collapse being expressed, and a fight instinct undertone, but I haven't seen any concrete "Wikipedia needs to..." statements.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:39, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Capilano

There are a number of places, particularly in Canada, that bear the name Capilano. Does anyone know the origin of this name, please? Bridgeplayer (talk) 22:03, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

You should post this question at wp:reference desk rather than here, although someone may know here. --DThomsen8 (talk) 22:20, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thank you; I'll post it there. Bridgeplayer (talk) 22:45, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:GRAMPA

Is there anywhere us young'uns can sit around the campfire, and listen to Oldtimers talk about what things were like in 2001-2? I'm curious whether things started out amicable and then gradually got more conflicted; how soon after creation the inclusionist/deletionist camps started forming; when nationalist POV pushing raised its ugly head; how vandals were handled (escalating level-1 thru level-4 warnings? I suspect not, but just don't know); etc.

I don't even really know how many oldtimers there are left. There don't seem to be many. Natural attrition, or have us (relatively) whipersnappers driven them away?

If we created WP:GRAMPA (or perhaps WP:LISTENTOYOURELDERSYOUPUNKS), where people with an account created before, say, 2004, could reminisce, and people with newer accounts could stop by occasionally, listen for a while, maybe ask a question, and bask in their reflected glory, I think that would be kind of cool. If such a place already exists, that's even better. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:26, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not so much that the "oldtimers" have suffered from attrition or been driven away. It's just that there never were many in the first place and they've been diluted by the flood of newcomers. So it's true to say that many of the oldtimers are still here. Of course some have left for one reason or another but then that's just as true for people who joined in 2008 as for those who joined in 2001. -- Derek Ross | Talk 23:02, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Support this, institutional memory is important!  Skomorokh  19:59, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Not all relative newbies are young'uns, though. --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:51, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

And WP:ODNT might also be of interest. Ronnam (talk) 03:05, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Check out WP:CODGER for the League of Old Codgers; they'd be happy to share stories from the ancient era of wikidom. 75.147.59.54 (talk) 03:37, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Jaysus - who let Derek Ross in here? I hate troublemaking newbies. Manning (talk) 14:58, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I know your type, Bartlett. You think Ignore All Rules means "Write What You Like" but it ain't so! Danzig for Ever! -- Derek Ross | Talk 15:17, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Alternate name for fancruft notice

Just to let people know, I have created the redirect Template:Excessive so I (and others) can convey the message without using the slightly derogatory slang. What do people think about switching them round so Template:Fancruft is the redirect? OrangeDog (talk • edits) 03:44, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that "Fancruft" is an unnecessarily inflammatory term, but "Excessive" does not specifically highlight the problem that is to be addressed (excessive what?). How about moving it to {{Overdetailed}} or {{Too detailed}}?  Skomorokh  19:58, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Good point. I prefer {{Overdetailed}}. Any other thoughts? OrangeDog (talk • edits) 00:24, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Great idea! you should get a barnstar! Ikip (talk) 05:51, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

 Done The template now resides at {{Overdetailed}}. If anything explodes as a result, let me know.  Skomorokh  18:00, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

A very good suggestion, and done with the minimum of fuss. Excellent. Fences&Windows 21:31, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I concur with this excellent suggestion. We should strive to be somewhat serious academic encyclopedists, and no serious editor would ever use a nonsense term like "cruft" as a reason for anything. Big bravo here!  :) BUT we need to go further and either delete or mark as historical WP:FANCRUFT, because it is an essay, not a guideline, nor policy and as such has no place being linked to in any template on an actual article. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 21:56, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Youy don't give any reason to delete it or mark it is historical. It is an essay, like you say, and that's all there is to it. Essays are in general not marked as historical, nor are they deleted. I even know some users who present essays in AfD's all the time as if they are gospel... Fram (talk) 07:17, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree this is a good idea, but what's the limit on using it to critique detail outside the popular culture space, though? There are many articles on wikipedia that "may only interest a specific audience", e.g. the "Causes" section of Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, Quaternions as the even part of Cℓ_3,0(R) and parts of Ballet Mécanique. IMO {{Overdetailed}} needs to be more clearly documented. The original fancruft documentation says "too much detail is present that will bore, distract or confuse a non-fan, when its exclusion would not significantly harm the factual coverage as a whole." Is that an appropriate way to define overdetailed? How would Buildings of Jesus College, Oxford be assessed using that measure, for example? - Pointillist (talk) 22:17, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

You've highlighted the problem perfectly. What is considered fancruft when applied to fiction is of course deeply academic when it concerns physics or buildings. The solution is to base articles on reliable sources and avoid going into detail that will be of no interest to anyone but the writer. In short, unnecessary detail is not a problem confined to fiction, but more editors have a dislike of fiction than have a dislike of physics or architecture. Fences&Windows 17:13, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Well if the article on quaternions was listing every number that someone has studied, or what the settings were on their computer when they modelled them, I would consider that excessive detail. The answer would be to use common sense, as with all areas of Wikipedia editing. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 19:20, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

All I am saying is that when an editor tags an article as {{overdetailed}}, there should be better explanation of what it means. Currently the explanation is provided by clicking on the intricate detail link in the notice, which leads to the fancruft essay. I don't think that essay is sufficient. For example, SAS System is badly structured, overdetailed and under-referenced, so a notice is appropriate—but the problem isn't "excessive trivia, praise, criticism, lists and collections of links". Either the fancruft essay needs tweaking or (better IMO) a new guideline should be drafted that explains what overdetailed means beyond popular culture. - Pointillist (talk) 22:06, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

And/Or maybe have an template parameter that modifies the notice, e.g. "|excessive=source code, product component lists" would apply to SAS System

I think creating a new essay, for example Wikipedia:Excessive detail, is the best approach. (WP:DETAIL already exists but it is a subsection of Wikipedia:Summary style, which isn't relevant here.) I thought about starting the essay myself but I'm not really sure how to put the concept into words. Is there any existing guideline setting out Wikipedia's desired reading level? Should it only be accessible to a layman or should there be as much information as possible? How much detail is too much? (Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible is the closest guideline I've found to an answer). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 16:57, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Should we also, A Nobody, delete WP:AADD as it is "an essay, not a guideline, nor policy and as such has no place being linked to in any template on an actual article"? Stifle (talk) 14:11, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

google sidewiki

What do people think of this new product and the possible interactions between google sidewiki and here? I have added a sidewiki entry for the Article Rescue Squadron and I see Matt Sanchez and the front page already have comments. It will be interesting to see if people try to change articles after reading the sidewiki. --Cameron Scott (talk) 06:58, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I'm not a fan of Google Toolbar for many reasons. hmwith☮ 17:06, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Book

I'm anonymous Wikipedia user contributing to articles on Immigration, Ethnic groups and Foreign relations related to Pakistan and I do believe, a lot of things still missing because the biggest challenge is lack of reliable sources on a particular subject. Recently, I got an idea of compiling a book containing statistics of Non-indigenous ethnic groups living or working in Pakistan. The population of a particular ethnic group would be obtain respectively from their diplomatic missions in Pakistan. The actual reason for such publication is Wikipedia and if book's content could be use for citing as sources to Wikipedia articles. Any suggestion or comment would be highly appreciated.--119.155.10.14 (talk) 11:10, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

It is a good initiative but I am not sure how Wikipedia will treat with your work because self-published sources are largely not acceptable in Wikipedia articles. Maybe we had publication in the past made solely for use in Wikipedian articles and self-published work used as citing sources but in limited circumstances. I don't have any idea if acquiring data from government offices will be count as Original or self-published work.--Gaikokujin  talk  11:30, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Gaikokujin, I'm not sure why you moved this here from WP:VPM. This doesn't involve administrators. hmwith☮ 17:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Me either, so I moved it back.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm already working on such subjects, you mentioned and I do really look for such publication get printed but I'm not sure if Wikipedia would allow us to use it as sources. If you going to publish this book solely for Wikipedia usage, I recommend you it's better to discuss before you going to start it. --Gaikokujin  talk  17:55, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

If you're wondering about the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia, administrators are not who you need to ask. You need to ask the community in general. Administrators are have no more power than you do, so your and my opinions carry the same weight. :) For discussion of reliable sources, see Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources or WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. hmwith☮ 19:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Worst of Wikipedia

What do you find are the worst, most distasteful things on wikipedia? (I'm interested to see what people hate about wikipedia, and perhaps find a way to fix it).Smallman12q (talk) 13:19, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• For me, I dislike the outdate user interface. It does virtually nothing to assist us in the creation/maintain of articles.Smallman12q (talk) 13:19, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

They're in the process of totally overhauling this. Click "Try Beta" at the top right, to the left of your username to try it out. For more information about the changes, see The Usability Wiki. hmwith☮ 19:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Editing question

I come here at the suggestion of an administrator, Sarek.

Is it better to write just 2-3 articles well and then, when much progress is made (temporarily finished) then to move on. Or write hundreds of articles, with just minor improvements, but having 2x or 3x the number of edits. I am thinking about doing the first strategy. What is consider more "prestigious" or valued? Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 21:05, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Neither. Do what you can, when you can. I'm sure that I'm not alone in my feeling of gratitude towards your interest in volunteering your time to Wikiepdia, but I should warn you that if you're here simply looking for prestige then you're very likely to be disappointed.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 21:21, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Neither is better. You should edit in a way that most appeals to you - some folks prefer to make numerous, smaller edits to many articles, some prefer to make substantial edits to a smaller number of articles. Both editing styles are equally valuable to Wikipedia, and therefore it is better to edit in a way that makes you most happy. Shereth 21:21, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer. I meant valued more than prestige. I think I've answered the question in my own mind. Working on 2-3 article provides a lot of depth. Fixing a sentence or two also has value. Probably you will look busier if you do the fixing minor things but nobody is probably looking. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 21:46, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

The only real answer is to do whatever gives you the most satisfaction. Personally, I like to create relatively many articles and leave them as start or C class articles (not stubs) before moving on. I will then revisit some of them later to expand them further. One thing to consider is that you can only get your article appear at WP:DYK if it's new and quite substantial. Therefore, if you want DYK recognition, you might want to work on just one new article for a longer time (for example by working on it in your userspace and bringing it to B class) before posting it to mainspace. Yes, it's annoying that people who do a lot of simple edits (such as vandalism reverts or minor corrections) appear to be "doing more" when looking at their contributions than those who make less edits but post quality material. An easy solution is to make one quality post (such as a new start or C class article) and then do a series of corrections/small improvements on it. If you're looking for glory, respect or gratitude, you will probably be disappointed as you will get very little. If you work really hard for a long time, you might get a single barnstar or something. Possibly -- if you're into following news -- the easiest way to get awards is to create articles about recent events and get them posted at WP:ITN, as you will then get an ITN recognition award. But the best way is to just take pride in one's work, work hard for a year or two, get the single barnstar that may come, and be happy. The greatest reward is to look at how many hits the article you created gets in a day, and think that some of those people might actually find the info you have provided useful in their lives. Offliner (talk) 02:17, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I actually get some satisfaction from seeing my Wikipedia text being used all over the Internet, sometimes with credit, more often without. But either way it's nice to know that someone thought my stuff worth using. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:32, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Book citation -- no ISBN/DOI

Hello,

I have an old book that has no DOI/ISBN, but it does have a Library of Congress Catalog Card Number -- is there a convenient way to use this with {{cite book}} ? User A1 (talk) 12:45, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

{{cite book |id={{LCCN|the-number-here}} --Cybercobra (talk) 18:28, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. User A1 (talk) 03:23, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Article vs. Talk confusion

There seems to be some confusion between Wanamaker Organ and the talk page Wanamaker Grand Organ because there are two names. Therefore, going from Wanamaker Organ, the article, to the talk page at Wanamaker Grand Organ those two are inadequately linked, and the talk page comes up unranked, even though the class and importance are specified for Philadelphia. I do not know how to untangle this situation, but I am sure someone here does.--DThomsen8 (talk) 19:03, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

easy peasy, just redirect the talk page of the redirect to the talk page of the target [7]. –xeno^talk 19:08, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Easy? Maybe, since I have another situation just like this fixed one. I will attempt it myself. Meanwhile, thanks for the assistance and information. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:13, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

How standard is it to redirect the talk page as well as the article page? Should this be done only if some confusion arises, or should it be done preemptively in all cases? I've seen a couple of broken examples lately, such as Talk:Gurney Stove → Talk:Goldsworthy Gurney#Other work which was created immediately after the section redirect Gurney Stove → Goldsworthy Gurney#Other work; do some editors use an automatic tool which creates them in parallel? -- ToE^T 23:25, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

My (general) suggestion is that it should only be done when a problem exists. In most instances using {{copied}} templates on all affected talk pages is more then sufficient. See Wikipedia:Merging and Wikipedia:Splitting for more information.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 23:40, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I thought it looked particularly strange when it was done not as part of a merge, but at the time a brand new redirect was created. I suppose it is mostly harmless, but redirects do have lives of their own, and "kept" RfD decisions are supposed to be documented on their talk page. -- ToE^T 23:53, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Getting someone to do a weekly archival of a RS site

Can someone use Webcite or another archival program to archive Media Create's game ranking page. It's updated on a weekly basis listing the top 50 game sales in Japan. They do later republish this information, but the books are quite expensive, especially when you add import fees. They do not archive the site and archive.org doesn't do so regularly enough.陣内_Jinnai 23:37, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Rijeka Crnojevica

Hello! Is it anyone who knows what this peninsula close to Rijeka Crnojevica, Montenegro is really called? The reason for the question is that i've been working on the sv-wiki version of Rijeka Crnojevica in almost a month, and i still don't know what this place, that is located close to RC is named. If that's not revealed in the article, it certainly would not be a selected article... But that is what i want with this article, i want it to be at least recommended...

I would be very grateful for knowing the name on this place, and i hope somebody here could help me...

Thanks!

Perolinka (talk) 00:53, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

It's a beautiful photograph. Try posing the question on one of the wiki reference desks. I'm not sure which one is best. Ask in your question if the desk you've chosen is the best reference desk on which to be posting this question. Bus stop (talk) 19:33, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The web site "uic.com.au" will be closed soon, some 70 articles are affected

According to The Uranium Information Centre, their web site no longer exit and will be closed on 19 December. On the web site it said that much of the information it contained is available on http://aua.org.au and http://world-nuclear.org It was a widely used source for quite a number of articles, as shown by the Special:Search/"uic.com.au". These references may become dead link if we don't fix it. --Quest for Truth (talk) 05:37, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

You might make a request of the operator of WebCiteBOT. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:48, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Portal Featured Article Selection Procedure

Hello, I'm just curious how Featured Article selection works for Portals. I also want to know whether or not a Featured Article of the week is possible for a Portal. And lastly; can a Portal pick an article not voted as a Featured Article on the main but considered a FAC by the supporting Wikiproject? Thank you --Marx01 ^{Tell me about it} 05:19, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

It's different for every portal. Ask these questions on the specific portal's talk page, located at Portal talk:X. hmwith☮ 19:51, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I did (before I posted this), but it is Portal:Astronomy, so I do not expect a reply anytime soon. I would like to renovate it, but I feel that the first step would to have a better "Feature Article" on it's page. That way, user's would see it is becoming much move active and might help it along with me. I just do not know how to go along renovating it, and what I can and cannot do. Thank you, Marx01 ^{Tell me about it} 00:12, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Why no list of red references without an article

Why is there no list anymore of the highest number of red references without an article. That was a useful facility to have ? --Penbat (talk) 19:02, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean red links and Special:Wantedpages? hmwith☮ 19:56, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes so why is it not available --Penbat (talk) 19:59, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I would guess it's too computationally intensive for the servers to run, given English Wikipedia's size. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:00, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Is nobody interested in helping with Wiki psychology articles anymore ?

I have almost single handedly done tons of work recently on workplace bullying, narcissism, personal boundaries and ( I hope) psychological manipulation. It would be nice if someone else helped, preferably an academic.--Penbat (talk) 19:04, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Try asking on the talkpage of WikiProject Psychology. --Cybercobra (talk) 19:40, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I recommended to Penbat on their talk page that they seek input here regarding the desirability of creating a separate 'free standing' article, devoted exclusively to the concept of "psychological manipulation". In my opinion that are already other articles in existence that potentially address the topic such as psychological abuse and the "psychological" section of the coercion article and perhaps even others as well. My concern is with avoiding the creation of a content fork WP:CFORK, but personally I'm open to any reasonable (and referenced) argument that allows me to see some 'daylight' between what appear to me to be very closely overlapping categories. Personally, I'd rather see resources devoted toward improving the closely related articles that already exist. cheers Deconstructhis (talk) 19:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes but you gave me a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_talk:Psychology which seems very quiet not WikiProject Psychology which seems busier. Anyway Deconstructhis have you not taken on board that Braikers book doesnt even mention "abuse" and barely mentions "coercion" to support my view that manipulation is entirely different to abuse and coercion ? You may be able to see some of Braikers book electronically on Amazon or Google books. Currently all Wiki references to "psychological manipulation" or manipulation in a psychological sense go nowhere.--Penbat (talk) 19:51, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad that the other editor mentioned an alternative place for you to make enquiries that might prove more potentially useful than the one I provided, my hope was to encourage you to communicate with others and attempt to move forward smoothly through consensus. Yes, I understand that you have located a source which you believe supports a necessary distinction should be made between "psychological manipulation" and psychological abuse in the encyclopedia. When I suggested that it might be a good idea to communicate with other editors, it was to encourage you to garner other opinions (and perhaps 'counter references') on the matter. Let me try to explain my current perspective based on what I've read so far a different way. If a new article appeared tonight in Wiki and its conceptual content mirrored the proposed version of psychological manipulation that you posted yesterday and I was asked to vote on it in an afd, I'd vote for merger, probably with "psychological abuse". This doesn't mean that I think that you're "wrong" in your position, or that there's anything implicitly bad about your source, I'm suggesting that its possible that many other editors might hold the same position as myself, that what's being talked about is an issue of semantics in splitting the words "manipulation" and "abuse" and that it's an example of content forking. Then again, a large number of other editors might thoroughly agree with the interpretation you're putting forward and a quick consensus would be reached in support of it. My attempt at encouraging you to communicate directly with other editors on the matter was in hope that if it was the former, that you might be saved more time and disappointment. Really, the only way to find out, is to ask other editors in an appropriate forum, in a direct fashion, ahead of time. cheers Deconstructhis (talk) 03:37, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Reminder of Wikimedia Conference Japan 2009

I posted about this event a while ago, but let me remind you again, and make the last minute call for presentation applications. This conference will be held on November 22 at the University of Tokyo. The details are posted at this site, and a tentative program will appear soon. Meanwhile we are still accepting applications to lightning talks and other form of small sessions here. The deadline is close, so please contact the staff asap if you need to know anything about it. --Makotoy (talk) 22:06, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Avoiding systemic bias

There was recently an article about WP in TIME. It discusses things like how only 13% of editors are female, and how the top-level contributors are largely from a narrow demographic. This has sparked a lot of discussion, and it's gotten me thinking...

In a system like WP, when those in control come from a largely homogeneous demographic, the consensus will be biased towards the POVs common to that demographic. Furthermore, this will happen even with well-meaning editors. It can be hard to tell the difference between a lone crackpot and someone from a significant but underrepresented group on WP.

I think it's extremely important that underrepresented groups have their voices heard, for the sake of NPOV. It seems like there should be a policy and/or procedure for people who feel that their arguments are not being considered due to such a systemic bias. In other words, they have a valid argument with verifiable sources, but consensus is still against them. Is there any such policy, or related discussion? What are people's thoughts on this?--Elplatt (talk) 01:04, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Anybody, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, etc. are more than welcome to edit here, period. Anybody with access to a computer can edit Wikipedia, depending on the location and any government restrictions. Unfortunately, those without computer access is a bit harder to do and goes far beyond Wikipedia's scope (i.e. more of a global scope). With that said, everyone looks the same in my eyes as far as editing is concerned, as signatures and account names are mostly the same, regardless of who is editing behind that account. MuZemike 20:59, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

We've been working on it. Geographically seems to be the major problem, since a couple of groups that are generally underrepresented in society are overrepresented here (most notably the LBGT community). Others, such as blue/white collar representation are inherent to an encyclopaedia, and so aren't much of a problem. (FTR, I vastly expanded the article on Nouakchott, which, despite having 1-2 million people, had an article about the size of a small UK or US town.) - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 21:09, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

You have identified one of the major problems of modern democracy, if not modern society, if not human nature as a whole - the good of the minority balanced against the wishes of the majority. I imagine that it will be solved roughly as well in wikipedia as it has been in most human endeavors; in other words, badly. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:41, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Jerry! Exactly what I was looking for. I'm glad to see people are working on it, and I look forward to offering what help I can. --Elplatt (talk) 00:47, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

This bias is often noted. Our founder, Jimbo Wales, notes that there is a left of centre bias in Wikipedia. There is also video game and porn star leanings in Wikipedia. Prisoner representation is lacking due to no internet in most prisons. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 19:06, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia hoax by producers of ABC1 programme

I've cleaned up the article about the hoax, and it is now at Hungry Beast (AfD discussion). Various editors have reverted the hoax edits themselves. They were all perpetrated by 203.45.16.153 (talk · contribs) who claimed to be Allan Hogan back in April, but which reliable sources state to have been Andrew Denton this month. Uncle G (talk) 17:29, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Template for salting?

I wonder if there is a salt request template that can be put on articles that are persistently being recreated after having been speedily deleted several times. I see that Template:Salt was deleted some time ago, so I am reluctant to recreate it. Is this the best venue for this sort of discussion? Basket of Puppies 18:58, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

You need to request salting (create-protection is the technical term) on Requests for Page Protection, along with other such requests. ╟─TreasuryTag►consulate─╢ 19:13, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Hardware Server Upgrade

Anyone know if it will happen any time soon ? It would be nice to get back full statistical data on internal links etc and email alerts of article changes for example.--Penbat (talk) 15:13, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

is this a big secret ? I dont see any info about this anywhere. It strikes me that this issue is a big reason why interest in Wikipedia is drying up (no email alerts and many tools not available). Wikipedia has been pushing hard to raise funds so surely a server upgrade should happen at some point. --Penbat (talk) 20:41, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think a lack of server doodas is why people are failing to join WP. If it was newer introductions (the new search function, for example) would be bringing people in by the dozen. The Wikimedia techblog can be found here - I assume server upgrades have already happened, since we're giving away all the old ones. Note that mass orders of servers take quite a while to arrive, so the gap between funding and servers can be (from memory) substantial. Ironholds (talk) 00:17, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

OK but it would help a lot if the functions disabled in 2006 where brought back. Obviously Wikipedia has a high search engine visibility but most people i know have no idea that anybody can edit Wikipedia or consider getting invoved in that.--Penbat (talk) 06:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Would internal data links and email alerts really help that? Those are for editors, not readers. I'd suggest (just hypothesising here) that the disabled functions "space" (processor cycles/ram) has probably been taken up by other things - it isn't that we have a massive disparity between usage and potential usage. Again, though, just hypothesising. If you use the IRC chans you could try querying the techs directly in #wikimedia-tech. Ironholds (talk) 07:12, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

For whatever reason, most Wiki editors do a few edits and then vanish forever. Things like email alerts of changes is likely to keep them interested and anything else that can help improve the editing experience. --Penbat (talk) 08:35, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Assuming they sign up for such things, yes. Best to query the dev team; personally if email alerts have been disabled to allow for things like an enhanced search function, that's fine. We work for the users first, community second. Ironholds (talk) 20:44, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry all

• Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#Apology_from_Casliber - discuss here Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:39, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Volunteers still needed

Hi all,
Although we removed the centralnotice that was up, the Wikimedia Foundation is still looking for volunteers to serve as subject area experts or to sit on task forces that will study particular areas and make recommendations to the Foundation about its strategic plan. You may apply to serve on a task force or register your name as an expert in a specific area at http://volunteer.wikimedia.org.

The Foundation's strategy project is a year-long collaborative process which is hosted on the strategy wiki, at http://strategy.wikimedia.org. Your input is welcome (and greatly desired) there. When the task forces begin to meet, they will do their work transparently and on that wiki, and any member of the community may join fully in their work. This process is specifically designed to involve as many community members as possible.

Any questions can be addressed to me either on my talk page here or on the strategy wiki or by email to philippe at wikimedia.org.

I hope you'll consider joining us!

- Philippe 00:31, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee code of conduct

Proposal at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee code of conduct. Input would be appreciated. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:52, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

New essay

I've posted a new essay documenting my thoughts on the project's status as an encyclopedia, although they do not necessarily represent those of the community. I'd appreciate if some folks could go post their ideas as well. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Using the wiki format to produce scientific publications

I'm a scientist at the US Geological Survey headquarters in Reston VA USA. I would like to know of the use of the wiki format for the production (writing, reviewing, publication, indexing, etc) of our scientific reports. Lee De Cola (talk) 14:48, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

There are two parts to this. One is setting up a web server to run MySQL and PHP, installing the MediaWiki software and configuring your own wiki. The other is the editing side of things, beyond the help links already in the welcome notice on your talk page, you might be interested in Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual which is a very friendly guide to editing. Hope this helps! Franamax (talk) 17:06, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Could further eyes take a look at some edits?

I brought this up at WikiProject Arts, but nobody there has responded. Could people take a look at the first two edits made by Brendanwoods (talk · contribs)? I don't know if their edits were correct or not, but they have given no sources for their edits, and have not replied to my request for sources. I don't know anything about these subjects to know if the edits are correct or not. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:02, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Since their third edit looks like they were adding their own birthday to a day-page, I've reverted those edits and noted such on their talk page. When they show their sources, the edits can be easily enough rolled forward. Franamax (talk) 16:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

In-universe tags

I am wondering about the value of these. Certainly Oedipus might merit extensive out-of-universe discussion, as might Heathcliffe of Gandalf - however I suspect they have them, and probably without prompting. Jonathan Archer, however, has been tagged since 2006 and really I see nothing wrong with the article (except maybe a tiny amount of cruft) as it stands. Since we are not permitted to discourse on Archer as a reaction to previous enterprise Captains, for example, without supporting references, and there is probably a very limited amount of RS, the article seems essentially complete as it stands. [Disclaimer:I haven't actually seen the show in question.) Comments? Rich Farmbrough, 14:05, 4 October 2009 (UTC).

An article tagged "in-universe" means that's its weighted too heavily on the fictional aspects of the work, and not on context of the character outside of the work, and what's presented as plot is very detailed (we don't need to repeat the entire history of the show, but summarize the character's involvement with it); There needs to be information about the creation of the character, information about casting, and/or reception of the character. And at the same time, either the tone of the article needs to be fixed (we present fictional details as from outside the fictional univser) or the amount of detail cut back. Without these, the article is prime for deletion or merging per WP:PLOT or WP:N. For Archer, its a rather recent show, and the character was rather important, so such information establishing context really ought to exist and thus cleanup and improvement seem perfectly in line before any deletion or merging can be done. --MASEM (t) 14:16, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I tend to think of it as more of how the fiction is presented as opposed to showing undue weight in the article. For example, you could have a perfectly-balanced article but have its plot/fiction section written in a way in that it's just paraphrasing or reiterating the storyline rather than sounding like someone else giving a brief synopsis of the plot from an outside perspective (what it should be). As Masem indicated, that is where the writing about fiction guideline comes into play as well as possibly verifiability and NPOV concerns if all you're drawing from is the fictional work itself. MuZemike 21:23, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

The tag (to me) exists when the material from a show/movie/book is presented as if it was from reality. That is certainly the case - here with section heads like "Place in History". IMHO, there's way way too much fancruft-bordering detail - his pet dog's name is in the introduction, and we've got three long paragraphs about the sci-fi version of an evil twin! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:08, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

En.wiki and the commons

I was looking at images on the commons and I noticed this discussion: commons:Commons:Language policy#Titles of galleries. Is that something that affects us here? Newport Backbay (talk) 01:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

In general, Commons policies and guidelines have no effect on English Wikipedia (excepting some licensing or technical issues). Our naming guidelines are completely separate. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 20:06, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Three Audit Subcommittee vacancies: Call for applications

The process to appoint the three non-arbitrator members of the Audit Subcommittee is underway, with the election itself starting on 30 October. If you think you may be suitably qualified, please see the election pages for the job specification and application arrangements. Applications close 22 October 2009.

For the Arbitration Committee, Thatcher 21:44, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

Tracking the source of an edit.

Hello. I think I've heard of some sort of tool that can pinpoint the revision/author of a given section of text withough having to trawl through the history myself. Does anyone know about this or where I could find it? Thanks, Oreo Priest ^talk 00:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

WikiBlame. I always use the "interpolated search" option and increase the number of revisions to check from the default. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch! Oreo Priest ^talk 00:34, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Anytime.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Date de-linking trial

Please could anyone interested review (with a fine tooth comb) the edits listed at Special:Contributions/Full-date_unlinking_bot. One bad edit has been account for at the BRFA, which is where any wannabe commentators should also go. Thanks, - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 10:55, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Bear in mind that I look at every trial edit the bot makes, though having additional eyes is always helpful. @harej 03:06, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Help:Transwiki

Between 15 May 2007 and 7 July 2008, the page Help:Transwiki was a simple soft-redirect to m:Help:Transwiki on Meta. On the latter date however, user:Yecril added the phrase "Note: According to User:John Broughton, incoming Transwiki content is not accepted and the relevant sections do not apply; just copying the content is recommended instead." [8]

To me this sounds very dubious and so I thought I'd check whether it is actually the case or not? I'm doing so here as this is a much higher traffic location than the talk page of a soft redirect in the help namespace. Thryduulf (talk) 17:47, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea on why the notes were added to Help:Transwiki, but some history on Help is relevant. The original concept for Help pages was either redirect to the Meta help pages or to transclude the Meta help pages and have en.wiki specific help tacked on. The Meta pages were never maintained, so they went out of date. And en.wiki has diverged from the default and other language wikis in so many ways that the Meta help pages were sometimes wildly inaccurate. About a year ago, the transclusions were removed, leaving us on our own. Since editors were already creating help pages in the Wikipedia namespace, it has left a bit of a mess. For example, we have Help:Footnotes and Wikipedia:Footnotes. There is some discussion on cleaning this up at Wikipedia talk:Help Project. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:58, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Report Card

If you haven't seen it, Erik Zachte has just released the first public version of our monthly "Report Card", which is tracking key metrics (traffic, content quantity, participation rates, etc.) on an ongoing basis: http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/

See more in his blog post about it here.--Eloquence* 01:35, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Question about talk pages

Right. I know about the rules stateing that in most cases one is not allowed to revert edits by a user to thier own talk pages, but what happens if an IP removes posts? Do the same rules still apply?  rdunnalbatross  12:23, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't know of a policy page on this, but unless a post is complete vandalism or one's own with no replies, I don't think posts should never be removed. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:05, 9 October 2009 (UTC) My bad, I didn't read closely enough; user talk pages are of course fully controlled by the user. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:32, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

See WP:BLANKING. Both registered and IP users are specifically allowed to remove posts from their own talk pages (for better or for worse). • Anakin ^(talk) 05:07, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

:( to IP's being allowed... Thank you anyway.  rdunnalbatross  07:57, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

New essay

In response to several years of debate across many subjects, Wikipedia:Reliable sources may be non-neutral. Durova³²² 17:26, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

ta.wikipedia and words usage

This is about ta.wikipedia.org

I have read one problem about usage of right words. Some people (group1) prefer using common word which are in day-to-day usage (derived from some other language). Some others (group2) are in favor of using right words that are not in use, and little bit difficult to understand for a layman. Problem comes when these group2 people starts editing pages created by group1 people. How to handle this case ? Do we have any policies which could solve the dispute ? --V4vijayakumar (talk) 10:52, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia's solution was to fork a new wikipedia: Simple English Wikipedia, but that probably won't help you. All I can suggest is to agree to follow the terms given in reliable sources, and wikilink them when confusion might arise. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 15:20, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

WikiReader

OpenMoko Inc. announced the WikiReader today - a portable device for browsing Wikipedia. It will cost $99, is powered by two AAA batteries, and reads a Wikipedia dump from a micro SD card which can be updated by the user. TRS-80 (talk) 15:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

"a Wikipedia dump from a micro SD card"?!? Intriguing, given the size of a dump. Maybe a partial selection? Or have micro SD cards got better since I last looked? Or does this use some sort of adapted one? - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 17:47, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it's not that infeasible. WP:Size in volumes gives 7,989,089,940 characters in Wikipedia. Assuming amerocentrically that each character is ASCII, # characters = # bytes. Convert to gigabytes and we have 7.44041981 GB. Even assuming a 2x error, that's only ~15 Gb and microSD is available in up to 16GB capacities. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:45, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Bah and humbug, I still don't believe it (though admittedly I hadn't seen the 16Gb varieties available for sale). OTOH, one uncompressed dump (the one I happen to have) is 21.7Gb, which I suppose is in reach of 16Gb with one a little fiddling around. No images, naturally, that's a given. - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 19:37, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Hm. They're definitely doing something special. Says here the file used is "4+ GB". I suppose the error factor is less and they applied compression. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:05, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Leading space when cut-and-pasting section titles

Anyone here know how to suppress the leading space when cutting and pasting section titles? When running Firefox under XP, double clicking and drag-selecting over a section title to grab a word at a time causes a leading space to be included, but this does not happen with article titles. I know that this has got to bug other users as well as I've seen a fair number of broken section redirects and links caused by a space after the fragment separator. Triple clicking for the entire line includes the "[edit] " (and I've see a few of those in links as well). Single clicking and drag selecting certainly works, but less pointer precision is required for word at a time selection, making much it faster. -- ToE^T 19:44, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Volunteer response team looking for voicemail respondents

Hi all,

The volunteer response team is looking for a number of English-speaking Wikimedia contributors to join their team to handle incoming voicemail enquiries. There has been a recent surge in queries left on the Wikimedia Foundation's voicemail service, which end up being forwarded to the volunteer response team for action. Unfortunately, the volunteer response team leaders have so far been unable to find sufficient cover to handle the increase in voicemail correspondence received.

If you would be interested in joining the volunteer response team to handle voicemail enquiries, and are comfortable volunteering your time to telephone people who have left voicemail enquiries, please leave the appropriate details at meta:OTRS/volunteering. Please make sure to mention in your nomination that you are interested in, and comfortable replying to, voicemail enquiries. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact one of the volunteer response team leaders listed at Wikipedia:Volunteer response team#List of volunteer response team leaders.

Regards,
Daniel (talk) 13:24, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Looking for more help creating missing topics in dermatology

The dermatologic-related content on Wikipedia continues to improve; however, we still need help to complete the Bolognia Push 2009! This is an effort to make sure that every topic found within this unabridged dermatology text is also found on Wikipeda. Please see the above link for more information, and, if you are interested in helping, e-mail me for the login information.

There are still hundreds of disease stubs and redirects to be made. We need your help! ---kilbad (talk) 22:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Name of a Swedish city

I read a Chinese news report on a city in Northern Sweden that, according to the report, is the only female-only city in the world since 1820. However, the news only quoted the name in Chinese as 沙科保市, without its native name. Though "沙科保" (pinyin:Shakebo) suggests a three-syllable name starting with S, no such article under the relevant wikipedia list and category contains the description of male-free. We should create a wikipedia article for it if it really exists, provided we know its name. --Poeticlion (talk) 18:07, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia deems a few things as automatically notable and fit for articles. These include high schools and cities/towns. Feel free to create an article! Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 19:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

No, some people deem them, though I don't believe there's an actual consensus for it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

In my experience there certainly isn't consensus. Anyway, the issue here is finding the name. Maybe WP:Reference desk is a better place to ask. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 21:23, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I guess I'll try to get help from Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities and see whether it is notable after I get its name. Thank you very much!!--Poeticlion (talk) 08:25, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Djäkneböle, could, when mangled through Chinese, come out something like "Shakebo". DuncanHill (talk) 09:05, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I can guarantee you that there is no such town in Sweden. I haven't read the Chinese news about it, but Swedish news reported about the Chinese one and found it quite entertaining. To me it seems like the Chinese have created an artic variation of the classical amazon myth. Vigfus (talk) 23:22, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it a myth [9] I wonder where it came from. --Apoc2400 (talk) 13:19, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Um, it defly is not Djäkneböle, for the Chinese news report claims 25,000 (all female)inhabitants, far more than the 161 suggested by the wp article. Also, it should be something like Yakenbo in Chinese. Btw, the correct spelling in Pinyin for 沙科保市 is Shakebao. I believe its a hoax. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blodance (talk • contribs) 02:36, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Any new articles that need to be done?

If you have any ideas let me know. Thanks --TaRiX oF tAjUn 18:53, 14 October 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tarix of Tajun (talk • contribs)

Yep: Georgina Weldon. She's an interesting character on whom we have nothing at present. -- Derek Ross | Talk 19:28, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

thanks. I'll look her up. TaRiX oF tAjUn 19:57, 14 October 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tarix of Tajun (talk • contribs)

Here are some more biographies that need to be written. Kaldari (talk) 14:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:Requested articles is always in need of helpful users, and you can pick your topic. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:25, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Average editors stats

Do we have an idea of stats for an average editor of Wikipedia? How long has s/he been registered, how many edits s/he has made, and so on? PS. Since we know how many editors there are in this project, do we keep the track of the total number of edits? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:47, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:Statistics should have (mostly) everything you want, although you may have to do some number crunching with the figures available to get the exact values you want. A lot of that is of varying degrees out of date, though, so watch out. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:55, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Newspaper front page images

The Philadelphia Inquirer article has an image of the newspaper’s front page, with indications that this is a fair use. I am writing an article on the ‘’The Public Record’’ newspaper, published weekly in Philadelphia, and I am being challenged on Wikimedia Commons on the copyright issue.

How do I make use of this kind of image, in the same way that currently The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times are now appearing on Wikipedia? --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:53, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Both the Philly and NYTimes images are non-free images because they contain copyrighted photographs and other elements. (And because they are non-free, they can't be shown on talk pages, so I've edited their appearance above for that. Your image would also be non-free and wouldn't qualify on commons but can be uploaded to en.wiki with a non-free rationale and license. --MASEM (t) 19:12, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. The front page is up, and included in my sandbox article. --DThomsen8 (talk) 20:07, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

New halloween template.

I created a Happy Halloween Template.

{{Template:Happy Halloween}}

Copy and past it to your user page. Have a safe halloween.--Zink Dawg -- 00:54, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

GFW and en.wp

Could anyone please confirm if the PRC govt tightened the GFW again? I'm now getting blockedfrom accessing en.wp(by blocked I mean deprived of access to the entire site, not WP:BLOCK.) for 5mins every time after I make my edit. Initially, I could get the edit i was trying to make done, and occasionally I could escape the block. But nowadays, most of the time I get blocked w/o actually getting the edit done. It's not the problem of my comp - I'm now on a public computer and the problem still persists, and I'm struggling w/ a loooong proxy list trying to get THIS edit done. I'd really appreciate it if anyone know a mean to get rid of this ridiculous censorship, such as a regular proxy(instead of the random ones I'm currently relying on)... And prolly even happier if told it is actually not the problem of GFW... :P Btw, could anyone else who can translates Japanese into English help me get the article Japan Airlines Flight 446 done? I'm changing my connection now and this issue is making me almost impossible to make any useful edit at all. Thx alot. Blodance (talk) 02:26, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Adobe incontext editing

Recently, adobe unveiled "incontext editing". It'd be nice to see if wikipedia could allow for similar editing.Smallman12q (talk) 15:31, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Three Audit Subcommittee vacancies: Urgent call for applications

The process to appoint the three non-arbitrator members of the Audit Subcommittee is underway. If you are suitably qualified, please see the election pages for the job specification and application arrangements. Applications close 22 October 2009.

For the Arbitration Committee,  Roger Davies ^talk 19:16, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Mysteriouse-mail

I am not sure as to whether this is the best place to post this message. I have just received a rather strange e-mail:

Caro ACEOREVIVED, A página Cumbersa outelizador:ACEOREVIVED na Wikipedia foi criada a 09h29min de 11 de Outubre de 2009 por Chabi; consulte http://mwl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbersa_outelizador:ACEOREVIVED para a versão atual. Esta é uma página nova. Sumário de edição: Criou nova página com '{{Bienbenido}} --ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)' Contacte o editor: e-mail: http://mwl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contactar_utilizador/Chabi wiki: http://mwl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outelizador:Chabi Não haverá mais notificações no caso de futuras alterações a não ser que visite esta página. Poderá também restaurar as bandeiras de notificação para todas as suas páginas vigiadas na sua lista de vigiados. O seu amigável sistema de notificação de Wikipedia -- Para alterar as suas preferências da lista de vigiados, visite http://mwl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist/edit Contacto e assistência: http://mwl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajuda:Cuntenidos

I do not recognise this language. Can any one please help me? What is this all about? If

you understand what this is about, can you please leave a message at my userpage. Many thanks, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Is there some way to manage one's unified login / global account so you don't get welcome emails like this just for visiting (not even editing) a different language wikipedia? -- ToE^T 01:02, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like Portuguese... Draftydoor (talk) 15:10, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Macaronic Brazilian (?) Portuguese with spelling errors. --Xyzt1234 (talk) 20:37, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

mwl is the ISO abbreviation for Mirandese. --Danger (talk) 22:05, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Search in new window

Not sure where the best place for this is but anyway. Have you ever wished that pages accessed through the mini search form in the sidebar could open in a new window/tab so you could keep the current page open? I've written User:Anakin101/search-new-window.js. It changes the mini search form behavior so that it opens in a new window (or tab, assuming your browser is set to prefer tabs) if you hold down ⇧ Shift, as you press enter/click.

To use it add this to your custom script file:

importScript('User:Anakin101/search-new-window.js');

(which will be, as always, dependent on the skin, monobook.js or modern.js or vector.js etc.) (Alternatively copy & paste the code directly (it's short) or put it in a Greasemonkey script.)

I tested it in IE6/Firefox/Opera but I'd be delighted if others could test it and give feedback. • Anakin ^(talk) 06:44, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia in other languages

Hello! I look for to a assign, who know, how was permit to the Wikimedia for exam. the Samgotian wikipedia, inasmuch as the Samogitian dialect have not ISO code. Doncsecz^znánje 15:32, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Per Meta:WM:LPP new projects should have an ISO-639 code. The Samogitian Wikipedia was created here before that rule was made. I think the code "bat-smg" was just made up ("bat" is ISO-639-5 for "Baltic"). Also see meta:Language code, which has a list of wikis without valid ISO-639 codes. I'm not sure how one would create a new wiki without a code, other than to get a code registered or to try inventing one. • Anakin ^(talk) 05:16, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Possiobly free images of Birmingham

Slides by Phyllis Nicklin of Birmingham in the 1960s are "available to download and redistribute for non-commercial purposes". Is there a project who batch-upload such stuff? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:41, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

"For non-commercial purposes" means non-free. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:50, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Quotes of quotes

I have a history book that provides a brief biography of a certain viceroy and that may be useful for being used as a source to expand and check the article. But there's a point I'm a little confused. After providing the mere facts (did this, did that, was designated for this, died on such date, etc.) there's some analysis of the viceroy, but instead of analyzing himself the viceroy, the author quotes other historians and what do they said about him (in a style not unlike the one we would use ourselves here on wikipedia). It's clear who do the quotes belong to, but wich book should I cite? The original book of the cited author, wich I have never read, or the book I have read, where the cited author did not wrote anything, but is instead just being cited? MBelgrano (talk) 02:32, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Citing sources#Say where you found the material. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:36, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Double linking of birth/death categories

Hello, I linked the birth and death categories on a number of articles at the top of the page like this because I thought this would be a more helpful location for these links rather than stuck somewhere at the bottom.

Nobody objected to this for several weeks until User:John removed them saying that they were duplicate links, and sent me a link to WP:OVERLINK as a reason. However when I looked at this it appeared to support what I had done: To quote.

Repeated links

In general, link only the first occurrence of an item. This is a rule of thumb that has many exceptions, including the following:

• where a later occurrence of an item is a long way from the first.
• where the first link was in an infobox or a navbox, or some similar meta-content.

This appears to apply to this case, so am I within the rules or not? Cabbawoo (talk) 11:17, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

It also says "Unless they are particularly relevant to the topic of the article, avoid linking terms whose meaning can be understood by most readers of the English Wikipedia, including plain English words, the names of major geographic features and locations, religions, languages, common professions, common units of measurement, and dates". Neither those categories, nor dates in general, are relevant to the topic at hand. I'd reckon that having those categories linked is extremely unlikely to be useful, and it's clearer without them. Also see WP:Linking#Chronological items and MOS:UNLINKDATES. • Anakin ^(talk) 12:21, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Another point, per WP:Piped link#Intuitiveness: it's non-obvious and possibly confusing if 17 January 1863 links to a list of people who were born in the same year. Not all browser viewing modes, web-capable devices, etc., will make it easy to see the title text or URL of the link to figure out where it goes. • Anakin ^(talk) 12:29, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Suffix: prefix:

I keep seeing new articles with " prefix:<valid page name>" at the end of their titles, for example: Roblox prefix:Talk:Main Page. Here is a list of some. They seem to have been created by different people. Is there some article creation wizard that leads people to do this? Not a serious problem just a puzzle that I would like answered. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 22:48, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

They come from archive search boxes like the one at the top of Talk:Main Page. Somebody makes a search with such a box and then clicks the red link in the search result message. A possible solution would be to change the search function so a prefix part is not included in the red link. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:23, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, from the top of this page. Many thanks. If they start arriving faster than one a day, I might report it as a bug. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 23:37, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

It is a bug. The search form oughtn't really to be including special parameters like prefix: in that link. • Anakin ^(talk) 17:41, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I see the issue was brought up with no reply at MediaWiki talk:Searchmenu-new#Breakage with fulltext search. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:06, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Audit Subcommittee elections: Urgent! Final call for applications

Time is rapidly running out. The closing date for completed applications is 23:59 (UTC) 22 October 2009. If you are interested in becoming one of the three non-arbitrator members of the Audit Subcommittee, see the election pages now for the job specification and application details.

For the Arbitration Committee,  Roger Davies ^talk 17:39, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The typeface list collaboration

This collaboration is in need for people to help, this message is also posted in the wikiprojects Typography and Writing systems as well as in user namespace. Wikiproject talks may be inactive for medium-to-long periods, so it´s also advertised here to atract contributor´s help. Any suggestions are welcome.

Requesting editors' help There is currently an oppened collaboration which aims in improving articles related to typefaces and font categorization. If you´re interested in this subject, please visit the collaboration page, add your self and see how you can help.

- ☩Damërung ☩. -- 20:15, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

One would think that people interested in typography would also be interested in proper spelling. As well as readability. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:34, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Atlantic books plagiarizing Wikipedia

Anybody know anything about Atlantic books[10]? One of their books[11] that I looked at on Google Books consists mostly of material copied from Wikipedia articles. Anyone know the dirt on them? Are they legit and just have poor editorial standards or is the whole operation a scam? Kaldari (talk) 20:54, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is available for anyone to reprint. This is not a scam. --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:04, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure they must be breaking our licensing terms though (unlike previous "scams" which were totally legal), but I did only look at it briefly. I can find no mention of where it came from/attribution. In fact, they even appear to exercise copyright over it. But what would I know. - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 21:09, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

(ec)However they are not entitled to claim copyright on WP text as they appear to be doing. No doubt some of our articles will shortly be removed as copyvios, as has happened so often with mirror sites. Johnbod (talk) 21:10, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

They do not even attempt to meet our licensing conditions or credit Wikipedia. Moreover, they are claiming copyright over our work which is copyfraud, i.e. a scam. Kaldari (talk) 22:01, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

There are two immediate ideas:

1. Are there other books like the one given as an example? Can we please compile a list of such violations?
2. Can we contact the publisher?

{{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 22:36, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 20#The Alphascript-Amazon-Wikipedia book hoax. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:56, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

A significant editor to one of the feminism articles could send them the Standard license violation letter and go from there. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:46, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I've left a note on Mgoodyear's page as he wrote most of the History of feminism article which is plagiarized at the beginning of the book. According to another review on Google Books, the section on sex-positive feminism is also copied from Wikipedia word-for-word, although it seems to no longer be available in the online preview. Kaldari (talk) 14:41, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

As I've noted on the review page over at Google Books, the book in question heavily plagiarizes Wikipedia. The "Sex-Positive Feminism" section of that book is a complete cut-and-paste of the Wikipedia article (which I wrote some parts of). I would not be surprised if many other parts of the book are plagiarized as well. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 00:15, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Someone should contact Wikimedia's lawyer, User:MGodwin about this. --Blargh29 (talk) 14:43, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

He can't really do anything, the Foundation doesn't have copyright, the individual editors do. --Cybercobra (talk) 17:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Mike knows about it. Kaldari (talk) 20:08, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

How does one create a workgroup within a WikiProject?

I would like to create a workgroup on within the WikiProject:Pennsylvania that focuses on the politics and government of Pennsylvania. I have looked at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Politics and government as a model for this possible workgroup, and I am wondering what it would take to create such a workgroup. Thank you,--Blargh29 (talk) 03:11, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I believe you just find some people and do it. No official process is necessary. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 03:21, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Cool. What kind of coding would be required to get the fancy notifications (?) in the parent project's talkpage templates?--Blargh29 (talk) 03:30, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

It depends on how good with code you are - I suggest you just copy the template and modify it for your own needs. And give the original creator credit of course. Aiken ♫ 09:34, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Active users

Is there some estimation on how many active users does Wikipedia have? "Active" means performing at least a minimal number of edits each day (or at least without very big gaps between edits, and with the last one being somewhat recent). It's not needed to be an exact number, an estimation for getting the idea would suffice MBelgrano (talk) 13:13, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Special:Statistics OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:44, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

"Last 30 days" is hardly active though. Someone who corrects the occasionally typo every couple weeks isn't really 'active', certainly not what MBelgrano asked. There's probably no way of knowing the real answer though -- I'd be curious myself. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:17, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The logic for trawling a database dump would be reasonably simple, though it would be incredibly slow. Alternatively, a site message reading "If you're an active editor then sign this page" should give a good estimate. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 14:29, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Google Maps window

Hello, I'd like to create a Google Maps window or API-like, like in http://routes.wikia.com (e.g. A36). Otherwise, I have to draw a map under Google Maps, hardlink it to the article, and nobody can contribute to modify it... Such a feature would be nice for wikipedia. I had a look at {{fr:KML}}, but it is rather limited (only points, not lines). Regards, Jack ma (talk) 13:55, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

You can't use Google Maps images in Wikipedia anyway, due to licensing issues. Powers ^T 15:20, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

however, Open Street Map would be appropriate. Aiken ♫ 09:31, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

WikiTrust to colorize Wikipedia

[12] - makes one wonder how they determine that an editor is reliable. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:04, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Per RTFA -- "It's a simple concept: The more often a person's contributions are thrown out, the less reliable they're likely to be."--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:11, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

So the person whose hoax article remained for ten months would be considered ultra-reliable. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Only if they didn't contribute anything else that was overwritten before or during those 10 months. Basically you're talking about one in a million. The vast majority of vandals can't help themselves, so I don't think we have anything to worry about. On balance this will do far more good than harm. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Suspicous

Does this seem suspicious to anyone? Would it be worth emailing that address to explain that I see no problem with the loading of the image, or is it likely to be a spam/phish attempt? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 15:31, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Likely an IP editor unfamiliar with the signature system. I would redact the email address off the talk page and respond there. For what its worth, I also have no problem loading the image. Livewireo (talk) 19:05, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't see anything particularly suspicious, but if you are worried then you can send a message from a disposable email address. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Geocaching

Has there been any discussion about random geocaching references being made to text as in Cleckheaton, please? I think these look a bit odd and out of place in an encyclopedia.--Harkey (talk) 21:12, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

They aren't at all appropriate. Someone has removed the references in that article already, and if you see it popping up anywhere else, you should feel free to remove it in an aggressive fashion :) Shereth 21:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Need help in fi-wikipedia

Hi! Do somebody have book "The Smithsonian Book of North American Mammals", ISBN 9781560988458. I need information of mustela erminea, I try that on featured article in fi-wikipedia. – EtäKärppä^{äl' yli päästä perhanaa} 09:54, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Try asking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange. Aiken ♫ 09:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks you! – EtäKärppä^{äl' yli päästä perhanaa} 17:14, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

New master sockpuppet template

Hello. With the proliferation of various flavors of sockpuppet and sockpuppeteer templates, I have worked on consolidating. When it came to {{Sockpuppeteer}}, there were no inherent contradictions between parameter naming and usage between the variations, and I was able to adjust the existing template to be both backwards compatible and pretty much totally inclusive. However, when it came to {{sockpuppet}}, that was not the case. I worked on a new template, which can be found at User:Avraham/Sandbox/SPOM with many (but not all) permutations of its usage. However, this would call for a re-mapping of existing parameters. The mapping can be found at WT:SPI#Single sockpuppet template. While it is not complete, it should cover >99.9% of the 49K+ instances of the templates. We have discussed this many times at WT:SPI (see Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Archives/Archive4#First stab at combined sockpuppet template, Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Archives/Archive5#New combined sockpuppet template, and Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Archives/Archive6#Are we giving up on the combined sockpuppet template? for examples. Recently, the issue arose again at WT:SPI#Sock template cleanup. At this point, we would like some more input whether or not there would be any serious opposition to a bot-driven replacement and re-mapping of the templates, that would break most of them while the process is in progress. Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 16:58, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/THUDD

The THUDD article, which is about a 10 second spoof of THX from Tiny Toon Adventures, somehow has avoided deletion for 4 years. It's like a throwback to the old days of Wikipedia when anything had its own article. See it before it gets WP:SNOWed into extinction. --Blargh29 (talk) 03:52, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Banned user User:Zephram Stark is trying to start an edit war on Law of the United States, both directly and through friends

Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Banned user User:Zephram Stark is trying to start an edit war on Law of the United States, both directly and through friends

archive. Garion96 (talk) 12:23, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

pleas punish WikiProject Russia

i left them messages but they ignore them and do not reply. They are also lazy and do not assess their pages i mean i found five with no effort which were not tagged at all and they have thousands unassessed. Pleas notify the local authorities and tell them that that Wikiproject's "members" are not improving this encyclopaedia and their project is a failure if they don't get cracking asap!--anonimous —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.114.215.165 (talk) 02:46, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Why is everyone ignoring my questions i though everyone is welcome here? Who do i complain to about not getting answers here? I tried Wikipedia:Police but it is not there. Are they out?--anonimous —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.114.215.165 (talk) 02:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Everyone is welcome. Welcome to do as much work as they want. There is no way to force people to do work if they don't want to. Everyone is a volunteer. It also helps to show more than 9 minutes of patience. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:16, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I vote that we sent wikiProject Russia a strong letter and if that fails we invade and take over all their bases. --Cameron Scott (talk) 12:22, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Too late. All their base are belong to us. MuZemike 18:27, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that unless WP:RUSSIA turns back into WP:USSR and invades WP:Afghanistan, we should probably let a sleeping bear lie. Resolute 19:03, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Outside rewrites

While conducting an academic study of Wikipedia, I have come into the possession of a large number of rewrites of Wikipedia articles by outside experts, as well as the notation of a great number of errors, omissions, etc. I have no particular interest in acting on the basis of any of this material myself, so please do not invite me to edit, however charmingly. I would, however, like to know if anyone would be interested in having this information with the understanding that the sources involved would remain entirely anonymous. If you would be interested in seeing some of these expert reviews, please leave your email address and I will get in touch with you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.214.112 (talk) 14:27, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

"I have compiled lots of information but refuse to do anything useful with it and will make only a limited effort to help anybody else do something useful with it." ... Yeah, sounds like an academic, all right. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:40, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

"I have no interest in finding out what experts have to say about Wikipedia articles." ... Yeah, sounds like a Wikipedian all right. 163.1.214.112 (talk) 15:07, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Ouch ... touche! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 18:45, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• What sort of subjects are covered? How many articles, & what format is the material in? Johnbod (talk) 15:15, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
• I'd be willing to give you my email address, but you'd have to give me yours first. 173.170.157.188 (talk) 17:49, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I would be keenly interested in how academics or other experts have taken a surgical knife to the tumors within a set of Wikipedia articles. I'm not sure why personal e-mail addresses are necessary to enable the sharing process, though. Is there something that must be kept secret or private about these documents? If so, you surely know that e-mail is no guarantee of preserved privacy. I could give you my e-mail, then you send me the documents, then I post them on WikiLeaks, or myWikibiz, or Google Documents, and you're no better off than if you had just posted them yourself in the first place. In fact, why don't you post them somewhere safe, like Google Docs, then provide us with the link here? That would make more sense, unless you're up to something nefarious by trying to harvest e-mail addresses. -- Wandering Parsnip (talk) 02:43, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd be interested, at least to the extent of seeing the set of topics that are included, in case any are in areas I would be interested in. Could you email me through Special:EmailUser/Mike Christie to let me know how to contact you? Thanks. Mike Christie (talk) 12:37, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I would be happy to see this. Could you send it to apoc2400@gmail.com --Apoc2400 (talk) 22:10, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm interested to see whether this turns out to be a spam attempt of some sort or whether the person is indeed in possession of what they claim.Smallman12q (talk) 01:58, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't these rewrites, without named rewriters, be copyright violations? Nobody could take these things and post them to Wikipedia claiming they were the author of the changes. And how would you identify just who was? 99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:33, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like it would be hard to incorporate the changes and stay within Wikipedia guidelines. Wikipedia sources must be verifiable, so personal communications, unpublished documents etc. aren't acceptable sources no matter who wrote them. The philosophy of Wikipedia says verifiability from published sources is the standard for inclusion, not whether it's coming from an expert. Probably a better approach would be to make a list of the errors found and add them to the talk pages of the respective articles. Or if it's hard to break it down by individual articles then post a link in the subject area project talk pages.--RDBury (talk) 06:11, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Update on Flagged Revisions?

What is the status of the Flagged Revision idea? Has it been dropped? Is it still under discussion? Is a trial run being done (if so where)? Blueboar (talk) 15:25, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

The Foundation did some hiring for a dedicated developer, and there's a test wiki over at flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org. It is taking a while, :/ but the key is getting the interface working right, since the English Wikipedia decided on a rather unusual configuration for the extension, one that wasn't initially quite supported by the software. It'll take a while longer, but it's coming—the fact that the Foundation has hired a developer for this shows that at least something is getting done… {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 18:19, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Can someone please direct me to the discussion that agreed it was "A Good Idea"? Thanks. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 12:47, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Here is the poll : Wikipedia talk:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions/Poll. A few months ago, I found this page with ease. But now it seems someone has removed every link to this page from Wikipedia:Flagged protection, so it was a real pain to find it again. I went trough Special:PrefixIndex, clicked on a few links, and suprisingly arrived on it. I can't remember how I arrived there. Anyway, here is the discussion you wanted. :-) Dodoïste (talk) 18:06, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 18:37, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Uncategorized biographies of living people/BLPPotential needs your attention

Wikipedia:Uncategorized biographies of living people/BLPPotential needs editors' attention. They are about 16,000 articles to be checked whether are lacking Category:Living people. This will help us to better protect BLPs. You can help. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:32, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009

Yes it's that time of year again. As many as EIGHT Arbitration Committee seats are up for consideration.

Timeline:

• Now - getting organised & finalising details
• November 10 - nominations and candidate questions begin
• December 1 - Voting begins
• December 14 - Voting ends
• January 1, 2010 - new candidates take their seats.

Potential candidates are advised to start thinking about their statements. Volunteers are also invited to sign on to help with the housekeeping involved in an election.

The 2009 ArbCom election page

Manning (talk) 16:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Google is not the be-all and end-all of notability for an article

Currently we are placing way too much trust in Google to be the deciding factor in AfD discussions.. We come across an AfD on an unsourced article on a foreign subject we know absolutely nothing about. First thing we do is a quick Google search for any mentions in (mostly American) sources. And that's usually all that is done.. if nothing can be found we are most likely to !vote "Delete, cannot find any coverage, no hits on Google" The question I have is, can Google alone be counted on in all cases to be the definitive method to establish whether a subject is notable or not? What about really old references? subjects that have not been digitised? These sources cannot be found on Google, does this mean the article should be deleted for failing WP:V? What about foreign subjects in other languages? This ties in with Wikipedia:Systemic bias and Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#Subjective importance yet there's no mention in either of these pages that Google is what's behind it all. I think anyone who participates AfD needs to be educated about not relying primarily on Google to determine how they !vote. Except I don't know how else it can be done?? -- œ^™ 08:10, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

btw, although I don't necessarily disagree with the result, this afd was what influenced me to write the above: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dr Prabhat Das Foundation. -- œ^™ 08:14, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

We could let, or better educate, the closing admin in the low usefulness factor instead. - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 08:41, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

There may be such sources, or may not. If there are, they should be provided. If no sources are mentioned, and google does not provide any, we can suspect the subject is not notable and act that way; wich does not mean a definitive statement about the subject not being notable. If the user requests a restore bringing the needed bibliography that failed to provide before, or a new user writes the article again citing such sources, then the article can be kept regardless of the previous AFD. MBelgrano (talk) 12:55, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

So let's say the user brings it to DRV, this time citing a multitude of reliable-looking offline sources, book, journals, etc. The editors commenting on it will still doubt the authenticity of the sources because 'they can't be found with Google' and will again !vote delete as failing WP:V or failing WP:N because 'if it's not online then it must not be notable'. Again they rely too much on Google alone, whether it be the closing admin or the participating editors. I'm sure there are other resources on that internet that can be used besides just Google but it seems no one bothers to look anywhere else. Maybe it's just my lack of faith in the resourcefulness of Wikipedia's editors that could use an adjustment. -- œ^™ 00:52, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

If you have a bunch of offline lines 1) add them to the article to assert notability but more importantly 2) people, particularly closing admins, need to AGF that you aren't lying about those sources that they actually exist and say what you think they say. In most cases, even if the work is not available easily, it can be proven to exist and then the step of AGF can be used. If there are editors flatly denying sources that aren't online, they are very mistaken and need to be told that we do not require online sources.

Also, remember that google exists in other languages, (eg, [13] [14], etc.) and I do believe IIRC that google gives more weight to sources in the native languages on those pages. --MASEM (t) 01:11, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I am thinking that we need to better educate editors on the need to establish notability in their articles (and how best to do so)... If notability is properly established when an article is created, it becomes less likely that the article will be nominated for AfD in the first place Blueboar (talk) 15:35, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree. It's the responsibility of the original article author to establish notability and back it up with reliable sources. (And if they don't, it's indistinguishable from not being notable, so should be deleted. Normally, it works out correctly and nothing of value is lost.) • Anakin ^(talk) 13:11, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we can find editors that think that a source should be online to be considered: everyone is entitled to have an opinion. It would be up to other users and closing admins to point that such would be a weak argument. Articles must be verifiable, yes, but that does not mean verifiable by anyone at any time. Wikipedia should prevent itself falling into the FUTON bias MBelgrano (talk) 22:27, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

The burden to show coverage of the article topic using reliable sources is on the editors, not the reviewers. Reviewers use a google test just to demonstrate there is, on the surface, a problem with the article topic which needs to be addressed by the article editors. It is indicative of a problem, not conclusive proof of the lack of coverage. Discussion above is drifting between the article topic itself WP:N and content within an article WP:V once WP:N is passed for it. patsw (talk) 14:23, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Editors and reviewers are different people? Boy, wikipedia *is* getting specialized. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:00, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a useful distinction to make between folks with an interest in adding their content, and other applying the guidelines and policies to it without an interest in its addition or deletion. patsw (talk) 16:04, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia influening elections?

I noted something interesting about the article John Verbanac. I have evidence the Wikipedia article was used by a political campaign to develop a new campaign strategy. See the page view statistics.

For months, this article about a Pennsylvania lobbyist, received 1-2 page views at most. All of a sudden, from October 17-21, the page views jumped 300% up to around 30 per day. Then on October 22, Pittsburgh mayoral candidate Kevin Acklin launched a campaign attack against Luke Ravenstahl that focused on Ravenstahl's close relationship with Verbanac. The page views went through the roof and are still 200% higher than the average as this story continues to get traction in the media.

So, how can we explain the 300% jump in page views before Acklin campaign launched its missive? Those page views are his campaign staffers consulting the Wikipedia article for background information and sources before they attacked Ravenstahl.

Just an interesting observation of Wikipedia influencing the public debate.--Blargh29 (talk) 03:45, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Page view counts are notorious for being easy to misinterpret. We have no idea who was viewing the page or why or even if the counts are accurate. Maybe John Verbanac appeared on a local evening news and that triggered a bunch of hits. Maybe a completely unrelated person with the same name got his 15 min. of fame and that triggered hits by people looking for the wrong person. Maybe a link was added to the page from a more popular article and that's helping more people to find it. Maybe the Wikipedia article moved to the top of the Google search results on the name so people are getting to it that way. These are four alternate explanations and there are probably dozens more that I can't think of.--RDBury (talk) 06:38, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Certainly Wikipedia articles can influence local elections, especially when voters look at information pertinent to their choices. This effect is exactly what we would want, better informed voters who learn something about candidates and their associates. Naturally, what the voter learns may influence their vote in either direction, for or against. Editors need to make sure that articles about candidates for public office are NPOV as much as possible. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:33, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

All of those things suggested by RDBury are possible. But it is less likely than the campaign using the Wikipedia article for background research before launching their campaign attack. Verbanac didn't appear in the local press until 10/22, so that can't explain the uptick from 10/17-10/21. Besides, I was just ruminating. Dthomsen8- I'm currently the only editor of that article, and I think I did a pretty good job avoiding POV, but check it out. --Blargh29 (talk) 06:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

404 error

I keep getting a 404 error when I try to access Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy. Does anybody have an idea what's up? Thanks.—RJH (talk) 17:20, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I just accessed it without any problem. Ruslik_Zero 17:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes it seems to be working now. Perhaps it was a momentary hiccup?—RJH (talk) 18:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia commons survey

Where are the messages that appear below the top bar discussed and approved? The current survey on Wikimedia Commons has got right up my nose as being a deeply flawed and insulting waste of time. I'm wondering where that can be brought up? Yes, I know I can just hide it but that's not the point. CrispMuncher (talk) 17:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Multimedia talk:Initial survey. I'm wondering why this page is on the Usability Initiative wiki, since it is none of their work. Obviously, the collaboration between the Usability Initiative and the producer of the survey is almost nonexistent. It might confuse the users. Dodoïste (talk) 17:31, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree, the survey was very badly designed, apparently asking the same questions repeatedly and disregarding the answers to previous questions. Even the statistical models it was based on (rarely/often scale in particular) are flawed and not likely to give meaningful results. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:49, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, I've taken it up there. I see I'm not the only one either. CrispMuncher (talk) 22:14, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I also hated the survey. Comet Tuttle (talk) 04:45, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I took the survey, but I thought it was rather pointless. Good luck to the survey readers, they will need it to learn anything from those questions. --DThomsen8 (talk) 16:46, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

AUSC October 2009 elections: Vote now!

The election, using SecurePoll, has now started. You may:

• Visit the election "home page" for an overview;
• Review the candidate's statements: Dominic • Frank • Jredmond • KillerChihuahua • MBisanz • Tznkai;
• Or go straight to your personal voting page: here to cast your votes.

The election closes at 23:59 (UTC) on 8 November 2009.

For the Arbitration Committee,  Roger Davies ^talk 07:31, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Xbox 360 backwards compatability

Note that this was moved to WP:RD/C#Xbox 360 backwards compatability. Killiondude (talk) 03:26, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Transwikification

I am not pleased about how the sister projects interlink: Currently, the template is template:sisterlinks, which is rarely added and if it is it is out of the way at the bottom or in the text somewhere due to impagination constraints. Wiktionary's one (Template:Wiktionary) is only slightly better as it is smaller and users are more happy to put it on top, but often clutter also dictates where it goes.Wikias, which also belong to wikimedia, have to go in the external link section due to policy.
There is a lot of discussion of people wanting to merge all into wikipedia, but that never goes nowhere. I think changing the location of the links to sister projects to outside the article space would be a good solution, see picture for a nice possible space to put it. Obviously no users can edit this in, but if there is a good support, the idea will float to who can internally change it. What do people think? (for simplicity, no discussion of merging the sisters projects nor policy changes, Thanks)

--Squidonius (talk) 16:24, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Seems like a reasonable overall idea to make the links more visible but, it would only work in vector and Wikia should not be included. It was started by Jimmy Wales, but is not a part of the Wikimedia Foundation and is not a sister project of Wikipedia like the others. Otherwise, the overall concept seems decent. Certainly there would be a lot of kinks to work out, though, and pages on the linked-to wikis would also need to link back here. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 03:11, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Wikia was baffling me, fixed the image now. --Squidonius (talk) 10:16, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

A vector-only local implementatation looks difficult to sort out, due to all the other tabs that get added. Maybe a feature request for a long-term MediaWiki solution is appropriate? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:55, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Strongly agree with this idea in principle. Might be worth mentioning to the folks at http://usability.wikimedia.org (though I'm not sure how far their mission extends...)? We do need these sister-projects to get more deserved attention. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:26, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Very good idea. I suggest also bringing it up over at the Beta discussion page. SharkD (talk) 06:38, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Appearance of article pages

I find it hard to read plain text that spans the width of my browser window, and because I generally have Wikipedia open as a tab in my browser, I don't want to resize the window (and thus all my tabs). Some text-heavy sites used fixed width columns to better approximate the width of printed materials and avoid this issue (e.g., [15] [16]). Would it be possible to change the overall format in Wikipedia to make it easier to read? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Agrantx (talk • contribs) 12:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

You could modify your own css to restrict the page width. If you're using the default skin, it will be Special:MyPage/monobook.css OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:42, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec) The difficulty with fixed-width text is that people read Wikipedia using an astonishly vast array of display sizes and resolutions, on a variety of different browsers. (Wikipedia is also increasingly being read on mobile devices.) Imposing a fixed width of text on low-resolution and small-screen users may force horizontal scrolling for every line of text, which would be a usability disaster.

What you may be able to do is adjust your own settings so that you see a fixed width of text when you browse Wikipedia. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has written suitable custom style sheets or employed some other trick to do just what you're looking for. The techical Pump or the Help Desk might be good places to ask if you can't find the answer here. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:48, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The code in my User:CBM/vector.css and User:CBM/vector.js will accomplish this. I agree it is absurd that we permit our text to flow to the width of the screen, when printed layout demands limiting average number of characters per line. But that's an issue for another day. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:54, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there no CSS code to only enforce a MIN or MAX width? (I know this doesn't completely solve the underlying problem.) SharkD (talk) 06:43, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, using EM units should help. SharkD (talk) 06:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Quote translation

Sometimes it is needed to point small quotes from people when writing an article, such as "X the shouted 'This is a quote!' and then...". When writing topics that took place in a languaje other than english, it should be pointed both the origional quote and an english translation. But in wich order? I can be the original and "which can be translated as..." in brackets, or the translation and a "the original quote is...". Or other better explanations, the question is about the order MBelgrano (talk) 13:44, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Official/independent translations or translations by Wikipedians? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 19:14, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I would say the original first especially where it is well known "hit the desk with his shoe shouting "Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!" (No! No! No!) ..." Rich Farmbrough, 05:57, 5 November 2009 (UTC).

User:AndyZ/peerreviewer script needs adoption

This script often used in GA/FA reviews needs adoption by an active user or a WikiProject. Please see my comments here for a centralized discussion. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 21:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

What kind of user are you?

Hi Everyone,

I am new to this section of wikipedia, as I created an account just today. I am a design student in NYC, and for one of my classes I chose to redesign wikipedia. I know, I know.. it's not easy! In my opinion there is a lot that could be improved, but I would be very glad if you could answer few questions that will help me to untangle the different realities behind wikipedia.org.

1) Most of users search wikipedia, read articles and leave. Other p[articipate in its editing and discussions. What kind of user are you?

2) name the most common actions you do on wikipedia (read articles and then take a look at the discussion, read article and leave, edit articles)

3) waht do you think wikipedia's design?

4) do you think it's easy to navigate?

5)what would you like to see improved? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gioru-chan (talk • contribs) 23:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Before answering your question, i actually have a question myself. Are you intentions to improve the graphical, or the technical layout? Or perhaps both? I assume you are referring to the graphical layout, but i know some design students actually specialize in designing the back-end of a website. Based upon this my answers to 3 and 4 could differ. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 19:27, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

This being an "internal" discussion page, the answer to (1) will almost invariably be the latter option. --Cybercobra (talk) 19:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea behind your questions, but I don't think they'll accurately capture what people want, mostly because pure "readers" tend to not frequent this or other similar fora. What I think you need to realize is that there is a tension between three things, on Wikipedia: reading, editing, and compatibility. Readers usually want an uncluttered interface with prominent navigation and search functions. Editors generally find those less useful, and prefer lots of information available: tabs that give quick access to various functions, history pages with lots of metadata—the kinds of things a power user goes for. Balanced with each of those is the need for compatibility: people use all sorts of browsers, devices, and computers to access Wikipedia, so the interface must work across all those browsers. Plenty of potential improvements, like inline SVG images, aren't in place in practice because a number of browsers won't support them. This tension needs to be taken into account in any design: readers should be accomodated, but not to the point that the editing interface is hidden, and editors need to be accomodated because they keep the site running: all while avoiding features that will completely break in some browsers. I don't envy you your project! :) {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 22:33, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Discussion about Razzie Awards templates

Please weigh in with your thoughts about having Razzie Awards templates at the bottom of film-related articles. Check in here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Actors_and_Filmmakers#Gaining_consensus:_Razzie_award_templates_at_the_bottom_of_articles. Thanks! Cirt (talk) 05:46, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:WebCite

I have completed a how-to essay, Wikipedia:Using WebCite, that describes how to use WebCite within Wikipedia. It is an analogue of Wikipedia:Using the Wayback Machine. Perhaps people can review it and proofread.--Blargh29 (talk) 01:51, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for a valuable contribution to the how-to field. I have used it, and it works just great. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:30, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

{{BLP dispute}}

This template should only be used on articles with stuff that should be removed: I have reviewed a few and found them to mainly be either sourced or non-controversial, and removed the tag. Obviously any un-sourced controversial material needs to go (and then the tag can too), but there is really no excuse for putting this tag on an article unless one is so unsure about the basic principles of editing that removing the material is "too difficult". Anyone has a couple of spare minutes, please help get the transclusions of this template (not very many) down to zero. Rich Farmbrough, 05:54, 5 November 2009 (UTC).

The War on Prose continues

The article Playhouse Theatre (Seattle) which I recently started has been tagged with {{essay-like}}. I requested clarification from the person who tagged it as to what he objects to, but none has been forthcoming. I don't see anywhere in the piece I have inserted an opinion of my own; the few opinions in the article are cited (and most are direct quotes).

All I can think is that someone is objecting because I'm not falling into the leaden prose style which has become so predominant on Wikipedia this last few years. The problem with essayistic content, as I understand it, is the injection of the writer's opinions and, secondarily, the problem of undue emphasis. It is not that it is detectable that the article was written by a human who has actually written something else in his or her life.

I won't remove the tag myself, but would appreciate it if someone else either can point out specific issues in the article or remove the tag. - Jmabel | Talk 05:50, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

You nailed down what is the typical problem of "essay like" articles-lots of unsourced, personal opinion. I don't see any of those issues with the article and so will remove the tag as invalid. If the editor wishes to restore it, they should put a list on the talk page of specific problems. As an objective, third party I don't see them. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 06:19, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. - Jmabel | Talk 07:18, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I've had a look through it too and don't see any major problems with it. The only issue I would raise is the "The venturesome, multi-ethnic, multiracial, and sometimes explicitly socialist company..." sentence. That is an awful lot of adjectives in one short space. I see that sentence is sourced but to be honest I don't care if you can find direct cites for each and every term in there - it still sounds excessively promotional to me.

I don't really like the {{essay-like}} tag anyway - it does not describe what the fundamental problem is. An essay may contain highly POV statements, it may not: it really depends on what the essay covers. Thinking about it I may nominate it for deletion but I suspect that would be controversial.

In general though, if someone places an article or section template such as this in an article and it is not clear why (and no rationale is given on the talk page or edit summary) I think you should feel free to delete it - point out the lack of a rationale in the edit summary. They can always re-add it with proper reasons. There are far too many people here that seem to thing they are performing some great service by blanket tagging articles without proper consideration. It does not improve things - indeed the tags add clutter and in themselves make things worse. What does improve things is if the perceived issue is addressed and the tag removed, but this cannot be done if it is unclear why the tag is there in the first place. CrispMuncher (talk) 12:54, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

A project you might be interested in

Hi. I've recently initiated an informal WikiProject which will, in theory, help to support the Wikipedia community and its volunteers. I'm looking for a few people to help me get it off the ground, so feel free to join up! Regards, –Juliancolton | ^Talk 05:17, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The project now has a more defined idea of what we plan to do. Basically, we're calling for individual proposals on how to improve Wikipedia. Please help by posting your new ideas! –Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:13, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:United States Government Image Categorizing Week

Just to let people know, I have started an event to tag that category as it can be shrunk with ease. Please feel free to join. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:52, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

This is an entry about the Wikipedia:United States Government Image Categorizing Week event.

If I go to the Category:United States government images, there are 38 subcategories, and this message before a series of images:
"The following 162 files are in this category, out of 3,521 total."

Today, (8 November 2009 (UTC)), the first image was: File:070310-A-4000S-001.jpg first file, U.S. Army National Guard photo by Spc. Gail Sanders

I was able to add the following category, United States Army National Guard

The second image was: File:19620220-JohnGlennMedical.jpg

I was able to add the following categories:

[[Category:United States Astronaut Hall of Fame inductees]] [[Category:United States Marine Corps officers]] [[Category:United States naval aviators]] [[Category:Recipients of the Air Medal]]

After doing this, I tried to remove the United States government image category from these images. This did not work. I get a message that says the category is not found, and maybe it is in a template. Well, maybe it is a result of a template.

So, my question is whether the Wikipedia:United States Government Image Categorizing Week event is doomed to failure, or whether I have somehow misunderstood my experiences with adding categories to these two images. Perhaps they are not representative of the 3,521 images (more or less by the time this is read). Perhaps these images should be in subcategories instead.

Any advice or assistance would be greatly appreciated. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:12, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

The whole category missing thing is normal. Every time you remove a category and go back two pages, it tells you that it can't find the category. It is a result of the template. You have to change the template itself, i.e. add "-Military-Army, Navy, etc." The category will help, but it really doesn't do much to this idea. I also fixed the template issues that you had. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:21, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Um, I know some people don't like commons, but surely this should be moved? Then (and maybe here as well) you'd just need to add one "subject" category, Cat:John Glenn, rather than 6 or 7. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 11:44, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

This project is about images in English Wikipedia, and not about images in WikiMedia Commons. --DThomsen8 (talk) 17:02, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Exactemundo. Maybe they should be moved to commons as part of the project, while you're at it. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 21:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

For clarification on Dthomsen8's post, I meant adding a template ending such as "-Military-Army, Navy, etc." You can also change the categories by changing what the template says. It's a common thing among these templates to be confusing, so I can understand where your coming from. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:45, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Nominations now open for the Arbitration Committee elections, December 2009

Nominations are now open for candidates to run in the Arbitration Committee elections of December 2009 (WP:ACE2009). In order to be eligible to run, editors must have 1,000 mainspace edits, be at least 18 years of age, and be of legal age in their place of residence; note also that successful candidates must identify to the Wikimedia Foundation before taking their seats. Nominations will be accepted from today, November 10, through November 24, with voting scheduled to begin on December 1. To submit your candidacy, proceed to the candidate statements page. The conditions of the election are currently under discussion; all editors are encouraged to participate. For the coordination cabal,  Skomorokh, barbarian  01:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Civility in Wikipedia

Civility is expected in Wikipedia. Do I have any remedy if I am called foul names? --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:56, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

“If you can't answer a man's argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names” · Elbert Hubbard. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:59, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:WQA, WP:ANI, WP:ARBCOM, etc. OrangeDog (talk) 19:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Hell is other people. If you encounter an insurmountable annoyance that is causing significant levels of aggravation, the best remedy is usually to stay away from wikipedia for a few days. When you come back your situation will likely be much improved.—RJH (talk) 00:03, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Defend Each Other. Don't defend yourself. If you think more defense is needed, go out and defend others. If a particular individual is upsetting you, ignore him. Wikipedia is a big place. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:36, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, previous ArbCom case(s) basically said that DefendEachOther is not an OK principle on Wikipedia.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 23:27, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

It depends on how you interpret it. I am doing it all the time and only the very first time (when nobody knew me) did people have a problem with that. I believe whether it's OK or not to defend someone really depends (among other things) on the merits of the case and on your motivations for doing it. And you must keep in mind that both factors may be misjudged, especially when you are a relatively unknown user. Hans Adler 01:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The best remedy is to not give a fuck. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 14:47, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that civility means never call other editors bad names, and don't use foul language in any case. Feel free to think that I am old-fashioned by saying that. --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:20, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

New essay at Wikipedia:Linkrot

Over the past few weeks, several editors have revamped the Wikipedia:Linkrot essay. Please take a look.--Blargh29 (talk) 06:40, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Good work! --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:21, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Urgent! Last call for votes: AUSC October 2009 elections

There's only one day to go! The Audit Subcommittee election, using SecurePoll, closes at 23:59 (UTC) 8 November. Three community members will be appointed to supervise use of the CheckUser and OverSight tools. If you wish to vote you must do so urgently. Here's how:

• Visit the election "home page" for an overview;
• Review the candidate's statements: Dominic • Frank • Jredmond • KillerChihuahua •

MBisanz • Tznkai;

• Or go straight to your personal voting page:

here.

For the Arbitration Committee, — Rlevse • Talk • 17:01, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Voting in this election is closed. --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:23, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Municipal authorities/special district governments

According to the US Census Bureau, the state of Pennsylvania has 1,728 special district governments and municipal authorities. These are organizations set up by local governments with delegated sovereignty to perform government functions. Some examples are Housing authorities, or stadium authorities. Many have taxation and condemnation power, as well as some level of sovereign immunity. It is my understanding that municipal governments are pretty much notable, even without independent, secondary sources. So, here's my question: would special governmental districts be be similarly inherently notable? If so, is there a bot that could take data from the U.S. Census Bureau Census of Governments and make stubs for them? I think this would be very powerful material for the encyclopedia.--Blargh29 (talk) 16:12, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

You are right, a bot that could do this would be very powerful, but perhaps too powerful for current Pennsylvania editors to absorb 1,728 new stub articles. I would suggest that it would be better to have specific examples as a starting place. Perhaps there are existing special district governments to serve as examples. Perhaps some special services districts could have new articles written about them. For example, in Philadelphia we have the Center City Special Services District (http://www.centercityphila.org/) and the Philadelphia Sports Complex Special Services District (www.scssd.org) as examples, but there are no articles on them.

You might also explain how to drill down to the specific Census of Governments website to a specific example, to show us what information is available in the U.S. Census database.--DThomsen8 (talk) 17:01, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Here are some prominent examples from Pittsburgh: Sports & Exhibition Authority of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, Stadium Authority of the City of Pittsburgh. I think that I can create a spreadsheet with a pretty decent data array that would at least be a decent stub. As far as having this many articles created by a bot, it is my understanding that many articles for tiny municipalities in the US were created by a bot from Census 2000 data. Give me a few hours to get some examples of what kind of kind of data can be mined from the Census of Governments. By the way, depending on how this goes, this could provide a good template for expansion to all US States, thus creating tens of thousands of great stub articles.--Blargh29 (talk) 17:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Here is the link to the database [17].--Blargh29 (talk) 15:58, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Go ahead and provide examples. I would be especially interested in special services districts and any authorities in Philadelphia, whether a SSD or not. Are you sure that there is no notability issue? After all, a water authority in Elk county, PA, is of limited interest elsewhere. On the other hand, there is certainly the argument that Pennsylvania has far too many different governments for its population. --DThomsen8 (talk) 20:54, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I wondered myself about the notability for something small like a water authority in Elk County. I think that these organizations are governmental authorities, with requisite governmental powers like taxation and condemnation authority, so they should be notable. Even subjects of local concern can be notable. Plus, there will be many Reliable sources for all of these authorities, as they are all studied by the Census of Governments and are all required to publish certain data for the public, including bylaws and meeting minutes. Just about every local newspaper is chock full of reports about local meetings.--Blargh29 (talk) 04:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Here is my vision for how this would work. I have downloaded an .xls file with data on the operation of each municipal authority. It is my understanding that a bot can draw data from such a spreadsheet and plug it into an article template. So, here is a possible template: User:Blargh29/Elk Water2. Here is an example of how that could look after the bot takes the data from the spreadsheet: User:Blargh29/Elk Water.--Blargh29 (talk) 04:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The examples convince me you have a good idea. I have been poking around in the Census database, and learned some things there. First, you can include the ZIP code, and in some cases, the ZIP+4 in the address. Second, some of the purposes are so general, there can't be a Wiki link, but in at least some cases, editors can figure out the appropriate purposes from the name. Of course, I am amused that you found a water and sewer authority in Elk county, PA. --DThomsen8 (talk) 11:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Can the bot also create a talk page, showing the Pennsylvania template with class=stub|importance=|, and the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh templates for their counties? I have worked hard to reduce the number of Philadelphia articles that are not rated with both class and importance, and I would not like to go backwards on that work.--DThomsen8 (talk) 14:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Please don't create any articles until notability - that is, as specifically defined by WP:N - has actually been established. The last thing we need is another dump of un-expandable stubs that should have instead been put into a couple of list articles. That there might be lots of reliable sources is not a "plus", it is the be all and end all of notability and must be checked beforehand. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:21, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

OrangeDog has a good idea about lists. We should look into making list articles from the Census of Governments information, probably divided up by the kind of district. One difficulty would be if the links to existing articles could be included in the lists. What do you think about that, Blargh29?

Cities and towns have generally been granted "inherent notability" because it is presumed that sufficient sources exist to satisfy inclusion criteria. This presumption is occasionally disputed, and as such it would be a bad idea to begin extending said "presumed" notability to other governmental entities without broader discussion on the topic. Before anyone starts talking about a bot to spit out thousands of new sub-stubs based on presumptive notability, you need to get some consensus that it is even a good idea. Shereth 20:53, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I am strongly opposed to the entire concept of bot-created articles. Blueboar (talk) 14:44, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I have officially made this proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Municipal authorities/special district governments, which is probably a better place to hash out the notability question.--Blargh29 (talk) 22:56, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

monobook font changed?

Did the monobook font change today? I'm not in the beta usability rollout, but it looks.. different. Smaller or more serif-y or more compact or something. No, I didn't change my font size in the browser, it appears to be something unique to Wikipedia. Has it changed, and is there a way to change it back? tedder (talk) 06:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Link Underlining

I've always had my preferences set to underline links, but today I noticed they're no longer underlined even though the option is still set in My Preferences. Is this something that was recently changed, or is it on my end? --LP ^talk 05:30, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

It may be due to problems with the fundraiser ads; watch this space.  Skomorokh, barbarian  05:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

• See: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 67#"Wikipedia Forever" banner / Change in link styles?.
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 05:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I figured if anyone else was having the same problem, it would appear elsewhere, but I overlooked that item. Next we'll probably find out the fundraising banner was responsible for the Kennedy assassination. --LP ^talk 06:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Glad to know that those with the power to launch something like this across multiple sites don't have the common sense to actually TEST THEIR CODE first. A disgrace to web coders everywhere. JPG-GR (talk) 07:18, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Deletion stats

What percentage of all the articles created by: a. Non-autoconfirmed registered users b. Auto-confirmed registered users get deleted via: 1. speedy deletion, 2. proposed deletion and 3. articles for deletion? Thanks! Fences&Windows 20:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Britannica

If anybody is struggling to find information to use to update or improve Wikipedia, a good website to use for this is Brittanica online encyclopedia : http://www.britannica.com/ Harls (talk) 20:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

...is this a joke? seriously?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 04:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Per WP:TERTIARY, "Tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources. Some tertiary sources may be more reliable than others, and within any given tertiary source, some articles may be more reliable than others." So Britannica could be used as a source, though I'd not use it myself. Fences&Windows 01:27, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in SecurePoll feedback and workshop

Interested editors are invited to participate in the SecurePoll feedback and workshop. SecurePoll was recently used in the Audit Subcommittee election, and has been proposed for use for the upcoming Arbitration Committee election at this current request for comment (RFC). Your comments, suggestions and observations are welcome.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Dougweller (talk) 09:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

medulla oblongata

In a recent PBS program concerning a group of people that walked on all fours, it was discovered that there was an anomaly in the medulla oblongata that affected balance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.251.73.244 (talk) 20:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

If you think this needs to be covered in the article at medulla oblongata, please discuss it at Talk:Medulla oblongata. Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 21:22, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia logo discussion

I was wondering if there are any open discussions regarding the Wikipedia logo, its appearance and so forth. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 04:48, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. Then again, I don't actively look for anything like that. Why? Do you think it's time we should change it? Anakinjmt (talk) 06:29, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes and no. I recently nagged our Volunteer Coordinator about this at meta:User_talk:Bastique#Wikipedia_logo. See that thread for a slew of relevant links. meta:Talk:Wikipedia/Logo is the primary place for discussion, currently. I don't know if any discussions have been occurring on-wiki recently though. (See also this blogpost ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:34, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think the current logo looks old and dated next to the new skin (Beta). I would also prefer a vector image like the rest of the MediaWiki sites to the current bitmap. SharkD (talk) 06:35, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

If by "current logo" you mean the strange new "Wikipedia Forever" banners, I must agree they look bad, and not just in the new skin, as well as being just, well, kind of dumb and reinforcing the idea of Wikipedia as some kind of a cult or "movement". Did you ever notice that anything that generates a slogan "XXXX Forever!" never lasts long? Is there some place (other than here) where this banner is being discussed and I can add an opinion? Jgm (talk) 16:47, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Abolish_the_silly_headers and the links at the top and bottom of its subthreads. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

POV advice

HAI2U! Policy-ish question... So, for many years several editors from many diverse articles have been dealing with a persistent POV-warrior who takes every possible opportunity to misstate facts, misrepresent sources, and misapply policy to service his agenda. We have let this go on literally for years, and several of us have come to the realization that additional assumption of good faith is pointless. A topic ban or community ban is likely in order, but it is going to take us a while to assemble all the evidence. However, I've seen plenty of editors accused of harboring "drop files" or "attack pages" and I want to check with the community before starting down this road. There is, in my mind, no doubt that we can put together a very compelling case -- we have editors and admins from multiple articles that have fought his bias for years -- but the patterns are so long term and the incidents are spread across so many articles that is going to take some type of coordination to put together a coherent and compelling case. In normal circumstances I'd just do it locally with vi and upload when done, however to really give the case justice we need to have a place we can gather and store evidence, and collaborate on assembling the case before presenting it to ANI and/or ArbCom for adjudication. What is the best course of action? Thanks in advance! //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 18:19, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The sollution is to compile your "evidence" off wiki ... and then copy it over when you actually file a complaint. Blueboar (talk) 17:51, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedians in South Bethlehem

I look for Wikipedian in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The cause: in South Bethlehem was work the Slovene tidings: Amerikanszki Szlovénczov Glász and if somebody look for archive tidings and if take a photo. Doncsecz^znánje 20:43, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Shopping Wikipedia Shirts

Where can I shop a Wikipedia shirt? I'm a contributor to wikipedia, and I though I do not must sent money, but I want to buy a shirt. Pérez (talk) 09:18, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

• Here you go: Cafe Press
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 11:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Commons

can File:Eminem at DJ Hero Party.jpg be transfered to commons? i'd transfer it myself, but i'm not sure of copyright of that image --SveroH (talk) 14:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we can't take the uploader's word on the fact that the youtube uploader gave him permission. The copyright holder of the youtube video needs to send permission to OTRS, so that we can verify they agree to release the screenshot under a free license. To that end, I have tagged the image for deletion, unless we get permission. Commons only accepts freely licensed images. Killiondude (talk) 23:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

SharedIPCORP

There is a new shared IP template for use on corporate networks: {{SharedIPCORP}}. Figured we needed one for corporate networks since we have {{SharedIPEDU}}, {{SharedIPPublic}}, {{SharedIPUSMilitary}}, and {{MobileIP}}. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 21:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Offline sources

There's a new essay at Wikipedia:Offline sources that explains the use of offline sources within Wikipedia, a frequent source of confusion among editors.--Blargh29 (talk) 06:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Usurpation of my old account name

A user whose only purpose so far on Wikipedia has been reverting my edits on this article, "Kitab al Majmu", has now taken the name of my old account (Funkynusayri), before I changed the name to the current one, and his account now sill redirects to mine! Isn't there some sort of protection against this? See revision history of the Kitab al Majmu article for more info. Furthermore, my old account name was rather unique, no one else would make it up themselves unless they wanted to harass me, so can't it be blocked for new users or something? FunkMonk (talk) 06:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

This probably should have been brought up at WP:ANI or WP:UAA, but as it appears the account was created to harass an existing good-faith user (since the editor's only edit is to revert FunkMonk's edit), I have blocked the account indefinitely. Firsfron of Ronchester 07:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Wasn't sure where it would be appropriate to bring up, but was also a bit upset, so didn't look too carefully. And thanks again! FunkMonk (talk) 07:28, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

World Genseiryū Karate-dō Federation

I would like to get the attention of some moderators to the article about World Genseiryū Karate-dō Federation (WGKF). In the past, Peter Lee has caused some trouble on this and also on other articles, like Genseiryu, writing unfactual stories. In the recent months he has ruined the article on WGKF with name slandering, false accusations and so on, all without backing it up. Of course he cannot. The only thing he wants is to bring the WGKF and persons inside that organization into discredit. I don't care what you people know about karate or about Genseiryu, but if you would just have a look at what he write, you can clearly see that everything he says is totally against the policies of Wikipedia. I have reverted the story MANY times, but he keeps reverting it back, calling ME a vandal. It is Peter Lee who is the vandal, for he is turning a NPOV story into a personal ferry tale, full of unfactual accusations that is putting other people in a bad daylight. It's now like a personal vendetta to him, for he simply keeps going on with this. None of his claims and accusations he wants to back up with evidence. I warned him on his talk page, but he keeps deleting everything there. Please, point out to him that he cannot just slander somebody's name on Wikipedia, just because he doesn't like the person... Thank you for your help! MarioR 03:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

There are no "moderators" on Wikipedia; perhaps you meant administrators? You can try asking the admins to intervene by posting at WP:ANI. You can also post at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard for advice/help/assistance from non-admins. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:50, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Oops... My bad... Little mistake. It's because of my mother tongue. In Dutch we do call it "moderator", but this translates into English as "administrator". So that is indeed what I meant. Thanks, also for the tips! --MarioR 16:34, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Using "unofficial" logos in university infoboxes

A discussion regarding the appropriateness of using unofficial logos in an infobox to represent a university has begun at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Universities#Using_.22unofficial.22_logos_in_university_infoboxes. Your input is welcome. Thanks, --Hammersoft (talk) 17:28, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Questions regarding characteristics of new Wikipedians

Hi, I've posted some questions regarding new Wikipedia users on the talk page of the Welcoming Committee. If you have the time to help us out, please go have a look, much appreciated! Regards, Nettrom (talk) 19:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Who's youve?

User:Youve's Talking Page Who's youve?--Badbread123 (talk) 06:07, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

This is actually not the place to ask questions, I think you want Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous). Also, your question is not clear - I could not find this user on English Wikipedia.--Commander Keane (talk) 06:29, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

 Done Moved. --Badbread123 (talk) 22:28, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Vote

Would you please vote for the Friendly discussion here? Thank you. Btilm 01:30, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

FfD daily pages

I recently brought up a subject on the FfD talk page, but noone responded. This seemed like a next logical place to point it out. Any input would be appreciated.--Rockfang (talk) 06:23, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Copyright violation, need assistance.

Lawrence County, Pennsylvania#Historical markers is a copyright violation. See the talk page. I stumbled on this while doing updates to every Category:Pennsylvania counties entry for a county. Pursuing this copyright violation is beyond my interests or skills. Please help. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:41, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

CAT:TEMP

What are we going to do about CAT:TEMP? It's an absolute nightmare. Most of it is old user talk pages full of auto-messages which can be safely deleted. It's apparently even got socks in it (which I can't confirm - the sock cats have the user pages, but this one has the talk pages). It's pretty useless as is. Any ideas? — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Just leave it alone? Presumably the backlog reflects the level of interest in this issue. Or we could create a bot to delete these pages if they are a problem. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:17, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem is the uncertain consensus over the page. That the category exists suggests that they can be deleted, but if you actually try to do so, someone will probably yell at you for deleting out of process. Mr.Z-man 00:51, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Runcible articles

Hi, I found out that runcible has several WP entries, namely :

• Runcible spoon
• Runcible Jones Quintet
• Runcible Jones: The Buried City
• Runcible Jones: The Frozen Compass
• Runcible Jones: The Gate to Nowhere

As runcible redirects to runcible spoon, I was at first going to make it a disambig page. Then I figured out that according to the article runcible spoon, runcible is an adjective used not only for spoons. Moreover, all other "runcible" articles are about the same thing. So I don't know what to do anymore, and don't really care, this is why I leave this message right there hoping that someone interested in it will do whatever he/she finds the most accurate. Skippy le Grand Gourou (talk) 16:51, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I have added a {{Redirect}} hatnote to Runcible spoon.[18] PrimeHunter (talk) 17:14, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Great, I think that solves the problem. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 20:58, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

The wiktionary logo

There has been an earlier attempt to come up with a logo for wiktionary. The Dutch wiktionary did not initiate this drive but we did loyally adopt its outcome, as did numerous other sister sites. Sadly, the anglophone wiktionary did what anglophones always do: if it is not your idea, you boycott it. (This holds for the metric system, for the Kyoto protocol and for many another occasion.)

So, this time we boycott you. The Dutch wiktionary will not adopt any logo that comes out of the current procedures. They simply lack democratic credibility and represent an imposition by en.wiktionary.

If you really want a different logo than the tile one this is the proper procedure:

1. ADOPT the tile logo (yes: you follow, not lead)
2. KEEP it for say a year
3. THEN ask other sites if they have a desire for change
4. THEN start a new vote

nl:Gebruiker:Jcwf Jcwf (talk) 21:11, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary's that way. That's really the place you need to be raising this, not here, though I dare say insulting the other side will not get you too far either way. Plus, I'm sitting here in England, happily using the metric system and abiding by the Kyoto protocol, thanks very much. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 21:17, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Take it to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo/refresh, and keep the insults to yourself please. Fences&Windows 21:44, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

New place for on-topic, but non-editing discussions - WikiChat

Ever want to engage in discussion of the subject matter of a topic, but can't because it's WikiChat ("text whose purpose is anything other than improving the related article—usually a comment about the subject an article, rather than about the wording or information in the article")? There's now a wiki in which to do it in which each entry is tied to an en-Wikipedia article: WikiChat. Give it a try! TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 22:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee Elections: last calls for candidates, comments on process

This is a reminder that the nominations phase of the December 2009 elections to select new members of the Arbitration Committee, as well as the Request for Comment|Request for Comment on the conditions for the elections and the 2010 Committee, will close on November 24, in one day's time.

If you have been considering running as a candidate in this year's election to the Committee, now is the time to make the decision. It's worth noting that there are twenty-two candidates at the time of writing, six fewer than last year, and so with eight seats available the field is not as competitive as might have been expected. All editors who had made 1,000 mainspace edits by November 10, 2009, are over 18 years of age and of the age of majority in their nation of residence, and are willing to identify themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation are eligible to stand as candidates. You can declare your candidacy by following the instructions at the candidate statements page.

The Request for Comment on the Arbitration Committee covers the conditions for the elections and the Committee in 2010. Specific issues under debate include term lengths, number of seats, election methods, ballot transparency, the tranche system, threshold for successful candidacies and voter eligibility. If you want to participate in the discussion on any of these issues, you have less than a day to have your voice heard. For the coordinators,  Skomorokh, barbarian  01:34, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:Pathnav

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Template:Pathnav

Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Loss of merged content and history

How can one find the content and history of articles that have been merged into others? There was an article on-poetry. This was suddenly merged into digital poetry, and now I can't find what got merged out of exist'nce. Kdammers (talk) 09:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

• I am guessing you meant e-poetry, going by this. There was a copy-and-paste-ish merge that took place back in 2007 (here and here). — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:lang-sa

It should just link to Sanskrit, since Sanskrit language redirects to Sanskrit. --76.211.91.135 (talk) 00:45, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

So you end up at the correct article: what's the problem? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 22:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:lang-sa uses Template:LangWithName which always makes a piped link to "X language". If you want an option to omit "language" then you can suggest it at Template talk:LangWithName, but I don't see the need. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

http://twitter.com/Wikipedia

Is this really an "official" Twitter account as it claims? –xeno^talk 18:59, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not verified by Twitter, but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't an "official" account for Wikipedia. Twitter now tries to authenticate accounts that claim to be famous people/groups/etc so things like this don't happen. Killiondude (talk) 20:10, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Novice editors breaking citations

I've noticed a number of novice editors and IP editors make the same error: They delete some prose along with its reference, but because other parts of the article may call for that same reference (e.g., like <ref name="fubar"/>, where the original "fubar" ref was deleted), it leads to lost information and errors. This seems to me like it's primarily a design flaw of Wikipedia, and it's difficult to explain to new editors what they need to do to prevent the issue or to fix it when it occurs.

Does anyone have suggestions for how best to approach this issue, or how best to explain it to new editors? —Notyourbroom (talk) 23:22, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

There's a feature called "list-defined references" whereby you name all the references in an article and group them into a list in (e.g.) the References section. Citations then use the usual named reference syntax, but because all the definitions are held in one place there's no risk of deleting them along with prose. However, this can make the edit-a-single-section model more difficult. Ideally what is needed is a dual-panel editing paradigm (one panel for article text and the other for references) with drag-drop or similar between them. - Pointillist (talk) 00:24, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

There's also a bot that goes around fixing these. Example edit --Cybercobra (talk) 02:39, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm a user and supporter of WP:LDR; this is an advantage I hadn't considered. Just makes it even better.--SPhilbrickT 22:03, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Can someone move that this be made the default/recommended referencing method? It gets rather hard to edit articles that use massive inline reference templates, since the flow of prose is just so broken up, epescially when several site right next to each other, every few words. 76.66.197.2 (talk) 13:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Help in adding category to Domesday Book settlements

There are 13,418 English places listed in the Domesday Book of 1086; and many of the wikipedia articles for English settlements make reference to their inclusion as this is often the first record of a particular place. These articles usually include a link back to the Domesday Book article.

There is a category Places listed in the Domesday Book which is an attempt to link and organise these pages - but the task of manually adding this category to every appropriate article is daunting.

There is not currently a bot to automate this task, so if editors reviewing English settlement/placename articles can add this category to pages where appropriate this will help with categorisation of these articles.

Josephus (talk) 10:52, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Have you considered using WP:AWB to help you add the categories to a list of pages? You'd just about be eligible I think, if you said why you wanted to us it. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 17:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Since the category currently contains only 11 members, and is very likely to be regarded as not defining by many people, at least for many places, you should certainly take it to WP:CFD before adding the other 13,411. AWB should be saying this to people with such requests. Johnbod (talk) 19:32, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, perhaps a list would be better on reflection. How should AWB be telling people this? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 19:41, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, when they ask questions like the one above, for a start. Johnbod (talk) 20:34, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

• CFD now opened Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_23#Category:Places_listed_in_the_Domesday_Book. Johnbod (talk) 20:34, 24 November 2009 (UTC)