Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 20

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Village pump (miscellaneous) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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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What's your favorite entry?

I'm trying to read every wiki entry. I have a log of my progress. I'm unavoidably missing some of the best article updates out there - so what's your favorite wiki article? Tell me your favorite wiki encyclopedia entry and I'll tell you the date on which I've read it. Chickenbattered (talk) 00:55, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

You are aware that there are 2,898,238 articles? If you want a list of good articles, see Category:Featured articles. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 06:32, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

2,898,241 now. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 06:35, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

6,928,752 now, mwahahhahwah! Hopefully this thread needs no more updates. — CharlotteWebb 11:10, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't be so negative. If Chickenbattered reads an article per second, 24x7, that's only about 34 days worth of reading - no problem! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 11:17, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I make it 80.193888888889. =P.

If you were to do the same with just FAs, you'd only need 0.076851851851852 days. If you want to be more realistic and say an FA every 3 minutes, it would take 13.833333333333 days. (I hope I've got my sums right, rather than just embarrassing myself :S). Dendodge _T\^C 17:58, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

My buddy Hal can read them all in 80.193888888889 μs, but the folks over at AfD had him blocked from contributing a while ago for some reason. Sswonk (talk) 18:17, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget that he may go through all revisions! :P 93.86.201.173 (talk) 17:13, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

pollockfineart.com reuses content without appropriate notice

pollockfineart.com seems to reuse wikipedia content with a notice claiming their own copyright, that is unless it is the wikipedia article that has taken material from this site.

http://pollockfineart.com/artists_biography.php?r=e8804c09dbe02a1e42075c30e9011e65 http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Hans_Bellmer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.103.153.48 (talk) 10:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter is the typical practice IIRC. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 18:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft Bing rehosting Wikipedia content

Wondering what people think about the new Microsoft Bing search engine. In particular, it's 'enhanced view' option which rehosts entire Wikipedia articles under the Bing domain. For instance, a search at Bing for Love Canal turns up this result with the enhanced view click leading here. As far as I can tell this appears compliant with GFDL, although the GFDL has its obscure side so I wouldn't pretend to be the final word on that. Opinions? Comments? Durova^Charge! 20:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Seems to me that this sort of thing is part of the whole mission of Wikipedia. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

They seem to have mastered the content bit, but the rendering is appalling. I chose my old favourite Glossop and looked at it Bing version using Firefox 3.0.10 on Ubuntu 9.04. Everything seems fine till we encounter a table- then the word wrap dies and templates such as { {reflist|2} } are clipped. Anyway, we can all tweak our CVs to say that we are professional authors published by Microsoft! ClemRutter (talk) 22:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Haven't tried it yet. I should do a trial run the next time I trawl through AFDs; that is, instead of doing a Google search, I will do a Bing search. MuZemike 21:36, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Findsources template

Tangentially related (I'm putting this as a subsection of here), perhaps we could add the results of a Bing search to the {{findsources}} template along with the Google searches provided. MuZemike 21:39, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

New Carissa's stern is not on the beach

Being mostly active at Dutch Wikipedia I am not quite sure how to correct the error I found in Portal:Featured content. This page seems to show abstracts of featured articles in random order. The abstract of the New Carissa text blunders quite badly, stating that there are plans to remove the stern of the ship from the beach while the article says it has already been removed in 2008. Please could someone correct the faulty sentence? Thanks, Bertux (talk) 23:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

The featured article blurb Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 31, 2007 appears as it did when it was featured on the Main Page. These blurbs are not updated as they act as archives of how it appeared on the Main Page. Cheers, BanyanTree 07:25, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Readers Don't Use Discussion Pages

Though I've participated in editing a few Wikipedia articles, I, like the rest of the world, am primarily a consumer of the Wikipedia as a source of information.

I don't, a priori, trust or not trust information that I read on Wikipedia. I approach my reading of the New York Times the same way. Where Wikipedia is far superior to the New York Times is that the process of creating the information is transparent due to the "discussion" and "history" functionalites.

I've conducted a small survey which confirmed my guesses: a significant percentage of users have never noticed the discussion link; another significant percentage of people have noticed it but never clicked on the link. A tiny percentage click on the discussion link as part of their regular Wikipedia reading habits.

So here are my questions:

1. Is there concern in the Wikipedia community that readers of Wikipedia are not aware of the powerful tools available to help them determine the reliability of the information within articles?
2. Does anyone know of other research, usability studies, etc on how people use Wikipedia?
3. Are there references, within Wikipedia or elsewhere, that folks can send me to where this issue is being discussed?

Sam* (talk) 14:13, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a usability study being done now, I believe. Talk pages in themselves do not necessarily need to be used to judge the reliability of the sources, what they could be used to do is question the reliability of sources, discuss possible changes - mostly for the benefit of editors. Whilst everyone is encouraged to contribute, most users do not do any editing other than typographically. Someone may well know about whether this is being covered in the aforementioned study / previews.

- Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 14:35, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

"Talk pages in themselves do not necessarily need to be used to judge the reliability of the sources." Do you have a better suggestion, especially for someone who isn't an expert on the topic? Even if a user has no intention of adding to the discussion by questioning a source or participating actively, there is so much to be gained in evaluating an article simply by reading the discussion, especially combined with looking at the history. A reader can ask him/herself the following questions among others:

1. How many people are involved?
2. What is the tone of the debate?
3. Have significant sections been removed or added in the context of a controversy?
4. If there are sides, which side sounds more reasonable and has the better arguments?

At any given moment, the current Wikipedia article may reflect the influence of people in the discussion who look less trustworthy. The harm that folks with poor facts or an agenda can cause at any given time in a particular Wikipedia article is mitigated by the fact that their process is transparent and can be deduced by a skilled reader of Wikipedia.

Instead of actually teaching people how to use these tremendous tools, to leverage the transparency, many teachers and policy makers simply ban students from using the Wikipedia.

Maybe part of the problem is that the Wikipedia editorial community doesn't see the value of promoting general readers to use discussion and history links for the purpose of helping readers to determine reliability of articles.

Sam* (talk) 16:15, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I do think they should use talk pages to question sources and combined with history to check whether anything has been added or removed, but for the majority of pages it isn't necessary. They're very useful for guaging opinions, but one can more easily be mislead by the discussions into misrepresented opinions. In a way, that's the point: opinions, widespread or not, on talk pages, such that the article itself can be neatral and balanced. I agree with almost everything above: the one point I'd make though is that say you come to Wikipedia to find the MP for Darlington, for example, then reading the talk page to judge the accuracy just isn't necessary, but useful should you require further information. The question here is about using it more than it currently is for casual readers. In theory, the article itself should contain enough references that you can check the accuracy and/or reliability. Talk pages should really feed to the article itself on points of reliability, sources or clarity.

- Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 16:30, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

People using offline reference materials (or those hosted online that are not openly edited and don't include discussion forums or pages) determine reliability the old-fashioned way: by examining the references. What's wrong with people doing that here? It's particularly easy in most cases, because direct links are provided. I just don't see how looking at the talk page will enhance any user's ability to determine whether a given source is reliable, especially given how the talk pages of controversial subjects tend to degenerate into long drawn out arguments over minutia. Not that I have an objection to people using talk pages or getting into discussions, but I don't really see the point here: people should be able to determine for themselves whether or not something is reliable. The number of people involved in discussing an article, which sides they're on and how convincing their arguments are, the tone of the debate, and the removal or addition of sections say nothing about a given source's reliability.

Exploding Boy (talk) 16:32, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

What's the point?

1. Many articles have offline references which are not easily checked by a reader and so readers need other ways to determine reliability.
2. Many readers want articles with references but don't want to read references themselves. That's why having access to the discussion pages is so powerful. It gives the reader a lot of tools to evaluate the article without having to read sources on topics on which they may not be expert.
3. I wouldn't underestimate readers' ability to sort through the personalities, agendas, minutia vs. critical components of a discussion page. Big problems are that many people don't even know about or understand the value of discussion and history pages. And that includes teachers, who then fail to teach these tools.
4. A lot of the "evaluation" that needs to be done regarding articles on Wikipedia is for casual use, not academic use. So a quick scan of the discussion page combined with history can be an efficient way to get some information about whether the authors have agendas and whether the topic is controversial.

Sam* (talk) 17:01, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The great majority of references used here are online; anyone using Wikipedia who needs to delve into offline references is likely doing the kind of research, academic or otherwise, that requires them to (a) be able to assess the reliability of a given source and (b) find suitable sources themselves. People who "want articles with references but don't want to read references themselves" (what people? and why?) are probably hobbyists, in the sense that they're not using Wikipedia to supplement academic or professional research. I still don't see how following the talk page discussion will help them determine whether a source is reliable. If teachers aren't training their students to look at Wikipedia talk pages, I'd suggest there are other reasons, namely (1) Wikipedia is not, in general, considered a reliable academic reference, and (2) students are supposed to be learning (i) to do their own research and (ii) how to evaluate the reliability of sources they encounter.

To be honest, I don't see the point of this section at all. If we're saying that not enough people who edit Wikipedia use the article talk pages, that may be true. We need people to use the talk pages so they can familiarize themselves with issues surrounding the articles they edit, so that they don't inadvertently edit against consensus, for example. But the idea that talk pages can and should be used for research purposes (specifically into the subject of the article) seems like a stretch: there are far more useful, practical and academic was of enhancing one's understanding of a topic and determining the reliability of sources.

Exploding Boy (talk) 17:14, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

In response to Jarry1250 who writes that in many cases, "reading the talk page to judge the accuracy just isn't necessary," I think Jarry1250 may be underestimating the degree to which the reliability of Wikipedia and its processes is held in suspicion by many people. Bad press has dampened the reputation of the Wikipedia, especially in K-12 education circles. I believe that Wikipedia's transparent process in how articles are created is Wikipedia's greatest defense. "Transparency" is a hot concept in discussion about good government, good business management etc... The Wikipedia is a huge social experiment which has transparency built in to the software platform on which it is run. In my opinion, not enough people, including within the Wikipedia community, are trumpeting that fact and showing people how to use it.

Sam* (talk) 18:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

What we need to do is improve the reliability of everything - and this is an ongoing concern. Is the proposal here to encourage people to use talk pages more. Fair enough idea, if there's is something you think more people should be doing - like questioning sources, challenging material etc. If that's the idea, then come up with a way to do it, outline pros/cons and let us not vote on it. I just think that encouraging people to question the articles will undermine, not improve perceived reliability (it will probably improve actual reliability IMO).

- Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 18:56, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Jarry1250, Thanks for the encouragement. I'm actually writing an article for a Jewish education journal now in which I want to promote the use of Wikipedia and deeper engagement by teachers and students to become editors/contributors and better readers of Wikipedia. As I'm thinking about this article, I was curious to get some reaction to one piece of it, my hunch that users of Wikipedia don't use the history and discussion links and don't even know what they are for. This thread has been helpful to me in that pursuit. Jarry1250, if you do have any more details, a link etc. about ongoing usability work within Wikipedia, I'd be curious about those details.

Regarding your encouragement of me to draft a proposal for a not vote, I much appreciate the encouragement. I think what I would need to do in advance of that would be to look in much more depth at the current help and "how to" pages that exist here at Wikipedia.

Jarry1250 writes, "I just think that encouraging people to question the articles will undermine, not improve perceived reliability (it will probably improve actual reliability IMO)." For non-critical readers of Wikipedia it's possible that WP's perceived reliability may go down a bit if we do a lot more promotion of Wikipedia's process and invite people in more broadly to look "underneath the hood." I can't see how that is a bad thing. Why wouldn't you want more critical readers who understand better how Wikipedia works? More people might become involved as contributors and editors. And to those who are currently hyper-critical, like many K-12 educators, I think that emphasizing Wikipidea's process could help them trust it.

In the end, the goal for me is not that Wikipedia could produce, by clever collaborative means, an encyclopedia which is better than the ones you pay for. That's likely true and wonderful. For me, Wikipedia's tranparency and openness model the knowledge-making of the future. It also emphasizes that "critical reading" and "reading" must become synonymous. Wikipedia's radical openness invites its readers to be aware of that. The NY Times wants you to just trust them. I won't "just trust" the NY Times. And I don't think Wikipedia should have as its goal that its readers will simply "just trust" Wikipedia. Every reader should be invited in to be a part of the process.

Sam* (talk) 20:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Talk pages are definitely a good way to contribute, although Wikipedia policy does prefer being bold for most things. I can't really say anything more.

- Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 21:05, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Jarry1250

Sam* (talk) 21:30, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I only read half the thread, but I just wanted to point out that the newest usability study's information can be found here.

Killiondude (talk) 20:41, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Killiondude that study is interesting. However, that study is about how user's can be brought into the fold as editors: what are the barriers etc. I'm more interested in understanding how readers read Wikipedia. The issues are related though. Thanks.

Sam* (talk) 21:30, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I won't say that there are no such studies, just that I've never heard of any, and I doubt that any such have been done. The reason is that the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, certainly would not pay for such a study (its current focus is on trying to increase editors and edits), and there really isn't anyone else that cares that much (in the sense of "Now that we know how readers use or don't use talk pages, let's try to change that). But I could be wrong; you might want to review the studies listed at Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

{{Expand}} + {{Stub}} = ?

Using both is discouraged (the need to expand is implicit in the stub message, and having a big box saying it at the top can overwhelm), but what should you do if you do find both used on the same page? Is it worth removing {{Expand}}, or is that just wasting an edit? What about the other 1215 articles? (Some might have Expand section though). Is mass removal desirable? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:57, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Per WP:STUB, one of them should be removed. The {{expand}} maintenance template is supposed to be used for articles already past Stub-status. If you have AutoWikiBrowser, you could generate a list that contains both templates. After that, however, it would need to be sorted out by hand as to which template should be removed. MuZemike 21:34, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how pressing this is, but I'm positive a bot can do that task. It would have to generate a list of what pages use both templates, then using a predefined character count, decide if the article is actually a stub, then remove one of the two templates (the stub tag if the article is no longer a "stub", or the expand tag if the article doesn't meet the character requirement). Killiondude (talk) 21:44, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I've got a list of those articles using both templates - a link to is cunningly disguised somewhere in my original post. I'm not surprised you missed it :) - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 09:50, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

As explained at WP:STUB, you can't determine what is a stub by character count, which is why bots can't be used for that task. If you could, it would reduce the work of WP:WikiProject Stub sorting considerably (for an explanation, my handy-dandy essay gives many of the reasons why character count alone is not a good way to judge what is or isn't a stub). The best call would be to remove the expand template - if it's clearly no longer a stub then that will be noticed soon enough. Leaving the stub template has the added advantage that expand templates aren't categorised by subject, whereas stubs are - so the article will come to the attention of relevant experts more readily. Grutness...wha? 10:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. That would be my personal preference I think. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 10:33, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

It would have the added advantage that removing the expand template would be more easily done by a bot, I think, given that there's only one expand template (with maybe a couple of redirects), rather than having to have it pick out all the many stub templates. BTW, I'll add a link to this discussion at WP:WSS (and a link to the 1215 article list). That way at least us stub-bods are aware of just how many articles there are like that - and who knows, one of them may be up for the bot task... Grutness...wha? 11:35, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I recently used AWB for a larger project (I performed several hundred edits), and one of the filters or somesuch (I'm not too experienced with it) was that it prompted you if the article you had pulled up was over a certain character count, and still had a stub tag on it. When I originally posted on this thread I was thinking that it could automatically remove it (and therefore thinking a bot could automatically remove it too), but now I remember that it was just a prompt so you could evaluate whether the stub tag should remain. Killiondude (talk) 16:45, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

When deciding whether something is a stub, you ignore things like lists, infoboxes, and images. So if something has just one sentence of formatted text, followed by half a dozen templates, a long list of examples, and a gallery of pictures, it's still a stub. Something like List of mayors of Margate, will stay a stub until someone actually writes something about the Margate mayoralty in it. I don't know any way that AWB could be used to recognise things like that. We do however already use AWB in pretty much the way you say at WP:WSS, to check long articles which may or may not be stubs. Grutness...wha? 02:50, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Biography Standards + Charities

I've started doing more and more biographies and one thing that I've noticed is quite a few Celebrities or people of note have a section for "Humanitarian work", "Charities", or "Philanthropic activities;" While others who are active with charitable work, is not included. I'm merely wondering if there can be a standard for biographies for those that have documented/well known contributions in the past and present. While I'm not going to hunt down every celebrity article to make the appropriate changes or additions (I'm not THAT Anal!), I would like some sort of standard for it. --Hourick (talk) 04:05, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Two better places to discuss this would be Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography. I suggest picking one and seeing if you get a response; if not, try the other. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikiquote Quote of the day

Thought I'd let everyone know that my bot, DottyQuoteBot was approved the other day & is up & working. It imports the quote of the day from Wikiquote every day so you can display it on your userpage/talkpage. See here for more info on the templates to use. Dotty••|☎ 15:41, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Nice work, but shouldn't those templates be {{QOTD}} and {{QOTDsimple}} (ie without the Template prefix)? – ukexpat (talk) 20:42, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Uh yeah I guess they can! Stupid me! Dotty••|☎ 08:22, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Countries should be called by their names.

While I don't expect the average Joe's in the mainstream media and colloquial language to change I do expect a source as veritable and geek ruled as the Wiki to do something about this problem.

Hi, I'm a fellow "North American", no I do not live in the US, but in Mexico. And under the description of North America depicted here:

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/North_America

Mexicans and Canadians are also North Americans, not only US residents. So I would be very thankful if the term American and North American where used on the proper and broad sense of the word only and not to describe US residents alone.

Starting today I'll simply run a search for the terms, America, American, North America and North American and edit out all of the ones that are used to describe US residents alone.

While I understand it is very difficult to use the proper adjective in the case of the USA and its residents it's not to blame the rest of the continent and sub-continent by stripping us from a geographical adjective that can well be used to describe us all alike.

Thanks and please reply with any views or opinions wether you agree or oppose and plan to edit back my edits.

Have you looked at American (word)? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Joel Hinojosa —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joey22MX (talk • contribs) 23:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Editing out the terms is mistaken. If American can be replaced by a term referring to the United States, it probably should be (except within quotes), but removing the term is faulty. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I see this is your first edit and I don't know how serious you are but do not start doing this without discussion. Wikipedia follows common naming conventions and it's extremely common to refer to somebody from USA as American while the term is rarely used about other people from North or South America. Where is "North American" used to describe US residents alone? I don't recall seeing it. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:13, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Such a drastic action would almost assuredly cause you to be blocked for disruption. Your unilateral interpretation of the English language usage of "American" is not the way Wikipedia does things. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 19:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

As a Canadian, I have never described myself as "American", and in common English, have virtually never heard "American" used to describe anyone other than a citizen of the United States. There is very obviously a difference between "North American" and "American". We are all "North Americans", but neither you nor I are "Americans". Resolute 16:25, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia failed to acknowledge D-Day

The on this day page failed to post anything about D-Day. It was on the news stations all day. The president visited a ceremony for it but nothing was mentioned on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mazman34340 (talk • contribs) 00:35, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

"Failed to acknowledge"? We put it on the Main Page! =P Dendodge _T\^C 19:11, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

In 2 separate sections. Dendodge _T\^C 19:14, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

You write that the president visited a ceremony- but isn't important to say he was accompanied by Barack Obama. --ClemRutter (talk) 19:43, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

And Prince Charles because they failed to invite HM QEII. – ukexpat (talk) 19:48, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Someone deleted a whole chapter with (political sensitive but reliable) information i and others added...

Someone deleted quite some (political sensitive but reliable) information from the article on Rohingya people. The entire chapter on Refugees is gone! (before called: Rohingya_people#Refugees). I guess if someone doubts the accuracy of certain information, there are other ways of making this clear than just deleting the entire chapter?! What can be done to retrieve this information/chapter? Regards, User:Mirrormundo —Preceding undated comment added 16:06, 8 June 2009 (UTC).

Did you ask whomever removed the information? MuZemike 17:56, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

A quick history check shows an IP, who left no edit summaries, assuming I have correctly identified the passages asked about. After a look, I could see no obvious reason why it was removed. I suggest the OP retrieves it by copying from the history tab and looking at past revisions of the page, then add it to the talk page to allow a discussion on readding; if there are no complaints, it may well be advisable to be bold and add the information back in again, albeit it in a clear and concise fashion. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 18:13, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Paid Editing

This is overdue, probably: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Paid Editing. Given that this (and related WP:COI issues) seem to be coming up more and more, I've launched this basic RFC. We've never had an actual community discussion or mandate about this. Please review the statements, leave yours, endorse as you see fit. Should make for an interesting and enlightening discussion. rootology (C)(T) 19:33, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

need help on ACE and NME

I added two new entries in ACE and NME, respectively. However, another person who knows nothing about chemistry deleted the explanation twice. What I added is truth and you can google and check it. Please help to maintain these two pages. Please stop that person. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.89.77.122 (talk) 20:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but the editor was correct to remove the entries. There is no mention of those terms (ACE or NME) on the linked pages. Disambiguation pages are a navigational tool to link to existing articles and not a directory of chemical compounds. older ≠ wiser 21:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Red links are allowed if there are links for the article in other articles. So the page does not need to exist to be listed. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure about the function of disambiguation pages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.89.77.122 (talk) 21:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes. See WP:Disambiguation and WP:MOSDAB. older ≠ wiser 21:59, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Show me clearly the exact sentence please.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Bkonrad knows nothing about the rule.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Some people are very strange. They only use their time to delete useful things but not to build things. Their task is to stop other people to get useful information from Wikipedia. --141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Since you seem either incapable or unwilling to bother with reading the pages for yourself, the very first sentence of Wikipedia:Disambiguation explains why the entries were inappropriate. There was no ambiguity among article titles. Further, there was not even any mention of the terms on the linked articles. older ≠ wiser 22:25, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you are really incapable and unwilling to understand and explain the rule in Wikipedia. You said "There is no mention of those terms (ACE or NME) on the linked pages". So tell me clearly please, which sentence supports your action to delete the entry linked to the page without the term? Are you capable to do this? Are you willing to do this? You also said "Disambiguation pages are a navigational tool to link to existing articles". So tell me clearly please, which sentence supports your action to delete the entry linked to a new page? Are you capable to do this? Are you willing to do this?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 06:12, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Bkonrad has admitted by himself that he is really incapable and unwilling to understand and explain the rule in Wikipedia in his talk page.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 11:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Rubbish. I'm beginning to feel like further responses are encouraging further ignorance. older ≠ wiser 11:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Rubbish. I will ignore you.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 11:37, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Only add links to articles that could use essentially the same title as the disambiguated term.

— WP:Disambiguation

OrangeDog (talk • edits) 15:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

This sentence does not support the deletion.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 16:15, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

copied from OrangeDog's talk page:

You know the rule, don't you? So please tell me why the entries should be deleted?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Because they don't follow the rules. The articles you have linked to could not be entitled ACE or NME, moreover they do not contain any references to support (or indeed any mention of) these terms. Even if these guidelines were not clearly laid down, Wikipedia does not operate by following prescriptive rules. The reason that your entries were removed has been explained to you, and reflects the consensus of the majority of Wikipedia editors. Continued questioning and reversions are considered disruptive. Further discussion should continue at the Village Pump. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 16:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Why could not the article linked be entitled ACE or NME? Do you know those two chemicals?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 16:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

methylamide does not have an 'N' in it (nor is it considered notable enough for an article)

acetyl, as the article states, is abbreviated as Ac, not ACE

OrangeDog (talk • edits) 16:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Could you please google a little bit? I didn't find N-methylamide in Wikipedia, so I linked to methylamide. If you insist, I will change the link to N-methylamide. For ACE, how do you know that article of acetyl is correct?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 16:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The information contained within it is verifiable from the given sources. If you can prove otherwise, then feel free to change the article, justifying the ACE disambiguation. For N-methylamide, the disambiguation link is only justified if you can prove that the subject is notable and fit for inclusion in Wikipedia. A Google search is neither sufficient to demonstrate neither nor verifiability. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 16:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Have you googled or not?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 16:41, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

That is irrelevant. Moreover, the search that I did do contradicts you - ACE is used to abbreviate Acetyl with Enzyme[1]. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 16:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

It is relevant because if you do not even google, then how do you know that the link was wrong? Then how dare you to delete the link? It is good for you to google and find a new entry for ACE. I will add this new entry to ACE. What I mentioned is this link http://xray.bmc.uu.se/hicup/ACE/ . It seems that you did not find this page. How about NME?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 16:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

No, no, no, no, no. Wikipedia is not a directory service for Google. A single Google hit does not justify a disambiguation entry. Disambiguation pages are to deal with existing articles that have the same title. If there is no article, then there should be no disambiguation entry. I did see the link you posted - it appears that ACE is being used as an internal marker for the purposes of that single study. There is nothing to suggest that the abbreviation is used in mainstream reliable sources. Just saying "google it" is not an acceptable argument on Wikipedia. If you have found a reliable source that supports your additions then give a direct citation for it. The burden of proof is on the person who adds the information to Wikipedia. N-methylamide does not have an article, so should not be added to any disambiguation pages. Have you yourself read WP:DAB and MOS:DAB before "daring" to change disambiguation pages? OrangeDog (talk • edits) 17:03, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

First, how do you know it should be *existing* article? Show me the sentence clearly. Second, how do you know that the abbreviation is not used in mainstream?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 17:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The first line of WP:DAB - "Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving conflicts in Wikipedia article titles".

How do you know that it is? Where are the reliable sources that support your position?

I suggest you read some of the policies and guidelines I have linked to before you attempt to continue this argument. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 17:10, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Did you find the word *existing*?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 17:11, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Did you find the word *non-existant*? Common sense and Wikipedia consensus are that it means existing articles. Unless you have anything further to add I will ignore further replies as WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 17:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

So you did not find the word *existing*. Then why do you rule out new articles?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 17:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I did not find the word *non-existant*. I will not rule out link to existing articles.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 17:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

For ACE, the article even has already been there. Why should you delete it?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 17:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Please have a look at this page Clementine (disambiguation) as an example. There are also red links. I think red links are useful.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 20:13, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Another example with many useful red links is Gilbert House.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 20:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I found such sentence:

I'd hope that those editors intent on removing the links would expend as much effort on improving the links rather than simply removing them. older ≠ wiser 02:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

--141.89.77.122 (talk) 20:27, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out Clementine (disambiguation) — the page needed little help. As for Gilbert House and red links in general, there is an entire section addressing them at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). The general criteria is that a disambiguation page should not include red links unless there are other articles that link to the term and there is some reasonable potential that article could be written for the subject. Wikipedia is not a directory nor an indiscriminate collection of information and disambiguation pages disambiguate Wikipedia articles, not everything and anything that might possibly contain a particular term. older ≠ wiser 21:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

You are welcome.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 21:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

For the red links, it would be better if you would say it clearly as above when I asked you to do so. The current rule in Wikipedia does not allow to the red link in PMF that I added. I think that rule is stupid. What I have added is useful information and the readers have the right to access such information via Wikipedia. For ACE and NME, there are evidences to support the abbreviation and we should keep the entries.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 21:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

It would have been better if you had read WP:Disambiguation and WP:MOSDAB as suggested earlier. older ≠ wiser 22:12, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Two more examples: Douglas County Courthouse, Washington Avenue Historic District.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 21:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

(after ec)Also, for editors arriving here from the canvassing by 141.89.77.122 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), here are the articles and edits under discussion:

1) This edit on Ace (disambiguation) which adds the following text:

*[[acetyl]] group, Formula: C2 H4 O, a [[peptide]] N-terminal cap

resulting in

• acetyl group, Formula: C2 H4 O, a peptide N-terminal cap

2) This edit on NME (disambiguation) which adds the following text:

* n-[[methylamide]], Formula: C1 H5 N1, a [[peptide]] C-terminal cap

resulting in

• n-methylamide, Formula: C1 H5 N1, a peptide C-terminal cap

3) This edit on PMF which adds the following text:

* [[Potential of Mean Force]] (Kirkwood 1935)

resulting in

• Potential of Mean Force (Kirkwood 1935)

On both Ace_(disambiguation) and NME (disambiguation), there is nothing to support the claim that the entries are known by the terms being disambiguated. Not only is there no mention of either term on any of the blue-links, there is not even any mention of either acetyl or methylamide on peptide. For the redlinks, methylamide and Potential of Mean Force, there are no other articles that link to the terms. Such dead ends are unverifiable and have no place on disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 21:58, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I want to ask a question to those people who deleted the entries added by me in PMF, ACE and NME: what kind of benefit can you get from your deletion? A clean Wikipedia according to your standard but with less information for the readers?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

If you are so convinced that there is some actual value to the information, the solution is simple -- add verifiable information with appropriate citations to the relevant articles. Disambiguation pages are not the place to assert usages that are not supported by any of the linked articles. older ≠ wiser 22:04, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Will you be only confined in the information in Wikipedia itself? If there is no right information in the article of acetyl, then you will claim the ACE is not the abbreviation of acetyl? I simply want to share useful information to other people via Wikipedia. Why should you always delete such useful information? What is the purpose of Wikipedia? Is it not to spread knowledge?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:11, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

It has been explained many times already — disambiguation pages disambiguate ARTICLES. They are not general directories of human knowledge. older ≠ wiser 22:14, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

What you said is really bureaucratic. The information I added is truth no matter there are other articles in Wikipedia saying it or not. Why is there no space for truth in Wikipedia?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Just because you don't like something doesn't make it bureaucratic. Verifiability (within Wikipedia articles) is necessary. Vague suggestions to look it up on Google are unacceptable. Sorry. But that;s the way it is. older ≠ wiser 22:37, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, I use bureaucratic way to deal with your bureaucratic mind. Now I have added ACE into the article acetyl. What will you say?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Where is you're source? Without a verifiable source, it is useless. older ≠ wiser 22:37, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Did you see the link above when I discussed with Orangedog?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Having a link there not going to help anyone looking at the acetyl article. older ≠ wiser 22:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Not you? Even you saw it?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

" Without a verifiable source, it is useless." Are you strict with this?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

To varying degrees. Unsourced additions by argumentative, anonymous editors, who do not exhibit any indications of cluefulness are problematic. older ≠ wiser 22:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I see, double standard.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

More like common sense. older ≠ wiser 22:56, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Sure, your common sense is bureaucratic and double standard.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 22:58, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia practices and conventions likely do seem bureaucratic to those who exert little effort to understand them, and especially if they presume that they know better and jump in by throwing a tantrum and insulting other editors. older ≠ wiser 23:05, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Who said Rubbish at first?--141.89.77.122 (talk) 23:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

This link is without ACE: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I will delete it.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 23:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

That would be ill-advised. Self-evident initialism of organizations are trivial. older ≠ wiser 23:05, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

See, clear double standard.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 23:07, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Uh huh, you're obtuseness is tiresome. But then again, there is no real loss to remove the group if it is not in fact commonly known by the initialism. older ≠ wiser 23:10, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that there is no real loss to remove Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. But there is loss to remove acetyl. Without the information I told you, you would never know that ACE can stand for acetyl. Now you knew this information, even it might be useless for you personally, but it is useful for other people. Due to your deletion, other people will loss the chance to access this information via Wikipedia.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 23:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I do not know that ACE refers to acetyl. You provided a link to a somewhat quirky-looking site with a lot of dead or broken links. Perhaps that passes for state of the art in chemistry citations. I doubt it though. But I'll let chemists sort that out. However, there is still no citation for the usage in the acetyl article. older ≠ wiser 23:30, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

You said the site "with a lot of dead or broken links". Is that true? Show me the links you talked about.--SayNoToHypocritical (talk) 10:04, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Good. Ask them.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 23:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The burden of providing verifiable quality sources is on the person seeking to add something. older ≠ wiser 23:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, the bureaucratic burden here is too much for me. And there are even people who keep deleting what I added.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 23:41, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

You came to my talk page and asked for help. My search found only a web page on a Swedish site that indicated that ACE may refer to an acetyl group. Since this is an English-language encyclopedia, that Swedish site doesn't carry much weight. The natural article title is "Acetyl", not "ACE". Therefore there is no conflict between "Acetyl" and any articles whose natural title would be "ACE", so no disambiguation seems to be needed. WP is not a directory of acronyms, especially of acronyms as obscure and doubtful as this one. Chris the speller (talk) 03:14, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Is that site in English or in Swedish? Do you mean Wikipedia only accounts the English words from the mouth of native English speaker? You said "WP is not a directory of acronyms". How did you know this? Here is an example: List_of_acronyms_and_initialisms:_A--SayNoToHypocritical (talk) 09:38, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

The natural article title is "Atlantic City Expressway" not "ACE". Therefore there is no conflict between "Atlantic City Expressway" and any articles whose natural title would be "ACE", so no disambiguation seems to be needed. Right?--SayNoToHypocritical (talk) 09:46, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

The problems have been solved. I thank people who paid attentions on this issue and I apologize to people with whom I treated impolitely.--SayNoToHypocritical (talk) 18:04, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Cubs197

User:Cubs197 is refusing to talk to me and is giving me vandalism warnings in return for trying to discuss issues with him. 70.29.210.174 (talk) 05:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, after leaving a message at WPTalk:AN, he's corresponded with me, so this issue has been resolved. 70.29.210.174 (talk) 07:02, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Theatre reviews by Nancy Spain

I am trying to locate a review of West Side Story by the late Nancy Spain,Daily Express and Manchester Guardian columnist.Died 164 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kensalt (talk • contribs) 20:10, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

You should ask at the Reference Desk - they are experts at finding that kind of thing. – ukexpat (talk) 20:13, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Talk page archiving vs. neutrality (and other) templates

I'm under the impression that now common auto-archiving of talk pages doesn't mesh well with the "neutrality disputed" template (and other templates, but the NPOV one is most problematic.

For an example:

• Book of Daniel

Heck, there's a neutrality dispute since at least December 2007. So what's is disputed and by whom? The link in the NPOV box to the talk page doesn't help at all, as the discussion, if there was one, is archived since eons. OK in this case there are a moderate number of archives so that combing them for the reason doesn't look pointless.

Two suggestion:

• When putting the NPOV dispute box in the article, the discussion page entry holding the reason should be made immune to auto-archiving. I fear this can't be done by template magic, so clear explanation of the issue and co-operation of editor setting the box would be required.
• Trash those stale boxes! If there are old article boxes and no linked reason can be found by reasonable effort, they are of no value. They should be just deleted.

--Pjacobi (talk) 19:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Even better, make it possible to permalink to an old version of the talk page. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:15, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe when adding tags it's be helpful if an explanation was added to the talk page first, and then the template linked to the diff edit of the history that added the rationale. DreamGuy (talk) 15:01, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

• I'm not a bot programmer, but I imagine it should be fairly simple to add a hack/magic word that allows you to mark a section as one that shouldn't be archived. Just some string of text that, when placed at the beginning of a section, tells the bot encountering it not to archive that section.
• That being said, I think Pjacobi does have a decent point...if a dispute tag has been around for years but the dispute is over, maybe it can be removed (although there's no guarantee). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:19, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Interlanguage Transwiki

Is there a request template to request an article be transwiki'd to a different language of Wikipedia? As articles show up here in a non-English form and also don't exist on that language's wikipedia... and such a template does not exist at WP:Template messages... it would be useful (And complementary to other transwiki templates), so I expect they exist already and are just not properly listed? 70.29.210.174 (talk) 05:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

We use "transwiki" to mean move to another wiki. What you are referring to is simply a translation of an article.

Looking through the "Translation" topic in the Editor's index, perhaps what you're referring to is Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation, which is generated using the {{Notenglish}} template/tag. Or, if you're referring to creating an article in a non-English Wikipedia, based on content in the English Wikipedia, it appears that Meta is the right place to make such a request. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:01, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

WP:AN

WP:AN is locked down, so how I can I leave messages there? 70.29.210.174 (talk) 05:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not seeing that. The page doesn't appear to be even semi-protected, at least at the moment. (If you were to become a register editor [free, no personal information required], then you could also edit semi-protected pages.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:52, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

He probably means ANI. ANI was semi-protected yesterday because of repeated sock vandalism. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:00, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

But in any case, the protection has expired by now, so it should be fine. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:01, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

problem editor

I write about a fairly specialised subject. Another editor has come along and claimed to also know the subject, however, his edits demonstrate that he actually knows very little. Furthermore, after adding or deleting information, he edit wars to make sure his edit stays. Where can I go to get help with this? 80.126.66.106 (talk) 14:41, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

The first stop would be WP:EAR. But while I've got you here, you need to know that wikipedia is about verifiability, not truth. So you may be "right", but if he has sources, his version will be accepted.Drew Smith What I've done 14:52, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I will try there. Yes, I know about verifiability, but for the subject I write about, the information in English is often wrong (and thanks to the Internet) often repeated elsewhere. The only accurate sources are in another language which this editor can't read (but I can). 80.126.66.106 (talk) 15:10, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Try talking to people from that languages wiki. I can't personally back you up, because I don't no any other languages, but find some bilingual person and you're good to go.Drew Smith What I've done 00:11, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Template:disputed-inline

Since September 2008 this template has been a redirect to {{dubious}}; I just restored it to its old templateness, though, because I think it's useful. I left a rationale at Template talk:Dubious#"disputed", in case anyone is curious, and figured I should just leave a note in case anyone would have a problem with this change. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

LA Times Archives

Anybody with access to the LA Times archives want to take a look here and tell me if there's anything usable for sourcing Job's Daughters International? The only thing showing up in the abstract is the Biblical quotation that inspired its name, and I don't want to pay for access if it doesn't actually say anything useful. Also, is there any better place to post questions like this? Thanks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

You might try Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange. I suppose it would be nice to have user categories like Category:Wikipedians with access to the Los Angeles Times archives. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:43, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, lovely. Thanks! --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:51, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

You may also be interested in List of online newspaper archives and Free Newspaper Archives. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I suppose anyone in a major city is likely to have access to those archives. I know that even in Calgary, our library has microfilm archives of various American publications back to 1981, though the LA Times is not one of them, iirc. Resolute 16:08, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

The Free Library of Philadelphia's Central Library Newspaper Department has computer access to several major newspapers for free, and lots of microfilmed newspapers, too. The preceding unsigned comment was left by Dthomsen8 (talk · contribs) on 14:44, June 12, 2009

Frivolous accusations of plagiarism, internal and external

I have no idea what to make of this situation, so I thought I'd post it here for anyone's information. See Talk:Birthday problem#Horrendous Mathematics on Top of Plagiarism. As I commented there, there does not seem to be any plagiarism. But what makes this really weird is the "benchmark article" the user links to. It's clearly written by himself (he's been blocked before for spamming that very domain into related articles, and now he edits very infrequently) and it makes the same accusations of plagiarism against the Wikipedia article. Obviously, this user holds a grudge against Wikipedia. It seems easiest to just ignore this, but I don't know what the common procedure is. —JAO • T • C 20:51, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

WP:RBI perhaps. If you've checked the source he mentions and it is clear that this article is not plagiarized, I would simply remove that section as trolling and ignore it. If the user chooses to press, then admin action may be required. Resolute 21:02, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

"notable Wikipedians"

Is someone with only three edits to their credit, only one to article space which was immediately reverted, a "notable Wikipedian"? See Talk:James von Brunn. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 01:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

He is arguably notable for having a wikipedia account, yes. Was it not reported in many papers he held an account here and used it to espouse something or other? A fresh CFD might be in order for the category though. –xeno^talk 01:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

The Alphascript-Amazon-Wikipedia book hoax

This week I learned that a company called Alphascript was creating so-called books by clumping together enough Wikipedia articles to make some "things" that seem thick enough to be called books. They sell these on Amazon, for prices ranging from $38 to $173. At last count (they seem to be adding more all the time) they had 909 books listed.

The books have absolutely no author listed on Amazon. They are supposed to have been edited by the team made up of John McBrewster, Frederic P. Miller, and Agnes F. Vandome. In fact, it would seem that they have not been edited at all, in the sense understood by librarians. They warn:

"All texts of this book are extracted from Wikipedia… ...Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information. Some information in this book maybe misleading or wrong."

In other words, the three Alphascript editors are just copy-pasting editors and they are washing their hands of any liability that might ensue from reading the so-called books they sell and blaming everything on Wikipedia! This is blatantly using one the requirements of copyleft (stating where your useful, copied information comes from) to try to weasel out of any kind of responsibility.

While they do not list any of the Wikipedia authors/editors on the Amazon Web site, it would seem that they have been scrupulously adhering to the letter of the law, and the Wikipedia "copyleft" licences by printing, in very, very small print the entire list of authors/editors (the anonymous ones included) of each article, among other things.

But in the end, what counts is that those things are not books. They're just copy-pasted messes of haphazard information. That's where the hoax lies. They're passing off for books some things that aren't really anything, even if they do have an ISBN on them.

Real books have ages-old traditional metadata like a useful title. In nearly all their Amazon entries Alphascript editors haven't even bothered to find proper titles for the so-called books. Take a look at this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Population-history-American-indigenous-peoples/dp/6130004443/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244350161&sr=1-3

They are also just as nonchalant when it come to finding illustrations for book covers. Take a look a this other one, about the republic of Georgia, in Europe and look up close and you will see that they put up a photograph of the city of Atlanta in the state of Georgia in the United States.

http://www.amazon.com/History-Georgia-country-Democratic-Tao-Klarjeti/dp/6130007442/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

If it were just one book or one dozen, then it would be rather insignificant. When it's 909 books, on Amazon (which has said that it cannot be held responsible for the quality of the books) it's a major trend. I would be tempted to call it a notable trend, in the field of copyleft, copyleft licensing and copyleft commerce.

When I learned about this my first reaction was to start writing an encyclopaedic-level article on this, for Wikipedia, with all the relevant links from copyleft projects and principles and within the context of commercial products derived from copyleft. Unfortunately a Wikipedia article must be based on published sources. It must not be original research. The problem here is that I have not yet found a published source writing up this book hoax.

So, what can I do, what can anybody do with this Wikipedia-tarnishing book hoax? Send e-mails to person who are concerned with general book reviews like librarians, hoping that they'll write this up on the ALA Web publications? And then, after that's done we can finally write the relevant article or articles?

Please don't brush this off by thinking Alphascript will go away by itself. If they do go away, others like them will spring up. This kind of slapdash exploitation makes Wikipedia articles look extremely bad. I can laugh at the very idea of comparing the disorganized Alphascript "books" with the well-tagged, easy-to access, easy to evaluate (just read the discussion pages!) Wikipedia articles I can see on the Web, but other people will not. They will equate the two as being equally made of sloppy cut and paste segments. They will not bother finding out about the copyvio efforts here in the Web Wikipedia, or of other efforts that make the Web Wikipedia a useful tool. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AlainV (talk • contribs) 2009-06-07 05:44:01

• Except for the fact that some morons are actually paying for these, I don't really see how its that much different from some of the hundreds of mirror sites, many of which aren't even compliant with the license. Mr.Z-man 06:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
  • First, they're not dumb or stupid or anything because they got caught into buying those books. They did not know what they were getting into because there aren't that many signs in the Amazon entries that those are what I call "fake" or "hoax" books, that is, useless assemblies or disorganized info. Second, a true mirror site mirrors everything, links included and doesn't create a hodgepodge clumping of unlinked articles. And of course the mirror sites don't charge people for using them. By the way, please accept my apologies for having forgotten to put my signature above. --AlainV (talk) 08:48, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Maybe raise the issue with Amazon? – ukexpat (talk) 15:58, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
      • Already done. They say they're not responsible for the quality of the books they sell. They are willing to refund a deeply unsatisfied buyer but they will do nothing about the listing of the 909 Alphascript "books".--AlainV (talk) 17:30, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
    • While most mirror sites mirror everything indiscriminately, many of them try to appear as some specialty site or they pass off the content as their own with no reference to Wikipedia. Most mirror sites are created for the purpose of making money by doing almost no work, if not charging for use, by putting ads on the site, or possibly spyware. If they're including the GFDL and the full list of authors, then legally, they're not doing anything wrong and they're much more compliant than most reusers. Mr.Z-man 16:27, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
      • You made me think a lot about mirror sites, and the similarities and differences with print copies, such as those things made by Alphascript. The mirror sites come and go very fast. Sometimes they drop out of view completely for someone doing a Google search on a topic. The Wikipedia article comes up on top and the mirror sites are farther down. For anyone with no interest in buying books on Amazon those 909 Alphascript books are even more completely out of view. But those printed-out "books" are going to stay. They don't go away like pixels do--AlainV (talk) 18:13, 7 June 2009 (UTC).
        • Sure, individual mirror sites may disappear, but the concept won't. For every mirror that dies, another will take its place. I don't see how there's much of a difference between 12 mirrors that last a month and 1 mirror that lasts a year. Mr.Z-man 19:08, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
• I have started a page at User:PrimeHunter/Alphascript Publishing sells free articles as expensive books. It makes no attempt to satisfy article guidelines and is not intended for mainspace but maybe for Wikipedia space. It lists all the book titles so potential buyers searching a book title in a search engine may see the page listed and get relevant information from the page title alone. Wikipedia space is indexed by search engines (unless explicitly excluded by Wikipedia). PrimeHunter (talk) 18:52, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
  • They don't sell single articles as expensive books. They sell badly assembled and shoddily organized compilations of many articles as expensive paperback books. If they did it right I would not be mentioning them at all. They make Wikipedia look extremely bad because people are saying "Look, this is what Wikipedia is all about" while holding up those paper copies. Of course I'm summing this up here for those who have just skimmed thru my big explantion up there. I know that PrimeHunter is well aware of the distinction and he doesn't need me pointing this out specifically like this.. --AlainV (talk) 23:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
    • What do you want to do about it? I don't see that there's much that can be done, really. -Chunky Rice (talk) 23:41, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
      • After a week, if nobody here can suggest something else to do I'll be writing emails to book reviewers who specialize in textbooks and book reviewers who specialize in the library (public and university) markets because the Alpahscript books are sometimes touted as being textbooks and also because librarians as a whole are more interested in the quality and ultimate fate of non-fiction, documentary books, than most other groups.--AlainV (talk) 23:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

They appear to be part of the VDM Group, a German publishing house according to this [2] -VDM is a print-to-order firm, so far as I can tell, that specializes in university papers. (At least one blogger has stumbled across them [3]) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 00:01, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

• Google is fast and likes Wikipedia. My user subpage is already high in many search results and number one on "Alphascript Publishing". Others are allowed to edit the page (but try to stay within reasonable bounds). I have not seen the actual books but only read about them. They are also advertised at other sites than Amazon. I'm not planning to personally contact anybody outside Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:50, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Here is the Corporate profile and concept of VDM (PDF). It states that they publishe hard to publish scientific papers, (quote): "In this way we actively promote scientific research and development world-wide." I don't see how copy-pasting a random selection of inter-related Wikipedia articles promotes scientific research and development world-wide. Wolfgang P. Müller is the founder and sole shareholder of the VDM Group. I think he's more concerned with his business than with scientific research and development world-wide. Mirrormundo (talk) 22:15, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

This is not a new issue. See Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Ghi#Icon Group International. The problems with such things as far as we are concerned are twofold: violation of our copyright (as the people who wrote the text in the first place) if the terms of the GFDL are not complied with, and people who mistakenly use these books as sources (which happened at AFD with the Icon Group books several times until people started to spot it). Making Wikipedia look bad isn't one of these problems, for the simple reason that these books don't reflect on Wikipedia at all. That is, after all, one of the prevalent problems with them: they don't properly credit Wikipedia editors with the authorship.

By the way: People putting free content in book or other offline form is not forbidden, nor even bad. (And the FSF and others will tell you all about why selling free content is not against the free content philosophy: "Selling Free Software". GNU Project. Free Software Foundation. 1996.) Indeed, making Wikipedia accessible to those without on-line access has been a goal that people have worked towards for a long time. We've had a project to do this ourselves, Wikipedia:Wikipedia 1.0, for about five years. Some of the German Wikipedia has been published in book and DVD form long since. Uncle G (talk) 15:14, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

To me this, the Alphascript book hoax, is a very different issue from those you cite here. Alphascript properly acknowledges Wikipedia within the book even if it does not do so in the Amazon listing. Furthermore, they put the name of each Wikipedia contributor (in tiny print) at the end of the book, even when the contributor is anonymous. Alphascript goes further and stresses that since all the text comes from Wikipedia then all faults and errors can be attributed to Wikipedia and not to Alphascript. In other words go sue Wikipedia if something bad happens to you from having used this book.

I don't know that much about the Wikipedia 1.0 efforts, just what I've read in the press in previous years and skimmed through in the Wikipedia texts on it. But I do know that the efforts produce vetted, edited versions in relatively small numbers. This is not the case with the Alphascript print versions which are for all practical purposes unedited text dumps produced in large number. This is also the case for the German print versions, since the German print versions all seem to offer edited, vetted prints, if I can trust the relevant sections in the German Wikipedia article on this topic.

To sum up, it seems to me that the Wikipedia 1.0 efforts and the German print efforts make Wikipedia look good while the Alphascript print production makes Wikipedia look extremely bad, to anyone who doesn't catch the nuance of a transfer from a digital, hyperlinked text to a fixed paper book. In fact to anyone who is used to paper books more than electronic texts. There are a lot of persons like that in the world today and for the most they are good persons, not to be dismissed easily. Mind you, nobody who's been posting here has been dismissing paper book readers, but there is this big digital world that's implied by our context, and we all tend to be absorbed by it.--AlainV (talk) 19:25, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

A concrete example for the kind of problems that can arise through unexpected "print mirrors" of Wikipedia, especially when they appear on Google Books, is at Talk:Middle Ages#Copyvio Article published as a book The Middle Ages for Know-It-Alls. Dougweller blanked large parts of the article before it became clear that Wikipedia was the source for the book, not the other way round. See also [4] for a way to deal with this, although it's probably not very effective. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:52, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Not a new issue. Before wikipedia people used to do much the same with PD US goverment documents.Geni 21:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Can you point me towards some examples? --AlainV (talk) 01:02, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Project name confusion

I am certainly confused by the project name Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Near East/Cleanup listing, which contains a long cleanup listing with many articles far remote from ancient times, and far remote from the Near East, for that matter. I stumbled on this project by a What links here entry on an article about a Midwest fair, having nothing whatever to do with the Ancient Near East. Perhaps someone can explain this project, or project name, or maybe this is an intentional cleanup list with a peculiar name. --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:41, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

You should probably ask this question at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ancient_Near_East. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:17, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

What I am seeing on this page looks very much to me like a Wikipedia software bug. I made a screen capture of the statistics on a section called "About this listing" which says in part, "Based on that data, 855 articles are assigned to this work group, of which 113416, or 13,265.0% are flagged for cleanup." The next pages do list an incredible number of articles, on every possible subject, through missing coordinates in Zimbabwe at the end. Please tell me if there is a place to report software bugs of this kind. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:40, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I will post something on the Ancient Near East talk page, too. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:40, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, you'll want to talk to the owner of User:WolterBot as well I would think, if only to generate a new listing. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 08:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

It was a bug, and it was fixed by the owner of the bot. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ancient_Near_East for more.--DThomsen8 (talk) 15:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Asking for an help

french contibutor, my english is'nt good enough : i would like to translate the page Viete in english. I have already made a stub on my own page here User:Jean_de_Parthenay/Viete2/wikipedia (in britain) but, there are probably several mistakes. If somebody shoul be kind enough to see that page again, Hurra ! Jean de Parthenay (talk) 08:15, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I thought when you raised this on the help desk we pointed out the page already existed? Unfortunately that makes your work less valuable, but if there's any information to add to the existing page, do it. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 09:55, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Error in article on Potter Stewart, the late SCOTUS justice

I am a member of Wikipedia, and I really haven't studied how to make changes myself. I tried to do it once, and made a mess of it in an article on Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and so I gave up trying. But now I have a problem to report. It is not a controversy or a problem of political or ideological opinion, just a factual error in the aticle on Potter Stewart.

The article states that his father was one Potter G Stewart, a mayor of Cincinnati who later became a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court. Potter G Stewart is listed in blue in the article, and I clicked on it. The problem is that it goes, not to an article on the SCOTUS justice's father, but to an article on another Potter G Stewart who was a Hollywood sound engineer. The disambiguation page lists a number of other Potter Stewarts and Potter G Stewarts, none of whom appear to be the SCOTUS judge's father.

This problem begs for correction.

RebLem —Preceding unsigned comment added by RebLem (talk • contribs) 06:12, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out. I had a look and the James Stewart whose article is currently linked as Potter Stewart's father certainly isn't the correct one. I too have been unable to locate an article on the right James Stewart, so I have changed the link for now to James Stewart (politician), which will is a red link, and am checking other articles linking to James G. Stewart to make sure they are not linking to the wrong article.

If you do decide to have another go at editing, you can always suggest changes via the talk page of an article - things are usually (though unfortunately not always) a bit more flexible and relaxed there! The nice thing about Wikipedia, though, is that any mistakes can be fixed quite easily. Thank you again for pointing out this one. --Kateshortforbob 10:52, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

You mean you changed it to the red link James G. Stewart (politician). I was also researching our articles while you edited. List of Justices of the Ohio Supreme Court has a red link to James Garfield Stewart. The red links should point to the same. I suggest James Garfield Stewart. It can be piped links when he is referred to as James G. Stewart. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:59, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I see you are already updating other links to point to James G. Stewart (politician) so it's fine by me if that is also done for List of Justices of the Ohio Supreme Court. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:03, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, good point. Thanks for the correction. I'll change them to James Garfield Stewart as you suggest, as that is consistent with the list at James Stewart (the politicians at least)--Kateshortforbob 11:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

cc-by-sa

It's June 15 on my calender. Has Wikipedia switched to cc-by-sa or not? If so, I want to start data-dumping from citizendium. The edit page I'm seeing right now still says "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the GFDL.". So, I'm guessing the big switch hasn't happened yet. If not, when does it happen? -- Taku (talk) 22:01, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Just done a few minute ago [5]. Cenarium (talk) 00:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

By saving, you agree to irrevocably release your contribution under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GNU Free Documentation License. Re-users will be required to credit you in any medium, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL to the article you are contributing to. See Terms of Use for details. MuZemike 04:56, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Catalogue of all Natura

I am creating a tree diagram catalogue of everything in "Natura" You can see me progress at User:Drew R. Smith/Natura.

Questions? Comments? Criticism? Any ideas where and how this can be used in article space?

Thanks in advanceDrew Smith What I've done 05:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

A diagram with text that is only readable at full resolution (taking up the entire screen), and then just barely, probably isn't useful for Wikipedia articles. You might want to ask for help at Wikipedia:Graphic Lab. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:48, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately with the program I am using it's the only way. I'm thinking I'll provide a list form as well, but I really like the tree. Aside from functionality issues, what do you think? Worthwhile?Drew Smith What I've done 00:09, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Go for it! The Family Tree images of, for example, German Kings, require the whole screen but are some of the most interesting (and useful) on Wikipedia. You can link to it (rather than 'transclude' it) in articles, as the aforementioned image does. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 15:02, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, sounds good. I'm in the middle of some RL stuff, but when thats over, I'll be back at it.Drew Smith What I've done 01:57, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

For the record, Kings of Germany family tree is the article, WhatLinksHere should give you confirmation it is used, and how. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 10:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, any idea what software was used to create that? My software gets extremely sluggish after a hundred or so branches...Drew Smith What I've done 10:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

No, but you could ask. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 10:48, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Three points:

• I find the purportedly explanatory link to Natura most amusing.
• You do know that "Tellusque" is "Tellus" plus "-que" and not the actual name, don't you?
• The English language Wikipedia already has an outline of knowledge, in English, and doesn't really need a Latin language one. Have you considered working on the the Latin language Wikipedia?

  At the very least you should interwiki link your Latin language article titles to the correct language Wikipedia. All of these pages already exist on the Latin language Wikipedia and (unlike our Mare article, for example) even discuss the right subjects: Natura, Mundus, Tellus, Universum, Caelum, Terra, Aqua, Aër, Ignis, Mare, Continens, Nubes, Flumen, Venti

Uncle G (talk) 15:39, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Well I would work on the Latin wikipedia, but I don't know a lick of Latin. As for the links, I put them in, and didn't bother to chane them once I realised they didn't go to the right place. I am currently working on a better way to format the tree, before I actually take it live on any wiki.Drew Smith What I've done 14:56, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Create Account Page Error

Just pointing out that there is an error on the create an account page. The small text, in regards to e-mails reads "(Your e-mail address is never given to anyone, with one exception: if you e-mail another user, your the e-mail address is provided to the recipient to enable him or her to reply.)"

The word which I have bolded should be removed so this sentence makes sense. That is something that should be corrected. Muffhen (talk) 10:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see this text. Perhaps it has been fixed? - BanyanTree 22:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

It was still there when you posted but it's only seen by logged out users. I have fixed it.[6] PrimeHunter (talk) 23:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Good stuff. It wasn't a good thing to have potential new members reading. ;) -Muffhen (Talk) 06:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Images on articles not loading?

I would say for the last four months or so, I have noticed our images either not loading, or loading very slowly, particularly in infoboxes. Is it just me? -->David Shankbone 15:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I've not noticed any problems. -- Flyguy649 ^talk 19:06, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I noticed the same thing, slow loading images recently. Not as long as four months, though. --DThomsen8 (talk) 22:34, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

List of Malaysian writers includes brief bios

The List of Malaysian writers includes five rather brief biographies. Is this usual for a list? I expect a list to include no more material than names, dates, and perhaps a one line identification. In at least one case, I would think the material could become a stub class article. --DThomsen8 (talk) 22:38, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Renaming "peer review" to "internal review"

This post is a notice for a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Peer review#Renaming "peer review" to "internal review". Please participate in the discussion at the link above. Thanks! Ecto (talk) 06:24, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Association of friendly geezers

Announcing a new page for Wikipedians who oppose ageism. If you appreciate good volunteer work from fellow editors regardless of age, please consider joining. Durova^Charge! 23:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

It defines "geezers" as over the age of 30! Thirty?!?!?!?! Now I do feel old. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I asked some--erm--teenagers for advice about the cutoff... ;) counts gray hairs and cries Durova^Charge! 00:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

We now have an anti-ageism group with an age requirement for membership? Is this some kind of joke? Algebraist 10:34, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Read the page. It's practically humor. ;) On a more serious note, though, a lot of people presume that everyone who opposes ageism is very young. This helps dispel that. Durova^Charge! 15:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll wait for the Wikipedia:Association of cranky geezers. Or is that redundant with Wikipedia:Association of geezers? --Kbdank71 15:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Old Joke... Good news: a recent poll of University aged women shows that they think middle aged men are smarter, sexier and better in bed than younger men. The bad news is that they define "middle aged" as 25-30. Blueboar (talk) 01:52, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Licensing Change

There are a number of pages that may need looking at for licensing changes. For example:

• Wikipedia:User page
• Wikipedia:TourBusStop
• Wikipedia:FAQ/Overview
• Wikipedia:How to import articles
• Wikipedia:Ownership of articles

A number of the pages that link to the GFDL article page may also need looking at. -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Monsters Inc. 2

There has been a lot of argument about Monsters Inc. 2 on List of Pixar films. Any official confirmation?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

bibliografy references

Hi, Could I make an edition on Neologism informing thai it comes from latin and sânscrit if I cite a portuguese reference (it comes from morfologic tree of Neo (new) that derives from latin novus, nova, novum and sanskrit návah<ref>Dicionário Morfológico da Língua Portuguesa, por Evaldo Heckler, Sevaldo Back e Egon Ricardo Massing - São Leopoldo, UNISINOS, 1984. 5v</ref>)?

Thanks for attention, Nevinho (talk) 10:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I suggest you bring it up on the Talk page for the article, but as it's clearly from the Greek, your source seems mistaken. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 18:04, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The Portuguese Languase morfologic dictionary is a trusty source. I don´t think a five volumes wich collect more than 5000 famyly trees of several words and have been done by a seriously doctores may be wrong. I'll discuss it on the talk page. thanks, Nevinho (talk) 21:10, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

userpage to delete?

Does it make sense to have a user page (with 3 personal images in it) of a user who never made any other edits than the one to create his userpage 4 months ago? See User:Darren O'Connor. Sorry if that's the wrong place to ask for. --Túrelio (talk) 09:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Deletion template

Resolved

 – Click23 (talk) 15:42, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I have seen a deletion template for fixed articles that had copyright issues. I asks an admin to delete out copyright revisions back to a specific point after someone edits out the copyright material, but I cannot seem to find now. Any know what I am talking about?? Thanks! Click23 (talk) 13:30, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Someone else found it for me, {{Copyvio-histpurge}}. Click23 (talk) 15:42, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Attention AWB users!

This a general notice to all AWB users: you can now install the Fronds plugin, and contribute towards improving it. Find/Replace On Demand Services (FRONDS) are collaboratively-created blocks of Find-Replace combinations for AutoWikiBrowser, where knowledge can be shared for maximum efficiency. All AWB users are invited to try them out, and make suggestions. Don't know anything about regular expressions? Fear not, you can still enjoy using the plugin. Fronds is particularly suitable for those collaborating to make repetitive edits. Any questions can be directed to the talk page or my user talk page. Cheers, - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c, rfa)} 19:50, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey that sounds nifty. I've got a block of userboxen I'm gradually migrating from a blocked user to User:UBX. –xeno^talk 19:51, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I hope so. At the moment it's hard to get a good understanding of what, in reality, it can and can't help with, but try it out and be sure to let me know how you get on. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c, rfa)} 19:53, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Citizendium Porting

WikiProject Citizendium Porting has been proposed. If you would be interested in joining such a WikiProject and/or have comments on the proposal, you are invited to say so at the aforelinked proposal page. --Cybercobra (talk) 19:18, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Double Images

Sorry if this is the wrong place, but I can't for the life of me find another place to raise it (although I'm sure there is a proper place). But anyway, I've noticed there a 2 versions of the same image floating around. One is here and the other here. From the research I'm doing I'm fairly sure the second (ie. British caption) image is correct, and this would seem to back it up. Unfortunately the first (ie. Polish) version is linked to a few pages. Is there an appropriate forum to discuss this sort of issue, or is it a case of bringing it up on all the article's talk pages? And how do you go about getting a pic deleted?

Cheers in advance for any advice, Ranger Steve (talk) 22:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

AntiAnnonymism

Could someone define how well are the Annonymous editors treated by old users? aghnon (talk) 17:31, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

We like to hit them with our canes and tell them to get off our lawn[7]! Or is that not what you mean by "old users"? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I actually meant how do "experienced" users treat the Annonymous . aghnon (talk) 20:07, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by Annonymous in this case?©Geni 10:29, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

If you mean 4chan Annonymous, we generally beat em off with a stick, unless they were good contributors 'before it was revealed that they are Annonymous

If you mean IP's we generally beat em off with a stick.Drew Smith What I've done 15:06, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I would like to know better the english Wiki-slang. aghnon (talk) 17:22, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

That's not very helpful Drew. Contributions are generally judged based on the contribution and not the contributor. Editors are welcome to contribute whether they register a user name or operate "anonymously" via an IP address. There should not be any discrimination against an editor because they choose not to register an account. Likewise, anyone who violates core policy, or otherwise disrupts Wikipedia will suffer various kinds of sanctions. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 19:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

So what is the actual situation? aghnon (talk) 17:46, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

What are you asking? Wikipedia core policy can be found here. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 23:51, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately the actual situation (I assume you are asking what actualy happens, and not what policy says) is pretty much what I described above. If an annonymous edior (I.E. and IP in wiki slang) even bends a rule slightly they will get a templated warning. If the IP pushes the point with an argument like "so and so does it" or "registered users get away with it" they are usually blocked fairly quickly. I.E. beating them off with a stick. If anyone sticks up for blocked IP's people automatically assume they are a sockpuppet of the IP, even if they have a substantive edit history to prove otherwise (its happened to me, so don't say it doesn't happen). Usually, policy is widely ignored when it comes to dealing with IP's, unless said policy is useful for aiding in the beating of an IP.Drew Smith What I've done 07:37, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

As I thought, thats what usually happens in hebrew. aghnon (talk) 12:56, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Well this is a very disheartening summary. I for one never discriminate against IP editors. Telling people that this is how we do things isn't helping the situation Drew. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 22:55, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I personally don't do it, but I have witnessed it many times. I'm just telling it like it is.Drew Smith What I've done 03:31, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm unclear on something Drew said, & would like a clarification. The phrase "beating them off with a stick" implies something quite different than "beating them with a stick until they go away." I won't belabor what Drew's phrase implies, except that (1) some of us might not find it as unpleasant as the rest of thinks it is; (2) I honestly have a problem visualizing just how this is done; although (3) I'm sure if I look hard enough, I'll find an illustration of this done over on commons. TIA, llywrch (talk) 21:59, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I am proud to say that your alternate interpretation of this phrase had never occurred to me until I saw this thread. Drew's phrasing is fairly common American slang; we usually omit the (crucial?) words "of me". Unfortunately, I'll no longer be able to use this phrase (even including the words "of me") without picturing things in my head that I don't want to picture. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:11, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

O.o

Wow.Drew Smith What I've done 10:21, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

acceptable academic resources

Why do you think wikipedia is not considered acceptable academic resources for my assignment in school? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.63.10 (talk) 22:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia#A caution before citing Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:22, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

As a history teacher I can tell you why I don't allow my students to cite Wikipedia... from an academics view, there is a fundamental flaw to Wikipedia. It is "The Enclyclopedia that anyone can edit"... which means that anyone can edit, whether they know what they are talking about or not, whether they are pushing an agenda or not. This means that, at any given point that my students might be reading an article, the information in that article might not be trustworthy. However, you are incorrect in saying that Wikipedia is not considered an acceptable academic resource... I concider it an excellent resource for compiling a bibliography. It containes a plethora of reliable sources on a wide range of topics, so as a bibliographical resourse it is first rate. Blueboar (talk) 01:49, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

No encyclopedia should really be used as an academic reference; Wikipedia shouldn't really be alone in that respect. Encyclopedias are teriary sources and not necessarily written by someone qualified to do so (in an academic sense). However, most Wikipedia articles include a list of more appropriate primary and secondary sources towards the end (References, Bibliography, even the External Links section sometimes). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 11:35, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

As an add-on to AdamBMorgan's comment, good students (who might find this rule unreasonable) will use Wikipedia as only one of many sources for their research, & may be troubled by not being able to quote the occasional passage which expresses an idea well. (There are a few here, believe it or not.) Bad students tend to plagiarize wholesale, to the point they will copy an entire article verbatim, & not notice (or care) that in the middle of the text there might be a non sequitor such as "You sux fagg." -- llywrch (talk) 18:43, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

People often ask whether or not they should cite a Wikipedia article directly. My favorite answer is this: If it's a bad article, then you shouldn't. If it's a good article, then you won't have to. Simple as that. I also agree strongly with Blueboar's sentiments: as a resource, Wikipedia is unsurpassed. As a source, not so much. Even if you don't intend to compile/check/read an article's references/external links, the article itself is still a great way to get a broad overview of a topic. History of astronomy is a good example. Even though it doesn't have copious inline citations, it provides a solid overview of the subject. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:45, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Michelin-starred restaurants

Inherent notability? Or rather, can notability be safely assumed for any Michelin-starred restaurant? Two stars? Three stars? Assuming, of course, that the article is not overly promotional, etc. WP:Notability (restaurants) isn't exactly clear given the lack of an outcome. Cheers, - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c, rfa)} 13:21, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

• I would presume notability for any restaurant with a star. The stars are awarded very sparingly and only to a handful of the very best restaurants; thus, I think a Michelin star is equivalent to the sorts of awards that establish notability in other fields. Any restaurant that gets a star will also undoubtedly be the subject of multiple articles or reviews in food/cooking magazines or by the food critics of other publications. As an aside, if you're interested in a wider array of views you may want to crosspost/move this thread to a page frequented by notability regulars. Cool3 (talk) 17:16, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Any suggestions? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c, rfa)} 17:24, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
    • I suppose you could check in at WP:WikiProject Food and drink. You could also ask at the Humanities reference desk, as some of the regulars there are probably au fait with such things. Not necessarily to ask "is this good enough for Wikipedia", but more along the lines of, "what does it take to be a Michelin-starred restaurant? What does it mean? Who decides? Just how common are the lower-ranking stars?" From good answers to those questions, you should easily be able to judge notability. Maedin\^talk 18:23, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
      • Thanks for the suggestions Maedin. The question is more, I suppose, "If I created 50 stubs tomorrow for Michelin starred restaurants, would people try to delete them?". I'm thinking not at the moment, so I may well do that. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c, rfa)} 18:37, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
        • I'd just check in at Wikipedia talk:Notability and maybe cross-post at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies). I think if you are actually creating 50 stubs tomorrow, you shouldn't run into trouble, and I'd be willing to help you out with sourcing (so if this isn't just hypothetical leave me a message). Cool3 (talk) 18:40, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
          • (Out of sequence reply) That's an idea. I'm not sure whether I actually would though; I think I prefer the speckling that threads here receive rather than a full review with commentary. And it looks like it's a goer anyhow. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c, rfa)} 18:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
          • Before you have a stub-creating spree, remember that it is better for Wikipedia to have 5 DYKs than 50 stubs. It pains me to see articles that could easily be expanded and on the main page left as stubs because of a rush to create. If you do make stubs, let me know at the time so I can check them out and see what can be expanded within 5 days. I would imagine that some restaurants with lots of reviews, change of owners, and brisk business could have enough material for 1,500 words. Thanks, :-) Maedin\^talk 18:45, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
            • Sure. The point is that nothing existed on these restaurants before; 0 bytes. Anyhow, that's a debate to save for another day. (I've signed up for WikiCup 2010 btw, so don't worry about where my loyalties lie.) - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c, rfa)} 18:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
              • Ok, :-) Sorry if I was trying to teach you to suck eggs! Maedin\^talk 18:53, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
• (random outdent). Take a look at Category:Michelin Guide starred restaurants and chefs, it looks there are about 150 articles on Michelin starred restaurants already, and many (most?) 3-stars seem to have articles. All of the 3-star restaurants in New York, for example, are already the subject of an article. Cool3 (talk) 19:02, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) encompassed businesses such as restaurants from its very first versions onwards. It even used restaurants as some of its examples, during its history. There is no blanket notability, nor should there be. Notability is not a blanket, and attempting to locate blankets by applying short-cuts, be they stars, number of employees, or other metrics, yields bad results. They get us business directories. Wikipedia is not the Yellow Pages. The primary notability criterion is the one to apply. Uncle G (talk) 11:32, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• The general notability guideline is not perfect either, in both ways. Some things the tabloids write about is still not notable, and some things are definitely notable even if we haven't been able to locate significant coverage in independent reliable sources. Restaurants with Michelin stars seems like a clear case to me. --Apoc2400 (talk) 00:43, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • You're erroneously conflating notability with your subjective judgement of fame and importance. Notability is not fame nor importance. Whatever your subjective judgement of how "notable" something is, if it isn't covered in depth in multiple independent published works by people with good reputations for fact checking and accuracy, it is not notable. Wikipedia isn't about what we, as editors, want to be part of the corpus of human knowledge. It is about what is part of the corpus of human knowledge, and is properly documented as such. This means accepting that some things that we subjectively regard as unimportant and not famous are notable, and that some things that we think to be hugely important or famous are not notable. Human knowledge is lumpy and uneven, and we don't get to level it out into a business directory when what we are writing is an encyclopaedia. The business directory is another wiki entirely, and it takes restaurant entries like this one Uncle G (talk) 15:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Jp./Kr. vs. Jap./Kor. in commons:File talk:Dokdo Map.png

I am comfusing about Jp./Kr. vs. Jap./Kor. in commons:File talk:Dokdo Map.png. I think that "Jap" is irravant in this map.but user Valentim said this are adjectives of the belonging languages.I simply ask that shortened of "Japanese: X" is "Jap:X".I am not native.I want to know native feelings.--Forestfarmer (talk) 10:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

"Jap" should be avoided as an abbreviation because it is often considered a racial slur. For these languages you will want to use the standard abbreviations "ja" and "ko" in lowercase letters. Also for maps I recommend using the SVG format, as it is much easier to update captions/labels/etc. when they are stored as actual text rather than as pixels. — CharlotteWebb 17:40, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

thanks your reply.I would do as your saying.--Forestfarmer (talk) 23:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

AlexFreeAssociationBot

Almost all of these links (based on the reasoning of one "AlexNewArtBot") make no sense. It wouldn't bother me so much if these links would go away after a while, rather than being archived forever. However it's not entirely the operator's fault as criteria for each assumption are freely editable. Right now the flagging done by this bot has an unbelievable false-positive rate, higher than that of the title blacklist even. Right now I'd like to know if anyone:

• Uses the lists provided by this bot (or would be interested in using them if they weren't too polluted to be useful)
• Has the time and energy to examine and clean up the "Rules" pages found in this list (possibly not complete, see also [8]).

One might start by removing words which are ambiguous or simply too common, adjusting the point values, etc. in order to leave a robust set of criteria more likely to produce meaningful data. Obviously this cannot be made perfect—the closest thing would be to ignore everything that's not a category or an infobox (however many articles are created without these)—but there is definitely a vast frontier for improvement. Regards and thank you in advance. — CharlotteWebb 17:27, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

To see that there are people using the results, just look at the howls of pain which resulted from the bot not running for about ten days in May.-gadfium 21:37, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

License change

Change in license is welcome - there's a couple of places that need the reference to GFDL changed - specifically http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Top_questions#Can_I_copy_articles_from_Wikipedia.3F and the template for the mobile-formatted pages ( en.m.wiki.x.io ....) --O'Prometheus (talk) 07:40, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Plumbers Wikipedia Project?

Is there a Plumbers Wikipedia Project? Perhaps it comes under something else? --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:11, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

There doesn't appear to be a WikiProject devoted to plumbing. Articles which would come under its remit (those in Category:Plumbing, and possibly Category:Plumbing valves) are not consistent in the projects they are tied to.

For example, "Radiator (Heating)" is tagged for WikiProject Home Living and WikiProject Energy, while "Shower" is just tagged for WikiProject Architecture. "Thermostatic Radiator Valve" is tagged for WikiProject Systems, while "Plumbing" is not tagged for any WikiProject; "Central Heating" is tagged for WikiProject Engineering, WikiProject Architecture, and WikiProject Technology. Proposing new projects is always an option, of course. –Whitehorse1 13:49, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I found just what you found, several projects, none really on target. I do not want responsibility for a new project, though. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:09, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Or do you mean these "plumbers" :-) Jezhotwells (talk) 15:07, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I wanted to add a Wikipedia project to GreenPlumbers but I don't know what is appropriate. It is clearly about plumbing as a trade, but also providing education on water conservation.--DThomsen8 (talk) 23:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I have added {{environment|class=start|importance=low}} to this article. This is certainly not the only possibility, and does not relate to the tradesman/plumber aspect. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:51, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Should Wikipedia Press coverage include references to a known enemy of Wikipedia?

Should the Cade Metz entry at Wikipedia:Press_coverage_2009#June be removed from that page and moved to Criticism of Wikipedia? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 21:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't mind this coverage, either way. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

What can I/What should I do?

There is some content on a disambiguation page that is non-neutral. Alex Jones is an alternative media journalist. His disambiguation title says "Alex Jones (radio host) (born 1974), radio host, conspiracy theorist, and filmmaker". The point of disagreement is with the conspiracy theorist. The term itself is a push of POV. I don't want to get into convincing you that he is not a conspiracy theorist, that's not the point. It's inflammatory language. I changed it to something more fair and agreeable, and if you look on my talk page, basically you see a user notifying me that it wasn't an acceptable edit because, "It would require an link and you can't have multiple links on a line". I then decide to change "conspiracy theorist" to "paleoconservative" (His article states this). Again, it was reverted by the same user saying "This is what he is known for". What can I do? If I simply keep changing it until he gives up... Well wait, that won't work, he'll probably get me banned for an edit war or some nonesense. How do I eliminate bias from a page without running into "You are not allowed to change this anymore or we will ban you". (that hasn't happened but I know it will).

I believe that the same user that is hawking over this page is also a conflict of interest. http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/User_talk:Arthur_Rubin/Archive_2009#About_Alex_Jones_and_your_gradeschool_.27conspiracy_theory.27_charges

I should just say this now, I didn't know that I was running into the same issue raised by another editor 3 months ago.

We shouldn't let him/her just push his POV. JeremiahSamuels (talk) 12:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Although I really don't follow the other user's logic, I don't see conspiracy theorist as being an inherently inflammatory or derogatory phrase. As I interpret the phrase, it does not necessarily imply that he is involved in conspiracies or even that he believes certain conspiracies are true. It simply implies that he has theories on conspiracies or. Does he? If so, then keep it. If not, then delete it. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:00, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Swaenajayanti grama swarojagar yojana

The article Swaenajayanti grama swarojagar yojana has a name in a language of India. It needs to be wikified, and it has several cryptic abbreviations. I am not so sure that it is in any way notable, but it could be. Can someone else help? If not, maybe it should be marked for deletion. --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:31, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

It appears to be largely be a copy of text from nift-sgsy.com, with no significant content or earlier version that does not infringe copyright. I've tagged it as an apparent copyvio. –Whitehorse1 22:12, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I suppose I could have found this copyvio with Google. (I am still learning!) Can article titles be in foreign languages like this? --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:47, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

The relevant rule of thumb for article titles is at WP:COMMONNAMES. If the most common name for an article is in a foreign language, then there's no reason to translate it into English. See Die Naturwissenschaften (the natural sciences), Jawor (sycamore), or Jujutsu (way of softness) for examples. I'm not sure what Swaenajayanti grama swarojagar yojana means, so I can't really give you a definitive answer for that one. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:38, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Random page getting better?

Has anyone else noticed that when you click the random article button that you're much more likely to be sent to an interesting article than, say, a year ago? 'Cause I used to click the random page button a lot, but stopped because I always ended up on a sentence long stub about an obscure place or athlete. Now after not having done it for a while I find myself being sent to all sorts of interesting articles, some on major topics. Anyone else noticed this? Is it because Wiki has grown alot, or (more cynically) maybe the programmers changed the algorithm or something and it's no longer directing users to truly random pages any more? Abyssal (talk) 03:17, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

It never did direct you a truly random article; instead, it selected an article from a constantly changing pool. The pool could conceivably be in a better place at the moment or it's just luck. I doubt that all articles have been improved enough; in fact, the stub to FA ratio has only been increasing. - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 09:47, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence for this claim, which contradicts WP:FAQ/Technical#Is the "random article" feature really random?? Algebraist 12:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Citizendium Porting

I just stumbled over this project and thought it might be worth discussing it on a broader basis. The project describes itself as a "group dedicated to importing content from Citizendium into the corresponding Wikipedia articles and periodically resynchronize when the Citizendium source articles are modified". I wonder

• a) do we need that

and, more importantly

• b) do we want that to happen? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 09:56, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Citizendium is at [9]. A brief look shows that the articles are well laid out and well illustrated. I did not take the time to compare a Wikipedia article with a Citizendium article. Jakob.scholbach has raised an important question. Is this the best place to discuss what could be a major issue? --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:59, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

According to Citizendium#Content the licences are not compatible except when their article is based on ours and hence GFDL licensed. That will limit the extent to which we can use their content. I also can't see how we can tell which of their articles is GDFL and which is not. I am concerned that some of the synced content might not be ours to take. For example: List of drugs banned from the Olympics is taken from [10]. I can't see anything to say that this is GFDL.

Apart from that, I would hate to see our content being brought into lock-step with theirs but it makes sense to make some careful use their material if they come up with something that we lack and which we are allowed to use. As for syncing stuff back to them, that is an issue for them. I don't know how well their process will be able to cope with it. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:23, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

DanielRigal, I think you missed the recent license switch: we have switched our license from GFDL to cc-by-sa. As far as the legal issues are concerned, there is no problem. As for the point Jakob.scholbach raised, I'm not sure what exactly concerns him. As for (a), yes, the project is a good way to coordinate works if more than one person is engaging in the importation of contents. As for (b), why not? Since when improving Wikipedia becomes a problem? This may lead to digression, but a fair number of pages in Google's knol is licensed under cc-by-sa; e.g., Pacemakers. While we don't want to data-dump religious craps or advertorials to Wikipedia, I wouldn't be surprised if one finds materials in knol that we lack here. In particular, I remember a study that found Wikipedia often suffers from omission of some important facts regarding medicine and health. Even better, this seems precisely an area that knol is the strongest at. Let me ask this then: should we expand the project to include the data-dumping from knol as well? -- Taku (talk) 18:48, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

If importing the material amounts to an improvement of existing (or non-existing) WP articles, it's surely fine. My concern is, though, that importing and, particularly, synchronizing(!) WP articles with Citizendium articles may not be an improvement in all cases and dare to say will not be an improvement in many cases. For example, the project proposes to synchronize the CZ article on prime numbers with prime number. In this particular case, this amounts to actually removing material. I'm confident members of the porting project would not do that, but the mere idea makes me somewhat uneasy. Note also differences between CZ and WP (See also CZ:We aren't WP.). That page says "Citizendium is not a mirror of Wikipedia. Absolutely do not simply copy content from Wikipedia to Citizendium without working on it." I think the same holds true the other way round. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 19:57, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

No, no, no. You've got a completely wrong idea. (Of course, the language in the project page is to blame.) As I understand, the idea is to import materials from CZ that could improve corresponding Wikipedia articles. "Sync" is probably a poor choice of wording. It should be more like: when is the last time an editor checked a CZ article to see anything that could be imported here? This way, more than one editor has to compare CZ and Wikipedia articles. It's meant to save time. Obviously, we (members of the project and the other editors in Wikipedia) won't replace our prime number by its CZ counterpart. -- Taku (talk) 20:49, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Would create licenseing issues since CZ editors have not agreed to atribution by URL.©Geni 00:00, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Care to elaborate? As far as we follow http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Reusing_Citizendium_Content we should be fine, legally speaking. -- Taku (talk) 01:33, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Zee problem is the "You agree to be credited, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL when your contributions are reused in any form" line in or edit window.©Geni 13:16, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Copyright violation

The section Clarification is clearly a copyright violation, since it is taken directly from the cited source, and is a very long text, so fair use is not applicable. I have never done a copyright violation procedure, and I am reluctant to undertake one now. The Clarification section is very important to the article, so rewriting is in order. The subject is very technical, and filled with jargon. Please help. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:47, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

What article? Algebraist 12:50, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, T-MPLS is the article. I failed to modify the link above, but I fixed that.--DThomsen8 (talk) 13:03, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I've fixed it by removing the copyvio and pointing to the text as a reference. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:23, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

New cleanup template

Hey mates. I've created a new article cleanup template at {{unlinkedrefs}}. See Aqueous normal phase chromatography and 832 Karin for examples of where it should be used. I just posted this here so that more people would be aware of it. Also, I pretty much just copied the code from one of the other cleanup templates. Hopefully those creatures more familiar with template coding can have a look and eliminate unnecessary parts and make sure that bots recognize it properly. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:28, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia in the UK

What Wikimedia events or activities would you like to see take place in the UK?

We're currently trying to pull together ideas for "initiatives" that Wikimedia UK can support here. There have been lots of ideas posted here which need fleshing out before they can be taken forward. We've also got a list of things that we've already supported here.

We're having an open IRC meeting to discuss possible initiatives, which will take place this coming Tuesday, the 30th June 2009, at 8.30PM BST (19:30 GMT), in #wikimedia-uk on irc.freenode.net . For more information, and to say that you'll be coming, please see [11]

Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, and is set up as a membership-run non-profit UK company limited by guarantee. To find out more information, to join or to donate, please visit our website at http://uk.wikimedia.org/ .

Thanks, Mike Peel (talk) 17:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Chair, Wikimedia UK - http://uk.wikimedia.org/

Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited. Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom

Publication interpretations about radon

Hello, Could some neutral observers keep a look at the ongoing discussion about the radon article and (abusive?) usage of references there ? thanks in advance. Biem (talk) 07:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Survey 2009

So are there any news about the 2009 survey? It is high time to start discussing it; in particular, what we have learned from the 2008 one and how to make new surveys better. It would also be nice if this survey was more transparent with issues such as data availability for future researchers, and the contributors to meta:General User Survey were finally invited to participate in this project... As this is important for the Foundation, organizing the yearly surveys should probably become an official responsibility of somebody. It does appear that relying on random contributors and self-motivated academics is not working out that well for us. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

WMF is not planning an official 2009 survey (not a general one, at least - probably a few more specialized ones) - our current thinking is to do a big one every two years. There will still be quite a few reports on the last one in addition to the preliminary results already published; I've received two new preliminary reports (one on perception of quality and one on comparison by languages) which are ready to be published pending final approval. And, we've got a commitment from the research team at UNU-Merit to release all the anonymized data from the survey under CC-BY, which I will continue to remind them of :-). That said, any community work on an improved survey framework for next time is much appreciated.---Eloquence* 00:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Size and location of the search box

Whenever I visit wikipedia I find it most annoying to have to click on the tiny search box on the left side first before entering anything. The first thing visitors on wikipedia do is search for an article. Therefore the box should jump at you, be bigger and placed at the top of the page, with no need to click on it first. Who agrees with me? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juclael (talk • contribs) 17:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

If you use Firefox or another Mozilla-based browser you can configure it to run a Wikipedia search from the address bar. For example, if I type wp ham sandwich in my address bar, it will direct me to Ham Sandwich (rock band) because that is the first search result for that query. I imagine that every other browser can probably be configured to do the same thing in one way or another. I agree that the Search box could be bigger, but it's also unnecessary because of the address bar. Also, not everyone even uses the search box, some people just type out URL's manually due to some browsers' ability to do URL completion, though I think that is a bad idea myself. -- Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 17:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

It is a common request. At the top of Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) it says "No, we will not use Javascript to set focus on the search box. This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See b1864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English), and for logged in users there is a gadget available in your preferences."--Commander Keane (talk) 12:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Try wikipedia.org. It focuses on the search box. APL (talk) 00:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Wow!! Thank you, that is a great url - and for something like that which I have been looking for for ages. Would this url be somehow added to the navigation section on the left of the page, say under the Wiki globe? 78.32.143.113 (talk) 07:17, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia reliability!

Does anyone collect these anecdotes? Wikipedia has a picture of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire painted in 1768. The official site of No 10 Downing street shows this person as a prime minister...... but that one died in 1764. So wikipedia is right and allows edits. The No 10 site doesn't appear to have a place to report errors..... ?? Can anyone confirm I'm right? Victuallers (talk) 20:44, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Well the alternative explanation is that the Wikipedia article is wrong and the Number 10 website correct. – ukexpat (talk) 21:06, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

One of wikipedia or the number 10 website looks to have got the picture identifying the wrong person. The details on the number 10 website seem to refer to William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire not the 5th Duke who wikipedia has the picture as being of. Davewild (talk) 21:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The book I found on google books agrees with wikipedia that it is the 5th Duke - [12] Davewild (talk) 21:23, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

That book is by Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (one of the Mitford sisters and an acknowledged expert on this stuff). Amanda Foreman says pretty much the same thing on her website and since her book Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire was adapted from her Oxford DPhil I think we can treat her as a reliable source too. I've updated the commons description accordingly. Well done Victuallers for spotting No 10's mistake! - Pointillist (talk) 22:35, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

He, he - I doubt that many UK citizens would regard No 10 as being a reliable source. Jezhotwells (talk) 22:43, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I lived in the UK for the first 35 years of my life (and still a citizen) so I know how <sarcasm>absolutely reliable</sarcasm> No 10 is, but someone had to be Devil's advocate here! In any event, this may be a useful anecdote for The Signpost. Has anyone e-mailed Gordon to tell him about the error?! – ukexpat (talk) 01:44, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Brilliant - one up for wikipedia! It would be nice to make the signpost. I'm going to see if I can make a "DYK" for the main page Victuallers (talk) 09:02, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Article which seems like a blatant advert

Hi, I tagged this article yesterday - Nurofen, with the advert tag, but noticed it hasn't gone into any category for any 'Admin' kind of attention. I personally think the whole article needs deleting, and any relevent info from the Nurofen article inserting into the ibuprofen article - such as compound preparations of more than one active ingredient. I notice that concern had previously been raised on its talk page. Regards. 78.32.143.113 (talk) 07:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia has many articles on brand name products - as Nurofen is one of the biggest ibuprofen brands it seems reasonable to have an article. I don't agree that it is written like an advert. It isn't particularly promotional. Putting a tag on an article doesn't neccessarily mean 'admins' are going to leap into action. You could try improving the prose yourself. If you feel really strongly about it then raise an AfD. Driveby tagging is not encouraged in Wikipedia. You are an editor so you can act yourself. Don't expect others to do things that you are not prepared to do. Cheers. Jezhotwells (talk) 10:21, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

links_to_essays_in_policy_pages

Please join the discussion in Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Links_to_essays_in_policy_pages - Altenmann >t 17:27, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

File:ChinaTJC.jpg

File:ChinaTJC.jpg looks like it's been photoshopped. When I mentioned that to the uploader, their response was, "That is due to the fact that the Chinese govenment does not permit any Christian denomination in China to display the name of their church group on the chapels.". Doesn't that make this image a fake, and not appropriate for Wikipedia? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 03:01, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

This has been resolved. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 03:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I personally do not mind about the modification because I believe it portrays the situation more accurately. I have added a note below the image caption here clarifying the situation to readers. --George Thompson (talk) 03:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

The uploader removed their deletion request from the File page. It is no longer resolved. Please provide some further opinions. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 03:26, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

We should not be illustrating things with faked or doctored photographs. Algebraist 03:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It seems the general consensus would be to delete the image. I have therefore reverted my previous edit.

This issue is now resolved. --George Thompson (talk) 04:34, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Clearly a useless image. It doesn't portray any situation "accurately" because the church doesn't have its name written on it, and the image should show the church the way it actually looks. I have deleted it. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Page numbering in {cite journal} and {cite book}

I suggested a change to the {{cite book}} template, please see this discussion; any input would be appreciated. Thanks, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Random article should not appear on unregistered editor interface

Random article should not appear on WP's unregistered (IP) editor interface, because:

1. The Wikipedia foundation encourages parents/guardians of pre-pubescent minors to permit such minors to access Wikipedia for educational purposes
2. Random articles may include sexual content that goes beyond explicit anatomical details and may describe unexpected activities
3. Parents/guardians may wish to prevent minors' access to such materials.

- Pointillist (talk) 01:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

This would be an extremely ineffective way of stopping minors reaching 'inappropriate' content. Parents who want to do this should block access to such content (and to Special:Random if they wish) at their end, rather than have us disable a useful site feature to guard against a very low-probability risk. Algebraist 02:01, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose: It's up to parents to monitor the internet activities of their children. To remove the random article facility for all unregistered users is unfairly penalising those who choose not to create an account. – ukexpat (talk) 02:03, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose as stated in the thread above and as per [13] and [14] and [15] and [16] and so on. Jezhotwells (talk) 02:09, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Researchers often use the Random Page feature to help select a random sample of articles for a study. Such researchers may not have an account. They should not be required to register to use this tool. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a babysitter. Period. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 03:18, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

We should also remove the ability of unregistered users to type "sex" or "lingus" into the search box. --Golbez (talk) 03:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

But that would disenfranchise people looking for the Irish national airline. Jezhotwells (talk) 10:23, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Sounds dirty to me. Also, why would a kid need to know about either Ireland or airlines? Both are taboo subjects in my household. --Golbez (talk) 14:08, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose, of course. It's not our responsibility to implement parental control. And that is quite independent from the facts that we cannot do a remotely useful job without crippling the encyclopedia, that we will have a hard time agreeing what kinds of materials to restrict (Women without a Chador? Image of a Crucifix? Scientology?) and that very few kids spontaneously turn into murdering madmen on the view of a breast. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:21, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose - It is not our job to be the parents here. Any good internet filtering system will prevent access to articles which are sexually focused while allowing the rest of Wikipedia to still be open for children. Also, I doubt consensus could ever be reached as to what is inappropriate, so even trying to start this type of thing would just be an enormous waste of time and probably simply attract negative media attention to the site. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 11:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
• Question - This proposal seems to be predicated on the belief that registered users are not children. Is there any basis for that belief? Is there anything that prevents or discourages children from registering? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:15, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Good point. I know a number of minors who are productive registered members. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 01:17, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. It doesn't seem fair to determine what features of the interface people can use. Secondly, if a child wants to look at the list of sex positions (a particular favourite of mine), we have a handy search box for that. If anything, the random article link is less of a threat. And finally, if parents don't want their blessèd little children accessing rude material, they shouldn't provide them with unrestricted access to the internet. There's a reason parental controls exist... Greg Tyler ^{(t • c)} 21:24, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. As noted above, let parents do their own parenting. It's not our job to filter the internet for them. Resolute 21:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• Besides, you are seriously deluding yourself if you don't think the first three searches children are making on Wikipedia are anything but "sex", "penis" and "fuck". Removing the random article button certainly will not stop kids from finding what they want to find. Resolute 21:34, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

GLAM -Challenge

On August 6 & 7 Wikimedia Australia is hosting GLAM-Wiki at the Australian War Memorial supported by the

• Wikimedia Foundation
• Australian War Memorial
• ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
• Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre

In lead up to the event some of the GLAM institutions(Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) have donated items to be given away, Wikimedia Australia has organised the GLAM Challenge which will run from 13th July until 23:59UTC on the 19th July. This is open to all registered editors in any Wikimedia project, you dont need to be in Australia to win as prizes will be posted to anywhere in the world. Nominate yourself by the 13th July, see GLAM Challenge for more details. Gnangarra 11:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

A proposal

I've noticed that some of the articles on Wikipedia contain content that definitely isn't appropriate for small children, yet they could still come upon them accidentally by using the random article feature. Therefore, something needs to be done. Wikipedia isn't censored, so that's not what I'm proposing. Rather, any articles detailing the processes of human reproduction (with or without pictures) or excretion (with pictures), as well as anything else that may be determined inappropriate in the future, should be moved to a separate namespace, perhaps "Adult:" or something similar. Then, on the page for that subject in the main namespace, a warning template should be placed stating that the content isn't appropriate for children and containing a link that a person can click to go to the article if he isn't bothered by the inappropriate content. --Aruseusu (talk) 23:08, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

No, it is not appropriate for Wikpedia to self-censor in this way. Jezhotwells (talk) 23:10, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

It's not censoring, since the content would still be there and easily accessible to those who want to see it. My proposal would merely prevent, for example, a young child pressing "Random article" and getting an article about something inappropriate. It would not in any way remove any content from Wikipedia, so it isn't censoring. --Aruseusu (talk) 23:18, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

How do we pick what goes into Adult:? It's a lot harder than you probably think it is. Better to not try. --Golbez (talk) 23:26, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

As I said, anything detailing human reproduction or excretion (the latter only in cases with pictures) would be moved there, as well as any article containing profanity in the title or in a quote on the page. --Aruseusu (talk) 23:28, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

If you start, it will never end. What about articles on other parts of the human body? Breasts aren't involved in reproduction, would they be on your list? What about bondage? What about bad words? What about gory subjects? What about blasphemy? --Golbez (talk) 23:37, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

But what if users (like myself) don't consider any of those things inappropriate for children (especially excretion: are children supposed to not know about this somehow?)? Algebraist 23:32, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Note that I said that articles about excretion would only be considered inappropriate if they contained pictures (for example, articles with a picture or diagram of a penis or vagina). Also, there is absolutely no reason that children should be exposed to articles about sex. Also, I stated that articles about other inappropriate subjects (such as articles about breasts or articles with pictures containing excessive gore) could also be moved if it is decided that they are inappropriate as well. --Aruseusu (talk) 23:38, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Not everyone considers basic anatomy an adults-only topic. Algebraist 23:43, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

So you think that articles detailing the step-by-step process of sexual intercourse should be completely accessible without any warning whatsoever? --Aruseusu (talk) 23:46, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

As it happens I do (like most Wikipedians), but I was referring to your excretion-related comments above. Algebraist 23:47, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

It's just ridiculous expose small children to things such as sex. They should find out from their parents when they're older.--Aruseusu (talk) 23:50, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

It's quite ridiculous to give such small children unfettered access to the internet, as well. The solution lies with parents, not with us. --Golbez (talk) 00:06, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Who will decide what qualifies? With hundreds or thousands of new articles everyday, who is going to check them out?. Exactly what criteria would they use? What is the problem with an encyclopaedia having articles about sex, bodily functions, etc.? What politics do you think are not suitable? Are there books, you would not consider appropriate? Do you think it right that Google self censor the content it delivers in China? Would you think it right that tv and radio and music and books in the library and newspapers and childen in the playground are censored? There are various software devices which uptight parents can use to censor what their children can view on the web, if they so choose. There is no need for this, and no-one to organise it, unless you want to recruit an army of Mary Whitehouses. And despite your statement, your proposal amounts to censorship. What is the problem with a picture of a vagina or penis? Do you really belive that children should not be allowed to havce sex eduction? Jezhotwells (talk) 23:52, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I believe that children should not have sex education until at least middle school, and possibly not even until high school. This isn't censorship, since the content would still be available if you click on a link below the warning message. The comment about Google China is completely irrelevant. A much more accurate comparison would be to Google's SafeSearch, which also censors out content which is universally considered to be inappropriate. Like SafeSearch, perhaps there could be an option for registered users to turn it off if they so choose. --Aruseusu (talk) 23:58, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Well you're entitled to your beliefs. It's not entirely clear to me what you mean by 'middle school' and 'high school' since these vary from country to country. But at a guess, I would say 14+. In many countries, this is considered too late Nil Einne (talk) 17:06, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

It isn't necessarily unreasonable to distinguish between what readers find if they search for it, and what they might encounter when they click "Random article", is it? This is a question of unexpectedness rather than censorship: my sister won't kill me if I show my niece the Venus article, the 69 dab page doesn't link to soixante-neuf, Brazil doesn't mention Brazilian waxing, etc. IMO this would benefit from wider debate, though I suspect there are simpler solutions than the proposed "Adult" namespace. - Pointillist (talk) 23:54, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Bring on the debate. If parents don't want their children to view things via the internet, they can use software blocks or throw the computer in the skip. It is called parental control. Jezhotwells (talk) 00:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, most parents, aunts and uncles will realise that the boundaries aren't so clear. There's a difference between articles about body parts etc and technical descriptions of soixante-neuf and Anal sex, so Aruseusu's point about Random Article merits wider discussion. - Pointillist (talk) 00:05, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

The odds of hitting a sexual article through random article, and not, say, an article on a town in Nebraska or a train station in Britain, are so infinitesmially small as to not merit effort to avoid. It's equally possible that they could hit an article about harlequin fetus or flesh-eating disease, both of which I could propose are more damaging to children than analingus. --Golbez (talk) 00:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I would strongly object to random train stations in Britain being encountered unexpectedly - it might lead to children becoming trainspotters or anoraks. Seriously though, if parents, aunties, etc want to leave their children unattended at computer terminals without suitable control then that is their problem, not Wikipedia's. I really can't believe that people wish to object to the chance that an unsupervised "small" (unspecified - presumably capable of operating a computer keyboard) child might encounter articles on common sexual practices. I mean, they might encounter articles on Mutual assured destruction or cluster bombs or the use of White phosphorus use in Iraq Jezhotwells (talk) 00:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Good call on trainspotting but you are missing the point. Wikipedia is a site that parents are reluctant to block, because it is so helpful for understanding how the world works, and in general readers don't stumble across explicit material here unless they are looking for it. Random article is an exception to this and I'd love to see Golbez's stats calculations, which would need data on the number of times Random article is clicked by pre-pubescent readers and the amount of "adult" content across the c. 2.5 million articles here. - Pointillist (talk) 00:34, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I hit random 50 times; I came up with Knife Juggling, an Olympic athlete, and a village in Poland, but no dicks. Knife juggling sounds pretty dangerous for kids, to me. --Golbez (talk) 00:40, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

If parents don't want their kids to visit a random article, they should block the random article feature. This is easily possible. There is no reason for us to limit the random article feature fo the majority of wikipedians who don't have a problem and are able to click again if they come across something they don't wish to know about Nil Einne (talk) 17:14, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

(outdent again) Well, I would guess - without casting aspersions - that that was just an educated guess on that editor's part, but I don't think that I did miss the point. Problems come when parents, aunties, guardians don't supervise and don't discuss things in an open and honest way. I had more "problems" discussing issues like nuclear war, war atrocities, crooked financiers, biassed referees, etc. with my children than I ever did with sex (or taking a dump!) Jezhotwells (talk) 00:44, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

The fact is, no matter how much people cry out for any kind of system for this, it's been proposed tens (hundreds?) of times over the years and has NEVER been implamented. It's not going to happen, nor should it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

And I believe that children should not be on the Internet for the most part until middle school or even until high school. At least not until they can demonstrate that they can show a speck of maturity and are able to type in clear, coherent sentences (i.e., no lolololol, rofl, lmao, o_0, xD, ur gay/stupid/stupid and gay, leet, other emoticons, or lack of capitalization/punctuation, or substituting words for letters and numbers like b4). MuZemike 01:35, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, let's start a fresh thread to discuss this. - Pointillist (talk) 01:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

This comes up every couple of months. Tagging things as "Adult" is a form of moral judgment, even if it's not total censorship. The question is criteria. People will naturally be very insulted and angered if things that you think should be censored are tagged and things that they believe should be tagged are not. Who are you to say that your interpretation of "adult" is more correct? So then, what about icky surgical pictures? Articles that mention sexuality incidentally? Clean photographs of porn stars? Religious icons? Drugs? Abortion? Photographs of people dieing in natural disaster or being killed in military combat? Predation photographs? Animals mating? Insects mating? What about David(Michelangelo) or Venus De Milo? Darwinism? Half of human culture is offensive to someone.

Here's a concrete example : Homosexuality. It's an important topic in today's society, and one that kids may well want to know about. Most people would say that it would be ludicrous to ban kids from a topic that describes nearly 5% of human population, including the parents (adoptive or otherwise) of many children. However, a small but vocal minority will want that article tagged as "Adult" to shield innocent youngsters. The amount of energy that would be wasted on that single debate would be staggering, and that debate would be replicated a thousand times across the entire Wikipedia project.

That is why, to preserve harmony, Wikipedia must absolutely refrain from making moral judgments, even when the direct consequence of that judgment is relatively minor. (an "adult" tag, as opposed to total censorship.) APL (talk) 14:14, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think even the OP's posts prove your point. The OP is apparently opposed to anything with any depiction of genitalia, for children below middle school or perhaps even below high school. (Whatever he/she means by middle school/high school.) Surprisingly there was no mention of violence or anything of that sort. I'm not sa parent and I'm unlikely to be one anytime soon but personally I'd be more worried about a young child come across and article on the Holocaust or slavery or genocide or some other article about the horrible things humans do to one another or perhaps some scary disease then I would be about them coming across a diagram depicting the penis and vagina, body parts that I personally would expect most 10 year olds in the Western world know about, or should know about. Nil Einne (talk) 17:14, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Come on, people. Eveyone knows such tagging is a very good way of getting children to read those articles. Peter jackson (talk) 10:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Multiple projects, only one class=C, and NPOV

If an article has several Wikipedia Projects, all of which were unranked in class, and another editor comes along and ranks the article class=C in just one of the projects, what does that mean?

In this instance, I had already marked the article with the POV template, because the last part of the article is preaching a particular point of view. I may agree with this particular preaching, but this is not appropriate in Wikipedia.

So, can an article be ranked as class=C when it has a serious POV issue? I am reluctant to change other project lines to a class=Start, so I plan to await whatever happens as other editors may respond to the POV template. I would appreciate advice here on the issues: several projects, one ranking; and can class=C be justified when NPOV is a serious issue. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Some sort of glitch

I found this article with an AfD notice while clicking on Random article; e-zone, but the discussion page leads to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flawless (Dance_Group). How did this happen and who/what fixes it? Abductive (talk) 11:02, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks like User:Simon1223hk just copy-pasted it in. Algebraist 11:39, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Philophobia

I was wishing to make at least a starter page on Philophobia (fear of being a relationship). It seems there is a band with this name and I don't know how to differentiate and make a separate page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Waldo1967 (talk • contribs) 16:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:DAB should tell you all you need to know. Rmhermen (talk) 16:36, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Stubs icons and accessibility

Hello there. I see the community is familiar with alt text for images (Wikipedia:Alternative text for images). But unfortunately, there is no alt text with most icons, such as stubs icons.

By exemple, when a screen reader reads Template:Album-stub and reads the icon, it reads the name of the file (Gnome-dev-cdrom-audio.svg). As you already know, the name of the file is not a relevant information at all.

This icon does not carry important information, so there is no need of a long alt text. The best solution would be "|alt=Stub icon". Here is an example. Since there are hundreds (if not thousands) of templates to edit, I need help. Maybe we could make a Bot request. Do you agree ? Dodoïste (talk) 23:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I understand what you are trying to accomplish with stubs icons. Perhaps images on project templates have the same issue. It seems to me that a Bot could do the job, but I know nothing about how to write a Bot. Remember Be Bold WP:BB, and just go ahead and ask for a Bot to be written. --DThomsen8 (talk) 20:03, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, alternative text should only be used when the image has other meaning than decoration. Why would you want a screen reader to read the "stub icon" to a blind person, for example? So the best alternative for stub icons is alt="". Samulili (talk) 20:57, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

You would be right if the image was not a link. An icon should have empty alt text (alt="") only if the image is not a link. Otherwise, as Graham87 stated, a screen reader would read the file name. See using null alt on an image where the image is the only content in a link from www.w3.org, techniques for WCAG 2.0, for further information. Dodoïste (talk) 09:54, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

It's worth running this idea past Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting. I don't know enough about the technicalities of this proposal, but others there will be interested in commenting, I'm sure. Grutness...wha? 01:00, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

As a screen reader user, I'd prefer some alt text like "stub icon", because the filename is read to me if there is no alt text, and "stub icon" would be more informative than the file name. Graham87 03:15, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, each icon should have e.g., alt="Nurdsburg icon" or alt="[Nurdsburg icon]". The same words that one would "read in their head" if they could see the image. P.S., == Stubs icons and accessibility == should be == Icons and accessibility ==. Jidanni (talk) 20:01, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I have corrected a major mistake in Wikipedia:Alternative text for images. Please reread my poor english. Many thanks. :-) Dodoïste (talk) 23:35, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

This would also apply to other icons, such as the ones used for portals. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 03:16, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

•  Note: BRFA filed: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Xenobot 6.1. –xeno^talk 18:14, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks, Xeno. This really gets my hopes pumped up. Looks great. :-) Dodoïste (talk) 18:33, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

There is a proposal at Template talk:Portal#Remove link from image, for accessibility to set link= so that the icon does not link. It should be one or the other, not both. There are some portal templates that use {{portal}} as a meta-template, and some portals in infoboxes. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

iPhone Developers

Hi all, Over at Wikinews, we are currently looking into the possibility of an iPhone application for the site. Any chance any capable developers could get in touch, either on my talk or by email? Thanks all! Dotty••|☎ 23:17, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Sandbox on Google

Hi, I was doing research for a new article today, when I noticed that my sandbox page was the #1 entry in the Google search. Anything we can do to keep our sandbox pages from showing up in search results? --Tim Sabin (talk) 00:34, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

{{NOINDEX}}. Algebraist 00:49, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I added this template to my sandbox pages. Will Google remove entries from a sandbox following this action? --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think so. It seems once Google has your page, it's there forever. Meanwhile: is there a way we can put together a robots.txt file in our sandbox? This way, we could promote directly to Wikipedia with having to first remove the {{NOINDEX}} template. The current forced removal is error-prone. --Tim Sabin (talk) 13:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

DThomsen8, all your sandbox pages are in User talk namespace (compare [17] and [18]), and User talk was already noindexed for all users since bugzilla:13890. So your addition of {{NOINDEX}} to those user talk pages makes no difference unless bugzilla:13890 is reverted (which was suggested at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 36#Re-enable searches in the user talk space but didn't gain support). I don't know what Tim Sabin is talking about. Google respects the noindex tag which is what {{NOINDEX}} adds via __NOINDEX__, but if you added it to User:Dthomsen8 or a User subpage (of which you currently have none) then it would remain indexed by Google until next time they scan the page and detect noindex. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:13, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Prime. True, Google will respect {{NOINDEX}} on each individual file. It will also respect robots.txt on an entire directory, which does the same thing. I'm just saying that, if you add {{NOINDEX}} to a sandbox page, you need to remove the tag before promoting the page. This is what is error-prone, for you may forget to do it. robots.txt would eliminate the need for this step before promoting. --Tim Sabin (talk) 16:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

{{NOINDEX}} has no effect in mainspace (articles). PrimeHunter (talk) 19:35, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Dynamic Vapor Sorption

Dynamic Vapor Sorption appears to have been copied from somewhere, though I can't find it online anywhere. Any ideas about what to do about it? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 07:01, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

At least some of it (e.g. the last paragraph) seems to be copied word-for-word from the given sources. Algebraist 14:28, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

For ongoing discussion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dynamic vapor sorption. - Pointillist (talk) 22:43, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Featured portal candidates

Could use some more participation at WP:FPOC. There is a portal that has been under consideration for some time now, Portal:Statistics, that has not received any comments. Cirt (talk) 20:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Shamu and Shammu

I would like the article on Shamu the killer whale to be distinguished from Shammu the Indian actress, but I don't know the proper template to make that happen. I am sure other editors can do it, though.--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I used {{distinguish}} in [19]. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:27, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Close, but not quite. I added it to Shammu, but I am looking for it to say "the killer whale" or "the Indian actress" too. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:19, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

How about Template:Otheruses4? Rmhermen (talk) 16:35, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

There is also {{Distinguish2}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:09, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I used Template:Otheruses4 which seems to do the job. --DThomsen8 (talk) 04:56, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Also be aware of {{for}}. - Jmabel | Talk 04:54, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Blacklisted links

• See Talk:Dhurarara!!#Move?. Please where is information about this new blacklisting system? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:55, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
• MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. Algebraist 13:15, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
• It would be useful if to Special:SpecialPages could be added a call to a special page which asks for a page title and reports if that name would be blacklisted. That would be a quick way for admins to find if a name is blacklisted - an admin gets the same result on creating a page whether its name is blacklisted or not. It would also be useful if it reported why the name is blacklisted, as stated in the comments in page MediaWiki:Titleblacklist, e.g. an ordinary user trying to create a page ABCD☭, or an admin querying whether ABCD☭ is an allowed page name, would receive the fault remark "Disallowed political symbol" or similar. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:48, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
• Another way would be: if an admin tries to create a page with a blacklisted name, a warning fault message would be shown, but he would be allowed to create the page. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:25, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Bugzilla is thataway. Algebraist 14:20, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm....

http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Australian_Pink_Floyd_Show&diff=301256213&oldid=301245470

So I reverted a change made by 'bandcorrection'. He had removed an image and a small piece of trivia which was useful to the article, claiming it wasn't relevent, I reverted the edit, and he reverted it back. He also left the following message on my page:

I'm a member of The Australian Pink Floyd Show It's not that it wasn't 'relevant' we've run into a few copyright issues of late, and I didn't want to mention that as the reason for the edit. Roger isn't happy as he's touring The Wall himself this year and doesn't want the competition.We have to respect that! Sorry for the confusion

Now, putting the claim made aside, the items (Picture and trivia mentioning that one member was once in a former PF tribute) removed have nothing to do with violating copyright or competition. Getting into the claims, the first one is unprovable and here-say. The second one doesn't even appear to be true. Rogers had planned on a big show in Israel in June which I believe never went through, and his recent tour ended in 2008, with no mention of upcoming tour plans.

So what should I do? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 04:49, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I reinserted the image, but the text was unsourced. You may want to contact an admin you trust concerning the WP:SPA and WP:NPOV problems with the editor. Sswonk (talk) 14:27, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Meh, I don't know any admins on any level. This user clearly has a determined purpose in mind. They seem to arbitrarily decide information they don't want on the article (As well as a reply I made on their talk page) and remove it again and again despite several editors reverting those changes. The picture you added back was removed again. I have replaced it, as well as adding another external link that the user had removed a while ago (To a principal member's official site). This is approaching vandalism and so I believe it exempts the 3RR with reverting these unconstructive edits. If an admin can come in and deal with the user specifically it would be very appreciated... Perhaps a temporary block on them editing Australian Pink Floyd Show as a warning? -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 22:53, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikivoices Skypecast

Hi all. Participants are welcome for the next Wikivoices Skypecast. See here for more details. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 01:54, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

2010 US Census

As suggested, a dedicated page has been set up, and this discussion may wish to move to its talk page. Thanks! BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 06:35, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

So, eons ago, User:Ram-man programmed a bot to take data from the 2000 US Census and use it to create articles for all the CDPs (Census Designated Places) in the US of A. Well, it's been a while. 2000 has come and gone. Wikipedia has, shall we say, grown and matured. A lot has changed. Now, a new census is coming upon us. This, invariably, will create probz (problems) for Wikipedia.

As it is one of Wiki's goals to be current and timely, the addition of US Census data should be incorporated into articles when it becomes available. However, it is no longer as simple as last time. In fact, it's a whole lot harder.

Many, most likely most, if not all Ram-man's original articles have undergone at least a few edits since their respective creations. This means a bot cannot simply go thru and replace what it identifies as "olddata" with "newdata". I suppose (I'm honestly very unqualified to talk about bots, so correct me if I'm wrong) it would be possible up to a point, for a bot to go thru, looking for certain tags from the original articles (ie, "the city has a total area of x square miles" or "For every p females there were d males") but if that information had been in any way reformatted, it would be far more complicated, if not borderline impossible.

Now, I s'pose it'd be possible to manually go and edit the average per capita income and average family size on every single article, but it would be amazingly time consuming, astoundingly tedious and, in my opinion, dead boring.

So, fellow Wikipedians, I come to you with a question: what the schnitzel do we do? I'd love to get a jump on this problem now, and would love to hear your input. As always, thank you all! BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 02:33, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Also up for renewal will be the "demographics" sections of thousands of municipalities and towns. Many of those have been altered since they were created. Perhaps the bot can see if the information is still in the original arrangement and if so just change it. For those that have changed significantly, perhaps the bot could place suggested text on the article talk pages, and leave it to live editors to modify it to suit.   Will Beback  talk  03:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah; it's especially the demographics sections that'll be needing this, although of all the sections, they might have been the least likely to have been edited, because of their statistical nature. I dunno. Maybe a survey of these articles is needed t see what needs doin'? BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 04:12, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I suggest posting a more formally stated note with this issue outlined in brief at every US state's project talk, requesting project members come to this discussion and add their thoughts. This would provide a structured way to set up a 2010 requirements survey, with volunteers providing information about the needs of their respective states. I don't think a bot will be able to accomplish or update what the Ram-man bot did. Sswonk (talk) 04:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

First off, around what time does the actual data get published? I was thinking this material would not come out until around late 2010/early 2011 at the earliest, and even then we're not sure how much we're going to be off by on the various demographics. So I guess the way to look at this is to try to see: 1) What data (what parameters) we're going to have to change in the various infobox settlements? 2) Can we look for the original demographic text arrangement first, and modify that if possible? 3) If not, can we modify individual sentences/segments without throwing off a lot of the other material article in terms of context? 4) Can we specify some kind of opt-out parameter for this bot for articles which are already being manually maintained? I'm going to go notify User:Ram-Man, since he may have anticipated this on the initial run. From WP:CAL -Optigan13 (talk) 05:32, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

An opt-out (hidden category?) for pages is definitely needed. I just did a quick check of six CDPs and Bishop in Inyo County, California and all of the "Demographics" sections appear to be identical with respect to non-numeric content - stress "appear". If a routine could be coded to confirm that the section is identical to when it was originally created, then direct editing by the bot would be OK. Otherwise, I like the idea Will suggested of having a bot dump updated text sections on article talk supbages for manual insertion, and also create new stubs for new CDPs. I think bot infobox edits are also possible, but the likelihood of finding manual formatting w/line breaks, abbreviations etc. there is much higher. (WP:MASS) Sswonk (talk) 12:42, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Is the 2010 Census even going to collect the same data that it did in 2000? I read they were doing a short form this time around. 2010 Census is Different. --JBC3 (talk) 13:47, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Obviously the ideal scenario would be if we could simply plug the new data into the bot and have it go through and replace $olddata with $newdata, but the obstacles to this have already been stated : the data sets from the Census Bureau may not be the same, the data format in the article may have changed and become unrecognizable to the bot. Also, it'd be ideal if Rambot can be used for this task again; I would like to mention that I have a (currently inactive) bot that was used to update the infoboxes in US cities and places, and I can reprogram it if Rambot cannot be used. If nothing else, I can start running a survey of random articles over the weekend so we can get an idea as to how hard it would be .. Shereth 14:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

As not even an American citizen, I don't feel overly qualified to comment, but then again, we're all friends now so I'm going to anyway. :) If I were leading this "operation" (which I fear it must be), I think I would follow Optigan13's comments, and work in stages. That is to say: 1) Create new articles (ah! the easy bit; 0/10 difficulty) 2) Find articles where all the relevant sentences have remained totally unchanged and edit them accordingly. Where new data is not going to ever be available (questions not being asked and so forth), mark old data as being from 2000. (Difficulty: 2/10 realistically.) 3) Same as 2, but for articles where all relevant sentences remain unchanged, or only changed to a level through which the bot can penetrate. (Diff: 6/10) 4) Articles where some sentences are machine readable, but others aren't. Two options: involve humans to some degree directly, or try to get a bot tag old sentences as being old. "In 2000, ....", "As of 2000, ..." (Difficulty: 8/10 either way you look at it) 5) Articles where virtually all sentences are inpenetrable, the bot encounters some sort of contradiction, or some sort of artibtrary limit on "importance" of a page i.e. featured articles; these to be updated by hand. (Difficulty: A fair bit of work for humans). Anyhow, just my collected thoughts. - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 14:40, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, the complications of it all! One more thing: Many CDP pages have estimates since 2000 ("...the 2009 population is estimated to be..."). What do we do about THAT?!?!? --Tim Sabin (talk) 14:49, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Here is where it gets real fun : I can almost guarantee that the Census Bureau will be re-defining some of their CDP's, adding new ones, dropping old ones, etc. Unfortunately for us they aren't exactly set in stone from one census to the next. Shereth 15:08, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Yay. :) You could probably still hold all these changes to my little plan with a little thought, hopefully with only a little manual assistance. Oh yeah, and then we get to go through it all again with the 2011 UK Census and the same for all other commonwealth nations. Smaller tasks, admittedly, but quite probably harder to achieve by bot given that at least US middle-of-nowhere places have RamBot's uniformity as a starting point. Ah, the fun of it. - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 15:23, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah that is a bit tricky. The new ones and discontinued ones should be easier to deal with, because we either create a new article or add the data to an existing hamlet article. If the Census Bureau puts out a list of the CDPs that already exist but changed boundaries, that could make things considerably easier to deal with. --JBC3 (talk) 15:36, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

The CDP's estimates would no longer be needed and should be replaced with the actual count provided by the 2010 Census, no? --JBC3 (talk) 15:36, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Is there anything in the Demographics section that requires being saved? Couldn't a bot just wipe out the section entirely (if it exists) and replace it with a "template" with the appropriate data filled-in? --JBC3 (talk) 15:36, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Some articles have gotten new demographic information (such as religious affiliations) that are not tracked by the Census - wiping out the demographics sections en masse would result in a loss of all this additional information. Shereth 15:38, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, these new comments have me leaning strongly towards the "bot dumps new demographics paragraph on article talk subpage or section" idea. I am pretty sure that will become widely known and conscientious state project editors will follow up. This would keep the heuristics required and difficulty factor low. Sswonk (talk) 15:25, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I can only see this being useful for the "problem" pages - the vast majority should be bot-editable (see my below comments). If all we did was have a bot plop the info on every talk page we'd wind up with a lot of outdated articles, as there are many thousands of minor CDP's and small towns that get very little attention from actual editors. Shereth 15:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Probably so, I anticipated that but it made it simpler to throw the suggestion out there than to investigate on my own. In Massachusetts, Gosnold is the smallest town but as you can see the article has matured. I set up a demonstration diff to show the changes since Ram-man (keep confusing with Manny Ramirez, got to focus...). The verb tenses and other subtle edits exist - lots of them. Mass has 351 cities and towns, no unincorporated territory (true for most of New England and the northeast). I can see that these type of edits also may be common elsewhere, especially here where each place is fairly well populated and the articles have matured. That is why I prefer an opt-out or talk page solution, but I am getting a clearer picture of the difficulties involved in large sections of the midwest and west where the pages may not have changed much or at all since the bot started the articles. Sswonk (talk) 16:33, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, having taken another look at things, we can also break down the concerns by section. Essentially there are 4 places where the data is likely to change in any article when the new census data comes out. They are:

• In the infobox. As infoboxes are almost universally standard these should be easy for a bot to edit with minimal problems.
• In the lede. The standard format that exists in most of the articles will be "The population was XXX at the 2000 census." Those will be easily modified by a bot. I'm sure we can come up with a few common variations (such as "population of XXX as of the 2000 Census") to aid the bot, as well. Many of the larger/more prominent cities will have other constructs with updated estimates. Again, I am sure we can come up with several variants for the bot to search for.
• In the geography section. The standard format is "According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of XXX square miles (XXX km2), of which XXX square miles (XX km2) of it is land and XXX square miles (XXX km2) (XXX%) of it is water." There are a few standard variations as well. For the most part, I anticipate these statements will be largely unchanged and easy for the bot to find, but of course there will be exceptions.
• In the demographics section. There does exist a standard format that many articles will have and thus this should be relatively easy for the bot to change. However, due to the length of the demographic information, this section is the one I anticipate seeing the highest number of variations on and probably giving the bot the most trouble.

What we probably ought to do is to come up with a list of variants on the "standard format" statements that the bot can look for. I suspect that with a relatively small amount of work, more than 95% of the work can be done successfully with a bot. The small number of articles that have been sufficiently modified by editors so as to be unreadable by the bot are, naturally, the ones that get a lot of editor attention and those editors would be quick to manually update the information as needed. I for one am fairly optimistic about this being somewhat less daunting than it appears at first. Also - perhaps we should consider creating a dedicated page for this discussion, as I fear it may wind up overwhelming the page before too long. :) Shereth 15:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

(after ec) Yes, CDPs are problematic (as I've said many times before). Apparently the Bureau will be using different criteria for naming and defining CDPs. See here for some details from the Federal Register. In general though, I suggest that all the demographic and statistical data be placed into some sort of standardized template format that can be transcluded onto articles. Such Census data should rarely need to be edited and any stylistic edits should be done with some consistency across the board. Perhaps there might even be a mechanism for importing the raw data to Wikisource and then developing templates that could display the data in pre-formatted ways by using the entity's Census/FIPS codes. older ≠ wiser 15:33, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I remember a discussion not too long ago about trying to centralize the data and simply using templates (or some similar scheme) to display Census data on the articles themselves. If we can come up with a good way of doing this, I am very very strongly in favor of doing so. Shereth 15:38, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Interesting - The UK will a census in 2011 and so will other European countries, e.g. Spain. I like the template idea if it can be made to work. Jezhotwells (talk) 17:17, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I will look into drawing up a more formal page for this, and getting members of all the US States WikiProjects involved. BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 04:34, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Brainwave

^ Arbitrary break. Regards evolution of language, if we get Ram Man back, or get his data, this job should be made a lot easier. Don't rely on the words. Instead, look at the numbers themselves. Sure, that wouldn't solve everything, but 2432 => 2564 is a fairly easily substitution to make regardless of the words that surround them. That should help with most numbers (where they're not duplicated), but it doesn't get away from the problem of wanting to ensure 100% goodness. Only some serious logic would help with that. - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 16:45, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad idea at all. The bot would have to search for both the 2000 figures and the most recent estimates, and naturally it wouldn't catch instances where someone has swapped out the census figures for other data - but yeah, this is actually a really good idea. Shereth 22:14, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure a bot is necessary. Run a bot/script to gather the data, put it on a page somewhere, and let users introduce it into the articles. With, what, 55,000 Rambot pages? That could be easily done within a few weeks. --Golbez (talk) 17:24, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

• Why delete data from prior decades? Isn't it useful to show the change in population? - Pointillist (talk) 22:22, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Although the data is collected in 2010, it will not be available until 2012. And the information that is available will be in general the same as in 2000. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 22:32, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Not that I doubt you, but do you have a source for the anticipated date of release of the information? It'd be highly useful. If the information isn't going to be released for over 2 years then it's probably safe to put a lid on this conversation for now ... Shereth 22:36, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, the 2000 data was released in 2002, and this says that the data doesn't go to the President till December 31, 2010, so it won't be till at least some time in 2011. This says the repapportionment data has to go to the states in March 2011. This says that local population data will be released in 2012. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 01:28, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

When I first created all those pages, I had planned to update them all when the 2010 data was published. That has always been my goal, and I always planned on doing it myself, since I created the work in the first place. I suspect that the vast majority of pages are still close enough to the original that a bot could be hand-programmed to replace the data. I have not touched the original data in many years, but I'm pretty sure I have it stored somewhere on my computer. I don't see the need for opt-out lists or anything like that. Anything that can't be done automatically and correctly will be pretty easy to determine. -- RM 00:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

When you say hand-programmed do you mean numbers matching within rewritten paragraphs could replace just the numbers without changing the prose? And, after the determination of go-nogo on bot updating of the passages, could your bot then still place the newly compiled paragraphs for the article on a talk page for the nogo articles? Sswonk (talk) 03:02, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm still not sure why you think will be better to replace the existing 2000 data. That looks like a sort of recentism. Why not retain the millenial data and append the 2010 data? - Pointillist (talk) 10:14, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

The demographic data in the articles are meant to provide the reader with information about what a city is, not what it was. Many of the articles on the larger cities do include historical population figures in tabular format, and perhaps there is some benefit to making a table of historical population figures a more standard feature. That said, I believe it is largely a case of what Wikipedia is versus what it is not: a general knowledge encyclopedia and not a database of historical demographic data for every city. That's what the Census Bureau is for. Shereth 12:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

an aside

This is a quite interesting knowledge management problem with natural language processing and evolving data format accommodation elements. If properly described and addressed, one might be able to compose either an article for peer review or an abstract for submission to a conference related to this "operation" (I'm thinking about the annual ASIS&T meeting or the JASIST publication, for example). It would be quite a confidence builder for Wikipedia users if Wikipedia editors were to author a peer reviewed research article related to handling a real world knowledge management problem such as this. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:38, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

RfC on Wikipedia:Advisory Council on Project Development

The community's views are needed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Advisory Council on Project Development. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 17:23, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Offline editor for wiki

Is there any project about this?
But may be there was a discussion?
P.S. I'm not so good in search, so may be I just missed something.
Besuglov.S (talk) 07:03, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

See WP:WIKED.   Will Beback  talk  19:30, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Besuglov.S ^cont / _talk 05:49, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

But how do you use it offline? --ClemRutter (talk) 10:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Looking for help expanding list of dermatologists

I am looking for a few editors who would be willing to help me significantly expand the list of dermatologists. Would any of you consider working on this project? ---kilbad (talk) 15:49, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

There are probably few editors with knowledge in this field. After looking briefly around I was going to point you to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Dermatology task force but I see you are already a main poster there. Why not try asking for help there? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:44, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Edit screen message

As I write this on the edit screen, down below it says: "Only public domain resources can be copied without permission — this does not include most web pages or images." According to WP:EMDASH, the spaces before and after the dash (which happens to be an "em dash") should be removed (or use an "en dash" – instead). Most Wikipedians can't be bothered with Manual of Style obscurities, but they should either be enforced or removed, and if the rule is worth keeping, we should set an example on the edit screen. So how does one edit that sentence? Art LaPella (talk) 19:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

It's at MediaWiki:Edittools. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

 Done Art LaPella (talk) 22:44, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Auto linking to related subject

I have come across a number of cases recently where searching on one word automatically goes to another. For example if I search for mathematical solution I get equation. I can see that this might avoid Wikipedia repeating itself when, for example, the concept of an equation and its solution are closely related. But I can think of three down sides:

• If I didn't know much about either equations or solutions I might get confused. Are they the same thing?
• The first sentence or so is supposed to be a definition. It we define equation we are not defining solution.
• It makes it hard to use a link to explain a term. e.g. from exact solution.

Any thoughts on this issue? Yaris678 (talk) 21:22, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Redirect. One possiblity for a related term is to redirect directly to a relevant section in the target article. Special:WhatLinksHere/Mathematical solution shows no redirects from articles and I wouldn't worry about that one. Solution has a hatnote link to Solution (disambiguation) which briefly explains it and links to equation. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:32, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

(ec) There are various reasons to create redirects, often when the alternate title isn't notable, after a merge or to avoid a fork. In cases such as the one you describe, the article should either describe the redirected title in the lead, or have an obvious section title. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 21:41, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

This is helpful info for the general case. Thank you.

Unfortunately, on the specific case, I've just found the page on Equation solving. Perhaps mathematical solution should auto-direct there instead. In addition, I think both exact solution and Solution (disambiguation) should have a link. I will do that now. Yaris678 (talk) 18:09, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Project for new users

I remember reading somewhere (maybe the Signpost) that the foundation intended to set up a project to investigate the obstacles placed in the way of new contributers and to "eliminate them one by one". It may have done so already as far as I know. Is this project being discussed online anywhere? I would like to contribute. SpinningSpark 12:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

If you are referring to the Usability Initiative the URL is http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability. -- œ^™ 01:02, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that seems to be the thing, thanks. SpinningSpark 01:35, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:NODRAMA

Hey all, just a quick reminder to check out Wikipedia:The Great Wikipedia Dramaout. Cheers! –Juliancolton | ^Talk 23:51, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

South Asian articles

I am not here to offend, and I apologize in advance if it comes across that way. Unfortunately, we have a large number of articles about South Asian people, places and institutions which are written or edited by people whose English is not the best. These articles also tend to be highly POV, and full of trivia. As someone who has no knowledge of any of the content, I have no idea how to edit these articles to make them work. These editors also tend to add long lists of non-notable people into articles about cities, Indian and Pakistani states, tribes, ethnic groups, etc. Just last night, I ran across Mhow and Indore. Looked at from Western eyes, these articles don't tell us anything. Are the people mentioned notable? Are there articles about them? If not, they shouldn't have importance. The Sports section in Indore is daunting. Is all of this trivia notable? It's not just these two articles, it's practically every South Asian article. I know that people from the subcontinent are highly literate, but they don't seem to understand Wikipedia rules about notability and sourcing. It's generalizing, that's true, but something really needs to be done. Does anybody have any ideas? And please no attacks about perceived racism. This has nothing to do with racism, nothing to do with disdain for people who don't speak English as well as I do (I'm not the greatest writer, that's for sure), all I'm concerned about is quality of articles. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:38, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

To me, those articles look better than most articles from around the world; compare this for instance. Heck, look at this before I fixed it; it's British, but they don't know what a sentence is. India might be a particular problem because Indians are more likely to think they can communicate in English (due to their British colonial period) when they can't. Some Indian articles include stuff I can't even guess what it means, including a lot of words that aren't even translated. But if you can guess what it means, it's easy to improve; just rewrite it the way an American (or Englishman etc.) would write it. (If you can't guess, you could use Template:RoughTranslation.) Are you suggesting we should discourage foreigners from editing? If so, we wouldn't have nearly so much information about the rest of the world. Art LaPella (talk) 19:22, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I really don't want to suggest that, I'm just saying I don't know what to do with this apparent problem. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:50, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there is a problem with South Asian articles written (apparently) by South Asians. Anyone who clicks for a random article enough will encounter them. For example, Astadiggajas, which means eight elephants, about eight poets in the 16th century, badly needed some polishing, as did the articles on the eight poets. I could correct the spelling errors and the grammar, but the articles are filled with words that are never defined. The general sense can be discerned, but how would I know if the eight poets are noteworthy, or not? Another problem I had trying to improve this kind of article is the issue of British English, presumably what is needed in Pakistani, Indian, or Bangladeshi articles. Spelling honour is easy enough, but the British leave out articles when Americans use them. A Brit goes in hospital, an American goes in the hospital. I am sorry not to suggest what to do, but I respect you for bringing the subject up. --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:27, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

But it would be hard to make those articles worse, even if you do let an Americanism slip in. So I think the solution is to do what you can; there's plenty of work there and most anybody can improve the articles, even if they can't make them perfect. Art LaPella (talk) 22:11, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, we go into hospital. Peter jackson (talk) 10:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I see at talk:WikiProject Indian history that there are many editors working on India articles, and there is mention of the problem of a large number of India stubs. I think there are two problems, at least. Volume, that is, far too many very short articles, some of which could be merged into relevant articles, and some of which are just plain not notable and not well documented, either. Quality, that is, some articles have lots of spelling and grammar errors, and worse still, plenty of words in various Indian languages, without definitions. I still don't know what to do, but I recognize the problems. --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:09, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

This is a major problem on subcontinental articles. Most long-term people only edit their own articles and detail and vandalism is completely neglected. Patrolling for spam, stealth adverts and to clean up disorganised additions are basically never done. It is just the culture there. Some guys they have maybe 50-80% article edits only to those they personally wrote, meaning that they do hardly any 1 percenters. I know some people (now retired) who felt that an FA meant that the article was completely fine in terms of POV etc, when it is not necessarily, and only see FAs as worth fixing and don't care if any old BS is on other articles, eg see Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, etc members of the ruling family. Sometimes a vandalism or a spamlink to an extremist site can last days. In late 2006 NY of 2007, someone wrote that Rahul Gandhi was a rapist and it stayed there for a week. And all sorts like that. Maybe people just won't do the unglamourous stuff. Also many in there (apart from POV pushers mostly) refuse to get involved in any incident or make a stnd against anything. I operate a lot in Australian articles, and there is a much more proactive stance towards fixing and cleaning up stuff. Indian articles are full of cruft, spam, vanity listing, POV accretions. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:28, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps someone should bring this up on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject India. Alternatively, you could refer suspect articles to Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Peer review, Wikipedia:WikiProject Pakistan/Peer review etc.. Yaris678 (talk) 18:16, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, everyone knows about it. There is a culture of turning away from problem articles (avoiding all disputes etc) and PR is used to work out improvements for reasonable articles to get them to WP:WIAFA not for talking about spam and ranty articles YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:25, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm... well we do want peer review... but I guess it is peer review for a different purpose. Perhaps some wikiprojects need a low quality department, for want of a better word, that looks at notability etc. Yaris678 (talk) 12:50, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Should "Other uses" hatnotes take into account the meanings of words in other languages?

Since the talk page to Template:Distinguish doesn't seem very active, I thought I'd post this here.

Lately, a user with a dynamic IP address has been adding "For the drug, see tobacco." to the top of the article on Žan Tabak, a former basketball player. Tabak is the word for tobacco in several languages, and the page Tabak does redirect to Žan Tabak, but I don't think such a hatnote is needed in the English Wikipedia. Indeed, the hatnote looks very silly to me. Do others think it is appropriate? Thanks, Zagalejo^^^ 19:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that's necessary. Algebraist 19:17, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it is unnecessary in the English Wikipedia. --JBC3 (talk) 19:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

It's unnecessary at Žan Tabak, but I would make Tabak a disambiguation page. Compare this English only "Advanced Search" on Google and this one to this one. If a user types in "Žan Tabak" or "Zan Tabak" he wants the basketball player, but if he types in tabak, even on English Wikipedia, he probably wants tobacco. Art LaPella (talk) 18:04, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I could try turning Tabak into a dab page. Thanks for the suggestion! Zagalejo^^^ 22:10, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

"Wikipedia's status"

Does anyone know who can edit the main text body of http://www.thewritingpot.com/wikistatus/, the page known as "Wikipedia's status"? The updates to the status there are very useful, but pretty much all of the links in the hard text are to pages which no longer exist or no longer show any recent activity. - Jmabel | Talk 00:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The "Wikipedia's status" page is not something that Wikipedia itself controls or publishes. You'll need to seek support from whomever runs that website.
— Ω (talk) 00:31, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

There are several 404 error links on this page. Does someone know how to report this?--DThomsen8 (talk) 11:08, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

What page is "this page", exactly?
— Ω (talk) 00:31, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd not seen that page before. Looking at it though, if you backspace in the URL (web address), the page one level up lists that status tool and gives a WP userpage link, for one Edward Yang. I'd suggest leaving a polite query on his talk about it. –Whitehorse1 01:22, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

A little problem from a Chinese Wikipedian

Hey guys. I am a Chinese Wikipedian. We are now translating the notability guideline of Wikipedia:Notability into Chinese. However, we do have some translating problem with the "nutshell":

1. the word "significant". Does it mean "very large amount of" or "very important" or "meaningful" or just "reliable"?
2. the word "coverage". Does it mean just "cover" as the same meaning of "overlay" or "mantle", or something like "report"?

Could you please help me solve those problems? We also welcome the original author of this guideline to answer. Thank you!

(My English may not be so good....)--Franklsf95 (talk) 02:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

In this context:

1. Significant = meaningful
2. Coverage = reports about

And I can guarantee that your English is better than the Chinese of 99% of English Wikpedians!

 – ukexpat (talk) 02:26, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! (I thought to use {{thankyou}}, but I found it was toooooo long...)

BTW, your "Chinese" means "China Language" or "Chinese people"?--Franklsf95 (talk) 02:54, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

My Chinese meant Chinese language - you write better English than 99% of En Wikipedians can write (or speak) Chinese. – ukexpat (talk) 03:15, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I got it. Thank you again. And, Welcome to Chinese Wikipedia! I'll be waiting you!--Franklsf95 (talk) 03:38, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

List of featured articles not on Main Page yet

I was looking around, and I could not find anything like a list of Wikipedia's featured articles that have not been showcased on the Main Page yet. Is there such a page? Thanks for your help! --Spotty ¹¹²²² 00:17, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured articles that haven't been on the Main Page--Salix (talk): 07:27, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Looking for help styling tables

I am looking for some computer savvy editors to help me style some tables to make them more readable. Basically, several of us editors are working to categorize pharmacology-related articles, and have created some rough draft conversion tables. However, at this time, they need more stylization for readability sake, but we were unsure how to do a few things, like indenting ATC codes in the first column to illustrate the hierarchy. Basically, anything you can do to make the tables easier to use would be great. Please feel free to edit away if you have ideas. ---kilbad (talk) 19:39, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Small change to speedy deletion templates

I suggested a small addition to all speedy deletion templates; it's explained at Template talk:db-meta#Addition?. Comments would be welcome. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:19, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Newsbank template

I've found myself linking to articles in Newsbank quite often lately. Since most of the parameters in the URL are redundant, I trim the links down to the minimum that will get me to the article. I just created {{Newsbank}} to help me with this: it takes a parameter for the only field that really matters and generates the minimal URL to display that article. I think. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

News citations should use the cite news template with the parameters of work, publisher, publication date, accessdate, article title, last / first name of author. This enables checks to be made against the original source on microfiche or hard copy in a library. A bare URL is not a good citation. Also when citing articles from sources such as newsbank or nexis, it should include this fact. Jezhotwells (talk) 13:14, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I do use {{cite news}}. This is merely for trimming down the URL to include inside the CITET. The parameter name is the same as the parameter in the URL, so it's easy to pick out the field you need. And I cite the original article -- I just provide the Newsbank URL so people can verify it if they don't have free access to the papers' archives some other way.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:50, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Could we please have examples for the same news story, using both templates? That way, other editors can see what is happening, and whether any important information is being left out. --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:09, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

For example, in the article that tipped me over the edge on this template, I'm currently using:

{{cite news
|url= {{Newsbank|p_text_direct=0FAFFBB974E01E30}}
|title= Rebate processor still works hands-on
|publisher= [[Minneapolis Star Tribune]]
|date= March 3, 2003
|accessdate= 2009-07-15
}}

which renders like

• "Rebate processor still works hands-on". Minneapolis Star Tribune. March 3, 2003. Retrieved 2009-07-15.

A naive cut-and-paste of the URL, as supplied by Google News Search, would look like:

{{cite news
|url= http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=MN&p_theme=mn&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0FAFFBB974E01E30&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
|title= Rebate processor still works hands-on
|publisher= [[Minneapolis Star Tribune]]
|date= March 3, 2003
|accessdate= 2009-07-15
}}

which would render like

• "Rebate processor still works hands-on". Minneapolis Star Tribune. March 3, 2003. Retrieved 2009-07-15.

(which should be identical to the first one). --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:28, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

BAG nomination

Hello there. Just to let you know that I (Kingpin13) have been nominated for BAG membership. Per the requirements, I'm "spamming" a number of noticeboards, to request input at my nomination, which can be found at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Kingpin13. Thanks - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 08:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Academic Research Study on the Request for Adminship (RfA) Process

As part of an ongoing research project by students and faculty at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science we are conducting a survey of anyone who has participated in the Request for Adminship (RfA) process, either voting or as a candidate.

The survey will only take a few minutes of your time, and will aid furthering our understanding of online communities, and may assist in the development of tools to assist voters in making RfA evaluations. We are NOT attempting to spam anyone with this survey and are doing our best to be considerate and not instrusive in the Wikipedia community. The results of this survey are for academic research, are not used for any profit nor sold to any companies.

Take the survey

Thank you!

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free comment on my talk page.

CMUResearcher (talk) 05:17, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

• Personal Information Question Removed. Unfortunately we realized the survey asks for an email address by default so we can give some label to who submitted the survey. The question has been changed, enter any string of characters you would like to label your survey. CMUResearcher (talk) 14:51, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

• Caution this survey asks for personal information, Gnangarra 07:42, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, but the information is optional. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:39, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Why "Not a forum"?

First, I want to make one thing clear. This post is in no way a proposal for change of any sort. I can't imagine that this topic has never come up before, so I just wanted to see what people think.

I understand the technical reasons why talk pages are not currently forums, which at least partially drives the policy (WP:NOTFORUM) reasons. What I'm saying though is, why not ask for that to be changed? Why not turn all talk pages into a phpbb/vBulletin/(insert your favorite bb system here) style page? It's not as thought the technical requirements for such systems are inaccessable to a system using wiki software. Everything required for a Wiki is the exact same things required by (for example) phpbb.

So, other then that no one has aparently pushed for it and/or some people may not like it, is there a reason not to have talk pages act like a forum?
— Ω (talk) 04:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

This aspect of the policy relates more to the discussion aspect than the technical layout of the talk pages. The goal of the talk pages is to discuss improvements to the articles. When people begin to get into discussions related to the topic, but not relevant to the article, it suffocates attempts at discussing improvements to the article. A good example of this principle is at Talk:Rorschach Test, where the debate over the use of the images has overwhelmed all other topics, and pretty much stalled development of the article itself. Imagine how useless articles like Barack Obama would be if the talk pages were used to discuss everything about him? Resolute 04:10, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Right, but don't you see, the largest cause of what your'e describing is the fact that talk pages are not currently "forum like". The fact that there are no real threads, posts, groups, tags, etc... as there are in real discussion forums, is the reason that "it suffocates attempts at discussing improvements to the article". Those conversations do not detract from improving articles simply by their existence, they impact improving the articles because they can overwhelm a talk page using the current system. That's why this is a tech driven issue, in my mind.
— Ω (talk) 04:18, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I "answered" my own question. It looks like the Wikipedia Usability Initiative has been/is developing an extension dealing with talk pages: mw:Extension:LiquidThreads
— Ω (talk) 05:03, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps a simple solution would be to set up a forum subpage. Peter jackson (talk) 11:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I want an apology!

• This concerns the csd issue of Wilson Jeremiah Moses

Ok, I made a small mistake. According to the notability guidelines of the German Wikipedia, any ordinary Professor at an established university is notable. Under the premise that this would be similar on the English WP, I thought that it would be sufficient to say that he is "Professor of American History at Pennsylvania State University". I was wrong there, because Wikipedia:Notability (academics) on the English WP says something slightly different. However, if [it] should turn that Wilson Jeremiah Moses is not notable according to the guidelines, then the guidelines must be false. If the guidelines would say that someone who has written 2 books published by Oxford University Press AND 2 books published by Cambridge University Press [is not notable], then we better delete all articles about academics. It would only have required 5 minutes of waiting or a glimpse on the resume of the person which I provided under external links to figure that out, but one editor and one administrator were to deletion-happy for the first option and to lazy for the second. This is not the first time that something as infuriating as this has happened, and already a long time ago this has become unbearable for me. I am quite sure the guidelines say somewhere that you have to wait 30 min before you flag a new article as candidate for speedy deletion, or at least the guidelines used to say that. Now someone please tell me that this is not an intentional manoeuvre to make me quit wikipedia! Zara1709 (talk) 17:20, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

There is no hard and fast guideline, but it's reccomended that they give editors some time to work on the article prior to tagging it for deletion. I've left a note for the new page patroller reminding them of this.. You could also consider creating the draft in your userspace, where you can build the article in relative peace and quiet. –xeno^talk 17:28, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I've also left a message for the operator of SDPatrolBot. The bot should not have restored the A7 tag, as you had made the assertion of notability prior to removing the tag. –xeno^talk 17:36, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Note: The bot owner is going to tweak the bot so it doesn't restore A7 tags when the article is expanded in conjunction with the tag removal. –xeno^talk 17:45, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

This is not an intentional manoeuvre to make you quit wikipedia! It's just a well known problem that currently nobody is doing anything about: Spam fighters with a déformation professionelle getting into the way of genuine article creators. Hans Adler 18:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

You're right, Hans Adler this is not intentionally aimed against me - but I suppose after this incident I have started to become paranoid. I'll have to deal with that issue sooner or later again, but I think we can avoid what happened here if we tweak the criteria for speedy deletion slightly. I made a suggestion on the criteria talk page. Zara1709 (talk) 20:01, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Publication of half-year summary of arbitration activities

Pursuant to the Arbitration Committee agenda item Review Committee performance, a half-year summary of arbitration activities has been published at January to June 2009 report. Comments and feedback are invited on the talk page. For the Arbitration Committee, Carcharoth (talk) 04:49, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

an editing that was deleted

I edited a wiki article last night , and this morning i looked at the page and my editing was removed completely. The page said that a section was in need of clarification , I clarified the section , so people could understand the article better and it was deleted. I dont understand why if an article needs to be clarified and it is clarified very clearly someone would erase it.

The article in question is on physics so its not like it was easy to clarify and put it in words that the average person would be able to understand , but I did. I spent my time doing it just to be erased in less than 6 hours , last time i try to help out around here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.25.150.125 (talk) 13:21, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for attempting to improve the timewave zero article. I have looked at your good faith edit and understand that you were trying to clarify the information. You can ask User:Hrafn to explain the revert, but I suspect that the information was not seen as verifiable since it was attributed only to you. It was also written informally and away from the original bullets, so it would have also needed to be wikified. Please join the discussion at Talk:Timewave zero, where editors may need you to further clarify. I posted your edit there so that more informed editors could validate your understanding with sources and work it into the text. I hope that you reconsider contributing to Wikipedia in the future. —Ost (talk) 13:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Ost316 it was the first time i tried to edit a wiki article and was kind of discouraging to see it being removed. As for being verifiable and being written informally i wasnt sure how to format my clarification , but just wanted to make it easier to understand in laymens terms. I will reconsider contributing , I was just a little disappointed in the revert. and I will try to read up on how to post a better clarification before i do contribute again. not trying to clutter up the place just thought i could help. thanks again ost316 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.25.150.125 (talk) 15:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I noticed that your edit contained the phrase "According to me" and you signed it "jeff". These items suggest that the content you are entering is your opinion alone. This violates the Neutral Point of View that Wikipedia articles must have (because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a forum or a blog). If your point of view is embodied somewhere (especially if others share your POV), use it as a reference. Also, stay away from using the 1st person; use the 3rd person, instead. --Tim Sabin (talk) 12:59, 22 July 2009 (UTC)