Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance)/Archive K

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Village pump (assistance) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (assistance). 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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Help

Hey everyone, when I typed in Alphabet Spaghetti into Wikipedia and it came up with no results - I was pysically sick. So help me make Alphabets (pasta) a great article. I need your help! Thanks, Dfrg.msc ^{1 . 2 . 3} 10:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

See Alphabet soup. A merge may be in order. Deco 13:51, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

How to encourage an editor not to create trivial articles?

I have had the mixed fortune to come across what I can only describe as an eccentric editor. Their speciality seems to be the creation of articles that simply cannot have any notability, not now, not ever, never - several AfDs have proved that.

How do we, as a community, encourage an editor like this to use their abundant energies to create worthwhile articles instead of creating mayhem with page after page of indiscriminate information? You guys have seen this before, so one of you will know the answer!

Fiddle Faddle 22:26, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Guide them to the policies and especially the notability guidelines. If they persist, tag the articles for deletion -- Lost^(talk) 06:26, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I have done both. Politely, regularly, and without apparent effect. The notability guidelines appear to be ignored or badly understood. The AfDs all succeeded, but the editor (as author) decided to speedy their own work appearing to state that this was in order not to receive a final community opinion. This editor has appeared before under a different name and either has a poor command of English, or chooses to display a poor command of English (impossible to tell, since it varies) and has made many valid contributions, but substantially more articles are mayhem and indiscriminate than their valid edits. Regrettably their stance is more combative than learning, though this has improved substantially from the prior user id's stance. Fiddle Faddle 06:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and post warning templates on their talk page in that case, and if they persist after several templates report the case to admin. Durova 16:55, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The challenge with that is it is starting to look personal, which it truly is not. What templates do you suggest in the event I follow this course of action? The articles are really trivial, and they get AfDd pretty much straight away. I'm sure you can work out the articles in question from my contributions log. Fiddle Faddle 16:58, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

redirect options

Is there a way to hide the "redirected from X" after following a redirect link? I mean, if I have Mr Donald and redirect it to Mr A. Donald can I make something to make disappear the "redirected from Mr Donald? --For Our Nation's Honor 23:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

No. This is a feature. The article that came up was not the same name they typed in or clicked - the point of this message is to decrease the shock/surprise of the user and provide an explanation. Deco 00:45, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Besides, FONH, this prevents vandalism like yours to pass unseen. Mariano(t/c) 06:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Now ain't that amazing! Just like the criminals who get convicted because they video their own crime spree. I don;t know whether to laugh or cry. Wait, yes I do. I am hurting so much my sides have split. Fiddle Faddle 07:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Should I edit?

The Maria Sharapova page says she moved to the US when she was 9. I just saw her on Jay Leno where she said she moved here when she was 7. I'd like to fix this, but should I just go in and edit the page without saying anything or should I post a discussion to change it before it gets changed? Where would I do the latter?

SlyMaelstrom 04:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Any information here has to be verifiable using reliable sources. If you have a link to the transcript of the show, refer to that and go ahead and change the information -- Lost^(talk) 06:31, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Surely it is sufficient to reference the show itself, transcript or no transcript, in a note, stating that this was her own statement on that show on that date? I don't offer this as advice, but as a question that has interested me in general for some time too. after all Jay Leno fits "1. Articles should contain only material that has been published by reputable sources." Fiddle Faddle 06:53, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The only thing is that its much easier to verify if there's a transcript. How else would you verify something said on a show? -- Lost^(talk) 06:58, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Just edit it, this is a wiki. Do please mention that you got the information off the show (and keep in mind that the show could be wrong) Kim Bruning 16:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I would bring this up on the talk page. Perhaps the editor who originally added the age of 9 could shed light on the discrepency. Deco 00:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Yup, both edit, and bring it up on talk! But do edit Boldly! Kim Bruning 09:21, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

How do I avoid a cut-and-paste move?

I am working on a disambiguation page. The talk page of the disambiguation article in question redirects to the oprhaned talk page of an article that has since been moved. I would like to un-orphan this talk page as well as clear the disambiguation article's talk page for discussion of the disambiguation page itself. How can I do this without cutting-and-pasting, thereby destroying the edit history of the talk page? Do I need an administrator for this? To see specifically what I'm talking about, see the Fat man (disambiguation) article. The talk page redirects to the page for Fatman (Metal Gear) (an article that no longer exists).--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 16:24, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Infrogmation deleted Talk:Fat man (disambiguation) (the talk page redirect), I suspect in response to this request. I'm not sure why he didn't post a followup here, but I think you're all set. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:36, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I also could have deleted the redirect. But part of my question was what to do with the Talk:Fatman (Metal Gear) page. Fatman (Metal Gear) now redirects to List of Metal Gear Solid 2 characters. Can I merge the content on that talk page to the List of Metal Gear Solid 2 characters talk page without cutting and pasting?--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 22:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

No I'm afraid not. But cutting and pasting is ok. The talk page of Fatman is so small you can just paste it in with a note and slap a redirect on the talk page.. --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk)(Review me) 22:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Printing

Hello!

I would like some help please with printing. In particular, I would like to know how to print only a portion of the chat page: i.e. one entry. I have tried highlighting, but this brings no results, and on pages such as Hiberno-English, the print can extend to 20, or even 30 pages.Thanks in advance!--PeadarMaguidhir 15:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Printing a selection works similarly in Firefox and IE. Select the text you want to have printed, select File>Print..., then, under the Print Range setting, which is normally on "All", select "Selection". Then print! Phidauex 15:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I spotted a page in article namespace which redirects to Wikipedia namespace - against policy?

I noticed that Instruction creep redirects to Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep.

I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, and therefore I'm not very familiar with policy (though I know the basics). I think there's a policy named "Avoid self-references", and it states that we should not have pages in the article namespace which redirect to Wikipedia namespace.

Did I get the policy correct? If I'm correct, could a kind admin please do something about it - probably deleting the page? If not, could you please correct me? Thanks.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I deleted it. BrokenSegue 13:52, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:08, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

For future reference, that would go to WP:RFD. However, cross namespace redirects rarely survive that so it may as well have been deleted out of process anyway. Viridae^Talk 14:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Journeyman assistance

I need some assistance with reguards to the article Journeyman. I'm unable to get any response from another user who belives the article should be entitled Journeyperson, mearly to make the term gender neutral. Two moves, then a cut and paste move. Others opinions would be welcome, as I'm meeting with a fair degree of stubbornness to discussion. Kevin_b_er 07:30, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Have a look here and enter Journeyman. Twenty three of their dictionaries have it. Now enter Journeyperson, none have it. It's nonsensical to try to change an established word just because it seems gender specific. The language is what it is, journeyman is just a word and is not gender specific. Even a redirect from Journeyperson to Journeyman seems unnecessary to me. Good luck - Adrian Pingstone 09:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll comment on the article talk page :D --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk)(Review me) 09:50, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Arabic speakers needed

Need to verify that this change to a userbox says something it should... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AUser_ar-4&diff=67593725&oldid=58070358 - came up in RC patrol and I am a little suspicious. Viridae^Talk 07:08, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

This might be useful. Tonywalton  | Talk 10:39, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Viridae^Talk 13:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

External links opinion

The article at bootleg recording has a tendency to collect external links to bootleg collectors' sites, BitTorrents, and so on. After some consideration, I removed the entire external links section, leaving this message in a comment, as none of the links educate readers further about bootlegs. They simply provide sources of bootleg material, which goes against our Wikipedia:External links guideline to avoid linking to sites which we know to be violating copyright. Some users have been putting the links back, claiming that bootlegs (otherwise unavailable live or demo recordings, as opposed to pirated commercial tracks) are not under copyright and the sites are legal. I'm fairly sure I'm in the right here and have explained my reasoning on Talk:Bootleg recording, but in any case, the legality isn't the real issue. I don't believe these links add value to Wikipedia, I believe they're only here to drive traffic to the sites, and I believe that having any external links at all on that page is a magnet for others to keep adding spam. Since the links have returned, I hesitate to remove them again and antagonize the users involved without having a little more evidence of consensus on the value of these links. Would anybody care to weigh in at the talk page? Thanks! — Catherine\^talk 06:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Left my two cents. Viridae^Talk 07:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

convert well-intentioned newbie "disclaimers" to hatnotes

I've just gone through most of the recent contributions to station articles by 198.45.18.28 (talk · contribs). In almost every case they have written out a note to disambiguate the station name between British, Candadian and American railway and subway stations. Where I have found them I have been converting them to use a standard disambiguation template, most commonly {{otheruses4}}. I have done most of them but I've run out of time for now and would appreciate someone else taking over. Thryduulf 15:26, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

How do we tell which ones you've done and which ones you haven't? ONUnicorn 15:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Working from the top of their contribution tree I've done everything as far down as Hastings railway station, so none of them will be marked as (top). Thryduulf 15:40, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I've started working from where you left off. Someone might want to look at Boston railway station though, I can't quite figure out what I did wrong with that one. ONUnicorn 16:16, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I fixed it. The problem was the template was already wikilinking the last parameter, so you couldn't have two links in it. I changed to the generic dablink template. --Rehcsif 16:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. ONUnicorn 16:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I think I've got them all. ONUnicorn 16:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. You'd missed three, which I've sorted now. Thryduulf 20:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Alternative account for RC patrol?

I created an account with Wikipedia several months ago and currently have about 700 edits, but I'm asking this anonymously to protect the identities of myself and my friend - I don't wish to implicate him as he has several thousand edits and may run for adminship soon. In addition, if I don't reveal myself, you can give advice based on the situation without resorting to ad hominem. This IP is shared by thousands of users, so CheckUser is useless.

As mentioned earlier, I've been editing Wikipedia as a registered user for several months. I've written a couple of articles, and add information to articles on topics of interest. I also discuss about Wikipedia on Wikipedia-namespace pages.

Several experienced users have touted (not to me) RC patrol as a way of learning Wikipedia policy. Therefore, I'm considering creating a new account to try out RC patrol. As I won't be putting my main account's reputation on the line, I'll be more bold with reverting anonymous vandals, and once I've learnt the ropes of RC patrol, I can start RC patrolling on my main account. I don't want to plunge into RC patrol unprepared on my main account, as I have a tendency to mess up big time.

However, when I consulted my friend, an experienced Wikipedian, he told me that my plan constituted sockpuppetry, and if I was found out, both my main account and RC patrol account may be blocked indefinitely. Although I trust him, I wish to get more opinions from experienced Wikipedia users. Therefore, if you're an experienced Wikipedian, please tell me what you think. Is this sockpuppeting? If so, I'll drop the idea. If not, do you have any tips for new RC patrollers? Thanks.

--202.156.6.54 10:54, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Unless you do something really drastic you won't threaten your main account via being new to RC patrol. As you say creating a new account is sock-puppetry althoug if you use the account well there is thoeretically no problem. SOme users use VandalProof on sock accounts so as not to artificially increase their edit counts.

However don't create the new account, just have a go at RC patrol. Be bold and if you make mistakes they will be pointed out (hopefully in a friendly manner). The best advice though is to read all of the WP guidelines such as the delteion criteria (especially the speedy deletes ones) and if you really arn't sure just ask - then the next time you'll know :D --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk)(Review me) 11:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Please Help !

Hi,

Im new to this and have added my group called Shock To The System to your site - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_To_The_System_uk

I've noticed that there is a user which is useing our groups name - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_To_The_System ?

Can we both have the name Shock To The System on your site ?

Shock To The System has had its name for 10 years !

Thanks in advance,

Shock To The System

I'm sorry, but I don't think Wikipedia is the place for this sort of thing. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. We don't have groups - we have articles. There is a Shock To The System article on a band called Shock To The System. I'm not sure what the article you wrote was about - it seems like advertising. As a collection of links, the article is likely to be deleted unless you add actual encyclopediac content. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Advice request

Hello everyone,

I spend a lot of time editing the schizophrenia article. One user consisently deletes the section on violence and schizophrenia. This issue has been to mediation twice. On both occasions the user in question pulled out of mediation, and on the second occasion the mediators could find no clear reasons why he wanted the section deleted and expressed a view that it should remain as it was accurate, referenced and balanced.

The user has just deleted the section again, and has just added a spam notice to the links section because it links to pages expressing views which he does not agree.

Actually, the user has made some valuable contributions in the past but seems fixated on this issue.

The violence section has now been deleted (for a second time) for over a month due to a lone user who has decided he doesn't like it. I am abiding by the guidlines and not constantly re-adding the section, which means it is missing.

I am wondering whether arbitration my only recourse or whether anyone has any additional suggestions for resolving the situation?

Many thanks - Vaughan 15:42, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, at the moment it seems to be a matter of him versus a growing consensus. Unless policy can determine a reason to not have the section, if he continues reverting despite the edits of other editors to bring back the section, it is likely this will end up being solved by WP:3RR. Anyway, another opinion on the matter in the talk page of the article would be helpful, as well. Thanks. Cowman109^Talk 16:21, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Seek consensus on the talk page. If the consensus is on your side, then it will be more difficult for him. If he reverts more than thrice in 24 hours, ask an admin to block him - that's violating a rule called 3RR. Otherwise, file an RFC against him, failing that, an RFA as a last resort. Just my 2 cents, I'm not that experienced here. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

WP:RFA? I don't think making him an administrator will help anything... I think you meant WP:ARB or something similar. Not to be rude, just trying to avoid confusion. --tjstrf 04:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Oops! Yes, I meant a Request for Arbitration. I notice how often experienced users use abbrevations for Wikipedia-specific terms, and I thought that after a few months, I should try that as well. And since Requests for Arbitration is condensed as RFA, that was the first thing that jumped to my mind, as a speed typist. Turns out I'm not ready yet, messing up on my first try. Oh well, admit it's pretty funny. Back to the drawing board. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 05:09, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Heheh, don't worry, we won't WP:BITE. Not that a member with 500+ contribs is actually a newbie by any means. As for mental lists of policy and essay abbreviations, I've been using them for months and I still have to hit preview first to make sure I have the right one occasionally. Also, it might help if you wikilinked them, so that the uninitiated know what you mean. --tjstrf 05:14, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't consider myself a newbie, although I don't consider myself experienced yet. Maybe once I have 1,000+ contribs. In fact, I'm reluctant to overuse abbrevations because I like to be newcomer-friendly. Thanks for the tip of linking them. What would be the correct abbrevation? And is my other advice correct? We're here to help Vaughan, after all, not me. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 05:30, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

You're sort of right. The best advice would be to consult dispute resolution. --Richard 05:56, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Um, not sure what's going on here, if it's vandalism or what....

Maybe someone should take a look at the article Mean Red Spiders and its revision history.

I came across it yesterday, apparently seconds after someone added a clean-up tag to it. I tried to do what I could with it (to clean it up), and some of my changes have stayed. Others... haven't.

There seem to be an account and an IP (I think they're the same person) doing most of whats being done on that article. A great deal of the content, both good and bad, seems to have been added by those two accounts. However, they keep removing attempts to clean the article up. When I started my clean-up, I ran into an edit conflict with the IP. The IP had removed the clean-up tag. After I posted my cleaned up version, the IP and the account both proceeded to undo some of my changes. I asked about these changes on the IP's talk page and got no response.

Some of the things that they are doing that don't make sense;

• Removing clean-up tags
• Linking to almost every word in the article
• Insisting on certianwordsbeingruntogetherwithoutspacesbetweenthem.
• They don't format their references correctly. I've tried to fix them, but I'm not very good at the whole getting wiki references to act the way they are supposed to act thing either.

I'm trying to assume good faith here, especially since looking at versions of the article before they became involved, it seems that they have greatly expanded the stub, and have added references where there were none before. However, perusing the history today I realized that all their changes have been made either yesterday or today; and other people (besides myself) have tried to revert some of their changes (again, without success).

I really don't know if this is vandalism, good-faith editing, someone whose favorite color is blue and wants the article about Mean Red Spiders to be their favorite color, or what is going on.

At any rate, I thought posting it to the Village Pump might get someone else to take a look at it and offer another opinion.

The users are User:Dashumphreys and User:24.42.81.91. [Dif where Dashumphreys first became involved], [Dif where I first became involved], [Dif between my first attempt at clean-up and the current version].

Thanks to anyone willing to take a look at this. ONUnicorn 13:53, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Nazi symbols

Is this OK? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3ASteveGOLD&diff=62592334&oldid=47086076 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASteveGOLD&diff=62416865&oldid=62402855

Now we have dispute on UK wiki. Some active members are going to leave Wikpedia unless large Nazi symbols are removed from user page, and most of our contributors beleive that they must be removed

SteveGOLD says among other things, that this is allowed in tolerant English wikipedia Ilya K 12:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Straight out of WP:USERPAGE, "Personal statements that could be considered polemical, such as opinions on matters unrelated to Wikipedia (should not be on your userpage)." Images can be considered a statement or such, and such images do spark controversy. Yank sox 12:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I've left a message for Steve Gold asking for him to remove the images. Yank sox 13:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I have also left him a message also requesting him to remove the symbols. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 14:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I removed the flag after posting a note - which he reverted as well as the above note - we might need to watch this space! Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Whisper...) 16:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I don't think that this image may be consider as image that spark controversy. I'm already tired explain that this is ONLY in informative purpose, as somebody refer to his/herself as communist, liberal, muslim, jew, homosexualist, etc - I'm refer to myself as Neo-Nazi, because I'm Neo-Nazi. So what is bad in this statement? I DON'T MAKE TO NOBODY IN WIKIPEDIA SOMETHING BAD, SO WHY YOU ARE TEASING ME? Thanks. P.S.: I'll reverting my page to old version. Plz, don't make any change there until we make some decision on this. SteveGOLD 15:08, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

self-promotion

I'm not really sure what to do with this. This user, Vickilp recently added a bunch of "further reading" links to a few articles. Suspiciously, all the books are by the same author. I don't really think that these books are informative about the subject in any way; I think they're more just "read my book because it kind of pertains to this topic". Has she broken any rules or should I just go ahead and delete the links? Or both? Jesse 06:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Edit: they are informative (with the exception of the one supposedly about dairy farming), but are children's books. Jesse 06:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I have rolled them all back and left him a note Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Whisper...) 15:45, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Need Image Copyright Assistance

Don't bite the newbie! :) I need assistance on the copyright status of Image:Darren Mack.jpg[1]. This is an internal link; I couldn't figure out how to link to the image page without the photo showing up here. This is the photo used on the police handout when Mack was a fugitive. The newspaper source http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060613/NEWS18/606130373/0/NEWS&theme=SNIPER did not give a photo credit. I believe this is public domain and/or fair use, but I didn't want to inadvertently get Wikipedia into trouble. --Kat'n'Yarn 03:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)Kat'n'Yarn

Please rename a misnamed category

Crap oh crap. I just created the suprisingly absent Category:Death by carbon monoxide poisoning. However, I screwed up: It needs to be called Category:Deaths by carbon monoxide poisoning in order to conform w/ the other deaths by causes categories. Can someone please add the "s" to death for me? Very sorry for the bother. Thanks for the help. J. Van Meter 01:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC) :Come to think of it, I believe it should be Category:Deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning. -J. Van Meter 01:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

::* I just reposted this same request at Wikipedia:Requested moves. I think that's the place where they handle this sort of thing. J. Van Meter 13:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Category renames are handled at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

thank you, i relisted this over in category renaming. J. Van Meter 15:26, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Need help adding citations to Microkernel

Uncle G (talk · contribs) has been frantically adding {{citeneeded}} and {{original research}} tags all over the Microkernel article. I added about six more citations and took out the rest of his tags, but he's still not satisfied. He just added even more demands for citations. I need help satisfying his demands. I can't keep up. --John Nagle 16:46, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know enough about computer science to be of much help. I will recommend you run some searches through Google Scholar. You should turn up some good, academic resources. --Oldak Quill 20:13, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Did that, got two more references, so that Mach and QNX are now well cited. What would really help now is an IBM VM expert. Refs on that operating system tend to be older and to IBM publications not indexed on the Web. I'm trying to fix up parts of the article that I didn't write, and the article now looks like a mess, because Uncle G (talk · contribs) put in dozens of tags complaining about lack of citations, some of which messed up the formatting. --John Nagle 03:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

persistent, long running claim of POV re article title & w/ attempts to resolve it

The article Digital rights management is about a controversial subject matter. Little can be done about that by WP or any wording of any article. But, one recent issue bears on WP policy or WP style or some such. It's POV. And, **be warned** that POV allegations here have been hashed more or less endlessly on the Talk page (see the archives...); this bears somewhat on the current controversy about the article's opening.

The instant issue has to do with the title of the article, and implications thereof. The term was chosen for policy promotional purposes (propaganda, per se) by the people who perpetrated it. Whew! That is, Digital Rights Management is wording which inherently takes a position on the controversy which underlies the subject, whatever it might be called. Others, including some prominent others (most prominently and controversially, but not alone, Richard Stallman), call it Digital Restrictions Management, as that better fits the underlying technology in their view. The article name seems to have settled down -- Digital Rights Management. Though not without some toing and froing (see archives).

What had seemed to have somewhat also settled, as a way to diffuse the POV in the expansion of DRM, was to mention both, early and prominently adn equally, and thereby remove this article from POV allegations from either side, at least with regard to the name. This was objected to, reverted, and became the subject of comment back and forth on the current talk page.

If WPians were to look into this, look over the POV history (mostly reflected on the talk page and archives), and leave a comment or two, it would be a Good Thing... Thanks. ww 21:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

parabola

is it possible to convert an equation of cartesian form to polar cordinate form.

The formulas are: x = r cos θ, y = r sin θ. For example, the parabola y = x² becomes, after some use of trig identities, r = sec θ tan θ. Some care needs to be taken to insure that the domain and range stay the same. In this case, we want -π/2 < θ < π/2. When θ in in the fourth quadrant, r is negative, which puts the point in the second quadrant. Rick Norwood 13:20, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Ongoing trouble with the Furry Fandom article

I've been looking through the history and talk page of the Furry Fandom article, and it seems to have serious ongoing NPOV issues. Certain anonymous users (namely User:68.69.194.125, and maybe User:85.210.107.2) seem to be muddying the waters, making repeated NPOV complaints, and modifying the article in a manner potentially harmful to the image of the fandom. Meanwhile, registered users tend to make modifications that paint the fandom in a (maybe unfairly?) positive light.

Because of the counterbalance of these two forces, I think the article, at any given time, is reasonably fair. The problem is, it's being changed and reverted and rechanged so many times a day that it's really easy for weasel words and POV to slowly build up. The system is metastable at best.

I'm wondering if any unbiased Wikipedia higher-ups would like to come and moderate this article? If somebody with some authority could settle the debates that are pulling this article in every which direction, maybe it could finally achieve NPOV.

I hope all that made sense.

--Pifactorial 23:08, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I suppose I could sum that up by saying:
It appears that there's an edit war going on. Is there a way that somebody with authority could help to break it up?

--Pifactorial 23:45, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Please see WP:DR. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I added this to WP:RFC/SOC. Hopefully some fresh blood will help to clear up this mess. --Pifactorial 05:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

anytime I've dealt with an article where you have an IP that is continually making edits over an extended period of time and not creating an account, they're there to vandalize, or push PoV. For example I've been keeping an eye on Werner Herzog where two IPs have been fighting over his heritage for a long time now. The page has been protected multiple times, and there have been attempts to get them to discuss it, but they never really say anything, or work anything out and when the protection is removed, they're right back to reverting.--Crossmr 06:39, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Is this vandalism?

An anonymous user has been modifying the Shockwave (roller coaster) article by adding a 'fact' template to virtually every sentence in the article. I've been a minor contributor to this article, but am far from the primary author. I understand that portions of the article need better cites, but I have been reverting his changes because having a 'fact' on every sentence, including such basic, undisputed facts as the first sentence ("Shockwave was a large roller coaster manufactured by Arrow Dynamics at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois.") is clearly ridiculous. I have politely told him several times that what he is doing is non-constructive, and to please discuss his concerns on the Talk page. He responds with comments in edit summaries such as "yes it is constructive, now get your lazy butt to work!".

The primary source for info in the article seems to be a forum post, which is linked at the bottom of the article. Granted this probably isn't considered a "reliable" source, but the info seems to be correct, by and large. I don't see why we should delete large portions of the article, or litter them with 'fact' tags when very little of the article seems to actually be in dispute. I suspect someone is just trying to yank some chains here.

Anyway, just wanted to make sure I'm not totally in the wrong here. I hate getting caught in a revert war, but this person doesn't seem to want to discuss what his actual issue (if he really has one) is. --Rehcsif 14:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I think we should be careful here. Ideally every statement in Wikipedia should be backed up by a suitable reference. This editor is just added the 'fact' template to each statement that he things needs verifying. Yes he is probably being a little liberal in scattering around the 'fact' template especially when compared with the rest of Wikipedia (which is rather lacking in references) but I don't think it is vandalism. He might be trying to 'yank some chains' but I don't think what he is doing is wrong. Just leave a message on his talk saying it would be more helpful if he could help fill in the references. --MarkS (talk) 18:12, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The user is anonymous, and has posted from several IP's, so doesn't have a talk page. I have asked him via edit comments several times to list his issues on the article's talk page, but instead he just posts semi-personal attacks as noted above (and in the article history). Do you really think every single sentence in the article should be footnoted? If the facts are not in dispute (e.g. is there anyone out there who believes that Shockwave was NOT a coaster at SFGAm built by Arrow Dynamics?) why is he placing citation requests on statements like that? The article does have a reference listed at the end. I'd be happy to try to provide more refereces, but I'm not an expert on this subject. Please look at the version he is attempting to submit in the article history and tell me if you really believe that it is constructive to the Wikipedia process.

I also have a real problem with people who go around placing cleanup tags, etc. on articles, but are not willing to do any cleanup themselves-- particularly when it's done with the air of superiority that this fellow is doing.

Can I get some other opinions here? If others feel like MarkS that this user is really acting in good faith and that an aticle with 'fact' tags on every sentence makes for a better article, then I'll bow out (and be very disappointed with the whole WP process, frankly). --Rehcsif 18:35, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree his edit summaries are rude and this is not helping his cause. I'm just inclined to give him the benfit of the doubt. If these type of summaries continued then it would become vandalism. As to the need to references then I do think you need to be able to verify each statement. This doesn't necessarily mean each sentence needs a reference; if a paragraph covers a single topic and a good reference source covers the whole paragraph then just add the reference to the end of the paragraph (likewise if the whole article is covered by a single good reference). However, here we only have one reference, a forum which anybody could post almost anything to. Personally I don't know anything about who built this rollercoaster (and I suspect most people are with me on that). If I were researching this rollercoaster and came across the wikipedia article then I would want to check the references and at the momment they are just not good enough. I would want a better reference than a forum to confirm who built it. As I said originally I think he is being liberal, probably too liberal, with his references but I do believe the fundamental reason for the edits is justifiable. --MarkS (talk) 19:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I added a few basic cites, as well as a general external link/reference, and marked the two major "questionable" paragraphs as 'uncited'. This sure seems far superior to marking every single sentence as needing a cite. This isn't my article, but it sure bugs me to see someone abuse it in this way.--Rehcsif 19:31, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the anon editor's behavior is not vandalism per se but it is possibly borderline abusive. I have encountered similar behavior from a registered editor. However, as annoying as the delivery of the point may be, the point is still valid. As other editors have said, every statement should be sourceable to a reliable source. Any single statement that is challenged should be backed up with a citation. Now, challenging every last statement is seriously annoying behavior to the point of being abusive.

That said, are there no publications about roller coasters that can be used as reliable sources? While the comment was put in a nasty way, maybe a bit more effort is required to dig up reliable sources for this article.

In theory, the anon editor would be supported by official Wikipedia policy in deleting any and all statements that are unsupported. (An extreme and outrageous act but technically within policy.)

--Richard 20:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

What you describe in your last sentence is not within policy. Disrupting Wikipedia to make a point and harassment are both violations of policy. -- SCZenz 20:25, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeh, I know. I thought about that. However, it's a judgment call between what is policy and what is harassment and WP:POINT. We could debate this all night long and, at the end of the day, it would still be a judgment call.

As I stated, I've been on the receiving end of this kind of behavior but only over a single paragraph that kept getting deleted. The best defense against this sort of borderline harassment is to provide sources.

--Richard 20:37, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The ridiculous amount of use of the 'fact' tag, combined with the edit summaries, makes this a clear case of abuse in my book. Please show me a single Wikipedia article which has footnoted sources on every single sentence. That's what the 'fact' (which says 'citation needed') on every sentence is asking for. And asking for citations on such things as "Chicago is a city in Illinois" (hypothetically) is beyond ridiculous. If we have to bend over backwards to appease folks who just want to disrupt the process, then I don't want to be a part of this process anymore. If people have legitimate concerns with the quality, including citations or quality of sources, of an article, then they should use the talk page, and use the templates sparingly. If this isn't blataant abuse, then I don't want to be a part of Wikipedia anymore, because evidently the community puts a greater stake in not offending the troublemakers than it does not offending the true contributors. --Rehcsif 21:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Chill, dude. Step back and take a deep breath. In the greater scheme of things, this is really not that important.

Look, we basically agree with you. I have to admit that I was at a disadvantage earlier because the current version of the page doesn't have all those {{fact}} tags. I went back and looked at the history just now and saw the {{fact}} tags and the edit comments that you were talking about. The Internet is a funny thing. The anon editor is probably not trying to be malicious but trying to push you towards a better article although in an obnoxiously condescending way. Too bad he's better at pissing you off than at helping you improve the article.

In the face of unreasonability, act reasonably and ask for help.

Work on getting more sources and citations if you can. If the anon editor puts the {{fact}} tags back, you can ask for help here or a number of other places. Try WP:ESPERANZA, WP:HEC or WP:Concordia. I'll put the article on my watchlist and try to help as appropriate.

--Richard 22:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Although I appreciate your help, I'm only a minor contributor to that article (I'd almost hesitate to call myself a contributor at all -- I basically changed a couple wikilinks appropriately) and am not in a position to rewrite it. I do, however, know that most, if not all, of the info in the article is true. I also don't respond well to hostile demands from non-contributors, such as "come on, lazy butt, try again". Tell you what, I will take that article off my watchlist and whatever will be, will be. The rest of you can either keep feeding the trolls, or deal with them. --Rehcsif 22:35, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

"I do, however, know that most, if not all, of the info in the article is true": unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) you can't cite your own knowledge! Something that nobody here has pointed out yet is that {{fact}} is not used to indicate a fact is disputed, merely that it needs a citation. For example: if the entry on Tony Blair did not include a source that mentioned he was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, then the introduction of the article would read: "Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born May 6, 1953) is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." Not because anybody is disputing that Blair is the British PM, but because a claim has been made without a citation to back it up. Rude edit summaries aside, the anon's actions seem well within bounds, but {{fact}} was an unusual choice as it involves spraying templates around all over the place, so {{unreferenced}} may have been a better choice. The truth is, probably 70%+ of Wikipedia articles ought to be (according to policy) absolutely coated in {{fact}} and {{unreferenced}} tags. The fact they aren't is not a reason to assume this anon was acting outside of policy. The problem is that they were probably acting in bad faith.TheGrappler 00:24, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

There has been a bit of an edit war between the "unreferenced" taggers and the "fact" tagger (the anon editor mentioned above). At the moment, the "unreferenced" taggers seem to have won just by wearing down the anon "fact" tagger. Surely, there is more to life than insisting on spraying the "fact" template allover the Shockwave (roller coaster) article. Hopefully the anon editor has figured this out and moved on to other more productive activities.

However, the real point is that someone needs to dig up a reliable source on which to ground the statements made in this article. Can anyone help?

--Richard 19:34, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Image copyright question

Hi there. I'm a bit new to wikipedia and I was wondering if somebody more experienced than I could check on the copyright status of the following image: [2]. I want to use it on the Minamata disease article which I have been editing recently. I obtained the image from a website called Masters of Photography. In their FAQ it states that "You are free to use up to five or six images from the site for any personal non-profit, educational purpose.", subject to a link back to their website. What copyright tag would be correct in this instance? Thanks for any help you can give! Bobo12345 06:57, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

None. The images are under a {{noncommercial}} license, which isn't permitted on Wikipedia. I've tagged the image as such; it's going to get deleted. Zetawoof^(ζ) 07:49, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I see. Shame. Thanks for your help. Bobo12345 08:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Undoing unlogged-in edits?

I think the answer is you can't do this, but is there any way to merge them into my username or at least get rid of them? Sorry to ask here, but finding things like this in Wikipedia is becoming difficult due to its sheer size. Also, I found the documentation on how to force logging in for edits, but since I have no LocalSettings.php file, I'm wondering if that can only be done globally for the whole server and not for individual clients? Thanks, Spalding 15:39, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

LocalSettings.php is a file internal to the MediaWiki server. It's not something that can be set per-user. Zetawoof^(ζ) 07:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

jorge arturo

hello everybody im arturo marin from mexico some times I remember an italian film above a family owner of a medicinal laboratories and their modern troubles that make out of bussines the Roffee labs. in this movie remember the gerent a whoman says many medecines have no clients for the products they are producing I always think that is a problem for the humanity in the future but im watching merck labs make more money than many countries in the world I like to know how can I find this film for reference and then try to exolain to my family and friends some problems in this times. for example im diabetic person like millions in this world and I writting a sci fi tale La teoria de aprender a jugar a ser dios empezando por estarnos quietos in spanish maybe one day I can gyve to knows to the world thanks

Try Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous for knowledge questions. This page is for assistance with Wikipedia. And it would help if you used some punctuation, as your writing is very hard to read. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 13:50, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Integration

WP:ʃ

For the last month, myself and 1-2 other individuals have been jumpstarting a massive cleanup project as an attempt to bring order to Wikipedia. I think I have the methodology sorted out: now we need participants. There are more details on the project page. Thank you. Cwolfsheep 12:27, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Image licence with conditional commercial use?

Hello,

I'm going to upload some images to Wikipedia but I would like them to be available for commercial use only with my consent.

It's fine by me to have them freely distributed for non-commercial use but I don't like the idea that they, at least hypothetically, could be used on some commercial website etc.

I couldn't find a type of licence for the following: free, with attribution to the author, commercial use only with consent of the author.

Please help. Thanks!

You're thinking of what is more or less a {{noncommercial}} license. Unfortunately, such a license is not compatible with GFDL. Zetawoof^(ζ) 09:25, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Article White People

The section Footnotes, Sub-Saharan African slaves in the article White people is unreadable [3]. The talk page is protected so I can't post on it. Someone really needs to look at that section. It looks like the letters are all squished together and is unreadable. Probably some sort of vandalism. I was reading the article when I saw it. --71.28.252.27 07:55, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Neither White (people) nor Talk:White (people) are protected. The talk page appears to have been left semiprotected by mistake; this should soon be corrected. Also, I've fixed the issue that was screwing up the footnotes. Zetawoof^(ζ) 08:43, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

--71.28.252.27 20:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

There is no reason to protect the page or the talk page, imho. We do have a 3RR problem going on though with user Al Andalus.Yukirat 08:56, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The following is a message I sent to a user after he contacted me, and which he later retracted his comment because of the situation with Yurikat. Please see my talk page.

Thanks for your message. May I recomend, however, that you compare the edition that is being put up by Yukirat. He deletes content which on top of being sourced, also has consensus in talk. The content which continues to be deleted was not contributed and researched by me, but by other users. Personally, I don't agree with much of it, but it has been sourced and they have their references.

I have already put a complaint against the users constant use of "that's anti-White" as his sole defense for deletion of sourced content. If he want's to make allegations (and I've evven asked the user to define what to him constitues "anti-White") then he has to back them up. I am not the first user, you can see the talk page, that has asked him to explain himself and all that is given back is either silence or more one sentence replies stating over and over again "anti-White", "controversial", "hate", but not once define or explain what or why they are so. Al-Andalus 07:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

There's a block on its way for both of you, I'm afraid. 3RR still counts even if you're reverting someone who's gone over three reverts themself. Sit it out for a bit, then take it up on the talk page. Zetawoof^(ζ) 09:22, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I hope you are not refering to me, I did not do anything but ask a question.71.28.252.27 20:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Possible illegal post in George W. Bush article's discussion pages

I noticed that Queen of Sheeba posted an entry that Bush should get the death penalty. I think it is illegal to say this. How do I report it to wikipedia so that it can be deleted?

Thank you,

BMIKESCI 22:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)BMIKESCI

I blanked the comment for being absurdly trollish, but probably not illegal. I've also invited revert and comments if my action was improper. --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 23:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

• and I removed the similarly trollish responses that strawmen arguments on the George Bush talk page tend to attract--152.163.101.14 23:21, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

And after a flurry of edits and reverts, the entire section has been deleted; probably for the best :) --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 23:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

It is not illegal to say "X should die". This is just an opinion. Quite a different matter is saying "I'm going to kill X and this is how I'm going to do it". Deco 05:23, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

9-11 bias

Hello, the article September 11, 2001 attacks is, according to many people, biased (just have a look at the talk-page). Some editors however do not want to see the {neutrality} tag and are very persistent and quick about guarding their version of the 'truth'. Therefore I request that the tag is put up there and that the page (or the tag) receives some protection against removal.

Is there any moderator who would be willing to implement this? greetings Sacca 20:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Help with a good freeware SVG converter

I'd like to convert some images with the {{Convert to SVG}} tag to SVG, though I don't know which freeware SVG program I should get. Does anyone have any good recommendations for a program of this sort?--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:42, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Try commons:Commons:Village Pump. Deco 05:24, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, I will do that.--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 14:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Could an admin please move this.

Lunar Surface Access Module (Project Constellation) has been listed at WP:RM for a while now, and no objections have been raised to it's move to Lunar Surface Access Module. Please could an admin carry this out, as the destination has a page history, so I cannot do so myself. --GW_Simulations_{|User Page | Talk | Contribs | E-mail} 19:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

• Done. - Mgm|^(talk) 07:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Need a more experienced users help

I think this needs to be fixed [4] [5] but there is no history to be reverted. Found it whilst seeking info to make myself another subpage for keeping track of my prods and speedies. It might something an admin only can fix and I don't know who to ask.--John Lake 17:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

It looks like it might be a "work in progress" situation. I think there's no harm in just watching for a while to see what develops (but I'm not an admin). --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 17:35, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I left a message on Talk:Dr. José L. Duomarco and User talk:Rtierno asking for an explanation. --Richard 18:34, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

• It looks like he created the article in an inappropriate place and tried moving it to the right place. I moved it to José L. Duomarco per naming conventions, and deleted the redirects resulting from the moves at User:Example/Sandbox and Wikipedia:Dr. José L. Duomarco. - Mgm|^(talk) 07:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Changes to Billy Meier

This article about a UFO contactee and photographer has gotten rather large lately, with the addition of "The History of the Earth and Humanity According to Billy Meier". This section is longer than the rest of the article, going into considerable detail on how space aliens have created the various human races. I have asked the contributor of this material to slash it down to reasonable size (say, two or three smallish paragraphs) and refer to some external summary.

He doesn't seem to agree with me on the relative importance of this material.

I'd appreciate a third opinion, preferably from an editor willing to do some of the re-write. I'm on vacation and don't care to begin a big edit dispute right now.

Many thanks. Phiwum 14:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I've moved the tedious world history bit to a sub page which cleans things up Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Whisper...) 14:17, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Verifiability

This may have been raised elsewhere and if so simply direct me there and I apologize. Would pictures or screen captures uploaded to Wikipedia be acceptable sources of information for which there is no reputable (or sustainable, as many websites' stories are available for a limited time) source?

The question came to me when I noticed The Twilight Zone is used on the Sci Fi Channel in the US as part of "Cable in the Classroom" which is commercial-free programming for educators aired at ungodly hours so they can record it. I can (probably) find a reputable source mentioning this if I Google it, but I want to ask for future reference. Say no one has mentioned this fact at all - not too big a stretch considering it's only an hour of programming every few weeks! In that unlikely event, would, say, a screen capture of the programming guide information on my Media Center PC be considered original research? Modlin 09:54, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Citing a publication or linking to an external website would certainly be preferable, but I tend to feel that any verification is better than none provided it's not a copyvio. --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 17:33, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Cleanupbox problem

I've attempted to make a cleanup template for WP:MUSTARD which can classify the article into various categories based on what needs to be cleaned up. The part I thought would be hard, using the switch ParserTemplate, was actually easy. But there's a huge blank space that I can't get rid of. You can see it in action at User:TUF-KAT/Test. Any suggestions? Tuf-Kat 00:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Problem was the linebreaks between the switches. Fixed now. Circeus 00:46, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

When templates collide

Bagnolo di Po. Just thought I'd share. If someone has a cure. --Tagishsimon (talk)

The NavFrame class in MediaWiki.css lacks a clear:both style.It must added on a template-by-template basis.Fixed forthis template now. Circeus 23:23, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Weird References

Hi. I was bored, so I started working on the Empires: Dawn of the Modern World Article. I've added a lot on to it, but I still don't know how to reference it. The three references I have are the game itself, the manual, and these sheets that give a description of each civilization. The sheets are almost like pamphlets. I don't know what to do. I know how to cite standard things, and I have a Writers Inc. book, but I need some help. --Clyde Miller 19:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Just write "from manual", try also {{cite video game}}. Circeus 23:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

change category name

how do i propose to change a categories name? is this the right place to ask this question?Qrc2006 02:28, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion to propose a name change for a category. Concerning your other question, I think Wikipedia:Helpdesk is the best place for those questions. But this works too. Garion96 ^(talk) 02:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Related question: When a large category gets renamed, how does one typically go about moving all of the articles? Is there a way to request bot action? ~ Booya ^Bazooka 23:30, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Usually, the admin taking on the task will run a bot, or manually use AutoWikiBrowser or such similar tools. Circeus 00:48, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

What to do if one suspects a threat has been made against them?

I am sorry to have to bring this up here but I do not know how else to proceed. The threat was not issued directly, it was an exchange on the talk pages of two people who were advocating for the deletion an article, whereas I had taken the opposite position. I have posted the exchange between them on my talk page. I believe it constitutes a threat against me and am looking for advice on what to do. Can someone please check out my brief summary at User Talk:Tiamut and ask me if they need more info to make a determination on what to do? Deep appreciation in advance. Tiamut 18:36, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Tell them not to threaten you. If the threat is severe enough and the behaviour is chronic, it may be useful as evidence at a disciplinary hearing. Till then, don't panic, they don't know where you live. Deco 18:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I was one of the editors involved in this and I believe it has been fully explained on my Talkpage and Tiamut's, hopefully to the satisfaction of all. Somehow a joke about an article got interpreted as a threat, but I think it was clearly a misunderstanding. However, anything which might be percieved as a threat must certainly be taken seriously. Most of the thread can be found on my Talkpage in the section labeled "OUTSTANDING!". The thread actually begins on the Talkpage of Aeon1006 where I (jokingly) suggested a betting pool on the length of time between a contentious article's AfD and its recreation. I find this situation very unfortunate and would encourage responses from the community. I'm also going to create a section on my Talkpage titled "Critique" and I invite anyone interested to post their comments there as well. --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 07:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to User:Doc Tropics for patiently responding to my concern and putting it to rest. Tiamut 18:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

This is Aeon, I have no idea how Tiamut took it as a threat against him (Still trying to figure it out) since the comments and joke were about the AfD of What really happened. Hopefully he will understand that there was no threat made against him. Aeon 18:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I think Tiamut needs to grow a much thicker skin. Saying that an AFD needs to be treated like a vampire does not meet the "reasonable person" standard for threats. --SarekOfVulcan 18:14, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I know hopefully He will figure that out, he seems like a reasonable editor so this should blow over. Aeon 18:26, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I left a message for you at User Talk:Doc Tropics. As I said there, I accept that I made something of a mountain out of what should have remained a molehole, with a few scattered pieces of earth. It was a lesson for me on how not to go about dealing with a suspicion. I'm sorry you had to be my practice case. I hope to do better in the future. I hope there will be no hard feelings. Tiamut 18:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I think this issue is done. Everyone settled there issues and even a few barnstars were given out. Aeon 19:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

No hard feelings anywhere. This was a great example of the power of good faith and civilty. --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 20:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Seeking Caretakers for Open source intelligence sub-pages

Hello. Although I am new to the process of contributing to the Wikipedia, I have admired it for some time. When I was recently asked to create a private wiki for practitioners of Open source intelligence, I chose instead to attempt to join our knowledge to the wiki process. Initially there was one hateful individual that constantly deleted stuff, but he seems to have been contained and I have been ably mentored by several individuals.

The purpose of this note is to seek assistance in expanding the sub-pages. For example, there are eight communities of interest that use open source information: government (civilian), military, law enforcement, business, academia, non-governmental organizations, media (including niche media), and civil societies (including advocacy groups, labor unions, and religions. Similarly, there are diverse open sources, softwares, and services.

In the ideal, we could emulate the LINUX guys, and have one person become the shepard or caretaker for each of these communities and each of these capabilities areas. Any interest?Robert Steele 17:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

how do i add pictures to articles??

hi,

i've tried to look around to find out how to add pictures to articles, but no success so far.

can someone please help me out??

thanks. :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tajik-afghan (talk • contribs) 19:07, 4 July 2006

See Help:Contents/Images and media. The most important rule is: Don't upload anything that you didn't take yourself, unless you are thoroughly familiar with American fair use law and you know that you have a strong argument in favor of fair use. Otherwise, your uploads WILL be deleted. --Coolcaesar 23:13, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Irrationality & Augur

Hi fellas,

I just added an image to both of the articles. Could you improve the sentence I added, I think that despite the meaning is clear it could be levelled-up (I think I'm only en-3).

Yours,

--Lilliputian 12:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I have done as you request, however, since augury refers specifically to flights of birds, I think a picture of birds flying would be better than the picture you have chosen, in both articles. Rick Norwood 13:06, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Articles (for years) 1700 to 2099 have Roman dates

Every article regarding years 1700 through 2099 in Wikipedia (English language) has the Arabic numerals immediately followed by the same as Roman numerals. Why? Is there a template that drops this into the article? If so, why? Is this some The Da Vinci Code crap reference? --Charles Gaudette 09:07, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

zomg i am wikidepressed

I've been here 20 months and my only edits have been interwiki links, spelling fixes, and 2 sentence edits of NES game articles. Basically I feel too uneducated about every topic I come across to make any worthwhile edits, which is upsetting because I come across articles all the time that I would like to create/unstub/expand/cleanup or even get to featured article status. If I wasn't banned from taking non-engineering courses I might take a class on something that interests me but my only shot is self-education.

Stuff that seems to interest me (but I never really edit because I have no confidence lol)

• Video games (wow a lot of these suck but how do I reference a 15 year old cult classic)
• Metallurgy / Minerology / Chemistry
• Marine biology
• Art

Crap I wish I knew what my question was.

I guess I just need advice on how to help the Wiki

Particularly on cleanup and helping to get more featured articles

Try Wikipedia:Contributing_to_Wikipedia for a starter. I remember the phrase, contribute to what you know or would like to learn about, and I find that to be excellent advice. A personal favorite of mine is eliminating red links (see the link to the red link recovery project on my user page if you want) by starting articles or more commonly by finding the article that very often exists with a very similar name. Just today I did that by creating the cutworm redirect. You could also check my contributions for an idea of how others like to contribute. Good luck! Spalding 18:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Another thing I recommend is whatever interest you have, look up its subjects as you encounter them in Wikipedia. (For example, I just heard jazz artist Hank Crawford on the radio, who is new to me as many jazz artists are, but there is no Wikipedia article on him, so I (horror) had to Google him.) Read the article if there is one for information, and make small tweaks, get it on your watchlist. If there is no article, Google it and create a stub with some relevant freelinks to start building the web on that subject. Believe me, with that technique you can waste all the time you have available and then some! --Spalding again

I do frequent editing on articles whose subject matter I know absolutely nothing about. This is possible because bad grammar, spelling errors and the like can be recognised regardless of the subject. So I can edit any article and so can you! Just get editing, best of luck - Adrian Pingstone 19:04, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not all about the writing, either! If you are into engineering I bet you can put a decent diagram together. Have a look at Wikipedia:Picture requests for that. Also, you may be able to contribute photographs from your local area. Have a look under Category:Wikipedia requested photographs and find your local subcategory. You could also help by identifying articles which need a picture, and adding them to their appropriate category. An alternative way you could help Wikipedia is by getting involved in one of the projects like Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories, that aims to sort Wikipedia's information by adding categories; or Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles is looking for people to help review the quality of some of Wikipedia's better content. TheGrappler 21:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

If you want to write new content and learn about your areas of interest, my advice is to visit a University bookstore and purchase textbooks in those areas. Read the book, do the exercises, and if you have questions, many teachers are happy to answer questions for a confused student, regardless of what he or she is registered for (nobody teaches for the money). And it's not wasted effort either - later on, you may be able to exempt relevant courses based on your acquired knowledge. Don't let the bureaucracy get you down. Deco 00:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

How to deal with suspected vandalism

I have recently encountered an edit which seems rather odd, but which I cannot really say is vandalism. Is there a template or similar action that can be taken in order to mark an edit as suspected vandalism, since reverting it would seem very harce, and could probably be attributed to my ignorance.

The specific incidence that has caused me to ask this question is the edit about Fusion Drawing Machines on the disamibiguation page FDM. Googling the subject turns up no relevant pages.

Bfg 11:43, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Can you point us in the right direction as to the suspected vandalism? Provide a diff link or similar? You might want to check out Wikipedia:Template messages/Disputes and see if any of these fit your purposes. Alternitively, revert the article and contact the editor to cite sources if they re-edit it to include the new information. If it is a hoax, por you suspect it is you can nominate it for speedy deletion (WP:CSD) or if you are unsure, WP:AFD. Lastly you could add this template: {{hoax}} Viridae^Talk 12:00, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I thought I did point you in the right direction. Anyway I left a message on the talk page of the article that would hopefully clear things up. In summary What is a Fushion Draw Machin?. I also put up the hoax template in the main article. I think I have gotten it right now, please advice me if any other action should be taken. Bfg 18:03, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry didn't see that. I had a look at it (didnt realise it was a disambig page - thought it was an article). A hoax template isn't suitible for a disambiguation page - especially one with multiple entries. If the fusion draw machine had an article I would have out it there. As it was, it was a redlink so I just removed it. If they want to create an article about the thing they can re-add it, but at the moment there is no point in having it redlinked on a disambig page. If you come accross a full article and still think it is a hoax - add that template to that article. Sorry for the mixup, that would have been a lot simpler if I had read your help request properly in the first place. Viridae^Talk 23:30, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Hoaxes cannot be nominated for speedy deletion. Please see WP:CSD#Non-criteria, bullet point "Hoaxes". Deco 00:37, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Whoops - should have checked that. I would have dones so had I been nominating the article, but this reply was on the fly and in a hurry. Thanks fo rpointing that out. Viridae^Talk 01:02, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

No problem. :-) Deco 02:11, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Demographic data

Hi. Is there any copyright problem for copying demographic data from http://www.ine.es ? Is Berne Convention useful here? I need it for municipalities like this Abla. Thanks--Emijrp 09:07, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Just a note. Pure facts are not copyrightable. That is reasonably disputed of course, as baseball statistics are under controversy, but if there's zero creativity in said facts, there's nothing to copyright. Kevin_b_er 05:01, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Need copyright help

Image:Rudy Giuliani face.jpg is marked with a federal PD tag but plainly appears to come from a Washington State government source (per Commons). This is especially important, since this is a very popular image, part of a popular userbox. Can anyone deal with the situation please? - CrazyRussian talk/email 07:17, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The image is from here and the issue seems to be resolved now (licensed under {{cc-by}}) -SCEhardT 22:53, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there a standard way to cite a Whois entry?

I need to cite a Whois entry of a domain name. Is there a standard way to do this? Thanks. --John Nagle 16:33, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know of a specific guideline for this information source, but I'll give my recommendations. If you are citing as a note or reference in an article, treat it as a web citation per Template:Cite web. If you are adding it to a User talk page for a anonymous user (identified by an IP address) there are a series of templates that can be used, indexed at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace#Other messages; I've lately eschewed the use of these templates, though, in favor of a one-line header statement with a) whois resource links, b) organizational affiliation of address and c) IP address block range in which the address sits (see for instance User talk:203.202.5.75). User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 18:54, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Demography template

Hi, is there anything like this http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantilla:Demo ? I need to put population values in some articles. Thanks. --Emijrp 10:15, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I have found this Template:Demography_7col.--Emijrp 10:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Impersonation

An edit which I did not make has appeared under my name, and is listed in "my contributions". The edit is to the article on OJ Simpson, it was posted at 08.32 on 29 June 2006. At that time (if it is in my own time zone, GMT), my computer was not turned on, and I was busy feeding my son. In any case, I did not make this edit. How is it possible for it to appear under my name? RolandR 17:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Somebody must've found a way to access your account, I suggest you change your password immediately before it happens again. --ApolloBoy 00:17, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Advice on unencyclopedic edits.

How do I go about advising an editor to behave more professionally? I have no other words to describe the editor's actions. Here's an example of the edits he's made:

• "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" [6]
• "This also made the aircraft much quieter, as witnessed by people in Seattle who saw it fly over."[7]
• "What happens when you combine a bad car with a bad boat. You get a good car for watching the Boston Pops or hydroplane races 40 years after they were made."[8]
• Is responsible for much of the content on List_of_famous_successes_in_science_and_engineering, (currently up for afd), which is amateruish and all OR, and consists of blatantly false and POV statements such as:

• "Bell UH-1 Huey Revolutionized ground warfare to counter guerilla insurgency." (Completely wrong)
• "UNIX. A large-scale operating system built for any computer which still triumphs over any proprietary operating system, even Microsoft"
• "Internal combustion engine - solar power is not there yet."
• "M-113 The outstanding not-a-tank of the Vietnam war. First modern aluminum APC and IFV. Has been challenged by faster, sleeker, and better armed, but some say still the best as they are in Iraq with a new turret and armour."
• M-4 Sherman Disasterous in one-on-one against Panther or worse, but overwhelming numbers won the war at some cost in tank crews. Effective in six-day war with 105mm guns as well. Inspiration for M-1 getting it right for once.
• RPG Still not equalled by the west. Caused cancellation of stealth RAH-66 when most helicopters in Iraq are downed by RPGs guided by Mark one eyeballs.
• AK-47 A fine weapon if you can't afford to maintain your M-16.

He has started similarly amateruish pages List_of_successful_automobiles, originally titled List of automobiles considered to be the greatist ever

I am currently engaged in an content dispute with this editor, and when I called the user out on blatant mistruths that he has been spreading (tangential to our content dispute), he proceeded to challenge my certifications and personally attack me "As far as I know, I have no reason to believe that you have even a bachelors degree, ever taken a course in writing or logic, ever wrote a computer program, or even held a job, let alone an IQ over 100, purchased, borrowed, browsed or even read a single book, magazine, watched any media or even visited an aviation museum exhibit on the F-14. You're up against an entire F-14 community that has all of the above." I filed a wikiquiette alert Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#28_June_2006 concerning his abusive behavior. This is not an attempt to forum shop, but to raise concerns about the quality of content that do not fall under wikiquette.

Since I'm already in a content dispute with the editor, I ask that a neutral party look at his contributions and give him some constructive advice on making better contributions to wiki. The issue of reliable sources and original research has come up, and I believe he understands the need to cite sources, but he continually miscites sources to say what he wants them to say. (details are on the Talk:F-14 Tomcat page, but it's a bit involved. However, his edits continue to be of poor quality, are loaded with POV, and reflect a very simplistic picture of events. E.g. [9] --Mmx1 06:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Request to usurp

Hi. I posted this request yesterday to Requests to usurp. Not that there is a big hurry, as the account is blocked, but I am suddenly uncertain whether Request to usurp is actually followed as there appears to be rather old requests there, without any feedback. Did I post in the appropriate place? Should I post this to another place? Thanks. Alex lbh 19:24, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Current policy is to never fulfill such requests. I'm not sure if it's a software limitation or a policy limitation. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:34, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

If that would be the policy, how would you explain the very existence of the page Requests to usurp ;-)

Actually there is currently no policy at all.

The "request to usurp" page exists and can be reached from the page Changing username, more specifically from that section that states "Occasionally, someone will request to be renamed to an account that exists (has been registered) but has not made any edits. While there is precedent for making such changes, as yet there are no guidelines for handling such requests. If you like, you may note your desire on this subpage. Current practice by many bureaucrats is to refuse to perform these requests without a specific policy allowing it."

And a quick search brings me to Wikipedia:Usurpation which a proposed policy.

You know, as explained in my initial request, there is no real hurry as an admin blocked the account and the issue will probably eventually be solved by the Single User Login when that one comes (well, I sure hope so) and I would eventually get the account.

But keep in mind this is the result of an identity theft (see my request for details) and that's what really bugs me: the idea that some troll of the french Wikipedia giggles because he made a good joke on an admin ;-) Alex lbh 17:59, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I did get my identity back on Wikisource and on Commons. What seems to be the problem here? Alex lbh 17:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

special symbols

Hello, I have set up a small independent wiki and would like to use the box with special characters that appears here in Wikipedia when editing a page. Could anybody tell me where the template for this can be found? I tried looking for it but couldn't find it... thanks.. --Sacca 16:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

You mean MediaWiki:Edittools? It's used in conjunction with some javascript as well, specifically MediaWiki:Editmenu.js. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:04, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

yes hat's the one I need. thank you. Sacca 01:38, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

You'll also need CharInsert. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:32, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Checking recently creating usernames

How do I access the list of recently created usernames? - Richardcavell 03:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Special:Log/newusers -Aude (talk contribs) 03:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Signature

I'm going to ask here before I attempt to make changes and cause all sorts of glitches =)

I would like my signature amended to include a link to my contributions, not just my talk page, and would like to avoid it being to long by having the links subscript and superscipt, as below. Can someone guide me through it please - I'd like "words" - the existing link to my talk page - to be subscript and "deeds" - a link to my contributions - to be superscript.

Cheers for any help doktorb | words 11:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

You have to go to "My preferences" and check "Raw signature (no auto link; don't use templates or external links in this)". Then you enter this into the box:

[[User:Doktorbuk|doktorb]] <sub>[[User talk:Doktorbuk|words]]</sub><sup>[[Special:Contributions/Doktorbuk|deeds]]</sup>

Then make sure to press "save".

This will generate the following: doktorb _words^deeds

Is this what you wanted? —Mets501 (talk) 15:15, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Deleting nearly 50 articles

I started the deletion debate for List_of_United_States_musicians (AfD page); the conclusion that was drawn was that ALL of the "Lists of bands from ___ state" should be deleted and replaced with categories. Going through the AfD steps for all of them would be incredibly tedious: is there any way they can all be deleted as part of the decision made on the United States list AfD discussion? --Stellis 07:29, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Contact an administrator at WP:AN Viridae 07:51, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

A controversy in the Conservatism article

The following section is proposed for the article Conservatism. A somewhat different version is in the article currently. User:beneaththelandslide insists that the entire section be deleted. More than a month has gone by, and the section has been completely rewritten many times. The section is currently being mediated by the Cabal, and a number of compromises have been proposed. The response from beneaththelandslide to all rewrites and compromises is the same. "I offer no compromise with idiocy." The Cabal mediator suggested posting the problem here might lead to some constructive suggestions. Rick Norwood 15:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Critism of Conservatism

Conservatism is the belief or claim that tradition is of primary importance. From time to time, people have expressed criticism of conservatism.

One criticism is that conservatives may tend to punish deviations from tradition too harshly. Plato, in his Apology, gives a sympathetic picture of Socrates, who was sentenced to death in 339 BC on the charge that he was "a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of the state, .."[6]

A second criticism is that conservatives sometimes use appeals to tradition as a cover for self-interest. The Roman historian Livy, in his History of Rome[7], describes one such instance, in the year 445 BC, when conservative Romans, to preserve their political power, appealed to tradition and found war preferable to change:

"…the tribune Canuleius introduced a bill for legalizing intermarriage between the nobility and the commons. The senatorial party objected strongly on the grounds not only that the patrician blood would thereby be contaminated but also that the hereditary rights and privileges of the gentes, or families, would be lost. ... It was with great satisfaction, therefore, that the Senate received a report, first that Ardea had thrown off her allegiance to Rome in resentment at the crooked practice which had deprived her of her territory ... . In the circumstances it was good news, for the nobility could look forward even to an unsuccessful war with greater complacency than to an ignominious peace."

Another example is the dispute over the corn laws in England in 1845. Benjamin Disraeli, himself a member of the Conservative Party, claimed that those members of his party who opposed the corn laws were the very people who stood to gain the most financially from their repeal. He wrote in 1845, "A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy." [8]

A third criticism of conservatism is that it stands in the way of progress. Unlike charges of excess and hypocrisy, this criticism speaks directly to the conservative philosophy itself.

In France, in the 18th century, conservatives supported the Ancien Régime, revolutionaries opposed it. Writing in support of the revolution, the English poet William Wordsworth wrote, "Bliss in that dawn it was to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!" [9]

After the failure of the revolution, Vicomte Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise de Bonald, one of the two leading French conservatives in the age of Napoleon, set forth the principles of French conservatism in Théorie du pruvoir politique et religieux (1796): "absolute monarchy, hereditary aristocracy, patriarchal authority in the family, and the moral and religious sovereignty of the popes over all the kings of Christendom." Napoleon himself criticized French conservatives for trying to hold back progress. In his final days he said that the principles of the French Revolution would triumph in American, France, and England; and “from this tripod the light will burst upon the world.” [10]

(end of section)

I need stuff to do!

Point me to some stuff I can edit because I'm bored bored bored! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Krein (talk • contribs)

• How can you be bored in Wikipedia? There is always something to do. Lots of ideas can be found half way down the Community portal under "To do lists". Pick something, try it for a bit and if you don't want to be involved with that try something else in the list. --MarkS (talk) 08:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Can you do my math home work and mow the lawn?

Please?

Oversight

Anyone knows what happened to the oversight log? It seems that the function is still active (Special:ListUsers/suppress), but Special:Log/oversight gives nothing. Just wondering. --Zoz (t) 22:33, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

They removed it to everyone but those with oversight privlage itself. Even that I'm not sure of. In any case, very few if any can see what the oversight users delete now. Kevin_b_er 02:20, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Um, yes, I found this and this. At any rate, I would have appreciated a notice of this change somewhere. --Zoz (t) 14:32, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I whipped up WP:OVER & Wikipedia:Oversight to handle questions and answers regarding the Oversight permission. It's currently a blatant ripoff of the page from Meta, but now that we've got a local copy to play with and reference, it'd be good to incorporate what information we have there. Just FYI. :) ~Kylu (u|t) 05:51, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, thanks. --Zoz (t) 11:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

I was directed here by anther user, as I need some help curtailing the constand vandalism of FIFA World Rankings, exasperated by the on-going world cup, and more worrying, as it is up for FA. So if some people could add it to their watchlists to help or something, another problem is often the page is vandalised repeatedly and only gets rolled-back one version, so vandalism remains, and then it gets mixed in with legitimate edits and is a lot of effort to remove. So if you could just look out for these things, thanks in advance for the help. Philc _T^E_C^I 22:25, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

This page looks to be vandalised a lot. When there are multiples vandals then rolling back one version often fails to clear all the vandalism. This is something we all need to watch our for especially when using semi-automated tools such as popups and vandalproof. --MarkS (talk) 08:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

External editors on Mac OSX?

Is there any way to use an external editor on Mac/OSX? I've looked at Wikipedia:Text editor support, but as far as I can tell, none of the solutions described there work on OSX. I'm happy to use either Safari or Firefox. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Lacking a better alternative: mark area needing revision, copy to clipboard, open text editor, paste to text editor, edit, mark edited article, copy to clipboard, paste into article. -- Hoary 09:43, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

The "Saft" plugin isn't free, but it does have a feature like that. Zetawoof^(ζ) 04:06, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

{{double-NPOV}}

There used to be a template for "doubly-disputed" articles where there was a question as to whether the article should even be disputed or not. However, I did a thorough search and did not find it. Was it deleted? 69.140.157.138 10:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems to have been redirected, but still exists as a redirect. See Template:DoubleDisputed. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:38, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. 69.140.157.138 15:13, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

temporary ban for supposed vandalism

User_talk:AmiDaniel left a message that an unsigned in user from my computer address had done some vandalism. I can only assume that I was doing my regular editing and cleaning up and had failed to log in or possibly not filled in the summary bar? How can i find out more on his accusations as he hasn't answered my response on his page. He didnt say what the problem was. I can only think it is on the poetry lists I have been working on cleaning up the red dead links.?? WayneRay 17:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)WayneRay

Many ISPs do not assign IP addresses permanently, but allocate them to currently logged in users (logged in to the ISP) using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. If you had recently turned your computer off and back on again, almost certainly your ISP assigned an IP address to your computer that somebody else had recently used to vandalize Wikipedia. AOL takes this one step further and uses a large pool of IP addresses as proxy servers for use by its subscribers when connecting to the Internet. If you are an AOL user, please see Wikipedia:Advice to AOL users. If this happens again, please contact the administrator who issued the block (or any other admin) and let them know the IP address and it can be unblocked. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:52, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Casino advertising on Wikipedia

There's been a recent spate of articles about specific hotel/casino operations in Nevada. Now there's even an infobox for "Laughlin (NV) casinos". Some are blatant advertising: Ramada Express Hotel and Casino was actually copied out of the hotel's advertising, so I marked that as a copyvio. Others, such as River Palms Casino, are not quite as blatant. What's policy on this? Can all of these be deleted? --John Nagle 05:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Uh, say what? I just checked a Laughlin hotel article and didn't see a specific casino tempalte - just the same old {{Infobox Casino}} that's always been in use. Yes, I'll agree with you on the Ramada one - I added the speedy as it was created just a few hours ago - but I think that the Colorado Belle is pretty notable (which you prodded). But, hey, this is just feeling, I'm not referring to any guidelines or the such. Hbdragon88 08:16, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I think he means this one template:Laughlin casinos Philc _T^E_C^I 22:53, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Ahhh...byt that's not a infobox - it's a navigation template. I don't think it's really that bad; it's a useful template. Hbdragon88 06:47, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd say all the major hotel-casinos in Vegas are article worthy. Several of them are very famous indeed. Chicheley 22:46, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Where to start

HELP!

I am a total noob at this. is there a bsic guide some where...? I can't even figure out how dto put a picture on a page for god sakes! — Preceding unsigned comment added by SovietComrade (talk • contribs) 02:22, 22 June 2006

I recommend that you begin with Wikipedia:Introduction. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:09, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Systematic removal of references to 'mildly popular' website

There is an anonymous user(s) (User:68.180.3.103) who is systematically removing references to content residing on the external website for WrestleCrap. Some of the things removed have been accompanied by an edit summary suggesting (rightly so) that the external site is only moderately popular and inclusion of items in lists maintained by purveyors of the site might well be non-notable information. What I'm wondering is what the current thinking is on this type of behavior (systematic removal of critique-type information from entertainment-related articles based on the critiquing entity being non-notable in the measure of the editor). Note that the web site is sufficiently notable to have an article here ... if the web site did not have an article here, there would be no question in my mind about the appropriateness of the removal of information as I've described. Thanks for spending a brain cell on this. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

It sounds perfectly proper to me. If the links are inappropriate we should be grateful that someone is diligent enough to remove them. Chicheley 22:45, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Removing of information deemed non-notable by an editor is a good faith action, whether in one article or many articles. If you believe they are in error, you should discuss this with them on their talk page and come to a consensus, but you would have no basis for unilaterally reverting these changes. Deco 02:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

need help with references markup

User:Wikimachine has put in a lot of work into Jang Yeong-sil, but the article needs some outside attention. most noticeably, the references are not formatted correctly. he's a relatively new user, & eager to nominate the article for Portal:Korea. i'm not familiar enough with the markup style to fix it. can someone fix this & give some comments at Talk:Jang Yeong-sil? or is there a better place for this request? thanks. Appleby 21:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• Answered on article talk. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:50, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Adding userbox?

How do I add/propose a new userbox, and how do I know if it's accepted/added? --69.204.179.124 17:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Just create it. Create a page the name of which begins with "Template:", like "Template:foo", then include it with {{foo}}. Be warned that many people like to delete userboxes and read the Templates section of Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion. Deco 18:13, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure? The WP Userbox page says One thing that is reasonably clear is that, at the present time, you should not make your userboxes into new templates.. --69.204.179.124 18:40, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I've never read that page, and it's not policy, but I suppose it's best to do what it says. I think it's silly though. Deco 21:13, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

So, back to my original question. How do I add/propose it, and know if it's accepted? --69.204.179.124 16:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is sort of chaotic. You can just create it, and you'll know it's been rejected if it gets deleted. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:48, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

According to WP:Userbox, Wikipedia talk:Userboxes/New_Userboxes seems to be where new userboxes are proposed. ~ Booya ^Bazooka 22:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I actually added one to New_Userboxes, but how do I know if it's accepted? --Zeno McDohl ^(talk) 22:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Why does it need to be a template, if people care that much why dont the put the code on their page, or make the tamplate in their namespace. Philc _T^E_C^I 22:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

By that logic, why do any userboxes need to be a template? --Zeno McDohl ^(talk) 18:43, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

• I think that's Phil's point. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Dispute over External Links

I am current involved in a rather slow moving debate over the use of blogs in external links of a particular article. Out of a matter of respect, I won't name the article, until assistance is needed. At any rate: I argued that a particular link (links, actually) shouldn't be on the "External links" section, as it was a blog hosted on some website. It failed WP:WEB, and thus I figured it should be removed. My opponents replied back, stating that by following Wikipedia:External links, their blog deserved to be on the article, as it was "closely related to" the article content.

Now, am I alone in assuming that an unpopular blog (that is, based on the fact that there have been no comments to the blog posts ever since it started) shouldn't be linked to in Wikipedia? Also, the fact that the article contributors were the one and the same two people whose blog the article is linked to. Both WP:WEB and Wikipedia:External links state that WP isn't a repository of links, so I'm caught. Any suggestions? Kareeser|^Talk! 19:17, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I would recommend that in the future, you do link to the specific dispute, and furthermore inform all other disputants that you've brought the issue here. Summaries by an interested party are no substitute for firsthand examination of the dispute's facts, and bringing the matter to the community without telling others who are involved could be viewed as dishonest. And finally, there's no mileage in breaking up a discussion. In the future, I suggest you say something more to the effect of "Anyone who's interested, there's a dispute about external links at Talk:Digital signage. Comments are welcome.". You'll find that this is routine at the various Village Pumps, particularly at WP:VPP and WP:VPM.

I've commented at the talk page in question. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:08, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

My bad. It's my first time using the Village Pump, and I was (at the very least) a tad annoyed over the issue in the first place. I suggested bringing in an arbiter (which was the point of this thread, actually), but didn't, because I thought it might seem like I was, to borrow a colloquialism, telling on the bully. It's childish :) It won't happen again. Kareeser|^Talk! 07:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• Generally speaking, blogs or not suitable external links. If I were to start a blog on film making, for example, it would be "closely related" to the topic, but Wikipedia is not a repository of links and unless the blog provides sourced information not available elsewhere (not opinions), it should be removed per WP:EL. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:55, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Generally I think an external link should be authoritative, in the sense that it is not merely relevant but "official" or at least notable/widely-known. For example, if a game company created a website for some new game they're releasing, that site would be eminently suited for a link from the game's article, regardless of quality or how long it's been up. Deco 02:12, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

something to ask

I am at the college crossroads and I want to know what is the best path to take if I want to devote all of my spare time to creating and maintaining featured articles.

and by that I mean if my only goal in life is to see an article I contributed heavily to on the front page, regardless of what it's about, how should I go

Unfortunately I can't do it now because I own no books and during school I have no time to check out books to read, though the main limiting factor right now is that I don't know jack about any specific topic

I mean I am like 15% of the way to being a Civil Engineer but screw that

Dude, don't abandon your degree. :-P Check out Wikipedia:What is a featured article?, which lists the primary criteria we use when considering an FA. As you noted, one of the most difficult to fulfill is 2c, factually accurate, including citations and references. Many citable resources can be found online or via digital subscriptions - many school libraries have subscriptions that cover all students, check with your library. Finally, keep in mind that no featured article was written by a single person - do the part that you do best.

If you're worried that you don't know enough about any "encyclopedic" topic, note that many of our featured article regard figures from popular culture, politics, video games, or other venues that you might have interest in only as a hobby. See if you can expand on your hobby interests. Researching and expanding a small existing article in your area of interest is a good way to get started. Hope this helps. Deco 11:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

• Besides, you don't have to know anything about the subject when you begin writing about it. You just need to be willing to research it and be able to separate good sources from bad ones. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I dunno about the rest of you, but this kind of stuff gives me goosebumps, and not in a good way. Honestly, I could not possibly recommend that anyone make getting an article they have contributed heavily to on the front page the only goal in their life. That way lies the kind of horror that makes Comic Book Guy look well-adjusted and socially capable. Wikipedia's cool, absolutely, and it may be a good thing in your life, but it's not your life. -- Captain Disdain 18:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Should an edit that reverts vandalism be marked as minor?

My main purpose on Wikipedia is contributing information to articles on websites and Singapore TV shows. However, I occasionally revert vandalism to articles on my niche topics. When I revert vandalism, should I mark the revert as minor? Or does this depend on the level of vandalism - e.g. mark minor if vandalism was minor, don't if vandalism affected large section or whole article? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:05, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The automatic revert which is available to admins marks the reverts as minor. When I revert a large amount of vandalism, or if I have to pick and choose because a good edit occurred after the vandalism, or if there are several vandals in a row, I put an explanation in the edit summary and don't mark it as minor. User:Zoe|^(talk) 16:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Generally, I would mark a revert as minor if it's, well, a minor change. Rewording a one-word sneaky vandalism is minor; reverting a replacement of the entire page by a thousand penis images is not. Deco 17:14, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

And I would generally disagree with that. I believe the one word, "sneaky" vandalism should not be marked as minor, as it may well be beneficial for others who may disagree that it was vandalism to review the change. When an article is replaced by a million penis images, well, there's no need for anyone to review that change as it's quite obvious what I'm doing--I'd mark it as minor, or, in the case of a rash of similar attacks from one user, I'd use "&bot=1" to completely hide my reversions from Recent Changes (only admins can do this though, I believe). Essentialy the determinant between what should and should not be marked as minor is "Is there a need for someone else to see what I'm doing here?" AmiDaniel (talk) 10:21, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

If you really feel that it's more useful to mark edits that don't need to be reviewed as minor rather than editors that are minor, I suggest we rename "minor edit" to something that actually reflects this. Deco 19:55, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I normally use Vandal Proof which marks reverting vandalism as minor. If doing it manually then for very obvious changes I would mark if minor (e.g. blanking, inserting rubbish). I tend to mark it as major if reverting more than historic version or I suspect their is a chance the edit could have been done in good faith. Broadly if I believe nobody is every going to dispute the reversion then I go for minor; otherwise go for major. --MarkS (talk) 10:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I generally mark my own reverts of vandalism as 'minor'. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:23, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

• They're usually marked as minor by tools so they can be filtered from "Recent changes". Whenever I revert vandalism without a tool, I don't mark my edits. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Unusual crisis - losing focus of contributing to Wikipedia

I am facing an unusual type of crisis on Wikipedia. In short, I am losing my focus as a Wikipedian.

I joined Wikipedia in February 2006. For several months, I had read articles about websites and Sinagpore TV shows, and I found lots of information about them on Wikipedia. However, I soon spotted loopholes - missing or incorrect information or missing articles. When I realized anyone could edit, I decided to join the project and contribute my knowledge. I was warmly welcomed.

Therefore, from the very start, I focused on contributing information to articles about websites and Singapore TV shows. I created the GTalkr article, and contributed information to the NeoPets and Gmail articles. In the beginning, I struggled to understand the wiki markup and policies, so I started with small additions. In addition, I often participated in discussions about Wikipedia on various talk pages, as a way of becoming familiar with the wiki markup and policies.

Over time, I became bolder, and wrote the Google Groups and Homerun articles. (To date, 99% of the content in these two articles is still by me, so I would welcome feedback.) My discussions also lead to the birth of Wikipedia:Requests for feedback, a place for newcomers to get feedback on their articles that will help make them better writers. (This arose out of personal need - I found it very difficult to get feedback on my articles!)

Eventually, the pressure of school decreased my time on Wikipedia. Still, I managed to contribute information to articles on my niche topics, and participate in discussions to improve articles and Wikipedia as a whole.

Finally, my exams ended, and school holidays started. I have lots of time to contribute to Wikipedia. However, now I seem to be losing my focus as a Wikipedian. I am finding it difficult to contribute information to articles on my niche topics. This is partially due to various issues on Wikipedia that are affecting me. I think, however, that it is more due to the lack of organization and direction in my contributions.

In the past, I would chance upon errors and omissions in articles, and contribute some information or correct the errorneous information. However, I think I must organize my contributions into sub-goals. For example, I could have a sub-goal of improving all Google-related articles. Every week, I would pick a Google-related article and make significant improvements to it, and, if the article is good enough, nominate it for GA or FA. If a Google-related article should exist, but doesn't, I should create and expand the article (e.g. Google Groups, which was written by me). I could do this until I improve all Google-related articles by a notch.

I recently had an idea for a sub-goal. This subgoal concerns articles related to Yahoo! I noticed that the exclamation mark in Yahoo! is often omitted, even in Wikipedia articles about Yahoo! I therefore decided to add omitted exclamation marks to Yahoo! in Yahoo!-related articles. I think WikiProjects could be used for sub-goals, so I created Wikipedia:WikiProject_Yahoo! to encourage other users to follow suit and add omitted exclamation marks. User:Mets501 used AutoWikiBrowser to automate the adding of omitted exclamation marks to over 300 articles.

If WikiProjects are useful for helping me find sub-goals, I would be interested in finding such WikiProjects for my niche topics (websites and Singapore TV shows). Although I usually work independently in school, I understand that Wikipedia is an online community. Therefore, another goal of mine will be to build up a good working relationship with several fellow Wikipedians that will help us collaborate to improve articles in my niche topics. Would WikiProjects help me do so as well? Regardless of the answer to the previous question, how do you suggest I find editors to build a good working relationship with, so we can collaborate and contribute to articles together?

As I started losing my focus, I started "wasting time" on more discussions on Wikipedia. For example, at the Village Pump, I suggested a Wikipedia-Google partnership. The suggestion was not well received. I also participated in several surveys, such as one to prevent anonymous editing, and one regarding my reasons for contributing to the project.

I think the wiki concept is great, and I wish to make significant contributions to this mammoth project. However, I am running out of ideas for doing so, and I would appreciate some pointing in the right direction. Some may suggest that I start combating vandalism. In fact, if I spot any vandalism to articles about my niche topics, I will most certainly revert it. However, reverting vandalism is not my cup of tea, and not my purpose in contributing to Wikipedia. Many people are much better vandal-fighters than I am.

I could spend my June school holidays working on my user page, letting everyone know I'm a 14-year-old boy from Singapore who contributes information to articles about websites and Singapore TV shows, and finding userboxes, and I am currently working on my userpage, but the question remains: After I complete my userpage, how can I make further contributions, now that people know who they are working with?

Several other issues are distracting my ability to contribute information to Wikipedia, and are increasing my WikiStress levels. Resolving these would certainly help me regain my focus, although I think it is still imperative to have sub-goals. Despite these issues, I would probably continue to contribute with focus if I could work in sub-goals.

My IP, User:202.156.6.54, is shared by practically all of Singapore (over 4 million people). There are several egregious anonymous vandals using this IP address to vandalize Wikipedia. As a result, the IP is often blocked, and I am affected as well. I find myself unable to edit Wikipedia a quarter of the time, and this is very frustrating! I have tried to raise this issue elsewhere, but this problem has not been resolved yet. I had to resort to edits which were deemed violations of WP:POINT. Please sign at Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal.

Some policies appear to have been deliberately designed to make contributing very difficult for me. I will single out the verifiability/original research policies. A considerable percentage of my contributions have been tagged as original research. Unfortunately, given my niche topics, it is very difficult to find and cite reliable sources for my facts.

For example, I contributed information to the NeoPets article and nominated it for FA. It failed - the primary objection being the lack of reliable sources for the Criticisms section, and therefore the over-use of weasel words. As an experienced NeoPets user, I agree with most of the information in the Criticisms section, and I wish to point out that it is difficult to find reliable sources criticising a website. Much of the criticisms are user opinion, and it is unlikely that these criticisms would be published in a reliable source such as a newspaper. It is possible to find such information in unreliable sources such as anti-NeoPets websites.

Similarly, almost all of the Homerun article which I wrote is original research! While writing the article (especially the spoiler), I watched the movie to verify the information I wrote in the article. Unless one has actually watched Homerun, it is practically impossible to verify the information in the article! When I contribute articles about Singapore TV shows, I will have it even worse! It is unlikely that the TV shows will be aired a second time, so it is almost impossible to verify the information, except by reading the storylines at the MediaCorp website.

Although I am more experienced with Wikipedia than I used to be, I still occasionally slip up with wiki markup, particularly with the helpme and peerreview tags. User:Commander Keane recently banned me from using helpme. I was also involved in a dispute regarding the Internet Explorer article. I contributed some information to the Criticism section. Several editors pointed out that my information had serious POV issues, and reverted my edit. I read their feedback and worked on cleaning up the information to become less POV. I then re-added the cleaned up information to the article, and posted on the talk page. My edit was immediately reverted without any explanation or consideration that I had cleaned up the information. On the talk page, User:Warrens called me "a biased critic whose only purpose here is to disrupt", which could be a violation of WP:NPA and WP:AGF (I'm not sure as I'm not very familiar with Wikipedia policy) and did not offer any explanation or consideratoin. He then banned me from editing the article. Even if I lose the dispute, I hope to learn from it. [10]

I hope someone will help me find/regain my focus as a Wikipedian and also offer advice regarding the various problems I have encountered while editing Wikipedia. I am unsure whether the Village Pump is the best place to post this; if there's a better place, please redirect me to it. Is there a page where Wikipedians can ask questions to help them develop as contributors to Wikipedia?

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:17, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not familiar in any way with you as an editor, I'm sorry to say, but here a few random thoughts that you may find useful nonetheless:

• Stay cool. Take a Wikibreak if your Wikistress gets too high.

• June holidays are the worst time to take a Wikibreak - when I have the most time to edit Wikipedia! --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, no one is going to waive WP:NOR for you. Try to live with it. This policy exists for a number of very good reasons, and should be rigorously enforced. In a nutshell, what good content we lose because of it is a lot less important than the tidal wave of crap, cruft and crankery that would otherwise flood Wikipedia.

• I understand the rule is there to prevent conspiracy theories. I'm just frustrated with how it hinders my editing. Perhaps the policy should be modified to give the editor more leeway in verifying the facts, especially if he can prove he is reasonably knowledgable about the subject. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

• For getting more feedback, you could try WP:ER; to resolve your issues with other contributors, you could try one of the methods listed at WP:DR.

• Thanks. Will check out WP:ER. Please check out WP:RFF. I created it to help new articles get feedback. As for WP:DR, I posted my dispute there but did not receive any response Wikipedia_talk:Resolving_disputes#A_dispute_I_hope_to_learn_from.

• You're 14. You've got all your life in front of you. Eventually, you'll get to know more stuff that will give you ideas for Wikipedia content. Call it a fringe benefit of life.

• Perhaps I should utilise my teenhood to surf more websites and watch more TV shows so I can write more articles. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Best of luck, Sandstein 16:49, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you know any other languages—if you do, you could help with interwiki translations. No one will criticize your lack of activity as long as you give it a reason (i.e. wikibreak). For what it's worth, you are way ahead of the standard, writing articles and interacting at your age (most wikipedians are, which is why you may not realize it). It's OK if you step back from what you are doing in order to reevaluate yourself, because you are at the point in your life where you are defining, categorizing, and trying understand the motives of the people who surround you, and it can be stressful to do a million things at once, especially write an encylopedia :).-- The ikiroid  18:46, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

"You are way ahead of the standard" - does that mean I'm mature? Cool - my friends on Google Groups say so too. Yes, I'm at that stage, and it's stressful, but I'll get over it, and I hope to find help in re-evaluating myself. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Check out Wikipedia:Community Portal for a list of Wikipedia tasks that need to be done. Editing Wikipedia is not just about writing articles. It also includes editing other people's articles, resolving disputes, reverting vandalism, wikifying articles, working on Wikiprojects to coordinate work across multiple articles, etc.

I mentioned earlier that I do revert vandalism to articles on my niche topics (websites and Singapore TV shows), if someone doesn't get 'em first. It seems many Wikipedians are engaged in fighting vandalism, and few actually contribute information and expand articles. I hope to find ways to continue improving the content of articles about my niche topics. I think I need to co-ordinate and organize my edits, perhaps in terms of sub-goals (outlined above). I understand that WikiProjects could be used for this purpose, so could anyone recommend WikiProjects for my niche topics? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Check out what it takes to become an admin. It may be too early for you to apply but learning what it takes to be a good admin is a useful thing and may give you a broader perspective on Wikipedia.

Becoming an admin? I guess I can only dream. They probably wouldn't want a 14-year-old who violates WP:POINT and lacks understanding of wiki markup for an admin. Anyway, it's not my style - as mentioned earlier, I came here to contribute information, not to fight vandalism. Still, I'll read it. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Consider joining a group of fellow editors at WP:Esperanza,Harmonious editing club or {{WP:Concordia]]

A good place to make new friends? OK, I'll check it out. I know Wikipedia isn't Friendster or Myspace. The reason for having Wikifriends is to work towards a common goal. My goal is to improve articles on my niche topics, mostly by contributing information. If other editors also wish to improve the standard of articles on the same niche topics as mine, then it makes sense to become Wikifriends so we could collaborate and contribute together. That's why Wikipedia is a community project. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Good luck. Don't take Wikipedia too seriously. At the end of the day, it's just a bunch of magnetic charges sitting on a bunch of disks in Florida. There's more to life than that.

--Richard 19:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I have no life. I spend practically all my time online - on online communities, playing some online game, surfing for information, blogging, or editing Wikipedia (natch). OK, I lied. I do have some life. I usually do well in my exams, with about half of my report card showing As and the other half usually Bs. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I joined when I was 14. *whistles* Elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (Be eudaimonic!) 14:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

While I realize you're frustrated by being repeatedly blocked, things such as this and this are out of line. Furthermore, nobody ever blocked you except User:NSLE, once, for those two edits (and you were unblocked 28 minutes later for—ironically—collateral damage). User:Commander Keane never blocked you. If you're having trouble editing Wikipedia, unfortunately, the only thing you can effectively do is wait for Mediazilla:550.

As for WP:NOR, I suggest that when noting criticism of, e.g., NeoPets, you link to websites criticizing it; for Homerun, cite the movie itself, giving the time in the movie where something occurs. Nothing verifiable needs to be unsourced. (If a TV episode isn't going to be rerun, though, and can't be otherwise obtained, it's not verifiable and shouldn't be in Wikipedia.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I guess I'll wait for MediaZilla:550 then, and strongly suport the proposal, and grit my teeth when I'm blocked. This does not affect me alone - it affects almost all Internet users in Singapore, and others, such as User:Stefan, have complained. Commander Keane didn't block me - he left a note on my talk page telling me to never use helpme again, after I used it and messed up Talk:MSN Groups. I will consider your suggestions regarding citations. How do I cite the minute in the movie? Remember I'm not good with wiki markup. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

All DVD players and VCRs will tell you exactly how far you are into the movie, I believe, at least if you know how to look. To cite, just write <ref>''Movie Name'' at [time]</ref> or something of the sort, and make sure <references /> is somewhere appropriate on the page (see m:Cite.php). It's not pretty, but someone will clean it up eventually. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 08:23, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

This comment is an excellent example of why we should limit participation in this project by minors. Chronological adulthood is not easy to verify, true; it is no guarantee of mental maturity, also true. But experience has shown that young people need more direction than older ones. Some users are always going to require that more work be put in to their support than we will harvest from their efforts. John Reid 18:10, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Interesting point. From a technological angle though, a frusteratingly high amount of adults need much guidance in navigating the internet, let alone editing wikipedia. I suppose we see a high number of minors swarming wikipedia and net groups because their generation has grown up with this technology as part of their cultural zeitgeist. It is much easier to follow and learn things when the peers that surround you are moving by the same ebb and flow of ideas and technology.-- The ikiroid  02:33, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I have no respect for people or websites which practise age discrimination. I usually take about 6 months to get fully familiar with a website. For example, I joined Google Groups last August, and by this February I owned a successful group and was an established member of several other successful groups. I joined Wikipedia this February, and my familiarity with wiki markup is increasing. I am now thinking about making long-term contributions to Wikipedia. This is why I wish to get involved in WikiProjects and such. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:05, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The assertion that younger users are going to require more effort than they're worth is baseless and prejudicial. Some of our best contributors, admins, and even arbcom members are young users, many of whom required very little handholding. No user gives a return on investment right away, but in the long run they have the ability to offer knowledge that those who helped them do not possess. Deco 06:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. Thanks for your support. I hope to become a prominent member of the community. Not everyone can write articles like Google Groups and Homerun like I did from scratch. Now I want to write and improve more articles, and I want to find appropriate WikiProjects to organize my edits. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:58, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I have recently joined the Good Articles WikiProject. I nominated four articles - Criticism of Microsoft, Chelsea F.C., Gmail and RuneScape - for Good Article. Three of them passed, while RuneScape is still awaiting review. I have also sent two articles - Yahoo! and Neopets - for Peer Review. Please review them. It looks like my current direction will be to increase the number of deserving Good Articles on Wikipedia.

However, I would still appreciate any suggestions for appropriate WikiProjects I can join to improve articles on my niche topics: besides websites and Singapore TV shows, I am also interested in chess.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:05, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

For those who don't understand, I'm looking for some WikiProjects on my interests to help me co-ordinate and organize my contributions. I usually contribute information to articles about websites and Singapore TV shows/movies. I'm also interested in chess, but have not contributed to ches-related articles yet.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 02:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

just an observation: Homerun is a link that redirects to a baseball article. make sure you type "Homerun (film)" in order to get to your article. J. Van Meter 12:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Trigger Happy

Dear Wikipedians: I, like you, am an editor; I create articles and make edits. But, many, I am sure many other people out there, are tired, frustrated and angry with the behavior of many Administrators. I am certain that it is appallingly easy to revert and article, that someone has undoubtedly spent allot of time and effort writing. I have, in the past spent hours, researching, planning, writing, checking and revising an addition to an article only to have the whole lot deleted forever three minutes afterwards.

I know that deletion of material is essential in a free-to-edit encyclopedia, but if you see an article that someone has anonymously devoted their time to writing, why could you not revise it, change it or give a reason for you action? They deserve one.

I know all Administrators are not all Drunk-With-Power-Trigger-Happy-Nazis, many of you do an excellent job and you know who you are.

In closing: Create, don’t Destroy. Make a distinction between “what is right, and what is easy”. Be enriched and enrich others with the knowledge of other people.

And keep that finger off the trigger.

(If I don't cop flack for this one, I will climb the Reichtag Bulding in a Spiderman outfit).

Dfrg.msc 07:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

• See also Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Trigger Happy, begun 6 June. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Seeking help and contribution

Dear Wikipedians,

We apreciate your valuable contribution in article named Wikipedia:Indic transliteration scheme on english WIkipedia.

We at Marathi Language wikipedia do not have enough expertise to update IPA related info in our article, specialy we have been unable to import/update IPA templates and do not know how to use IPA symbols.Please click here-this link- to provide help to update "IPA transliteration for Indic Languages" article for Marathi wikipedia

We seek and request for help in updating above mentioned article and would like to know relevant resources and refferences in respect of Devanagari and IPA .

Thanks and Regards

Mahitgar 16:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The Matthew Barnard Show

Has anybody heard of this show? According to some articles on Wikipedia it was a hit show on NBC between around 1989 and 2005. However, User:194.81.176.254 has been extensively editing the article The Matthew Barnard Show Movie and concencous is building that the movie article is a spoof. Assuming the whole Matthew Barnard Show is a spoof then somebody has gone to a lot of effort to add references to it in a number of articles (see: [11] for a list). I have checked on google and it doesn't seem to return anything (other than sites which pick up Wikpedia's text). Before I remove all these references I thought I would check to see if anybody else had heard of this or had any other thoughts. --MarkS (talk) 10:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks like a hoax, smells like a hoax, quacks like a hoax. Durova 13:34, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

what are .ogg files?

I want to hear the pronunciation of a certain word on your site, but when I clicked on it to listen to it, my computer said that there are no programs on my system to play .ogg files. What is .ogg? I've never heard of this as a sound file, what works to play it with?

Next to the download link, there should have been a link to instructions to play it that looks like this:

Problems listening to the file? See media help.

Deco 03:50, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

World

World has been split up by a bold editor into two articles, World and World (adjective). We could use some more people to come to the article and contribute as to the necessity of the split, the name of the new page, other ways of dealing with issues etc etc. exolon 12:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The current debate on World made me think of setting up a new WikiProject, Wikipedia:WikiProject Conceptual Jungle to more structurally collectively solve conceptual issues. Help with the project is much appreciated! :)

For the specific discussion on the World article see topic see Talk:World#What_in_the_world.3F.21, Talk:World#Assistance_requested.

Logo font

What font is used in the Wikipedia logo? I'm working on a graphic and I'd like to use it. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 09:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• Check Wikipedia_logo#Puzzle_ball_logo_.282003_on.29 - it says "caption in Hoefler Text Small caps." exolon 16:36, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Cleveland template

I hope here is the right place to bring up this issue: at Category:Wikipedians in Cleveland, Ohio there is an unnecessary, redundant subcategory which appears. I would like to see how it's fixed. Thanks. GilliamJF 20:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Easier done than said, please see [12]. The issue is the template categorized whenever it was transcluded, including in category space. The change makes it categorize only when it's transcluded in user space. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:31, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. GilliamJF 03:32, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Deal or no Deal (UK)

It looks to me that Deal or no deal UK Corley Series is an unnecessary copy of Deal or No Deal (UK game show), but I don't know if belongs in VfD or candidates for merging or what. Someone more knowledgeable of WP policy want to take up the effort? Shorelander 03:31, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

It was a cut-and-paste copy, and I've deleted it. Thanks for bringing it to our attention :-) —Mets501 (talk) 03:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

How to download an edited version of Wikipedia

Hello,

I want to be able to edit something out of Wikipedia and then download the entire Wikipedia without that data. Is that possible?

For example I would like to revert to March 2002 version of an article in Wikipedia and have that version along with the entire Wikipedia database and put it in my Palm OS 5 handheld computer (Sony Clie PEG TH55).

Best David

The easiest way to do this I think is to download the most recent current version database, then use Special:Export to export the correct version of the single article you want, and edit that into the large XML file at the appropriate place. Unfortunately, the entire English Wikipedia, even just the current versions, is quite unlikely to fit on anyone's PDA. Deco 07:12, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much Deco!!

Best, David

German proficiency badge

I'm not sure that's what it's called. I stumbled on lists of users who have image files on their user pages that indicate a grade of proficiency in German, from DE-0 to DE-5. I could not determine how to add one of these to my own page. I suppose it's some kind of "user" include. But I'm stumped. Alarob 02:17, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

These are called "Babel" userboxes, please see Wikipedia:Babel. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanx. Exactly what I needed. My user page is now sporting Babel userboxes for English, German, Spanish, and (so moȝt i þe) Middle English. Alarob 04:28, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Richmond, California vandalized

, resulting from a high amount of welfare recipients and felons wishing to get their voting rights back who live in the city However many locals in west county refuse to go to that theatre on the grounds that many obnoxious hoodlums patronize that theatre and the locals choose to go to other theatres in Contra Costa County [this] was recently added to richmond, california it think its vandalism, what can be done? Qrc2006 10:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Those edits by an anon have been revertd (manually since I wanted to preserve a dab change made after them). Thank you for reporting this vandalism. As an editor you can, of course, make your own changes (subject to WP:3RR). Recurrent vandalism can be reported at places such as Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. RJFJR 14:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Preferably, recurent vandalism should be reported at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism Equendil Talk 00:09, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Fair use?

The image (Image:1antiamericanism.jpg) is used at the top of the GA candidate Anti-Americanism with a fair use claim, yet the article does not discuss the particular book pictured. None of the footnotes even cite the book. Could someone with legal expertise determine whether this is a copyright violation? Durova 23:25, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I looked at the fair-use license on the image page and, unfortunately, there is some ambiguity in the license's bulleted list. It is unclear whether the bullets represent a logical or or a logical and. If the former then it appears that any use of the image on wikipedia constitutes fair use. If the later, then the image is only fair use when the article is discussing the book in question. Personally, though, I'm not sure that a book cover is the best lead image for this article. — RJH (talk) 17:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Is there a copyright questions page where I can pose this for actual Wikipedia attorneys to evaluate? I feel uncomfortable seeing a GA candidate with that sort of open question. Durova 20:26, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it'd be better to just change the image. Perhaps replace it with this one? Image:Flag burning.jpg ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 20:35, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Fair use review but that one isn't used much. The best place I guess is Wikipedia talk:Fair use. I don't think the image in question passes the fair use criteria as stated in Wikipedia:Fair use criteria. Especially point 1 and 9. Garion96 (talk) 20:43, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It's a book cover, the fair use rationale is explained in the box. The uploader should have written where the image come from, but that's about it. The real problem with that image is that it's orphan, probably because the entry about the book was deleted. Equendil Talk 00:04, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Hebrew-0 not showing up

When I type {{User he-0}}, it's just a red template link. I'm wondering who to go to to get this made. --Stercus.caput 21:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Just make it yourself. You can base it off the other User he templates. —Mets501 (talk) 22:04, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Only problem being, I don't know Hebrew well enough to do so. Please direct me to someone who could help.--Stercus.caput 03:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I really don't think a userbox saying you are unable to contribute in hebrew is helpful for the project. Equendil Talk 00:11, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I grant you that, but it's still a small step that could be useful to bring up the fact that we don't have a hebrew-0 template, that's all. --Stercus.caput 02:39, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Pumped-storage hydroelectricity/Catalan place names

An editor User:Xaf-bcn has taken to renaming some of the pumped storage stations in Spain in Catalan, and removing Castillian Spanish names of the same places. As I understand it, Castillian Spanish is an official language over all of Spanish territory, so at the very least, I would expect both names to be listed, in much the same way as articles involving Welsh place names include the name in both English and Welsh variants. Xaf-bcn seems a little inexperienced in Wikipedia. Is there someone, possibly Spanish/Catalan speaking who can help hear (1) with educating Xaf-bcn on proper use of Wikipedia, and (2) with working out what appropriate policy should be? I have a suspicion that the use of Catalan place names may be POV-pushing, but I really don't know enough Spanish to know, and I don't want to get into a revert war. Thank-you. WLD 11:22, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

History of prod and speedy deletions

I am wondering if any feature exists, perhaps only to an admin, that could give me an idea of the number of speedy and prod edits I have applied and been successful. Once successful, the edit drops off my contribution list. I have set up a page to track my AfD nominations and their success/failure rate, just wondering about the other two types of deletions; especially given my new page patrolling. Thanks.--Gay Cdn (talk) (email) (Contr.) 01:50, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

You can put the articles you tag with prod or speedy delete on your watchlist. If they are deleted, the articles will show up a red link on your complete watchlist. (click on 'display and edit the complete list'. Garion96 (talk) 02:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I realize I could do that for things going forward, but I wonder if it can be done retroactively. I clean out my watchlist once the article is deleted so they no longer exist there.--Gay Cdn (talk) (email) (Contr.) 02:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Not really. A server called the toolserver used to be able to show edits (but not the content of the edits) made by someone. You could take which ones you edited and look at the deletion logs to try to figure out which ones were prodded or not. However the functionality was removed for social and technical reasons. --Kevin_b_er 20:42, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Debatus.com questions

I hope nobody considers this advertising for Debatus.com that I'm asking questions about it here. Debatus is a wiki for argumentation and debate that myself and a team of Georgetown students began. We've been trying to spread the idea outside of Wikipedia as well as in Wikipedia (bad idea - and we've stopped). Generally, though, we believe that the content and structure of the debates are complimentary to existing controversial articles on Wikipedia, and want to make Wikipedians aware of the tool that Debatus is. This is not shameless advertising as many administrators have suspected; it is an honest outreach to the Wikipedia community from a related and complimentary wiki. What are the appropriate means to getting the word out among Wikipedia and wiki users? Any suggestions?Loudsirens 00:46, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry -- Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and all discussions on Talk pages are supposed to be about improving articles. If a debate is happening, it should be about article content, not about the subject itself. In any case, I think you'll find (as you apparently already have) that promoting your site here will be unwelcome by most Wikipedians. You could certainly link to it from your user page, and become involved in helping out with the encyclopedia, therefore having your user page show up in a lot of logs and talk pages, etc. and people might find it that way, but any other way pretty much violates wikipedia policy. --Rehcsif 04:38, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Source reviews?

Where can I go to request comment on the use of a source across multiple articles? There does not appear to be a source section on WP:RfC. The source in question is The Sealed Nectar. There is a dispute whether this book can be treated as a reliable source for findings of historical fact. Should anybody be willing to briefly page through it and comment (it shouldn't take long to get the feel of the work), or refer me to a better place to ask, this would be most welcome.Proabivouac 02:04, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pages needing attention needs attention.

I decided to take a look at Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Political science and see what was there that needed attention. It didn't take me long to realize that all the listings there were very old. The most recent listing was from October of 2005. I glanced at a couple of them, and they seem to have been cleaned up.

I'm not sure if the other sections of Pages needing attention are in as bad a shape as the Political science ones or not. However, the purpose of Pages needing attention seems to overlap with other cleanup pages like Wikipedia:Cleanup and Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce.

I considered just removing all those very old entries from the page, but don't really want to check them all. Besides, if Pages needing attention is no longer used; wouldn't a better solution be to just mfd the whole kaboodle?

What do others think? ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 16:57, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

wikimapia

how can i put a wikimapia image on an article here?Qrc2006 21:55, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It appears wikimapia is using Google Maps, as such, images are under copyright as indicated in the bottom right corner, so basically, you shouldn't. Some of the datasets might actually be in the public domain, but unless you know exactly what you are doing, I suggest not adding any image from wikimapia here.

Consider adding geographical coordinates instead, (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates), which will let people use a number of site to find the location (for instance, if you click the coordinates in the article Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, you will be directed to this page, where you could chose to see the location with Google maps], for instance. Equendil Talk 17:59, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Photos from PR Newswire

Hi all, just wondering if photos submitted to PR Newswire would qualify as "fair use". Specifically, I'm looking for a photo of the just-announced Renegade (roller coaster). Since it's not built yet, the only illustrations available are concept art, one such pic was submitted to PR Newswire (see this link). There are also additional links to a high-res photo at the bottom for 'real' news sources. Anyway, just wondering if I could use this image, tagged as 'fair use, promotional' or some such? Thanks! --Rehcsif 04:46, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems iffy - especially since prnewswire claim copyright at the bottom of the page. You could try requesting a promotional image directly from the company building it (you could even try asking them to release it into the GDFL) - or even better, wait until it's built and take a free photograph. Megapixie 06:48, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand it is copyrighted, but it was released for promotional use (as part of a press release) by ValleyFair... So it seems just like all the promo pictures associated with celebrities, etc. that came from a press kit... --Rehcsif 15:13, 23 September 2006 (UTC)]

I'm hoping for some other thoughts on this... anyone? Feel free to redirect me to another forum if there's a better place to discuss. Thanks! --Rehcsif 19:12, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that it has the copyright of a press agency attached to it - which per WP:FU#Counterexamples #5 - is not fair use. Most of the fairuse celebrity photos are actually not fair use - unless they happen to be dead, per the new tweak to WP:FU#Policy. The easiest way to get round all of this is to request an electronic presskit directly from the company directly. Megapixie 00:38, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Is there a templates or projects for deletion process?

I've noticed a proliferation of templates and projects lately, usually the bright idea of someone who creates a template or project without any consultation with other people, and starts plastering it onto various articles. I'm particularly concerned about various Indian film articles, which have taken to sprouting templates for actors and directors. The bottom of articles is going to get very crowded if people start adding templates for everyone involved in the film. Surely a LINK to the actor or director's main article is enough. The purpose of the template seems to be to grab the film as "belonging" to a certain actor or director -- and already we have competetion, with fans of various actors adding THEIR actors' templates.

Where do I go to deal with this? Zora 07:43, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:TFDGeni 09:07, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

More template problems

There are two big templates in the article Three August Ones and Five Emperors. I want to make them line up next to one another, but {{combi}} isn't working. Can someone make them line up next to one another? The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Lords Reform - Serious Help needed.

There are two of us working on Lords Reform I don't think either of us know much about Wikipedia, but between we know most of the details on the history and current politics.

My immediate problem is trying to create sub pages so that we can put all the information in a sensible format.

My next problem is keeping the vultures away, who want to kill the project because I happened to cut and past a lot of political stuff as a starter.

The aim is to provide something that is informative, covers the history, issues and the various proposals under consideration.

if you:-

1. Hace any flair for Wikipedia and can help guide some novices
2. Can check spelling (Mine is atrocious at 3am)
3. Can comment on the style
4. Can comment (helpfully) on the sub-division of the pages
5. Can add anything
6. Can tell us what you think is missing/too much
7. Can add moral support
8. Can help scare away the vulture that are already circling over the project.

Then your help would be much appreciated.

Unfortunately, Time is limited. House of Lords will be back on the agenda fairly soon with the expected announcement of the legislation on 15th november. Mike 18:53, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Getting a random article from a specific category.

Hi everybody! I'd like to know if there's a way to get a random article from the Category:Ancient Rome by clicking on a link or a button like in the navigation box at the left. Is there a tool I'm not seeing?--Carlos, Mexico, - 21:05, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Restricting the domain of "random article" is not a supported feature at this time. It's a long standing requested enhancement, see bugzilla:2170. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:54, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Are these requests ever fulfilled?--Carlos, Mexico - 18:07, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, "ever" is long time. Here's how it works. There are something like two programmers paid by the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit organization that runs Wikipedia). Being as how it's one of the top 20 (by traffic) websites in the world, and it's run on hardware bought and maintained on donated money, performance is a pretty big issue. These two paid staff members spend almost all their time responding to urgent emergencies or working on ways to make the software run faster. When they're not doing this, they work on various feature enhancements. MediaWiki is the basic software that's used (there's a fair amount more), and it's run as an open source project (sort of like the Apache web server or Linux, both of which Wikipedia uses). In addition to his other duties, one of the paid programmers is the lead organizer for this open source project. Like most open source projects, anyone who is able to can (on a volunteer basis) contribute fixes and feature enhancements. The chances that one of the paid programmers gets to this feature seems not too good to me. It's probably not exactly trivial or someone would have implemented it by now. All the open "bugs" (including enhancements) can be voted for by anyone with a bugzilla account. The volunteers working on fixing things take the vote totals into account (but, since they're volunteers, no one can really make them do anything, so even very popular features sometimes don't get worked on for a while).

So, are these requests ever fulfilled? Certainly some are. Are you a programmer? Are you willing to do some work for free? Oh, and by the way, I'm not one of the folks on Wikimedia's payroll (there are very, very few of them, but they do occasionally pop up on this forum). Pretty much everyone who answers questions at any of the Village Pump pages and the help desk are volunteers, just like the folks who edit the articles, just like the administrators, just like most of the developers. We're all one big happy family of volunteers helping each other. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:12, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand, and appreciate all the volunteers work. -- Carlos - 09:14, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Help on Editing Carnictis (Vile Meat-Weasel)

I really need some help with my first real page, I've got the basic's already on there like where the animal's live and what they eat and etc. I just need a picture and alot more information!A7X 900 01:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I know nothing about the topic (and having read this article convinces me that I do NOT need to see the film! ;-)), but one way to get some help would be to partially wikify the article by introducing some sensible wikilinks and by finding pages that mention this creature and making wikilinks there. --Tkynerd 02:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Slow-motion revert war

An editor (User:Derouch) has been persistently inserting an external link into Binary numeral system, and several editors have been removing it since it does not seem to them good to include in the article. This has been happening perhaps a couple of times a day average for the past month or so. The editor has ignored disscussion on the article's talk page and on his talk page, and a 24-hour block for three-revert violation had no apparent impact beyond the 24 hours. Essentially all his/her edits appear related to this web site. Wikipedia has a huge morass of policies and procedures, and a good way to handle this isn't obvious to me, especially since I don't want to invest a lot of time on the issue. -R. S. Shaw 00:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I blocked the user indefinitely for persistent linkspamming. Problem solved :). Cowman109^Talk 00:35, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Professor of Zoology, Cambridge University

Hello,

I find a mistake in that list :

Adam Sedgwick can't be professor in 1907, because he is already dead !

Regards.--Valérie75 19:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

If you can correct the information (and preferably provide sources for your correction), be bold. If you can't, leave a note about this on the talk page, and someone who's more familiar with the subject matter can follow it up. On another note, I have a hunch that the Adam Sedgwick who was Professor of Zoology at Cambridge and the one we have an article on may not be the same person (having skimmed Adam Sedgwick). --Tkynerd 20:10, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

How to handle long-term disruption from IP block?

A user editing from a block of IPs has been causing general disruption for well over a year now. I am not sure how to proceed. See the old Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/65.182.172.x for further links. Currently active at Talk:Green Tortoise. What is the historical response to abuse/vandalism arising from blocks of IPs? ∴ here…♠ 15:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

It may be best to take this to WP:ANI to get other administrators to weigh in their opinion. If it can be determined that only one person owns those IPs, a long-term range block may be acceptable, for example. Cowman109^Talk 15:38, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Redirect to disambiguation page redundant?

Swedish (disambiguation) is a redirect that goes to the disambiguation page Swedish. I think the redirect is unnecessary (only one easily fixed page links to it) and should be deleted. Are my instincts good? Thanks. --Tkynerd 19:23, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I asked on the creator's talk page (the user who created Swedish (disambiguation)) and got a good explanation of why such pages are needed. Issue resolved. --Tkynerd 02:29, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Cannot locate template

Hi, I've been doing some reading on Francis Ford Coppola film's and have come across an omission that I would like to correct. All of the film pages embed the template {{Francis Ford Coppola's films}} (eg. Apocalypse Now). I am correct in refering to this as a template? I've searched high and low to find the source for this template and cannot find it or any help in how to solve my problem. It seems to exist in some omnipresent state. I would just like to make a modification. It is quite possible that I have no clue what I'm doing or how to approach this problem. I'm fairly new here and have not touched on any of these "templates" before. If anyone can direct me to the proper place or to inform me in valuable information for completing my goal I'd greatly appreciate it. -MattWatt 20:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok I feel rather stupid. I simply edited a url to another template and inserted the template name that I was looking for and viola, it appeared (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Francis_Ford_Coppola's_films). I probably should have tried this before posting this. However my qualm is still the fact that I did a template search and got no results for what I was looking for, which doesn't make much sense. -MattWatt 21:09, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The easiest way to get to a template is to edit an article that uses the template and scroll down to the very bottom of the page, where there's a list of the templates that are used with links to them. Searching should also work, so exactly what did you search for? -- Rick Block (talk) 23:43, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh wow now I really feel stupid! Thanks for the tip, I was currently unaware that those links were there! I did a search for "Francis Ford Coppola's films", only checking Template and Talk:Template, and got no results. This is the exact title of the template, which is why I was baffled when I didn't get a result. Thank you very much for teaching me something new today.  :) -MattWatt 00:29, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm. Seems like this search should have worked. I've entered this as bugzilla:7482. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:14, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

It may have something to do with the apostrophe -- they often seem to foul up search and other things (like Lupin's popups) for me. — Catherine\^talk 06:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Highwater

Hi, I was wondering if an admin could tell me what the content of the deleted article "Highwater" was, as well as why it was deleted (in the deletion log, it is listed as "old prod"), as I am considering creating a similar article, and I don't want create someting which will then be speedily deleted as a recreation. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 12:50, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Highwater, are a band numbering four members from the North-East of England..... We read that they were on their way to "Success" (yes, capitalized) when they broke up. One of them pursued a "roll" (yes) of a drummer. There's no clear account of any performances, let alone recordings. -- Hoary 05:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks - clearly non-notable. I was looking at the space missions, so the deletion of that article is not something which will affect the new article which I am creating. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 11:16, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

User:Albertotineo10

Hello anyone out there. I could use some assistance.

Albertotineo10 (talk · contribs) has been creating articles related to Pennsylvania state highways. These articles have not come anywhere close to WP:PASH standards. Myself and User:TMF have attempted to contact him/her, as you can see on his/her talk page User talk:Albertotineo10.

I don't want to discourage his/her creating articles, because he/she's at least including some information about the roads. However, as I said, they aren't within PASH standards, and he/she hasn't responded to any of our requests to stop making pages so far beyond PASH standards.

We would like a third party to get involved. Any help would be greatly appreciated. You can contact me on my talk page for Roads projects I am involved in: User talk:Myselfalso/PA Routes.

Thanks! --myselfalso 21:41, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Because no one's responded to this request yet, I'll add my two cents as well. If you examine his/her contributions, and the "articles" s/he has created, and compare them to the standards specified on WP:PASH, you can clearly see that this user is creating articles that are neither meeting the project standard nor are encyclopedic-quality. Requests to point this user in the right direction on his/her talk page have gone unnoticed. Even more problematic, this user is now uploading images stolen from http://www.state-ends.com. One more point: whenever either myself or Myselfalso attempt to (appropriately) tag one of this user's articles as in need of cleanup or to designate an article as a stub, this user has removed the tags.

Surely there must be some policy that this user is violating by (1) ignoring helpful requests to improve his/her articles on his/her talk page, (2) by uploading images that are clear copyvio and (3) erroneously removing maintenance tags from articles. Diffs are available upon request.

Does anyone have any ideas? --TMF ^{T - C} 22:11, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

IMHO I'd say give a short block to make them pay attention to the "You have new messages" and to get them to realize that they can't just ignore all rules. We just have to find a policy. Yes people may say I'm biting a newcomer. But the fact is when you pull off those cleanup tags and do copyvios, you have to be doing it maliciously. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 04:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Wow, didn't realize we have a new Wikipedia:Template_messages/User_talk_namespace. We have {{Drmmt}}- did we use that? --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 04:49, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Apparently we can give MOS blocks. {{lang5}} --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 04:50, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, we can block per Wikipedia:Blocking policy- I assume :"persistent copyright infringement" is going on here? Like something like 12-24 hours, so they are forced to spend some time reading WP:PASH rather than just going "I'll read it later." --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 04:54, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep, if you look at this user's contributions and select one of the PA route articles listed, you can see the blantant copyvio pictures from State-Roads on the pages. Plus, if that isn't enough, the block is definitely justifiable by {{drmmt}} and a blatant lack of respect for the WP:MoS and WP:PASH. A 12 or 24 hour block should be suitable for this purpose. --TMF ^{T - C} 05:07, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

This edit makes me mad. So go ahead and hit block? --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 05:14, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead. I have no objections, nor should anyone else who has been following the issue. --TMF ^{T - C} 05:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Blocked. Left a long note at the user talk page. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 05:29, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Upload File

Are us WikiPedia users allowed to upload any kind of file other then images onto WikiPedia? If so, will it appear as a link? I understand that, if a file is uploaded, any viruses in the file WILL cause the file to be deleted (also possibly resulting in broken links) and the uploader MAY be blocked if viruses were in the file upon upload. If we are allowed to, then I will make a "My Programs" section on my User Page and upload programs that I make. If you want, I could have the programs first authorized for use on WikiPedia before uploading. That way, we can ensure that WikiPedia is safe for all. I am asking because I do not want to get in trouble if I do and are not allowed. The only reason I want to is so I can share the programs I write.

Signed,
--Cricket Boy 01:20, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

You can upload files other than images (e.g. audio files) but it isn't possible to upload programs, because of the risk that they may contain viruses, and because programs aren't normally relevant for an encyclopedia. Tra (Talk) 01:40, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

How do I format tables, templates and references?

Wiki markup has always been confusing to me, particularly during my first few months at Wikipedia. However, I believe I have mastered the basics, such as headings, list and basic formatting. Now it's time to move on to more advanced wiki markup. How do I format tables, templates and references? I know how to insert templates using curly braces, but how do I edit them? For references, do you just enclose each reference link in <ref> tags, and create a section named References and add the <references/> tag to the section? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:01, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you got references right. Help:Table, Help:Template and Wikipedia:Footnote should give you the information you're looking for. Tra (Talk) 18:22, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Transwiki to Wookiepedia?

Is there a graceful way to move excessive Star Wars cruft (List of podracers comes to mind)) out to Wookiepedia? --John Nagle 04:06, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Genocide advocacy

An anonymous editor has written on the schizophrenia talk page (now archived) that a person with schizophrenia is a "genetic junk" and added a section to the article titled 'Schizophrenia and Crime' later renamed to 'Schizophrenia and Violence'. Now there are editors writing that I can't remove it. I don't want Wikipedia to promote genocide. Can anyone help? --Mihai cartoaje 03:12, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I need to help get articles to Fa status

but I need a mentor Spreck 21:23, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

a good way to understand and learn more featured articles is by taking a look at the criterion by which FA status is obtained and then try to incorporate those points in articles you help contribute to. what you can also do is check out the current featured article candidates so that you get a better understanding of what is looked for in a successful candidate as well as note the nature of the feedback given by other editors. finally, you could look at the current featured articles in your area of interest and use them as a model when aspiring to help other articles reach FA status. ITAQALLAH 21:43, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

"bad" word censorship in articles

Howdy -- I couldn't immediately find anything on this in the Help files... I just reverted a non-registered user's change to the Daniel Pearl article wherein the editor changed the word "fuck" to "f***". The word appears toward the bottom in the References In Popular Culture section referring to some lyrics by Outkast. Do we have any policy against using the word "fuck" in articles? I thought it was pointless censorship, so I reverted "f***" back to "fuck". Please tell me if I'm wrong. Thanks for any input... --nathanbeach 21:00, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

No, your edits are correct. Wikipedia is not censored. Cowman109^Talk 21:02, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

1862 legal tender ? i have one

i wish to know more about it in general if someone could help me out that would be great

See the Reference desk. --Scott5114↗ 14:51, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:RS question regarding website?

On the Bowling for Columbine article, two recent editors have seen fit to remove entire sections of the article. These edits claimed under the guise of WP:RS have cut out much of the content of the article, and in fact make many sections make little sense, making sections that once made a claim and backed it up, to just a group making a claim with the evidence removed. They claim under WP:RS that critical website of the film such as [David Hardy's Bowling for Columbine site] are not reliable sources because their authors don't have advanced degrees in film editing or related subjects. While I argue that it doesn't take a degree to point out via transcripts how the tone of a speech is changed via editing, and that they fall under the Pop Culture clause. I am looking for a neutral third party to help with the interpretation of WP:RS in regards to this subject. PPGMD 23:08, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Suggest WP:3O or WP:RFC. Durova 13:46, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Question on how to handle an article

I ran across an article today, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialized_Bicycle_Components . The article in question has information that is arguably point of view, but more importantly, I'm pretty sure a lot of the information in it is copied verbatim from Specialized's marketing materials... should this be sent to RFC? Articles needing attention? I'm still not totally keen on all of this and would appreciate some advice.

TO11MTM 01:07, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The whole thing looked to be an advertisement as you stated, and it does look to be a copy-and-paste job (creating copyright concerns), so I deleted the page as it would require a complete rewrite to fit Wikipedia standards. Cowman109^Talk 01:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Per suggestion on my talk page, I restored the page and reverted to the September 14th version before the mass of copyvio. Cowman109^Talk 02:32, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Problems with templates

There seems to be a problem with Template:Dinosaur Star and probably the similar WikiProject award templates, it seems like no matter what messege I type, it still leaves {{{messege}}} instead of text. The following is the code of the template:

[[Image:WPD_Barnstar.png|left|frame|{{{message}}}]]<noinclude> [[Category:Award templates|Dinosaur Star]]</noinclude>

Anyone seems to find the problem? Michaelas10 15:49, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

		Paleontology Barnstar
		{{{1}}}

See the source for this reply. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:16, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) With the template as it is now, you'll have to use {{Dinosaur Star|message=Hello world}}, because the template uses the named variable {{{message}}}. To get {{Dinosaur Star|Hello world}} to work, change {{{message}}} to {{{1}}}. —da Pete (ばか) 18:20, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, done. Michaelas10 20:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Potential copyvio issue at X60 Train

SuggestBot suggested that I work on the X60 Train article, which was a stub. There was a much larger corresponding article on the Swedish Wikipedia, so I simply translated that article into English (cleaning up some wikilinks in the process) and saved it.

Then I tried to find sources for it (the Swedish article is unsourced) -- and found the page from which the Swedish article appears to have been largely cut and pasted, with only minor editing done. Obviously this is a problem for the Swedish Wikipedia (and I have raised the issue there as well), but what does this do to the status of the translated article here? Is it then also copyvio? --Tkynerd 20:40, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Sadly, yes. The harsh way to look at is that you're just a very specialized copying tool, one that changes between languages. The translation is very welcome, but it'll need cleanup. Wipe the text you know is just a translation of the cut and paste job. Take the place you found the swedish text was cut and copied from and use it as a source. Make statements of fact that can be reliably backed up by the swedish text I assume you found. You'll basically be writing your own article. We'll be loosing some content, yes, but the content there will be fully free afterward. If its a webpage, just making an in-line external link to support statements you make will do for now, unless you want to go through and do advanced citation formatting and all, but I can do that part for you if you want. Kevin_b_er 07:31, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Kevin. This is pretty much what I thought, but I wanted to get the WP view of this kind of thing to be sure. I don't know whether I'll have time to mess with the article today, but I'll get it straightened out ASAP. --Tkynerd 14:24, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

User impersonation

Where do list a problem with a new user Alan au (talk · contribs) attempting to impersonate me? Is WP:AIV the appropriate place to report this? I'm fairly certain it's a bad faith attempt to retaliate for deleting spam from the Atlas.ti article. --Alan Au 02:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I have blocked him and suggested he choose a new name. Anyway, I think WP:AN/I would be a good place for sitations like this in the future. --W.marsh 02:31, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

AfD article and deletion log

I think I need an admin's assistance with the following. This article, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2006 November 17 is showing up in the categorized list of deletions. The reason it shows up is that the content of this page is {{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/One Piece attacks}}. While I could just delete the line, I am concerned about the effect on the AfD logs once November 17th rolls around and the bot tries to create the page. All the "votes" are appearing in the One Piece attacks AfD page so there is no issue there, they are just duplicated in the November log page. Thoughts?--Gay Cdn (talk) (email) (Contr.) 00:48, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Listed it properly and tagged the november page for speedy deletion. It'll be an interesting closure by the admin on that one too. Kevin_b_er 03:42, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

AfD noms made after 0000 UTC but before log rollover

Greetings all ... I just put up an AfD that caused me to find myself in a strange situation, and I'd like some guidance. I started the process of formatting the AfD for Women Fully Clothed around 2340 or so UTC. I got a bit distracted, and by the time I was done, it was roughly 0015. I manually opened Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_October_2 to see if had been created yet, but it was blank. I then reloaded the AfD edit page (the one created by clicking "Preloaded debate" on the {{afd1}} tag), and saw that the "Edit today's AfD log" link on that page had been switched over from October 1 to October 2, so I went ahead, opened it up, and put the tag in there as usual. It saved just fine, but of course when I opened up Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_October_2 all the templates at the top of the page were missing. So I did the only thing I could think of: I opened up the October 1 page, copied them, and pasted them on top of the October 2 page (after changing the dates, of course). Several other articles have been added to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_October_2 since then, so everything looks fine, but I can't help but think I screwed up somewhere and either interfered with a bot or somehow mishandled the changeover. So my question is: When you find yourself in the situation of nominating the day's first AfD, is it your job to create the new day's log and copy over those templates, or should you just add your AfD to the bottom of the previous day's page until some bot (or whoever) comes along and changes the log date for you? Thanks ... --Aaron 01:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

• Due to the total lack of response, I'm going to walk away from this on the assumption I handled this 100% properly. I'm removing this from my watchlist. Further comments had best be left on my user talk page if you want me to see them. --Aaron 03:54, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Vanity Article - Perry Marshall

I added a deletion tag to Perry_Marshall_-_Bio as it appears to be a vanity article/non-notable. The tag was deleted by the author of the article. How do I propose permanent deletion? I found the right page but it's not obvious how to add anything. Bregence 02:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Inconsistent zodiacal disambiguation pages

The disambiguation pages for the constellations/signs of the Zodiac seem to come in five flavors:

1. "name (disambiguation)" redirects to "name": Aries, Taurus, Gemini
2. "name" redirects to "name (disambiguation)": Leo, Virgo, Aquarius
3. only "name" exists: Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Pisces
4. "name" and "name (disambiguation)" are two separate pages: Libra (and Libra (disambiguation))
5. only name (disambiguation) is a disambiguation page: Cancer (disambiguation)

The page in group five is obviously fine (Cancer is an article about the disease), and the page in group four is obviously not fine, and need to be fixed. My question is about groups one, two and three. I can fix the articles in groups three and four once I know how (and if) they should be fixed. But if the articles in either groups one or two are wrong, I think it will require an admin to fix. What to do, and does it matter? Thanks! Xtifr _tälk 00:10, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Libra now redirecting to its dab page, I don't think it matters whether <name> or <name (disambiguation)> is the redirect or if both exist or not. The important thing here is where people end up from the search box. Equendil Talk 00:49, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Rocky Mountain National Park�

Hi, earlier this year we had a user who added spam links to his site to many national park related articles. (See this, this, this, and this for more info on the "saga".)

Now, there have been several IP address adding these spam links to Rocky Mountain National Park, likely by the same user. There is a borderline personal attack on Talk:Rocky Mountain National Park (it's entirely irrelevant, in any case, and an invasion of privacy). Even if an admin were to block one of the IP addresses, this user (or maybe these users) seems to control a number of IP addresses.

Comments, suggestions, etc? Thanks! Nationalparks 04:16, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I would agree that all of the nationalparksgallery links are spam, or at a minimum, not notable. The info on those sites are also found on other linked sites (in particular the nps.gov official sites) so from that standpoint the links don't add anything. They do have lots of photos but there are much larger and better quality galleries for the parks out there. If we included links to every park gallery out there, the external links section for each park would be longer than the article.

FWIW a quick search also finds their link in the following articles. I think they are left over from the Feb 2006 link war but were overlooked. I'm leaving them for now to see how this discussion develops, but I'm all for having them removed as well.

Mission San José de Tumacacori -- Petroglyph National Monument -- Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 -- Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas/Statue of Liberty Adagio 13:53, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Eh, after reading a bit more of the background, I'm going to remove the links from those pages. This guy sounds like he's using multiple IP addresses to get around edit blocking. User:Nationalparks, if it truly is a spam problem, and the person who keeps adding the links refuses to compromise or work out the dispute, I'd recommend proposing adding nationalparksgallery/.com to the Wikimedia-wide spam blacklist. If you look in the Wikimedia-wide spam blacklist talk page you can propose adding the site and state your case. If it is approved, nobody will be able to add links to any nationalparksgallery.com/* sites. Adagio 15:43, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

He's at it again. Since this doesn't seem to be stopping, I have placed a request on the Wiki-wide spam blacklist page. Nationalparks 23:34, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Now that the site is blacklisted, this user has become a "classic" vandal. See Special:Contributions/67.176.112.128. Nationalparks 01:00, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Question about GFDL

If another Wiki incorporates a GFDL-image into an article does the entire article then become GFDLed? JoshuaZ 23:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. If you're referring to a non-Wikimedia wiki site, then I believe that the entire site needs to be declared GFDL, however, the image being used must be declared as GFDL in order to use it. That's assuming you're talking about an external wiki. Shadow1 (talk) 17:15, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

A GDFL'd image cannot make something else GDFL'd! However, using it in a manner inconsistent with its license is a copyright violation. There's a lot of nonsense around about how the GDFL (and GPL) are "viral", and how they "infect" other works, but that is just nonsense. The license(s) are designed to encourage people to use them, but any such use is always completely voluntary. (You can simply do without the GDFL'd content if you don't want to comply with the license. Or negotiate with the copyright holder.) Xtifr _tälk 00:45, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Annoying white space.

I've been working on re-arranging the information in the article Toy. I'm not sure what I did to cause it, but for some odd reason there's a whole bunch of white space between the end of the intro and the top of the TOC box. How can I make that go away? ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 14:35, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. --Mets501 (talk) 20:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I moved one image. The white space is now gone. Garion96 (talk) 20:39, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 20:49, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Repeated edits to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Green

Hello-

I recently joined Wikipedia after doing anonymous edits for some time. Anyway, someone keeps turning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Green into a vanity page. I have reverted the edits twice already but do not want to violate the 3RR. Can you help me, thanks.

I don't have any personal interest in the person, I just want to see the page be done correctly. Thank you. Princemackenzie 20:04, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Articles for creation needs admin attention

Could an administrator (or a more experienced editor that me) please stop by Afc? No one has created an archive since September 30, so the submissions are getting very difficult to review. I'd do it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I would screw up the move and make things worse. Thanks! -- Twisted86 - Talk - at 18:52, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Quick question: policy on creating User/User Talk pages

Clicking on my name User:Doxmyth takes one to a blank don't-have-one-yet User page. If you then click on Discussion, you come to a User Talk page that was not started by me and that, in fact, I didn't know existed until recently. It's being used as a page of personal criticism. I know that User pages are (per Wiki custom) supposed to be started by the User himself; what about the associated talk page? It seems odd that a nonexistent User page can nonetheless have a Talk page started by someone else. Is there a policy? Doxmyth 21:26, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Either your talk page or user page can exist independantly. The talk page is used by other wikipedians to reach you, while your user page is more of your private space that other wikipedians usually won't edit, though check WP:USER for the details. Equendil Talk 21:52, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

looking for help with the FA writing style

Hi, I happened to find a rewrite I was planning from May, and now I am continuing it (because without a FA I feel inadequate, lawl). The current draft is at User:ClashMan, and just from reading the beginning of an external biography I know that it needs to be expanded in places (the autobiography is not very long) and fact checked (Noguchi apparently got at least one date wrong).

Other than that (and being horribly incomplete, of course), are there any suggestions for what kind of writing style I should maintain if I want to get this to GA/FA quality? For example: obviously the article size isn't a concern now but I included everything that I thought was notable I might go past the accepted limit. How in-detail should I be, then? I already know I might need to snip some of what's already written in order to vastly expand upon the circumstances of his birth. Thanks. ClashMan 11:40, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

You can request a peer review, which will be more adequate than the Village pump, also did you check WP:FA? ? Equendil Talk 21:51, 2 October 2006 (UTC)